Achieve Metabolic Flexibility, with Neil Gyte

How do you feel your energy is during the day? Do you have a constant source of energy or are you constantly going through peaks and troughs and relying on stimulants to help you through that? The more you're relying on stimulants to help you through the day, the more metabolically dysfunctional you will be.

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. This is Ed Levitan. Star sighting today, and we have Neil Gite with us. He is the chief business officer of RX Sugar, as well as the founder of One BMH. His mission is to help 1 billion or more people become metabolically healthy through education, awareness, metabolic challenges, and practical products. Welcome, Neil. We're so excited to have you here. This is my new favorite product.

I do have to. I have to start by saying why it's such a low level of, like, only 1 billion.

Such an underachiever, man.

Come on. Like, I wish we could. You have to think big here.

Well, you do. You do. Yeah, I think I need to revisit that. And. Well, the funny story around this was why it was 1 billion plus is because the 1 billion was kind of a North star. And then as I dug into the research and realized 93% of Americans, probably 80% of the global population are metabolically unhealthy.

Can you repeat that stat? Because that stat just kind of washed over me and then I recognized. One more time, please.

93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy.

What does that mean? Let's start there because that's a definition. We did.

Yeah. So. So per that 93%, there's. There's five kind of basic biomarker of blood sugar level, your waist circumference, triglycerides, hdl, and so forth. That kind of encapsulate that. And you need multiple of those. But I think the simplest way is. What does metabolically unhealthy means? It means that your mitochondria are not producing energy efficiently and effectively, and they power every single cell, tissue, and organ in your body. And like anything, if you don't have any of our devices, if the Battery is not working properly, they malfunction. And that lack of good creation of energy then causes malfunction within organs and tissues and leads to chronic disease. So that, for me is the simple way I scrap your body and your mitochondria not creating energy efficiently and properly. And it's. I think the other important thing is that, you know, it's not a binary thing, as in, you know, yes, if you're metabolic, you know, dysfunctional, but it's, it's, it's the scale. So people can be acutely, metabolically unhealthy, or they can be chronically, metabolically unhealthy. And that is a scale that's kind of accumulated over time. And the main, I think about metabolic health in terms of five pillars. So you have nutrition, you have exercise, you have sleep, you have stress management, and you have environment and toxins. And all of those five can contribute to good metabolic, good mitochondrial health as well as bad metabolic mitochondrial health. And. But they're actually relatively simple lifestyle changes that people make, can make to get back into good metabolic health. So, yeah, 93% of Americans, America is the, I would say that the worst in terms of statistics, most prevalent. I personally believe, based on what I know, that probably 80% of the global population is metabolically unhealthy. So that's five out of the seven billion people in this world. And it is the leading cause of all of the chronic diseases, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's. Ultimately, they're all largely preventable and reversible if you optimize for your mitochondria and metabolic health.

93%.

So how did you get into this? Because this is like, that's. It's a big goal and you're obviously very passionate. So.

Yeah, great question. So I'll give you the short version, then we can dig into a little details. So it started off with my own health journey. So 10 years ago, I was 260 pounds and the epitome of unhealth, definitely metabolically unhealthy. And I was on the fast track to developing one or multiple of those diseases. It was becoming a father and my daughter's christening, where the family were playing outside, kicking a football or a soccer ball around, and I went to join in. I did a huge amount of sport when I was younger. I went to join in after two minutes. I had to sit down because I was out of breath. I was tired, and I had this kind of epitome, epiphany or moment of clarity where I realized I couldn't be the father I wanted to, because I couldn't even kick a football around. How could I do any activity my daughter wanted? So that sent me on my own health journey, which just started with simple, basic things of nutrition, running, doing a bit more exercise. And that led down the slippery slope to do ultra endurance endeavors, which I never planned to do. It just kind of happens. And through that, I got fascinated by the body's metabolism and the different fuel sources, because when you're looking at doing an ironman, you have to fuel yourself for 10, 11 hours at a high intensity. And it was amazing to me to realize that the body can mobilize and utilize fat as a fuel source, as well as sugar and carbohydrates, because the prevailing paradigm is you need sugar and carbohydrates to fuel athletic endeavors. So I started doing more low carb, more fasted training as part of that. And so I ended up doing ultra endurance events. But the biggest change in the direction and kind of velocity of my life was really the impact of these chronic diseases on family and loved ones. So I had very close family members being diagnosed with cancer, autoimmune diseases, bipolar, neurological diseases. But it was at the start of last year, a very close family member got a stage four cancer diagnosis. And it's that that really got me digging into, okay, how do we stop cancer? How do we reverse cancer? You know, when somebody close gets a terminal, you know, diagnosis, and the prognosis outlook is very poor. I dug into the research. I found the amazing work of Dr. Thomas Seyfried and the fact that kind of cancer is a metabolic disease and, you know, the cells effectively switch to be able to only utilize glucose as a fuel source. And if you restrict carbohydrates and restrict glucose, your healthy cells can run off fat and ketones, which tied into my previous athletic understanding. So as I realized that, and then I started to read broader work about metabolic health and realized it wasn't just cancer. All of these chronic diseases fundamentally are mitochondrial and metabolic in nature. And. And then I looked at the statistics that I just shared. Of 93% of Americans, 70% of all deaths worldwide, 41 million people a year die from these chronic diseases, and they are devastating and debilitating to those who have them, but also the impact on loved ones and family members. So I realized that every single person in the world pretty much is going to be impacted by one of these diseases, either directly or through family and loved ones. And then I had the realization that the vast majority are preventable and even reversible and at the time I was working for Google, helping to build Google Maps and Google Earth, which I absolutely loved. But the world of digital mapping is in pretty good hands. I thought I knew about health and nutrition and realized I didn't know about it. And so that's when I decided to totally change and dedicate at least the next, you know, vast majority of my years to metabolic health. Because it's just, it's so under known, underappreciated, but it impacts people every single day. And the Western world and our modern world is really fighting against our evolutionary biology and it's just, it's, it's not well known. So I felt I had to raise awareness, which I do through kind of metabolic challenges. My swim challenge is one example of that. But then really trying to help people with practical products that can help them reset some of the pathways in their body to get back into metabolic health.

There's a lot to unpack here, Neil. Okay.

I mean, before we started you were talking about the swim challenge, so I just wanted to. Because you're saying you. 22 miles in a row.

Yes, 22 miles in a row. So this is also in Scotland. So it was an open water swim. I swam with my brother. So it was his swim initially he was struggling with kind of mental health conditions back about four or five years ago. Found swimming in open water as kind of a love and something that really helped him. And this had always been his dream swim. He asked me to join him. And this was at the same time that I was doing this pivot out of Google and tech and into the world of metabolic health. And so I decided to do it with a Twist, which was 22 miles, it took us 12 hours, zero calories. So I only consumed water and electrolyte throughout the swim, actually even from the evening before. So my last caloric meal was dinner the evening before at 5pm we woke up, we started about half past six in the morning, finished half past six at night, and for that whole time all I consumed was water and electrolytes. To demonstrate the amazing ability of the body to utilize and mobilize fat as a fuel source and to try and break the current paradigm where people think you need sugar and carbohydrates to fuel athletic endeavor and you really don't. And this really boils back to metabolic health because one of the things which is overwhelming and stressing on mitochondria is being overloaded by sugar and carbohydrates and that forces mitochondrial dysfunction, which leads to a lot of these chronic diseases. And so that was the aim and the purpose behind the swim challenge, which I'm not recommending everyone do. It was purposely extreme by nature, but just to demonstrate. And I burned 9,632 calories through the swim, 11,000 in total through the 27 hours that I was fasted and did so perfectly happy to do. So once you train the body to use and mobilize fat as a fuel source.

Now you've given me more to unpack. Thank you very much, Neil. So I want to go back to something else you said when you were telling us your story. I want to highlight something you said, because there's the period of time before you get a diagnosis where you're just doing your thing, and then there's the period of time where you have your diagnosis. And if it's what leads to your death, that's what I'll call the period of time where you're suffering. And what you really highlighted was that there's so much time of our lives spent in that phase, right? So here's the cool part where you're fine, and here's the part where you're dead, so you're done. But we spend a lot of time not being optimized, suffering and having our friends and family and ourselves not feeling well. And that's. That's what was so striking, because not only does it cause us to die, but it caused us to suffer. And that's the part that I think is really important to remember, is that it's. It's not just like you're fine, then you die, you suffer.

I wholeheartedly agree. And I think the suffering is actually more than people realize. So to your point, when you get diagnosed with one of these diseases, then you know you are suffering because usually you have some symptoms. That's when you go to the doctor and you realize it. But actually, what a lot of people don't realize is you're even suffering even before you have these diagnosis. There are warning signs if you tune in and listen to your body at the same time. What I've come to realize through this is it's often difficult to see those warning signs when you are, I would say, metabolically unhealthy, because our bodies are amazing. They adapt to the modern world. And so once you have that kind of baseline of if you're on a standard Western diet, drinking five, six, seven coffees a day and kind of using these stimulants to help you through the day, then that becomes your baseline, and you don't realize actually how good you could feel if you were to clean up some of those areas and get back into good mitochondrial and metabolic health. Because. And again, all of it's back to producing energy. The standard kind of Western diet and the modern world impacts our mitochondria so much, you're not producing constant energy and so you're suboptimized. But it's difficult to see that once you're kind of in that Western toxic stew. And so one of the things that I, that I love is how can people, you know, realize relatively quickly simple things that help them see signs of, oh, if I change this, then I could actually feel better today, tomorrow, and switch into much more preventative before you get any of these chronic diseases.

You know, it's interesting. I started working out with a trainer four times a week a year and a half ago. And I've been doing intermittent fasting since before it was. Had a name of intermittent fasting. It's just how I liked to eat, you know, eat dinner. We have a lot of kids, so we would eat dinner at the crack of dawn at five o' clock, and then I wouldn't eat until like 11 or 12 the next day. That's just kind of how I liked to. To run it. But I noticed when I went to the gym and, and this is all happening simultaneous with menopause, which is the devil's curse on both men and women, by the way, because, you know, you don't get unscathed. When I go through menopause, you're all getting the impact of it. Ed knows. So anyway, I start working out on with a coach one day on this Saturday morning, and I'm like, I feel like I'm gonna puke. And he said, did you eat? I'm like, no, I didn't eat. I intermittent fast. I didn't eat. He's like, you need to eat. I was like, what? So he made me start eating breakfast and. And he's like, you need carbs. I'm like, I'm not eating carbs for breakfast. That's not how I roll. So I would have eggs and cheese. And what's really interesting is I want to dive into how long does it take to go from. Because I said to Ed, do you remember when I said to you, I feel like I have insulin resistance and it was sort of going through menopause and I was gaining weight and I was like, I feel insulin resistant, even though nothing is different in how I'm very regimented and patterned. And so I'm just curious when you start to become dysfunctional around how you metabolize or how your metabolism works and start to rely more on glucose, um, how long does it take to get you back into utilizing fat for. For fuel, which is more efficient? So something what, like 50 times more efficient or something ridiculous. Using fat instead of glucose for mitochondrial to make ATP. So I know I just gave you a lot to unpack, but today's apparently the theme.

Yeah, a lot to unpack. So I think, I think it's simple is, is it can be relatively quick. There's different ways that, that you can do it. Intermittent fasting is, you know, is one way. Simply by letting that, you know, carbohy glucose level drop low, your body naturally then starts to, you know, kind of switch across. But it's not a, it's not a binary thing. Other things that obviously are important are diet and nutrition. So for my swim training, I was on a very low carbohydrate diet, but I would periodically cycle in slightly more carbohydrates into that. I think a really important point that you raise is there is also big difference between men and women hormonally, I think Dr. Mindy Peltz, you know, amazing books and work around this around, you know, fasting at specific points in your cycle and other parts of the cycle. You know your best not necessarily to fast. And then what food you introduce is also important as soon as you put carbohydrates into your body. Because we can only tolerate one teaspoon of sugar within our six liters of blood that we have, your body works incredibly hard to get that out of your bloodstream and your muscles are the main sink, you know, obviously for, for those glucose.

So wait time. I don't know this off the top of my head. Do you, do you happen to know how many grams of Sugar is in 1 teaspoon? Because I know that Americans eat like a lot.

So Americans eat, eat, eat a lot. So I want to say 4 grams, but I would say don't quote me on that, but. So this is one of the fundamental things back to the current paradigm that we need carbohydrates and sugar to fuel life. Which was very much a narrative created by the food industry and you know, the whole history behind the food pyramid, which is totally upside down in my, in my opinion. But when you look at. I always look at it from an evolutionary perspective. So our bodies can only tolerate one teaspoon of sugar in our blood any more than that is toxic. And we evolved like that because we did not have. If you wind back 50,000 years, our biology is so amazingly complicated. It hasn't dramatically changed from a Systems level in 50,000 years. So pre agricultural revolution, what were we eating? Back then? We were hunter gatherers. So we would, you know, run down, you know, animals and get meat and protein, but we would then forage, you know, plants, herbs and overground things to keep us going. And so that's why we have a very. Our bodies regulate our glucose control so tightly. And in current modern environment to the average link of Marin, I think has 18 teaspoons of sugar. Today, the average kid is even more than that. 74 of the calories that children in America are eating are from ultra processed food which are loaded with sugar. And so simply our bodies are flipping into this kind of survival switch to deal with the carbohydrate and glucose and where do they put that goes into fat storage and it purposefully actually damages the mitochondria. And our bodies are actually trying to save us because back from an evolutionary perspective, we used to store energy because of food scarcity, we would have to go two, three, four weeks without eating like bears hibernate for the winter. And obviously in the current modern environment, that doesn't happen. But our bodies don't know that. And so it really is, you know, the over consumption of sugar and carbohydrates, in my view, is one of the biggest drivers of mitochondrial dysfunction, metabolic dysfunction and these chronic diseases.

We need to dive into this for a moment, so think about this. Okay, so if we're right, and 1 teaspoon of sugar is 4 grams of sugar, 1 teaspoon is 4 grams of sugar. So if you're drinking a kombucha, which often has 26 grams of sugar, you're putting almost eight teaspoons into your body. Or if you're eating a candy bar, or if you're drinking a Coke, which is 39 grams of sugar, a can of Coke is 39 grams of sugar. The RDA for sugar is 40 grams, which means one teaspoon every hour, which I would not recommend, but there's so many ways. Or if you're eating your favorite Greek yogurt that is not plain, you're getting like 18 grams to 24 grams of sugar. So I think what's crazy is this is very invisible to people. And so, okay, so every 4 grams is a teaspoon. If I said to you, oh, have a teaspoon of sugar, you'd be like, you're crazy. I would never do that. But Then it's all of these invisible ways we're getting exposed to sugar and it's invisible. So it doesn't make you think like, oh, this is not good.

You know, I wholeheartedly agree and I think, you know, it, the statistics are mind boggling in that, you know, now the, the average adult or child has more sugar in one day than we used to have in a whole year.

I presented on this in 1840 people had 40 grams of sugar in a year. And now in 20, 20, 24 people have that amount in an hour. Honestly, it's not even a day, it's an hour.

Yeah. And this is, and this ties really into, you know, glucose control and why, I think one of the simplest things back to how can people, you know, know if they are, you know, kind of mitochondrially, you know, metabolically healthy or not, how can people test? And you know, continuous glucose monitors now available over the counter, a lot of devices. Because when you look at it through that lens, okay, one teaspoon of sugar and minimizing, you know, blood sugar spikes. When you wear a CGM and you see what happens if you have a Coke or a yogurt or any of these drinks from Starbucks that are just loaded with sugar, your blood sugar spikes up and, and down. And it's the repeated spiking that causes the body to switch into this kind of survival mode. And all of this metabolic machinery kicks in to actually produce less energy and promote fat storage because it's, our bodies are signaling, oh, there's a, there's a caloric surplus. Let's hang on to a lot of this. And in current modern day, you know, if we were then not to eat for, you know, a few weeks, which, you know, I'm not necessarily remaking recommending but can be done. I think Angus Barbary, a Scottish guy, set the world record, I think, for, you know, water only fasting. He went something like 374 days. He was £450 before he started. But back to, you know, utilizing.

What was he after? Out of curiosity.

So after he got down to like, yeah, I think like 190, 200 pounds. And he then actually lived pretty, you know, lean for the, for the rest of his, for the rest of his life. But you know, back, if you look from an evolutionary perspective, we know we were, you know, feast, famine, feast, famine. That's how we used to kind of, that's how we survived. And in current modern day, there's, there's no famine that comes because food is available on the corner and it's loaded with sugar and carbohydrates, which is constantly triggering off this survival switch within our bodies, and it's leading to all of the chronic diseases.

You know, it's interesting to me. I figured a CGM should cost 30 bucks, but it could cost 200 bucks. So they're not readily available. Even though they're over the counter, they're not easily financable for a lot of people. So if you're listening and people are saying, okay, how do I know if I'm metabolically out of balance? What are the things that you would say to people? Because I would say, okay, if you get easily hypoglycemic, that's a warning sign that you're metabolically out of balance. Or if you have a lot of deposition of fat on your body and can't seem to move it, that's an indicator. But are there other indicators that people should be looking for that are signs? Right, because you said the body speaks and gives you the signs. So what are those signs that people should be looking for?

Yeah, great question. I think. And obviously there's, you know, there's. There's blood tests that you can do to help and other things. But I think for me, the simple thing is, you know, how do you feel your energy is during the day? Do you have a constant source of energy, or are you constantly going through peaks and troughs and relying on stimulants to help you through that? So when you have lunch, do you feel like you need to sleep afterwards? Do you have a lull in energy afterwards? Are you reaching for, you know, coffee, caffeine, and these other stimulants to help kind of give you that energy. So the more you're relying on stimulants to help you through the day, the more you are having these peaks and troughs of energy that you feel, the more metabolically dysfunctional you will be. And to tie this, I would just say back to my own experience and, you know, intermittent fasting. Once you get the body utilizing and mobilizing fat as a fuel source, I've never had as much consistent energy, especially when the brain starts to run on ketones instead of glucose, which is actually the preferred fuel source for the brain. You just have this constant source of energy throughout the day. The hunger noise quietens down and you just get into this beautiful homeostasis. And if I look at my life before that, when I was unhealthy, all the rest of it, then I would have all of these energy peaks and crashes. I would Rely on coffee five, six times a day to get me through the day, day. So I think for me that's the easiest way to relate is just to take a step back, think about your energy. What are you using to get your energy? What are you using to prop up that energy when it sinks low. And I think that's usually the best indication of whether you're producing energy in a good way or whether you're not.

All right, so let's go to. Now I'm like, okay, I gotta do it. But let's go to how can people find out more about you? Because you just basically started an avalanche. So where can people find you? You? We'll put it all in the show notes. Talk to me about that.

Yes. So the main place people I would say can find and connect me is LinkedIn. I'm probably most active on LinkedIn. So if you just search Neil Gites on, on LinkedIn outside of that two, two websites really where kind of most of my content is. The first is one bmh.org which stands for one billion metabolically healthy. And that really is the website, the kind of non profit that I started to really simplify metabolic health and just provide people with links to tools and resources because people can also be overwhelmed and want to change too many things at once. And so it really was, these are the things that influence. Here's some great resources. Go figure out what aligns with you, be it food, be it stress, be it exercise, and just start somewhere and start your journey and then, you know, I'll continue to evolve that over time. I also have the Swim Challenge website which is called 0-2-lohman.com so there you can read more about the Swim Challenge obviously why doing that? We are raising awareness and donations for a number of metabolic therapy charities, you know, through the swim. So I'd say they're, they're the three main areas. I am trying to be more active on Instagram and some of the other social media platforms but I've been very off social media for the last 10 years but now realizing actually how beneficial social media can be when you have, you know, a purpose, a passion and a cause and, and you try to, you want to try to reach people. So yeah, I'll provide you all the links to add in the show notes. They're the main places to yeah to, to find out more and hopefully for the listeners it's sparked some, some interest of yeah, how can I, how can I optimize the fuel sources that my body has? And I think. For me, the swim challenge was a demonstration. It comes back to metabolic flexibility. How can you make sure that your body can burn both fats and glucose carbohydrates and you manage your blood sugar levels throughout that and get to that constant energy throughout the day without the peaks and troughs? Because if you can do that, you're probably in a pretty good place, pretty good metabolic health and you really dramatically reduce your chances of getting any of the devastating chronic diseases.

This has been amazing, Neil. Thank you. So, did you want to say something?

No.

Just as I'll wrap it up.

I mean, Liz, I'm ready to get my ice cream and my chocolate bar.

I know I want to go home and I don't know that I want to bake, but I want to go do something. I don't know. Anyway, Neil, thank you for being here for this episode of the Feel Freaky Amazing podcast. This has been a great open eye opener for our listeners and for the listeners, we really hope this has been an inspirational podcast that will allow you to take a step right to become more metabolically healthy and prevent all those diseases that metabolic dysfunction leads to. So, Neal, thank you so much for being here and joining us for this episode of the Feel Freakin Amazing Podcast.

You're welcome. Thank you very much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Ours too.

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