Find Metabolic Freedom, with Ben Azadi

You could have full blown hyperinsulinemia for six to 14 years. Meanwhile, your fasting blood sugars look perfect. Your A1C, which is the three month measurements of your glucose levels, look perfect because your body is so busy producing massive amounts of insulin to clear that excess glucose until your insulin receptor sites go deaf to the screams. And all of a sudden there's a dramatic increase in your blood sugars. And then you have a diagnosis of prediabetes, which then leads to type 2 diabetes. And once you have type 2 diabetes or diabetes in general, it opens up a whole new world of metabolic diseases.

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And I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast.

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Hello and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. We don't have a star sighting of Ed Levitan today. You couldn't make it. But our guest today is Ben Azadi, who's one of my favorite humans to interview. He's been on the podcast before. He's the founder of Keto Camp. He has over 17 years of experience in the health industry and he's the author of four bestselling books, including his latest, Keto Flex. He's also the author of Metabolic Freedom, which is being published this week so you can get your early copies and it's through Hay House. He's been the go to source for Intermittent Fasting and the Ketogenic World and diet since 2013. So, Ben, welcome. I'm so excited we could talk about your book and Metabolic Freedom today. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. Wendy, loved your work. I had so much fun with you the first time. So let's make round two. Let's make Edward jealous of this conversation. How about that?

Seriously, he's always like, why didn't I get to play on the cool ones? Okay, so talk to me. Why this book? Like, why did you. You've. You've been in this space a lot. What was it about this book that you felt compelled to bring to the world?

Yeah, you know, I've written more niche books, right? A book on keto, a book on fasting, a book on sleep. And this book is not a niche book. It's a book that I wrote for the for the masses. It's written for America and all first world generations who are struggling with metabolic diseases. And there were three key studies that really convinced me to write this book. The first one was a 2016 study from Mayo Clinic. They did a study looking at how many Americans live what they consider an active, healthy lifestyle. I know, I know. Yeah. Wait until you hear the results. They based it off of four criterias, Wendy. The first criteria was that they don't smoke cigarettes. The second criteria was that they exercised moderate to vigorous exercise for a total of 150 minutes per week. The third criteria was that they eat what they consider a healthy diet, which is just a minimally processed diet. And the fourth criteria was that if they're a female, they have a body fat percentage under 30%, and if they're a male, a body fat percentage under 20%. And they concluded that only 2.7% of Americans are what they consider active and healthy. That's it, 2.7%. Then in 2018. I know it's crazy. And that was before COVID In 2018, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill put out a study showing around 88% of Americans. Americans are what they consider metabolically unhealthy. And then a more recent study in 2022 showed it's about 93% of Americans having metabolic dysfunction. 93%. So I wrote this book for the masses. It's not a niche book. Yeah, I talk about a little bit of ketone fasting in there, but it's really to get somebody to understand how their metabolism works. What are the causes towards metabolic dysfunction? That's the first half of the book I identify those causes with. Your favorite chapter is going to be chapter five, all about environmental toxins and how that relates to metabolic disease. It's really aligned with your dirty girl book and all that you teach. And then the second half of the book talks about the solutions and what can we use, what can we do? And then it's all wrapped together in a 30 day plan to achieve metabolic freedom. And metabolic freedom is simply metabolic flexibility. The way that the body was designed to be able to burn whatever substrate is available for fuel. And that could be carbohydrates, that could be fat, protein, that could be your own body fat. When you're metabolically free, you're not having to rely on snacking and grazing every two to three hours, counting your calories, weighing your food. That's a metabolic prison. We need to detach away from that. So that's why I wrote the book for the masses. And if you're not new to this and you're already doing these principles of ketosis and fasting, well, there's still a lot of stuff in there that you're going to love. There's 275 citations. There's an advanced plan to follow as well. So I'm excited, excited about the book. It's going to put a dent in disease. And right now is the perfect time to get the book out into the world.

It's going to put a dent in the mass, right? It's for the masses who want to lose mass.

Yes, yes. That's a good way to put it.

Okay, so unpack this for me. When you talk about metabolic dysfunction, can you really go into the weeds and talk to me about what does that mean? Like, as the listener, how would. Okay, sure, I'm likely to be a statistic, but how would I know that I'm metabolically dysfunctional?

Well, I lived it myself. And sometimes it doesn't show up on lab work. Sometimes it shows up in symptoms. First, symptoms are not bad. Symptoms are your check engine light. It's your body's way of communicating to you. So it will show up as symptoms. Your body will communicate to you through symptoms. So for me, that's what it was, being obese for most of my life, physically, mentally, metabolic syndrome. So how this will show up is the following. You'll start to gain weight, obviously, and this is going to be the unwanted stubborn fat that's around your belly. You're going to start to have energy fluctuations, maybe that afternoon crash as it progresses. And as you start to create something called hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance, you're going to start to see other things happen. You start to see skin tags develop on your body which are signs of insulin resistance. You'll start to see brown patches around your armpit and around your neck area. The weight will continue to increase and you'll have difficulty burning that fat. You'll feel tired after eating meals. You'll have to rely on stimulants to get through the day. You'll feel unrested even after a full night of sleep. And sometimes you'll not even get a full night of sleep. But what's going to happen first is this, Wendy, you're going to have insulin resistance. And that is the first domino to fall. Chapter two of the book talks about this and how there are studies showing Whitehall study and several others that you could have full blown hyperinsulinemia for six to 14 years. Meanwhile, your fasting blood sugars look perfect. Your A1C, which is the three month measurement of your glucose levels, look perfect because your body is so busy producing massive amounts of insulin to clear that excess glucose, until your insulin receptor sites go deaf to the screams. And all of a sudden there's a dramatic increase in your blood sugars. Then you have a diagnosis of pre diabetes, which then leads to type 2 diabetes. If you're testing, sometimes this happens without knowing. And once you have type 2 diabetes or diabetes in general, it opens up a whole new world of metabolic diseases. So it starts with insulin. I make the case that one of the most important tests you could get done is a blood fasting insulin test. You want to see that in the single digits that shows insulin sensitivity. If you see it over 10, that's a problem. And that standard reference range is going to be between 3 and 25 or 3 and 28. But if it's over 10, that's a problem. So make sure you get a fasting insulin blood test.

Okay, we gotta pause here because so, you know, I see patients and that's part of the hemoglobin A1C, insulin and fasting blood glucose are just literally, you walk in the door. That's what we do on you because we wanna know how's your metabolic state. And I've noticed over the last few years a couple things. One, there's a subgroup of women who have that stubborn weight issue and who, their fasting blood sugar is normal, their insulin is normal, but their hemoglobin A1C is creeping up like 5.6, 5.7. And sometimes I see the insulin, it's 6 or 7, but it's shockingly, weirdly low. But they have all the signs of insulin resistance. It's just not showing up in the insulin. Do you have any. And I know I ambushed you. Do you have anything to say about that or anything that you could point some guidance on?

Yeah, there is. I love that you test all that. You're a rock star, first and foremost.

Well, we love data. We're like, you know, we love the data.

Yeah, that's, it's. Unfortunately, most conventional doctors don't test fasting insulin. So usually you have to work with the functional practitioner or pay out of pocket. The good news is that it's a cheap test to do. And I think they don't test for it because there's no medication for insulin. There's medication for glucose, but not insulin. Anyways. Yeah, the A1C part. Now, A1C could be a little tricky sometimes. I know that Depending, you know, some people could live at altitude and it changes the lifespan of those red blood cells and it could affect the A1C levels. But I have seen if we get that fasting insulin from 7 is good, but if we could get it down to three or four, they could break through some of that weight loss resistance. But there are other factors at play, as you know, there's toxicity, there's stress components here. So, so addressing all of that, which I know that you do, but that's not common. That's an anomaly. Usually when you get your, your fasting insulin in single digits and you're fasting blood glucose in the sink in the between 70, 90. Excuse me, you're gonna see a lower A1C. So I don't know, what are your thoughts? Like what, what have you worked on that you've seen that helped lower the A1C here?

Yeah, honestly, it's tox for me. It's toxins and then. But it, but there is this full on category of women in their late 40s, early 50s, and the calorie in, calorie out model no longer works for them because they are metabolically rigid, the way I would say it. And these are the women you say, okay, 150 minutes a week. These are the people who I'll use myself. I'm 54 and a half now and I really have to. I go do weights four times a week, I do cardio three times a week. I go to the PT once a week, I go for a walk one to two times a week. And that just keeps me just right. Okay. Not great. But I would say that my story is exactly everyone else's stories. They're killing themselves not to gain weight. And if you're perfect, you don't gain weight. If you're not perfect, you gain weight, but you never lose weight. That's the frustrating part because it's not about calories in, calories out, and even working on. I think toxins are huge. Stress is massive. I don't think we can understate the impact of stress. Not so much sleeping enough, crappy hormone balance. Like, there's a lot that goes into it. But even when you're optimized, there's something about menopause that makes women much less metabolically flexible. And that's. I've been diving into that because it's personal, you know?

Yeah, no, you're absolutely correct. And you're doing a lot of, a lot of things personally just to keep the weight. When you're going through menopause you're more insulin resistant. We know that. We know all the hormone fluctuations. The ovaries are retiring and they've done their job. And now the adrenal glands, they have to pick up the slack and, and the body's well equipped to do that. But now you said stress is like the major thing to really tackle here. And stress comes from three different areas. Emotional, mental, emotional, physical, and of course, the chemical part. And I know you address all of that. So I like using, not just for postmenopausal women, but for sure for postmenopausal women. Heart rate variability is a good gauge for the stress they're dealing with, if they're adapting to the stress. And I like to work on increasing that heart rate variability. And for those who don't know exactly what that means, Heart rate variability is not your heart rate. It's looking at the balance of your nervous system. We have two primary branches, which is your. The one branch is your sympathetic branch of your nervous system, which is important in spurts, fight, flight, adrenaline, cortisol, and then the opposite branch is the parasympathetic rest, digest detoxification. A healthy person goes back and forth in healthy balance of both sympathetic and parasympathetic, and that will raise their heart rate variability. Somebody who is under too much stress, too much sympathetic overload and parasympathetic suppression, they're going to see a low hrv. So we want to use that HRV as a gauge to see how much exercise should we be doing, how much fasting, how much of these biohacks cause they're all stressors. And if you're doing too much, then HRV will drop and it actually will have a negative effect where your body starts to store fat because it has this cortisol stress response. I have noticed this and I want to get your thoughts here. Wendy and I talk about it in the book. Melatonin has been a game changer for increasing HRV buffering oxidative stress. And I use it on most of my postmenopausal ladies that like really high doses. Not for the sleep part, that's great. But for the buffering of oxidative stress. Have you gotten into melatonin much?

So I use a lot of melatonin, especially given how prevalent Covid has been. So anyone who gets Covid, I typically put them on 15-20mg of melatonin for a period of time. And it's funny, I was trying to think I had Covid almost two years ago at this point, I'm still on high dose melatonin. I've weaned down from 15 to 12 at night. I'm like, okay, one pill less. But I am using melatonin a lot for antioxidant work. I love melatonin. I also love quercetin. I love everything, right? I'm like, oh, bring it on, let's do it.

Yeah, I love that you take it. I do as well. I've actually experimented with super physiological doses of melatonin, like 100 to 200 milligrams, sometimes 300, cyclically through suppositories as a delivery system. And the unique thing about melatonin, yes, it's a hormone, but there's no negative feedback loop like testosterone or estrogen or progesterone. When you take that exogenously, your body will start producing less. But with melatonin that doesn't happen. It's one of those rare hormones. There's no negative feedback loop. You could take it for months at high doses and your body will still produce it. And every cell, actually, with the exception of red blood cells, every cell produces melatonin. Every mitochondria produces melatonin. You actually produce more melatonin in your gut than you do in the pineal gland. It's really interesting molecule. It's fascinating. So I love it as well. And I use it all the time.

What kind of suppository is this that you have 300 milligrams of melatonin?

It's called Sandman from Dr. John Laurent. He has one that's 200 milligrams and he has Super Sandman at 300 milligrams. It has glutathione and some essential oils and it's really great. It's fantastic.

So would you only ever do it regularly or would you do it for women? Do they do it it vaginally or is it only a rectal?

Rectally, yeah, rectally. But he has liposomal versions that you could take orally. They're just, they're good, but not as effective as suppository.

Okay, thanks. Sorry, I was like, I need to understand that. Okay.

Yeah, and I'm happy to connect. Yeah, I'm happy to connect you with Dr. John Lawrence too. He has a whole a book called Melatonin Miracle Molecule. It's really, really fascinating. Yeah, I'm glad we're on the same page. On the same page with melatonin.

Talk to me about toxins. Like, what's the, what have you found around toxins and metabolic dysfunction.

Yeah, you know, toxicity, right? This is our jam. I know, you're just such a great educator on this. It's your story. You have a whole book on this. There are many reasons why we have metabolic disease. Many, many reasons why being a sugar burner, poor sleep, too much stress, poor circadian rhythm, processed foods. But if I had to be pinned to a corner, and Wendy will agree with me and choose one thing that has led to this metabolic disease disaster. It is the environmental toxins that are out there to the level that we have it. It's the number one thing that fills our stress bucket and triggers a cascade of bad things. There's a whole host of them and your book covers it so well, Dirty girl. There's two that I identify in the book. They're obesogens and diabetogens. So the obesogens are really interesting. They're in microplastics, they're in our food supply, water supply. These are chemicals that actually create fat cell, larger fat cells or fat human beings. It increases our body weight, and it does this because the body wants to survive. And when we have these toxins, these obesogens enter the body through a food supply, water supply, heck, our cleaning supplies, detergents, they're everywhere in the air from jet fuel. The body does not want these toxins to freely circulate in the bloodstream. So it activates a pathway, PPAR gamma, similar to what insulin does to clear glucose. PPAR gamma clears these toxins and shuttles them into your fat cells, your adipocytes, because there's a lot of room there. They're lipophilic, they're fat loving toxins. And the body does this because the solution to pollution is dilution. I want to dilute these toxins and throw them in your fat cells. And if there's not room in your fat cells, well, I'll just increase the size of your fat cells. And if that's already full, hey, I'll create new fat cells. And these are how toxins create fat human beings and animals, by the way. And then what happens is, you mentioned the calories versus calories out approach, which doesn't work, not just for postmenopausal women, for anybody. We need to get away from that. Let's say somebody has a whole bunch of toxins, they start to exercise more, eat less, they're on an extreme protocol. So they're starting to burn fat. But what happens, you have a whole bunch of toxins in those fat and you could burn fat. You can't burn these toxins. So you start to dump these toxins and your metabolism realizes every time burn fat, we dump toxins and we auto intoxicate ourselves. So I'm going to slow down fat burning. And now you have weight loss resistance. So these are problematic because they're everywhere. But there's a second classification of toxins called diabetogens that actually trigger beta cell dysfunction in the pancreas, which leads to insulin resistance, pre diabetes, and eventually diabetes. There's a study I referenced in the book that showed about 33% of diabetes is from toxins. These diabetogens. So it's everywhere. Simple things we can do. Well, first of all, go buy Dirty Girl. Because you lay it all out. Chapter five of my book talks about some easy things that you do. Drink out of glass instead of plastic. Say no to cash register receipts, which we know contain a ton more BPA than canned food. And by the way, the average American. I know you've spoken about this. The average American eats a credit card's worth of plastic every week. That's according to the University of Newcastle study. Keep your detox pathways open. There's a lot of things we can do, but we need to address the toxicity component. And I know this is your jam, Wendy.

It is. And you know, it's funny, because when I look at the rate of autoimmune disease and diabetes and heart disease that are just exploding, I keep thinking, okay, our whole environment is fully toxic and I'm about to do a rant and rave on. Whether you're political or not, the elimination of the EPA is not in your favor, and the elimination of the Clean Air and Water act is not in your favor. And that was just eliminated, meaning one out of every six deaths is directly linked back to air and water quality. So because nobody's looking out for you right now, you need to look out for yourself. What that means is filter your air, filter your water. Don't smoke in your home. Don't let other people smoke in your home. Don't add sense to your home. Like, you can do herbal diffusers, essential oils, but you don't want to do any of the fake or standard or commercial air fresheners, because these are all 100% chemicals. And so you really want to make sure that what you're putting in your body is filtered. And it's so funny. You've met my husband. When we started down this path, he was like, you want to filter the house? I was like, yep. And I want to filter it. Not only Whole house. I want to filter at the point of use for where we drink it. So we have one in our bathroom, and we have one in our kitchen specifically for drinking. And then everything else, I'm like, okay, I don't think I need to put another one on the shower head. My hair is fine. But I highly encourage people to filter at the highest level you can to your budget, whatever your budget allows. So, okay, so this is another thing that's causing us to not have metabolic freedom. Okay, where can people get your book, and where can they find out more about you?

So you could get the book over@metabolicfreedombook.com and if you order it on that page, we have a free gift that we're giving away, which is an entire course I built out on the metabolism. 12 lessons that you get for free. And we did some exclusive interviews that I put in the course with Dr. Daniel Pompa, Gary Breca, Dr. Jason Fung, Megan Ramos, and Cynthia Thurlow. All of that is in the course, and it's for free. You could get the book. It's available on hardcover, Kindle, Audible. I narrated the audible. So metablogfreedombook.com, once you order it there, you just put your name, email, order number, and then you're automatically sent that course with the exclusive interviews.

That's great, Ben. Okay, we'll put all that in the show. Notes. This has been awesome, Ben. I'm very grateful you're here, and I can't wait to read the book. I'm, like, super psyched. I'm going to get a copy.

I can't wait for you to read it. Yeah, I'll get you a copy. And by the way, chapter 10. Chapter 10. I'll plant the seed. That's my favorite chapter in the book. I think it's the best chapter in the book, so I can't wait for you to read that chapter.

Awesome. All right. Awesome. I can't look, wait. Will you sign it?

I would love to do that. Absolutely, yes.

Thank you. All right. All right, Ben, thanks for joining us for this episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast, listeners, go read the book. He's amazing. He's an expert. You can see he can quote studies at you like no one's tomorrow. And, Ben, it's been a pleasure having you on. I hope you hit the New York Times bestseller list with this one, because this is a knock it out of the park one.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your work, Wende.

My pleasure. Right back at you, Ben. Inspire and empower someone else by leaving a five star review so they can.

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