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Guest Dr. Sara Gottfried

Dr sara godfried, welcome. All right. Let's, let's rock this out. Yeah. So thank you so much for coming. My pleasure, it's actually kind of funny. We have we feel like we know each other, but this is the first time that we've occupied the same space in the universe we have had webcam chats is basically it's true. I feel like I know you with the guitars in the background. Yes way. Have that here as well on the dog football's, it's it's, good stuff. So why don't we just get right to it? You are obviously a doctor. You're a great doctor, someone who entertains new ideas and isn't afraid to kind of dabble in the french. So why don't you just give folks a quick background of who you are and what you do? Sure, sure. So I'm the author of the new york times best selling book the horman curious you mentioned and I help both men and women balance their hormones naturally so that they can lose weight, feel great and rock their mission. So that's my focus and there's really seven hormones of metab...

olism that you want to be mastering, especially for fat burning, so hopefully we'll get to some of those today, we sure will, why don't we get right to get tom? I would let's start generally and talk about which hormones should most people be paying attention to right now if they want to burn fat and be healthy and build muscle that sort of thing well I would say number one is insulin and insulin I think is misunderstood it's the unsung hero of fat burning and high I think that if you have a good relationship with insulin it's like your inner able james it's your inner gillian michaels lt's you know your inner tony where it just helps you stay at that place of really healthy metabolism so that you're not you're not watching the scale climb over the years you're not feeling like crap or craving sugar so I think this is a really important one to manage and the super cool part about insulin and me we should back up and talk about what it does is that you can reset your insulin levels inside of seventy two hours now that's that's an incredible opportunity so it's not like this is some gigantic project you can do it in three days so I think that's a really important piece so what does it do it actually drives glucose in the cells and the problem is two thirds the u s population does not have the inner able james does not have an insulin that's really supporting them the way that it should be so what happens over time especially if you need to much sugar and your metabolism becomes damaged is that insulin levels climb than blood sugar climbs and you get into this vicious cycle that leads to fact gain the opposite of your entire message able so we've got a reset insulin so that's number one that's really important cool how do you do that? Oh sir, will you talk about this quite a bit I think we should tag team here and talk about the fun ways of resetting your insulin and you know you you are masterful at talking about mindset and food and how to exercise and that's really what I think it's important you know, I I am a conventionally trained physician but I definitely don't think that you find the answer to health in a pill bottle and I think ninety five percent of the time you can reset your hormones naturally without needing a drug with your fork you know, basically with how you eat move thinking supplement so she we mentioned some of those s o specifically what foods will jack up your insulin in a horrible way? What foods won't so great question you know, the main thing is that you want to stay away from sugar sugar is it's like a drive by shooting in the body, right? Yeah, I like this analogy you want to create a good neighborhood in your body you want a love up your dna you want yourselves to be in pleasure and when insulin is loving you up and not working against you when you're not eating sugar when you don't have that drive by shooting in your neighborhood that's where you really step into the grace of fat burning so staying away from sugars number one when it comes to carbohydrates I mean everyone sort of knows that refined carbohydrates are not a good thing but I think we can get a little more detailed about this I mean the answer to this question is always non starchy vegetables vegetables, vegetables, vegetables right and I think that people should eat a minimum of a pound a day of vegetables I think that's really important for loving you like that one I like that okay, good. So there's there's many other pirate type moves when it comes to insulin but lean protein I think is essential and it's you know you know this so you talk with me here is they're really good at messaging this to cool well, what is a you as a doctor I know a lot of doctors including my own several of them over the period of time recommended a lot of whole grains to get my heart in order and to lose weight they also expressed that told me to exercise more and do a lot of other things but let's start with the grains what's your take let's see how can I put this delicately I don't think grains or the answer I think the u s food pyramid is way off I I actually find in my twenty years have taken care of men and women in my integrative medicine practice that the number one food intolerance is gluten gary is a close second hey scene, but I really like to get people off of gluten, so I'm not a big fan of grains you know, you and I are similar in our overarching approach to food I sometimes joke that I'm a polio vegan video just to make sure that we're getting the vegetables in sufficiently so I am not a big fan of grains I think bread makes you fat and dumb and I find that a lot of the gluten free breads actually have too much for toasts and other sugars in them, so I really think the best way to go is to limit your grains or go for the ones that are more slow burning. Which ones? Well, I happen to think that keen wah is a lifestyle, not just a a seed, ok, so I'm gonna put it in that in that category even though it's not officially a grain right but it's it's grainy enough for people to get that satisfied? Yeah, yeah so I I likeem what I like the ones that don't contain gluten, that air slow burning and so some of this is genetically determined right? There's some people who need to have more carbohydrates and brown rice is often a good choice for them. Um I think that other forms of grains you're basically the unprocessed will forms you know the it's where starches go it doesn't even have to be grains like this there's no reason to lie or ties you yes, yes, yes that's sweet potatoes are my best friend I didn't know that they're like rocket fuel, so one of the things that I didn't have a chance to cover in one of my last segments is my approach to carbs and carp, timing on re feeds and that sort of thing. So I found myself and we can talk about how this relates to hormones as well on the thyroid specifically because mine was all sorts of jacked up and I know that that's still something that I need to watch s o if you go too low carb for too long, sometimes bad things can happen. So it's not like all carbs are horrible for you and they're going to make you fat, but if you have an excess of them generally that's, what happens? So for me I went for a long period to see how low carb I could go and I was kind of like straddling ketosis for a period of time, but I wasn't feeling that great in fact it got worse and worse and one of the ways that I know that I'm feeling great is number one energy that makes me want to get up and move number two the way that my mood sets over the course of the day and over the course of the week number three my sex drive if that if anything happens to that I know that some thing is going wrong and when I went to low carb for too long I was like, yes, sex whatever and that's not sex drive very exciting, very exciting because I know it's one of your specialties is especially the sex differences too, because it's not it's not exactly the same thing that happens with men and women as it relates to hormones and sex drops. So one of the things I did, I know that that was happening, or at least I assume this is why going to two low car for too long can actually down regulate a lot of hormones that you want and that you need in order to performing an optimal level and feel great all the time, eh? So one of things that I do is make sure that I have a somewhat of a car brief feed at least once a week this works really well for a lot of men it can work for some women as well as especially if they're very active across bitters or something like that power lifters of course think of others this morning percent of the female population yeah, I know, I know it's you know what the actual number is, but but car re feeds if you're talking about building muscle and making sure that you are regulating those hormones for men for myself, I make sure that I don't dodge all carbs all the time I actually prioritize, especially after a big workout right after a workout is a great time to have a sweet potato were some rice or something else like that, and if you go high fat most of time and then higher carbon and low fat maybe once a week or once every two weeks, that can actually really help your body stay in balance but burn fat most of the time. So what you're doing is refilling your glycogen stores you're up regulating some hormones that you need to burn fat and to feel superhuman. This is actually what a lot of body builders do also to get super lean really quickly it's called a cyclical ketogenic diet. So why with all that said, why was I feeling mad when I avoid carbs for too long? Can we no doubt for a moment it's doing nobody liked to nerd out with you, so first of all what we know when you go low carb is that it can please some stress on your body so getting back to a good neighbourhood bad neighborhood we know that some people are genetically programmed to need a certain threshold when it comes to carbohydrates so you probably have a certain threshold you drop below it and that's when symptoms started to come up with energy, mood and sex drive so one of the things that's happening hormonally the back story here is that we know for instance, from the atkins studies that some people will raise their core dessau so court assholes that stress hormone most people have heard of it I joke that it's like the bad boyfriend hormone or the bad girlfriend hormone that if you read that right now so I think the problem with korda solace that if it goes too high it's driving your blood sugar up and it's also depleting you're happy brain chemicals those things we need like serotonin which is in charge of your mood your sleep your appetite so serotonin khun drop below a certain level of cortisol is high cortes als also involved in your immune functioning it also raises your blood pressure so you can start to have symptoms if court us all is too high so it sounds like you know I'm totally speculating here but it sounds like that's part of what was going on I have a low carb gina type so I eat I eat pretty low carb most the time it's just what I do to manage my weight but there are other people who are from italy right? Who can eat pasta and they don't have any problems so there's definitely some individual variation what I would call you know this is that need for personalized medicine, right? But court assaults a major blocker of metabolism and it's to me it's the elephant in the room that we're really not dealing with and your food can raise your levels of cortisol similarly, if you're eating gluten and you have an intolerance to it or you're eating something else that you have an intolerance to like casing in dairy that can raise your cortisol levels lay down the belly fat along with raising your blood sugar causing problems again with insulin. So we've gotta have this this approach where we're not overly reductionist stick and just focusing on one thing you know I'm gonna fix my testosterone we got a look at this whole symphony and get it working together yeah that's the fun part yes, it is yes so you mentioned that you do keep carbs low what I'm sure a lot of people are wondering out there what is low carb anyway, where do you define that? What is too much for you? Well, I really don't believe that we have scientific consensus yet on what's the right level across the board so I'm gonna throw out some numbers here and hopefully you'll china and so I I tend to keep my carbohydrates each day's somewhere between about fifty and one hundred fifty depending on what dress I'm trying to fit into my sister just got married and I had like this tiny little dress that came to like here that I had to wear so I was on the lower side of those carbohydrates and you know, one little important message about carbohydrates that we should share is that they're not essential like you have to have fat you have to have protein they are essential right carbohydrates are not essential can you define essential because they actually has a scientific meaning it's not just the squishy thing that we throw around it it's a really thing yes so you need it to live you've gotta eat protein so that you can make amino acids amino acids are the bricks and your body that you use tio make neurotransmitters you know those happy brain chemicals we're talking about serotonin dopamine they also are involved in muscle repair in that balance that we want to create just gonna warn you going to get geeky here again from what again I love this stuff I hope you guys like that way so we want hormonally if we take a step back and kind of look at another level we want this balance between tabal ism kind of the breakdown in the body and an embolism not cannibalism but animal ism right where you have a balanced between breaking down in the body and repairing building back up so you've got to have the immuno acids for the building back up and I know you know a lot about building so what does that how does that relate to health itself? Those two states of the body either essentially growing guests or or disposing of waste and burning fat and that sort of thing you're actually not really burning muscle or sorry you're not really building muscle while you're burning fat in fact, if you try to burn too much bad you might be burning muscle to so what does all that work? Well, that would be like a phd dissertations let me try to summarize as best I can so you know what I think is important is attunement so I'm gonna take a different angle here I think we have so much individual variation and this is where we're going like in a couple of years you're gonna be able tio know your entire genetic code we're gonna walk around with these little cards that have all of your dna and you're going to know spa's civically ok here's the food plan that really works for you here's the range of carbohydrates that really suit you here seem out of fiber that you need to keep your liver and congested and love up your microbiome here's what you need to do for insulin sensitization so we're heading in that direction and when it comes to this balance this kind of teeter totter or when we use tango that's a better analogy that so when it comes to the tango between kuttab eliza man an embolism you want to make sure that you're not too much in one direction so what happens with a lot of people that I see I live in the bay area I have a lot of people that I work with online and also in my practice who are overwhelmed who are stressed out I don't know if that resonates with anyone no not me so when you're stressed out and you're overproducing the court assault your little adrenal glands and your back we're just pumping it out like crazy that is going to increase kuttab eliza you're gonna have more breakdown in the body your immune system starts to suffer you've got the glucose that's too high you're creating the bad neighborhood and then you're craving sugar like crazy and you can't stop eating it so that's one whole pathway you can also have too much of the animal is um and you might be able to speak to that better than me sumo wrestlers let's just wait who did that that's good that's what happens on one extreme you can also kind of straddled both, you could go back and forth and that's a great way to do it. Fasting is really interesting. We haven't really covered that much if we could touch a upon it quickly, especially as it relates to women, that would be great. Yes, I'll start with with my piece it's something that I do. I kind of teased it that in some of the earlier sessions, generally, what it looks like for me is I have a compressed eating window. There are a lot of health benefits that have kind of popped up in the past few years that show exactly why that works from a scientific perspective, I know even more importantly than that, that I feel better most of the time when I push my breakfast back a little bit. This is something that I do on most days, not every single day, and I'm feeding myself during that fast with pure fat, so it's a key to janick type fast. So what I'm doing there is when you eat fat during a fast, generally you're sparing muscle, and you're burning that fat or burning stored body fat if you do it for too long, like there's been a lot of research that shows and anecdotal evidence as well, that for men, anyway, somewhere around twenty four hours is that point where you might risk losing quite a bit of muscle if you keep the fast going for women though the equation is vastly different so can we talk about this new hot topic fasting and as it relates to women sure sure well one of the you know I look through hormone colored glasses at the world right so I I tend to go to the hormones and what we know about intermittent fasting is that it's more effective in men and it's also a way to raise testosterone so testosterone is that really important anabolic hormone that she wanted have in that sweet spot in that goldie locks position where it's not too low not too high maybe testosterone got a little bit low when you were low carb I'm not sure what was happening sex drive but what we want with testosterone for both men and women we want testosterone to be in that target range and intermittent fasting for men raises testosterone I haven't seen the data conclusively show that in women and I also in the studies that I've reviewed and the last time I really took this on was about six months ago what I found was that women don't lose as much weight as men do when they do intermittent fasting so there's many reasons for that we can blame some of it on estrogen estrogen is you know another major difference women have ten times less testosterone but we are exquisitely since to it we need our testosterone and for the men, you know, they have much lower levels of estrogen than women, so there's salute hopefully hopefully if you if you don't, I mean, for the guys which he really want to manage and you and I have talked about this before is the ratio between testosterone and esther dial and if you have a problem with your ratio, it can start to make estrogenic fat deposits on a man like man cans and at your your butt in hips. And, um, I'm trying to use my pt language and it also, you know, it's, not just vanity, it actually is linked tio heart disease and all these other problems andropause so we don't want that, and then just similar similar for the women we want to manage testosterone, we want to manage estrogen. I think about this as you want to manage these hormones like you manage your for a one k or your bank account. So you it's that simple, like you can manage these things, you don't have to let them manage you. Yeah. How do you actually measure where these home hormones air are at? Is that something where you can just be like, oh, I'm a seven today with my testosterone over my yesterday all or something like that, how what's the budget way to do it and what's maybe the next the next level great great questions so the budget way to do it is to actually take a quiz or fill out a questionnaire I have a free one eye convention if that actually helpful so there's a questionnaire that you can do on my web site the hormone cure book dot com forward slash quiz the german cure book dot com forwards last quiz and that's a place where you khun dio eh a version of the questionnaire that I have in my book so I have one hundred eight item questionnaire my book that identifies the root cause of symptoms that you're having especially as they relate tio fat deposits so I I think that that's a powerful way to work and you know your first thought might be a quiz another quiz but what we know biochemically like the next ten years of hormone science we know that there's this problem of hormone resistance and you you probably have heard of insulin resistance where yourselves become numb to insulin that's where your insulin no longer is your inner able james it's rising and you're depositing fat like crazy right here so what we want is to we want to prevent hormone resistance so just like insulin resistance you can have estrogen resistance you're gonna progesterone resistance that is the mechanism behind premenstrual syndrome you can have glucocorticoids resistance cord cells the main glucocorticoids where it's like the boy who cried wolf if you're just constantly stressed out ultimately the feedback loops between your brain and your body start to say I'm done I'm done here yeah, so the questionnaire actually pulls out your experience rather than testings that's the freeway to do it next level would be to do tests and there are lots of doctors and other practitioners who are willing to do this I've personally trained about three hundred of them and it's ah, you know this is a growing trend to kind of manage these numbers over time. Ultimately I think we'll get to a point where you're describing where you like prick your finger and you find out where you are with your testosterone investor dial ratio we're almost there almost there almost there and I do that quarterly so I test myself quarterly so that the more expensive way to do it the high budget item is that you test quarterly you have a dashboard on your computer of maybe your top ten most important biomarkers and you are rocking those biomarkers you are making them serve you the best that they can so for me insulin is one of the top portland's I gotta manage that I got to manage my court it's all I got to manage my astra dialogue because I tend toward estrogen dominance so that's just an example