Stress Takes More Than it Gives: Ways to Adapt and Get Stronger – Siim Land with Dave Asprey : 724

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You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about stress, but not the kind of watered down media stress that you've probably been hearing about lately, like it's the end of the world. Pick which plague you're looking at locusts, by the way. There are locusts emerging this year in case you needed something else to be worried about or pandemics or injustices, justice and racism and things like that. There's a lot of stuff going on and all of those create emotional stress. But there's also physical stress and biological stress. And I have someone who I've really come to respect coming back on the show for the second time to talk about something called hormesis, which is how some stress makes you stronger. If you are a longtime listener, you might remember when I had an interview with a guy with the memorable name of Seam Land who wrote a book called Metabolic Autophagy. And in that interview we talked about how you can actually use your metabolism to get rid of cells they don't really want. And in that conversation, we talked about how bulletproof coffee during a fast doesn't turn off at least the most important forms of autophagy. Based on his research, based on my research and things like that. So you still get a few sort of fasting purists who are saying if you have anything besides water, you're a bad person. And it turns out you can actually hack your fast with all sorts of things like, I don't know, plant compounds and all that. Seam has a new book, though, that is really good. Right in alignment with the things that you've learned here and things that, if you're just paying attention, you might have heard about that stress makes you stronger, but not too much. And his book is called Stronger by Stress. It just came out on Amazon and I think this is the first interview he's doing about the book. 516 pages, 2072 research references. That means he put a lot of time and energy into it. Seem is a researcher who likes to go really deep the way I do. And you just find that when he says something, there's a reason and he says it. Seem. Welcome back to Bulletproof Radio.

Hey, Dave, I'm glad to be back and glad to talk with you.

You are hanging out in Estonia where you live.

Yeah, that's right.

So is hormesis this idea that stress makes you stronger? Is this a core part of Estonian belief systems? Do you walk around wrapping yourselves in ice or saunas or any of that. Is this a cultural thing for you or is this just because you're a geek?

Well, I would say that a lot of similar hormetic practices are a part of the culture here. Like, the sauna has been practiced here for, like, you know, centuries. And I myself have started using the sauna since I was, like, a child. So I can remember, like, when I was age 4 with my brother, we were sitting in a sauna with the parents and we would get, like, our hormesis on from heat. So I would imagine that, yeah, like, a lot of people are engaged with some form of, like, winter swimming and heat, saunas and exercise and that sort of thing. But the biohacking itself is like, a novel way of approaching it.

That's fantastic. I believe that in the US at least, a lot of that stuff we've lost. There's some bodybuilding and all, but saunas, until recently, have not really been a big thing. They've experienced a comeback. And I don't really know when we lost that or why we lost it, but it seems like it's. It's just not been there. And then you get real far north into Canada, where I live now, and at least, well, you just. It's winter all the time up here, at least half the time. So you get hormesis because it's just cold, but you get sort of those tough people walking out and hunting grizzly bears with their bare teeth and all. So I don't really. I don't really know what happened there, but it feels like fasting and all that stuff just sort of went away. What about fasting in Estonia? Is that a part of the culture?

Not really. Like, most people don't do, like, a keto diet or that thing. They don't do fasting or intermittent fasting. Some people do, but it hasn't been a part of the culture. But, you know, fasting has been a part of many other cultures and similar hormetic practices like the sauna and cold, they are used in basically across the world. And I'm afraid, like, these kind of ancient habits have disappeared just because of the modern comfortable environment that we find ourselves in. So people, you know, the human nature is that we want to avoid things that are painful and discomfortable, so we much rather not do them unless we have, like, a dire reason. So because of, like, central heating, because of the pantry and because of supermarkets, we don't. We're not forced to experience these beneficial stressors, whereas in the past, those beneficial stressors were already woven into our everyday life. Like they were a part of just existence. And nowadays people are. Have. I think people have become slightly too fragile and too weak against even, like, these milder stressors, like, just a little bit cold and just a little heat. Those things, they aren't as dangerous as, like, running away from a lion or actual, like an asteroid or volcano.

I feel like in Europe, something big happened, and it was around World War II. Many, many people went without enough food for a couple years. In fact, even my grandmother I. And she's 97 now, she doesn't waste a tiny scrap of food. Like, it doesn't matter if you're not hungry. You clean your plate. And it's because there were times of real serious shortage. There were times, in fact, in her. Her memories, there's a time when all of her sisters stopped growing for a year because there just wasn't enough food for them to eat. So these periods of forced famine create sort of societal things saying, oh, my God, you will die if you don't eat. Because at some time in recent last hundred years, people did die from not eating. So now there's an inherent fear that's maybe stronger than it needs to be. And it feels like there's more of that in Europe than there is in the US but even here we have more obesity and people saying, like I did when I weighed 300 pounds, if I don't eat six times a day, I'll go into starvation mode, and then I'll starve and I'll die and it'll suck, and. And all that. And what was going on in my head? Was this an emotional issue where this is emotional stress, or was this a physical thing that was going on?

What would you.

Would you hypothesize?

Yeah, there. There are, like, you know, different types of stress. And some of the stress is physical and some of that is emotional as well. So, like, let's maybe define what stress is as well. So stress is. Stress is, by definition, disruption in the body's homeostasis. And the homeostasis is the balance or the equilibrium where your body is functioning at its optimal state. It's in peace, so to say. And stress disrupts that kind of puts the body out of balance. And the body experiences these different stressors based upon how adapted it is to the stress and what kind of a stress it is. So, for example, like, you know, skipping a meal may not be a stressful event for someone who is used to intermittent fasting, whereas it might be very stressful for someone who is used to eating six meals a day, or for another example, running a marathon may not be that stressful for like an athlete, but it's definitely stressful for someone who isn't used to exercising. So stress is always very context dependent as well. It's based upon the individual and the situation or even how they perceive it. So we come across many various stressors on a daily basis and they affect us both on a physical level and on an emotional level. So there's this thing called allostasis as well, which is a kind of predictive programming of how your body kind of anticipates these future stressors based upon past memories and past events. So if the body has, you know, in the past, has experienced famine, then their body can kind of maybe install or retain some of those memories inside there. So in the future you're going to react in a way of more scarcity because, you know, you kind of draw upon these memories and therefore you go into like, okay, you know, the hunter gatherer example is the perfect of it. Like you, the hunter gatherer, they would fast very often, they would skip meals and whenever they did eat, they would eat a lot because they would, you know, think that I don't know when my next meal is going to come from. So therefore I'm going to gorged and gain a bunch of calories and wheat to kind of compensate for the lack of scarcity. And the same applies to humans in the modern world as well. So if we experience too much stress on a daily basis, then it can just overburden the system and create disruption and homeostasis. And if we lack certain either physical resources or if we lack emotional coping mechanisms, then we will eventually just, you know, cause some damage in the body and bring it out of, out of balance.

That idea of homeostasis, this optimal thing, the more I've studied biology and how to hack ourselves and the whole biohacking, I don't believe that there is such a thing as homeostasis. And the reason is that you're looking at me going, what are you talking about? I just wrote a book about this. Here's why. We like to think we're standing still. But if you are standing on a stress plate, you find that you're actually rotating in a small circle that your body's moving like a cone if you plot it out. So our perception is that we're standing still, but the reality is that we're making micro adjustments all the time and that the shape and frequency and size of that cone of movement, that's imperceptible to us is predictive of neurological disease. In other words, it's, you feel normal, but if you're moving in a non circular cone and it's kind of oblong or it's jittery, something's going on. And your, your mechanisms that are invisible to you that correct what you're doing, how you're standing in space, those mechanisms are slightly off and it shows in your movement, but no one can see it without data. And it feels like homeostasis doesn't exist. What's going on is you're either having giant swings in one direction than the other direction or when you feel like you're in homeostasis, you're just making small adjustments all the time. But it's, there's no such thing as perfect flat line optimal. It's just small squiggles away from the line versus, oh, I actually got there. Now I'm perfectly in homeostasis. I'm optimal. It's like, no you're not. You're 1% off of optimal. But you corrected it before you noticed it. You think I'm right or am I wrong?

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And I agree that there isn't something that is balanced. There isn't a state of complete equilibrium because that would mean that you're dead. Exactly. Being alive means that you are constantly fluctuating between different states. And examples of homeostasis include your body temperature. Your body temperature is never exactly 37 degrees Celsius. It's constantly fluctuating throughout the day. Your metabolic rate isn't always the same. Every day it fluctuates every day. Your hormones aren't the same, they fluctuate every day. Your body weight fluctuates all the time, your water weight, all those things. So yeah, homeostasis itself as a phenomenon isn't stagnant, it's constantly moving. And I think there is like a, you know, there's a certain range that fits into the homeostasis. So you know, the average human body temperature is between, you know, 36 degrees Celsius up until 37.5 or something. That, and if your body stays within that range, then it's, then it is in somewhat of a homeostatic state and only if it goes beyond that, where is going to be disrupted. So there's, your body kind of needs to, needs to have like a buffer zone in order to preserve resources for the brain. Because if you were to constantly focus on these minor fluctuations in your temperature and homeostasis, then you wouldn't be able to, you know, go out and hunt. You would always be focused on these very small, insignificant changes and fluctuations.

So it's sort of like blinking. You don't have to consciously blink, but you can.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay. One of the things that you write about is something that is very important and underwritten about in any of the health magazines and things like that. And you talk about it in the original term called adaptation energy. That goes back to Hans self, Celia Cells, where. I don't even know how you say the guy's name. It's not English, Celia. It's a German name, I believe. But he wrote about the general adaptation syndrome, sort of the father of hormesis. You could say, what is adaptation energy in the way you talk about it, and why is it important?

Hans Selje, he created this term adaptation energy to describe, you know, the body's resource or the organism's resources to cope with stress. And his perspective was that he created, like, certain axioms for that, for adaptation energy. And he. He claimed that, you know, adaptation energy is a finite supply. And you create. You get. You get that supply at birth, and you only have, like, a certain amount for your entire life. So every stress in your life, every. Every stressful situation, every sleepless night, every burger that you eat, all those have, like, a depleting effect on that adaptation energy. And eventually, as you get older, your adaptation energy just becomes decreased constantly and drained from those small stressors. And once your adaptation energy is depleted or if it's very low, then you'll basically, you'll get, like, sick or you die. So he did a lot of research on mice particularly. But, you know, I would say that's not, like, a really accurate way of describing how stress works and how humans are able to adapt to it, because, you know, we are able to, you know, recover, and we're also able to replenish some of that adaptation energy to a certain extent. So there's one other researcher who came after, Hans Selja, his goldstone, and he wrote a few decades later that he thought that the adaptation energy can be restored and recreate it as long as there's enough time for recovery. So that's basically the idea for Mises, that if you do get exposed to a small amount of stress, then you can bounce back and you can get stronger or you can just recover, reach back to the previous state as long as you have recovery. So I think that is particularly more accurate or it makes more sense in the sense that humans wouldn't have survived for so Long if we have just a finite amount of resources for dealing with stress.

Well, the, the idea that was at the very foundation of, of head strong, it was all about the fact that even that type of energy I find or that theory to be kind of bs. The reason for it is that it's just electrons. End of the day, if you have any energy in the body, it's electrons. And electrons come from air and food combining. And whether they do it efficiently and effectively, uh, that's kind of what happens. So if you're going to have adaptation energy, the question is, okay, energy comes out of a cell or out of a mitochondria, goes through its transport network and then do you use it to get stronger or do you use it to worry or do you use it to deal with some other physical stressor? And the body will allocate that stuff automatically. And if you worry a lot, it'll say, oh, I must have to pay attention to the worry instead of folding a protein. And if you're not too worried and you got enough energy, it says, oh, let's fold some proteins or clean some cells. So it's really just mitochondria, which funny enough, that's chapter two of your book Mitohormesis and Autophagy. Do you, do you ascribe to that perspective that it is all just energy? Or do you think that those old original thinker masters were onto something, that there's kind of a different kind of energy or a different allocation mechanism for energy for resilience in humans?

Well, I would think that there might be certain specific nutrients or specific types of energy that you need to deal with certain stress. Like for example, in the example of the allosthesis that I mentioned, There is type 2 allosthesis which essentially describes this emotional depletion. You can be in type 2 allostasis and in a stressed out response, even if you have plenty of energy, you can be overnourished by calories and still be in a stressed out state because of some emotional depletion from the resources. So I think there are different types of energy and a lot of the times your perception of it can also very dictate how your body uses that energy. So if you're in anxiety, you're ruminating about negative thoughts and past, past trauma, then that is kind of robbing that energy and keeping your body in this constantly fight or flight state. And you never, you're, you won't, you won't be able to detoxify properly, you won't be able to produce energy properly. You won't be able to build muscle, you won't be able to burn fat because the body is prioritizing, dealing with the stress or protecting against that stress because it's in you. It thinks it's in like this massive scarcity. So where of and whenever you kind of flip that perspective, then you can get out of it. So like, I think that it's very hard to become healthy if your mindset is broken or if you're like mentally too anxious because it creates this subliminal chronic stress all the time.

And that then tells the cellular behavior to not go into this adaptation mode, but to go into defense mode. And yeah, if you have old traumas playing around in your head and you're constantly anxious because you're reading the news all the time, magically, whether you're in an under or an over calorie or under calorie state, you end up not getting the biological results you want because basically you're tweaking all the time. Okay, so I'd say we're seeing that similarly there. Tell me more about mitohormesis. This is one of my favorite words. So tell me how you, what it is and how you would turn it on.

Yeah, totally. It's a awesome, awesome word. And it basically describes mitochondrial hormesis. And like you already mentioned, the mitochondria are producing energy and hormesis is adaptation to stress. So the mitochondria are experiencing stress, you know, all the time because any, any form of biochemical reaction and energy production and breathing even, they cause mild free radical production in the mitochondria. And those free radicals, they can, they can cause like excess oxidative stress depending on, you know, if you're in constantly, constantly under oxid stress, then they eventually will damage the mitochondria and become, make, make them turn dysfunctional. But a small amount of them are actually necessary because you don't really want to blunt all of it. You need some small amounts of stress for the body to adapt to it and especially the mitochondria to also become stronger from the stress. So mitohormesis describes that where the mitochondria are just adapting to the stress in the small, in a hormetic dose, like too much is bad, but too little is also bad. So the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.

I love that perspective. Tell me about xenohormesis and mithrism. These are things that people oftentimes don't know about. I know Paul Saldino was on the show a While back and we talked about some of this in the perspective of the carnivore diet. I know he's been on your show as well. So he's sort of a. Plant compounds are always bad. I'm in the. Yikes. Back in 2011 I was saying, guys, lectins and oxalates are going to mess you up if you're certain types of people and certain things, things like these are plant toxins that aren't good for you. But there's a whole bunch of things that some people think are good and some people think they're bad. So what is a plant hormetic and are they good?

Yeah, well, you introduced it really well. So Xeno Hermesis describes how like different plant compounds can cause a hormetic response in the body through this similar, similar pathways. Like they turn on the body's defense pathways like that there are small toxin and the body responds to them by turning on different antioxidant defense systems like glutathione autophagy and other similar ampk and those things. So yeah, the idea is that some like definitely I believe that if you take too many of these plant compounds and if your body isn't capable of dealing with them, then they can eventually cause a negative response. But for someone who is healthy and if they take it in like a moderate amount and they take some time from off them, then they can, they can definitely reap the benefits from it. Like there are a lot of studies showing how different compounds like curcumin or sulforaphane, ginger and these different adaptogens, they can have a positive effect on the body by improving like mitohormesis, improving mitochondrial functioning, lowering blood sugar, lowering insulin and you know, fixing certain, certain types of metabolic syndrome. They can be useful for that. And some studies where they show that they have like a negative effect, they usually, they occur in some people who are like macro dosing them. Like there was. There's this study where an old diabetic Asian woman was juicing like two or he made a. Like he made soup out of rhubarb leaves which are really high in oxidates.

Yeah, that'll trash you.

I mean like who eats rhubarb leaf soup? And like some other studies show where people blend or they eat 2 kg of bok choy like.

Or kale.

Yeah, exactly. There's not like really in the real world, most people don't eat that many of these plant compounds and they don't hit that high threshold. So they're relatively safe for most people. And yeah, like, I think the carnivore diet can be great if you do suffer from some sort of sensitivities towards these plants, but most people don't need to do it. And I would in fact argue that if you're, if you do avoid these foods all the time, then you eventually will become too sensitive and your body becomes almost like resistant. So you need to, in order to be like metabolically flexible and to have this small amount of hormesis, then you need to be consuming those foods also on like a pretty regular basis.

It makes sense there may be some genetic sensitivities. Like there's. We pretty well understand with lectins, by the way. There's thousands of different lectins. You can't say all lectins are bad. You can't even say cashews are bad. In fact, they're pretty low on the list. And your body makes its own lectins in internally every day. But there are some, like nightshades where a third of people, if they eat nightshades, it just always causes problems and there is no hormetic benefit to it. But for the rest of us there is.

Yeah, for sure. Like individual differences are huge. And also the quality of the food is very important. So xenohormesis is the result of the plant actually being stressed out itself. So, you know, plants are also under different kinds of environmental stressors like the heat, the cold and predators. So they produce those beneficial compounds only if they need to. So if you have a GMO garbage, garbage plant that doesn't have, that isn't exposed to these kinds of stressors, then it's also going to lack these nutrients that would otherwise be present in a wild plant, for example. So organic and wild plants are inherently more beneficial because they have been stressed out. So those plants are stressed out. That's a lot like the David Sinclair also talks about. You need to kind of eat those plants that have been stressed out because they're stronger and they're more resilient against stress. Whereas the kind of mainstream or the conventional foods, conventional plants, they, they come with all the bad stuff. They come with all the anti nutrients and not a lot of the beneficial nutrients. So I would, I would imagine that part of the reason why the average person suffers a lot of, from those sensitivities is because they're eating, you know, domestic food and they're not eating wild food. That would be completely different.

It's interesting because it's possible to raise on a farm food that has appropriate levels of Stress. And some days you don't water it and then it develops another flavor. So I just mentioned nightshades before jalapenos or green chili. If it's hot and dry and you stress them a little bit, man, they're full of that stuff. And they'll melt your skin off when you eat them. That's when they taste the best. But if it's too wet, then they're sort of more like bell peppers and it's environmental stress or insects. We just figured out that if flowers aren't pollinating when they're supposed to, bees will come in and bite the flowers to basically piss them off so that they'll bloom. So the bees are actively producing stress so that then they can get their food. Like, hey, plant, you didn't make me a flower. Come on out with the pollen. So it's this incredibly dynamic system. I want to get your take on two of my favorite plant compounds. First, one, nicotine. What do you think?

I think it's a potent nootropic and can be useful for cognition. So the preferable source of nicotine would be like a gum or a patch or the spray instead of smoking. But I personally don't use it. But I would imagine that it can be pretty useful for some nootropic benefits and cognition or some work.

The cognition side of it is one I've been very interested in. But the one that has me most interested is right up your alley. And it's actually around mitophagy and it raises levels of PGC1 Alpha. It's an exercise memetic. So you'll actually grow more mitochondrial. Your mitochondrial biogenesis from very low dose nicotine. So if I get a nootropic benefit and I'm using 1 milligram a day, we're talking low levels. And like you said, don't smoke, don't put tobacco in your mouth. But you can use gum. I'm a fan of Lucy gum because it doesn't have artificial sweeteners and stuff in it. You can use a spray, you can use a patch. But it was the PGC1 Alpha and the mitochondrial benefits, especially in the brain, that got me going because that was one. The other one is caffeine, another one of these things. What's your take on caffeine?

Well, I'm a habitual consumer of caffeine and I do drink coffee on a regular basis and I think it's also great. Similar for cognition and alertness, but from the perspective of autophagy, it also boosts autophagy and also improves mitochondrial function. So yeah, I, I like the taste, but I also like the, all the longevity boosting benefits that you get from caffeine and coffee. Like you get the reduction in blood sugar and also like protection against neurodegeneration. So yeah, all in all it's a pretty. One of the best substances.

I think I'm a hundred percent with you there. And you know, if you guys don't know this, I did start bulletproof coffee. I think everyone listening already knows. So yeah, I, I do have a bias here, but my real bias also comes from a study that said the amount of caffeine in two small cups of coffee doubled ketone production in the morning. So caffeine and nicotine can both be addictive. So can exercise by the way. In fact, both of all three of them are probably good for you. So just not in excess. Just like too much exercise is not going to create hormesis, it's just going to wear you out, right?

Yeah, exactly, yeah. Like the, the dose is where the benefits lie.

All right, what about mithrism?

Yeah, yeah, Mithrism is, is related to xenohomesis. So there's this ancient myth about the king of Pontus Mithras, and his father was the king before him, but he got poisoned. So he figured that it was his mother who was slowly or he was the mother poisoned the king. And because of that Mithras was very fearful. He ran into the wilds, into the forest, and because of, because of being afraid of poisoning, he started to ingest small amounts of plant poisons in hopes of making himself immune against it. And it worked. It was great. He was able to kind of build up a certain tolerance towards poison. But the unfortunate situation was that he was also. His country was invaded by Romans and he was captured by Romans. So when he tried to poison himself in prison, he failed because he was immune to poisoning. So that was like a really bad situation or unfortunate because he was, he was able to resist the poison, but he wasn't able to kill himself in prison. So they executed him instead.

There's also a whole cult of Mithras around that, that came out. That was a pre Christian cult that practiced in caves. And they had an almost identical myth around the origin of Mithras that matches very much what happened with Christ.

So there's.

When you look into relig religious history, you end up saying, oh, there's all sorts of people. In fact, there was a time when many people thousands of years ago would have thought that the, the worship of Mithras would have won over the worship of Christ that they were, they were pure and peer kind of religions. But eventually where we ended up today, if you're Christian, has a lot of that sort of baked into it, which to me is fascinating. But it all comes down to this idea that, that American listeners probably remember from the Princess Bride, which is a famous movie where the protagonist, the same thing, takes a little bit of poison so he can swap the wine glass with the other guys. I don't care. They're both poisoned. And I didn't die and you did. Ha ha. So it's neat how these weave themselves into our society, but really what we're talking about there is getting stronger because of mild doses.

Yeah.

Okay, let's talk about stoicism. This is something that, you know, Ryan Holiday writes about, something that I, I am a proponent of, at least most of it, but not, not necessarily the I have no emotion perspective on stoicism, but the actual Greek stuff. So talk about your perspective of stoicism. I just want to make sure people listening don't just shut off their listening right now because we're not talking about having no emotions being meat robots. That's not the point. So tell, tell me what your take on on hormesis and stoicism is. Your phone screen is aging your skin and wrecking your sleep at the same time. Artificial blue light goes from your phone screen straight into your eyes and deep into your skin. That light messes with your melatonin levels, interrupts your deep sleep and speeds up skin aging by breaking down collagen. The bodyguard's red light converter fixes this at the source. It's a first of its kind screen protector with red Real tech that converts blue light into beneficial red light before it hits your face. It turns your scrolling into a skincare routine. It supports healthier skin, reduced eye strain, improved sleep quality and fewer screen related headaches. Third party testing showed a 50% plus increase in red light exposure within the optimal range of 620-770nm. And this comes with zero compromise on your screen. The red light converter preserves your screen's true colors and full touch sensitivity. Beyond its wellness benefits, the red light converter provides ultra thin edge to edge protection for your device and bodyguard stands by their quality. Enjoy peace of mind with lifetime replacements, ensuring your red light converter continues to protect and support your biology for the long haul. Visit bodyguards.com and use code Dave for 25% off. That's bodyguardswithaz.com for 25% off. So tell me what your take on hormesis and stoicism is.

Yeah, absolutely. So I agree that stoicism isn't actually something that is negative or stone cold. It's a form, is a way of thinking where you kind of realize that the world itself isn't out there to your benefit. We can't control the outside world, we can't control outside events. We can only control our own response and who we are as a person. So stoics realize that you will inevitably come across different stressful events and different kind of challenges, even bad people, bad situations like the plague, like war, like riots, all those things, you can't, they're going to happen eventually, they're inevitable. So what you can only do is realize that they're going to happen. And in saruing you can also prepare for them in advance. So different kinds of stoic techniques involve, involve visualizing how, how would you react in a bad situation? Like how would you react if your flight got cancelled or how would you react if someone, someone broke into your house? Whatever it is. If most people don't think about those things, they don't even, they don't even have it in their consciousness ever. So they're going to basically freak out whenever those things do happen. Whereas someone who has practiced this sort of visualization and stoicism, then they can at least have some sort of like frame of reference, they can at least have some past like psychological experience from it and they can also make better decision as a result of it, hopefully. So one of the modern day stoics, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who's written books like Antifragile, he's written that a stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation and mistakes into action. So it's almost like turning garbage into gold. So to say you kind of flip your perspective on the situation and you kind of make yourself also mentally tougher against potential stress. Because again, stress, you can't avoid it. What you can only do is prepare for it and realize that it's going to happen.

Years ago I read Neil Strauss's book called Emergency and Neil and I have become friends. I've been on his show and he's been on my show and I've come to respect him and his progress as a human being. But in Emergency he wrote about going and doing urban escape training, basically learning how to be kidnapped and how to escape from it. And so I went and I did the class that he talked about in his book and they Handcuff you, they put a hood on you. You're in the back of a van and you have to escape, and you're running around a town you don't know, with no resources, trying to hide from bounty hunters and run missions. And frankly, it scared the crap out of me. And I mean, you know, it's not real, but it sure feels real when you're there. And that's an example of what we're talking about there. I know that I can handle my shit, pardon my French there. I know I can do it just because I know the stress level. And the real badasses in that group, like, oh, yeah, why don't you hit me with a taser or a stun gun? Well, I'm done. So my nervous system will be all jacked up, and I'll still escape and do everything. I wasn't that tough, but I did feel like experiencing that level of stress, you know, the heart pounding and that sort of thing really was liberating in a weird way. And it is that stoic sort of thing, like, okay, I know I can handle it. So you get that toughness. But I feel like that toughness is missing in large part. I didn't like. I'll say I didn't like schoolyard fights when I was a kid, but I might have been in a few of them. And. And it's a common occurrence, right? And bullying sucks and all that, but there are a large number of people who grew up who have never been in a schoolyard scuffle before, and it feels like that's another way of building. So you will feel like you're going to die when there's someone trying to harm you, even if you're in fourth grade. And there's something validating about saying, you know what? I got my ass kicked. At least that's what it felt like. But really, someone hit you a couple times in the gut and you cried, but that happened, happened, but the next day you weren't dead. And then your nervous system's like, you know what? Maybe I'm tougher than I thought. I feel like that that rite of passage, as nasty as it. As it was, might be missing. And there is some toughness that's. That's lacking. Do you think that that's a valid theory? Is that a part of what we're talking about in stoicism, or am I just romanticizing schoolyard fights?

No, I. I agree with you that we don't have these challenges in our everyday life anymore. And, like, we don't have nutritional challenges and we don't have environmental challenges. And like, a lot of helicopter parenting and that sort of thing can also shield us from other people or bad experiences. So inherently, I do agree that bullying is bad, and I think it's, it's. It is a better, better approach to create more safer environments for children and that sort of thing. But at the same time, we shouldn't completely forget about the stress and these challenges either. So I'm much rather proponent of, like, voluntary hardship and voluntary challenges. So, you know, one of the. One of the stoic writers, Seneca, he would basically, he was like the richest banker in Rome. He was the richest man. And he would still, on a, like, on a monthly basis, he would take a few days where he would dress as a beggar and he would eat nothing, like, you know, scraps on the streets and those sort of things. So he would put himself into this very challenging and humiliating situation voluntarily because he didn't want to kind of take his own fortune for granted, and he didn't want to become, like, too soft for those things. And I believe, personally, we can also embrace similar challenges, like sleeping on the floor, sometimes doing some interim fasting, you know, maybe missing a good night's sleep, staying up a little bit longer, maybe maybe eating something that you don't really prefer on some days. And those things, they can all be similar challenges that we can create ourselves. So I believe voluntary challenges should be as a replacement. Even if we do create a very safe environment, we wouldn't want to completely forget about those things. So it's like a fire drill. People still do fire drills, even if the chance of actual fire is relatively low in most places.

It's interesting, you talk about fasting from sleep. That's something that is real. That's what the Navy SEALs and Special Forces guys do, is, oh, you haven't slept for three days. You're still going to go get the target. Oh, and you haven't eaten during those three days as well. Well, that's okay. There's a hamburger at the target if you're the first one there. And, man, those guys, I've talked to them, I've interviewed them about it, and they develop superpowers as a result of it, but it sucks at the time. And what I've been working on teaching my kids every night, it's like, what'd you fail at today? And if they have something they failed at, I'm like, good job. You did something that was so hard. You didn't do it, that you couldn't yet do it, you hadn't learned, so you had a day of pushing yourself. And if you have nothing, you failed that today. It's like, oh, maybe tomorrow can be a better day. So the idea is we're not going too far beyond what's possible, but we're taking that sense of frustration and turning it back into oh, that's a sign that my body's getting good input. And I had to do that myself with hunger as a 300 pound guy to realize, okay, too much hunger all the time is probably not a good thing. But to experience hunger is like, is my body lying to me or not? And it turns out when you're 300 pounds, well, your body's kind of lying because you are feeling hunger and your cells may not be getting enough energy or making enough energy, but that's because they need to get woken up, not because you need to eat more. And it's that tough thing. It is about the stoic mindset. So I'm happy you brought that out in a book on hormesis, which is, which is cool.

Yeah, absolutely. Because I believe the mindset is kind of the very foundational aspect to being able to adapt to stress. Because if you create this fear around stress, like hysteria and panic about stress, then you're never going to do some of those things that may be beneficial for you as well. Like you're going to, you're gonna, you know, you're not gonna do the sauna because you're afraid of the heat or it gets too hot, you're afraid of the discomfort or you're not gonna exercise because it's too discomfortable. So you need to have like some small amount of discomfort in your life in order to maintain like a beneficial, like hormetic adaptation.

What's your favorite kind of discomfort?

Well, I would maybe, I would say the sauna is pretty, pretty awesome. Like it feels almost euphoric and it feels really enjoyable compared to other things like hiit, cardio or something even like, I do enjoy like the fastest state as well. But you know, going for two or three days without eating is still pretty uncomfortable. But the sauna is actually enjoyable as well at the same time.

Got it. I've been doing the sauna a lot during the whole coronavirus thing. My son who's 10, wakes up early and comes in and then we, we go sit in the sauna. We've been doing up to 45 minutes at about 140 and kind of worked our way up to that. And it, yeah, it does feel Good. I'm, I'm with you there. And plus, then we actually get to, to chat about cool stuff and, you know, get some, you know, family time. At the same time, we're getting some discomfort, which is kind of cool. So maybe he'll grow up to be tough and, you know, hang out like Seneca did. Who knows? Let's talk about another one of my favorite topics, which is MTOR or MTOR signaling. I want you to define MTOR for listeners who don't know what it is. So what is mtor?

Yeah, well, MTOR is a mechanistic target of rapamycin, and it's the body's growth switch that promotes protein synthesis, cell growth, cell replication, and survival. So you need to have MTOR to build tissue and to replenish cells and to stay alive to produce immune cells and all those things. So without mtor, you would also die. And the kind of controversy around MTOR for the past few years has been that too much MTOR is going to accelerate aging and make you grow cancer cells, because it's like the growth switch that turns on the growth of everything, including the good and the bad. But, you know, too little MTOR is also pretty unwanted because you're gonna end up losing muscle mass and you're gonna become frail and you're gonna lose your bone density and that sort of thing. So there needs to be a proper balance between those things because in the modern world, we tend to be gravitated towards too much MTOR stimulation all the time because of eating too many calories, eating too many carbs, as well as just the high eating frequency. So we're able to eat throughout the entire day, which keeps MTOR turned on. So MTOR is sensible to new to nutrients. So they often, the more often you eat, the more MTOR stimulation you have, and therefore the more potential you have for also the growth of these malignant cells. So that's why I believe the best ways of kind of achieving this optimal balance between just enough MTOR is to do some form of intermittent fasting and to just like skip a meal every day and to not eat too many carbs and to just keep the overall calorie intake also around your maintenance and moderate.

That's a great description of mtor. And James Clements came on the show a while back and he wrote a whole book about how to turn on mtor, which I think he's also been on your show as well. And he's one of the more brilliant but maybe lesser known guys out there and just mind blowing how Deep he goes. He memorized the birthday of everyone who was an author of every study he's ever cited. He has a brain like that, you know what I'm talking about. So I looked at this back when the bulletproof diet book came out in 2014. So I was doing the research around 2012 and I proposed this idea of one day a week protein fasting, which is less than 15 grams of protein from any source in order to turn on autophagy, which necessarily restricts protein. And this is a way to essentially make sure you're not getting any mtor once a week because you're not getting the amino acids in protein that would do this. The branch chain aminos, but particularly methionine as being one of the bad guys. What, what's your take on. Okay, fine, eat today, just don't eat any protein. Even coconut milk has a little bit of protein in it. You know, if you drink two cans of it, you're probably not gonna, you're probably gonna get enough on that protein. Good idea, bad idea.

Well, it, it wouldn't be detrimental I think. So you can still get away with a little bit of protein and a little bit of calories without suppressing autophagy and without turning on mtor. So it doesn't work in like this binary way that even just one calorie is going to break a fast. So there is always like a, like a buffer zone that you can get away with. And yeah, like you mentioned, some amino acids are more mtor stimulating than others. Specifically methionine is the most, most widespread amino acid and it's also very mtor stimulating and other bc like the branch gene amino acids like leucine and those things, they, they're also more anabolic in a way. They promote growth more than others. And generally like plant, plant based sources of protein are lower in these PCAs and methionine especially. So yeah, like if you eat like a plant based meal with less protein and then you would kind of keep the MTOR pretty low from that because it doesn't have these anabolic amino acids. So yeah, like eating a little bit of like a low protein day on some days is a pretty okay strategy. I think it's, it's good to have these cycles of some days that you have higher and some days where you have lower. For example, if I'm working out, I'm training or I'm trying to build muscle, then I would inevitably one tire mtor because it's going to help me to build muscle. Whereas if I'M you know, maybe, maybe taking a break from working out. I'm, I'm resting, I don't have that much high physical activity. Then I will aim for a lower intake or protein and specifically less animal protein.

Yeah, there's a definite case for not eating too much animal protein. That's the case, at least on some days. Other days you might want to actually have an excess of it just because you're trying to put on muscle that day. And this goes back to this idea of is there a steady state for the body? And I hate to say it, but the people's like, I'm going to be in keto all the time. It's predictable what's going to happen. And I've been saying this for like 10 years now because you are going to start getting inflammation, it's not going to work very well and you're going to get insulin resistant. Or if you eat sugar all the time, you're going to have the opposite of that. So. But what, and if you exercise every day, you're probably not going to like what happens either because you never recover. But as humans we want habits that we do daily because it's easy. So I'm going to eat the same thing every day, I'm going to skip breakfast every day. I'm going to do this. But it seems like mother Nature really doesn't want you to do the same thing every day almost in any state. Valid.

Yeah. There is some merit, I think you would maybe get away with being in ketosis all the time to a certain extent, as long as you're not introducing carbs or if you are really on a very specific diet. So for example, like you mentioned, eventually your body will become slightly insulin resistance if it's in ketosis all the time because there's no demand for burning carbs and your body just down regulates its insulin production and it becomes insulin resistant. It's not the same pathological insulin resistance as you get from being diabetic or, or just overeating, but it's, it still would require a short period of re adaptation for the body to kind of rebuild its pathways for utilizing carbs. So if a person who is on keto all the time and they then accidentally eat like some cake, then their body would respond in a very negative way because they're insulin resistant. So there needs to be some like a gradual shifting of the phases if you want to stay still, stay relatively healthy from those transitions where someone who is doing like a cyclical keto diet, they're eating carbs on a regular basis, then their ability to stay insulin sensitive is higher because they're doing, they're eating carbs more frequently so their, their body is still able to burn carbs. So I prefer like the metabolic flexibility aspect where you eat, eat carbs on a cyclical basis because you get the benefits of both worlds. You get the benefits of ketosis and you get the benefits of the metabolic flexibility.

We're in alignment there. And I've just seen too many women, you know, start losing their hair. I've been in ketosis for six months and my cycle's all broken. I can't sleep well and I'm starting to lose hair. Maybe you should eat some carbs. You know, just saying. And then same thing with guys, my libido's gone and I don't sleep very well. Maybe you should eat some carbs. So it's one of those things where you want the flexibility because the flexibility equals resilience. So I'm one of the first people to say, even in my first book, if you want to know about keto, just read an Atkins book from 1972. I was born back then. And the problem is that you have to change the type of stuff that you eat and that you might want to just cycle it more than we used to. And so I think you've arrived at that from your research and all. What I've, what I realized about MTOR when I was writing the bulletproof diet was that, all right, the way it works is if you suppress MTOR for a while, then you do something that causes it to turn on, it'll turn on to a higher degree. So if you're trying to put muscle on, you want to a large amount of MTOR for a short period of time. And if you want to avoid inflammation, you want low mtor when you're not building muscle.

If you, if you, if you like shift from like a fasted state into a fit one and you turn on mtor, then the rebound effect can be substantially higher. So to say, just because the body is, you know, coming from a fasted state, and when you're fasting, then the body is breaking down some of its muscle tissue. But, and it creates this in a way, it's like a beneficial scarcity. Like the body perceives that, okay, we've been fasting and therefore we need to kind of rebuild some of the muscle, so we're gonna overreact and like super compensate for the small decrease in muscle mass that we get from fasting by building more muscle. Once we start eating and it's especially more predominant if you also exercise. So resistance training and muscle building exercises, weightlifting and those things, those are even more important for muscle growth than just the diet. So you need to send like a particular signal for the body to build muscle. And resistance training itself turns on MTOR as well, or it kind of prepares the body to turn on mtor. So once you start eating, then the rebound effect that you describe is going to be much higher. So eating after a workout would inevitably lead to more muscle growth just because the kind of stimulus is there, the stimulus for muscle growth and then you provide the nutrients as well. With, with the diet, the three things.

That suppress mtor the most in the research that I had done was fasting, which clearly we just talked about resistance exercise and coffee. So the perfect morning is you wake up, you have your coffee right now, you already fasted overnight. You fast until, you know, midday, whatever, at 2 o' clock in the afternoon. Then you do your resistance training and, and then you eat a meal with a bunch of protein in it and that will maximally suppress your MTOR so that you get the biggest spike. I call it tripling down on MTOR in, in the bulletproof diet. And it seems like that is the way to put on the most muscle in the least amount of time. And of course the stimulus for the muscle needs to be high intensity, the way that you and I both talk about in our work. So you're not going to take a five pound dumbbell and flop it around. You need to pick up something heavy, you do some squats or push ups or something. But that seems to be the way to get the highest spike in mtor. But what I don't really have good data on where I think you might have done some good research is, okay, you've eaten your protein after that regimen, how, for how long should you eat protein at higher levels to take advantage of that MTOR before you should go on another intermittent fasting cycle? I just say the next day, but honestly I haven't, I haven't looked at, you know, half life of MTOR in the body or anything like that.

Yeah, that's a good question. So it depends a lot on the goals. So if a person is wanting to build muscle, then they could keep it elevated for longer. And the way you do that is by just increasing the eating frequency. So instead of eating once after workout, you would eat like two times or three times, depending on your goals and preferences.

And have some carbs too, right?

Yeah, yeah, like protein and carbs is the biggest combo for mtor. So yeah, mtor, there's like a certain threshold where the body caps off how much muscle is going to build or how much muscle protein synthesis it's going to create from per meal. So the way you overcome that is by just increasing the meal frequency. So if you want to really pack on muscle, then you just have to eat like six times a day and do no intervention fasting. But for like longevity oriented goals, then narrowing it down a little bit is probably more better. And how narrow depends again on your preference. I personally also stimulate once MTOR after a workout and I'll do it the next day again. So I stimulate MTOR only once a day as well. But yeah, for some other people they can do it twice a day as well. So there's no real way to quantify it. And you would just have to look at some of your Biomarkers, especially like IGF1 and insulin. If your IGF1 is really high, then that would mean that your body is in a more anabolic state and state of growth. Whereas if your IGF one is low, then it means that you're less anabolic and less MTOR or stimulated.

Talk to me about EMFs. Are they hormetic? I mean, should I stick my head in the microwave every now and then?

Yeah, that's also a controversial topic. And I personally think that from a biological perspective there is some hormetic effect from EMFs and radiation. Even so, because imagine like most people who are in like New York City or Los Angeles, they are constantly surrounded by tons of EMF all the time, but they barely even notice it because their body has kind of developed small amount of adaptation towards it. Whereas if you take like a hunter gatherer from the Amazon and you put them into the middle of Times Square, then their brain is probably going to melt down or they're going to feel really anxious and really stressed out because they're not used to that EMF and those that's a form of radiation and that blue light. So there is some small amounts of adaptation that can occur. The only caveat is that you need to have some period of downtime from the emf. So if you're constantly in a soup of emf, then your body never has the opportunity to adapt and recover from it. So that's why I think the most important time where you need to have a break from EMF is when you're sleeping. Because during sleep your body repairs itself. It conducts all these antioxidant defense mechanisms, it conducts autophagy it releases growth hormone, all those things. So your sleep has to be pretty low emf. And for that you can use some, you know, turn off your WI fi. That's really important. Use some maybe grounding nuts or even like a, like a Faraday cage if you're that dedicated. So yeah, like just making sure that you have some periods of the day where you're not in a high EMF environment, then I would believe that you would experience some hormetic effects at least, at least you would experience some adaptation or some resiliency against it.

Definitely some resiliency. And I'm a good case study there. I live on a farm in a low EMF environment. We turn off our WI fi at night. In fact, it's turned off during the day most of the time. So we have pretty darn low EMF. Dr. Mercola came up here and we hung out and he walked around with his meter and I have similar meter and all, and he's like, wow, this is amazing. You don't have to do any remediation stuff here. And that said, I travel a lot, I'm on airplanes a lot. I'm in hotels surrounded by garbage stuff a lot. And for a while years ago, I actually traveled with a little Faraday cage, little sleeping bag thing. It was just too heavy. It only weighs a pound or something. But when you don't want to check your luggage, then you know, every ounce matters and it was just too much bulk for the value. And I, I could feel a little bit of a difference, slight changes in heart rate variability, but not enough to matter. So I quit doing that. And I don't know that the fact that I have that kind of hunter gatherer experience here has made it so I feel worse when I'm in WI fi. I feel like I don't have any difference, but I'm just an N equals one study.

The body also has coping mechanisms against emf. So for example, EMF actually turns on autophagy to a certain extent as a defense response. So EMF causes oxidative stress and the body starts repairing that oxidative stress with autophagy. So I wouldn't recommend using EMF as a way to cause autophagy. But at the same time you can know that the body has these defense systems like autophagy and glutathione that can help you to deal with the stress more. So I would also argue that if you go into an airplane while fasted and with some ketones present, then you would experience less negative symptoms because your body has more, more, more antioxidant activity and more autophagy activity that will clear out the oxidative stress in real time, so to say. And yeah, the problem is that most people, they're constantly inhibiting autophagy. They're putting brakes on autophagy with their high carb diet and high eating frequency diet as well. So they're never protected from the EMF and therefore they experience also more negative side effects from it.

It's true. I do have ketones present all the time. I use brain octane pretty much every day, especially when I travel, I take more of it, which directly converts into ketones in the body. So there isn't that much time where I don't have either ketones I produced or ketones that I added. And I've noticed a big difference when I fly from that. I also use pulsed emf. We have this at upgrade labs. I have one kind of over there behind me. And you can really radically improve bone density. This is pulsed emf. It is specific frequencies and strengths and it'll cause bones to heal much faster than they otherwise would. It'll cause growth of mitochondria, et cetera, et cetera. So we know EMFs have a health effect. And the big question here is, okay, does frequency matter? Right. And I think the questions are still out there. And we've had a lot of discussion in the biohacking world about voltage gated calcium channels and mitochondrial performance. Dr. Mercola came on the show, had a couple other guests talk about that. And from that perspective, I am concerned that any of these things but 5G might be worse, but any of them chronically are going to cause mitochondrial. It's called heteroplasmic. Basically, your mitochondria don't work as well. They're less effective. Do you think frequency matters or is it just the strength of the signal that matters?

Yeah, I believe the EMF can be beneficial and useful. So there's definitely not all EMF is the same. And I would also imagine that 5G would be more stronger than 3G, for example, or it would have a more negative effect on the body than 3G. And also like the how close you are to a particular source of that emf. So if you literally, if you have your phone underneath your pillow while you're sleeping, then that's going to be really bad. Compared to something. Yeah, compared to like, even if your neighbors do have the WI fi turned on, it's not nearly as bad as having the phone right on your body and underneath your Pillow. So I really like the kind of vicinity or the distance from the source matters. And the intensity also matters.

Well, Siem, I really appreciate your work. You do heavy duty research, the kind of stuff that I really appreciate. So that you can come at things with an informed perspective, but also say, look, there are areas we don't know, or there's conflicting research, but you're willing to go out there and say, even though there's conflicting research, based on the sum of what I've seen, the people I've talked to, et cetera, I'm going to place my bet here. And so much of academia, they will not place their bet ever. And they'll say we should all do nothing until we have certainty, even though there is no such thing as academic certainty. So there's almost like this built in fear. We'll call it a lack of hormesis and resilience in academia because something you say one time might be proven wrong and heaven forbid if someone did something based on the current state of knowledge. So it's that biohacking mindset that you have that says, all right, given all the stuff that's out there, let's weigh all the things and then let's decide to do something and then course correct. That's I feel like how humans evolve versus how we stay stagnant. And we just talked about what stagnation does. Stagnation equals death. So thank you for continuing to push the limits here. Appreciate your work and people can buy your new book on Amazon. What's the best way to search for your book on Amazon?

It's called Stronger by Stress and my name is Siem Lund.

All right, so if you Google for Stronger by Stress and Siem is S I I M so Stronger by Stress Land is almost certainly going to help you find it. And it is a book that's worth your time if you like the show and you've really taken the time to look at fasting, to look at ketosis, to look at hormesis, and to look at the things that make you stronger, make you perform better. There's a lot of research, a lot of data in here and it's well written and well formulated. So thank you for taking the time to write a comprehensive book like this. A couple thousand references takes a lot of time. I appreciate you, Siem, and I look forward to having you on the show again.

Yeah, I appreciate it for having me and yeah, glad to talk with you.

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