I am thrilled to have Wade Lightheart joining me today. Wade is sought after by athletes and high-performing individuals for his expertise in optimizing health and fitness. He is a three-time Canadian natural bodybuilding champion, a premier global authority on natural nutrition and training methods, and the author of several books on health, nutrients, and exercise.
In our conversation today, Wade and I dive into digestion and gut health, breaking down the stages of digestion and looking at the effects of poor digestion, including muscle loss and sarcopenia. We examine the impact of low stomach acid and explore the evolution of the processed food industry since World War Two. We also discuss immunity and fasting, the benefits of hormones for overcoming weight loss resistance and enhancing muscle and metabolic health, testing to inform specific recommendations, and the role of bio-individuality.
I know you will enjoy all the actionable insights Wade shares today on optimizing your health and fitness.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
The five stages of digestion
The role enzymes and hydrochloric acid play in the digestive process
Why probiotics are essential for maintaining the balance between good and bad gut bacteria
The consequences of poor digestion
How modern farming practices have depleted the nutritional content of food
Why muscle mass is essential for maintaining a healthy metabolism
The benefits of weight training and a protein-rich diet for retaining muscle mass
How genetic testing can help in personalizing health strategies and preventing diseases
Why lifestyle adjustments are necessary for healthy aging
How stress and trauma impact health
The education system and 365-day money-back guarantee Bioptimizers offers
Bio
Wade T. Lightheart is a Certified Sports Nutritionist Advisor, president/director of education, and co-founder of BIOptimizers. As a plant-based and drug-free athlete for more than two decades, Wade is a three-time National Natural Bodybuilding Champion who competed in both the IFBB Mr. Universe and the INBA Natural Olympia by the age of 31. At the age of 50, Wade came out of retirement to win the Open Men’s and Grand Master’s Categories at the INBA Ironman International, then competed at The PNBA Natural Olympia. Six months later, Wade successfully ran his first marathon in four hours.
“Gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux, heartburn, skin blemishes, and low mood are all directly correlated to your digestion.”
-Wade Lightheart
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Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Wade Lightheart
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.
[music]
[00:00:30] Today, I had the honor of connecting with Wade Lightheart. He is a three-time Canadian natural bodybuilding champion and he's one of the world's premier authorities on natural nutrition and training methods. He has authored numerous books on health, nutrition and exercise and he's sought out by athletes and high-performance oriented individuals for his advice on how to optimize their health and fitness levels.
[00:00:54] Today, we spoke at length about the role of digestion and gut health, stages of digestion, consequences of poor digestion including muscle loss and sarcopenia, the impact of low hydrochloric acid, the evolution of the processed food industry and the impact of changes post-World War II, the benefits of immunity and fasting, the role of hormones as it pertains to muscle protein-centric diets, metabolic health and weight loss resistance, and lastly, testing to help guide specific recommendations and the role of bio-individuality. I know you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it.
[00:01:38] Well, Wade, congratulations. I know that you just had your first child, but welcome to the podcast. I've been looking forward to this conversation.
Wade Lightheart: [00:01:45] Yeah, myself as well. Thank you for having me.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:47] Absolutely. And I'd love to frame our conversation around the importance of digestion and gut health. And my listeners obviously know this is something I'm incredibly passionate about. Why is digestion and gut health so important, in particular for breaking down protein? Protein is a big topic on this podcast, the importance of protein, why it's so important for muscle-protein synthesis but from your high-level perspective, what is it about gut health and digestion that's critically important for breaking protein down into amino acids?
Wade Lightheart: [00:02:23] Oh, I can go into so much depth in this because I've literally been studying this my whole life. Of course, I came from a background. I went into the bodybuilding world where protein is king and bodybuilders and fitness competitors figured out how to stay lean through consuming protein, which has a satiation factor, keeps you full and second, it allows you to support your musculature as well as neurochemicals and all kinds of building blocks that allow you to look a certain way. And then that later became adopted by the anti-aging community and now it's worked its way into the female market. Because for so many females, they were like, “Well, I don't want to build too much muscle. I'm not sure I want to go to the gym. I'll just do some yoga or something.” That was the era that I grew up in.
[00:03:14] And now all of the anti-aging literature and all of the fitness public world that got so popular in the last 20 years have now merged together and have landed square in the lap of women in their mid-30s and 40s and going through pre-menopause, menopause, and post menopause and why it's so critical to get this down. This is maybe the biggest topic in the health industry right now because a lot of women frankly are late to the party. They were fed a bunch of information that I think was missing some perspective. You're not going to get too big if you work out. If you eat a lot of protein, you're not going to somehow build a bunch of muscles and not look the way that you want. Those are all false.
[00:04:01] But what you can do is sustain your metabolic activity as your hormones start to drop. And that's the critical reason. So, I'm setting the stage up, but let's talk about why digestion is an issue. I'm just going to give you some quick statistics. There's 100 million people on any given day in America that report digestive distress. 12% of the emergency hospital visits are gastrointestinal-related emergencies. That's second to heart attacks. Okay, which is the leading killer of humanity right now. And then the third element that comes into play about this is that even in the nutrition field were looked at digestion through an assumption-based process. In other words, if I put food in my mouth, then magically it's converted into energy or building blocks. Well, what is that magic? How does that work?
[00:05:03] And the first thing people have to understand is there is a five-stage process that is involved when you digest your food. And if it's okay, I'll run through the process and then we'll get to your question. Because I want the ladies and folks listening to this podcast to understand not only in a general sense of how digestion works, but where the critical elements might be that they can address that's causing the problems with their digestion, that's causing gas, causing bloating, causing a constipation or diarrhea or acid reflux or heartburn or skin blemishes or low mood. All of those things are directly correlated to your digestion. Okay, so let's go through the five stages. If any questions there or any comments?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:05:54] No, no. I think this is great. In many ways, I think walking listeners through this process and the physiology of digestion will be very helpful.
Wade Lightheart: [00:06:05] Right. Okay. So, the first phase of digestion is actually the preparation phase. The taste, the touch, the sense, the food and anyone who's gone to a beautiful restaurant or has prepared a big meal for the family or has engaged in any kind of socializing where food is extraordinary, you immediately start to salivate. You take on the senses, or even you might smell something, and boom it takes you right back to your grandmother's kitchen when you're seven years old. That one smell. So, smell is tied into memory. It's tied into association and connection with people. The texture, the taste, the smells, your body will actually start producing digestive juices in your mouth in anticipation and your nervous system needs to go to rest and digest.
[00:06:55] In other words, you need to be in a relaxed, calm state, fight or flight, staring at your computer, pounding coffee on the way with a slam and a shake at the same time, while you're driving down the road trying to talk to your kids because [unintelligible 00:07:19]. So, setting and how you set up your digestion and so, taking the time to put your meals in a place where you have that environment. And I think for females in particular, it's even more of a priority because I think they're a little bit more sensitive, especially as their hormones start to fluctuate. Things that were tolerable aren't tolerable anymore. Things that didn't get on you kind of grate your skin and drive you nuts and that's just due to hormonal fluctuation.
[00:07:40] Very much like when kids go through puberty, all of a sudden, their personalities change. Things that they love, they hate now or they change the behaviorism. Hormones are super powerful, so you can underestimate their influence on your digestion. And if you're entering into that stage, things that you used to do or that you like to do or that were easy to do might not work anymore. And that's not you going crazy, that's just your body changing. Second stage is the mastication, chewing your food, making sure that it's chewed up and broken up properly. The food will then go down into the esophagus, which is a tube that goes--
[00:08:15] Keep in mind, it's a tube straight from your mouth to your butt like the food is in the tube, it's not in your body, it's not in the cells where your body needs it. It has to go through this process. So, as it enters what's called the upper cardiac portion of the stomach, what happens is the enzymes present in the food are supposed to be breaking that food down. Now, what are enzymes? Enzymes control everything from thinking to blinking. They are the workers of your body. There's over 25,000 different enzymes inside your body. They fall into various families. We can go into that a little bit later. But between them and probiotics, that's the only thing that does work in your body.
[00:09:01] They are the catalysts, they are the engines, they are the workers, if you will, the biological workers that operate all of the functions in your body and especially digestion. In fact, digestion takes up a tremendous amount of the resources in your body just to produce enough enzymes to do it. Now, humans are the only species on the planet that consume an enzyme-deficient diet. See, every animal, whether it's a herbivore, an omnivore or a carnivore, eats its food in a live state. And when it eats it raw, it consumes the enzymes and probiotics. And so, a carnivore will eat the entrails where that's rich in probiotics and enzymes first before it eats the carcass. A bear will eat berries or it will eat salmon, let's say, and it consumes it live.
[00:09:48] So, in a live state you have the enzymes and a plant-based person or animal, like a horse for example, will eat the grass and digest it. But if there's any blood on it or something, it won't eat it. It'll only eat the food that's right for its body. Now humans, we learn to cook, awesome. We solved lot of problems with cooking, disinfecting. We have the ability to store food for extensive period times and cook it so it doesn't go bad. So, the preservation advantages of learning to cook and to store is great. Pasteurization, okay, all of the sterilization processes that destroy enzymes, irradiation when it travels, all of these different things allow food to stay from decomposing or rotting in the grocery store. When you go to the grocery store, you're looking to see if that food is spoiled.
[00:10:34] This is a big attention and women are very sensitive to these items. Particularly, they're actually biologically developed to have a bigger range of sensory smell, to have a bigger range of our color selection and stuff. So, it's really Important to understand that these are all aspects of your digestive process of knowing what's right. But since we irradiate and cook and pasteurize everything, we kill all the enzymes. And so, your body has about 30 to 60 minutes after to figure out what enzymes do I need to produce in order to digest this food. Now, at about that 30-to-60-minute mark, you release something what's called hydrochloric acid. HCl is the abbreviation that you'll say on it. Now, HCl performs two important functions. Those functions are, number one, it disinfects your food.
[00:11:25] Any bacteria, viruses, bugs, any elements, parasites, these things that can disrupt your digestion. If you have sufficient levels of hydrochloric acid levels, you will destroy that. If you don't, some of those things can come into the body and then create all kinds of problems. The other thing that HCl does, and a lot of people don't know this, is that it changes the pH of your food. So, if you're eating alkaline or you look slightly acidic, it doesn't matter. It's going to go from slightly alkaline to neutral, to acid, to really acid. And while it goes through that process, when it comes to protein, you need these different types of proteases. Proteases is the enzyme that breaks down protein.
[00:12:13] And what it does is there's different proteases that work at different pH levels and different amino acids that you get from the protein get cleaved off of that. And if you don't get that right, then some of that undigested protein could be problematic later on. So, the food will then, after it's broken down, chewed up with the enzymes and the hydrochloric acid and the mastication will then travel out of the intestinal tract. Your body releases what's called bicarbonate buffers, the fancy name for alkaline minerals, calcium, magnesium, things like that, that neutralize the acid so that it doesn't burn in your intestinal tract. Because your stomach can handle the acid, your intestines or your esophagus can't. Okay, goes into where the real action is, which is into your intestines. Now here is where the rubber hits the road.
[00:13:06] You have many different types of species of bacteria, I would say for simple terms called 10% good, 10% bad and 80% opportunists. What I mean by that is, depending on what you're eating or what's being digested properly, you will feed these bacteria. We live in a symbiotic relationship with these organisms. We don't have bacteria in your intestinal tract. We're all dead. So, we're really feeding the bacteria. The bacteria convert what we consume into the energy units and building blocks. They produce all sorts of different things, antioxidants, they make vitamins and minerals. These things are amazing. And we have a whole lab in Bosnia where we actually run all these tests.
[00:13:56] We got 20 PhDs and Master students that are running nonstop tests to see what happens when you put this probiotic with this food, what happens when you put this prebiotic food with those probiotics, and what happens. And basically, there's a war going on between the good guys and the bad guys. And if one side gets a little bit over the other, other side's the other, the opportunists come in and try and pick up the scraps. But undigested protein is the biggest causes of problems for people. It can leak into the intestinal tract, which is called leaky gut, okay. That creates an autoimmune response. Your body thinks that a virus is attacking it and starts to crank up your immune system response. And that's done consistently over time, this is where you get inflammatory conditions, hyperallergies, bloating, histamine responses, all type things like that.
[00:14:45] And oftentimes it's suggested that it can also lead to a bunch of neurological conditions as well, because these bacteria that eat undigested proteins will produce things like indole and skatole, which have very negative effects on our psychological health. The other thing that these bacteria do is they make all kinds of things like antioxidants and neurochemicals, and particularly as women or people who are sensitive to, say, not producing enough serotonin. Serotonin is produced by the bacteria in your gut. About 95% of it is produced there. And so many people that I believe that are suffering from mental health issues aren't suffering from mental health issues in their brain. They're suffering from mental health issues because they're not breaking down the proteins with the right bacteria to convert them into the happy chemicals for our brains, that's really what's going on.
[00:15:40] So, we've seen so many people that have been able to turn that around just getting their digestion right, that's the gut-brain connection. And then finally is the elimination phase. Elimination phase is the movement of the leftover components of what you've consumed so that you have smooth and accurate bowel movements. In other words, you're not constipated and you are not getting the runs. And of course, we all know that if you do certain foods or you do certain medications, you go to different environments where you're exposed to different bacteria, one of those two criteria happens, and it's because something is disrupted.
[00:16:12] There's one other element that's not related to the chemistry that I would point out. It is possible in some cases that you can have-- That movement to the whole food thing is called peristaltic contraction. And sometimes if someone has had an injured spine or dislocated certain vertebrae inside of their body, you can disrupt the movement of your food so you can stay so it doesn't move. So, if it's good to find yourself a good chiropractor that understands that if you're having digestive issues and just get the physiology worked out on that, because that's possible if you've tried everything else. But generally you can figure out your digestion, it's either you don't have enough enzymes, you don't have enough hydrochloric acid, or you don't have the right bacteria in your gut or all three. I can give you some points on that a little bit later. And if you have those going on, then you're going to convert your protein into the amino acids. And then the amino acids are going to build your muscles, they're going to build the neurochemicals, they're going to make you feel better as you go through this transition in life.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:15] With that being said, I think it's so helpful to have that process explained so beautifully. And one of the things I really want to emphasize is this concept of digestion starts in our brains. If we're not in this relaxed parasympathetic state, it can disrupt the physiology of our bodies. And I think about how many moms are eating in the car, they're eating while they're working, they're eating off their kid’s plates and they're standing. And why it's so important to be in a relaxed state, to not be in this sympathetic dominance where not only are we not optimized to detoxify, we're not optimized to digest our food at all. And how many of my female patients will tell me things like, “I'm listening to your podcast. I know I should eat no less than 30 to 40 g of protein in a meal. And if I eat a big piece of protein, it just feels like I have a rock in my stomach.”
[00:18:08] And so, it's helping them understand it's this top down approach, if you're not in a relaxed state and you're eating on the go or your hydrochloric acid is deficient, and we know most people north of 40 are making and producing less hydrochloric acid and not only does that impact our ability to contract opportunistic infections, but also makes it harder for our body to break down protein into amino acids so that our bodies can assimilate it. So, when we're talking about the role of digestion, what do you think are some of the most important considerations about digestive health and how they can impact malabsorption? So, if we're not properly breaking down our food, we're not going to be able to absorb the nutrients, what are some of the high-level concepts that you feel are associated with this that you get most concerned about, especially for middle-aged people that are already at risk for muscle loss with aging?
Wade Lightheart: [00:19:06] Well, that's the first one. Excessive muscle loss is a good indication that you're not recovering. Let's assume that you're exercising and when I say exercising, I'm talking resistance training with weights, okay, ladies you will not get too big. It is the only way that you can really change the shape of your body. So, if you don't like your glutes or you don't like the way your chest is or your shoulders are, or if your arms are flabby, nothing trumps muscle building and you will not become a bodybuilder or anything like that. It's really hard to build muscle, but it's really easy to maintain muscle if you're training regularly and even like two or three times a week is sufficient enough to retain your muscle.
[00:19:47] The second thing in my opinion, if you are not doing weight training going through this phase, the likelihood that you're going to be successful, even if you get your digestive health in order is extremely low. And I want to be clear about that. And I talk about it in the awesome health formula that I give away on my website. I go through the seven phases in an 84-day course which I give away for free because I just want people to understand the lifestyle components that have to be implemented. I know we're talking about digestion, but you can't overstate that. If you're that lady out there right now that eats the steak and it's like, “oh, spits in my weight.” Well, there's a couple things. Number one, get your genetics test.
[00:20:25] You might be one of those people that doesn't do well on meat. Likely, you probably do, or there might be different types of meats that are better for you or easier for you to digest. I don't have an opinion about what people follow. As I said, my business partner's a keto person, I'm a plant-based guy. Like I haven't eaten meat in 20 some years. He eats nothing but meat. [laughs] So, like we built a whole system around more dietary agnostic. It should be right for your genetics. It should be right for your lifestyle and it should be to sustain you and it should be flexible enough that you don't become indoctrinated it with one area and that you can't think through like, I'm a vegan or I'm a keto or I'm a carnivore.
[00:21:04] You know those dietary fads where you get an identity built around it that might be suboptimal for your genetics. Genetics and your lifestyle is going to tell you, “Hey, does that feel good?” So, if something doesn't feel good, eliminate it. That’s first thing. Second, the other item that you can do, maybe that steak was easy for you to digest in your 20s and now it isn't. Now, we got an indication that your digestion is off. And that's very common when you get past 35 that all of a sudden you just can't do well in the food. So, a couple easy tests. Hydrochloric acid test, easiest test in the world to find out if it’s produced or not.
[00:21:37] Take quarter teaspoon of baking soda, throw it in 4 ounces of water, stir it up, drink it on an empty stomach. If you burp in five minutes you got good hydrochloric acid. If you don't, you'd benefit from a hydrochloric acid tablet after every meal and usually what's accompanied with that If you have low HCl, you often get H. Pylori issues. H. Pylori is a contributor to acid reflux, okay and heartburn. Basically, what happens is the food comes down into that, into your stomach, it sits there and it starts fermenting. You didn't have the enzymes to break it down first, if there is not enough hydrochloric acid in order to make it going and what happens is it starts to ferment and what acid that you do have starts to bubble up into the esophagus past the esophageal sphincter that creates the heartburn and acid reflux. That's a precondition for esophageal cancers, which is one of the fastest growing cancers.
[00:22:38] And I do, because what do they tell you? Oh, you got acid reflux, heartburn. Oh, let's go take the pill or drink this pink liquid and then it goes away. Well, if you look at the pharmaceutical literature on antacid prescription medication of which millions of people are on every day. Well, they're only supposed to be on that for six to eight weeks because they complicate and create more problems than solving the “Hey, I don't have heartburn anymore.” And you could solve that with some enzymes and a hydrochloric acid tablet, really easy. So, the second thing is enzymes before your meals I think is a winner. I ran into-- I learned this the hard way.
[00:23:19] In 2003, I went to the Mr. Universe contest. I'm one of the only, I think, plant-based vegetarians that didn't do drugs that went to the Mr. Universe contest. It's very odd. And part of my goal was to see if it was possible. And then what I didn't know is I didn't know the digestive story in 2003 and after the Mr. Universe contest, I gained 42 pounds of fat and water in 11 weeks. I went from Mr. Universe to Mr. Marshmallow because my digestion was wrecked following a standard bodybuilding diet, trying to adapt it for a vegetarian, it was a disaster. And I met this doctor, Dr. Michael O'Brien. He was this vibrant senior citizen in his like 70s. And he looked like right out of the central casting for cocoon or something. I never met anybody like that. He's still the standard today for senior citizenship for me.
[00:24:07] And he gave a whole lecture about what I'm talking about today on enzymes and probiotics. Nobody was talking about this stuff like 20 years ago that was really wild. And he introduced this to me and I said, “What am I doing wrong? And he says, “You know how to build the body from the outside in, you don't know how to build it from the inside out.” And underwent his program. Matt and I, my business partner, transformed my health. Literally, I felt amazing after three months. Six months later, I had my physique back, but I had a new level of energy and vitality became so important to me at that point. I began crusading. We started our company and we introduced MassZymes, which is the most robust proteolytic enzyme.
[00:24:44] It's got 17 enzymes, all these proteases in particular because I was really protein centric on why I needed to convert that, because on a plant-based diet, I wasn't getting a sufficient load of amino. So, like every gram of protein needs to get converted because when they say take one pound per gram of body weight, they don't tell you how much of that gram got digested. And all of the top bodybuilders who have to eat like 300, 400, 500 g that can support 300 g of protein, they're all using digestive enzymes now because their careers are ending too early because of digestive issues. And I have Ms. Olympia on it. I've had Mr. Olympias on it, I've had all like the very top level of that because they figured out, “Oh yeah, if I'm eating all this protein and I don't digest it, I lose my health.
[00:25:28] So, they find out what people find in their 50s and 60s, they find out about that in their 20s and 30s because they're pushing through that life force exhaustion faster because of the performance that they're doing, they're augmenting with hormones and things like that. So, a good robust enzyme that focuses on proteolytic, that has 3.0, 4.5, and 6.0. Those are the enzymes of the proteases that you're looking at. Proteases break down protein, amylase brings down carbohydrates, lipases break down fats, cellulase breaks down cellulose or plant matters. So, those are the four mains and then there's like families that branch off of it, those two elements.
[00:26:05] And then you want to look at your bacteria cultures. A proteolytic probiotic, by the way, there's very few of them out there. What does that mean? What does proteolytic mean? It means bacteria that feeds on protein. Most feed on sugar or plant matter. That's what they do best on. And we've looked at every different possible probiotic in the lab. And what we came up with is-- Dr. O'Brien came up with a patented way to convert L. Plantarum, which is a robust strain. He put it through a toxic soup, ran a sine wave through it. It's like, I call it like Navy SEAL training, like 2% survive. And now, these bacteria have capabilities, particularly being proteolytic. But they also have some other unique abilities that they have a patent for, it's on our website, [unintelligible [00:26:51] to us and allowed us to use that in the world.
[00:26:53] Dr. Brien's not with us anymore and we're carrying the torch for his message. That proteolytic probiotic we marketed as P3-OM, it's probably going to be taken to-- it's going to probably change the name on that, but which means powerful proteolytic probiotic. That's what P3 stands for. That will go in and break down any of those undigested proteins that are causing constipation, causing gas, causing bloating. So, if you're getting gas and bloating in your intestinal tract, I guarantee you've got bad bacteria in there eating undigested proteins from the first part of the process and creating all of this toxin that's affecting your brain is feeling you-- Because anyone that's got that bloated feeling like you described from the state, they're like, “Oh, like it does affect your brain. I don't feel good about myself. I'm self-conscious about myself.” Because these toxins are leaking into your brain and your brain is literally going into emergency mode saying something's not right here.
[00:27:54] You're sitting there and your husband's like, “Well, come on, just have a smaller piece or whatever.” No, no, no, you're actually right. I want to let you tune into your body and say, “No, something's not right.” I'm not digesting my food. And the reason all of this happens is because we changed the food supply after World War II. We did mass manufacturing, we stripped away the soils, we didn't do crop rotation anymore. We didn't put them [unintelligible [00:28:23]. And what happened after World War II, when we went to monoculture farming, we started growing everything in these big giant things to support people moving from local communities where 95% of people had farms or had gardens and parents still live like that today.
[00:28:41] And they all moved to the city and then now they're eating store-boughten food that doesn't have the enzymes, doesn't have the protein. You're not getting the vegetables brought out of the garden, you're not getting the food fresh out of the thing. And then all those foods have preservatives, dyes in them. They've been irradiated to take out the enzymes that were naturally present inside of them and so that was the start. Then with mono-culturing and stripping the soil, all of a sudden, they added fertilizer. So, you grew the yield, but you took down the amount of protein, the available enzymes that were in those plants that were so strong and healthy.
[00:29:11] That's why it's so difficult for many vegans to survive today. Even though that was so common throughout history and aspects of the world. There's whole societies that lived on vegan diets for thousands of years. It's much harder now because the roots aren't getting the nutrients. The nutrients aren't there. And then they started using fertilizers. The plants started to grow really quickly. That stripped the minerals out of it as well. So, when you're eating a tomato today or a cucumber today or a carrot today, it's nothing like our ancestors had. And I invite people to go to an Amish or Mennonite farm that has been using traditional methods for the last few hundred years and heirloom seeds.
[00:29:49] Go there, eat a tomato or carrot or whatever your favorite vegetables, you'll see that you'll eat a carrot near full or you'll eat a tomato and you're full. You're like, “Oh, I'm just nutrified.” There's all kinds of elements that we don't get anymore. And then they started putting glyphosates and chemicals to kill the bacteria because the plants were getting. So, now they have all these anti-bacteria elements that are disruptive. How do they kill the bugs? Well, they disrupt their enzyme function. That's how they kill the bugs, that's how they kill the bacteria that we'd normally get. Doesn't have the minerals, doesn't have the vitamins, doesn't have the protein, doesn't have the enzymes. And so, through that, that's why selecting your food or getting local produce is so important. But the whole mechanism needs to be redone. and podcasts like this are getting the message out so that we can support our natural, organic, old school-type farming, local environments to get our food, so the food is good and our digestion good, guess what? our health is going to be good.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:49] Yeah. It's such an important point and thing I want to go back to is when we're talking about the consequences of inadequate digestion. So, high level concept sarcopenia, muscle loss with aging, it's not a question of if but when, if you're not actively working against it and really after the age of 40, you can lose anywhere from 1 to 2% of your muscle mass each year. So, for anyone that's listening, there's nothing wrong with yoga or Pilates or if you're doing some degree of high intensity interval training. What I think is so important to reemphasize is that we have to eat enough protein, but we have to be able to digest it. We need to actually create enough of a stimulus, lift enough heavy weights to be able to build and maintain muscle.
[00:31:36] And before we even get to the discussion around hormone replacement therapy or anything related to that, understanding those very basic concepts. And I feel like many women, and certainly for my generation, we were the “Don't eat fat, it's bad for you. Fats are bastardized.” Every woman was told you have to do lots and lots of cardio. And I'm here to tell you that as you are getting older, the most important thing you can do. Yes, we want to be physically active, you need to lift weights. That is critically important. And I know that's very much in alignment with what you're speaking to kind of reaffirm the tail end of what you were talking about.
[00:32:10] How our food has changed so dramatically over the last 70 plus years and why we can't assume that when we go to the grocery store that the tomato, the carrot, the lettuce is anything like it was during our parents’ generation, our grandparents’ generation, and why we have to be more conscientious. Now it may not be accessible for everyone to have a CSA, crop share, or necessarily to do all your shopping at a farmer's market, but get to know what real vegetables taste like. I remember I had Italian grandparents. They had an amazing garden in their backyard. And sniffing a carrot to this day, like a real carrot, not the carrots that don't taste like carrots, will bring me back to my childhood because it's such a powerful and profound memory.
[00:32:58] Actually, our sense of smell is one of the most impactful on memory imprinting in our brains, which is why, sometimes you'll smell something, it'll bring you back to a time in your life and you're like, “Gosh, it just transports you back, many years ago.” So, when we're talking about being conscientious about the quality of food, purchasing the highest quality food that our budgets will permit, what are other things related to digestion that you think most people are unaware of? I think that the things that I think about are, just being susceptible to infections, not being able to heal properly, and not even making that association. If we're not eating enough protein in our diet, it has a profound and far-reaching impact on our health.
Wade Lightheart: [00:33:45] 80% of your immune system is in your gut. Think about that. And when I say the gut, that's the whole digestive. Remember, it's a single canal from mouth to your bum. If you understand that and that's not in your body, that's still in the tube. It's like you drove a tube through the mountain. You're not in the rock, you're in the tube as you drive through the mountain. Or if you're driving from United Kingdom to France, you are in a tube under the ocean. You're not in the ocean and you're not in the ground. You're in a tube. Okay, so your subway, you're in a tube. And the food is in the tube. So, these elements take that whatever's in the tube and gets it across.
[00:34:31] And if you don't have those elements, it doesn't matter how good the food is. The other thing is, it takes up a tremendous amount of energy. So, enzymes and probiotics, they fight off the bad guys. They activate all the other metabolism points. So, one of the reasons why people are into intermittent fasting or fasting, like I fast one day a week, I just do one day a week. I do like 36 hours I just don't eat. And the reason I do that is because it frees up my enzyme production in the body so that it can go heal myself. Because, so much of your energy is used by digesting your food. It's ridiculous. Okay, so you cut that off.
[00:35:11] The other thing is if there are elements that are disruptive inside your system, your body has enough time to knock out the bad guys and bolster up the good guys. That's why fasting is so effective as a health advocate program to improve your immune system response, to improve your resistance to diseases and keep in mind if you don't get sufficient amount of protein and you're especially in that hormone. So let me break this down. Hormones help you retain muscle mass. Muscle mass is the key to your health span and your longevity. The more muscle that you have, the better your chances are to live long. And here's why, if you become sick, who wants to eat when they're sick? Very few people want to do that. If you go through a stressful environment, if you go through these things, what happens? Your body will convert that muscle mass into the enzymes it needs to meet the metabolic demands that are going on your body from a stressful situation.
[00:36:16] So, if you trace most people's disease states or when they get anything, you can almost always start with some site of trauma. Something happens in their life. They go through a divorce, they lose a job, a child gets sick or passes away or something like that, a family member, they're in a car accident. There's a triggering event. It can come in many different forms. And all of a sudden, they go, “I don't know, how that happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. And I haven't been the same ever since.” That's because your stress response boosted up.
[00:36:48] You started taking your muscle mass and converting it and using it in order to make enough enzymes in the body to run all the other stress response, because you're on the stress wheel. So, you really want to address the psych trauma of the stress to reverse that, because sometimes depending on how intense it is, it can put you into permanent stress response. I think for a lot of women that's really common, especially when their hormones start to drop off. They start to feel less of a woman or not quite themselves, or something's wrong with me or I've just lost interest in all of these elements. And then there's an identity aspect that comes with that, and that can be triggering and amplify those things. And you go, “Really? All this is related to digestion?” Yeah, it is.
[00:37:31] And it's all related to also having sufficient protein converted into the amino acids. So, there's a couple of suggestions that I'm going to put forth for the ladies. In fact, I was just at dinner about six weeks ago with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Yeah, we were talking about this particular thing. She's a wonderful lady and she's awesome. And I said, her and her husband are just amazing. They're super fit and great people. And we were talking about this, and she's like, “Yeah, you got to get like 50 g of protein right off the start of the day and 50 g after.” And I said, “It's so funny that you say that because I've been doing that for 30 years.”
[00:38:05] Like, I get up in the morning, I do my exercise, my meditation or whatever, and then I get myself a really nice, big protein drink in the morning. Guess what? It's fast, it's easy, it's simple. It doesn't take much time. You can sip at it at your own pace. You can make really good ones. You can do it keto style. You can do it vegetarian style. You can do it Paleo. You can make it. You can do it just if it fits your macros. Getting that protein first thing in the morning and then another protein hit generally by noon. If you can get those two elements as a woman and making sure that you have-- if your digestion’s off, take some enzymes, some hydrochloric acid, some probiotics. If you get that piece worked out, your rest of your day is going to go easier. Your ability to retain that muscle mass and that shapely figure as you go through your aging years. When you look at those women who seem to pull it all off, that's what they're doing.
[00:38:57] Just so you know, some are doing hormone augmentation, some are not. That's not my commentary. I do feel that that's something between you and your naturopathic doctor. I haven't done any hormone augmentation in my 50s. Almost everybody in the-- “they call it biohacking field.” I call what I do biological optimization because I think hacks always have consequences where optimization is an ongoing aspect that you make selections. Could I carry more muscle mass if I took some hormones and could a female that would think about it be able to do so? Absolutely. Is there a time for that? Absolutely. But try to kick the can down the road as far as you can. Get your diet squared away first. You can probably extend that time another five or ten years if you get your diet right.
[00:39:43] And if you don't get your diet right, you'll take the hormones and what you'll do is you'll be running on hormones for a while and it'll be causing all of these other problems in the background because hormones can mask a bad diet for a while, not long. And how do we know this? Well, we know this because if you go to the athletic world and all of this, by the way, originated out of the bodybuilding and fitness community, they figured this stuff out 50, 60 years ago and it's just now caught mainstream media because of the regular-- people didn't want to look like bodybuilders.
[00:40:18] The science behind what they're doing actually is applicable to a female with three kids at 42 years old. Oh, I just described my wife. [laughs] It's her third child, she's not on hormone treatment. Five-time world champion Jiu Jitsu, taking her psychophysiology PhD and she's taking care of our house and doing her spiritual life and doing everything else and all these sort of things. And when we met, she didn't know-- she was doing some version. And I introduced these elements to her and she just turned 43, she just had her baby totally happy, totally healthy. She's nursing right now while doing her PhD and she's able to do these things without hormone augmentation. But she's got her diet right and she's got her digestive health right.
[00:41:07] And she's so happy about that because it allows her to still perform at a high level. Not everybody is going to perform like that. I don't know how she does it. I think, some people are just wired up different. She's that way. So, you have to understand hormones are a tool, but they can't fix your digestion. They can't. The only thing that's going to fix it is enzymes, hydrochloric acid, and probiotics and the right probiotics. And I would start with proteolytic probiotics first. That's key element.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:38] So, there's a lot that you just said. So, I want to make sure we address the challenges around building and maintaining muscle. And I agree with you, especially a woman in perimenopause or menopause, if they go through a divorce, a job loss, a lengthy hospitalization, if we're not eating properly, if we're not able to break down and assimilate the food that we are eating, our body will catabolize. It'll actually break down muscle. And I speak from personal experience because five years ago I spent 13 days in the hospital. I know you don't know this, my community does, for a ruptured appendix. And so, I lost 15 pounds of muscle and I had a slew of complications. And I remember when I left the hospital, I remember saying to my husband, I catabolized all of my muscle.
[00:42:26] I mean I was so un-ridiculously thin. And I remember my surgeon saying to me, I sometimes when I have patients come in the hospital that are sick, they're almost better off if they're a little bit overweight. And she said because they have a larger reserve. If you would continue to lose weight, there's no question you would have put your life in peril because I just didn't have enough. But it takes a whole lot longer to put that muscle mass back on once you've lost it, especially at the stage of life I'm in. So, these protein-centric diets are important. The strength training is certainly important. You mentioned the role of trauma and certainly for me, that five years ago was definitely the precipitant for that happening.
[00:43:05] But when we're talking about metabolism and I do think of the weight training, the serious bodybuilding community being the first biohackers. I know you don't like the word hack, but that word is used. It is completely appropriate because they understood metabolism at a far better level, stimulus and response, you are understanding the role of insulin and how that can help with anabolism, so building muscle. Let's just speak briefly to metabolic health and women in particular. I know your wife is early 40s. There's certainly a good amount of women in this community that are late 40s, early 50s and beyond. And they feel like their metabolism, and I don't know how else to say it, gets broken in perimenopause.
[00:43:53] All of a sudden, they're eating well, they're for the most part digesting well, they're managing their sleep, their stress, their strength training and all of a sudden, they start becoming weight loss resistant. What would you say to them? Some higher level concepts to be considering. Obviously, the digestion piece is important, but what other things, as a former avid bodybuilder would you be advising them to consider that could be contributing to their circumstances?
Wade Lightheart: [00:44:22] Oh, that's such a great question because I've gone through that myself. I was competing as a bodybuilder. My last contest was when I was 35 and then I came back a couple years ago when I turned 50 because I wanted to see where I was at. Now what was interesting is I had actually retained all of the muscle mass that I had from when I was 35. No hormone augmentation following what I've advocating for years using enzymes and all that stuff. Because I'm not draining my enzyme reserve. By the way, to get really deep on that topic, I recommend reading a book called Enzyme Nutrition by Dr. Edward Howell. And if you're really kind of geeky, you can get into food enzymes for health and longevity.
[00:45:08] And why that's important is he identified back in, I think it's the 1940s or 1950s when all this food science started to come in and destroy our food things. He took these animals. I'm going to get to the metabolic thing. But this is just triggered this and people need to know this. They fed animals without enzymes. They fed animals like a cooked food diet. They did one which was a raw food diet and then they did one where they were adding enzymes to the food. By the third generation, the animals that did not have the enzymes present had a several things, one, a massive spike in genetic mutation diseases. Two, they exhibited strange social behavior not native to their species. Three, they lost the ability to procreate. The ones that ate the raw food had no changes.
[00:46:01] The ones that had the enzymes, by the way, they lived lesser time. The ones that eat the raw food, the ones that had the enzymes live longer than all of them. And so that led Dr. Howell to conclude that you could build up this enzyme pool-- Your enzyme reserve is what you basically call an enzyme pool that you draw on in times of stress, in times when you're subjected to an attack in these elements. Now when you go through hormones, hormones start to drop as you get older. That is essentially a requirement on your system to start using more enzymes of your body in order just to maintain functions and it starts shutting down other functions. This is why you do not see people who are over 28 years old breaking Olympic records.
[00:46:53] You peak at that age because you don't have enough proteolytic enzymes to maintain the muscle mass to do training at that level, you have to back off. So, what happens is for the advocate like myself, well, I used to get in shape in like 12 weeks, easily 20 weeks for a competition. It took me a year to get in shape for the competition and another six months to get to what I call world class condition. So, it took me 18 months, which would have been able to do in 18 weeks. Literally, like so much like what that's like four, five times longer. I had to do less volume on my training. I had to select a different set of exercises.
[00:47:34] I also had to split my workouts into a long slow cardio session, which is just basically going for a long walk in the mornings on an empty stomach. And you know what that did is it reset my system so I'm not in fight or flight. Because what happens, you can eat the same diet. If you're high cortisol, you get fat if you are low cortisol. So, what was I doing before? I like stimulants, I like coffee, I like nootropics, I like all these things. I like to go, I'm high energy guy. And I was like, “Keep going.” I can stay up for days if necessary. I've done it many times. I'm wired up that way, but also will go to cortisol and I will get fat really easily. I get fat so easily, it's not even funny.
[00:48:18] I have to fight tooth and nail. I don't have the best hormonal profile. I don't have the best genetics. It's another thing. Get a genetic test to see what diet's right for you, which type of exercise you're going to respond to this or your fast oxidator or slow oxidator. These types of elements are important to understand about you because what your friend does might not work for you and it's okay. It doesn't mean that you can't be friends. It means that you're just different. And then working with your metabolism to do smaller durational workouts or less intensity as you get over. I can't go into the gym and go full nut bar like I used to do when I was 20. I get to a certain point and I'm like, “That's good.”
[00:48:59] Because if I go to that level, I'm a mess for the rest of the week. And by that time in life, you have all these other things to go on in life, but you just can't be focused on, working out. That's cool when you're 20. It's not so cool when you're 50. So, you're doing workouts for metabolism. So little intervals, stimulatory, keeping yourself that you're not overly stimulated. You're keeping those cortisol levels down. Magnesium is a big factor in keeping your cortisol levels. Magnesium because of EMFs are deficient magnesium diets and high calcium diets, by the way, oftentimes lower magnesium. These elements are downward pressure on magnesium. Magnesium is the rest and relaxation hormone. It relaxes your muscles, it relaxes your nervous system, and so ensuring that you get a mineral profile. I like the SpectraCell.
[00:49:48] Do the SpectraCell test. You can look at what vitamins and minerals you're not getting as well because key elements can disrupt you if you're not getting enough B12 or if you're not getting enough of this element. And genetically you might be eating what's recommended, you might even be supplementing, but you're not absorbing and utilizing because your digestion is not that right or your genetics are suboptimal. All of a sudden you got the little poofy muffin on your tummy and you're like, “Where did this come from?” Like, I didn't do anything different. And I remember when that happened to me, I was like, “I'm eating the same diet, I'm doing the same training, I'm doing it like, where's this muffin top coming from?” Like, I don't get it. And I had to make these subtle adjustments.
[00:50:27] A lot of people just go right to hormones. A lot of my colleagues in the industry, that's what they did. And I thought, “I'll do that can later. I want to figure this augmenting hormones first.” And was able to figure it out for myself and was able to figure it out for our clients. And we wrote about it in our book of how to do it in our book that we released recently, The Ultimate Nutrition book. But getting those elements down uniquely for you and making those age-related adjustments in your training are really important. Most ladies, two to three times weight workouts. And if you can get a daily longer slow cardio, walking, light cycling, you know, if you have to be at home, you can get a treadmill at home or something. You don't have to walk fast. In fact, I would avoid going too hard. I find HIIT training as you get older becomes a lot more difficult. Some people, if they've been really athletic all their lives can pull it off and they have the nervous system for it. Most people don't. And you can run yourself into trouble.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:51:30] Yeah, it's interesting, when speaking to the lifestyle piece, it is lifestyle first. Before we even consider adding in peptides, HRT, etc., we have to make sure our detox pathways are working well. You mentioned the genetics piece. Do you have a genetic test that you like to work with or that you have had great success with because there's so many that are out there?
Wade Lightheart: [00:51:54] No, I don’t because people have to understand something about genetic testing that isn't revealed. Your genetics don't change. They're yours. Okay. This is your genetics. What happens is you have suboptimal genetics. So, epigenetics, do you turn this off or do you turn this on? And that's time, that's stress, that's different environmental factors, different toxins and that's important. Every genetics test is still testing the same gene. What they're doing is running different algorithms, which is basically they take a database. Maybe it's for heart disease, maybe it's for blood sugar, maybe it's for kidney disease or whatever. And they composite that and then they compare your data to this and give you a report of where the potential pitfalls might be.
[00:52:43] Every single genetic test that I've taken, and I've taken a handful of them from different companies, I would say 80% is the same, and then there's 20% nuanced by the data they're comparing it to or the expertise of that element. And now keep in mind, research is still ongoing. Larger and larger databases are coming on board. The database industry is getting much better. We're using AI technology. So, the whole genetics program is, they're in a fight right now, just like Google and the other search engines were in 20 years ago. There is a fight to who's going to figure out the genetic test better than anyone else. And there's no clear winner yet. What any genetic test is going to require, they're going to need an expert like yourself to help the individual interpret what the raw data says compared to their life.
[00:53:50] And that's a part that a lot of people don't understand. Because genetics is the gun your lifestyle is the trigger. That's the epigenetic response. In other words, you can have suboptimal genes in something and nothing's going wrong. Nothing's going wrong because you haven't pulled the trigger; stress loaded the gun, that stressful moment, boom, your lifestyle pulled the trigger because the gun was in your hand all the time. It just didn't have a bullet in the chamber. That stressful event that put the bullet in and that's where you run to the problem.
[00:54:26] And having that expert to help you interpret your lifestyle, what your current diet is, what you've been doing, what's been going on in your life, preemptively becomes very helpful because I always say the pain train's coming for everybody. Nobody gets out of life alive, right? So, we're all going to die. And we want to try and push our health span, which is be as healthy and functional as possible so that you kind of get to that steep fall off the cliff and then you're done and don't have this endless suffering.
[00:55:01] Or as we see now, the disability adjusted life expectancy in our country is 60 years old, meaning that you'll have a compromised life and you'll be on a variety of medications and literally the mill of the pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial complex that is making tons of money of you being not dead, just half dead. Because when you're half dead and suffering, you'll continue to take another pill, another drug, another chemical. None of those are addressing your genetic indications. None of those institutions are addressing what's really good for your food. None of those institutions are here to help you with your fitness. It's people like you Cynthia, that are sharing with people over and over and over again, the basics, the essentials, things that you have to figure out, the things that your doctor doesn't know or is legally unable to tell you, legally unable to tell you if they're doing it.
[00:56:00] The thing that your regulatory bodies are obfuscating from you, the things that the university system, tell me who funds the university study, I'll tell you who gives you the result. These institutions have been captured. You cannot rely on them for your health. You cannot rely on them to give you the right information for you as you're going through that transition. And they will not keep you healthy because that's not their mandate. Their mandate is to keep you half dead so that you keep on their system. And you're here and listener to this podcast because you're not that person. You understand this and you know this and you need a Cynthia in your life to help you keep on track because you listen to the news or you get out there, it's crazy making you're bombarded by so much variance of information, so much contradiction.
[00:56:51] That's not an accident because it paralyzes you. And then what do you do? Well, you go to your doctor and the doctor says, “Well, you need this pill.” And if you bring up anything else which they have no experience with or illegally not able to comment on, they just discontinue it. Well, we don't know about that or no that doesn't work or have it poo poo because they've got five minutes with you and they've got to run the thing because they've got a big debt, they've got a house, they've got a college debt they can't get out of, they got a car they’ve got to-- they've got a society, a professional board that they got to answer to that has these top down politicized-- These things are going on folks, and it's up to us to wake up, take control of your health, get local, work out regularly, eat real food, keep your protein intake high and keep your digestion strong. If you do those things, there's no reason why you can't live to 80, 90, 100, totally healthy, vibrant, enjoying life, enjoying your grandkids, your great grandkids, and contributing your unique abilities to your community.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:57:46] Well, I can't think of a better way to end the conversation. Thank you so much for this conversation. Please let listeners know how to connect with you, how to listen to your podcast, learn more about your books and obviously your supplements.
Wade Lightheart: [00:57:59] Yeah, so we're at the Awesome Health Podcast. BIOptimizers is my company. I believe we give you a discount for any of your listeners. If they go on board, they get a 10% discount on anything. We started the company based on digestive health and we have the most robust, effective suite of products. In fact, we have 365-day guarantee on everything. If something doesn't work and blow your mind, best they ever had, just give your money back. We have an education system on our BIOptimizer called the Awesome Health 84-Days. And basically, it's a 12-week thing where I teach you about air and water and exercise and sunlight and optimizers and mental beliefs and attitude education. Because give it away because I don't have time to coach everybody anymore.
[00:58:33] I coached like, I don't know, 15,000 people at one point and lost count after that. And now it's this broader image that we're reaching the world with. It's an honor to be on your podcast because what's really cool about today's world in this digital thing and why BIOptimizers is working with people such as yourself to get the message out about digestive health, to get the message out about cognitive health and where we're going. There's a new paradigm of health emerging right now. It's now hit the political stage. I've been so excited about this right now. It's never been a more exciting time. The answers have been figured out by people like you, Cynthia. We know what to do. We know how to do it.
[00:59:10] There's a groundswell movement going in this direction and BIOptimizers is one of the companies the last 20 years have been advocating from it. And it's now turned. And so, every product that we produce, a big percentage goes back into our research facility. We have a research facility in Bosnia. We have a development facility in Iowa. We're constantly doing experience, so everything's backed by legitimate science. And almost no nutrition company does that.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:59:36] No. It's a pleasure to work directly with you and thank you for all the work that you do. It really does reaffirm, reestablish, help educate and inspire people to live their best lives.
Wade Lightheart: [00:59:48] Thank you so much.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:59:50] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating in review, subscribe and tell a friend.
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