Antidepressants, Vasectomy, Prednisone and Insulin Resistance | THRR063

Prednisone and Insulin Resistance/Ketosis, Baby Led Weaning, Electrolyte Intake, Vasectomy- Yay or Nay?, Depression and Antidepressants

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Show Notes:

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News topic du jour:

Colchicine for Early COVID-19? Trial May Support Oral Therapy at Home — But some find science-by-press-release troubling

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1. Prednisone and Insulin Resistance/Ketosis  [31:27]

Sunny says:

Hi. I’ve been on prednisone all year for ulcerative colitis. It’s been difficult to stick to the right diet because of the cravings, yet that is critical for me to get right in order to get off of prednisone (I think I’m prednisone dependent, whatever that means, but I can’t seem to get off it) so I feel stuck. It seems like no matter how well I eat for how long (paleo diet) I still get “sugar crashes”. I’d really like to try full carnivore, but worry I will just feel sick the whole time because of the prednisone. What is prednisone doing to my insulin? Is there a way to overcome it? In the morning I have tried to do some intermittent fasting but I end up feeling ill if I don’t eat. Thank you.

 

2. Baby Led Weaning  [36:35]

Amanda says:

Hi Robb and Nikki

I’m very confused about how to best feed my baby. She’s 10 months old now and we started solids at 6 months with letting her self feed bacon and raw or lightly cooked garden vegetables. She loved it. Our general approach was to give her whatever we’re eating and it worked well initially since we try to eat relatively well.

She’s since been introduced to less desirable foods with her grandparents including french fries, bread, pasta, crackers, and pretty sugary fruits. It seems like all she wants to eat now is bread and frozen blueberries, not the delicious steak and fish offered. I try to stay chill about what she eats but she will now scream for blueberries at each meal and pick around her meat to eat only frozen blueberries. We’ve tried frozen mini shrimp to no avail. Is it bad to subsist on blueberries and breast milk?

I’ve generally minimized non paleo foods but wonder if she needs to eat small amounts regularly to avoid allergies? I’ve read that exposure early and often is important in preventing allergies.

As an aside, she won’t eat purees and mostly wants to feed herself, not have food fed to her.

Finally, is there any data suggesting an optimal breastfeeding duration? My baby seems to get most of her calories and liquids from breast milk still and I’m not sure when or if she will transition more towards solids.

Thanks!

Amanda

 

3. Electrolyte Intake [43:18]

Josh says:

Good morning,

I have been on the Ketogenic diet for the last 2 weeks. I am definitely beginning to see the results that I am looking for. I’m curious about electrolytes though. About a week into this, i began to feel an irregular heartbeat, mostly in the evenings. I am a paramedic, so I was able to hook myself up to an EKG, and confirm a sinus arrhymthia. No detrimental side effects, other than just not feeling right. I began to start tracking my electrolyte intake( I have also been supplementing with LMNT), and quickly noticed my potassium intake was low(600-800mg/day). Since noticing this, I have been making a concerted effort to make sure my potassium intake has been increased. My question is this: since LMNT only has 200mg of K each, is it recommended to supplement with actual Potassium tablets? I have been drinking 2-3 LMNT drinks/day, as well as looking for foods that have higher levels of potassium in them, but it definitely seems like an essential electrolyte that is somewhat hard to come by naturally. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Josh

 

4. Vasectomy- Yay or Nay?  [49:04]

Clint says:

What’s up Robb and Nikki!?

I’ll skip the normal “stats” other than I’m 36 years old, happy and healthy- well versed in the paleo ways of Cordain, Sisson, and most importantly- Wolf. My wife and I have two wonderful kids; a 4 year old and an 18 month old and we have a baby on the way in April (2 under 2- wtf is wrong with us?). I went for a routine physical and my doctor suggested getting a vasectomy since we aren’t wanting to have more kids. I’ve always been of the mindset of wanting to be here “for a long time- not necessarily a good time” meaning I take cold showers, fast from time to time, forego shitty foods, exercise regularly. I’m not a Ben Greenfield longevity bio hacker shining red lights on my balls- but I’d like to do what I can to live a long life. Are you aware of any health and longevity benefits/downsides to getting the old snip-snip? (Other than the benefit of not getting my wife pregnant again).

Thanks for all you guys do for us mere mortals- keep fighting the good fight.

 

5. Depression and Antidepressants  [53:45]

Andy says:

Hello Robb and Nikki,

I’ve had problems with depression off and on for several years now.  I recently saw a new therapist that my wife has known for 15 years and she is guessing that I’ve always lived with depression due to family history.  It has just happened that being a hard driving type A I’ve been able to cope and push through major depressive seasons.

She has suggested going on an antidepressant to help me get over the edge and allow me to begin healing from long term depression.  I’ve always been reluctant to take them and haven’t before but I’m feeling that this is probably a wise decision considering I have also had 2 great friends (nurse and social worker) suggest it.  The reason I’m thinking this makes sense is given the year I’ve had… COVID, 2 miscarriage’s, 4 months of unemployment, business losses, and I’m sure I could name more.

So, my 2 questions are

1. What do you think about antidepressants in my case

2. Do you have other suggestions that are easy to implement because major changes right now are very hard for me

Now, a background on health.  First off, everything seems hard for me right now.  My symptoms include: insomnia, low energy, brain fog, lack of motivation to take action, low desire for sex (although once I’m going I’m fine).  I’ve also been drinking 2-3 beers a day for several months now as a coping mechanism which is really bad.  My diet is iffy, sometimes I’m good with a good amount of protein (probably not enough but sometimes 150g a day) some healthy fats in meats, olive oil, MCT oil, and some fruits and vegetables.  However, I often have several days a week that I will just not care and go to things like nachos and other carb food.  I don’t tend to eat a lot of sugar or sweets but those do sneak in occasionally.  I’ve been working with a functional doc and the we tried addressing low T with Clomid and boron.  That got my T levels from 250ish to 960 and also caused MAJOR anger issues so we removed the Clomid and dropped the boron down.  The last testing we did was a dutch test in May and it showed low T again, but it also showed that I was clearing a massive amount of cortisol, like above 15k on that test.

My exercise habits are pretty poor right now as well.  I was reffing 2 high school soccer games a week during the fall which equated to about 10 miles of running a week.  Now the only activity I am doing is a 6-7 mile hike (moderate difficulty) on Sundays.

I’m currently taking the following supps: Morning – 10 mg boron, lithium 5 mg, ashwagandha 300 mg, ADK (5k iu D), Active B Complex from Klaire (double dose since I’ve shown a B deficiency and single dose didn’t impact the deficiency).  Evening – 400 magnesium taurate, physphatldylserine 600 mg, zinc chelate 100 mg, trazedone 100 mg, melatonin 2 mg.  My doc also has me using an Alpha-Stim for 1 hour a day.

Hopefully this gives you some good info on my background and may give you something to work with from a suggestion perspective.

Thanks,

Andy

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Transcript:

Download a copy of this transcript here (PDF)

Nicki: It’s time to make your health an act of rebellion. We’re tackling personalized nutrition, metabolic flexibility, resilient aging, and answering your diet and lifestyle questions. This is the only show with the bold aim to help one million people liberate themselves from the sick care system. You’re listening to the Healthy Rebellion Radio. Contents of this show for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed, functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change. Warning, when Rob gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletives. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your britches in a bunch, well, there’s always Disney+.

Nicki: Welcome back to another episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio. You all are very thankful that you missed the last three minutes of set up here before this episode started rolling.

Robb: It was the last three minutes of all of our lives, but it was nearly the last three minutes of my life, as I take it.

Nicki: No, no, no.

Robb: What’s new wife?

Nicki: Goodness, we are in the middle of our 30 day rebel reset. This week was our food focus pillar.

Robb: Are we really in the middle of it, or are we only 40% through?

Nicki: We’re 25% through, because it’s week one.

Robb: See, just overstating things.

Nicki: Yeah. Well, Hey. I’m usually the one that splits hairs. I don’t know why you’re splitting hairs all over.

Robb: Because it’s fucking annoying? Isn’t it? I’m reposte on that.

Nicki: Yeah. Folks are going strong. Lots of great interaction, lots of already some successes and wins.

Robb: A couple of folks reporting some dramatically improved blood sugars, a little bit of weight loss, a little bit of tight pants test improved already.

Nicki: Some people are doing this reset. We have a workbook that each reset folks will use during the 30 days. We have some folks choosing to do their workbook work, right alongside their previous ones, so they can compare. They’ve done it enough times, and they can actually compare some of their mental, their self-talk and their sleep and all this stuff with the most recent reset. That’s pretty cool.

Robb: Yup. Yup.

Nicki: Let’s see. We had a lot of really great feedback about the last episode when you shared that park bench story, at Linda Park. A lot of people in the Rebellion said that that really hit them, hit them hard and they were thankful that it was shared. There’s a lot more going on that is not making headlines during this time.

Robb: I don’t even know what to say about it. You have a thing here about Las Vegas, I guess Unified School District, is really reassessing whether or not they’re going to open things up fast, because apparently they’ve had quite a spike in teenage suicides, which when we were poking around this stuff and the funny thing is that, finding the information has become remarkably challenging around these things. Almost as if it’s being hidden, but I’m starting to cycle up. Start the whole smashing. Back in September of last year, the initial reports were that in September, we had already more than doubled teen suicides in the US, from the previous year. It’s not because of a lack of Netflix, it’s not because of a lack of fucking news stories, entertainment or whatever.

Robb: It’s because people are in some cases destitute, financially in many cases, desperate at a minimum. Again, it’s just so fucked up. I guess the big thing for me at this point, and really almost the whole way through, is just every once in a while you get some virtue signaling gig, there’s fancy pants in the ancestral health scene that couches themself as a COVID acceptor, which I have no fucking idea what that means or how that’s helpful in any way possible. It’s like, okay, so you accept COVID, awesome. Does that mean that you just accept what the DNA sequence is? What does that even mean?

Robb: Are you actually still as per the rest of this person’s whole career providing nothing of value or insight or analysis? Which to be able to do that, actually you have to put your dick or your ovaries or something out on the line a little bit in like, well, here’s an opinion on something. Maybe it’s right, or maybe it’s wrong, but at least you’re just fucking some dog in the fight to discuss this. One of my main things has just been that nobody is discussing the knock-on consequences. It’s presented as if this is the one, man-

Nicki: Case counts are the only thing that matters.

Robb: Yeah. Funny enough, and we’ll get around to that. There’s now this little ray of hope, maybe we should reevaluate PCR cycle, thresholds, because if you let it run too long, then it’s not really that descriptive. Man, maybe we should use this as a diagnostic tool to help us inform whether or not the person is a little bit sick or really sick, just like you fucking do with HIV and a bunch of other conditions, and all of this has just been suppressed, repressed, permanent pressed, whatever fucking press you want to call it. It has been-

Nicki: Full court press.

Robb: … full court press. It’s hard for me to keep my together. If I didn’t have a wife, didn’t have kids and was just watching this stuff roll out. I don’t know what I would do. There’s plenty of people out there, particularly the person that I’m thinking about who is the COVID acceptor probably thinks I’m totally unhinged. To be honest, I’m getting a little unhinged, we have good friends that are very successful and grounded, salt of the earth, and they’re getting unhinged, because when you are consistently fed a message that does not make sense. That actually doesn’t follow the science. That is countermanding its own dictates and whatnot. You either ignore it like an idiot and continue selling hair extensions and nail products, or you fucking stand up and say, what is up with this?

Robb: I’m at the, what is up with this thing? Again, lots of people are still dying. There’s a long hall syndrome. There’s all kinds of shit that we need to be talking about. But in addition to all that, kids are starting to kill themselves and they’re starting to kill themselves in the droves. I don’t know how you equate a person in a rest home with a young teenager. I don’t know, I’m not a philosopher. I don’t know how you do anything around that type of stuff, but there is a difference there. We know that there’s a difference there. It’s a slippery slope. I don’t know, this is a thing that you can’t really quantify, even though we know that there is a quantifiable difference.

Nicki: We’ve talked to people in the Rebellion who have college aged children, who have shared that their kids feel they’re, what’s the point? There’s no hope and whether it’s their kids or their peers, they’re not able to do all of the… When you grow up, you have this idea of what life is like, and you’re in high school, and then you’re going to go to college. That whole plan has been completely-

Robb: Gulped.

Nicki: Yup. Thrown on its head. I think there’s just a ton of despair and an anxiety and a lack of hope. I actually had coffee with, there’s a gal in the Rebellion that doesn’t live, she lives about 45 minutes from us, but we meet for coffee, gosh, we hadn’t met since before COVID, but we met a few weeks back and she has two children. Her son, I think, is just going into college, and her daughter is 15, I believe. She was sharing that her daughter is just lots of anxiety, terrified of COVID. Even though she knows the risk for her individually is very low. She has a boyfriend and her boyfriend’s parents are, I think, late 40s, early 50s. And so she is just-

Robb: So super fucking old.

Nicki: … like your age.

Robb: Super old.

Nicki: She has it in her head that she’s going to catch COVID and somehow pass it along and kill her boyfriend’s parents. This is the anxiety that she’s living with. And so, gosh, that’s a big story to tell yourself, and we know that how we perceive the world is based on a lot of the internal dialogue that we have and the stories that we tell ourselves. And so how many people… The media has done a fantastic job of scaring the shit out of all of us.

Robb: They’ve done such a good job that even though now they’re doing the super unethical attempt to unwinding this, trying to, there’s a little hope on the horizon. Lo and behold, there are off the shelf pharmaceuticals that may improve COVID outcomes. And bam, we need to really investigate this stuff, which was, again, pressed over the whole last year. But they’ve done such a good job. This is where I can’t quite get a sense of what the goal was. Was the goal to terrorize everybody in such a way that the world has just changed and there’s just universally more control. And it’s the post 9/11 world, when it became normal to take your shoes off to go through an airport scanner, when there’s absolutely no reason for it, but it shows compliance.

Robb: Are you willing to comply or not? If you don’t take your shoes off, you’re not a good comrade, and now we need to give you the baton and the body cavity check and everything else. There’s absolutely no justifiable reason to drag old people out of their wheelchairs to put them through a body scanner at the airport. There’s just no good reason for this. Yet as a society, we have moved to a point of complacency and malaise, that we’re just like, whatever, and we accept it. I can’t figure out if the goal was to just bring us to this less free spot, where mask wearing or not wearing is indicative of one’s political affiliations and whatnot.

Robb: Or if this was entirely so that the world could look as shitty and fucked up as possible, so that they could get orange man out effectively. I don’t know, or maybe a combination. Porky no low stokes, let’s get both of those. I don’t know, but if there is some thought around unwinding this, to your point, there are people that are never coming back from this. There are children, there are teenagers or young adults that are never coming back from this. They’re never going to socialize-

Nicki: The mental scarring that has occurred, I think is going to be really hard to undo.

Robb: And, fuck this. If these things keep turning into salty talks, whether we mean it or not, I guess I apologize, but it’s the only thing that really matters to me right now, but for the people who’ve been virtue signaling around this stuff, and it’s like, well, just wear a mask or just do this, or just do that. Again, it would be great if this was a pinpoint, accurate solution to a discrete problem, but it’s not, we’re dealing with the economy and the world and the knock on effects are staggering.

Nicki: Honestly, and I know, I think we’ve mentioned this before, and it sounds conspiracy theory, but, it’s not theirs. It’s all on the world economic forum website, but this whole great reset thing, it seems this-

Robb: Build back better.

Nicki: Build back better. Somebody shared a video with me last night that was super disturbing. Mainly listening to these different world leaders, speaking in their language and then also watching just stuff that I hadn’t seen previously, people protesting lockdowns all around the world, from London to Spain, to France, and the police just hitting people with batons and bloodied faces and pushing old women off of chairs. This is like-

Robb: These are places where people don’t own firearms.

Nicki: You look at the gathering, the crowd. It was completely peaceful protesting, and you see all of these police officers rush in and it just gets ugly fast. My point is, you can argue all day whether the virus happened, however it happened, whatever, but it’s definitely been convenient for people who are really wanting this great reset to occur. They want to build the economy back in a different way. When you really look into what is on the agenda, and it’s all spelled out right there, and there’s several videos, you will own nothing, and you’ll be happier and you’ll eat less meat and it’ll be an occasional treat. Everything that you buy will be delivered to your doorstep by drone. I don’t know who wants that world.

Nicki: What really hit home in this video was that, if this moves forward, it will enrich a very few people at the top who are doing all of this AI and all of the tech involved in making this new fourth industrial revolution a reality. And then there will be a huge class of people, which they are terming the useless class, who will no longer have skills that are appropriate, or that will be useful in this new world.

Robb: This great new world.

Nicki: It seems to me that it completely benefits very few, and the rest of the world we’re just pawns that will consume things delivered by drone to door, and receive the universal basic income and not do anything. We won’t need to work because our skills might no longer be needed. And we should just sit home-

Robb: If we do podcasts this, then our social credit score will be low enough, we won’t get our universal, basic income.

Nicki: Again, I know this stuff sounds a dystopian novel. It sounds nuts. If I would have heard myself saying this stuff a year ago, I would have been like, “Oh shit. She went off the deep end.” But-

Robb: It’s right on the World Economic Forum website.

Nicki: It’s all out there. Time magazine had a cover, gosh, I don’t know, October or November of 2020, was all about the great reset. It is an agenda that the world economic forum is stewarding. Then you hear all of these world leaders from Boris in the UK, Johnson is that his name?

Robb: Yeah. I want to say Karloff. 1950s actor.

Nicki: To Trudeau in Canada and to Biden, all using the “build back better” slogan. It just makes you wonder what is going on behind closed doors. That’s all I got.

Robb: Let’s do the actual podcast. Sorry, folks. Maybe folks enjoyed, or found some value in the last one. What am I trying to say here? Nicki and I get to talk to each other, we talk to each other about this. We chat with folks in the Rebellion about some of this stuff. But the world’s gotten to a point, and this is the goal where we’re cowed. There’s all kinds of stuff I would to talk about in so many ways, just to ask questions, what’s the deal with this? What’s the deal with that? That’s the thing that got me in troubling in Sunday school, what got me kicked out of Sunday school all the time. Now I find myself in a situation in which the woke social justicey people of the world are the Sunday school.

Robb: When I ask questions now, I get my ears trimmed for it. It’s getting old and I have a feeling that we’re just at the beginning, we’ve only just begun. Anyway, I don’t know if this is valuable to people, if it’s not tell us to shut the up and we’ll stick with protein, carbs, fat, but I think in some ways this is our sending out an SOS way.

Nicki: Yes.

Robb: It is somewhat therapeutic for me. I don’t know if it’s helpful for other people. If it’s not again, tell us to stay in our lane line, and I guess we’ll stay in our lane line.

Nicki: I think a lot of people see snippets of this stuff and they wonder about it. And then again, you feel crazy if you’re questioning it, but I-

Robb: Real quickly, just as a quick divergence into this. One of the things that Nicki was watching, I was just listening over her shoulder and they were talking about 5G. Very early in the coronavirus spin up, I don’t know if folks remember, I did this piece, 5G does not cause COVID. This is a classic disinformation process. When you step back and look at the 5G topic, I don’t think 5G barbecues your giblets, I don’t think that 5G gives you COVID. There there’s this laundry list of shit that I don’t think 5G does, but then you get to what 5G really does. It provides a degree of bandwidth where monitoring and censorship to some degree are-

Nicki: It is the necessary infrastructure to make this new fourth industrial revolution work. And so it’s-

Robb: Because of the data capture potential.

Nicki: … the data capture and the speed.

Robb: And so while that is a reality, and it probably could have some great things attached to it. There’s a lot of cool shit that could come about it. There are a number of things that should be discussed and maybe some rules and some processes put in place that will not happen, because now anything 5G related, if you raise any questions around it, you’re immediately a denier.

Nicki: And you’re not a COVID acceptor.

Robb: Yeah. This is just fucking classic. When you look at the disinformation things at the CIA did during the Vietnam war and stuff that, this is totally out of that. It didn’t even occur to me until a few days ago, because I would just get cranky. I’m like, “Oh, these God people don’t understand physics.” I get in and do my podcast and talk about energy densities and quarks and batons and different shit. And it had nothing to do with that. I was just as useful an idiot as everybody else. I’m out there doing battle against the unwatched masses who never took a physics class. That wasn’t the point at all. It’s like, of course, yeah, you just get everybody spun up with a bunch of bullshit.

Robb: We have enough bullshit in there, so that the one thread of truth, hey, there is some real concerning features around this technology and the ability to just constantly surveil people and data collect and whatnot. We should probably have discussion around that. We don’t have a discussion around that, because the whole topic, 5G-

Nicki: Everybody’s in a frenzy, little cockfight about-

Robb: -Well it’s been nuked to where it’s like, there is nothing to see here, because the insanity is so thick that you get to the, there is nothing to see here, but there is actually something to see there. There are some concerning features to it, but it’s been buried under all this. Funny enough, what’s it all been related to? Health, it’s all been really into health. Just very similar to COVID itself. We’re going to save everybody for their health. We’re going to do these good things-

Nicki: Health and finance.

Robb: … and now climate also, of course, yeah, yeah. Which is planetary health.

Nicki: Yeah. We can stop here, because I know we’re going long. But there was an article that, I don’t know if Diana Rogers shared it or where I saw it, but they are installing 5G networks on farmland. The idea is there’ll be able to monitor, better the crops, how much rain is needed and all of this stuff. Which sounds really good and potentially helpful. Let’s use science to the degree that we can, to maximize yield and do all of this stuff. I don’t know where I’m going with that.

Robb: That is one thing that I think is, you’re putting a cryptic spin on that, which I guess it could. That is one of the things that I-

Nicki: It’s just a great way to get it everywhere. To install it.

Robb: Yeah. Yeah. For Sure.

Nicki: Yup.

Robb: Okay.

Nicki: Okay, Hubs, news topic…

Robb: We are now Alex Jones affiliates and-

Nicki: Oh shit. Oh dear. Yeah. We might just hang it up.

Robb: The news topic, we’ve already beat this God damn thing to death. Title is, cultured scene for early COVID-19? Trial may support oral therapy at home and then the little tagline, but some find science by press release troubling. Well, I already touched on this. It’s amazing the absolute explosion in news articles and excitement around non vaccine related therapeutics that could be helpful for COVID that has occurred since January 20th.

Nicki: In fact, even hydroxychloroquine has now been… Was it CNN that had that?

Robb: CNN.

Nicki: Yeah, they tweeted and somebody did a side-by-side of a previous one where, how it’s so bad and I can’t believe Trump recommended and the new one. Actually now scientists have found that hydroxychloroquine is very helpful in helping people with COVID.

Robb: To the world’s credit, there are a good number of people that are taking CNN to task. Fuck. Fuck it. I’m just so over all this shit. Fuck it. I’m just in, balls steep. Didn’t we… Oh, no, no. Sorry, that was my sloth group of guys, Jiu-Jitsu friends that there’s a whole funny meme going on with that.

Nicki: I’m not on that thread.

Robb: You’re not on that thread. You don’t want to be on that thread.

Nicki: I do not. I do love those guys, but I don’t need to be on the thread.

Robb: Some people notice the bullshit and some people notice the lies, the inconsistencies, the hypocrisy. People were fucking with things. If a particular genie comes out of this particular bottle as a consequence of this stuff, it is going to be really hard to put it back in. I tell you, I feel I’m a pretty balanced person, a pretty reasonable person. I do my meditation and I make my money, connecting with people and everything. It wouldn’t be hard to get me tilted enough to do something super fucking squirrely. I think about everybody, just one step removed, they don’t have an awesome wife in their life. Maybe they don’t have kids that are worth staying on the straight and narrow, financially their life is in a wreck.

Robb: There’s a lot of those people and you can’t just borate, dismiss, antagonize those folks for four years and then spin on a dime and say unity, and then start releasing pieces like this, talking about all these therapeutics. Some of these people put all that shit together. This is just hypocrisy that is stunning.

Nicki: Well, this is where, I think I mentioned it before, but the book, Slanted by Sharyl Attkisson, is a great read. You really see that, we have no-

Robb: Maybe I should interview her-

Nicki: I think she would be a great interview.

Robb: You should interview her for Salty Talks, since you’ve actually read the book or maybe we co-interview her.

Nicki: We co-interview her. The example she provides from her many years in journalism and what is going on today would never, ever in a million years have been considered, would have ever gone to press 20 years ago, 10 years ago. Journalists are supposed to bring you the facts and help you to come to your own conclusion, and now it’s all about me, journalists giving you my opinion and shoving it down your throat. And just the agenda behind these big news networks. It was a very eyeopening book. If this is a topic that you’re at all interested in, like, how did we get here and what’s going on? She did a great job. Let’s move on.

Robb: Okay. Let’s actually go to protein, carbs, fat.

Nicki: All right. We have our t-shirt review winner. This one goes to ALoha IV8. She says, “I love you guys. Please keep podcasting. I just try to Element and has been straight up game changer for me, as an aerialist that struggles with potts and hypothyroidism. I can’t thank you enough for your courage in speaking out in this hostile political climate. When I listen to your podcast, I feel a strong vibrational truth and alignment in the core of my being. Thank you guys for following your truth as it enables and inspires me to follow mine. I am still listening. Big love to both of you.”

Robb: God damn. I didn’t even read this ahead of time. That was very well placed.

Nicki: That was a great one. Aloha IV8. Thank you very much for that review. Send us an email to [email protected] with your t-shirt size and your mailing address, and we will send you a Healthy Rebellion Radio t-shirt. This episode, actually every episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio this year in 2021, is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, Element. I wanted to read a review from one of our verified Element customers, Ashley, but first Robb, because Ashley mentions this in her review. Let’s talk about how much water you typically mix in your element. I know on the package, we say 16 ounces, but it varies.

Robb: It really does. I am definitely more the 24 to 32 ounce level, which is funny because I’m more usually the intense flavor person and everything, and you’re more comfortable in that 16 to 20 ounce range. Whereas for me-

Nicki: It depends on the flavor too. Some of them I’ll do more concentrated than others. Again, we say 16 ounce on the package, but a lot of people, some people do one packet in 30 ounces. It really depends on your preference and that’s cool. You can dial it up and down. Ashley says, “I originally ordered a 30 day supply of the unflavored as I had read reviews that the flavored varieties were too sweet or too salty and needed to be diluted more than directed. I decided to order a sample pack of some of the flavored varieties when they offered the promotion to pay $5 shipping and receive a free sample pack. It made me disappointed that I ordered the unflavored. They were so tasty. Both my husband and I agreed that they were neither too sweet, nor salty. I immediately ordered the bundle for auto delivery every four months. And my favorite flavor so far is the raspberry. We also ordered the orange and citrus, which were included in the sample pack and we added the mango chili as our fourth option and hope that it is just as delicious as the others we have tried.”

Robb: Mango chili is amazing, just be careful opening it indoors.

Nicki: As well as the lemon habanero. Not opening indoors, just do not inhale when you’re opening the pack.

Robb: The other ones, you can be just rip and go, but those things you want to be a little careful getting this stuff in the air. It will make you sneeze.

Nicki: Yes. Don’t inhale, don’t open it around other people too. There are a few days left to get this Element sample pack for just the cost of shipping, like what Ashley mentioned, that goes until January 31st. This episode releases on the 29th, that gives you a couple days left to get a free eight count sample pack which is two sticks of citrus, raspberry orange, and the ron flavored, just paying $5 shipping for folks in the United States. You can grab that by going to drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drinklmnt.com/robb. Remember that’s going just through the 31st of January. If you miss the promotion, you can still of course, grab a sample pack. And you can also try the fiesta pack which contains mango, chili, the lemon habanero, and the chocolate salt. Drinklmnt.com/robb, you’ll be able to navigate your way around and find that there as well.

Robb: Cool.

Nicki: Cool. Okay.

Robb: What are we? Like 40 minutes in and-

Nicki: I know, I know this is going to be our longest one ever. Okay. This first question is from Sunny on prednisone and insulin resistance/ketosis. Hi, I have been on prednisone all year for ulcerative colitis. It’s been difficult to stick to the right diet, because of the cravings, yet that is critical for me to get right in order to get off prednisone. I think I’m prednisone dependent, whatever that means, but I can’t seem to get off of it. I feel stuck. It seems no matter how well I eat for how long, paleo diet, I still get sugar crashes. I’d really like to try full carnivore, but worry I will just feel sick the whole time because of the prednisone. What is prednisone doing to my insulin? Is there a way to overcome this? In the morning, I’ve tried to do some intermittent fasting, but I end up feeling ill if I don’t eat.

Robb: Sunny, there sounds a lot going on here. One, if you’re on prednisone, you do not need to fast. You should not be fasting. Prednisone is a cortisol analog, and you need low stress consistency. Yes, you probably need to walk. Yes, you probably need to lift some weights. You need to sleep well, but you need to eat really consistently. This is one of these things where the hound dog years start, I think that there’s just a lot going on here. Maybe carnival is a good idea, but when I hear sugar crashes, it’s like, why are you getting sugar crashes? What are you eating that could provoke a sugar crash? Right? If it’s sweet potatoes and stuff, then it’s like, okay, we’ve got a pretty serious deal there. But if it’s, well-

Nicki: Gluten free. Brownies are gluten free.

Robb: … mango smoothie, then it’s a whole other deal. Prednisone is super rough on insulin sensitivity. It’s very easy to look at literature that paints the picture that long term prednisone use will very largely move you towards type two diabetes, due to the insulin resistance it induces, it’s a well worn path. Sunny, there’s something going on here and I don’t know exactly what. I feel I’m only getting a little bit of the story on this, but we definitely need to find a carb level that works for you. Maybe carnivore is it, I don’t know. Usually folks are put on prednisone because of systemic inflammatory issues or-

Nicki: Ulcerative colitis.

Robb: … ulcerative colitis. We know that ulcerative colitis tracks very tightly with certain problematic foods. And so we got to get on top of that. Just have to get on top of that.

Nicki: Focusing on protein. If you are doing paleo and you are having sweet potatoes or vegetables or whatever you’re doing for your carbs, and you feel a sugar crash, look immediately to the previous meal, what did you eat? How much protein was there? Did you have a bunch of fruit or a huge sweet potato? Then next time, dial it back. If you still want to try that food, have half the amount or a quarter of the amount. What you’re eating, if you’re paying attention to it, maybe write it down, so you can look back to what that previous meal was, with quantities, and it’ll help guide your awareness to what’s actually happening here.

Robb: In this ulcerative colitis world, a lot of people don’t do great with tons of veggies, or certainly not poorly cooked veggies. That stuff should probably be coked, should be in soups and stews. Really pay attention to how you’re responding to that. Again, sound like a crazy person, but carnivore might not be the worst place to just plug into that, to get a reset, to find a safe spot where the gut can heal and maybe you could titrate off the prednisone. And then we can reintroduce some foods and see what’s happening. We had Denise as an example, last time, that did carnivore more from a weight loss and metabolic perspective.

Robb: This is more immunogenic food thing. Although she’s describing glycaemic issues too. Denise lost some weight, she started lifting some weights. Even in the age of COVID, has stayed active and then a seven day carb test last time, retested same things this time and responded much better this time. And was re-introducing some carbs. It’s not a guarantee that you just end up in this carnival or cul-de-sac and can never come out. I think some people do, more like me, but it’s not a universal thing, but I like your suggestion, there just needs to be some awareness of what’s being eaten. And-

Nicki: And if you want to try full carnivore, try it, don’t not try it because you are worried, you’ll feel sick. Let’s see-

Robb: Seems she’s already feeling sick. This is the, what do you got to lose?

Nicki: Yeah. Let us know. Circle back and let us know how you do. Okay. Our next question is from Amanda on baby led weaning. Hey Robb and Nicki, I’m very confused about how to best feed my baby. She’s 10 months old now, and we started solids at six months with letting herself feed bacon and raw or lightly cooked garden vegetables. She loved it. Our general approach was to give her whatever we are eating and it worked well initially since we try to eat relatively well, she’s since been introduced to less desirable foods with her grandparents, including French fries, bread, pasta, crackers, and pretty sugary fruits. It seems all she wants to eat now is bread and frozen blueberries, not the delicious steak and the fish that we offer. I try to stay chill about what she eats, but she will now scream for blueberries at each meal and pick around her meat to eat only frozen blueberries.

Nicki: We’ve tried frozen mini shrimp to no avail. Is it bad to subsist on blueberries and breastmilk? We generally minimized non paleo foods, but wonder if she needs to eat small amounts regularly to avoid allergies. I’ve read that exposure early enough is important in preventing allergies. As an aside, she won’t eat purees and mostly wants to feed herself, not have food fed to her. Finally, is there any data suggesting an optimal breastfeeding duration? My baby seems to get most of her calories in liquids from breast milk still, and I’m not sure when, or if she will transition more towards solids.

Robb: Amanda, you snuck in like 10 questions into this.

Nicki: Optimal breastfeeding duration, in the United States, I think they say, gosh, I think it used to be six months. Now, I don’t know if it’s still six months or if they’ve dropped it back. They have changed some of the guidelines based around the fact that most moms work. And so-

Robb: So they change the guidelines so people don’t feel bad about the tough situation.

Nicki: They aren’t able to for as long as they might want. But I think in traditional cultures, babies breastfeed till two-

Robb: Two plus years.

Nicki: Two plus years. Yeah. If you are able to, if you’re fine with it and she seems to still want to nurse, I think keep running with that for as long as it works for both of you is fine.

Robb: I do seem to recall Kresser, somebody else smarter than myself mentioning that at about 18 months, there was really consistent benefit from health stature, immune function. And then at about 18 months, I wouldn’t say it plateaus, but the return on investment starts decreasing to some degree. I think it 18 to 20-

Nicki: Usually at 18 months you’re maybe nursing once a day. It’s not their main food source at that point.

Robb: All I’m saying is that the benefits seem to start dropping off at that point.

Nicki: Right. She’s six months old. Some babies are really eager to eat solids at six months. She’s 10 months old now. Okay. I don’t know that I would really worry. I would just go with the flow. I think at this age, she’s not going to starve. If she’s hungry, she’s going to… The tough part is what you described, which is super common in a lot of families. Once kids have these more hyper palatable foods introduced, of course they taste good and that’s what-

Robb: They are easy to chew.

Nicki: They are easy to chew. They are soft.

Robb: Which actually is a good thing.

Nicki: I think that is just this built-in challenge for all parents, regardless of the age.

Robb: It’s amazing if you have grandparents that can help watch the kids and everything, and then it is just inevitable slide to Lego waffles and shitty food seems to be, what our grandparents did, that’s where you got the shittier food. I don’t think the kid is going to under eat, blueberries are great, breast milk’s great. It’s unfortunate if that whole profile of just eating protein is more challenging. We did notice with our kids, if we cut the meat extra small, which is, full disclosure, we did that for a long time to encourage the girls to eat meat. I believe that that was very successful. And now in trying to teach the girls how to use their own steak knife to cut their own stuff up, they’re like, dude, this has a lot of work.

Robb: And so we helped them on the front end and then we hamstrung them a little bit on the back end. And so, there is no free lunch with this stuff. It’s better to just not have kids. Any other thoughts? I would make the case though that cutting things steak and the protein sources up a lot to make it smaller, more amenable. Also there’s this crazy thing of putting your parental foot down and saying, you’re going to eat the protein first and then you can have the other stuff, and if little Susie or Johnny or whoever they are throws a fit, they don’t get anything until they finish the steak. I know, again, some people are going to be calling CPS, but it’s like, this is what’s for dinner or breakfast or lunch.

Robb: And if you don’t want it right now, then when you come back the next time, the same thing will still be waiting for you and you will want it then. And so, I would just make the case that put your foot down and be a parent and put some structure in there. It’s like, you can have whatever blueberries you want, but you’re going to eat this protein first. Not saying you can’t have the blueberries, but you will eat this first. The first couple of times, the kid is liable to push back shockingly. But if we do our work as parents and actually steward them in the direction that they should go, they will figure out, okay, I’ll eat my protein, and then you can have your blueberries. We call it the speed bump deal, where you got motor through the protein and some of the other stuff first, and then some of the-

Nicki: I’m wondering too, if you cook the steak or you saute it in a little bit of butter, or maybe add a little bit of salt. You know, just kind of-

Robb: -Our girls have really been enjoying the air fried steak that we cook. They just like the way that it turns out that, like that. Definitely presentation is a biggie. It’s unfortunate, our kids aren’t huge fans of slow, cooked meat for whatever reason. They like soup.

Nicki: They like soups.

Robb: But doing a slow cooked roast, neither one of them really like it that much.

Nicki: Okay. Our third question this week is from Josh on electrolyte intake. He says, good morning. I have been on the ketogenic diet for the last two weeks. I’m definitely beginning to see the results that I’m looking for. But I’m curious about electrolytes. About a week into this, I began to feel an irregular heartbeat, mostly in the evenings. I’m a paramedic, so I was able to hook myself up to an EKG and confirm a sinus arrhythmia. No detrimental side effects, other than just not feeling right. I began to start tracking my electrolyte intake. Also been supplementing with Element. Quickly noticed my potassium intake was low, 600 to 800 milligrams a day.

Nicki: Since noticing this I’ve been making a concerted effort to make sure my potassium intake has been increased. My question is this, since Element only has 200 milligrams of potassium in each packet, is it recommended to supplement with actual potassium tablets? I’ve been drinking two to three Elements a day, as well as looking for foods that have higher levels of potassium in them. But it definitely seems an essential electrolyte that is somewhat hard to come by naturally, any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Robb: The perplexing thing here is I’m really curious what Josh is eating, because only ending up with 600, 800 milligrams per day, if you’re eating any amount of meat, you should be getting a lot more than that. If you do eat any vegetables at all, it’s pretty easy to end up with more than that. Nuts, is Josh just eating protein powder or something? This seems really odd. Is he really eating that low of potassium? I don’t know. I’m perplexed by that. I have questions around that. Beyond that, we definitely do need significant amounts of potassium, and interesting thing is, when we get enough sodium, the kidneys are pretty good at sorting that out. And you will end up in more of a downward spin-out problem with inadequate sodium versus inadequate potassium.

Robb: The body is a little bit better at making things right there. Again, to his original point, Element does have 200 milligrams of potassium in each stick. If he’s doing two to three of those, that’s 400 to 600 milligrams of that. Again, someday, it would be good to have a call-in show to be able to get some, yeah, becaue I’ve got bunch of questions around this.

Nicki: The reason why we only put 200 of potassium, is because most people get adequate from their diet.

Robb: Yeah. If they’re eating anything along a whole food based diet. We have a little bit of magnesium, no calcium, because people generally get adequate calcium, a little shy on magnesium, a little bit more shy potentially on the potassium and then super deficient in sodium, particularly when on a low carb or ketogenic diet.

Nicki: Okay. Moving on to the Healthy Rebellion Radio trivia. Our Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor, Drink Element, is giving a box of Element recharge electrolytes to three lucky winners selected at random, who answer the following question correctly. Robb, but you just turned our two girls onto a new show that you’ve been watching together, and giggling and chortling in the other room together. Something that we watched when we were first dating-

Robb: Ages ago.

Nicki: Ages ago. What is this new show?

Robb: The Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. When it originally appeared in Japan, it was called Takeshi’s Castle. It was this physical skills competition, like Ninja warrior, but it wasn’t as set of a course.

Nicki: And all the obstacles are handmade, looking like, they’re not airbrushed perfectly. It’s all like, high schoolers made it, kind of.

Robb: It does look like high schoolers made it. And the water-

Nicki: No offense to any high schoolers out there.

Robb: … the water traps in them do look like sewage, effluent. You will get giardia out of them. The girls love the show and they only get maybe less than half of a percent of all the jokes that are going on in the back ground.

Nicki: Because the people in the show are speaking Japanese, but it sort of mystery science theater, where-

Robb: It’s completely overdubbed. What’s being said in English is not even remotely attached to what is being said by these people originally. Honestly, a lot of it, with cancel culture and everything, I’m amazed that the show is still on, some of this stuff, I’m just like, it is hilarious. And also you see a bunch of people folding their spine in half and getting up and walking away from it. It’s pretty awesome. We’re watching a little bit of that.

Nicki: The Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. How do you abbreviate that? That’s MX-

Robb: MXC.

Nicki: MXC. If you want to play this round of trivia, go to robbwolf.com/trivia and enter MXC, and we will randomly select three folks with the correct answer to win a box of Drink Element electrolytes. The cutoff to answer this week’s trivia and be eligible to win is Thursday. I didn’t update my date, so let me make sure I get this right. Thursday, February 4th, at midnight and winners will be notified via email and also on Instagram. This is open to residents of the US only. Okay. Our next question from Clint, he wants to know, vasectomy yay or nay. What’s up Robb and Nicki, I’ll skip the normal stats, other than I’m 36 years old, happy and healthy, well versed in the paleo ways of Cordain and Sisson and most importantly, Wolf. My wife and I have two wonderful kids, a four year old and an 18 month old, and we have a baby on the way in April. Under two, wtf is wrong with us?

Nicki: I went for a routine physical and my doctor suggested getting a vasectomy, since we aren’t wanting to have more kids. I’ve always been of the mindset of wanting to be here, “for a long time and not necessarily a good time.” Meaning I take cold showers fast from time to time, forego shitty foods, exercise regularly. I’m not a Ben Greenfield longevity, biohacker, shining red lights on my balls, but I’d like to do what I can to live a long life. Are you aware of any health and longevity benefits or downsides to getting the old snip, snip, other than the benefit of not getting my wife pregnant again? Thank you for all you do for us mere mortals, keep fighting the good fight.

Robb: And that is a non-trivial benefit if you’re like, we’re done. One thing that doesn’t get talked about very much, and this is tough. One could make the easy case that vasectomy is way less invasive than most of the things that women face, like long term hormonal intervention for birth control, versus tubal ligation and all that stuff. It isn’t discussed much, but it is very, very common for men to have a vasectomy and then see their testosterone levels crater, subsequent to that. That is because there is actually a feedback loop within the testicles and preventing the semen from making its normal route. Appears to have some a feedback inhibition process, and we’ve known several people that have done the vasectomy gig and then ended up on HRT afterwards, because their testosterone just cratered.

Robb: I don’t know, it doesn’t happen to everybody, but it happens way more frequently than urologists talk about. Our friends when they printed these studies out and took it to the urologist, there was initially some guffaws and, this is silly and it’s like, it’s fucking JAMA dude. It was like, oh, well, so you don’t actually stay up on the literature, give two shits about really knowing about this. I don’t know what the right answer is on this. I will just say that the rates of say hormone andropause in men post this intervention, is I think a lot higher than what is generally reported. Most urologists are not aware that it exists at all. But then at the same time, we’ve had friends that we’re pretty maxed out on kids and then ended up with potentially another one in the shoot. It’s just a lot.

Nicki: It’s a lot.

Robb: I don’t know if there was a couple of podcasts back or a totally unrelated thing, but people were talking about the jump from two kids to three kids and the economic impact of that. Because two kids, there a lot of cars you can use with two kids and it may be a little cramped or what have you. You put in three kids and it changes everything.

Nicki: You need a different vehicle.

Robb: You need an entirely different vehicle. You need an entirely different strategy and plan for the way that you’re doing a number of different things. It’s a non-trivial consideration and all of that.

Nicki: And folks that we know that have more than two kids, have said, when you go from, one to two, the laundry, all the chores and those types of things, double. But when you add the third one, it’s this exponential amount of laundry. When they’re little, well, there’s always lots of laundry, but when they’re little and in diapers and messy eaters, there’s a lot of laundry.

Robb: There’s a lot of laundry.

Nicki: Clint, good luck with this decision.

Robb: God bless you man.

Nicki: We don’t have the answer for you, but you can make your best decision with the information at hand.

Robb: Or if your life plays out like ours, you’ll be beat down soon enough that sex is just a memory anyway.

Nicki: Jesus, babe.

Robb: There you go. I kid, I kid.

Nicki: Okay. Moving on to our fifth and final question of this week. We have a question from Andy on depression and antidepressants. Hello, Robb and Nicki, I’ve had problems with depression off and on for several years now. I recently saw a new therapist that my wife has known for 15 years, and she is guessing that I’ve always lived with depression due to family history. It has just happened that being a hard driving type A, I’ve been able to cope and push through major depressive seasons. She has suggested going on an antidepressant to help me get over the edge and allow me to begin healing from long term depression. I’ve always been reluctant to take them and haven’t before, but I’m feeling this is probably a wise decision considering I’ve also had two great friends, nurse and social worker, suggest it.

Nicki: The reason I’m thinking this makes sense, is given the year, I’ve had COVID, two miscarriages, four months of unemployment, business losses, and I’m sure I could name more. My two questions are, what do you think about antidepressants in my case? And two, do you have any other suggestions that are easy to implement? Because major changes right now are very hard for me. And then he includes some background on health.

Robb: There’s good background in here. There’s some interesting stuff. He’s gone through some scenarios of low T and managed to fix with Clomid and some boron. Andy is doing two to three beers a day. Which I-

Nicki: His diet, he’s good with a good amount of protein, some healthy fats, but he often has several days a week that he’ll just not care and go to things like nachos and other carby foods.

Robb: Who is the doctor that was on Rogan? She’s a psychiatrist who-

Nicki: Kelly Brogan.

Robb: Kelly Brogan. Which I ended up her off because she had one of those 5G causes COVID things. I just everybody off on that, but I generally really respect her and she has migrated away from putting anybody on antidepressants that she works with, but she is also totalitarian in the diet. You will follow the diet recommendations to a T.

Nicki: She will not work with anybody who won’t eat meat. Meat is a huge focus of her recommendation.

Robb: Man, Andy, this is really hard stuff. Clearly not a medical provider. The thing about antidepressants, they I think can legitimately save people’s lives in some circumstances. I remember my parents, particularly my mom, both of my parents ultimately ended up on antidepressants. I think that there could have been other things that they could have done in lieu of that. But it was crazy where I went to visit them before my dad died and they were just calm and they weren’t bickering and attacking each other. I was like, what’s up with you guys? We’re both on Prozac or whatever. They were definitely more reasonable to be around and they seemed a bit happier. And I was like, how are you guys doing?

Robb: What’s interesting about it is, it seems for most people, you don’t get the lows, but you definitely don’t get much highs either. It just squeezes the frequency band down a little bit, but clearly when people are in a real low, that can lead to catastrophic events and it can just be miserable and all the rest of that. But also three beers a day.

Nicki: Andy, I’m wondering, one of our rebels in the Healthy Rebellion community posted something, she has a friend who, they live in Canada and one of her friends is on paternal leave. They have that in Canada. And so he is with his young daughter outside and it’s winter, minus 10. So she was hanging out with her friend and his daughter in minus 10 degree weather, outside. She related that this friend of hers has been spending three to four hours outside every day with his daughter. They just bundle and go for stomps or go hang out on back patios, socially distanced or whatever, outdoors. He normally has serious seasonal depression and he says, it’s completely gone. Obviously he has a new baby, so there could be some oxytocin type effect there perhaps, but he’s really attributing it to the time spent outside.

Nicki: I’m wondering just you asked for other suggestions that might be easy and I don’t know where you live, but whether you can get in sunlight or not, being outside, spending as much of your day outside as you can, making that a focus. Because there’s just, and gosh, our friend Dave Dooley, who we’ve talked about, he’s been on some Salty Talks previous episodes, did the controversial truth with Rob before. He’s shared that, this is a tough time for everybody right now, just mentally, but he was invited on a hunting trip and spent three days outside. Some of it was quail hunting and some of it was on foot and some of it was on horseback. He said that, by the second day, they’re on horseback and the sun is setting and he just felt this-

Robb: Euphoria.

Nicki: Euphoria. Euphoric feeling that he hadn’t felt in years. This is three days of outside, in nature, hunting. I feel there is some really powerful medicine, especially for mental health in being outdoors. I know it’s hard to drum up the motivation to go outside, but I would try that. I would give that a shot.

Robb: Andy, we got to just dial the beer down, the alcohol is just not doing any favors. It’s not helping, out of the diet stuff, focus on protein, but pull the alcohol out for a bit. It’s definitely not going to help. And then I would at least give that a shot. You have some good friends and feedback there on the end of the precedent. My point about mentioning my parents, is that, they would just bicker and fight and were so ugly to each other frequently. And then when they went on antidepressants, do you want me to do this? It was all very reasonable. It also, I wouldn’t say robotic, it was definitely not robotic, but it was interesting. It was less stressful to be around them, but it was also like, this is a little bit odd. Maybe it was just odd because- yeah I was just waiting for the other shoe to fall-

Nicki: Or maybe because your whole childhood, you had chaos going on.

Robb: Both of them said, I wished that I had done this far sooner, but both of them still ate poorly. My dad drank alcohol.

Nicki: Smoked.

Robb: Smoked and all the rest of this stuff. I think that there was a lot of potential upside there. Kelly Brogan says that she never puts anybody on antidepressants now, which is fine. That’s her approach. I think that there are docs who are more middle of the road. They will look at nutrition and lifestyle, like the things you’ve recommended. They’ll look at that strongly, but then they will also pull in other options too.

Nicki: You know what, I think also just having some grace for the stuff that you’ve gone through, everybody’s gone through COVID, but two miscarriages, four months of unemployment, business losses, all of that is an incredible amount of stress. It’s just a lot to deal with. We’ve been talking about this collectively. My cousin came over this weekend to celebrate Robb’s birthday, people have posted similar things in the Rebellion., but it’s just like, a lot of people right now just feel like crying all the time. There is just a lot of heavy, heavy stuff going on, just in the world and then also in personal lives. We are all only human and collectively we’re going through a lot and clearly you have gone through a lot. And so I would just like, give yourself-

Robb: Props and sone space.

Nicki: Some space and some grace, and just love yourself. We’re all motoring through.

Robb: Our kids, I wouldn’t say, is insulated the right word? We just talk to them about what’s going on, but I feel we do it in a non hysterical way. And it’s like, well, there’s this and that. I’m very optimistic. We’re all healthy, mom and dad, aren’t going to die. But there are concerning things, both girls in the last maybe two weeks, just kind of, I heard each of them separately crying. I’m like, what’s going on? Both of them were like, I just need to cry. I feel our kids are very insulated, we’re not terrorizing them over this. They don’t consume regular media, but just things are different. Interacting with friends is different and a whole host of other shit is different. And so, you raise a really good point here, Andy’s gone through a lot.

Nicki: Okay. That was our final question for this week, folks. Let’s see. Thanks for joining us. Remember, you’ve got two days left. If you’re listening to this on Friday to get your hands on an Element sample pack for just the cost of shipping, that’s drinklmnt.com/robb, to get that. Two sticks of citrus, raspberry, orange and raw. If you miss that January 31st deadline, have no fear, you can still grab a sample pack or try the fiesta pack, or just grab a full box of something.

Robb: Cool. I’ve got nothing else.

Nicki: That’s what I got.

Robb: I said everything at the front. Well, we appreciate you folks, we’ll say that. We really appreciate you folks. We’ve had a lot of cool new people enter the Rebellion. We always get an uptick during recess, so it’ll be interesting to see how many of those stick long term. I think the frustration with social media, the isolation of our world, and just the shenanigans seems to be making the potential for community like that, to be very, very valuable. So very, very grateful for all that.

Nicki: All right, folks have a wonderful weekend and upcoming week, and we’ll see you all next week.

Robb: Bye buddy.

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Robb Wolf

Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat, is a former research biochemist and one of the world’s leading experts in Paleolithic nutrition. Wolf has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world via his top ranked iTunes podcast and wildly popular seminar series.