Category Archives for "Intermittent Fasting"

Intermittent Fasting: What is it, and how does it work?

Welcome to Episode 416 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

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Effect of adding vegetable oils to starches from different botanical origins on physicochemical and digestive properties and amylose–lipid complex formation

Resistant starch intake facilitates weight loss in humans by reshaping the gut microbiota
The Effect of Heat-acid Treatment on the Formation of Resistant Starch and the Estimated Glycemic Index in Potatoes

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TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to Episode 416 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat, with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Hi, everybody, and welcome. This is episode number 416 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. I'm here with Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today?

Barry Conrad

Hey, everyone. How's it going, Melanie? I'm feeling good today. How are you feeling today? What's happening?

Melanie Avalon

I'm feeling so great. I'm curious since it is April 7th. Do you ever do crazy April Fool's jokes? Do they have that in Australia?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, okay, listen, okay, just to kind of zoom out from this for a second, because Melanie's always asking, do they have this in Australia? Do they have that in Australia? And one of the things she asked me was, do you guys have peeps?

Melanie Avalon

Peeps, yes. Perfect timing because peeps are very much celebrated or used around Easter, and isn't Easter around this time?

Barry Conrad

Mm hmm. I think April 20th coming up. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Oh wow, you knew it right off the top of your, doesn't it change?

Barry Conrad

I don't know if it's different in America. Is it different or is it the same? I don't know.

Melanie Avalon

is on Sunday, April 20th this year. Yeah, it changes. It's always on a Sunday. It has to change because it's always on a Sunday, you know?

Barry Conrad

You're right there we go i was wondering cuz that my next question was like who decides why changes and you know why does this holiday change in other holidays anyway we know the answer sundays. But you have peeps we don't have peeps in australia meaning like the candy like the what is it marshmallows we don't have that.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, did you look up the link I sent you?

Barry Conrad

I did look it up and we don't I don't I've definitely have not seen them here.

Melanie Avalon

These are such a thing in America and they're kind of polarizing. Like people either, you're not going to meet somebody who feels lukewarm or is like, could go either way. People either love or hate peeps. Same with like candy corn, I feel. They have candy corn in Australia.

Barry Conrad

We do not.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness.

Barry Conrad

Do you, but do you like it or did you like it before, like, you know, when you were eating the candy?

Melanie Avalon

or candy corn. Both. Actually, I'm going to undo what I just said. I do like peeps. I do like, and candy corn, yes, I do. And peeps are, they come in all different, so the traditional one is like, it's like a yellow chick, like a little chicken and it's yellow. But they come in like a hundred varieties and they're always coming up with special ones so that Valentine's Day, they'll have like Valentine's ones, I think the newest one right now is like a churro one. So not pee-ups? Okay, this is the other thing. So I say peeps like people, like your peeps, and I spell it P-E-O-P-S, and Barry was giving me grief about it being pee-opes. Like, it's not pee-opes, it's people. That's how you spell people. So if you do peeps, wouldn't you do P-E-O-P-S? Am I the only person?

Barry Conrad

Can you ask your friend, ask your friend chat GBT about this because chat GBT.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I can. I can do that. Let's see. How would we ask this? We would say, if you were to shorten the word people into the short form, how would you spell that? I don't want to give it any leading. Oh, no.

Barry Conrad

What? Do they do P E E P S?

Melanie Avalon

Well, okay. It says a common shorthand for people is P-P-L, like people. Other informal variations include peeps spelled P-E-E-P-S. Okay. Yes. Going forward, I might need to adjust how I spell that word. Do you think other people have been thinking that too? They're like, pew-oops, pew-oops. When I, cause I send that all the time. I say peeps, P-E-O-P-S.

Barry Conrad

Do you know what I think they might be thinking? What? She meant to spell it properly like P-E-E-P-S and she just, it was a typo. Because that's what, that's exactly what I thought when I saw it was like P-O.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, what? Yeah. I will adjust. I will adjust my behavior going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Barry.

Barry Conrad

Listen, this is not fasting-related at all, but do you go P-E-E-P-S or P-E-O-P-S? Maybe we'll put a poll up on the Instagram.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, please do. That's so funny. Wait. So, but April Fool's jokes, so do you have or how do you feel about April Fool's jokes?

Barry Conrad

I love, you know what, I actually love April Fool's jokes, but I never make them, but I don't know why, like I love like seeing them and laughing and cracking up, but I just kind of, I don't know, do you make them or do you prank your family and stuff?

Melanie Avalon

So here's the thing, this is like things are about to get real. So I think they're super fun. I also, I'm not saying like if you're doing April Fool's jokes, you're like lying, but I feel very uncomfortable not telling the truth. So I don't think I can like do it. And I would feel like a bad person. I would struggle with that aspect of it, even though it's a joke. I just, my mom, like her one virtue was never lie. And that got like instilled into me. So I don't do well with like jokes that require altering reality presentations.

Barry Conrad

I know this about you actually so that that tracks that make sense but it's but it's like it's like okay well okay how about when you're doing a scene or something like that as an actor did you feel bad about like that or is that different it's a different thing.

Melanie Avalon

No, because people know, people know you're, you know, you're not actually. And this is not a moral judgment. Like I literally think it's not a problem. If this is all like my childhood coming out. This is my point is like it's hard for me to like actually implement a serious April Fool's joke.

Barry Conrad

What about when I think it was another show when I was like, just before we started recording, and Melanie was like, does my mic sound good? And I said, it sounds like you're really far away. And she goes, oh, really? I was like, no, I was just kidding. Could you say something like that? Or is that still like, it's not telling the truth.

Melanie Avalon

No, no, like in the moment, I'm glad you're clarifying. So, because that you can just, you quickly correct it, like the next second. But it's not like you have somebody existing in a state for an extended period of time where they think like reality is different than what you said. It's, I think it's the time issue.

Barry Conrad

This is like the one meal a day thing. How much time do we have between the between the

Melanie Avalon

How much time has passed with the lie for it to become a problematic lie? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm going to ponder that.

Barry Conrad

And also, how do you feel about your friends and family playing those April Fools jokes on you? Do you laugh or do you find it hard?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, I would, I would find it funny. I mean, it depends, it depends what it is. I don't think I've ever been the brunt of like a really intense April Fool's joke. I feel like it's more a thing you do in childhood, you know, or like companies will do it on X formerly known as Twitter and stuff.

Barry Conrad

Do you know how celebrities or public figures will often post like, I'm retiring or say something like that on April Fools or I'm dropping an album. It's like April Fools, like stuff like that on the Instagram.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I feel like people can use it to be mean too.

Barry Conrad

I think so too. That's not what we're about here.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, we're not, we're not a fan. Or I used to fantasize about using it. Like if I like liked a boy in middle school or something or high school, because then you can like test it. Like I like you. And then if they're like, I like you back there and you wanted to tell them anyways, then woo, everybody wins. No April fools. But then if they're like, no, you're like April fools.

Barry Conrad

That's sneaky. That's pretty, that's on the sly right there.

Melanie Avalon

Uh-huh. That's how I would want to use an April Fool's joke. Like, I would want it to address something that I wanted to address with somebody. I wouldn't actually do this, but this is how I would like to use it.

Barry Conrad

So basically, listeners and all people listening should not expect Melanie Avalon to put up an April Fools situation on her Instagram story and try to prank people this Easter or April Fools, I should say.

Melanie Avalon

unless I'm just planting the seeds right now to have the best one ever next year. Maybe that's all, maybe this is all a mind game. Not really. It's not. But maybe it is now that I think about it.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, you could make it one. We'll see.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, okay, anything new in your life?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I'm actually, this is a week of photo shoots for me.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yay, new photos. I feel like you have a lot of photo shoots.

Barry Conrad

Well, not that many. I feel like you have a lot of photo shoots.

Melanie Avalon

like I went through a period of time where I was having a lot, but I feel like you consistently, like since I know you have had a lot of photo shoots, which is a good thing. I support. I think it's great.

Barry Conrad

Well, this one is it's a new pro. It's new promo shoots for things coming up, which I promise I will definitely share. I keep talk hinting to this thing, but it's promo shoots and I'm super excited. I had one yesterday and I have another one in two days. So it should be really fun like Bondi beach sunrise one. So that'd be really sick. Can't wait.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, I want to see the pictures. I love looking at photo shoot pictures. Awesome.

Barry Conrad

Do you know what I like to do as well?

Melanie Avalon

Look at photo shoot pictures.

Barry Conrad

have like a mirror there so I can see my pose.

Melanie Avalon

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Do we talk about this?

Barry Conrad

I don't do that, but I said this because you're making fun of me.

Melanie Avalon

No, I'm just- I got really excited for a second. Have you tried this? Have you tried this?

Barry Conrad

You know what? I saw a photo of yours.

Melanie Avalon

Would you feel awkward?

Barry Conrad

Well, I saw a photo of yours on Instagram, because you're on Instagram, and I thought, did she use the technique for that photo? So I tried to do or pretend like, how do you do it? I'm trying to see it in my mind, how you set it up.

Melanie Avalon

What Barry is referring to is that when I do a photo shoot, like a professional photo shoot where it's not a selfie, it's like a photographer taking my picture, I need to see myself, I need to pose myself. And I used to feel very insecure about this concept that I need a mirror to pose. And then I saw a video where Paris Hilton was talking with one of the Kardashians and they were talking about how Paris Hilton has to have a mirror at her photo shoots so she can pose herself. And then she is the queen of photo shoots. So then I felt better about myself. Not that I needed her validation, but it helped a lot. What's the question? How do I do it?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, like give us like a quick walk through like

Melanie Avalon

So we ordered, well, there's two steps. I ordered like a rollaway mirror, so I have it set up so I can be like posing in the mirror while they're shooting. And then I also hold a little handheld mirror in my hand so that I can sometimes like pose my face right before. And it works. I have a photographer that I work with Adrienne, shout out to Adrienne, and she totally gets it and she knows I got to pose my face and it works so well.

Barry Conrad

Just like what we talk about on the show, do what works for you. And I think it's, you know, I'm not, I'm not giving you a hard time. I was just teasing like sort of, but I think it's awesome that you do that because it works, right?

Melanie Avalon

I'm teasing you about teasing me, so it does work. I think you should try it. I think you should try it and report back and let me know if it completely like changed your life for photo shoots.

Barry Conrad

Okay, if I am in a studio or someplace that has a mirror, I'll do it. But I don't think I'm going to like buy a mirror and then bring, or bring one.

Melanie Avalon

Well, if you move to the US, I can come be your assistant and I'll bring a mirror. I'll bring the rollaway mirror and I'll like roll it around for you. Roll it around.

Barry Conrad

She's rolling rolling. It's like your workout. It's like there she goes bouncing around

Melanie Avalon

I'd be like, where do you need it? And I'll put it there.

Barry Conrad

What about when, okay, Melanie, here's an exciting thought as well, but what about when, not if, what about when we do a promo shoot for the show, you and I? Isn't that exciting?

Melanie Avalon

Oh my gosh, we should do that. And we should have a rollaway mirror.

Barry Conrad

Then I get to see her process.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, we can do it together. We can both be posing in the mirror. It is going to be such a moment.

Barry Conrad

Wow. It's all full circle. That's exciting though. I just had that thought in this moment. So that's something to look forward to. We must do that. Are we going to mimic the artwork? Are we going to do the same, try to do the...

Melanie Avalon

Oh my. Yeah.

Barry Conrad

Or something completely different.

Melanie Avalon

We can do a lot of things, but that should be one of them. We should reenact the art, yes. And then we should do some of us like podcasting with my rainbow mic.

Barry Conrad

Me with my blue one. Love you. I love you.

Melanie Avalon

And then we can do some that are very like acting drama class where it'll be like, do how you feel while podcasting.

Barry Conrad

In front of food or like at a restaurant like eating.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and then we can have some of us eating and some of us not eating like holding clocks.

Barry Conrad

holding clocks, that's so funny.

Melanie Avalon

I'm looking right now, I'm staring at the OG inspiration of the artwork, because I don't know if you remember. You probably do, like way back in the day, the original artwork was a photo of a clock.

Barry Conrad

Yes, I do remember that. I actually do remember.

Melanie Avalon

That clock is on my wall, I'm staring at it. I have that clock, so we could shoot with that clock. That's cool. It needs to be touched up a little bit, some of the paint's coming off, but what do you expect? It's been how many years? A lot of years. There we go. I forgot that clock was there. You know how you stop seeing stuff because it's in your environment every day? I forgot that, I don't think I've looked at this clock, like looked at it in a long time.

Barry Conrad

So what, you were just minding your own business and then you thought, okay, what is something that could be a great, you know, like photo for the podcast and you just looked up at the clock and you had a Eureka moment or like what, how did that work?

Melanie Avalon

This is kind of like how you were talking a few episodes ago about how you don't remember but then you remembered your origin story of starting intermittent fasting. I got it at Target. I think I went to Target with the intention. Yeah, I went to Target with the intention of finding a clock to shoot a cover for the show and I found this red clock and I was like, that's it. That's it. This is the clock.

Barry Conrad

Wow.

Melanie Avalon

It's exciting. So I think that's what happened. I know it was Target.

Barry Conrad

that specific that you remember that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Shall we jump into some fasting related stuff?

Barry Conrad

Let's do it after taking you all on a trip from April Fool's through to photo shoots.

Melanie Avalon

April Fool's, to peeps, to photo shoots, to The Clock, Memory Lane, Barry's secret project.

Barry Conrad

Let's dive into some fasting. Are you guys ready for this? So I've brought a study this week, it's called intermittent fasting. What is it and how does it work? So it could be very basic for people that do already follow the podcast, but for listeners who are new, this is going to be particularly for you. And so the study I'm bringing is called that intermittent fasting, what is it? And how does it work from Johns Hopkins medicine? Yeah, we're about to dive into what Mark Mattson's research on intermittent fasting has uncovered based on his decades of groundbreaking studies. And so a bit about Mark, he is a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University. He spent more than 25 years examining the effects of fasting on not just the body, but the brain as well. And his work goes way beyond just weight loss. It touches on the profound health improvements ranging from brain function to reducing the risks of diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes, and even cardiovascular issues. So here we go. Mattson's research and what I've found here suggests that IF intermittent fasting for newbies isn't just a way to lose weight, it's about triggering natural beneficial processes in the body. Many of which we don't even realize are happening. So when we fast, our bodies switch from burning glucose, which is sugar, the burning fat for energy and metabolic change that has shown to improve fat loss and increase energy levels. But what's really exciting is that this metabolic switch also kicks off repair mechanisms at the cellular level. So it's like our body gets a chance to really rest, repair, and function more efficiently, but the magic, it doesn't sort of stop there at fat loss. His work has also shown that intermittent fasting can actually help your brain become sharper and more resilient over time, which is so exciting. And fasting triggers a process in brackets, which like, this is one of my favorite things about fasting here, autophagy. And as some listeners may know, it's the body's way of cleaning out damaged cells and regenerating new ones. So this process can reduce brain inflammation, protect neurons, improve memory, and for those of us, I definitely am one of these people wanting to keep our minds clear at its peak. This is a game changer because it doesn't just help prevent cognitive decline. It actually boosts brain health and promotes longevity. So for Mattson, he's saying intermittent fasting isn't like, it's not just a 20 diet, it's a lifestyle that taps into our biological. Roots. And he goes into say, like our ancestors who didn't have access to constant, like 24 seven food supplies were forced to fast regularly. And it's that biological adoption that he says, our bodies are still attuned to even in today's day and age, even if we don't face that food scarcity. So the modern food environment, as we all know, like we, we often eat way more than we need and it can disrupt metabolism or it can lead to obesity, chronic diseases. So by practicing intermittent fasting, we can align our eating habits with, with that evolutionary biology, resetting our bodies, metabolism, give me the chance to fully function at its best.

Barry Conrad

And what I really love about this study, Melanie, is that Mattson saying that intermittent fasting doesn't require complicated meal plans or calorie counting, as we know, hear from experience. It's just simple. You pick a window and for new listeners, that means a protocol like 16, a 19 five, one meal a day, which is Oh, mad, just whatever works for you and stick to it. So during your eating periods, you focus on eating nutrient dense meals with whole foods. So we're talking about lean proteins, healthy fats, plenty of veggies. And it's not about restriction. And if you, you are new to the show or even if you've been listening for a while, we're about definitely enjoying our food, but it's rather giving our bodies the time it needs to reset. His study also provides hope for people that have chronic diseases because intermittent fasting has been shown to lower risk of conditions like type two diabetes, heart disease, even cancer. And plus for those of us looking to manage our way, fasting naturally helps improve insulin sensitivity and reducing overall calorie intake without the need for like intense calorie counting or deprivation. So you know what I think. The biggest thing about this research that stands out for me is how it connects the dots between a simple habit, delaying a meal or two or three, and the long-term benefits it can offer for both our brain and body health. And the best part, it's free. It's a free tool, accessible to anyone. You don't need like a whole bunch of supplements or complicated routines. You can fit it into your life, which I love. And so for anyone new, particularly to the podcast, if you're on the fence, wondering about intermittent fasting, if it could work for you, whether it's for better health, sharper mental clarity, or even fat loss, Mark Mattson's research lays out a pretty compelling case and we'll definitely have the link there for you to see. As always, before jumping into any new routine, it's always best to chat with your healthcare professional because I'm not a doctor. Melanie, what do you think about that?

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. And so to clarify for listeners, so this is an article from John Hopkins Medicine, and they're talking about Dr. Mark Mattson's work, and he's done a ton of studies on intermittent fasting. So I don't think this is like any one study that he did, but yeah, he's pretty much one of the... Probably one of the primary researchers that has made fasting what it is today with the former co-host of the show. She's interviewed him before on her show. Cool. Yeah. I would love to interview him sometime. I wonder like by Google him, like how many articles he's done. Let's see.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, imagine having him on the show. That'd be so awesome.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. So if you, oh, and he's done articles like with Walter Longo, we've talked about before. Yeah. If you go to Google scholar and look him up, so many different articles come up.

Barry Conrad

In 25 years in the game, that's a long time examining the effects of fasting, which I think is awesome, incredible as well.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, no, he's amazing. So like on ResearchGate, which is a website I really like to find articles and they often will have the full article even if you can't find it on other sources. So he has 1,121 publications. It doesn't mean that they're all like just him, but that means his name is attached to 1,121 publications. Citations were like citing his work 159,271. Yeah, so he's super cool. And he really did find like you just so eloquently went through. He has found so many of the mechanisms of IF, how it benefits our brain, our health, all the things. And I love what you ended with about how it's free, which is just so amazing. You don't have to buy anything. Cause I love it.

Barry Conrad

A lot of people when it comes to a plan or a diet or a new health, quote unquote, fed, it's like, okay, this sounds great. And then there's like the cell. It's like, well, there's no cell. It's free. Anyone can do it. You can start anywhere you are. And I love that about it.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Yeah, we should have them have them on the show. That'd be fun. That'd be amazing. Add it to the to-do list. Shall we jump into some questions for today?

Barry Conrad

I think we should.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, would you like to read the first question?

Barry Conrad

Okay, so Amanda from Facebook asks, Can you please explain making rice more resistant starch? Dave Ashbury talks about it, but I don't see the how to some say vinegar, some say coconut oil. Does it have to be heated back up? Can you eat it cold? Does it really have less impact for calories? Also, I do not understand what can and can't be absorbed through the skin. I feel like this with so many things applied with a patch are other things seeping into our skin. For example, you can take magnesium transdermally even in a bath. Would this mean the minerals in the ocean soak into you while swimming? The chemicals in a pool?

Melanie Avalon

All right, great questions from Amanda. So to tackle the resistant starch piece first, and this was good timing because I had done a lot of research on it and then I'm actually prepping to interview this week, the week that we're recording, not that we're airing. I'm going to interview for I think the third time Dr. Steven Gundry. Are you familiar with Dr. Steven Gundry, Barry? I am. Yeah. Yeah, the plant paradox. He's written so many books. I've had him on the show for, he had a book called The Plant Paradox people might be familiar with. It's the diet where you reduce lectins in your diet. It's like a New York Times bestseller. A lot of people follow it. So I had him on, not for that book because that was before I knew him, but I had him on for a book called The Energy Paradox. And then I think I had him on for unlocking the keto code maybe. He had another book called Gut Check that came out in January of 2024. He also has a book coming out called The Gut Brain Paradox of April of 2025. So around this time, so I will be doing that interview at some point, but in his book Gut Check, he did talk about resistant starch. And so it was good because it helped me understand more the benefits that come from resistant starch and why. So basically resistance starch, what it is, is when there's been a modification to starch, which is something that we eat normally in our diet, there's four forms of it, RS1, resistance starch one, two, three, and four. And basically the starch, because of how it is changed, like the chemical structure of it by different means, which I'll go through, it makes it so it's not digested by us in the small intestine, it makes its way to the large intestine. And there it is fermented in the colon by microorganisms and they produce short-chain fatty acids, which have a lot of beneficial health effects, which Dr. Gundry talks about in that book. But those short-chain fatty acids, they regulate our metabolism, they boost our energy, they can help with fat loss, inflammation. He makes the case that they're signaling molecules to the mitochondria, so many things. And the different forms, so there's RS1, that's the one, it's naturally found in coarsely ground or whole grains like bread, seeds, legumes, so it's there naturally. RS2 is a form that due to its structure, it's not digested, and it's found in raw potatoes, green bananas, high amylose corn. Then there's resistant starch 3, RS3, and that's one that Amanda is referring to, and that's where you actually, it's formed by cooking. So you cook and cool starchy foods that don't normally have a lot of resistant starch, if any, in them. So potatoes, rice, pasta, oatmeal, bread, and then you cool it. And then in its cooled form, it's become resistant. Resistant 4 is a chemical form of resistant starch, so it's in commercial compounds. Oh, there's also RS5, so there's five, not four. So RS5, that's found bread containing fat as an ingredient, foods with artificially produced.

Melanie Avalon

I think it's also in a non-viscous type of dietary fiber, resistant maltodextrin. In any case, we'll talk about the RS3 one, which is the cooked and cooled one. It does have metabolic health benefits, and it can potentially help with weight loss. So there's been studies on this. There was one study called, Resistant starch intake facilitates weight loss in humans by reshaping the gut microbiota. That was February 2024 in Nature Metabolism. They looked at 37 participants with overweight or obesity, and they tested resistant starch supplementation with them. And they found that, let's see, they showed that eight weeks of resistant starch supplementation helped lead to weight loss or an average of 2.8 kilograms, which is pretty cool. As far as the oil and stuff, so adding oil may, especially coconut oil, may increase the resistant starch content. So I found one study, it's called, Effective Adding Vegetable Oils to Starches from Different Botanical Origins on Physiochemical and Digestive Properties and Amylose Lipid Complex Formation. They looked at coconut, rice bran, and sunflower oil, adding it to rice starch. And they found that adding oil increased the resistant starch in all of them. So for coconut oil, it went up 13.37%. Rice bran oil was actually 15.21%, and sunflower oil was 10.75%. And there's been quite a few other studies on adding oil, and it does seem to increase it. So it's probably going to increase it around 15% or so. As for vinegar, I couldn't find a lot of specific studies on this. It is possible that adding a little bit of vinegar, that the acidity may reduce the glycemic response. So there's definitely a benefit there with vinegar and blood sugar control, but I wouldn't go to it specifically for increasing resistant starch content. For that, I do think that adding one to two teaspoons of coconut oil would enhance that. And as far as cold versus reheating versus if you were to cool it again or reheat it again in the cold state, so it has to be at least heated once and then cold, and then cooled. In the cold state, it's going to have the most resistant starch. If you reheat it again, it might reduce the starch a little bit, but there is still going to be resistant starch there. And basically, like I said, so these resistant starch calories, we don't really digest them. So we're not getting calories from them, but then they then feed our gut microbiome that produce these short-chain fatty acids that have a lot of beneficial health effects. So really great for our microbiome and great for our metabolic health. Do you have thoughts on resistant starch, Barry?

Barry Conrad

You know, I, as someone who eats a lot of white boiled rice, this is, this question was actually super interesting for me as well to dive into. I mean, you said it so well, you know, Amanda cooked and cooled rice is a solid blood sugar hack, so your skin absorbs more than you probably realize. It's, it's not a perfect sponge, but it's definitely not a shield. And in terms of gut health as well, it helps with blood sugar control, you know? So I mean, I don't have too much more to add to that, but yeah, it definitely changes the structure when you cook it, cool it, and then that starch does change structure, making it hard for your body to break down. So yeah.

Melanie Avalon

something there. It definitely works and definitely supports the metabolic health and my support weight loss. And then as far as things being absorbed into the skin, so basically our skin has a lot of different layers. And our skin is really amazing when you think about it, how it keeps out things, but lets in things it needs like, and so resilient. It's, it's so, so cool. And so for substances to be absorbed into the skin, they have to get through the watermost layer, which is called the stratum corneum. And the, the compound itself and whether or not it's fat soluble or water soluble will affect that. So fat soluble substances do penetrate easier because they can go through the lipid layer. So essential oils, skincare, medications that fat composition can help with absorption compared to water soluble, those don't absorb as easy. That said, if you are exposed to them for a long time, it is possible that absorption can happen. So especially things like chemicals in the pool, like if you're, you're in the pool for a long time, for hours, some of those chemicals can, you know, eventually penetrate the skin. So things like bromine, chlorine, things that you don't want in your body. Yeah, like chlorine and chlorine in particular. There's other things that affect it, like the molecular size, the concentration, like Amanda was mentioning, some things are specifically made to get into your skin. So that's things like transdermal patches. Basically, for me, the way I look at it is your skin can let things into your body. So I would be very, very careful about what I put on my skin and not expose myself to things I don't want in my body anyways. And it's going to be on the outside of your skin. So why would you want things that are, you know, potentially toxic on the outside as well. One reason I think like safe skin care makeup free of endocrine disruptors is just so, so important. I'm obsessed with beauty counter and crunchy and these brands because you want to make sure that you're not letting endocrine disruptors into your body. So Mary, do you have thoughts?

Barry Conrad

I think it's, you look at magnesium sprays, look at like hormone creams, nicotine patches, it proves like our skin definitely absorbs some things. So yeah, Melanie exactly was right. Why would you let things in that aren't safe for us? So you don't want to be like baking or you know, stewing in a pool full of chemicals, getting that into your system. And some ingredients just can just sit on the surface, but others actually enter our bloodstream. So it's pretty important. Very, very important.

Melanie Avalon

It's kind of like all those really scary studies that came out on sunscreen where they would find, you know, once people put on the sunscreen that these really toxic compounds in sunscreen were ending up in people's bloodstreams. Yeah, it's not, it's not good.

Barry Conrad

Not a good situation.

Melanie Avalon

Be careful of what you put on your skin. Shall we go to our next question?

Barry Conrad

Let's do it. So Jody from Facebook asks, please talk about tanning beds. Do you still use them? I guess this is for you, Melody.

Melanie Avalon

I've talked about tanning beds on the show before and this would apply to you as well. I'm curious for the vitamin D production because that's the reason I would use them was we know that vitamin D is so, so important for our health, our immunity, so many things. And so I went through a period of time, especially it was really just during the winter. And it was when I felt like my vitamin D levels were low and I would do blood tests as well for that. But I would go in like a UVB bed, which is the in the tanning beds, it works well because it's the rays, it's like the cheaper ones in the beds because they're the ones that aren't for like the tanning color, but it does more preferentially stimulate vitamin D production. So I would literally go in for like a minute, like a minute in the winter. I haven't done that, I don't think the past two winters maybe. And it's just because I've been so on top of my vitamin D supplementation, my levels have always been pretty good, but you feel it like you going in that bed for like a minute feels so good on the flip side. Again, I'm not doing it for tanning, I'm doing it for vitamin D levels. Do you get your vitamin D levels checked, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I do actually, and this is, I was actually saying this to a friend three days ago and everything is always great except my vitamin D because I don't spend as much time in the sun for reasons of sun damage, but yeah, I could definitely up my vitamin D. What about you?

Melanie Avalon

So I take the vitamin D supplements nightly, and ever since I've been doing that I've been really good on my vitamin D levels. The problem, especially for people with darker skin, you have to have more sun exposure to create that vitamin D in your body, which means more damage to your skin. That's why a lot of people with darker skin are more likely to have vitamin D deficiencies. You already have, because of the melanin in your skin, like a natural barrier to the sun, which is good, but then it also means on the flip side that you have to get more sun exposure, more damage to generate that vitamin D. So I would, yeah, I would really highly recommend for people in general, like testing their vitamin D levels, staying on top of vitamin D supplementation, maybe going this tanning bed route, especially in the winter, you know, if needed. And MD Logic Health, they have a really good vitamin D supplement that I recommend. So you can go to MDLogicHealth.com and use the coupon code I have podcast and that will get you 10% off their vitamin D, which is a really amazing vitamin D with the ingredients and the quality and the purity and the potency. So I definitely, definitely recommend that.

Barry Conrad

What do you think about the, you know, how the world health organization classifies tanning bears as a group one carcinogen and just like the concentrated UV radiation that, that can increase that skin cancer risk as well. So how do you sort of ride that? What are your thoughts on that? Like riding the situation of spending a minute in there and just that, but is that damaging? Do you know what I mean? Or not?

Melanie Avalon

So, 100% UV damage is a carcinogen and a potential for harm. I think you really have to weigh the cost benefit. I would not wear conventional sunscreen that has these toxic compounds in them like we were talking about earlier, so these questions go well together. Because putting those toxins into your body, I think is just not good. So, you could use a natural sunscreen. They usually have zinc oxides in them, so it creates a physical barrier between you and the sun. In general, for anti-aging effects of the sun, I would minimize sun exposure, like I really would. On your body, definitely on your face where you're aging. And when I do the tanning bed for a minute, I cover my face completely, like I put a towel over my face. So, I just get it on my body. Really? Yeah. Because the skin on your face is where we show aging the fastest. And UV is probably the most aging thing. I mean, I get maybe a lot of the ingredients in common skincare makeup are also very aging, so it's hard to know. UV damage is very aging. So, yes, it can create cancer. Also, vitamin D is just so, so important in your body. And I do think, I've talked to some people about this, I do think there's probably a little bit more of a benefit just of the vitamin D hormone created naturally versus from a supplement. It's hard to know. That said, there are so many studies looking at vitamin D supplementation and seeing the beneficial effects that I'm really a fan. And especially you want it with K2, which is what I should have mentioned about that endologic health. It's with the K2 blend that you really want to get the best synergy in order to get that vitamin D into your bones and get the metabolic health from it, the metabolic benefits. So, it's like a loaded question with a loaded answer and that, yes, it's a carcinogen. Yes, we should, I think in general, we should not overexpose our skin to UV damage. I do think though that you can be smart about it and do what I said about like just in the winter for a minute. Yeah, so it's all true. It's like, yes, and.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I do when to get my son, I usually go earlier in the morning before the peak period or later in the afternoon slash evening with the sun still out, but it's not as harsh to try to get that vitamin D in there, but you won't find me rarely in the sun in the middle of the day. There's just no way. And this is like a work thing or something.

Melanie Avalon

Actually, there's and there's an app. Have you heard of it? It's called dminder. Have you heard of it?

Barry Conrad

No, what is that?

Melanie Avalon

I haven't actually haven't used it because I don't really go out in the sun that much, but it'll tell you put in like your location and it'll tell you exactly when to go outside to get the maximum benefit of getting vitamin D from the sun. Like when you should go outside, basically.

Barry Conrad

What's it called? D-Minder.

Melanie Avalon

Dminder? Yeah, Dminder. So they're little pitches. Wherever you go in the world, Dminder tracks the sun and tells you when you can get vitamin D. The stopwatch interface lets you set your session target by either the amount of D to get or the time, then it will count up or down to your target, applying all the factors and determine how much D you can get, including your skin tone, your age, your weight, and the amount of skin exposed. All your doses of D from the sun or supplements are used to continuously estimate your current health. Yeah. And it was developed with the World Authority on Vitamin D, Dr. Michael Hollick. We will put a link to that in the show notes.

Barry Conrad

That's amazing. It's a reminder, this episode is definitely a reminder for me to get my vitamin D up, for sure.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, when was the last time you said you were low last time?

Barry Conrad

This is maybe a couple of months ago, just before the holidays, I should say, before that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I just think it's so, so powerful. And vitamin D, it's people think it's a vitamin, we didn't even say this, it's actually a hormone. And it's just involved in so much when it comes to especially immunity and bone health. I think those are the two like, really big things. But then also, I was mentioning Dr. Stephen Gundry earlier, he talks about the role of vitamin D in the gut microbiome, which is also really huge. So lots of things.

Barry Conrad

It's so interesting though, because I feel like my immunity is generally pretty good, but if I could, if I'm like not getting as much as I could be, because I'm not getting enough vitamin D, then I'm selling myself short big time and for both the bone health as well.

Melanie Avalon

super important, but great question from Jodi. So thank you so much. Thanks Jodi. Okay. Shall we have our hypothetical? Maybe it is hypothetical. Is it hypothetical?

Barry Conrad

Is this simulate or do you not, what do you think of that word is simulated?

Melanie Avalon

our simulated breaking our fasts.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, let's do it. Okay. I'm excited.

Melanie Avalon

All right, yes. It's going to come to me, Berry. It's going to be like 3 a.m. and then the word is going to come into my mind. I'm going to be like, that's the word, our hypothetical. I think it... That's how we say it. Yeah, our simulated hypothetical. I like that. Our simulated hypothetical, breaking the fast. Listeners, this is the time of the show where we'd like to celebrate. Fasting is not just about fasting. It's also about what you eat and your feasting. We should actually, probably when we introduce this segment each time, Berry, we should talk a little bit about that briefly. Just that you, if you only fast, the feeding period is so important for all of the benefits that you're going to get. And actually, even in things like Dr. Balter Longo, who came out with the fasting mimicking diet, his work shows that when people go on five-day fasts or they do this fasting mimicking diet, all the beneficial changes that happen with gene expression and stem cells and all of that happen when you eat. That's when a lot of the benefits come in. So it's really important that you really have your feasting window as well and think about all that muscle that you'll be maintaining, how you're spiking your metabolism. So many benefits. And we just love that fasting lets you really enjoy food still.

Barry Conrad

Because food is life. I love food so much. So good.

Melanie Avalon

Yes. So, okay. So the restaurant I have, I sent you the link. It's called the Pine Creek Cook House. Nice. Let me check this out. Have you been to Aspen?

Barry Conrad

That's all my bucklers. I really want to go, especially during Christmas. I'd love to try to check it out. Have you been?

Melanie Avalon

Yes. So it's where we used to go. Well, my family still goes, but I'm not the biggest traveler. Every spring break, we would go to Aspen growing up. It's such a beautiful, like cool little town. I used to ski. Do you ski?

Barry Conrad

I don't I want to I really want to learn how but I don't I was about to say maybe like no I can't can you are you good

Melanie Avalon

Have you ever tried?

Barry Conrad

You know what, what I can do is I have tried snowboarding and I'm not bad at that because I used to skateboard when I was a kid, so that works.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, that's I feel like that's harder than skiing. I'm I feel like if you're raised with skiing, like if it's like where you go every spring break type thing, which is probably way more common in the US than Australia. We've got that in our favor. It's like the moment when you're young and you decide, am I going to skiing route or am I going to the snowboarding route? Because you're like a little kid and you have to like enroll in school, you know, because they have I don't know if you know this. They have like ski school like when you're a kid. What? Yeah, because I guess this is not a thing in Australia. So yeah, what?

Barry Conrad

So tell me, tell me.

Melanie Avalon

So yeah, you're like, you go to these different mountains and ski places and there's like school, like ski school. But you have to choose if you're doing skiing or snowboarding, and then you're kind of like locked in. I mean, I guess you're not locked in, I guess you can do both. But I went the skiing route is the point.

Barry Conrad

See, you must be pretty good.

Melanie Avalon

Well, no, I mean, I stopped, but I, I would do like blues comfortably because there's like green, blue, and then black. I think I did a black like a couple of times, but that's it. But I kind of stopped because I realize I don't like putting on all those clothes.

Barry Conrad

that's what you mean. What about the actual like experience going down these massive cliffs?

Melanie Avalon

I love the cold, but I don't like all that clothing and getting there is a lot. So when I had the realization, probably circa high school, that I could go in my family to Aspen and not ski, and I could just read books in the lobby, I was like, oh, this is fun. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna shop. I'm gonna shop during the day, read books in the lobby, and get dinner with my family at night. It's gonna be a fun time. And it was so fun.

Barry Conrad

That's actually hilarious.

Melanie Avalon

Speaking of dinner, this is one of my favorite restaurants in the entire world.

Barry Conrad

Wow. Okay. So you've been here.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it's called the Pine Creek cookouts. It's an Aspen Can I tell you about this experience? So to go there it's a little bit on the outskirts So you have to take a like presumably an Aspen you're staying downtown so it's a bit of a drive you have to get a driver to take you to the point not to the restaurant but to the like the point and then you get to the point and then you get into a sled a reindeer pulling a sled and you like bundle in there with your family and some other strangers They take you up to this cabin restaurant thing that you can only get to buy reindeer pulled sledding situations

Barry Conrad

Wow. It sounds like a Christmas movie or something. It doesn't seem real to me.

Melanie Avalon

Yes. And then the menu is everything I love, although I have a funny story about trying to order dessert there. So did you get the link?

Barry Conrad

I got the link i'm looking at it okay even the listeners like if you looking at this in real time with us you look it up welcome to the pine creek cookouts it's like. The photo on there looks like all cozy snows that looks cabernet this looks so much i love cabins i love snow so this is great.

Melanie Avalon

You would love it. I'm looking at pictures. You can probably, I guess you can ski there too, or like ski walk or whatever these people are doing. Oh, not ski. They're like snow, you know, like snow shoes. They're like... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So the winter dinner menu, I guess to start, there's a rotating soup of the evening and a salad. They don't have like, they can't really make a lot of like substitutions and stuff because they only have like what they have type thing because they're like up there, you know. So, okay. So they have a soup, they have a salad, and then they have actually quite a few starters.

Barry Conrad

This all looks really good from what I'm seeing right now. This is looking like it's going to be hard to choose. I don't know. Actually I do know. I already see a couple of things.

Melanie Avalon

Oh wait, actually, okay, it's a little bit confusing because it says additional sharing items for the table and it's like all these different things, but, so I'm a little bit confused if you, cause some of these look like meals.

Barry Conrad

Like mains, like meals.

Melanie Avalon

So what would you get to start?

Barry Conrad

So, a clear, clear winner for my starter is going to be Ashcroft charcuterie board, because I love charcuterie, the meats, all the cheeses, that situation, and you know what, because we are up there, I'm going to try the soup of the day, because it's going to be light, and then I have to go for the smoked trout dip as well, the chilled smoked trout dip, so three, three things.

Melanie Avalon

Although we don't know if the soup is light. It could be like potato soup.

Barry Conrad

You know what? You're right. We don't know. It could actually be quite heavy, so I'm going to go. I'm still going to try it. I'm going to go for the soup, go for the pinecreek chilled smoked trout dip, which is cold dip, quinoa flax seed crackers, crispy capers, preserved lemon. So good. The Ashcroft charcuterie board, which is daily cured local Colorado meats and a variety of daily local Colorado cheeses, seasonal food jam, pan smeared in almond flour, Farrah Poloff, prosciutto, wrapped asparagus. Oh, wow, this is amazing. So good.

Melanie Avalon

and sauce. What is that word? Minuet.

Barry Conrad

Minyori, do you like how I avoided that last part?

Melanie Avalon

I saw you. I was like, Oh, he didn't read the rest of it.

Barry Conrad

And, and what Barry and, and yeah, it's me.

Melanie Avalon

I see what you're doing there.

Barry Conrad

What would you get?

Melanie Avalon

I think I would just, the charcuterie board, I would want some of those local Colorado meats.

Barry Conrad

And Mel, you probably wouldn't ask, I guess because it's a chakuri word, you wouldn't say like leave anything off that because it's like you could just pick it in any way, right?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think realistically, like, would I clarify? I probably would. I probably, I would probably ask. I'd be like, just to clarify, there's no, like, sauces on the meats, right? Then I'll go from there.

Barry Conrad

Melon, did you remember when we did, this is a few episodes back now, but we did the- We role played it? Yes. We might bring that back again at some point, but that was really funny.

Melanie Avalon

I hope this is helpful for people to know if they wanna, basically this shows you can order, if you have no dietary restrictions, you can order like berry. And if you have dietary restrictions, you can learn how to order like me.

Barry Conrad

And this is actually why this segment, other than highlighting how important the feasting window is, which is so important for all the benefits that we need and what happens in our bodies also just to realize to see two examples of I'm Barry and or I'm Melanie in terms of like the way you eat like, you know, Melanie's way more specific and that's amazing. And then I am but more liberal and there's no wrong. It's just whatever works for your body, right, Mel?

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. And I really want to empower people that... Because I think especially if people are trying to follow a certain diet, they think that restaurants are... That they can't eat at restaurants or they're scared about restaurants. I want to empower people that you can find things that work for your restaurants and you can be nice and you can learn how to order to make it be what you want to put in your body. And there's no shame there, there's no guilt. Just be really nice, know what to ask. For me, it's really important to avoid seed oils like I was talking about. Was that in the... That was last episode I think or two episodes ago. Yeah. So it's all it's all very possible to order the way you like. So what would you get for your entree?

Barry Conrad

Ah, this is tough because I need to get this two that I really want.

Melanie Avalon

You can have two.

Barry Conrad

The Colorado lamb shank and the Rocky Mountain elk chop, they both look amazing, that has to happen. And the listeners, so it's grilled elk chop, stilton blue cheese, bread pudding, winter succotash, truffle steak butter, and that slow-raised lamb, rice, celery, root, pull onions, braised juice, huckleberry, mint jam. It sounds incredible, actually. What about you, Melanie?

Melanie Avalon

So what's crazy? Okay, a few things. One, I think we were talking a few episodes ago about elk. The first time I had elk was at this restaurant. Really? Yes. And I had that Rocky Mountain elk chop and it was just so amazing. Like it was so, so good.

Barry Conrad

Can you paint the picture? Is it like big, like what does it look like? How does it come presented? Like, is it a big chop? Is it a small chop?

Melanie Avalon

Well, okay, when I went, was it actually the elk? I got elk, but maybe it wasn't an elk chop because I don't remember it being, are chops always bone in or can you get no bone elk chops or like chops, like pork chop, is it always on the bone?

Barry Conrad

I feel like it's always on the bone, from what I'd, yeah, reckon.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, okay, no. So pork chops can be bone in or boneless. So it's just the area that it is. I don't remember the elk I had, I don't think it was on the bone. So I'm envisioning it was more like a steak. So I'm not sure if it was... That's the first thing I would clarify with them. Is it on the bone or not? Do you like things on the bone or not on the bone?

Barry Conrad

I am of the train of thought, like I don't have any shame eating in public, like eating off the bone and stuff, because I'm South African. So I don't mind if it's in the bone, but what I will say is it has to make sense. So if there's like hardly any meat on that bone, give me the filet. But if it's like a big portion, give me the bone. I love just the feeling of like, feels like primal, like eating off the bone. I love it.

Melanie Avalon

I feel like you get so much just extra flavor. So my favorite cut of steak is a bone in filet. I just, I love a bone in filet. Really? Yes. Well, because you get like, I love the filet because it's so tender, but it's also really lean. And we were talking a few episodes ago about the fat in meat versus not. And I prefer leaner meats. So I love that filets are leaner, but then you get that extra flavor that maybe you're losing some flavor by not having as much fat. You get it from, you get extra flavor from the bone. I just love bone in. I love bone in lean cuts.

Barry Conrad

So if you had a steak, do they call it a sirloin over there or do they call it a New York steak, because I know sometimes it's different.

Melanie Avalon

I think we talked about this, didn't we talk about that? Because here, sirloin is a different cut than fillet. But I think, I feel like we had a whole, am I making this up? I feel like we had a whole conversation where we realized that cuts are called different things for us, which was really confusing. Because it's already confusing. So to add that language barrier, which is not even, it's the same language, but it's different.

Barry Conrad

Do you pick it up and eat it like off the bone or do you cut like around it really cute and nice?

Melanie Avalon

I cut really cute and nice if I'm at a restaurant.

Barry Conrad

Why'd I ask that? I knew that.

Melanie Avalon

Okay. Well, here's the thing. Wait, actually, do you want the real answer? So always in a restaurant, I use a fork and knife. And at home I used to go like primal style, like teeth in no fork and knife. Then I got veneers and we cannot do that with veneers. So.

Barry Conrad

I appreciate the honesty. I love that. I'm all for it. You've told me this, right? Or you've, you know, told me.

Melanie Avalon

I know I've talked about it. I don't know if I've told you. Maybe. Do you have veneers? I don't. No. So fun fact. Veneers were a game changer for me because my diet, okay, well, multiple fun facts here. Highly pigmented foods tend to be really good for you because of the compounds in them. So think what's really highly pigmented that's not artificial. It's things like coffee, blueberries, wine. So all those colors are great for you because they usually indicate there's some sort of polyphenol content, antioxidants, nutrients, also very staining for your teeth. So I was eating a diet of basically like blueberries and wine and meat and yeah, my teeth were not having it. And then I discovered the world of veneers and my life changed. I was like, oh my gosh, I can eat all the things and they don't even change color.

Barry Conrad

So really, so actually, so for real, like, is that a thing where with veneers, you can actually drink more coffee and eat the colored foods and it won't stay in it? Is that a thing?

Melanie Avalon

veneers don't stain yeah so like whatever color you get like because you pick your shade done they don't stain i mean if they're like porcelain veneers i don't know if there are other like other forms that do stain but one of the most like life you know like you do some things in your life and you're like wow this is like life-changing that was life-changing for me

Barry Conrad

When did you get them and are we going off topic?

Melanie Avalon

I've had them a few years, but then I hit the moment where I was like, oh, because for a while I was getting like normal veneers, just like at my normal tooth shade, but they wouldn't stain. And then I realized, oh, I can get veneers that are like white, like Hollywood smile. And that was really exciting. And so I did that.

Barry Conrad

You do have a great smile, by the way.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you. It's not really mine. I mean, it is, but I actually, fun fact, because when I was getting them, they were like, you can give us like a, we can make whatever. So you can show us what you want. And I was like, oh. So I was like, I want Margot Robbie's teeth from Barbie. So like, I have Margot Robbie's teeth. They made my veneers to look like her mouth, like her teeth.

Barry Conrad

That's a good pick. I'm not mad at that.

Melanie Avalon

It's not funny though. It was like, yeah, it was really exciting. So that was, I think it was not this past like Christmas, Thanksgiving time, but the time before that. There you go. And the thing not to stay on this tangent. I promise we're going to come back to the restaurant.

Barry Conrad

The listeners love it. They love it.

Melanie Avalon

The thing that makes me feel better about it, because like I feel bad about it. Like I feel like, oh, I should just have like perfect teeth and everything. But if we look at paleolithic men, like men, they, and women, they struggled in the tooth department. Like cavities, their teeth were falling out. The reason we have, do you know the Mary Conrad? Do you know why we have wisdom teeth? Tell me. We have wisdom teeth because they were extra teeth because it was just like assumed from evolution that you were gonna lose your teeth. So we developed extra teeth to fill in like when we lost our teeth. Isn't that crazy?

Barry Conrad

Okay. I didn't know that. And also on a wisdom- Isn't that mind-blowing? It is. And also on wisdom teeth. I need to get mine out, by the way. Do you have yours out or are they in?

Melanie Avalon

And I to this day have TMJ issues from when I got them out. So yeah proceed with caution

Barry Conrad

No, I need not because they flare up every like out of the blue and they so painful. So I need to just get rid of them.

Melanie Avalon

That's weird. So is that not a normal because like here in the US it's like very normal. You just like take kids with some teeth out like kids here like people here don't help with some teeth because it's just normal that you it's like protocol like is that not protocol there.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. Thanks for Australia. Shaming me again. No, it's, no, it's, it's, I don't think it's protocol here. It's not a thing. It's like you get it out if it's an issue. So I need to get them out, but I'm also trying to find like a window where I can kind of be like out of office kind of thing for like, how long did you take to recover? Oh, well, you wouldn't remember cause you're a baby.

Melanie Avalon

I remember how old I was because my, it was 2012, I came back for, I was at home, my sister was graduating, I got my wisdom teeth out. The next day I looked like a chipmunk. My face, it was like horrible and my parents, to this day, I think I made the wrong decision there, which was my parents made me go to my sister's graduation and it's like at our school so it's like seeing everybody that you know, you know, type thing and I looked like a chipmunk. I was so embarrassed. I was wearing like sunglasses inside. My parents made me go to this day. I'm all about supporting people. I don't think I should have had to go to that graduation because I, it was such a miserable experience like being there. I was like, nobody look at me. But to recover, they did not, they like didn't give me the proper recovery protocol and it was like rough. It was not good. So make sure that you get the right protocol and, but you know what, here's something. I think it would be, I think I would recover better now with all my health stuff that I do because that was before I had had all my like health, like my, cleaned up my diet, doing intermittent fasting, all my biohacking, anti-inflammatory stuff. I think I would recover a lot better now, kind of, yeah, that's what I think.

Barry Conrad

Well there you go how long how long do i need to leave like a week is that a safe amount of time a week.

Melanie Avalon

I literally do not remember how long it was, but if I were to guess, yeah, probably. But the thing is, you also, I feel like your health is really amazing. You do all the things, kind of like when you broke your ankle, right? My ankle. Yeah, and didn't you heal like super fast?

Barry Conrad

I healed faster than normal, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so I think if you did it now, you have all that going for you and you could do all the stuff to support it. Like I think the fasting would support it. I think red light therapy, like I feel like Barry Conrad would be pretty good with the

Barry Conrad

watch the space like in the next few episodes I'll report back I would have got them out because I have to do it anyway back to the back to the menu sorry if that was gross for you guys but

Melanie Avalon

I think it's really interesting. Yeah, do you have all four teeth?

Barry Conrad

I do.

Melanie Avalon

and you get pain from it.

Barry Conrad

When I do it's really noticeable and also it's just not great like why would you have it there when bacteria could like this is not this is so gross but like you know it's it's better to have them out so I just need to get them out.

Melanie Avalon

And also see if you can find like a holistic dentist if that's an option.

Barry Conrad

Well, I apparently may need to go under because one of them's, like, more impacted.

Melanie Avalon

That was my next question. I was like, are they impacted?

Barry Conrad

Yeah. So I can't, yeah. It's going to be like under, I think, because it's just, it's kind of right in there.

Melanie Avalon

Keep us updated!

Barry Conrad

It'll be a bit like, hey, I will do a lucky episode when I have a chipmunk face.

Melanie Avalon

I have a request. If you get this done, can we like talk when you are loopy on the, like when you come out?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, deal.

Melanie Avalon

And can we record? Yeah, can we record it?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, that's okay. I'll figure it out. What I'll have to do is probably set up the podcast equipment so I can just stumble inside and just press record because I won't know how to connect anything.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, perfect. Okay, back to Pine Creek cook house. So I would also get the same thing that you picked. I would get the elk and the lamb, I think. Although I also really like the idea of the salmon. So I think I'm going to get the salmon for dessert. So the salmon is pan seared, schoona, bay salmon, gluten-free. Oh, so here's something. The menu says what's gluten-free in parentheses. And I want to empower people that even if the menu says that, so you think, oh, only a certain few things are gluten-free, you can make most things gluten-free by modifications if you talk with the waitstaff. So some empowerment there. But yes, I would get the elk top that you got. I would get it rare. How did you want yours cooked?

Barry Conrad

You know what? Because I've, to be honest, like I obviously know what Alk is, but I haven't had it in so long. So I'm going to go rare. Let's do it.

Melanie Avalon

And then how about the lamb?

Barry Conrad

Medium rare, but Melanie I was gonna actually say why don't why don't we just share one of them and you can that way you can like by the way so if I'm getting the elk chop in lamb shank and you want to get the elk chop and so we can kind of share the salmon and lamb.

Melanie Avalon

And I'm getting the salmon for dessert. Okay, all right. And the salmon comes with wilted spinach, blistered tomatoes, fried capers, lemon butter sauce. So I will get it all on the side. Delicious. What are you gonna get for dessert?

Barry Conrad

I have two choices and I bet you can probably guess them.

Melanie Avalon

I think you want the... Actually, I don't know. Do you want the bourbon pecan pie?

Barry Conrad

Yes, tick, what's the other choice?

Melanie Avalon

Okay. Pressure's on. Well, I know you like vanilla ice cream, but that you probably don't want to waste. You probably don't want it like that. Okay. I'm going to say the pecan pie and the apple crisp.

Barry Conrad

Melanie, my favorite thing ever is chocolate.

Melanie Avalon

Really? And I said vanilla too. Oh, such a fail. I thought you liked vanilla.

Barry Conrad

I feel, okay, I love vanilla ice cream with, remember we did the, what is it? Remember we did this thing where it's chocolate on chocolate, vanilla and vanilla? Remember that thing?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, yes.

Barry Conrad

Bourbon peak, pecan pie.

Melanie Avalon

I will never make this mistake again. Okay. You want the, you want the warm chocolate brownie and the bourbon pecan pie. Yeah. Shall I tell you the funny story though about the dessert when we went there? Tell me. So I think last time I went there, it was around the time I had started my low carb diet, but not, not like paleo or everything I do today, just low carb. And so when I was in that phase, I would always get cheese as dessert, like cheese desserts. And to this day, I will not forget this because we went there and people were ordering desserts. And I was like, can I get cheese for dessert? And they said no. And it was really upsetting to me because I know they had cheese on the menu. I was like, I know you have cheese in the kitchen because there's cheese on other things. So why can I not get like cheese as a dessert? And to this day, it's like, it's like a joke in our family that I was so upset that they would not bring me cheese for dessert.

Barry Conrad

I could just see you sitting there, like really upset, folding your arms, like.

Melanie Avalon

No, but actually, I think that now like that actually doesn't make sense because it's not cheap, like it's an expensive nice place and they have cheese in the kitchen. So I think they should have brought me cheese for dessert. Just saying.

Barry Conrad

I think they should have as well. Like, seriously, Pine Creek Cookhouse, where you at? Like, this is not this. I think it might have been a server that, you know, I feel like it was the manager, they probably would have like been fine. But I think it's just a service like, no, we don't do that. That's not on the menu.

Melanie Avalon

They probably didn't want to deal, which I completely understand and respect, because I was there. But it doesn't matter, because if we ever go now, I don't eat cheese, so now, so it's fine. I'll just get the salmon. All good. Yep. But I do. I do. I highly recommend this restaurant. It's one of my favorites. In the world, I must go back. Well, anything else or shall we wrap this up?

Barry Conrad

Let's wrap it on up.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, listeners, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you would like to submit your own questions, you can directly email questions at ifodcast.com, or you can go to ifpodcast.com and you can submit questions there. The show notes for today's episode will be at ifodcast.com slash episode 416. That will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about, so definitely check that out. And yeah, I think that's all the things. Anything from you, before we go.

Barry Conrad

Thank you so much for tuning in, happy fasting and feasting and we'll see you next time.

Melanie Avalon

Likewise, I will talk to you next week.

Barry Conrad

Talk to you next week. Bye!

Melanie Avalon

Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice, and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week!

Mar 29

Episode 415 – Special Guest Matthew Lederman, Finding The Diet That Works For You, Low Protein Benefits, Whole Foods (The Store And Food!), Reducing Added Oils, Toxins In Animal Products, Plant Based Diets, Finding Calm, Stopping Stress With webe kälm, Parenting Paradigms Shift, And More!

webeKalm.com | webeParents.com | connectiondocs.substack.com

Welcome to Episode 415 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SPECIAL GUEST BIO

Matthew Lederman, MD, is a board-certified Internal Medicine Physician and a pioneering thought leader in holistic health. Renowned for his innovative integration of plant-based nutrition, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), trauma-informed care, and lifestyle medicine, Dr. Lederman's work highlights the profound interconnectedness of physical, emotional, and relational well-being.
Dr. Lederman is the co-host of the webe Parents podcast, a platform dedicated to equipping parents with tools and insights to foster emotional connection, resilience, and well-being in their families. His latest book, Wellness to Wonderful, weaves together medical science, psychology, spirituality, and life wisdom to guide individuals toward lasting health, vibrancy, peace, and joy.
He has co-authored six books, including the New York Times Bestseller Forks Over Knives Plan, and was featured in the acclaimed documentary Forks Over Knives. Through these works, he has shared his transformative approach to wellness with audiences around the globe.

In addition to his roles as a clinician, educator, speaker, and corporate advisor, Dr. Lederman has served as Vice President of Medical Affairs at Whole Foods Market, lectured for eCornell, and provided adjunct faculty instruction in medical schools. He also co-created the webe kälm device, designed to promote emotional regulation and soothe the nervous system.

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Books:

The Forks Over Knives Plan: How to Transition to the Life-Saving, Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet

WELLNESS TO WONDERFUL: 9 Pillars for Living Healthier, Longer, and with Greater Joy

The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity

Plus, my listeners can get 25% off webe kälm at ifpodcast.com/webe!

SHOW NOTES

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

WEBE KÄLM

Get 25% off webe kälm at ifpodcast.com/webe.

MD LOGIC

Get 10% off MD Logic's Health Marine Collagen with code ifpodcast at ifpodcast.com/collagen.

PELUVA BAREFOOT SHOES: Peluva's barefoot shoes are a zero drop minimalist shoe with a distinctive 5 toe design, to create the most authentic barefoot style experience. Get 15% off with code ifpodcast at peluva.com.

TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure with code ifpodcast at timeline.com/ifpodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to Episode 415 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat, with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-host, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with B.C. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. This is Episode 415, and I am here today with a very, very special guest. I am so excited about today's episode. So the backstory on today's show, I met Dr. Matthew Letterman, I don't even know now, probably a few years ago, I think, because I've had him on the Melanie Adlon biohacking podcast twice. The backstory is I received information about his work, and I was an immediate yes, because I was so familiar with his background and what he does. So he has co-authored six books, including The New York Times bestseller Forks Over Knives Plan, and he was also in the acclaimed documentary Forks Over Knives. He also authored the book The Whole Foods Diet, and he did that with John Mackey, who's the co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods. And I'd read that book before I explored Forks Over Knives, so I was super familiar. And when his people reached out to me, it was for his new book at the time, which was called Wellness to Wonderful, Nine Pillars for Living Healthier, Longer, and with Greater Joy. So I had him on the show. We talked about that book. That book was incredible. It was such a holistic approach to health. It went into all the things to work on, you know, when it comes to health. So diet and nutrition and sleep, which Matt and I were just talking about before this, as well as a lot of mindset and social things. And I, because when I started reading that book, Wellness to Wonderful, I wasn't anticipating just how much of it was going to be the mental, emotional, social side of things. So I was really interested in that. So that was a great interview. I will put a link to it in the show notes. And also during all of that, I learned about Matt's incredible products called WeBeCalm, which we will definitely talk about today. It's a really cool device that helps you gamify breathing exercises for kids and adults. I actually gave one to my mom for Christmas. And it's a way to just instantly bring some calm into your life. So that's really amazing.

Melanie Avalon

So I had him back on the show for both that, as well as his podcast, the WeBe Parents podcast, which he co-hosts with his wife, Alana, they actually both wrote the Wellness to Wonderful as well. That was a lot. Matt, by the way, he's also a board certified internal medicine physician, a specialist in something called Nonviolent Communication, which I bet we will talk about in today's show. And he's just super savvy, super knowledgeable and so many of these tools and techniques that can really boost people's health. So I knew we had to have him on this show. So Dr. Letterman, Matt, thank you so much for being here.

Matthew Lederman

Wow, what an introduction. I hope I can live up to all that. That was amazing.

Melanie Avalon

No, no, you definitely, definitely will. I've just so enjoyed having you on the shows and really, really appreciate your work. I was thinking about this before we started. I don't think we actually talked and we might have, but in any of my prior interviews with you, I'm really curious, you worked for, what was your position with Whole Foods for like a long time? What was your position there?

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, I was the vice president of medical affairs there.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, that's okay. So that's like a very impressive title. I wasn't even aware that that was a role at Whole Foods. Like what did you do in that role? That's so cool.

Matthew Lederman

Me and Alona, who's my partner at work and in life, worked for them for 10 years. We helped them open medical centers that treated employees with this comprehensive paradigm. There was doctors and more time with patients. There was a more holistic team with health coaches. There was acupuncture, mental health support. And then we partnered, I mean, as nurse practitioners to different level providers. And then we partnered with like-minded healthcare systems that were focusing on optimizing health and wellbeing and minimizing overtreatment and all of the harmful, unnecessary care that happens in a lot of the conventional healthcare systems. And then we would get specialists that also were focused on dealing with the overtreatment problem. A lot of people think the key to getting good specialists is someone that knows about the obscure diagnosis, but more often than not, the bigger problem is finding specialists that don't overtreat, which can only hurt people and doesn't help them. So it was trying to put together a network. We helped them create an insurance plan that incentivized this type of care and put all that together with them.

Melanie Avalon

Wow. Okay. That is so cool. By the over-trading, do you mean specialists where it's like if you have a hammer, everything's a nail, like they see the thing everywhere or actually over-trading once they diagnose it?

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, so there's a lot of things that like blood pressure, it's used blood pressure for an example, they'll give you way too much medication to try and get your number significantly low and make your number look normal. But data shows that if you try to give someone a normal looking blood pressure number with medication, you actually can increase strokes, heart attacks and death. So if your blood pressure is really high, medication is great to get it down as far as decreasing strokes. If it's getting a little bit lower, but getting it to look normal would be considered over treatment because the data shows that it can't help you, it only hurts you. But everybody thinks a normal number means normal health. And if you're getting normal numbers with medication and not die in lifestyle, then that's actually harmful. So that would be an example. There's a screening for cancer, a lot of screenings, there's harms that are not explained. So we inflate the benefit of screening and we under represent the harms from screening so that people can't make an informed decision. So there's two back surgeries, another one way too much happening, using back surgery to treat pain doesn't work. And yet, millions and millions of dollars are spent on doing that to patients who just feel terrible and it doesn't help them.

Melanie Avalon

Wow, statins, would that be one maybe?

Matthew Lederman

Statins for secondary prevention, like if you've had heart attacks or strokes, the data's pretty good. But a lot of people take statins and think, oh, my cholesterol number's down, I'm good, I can eat whatever I want because I'm on the statin. And it doesn't work that way. So just because you have a normal cholesterol number with a statin doesn't mean you have the health of someone who has a normal number because of diet and lifestyle. So they do benefit people, particularly if they've had a heart attack or stroke or something like that before. But it's definitely not, to me it's something you do as an adjunct, not the primary focus of the treatment.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, that actually happened to my friend yesterday. He had a heart attack and he didn't see it coming at all and he had completely normal cholesterol levels.

Matthew Lederman

And that's the thing we'll tell people, we'll say, we don't know what normal is for you. I know what your normal is when I put you on a whole food plant-based diet and some exercise, and after six to 12 weeks, I see what your cholesterol does. Because I've had people who have a cholesterol of 200, and they go down to 180 on these diet and lifestyles, and that's a normal cholesterol for them. I've had people that are 140 total cholesterol, and they get down to 190. So 140, even though for most people they'd say, that's great for this person on the American diet with a 140, they actually needed to be down at 90. So it's an indicator, it's not a definition of health, it's an indicator of how your health is doing. Given the other circumstances though, you need to take those into account.

Melanie Avalon

to clarify that was for the employees at Whole Foods that could engage with it.

Matthew Lederman

Yes, that was for the employees, correct?

Melanie Avalon

That's so cool. Did that continue on after you left?

Matthew Lederman

It was great. It showed a 20% reduction in health care cost, health care spend. And then it was Whole Foods was bought by Amazon and it's just a big, big company. And they were looking into, they were started expanding it. When we left, it was sort of, we showed that the pilots worked and they wanted to expand it. But I was, me and Alona were not as excited about just reproduction. We wanted to be more in the creative side of things and adding to it. And we also wanted to expand into what we call connection medicine. And basically once Amazon came and some other things started changing, we decided to go out and do what we wanted to do, but do it on our own so we didn't have to work within the confines of a big corporation and legal systems and things like that. So now I think Amazon, it's so big, they wanted something that they could create and spread very quickly. And this was more grassroots. So I don't know if they continued it in any capacity, but we left five years ago. So I'm not sure what's happened since then.

Melanie Avalon

Gotcha. Yeah, I'm I'm super curious because I've been a whole foods girl for quite a while and it's been interesting to see especially with the Amazon merger and the change and everything. It's been interesting to see it. It's definitely I appreciate now that I can use all my Amazon benefits and it's actually helped. It seems some prices and things like that. I always wonder what's happening behind the scenes though with everything. So very interesting. Okay, so you hinted at it a lot, which is that there's so much to health beyond just like diet and beyond just, you know, what you see in your blood work and things like that. Before we get more into that, I am super curious. This is the intermittent fasting podcast. What are your thoughts? Because you're you come from a whole food plant based diet approach to to health and wellness. What are your thoughts on intermittent fasting for health?

Matthew Lederman

I think the most important thing is that you eat whole plant foods and you minimize or eliminate the processed foods and that includes extracted added oils, extracted added sweeteners, added sodium as much as possible. And the same thing with animal products. You don't have to be, for a majority of chronic illnesses, you don't have to be vegan, but we eat way too many animal products. And there's a lot of reasons that eating no animal products can be a good thing, but regardless of what you decide to do on that end of your own, people have to eat significantly less animal products. I don't know what your thoughts are, Melanie, on animal products or what your audience, do you have a sense of what your audience's view is on animal products?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I was just thinking how I'm excited to be having this conversation because I feel like we heavily, the majority of the guests that come on are often in like the paleo or you know, keto type world. And then my former co-host and my current co-host, we're all very big supporters. So I like to say that I am dietary agnostic. I'm dietary agnostic in that I think people can follow diets that work for them. So some people do do well on vegan. I think a lot of people struggle to get enough protein or certain forms of nutrients that might be higher in animal-based foods. Some people do really well on a more animal-based diet. Some people do well on, you know, a very omnivore type approach. So I think it's about finding the diet that works for you. But then I think when you step back from that, there are some key tenets that apply. So and you probably just said all of them, like whole foods, so, you know, cutting out these processed foods, avoiding these additives, this added, you know, sugar and flavors and added sodium and just all these different additives and preservatives, just not good. And then the third thing is I do think it's really important to focus on protein. So that's why I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on protein because I think people get very confused, especially on this show because we talk all the time about the importance of protein. How do you feel about protein intake?

Matthew Lederman

My view on protein is probably going to upset most of your viewers. So I'm trying to make sure that I say clearly up front is that, you know, what feels best for your body. And when I work with clients, ultimately, that's what I want to do is help them check into their bodies and see what feels good. And then I also want them to isolate the variables. So sometimes they make a conclusion because they have compounding variables or there's confusion. For example, some people who start on a plant-based diet, the calorie density is significantly lower. So they can go from 2000 calories per pound to 500 calories per pound, which is a quarter of the calories per pound of food. And if you try to eat the same portion sizes over a period of days, you'll start to have calorie deficiency and you'll feel lower energy and fatigue and cravings. And then they'll go out and they'll say, it must be the protein. I need animal protein. And then they'll go out and eat a big burger, which is like a calorie bolus. And then they feel better. And they say, see, it was the animal products. And what I have to explain to them is you can eat animal products if you want, but what helped you there was the calorie bolus. And we need to adjust your diet to deal with the calorie deficiency. It's not an animal protein deficiency. And then they can still choose to eat animal products, but I want them to do it for the reasons, for the right reasons, if you will, but that makes sense. So I want to make sure people have information. They take that information can make an informed decision about what works best for them. So with that caveat, I tell people that protein should be the last thing you were, it's the first thing everybody's worried about. For me, it's the last thing. In fact, I'm working on ways to get less protein because I eat a whole food plant-based diet. I'm getting excessive amounts of protein. And when we're talking about protein, what we really care about is the essential amino acids. And I'm, I'm blowing away if because of my diet is full of whole foods, there's no added oils and sugars, which are, those are actually devoid of protein oils and sugars give you calories without any protein. So if your diet has a lot of oil and sugar, you can start to get, it's still probably hard, but you can still, you're definitely getting a significant portion of calories without any protein. I don't have that problem because all my calories come with essential amino acids because I'm getting them from whole plant foods. So the problem with too much protein is that you don't store it. It doesn't, it doesn't magically, you know, get stored in the body. It doesn't, you know, you can't eat protein and all of a sudden gets pushed into your biceps. It's floating around and your body eliminates it. So you'll, and that puts stress on the bones and the kidneys and the liver. And the more protein you have that you don't need, the more your body has to work to eliminate it.

Matthew Lederman

And then I have a whole slideshow that I take people through to show them how they determined what is the minimum safe requirements. And then what they do is they put a buffer in there. So the minimum like different organizations that have recommendations for protein for populations, they put a safety buffer in there because each person's a little bit different, but they put something in the, you know, so they'll double the amount that made that the person who had the biggest protein requirement of the group in a test study, they would double that amount. So that's more than double what most people need. So if you're getting what's quote unquote, the minimum requirement, you're still getting a safety buffer of twice as much as you need. So knowing that even if you're getting the, you're just meeting the minimum requirements, you're going to do fine. The recommendation for populations with these minimum requirements is basically saying, if we make this requirement to a population, almost all of them not going to get into any trouble if they follow that. And that's the answer. Yes, they're all going to do fine. So knowing that if I'm working out more, I'm going to eat more calories because I'm going to be hungrier and because I'm burning more calories. And when I eat more calories, guess what? If they're whole plant foods and not oil or sugar, I'm getting more protein. So if I work harder and expend more energy, I'm going to eat more calories and I'm going to get more protein.

Melanie Avalon

I so appreciate this conversation and I think it's really helpful because what's really important to me in life is to interview and talk to people of all different perspectives because if not, I think we get really siloed and it can be hard to know if we're being biased or cherry picking or whatever it may be. So I really appreciate having this conversation. So the first point you made, I want to communicate that I understand it and I see it go the other way as well. So you made the example of how people, you know, might be needing calories so they eat a burger and then they think that they think it was like the protein that made them feel better but really they just needed the calories. I feel like that happens and then I feel like it also happens on the flip side where people might cut out, maybe they go completely plant-based or vegan and they cut out everything and they feel massively better and so then they think that going that restrictive on plant-based only was what it was but maybe it was cutting out all these other things and then in the future they might need to bring back selectively some animal-based products if they need certain nutrients that they're not able to get enough of. So I feel like it can happen both ways.

Matthew Lederman

What are those nutrients that people are worried about, would you say? Because I think they can, I think people can add some animal products back and still be healthy. But what other than B12, what nutrient would you say that people can only get if they eat animal products?

Melanie Avalon

Well, so the only one that they can quote, I guess only only get would be, like you said, be 12, but then people can have like spirulina.

Matthew Lederman

But just to clarify, B12 comes from bacteria. And the animals get the bacteria and make the B12. And then they accumulate the B12. So animal products are basically like a supplement. It's not like the animals make the B12 either. So to me, I just wanted to add this in about the B12, that it's made by bacteria. And then we can either get that from a supplement that stores this B12, or we could get it from an animal product that stores B12. Or we could, I guess, potentially stop eating really, really clean food and maybe get some B12 that way. Just to clarify, because when I said B12, I just wanted to make it clear that for anyone listening that I'm not saying that they can only get that from animal products or that animal products are producing it.

Melanie Avalon

Right and kind of kind of the same way like meat from animals they ate grass and turn it into meat so similar concept actually.

Matthew Lederman

Right. I just want to make sure vegans don't hear this and say, oh, I could eat lettuce and I'll get my B12. If you're vegan, they're going to get into trouble without a B12 supplement. So just to be careful that, yes, if you're eating animal products, sometimes they even need to supplement B12. Even eating animal products isn't enough for some people. But yeah, you definitely need to supplement B12. You can't get that. Even if you don't wash your lettuce, it's not enough.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'll do a shout out for my spirulina because it's super high in B12 and it is vegan. So there is a solution for people.

Matthew Lederman

Who don't want to eat animals or take pills, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

The other nutrients I'd be thinking, I think there's quite a few nutrients that are just easier for people to get and assimilate in the plant-based form. So EPA, DHA, so with their omega-3s, getting them in the plant that like from fish compared to converting it from ALA and plants, some people genetically might not have the best conversion there. And then with a lot of fat, soluble vitamins are easier to get in from animal products. Creatine from animal products and protein, I think if you are going and getting just direct animal meat, like lean protein, you're getting those amino acids in a form that I think will be a lot better for stimulating. I know it's ironic because we're talking about anti-aging and reducing protein for reducing IGF-1 and reducing mTOR and increasing AMPK for longevity. But when you're intentionally in the growth state and wanting to support muscle mass and support building your body, I think a lot of people can assimilate and get that better from animal-based protein, easier for them. And a lot of it depends on your gut microbiome, like how good they are at what they do with plants or not.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, I mean, people can stay if your goal is to stimulate growth, it's a different goal than if your goal is health. And I think at that point, like you're saying, maybe you want to do if you manipulate the diet, when taking isolated protein powder is going to stimulate IGF one insulin like growth factor, which is going to stimulate growth, you know, getting hormones that are in your animal animal products is going to stimulate growth. So there's different ways we can stimulate growth. But I'm helping people, if you're trying to avoid cancer, stimulation of growth is something you want to avoid as well. So it's just a matter of balancing like, hey, what's your priority, and then helping people meet their needs around that party, because I don't want to come across like, I'm saying this is the right way to do it, and everything else is wrong, it's really important to check in with people, what they want, and what works for them. I just, I just also want to make sure I get people, even if it's another view, like there's some people say, oh, I'm getting older, I can't absorb animal products as well if they're from plants, or I can't absorb protein as well if it's from plants versus animals. That is not my experience. That's not what I see in the data. I know people will talk about creatine, even though that's naturally synthesized in the body from amino acids, arginine, glycine, and methionine, primarily in the liver, kidneys, pancreas. So it's not an essential nutrient. Now, if people for somehow take creatine and they say, wow, my life is amazing, and it's so much better. Like, that's great. I just want to make sure that people who feel great already don't say, oh my God, I need to eat animals, I need to eat creatine, and I need to get more protein, or I'm going to be hurting myself. I think that's what I worry about are the people that are feeling great that are then second guessing themselves. But if on the flip side, you're having a problem, or you somehow you do something and you feel better and it still feels safe enough, you knock yourself out. My worry with animal products is, hey, now it's cholesterol, no fiber, environmental contaminants that are in there that bioaccumulate as they eat up the food chain, and then just the effect of some of the animal products and the more acidic amino acids that tend to be from them with the sulfur-containing amino acids. So I tell people, if you feel better doing this, that's ultimately what you should trust your body. But if you're feeling great and you hear something and it makes you second-guess yourself, then I have a higher bar before I would switch anything.

Melanie Avalon

I so appreciate your communicating everything really clearly. I so appreciate your perspective. I love that you have this perspective, and I think it's really valuable that people hear all different sides of the coin. I really like the central tenet of listening to your body and finding what works for you and being smart about it and seeing what nutrients do you actually need. And we can go more into listening into your body. That's a good segue. But before that, I just have a few other thoughts. I am literally haunted by this protein aging question. Anytime I bring on anybody who remotely might have an idea about it, I ask them. So I've had a lot of people, I don't want to make it like camps, but I've had people with similar viewpoints to you that I've interviewed, so like Dr. Michael Gregor, Neil Bernard, and Walter Longo. And I'm always asking them this question about the trade-off with a high-protein diet and IGF-1, mTOR, aging, and then also this question which you referenced. And I'm curious. It does seem to be pretty accepted that after the age of 60, that people do need to increase their protein intake. But you're saying you've seen some people that don't need to increase as they get older?

Matthew Lederman

Do you see a question you're saying it to people over the age of 60?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I think that's the cutoff that they give usually for when people need to increase their protein intake.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, I don't I don't see that if if somebody I if people are meeting their caloric needs With whole plant foods meaning they're not getting a lot of processed foods I don't I don't know of a Disease some people will say oh their muscles are wasting and they're they start losing muscle mass They lose muscle mass because they're not active because they're not well There's there's some changes that happen just as you age But as far as a majority of the the the damage it will be When they are not as active they're not doing the resistance. They're not doing flexibility training all of which Are required if you don't use it you lose it, but it's not because they're not eating animal products It's now maybe there's this one, you know, i'm not going to say never But I don't think the majority of people as they get older 60 All of a sudden need to either eat animal products or somehow start supplementing protein powders or they need to Push the caloric intake beyond what they feel satisfied with because that's essentially what I would imagine what happened If you're saying that they're not you or experts are saying That when you hit 60 you need more protein Then to me what they're basically saying is don't listen to your hunger signals Even though you're you're good at you need more than that And or you need to start taking some A non-whole food some type of isolated protein powder Or you need to change the concentration of the protein. So instead of eating, you know You gotta gotta pack in all of these beans, let's say and I don't think any of those Are needed or make people healthier, but I do believe there's problems with people as they get older with not being active Not doing the flexibility training not or not doing it correctly or both And have not getting in the sun or getting the vitamin d so there's there's other issues But I would I would put my focus a little bit differently

Melanie Avalon

I agree completely that it could be causation correlation with people getting older and not getting the stimulus they need to, you know, maintain, definitely not grow, but at least maintain that muscle. The other thought would be, I can also see the issues that you mentioned with animal products like contaminants and things like that. I feel like that goes across the board though, like you could have, you know, pesticides and issues and plant-based foods. And then on the flip side, you could choose. So I pretty much just eat, you know, responsibly raised, toxin free for fish. I only eat low mercury fish because I'm very much concerned about heavy metals. So I think that can be navigated and then the cholesterol thing, I feel like that is more

Matthew Lederman

Could I speak to the environmental contaminant thing? Yeah. So the problem with anopox is that there's bioaccumulation. So things like dioxins and PBDEs, and also they accumulate and break down just based on their half-lives. So you can't eliminate them. They can be passed to the baby through the placenta and the milk, but essentially, you have to just wait for it to break down. When an animal, so let's say there's a grain that has so many parts per million of an environmental contaminant, and you eat that grain directly, versus if you eat an animal that had to eat 10 times or 20 times the amount of grain to get to be the big animal, you're basically eating 20 times in a serving of animal products. You're eating 20 times the amount of that environmental contaminant than you would if you just ate the grain directly. So again, I'm not saying people have to eat grains, but if they look up how biomagnification works, that's the problem with animal products. And eating even organic animal products, it's getting passed down from the mom to the kid. And it's just something that it's hard to avoid. And I wish there was a way where that wasn't an issue, but I have not seen any example where you don't have to worry about environmental contaminant, the biomagnification issue.

Melanie Avalon

So there are like measurable levels of these if you find the best of the best sources with organic pasture raised animal products.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, that doesn't it doesn't matter. And you can look I mean, we'll have to talk offline afterwards. I can show you there's even graphs where they look at this and they know. I mean, milk was one of the biggest as far as dioxin contamination, like it's just because it gets passed down for the mom into the milk. So keep every time it's getting more and more concentrated. So it's just it's just hard to avoid. And that's why you want to eat as low on the food chain as possible, or at least have as much calories as you can tolerate as low on the food chain. Like I said, I'm not against people eating animal products. I just want them to know about all this so they can decide, hey, which one is it worth it? And when is it not?

Melanie Avalon

I'm very concerned with the environmental toxins and especially in the seafood. So hard to get clean, yeah. I had mercury toxicity in the past and that was just from fish and after that I became so aware of it and I think people don't realize, they don't realize that if you have a piece of fish high up on the food chain on your plate, you can't see these toxins. So you can't see just how much can be in there and you don't realize that, oh, if I have a piece of swordfish that could have hundreds of the amount of mercury of like a piece of tilapia that's way lower on the food chain. Like if you look at the charts, it actually can be that much of a difference and that's just mercury. So yeah, it's upsetting.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, it's really tough, and it just makes the higher up on the food chain these toxins multiply. So the same way smaller fish to bigger fish is the same thing when you're eating a plant to an animal that's eating the plants. So the higher up you eat, it's a cow eats thousands of pounds of contaminated grain and grass over its lifetime, concentrating the pesticides and heavy metals in its meat and its milk. Just like you said, tuna, it eats hundreds of smaller fish that are all filled with mercury, making its flesh one of the most contaminated foods. So you can either choose to eat the small fish, which are going to have less, which unfortunately our oceans are so polluted, even the small fish have it, but at least it's not being concentrated when you eat the fish higher up. So basically plants don't store up the toxins in the same way. So eating the lower on the food chain, the fruit, vegetables, grains, legumes means fewer contaminants. And it's all because there being the pollution from the environment getting into all this stuff. So it's not the animals or the plant's fault. It's just what we have to deal with now.

Melanie Avalon

Could this be mitigated in part, since toxins are preferentially stored in fat, what if people ate very, very lean, you know, organically raised, free-range meat, like very lean, like bison and chicken breast? That might, I feel like that would eliminate a lot of the exposure to the toxins.

Matthew Lederman

Yes, even if someone eats lean, organic, free-range meat, they still accumulate more toxins than someone eating plant-based. It's organic, free-range animal, still eat plants, grains, or smaller animals that have been exposed to the environmental toxins. So that's the challenge, is if whatever they're eating has toxin, then they're going to accumulate it. And since they don't break down very easily, they build up in the animal's body over time, even if the feed is organic. So even lean meat still contains the toxins, but many toxins like dioxins and PCBs store in fat, but they also bind to muscle tissue. So even lean meat is not free from contamination. Mercury in fish is found directly in the muscle tissue, meaning that choosing lean fish doesn't reduce exposure. Poultry containing arsenic used historically in chicken feed, organic standards don't fully protect against environmental contamination. So you just can't get away from it if you're eating things that eat other things. You're just, you're going to be exposed to it, but you can at least minimize by not eating things that eat other things that eat other things. So the little fish still eat the algae that's contaminated. So the little fish are still accumulating, but then the big fish that eat the little fish are accumulating even more, because they already have a level of concentration just from the smaller fish when they eat the algae. So does that make sense? Like the free range organic meat is better. At least it'll have fewer antibiotics and pesticide residues than factory farm meat, but it still concentrates environmental toxins and it doesn't protect against bio magnification, which is just a natural process that happens in the food chain.

Melanie Avalon

It does. I would like to look into this more and look at samplings. I'm curious what this practically looks like, because I understand what you're saying, that it's still in there if we choose the best of the best. I would like to just actually see the numbers of what that practically looks like, just because I don't have that much.

Matthew Lederman

That's a good exercise because then you can make an informed decision about how much you want to eat I mean, we're all getting chemicals. We're all getting stuff from our mind. That's why we want to optimize our immune system It's it's gonna be taking hits every every day from all different, you know from the air we breathe the water we drink So you just try to minimize the hits and you decide what's worth it and certain meals certain dishes certain types of food Really bring a lot of joy and pleasure to people So it's more a matter of understanding all this stuff and then making an informed decision about what works for you

Melanie Avalon

And just for the cholesterol piece, I wouldn't be concerned about dietary cholesterol and animal products raising cholesterol. I would be more for me the saturated fat, which you could get from plants as well.

Matthew Lederman

this is this is a common thing that people say and it's I've learned over the years to not spend a lot of energy trying to convince people like like I'm just like if that's the belief that they feel good about then that's great my read of the data and my read of working with patients that it's they can get saturated fat from eating whole coconut and it will not affect their cholesterol the way it will if they get eating animal products and at a certain point you can keep eating more animal products and it doesn't you know we we saturate pretty quickly as far as the amount of cholesterol that any more than that doesn't matter you know you have it's like saying if you're smoking one pack of cigarettes and then you add a second pack well you've done so much damage from the first pack that adding the second pack it might make things a little worse but you know so so if you so you could do a study that says let's take them from two packs of cigarettes down the one pack of cigarettes and there's not much a difference so therefore cigarettes have no effect on health when in fact if you went from two packs of cigarettes to no cigarettes you would see a big difference so I think you got to look at the studies and when you remove dietary cholesterol it's it's clearly a problem but at the same time there's so much so much of the dietary cholesterol comes with saturated fat too so I think they both have their issues but I really don't like in the end I don't like talking about individual macronutrients when we're trying to direct people's health because nobody sits and eats a bowl of cholesterol or eats a bowl of saturated fat and all these foods have all the different I mean bananas have saturated fat in them so it's not like you're gonna pick one type of the other it's it's to me what foods are health promoting and what or not and which foods feel good when you eat them and what foods don't and you put all that together and find a diet that works for you but I don't I've stopped over the years arguing I just want to make sure people hear that maybe there's more than one opinion out there and if they think if they will feel strongly that cholesterol dietary cholesterol doesn't make their cholesterol grow up great and you know they can do an experiment eat one diet and then try to try a couple of weeks without dietary cholesterol and check your blood cholesterol again and do it in yourself but be really you know strict about it so you get a good study and what I imagine is that people who all they do if all they do is change the dietary cholesterol which again I like is hard you can't just eat a bowl of cholesterol my guess is they're going to see a difference if they go from down to zero cholesterol for a couple of weeks just to test it out so do your own little study

Melanie Avalon

So appropriately enough, I've done almost that. But first I just wanted to comment really quickly. I am the same way. I literally have zero interest in convincing anybody of anything, like zero interest. I just wanna explore and hear different opinions and people make your own decisions. So we're on the same page there. It's interesting for me, because so I have done, I'm really intense with what I eat. Like I pretty much eat, I eat very strict whole foods based diet and it's really just a few similar foods, no additives, meat, fruit, cucumbers, things like that. But point being is what I currently am eating and have eaten for a long time, it's very high animal protein, but it's high lean animal protein and it's tons of fruit. When I do that approach, I have very low cholesterol. So LDL will be in the 40s, total cholesterol hovers around 100. When I make a change, and the only change I make is I get rid of the fruit and I add in lots of like coconut oil or MCT oil, all my cholesterol levels like shoot up, which has been really, really interesting to see.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, oil will definitely get cholesterol, even oils that have more, if you go from an oil that, whether it's high saturated fat oil or high monounsaturated fat oil, you add a ton of oil to someone who's not having oil, their cholesterol is going to go up.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so and that's like a plant-based saturated fat, but for me it makes my cholesterol like go really high.

Matthew Lederman

All right. I'm saying is if you're going to test in yourself, test it with a whole food. If you add an oil, I don't care what kind of oil it is, it's going to cause problems. But if you, I would say eat like whole coconut.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, which I don't like, interestingly, like I love all foods and I don't know why.

Matthew Lederman

But I would say do the study with whole foods. So do a study with its high saturated fat that's a whole food, not even coconut milk. Do the whole coconut with the fiber and all the other stuff that comes with it. And compare that to an animal product that's high in dietary cholesterol. And then compare that to a diet that's whole food plant-based without concentrated saturated fat or concentrated cholesterol. And do that experiment for a couple of weeks. Do a before and after. Everything else controlled, if you're interested.

Melanie Avalon

controlled dietary studies are, like you said, so difficult because you can't really isolate one nutrient. No, well, okay, that was fun. So now, it's funny, we get a lot of feedback from listeners and they're always like, I'm so confused because, you know, I hear this one thing and then I hear another and I agree that it can be really confusing, but I like to see it all as benefit. Like it's more information of things that can potentially make you feel better. So do your labs and see how you feel. It sounds like, though, we do have a few overlying, you know, things we believe, which is whole foods based, removing these processed foods, you know, focusing on minimizing the environmental toxins as much as we can.

Matthew Lederman

as low on the food chain as you can, eat as much whole food as you can, which includes not having added oils and added sugars. So whole food is close to its original form as possible. And then, I mean, I don't know where you stand, but I think if you're going to eat animal products, make them count. But again, I don't know where you are on that as far as like, how much do you really need. And then, most importantly, check in with your body. Eat these whole plant foods, add whole animal foods if that's important to you, and then check in with your body. And then, if you're going to do an experiment, really isolate the variable. So if you want to see how you feel with animal products versus, or more versus less, or oil versus no oil, make sure everything else is the same for that two-week period so you can really isolate the variable.

Melanie Avalon

So actually, going to the make it count part, we kind of do overlap indirectly. It's kind of a weavy path to get there, but you were talking about the for the anti-aging benefits, you know, not having this abundance of protein. And it's ironic because on this show, we talked about the importance of protein, or a lot of people eat like a moderate to high protein diet. But by pairing it with fasting, it's actually getting to the same end result where you're not constantly stimulating your body with with mTOR. And I think you can still get the anti-aging benefits. So you're making the protein count by having it in this concentrated eating window. And interestingly, I hadn't thought about this yet, the implications of this, but so I do Matt, I eat a very high protein diet, it's, it's very high protein, but it's in an intermittent fasted pattern every day. So I fast every single day and I just do one meal a day in the evening. And I recently got back and like I said, I'm haunted by this longevity question with this. And I recently interviewed Dr. Matt Dawson, he is the founder of True Diagnostic, which provides an epigenetic age test and they have three of them ones in partnership with Yale ones with Harvard and ones with Duke, I think. They're all epigenetic, they all look at different markers for aging. And he told me in real time when I interviewed him that my results were some of the best he's ever seen with epigenetics showing that I'm aging slowly. So that was really validating to know that I can still have a high protein diet, but by having it in an intermittent fasting and you feel good and feel good, yeah.

Matthew Lederman

You said you feel good. You have you eat one meal a day, you said.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, but it's over a few hours in the evening and it's a lot of fruit, a lot of lean animal protein. Do you publicly share your age? Sorry, there's a funny story there. I wasn't and then CNBC wanted to do an article, like a profile piece on me and they asked if she asked me last minute, she was like, is it okay if we include your age? And I was like, I haven't put that out there publicly. And my background's in acting, which is where you don't say your age and all this stuff. And I was like, so I'd rather not, but if you think it'll benefit the story, I understand. And then she published it and she made it the title, like the title was my age. And so I was like, okay, I guess it's out there. So that's when I was 32. So I'm, oh gosh, I don't even know how old I am, I'm 33.

Matthew Lederman

So, so you're been doing this for a while, you feel really good. You're, you're getting the calories you need. It's not like you're walking around hungry. And I think that's what's most important. Now, we all are trying to do our best to guess what's going to be good for, you know, what do we do now that's going to help us 20 years from now, essentially, or 30 years from now. And it's really tough to know for sure. I mean, you can look at other culture, other populations, and what they ate. That doesn't mean that's what's best. We're just making our best guesses here. And a lot of these studies, they look back and they'll follow people for, for populations for a while, but they don't do this, like, randomized, well, we have this population following this and this, because it's just so hard to do it's so hard to control. So I think the most important thing is that you feel good about what you're doing, you feel good about, you know, you're not stressing out about it. And you're minimizing the stuff that we all clearly agree is crap, all of the processed Twinkies and the cookies and the added sugars. And I don't know what you feel about oil, but I think of added oil, the same as added sugar, that it's an isolated, extracted macronutrient, devoid of all of the things that are naturally in the food. So I don't know if a significant portion of your diet is coming from anything like that, and you don't have to answer, but that's what I'm telling people. I think the most important thing is how you feel. And it sounds like you feel great.

Melanie Avalon

I do. And it was really nice to see that like epigenetically in real time picture of how I'm aging. I'm on the same page as you with oil. So I think I really don't see the reason to add these refined processed oils to things. The only exception is I can see, I mean, there's a lot of really interesting data on olive oil. So I could see if you're having like a little bit of that, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't douse the food in it. I think I don't add oil to my food.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, I mean, to me, it's again, it's like if you don't need to, then don't. And if you're going to use it, there's like the good better best to me, the good is minimum, you know, you a little bit, the better would be like, maybe you're almost like putting it in a spray bottle and just in. And to me, the best is eat, you know, eat an olive or something, that's the whole food version of it, you know, eat the avocado instead of the avocado oil. So it's not a low fat or fat free diet, it's just a low extracted fat diet.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, oftentimes people will be doing like keto or low carb and say they're not losing weight. And one of the suggestions I'll make is you don't need to add all this fat, like you don't need to be adding all this fat. You can just eat food, like in its real form.

Matthew Lederman

Exactly. See, so we're on the same page there, I think. And there's just, if you're feeling great, that's the bottom line here. Now, what are the challenges, though, when I was in my early 20s? I mean, you could eat anything and feel fine when you're really young. But as you start to get older, your body can't handle that anymore. So, and actually, kids will say they feel better when they clean up their diet. And, and that's, like I said, you do not need to be vegan, but feel great and be healthy. But I think getting rid of the processed foods, everybody would agree with.

Melanie Avalon

I think so. So segue, we keep talking about how there's so much more to it than just diet in your book, like I said, in your books. But most recently, the one I read, which was Wellness to Wonderful, you go on all these other pillars of, like I said, emotional health and mental and social and all of these things. And you have this We Be Calm product, which is incredible. So what role does that play in all of this health picture?

Matthew Lederman

Actually, before we go on, I just want to make sure I realize I didn't answer your question on intermittent fasting. And I just want to say that, again, it's what helps you feel really good. I think it's very important. Fasting in general, I think, is really good for the body. And I think giving your body downtime to do its repair and restoration is really important where it's not trying to metabolize calories. And I personally, for whatever reason, just naturally gravitated a long time ago where I wouldn't eat. I never felt good eating breakfast. So I would eat my first meal, 11.30. I eat my dinner around 5.30. And that's all I eat. So I think I'm naturally doing some long periods of fasting every day. And then getting low. I think we overall eat too many calories. So that's what I like about low calorie density diets. Whole food plant-based diets are naturally low calorie. And oil is the most calorically dense. So someone who's trying to decrease their caloric intake and fast or intermittently or it's adding oil would be the last thing I'd want to do. It's like 4,000 calories per pound. So that's just another plug for trying to get rid of processed or refined oils. But yes, I think giving yourself time is a really good thing. But there's some people that if they feel better, if they eat three meals a day or they sort of snack throughout the day. And I think that's, again, a personal experiment. If you really have terrible cravings, or you're struggling, or your energy is different, and you feel better eating three meals or snacking during the day, I think the bottom line is trust your body, especially if you're doing that with healthy whole foods. But if you're snacking and eating Lucky Charms for breakfast and snacking all day. And well, then I think we have other things to talk about. So bottom line, yes, I think intermittent fasting is great. But I don't think someone who's feeling good and healthy and loving life needs to force themselves to intermittent fast if they're doing really well, unless they want to play around with it and see how they feel. So that makes sense. I don't think the data is so clear that we have to tell people, if you're not doing it, you are in serious trouble. But it might be something that's worth exploring.

Melanie Avalon

I agree completely makes sense and it might come as a surprise to people since I have a show called the Intermittent Fasting Podcast, but I feel the same way that I think it's a tool that works really, really well for a lot of people and it can be a major game changer and some people in the end, it's just not the thing for them. I definitely don't think everybody needs to be doing it, but I do think it can benefit a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely.

Matthew Lederman

And I say try it too, like you have nothing to lose. What's the worst thing? You skip breakfast and see what happens. Like I love that trying and that's how I do everything. I just experiment on myself. I see how I feel. What do I like? What do I not like? And I wish more people, in fact, that could segue into this other stuff. To me, that's one of the biggest things that I have to help people with is connecting to their own bodies and using their internal value system and their internal felt experience to direct what works and what doesn't work. Instead of looking outside and having these external markers of success and health and then trying to live up to those. So it's really retuning our ability to check back in with our body and let their inner wisdom guide them.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, I love this so much. And so practically, what does that look like? And a lot of what you do, and I'm so grateful, I love that you are, you know, creating this education, spreading this awareness, products, books, all the things for people, but you also have or and you also have a big focus on raising the next generation. So, you know, instilling this mindset and helping, you know, being a parent and helping kids. There's so many ways we could go with this, I guess I'll just start with a fairly basic question. When did you launch your we become product?

Matthew Lederman

we become, I love this tool, it was we created it to help people learn how to regulate their nervous system. And we did we count with this idea of probably four or five years ago, I've been thinking about it for a long time. But over the last five years, we started figuring out how to design it and make it work and then put it together and market it. And, and the reason this is so important is that regulating your nervous system has and which basically means turning on the parasympathetics and telling the sympathetic they can take a break. So parasympathetics are natural calming, that's how we can turn on rest and digest and reproduce functions. The sympathetic or your fight flight frees faint when there's a danger or threat. And we don't want to have those on unless you really need them on. And many people struggle to turn on their Paris or to yeah, turn on the parasympathetics and sort of put a brake on the sympathetic. And breathing particularly slow, along the exhalation is one of the best ways to turn on the parasympathetics. And that's when we let's create a device that you can only exhale through slowly, it's not comfortable to try and blow out fast, along with an indicator that holds a ball loft, as long as you're exhaling, so you can try and keep that ball loft for 10 seconds. So then we said, there's a little bit of white noise that comes out for auditory regulation. So you have three different pathways that stimulate parasympathetics, you have the slow exhalation with the tube, you have the feedback device where you have focused attention on the ball, and that's, it's triggered similar pathways as to all the mindfulness practices. Then you have the white noise that comes out the back, the auditory regulation feedback. And you put all those together and you're activating three different parasympathetic, three different pathways to turn on the parasympathetics. And I tell people put that by your nightstand and do five breaths, five exhalations, five repetitions before bed, you can do another set of five if you want, and do it every night. And the key is doing it every night for months. And after that, you start to build this muscle memory, these neural pathways, neural networks that are created that are basically linked from your breath to turning on calm. And then at any point during the day, you can say, Oh, I'm just going to take a weeby breath. And you do that exhalation and your body now trained by this tool that's giving you feedback of what a correct breath, correct weeby breath is. Then if you take that same breath at any time during the day, you now have this strong neural pathway that can immediately turn on calm. That's been super exciting because it works really well for kids and adults. And you can, and you just have to do it before bed every night and you'll see some amazing results.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I love this so much because there's so much stress in our world and there's a lot of different ways that you can approach it. So, you know, bottom up versus top down and so things like meditation and doing, you know, mental exercises and therapy can be really helpful. And at the same time, you can use devices like this where you can literally, like you said, instantly turn on this parasympathetic state. So well, first of all, demographics wise, so is it mostly kids using it or are you saying for like us adults and parents and such and people in general to use it as well?

Matthew Lederman

Oh, everybody, it's marketed towards children because that was the easiest demographic to target. But my kids and I use it before bed every night. And it's really amazing. My daughter, who's 11, called me from school, hysterically crying. I couldn't even understand her. And I said to her, hey, I'm hearing something's really upsetting you, and I can't understand you. Can you take a weebie breath, and then maybe we'll be able to understand you better? And she immediately, just from even asking her to take the weebie breath, she was able to sort of, I could hear it start to come down a little. And then she stopped, she did the breath, and she was like, ah, so dead. And it was like a switch. And you can't do that if you don't have the training. It's almost like trying to tell somebody to bench some weight, bench press some weight, when they need the strength versus months and months of training, and then they need the strength, and they can do it easily. The key is, even though you know how to breathe, you want to train and give your body that feedback so that you're doing it exactly the way that stimulates the parasympathetics, and that it's a practice. And when you see that tool, the weebie calm device on your nightstand, it takes 30 seconds, 40 seconds, and to do five repetitions, probably actually, if I'm being honest, probably 60 seconds. It takes a minute, but it's still worth it. And you do that every night. It's so amazing. I tell people, just do an experiment. Do it for a couple of months, and then randomly try to take weebie breaths throughout the day, and notice that felt sense in your body.

Melanie Avalon

It's so amazing that like it's a practice, but you don't have to have the cognition to make it work. Like it's going to work if you do it. It's a physical thing that you do, and then it's going to have that effect. And then I love this fact that the brain will then anticipate and the benefits will only grow from there.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, it's a real, a real strong association by doing every night, you make these all these associations and this neural network just fires and it's like going down a slide and you just slide down the slide at that point because you've created this beautiful neural network.

Melanie Avalon

It's kind of like how even with things like dopamine, we know that when you have an addiction or a habit or something that you do all the time, you actually release those feel good feelings before you even do it. Like once you get into the habit of doing it, it's the thought of it that actually, you know, releases these feel good compounds. So it sounds like the we become can become not that it's like an addiction, but it can become entrained where it immediately will signify to your body these the state to go into.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, it's a really beautiful thing to watch.

Melanie Avalon

so amazing. And I love that it's so like portable and affordable. Literally, it's like the perfect gift to give to everybody. My mom before, like I said, I gave one to her, because before she'd been using a straw, breathing through a straw. And this makes it so much easier to, like you said, it's multiple thing, it's three different things, not just the breathing. And then you like know what to do, you're not having to like come up with the paradigm that you're fitting into it actually with the thing, like it makes it like easy to follow like step.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, yeah, when you see the ball and you know you're getting the ball off, that's as hard as you have to blow. And then you exhale until you don't have to anymore, at least the 10 seconds. And it gives you this, it's this form, it's a container around the breath that otherwise it's hard to know exactly if you're doing it correctly, especially for kids, but even for adults. So by using this device, it sort of holds the breath the way you need to do it so that you know you're doing it correctly. And then you just do it every night, 60 seconds. If you want to do another set, it's two minutes. It's not a big investment to be able to have calming at your fingertips.

Melanie Avalon

That's incredible. Can you, this is random. Can you use it for things like cravings or people are experiencing like any sort of feeling that they're experiencing where they want to come back to a state of presence? Like what are other things people could use it for?

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, you can use it any time your body is dysregulated and you want some regulation. Some people with cravings, they are feeling stressed, they are feeling their nervous system is mobilized and chewing and swallowing is one way to trigger the vagus nerve that turns on the parasympathetics. So it makes sense that people like chewing, swallowing, sucking to calm themselves. That's how kids do it. They suck on and pacifiers. So it's not wrong, but it gets in the way of your health when you use food and swallowing and sucking, especially when you're stressed out, you tend to want high calorie density foods. So it's going to get in the way of your health if that's your go-to calming mechanism. So instead, try and calm other ways. And then on top of that, we ask people to connect to what's going on inside. What's going on with their feelings and needs now shifts into nonviolent communication. But what's going on with their feelings and needs that's causing them to mobilize in the first place? And is there something a request we can make of ourselves or other people that can better meet our needs so that we regulate, again, getting out of that fight or flight mode? So it all starts to come together.

Melanie Avalon

That's a whole nother topic that I love that you talk about, which was the nonviolent communication. I was so fascinated by it, reading your book and listening to your podcast, this idea of needs and wants and requests, and there's so much there. It's a whole nother world. But you talk about it a lot on your podcast, the We Be Parents podcast, so people can check that out in your books.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, the podcast is, the contest is fun because we, it's all focused on bringing connection and that sense of safety, which is really important for kids, their physiology, helping to regulate kids and connect with them. We call it collaborative non-permissive parenting that we teach. And it's all, that's what the podcast is all about, how to bring that into the household. And it's not that, I mean, I'm getting it, getting it right, you know, quote unquote, right, about 50% of the time. And then I know how to clean up the messes that I make. So it's, I mean, it's tough being parents and it's, it's just about doing the best you can and trying to bring these skills into the household, not only for your own wellbeing, but it really contributes to the kids and what the kids learn and bring into their adulthood.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I was fascinated by this whole approach and there's this idea where you're not forcing kids to do things that they quote, don't want to do, which is a really, at surface level, it's like, oh, well, then kids aren't going to do anything. But once you get a bigger understanding that, you know, everything is driven by wants and needs and what's being met and you can talk to your kids and come to a place with the goal in mind, usually where you can accomplish said goal that is needed by the by everybody. Once you talk through what people actually want and need, and I'm using a lot of words, but it's really, really interesting. And it was a paradigm shift for me for at least what I see of parenting and how parenting is typically done.

Matthew Lederman

Yeah, I think that's very well said and it's you have to shift your paradigm. If you believe that kids are inherently bad and you need to force them and mold them to be good, this isn't going to make sense. But if you believe, as I do, that kids naturally want to contribute to the well-being of others just like adults do, but sometimes they're not connected to that or their own needs. There's other needs of theirs that are preventing them from doing that. So when a kid says no, instead of trying to force them to do what you want anyway, try and care about what needs of theirs are preventing them from saying yes. And that's the beginning of the connection. And then you can collaborate and say, hey, how can we care about that need of yours that's making you want to say no, while also caring about my need, which is behind me asking you to do this thing that you're saying no to. Can we both care about all that together?

Melanie Avalon

I love it so much. It's really definitely a paradigm shift and it's really powerful.

Matthew Lederman

It is. It is. And for some people, they really like the authoritarian parenting style. And like I said, I'm not here to tell everybody what's right or wrong. This is just making life a lot more wonderful for us and a lot of the people we work with. So that's why we do it.

Melanie Avalon

Listeners, I cannot recommend enough getting a Webby device for you, for the people in your life, for your kids. Honestly, this is another little hack I do in my life. I like to stock up on Christmas presents throughout the year for people. So then come Christmas time, I already have all my shopping done. Literally, it is such a game changer. So just stock up on these and you can give them as Christmas presents to so many people. So Matt and the team are so kind. They have a discount for you guys, you can get 25% off. Just go to ifpodcast.com slash Webby, that's W-E-B-E. So ifpodcast.com slash Webby, W-E-B-E. And when you go there, it will bring you to the main page. There's a pop up to get on the email list and that will get you a 25% discount on the product. There's also a little button in the corner that says save 25%. So you can click that as well. So definitely check that out. That will be at ifpodcast.com slash Webby, W-E-B-E. All right. Well, thank you, Matt. I really, really enjoyed that conversation. It was exciting. It was nice because I think in our two prior episodes on the other show, we did more focus on stuff that we got into at the end. So if people were interested in that, definitely check out those other episodes. I really enjoyed talking about the diet stuff with you. That was super fun. And I really appreciate your perspective. The central tenets that you think are important, I really love that you understand that different things work for different people. And I think this conversation will be really valuable for people and exposing them to different paradigms and ideas and helping them really find what works best for them. So thank you for what you're doing.

Matthew Lederman

I appreciate it and I really hope people listening because way back when I remember listening to different shows and I would think that person doesn't agree, I don't, yeah, I would just stop listening. And I think it's really helpful to listen to everything and then just pick what works for you and make that your program versus, you know, you have to agree with somebody 100% or, you know, if they don't agree, you know, throw them away. And maybe there's, you know, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe there's some things you like and other things you don't like. So I really invite the audience and in general, I invite my audiences when I'm talking to just pick what works for you. You know, here's my opinion, you know, Melanie, you have your opinion, but you've ultimately figured out what works for you and that's why you have this opinion. But it's different than probably all the experts that you've talked to. There's some differences in what you do compared to each of those experts. And I think that's the way to be successful.

Melanie Avalon

I agree so much. I actually actively, one of the podcasts I listen to is Rich Roll, he's very vegan. And it's because I actively want to make sure I listen to perspectives that are very different from what I actually eat or overlap, like we talked about as well. Yeah, find what works for you, leave what doesn't work for you. Yeah, this has been amazing. So again, listeners, go to ifodcast.com slash weebie and click that little button in the bottom right hand corner to get 25% off. And yeah, this has been super, super awesome. So thanks, Matt, we'll have to have you on again in the future. There's just so much more we could talk about. So thank you for everything that you're doing. Oh, and oh, by the way, can you give links for people? So how can people follow you? Listen to your podcast, all the things

Matthew Lederman

Yes. So people can find us. Our website is connectiondocs.com. And the calming device and the breathing device is through webeecom.com with a K. W-E-B-E, Caleb.com. And our podcast is webeeparents.com. And then our book Wellness to Wonderful is on Amazon. And you can follow webeecom.com on Instagram and Facebook as well.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Awesome. So we will put all of that in the show notes. Again, thank you so much for the conversation and everything that you're doing. And yeah, we'll have to talk again in the future. This was really great.

Matthew Lederman

That's great. Thank you so much, Melanie.

Melanie Avalon

Thanks, Matt. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice, and no patient doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week. you

Mar 24

Episode 414 – TruDiagnostic, Stubborn Weight Loss, Fasting Releasing Toxins, Epigenetic Testing & Biological Age, Animal Vs Plant Protein, Toxins In Animal Fat, Protein & Aging, and More!

The Melanie Avalon Podcast Episode #61 - Dr. Cate Shanahan

Welcome to Episode 414 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

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Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to Episode 414 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat, with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-host, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with B.C. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iofpodcast.com or by going to iofpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. So, pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Hi, everybody, and welcome. This is episode number 414 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. I'm here with Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today? And also, how do you feel about palindromes?

Barry Conrad

Hey, everyone. How's it going? I feel great today. And, Melanie, I don't know how I feel about that. I was not expecting you to even ask me that. How do you feel about it?

Melanie Avalon

414 is a palindrome. 414, like palindromes are where there's like mom, like M-O-M, like where it can be read.

Barry Conrad

Yes. Okay. Yeah. I get you. I get you. I feel, I feel pretty good about that. I feel excited, frisky, awesome, stoked.

Melanie Avalon

Fairy contract feels frisky about palindromes.

Barry Conrad

That's not a sound bite that we need to use, but I feel good. I think it's a good, it's a good number. I like the situation.

Melanie Avalon

I have a fun fact about palindromes. My grandfather, he was obsessed with palindromes to the extent that he wrote a book called Refer, which is a palindrome. And all this book is very, this book is just a list of every palindrome. Are you serious? Yeah, it's just lists of words and numbers.

Barry Conrad

I didn't even know or I'm not sure if I even knew that you had another author in your family.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I think he self published it. I don't know. It's on my shelf. He was a character. Wait, should I grab the book? Hold on. Wait, let me go grab. Let me go grab it. Hold on.

Barry Conrad

This is a really interesting. I had no idea, listeners. So here we go.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so it's called refer and then the subtitle is what's not really, I guess it's a subtitle. The reference for writing palindromes because, you know, we need that. And then it's just lists. Okay, pick a page number.

Barry Conrad

24.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so we're in the S's. So the top one on top is actually, I don't know how this works. Oh, these aren't really palindromes on this page. These are words that spell one word one way and one word the other.

Barry Conrad

Okay, give me an example. So what?

Melanie Avalon

Well, the top one, I don't know if sprat is a word, sprat and then tarps. Ah, I get what you mean. Like, or like, okay. The one next to it is straw and warts, stressed and desserts, et cetera. Those aren't palindromes though. Pick another number.

Barry Conrad

Melanie Avalon

That's still in the same section pick a number like

Barry Conrad

Like higher.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah.

Barry Conrad

Okay.

Melanie Avalon

48. 48 is talking about palindromes. It says it is obvious that there are infinitely many numerical palindromes. Some palindromes are prime numbers, like 101, some are not prime, like 202, and then it just keeps going on.

Barry Conrad

You know what I'm gonna keep that in my mind now every time I see one I'm like It's a pelodrome. How do you feel about that and people be like, huh?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And then you can have this whole conversation with them as well. You can refer them to my grandfather's book refer.

Barry Conrad

That's hilarious. I might have to do that. Yes. Is this going to be in the show notes or what? Are you going to put this for people to, can people find it?

Melanie Avalon

I wonder if it's on Amazon. Let me find out. I hope so. I think I bought it on Amazon.

Barry Conrad

It's pretty cool that he's got this book.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, here it is. You can buy it on Amazon. That's so cute.

Barry Conrad

That is awesome.

Melanie Avalon

I will put a link to it in the show notes. I will put a link to that and to my new microphone, which is rainbows.

Barry Conrad

When, listen, is when I first heard that Melanie had this mic, I thought like, what is it shooting rainbows out of the mic? Is it a rainbow colored mic? Yeah. So can you tell us what it means? What is it?

Melanie Avalon

Well, have you seen any of my clips on social media where I normally I have like a red mic, it's like very red. So this is the same brand HyperX, but it lights up and it's lighting up with a rainbow that is changing, like changing colors, like rainbowy.

Barry Conrad

How does it make you feel?

Melanie Avalon

I mean, it feels wonderful, honestly, feels like World of Color. It's, I just can't decide if it's distracting or not. But it, okay, you know, when things like very calmly, like, like just oscillate and vibe, like it feels calming, it's that. But what color would you have Barry if you had, because you can program it to be any color. So what color would you have?

Barry Conrad

I would have to go with blue because blue is my favorite color and I feel super chill when I'm when I have blue around me just relaxed calm yeah serene so blues my color all the way.

Melanie Avalon

Well, that's interesting because, you know, blue is energy. What do you mean, energy? It's the wavelength of energy. So like the reason it's like the most high energy wavelength. That's why we have like blue light blocking glasses. That's why there are no blue fruits or plants. There are, did you know that? There are no plants that are actually blue. They're actually shades of purple if you think they're blue. Because blue, the plant absorbs all the blue because it's the energy. So it doesn't reflect it back.

Barry Conrad

I had no idea about this at all because what about flowers or like blue flowers or is that more of a purple? Is that what you're saying?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, I don't. Okay. When I was reading about this, it was talking about fruits. I don't know about flowers.

Barry Conrad

Oh, actually, actually, what about blueberries?

Melanie Avalon

They're actually not like completely blue. They have some, they're actually technically, I think a shade of purple. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, there's no like a hundred. Basically there's not a fruit that just reflects back only blue because it wouldn't have energy.

Barry Conrad

It's amazing idea while mind blown, not pun intended with the other podcasts that we go, but it's true.

Melanie Avalon

So, so now that I've provided completely useless information, how are things in your life?

Barry Conrad

It's not useless. I'm very, I feel very educated right now after living by paladromes and- Paladromes and blue. Blue energy. Things are great. You know what, Melanie? I have something to share with you that is- goodness, excite you so much. And me.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, I'm so excited.

Barry Conrad

So, you know how you've asked me this before, like, how did you when did you start fasting and what brought you to it? Like, how did you find it? Did you remember? I always was like online, online, which is true, but I didn't know the origin story until a couple of weeks ago. My second brother came over for some trinkets. We had some foods and wine and and I was venting to him. I said, you know, I'm so frustrated because I can't remember the exact moment. He goes, ah, well, I do. Like, remember, you said.

Melanie Avalon

Second brother to the rescue.

Barry Conrad

It was like Hugh Jackman, you know, you read an article when he was training for Wolverine and he said that he did intermittent fasting and you kept going on about it like, I'm going to try this thing Hugh Jackman does, 16A, intermittent fasting. That's the moment I was like, bingo.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. Let's take a moment for Hugh Jackman right now. That's amazing.

Barry Conrad

I was so excited i was like finally someone had the missing puzzle piece so i finally can answer that now you jackman.

Melanie Avalon

So when he said that, did you like really remember the moment or was it, you had to reconstruct the memory based on like what he was telling you.

Barry Conrad

No i remember the moment when he said that i was like what do you mean i forgot this moment this is that's exactly but he was so chill is like he was like yeah of course it's when you remember the huge action. I dropped the glass that i was holding into the sink is like that's the moment we go.

Melanie Avalon

That's amazing. I feel like I vaguely remember that, not you and that, but like, I remember Hugh Jackman talking about intermittent fasting. Was it during like the X-Men time?

Barry Conrad

It was during the x-men time but also when you started preparing for the the solo films you know wolverine.

Melanie Avalon

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. I wonder if he still does it. We should

Barry Conrad

We should ask him, Hugh Jackman, if you ever hear this, do you still do intermittent fasting? Did you do it for the Deadpool Wolverine movie or you kind of pass that now? Let us know.

Melanie Avalon

We would like to know, maybe, wait, have you ever met him?

Barry Conrad

He's one of my, I look up to that guy. I've never met him yet. I met his wife, his ex-wife, but not him. Not yet, yet, keyword.

Melanie Avalon

I'm putting it out there, you're doing a project with him. I'm just putting it out there, manifest that. You guys could do a musical together, a stage musical.

Barry Conrad

acts that actually could happen too because I think he's in New York right now doing a show.

Melanie Avalon

I feel like he probably feel like he's always doing something. He's very inspiring

Barry Conrad

Very inspiring. I love how he pivots between movie, like action movie to musical to Yeah, it's it's super inspiring as an actor for sure. Wow. But there you go, Melanie. That's it.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you for sharing. That's amazing. Okay.

Barry Conrad

What about you? What's happening in your-

Melanie Avalon

world. I'm good. Okay, friends, actually exciting announcement. So if things are on track, which hopefully they will be this Friday, March 28, I should be launching my AvalonX EMF blocking product line with the EMF free headphones air tubes. That's so exciting. So hopefully, FutureUs is having this moment right now and hopefully it's launching. So go to AvalonXEMF.us on Friday. Actually, go there now because you can get on the email list to get updates for the products and the launch special and all the things. But basically, EMFs are classified by the IARC as a group to be carcinogen. And they are not good. They are linked to a lot of health conditions. And when you're putting AirPods in your head, did I say AirPods earlier? I meant air tubes. Oh, dear. When you put AirPods like Bluetooth ones in your head, you're literally just putting all that EMF signal right next to your brain, which is no bueno. So these are headphones that are free of EMF. They actually conduct and convert the sound into analog. So there's nothing digital about how the sound is transmitted to you. Yeah, they're going to come in rose gold and black. Which color would you get, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I would give black for sure.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, no, I was like, are you gonna do like a curve ball? No rose gold for you?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I don't have anything of rose gold yet, but you know, I'm open to it if I can yeah, maybe I should change

Melanie Avalon

Maybe that's your new color palette.

Barry Conrad

along with some paludromes and some, some blue energy.

Melanie Avalon

calendrobes and blue. So yeah. So again, to listeners, Avalon XEMF.us.

Barry Conrad

Super exciting!

Melanie Avalon

I know. Shall we jump into fasting stuff? Let's do it. So I'm the one who brought a study today to talk about. I actually prepped this berry because you weren't there. But next week, episode 415, I interviewed Dr. Matthew Letterman. He is a really awesome human being. So did you ever watch the Forks Over Knives documentary?

Barry Conrad

I don't think I have seen that. No, tell me about it.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, it's probably like it may be one of the most well-known vegan documentaries. It's very like plant. It's all about like Whole Foods plant-based diet. So he was in that. He co-authored the New York Times bestselling book, The Forks Over Knives Plan or something. It's the book that's about the plan for it. And he actually worked at Whole Foods, wait, they have Whole Foods in Australia, right?

Barry Conrad

We actually don't we have a we haven't stopped we don't we don't that's another moment we have a harris farm which is kind of like if you look at paris farm it's kind of like whole foods the same kind of thing.

Melanie Avalon

Wait a minute. How have we known each other for all these years and I didn't know they don't have whole foods in Australia?

Barry Conrad

They don't? We don't have it here. I know.

Melanie Avalon

I know. But you've been to Whole Foods, right? Like in the US? Yep. And are you like, wow, we need this in Australia.

Barry Conrad

We do need it. I mean, Harris Farms is similar, but not Whole Foods.

Melanie Avalon

It's a chain, Harris Farms. Maybe Whole Foods will acquire it, take over. Okay, I'm just trying to get over how sad I am that you don't have Whole Foods, but Harris Farms is probably, Harris Farm or farms? Are there one farm, two farms?

Barry Conrad

I think it's just like, that's just like the name like the, on the facade, like, you know, the signage Harris farm. It's called Harris farm markets. That's what it's called. Harris farm markets.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so one farm, multiple markets, Harris Farm markets. Okay. I think Whole Foods is technically Whole Foods market. I don't know. In any case, Dr. Letterman was the for like, a long time, like eight years or something, he was the vice president of medical medical affairs or some sort of he was some sort of medical director. And he basically was in charge of their medical program that they use for their employees that helped with like their health and their wellness and helped reduce insurance costs, because it was all about supporting like health and wellness and a more holistic approach. So he spearheaded that at Whole Foods for a long time. He co authored the Whole Foods diet book with john Mackey, who is the the co founder and former CEO of Whole Foods. And he is the creator of a brand called we be calm, which they make this breathing device for it's where they market it to kids, but it's for adults as well. And it's it kind of gamifies breathing, like slow breathing, where you like breathe into this tube and watch a little air like a little ball rise. And it's to help like instantly calm you down. It's really, really cool. So I'll give listeners a code for that. If they go to if podcast.com slash we be w e be, you can get 25% off go to that link. And then there's a button in the bottom right corner to get 25% off. But that was a lengthy introduction. So the reason I want to talk about it today, and what led to the study that I'm going to talk about is be ready friends, because we talk a lot on this show about the importance of protein and high protein diet and you know, the benefits of animal protein. So Dr. Letterman, he is very much in the plant based world and the vegan world. So we had a very interesting conversation that I think people will find helpful because he brought a different perspective. He thinks most people don't need to worry about protein, he thinks we should, you know, minimize animal protein. So I do not agree with a lot of what he said. But I think it's really helpful to expose yourself to all different viewpoints. Because that keeps you from, you know, being in a silo and being biased and cherry picking. So I'm excited to hear what listeners think about next week's episode, you'll have to listen and let me know what you think too. Yeah, how do you feel about different opinions? And I feel about different opinions like that.

Barry Conrad

I think that I'm on the same page with it being really really helpful and interesting to hear different opinions and also as soon as you said that about the we don't need like he doesn't think we need to focus on protein I had to literally listeners sit back in my chair away from the mike before it. Because I don't agree with that but yeah all four opinions though.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I don't either. And I did push back on it. And so we debated about it back and forth. One of the arguments he made, but this was about, and this brings me to today's study, this is not about protein per se, but he was saying that these toxic compounds like carcinogens and pollutants in the environment become massively more concentrated in animal products compared to plants. Because as the animal eats, everything concentrates and goes up the food chain. So he was saying eating an animal-based diet exposes you to way more toxins than a plant-based diet. And I have a lot of thoughts about that. One, I think there's a big difference between an organic animal-based diet compared to a conventional plant-based diet. You have to take that into account. He pushed back and said there wasn't much of a difference between organic versus conventional toxins in animal products. And I actually, I researched that and looks like that's an accurate statement. It looks like there's not a huge difference between them because these compounds are so pervasive in the environment. I just think the benefits of animal-based products, especially protein and the nutrients that you can get, and I talk about this in next week's episode. So check it out for instance, like a major teaser for next week. I just think it's so valuable for so many people. The nutrients are more easily assimilated. There's a lot of nutrients that can be hard for people to convert into the correct form. So things like ALA versus DHA and EPA, the omega-3s, what else? Well, vitamin B12 is really only in something like spirulina, shout out, if you want to have that on a vegan diet. There's just a lot of nutrients like choline and creatine and such, which are much more concentrated in animal products. But in any case, I asked him if maybe some of this could be avoided by eating lean animal protein rather than fatty animal protein because toxins tend to accumulate in fat. He kind of gave me that, but he was still kind of not about it. So I went and researched this concept and I found a really, really interesting study about fat accumulation and toxins and what happens when you fast. So that's what I'm going to talk about. But before I move into that, I want to say I really adore Dr. Matthew Letterman. He was amazing and it was such a respectful conversation. And at the end, he was so overwhelmingly abundantly clear that he feels people should find what works for them personally. And that's how I feel as well. So I just want to say that. Yeah. Should I, do you have any thoughts or should I bring up the study?

Barry Conrad

Let's get into the study i'm curious to hear this.

Melanie Avalon

Okay. So I found this study because I was trying to find a study talking about if you eat lean meat compared to fatty meat, would that reduce your toxin exposure? And I couldn't find a study looking just at that, but then I found a study that mentioned it in passing and it was in a broader study that was really, really interesting. So that's what I'm going to talk about. But it is true that eating lean meat compared to fatty meat can really help reduce your exposure to most of those toxins because they do accumulate in fat. The exception would be something like mercury, like heavy metals and fish. Those actually accumulate in the protein, not the fat. So you just can't win. You just can't win. That's why I think it's so important to eat fish that's very low on the food chain. But the study is called adipose tissue as a site of toxin accumulation. It was published, I'll give you the link as well, September 2018 in comprehensive physiology. And some of the takeaways from this study was it was talking about these, they're called POPs. They're persistent organic pollutants. And basically, they're all these different compounds that are so saturated in our environment that they persist. So even though a lot of them have been banned or are not being actively used, they are still there and they tend to accumulate and they are not good for our health. So what's interesting about them is our body, there's a good side and a bad side to this. So in order to protect us from these compounds, because they are so toxic, our body stores them in fat so that they won't hurt us. And while they're in our fat stores, they are inert. So they can't hurt us, although there's a little bit of a caveat I want to talk about, but they can't directly hurt us while they're in the fat. But then the problem happens is when you try to lose weight by weight loss and fasting in particular, it talks about that in the study, that we mobilize these toxins into our bodies, and they can actually hurt us. So it talks about how fast weight loss can be a problem for some people because they released so many of these compounds. And so these compounds are things you might have heard of like BPA or phthalates. There was actually a conference in 2001 at the Stockholm convention and they came up with their Dirty Dozen list, which was 12 key ones. And they have very long names, but some of the other ones you might have heard of are like dioxins, DDT, PCBs, all of these things. What's really interesting is not only does our body store them in fat, and we release them when we lose weight, they actually... One of the theses of this paper was that they contribute to obesity and insulin resistance and diabetes and all the things. And that's because they actually can encourage insulin resistance. I've talked before about things called obesogens, and that's what these are. They're literally these compounds that can make you store and gain weight. And then within the fat cells, they actually make the fat cells more inflammatory and they actually can make the fat more likely... Make it more resistant to weight loss and make it more likely to gain weight from there.

Melanie Avalon

It just goes to speak... I know I talk a lot about the importance of things like safe skincare and makeup and like what you put in your body and the role of toxins. And that's because these compounds literally can affect your metabolic health. They can encourage you to gain weight and make it hard to lose weight. So people often are struggling with weight loss and things and these compounds may be playing a really large role in it. It's not just the food, even though they started this with the food saying that animal products can be higher in these compounds, but we're exposed to them in all different ways. So yeah, do you have thoughts? It's kind of a story, but...

Barry Conrad

It's not a dairy donor. For me, I just think that... Well, actually, I had a question when you first started, which was you said in lean protein. So does that mean, lean animal protein, does it still count if you cut the fat off? For example, like a steak, if you cut the fat off and then prepare it, cook it, grill it, or does it have to come in its actual form just leaner, less fatty? Like how does...

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, no, that's a really great question. So there's a few different things here. So when it comes to fat and meat, there's intramuscular and extra muscular fat. So when you're talking about like cutting off the fat, so that's extra muscular fat that you can cut off, which is great because you cut it off and you're removing those toxic compounds in that fat. But then there's what you're talking about, which is just the actual animal itself needs to be leaner. And that is something else because you can't cut out the fat if the fat is inside of the actual meat. You can cook it out by cooking it more and the fat drains out, but you're not going to remove all of it. So this is actually really interesting where grass-fed versus conventional meat comes into play because you'll notice if you have grass-fed beef, for example, or bison, that it's way leaner than conventional beef and steak. And that's because those animals, because of their lifestyle, they're just leaner and they're less insulin resistant, less obesogenic from how they're raised. So they're not storing as much fat inside of their actual muscle. So you're going to, to the point of the toxins, getting grass-fed meat should reduce your exposure to some of that fat. Or if you look at, for example, like conventional farm-raised salmon versus wild-caught salmon, it's so much fattier, the farm salmon. So, yeah. It's a good question.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, going back to what you said about animal protein versus plant protein, though, I just think it seems like such a clear slam dunk to me, from my opinion, and I could be wrong. But from what I know, we know that, you know, animal proteins, it's a complete protein. It's not, you know, whereas, you know, like plant proteins, like they have fiber and antioxidants. But, I mean, animal proteins, better absorption, it's higher in leucine, more nutrient dense. So, for muscle and strength, you'd think, isn't it clear that animal protein is sort of king? What do you think?

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I have so many thoughts. I really do agree. It is true that you can get the full amino acid profile by combining different plants. I just think if it comes to supporting muscle in your body, the amino acid profile of animal products is just much more ideal for that. It's much more easily assimilated. It's everything that you just said. I think people can struggle to get enough protein on plant-based diets. I understand it works for some people, but I think it can be hard. An argument he was making, and I'm excited to tell you about this. An argument he was making was that some of these amino acids are pro-aging because they really stimulate mTOR and IGF-1, which are growth-promoting signals which relates to aging and an excess of which may correlate to cancer. These are things like leucine in particular, methionine. I agree with that, but I think there's some magic to having intermittent fasting because that's going to reduce those growth signals and then have the growth-promoting protein in your eating window. I feel like you get best of both worlds. I've wondered this for a long time. I've also been haunted by this for a long time because I eat a super high protein diet. I feel like Barry, you're probably one of the only people I know who might eat. I don't know. I feel like I eat more than you, protein-wise.

Barry Conrad

We'll have to have a protein off.

Melanie Avalon

a protein off, but you eat a lot too, like, yeah.

Barry Conrad

A lot of animal protein to clarify.

Melanie Avalon

I've been hoping that the fasting does provide ample mitigation of that growth time when you're having that high protein diet for an anti-aging effect. And I interviewed... Did I tell you this yet? How I interviewed Matt Dawson? Did I tell you this?

Barry Conrad

refresh my memory, maybe you did.

Melanie Avalon

So he let me see what episode it was. So he was episode 412. He is the founder or co founder of wild health.com, which they provide this, like this full lab work, genetic analysis platform where they really test what you need to be testing. Then you work with their providers to figure out what you need to do with your diet and lifestyle. And they run your, they sequence your DNA and you get this massive report. That's like 50 pages talking about your genes and how they affect your diet, your sleep, your lifestyle. It is fascinating. I absolutely love it. I want to do that. Yeah. It was, oh, I can, yeah. Let me talk to him and see if we can get you set up on it. So I can't recommend it enough. And I was excited because it really did match what I said. So like, or what I experienced as far as like what it was saying, like it was saying that I'm, um, you know, like a night owl and oh, that like when it comes to neurotransmitters that I'm very, I break down dopamine slowly. So I'm very like dopamine driven, which is kind of how I feel. I'm always like high dopamine. And then they helped identify that I knew I had methylation issues, but they put, they had me go on like a methyl folate supplement to help with my homocysteine. So that was exciting. So I definitely recommend it. People can go to wild health.com slash Melanie Avalon and use the code Melanie Avalon. That will get you 20% off, but he's also the like founder or CEO. He's the head honcho at another company called true diagnostic.

Barry Conrad

I feel like maybe you did tell me about him because I remember some of this, yeah. That sounds awesome, though, what you just said about, you know, getting that 50 pages worth of data. That's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

It's so, so cool. I really love it. And it helps you, you know, kind of figure out what diet might work for you. But the long windy road is, he's also at this company called True Diagnostic, and they provide, this is so exciting, three epigenetic age tests for your biological age, which for listeners, that's basically what is your age on the inside. So you have your chronological age, and then you have your biological age. He looked at my results. So there's three tests on it. Let me see what they're called. So there's three tests. One is the it's called the Omic age, or Omic M age, and it was developed with Harvard. Then there's the Dunedin pace, which was made with Duke and Columbia, and then the symphony age from Yale. So I got my results back. And he told me, he told me my results were some of the best he's ever seen for epigenetic aging. And this is the guy who runs the company.

Barry Conrad

That's massive. What did he say? So what can you share some of like the comparison?

Melanie Avalon

I'll share with my results, but the reason it was really exciting was I've been haunted by this idea like, is eating this really high protein diet aging me faster, you know, or is it a problem? But according to this results, I'm doing, I'm aging really slowly. So the Omik age, that's the one with, who did I say that was with, with Harvard. So at the time I took the test, I was 33.53. The result, I was 10.64 years younger by that, which was, so I was 22.89. And then the, the dune in pace of aging test, which he said, he said this one is really telling for how are you actually aging in the moment. Like the other one is kind of like, what is, the other one's like, what is your age, your biological age now? But this one actually looks at like, how are you aging, like the rate of aging. And I was 0.67. So basically for every year of aging, I'm aging at a rate of 0.67. And that's the one he said he was like really impressed with. And then the symphony.

Barry Conrad

Almost half, you know, that's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, almost. And then the symphony age, that actually looks at 11 distinct organ systems. And it tells you, in each organ system, are you aging slower or faster? In nine of them, I was aging slower. So I was aging slower in systems, heart, inflammation, metabolic, brain, musculoskeletal, kidneys, liver, lungs, and blood. And then I was aging slightly faster in immune and hormones. But he did say that a lot of these can fluctuate from day to day. So point being is, I'm sorry, this is so long. I feel like I've been talking for the entire episode.

Barry Conrad

No, this is super interesting.

Melanie Avalon

So listeners will have a code for you. So if you go to Melanie Avalon.com slash true diagnostic, and that's spelled TRU for true, so Melanie Avalon.com slash true diagnostic. T R U D I A G N O S T I C. You can get 10% off with the code Melanie Avalon. But yeah, the point is I've been, I think what this really says, and I realize it's an N of one, like I am, it's only me as an example, but it does to me clearly show that it is possible to eat exuberant amounts of protein and not be aging faster from it, given the overall context. So, you know, the intermittent fasting pattern, because it can't, it, I mean, it literally does mean that because it does mean that at the very least eating high, high protein will not always 100% of the time make you age faster because I'm literally eating a ton and I'm aging slower. And I think that's due to the fasting. I mean, it has to be, because if not, I should be.

Barry Conrad

changing faster. That's amazing, actually. I want to do that as well. Can we do that in Australia? Or does that have to be in America for that?

Melanie Avalon

Probably not, I can find out.

Barry Conrad

I'll wait till I'm there.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'll find out it might be and same with the wild health might be a little bit difficult because It's like they have to order blood tests and stuff for you. This one though was a saliva test. So maybe I'll have to find out you would love it

Barry Conrad

Yeah, in any case, Mel, like you're right, what you're saying, it backs up what we both really believe about animal protein and eating high protein diet, you know, and it's amazing to hear those results. It's science. So how can you... Yeah, that's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

It was so exciting because it's the information I've been needing for a long time to feel, I don't know, to feel not quite as worried about my high protein diet. I really think the fasting is doing something magical. And something else I want to say, all these studies on high protein diets and aging, especially if they're causation correlation, if it's completely just epidemiological data, like they're looking at people on high protein diets, most people on high protein diets are eating a lot of food in general. Like it's the rare subset. It's like bodybuilders and people who are eating like a high protein, but like a low calorie diet. Like that's pretty rare. So it's hard to know how much of it is the protein and how much of it is just the diet in general, like the calorie load of the diet in general and like eating constantly.

Barry Conrad

It's my brain's buzzing. I'm so excited to hear this news because it's basically just confirmation. Also, did you, did you really, were you really feeling like that? Like feeling like, oh, is this good that I'm eating this much protein?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, 100%. I asked this question. If you go through my biohacking one, my biohacking podcast, I ask everybody who I think might have information about this, I ask them their thoughts on the trade-off between high protein diets and longevity. So I'm pretty sure I asked David Sinclair and Valter Longo and even people on the high protein side of things like Gabrielle Lyon. Yeah, I'm haunted by this question.

Barry Conrad

What do they all say like on average like all those guests like to they all support the high protein or do they cut is it more abstract like what they say about it.

Melanie Avalon

It pretty much depends what camp they're in. So I interviewed Dr. Michael Greger end of last year, and he's one of the biggest vegan people out there. And he made the case that he thinks protein is the most aging thing, specifically the amino acid methionine. According to him, the most aging thing you can do is eat a high methionine diet. So yeah, he was team low protein. Walter Longo, who is also team low protein, I asked him this question. I remember I actually asked him. So he's the one who created the fasting mimicking diet. He's at the University of Southern California. We've had him on this show, and I've had him on my other show once or twice. I'm actually trying to book him again for his new book, which is on cancer. I asked him specifically. I was like, do you think maybe if I'm eating a high protein diet, but in a one meal a day window every day, and then fasting all day, is that mitigating the effects? And he said it's possible, but we just don't know. Basically, why risk it? What's his answer? But then people like Dr. Gabrielle Lyon will make the case that supporting muscle is of most importance for longevity. So you get all different answers. But yes, to answer your question, I am very haunted by this question.

Barry Conrad

Well, hopefully you less wanted after getting those results.

Melanie Avalon

I am. I felt intuitively like I don't feel like I'm aging from it. It feels very supportive of my metabolic health. And then the fasting every day just intuitively feels good. Like I don't feel like I'm aging faster.

Barry Conrad

I 100% agree with you 100% and same with you.

Melanie Avalon

You look amazing. You look like a baby.

Barry Conrad

you look amazing too. Hopefully a big baby not like an actual

Melanie Avalon

A big baby, no, not an actual baby. It's like, what's that movie, Tuck Everlasting? Like, don't age.

Barry Conrad

Aye, yeah, yeah

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I don't know if you ever saw that I saw that like forever

Barry Conrad

I can't even tell, like, you're one of those people where looking at you, you just can't tell your age, you know what I mean?

Melanie Avalon

Mm-hmm. Like you can't really pinpoint it

Barry Conrad

Like he should be in Twilight.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, you too. Let's make a movie. Let's cast ourselves.

Barry Conrad

I like how there was a ding when you said that in the background.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, my goodness. So that was a lot.

Barry Conrad

No, it was a lot in a good way.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, should we answer a listener question? Any other thoughts?

Barry Conrad

No, I'm very, very happy to hear what you just shared because I'm so big on protein too, so it's encouraging. Let's get into some questions.

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Okay. All right. So we have a question from Nydia, and this actually relates a little bit to some of the things we talked about, but this was on Facebook. And friends, you can join our Facebook group, IF Biohackers, intermittent fasting, plus real foods, plus life, and ask questions in there for us, all the things. So Nydia says, why after almost four years, I can't seem to get fat adapted. I do clean fast since I started to fast. I do 19-6 most of the time. I close my window with no sweets, so my glucose levels won't be higher. I lost weight, then gained all of it back, and some more. I'm 50 years old. I weigh 170 and 5-3, so yes, I'm obese, L-O-L. She said L-O-L. I didn't add that in. She said it. So what are your thoughts, Yuri?

Barry Conrad

Well, Nydia, how's it going? I hope you're having a good week. First off, massive, massive respect for sticking with IF for four years. That's a long time and it's a real commitment, which is great. I know how frustrating it could be, you know, to feel like you're doing everything right, but not really getting the results you expected. But let me tell you that your, your body isn't, it's not working against you. Your, it sounds like from what you're saying that something's out of sync there, but we can, we can figure it out. So when people talk about quote unquote fat adapted, it means like their body has shifted into like a fat burning mode, which means using stored fat for energy instead of running on carbs. And based on what you're saying, you are clean fasting, doing a solid 19, six situation and keeping your sugar in check, which is good. So you're ahead of the game there. But if your body is holding on to the weight or even gaining, that's a big clue that something needs tweaking here. So the first thing I'd look at is drum roll protein, protein intake, because it's, it's a huge, it's a huge thing, especially at 50 and as we get older, we naturally lose muscle and that can slow our metabolism down. We name checked over four, but for example, Dr. Gabrielle lion, who's the physician and expert in all things muscle. You know, she says that after the age of 30, we can lose approximately like three to 8% of muscle mass per decade. That's significant. So with that rate, even accelerating after age 60, we need more protein. So if you're not getting enough protein to support your muscle, your body isn't going to burn fat as efficiently. And that's just the reality. So I'll be real. A lot of people think they're eating enough protein and a lot of my friends and family say, yeah, I had a steak for dinner. I had some chicken for lunch. I had my protein, but that's actually not having enough. When you actually track for a day or two, you'll find that you're way under like a lot of people do. So a good rule rule of thumb here is to aim for at least a gram of protein per pound of body weight and don't just guess it though, like actually track it for a couple of days and see where you're at, that might surprise you. Next up, are you eating enough overall? So this might kind of sound weird, but if you're under eating, your body can go into a kind of survival mode where it actually will hold onto the fat instead of burning it, which is not what we want. So this happens when we fast too aggressively or we don't fully refuel in our eating window. So eat enough on the flip side of that. It's easy to overeat without realizing, right? Especially if your meals are packed with like cheeses or, you know, quote unquote, health foods in the health food aisle, which are calorie dense.

Barry Conrad

So tracking your intake for a few days, it's going to help. Then we have to talk about hormones. I'm going to tread lightly here. Melanie, you can jump in if you need here, but because this stage of life, from my understanding of it, things like insulin, estrogen, cortisol, and thyroid function, it all plays a huge role in the way we lose weight, lose fat. So if your insulin sensitivity has changed or your estrogen levels are shifting, your body might store the fat more easily, especially around your your midsection. And we can't forget about cortisol because if stress levels are high, that's going to spike cravings and slow fat loss and even like really mess up your sleep. So if you haven't had your hormones checked in a while, this could be, could be a missing piece of it. Sometimes even simple shifts in meal timing or food choices are going to help to bring that back into balance. And speaking of sleep, like, and I'm preaching to myself here, it matters so much more than we think, because if you're not getting the deep quality sleep, your body doesn't fully recover, your hunger hormones get out of whack and your metabolism is going to slow. So if you're not winding down probably before bed nadir, I definitely think it's worth paying attention to. Bottom line, I don't think this is any kind of failure or nothing's broken. It's just, I think there's just some tweaks you can make here. And honestly, the fact that you stuck with this for four years proves you have the discipline, the mindset and the patience to figure this out. You don't need to overall everything. It's just fine tune what's not working. You've already done the hard part by staying consistent. And so I reckon you're much closer than you think you are. You got this, Melanie, what do you reckon?

Melanie Avalon

That was so wonderful. That was amazing. Thank you so much. I agree with everything you said. I'll throw in some other things that you could think about or consider. So first of all, I love the protein, I echo all of that back. So I think we've made it really clear how important that is. And one thing you could try. So you say that you you close your window with no sweet so your glucose won't be higher. If you haven't done a round of wearing a CGM, I would highly recommend that. So it's a continuous glucose monitor. It's a little sensor that you put on your arm and it monitors your blood sugar levels 24 seven. So you'll get a good picture of how your blood sugar is actually responding all throughout the day. And I think that will provide a really helpful picture of what might be going on. So you could try Nutrisense. So for that, go to Nutrisense.io slash I have podcasts, that's n u t r i s e n s e.com slash I have podcast and use you can use the code I have podcast that will get you a discount. I think it's $30. But it will definitely get you a discount and one free month of nutritionist support. So you could try that. And then you can also try a lumen device that might be something to try. I love lumen. It's a device which measures the level of carbon dioxide in your breath to actually tell you if you're burning carbs or fat, and then helps you work you through to get more into the fat burning zone more often. It's a really, really cool metabolic device. It's actually the same science when they do these studies in lab controlled ward studies where they try to see how people are burning carbs or fat, it's actually using that science, which is so cool. So if you want to discount on that, you can go to Melanie Avalon comm slash lumen l u m e n and use the coupon code Melanie Avalon and that will give you a discount there. So definitely try that or definitely consider trying that. And then I recently interviewed for the second time I interviewed her recently, this episode will be airing April 11. So check it out when it airs. It's with Dr. Kate Shanahan, although you can actually listen to I interviewed her a few years ago. So you can listen to that old one in the meantime as well. And that's on the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. So Dr. Shanahan, she wrote Deep Nutrition, which is an incredible book. That's how I was exposed to her work. But then she more recently wrote The Fat Burn Fix. And then her newest book is called Dark Calories. And the subtitle is how vegetable oils destroy our health and how we can get it back. She is a huge proponent of the idea that seed oils are what are causing so much of our metabolic health issues today. She does take it to the utmost extreme, like this is the cause of like all the problems. I do think there's something there though, I personally have been on a seed oil free diet for years and years.

Melanie Avalon

I've been on a quote PUFA depletion diet. So basically, PUFA is the poly unsaturated fatty acids, things like omega three is omega sixes and they're very high in seed oils. And these, these fats, they're not meant to be energy, they're more like a, they have health benefits for our body, but they're not meant to be burned by the mitochondria as ongoing energy. And when they are, they're very inflammatory. And she makes a very comprehensive scientific case for the fact that these are creating insulin resistance, metabolic health issues and are and are like she thinks it's like the reason people get into stubborn weight situations like Nydia is experiencing. So you could definitely I don't you don't mention and I think this is huge. You don't mention what you're eating besides not eating sweets at night. There is so much potential that can happen when you clean up. I don't like the word cleanup. But when you change actually what you're eating, so change to eating just whole foods, removing those seed oils, removing processed foods, that can have a massive effect on your metabolic health and your weight loss. So that's definitely something to consider. And then also, like I was talking about earlier, if we have these toxins stored in our fat tissue, especially if you're obese, you probably have a lot of toxins stored in your fat tissue, that might be making it harder for you to lose weight. It is what it is. It's not meant to be scary or bad. It just it's knowledge to know that that might be an issue for you and that maybe you need to lose weight slowly and as much as you can reduce your incoming exposure to these environmental toxins through your diet choices, your skincare and makeup, all the things. So and then I will just quickly say, you know, Barry's comment about hormones. So so huge hormones can be a big reason that we, you know, can not easily lose weight. So Anything you do to optimize your diet with like the food choices and your health and your lifestyle and your sleep, those are all going to help with hormones, kind of just to echo what Barry was saying. So you've got this, there's a lot of things you can try, keep tweaking and you can always write back in, keep us updated. Yeah, let us know. So, okay, Barry, shall we hypothet... or what's the word, hypothetically? No, no, no. What's the word? Hypothetically break our fast? Not hypothetically. Hypothetically. Hypothetically.

Barry Conrad

So we virtually, yeah, I guess hypothetically, I guess so, right?

Melanie Avalon

And it's not hypothetically. What's the word for it's like you're not actually doing it, but you're like doing it in your mind?

Barry Conrad

We mentally break up, so we imaginatively break up us.

Melanie Avalon

Should we that our vast let's do it. Okay, I'm so ready. Awesome. Do you have a restaurant for us to talk about?

Barry Conrad

I have a restaurant today that I'm really excited about.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I'm excited too.

Barry Conrad

It's called Kaya wine bar, and it's in my favorite city in the whole world. You can guess it, Mel.

Melanie Avalon

what your favorite city in the whole world? Wait, is it in, what? Is it in, I should know this, I'm embarrassed.

Barry Conrad

It's in the States.

Melanie Avalon

It is in the U.S.? Okay. Is it New York?

Barry Conrad

Yes, you got it. I was going to say that. And the other reason why it's one of my favorite, one of my favorite restaurants to share is because it's South African, which I am. So Kaya wine bar, it's like nestled in Manhattan's Upper East Side. It's a celebrated South African haven founded in 2011 by Suzanne Haupt of Leish, a native of South Africa's Free State province. Kaya means home. So that's the vibe we're sitting here. The Michelin guide highlighted it as like a South African gem in the heart of Manhattan. It's been recognized as like one of New York's essential places to eat by eater. And the New Yorker also featured Kaya noting its unique position as the city's sole South African restaurant. So I'm so ready to go. And Melanie, it offers a diverse array of South African dishes like elk tata, lamb burgers and traditional boba tea. Do you know what elk is?

Melanie Avalon

Do I know what elk is? Do I not know what elk is? Do people not know what elk is? I mean, some people don't. Wait, really? I love elk. It's my favorite. It's so good. It might be my favorite.

Barry Conrad

and get this as well. It has a selection of over 50 South African wines, which I knew you'd like. So, elk and wine.

Melanie Avalon

Nice. Okay. Yes, because the purpose of this is we want to emphasize how much we love food and fasting is not just about fasting, it's about what you're eating as well. And it's about breaking the fast.

Barry Conrad

I'll just send you the link.

Melanie Avalon

they have oysters i will not be getting those.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, why not?

Melanie Avalon

Mm-hmm. I'm done.

Barry Conrad

OK, here we go.

Melanie Avalon

No, I am going to have them with you one time and then I'm officially done.

Barry Conrad

Maybe more than one time if you actually see the light and see how good they are.

Melanie Avalon

Mm hmm. They have normal oysters and roasted oysters. Sure. For the sliders and snack. Okay, wait. So, okay. So there's sliders and snacks. There's a taco shop. There's a lot of stuff. Okay. Then there's like the, wait, so what does this mean? Is com com? What is that word? Combuis entree?

Barry Conrad

Okay, so it basically means like the kitchen, like a nautical term for cooking placed aboard a ship. So here we go. This is like the kitchen time to eat. So it's like the main course situation. Awesome.

Melanie Avalon

Well, for my starter, I would get the lamb skewers, which come with lamb skewers, apricot and onions, and a Pinatas reduction. So I would get them rare, completely plain, and can they put everything on the side.

Barry Conrad

Just the one, just the one thing.

Melanie Avalon

This is the starter. Oh, um, I think so. If you get some bacon, I might taste it. Wait, what are, what are drummets like duck drummets?

Barry Conrad

Jomet's a kind of like, you know, drumsticks, like, you know, like, uh, do you call it drumsticks in?

Melanie Avalon

Oh yeah, that's cool. Okay, I'll have those as well also with the sticky mango chutney sauce on the side, please.

Barry Conrad

And the mango chut- Honestly, Melanie, Mrs. Ball's chutney in South Africa is a staple and it'll change your life. It's so good. It's so good. That mango chutney.

Melanie Avalon

That's like a thing that's known there.

Barry Conrad

It's definitely a thing.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, those are my choices, how do you feel? What would you get for the starter?

Barry Conrad

How do I feel? First of all, I feel disappointed that you didn't choose oysters, but I'm gonna go.

Melanie Avalon

You can get the oysters.

Barry Conrad

I'm going to get roasted oysters and the regular oysters.

Melanie Avalon

You're getting both. You're getting roasted and the regular.

Barry Conrad

Why are you yelling?

Melanie Avalon

I'm just clarifying. There's going to be a lot of oysters.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, and the roasted oysters, listen, it's caramelized shallots comes with caramelized shallots, smoked cheddar and breadcrumbs. Then I'm also going to get the lamb sosotis, which is the lamb skewers that Melanie got and the, the ian tflerikis, which is the drumettes. So I'll get the same of those two. And then I think I'm also going to get the duck a spice chicken with onion, marmalade and caya aioli. So that's like four, four trinkets, a little something, something, nothing too crazy.

Melanie Avalon

Nice. Are we going to double up on the things or share it? Like the ones that are overlapping? I guess. Let's share it. We could, but then also, how do you have your lamp code?

Barry Conrad

Well, the elk, for example, which we haven't got into yet, it has to be on the, more on the rare side, it's to stay tender, but lamb, medium rare rare, I could do, I could do either.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it sounds good. I like this menu. I really like the different, the diverse representation of animal related foods.

Barry Conrad

I knew it. So Africa is like animal protein heaven. You love it there.

Melanie Avalon

Oh man, I bet I would.

Barry Conrad

So what about a main situation for you? What are you thinking?

Melanie Avalon

So I'm not going to go the taco route, I don't think, unless they do it without taco shells. Actually, what if I, could I request just like all the meat? Because at the taco shop pick three, could they just give me the meat, like just give me the pork, the shrimp, the steak? That's too confusing. I'm going to go the entrees. Okay. I will get, I'm so excited about this el carpaccio. This is so exciting. And I love that it's an entree, like a main thing. It must be really big. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yes. I'm excited.

Barry Conrad

And also just to let you know as well, like in South Africa, portions, we throw down. Like we can, it's big.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, like America, like the U.S.

Barry Conrad

Maybe not quite as big, but it's on the bigger side.

Melanie Avalon

Okay. Well, I'm really excited about this el carpaccio situation.

Barry Conrad

What about the, what about the commasals, which is peri peri dry scallops. You didn't like that. The look of that.

Melanie Avalon

So I don't like to get scallops when I'm out because I, I have them all the time at home and I eat pounds and pounds with them at home. There's no way on earth. If I order them out, it's going to be enough. It's going to be like a scallop. But wait, where is it? What's it called?

Barry Conrad

the camossels that's so like that's it's just above boboti come on

Melanie Avalon

Well, I do like, okay, let's get those two. I changed my mind.

Barry Conrad

I'm going to go, my eyes went straight to the Gatsby and this is, okay, so listen, I'm from Cape Town originally, so that's, the Gatsby is sort of like this big roll. If you can imagine like a, a French stick, but wider and bigger, and they fill it with like all kinds, like any feelings that you want, like chicken or whatever kind of animal protein and fries, sometimes it's just delicious. So I'm going to do the Gatsby, and this is described as, Portuguese roll stuffed with garam masala pulled chicken, pepper dews, cayenne pickled curvy cucumbers, mayo and fries. So I'm going to have that, the El Capachio that Mel had, and also I have to go for, just because it's the wild, some peon mac and cheese, got to do it. So I'm really going in here.

Melanie Avalon

I will look at your mac and cheese and appreciate it vicariously through you. I'm excited you're ordering it because I like looking at mac and cheese.

Barry Conrad

Would you try some? Or no?

Melanie Avalon

No, boy. Oh, no, it's not good. It wipes me out. I know. So I know like what food, Barry and I talk about this a lot. Like I know what food makes me feel good inside and out and some don't. So I'd rather not have them. Like I'm like a happier person not having it, but I still appreciate it vicariously through other people. And then I eat the food that I like, I might as well, if I'm going to love what I'm eating anyways, I might as well eat the food I love that's also not going to make me feel bad, you know?

Barry Conrad

It's a good call, you know, kind of be mad at that. Personal.

Melanie Avalon

like my personal constitution. Yeah, I had another thought about it. I don't remember. Oh, the El Carpacho. I'm excited because I do like mustard and it comes with her, it says with my mother's mustard is what it says, and a peppery arugula salad. So I might bury, I might actually have some of the accompanying sauce, the mustard.

Barry Conrad

That's awesome. Because usually, listen as you already know this, but Melanie would be like, I'll get everything, but I'll have like, you know, all the additives on the side. You know?

Melanie Avalon

There we go. That's awesome. Yep. I would just have it not at all, but I want them to feel like, I feel like it makes the chef happy if I at least get it on the side. And then other people might want to try it. So everybody wins.

Barry Conrad

Everybody wins.

Melanie Avalon

So what would you get for dessert? Is there a dessert list on here?

Barry Conrad

Yep. Scroll on down and you're going to see all kinds of other things there that you're going to that I need to point out to you like Bill Tong. Do you know what Bill Tong is, Melanie? Yes, we do.

Melanie Avalon

talked about this. Where is it on here?

Barry Conrad

So good at the meats.

Melanie Avalon

Wait a second, is this a whole other menu? Oh, is this just like meat? Oh my goodness, I miss this part of the menu. Okay, well this is great because this will be my dessert.

Barry Conrad

I knew you'd like that.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, I'll try the Biltong.

Barry Conrad

Do you want to go first?

Melanie Avalon

They put emojis, oh my gosh, they put emojis in their descriptions. I'm so not not like an actual emoji, but like a smiley face. I'm so a fan of this place. I don't think I've ever seen that in a minute. I don't know if I have never seen that in a menu. I don't think have you.

Barry Conrad

No, I haven't actually. It's actually a good point.

Melanie Avalon

Wow. I love it. Okay. Because it says South African biltong. And then underneath it says one fourth pound naturally dried beef jerky, but way better. Smiley face. Wow. That's funny. I think I would get for dessert the prosciutto. Maybe the, I don't know, what is car, Carpicola? Goose. Goose? Oh yeah. Let's try that. Yeah. Some of the meats. I would just be like, bring me a lot of meats.

Barry Conrad

Even their wineries there, you're just going to have to go to South Africa because it's just like the meat is so good to produce and the wine is so good, I'm getting excited. Is that it? Are you getting nothing else for dessert?

Melanie Avalon

And then maybe I'll repeat something like whatever I like to the moat. Okay, so when we're having the appetizers, whatever I like really like, I'll tell them to save some for dessert for me at the end and I'll have it again. So be it the duck or the lamb or I have to decide though when we're actually trying it.

Barry Conrad

Okay, for dessert for me, definitely getting the biltong, definitely getting the drouvours, which basically is dry sausage, it means that. But it's really delicious, so I'll get those two and then I'll migrate to the peppermint crisp tarte, which is like a peppermint crisp tarte, it's really, really good. And then I'll have the malva pudding, which is basically a South African delicacy, it's sticky day, sticky cake with homemade vanilla custard, so I'll get those two and the meats.

Melanie Avalon

It all sounds really good. It sounds like you feel like you're at home, which is appropriate because it's about home.

Barry Conrad

What about Vino?

Melanie Avalon

So I can't answer on the fly because I would have to look up every single one and find the organic ones and then I'd have to look at the alcohol and find the low alcohol. But if I had to guess, I really, it's really hard to know. But as far as like varietals that I'm intrigued by that I really like, I love Grenache Noir. I'm really excited by the look of that one. They are organic. So the Grenache Noir, the Foundry, that's just the first one that spoke to me and I looked it up. It looks like it's 13.5% alcohol. I try to get 13% or less, but it is organic. So I'm just gonna, just because I don't have time to look through all of them, I'm gonna go with that one for now. That one looks good.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I'm going to go for, you know, I usually go for Pinot Grigio, but we're in South Africa and there's lots of meat here. So I'm going to go for the Pinotage, which is, I've actually had that. It's delicious.

Melanie Avalon

That's what I'm looking up right now, because it's like South African wine, like they're known for pinotage.

Barry Conrad

It's really good.

Melanie Avalon

Perfect. Awesome. Well, great restaurant find. And I forgot, you said you have been here or have not been here.

Barry Conrad

I haven't been to this restaurant, but I'm going next time and I'm in New York. It's happening because I didn't know it existed until yeah.

Melanie Avalon

That's so exciting. You must send pictures and upload them to our Instagram.

Barry Conrad

I'll do it. I have to do it.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Okay, well, this was so, so fun for listeners. We hope you had as much fun as we did. If you would like to submit questions for the show, you can directly email questions at iapodcast.com. You can also go to iapodcast.com and submit questions there. And you can get the show notes, which there are a lot of notes in the show notes, a lot of blinks of things we talked about, all the things. Those will be at iapodcast.com slash episode 414, which is a palindrome. And you can follow us on Instagram. I am Melanie Avalon. Barry is Barry underscore Conrad, and we are iapodcast. So anything from you, Barry, before we go?

Barry Conrad

Hope you all have an amazing week. Thank you for listening. Keep your questions coming and happy fasting and feasting from me.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome! I will talk to you next week!

Barry Conrad

Bye!

Melanie Avalon

Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice, and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team, editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week!

Mar 16

Episode 413 – OMAD Definitions, Flight Attendants & Traveling, Fasting For Metabolism & The Immune System, Lumen Vs Continuous Glucose Monitors, Breaking Plateaus & Burning Fat, And More!

Intermittent fasting influences immunity and metabolism

Welcome to Episode 413 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SHOW NOTES

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

MAUI NUI

PIQUE FASTING TEAS

LMNT

LINKS

Featured Restaurant: Blue Bayo

STUDIES

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 413 of the intermittent fasting podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of Avalon X and author of What, When, Wine, Lose Weight and Feel Great with Paleo Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting and Wine, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iofpodcast.com or by going to iofpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine. If it's that time and get ready for the intermittent fasting podcast. Hi everybody and welcome. This is episode number 413 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. I'm here with Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today?

Barry Conrad

Hey, everyone. How's it going? I am doing great today. I'm having a really, really good day productive. Feeling good. How are you feeling, Mel? I'm feeling good.

Melanie Avalon

I'm feeling really good too. I'm really excited because I know I keep talking about it, but we're finalizing the design. And by the time this airs, it might even be out, but we're finalizing the design of my coffee line bags. And I love creative design. Like, do you like creative design?

Barry Conrad

I actually do as well, I really do, I'm working on something, some level which I'll share at a later date, so I'm totally in the zone with you, I get it.

Melanie Avalon

We've had so many work calls about it and people keep making comments about once we get through the bag design and like, you know, like, you know, how it's like, so they're all like dreading the design process. I'm like, this is like the best part. I love it. It's so fun. Honestly, it probably will be out by this time. This comes out because this will be in March, but either sign up for updates or get my glow coffee because it is going to be a coffee that basically has the highest CGA content possible in coffee and CGA is the primary antioxidant in coffee. So for all of the health benefits of coffee, this is the coffee that you want. So we source beans to be high in CGA content and then we specifically roast it to be high in that content. And then we test it for purity. It's free of toxins free of mold that uses organic beans. And I just found out more about the actual farms the coffee comes from and it's led by all women. They're very supportive of the environment and like the goodness of both the environment and people and humans. And it's just so, so incredible. And the coffee tastes amazing. So I'm, I'm excited go coffee, but I'm just so happy because the colors that we're doing on the bag are just beautiful, like glowing.

Barry Conrad

Can you say what colors they are? Do you want it to be a surprise?

Melanie Avalon

Well, I really honestly do think it will be out by the time this comes out. Either way, though, yeah, I'm happy to say it's like it's like it's an ombre effect. So the top is yellow, then it goes to orange and then to like magenta and then to brown. It's just I think it's stunning.

Barry Conrad

And you know what, Mel, I'm ordering some.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yes. Well, actually, I think Barry, I'm going to have to send it to you in Australia because I don't think we'll be shipping to Australia. Oh, really? I doubt it. I'll be sending you some, though.

Barry Conrad

Okay, well, I'm all for that because I love my coffee. So let's go.

Melanie Avalon

I know. I can't wait to get your thoughts on it.

Barry Conrad

I'll tell you my honest opinion.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, no. Yeah, please do. Please do. Do you know, have I told you what I do with coffee topically? Like, not drinking it? Have I told you what I do?

Barry Conrad

No, you know, this is a first what would you do?

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so every time I wash my face, like after a shower or after a sauna and then I take a shower or in the morning, I splash my face with coffee.

Barry Conrad

Why? Don't try to get the visuals so that you have a bowl of cold coffee on the sink. How does it work?

Melanie Avalon

So, okay, so basically I actually, okay, it's a little bit ironic that I'm creating a coffee line because I don't, I love coffee, but I don't, I don't drink a ton. I'm not a, I used to, I went through phases, but now I just have like a little bit every morning, but I have to have it, but it's like a little bit. So basically I cold brew coffee, I keep it in my fridge and then I just like have a little bit every morning and I also use it for my face. So I wash my face and then I like pour some coffee into my hands and I just splash it on my face kind of like a toner. And the reason I do this is because way in the past I was using some products and they were like features like coffee bean and caffeine. And I was like, wait, what if I just put coffee straight on my face? I love it because it tightens my skin. I feel like some of the caffeine gets into me. Like I feel like it wakes me up. The antioxidants are there in coffee. So wow. Yeah, it really makes my skin glow, which is perfect because glow coffee is what I'm making. I didn't plan that.

Barry Conrad

Are you gonna, are you gonna do like a blog about it when glow coffee is out, which is probably now you're gonna say, by the way, here's a hack. You can put this in your face and da da da da.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, thank you for asking, can I actually get your, okay, Barry, this conversation we're having right now is probably going to affect the glow coffee bag. So this is a lot of responsibility on your shoulders right now. Are you ready? Take this very seriously. So we're coming up with on the back, the instructions, like how to use, you know, like how to brew. And I was thinking, because I want to have my name, I want to be associated with it, but I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to be it. Like I don't want it to be like Melanie Avalon's glow coffee, but I do want people to know that it's my brand because then they'll associate with my standards and you know, everything that I'm about. So I was thinking, what if I have like under the, like by the instructions or somewhere, I have like Melanie Avalon's, like how Melanie Avalon brews her, like does glow, like, like basically like what I do. And then it could be like instructions for how to cold brew. And then it could be something about how to put it on your face.

Barry Conrad

I think that's a really good idea. I think not having it on the front, but having it on the back where all the instructions and things are, having those tips there and then underneath how Melanie Evelyn does it, and then in brackets, founder or creator. I think that's a really smart way to still have you there. Some people know it's yours, but it's not like Glow by Melanie Evelyn. Do you know what I mean?

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Would you put in like, so basically like the basic instructions and I can make it all look nice on the template, but like the basic instructions, but then like Melanie's, you know, thing and it's like how to cold brew and then the how to like splash it on your face.

Barry Conrad

I think it personalizes what you created. I think it's a really good idea.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I really want to do it. I just got to, I got to work with like chat GPT and help it help me figure out how to like put this on the bed, you know, like what to say exactly. But

Barry Conrad

Because I'm guessing you don't want it to be like, because how big is the the package like the bag? Is it like a one kg bag? Is it like a 500 grams bag? It is 12 ounces. Do you know how this always gets me? What is the equivalent? Do you know that in grams? Hold it, I'll find out.

Melanie Avalon

Barry, making me do the hard work here.

Barry Conrad

Hold on, 12 ounces is how many grams.

Melanie Avalon

It is 340 grams.

Barry Conrad

You beat me to it, my internet's slower. All right, that's good. That's a good bag. Good size. I think it's just like normal size, right? The reason why I asked that was, I guess it depends how much you want, how much info you want to put, how much copy you want in the back of the packaging. Right? That's a great idea.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it can fit a lot of stuff. What I'm actually figuring out right now, if people are curious about the production process, I'm curious. I'm trying to figure out if our bags are going to have side panels or not, because if so, then I will have even more real estate to put stuff on. Yeah, so go coffee.

Barry Conrad

Super exciting and that's such a good idea, that's my vote, put it on there.

Melanie Avalon

it on? Okay, I'm doing it. That's you. So when it comes out and you see it, be like, that was me.

Barry Conrad

That was me, everyone.

Melanie Avalon

So, what is new in your world?

Barry Conrad

You know what? I've actually started taking Salsa classes again.

Melanie Avalon

salsa classes, again, wait, you just like hit me with two big things, salsa classes and again.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, so listen, this might seem random, but last year, I did a show called In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda, one of the shows and in the preparation, well, actually, it wasn't preparation, I was I wanted to learn salsa anyway. And then I booked the show whilst doing classes like every every Monday, I go it's like local and it's it's such a good workout. It's such a sexy fun dance to do and I'd stopped doing it because the show did most of the work for me and once I was doing that, but now that's, you know, we're well and truly into the year, I am picking it up again, got to do it. So I've started doing salsa again. And it's every every, do you know how to salsa?

Melanie Avalon

Well, first of all, I just want to say if you lived in Atlanta, I would do salsa classes with you.

Barry Conrad

Would you really? Uh-huh. Are you just saying that because like, you know, would you be like, okay.

Melanie Avalon

I'm serious. Sign me up. What do you wear? Can you wear anything?

Barry Conrad

Have you done it before now how funny that that's like one of the first question listeners are you surprised that she's like what do you wear can you wear anything.

Melanie Avalon

Well, I need to know what I can wear.

Barry Conrad

You can wear one of your awesome dresses that you wear and you can wear that if you want because I mean it's it's that kind of thing or some people just wear like active wear gym clothes it just depends it's wear whatever you like but there's salsa shoes that you can buy like the specific heels which I feel like you'd you'd like that that's a Melanie thing and then there's there we have like a social so like every few weeks is like a salsa social where like a whole bunch of people from the school we just like dance and like this food and it's like you know more just to hang which it's which is so good it's like dating but you're not really dating but you just like dancing with random strangers like going from one person to the next person to the next person you'd like that it's really fun.

Melanie Avalon

There's, well, she's my friend too, but Stephanie Rupper and Noelle Tarr, they have the Wellhead Women podcast, showed up, and Stephanie was always doing dancing and talking about it. I think it was salsa, and it just sounded like such a culture, and once you know how to do it, they just go salsa dancing, and like you just said, you dance with all these other partners, and it just sounds really cool.

Barry Conrad

It's really, it's so cool and it just feels, I don't know. It's just, it's hard to explain, it's a lot of fun. You have to kind of just put yourself out there, be willing to look foolish, and everyone's just learning at the same time, but man, I've always wanted to do it, and I'm so glad that I've finally bit the bullet and I'm back at Salsa class, so that's an update of mine.

Melanie Avalon

can you drink while learning? I feel like I'm a better dancer when I have some drinks on me. Or do you have to be like memorizing things? But it's muscle memory, right? It's like body memory.

Barry Conrad

Well, I mean, technically, you could probably come to the class having had a few beverages, but you can't, it's like a dad's studio. So you can't like have a bottle open and, you know, I could just picture you waltzing around, hold on guys, just having a drink.

Melanie Avalon

Like just wait for me. I'm going to open a salsa studio and we're going to, it's going to be called what I'm I have nothing. I'm just trying to come up with like some great like salsa wine pun. Oh, oh wait that wait salsa, like, like chips and salsa, salsa and what choose salsa, wine and salsa, wine and salsa.

Barry Conrad

That's a good name.

Melanie Avalon

it took care of itself. The puns took care of themselves. To answer your question, I took ballroom dancing classes and okay, wait, wait, let's go back farther than that. I did cotillion when I was little. Do you have cotillion in Australia? What is that? Oh.

Barry Conrad

the reaction. I'm not sure if that's bad or good.

Melanie Avalon

might have it. You might just call it something else. It's like at country clubs and it's like you're like a little kid and they teach you manners and how to set a table and how to ballroom dance. And it was really stressful because I have this memory of being, how old was I? It's like fourth grade, fifth grade. I had this memory of being there. And this is the fourth grade. Boys are like, you're not really into boys. And to learn to dance, they made us do this exercise, which I don't think they should be doing to fourth graders and third graders. We had a snowball, like a snowball, like a fake snowball. You know, like those fake snowballs made of like cotton. Okay. So like the size, it was like the size of like a baseball, but like soft. And we had to hold it between our heads. Like with the boy, that's like so close to their face. And you have to hold it there. It was like a lot to take in.

Barry Conrad

Did you like that?

Melanie Avalon

No, I did not like it. Do you like Italian or holding the ball with a boy?

Barry Conrad

We're both maybe the first questions the ball and then the second is cotillion.

Melanie Avalon

Ball with the boy, no, cotillion, meh. I liked learning how to, you had to like memorize how to set a table. I liked it, yeah, it was fun. Yeah, so that was my first dancing experience and then I did ballroom dancing for a little bit in college and peace out.

Barry Conrad

Wow, so basically we could go dancing when I'm in Atlanta.

Melanie Avalon

Basically not. No, it's it's funny. What up because I don't really oh and I and I used to I did a little bit of swing Dancing lessons. I don't think it retained any of it. I need to take lessons

Barry Conrad

There's one way to find out when I'm in Atlanta next, let's just go out like a spot and then just hit the floor. Do you know how to swing dance? I don't, but I could probably learn. I'm a quick study.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, you should come here and we'll take swing dancing lessons and salsa dancing lessons.

Barry Conrad

Deal and speaking of Italian does that cover like this is the color you use you know that are as well as the table setting cuz i'm i'm going through that again just trying to we learn the etiquette you know because it's different in different places yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, they don't have this in Australia, this thing I just described to you.

Barry Conrad

They probably do, so I'm not going to quote and say they don't, so don't get at me, everyone. They probably do, but maybe it's called something else. I'll just say that.

Melanie Avalon

That's cool that you're trying to relearn the way you're trying to learn it for like Australia or like what are you trying to learn exactly?

Barry Conrad

I love to travel, so I just want to be versed in that so that when I go to different places, I'm not being disrespectful, you know, to the, you know, I mean, table manners.

Melanie Avalon

trying to learn all countries or like places you might go.

Barry Conrad

Places are my go.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, that's cool. Apparently there's a lot of rules, speaking of fasting and food and such, about like some like whether or not to finish all the food or not. Like some places it's like an insult if you eat all of it. Some places it's an insult if you don't eat all of it. Like you just can't win. Like my takeaway is everybody's offended by everything.

Barry Conrad

I've got some friends who are Samoan, and in their culture, it's a sign of respect to have more. I remember going over to a Sunday lunch with some of my friends, and the mother was like, Barry, have some more. But my plate was already like, picture this, like a heaped, like a mountain, a mountainous, massive plate. She's like, have some more, have some more, because it's offensive if you don't keep eating.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, some places it's like you can't if you say no, it's offensive, but then some places if you eat everything, it's offensive because it means they didn't give you enough.

Barry Conrad

That's not really my style but i can i can respect that when i'm there.

Melanie Avalon

my style is I do like the idea of I like the idea of like dressing up and like having respect and like you I like the idea of like the cutlery being in a certain order and play settings I think it's great I think when it comes to actual food though people should be able to eat whatever they want

Barry Conrad

Obviously. Or not eat whatever they want as well. Yes, yes. Speaking of meals, before we go any further, actually, a couple of episodes ago, listeners, you may remember we talked about, you know, what is one meal a day, like, you know, we revisited the great... The great one meal a day debate? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I stay right there because I actually did a poll on... We did a poll on the Instagram, and I'm gonna let you know, which is really interesting.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so friends, follow us on Instagram at if podcast to engage with the polls.

Barry Conrad

engage in the polls. I love a poll. So here we go. So these are the options, Melanie. Okay, so you've got to eat the meal within one hour max. That's one. The second one is it can be spread across two to four hours. And the third one is just eating once a day in brackets timing doesn't matter. Which one do you think had the most votes out of those three?

Melanie Avalon

Wait, so did you include though, we need to do it and include like where it's okay if you eat and then stop and then eat again.

Barry Conrad

Might have to do that again.

Melanie Avalon

Because that's like the crux of the debate. Wait, so what options did you put?

Barry Conrad

You've got to eat the meal within one hour max. The second one is it can be spread across two to four hours. And the third one's just eating once a day. Timing doesn't matter, which is quite ambiguous.

Melanie Avalon

And the question was,

Barry Conrad

In the latest episode, we revisit the great one meal a day debate. We're curious what's your definition of one meal a day.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I would say that it doesn't matter the timing.

Barry Conrad

Okay, so 62% of the followers said it can be spread across two to four hours. 10% said you've got to eat it within an hour, and 29% guessed your one, which is just eating it once a day. Timing doesn't matter. How interesting is that?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, that is interesting. I would have done the same, but just switched the first two.

Barry Conrad

So there you go. So that's what people are at the moment. How about you? I think probably the second one, probably not within just one hour, because, you know,

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, no, me neither.

Barry Conrad

And eating once a day timing doesn't matter. That could be like spread across like eight hours. I don't know. Like eating once a day. You know what I mean?

Melanie Avalon

That's how I define it though, honestly. I, yeah, I didn't think about that, that you could be taking into account, like a long, a really long window.

Barry Conrad

But in any case, I think listeners definitely, if you don't follow us at our podcast on Instagram, please do, and there'll be lots more interactive polls for you to weigh in on what you think about all these conversations.

Melanie Avalon

Can you post if you have a snack and then stop and then eat, is that one meal a day?

Barry Conrad

You know what? I'm going to. I'll do it. I'll do part two if you, so what is it? If you start.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, like the great one meal a day debate part two. If you have a snack slash appetizer, then have a break, then eat your main meal. Is that still one meal a day?

Barry Conrad

Okay. We'll share those results first and then I'll put up the top part too. If you have a snack slash appetizer, then a break, then eat your main meal. Is that still one meal a day?

Melanie Avalon

Love it!

Barry Conrad

It's so good just to hear what people's different perspectives are, don't you think?

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Okay. So, Barry, do you have a study to start us off with?

Barry Conrad

I actually do. This study is called intermittent fasting influences immunity and metabolism. It's from Science Direct. All right, so let's just dive in. This title, intermittent fasting influences immunity and metabolism, we've all heard about IF as if you're new to the podcast, maybe you haven't, this is your first time. But a lot of people have heard of IF in the context of weight loss, but there's a lot more going on beneath the surface. One of the key things this study reveals is how intermittent fasting can improve something called the metabolic flexibility. So I know that term, it sort of sounds technical, but it's actually pretty straightforward. Essentially, metabolic flexibility is your body's ability to switch between different energy sources, like whether that's carbs or fat, and depending on what's available. And for people dealing with obesity, this is like a game changer, because their bodies often get stuck using just one type of fuel, usually carbs, which makes it pretty hard to burn fat efficiently. So it's like trying to drive a car with the handbrake on, you're not really going to go anywhere quick, but fasting helps to break that cycle. So in a way, fasting helps your body get back into that groove, using the fuel properly. But here's where it gets even better in the study, it shows that intermittent fasting can reduce inflammation, which is a big, huge problem for people with obesity, especially. And I'm sure that you've heard of inflammation. But what's important here is chronic low grade inflammation, which is also known as metaflamation. This kind of inflammation like messes with your insulin. What was the word that it used?

Melanie Avalon

Interesting, I've not heard that before.

Barry Conrad

And basically, this kind of inflammation messes with your insulin signaling and metabolism, which makes it way harder for your body to process your food and to use it for energy. But then when you fast, your body actually calms that inflammation down, allowing your metabolism to function better. It's like sort of hitting the reset button and clearing away all that stuff that's been slowing you down. But Melanie, this is the part that really blew me away because it went on to say that intermittent fasting can improve gut health. I know we were talking about that last week. And you know how much I'm into gut health as well lately? It turns out that fasting can actually help reset the balance of gut bacteria. And that is huge because gut health is linked to so many aspects of our health overall. So like a balanced gut microbiome listeners, it helps reduce inflammation and supports our immune system basically. So while our metabolism is getting like a boost from fasting, our gut health is also improving at the same time, creating like a ripple effect of benefits, like a domino effect of health. Like when one thing gets better, everything else can follow suit. But here is the kicker. Like intermittent fasting can improve your blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity even without dramatic weight loss. And that is really key about this study because it's basically saying even if we're not seeing massive changes on the scale, and I know a lot of people do come to IF4 weight loss first, but just to know that even if you're not seeing huge changes on the scale, your body still improves how it handles sugar and insulin. And that's so massive when it comes to preventing metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes or whatnot. So even if the weight's not falling off right away, everyone, fasting is making a huge impact on your body's ability to manage sugar and to manage insulin levels, which can have long-term health benefits. So long story short, when you really think about it, IF is it's not just about the weight or focusing on the number and the scale. It's about the body being more efficient overall. It's about reducing that inflammation, improving your metabolism, supporting our gut health, and giving your immune system a boost. So friends, whether your goal is to lose weight or just to optimize your health like intermittent fasting, based on the study, offers a whole range of powerful benefits to help you function at your best. That's my takeaway from the study. So yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, good find, that's an awesome study, it literally touches on all the things. It's so cool, we know inflammation is so involved in all of these disease processes. It's really interesting how just the absence of doing something, so just like letting the body rest and being in the facet state, because I think with the immune system we often think it's about whether or not we're exposed to sickness and whether or not there's disease and how are the immune cells functioning, but just by fasting and stopping having these inflammatory inputs, the body can pull it together, you know? It can take care of itself. That's so cool about how it can help reset the gut microbiome, that's cool.

Barry Conrad

It's so cool. And I think, you know, like we know this, but a lot of people that don't know by intermittent fasting might not know that take away of, you know, even when there's not massive changes on the scale, like a lot is happening. That's like, you know, a huge thing to remember. There's a lot happening within the body about handling the sugar and insulin. And that's really key. Long term. We're thinking about the long game people. We're not thinking about two weeks or a month, you know, so massive win. I have.

Melanie Avalon

Immunity and metabolism, those are like the two, I don't know, if you had a list of all the things you really want to affect in your body, your metabolism, you know, creating your energy, burning fat, and then immunity, your actual state of health.

Barry Conrad

And do you remember when people used to say, the trainer thought it was really popular where they'd be like, ah, you need to have six meals a day to keep your metabolism spiked. Yeah. It's just not true. At all.

Melanie Avalon

That is definitely a myth. Basically, yes, you do, quote, burn more because there's a thermogenic effect to food, but you burn more calories at that meal, but then you took in more. It doesn't make up for the calories that are burned from eating are a percentage of what you ate, but you still ate all that food. And the metabolism doesn't undo it. It's just no with the fasted state. It really doesn't, like you just talked about with this study, it really does support a state of metabolic health and metabolism and using fuel substrates appropriately and not getting locked into this sugar mode where you're just waiting for your next sugar meal, which is a limited, we have limited sugar glucose stores. So then we're just like waiting for our next snack rather than tapping into body fat.

Barry Conrad

You know what? One of the biggest misconceptions that I've heard from people coming to me who know that I do intermittent fasting is you're really damaging your metabolism. You're slowing it down by not eating. Why do you do that? Why wouldn't you just keep eating? It's healthier to keep eating throughout the day. It's interesting trying to get into it with people if it's a general conversation because they've already made a lot of people make their minds up about it's the same thing breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So getting those three square meals in there and it's just not the case with IF. What do you think, Mel?

Melanie Avalon

Well, the breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Did you and I talk about this on the show? Or is that when Vanessa was here? About that came from, that was literally created by the breakfast cereal industry. Kellogg's. Like, yes, yes. So there are these ideas that are just saturated in society and it's really, really hard to have a paradigm shift with things. And especially when it's things that people think is just common knowledge. Like eat constantly to fuel your metabolism. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Barry Conrad

So basically yeah is proving that wrong and i think as well it's you tell me what you think no but i just tried to live by example and if you do it long enough and it's quote unquote sticking people usually come around saying okay okay time but this thing. For real what is this i think you've been doing it for a while now and it's working so yeah.

Melanie Avalon

You know? Exactly. It's ironic because I'm talking about it all the time on this show and in my social media and things like that, but in real life, I really just want people to do whatever they want to do. I never try to convince people of things. I have zero, zero energy or interest in that. So I just do me and I'll answer questions if people have questions, but I don't try to convince people of anything.

Barry Conrad

Convert people yeah

Melanie Avalon

or yeah, or convert. Awesome. Well, thank you. We will put a link to that study in the show notes and the show notes will be at ifodcast.com slash episode 413. Okay. Shall we jump into some listener questions?

Barry Conrad

I think we should. So Benoit on Facebook asks, let's say I have a couple hundred bucks to spend on my health. Should I go Lumen or CGM? I have no major health issues aside from being overweight. I've been doing IF for 14 months, 22 to protocol, evening meal, 7-7 and occasional ADF. Choosing healthy foods, home cooked, grew lots of veggies in our home, garden the summer, etc. The objective is to better understand my metabolism so I can tweak my food choices to improve my weight loss and break plateaus more easily.

Melanie Avalon

All right, Benoit, thank you for your question and it works well with what we just talked about with metabolism and everything with fasting. So, lumen versus a CGM. I will, well, first of all, tell you what those are. So, a CGM is a continuous glucose monitor. Have you worn one of these, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I actually haven't worn one of these. You recommend it? You would love it.

Melanie Avalon

it. You would love it. So it is a so it's a a sensor that you put onto your arm and it measures your blood glucose levels 24 seven. It sinks to an app and you can see how your blood sugar is responding to everything to what you eat to how you fast your exercise to your sleep your stress. It is so enlightening because you will actually see like it's very powerful to eat a food and see what it's doing to your blood sugar like actually see. I honestly think if everybody wore a cgm at some point like in like in the US for example that it would just change the metabolic health of the country it's it's that helpful. The one I love I love Nutrisense so listeners can go to Nutrisense.com slash if podcast and use the code I have podcasts that will get you a discount and one free month of nutritionist support so Nutrisense.com slash I have podcast with the code I have podcast so that's a continuous glucose monitor. It actually technically measures the interstitial fluid around your cells which blood sugar seeps into so there's slight a slight delay like when you when you get the number that is actually probably what your blood sugar was like 10 minutes prior but it's a pretty accurate gauge and then a lumen is a a device which actually measures the levels of co2 in your breath to tell you if you are burning fat or carbs like literally what are you burning which is so cool depending on whether or not you're burning carbs or fat it changes the co2 ratios in your in your breath.

Melanie Avalon

Its purpose and I should go back to what a cgm's purpose is but its purpose is to help you achieve metabolic flexibility help you learn to what Barry was talking about earlier with metabolic flexibility help you learn how to you know burn carbs when you want burn fat when you want and you know switch back and forth burn more fat and the app that it comes with uses you know AI to analyze what's happening to make recommendations to adjust your food and your fasting to help you burn fat more also with with the cgm with Nutrisense they also have like I said you know nutritionist support and things like that so that you can really optimize your blood sugar levels so for Benoit both of these are going to be incredible for you I would do with weight loss being your goal so how are these both going to affect weight loss and plateaus the cgm is going to really open your eyes to the food choices that you're making so you can see are you locking yourself into a high blood sugar state because if you're in a high blood blood sugar state all the time you're not going to be burning fat so it's really going to help you see how is your food affecting you you know how's your fasting affecting you so that you can make better choices to regulate your blood sugar levels and burn fat the lumen it's also going to help you learn how to burn more fat because it's going to show you again with your fasting and your food choices are you actually getting into fat burning mode and then it's going to also make suggestions and recommendations to you know help you get there so I want to say both like honestly I would do a cgm at least once to get a picture of everything and then ongoing to really move towards you know weight loss I think a lumen would be great that I know I like kind of took the easy way out by saying both of them but that's how they're going to function essentially do you have thoughts Barry?

Barry Conrad

Well, I think, as Melanie said, it's super interesting that you're able to track your blood glucose levels in real time. And I think that is really helpful to see how different foods affect your blood sugar, which is key for weight loss as well. So in my thoughts would be, if your goal is to break a plateau and improve weight loss, CGM is going to be helpful because of those insights. But if you're more interested in understanding how your body shifts between the carbs and fat, lumen's great. But I mean, again, it's both a solid. Both are solid tools. But yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Ironically, I might, okay, they're both going to help so much that the thing is with Lumen is it's going to be an ongoing journey with the CGM. It's a two week thing. It'll open your eyes. You'll see all these things. You'll learn a lot of information and you'll be empowered to make better choices to move towards weight loss. Lumen you can keep using for like, I mean, the rest of your life and it's actually going to, it's going to guide you to weight loss. So again, I want to say both because they're just so powerful. The goal of Lumen is more geared towards weight loss, if that makes sense. Awesome.

Barry Conrad

Well, it's a weird win then for you, Benoit. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

So you can get 10% off with the code Melanie Avalon. I'm going to put both codes because I'm always, I'm not sure if this one still works. You can try to get $100 off with the code IF Podcast at lumen.me. I don't know if that one's active, so you probably will need to try my code, which will be Melanie Avalon.com slash lumen and use the coupon code Melanie Avalon and that should give you a discount as well. Okay, shall we move on to our next question? Let's move on. Let's do it. Okay, so our next question is from Dawn and this is from Facebook as well. So listeners join our Facebook group. It's called IF Biohackers, Intermittent Fasting plus Real Foods plus Life. You can ask questions in there. We're both members in there, even though Barry just joined.

Barry Conrad

Don't bloke my spotlight.

Melanie Avalon

I like that. It's a great place to be. Don't let.

Barry Conrad

Blow up my spot, I've just joined.

Melanie Avalon

Is that an Australian phrase, blow out your spot?

Barry Conrad

blow up my spot.

Melanie Avalon

Blow up your spot.

Barry Conrad

Do you say that over there?

Melanie Avalon

No. What does that mean? Blow up your spot?

Barry Conrad

It's like put me on blast kind of thing.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, I love how there's all these little like, little things, you know, blow up your spot.

Barry Conrad

So if I said something like, and listeners Melanie said this, but Barry, don't blow up my spot. That was not for everyone.

Melanie Avalon

don't blow up my spot. Okay. So this question, this question is from Dawn and she says, I'm a long haul flight attendant and struggle to cope with fasting and long days and time zone changes. Any advice would be gratefully received XX. And we've talked about this a lot on the show, but we haven't talked about it since Barry's been here. And I don't think Barry, you are so much more skilled at traveling. I am so curious how you adjust your fasting and food and such when you're traveling.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I do fly a lot. And, hey, Dawn, thank you for the question. We appreciate you having a go and asking. Being on those long-haul flights and being a flight attendant dealing with the time zone changes, it's definitely going to make... It can make fasting a bit trickier, but it's doable. It's going to be doable with the right strategy. So my thoughts, I'd suggest starting with a flexible fasting window that works best for your schedule. So for example, on a flight day, it might be easier to do a shorter fasting window, especially if you're already dealing with things like jet lag and long hours, because that can really be tough even as a traveler. So you can adjust based on how you're feeling and then on the ground. So just say you're flying from the US to London, for example. Once you get on the ground, then you could go on for that longer fasting window when you have more control over your schedule and your body's rhythms. I'm going to say here, hydration is key, speaking from experience. So really make sure you're drinking plenty of water, especially on those long flights. And I'd even consider adding electrolytes to your water just to keep it balanced and to avoid that drained feeling. And you can just get off a plane feeling like you've been hit by a train. So you don't want that feeling. Another thing to consider is like your meal timing. So if you're in a different time zone, it's about gradually shifting your eating window to match the new time zone. That's what I find is helpful because that way, you're easing into the rhythm rather than forcing your body into a new pattern all at once, just because this is what my protocol is. So I need to just stick to it. It's about listening to your body, easing into the rhythm. And then I would say, last but not least, probably focus on nutrient dense, easy to carry meals. Because as you know, more than anyone being a flight attendant, the meals on planes is often just not nutrient dense. So making sure you have protein, healthy fats, some carbs in there, stuff like nuts, seeds, some protein bars, good quality protein bars, keeping it simple, but satisfying enough to fuel your body properly. And with a bit of tweaking, dawn and listening to your body, you'll find a rhythm that works. But don't be out on yourself. I mean, it's about, as we say as well, it's about consistency, not being perfect about it. And keep doing what you're doing. You'll figure it out. You got this. Melanie, what do you think?

Melanie Avalon

So I love the flexibility. I love not being hard on yourself. And to be using it to a point, this is interesting because we actually have opposite advice here.

Barry Conrad

Okay, there we go.

Melanie Avalon

So another approach. So that's one approach where you ease into it gradually with time zone changes. And I'm coming from this more from just like traveling for a day. So this is a little bit different than constantly changing time zones because of being a flight attendant, which I could not be a flight attendant. Could you be a flight attendant?

Barry Conrad

I think on paper it sounds really fun, but I think my body would just be messed up. My internal clock and everything. Yeah. I don't know. Probably not.

Melanie Avalon

I cannot. There have been studies on jet lag and actually using fasting to deal with jet lag. And the approach that you do is you fast longer. So basically, you go into the travel, you approach the travel situation, you have your like normal meals, and then you go into the travel, you fast, you fast through the traveling. And then what's really important, you continue to fast in the new location. And what's important is that you eat a meal in sync with the new location's time. So that's what I mean by it's the opposite, you don't go based on what you were doing or like ease in, you literally just immediately adapt the new culture. If you've been consistently doing a fasting window, where your there's something called zeitgeibers, which are essentially environmental cues that signal that affect your circadian rhythm. So our circadian rhythm, our sleep-wake cycle is severely influenced by our environment. So light exposure, eating exposure, even social cues can affect it. And so eating is so intensely connected to our circadian rhythm. If you are fasting, and in general, fasting and eating on a consistent basis, then your body associates different times of the day with different meals. So for example, I always eat one meal a day dinner, and then I go to bed after. So when I have my one meal a day, it signals to my body like this is evening and we're going to bed. And so the way I can use that as a hack for traveling is when I'm traveling somewhere, I just do my normal fasting, my normal everything, and then I eat dinner in the time zone of the new location. So if that requires fasting more, or I think it would always, I'm trying to think if it could ever require eating earlier.

Barry Conrad

Thank you.

Melanie Avalon

Probably not.

Barry Conrad

Because what if there's a time like it's usually like a time zone change when what not and then what if it's maybe like 1 p.m.

Melanie Avalon

Well, like one hour time zone change. Yeah.

Barry Conrad

OK, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Well, yeah, yeah, so because basically the flight would have to account because because if you're flying from like you're flying from Atlanta to LA and let's say it's like a four-hour flight So you've you went four hours, but then you jumped back three hours. Oh wait No doubt that would be massively expanding it. Oh, sorry. That's like the opposite. You have to go the other direction You have to go when it's like speeding ahead, but there's nowhere I can fly. Okay, so reverse So from LA to Atlanta, I'm like thinking of myself in Atlanta. I can't fly because it's like the ocean. Okay, so if I'm in LA And I fly from LA to Atlanta It takes like four hours, but then okay, that's where but that's where it would um jump forward So it'd be super late when I get there I don't know. This is too much math and too much time zone for me to figure out the point is if I Eat my one meal a day in the new time zone In alignment with that new time zone then I can pretty much Like just immediately adopt that new time zone So like when I flew not this past thanksgiving, but prior to that I went to London London for just like a day

Barry Conrad

I still can't get over that.

Melanie Avalon

And you know what, Barry? I didn't really have barely any jet lag at all because what I did was I flew to London. I got there. So I left for London in the evening here. I was on the plane. I might have slept a little bit. I'm not sure. I got to London in the morning or after morning or early afternoon. And then I just didn't eat until dinner. And so then at dinner, I ate my meal. And then it was like, time to go to bed. And that pretty much synced me up with like the eating schedule. And then the next day I went to the Thanksgiving thing. And then I flew home the day after that. So that works that I mean, that works really well. I mean, I guess it depends on what dietary pattern you're doing. But it works really well for like one meal a day before dinner. So what I was thinking when I first read her question was if she is the type that because here's the thing. So for Dawn, Dawn is going to quote be awake every day and sleep every day, but it might be changing crazily hours because of the flight. But it's still a pattern of like being awake, going to bed, being awake, going to bed. So if Dawn if depending on what works for you, but if a one meal a day type situation works for you, you could for example, always eat before you go to bed. So then you would like just you wouldn't even like think about it, you would just like do your traveling, do your life and then eat your one meal a day for dinner. Remember, it doesn't have to be right for bed, but have your one meal a day for dinner and then go to bed and you I think not a flight attendant. So it might be more complicated than that. I don't really know how your schedules work. But I think you could do that. Like I think you could do that ongoing. So you would never be eating during a flight or anything. You would just unless you're sleeping, I guess if you're sleeping on the flight for your like sleep, sleep, but I don't see I need to know more about flight attendants. I don't understand like, I don't know if did you say international or not.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, well, long haul to me is international, because to me, like, when people say long haul, it means, like, they go, they're leaving the country, they're not going to, like, interstate, which is like, you know, four hours, five hours, or, you know, long haul flats. So that's, you know, it's changing time zones. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

long days and time zone changes. So I mean, again, I don't know a lot about flight attendantness. So maybe this is being like, do this. And it's like, not even remotely possible. But I would consider trying up an approach like that where you, your pattern is that you, when you get to your city, you eat, it would change so much based on where you're going.

Barry Conrad

It would change so much.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, okay, if I was a flight attendant, I would probably do that.

Barry Conrad

Well, Melody, you're a very unique person. You're just like, this is what I'm doing. I'm flying for one day. I'm sticking to this protocol. This is it.

Melanie Avalon

I do think though, there could be a map. I think you could find a system that works for you where you are using meals and this like Zeitgeiber approach. Say that again, Zeit. Zeitgeiber.

Barry Conrad

I've never heard that word before.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it's Z-E-I-T-G-E-B-E-R. The definition is a rhythmically occurring natural phenomenon which acts as a cue and the regulation of the body circadian rhythm. Isn't that amazing? That's amazing, actually. Again, it's like something in your environment. So something you're doing or exposed to that affects your circadian rhythm. So I think you could, I really think you could use fasting and eating to create like a zeitgeiber for your circadian rhythm to help with the jet lag and stuff.

Barry Conrad

We hope that's helpful, Dawn, a couple of different, different thoughts there, but you know, I feel I'm confident that you're going to figure it out.

Melanie Avalon

Me too.

Barry Conrad

But please keep us updated, let us know.

Melanie Avalon

us know. Shall we end with our restaurant? Time to break our fast? Do it. So speaking of food, we are all about eating around here. And we love breaking our fast, and our heads and our minds and in real life. Okay, so Barry, the restaurant I chose, which have have you been to Disneyland or Disney World? Wait, wait, have you been to Disney? Wait, wait, I know we've talked about this.

Barry Conrad

Disney okay i've been to the one in florida that is because the world of the world of it is new world and you have been to the international i've also been to disneyland i've been to both. I have been to both yeah the California.

Melanie Avalon

Have you been to any international ones? No. I have. Are you impressed?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, there's also like a lot of kids around. Did I surprise you? You did surprise me and this is not what I was expecting, a Disneyland restaurant.

Melanie Avalon

I have been to Disneyland, Disney World, Disney Land,

Barry Conrad

Disney Places, Disneyland, Disney World, Disneyville.

Melanie Avalon

I think it's Disneyland. I have been to Disneyland Paris.

Barry Conrad

Wow, what's that like compared to the ones in the US?

Melanie Avalon

It was lovely. It was interesting because the Main Street had much more of a covered experience. I feel like there was indoor walkways because of the rain and such, but it rains in Florida. Main Street was a little bit different. Oh, I felt so validated. They had their version of Space Mountain. This is when I was young and resilient. I wrote it and it was literally the most painful experience of my life. I got off and I was like, that was horrible. I'm never doing that again. Then I talked to a friend who also went and she said that she was recovering from that ride for days. So it's not just me. They need to get rid of their Space Mountain. It's horrible. But yes, Disneyland, I went to USC in LA. I used to go to Disneyland all the time. My favorite restaurant in Disneyland slash California Adventure is the Blue Bayou restaurant. Last week we had a New Orleans restaurant. Have you been to the Blue Bayou restaurant?

Barry Conrad

I have not been but blue is my favorite color so i'm sure it's gonna be really good tell me about it.

Melanie Avalon

It is, you know, Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah. So in Disneyland, there's a restaurant like in the ride. Like when you what? Yeah. So like the beginning of the ride, when you're like in the bayou of the Pirates of the Caribbean before you go into the Caribbean or Caribbean, it goes by there's like a indoor restaurant that looks like you're in New Orleans, like outside at night. I am all about restaurants that make it look like you're outside, but indoors at night, all about it kind of like the Mexican restaurant and Epcot. So yeah, Blue Bayou restaurant, it's my and it's like a fine dining, steakhouse, New Orleans, steakhouse type experience. It's wonderful. I love it. It's a vibe.

Barry Conrad

highly wreck. Okay, cool. You know what, all these restaurants, we've got to check them out. IRL for sure.

Melanie Avalon

I know. I know. So let us look at dinner. Okay. So right now they have a, okay, they have like a set. I'm confused. They have a set price meal. Oh, that's a question for you. How do you feel about set price meals?

Barry Conrad

Okay, so sometimes, and I don't know if you feel the same way, when you're out with like a big group of people, sometimes I get invites for, hey, we're going to this restaurant, they have like a set menu for X amount of dollars, and it's just easy, then I'm happy to try it. But if I don't love what's on the set menu, I'll just order a la carte. What about you?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I don't like set price menus

Barry Conrad

You don't? Actually, why am I asking you that? Because I know that you want to change it, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

unless it's like the perfect set price menu like everything I would order, which I have never seen that in my life. And normally they're not like about substitutions, you know, it's so yeah, usually stay away from especially on like Valentine's Day, I feel like all the restaurants turn into set price menus and I'll just be like, nope, nope, I got to have my freedom of choice.

Barry Conrad

I agree. I mean, I get what I get. They're trying to like, you know, it's easy for them to like, you know, quantify, we're going to make this amount of money. These people buy it. But it's not, it's not ideal for people like us who want to have what we want to have.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. And having been a fine dining server for like five years and being on the flip side, I know why they're doing those set price menus. Like they, yeah, like you just said, it makes it seem like, oh, I get so much and like, it's like happy and I pay, but no, it's because they can like make, it's like easy. They can like, they can make more money and they it's like all set up and they just like turn it out. Maybe they're not all like that, but I like a la carte is the point. So we're not going to do take away. Barry and I will not be doing the Mardi Gras celebration meal.

Barry Conrad

No. And also it doesn't seem like there's, I don't know, I'm going to skip past that. We love Disneyland. I'm not, we're not hating on it. We're just saying we're going to do, we're going to do a la carte. So let's do that.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so then they're using the word that you like. What would you get for your starter?

Barry Conrad

Finally, someone's using the correct terminology. Oh, no. We say starters because it's very confusing listeners. You've probably heard us talking about what is an entree? What is the main meal? What is the starters? What's the appetizer? It's so different everywhere.

Melanie Avalon

I forget every single time, and for you an entree is, wait, an entree is an appetizer?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, like a starter kind of thing.

Melanie Avalon

And entree is a starter. That is so confusing. Who came up with that?

Barry Conrad

somebody awesome.

Melanie Avalon

We should we should research like what is the original.

Barry Conrad

I feel like if we did that then Melanie will be like Seabury I told you this is the right way to do it.

Melanie Avalon

No, but no, here's the thing. Well, a a I don't put I don't I wouldn't put it in your face like that, but B

Barry Conrad

You blow up my spot, you would.

Melanie Avalon

I would not blow up your spot. B, the US is like, we're very new, relatively speaking. So if it's ever like the original, it's probably more likely that it's not us. You know, like that's in your favor. OK. Like the US is a relatively new country compared to the rest of the world.

Barry Conrad

Of course.

Melanie Avalon

So I feel like it's unlikely that we originated things.

Barry Conrad

The terms for menu.

Melanie Avalon

Except for the Constitution. Oh my gosh. OK, so starters, what would you get?

Barry Conrad

Okay, so I'm looking at the dinner menu, and I already know I'm going to go the chicken gumbo and the brioche because a bit of bread there is going to be good, and the chicken gumbo has tassel, ham, and dulce sausage and peppers with stew.

Melanie Avalon

I knew you were going to pronounce it that way. I was waiting.

Barry Conrad

Okay, it's wrong. So tell me again, Melanie, because listen, if you listen to last week's episode, I got a word wrong too. But anyway, maybe that got taken out.

Melanie Avalon

Wait, what was last week's episode?

Barry Conrad

I'm not going to say it because of someone's name. I don't want to offend anyone, but how do you say it?

Melanie Avalon

Melody? Well, now I'm on the spot. Oh, wait, putting me on the spot. I think it's, isn't it, andouille, andouille? I don't think there's an, I don't think you pronounce the L.

Barry Conrad

We're keeping it in the edit is please be not because we want because that way we can have it out there is this how you say it is the size.

Melanie Avalon

I'm pretty sure the L is not like an L.

Barry Conrad

Okay, stand corrected, and I'll put it to the I have podcast followers. Okay, I'll get the chicken gumbo and the rosemary and sea salt brioche, which is butter and seasonal jam, comes with butter and seasonal jam, the bread. What about you? Awesome.

Melanie Avalon

I think I'm gonna tap out of this round.

Barry Conrad

You don't want to take anything from the other sections to substitute. You just want to move on to the.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yeah, I think I don't think they I don't see other options really like the kids meal. Maybe I get like

Barry Conrad

is roasted chicken, which you could have planned.

Melanie Avalon

No, because I was named Shrimp. Oh my gosh, wait, this is what I'm doing here. And we're like, okay, I'm going to be like, okay, because you want me to do it in character, right? So this is what I'm going to say.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, here we go. Okay, so I'll be the server. Here we go. Hi, you ready to order?

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Okay. And then you're going to order, like Barry's going to order. What would you like? So for the starter, okay. I completely understand if you can't do this. It is literally no problem at all. I see that you have sauteed shrimp on the kids menu. Is there any possibility I could get, it doesn't have to be like a fancy shrimp cocktail type thing, but can I get just like shrimp, like in the cocktail type vibe as my appetizer? Again, zero worries if you can't do that, but I would love like shrimp as an appetizer. Is that possible? We can.

Barry Conrad

definitely accommodate that for you Madam, so we'll make sure that's taken care of.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you so, so much. And nothing complicated, like no sauces or anything, or like you can put that on the side if you want. Thank you. Like, thank you. You're the best.

Barry Conrad

not to worry thank you there we go you did it how was that that was really really polite really good really easy not a big deal

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, okay. We got our starters and nice job with the waiter.

Barry Conrad

I don't know what kind of way to get out to that. It was a change three times, what I was saying. Uh, entrees, I would get a, oh, wow. Definitely two of them.

Melanie Avalon

And you've got, you've got two options. You've got entrees and there's a whole, there's a plant-based section as well. There is. Which I find it difficult to get enough protein and plant-based options.

Barry Conrad

So, listeners, as you may have caught and done already, I love my protein. So I'm not gonna say I don't do plant-based because I think there's a lot of nutritional value in it. I love it, but I'm going to stick with the animal protein heavy entrees. So I'm gonna go with the prime rib and the roasted chicken. So the prime rib comes with mashed potatoes, roasted veggies, horseradish cream, and peppercorn demi glaze. And the roasted chicken is, as Melanie Avelin would say, andouille sausage, sounds really funny. Shrimp, Creole rice, and Creole, that sounds really good. Creole sauce, that sounds like it's gonna slap. It's really good.

Melanie Avalon

It is Andouille. It's Ann Andouille. Oh, one is a...

Barry Conrad

put it on the poll, but that's okay. You've already corrected me.

Melanie Avalon

validated by Google.

Barry Conrad

Okay, validated. And do we did you do the thing where they say it?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and Dewey and Dewey the little mouth is like was moving. Okay

Barry Conrad

So those two for me.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, the chicken and the prime rib. Okay, this is okay, this is great because I love there's not it's kind of a limited menu. There are four options. I love all of them. Also, I love that we both just get two entrees. So I am going to get two entrees right now. And then I'm going to reserve one for dessert since the appetizers were like a little suspect. I will get the oh wait but I don't want hmm was this difficult actually? Can I have a bite of your prime rib? Yes. How are you getting it prepared?

Barry Conrad

Well, all okay, just rule of thumb for Barry Conrad's rule of thumb for any red meat is going to be medium rare for me. It's just my vibe.

Melanie Avalon

So I think I am going to get the, okay, I know I've got it. I'm going to get the filet mignon. It comes with mashed potatoes, spinach, mushrooms, and crispy shallots. I'm going to ask if I can get it with just steamed spinach. Do you need a reenactment to, or? Yeah, I'll do it. It's like, actually, I'm going to order everything right now. So I'm ready. And your desserts? Are you ready to?

Barry Conrad

to order your entrees.

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Thank you so much. Okay, so I'm actually going to get two entrees. May I please have the filet mignon? And can I get it completely plain? So like no, no oil, no sauce, just like completely plain, and I will have it blue, like as rare as possible. And for the sides, can you just mix all the sides and I'll just, the spinach, can I get just steamed spinach with the filet?

Barry Conrad

And again, I'll speak to the kitchen, but I'm sure that should be fine.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome, thank you so, so much. And then similar vibe, I'm also gonna get the market. Oh wait, what is the market fish today?

Barry Conrad

It's a snapper.

Melanie Avalon

Okay.

Barry Conrad

Can out-broke character!

Melanie Avalon

Hmm. No, no, no, no, that's still in character. That's how I would have. Okay, so we're not okay. So basically for listeners, I'm very concerned. This is how this is educational. I'm very concerned with mercury content. So for market fish, I would only get the fish if it were a salmon or a tilapia or cod, maybe. Otherwise, or a trout, a farm trout. Otherwise, probably not. And I would Google the fish and I would look up the the mercury levels, but usually fish is a little bit problematic with mercury.

Barry Conrad

So, it still stands. If it was snapper, would you pivot to another choice or would you just stick with the...

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. So if it was snapper, I would not get that. And I would, I would say, okay. Yeah. So thank you. So I will actually, I'll just get the filet. Are you sure you just want the filet? Yes. And also heads up, I'm probably going to get another filet for dessert. So can you, can you have the kitchen reserve one? And also for dessert, if I get it for dessert, they don't like, I literally, they don't have to like cook it long. They don't have to like hold the, it's not going to be like a long thing. They can just like really, really quickly sear it basically. You can even bring it raw. It's fine. I'll do that too. If you want.

Barry Conrad

So you want us to understand, you want a filet for dessert as well.

Melanie Avalon

So basically, I'm having a filet right now in the way that you so amazingly, kindly accepted. And then I'm probably going to order a second one when we order dessert, but it's not... I promise you, you don't have to cook it long, you don't have to keep the kitchen going. You can just literally put it on the thing for a second. A second. Just sear it.

Barry Conrad

You sure? For dessert? You don't want to try one of our cakes or sundaes? Very popular.

Melanie Avalon

Barry will be having that for sure. So we'll have it. It's going to be great.

Barry Conrad

I'll have it Did you like that off mic moment

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I love yeah. That was so immersive. I felt like I was like there.

Barry Conrad

Don't worry. I'll just it's fine. Like she does this all the time. I'll have it. Thanks. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, we're good. We're yeah. So if that's possible, that'd be amazing. Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate it. Like, thank you. Thank you so much. And also no rush like we're like super chill. You don't have to stress about us or anything like we're just happy to be here. So thank you.

Barry Conrad

You're welcome.

Melanie Avalon

How was that? That was good. That felt... Oscar nomination? That was actually really funny. That was amazing when you did it, okay, when you did it, like, oh, that's brilliant.

Barry Conrad

But try to create an experience for the listeners here. There we go. That's so funny.

Melanie Avalon

Should we do it in character every time? That'd be really fun. We should do it in character every time and I'll be the server for you.

Barry Conrad

Actually, that's really funny and that way we get to use our acting. Let's do it.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, and I can be like the way I used to be a server because I was like a lot. I was a lot.

Barry Conrad

Okay, let's do it. That's so fun. Yes.

Melanie Avalon

Okay. Listeners.

Barry Conrad

You're getting a performance, you're getting fasting, you're getting science, you're getting everything.

Melanie Avalon

This is all the things you wait. So question though, cause that was the first time doing that. So how do you feel like about if I do this?

Barry Conrad

No, I'm all about it.

Melanie Avalon

You just gotta be nice, you know?

Barry Conrad

You can use have to ask in a way that's respectful i don't think it's only a big deal when people you know get snobby or entitled but if you just ask politely you can't really go wrong.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Yeah. And I find most restaurants are very accommodating. Can't even tell you how many birthday, like birthday steaks with candles I've had. Two of those.

Barry Conrad

Okay, that's hilarious.

Melanie Avalon

They do that. That's happened twice, and they bring out a candle every time. They think they're really smart, but I'm like, no. It is smart, and it's really cute. I'm just saying people do it, though.

Barry Conrad

You should post a photo of that sometime because it's so funny, like it's just unusual.

Melanie Avalon

I will share my last birthday in November. They did that. So I will share it. Actually, no, no, no, that's not true. Last birthday, what? Wait. Oh, last birthday, I actually just went to a bar with friends. Birthday before that, they brought out a steak with candles. That's hilarious. So dessert time. I already pre-ordered my dessert. What are you getting?

Barry Conrad

I'm going to get, because the petite sundae, why do you think I saw it? I don't like the petite pot when it comes to any kind of food, so. I'm going to have three petite sundaes. I'll get two, I'll say to them, like we're not doing it now, but I'll say I'll get two petite sundaes, one for myself, one for Melanie, and then I'm going to eat it.

Melanie Avalon

No, you know what? I will take one for the team. I'll order one for you. I'll order a petite.

Barry Conrad

And then I'll order the brown butter banana upside down cake, which is soaked in bananas, a foster sauce garnished with candied walnuts. Okay. Here's another one of these. Okay. Okay. You have to read it out. What is it?

Melanie Avalon

tulle, I think it pronounced the L there, fleur, delise, I think those Ls get pronounced, and vanilla.

Barry Conrad

All fleur de lis, de lis, and vanilla ice cream. You'll see if you look at the menu, listen as it's, I cannot, I failed French. There we go. Yeah, so that's that. But yeah, those two desserts, well, three desserts is gonna have to do me because one petite sundae is not gonna do. Two petite sundaes and a brown butter banana upside down cake could do.

Melanie Avalon

they're gonna be so confused because I will have ordered all this like really crazy stuff and then I'm like oh and I'll have a petite sundae no modifications just as is

Barry Conrad

You know, it's the actual truth is I would probably just order two and they'd be like, Oh, one.

Melanie Avalon

for. Well, I already have the state coming, so.

Barry Conrad

No, it's both of me. And I'll also get the, yeah, I'll just say it. Oh, there's also beverages, so you're up. What would you like to drink?

Melanie Avalon

So the thing about Disney is I don't feel good at all about their choices of the champagne. I don't like champagne.

Barry Conrad

Sparkling wine.

Melanie Avalon

I think this is I have to look at the by the bottle list, which hopefully they have. I don't know if they do have because it's Disney. Because they only have a few options for wine and it's not looking good. It's all California. That's what I've noticed because I've I for fun, I sort of maybe read the Disney food blog where they like review restaurants at Disney and the food at Disney because I just love Disney and I love like reading about all the places and all the food. And I the thing I've noticed is that they tend to feature a lot of California wine.

Barry Conrad

But don't you see, you know my favorite white wine is Pinot Grigio.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, they have Frank family chardonnay, which is organic not idea

Barry Conrad

What about the Italian Pinagugio?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, the Italian Pinot Grigio? I could look that up. I'm on the struggle bus, though, with the wine, but what would you get?

Barry Conrad

Okay, so always for me, 90% of the time, I'll always get Pinot Grigio with something else. So Pinot Grigio, I probably love that for the table and then I'm gonna go because I also love my margaritas. I'm gonna try the Milograno melon margarita. I'll try it. Yeah. Oh, hey. So you're not gonna have anything to drink. You're gonna have water or there's like non-alcoholic.

Melanie Avalon

So here's the thing, if we were going to this restaurant, I would have dealt with this issue. I would look up every single wine. So for listeners I drink when I'm out, I try to find low alcohol, organic, low sugar European wines, hopefully on the menu. I would have looked at the menu, probably not found that many options. I would have inquired if they have a bottle list, which they probably don't. So then I would inquire, oh, you know what? At Disney, you probably can't bring in wine because you can't bring wine into the park.

Barry Conrad

Probably not, no. I'm guessing.

Melanie Avalon

We would implement plan C.

Barry Conrad

Have a drink beforehand, before going, or after, or what?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, actually, I can't even I don't know. No, it would be okay, I'm not I don't do that. This is like me just saying like, this could happen in a story somewhere. I'm not saying I do this, but I might depending if I pre researched and I knew the situation, I might like, you know, make sure I have my organic wine with me like with my person somehow, because of my means, and then I would order a wine.

Barry Conrad

And then I'll quickly swig it and then you can throw it in there.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, which a rue situation? Yeah.

Barry Conrad

That's so funny.

Melanie Avalon

Because my health comes first.

Barry Conrad

It's like spy vibes.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'm actually very good at this such a real situation.

Barry Conrad

I'd love to see that actually, see you do it. Yeah, that was fun. Do you want to go? That was very eventful, eventful ordering experience, restaurant experience.

Melanie Avalon

So friends, let us know your favorite restaurants and how you break your fast and how you deal and order and all the things. Are you a berry or are you a Melanie? Like where are you on the berry Melanie spectrum?

Barry Conrad

That's that's actually a really good question. That's good. Yeah

Melanie Avalon

So, well, this was so, so amazing. So listeners, you can submit your own questions for the show. Just email questions at ifepodcast.com or you can go to ifepodcast.com and you can submit questions there. These show notes will be at ifepodcast.com slash episode 413. They will have a full transcript and they will have links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. And you can follow us on Instagram. I am Melanie Avalon. Barry is Barry underscore Conrad. And we are, I have podcast. I think that is all the things. Anything from you before we go?

Barry Conrad

Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Have an awesome rest of your day or night and we'll catch you next week. Awesome.

Melanie Avalon

I will talk to you next week.

Barry Conrad

See you later.

Melanie Avalon

Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week.

Mar 10

Episode 412 – Special Guest Dr. Matt Dawson, Wild Health, Finding YOUR Perfect Diet, Blood, Genetic, & Epigenetic Testing, Optimizing Biological Age, Interpreting Lab Results, AI & The Future Of Healthcare, And More!

Wild Health Website | TruDiagnostic Website

Welcome to Episode 412 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SHOW NOTES

SPECIAL GUEST

Dr. Matt Dawson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Wild Health, a genomics based precision medicine company. He is also CEO of TruDiagnostic, a deep science epigenetics company focused on human longevity testing. Dr. Dawson has published dozens of research articles, authored two textbooks, and written over 100 book chapters. He has won national awards in education and innovation and given talks in over 20 countries. He has a passion for not only human performance and longevity, but also bringing cutting edge research and science to market so that individuals can actually benefit from them. As such, he has founded 6 companies in the last decade, all of which are still in operation. Three of these have been acquired. His passion for human performance started in high school when he paired it with suboptimal natural athletic abilities to earn college scholarship offers in two different sports. His passion for longevity comes from a desire to be around as long as possible for his 4 children, wife, and future great grandchildren. He lives with that current family and two dogs in the woods of Kentucky.

Dr. Matthew Dawson attended medical school at The University of Kentucky before completing his residency in emergency medicine at The University of Utah, where he served as both chief resident and fellow. He has practiced medicine and was an associate professor at the University of Kentucky for 7 years, with an acute interest in functional medicine and, later, genomics. Dr. Dawson’s obsession with performance optimization began well before medical school. In high school, he would implement any fitness or nutrition technique that’d give him ‘an edge’ in athletics, resulting in college scholarship offers in two sports. Dr. Dawson carried this obsession with him through medical school and into his profession as a physician, earning numerous national awards for education, innovation, and leadership on account of his research and approach to health care.

‍Dr. Dawson crystallized this approach to providing patients with true health care, rather than sick care, by building Wild Health – a Precision Medicine service providing personalized, genetics-based care to help patients achieve optimal wellbeing. In that, Dr. Dawson has also trained thousands of physicians in Precision Medicine through online education, and has lectured in over twenty countries around the world. Dr. Dawson also co-hosts the Wild Health Podcast, a tool for teaching thousands about personalized, genetics-based Precision Medicine. His passion to help patients maximize their health span and perform at their absolute best considers all aspects of health: mental, physical, and spiritual.

Wild Health IG | Wild Health LinkedIn

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

WILD HEALTH: Get 20% off with code melanieavalon at wildhealth.com/melanieavalon.

TRUDIAGNOSTIC: Get 10% off at melanieavalon.com/trudiagnostic.

ONESKIN

Founded by a team of all female scientists, OneSkin is the world's first skin longevity company, with products shown to reduce your skin's biological age! OneSkin addresses skin health at the molecular level, targeting the root causes of aging so skin behaves, feels, and appears younger. It’s time to get started with your new face, eye, and body routine at a discounted rate today! Get 15% off with the code IFPODCAST at https://www.oneskin.co.

MD LOGIC

Get 10% off MD Logic's Health Marine Collagen with code ifpodcast at ifpodcast.com/collagen.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to Episode 412 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat, with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Welcome back, friends, to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. This is Episode 412. I'm Melanie Avalon, and I'm here today with a very, very special guest. So the backstory on today's conversation, a while ago now, I got reached out to by a company called Wild Health. And they're doing very cool things when it comes to monitoring everything in your body that you need to be monitoring to actually take charge of your health right now, to take charge of your aging and longevity, all the things. I was really intrigued by their service because I know it can be really confusing, I think, for a lot of people to really navigate what's going on in their body. And there's so many different markers to look at. There's blood, there's genetics, there's just so many things. And what I really loved about Wild Health is it's a platform that encompasses all of that and analyzes things for you and makes things very implementable and approachable. So it looks at your blood work, it looks at your DNA, your genetic tendencies, it even looks at your biological age. And we'll dive into what that actually means. What's really cool is it's really easy to do to take the test, all the things. And then you have the portal, you have your results, you get this really comprehensive, like 50-page report that I was reading last night, again, and was fascinated by. And you actually get to work with coaches and practitioners in the portal to help make sense of everything. So I think the service is going to be so helpful for so many people. And I have so many questions as well as my own personal experience to share. So I'm here with the CEO and co-founder, Dr. Matt Dawson. Dr. Dawson, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Thanks for having me. You get such a great description of what we do. You nailed it.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, thank you. I really like because I feel like there are a lot of different companies trying to do what you're doing. And I like I said, I was very, very impressed with just the whole system and everything that I learned personally and and where the focuses are. But to introduce yourself a little bit to listeners. Can you tell listeners a little bit about your personal story? I know you attended medical school at the University of Kentucky and you did your residency in emergency medicine at the University of Utah. And you've published a lot when it comes to textbooks and articles and things like that. But what led you to what you're doing today with this wild health service?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Sure. Yeah. So you're right. So I went to kind of traditional medicine route at first, and it was around six years ago. I was working at an academic center. I was teaching med students and residents and writing and publishing and doing all that. I started noticing all of the science emerging around genomics and personalized medicine. And it looked to me like for the first time that we could really personalize almost everything down to the level of someone's DNA. Like we've known for a while that you can look and see what medications will or won't work, what someone's likely to have side effects from. But it looked like you could even personalize diet, exercise, sleep, supplements, all of these other things. I kind of started diving into that, went down a rabbit hole when it comes to that. My co-founder at Wild Health, Mike Malin, he's also a physician. We sequenced our DNA. We started looking into it. And around that time, he had a difficult medical issue. He found out that his lipids were through the roof, like a really dangerous level, like cause a heart attack level. So he saw his doctor. His doctor told him to do a specific diet that works for most people, but Mike's not most people. He's Mike, and he got worse on this diet. So his doctor then wanted to put him on a statin, which is fine. It helps most people. But Mike had a bunch of side effects for him. I had muscle breakdown, myopathy. And when we looked at his genetics, we saw that, oh, wow, it looks like his genetics needs to be on almost the exact opposite diet of what his doctor had put him on. And he had a very specific gene variation that made him almost guaranteed to get that muscle breakdown of myopathy. And we were kind of angry at first, but then we just realized, well, medicine is always 15 to 20 years behind. And while the science is out there, no one is doing this. And we couldn't really tolerate that. We left our universities. We started doing it for friends and family, and just started having really remarkable results when we started personalizing people's treatment and recommendations to their DNA.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I love this so much. And like I said, I was reading my report last night and it was, I guess, validating. It was nice to read some of the different sections and just see how much it aligned with me personally. So for example, in the sleep analysis, it was telling me that I have a genetic tendency to be a night owl, which is so true. In the food sections, it was telling me that I might have increased gluten and wheat sensitivity. Oh, in the mental section, there was one about how I tend to be dopamine driven, which is literally what I say about myself all the time that I feel like I keep a lot of dopamine around in my brain. So, okay, I have so many questions here. So these genetic tendencies that we have, how do you approach, because you just mentioned that, you looked at his data and you realized that he wasn't on the appropriate diet and all of these things. It mentions on wild health that there are, is it over 70,000 different SNPs? And maybe you can define what a SNP is. How do you decide which ones to look at? How to interpret them? And also, how do we know it's accurate? Because I noticed, for example, in the section that talks about your APOE, or was it the APOB? One of them, it was saying that it's actually, I think it's probably the APOE, one, that it's hard with accuracy to actually test that. So how do we know that what we're testing is accurate? How do you know what to test? And how do you know how to interpret it? Lots of questions.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, no great questions. And yeah, it's about 700,000 specific SNPs that we test, and a SNP is a single nucleotide polymorphism. So it just means that it's a slight variation, and it just puts you at increased or decreased risk for something. So APOE is a good example of one of those. So if you have an APOE4 gene, then you're about 200 to 300% more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. And if you have two of those, if you have an APOE4, you're about 11 times more likely. So someone is at more risk. Now, your DNA is not your destiny. We've heard this term DNA is destiny. It's not. It's only about 20% of your health outcome. And that APOE4 is a great example of that. So one of the first patients that we saw was my mother. My grandmother had passed away of dementia of this disease, and I was worried that my mother would have this gene, and sure enough, she did. But what I told her at the time is I said, mom, this is good news, because we know about this now, and we know what to do about it. And when we put her on the program, personalizing her diet, her sleep, her exercise, in three months, she lost 40 pounds, reversed her insulin resistance, told me she felt 20 years younger, and I think that we will prevent, or at least delay by 10 to 20 years, her getting that disease. So we find these differences in our genes, and we do something about them. You ask about diet. So another example of that is actually, I told about Mike and his diet. One of this was kind of an aha moment for both of us when we look at our genes. It looked like when we looked at our genes that he and I needed to be on pretty much the opposite diets. So he had all of these sensitivities to saturated fats, where I had none of those. And I had all these sensitivities to carbohydrates. And so it looked like I almost would do really well on a ketogenic animal-heavy diet, and he would do well on almost a vegan diet. And so we tested this. We would eat the exact same thing for two weeks, do the same workouts, draw our blood. And we were eating his diet. He destroyed me in the workouts. It was much better. His lab looked great. He felt great. When we switched to my diet, I would beat him in the same workouts. I felt great. He felt horrible. His labs were bad. Mine were good. And we're like, wow, this is why it's like religious wars when people talk about diet, like people they're keto or they're vegetarian or vegan or omnivore or carnivore or Mediterranean. It's because people find the perfect diet for themselves, and they assume it's perfect for everybody else. But we're not like that. We're very bio-individual, and personalizing all of these things makes a big difference in how we feel and perform and the diseases that we get.

Melanie Avalon

It's so interesting and I think it is so relevant to so many listeners on this show because we get so many questions about people having that very debate that you just talked about. Do I do lower carb? Do I do lower fat? I think it can be really confusing and of course you can do trial and error and try it yourself but having this lens of looking at through your DNA can just be so, so helpful. And what I found really interesting is cause I really gravitate towards an animal based diet. A lot of my genetic SNPs really did seem to line up with that. So for example, I saw that I have difficulty converting a lot of the plant based sources of vitamins into their usable form in my body and so I would benefit from having an animal based diet there with those different nutrients. How do you handle potentially conflicting genetic information that may pop up? So for example, my general recommendations in my report were that I tolerate saturated fat well, that I tend to tolerate carbs like okay, like in the middle. In general I was getting like low carb recommendations but then also at the same time some of the SNPs indicated that I'd be better on a high carb low fat approach. So how do you handle that when people have SNPs that seem to be conflicting?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah. So you said something important earlier. I want to go back to you said, it seems like a lot of people are trying to do this. And I think it's important to use that word, because one of the things we realized very early is it's not easy. Like, this is very complex. So, I mean, we, we've spent over $50 million on the platform to do this. And so it we use, we built this on an AI platform that takes into account, not just all your genetics, but also the blood work and a lot of other information as well. So like, you'll get kind of the general recommendations that will pop up and populate in there based on all the different SNPs. But then we also, the last step is actually running this through a physician and a health coach filter as well. That's where we give the final recommendation to kind of edit things. And but what the AI engine does is it kind of pulls together all the different stuff to make specific recommendations. I mentioned earlier, I'll give you a good example from food. With food, we don't really actually usually talk in terms of the big macro diets, the big macro categories, like vegan, omnivore, keto, things like that. We talk in specific foods, like what are potentially super foods versus kryptonite foods. So like for my mother, a couple of the steps that you mentioned, so there's a fads too, that means she needs more of the active form of omega three from animals. She also has a collagen 5A1 snip, which means she needs more collagen protein and a VDR snip, meaning she probably needs more vitamin D, a BCMO, meaning she needs more vitamin A. So when you put those together, the algorithm said, okay, for you, the world's perfect food looks like it's probably a sardine. It has a really clean source of omega three. It has a collagen protein in the skin and the bones. It has vitamin A and vitamin D in the organs because it's a whole animal. And so it kind of put all of that together. And then for kryptonite foods, you mentioned you had some sensitivities to wheat and gluten. She had that as well. So that's an SH2B3 gene, but she also had an MCM6. So it meant dairy is inflammatory for her. So identifying kind of the super foods and kryptonite foods, we think is a better way to go about talking about food than kind of the bigger categories itself. But at the same time, if you're seeing the doctor and the health coach and you're talking through some of these things now for you, if it looks like, well, you have some genes that mean you need more, that you'll be fine with, with fats and animal, animal fats and some where you need more complex carbohydrates. Well, then we're going to look at your lab tests. So for example, if your ApoB, your kind of most atherogenic cholesterol particle is through the roof, that may give us a little bit of pause on the animal proteins. But if your hemoglobin A1c is really high and you have a lot of insulin sensitivity, that may give us some pause towards the carbohydrates. So we would tailor the recommendations based not just on the genetics, but the lab tests as well.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

And then what also are your goals around activity and exercise and things like that. So it's a complex picture that we use the AI engine to make most of the recommendations. And then we add on the kind of doctor and health coach, their kind of final look and talking to the patient as well.

Melanie Avalon

I love that so much. Yeah, because I think, well, first of all, I want to say you did a really good job with the report of having it be very comprehensive. Like there's so much information, but also it is very approachable. It's very readable. So I really appreciate that aspect. And I really liked that. So basically AI can, you know, analyze and generate all of these findings, but then having that conversation with a real human being who can walk you through it. And, and that's what I remember when I met with my health coach, she was very knowledgeable and helpful in saying like, this is what this actually means. Like she was saying, like, you know, I know there's like a lot of data here, but here's what we're actually looking at. And then like you just said, when we actually look at your blood work, what do we see and what changes should we make? And I actually made a very practical, implementable change immediately after having this conversation. And that was that, cause I'm looking right now at my, like the summary at the very end. And it looks at like your lipids, your methylation, your vitamins and micronutrients, your hormones, your inflammation and your insulin resistance slash, slash metabolism. The one category that's like all red is my methylation category, which I have known. I've, I've known, I, I struggled with that in the past, but it was nice because talking to her, she was like, okay, like what, you know, what you need to do is you really need to be on a methyl folate supplement here. It's also interesting because, you know, based on the whole context of that, which it talks about in the report, apparently there are different ways that you could go about addressing it based on the whole comprehensive picture. But what she was saying with me was to get on that and now, and I've been on that and I've seen a big difference. So, so thank you. That was like a very like practical change that I made.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

And I'll make one point about that, about the provider and things, too. This is called precision medicine. I like to remind people it's precision medicine, not perfect medicine. So our recommendations as a physician or a health coach or a provider is only as good as the amount of data we have. So the fact that we have an incredible amount of data about your genes, all the biomarkers, scientific data, all of this, means we're going to be able to give much better recommendations, but we still need to follow that over time and make sure that what we're recommending is actually working. So I think the relationship part of this is really important, too, having that relationship with a physician health coach that can interpret, like you were mentioning. And like things I mentioned earlier, like from my mother, they identified that sardines was the world's perfect food. Well, the perfect food and perfect diet for you is the one that you're going to be able to follow as well. If she had said, that's disgusting, I'm not going to eat sardines, well, then we would have just found other ways to kind of plug those holes and give her that extra support that she needs. So it is definitely, the AI platform is very powerful, but having that human with it and following someone over time, because humans are complex, is a very important part of the process.

Melanie Avalon

with the evolution of AI, is it continuously updated? And do you ever have to retest your genes ever, or is that technology pretty much done like you've done the testing, and now AI can just adapt to interpreting it?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah. So you would not have to retest your genetics. The AI itself, though, is getting better and is making the recommendations better and better over time. So when I say AI, though, I specifically think about two different things. So to be able to build all these recommendations, we need machine learning. A human's brain isn't, it's not the right tool to look at a million different variables and make recommendations. So you need machine learning for that. So that's what the platform is built on initially. However, the other thing that I mean when I say AI is large language models. So this has been a real game changer. So we took all of our, all of our IP, all the recommendation engine and all of that and put it on a large language model so that we could interact with it better. So for example, I have this app that we built on my phone, and I can actually interact with it. I can ask like I was giving a talk at an event in DC a few months ago, and I said to it, I said, Hey, I'm giving a talk. I'm in DC. I'm saying it's the Omni in DC. What should I have for lunch? And it gave me a specific meal at a restaurant point one miles away. That was based on it knows my genetics and I was on my lab work and who I slept that night, it knew that I lifted weights and went for a run that day, gave me the perfect meal at the perfect time there. So really cool stuff. And it can also it just pushes information like a few months ago, I got a notification from the LLM has all the status said, Hey, you are about you're overtraining, you're gonna get injured or sick. So I chatted back with it and said, Well, how do you know that? And it showed me all my HRV data, my resting heart rate trends, and I thought, Oh, yeah, I've been traveling and working out just as hard not sleeping. Well, historically, I would have just pushed through that and gotten sick or injured. But I saw this and then I said, Well, give me a program to recover over the next two weeks. And it knows my goals. At the time I was training to climb this mountain in Ecuador, and trying to improve my pickleball game. Those are my only only two goals. So it gave me recommendations personalized to me for those goals and to recover and follow that. So the LLMs are a real game changer and being able to interact with your with your data. Now that app itself, unfortunately, is not on the market. It actually was so good, we ended up taking it down because we were worried from a regulatory standpoint, it'd be seen as a practicing medicine. But we built it into our product where now, if you ask a question of your doctor and health coach, the LLM intercepts it, it gives them a suggested response because it knows everything about you. And the doctor hasn't memorized your 700,000 genes probably. And then the provider can kind of modify it or just use it or reject it and give a new answer. But we found when we first implemented that, the providers only use it about 20% of the time. But now it's over 90% of the time because the answers are phenomenal. Like they're just really good, much better than a than a regular person would give an answer.

Melanie Avalon

Do you think AI will ever completely take the place of humans?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, great question. So there's a couple different ways to think about that. Like if you asked me the question, is AI better at making medical diagnosis than doctors? There's no question. It's just much better. Like there's lots of data on that. There's also data comparing like Chad GPT to physicians and blinded. Well, because people said, well, okay, it's better making diagnosis, but the people are more empathetic. So then they tested that and when people were blinded chatting with a doctor, Chad GPT, they actually rated Chad GPT more empathetic too.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. I believe that.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

So if you were to tell me your options are a doctor or AI, I take the AI every day, like I just do, and I am a physician. I don't actually think that's the decision though, just like when, let's think about chess. It took a long time before Big Blue, which is an AI machine from IBM, beat the world's best chess player. But the best chess player in the world now isn't a machine or a human, it's this combination. It's kind of a centaur. So what you want is a physician you really trust who stays super up to date and who is using the AI. Like you want the combination of the two is what I think the best medical care is now and in the future.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'm really interested by it. I did an episode recently on AI. The whole book was actually about the future of health care in regards to like technology and AI and stuff. And he was saying that the reason the synergy of humans and AI can surpass just AI is that AI doesn't have the ability to, I guess at least right now, to think outside of its own rule system. And sometimes you need to think outside of... You need to not break the rules, but you need to be able to think outside the box in that regard.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, I go really deep on this, especially the last couple weeks has been a crazy time in AI. And I would say, I don't know if I, I think you actually could train the AI to be much better at humans and we have that thinking out of the box and being creative. So I'm not I'm not sure if that's the separator. Maybe it is. I can give you another example, though, where them working together is really important. We had a patient who was young, like in the early 40s, executive came to us very healthy, no medical problems, just wanted to optimize probably like the 95th percentile already wanted to go to the 99th percentile. So great. We ran all of the stuff. And we got an alert from the AI from the large language model that said, Hey, notice some things like in his genetics and labs and things like this guy needs a deeper dive on cardiovascular health. So I as a physician or clinician, like no one would have said that this guy's perfectly healthy, young, we would have not got a clearly scan, which is an AI guy to CT angiogram for him, we would not have done that for him. It just didn't make sense. And from a textbook, but the AI picked it up. However, then actually having him do that, I don't know if he would have actually gone through the trouble of doing it, because he felt fine if just the AI was telling him, but he trusted us as a clinician. So it was kind of that combination of the AI finding it and then and then him trusting the human. And in fact, he got the scan, we got an emergency call from the radiologist who said he needs to go to the cath lab immediately he had like a 90% lesion and his LED, which is called the widow maker artery. And if he hadn't had this done, he probably would have died of a massive heart attack in the next year or two. And this was an example of the AI and the human either one of them alone, like would have been probably been a little deficient wouldn't have gotten this outcome. And now, I mean, this guy who he had two teenage daughters, and he's going to be with them hopefully for 40 more years instead of one to two years. So that's, that's just the example that pops to my mind when I think about humans and AI kind of working together to really deliver the next level of of medical care.

Melanie Avalon

Wow, yeah, I love that. Do you think there will be any, since AI has this super power to be able to analyze all this data, do you think it will come up with any really surprising findings or change our opinions on what we've historically thought about different medical conditions, treating them, like things like that? Paradigm shifts, basically.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

100%. And that's kind of why other guys, that's kind of why I push back on his thinking outside the box. Because when I look at this, like, AI, and people could argue about this word, I see AI is much more creative than humans already. And I wouldn't even say that a year ago, it's just progressing so quickly. Like, when you watch the emerging things that come out, or its ability to put things together, like creativity is really about pulling together kind of disparate things from different places to come up with new and novel ideas. They're really it's, it's fusing different different areas. And AI is amazing at that. So I yeah, I think AI, it's already in drug discovery, so many other areas, it's making a tremendous difference and really changing the care, we see it all the time and the recommendations that it makes, and the things that it comes up with, it's, it's very creative, and is definitely going to be showing us new ways to deal with things.

Melanie Avalon

Actually to that point, because so last night, so like I said, I did this a while ago, I read my report then last night, I went in and downloaded my report again, when it's generating the report, is it updating it when you go in?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

So, I don't think it is if you don't have new data, and I say I don't think it is because if it was like a year or two ago, then I think you would get a new report because there's been updates. But when you would get a new report is one, if there are updates pushed in the system or two, when you're feeding it more data. So if you had just had a new lab test, for example, then there would be a new report. But if there's no new data, then it would be the same report and recommendations.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, gotcha. One other question there. Oh, so when people are reading their results, when it's talking about these different SNPs, these, you know, genetics that people have, it'll say that you might have an increased or reduced risk of XYZ, you know, whatever condition or thing it's talking about in that section. How should we interpret that word risk? Especially if we don't know what the normal risk is for something. Yeah, how do we know the severity of what this means with this word risk? And is it like absolute or relative? Like, what's going on?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

there? That's a great question, and we could actually try to build that into the report and say it increases your risk by X amount, which means this, so therefore this. That would turn it into hundreds of pages, so that's part of where the human comes in, and that's why it's important to have a doctor and health coach, because if you have a PEMT SNP or some other SNP that says, oh, based on this, you have this increased risk of blood cancers or something like that, that can sound scary, but if you have the physician or the provider who has a context around that, it's like, okay, yeah, that means your risk of blood cancer goes from 0.5% to 0.6%, then that's like a one in a thousand increased risk that you got, so it's not a really big number, or even if it's a 1% for a 2%, that can sound scary, because you think, oh, my risk has doubled. Well, it's doubled from a relative risk standpoint, but still, from going from 1% to 2%, that's a 1% absolute, so it's a 1 in a hundred risk, so it's not really much to be worried about, like the stress from you thinking about that and constantly trying to do something about it is probably worse than having it, so it is important to have someone who can give you that context with these, quote, unquote, risks as well.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, awesome. Yeah, I did notice in the report that it was with one of the cancer related things that it actually gave me a little bit more data more in the language that you're using. And I had a feeling it was because for what the reason you just said, because you want it to be clear, like what it actually means practically. Okay, on the blood side testing side of things, so for listeners, so when you do this program, you get the genetic information, which that was a saliva test, right? The genetics. That's right. And then you also do a blood test and get a lot of biomarkers. How did you decide which biomarkers to include on the blood test and how did you decide the ranges?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

We basically said, okay, in the first assessment of someone, we want a lot. We kind of want as much information as we can reasonably get that doesn't kind of break the bank for them. So it's a large amount of tests initially. On follow-up testing, we try to get more targeted and specific, like what did we find? What are the risks? What are the things that we need to follow? So it's normally smaller tests. So we really picked, I think there's around 50-something biomarkers we start with, and we just think those are the ones that are most impactful. Now, there are others we could add. So if we do the testing and we're talking and we find that someone has elevated inflammatory markers and we just can't figure out exactly why, then we may add a lot more things. We may add some food sensitivity testing or some other toxin testing. If we're talking to someone and it sounds like hormones are an issue, we may do more advanced hormone testing. So the initial set is designed to give us the most bang for our buck, the most information without breaking the bank, and then we get very targeted from there when picking the lab test. And oh, you mentioned reference ranges. Yeah, so there are certainly classic reference ranges, and we'll use those for a lot of the tests, but others we try to use ranges that we consider more optimal for. There's an example, you mentioned methylation status. So homocysteine, I think a standard lab panels, they'll say it's normal if it's under 14. Well, we want you to be kind of under 10. Vitamin D, you may on some lab reports not get a quote unquote deficient number unless you're under 20. We want you definitely to be above 30 and optimally to be around 50 or more. So we do modify some to be more optimal range than just non-diseased.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, one of the personal findings I had, this was really interesting to me because this has been my theory for like a decade. And then getting my information back, I was like, okay, maybe, maybe this is correct, which is that, and this is again, this is showing how you look at the blood and the genetics. I always have high B12, like always, I test high for it. And so I tested high on this one for the blood work as well. But it said in my genetic analysis that I have a SNP which makes it hard for B12 to get into my cells. And so when I was talking with the practitioner to reviewing everything, I was like, oh, could this maybe be why it's always high for me because it's not getting into my cells, it's just like staying in my bloodstream. She agreed with me on that. So I thought that was really, really interesting. Another question, so the biological age test that people take. So what is the role of that? What is the difference between biological age and chronological age?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Sure. Yeah. So, chronologically, it's just pretty easy. That's how many years you've been alive. Most people know that. If you don't, you can look at your driver's license and there it is. The biology age is different. So, first off, age is the number one risk factor for almost every chronic disease. But we all know people who may be 40, but they look and feel and perform like a 30-year-old or a 50-year-old. So, that's more of a biologic age. What is your risk of getting diseases? Morbidity. And what is your risk of dying? Mortality. And traditionally, for years, there's been multiple of these biologic age tests that are out there. Most of them are not good. They're kind of junk. They're not validated. They may just be based on some random algorithm. But are they really telling you what you want to know, which is, am I increasing or decreasing risk of dying? And am I increasing or decreasing risk of getting disease? That's what we really want to know. That's kind of a true biologic age. At Wild Health, we use a company called True Diagnostic for that. Now, True Diagnostic is just to call out a conflict here. I am CEO of True Diagnostic as well. So, we were using True Diagnostic for years before I came in and started working with True Diagnostic. The reason why I like True Diagnostic is because of one specific test they have that I have used for years I really like, which is called the PACE test. So, I don't actually care that much if we get your biologic age back. And let's say you're chronologically 40, but your biologic age tells me you're 36 versus 44. I'm just going to try to optimize you either way. And if it tells me you're 44, biologically, and let's say that we believe that result, well, are you doing everything perfect now and you just had a really rough go of it in your 20s and 30s? Or is it reflecting something that's going on right now? That's unclear to me as well. What I like about the PACE test, this is a test about by Duke, it tells you what is your rate of aging right now. So, it's information right now. And what's great about it is it is very sensitive to change. Meaning, for example, if you get pregnant, that's a physiologic stress and your rate of aging goes up about 20 percent, but then it comes back down to normal when you deliver the baby. Same thing happens if you get COVID, have hip surgery, get a car accident, your rate of aging goes up, but it comes back down when you recover. What this allows me to do as a clinician is to do end-of-one experiments to figure out what is going to reduce your rate of aging. So, Stanford did a great study. Actually, it's not a great study. There are a lot of problems with the study, but the interesting thing about the study was there's this twin study where they move people back and forth between a vegan and an omnivore diet. And then they measured lots of things, but one of the things they measured was this PACE of aging. And they found that in eight weeks, changing your diet, you can have an effect on your rate of aging.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

So, we could change someone's diet and see how it affects the rate of aging. Or if someone says, I want to go to Panama and get IV stem cells. Well, that's expensive. If you're going to invest $40,000, it would be good to have an objective measure of something like rate of aging that we could look at and see if it affects that. Or if you're going to try a wrap of ice in or some other supplement stacks or other things. It's nice to have an integrator of all your health, like rate of aging to follow over time and try to push down as low as possible.

Melanie Avalon

okay, I am loving this part of the conversation so much. I mean, I've been loving the whole thing, but I'm really loving this. And I just pulled up my report as well. So mine was 10.64 years younger was my biological age, which it says puts me in the top 16% of the population. For that pace that you were talking about, mine was 0.67.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

That's that's incredible. Yeah. So the way the pace works is if you get a score of this one point zero, that means you're aging at the normal rate for someone your age and sex. If it's one point two, you're aging 20 percent faster. If it's point eight, you're you're aging 20 percent slower. So point six seven is remarkable. That means you're aging at two thirds normal rates. That means for for over 30 years, you're only going to age 20. You'll be 10 years younger than you should be in 30 years from now. So that is that is definitely one of the lowest ones I've seen. That's really incredible. It just means that you're you're doing a lot of things right. Like you're killing it. That's a really impressive pace score.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, wow. Okay. I'm really excited. And you said this was based on.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, this is developed by Duke. They have a really large cohort called the Dunedin cohort is a large group of people out of New Zealand that were followed for decades. And they followed them and watched how they aged, what diseases they got and things. And then they drew longitudinal blood samples over time. And then from that, they could derive and figure out what is your pace of aging based on different epigenetic markers. So this is epigenetics. So we sequence someone's DNA once, that's your genetics, that never changes. But I mentioned earlier, genetics is 20% of your health outcome. The other 80% are epigenetics, what you do, what you eat, your stress levels, how you sleep. And so you're doing all of that right, it seems like. And so the way we measure this pace is we look at gene expression, epigenetics. So it looks at about a million gene sites and tells how much each one is turned up or turned down, how much you're expressing those good or bad genes. And you turn them up and down by changing different lifestyle factors. And so from that, then they can derive what is your pace of aging. So that's how it is from that Duke study specifically, but that's a remarkable pace, that's great.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. And for listeners, when you get your report, it breaks it down into all these different organ systems, so 11 different systems, and it shows you are you aging, you know, slower or the same or faster in each one. So it's like heart, inflammation, metabolic brain, musculoskeletal, kidneys, liver, lungs, blood, immune hormones.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, and to be specific not only about that, so technically on the report, the trade report, you're going to get three different clocks. So Harvard developed a clock on the Olmec M.H. And that is probably the one where you said you're 10 years younger. That's the best predictor of kind of mortality, like your risk of dying. So you have a much lower risk of dying than someone your age. The other one you mentioned with the Oregon systems, that's from Yale. So Yale developed that one. It's called the symphony age. That's right. And because we age in a heterogeneous manner, like if someone drinks odd alcohol, their liver is going to age more quickly. If they're smoking, their lungs are going to age more quickly. So that's a nice one to figure out kind of maybe what is your weakest link. And then the pace one is from Duke. So three very different epigenetic clocks there.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, and so they should in theory align or do they often not?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Well, they're giving you different information. So, yours are pretty aligned. Like, you're only getting ages 10 years younger and your pace is 0.67. Both of those are remarkable. I don't see your symphony age, but most of your organ systems are probably going to be lower as well. Maybe not all of them. So, they do line up in general, but they're measuring three different things. So, they're really telling you different information. And I will say for any of your listeners that do this, like, don't be disappointed when your results aren't like Melanie's. That's a phenomenal result you've got.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, wow. Yeah, for the symphony, they're all aging slowly except for immune and hormones. Very interesting.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

And things change over time too, so it could be that when you repeat the test, there could just be a certain reason at that time that those may be a little off as well.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, this is so interesting to me. Two quick questions. One, because you're mentioning this, well, first of all, I love this idea about how one of them, like the pace is looking at like your pace of aging. That is so, so cool. Practically, it seems like a person could be aging slower. And then like you were saying, that means when you live chronologically this amount of time, but you're only going to quote age this other amount of time. And at the same time, it seems like there's a limit to how long we can live. Basically, my question is, do people age at different rates, but then is there still like this final timeline that once you hit it, you hit it?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

What I'll say to you is, so far, no one has ever not died necessarily that we have on record. That we're aware of. Yeah, so where is that limit? People argue over that all the time, like, is there an intrinsic limit? Is it 120? Like, where is it? I don't know. And as science progresses, like, we're going to get better and better. People are living longer and longer. But yes, it's really about slowing the rate of aging. And the other thing about the slowing rate of aging, it's not just about living longer. You're just going to feel better and perform better. So it's not even like how much time we're adding to your life by slowing the rate of aging. But I mean, when you're 60, it'd be great if you feel and perform like you're 50 or 40. And when you're 80, like, you feel like you're 60. So it's really about optimizing your health now and how you feel later, too, is that the rate of aging, that's the big thing. Because most of us don't actually die of old age. We die of cardiovascular disease, dementia, cancer. These are the big killers. So while health, we're trying to slow down your rate of aging and optimize and make you feel as good as we can now. But we're also really aggressively screening for and trying to prevent those big things as well at the same time, because that's really what's going to lead to a shorter life for most of us.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I have sort of a nuanced question. I hope I can articulate it. Let's say a person gets a test, like does this test, does the true diagnostics and gets all this aging information. So they have the potential to make lifestyle changes that will change the epigenetics. And if they are to retest, you know, in the future, hopefully they would see a beneficial change in that they're now aging slower based on these lifestyle changes that change their epigenetics. Is aging itself still a factor going against us? And what I mean by that is, even if they make these beneficial changes, if they test a year from now, does that year of aging, is that always going to be kind of a negative in affecting their rate of aging?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

If someone, if two people, let's say two people are doing the exact same things, they have the same genetics and everything else, if one of them is chronologically a year older, they're just going to have higher risk factors. So, it just is a risk factor in and of itself. Now, I think you were kind of asking the question like could maybe, and you tell me if this is a question, what was the question maybe like can you like reverse your biologic age and kind of be younger over time as well? Was that the kind of

Melanie Avalon

Okay, I think this is the reason I thought about it, because I was like, okay, I feel good about my results right now, so if I retest in a year and I haven't changed anything, but I've aged a year, is that going to slightly make my results not as good?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Right, so if you're not changing anything, you test in a year, you're in the same position, your rate of aging should, so what would most likely happen is your rate of aging.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, does aging affect the rate of aging?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah no it doesn't so okay now i got you yeah so your rate of aging if you're not doing anything anymore in poorly or any better should stay the same so the rate of should change so what you see for example you have that call your rate aging is say point six seven. And then in the three years you retest your rating still point six seven but your biologic age the one where you got a number that probably is only gonna go by two years instead of the three years. So that's that's the what you can see from that.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, gotcha. I've had David Sinclair on the show a few times and he has, you know, he came out with a book and his whole hypothesis was aging is a disease. Do you think aging is a disease?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

So, I think it's semantics, and what I mean by that is if we want to get, like, funding from NIH and places like that, it makes sense to call aging a disease. At the same time, aging is unnatural. Everyone ages, so is that does everyone have a disease here? So it really kind of depends on what you're trying to do with the word, like does it lose its meaning if you say aging? Now I've heard some people, like the argument, which is an interesting one, that disease, to kind of flip this around, disease is just aging of certain organs. So it's another way to look at it. When we have dementia, that's just aging of the brain in an accelerated fashion, or cardiovascular disease, aging of the heart. So is aging a disease? I think, honestly, the answer to that is it's a semantic question, and it's around words. If it's helpful for us to think of it as a disease so that we actually get more funding to treat it, then that's great. Because if we were to able to spend money on reducing the rate of aging of people, that would be way more effective than all the research that's going into individual diseases because aging is the number one risk factor for pretty much every chronic disease.

Melanie Avalon

That's pretty much the argument or the thoughts I subscribe to as well. Okay. I could ask you a million more questions, but I will stop myself. So listeners, I think you can see just how incredible this wild health platform is. So to recap, when you do this, you get all of this. So you get that genetic test where you're getting your risks for health based on your genetic DNA, you're getting that blood work, so a picture of what's happening right now and looking at it through these idealized ranges. And then also this biological age test where you're looking at epigenetics and looking at your rate of aging and things like that. And you get to work with a practitioner to help make sense of everything. But it's really an incredible platform. I'm so, so excited about it. Yeah, when listeners sign up and do this, how often do you recommend they do retesting? What will it look like practically for listeners to do this service?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, so what happens if someone signs up, they get DNA tests comes to their house, the blood work is just we just put an order in and you get that done. A lot of the testing is done at your house where we arrange it. You have the meeting with a physician health coach and then kind of the cadence from there, the retesting depends on what's going on and what we find. Sometimes we may repeat testing pretty quickly based on what we see or sometimes maybe it's not until another three or six months. It kind of depends on what we identify are the main issues and what we want to work on. Some things take a while to change, other things change pretty quickly. So after the initial all the testing and the meetings with the providers, it's a pretty individualized and personalized program from there just based on what you need.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Awesome. So friends, listeners, I really cannot recommend this enough and we have an awesome offer for you guys. So thank you so much for that. You can get 20% off a wild health membership when you use the code Melanie Avalon and that will be at wildhealth.com slash Melanie Avalon. So definitely check that out. This is, this has been so amazing. What are you most excited about with the future of all of this?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Yeah, it's very clear to me. It's epigenetics. So, the pace of aging and all that, that comes from epigenetics, but there's so much more we can do. There's a true diagnostic. We just did this big study with Harvard where we found that we could actually predict and report on hundreds, if not thousands, of biomarkers just with an epigenetic test. So, you get so much data at much lower cost. So, there's a new product called TrueHealth that True Diagnostic has reported on about 130 biomarkers with the same just few drops of blood that the TrueAge test uses as well. So, in the future, in the next few years, we'll be able to give tens of thousands of dollars worth of data and biomarkers for hundreds of dollars. So, just the amount of data that we have to optimize our self-worth and to prevent disease and predict diseases is going up exponentially.

Melanie Avalon

Amazing. How often do you take your blood work?

Dr. Matthew Dawson

I go overboard with it. I'm probably once a month testing, but I'm always doing different experiments and I want the data. So I'm testing a lot. I don't really recommend that often to anybody else. It's a lot.

Melanie Avalon

That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Dawson. This has been incredible. Again, listeners go to wildhealth.com slash Melanie Avalon, use the coupon code Melanie Avalon to get 20% off. Yeah, this has been so incredible and exciting. Thank you so much for all you're doing. It's changing so many lives. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Matthew Dawson

Thank you, Millie. It was a lot of fun. You asked great questions, so thanks so much for having me on.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Please remember everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week.

Mar 03

Episode 411 – The Great Oyster Debate, Calorie Restriction Vs. IF Vs. Keto Vs. Mediterranean Diet For Longevity, Resistance Training And Fasting, Protein Intake, Fasting With Kidney Disease, Men Vs. Women Fat Burning, And More!

#272 - Laura Morris & Jennifer Ventrelle, MS, RDN | The Official Mind Diet

Welcome to Episode 411 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

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Featured Restaurant: Antoine's Restaurant

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Mentioned Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episodes:

#136 - Dr. Steven Gundry | Gut Check

#135 - Cynthia Thurlow

#255 - Dr. Mindy Pelz

#286 - Dr. Amani Ballour | The Cave Documentary

STUDIES

Molecular Mechanisms of Healthy Aging: The Role of Caloric Restriction, Intermittent Fasting, Mediterranean Diet, and Ketogenic Diet—A Scoping Review

Safety of fasting in diabetic and non-diabetic patients with stable chronic kidney disease during Ramadan

Effects of Ramadan fasting on moderate to severe chronic kidney disease

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 411 of the intermittent fasting podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of Avalon X and author of What, When, Wine, Lose Weight and Feel Great with Paleo Style Meals, intermittent fasting and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer, songwriter, and creator and host of banter with BC. For more on us, check out melanieavalon.com and barryconradofficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iphpodcast.com or by going to iphpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine. If it's that time and get ready for the intermittent fasting podcast. Hi everybody and welcome. This is episode number 411, 411 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon. I'm here with Barry Conrad. Barry, how are you today?

Barry Conrad

Hey, Mel, how's it going? I'm doing really, really, really good today. I have had a really productive day so far. Sydney is looking, it's showing up and showing out beautiful weather. Feeling great. How are you doing?

Melanie Avalon

I am doing swell, also beautiful weather. It's snowing, although this is coming out in March, although does it still snow in March sometimes?

Barry Conrad

Maybe some parts of America.

Melanie Avalon

That works. Well, conversation that we must have, I'm going to re-ask you it, even though you know what it is, and I know your answer, but we must discuss this because this is mind-blowing to me. So did you know you didn't know, but you know now, because I already told you, telling you again, did you know, and listeners, that snow doesn't just form, like the raindrops do not just become snowflakes, they have to have a nucleus, which is particulate matter and dust and stuff in the air. So every little snowflake has a piece of physical something at the center of it, and snow cannot form without this. It can in a loud situation, but not in the real world. Did you know this?

Barry Conrad

I did not know this at all. I just thought it was basically, you know, water freezing in the air and falling to the ground. That's why I've eaten the snow. It's like, oh, this is just frozen water.

Melanie Avalon

I feel like we were taught how snow forms a lot in school, and nobody ever mentioned a nucleus.

Barry Conrad

What does that mean? What does for listeners and for me? What does that mean? Like a nucleus, like a piece of, like a speck of dust?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so there's some, like some sort of particle in the air. I mean, a lot, they're like microscopic particles, but it forms around that. If not, there is no snow. It would just be really cold rain.

Barry Conrad

Well, I'm glad. I thank the universe or whoever's out there for that nuclear nuclei. How do you say it? Nuclear?

Melanie Avalon

I guess for the nuclei, if multiple.

Barry Conrad

Because we love snow and i'm glad that we have it so but i didn't know that didn't know that metal until today so false advertising what we learned in the school it's not what happens.

Melanie Avalon

I know. And now I look at the snow and I'm like, so is it dirty? It's like, I'm like stressed about this. And it means it's not like there's snow and then some cold rain. It's only snow. That means there's so many little particles in the air everywhere.

Barry Conrad

So does that mean you can, are you grossed out now by snow rather than loving it because of that new information?

Melanie Avalon

not grossed out, I just feel like I feel like somebody lifted the curtain, like the illusion is gone.

Barry Conrad

Smoke and mirrors, the veil is fallen on how snow is made.

Melanie Avalon

I know. So here we are. Here we are. What's new in your life?

Barry Conrad

You'll love this, Mel. I'm actually preparing for a show called Disco Wonderland, and it's basically I'll be hosting and performing at this event. It's with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, but disco music. So think high energy, sophisticated, classy, awesome fun. We have people like Pauline, who's one of Australia's best female voices. We have Tim Lucy Mondo, who I did beautiful, the Carole King musical with. And we have, you'll like this one, Nick Afoa, who played Simba in The Lion King. So we're all taking the stage. It's going to be- Wait, wait, wait. In the original Lion King? The stage production, the musical.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, he played it like in the, in which version, in Australia.

Barry Conrad

Australia and New Zealand, yeah. And Singapore, yeah. It's going to be lit. It's going to be an amazing couple of nights next. Well, this is going to be in the past now, but it's happening next week, Friday and Saturday. I'm so excited. And also I get to like, you know, dress up, which you'd appreciate as well. If you were here, do you want to come? Do you want to fly?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, thank you. You should come. I would love that.

Barry Conrad

It's right up here, Ellie.

Melanie Avalon

it's disco. So is it going to be like people dancing like a disco party?

Barry Conrad

So yeah, so it's at this place called the Horden Pavilion, which is like one of the most popular venues here in Sydney. And yeah, people will be on their feet dancing. It's a ticketed event. It's gonna go off. I can't wait. I'm so excited. And you're singing? I'm gonna be hosting and also taking the stage, also singing. So I'm kind of holding the night together slash storytelling because it's like a narrative all the way through it. And then also singing.

Melanie Avalon

That's so cool. Oh my goodness, please post all the things.

Barry Conrad

I'm going to post everything, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

feel like I was there. That's amazing. Congrats. That's awesome.

Barry Conrad

Thanks. I'm so excited. Awesome. What about you? Fill me in on all things Melanie.

Melanie Avalon

Well, I had a moment this week this was a moment. I interviewed you might have seen it on Instagram, but Dr. Amani Bellore have I brought her up yet?

Barry Conrad

I don't think so.

Melanie Avalon

So, she was in a 2019 Oscar-nominated documentary called The Cave, and this woman, I have never been so in awe of a human on my show and really nervous, I was so nervous to interview her. So, she was the first woman to lead an underground secret hospital called The Cave in Syria, all during the Syrian Civil War. So, like, so her memoir came out, that's why she was on the show. Her memoir came out like a year ago. I immediately, when I got the pitch, I immediately recognized her from that. I didn't see that documentary when it came out, but I recognized it. So, I read her memoir, I watched the movie, and it was just so, it was so haunting. It made me realize how naive I am to everything that goes on in the world, because basically, she was leading this hospital, and there's shellings, and they're getting attacked all the time, and they're always dealing with war victims, and they're running out of supplies, and she's dealing with patriarchal society where people don't want her to be in charge, and it was so haunting. And then, she's had multiple humanitarian awards, and she's spoken to the United Nations, and it was just crazy. And then what's even crazier is because I booked her like a year ago, she had stopped doing interviews, actually. So, and then we did our interview, and in December is when Assad fled in Syria, and so there was the revolution and everything. So, this was her first interview that she's done since that happened in December of 2024. So, she said, I asked her, because I asked her, what is it like to have these conversations, and is it hard to think about, and are you sad? And she said that the conversation she was having with me was the first time she's had a happy interview, because it was the first one she has done since that happened in December. It was a moment. And then the second moment is, I normally record on what we're recording on right now, which is a podcast recording platform, but we were having some technology issues, so I decided to record it on Zoom. Have you ever recorded something on Zoom?

Barry Conrad

I have.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so I was so nervous because we had the interview and I was like, this is one of my most cherished conversations I've ever had in my entire life type thing, you know? And so I was so nervous about losing it that I wasn't closing out the window, like the zoom window because I was like, I can't close it until I have the file. Because what if, you know, so I'm like, I'm not going to close this window, I'm just going to go find the file and then I couldn't find the file because you have to close the window to have the file. So I literally spent like a panicked 30 minutes thinking I lost it, like trying to find it. And then finally I realized, oh, you have to close the window. And then it popped up like right away. And then Barry, I started sobbing, not crying, sobbing. I was so happy.

Barry Conrad

It's like I just picture the-

Melanie Avalon

So yeah, that's my life.

Barry Conrad

It sounds like a really special experience, to say the least, right?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but I don't know about you. I just feel like I need to open my eyes a little bit more to the world, what's going on. Like in general.

Barry Conrad

I can relate, you know, with that as well. I mean, there's just so much happening at any one time, but you still feel so sheltered sometimes, you know, and just caught up in your own bubble of your own reality, really speaking for myself.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I don't watch the news.

Barry Conrad

You don't?

Melanie Avalon

No, I'm gonna keep doing that. I'm gonna keep not watching it even with this experience, but I Just figure if something is bad enough that I need to know about For like my immediate surrounding like I will find out Like people will tell me or all like the zombies will show up at my door Like I just don't want to get overstressed just watching the news all the time because it tends to be like sensationalized and doom and

Barry Conrad

I was about to say the same thing. It really can be sensationalized and there's people that I know who are just so deep in it. Like every update, every, it's just like, and it consumes just the way they live their life and like in fear and anxiety and stress is like, well, I don't really have capacity for that. So I'm not going to do that.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. And then there, though, there's the tension where, you know, I feel like I should have known more about the serious situation. I basically learned all of it reading her book and watching the documentary. I didn't even, I didn't know about it that really. So maybe the solution is to like seek out conscious like content like that, where you're seeking out conscious, you know, explorations of topics.

Barry Conrad

And just being intentional about it, right?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, exactly. Well, shall we jump into some fasting-related things?

Barry Conrad

I think we should jump all the way and let's do it.

Melanie Avalon

All right. So Barry and I are excited because this is going to be the first episode of a new format we're trying. So basically each episode, one of us is going to start with a study that we found related to intermittent fasting. I guess it probably, I should always like in some way relate to intermittent fasting, but it could be a little bit tangential. And then we're going to do listener Q&A. And then at the end, we will break our fast, except sort of in our minds.

Barry Conrad

I'm gonna maybe have a drink it. We'll see how we go

Melanie Avalon

Oh, okay. That's where we're going to profile the restaurants like we've been doing because we love food. So we love feasting. So to start things off, the study I found, this study is called Molecular Mechanisms of Healthy Aging, the Role of Chloric Restriction, Intermittent Fasting, Mediterranean Diet, and Ketogenic Diet, a Scoping Review. It was published in Nutrients in 2024. The reason I was drawn to the study is it's looking at anti-aging mechanisms for longevity, which is obviously a passion of mine. And it specifically goes through those four things I just mentioned. So calorie restriction, intermittent fasting, Mediterranean diet, and the keto diet to compare how they affect aging and why in a way. Like why is each one having these beneficial effects compared to the other, which I really like because we talk about, we definitely talk about calorie restriction, IF, and the keto diet all the time. And I'm really interested in the Mediterranean diet as well. In general, so the overlap seems to be that they affect the mTOR, AMPK pathways, which we've talked about on the show as well. So mTOR is basically a signaling pathway involved in growth. And AMPK is kind of like the opposite. It's activated during fasting, calorie restriction, and these things we'll talk about it. But it's like self-preservation of the body and it actually is supportive of longevity. So let me go through the four different ones. So calorie restriction, they talked about it and they said, and this is pretty well known, but it is the most effective non-genetic intervention known to date for extending both lifespan and health span, which is something to think about. People say that, I mean, I read that all the time from all different places. And I wonder if that will ever change. I wonder if fasting or some other protocol will ever come out that shows to be more effective. But as of right now, calorie restriction is the most effective. Did you know that?

Barry Conrad

I actually didn't know that but yeah, I'm curious. I'd like to hear the others because this is this is super interesting

Melanie Avalon

They go through examples of studies that show that the reason that calorie restriction seems to be so powerful or potent for longevity is, well, it has a lot of just health effects in general, like weight loss, reducing inflammation, improving cardiovascular health, and then like literally slowing biological aging. But again, it's primarily through how it's affecting that mTOR pathway. So again, that mTOR pathway is like the growth signal mode. And while it's really great and really important, like you need it to build muscle, you need it to grow, you need it to do all those things. Also, if it's over activated, it's aging because then you're always in growth mode. And so calorie restriction reduces its activity. And one of the ways that it might do that is by reducing protein intake. And there's one amino acid and protein called leucine. And it is really, really, it's a really powerful stimulator of that mTOR growth pathway. So by reducing protein with calorie restriction, and in particular leucine, you're reducing that mTOR pathway, and you're encouraging helpful aging. And then on top of that, calorie restriction also reduces insulin, which we talk about a lot in this show, and IGF-1. So insulin is the hormone responsible for fat storage and putting energy into your cells. And it can be aging when you have too much of it all the time, and it stimulates mTOR. And then IGF-1 is also a growth signaler. So calorie restriction reduces both of those. And then not only does it reduce mTOR, but I was mentioning that AMPK, which is the flip side of things, calorie restriction actually activates it. Because like I was saying before, AMPK is activated during things like fasting. It happens when you have a low energy state. So calorie restriction is like literally just a low energy state. So it instigates AMPK. So that's like the summary of calorie restriction and why it's probably anti-aging. I can go into the next ones, but do you have any thoughts?

Barry Conrad

Is this sort of a margin of what that deficit is, what defines calorie restriction, or is it really case by case per person?

Melanie Avalon

I mean. That is such a great question. They just define it as a sustained reduction in overall caloric intake while assuring adequate nutrition. It's kind of, okay, so the studies they looked at, the ones they looked at, for example, they look at one study, a two-year intervention in 218 healthy weight or non-obese individuals, and that was 25% calorie restriction, a follow-up study, this follow-up study would have been the same sample size. So they're saying they're like 25%. I know the calorie restriction society, which is actually a thing, I think they do like 30% restriction, kind of existing in that sphere.

Barry Conrad

Right. So beneath your maintenance calories, you're resting, you know? Yeah. Okay. 30% of that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, 25, 30% or so.

Barry Conrad

And I wonder as well how many days or what frequency people need to do that for this to be effective. Do you know what I mean? Like, is it one day a week? Is it for, you know, every other day? Yeah, that's an interesting question as well. Like, how often do you need to do that?

Melanie Avalon

So like, for example, that, that one intervention I talked about a second ago, that was two years straight. Two years straight. So that was actually the calorie trial, which is probably the most famous of calorie restriction studies besides the Minnesota starvation experiment. And so it was two years, which is a long time. I mean, I don't think like just one day, you know, it's Yeah, so then there is intermittent fasting, represent. And what's interesting about IEF, so it also has a lot of beneficial effects all over. So body composition, cardiovascular health, cholesterol, hormonal health, it's similar to calorie restriction, and that it's affecting those pathways by, you know, reduced energy intake. But they say that it potentially has additional benefits or different impacts compared to calorie restriction. And that's mainly because you get this feasting period where you get high nutrition. And so there's a few different benefits to that one getting the nutrition, but be that like fast fee cycle is actually a cellular stress response mechanism. And fasting supports that more than calorie restriction. So it can help build resilience in the body, possibly more than calorie restriction by going back and forth. They were saying that IEF fasting's effect on insulin may be better because of the fasting feasting period. And then fasting also can do things like upregulate heat shock proteins, and sirtuins, which are also signaling mechanisms in the body which can support longevity. Yeah, so basically, it's pretty similar to calorie restriction in some ways, but it also has other benefits because of that, that cycling nature and that period of time where you're not calorie restricted.

Barry Conrad

I think it's super interesting that it's saying that it builds more resilience on the body than calorie restriction alone, right, intermittent fasting.

Melanie Avalon

that, yeah, basically it can be better for the, it says it can, may also enhance cellular stress response mechanisms more because both of those are a stressor. So fasting is a stressor, calorie restriction is a stressor, but fasting, because you are going back and forth from fasting, eating, fasting, eating, it's like priming the body's stress response more. It's like helping it more. And those stress pathways are really involved in longevity.

Barry Conrad

That's awesome. Go IF!

Melanie Avalon

I know. And then similarly, they did Mediterranean next, but I'll do Keto next because that's what we talk about a lot. And it's also kind of similar. So it's also activating similar pathways and having effects on mTOR, but it's not from not eating. So it's not from a lack of food, like fasting and calorie restriction are. It's actually from highly from reducing insulin, because on a ketogenic diet, you're not having carbs, you're not stimulating insulin and having that glucose. And so that in turn can directly affect the mTOR activity. They had concerns, oh, they said that it also can actually support autophagy, even though you're eating, but that reducing that mTOR and, you know, reducing that insulin can help with that. But they do have concerns about how keto, depending on who you are and what you're doing can affect LDL cholesterol levels. So they say it could pose a potential risk for cardiovascular health in some individuals. But what's interesting about this one, like this pillar, is that it's similar mechanisms and things going on, but you're not doing it from not eating, you're doing it from the type of food you're eating.

Barry Conrad

which really speaks to the importance of actually what we eat. It's not just about the fasting or just restricting calories, but our diet significantly impacts our bodies.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, so, so, so much, which actually brings us to the fourth one, which is the Mediterranean diet. So for the Mediterranean diet, they talk about how it's the most documented diet for slowing the development of age associated conditions. And a big reason for this, by the way, is because of the authors of the MIND diet trial, which was like this really, you know, huge thing and I actually had on some of those researchers and the author, the authors of the official MIND diet on the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But in any case, so the Mediterranean diet, it's really interesting. It also can affect anti-aging pathways, specifically inflammatory markers, things like C-reactive protein and also indirectly affect mTOR. But it's not doing it through, again, like, it's not like keto. It's not doing it through not eating, it's doing it through the actual foods. So it says that some of the foods included in the Mediterranean diet, specifically the high levels of unsaturated fats and the antioxidants can modulate insulin sensitivity and endothelial function, which are then affecting mTOR. Then they also talk about how the fiber rich component of the diet can help support the production of short-chain fatty acids that can have an effect on these aging pathways, which actually brings me to the book I'm reading right now. What is it? I've had Dr. Stephen Gundry on my show twice. He's the figure behind the plant paradox. He's kind of like a legend in that world. I had him on for, I think, the longevity paradox maybe. And then he wrote a book about keto and then I had him on for unlocking the keto code. But his newest book is called Gut Check. Let me see when it comes out. Okay. It's out now. And he's talking all about the role of signaling molecules to the mitochondria to support health and short-chain fatty acids that I just mentioned that the Mediterranean diet can help produce. They actually do so much to signal to our cells mitochondria to get stronger and deal with inflammation and it's anti-aging. So yeah.

Barry Conrad

With a Mediterranean diet, is that things like lots of seafood and some red meat, herbs and spices, things like that, vegetables? There's no poultry, right?

Melanie Avalon

So they define it as, they say it's distinguished by an abundant consumption of unrefined cereals, fruits, vegetables, legumes, olive oil, moderate intake of dairy products and alcohol, represent, low consumption of meat, synergistic blend of vital minerals, antioxidants, and compounds with anti-inflammatory properties. Yeah, when you think of the Mediterranean diet, especially after like reading that book, it's things like fruit and like leafy greens, olive oil, wine, some fish, greens. I feel like

Barry Conrad

Like we could both really get into this diet, but there's a couple of things, like obviously we both eat lots of animal protein, and they don't recommend lots, they just say your moderation. And also the grains, you don't really eat grains, do you, Mel? Not that much, and I don't as well, other than rice, white rice. Could you do it? Could you follow the Mediterranean? Or have you flirted with the Mediterranean diet before?

Melanie Avalon

Well, interestingly enough, all the foods I eat, like quantity wise, it's more than the Mediterranean diet for the animal protein, but the actual foods themselves are all on the Mediterranean diet. So like when I read the official mind diet, which I highly recommend, they actually have a quiz, like it's like a scoring system where you, they want you to eat a certain amount of points. And foods, different foods are like different points. So you can like score yourself and see like how, you know, how well you're doing on the Mediterranean diet, like scale. Yeah. Basically, cause I eat primarily as my meat, it's like fish and scallops and things like that. So I do need to add some more olive oil. I think they're really big olive oil fans. And the only fruits they focus on is, is berries, which is what I eat.

Barry Conrad

Buried, just that.

Melanie Avalon

Mm-hmm. And what I really like that they do, because I feel like, okay, there are so many studies tangent. How many times are there health studies and they'll just be fruits and vegetables as the category, like lumped together, like produce? That's so broad. That is so broad. It should be broken down. So like they break it down into berries, and then like all other fruit. And then for vegetables, they break it down into leafy greens and all other vegetables.

Barry Conrad

Interesting.

Melanie Avalon

and it's like different effects like you if you break it down that way you'll find different health effects than lumping it all together.

Barry Conrad

I have a lot of blueberries and raspberries like frozen, like with my Greek yogurt in terms of berries. Is it specifically a type of berry or just all berries?

Melanie Avalon

I think it's all berries. I'm pretty sure, I need to fact check that, but I'm fairly certain it was. Right, it is because there was a question about are cherries included? And I don't remember the answer.

Barry Conrad

I don't have a lot of cherries to get. Do you have a lot of cherries? I don't really buy them on the regular.

Melanie Avalon

No, you haven't had cherries in forever.

Barry Conrad

When I think of cherries, I think of like a dessert, you know, like it's going to be on a slice of a fun, fatty cake or some chocolate cake or something like that. You know what I mean?

Melanie Avalon

Yes, like a staple flavor like cherry, you know

Barry Conrad

I do. I actually could do, every time I see the Mediterranean diet, just see those words, it just gives a fresh, healthy vibe. I could definitely do Mediterranean diet, I just need way more meat than what they're suggesting.

Melanie Avalon

I do too, yeah.

Barry Conrad

That was super interesting. Just the differences, the different effects that you can get through caloric restriction and IF and then just dietary. Just what we eat. So fascinating.

Melanie Avalon

And I forgot to mention, so Dr. Gundry in that book, he also talks about how ketones are a signaling molecule for the mitochondria. He actually thinks the benefits of the keto diet and ketogenesis are from not necessarily the ketones being fuel, but how they talk to our mitochondria. And our mitochondria are our cells' powerhouses. So they're like the energy production center of every cell. So yeah, he has this theory that it's not like ketones are a great fuel, per se. It's that they talk to the mitochondria, specifically they tell them to uncouple. It's like this whole, this whole thing.

Barry Conrad

Wow, yeah, yeah, what about even with the keto diet, how a lot of people like, well, it's, it's a great reason just to eat a lot of bacon or it's not just that right. It's not just eating a whole lot of bacon is a specific amount of fat. You should have protein is that am I right in saying that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I think there's because like, people who are keto and they'll just go all out with like all the fat all the time. And I really, I personally don't think that that's healthy. I don't think it means we should just be slamming ourselves with all of this fat. I think it's more about reducing the carbon take and getting in getting in the ketones and then having, you know, the amount of healthy fats that you need. But people are like, Oh, it's fat is like a free food on keto, because your insulin is low. So you're not going to store any of it. Here's the problem with that. It's just not true. So the reason insulin is low with fat is because fat doesn't really require much insulin to be stored. So it's really ironic, honestly, because people think that that means it's a free food and you're not going to store it. No, it just means it's so easily stored that it's not really even affecting insulin. So if you're eating like tons of fat on keto, you're not gonna be burning dietary body fat, you're gonna be burning dietary fat. Yeah, I think I think a whole foods approach to keto is much more healthy. So like focusing on whole foods and, and then just having natural fats that come with your food already, like steak and chicken. And I mean, you can have bacon, but you don't want to be eating just bacon, which is like mostly fat.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I've seen people eat bacon in like blocks of butter like on you know, social media just to sort of sensationalize Oh, it's just so it doesn't seem healthy at all

Melanie Avalon

I think people should really focus on protein, like we talk about, and having healthy amounts of fat. Yup. So, okay, shall we jump into listener questions?

Barry Conrad

Let's do it. Let's jump on in.

Melanie Avalon

All right, so our first question comes from Nicole on Facebook, and she says, I'm 48 and perimenopause. I work out in the mornings around 5.30 a.m., about four to five days a week at a minimum doing strength training. I know that it's ideal to eat protein after lifting. Do you have thoughts on continuing my fast after my workout and waiting until lunch to eat? Am I doing more harm than good by not eating after lifting? Also, I know that fasting my age is supposed to be different. I have an IUD, so I cannot base anything off my cycle since I do not know where I am at it without menstruating. Okay, so protein waiting to eat after lifting. Do you have thoughts, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I do have thoughts. Nicole, this is a great question. I love my protein. So first off, I'm going to say, you know, fasting at your age can still really work beautifully, but it is about tailoring it to you. So working out at 5.30 AM and delaying that protein until lunch, it's going to be fine, especially if your body feels good because you're maintaining muscle mass and your energy stable. But strength training, it's like a whole, it's a whole different beast. So ideally you want to give your muscles some protein to recover and grow. So a small clean protein source post lift, something like maybe like a shake could do the trick while keeping you close to your, your fasting benefits. But remember we don't actually need to consume protein right after. So you don't have to have it right up, like put the weight down and go to your car and you know, hold down protein. You don't have to do that right after your training, but rather within a 24 hour window. So you may know like the RDA is it's one gram per pound or 0.8 grams per kg of body weight daily. But keep in mind, that RDA it's designed to cover the needs of the general population. So like to just to avoid deficiency, it's not for people like you and I or people who have higher activity levels or specific health goals like building muscle, for example, that's probably not going to, it's not going to probably be optimal. And I'm guessing that if you're training like four or five days a week, you're going to need a bit more protein. So I'd actually recommend 1.5 or even, even double the RDA on average. That's sort of what I'm doing on the daily around 130 grams. Also, you know, I've definitely isn't, it's not a one size fits all kind of situations. So from what you're saying, your IUD makes it a bit tricky with your cycles, but listening to your energy levels and well, how your body feels, that's going to be what guides you. Melanie, what do you think?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I love that. Definitely. You don't have to eat right after the anabolic window can extend for up to 24 hours after a stimulus from, you know, strike training. So what's key is making sure you actually get in enough protein. And you could always adjust. So basically, like I would focus on if you don't want to eat until lunch, I would say that's fine. Just make sure that you're getting enough protein in like Barry was saying. And if you notice that you are losing muscle or aren't making gains, then you know, A, look at how much protein you're eating and B, you could try bumping up earlier like you could you could experiment, but you should in theory be okay as long as you're getting enough. The fasting at any age being different. So check out my interview that I did with Dr. Mindy Peltz on the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. She wrote fast like a girl, she wrote the menopause reset. And you can also check out Cynthia Thurlow's book as well, the former co-host on this show because she she talks a lot about this. But you can still so A, yes, you can adjust fasting for, you know, perimenopause menopause. Also, if you have an IUD and don't have cycle, you actually can still have and I think it's Dr. Peltz who talks about this, you can still like track a cycle. And you just do it based I'm trying to remember what she says, I think you can do it around like moon cycles if you want. You can also do it around like using some of your biometrics to figure out like when your cycle would have been. But you can still if you want to, you can still do that. So I would definitely listen to those interviews and check out those books. Some people, yeah, some people really adjust their fasting different ways, others don't. The good thing about fasting is that from what a lot of people say like interviewing Dr. Peltz and like Cynthia, when you actually enter menopause, you can actually do more fasting like your your body's with the exception of you want to make sure you're getting off protein and things like that. The body's not as you don't have to worry as much about like hormonal issues or cycle issues by overdoing it with fasting when you're when you're menopausal versus when you're younger.

Barry Conrad

I get asked this as well, like, you know, fasting is different for men and women, like, can you elaborate on that? And I think that is, I think it's so nuanced. What are your thoughts on that? Well, like, you know, because even what Nicole sang here, I mean, she's very menopause. You know, it's different. It's different to a male's approach. How would you, you can't really blanket statement saying these are the differences and that's black and white.

Melanie Avalon

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, not at all. The ironic thing is women actually tend to be better fat burners than men, which can seem surprising because it seems like women are always the ones, I don't wanna make stereotypes, but a stereotype out there is that women struggle more with weight loss than men, I think. Women are actually, yeah, so especially like when doing exercise, women are more likely to burn fat at certain levels than men. I mean, we store more fat, but we're also like primed to use it more. That's a benefit there. As far as the differences with the fasting, women do need to be more, especially during their cycling years, need to be more concerned about that they're getting enough nutrition that they're not over fasting, and that it's not creating too much of a stress that is gonna throw off other things hormonally. I think they do need to pay more attention to that than men. But these ideas out there that fasting is horrible for women, a lot of it goes back to rodent studies, which are just not even remotely applicable because it's like studies of rodents fasting for an entire day or more, which is the equivalent of days in a human. So it's not surprising that it creates hormonal issues in rats when the equivalent fasting hours would be days and days in humans. And they also have a more sensitive stress response. Rats also, they're much more sensitive to fluctuations affecting their reproductive cycle because they're having kids, I don't know, baby rats all the time. It's something that is much more sensitive to environmental signals of stress.

Barry Conrad

And you do hear a lot. No, we put on weight easier than you guys, like it's easier for guys to be in shape. And I've heard, I have heard some females saying that and I'm not calling everyone out, I'm just saying that's what I've heard on the street, in the gyms and yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I think it's I mean, it's a lot so much of it is the insulin resistant and like resistance and the food we're eating but when it actually comes to like the ability to burn fat, like women are made to be fat stores fat stores and fat burners. And that's because we're, there's a lot more concern in the body for running out of energy and nutrients because of having a baby and like supporting a child through like pregnancy and reproduction. So women are good at storing fat and they're good at burning it. There you go.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. Something I've learned that I can now answer, well, you know, women actually are good at storing hand-burning fat, so I'll say that.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, exactly. And then once women hit like I was saying before, like menopausal, that's when they become a little bit more similar to men hormonally as far as like the fluctuations and not having to be quite as concerned with fast and creating like hormonal issues.

Barry Conrad

Well, should I jump into the next question? Okay. So we have a question from Jennifer. I'm curious about the safety of intermittent fasting and kidney disease and in brackets she says moderate or if IF could possibly offer any benefits to damaged kidneys. I don't have diabetes. My kidney damage brackets scarring occurred from infections when I was a baby. My GFR is 41 to 54 range.

Melanie Avalon

All right, Jennifer, thank you for your question. I got really excited for a second because I think I manually typed her name in and I spelled it J-E-N-I-F-F-E-R, which is how my cousin spells it and nobody spells it that way. So I got really, I thought for a second, maybe I found somebody who spells it the way my cousin does, but I think I manually just typed that in. Jennifer, thank you for your question. So I'm not a doctor, just not a doctor. And I would say, you know, for everything, work with your doctor, especially when if you have, you know, a condition like that with the scarring. I can just tell you what I found in the literature about fasting and kidney disease. And there are quite a few studies. So for example, I found one called Effects of Ramadan Fasting on Moderate to Severe Chronic Kidney Disease. So this is 2017. It did look at Ramadan style fasting. So, you know, not eating during the daylight hours. This is people who actually have moderate to severe chronic kidney disease. Almost half of them had stage four, followed by stage three and then stage five. And it found that fasting was reasonably safe for them. There was another one called Safety of Fasting and Non-Diabetic Patients with Stable Chronic Kidney Disease during Ramadan. Again, the last one looked at 68 patients. 38 were diabetic, 28 were non-diabetic. The majority were stage three and followed by stage four and then stage... Oh, sorry. The majority were stage three A followed by stage four, followed by stage three B, then stage two, then stage five. They actually saw improvements in... So for fasting, it improved blood pressure, improved creatine levels and uric acid levels for all of the patients. And their conclusion was that they saw no worsening of renal functions in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients with stables, chronic kidney disease who intended to fast. That was the takeaway of like the studies I was finding. So I would basically say, I would just monitor everything. I would, you know, do the fasting, but hopefully you're working with a doctor, especially having that condition and monitoring all the things for your kidney performance, your kidney levels. I would just really keep an eye on it and work with a doctor. Do you have thoughts?

Barry Conrad

I, as well, I'm not a doctor, but from my understanding, I would say, from what I know, the higher your glomerular filtration rate is, the better your kidneys are at filtering. And since your kidney damage isn't related to diabetes, that's a positive, but yeah, as Mel said, I'd strongly just encourage you to talk with your nephrologist about how fasting fits into your situation. Safety first, Jennifer, safety first.

Melanie Avalon

All right, is it time to hypothetically in our minds maybe break our fast?

Barry Conrad

I think it's time it's different time i'm ready.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so do you have a restaurant for us, Barry Conrad?

Barry Conrad

I do have a restaurant, so this week's restaurant is Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana. The reason why I chose this restaurant, a few reasons, it was established in 1840, which makes it one of the oldest family-run restaurants in the US. It's known for its delicious French Creole cuisine, and it introduced the famous Oysters Rockefeller in 1889. It features 14 unique dining rooms, 14 rooms, each with its own vibe and

Melanie Avalon

14. Wait, I'm trying to envision that. That's so many rooms.

Barry Conrad

It's so many rooms with a different vibe, so I know you'd appreciate that one, Mel, and it's hosted notable figures like Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, and LBJ, Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, so it's a cornerstone of New Orleans, blending history, hospitality, and exceptional food, so I'm so ready.

Melanie Avalon

I forgot, have you been to New Orleans?

Barry Conrad

I have once before and I loved it. Have you been? No. It's so vibrant.

Melanie Avalon

I know. I'm annoyed that I didn't go for Taylor's last concert. Why didn't you go? I think I had so much like trauma from trying to get tickets to the first one, which was the most amazing night of my life. But I was like, I don't know if I can go through this again.

Barry Conrad

What do you mean? What happened?

Melanie Avalon

I was there for the, remember the whole Ticketmaster fiasco.

Barry Conrad

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

I've told you that, right? You have. Six hours. I was actually podcasting for this show. I woke up early for me like 8 a.m. That is like so early for me. The stress, I know it doesn't sound, it's complete first world problems, but the stress of being in a Ticketmaster queue for six hours and it looks frozen and not knowing if you should refresh the window or not. So like six hours of like wondering should I refresh the window because it seems frozen. But then people are like, no, if you refresh the window, you'll lose your place in line. It was being sleep deprived. And then I had a podcast at the same time.

Barry Conrad

So you were like not, like you probably would have been in two minds, like you podcast you, but you're thinking about this window that, do I not refresh it?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, yes. Because you know when you're debating a decision to make, it's stressful anyways if you just don't know what to do. And then the urgency of meeting these tickets. And then six hours is a long time, Barry. It's a long time to be worried about, be stressed about that.

Barry Conrad

Can you tell us what happened at the very end? Did you leave the window or did you refresh it?

Melanie Avalon

I did not refresh it. Yeah, my sister-in-law was mostly was like don't refresh. She was like Twitter was saying don't I don't know I was recording with Cynthia. I told her I think it was Cynthia Yeah, I think Cynthia was my co-host at the time and I was like listen I was like if this goes through I have to I have to stop Yeah, it was Cynthia because so then and then I got in like mid podcast recording and I was like stop And then I was like in this panic frenzy of Because I should have bought six tickets, which was the max but I bought two

Barry Conrad

Should've bought 6 tickets, why?

Melanie Avalon

Because people were reselling them for like I would have made bank

Barry Conrad

Yeah, that's a good call.

Melanie Avalon

But yeah, that didn't occur to me.

Barry Conrad

You know she's going to tour. She's probably going to tour again soon, right? I'm guessing she has another surprise.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, but will it be the Aeros tour though? She should do, oh yeah, she should do surprise Aeros tour again, part two.

Barry Conrad

Maybe I'd like to go to a show with you just to see you lose your mind to Taylor Swift.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so we're there for dinner. What would you get for your... Oh, I have an idea because we were trying to figure out the terminology. Maybe we should just read the terminology on the menu.

Barry Conrad

Okay, let's just do that. Let's say what they have there. Let's do that.

Melanie Avalon

Like because the beginning, well, I guess we can clarify, but so the beginning is appetizers and oysters as a category and then soup and salads. So yeah, what would you get?

Barry Conrad

OK, I'm going to say I've got to go because, you know, they I said before they famously introduced the oysters Rockefeller. So I'm going to that's going to be one of them. The oysters Rockefeller. The I love my potatoes. I'm going to go souffle potatoes. And then because I have been to New Orleans once before and I love the gumbo. I've got to do the seafood gumbo. That's my jam. So those three. Should we read the descriptions? Yeah, I think we should. So the oysters Rockefeller, it's baked with a Rockefeller sauce created in 1899 by second generation chef and proprietor Jules Alcator. The souffle potatoes are classic fried puff potatoes with bérené sauce. And the seafood gumbo is Gulf shrimp, oysters, lump crab meat, blue crab and shrimp stock. Trinity, okra and filet. It's going down. Party in my tummy. It's happening.

Melanie Avalon

I don't know what that filet is because it's spelled F-I-L-E. Yeah, that's yeah, it's not like a steak filet.

Barry Conrad

So it's a French term for a boneless cut of meat or fish. So it is, there we go. In this case, it refers to a piece of meat often from fish or beef that's prepared with our bones.

Melanie Avalon

So it's probably fish. Well, Barry, we've talked, but we haven't talked talked since I had my oysters again.

Barry Conrad

Oh, here we go. Let's hear it. Let's hear the grief.

Melanie Avalon

Can I tell you something? I posted. Are you in our Facebook group?

Barry Conrad

You know what i'm embarrassing you know i need to join the facebook group cuz that's really bad do you get on facebook i definitely will have to more now cuz i'm the new course but yeah i'm jumping in the group now as we speak.

Melanie Avalon

Well, you should jump in and you should see the post I posted. I posted a post of the oysters that I had at a Michelin-starred restaurant here called Spring, shout out. And I posted and I was like, I got these oysters and I just don't like oysters. And I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but I was like, does anybody else have this experience? Because basically, I don't understand why I don't like them because they are so nutritious, I should like them. So there's something going on here. There's a reason they don't taste good to people, I think. Maybe we're not supposed to eat them. Regardless, the amount of comments this post got was insane. And I got a lot of backup. People don't like oysters.

Barry Conrad

The people out there, all of you listeners who are backing up, Melanie, no, it's not. Oysters are so good, they're so delicious. How can you say that?

Melanie Avalon

Well, because so I got it completely plain, like no, nothing on it, because people were like, Oh, well, you need like the olive oil or the lemon. But also I got supported when I went. I actually so I went with my sister my previously mentioned cousin Jennifer and our friend Conrad, who is a he's actually the bar manager at another Michelin restaurant here called Lazy Betty. And he came to my defense, because everybody at the table was saying that I needed to put stuff on them to make them taste better. And I was like, No, because intuitively, if I like it, I should like it without other stuff. And Conrad said this is true. Oh, my gosh, I just realized his name is Conrad. And your last name is Conrad. That's confusing.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, that is confusing.

Melanie Avalon

whoa okay it literally tasted like everything bad about the sea like not the good like okay like my spirulina is like take the good from the sea and like yummy this is like everything bad about the sea like in a bite i literally took one bite and i was like done and it was a massive oyster it was massive

Barry Conrad

Did you approach it with like mentally thinking it's going to be disgusting like

Melanie Avalon

No, because I think I should like them. I really do. And I love like raw meat. I love seafood. So I was like, I'm gonna love this oyster. This is gonna be great. I am here for this. And then I...

Barry Conrad

No, you know what? We're gonna change that. We're gonna have oysters together. Are we gonna have good ones? No. Yes. It's gonna be great.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so you know what for you here at Antoine's I will get this is the last time I'm trying oysters though So if this doesn't work then I'm piecing out From the oyster from the oyster thing. I'll get let me look at the oyster options I'll also get the Rockefeller, but I want everything on the side

Barry Conrad

So you don't want any of those, okay, okay, you don't want any toppings. You want it on the side. All right, that tracks.

Melanie Avalon

and I think I'm good. I don't think I want anything else.

Barry Conrad

Just that? Yeah. You're going to have a Rockefeller for dessert as well? Okay, hopefully not.

Melanie Avalon

No, I'm not.

Barry Conrad

Like one recommend.

Melanie Avalon

I'll tell them, I'll be like, and by the way, you don't have to reserve any oysters for dessert because I'm not going to want any more. Maybe I'll like it. I'm open-minded.

Barry Conrad

I think you know what? I have hope. I have faith it's going to work. It's going to happen. There'll be a day where you'll try and be like, this is where it's at. It's really good.

Melanie Avalon

I don't know. Three times I've done... No, twice. Three times? I think I've had oysters. Two or three. Every time I've done this. Maybe two. Maybe two. I think I've had it three times though, I'm pretty sure. And it's the same experience every time. It's like the seed vomited in my mouth.

Barry Conrad

That's so rude.

Melanie Avalon

I'm upsetting you, very upset.

Barry Conrad

I'm actually sitting here shaking my head, I can't believe she said that. Anyway, moving on to the next category.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, okay, I'll redeem myself, I promise.

Barry Conrad

We have classic entrees and Louisiana seafood together so that's I'm guessing that's our main situation and there are dinner add-ons the scallops done that too well how about how about you go first this time.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, let me look. I would like to get two entrees because this is my one meal a day, so I need a lot of food. Oh wait, maybe I can get one of the entrees for my dessert. Okay, that's what I'm going to do. So I'm going to tell them ahead of time to have another one ready because I'm going to order it for dessert. So for my entree, entree, I'm going to get the veal chop. The veal chop royal, which is boiled veal chop, lemon, saffron butter, and roasted ancient grains. I'm going to modify that. See, this is also good because I can teach listeners how to modify things. I'm going to say, can I get it cooked rare? Can I get everything on the side? I don't want butter. Actually, they can put the lemon, saffron butter on the side. I might try it. I don't want any grains. Do they have sauteed steam spinach? And if not, that's fine. They can just not give me anything. Unless do you want the ancient grains?

Barry Conrad

I'll have the greens. Yeah, we don't want to waste it. There, you'll have them. I feel like this is going to happen for real when we eat. You know you're going to be passing up.

Melanie Avalon

We're gonna be so good at ordering when we actually go eat. It's gonna be like we've eaten together like 50 times.

Barry Conrad

She'll have the, she's gone to the restroom, but she's going to have that and you'll come back. Oh, that's exactly what I wanted. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, what are you getting?

Barry Conrad

Okay, again, it's, I'm with you. It's my one meal a day vibe. So I'm going to go lamb chops to start for sure. Like to say to start lamb chops. And then I'm going to go the classic fish, Amandine, that looks delicious.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so you are getting two entrees, then I'm going to get two entrees too.

Barry Conrad

Well, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, great.

Barry Conrad

I don't know if it's a copy of it.

Melanie Avalon

No, I wanted to, but I was saving one for dessert. I think I should have it now because then I can get more food.

Barry Conrad

You can get more food and you can always, you know, if you don't finish it, I'll finish it.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, perfect. Okay. Are you getting them the way they're prepared?

Barry Conrad

just the way they prepared. I'm going all in. So I don't, unless I'm preparing for something or not, I won't really modify anything, as Melanie likes to do. So I'll probably just smash it the way it is and experience it in its fullness for now.

Melanie Avalon

For the almondine, so fresh local goldfish, light breading, toasted almonds, brown butter, onion rice, fresh lemon drizzle. Are you going to add sauteed lump crab meat? Which it suggests.

Barry Conrad

You know what, I'm going to add that and I'm also going to, because it's an add-on, have some bronze garlic scallops as well. It's going to be massive. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

What was the other one that you were getting you said to blam shot?

Barry Conrad

The land shops with port demi glaze which is grilled lamb chop lollipops rosemary fingerling potatoes and port demi glaze that sounds so good.

Melanie Avalon

How are you getting it prepared? What temperature?

Barry Conrad

I don't want it to be overdone, so I want it to be pretty... How would you ask for it? I don't know how to ask for things over there temperature-wise. How do you guys say it?

Melanie Avalon

I mean, I'm I asked for blue.

Barry Conrad

Well, I'm not going to blue it. That's going to be medium rare.

Melanie Avalon

Medium rare is pretty safe. If you're at a nice place medium rare safe, if you're at like a fancy place, you could maybe get medium, you know, if you insist, but medium rare is probably good. If you're at a fast casual type place, I would honestly, I would order rare, but medium rare, rare, like emphasize the rare.

Barry Conrad

and listeners as well. I'm not going to leave out the creamed spinach when you see the link to this menu, you know what I mean. So I'm going to add some creamed spinach on the side.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, so they do have spinach, so that means they can do steam spinach for me.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, on the sides, this is asparagus you can probably ask for steamed as well.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, this is true. I have to add in my other entree, which is the Speckled Trout St. Louis, which is Golden Fried Trout Filet Crawfish and Artichoke Saute, Mounier Butter and Creamy Herbed Rice. Okay, we're modifying that. I want it.

Barry Conrad

Oh, wow.

Melanie Avalon

By the way, I'm like saying this very like forceful right now, but I'm very nice to the white staff. I don't, I'm not in their face about it. I'm very kind.

Barry Conrad

Can you give me a demo of how you would do it like if I just came over so

Melanie Avalon

How would you, are you ready to order? I will, I will next week.

Barry Conrad

It's like I'm putting you on the spot like, okay, tell me how you would do it because I really want to hear it I'm sure the listeners want to

Melanie Avalon

I'm gonna do it in character next week. But yeah, so this one, not fried, I would like it just baked or steamed, baked or grilled with no, like no seed oils, no oil, just give me the fish. If they insist that there has to be a little oil, then a tiny bit of olive oil, but I have faith that maybe they can do it without it. And then I'll just see if they can do it with steamed spinach again.

Barry Conrad

Mm-hmm. Okay, that sounds good

Melanie Avalon

Then are you getting a dessert?

Barry Conrad

I am going to get a dessert, but before that, I'm going to get, yeah, let's do desserts first. I'm going to go to a drink. Dessert, I'm going to go, oh, a couple things, here we go. You're probably going to guess. I'm going to get two. You can probably guess which two. I'm going to go the flour-salted caramel chocolate torte, which is candied pecans, salted caramel and merengue crown, and then I'm also going to get the creme brulee, which I just love. It's one of my favorite desserts, those two.

Melanie Avalon

I was very close. I was going to say you were going to do the chocolate torte and then either the bread pudding or the creme brulee. I wasn't sure which one, but then I was leaning towards creme brulee for you. They also baked Alaska though. Did you see that? I've actually never tried that. I haven't either. It's not the one that's like on fire. Yeah. Or they like fire it up. Is it on fire or are they just like...

Barry Conrad

Like maybe they're just like to use the blowtorch, you know, the thing.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, they blowtorch it. Yeah, you have to order that at the beginning of the meal. You know what they should do? They should put that note at the top of the menu.

Barry Conrad

Mm-hmm. They should actually. I could just picture you going. Can I have the baked Alaska? Can we just have the fire on the side? Just hold the fire. Hold the fire.

Melanie Avalon

Hold the fire, I can't do the A-G-E's or the H-C-A's, whatever they are, the amines.

Barry Conrad

What about you? Dessert.

Melanie Avalon

I might get a...

Barry Conrad

us. Maybe another oyster, Runkafella? Nope.

Melanie Avalon

Scallops. I'll get scallops for dessert. That's it. Well, I already had two entrees The bronze garlic scallops and they can actually keep the garlic. I like garlic Although I don't like garlic breath. So maybe not

Barry Conrad

It's alright, you can just sit on your side of the table and you can have a mint or something.

Melanie Avalon

I have a complex around, I have some PTSD surrounding garlic breath. I can't do garlic. I'm public. What do you mean? Because of a comment somebody made to me once.

Barry Conrad

What do they say?

Melanie Avalon

I went on a date with a guy and then he tried to kiss me at the, this is like a first date and they tried to kiss me at the end, which I don't kiss on the first date. You don't? There might be exceptions, but usually no, usually no. And so I declined politely. And then later he said, you had garlic earlier, didn't you? And I was like, I was mortified. And then he said, no, you should take it as a compliment that I still wanted to kiss you. And I was like, I just, the amount of it mortified, like that to this day, I'm like, so it's cause I had gone through, I like discovered garlic. I mean, it had it before, but I discovered how amazing it was. And I had gone to town on garlic like the day before. What a joke.

Barry Conrad

What's that guy? Bro, who says that?

Melanie Avalon

He did, and yeah, he does.

Barry Conrad

Like a backhanded compliment like, you know, you should be flattered. I wanted to kiss you. It's like, God, thanks, bro.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. So to this day, I like can't, if I'm going to be in a social setting, I just, I got to work on that with my therapist probably, but yeah.

Barry Conrad

Are you going to talk to me with your hand in front of your mouth, are you going to do that from across the table while you're eating?

Melanie Avalon

Just not gonna eat garlic. Oh, but you mean like a little bit like when I'm talking a little bit Yeah, I do do that a little bit. Yes

Barry Conrad

I can actually fix you do I think we've met motto talked about this about dates.

Melanie Avalon

We did. Yeah, I don't want to like I occasionally cover my mouth not while talking I wouldn't talk me eating at the same time, but occasionally like while I'm chewing cover my mouth I don't look away though. Well, like don't look at me. I don't make you not look at me Don't look Okay

Barry Conrad

That's so bad. Okay, should we go to a drink? Do you want something to drink? What would you like to...

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Yes, I don't see, I don't see any wines on here that I can do. Really? I'm not sure. I don't think so. This is where I'd have to bring my own wine, I think, to this restaurant.

Barry Conrad

You can scan the, I don't know if you can be bothered if we have time, there's a QR code to see the complete list, but that could be time-consuming.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, for like the bottles. Oh, you know what? Yeah, no. Everything by the glass. I don't see any organic, low sugar, European wine. So I would look at the bottle list and look for that. Otherwise, I'm sure they have a cork policy. I could bring a bottle. How about you?

Barry Conrad

Well, a couple of things. I'm going to get a bottle of the Chablis because that would just pair really well with the style of cuisine that we have. And then I will get a Mardi Gras Mambo cocktail, which is Casamigos Blanco, blue curacao, lime juice, and orange juice. And that's a cocktail for all of you listening.

Melanie Avalon

So you know what? I could maybe I could do that. So it is organic that Chubley is, I don't know the ABV, but I would get that. It's a French white, as long as it's not like too sweet. So awesome. Thanks for picking this one. Oh, gift shop. There's a gift shop.

Barry Conrad

Are we going to do the thing where if there's like an alternative thing like a gift shop you have to choose a gift as well or are we just going to stick to the food. We could go on forever if we do that let's stick to the food otherwise you could be here online shopping going through every category.

Melanie Avalon

I could get a wine glass. If it was like a really amazing experience and I wanted to remember this place, which I'm sure I would, I mean, it looks amazing. I think I would get a wine glass.

Barry Conrad

A vino set. A go vino set of four. That looks pretty good.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Well, this was fun.

Barry Conrad

I feel like satisfied just even ordering the food even though i haven't eaten it like thinking about it right now.

Melanie Avalon

I do too, because we're all about fasting and feasting, even if you're crazy like me with ordering. But I really, I feel like this is going to help people, they're going to learn like how to order. But you know, because I think people get intimidated, not how to order because you can totally order like the way Barry orders, but if you have dietary restrictions or want to make adjustments, you can. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Barry Conrad

what do you mean the way Barry orders? I don't just have anything. It's just like, if I want to change it, you know, I will change it. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

There are two different types of order.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. And there's no shame in changing order as well. It's just the way you do it, right, Mel? Exactly.

Melanie Avalon

I'll do it in character next time. Well, this was so fun. Listeners, definitely send us your questions. You can directly email questions at ifodcast.com, or you can go to ifodcast.com and submit questions there. The show notes will have links to everything that we talked about, and they will also have a full transcript. So that will be at ifpodcast.com slash episode 411. And you can follow us on Instagram. I am Melanie Avalon. Barry is berry underscore Conrad, and we are IF Podcast. And yeah, I think that's all the things. Anything from you, Barry, before we go?

Barry Conrad

Thanks so much for tuning in everyone and we'll talk to you next week.

Melanie Avalon

All right, talk to you next week. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intramusian Fasting podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice, and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recon host by Steve Saunders. See you next week.

Feb 23

Episode 410 – Autophagy Genes, Biohack Yourself, Fruitarianism, Eating Timing, Barefoot Shoes, Serrapeptase & MCT Oil, Fat-Fueled Exercise Problems, Protein Needs, And More!

Derek Duvall Show Episode 237: Melanie Avalon - Founder of AvalonX, Podcaster & Actress

Welcome to Episode 410 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SHOW NOTES

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

ONESKIN

LMNT

MD LOGIC

Get 10% off MD Logic's Health Marine Collagen with code ifpodcast at ifpodcast.com/collagen.

LINKS

Featured Restaurant: Atlas

Barry’s Upcoming Show: Destiny

STUDIES

Dawn-to-dusk intermittent fasting is associated with overexpression of autophagy genes: A prospective study on overweight and obese cohort

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to episode 410 of the intermittent fasting podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of Avalon X and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo style meals, intermittent fasting and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer, songwriter, and creator and host of banter with BC. For more on us, check out Melanie Avalon.com and Barry Conrad official.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at I have podcast.com or by going to I have podcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember the thoughts and opinions on this show to not constitute medical advice or treatment. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine. If it's that time and get ready for the intermittent fasting podcast. Hi everybody and welcome. This is episode number 410 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon and I'm here with Barry Conrad. How are you today, Barry?

Barry Conrad

I'm doing really well. How are you doing?

Melanie Avalon

I'm good, what's new in your life?

Barry Conrad

Well, it's a beautiful day here in Sydney. The sun is shining. It's currently one o'clock. What is the time in Atlanta right now? I know we have a list as we have a wild.

Melanie Avalon

9 p.m.

Barry Conrad

I've actually been doing, earlier today, some work on some character work for my play that's happening later this year, Destiny. So that's been really, really good just diving into the character a bit more and excavating, I should say. So that's been really, really fulfilling and fun to do.

Melanie Avalon

That's so exciting. And when will you actually be performing that?

Barry Conrad

Yes, so listeners, it's called Destiny and we head into into work in July, but it runs from October 18th onwards. So if you're in Australia or you're going to be traveling here, please come see it. We'd love to see you at the show. It's going to be really special because of what it's about. So, yeah, I'd love to see you there.

Melanie Avalon

That's a long lead-up, right? Yeah. Like, how does that compare to how many months you normally rehearse for a show?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, well, we have well, usually it's maybe a couple months. So this is a longer lead up, but there's also more intermittent sort of workshops beforehand, which is really good where we get to actually be part of the process more, which has been really, really good and rewarding as an actor to have more of a say, you know, because it's a play and it's something different to sort of musical theater that I've done before. So that's why it is different. And it's, I'm so excited. I'm really, really excited about this Mel. So yeah, we'll have to put a link in the show notes for people if they're going to be around or happen to be in Australia, so they can check it out. Oh, definitely.

Melanie Avalon

Definitely. I'm so excited for you and I'm so proud of you. Wanna come? It's so awesome.

Barry Conrad

Come for a day what about you what's what's happening in melanie evolones world right now.

Melanie Avalon

I'm really curious by the time this comes out, because there's so many different potential products I'm working on right now, I'm curious what will be actually launched by the time this airs. The coffee line I'm making, Glow Coffee, my EMF blocking product line, which I know I've been talking about it for so long, but it's actually, like it's in production now, so we should be launching that sometime this quarter. We have our next two things we want to make for my supplement line, so hopefully one of those will be coming out around February. Then my really big project, which is, I don't know if I mentioned it on the show, I probably have the dating app that I'm working on, so lots of things, lots of things.

Barry Conrad

Bring it on, bring it on. Exciting.

Melanie Avalon

And I'm hoping to be going to some more conferences around this time as well. Oh, oh, I will. I'm actually going, I'm so excited. I'm going at the end of January. So I will have gotten back from it a few weeks ago, but I'm going to Sundance Film Festival for the first time, which is very exciting. I think we talked about that. Yeah, I'm really excited. You should come to that, see the movies.

Barry Conrad

That x is it's tempting you know i hear your friend the person that you know with the project that's so that's so incredible what an achievement to be able to have that in. Be part of that festival right that's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it's so exciting. Hopefully someday we'll see you there in a film. That'd be awesome.

Barry Conrad

or even maybe you, when you fire back into the land of acting.

Melanie Avalon

You never know. This is very true. We should manifest it.

Barry Conrad

Would you ever want to is that something that you maybe want to maybe possibly potentially maybe kind of do later on again.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, we shall see if the stars align So Okay, so friends we have decided to start starting off the show with an intermittent fasting study And we're gonna make it a surprise like one of us is gonna prep it for the other person but this time we just Got one together. So this one is called dawn to dusk intermittent fasting is associated with overexpression of autophagy genes and Perspective study on overweight and obese cohort So this was this is a new study published so it's actually gonna be published in February 2025, but the preprint is online already and Long story short we talk about how intermittent fasting Has been shown to have effects on healthy aging and longevity often through Autophagy genes and we talked about autophagy a lot on this show But basically it's the process where your body Goes in and breaks down old and problematic proteins in your body and recycles them It gets rid of dysfunctional ones and then it recycles them to make new cells and you know new proteins in your body It's like a cleanse on the cellular level. We know that fasting supports it And so this study actually looked at 51 participants there was 36 males and 15 females and they were all overweight or obese and They also had six healthy subjects who were a normal BMI that group was used as the control and They monitored these different genes that are involved in increasing autophagy And they found that at the end of the fasting period Compared to the pre fasting period that the participants that were overweight and obese They saw a significant increase for three autophagy genes and it's a lot of letters, but it's LEMP to LC3B and ATG5 and that was up to 4.2 times increase so the first one was 4.2 times the second one was 1.9 times and the third one was 1.4 times and then they did check another fourth autophagy gene But it was not significantly increased and the type of fasting by the way, they're looking at Ramadan which a lot of the Studies will use Ramadan fasting as a way to test fasting related things because so many people are Doing it anyway as a part of that lifestyle. So yeah, they concluded that basically Fasting with Ramadan is associated with the upregulation of autophagy gene expressions And that this may in part explain the short-term metabolic and health improving effects on early aging Related markers and they said that if presumably may be protective Against aging and metabolic disease and people who are overweight or obese. So I thought that was pretty cool Barry What are your thoughts?

Barry Conrad

This actually really blew my mind because what sort of really stood out to me about the study is in just those four weeks of the fasting, as you said, the 51 participants who like there were mostly people with overweight or obesity had like this huge boost in activity of those three key genes that you said. Like the one gene there, it's called LAMP2, which listens to sort of like the manager for our bodies cleanup crew sort of thing. And it actually increased over four times. It's like their bodies were going into like an overdrive to heal and protect themselves, which I thought was amazing. And I've got friends who are Muslims, so I'm very familiar with Ramadan and how they fast and then feast. So this makes total sense that they conducted this study in that way. And yes, sure, like, you know, the people in the study lost the way and, you know, maybe reduced their waistline or whatever. But from what I'm understanding from the study is that the benefits like they went deeper than the physical. So the glacial went up, their inflammation went way down. Even anti-aging markers improved, which again, why I love fasting. It's not just about the scale. It's about the overall health and longevity and what's happening inside. And I mean, Mel, I've been fasting for years now since not as long as you, but 2018 and seeing signs like this just confirms those benefits firsthand, like the non-scale victories, that it's not just sort of like a clickbaity fad. It's something that is actually impacting us on like a cellular level, like keeping our bodies thriving. And also I loved another thing is that it didn't just sort of focus on one outcome. It showed that fasting, it doesn't magically fix anything. It's a powerful tool in the toolkit for better health and sort of like creating habits for work to help our body work better. So whether that's weight, inflammation or whatnot. I mean, Mel, I'd love your take. Do you think Daunter Dusk fasting has an edge over 19.5, 16.8, 24. How do you think autophagy plays into not just longevity, but everyday energy and recovery?

Melanie Avalon

I love all of this so much. Before I answer your questions, it's really empowering because this concept of epigenetics is just so wonderful because basically everybody has these genes. It's not like you have this gene or you don't have this gene. It's not a genetic destiny in that way. It's epigenetics, meaning we have these genes and then how they're expressed, like how they're actually functioning and if they're turned on or not and how much they're working is really determined by environment and lifestyle. So it's so empowering because it's like anybody can turn this on. You don't have to have been born with the gene because you already have it. It's just, is it being expressed or manifest or is it on? And it's so great to know that fasting can turn these genes on. Yeah, so as far as like the different types, like the different types like dawn to dusk or more of an hour space approach. So honestly, for me, I feel like it really comes down to what are you going to do consistently. So rather than saying like one is better than the other, I think it's really about finding what can you do and stick to. And for some people, it's like a dawn to dusk type approach. For some people, it's like a one meal a day. For some people, it's 18.6. But I really think there's a magic and it's kind of like last episode when you were talking about like the concept of tiny habits. It's like what are you actually doing day in and day out? So I would encourage people to find the fasting that works for them. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that concept?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, we're all very individual. It's hard for, well, it wouldn't be fair to prescribe one protocol to any one person. So I think just doing what works best for your body, I do feel like this study has made me not rethink, but, you know, just the benefits of timing your window, like timing wise in terms of like the time of day, do you know what I mean? Like, you know, how eating earlier rather than too late at night, what do you think about that? Or do you think it has a, there's any difference eating super late at night versus capping off your eating earlier in the day? That's something that this did provoke me to think about in terms of that.

Melanie Avalon

I've done a lot of diving into that. It does seem like there are a lot of studies about the problems with eating at night and late night eating. That said, I think I like sat down and looked at the actual like what winter hormones being released and what things are being turned on at different times. And for me, I feel like it points to a later eating window, but still while it's laid out, if you're being quote ideal, I don't think the hormonal profile right when you wake up is one in which you should be eating because once when you wake up, you have like cortisol, you have adrenaline, you have things that are releasing endogenous fuel, not prepping you to actually be eating. And I actually did a whole blog post on this that I can put a link to in the show notes. All of that said, it goes back to my answer before where I really think what you can stick to is what is best. So if eating later consistently is what works better for you, or if eating earlier consistently is what works better for you, I think what fits into your life, that's what I would focus on rather than what is in an ideal scenario in a metabolic word study, the perfect time to eat.

Barry Conrad

I think it leads back to what you were saying before, Melanie, about making habits work for us, you know, make it easier for our lifestyle, because that's going to be the thing that's going to actually sustain and be consistent rather than if this is the ideal window people are saying I should do, that, well, actually, what works best for you day in and day out? That's the thing, really. And for your body. Like for me, for example, I maybe, when I'm on vacation, I'll have breakfast when you're supposed to, quote unquote, have breakfast in the morning, but I don't start eating normally on the daily around till like four or five most days. So yeah, it's just like it's doing what is going to make me win and just stay consistent with my protocol. And so I think that's exactly what you should do as well.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. And then just to go just to show how different we are. So if I were to eat at four or five, that'd be so early for me. Oh my goodness. I feel like the only way I could eat at four or five is if I like didn't eat that night before. Otherwise, I just wouldn't be hungry.

Barry Conrad

You're like 10 or 11. You eat later, way later.

Melanie Avalon

Are you late? Are you late? Actually this week I'm going to a dinner so I will be eating at a normal time. It's still late but it's not that late. It's like eight o'clock.

Barry Conrad

How do you feel about that? Do you feel excited about eating a bit earlier or not really, or kind of nervous or apprehensive?

Melanie Avalon

I don't like eating earlier. I'm not excited by that aspect of it, but I know that, I know I'll have a fun time and I know once I'm there, I'll love it. And so here's the other thing. Because I'm so intense with my routine of how I eat, I can kind of like signal to my body that it's eating time. Like normally when I start drinking, I'm like, you know, if I have some wine, that's kind of signaling that I'm about to eat. So I can kind of like tweak, well, actually that's not true because when I go out and have drinks, I don't eat. So maybe that, I think once I actually start eating, my body enters the like eating mode. And so it's all good. It's interesting because it's like, it's like your body becomes hungry once you actually start eating. If you're not hungry before, for me, that's my personal experience.

Barry Conrad

You know, what's really interesting is that sometimes when I'm in a longer fast, when I start thinking about food, it's almost like my body starts preparing to like, I just start, you know, like I start salivating. I'm like ready. Like my body knows like, and before starting intermittent fasting, I didn't really feel those cues or that sensation or have that experience. But now when I'm fasting, it's like, okay, it's time to eat. Like it's so fascinating. Do you ever feel that or not really?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, definitely. And that's a key thing about like dopamine, for example, because like people think people think often think dopamine is your happiness chemical and that compound or hormone and that dopamine makes you happy. But dopamine, it makes you happy at the thought of reaching a goal. So it's not actually getting the thing that makes you happy. It's like trying to get the thing that makes you happy. I promise this is going to relate. And the more dopamine is released and it's released just at the anticipation because it becomes a routine and a habit and self-reinforcing. So the point of this is we have habits that we do and once we start doing them and we get ingrained in them, we don't actually even have to do the thing that would release and encourage dopamine. We just have to like anticipate doing it and we get the dopamine hit. So they'll see that people who are, and it happens with food too. So like it's what you basically just said, like if you're accustomed to eating something that you really like or like in a situation that you like, you'll start releasing dopamine before you even do that thing. Yeah. So you can definitely, the body like anticipates and releases these compounds that then make you engage in that habit and like start the systems running, if that makes sense.

Barry Conrad

It definitely makes sense. I think the body is just so fascinating. And I don't know if this is relative, but even as soon as you said that about the body sort of anticipates, even with things like acting or performance, like when something's ingrained, it's like an anticipation and you know what's coming. You know what I'm saying? It's like intuitive. You know, it's just like programmed on a cellular level almost. It's so awesome. I love that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And actually, so we had Mark Sisson on the show. Have we, have we talked about Palluva yet? His shoe line? No. Okay. This is going to be all over the place. I promise it relates though. Barry, we got to get you wearing Palluva's. Do you wear like running shoes?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, every day when I go to the gym.

Melanie Avalon

So I highly recommend friends check out Mark's book, Born to Walk. So Mark Sisson, he's, do you know Mark? He's like the, he's one of the, he's the founder of like the Primal Health movement. He, he had a Mark's Daily Apple. Yeah. He had like Primal Kitchen, lots of New York Times bestsellers, Primal Endurance, and I think the Primal Blueprint is probably his most famous one. He has the Keto Reset Diet, but in any case, in Born to Walk, and we'll put a link to that episode in the show notes, but he basically makes the case that we should not be, like we should be walking a lot. We shouldn't be doing this endurance, this intense endurance activity all the time and like marathons and running. It's just not good for you. And shoes are like horrible for our feet, like horrible. They basically allow you to move in a way that is not natural for the body and also sustain impact trauma consistently, but you don't really feel it because of the shoes, but you're still getting all that damage and it's just not good. So he has this line paluba, which is a, like a barefoot shoe. It's like where your like toes are separated in it. And he has a whole line of them. And literally he completely changed my, my, my thoughts about like shoes and running and walking. And oh, the reason I'm talking about this is because we were talking about how would these, there's like four different feel good neurotransmitters that people think of like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. And dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin are all good feeling things to bring good things to your life. So dopamine is about pursuing a goal. Serotonin is about like social hierarchy and feeling safe and social bonds. And then oxytocin is about like the love, like the bonding compound. It's from like hugs and like love and all those things. Endorphins, which also make you feel great, their purpose is to mask pain. So historically, their main purpose is like if an animal's being killed by another animal, they get flooded with endorphins so they don't feel it. So it's not a compound we should be chasing to feel as a good thing because literally its purpose is to make you not feel painful things happening. And that's what people who are doing intense running careers and marathoning and all the things are chasing, they're chasing endorphin highs. So that's why I was thinking about that.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I mean, that sounds amazing with the issue. I'd love to wear that. And also on that, I 100% subscribe to walking. I actually, my form of cardio in the gym or outdoors is walking. I do hill sprints or walking. I just think it's such an underrated way to burn fat and not just that it compounds things. You can do that at a very pretty easy pace. Burn fat effectively and do something like listen to a podcast or make calls. It's so good. And also just clear your mind so that that's one thing. Another thing is I'm actually in bare feet right now, Melanie, and I always wear shoes, but I was recently traveling a bit, seeing my family and in New Zealand. And I've never been more barefoot during those few weeks than probably in years and coming back, it's just more freeing. You feel grounded to the earth. You can move better. And I'm actually I promise you, I'm barefoot right now. So there you go. It's very fitting that you're talking about it.

Melanie Avalon

I love that so much. Yeah, it's literally, he completely changed my perspective on it. I'm like, I need to be barefoot, like all the time or wearing these palubas. And so yeah, I love that you had that experience giving your feet the more natural experience of the world. So listeners, you can get 10% off paluba. If you go to paluba.com slash iapodcast, that's p-e-l-u-v-a.com slash iapodcast and use the coupon code iapodcast. So and they have one of the shoes that I like, you can actually, I don't really like, I don't normally wear like tennis shoes and stuff anyways. So I need to start wearing the normal ones outside. But for wearing around the apartment, they do have one that kind of you can not use the back of it. So you can use it kind of like a slip on. And so that's the one I'm really loving. That's the Zen active slip on. So I have the women's Zen active slip on but they have so many different ones. Yeah, it's literally game changer. Okay, oh, I just thought of something really random. But I should have said in the beginning when we were talking about what we're like, what's new in our life. Guess who I'm interviewing. Speaking of interviews tomorrow. Actually, I don't know how you would guess but give me a clue. It's a character from like one of the most well known TV series in the superhero world. What?

Barry Conrad

Who is it? Oh, you know, Melanie, I love superheroes. Don't play with me. Hold on. Is it okay? Gender? Give me the gender.

Melanie Avalon

You want to play the yes or no game?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Okay, I'm ready. Are you under the age of 50?

Melanie Avalon

The person? Yeah. No.

Barry Conrad

Are you in a Marvel franchise?

Melanie Avalon

Not Marvel. I don't know anything about superheroes.

Barry Conrad

Okay, have you been in a release of this franchise in the last two years?

Melanie Avalon

The character or the actor? The actor. No.

Barry Conrad

I don't know, tell me, because now I'm just going to, but we need to play 20 Christians, this is fun, but tell me who it is because I'm dying to know.

Melanie Avalon

I feel like Barry and I could play 20 questions for like five hours, so we can just like play. It's the original Robin from Batman and Robin.

Barry Conrad

You mean, oh, that's amazing. Are you serious? How did you score? That's amazing. That's incredible. How'd you score that? That's awesome.

Melanie Avalon

I was on the Derek Duvall show and that host Derek, he's like so kind and so nice. So he was interviewing me, um, I can put a link to that in the show notes. He connected me to Burt. He said Burt was like one of his favorite episodes he's ever done, but so Burt has, the reason he's going on like health related podcast is he has a, he has a gentle giants pet food line that is like to help support pet longevity and stuff. He's like all in now. He's all into dogs. They have, they have like he and his wife have, I don't know, 40 or 50 dogs at their house.

Barry Conrad

What?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and they make this pet food line.

Barry Conrad

If it's a big house.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. I was watching videos. They put the food in like, like horse trough type things. Like feed the dogs. I am going to ask him a lot of questions about his dog, pet food line, but what would you ask him about his career, his acting career?

Barry Conrad

I would definitely ask him what was the most foundational thing you learned from being part of that franchise like with Batman and how has that shaped the rest of his like the trajectory of his career because that was like a huge, huge moment.

Melanie Avalon

And you were in, you were in Spider-Man something, right?

Barry Conrad

I was in power range. It's very different. It's very different.

Melanie Avalon

And here's the thing, I knew as Power Rangers, I was seeing Power Rangers in my head.

Barry Conrad

But Melanie, get this. Honestly, I always joke, but I'm not really joking. I would love to be. I'm obsessed with superheroes, so this is the perfect guest. I can't believe you're interviewing him. It's awesome. I'd love to be in a Marvel franchise.

Melanie Avalon

I'll let you know how it goes. Also, yes, Barry, you would be a perfect superhero. Which one would you be if you could be one?

Barry Conrad

like a current one, or you're asking me what kind of power I want.

Melanie Avalon

if you could be like, you know, like a new version of one of the ones.

Barry Conrad

Yeah. Okay. One of the ones, this is how you know, Melanie is not really a discoverer is Wolverine. Definitely. Hands down. My favorite.

Melanie Avalon

That's not a comic book though, is it?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, X-Men. X-Men.

Melanie Avalon

X-Men with a comic book? Wow. No idea. I had no idea.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I feel like if you were a superhero, you'd be like a biohacking, a biohacking superhero, like, take my red sauna. Like, I don't know, I could just see like in a dress looking really glamorous, looking really good, and then like, just like not breaking a sweat and just doing your thing.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'd be down. Is there a blonde, superhero, female? Many. I can't think of any.

Barry Conrad

We're going way off here. Sorry listeners, if this is not interesting, but we're having a good time.

Melanie Avalon

I'm a fasting superhero.

Barry Conrad

So what is the power? So you could fast real good, you know, 19 hours a day, 20 hours a day.

Melanie Avalon

I don't ever have to take the time to eat, so I have more time. Yeah, but I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow. It's amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. So, OK, before we go on to our next thing, we realize that last week, this is my bat. I only partly answered one of the listeners questions. So we had answered a question from Julian about MCT oil and syrup peptase. I answered the part about at the end about what MCT oil and coffee breaker fast and we kind of like ran with that, but we didn't answer the first part. So would you like to reread the first part?

Barry Conrad

So Julian on Facebook said, I just recently started implementing black coffee with MCT oil in the morning during a fasted state. I usually also take seropeptase during that time as well. Would it be fine to take both MCT oil and seropeptase simultaneously? I wanted to make sure the MCT oil didn't interfere with the seropeptase since it's helped my sinuses drastically. Also, if I'm having black coffee with MCT oil, yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so totally forgot to answer this one. And so Julian is referring to my Avalon X serapeptase, which this actually ties into what we were talking about with autophagy. So serapeptase is a proteolytic enzyme created by the Japanese silkworm. And in the fasted state, well, its purpose in the silkworm is to break down the cocoon of the silkworm. So it breaks down nonliving tissue without hurting living tissue. So when we take it in the fasted state, kind of like how autophagy is that process in the body where we break down problematic proteins and things like that, that's what serapeptase does. And a lot of inflammation and health issues we have come from our body reacting to like proteins in our body. So like Julian says, it clears sinuses, I mean, dramatically. It's a game changer for that for me personally as well. And I hear that from so many people. And it can help with inflammation, it can break down amyloid plaque in the brain, help reduce cholesterol, all the things. I love it. I take it every single day of my life. And so you can't take it, well, you can take it with other food and proteins. But if you do, it'll just break down your food instead of going into the bloodstream and working its magic. So that's why it needs to be taken on an empty stomach. However, if you were to take it with MCT oil, MCT oil is just a pure fat. So serapeptase is not going to break down anything in that. So you could take MCT oil and serapeptase together is the answer to that. And if friends would like to get some serapeptase, they can go to avlonx.us and use the coupon code IF Podcast to get 10% off site wide there, including that serapeptase. It's kind of like a superhero serapeptase. It's like a superhero supplement, I think.

Barry Conrad

I've actually never tried syrup up this yet, so I feel like it's time for me to well and truly dive in and see what all the fuss is about, especially your supplement.

Melanie Avalon

Oh wait, did you get my bottle that I sent you?

Barry Conrad

I only got the magnesium. I didn't get the Sure-Five test.

Melanie Avalon

I didn't see new Sarah Papjes.

Barry Conrad

No. Oh. Not that I expect you to at all, but yeah, I haven't tried it yet.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, let me see, hopefully I can get it into Australia. It's like, I know I got the magnesium in. They do not make it easy. Yeah, they do. I will have to send you some. That's crazy. I really thought I had sent it to you.

Barry Conrad

That's all good. Yeah, but I definitely want to try it because I know that you talked about it so you rave on about it and you really believe in it. So I think it's definitely worth trying.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it is one of my favorite things like ever, ever, ever.

Barry Conrad

And do you take show of her days when to like to break your like during the when you break your first or when do you take it?

Melanie Avalon

So you would want to take it earlier in the fast and then not eat right after because if you ate right after, it would just break down the food. So you want to wait at least like an hour after to eat, but I take it in the morning and I don't eat until the evening, but I just notice such a difference. It just clears my sinuses. My brain helps with brain fog. It's amazing.

Barry Conrad

I'm going to write that down now because actually, I have allergies, like dust allergies, and when I was traveling recently, it's just so dusty, and I found it really hard, so I wonder if that would help mitigate some of the sinus issues as well. So that's definitely, I'm going to write this down right now.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yes, it would be amazing for that like game changer. It's so effective

Barry Conrad

Okay, great, awesome.

Melanie Avalon

All right, Barry, would you like to read our question from Camilla? And by the way, I picked this one because she's from Australia. That's not the only reason, but that's a reason.

Barry Conrad

So Camilla says, hi. First of all, I absolutely love your podcast. I'm 30 years old, Chilean woman working full time in Australia. And listening to you has saved my life from the boredom of cleaning rooms for eight hours a day and encourages me to keep fasting. I tried so many times fasting before, but never understood the importance of clean fasting. That changed everything. So my very big question is, back in time, I practiced about three years ago a lifestyle called hygienism. The diet includes fruit juiced fasting, which is two juices in the morning, 10 and 2 a.m. And then fruit for lunch, about one kilo of fruit, where I can mix acid with semi-acid and semi-acid with sweet fruit. A few fruits for snack and for dinner. Fruit for a big plate of salad with cooked veggies is optional. Also, I can choose one protein, one cereal, or one starchy vegetable. I followed this diet for about two years and was feeling fantastic. It was very similar to the feeling of being in the fasted state. In the first two weeks with just fruit and salad two days a week, I lost about 10 pounds. By the way, I was dancing and using my bike a lot. The problem with that diet is that my body got used to eating every two hours, otherwise I would have been shaking and so hungry. Also, my stomach got bigger because I had to eat lots of fruit to get satiated, but I had it all covered. I didn't crave junk food anymore and my cravings for sweets was gone as the fruit was all that I needed. The problem started when I left my comfort zone and during my travel, where I had not that quantity of fruit available and for social or emotional reasons. So I quit that lifestyle and started overeating. My stomach got really elastic and big with the fruit. And I binge ate. In one year, I put 20 pounds on in my body and I felt awful. I've been trying so many diets and fasting, et cetera, but I didn't understand that intermittent fasting was a lifestyle too. So far, I've been practicing clean, intermittent fasting for about two weeks. I feel much better, more energy, no cravings of junk food during fasting time. My mind is clearer and more calm, but I haven't lost weight because I'm still overeating and eating junk food became a disgusting habit. My problem is that when I have dinner, salad and cooked veggies, I still crave sweets and mess it all up with cookies, brown bread and jam, granola, whatever it looks that it can satisfy my brain. Sadly, I have housemates that love junk food too. So here's my question. What are your thoughts about doing intermittent fasting and having a fruit diet? I ask because I feel when I do strict food diet, I stick to it more easily than having a whole food meal. I don't think I would do just fruit as before because I used to have fruit for dinner at least three days a week, but I wonder what happens with the insulin and sugar levels if I do it for about a week or two.

Barry Conrad

My goal is weight loss. And since I started fasting, I also go back to daily yoga practices, riding my bike for about 30 minutes a day. Oh, and also today I began with MCT oil to break my fast. And I wonder, would I get the same great benefits if I drank the oil, if I do exercise, or would it be better if I exercise and then break the fast with the oil? Thanks so much in advance. And I apologize if the English isn't the best. You're so great. I can't be grateful enough for having met you in the virtual world. Send you lots of love.

Melanie Avalon

Camilla. All right, Camilla, quite a journey and so many questions there. I'm curious, Barry, have you ever done a stint where you did like fruit fasting or something like that, like only eight fruit?

Barry Conrad

for about a day, but because I love meat so much, it's like, this is not going to work for me. It's not really, what about you? It's just not, for me, it's not satiating or satisfying. And it just actually, if anything, makes me crave more sugars. So, no, not really, just a day.

Melanie Avalon

The longest I did was in college. That's when I, I think I've told you before I did my, my apple fast. Where I was going to eat apples for three days. And I went like 11 days eating just apples. And it is very true. I felt, I like, I felt high. Like I felt like Camilla said, like the fasting feeling, I felt very light. I, it was an experience for sure. I have so many thoughts about this. So one, I think a lot of people, especially if they are eating an unhealthy diet and then they switched to some sort of cleanse, like just green juices or just fruit, that, that is sustainable in the beginning for a little bit. And they probably feel really great. And if they have the fat to burn, you know, shedding the toxins, getting all of this hydration and nutrients from the fruit, and then the body is probably doing more topology and so it can feel really great, but here's the thing. For most people, I mean, I know they're apparently fruititarians out there that, you know, say they've done it for life. There's also a lot of fruititarians out there that stop doing it because it works really well in the beginning. And then they start falling apart. I don't think most people can get the protein they need, the nutrients they need on a fruit only diet forever. There might be the rare people who can, like they've got the perfect microbiome and the perfect constitution and it works for them. But for most people, I don't think it's going to work. And I think what happens is people will try it and experience these amazing health benefits. And so they think, they think it's the thing and that it should be, that they should do it longer and that when it stops working, that it's not because it's not sustainable, it's because, you know, of other problems, but maybe it's because it's not sustainable and you need more nutrients and protein. And you can only do that for so long. So, yeah, so I have a lot of thoughts here. Basically, I think it could be done as a short-term thing. Like I said, if you want to do it as a very short-term thing, like maybe a few days, if you can make it that way. And I guess combined with intermittent fasting while doing that, but it's just, it's not a long-term thing. I would not look to this as a long-term lifestyle. And I definitely wouldn't do long-term intermittent fasting with only fruit. I just think that is a recipe for a disaster. And especially if you're dealing with binging and craving and that effect, a lot of that could be due to not getting the nutrients you need, like the protein that you need. I would have a reframe and if you're doing fasting, focus on fasting, like let fasting be the cleansing process and then have your eating window be the nourishment and make sure that you get all the protein you need in that window so that you're not craving and binging.

Melanie Avalon

And something else I think people might not account for sometimes is just how much an effect that you can like undo what you've done if you get into a binging cycle, because I think people, if they're not doing fasting from a healthy perspective where they're getting enough protein, they're getting enough nutrition and instead they're not getting enough. And then they get into this like binge, you know, this binge cycle where they're binging and then they try to make up with it, make up for it with fasting, but then they're not eating enough. So then they binge again. Like that's not, you can create a lot of harm by doing that and it's not sustainable, it's not healthy. So I would focus on fasting and eating a lot in your eating windows. So you don't fall into that. And there's this thing called the protein leverage hypothesis. And it's basically that we will be hungry and we will keep eating until we fulfill our protein requirement needs. So basically I would not suggest as a long-term thing, doing fasting and puritarianism together, I would only do it as like a short thing. Yeah. And I can talk about the MCT oil and the exercise, but what are your thoughts, Barry?

Barry Conrad

Yes. This is a big question and also so many thoughts, but first of all, Camilla, thanks for sharing that. It's a big story. Thanks for the support for the podcast as well. The fact that fasting has brought you clarity and energy after that sort of journey is a huge win, but I would definitely agree with Melanie in saying that combining IF with just fruit solely, it's not a great strategy because you're just not getting the nutrients that you need, you know, and I mean, I would suggest balancing that with some greens, some seeds. If you don't like meat, try protein from tofu, eggs, fish maybe, but I don't think you can't really sustain a long life, in my opinion, on just fruit. And also one thing to keep in mind is that if you're eating mainly fruit as well, you're going to spike your insulin so much, which potentially could make weight loss slower potentially. If you're just having fruit over the long term because your body does adapt. Yeah, great. The yoga, the cycling is great. That's awesome. But I'm 100% on the protein train here. Like protein is so important because skeletal muscle is such a huge important factor in terms of like having longevity. You can't just I don't want to see you withering away. So make sure you get your protein in. That's what I would say.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, we're definitely on the same page. And I think a lot of times people, especially doing like veganism or especially like fruititarianism, like if they're getting cravings and bingy and everything, it can be hard to see that it's because you're just not getting enough nourishment, you know, like you can think it's because oh, like I'm just weak or I crave these junk foods, but there's a lot of magic if you get in enough protein in your diet.

Barry Conrad

100%. One thing that I would say is when I'm having particularly, at the moment, I'm experimenting more with smoked salmon for my protein sauce just to change it up. But generally, I have with smoked salmon that is around for 200 grams of smoked salmon that has 40 grams of protein for that. In one sitting, I can get that. With ground beef, I have about 42 grams for the same amount. When I have chicken breast and ground beef, I get full. I can eat a lot of meat for sure, but I definitely feel satiated. The only thing that I can put that down to is the satiation that comes from hitting the protein that you need. I don't get that when I'm just snacking or having lots of carbs solely. I'll just keep eating and keep eating and keep eating because your body hasn't got what it needs. Please, please look at the protein. That would take you more.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I agree so much. And then for her question about the MCT oil, which is I didn't realize that we were answering two questions about this, but so she said she uses it to break her fast and she wants to know, should she basically take it, like have it before exercising? Okay, wait. If after drinking the oil, so like have MCT oil and then exercise or exercise and then have the oil. So I would want to know like why you're having the oil. Like is it just for calories? Like what is it for your metabolism? Like what is the purpose of having it? I would not have it before exercise because there's, I think there's a lot of benefits to fasted exercise. And if you are taking a lot of MCT oil before exercise, you're just going to be burning the MCT oil rather than, especially if like weight loss is a goal of yours, which she said it is, you want to be tapping into your body fat, not just running off of the oil you just had. So if weight loss is a goal, I would definitely, I would have it later. Not, I would have it in your eating window, not before exercising. What are your thoughts?

Barry Conrad

I would agree with that. One thing to keep in mind is that there's a train of thought out there where people feel afraid to exercise without something in their system, whether that's a banana, whether it's fat, or whether it's something. So I'm wondering, because she hasn't been fasting for a long, long time, that that might be a possibility, because you actually don't need that chameleon. Because remember, in the fasted set, there's plenty of glycogen for you to use up there. There's energy there, and there's plenty of fat that we're carrying. You don't need to take anything else to exercise. And I exercise as a six-foot-tall, 80kg male fasted. I'm not withered. I've got lots of muscle, and I don't eat anything. I have black coffee that's about it. So I would definitely say, you don't need the MCTL, and I wonder if that's something you've been told that you just need. Let me just have this little something to help me. You don't need it. Your body's got everything that it needs inside.

Melanie Avalon

I'm so glad you brought that up. It's so true. It is like a fear. It's like, I guess people are scared of that they're gonna run out of energy. Like I'm not, you know, but it's like once you start doing it, you realize that you can, you know, tap into your body fat stores and we carry so much energy on our body, just waiting to be tapped into. And especially if you have something like coffee or tea, you know, to have that caffeine and polyphenols and such help you, you know, tap into those body fat stores. Yeah, you can do it.

Barry Conrad

You can do it, Camilla.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome!

Barry Conrad

And we'd love to hear from you if you changed anything after hearing this. We'd love to hear back from you.

Melanie Avalon

Yes, please let us know! Okay, so we're like playing around with the format of the show and we always feature a restaurant on the show and we've decided we're going to try out having it at the end because then it's like we're breaking our fast after talking about all the fasting stuff and like we just talked about we are all about food on this show. So Barry, the restaurant I picked for us today is actually my favorite restaurant in Atlanta. Which is why I picked it.

Barry Conrad

Hold on for one second. You know what? I was actually thinking, the last episode listeners, I was actually thinking, I said to Melanie, if we went on like a food tour, she'll only come for a day. And then in my head, I was thinking, but if it was Atlanta, she'd come. So hello, now you've chosen Atlanta restaurant. So perfect.

Melanie Avalon

Wait, if it was Atlanta?

Barry Conrad

then you'd definitely be there.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, yes, yes. So guess who's got to come to Atlanta?

Barry Conrad

Yours truly. Yep.

Melanie Avalon

for more than a day, for more than a day. So why are the rules different for me? Oh, the rules aren't different, but there's, you make your own rules. So, but my rules are one day, which we didn't talk about this on the show yet, because it's going to be way in the past when it happened by the time this airs. But, um, I went for one day to Vegas for the biohack yourself premiere, which actually was really, really incredible. Um, and I highly recommend people check it out. It's a documentary on Amazon prime and it has all the people in it. Like all the biohacking people are, are in it. And I, I was so honored. They actually invited me to host on the right carpet. So I got to interview a lot of really cool people. I got to meet people in person. I never met like Ben Azati. I was excited. I got to meet Aggie who I found on the show. Got to interview Del Big Tree, who he's actually a really big deal. He, he leads the make America healthy again movement. And he works with RFK. Yeah, it was really cool. It was fun.

Barry Conrad

That's amazing. Congrats, Mel. Can I see it? Is it when does it come out on Amazon Prime?

Melanie Avalon

it's out now. We'll put a link to it in the show notes and no, you won't, you won't see me because I was just at the like the premiere thing and this is the actual documentary. I got to see, I literally, I think there's so many friends there, like so many people I've had on the show. The people I listed before were people I actually interviewed, but I got to meet in real life. Well, I know Dave Asprey, so I got to see him. I got to meet the founder of Viva Ray's who I've had on my show. I got to meet, I got to, I saw Sean Wells, literally just so many people. I, Ian Clark, who I just interviewed the other day, you would have loved it, Barry. We should go to something like that sometime. I'd love that. It'd be awesome. So in any case, so the restaurant I picked, like I said, it's neck and neck because I have two favorite restaurants in Atlanta, but this is my all time favorite and it's called Atlas. It's at the St Regis and something really cool about it. So it has a Michelin star. I knew it would because the Michelin guy just came for the first time two years ago to Atlanta, which was really exciting. And I was like, I know Atlas is going to get one and it did. And what's really cool about it is the restaurant itself, there's all this art and they actually have to change the art every, I don't know how many days, like how many months or so. They have to continually change it. And the reason they have to change it is because they have so much art in that room worth so much money that it would, they would be a museum if they didn't change it out. Isn't that cool?

Barry Conrad

That's so cool.

Melanie Avalon

I think it's probably complicated to be a museum, so the art changes. But they have really cool museum type stuff, obviously. I went there for my birthday three years ago, maybe. So the menu is, I guess we can just pick from the tavern menu because they have a tasting menu but we can't actually see what that is because it changes. So we'll just have to go off of there.

Barry Conrad

This looks good.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so they do have a chef's tasting menu, but it says full table participation required. That's like so scary.

Barry Conrad

Well, have you met me? I'm pretty much a full table when it comes to food. I'll eat for like five people.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so we'll go. I'll be like, we're getting the chef's tasting menu. The full table is berry. And then I'll sit over there.

Barry Conrad

That's your buddy.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, actually, you know who I went to? I went twice. I went with Jean Valacara, who is the he has biohackers magazine and I had him on my show as well. But I love biohackers magazine. He's incredible. He's called his handle is cyber gains on Instagram. Yeah, he does calisthenics. He's like, so he's so impressive, like, with what he does. But he came to Atlanta and we went into Atlas once he had to come in town for like some other like conference things. So we went there. Okay, so looking at the menu, what would you get to share?

Barry Conrad

This all looks incredible, actually. I would say I'm gravitating towards large seafood platter for sure. I'd probably eat most of it, but we could definitely share that.

Melanie Avalon

features caviar, king crab, oysters, shrimp, crudo, and main lobster. I feel like we have to do that because the other things are oysters or small seafood platters. So we'll just get the large one. And I would eat, I would eat everything on that. Wait, what is crudo? I should know this.

Barry Conrad

So crudo, it's sort of the way, like when you have kingfish crudo or not, it's just the way it's cured. So I'm guessing it's going to be like kingfish or some sort of fish, but cured in that.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, it means raw.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, exactly.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so I would definitely actually when I went I think I had I actually this is one of the locations where I Had this is do you know what this was berry? This was where I learned the term savory dessert because I Had salmon as the appetizer. This is when I went with jean and then for dessert I asked if I could have salmon and they were so accommodating and then I said I was like do people do this or like It's just like a weird and then the server said to me. Yeah, sometimes people have savory desserts And I was like, oh my goodness. I am adopting that term

Barry Conrad

That tracks, that makes sense and that's it's good that it's a full circle moment back to your favorite restaurant. That's good.

Melanie Avalon

So they also have an incredible wine list, but in any case, okay, so to share and then the cheese cart, would you be having some from the cheese cart, Barry?

Barry Conrad

Of course, like that was my second thing. We definitely need to have that select, like we need to get like a selection. Cause that's something we can pick at. I love cheese and crackers. I love it so much. So we have to do that.

Melanie Avalon

So I have good and bad news. Okay, what? What's the good news first? Good news is I love cheese. Like in heaven, I probably just, it's probably like made of cheese. The bad news is cheese for me, it's like the thing, I just can't have it. I like it too much. And cheese has queso-morphenes in it, which are, it's basically like morphine, but in food form. And the reason it has that is because I'm not trying to scare people away from cheese, but the reason it has that is to, do you know, do you know the reason why it has that? You tell me. It's to help the child. So milk has queso-morphenes to help the child bond to the mother.

Barry Conrad

Oh, well.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, isn't that crazy? So basically like mother's milk has these compounds that make the baby like be addicted to the mom.

Barry Conrad

That's kinda crazy.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, and depending on your constitution, some people have more like receptors for that and react to that differently. So for me, like it, if I have one bite of cheese, it feels like a drug like I, so I just have to abstain because I could just like eat cheese forever.

Barry Conrad

What about like a morsel, like one, one little bite and that's it.

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. You have one bite and it's like, then you're just stuck wanting more. Like, I'd rather just not have it.

Barry Conrad

We'll all have the cheese. We can get it.

Melanie Avalon

I love it so much that I would love you to have it and you can like give me tasting notes and yeah. So we will get the cheese cart.

Barry Conrad

Now, do you like do you like heavier? Is that something that you like?

Melanie Avalon

Oh, okay. I am so excited to talk about this. So I had not had caviar until semi recently. And what's funny is I didn't realize it was caviar until after I ate it. I was at another birthday dinner at one of my, another restaurant I love here, which is called Kevin Rathbun's Steakhouse. And something came with caviar. And then I ate it. And I was like, this is so good. And I was like, Oh, this is caviar. Like after I ate it.

Barry Conrad

That's funny. That's hilarious.

Melanie Avalon

It did not taste like what I thought it would taste like. What did you think it would taste like? I don't know, but it basically just tasted like salt.

Barry Conrad

Well, did you have it on a blini or did you have it on like, what did you have it with?

Melanie Avalon

It was a condiment, like it came with the tartare, I think, but it was like squishy and like little, little bit like seafood, but like salty. I loved it. And like fatty. Do you like caviar?

Barry Conrad

I love it. And so I'm throwing the ball to you, which, cause I'm having most of the cheese, which caveat would you choose?

Melanie Avalon

Let's get the la grande caviar selection, then we get everything. Wait, how does that compare to the tasting flight?

Barry Conrad

No, that's not enough.

Melanie Avalon

What's the difference between, it's the same thing though, with condiments. With condiments, is that the difference?

Barry Conrad

And have you tried Blinnies before? Have you tried that?

Melanie Avalon

No. What is that?

Barry Conrad

So I actually make these from scratch when I'm having caviar or even with smoked salmon. It's basically like, think of like a miniature, like a miniature pancake, like really small.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, okay. Yeah, I do. So so I would actually I personally would order just the tasting flight, but I feel like for the table me and you we would we want to get the grand caviar selection so that you can have the condiments and the Bellini that you make at home. Wait, I have a quick question about caviar. Do you buy caviar like at the grocery store? Because once I had it, then I when I would go to Whole Foods, I was like, oh, I should like buy some caviar. And I was like, Oh, this is this is confusing. There's like so many options. And the price goes from like expensive to like crazy expensive. I like couldn't bring myself to buy it.

Barry Conrad

I have an occasion for caviar but at the store but i would definitely go for if you're gonna do it like you know do for an occasion. But you can definitely buy it gets it gets pricey though.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, maybe I should, oh my goodness, maybe I should have a caviar line in the future. Maybe that'll be my first food. Yum. If you could have, last quick question, if you could have a berry Conrad food line, what would be your first food?

Barry Conrad

Do you know what not just food i would say you know because i love spicy i'd maybe do something like a hot sauce or a. So like a hot seasoning first before like a food because that's something that i could make sense because it's something you can put lots of different things that's probably something i would do.

Melanie Avalon

I'm making a note of that, that you like hot sauce stuff.

Barry Conrad

I do. I love it. I love Spicy.

Melanie Avalon

We should do a product collab, like a food collab. A wine, maybe? Yeah. Okay, what would you get to start? Oh, I know what I would get. This is like, oh, whoa, there's two things I want. Oh wait, there's three. Oh crap, actually I want everything. What do you want?

Barry Conrad

Kompachikrudur and the Wagyu Tatar.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so I want the wagyu tartar, the crudo, and the hen's egg. I really want the hen's egg. Oh wait, is it not a hen's egg? Is it actually crawfish?

Barry Conrad

Yeah, I think it's just called hens egg, but I don't know why.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, so I take that back I want the same thing as you

Barry Conrad

Okay, in that case, let's get the garden solid like to kind of pad things out just to be there, you know, there's some, you know, greens there to look good.

Melanie Avalon

and take pictures for Instagram.

Barry Conrad

For the photo, exactly. You gotta bounce it out.

Melanie Avalon

And I'll have the crude out and the wagyu as well as will you.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, what would you have for your, okay, not the entree, I'm going to say your main event. That's the main dish.

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Are we skipping? Is pasta like, I'm confused. There's like a pasta section. Is that like a, is that a course? I'm skipping that course. Do you want one of those?

Barry Conrad

I feel like that's a main thing too. I feel like I put pasta and the entrepreneur sections into one thing. Like they're all like main things.

Melanie Avalon

So here's what I love, friends. You can get, for your main thing, we always have the language translation issue here, but for the main thing, you can get a pasta, an entree, or an entree for two. So basically, I'm always wanting to get two entrees, so I can just get the entree for two for one, for me. This is like incredible, but you can have some too if you want.

Barry Conrad

So what would you have?

Melanie Avalon

I think I would get the Dover Soul entree for two, but how big is that fish that is for two?

Barry Conrad

They'd be massive.

Melanie Avalon

That's what I want. It's probably like a it's like probably a whole fish. Do you like fish when it's in its whole fish form? I love it

Barry Conrad

I do. I love it. Some people get grossed out by seeing the eyes and seeing the whole thing. I love it.

Melanie Avalon

I love it when it even has like the brain in it still.

Barry Conrad

What? I was expecting that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, because I remember the first time I had it like that, the guy I was I was with was like daring me to eat the brain. I was like, Oh, no, I like I want to eat the brain. This is not hard for me to do. Although it actually didn't taste as good as I thought it would. I thought it was gonna taste like good, like bone marrow. And it actually tasted like not that good. And I was like, Oh, actually, nevermind. But I wasn't scared is the point.

Barry Conrad

Have you fished before like yourself? Like, have you gone fishing and caught something and ate it?

Melanie Avalon

I have. Are you impressed? Are you surprised? Growing up, we lived on a pond. We would fish. We never ate that fish, but we would fish. And then in Florida, we would always go on these fishing things where you hire a person who takes you fishing, and then you would cook the fish later. But oh, actually, so I'm halfway answering this. At that time, I was not eating fish, so I didn't actually eat the fish, but we did cook it.

Barry Conrad

Wow.

Melanie Avalon

How about you?

Barry Conrad

Oh yeah we went fishing a lot when i was a kid so i do love the whole thing and it takes better when you catch it something about that.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Although now I don't think I could actually eat any of the fish that I catch because of the mercury issue. Unless I catch salmon. And sole I believe is low. That's why I was picking it.

Barry Conrad

I might have to have like a bite of the soul, just like an immortal to try it.

Melanie Avalon

And what would you get for your entree?

Barry Conrad

I would get two things. I would get the West Home Wagyu and I'd also get the Hunter's Chicken.

Melanie Avalon

That's perfect because I also wanted those. So can I have a bite? Of course. How are you cooking your Wagyu?

Barry Conrad

So it's got to be medium rare, but more on the rare side.

Melanie Avalon

I can tolerate that.

Barry Conrad

I'm not going to do blue, Melanie, I'm not going to have just

Melanie Avalon

You're not doing blue? No blue?

Barry Conrad

No.

Melanie Avalon

someday. When we have our meal together, will you eat blue? Like if I order it blue, will you like try it?

Barry Conrad

Oh yeah I'm not like I've I'm not scared of having it's just like I enjoy like a little bit more like heat on the surface but I definitely love like rare for sure I definitely do it to the blue.

Melanie Avalon

Perfect, okay. And then for dessert, what would you get?

Barry Conrad

Oh man, this is hard. Okay. The FM Rocha, which is vanilla hazelnut chocolate, and I would also get the Baba R. Rom, which is an aged spirit selection. That sounds pretty appetizing to me. What about you?

Melanie Avalon

I would get a repeat of whichever appetizer I liked the most out of the caviar, crab, oyster, shrimp, crudo, and lobster. For dessert, actually, let me take that back. I probably would go like the shrimp, lobster, or crab route.

Barry Conrad

One day, hopefully I'll get to see you like have like one bite of like a cake or something with me.

Melanie Avalon

That is your mission in life, and I respect that.

Barry Conrad

I just want to see your reaction to it just when you have it.

Melanie Avalon

It's not, yeah. Would you get any of their seasonal or signature cocktails? The beverage menu.

Barry Conrad

You know what? The Southern Passion looks pretty good. I'll try that.

Melanie Avalon

Although it's perfect because we're in the south.

Barry Conrad

Yeah, you know.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, on theme I would get so I actually am friends with the Psalm here. His name is Maxwell. Shout out to Maxwell. And he knows my tastes and how intense I am and that I only drink organic low alcohol, like fruity wines. So from Europe. So and again, Atlas has an incredible wine list, like the book is just overwhelming. It's like, it's one of those like books, you know, like pages and pages and pages. So I would have him pick something.

Barry Conrad

Also, I have to maybe zoom out for one more second. I'll have that as like the first, I'll have that with my starter. And then with the mains, I'll have my, I'll have the golden margarita.

Melanie Avalon

Perfect. You got to feature the the berry margarita moment

Barry Conrad

Yeah, because that looks good. Lime, egg white, that's to own. That's that's that looks really good.

Melanie Avalon

And we could take beforehand a shot of what we talked about last time, Z-biotics.

Barry Conrad

Exactly. We'll take the shot and then enjoy the night.

Melanie Avalon

the probiotic genetically engineered to help you break down the toxic byproducts of alcohol in your stomach. I highly recommend it and it is part of my protocol every single time I go out. So for that, listeners can go to melaniavalon.com slash zbiotics, z-b-i-o-t-i-c-s and use the coupon code melaniavalon to get 10% off. Awesome. Well, I feel good. So friends, takeaway is that with fasting, you can have your cake and eat it too, unless you just look at it like me. But the point is you can indulge in all the things that make you feel good and happy in your eating window and still get all the benefits of fasting. So we love it.

Barry Conrad

We love it. And you know what, I was actually just thinking as we were doing this week's restaurant is, I hope that when we do the restaurant at the end, that if it works with your window, your eating window listeners, that you can start snacking away and enjoying it. Like while we talk about food, that'd be really fun. That'd be fun for me to listen to and eat.

Melanie Avalon

Oh yeah, or go look at the menu and see what you would order.

Barry Conrad

Or both, and or. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

I love it. Love it. Love it. All right. Well, this was so, so fun. Friends, if you'd like to submit your own questions for the show, you can email questions at iapodcast.com or you can go to iapodcast.com and you can submit questions there. You can follow us on Instagram. I am Melanie Avalon. Barry is berry underscore Conrad. And our together one is I have podcast. And yeah, I think that's all the things. Anything from you, Barry, before we go?

Barry Conrad

Thanks for tuning in everyone and we'll catch you next week.

Melanie Avalon

Yep, this was so fun. I will talk to you next week. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice, and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team, editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week.

Feb 17

Episode 409 – Special Guest Kara Collier, Continuous Glucose Monitors Q&A, Ideal Blood Sugar Levels, Berberine & Apple Cider Vinegar Timing, Reducing Blood Glucose, Sleep, Stress, Diet & Exercise, Adding Fat Vs. Protein, Blood Sugar & Heart Health, and More!

Welcome to Episode 409 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine, and Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC.

SPECIAL GUEST

Kara Collier is the co-founder and VP of Clinical Operations at Nutrisense, one of America’s fastest-growing wellness-tech startups. She is a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient, frequent podcast guest & conference speaker. Kara has made it her mission to help others reach optimal health using modern technology & expert coaching. Kara is a leading authority on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology, particularly in non-diabetics, for health optimization, disease prevention, and reversing metabolic dysfunction. Kara is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), Licensed Dietitian/Nutritionist (LDN), and Certified Nutrition Support Clinician (CNSC).

Website | Nutrisense IG | Kara Collier IG

SHOW NOTES

SPONSORS & DISCOUNTS

NUTRISENSE CONTINUOUS GLUCOSE MONITOR

Get $50 off with code melanieavalon at melanieavalon.com/nutrisensecgm.

ONESKIN

MD LOGIC

Get 10% off MD Logic's Health Marine Collagen with code ifpodcast at ifpodcast.com/collagen.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review in Apple Podcasts!

Original theme composed by Leland Cox, and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to Episode 409 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat, with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, founder of AvalonX, and author of What, When, Wine. Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine. And I'm joined by my co-hosts, Barry Conrad, actor, singer-songwriter, and creator and host of Banter with BC. For more on us, check out MelanieAvalon.com and BarryConradOfficial.com. You can submit questions for the show by emailing questions at iapodcast.com or by going to iapodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment, so pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Hi, everybody, and welcome. This is episode number 409 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. I am here today with a very special guest. It's somebody who's been on the show before, and it's for a topic that we talk about all the time and which has a radical effect on people's health and wellness and fasting and all the things. And so that topic is continuous glucose monitors, also known as CGMs. And friends, like I was saying, you're probably familiar because I talk about them all the time, but continuous glucose monitors, which we will talk about, actually give you a picture of your blood sugar levels on a sort of like a 24-7 basis for quite a few days when you do a session of one. And it is so eye-opening because it actually gives you an in-real-time picture of how your food is affecting you, how your fasting is affecting you, all the things. It can be a game changer, especially if you're trying to just figure out where you're at with your health or if you're trying to break through a weight loss plateau or just really optimize everything you're doing when it comes to food and diet and lifestyle. So I am here with Kara Collier. She is a fabulous human being and the co-founder of Nutrasense, which is a platform which makes CGMs accessible to everyday people. And by everyday people, I mean you don't need a doctor's prescription in order to get one. And then Nutrasense also comes with an app which helps you actually analyze and understand the data and it is just so empowering, so helpful. And so Kara, thank you so much for being here.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to chat.

Melanie Avalon

So, I was telling you before, I have quite a few listener questions for you, but before diving into those, I actually have a personal question because I think last time we came on the show was a while ago and I feel like within that, well, it wasn't that long ago, but in any case, in that time period, I feel AI really like took off, like chat GBT, because I feel like there was like a pre-AI time, I mean, AI's been around for a while, but like it like rapidly escalated. And so I was just thinking before we started recording with Nutrisense and everything you're doing with CGMs, like the future of it and what you're doing now, has that had a big effect on the company and the future and everything that you want to do with CGMs?

Kara Collier

Yeah, that's a great question. So much has changed. I think we spoke maybe like a little over a year ago, when you reflect back of like all the things that change in a year, both in terms of technology advancements, but also just the industry, like a lot has changed within cgms and within our company. But with AI specifically, yeah, it is going to make analyzing, I mean, it already is making analyzing large amounts of data, super simple and easy, which is great for both businesses that function on data as kind of the main component. So now instead of just having maybe cgm data, it's going to be a lot easier for us to plug and play other forms of data and put it all together and give you something meaningful. And then it's also going to make it easier for the user, you know, we have the easy ability for you to export every single data point in that kind of like five minute intervals. And then you can kind of if you're savvy enough, you can use simple free AI tools to manipulate that data if you have certain things you want to look for or see that we aren't necessarily providing for you. So I think it just makes it a lot easier to use data for answers, because you don't have to be an analyst anymore to be able to kind of use these tools. So as a company, it's kind of helping us make it easier for making things digestible for people. And it's also helping us to make sure that our human support, which we're actually leaning on even more now in the forefront of AI is still having that human component, but it's helping to kind of augment them and give them the tools and support they need to do their job well.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, that's really interesting. So do you think you're temporarily leaning on them more or do you think ultimately, you know, it'll be all AI providing that support?

Kara Collier

Yeah, it's hard to predict what exactly will happen and what the gaps are going to be and how much adoption there will be across the board. You know, you still ask the average person on the street if they use chat GBT on a daily basis and most people actually are not. Like it's still really underutilized on just like an average person, but we've actually leaned more on the human component because of a demand from customers. Recently, you know, we used to just provide chat support access to our dietitian so that you could ask questions. And now we do kind of our long telehealth sessions that are reimbursed by insurance. And that really came from the demand of people wanting to turn these data insights into real behavior change. So it's kind of connecting that dot of how do I now turn this into a habit I can stick to? How do I, you know, adjust things when my routine is different? And for some people, I think it just depends on your personality type AI might solve that problem for you. And we're happy to kind of support that person in that way, where I think there is a whole separate group of people that need that human connection in order to reach their goals. So I think it really just depends on your personality type and like what motivates you.

Melanie Avalon

I'm so interested by this, and it's also interesting that you point that out about, you know, not everybody using chat GPT and things like that. Actually, yesterday, the guest I had on the show, I just like brought up chat GPT, I was talking about it, and they actually hadn't, like, they didn't know what I was talking about. And I was like, Oh, like, because I'm so saturated in it, it's like, I use it so much. I forget that everybody's not using it all the time.

Kara Collier

I know I'm currently trying to get my mom to use it more for like basic things. And it's, it's an interesting experience to walk through somebody who's like the learning curve is like, it's not intuitive to them in the same way of like how I would use it for all these different applications. But as soon as like I pointed out, she's like, Oh, that's amazing, but wouldn't have thought of it herself. So I think there's a lot of people like her.

Melanie Avalon

I use it for for everything. It's so it's so helpful. It expands beyond just things like this, but the entirety of health care like will we always want a final human, you know, overseeing everything, especially like surgeries and procedures and records. Do you think there's a future where we're comfortable? I know you're talking about personality types, but do you think there's a future where it's all just automated?

Kara Collier

I think so. I think a lot is going to change. I think we're at the start of exponential change, you know, where it's, we're at that bottom of that exponential curve where I think it's going to be almost, it's going to be very challenging to even imagine what things are going to look like 10 years from now. Cause I think they're going to be so different than even what has changed, you know, in the past 10 years. So I think everything is going to look different eventually. I just don't know when that will happen. Like what is the pace of which this is going to occur in a, which we're all very like normalized and we trust some of these systems. Cause the other thing is, you know, right now there's still the issue of kind of the quality of data you put in is what you get out, but it's, that's going to be less of an issue as things just get more and more intelligent. I think there's going to be time where we trust data a lot more than humans.

Melanie Avalon

It's so interesting. And on a similar note, so the actual technology itself, and it's interesting when I was asking for questions, one of the first comments I got, it actually wasn't a question, but it was a clarification, which I find really helpful from Lisa Marie. And she said that she's a type one diabetic here. She said, please know that CGM tests the interstitial fluid and not the actual blood like blood glucose monitors do. I've heard other podcasts mistake this. It will be interesting to see what questions pop up here. And then Stacy wanted to know how accurate are CGM's. And the reason I'm leaning off of both of those is kind of tying it into this concept of the evolution of everything in the future. So the actual technology of the CGM, because like Lisa Marie was saying, it's not actually measuring our blood sugar levels. It's measuring this interstitial fluid. Is the technology itself, like has it evolved or changed? Is that still how it works? Do you think it will change? And then as far as the accuracy, like how does that tie into the evolution and how the technology might be changing?

Kara Collier

The, that is correct. So the, the CGM they are measuring your glucose in your interstitial fluid, which is just kind of like the fluid in between your cells. So you can think of it as kind of like classic diffusion that we learned in science class. So when your glucose changes first in the bloodstream and then diffuses into the interstitial fluid. So the biggest difference between the values in your blood glucose level and your interstitial fluid is that there's usually a little bit of a delay as it diffuses and the more intense the change. So if you suddenly dump in a ton of glucose into your bloodstream, the faster it's going to diffuse into the interstitial fluid. So the more rapidly it's changing kind of the quicker you're going to see that appear, but if it's a slow change, it will diffuse slowly. So it is an, and one thing that is important to think about though, is that that glucose in our interstitial fluid is still like, you know, it's a part of our body. Like that is like real glucose that is also important to know. So it's not that it's irrelevant. It's just that it's a slight difference from your blood levels. This is especially important for type one diabetics, which are the, you know, the patient population, the audience that these CGM were first created for, and that they're most critical for this audience because they cannot, you know, they type one, type one diabetics do not make insulin. And so they rely on exogenous, you know, injected insulin in order to maintain glucose levels and to live and survive. So those minor fluctuations are really important to be on top of in a type one diabetic. And their glucose swings are much more dramatic typically because, you know, that normal process that a non-type one diabetic kind of naturally has. So their swings might go from 200 to 50 in the matter of, you know, 30 minutes. It's especially important in that group, whereas if you're a non-diabetic, the minor differences, it is important to kind of know that absolute value, but it's the trends and information that you're gaining from like the way your glucose is changing. And that is most useful. So coming to the question then of accuracy and precision, what tends to be very correct, so to speak with the CGM is the precision. So the amount that glucose is fluctuating at different times. So if you compare your overnight average on your Sunday versus Monday, kind of how you're seeing how much those are different between two days is very accurate in that precision. But what might be off is the absolute number. So it could be reading that your glucose is 90 right now, and then jumped up to 120 when in reality it was 80 and jumped up to 110. So we do allow people to calibrate in our app, which means if you know your glucose at that moment, because you recently got a fasted glucose level or your finger pricking is 80, you can adjust it to match that. And then you can kind of see that in real time, a little bit more accurately. But if you don't have that number and you aren't calibrating, you can see that my glucose jumped 30 points and it took four hours for it to come back down to what it was before I ate.

Kara Collier

You can see those trends and variability in your glucose levels, whether the number is exactly on or not.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. Okay. So many, I have so many thoughts and questions. I'm just trying to think in all the conversations I've had about CGM's. I don't remember learning that about if it's a bigger change or a faster change that you see it faster on the CGM. That's, that's really, that makes sense though. Okay. Some, some questions there. Well you mentioned just to provide some clarity for listeners about the numbers they actually should be looking for. Andrea had a really good question. She said, what is the optimal blood sugar spike for a given meal? Should your blood sugar never go over X amount or is it more about how quickly your blood sugar returns to normal? I heard someone say your blood sugar should basically stay between 80 to 130 no matter what you've eaten. So can we, um, just kind of clarify for listeners, what numbers they actually should be looking for?

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. And I love this question because I think there is a lot of misinformation around this. The first myth I always like to point out that I think we've discussed is that like an absolutely flat glucose line is not necessarily the end goal. Like zero variability in your glucose is not superior to normal amount of variability. So if your glucose moves because you just ate, that is normal physiological response to eating. But we want to make sure that it's moving in a way that is not too high and it doesn't take too long to get back to normal. And then we also want to put it into context. And this is where kind of either AI detection to put it into context for you or a human to kind of point this out and talk through it is important. Because if you eat something that is just protein and fat, I'm not expecting your glucose to go up too much if there isn't any carbohydrates in it. So it might be ideal if your glucose was starting at 80, if it goes up to a 90 or 100, and then comes back down to 80 within two hours, that's pretty expected. But if you have some carbohydrates, let's say you have half a cup of sweet potato with that same meal, it might be completely normal for it to go up to 120, 130, but then come back down within two hours still. So you do want to take into context like what did I eat to make sure that it's an expected response. But at a high level, we really don't want glucose to go above 140 in an optimal manner. And we want it to kind of come back down to those pre-meal values within two hours of eating. But as I mentioned, if you're following a low carbohydrate diet, if it's just kind of mostly protein and fats, then I really don't expect it to go much above 120, kind of at any point in time with meals. But one last clarification I'll point out is that there's a difference between what is optimal for good long-term health and kind of what is the goal range, which is below that 140, and being metabolically unhealthy. So there are responses when I look at someone's meal response that I would say, this concerns me that maybe there's some metabolic dysfunction, potentially some insulin resistance. And then there are responses where I'm like, this makes sense given the context, but it's not a healthy or ideal response. So to give two examples, you might eat a piece of steak and half of a sweet potato, and your glucose goes up to 140. It takes four hours to come back down to normal. And it's like, I wouldn't have expected it to go that high, and I would have expected it to come back down sooner. This could be something to look into, get your insulin level tested, kind of try some other foods. It might not be a good sign of normal metabolic response. And then there's somebody who maybe drinks an entire Gatorade and their glucose spikes up to 150 and comes back down in an hour. And that response doesn't indicate to me that you have metabolic dysfunction, but it doesn't mean we want to see that response because it's not necessarily good for your body. Does that make sense?

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, no, that completely does. And actually, so to that point, and so this is me asking, and then Andrea actually had a follow-up question that is kind of similar. But my question would be, if we're not expecting to see that many fluctuations on like a low-carb diet, a keto diet, maybe even a carnivore diet, is there benefit to using a CGM on that sort of diets? Or is it really just for people who are eating carbs? And then I can tie in Andrea's second question, but maybe I'll start with that.

Kara Collier

Yeah. I definitely think there is still benefit. Usually people who are following a lower carbohydrate diet don't need to wear them for as long to get some insights, but some examples of things you might learn are the impact of meal timing. So sometimes everyone kind of responds differently, but eating later at night versus earlier in the morning, like how does your glucose respond? And then there's also giving you a better picture of what your average glucose levels are because a hemoglobin A1C, which is trying to capture your average glucose, isn't always super accurate. And so this wearing a CGM is another way to kind of see at a broader view, what are your average glucose levels overall, which is really important for overall health. I mean, kind of seeing like, does it come back down to lower values while I'm sleeping when I'm fasted? And then that's kind of the third component is seeing the fluctuations in your fasted glucose levels, which can be impacted by a lot of factors outside of nutrition and carbohydrates. So often we'll see people who are under a lot of stress and those fasted glucose levels are really high, which brings their average glucose levels up and they're not eating any carbohydrates. And the thing they really have to work on is stress management. That could be a similar type of thing for sleep quality or sleep quantity. So there's all these other variables that can impact your glucose levels that a CGM just provides much quicker and more meaningful insight into that are worth at least assessing, even if you're following a low carbohydrate diet. So maybe you wear one sensor for 14 days and everything looks good. You might be good to go and maybe you only wear one once a year to kind of check in where somebody with more of a variability in their diet might need to wear them a couple more to even kind of understand that baseline.

Melanie Avalon

So that actually does tie in really well to Andrea's second question because, so basically she's trying to figure out why her fasting blood sugar is consistently around 100, whereas like she said two years ago, it was always low around in the 80s. And she says she's been taking berberine for a long time. She says she's tried eating higher protein. She avoids processed foods, seed oils, refined sugars and grains. She takes a bajillion supplements. And so she's struggling to figure out why her fasting blood sugar is high. And her two questions here are, one, can high protein cause a higher fasting blood sugar somehow? She said she feels healthy otherwise. Good energy, good muscle mass, very little visceral fat. And then her second question, it's not really a question, but I'm turning it into a question. She said, I'm considering getting a CGM again, but I, oh, this is just a note. She says she thought that the numbers were consistently about 15 millimole difference compared to her finger stick. And since her main concern is now her fasting blood sugar and not the spikes, will it be helpful? So, and her fasting insulin was 4.7 and she's considering metformin. But to recap the questions here, so I guess there's three questions. One, which is what is similar to what we were just talking about, if she's just concerned about her fasting blood sugar, not the spikes per se, would a CGM be helpful there? Maybe we can start with that question.

Kara Collier

Yeah, I still think it's very insightful because you can start to see trends a little bit easier than the finger pricks. And like I said, in our app and in some apps, you can calibrate and some you cannot. So it sort of depends. But if you know, okay, it's consistently 15 points higher, you can kind of just do that mental math in your head that, okay, it's reading 115, but it's actually 100. But it's useful to get that sense of what days are my fasting glucose even higher or lower and like what is driving those changes potentially. Typically, we don't see people have the same exact pattern every single day. And to that point, then kind of bleeding into potentially a second question, is there are other variables that we tend to look at really closely if it seems like the fasting glucose is the thing that is driving up. So I mentioned stress tends to be the top thing for people usually if they have a higher fasting glucose level, but everything else looks good, because that kind of chronic cortisol pulsing that chronic elevated cortisol is going to stimulate the liver to be making glucose. And that tends to drive up our fasted glucose levels. So sort of assessing stress levels, and kind of any form of stress is a good place to start. The second thing tends to be sleep quality and quantity. So kind of looking at that and making sure that you're getting adequate sleep, because that can definitely impact your fasted glucose level. And lastly, in terms of just really common factors for people is the timing of your last meal. Some people seem to be much more sensitive to this than others. There seems to be like a genetic variance to how sensitive you are. But for some people, if you eat later at night, it will bleed all the way into kind of the next day, next morning and impact your fasted glucose levels. So that's another thing to play around with. And as we've kind of mentioned, the benefit of the CGM is that you can experiment with something and get insight quickly. So you could try adjusting that meal timing and see what happens and pretty much assess within one day, if that is making any difference or not. Similarly with adding in a walk before bed or in the evening or after your dinner, you can have a very quick yes or no of what type of impact that had, which I think is one of the main benefits of the CGM is just that quicker learning feedback.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I could not agree more and it's hard to really emphasize just how profound it is until somebody's actually done it, but that in real time data and that really ability to see quick changes, I just think is so, so powerful. So her question about the protein, actually before that, I want to comment on the liver piece. I also love that you brought that up because I think a lot of people think fasting, you know, their fasted blood sugar level is primarily driven by like the food they just ate. But so much of it is the liver actually, you know, producing this glucose, which I think a lot of people don't realize. So her question about can high protein cause fasting blood sugar to be higher? Have you seen that with CGM's?

Kara Collier

Yeah. And to touch on the liver piece, just to emphasize that more, like your liver has unlimited ability to keep making glucose. Like there, there is no upper limit, you know, it's like you can keep making it and making it. Because I think a lot of people under emphasize the amount of stress they're under and how much of an impact that has, but related to protein. So this is something that I get asked quite often. And I have very rarely been able to see a direct link between, okay, we really increased your protein and we saw that fasted glucose go up or we really decreased your protein and we saw fasted, flat, fasted glucose levels drop. So I can't say with certainty, because I haven't done like a, you know, completely randomized controlled trial. But anecdotally, I haven't seen this to make a big impact. I think that the upper threshold of how much protein you have to eat in order for that to start impacting your glucose levels is pretty high and higher than what most people are doing. So it's not to say I don't think it exists. I just don't think it's a common variable that most people are probably needing to deal with. It can, you know, provide the substrates for your liver to make more glucose, as we've mentioned. But again, most of the time I don't, see this direct correlation and it's not usually something that I'm having people worry about too much. Usually I'm having people eat more protein than what they're currently doing.

Melanie Avalon

I tend to err on the side of encouraging more protein rather than less. And we've actually, especially when we have a new co-host now, but Vanessa Spina was our prior co-host and we talked about protein all the time on the show and it's still an ongoing debate. Like it's weird to me that we still don't know that there are still conflicting opinions about if you're eating excess protein, whether or not it becomes glucose or not. Like there's people still debate that.

Kara Collier

Yeah, they do.

Melanie Avalon

I'm like, how do we not know? I feel like this is testable.

Kara Collier

Yeah, I feel pretty good about recommending like higher protein is typically better. And there's like very rare instances where I'm like, that's a lot of protein you're eating. Like usually I'm like, yeah, more protein, please.

Melanie Avalon

It's shocking the amount of protein I eat, but I also don't add a lot to it. I don't think I could eat the amount of protein I eat and also have a ton of carbs or fat as well. This is a random question I just thought of. Have you seen, I'm trying to remember, I don't remember the brand or what it was called, but a company reached out to me and they were making an app that was supposed to show you your blood sugar levels, but it didn't actually test them. Do you have thoughts on that concept? I was very hesitant. I immediately just said no, because I was like, how does it know? Like you could be telling people wrong information.

Kara Collier

Yeah, I would definitely be skeptical of that. And that, that brings to a question I think you had earlier that I might not have finished with just like new technology with measuring glucose levels. What is being tested and I think has a lot of potential, but is not ready for like full market adoption consumer use is kind of detecting your glucose values through like optics and lasers. So, you know, similarly to kind of how we're detecting heart rates from like a wearable or like a watch. I think that there will certainly be a possibility where we'll be able to wear something like that, that is kind of able to detect the glucose levels like in from your, you know, your veins and your, your blood vessels. There's also the ability potentially to detect it in like your eyes. So the small amount of those tiny blood vessels that are in your eyes and kind of similar type of functionality. I haven't seen anything yet that has been that is credible and verified and ready for like market use. So I would say if you have something right now, like anybody out there, like they're seeing an ad for something, I would be skeptical, but I definitely think we're going to have much better technology in the future.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I was going to circle back to that. I'm so glad you brought that up again at Nutrisense. Are you actively looking at expanding if there is new technology like that in the future, or I'm just curious about like the company in general. And actually related to that, Anna said, are they available over the counter yet? I had heard a like a rumor or a whisper that maybe that barrier was going to be broken anyways with CGMs. Do you know about all of that?

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. So from a company perspective, we don't make the hardware. We work with the companies who do make it. And then we do the software. So the app and then the services, the nutrition dietitian support on top of it. So we're always looking for like what, and we're not hardware specific, where we only work with, you know, one person, one type, we work with several different ones. And now we also have a better related to the over-the-counter option. We have a better what we call like BYOS, bring your own sensor, because they are available over the counter now. Oh, are they?

Melanie Avalon

Did I miss that?

Kara Collier

Yeah, so it's very recent change. So yes, they're available over the counter, which is a huge change in making them more affordable, more accessible. So we're working directly with those companies as well, to kind of integrate those sensors into our ecosystem to make it even cheaper to our customers as well. And from their perspective, they are still hardware manufacturers that don't really want to play too much in like the consumer side, even though now it's direct to consumer or the software side. So, you know, they're, they want to kind of like stick in that wheelhouse. So it works well to be able to either you can get the sensors directly from them and then use just our app in our dietitian services or kind of still get it through us, but using their hardware because it's continuing to make it cheaper and easier for everybody.

Melanie Avalon

Wow, when did that happen? Do you know?

Kara Collier

I think it was August or September.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, in the fall. Okay. I find it really interesting in the medical community in general, where the barriers are, and where they aren't. Like what we're like allowed access to, and what we're not. I just, I'm, I find it intriguing.

Kara Collier

It is. The whole thing has been interesting because, you know, it's in Europe, they've always been over the counter, same companies, same, you know, manufacturers are allowed to sell them in Europe over the counter. And then in the US, we just kind of, you know, had like an arbitrary rule, but they are still their cgms that they make for so like, you know, the Libre you're familiar with is still a prescription device for diabetics, technically. And then they have their over the counter variation, which has like certain, it has to be like a different sensor, technically, in order to get that approval. So there's still some weird rules and like, things that we're having to go through. But I think the whole landscape is changing. And we're only going to move towards more accessibility, cheaper prices, better technology as things continue to change.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Wow. That's really interesting about the, like the lasers or the eye. And I want to say non-invasive, but putting a CGM on for friends, if you've probably heard me talk about this before, some people can be intimidated because it, there is like a needle that sticks to your skin, but I promise you, you don't, you like don't even feel it. It's so easy to put on.

Kara Collier

Yeah, it's so easy. And if you do any sort of at home finger pricks, that's way worse just like to put it into context way worse.

Melanie Avalon

There's like no comparison.

Kara Collier

Yeah, I hate finger picking now.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, as far as actually lowering blood sugar levels, Amy had some good questions. She wanted to know about some specific different things. So she wanted to know, to help regulate blood sugar, is it better to go on a walk right after a meal? Or if the morning blood sugar is high, is it better to walk before the first meal? So that's the first one she asks about. So walking, and you mentioned walking earlier, so I'm glad she's talking about it. Is the timing of it, do you see a difference?

Kara Collier

Yeah, in general, walking is a great tool. The more you can do it and the more you can kind of get these like micro walks in. So 10 minutes here, five minutes there versus like a really long walk is better. So if you have the ability to do a 10 minute walk in the morning when you wake up and the ability to do 10 minutes walking after each meal, like that's ideal. But if you're like, I'm only going to do it once, I would say right after a meal is the best.

Melanie Avalon

And then another one she asked about when is the best time to take berberine?

Kara Collier

Yeah, I'm also curious to see if you if you have a preferred time, but in general, I see it best with meals. So I tend to recommend if you're kind of splitting it up, like if you're taking it twice a day, kind of taking it with with your biggest meals as the most optimal time, but I recommend taking it consistently. So as opposed to kind of taking it here and there, the more consistent you are, we see I see better benefits, but curious your, your thoughts. 1

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Well, first of all, have I sent you my berberine?

Kara Collier

I think last time you did, yes, yes, you did, because it's in the beautiful glass bottle. I love when they're glass bottles and not plastic.

Melanie Avalon

Me too. Yeah, no, huge Burberry fan here. It's interesting and I'm glad you asked that question because the majority of the research I've seen on Burberry does dose it around meals. That said, I do a daily fast. I fast every day and I eat one meal a day at night. So I actually just personally, I do take it in the morning and then I take it before my meal as well. I just, that's the way I do it.

Kara Collier

Yeah, makes sense. And I think the main recommendation from my awareness of taking it with meals is because sometimes people have GI side effects and they tend to be lessened with with meals, less so of like effectiveness. So if you don't have any sort of, you know, GI issues with it, then I don't think it matters as much.

Melanie Avalon

That's a good point. Yeah. It's also astounding because I think a lot of people think about berberine and they focus on the blood sugar control aspect, but there are so many studies on the other benefits of it beyond that. So helping with cholesterol, it actually, there's a study on showing how it activates AMPK, also microbiome effects. That's why I thought about it. So yeah, it has a lot of potential good benefits, which I love.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. And just like general like suppression of chronic inflammation, those like natural stress pathways. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so low risk, like we don't really see any sort of issues with it.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, it's great. How about fasting? So I'm going to modify her question a little bit because she's wanting to know, actually before that, since we're talking about blood sugar levels, she wants to know what is the best time to drink apple cider vinegar for blood sugar. She said she's seen 15 minutes before a meal and also right after a meal, does it matter? Do you have thoughts on apple cider vinegar?

Kara Collier

Yeah, I typically see the best benefit with this if it's right before a meal. So just drinking a little bit, diluting it with water if you want to. I know there are also apple cider vinegar supplements, but honestly, just kind of drinking it, taking a quick shot, diluting it into a beverage. A lot of people will dilute it into a plain sparkling water if that's your preference and kind of drinking it right before the meal, I tend to see the best, best impact.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Do you personally use any? Well, I know we're brain. Do you use apple cider vinegar?

Kara Collier

I don't use it consistently. I have used it in Burberry or not Burberry apple cider vinegar is one of those that you can sort of use more randomly and see just as much of an impact versus like needing consistent use to see the benefit. So if I know like I have maybe an abnormal meal coming up that's like higher carbohydrate or kind of something going on, like I'll try to incorporate it. Like I'm like, Oh, a mental note to do it, but it's not a part of my daily routine.

Melanie Avalon

And then Amy's last question was the fasting schedule. She wants to know for blood sugar, is it better to do a long fast or to fast daily for X amount of hours? What might people find with fasting and CGM?

Kara Collier

Yeah, and this is one of those topics where I think wearing the CGM and experimenting is going to be your best option because I see so much variability between people of what what is kind of their optimal sweet spot for fasting. Like as I mentioned, I think there's some good general rules of thumb of like, you know, don't be grazing all day, like make sure you have at least, you know, a little bit of time between your last meal and going to bed, having some sort of fasting window throughout the day. And then beyond sort of the basics, I just, I just see so much variability between what works for people. What you're kind of looking for is what does your glucose look like when you break a fast, so kind of just being mindful of what is the first few bites of food you put in your mouth, please don't start straight with carbohydrates, you'll probably especially the longer you've been fasting, the more important this is of like how you're breaking that fast. And then kind of when it comes to the right timing, you just sort of experiment with different times. And then that fasting window, I think also experiment. I know you you mentioned you do OMAD, and I think it works really well for some people. And then for some people, it doesn't. So I think just kind of testing that out for yourself. And usually the factor that I see of when it doesn't work is if they have a lot of other stressors stacked up in their life. And there's one too many stressors happening. So if you have a very stressful job, and you don't have your stress management under control, and you kind of are doing other things that are putting stress on your body, sometimes the positive stress of fasting and some of these other things like, you know, sauna cold plunge can tip that scale into too much stress. And then we see glucose levels go up fasting glucose levels, postprandial responses, average glucose levels. And so usually it's kind of what which of those things can we adjust so that we can normalize. And then with some people, we see their glucose levels dramatically appear dramatically improve when we add in more fasting than what they're currently doing. So again, I think it's contextual. And I think you have to experiment. But you know, I do recommend kind of the basics of doing some type of fasting window. So you're not eating 24 seven and trying not to eat like right before you go to bed. And then being mindful of how you're breaking that fast is super important.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I just like you're saying, it's so individual. And it also can change, you know, through time, like one thing that's working for you now might be different later. Like I know for me in the past, I went through a period of time where I was very low carb, almost carnivore, and I would have higher fasting blood sugar levels doing that. And then when I actually added in some carbs, I actually started having lower fasting blood sugar levels. And so my theory there is that, you know, my liver was probably like overcompensating, putting out glucose, and then it's actually just brought in, you know, endogenous or exogenous carbs. I feel like it wasn't keeping my levels high all the time. Things just can really change. So if you had to, well, Susan wanted to know what's the best way to lower blood sugar, and we literally just went through so many different ones. But so maybe I'll modify her question a little bit. If you had to, you know, have somebody start somewhere, because that's so many lifestyle factors, like where should somebody like, where should they start? Because it can be a little bit overwhelming, I think.

Kara Collier

Yeah, it definitely can be. And that's again, why I think a CGM can be helpful is because you can kind of identify like, oh, this one meal is like really not working for me. Let me just adjust this thing versus kind of you get a high A1C and you're like, what do I need to do to bring this down? Like what do I, like it feels overwhelming. So it can be helpful to have just like more information so you can pick one thing at a time that you know is working. But if you don't have that, you're like not really sure and you know, your, your glucose is elevated. I would start with just being mindful of your carbohydrate intake. You know, it sounds simple, but that's a good place to start. I think one of the biggest myths out there that I'm sure your audience is a little bit more aware of than maybe the average person is just that like half of your calories should come from carbohydrates. And that's a lot. And like for 98% of people, it's too much. Sometimes I see it work fine for people if they're like athletes usually is pretty much the only bucket that, that amount tends to be okay. And so really just being kind of mindful of that total carbohydrate amount and prioritizing your plate to be more about protein, non-starchy vegetables, if you tolerate those well, and then kind of the carbohydrates are more of a nice to have small amount. So that can make a big difference. And then if you're consuming any form of like liquid carbohydrates, try, try to cut those out and that, cause that makes a big impact. You know, even if it's sort of quote unquote natural juices, that's still a very concentrated form of carbohydrates, any sort of sweetened beverage, sweetened coffees, Gatorade, you know, checking the sugar content of like electrolytes. So trying to just be mindful of that liquid sugar is another really kind of like big place to start kind of auditing your sugar intake.

Melanie Avalon

I'm pretty sure I think we talked about this before. I'm so fascinated by this question. So I'll re-ask it. How do you feel about the recommendation people make to add fat to your carbs to slow down the absorption of the carbs?

Kara Collier

Yeah. So it is this concept of kind of like no naked carbs, which I do think has validity to it. But what I see work a lot better than just kind of coding carbohydrates and fat is eating some protein before you have any form of carbohydrate. So back to that kind of point of how you break a fast, if you are in a fasted state and your first bite of food is like a banana, you're probably a piece of steak and then some non-starchy vegetables, like you're doing Brussels sprouts or whatever it is, and then like banana is your dessert or whatever, however you're arranging that. It's probably going to be a much more blunted glucose response, which is going to have a less of an impact directly on kind of your blood vessel health and that endothelial tissue and those things that kind of cascade from a dramatic glucose spike. So it is beneficial to first prioritize eating protein before you have carbohydrates and not eating them by themselves. But that doesn't mean that trying to think of a good example. If you're eating potatoes, that putting a bunch of olive oil on top of them makes them significantly better. That's kind of where we're headed. Instead, I would say eat a piece of fish and then have a few bites of potatoes if you want them and see what your glucose does.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I feel like my take on it is a little controversial, but I actually, I don't know. I just feel like if you're having carbs, adding fat to that just seems like a bad idea to me. Because then you're, I love the idea, basically for carbs, I would say add what you just said, protein or like green veggies. Because then you're gonna slow the absorption, but you're not gonna be adding in a competing fuel source. Because when you're adding in the fat, then you're just encouraging a situation, in my opinion, of energy toxicity. Because now you have like, you're adding a lot of calories, you're adding two fuel sources of fat versus carbs. It just seems, I don't know, compared to if you add in the protein or the veggies, but not adding in the fat, you can still be using that glucose and those carbs as fuel, the protein will be slowing everything down. I don't think it'll be running into this like conflicting fuel option.

Kara Collier

I agree. And I think volume matters. Like what the quantity of food definitely makes an impact. So it's like, you know, if we start to get where the quantity of food is more than your body needs, then it's it is going to start kind of kicking that in. But if it's like smaller amounts, it doesn't matter as much. But what I always recommend is that focusing on protein versus fat, because I also don't see fat blunt the glucose response nearly as well as protein or fiber does anyway. So it doesn't seem to have as powerful of an effect in that. And it is like, fat is extremely calorically dense. I am not fat phobic. I'm pro fat. But that doesn't mean that we want to like I maybe this is controversial, but I am not in the camp of add more fat to everything. Like the butter coffee is not my vibe. Because what I see often of what this actually turns into of people what people actually do with that is they're eating carbohydrates and they're putting butter in their coffee. And now we've just added 300 calories of butter for no reason. And like they're not any more satiated. They're not eating any less. They're not in ketosis. They're just adding more fat in random places. And that's not helpful.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I actually I'm on I'm on the same page there, because I feel like that's such a common recommendation. Add fat to your carbs. And it really should be add protein to your carbs. Like that would just be such a better recommendation, I think for for people.

Kara Collier

And usually the fat source people are adding that situation isn't necessarily like nutrient dense either, it's not like adding a lot of value.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Yeah. So true. So we're talking a lot about using a continuous glucose monitor for blood sugar levels. And I think we're kind of focusing on, well, actually we haven't even really defined this. So blood sugar levels and how it does relate to metabolic health in general. So that's me asking you, like, what are your thoughts there? Stephanie wanted to know, does glucose have any relation to heart health or cholesterol? Would her general practitioner give her a prescription if she asked? That's a good second question. Okay. So a few different things there. So general health, do the blood sugar levels, how do they affect our metabolic health? Does it relate to heart health? What are your thoughts there?

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. So metabolic health and metabolism in general, I think of as like this whole bucket of all the processes our body is doing in order to turn food into usable fuels. So thinking about digesting, absorbing, processing, transporting, excreting, it's all of the different processes required to utilize the energy that we're putting into our system and the energy that we've stored in our system. So that's like metabolic health and metabolism as a whole. And then glucose is one of those main fuel points, right? So we have glucose, we have fats and fatty acids, and those are our two main fuel sources. Of course, there's also ketones. And so by monitoring that, we have a good idea of kind of how that metabolic system is working. And typically you don't have glucose. It's not usually like if you keep going down a certain path of metabolic dysfunction, that you're only going to have one issue, that you're just going to have glucose issues and never lipid issues, or you're just going to have lipid issues and never glucose issues. So typically, like if we have metabolic dysfunction, that means our energy processing, transporting, all of those different systems are not working as they're designed to be working. And so you can kind of see that by watching how your glucose levels change and react and how they fluctuate. There's definitely a correlation with glucose levels and cardiovascular health, heart disease risk. And that's where tracking glucose levels tends to be easier than tracking lipids because we have the technology to monitor it in this 24 seven way. So usually when we improve glucose levels, we tend to kind of improve metabolic health as a whole, which then has that kind of ripple effect bleeding into improving lipid levels and kind of those other areas. But it doesn't just start with cardiovascular health. One thing I always like pointing out is that it also has a direct impact on kind of the sort of brain function side of things. So both risk for conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia, but also kind of your day to day ability to concentrate cognitive function memory, because that, you know, our brain is very glucose dependent and very insulin sensitive organ. So that's kind of another major area that by monitoring glucose levels and optimizing them kind of having that big impact on long term and short term health.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome, yeah. When she asked about would her general practitioner give her a prescription, if she asked, I'm curious if she's asking about like for her blood sugar levels or if if he would give it to her based on her cholesterol. But either way, do you find doctors are open to prescribing them to people?

Kara Collier

Yeah, historically, not so much, which is why we decided to do it ourselves. You started your company. Yeah, so we traditionally know, and I think part of the resistance here is that they're not trained on what to do with the information. It's like, okay, if I give this to a non-diabetic, and they come back and tell me, look at my glucose levels, how was it? They don't know because the only... And I really can't blame them for that because the only thing they've been trained on is maybe managing the diabetics levels, which is honestly very, very different. So part of it is, how do they help somebody if they do give it to them? And then the other is, it's not anywhere in traditional guidelines that this is a use case. So traditional medical triaging, an intervention for somebody, this is nowhere in the standard recommendations that it might be a useful tool. So unless you get somebody who's maybe more of in the functional medicine space, it's probably unlikely that they're going to, unfortunately. But yeah, that's sort of why we exist. And now that things are moving a little bit more over the counter, you can kind of bypass that all in general. So I would kind of go around them if they're resistant.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And I don't know the, obviously I don't know the technicalities of the medical system and how it works, but I would imagine, I know for doctors, there's a lot of pressure about what they can and can't prescribe and there's codes they have to follow. And so I would imagine it's probably not the easiest for them to prescribe a CGM without like a verified you are diabetic or pre-diabetic like code to put in the system.

Kara Collier

Definitely like insurance won't cover it and so usually weren't they're not typically thinking about things if it's not in a classic like insurance coverage route

Melanie Avalon

And so, glad we're talking about this, to clarify, so when people use Nutrisense, what is the setup? How many CGM's do they get? How does it work with the app? What is that experience like?

Kara Collier

Yeah. So each CGM lasts 14 days. So kind of our minimum order is to do two CGM's or like a month supply. And that's a great place to start if you're not really sure, if you just kind of want to check it out, or if you're generally healthy and just want to see some of these additional like insights that we talked about. So if you were to just do the one month, then you would get those two CGM's shipped to your door. You just kind of sign up on our website online. It's super simple. You fill out a quick health questionnaire, and then we'll ship it to your door. And then you have access to the app, which is where you'll see your glucose data. Once you put the sensor on, you can log your meals, you can kind of sync with your wearables. So any data from like your Apple watch or your or ring will sync on there. And that's also where you can schedule and book calls with our nutritionists and where you can kind of connect with them. Like I mentioned, now we offer full video consults, which again, for some people using the app, looking at the data, reading our blogs, talking to our kind of like chatbot that has all of our information might be enough. But then for other people, there was this big issue of kind of like what now or what does this mean, or what's most important to take away from here. Being able to kind of connect with that human helps people really turn the data into actions and change. And so then we also offer three months, six months and 12 months subscriptions. So you can change to those plans at any time, but it gets cheaper, kind of the longer the commitment term.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. And yeah, this will be a good time. So I will give listeners a link, because we do have a discount code for you guys. So thank you so much for that Kara. So people can go to Nutrisense.com slash if podcast. So that's n u t r i s e n s e comm slash if podcast and use the code I have podcast that will get you $30 off and one month of free nutritionist support. So definitely check that out. I'm super curious just like a day in your life, Kara at Nutrisense. Like what's a day in the life? I mean, I know we're like podcasting right now. But you know, where's your focus? What are you doing? Like was what's it like being at the company?

Kara Collier

Yeah, that's a great question. It's all over the place. I would say one thing that is always true is that a one day never looks the same as another day. But largely, so I'm responsible, really paying attention to our dietitian services. So everything that our dietitians touch and making sure that they are, you know, adequately staffed, trained, supporting our customers in the right appropriate way. And then anything that kind of requires knowing anything subject matter expertise. So I'm working with product a lot to make sure our product is really good, and scientifically sound and also useful and actionable. And then kind of external facing activities like this that require some of that more knowledge about kind of the nitty gritty of what it all means.

Melanie Avalon

And two more personal questions. One, how often do you wear a CGM?

Kara Collier

Well, I'm actually wearing one right now. So pretty often, I think when I first started wearing them, I wore them pretty much 24 seven, where now I probably tend to put one on every, I don't know, maybe two or three months, sometimes I'll wear them more often, if just there's like something happening in my life that I'm trying to pay more attention to. But in my normal routine, it's it's Yeah, maybe once every quarter. So

Melanie Avalon

This is actually really inspiring me because I haven't worn one in a while and I have one. So for me guys, so I'm going to I'm going to put that on like really soon. And what are you most excited about in the future with all of this?

Kara Collier

Yeah, similarly to what we've talked about, I think we're really at a cusp of a lot of positive change happening. So I'm excited about all of the technology advancements that are going to be coming, but I'm also really excited in terms of kind of the switch to the over-the-counter sensors. Because I think they're going to become more normalized. More people are going to be wearing these. They're going to be cheaper, which is going to make it easier for a lot more people to use them. And they're just going to become better technology that are easy to understand, easy to wear. They're going to last longer. And just like my personal goal, the reason I got in this in the first place is because I really, truly believe that if everybody wears even just one CGM, we will be healthier as a nation. So that is my big picture, moonshot goal, is that everybody wears at least one. Honestly, we still have a lot of improvement to make in our health as a society, but I'm optimistic that we'll at least be heading in the right direction, hopefully.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. Now I feel like I'm plagiarizing because literally that is how I open my conversations of CGMs. I always just say, especially for people who aren't familiar, I'm like, if everybody could just wear a CGM, like once, even just once, it would change the metabolic health of our nation. Like, hands down. Hands down. That's incredible. And it's really good to hear because I was curious when I first heard that, yeah, CGMs are going to become more accessible or maybe not require prescription. I was wondering how it was going to affect companies like you. Like, would you see that as, you know, a threat because you're providing CGMs, you know, and now people can get them over the counter. It's good to hear that you're all about the more access and the abundance. Because even if you get one over the counter, that is not going to help you analyze that data, make sense of it. I think so many people, you know, they get a CGM and then it's like, now what? You need something that helps you to understand everything. And Nutrisense, the app, and everything that you're doing is just so, so valuable for that. So, like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. And it's definitely synergistic. You know, if I love that they're going to be, you know, cheaper and easier, but it's also they are not they're not good at making apps or accessible data. So it's definitely synergistic of what we do and what the hardware manufacturers do.

Melanie Avalon

So again, for listeners, cannot recommend enough getting a CGM, go to Nutrisense.com slash I have podcast use the code I have podcast to save $30 and get one month of free nutrition and support. So well, this was awesome. I would love to just keep having you on annually if you're down because I, I just think this is so so helpful for people and I just can't thank you enough for all you're doing. So so thank you so much for everything that you're doing.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. I would be thrilled to make it an annual change and honestly, so much changes in a year would be fun to kind of do at that cadence.

Melanie Avalon

I know. It's really exciting, especially like going back to what we were talking about in the beginning. Like just so much has changed even from last time we talked, so. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day and we will have to talk again soon.

Kara Collier

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Melanie. Bye.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice, and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team, editing by podcast doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders. See you next week!

Feb 09

Episode 408 – Does MCT Oil Break The Fast?, GMO Probiotics To Break Down Alcohol, Fasting Tea And Coffee, Fasting For Colonoscopy Prep, Habits And Planning, Our Favorite Biohacks, Infrared Saunas And Red Light Therapy, And More!