From Cycling to Paleo: A Journey to Optimal Health - Episode 311

Well, is diet the secret to health or exercise the secret? Health. And it's always this either or conversation.

That's right.

And I'm always the one going, it's not either or. I don't think you can be healthy with just one. You have to have both. So you have all that new research that I'm sure you've seen, what they're calling the third compartment in endothelial cells, which if we over consume sodium, we can't excrete it all. So your body has to do something with it because it wants to keep your blood levels at a very specific level. And what we discovered is it can be stored in endothelial cells, hence the third compartment. It's not a literal compartment in the cells. It basically says you have too much sodium. We're going to store it in the endothelial cells. And endothelial. Your skin is an endothelial cell. P53 really is one of the major regulators of the cell cycle. And you want the cell to go through all its cycles. You want it to go through growth, then maturity, and then ultimately go through cell apoptosis. And they talk about AMPK being the energy sensor in our cells because it senses glucose levels in the blood. Glucose levels are high. AMPK shuts down.

Welcome to the Gladden Longevity Podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, where our passion is helping you to become an age hacker. On this show, we want to help you optimize your life energy, longevity, health and human performance with impactful and actionable information by answering four questions. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? And how do we live young for a lifetime? Now here's today's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

Welcome everybody, to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, and as always, we're here answering the really important questions in life, like how good can we be? How do we make 100 to new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? How do we live young for a lifetime? And how do we develop a 300-year-old mind? How do we crack the hayfic limit there at the 120? That's always important. So today I had a really interesting conversation with Trevor Connor. He's a former professional cyclist who competed at a very, very high level and then basically started collapsing at age 38. His body was giving out on him and he actually was, at age 40, was actually able to, with the Findings are going to talk about here. Able to actually go back and compete into his 50s and finish in the top 10 in elite cycling races. It's a super interesting story and I think you're. You're really going to enjoy it. Welcome, everybody, to the this edition of the Glad Longevity Podcast. I'm here with Trevor Connor. Trevor, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this.

Yeah. Cool. So, Trevor, tell us a little bit about your story. How you ended up thinking about diet, exercise, the Paleo route that you've gone down. Where did you. Where did all that begin for you?

I'll try to give you the short version. It really started for me with a cycling career. I spent a lot of years racing in the professional cycling peloton.

Okay.

And basically needed to something to keep me busy and active. So I started studying physiology. I started studying nutrition to really help my cycling and in the process discovered, you know, this is what I love and what I want to research and what I want to do. So when I was nearing the end of my career, was getting into my late 30s, I decided to go back to graduate school. I was living in Canada at the time, training at the national center up there, and came down to Colorado.

Okay.

And studied at csu. I was doing a dual degree in exercise, bioenergetics and nutrition. And my first semester, I had to take a class with a Dr. Loren Cordain, who everybody was talking about. And I had no idea who he was. So he was the author of the. The original Paleo diet book. And can tell you that I took the class and hated it. I thought he was.

What'd you hate about it? It was. It was a lousy professor or you didn't like the.

No, he was a good professor. But I had been studying traditional Sports Nutrition for 10 years, which is you can't cram enough sugar down your throat. So just lots and lots and lots of sugar. And here he was saying, no, that's actually not healthy for you. My two bowls of cereal I have every morning before I go out for a bike ride is not healthy. And it was just a lot of psychological dissonance. So at the end of the course, I took the course in the spring. I was actually so angry. I spent the summer trying to prove him wrong.

Okay, you started with ice cream in the morning on top of your cereal or what?

Unfortunately, I kind of went the opposite direction. I just started diving into the research, looking for the things that he had to be wrong about. And as I'd read The research. I go, well, actually that makes sense. And then next thing you go, but, you know, it has to be wrong about this. So I'd look into that and then go, well, that makes sense. And I ended up.

What would be an example of that you were looking at that you felt had to be wrong?

Well, I admit the very first one I had to go look into was cereal. You know, breakfast cereal and grains, because I loved my two bowls of cereal every morning.

Yeah, what kind of cereal were you eating?

Oh, God, I can't remember now. This is going back almost 20 years. You know what?

Flake something.

A lot of granola. I mean, I wasn't doing the kids cereal. I, I was trying to eat stuff that was considered healthy, but it was granola, oatmeal, things like that.

Right.

And it was what we were told to eat. I mean, I was a cyclist, so that's what I had for breakfast. I had pasta for dinner. That was the, the accepted nutrition for, for a cyclist.

You know, it's interesting, we've worked with triathletes here that have been on a similar path and it's, we measure resting metabolic rates on everybody, so we can kind of see what, what they're kind of burning at rest, whether it's carbs or fat. And typically, typically a healthy mitochondrial would be burning the 80% plus fat, because you only get 34 ATP, let's say, from fat, and 36 from carbs. So if a mitochondria are healthy, they'd be burning, you know, a low energy fuel source when you're at rest. Right. And of course, when you're at peak exercise, you're going to switch to burning 100% carbs. But what we found is that even though these people were incredibly fit with high anaerobic thresholds and high VO2s, that their mitochondria had been trained to burn carbs. And so they'd be like 60% carb burning at rest or 70% carb burning at rest. Right. So you can actually train your mitochondria, interestingly enough, to to it to a fuel source based on a diet. There's a little bit of strategy there, right, because you want to restore the glycogen in your muscles and in your liver after you burn up, you know, all of that through your cycling. And yet people get the timing wrong on that, right? They think, if I quit cycling four hours ago, now I'm gonna eat a bunch of pasta. Well, that's, that's not going into glycogen at that Point. Right. So it's. There's really. It's really interesting to see how this has kind of progressed and yet how some of this kind of lingers on. So. So in your own summer of disbelief, let's call it, you. You were trying different things. So what were you actually trying?

Well, what I was doing is, as I was reading the research, I was just slowly shifting to the Paleo diet and not even realizing it. And by the way, I definitely want to.

What do you do? Why don't you give us a definition of Paleo diet? Because there's a lot. There's so many diets out there these days that, I mean, nobody knows exactly what anybody's talking about.

Yeah. And thank you. Because that's probably one of the things we have to address the most is just the. The different perceptions of the Paleo diet. And I'll give you the short version, but the best way to Describe it is Dr. Cordain wasn't actually. He didn't even start nutrition. He was a runner. He was. He was an exercise physiologist and he wanted to improve his own running. And he just spent 15 years reading the research. At the end of it, just said, this is what the research shows. And the bias that he came into it with is we evolved around a certain diet that is probably what our body is most adapted to. And we've introduced so many foods to our diet in such a short period of time, our bodies just haven't adjusted to those foods. So they're not optimal. They can lead to negative health consequences. So the Paleo diet's really about eating the foods that we evolved around. A lot of those foods don't exist anymore. So we're trying to create a, you know, as close an analogy as we can, but you can't eat those specific foods anymore. But it's really just a lot of fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, and then nuts and seeds sparingly, and trying to keep it less processed. It's actually really simple. And I tell people that, they just go, well, that's what I was taught in kindergarten. You go, yeah, it's actually not that complex.

I mean, really. So really, when you're talking about this particular Paleo diet, I mean, it's not like a super high fat Atkins kind of approach. It's really more of a nutrient dense diet is really what you're talking about. Right. You're going for nutrient dense plants. And then, of course, nuts have a lot of calories in them through their fats and some nutrients as well. Yeah. And then we were, yeah.

You know, that's something we're really proud of. We were really hammering on the nutrient density concept before it became popular. We don't have a macronutrient ratio. I actually did an interview, you might know a Dr. Apovian who, who works with the, the government on setting a lot, the, the recommendations for, for diet. And we talked about the Paleo diet. And she just, you know, she was against the diet. And as we were going through the concept, she's like, yeah, no, I agree with that, I agree with that. And I finally had to ask her. I'm like, so what's your issue? She goes, you don't have a macronutrient ratio. How can we compare you to other diets if you don't have a ratio? My response is, that's because we focus on foods you can eat. Lower carbohydrate, higher carbohydrate, lower fat, higher fat. It's about the foods you're eating. Something I'm constantly telling people where they go, well, a high carbohydrate diet is good or bad for you. I go, what are your sources of carbohydrates? Because broccoli is a carbohydrate. Skittles are a carbohydrate. You can eat a higher carbohydrate diet. That's horrible. Bad for you or good for you, depending on the foods.

That's right. So really we're talking about things that have a low glycemic index and to some extent, even a low glycemic load. But, but then getting those mixed in with other foods. You know, one of the things that we've seen with the continuous glucose monitors is that it's not only a function of how much carb is in the food that you're eating. It's also a function of the sequence in which you're eating the foods. So you can eat something that has a little more, let's quote, say, sugar in it, like a piece of fruit. You can eat that first and see your blood sugar spike, or you can eat it after you've had somatic, you know, fat, protein, veggies, fiber, and has much lower impact. Right. So that's also interesting. So really this idea of nutrient density and yet also getting the timing down right, and things like that.

I agree with that completely. And we, we tend to focus more on glycemic load than glycemic index for exactly that reason. What else? You're, what foods are you eating together? What quantities are you eating them in but yeah, I just read a really good study a week ago that was talking about all the negative health consequences of sugar, but then showed when you are eating that sugar with high fiber foods, a lot of those negative consequences go away.

That's right.

So you really have to look at what, what you're eating it with, as you said, what order you're eating it in, all that factor.

That's right. And the interesting thing too, one of the things we measure here in the practice is glycocalyx function. I don't know if you're familiar with the glycocalyx, but.

Excuse me, we did a whole article on it.

Yeah. Okay, so you're very familiar with it. So it's basically the glycocalyx is kind of really the key to a healthy artery. Right. It's kind of like, you know, if an artery is like a garden hose, if that's the analogy, the outside's the tough adventitia to protect the artery. And then inside the is the, in the center that doesn't touch the fluid running through it, but that's the media, that's where the muscle is. It can either relax to dilate the artery or constrict to constrict the artery. And then you have the skin on the inside, which is, you know, low friction surface like there would be in a hose for the water to go through. That's the endothelium. It's one cell layer thick, but growing off of, so to speak, structures that grow off of that endothelium. Kind of like the analogy would be like grass at the bottom of a stream. You know, it kind of comes off the bottom, but it doesn't grow slowly like a plant. It can actually be destroyed in a matter of minutes. It can actually be reconstructed in a matter of minutes. And one of the things that it's most susceptible to is sugar. So when you do spike your sugar, one of the reasons we pay attention to glycemic index is because when you do spike your sugar, you're destroying the glycocalyx.

Yes.

And now the artery becomes vulnerable to the cholesterol and the other things that can start to, to go into and cause atherosclerotic plaquing. The other thing is the glycocalyx, when it's sensing blood flow going by, it triggers the artery to make nitric oxide. It tells the endothelium, that skin that lines it, the artery, to make nitric oxide, which then dilates the artery so you can accommodate more flow. So really, we feel like one of the key things to focus on. And my background's interventional cardiology. We never even knew about this back then, but is really to focus on a healthy glycocalyx that becomes kind of a key thing.

Well, I'll throw another one at you along the same lines that you're probably very familiar with, but the impact of sodium on the glycocalyx as well. Yeah, and that's actually what we talked about. So you have all that new research that I'm sure you've seen, what they're calling the third compartment in endothelial cells, which if your listeners are unfamiliar with this, it's. If we over consume sodium, we can't excrete it all. So your body has to do something with it because it wants to keep your blood levels at a very specific level. And what we discovered is it can be stored in endothelial cells, hence the third compartment. It's not a literal compartment in the cells, but basically says you have too much sodium. We're going to store it in the endothelial cells and endothelial. Your skin is an endothelial cell. The glycocalyx is made up of endothelial cells too. So you see, the sodium gets stored and it actually interferes with the nitric oxide process that you were just talking about. It interferes with your ability to handle oxidative stress. It promotes TH17 immune cells, which are highly inflammatory immune cells. So that kind of double whammy of the sugar and the salt is really, really damaging to your vascular system.

Yep, exactly. No, that's right. And then you throw some unhealthy fats in there and you really get a whole tornado of things going on that are attacking the artery. Right. So, yeah, so this is why, you know, sugar, salt and fat. Right, what we just talked about here, that's kind of what, what sells, right, people? I mean, we like, we like the flavor, we like the fat for this, you know, the satiety of it, and then we like the sweet. So, you know, I think chocolate bars that have some sea salt in it, you know, they're pretty, pretty popular, right? It's a pretty, pretty nice tasty combination. I think the key thing is, is again, timing, sequence and quantity when you're doing something like that. Doesn't mean you can't ever have a bite of chocolate with some sea salt, but. And I think you counterbalance it actually with a high nitrate density. Food choices like kale and arugula and beets and spinach. To kind of give you more precursor for nitric oxide.

Right.

So yeah, all very, very interesting. And there's some cool supplements to actually help you regrow the glycocalyx. Also you may be familiar with.

I'm actually less familiar with those. I mean we're shifting our position but the paleo diet at its start was very anti supplements. It was really due natural foods. We're shifting more to. Towards. There are some supplements that are really beneficial but we push people away from thinking they can supplement their way to health.

You, you eat healthy, no, that's right. I mean you can, you can never outside. You can't out supplement a bad diet. Right. You can't supplement bad lifestyle choices. Right. That's for sure. They kind of be a little bit more the, the tweaks on top that you can't quite get to with a diet. Even when you're doing the right diet and exercise and things like that. There are some things that you need, right. Particularly as a cy. Know you're just burning through your B vitamins or whatever, right? So yeah, for sure. But there are some supplements. One's called Arterosil which we, we have here is Glycocalyx Pro and then another one called Ruvasca and they actually come at the glycocalyx from a couple different, couple different angles, if you will. And both of them have been shown or we've shown in the office here that you can restore the glycocalyx also within 30 minutes to an hour, which is pretty interesting. So if you are going to indulge then if you take this with the meal, you can kind of, you know, cover your sins. You're getting, you're kind of confessing, getting absolution and having your guilty pleasure all at the same time. Right.

So which is fantastic. So I will admit as soon as we're done here, I'm going to go look those up and see what natural food sources there are for them.

You'll find that they're not. Because there are molecules that are found in particular algae 1 in the Pacific Ocean someplace that you can't get a hold of in a food source. You know, there's some pretty. They're a little bit in the esoteric side of molecules, if you will, that have been found to actually be super helpful. So. But take a look.

So that'd be interesting. So would you find them in seafood though? Because you have a lot of like muscles and you know, things like that. That's too bad.

No, it's only in the Algae. Right. So. And only a particular form of algae.

That occurs because that's when we've been talking a lot about is you have your astaxan again, which I can never pronounce. I apologize.

Astaxanthin.

Thank you. And I'll try 20 times and mispronounce it every single time. We, we promote that a lot. And you see that in a lot of your shellfish, but they don't produce it themselves. They actually get it from the algae.

Yeah, the algae acid. That's right, yeah. Which brings up another interesting thing about antioxidants in general, which is that we don't like to take them pre exercise because if you're taking Astrazenec, vitamin C and whatever else pre exercise, you're basically blocking or neutralizing the reactive oxygen species that you generate with exercise that you need to signal the body to tell it to make more blood vessels, make more muscle, grow more bone, things like that. You want to take. You want to take those things away from your exercise routine.

Yeah. I read a great study on curcumin, which is really powerful antioxidant. They were having athletes take it and then train, and you were seeing a substantial blooding, blunting of the training adaptations.

That's right.

Because you actually need some oxidative stress to promote adaptations. Here's something even more. I love this study. They did a study on top, top level, like Tour de France level cyclists. There's a race that they do right before the Tour called the Dofine.

Okay.

And so they looked at these elite cyclists during the dofanae and then compared them to kind of amateur cyclists and had the amateur cyclists do a week long, very fatiguing training block. And what you saw in the amateur cyclists is by the end of that training block, their oxidative stress in their bodies was just overwhelming and it was shutting them down. Amazingly, in those Tour de France level cyclists, you saw they had developed such powerful natural antioxidant systems in their body. Their oxidative stress was lower by the end of the dofen a than it was at the start.

Oh, my gosh. That's incredible. That's really.

Isn't that amazing?

That's really amazing. So I just gave a whole lecture on oxidative stress as it relates to longevity through the lens of a company that I'll mention called Vibrant America, that makes now an oxidative stress panel that actually looks at the genetics of oxidative stress. And there's about seven or eight genes there that are particularly important. And one of the things that you note is that some people are genetically gifted with their genetics and can end up like an elite cyclist where with training, they're up regulating the expression of those molecules to handle oxidative stress. Superoxide dismutase, glutathione, peroxidase, catalase, some of those. And yet there are other people who are not genetically gifted who can really do damage by trying to be an elite cyclist if they don't know their genetics. We have a gentleman in the practice who is 40, who is actually out of Canada, sold his company, recently moved to Italy for six months, and wanted to be a cyclist because he rode as a kid. So he's over there cycling four hours a day, trying to get in shape, but he finds he keeps getting sick all the time, which is interrupting his training. So it's like, I've been told I'm over training. It's like, well, I don't know. Let's. Let's deconstruct this situation, see what's going on. So we did this profile, among many things we did for him, but we did this particular profile for him. And genetically, he's just not built for that. The oxidate. He had an oxidative stress age of almost 60 years old, 59. Right.

Yeah.

So the point is, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. And if you're not genetically built for these things, like running a marathon or being an elite cyclist or trying to, you know, climb Mount Everest or something, you can really do a lot of damage to yourself.

Right.

That being said, there are other things you can take that upregulate genetic expression of those enzymes and those genes. Right. Things like sulforaphane and things like hydrogen, molecular hydrogen, they've all been shown to actually increase the expression of those genes. And there are other things you can use. Peptides SS31 and MOT C and things like this, all of which will make the mitochondria more immune to oxidative stress. So there's lots of hacks if you want to go down that path. But if you're listening to this and it's like you have an aspiration to be an endurance athlete, you really should get your genetics tested to see what you're dealing with. Right.

So, yeah, and I'll actually. I'll throw another one at you because we just covered this study in my podcast. So I do a podcast on endurance sports training. And when we talked, when we started to introduce a study, I basically said, if you had asked me to bet on the results of this study, I would. I would have lost a lot of money because they took not elite athletes, but people who are fairly well trained, and they compared endurance athletes to strength athletes.

Okay.

And what was really surprising to me was you saw the strength athletes had developed better antioxidant defense mechanisms than the endurance athletes, and I did the exact opposite.

I would have. I would have predicted the opposite as well.

Right. So, I mean, that's. If somebody, you say, has those. Those genetics where endurance sports is not best for them, they should try the strength sports because it can still help build those natural antioxidants.

Yeah. And it doesn't mean you have to give up on. On endurance activities. I think what it's also pointing to is that there really is a balance between strength training and endurance training, kind of no matter who you are. And then if you know your genetics, you can take the right supplements to actually boost genetic expression. If you want to get into peptides or things you can do there too, which is like, super fun, because then you can actually have the joy of performing at a high level and you're not damaging yourself. So. Yeah, yeah.

But no, I'm actually really glad to hear you bring that up because I have that conversation all the time. And I came on your show to talk diet, but I'm happy to talk exercise as well, where, I'm sure you've heard this, where people are like, well, is diet the secret to health or exercise the secret? Health. And it's always this either or conversation.

That's right.

And I'm always the one going, it's not either or. I don't think you can be healthy with just one. You have to have both, right?

It's absolutely both. Yeah. You can't, you can't run your way out of a bad diet. You can't. You know what I'm saying? You can't. You can't get healthy by just eating healthy. Right. If you're missing exercise, you're really going to go downhill fast. So, yeah, really pretty interesting. So let's talk a little bit more about the Paleo diet. One of the things that I think you wanted to chat about was some of the misconceptions or preconceptions that you previously had or whatever things that you've learned as you've gone along that have made you change your perspective a little bit on the Paleo diet. You want to talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. And that's a. That's a big question. Is there anywhere in particular you'd like Me to start or just take it and run with it?

Yeah, just run with it. Yeah.

Well, you know, I'll start by actually finishing the, the question of my history and what got me into the paleo diet. Because it partially answers your question and I'll give you just a very quick answer. So I ended up accidentally almost going on the paleo diet because of trying to prove Dr. Cordain wrong. And I was 38 at the time. And I quit professional cycling because I was getting sick all the time.

There you go.

And after I went on the paleo diet I just stopped getting sick. And I went to Canadian nationals that year and missed third place by, by a wheel length.

Okay.

And just went, well, this is fun. And I went back and joined a team and at the age of 40 I was ranked top 10 in the country.

Okay.

And I ended up still doing pro races into my, my 50s. That's what really convinced me is there, there is something to this. And everybody, all the sports intruders were going, Trevor, your diet's all wrong. And I go, my personal evidence is to the contrary.

Right.

But you know, the misconceptions are people try to take it to extremes. And what I really like about the diet is, is to me it's all about a very balanced approach. I mean we talk all the time about Hermesis basic idea that too much of something can be really bad for you. Too little of something. I love that. Toxicologists talked about the fact that too much water can actually kill you.

That's right.

There's too much of anything. So it's really about finding the balance. When I talk about the balance, it's the balance of the different nutrients. So we really promote, you know, one of the misconceptions is the paleo diet. Is this all meat diet and you have to eat raw meat? No, it is a plant and animal diet diet. We looked at hunter gatherer societies. There was no hunter gatherer society that was vegan. There was no hunter gatherer society that was carnivore all the time. Some had to be in the winter months just because they couldn't find fruit and vegetables.

Right.

But there, there was no pure carnivore nor no pure vegan society. But you saw a broad range. Some societies, particularly those close to the equator ate a lot more plant food. Other societies ate a lot more animal based food. So I don't tell people you have to eat this much meat or you have to eat this much, this many vegetables. It's experiment, find what works for you. It is about finding that Balance.

Yeah, I think that's right. You know, biology is an economy of balance, right? So I write about this in the book that in the, in the money economy, it's a, it's an economy of scarcity, right? No matter how much you have, you're always worried about losing or you need more or whatever it is. And then in a love economy, it's an economy of abundance, right? The more you, the more you give away, the more you have, right? So, but in biology, it's an economy of balance, right? It's finding a sweet spot. And the way that we think about this, you can critique this for me, but the way we think about this is that metabolic flexibility is also very important and the ability to kind of rotate your diet around. We're having more carbs now, we're having more protein now. We're having this and that going back and forth and moving around. Because what we found, particularly when we test everyone's gut, is that if you're eating the same foods all the time, your immune system starts to react to it. Your gut doesn't like that. What it really, what the body seems to really like is variety. So getting a variety of different things and not eating the same stuff every day for breakfast or that kind of stuff, I think that's, that's something that we've learned.

Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, I, so forgive me, I'll tell you this now. I always go back to evolutionary biology because that's, that's a concept of, you look at hunter gatherer societies. By necessity, they had to eat variety because they could only eat the food when they were fresh. They couldn't eat apples all year round, they couldn't eat broccoli all year round. They ate everything was available. And yes, I mean, honestly, if I ever end up writing a second book, I think it's, it's really going to be about metabolic flexibility. I don't know how much you've died, and this would be the focus of my book, but how much have you dived into this whole AMPKP53 pathway? And tell me if I'm getting too deep.

No, no, we love that. So, yeah, you know, the MTOR ampk teeter totter, essentially, right. So we know that high protein diets, that protein, that MTOR is basically amino acid concentrations, tend to drive mtor, just like high glucose tends to drive insulin, which also kind of drives MTOR in its own way. And we know that, that those diets are associated with higher incidence of cancer and a shorter life Expectancy. Right. On the flip side is the AMPK, the P53 activation, which basically kills off cancer cells. AMPK, which activates all your sirtuins and your.

Yes.

Things that rejuvenate DNA repair as well as basically cleaning up your proteins. Right. So you've got all this kind of stuff going on, the autophagy and then the mitophagy that goes along with it as well. So this becomes super important. And so for us, the subtitle of my book is How Playing the Symphony of Longevity will Enable Us to Live Young for a Lifetime is really about going back and forth between. Right. MTOR activation. So you get muscle mass, bone density, strength, but then ampk, where you get rejuvenation, regeneration. Right. So those are. We see that as a major balance.

Yeah, Well, I love it. You know, all of this. And so to take that a step further. So P53 really is one of the major regulators of the cell cycle. And you want the cell to go through all its cycles. You want it to go through growth, then maturity, and then ultimately go through cell apoptosis. And they talk about AMPK being the. The energy sensor in our cells because it senses glucose levels in the blood. Glucose levels are high. Ampk shuts down, P53 shuts down and cells go through growth.

That's right.

If blood glucose levels are low, AMPK activates. It activates P53 and then you. You see apoptosis.

That's right.

And then the moderate level is that kind of in between that maturity. And if you stay in any one of those, those cycles for too long, it's actually very unhealthy. And so they've shown keto diet can have short term benefits, but in the long run, it seems to actually accelerate longevity.

That's right. Likewise, accelerate aging, actually.

Likewise. We just talked about the fact that if your blood glucose levels are too high, then P53 shuts down P53. The most research on it is about its role as an oncogene. It really prevents cancer.

That's right.

And cancer shells have to shut down P53. And what's interesting is you see that Warburg effect in cancer cells where they can only use glucose for fuel and they maintain a high glucose environment around the cell, which keeps P53 down, regulated and inactive.

That's right. That's right. You need that cell cycle, you need that cell cycle. You need to go back and forth. And you can activate AMPK with fasting, you can activate it with dietary choices. It's also activated with Exercise. And it's also activated by things like Mtor. I'm sorry, by metformin and things like berberine and things like that.

Right, exactly.

So I, I love the fact that you were 38, getting sick, switched your diet up, which basically helped you manage the oxidative stress on one hand probably is a primary driver. You were a little bit like this guy that I just told you about out of Italy, right? Probably to some extent. We haven't done your genetics yet, but probably. And yet once you got to a point where you're actually managing the oxidative stress better, it enables you to continue to perform. That's, I mean, that's. And I think if you're listening to this, that's really the, the goal, right? I mean, we all have been dealt a hand, so to speak. We all have cards, genetic cards we're trying to play. And that's why we're big advocates of get your test, get your genetics tested. Right? So you actually know what cards you're playing and then you can actually play the hand and have the best outcome.

And you touched on something at the beginning of this episode that I think is really important is also understanding what you can change. The one issue I constantly have with the research is they take people that have been on a western diet all their lives and say, let's change it for five weeks and then see the results. And you go, I don't care what change you're making, if you've been on a diet for your whole life and then you change it for five weeks, your body's going to go into you an emergency response.

That's right.

You don't know the longer term effects. And you brought up the one about how much can you actually perform on a high fat diet. Now, are you familiar with Dr. Paul Larson at all?

Not so much.

So he works in exercise physiology and he's now doing a ton of research on ketogenic diets or high fat diets and endurance athletes. And they're finally doing those very long term studies where they adapt the athletes to high fat and showing that you can actually still primarily rely on fat at actually very high intensities, which is completely in the face of what you're seeing in the current research where they basically say you want to do any high intensity, you have to be high carbohydrate. So I don't know what the answer is. I don't think we have the answer yet. But the research hasn't been conducted because most of the research was taking athletes on A very high carbohydrate diet, putting them on a high fat diet for six weeks. And all you proved is their body just went greater than you do anything.

They crater with that. Right, yeah. So, you know what I think of this is, all of this is showing is that the body does have a set of predispositions that are genetically determined, but it also has an amazing capacity for adaptability if it's, you know, if it's kind of walked into that adaptation as opposed to, you know, thrown off the high, high dive platform into it. Right. Where it doesn't have time to adapt again. I come back to, you know, in the longevity space, the way I think about it is why waste your time, you know, going through stuff. Why not just get tested right up front so you actually know kind of what direction to go.

Yes.

And then let's go down that path. It's like, I think we'll drive around and see if we get to Canada. All right, well, let's just start driving around. Why don't we look, check the GPS before we leave. Right, so, right. It might be a little more direct drive. So. Yeah.

But you know, the thing I would add to that is, yeah, get tested right from the start. Make the changes, but keep testing. You know, it's just what we tell athletes. It's like, get test tested, we'll tell you what training you should do, but then you need to come back and see the impacts of that training.

That's right. And that's the beauty of this testing with the test I mentioned earlier, that vibrant oxidative stress panel is because it, it does give you the genetics and then it actually gives you all the markers of oxidative stress related to oxidation of DNA, rna, proteins and fat. So you can see what damage is being done. Then you can go back and you don't have to redo the genetics. Of course, that's a one and done. But you can go back and measure to see how you're doing with decreasing those stress molecules. So pretty cool.

And it's fascinating the effects you can see on the body. So, you know, I'll give you again, I'm sorry I'm using so many examples from me. But, you know, before I made that shift with the diet, you know, at the national center, they made us do six hour bike rides multiple times a week. And I would be stopping at gas stations to pick up candy like every hour, hour and a half. I just had to keep eating it or I couldn't get through the ride.

That's right.

After I, after I'd been paleo for a couple years, the biggest shift that I noticed was I could go out for a six hour ride and I'd have to remind myself to eat. Like I'd get three hours into a ride and go, oh, I haven't eaten something nice.

So yeah, that's cool.

It's one of the, you know, your body's going to adjust to the changes you make, so you need to track that.

You know, that raises a question of how do you fuel during the exercise if you need to. First off, I don't think people need to fuel really if they're going to do something less than an hour in general. Right. And you don't really need to fuel. You may need to hydrate, you may need some electrolytes, but you don't really need to fuel. How do you think about fuel going forward, you know, in a longer activity?

Yeah, a lot of answers to that and one of them is particular. Are you doing this for health or are you racing?

Yeah. So in this case, let's say, let's say it's for recreational health, but enjoyment because I think the vast majority of people are doing that as opposed to racing.

Yeah. So what I'm going to say is, and this is controversial, ignore a lot of what you're hearing out of, out of the sports nutrition world right now. And I'm going to give you my bias. This is something we talk a lot about on my show, but I think the sports nutrition world is going in a very dangerous direction. I've had a couple of the leaders on my show where they literally come on and say, it is a, there's a quote, it is a myth that sugar is bad for you. And I think that's a really dangerous statement to make. And you hear them, they're talking about gut training. They are pushing, consuming more and more and more sugar per hour. So in a untrained person, generally their body can only absorb about 40 to 50 grams of glucose per hour. And they're pushing people to now train their guts to absorb 120 or more grams of glucose per per hour.

Wow.

And I think that's dangerous. And look, if a team called me up and said, we want you to come race at the Tour de France with us, I would probably go to the Tour and suck down every bit of sugar possible and know that I'm taking two years off my life, but it's worth it because I always wanted to race the Tour de France.

Yeah.

But if you're doing it for health, no, ignore all that. I think you can be very healthy and as you said, for an hour, you don't need to eat anything if you're going longer. Yeah, but I'm going to push people to eat more natural foods. It can have some carbohydrates in it, but that makes a carbohydrate and fat. It's going to be just fine with you. So go with some granola, go with a banana, things like that. It's going to do you a lot more good.

I'll tell you what I've gotten into as well. I think all that's great advice and it is interesting on that sugar because when you dump all that sugar into your gut, you now are selecting for bacteria in your gut that love sugar.

Yes.

Which also is very unhealthy in the long term. So there's so many downsides to that and they're not. And the glycocalyx gets trashed in the process. Right. So there's, there's a lot of negatives to it, which is interesting. But one of the things I've gotten into is for longer exercise bouts is chia seeds. Just because they're kind of a slow release carb, they've got some healthy fats, a little bit of protein. It's kind of a whole. It's kind of a whole food. Right, Right. So I've kind of come to really like that. It's like I don't find myself getting hungry or depleted. I just, it just feels like, oh, there's just energy there to draw from, which is kind of cool.

So I put together my own mix for my rides. And I have coconut flakes in there. I have a few nuts, I have chia seeds. I'm right on the same page with you.

Nice.

So, but yeah, no, there is a lot of research showing those negative effects of sugar, even in endurance athletes. And, you know, I'll let them go nameless. But I had one of the big names in this world come on my show and of course he immediately came on and said, it is a myth that sugar is bad for you. And I'm usually very nice to my guests. But he did 10, 15 minutes of that. So I just started pointing to study after study going, well, here's this study, here's this study, here's this study, here's this study. And then finished with one that showed that even in elite endurance athletes, when they are consuming lots of sugar during their training, you see an elevation in TH17. My, my research with Dr. Cordain was focused on the effects of TH17 because it precedes every single autoimmune disease. And that final study he was actually an author on, and I said, so how do you explain this? And I admit he just gave me the look of death and said, not my area of expertise. That's the end of the conversation.

I don't think you ever want to take advice from anybody that's actually hyper focused on one particular outcome. Right. It's just not generalizable. I don't care what it is. It could be high jumping, it could be cycling, it could be, you know, bowling, for that matter. I don't think you want to take health advice from somebody that's so hyper focused. I think it's because it's really skewed. I agree. They're going for the 10, you know, the last 10th of the 10th. And in order to get there, they've got to compromise on a lot of other things. So. Yeah, yeah.

And that's important to hear. There are always compromises.

That's right.

But no, I. I think people who are exercising for health, you should be eating a healthy diet. You shouldn't be going, okay, now I'm exercising, I need to eat something completely different.

That's right.

Just focus on health.

Awesome. Well, Trevor, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. How do people find out more about your podcasting? More about you and Paleo in the book and all that?

Fantastic. So Our website is thepaleodiet.com so please come to our site. It's all free information about the diet and about science and nutrition. And then we have our book coming out. So it's a book I co authored with Dr. Cordain, who invented the Paleo diet, along with my business partner, Dr. Mark J. Smith. And that's coming out October 21st.

Great.

And it's called Paleo for Life. So it's a whole book on diet and longevity.

Oh, great.

And so please go pre order it if you're. If you're interested or buy it after it comes out.

Yeah, beautiful. All right, well, great. Well, good stuff. Yeah, really good stuff. Enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much.

Likewise. It was a real pleasure.

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