I am delighted to have Dr. Donald Vega joining me as my guest for today’s podcast episode.
Dr. Vega is a Costa Rican-based registered dietitian, strength and conditioning specialist, and lifestyle mentor with more than two decades of experience promoting metabolic health. His latest book, The Science of Losing Weight, has been a valuable resource for countless individuals seeking to improve their metabolic health.
Dr. Vega brings a wealth of expertise to today’s conversation. In our discussion, we explore the multifaceted role that lifestyle plays in fostering metabolic health, touching on topics like the influence of sunlight and blue light therapies, the importance of high-quality sleep, and why diets fail to work. We discuss the impact of mindset, oxytocin, and gratitude on our personal growth, also looking into the intriguing concept of cold hormesis and how autoimmune disorders and trauma can affect our overall health, in addition to many other informative and relevant topics.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
Why are people struggling more with weight loss resistance now than ever before?
How sleep deprivation impacts weight-loss resistance and overall health
How exposure to artificial light affects brain function and energy consumption
The benefits of morning exposure to blue light and sunlight
The role of Vitamin D in immune function
How stress and inflammation in the gut can prevent weight loss and muscle gain
How acts of kindness impact our emotional well-being
How hormetic stressors like cold exposure improve our metabolic health
Why cold exposure can bypass the need for exercise
How deep breathing changes our brainwaves, leading to creativity and problem-solving
Bio:
Dr. Donald Vega is a 48-year-old husband and father.
He is a registered dietitian, strength and conditioning specialist, and lifestyle mentor based in Costa Rica with more than 25 years of experience in metabolic health promotion. He is founder of Kilosophy, which he established with one purpose: To reverse metabolic disease through a free, fit, happy, and healthy society. He is also the Author of The Science of Losing Weight. He leads a team of 8 registered dietitians in 4 different locations in Costa Rica, where they provide education and follow-up for their patients so they can achieve mastery of the 10K Methodology (10 Biological Keys of Health Methodology: sunlight, sleep, electromagnetism, thoughts, hydration, breathing, nutrition, exercise, thermotherapy and stress management).
Specializing in low carb, carnivore, and keto lifestyles, he has been in nutritional ketosis since 2011 and helped over 20000 in-person patients to improve their lives and lose over 440000 pounds of extra fat through the interventions in his clinics. He has been a speaker at TEDx and health conferences in Malaysia, México, Panamá, Argentina, Perú, and the USA. He was in charge of the nutritional and lifestyle counseling in the second and third seasons of Reversed Reality Show, directed by Charles Mattocks. He is also passionate about public speaking, coffee, wine, reading, stand-up paddle surfing, and resistance training.
“When people are exposed to a tablet, and they read for an hour before they go to bed,
they diminish by fifty percent the amount of melatonin that is released and
will induce the sleep phase.”
-Dr. Donald Vega
Connect with Cynthia Thurlow
Follow on Twitter
Check out Cynthia’s website
Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Dr. Donald Vega
On his website
Spanish-speaking listeners can find Dr. Vega on social media @kilosophy
The Science of Losing Weight is available on Amazon
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 connecting with Dr. Donald Vega. He's a registered dietitian, strength and conditioning specialist, and a lifestyle mentor based in Costa Rica with over 25 years of experience in metabolic health promotion. His most recent book, The Science of Losing Weight, is one that is an incredible resource for many, many of our listeners.
[00:00:51] Today, we dove deep into the role of lifestyle in metabolic health, including sunlight as well as blue light therapies, the importance of high-quality sleep, why diets don't work, the impact of mindset as well as oxytocin and gratitude and growth work, cold hormesis, the impact of autoimmune disorders as well as trauma, amongst a myriad of other very interesting and relevant topics. I hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it.
[00:01:29] Welcome Dr. Vega, so good to have you on the podcast. I know we've been-- it's taken a bit of time to get this worked into both of our calendars, but I loved reading your book and I'm so grateful to be able to share you with my community.
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:01:10] Oh, thank you. Thank you for the invitation and I'm really glad to be here. And I think the things that take a little longer, they're worth. So, I hope I'll make this valuable for all your audience.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:52] Absolutely. So, when I was reflecting on your book and the work that you've done, let's really start from the place of why, as a culture, are we struggling with more weight loss resistance now than we probably ever had? I can quote statistics here in the United States about weight loss resistance and obesity and being overweight. And I know that many of those statistics can be extrapolated to most westernized countries. But in your clinical experience, what are some of the main drivers of weight loss resistance and the struggles that most of your patients experience in trying to lose weight and become healthier?
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:02:32] Well, I think this is a great topic, and sadly, it's not just one aspect, since we are multicultural beings and we're exposed to a lot of information. Also, we need to take in count our heredity to begin with. Definitely, it is not something to be worried about, because what we already know is that environment is the main aspect when it comes to gene expression. So, what is this environment we go down to? What is environment? Environment is everything from mental, emotional, physical and spiritual exposure that we get on a daily basis. So, let's start with something that probably most people won't think it's big of an issue. But I will give some statistics and tell you why this is so important. I know probably we will think about exercise, we will think about nutrition. But let's start with sleep.
[00:03:37] Statistically, 50 years ago, at least in the US, people used to sleep 7.9 hours every night. It has come down to 6.2 hours every night. So, let's imagine that I would ask God or the main presence in the universe, “Could you please diminish the amount of oxygen by 20% and see what happens to our species?” Well, that's basically what's been going on with our sleep. So, if we want to put this in perspective, in terms of weight loss, when people sleep less than 6 hours, they wake up with a higher blood glucose than they would normally do, which means that they will be secreting more insulin, which is the “fattening hormone,” when we have excess glucose and excess insulin. So that's the first aspect.
[00:04:31] Also in the behavioral aspect what we know is that when people sleep less than 6 hours, what they experience is more. If there are placed in front of buffet, for example, and this experiment has been done and they have access to, I don't know, some fruits and vegetables, and protein. And on the other side, they have all these baked goods and cookies and pasta. When people sleep less than 6 hours, they will naturally go towards the higher carbohydrate foods, which means that they are immediately placing themselves in higher glycemic load, which also means higher insulin secretion. And we can discuss this later how that impacts overweight, or the ability to lose weight, or the impossibility to lose weight.
[00:05:19] The other aspect that has been shown is that when people sleep less than 6 hours, and they are, you know, pictures and real foods are placed in front of them, the ones that are “healthy,” let's say good fats, proteins and fruits, vegetables, whatever your philosophy of eating is. But at the same time, they have exposure to these areas where they have fattening foods like regular cookies and soft drinks and everything. When they see these pictures or the real foods, the part of the brain that is associated to hedonic responses, meaning you want to gain pleasure immediately, they light up immediately, but they don't light when they are exposed to the, “healthy foods,” which means that you are immediately directed towards the kind of foods you don't want to eat. But maybe we can go later into why that happens.
[00:06:21] Also, it has been shown that when you sleep less than 6 hours, the pancreas, which senses the amount of carbohydrates that you are ingesting in preparation to releasing the insulin hormone, becomes less sensitive. So let's say, just as an example, this is the amount of glucose that you have in your blood. This is the upper limit; this is the lower limit. Every time your system, whenever you eat something, senses that the amount of glucose or carbohydrates that you are eating are going to go over the higher limit then on preparation to that, your pancreas will start releasing some insulin to get this excess glucose and put it away on what we call the banks. One is the liver and the other one is the muscle tissue.
[00:07:10] What happens is, in both ends, the carbohydrate sensing apparatus that we have, it doesn't read the signal that there is this high amount of glucose entering the blood. So, the amount of insulin that is produced in the pancreas is diminished on one side and on the other side, the receptors for insulin that our bodies sense and open their doors to receive the excess glucose that are circulating in the blood, they are diminished in sensitivity as well. So, we produce less insulin. And the low amount of insulin that we have circulating is not as effective, acting on the receptors to allow that excess glucose to go inside. So, we have temporary excess glucose in the blood, and that will sense the rest of the system, and also, we will not be able to handle that amount. And we will end up putting more of that into stores as the kind of energy that we store, which is fat.
[00:08:09] Also, it has been shown that when we sleep less than 6 hours, and again, the average is 6.2 every night, which means that it is not optimal. But many people might be under that 6-hour amount. The hormone ghrelin, which prepares your system to be hungry because it senses we need energy, is augmented in 24% when you sleep less than 6 hours. And at the same time leptin, which is the hormone that tells your system, we have had enough food, we don't need to have more energy, please stop eating. Its effect goes down 17%. And at the end, people end up eating about 22% more energy than they would be doing otherwise if they slept like the 7.5 to 8 hours that we need. Okay, so we have behavioral things, we have physiologic things that are preparing our system to be more anxious to these kinds of food.
[00:09:16] So, evolutionarily speaking, it happens more in the US than here in Costa Rica, where I live, because we have tropical weather in the US, and northern and southern parts of the planet, you have the four seasons, basically. We here have only the rainy season and the dry season. In the US for example, when you go into summer, you have more hours of light. So, when you have more hours of light to our system, it is telling you that you are in the part of the year that the nature is preparing their natural resources for you to have, which means high amount of carbohydrates at the end of summer and beginning of the fall season. So, it is natural that when you have longer hours during the day, which naturally occur during summertime, but we can artificially cause that by having lights turned on during the night, your body is sensing that it is time to get all the amount of energy that it can get anywhere. So, you prepare your system to eat more and accumulate fat, because all these systems that are going on molecularly in our cells.
[00:10:34] So it is not a bad thing if it would happen on a cycle as we naturally have it in nature. But since we have now, instead of having 8 hours of sleep, now we have 6.2, which means we have more hours of light or exposure to artificial lights, then our systems are always in summertime, where they require a lot of energy. So, it's not that much having access to. Of course it is, but having access to processed foods, it's not so much lacking exercise, which of course, is another variable. But the main driver of our biology, which is sleep and light cycles, are completely moved from their natural cycles. So, just to give you an example, the amount of brain tissue that is exposed to light as opposed to the feeding stimulus, is 44% of our brain is exposed or has some effect according to the amount of light that our eyes are receiving.
[00:11:42] But in terms of the amount of gray matter, the brain matter that is sensing the amount of energy that we're exposed to is only 4%, which means we have 10 more times the amount of tissue in our brains to be sensing these light signals. And when we disturb these light signals, then our systems move into a whole different biology, which is preparing the system to acquire more energy, which means now that we have immediate access to the movies, which is not the movies, but it's Netflix, it's HBO Max, it's all these platforms that we have in our houses. And people like to do these series marathons where they, I don't know, they binge on a 12-chapter series where normally if we’re a long time ago going to the movies, it would take us maybe a year to see all those 12 chapters. People take them in one single night and they go to bed at 8, but they binge on this, and then they go to sleep at 04:00 AM because they binged on movie or chapters or series. And then we are facing a huge discrepancy with our natural cycle. And that's just part of the problem.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:05] Yeah. No, it's interesting because I typically will say, “If I can't get you to sleep through the night, I can't get you to lose weight.” And I think you did a really beautiful job identifying some of the things that happen when we're getting inadequate amounts of sleep and what contributes to them. And I would completely concur that I find for most, if not all of my patients that if they have one night of poor sleep, that's one thing. But if they're consistently getting less than 7 hours a night of sleep, and I know there's a genetic anomaly that allows a very small percentage of the population to be able to get away with 6.25 hours a night of sleep, but that's not most of us,-
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:13:44] Yeah.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:43] -that's probably a very, very small percentage. Understanding that over time, that can slowly erode our health. And so, when patients come to me and tell me that over the course of a week, they're getting 5 or 6 hours a night of sleep, and they're wondering why the scale is stuck, why they're inflamed, why they're becoming increasingly insulin resistant. And we start to unpack not just the sleep piece, but also, “What are you doing throughout the day?” Are you getting light exposure when you first wake up, which helps kind of reset that circadian rhythm, are you unknowingly sitting in front of the TV until 11 o’clock at night, not realizing that you're suppressing your natural melatonin production? And were you eating really close to bed? Which can also is-- I know that you talk about in interviews, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, understanding that we have these circadian clocks in our digestive system and how these things can all negatively impact sleep quality and then consequently can contribute to weight loss resistance.
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:14:41] That's right. And of course, this is the two phases of the same coin. One is light exposure, and the other one is excessive artificial light exposure, which means not enough sleep. And just to join with what you were saying about sunlight, the amount of blue light that naturally is present during the day is highest during the first hours of the day. Let's say here in Costa Rica, we have the sunrise at 05:30 AM. From 05:30 AM to 07:30 AM is probably the best time to be outside in terms not of vitamin D production, which I will go into a little later, which is also very important, but into the blue light exposure of the sun and the amount of light that we get from the sun in these sensors, they're called melanopsin, we receive this blue light and then we start the production of melatonin, which is going to be used during the night.
[00:15:43] But here is also one thing. It has been shown that when people are exposed to a tablet and they read an hour before they go to bed, they diminish by 50% the amount of melatonin that is released and will induce the sleep phase. So, if you're doing this light exposure during the morning in a perfect way, but at the same time you say,” I’m going to go to bed at 09:00 PM.” Which is, I would say, the right choice to do. But before that, 09:00 AM 1 hour prior to that, you read on an iPad, then this exposure will delay the amount of the concentration of melatonin. So, all the processes that will take your system to go down and prepare for sleep are going to be delayed as well. So, these two phases are of the same coin. We have that in everything, you know, polarities. But sun exposure is another big one because of this you also create dopamine and serotonin by this sun exposure in the morning.
[00:16:54] But also something that has been going on consistently with our societies are less light exposure due to different things. We now live, work, and commute under a roof, so we don't have that light exposure. And it is not that during the first hours of the day the sunlight is better than later. They perform different functions. In terms of vitamin D production, which is a huge hormone or prior to hormone molecule that is very, very powerful in the system. Vitamin D production, you get the most of it when you get the exposure to the B ultraviolet rays, which are more present, or the highest intensity is between 10:00 AM and 02:00 PM to 03:00 PM. Where normally people would say, “I won't go out and have some sunshine because they're scared of skin cancer.” But we need that vitamin D to be present because it is one of the highest anti-inflammatories, it promotes muscle growth we were talking about-- You were doing a podcast where muscle building has some ingredients, one's exercise, the other one is the amount of protein and enough sleep.
[00:18:11] Well, we have found that having enough vitamin D levels is very important for muscle hypertrophy. And at the same time, this vitamin D knowing that now statistics are showing that many, many people are suffering from autoimmune diseases, which, for autoimmune disease, you need three different ingredients. The first one is you have to have a genetic predisposition. That's the first one. The second one is you have to have an environmental aspect that will create the third one, which is intestinal permeability. Those are the three things you need for an autoimmune disease. So, the first one is genetics. We can do anything about how our genes are programmed, but we can do a lot to influence our genes positively or negatively.
[00:19:05] And some of the environmental triggers that create this intestinal permeability are alcohol, sugar, stress, nonsteroid anti-inflammatory drugs, exposure to electromagnetic waves, very close to your digestive system, also a microbiota disturbance, which is mostly created by an excess sugar, and also having this kind of oxidized vegetable oils. These are some of the aspects that need to happen in order to have this intestinal permeability. So what does vitamin D do? Of course, you remove all these aspects. It helps to bring the cells on their digestive system back together. Because what happens is these cells that are supposed to be the barrier, they are selectively opening and closing to allow some things, even our immune system, to throw or put away a hand to check on the environment and see if this is something that I need to be aware of. This is a bacteria, this is a virus or no, this is only food. I need to do anything about it so it goes back.
[00:20:25] So they open and close selectively. But when you have intestinal permeability, what happens is they stay open. So, some of the molecules from proteins, which are amino acids, that are supposed to be completely separated in order to be absorbed, they stay together. Let's say 5 or 10 or 15 or 33, for example, in the case of alpha gliadin, which is the one that most people react against in terms of celiac disease, for example, these 33 amino acids together, they didn't become separated. So, when you have a leaky gut, they come inside and your immune system senses them, attacks them, remembers the sequence, and starts to go around your system. And wherever it finds that same molecule, even though to the right is different and to the left it's different, but that same molecule, it starts to attack it. So that's what happens for example when somebody Hashimoto’s or Graves’ disease or inflammation in their joints. So, the system is attacking your own system.
[00:21:38] So we have to do two different moves to stop some of this environmental attack on our system, which is you remove all these things I told you about at the beginning, the alcohol, the stress, the excess sugars and everything. And at the same time, we need to take care of how do we do with these cells and bring them back together. So, glutamine is an amino acid that you can use will help to rebuild this. Another one is having bone broth. for example, which has some of the ingredients that you need to rebuild this. And vitamin D is another one very important to put this together and create a functional barrier again. Having sun exposure is not just feeling well, because you also release some feeling happy hormones, but it has a lot to do with the behavior we have. And also, if you have low-level inflammation, which means, I'll make the connection here, if you have autoimmune, you have low-level inflammation. When you have low level inflammation, you are endogenously, meaning internally producing the molecule that will diminish the amount of inflammation, which is cortisol.
[00:22:55] So, you have excess cortisol production, which is the anti-inflammatory that is doing the job that vitamin D should be doing as well. And when you have excess cortisol, you are continuously releasing carbohydrates, meaning glucose, from the liver into the circulation, because that's the stress response. And when you have that, you also have elevated levels of insulin, and then you are promoting fat production and also accumulation in your system. So, if you're doing everything perfectly, either you're doing carnivore, low carb, keto, whatever you're doing. You know, most people, when they go into a single intervention, which is diet, we can talk about the word diet, which I hate, by the way. When they go into a single intervention and they forget that the stress level could be preventing you from losing fat and gaining muscle, and they are given a menu, they are not explained anything about changing their lifestyle, and they get stuck. They are not getting the results. They blame the diet or the dietitian or the nutritionist because they didn't do a good job, because they are the recipients of external forces and we need to have people involved in their own process of healing, because there are many, many things that they need to start changing as a lifestyle intervention, so they're not getting the results. It is not to do to whatever they are eating, but in this case, because of the stress or the inflammation that they have in their gut or the lack of sunshine exposure.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:24:39] I think that really brings up so many good points. I think many people probably are not making the connection that vitamin D has many, many impacts in the body, not just related to your vitamin D levels being a certain amount, and it improves insulin sensitivity and immune function. And as it pertains to autoimmune conditions, what I have found really interesting, that I've learned over the past year, is that autoimmune conditions are more common in women. And so you're right, there is a genetic propensity. And what's interesting is if people have experienced adverse childhood events. So, there's scoring here in the United States where people can take these tests and the higher your score of this ACE score, the more likely you are not only to develop autoimmune conditions, but actually to become weight loss resistant at some point from that chronic overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system.
[00:25:28] And so, when I start thinking about how many patients, I have seen that have multiple autoimmune conditions myself included, I had a lot of trauma as a child. All of my autoimmune conditions are quiet. But it really makes a great deal of sense that even if we intrinsically don't think we're stressed, if our body perceives we are stressed, it can lead to all these other health issues that I think many in traditional allopathic medicine are not helping make those connections for their patients.
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:25:58] Oh, absolutely. I am a student of the mind. Probably 60% of the books that I have here, this is only a third of the books that I have, because most books I have are in audio format and on Kindle format. Because since, I live in Costa Rica, if I want a book, I have to wait, like three weeks for it to get here. [Cynthia chuckles] If I don't get it in the library where they have in Spanish. I wouldn't say most books are not in Spanish, but many books are not in Spanish, so I have to bring them from the US. There's this guy, Gabor Mate, who is a family physician. I believe, he is from Hungary, and then he moved to Canada, and he started his practice there. He is a huge proponent, and he has a book it's called, When the Body Says No. And he explains beautifully how our system is when it is exposed to trauma during the early years of existence. It can have an effect later in life, and you can change that.
[00:27:06] According to some psychologists that I have been studying, they say it's not possible, but I have seen otherwise. So, I'd like to believe that it can be done, even though it requires a lot of awareness first. And then, it is a massive desire for change. And there are many interventions. You can go to a psychologist, you can practice neurolinguistic programming, you can do many things. But what he proposes is that, yeah, in effect, what he did was he measured in different patients that, where they had some-- they were abandoned during childhood. And this specific set of patients that were abandoned during childhood by their parents, they end up suffering from this specific disease. Or saying it the other way. If somebody has multiple sclerosis and he follows their life history, he gets to the same kind of negative exposure that they had when they were child.
[00:28:08] And I also have a book here. It's called Molecules Of Emotion. It is by Candace Pert, where she explains how everything environmental, which is mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, has an effect on the molecules that we are producing in our brain. So basically, her thesis is that whenever we have a feeling, that feeling doesn't only happen locally at the brain level. We produce a molecule which corresponds to happiness or jealously or every feeling that we have corresponds with a molecule. And this molecule, which is produced in the brain, many are produced in our gut as well, starts to circulate around the whole body. And every cell we have has a receptor for that molecule, which means that we don't experience that frustration, happiness, or just in our brain level, it expands to the rest of your system. That molecule tells the rest of the cells in the body the state that they have to acquire from that moment on.
[00:29:15] So if we are depressed, I'm not depressed just here. Every cell of my body is receiving that signal. And when that signal is created, the DNA in every cell, which is the one that produces our proteins, and these proteins create the specific function of every cell. If you have a depression molecule, because you're carrying over those experiences you have not been able to handle yet, and you're consistently producing this depression molecule, then your cell's functions are depressed because that's the signal that is being sent. And on the other token, for example, which I love, by the way, to do every time I'm having breakfast with my son, before he goes to school in the morning and before he goes to bed, I put him this blue blocking glasses. So, he looks at my phone screen. And we play these videos on YouTube, they're called Faith In Humanity Restored. It's acts of kindness from somebody to somebody else that were filmed. And whenever you experience that, it has been shown that you lower your sympathetic tone.
[00:30:38] For people that don't know what sympathetic tone is, well, it's an automatic nervous system, which carries all our functions that we don't have to think about. For example, which I did earlier, I placed myself on 20 minutes of 41-degree Fahrenheit cold exposure. And I don't have to think even though I can. And I briefly explain how I need to elevate my temperature, my nervous system will do that without me telling it to do it, which is automatic. And we have two different branches. The sympathetic is the one that activates when we are really stressed. And the parasympathetic is the one that will activate when we are not under stress. So, it is like a seesaw function, where one pulls and the other one pulls, and then you are either stressed or relaxed and on a resting pace. So not just me and you, but everybody are suffering from excess stress.
[00:31:36] You were saying the amount of patients that I see, maybe I want to go a little low on the number that I see every day because I want to have some quality of life. Okay, the sympathetic tone of the autonomic nervous system is high in most people. So, it has been shown that whenever you witness an act of kindness, either you remember it because you were the recipient of the act, or you were the one who performed the act for somebody else. You witnessed the act between two other people where somebody was doing something good for someone else, but at the same time, you see it on video, the sympathetic nervous system starts to go down, and the parasympathetic, which is the one that puts us in a relaxed state, starts to go up and leaves you really relaxed and produces oxytocin, which is the hormone that connects us all.
[00:32:33] And the really interesting thing is that this effect is not just locally. For example, every morning when my son goes to school, when we are having breakfast, we see this. And it is not a local effect on his oxytocin production, but he is more prone to do something good for somebody else because he has witnessed and has faith in humanity restored for example. And I saw it the other day, there's this guy who lives maybe a mile from my house, and he suffered from cerebral palsy, and he is like 25 years old, and he walks, but he has some bunions on his feet and which are very painful. And I saw one of those videos in the morning, and then the reticular activating system, which is a system in your brain that will turn on and show you evidence of whatever you were focused on. I was driving my motorcycles. I have a motorcycle. And I passed him, and he was walking with some dogs because he's a dog walker. And like maybe a quarter mile after that, my brain told me, “Hey, you could do something for this guy.”
[00:33:50] And he doesn't have the economic resources to do it. And also, I don't want this to sound that I want to tell everybody that I am doing this. I'm just saying this as an example of how you can feel good because somebody else doing something for somebody else. And then I got back into my motorcycle, I turned it off, and I asked him, “Would you benefit from having an electrical scooter?” And he said, “Yeah.” And he told me about his bunions and he's not able to have them operated because he's not part of the social security system. I immediately went into Amazon and found one that he could ride because he doesn't know how to ride a bike, which means he doesn't know how to keep himself in balance. And then I asked him if he would like to have one that has a small seat where he can sit. He can have both feet out so he can learn how to have balance. And I say, I want to give this to you. And I told my son, and I told him, “Do you remember this guy that I told you has cerebral palsy? And we have seen some of the recipients of good acts of kindness on the videos that people do something for them. Whenever they are in a stadium and the star player comes and hugs them and they get crazy.”
[00:35:02] And my son started to experience that same feeling in preparation to what's going to happen the first week of November, which is when that scooter is going to come to our house. So it's incredible how you can impact your emotional system by knowing all these strategies, but at the same time, how your life can be impacted without you knowing it because of things that happened when you were a child that, thank God, there are many ways that you can handle them because many therapists and professionals can get to that point and bring you to the awareness, “Oh, this happened to me and start forgiving many things that can be done.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:35:49] Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Gabor Mate's work for me personally has been transformative. I had the honor of being able to interview him last year for the podcast-
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:35:58] Awesome.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:35:59] -and what an incredible experience. I think if anyone is dealing with trauma or unresolved trauma, his resources and work is transformative, truly. And I love that you are teaching your son at such a young age, these random acts of kindness. It can be very small things, could be more substantive things. And the role of oxytocin, which we know can help quiet the autonomic nervous system, can help lower cortisol. Oxytocin is that hormone that doesn't last all that long initially. So, if you hug a loved one, if you hug your pet, your child, your significant other, your spouse, you do something that brings you joy, having orgasms, all of these things can lower cortisol, can lower stress. And understanding that, because oxytocin, it's almost like a little bit of a hit, you get a little bit of it, but you have to do things throughout the day. But doing things that bring you joy, being gracious and doing such a nice thing for that, such a deserving stranger, I think is wonderful.
[00:37:01] Now, when we're thinking about the things that contribute to metabolic health that can contribute to weight loss resistance, you kind of alluded to these hormetic stressors. You talked about cold exposure. We could certainly talk about heat exposure. How do you walk your patients through these types of things? Because I think for some people listening, they might be able to wrap their heads around the concept of a cold shower before they're ready to do cryotherapy or even get into a cold plunge. I always say there's varying degrees of hormetic stress. Some are more stressed to the body than others, depends on the individual. I personally hate being cold, so I don't need a lot of hormetic stress [Dr. Donald laughs] about being cold to get a lot of benefit. But let's talk about the role of cold shock proteins, heat shock proteins, and how this can improve our metabolic health.
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:37:47] Okay, that's awesome. From the point of view of weight loss, that's what I started to introduce this concept. So, to begin with, the way we work with our patients is I don't see patients anymore. I don't see patients since 2019. I used to be a personal trainer, and I founded Kilosophy with the idea of-- Here's the thing, I am a right brain individual, which means I can see something. I get the concept. I don't need much instruction. I just need to know how it works. If it is intuitive to me, “Great, let's go.” I'll keep doing it. And [chuckles] early in my career, I thought everybody was like me. So, what I would do convinced that having somebody do a diet was not going to work. And now statistically, around 97% of people attempting to lose weight by a diet failed. So, I knew the answer was not there. So, I started to study a lot of different aspects that could be put together in synergy. I used to do these personal training sessions, and around 2002, I changed my methodology, I doubled my prices, and told my clients at that time, I'm going to change the model. If you want to work with me, which I'm glad if you could continue to work with me, I'm going to go to your house, you're going to give me 2 hours of your week every week.
[00:39:14] So I bought a computer, I bought a video beam, I bought a screen that I would bring to people's houses. And I was like teaching them all these lifestyle interventions. And at that point, that was it. So, I started seeing patients not by personal training and combining it with them with all these things, but people asking me for help, and I wouldn't train them if they didn't have the resources to do that, but I would take them to my office and would teach them 6 hours of information on a single session. And then I would say, “There you go, you're ready to face the world.” And what I found was that half of people did great, and the other half they couldn't, because they didn't have a structure and somebody to keep telling them, this is how-- and we're going to change this by a little bit like a left-brain person.
[00:40:07] So, when I started to introduce all these things, what we created in Kilosophy was we're going to combine the best of two worlds. Education, which is my passion, and at the same time follow up by a nutritionist who's going to be-- in Costa Rica the nutritionist is the equivalent of our registered dietitian. We don't have that term here registered dietitian is the same as a nutritionist. We don't have nutritionists or RDs. There's only nutritionists. We have to go to hospital rounds and everything. And I would hire them so they could follow up the patients every 15 days and check on their progress on each of these 10 biological keys of health that they were taught in at the beginning. Before the pandemics, I used to have a 40 people classroom, where I would teach 12 hours of classes, three groups that would go through the complete system every week.
[00:41:05] After the pandemic, we couldn't do that. Thank God we had recorded all the information. So, we moved them to the digital format where before they see us with the nutritionist, they have to go through the four and a half hours of education. And once we confirm that they have gone through the whole material date, they then start their intervention from the nutritionist. So, we have education and follow up. So, they are taught all this on the digital classes, but the nutritionist checks on them. So the cold exposure, why we use that? First, it has been shown that we have something that we can't do nothing about, which is a temperature sensing system. And every time your body feels there's cold outside, it thinks this is wintertime. And during the winter time, what our systems do is that all the energy that you have accumulated during the feasting season will serve two functions.
[00:42:08] The first one is it's going to help your metabolism to survive, because you're not going to be able to get any energy from outside because everything is under snow. It's cold outside, so you don't have access to that energy. And the second one is, it's going to help you to turn part of that energy, the accumulated fat into heat that you will start producing to elevate your temperature and keep your body in a balance, okay. So, we have two kinds of fat. Let's talk about the white fat and the brown fat. The white fat is the one that we have accumulated in our systems and whenever we say, “I'm fat,” that's the fat we're referring to, the white fat, subcutaneous fat, and some of the liver fat. And the ones that are your visceral fat is this kind of fat. And then we have the brown fat, which is a higher concentration of mitochondria that we have in that kind of fat, which to the microscope, it makes it look a little brown compared to the white fat, which doesn't have that big amount of mitochondria.
[00:43:20] When you are under cold exposure-- I was doing this morning, your body senses-- okay, we're in winter time. It turns the white fat, the one you say I'm fat and I look fat, it turns it into brown fat. And the brown fat is the one that has the capability to immediately turn into heat without exercise. And this is the funny and interesting part. Many people ascribe to the calorie theory, which in my opinion, has done more harm than benefit. And I would say it's a disgrace that we are still talking about calories and not the quality of food that we are eating. And if you have a 2000 kcal metabolism and you have 2000 kcal of energy, then you are stable. If you have more 2200, then you're going to gain weight. If you have 1800, you're going to lose weight. So, what happens in terms of this cold exposure is, and part of this calorie thing is you need to exercise. So instead of surviving in 2000 calories, then you spend 500 calories with exercise. And today your base metabolism is 2500 instead of 2000 because you exercise the 500 calories.
[00:44:39] So, the uptick is for your system to lose energy, you need to exercise, okay? That's where this theory of exercise more and eat less, you're going to have results comes from. But what happens when you expose your body to cold is that on the energy production system, where you take fat, proteins or carbohydrates and you turn them into ATP, which is our biologic energy coin. There's a step that is broken down on this energy production. And instead of turning fat into ATP, which is potential energy that you have stored for whenever you want to do, exercise, for example. Destruction of this pathway, instead of accumulating ATP that you will be able to get rid of only if you exercise, it will immediately turn spontaneously into heat, which means that you don't need to exercise to lose that excess energy. And you're inducing that loss of energy because you're cold exposing yourself and your system completely--
[00:45:50] People say that you cannot lose fat locally. For example, if I want to lose fat on my biceps, I need to do something outside of my biceps. We know that you don't lose fat from here if you do bicep curls. But when you expose your bicep to cold energy, this fat from this area is turned into brown fat, and it goes to the function of creating heat to keep you in balance. So those 20 minutes that I had on 41 Fahrenheit degrees, I can tell you the first three minutes are like hell, [Cynthia laughs] one time and then you get used to it. And most people do three minutes, but I like to do longer cold exposures because it serves me three functions, I would say. I always do cold therapy before I do a workout or 5 hours I do a weightlifting workout. Because I don't want the blunt, the inflammation phase that comes after exercise with an immediate cold exposure. So, I lift 5 hours after I do a weightlifting workout, I do it before. And that's for, in terms of recovery. After that, I get recovery, my muscles are less sore, and I kind of potentiate all these muscle building phase, but at the same time, I use it for fat loss.
[00:47:17] So I stay lean the whole time. I am not a bodybuilder, but I like to train hard. And in bodybuilding, you have these bulking phases where people get fat and big and massive, and then they have these leaning faces. Once they are big, they start to cut on energy and they lose their fat. I don't have to do that, because I do those two things at the same time. I work out every day, but at the same time, I have cold exposure. So, I have my system burning excess energy all the time. And the interesting thing is that when people start facing that and I point there, because I have it outside on my garden that way, is that you suddenly start to feel more heat during the day, which is a confirmation that your system is turning metabolic pathways to keep this fat energy being burned without exercise. And that's a confirmation that we have that people are finally achieving that. Being hot all the time, which is not like being hot in a bad way, you just feel more hot during the day.
[00:48:29] And to the point that you were saying here we have a function of two different variables. One is time and the other one is temperature. So, the lower the temperature goes, the less time you need to expose yourself. The higher the temperature, the longer you need to expose yourself. So cryotherapy, for example, the one that is with nitrogen, it only takes three minutes. I have done that. It goes to -180 Celsius, which I can't do the conversion in Fahrenheit. And you do that for three minutes, which is gas coming to your system and cooling you down very quickly. When you do cold exposure-- I had my machine, it wasn't working that well. So instead of being at 41, it was at 52, so I could do 45 minutes. So, I use the temperature also as a variable to see how effective I want that exposure to be.
[00:49:28] But with three minutes, you get this release of dopamine. And also very important, as you were saying, “I don't like to expose myself to cold temperature.” But here's the thing. It can be either a stress in a bad way, or it could be a stress in a good way. And, what's the difference? If I was to get you from your shoulders and force you into the cold water, the response would be completely different. It would activate the sympathetic system and would keep it activated, and you would receive that stimulus as something bad. Then when you do it because you want to do it, even though it's not comfortable, but you want to do it, you are the one who is forcing yourself to do it, then the response is completely the opposite. You have cortisol at the beginning, you have a lot of dopamine. And then this dopamine release will help in every other way, the cascade of hormones that keep your mood elevated. You feel motivated, you feel like, strong and healthy. And it is incredible.
[00:50:38] So what I do, because I promote also grounding, which is the exposure to the free electrons that we have in the ground whenever you're walking barefoot. What I do is I take a cable, I have it outside in my garden. So, I take a copper cable from the earth that I put inside the tub. I have it on a place on my garden where I have sun exposure. So, at the same time that I am doing the cold plunge, I am having sunshine, and at the same time, I'm doing the earthing or the grounding, and I'm reading because I have a wooden table over the inflatable bathtub where I put up my iPod or I put some audiobook that I'm studying or something. So, I am at the same time learning, and I enjoy learning. And as I was saying there's a difference when you're force to learn than when you like to learn. And you expose yourself to those same 30 minutes of material. If you're forced, you perceive that as a stress. If you like and love that, then it's the complete opposite.
[00:51:43] And at the same time, if I don't do that, what I do is I focus on breathing. When I start, I am like 8 to 10 breaths per minute. And I start to lower in four different phases, the amount of time before I breathe in, the amount of time when I am breathing, in, the amount of time when I hold my breath, and the amount of time when I'm breathing out. So, I start to lower the frequency and deepen the amount of air that I'm taking into my lungs to the point where I can have between one and two breaths for every minute. So, what has been shown when you do that, independent of sunshine, the cold plunge, the grounding. When you lower your breathing frequency, you change the brainwaves from beta brains. The beta waves are the brainwaves that are active when you are under stress or when you are on a task. You know, that forces you to be completely focused on something.
[00:52:51] The alpha waves are the ones that suppress the cortisol and the stress response are the ones that will create creativity. When alpha waves appear, immediately your brain changes and you start integration of your whole system. So, by diminishing the amount of breaths per minute and deepening the amount of air that I'm putting, what I'm forcefully doing is changing my brainwaves from beta to alpha. And that's where I really like to enjoy when I am not listening to an audio or video, then you become creative. And I like to solve problems because we face a lot of issues with our patients, and I need to be constantly creating new solutions. So, their experience is better, not in terms of our service, but in terms of what they experience and the amount of results that they can get. For example, a huge problem that we face with our patients here is their social circles start attacking them when they make a change.
[00:54:04] And that's, I would say, because I asked the nine nutritionists that work in our system, which are the five things that will keep people from achieving their goals or leaving the program, which are the five most important? The first one is their social network is not helping them, it's attacking them. So by doing this, breathing deeply, going lower in frequency, higher on the depth of and the amount of air that you're sucking in every cycle, then you move your system from these beta waves and stress to a more creative, and then you find solutions to all those problems that happen during the day.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:54:46] Wow. Well, such a great explanation of so many of these processes. Please let my listeners know how to connect with you, how to purchase your book or work with you. Does your team work distantly or just within Costa Rica?
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:54:59] We work distantly. We have people in Qatar.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:55:02] Wow.
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:55:03] It was funny. It was like a cluster of 40 patients. So, some person did a program and they told somebody else, they told somebody. We don't have the videos of English in English, which is what we do. But what we do with patients that don't speak Spanish is that we use the book as the material they need to study before they start our program. So the book, you can get it on Amazon. It is in two different formats. I'm going to record the audiobook. So, you have it on Kindle, you have on paperback, and it's on Amazon. And sadly, we still don't have any English material saying a YouTube videos or a podcast or our social network, like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook are Spanish only. So, for those of your listeners who speak Spanish, they can find information on Kilosophy. It's spelled K-I-L-O-S-O-P-H-Y, which is a made-up word. Kilo is the mass measurement in the metric system, which you guys use the pound or [unintelligible 00:56:13] and Sophy is the suffix study of the weight. So that's what we do. We study all the variables that are involved in weight management.
[00:56:27] And we can see patients in English. So, what we tell them to do is they purchase the book, and then we have these online consultations where we help them to achieve their goals in terms of nutrition, of course. And the testament that we just left, which was not talking at all of nutrition, it says that, nutrition is important, but many times what people experience when they don't get results doesn't have to do anything with nutrition because they might be doing everything perfectly, but these other variables are not working properly, and that's what keeps them from the results and keeps them frustrated all the time.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:57:05] Oh, such a good point. Thank you again for your time today. This has been a pleasure.
Dr. Donald Vega: [00:57:09] No, Cynthia, thank you very much. And I hope people get value from all what we talked about.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:57:14] Absolutely.
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