Live Longer By Optimizing Your Immune System w/Mike Mutzel EP 1187

This is episode number 1187 with Mike Mutzel. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin. Welcome back my friend. Today's guest is Mike Mutzel and Mike earned his BS in biology from Western Washington University in 2006 and completed his Master's of Science degree in clinical nutrition from the University of Bridgeport in 2015 and is a graduate of the Institute for Functional Medicine. He is a functional medicine consultant in the natural product industry and he has worked as a nutritionist over the years. And he runs the YouTube channel High Intensity Health, where he talks about all aspects of health and shares what he's learned in the medicine, nutrition and fitness industry over the last decade. In this episode, we discuss the biggest benefits and negative effects of fasting, what you can start doing to reverse your age, why getting out in nature is so crucial and important, what happens to our body when we actually eat and what is actually happening in the body as we're eating, how to make your immune system bulletproof and so much more. And if you're enjoying this, feel inspired by this, feel moved by this, then make sure to spread this message to a friend, share it on social media, make sure to tag me and let me know that you're listening, post the link out of there as well so other people can be inspired by this free message as well. And I want to give a shout.

Out to the fan of the week.

From Miro who said, I have been on a healing process for three years now thanks to this podcast. I appreciate the insights one gets from each episode and I think Lewis one of the best interviewers there are and manages to make powerful interviews with each one of the people in the podcast. Seeing a man so committed to his personal growth and helping people along the way by sharing his journey is quite powerful. Thank you for your work, Lewis and team greatness is having a huge impact on so many. So Miro, thank you for the message and my team actually picks out the fans of the week and I always tell them, even though people might be talking about me and some of these reviews, that it's really a team effort. We've got an incredible team here at Team Greatness who's helping with all the messaging, with all the content. So a big thank you to the team for making this possible as well. And if this is your first time here, please subscribe over on Apple Podcast and leave us your review as well at any point during or after this episode. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Mike Muzel.

Welcome back everyone on the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest, Mike Muzel in the house.

Hey, buddy. Thanks for having me on.

Excited that you're here. You're a master of research around a lot of these things and nutrition, health and wellness, but specifically fasting and longevity recently and just how to optimize our overall health through fasting and living longer. It seems like everyone wants to know about fasting these days. I saw a video of yours recently that said some research might suggest that fasting at the night could be better than fasting for breakfast where everyone talks about just skip breakfast and go into lunch and do the 16-hour window of fasting, the eight-hour feeding window, the intermittent fasting. But I saw a video that said skip dinner, not breakfast.

Is that true?

Yeah. And so, how is fasting at night better than in the morning?

Well, I mean, this is phenomenal and it has to do with the circadian clock system. So, have you talked about this on the show before? Not too much. Like how our body resonates with nature and the environment. And so, we have these intracellular clocks that regulate gene expression and metabolism. To me, it's just super fascinating. And it turns out that humans didn't evolve eating at night because that's when apex predators, like back in the day grizzly bears and cougars and cats and things that would hunt us would be out hunting. At night. At night. So we'd want to be cooped up in our safety so we would eat when the sun's out and fast at night. Now, the only caveat to this rule.

Is in Latin America. They eat at midnight.

It's like you start your appetizer at midnight, right? So it's tough, you know, because that can eating I think there's all these cogs in the wheels of health and socialization and connection is a major cog. So that's sort of the caveat when recommending this. So if you tell people, okay, start eating at 8:00 AM and as a study that we'll talk about showed, they cut off the feeding window at 2:00 or 4:00, that becomes socially impractical, right?

So they stop eating at 4:00.

Correct.

And you fast all night.

Until 8:00 in the morning. Wow. But they noticed a lot of improvements in not changing any of the diet. The control group ate the same amount of calories, but they started eating at 8:00 in the morning and stopped at 8:00 p.m. But they didn't achieve all these longevity benefits. We'll talk more about autophagy, which is this process where your intracellular components of your cells are recycled. It's linked with various disease reductions, for example, mild cognitive impairment, dementia, cancer, autoimmunity. So this is a favorable process that we should strive to increase. And the group that cut off their feeding window at, you know, between two and four, had a dramatic increase in autophagy and all these longevity biomarkers were increased. So it makes more sense just practically if you can do it in most days. If you're going to socialize on the weekends, maybe you eat a little bit later on the weekends with your buddies, your girlfriend, your friends, all of that. But during the week, if you can make it a habit to eat earlier and start your fast earlier, that's the important thing. Really?

So wait a minute, for those that do intermittent fasting where they skip breakfast, But maybe they eat until 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night, right? They still do an eight-hour feeding window, but they finish at 8 or 10. Versus those that eat breakfast and skip dinner. Which group overall would extend their longevity markers?

Probably the latter group, the group that ate breakfast and skipped dinner. Really? That's what multiple studies are showing because it turns out that these longevity related processes, like we mentioned autophagy, we can talk about mTOR and these different pathways that are signals that signal and enhance the processes that make us live longer and prevent disease initiation. Those increase in our kind of part of our circadian clock system. So the timing of your meals and your fasting really do matter. Now, let me just pause here because if someone is getting good results, let's say someone listening is like, Hold on, this guy's telling me to like now eat breakfast and I've lost all this weight. Please don't change what you're doing. For the people that haven't gotten the benefits that they expect with these intermittent fasting protocols, and this is common in the fitness industry too, do the opposite of what you've been doing. Like change it up a little bit. And this happens, you know, sometimes the guru on YouTube or Instagram or whatever does something this way and we all want to do it exactly like the guru, but we are different than the person, than the guru. So do what works for you in your schedule, but there's A mantra I come from, I know you have a competitive athletic background, I did competitive cycling.

And the mantra there, because-- Wait, is cycling competitive? Like, yeah. So it's very competitive actually.

Yeah, I mean, and it's all based upon power to weight ratio, right? So the lighter you are and the stronger you are, there's literally a metric, the power that you put out, watts per kilogram, will determine who wins grand tours, like Tour de France. Anyway, so the mantra was eat early, sleep early.

Eat early, sleep early.

That was it, that was like- For.

Cycling, like if you wanted to build more power, more endurance, be shredded, be.

Lean, so that you're not carrying extra weight on the bike, so that means starting your fast earlier in the day. So you would go train in the morning, go train hard, eat fuel, have pasta, carbs, all of that, but you basically didn't have dinner, you had like.

A big lunch early and that was it.

When did you usually stop eating? Well back then I didn't know much about, this was like early 2000s, but this was like, you know, Lance Armstrong and even older generations, but this was like, tacitly implied in the culture of those sports is you want to get a fast going because that will keep you lean.

It'll burn, it'll burn the fat.

Exactly.

So, I mean, this whole intermittent fasting phenomenon has really blown up in the last three to four years. And there's apps for it and there's millions of people that are in communities around this. But what the research is saying is that to burn more fat, to live longer potentially. The research is saying just skip dinner now, not skip breakfast. Simple as that.

Simple as that. Or have an earlier dinner.

Earlier dinner?

Yeah, six o'clock, five o'clock. It could be reasonable for family. You know, I have a young daughter, nine years old, and she's super hungry after school. So instead of like saying, no, honey, we're gonna go play and do all this stuff and then we're gonna eat later, I just give her the food then. So then she's not even that hungry for dinner. It's not like I'm trying to get her to lose weight necessarily. I just want her to get into the habit because The most important thing for people listening right now, sleep is arguably, and I know you've talked a lot about sleep. It's key. When we eat a big dinner, let's say you're doing the intermittent fasting thing, you fast till 2:00 p.m., start having all this food, your sleep is not as good if you cut off your feeding window at 10:00 p.m. You're digesting the meat that you had or the olives or whatever healthy foods and you're not getting a good night's sleep. So then this sets up this vicious cycle when you're not sleeping good, then all your appetite regulatory hormones, leptin, ghrelin, insulin are all skewed up, skewed. And then you want to eat and consume ultra processed packaged crap because your sleep was messed up. And our sleep naturally gets a little wonky as we age. People have sleep disorder breathing. We should be breathing through our nose when we're sleeping, not our mouth. A lot of people, we gain weight around the neck and so forth and that causes us to breathe through our mouth, which leads to all these changes we can talk about later. Anyway, so the point is the way to remedy all of this, at least make a big dent in this, is to eat earlier.

Is there any negative side effects to fasting?

Well, that's a great question. You can overdo anything. You can drink too much water. So fasting can easily get you into a calorie deficit. And so especially for women that come from a history of disordered eating, anorexia, bulimia, if people are really lean, for example, if you're 8% body fat, Fasting for 18-20, probably not good for these. You're gonna start to tear away muscle. Now, fasting is unique and the rise, and if we talk about sort of the recipe, if we just back up a little bit in the physiology for people, one of the benefits of fasting comes through you're dropping your blood glucose levels and that leads to a reduction in insulin and that increases a related hormone to insulin called glucagon. So that signals your fat cells to.

Start releasing stored energy.

What does that mean?

Burning the fat?

Essentially burning fat. Right, so that energy that's being released can go to your brain to help you think and make thoughts and it can go to your liver to create energy and so forth. And that helps with fat loss, which is great, but it also helps with all these processes of longevity that we've been sort of talking about. Sure, okay. And then in the process, when you're burning fat, your body makes ketones, your liver makes these things called ketones, and they help suppress appetite and prevent muscle from being catabolized. So they're anti-catabolic, they're actually used in or being studied to be used in individuals who are bedridden or have cachexia to give them exogenous ketones. Let's say you have to get a surgery, you break your leg or something like that. And you're bedridden and you can't move. You don't want to catabolize all your muscle that you've spent a long time building. So you could take these exogenous ketones that would help prevent muscle wasting. So that's kind of cool. Anyway, the point of me giving that backstory is with fasting, you naturally have more of a suppressed appetite because these ketones help to suppress your appetite. So if you're already underweight, it may lend itself to being more and more underweight. And as we age, we naturally lose muscle anyway. And muscle helps us burn fat. So the point is it's a dance, it's a balance, figuring out how much fasting you want to do, and then when you refeed, try not to diet at the same time. So don't have the iceberg lettuce with boneless skinless chicken, right?

Like have a ribeye steak or some good steak. Really? Yeah. Okay. Don't be too extreme with everything in your life. Exactly. That's not sustainable. No. Yes. What would you say are the five biggest benefits of fasting?

So the biggest benefit that I've noticed, and this is great for entrepreneurs, is mental clarity. You know, as we age, everything atrophies in our body, but especially in our brain too, we start to notice that words are harder to retrieve and memory changes, so that's to me the biggest benefit. Another benefit is a reduction in blood pressure. So especially for men, heart disease is probably what's gonna harm most men and compromise their lifespan. so you get a reduction in blood pressure. The third benefit that everyone wants is you lose body fat. It's easier to lose body fat, so that's a huge benefit. And I think the fourth, and this could be depending upon who you are, the first benefit is more energy. I love food as much as anyone, but if I were to have, we're filming this around 2:00 or 2:30, if I would have went and had a big meal, I would be lethargic right now, unable to really You know, I'd want caffeine, which would have affected my sleep negatively tonight. So I just haven't had breakfast or lunch or anything.

So I'm just going- you- haven't eaten. Haven't eaten today.

Nothing. Nothing. No calorie, no coffee, no tea.

Coffee.

And I did have some exogenous ketones.

What is that?

You just put it in the coffee? Just had it separate. So these are- the powder is the pills is a- Comes in different forms, but this one is a liquid. It's a ketone ester. This is pretty cool. I have to give you some. Give me some.

What is this?

Honestly, it lights up your brain. Because our brains obviously need a lot of energy, but if you're fasted, your blood sugar drops, so your brain relies upon fat for oxidate to make memories and to retrieve words, and these ketones just go right into your brain and fuel the brain. They're pretty cool.

So you haven't eaten today, you had black coffee, no oat milk or anything, or no almond milk, just black.

Just black.

Liquid ketones?

I just want to make sure I'm showing up, right, to share good content. I want to thank you for having me on the show. And so it's like, dude, I want to make sure that I reciprocate and deliver value.

Okay, and the fifth thing, fifth benefit, would you say?

We talked about energy, fat loss.

Did we talk about blood sugar yet?

Blood sugar, clarity, fat loss, more energy. Blood pressure, I would say, is one important. Blood pressure, yep. Blood sugar. Yeah, and then longevity, I would just say.

Longevity.

Many of the processes of aging, if we think about reframing how we think about aging, we think that aging is this sort of phenomenon that just happens no matter what, but we can dramatically influence the rate at which we age biologically. And part of the processes in these intracellular signaling molecules and switches and genes that impact our aging process, are beneficially augmented, shall we say, by way of fasting. And so there's a lot of synergy and parallels between all those metabolic processes that are upregulated when we're fasting. And so we support our natural, we sort of turn the thermostat down on the rate at which we're aging.

Is there a way to reverse aging?

It depends on who you talk to. If you talk to David Sinclair, there is some different ways to go about that. There's senolytic therapies and so It's a way to change the way our cells are functioning because there's this process known as cellular senescence, which means that our cells, we have a finite ability to sort of replicate in our cells function. And when they achieve the end of their lifespan, they undergo this process known as senescence. And when our cells start to senescence, they release all these pheromones, so to speak. I'm really simplifying this. They release pheromones that recruit other cells to become more senescent. So it's like this vicious cycle, like a snowball rolling downhill. So once that process starts, it can become problematic. And that's why you see people, they might have a little pre-diabetes and high blood pressure, then they can't remember where their keys are and then pretty soon they're in a nursing home. And, we've seen this in our family members and friends. Well, we can augment that by purging those senescent cells. By killing the cells.

Yeah, those particular cells. And you do that through fasting.

Is that through autophagy or what is that? Well, through autophagy but also this emerging field in aging biology known as senolytic therapies or in So there's different drugs, actually some drugs that are using cancer, but you just use them short dose like two days with quercetin, Dasatinib and quercetin has been used. There's drugs like metformin and there's drugs like rapamycin we can talk about that have a really low side effect profile that people are sort of microdosing. We've heard about microdosing LSD and mushrooms and all that. But these are where people are microdosing longevity drugs to sort of pulse to not totally drive down longevity because we still want to grow, we want to build muscles, but if we can slow down this process of biologic aging, then we can just function better. And this is, I think, one of the most exciting, I think honestly you and I in like five years, we'll be taking metformin like every other day or every fifth day to just sort of put a damper on some of these pathways that are linked with cancer.

What would you say are the top three ways to reverse aging then? Is fasting one of them?

Fasting is up there. If you were to interview all these health experts, most people would say fasting is the number one thing, but I honestly think exercise is the number one.

To reverse aging.

To reverse aging because we talked about, and I know it's a big word, cellular senescence. So these are cells that have reached their end of their function. They should apoptose and die and go.

Away, but they don't. And then they recruit other cells to.

Become bad cells with them. Exactly. It releases this secretome, secretory phenotype. And it can be measured, and this can be measured in the blood.

And this just makes you look older. It makes your organs older, your skin older, your face older, all those things, right?

Exactly, yeah. And it compromises your heart function, high blood pressure, poor memory.

Hurts your immune system, everything, right?

The immune system is the biggest one. In fact, this is how biological age is often assessed, is by way of the immune system. So the immune system, obviously it's hot with everything going on right now, but it's really involved in how we repair. So if you're not repairing when you're sleeping and your immune system is repairing, you know, changing, say you damage your muscles by working out, right? Your immune system is going to help repair that. And our immune system can accumulate a lot of these senescent cells. We've heard about antibodies a lot on the media lately, but there's what's known as your T helper cells are really important for the immune system but also aging in general. And these cells are prone to accumulate a lot of senescent T cells. But if you and I go out and burst train, if we go out to the beach and we lift weights and do some CrossFit or go hiking, we purge those bad T-cells.

Through exercise.

Through exercise.

Any type of exercise or is this more high intensity training? Can you just walk and this does this? Is that to be?

You know, this is a great question because I don't want to prevent anyone from gardening and just walking. Any exercise is way better than no exercise. However, intensity matters.

Really? How much intensity?

How long? I would say at least, and this is what the research shows, 75 minutes combined over the course of a week.

75 minutes of intense. Intensity, what does that mean? Resistance training. Training to failure is that heart rate getting above a certain level. What does that mean?

A very simple way to approximate the intensity is how well can you breathe. So if I'm doing if I can't talk to you, then that's intense enough. So it's like an eight or nine out of 10. Now again, this is just in short segments. This can be little sprints for 10 minutes here. This can be going up the flight of stairs instead of taking the elevator. This can be walking up a hill. So if you're going to walk, which is amazing, like so good for all many aspects of your health, try to walk up hills as well, not just flat. Try to increase the intensity periodically. Tell your walking partner, Hey, we've got to speed it up. See that telephone pole down? Let's go as fast as we can. If you're functionally able to sprint, that's even better. Periodic sprints are fantastic. Again, there's all the benefits from the aerobics, the lungs, the cardiovascular system, but specifically since you asked about aging, that's where exercise in my estimation trumps. I don't want to say it's better necessarily, but it seems that it has a lot of crossover. Here's what's cool about exercise. It makes fasting more efficient. So exercisers, we have several studies here, if people can't see, several studies have looked at individuals who are overweight and sedentary and had them fast for 72 hours. Had individuals who were physically active and lean and had them fast for 72 hours. And they looked at the initiation of this process that we've sort of been talking about known as autophagy, which if I haven't defined yet, it's an intracellular way to break down accumulated proteins and stuff in our cells to recycle it, it's triggered by states of low nutrient conditions. So when we're fasting, when we exercise. Well, everyone thinks, well, you've got to fast for 72 hours or 36 hours. All the gurus have different opinions about how long you fast. Well, it depends upon how fit you are. So the more physically fit people are, the greater the initiation of autophagy is.

When they fast for the identical lengths of time. So what does that mean? So if I'm shredded, 8% body fat, 5%, whatever it is, and I'm fit, does that mean I need to fast longer to get the benefits? Short, less. Because I'm fit, I only need 24 hours. I don't need 72.

18 is probably good.

18 hours to get the benefits. If I'm 40% body fat or 30% or whatever it is, I'm going to need multiple days is what you're saying to get the same benefits.

Exactly. Why is that? Well, it has to do with the muscles. So if we think about what tissues are impacted by fasting, it's your liver, primarily in your muscles and then your brain, but your liver and your muscles are sort of necessary in terms of the adaptations from exercise. So if you and I start training and then you look at sort of the proteomics or metabolomics, which is a way to see how bodily tissues are responding to exercise, you would see our liver and our muscles are like changing, right? and that's why exercise is so good for fatty liver disease because it helps to prevent the accumulation of fat in the liver. So yeah, the act of moving your muscles changes how your muscles function and in a fasted state, they're already primed to deal with conditions of nutrient deprivation from exercise.

So should we exercise and fast at the same time or is that too much where you're like, okay, I'm exhausted, now I need some energy? Yeah.

It totally depends on... So here's my personal perspective on this. And again, my biases are, I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm trying to preserve muscle as I age, because I know that as men and women, you lose muscle as you age. So I'm trying to maintain muscle.

So I do my cardio in the morning fasted.

Cardio, so 30-60 minutes of running, biking, swimming, jogging, whatever. I mean, honestly, it sounds silly, Louis, but I bike my daughter to school. And we're sprinting, we're having a good time, we're joking around, Hey, I'll beat you to that telephone. We're doing stuff, but my heart rate is up and that's enough cardio for me. And then we'll do some stuff later in the day, walking or things like that. And then I wait train after I've had some food. After you eat. That's just my thing. But again, I've been lifting since, I don't look like a bodybuilder, I'm not bragging, but I've been lifting since in high school. But if you're brand new to this, I would say give fasted exercise a try. See how it, it's just like a different diet. Keto works for some people. plant-based works for others, I would say try fasted because that recipe we talked about, low glucose, low insulin, high glucagon, you accelerate that process when you do fasted exercise.

Fasted exercise, gotcha. And what's more powerful in your mind or what is the research saying, fasting or specific types of diets without fasting?

It's an awesome question. I don't know that it's possible to disentangle the two, you know, because to get the benefits of fasting, you get that metabolic switch, like low glucose and all that. And if you're eating McDonald's or Pop-Tarts and foods that jack up your blood sugar, it's going to be hard to get some of the benefits and to trigger these autophagy related processes that we've been alluding to if you're eating that sort of food. Now, that being said, if that's all you can afford or your whole family eats that way and you're kind of stuck, still fast. It's better than not. but you want to try to eat as much unprocessed, ultra paleo, like get rid of the packaged foods and eat more real food. If it comes in a box bag or a can, try to eat as little as possible of that and make your food from scratch. That's kind of a, but everyone responds differently. Some people love high carbs and eat rice and do well. I like more of a low-carb approach. I don't think there's any one diet that's gonna be applicable to everyone and benefit everyone the same.

So how does the body create autophagy? Is that only through exercise and fasting or is that other ways you can do that?

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, autophagy is super complex. There's all these different subtypes of autophagy. But the autophagy that we're kind of alluding to with regards to longevity, I believe most of that is initiated by low glucose, low insulin environments. So if you do a fasted walk in the morning, you're going to see probably a bump in your autophagy. If you skip dinner, by the time you wake up, the autophagy initiation genes will have been upregulated. And this was actually a study, I think it was researchers at University of Alabama actually, they stratified, kind of alluded to it, people in two different groups, one ate the same amount of calories over 12 hours, one ate between eight and two, and they did these microarray studies in the muscle tissue in the liver, and they actually found that autophagy was significantly increased in the group that stopped eating after 2 p.m. They're eating this isocaloric diets and all that, matched for their body weight.

So that just shows me that- Same calories, different times. And the autophagy was higher when people stopped eating at two.

Right, and not only the autophagy was higher, but there was a bunch of other genes related to autophagy signaling like mTOR. And so this is a sort of a break on autophagy. It's an enzyme, it's a kinase, and this inhibits the process of autophagy. Now, some people might say, oh my gosh, I want to inhibit autophagy all the time. You want mTOR to also grow and repair. So if you and I both go work out, we've been fasting, we would want to probably eat some protein. Well, part of how protein helps us recover is mediated through mTOR. So it's not this binary thing like one of these things is always bad and one's always good. It's the context.

Yes.

And you don't want to overexpress mTOR all of the time. That can accelerate your aging. So snacking every hour, having protein shakes and then chips and cookies, that's going to overload this growth process and lead to things like cancer, dementia, heart disease.

Really? So eating frequently throughout the day is typically not good or is it okay for some people?

Generally, so if you're a 20-something fitness model and you're training your butt off, you can get away with it. But when you get older, and there's been several studies, they call them nibbling versus gorging studies, where they have people just eat one meal versus all these small little meals. When you're eating all the time, you.

Think about food all the time. And you're digesting all the time too, I'm assuming, right?

Exactly. And you're having this constant surge in glucose and insulin, and you're just preoccupied with food. I know a lot of your listeners are business owners or want to be business owners. you can focus more on your business and your family, things that matter in life as opposed to always like, well, it's two hours, I gotta have my shake. And you become food obsessed. And that is a behavioral addiction that can compromise your life and productivity.

So, what's your routine look like on a normal season of life when you're not splurging or something or whatever on a cheat day? But what's a normal routine look like? Yeah, so in terms of feeding, exercise, and fasting.

And sleep. Awesome question, Louis. So I get up, meditate first thing in the morning. So I think mindfulness meditation is huge. I do a little Wim Hof hyperventilation, retention, breath work. I have a cold plunge. I go in that and that just sort of sets the day. And then I have some black coffee. But my rule is I can't have coffee before I meditate. So that's just my rule because I would obviously just want to have the coffee and then go about my day and not do any of that. But I just have espresso black coffee. you know, our family, you know, we bike to school and stuff like that. I'll come back, do like an hour or so of work, and by then I'm starting to get hungry. It's like 9, 10 o'clock. I usually have breakfast and that includes protein and fat for me. So I'll have two meals a day and my feeding window generally, again, and I'm not saying this is good for every single person, but it's between, you know, 10 and something like 10 and 6 on most days. So it's like two meals a day. Now, if I train really hard or if I feel really hungry, you know, have a snack, you know, maybe like one or two o'clock, and that can be some raw milk or a nut milk with some whey protein, something along those lines. And then dinner, generally low carb. But, you know, during the fall, that's when squashes and tubers are there. Yes. So I know it sounds weird. It's not really sexy to talk about eating seasonally.

That's all humans ever could ever do. That's true. So you finish, you have dinner around five or six, you finish around six.

Typically. It's pretty good.

It sounds like a good lifestyle.

I mean, it's pretty simple. You have two major meals a day and if you want a little snack, I mean, that's fine.

But stop at 6, 7 o'clock latest is what you suggest.

Exactly. Now, if I have friends that are doing a cool dinner, I'm not gonna be that weirdo like I already ate before. So that's the thing. So balancing that with social connections because social connections, I think, are as important as as any of the stuff that.

We'Ve been talking about. Yeah, so one, two nights a week, if you're having a dinner at eight o'clock, you're fine. You're just trying to eat quickly and.

Then just drink water the rest of the dinner or something. Totally. Or make sure I go for a walk after. Going on a walk after a meal is such a great way to drop that glucose level.

Really?

Yeah, it's amazing. What does it do to the body? Well, so after we eat, I mean, it's funny, so I love food, so just want to preface this, but eating is stressful on the body. and so your eating raises glucose, it raises cortisol, everyone's scared about cortisol from adrenal fatigue and all that, but when you eat, you disrupt the homeostatic balance and so your body is trying to mitigate some of that and walking can help do that and bring down that post meal blood sugar level. So I think one of the easiest things people can do, especially if they don't have the money to eat healthy food or if you have a cheap meal, you go to McDonald's with your buddies, you go to Chick-fil-A, whatever, go for a quick walk afterwards and it can really bring that glucose level down.

What if you did a run or an actual workout right afterwards?

Well, okay, so if you do something super intense, maybe you haven't digested everything.

That's not good, yeah.

So you might want to wait a little bit, but yeah, there's nothing wrong with necessarily doing that.

Is there optimal times to work out during the day?

So I think cardio in the morning is better. and you're more powerful from a resistance training standpoint. You have more strength when your body temperature raises later in the day, so in the afternoons.

So don't do lifting or high intensity in the morning.

Well, I hate to add all these caveats, but dude, if you have three kids and that's the only time you can do it. Do what you want to do. Yeah. Like Steve Weatherford, that's it, right? He's out at five in the morning, just do it. It's a machine. Don't change what you're doing. But if you have the flexibility to split hairs, Sure, do your cardio in the morning or your walking and then hit the gym later in the day.

And do you think it's good to do multiple workouts throughout the day? You know, like a 20 to 30 minute walk, run, bike, swim in the morning and then 30 to 60 minutes gym, class, whatever in the afternoon?

If your schedule allows that, I think that's awesome.

Why is that?

Well, because you're training different energy systems, you give your body the ability Because when you're doing cardio, what you're doing is you're using your mitochondria, you're tearing down, it's just different pathways and your body temperature is a little bit cooler. So I do think from a physiologic standpoint, it is good to split it up.

And do two a day if you can.

Yeah, maybe not every day, but three or four days a week, I think that would be ideal.

How much cardio would you say for the normal person?

20 to 25 minutes.

So jog?

Jog, walk.

It doesn't have to be high intense, like, as fast you can push three mile run or something. It can be a jog. Okay. What would that do? Just a 20 to 30 minute jog in the morning, first thing before you eat. Yeah, well, first of all, mental clarity.

Is huge because you're gonna clear the cobwebs, you're gonna drop your glucose. It's good for the body's inflammatory response. You're gonna decrease chronic inflammation. you improve the distribution of your microvasculature. So as we age, our cardiovascular system gets compromised and we can get edema, we can get varicose veins and all that. So just moving, you're exercising this critical tissue.

What are varicose veins? Those really thick veins that stick out in those.

They're unsightly. what is that? Why do some people have that? the vascular integrity, the capillary integrity can be compromised. Like some people are just genetically prone to that, but it does happen more as we age. It happens to women after they give birth, they get hemorrhoids and all the pressure. So that's where walking is really critical because when you're moving your muscles, it massages all that tissue. Interesting. And another facet of inflammation is when our lymph, so we have blood, then we have our lymphatic system, which really mirrors our cardiovascular system. We want to move that lymph around. Stagnant lymph is a major problem. So if you go sit on an airplane or a train or even a road trip, it's good to just go for a quick walk, like five minutes. So last night I landed at Burbank and the rental car place is a good hustle. So I decided just to run because I've been sitting for so long. Not that, but like three and a half hours, right?

And just to move that around.

5-10 minutes is good, right? Easy, yes. I wasn't sweating, it wasn't that big of a deal. But we don't think to do that stuff. We're like, oh, I'll get the Uber, I'll take the elevator, I'll take the escalator. These small little acts sprinkled in throughout the day, it's just like, if you ask someone, well, hey, when do you read about your bit? If you could read 10 minutes, three times a day, it's probably better than sitting there trying to squeeze it in right before bed. So you're going to be tired, you're going to have... Sure, sure.

So cardio in the morning, a little workout in the afternoon, fasting. What happens to the body when we eat? You said it puts stress on the body. What happens to the body? And is it better to work out before or after? eating. These are like before workout or like an hour and a half after, which one is better?

Yeah, everyone has different perspectives on this, but again, I just want to clarify. I love eating and I'm encouraged eating. However, we need to realize that eating can be a stressor on the body and that's how we can mitigate, especially eating on unreal food, more refined food, right? But it's better.

So what happens in the body when we eat? Say we have a big meal. What is the process of eating? What does it do when we digest? How long does it take for us to get back to focus? What is that process?

This is a phenomenal question. Well, what's interesting and this leads into a tip, practical tip with eating, is the more mindful we are when we're eating, the better we will process that food and the better our blood sugar will be in the post meal window. If you and I start cutting up garlic and ginger and oregano right now, we're gonna start to salivate, right? Just even thinking about it, that's known as the cephalic phase of digestion. So digestion really starts in your brain. And that cephalic phase, if that doesn't get initiated, so let's say you're eating, you're on Instagram, you're on Instagram and you're driving and you're eating. I saw someone doing this in the way over. Oh my gosh. So your brain's not thinking about processing food. So you could eat that same meal when you're in a relaxed state, and you cook the meal with your significant other or family member and have a totally different post meal processing of insulin, glucose, inflammatory response.

Because you're relaxed or you're preparing it or you're preparing for it to be ready.

Exactly. Because your brain is signaling to your gut, food is coming, so we're going to increase and there's this whole field known as the incretin. So these gut hormones, they help insulin do its job in the post meal window. so they help mitigate blood pressure. And these incretins are so important that they're actually a big target when it comes to managing type 2 diabetes. In fact, a lot of, if we think about bariatric surgery, I know I'm all over the place, but it'll come back to your question. What is this surgery?

Gastric bypass.

So to lose weight by manipulating the stomach. By making it smaller, taking out some of the stomach. Correct. So that's what a lot of people think. They assume that when you get bariatric surgery, the mechanism of action of how it's how it's attributed or ascribed to losing weight is by making the stomach smaller. But a huge mechanism is changing these gut hormones and amplifying them. It's turning up the thermostat on these hormones that we can amplify by chewing our food, slowing down. Really? Talking, you and I talking, we put the fork down, we're engaged, we cook the meal together, we smell the meal, we're gonna have a much better post meal processing of that compared to if we just shoved it down. and we're driving on a 405 eating.

Right, right. So digestion starts in the brain.

Fasting.

Huh?

Yeah.

So it doesn't all just happen in the gut and just process all in the stomach and the intestines down here. It starts with the brain and the process before you eat.

Correct.

And while you're eating, wow.

Pre-meal insulin release. And so that's why when people are new to fasting to dovetail it back, if they've been regularly eating at say, they always eat breakfast at 9:00, they always have lunch at 12:00. If you skip breakfast, it's normal to be a little bit jittery because your body starts to remember, Sally has a meal at 9:00, so there's a little pre-meal insulin release and that's going to drop your glucose. So if you suddenly skip breakfast, and this is a hurdle that people have logistically when they start fasting, they're like, I've tried it, I'm all jittery and I can't do it. Part of that is because there's this, what's known as a second meal effect, and this anticipatory effect of eating. So your body adapts. So it just might take a week.

Or two to get used to it. Exactly.

Take some time. And maybe you just have instead of a monster meal, maybe you have some macadamia nuts or cashews or something.

I have a banana or something. Interesting. Huh. I'm gonna have to try, because I love breakfast, but for the last few years I've been doing the intermittent fasting more in the morning, obviously. And so maybe I'll try the not eating after seven or something. Try it out for a few weeks. Yeah.

Yeah, I would love to know what you notice, changes. But again, if that's working for you, then maybe it's worth it.

Yeah, if it's working.

Yeah.

Why is it so hard for so many people to lose belly fat?

It's a good question. I don't know that anyone totally knows the answer. Like five years ago, I would have told you it's all about the gut. It's all about your gut hormones. It's all about the gut microbiome. But now we know that stress and cortisol is an issue. We know that hormones, so if I give an overweight person testosterone, particularly if they're a male, they will start to lose more abdominal adiposity or fat around their fat tissue. And then it's stressed. You take two different people and you look at their cortisol levels. One's lean, one's overweight around the middle. Generally their cortisol levels are a little bit higher. So I think it's multifactorial. There's a lot of things going on. and that's why we can't just focus on just calories alone. Of course, energy balance matters, but we need to look at the body as this interconnected network, and there's all these different pieces of the puzzle, and we now have some of the data to show that. So, I think if we focus on eating more whole grain food, we cover sort of that microbiome piece. If we focus on stress reduction and eating in a mindful state, we sort of COVID that cortisol piece, and going to bed and rising at the same same time of the day, making sure we're getting enough sunlight. As crazy as it sounds, there's good data to show that just 20 minutes of midday sun exposure can help you sleep better that night. We never hear about it, right? People want to take the Tylenol PM or the antihistamines or whatever, but very.

Simple things are accessible and they're not very expensive. What about mitochondria? Why is this such an important thing now?

What is it and why is it so important? Yeah, the analogy that maybe it's not the best analogy, but if we think about our house and relate that to a cell, we have billions of cells. Our house has a furnace, it has a dishwasher, it has different appliances that make the house able to be hospitable, where your cells have these different intracellular components. And the mitochondria help take that energy, like we're gonna both eat dinner tonight, we can't directly utilize the glucose from a sweet potato or the fat in in say an avocado, we have to break that down into a form of energy our body can use known as ATP. And it turns out that our mitochondria help facilitate. Well, they are what are needed to make that process work.

What's ATP, Stan?

ATP is like when I move in my muscles, adenosine triphosphate. It's how the human mammalian cells function. Like that's the currency. If we think about cash, that this is the ultimate currency that enables transactions. By transactions, I mean movements, thinking, creating thoughts, they depend on this ATP. So we hear about, oh, the brain loves glucose. Well, the brain doesn't directly oxidize glucose, it needs it in the form of ATP. So anyway, that happens mostly in the mitochondria. And it turns out that our mitochondria can become rusty and squeaky if we don't exercise, if we never fast, because we talked about autophagy as a way to Autophagy is increased when we exercise or when we fast. Well, there's a way to sort of cause autophagy to our mitochondria, it's known as mitophagy. So mitophagy is a way to sort of take those rusty mitochondria that should be recycled. You know, it's like these papers, you put them in the recycle bin and we can use them for something else. Mitophagy helps to break down those intracellular components within the mitochondria. Got it.

So exercise enhances that, fasting enhances that.

So they're really important.

What is the thing that you've learned in the last two years that's been a breakthrough for you in your sleep, your performance, your health, your emotional and mental well-being what's the thing you've noticed? Because you've been performing an elite level for many years. You've been doing this since high school. You've been studying this. But what's something new for you in the last couple years?

Yeah, this is a great question. I mean, .. you always get excited about the newest things, right? But I think really honoring the circadian clock system in the body and being much more vigilant, because I used to stay up late and do research up to like two in the morning, then sleep in and having these irregular sleep wake cycles, especially as I age, I've noticed that I'm much more sensitive and I perform much better if I just say, look, Mike, you're going to bed at 10 and then in that process, if it's getting dark as we get into fall here, making sure that I'm cutting off the screens beforehand, at least two hours. Yeah, wow. So, I mean, it sounds so simple. You're like, dude, that's it. Really, that's all I need. But how many people actually do it? That's the thing. I had a late fight last night. I saw all these people on their phones just blaring. You can see the blue light. That is augmenting a lot of their aging process, their hunger hormones. It's impacting a lot of different things. So just being I would say being more conscious of how I treat my body's circadian clock system.

So you're saying if we're looking at TV screens or phones, we're more hungry or we're going to be susceptible wanting a snack or something?

Probably the next day because it screws up your circadian clock system. All these hormones and all the men and probably all the women will recognize men's testosterone rises in the morning, right? It's very predictable. All these hormones rise on a circadian clock rhythm. They're influenced by our internal clock system. So when we're on these screens, we screw that up. So we might pivot it one hour here or two hours there. And so that then, leptin is another one of these hormones like testosterone that oscillates in this manner. And if we augment leptin, then you and I will start to crave crappier foods. We're gonna want the cookies and the treats. Whereas we might have had the willpower to say, you know what, I'm not gonna have that. If our leptin is off because we went to bed at 2 in the morning or we're watching Netflix too late, then we can succumb to those cravings that ordinarily wouldn't be a problem because our circadian clock system is off and.

Leptin can be imbalanced. Wow. Because there's a few books out now about this arcadian rhythm, right? Like the rising and sleeping with the sun and this and this. I mean, I'm not sure which, my mom was telling me about one recently, actually, I'm not sure which book it was called, but how important is kind of this philosophy of, you know, once the sun goes down, like, you start getting ready for bed, and when the sun comes up, it's time to get up.

To me, I think this is one of the most important facets of health. And if you go in nature and just look at what deer do, what bears do, even what, and what drilled this home for me is we got backyard chickens a few years ago. And I was like, every night, no matter what, these chickens, when the at a certain time the day like they're in there because they're prey, right?

Right. They're hidden in their little hut and they go to sleep.

Every night. So it's like if we want to survive, we can't circumvent this critical process and we have and the advent of screens, of phones, of Uber Eats, of all of this, we're seeing a worsening in our health. So I think it's one of the biggest things and you know, we've been talking a lot about fasting and autophagy and all that. Well, all these processes linked with longevity that we're all trying to hit and increase to make our aging processes slow down, they depend upon the circadian clock system. You cannot disentangle longevity-related processes from this critical circadian rhythm. So that reminded me of the importance then of time-restricted feeding. As opposed to intermittent fasting, which focuses on the number of hours you fast, time-restricted feeding focuses on when you eat and when you fast.

Say it one more time, the last part?

Yeah, so intermittent fasting, people hear about 16:8, 10:24, whatever. Time-restricted feeding is a subtype of intermittent fasting that focuses on the hours that you feed and the hours that you fast.

Okay.

Sorry, the time of the day.

Time of the day, not 16:8, but when you do that.

Exactly.

Gotcha.

So again, we've talked, I think a really easy window for most people is like like 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Okay. Like if most people ate during those times, even if they're eating crap, they would probably improve their health.

Really?

Yeah.

Don't eat crap, but if you just did from 10 to 6 and that's.

The only time you ate. You would probably notice your pants feel less tight. Really? You would probably notice that you're a little bit more on top of it mentally. You might notice better digestion and hopefully better sleep.

You know, a lot of people can't sleep.

Wow.

So don't wait till one or two. which is what most people have been doing with the intermittent fasting is like skip breakfast, wait till afternoon, then from noon till eight or two till 10 eat, it's like 10 to 6.

Pushing it.

It's the same.

So it's the same.

So the research is showing that if you eat farther away from when you sleep, if you eat farther away, I guess, than when you're going to bed, the better it is for you.

Exactly.

The closer you eat to sleep, what does that do to you?

It makes it harder to burn fat. So there were several studies actually in overweight women where they had them have a little snack before dinner or after dinner or not, but they had the same calories. What they did is they divide, let's just say it's like a thousand calorie dinner. They had one group have an 800 calorie dinner and a 200 calorie snack. So it's the same amount of energy, but they had the dinner. One group, Group A, will say had the dinner, had the snack, went to bed. They tracked them for eight weeks. The group that just had the dinner, but no snack, lost more weight. Same calories, but it's just the timing.

And the distribution of those calories in relation to the sleep window.

Huh, so they had the snack, what.

30 minutes after dinner or something or later?

It was like an hour after that. Gotcha. Interesting. Same amount of calories. Exactly. Wow. So that's where, again, calories matter, energy matters, but When the so-called calories in, calories out model of obesity was sort of elucidated, energy balance they call it in the fitness space, we didn't know about these circadian rhythms and circadian clocks. We didn't know about all the microbiome. So now that we understand this new biology, we should acknowledge and recognize that.

These things are influencing our metabolic health. Wow. If someone's listening or watching right now thinking this sounds amazing, but it also seems overwhelming, and to do it on their own just seems daunting. What would you suggest? Is there accountability or coaching they can get? Is there groups online where people are doing this for support? What can they do to have a community to support them?

Yeah, no, this is a great question. I'm a fan of the apps, so there's a few different fasting apps. I like the Zero app. I don't know if you've used that, Peter or Tanya. and company developed that one. So that's super simple. I think it's- and you set the time then on that.

You say, I'm only gonna eat between eight and six. Exactly.

Is that right, eight and six? Yeah. Yeah, something like that.

And then what it kind of reminds you of when to eat or has a community, how's that work?

Yeah, they have, I think, an online Facebook group. They do. Okay. Yeah, a lot of these, I used to have this Facebook group, this Metabolic Monday thing, but it just became logistically hard to like support it and all that, but I know there is fasting groups. There's a big fasting community, which is great. But I think an app is helpful. And then get your family on board. I mean, I don't know anyone who doesn't want to lose weight and have more energy and feel better.

Right, so just support each other in your family or find a friend who wants to do this with you.

Exactly.

And how can they support this with each other? Just like check in once a day over text, like what's the best process you think for getting people on a four to eight week process of of doing this fasting cycle of going to sleep at a better time, eating earlier, what do you suggest?

That's a phenomenal question. I suggest making the private public. That's what I found with goal setting. So if people just keep it to themselves, like I'm doing this thing, but I'm not gonna tell anyone, then they don't really have any accountability. But if they put their foot in the sand and say, Hey, this is what I'm doing, so take a picture, even if you only have a hundred Instagram connections or whatever, it's fine. Just say, hey, this is what I'm doing, here's why I'm doing it, and post about it. And you talk about this a lot. When you start to identify with the person that you want to be, you behave like that person. And so start to really, even if you're morbidly obese and you really have a weight, it doesn't matter. Just start somewhere and make the private public. I've seen a lot of benefits doing that. And you can do that with business, with all these things. So, I mean, that's how I got into it. started sharing their research. Like, you know, just said, Hey guys, here's this new fasting study. And then when the time came to have cookies and ice cream, I'm like, I can't share the study and then.

Also not do this thing, right?

So... Do you give yourself a cheap meal or how does this work for you? Yeah, I mean, so I love like organic red wine and stuff like that. So like Saturday night, I have some wine. My wife used to have a raw food company, so we make like these almond flour cookies and this and that, you know? But It's not an everyday thing, but nutrition adheres to the 80-20 principle. So you don't have to eat like a monk or whatever every single day. You can have some buffer room. And this is where exercise and this is where compressing that feeding window comes in. It gives you a little buffer room to where I have friends who are like, Dude, if I look at ice cream, I put on 10 pounds. So if you're eating like a standard American, that is true. But when you start compressing your feeding window when you're walking, when you periodically do maybe a 24-hour fast, you can get away with more stuff.

How often should we do a 24-48 hour fast?

Well, I think it depends on your body fat. I think it depends on your age. So if it's more important for a 60-year-old compared to like a 39-year-old.

The older you are, it's more important to fast for longer periods.

For longer because the risk of cancer, the risk of dementia, all of these diseases that are improved when we fast, the risk aging is a disease. We've looked at it like an inconvenience, but it really is a disease. And we can decrease the prevalence of that disease by fasting more. So I think everyone over 40 should fast at least one day a week.

Wow.

It's tough, I know.

24 hours once a week. Unless you- Is that no food at all? Is that coffee? Is that just water? What does that look like?

Well, so the studies allow for like up to 300 calories, even up to 500 calories. So you could do like a one meal a day and OMAD one day a week. I think that's way better. I mean, if you look at that, and let's just back up a little bit, you know, some of the studies look at calorie restriction as a way to enhance longevity. So one way to get into a calorie deficit is to restrict how much food you eat. But that's who wants to do that? You're like, oh my gosh, I'm at 2,000 calories or 17, It's hard logistically to do. So one thing you can get into a 20% calorie deficit over the long haul by not eating one day a week. Super simple. You don't have to count calories on those other six days. I think it's a huge-- Is that what you do?

Not every week.

So I'll be honest with you. I would, for like a year, I was every single week, every Monday. We'd have dinner Sunday night as a family. I wouldn't eat until Tuesday morning.

Wow, so it was like 36 hours or something, right?

Is that? Yeah. more. Exactly. More like 36. Wow.

And what are you doing now? Once a month or something?

I was doing that every day, every, every week. What are you doing now? Oh, now? Yeah. Now it's like once. Exactly. So, like, yesterday, like, this will be my, basically intermittent fat, like my 24 hour type fast. Really? I haven't had food since, you know, it was like yesterday at 2 p.m. really. Gotcha.

So you'll have a dinner tonight or what? Yeah, I'll probably go for a hike.

After this and then go to airwands or something like that. Gotcha.

Or would you wait until breakfast the next morning and try to push it a little more?

Well, here's the thing. I noticed I was getting a little too skinny. Okay, so it's that balance.

Too lean, huh?

Yeah, I was like, I don't want to be the skinny guy. What's the point of being like having increased lifespan, but you're a stick figure? So muscle matters. So finding that balance, what's gonna work for you? So now it's more like a OMAD one day a week, meaning one meal that day.

One meal.

Earlier, you know, and so yeah, but finding that balance, you know, that's what I think is helpful. Now, if someone is morbidly obese or pre-diabetic or has heart disease, maybe a 48-hour fast every week. And being consistent with that, like every week, as opposed to a lot of people get excited this January, I'm gonna do a 72-hour fast. Imagine, like, if you ran a marathon only once a year. You're better off running like two miles a day compared to just one big event because that consistency. So that's my philosophy. I could be wrong on that.

How old are you now?

39.

What do you think will shift for you from 40 to 50? Is there anything you'll do differently?

Shoot, that's a good question. I don't know the answer to that question, Lewis. I mean, maybe I might crank the fasting a little bit more.

Really?

Cancer doesn't run in my family, but I do have this tumor biomarker that's elevated. Just I randomly happen to test this and it could be nothing or it could be related to early cancer. So just to sort of keep an eye on that, that's what has encouraged me and inspired me to dive into the science on fasting. But also, personally, I'm just interested because we know that fasting is a way to help improve cancer biology.

And how important is a strong immune system at all ages of your life? and what would you say are the key factors to enhancing the strength to make it Bulletproof, your immune system?

This is a wonderful question. Well, not having glycemic variability. So if you and I go and have a soda right now and we test our glucose, we're gonna go up to probably 140, 160 and come back down. You want it to be more neutral.

Like a wave, not a big spikes.

Exactly. So less fluctuations.

How do you do that? Cutting out sugary foods and processed foods?

Processed packaged stuff. So sugar without fat is going to do that. So liquid calories, soda pop, candy, things like that are going to jack that up. Milkshakes as well. So just having more real food, reducing glycemic variability, improving our sleep, so making sure we're adhering to those circadian rhythms. I know it sounds like we're beating a dead horse here, but exercise is going to be one of the most important things, and I can share with you study after study about individuals who have poor outcome when it comes to viral infections compared to individuals who have good outcomes in their exercise habits. Kaiser Permanente here in Southern California did that, 48,000 subjects with COVID They looked at their exercise habits and individuals who regularly exercise were much less likely to.

Go to the hospital, end up in ICU or die.

From exercise. Just straight up exercising. This was another study in Sweden or, yeah, Sweden found this. several studies in China and South Korea. So the data is emerging that being sedentary, it compromises your immune system. Because when we're sedentary, our baseline level of inflammation increases. And so if we think about it, let's say we're playing really loud music in this room, we're not going to hear if someone comes in or out. And that person could be a burglar, for example, just hypothetically, right? So if you have more static background inflammation because you're not exercising, you're eating processed processed food, when that pathogen you're exposed to, whether it's influenza or SARS-CoV-2 or whatever, then your immune system is not going to have the bandwidth to do what it should do and take care of that pathogen early. That seems to be the problem with these infections is the immune system is not mounting an appropriate initial response and the virus or the bug circulates and then it becomes just there's a lot of collateral damage and our immune system freaks out. So if we can enhance, if we can prevent that smoldering inflammation with exercise, with raw food, with stress management, with sleep.

That's the key to increase the strength of your immune system. And what about gut inflammation? Because that seems to be a big leaky gut and gut inflammation seems to be a big topic these days. How do we, I guess, really clear up the inflammation in our gut so that we can process our food better and and be healthier that way.

Yeah, this is an awesome question. Well, it turns out that when we eat a lot of processed fats with carbs together, that creates that inflammation. In the gut. In the gut.

Processed fats with carbs, is that what you're saying? Right.

So let's think about the foods that are problematic. So if we think about french fries, fried oil, carbs. I'm so good though. I know, that's the thing. But if you just have a couple, maybe you go for a walk.

Afterwards go for a walk.

Yeah, and if it's a one day a week thing or whatever, you're with your significant other, I'm fine with that. If we think about pizza, so you got cheese, which turns into liquid fat, and carbs.

My favorite food.

Corn dogs, right? Like it's tough, you know? Or if we have a soda with something else, right? That's like the ultimate disaster.

What do you mean, soda with what ice cream?

We have a soda with ice cream, root beer float, or you- oh, so good. Corn dog, like, dude, you're at, it's, you're just, look.

You're stacking on inflammation.

You are. And so you gotta mitigate that. Now, if you train your butt off.

You'Re gonna work out.

You're fasting, whatever. And this is like, you know, once a month, this is every other week. It's not a big deal. Yeah. You know, but you don't wanna regularly do this. And sadly, people regularly eat that stuff. And it's reflective in their visceral adiposity, their belly fat, their liver accumulates fat. So the liver is a lot of first absorption happens from the small intestine to the liver. And so it's this first target. And so if we start to, you only have one liver and once it goes, you are really screwed. And a lot of people, there's a pandemic of fatty liver disease and most people don't even know. Really? They don't test their liver enzymes which are really accessible. You get your blood work, AST, ALT, GGT, three tests we should all know. And this is not esoteric. You go to any doctor anywhere in the world, you can measure these. Those are, and you asked about who should fast. If your liver enzymes are increasing, you should fast more. So liver is a huge metabolic organ and by exercising and fasting we can reduce the amount of fat that's stored in that organ.

And what about eating before or after exercise? Say we did the eight and six, right? We eat in that window. We do a little cardio in the morning and then we say, you know what? We're gonna do a workout at whatever, seven o'clock at night. Is it good? Is it a bad thing to train hard on the muscles and tear them down and then not eat protein afterwards? Is that okay or should you work out at four and then eat at six?

I would do the latter. That's what I would suggest.

Work out if you have the time and the flexibility.

Totally.

Work out before more, then have protein afterwards. Why is that?

To help repair. So in the post-exercise window, you're very insulin sensitive. So that's the other thing, we talked about the soda and stuff like that. So if you just crushed a workout and had a soda, it's not going to have the same effect negatively on your blood glucose levels as compared to if you've been sitting all day and had that soda. So exercise causes your muscles to be like a glucose sponge. And what's cool about having a post post-exercise meal is you're much more insulin sensitive. So you're going to take those amino acids and they will help repair the damage that we did to our muscles from that workout. Got it. Okay. That's important. Some people do that. They train really hard but they don't eat enough and then they wonder why they're not getting stronger. So again, it's this balance. It's tough and that's why it's so hard. It's like building a business. There's a lot of things that you've got to do right and you've got to ask ask people, ask mentors, ask friends, Hey, what do you do? What's working for you?

Do you have a coach or do you just kind of do this all on your own?

I don't have a coach when it.

Comes to health stuff. This is your obsession though, this is what you do.

Yeah, and I've had a lot of clients over the years who used to work with a medical doctor helping overweight people and I was a personal trainer back in the day. So yeah, and I'm not saying I'm the world's running expert at all. I make a lot of mistakes too, and stuff like that. But I think with some of these approaches that we've been talking about, we can get a lot of people trending in a better direction.

I love this, man. What else do we need to know? Anything else about optimizing for today's time where it's so much on our phones, so much late night TV, movie watching, so much poor eating, minimal exercise, anything else you think we need to address here?

Well, I guess there's two things. And the first one, especially for the men listening, donating blood. And because, well, as men, we don't have a natural way to sort of get rid of blood. Like women menstruate, so they lose blood naturally. Back in the day, you and I would have been out hunting, we'd be exposed to parasites and ticks, and we would naturally have thinner, less viscous blood. But I found, and this is, I can almost predict this with the clients that I work with, I would say about 90% of them have thick, hyper viscous blood. And we can easily help humanity and help our own longevity and health by donating blood periodically.

What does donating blood do for us and our health?

Well, it reduces the viscosity of our blood, the thickness. And so, we don't want thick blood. You don't.

It can be, it's more sheer stress.

For the heart and the blood vessels. The pumping in and out, right? Yeah, and blood's moving around and it's circulating and that can create sheer challenges there. And so we think about eating fat, this was the mantra people used to think about in the 90s. You eat fat, creates cholesterol in your vessels, narrows the vessels, you get a heart attack. Well, it turns out that when your blood is thick, that sheer stress can cause that same atherosclerotic formation, which is the formation of plaque in the narrowing of the arteries that can lead to a heart attack or dementia or a stroke. And so a lot of men are in a better position health-wise if they periodically donate blood.

How often do you do it?

Once every six months.

Right.

But you might want to just get some blood work to see. So there's a test known as your hematocrit and hemoglobin. A lot of men, this is close to 50%. And so if you look at, say, we talked about cycling earlier and stuff like that, those guys would do blood doping to get their hematocrit high. Some of them- They have more oxygen in their blood. Someone stroke out because their blood is so thick.

They ever get a stroke?

A lot of people have died or had strokes and all that because their blood is so thick, they're placing so much stress from exercise and sometimes they'd be dehydrated. Some guys would stroke or... Anyway, so the point is we want thin-ish type blood. You want you in that around maybe 42-43%.

The only way by doing that is donating or... Well, is there nutrition or exercise that allows it to thin or no?

I mean, exercise would help because you're kind of damaging those red blood cells and so they're gonna break down over time, so that does help. But for a lot of men, honestly, just periodic, just put it on the calendar like, hey, around Christmas, 4th of July, donate blood. Now, if you're anemic, you don't wanna do that. If you're a menstruating woman trying to get pregnant, you don't wanna do it. But post-menopausal women, they're not menstruating anymore, their iron can creep up as well. And so iron can be a pro-oxidant, it can accelerate degradation of the brain, it can lead to Alzheimer's and stuff like that. So it's just a good health thing to sort of get in the habit of doing.

What was the second thing? You said donate blood for guys. You were to say there's two things. One is for men donating blood.

Yeah, so gosh, I can't remember what else I was gonna say. I think it was, was this. Go out and go camping. Why? Because it gets you more in tune with this whole circadian clock system that we've done. And it gets you in tune with nature. And I, I think, and this sounds woo-woo, right? This sounds. But that has been the big. And you asked me, hey, Mike, what was the biggest thing that you've changed? Well, I've got with my family, you know, hey, we had the best conversations. We're not on our phones. We have no cell phone service. we're exercising, we're in nature, there's research in Japan, Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing. This is real tangible, it reduces your inflammation. Even if it's over the 4th of July or even if it's over Labor Day weekend once a year, getting out in nature, it just reframes your perspective and it detoxifies you, so to speak, and all that word's been overused from the news and the stress. And it puts you in touch with your rhythms because when you're out camping, you might be having a drink or something around the fire. But you're not crushing buckets of ice cream on Netflix, right? You're watching the sun, you're watching the stars.

And you typically get tired because you're out in the dark all night and you're like, okay, it's time to go to bed. Exactly.

What about grounding?

What does that do for people?

Look, it sounds totally woo-woo, man. But there's data showing, and I did this before, there's a building just south of here and I took my shoes off. They have little couches out there in the courtyard. and I just got some sun and grounded myself.

How often do you do that?

You know, I try to walk barefoot a little bit every day. I don't make it like, I'm not fanatical about it, but I think it's just good periodically. All animals touch the ground. We are animals. I know birds stand on trees and stuff like that, but we should be touching the ground and we never do. And we have cell phones on our hips all the time. We have Wi-Fi going on. So if nothing else, it's just a great way to help our electricity and our circuitry and our circulation. And again, it might sound crazy, but studies have actually shown improved circulation and blood flow in people who ground. Really? So there's grounding mats, there's all sorts of experts out there. But the best thing is just go.

Out in the grass and the dirt and just walk around barefoot for a little bit.

Take your shoes off when you're walking on the beach. Like it couldn't be simpler. And we all know we feel better when we do this. You go on vacation, what do you do? You go to the beach, you take your shoes off, you're in the sand. You feel amazing. You think it's because you're having a mocktail or margarita, but it's all these things. It's the sun, it's the fresh air, it's a grounding.

I like this man. This is exciting stuff. Your site is highintensityhealth.com, what can we learn more when we go to your site?

You know, Louis, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate this opportunity. I share a lot of the science details on these things, but I try to keep it practical and just what I found is there's so much good research, but it's not really being talked about, and I'm just like a weird nerd. Like, I love to read the research, so I just like to break it down and be like, hey, guys, so here's what the studies found. Here's. Here's how we can validate healthy lifestyle change.

So that's what we encourage.

People to do.

That's cool. Your social media is fun as well. You got a lot of cool memes on there. On Instagram, MetabolicMike, Mike Mutzel over on Twitter, Facebook as well. What's the main platform you're on the most?

What do you like?

Probably YouTube.

YouTube.

What's your channel there? I didn't see it. High Intensity Health.

High Intensity Health on YouTube.

You're putting out videos once a week or?

At least five days a week. Five days a week, you're putting out a video. I try to.

Wow, man. stepping it up.

I like it. I mean, I just found like the platform will push your video into the feet, right?

With more frequency. Yes, on Instagram it's like kind of gone after a day where this is, stays more relevant frequently, which is cool. I'm a big YouTube fan. We've been going hard on YouTube. Thank you. And if you guys are listening and you haven't subscribed to our YouTube, go to the YouTube right now and check.

Out Mike's High Intensity Health on YouTube also. Anything else we can do to support you and be a part of your mission? this is all good, man. I mean, if anyone starts fasting and gets benefits, I'll check on the comments on this YouTube video. Okay, like I would love to know where people are at and how fasting or exercise, how that's improved their health. The comments, you can really get a good kind of pulse with the zeitgeist, you know, see what's working for people.

Absolutely. Okay, cool, man. This is a question I asked everyone at the end called the three truths. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. you live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day on earth and you gotta turn the lights off. And you accomplish all your dreams and goals, but it's the last day. But for whatever reason, all of your content has to go somewhere else. It's not here on this earth anymore. No one has access to your five weekly YouTube videos and your content and this interview is gone. But you get to leave behind three lessons I like to call three truths to the world. And this is all we would have to be reminded by your work and your message. What would you say of those three truths for you?

That's a great question. I would say really value your relationships. People really matter. The person that I would want to be with would be my daughter. So relationships really matter. The second one would be slow down. Anything great takes patience. Businesses and professional athletes develop over time slowly. The third thing that I would say is we are part of nature. So whatever your business is, whatever you're, if you're gunning it and you're driving till 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and you think that you can circumvent these biologic rhythms that we talked about, that's going to come up and bite you in the butt. So living in harmony with nature, being patient, valuing your relationships, that's what I would say.

Say?

That's a great question.

That's good, man. I appreciate it. I want to acknowledge you, Mike, for showing up and constantly doing this research. I think it's important because there's so much information out there. A lot of us don't know what is accurate, what is helpful for us, what is beneficial for us now and long term. So I acknowledge you for being obsessed with the data, the research, the science, and then teaching it to us in practical, on insightful ways for us to actually be like, okay, I'm not too overwhelmed. Let me go do some of this. So I acknowledge you for doing that, man. And I acknowledge you for walking the talk. You do the research and then you're living it as well. You're not just telling people and going to sleep at 4:00 a.m. every night and all that stuff. So I appreciate you showing up for your audience by walking the talk. It's really fun to see that, man. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

Yeah, I knew this was coming. I think being consistent. So if we think about Kobe, we think about great athletes, great entrepreneurs, they just showed up every day, day in, day out. And they were just consistent. And everything that we've talked about here, just be consistent with your walking. They can achieve a great physique, a great health, great mental clarity. So instead of trying to to always jump onto the latest fad, just be consistent. Pick one thing that we talked about today and just be great at that one thing. It can be exercise, feeding, whatever. That to me is what I think leads to greatness or it can, one attribute of that. There you go. Consistency. Mike, my man.

Appreciate it. My pleasure, buddy. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

And now it's time to go out.

There and do something great.

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