What up family? Welcome to episode. 190 of the genius life. Let's go.
What's going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of The Genius life. I'm your host Max lovera filmmaker health and science journalist, and author of The New York Times best-selling book, genius foods and the genius life. First off. Happy Wednesday. Hey guys. Doing on this episode of the show. I'm so excited to welcome back the one and only Mark Sisson to the show. He's an OG in the health and wellness space, and he is
Got a long and storied history within this industry. And today we're going to talk about something different from I think what Mark normally talks about. But before we get to that, Mark is a New York Times bestselling author and he is one of the founding fathers of the ancestral Health movement. His latest book is two meals a day, the simple sustainable strategy to lose fat reverse aging and break free from diet frustration forever. And it's so good. He also created a little thing called Primal kitchen, which I'm a huge fan of their sauces. They
make all types of condiments, sugar-free ketchup thousand island dressing, but with no junk ingredients, pasta sauce is you name, it really fantastic company and no junk in any other ingredients lists, which I certainly appreciate on today's episode of the show Mark and I catch up about what he's been doing to fend off the effects of Aging Mark doesn't seem to age and I'm determined to find and patent his secret. He also shares why that even if you hate exercise,
Is walking is one of the most beneficial and most accessible ways to keep your body moving and strong at any age. We also discuss The Sweet Spot of how long you should be working out for maximum longevity benefits and why Mark has reduced his workouts from an hour and 20 minutes to just 23 minutes. And finally, Mark explains why he's particular about the muscle groups that he pays attention to in is anti-aging workouts. We cover so much. We cover his philosophy on nutrition for anti-aging,
Mrs. We talked about sleep and what he's doing to optimize asleep. There's really so much here. And Mark is normally talking about ways of getting fit and burning fat. So here's an episode where he really kind of shifts gears and talks about his own sort of personal strategy and it's very actionable, very achievable, lots of amazing information. So yeah, above all, I'm just psyched for you to be here and for you to listen to the conversation that we had before we die.
In. I am headed to the great state of Texas this week. And while Texas is not short on their meat game. They are a little short on their meat stick game, but fear not. I am bringing some paleo Valley meat sticks with me to Texas. I always throw in my backpack when I'm on the road. And so, why would my for day long trip to Austin? Be any different meat sticks by paleo Valley are the best travel snack. Of course, they are the only be stick in the USA made from 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef.
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It's a 15%. You will love them. I promise. Thank you guys for supporting my sponsors, which in turn helps support the show. Really appreciate you guys. And you can always rest easy knowing that any of the brands that I mentioned in any of the ads on the show. I genuinely trust enjoy, and personally will use. So again, just thank you. I want to share a wonderful review for the show that I am. I don't know how to pronounce this but Co simcha left on the Apple podcast app.
When you leave a rating and review for the show on the Apple podcast app, it really helps the show guys. Rise up the ranks draw, new listeners to it. So, please keep doing that. If you haven't already, just take a moment out of your day. It's a free way to support the show. Really appreciate it. Anyway, kousaka writes. This podcast is an incredible source of helpful and actionable content to begin. Taking better care of ourselves, beginning with diet, but also focuses on other aspects, like physical and mental health. Thanks Max your great interviewer and you bring out on extremely
Interesting and knowledgeable experts from various scientific Fields. I look forward to listening to every new episode. I've been a passionate follower for two plus years. Well, kousaka. Thank you so much for that wonderful review and I love your loyalty to the show. It means a lot you guys can also wear your love for the show loud and proud by going to the genius life.com. We've got incredible March, including our tie-dye hoodie, which is super popular. We've got socks with my face on them. We've got a fanny pack. So if you are a regular listener of the show a true genius,
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And yeah, enough of that. Let's jump into today's episode. How about it? Here we go.
Are we rolling? Mark Sisson? Welcome back. Great to be back. Max. Always good to see you,
likewise, and I'm trying to think the last time we saw each other because we move around the world so much.
Yeah. I think I I must have come to visit you. In Miami was probably around New Year's. That's right. Was it not? Yeah, you're living it up down there in my old stomping grounds.
It's great. I love it. I love it. I become a huge fan of Miami and particularly Miami Beach. Hmm.
How are things there at this point? Oh, they've
been great all along.
Be great. Hey man, great all along. So I mean except for last summer when I couldn't you couldn't cross the beach, couldn't get out because the beaches were closed. You couldn't cross the beach to go to the water to paddle. That was an issue. But otherwise, you know, I think all during the latter part of 2020 and most of this part of 2021. It's probably the best place in the world to
be. Wow. Don't tell anybody. No. No, I do. Let's see. I keep that. Keep that between us. Yeah. I love Miami. I lived there for about four and a half years and
Gables primarily, but I went to University of Miami and so I would spend a lot of my time in South Beach and it is, it is almost like a it's it's almost like a paradise. It's the closest you can get to like the French Riviera in the United States. Yeah.
For a lot of reasons. I mean, first of all, the weather is fantastic. I mean, I enjoy the humidity. I enjoy the getting up in the morning and having that sort of warm blast of moist air with a, you know, scented with some flowers and the that, you know, sort of unique Florida, smell.
Yeah, do it, the waters 20 degrees warmer than it is in California. You know, the sand is a little bit nicer. The music is great, is very International in terms of music with an emphasis on EDM. The, you know, the food is great. I mean, it's become known for great restaurants. So some of the best restaurants in the country are in Miami. Now, you know, the nightlife is good. I don't partake that much but but, you know, a few, it's a bit of a
Playground. And you know, if you don't have discipline, I suppose you can get yourself in
trouble. Yeah. Oh, yeah,
fairly disciplined. So I'm I'm able to take advantage of the of the best parts of it without getting in
trouble. It's so great. One of my favorite. I mean, just speaking about the food Prime, 112 amazing steak house, but actually one of my favorite Ceviche restaurants it. I think it's a chain actually in Miami, but that I've ever been to is there. It's just a flying. It wrote, It's called Ceviche. Yeah, it's so good.
Yeah, no, it's it's one of several. You know that are again are very very specific to a type of food and you. So whenever I go to a restaurant it I don't think about where I'm going to go. I think about what I want to eat and then I figure out where I want to go. Oh my God, you're making
me want to move there Sydney. We gotta move to Miami. We're moving the operation. All right. Well, so what's, what's been on your mind these days, you know, we've covered so much ground over the past couple times that you've been on the show and, you know, we always talk about, like, you know,
Flexibility how to become a better fat burning beast. But
what sort of rolls off your tongue? By the way, I love the closet. Yeah. I
feel like I must have gotten that from you. Yeah, but yeah, like what? So, what are you into these days?
Well, I'm into, I continue to support Primal kitchen food company. So that's still kind of a primary area of focus R&D and you know, being the face of the brand looking for and I've gotten
Number of Angel Investments that I tend to and that's fun. So I'm having a good time mentoring young entrepreneurs in their operations.
So great to be able to be in that
position. Yeah, not really is and it's a it's a real privilege to be there and it actually happens to be very lucrative. If you pick the right, you know people to back I'm trying to orchestrate a lifestyle that is more geared around, doing enjoyable activities, not
So much working out with quotes, but you know playing. So, you know, paddling and writing a fat bike and playing ultimate frisbee things like that. And I am starting a new business can be, you know, a little bit. I can let the cat out of the bag a little bit, but it's a minimalist footwear company, and I'm looking forward to getting involved in that. And you know, I'm focused as much.
As ever and perhaps more on this concept of anti-aging because that shit's starting to hit me. And so I get, you know, my little, you know, injuries from from playing,
go from my vantage point. Every time I see you. You look younger and younger. So well. Yeah, you for that. So what did what are you doing to fight the Frailty until like, you know, well, so his vibrant.
Yeah. I mean, it really, I think it comes down to some simple rules one. Is you got to eat, right? Yeah, absolutely. Have to eat.
Of course, I've orchestrated Motes, most of my professional career around figuring out those Secrets, hence, 10 books on how to eat right? Then. There's the movement patterns and the movement, you know, I thought when I was younger, the that the more was better and putting in a hundred miles a week of running or 250 miles a week of of cycling, was the way to go when I was going to be, you know, jacked and well at Jack because you can't, you can't get that big doing that amount of endurance stuff, but I was going to be the fittest
Beast on Earth doesn't work that way. There's a point of diminishing returns when you train too hard too much. So a lot of what I've done in the past couple of decades is figure out literally to quote, Tim Ferriss. What's the minimum effective dose of exercise? What's the least amount of exercise, you know, focused on The Workout Part, what's the least amount of working out I can do and, you know, maintain muscle mass and and maintain some amount of power and Agility and Mobility.
And and then that allows me to play and to play without getting injured. So the all of the workouts to do in the gym or sort of contemplated to keep me from getting injured when I'm playing now, when I'm playing and having fun and moving around a lot. I'm sprinting and jumping them or paddling of doing core work. I mean, it's all kind of all over the place which adds up to a, you know, a total picture of I think, vibrancy. I mean, I'm not, I'm not just, you know, going out and running.
40 miles a week as a 68 year old guy and that's it. I'm doing a little bit of Sprint, a little bit endurance, a little bit of cycling, a little bit of, you know, throwing and catching and changing movement. So the the key to that is to move yourself through as many planes and ranges of motion as you possibly can, because as we get to, you know, to the to the later stage of Our Lives, we really have to define the quality of life in ways that are meaningful.
I think the two major meaningful ways our access to cognition. So our thoughts, you know, can we can we respond to people have conversations? Can we recall our thoughts? Can we remember things? Do we have access to those wonderful memories that we created in the earlier, part of our lives and Mobility? Am I able to get through this world and enjoy travel? And enjoy meeting new people and enjoy going places and taking walks and going out in the forest or going on a hike or going in the water and swimming. We're going scuba diving or
Or snorkeling or whatever it is, or skiing or snowboarding. Those are all again to me. There was a role, you know, the sorts of things that add up to a high quality of life. And when you when, you know, as you get older those people tend to to I think downplay the importance of those. Hmm. I'll see you at home. I'll I'll call my kids on the phone or I'll talk to my grandchildren or I'll watch TV or whatever and there's this steady decline that people tend to enter into if they don't if they don't.
You know, if they're not really aware of what's going on and the more, you sit around and the less you you work out the less inclined. You are to work out or less inclined. You are to move the less inclined, you are to walk. So now walking is still the greatest thing humans ever. Learn to do the bipedalism, which is you know, we're basically like Segways. How do we stay upright on two feet? I don't even know, right? It's like it is amazing. It is amazing. But the ability to just get out and walk is I cannot stress enough.
Tough to everybody and he was funny as a. I don't know if you if you're fans of Mark and Chris bell bell Brothers, you know,
Mark smelly Bell. They I'm familiar. I don't know
that much about them. But, I mean, you know, he's been a bodybuilder Place been a weightlifters, hold a heavy weight lifters whole life and then a body builder and now he's just sort of discovered, walking and is like one of his favorite activities to do. And I love to see that and he has, he's still in the gym lifting heavy shit, but he's out there walking every day.
Because he recognizes the importance of it.
That's amazing. Yeah, why did you have like a certain step count that you aim for, or it's just like you just go by the
feel of your pillow by the feel. So I was in in July. I rented a house in the south of France and a big house. I had my family and friends visit throughout the month and we didn't have a car and and it was away from from town or towns and Villages and things like that. So I walked an average of seven or eight miles a day every day.
And we all walk, we walk to dinner, you know, back from dinner. We walk to go shopping. We walk to go to the beach. We just took hikes for the, for the sole purpose of having taking a hike. And I realized at the end of the month. I got like 240 miles of walking in well, and I had had a hamstring injury that had been working on the months prior. I, you know, these are the sorts of injuries that you, when you get older, they just, you know, they take a little bit longer to heal when
You're 18, you get a high hamstring injury. It's better the next day. You know, when you're 28 takes a couple of days or a week, when you're 30, it takes you, you know, at my age, it's a, it can be devastating. So I had physical therapy. I attend sessions of physical therapy for like, two hours. Each. Nothing worked. Next thing. You know, I just, I walked, and I walked in basically Minimalist Shoes, the whole time.
For the month of July and the, the issue resolved. Well, and it's just so magical that you always go back to Nature. Has the best way to fix things. Whether it's covid, whether it's, you know, global warming. I mean, whatever you look at and and heart disease, you know, it dementia. All the things that we that we talked about know about nature, always has the best answer. It's not found in drugs. It's not found in some surgical intervention. It's not found.
And, you know, all of the magic, you know, potions and lotions and things that we that we figure, we need literally, there's always a solution that that will be found in nature. That's probably the best solution. I love that.
Hey guys, quick pause. As I mentioned this week. I am traveling to Texas just to do some exploring hanging out with my brother's jump in. Some Lakes, who knows? But in prepping for the trip because I know that it's going to be hot AF in Texas. I'm
Packing some element with me which you know, is my favorite means of replenishing electrolytes and keeping hydrated. I love to use element after a good sweat session Asana or after a vigorous workout. One of the things that I love about element is that there's no sugar. So unlike many of the rehydration solutions that you'll find on the market element is completely, sugar-free. Not only that, but it's gluten-free. There are no artificial ingredients. No plastic bottles, just the stuff that you need for proper hydration, their flavors.
All amazing. I'm not kidding you, whether it's raspberry salt, orange, salt, Citrus salt, mango, chili, their stuff is just so good. It's actually a delight to Shake It Up in a water bottle with some ice water. I look forward to drinking my packet of element every day. Actually, it's really that good. And I've gotten my brothers and Sydney and everybody else that I know hooked on it. So I have no doubt that you're gonna love it too. If you'd like, a free sample pack, which is an exclusive genius life.
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Are they really good
to wear on when you're walking on concrete?
Because I understand that being barefooted, like, you spent a lot of time on the actual Beach, you know, we're walking barefoot. I think is, is makes obviously the most sense. But, you know, like my experience with wearing really thin soled shoes. It's kind of kind of hurts like my lower back a little bit or my like or my knees when I'm walking on
concrete, right? Well, I mean there's a there's, there's the difference between a very thin Sole and a slightly cushioned soul that has still has zero drop. It still doesn't have
Much of an arch, so you're still requiring, the small muscles of your feet to do some work. Having said that, I mean, I walked mostly Pavement in in France. Well, you know because it was up and down streets and sidewalks and and you know, boardwalks and things like that. And again, the more I did it, you know, to your point, you have to adapt to it. It's not something that you go out and buy Minimalist Shoes and then the first day, you know, run seven miles. You gotta, you gotta break your feet.
In a little bit, you have to adapt them, acclimate them to the shoes. But once you get acclimated, then it becomes a great thing and it becomes, you know, good for a back problem or good for a,
yeah, our friend, our mutual friend. Aaron. Alexander. Those are all like, he wears. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, and that guy's a beast. So, so you don't do any do, do any deliberate workouts at this point? Like, all right, for sure. I still go to the
gym, but I go to the gym, but now what used to be an hour and 20 minute, workout is a 23 minute workout. You know, I just, I literally,
Lee, go to get the pump if you will and to do some, you know, maybe some resistance rubber band, resistance exercises, things like that, upper, if I do upper body, it's pull-ups. It might be dips. I do push-ups
hot. Like what? We're in the rep range.
Generally. Oh usually 15 reps per set, you know, three-set kind of thing noting that while I've done a lot of research on lifting heavy weights. There's a point at which
Lifting heavy weights again, become sort of dangerous. Hmm, at my age. So like I will do once every 10 days. I'll do a hex bar deadlift, right. And I can do 335 pounds. Well, which is double my body weight, but I don't, I don't like to because it takes, that's a one rep, max. And one rep max is are sort of like binary either. You can do it in which case it's probably not your Mac's or you can't do it in which case you might hurt yourself. So,
So, you know, whatever you think your one rep met where I think my one rep max is I might do, I might work up to four reps of something. That's 88 percent of that or something. Yeah, but again, always sort of contemplated to avoid injury, not to court injury. Yeah, and there is a point for me. It happened around the age of 52 where you realize you're never going to set another PR in anything. So why? You know, why even
That and then it just becomes a game to figure out how to optimize your workout again, the minimum effective, dose of a workout to get you through the workout uninjured. Leave you feeling not, not knackered, not beat up, it feeling, you know, like you did a workout and that you're going to recover in a day or two.
Yeah. Are you at all familiar with this? I discovered this. This guy on Instagram recently is like a knees over toes. Yeah guy or something like that, but it's basically like this philosophy.
See which he's sort of championing, but you know, I'm sure you're well familiar with this concept as well. That, you know, the Dogma in the Fitness World, when doing moves, like squats and lunges to never let your knees go over your toes actually isn't rooted in science and could potentially be to the detriment of like knee stability and things like
that. Yeah. I mean, I'm not that well versed in the biomechanics there, but somebody like Kelly Starrett who is, you know, he's gone.
Through all these iterations of, you know, where the knees should be and where the feet should be relative to the knees. And I think, at the end of the day, it really comes down to your own biomechanics. Like, that's if, you can have somebody who can watch you and understands biomechanics and then how your own body is set up, you know, maybe your pigeon-toed. Maybe you're not need, maybe you've, maybe you're bowlegged. Maybe you've got years of hip dysplasia. I mean, there are all these factors that you have to add into the equation in order.
Come up with what's right for you. And I think sometimes, you know, one, you know, one size, fits all workout routine like that can be, can be problematic.
Yeah, totally. There's a lot of like Fitness porn on Instagram, you know, people doing all kinds of crazy moves, but you know, biomechanically like something as simple as a deadlift for me, has always been a challenge. Yeah. I'm like at all, you know, lanky guy. Yeah, and and I've just never been able to do them properly. I feel like
Andrew deadlift, or have you tried to
Bar deadlift. I've never tried that so the hex bar deadlift is just a again a Kinder gentler way of doing a deadlift your because the bar is around you, the weight is sort of through the middle of your your body instead of over the front of it. So the tendency to you know, to strain your back trying to do heavy weights is decreased because of the centering of the weight over the middle of you,
super interesting. And how does the weight like translate like are you typically stronger?
Most people are a little bit.
Stronger on an x-bar deadlift. Yeah, and, you know, it hex bar deadlift is kind of a combination of a loaded, Squat and a deadlift. If you can imagine, you know the weight behind your back on a squat, you know, and keeping your back positioned appropriately. You're trying to keep it weight over the center of your body. Same thing with a hex bar deadlift, but accept your your dead lifting it from the instead of from here. Your your arms are at your side and part for me that amount of
Puts I think my weakest, you know, the weakest part of my lift there as my grip
strength. Hmm, interesting. Yeah. With with sort of, you know, in air quotes, anti-aging being a primary focus of your of your of your efforts. Are there any like particular muscle groups that you spend more time exercising like hips legs, lower body, things like that.
That's a good question. There are more that I should spend time exercising, but I probably,
Don't and yeah, hips, you know, inner thigh, you know, sort of paying more attention to hamstrings, to glutes to the friends. I've had Achilles issues over the years, and the Achilles issue isn't in and of itself problematic. It's the tightness and in the calf muscle, and the gastroc. So, you know, being able to understand that a lot of these injuries where you feel them is not where the actual source.
Of the problem is you have to kind of deconstruct and figure out how to go back and and and approach those and then I've had enough injuries over the years. I've had torn severely torn hamstrings on what one severely torn on my right leg, not so much on my left. I tore my lat muscle when I was 35 years old and it dropped, you know, the thing tore off and drop down and was a ball Jesus. And I didn't eat in both cases. I didn't have surgery and it just allowed myself.
My, I should have. But I anyway, anyway, I'll add my body to kind of return to its own like natural state, which how that manifested itself was an asymmetrical body. Now that was doing symmetrical work. So for instance, when I was doing pull-downs or pull-ups, if you look at my back, it looks. If you cut it down the middle, looks like two different backs to different people. Well, because the musculature is so different from one side to the next, because the side that had the injury.
Found muscles found ways to do the work new muscles. That wouldn't ordinarily be used in that in that particular exercise. It's a little weird.
There were here that line find what you love and let it kill you. Yeah,
that's
that's that's you. That's pretty much.
That's me know. I've had, I've had enough. I got, you know, a bad guy. Got a patellar tendon. Torn off playing frisbee one time. So I've had some, I've had my share of of you know those
It's of injuries. But you know knock what I just I come back and work around them. I figure figure how to work around because I still want to play and I don't want to sit on the sidelines.
It reminds me of my my middle brother Andrew. He's he's basically a competitive jiu-jitsu fighter and well his intent is not to to like go to the. I'm gonna sound like such an idiot here, but like the big leagues or whatever like, you know, major competitions, but he's more than a hobbyist. Like
Loves Jujitsu. But his intent is not to go pro and yet he's always getting his injuries like, his knees are always getting messed up. He's like tearing things is meniscus, you know, in both. I think he's tired at this point. He's developing like some kind of cyst on the back of the other knee and his ear. Recently. He started to develop the cauliflower ear in, you know, on one side.
And I'm like, why
why are you doing this to yourself? But it's because he loves it. Yeah, you know,
I had not heard that line and I'm going to use it. Find something you.
Love and let it kill
you. You've never heard that. It's the best. Yeah, because that's really what I think it is. It's really, that's what To Me. The Meaning of Life is, you know, like we're all on this moving walkway. Like, at the airport's, you know, towards this, you know, this inevitable destination. And I think I think to have a meaningful life, which I think is, you know, if you look at all of the world's long-lived populations meet, you know, having a sense of purpose their lives. Absolutely.
It's crucially important and, you know, to digress a little bit at what.
See with the generations coming up, and I'm kind of fearful of what's going to come out of covid as a result of this. But, you know, this reason to get out of bed in the morning, like like why do you get up in the morning? Why do you not just do what Brian Wilson did in the 60s and stay in bed for two years? Never get out of bed, you know, you have to have meaning, you have to have a reason to get up and for a lot of people, you know, it's a hobby for your brother. It's the, it's, you know, it's that pursued even though it's killing him. It's not killing it.
Um, it's just it's letting him know that he's alive, is what it is, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think you know, I used to have a t-shirt my original T-shirt with Primal nutrition and Primal kitchen was live long, drop dead. And I've sort of felt that way that was the the hunter-gatherer experience. Like if you survived the rigors of the hostile environment, you got stronger and stronger and stronger until you know, something, you know, either a saber-toothed tiger whack, you or he just at 88
90 years old, even a hundred thousand years ago, you know you you just drop dead.
Yeah. You just want to get you want to make it through with as few scars and injuries as possible. But you're going to, you're going to accumulate some, right? But back to sort of
what we said in the opening which was, you know, what defines a quality of life. And one of those things Mobility is that ability to snowboard and powder down a steep face. I just that is one of the greatest experiences, you know, in Life or surfing or, you know, or worse.
Skiing or cycling, you know, in the Alps, there are all of these experiences that that so many people will never get, because they're not fit enough to suit up and go try it out. And then those that do try it. Are there smitten?
Yeah. I mean, you look at the the Aging population in this country and everybody's, you know, everyone that you see is frail, barely mobile. It's a real problem and just because it's typical.
Because, you know, the way that people typically age.
Is common doesn't make it normal. And so this is, I think an important conversation to be
having. Yeah, I mean that even sort of bleeds over into, you know, medical statistics, where they look at blood work of the average population, or the normal population. Well, that's, that's the average population. That's an average unhealthy population. So when you look at ranges of outcomes or ranges of blood work, they're not referencing ideal.
Referencing what the general population Norm is and it's generally an unhealthy population. It's just, it's just bizarre. So, you know, we look at, you know, cholesterol numbers, right? And you know, people have have cholesterol over the map and and some people have, you know, HDL that's in the 30s or 40s, which is, which is horrible. But but because it fits a norm that there are a lot of people,
That have that low HDL. And as long as the total is under 200, then the doctor will say everything's fine. You're with you know, you're within a range.
Yeah, that's how they design. Those reference ranges, right? It's just based on population averages and we know that the average Health the, the average person in this country is not. Yeah, is not. Well, unfortunately. 12% of people have good metabolic
Health, which is just it's ridiculous.
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one of the things that's come out of the covid experience was
D levels, you know, and we see how important vitamin D is, like, literally vitamin D, might be the most single most important factor in, in being able to handle about, if covid-19, or maybe not even, you know, becoming a symptomatic. And, and when you look at the reference ranges of what the Stephen, the studies, the reference ranges of the populations start with such low levels of vitamin D, like you and I having, you know, been in this field for a long time would go Jesus. Those people with 20.
No, 25 or
less. Yeah,
they're unhealthy out of the gates. And yet that was sort of the high end of the of one range. And then they say, well, if it was above 25, then you were into a healthier range. Well, no, I don't think you're healthy until you get into a
40 and a between 40 and 60. Yeah, and I grams per milliliter. Yes. Typically what I am for. Yeah, when I had covid, I that was definitely one of the supplements that I brought into the Arsenal. Yep. It was that it was vitamin C. It was corset in. It was Zinc. Melatonin vitamin C.
And fish oil, I don't think enough people are talking about fish oil as a potential therapeutic option. I do, I'm not aware really of any research on it. But to me, it makes a lot of sense that fish oil would be useful, you know, and mitigating the cytokine storm and preventing blood clots and things like that because fish oils
and natural natural blood thinner, every thinner I didn't do fish oil that and I had covid over Thanksgiving and mine was a non-issue. Really I kept waiting for the other shoe to
to drop thinking, what's going to know what's going to happen, but it was like a mild summer cold, but I did lose taste and smell for eight days. And that was freaky. Wow. And so that's, I did a lot of zinc supplementation. I mean, I did, you know, ten, twenty thousand IU of vitamin D every day. Just as a matter of like, that was easy, that was an easy selection, but the zinc thing, I think contributed to my coming back because I have friends who got covid and who like literally six months later didn't have full taste and smell. Yeah.
That's crazy. That's the weird thing. Most of the people that I know that I've gotten covid did lose their sense of taste and smell and that never happened to me, which I feel kind of Lucky about. I didn't
lose my sense of smell or taste. Yeah. It's almost Universal what I've heard with people. So that's interesting. Yeah. Maybe it's my, it's the genius
Foods. Yeah, or something. No, my my neurologist friend said that, that probably suggest that there was like, you know, some lesser degree of penetration penetration to the brain or something like that because I, you know,
Your seat your senses originated in your, you know, yeah, in the cortex. So yeah, that was a, I didn't have fun with covid. I'm just going to say, look, anybody doesn't fun with it. No. No, it was my heart goes out to people honestly that that have suffered with it because it is rough and I'm a relatively healthy fit guy. And for me it was, you know, it was like eight days of just pure suckage. But yeah, glad that I'm glad that I'm on.
On the other side of that. So going back to strategies to mitigate the aging process. Yeah, nutritionally. What are you doing? These days to support your so
I've become more and more carnivore. Hmm. And you know, it's it's interesting because, you know, I was the big ass salad guy, right? I mean, I promoted marks big ass salad for 10 or 15. You're not even a big SL.
Whatever it anymore. No, wow.
And
Not so much because I think it's bad for you guys like, guys, like, you know, Paul saladino will say, well, maybe we shouldn't even be eating plants.
Do that guys, like on a Paleo diet at this point. Yeah.
She buries he's eating, he's eating fruits. Oh, and honey, apparently a lot of honey, but no, I'm, I've cut back on nuts for instance. You know, that was a Paleo sort of, you know, treat for a long time, and I'm, I'm
More and more convinced that knots don't serve me. Well in the last five or ten years, you know, we really gotten down on seed oils. There's a lot of information about how devastating seed oils are, you know, I was talking about it years ago, but not not as overtly is like a Kate. Shanahan is doing right now or, you know, some of the some of the people out there who are really even my khalid's, you know, saying look, you know, and he's one of my mentors.
Yeah, these these industrial seed oil may be more of an issue than sugars for a lot of people. So, yeah, cut out, you know, the sugars. I think that's, that's kind of goes without saying for people trying to cut out the seed. Oil is difficult though because if you eat at a restaurant, you know, you if the sort of remember that, you got to ask them what they're cooking the protein in, if it's a soy concoction, because a lot of these restaurants, even the high-end restaurants, have these
Oil blends that they that they buy. That are inexpensive that they could cook in.
Do you really go that far? I can restaurants you'll
ask. Well typically if they're going to be cooking like a fish or something like that. I'll ask. But I don't over fish that off and so if I morning mistake, I don't it's like
just because you just assume that throw it on the grill. Just three little girl. Yeah.
So yeah. I'm eating really watching out for the, for the industrial seed, oils. I mean, that's the reason I started Primal Kitchen in the first place was, you know, I was like, I was over, trying to figure out how to get a
Good salad, dressing or mayonnaise or any kind of condiment? I'm that the two meals a day, which is the name of my most recent book really has become kind of a way of life for me. So, I don't eat until 1:00 or 1:30. I don't feel compelled to, I'm not hungry. It just fits perfectly with my, with my lifestyle. So, I'll have a lunch kind of a smallish lunch, and then
A very enjoyable dinner, but again, not overdoing it just, you know, enough to satisfy. I noticed that, you know, if I again, I was on on vacation, but I have to admit, I'm always on vacation, but I happen to be on vacation. Don't rub it in Mark and you know, in France. And, you know, I had desserts and I had bread and, you know, but not, you know, not overboard, right? Just enough to kind of, you know, taste get get that sensation, and
Couple of bites and then say, okay, I got I got it and I noticed the difference, you know, on occasion. I mean, they'll be a night when I've come back from dinner and and I don't sleep as well. And I know it's because of something I had to eat. So you you know, good news bad news. When you clean up your diet, you know, everything falls into place. The bad news. Is if you go off you really notice it, right? You really feel the difference. So, you know, diet as an anti-aging strategy diet is still the primary driver of a lot of
Lot of what we
do now. Do you think about is your focus primarily at this point, food quality, or do you, you know, are macros a consideration. Are you trying to be in ketosis or example, good point?
I'm not trying to be in ketosis. I sort of have keto days because, you know, I have a piece of fish for lunch and a vegetable and a piece of steak for dinner and a vegetable and a glass of wine, and that's my days.
You know, allotments and that's a very keto day. I don't have a lot of days where I'll wear. My cards will be up to over a hundred. But if they are because of metabolic flexibility, I don't feel drag ass because I had carbs and now I'm feeling like I need to take a nap that doesn't really happen to me. What I said about eating dinner or a dessert is more of a immediate response to blood sugar and things like that that you know, I don't sleep as well. But you know if it were
During the day or the next day. I wouldn't be dragging because I got kicked out of Quito. Yeah. Since which is a line. I used to hear from a lot of people who are, you know, all the all key to all the time and when they went off and when they'd have 120 grams of carbs, they feel like crap. Well, that's not metabolic flexibility. That's just an allegiance to Quito. That didn't really correct a lot of the problems that we're going on.
So I'm keto ish and but but almost by just the nature of the choices I make. It's not like I'm purposely trying to be keto. I'm just because I know to eliminate certain things that don't serve me well. And I know to include other things, protein becomes a Big Driver of everything. Like as long as I can focus on protein for the day are almost don't care what the other macros are. And you know, again as my philosophy.
Evolved over the years. It was a time when I was adhering of Ron Rosedale. Who would say, oh my God, and being over 40 grams of protein a day and you got to, you know, mtor is going to come into play. And it's a, you know, it's a precancerous sort of root. And, and it's a, it's an aging strategy, not an anti-aging strategy and I'm past that, I think we've decided that, you know, all these things like m2r, play a positive role for the most part, and we want to promote mtor to a certain extent because that's, you know,
Growth and and certainly if you're, you know, under 20 years old, you want a lot of that. So I look now at protein, being sort of the main driver like if I and it's not just the main driver of, as the preeminent macro because a body can pretty much do anything with with amino acids with protein, right? Again, you can do gluconeogenesis. You can make glucose most of the sources of protein have fat, you know, alongside a company. So you're going to get fat with that anyway,
So, there is a rationale behind a carnivore diet that says, you know, you really don't need a lot of extra. We certainly don't need any extra macronutrients, if you're eating carnivore, and you probably don't need that much in the way of micronutrients, if you're eating cardboard, so, as as a using protein, as the primary driver and protein being the most satisfying, and in my world, tasty choice of food, it makes
It's eating really easy and it's almost like to he's like a go to restaurant and you know, I'm going to have a steak or lamb or even a pork chop. I don't eat too much chicken, but a fair amount of fish shellfish shrimp.
I mean, it's a great, it's a great way to live. It's not, you know, inexpensive if you're eating dining out a lot. But if you're eating at home, it a way to make that work for
sure. Yeah, not everybody's Mark Sisson. Okay. No. No, but I mean, I have a lot of friends who
will eat four pounds of ground beef. Add a, you know, yeah, there is a there is a way to optimize for persimmon. Yeah. And love it economically, you know, and thank, you know, and I and you know, some of the best meals I have or when my wife will cook like a shepherd's pie or something like that. So,
You know, I'm not. It's just, you know, yeah. In in Miami the tendency is to is to dine out a fair amount.
Yeah, I mean, if you're, if you're living in Miami and you're not eating out on a regular basis, you're kind of like, what are you doing Point? Yeah. No, you're so right. But I love that. You're not dogmatic leaky. Do you know? I think it's just a testament to when you're a Zac when you're a person who's as active as you are and you're you're probably living in some state of, you know, glycogen depletion. Yeah. At any given point and it just gives you a
Much higher leeway to consume carbohydrates. And then inevitably, you're going to oscillate in and out of ketosis, just with just because of
that. Yeah, and you know, what happens is, as you develop metabolic flexibility over the years that your body doesn't want to be in ketosis. Ketosis is a term that describes an excess of ketones in the bloodstream. It's basically osis part of it means it's not, it's not really desirable. Yeah, you don't want to be in ketosis, you want to be making ketones but you want it. You don't want to over produce them and as your body gets more and more.
A flexible. It learns. How much how many ketones to make? Yeah, and the, you know, the cool thing is, a liver can make 750 calories a day worth of ketones. And most of these ketones go to fuel the brain. Well, the brains daily requirement for energy is rarely above 500 calories a day between five and six hundred calories a day. So call it 25. 22, 24 calories per hour and because the brain has his steady state consumption of fuel.
You'll, it doesn't go up and down with wide swings. If, if you become keto adapted and fat adapted and metabolically flexible. The liver just goes, you know, I'm just going to pump out 20 calories worth of ketones every hour, it's easy, and I've got access to body fat and know how to how to take the fat out of storage. So becomes. So a lot of guys have been like keto for 10 years.
Are almost written rarely in ketosis as defined by .5 millimolar or higher?
What about for listeners who are wondering, like, what's the, what's the point? Like, what is the point anyway, of wanting to see an elevation of ketones isn't all just like calories in? Calories out. Is there is there an anti-aging argument to be made to be made for this intermittent dalliance with ketosis?
Well, I think ketosis is more of a, as a three-week.
Week, you know, program to embark on as a strategy to help develop metabolic flexibility. But once you develop the metabolic flexibility, then the benefits of of being in ketosis all the time start to diminish, you don't need to be in ketosis all the time because if your metabolically flexible, your body gets energy from whatever substrates available and doesn't doesn't care. And then because of your selectivity with the types of food, you eat, you almost you almost selectively
Get rid of sugars. Sweetened beverages processed carbs. And and if you're eating just real food, it's basically meat fish fowl, eggs nuts seeds, which are all fat and protein vegetables, which are free carbs. For the most part. You can eat as many vegetables as you want and some fruit and the fruit because it's mostly fructose doesn't have the same effect on insulin. So you don't you don't you don't get the wide, the wild insulin swing
He's from eating fruit that you that you normally would from eating sugar or from eating, you know, bread pasta, rice, cereal, all that stuff. So it's kind of a self-selecting mechanism where there's a point, which If you eliminate those those offensive Foods, you don't even have to think about it. If this is your choice of what you're going to eat. You don't think you don't count the macros that way. You don't count the grams of carbs or the net, the net carbs, you know, it's you just eat.
Yeah, it's like if you if your goal is to be able to have a way of eating that, that allows for, you know, rice or bread or sandwiches, or wraps, or bowls of pasta, as your primary Foods, then you're going to have to create some kind of budget for yourself because it's just so easy to overindulge on those foods, but if you remove them, I think it makes a really great. It just makes them a lot more effortless to,
and it does. And, and I will tell you that.
That that I had an amazing bowl of pasta a couple nights ago. You know, I knew what I was doing, didn't think twice about it. Didn't you know guilt myself over the carb content. Just knew it was going to be great and it was gluten-free and it was, you know, a creamy sauce and it was it was wonderful. I don't need to do that every night. I don't need to do that. Yeah, you know more than once in a while, but I also like to eat. I love a variety of food. I don't want to deprive myself, which is also why some Knights
Again, if I'm in a great restaurant, I've got this great yeasty bread, that's making its rounds on the table. I'll take a chunk of it and some butter and, and enjoy, you know, with Reckless, abandon
with Reckless, abandon. I, when I in the middle of covid, I because I was just ordering up food, you know, because I couldn't leave my house. I was getting so sick of all of my options, my typical options, like, all the food that I love. I was just, it's what I was eating 24 hours a day and I barely had an appetite to boot.
So, one day, I decided to just like, completely go outside of the norm and I ordered a, an entire Pizza, like a gluten-free pizza from this place called pees on and la which actually has pretty good. Pretty good, gluten-free pizza. And I ate the whole thing with Reckless abandon and it was great. I couldn't
go quite outside the norm because it was gluten-free soldiers
because I, yeah, that's true.
But I've no. But, I mean, you know, so there's there's a, there's a workaround there for you. You had a great pizza, didn't affect you negatively that much, probably, you know,
yeah, I mean, I was also
I was also to be fair in a probably pretty pretty Stark calorie deficit during those. Yeah, during those eight days and I was barely moving but you're resting energy expenditure. I think when you're sick probably raises because you know, your body is just
fighting. Yeah. So if you've got a your temperature is up a couple of degrees, it really increases your metabolic rate substantially.
Yeah, so I was like I was torching calories and I probably and I definitely wasn't eating enough.
So yeah, I lost
ten pounds, but well, write five of it during covid. Well, most of it because I lost my appetite because that whole thing about losing taste and smell. I remember cooking a steak for myself and I was living alone. My wife had banished me from the house. Once I got go of it. So I was literally living alone was fine. And I cooked a big beautiful, like steak. And I knew it was beautiful because I bought like five of them at the same time and I'd already cooked a couple. So I knew it was going to be spectacular, and it tastes like rubber.
I literally, I couldn't even have more than three bites. And so I get how I get, how mm, you know, how critical smell and taste, is to the whole process of eating and everything. Of course, everybody had covid who's in this field that the light bulb went on. Oh my God, if we can create a thing that you, you know, something he put in your nose, but just before dinner time that would have people eating less. This would be a trillion dollar
idea. It would be a trillion dollar idea. Oh my God, imagine something that just like to
Everly takes away your to. There are some things that you can like let dissolve on your tongue that for example disallow, you temporarily to taste sweet. Yeah, but I don't none of them ever. None of those products ever took off as like a real weight
loss strategy.
So, what else? How do you mark? Tell me about your, your sleep regimen? Like, what's your, what's your like before bed sleep routine, like, because we know that sleep is crucially important when it comes to
anti-aging, right? So in
When I'm in California, we have a house that we rent in the Palisades. We visit our kids, every once in a while here. So, when I'm here, we have a Jacuzzi on the roof. So my wife and I just go up, take a Jacuzzi around 10 o'clock 10:30. Go to bed. I get at least eight hours. Try to get nine zero apologies for that. I love that big fan of sleep same and in in Florida my routine is I'm in a condo when we have a
Spa sort of thing at the at the base of it. So I do a fire and ice routine. I do.
Fifteen minutes at a hundred ninety five degrees in the sauna, then I'll do five minutes at say, 47 degrees, cold plunge. I might warm up a little bit after that in. Just because I if I if I get out after that amount of time, I might shiver all night. I don't know them. But I like doing that before bed. And that just I sleep like a baby fantastic. So for me blackout curtains, white noise,
Try to go to bed at about the same time usually between 10:30 and 11:30 at night and never wake up to an alarm, just wake up naturally and you know again just a big fan of getting quality sleep and think that it's probably the, you know, the single most overlooked aspect of good health across the board. No matter what field of expertise you're in sleep.
Is right up there with you know, if you don't have good sleep, you're not going to get the results. You are
seeking so important. Do you watch any TV before bed
sometimes? Yeah, we stupid stuff, you know, but there's so much good. I should say stupid. There's a lot of good TV on these
days. A lot o, suppose. The last good
thing that you watched last good to here's the thing. I I put them out of my my brain so quickly like I watched a show called White Lotus.
Finished last night. Have you heard about it?
I think I've heard of it, but I don't know it's about
like but it was it was short enough that it after three episodes in, we didn't want to abandon it. We knew that it was going to be over in six episodes. So I mean it was I don't want to, you know, somebody might really like it was a good character story. But you know like Yellowstone. I like I can't wait for the next season of succession like billions. I mean, I know it's a lot of lot of cool shows. I would say my favorite show in the past.
Bunch of years is called the night of.
Oh, yeah. I remember that on HBO,
right Amazon, maybe HBO. Yeah. Yeah. So six six-episode series really extremely well done. Hmm, you know, but I also read, I've been reading some, a lot of Ken Follett recently. So I read, I try to read before I go to sleep. I like to watch TV before going to
sleep. Yeah, I mean, because the light from the TV outside, it can be very disruptive the last total non sequitur or not, a non sequitur, but
The last amazing thing that I saw, I watched it when I had covid-19.
Crazier and I just loved it. I thought it was amazing. Really, really well done. And I'm kind of obsessed with the actress that was in it. So that was great. Brand new cherry flavor. Definitely, definitely check that out. On Netflix is a miniseries like Eight
Episodes. Yeah, I think again, just just to sort of go back to the pre sleep routine. I try to I try to read as the last thing and at right now, I try to read, you know, historical fiction or something. That's entertain me entertaining because most of my career, I've just been reading
Science, doc, science stuff. Yeah, you know, or other people's books,
you know, in our field, you know how to and self-help and things like that. So now I'm in this, you know, sort of historical and I like regular, you know, fiction cop, Thriller type stuff, too.
Yeah. Do you have a blackout curtains in your bedroom? Yes. Blackout. Curtains to keep the temperature at a certain
6767. Yeah, and I have a chili pad. Mmm, and that's been a great device.
And if you do, you know, what actually pad is. Yeah. I
have a ruler of very yeah.
Yeah, they're awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, that was that everyone, the term Game Changer is sort of what everyone says, when they, when they purchase one and experience it, it's a game changer in terms of how you sleep.
Yeah. Awesome. Actually last night. I had dinner with the founder of the company.
Todd Todd in town,
he is yes, I think. I don't know if he's still in town, but he was here last night. Yeah, let me have my first time meeting him. Wow.
Ow, yeah with David nurse. Wow. Yeah. Our mutual friend. David. I don't think they might not know that you're in town or something. I don't know.
Yeah. Yeah. So funny cause I was going to call Todd the other day. Oh cool. Yeah.
Yeah. No, it's a great product. They they so they gifted me one but I've no Financial affiliation with the company and I love it. Yeah, it definitely, you know, I'm a hot sleeper and it keeps my bed. Cool. Yeah, so it's solved that problem ever since I got it and installed it. I don't wake up sweaty anymore. Nothing like that. Yeah, which is
Which is awesome morning. Rituals. What?
Yeah, morning is a cup of coffee, really, you know, strong, dark coffee black. No. Put some some, the heaviest cream. I can find it Dairy, like, real Dairy, get real dry rot. Like raw cream. Wow. Yeah, and and then I do religiously, do the crossword puzzle. Hmm. So if I'm if I'm in
Miami. I get actually get physical papers delivered. So I do I do the sudokus and the can cans and crosswords, everything, and it's just sort of my Rachel here. I just go online and do them, but that's like my thing. I can't start the day until I finished the crossword and and then and then basically, you know, I go to work. I start, you know, you're writing or answering emails or that sort of thing, usually break around 10:30 and go work out. So I do a mid morning workout all
Fasted could be, you know weights could be a bike ride again when I'm when I'm in the Palisades. I have a fat bike and I take it down to maskull. And I'm at low tide. I ride down to Venice Pier, and back on the, on the beach. Oh, wow. It's spectacular. And no one's discovered. That here is weird because I do it all the time in Miami and it's sort of a thing in Miami Beach. Are
you still getting the ocean every day to doing? What was it? What was it called? Were you
like?
Oh, no stand up paddling. Yeah, so I haven't paddle that much here because my board job in Malibu and I don't I haven't gotten out there that much, but in Miami try to go two or three times a week in the ocean. And so that would be my sort of mid morning, break come back and and works more. Make some phone calls have some meetings lunch, 1:30, or 2:00, you know, back to work in the afternoon, typically around 6:00 I break.
On the drums. So I have a drum electronic drum kit. I have the exact same kit in our house in LA and in Miami, that's awesome. You know, it's all familiar to me.
Well, learning a musical instrument is one of the best ways to keep your brain young.
Yeah, so I tried to an hour of put on the headphones and no one can hear me except be and I'm really loud and I'm usually playing to rock standards from the 70s or 80s.
So that's very cool. And it just got a DJ controller board. So I'm going to start doing some
DJ Sisson. Yeah. Damn, watch out. Watch out. He's my
everything. So I'm trying a lot of a lot of stuff as as as the years go on. That's
awesome, man. You show no signs of like I'm ready to retire. Nothing like that. I mean I try I didn't try
but I for two years after I sold the company was like, you know, those didn't have a lot.
Going on. Tried to tried a few things here and there and just it's too. I never see myself retiring ever. It's just too. It's too much fun doing stuff. Yeah, I love that.
Are you when it comes to Coffee? Are you just like a one, one cup a day kind of
guy? Yeah, one big strong cup. And that's it. I don't do any in the afternoon and again, not because it, you know, affect me negatively. I could have a four-shot espresso with him, cremated it at a Starbucks, have a meeting with somebody, but
You know, usually when I do that in the afternoon, my God, why? You know, I didn't need to do that. Yeah, I had to sort of the hankering for the coffee taste, but I really didn't need to, you know, to do that. And and I like to also, I like to go between lunch and dinner without eating. I just feel like as I said in, you know, two meals a day, the longer you go without eating the better. It is for your body, the more good stuff happens in your body. So people are snacking all day long. Aren't just giving them. They're not giving themselves a chance.
The to recover and repair and you know get into any form of a toffee
G. Well, for digestion alone. I think that that is such good advice. Are you familiar with the migrating Motor complex? It's fascinating it basically like it activates over after 90 minutes of not eating. So it's a system that's very sensitive to calories. Yeah, so it literally like if you eat anything it basically or water is obviously fine, but if you eat anything with any caloric value, it basically resets the
Timer. But after 90 minutes, this this system gets going in your digestive system is basically it's referred to as a housekeeping. Wave it basically like sweeps debris, bacteria dead, you know, epithelial cells through your small intestine from your stomach to the small intestine all the way down to your large intestine and and constantly subverting that that complex with like chronic snacking throughout the day. So one of the reasons why people develop sibo, yeah, because that one of the jobs
Of that of that of the MMC. The migrating Motor complex is to get bacteria for this paradise. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I mean, it's it prompts a discussion about what the nature of human. Fecal. Matter should be right. And so many people think. Well, I have to eat a lot of brand and I have to eat a lot of fiber in order to sweep by colon clean. Well, no, the body has mechanisms to take all the dead cells. In fact, fecal matter. Should really only be it only exists to get rid of the the dead bacteria. The
A hundred trillion cells or whatever. 60 trillion cells that reside in your colon have a massive turnover. They don't live for weeks or months. They live for days hours and days sometimes. And there's a massive turnover. That's that should be the primary reason for a bowel movement is to is to get rid of dead bacteria, dead skin cells, epithelial cells things like that, not undigested food, and big pieces of fiber, from twists and bran, and stuff like that. And yet people have this image of
The:, you know, is supposed to look like and how they get, they think they get constipated because they're not eating enough fiber. When in fact, many people are getting constipated because eat too much fiber and they're eating too often, which is not giving this migrating Motor complex an opportunity to do its to do the job, you
know, toilets in the Netherlands. They have these shelves that they think that those the shelves are so that people can like inspect their poo. Yeah. I mean, we would be mortified in the west if you went to a
You into a gas station, there was a shelf in the toilet, but it's very common in the Netherlands. I think it's important. You gotta you gotta look at your poop. Yeah, and and I think what's interesting that you, that you brought up is that like, most of the time when you see undigested food particles, it's not you're not seeing undigested pieces of meat, you're seeing undigested that plant plant matter play matter.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And again, it's all it's all crazy. I was you know, I had IBS for the age of 14 to 47 and so I probably never had, you know, I never took a decent crap. My
All life. Wow. Until I got that sorted out and you know, and the irony now, is it the more Carnival? Right? I go, the more comfortable. Everything is, you know, it's like it's crazy how that how that works. And again, it was all based on erroneous assumptions about, you have to eat more fiber and you have to eat more plant matter. You have to eat more bran and you have to take Metamucil and it's, did you ever hear of a book called fiber? Menace by Constantine Monastery? Ski, no. Oh, it's a great Abby's. It's been out for 20 years. Wow, Cybermen.
He basically just, you know, he takes a whole concept of fiber and rammed it, down the
toilet. That's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely, there's a lot of, you know, with research in the microbiome, in the microbiome, becoming sort of this, like, buzzworthy thing, and all the books that have come out about the microbiome. There's been this like rush to get people to eat more fiber, but if you don't, if you're not careful.
Well, and that's interesting in and of itself because the microbiome, which you
Are led to believe requires fiber soluble and insoluble fiber as a substrate. To make sure chain fatty acids to feed, but a better substrate is collagen is collagen peptides. So, so the mic, the, the bacteria in the gut respond to collagen and to collagen peptides, by creating these short chain fatty acids, obviating the need to take in any fiber of any kind. Which is why
Carnivores who eat nose to tail.
Have you know, have great
craps? Wow. Yeah, that's who I've heard that before but I yeah it just like I'm trying to wrap my head around it. That collagen. What is it? Like the is a glycine, is it just like
what? It's the college? It's the peptides that, you know, it's glycine. It's it's
we called in the yui makes its way down to your large. Intestine becomes like a fermentable substrate. Yes, for wow, a microbiota. Yeah, that's
fascinating. Yeah, and if you think in terms of again,
Nose-to-tail eating and and skin which is collagen and gristle, which is called, you know, Knuckles and boneheads and think, you know, all that stuff. I mean, when I was a kid, my mother used to give me grief because I would eat the ends off the chicken bones, right? The soft white, you know, parts of the chicken bones. You see those. Yeah. Great crew chewy crunchy. Yeah. So so so much of what we, you know, think we know like a
Which has been a thing now for ten years, but really, the last five years and even then, we don't know, you know, anything about it in terms of what's better or not. There are 3000, you know, species of bacteria, at least, and I know people are having their biome tested and, you know, and they get a, they get the results back and, and but the results can change from from one week to the next based on your diet. A hundred percent, you know, and so people who are getting fmt.
You know, fecal microbial transplant. Like, how do you pick? How do you pick your donor because it's going to depend on your diet as well. It's a little, it's really early days for a lot of stuff. Having said that fmt is a godsend for people if you know, c-diff.
Yeah, but I feel the same way about those microbiome tests. I mean, it's like the mic, the, the stool sample is going to show probably a different microbial profile depending on the time of day that, you know, or, like we're within the, within the stool, you sample. Yeah, so
All these like there's all these different variables. And yeah, I've always been very skeptical of any of that stuff is all it falls
under the category. I think of, you know, too much information, too much data, like what do you what do you even do with it? Like it's insignificant data. It's almost like you know this wearable tech world that we live in and I want to measure everything and I want to you know, I want to wear a continuous blood glucose monitor to see. No, I mean I like if you eat if you eat well right now and you and you wear a continuous, blood glucose monitor and you get, some information are going to change how you really
Ali going to change your life, you know, is it going to make that much of a difference? And, and it is it even a bad thing. If your glucose goes to 140 after a certain meal and then, you know, drops right back down to 88.
Yeah, I don't think so. I think that's physiologically, completely normal. Yeah, and so and so the, I think the problem with these I think blood glucose monitors can be really useful, but I think that they you know, what they do is they pathologize like and well, so
absolutely they can be useful to people who have pathologic.
Conditions. But what I'm seeing is in the, in the bio hacker World, these people, you know, they want to measure everything and they asleep trackers. I don't need a sleep tracker to tell me how well I slept last night. And in fact, if I have it sleep tracker, that gives me a little bit of bad information. Maybe it didn't record things appropriately. Then maybe I'm going to get freaked out of back. The fact that I thought I slept. Well, your timing. Yeah, come on, seriously. When I was in France, you know, we all of us would walk. There were six or eight of us at any
One time walking to and from dinner. Everyone's tracker would have a different number of how many steps they took. I don't wear one. But I mean, oh my God, it's like what do you do with the information? It's just you know, it's I guess it's like a parlor game or something like that, you know, and you know, you have Bets with people to see if you can get, you know, 40,000 steps, whatever. But but the point is so much of the information is is not just soup.
If Louis, but could be deleterious to a path of Better Health. And from my perspective. All that matters is how do you feel? That's all that matters, you know, if you're overweight, but you feel great. I got no problem with that. If you are, you know, if your, if you have a medical condition, but you still feel, you know, your joyous and you feel great, then the data isn't going to shift one.
Way, or the other, or maybe it'll shift with medication or whatever. But really all that matters. Is, how do you feel?
Are you happy? Are you hungry? Are you horny? That's right. Those are like the three. Yeah, the three H's. Yeah of it's like you're checking. That should be your check in every day. Yeah. Well dude. I always love talking to you and I feel a lot more confident after this conversation that I'm going to age. Well, thanks to you sure you so thank you. Yeah, so thank you and for, you know, for everything that you're doing I've got just one last question for you.
Mark, but before we get to that were can listeners find you on social media?
Mark Sisson Primal is my Instagram haven't posted for about a year or so forget that but now I had a real thing about how much time was being spent trying to, you know, build a Persona there. So marks daily appleís blog posted every day for 16 years on that and Primal kitchen.com for the food. Yeah. That's about it.
I got your ketchup in my fridge right now brother. Good. Yeah.
I'm a fan. Last question again, says everybody on the show. I think I probably asked it to you once or twice, but I love to see how people's answers evolve over time. What does it mean to you to live a genius life?
It to live a genius. Life means feeling that I have made a contribution to other people. Whether it was specific to one person or generic to a bunch of people. Just the the sense of having been
A positive impact on someone's life versus, you know, just going through life hedonistic Lee
love that. You didn't positive impact on my life. Cool. So thank you. Thank you to all. You guys love you for your time and attention. Thank you for tuning in. Share this episode of the show. Text me, 310 2999 401. I'll catch you on the next episode, please.
