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News topic du jour:
https://www.q13fox.com/news/fallen-seattle-officer-was-a-real-life-wonder-woman?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerefolin
1. Benefit to a Smaller IF Window? [19:19]
Max says:
Dearest Robb & Nicki,
I’ve been making my way through the podcast archive and to my recollection have yet to come across the answer to this quandary. I’ve been practicing intermittent fasting for about 5 months now, sometimes ketogenic with minimal fat intake in the morning, sometimes full-on starvation mode. Generally I break my fast between 2-3 in the afternoon and get my last bite of the day in by 8:30 or so. I recall hearing John Berardi talk about his period of IF experimentation and mentioning that sometimes he would limit his food intake window to as little as two hours or one heaping, Spartan-esque meal.
Do either of you have an opinion regarding the potential benefit or detriment of such a small eating window? When I’ve tried to limit myself to cramming in 90-95% of my unfasted calorie intake, which is 100% of my protein/carb intake, into a single meal or two small meals in just a couple of hours, I find myself really having to shovel it in. Either feeling too full to take in the amount of calories that I feel I need, especially if it’s a particularly active day or week. Logic leads me to believe I shouldn’t trade a smaller window of eating for packing my stomach so full of quality grub that I don’t feel like moving afterwards. I may have just answered my own question.
Thanks for all of the effort you guys put into sharing positive tips and information with the portion of us willing to listen. Cheers!
-Max
2. Juicing – GERD – Electrolytes [26:18]
Cynthia says:
Hi Robb & Nikki.
I love your podcast and the work you do. It is refreshing to listen to someone who really tries to give unbiased information.
I have 2 questions (if only one is allowed please pick either one. Thank you :))
1. Should LMNT be drunk with meals? My thinking is that it may counteract stomach acid and exacerbate GERD. I do have reflux, so I am trying to not make it worse.
2. Have you watched “Super Juice Me” (it is a 2014 documentary where 8 people with 22 combined diseases get remarkably better with 28 days of juicing)?
According to many people in the paleo/carnivore community drinking that amount of carbs/sugar/fructose would make you sick, yet people got better, not worse.
I am trying to bounce my ideas with someone smarter and more knowledgeable than me.
So if some people get better with fruit and vegetable juices only, and other people get better with a carnivore diet, do you see a reason why combining both approaches would be detrimental? For example, having a fresh-pressed fruit juice (or even a couple of oranges) with my steak.
Thank you.
3. Roasted Unmalted Barley [32:56]
Irvin says:
Hi Robb & the Wolf Team
I like the sound of your statements, and arguments, please keep it going.
I am experimenting with Paleo/Primal/Bulletproof experience whilst unemployed (n=1), and I am loving it; however, I have a question regarding my love of Guinness as a drink (I live in Europe). I am interested to know the effects of ‘Roasting’ on unmalted barley (Main ingredient for Guinness)? I have read that it chars the sugars, and is high on the ‘Lovibond Scale’,but what does this mean in ‘laymans’ terms as compared to barley for beer per se, is it better than normal beer for consumption?
I know that the beer is my choice, as opposed to wine for the better Paleo affect, I am just trying to challenge the ‘low beer’ scenario with drinking Guinness, as it is not the same as the light coloured beers, and I can’t find the solution so, I am basically asking you guys for help 🙂
Whilst I am taking the liberty, would or, does toasting bread change its properties as a starch, or sugar significantly for the body?
Thanking you in advance
……..Irvin……..
4. Digestion Issues [41:46]
Tom says:
Hi Robb, love the podcast and thoughtful answers,
I’ve always had digestion issues with gas and diarrhea and spent around 10 years of my adult life eating SAD with a lot of fast food. My wife and I lost a lot following ketogains and I got into single digit BF levels. The digestion issues didn’t go away and out of an experiment on myself I shifted to a very low fat (40-60g/day) high carb (200-400g depending on activity from rice, potatoes, oats, and sourdough bread) diet while keeping my protein up between 1.2 and 1.5g/lb bodyweight. I don’t notice a ton of difference in training, A1C is 5.1, fasting glucose always 85-96 if this makes a difference (never diagnosed with diabetes to be clear). The biggest change is that my digestion issues have gone away, but I miss the ribeyes and bacon I used to have. Is there something I should look at to be able to digest fat more effectively, or just accept that it’s what my body seems to prefer? I really like the low carb community, but I feel like an outsider with the high carb intake.
Thanks
5. Give Up on the Chin-Up? [45:58]
Nicolle says:
Have you ever witness a female who could not do a chin-up make it her goal to get one and succeed? How long did it take her? How did she do it? For me, this is the holy grail of body weight exercises and the last one I have to master. I’ve been trying (with the help of resistance bands, negatives and my trainer) for over a year now and I just don’t feel like i’m going to get there. What strategies do you use?I I’m 5’8″, 135 lbs and I can do 20 push-ups so I started with that. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thank you!
Nicolle
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Transcript:
Download a copy of the 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 a 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. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change. Warning. 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+.
Robb: So we’re really going to do this?
Nicki: We are rolling. Lots of prerecording chuckles today.
Robb: Dude. Oh my god. Yeah. Normally we do this in the morning, and we’re doing this in the afternoon. I got mauled at jiu-jitsu, so we’ll see if I-
Nicki: We both got mauled at jiu-jitsu.
Robb: … stroke out before this wraps up, so yep.
Nicki: Sometimes getting mauled at jiu-jitsu is a good thing though. It kind of resets the…
Robb: Calming.
Nicki: Calming? I don’t know if I would call it calming.
Robb: Near death experiences are calming.
Nicki: It’s the calm after the storm?
Robb: Something like that.
Nicki: Okay. Well, I guess we’ll just jump right in. I don’t really have any… I mean, we’ve got lots of stuff in process inside The Healthy Rebellion. Our summer strength program with Sarah and Grayson is starting in early July. We’re in the middle of our book club. Lots of live chats on the book this summer, but I don’t have anything super announcement worthy, housekeeping-y to share this week. Is there anything you want to share about what’s going on inside The Rebellion?
Robb: No. We’ve had a lot of new signups. And usually within a couple of days folks will comment, they’re like, “Wow, people are actually friendly and helpful.” So I guess shameless plug for us, but there’s a lot of interesting discussion. Not everybody agrees on everything, but people lay out their case, and they can say, “Okay, I agree to disagree.” It’s really refreshing and I’ve been doing-
Nicki: And civil.
Robb: … and civil. I’ve been doing stuff like this for 22, 23 years. It can definitely be a grind at times, like it’s “Whoa is me. I get to work from home,” and all this stuff. But the vitriol and the ugliness of social media… There was a time where, just like forums and stuff, you would get to know some people, and there was kind of some comradery and you’d feel like you’d made some progress. And then sometimes it would get a little bit too large and there’d be a troll.
Nicki: Every once in a while there’d be a troll, or it’d be some drama.
Robb: And usually, you could kind of oust that person with a little bit of drama attached. But social media started off kind of cool. I have mentioned before, I learned a ton, I learned a ton from people because of questions they ask mainly, and then it just kind of became something else. And it’s just refreshing that there’s a place… I really enjoying going in there and just seeing what people have going on. And even though we founded it, we can croak, and hopefully that thing would just keep motoring along and would do great and it would be this little beacon of hope and rationality for the world. So if I get suicided like John McAfee did-
Nicki: Dude! Yeah. We just got home from jiu-jitsu to learn that John McAfee has been found dead in a Spanish prison. Apparently he tweeted back in November of 2019 that he was getting some kind of-
Robb: … Cryptic.
Nicki: … cryptic messages from US government officials that said, “We’re going to kill yourself.” That’s how he phrased it, “We are going to kill yourself.” And he said, “If I’m suicided, I did not do it.” So he tattooed on his arm “whacked.” And so, “If I get whacked, it’s not by my own hand,” it’s what he said. And this was obviously a year and a half ago, two years ago.
Robb: But he got out of-
Nicki: But he got whacked.
Robb: … eating his own penis.
Nicki: I know. That’s the funniest thing because we were just chatting with our friend Dave Duley, who you all have heard on this podcast before. Back when McAfee said that Bitcoin would reach like a million dollars by 2020 or he’d eat his own dick… And for some reason that just popped up, and we were having a little-
Robb: Like two days ago. Yeah.
Nicki: … chat about it. Duley was like, “Where is that SOB?” And I’m like, “Yeah. It’s about”. Clearly Bitcoin… It hit a little bit of a high, and then it started dropping again. So we were just making a crass joke about him, and-
Robb: And then he died.
Nicki: … Low and behold, he died. I don’t know what else to say about that. But times are strange, folks-
Robb: They are indeed.
Nicki: … on many, many levels. What else?
Robb: I don’t know. Our news topic du jour, I’ve got the n-acetylcysteine and then also Lexi, so I don’t know…
Nicki: You want to jump over there?
Robb: Well, if you want to scroll me up, since you’re driving.
Nicki: I’ll scroll you down.
Nicki: Well, let’s first talk about the n-acetylcysteine because we just did that Salty Talk, and then-
Robb: So if folks remember from the last episode, we talked about n-acetylcysteine. We started off to do just a regular Q and A podcast, and the first question was, “Hey, do you really think n-acetylcysteine is all it’s cracked up to be? Why would the government jump on it with both feet?” And I got in and really started looking at it. As part of my diligence, I looked into the toxicology of it, which is … You can’t even find the toxicology because it’s used specifically as a recovery aid to save people from overdosing on things like Tylenol. So that was just an interesting exploration.
Robb: N-acetylcysteine has been more front of mind in the past, looking at liver detoxes and different things like that, but it kind of becomes this thing that’s just kind of background noise. So I had forgotten a lot about it. But in getting in and digging around, what was interesting, as we talked about in that episode, it’s this amazing recovery aid for a specific injury to the liver and kidneys. And then it got me thinking, “Well, wow. Why would they jump on this?” Well, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is this thing that’s increasing like crazy. It’s super prominent among kids.
Robb: So I kind of made a prediction, which is that at some point some iteration of n-acetylcysteine will be patented, wrapped together and whatnot, and will rollout for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. So that is yet to be seen, although there is emerging research looking at it for exactly that purpose.
Robb: And unbeknownst to me, there’s this product called Cerefolin. Cerefolin is a prescription medication made by Pamlab that contains folate, B12, riboflavin, B6, and n-acetylcysteine. And this has been used in a variety of different applications, but what it started really setting the … And this is a prescription form of this. It’s really been setting the world on fire being used as a stopgap in cognitive decline, dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, a host of different neurologically-based conditions.
Robb: And what has apparently been … This stuff is pretty expensive to get it through a prescription route or if you’re paying direct or whatnot. It’s pretty expensive. So what people have been doing is just looking at the amounts of this stuff and taking it themselves, and then reporting, “Oh, we’ve had these amazing results.” And it’s interesting when the FDA recently came out against n-acetylcysteine. And what they’ve been making the case is that it’s not really a supplement, it’s actually a drug even though the thing has been used as a supplement for 60 years. But I guess they didn’t realize how much utility this thing had and how much more money I guess there was to be made on this. But it was odd also that in that lineup of things that kind of got a nastygram, melatonin, B12, riboflavin, a bunch the things-
Nicki: All these things that are in this drug that treats cognitive decline.
Robb: Yeah. And if folks have been listening to the podcast for any length of time, I’ve mentioned that even though we know that metabolic-driven disease, like diobesity, there’s Congressional Budget Office projections that suggests that by 2035 the US will be bankrupt from diobesity related cause just because of how expensive it is to deal with that. But that all pales in comparison to the cost that we will experience dealing with the tsunami that is coming on neurodegenerative disease. Because diabetes is a bastard, but one can manage it. You do some metformin. You do some insulin. You do this. You do that.
Robb: Once neurological decline gets past a certain point, people require 24/7 nursing care. And the cost there is just jaw dropping. And the decisions that will be made to deal with those costs are going to be ghastly. So ahead of that, instead of really rejiggering our food system and really having a conversation, like a legit conversation, around metabolic health, we’re just going to, you know, put in this roadblock.
Nicki: Make as much money as we can on how sick we all are.
Robb: You can smoke them while you got them. But a listener pointed this out to me. This person is a PharmD and was like, “Hey, I don’t know if you know, but n-acetylcysteine already has this other use, and it’s already in this patented drug, prescription-only format.” So there you go. But I’m still-
Nicki: Time will tell if it becomes a drug for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease as well.
Robb: I set up a … I know, evil Google, but Google Alerts are pretty handy. But I put together a Google Alert for that just so that I don’t have to remember to keep looking for that.
Nicki: And then we wanted to talk a little bit about our friend Lexi.
Robb: Do you want to crack this open so I don’t break down here or?
Nicki: I met Lexi through you. You have known her, gosh, even since your time in Seattle, right? You met her originally through capoeira. So, Lexi Harris was a dear friend of Robb’s and mine and several people in the Power Athlete community and, gosh, a lot of communities. She was a police officer in Seattle, and she was killed about a week ago, 10 days ago now maybe, coming home from her shift. And she saw that there was a multi-vehicle car accident on the freeway. So she pulled over to help and was struck by a vehicle in the process of helping and was killed.
Nicki: The handful of times that I got to spend with her … She’s one of these people whose eyes light up the whole room. There’s not that many people that you meet in your life who literally are walking embodiments of joy. She literally was just a bright spot in this world.
Robb: I just want to throw something in there: when somebody dies, particularly untimely, it’s always like, “Oh, they were a great person.” And she really was that person. She is the person that I tried to get on Joe Rogan because she was a bike cop, and she saw everything that was happening on the CHAZ/CHOP scene. And she was like, “Robb, you can’t believe the horrors that are happening here. Somebody has to know this. Somebody has to do something about it. Our hands are tied.” I was begging her to quit and just walk away, just stop. She’s like, “I can’t. I help people. I help people every day. I love my job.” And she really just wanted to get the story out there. We almost got that to happen, but it didn’t happen.
Robb: And again, I can’t emphasize this enough: everybody always says that the person was wonderful once they’re dead. Lexi was just this fucking one in a million … She was just amazing. And she loved being a cop. Loved being a cop, loved helping people. I’ll try to do this without getting canceled, but Lexi was hit by a bystander. The person pulled over. They were complying with the police, doesn’t seem to be anything nefarious there. While she’s laying dead, one of the people that was already in the pileup that she stopped to help stole her car and drove it and then abandoned it, which makes me hate all of humanity at this just profound level, particularly because of just everything that’s going on.
Robb: I guess the whole “defund the police” and all of those shenanigans have kind of drifted a bit into the past now that the orange man is gone and all the rest of that. But I fucking wish that they had defunded the police because then Lexi would’ve been doing a different job, and probably the people involved there would’ve been involved in some sort of chaotic unraveling of the world, which is exactly what would fucking happen if we do stupid shit like that. And the world that Lexi helped did not deserve the greatness that she was. Most of the people she helped didn’t deserve that. They don’t deserve that degree of commitment, the joy and the effort to make their goddamn lives better, and then we have other shit like this going on.
Robb: And I guess if we get canceled for this, then fuck it. This is a pretty good flag to stick in the fucking sand as kind of like, “Enough.” But people need to wake the fuck up about what they’re thinking and what they’re doing, and they need to start pushing back against this stuff. I’ve tried to tread a path through all of this so that we could keep helping as best we would. Just going crazy over the top is going to get us canceled, and we’ll alienate people. I legitimately still like helping people and trying to do some good both in the health space, but I … There’s this societal health that just seems to be unraveling. And Lexi is a casualty of that.
Robb: She was supposed to be at my funeral, not me at hers. So I’m going to miss her.
Robb: You okay with going forward or are we going to delete this?
Nicki: No, we’re good. Let’s just take a quick pause.
Nicki: Okay. I think we’re back.
Robb: We good?
Nicki: I think so.
Nicki: Okay. And I guess, just as a final ending to that section, just life is short, folks. We got to love the people we love and be the bright spot that we can be. Yeah. Be good to the people around you.
Nicki: Okay. We’re going to move on to our t-shirt winner this week. And this week it goes to GracieHearts. She says, “I usually struggle to keep my attention on podcasts. I find the episodes interesting, easy to digest, pun intended. Plus, their voices are soothing,” which I was like, “Do we really have soothing voices?” I don’t know about that. “Listening to this has been enlightening and has a calming effect. Thank you for not being an alarmist and being flexible with point of views as research evolves.” So Gracie Hearts, thank you so much for that review. Send us an email to [email protected] with your t-shirt size and your mailing address, and we’ll send you a Healthy Rebellion Radio t-shirt.
Nicki: And this Healthy Rebellion Radio episode is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, LMNT. Recently, one of our girls on the LMNT team shared a review from one of our LMNT customers that I just loved the title of, so I wanted to read that. This is from Eric. He says, “Why the hell would you drink a sports drink sold by a soda company?” Which is so perfect and spot on. He says, “This tastes great.” Oh, shit. I just…
Robb: Did you delete it?
Nicki: I think I … Oh, no. Maybe I just bumped the browser down.
Robb: There we go.
Nicki: Yeah. Okay. We’re having problems here today, folks.
Nicki: Okay. He says, “This tastes great, and it’s not-“
Robb: We have flies, Tony.
Nicki: Flies Tony. I think we mentioned that before.
Robb: We should bring that one back.
Nicki: We should bring that one back. It’s a hilarious … The Winnebago man and the flies. Okay. You’re derailing me-
Robb: Sorry.
Nicki: … from this. Eric says, “This tastes great. It’s not full of junk. I love everything about it. After my trial pack, I became a subscriber. It’s that good.” Remember our newest flavor, grapefruit salt, is now available just for a limited time. You can grab a box at drinklmnt.com/robb. You can also build a value bundle of your favorite LMNT flavors. And if you buy three boxes, you get the fourth box free, which is an amazing deal. Again, that URL is drinklmnt.com/robb. That’s drink L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. You ready for questions?
Robb: Let’s do it.
Nicki: Jumping in with Max. He wants to know if there’s benefit to a smaller intermittent fasting window. “Dearest Robb and Nicki, I have been making my way through the podcast archives and, to my recollection, have yet to come across the answer to this quandary. I’ve been practicing intermittent fasting for about five months now. Sometimes ketogenic with minimal fat intake in the morning, sometimes full on starvation mode. Generally I break my fast between 2:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon and get my last bite of the day in by 8:30 or so. I recall hearing John Berardi talk about his period of IF experimentation and mentioning that sometimes he would limit his food intake window to as little as two hours or one heaping spartan-esque meal. Do either of you have an opinion regarding the potential benefit or detriment of such a small eating window?
Nicki: “When I’ve tried to limit myself to cramming in 90 to 95% of my unfasted calorie intake, which is 100% of my protein carb intake, into a single meal or two small meals in just a couple of hours, I find myself really having to shovel it in, either feeling too full to take in the amount of calories that I feel I need, especially if it’s a particularly active day or week. Logic leads me to believe I shouldn’t trade a smaller window of eating for packing my stomach so full of quality grub that I don’t feel like moving afterwards. I may have just answered my own question. Thanks for all of the effort you guys put into sharing positive tips and information with the portion of us willing to listen. Max.”
Robb: Max really did answer his own question here. we have talked about stuff like this in the past. Time-restricted eating is cool. Intermittent fasting is cool. I would argue that to the best of my understanding, and I really lean on Bill Lagakos on this, he has really spearheaded this. He’s kind of my Ask Jeeves, you know to date myself thing on this.
Nicki: Wow. Ask Jeeves, that is going back.
Robb: Yeah. There’s another one that didn’t make the evolutionary cut. But partitioning more calories earlier in the day, there seems to be some metabolic benefit to that. It’s not huge, being on point with quality food, start with protein, build out from there, figure out if you run better on fat carbs or a combination, that really seems to be where the rubber hits the road that. within all these… anything that we do with this, it’s always like, what’s the goal? What are you trying to do? And it’s like, I’m just trying to be healthy. And it’s like, well, you could be healthy on two meals and a snack. I mean, so long as we figure out a way of navigating the modern hyper palatable food environment and we don’t overeat, we get adequate protein and we have other kind of nutrient dense foods, you’re good.
Robb: I mean, it is not a guarantee that you never have cancer or never have a heart disease, but Goddam it really stacks the deck in your favor. There’s absolutely no guarantee that these extended periods of fasting like seriously doing 22 hours a day of fasting is going to do anything beneficial for people. Some people thrive on it. Every once in a while, I meet somebody who does really well, but I’ve got to say my pool of folks that I know who had been doing a lot of fasting, I really bent their ear and I’m like, “Listen, try doing more protein two, oh my God, maybe even three meals a day. Do them a little earlier in the day, try not eat… get some buffer before bedtime.”
Robb: It’s harder to do that. It’s far easier to skip breakfast and skip dinner just socially and family, and all that stuff. But try to do that in two a person. These folks are like, “oh, I added muscle. My performance was better. And I leaned out.” you know? I just don’t see the upsides. I really wish that there was some magic in there. I think that if nothing else… There was this period of time when I was young with bodybuilding magazines and the zone diet, where it was like eat six to eight times a day. Barry Sears, if you were eating 16 blocks of food, he recommended doing a one block meal 16 times a day if you could. Now looking back is absolute madness. There’s-
Nicki: You got to set your time, Eid Pomodoros for eating.
Robb: … Oh my God. Yeah.
Nicki: Every 20 minutes.
Robb: There’ve been some studies where folks were mildly hypocaloric. Some folks ate two meals a day, other folks ate six meals a day. Both groups lost weight. Both groups had mild metabolic health improvements. But the six meal a day group had far less metabolic improvement. So I’m not saying to eat eight times a day. Humans are not grazers. When we do graze, then bad things happen. But then there’s this huge no man’s land between people eating all day and then, well, I’m only going to eat once a week or whatever it is. I guess another piece to this is the less frequently folks eat, the higher the protein requirements to be able to get enough anabolic signaling to maintain baseline muscle mass. If you are all ready just struggling to eat food during that window, not only are you eating to just hit your basal metabolic rate, assuming … I’m thinking max sounds like he’s probably lean and active and all that, and then if we’re just trying to avoid retrograde performance, he needs even more protein in that circumstance.
Robb: So this is definitely where I would lean towards the gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, up to a gram of protein per pound of body weight. Try to do a really big breakfast, a large… a moderate lunch, and then if you can skip dinner, skip dinner, and play with that. Some people don’t do well without either. It’s too long of a window before they go to bed and it disorders their sleep. Okay. Shuffle more stuff closer to sleep. But I just… It’s kind of an interesting experiment, if you’re traveling… The cool thing about doing something like this is like, oh, I could get by on one meal. When I was doing more traveling, sometimes I would get up so really, there was no way to eat breakfast. There were just garbage options at the airport and I had to jam onto the plane and then you’re like, okay, it’s six hours until I get to the next spot. And then you got to catch a quick connection or whatever. It’s like, okay, I’m going to eat when I get to the hotel.
Robb: You get one meal a day, and you live to tell the tale. I think that there… Some people are like, “I have to eat three times a day.” It’s like, “Ah, you don’t.” I think that there are reasons to use this as a tool, but just as a baseline of a nutrition strategy, I see far more hazard and downsides than upsides.
Nicki: Our next-
Robb: I think our guy there answered his own question.
Nicki: I know. That was a long-
Robb: Explanation.
Nicki: … answer. We have a question from Cynthia about GERD and electrolytes. Hi Robin, Nikki. I love your podcast and the work that you do. It’s refreshing to listen to someone who really tries to give unbiased information. I have two questions. One, should element be drunk with meals? My thinking is that it may counteract stomach acid and exacerbate GERD. I do have reflex. I’m trying not to make it worse. Question number two, have you watched Super Juice Me!? It’s a 2014 documentary where eight people with 22 combined diseases get remarkably better with 28 days of juicing. According to many people in the paleo carnivore community, drinking that amount of carbs, sugar, fruit toast would make you sick. Yet people got better, not worse.
Nicki: I’m trying to bounce my ideas with someone smarter and more knowledgeable than me. If some people get better with fruit and vegetable juices only, and other people get better with a carnivore diet, do you see a reason why combining both approaches would be detrimental, for example, having a fresh pressed fruit juice, or even a couple of oranges with my steak?
Robb: Interesting question. On the first one, should… I think anybody with digestive issues, GERD or otherwise, limiting fluid consumption during the meal-
Nicki: During meals.
Robb: … is smart. It just seems to clean up a ton of issues and it gets a little bit like, whew, whew, I don’t know that there’s a ton of randomized controlled trials on this, but it’s one of these… What I’ve noticed a lot of people will do is they will shovel some food in their mouth, have a beverage. They’ll kind of-
Nicki: Drink it down to get it… to swallow it. Instead of chewing enough, you wash it down.
Robb: This is that thing again, chew your food. In general, elements shouldn’t affect the GERD issue generally one way or the other. Although that said, I do notice that when people drink fluids with meals, it can exacerbate a host of different-
Nicki: Regardless of the liquid.
Robb: … I didn’t watch Super Juice Me! I remember when it came out and kind of checked it out, these folks were generally pretty sick as Cynthia mentioned. Several of them were pretty overweight. The takeaway for me on this is so long as we move towards anything that looks other than standard American, highly processed, hyper palatable diet, magic happens. I guess, part of the thing that I would push back on this is when we see people in that kind of juicing raw vegan scene, and you see them a year, two years, five years down range, some of them do okay on it, but man, you see some disastrous stuff like body dysmorphia, people who look like skeletons and they have some pretty clear neurologic. You start thinking-
Nicki: Dark circles under their eyes.
Robb: … It’s a disaster. I think that this is something that if all that you’re doing is juicing… I guess you, if you do a bunch of orange juice and stuff like that, you could get a decent enough caloric load that… Maybe you get 2000 to it. It’s going to be hard to get 2000, 2500, 3000 calories of juice a day. People can do it, people do do it. If you fed someone an ISO caloric level of juice, I don’t know that you’re going to see the same type of benefits. I think a lot of the benefit is is that these people are just eating less and they’re doing this whole regimen. It’s an interesting question around if juicing is good for some people and carnival is good for some people, could you see doing a little bit of juice or throwing in some oranges? It’s like, yeah, that’s paleo basically.
Robb: Although it’s still there on the juicing, I guess. Some of the problem there is a lot of folks have issues with say, oxalates and salicylates, and you do something like spinach or some of these greens, you can get a massive dose of these things, and that can be very problematic for some folks guts.
Nicki: Also blood sugar regulation with a big whack-
Robb: Blood sugar regulation is kind of tough, yeah.
Nicki: … of fruit juice in particular.
Robb: Again, once… If this is the strategy somebody chooses to lose weight and get healthier, okay. But then what are they going to do when they… it’s time to just-
Nicki: For a long-term sustainable plan.
Robb: Yeah. I really like Jason Fung’s work. I think he’s done a lot of good stuff, but the thing that I think he and folks like him have overlooked in recommending fasting as the intervention, and this isn’t intermittent fasting, this is prolonged fast, and I’m kind of in that camp that thinks that… They have claimed that loose skin kind of recomposes under that extended fast. I think it probably does. I think that there’s something that kind of happens there more so than some of my friends. Tyler and Luis are much more like, “I don’t know. I think it’s kind of bullshit.” I actually kind of think that there’s something there. We can disagree on that and still be friends and not murder each other. But the problem that I’ve seen is that folks never learn any new eating habits.
Robb: It’s like they go from really sick and overweight, they lose the weight with fasting, and then it’s like, okay, now it’s time for you to start eating again. And they’re like, oh fuck, I have no idea what to do. We’re just starting this whole thing over where… and maybe some people figure out how to bridge that, but I see a lot of folks just kind of spin right back into problems. And then at the end of the day, most people don’t make long-term dietary changes stick anyway. It’s like… Layne Norton, God bless him, but if he points out one thing that’s pretty solid, it’s that most people end up just failing on whatever it is that they’re doing. And so, I don’t know, I guess-
Nicki: Cynthia, I would just see how you tolerate the fruit juice in particular. Because you mentioned having fresh pressed fruit juice with your steak from a blood sugar perspective. Um, I think chewing your food is always preferred. Actually having oranges with your steak, I think would be preferred over drinking it. But that’s something that you can experiment with. You can even test your blood sugar before and after, do kind of seven day carb test style, and just see how your body responds to it.
Robb: We are the crazy people that suggest chewing your food.
Nicki: We have a question from Irvin about roasted unmalted barley. Hi, Rob, and the Wolf team. I’m experimenting with paleo primal Bulletproof experience whilst unemployed and equals one, and I am loving it. However, I have a question regarding my love of a Guinness as a drink. I live in Europe. I’m interested to know the effects of roasting on unmalted barley, the main ingredient for Guinness. I’ve read that it chars the sugars and is high on the lover bond scale. But what does this mean in layman’s terms as compared to barley for beer per se? Is it better than normal beer for consumption? I know that beer is my choice as opposed to wine for the better paleo effect, I’m just trying to challenge the low beer scenario with drinking Guinness as it is not the same as the light colored beers. I can’t find the solution, so I’m asking you guys for help. Whilst I’m taking the liberty, would or does toasting bread change its properties as a starch or sugar significantly for the body?
Robb: I’ll tackle that one first. When things get toasted, it goes through this Maillard reaction, which is some kind of advanced glycation in product creation. It’s really interesting to me because the stuff tastes amazing, but yet in theory… Advanced glycation in products are not good in the body. But there’s something there, it’s kind of a signal. One thing about that is when we consume these things, the gut is remarkably adept at kind of filtering this stuff out. Matt LaLanne turned me onto this 10 plus years ago. He’s like, the charring and all these types of things, you have to look at it differently than that stuff occurring inside our body. There’s a couple of things here. I really… how do I want to say this and not get myself trapped?
Robb: Because it’s like rice krispie treats tastes good, but… I was talking with John Boone, one of our jiu-jitsu coaches about this because he’s also a chef, and does meal prep for for the gym. He does an amazing job. We were talking about this, and there’s just something magic about a properly charred piece of meat. There was something magical about a properly charred piece of broccoli. It’s like-
Nicki: Or brussel sprouts.
Robb: … or brussel sprouts. Again, this is these Maillard reaction, cross-linked proteins and sugars. In theory, this stuff should be terrible for us. But Richard Wrangham describes human beings, not as omnivores, not as carnivores, but as cocovore. That we co-evolved with the development of cooking. There’s something there. There’s something magical about properly preparing food. I think it is kind of an evolutionary signal that this stuff is well-prepared. At a minimum when things have gone through the Maillard reaction, like toasting or searing and stuff like that, from an infectious disease standpoint, you’re not going to catch food poisoning from something like that, unless it’s been sitting around so long that there’s like toxins in the meat, and then it’s going to smell horrible anyway, and you’re not going to eat it. I think there’s something interesting there. I think it kind of sends a signal that like, man, this stuff is really digestible or something.
Robb: It does. It enhances generally the digestibility. I think that there’s something interesting about that stuff. This isn’t really Irvin’s question, but this is what… I’ve been noodling about this stuff anyway. I don’t know if I fully like, yes, it does change the starch or sugar when it gets toasted or kind of caramelized. Some people freak out about it. I actually see it as kind of a sign that you’re doing something cool with regards to cooking. I don’t see the horror from… that we’re ingesting that stuff. I think our GI tract is well-suited to deal with it. There’s some strong evolutionary pressure that tells us, hey, this is well-prepared food.
Robb: On the Guinness side of things, as a Ciliac individual, I miss very, very few things from the world of gluten, and Guinness is one of them. Light beers just ain’t it, gluten-free beers, ain’t it. There’s just something magical about the stuff. I absolutely love it. That is one thing that I’m like, man, I legit miss that. This lovely bond scale is… it was developed in the 1880s, and it is a grading of grains that are used in fermentation. It kind of provides their color scheme. The darker they get… The higher the number, the darker the grain. Guinness is basically very, very dark. Stuff like Sierra, Nevada Bigfoot, very, very dark. And then it gets lighter as you get into pilsners and IPA’s and all that type of stuff. There’s been some folklore around Guinness being high in B vitamins. I don’t think there’s really truth to that. It is kind of liquid bread, but… There are people that claim, “Ireland would have succumbed to nutrient deficiencies without Guinness.
Nicki: Were it not for Guinness?
Robb: I don’t know that that’s really credible, but it does clearly change the flavor, the aroma, the color and texture and everything. Again, I don’t know, is it better than normal beer consumption? If you like it better then it’s certainly better. If you’ve tried some elimination, and you don’t notice feeling better or worse with or without, relative to drinking a glass of wine or having a hard alcohol cocktail so that you’ve fully done like that gluten inclusion, elimination deal, and you notice no difference, then I will hate you a little bit, because you are able to drink some Guinness, but I just can’t see that big of a deal here.
Nicki: It really comes down to what your main goals for experimenting with paleo primal are. If you have significant weight to lose or you’re having sleep issues or any kind of autoimmune joint issues, inflammation, but if you are generally not experiencing any of that and your body composition is where you want it to be, and you tolerate Guinness and having one on occasion-
Robb: Or two.
Nicki: … or two… on occasion is… You’ve got to figure out what wiggle room you have given your circumstances and your goals.
Robb: Well said.
Nicki: There you go. Anything else there?
Robb: Nope.
Nicki: Moving on. Okay. Alright. Healthy Rebellion Radio trivia time. The Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor, Drink LMNT, is giving a box of element recharge electrolytes to three lucky winners selected at random who answer the following question correctly. Rob, think back to your days of yesteryear and tell us what your favorite bubble gum was. Flavor.
Robb: Hubba Bubba.
Nicki: Hubba Bubba, really?
Robb: Yeah. Hubba Bubba. It just got on my radar because Sagan-
Nicki: Well-
Robb: apparently shook you down for some…
Nicki: She shook me. We were in Target, and she wanted gum and they didn’t have… Normally we just get the Orbit, the sugar-free gum, and they didn’t have that. She wanted a bubble gum flavor and they didn’t have that. So then we got bubble yum, which she’s calling Bubba yum. And…
Robb: Which made me think of Hubba Bubba.
Nicki: That made you think of Hubba Bubba.
Robb: So the answer is Hubba Bubba.
Nicki: I had a big thing for… What was the… Not Juicy Fruit, but what was the other Wrigley… just the main green one.
Robb: The spearmint one?
Nicki: Yeah, the main green one. That one was my favorite. I don’t think that’s technically a bubblegum. That’s more of a chewing gum. There’s a little bit of a distinction.
Robb: That’s true.
Nicki: There’s some gums are for chewing, and some are specifically for making bubbles.
Robb: Bubble bubbles.
Nicki: Hubba Bubba is the answer to this week’s trivia. To play, go to Rob wolf.com/trivia and enter your answer. We’ll randomly select three people with the correct answer to when a box of electrolytes from Drink LMNT. The cutoff to answer this week’s trivia and be eligible to win is Thursday, July 1st. Can you believe that we’re almost at July. At midnight, winners will be notified via email and we’ll announce the winners on Instagram as well. This is open to residents of the US only.
Robb: Cool.
Nicki: Our fourth question is from Tom on digestion issues. Hi, Rob. I love the podcast and thoughtful answers. I’ve always had digestion issues with gas and diarrhea, and spent around 10 years of my adult life eating the standard American diet with a lot of fast food. My wife and I lost a lot following Ketogains, and I got into single digit body fat levels. The digestion issues didn’t go away. Out of an experiment on myself, I shifted to a very low fat, 40 to 60 grams a day, high carb, 200 to 400 grams, depending on activity from rice, potatoes, oats and sourdough bread diet, so low fat, high carb diet, while keeping my protein up between 1.2 and 1.5 grams per pound of body weight.
Nicki: I don’t notice a ton of difference in training. My A1C is 5.1, fasting glucose, always between 85 to 96. If the state makes a difference, I’ve never been diagnosed with diabetes to be clear. The biggest change is that my digestion issues have gone away, but I miss the bacon and rib-eyes I used to have. Is there something I should look at to be able to digest fat more effectively, or just accept that it’s what my body seems to prefer? I really like the low carb community, but I feel like an outsider with the high carb intake.
Robb: Virtually everybody in that community hates you, Tom. It’s kind of like having straight hair or curly hair, and you want the other. We have a good friend, Clark Connery who, who just finished his MD, and now he’s starting his residency, and he’s really gone deep on this stuff. He’s talked about it in the Healthy Rebellion. At some point he might do some talking about it. Maybe we’ll have him on the podcast, and just dig into this stuff. Because there is a reality that the consumption of a lot of fat for some people is very problematic from the GI perspective. They either don’t produce enough bile, they are intermittent in their bile production, they overproduce bile. There’s a lot of different variables on it. I’m already out over my ski tips with this. Clark knows this stuff off the top of his head. I’m just doing a very poor recitation of what he shared with me.
Robb: He had been Keto for a long time, and then started noticing, kind of like gall bladder spasms. It would actually cramp and hurt. He would have these issues and titrated up 100, 150 grams of carbs a day, dialed the fat down, not quite to the same degree as Tom, but definitely not key topic. He feels way better, just no GI problems there and all that type of stuff. If you want to throw in a ribeye or some of these fattier pieces of meat, something like the Now Foods, Super enzymes, which also has Ox Bile, and it could be helpful. I think it’s just going to be a deal to where you’re probably going to have to do a smaller portion.
Robb: Maybe you get… you go out to dinner, and they’ve got the eight ounce ribeye, and maybe eat half of that. And then you have the baked potato and some lobster or something with it. You’ve got a lower fat protein source, and you divvy that ribeye out over multiple meals. But your look, feeling and performing well, and you appear to have resolved something, which… I mean, just running around with constant nagging gut issues, I can say for somebody who’s had that for more than 25 years-
Nicki: That’s huge to find the solution for that.
Robb: … when you really resolve it, it’s a big deal but there are some mitigating strategies like doing some apple cider vinegar before a meal that can kind of ramp up digestion. Doing something like the ox bile or Now Food, Super Enzymes, those things can be helpful. But I think also, again, when you want to eat a ribeye or something, eat… do surf and turf and have some ribeye and some chicken. Half the ribeye and part of the chicken, so it’s a lower fat and it tinker with that. You’re still staying roughly within your recommended numbers there that don’t seem to cause problems and should do great.
Nicki: Let’s see here. Our final question for today is from Nicole. She wants to know if she should give up on the chin-up. Have you ever witnessed a female who could not do a chin-up, make it her goal to get one and actually succeed? How long did it take her? How did she do it for me? This is the holy grail of body weight exercises, and the last one I have to master. I’ve been trying with the help of resistance bands, negatives, and my trainer for over a year now, and I just don’t feel like I’m going to get there. What strategies do you use? I’m 5 ft 8, 135 pounds. I can do 20 pushups. So I started with that. Any advice would be appreciated.
Robb: Do you have any?
Nicki: We in gym would start people… We weren’t really into resistance bands, we did do some negatives, but we would start people with ring rows or body rows, copious amounts of just that scapular retraction. You can kind of walk your feet forward further so that you’re more at more of an incline to increase the loading that way. Because it’s really like a chin-up, people think, oh, my arms are weak, but it’s really a scap-back like movement. And-
Robb: Problem that we saw with the negatives, there’s a tendency to internally rotate when folks do this because… And this is kind of the cool thing of rope climbs and also the… When you do a rope climb, you’re using your back that you use in your… It really is like a full body movement because you end up going from external rotation to internal rotation as you climb. It’s very involved in… the scapula elevates and then it depresses and it’s cool. But if you start doing that movement on the chin-up, it doesn’t set up the motor patterns that you want, which is the scapular, retraction and depression that should happen as part of that movement. When we loaded people with the body rows, you get either a TRX or, I prefer-
Nicki: Gymnastic rings.
Robb: … gymnastic rings. Into Nikki’s point, again, you can progress that thing so that you walk your feet forward and then you can put your feet up on a box so that you’re just-
Nicki: Basically parallel with the ground.
Robb: … Yeah. Doing 10 body rows from a box, that core stability and everything, I like that movement better than pull-ups and chin-ups. I think that people need it more, they need more of the scalper, traction and everything. There’s overdeveloping the pull-up actually feeds into kyphosis and kind of postural problem. I really like that movement better anyway, but… We got people, women in their seventies, late… One of the big constraints is a strength to body weight deal. If the person is significantly overweight, this is going to be challenging. You’ve got to get really, really strong, or you’ve got to lose-
Nicki: 5′ 8″, 135 pounds, she’s perfect. That’s not the issue.
Robb: … That is not the issue. So-
Nicki: When you are doing your negatives though, really, really emphasize the part from the lower… what do you call from your elbow to that full overhead position? So many times people will start, and they’ll go nice and slow as they’re lowering down and then they kind of drop. The hardest part of a chin-up is the beginning-
Robb: Generally.
Nicki: … generally. Really emphasizing that, but I would spend a lot of time doing the body rows and then also hanging from bar and just activate… just using your back and just doing scapulae.
Robb: There are partial movement where the scapula is the only thing that moves, and you’ll raise and lower three or four inches, but your scalp… you should have somebody look at you. They can even put hands on both scapulae and they should depress and retract. But initially they may happen in segmented movements, then it eventually becomes more of a seamless movement. But maybe you don’t get a pull-up ever, but if you do these other movements, I think they’re going to serve you much, much better. I would be shocked if you didn’t develop a pull-up. The final, uh, in addition to… We’ve got body rows and progressing the body rows till you just getting a lot of volume, doing them parallel to the floor, working up to sets of five to 10, and just gaining volume on that, do your negatives.
Robb: I would honestly ditch the band for now because I don’t… To some degree, I’d even be careful on the negatives. I would do the scap-pulls where you’re depressing, elevating, just pulling up. And then I would just hang from the bar. There’s something kind of magical. I learned this from Coach Christopher Sommer of the gymnastics bodies, and he’s been elite level gymnastics coach for ages. Supports get people really, really strong and do some interesting neurological kind of things. Just hanging from the bar, accumulating time on the bar will get you remarkably strong throughout the full range of movement.
Nicki: Let us know Nicole.
Robb: Yeah, that would be cool.
Nicki: keep us posted. That was five. We made it through.
Robb: I was-
Nicki: A little rough in the beginning-
Robb: … a little rough in the beginning.
Nicki: … but we did make it through. Let’s see. I’m trying to think if there’s any other closing news that we need to share, but nothing is popping up.
Robb: Happy summer. We’re in summer.
Nicki: We’re in summer. Enjoy the summer. Make sure you check out our show sponsor, LMNT. You can go to drinklmnt.com/ROBB to find all of your electrolyte goodness. Have a great weekend you all. 4th of July is next week, so that’s coming up around the corner, but we’re squarely in the middle of summer.
Robb: We are.
Nicki: All right. We’ll see you next time.
Robb: Bye everybody.
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I appreciate y’all so much. Your honesty and your willingness to continue to help others, especially when it is difficult and challenging to navigate.
Thank you.
My condolences on the loss of your friend Lexi. Thank you for sharing about a tough topic. I appreciate you two speaking honestly about your feelings on the matter. I’ve lost friends and family in the line of duty and it never gets easier. Thanks again.