Siim Land on Intermittent Fasting, Ketosis and Biohacking for Optimal Health

This episode is brought to you by Nourish Me Organics, the premier gut health store in Australia. Now, do you suffer with digestive discomfort or gut issues while Nourish Me Organics have an amazing range of probiotics, prebiotics and gut health supplements. So we've got Megaspore, Vivomix, VSL number three, some amazing gut supporting supplements like collagen peptides, colostrum and prebiotics like Acacia Fiber. Acacia Fiber is amazing because it doesn't cause any gut discomfort like some of the other ones on the market and it's fodmaps friendly. So if you're interested in checking out the range, head to www.nourishmeorganics.com au and use the code SIM2020. That's SIIN 2020 for 10% off. Hey guys, Cribbing Govender from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I've got a background in food science and today I have a fascinating guest for you. His name is Simland and he's all the way from Estonia and I must say I've never met anybody from Estonia before. So, Sim, you have popped my cherry when it comes to meeting someone from your neck of the woods. So welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me on the show. And yeah, it's good to meet. And it's really, it's true that Estonians are like a very small nation, but at the same time there's a saying that you can find an Estonian in every part of the world because a lot of Estonians just tend to go, go across seas and travel. But yeah, it's good to connect with you across the interwebs at least.

Yeah, absolutely. And Sim, what really drew me to getting you onto the podcast is your voice. Your voice, it's such an interesting tonality, the way you phrase it. Phrase words and the accent is so different and yet at the same time quite captivating in the way you speak. And I think there was one particular video on YouTube and just for the audience. Sim is huge on YouTube and he's got an amazing podcast called the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast, which is hugely popular. He's also an author, but there was one particular video that I watched when you were breaking down Deuterium depletion for us. And I just found it fascinating the way you kind of phrase the words and the tonality and it was so informative. So that was one of the early bits of content I saw on the Internet about deuterium. So thank you for sharing that to the world.

Well, yeah, it's a really. It's a rabbit hole and it's an underrated topic, I think. Definitely. But yeah, you're right in the sense that some people tend to like my voice but at the same time there's as many people who don't like it. So it's a mixture. You can't please everyone. So I'm just doing my own thing.

Totally, totally. And I love that Sim. Do you say it Sim? Is that the proper pronunciation?

Well, it's more like seam, Seem. Yeah, Prolonged eyes.

Okay, so seem. And where was I going there? Yeah, deuterium. You broke it down for us so beautifully. And certainly if people want to go back and listen to more about deuterium depletion and deuterium, we did interview Dr. Jack Cruz, we interviewed Laszlo Boros and Dr. Gabel Semulei from Hungary as well. So guys, go back to the previous episodes and go really deep in that respect. But today what I really wanted to talk about is, is a couple of different things and a couple of different avenues we can go down. But primarily biohacking. And SIM is an expert when it comes to keto and fasting and we haven't had any guests that were particularly focused on fasting and on biohacking and on keto. So there's so many different rabbit holes we can go down. But Sim fasting is certainly one aspect that I've implemented very regimentally in my life. And I can say now I'm probably fasting a good 16, 16 hours every day. So the methodology that I follow is called time restricted eating. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but it's pretty much I'm eating within a short window each day. It's probably around eight hours. So I have my breakfast quite early and then I have my dinner like really early. I have my dinner like I've had dinner already. So it's 3 o' clock now, so I had my dinner at 2:30 today. So how about we start going down the fasting rabbit hole? Can you tell us a bit about what your thoughts are on fasting?

Yeah, for sure. And fasting itself isn't like anything innovative or it's not like real biohacking. It's primarily just a way of eating or more like not eating, where in essence you're just confining the period where you eat your calories within a certain timeframe. And it's almost synonymous with time restricted eating. And most people who are doing or who are thinking they're doing intermittent fasting, then they're actually doing this daily time restricted eating. For for instance, in the example that you are doing like they're fasting for 16 hours and eating within eight or even less. So there are different methods of doing fasting, like the one meal a day warrior diet, the 16 and 8 alternative fasting, fasting mimicking diet and extended fasting. So there are different ways of skinning the cat, so to say. Part of the reason why people may be interested in doing that is ease to, you know, first of all, it's a great way of eating less calories, losing some fat, improving your body composition. But there's also many other unique metabolic benefits for health such as, you know, reduction in triglycerides, reduced insulin, lower blood sugar, improved insulin sensitivity, and especially it's all very much linked to the process of autophagy. So autophagy is, is this process of self turnover or self eating where your cells are essentially recycling all the old and worn out parts of the cell that are like just causing more damage and inflammation inside the body. So with fasting and autophagy, you're eliminating those things and that has like a significant impact on the person's longevity and general lifespan. Even so, for instance, they've been found, some studies found that autophagy is the critical part to the life extension seen in caloric restriction. So if you're restricting the calories of mice and at the same time you're mutating the genes in a way that blocks autophagy, then those mice aren't going to live longer despite eating fewer calories versus the mice that are normal. They have autophagy activated. Those mice will live longer thanks to being in caloric restriction. So it comes to show that part of the reason why it's, it's seen that calorie restriction helps to promote longevity in virtually all species, has to do with the activation of autophagy. And at least in some parts. And it's, that's, that should be like, that's one part of, in my opinion, it kind of combines together all the health aspects or most of the health aspects of fasting. You activate autophagy and autophagy just in a way it's like taking out the trash and preventing your healthy cells from becoming dysfunctional. And it's almost like housekeeping. And the problem within the model in kind of the main conflict or the problem in the modern world is that we never really activate autophagy that much versus as much as we did in the past. Like we have, we have a frequent availability of food, we can eat from, you know, the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed. And the foods that we also eat are very anti autophagic, you know, if that makes sense, that they block the process of autophagy because autophagy is activated primarily under nutrient deprivation and energy stress. So if you are fasting, that's like the most profound example of that. You're not eating anything. But they're also like even just, even just the, let's say reduction in carbohydrate intake, reduction in amino acids and reduction in other certain nutrients can also promote this process. So it's always, it's just a matter of overabundance that we experience in our modern food environment. And with like intermittent fasting as a way of lifestyle, we can kind of bridge this chasm between what our body needs or what our body would thrive under and the current conditions that we live in.

Absolutely. And that's a great summary of autophagy and fasting. And certainly from the papers that I've read, a lot of it's down to those nutrient sensors in the body that triggers autophagy. I'm not sure whether you're familiar with the actual pathways, things like AMPK or, or MTOR or insulin. These are the nutrient sensors in the body.

Sorry, you can say, yeah, like your body is always like detecting the nutrient environment or the nutrient homeostasis as a way of kind of making sure that it's very efficient with its energy production and making sure that it's surviving. So the main two fuel sensors are MTOR and ampk. MTOR is the growth pathway that activates under energy excess when you're getting access to the essential nutrients like amino acids and carbohydrates and glucose versus ampk, which is the opposite. It's the catabolic breakdown pathway that supports like burning fat and supports autophagy as well. So when you're fasting, you activate ampk, that leads to autophagy, or even when you're exercising, that can also activate ampk, that leads to autophagy as well, versus if you're eating, then you suppress ampk, you stop autophagy and you activate mtor. So your body is always balancing between those two sides of the coin and that dictates where your body is heading towards, in essence.

Fantastic. And just to underscore your other point is, especially in Australia, and I think it's pretty much all through the west, it's just sheer overconsumption. I mean, if you just look at the Australian way of life, so I'm based in Melbourne, Australia, Sim. And in Australia, a whole culture from the time we're little kids here in Australia is just you've got to have breakfast, then after breakfast comes morning tea and then after morning tea comes lunch, then after lunch comes afternoon tea, then afternoon tea comes dinner and then comes sometimes for some people, supper. And then imagine all the snacking that happens in between all those different meal breaks as well. And Australia, I think is very much founded on kind of the British ideologies or British ancestry. And certainly where I'm from in South Africa it's the same thing because it's that British influence. So it's just culturally ingrained in us to overeat and it almost becomes habitual. So when I think back it's almost. I eat in the past out of habit because it's afternoon tea, we've got to have something for afternoon tea. Or kids in the school grounds, the mums and dads pack them afternoon tea. So break time comes and they've got some food to eat. So it's just a lot of it. What's your thoughts on that? What's the culture like in Estonia when it comes to meal timing?

Yeah, it's so on point that you said that we are very much conditioned to be eating breakfast, lunch and dinner because you know, that's very fringe or foreign to the primal physiology that hunter gatherers live under. They don't have like very regular meal times. Their eating patterns are very random and inconsistent, almost that they may eat something on one day and then fast for three days and you know, the next day they eat like three meals a day, et cetera, depending on like what's the situation. So in the modern world I think it's very much very, you know, they've seen some research in the States where the Sachin Panda, who is doing a lot of research on chrono biology and circadian rhythms, he has found that people tend to eat over the span of like 15 hours, which is basically the MO from the moment they wake up all the way up until the moment they go to bed. And that what it basically does is keeps their body in this continuously fit state because although you may not be eating during the night, eight hours isn't like a significant amount of time to fully go into a real fasted state because you know, the post absorptive state of digestion that lasts up to like four to six hours after you finish the meal. So there's still some nutrients in your body, you know, five hours from the last time you Ate. And if you sleep only eight hours, then, you know, maybe fasting for four hours or six hours, then that's not the real, you know, significant time to gain the benefits of zafaji or something like that. And that's, that's also part of the reason why there may be so many metabolic diseases in the west related to overnutrition. So a lot of the problem isn't that you don't activate autophagy. The problem is that deficient autophagy and not insufficient amounts of it in the modern food environment, and that's like a lot of research, are also linked to deficient autophagy causing things like irritable bowel disease, heart disease, these other very ailments related to overnutrition. So yeah, I think just the act of even you don't even have to reduce the amount of calories you eat. Just the act of confining the time where you eat and having less meals. That has just such a profound effect on your metabolism and the general health. And it's so kind of crazy to think that we are literally taught the opposite. And over the past few decades, the main trend has been to avoid hunger, to be constantly snacking and you know, fasting is bad, skipping meals is bad because it's gonna promote overeating, etc. And you have to eat these very high carb foods all the time just to keep your blood sugar up, etc. So it's, it's literally, it may be like in some aspects is caused by this marketing trends of wanting to make people addicted to certain foods and having more frequent meals. But at the same time it's also just the lack of, lack of, you know, stress or lack of struggle in the modern world, especially when it comes to food. Like you can literally go to the fridge and, and eat something and you don't really have to ever experience hunger if you don't like it. And most people tend to be, they're very much gravitated towards not wanting to be uncomfortable or they want to avoid discomfort as much as possible. And fasting is definitely uncomfortable to a certain extent. But at the same time, I myself feel that the immense health benefits are just so empowering. And if you acknowledge to yourself that it's actually a good thing for yourself, then fasting, it becomes almost joyful and something that you yearn for after you start practicing.

Totally. I'm 100% with you. And I'm glad you touched on the IBD part as well in your discourse there, because. And we are the Gut Health Gurus podcast. And I always like to put some essence of gut health into the conversation. And if you think about this logically, so we're like this massive tube and the outer part is the skin and then the inner tube is the gut. So when we're eating, the gut is actually sitting outside the body. So the food has to be absorbed inwardly. And then that whole process is extremely energy taxing to the body. And so as the food goes down, I think it's called the basal metabolism, it's huge in terms of energy expenditure for the body. So if we're continuously eating and not allowing the body to actually go through digestion and then also go through that resting phase and then autophagy, it puts a huge amount of strain onto the body. And this is one of the best ways to heal the gut, is simply fasting. It's because you allow your body to just rest and repair and see that gut lining and that mucosal layer, that mucus layer is what protects, I guess, what's outside from getting in. So allowing the nutrients to go into the body by keeping all the negative aspects out. So for that whole process to work efficiently, the body needs to have some form of rest so that healing can happen. Because the fact of eating alone is stressful, it actually raises cortisol levels in the body. So imagine if we're continuously eating, so we're putting this stressor on the body as well, and then we're not allowing that healing process to happen. And no wonder. We have ibd, leaky gut, obesity. All these things are factors of certainly in my mind and from the research I've seen from overeating. So seem how can we, for someone that's listening to this, and this is such a foreign concept to fast. Some cultures have fasting inbuilt into them. Like I remember when I was growing up in South Africa and my background is South Indian, and part of the culture is to have months where we fast. And it could be, and that's purely for cultural and religious reasons. And it could be a fast of, you know, a month of just not eating meat. And that's one form of fasting. And then it could be another time where you fast and you don't eat and you just have water. So what's your strategy for someone that's totally, it's totally foreign. How can people get started fasting?

Yeah, you just stop eating, as simple as it sounds. But yeah, it's true that, yeah, there are definitely many ways of doing it. And I think that it should be somewhat of a consistent thing. Like if I were to compare fasting for only one month of the year and doing it really hardcore, like fasting for several days in a row and restricting your food intake a lot, then I would say that may be good in the short term, but in the long term a much more consistent and daily practice tends to be. I would imagine that would be better because you're keeping the autophagy or like you're increasing the basal levels of autophagy much further versus doing it really doing it a lot and then not doing it at all for the rest of the year. So it's definitely better to have some form of daily machine eating on a daily basis. And like you mentioned, you're doing the 16 hours of fasting every day. That's a good start, starting point for everyone. And I think that that should be almost like the minimum for, for every person because it fits a lot with these circadian rhythms as well. And it's such a, like easier part. It's easy to implement, so it's not like really effortful. And what you're essentially doing is maybe skipping out one meal of the day, whether that be breakfast or whether that be dinner. And you're confining the period where you eat your calories within eight hours or less. So that's what most people can do. And it should be like the golden standards in my opinion, because there's no real reason to be eating any more frequently unless you're maybe hospitalized or you're pregnant or you're elderly or you're a child. So most people don't need to eat any more than that. And then there are also like, for instance, if you want to extend it a bit further, then there's things like the Warrior diet where you fast for 20 hours and eat your food within 4 hours. The only difference may be that you can burn more calories during that period of fasting. And of course you have to still eat less calories in the eating window. But it's a way of increasing fat loss. Or you probably may get a bit of more autophagy, but the four hours are so short that the difference is very small. And then there's also like one meal a day where you're eating only one, one meal within one to two hours or something like that. And that's also like primarily like a fat loss tool or just convenience. If you don't, if you don't like to eat any more than that and you like to eat only once a day, then that's fine. But when it comes to extended fasts, the extended fast that lasts for over 24 hours up to three to five days, then in that case I think it's a good idea to have them every once in a while and it's better, it will be better to have them rather than nothing at all. But they shouldn't be thought of as something that you do all the time because your body would adapt to them and you would see like diminishing returns from the longer fasts. But at the same time, I myself aim for at least like four, four to five, three day fasts per year. So just to kind of reset the system, reset the immune system actually and like boost, boost more autophagy, burn some more fat and yeah, like just I usually do the longer fast when I'm traveling or flying so it's very convenient to avoid all the airport food and the airplane food and just fast. So yeah, like in general most people should do the daily time machine eating on a daily basis in some shape or form and then have a few of these longer fasts every once in a while. And the frequency depends a lot on the conditions and what your goals. So for instance, if you're trying to lose fat, then fasting is a pretty amazing way of losing that really fast. And there are a lot of people who are doing some forms of fasting online where they fast for three days, they eat for one day, they go for another three day fast, they eat another day like cycling back and forth between these extended fasts and refeed day. So yeah, it's a really rapid way of losing weight and it's actually a pretty healthy way of doing that as well compared to like a prolonged period of calorie restriction. And of course if you have some sort of a medical condition, then fasting for that has been shown to be really effective as well, at least for some conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes or insulin resistance. Those tend to be healed really fast with these extended fasts. And yeah, I think for healthy people who are already doing everything right, they're eating the right diet and they're exercising, they're sleeping as well. Then for them they don't need to push the envelope with the extended fasts because their autophagy is already, let's say, more flexible and they will probably get into autophagy faster as well versus someone who is like metabolically damaged.

Those are awesome, excellent points. One disclaimer I think we should mention if someone's going to embark, especially if they've got some form of medical condition just to be cautious and perhaps seek some form of guidance from a trained practitioner before kind of diving in. So seeing a dietitian or someone versed in the elements of fasting, just to be cautious. But I guess if we're healthy and we're normal and we're functioning properly, just time restricted eating, as you mentioned, is a pretty safe practice to be following to eat in a short window. And there's definitely some good results and some good health benefits from that. I just wanted to touch on something I've never actually heard of, the Warrior Diet. That's the first time I actually heard. So I'm really interested. Yeah, go ahead.

The Warrior Diet is actually one of the first, one of the first intermittent fasting diets. Like it was created by Ori Hofmekler, who is like a researcher and a scientist and an author from the States. And he wrote the book, I think it was in 2004 or something, or even early 2000, somewhere around that. And he's been doing it for decades. He's like in his, I think he's in his 60s at the moment and he's like lean and ripped. So he's been doing that for several decades. And yet basically it mimics or the idea is to mimic some form of like ancient Rome where you know, people would, or at least the noble people or the royalty, they would have these large feasts that might. And Ori in his book claimed that the reason they got away with that was that they were fasting most of the day and essentially they were time restricting their eating window. And there were also like some talk about how, you know, Greek hoplites and Roman legionnaires, they would also fast most of the day or at least they wouldn't have like large meals or protein shakes during the day. They would, you know, maybe snack, snack a few there on some bread or something, but they wouldn't have like large meals all the way up until the point where they were camping at night and that's where they would consume most of their food. So yeah, it's a form of time restricted eating and fasting, which just promotes larger fat metabolism, put you into ketosis and makes you more metabolically flexible.

Cool, that's really interesting. I'll add a note to the show notes if people want to dig deeper into the book. And the other question I had was when you do this longer form of fasting, say three days, are you just having water during that time?

Yeah, well, I myself when I would have this longer fast, I would still have Maybe like black coffee or tea, because those things, they don't really break a fast and they actually promote some forms of autophagy and self recycling. So there are, they're healthier or they're safe in the sense that they're not going to break the fast. But if I were to try to give my gut a full rest, then I would maybe have just water or maybe some salt and electrolytes mixed into that water just to not stimulate the liver in any shape or form. But yeah, it's dependent upon what's the goal of the fast. Most people who are just fasting for, let's say fat loss or autophagy, then black coffee and teas are just fine and they may be useful in the sense of suppressing appetite and making sure that you actually fast for longer. So let's say a three day fast with coffee is still better than a one day fast without coffee, so to say, because you would stop sooner than you can handle, for instance.

And the other point that you mentioned earlier as well, around circadian rhythm session Panda is amazing. His work is phenomenal and this is probably my thinking as well and why I follow this time restricted eating combined also with circadian biology. Because what I'm trying to do is I'm working on the premise that hormones will activate at different times of day and be optimal. So certain hormones, hormones will be optimal at the start of the day versus later at nighttime where it's probably more restful phase. Hence I try and almost eat with the sun. Certainly when the sun comes, I'm starting to eat and then before the sun sets I've already stopped. So I think that really works for me. I'm not sure whether it'll work for everybody, but I think there's something to do with circadian rhythms and linking that to fasting. What's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and there is a lot of truth to that. So for instance, a lot of the hormones fluctuate based upon the circadian rhythms and time of the day. And a lot of the, let's say repair hormones as well as the autophagy activation and growth hormone and melatonin, all of those things, they tend to be elevated during the night. So most of the, let's say autophagy benefits occur in conjunction with the release of melatonin as well as growth hormone, which happens in deep sleep and that happens in the earlier parts of the night. So if you are eating, let's say a large dinner, then you're at least interfering with the process a little bit because your body would have to digest the food that it ate versus instead of like starting to repair itself. So you know, going to bed in a semi fasted state would probably lead to increased esophagy and increased growth hormone just because you're fasting and your body would be more prone to repairing itself. But when it comes to, let's say actual research that compares early time CD eating versus late time CD eating, then there isn't like a significant difference. As long as there's still the aspect of time she's eating. Like as long as people are still fasting and they're eating within the, and they're eating the food within a certain time frame, then the research, one study at least found that there isn't no research or there isn't no difference between health outcomes and let's say insulin sensitivity and lipid profiles, etc. So I think the main benefits, the main, most important benefits come from the aspect of the fasting window that there should be like some, some form of fasting in your day to gain those benefits and consolidate or consolidate the eating window to show the timeframe. That's where most of the benefits come from. But at the same time, eating immediately before going to bed isn't a good idea just because of, you know, it's going to decrease your sleep quality and make you make you feel uncomfortable, etc. So I think that optimally you would want to stop eating for maybe at least four to five hours before bed and to fully digest the food that you ate and then go into restful mode. But in the morning starting to eat immediately after waking up, that's probably not a good idea either because you have elevated cortisol and you're more prone to, let's say storing the food that you eat as fat if you eat like in a high cortisol environment. So usually cortisol tends to drop after 9pm so waiting maybe a few hours after waking up, that's also like a good rule of thumb to keep in mind. So that's essentially goal already gonna give you like an eight hour window if you eat like let's for example, between 10am and 6pm, that's like a pretty solid time receiving window.

Well that's fantastic advice and absolutely cortisol is there to wake us up, but certainly it's going to be very disruptive to your melatonin late at night if you're eating just an n equals 1. I can speak to my own experience with eating very late. I can Notice a substantial decrease in sleep quality. I mean I feel say for instance, if I've got a social event and I've got to eat 7:30, which was normal back in the day, right. It's 7:30 dinner, it's just normal. But if I have my dinner that late now and I'm in bed by say 10, 10:30, I feel horrible, like I'm tossing and turning, my gut feels like there's stuff in it and I feel yuck. And I can't get to sleep and then I wake up feeling really crappy because I haven't had the sleep quality. And that's generally normal for most people. But I think maybe it's just a normal baseline. But because I've been doing this time restricted eating for a while now, I can feel the difference. And as you mentioned before, there's something euphoric about fasting, like putting your body under this hermetic stress. I think there's, there's perhaps some release of some other hormones, maybe beta endorphins or something that's happening as well.

Yeah, for sure. Like a lot of nootropic factors like BDNF increase with fasting as well. And BDNF is like the fertilizer for your brain which grows new brain cells and creates new synaptic connections. So you are in a sense more motivated to learn new things, more euphoric, more excited, more enthusiastic. Just because your body is under this. It can be thought of like from an evolutionary perspective, it's like you're starving basically and therefore your brain is trying to motivate you to find food and make you more energized and fully alert. So that's maybe like a good explanation of why you feel this way in a certain extent. But there's also like ketosis. There's also like ketosis, your burning your own body fat and ketones are like very anti inflammatory, they have very much neuroprotective effects. And yeah, they also lead to increased bdnf. So it's like a good feedback loop, positive feedback loop where you're fasting, you're reducing inflammation which tends to affect your mental functioning as well. And at the same time you're giving your body and your brain like this high quality fuel that, that you can use to feel more energized.

Absolutely. And that's absolutely fascinating about the bdnf. It's a brain derived neurotropic factor. Absolutely. So there's definitely something going on there. And you've brilliantly explained a possible Mechanism. And I like the fact that if you're challenging your brain in terms of nutrient deficit and maybe just a theory, maybe it's the problem solving areas of the brain that are lighting up to maybe like an ancestral pathway or something very ancient, where it lights up to give you the ability to actually problem solve and find food and enhance the survivability of, of your genes. So maybe there's something there.

Yeah, exactly. I think there is. Like the only way for hunter gatherers to stop starving is to find food and basically get smarter or learn how to make better tools for trapping animals or something like that.

Totally, totally. And you brilliantly start to segue into ketosis, which is your other area of interest and specialty. How about we describe to the audience what is ketosis and then how can we start to benefit from incorporating ketosis practices in our diets?

Yeah, like, ketosis is a metabolic state with elevated ketone bodies in your bloodstream. And ketone bodies are these energy molecules that are derived from fat oxidation. So usually if you're fasting, for example, then you start to burn your own body fat. But most of the tissues in the body, they can use fatty acids, but the brain can't. So in order for the brain to benefit from burning fat, it has to convert, or the body has to convert the fatty acids into ketone bodies in the liver. And that happens when the liver glycogen is low. And the liver glycogen tends to be low either when you're fasting or when you're eating, or for instance, when you're exercising or when you're eating a ketogenic diet. So a ketogenic diet is a low carbohydrate, high fat diet that mimics a lot of the physiology of fasting, primarily because of keeping your carbs low and keeping your glycogen levels low. So the body would just start converting the fat that it eats from the foods and the fat that it has in its adipose tissue into energy and ketone bodies. And so the ketobiotics just start to substitute carbohydrates and glucose as a main form of energy. And the benefits of ketosis and ketogenic diets are very much similar to fasting in some aspects, like reduced inflammation, improved insulin sensitivity, improved glucose tolerance, et cetera, and lower inflammation. And even, like neuroprotective effects, like ketogenic diets were originally used to treat epileptic children, and they're even used by Navy SEAL divers who need to survive periods of low oxygen or high oxygen when they're diving. And ketosis helps to stay in these very harsh environments for longer. And for most people who are doing keto, then they describe it as an easy way of adhering to the diet because it kind of suppresses your appetite a little bit, helps to burn some fat, lose some weight and just feel mentally clear during the day. And yeah, that's, that's one of the reasons why keto is becoming pretty popular at the moment. It's like a very novel, not like a novel, but an easy, easier way to lose fat and lose weight compared to like the, let's say a high carbohydrate diet that tends to enforce more cravings and enforce snacking, etc. So ketosis makes it easier to fast and skip meals and just naturally under eat?

Absolutely. And if someone wants to start incorporating a keto style practice, what's the, I guess the macronutrient breakdown for true keto and how can someone start to use it?

Yeah, like the standard keto diet is like a very low carbohydrate diet with just 5%, 5 to 10% of your calories coming from carbohydrates, which in total would be around 20 to 30 grams of carbs per day. And for that to happen then you would have to be eating only like these very low carb vegetables and cruciferous vegetables and leafy greens and those sorts of things that don't have carbs like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, red cabbage, etc, celery, cucumbers, those sorts of things. And avoid all the high carb foods like potatoes, rice, grains, fruit, pastries, chips, those things that's going to put the body, that's going to just enable the person to maintain a lower level of liver glycogen and therefore start producing ketone bodies. And the other micronutrient ratios are about 20 to 25% protein and about 70 to 80% fat, depending on the particular goals and depending on a particular individual. So for someone who has epilepsy actually and who has maybe like some cancer or diabetes, then for them maintaining strict ketosis would be much more important versus someone who is doing keto for fat loss or who doesn't have any medical condition, then for them they can be somewhat more liberal with their macronutrient ratios because they don't need to be in ketosis all the time to reap the therapeutic benefits. They can just use it as a way of losing some fat and reducing calorie intake. So for them they can even eat like 50 grams of carbs or something like that. And they don't have to be worried about protein either. So yeah, like, it depends a lot on the individual, but the main idea is that you eat like very low carb and get primarily your calories from these proteins that have fat added to them, like meat, fish, eggs, some nuts, avocados, seeds, and some vegetables.

And what does a typical meal think of like a day meal plan would. What would. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, typical person, what would it look like in each meal?

Yeah, well, it depends on like what kind of a person you are and what you like to eat. Like, I'm the kind of guy for you. Well, for me, for me, like I can, I can. I'm kind of the guy who can eat like the similar meals back to back all the time and not really care about it because I kind of enjoy them. But for me, I eat. Usually my main source of protein comes from actually eggs because I think there are really nutritious and they're really like, they have good macronutrient profile as well. Like they get. They have protein and they have the fat and they have like virtually no carbs at all. So they're pretty good for. You can eat on keto, you can probably eat, you know, eggs on every. Every meal as much as you. As much as fits your macros in the sense. But other foods that I like are like steak, some beef. We also have like a wild game here in my house and some local fish. So those are my kind of main sources of food. Usually maybe have per meal. I would have maybe four eggs and some meat with some salad or vegetables that will be comprised of a good solid single meal.

Right. And that's some good actionable insights on fasting and then the keto, if people want to get started on some keto, we're pretty much coming up to time. But if you wouldn't mind, I've got a couple more questions and then we'll start to wrap for sure. So, biohacking, Tell us about biohacking. At the moment, I think people get the gist of what biohacking is. But from your current understanding or where you're currently at in your level of expertise, what's your top five biohacking tips for people?

Yeah, it is. It's a trendy topic. But the way I approach biohacking or the way I think about it has to do with more like health optimization and just almost creating this realignment between your primal physiology and the modern world. So drinking coffee can be considered as a biohack if you use it for something as that improves your performance or your health versus in reality it's just drinking coffee. But yeah, like I think the most important quote unquote biohack would be sleep optimization because sleep is the foundation to health and you can't really get away with poor sleep for too long because it's gonna catch up on you and it's gonna cause a lot of negative health outcomes. And I think the most easiest fix a lot of people can do is to practice some form of time machine leading to, you know, have a consolidated period where they eat their food. That's going to help to align themselves with the circadian rhythms. But there's also like blocking blue light at night which, using these blue blocker glasses, that's going to be useful for making sure that you still produce melatonin in the evening because blue light inhibits the production of the sleep hormones. But yeah, generally that will be like a good, good sleep optimization, at least like the foundation to it. And then there's I think some form of, some form of, I would say like a sauna. Sauna practice is also like really awesome for like mitochondrial functioning, reducing inflammation and just feeling great when doing it. So I myself tend to have a sauna almost every day. And yeah, it's a very common practice here in these parts of the world. It's been done for like thousands of thousands of years. So it's very interesting to see like the Western countries picking up on it and looking at it. What is this thing like sitting in a hot room with no clothes and sweating yourself off. But like, sauna is an amazing thing. A third would be some cold immersion as well to kind of complement the sauna and heat. So what I like to do is do back and forth between the cold and hot. So that causes like this very unique effect where you're actually draining the lymph as well. Like you're stimulating the lymph flow because of the alterations in the heat. And yeah, like the hormegic benefits are definitely there for both of these activities. Fourth would be, I would say that some form of meditation or something, some mindfulness practice just to develop more awareness and like meta awareness about yourself. Because like the biggest computer or the biggest screen is your own body that most people are just very much very disconnected from. And they don't really just. They don't know how to interpret the signals their body is sending to them. And if you learn to do that, if you become more aware of those signals, then you can definitely see a lot of Results from just paying more attention to what happens to yourself. And meditation is a way of like just honing or sharpening your axe and sharpening your mind with that. The last part. God. Maybe, maybe like a red light therapy is also like a real quote unquote biohack because I wouldn't categorize fasting as a biohack. It would be just not eating. But the red light therapies are like. Red light therapy would be like a real biohack because the red wavelengths or red wavelengths, yeah, they have like really good beneficial effects on both like energy production as well as just reducing inflammation and feeling better as well. So I usually use my red light therapy device for maybe 10 to 15 minutes basically every day. And yes, it's a very good for mitochondrial production and even like boosting testosterone and other good stuff. So those will be good kind of main fundamentals for biohacking.

That's amazing. That's pretty much all the things that I follow very closely as well. I almost do on a daily basis. I would like to ask you some clarification on the cold therapy and then the transitioning between hot and cold. So what would be your recommendation for how much cold, what temperature? And then how many times should we be moving back and forth to get the lymph benefits?

Right. Well, I think that if you're doing, if you're planning on having like an extended session in the sauna, then usually it will be maybe like five to 10 minutes sitting in a sauna and then do some form of cold for like a minute or two or something and then repeat that cycle for maybe two, two to three rounds. That's, that would be something like a kind of minimum, minimum effective dose per session, I would imagine. And it also maybe depends on like how frequently you're doing it. If you're doing it every day, then you would probably adapt to the stimulus quite fast and then you may have to change it or give yourself a break versus, versus. If you're doing it only once a week, then you can definitely do it for like three, three to four rounds, etc. So it's, it's a matter of, it's a matter of the amount of stress you're causing on your body as well as like how adapted you are. So Wim Hof can probably sit in the sauna for an hour and sit in the ice band for another hour, but he's doing it for other reasons as well. He's doing it just to, just to, you know, toughen up and endure it for Much further. But most people like I think the goal with these hormetic stress disease, yeah like to get tougher and get stronger but at the same time if you constantly push the envelope then it becomes harder to see more results and you start to see diminishing returns. So yeah, like it shouldn't be thought of as how, how long can I fast or how long can I sit in an ice bath. You should be thinking of how little can I do it and see greater results. Which is basically the idea behind biohacking.

Absolutely. That's such a good point because the body is so adaptive, isn't it? If we're over supplementing, if we're even applying some of these biohacking principles, the body will just adjust and it's almost like a normal thing for it. So it's good to trick it in certain regards so it doesn't get used to a certain rhythm. So I'm 100% there with you for sure. And something, something that's peaking your interest at the moment that people might not be aware of.

Maybe. Yeah. Not sure at the moment. I've been recent researching a lot about sleep and circadian rhythms. So maybe I would say that.

Or.

Even like autophagy activators. That's another thing that I'm constantly researching about. Like certain compounds can activate autophagy faster. So to say that they mimic calorie restriction and they mimic fasting by basically lowering your insulin and lowering your blood sugar a lot and activating ampk. So for example like rapamycin and metformin, those are considered like this very new or very popular anti aging drugs because of suppressing MTOR and activating autophagy. But there are even like milder versions of it that can be taken more easily like berberine, even coffee has similar effects and turmeric ginger, those things. So I'm you know, constantly trying to experiment with these different things and using them in my, in my daily nutrition to see like how do they affect my like mental well being as well as just performance.

Absolutely fascinating. Absolutely fascinating conversation. I think those biohacking recommendations are so on point. 100% with you, 100% with you on the fasting, 100% with you on the ketosis as well. One thing that perhaps is missing in the, the whole ketosis piece from a gut health perspective and it'd be interesting to get your thoughts on this. What's your thoughts on ketosis and fiber?

Yeah, like a lot of people may fear that because you're reducing your carb intake and you're reducing your plant consumption, then you may suffer from negative effects on the gut health. But at the same time, fiber itself isn't like an essential thing. And your body can, your body can thrive without the consumption of fiber as well to a certain extent. Like for instance, collagen protein is basically animal fiber and it does function in a similar manner in the gut as fiber, like producing short chain fatty acids and healing the gut lining. So as long as you have like these, you know, collagen, you know, tenderness, parts and ligaments, then you can still reap a lot of the gut health benefits of eating collagen with even, even despite having reduced fiber intake. And even like butyrate, which is, which is one of the main short chain fatty acids that gets created from the digestion of fiber, you can obtain that from dietary fat as well. Like, you know, animal fats, tallow, butter, ghee and meat. I would imagine. So, yeah, like that can be created from the consumption of animal foods as well. So you're never really deprived in terms of your gut health or you know, in terms of like the permeability of the gut. You're not really deprived as long as you have the animal proteins and sufficient fat. But at the same time, I do think that maybe like a cyclical approach to ketosis is just better for both metabolic health as well as gut health to kind of still have days where you're eating these non keto carbs like potatoes and tubers and other sorts of vegetables that aren't usually keto. So I think that that would be just better for overall health. And chronic ketosis is probably not something that you would want to have especially like in the modern world. So yeah, I think in any case, ketosis isn't going to harm your gut health, but at the same time, chronic ketosis isn't necessary and it's not like needed and it shouldn't be striated.

100%. That is so on point. 100% with my thinking as well in terms of gut health, ketosis in my mind should be almost viewed as a therapeutic tool to address dysfunction in the body. And then speaking to a lot of microbiome experts from across the world, they tend to have this train of thought where metabolic flexibility is the key and as you mentioned, having the ability to switch between different types of macronutrients because that's pretty much how ancestors would have survived. They didn't have the luxury of choice to say, I'm going to have my nice juicy T bone steak today or my sirloin and then Tomorrow I'm gonna have, you know, something different. It was like, I'm gonna eat that bug that I can find, or I can dig that tuber, I'm gonna kill that animal and then that's gonna feed me for the next 10 days. Eating its organs or offals, or finding a piece of fruit, or finding a half rotten piece of fruit lying in the ground. I mean, that's, that's how I'm imagining humans 20,000, 30,000 years ago when we first started to appear in this form on the planet. 100% with you on the butter, the ghee, the collagen to actually produce short chain fatty acids, heal the gut epithelial cells. Colostrum supplementation is also great for actually boosting gut health, healing the gut lining. The other thing that I would recommend as well is to consider, because you're not putting a lot of net carbs in, is to use something like a prebiotic supplement. So really great ones that are gentle for the gut, so things like acacia fiber, partially hydrolyzed guar gum, some of the other ones like inulin, fos, inulin or gos can create a fair bit of bloating in the gut, but one that certainly doesn't create a lot of bloating is acacia fiber. So this might be a great tool if someone's going for ketosis to, to use something like collagen butter and acacia fiber just to maintain that gut integrity and make sure those gut cells are really tight. We're producing enough butyrate in the gut to fuel the gut epithelial cells to make sure that they're nice and tight and they're producing enough mucin to just create that protective layer over the gut lining. So great advice, Sim. I think we're on point. We're in full agreement pretty much in all that you said and really appreciate you coming onto the podcast. So, final two questions. If there was one thing, it is a gut health gurus podcast. Of course. If there was one thing that someone could do for their gut health, what would it be?

Well, maybe it's eating not to full, not to full fullness. You know, eating too, I think what's the term in Japanese like hari hashimoto or something that you stop eating when you're 80% full. So it's a good practice in a way that you're not. You stop before you're actually full and therefore you will tend to gravitate towards more under eating because color restriction or at least mild calorie restriction would be better for longevity as well. As general health. So the problem isn't never that you're not eating enough. Its problem tends to be that you're eating too much. So if you're stopping when you're 80% full, then you allow your body to absorb the nutrients and therefore you will also just feel more satiated from less calories. Because if you eat too fast, then your body, it takes time for your body to get the message that it has received enough food. So just stop thinking beforehand is a good way to kind of making sure that you get the message at the right time. So that's something that I think everyone should kind of keep in mind when it comes to just improve digestion and even fat loss.

Great advice, fantastic advice. Don't eat too much, people. Stop at 80%. It's probably the best thing you could do for your gut health, definitely in terms of overeating. And if people are listening to this podcast, they're totally resonating what you have to say. They want to reach out to you, they want to follow your work, they want to follow you on social media. How can people find you?

Yeah, well, thanks for having me on the show and it was a great talk. My social media handles are all Siem lund and my YouTube is Seamland and my website is also Seamland.com so yeah, it's pretty easy to find.

Pretty cool, man. Great conversation, Siem. Absolute pleasure to have a chat with you today and I hope the audience will get a lot out of this conversation, which I sure that I'm sure they will. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

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