Today, I have the privilege of reconnecting with my friend Robb Wolf, who joined me on two previous podcasts, episodes 130 and 213. He is a former research biochemist and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat.
In our conversation today, we explore the neuro-regulation of appetite and satiety, diet debates, and the impact of ultra-processed foods. Robb shares the intriguing story behind Dorito Roulette, and we dive into the roles of novelty, palate fatigue, protein, sarcopenia, digestion, and reduced anabolic signaling. We also examine the broader implications of nutrition, autoimmunity, gut health, thermoregulation, and sparkling versus still water, and Robb discusses various ideas he has reconsidered in the last few years.
Stay tuned for today’s invaluable and thought-provoking conversation with Robb Wolf.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
What is neuro-regulation?
How the varied flavors of Dorito Roulette tie into our desire to avoid palate fatigue
How the processed food industry tends to understand satiety better than health professionals
Why do we need more protein as we age?
How hormonal changes, decreased anabolic signaling, and a sedentary lifestyle contribute to muscle mass loss and fat gain in older adults
Why moderation is essential when consuming seed oils or processed foods
Why Robb advocates for making incremental changes in diet and lifestyle rather than drastic changes
Why vitamin D production is essential for preventing autoimmune conditions, and the benefits of using vitamin D lamps during periods of low sunlight
The importance of sodium for athletic performance and recovery
Why sparkling water may be better for hydration than still water
“From an exercise recovery and sleep perspective and for general athletic performance, electrolytes are critically important.”
-Robb Wolf
Connect with Cynthia Thurlow
Follow on Twitter
Check out Cynthia’s website
Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Robb Wolf
On his website
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.
[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of reconnecting with my friend Robb Wolf, who is a former research biochemist and two times New York Times Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat. He has joined me on two previous podcasts, podcast 130 and 213. Today, we dove into the neuro-regulation of appetite and satiety, the impact of the diet wars as well as the role of ultra-processed foods and his story surrounding Doritos Roulette, the role of novelty and palate fatigue, what supports satiety? The impact of protein as well as sarcopenia, reduced anabolic signaling, digestion and more. The impact of the big picture on nutrition, the role of autoimmunity and gut health, the impact of thermoregulation, sweat rates, sparkling versus still water, and ideas he has changed his mind on over the last several years. I know you will find this to be an invaluable conversation.
[00:01:33] Well, Robb, such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. Welcome.
Robb Wolf: [00:01:36] Thank you. I've been looking forward to this.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:38] Absolutely. We were just commenting on how different our climates are right now. And you're in heat, but dry air and I'm in completely the opposite. It's hot, humid, hazy, nearly intolerable. This is the only way the south ever got subtle was the advent of air conditioning, and for which I am quite grateful.
Robb Wolf: [00:01:55] Right? Yeah, it's very different when you add a little bit of moisture in the air, for sure.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:59] It totally is. I would love to start the conversation today around a topic that I know both of us are passionate about. And it's really helping understand the mechanisms around satiety and why so many people, whether it's related to ultra-processed food or a constellation of other reasons, why most people don't understand what true satiety is, how it functions and how it impacts, how we regulate our appetites and hormones and so many other mechanisms.
Robb Wolf: [00:02:33] Sure, man, it's a huge topic and I really-- [Cynthia laughs] in these diet war spaces, you've got paleo and keto and carnivore and vegan and mediterranean and all these different approaches. And I think to the degree that these things work, they usually have some commonalities of improved satiety and also to the degree that they fail, it's reflective of how difficult it is to make satiety work in a modern, hyperpalatable, engineered food environment. And I've got a story on this. It was my second book, Wired to Eat really digs into the neuro-regulation of appetite. This is where the rubber hits the road. And I want to be clear when I say, the neuro-regulation of appetite. It's the way the brain regulates our sense of satiety and appetite.
[00:03:26] There is a cross section of folks out there that they say that all of this story boils down to is willpower. And so, when they [Cynthia laughs] hear neuro-regulation of appetite, they're like, “Oh, yeah, it's just willpower.” It's like, “No, it's got nothing to do with that.” If we had to control all of our lives based around willpower, it would be a disaster. Like, nothing would happen, nothing would work, because of the way that we engineer our lives. We have access to all these different types of foods and varieties of foods and timing of foods. Willpower is almost guaranteed to fail. We need some at different points. But really what we have to do is establish habits and almost approach it the way you would a self-defense strategy.
[00:04:09] If you don't want to get mugged, you don't go onto dark streets to 02:00 in the morning waving a wallet and stuff like that. And so, there's similar strategies around this food. And I know I'm wandering here, but again, it is a big topic. But I have this interesting story. It was right after I had published Wired to Eat, and I forget how this popped up on my radar, but there was an ad for this product called Doritos Roulette, which I think most people would agree that Doritos just generally are pretty damn delicious. For me, I'm not so much of a sweet person. I'm more of a salty, crunchy, umami-type person. And man, Doritos just, [Cynthia laughs] I've never met anything nacho like that I didn't like.
[00:04:53] And what was interesting about the Doritos Roulette is that it said, careful, each bite is different. And it basically, when you flipped over the back and you looked at it, it was a generally pretty spicy product. It was on the spicier side of things. But ever, so often you would get a medium spicy, and then once in a while in the bag, you got a burn your face off spicy. And I was just like, this is genius. It's diabolical, but it's genius because so much of what makes something irresistible is both anticipation of the item. Like oftentimes drug addicts will talk about the process of getting ready to take the drugs is as enthralling as actually doing the drugs. There's this dopamine release, the heroin addicts tying off their arm and all that.
[00:05:49] And there's all this dopamine released in anticipation of that. So, you get a food that there's an unknown anticipatory characteristic to it. I don't know. Is this next one going to be the one that burns my face off? And then the fact that it's variable. There's some hot, some medium, some mild. You're getting a constantly altered palate experience, constantly altered flavor experience. And this hearkens back to some of our basic evolutionary biology or whatever type of naturalistic wiring you want to call it. But we have these two competing elements. One is optimum foraging strategy, where we're trying to get as much nutrition as we can doing as little as possible, which is diametrically opposed to the eat less more kind of thing. And then the other part of that is that all animals are wired up for palate fatigue.
[00:06:45] If you get a lot of single item, you get bored of it eventually. And there's good reasons for that. Anything that you eat has some amount of toxicity to it. It just does. And so, if you break things up, then you diversify the toxin load. This is particularly true of plants. And then there's also the reality that not everything has a perfect nutritional profile. So, if we eat a wider variety of things, generally like carnivores and stuff like that deviate from this spectrum a little bit. But omnivorous critters, they do well to diversify things, but that can really be used against us again in this modern, hyperpalatable food environment. So, circling back to this Doritos Roulette story, I poked around and I found who the manufacturer was, and it's like Unilever or something like that, huge conglomerate. And I shot him an email, and I never really expected to hear anything back, but I said, “Hey, I'm a food researcher and I'm just curious, does the distribution of the hot, medium and mild chips, does it follow a power law distribution?” And I had a few other questions, and like two days later, I got an email back, and it was very nice gal. And she said, “First we wanted to let you know that the scientists here love your work, like, they love all [Cynthia laughs] your work, and they read it all the time which has come great, who am I supporting here?”
[00:08:03] But she said, “Yes, it does follow a power law, which a power law is this inverse intensity thing where if something is infrequent but highly intense, whether it's exercise or sun exposure, can be very good for us. And it can also be very addictive.” And so, what they had done in one package, in one product, they had created this shockingly addictive type of experience. And they were using evolutionary biology and a deep understanding of the neuro-regulation of appetite, palate fatigue, optimum foraging strategy. So, the people that are selling us junk food understand satiety on a level that just, I hate to say it, but 99% of doctors, researchers are clueless compared to the understanding that is endemic in the processed food world. The processed food people, excuse my language, but they fucking get this stuff. They understand it frontwards and backwards. And this, Cynthia, is what we're competing against.
[00:09:11] And oftentimes, even, I was hedging there at the beginning, throwing out the term neuro-regulation of appetite. Even people who are health focused, you have some people that are into healthy at any size camp, and then you have other people that it's only discipline and team good eating is almost like completely illiterate on this stuff. It's sad to say, [laughs] but I guess it's job security to some degree. And that's my rambling conclusion on, that's satiety writ large. And I guess getting in, well, what things make us satiated? Protein is highly satiating and this is true of any type of organism, cows, horse, sheep, they will actively seek out and be more satiated by clover and other higher protein forage. And this is called the protein leverage hypothesis.
[00:10:03] There's this understanding that high-protein-containing items tend to be more satiating and more nutritious. Like, they just come with more nutrition. And basically, if we hit or an organism hits a protein minimum, usually it's understood then that they hit everything else, because protein rich items tend to come with a lot of nutrition. And the flip side of this is we could make the argument that inadequate protein usually leads to people consuming more of whatever else is out there, usually fat and carbs. And then on that fat and carb story, there are separate sensing cells in the gut, neurological cells that are allocated for identifying fat, that are allocated for identifying carbohydrates and sugar and under most circumstances, when we consume generally more traditional meals, most traditional meals are protein and carbs or protein and fat. We usually don't get a massive combination of those, unless it's like pizza or enchiladas or ice cream or something. And not surprisingly, those things are super easy to overeat. And part of what's happening there is these separate gut brain neurons that are sensitive to either carbohydrate or fat. Both get activated at the same time.
[00:11:33] And if we think about this from an evolutionary biology perspective, if we ran across both a honey pot and a giant side of fatty roast beef, that was the biggest win ever, because it's massive amount of calories, really, really easy to overeat that and so satiety, at a practical level, usually involves good amounts of protein, fibrous vegetables, to some degree, water. Those things are satiating. And so then if we juxtapose that with modern eating and modern processed foods, it's ironically, the ratios of the macronutrients, protein, carbs, fat that we generally eat in the United States and more and more in westernized societies are exactly the ratios that are fed to pigs to fatten them. There's a get big quick ratio. Dr. Michael Eades pointed this out to me 20 years ago. He's from Arkansas, and he had raised animals. And he was just looking through a feed catalog, and it said that I forget-- it had a colorful name, the get the pig fat quick ratio and Dr. Eades looked at it, and he was just like, “This is identical to the current ratio of protein, carbs, fat in the American diet.” So, enough protein to grow, enough protein to accentuate satiety, but not enough protein to stimulate satiety in a way that you're like, “I'm done. I'm over it.” And then enough fat carb combo to just absolutely fire up the appetite, ensure that the critter continues eating.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:11] It's interesting to me that, there are books along the trajectory of my health and wellness journey, and there was a book I read probably 10 years ago called Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. And I had no idea prior to reading that book about the bliss point and these food scientists that you started the conversation around, these foods are designed to trick our brains to subjugate satiety, to drive hormonal dysregulation. And is it any wonder we're dealing with a metabolic health crisis? Because if 70% of Americans, I think that's the last statistic I looked at are consuming ultra-processed foods on a daily basis. I'm not talking about, like a clean whey protein. I'm just talking about really highly processed foods that are very adulterated and don't look like what they did when they started at the beginning.
[00:14:02] We're really in a position as a society to continue to drive poor metabolic health, as one example, because it's so easy to overeat these foods. As you said, the Doritos Roulette and of course, I can just imagine the food scientists were delighted to get feedback from you and to have your interest in their products. But understanding that these food scientists are so incredibly sophisticated, they are thinking way outside the box. And most traditional allopathic providers get little to no nutrition information, let alone. I never remember a conversation in any of my medical training about the role of satiety. I do not recall.
[00:14:45] In fact, I actually pulled my 20-plus-year-old books out of complete interest. And I said to my husband, there's not one discussion other than as a- [crosstalk]
Robb Wolf: [00:14:53] Oh, that’s crazy.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:14:55] -how old I am. The food guide pyramid preceded my plate, and the food guide pyramid really pushed those healthy whole grains. And certainly, if someone's metabolically healthy, perhaps they can entertain the possibility of more carbohydrate in their diet. But certainly, looking at the statistics, we're not heading in the right direction. Now, when we talk about satiety, and you mentioned the protein leverage hypothesis, which I think is so important. When we're looking at age-adjusted risks, obviously, a 25-year-old, lean, athletic young man is going to have a very different needs for protein than people north of 45. And I think you and I are roughly the same age. But recognizing that our protein needs actually increase with age, they don't diminish.
Robb Wolf: [00:15:41] Yes. Yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:15:42] What my teenage boys can eat to trigger muscle protein synthesis is a little different than what I need and my husband needs. So, let's speak a little bit to this protein piece, because I think this is such an important point to hammer out for people to understand. I'm not just saying this because I'm saying this. It's really understanding that our physiology starts to change as we get older and we need more protein, not less.
Robb Wolf: [00:16:06] You teed that up wonderfully. I may not be able to do it justice in fact, you teed that up so well, but I'll try. I guess we could look at it maybe as two different vectors here. There is a tendency to lose muscle and gain fat as we age. So, this is one of these things that we're trying to stave off. At least I think that we would want to do that. And then there's wrapped into all that. Part of the reason why that occurs is we have a decrease in anabolic signaling as we age. Both men and women get hormonal changes, less androgens, less growth stimulation, less growth hormone. We also tend to be less active, and so the growth stimulation from that becomes altered.
[00:16:55] And again, we don't really see this tendency of increasing adiposity, increasing body fat at the expense of muscle mass in non-westernized cultures, usually they get into quite advanced stage, and then we see this, and people have probably seen, it's kind of an interesting and disturbing deal. It's an MRI of the cross section of the quad of a 78-year-old triathlete. And it's like a tiny little line of fat and then muscle and good bone density. And then it was a similar aged individual who's sedentary, and it was 100% marbled, a tiny little fat infiltrated bit of muscle, but it was mainly just adipose. And that is because of the modern world, sedentism, poor sleep, poor anabolic signaling. That's the direction that we tend to go.
[00:17:51] And it's interesting, the RDA on protein, I think, for women, is something like 45 g a day or something like that. My good friend Diana Rodgers, she's much better at having that off the top of her head. And it is at least three times under what it I think it should be. And this is a little bit adjusted by body size. And interestingly, if you are more active, you will get more benefit from your activity if you eat more protein. But because you are active, if push came to shove, you could get by with less protein and still have good body composition. But as we age, I think a decent rule of thumb is a gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight.
[00:18:39] So, if I'm 175 pounds, and I want to remain about a 175 pounds, somewhere between 150 and 180 g of protein a day is a great spot for me to be. And, my wife is 130 pounds, and somewhere between 110, 150 g of protein for her, it's good. And I give that spectrum so that people don't have to be neurotic about it. Like, you don't want to be on the low side too often, you'd like to hit the higher side, at least occasionally. Hitting it more on days when you perhaps do some resistance training or some hard physical activity would be smart because it's like you had a good growth stimulus, so now you're providing the building blocks to help facilitate recovery and whatnot.
[00:19:25] But because of the age-related alterations, digestion also as I'm thinking about it, we have a tendency to digest protein less efficiently as we age. So, we need to put more in the front to guarantee that we get more in our system. Then that is hopefully helping to offset the decreased anabolic signaling because of decreased hormones as we age, the general trend towards decreased physical activity, and again the delta, the difference of people who are doing a decent bit of physical activity, a modest effort at good nutrition, and in particular adequate protein, you hit about that fourth decade going into the fifth decade, and the divergence is just shocking. I remember my 10th year high school reunion. You could see it a little bit, but people were still generally pretty young.
[00:20:26] But my 20-year high school reunion, the vectors of the folks that were still working out and still eating reasonably and had an active lifestyle, it was stunning the difference between those two groups and the 30-year reunion. Holy smokes. [Cynthia laughs] And the scary and sad thing is, by the 40-year reunion, the reality of the poor lifestyle and diet choices, it's going to mean a bunch of those people are not going to make it to the 40-year high school reunion, is the reality of that. So, I don't know if I touched on that sufficiently, because again, you gave a great tee up on that. But it's critically important as we age. If you haven't worked out generally and you haven't eaten that well and you're like late 30s at any age, it's better to change them to not.
[00:21:14] But the interesting thing is if you haven't really worked out and you haven't really eaten that well, and you're about 35 to 45, and you decide to jump in and really get after it, you will have as good or better results for the rest of your life as if you had been working out your whole life, it's kind of cheating. And so, if you haven't been doing it and you're like, “Well, I don't know, I haven't been active or I haven't taken care of this stuff.” Any age is better to start than not. But the crazy thing is that in that like 35 to 45 range, you can build muscle mass, you can build bone density, you can reverse all these hallmarks of aging and then really age well and effectively.
[00:21:58] And you can maybe even make the case that you'll be in a good spot because your knees aren't worn out, your back's not worn out because a really active lifestyle is good, but it comes at a cost too. So, if you have folks that are in that 35 to 45 range and they're wondering, well, should I get in? You cheated your way into the party, and you could really rock it from here on out if you decide to really invest in yourself and do the things that would be helpful.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:22:25] And I love that the messaging is, it's never too late because for someone that's listening, and we certainly, the bulk of our listeners tend to be women between 35, 55 and above. And we always get questions, well, I didn't, the would've, should've, could'ves. And I always say something is better than nothing. If you do nothing else, it is better to go from being sedentary, eating a standard American diet to walking as a starting point and maybe eating less processed food. The irony is I'm starting to work with a new trainer, and we had this intake, and she looked at me and she said, “Oh, I love training people like you because you've been doing so much of the right things.”
[00:23:03] And I said, “Well, I'm now at the point where I want to push my workouts, but I don't want to hurt myself.” And that's in the back of my mind. And I think that is a common concern for a lot of people. It's actually why I stopped skiing. I'm still very active. But I said, I don't ski often enough now and there's enough snowboarders on the mountain that, my skis get skied over. And I just said, “I think I'm going to let my kids and my husband do that and I'll do something else.” But I think for so many people, there are these concerns. I don't even want to say that they're limiting beliefs. I think there's these concerns of I don't want to hurt myself, therefore I just don't do it.
[00:23:38] And I think the messaging is there are absolutely coaches, trainers, people out there that know how to train a middle-aged person as opposed to a 20-year-old. And I do want to make a comment about the high school reunions. I went to my 10th and my 30th, and I was really struck at my 30th. And I say this with great love. It was so magnified of the people that were living a fairly clean lifestyle versus the people that were still drinking as heavily as they probably did in high school or college, that we’re still smoking. I grew up in New Jersey, at the Jersey shore. Got to see a lot of really good friends.
[00:24:14] But the degree of magnification of that lifestyle piece was so profound that I walked away thinking to myself, this just reaffirms why I live the way that I do, because I can see what could be possible if I were not living the way that I do. And I think for so many people, whatever age they're at, they're like, “Well, I'm 50, and it isn't going to make that much difference.” Yes, it is. It is worth it to make those changes, for sure. What do you find to be the more challenging things to try to be conscientious about in terms of diet? Do you think it's more nonnutritive sweeteners as an example? Because there's now a lot of what I think about emerging research about aspartame, sucralose, sucrose, things like that or do you think seed oils?
[00:25:01] And this is very timely because I just interviewed Dr. Cate Shanahan last week about her new book. What do you think is harder to avoid in our current ultra-processed world? The sweeteners and when I talk about the junkie sweeteners that have the research on that suggests they're detrimental or the seed oils?
Robb Wolf: [00:25:16] I don't know. And I'm a little bit of a thorn in the side of a lot of the folks in that scene because I'm not as concerned about either of them as many folks are. And from the perspective of if we can get somebody generally trending on this paleoesque thing, you start with a hunk of protein, get some fruits and vegetables, maybe you have some nuts and seeds. I see folks. So, let's say somebody's been eating standard American diet, and they start eating a paleo-type thing, but they travel a lot. And so, they get a couple of burgers, no bun. They get extra lettuce, tomatoes, pickles. They get a pretty good whack of veggies with it. But oh, my God, that burger is cooked on a grill that got spritzed with canola oil, okay.
[00:26:09] And then also the person has-- they have a tea, it's an iced tea, but it has aspartame in it. And then they're still hungry, and rightfully so, because they're exercising and they're busy. And so, they have a handful of Blue Diamond Smokehouse Almonds that have a little bit of MSG, and it also has a little bit of seed oil in it. I see people in this space that lose their minds over that. Like, that is the worst thing in the world. Those seed oils are going to kill you. And this person has shifted from eating a bunch of bread, a bunch of sugar, a bunch of this, a bunch of that, and we’re worrying about the seed oil that was on the griddle. Now, is that optimal?
[00:26:51] No, but we have a traveling salesperson who supports their family and is embarking one of the most difficult, most likely to fail endeavors in the world, which is dietary change in a western culture. And is that tea with the aspartame the best item? No, but I grew up on the sweet tea that my grandmother. You could stand a damn spoon up in the thing. [Cynthia laughs] It had so much sugar in it. She knew pretty good kitchen chemistry. She knew how to super saturate a solution with sugar so that then if you put it in the fridge and it cooled and you dropped one grain of sugar in it would crystallize in the thing. That's how much sugar she had in there. And maybe I'm wrong on this. Like, maybe everybody needs to go 100% Mikhaila Peterson carnivore lion diet, no seed oils, don't eat pork, don't eat chicken, because those things have seed oils in them also.
[00:27:52] Or maybe there's this massive gradation within ancestral eating that. Okay, is it great that chicken and pork are fed seed oils indirectly because of the food they eat? No, it's not great, but I just can't wrap my head around that that is worse than the bread, the rice, the pasta, in combination with all the seed oils also. Now, there are some people that they need to be shockingly fastidious to make things happen. I look like I'm in pretty good shape, and I do motor along pretty well most of the time, but I still have gut issues. I have autoimmune issues. I deal with essential tremor syndrome.
[00:28:34] Like, I've got a lot of stuff, and I have to be really careful with a lot of the things that I do. But for me personally, the stuff I can't, because of the autoimmune and gut stuff, wheat nightshades, A1 type dairy, I can't do it. You can see my knuckles are all chewed up from rheumatoid arthritis. So, I will concede that there might be people out there that for them, they got to double duty on the seed oils and maybe the artificial sweeteners, they should really use, stevia or monk fruit instead of the aspartame or whatnot. But I can't shake the sense that we should at least start something and have something that the average Walmart shopper could go in and make that damn thing work.
[00:29:22] You go get a rotisserie chicken at the prepared food thing, you get some almonds, you get the apple that. Yeah, it's got Bill Gates' spray on it to keep the moisture in. And then you have a diet beverage that is sweetened with whatever. I still think that's moving in a pot a more positive direction than where the bulk of the society is. And I love Cate Shanahan, she’s brilliant, she’s amazing. And maybe we need to have the people out there at the fringe driving that fringe so that the pendulum can swing a little bit more. But what I find is that a lot of the folks in that scene, they make good or perfect fit antithesis of good enough or however that saying rolls out.
[00:30:08] And I think that folks just, it's so hard to do diet and lifestyle change that if we get any headway going, any direction, we've got to applaud that and also look at it in the bigger context, 100% avoiding seed oils, you're not eating out. You're just flat not eating out. If you get to the Paul Saladino level of harassing the chef about what oil they use on the griddle. And I would hope that if you're really that concerned about it, eat three meals a day, seven days a week, it's 21 meals. Most of those, hopefully, are at home. But again, some people travel a lot, or they're a healthcare provider, and they just eat out of the house quite frequently. Let's not make it so difficult that it's just like, forget it. Like, I can't win.
[00:30:59] They were doing well, they were improving, they were feeling better, they were losing weight, and then somewhere down the line, they're like you know that tea with the aspartame doesn't feel great. Well, why don't you try one with stevia? There's pure leaf tea, like they do sugar in and/or stevia. Oh, I did that, and it's great. So, we've got an incremental process that can be anybody where they are versus putting these standards out there. So high, it's impossible to win. Circling back around on this, I think if we can just get people to eat a hunk of protein at every meal, have a little bit of vegetable matter, if that deals okay with their guts, try not to do sugar sweetened beverages, like just across the board.
[00:31:42] I think we're working a miracle getting people to do that. And I think they will feel so much better and they will be healthier and there'll be less of a burden on our healthcare system and yada, yada, yada. I think, again even very sick people, people who have legit health concerns like myself, that was my process. It was an incremental stepwise thing where it's like, okay, this is better, but I don't know if it's good enough, and then I would take more and more steps. But in working with people, we ran the first and fourth CrossFit affiliate gyms for10 years, the fourth one for over 10 years. And we worked with a ton of people. And what you learn is that if you want to see people succeed, you’ve got to meet them where they are.
[00:32:25] And some people are ready to jump in with both feet and go crazy. And other people, they’ll be overwhelmed with all of it. It’s like, well, you told me to eat protein and not the refined carbs, but the protein has to be cooked on a griddle that doesn’t have these 20 seed oils in it, and I’ve never been able to find. And then they’re out, they’re done.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:32:42] Well, I so appreciate your pragmatism and your authenticity, because the one thing that I know, when I started my business about eight years ago, I probably overwhelmed more people with so many things to do. And now I give people, three things to do. Let's do these three things, and let's talk about good, better, best. And I think for so many people, they are really doing the very best they can at that point in time. I think that coming out of the pandemic, it has demonstrated for me that the amount of stress that families and individuals have put themselves under dealing with unprecedented amounts of events, and we won't even get into the politics of it. But I think really meeting people where they are is the way to go.
[00:33:26] And it's not to suggest when I go out to eat, which isn't often, I'm sure I am eating seed oils, but I choose to focus on, I'm going to eat my steak and my broccoli, and I don't drink wine but I'm going to do a huge effort to focus in on the people I'm with and enjoying their company, as opposed to worrying and perseverating about the fact that I can't control every single factor that's gone going, because I don't want to be that person at the table that's like, can I ask for this to be done differently? Can I ask this to be done differently? I would love to pivot because you and I both share some autoimmunity issues. I jokingly say I have three very stable things, and I hope to never add a fourth.
[00:34:09] Let's talk about autoimmunity, because it impacts 10% of the population. It's one in five individuals and women more than men, seem to be impacted by this. And I think that's driven by some of our own physiology. Do you think that a lot of the autoimmunity that we're seeing is driven by this evolutionary mismatch with our standard American diet and our standard American lives? What do you think is driving a lot of what we're seeing right now?
Robb Wolf: [00:34:35] Yeah, a big one is in this, sucks to say it, because I live in Montana, and we have great sun right now, [Cynthia laughs] and it is sunny part of the year, but there's a big chunk of the year where I cannot make vitamin D via UV radiation here. And it is crystal clear in the research that north, south gradient, as you move further away from people who live right at the equatorial level, autoimmune level rates are just bottom basement. They're very rare and interestingly, it tends to mainly be among the wealthy that choose not to go outside and really don't want to darken their skin and stuff like that. So, it's a self-imposed problem. So, I do think that probably photo period is the biggest factor. We don't go out in the sun enough.
When we do go out in the sun, too much sunscreen. And when I say that, people freak out. I use a D Minder app, and I'm fair complected. I'm northern European mainly. I'm 10% native American, so I do brown up pretty well. But this time of year, the UV index, when we are done recording, I'm going to hop out in the backyard and jump on a recliner and get some sun and my allotment depending on the day, if it's a UV index of 7 to 8 will be 40 minutes aside, it's a decent amount. And what that does, in theory, because of my skin type and latitude and all that type of stuff, it maximizes vitamin D production, minimizes skin damage.
[00:36:11] Am I still experiencing some degree of skin damage? Yes, it is photoaging my skin a little bit. I don't care because I would probably hang myself with piano wire if I didn't get out in the sun. [Cynthia laughs] So, it's again, it's this trade off field. But taking vitamin D can be helpful for autoimmune conditions. But when you look at the cascade of going from cholesterol to vitamin D in the secosteroid cascade that is induced from that photoreactive process using UVB radiation, it’s stunning how many immunomodulatory intermediates are produced. And my gut and autoimmune stuff is so much better in the summer. So, so much better when we go somewhere like Nicaragua or something like that. We spent two years in Texas and my gut health was great. It was just great because I could make vitamin D all year round.
[00:37:06] Occasionally, it would be too cloudy to go outside and do it, but by and large I could. For a host of reasons, we ended up in Montana and it's cool on the one hand, but I'm not going to live as long. [laughs] It's just the way it's going to play out. So, I do think that's probably number one issue. I do think then we have this alteration in the gut microbiota and Alessio Fasano, who's, if you couldn't tell by the name, an Italian researcher. He went really deep into celiac and gluten-related issues, and he did a really seminal paper a number of years ago using celiac disease as a model for all autoimmune conditions. And basically, a piece that must happen for the autoimmune process to occur is there must be some degree of loss of an intestinal barrier function.
[00:37:58] If you don't have that, then you don't have autoimmune propagation. Interestingly, the transition from an HIV to AIDS is a loss of intestinal barrier function. There's all these things that are pre-acute, and then it goes bad with the loss of intestinal barrier function. Interestingly, photoperiod is a big deal in maintaining intestinal barrier function. So, it feeds back onto all that stuff. But I think about myself, I had, oh gosh, a strep throat. I don't know how many times as a kid, I had really severe acne in my adolescence. And so, I went on tetracycline for 12 years. I was not breastfed. I had all these things stacked up against me. I ended up getting exposure to Giardia in Mexico.
[00:38:49] And so the Giardia was really the thing that for me took me down at the kneecaps, like it so damaged and altered my gut microbiota, that all of this other autoimmune stuff, that’s what precipitated the ulcerative colitis, that's what really took me down at the kneecap. So, I think under most circumstances, dairy and wheat and nightshades, these molecular mimics of proteins in our body, that ends up being an autoimmune issue. I don't think that should be the norm at all. And I think that it's alterations in the gut microbiota, loss of intestinal barrier function, the lack of adequate photoperiod and sun exposure and UV exposure all of that then sets us up for the potential for an autoimmune cascade, where some sort of environmental protein or item can happen with a viral infection, can happen with vaccines, can happen with food.
[00:39:48] These things get identified by the body-- antibodies made against them, and because their proteins look similar enough to the proteins in our own body, then we end up with this autoimmune cross reactivity. And then oftentimes, if we can prop up the immune system with that sun exposure, do things to repair the gut, and then remove some of these environmental triggers. Like for me it would be gluten, nightshades, and A1 dairy. I do pretty good. I'm not perfect, but I do pretty well. Until I figured out the A1 dairy piece, like I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu and my hands just hurt all the time. But through a series of events, I became aware that the A1 dairy was the problem. So, I shifted to sheep and goat and some A2 bovine dairy. I have zero problems with my hands now.
[00:40:40] But if I go out to eat and there's a salad and there's a little bit of cheese on it, I can have a little bit of regular cheese. But if I do that serially, two or three days in a row, it starts at this pinky and starts migrating through both hands. And both my hands will be absolutely on fire after a couple of days of pressure testing that. But I am fortunate that I can dial that lever up and down based off of exposure, increasing sun, doing some things to help with gut health, and ironically, fiber isn't a huge boon for me on the gut health side. It actually makes my symptoms worse. So, I'm almost 100% in that carnivore scene. I do a little bit of asparagus, artichokes, avocados, some carrots, but I don't do a ton because it tends to make everything else worse.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:30] Yeah, I think that really speaks to the value and the beauty of bio-individuality for each one of us, determining what's the dial. I know for me and all of my autoimmune stuff is quiet right now, but I was hospitalized five years ago, had six weeks of antibiotics, antifungals, you better believe. I think I spent nine months being full carnivore and missed vegetables. And I have to be very careful. And to your point, I can only eat so much quantity wise of, I love Brussels sprouts, but if I eat too much, it's a disaster.
Robb Wolf: [00:42:01] Yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:42:02] And so, for me, it's like, I need just a little bit of fiber, but not too much. I don't do well with gluten, and I've been experimenting a little bit. I've had some whey protein here and there, and I can do that once or twice a week. I was saying to my husband that it's been so long since I've had dairy. It's been about six years that it's so creamy compared to coconut milk, which is what I've been eating.
Robb Wolf: [00:42:23] Right, yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:42:24] And I was just kind of like “Whoa. That's like, way I had to water it down the first time.” But I have found occasionally I could have a piece of shaved parmesan, but it's like a thin piece, and then I'm okay but most other dairy, I don't do well with. And to your point, also about nightshades. I can tell in summer. I love tomatoes. I love summer tomatoes. And I'll actually get plantar fasciitis pain when I've had too much. So, it just ramps up the inflammation.
[00:42:49] So, for everyone listening, if you have an autoimmune condition for each one of us, there's that N of 1 beauty of doing a little bit of trial and error to find what works. And what I found interesting when I was preparing was there are specific personality types that tend to have more autoimmune conditions. And I thought this was interesting because I'm sure some of these things describe both of us, perfectionistic, overachiever, at least at some point in our life chronic over giver some degree of childhood trauma. I can only speak to myself for that. But that desire for things to always be perfect. I'm definitely doing better now, but that personality type where you have this ramped up autonomic nervous system, that's making you a little bit more susceptible to autoimmunity.
[00:43:30] Now, you mentioned that when we’re done with the podcast, you’re going to go outside in the sun. And so, for me, I have mild dysautonomia, but for years and years and years, even in cardiology as an NP, I was the person that was always adding electrolytes to my water, and I always like to salt my food and my functional medicine doc said, “Oh, I think it’s amazing that intuitively your body was craving salt, which is exactly what you needed.” So, let’s talk a little bit about hydration and sweating. There were a lot of questions that came in. I live in a very humid part of the United States, and let's talk a little bit about sweat rates, because obviously you're probably going to sweat a little less in a non-humid heat than I will in mine. Let's talk about the role of thermoregulation in the body and the factors that can impact how much or how little we actually sweat. Because I'm always talking to my teenagers about needing to replace electrolytes. I think summer is the only time they really listen to me about this. But having said that, I'd love to have a conversation around this.
Robb Wolf: [00:44:26] Yeah, it's a huge topic, and I'm chagrined that even though I feel like I'm a decent strength coach, a decent biochemist, the electrolyte story was not on my radar at all throughout the bulk of my career. And I look back at both my health and performance and the folks that I was trying to serve, and I think about the struggles that emerged and sleep disturbances, cramping, poor recovery from exercise because of eating lower carb diets and everything. And I'm just like, “Damn it, you don’t like.” It's been ages since there was even a thought that sodium was deleterious to health. I was never in that camp. Early, early on, I looked at the literature implicating sodium around blood pressure and whatnot and it was clearly this issue that insulin resistance precludes any type of sodium sensitivity.
[00:45:25] And inevitably, if somebody is a sodium-sensitive hypertensive, if you reduce their glycemic load, then all of a sudden, they're not a sodium-sensitive hypertensive, but I don't want to portray myself that I understood this. This is where it's really good to keep looking and exploring. And so, I've eaten basically a ketogenic diet for 25 years. I've had a few diversions, just experimenting and whatnot. But that's where I feel best. And cognitive function is good, low-level cardio is good, but doing things like CrossFit or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and it was a grind. It really sucked because you just don't have that low gear. And what I didn't understand is in that low insulin environment of low carb or fasting, you have this process called the natriuresis of fasting. When insulin is low, we shed sodium like crazy, and then we shed potassium, and then we shed water, and it becomes this downward spiral. And dammit, I should have known that ages ago, [laughs] but I didn't.
[00:46:27] But I kept poking around because I would see people that were on a ketogenic diet. And funny enough, it was usually women. And they were killing it. They were killing Jiu-Jitsu, like winning world championships or competing at a high level in CrossFit. So, I kept looking and chatting with people. And I met this guy, Luis Villasenor who's the cofounder of Ketogains, and I was chatting with him. I'm like, “What do you think is up with what I'm doing?” And he just immediately said, “Your macros are fine.” You're probably super deficient and soggy.
[00:47:02] And me being a biochemist and big in my britches, I was like, “Oh, I salt my food, I'm good.” [Cynthia laughs] And so, it took a year of him patiently listening to me just struggle and continue to just fail. And he did something great. He said, “Hey, why don't we do this? Why don't you weigh and measure every single thing you put in your mouth and you put it in chronometer, and that will tell you exactly how much sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium that you're getting.” And I would love to see you getting 5 g of sodium per day. And let's see what you get. And I was getting fewer than 2 g of sodium per day because I eat this minimally processed whole food diet that just doesn't come with much sodium unless you're doing some kimchi or sauerkraut or pickles or something, there's just not much salt there.
[00:47:51] And so, I dramatically, the first time I increased my salt, it was just simply, I took some pickle juice and drank it and then went and worked out and it was the best workout I'd had in 15 years. [Cynthia laughs] I was like, “Oh, I'm such an idiot.” So, when we look at the brass tacks of how energy is produced, people will remember, the Krebs cycle or the TCA cycle and whatnot. The whole driver of that are sodium-potassium pumps. We have more sodium outside of cells, more potassium inside of cells, and it's a little bit like a dam or a water wheel. Like those things going back ends up being the drivers of how we harness energy to make ATP.
[00:48:36] But the most fundamental level of our biology, and this is true even of single celled organisms, are these sodium-potassium pumps. And if your sodium-potassium ratios get off, you'll die. The thing that is given for lethal injection is a big bolus of potassium because it causes a cramp, and that's it. And people get all wrapped around the axle of sodium and hypertension. And I do think that it's kind of a concern if you are insulin resistant and hypertensive, more sodium isn't really helping you. But also, low-sodium diets don't do anything to address the issue because it's upstream of that whole thing. But interestingly, we look at athletic populations and whatnot, that people can lose so much sodium in a quick period of time that the more dangerous thing is becoming hyponatremic and being sick, hospitalized or dying from it.
[00:49:33] When we, any individual that ends up in an emergency room, it is so safe to do that they do it to just about every single person, is put them on a 9% solution of saline, and a 9% solution is 9 g of sodium per liter. That is nearly nine times more dense than this. And there is not a thought about, like, oh, well, because there's cost benefit things to everything. But unless your kidneys are really in dire straits, if you have too much sodium, they will filter it out. But with adequate sodium, your kidneys will take care of the potassium and magnesium and sort all that stuff out. And so, electrolytes are this underappreciated currently. It hasn't always been this way. I’m aligned because I see sodium is actually kind of the apex in this thing.
[00:50:30] Potassium is super important. We should definitely get a lot of potassium from whole, minimally processed foods. But again, you can find yourself in situations where if you don't have adequate sodium, the body will start dumping potassium to maintain those ratios. It will mine sodium out of the bones and the connective tissue. And when it does that, it pulls calcium out too. And so, if you're on point with sodium just everything falls into place. It's a little bit magical. And circling back a little bit to your initial question, sweat rates vary massively from person to person. Women tend to have more dense sweat glands and they tend to be much more efficient at sweating.
[00:51:14] So, for every calorie of effort burned to produce sweat, because it actually does cost energy and then it costs us the water and the electrolytes and everything. But women tend to be more efficient in thermoregulation from a sweating perspective, there are what's called super sweaters, both male and female, where you just produce absolutely monumental amounts of fluid loss, heat, humidity, both increase demands. Cold can be a really interesting phenomenon because it decreases our desire to drink while cold air is dry and tends to increase our demands on fluids. So, there's lots of different angles on this stuff. But we've done work with NHL teams where they have tracked pretty big guys like the NHL player, 200, 220 pounds.
[00:52:06] These guys will lose 10 pounds of water and 10 g of sodium through the course of a hard game or a really frisky practice. And the dietary guidelines are to not exceed 2 g of sodium per day. And it's funny, if we were talking about calories, generally people have a problem overeating, but how do women in particular end up in the female athlete triad? Like undereating, overexercising? that's just this immediate thing that is not controversial, but yet it's controversial to suggest that if you lose 10 g of sodium during exercise, you could consume at least 10 g of sodium to replenish that. There is so much pushback around sodium, particularly within mainstream medical circles, that it’s a really controversial topic.
[00:52:59] But I think from a recovery perspective, sleep perspective, general athletic performance, electrolytes are so critically important. Here is just an interesting aside. Gatorade, when it was first released, used to be 1 g of sodium per serving. And over time it’s become far less sodium and far more sugar. And after LMNT came out, they actually have an earlier version of it. Now I think it’s like 500 mg but it’s certainly better.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:53:31] It’s so interesting. As I was preparing for our conversation, I actually read that women sweat more in their luteal phase of their cycle, which I thought was really interesting because that hadn’t occurred to me before. And for me, the way that my hydration/electrolyte balance shows up is my heart rate variability, especially if I’m traveling. So, I just got back from my last trip of the summer for business, and I said to my husband, it takes me about a day and a half to up my hydration enough to watch my HRV go up and my heart rate come down. And so those are always my tells, objectively. I always say the Oura Ring is both good and bad. Good because it provides that additional information. Bad because sometimes when I wake up in the morning and my HRV is in the toilet and my heart rates up, I'm like, I'm totally dehydrated. If I did a day of three podcasts, all the talking really dehydrates me. It's fascinating how that ends up being the case. And do you find that when we're looking, because I'm watching your drink, and I have to say that the new sparkling, like the grapefruit is my absolute favorite. In fact, we have-
Robb Wolf: [00:54:33] Mine, too, yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:54:35] -a friend over with his son over the weekend, his son's a baseball player. He drank three after a game. And his dad was asked, “Where did you get these?” And so, I was explaining, I was like, “I just bought four cases, so take as much as you need.”
[00:54:46] Is there any research to suggest that sparkling water versus still water is more hydrating? Because I feel like there's still a bit of misinformation out there that one is superior to the other. Have you found in your research that one is better than the other? If you're really wanting to hydrate.
Robb Wolf: [00:55:02] The benefit is that sparkling tends to be a little more palate stimulating. So, you will drink more of it. And we could give folks the link. What I just did with our team a really great article looking at this. It's funny. As an aside, if you want to get liquored up quicker, sparkling water delivers ethanol to your system faster than flat water. Like if you did a margarita in purely bubbly water versus flat water, the carbon dioxide does a nonpolar extraction of the ethanol and then delivers it to the gut lining. Doesn't really do anything one way or the other on electrolyte delivery, but what it does do, because the bubbly nature, people have a tendency to drink more of it because they just find it more. more enjoyable, yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:55:47] Yeah, that's interesting and lastly today, I'm sure that you have many of these things floating around your head, things that you've changed over the years. I know probably on our last podcast we might have touched on this. I find that one of the big themes that has changed for me over the last several years is less fasting, more eating because that protein piece is so important? Are there things for you that have started to shift and evolve as you found out of the power of the N of 1 or just in talking to colleagues or looking at the research. Listeners, if you're not following Robb on Twitter, you must. That's actually one of my favorite places to follow you to stay current with a lot of events and stay on top of the news. What are some of the things that you feel like you've shifted your perspective on fairly recently in the last few years?
Robb Wolf: [00:56:35] Definitely. I was early to recommending fasting and very, very early to being sad that I had recommended it because I saw really pretty negative outcomes. And I have a very technical, but I think pretty good talk. It's called longevity. Are we trying too hard? So, if folks want to check that out, I really dig into autophagy and fasting, and I feel like we have gone past peak stupid on that, but there's still some stuff out there. But, man, what have I changed more recently? I've known for so long that that photoperiod part is just critical. But I think each time I circle back out of winter and into summer, particularly living in this, pretty far northern environment, I'm just reinforced how massively important that is.
[00:57:28] And so a couple of years ago, I ended up getting a Sperti Vitamin D lamp, and I use that during the periods of time when I can't make vitamin D here. And it's a big help. And I use it way, way more than what the manufacturer recommendation is because, again, I'm like it's a piano wire over a rope [Cynthia laughs] or doing this stuff. So, I acknowledge that there is some skin cancer risk and stuff like that. But for me, I just feel so much better that that is a non-starter. Like, I definitely use that during off times. I do suffer from essential tremor pretty badly. At various points, it's bad enough where it's difficult to podcast. I've had some success there using some Phenibut, which is a blood-brain barrier form of GABA.
[00:58:17] It's really controversial because it can be habit forming. It's very similar to alcohol in some of the characteristics that it exhibits in the brain, and it is really similar to alcohol if you are taking really heroic doses of it, people will take large doses of it to get high. And you can have basically the same experience as an alcohol detox from it. So, I use it for that essential tremor syndrome. But with the understanding that you can’t abuse this stuff, it can be really problematic. I've been using some Selegiline also, which is an early Parkinson's type drug that I found oddly beneficial for the essential tremor because it is a little bit stimulating, but it modifies both GABA and dopamine arms within the brain. So, those are some things that I've tinkered with more recently that is for me has been really beneficial.
[00:59:13] And I haven't seen many folks talking about or digging into essential tremor. So, I would say that just like thinking about that condition and trying to address it has consumed more and more of my time in the last couple of years because it's gotten-- I used to really enjoy public speaking and podcasting and stuff like that. And sometimes it's bad enough that I just can't do a public speaking gig [unintelligible 00:59:41] recession is so pronounced that like, it's just so distracting for me and [unintelligible [00:59:44], [laughs] there's nothing fun going on there. So that has been something that I've been fiddling with this trying to figure out how to get on top of that essential tremor, which seems to be some neuroinflammation and some gut stuff and so that it's all the same thing. I'm just having to peel that onion another layer deeper.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:00:04] Well, it's so interesting. And I will definitely do a little bit of research myself because that's always something that I enjoy learning about. Obviously, I always love our conversations. We could talk for hours and hours and hours. Please let listeners know how they can connect with you outside of the podcast. How to listen to your own podcast, which I listened to multiple episodes the last couple of days. Its delightful and you generate a lot of really great commentary.
Robb Wolf: [01:00:28] Thank you. The name of our podcast is The Healthy Rebellion Radio. And my wife and I do that. It’s a Q&A program. So, if somebody has a question that’s not too medically oriented, I will do my best to either answer it, give some opinion, or find somebody who's a good resource for it. I'm on social media a little bit, but really, I don't do a ton there. It's @RobbWolf on Twitter or X. And then every once in a while, I will make the mistake of popping my head up on Instagram and posting something. [Cynthia laughs] And that is @dasrobbwolf over on Instagram. But I've found for my own mental health, social media is absolutely a poison. I feel obliged to post there occasionally.
[01:01:19] Something pops up that I feel like is important. There was just a ketogenic diet study that was shut down by the secretary of health in Maine for absolutely no good reason. And so, I hopped on there to try to get some awareness around that and try to get that reverse. But it's interesting because I built my career in large part in an online format, back when I had my forums and my website and the CrossFit forums and everything. And so, it seems so natural to be online and that when I've just found it to be absolute poison for my soul, so I pop on there occasionally, but not that often. Yeah.
[01:02:00] And Twitter is definitely, if somebody has a question or wants to engage, chat, talk, shop about something, X is a way better place to track me down.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:02:08] Well, thank you so much for all that you do. You definitely had me thinking, and I did see that study had been stopped, but I didn't have an opportunity to read more about it before this conversation. Otherwise, we definitely would have talked about it.
Robb Wolf: [01:02:19] Thank you. And it's always awesome to get to connect with you.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:02:24] Absolutely.
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