Exploring Cutting-Edge Research on Protein, Fitness, and More with Mike Mutzel

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout.

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So I've been stalking this guy, trying to get him on my podcast for years. Turns out I had the wrong email address because I've known him for years and I was like, why is he responding? I was at a conference Metabolic Health Summit and there he was. And so I was like, mike. I grabbed and brought him up. So I am super excited about this podcast today with Mike Mutzl. We sat down and talked about a bunch of super cool things, one of them being fasted workouts. Should you or shouldn't you? What about fasting? How has his views on fasting changed? And what is one thing that if you've got a lot of GI stuff going on that you might pull out of your diet that could make a major change? And this one kind of blew my mind. So I learned. I learned something else new and I often do when I pay when I'm checking out Mike Mutzle, which I follow him on YouTube and also on Instagram. You'll find him on Instagram as Metabolic Mike. But he is great at taking studies and yanking them apart, making them understandable debriefing so you'll know exactly what to do with them. So I love that about him and he's definitely one that you can trust the information you're getting from. He's got a great science background, his bachelor's in biology and a clinical nutrition master's from the University of Bridgeport. Plus he's in what's called an afmcp, a graduate of the Institute for Functional Medicine. So really good clinical background, great scientific mind, and it's just great at delivering fabulous information to the public. He also has a book, the Belly Fat Effect, the Real Secret, about how your diet, intestinal health and gut bacteria help you burn fat. So this is going to be a really fun, a fun interview where we go through a lot of different things and how we both because we he's been in this business now for 20 something years. You know, some of the things that he shifted his opinion on over the years. So hang out, buckle up and I'll be right back with Mike Mutzel.

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Mike Mutzl I am so excited. I've actually been trying to stalk you to get you on the show, and then I had to find you at a conference and basically, like, drag you in, so here you are.

I think you must have had my wrong email or something, but, yeah, it's great to be with you, jj. I was telling you offline, I've been listening to you for a very long time. In the early 2000s, I got a lot of information from you during the clinical rounds calls that you co hosted. So, yeah, it's an honor to be.

With you today and it's been a long time, man.

Yeah.

Well, I love the direction you've gone. Like, everything that you're doing, I'm like, so simpatico. I'm like, oh, God, he's talking about body recomp today. Yay, creatine. You know, it's just fantastic. So, I mean, there's a lot of different directions that we can go, but I would love to just start with. Just kind of go back a little bit with you and how you got into this.

Yeah, it's a great question. Like many of us, we had our own personal health issues. So for me in college, I wanted to be a pro cyclist. You know, I hurt my back, deadlifted and like, weightlifting was my jam for like, five, seven years. Prior to that, I played college football and all that, and it hurt my back, and I wanted to do something high intensity. And so the. You know, this was back when Lance Armstrong was in the Tour de France all the time. My dad was a big cyclist. To make a long story short, I ended up losing a lot of muscle and started to get hypothyroid symptoms, low testosterone, like, my libido.

How old were you?

So I was about 22 when this started, you know, and it was probably exacerbated. As I've told people before, I did two cycles of anabolic steroids in college as well. So I had put. I went from like 170 to 240, maybe. Like, actually, I was probably like 185 to 240. It doesn't matter. Put on a lot of weight.

That's a lot.

And so during that time, you know, and so that's why I love hormones, because hormones change all of your physiology, your strength and all of these things. So I hurt my back deadlifting during the second time that I did steroids. And I couldn't really do weightlifting like I like to do. So I got into cycling and that led to its own issues with over training. Too much endurance athletics. Lost a lot of muscle and a lot of fat. And then like literally my hormones were all just flatlined. So I went to the. I was a pre med undergrad, was studying biology, cellular and molecular biology. And the school nurse, I was like, I'm depressed. Like I've never been depressed in my life. Like I feel like crap. She was like, well, you should just. This is common for like undergrad students. Just hop on an ssri. And I was like, you know what.

It'S just getting fun from bad to worse, right?

So I said, forget all that. I'm gonna just do. I know my hormones are screwed up because I know what I did. I didn't tell her what I had done. Steroid wise. Several years earlier, my total testosterone was 91. Free was like 4. Sounds like, shoot. I really was really, really low. You're a 22 year old, totally crazy, right? And so I was like, well, shoot. So I went to just a family medicine person and they're like, yeah, we'll just put you on testosterone. And I'm like, well, I already know what that does to suppressing your whole HPA axis. So I said, I think I'm gonna. They didn't know about hcg, so all the bro bodybuilding science, they know a lot about hormones. Way beyond your standard medical doctors.

I think this is important to bring up because there's this war out there between the bro science and When I was going through college and graduate school, I was training people at Venice Gold's gym and then I was going to grad school and it was like, I was like going, yeah, but what you're saying isn't working. And what I'm seeing at the gym and what the broscience is doing is so like, could we talk?

I think it's helpful. And our mutual late friend Charles Poliquin used to talk a lot about that. How people in the trenches are seeing things ahead of the published clinical science. And so I think it's important to take everything with a grain of salt. Just because maybe what the bros are doing is working doesn't mean it's healthy long term, necessary necessarily.

But I think it should lead to a conversation. Totally right. It should lead to a conversation that does. Like, you know, by the time we've got enough placebo controlled, random, blind, blah, blah, blah, studies, you know, like we've all been out here trying to get things done. So there's, there's both are important.

It's so important. And in fact, just this last week, it's worth bringing up a Harvard medical student. Medical school student Nick Norwitz published a study on himself. He's been low carb for four and a half years, very strict keto to treat ulcerative colitis. And his disease wasn't put into remission until going on his strike zero carb diet. But he's what's known as a lean mass hyper responder, meaning that his, when he cuts out carbohydrates in his diet, his triglycerides go down, his HDL or good cholesterol goes up. LDL cholesterol goes up over 200 milligrams per deciliter, which is significantly higher than most medical doctors are comfortable with. And his LDL happened to increase up to 540 milligrams per deciliter, which most medical doctors are going to freak out. Like you need to be on extensive statin therapy. So he did this experiment where he had 12 Oreo cookies a day for two weeks and looked at how that changes. His LDL went down 273points. Then he did a three month washout period and went on rosuvastatin for 20mg a day, which is significantly higher than most people are on. And that only decreases his LDL cholesterol like 100 milligrams per deciliter. So you had like a twofold swing eating Oreo cookies compared to statins, which goes to show that there's LDL cholesterol, for example, is doing more redistributing energy throughout the body. It's not just this nefarious atherosclerotic disease causing particle.

We have to look at what it is like. LDL is not just ldl, it's particle size, it's number. So there's so much more to that picture. I remember early on because, you know, we both were in the Robert Cran days. So my nutrition first mentor was also yours. And he was talking about that study that was showing that you lower LDL too much and all of a sudden you're depressed. Higher risk of cancer. So you know. Yep. All right, so back to this. So there you are, 22. Yeah, depressed because your testosterone's in the 20 toilet. And so what did you do?

Well, so I went to an endocrinologist and they just wanted to put me on testosterone. I said, you know what? That's probably not the solution, because I've done that before. I knew what that realm would be. And so I started to dive into overtraining syndrome and endurance athletics. And I think this is really common in our society. You know, a lot of women in particular get hooked on group fitness classes or HIIT classes, and then they complain that their hair is falling out or they're constipated and all these symptoms that I had. So I cut back on the training, cut back on the cycling, and found the Paleo diet and found actually Loren Cordain Boyd Eaton's research in the literature.

Right.

And then I wanted to move to Colorado. I actually went to Colorado State University to visit with Lauren Cordain to see if I could get a master's degree there and ended up going to University of Bridgeport. But, yeah, so I basically healed myself with diet, nutrition and functional medicine. Glandular extracts, you know, adrenal, glandular, bovine, testicular, glandular, which I still personally take. Now. I'm not on hormones or anything. At 42, I find glandular therapy, along with DHEA to be really helpful for optimizing.

Would that be first? I mean, before you ever think of putting, especially someone who's not in their late 50s on testosterone, what do we need to do to help our body make it and how do we need to look at stress? And it's funny, someone was just talking about this yesterday that they see that people who are die hard vegans tend to become die hard carnivores or die hard. And it was like you were like going to be die hard in the gym and then you were die hard as a cyclist. And it's like I kind of went, well, probably the hardest thing that you had to do was go cut back a little bit and go into balance. And it's like, it's always a challenge.

Yeah, well, we get into these habits and these routines, whether it's over exercise or overeating ice cream, and then just pivoting that habit. So, yeah, it's, I think. But being open to our own biases, that's a big thing, you know, because when we get into a health trend, whether it's vegan or carnivore or keto, we get our blinders on. We think that's the only track, and we ignore some of the symptoms that we might be having. You know, I have a lot of former vegan clients and they had all sorts of gastrointestinal issues. For example, when they went vegan and saw endocrinologists and, and specialists with gastroenterological issues come to find out it was excessive fiber, for example. But we need to be open to our own biases and tinker and test and use objective biomarkers, blood work, for example, to track to see where things are going.

Yes. So I love your YouTube channel, which we're gonna put all in the show notes. We're gonna put it@jjvirgin.com highintensity health so now I know where the name came from. And on there you do a lot of pulling part of studies and what I would love to bring up because I think you just did this one the other day and someone very reputable sent me this study and after I kind of looked at the study I went, wait, didn't you question this study when you sent it to me? Because I sent it and then immediately sent it to another friend before I looked at it. And then I started to look at it and it's the one that says there's no upper limit to protein intake. So reading the headline, I was like, awesome, until you unpack it. So I'd love to hear what your take is on that study.

Yeah, that was a very interesting study. So Don Layman and Gabrielle Lyon did a review of that as well. I think what was interesting about that is the fact that they randomized people to have three different proteinaceous. Well, they had three different arms, a zero protein arm, a 25 gram of protein after a high intensity, the interval session and then 100 gram of protein in the form of a dairy protein like a whey protein. And they found that the 100 gram dose or bolus dose of protein increased muscle protein synthesis significantly over either having 25 grams or 0 grams. So I thought that was kind of interesting because we have a lot of people in our space, low carb keto, carnivore, who are doing let's say one meal or two meals a day and are concerned that, you know, what happens to these amino acids after the meal. Are they going to become oxidized or broken down? And it seems that humans can have bolus amounts of proteins less frequently and those amino acids will be preferentially utilized to stimulate muscle protein synthesis, it turns out, which I think is interesting.

But here's the bigger question though, like, so we're using them and I mean the whole thing has always been, well, they're going somewhere to.

They're going.

They're not just like people are like, you can't use it. I'm like, well, you're using it, it's like nothing created or destroyed, it's going somewhere. But if you are only doing one meal a day, you have an awful lot of time when you have to be in muscle protein breakdown. So even if you could use it all, is that still really if someone is wanting to put on muscle mass And I'd love you to talk to because that big discussion around fasting and muscle mass, I know that I tested out fasted workouts, that's a fail. And it never made sense to me because I was like if we are looking to do a high intensity workout, what's our bigger fuel source? It's not fat. And it's like here's our best fat burning time. But I would love you to speak to what your thoughts are now on fasting, intermittent fasting, fasted workouts.

Yeah, no, I think that's amazing. But to your point, going back to doing just one meal a day for example or two meals a day, I don't think that's necessarily optimal. But some people, I have a friend, Robert Sykes and he just did five body building competitions in 2023, got down to 3% body fat eating more meal. 3% so shredded, insanely shredded. Drug free. He's a really good friend of mine. I've hung out with them a lot but just doing one meal a day. So I think that recent protein study, there are concerns or criticisms over methods and things like that. But I think for some people they have an issue with food and having nibbling and having six or seven smaller meals or evenly spaced out proteinaceous meals may not be ideal for them because then they're just so preoccupied on food.

So.

So I think knowing that you can just have one or two bolus meals can be very helpful. You know my ex wife actually did omad and she got down to like 7% body fat. Wasn't training for everything. She was just doing carnivore omad and literally just lost all her visceral fat and did an MRI and had literally no visceral fat. Even the fat around the kidneys was almost starting to disappear.

But other people and she did a CT scan and had the same thing.

Yeah.

And I think that when we eat, you know, if you basically eat animal protein and plants like non starchy vegetables, it is really hard to put on fat. Put on fat. I triple dare you to try to do it. You're just, you just. It's impossible. Right? Like you have to actually have to monitor to make sure that I'm not losing weight now.

Exactly.

You know, I mean, so it's like.

There'S an easy one, it's impressive, but yet there's so much resistance for people to eat that way for some weird reason.

Why do you think it is?

I think we are just so biased and you know, telling people there's a recent study in 2012 looked at people, they, they went to a gastroenterologist for issues related to constipation. It was 63 people tracked over four years. And so they did a colonoscopy to see if there's any organic reason behind why people only have one bowel movement once a week. It was one point or I'm sorry, it's one bowel movement every single 6.7 days. Right. So almost only going to the bathroom once a week. And so they said, hey look, we think it could be related to your fiber intake in this diet. Researchers in Singapore put together this study. 63 people went on a zero fiber diet for three weeks. Their bowel movements returned in pretty much 100% of those people after just dumping fiber from the diet after two weeks.

It's counterintuitive, right?

You think it's going to increase, but fiber, for example, is just more traffic on the already congested freeway in your gut. So if you're having tons of fiber and it's already backed up, adding more volume to the system is not going to help.

Just like when you have this insinkerator and it just won't go down. So you just go, we'll just throw everything in the sink. That'll work. That is so interesting.

But what was interesting even more so is that even though majority of the people benefited from this and majority of the people continued to reduce the fiber intake in their diet and then restore their bowel movements, about 10% of the people went back to a high fiber diet and their symptoms didn't get any better, they were worse. So they saw improvement and then chose to go back to eating high fiber diets because of this bias with these things that we've been told, like try telling someone who's in their 60s or 70s that butter is healthy, they're just going to say it's not. You know, I'm going to have margarine or I'm going to have Crisco. It's just these, it's really hard, especially with nutrition, to unlearn things we've been taught. So I think that's the reason why, especially as people get older, a lot of the female population, they're scared of red meat. They Would rather have celery and red meat, lettuce.

Oh, my goodness.

But that's the nutrients. They need those nutrients. Creatine. Women don't have as much baseline levels of creatine. Creatine is involved in helping with embryonic development and building a baby, the placenta. It's involved in brain health, everything from high intensity interval training to walking. I mean, we, you and I are using creatine right now to have this conversation. You know, it's everywhere. But then there's this perception that creatine is going to cause your hair to fall out, it's going to cause kidney failure, all these challenges. But no one has that when they eat a steak, you know, so.

So what's your recommendation, especially for women and creatine? Because I personally think this is one of the most important, especially for women. It is one of the most important supplements that they should be taking. And there is so much fear around it.

There is. And some of that fear is, I think, for good reason. In the early, the late 90s, early 2000s, a lot of the bodybuilding companies were selling creatine with like 20 to 25 milligrams of dextrose for only 5 grams of creatine. So people were getting a tiny. A ton of sugar and having consequences from hyperglycemia. And so those were some of the early challenges. But now we have the creatine science is really sussed out. You take, you know, two to five grams a day. I think most people can comfortably start out with two and a half grams and have no gastrointestinal issues. I'm a huge fan of the German extract, the creapure creatine monohydrate.

What's different about it?

Well, it's just more of a purified material. Some of the Chinese material that most of the creatine monohydrate is from China. You have three different forms. Four. There's the CRE alkaline material from a company in Montana, which you need higher dosages of.

It's way more expensive.

Way more expensive.

No GI issue. But truthfully, I think what you just said, it's like if you titrate up, that's not an issue.

Yeah. A subset of the population responds adversely to creatine. It's not in every one. And that might be just watery stools initially.

Right.

And then there's a creatine Magna Power by Albion, so some companies are using that as well. And then there's all sorts of creatine monohydrate products and Then there's only one branded creatine monohydrate known as creapure from. I can't remember, the biotech company in Germany that supplies that. But back to your question. So for women starting out, they should have creatine around exercise. I would start out at 2, 3 grams and just see how they feel. Gastro from a gastrointestinal standpoint, why around exercise? Well, exercised muscle absorbs creatine about 25% better. So you're moving your muscles. Before yoga, before HIIT training, before weightlifting, before running, you're going to absorb more, so you don't need as much. It also turns out that if you have electrolytes with creatine, because creatine has a transport mechanism to get into cells just like glucose does. And insulin helps for. With glucose getting in the cells. Creatine relies upon electrolytes like sodium, potassium, magnesium to get into the cell. So having electrolytes with creatine might allow you to take less creatine but get better absorption.

Okay, so once your creatine levels are where they need to be and you've got tissue saturation, will that still matter or not?

You mean in terms of electrolyte use with.

Yeah, electrolyte use or taking it before a workout?

Yeah, that's a good question, jj. I'm not sure if it's. We're maybe splitting hairs at that point. For the general population. Take it when you remember. If you want to split hairs and optimize that workout session. I do think there is a real time benefit.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. It's always like, when should I exercise? When you'll exercise.

Exactly.

That's important. All right. I love the point you made about fasting, because I do think it's important to consider, like, some people have food triggers. That's always like, nuts are healthy. I go, not if you're fat. Like eating the bag of nuts, man. That's not healthy. So I think that is. It's interesting and important. And this information about protein makes a ton of sense. I do think of someone's working. I think most of the people do fasting, from what I can tell are doing it because they want to lose weight. And it's kind of like you look at the research and go, it really doesn't matter. Unless eating multiple times a day makes.

You, like, crave food so much.

Yeah. That you're just, like, food fixated. What am I gonna eat next? Although, you know, ever since I switched over early in life, I was. I went. I did. I Fried every diet. It was my research and development phase. But I did the vegan, I did vegan diet for a while till a doctor was gonna hospitalize me. He literally said, go eat a chicken or I'm hospitalizing you. And I go, all right, well that's an easy choice. But all I could ever think about was food. I was so hungry, I was like always hungry. And I think it might be that protein leverage hypothesis. Which. Would you like to talk about that one? I think it's really interesting.

I think that is really fascinating. So numerous studies find that in all sorts of mammals and animals when they under eat protein, we tend to overeat calories to sort of get some of that protein in hopes that if we just continue to eat food that we're going to get more and more protein because there's a threshold of protein that we need. And so I think that's pretty fascinating where you have people that are chronically hungry eating hyper palatable and high calorie foods that are very low in protein, but yet they're constantly hungry, seemingly. And we've talked a lot about mechanisms over the years. Is it leptin resistance? Well, what about adiponeptin or ghrelin and all these things? But it could be as simple as just a macronutrient imbalance. When you have insufficient protein in the diet, you're to going, going to crave more and more overall energy. So I think the simple fix there is just prioritize protein like you and I have been doing for a long time and found benefit. Because if you have say five or six egg yolks and half an avocado and maybe a little bit of whey or some yogurt, you're going to be satiated for three to four or five hours. If you have a ribeye steak, you're not going to be craving ice cream after that. You're going to be full satiated. And why is that? Probably the protein and also the healthy fats in there too that stimulate all these helpful gastrointestinal hormones. I think it's important to touch on this because Ozempic and these different GLP1 agonists have been promoted now for weight loss. And a lot of people are taking these and I'm sure you've talked about this on the show, there's consequences and side effects. But a powerful way to stimulate that same hormone that ozempic or semiglutide is activating, known as GLP1 is with protein and fat, right?

It's like, and if you look at it. If you're eating animal protein, then you are going to get protein with fat. Exactly right. I mean this is how it works. So nature is smart, did it for a reason. All right, let's talk fasted workouts versus non fasted workouts.

Your opinion and advice, you know what I mean? For a lot of years I thought and you still see gyms. I used to work at a gym. This was one of my first jobs out of gym.

I had a gym.

Some of the leanest people I saw, they would do fasted cardio in the morning and then do their weight training.

Later in the day. Now I do think fasted cardio is very different than doing fasted weight training.

100%. And in my opinion. I want to hear your opinion. My opinion on fasted weight training is you don't really have the best workout. And the idea is to get the adaptations, build the muscle, cause the hypertrophy and then you're bigger and stronger at a later day so you don't have a good workout. That's my opinion. But with slow zone two training, you don't need the energy in this tank to do all that to burn some of that. So for a while, and if I was to intentionally want to lean up, I would probably do a little bit of fasted cardio in the morning and train later in the day fed. But for splitting hairs, fat oxidation, it doesn't really matter in terms of long term overview what the studies show. Fasted exercise probably doesn't impact overall global fat oxidation throughout a 24 hour period. So I'm not married to that idea for a lot of people. But I do think that when it comes to weight training specifically, you want to prioritize a good workout. You're not going to burn more fat during that workout. If you're fasted, you're going to have a crappier workout. You're not going to be able to do as many reps or sets or weight. And over time that's not going to lead to the adaptation limitations that you want.

Well, and you might burn more fat because you're going so slow, which is.

Not what you're doing either.

You want to go hard. I, I checked it. I always n of one myself, you know, first and it was like a 20% difference going in fasted. I mean I just didn't have it. Yeah, I was like, what's the point? How are you going to progress if you can't push past what you're used to?

Yeah.

So yeah, we, we completely stop that in my perfect, perfect world, after I get up, meditate, we now have two saunasanas. We have the fast sauna so that we can do that and then jump in the cold plunge, cool, then do red light. Then I would do a little, just a little cardio, something movement wise. Then at some point have breakfast and then later do workout and then eat again. Like that would be perfect. But I also, I go who has time for all the self care? Like we have to work.

It's true. No, I agree. And so in that scenario, let's just say in the imperfect world a lot of people with young children, they need to get up and just the only time in the day that they're going to be able to work out is in the morning. And assuming they're relatively lean and don't have a lot of body fat to lose, I would suggest some interworkout carbs and protein, a protein shake with a banana or something. You're going to burn through that your muscles are going to be more pumped up. And what I think too part of this JJ is having fed workouts, you notice the results better. So the thing that you mentioned is you're not that 20% difference that you experience in terms of strength and all that. If you're not experiencing the strength increases you're going to be like weightlifting didn't work for me. It's like well, or maybe you just weren't fit in the right fit nutrition state or mental state or sleep or whatever the thing is. So I think yeah, making sure that you're feeding fueling your workouts. And that's a different framework for a lot of people nowadays which I think is important for them to shift and then some facet there are some benefits to training low. I mean if we look at it, you know, there's Mark Bubs, who's a doctor in Canada, put out this book several years ago about performance. And so for endurance athletes in particular, training in a low state might increase mitochondrial biogenesis and capillary density so that when you perform those exercises in a competition you have more fuel to increase blood flow to your muscles. So I think that helps people better understand the fasted versus fed exercise. But again, having creatine electrolytes during that workout could help as well.

And if I'm traveling this morning we got up and and I was like I can either go work out or I'm going to miss it. Which nothing makes me more upset than it's either poor sleep or missing a workout and I'm like blown Out. And so the only option was to do. I did creatine, collagen, amino acids, and electrolytes in my big bottle and went to the gym. And it was fine.

Exactly. I did the same thing this morning. It's like, you know, it's better. It's what I call a beautiful workout. Better than nothing. Just get it done right.

Especially when you go to a hotel gym and you're like, all right, which one thing is still available in here? Oh, there's a kettlebell.

When you're at a health conference, it's actually people in the hotel gym.

I was like, oh, no, this is gonna be bad at this gym.

There's like, I looked in there, but.

Fortunately, I think I went out of.

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An off time. We've been doing this a long time, and a lot of things have come and gone. And it's one of the things I really try to check myself on is not just jumping on the next trend bandwagon. And sometimes it can be hard. You're just in the vortex. But what things have you changed your mind on over the years?

That's a good question, jj. Well, we all have our biases. And the reason why I say that is I have my biases. I wrote a book called the Belly fat effect in 2020, which is.

It's super relevant and fantastic today, which says a lot, really, but one thing. But change some things. Of course.

Change some things. You know, the emphasis on fiber. You know, I think I overemphasize.

You kind of freaked me out on this whole fiber thing because I'm still.

Like, you like fiber.

I really like fiber. And now I'm like, going, huh? I don't think everyone should be trending now.

Well, if one has gastrointestinal issues, I think they should consider tweaking their fiber to see how that would impact their bowel movements. That's what I think.

Well, see, diets are tools. So if you think about it, like, I think we are looking for the thing we're gonna do forever. I go, that doesn't make any sense. Like, let's look at what you need right now. Maybe right now. You know, my son went through a period where I was seeing a lot of seizures. Hey, we're gonna do keto for a while. Like, you know, maybe someone's got a lot of adrenal stress and they're gonna crank their carbs up more. So I think that we look at it that way and it does seem like you look at the carnivore diet, it's like a great solution for people that are having GI issues.

Totally. Or autoimmunity or allergies or weight issues.

But it doesn't mean it has to be forever.

Exactly. That's the thing. So I think having that open minded mindset is helpful for a lot of people so that they don't get stuck in this confirmation bias loop and reintroducing what I think are healthy foods. I have a lot of olives. Avocados I think are healthy. I don't know anyone that would get pissed off that you had an avocado.

Oh no, I think avocados, aren't they? There's always someone. There's always. I look at everything and I'm like, could we stop majoring in the minors?

Exactly.

Major. Major first. And then once you've cleared out all that stuff, like do not talk to me about your health problems when you don't sleep and you're really not getting in enough protein and you're worried about your oxalates. Let's worry about those after we've done all the right big things. So I think yeah, it's the histamine and the avocados.

Yeah. Or it's a latex fruit or some such thing.

I don't even know what that is.

I don't even. This is just what I've heard from some people and like you said. But they're majoring in the minors and.

Maybe that was a lectin thing.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah. What are big things that I think where I've changed my mind? I think overemphasizing fiber.

What are your recommendations now?

Well, I think getting fiber from whole foods. So let's just say like an avocado, you know, you're getting 4 to 6 grams of fiber. Good.

Thion good. Fats. Good.

There's some fiber in olives, fermented foods, things like that. But I used to supplement with fiber and recommend people take inulin and some of these more specific prebiotic fibers and things. But a lot of those people would have sibo or small intestinal issues and get so bloated. And it was like, well, ignore all those symptoms. It's still good for you. And so that's where I've changed my tune. And then I think too, for people that do experience benefits of on a carnivore diet, being open to over time weaving in healthier foods, like olives, for example, or fermented foods, berries, I think that's really helpful.

What do you think of this? I think that again, looking at diets as tools, all these things are really interesting. And the most interesting thing is to check in and see how you feel on it and how your body composition is. I was just speaking at an event where there were a lot of vegans and to me, whatever you want to do, and if you're going to do it, I'm going to show you how to do it in the healthiest way. But that's a really challenging diet to get enough protein on and the right balance of amino acids. And one of the gals came up, she goes, you know, I'm turning 50 and the people I know that are eating prioritizing protein look like you. And my friends who are vegan look like I'm just kind of pointing over to someone who is very soft and you know, probably significantly over fat, not necessarily overweight, you know. And so she's like, that's making her start to question it. And I go, good. You know, you just like, let's just have all the information and not get political, religious, emotional. Like it's. This isn't like an emotional issue, it's biochemistry, right?

And being objective about it, like you said, looking at dexas or looking at objective biomarkers, blood work, looking at these things that are reproducible and just being honest with ourselves about it. Because yeah, I mean for some people you can do vegan, right? But most people, vegan means just all plant based junk food.

They call it French fried vegans. Yeah, that's not. So if you're going to do it, you have to really be good at your biochemistry. You can do it. But I did have someone ask me, I was doing a talk and they're like, okay, I want to do that without any supplements. And I go, I don't really know how to pull that one off without helping with some protein powder and amino acids and creatine. I think I don't know how to do it.

Yeah.

D Or like, I don't know.

Or just for properly preparing the food. So you don't have all the antinutrients, you know. So if we think about the things that make plants undigestible, there's a lot of antinutrients. You mentioned oxalates, but there's lectins and phytates. And so a lot of people will have a lot more grains or legumes in their diet, but they're not soaking them ahead of time or sprouting them. So there's just more food preparation work that needs to go into having a healthy diet in that way. But yeah, running labs I think is important. Once a year, looking at your Chem24 and CBC. So 24 different metabolites, iron, liver enzymes, electrolytes, you know, lipids, glucose, hemoglobin, A1C insulin, C reactive protein, all these things give you a good trajectory into your health trends. So that lady who was going to be turning 50 if she would have had health blood work like you and I have been doing every year for decades now, then you can look and see, okay, well this year my sleep was off, or this was the year I sold my business or got a divorce or whatever, had a child. All these things. And you can start to see where your lifestyle or your diet changes have impacted objective measurements or proxies of health, which I think are really important.

Now what's cool is you're giving everyone your blood chem cheat sheet, which is going to go through the most important test because these aren't necessarily tests when someone goes to their doctor that they get, and more importantly then you have to be able to interpret them correctly, which you also won't be getting. What are some of the ones that you recommend that you don't normally get when you go to the doctor and why?

Yeah, great question, jj. Well, I think the liver is really important to look at because once we start to get unhealthy, our liver gets infiltrated with fat and a lot of people have subclinical or benign fatty liver disease known as non alcoholic Seattle hepatitis or NASH. And so looking at the liver enzymes, there's three of them. Again, these are basic tests that cost 17 bucks if you pay cash at LabCorp request ALT, AST and GGT. And I really like ALT and GGT because as you may know, low GGT or sorry, high GGT would indicate increased exposure to procyone, persistent organic pollutants and endocrine disrupting chemicals. And it's a marker of glutathione turnover in the body. And so for people that are drinking alcohol, three to four glasses of wine a night, or you know, using perfumes or hair products that are unhealthy, things like that, that's a good way to maybe indicate they might need to support GLUTATHIONE that's I think unfortunately most of the clients I've been working with since 2006 doctors just run AST and that's it in terms of liver function tests. Also looking at fasted insulin and non fasted insulin as well. We can talk about the differences between non fasted and fasted labs.

Well, if you're going to do a fasted and a non fasted, is there a point you're doing the non fasted?

This is a wonderful question. So emphasize for people initially to do fasted blood work just to get a baseline, just to look at everything. But diseases don't start in the fasted window. They as you know from Mark Houston and others, they like for example cardiovascular disease, the process of atherosclerosis happens in the post meal window. So when we have these shifts from homeostasis and high glucose levels, high insulin, high triglycerides, that's where we start to see disease manifestations occur. And so I recommend people do first to get a baseline non fat or fasted labs, then have a meal they habitually like to eat. It might be true. For example, it might be a rib eye steak and avocado, whatever that meal is. Then run your labs non fasted about 90 to 120 minutes, about an hour and a half, two hours after eating and see what your non fasted triglycerides are. That's actually a really good association, independent, actually more predictive of a future cardiovascular event than high LDL cholesterol.

Wouldn't it be great if we just had a little CGM ish thing that looked at everything? I mean, I know we will, it's some point but how cool. Because then you can in real time, you know, with food being information or stress or exercise, like be able to modify things and really know.

Totally.

Of course we might make ourselves crazy too.

Yeah, right. Because it's amazing how much psychological stress impacts say just glucose or blood lipids or whatever. It's not just food. So I think. But yeah, one day we'll have, we'll be chipped up and have all sorts of omic analytic devices on us. But yeah, so fasted and non fasted I think are really good looking at hormones. I'm a big fan of dhea. I see that starting to trend low in a lot of women and a lot of men who are having symptoms of low hormones. So that's frequently not tested. C. Ratchet protein. I know you're big in looking at inflammation as well. A lot of people have this subclinical smoldering inflammation looking at instead of Just cholesterol APOB APOA 1 ratios before looking at even particles. Because again, this is really affordable. This test is around $12. There's some basic things that people can do. Iron ferritin, really simple, often omitted from, you know, annual physicals for whatever reason.

Yeah. And again, it's like the things you can order through the direct to consumer that are inexpensive.

Yeah.

This is not a big deal. It's not boutique or convince your doctor, bring the cheat sheet to your doctor because a lot of these doctors will order it. They just weren't aware. Find one that helps order it. Even better. The best of all, find a functional medicine practitioner who can do this. Any other big things that you've changed your mind on?

Yeah, I think excessive fasting, like prolonged fasting. You know, I got really excited about this in 2015, 2016 and I wasn't being honest with myself with how much my strength was decreasing. And if I look at all the research on the importance of strength as you get older, I'm sure you've seen the studies on grip strength, for example, and its independent associations with all cause mortality or severe Covid. For example, maintaining your strength throughout your lifespan is really important. Most of the people that are in their 70s or even younger that need assisted living facilities and 24 hour care, it's because they can't even get up to go to the bathroom, much less get a drink of water. So we want to prioritize our strength so that we can live independently. And I think the overemphasis on the purported benefits of fasting for enhancing autophagy and longevity.

Exercise.

Exactly.

I kept looking at this going, there are other ways to trigger autophagy. Probably the best one is exercise.

They're mirrored. So all the benefits that you see from fasting, you also see from exercise. In fact, and this was a big qualm that I had, the people who exercise get more benefits from fasting than people who don't exercise. So if you want to enhance autophagy, then exercise and do a 36 hour fast, you don't need to do a 96 hour fast to increase autophagy. You can. And one study actually looked at sedentary overweight people. It was like 47 subjects and then 50 subjects who are regular exercisers. They looked at autophagy initiation protein on the cellular level to see what was going on from an autophagy standpoint. The people who exercised had a significant increase in autophagy 18 hours. After just 18 hours in whereas the people who didn't exercise even after 36 hours, the initiation proteins that trigger autophagy were not increased in the sedentary people.

This has always been the question I've had with fasting, intermittent fasting, because people are talking about how long it takes to go into a top and.

And I'm like, it depends.

How do we know it couldn't be the same for everybody? What are we measuring to tell that number? You know, it's never made any sense to me, but the idea if you are going to fast to make sure that you're exercising so that you are able to at least try to hold on to some lean tissue is the other most important thing there. And again, I look at fasting like a tool too. There's definitely. I don't work in the cancer world. That's not my world. My world is really looking at how do we age powerfully. And you can't age powerfully if your muscles aren't powerful. And I will tell you what was interesting with the grip strength stuff is I started lifting weights when I was 16, in high school in the football players gym. Because we didn't have gyms back then. They had figure salons. I kid you not, like, because you're what I think. How old are you?

42.

42, okay. So I am 18 years older than you. I could be your mother. And we'd figured like there were figure salons, there was jazzercise, I taught calisthenics. I mean, that's, that's what it was. But I went in with the football players and lifted weights because I thought, how cool is this, right? And so I had been lifting weights and then I went to Gold's Gym in Venice. I've lifted weights my entire Life, from age 16 on. And a couple years ago, I was always the one who could unscrew anything at the house. I was the one that they handed the jars to. And all of a sudden I was having trouble. And I'm like, if I'm having trouble, me, who's been lifting, what's the typical person who maybe walks and does a couple group X yoga classes, like, we're in deep trouble. And I got very excited about Peter ATI whole centenarian decathlon idea. And I just was like, you know what? It is our responsibility really, as we age to focus. We're all worried about bone mineral density, but if you're worried about muscle, you wouldn't worry about bone mineral density. Just like if you're worried about improving fasting insulin you don't have a blood sugar problem. These are simple things. Let's go to the most important indicator, not wait till the long term one. So I just, like, we have to put on as much muscle as possible, and we have to put on muscle that is high quality but also powerful. Like, I think was on Drew Pruitt's podcast, he was saying that after the age of 40, it's like only 1% of the population ever sprints again. And it was me, too. I bought a sprint treadmill. I'm like, okay, I will be sprinting. So, you know, this emphasis on aging well and what we need to do that is, you know, it's what we've been talking about with protein and exercising hard and eating within a window. But really, if you're trying to trigger autophagy again, it's either you can eat less, do less, need less, or do more. So you eat more, your body is going to be better.

I agree 100%. I think the only concern that some people do have is some of the research. They're scared about protein because protein supposedly stimulates mtor. We know it stimulates mtor, but then it stimulates cancer. But again, it's in context. So prioritize resistance training to put a button on this conversation, and then you can. Those amino acids will go to stimulate the muscle, not to go promote cancerous cell development. So I think that's the most important thing in the sort of conundrum that people have when it comes to, well, as I get older, I want to avoid cancer, but cancer stimulates or, sorry, protein stimulants, cancer. It's like, well, you're getting it wrong. If you focus, like you said, on the exercise elements, you shouldn't be concerned about what those amino acids are doing. They're going to be helping to repair your muscles from the gym exercises that you did.

These statistics on people who are regular exercisers and cancer, their cancer risk is so clear. Like, it is so low. And I had a weird little cancer cancer scare last summer. And I was like. And that's how I, you know, did a ct. And I'm like, oh, I've got. They're like, we couldn't read the CT because you have no fat. Wow. And I sent it to our buddy, David Perlmutter. He's like, that is so cool. Because I'm like, can you read this? You know, But I was like, going, I'm not a. Like, you know, it is just rare. So, you know, you just look at it and go, which way do you want to go chase strength and power.

Yes.

So what are you working on these days? I know you have myosciences. If you want to share a little bit about that. You're going to give everyone the bloodchem list. I'm going to put that@jjvirgin.com highintensityhealth. And you've also created because you're formulating products, right?

Yeah. So the company MyoScience, it was an idea I dreamed up in 2012. The name Myo for muscle science. Muscle Science.

That's a great name. Yeah, just, it's like an obvious. You're like, oh, what a great name.

Kind of makes sense. Yeah. At first, you know, people. But yeah, I've been obsessed with muscle my entire life, you know, since I was like five years old, six years old. I remember seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger as a little kid on movie and thought, I want to, like, have muscles like this guy. This is amazing. But it turns out that there's all these health benefits, as you just alluded to with muscle. And so I feel like a lot of, you know, other companies don't really prioritize that. It's more fat loss focused to our gut health. And so we do a lot of things with creatine and electrolytes and detoxification and things like that to support recovery from exercise and helping with exercise performance. So it's more fun for people. So they want to go to the gym and have this just innate burning desire to just move their bodies and have it be more fulfilling for them. So that's what we do.

Love it.

It's fantastic. I love all that you're doing. You do podcasts, YouTube's where I kind of watch you all on YouTube because it's great. And you go live on there.

Seems like every day on Mondays, yeah, we do Metabolic Monday. That was the thing that we started a while back and just answer questions, but really just break down studies that have come out that generate some controversy because a lot of studies now it seems that the lead investigators are paid by some big food company. And so it's nice to just put out information with an unbiased lens and just say, hey, here's the facts. Here's what you need to know about this research.

So, yeah, I know that latest one where the RDs were getting paid to promote, like ultra processed foods. You're like, oh, come on, I will tell you. I forgot all about this. Tell. I mentioned that when I was on Dr. Phil, I had to do a segment to teach the teens, we were doing a teenage obesity thing. And so I had to take them to the fast food restaurants and do a segment on what to choose there. And I wish they. I wish back then we'd had iPhones that could have shown what was going on at McDonald's, because this didn't happen at Subway and it didn't happen at Taco Bell. It only happened at McDonald's where I'm standing at the register with the kids and the cameras are at us. But behind the cameras are all of the McDonald's executives. And by the way, every single one of them was obese.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, watching, you know, what was I going to say? And it's like my, my thing wasn't to put their thing down, was to show how you could make it. Like, what would be the best situation? Because I think that's part of what we also need to do. Like, what's the best choice in this situation? Yeah, what's the best choice? Do the best you can. That's all we can do. Right. But it was interesting to.

To be in that scenario.

I was like going, I'm not going to say anything that I don't believe in. Sorry, not doing it. Don't care. You're not scary, right?

No, totally. And in that situation, I just pulled the bun off, you know, just pull the bun off the burger.

That's what you do. Easy peasy. Like, hey, is that the best meat.

You'Re going to get?

No, but is this better than, you know, going and having. There's no Twinkies anymore, but although they still are somewhere because they'll never die. But, you know, it's like you, you make the best decision. You're at the airport, you make the best decision at whatever you have to do.

Right.

Maybe it's a kind bar and, you know, I don't know, whatever it is. So a banana. Anyway, this was fantastic.

Thank you, Jason.

Worth the wait. Worth, like hounding you down for. Hopefully it will be like part one of several.

Love it. I would be honored. Thank you so much.

And again, jjvirgin.com High Intensity Health. I will put all of your stuff, your metabolic mic, on Instagram. Great to follow, great information and super actionable.

Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and my website, jjvirgin.com and make.

Sure to Follow my podcast so you.

Don'T miss out a single episode@subscribetojay.com See you next time. Hey JJ here.

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