Dr. Layne Norton - Founder of BioLayne | The Science Behind Health & Nutrition

Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network They supported the show for over two years now, and I've used HubSpot for the majority of my professional career One of the most useful tools that is included in the HubSpot suite of products is sales hub Sales hub is an all-in-one platform built with the tools and Insights that you need to communicate on a personal level with every lead every prospect every customer It doesn't matter what kind of business you're building sales hub makes it easier to close more deals and drive more Revenue if you're looking for a better way to acquire customers and we all are because that is the lifeblood of our business If you're looking to make smart data-driven decisions increase visibility productivity Predictability of your revenue you've got to look at sales hub It can organize and sort deals in your pipeline It creates reminder tasks for your most important deadlines and manages leads it automates outreach It tracks and closes deals all in one place and on top of that It's free to get started and it grows with your business as it scales There's 1300 integrations and a ton of valuable add-ons Customize it exactly to your needs with sales hub closing deals is no longer a big deal Go to HubSpot.com slash sales and try it for free Doctor Lane Norton. I'm super happy that you're here. I'm very excited. I've I've watched a ton of your Content going into this and I've read some of your work as well followed some of the things you put it on Twitter And I love how much you speak your mind in this space and it's important now Let's kick this off with an interesting question. Why is there so much pseudoscience in health wellness nutrition? Why does it feel like everybody even before we kick the software speaking about people adhere to their Ideologies of health and wellness, but it seems like there's so much Fake and so much misrepresented in this space. Why is that? So it's a great question and I actually do feel like I have a pretty good answer for that. So I used to have this kind of Epiphany when I would go out. I hated telling people I had like if I was just meeting people I kind of didn't like telling why I did like having a PhD in nutrition Like if I could if I go out to a party or or meet new people or whatever and I say Yeah, I'm a theoretical physicist and I study string theory You know, I might get questions about the universe and stars and some fun stuff But I think you know, most people are probably not gonna try and have a debate with me About string theory, right? Or if I was a professor of mathematics, you know, most people aren't gonna like question my theorems But be a PhD in nutritional sciences Everyone eats so everyone has formed some opinion of nutrition Because whether it's right or wrong, they have associated something they beat me with some outcome and It is really interesting to people They'll get different ailments. They'll have something happen They'll get a headache whatever and it seems invariably they associate it They try to associate back to something they ate. I don't know where this obsession comes from. I wish Nutrition had that much power Because I'd probably make more money to be quite frank if nutrition really had that much power But I think a lot of it boils down to everyone has a personal experience with nutrition and so That personal experience I was talking about to friend about this today that personal experience is by far More powerful than any study I can show them They're they're even and the problem is People don't understand the concept of bias and confounding variables. So for example, I'll hear this all the time Why cut out carbs and I I lost weight all my blood markers improved You know, so it was the carbs that were were causing me problems well You one you probably didn't do that in isolation people don't typically do behaviors in isolation They cut out carbs they tend to eat less processed food. They're eating less calories overall They probably start exercising because they're getting serious about their health And they get all these but they tie it to the fact that well, I was eating too many carbs So it was insulin sugar that made me made me fat and unhealthy But That's why we have human randomized control trials because The important thing and I think this is so important for people to understand why Randomized control trials are so are the gold standard of research because If we like take let's say we take a hundred people I was okay some of you were going to do the high-carb Low-fat diet some of you go to the low-carb high-fat diet You you could choose which group you want to go into Well problem is There could be certain characteristics about people that select each diet that predispose them to better adherence Or More activity or all kinds of confounding variables, right? But if we take a group of a hundred people and we randomly assign them What you can What it gives you confidence in is that any of those kind of confounding variables are going to be randomly Distributed across the groups and so if you see differences or don't see differences You can be relatively confident that what you're looking at is a treatment effect. Hopefully that makes sense So it does so this is why human randomized control trials are considered the gold standard of research So again going back to somebody's a lot of carbs and I lost weight. I feel amazing Okay, well here's 20 randomized control trials where they control people's food intake Equated calories, equated protein and did the gamut of carbs and fats in terms of all the way from very low-carb to very high-carb low-fat And we see that there's really no difference in fat loss if you equate and control for those variables But the problem is because that person had that experience It almost doesn't matter how much research you show them and This is what we call confirmation bias where people have an experience And then they will retroactively look for reasons why whatever they did is the best thing to do Because people like feeling righteous They like to feed and honestly, I think I do think it's like oh, I want to help other people with this thing And I'll give an example where I fell into that So I do my kind of approach things when I call flexible dieting So I have a certain amount of calories protein carbs and fats that I'm trying to hit you know every day And you know for the most part I eat foods that I enjoy eating to fill those out I eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, but I still you know I'm ice cream every day Um, I love like popcorn. So I have popcorn like I have foods that you would not consider You know normal diet diet foods Uh, but I'm extremely consistent. I'm brutally consistent and it works and in fact When I was getting into bodybuilding 20 years ago, I kept trying to eat clean You know, which was basically like your traditional diet foods And I found that I would eat clean for a period of time and then I would invariably break and I would you know Go off the deep end and binge eat and you know have a bunch of crap You know, it's having trouble making progress And so I was like I said you know I wonder if I just allowed myself to have this moderation But you know didn't over calories and whatnot You know how it and once I started doing that I mean I became brutally adherent it felt relatively easy You know, and I've just been able to be consistent that way and I thought oh this is it This is the solution for everyone And then as I got into coaching and coach more people I found it. Yeah, it was a great option for a lot of people But some people the idea of tracking or hitting certain numbers It's just very stressful for them and they'd rather just not eat carbs or they'd rather Timer stricter eating whatever it is But fortunately having that scientific background I was able to identify oh, I'm being Confirmation biased right now. The data doesn't really support what I'm actually saying It's just a tool and a tool belt But I think people just become very dogmatic about whatever approach they felt feel like they got results with You know, I you know when it comes to I use financial examples a lot It would be like You know somebody who got rich in tech stock during the tech boom be like you got to invest in tech stock That's the stock that always works you know, and it's like Well, we know what tends to work for finances overall Like you want to for the most part be really consistent with your investing start early Consistently put away like at least 15% of what you're taking home and you spread of the cross Of various different types of mutual funds so that you're diversified and risk and hey if you become wealthy enough Then you can kind of mess around with single stocks What you have what you have some money that you can afford to lose essentially or not touch But that's not that sexy and so you know you get kind of similar types of messaging So I think that that's where you know people just can become dogmatic about anything based on their own personal experience Well, it seems like when you look at all the different types of diets So you look at the the high carb low fat you look at the low carb Higher fat and like more traditional keto if you look at intermittent fasting these are almost just psychological tricks To to promote a certain diet that you can adhere to for a long term is that is that more or less Yeah, I mean, so there was actually a really a really telling study Um, it was it was called um Was a meta analysis so a meta analysis just so people understand is Not a study in and of itself you're not recruiting subjects or anything like that what you're doing is you are scouring the entire database of research and you're looking for studies that fit your what you call inclusion criteria, right? So Basically these this particular meta analysis. I forget the exact inclusion criteria But I think they were looking for You know studies looking at weight loss diets in humans That tracked I think weight loss over three months six months and two years Um, and there was some other inclusion criteria as well and basically they're including any studies that fall into this And then and they have certain exclusion criteria like I you know again I'm not certain I'm not saying that these were the exact exclusion criteria But like for example some studies will say you know, we didn't take people with heart disease We didn't take people with type 2 diabetes, you know like that sort of thing, right? I'm not saying that was the case for this study I'm just saying you can set whatever criteria you want So you include all the studies that fit that criteria and what you try to do then is basically combine all those data points To try to come up with a consensus of what the research says for your particular research question So it's a very powerful tool because a lot of times you can take you know individual nutrition studies and randomized control trials It is very very difficult to get randomized control trials That last longer than a few months with any kind of reasonable amount of control So for example, um, if you want to really highly controlled study you have to pay people Like you like you can't Just have that much control over people's lifestyle people would be like, okay, sure now I'll do that You know, I'll go sit in food jail for for six months You know, so I mean there was a study recently where um Uh, I can't remember the exact study, but basically they paid people like seven hundred dollars seven eight hundred dollars Uh, for like over a hundred thousand participants are sorry sorry sorry seven eight hundred dollars per participant and the total end up being like several hundred thousand dollars They had to pay out and all they were doing was monitoring people over like a six month period Like they weren't even like forcing them to eat the meals that they wanted They just told them what to do and like had them come in and take measurements and stuff So the point being it's really really hard to get long multi-year randomized control trials with a high degree Of control And so the ones that are do have a high degree of control end up being very few subjects, right? So the power of a meta analysis is you've combined all these you can take You know a study may only have 20 or 30 people But once you do a meta analysis, you may have thousands of data points So it really could be a powerful tool Oh, I was gonna say you have to be careful for uh searching for studies It also support what you're looking for because I know that you can find studies on any kind of support Any conclusion right right and again That's why meta analyses are so powerful because I always tell people I don't care about single studies I mean, I may get like excited about how well a study was done or how tightly it was controlled or whatever But I will very very rarely make Uh strong statements about one study. I'll usually say this study suggests this Here's how it fits with the rest of the evidence Well, we probably need more research and I will say that I was every time right So that's why meta analyses are so powerful because it's not one study. It's multiple studies now It's important to read because you can do a bad meta analysis as well because there are meta analyses with like two studies You know are three studies You know, especially if research is emerging that's not necessarily a knock on the meta analysis if the studies don't fit the Inclusion criteria there may only be that many studies um But again in this one they were looking at 14 different like popular diets and how they You know their effects on weight loss over like six months a year two years And what they found basically is in the long term over two years All of them were equally forable at promoting a facilitating long-term weight loss There really wasn't much difference But when they took people and stratified them from least adherent to most adherent Regardless of diet used there was a linear effect on their results So basically the most adherent people got the best results regardless of diet used So what that says to me especially based on another a meta analysis I kind of was talking about This one from 2017 by Kevin Hall where they looked at um Low carb versus low fat diets When protein was equated and when calories were equated and when meals were provided to the participants So actually a high degree of control and they found that there was no difference between fat loss between these groups really Um, so taking all those things together. I look at that and say well The best diet is probably the one that you can stick to as an individual and we look at adherence adherence appears to be very individual because they even looked at hey did any of these diets tend to have better adherence than others And the answers though um There doesn't really seem to be one diet that pops up as as being better for adherence But for individuals You'll hear individuals say man. I did time restricted eating. It felt like I wasn't even dieting You know, it was so easy for me or I did low carb. It felt easy. I did plant-based. It felt easy I did flexible dieting. It felt easy So If you want to lose fat You have to you have to restrict in some way But you should probably pick the form of restriction that feels the least restrictive for you Because most people think about a diet just as a diet and they don't think about it as a lifestyle And that's why the weight loss recidivism rates which is basically relapsing to previous weights after weight loss Are like 80 90 even a percent even higher if you look out past five years So what it really says is whatever diet that you're Choosing to use to lose weight Those habits and behaviors you build you better be able to maintain them Because weight maintenance is actually more difficult than weight loss So on that point when you're talking about all these different types of diets. Is there any Uh, type of diet that is not just for fat loss But for muscle preservation and or cognitive performance that could be optimal or does it still follow those That exact same trend I can't really speak to the cognitive because it's not really my area What I will say is if you see people lose body fat um Following healthier diet practices you do say tend to see better cognition. I will say um There appears to be a link between the gut and the brain. Don't fully understand it yet So I will say eating sufficient amounts of fruits and vegetables uh and enough dietary fiber Is pretty much the best way to have a healthy gut microbiome And that may be important if it ties into cognition But I wouldn't say that there's strong Direct links between the two yet. Although I haven't looked really hard at it either so it could it could be there and I just not aware of it um When it comes to muscle retention really what you're looking at is getting enough protein in um and then resistance training If you do those two things you're you're you're doing 90% of the the work There is some data that suggests that a ketogenic diet specifically may not be optimal for lean mass retention Compared to a diet that has sufficient carbohydrate that is mechanistically That's probably because carbohydrate release insulin insulin has a inhibitory effect on what we call proteolysis which is basically Muscle protein breakdown, right? so That is probably why Uh, and then we do see that in the randomized control trials too Especially a randomized control trial by Kevin Hall Where they took people and put the monochetogenic diet compared it to Eating like a sufficient amount of car or not a sufficient because there's no requirement for carbohydrates But like a high carb low fat diet And they found that their urinary nitrogen excretion was higher and they had they lost more lean mass over the course of the rct So urinary nitrogen basically uh, why that's important is because Protein is the only nitrogen containing macronutri if there is the nitrogen component of what makes it unique and so um We can look at How much nitrogen appears in your urine we can also look at how much you're taking in And we can come up with like a pretty good idea of like whether or not you're in a positive or negative nitrogen balance And if you're in a negative nitrogen balance, that's a pretty good indicator that you're probably losing lean tissue So I'm not saying that you can't gain muscle on a ketogenic diet because I know people will Misinterpret what I'm saying and and bake it black and white and go to extremes. You could absolutely gain muscle on a ketogenic diet um But when they compare them straight up to diets equal in protein that are non ketogenic The non ketogenic diets tend to do a little bit better Again, it's not a massive difference in lean mass retention So I wouldn't tell anybody hey like if you have success in a ketogenic diet It's easy for you to adhere to i'm not saying don't do it because you're just gonna strip off a bunch of muscle But is it the best thing for muscle retention? Not based on the the data we have i also think it's it's important to note that when you look at the Individuals that are sort of preaching about one diet versus the other i mean you see this all the time So you live in this world a lot of them are not natural online And obviously that changes the whole game right yeah You can take any diet to a point and have some success with it And I know that some of the guys that you debate with And you and some of the guys that post a lot of bullshit online about this that that that diet they totally Negate to disclose or they just don't discuss that their whole body Physiology changes to a degree once you're on this that or the other Yeah, I mean obviously performance and answering drugs can make up for a lot of you know Inadequacies and in diet and training and whatnot Um, and it's always like you know, so people people will ask me things like oh um It reminds me of a meme somebody uh simply this meme and it was like um I took You know, I took statistics this year Um, and then they go into like p-values and stuff um and then the person goes oh it seems like it really it must have really helped you And the person goes um maybe Because if you understand statistics you understand that everything is just risk and probabilities that there are no There are no absolutes Uh, and so you know these people will say well, I did this and look I got this And like somebody yesterday asked me oh do you think um something they asked me something about my training Do you think that that was the reason that you set this world record in a squat? And for those are familiar 2015. I set um And then world's spot record 668 pounds at 205 pound body weight class Been broken a bunch of times since then But they were asking something about my training and whether or not that particularly was one of the reasons I was able to do that and my response was Maybe because I can't go back and clone myself and have myself do it a different way and then compare it right I'm basically my own case study And it's very possible that I could have gotten the same outcome Maybe I could have gotten a better outcome doing it some way differently But I there's no way for me to know that because I can't go back and copy that in time and again That's why we have randomized control trials because that's where we try to pick out some of those differences And people who say well, I did this and I got this Here's the problem with anecdote And I'll use carnivore diet for example, there's people say lane There's all these people that say you know they they did the carnivore diet and they resolved all these health problems They're autoimmune issues blah blah blah blah blah blah I'll say cool I can go find the same amount of vegans or more who say the same thing What makes your anecdote more valuable than theirs Now I'm not saying that your experience is incorrect I'm not saying that you didn't get some benefit What I'm saying is you cannot apply that broadly to other people You cannot do that because you started following the carnivore diet Okay, cool You also basically stop eating processed foods And it's also very hard to overeat calories on the carnivore diet So guess what fixes a lot of stuff Calorie restriction and weight loss If you're 50, 60, 100 pounds overweight I mean do I think a carnivore diet is the best diet out there? No, do I think it's optimal for human health? No But if somebody loses 50 pounds on it Compared to what they were before if they were overweight or obese Are they probably better off now than they were previous? Probably So But are they as good as it? Are they good if they could have been if they included fruits and vegetables And a more balanced diet and lost the 50 pounds through that? Probably not And so I think those are the nuances that people are missing when it comes to this discussion And again, anecdote is so powerful I mean, just to think about it for like in finance, right? Like how many times do you do a rigorous analysis of like Hey, who's the best in financial advice in my area? No, you go to your body who made a lot of money in investing Oh, hey, who did you use? Right? Like that's what we do And if you see somebody you like to paint job on their house You're like, hey, who painted your house? Right? You don't go like Look up who's in the better business bureau or any of this kind Because anecdote for us in word of mouth is really powerful And people's personal experiences are very powerful And I think a lot of that too is People feel very disconnected from scientific research Which is one of the things I really try to do is I really try to Make it not an ivory tower That's why I started my research review Every month we like basically review like five different popular studies And break them down in a way that's like easy for people to understand Because I think that's so important for people to have that connection To what's actually going on Because otherwise they're just going to consume stuff over social media or what's in the news And I can tell you In my experience I've been doing this 20 years 99 times out of 100 The headline in the news does not reflect the actual results of the study This goes down this this this is about everything from seed oils We're going to talk about some of that I think meat being carcinogenic Sugar all these artificial sweeteners All these different things that you've seen in the news all the time So let's talk about some of these sort of more popular topical items Because I think this is sort of top of mind for everybody I think it's an interesting you know It's an interesting comment that these studies don't translate into headlines So what happens what happens when you see in the news Meat is carcinogenic or seed oils are bad for you Or artificial sweeteners are bad for you That's a you know super super basic headline Then all of a sudden everyone's parents are stressed out or But he's trying to throw at the splendor from their house or everything like that, right? What what happened here? What happened in the study? How did it get miss the misinterpreted misrepresented? So keep in mind first thing is that negative news sells way better than positive news So for example, there's a company I worked with they're called consensus. They're a There are an AI powered Research Crawling tool basically so you can go to consensus and you can type in Does create and build muscle and it will not only like pull up All the relevant research studies it will actually basically answer your question based on the consensus of the data In terms of yes, possibly no right So and it will show hey 80% of studies show this 10% show this 10% show this right? So they break down like what the actual distribution of the answers are And then you can further like refine it based on like okay. I just want the human trials or I just want randomized control trials And when you go and you look at like for example Do does aspartame cause cancer Um actually, I think I had this just pulled up Let me just see if I can find or fire it. Uh, let me just pull up Because these are these are the things that you know, I I hear all of these I hear all of these you know, and these these sort of these tropes and I try and do my own research as well because I'm I am somebody who would try and go into a PubMed study and see where this came from But even even for somebody that does the effort and does the cognitive work and goes in and tries to understand You can still even find these PubMed studies to support one way or the other and it gets very difficult To understand what's what's correct and what because you don't you're not I'm not a research. I'm not a scientist You know, there's how many how many pages in this study and you're just looking at the abstract and you're hoping that the study was done right You're looking at the end results But it gets very confusing so I can only imagine if somebody does not go to the even that level How confusing some of these things could be oh yeah so Basically if I pull it up so it's like okay Hey, so here's the result if I if I use the um the phrasing Does consuming aspartame increase the risk of cancer? um 14% say yes 14% say possibly 72% say no Now if you are the news what's going to get you more clicks Aspartame not found to be associated with cancer in this cohort or Aspartame increases risk of Whatever tumor by 15% right well of course it's the the negative headline and that gets down to a more um Important aspect of cherry picking So you can always it doesn't matter what what your belief is You can always find a study to support whatever your belief is okay? Now a lot of them are like people will use like in vitro studies, which is basically the petri dish or animal studies It's so but just to show how powerful cherry picking can be I pulled up a um I actually did this because I I did a big long debunk of Paul Soledino's appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast a few years ago So Paul is a carnivore diet advocate um and Basically says that fiber is useless fruits or vegetables are bad for you and all kinds of crazy stuff and Just to give you an idea of how much it how much effort it takes to debunk nonsense versus saying it His podcast is like just over three hours long probably took me 50 hours to do this breakdown It was 48 pages in the google doc and it had two hundred and three citations Um, it took me 10 hours just to listen to it because every time there was a claim I had to write it down And they'd go back and address it right and I had to cite the whole thing But there were several times where he would cite a study and I would like scream I'm like that's one study and all the other studies showed something else right like you're picking one study So just to make the point in that breakdown I pulled up a research men analysis Uh the risk of smoking on a dental carcinoma right So if you look at the overall effect I believe the effect of Smoky on a dental carcinoma when you could pile all these studies It's like a seven times risk increase like a seven hundred percent increase in the relative risk of cancer That's massive right And when you look at what they call a forest plot and a forest plot is basically there's a center line Which basically means no effect and then to one side there's either a positive or to the other side There's either a negative effect and depending on how far it is to one side for each individual study It shows you how powerful the effect was. Hopefully that makes sense Well then if you look at this center line Virtually every study is like far to the right showing increased risk of cancer But there were two studies that were just a little bit left of that line So if I wanted to make the argument that smoking did not increase the risk of a dental carcinoma And oh by the way might actually be protective I could just highlight these two studies and completely omit the other 48 studies And so that's why it's so important to I mean frankly this is so hard for the the average person because they don't have a research background They don't know like what to give more weight to which is why I again I love that tool consensus dot app because They you could ask the question and it will kind of show you pretty quickly and then their search filters as well Um because it's so hard for the average person to like hear this stuff in and You know and really feel like oh, and then if it fits their bias, that's another thing So let's say somebody doesn't really like any vegetables and here comes this expert with a medical degree Um, by the way, he's a paul's a psychiatrist um But here comes this expert with a medical degree Who says oh no, you know vegetables actually not good for you Because vegetables contain fatates Which uh can and oxalates which increase your risk of ox oxalates stones And can also bind to nutrients and reduce your nutrient absorption Also, there's sulforofane and broccoli and look at this study showing when they gave sulforofane It increased the risk of cancer You know And it's like so you can And then when you look at the sulforofane study it was a crazy high dose and it was in rats And you could find more studies showing that sulforofane may actually have an inhibitory effect on cancer But you can always find a specific compound in any food Man made or natural That if you fed it in a high enough dose would cause problems. I mean you give people enough water. It'll kill them. Okay So Unfortunately, people don't know how to unpack this stuff And again, you know all all kind of go to yeah, but What actually happens with people who eat lots of fruits and vegetables Because based on what you're saying they should die earlier. Oh Oh, it studies when they look at people eat lots of fruits and vegetables They live significantly longer So how does that like this is the direct question we're concerned about so how do you reconcile your claim With the actual human outcome data And so this is what's so hard for people to unpack I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot Now the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network So if you like this show you'll love some of the other shows in their network One of my personal favorites is the hustle daily show It brings you a healthy dose of a reverent offbeat and informative takes on business and tech news And you guessed it every single day Some of their recent episodes that were my personal favorites how AI is making fake IDs How to meet your favorite CEO for a few thousand dollars and also how tick-tock is turning into an online mall And starting to replace QVC if you love business if you want to get it daily Let's into the hustle daily show wherever you get your podcast Well, it seems like it so it's sort of unfortunate that people are They're not fair with their representation of facts Like an individual that goes that deep and does a three-hour podcast on a particular subject You would think that they would look at all the data, right? But that's I mean this is probably why you're so fun at parties because You're bringing you're bringing up you're bringing up all the shit that they don't want to address and and you know that some of these people found These studies as well, but it doesn't fit the narrative and then like let's say you're somebody who doesn't like eating vegetables And you hear this guy say oh vegetables are bad for you It's not gonna take that much evidence to convince you that oh yeah Vegetables are not good for me. I'm not gonna eat vegetables. You're not looking at it. Right exactly I mean same thing with like, you know It's funny like I um every once in a while smoke a cigar and I you know, I'll be like I've been on social media and like had a cigar in a picture or whatever and people will be like So that being smoking is it bad for you? And I'm like no, it's bad for you I I just understand it's bad for me and I am valuing the experience over the fact that you know this may this one cigar I doubt will will increase my risk that much if I did it very regularly it might Um, but I acknowledge it is definitely not the best thing I can do for myself But I'm also not over here trying to convince myself that You know smokey actually isn't that bad and you know actually it's good for you, you know because Uh, it lowers my stress it lowers my stress and lower stress is associated with longer long I can bake any argument I want you know based on whatever it is I want Uh, and so it's really important to just look at the human direct Data with regards to that stuff. I mean another great example is um uh The the artificial sweeters You know like people are so scared of artificial sweeters And the resource like I said 71% of the studies show that it doesn't cause cancer But what gets focused on is the 14% that say it does Um, when you're looking at so if you look at all the different types of diets just sort of one last question on this Because you didn't mention longevity Are there any is it just a balanced diet that has the best possible outcome for human longevity across all the different studies Okay, so I kind of um I have six pillars for longevity, okay um Don't eat too much Meaning control your calories. Don't become obese. Okay. Now there are people who say you got a fast because a Tophagy um There's there's no evidence that fasting is superior for producing the desirable effects compared to just normal calorie restriction Now there are monkey there's actually more studies showing that uh Caloric restriction is better for longevity now we can't really do That study in humans because you have to track them their entire lives and control their calories But we do have in primates. So a recess monkeys Uh, they showed that a 30% reduction Uh, in calories a 30% walled. Okay, so here's where it's going to get tricky They showed that a 30% calorie restriction Was sufficient to prolong lifespan significantly. I can't remember what it was. I think it was like something like a like a year or two What's the baseline when you say calorie restriction? So is it like you say 2000 calorie diet are you supposed to be hitting? So, so this is the this is the question Scott So this is why it's important. So I did a lot of the animal research and I know how these studies are done They didn't find out What the maintenance calorie level of these animals were And then feed them 30% less What they do in caloric restriction studies is though they just have animals eating ad libitum So however much they want They track how much they eat and then they restricted by by a certain percentage and they call that calorie restriction um So Interestingly animals overeating captivity Right? So when you look at the research data when they cut these animals calories Yes, they lost weight initially, but it plateaued very quickly and then they just maintained it. Okay So if it was true calorie restriction, they would lose it lose weight for a really long period of time And they'd actually have to adjust it What did what what you really see? I think Is there simply stopping these animals from becoming obese from gaining excess body fat? I think that's really what that data says. I don't think you have to eat low calories your entire life I think You just need to stop yourself from becoming obese like have a normal A level of body fat and I will say too lean also has increased risk of mortality. So you don't want to go too lean either Um, but a normal level of body fat, you know from in 10 to 15% for women 20 25% all those are totally fine Um, so that's number one. Don't eat too much exercise vigorously and frequently move your body that's you if you look at any study at activity Like even with steps There is a huge drop off in mortality going from 2000 steps today to 8,000 steps today. I mean, it's a massive difference Um, and then it's the benefits slows down, but it never caps out Like even up to like 24,000 steps today. You're still getting incrementally Like smaller and smaller benefits, but they're still a benefit now. I think steps are magic No, they should the same thing with push ups men who could do like over a certain amount of push ups Had lower risk of mortality. These are just more active people. This is this is what this data is showing So number two is exercise. Number three Don't smoke or limit smoking, right? Um, you know, there's no benefit to smokey Other than like I said for my cigar like helps me relax every once in a while But this is something I do once a month, you know, do like for the most part Smoke as little as possible And even like with the vaping Uh, the vaping isn't as bad as regular smoking, but it's still not good Um, it still increases risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease because it's the smoke itself That appears to be negative. It's not the nicotine Brim may not even be the tobacco. It may just be the the the smoke you inhale itself um Number four Would be uh, get enough sleep Okay, so most people again, this isn't something sexy. They don't do this, right? Um Number five Actually, I'm gonna make this seven pillars now that I'm thinking of it. Uh, number five limit alcohol I say limit people get mad at me That I think small amounts of alcohol are not harmful your body has a system in place to metabolize it Um, there are cohort studies that show a dose response of alcohol on mortality But again, people who tend to drink also tend to have other unhealthy lifestyle behaviors Um, if you look at the human randomized control trials looking at like small amounts of drinks You can't really find them of negatively affecting health markers. So in my opinion I think you know a few drinks per week is probably fine, but if you can abstain fantastic um And then the next one number six is what I think is really underrated Mental health and stress management if you look at psychological stress And the risk of mortality and autoimmune disease Very very strong association with autoimmune disease and most people who have autoimmune diseases There's actually a very strong cross correlation between autoimmune diseases and um psychiatric disorders So people who have psychiatric disorders or an increased risk of autoimmune diseases and vice versa So I think when you're putting your body into fight or flight mode all the time um Your body can begin to attack itself. I mean, I'm not an autoimmune expert Um, this is just some stuff I've seen in the research literature But honestly overall call that we do see it in mortality there there is there does be an effect of mortality in psychological stress so Getting cognitive behavioral therapy and learning how to manage stress Because um, I think most people uh, I include myself in this for a long period of time Had this idea that we could just get stress out of our lives That is never going to happen Especially if you're a driven person who wants to do something you will have stress It is part of life every single one of us is going to go through trauma Tragedy horrible things are going to happen What matters is how do you handle it? How can you perceive it? Can you Feel your feelings and move on from them or do you get stuck in a leak? So I think Like mental health is a huge component of longevity Edges quality of life obviously Then finally I eat enough fiber fruits and vegetables. That's there's very for every 10 ram There was a meta analysis and met what they call men of regression where they basically like try to project based on the research day they have um And using uh milit or using statistical modeling Like what is the the effect of this is it like a u-shaped curve is it linear So in most of these models when they look at fiber and take it is a linear effect on the risk of cardiovascular disease Cancer at all calls mortality and they find that for every 10 ram increase in fiber There is a relative 10 percent reduction in the risk of all calls mortality cancer and cardiovascular disease So fiber is like literally a longevity hack So so that actually is an interesting point because normally I'd look at the traditional You know, government-sponsored food pyramid and say that they got most of that wrong But I would say that that fiber component is actually something that aligns with sort of more mainstream health narratives I think um, right, you know So people love to slam the food guide pyramid. They love it when they're going after me too. They say I'm like a government or big food shell And um, yeah, that's funny too some people will sound like do you what do you think I did for my PhD? Because they'll say well, you didn't do your degree in a hard science. I'm like, uh My BS is in biochemistry. I took calculus one two and three. I took differential equations. I took I took physical chemistry instrumental chemistry and a little chemistry Organic chemistry one and two I took advanced nutrition and metabolism. I took nutritional biochemistry So please explain to me which one of these aren't hard sciences Do you think I just like sat and looked at the picture of the food guide pyramid for six years? So the food guide pyramid Do I agree with it not really Mostly from the perspective that I think um lean sources of protein were unfairly demonized um But do I agree with most and I think they they People don't do well with nuance unfortunately, and so what you see was at the bottom was emphasizing whole grains Starches, you know those sorts of things if you look at the research So the research that supports the consumption of whole grains for reducing the risk of metabolic disease cardiovascular disease But unfortunately people look at that and they go oh, well Yeah, I just have a lot of spaghetti and meatballs or or have a lot of you know um refined carbohydrate um Which again, there's there's actually like very little research to suggest refined carbohydrates and isolation are bad It's more about the fact that people eat a lot of refined carbohydrates. Don't eat much fiber um Because if you look at studies where they equate carbohydrates and calories it either eat Have people eat refined sugar or like very little refined sugar People lose the same amount of weight on weight loss diets and have similar improvements in their health markers But the real problem is it's hard to eat a lot of refined people Don't add they replace when they eat so if they're eating one thing they stop eating another so A great example of this is like if sugar is so bad Why is fruit associated with so many positive health outcomes because fruit has a lot of sugar in it Well, because fruit has a lot of fiber in it and it's difficult to overeat right because of the fiber content So again, uh, I think the food guide pyramid wasn't really that bad and the end of the day people didn't really follow it That's the issue Like sure people ate a lot of carbohydrates But they also ate a lot of fats in fact the biggest source of added calories in the last few decades is oils Uh, not carbohydrates In fact, if you look at the last 20 years sugar consumption has actually dropped quite a bit I and we're still getting fatter and I'm more unhealthy So again people took out sugar, but they replaced it with oils, you know And so um, I you know, I don't like demonizing the food guide pyramid Just because I think if people actually followed it which which would also said exercise and limit your calories Limit your sugar limit your added oils if people actually followed it it would have worked But people didn't follow it You know, unfortunately the messaging that they took from it was eat a lot of carbs But then they also added fats with it so Okay, last thing on nutrition than I want to speak about resistance trainings physical activity Um on Twitter right now You are going into it with Your good writ on see I think it's about seed oils. What where did that come from because I've heard Oh my goodness. I've heard the most ridiculous things about seed oils the last thing that I heard about seed oils And I'm not I'm not an expert, but I'm just telling you anecdotally what I heard was some guy told me That if you don't eat oil you won't sunburn anymore and I was like listen, I can't I can't get this anymore one Yeah, so this is what we call mental gymnastics um, so What they're doing so seed oils essentially are like canola oil Um, but you know mostly polyunsaturated fats, which is what's been emphasized uh in the food guide pyramid and government recommendations So Here's my doubles advocate argument Seed oils are not innocuous in so far as they are the largest source of added calories in the last two decades And have contributed to obesity crisis because of that But and if you look at cohort studies where people consume more oil Uh, by default more calories. There are negative health outcomes And they're also looking at research studies looking like omega-6 to omega-3 ratios and showing that you know There's higher incidence of disease and people need more omega-6 for omega-3s But what do the human randomized control trials say where they don't just add it they replace it Meaning if we substitute in polyunsaturated fats in place of saturated fat Based on these folks Claves we should see worsening health outcomes for cardiovascular disease For cancer for inflammation for metabolic health Nobody yet Nobody I've challenged them challenged Tucker no one has been able to for Show me one randomized control trial Were these markers got worse when saturated fat was replaced with polyunsaturated fats So and so it's either neutral and in many studies it has a positive effect So If you look at say like liver fat there was a study where they replaced um Uh, they other had people consume polyunsaturated fats or saturated fats saturated fat they or sorry They overfed them so this is actually an overfeeding study Saturated fat increased liver facts 78% more than polyunsaturated fats Um, if you look at the the effects on insulin sensitivity There's either a neutral positive effect if you look at the effects on blood lipids There's a neutral or positive effect. There's actually a pretty big positive effect when it comes to LDL cholesterol Um, if you look at the risk of cardiovascular disease of cancer the same things So where are all these negative effects come inflammation? These guys there are one of their big central core themes is these things because they're unsaturated because the So in polynomial saturated fat you have multiple double bonds these double bonds can become oxidized And that oxidation they claim is going to cause inflammation Okay, cool So we have these things called human randomized control trials where we can feed people this stuff and see if it increases inflammation So what do we see when we feed polyunsaturated fats in place of saturated fat and look at inflammatory markers We have to see a neutral or positive effect most studies are mostly neutral but there are a few that you'll pause this Now Paul Soledino came back on Twitter and said something like um We'll look at the study where they fed alpha linolytic acid and saw um, an increase in lipid peroxidation Great So what what so let's okay, so that's a mechanism all right, so that is one thing I hold open I hold open the idea that nutrients can have both positive and negative effects in multiple different pathways And so the question becomes is the overall effect positive or negative that is the question we should ask Because what Paul is doing by pointing out a mechanism whereas I'm pointing out the actual human outcome data Hey, look cardiovascular disease cancer metabolic health That's like saying hey look at this mutual fund and let's say the mutual fund has 150 funds in it Hey, you don't want to invest in this mutual fund It's got these two funds in it and they went down by 50% this year Without with omitting the fact that the overall fund is up by 30% What do I care more about that the overall mutual fund is up 30% or that there's two stocks in it that are down by I don't even data on those two stocks I care about the performance of the overall mutual fund and that is the difference between looking at human outcome measurements versus these um, these mechanisms these guys love to focus on and Fortunately again, people don't know the difference between the two they just go oh well this guy started the study and this guy Side of the study and I'm like yeah, but that study doesn't actually answer the question that we're asking So at the end of the day, they're doing just a more educated version of what the news is doing already pretty much it's it's it's cherry picking it's um, and then it's like so there's always all these guys whether it's plant-based zealots, intermittent fasting zealots Seed oil zealots they all follow the same arc Which is look at these studies and then I say okay? Well, here's these studies that actually measure what we're wanting to measure and they show no difference And then they go well look at these anecdotes and I'm going well Here's these anecdotes over here from people who did the opposite thing. So what makes sure is more valuable And then invariably their last gas effort is to completely dismiss all scientific research So I say look at this Thing that shows that there was this article published in the Lancet where the Lancet claimed that like 40% of scientific research was Either doctor or fabricated, right? And so they'll say we'll see We can't trust any scientific research. I'm like no, you can't trust any one research study But what you can trust is the consensus of scientific Data because Replication is the mother of all science Because when somebody produces an outcome in a lab Other labs look at that and go hmm, I'll believe that and so they try to replicate it Because one if they can replicate it they want to know if they're wrong And sure maybe there's even multiple labs and did stuff but it doesn't you it's not going to survive The rigor of scientific experimentation over time and when people say this stuff you'll have people say well You know they've had a cure for cancer. They've been hiding it My response is always so basically what we're saying is all scientists are pieces of shit Is what you're saying they go what do you mean? I'm like You don't think That there's a scientist involved in this cover up who has a family member that died of cancer You think you can just pay off everybody like one of uh, well Joseph Zundell great great follow on instagram is a cancer biologist He got into cancer because one of his family members died of cancer You think there's a amount of money that you're gonna give that got like like scientists work for very little to begin with You know am I saying that there's no bad eggs out there? No, of course there's bad eggs out there But that's why replication is the mother of all science and that's why we don't just look at one research study We look at the consensus of the data I love that okay, let's talk a little bit about resistance training um in your opinion resistance training is the best thing you can do for your health And I say obviously in your opinion you have some data to back that up And personal bias I am biased in this and personal bias of course So let's talk about resistance training versus aerobic training Sprinting jogging whatever it is pick anything else wise resistance resistance training king Great question. So there's actually just a study published I believe where they looked at the risk of cardiovascular disease And actually found it was lower in people who resistance trained versus people who just did aerobic exercise I can't remember the exact citation so I should go hunt that down um The the reason I like resistance training is if you're doing it hard enough If you're going hard enough you're going to get the benefit some of the benefits of cardiovascular work Like um, you know, I have a apple watch that tracks my heart rate and whatnot So if I do a two-hour resistance training session I'm doing like heavy squats and dead lifts my average heart rate will be 130 to 140 I mean, that's right zone to you know what I mean Um, and I max heart rate will sometimes hit like 190 So Like you're getting some of those cardiovascular benefits from doing this But you're also getting the benefit of more muscle mass and muscle mass is tied to longevity lean mass is tied to longevity as well as strength And muscle is your uh metabolic health organ It is the largest organ in your body by weight and it is a metabolic sink if you have a lot of muscle mass Quite frankly you got a lot of places to put stuff as as like Reductionist is that sounds So if you have people who don't change anything, but they just are resistance training you'll see improvements in their blood markers Because you just have more throughput To get glucose and fatty acids in all the study of more places to put it muscle cells are energetically greedy So that's what then also you get the huge benefits on bone density like for bone health there is nothing better than resistance training Period like if you think calcium and vital and deer good for bone health Resistance training absolutely slaughters them in the research data I mean, and just as a personal anecdote I've been resistant training for 25 years The last time I had a bone mineral density scan done I was basically Almost off the chart of what they usually do And I've never broken a bone in my life. I'm not saying it'll never happen again. That's my own personal experience But it just has so many benefits for the stuff we care about for not just longevity but quality of life And bone density and muscle mass are not just huge for longevity. They're huge for quality of life as we get close to end of life Is there is there a correlation between uh strength training resistance training in your VO2 max? I'm not sure about that. I would imagine it's better than just doing nothing It's probably not better than aerobic exercise and I'm not trying to poo poo aerobic exercise If you like doing aerobic exercise ball beans do it any form of activity is better than nothing No question about it. In fact, there was even a research study that showed that just four minutes of intense exercise a day I'm not kidding Four minutes of intense exercise per day and it didn't have to even be consecutive. It could be broken out Four minutes reduced the risk of Cancer by 20% four minutes. That's what four minutes. That's insane. That's the that's wild That's absolutely wild When you look at when you go sort of a level deeper into the types of resistance training You're you're actually interestingly enough a powerlifter and a body builder Is there a certain kind of training that is more focused on powerlifting versus bodybuilding that Is maybe better for general health and longevity does one camp help better than the other Yeah, I don't think there's enough research to kind of pick that out in terms of what's better for overall health I think if you're just doing Some resistance training and be intense enough with it in terms of like, you know, getting close enough to to muscular failure Um, then then you're gonna get a lot of benefits from it But I don't think there's enough research out there to really pick out like which one might be better for overall whole Are they are they are they both more or less progressive overload? I've like I've never I've more in my life trained as a body builder versus a powerlifter But it's more it's all it's all very much the same Yeah, I mean, it's progressive overload, but just in different Fashions right like with progressive overload in bodybuilding. There's a lot of different ways to progressively overload Um, you could add, you know, weight you can add reps. You can add more sets more hard sets Um in powerlifting. I mean, you can aggressively overload the same way really what you're trying to get is just get stronger Uh, but both progressive overload is important for both And it's just the way in which you progressive overload like a little bit different for bodybuilding There really seems to be key to do enough hard sets very close to failure for powerlifting Proximities of failure are based on the latest meta analysis doesn't actually seem to matter much What seems to matter is doing enough sets and a high intensity like close to your one rep max so that you build that skill and then um At any given load Moving it as quickly as possible So for example, and you can apply the same force to 300 pounds that you apply to 600 pounds 300 pounds just going to move faster So with powerlifting it just basically becomes very important to at any given load move it as quickly as possible And I mean is there is there a four four the types of training that you do for powerlifting versus bodybuilding um in terms of Physique look is there one that you prefer more than the other or is that just a a cause of the right diet I mean You'll probably gain more muscle with a bodybuilding type trading Uh, you can do both as well. I don't necessarily think it was a downside to doing extra accessory work You know for bodybuilding with a powerlifting base Uh, it's kind of what I do Uh, but as far as like your body composition the amount of body fat you have Um, that is determined by you know your your energy balance and your your most of that is to diet so Yeah, I mean, I you know, I Look, I mean, I could probably diet for 16 weeks and be ready for stage and I would look like a wide And there's a lot of powerlifters who would fit that that That realm. I mean the super heavy weights might need more like a year diet Uh, but they could do it because they would have a lot of lean mass as well But would it be optimal for bodybuilding probably not um Because there's more time efficient and set efficient ways Uh, to build muscle computer how you do it Understood and then just one last one last point on this Um, people that are listening to this that are are either working out or getting into working out You know, they see so many Supplements they see all these different things that they could take I mean, I'm sure you've tried the gamut of things that you're able to take and and try as a natural athlete What would you recommend without going through each each thing? Yeah, you know specifically the types of way different as a protein creatine anything off the shelf at a G&C or a vitamin shop What actually moves the needle? So that's why self the line behind me Ha ha ha ha ha ha So I kind of I move I put supplements into like three tiers right now First tier is very very clearly defined uh, creatine little hydrate weight protein and caffeine those are Ca those are supplements with hundreds and thousands of research Studies to support their efficacy Um, there there is no question about the benefits of those supplements for performance For building need tissue for getting stronger Then you can move into kind of tier two stuff Things I would consider in tier two are things like um ashwaganda rodeola roséia Those are adaptogens which appear to reduce stress Uh, in the case of ashwaganda they actually even build some lean mass We've also got things like citrally on there. You've got things like um Betaine which has been shown to increase power Uh beta alanine would probably make the second tier And you've got stuff like melatonin uh, in fact like melatonin in a research study was actually shown to add lean mass to participants Now that might be secondary to just them, you know getting better sleep and recovering better um But that's and so that's why like my supplements are very basic. I have way protein powder I have a free workout with you know caffeine rodeola some other cognitive enhancers A recovery product that has creatin Uh ashwaganda some other things in it And then uh sleep supplement that the base is melatonin. There's some other Positive supplements in there as well But everything like I saw and could say at least tier two which tier two is basically like There's Not the same body of research. You could be the same length of time done on these and I want to see more research To kind of fully flush it out um, but it appears to be trending in a very very positive direction There's very few studies showing it does nothing tier three is like very new to market very little research data Basically, I'm unsure you can dump almost all of them into that bucket And then anything that don't fit those three tiers is you know, obviously not worth wasting your time on um You know, but but tier three I wouldn't even waste my time on I you know Most people are wearing it But most most people and even most people don't eat tier two stuff. I mean most people You know Creatin in the weight protein are very very cheap if you tolerate caffeine while it's a great cognitive enhancer forced an answer But those three you know, unfortunately, you don't hear a lot about them In terms of because they're not sexy because everybody knows that they were all the companies know that they were so all the companies sell them so they're cheap um And that's why they also tried to reinvent the wheel with like we have this uh, this is way made from goats Like a dead series. They have a goat way It's more anabolic than talway No research to support it or they're like creates an effulester more anabolic than regular creature No evidence to support that actually research science actually suggests the opposite um You know, so they're just people they just try and reinvent the wheel so they can charge you more money because It's like uh think about uh think about Flatt's green TVs, you know, when I bought my first flatt's green tv in 2009. It was an LCD tv I paid a thousand dollars for a 42-inch now. I can go down and try to stick a bubble gum for a 42-inch tv You know what I mean like because everyone sells them So they're cheap because the market is competitive So people try to reinvent the wheel on this stuff with this the stuff that works is the stuff that's on the floor All right, I love this. Thank you. Um one one last Piece of wisdom from you um think about perhaps one of the most dangerous nutrition health wellness exercise myths that you've ever heard What was that myth and what would be something that people just have to be very aware of that major red flag Is a sort of delve into bettering themselves being healthier whatever it is And you know, I don't know that there's one specific thing, but I guess it's more of like a a category of stuff which is X thing is toxic um I think this messaging is toxic um If you've done any research into toxicity the dosage makes the poison You know, I guess it you could find the components of any different feet. I look and read me heterocyclic amines if I look in um You know Plants uh if I look at apives cyanide Uh if I look in you know, like I said any food you could find something cyanolcobalamin has cyanide which is vitamin B like You could find something that sounds scary But they're like there was a there was actually a video of carry broccoli who's got really famous recently talking about cyanolcobalamin And how you got to be careful do you know how much vitamin B12 capsule it capsule for you would have to take To take enough cyanide to harm you Uh, it's about 43,000 servings of vitamin B12 So good luck with that You probably die from your stomach exploding and going septic from eating so many pills Before you would ever get hot and cyanide toxicity So again, when people say stuff's toxic, you know ensued Hey Very very rarely is it actually something you'd be concerned about But it gets people scared to eat hardly anything and increases I mean people have so much food anxiety now. I know so many people don't do they don't attempt to do anything They don't try to make any healthy lifestyle changes because they're like well You know the chain to the car award diet because meat math for me I can't do vegan diet because plants are bad for me. I can't do you know She'd do the diet because of this I can't eat list of foods and they go oh, oh, I'm just not gonna do anything I'll just keep doing what I'm doing because everything's gonna kill me. Sometimes what you whatever I want Uh, that is way more damaging than like any toxic Componing with food And then the last day I just want to ask you at you know at this point in your career Both for the industry and for yourself You've had an incredible career as a as a bodybuilder powerlifter now You know sort of an advocate for the truth and nutrition and health and wellness Um, what is what is success in your career mean to you right now and for yourself We're gonna ask me more questions Uh, the head You know, I think I I don't think I ever set out to be really well know Um, I kind of just set out to What out stuff that was helping I just I just wanted to like simplify things for people I think I was speaking to the 18-year-old version meat was so confused about everything It had that duped all along still um So I guess success but but as as I went through it I realized well if my content becomes popular I become popular by the fault So now I mean success to me is you know Getting on some of these like you know more major podcasts, which I've been lucky enough to do Um, you know, I do want to write a book and get that all messed up as you know, I do want to be You know Maybe even like get involved with government policy in some way shape or foreign um You know just to just to try to help in any way I can Um, because I wouldn't have the largest beneficial or you know positive impact I can Well, I think for me um I want to simplify nutrition and take the Take the scare factor out of it like just let's focus on the good stuff that you can do rather than like scaring everyone All the time because it's just not helpful messaging, you know, it's like that doesn't really help anybody So I think you know success for me would be I'm already seeing it in that like I I'll go to these videos of these guys making crazy claims and sure enough and and almost ever in one of them Which comments say where's your citations? Where's your sources? You know like people are starting to ask those questions Um Because you can't just take people's work for You know you can't just take the key So I think that one thing that I I really respect about you is you're such a logic driven data driven individual I think that this industry needs it. I think that even like having a you know An hour long conversation with you it really says a lot of light on things that you see in the news And I consider myself somebody that would go a level deeper and try to do the research and it's still so confusing So I really appreciate like how you bring this message to the world. I think it's very very important Um, I want people to go follow you I think it's at biolane on twitter and I think on all other most socials at biolane. I think your website biolane.com Um, and I just want to thank you. I appreciate your time. I appreciate what you're doing and let you know I think this is a very very Much needed perspective on this entire industry that impacts people's lives in such a major way But it's so confusing and scary to your point. So I appreciate it. Thank you, Matt You