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Show Notes:
News topic du jour:
Eating less Meat won’t save the Planet. Here’s Why
1. Low Acid & Overgrowth [18:07]
Chase says:
Hello Robb & Nikki! My sister has been experiencing severe digestive distress for about 18 months.
She had existing digestive issues from overuse of fake protein bar type foods and then when quit taking birth control her symptoms rapidly got worse.
Eating 1oz of avocado would bloat her stomach by 6+ inches. Reflux is a very common thing as well.
I finally talked her into trying a low fodmap diet, fasting, etc and we finally ended up having her see a specialist.
They gave her an antibiotic and said see ya in 6 months. Her physician hasn’t responded to questions so I figured I would reach out.
My question is, should we follow up immediately with a probiotic (if so recommendations?) and as far as her stomach acid recovering, is there a natural gradual process after balancing the micro biome or is this something that requires supplementation or both?
Thank you so much for any insight! Once again our medical system f**king sucks (:
P.S. Your podcast equips me to help hundreds through my health club. Thank you so much for what you do.
2. Workout HR conundrum [21:48]
Karen says:
Hi Robb and Nicki,
I just love you guys!!
I love the homeschooling bits. I homeschooled my 2 children
( now aged 23 and 26) and I feel it was the best parenting decision I made.
I’ve been a loyal listener for 10 years now. Time flies.
I am a 58 year old female. 5’5” 150 pounds.
I have been eating a Paleo/whole food diet for 10 years. My Functional Medicine doctor informed me that my blood work is great across the board. I sleep great. 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 hours every night. My Oura ring gives me great readiness scores every morning. My question has to do with my type of exercise in relation to my heart rate(HR). I have a resting HR of 45bpm. I have been jogging since I was 16 years old. I usually jog every other day for 3 miles( a 12 minute mile pace).
I then do 30 minutes of dumbbells and basic body weight workouts on the opposite days. I rarely take a day off from exercise. I have no injuries, so I feel as though I’m not over training. I keep busy throughout my day. I alway get at least 10,000 steps in every day. I hike outside all year long as well. Ohio can get pretty cold in the winter, but my dog and I tough it out.
Problem: I can not get rid of the nagging 15 pounds and belly fat I carry around.
When I’m jogging my HR hovers around 150bpm. When I do other workouts (dumbbells and hiking) my HR is around 115bpm.
Do you have any suggestions for me to get the extra poundage off?
I consume approximately 1800 calories per day. All Whole Foods. I drink lots of water. Approximately 80 ounces a day.
I will have an LMNT once in a while. I love them, I just forget to drink one more often.
I take Natural Calm before bed as well as Doc Parsley’s Sleep Remedy(one capsule) each night.
My cortisol levels are spot on through the day according to the saliva test.
Thank you so very much for your time on this matter.
Please keep up the wonderful work.
Karen
3. Food combining? [29:55]
Kim says:
Hi Robb, hi Nicki,
Thanks for all you do. I do best on a very low carb diet but if I were to occasionally have a serving of sweet potato, what is your take on consuming that sweet potato along with protein in the same meal? Should we consume and digest carbs separately from protein or can our bodies handle efficiently processing both at the same time?
Thanks!
Kim
4. Nickel Allergy and Weight [34:31]
Thalin says:
Hey Robb&Nicki, I hope you’re doing great!
I need your help figuring out what’s going on with my body. I have always been overweight but until my first pregnancy I felt I was in a good place, I was eating Paleo and all was good.
Then, after my first pregnancy (about 4 months after giving birth) I gained a lot of weight pretty quickly without obvious changes in my diet. I have been keto, I fasted long and short…no improvement. Then somebody suggested to me that my weight gain might be due to my nickel allergy. I knew I had a sensitivity but never thought that would make me “weight loss resistant” but then got across these papers (mostly Italian researchers) showing a strong link between obesity and nickel allergy:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30153310/
https://www.medpagetoday.org/hematologyoncology/hematology/50971?vpass=1
There’s also a connection to the ROS theory of obesity:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28429306/
Could a low nickel diet help overcome weight loss resistance?
5. Kefir and fighting cytokine storm [39:58]
Rock says:
What are your thoughts on this? Have you seen other research similar to these findings?
“This study illuminates a yet-unrecognized mechanism for cross-kingdom inhibition of pathogenic bacteria cell-cell communication in a probiotic microorganism mixture. A newly identified fungus-secreted molecule—tryptophol acetate—was shown to disrupt quorum sensing pathways of the human gut pathogen V. cholerae. Cross-kingdom interference in quorum sensing may play important roles in enabling microorganism co-existence in multi-population environments, such as probiotic foods and the gut microbiome. This discovery may account for anti-virulence properties of the human microbiome and could aid elucidating health benefits of probiotic products against bacterially associated diseases.”
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/could-a-cup-of-yogurt-cure-your-case-of-covid-19-664976
https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-021-01027-8
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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. The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice.
Nicki: Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary or fitness change. When Robb gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletive. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your britches in a bunch, well there’s always Disney Plus.
Robb: Welcome back, wife.
Nicki: Welcome back. Welcome everyone to another episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio. This is episode 74.
Robb: Holy smokes.
Nicki: I know.
Robb: Getting up there. Getting up there.
Nicki: Making our way to 100 lightening quick speeds.
Robb: Well, if you add in the salty talks, then we-
Nicki: We’re over.
Robb: … we’re probably over.
Nicki: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Let’s see. I wanted to say thank you to the folks who’ve reached out with some suggestion on identifying the raptor that we talked about in the previous episode. Several people suggested that it might be an osprey and I think that’s likely the case.
Robb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nicki: We haven’t seen it since, but looking at photos online, I think that’s the most likely.
Robb: We do think that we saw a bald eagle though right in proximity.
Nicki: Yeah, I do think I’ve seen both, but the one that I was describing last week that had a white belly-
Robb: Was definitely not-
Nicki: … was clearly not a bald eagle.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: So thanks everyone for helping us figure out what that was. Let’s see, what else is going on hubster?
Robb: I don’t know. You’ve got a list of things that ostensibly is going to create this façade of easy, flowing conversation and topical relevance, so why don’t you crack into some of that, given that you typed it up and it’s right there in front of you?
Nicki: I did want to just share a couple things going on. You are such a jerk. I did want to address the glitch that we mentioned last week.
Robb: I don’t know if you’ve ever actually called me a jerk.
Nicki: I’ve called you a jerk plenty of times, just probably not on air.
Robb: You didn’t vocalize it. You just internalized it. Let it all stew.
Nicki: Oh no, I’ve vocally called you a jerk.
Robb: You’ve called me many things.
Nicki: And other things.
Robb: I just don’t remember jerk. Okay, anyway, moving on.
Nicki: Moving on. It looks like that glitch that we talked about last episode where we weren’t able to find our show, people were messaging us on Instagram. People in the Healthy Rebellion were having similar experiences specifically on iTunes. It was available everywhere else, but specifically in the iTunes app store, the show itself wasn’t showing. We had some episodes showing, but not the show.
Robb: Well, and we couldn’t access it.
Nicki: We couldn’t access it to-
Robb: Do anything.
Nicki: … get into our reviews like we normally did. But I’m happy to say that that all seems like that’s resolved. There was a glitch that it was-
Robb: Well, they’re calling it a glitch, but it’s really fascinating who was and not effected by the glitch.
Nicki: Yeah.
Robb: I guess we could dig into that or we don’t need to.
Nicki: I don’t think we need to.
Robb: But it was fascinating who was effected by the glitch and who wasn’t.
Nicki: We were effected, but now all is well.
Robb: For now.
Nicki: Until the next glitch.
Robb: Until the next glitch.
Nicki: Yeah. So anyway, that is that. Let’s see. What else do we have going on? We have my … Zoe is turning nine years old coming up here in a few days.
Robb: That’s a holy cats worthy event.
Nicki: That is a holy cats. Yeah, so my sister and her family are coming up. The girls have not seen their cousins in-
Robb: Two years.
Nicki: Two years. Yeah, they didn’t make it out to Texas to visit us when we were there. Clearly, there was a lot going on in the world that impacted travel. So very much looking forward to seeing family and having the girls play with their cousins. So, that’s coming up. Then I did also want to share some stuff that’s going on inside the Healthy Rebellion. It’s the food week inside our spring 30 day rebel reset. I’m going to share a few takeaways that members have shared inside there so far.
Nicki: So we’ve got one from Jennifer. She says, “It’s day two and I’m becoming more aware of how my body is feeling without certain foods. My stomach is less bloated. I also had to really face the fact that I’ve been overeating a lot. Maybe all my tummy troubles are in part just too much damn food. Tracking really showed me some of the choices I was making were extremely high in calories and not filled with much nutrition. Don’t worry pork rinds, I still heart you.”
Robb: Indeed, I do too. Although, man, pork rinds are hard to find in Montana compared to Texas.
Nicki: Yeah.
Robb: Texas it was like you could throw a rock and get pork rinds.
Nicki: They’re everywhere. Natural Groceries has them here.
Robb: Some. Some.
Nicki: Yeah. All right, our next share that I want to read is from Bethany. She says, “It’s incredible how drastically different I feel when I’m at keto levels of carbs as opposed to just low carb paleo. It literally feels like a switch has been flipped. Suddenly my mental clarity is back, energy levels are stabilizing and I can comfortably go longer between meals. I guess there’s a part of me that was like WTF, I thought I was more metabolically flexible than that, but the major part of me is just so relieved to know that it really is that easy to get to feeling better.”
Robb: Nice.
Nicki: That was pretty cool. Then the last one I want to share is from Dean. He said, “So I had a bit of a revelation today, for me anyway. I think that planning out what I’m going to eat each day for the next 30 days is going to help me stick to my macros and hit my protein goals. I tend to wing it a bit too much in these resets and challenges and then, by evening, I allow myself to indulge in plain, full fat Greek yogurt and berries thinking it’s all good and I need to get more protein in, when in fact I’ve actually overeaten by a lot.’
Nicki: ‘By tracking my food ahead of time for each day of the week, and I’ve hit all my targets by after dinner, then there’s no reason to snack it up.” Some really cool takeaways from folks who are just … so this is the food week. So we’re recording this on Wednesday, April 28th, so Friday the 30th is … Jessica and Squatchy will be leading everybody through week two, which is the sleep call. So next week is all about sleep. We also have some really cool stuff coming up this summer inside the Healthy Rebellion.
Nicki: We have another strength program coming from Sara and Graces of Basis, New York. They’ve just relocated to upstate New York to be closer to Sara’s family.
Robb: New York.
Nicki: Their programs are of the do not miss variety, so we’re really looking forward to that. We also have a couple cooking demos lined up starting with our spring brunch cooking class with Healthy Rebellion member, Chef Eva B. That’s taking place in early May. We also have some really great Healthy Rebellion exclusive interviews coming up as well, which I’ll be sharing those in future episodes. So lots of good stuff ahead.
Robb: We actually found people far better at interviewing than myself to tackle these subject matter experts.
Nicki: Yeah, we’ve got some good stuff. So, that was all of the foreplay. What do you got for us for a news topic?
Robb: Getting the tip in there. It was an interesting week just on a lot of levels, but the anti meat rhetoric has just gone on steroids, or drive, whatever you want to call it. So the current administration released some guidelines. The goal is to reduce red meat consumption by 90% by 2050 to save us from eminent climate disaster. People get really fucking prickly about this stuff because it’s as if I am making light of climate change. I am not.
Robb: What I’m frustrated with is focusing on something that is a rounding error in the rest of climate change and in fact making it the most important thing, which is grass centric animal husbandry. It is stunning that this is the leverage point in this whole story when it is … At best, it may be an actual legitimate solution to sequestering carbon and having some mitigating effects in this whole thing. At worst, it is again a rounding error compared to transportation and a host of other things.
Robb: Epicurus, the fairly famous recipe website, came out and said that they will no longer be promoting recipes with beef in their recipes. Instead, they will highlight chicken and pork and fish. Which the chicken and pork, when you really look into the sustainability stuff, are dog shit compared to grass fed meat. Even got to remind people, even Kafo feed lot meats spends 70-80% of its life on grass, so oye vey. In the links, I have a piece from Diana Rogers, “My Beef with Epicurus,” where she really takes these folks to task and just lays out the facts.
Robb: This is one of those things where Epicurus, like the Biden administration … Again, I’m not fucking politicizing this other than there are outright lies being perpetuated around the relative contribution of say greenhouse gases from animal husbandry. Then there’s a really great short YouTube video called Eating Less Meat Won’t Save The Planet, Here’s Why. I have a link to that. It’s really, really well done. It breaks down the claims around water usage and methane is held accountable in context. It was just a recent piece describing how the monumental amounts of methane that are released within forest lands because that’s life. Life produces greenhouse gases.
Robb: When it’s part of a cycle-
Nicki: Get rid of all the caribou, get rid of all the elk.
Robb: That’s what fucking people are suggesting. I’m clearly frustrated by this because we’ve been beating this drum for a long time. I did a lot of cautionary warning. I’m like, this stuff is going to get politicized. It’s going to be used as a truncheon to bludgeon people down. If you pop your head up, you’re going to get your head lopped off. That’s happened to us to some degree.
Robb: There is pushback. There is some hope out there. Honestly, for the folks listening, if you’re not confident in your understanding of this topic, give Sacred Cow, the film or the book, a read or a watch. This link to the Eating Less Meat Won’t Save The Planet, Here’s Why. This isn’t a big opinion piece. The guy interviews top scientists in the kind of animal husbandry field. We unpack the claims versus the reality, which hopefully we do that on any given complex topic. But it is important and honestly I can’t fight this alone. Diana can’t fight this alone. This really falls on y’all and we need to be well educated.
Robb: We do need to be professional in the way that we handle this stuff. We can’t rise to the baiting of the vegan mob and all that. There are absolute pricks about this stuff, and there’s all kinds of squirrely things where, for a while now, climate change has become a social political issue. It’s a race issue. Every issue imaginable has now been wrapped into it so that, if you raise some questions around it, you are not just a climate change denier, you’re also a white supremacist, anti woman, anti trans. It’s mind boggling.
Robb: I think that all of that shitty logic is ultimately going to backfire on people, but it’s a scary time right now because it’s just simply saying, hey grazing animals don’t release that much greenhouse gas. I could be called a white supremacist whatever because this is where the folks in this scene go. We really need our own mob, hopefully an educated mob and one that is a respectful mob, to be able to tackle this stuff. It’s funny, there are some internal back and forth. There’s this low carb practitioners network that I’ve been a part of for a long time.
Robb: It’s just now dawning on folks that this is a real deal thing that, if you want access to nutrient dense foods and the foods you want to eat, and also some of these folks just acknowledged, well this science is really bad. It’s like, yeah, we’ve been saying that. Insufficient people have been taking this to task. People have secured huge amounts of money for trying to change the dietary guidelines and trying to prove the insulin hypothesis.
Robb: For at least seven or eight years I’ve been saying that is a waste of time. This is where we need to be fighting this fight, and we had an opportunity to get out in front of this, and now we are fighting a complete defensive trench warfare deal trying to reclaim real estate, which sucks. But that’s where we are. That was much longer than-
Nicki: That was your uplifting segment for today’s-
Robb: Fuck, I know.
Nicki: … episode. Okay, yeah, we’ll link to both Diana’s article, “My Beef with Epicurus,” and that short YouTube video that Robb mentioned in the show notes. We do have a review winner this week and that goes to Power Recovery. He says … I don’t know, he or she. “One of the early six. I may not have been an original six, but I’ve been following Robb since 2009 or 2010. I’ve worked through food intolerances and making sure I improve Robb’s three questions. How do you look? My wife has no complaints. How do you feel? Great, as long as I keep up with electrolytes and avoid eggs. How do you perform? Getting ready for my third master world championships for highland games.”
Robb: That’s pretty damn good.
Nicki: Awesome. He said, “Yes, LMNT chocolate salt is great in coffee. Yes, I use it in my unflavored protein powder, but the first time I got an order I ended up using eight pouches during a competition, and let’s just say I wasn’t used to that much magnesium. Anyways, stay salty and keep pumping out quality education.” Thank you Power Recovery for your review. Send us an email to [email protected] with your tee shirt size and your mailing address and we’ll send you a Healthy Rebellion Radio tee shirt.
Robb: Which will probably be an extra, extra large.
Nicki: That’s right, Highland Games, strong dude. All right, next up we’ve got … Why are you laughing at me today?
Robb: Just derailing you with every opportunity.
Nicki: You are. You are. Okay, Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company LMNT. Watermelon is continuing to make a splash, and I wanted to share a comment left on one of our LMNT Instagram posts by GwenK44. She says, this is pretty cool. “If I could choose one drink for the rest of my life, hands down it would be watermelon salt. You guys hit it out of the park with this one.” That was pretty darn cool. I also wanted to share something from one of our healthy rebellion members, Tracy.
Nicki: She shared an unexpected way to use LMNT raw. She’s been using it in jerky. She says, “I marinated my chicken breast for this batch of jerky for a few days, but it just wasn’t salty enough. So even though it sounds nuts, I added some LMNT raw to olive oil, Moroccan horisa pepper sauce and some smokes Salish sea salt. Then I painted it on with a silicon food brush and popped it back into the dehydrator for an hour or so. Wow, can’t stop snacking, salty AF and a good source of protein.”
Nicki: She says, “Pro tip, jerky seems to taste better if it’s dehydrated, then painted on with more sauce and/or spices, then dehydrated again to seal the sauce onto the meat.” So pretty cool there. We need to try that. We have a dehydrator, but-
Robb: We have massively underutilized it.
Nicki: Yeah. I’m searching for the word. I’m ashamed to say we haven’t used it in like three years.
Robb: Three years at least.
Nicki: Since Reno.
Robb: Since Reno.
Nicki: We did not use it in Texas.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: Okay, we need to get on some jerky. Maybe if you go hunting this year and get us a deer or an elk.
Robb: Or I get eaten by a bear and then maybe somebody else can deal with that bullshit. Fingers crossed.
Nicki: All right folks … Jesus Robb. This episode will go down as the … I don’t know. The Robb-
Robb: The one that convinced us that we should just close this all down and be gone.
Nicki: Right. You can get four boxes of LMNT. When you buy three, you get the fourth one free by choosing the LMNT value bundle. You can choose your four favorite flavors. Again, that’s you buy three, get the fourth free at drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drinklmnt.com/robb. Okay, let’s go to some questions.
Robb: Let’s do that, Nicki.
Nicki: And let’s just see.
Robb: Nicki, let’s move on to our first question, shall we?
Nicki: We shall. This one is from Chase on low acid and overgrowth. He says, “Hello Robb and Nicki, my sister has been experiencing severe digestive distress for about 18 months. She had existing digestive issues from overuse of fake protein bar type foods and then, when she quit taking birth control, her symptoms rapidly got worse. Eating one ounce of avocado would bloat her stomach by six plus inches. Reflux is a very common thing as well. I finally talked her into trying a low FODMAP diet, fasting, etc, and we finally ended up having her see a specialist.”
Nicki: “They gave her an antibiotic and said see you in six months. Her physician hasn’t responded to questions, so I figured I would reach out. My question is, should we followup immediately with a probiotic? If so, do you have any recommendations? As far as her stomach acid recovering, is there a natural gradual process after balancing the microbiome, or is this something that requires supplementation or both? Thanks so much for any insight. Once again, our medical system f’ing sucks. Chase.”
Robb: Man, there’s a lot in this. Should you follow up with a probiotic? I don’t know. As we’ve discussed on here, previously it seems like some people do wonderfully with pro and prebiotics, also prebiotic fiber, and other people it just ruins them. This is why I’ve been really … Dr. Ruscio’s protocol is great for a lot of people, but it just doesn’t pull everybody back. I’m a good example of that. I really wish that I had more latitude even in the plant material that I could eat, the low carb plant material.
Robb: I get gas and bloating, like IDS type problems from a lot different plant stuff. The probiotics just didn’t help. So you could try it. Seed is a very, very well respected brand. Dr. Ruscio’s protocol, the three legged stool protocol that he has. That’s stool as in imaginary … you have three legs of a stool, not that you’re pooping down your leg with a stool. There’s others out there, but you can give that a shot. Some people do great, again, with fiber. Some people do better without fiber.
Robb: Is there a way to stomach acid recovering? Betaine hydrochloride is one of these old go to standbys. Apple cider vinegar capsules. I used to just recommend the apple cider vinegar, but then became aware that it was dissolving people’s teeth, so the capsules are kind of a nice potential option. Again, these things work for some folks and not for everybody. It definitely sounds like there’s something significant going on here. It could be a fungal overgrowth. It could be like h pylori. I’d be really curious if she was screened for h pylori in this scenario.
Nicki: He doesn’t mention which type of specialist she saw.
Robb: I’m assuming a GI doc, but it could have been a podiatrist. I don’t know. It seems like screening for some pathogenic organisms like that, like an O&P, an ova and parasite. Just even a very mainstream medical gut screen seems like a good place to start here because, if she has h pylori, that’s definitely something that needs addressing and needs monitoring and whatnot. So yeah.
Nicki: Okay. We have a question from Karen on her workout conundrum. “Hi Robb and Nicki. I just love you guys. I love the homeschooling bits. I homeschooled my two children, now ages 23 and 26, and I feel it was the best parenting decision I made. I’ve been a loyal listener for 10 years now. Time flies.” 10 years, yeah I guess that was when we first started-
Robb: 2010 when we launched.
Nicki: … the book, right around the book time. Craziness. Karen says, “I’m a 58 year old female, 5’5 and 150 pounds. I’ve been eating a paleo whole food diet for 10 years. My functional medicine doctor informed me that my blood work is great across the board. I sleep great, seven and a half to eight and a half hours every night and my aura ring gives me great readiness scores every morning. My question has to do with my type of exercise in relation to my heart rate. I have a resting heart rate of 45 beats per minute. I’ve been jogging since I was 16 years old.”
Nicki: “I usually jog every other day for three miles at a 12 minute mile pace. I then do 30 minutes of dumbbells and basic body weight workouts on the opposite days. I rarely take a day off from exercise. I have no injuries, so I feel as though I’m not over training. I keep busy throughout my day and I always get at least 10,000 steps in every day. I hike outside all year long as well. Ohio can get pretty cold in the winter, but my dog and I tough it out. My problem is that I cannot get rid of the nagging 15 pounds in the belly fat that I carry around.”
Nicki: “When I’m jogging, my heart rate hovers around 150 beats per minute. When I do other workouts, dumbbells and hiking, my heart rate is around 115 beats per minute. Do you have any suggestions for me to get the extra poundage off? I consume approximately 1800 calories per day, all whole foods. I drink lots of water and approximately 80 ounces a day. I will have an LMNT once in a while. I love them. I just forget to drink one more often. I take natural Calm before bed as well as Dr. Parsley’s sleep remedy each night. My cortisol levels are spot on throughout the day according to the saliva test. Thank you so much. Please keep up the wonderful work.”
Robb: I mean, really two thoughts here. One would be getting a pretty comprehensive endocrine profile, hormonal profile, including thyroid. It sounds like things are on point with that, but being 58 years old, the whole menopause, perimenopause. Maybe there could be some benefit there from tinkering with hormones.
Nicki: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Robb: Also, I’ve got to say, this bums people out. People are continually stunned. It’s kind of both heart wrenching and a little bit funny when people are over in the keto gains macro calculator when they’re spinning up their boot camps. It doesn’t happen quite as much in our resets, but it does happen where people will run their numbers and they’re like, oh my God, that’s how little food I get.
Nicki: There was actually a comment on that this morning. The gal ran her numbers and came up with 1235 calories or something like that.
Robb: Yeah. It seems preposterously low.
Nicki: Well, I was just going to comment. She mentions her calories, but we also don’t know how much protein she’s getting.
Robb: Well, that’s kind of the rub here. Folks will calculate these things. Oh, that seems so low. If you get adequate protein, it’s often hard to get that low calorie level. It’s actually hard to eat to that because it tends to be highly satiating. We have never … We’ve had folks that … because you never really know for sure what people are really doing. Oh, I’m really weighing and measuring my food. So maybe we’ve had some folks go on some bioidentical hormone replacement and whatnot and they’re like, oh the weight loss was really easy after that.
Robb: So that is somewhere to look. That’s a stone to turn over for sure. But at the same time, I think a lot of days I maybe eat 2000-2200 calories and that’s doing jujitsu and stuff. A lot of people … This is where it’s interesting. There’s folks out there like the Matt Stone. I’m forgetting the main PhD guy talking about this, but they’re like, “You should be eating 4000 calories a day.” They would claim that my thyroid is too low and that my metabolism is too low. I’m not chronically cold. I don’t have chronically cold feet. We live in a cold environment.
Robb: Yes, I can get chilly going outside without a sweater on some days, but it’s also 32 degrees with the wind blowing, so it seems reasonable around that. So I don’t think that’s the case. We’ve just seen enough folks that eat a nutrient dense, largely whole, minimally processed food, and the calorie levels to make all that work are pretty darn low. But the nutrition that you get from it is remarkably high. So I think definitely investigating the hormones seems like a smart thing to do, and then follow that keto gains macro nutrient calculator and set it for weight loss. Set the protein at the high end and then go from there.
Nicki: Yeah. I will say we mentioned Deans comment earlier about … I would just decide that I would have some Greek yogurt and some berries because it’s healthy. Several people commented in that thread saying similar things. It’s like, oh yeah, for sure. I’m a little hungry. It’s yogurt with a little bit of granola or berries. Oh, what the hell, I’ll add some honey in there too because it’s paleo. It’s a whole food. So I think that a lot of folks end up gravitating towards these sort of paleo whole food snacks which aren’t really contributing to the desired body composition.
Robb: Right. Right.
Nicki: How do you feel about the jogging?
Robb: All that activity level seems fine. She’s doing some strength training, she’s doing some low intensity cardio. That all seems good. This is where the, if it fits your macros, people have some of this right. Calories do end up mattering. Even if we’re eating whole paleo keto foods and whatnot, if you’re overeating, you’re overeating. When we were in our getting ready to move phase, which was like six months long, and it was the election and it was this and it was that, I got chubby and I was still keto, but I was smashing that Rebel ice cream and gained a good five or 10 pounds.
Robb: Now that we’ve moved and we’re back into jujitsu, and I’m not stressed the fuck out all the time the way that I was then, it came off. So I didn’t have to get in and super duper tweak things, but I also … In the evening, I’d be like, oh a big bowl of Rebel ice cream would be nice. It’s like, yeah, it would be nice, but I don’t need that right now. Because I wasn’t super stressed out and everything, and I’m able to make a better decision in that moment, whereas before it was just kind of survival.
Nicki: Yep.
Robb: So the calories do end up mattering.
Nicki: Yeah.
Robb: And the composition matters too. This is where really emphasizing the protein makes that level of calorie intake doable because you’re just not hungry and you’re getting adequate nutrition.
Nicki: I’ll mention dairy too. She says paleo whole foods diet, so I’m not sure if she’s excluding diary just by default. But I will point to the fact that a lot of people find that dairy is that extra thing. If they eliminate that, not only do they feel better, but it helps that weight loss plateau kind of budge.
Robb: Yeah, it’s just easy to overeat with dairy.
Nicki: Super easy.
Robb: It tastes good. It kind of spins the dopamine receptors in our brain and stuff like that.
Nicki: Super calorically dense.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: Another place to look.
Robb: Oh, Ray Pete was the other guy. PhD and he wants you to eat raw sugar and eat 4000 or 5000 calories a day to ramp up your metabolism and all that.
Nicki: Okay, our next question is from Kim. She is curious about food combining. “Hi Robb and Nicki, thanks for all you do. I do best on a very low carb diet, but if I were to occasionally have a serving of sweet potato, what is your take on consuming that sweet potato along with protein in the same meal? Should we consume and digest carbs separately from protein, or can our bodies handle efficiently processing both at the same time?
Robb: Kim, this is some old stuff. I think there’s a little bit of wisdom in the food combining stuff in that, if somebody is really compromised and their digestion is wonky, really making the meal simple, like maybe one item or protein and veggies, or starch and veggies, or what have you can simplify things. But we are opportunistic omnivores similar to bears, similar to pigs. When we eat a meal, whatever the meal composition, we release digestive enzymes for the full compliment.
Robb: If we eat an avocado, we don’t just release lipases. We release amalyase, we release prodiases and pepsin, digestain or pepsin based digestive enzymes. So we’re breaking everything down. Part of that is that all foods typically have at least some of all the stuff in there, so we’re being efficient in breaking that stuff down. So unless you get some sort of weird gas, bloating, GI distress, I see no problem with mixed meals.
Robb: That said, some of modern culinary delights, sometimes they look at a marinara where you’ve got like 50 different things in this pot. That could maybe-
Nicki: Be a little irritating.
Robb: … present a little bit of a challenge digestively. Again, somebody that’s really robust and healthy, low stress may not be a factor for people that are high stress. Even when people start training really hard, they notice that they need kind of simpler meals or they get some digestive distress from it.
Nicki: Okay. It’s time for the Healthy Rebellion Radio trivia. Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor drink LMNT is giving a box of LMNT recharge electrolytes to three lucky winners.
Robb: You fraud.
Nicki: Selected at random.
Robb: You fraud.
Nicki: Answer the following question correctly. Robb, your question this week is why are you calling me a fraud?
Robb: Because your job is to set this thing up, and part of setting it up is having a radio trivia question written, and we have none. You’re just making this up.
Nicki: Well, I was going to come up with something on the fly and then you kept calling me a fraud, so I figured that would be a good-
Robb: Okay. The answer to this week’s trivia is making shit up.
Nicki: No, the answer should be-
Robb: You’re telling me what my answer should be?
Nicki: On the fly. On the fly.
Robb: Fine, on the fly. That’s way better than making shit up.
Nicki: Folks, if you-
Robb: Folks, we’ll accept either answer this week, and we’ll also accept the answer of Robb and Nicki, hang up your spurs. It’s time to move on to something else. We’ll take that one too.
Nicki: Also, I believe that I had sent out a cry for help in a previous episode like, hey, we’d love some help with some trivia questions. Nobody sent us any.
Robb: Maybe nobody cares.
Nicki: Maybe we got one. Yeah, maybe nobody cares.
Robb: Maybe nobody cares about trivia.
Nicki: Maybe we should … Okay, that’s a trivia. Should we do away with the trivia?
Robb: There is something. Okay, should we do away with the trivia question.
Nicki: Do you like the idea or should we do it-
Robb: Do you like the trivia or is it-
Nicki: I think people like the opportunity to win stuff.
Robb: Maybe they don’t.
Nicki: Maybe they don’t.
Robb: Do you like the trivia, yes or no?
Nicki: So that’s the new question?
Robb: That’s the new question, yes.
Nicki: Okay. Sorry to make this so confusing.
Robb: Nothing confusing to me.
Nicki: To play, go to robbwolfe.com/trivia and enter. That’s not a … They just have to answer the question yes or no, and either way they’re eligible to win.
Robb: Yeah, I don’t care at this point. I just want to know are we wasting our time on that.
Nicki: Okay, okay. We’ll randomly select three people with either of those answers to win a box.
Robb: Because this could remove one weekly ass chapping that I get when there isn’t a legitimate question there.
Nicki: Oh you need some-
Robb: I’m very set upon my life and things in general.
Nicki: You need some ass chapping occasionally or a red ass, the way that Michael Rutherford used to-
Robb: Rutherford.
Nicki: … refer to it. Okay, cut off the answer to this week’s trivia and be able to win is Thursday, May 6th at midnight. Winners will be notified via email and we’ll also announce the winners on Instagram as well. This is open to residents of the US only. Okay, our next question is from Taline. Taline is a friend of ours that we got the chance to have dinner with in Italy.
Robb: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ages ago.
Nicki: Over 10 years ago.
Robb: Yeah, 2008, 2009.
Nicki: Because you did a crossfit nutrition seminar in Denmark, and then after that we went and spent a week in Italy before returning to the states. We met with her, I think, in Milan.
Robb: Yep.
Nicki: Yep, and had a lovely dinner. So she’s been a follower of your work for a long, long time, early in crossfit and all that good stuff. So Taline has a question on nickel allergy and weight. She says, “Hi, Robb and Nicki. I hope you’re doing great. I need your help figuring out what’s going on with my body. I’ve always been overweight but, until my first pregnancy, I felt I was in a good place. I was eating paleo and all was good. Then, after my first pregnancy, about four months after giving birth, I gained a lot of weight pretty quickly without obvious changes in my diet.”
Nicki: “I have been keto, I fasted long and short, no improvement. Then somebody suggested to me that my weight gain might be due to my nickel allergy. I knew I had a sensitivity but never thought that that would make me weight loss resistant. But then got across these papers, mostly Italian researchers showing a strong link between obesity and nickel allergy. There’s also a connection to the ROS-“
Robb: Reactive oxygen species.
Nicki: … theory of obesity. Could a low nickel diet help overcome weight loss resistance?
Robb: It’s a really interesting question. It certainly could. I would still be curious how this could feed into, even on the reactive oxygen species theory of obesity, which I think could play a factor … it certainly plays a factor in oxidized LDL and cardiovascular disease. This is a part of this. Whenever we have a systemic stress, what’s one of the things that we do just kind of spontaneously? We tend to over eat and it can disturb sleep, and it can do this. So it ends up being kind of multifactorial.
Robb: So I would put this in the, yeah it could be a factor. I would generally assign this pretty low probability. If somebody knows that they have a nickel allergy, then they probably shouldn’t have lots of piercings or they need to make sure that it’s nickel free material so that they’re not getting some of that process occurring, the reactive oxygen species process. As far as dietary nickel sources, that’s definitely a Chris Masterjohn kind of question. I think some of these papers detail some of the more nickel laden foods like rice is actually pretty high in arsenic comparatively, so they recommend that people kind of mix up their rice consumption.
Robb: But this is certainly somewhere that we could look. Personally, I would still look at it more as this could be contributing to overeating and/or hormonal dysregulation. That is kind of the mechanism. So still we’re going to circle back around and probably need to address some hormones potentially and possibly modify the total caloric load.
Nicki: Yeah. Obviously, after giving birth, sleep is pretty impacted, so there might have been multiple confounding variables playing.
Robb: Without a doubt.
Nicki: Having a role here. I just got my … I don’t have the results back, but there’s a woman in the rebellion, Kristen, who does a lot of kind of hormone … looks at a lot of women’s hormones. She’s a natural … or what’s the … nutritional therapy practitioner.
Robb: Yep.
Nicki: So I just did something called a dutch test. Basically you pee on-
Robb: Which the girls thought that we were testing our dogs.
Nicki: Yeah, because our dog’s name is Dutch. So you pee on this little strip four to five times during a day on a certain day of your cycle, and it measures all of your hormone levels. So I just did that Sunday and sent my results off. So I don’t have anything back yet, but I know other women in the rebellion who have also done this test and it’s been pretty eye opening. So Taline, that might be something to consider too if you’re wanting to kind of get a better sense of what’s going on.
Robb: The dutch test is pretty cool in that it doesn’t just show the current primary hormones, but it shows the intermediate metabolites because, if you have let’s say low cortisol or even high cortisol, why? Historically, that’s been a big guessing game. Whereas with the dutch test, in theory, you can start seeing some of these intermediary metabolites, so you can get a sense of, oh things are getting log jammed here. They’re overemphasized there, and then you can formulate a game plan to address that.
Robb: It also really requires as well steeped practitioner-
Nicki: To do the interpretation.
Robb: … to really do the interpretation. It’s not an immediately obvious thing. It’s complex.
Nicki: Right. When I get my results, I might share those.
Robb: We will have a salty talk on that one.
Nicki: We might do something in the rebellion where we kind of do a little highlight on that.
Robb: Cool.
Nicki: Onto our fifth question today from Rock on Keifer and fighting the cytokine storm. Rock says, “What are your thoughts on this? Have you seen other research similar to these findings? Any quotes from a paper? This study eliminates a yet unrecognized mechanism for cross kingdom inhibition of pathogenic bacteria, cell to cell communication and a probiotic microorganism mixture. A newly identified fungus secreted molecule, tryptophol acetate was shown to disrupt quorum sensing pathways of the human gut pathogen v cholorrhea.”
Nicki: Cross kingdom interference and quorum sensing may play important roles in enabling microorganism coexistence in multi population environments such as probiotic foods and the gut microbiome. This discovery may account for antiviralants, properties of the human microbiome, and could aid elucidating health benefits of probiotic products against bacterially associated diseases.”
Robb: We have links to some papers in there. It’s important to mention here this is looking primarily at bacterial infections. He mentioned cytokine storm, which currently folks usually associate that with COVID or even influenza or whatnot. This is just one of these lynch pin elements of the innate immune response, which we are listening to the Dark Horse podcast last night. Bret was interviewing Gert Van De Bossche. Is that his name?
Nicki: I can’t remember his last name. His first name is Gert, yeah.
Robb: We were still in the thick of them just kind of doing a-
Nicki: Deep dive into-
Robb: Deep dive into immunology. The basics of the innate versus adaptive immune response. Yeah, this is where things like probiotic foods potentially are incredibly beneficial. This is where just being outdoors, being around other people, being around animals. It’s funny because you will have some of the evidence based folks poo poo things like probiotics. They’ll say, well you don’t even … that stuff doesn’t even seed your gut. That’s true generally. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. But what it definitely does is it helps tune the gut response to different environmental inputs.
Robb: So even if the bacteria going through the gut don’t populate it, it doesn’t mean it has zero effect on it. So it seems to be signaling molecules and tuning the gut for recognizing self versus non self and, in this case, setting up this innate immune response, which is really, really important for a host of different things. Identifying cancers early, to say nothing of viral and bacterial infections. So yeah, it’s a thing. This is where probiotic foods can be really helpful for some people and not so helpful for other people.
Robb: This is maybe also a part of why we’re starting to see increasing rates of COVID specifically in kids and younger populations, and there’s multiple factors there. But we have a year now of really limiting the exposure that folks get from immune tuning influences. The microbiome of other people, being outside, vitamin D levels. Then, in this Dark Horse podcast, Garrett makes the point that it could be a disaster trying to mass immunize the global population because you’re creating an evolutionary selection pressure for COVID to adapt to infecting younger, healthier people.
Robb: It’s still up in the air. That’s a different podcast. Give that one a listen. There’s definitely a lot going on here, but there’s a lot that supports this. It also shines a light on, well, maybe super hygiene hand washing and masks and social distancing. Not saying those can’t be used in a smart targeted way, but we are dumb to assume that there is absolutely no side effect, that there’s no cost associated with that. Folks present this as if there’s only win and no downsides.
Nicki: Only upsides.
Robb: Yeah, there’s only upside. That is a lie. It is short sighted. Again, I don’t know exactly what the right answer is, but God damn it, just having a conversation around that that, well there may be some pluses and minuses to this. So what could we do in scenarios like this to help maintain that innate immune response and not end up with this piosity of immune tuning in that innate side of things.
Robb: I remember it was maybe April of last year. There was a review paper suggesting that all the social distancing and the hand washing and all that stuff could potentially lead to a scenario in which people had diminished immune response somewhere down the road.
Nicki: All right.
Robb: I’m trying to be concise here. So yeah.
Nicki: I don’t know if you nailed the concise on that, but you did end … you stuck the landing.
Robb: Thank you. Thank you. However much I drifted, the landing was stuck.
Nicki: All right, folks. That is a wrap. Thank you for suffering through this episode with Robb and I today. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Please show support to our show sponsor. Grab your own value bundle. You can buy three boxes and get the fourth box free. Choose from our new watermelon salt, citrus salt, raspberry salt, orange chocolate salt, mango chile, lemon habanero and the raw unflavored, which now we know is good in jerky.
Nicki: The URL for that is drinkLMNT.com/Robb. That’s drinkLMNT.com/Robb. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend and get outside. Get some fresh air. Get some vitamin D on yourselves and we’ll see you next time.
Robb: Bye everybody.
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I wonder if Karen could benefit from slowing the jogs. Yes, I know a lot of people might think three 12-minute miles is low intensity, but if it’s putting her heart at 150 bpm that might not be the case for her. At 58 years old, Maffetone would have her around 120, right? That’s roughly where she is with weights and hikes. A half hour above her aerobic zone might be too stressful. Yes, she said she has good-looking cortisol tests, but exercising for more than brief intervals at three times resting heart rate struck me as something to consider changing.