JayJay
Welcome to episode eight of the Energy Balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman and joining me again today is my good friend, Mike Fave. And today we are going to be doing our first Q &A episode. We've got a ton of really great questions. Thank you guys so much for sending all of those in. We'll get to a few different ones today. We'll be talking about leaky gut, what it is, whether it's relevant to our health and what we can do to help to repair our gut in the case that it is leaky. We'll also be talking about starch and whether it is a culprit in weight gain and what we can do to incorporate starch into our diets or what we should do with our diet if we can't eat starch very well. And then we'll also be talking about the importance of experimentation and finding the right diet for us. We'll be talking about how we can work with our bodies rather than fighting against them, is what most of the recommendations out there suggest that we should do. And then we'll be talking about the different types of dairy, raw versus pasteurized, A2 versus A1, homogenized versus unhomogenized, grass fed versus grain fed, cow milk versus goat milk, all the different types of dairy and their different effects on our digestion and our health as a whole. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com/podcast where I'll be linking to any of the studies or articles or any other relevant content that we talk about today on the podcast. And if you have any questions that you'd like us to answer, just send an email over to Jay at JayFeldmanWellness.com. That's J-A-Y at J-A-Y FeldmanWellness.com. Just send me over a question and we'll see if we can get to it on the next Q &A episode. And if you are struggling with any low energy symptoms, whether that's fatigue or brain fog or weight gain,
gut inflammation or bloating or anxiety, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com/energy where you can sign up for a free mini course on energy balance where I'll walk you through some of the more important things that you can do to support energy balance, to support energy production and which things to avoid that inhibit energy production or that unnecessarily increase or energy demands or anything like that. So to sign up for that free mini course, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com/ energy and with that, let's get started.

All right. So Natalie asks, how do I know if I have leaky gut and what are the best steps to take to repair it? What causes leaky gut and is it a real thing? Okay. So we have a few questions there. So I think we, don't we just break it up with the first one being, how do I know if I have leaky gut? Well, let's start with, I mean, why don't we just start with what is leaky gut and does it exist? And then we'll talk about if you have it. Okay, so it's very basic. It is exactly what it sounds like. Essentially the membrane that is your intestines winds up becoming leaky either on a broad scale or even just on a very minor scale and quite a few things can cause it. In the research they basically talk about a breaking open of the tight junctions which are they're sort of like there are like proteins that sort of adhere the cells together. And it's like the spaces between the individual cells, because the intestinal wall, the intestinal membrane is pretty delicate, especially considering what it has to do. It also has a massive surface area to absorb all the food that goes in. And there's quite a few causes of leaky gut. So we're like, We can go into the specifics of the different causes, but the basis is exactly what it sounds like. You have a leaky gut when you're taking food in the different food particles as they're broken down. Some of them are passing through the wall more intact than what they should be. Right. And that's due to damage in the wall. Right. And so basically leaky gut does exist. It's also called gut permeability or intestinal permeability. As you're saying, it's one of those those gap junctions.

The gap increases between the cells and these small pieces of broken down food, digested food are brought in in between the cells, which normally with digestion, they're absorbed through the cells. So they're brought through the cell as they're broken into smaller pieces. Now it's just going right into the bloodstream. Yeah. Yeah. And so this is not what we want. It basically means that we are getting somewhat undigested food in between the cells and like directly into our bloodstream.

Jay
It also means that other things can pass through as well. So endotoxin is something that we've talked about a lot and that can pass directly through these gap junctions too. And endotoxin is also one of the causes of intestinal permeability as well. So, so before we say how to repair it, let's why don't we go to like causes of it. There's actually quite a few causes. but they're, pretty general overall. The, some of the main ones are stress. As soon as you have, massive spike in stress, psychological stress, physical stress, marathon running is a known stressor that caused massive leaky gut problems. Essentially what happens is blood supply gets diverted away from the digestive system and starts to move towards more vital functions to support a stress response, the lungs, the heart, the muscular system, things like that. And essentially when that blood supply is diverted for an extended period of time, you can actually develop, especially in like extremely stressful situations like in surgery, you can actually develop ulcers within the intestinal tract. And they actually, they give patients anti-acid medication when they do surgeries and things like that to prevent the formation of ulcers because of the stress. And then you can even see when you give people drugs like steroids, corticosteroids,
they actually can develop leaky gut symptoms and they can also develop ulcers in the intestinal tract. And this is further proves the point of stress as the cause of leaky gut because the corticosteroids are some of the main mediators of the stress pathways. Obviously adrenaline is as well. So you have that, then you also, have, you can do the next one. I was going to talk about like any type of bacterial overgrowth or infection or something like that in the gut.

Yeah, well, so pretty much all of these things are mediated through stress. So when you have any sort of gut dysbiosis or pathogenic overgrowth of bacteria or fungus, they they produce all sorts of metabolic toxins. And endotoxin is one that we talk about a lot, but there are other ones as well like D lactate or histamine or other other components of these bacteria or microbes that are basically metabolically toxic to us. And so any of those then disrupt all of our cellular functioning, but this starts in the gut. And so that can actually directly cause that sort of intestinal permeability. And just to explain also really quickly why that's such a problem is because the gut lining is the only thing, it's basically like the only barrier between in many ways this like... almost like in the outside world, know, that our gut isn't really part of us. It's kind of just like an open tube that goes through us. And so the the gut lining is the only thing preventing all these things in our gut from directly just entering our body and lungs and skin. Yeah. And so. When you're bringing in undigested food, we can't like our bodies don't aren't made to deal with large food particles that aren't broken down, and so that causes all sorts of inflammatory responses.

But also any of these gut toxins that are produced in the gut, we typically want to either keep them there or intentionally transport them out and detoxify them or metabolize them. Yeah, in the liver. And so when those gut toxins are able or we want to just excrete them, we don't want them to be entering our bloodstream on their own. And so when that does happen, that's basically a recipe for metabolic disaster.

So that's kind of why this intestinal permeability is such a big problem. It's also I want to mention that it's also I think overemphasized in a lot of like the paleosphere as like the main cause of virtually all diseases or at least autoimmune issues. And that's based on this whole idea of molecular mimicry, which is, I don't know, more or less not accurate, at least not as not really the cause of autoimmune conditions. But that's not to say that that it isn't a huge problem. It's just one aspect of of like of less than ideal health. It's a piece of the chain. It's definitely a piece of the chain. It's definitely prominent. Gut issues are very prominent in almost every single disease and disorder. It's just there's other factors involved. It's not purely only the gut. And once you solve only the gut, you're you're fine again. It's just the gut is one of the first things to go because it's one of the main interfaces between the environment and between our actual physiology our bodies. The other thing is a lot of gut problems are on the rise now and a lot of disorders are on the rise because another main factor that affects gut permeability is specific dietary components. So when and I don't want to get into any political sort of debate but when you start talking about a lot of plant-based diets that are focusing on heavy grain consumption and heavy legume consumption and they're not and they're not prepared in certain ways and things like that, you wind up seeing that the defensive compounds in many of these foods actually cause damage to the intestine on purpose. are doing that on purpose, and then that further leads to leaky gut symptoms. The other thing is some of the proteins within the GMO foods, specifically the BT toxin, has a, I mean, Monsanto and the different corporations will tell you, doesn't, it should only affect insects. The toxin doesn't do anything to the intestinal lining of animals and mammals and things like that. But there's a definitive effect and there are studies showing it. There's also a lot of anecdotal evidence from practitioners saying, Hey, I'm going to take my patients off of GMO foods and different things like this. A lot of their digestive systems clear up. So there's like multiple salts there.

The other thing is polyunsaturated fats have a negative effect on the membrane in the intestines, non-intestinal function in general. And adding insult to injury with that saturated fats, whether short chain or medium chain or long chain, can have beneficial effects on the intestinal lining. So diet is a huge factor. Part of it is, mean, is not, is we have a lot of
insults to the intestinal tract from modern food processing and agribusiness and things like that. But we're also eating a lot of foods that we normally wouldn't eat and that our bodies necessarily aren't adapted to eat. And so this sort of also goes hand in hand with the issue of like a bacterial overgrowth and things like that because eating a lot of foods that we aren't meant to eat and that have some of these damaging effects also encourage the growth of pathogenic bacteria in the intestinal tract.

Jay
And from there, you basically have a synergistic effect of endotoxin and metabolic products from the bacteria and then toxins and damage to the intestinal tract from the food. they develop, they go together. And I think a great example of this is, and you can see the parallels, when you start to feed ruminant animals like cattle and sheep, grains or corn or things like that, after a certain percentage of the diet as those foods, the animals develop, number one, they start to get fat because it's very inflammatory for them. And then number two, they also start to develop something called bloat, which is essentially bacterial overgrowth in the room in the room in with a massive amount of lactic acid production, but also endotoxin. And then the symptoms that they get from there is the cows develop large, distended stomachs similar to a lot of the American population.

After they've lived on grain diets for an extended period of time, joint issues, particularly laminitis, which is an inflammation of the connective tissue at the hooves. I'm sure it's elsewhere, but the main areas on the hooves, the veterinarians focus on this because it causes the animals to become lame because they can't walk very well when the hooves is completely... It's not the hoove itself, it's sort of the connective tissue around the hoove becomes inflamed. And so you see that with people...

They develop rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, joint issues, lower back pain, all goes hand in hand with this endotoxemia. So you're seeing it play out the grain consumption not only in cattle but in humans. And I think it's an easy parallel for people to see because you have the big bloated stomachs of humans and the big bloated stomachs of cattle on heavy grain based diets and a lot of polyunsaturated fats, are neither grains were not food for cattle and they're also not food for humans. And with the backbone of the food pyramid or the food plate or whatever government regulation you want to follow for your diet advice, grains factor prominently in there. They do have a lot of issues. Furthermore, the populations that did eat grains, because I know people are going to say, the so-and-so ate grains for centuries. They prepared grains in a very specific way. If you look at the African populations now that eat corn, they pound the corn down into like a dust. Then they ferment the corn and then they pass the corn through like a sieve and filter it out and then they cook it. So there's a lot of steps involved in processing this food and making it edible because there's a lot of defensive compounds within the grains and within legumes and also within nuts. those, have your...

You have the food component, you have the bacterial component, and you have agribusiness component of not only the BT toxin that they put into corn, but the pesticides like Roundup and stuff like that that can have a negative impact on the intestinal lining as well. And just to clarify a little bit. So when you're talking about those foods, the grains, the gooms, nuts and seeds, the the anti nutrients in those in those foods, which are those defensive compounds, those are those have been shown to lead to intestinal permeability and we've talked directly. Yeah. Yeah, and we've talked through all that extensively in the gut and digest it gut and digestion episodes. So I would recommend checking those out. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was a good overview. Let's go into the next question. other thing before we go, I think I think it's important that people know that alcohol is also one of the main factors that causes permeability. They literally use alcohol in studies to cause gut permeability. It's like

It's like well known and the damage done, the majority of the damage done by alcohol is not necessarily the metabolic effect because most people's livers, depending on how much you drink and handle it, but it's the alcohol causes gut permeability, which causes endotoxin release and absorption into the bloodstream. It's not even absorption. The permeability allows the endotoxin to get into the bloodstream and the endotoxin is actually what damages the liver.

And I think this is important. I'm making this specific point about alcohols because a lot of studies look at the effects of endotoxin by giving the animals alcohol, specifically looking at the effects of endotoxin on the liver by giving the animals alcohol. And there's interesting studies where they have germ-free mice. They don't have any gut bacteria, anything like that. When they give them alcohol, they don't develop liver disease because they don't have any bacterial endotoxin or metabolic products leaking to the liver because that's directly what damages the liver.

Jay (16:52.787)
And then within mice who have bacteria present in the intestinal tract and drink alcohol, when you give them saturated fats, it actually protects the liver. And there's some interesting studies where they continue to feed the rats and the mice alcohol and they give them, think it's either butter or beef tallow and the animals just don't develop liver disease. Even though they're continuing to drink, they still don't get liver disease when they have saturated fats present.

When we get into what are ways to heal it, that'll come into play. And I think that's where you're to go next. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess we can talk about that too. I'd also add that the in those studies looking at saturated fats as being protective, they found that the polyunsaturated fats were not protective, which is worth mentioning. actually amplified the effects and made it worse. Yeah. Through the prostaglandin pathways that we've talked about previously. Right. Yeah. So.

Yeah, steps to repair leaky gut. Why don't we? Well, OK, so I mean, if you reverse all of the things that we just talked about, that's the that like that would be part one is make sure you're not eating foods that have considerable amounts of anti nutrients. If you are eating grains, legumes, nuts or seeds, at the very least, make sure that you are soaking and sprouting them or fermenting them. But I would say, you know, as a whole, they're still they're still aren't ideal as as primary foods, food sources.

No if addressing any sorts of dysbiosis or pathogenic microbes in the gut is another incredibly important component, and then minimizing stress in any way. So, of course, those are things that we've talked about throughout as just anything that's going to support the things that drive energy production and reduce the excessive energy demands will result in greater energy availability, which improves our ability to deal with stressors and reduces stress. So as long as you're doing those things, I mean, that's that's going to be by far, you know, the main things to do. There are certain other things. mean, you mentioned saturated fats as being protective. All of these things that like it's all one integrated system. And so is like all of these things that. Not only avoid intestinal hermeneability, like all these things that are avoiding intestinal permeability also in turn help to repair it. it's not intestinal permeability and leaky or leaky gut. It's not different from a metabolic issue. Like it all goes hand in hand. Treating a metabolic issue requires also repairing leaky gut. at the same because you're not going to solve the metabolic issue without dealing with the leaky gut, but you're also not going to solve a leaky gut issue without dealing with the metabolic issue.

So like the same steps that we're gonna sort of provide about how to deal with different things, all like, it's all an integrated system as you said, there's not one thing here and one thing here and you need to specialize only in treating the liver or only in fixing the gastrointestinal tract or only dealing with this or only dealing with that. The whole system works together. And the paradigm that we're discussing is about fixing the system as a whole through diet and through lifestyle changes and things like that because that's really what it comes down to. There's no magic bullet, there's no magic drugs that are going to just solve the problem and it's not like you're going to turn around the next day. It's going to take a little time if you've been dealing with that to get through and within a few weeks you should sort of be getting back to normal and things like that. And there are supplements and things that you can use that can definitely help but it's within the general context and having a good diet and lowering stress getting adequate sunlight, things like that, those are paramount. There's no substitute for those. There's no magical drug that's going to solve your problem without making sure those are taken care of. And anyone who tells you that or any sort of drugs that solve it for a little while, most likely, at least in my experience and from my reading, have implications down the road that are not positive. And for example, when you look at some of the autoimmunity drugs, the mobs and the MIBs, so those are the endings of the drugs. For example, drug is like Humira. A lot of these drugs, they'll get rid of your inflammatory symptoms, and they'll deal with whatever, and this is for Crohn's disease, so that's extremely key gut, essentially. They'll get rid of your symptoms. You'll be able to eat foods, but you'll be severely immunocompromised, and you can see on the commercials, increased risk for cancer, increased risk for tuberculosis.

Jay (21:41.373)
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So what are you giving up there? So your immune system, your gut is maybe not as leaky. You don't have as much active damage with Crohn's, which is an extreme form of leaky gut to a large extent. But at the same time, and Crohn's has been associated with different infections within the intestinal tract. Number one, is that infection gonna get better when you're immunosuppressed? And then number two, you open the door for cancer and tuberculosis.

So I mean, I know there's trade offs, especially when you have active disease and it's like you're going to the bathroom a hundred times a day and you're not feeling well and things like that. Getting under control is important, but there's once you get it under control, there's things to do to try and rectify that situation going forward because those drugs always have, at least in my experience, have side effects that are not worth it down the line. Yeah. Yeah. It's and you know, we could draw a million parallels between any sorts of other reductionistic type approaches where you're focusing on symptoms and you can look at leaky gut in that way as well and intestinal permeability in that way as well. So that's kind what I was alluding to earlier where in a lot of the alternative health paleo type spheres leaky gut is or intestinal permeability is looked at as this black and white condition where you either where if you have it then it is this major problem that leads to all of these other conditions and diseases and so you need to get rid of it when in reality it's it's not black and white you can
be relative, you can have a relatively impermeable gut and then eat something and then increase intestinal permeability to an extent. It's not like that you either have or you don't and it's not like you need to treat it on its own. As long as you're treating the system, you will end up addressing it. Yeah. And I think it's important to point out that it is that there's transient nature to it. Exactly. You go out and drink Friday night, 10 vodka shots, you are going to have a leaky gut.

Right. Like you're not going to not have a leaky gut. Like it's going to be leaky. I promise you that. Yeah. Or say you eat, you go to Taco Bell and you get a ton of tacos from there with hot sauce and gray D meat and GMO corn tacos with no sort of processing or anything like that. And then you have, I don't know, a big gulp and whatever else. Like there's a chance that you probably might have some damage to your intestinal tract after you are eating things like that, especially if you're doing it consistently. So when you remove that stimulus and you start eating better food, will the gut seal itself back up? Yeah. I think a lot of people don't understand that the membrane or the intestinal wall regenerates and constantly regenerates very consistently, like all the time. Like it is one of the most rapidly dividing areas of the body, like just like skin cells. It's constantly softening off and regenerating.

So it's not like, like if you do have an issue and it is chronic, then you have something going on and it's not just leaky gut. Like there has to be some underlying process. You're eating something, you have something going on there, because the intestinal tract should be able to regenerate consistently. Yeah, and along those same lines, this doesn't mean that you can never have a meal containing foods with anti-nutrients or GMO corn or, you know, pesticides or a ton of alcohol.

It's kind of it goes both ways. So again, like having one of those meals that causes intestinal permeability for a period of time is going to drive inflammation. It is going to potentially aggravate any symptoms, but by the same token, assuming that you're healthy, you can be very resilient to that and recover quickly and it's not a big deal. It's not like we're saying that that one meal is going to then cause a chronic condition or chronic leaky gut. That's the whole point is that it's a transient state.

And it's the same as focusing on inflammation for that matter. You know, if you're reducing any problem to, it's just inflammation and then you're using anti-inflammatory drugs or supplements or herbs to treat it, you're not going to solve the actual problem. All right. Let's move on from there. That's OK with you unless you had anything to I don't have anything else to add. OK, cool. All right. Queenie K asked, can one eat more things like sourdough bread, rice, white potatoes?

And still lose weight while eating through this bio-energetic paradigm because I'm not satisfied just eating cheese and fruit and some meat. what she's basically asking is what about starchy foods? And we did talk a pretty decent amount about starchy foods in the blood sugar episode part two. So I would definitely recommend taking a look at that. But the short answer is yes. And the longer answer is, well, I'm going to give the long answer. So yes.

Jay
Some people do very well with starch and I've seen that happen. I've seen people do better with starch than without starch, but that doesn't mean that it's ideal for everybody and it very much depends on your context, on your individual circumstances. If you do have a gattis biosis, if you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, things that are extremely common for anybody who has dieted for a long time, who has been on low carb diets or carnivore diets or vegan diets, you know, these gut problems are things that I see all the time and are oftentimes very directly related to weight gain. So if you're having trouble with weight loss or you have gained a lot of weight introducing carbs or things like that, or introducing starches, it's pretty likely that you're not digesting those starches well and they're feeding any sort of dysbiosis and you have these metabolic toxins and that's blocking energy production and that's leading you to store that food as fat as opposed to burning it or oxidizing it to produce energy. So the long answer is for a lot of people they do better without starch, but some people do really great with starch. So again, it's on an individual basis. And if you're addressing those gut issues, that would probably be the best approach. I would also mention that if you're not satisfied, you know, she had mentioned not being satisfied eating just cheese and fruit and some meat, which is understandable. Sounds pretty limiting.

I would say that a lot of times because we're so used to eating starch, we're not used to eating a lot of food because a lot of people when they eat starch, they have a lot of bloating and fullness. It lowers their appetite. Well, if you're producing those gut toxins, right? if you have all like all these metabolic toxins stimulate hormonal cascades that do a lot of things. One of them is reducing appetite and metabolism. And they also make you feel full, especially if you have gas or bloating or anything like that swelling edema and so people are used to that full feeling. So when people are trying to reduce starch, a lot of times they don't feel very full. And so a couple of ideas there, a couple of suggestions would be one to make sure you're eating a lot of these other foods, a lot of fruit, dried fruit. If you do well with it, frozen fruit, make smoothies, fruit juice. I would also say to make sure you're getting enough fat. We've talked a lot about, yeah, we've talked a lot about the importance of fats as both the fuel and also for other structural components. And the important part being that if you're not getting enough fat, then your body will be converting those carbohydrates you're taking in to fat. And so you'll have a lot less of them available. You get a lot hungrier after meals a lot sooner because you have less of that carbohydrate available for your brain more than anything or any other high energy requirements. yeah, I think those would be a couple of the main ones, just making sure you're eating enough of those foods. And I mean, I want to go through all of the foods that are not starch and are still healthy, but there's more of them than just cheese and fruit and some meat. I mean, I think part of it is just you ought to see how you feel when you do it. there's the metrics that you can check for yourself, which is how your bowel movements, how's your libido doing, how's your mood, how's your sleep. When you wake up in the morning, you could check your pulse and your temp. You could see if it's up or down. A lot of people will tell me,
I eat starch and I get hot right away. It's like, okay, but what's your morning temp? Because you can get hot right away after a meal and that's fine. And it could be most of the times because you ate a hot starchy meal and you just dumped a hot meal into the center of your body and adjusted your core temperature. Just like if you ate something frozen and you just put it right in the center of your body, you probably will lose a few degrees of temp, not a few degrees, a small amount of body heat when you do something like that.

I mean, I know when I eat like frozen fruit bars or something like that, I'd get cold and rightfully so. So I think it really, you got to really see how it feels for yourself. And you sort of have to be a bit empirical about it. Sort of like take a, take a log of the different things that I mentioned. And the other thing is you can just look and see if you gain weight over time, whatnot, you can see if looks like you're holding water, you feel like you're holding water and try and be objective about it. You know, a lot of people say, Oh, I don't want to lose. I don't want to gain any weight. And they get
they move into this like sort of fear of I'm going to gain weight, I'm going to gain weight and then they don't they don't want to try something or they don't eat enough or they don't eat enough or something like that. It's like just give it two weeks. Give it two weeks. Give it a month. I don't think that you're going to gain 50 pounds of weight or 20 pounds of weight or even 10 pounds of weight in a month or even two weeks. But you can do something. Try it for two weeks. You can see how you feel and then go from there. mean, I can't tell you and I don't think Jay can tell you.

Jay
How certain food is gonna specifically interact with your body. I there's things that Jay eats perfectly fine that I can't eat and there's things that I eat with no problem that he can't eat. it just, it's like that. There are some degrees of individuality in different things and especially with diet and stuff like that. Now, when we talk about things, we give general principles because the principles apply relatively broadly, but at the same time, like there is individuality within those principles. So it's important to sort of start taking stock in your own experiences, testing your own experiences and trying to be objective about it not getting caught up in this fear, this projection of what's going to happen because you don't know. And a lot of times you just have to try it. And I know, Lord knows I've tried so many different things that have just messed me up, but I gave it a try. And then, and then you get the experience, you have the reference experience from there. And then, and then now you know, and so you can make adjustments from there and you start developing your own paradigm.

For us, we're trying to give the principles to people so that they have sort of like a guide, but we can't give you the exact plan that's gonna work for you. We can help you along the way, but a lot of it comes with you being able to look at what's going on with you and coming up with your own reference experiences. Then besides that, important point, the thing that I think is really important, specifically for people who don't eat starch or who don't do good with starch is, If you don't do well with starch, think it's really important that you increase your fat intake because there's only so much carbs that you can eat. mean, personally for me, on days that I work out or things like that, I go up to 500 grams of carbs and it's all sugar. That is not like I still need fat. will not, cannot keep increasing carbs endlessly and feel fine. I will start getting adrenaline rushes. I will not feel well. So I need to have fat. I need to have a base amount of fat in the diet. And then I add carbs and adjust carbs.

Based sort of on what my activity level is for the day, mostly cravings. It's not like I sit there and I calculate, it's, I want a little more pineapple juice or a little more dried fruit or something like that. Okay, I'm going to have that. So, but I think the baseline fat is very important. If you're not going to do starch and even for people who do starch, I think there is an importance of that. So, but it is, again, there is some individuality in it. So you really got to check for yourself and see what works for you. Yeah.

Jay
I would also add, you mentioned getting warm with starch, which I know a lot of people experience. There's a couple of things I would mention there is that one thing that's nice about starch is it's not too liquid dense. So a lot of times if you're trying to get decent concentration of carbohydrates from fruits, you get a lot of liquid with that because either from the fresh fruit itself or from fruit juice. And in the case that your metabolism is not functioning as well, a lot of times you might not do very well with a lot of liquid, which is part of why we don't recommend drinking a ton of water. And I have an article on that, so I'll just reference that and leave that. But so one thing that's nice about starch is it's a concentrated form of carbohydrates without that liquid. If you feel like that might be a part of it, a couple of things that you would want to test would be looking at your salt intake. So if your salt intake is low, then that might be one reason why you're not using that water efficiently. The other thing would be that you can create more concentrated forms of the fruit sugars. So dried fruit is one option, which obviously has a lot less water. You can also add honey or white sugar if you do it fine with white sugar or maple syrup to any of, you know, if you're doing some fruit juice or something like that to make it more concentrated. Those are things that I've seen help. We can also use juice concentrates. And I haven't really done this, but I know you can cook down some, like if you have pineapple juice or orange juice or something.

You can sort of like cook off a little bit of the water if you wanted to. I mean, it's already pasteurized, so you could do things like that. But once you get to, I know once you get to like a decent state, a lot of the liquid from juice sort of doesn't bother you quite as much. I know when we first started and we were doing a lot of liquids, we were had like, we weren't feeling so well to start, but over time we got a lot better with it. Plus we don't, I know for me, I don't really drink any water. It's pretty much all juice.

So once I started doing that, it sort of filled my water requirement and then I was right. And then it's Yeah. And if we're talking about being able to be satisfied and eating enough and basically trying to get enough nutrition from everything that we're eating, replacing water with juice is, you know, makes perfect sense. You're a lot more of those carbohydrates that we need and a lot more of those nutrients, vitamins, minerals and everything. And the polyphenols, all that without

Jay
Whereas if you're just having water, it's almost like you're wasting wasting an opportunity. Not to say never drink water, especially if you're active or if it's hot out and you're spending time outside and you're sweating. I think water can be helpful, but drinking to thirst is really, I think, the best option. And if you want juice, drink some juice. also don't think it's necessary to carry around a gallon jug of water with you and make sure that you however many ounces per day. I think your body will tell you how much you need because I see a lot of people that I work with in the hospital basically. They have these huge jugs of water. They have the levels marked and how much they need to drink. They're like, I'm drinking all my water. I'm just like, are you even thirsty for it? And they're like, no. And so LinkedIn is unnecessary. And it goes beyond that. The physiology behind it, we'll have to do an episode on water and salt and all that. I have an article that does into it, which I definitely recommend taking a look at and we're laughing about this because we've been there. mean, we used to both have a big like glass water bottle and we would fill it up multiple times for the day. And anytime we were hungry, we would drink it. Anytime we were bored, we would drink it. Anytime we were not any of those things, we would still drink it. It was, was kind of a way to replace calories and replace the hunger or try to stifle the hunger that was going on. We're hungry without actually eating. Right. Exactly. And suffice it to say that we both have felt a lot better with much less water. Yeah, let's move on. Well, so one other thing you were talking about in answer to that question was a little bit about experimentation. And there's actually another question. So we're going out of order here, but Debbie had asked, everyone has a different diet to share. How do I know which one is right for me? And I just felt like we already answered this in parts. We might as well kind of work off of that where, so there's two components here. One is kind of the knowledge side.

Understanding of how our body works, but there's a limit there as far as how much you can understand, how much you can research, how much you can learn, and that's a huge part of it. And of course, the more accurate that is, the better off we'll be. But all that knowledge is there for is to inform what we do. And if we're doing different things and not paying attention to the result, or doing it kind of blindly and just saying, I know that this is what my supposed knowledge tells me, so I'm just doing this regardless of how I feel.

Jay
That's oftentimes how we end up going down treacherous paths. And so we definitely emphasize that experimentation and looking at our own experiences as a huge part of this process because we should feel good. I've talked with a ton of people who have done, let's say low carb or carnivore diets or low calorie diets, and they normally felt pretty bad except

they were losing weight or they were really lean and so they liked that part of it or some did feel better but I would attribute a lot of that to gut like relief which we've talked about but anyway circling back the idea here is that the understanding of our physiology and of how our body works is really important and that's something that we are trying to provide in many ways and then the next part of it is that experimentation and paying attention to how you feel day to day your cravings and hunger and how well those are satisfied

how restricted you feel, whether you get those kind of adrenaline rushes throughout the day or how your blood sugar is, your ability to focus, bloating, digestion, temperatures and pulse, yeah, sleep. And then of course, any sorts of stronger inflammatory symptoms or kind of conditions or anything like that. Those are all really great indicators of whether what you're doing is helpful.

Yeah, and we are, you know, obviously that's something we help with as well is kind of guiding that experimentation based on the understanding of the physiology. Yeah, I think that's I don't know if I have too much more to add there. Do you have anything to I just think that your own experience is very pivotal in the entire process. And so at least for me, the way I sort of do things is I'll read about something or I'll get an idea about something and it's and I'll have an experience and then I'll think about something I read and I'll try and implement that and see how I feel and sort of like try and figure it out. So I'll take the knowledge or the information that I read or even other people's experiences and I try and like sort of connect the dots or sew the needle through all the different threads and sort of find some sort of underlying pattern for things. And then I will test it out for myself and see if it works, if it doesn't work, if I get a similar response.

Jay
And then I sort of like, it develops it from there. So yeah, it takes time and you have to be aware. I think that's important. You have to be aware of what's going on with you. You have to be aware of how different things affect you. You have to have a degree of discipline so that you don't all of a sudden find rape heat, switch over to eating only milk and orange juice and taking niacinamide, aspirin, prognetolone, thyroid, progesterone, DHEA, all on the first day. And then saying, well, I don't know which one did what to me. So, and I have this weird symptom, think sort of a more gradual approach to things is important with a degree of awareness and then also sort of researching as you go. And then something that I think is important and where I see this question coming from is I see a lot of people online espousing that they have the ultimate sort of plan and there's so much
there's almost like lot of disinformation campaigns going on in different areas. And there's a lot of these like competing ideas and things like that. I think it's important to like take a lot of ideas, break them out into a broader picture and ask yourself based on your experience and things like that. Does this make sense to me? And I think a lot of people find Pete and sort of vibe with what Pete has to say because they're like, well, I have cravings for sugar all the time.

And I really want sugary things or I have cravings for salt and I like milk or I like meat or I like this and I like that. And Pete's saying, well, the reason you like this is because your body needs them. think that a lot of people come down like, that makes sense. I think, and there's like obviously a grain of salt that comes with that. But at the same time, I think it's important to bring things into a larger picture and sort of like flush it out so that when you're sitting there and you're like, you're on keto,

and you're saying, I really crave sugar. It's like, well, that's just your mind making you want sugar. You don't actually want it. That's just the bacteria in your gut forcing you to crave sugar. It's like, okay, so how many weeks are you gonna go on craving sugar, ignoring the craving before you realize, and then for at least for me, I wouldn't ignore it. It'd be like Saturday night. It was time to binge on berries or something with sugar in it, because I just couldn't wait anymore.

Jay (43:23.217)
But I think that it's important to pay attention to your experiences. Cravings are important. And then all the variables that we talked about. then sort of take things into a bigger picture and ask yourself, does this really make sense for me? Based on what I've experienced in the past, based on what I'm feeling right now, based on just in general what you know in general, does this make sense? And sort of putting things through that sort of filter. And then I think that'll help.

to limit some of the dogma that we run into. In all the different diet spheres, there's a lot of dogma. And the keto sphere carbs cause all the problems. In the vegan sphere, it's animal proteins and animal products. And then in the Pete sphere, for some people, fats that cause all these problems. it's just- Well, Poofa also. Well, yeah, Poofa. And then you start to, those will give you avenues to sort of look through things and then-

For people, mean, for Jane and I, we try and provide some sort of background or principles or paradigm for which to give you a basic structure, just to give a basic map. Because I think a lot of people don't have a map. think that with everything that's going on, everything's been skewed all over the place. And I know that we both went through that. We went through the various iterations of different dietary paradigms. And going through something like this just doesn't make sense. This just isn't working.

Yeah, yeah. And I would I would want to add also. So you just mentioned repeat a few times and his one of his, you know, main recommendations, if you will, is only recommendation is perceive, think, act. And so a lot of people who do find his work and kind of jump into it and do the whole, you know, two liters of milk and a liter of orange juice and, you know, oysters once a week and liver once a week and whatever. And oftentimes end up doing all those supplements, too. I mean, those are not things that he recommends.

I think that he's tried and that have worked for him and he's seen benefit with various conditions and from reading and he played around with them, but he's not telling people to then take them or saying that that is ideal. It is like the like this is the perfect diet, you know, and a lot of people like it's worth mentioning because a lot of people go that route and either a end up with a lot of weight gain because they aren't digesting something like milk very well, which is hard to digest when you've come from whatever background you've come from. For most people is pretty stressful. Yeah. And all of the different supplements and things like that. mean, Ray is very careful with his supplementation. But supplementation, especially with hormones, is very popular in the community and is not based on his recommendation, but either way is also something that can lead people very much askew, I've found. I think a lot of that's from the forums, though. I think a lot of the forum sort of pushes a lot of these ideas as the Ray Pete diet or the Ray Pete supplements. And I think it's kind of hard. It's slightly nuanced. And I think that's the difficult part because Ray isn't saying that you should all take these things or that you should take these things or you should do this. He's saying the way I, at least my interpretation, you know, because I can't tell you what Ray is specifically saying, but my interpretation is I tried the, from Ray, I tried these things.

I've used them for this or that. I like them. I'm just letting you know. Like I tried this and this is what it did for me. You don't have to do this. I'm not telling you to do this. From what I've read and from what I've tried, this is what works. And the other thing that a lot of people will find if you actually like look at Ray's interviews or if you read some of his quotes or, and I think a lot of the problem is people don't read his articles directly. And I think, and I don't blame them because it's a lot for a lot of people, especially if you don't haven the scientific lingo down, his articles can be very dense. know, for example, my dad cannot read a repeat article. He won't read it. He read one one time. He's like, I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know what any of these scientific concepts. So and I'm not trying to scare people away. All I'm trying to do is say that if you're having an issue with some of this stuff, like you're not alone with that. But his basic idea is to just give ideas just about what he's done and what he's read and not as

you need to do this and this is the only way to do it. The only thing I've really seen him recommend for people to do is to stay away from polyunsaturated fats, to look at their own experiences and to get their vitamin D checked. Yeah. And the, well, I mean, even in those cases, it's, it's like somebody asks, you know, what do think I should do? And he, it's kind of like, well, this is what I would try and which I think is, you know, the best way to do it. And I would, so

Jay (48:17.391)
You had mentioned like people wanting to create a repeat diet or like a repeat supplement regimen. And I think that that's really natural in like current society is that we have this and there's a there's a couple of components to this, but we want a like a simple, perfectly mapped out, like this is the right thing to do. And that's how we're taught with everything. You know, we are given a multiple choice question and there's this right answer. And there are these four options. And in reality,

Reality is much more nuanced and there isn't black and white so much. And we're not, I mean, that's very much not the way that we're taught to think. And beyond that, we're also very much taught to rely on authority figures for giving us the information and that our autonomy, that our experience doesn't really matter. And so we want whoever has the most followers nowadays, which before it used to be whoever was in the white code and spoke on TV, but now it's whoever has the most followers on social media is supposed to tell me exactly what I'm supposed to do to be healthy. And I'm outsourcing my health to them because who am I to know any better? And my experience doesn't matter. And I'm not smart enough to understand any of this, which isn't at all true. Anybody has the intelligence to understand these concepts. It just takes time and effort. And the extent like doesn't matter all that much. That stuff is really the language. It's not the concept, but it just takes time to understand those things. When we were first reading repeats articles, it wasn't like, yeah, didn't mean as much as it does now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't understand it in the same way. And we didn't understand the perspective because it takes time to, to gather that and change your worldview. And not that Ray has been the only influence on that, but, just in general, like
It requires that sort of desire to understand and understand the why as opposed to just the what. So I like to make that distinction where a lot of times we're just looking for the what, just tell me what I should do as opposed to why does this work? Why was this, what happened when I tried this? Because when you understand the why's that informs the what. When you understand how our digestive systems work and how our blood sugar regulation works and how our brain function works and how our mitochondria work and

Jay
You know, that informs then what you should do as opposed to when you look at the what first. Right. Somebody tells you carbs are bad because they cause weight gain or because they cause insulin resistance and you have no conception of why that would happen. How are you going to evaluate whether or not that's the case, especially when your experience doesn't matter? You know, if you're under the assumption that your experience doesn't matter and you don't try to have some understanding of the underlying mechanisms, of course you're going to feel like
how do I know who's right? And so I think in many ways the solution is taking that autonomy, taking your health into your own hands and trying to learn as best as you can. And then also experimenting and valuing your experience and comparing that with what you know or what you think you know and continue to experiment from there. Yeah, I agree. I think that outsourcing a lot of things is a current problem. Yeah. Outsourcing your how to handle your money or anything like that, how to handle your health, all that type of stuff.

And relying on so-called experts. Yeah, and it's understandable. mean, our society isn't built where you have a ton of time to research all these different things. You there's a reason why you hire a lawyer. It's because you don't have time to read all the fine print more or less or all the different laws. Yeah. So it makes sense in our society. But as much as we can, I think that we should be trying to be autonomous with the things that matter the most. So I obviously think that health is something that matters a lot. And so I think that it's something that's worth our time, worth our investment.

I agree. I agree. A hundred percent. Yeah. I would also add that many, like I think another helpful paradigm is looking at working with our bodies versus fighting against them. And this is something we haven't talked about explicitly as much on the podcast, but most, we were talking about a little bit with cravings and hunger and how you were saying, Oh, well, if you're craving carbs, it's, it's because, you know, you're leptin resistant or, know, your body is trying to make you unhealthy and trying to make you eat all these bad foods.

And so you have to fight against it. And we, you know, as you might've gathered, we're looking at our physiology and saying, okay, what does our body require? Like how, how do we work with it in a way so that it functions at its best as opposed to this other paradigm that our body is designed to be unhealthy and we need to fix it by not doing what it wants us to do. And I would, you know, of course there are disclaimers here where obviously all of the foods that we have available and the technology we have available and whatever else wasn't around when

Jay
our bodies were developing. you know, it might taste really good to eat a donut and you might have a craving for it. That doesn't mean that it's ideal, but when you're looking at foods that were available and then also looking at foods that weren't through the lenses that we're providing, it's you, you don't have to work like fight against your body all the time. You don't have to be restricting. And that this, this entire idea is, really kind of the main idea throughout conventional medicine as well, where if
any marker goes up, so if your blood sugar goes up or your cholesterol goes up, we're taught that our body is mistaken in doing these sorts of things and so we need to reduce those levels to save ourselves. So we need to take a cholesterol medication. Yeah, we need to take something to lower our cholesterol, lower our blood sugar or lower our blood pressure if our blood pressure is too high without considering that our bodies are these adaptive intelligence systems that have intelligent and adaptive responses to things. if your blood pressure is high, that probably means that your tissues are not well oxygenated. So you need to drive further blood to those areas or increase your circulation in certain areas, not others. Or, you know, for example, if you're under stress, your blood sugar, your blood pressure will raise to force that increased oxygen delivery. And by just trying to reduce the blood pressure, you end up reducing that availability even further.

I don't want to go too deep into the whole blood pressure idea, but the same thing goes with cholesterol, with the conversion from cholesterol to protective steroid hormones and its usefulness in our immune system. You know, there's reasons for these adaptive responses. And when we simply, when we just look at them as through these reductionist approaches, we end up treating symptoms, which ends up making things worse in the long run. feel like the question again always comes down to why.

Why is my blood pressure elevated? Why is my cholesterol elevated? When you start asking the question why, you start to look at, okay, well, your cholesterol is elevated, well, here's a drug to lower it. It's like, well, why is it elevated in the first place? And when you ask that question and your doctor says, well, I don't know, it's whoever your authority says, I don't know, but here's a drug to lower it, then the question is, well, why am I taking the drug to lower it?

Jay
The other I have the understanding like if you don't have the understanding of why then how do you know if that's a great idea to lower it or not? Like there needs to be that basis. And when you start to look at why then you start to look at, well what do I actually do to lower it? So when you start to see high cholesterol, okay, what does cholesterol do? Why would it elevate? Okay, well if your cholesterol is elevated then maybe your thyroid functions are not doing too well and the cholesterol is not being converted into downstream hormones like Pregnant alone, progesterone, et cetera. Or maybe you have some type of latent infection or some type of inflammatory response going on and the cholesterol is elevated as a protective mechanism because that is one of the functions of cholesterol. And then you can start going from there and then you start going through the iterations of what it could be and what are the possible outcomes. And then you start to look at this and you say, okay, so I'm just going to take a drug to arbitrarily lower it.

Now, number beside you before you even get to what is the side effects and mechanism of the drug. It's well if I had an infection and the cholesterol is elevated to deal with an infection and I lower it what's thing with the infection or if I'm not being converted into downstream hormones and my my cholesterol is elevated now because of that when I get rid of the cholesterol I still don't solve the downstream problem. So then you start to look and you're just like well this drug doesn't really make any sense and then after that you start to look at.

Well, what's the side effects of this drug? What's the mechanism of action? they're terrible. Well, I think I'm going to avoid the drug. Thank you. So the question becomes why the question becomes how. And when you start to ask yourselves these questions as instead of and a lot of what goes on in medicine, at least in my experience, is fear based. If you don't take this drug, you're going to get heart disease. If you don't take this drug, you're going to do this. You're going to do that. And I'm not saying.

I'm not giving you medical advice to take drugs or to not take drugs. But the point being is, well, what's actually going on? And then not to make decisions out of scarcity or out of fear. At least in my experience, a lot of people who are on cholesterol medications, blood pressure medications, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, still get heart disease, still get strokes, still get heart attacks, still get this, still get that, and they're still on the medications.

Jay
They're on the medications, yet they still get the diseases. So is the medication solving the problem? My answer is in my experience, in my opinion, no. So then what is the underlying problem in it? Then it comes back down to that. Yeah. Yeah. And I would add also that a lot of times when you do ask why, if there is a response, a lot of times it's along the lines of your body is fighting against you. You were born in this certain, you had a predisposition your genes were, you know. I mean, I've seen doctors, I've seen a doctor, I had a lady, she was in the hospital, she had had a stroke. She was completely out of it, like the stroke messed up. She couldn't swallow, she couldn't control her bowel or bladder. She had lost complete control of the left side of her body. And the family member, the husband's in there and he says, hey doc, well, why did she get the stroke? And the doctor responds, well, she must've just had some type of genetic weakness in her vasculature.

And it's just like I don't really understand how that would just be. Like all of a sudden when she's just in her 40s or 50s, her vasculature just manifested the genetic weakness and then she had the stroke and she had the damage and she bled into her brain. It doesn't make any sense. There's no... Where's the rationale? It's almost like in some sense, the ideology...
of original sin or the idea that there's something automatically wrong with you was injected into the ideology behind current medical practice. there's just the idea that you're just going to break down. I mean, I've seen the analogy. You're just a car, and eventually you wear out the parts. And if you're in the hospital and you experience a lot of what goes on and how they treat people, all your lungs don't work. We're going to cut out your lungs and put new ones in.

Jay
Oh, you have a valve, you have a damaged valve in your heart. We're going to cut that valve out. We're going to give you a new valve. And it's literally, it's literally like body mechanics 101. You have a problem. We're going to cut it out. We're going to put something new in. it's just good as new. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's such a, like the paradigm and the understanding of behind these things is so basic. It's so, and it doesn't ask why, and it doesn't ask how it just says, This is what it is, this is what we're gonna do. There's none of these underlying questions and the underlying questions, as you pointed out earlier, direct the course of action to rectify the problem. You can't rectify a problem without knowing what caused it, how it caused it, why it caused it. If you don't know those things, then I don't understand how you're gonna provide some sort of solution that makes any sense in the long run. There's nowhere to go with that.

And you were something you're alluding to as well was the idea of genetic determinism where our genes basically determine our function and our health and that it's kind of this one way system when in reality our environment also is a major influence on our genes and vice versa and what's passed on and how we end up functioning. And so and this is a much larger topic that we'll have to dive into another time.

Exactly what you were talking about with the idea that our bodies are working against us and that, you know, kind of we're born with this original sin type idea goes hand in hand with genetic determinism. You're born with bad genetics. This is just you just had bad genetics. That's why you got heart disease. That's why you got cancer. That's why you got this. That's why you got that. It's just the idea is like ridiculous, especially when you start looking across like time and you start seeing, well, how come all of sudden we're all we're getting all these diseases now? Right.

And this directly contrasts or directly goes against the genetic theory, which is it takes thousands of years for evolution to occur due to random mutation. It's like, well, if that's the theory and in the past 100 years, we've seen massive and not even 100, like 70 years, we've seen massive increases in disease. It's like, well, definitely can't be genetic because it supposedly should have taken thousands of years. Right. And they'll say also, we're living longer now, but these diseases are growing in huge proportions in younger people as well. Massive proportions. So it doesn't make, there's no, the narrative doesn't line up and there's no, the genetic, the genetic theory doesn't really answer anything. It doesn't answer anything valuable. It hasn't really helped us treat any disease besides very miniscule percentage of diseases that are actually genetic. Tiny, tiny percentage. Tiny, extremely tiny.

And then even from there, when you start looking at some of those genetic diseases, then you see, there also happens to be some type of environmental component. It's like, wonder, I wonder, like, is the environment interacting with the genetic system? Is it possible? Maybe, let's create a new field, epigenetics. Right. And it's pretty crazy that epigenetics exists and is agreed upon, yet this idea of genetic determinism is still so pervasive.

Yeah, and it's a bridge. I see epigenetic as like a bridge from genetics to, there's a lot of environmental interplay. It's like a dialectic bridge, like a language bridge to get rid of the fact that, genetic determinism wasn't reality. It's like, well, we're going to create a whole new field. It's called epigenetics. And it talks about the interaction of the environment on genes.

And then once you get from there, then we're just like, well, from epigenetics, we're to go well, see environment. And so like it's a it's like a bunch of steps rather than, yeah, we messed up with genetics. So we have epigenetics. Right. Right. And again, this doesn't mean it's entirely all environment. Of course, you're like there is heredity. There are are things that are passed down, but it's that interaction that is what determines all of this evolution and our function and everything, which is, again, a whole other topic. Yeah.

All right, so next question, Katie asks, she's asking about the benefits and differences between raw dairy and processed dairy. Well, I mean, number one, it depends on the processing. but beyond that, just in general, I don't think that there's such a significant difference. And I do think that there are some degrees of individual variability and tolerance to the different types of dairy.

Jay
Um, some people can't tolerate it at all, such as myself. Other people tolerate process fine. Other people tolerate raw better. Um, I think that is important. And when, so the main difference is pasteurization. Right. Um, and before we get the pasteurization and homogenous, I was going to say and homogenization, it's not what we were about to say that. Yeah. Yeah. There's homogenization. Um, and then there's like ultra high temperature, pastor, uh, pasteurization.

So when it comes, if we're just going to talk about the difference between raw and pasteurized, I think it's important to mention that to pasteurize something, I'm pretty sure you heat it up to like 150 degrees for a certain period of time to denature the enzymes. When we're talking about the effect on the food, like there is an effect, but it's not like it's not massive. Like I don't think that it's such a massive difference when you just heat it up to kill bacteria and enzyme function, things like that. Do you lose some components of the milk? Yes. Like people talk about having lactase present in the milk to break down lactose if you're lactose intolerant, there's flora in the milk. and for some people like they consider it probiotics, things like that. There's a lot of other enzymes and stuff like that that can be denatured, but I still think that even at, even between pasteurized and raw, think both If you tolerate them well, they still provide very valuable nutrition. You lose some vitamins, you lose some enzyme function, things like that, yes. Now, when we start talking about things, so just to clarify, I think that there's relatively little difference between raw and pasteurized, especially if the raw is handled properly, because if it's not, you can have issues with the raw milk.

Are there some slight benefits for raw milk for certain people? Yes, there is. I think that there is. Can some people handle pasteurized better? Yes. Now, when we get to homogenized and ultra high temperature treated milk, these things are a bit different. And for the homogenized milk, we'll start there first. I think the biggest difference is that when they...

Jay
What they do with the homogenization is they basically force the milk through very small, almost like a small mesh with very, very small holes to break up the fat globules. When they do this, there's been some research showing that when you break up the fat globules like that, it changes the way that the body processes it and how the fat globules can get into the lymphatic system. And it can increase for certain people some of the allergenicity of the milk because the fat globules can...

I think they encapsulate some certain enzymes and things like that and can carry them into the body or the proteins. And then that can cause issues for certain people. I've never really been a fan of homogenized milk. For most situations, personally, when I would do milk or when I would recommend milk to people who had issues, I would recommend goat milk, which has smaller fat globules to begin with. it cause like there's no need to homogenize goat milk.

I guess I didn't say this in the beginning, with cow milk, the fat globules are much larger and so the cream tends to rise to the top. It doesn't sit in solution. And so homogenization basically just breaks up those fat globules. So it's evenly distributed throughout. Exactly. And then the other, for ultra high temperature treated milk, they just cook the milk to death, basically.

So that they can leave it in cartons at room temperature for an extended period of time. So basically a shelf life deal. When I think about things like milk or food in general, mean, we cook our steaks at decently high temperatures. If you're grilling your steak, you still eat your steak. Do I think you can lose some nutrients doing that? Of course. There's definitely, mean, especially when you look at things like feeding animals like cats.

Raw meat, the value of taurine from the raw meat if it hasn't been aged or sat for long period of time, it's very necessary for them. does the milk still... It comes down to individual tolerance. There are benefits here or there. I think the better question to ask for dairy is really... And I've seen the difference for me and for other people is, the milk coming from A2 or is the milk coming from A1?

Jay

And that's basically the type of protein in or the type of sequence in the protein casein and that will adjust its opiate effect. So it has like a, they call it casomorphin because it has a morphine like effect. It stimulates the opiate system in the body. The A2 milk, is either, I mean now they have the brand where it's a specific breed of cattle produces mostly the A2 casein protein and then with sheep or with goats or with camels, they also generally produce mostly A2 protein. And then the mass produced milk is usually A1 protein. And so the A2 protein has less opiate effect. So if you're having constipation from milk, if you're getting sinus congestion from milk, if you're getting rashes from milk, there is a chance that that may be from the opiate effect.

And so switching to A2 may help that. And then obviously if you're lactose intolerant, that's another problem. So I think that those are, that's more of the issue overall is A1, A2 for certain people who are really sensitive. And then after that, it's just individual tolerance to the different types of milk. I don't think that between hurrah milk and pasteurized milk is such a huge deal. I think it's important beyond that that you have quality milk, that you have grass-fed milk from healthy cows or healthy goats or whatever. if you like raw better and you can get raw, then go for it. And if you can't get raw, then I'm sure the store bought from a quality brand should be okay. So yeah, that's my basic take on it. As far as homogenization and ultra-high-temperature milk, I personally would avoid those. Interestingly, in this ties in with what we talking about with genetics in our environment is the whole A1, A2 things that A1 protein comes from cows that over time have been in much more stressful situations and have continued to be bred in these sorts of environments and then started producing this type of protein that happens to have these morphine-like, opiate-like effects. More potent, yeah. Right, right. And yeah, so the type of cow...

Jay
Determines whether the milk will be A1 or A2. And so the ones that have been bred in these stressful situations are typically A1. This happened over a period of time. then most of the, there's A2 cows from Europe. I mean, there's a lot in the US as well, but a smaller portion than A1 for sure. All of the major dairy farmers, it's typically A1. And yeah, a couple other things to mention. As far as raw goes, of course you were, you're getting the bacteria from the milk. So quality is extremely important. It's also important to consider that there's more variation between the different milks. So it'd be worth trying different local farms, depending on what you have available. If you don't do well with one, try another one, see how it goes. Because it can depend very much on the conditions that you're finding in. Whereas the pasteurized dairy is going to be more consistent, just kind of universally.

That's because they for pasteurized dairy and the large dairy producers at least because you can get pasteurized from a local farm. I'm sure. But so water. Yeah. For the large producers, they basically take milk from all all over the farms that they're and they put it all in a fat together. So you basically have and they standardize it. So they standardize the fat content in the store bought dairy where it's the whole milk is I think three point two five percent. And obviously the other percentages are on the bottle.

So those, though that's very standardized. When you go to a local farm, you, the fat content is dependent on the breed. Cause some breeds produce upwards of five, six, seven percent fat content in their milk. Like just really depends on what the breed is. And then obviously diet becomes important. I don't think a lot of people realize that what, like there are certain compounds that can come through from the animals feed into the milk. So as the animals serve to, to an extent as a filter for the milk, yes, of course, but there's still compounds that can come through. Like, for example, you can change the color of egg yolks by the foods that you feed the chicken. And the same thing with milk. You can get certain compounds present in the milk depending on the diet. So you may not react well, and this is with honey too. Certain honeys can be more allergenic depending on the flowers that the bees were tending to. So you can get a certain milk that, you know...

Jay
you really don't do well with. And that could be a huge problem. But then you go to another milk and you're like, it's milk. It's milk, all milk. It's like, no, then you go to another milk and you're fine with it. So it really, really depends. I think another important thing to point out is that within food labeling, particularly in the store bought large corporation stuff, if the ingredients are less than a certain percentage, then they don't have to label them.

So you can have certain additives present in the milk, like carrageenan or silicon dioxide or whatever it is, without even knowing it because it's at such a low percentage that it's not reported. And so for certain milks or certain companies, if that stuff is in there, you maybe could be having a reaction to that. Some people just don't react well to milk. it's just, I think it may actually be like, an ancestral thing. Their bodies are not adapted to dealing with it very well. Some people have an allergy. Where that allergy comes from is, I don't know. I don't want to get into anything like that. But I think it's important for some of the large corporate stuff that you could be getting certain additives that you don't know about. And then obviously, what are the carriers that the vitamins that they add to some of the milks, what are those carriers? What's in them? Are those irritating? Things like that.

So when we come down to it, think local would probably be the best, assuming that the farmer has good practices and the cattle are fed well, not eating anything allergenic, things like that. those would be, those are like very important. But if you don't have access to it, I don't think store-bought's gonna kill you as long as you can tolerate that milk. Yeah, a lot of people do fine with it.

But that's what we're saying is that tolerance matters a lot and it varies a lot between people. It also varies within a person based on their metabolic state. So the ability to digest lactose, their susceptibility to allergic reactions or kind of having an inflammatory response. Those things are all much worse when your body is less energy available and your metabolism is depressed. you know, it can be something where you start small with milk and build it up over time or just as your health improves, you might be able to do better with it.

Jay
So, and especially gut health too. I would also mention, we didn't, which this is just real quick, is that there are certain requirements, at least in the US, for adding vitamins D and A to milk depending on the fat content. yeah, so some people don't respond well to those too. So if you're buying local, you don't have to worry about that. But that also might be a reason why you want to get the full fat milk because I'm pretty sure that doesn't require vitamin A or vitamin D.

I'm not sure it might vary a little bit the different laws, but yeah, I mean, typically we're bigger fans of fat as a whole because of its effects on digestion and as, as you know, structural components and hormonal precursors and all sorts of other things. And as kind of that secondary fuel. So we would already typically recommend higher fat milk and then yeah, you don't have to worry about added vitamins at least as much. know some brands will still add vitamins to the whole fat milk, but yeah.

And you might digest it better as well. Yeah, I agree with that. Or worse, if you don't digest fats very well, if you're not producing bile or very concentrated bile or lipase. Or went on a zero-fat diet for an extended period of time. Now you're having bile problems, which I've seen happen with a few people. Yeah, yeah. Me too. yeah, let's... Is there anything else you want to add there as far as milk goes?

something that may be an issue for certain people with pasteurized milk is I'm pretty sure when you heat, if you heat the milk up to high temperatures, the lactose can form lactulose in the milk. so lactulose is essentially, it's a carbohydrate compound that we cannot digest and it has a laxative effect. And so if you have maybe like a high temperature treated milk, you may have a higher proportion of lactulose in there.

And when that hits the colon, that can cause like digestive distress. And I've seen a lot of people in the hospital get lactulose either for laxatives or to lower their ammonia levels if they have like liver problems or things like that. And essentially it wrecks them. It honestly wrecks them. It's cramps, bloating, gas. They're not hungry. It makes them feel terrible. Besides having an, they say its effect is an osmotic effect.

Jay
Which means that it basically pulls water into the intestinal lumen because it's a hypertonic compared to the other solution. What ends up happening is when it hits the colon, it's fermented by the bacteria and then whatever compounds those bacteria are producing, again, can be very irritating, especially if it's in large doses. So could give some people diarrhea, things like that. Yeah, yeah, definitely another good point. All right, well, I think...

I think that's it. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. And if you did, please leave a like or a comment or a review wherever you're listening or watching, share it with anybody who you think would find value in it. And to find any more of my work, you can head over to JFeldmanWalness.com. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to JFeldmanWalness.com slash podcast, where you can find any of the links to articles or other podcast episodes or anything else that we mentioned throughout today's episode.

And today we did talk a lot about experimentation and how important that is for our health journey and how we want to make sure that we're experimenting based on our knowledge of physiology and allowing that knowledge to basically inform our experiments as well as our experience, basically what results from those experiments. And of course, you know, that can sometimes lead us down the wrong path and it can be a little bit complicated. So if you would like some extra guidance with that experimentation and with your health journey, I'd be happy to help you. You can head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash call, sign up for a free call and we can talk about what's led you to this point in your health journey and how it can help you move forward. And if you do have any questions that you'd like us to answer on the next episode, you can send an email to j at jfeldmanwellness.com and that's J-A-Y, all spelled out at jayfeldmanwellness.com and send me over an email with your question and I'll see if we can answer it on the next Q &A episode.

Thank you so much for listening, I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will see you soon.