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News topic du jour:
On Friday, the CDC revised its covid risk formula.
With this single change, the pandemic abruptly eased going from 90% of the United States in High-Risk Red to less than 30%. pic.twitter.com/iwhlxYMPPZ
— Clarity (@covid_clarity) February 28, 2022
Podcast Questions:
1. Baby’s poor digestion [17:18]
Taylor says:
Hello, Nikki and Robb! I was hoping you may have some advice other than probiotics, since that seems to be the only advice I get on this topic and they don’t seem to help. I have a 9 month old baby with a very sensitive digestive system. We did everything “right” when it came to introducing good bacteria: natural home birth, no antibiotics, EBF until introducing solids. I have to cut dairy while breastfeeding because he has a CMPI. Since introducing solids, he is only able to handle meat, eggs, fish, and avacado. Anything else gives him extremely painful gas and he will be up all night screaming. Should I continue to try to introduce new foods or hold off until a certain period of time to let his gut heal/develop? His current daily food intake will look something like this: egg fried in lard, sausage patty, avacado, fish roe, ground beef, chicken thigh, over cooked white potato, and orange slices on the rind so he just gets the juice and no fiber. Thank you for any advice you may have!
2. Beef Liver [21:02
Chris says:
Robb,
I like to eat beef liver a couple times per week. In the states, I was able to find grass-fed sources, either locally or through US Wellness Meats. However, I recently moved to Okinawa, Japan with the military and haven’t found any local sources for grass-Fed or companies that will ship here. The grocery store carries frozen liver slices from Skylark meats, but they’re not grass-fed. For that matter, I can’t find any information on how Skylark raises their cattle, so presumably it’s a large commercial operation.
So, am I better off ordering some grass-fed beef liver capsules from a reputable company or do you think the liver from Skylark is okay, albeit suboptimal?
3. Essential Tremor [26:07]
Jenny says:
Hello, Robb and Nicki –
Thank you for providing truthful and unbiased information on health. I love your podcast and the Healthy Rebellion group.
I am a healthy, 50 year old female. I feel great but I have Essential Tremor. I also have Celiac Disease. Interestingly, I only know one other person with Celiac Disease, and he also has Essential Tremor. Most of the time, my tremor does not bother me too much, and I have learned how to deal with it. However, there are certain situations I am in once in a while where I would like to be able to reduce the tremor in my hands. I have to do a pistol qualification course four times a year for my job, and I would love to reduce my tremor before the test. I am drug tested for work and cannot risk using any CBD products, which is too bad because I have heard they can help with tremors. I have a few questions for you.
1.) In your research regarding Essential Tremor, have you found a link between people with Celiac Disease also having Essential Tremor?
2.) Do you have any suggestions for reducing tremors before an event as described above?
3.) Is there any hope for completing healing Essential Tremor aka getting rid of it for good?
Thank you.
Jenny
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Transcript:
Download 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 1 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 Rob 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 friends, neighbors, loved ones.
Nicki: To another episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio. This is episode 101.
Robb: It’s hard for me to keep track of what salty talk and what’s not.
Nicki: Makes me think like 101 it’s like the basics.
Robb: We’ve just covered the basics.
Nicki: Like Econ 101 or the Healthy Rebellion 101.
Robb: I like it.
Nicki: Sorry. We missed you all last week, but as many of you probably already heard Rob and Diana were in Austin on the Joe Rogan experience. So that was a great episode, a great opportunity to spread the word about regenerative agriculture and all things sacred cow, and why meat is both good for our bodies and the planet.
Robb: Yeah, it was a huge opportunity, generally well received. A few folks have had some bunch bridges about the platform and I’m going to address that in the Substack. I have some thoughts around it.
Nicki: Cool. So anyway, we did not have a Healthy Rebellion Radio episode last week, but here we are.
Robb: It’ll be twice as good.
Nicki: Twice as good. We’ll see.
Robb: Or maybe it will suck half of as much.
Nicki: Half as bad.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: All right. Well, I did want to kind of highlight some of the experiences, feedback, results that some of our members shared after this last 30 day rebel reset. So I have a few screenshots here that I’m just going to read, from the mouths of the rebels themselves.
Robb: I like it.
Nicki: This first one is from Kimberly. She says I’m down five pounds, four inches, a reset, all four pillar areas. I’m thrilled to move from at risk waist to hip ratio, to the low spectrum of average. I enjoyed the no alcohol for 30 days challenge and I’m looking forward to April’s reset. So that’s pretty significant. That was waist, hip ratio change.
Robb: Huge.
Nicki: A huge marker of things moving in the right direction. So very, very good. This next one is from Gabe. He says the reset was a success for me and I really enjoyed getting back to life without dairy grains and trying out no alcohol. I’m down to my normal weight of 212 pounds down from 222 on January 24th. I was actually 225 on January 2nd. Lots of people are telling me my face looks thinner and I feel lean overall. Next, I would like to up the strength training and get back to higher lifts.
Nicki: And I’m also continuing to work on sleep. Thanks everyone for the support and inspiration. And this one is really fun. Tracy says, okay, I have to share. I forgot this morning to try on my tight pants, so I did it tonight after work. And just for folks listening, who haven’t participated in a reset and haven’t done the keto masterclass we have folks before starting either of these do something we call the tight pants test. Because as we’ve talked about many times on this show, the scale is not always the best indicator of progress when it comes to body composition changes. So we have folks find a pair of pants that snugly and kind of pay attention to how they fit, keep notes on that, and then afterwards try them on.
Nicki: So maybe the scale shift isn’t as remarkable as it might be, but if those pants fit better, that’s a huge indicator of positive results. So Tracy says, I forgot this morning to try on my tight pants so I did it tonight after work. Before the 30 days I was one and three quarter inches from center of button to center of button hole. So she couldn’t button them and she was measuring. There’s a one and three quarter inch difference there. Day 30, they buttoned with room to spare and I can easily squat in them. I honestly had to check three times to make sure they were in fact the same dang jeans. So that’s a pretty big win there. And then finally, this one is from Don. He says, I wanted to share a few things about me and the reset. I had some goals of losing weight, implementing a strength training program and a few other things. I did lose some weight over the 30 days, but it wasn’t as much as I would have liked.
Nicki: However, before the reset, I took some measurements, neck, chest, belly, hips, bicep, and thigh. In just that one month I lost a half an inch around my neck, I lost a half an inch around my chest, lost four inches around my belly and one inch around my hips. But what I found really interesting is that I gained an inch around both my biceps and around my thighs, losing inches around my fatty pot arts and increasing size around my muscles. Yay. I think I’m on the right track.” Just wanted to give a quick share.
Robb: That’s cool.
Nicki: So that’s pretty darn cool. So anyway, our next reset is coming up in April. As we get closer, we’ll share exact dates and all that good stuff. And remember for those of you listening, who haven’t joined the Healthy Rebellion yet, the reset and all that goes with it is free for members. And our next event inside the Healthy Rebellion community is actually beginning this coming Monday, March 7th. And it’s an internal strength program with our friends, Sarah and Grayson Strange from Basis Health and Performance, New York. They’ve done several strength and mobility resets for us with our community. Our community members are very familiar with Sarah and Grayson. They do an awesome job. And this one coming up extremely excited for.
Nicki: We’ve actually been doing a little work with Sarah and Grayson with this internal strength stuff already these past couple of weeks, just to target some lingering back and hip issues that seem to improve. And we motor along for a little while and then something comes up again. And it turns out that inadequate capsule space, particularly in the hips can lead to back knee, all kinds of problems. So super excited for this one. It’s going to be very different than what many people have done before. Lots of work on the capsules themselves, the rotational muscle, and then finally the linear muscles, whereas most strength program you’re working on your biceps, your quads. You’re primarily just trying to like get, especially you’re trying to get stronger, but you’re doing these exercises to do so, but you’re not necessarily addressing the structure, the capsule inside that really allows you to do those movements effectively, right?
Robb: Yes. I’m trying to-
Nicki: -But you’re looking at me with the funny-
Robb: No, it’s good. All of the stuff that folks are used to seeing in standard strength training is in there. Again, press, pull, hinge, squat, all that type of stuff, but the emphasis that, and we are going to do a terrible job of explaining this. I’m going to break my no interview rule and probably interview Sarah and Grayson to explain this because I really do think it’s important. I see this FRC stuff as being as important and kind of trend setting is paleo as the CrossFit concept. I mean, CrossFit changed the world and there’s good and bad about it. I think that there’s going to be, by comparison, I think that FRC and Kinstretch can stretch is going to be 99.999% good. And maybe some to be determined 1% downside, which I don’t know what that is.
Robb: I’m just trying to be somewhat silly on that, but it changed things and it was kind of revolutionary. And I really see this FRC kinstretch stuff as being Revolutionary, like they’re approaching movement in a very, very different way. And it’ll have all the stuff that folks typically want, but it’s going to be rolled out in a format that’s a little bit different. And I think it’s going to take a little leap of faith initially for folks to get in and do it. But I immediately noticed benefits and I’ve been following both Sarah and Grayson, but Grayson in particular because he’s a little more front facing and what he’s up to.
Robb: And I’ve seen him rehab his back and go from not really able to pull deadlifts off the floor to pulling a rather heavy searcher deadlift off the floor, which it just requires enormous hip mobility, back integrity. And two years prior to doing this the other day, he wasn’t able to really deadlift off the floor at all. So it’s a huge change. And these things are very similar to the challenges that I face. So I have particular interest there, but if you have knee issues, shoulder issues…
Nicki: So we mentioned capsule work first and just personally, I have terrible internal rotation in my hips. So if you’re not familiar with what internal and external rotation are of the hips, if you’re like laying on your back and you bring your knee kind of up to your chest, but it’s in like a 90 degree angle from your femur to your tibia. And so you’re at like a 90 degree angle there. And then if you rotate your foot either outside of your body, or what do you call that, laterally.
Robb: Yeah. Which this is where it gets-
Nicki: Or immediately, it’s kind of hard to explain over the… But anyway, long story short, just even two weeks ago when Sarah and Grayson did a little assessment with us via Zoom, my internal was rotation, I could barely see my pinky toe when I’m trying to rotate my foot. Like if it’s my right foot, rotate it to the right, I can barely see my pinky toe. My internal rotation is so poor. Whereas if I bring my foot to the left, I can rotate my whole, I can see obviously my whole leg and my everything.
Robb: And the significance of this is not trivial. Folks who have no internal hip rotation get hip replacements. And this seems to be almost an if a then be type deal. And it’s just kind of a matter of time. And so if you want to avoid having rather invasive surgery and replacing things like hips.
Nicki: Well, and also just not having that capsule space, like then when I do things like squat, which I’m able to do a full depth squat, but I shouldn’t be, and I’m not now because I need to work on that capsule space first, because loading myself in that range is only making it worse. But even in just these two weeks of really working my internal rotation, like now I can kind of see a sliver of my heel in the side of my foot. So it’s like microscopic, but it’s significant to me because I know where I was and now I can see that I’m making progress.
Robb: Well and we both feel better too.
Nicki: And we feel better. Yeah. So anyway, that’s a long ramble and we definitely should get Sarah and Grayson on here to kind of talk about this stuff because it is so important. But anyway, if you want to get in on this program, that they are putting together for us, it begins on Monday. It’s a 30 day program. They’re programming for five days a week, and there’s a little bit of a learning curve to learning the exercises and whatnot. So there’ll be a little bit of a time commitment there, but once you get it, then you’ll be able to do things more quickly, ideally having access to a full gym, if you can, dumbbells are fine if you don’t have access to barbells. But anyway, Monday, March 7th, that kicks off inside the Healthy Rebellion.
Robb: Cool
Nicki: Hubs news topic.
Robb: The easy fun one today.
Nicki: Fun.
Robb: There’s a Twitter handle called COVID clarity. And it’s kind of funny because Nicki and I have talked about keto clarity for ages we’d say. I think I need some keto clarity on this thing.
Nicki: But now you have some COVID clarity.
Robb: Now we have some COVID clarity and this it’s just kind of amazing. So from this account, we have a link to it on Friday, the CDC revised its COVID risk formula. With this single change, the pandemic abruptly eased going from 90% of the United States in high risk red to less than 30%. And they have a picture of it. And this got on our radar with the Bad Gato talking about it and-
Nicki: -Boriqua Gato, El Gato Malo. If you’re not following him on Substack, you should.
Robb: He’s amazing, hilarious and brilliant. And it’s a stunning change in what I suggested to this person is that somebody do a bit of a retrospective analysis and look at how severe everything would look over the last two years if we had the current-
Nicki: -This current formula for risk.
Robb: Formula.
Robb: Yeah. And not to over really politicize this thing, but it is remarkable that we have the state of the union address over the weekend. And we have a war in Eastern Europe and all this other stuff going on. And suddenly really seems like, I think the mask mandates, like-
Nicki: -They’re dropping everywhere.
Robb: Mask mandates.
Nicki: Yeah. Oregon and Washington, I think drop Monday the 7th.
Robb: And one could make maybe a case of this is sour grapes on my part or people like me part, things are going to change. In theory, this has been a scenario where we expected stuff to unwind eventually anyway. But the politicized timing of this is nothing if not interesting, maybe a little infuriating and definitely interesting.
Nicki: Well, it’s like, what is this new formula? Right. And why now? And what would our economy look like? What would the state of our children and learning over the last two years and schools, and what would our supply chains look like if this was the formula that had been applied early on?
Robb: Right. Well, and I’m hoping somebody follows up with that. Somebody a little more numerically inclined than myself, but it is just interesting. And I guess I would just, as we motor forward and elections loom on various horizons, both here and around the world, assuming elections still are a thing that may become kind of a passe concept at some point but just…
Nicki: Well, if the world economic forum gets their way, then yeah.
Robb: Exactly.
Nicki: Jeff Bezos will be voting, we won’t.
Robb: Just kind of remember, like for crying out loud, people will have really short memories, but don’t have that short of a memory and remember the way that we’ve all been treated and the way that all the stuff has been couched and played out. Yeah, things are changing, but we’ve been… I’m not even going to get into it. We’re good. We’re good. I’ll leave it at that.
Nicki: So then take us back to our documents.
Robb: I do have a Substack that I’m kind of working on around digging into that a little bit more deeply.
Nicki: Okay. So before we get to our questions, I want to remind you all that the Healthy Rebellion Radio was sponsored by our Salty AF electrolyte company LMNT. If you eat low carb or keto, if you’re an athlete, let’s say you’re a Spartan racer. You play BJJ, you’re a runner, you’re a biker. Maybe you have an active job or you work in hot or human conditions, maybe you’re a breastfeeding mom, or maybe you have pots. If you do winter sports, skiing, snowboarding, cross country, any of that stuff. Or if you’re just feeling a little tired and need a natural energy boost without any caffeine LMNT is for you. You can buy three boxes and get the fourth box free at drink.lmtcom/robb. That’s drinkL-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B.
Robb: Cool.
Nicki: Cool. All right. We’ve got three questions today. Our first one is from Taylor on poor digestion for her little one. Hi, Nicki and Robb, I was hoping you might have some advice other than probiotics, since that seems to be the only advice I get on this topic and they don’t don’t seem to help. I have a nine month old baby with a very sensitive digestive system. We did everything right when it came to introducing good bacteria, natural home birth, no antibiotics, exclusively breastfed until introducing solids. I have to cut dairy while breastfeeding because he has a CMPI. Since introducing solids, he is only able to handle meat, eggs, fish, and avocado. Anything else gives him extremely painful gas and he will be up all night screaming.
Nicki: Should I continue to try to introduce new foods or hold off until a certain period of time to let his gut heal and develop? His current daily food intake will look something like this. An egg fried in lard, sausage patty, avocado, fish row, ground beef, chicken thigh, overcooked white potato and orange slices on the rind so he just gets the juice and no fiber. Thank you for any advice you may have. And my first thoughts are he’s nine months old, the list of items that you have there look amazing. They’re very nutrient dense. And up all night screaming child that is not good for anyone in the household. And I think at nine months that lineup of foods is probably, I wouldn’t-
Robb: I wouldn’t feel pressured to fix that.
Nicki: .. feel compelled to like expand your list. But here’s no need to push it. I would just take your time, maybe give him a few more months and then slowly tinker with a few other things.
Robb: I completely agree.
Nicki: Your sleep, his sleep, everybody getting good is of paramount importance.
Robb: I’m trying to think of, like it’s been a while since we-
Nicki: It’s been a while.
Robb: … were in that stage, but what was the recommendation? Like if you introduced something that didn’t work, it was like wait three months.
Nicki: And then try again. I think that was more for like, if they don’t like it though, like if they are…
Robb: I’m just trying to find some benchmark here. Like do you never reintroduce it? I think maybe wait for three months and then make the introduction a small amount.
Nicki: I guess the thing that I’m not…
Robb: You know, if you do something new.
Nicki: She doesn’t mention what she’s trying that he’s reacting to. So I’m assuming she’s trying other meats and fruits and things like that. But I feel like, I don’t know, I would prioritize the sleep. It looks like you’re feeding him very nutrient dense items of things that he does tolerate. And I wouldn’t see any need to kind of expand that list.
Robb: Well, and our kids just didn’t really like much beyond that list anyway. I mean, they’ll eat–
Nicki: -We did sweet potato, avocado for sure.
Robb: Little bit of asparagus, if it was cooked with a ton of bacon fat or something like that.
Nicki: But not at nine months, I don’t think we gave them asparagus at nine months.
Robb: Yeah. It’s hard to remember we did some… yeah, yeah.
Nicki: Might have done some apple sauce or…
Robb: Yeah. I think the big takeaways are probably don’t need to be in a huge rush to expand the offerings. If you want to tinker with it, I would just do very small servings initially to try to minimize problems and wait a good three months, I think in between introducing new options and see how the little one does.
Nicki: Yeah. Okay. This next question comes from Chris on beef liver. Hey Robb, I like to eat beef liver a couple of times per week. In the States, I was able to find grass fed sources either locally or through US Wellness Meats. However, I recently moved to Okinawa, Japan with the military, and haven’t found any local sources for grass fed or companies that will ship here. The grocery store carries frozen liver slices from Skylark Meats, but they’re not grassfed. For that matter, I can’t find any information on how Skylark raises their cattle. So presumably it’s a large commercial operation. So am I better off ordering some grassfed beef liver capsules from a reputable company or do you think that the liver from Skylark is okay, albeit sub-optimal?
Robb: This is one of the things that I think gets Diana and I in trouble with the Kind of meat. And I don’t want be a Dick here, but kind of the meat elitist. And we love regenerative ag. We love our pasture based folks, but there’s kind of a reality that ruminant meat, ruminant organs are really nutritious, like shockingly nutritious, even the ones that come out of the conventional food production pipeline, because they still spend 70% of their life on grass, if not more.
Robb: And then they’re just good at nutrient up cycling. So they take things like the leftovers from ethanol production and beer production, wine production, different things like that, crop residues, interning that stuff into amazing nutrient dense food. I think some of the concern that folks have particularly around the liver is there’s this whole song and dance of, well, the liver is the detoxification organ and so somehow toxins are going to accumulate in the liver. It’s not how this works. And I would be inclined to just do the liver if you want to do-
Nicki: -Especially if you enjoy it. Like if you’re eating it a couple times a week, clearly he likes it, whereas that’s not the case for many, many people. Many people, specifically beef liver, that like it’s tough thing to like.
Robb: Beef liver is pretty strong. Chicken liver is a little easy to do and like calf liver and stuff, but that’s kind of a side note. So I personally would opt on eating the fresh liver. I mean, we always seem to try to opt for minimally processed whole foods and there’s the whole experience of cooking it and maybe eat some onions and stuff with it. And there’s all this other stuff that goes along with that. So I would opt for that in lieu of, there’s some really compelling evidence that like a certain outfit has like significant bio accumulation. This is something that Diane and I didn’t go super deep into in the book because there’s honestly not a massive amount of data there. But when we look at bio accumulation of things like glyphosphate and stuff like that, it’s absolutely an issue.
Robb: It’s absolutely a concern. And also it’s just not that big of a deal in ruminant meat in general. And again if you know, your farmer, know your rancher and you can go buy stuff from down the road and you know kind of like a soup to nuts process on the way that the animal is raised, that’s great. But not everybody has that situation. I hate the way that privilege gets tossed around. It’s used like a truncheon these days and it’s just infuriating. But instead of saying privilege, like some of us have it good.
Nicki: Well, you have to an opportunity.
Robb: You have an opportunity.
Nicki: Yeah, if you live nearby somebody or you know, like you did before you moved to Japan, you had sources locally that you could get from. And that is awesome and always ideal. Like we’d prefer to go straight to the producer of our food if we have that option than purchasing from a store. But not everybody has that ability. And now that you’re in Japan, it sounds like you can’t find anybody local that is producing meat the way that you would like to purchase it. So I think not throwing the baby out with the bath water, but still getting your organ meats, in whatever way you can. I’m wondering though, do you think, I mean, obviously shipping stuff, like it’s not feasible from the US, but Australia and New Zealand, I’m wondering if there would be an opportunity to get anything from them.
Robb: Maybe. I mean, if Japan isn’t routinely importing meat from Australia, New Zealand or something like that, like they could be challenging.
Nicki: Right. Just popped into my head that side of the world might could be an opportunity, but maybe it’s not feasible. Our third question this week comes from Jenny on essential tremor. Hey Robb and Nicki, thank you for providing truthful and unbiased information on health. I love your podcast and the Healthy Rebellion group. I am a healthy 50-year-old female. I feel great, but I have essential tremor. I also have celiac disease. Interestingly, I only know one other person with celiac disease and he also has essential tremor. Most of the time my tremor does not bother me too much and I’ve learned how to deal with it. However, there are certain situations I’m in once in a while, where I would like to be able to reduce the tremor in my hands.
Nicki: I have to do a pistol qualification course four times a year for my job. And I would love to reduce my tremor before the test. I’m drug tested for work and cannot risk using any CBD products, which is too bad because I’ve heard that they can help with tremors. So I have a few questions for you. One in your research regarding essential tremor, have you found a link between people with celiac disease also having essential tremor? Two, do you have any suggestions for reducing tremors before an event is described above? And three, is there any hope for completely healing, essential tremor, AKA getting rid of it for good? Thank you.
Robb: Good, really good questions and timely. I don’t know if Jenny knows that we’ve had a few episode on essential tremor. Like, I don’t know if that got on her radar.
Nicki: We had another question a few back that you mentioned.
Robb: I mentioned though that I have it and have had it as far as I can tell my whole life. I remember this back. It’s kind of good. I knew about this for this time, but my 10th grade year of high school, my English instructor had me pull out like fourth, third grade, fourth grade like-
Nicki: Handwriting.
Robb: … handwriting book. And that’s all I did for the year. And he looked at my day one and my day. And he’s like fuck this is worse than it was in the beginning.
Nicki: So you’re blaming your handwriting on.
Robb: Well, it’s a piece of it for sure. And so I definitely have suffered with this celiac linkage with essential tremor is huge. And I don’t know if everybody who has essential tremor has celiac but it seems to be a massive linkage there. And one of the big questions with that is are we just serially getting exposed to gluten? There’s kind of a neurotoxin effect with this. Is this reflective of damage that’s been done that never heals? Is this reflective of ongoing damage? Is this reflective of different neurological changes? Man, I’ve been kind of doing a few steps. I’ve got a document on this stuff with everything I’ve tracked down. We had a very sharp person write in and they mentioned that there are some heterocyclic harmanes one of them called harmane, H-A-R M-A-N-E.
Robb: And there’s some linkage there with essential tremor. And the thought is the consuming animal products in particular causes these heterocyclic harmanes and these things are neurotoxins. And I really went down the path on that one and just didn’t find that much… It was kind of inconclusive, at least the research it was done there. I also personally did some experimenting of supplementing with Silymarin extract, really high dose basically did massive liver support Silymarin extract, N-acetylcysteine and alpha-lipoic acid, which all of these things kind of augment different elements of liver detoxification, absolutely no change for me. Like no change at all and I’ve been doing that for like two months. I think that’s all good stuff to do. So I’m just continuing to do it.
Nicki: You definitely notice that it’s worse when you consume any caffeine.
Robb: Any type of stimulant and both caffeine and interestingly, the nicotine gum and mince that I was using makes it worse for sure which was perplexing to me because there’s all this research that suggests that nicotine is kind of neuroprotective for like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and other kind of neurodegenerative diseases. But apparently this essential tremor is a little bit Parkinsonian in nature. I’ve talked to Crestor and some other people, and they usually tackle essential tremor in a similar way that they do with Parkinson’s. So like ketogenic diet and stuff like that is supposed to help. I had the ketogenic diet piece kind of ticked, but I’ve tinkered with adding more carbs and reducing carbs.
Robb: And the only thing that I notice with that is that I get hungry as I usually do when I introduce more carbs. And I didn’t really notice a significant difference there, big things that I’ve noticed that do help CBD definitely helps. So that’s something that I would, sounds like Jenny probably works in law enforcement. I would do some investigating though around the ins and outs of getting a drug tested in using CBD for the essential tremor, because there are CBD products that are like certified to have absolutely no THC residue in them and stuff like that. And maybe you could get an exception for this thing. I don’t know, but I would investigate that because I personally have noticed an improvement with that Ojai Energetics is probably the best one that I’ve seen.
Robb: But there is kind of an oral gummy that I’ve seen also that I haven’t tried, but is supposed to be like super high dose. So those things are options for this pistol qualification or other… So interestingly, like a social situation, if you just want to have reduced true tremor activity, like mine gets bad enough, you’ll even see it in my head, like my face kind of shaking and stuff like that. Like postural muscles, which is super annoying and embarrassing. You’re trying to do some sort of like social event and you’re kind of vibrating around, like you’re on vibration plate or something like that. Interestingly like a quick shot, a drink of alcohol like, pop, just down the hatch, really mitigates the essential tremor.
Robb: And oddly enough, on the essential tremor websites, they recommend, if you’re in a social engagement, don’t get drunk, but have a quick drink of alcohol. It can certainly help, but that’s clearly not going to help you on the pistol qualification. And I think it’s unethical to drink alcohol before going out to pistol qualify. So that’s a thing, but you can be prescribed beta blockers from your doctor and concert pianists. If you do a little bit of research around fine motor skill and beta blockers, it’s fascinating. And this is one of these things that beta blockers kind of get lumped under the performance enhancing drugs category in some ways, because it reduces anxiety.
Nicki: And you noticed like when you went on Rogan, like after the show you told me that it was really bad.
Robb: It was super bad on Rogan. Yeah, it was very uncomfortable.
New Speaker: I didn’t notice it in the video, but that was one of the first things he shared when I was like, how did it go? And so anytime you’re kind of like what Jenny, what you’re about to do, like it’s an event you want to perform well, that normal kind of pre-event anxiety type thing probably tends to heighten the tremor.
Robb: So beta blockers can be helpful. And honestly, if anything, they’re going to improve your pistol and shooting skills. And again, some people look at that as kind of like an unfair advantage, because it does reduce performance, anxiety. Concert pianists, and violinists, and all kinds of people do this type of stuff. Even if they don’t have anything like essential tremor, it just reduces, it doesn’t make you cognitively impaired at all. You’re just calm and focused. So that’s a possibility. I haven’t seen much out there on this, but I was thinking about kava kava as a possibility.
Nicki: You haven’t tried that yet.
Robb: I haven’t tried that. Mechanistically it kind of makes sense that it could help because it can kind of kind help people calm down a little bit and kind of takes some of the like hyperdrive edge off of things. I do really notice that doing box breathing type meditation. I think that there is for sure something related to like vagal nerve activation and like relaxation, big inhale exhale. I remember with my mom, her essential tremor was so bad. I couldn’t even get her to, like when I would try to teach her some, some breathing techniques, it was painful to watch. She couldn’t fucking do it. I mean, she had just had this lifetime of kind of like stressed breathing.
Nicki: Shallow breathing.
Robb: Shallow breathing that I think made the whole thing worse. So I would really recommend like a two or three times a day meditation plus box breathing, maybe the Wim Hof stuff. I would play around with a bunch of different breathing techniques, because I definitely notice, like when we were at Rogan, we went to do a photo together, Diana and I, and she was like, you need to breathe. And it just literally like the tremor just like stops then, but then I of get back into a stress breathing pattern and it starts ramping back up. So I think like if you could carve out 10, 15 minutes, multiple times a day and really entrain your body to be good about like, okay, I’m breathing now. And so this is time to calm down. I think that’s going to be a big deal.
Robb: I know to sleep is a huge deal. If I’m sleep deprived, it’s worse for sure. And I think that feeds into like general stress level allostatic load, the vagal nerve activation. I’m trying to think of what else, but I would investigate CBD. I would look into kind of the ethics and legality of using beta blockers. Like I see no, the only downside health wise that I could see is because I do jujitsu sometimes I’m the person that they demo stuff on. I go out and they’ll do stuff. And sometimes my tremors kind of noticeable with that. I still go ahead and do it because it’s just kind of whatever I do, but I wouldn’t use it before jujitsu because beta blockers kind of cap the max heart rate that you can have. And so I could get myself into trouble by doing a degree of physical activity that my heart literally can’t keep up with, and that could be bad news.
Robb: So if it was something like a tactical shooting challenge where you’re running and climbing and throwing and all this other stuff and then also shooting, that could be sketchy doing a beta blocker at that point. And there may be some other beta blockers now that don’t affect the heart rate specifically the same way. I haven’t dug into that, but that would be my main concern around that is like, if you had some potentially high physical activity kind of need in the context of having the beta blocker happening, trying to think of anything else.
Nicki: And then any hope for completely healing it and getting rid of it for good doesn’t seem.
Robb: I mean, I’m as motivated and interested in individual…
Nicki: Well, I remember you sent Kresser a text about it and his response was I’m so sorry that like, it’s like…
Robb: It’s a tough one to fix.
Nicki: He wasn’t like, “Oh, this is no problem. Here’s what you do.” It was like, “Dude, I’m really sorry.”
Robb: It’s the far side cartoon where the two deer talking, the one deer has like a bulls eye birth mark, and the guy’s like, dude, bummer of a birth mark. It was kind of like that. So my main goal is to try to mitigate progress so that hopefully I die before this stuff gets so bad that my life is seriously compromised by what it does. And again, like stress levels, sleep, all those things are big factors. I personally haven’t used beta blockers yet, and that is something like if I had to start doing speaking gigs again, or do media or whatever, I might have to consider doing something like that because it’s annoyingly noticeable at this point.
Nicki: Well, and you feel it.
Robb: Under certain circumstances, yeah.
Nicki: So then you’re self conscious about it.
Robb: And I mean, I’m used to dealing with awkward situation. So I think compared to most people, I motor through it pretty well, but it sucks. It’s just not good. So Jenny, I don’t know, keep us posted and I’m continually looking at this stuff. So I kind of dismissed the whole like harming deal. The reason why I did on that is that it was inconclusive from what I looked at, whether or not this potentially neurotoxic byproduct of cooking meat was a problem. And some of the literature kind of it made a theoretical case for it, but then the results of some of the interventions were super inconclusive. And then when I did the diligence of like, I changed the way that I cooked the meat that I was eating.
Robb: I was only doing like soups and stews for two weeks. And I super hammered down on liver detox support and it didn’t make any difference for me. But it’s not to say it wouldn’t for you. So the liver detox stuff I did was a good dose of Silymarin extract. I think it, I forget what it was. It’s standardized extract. And I do like three tablets of that. I do a gram of N-acetylcysteine twice a day, and then 200 milligrams of alpha-lipoic acid, twice a day. The alpha-lipoic acid, you have to be a little careful with because it will lower blood sugar levels. So if you’re not keto or whatever, you can get yourself into a little bit of a hypoglycemic event with the alpha-lipoic acid.
Nicki: Okay. Well, let’s see. Those are our three questions for this week. Thank you all as always for tuning in. If you do have a question, you could submit that at robwolf.com on the contact form page. There’s a spot to submit a question for the podcast. Remember our new internal strength program with Basis Health and Performance, New York with Sarah and Grayson Strange that begins this coming Monday, March 7th. It’s free to all members of the Healthy Rebellion. So if you’re not yet a member of the Healthy Rebellion, you can join by going to join.thehealthyrebellion.com. And remember to check out our show sponsor element. You can hydrate and tackle all of your electrolyte needs at drinklmnt.com/Robb, that’s drinkL-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. And we’ll be back next week. I hope you all have a fabulous weekend.
Robb: Take care, everybody.
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Hi Robb, do you think there is a level of adrenaline (sympathetic tone overall) sensitivity here – almost an intolerance? In the essential tremors. Put enough sympathetic activation in anyone they will start to have similar reactions.
Hi! Nicki mentioned a special on the drinklmnt.com/robb site – buy 3 get 1 free but I only see sample pack info there. Is there a different place or way to obtain this deal? Thank you!
It’s the value bundle, you can find it here https://drinklmnt.com/products/lmnt-recharge-value-bundle