Unicity Science | How the Body Uses Fuel By Dr. Benjamin Bikman Ph.D.

I am delighted to be here it is my great privilege and I'm always so thrilled when unicity wants scientists to come speak and that really is reflective of how much unicity cares about how what you know about health well as I've spoken about before every time you've ever heard me speak I always speak about the body and metabolism and metabolic health because that's my forte as a scientist that's what I study every day I think about how the body can be healthier with metabolic function and so today I'm gonna talk about how the body uses energy and within all of our bodies there are countless millions of chemical reactions happening all the time the sum or the combined the combination of all of these reactions is what we call metabolism and of course if these reactions are more active than your metabolic rate is higher if there are fewer reactions than the metabolic rate is lower but suffice it to say whatever is happening in the body the body needs energy to get this stuff done whatever the body needs to do in order to get that energy we eat and we have three main parts of our diet these main parts are called the three macronutrients and feel free to take notes in case I give you a test at the end so these three macronutrients you've seen them before carbohydrates proteins and fats these are the main parts of our diet now to be fair only two of these are really used as few carbohydrate in fat protein on the other hand is really more of a building block where made of protein it's what's giving our body the structure that it needs to work to move so I don't want to talk more about protein at the moment we're gonna talk more about that this afternoon and because I only want to talk about fuel for the body let's put protein to the side for now and focus on carbohydrate and fat the two sources of energy that our body uses all the time whether we use fat or carbohydrate for fuel in our bodies depends on the hormone insulin an insulin is a small little hormone that flows through our blood and it determines what energy the body is using and so how do the does the food we eat affect insulin if insulin determines what kind of energy we use well we want to know what happens to insulin levels when we eat when someone eats pure carbohydrate this could be something like bread or cereal or rice we have a substantial increase in insulin where insulin can climb ten times higher than normal and it can stay elevated for up to four hours in contrast if someone eats fat in their diet fat alone has a negligible effect on insulin if insulin is low and the person were to eat a source of pure fat the insulin won't even change it just keeps moving along now we have the two fuels fat and carbohydrate when insulin is elevated the body makes a decision and at this point it's shift and it starts to use most of its or get more of its energy from carbohydrate so basically the body goes into sugar burning mode it starts to burn sugar or blood sugar in contrast if insulin levels are low now the body switches and then it starts to burn more fat for fuel it has shifted its energy source it's kind of like the body is a hybrid Sonata it has an option the engine can use two fuels and so in this case again if insulin is low it shifts our metabolic engines to use fat for fuel and less carbohydrate or less blood sugar now within the body again to really bring this together elevated insulin means carbohydrate burning or sugar burning and if we're burning more sugar that means we're burning less fat and if we aren't burning fat than the amount of fat that we have on our bodies goes up because insulin won't let us burn fat for fuel if it's elevated and so high insulin means a shift to carbohydrate burning and less fat burning but of course the solution is quite simple if we want to burn more fat if we have more fat than we want if we want to use this fat for fuel that is on our body if we can lower our insulin levels well then we start using fat for fuel it becomes the main source of energy for the body and then the fat that we have stored starts to be used and of course that means our fat tissue starts to shrink which is something we all want right we never want to have too much fat now so here's the overall perspective low insulin or or high insulin means high-carbohydrate use the body starts to burn sugar and if insulin is too high for too long it creates something called insulin resistance you've heard me speak of this before I've talked about it at a previous global convention it's the topic that I focus on the most the reason I care about insulin resistance and the reason I want you to care about it even though you might not care about insulin resistance right now it's because you don't know it like I do insulin resistance can cause almost every chronic disease if you know someone who has high blood pressure hypertension it's probably because their insulin resistant if you know someone who has Alzheimer's disease dementia when the brain doesn't work as well it could be that the brain has become insulin resistant if you know someone who has infertility the most common form of infertility in women is a disease called polycystic ovarian syndrome and that's because of insulin resistance the insulin disrupts the normal hormones that allow a woman to be fertile and there are many other disorders that are all a result including some cancers that are connected to insulin resistance so here insulin resistance is either the cause or making every one of these disorders worse so if you fear chronic disease you should be fearing insulin resistance now what happens when someone eats carbohydrate of course insulin climbs and that means the body starts to burn carbohydrate for fuel that makes sense if you eat the carbohydrate the body wants to use carbohydrate and insulin is what tells the body to do that in contrast if someone eats fat in their diet fat alone helps insulin stay low and so what fuel does the body use well in the body we'll use fat for fuel this concept of being able to switch between fuel sources is a situation that we scientists call metabolic flexibility the metabolic engine in our body is able to switch between these two fuel sources if it's getting carbohydrate it burns it if it's getting if it's eating fat it burns the fat now unfortunately metabolic flexibility is the goal we all want to be able to use fat and switch between them just like a hybrid engine in a car unfortunately what happens more and more today is that a person eats more than a little bit of carbohydrate they eat so much refined starch and sugar all the time that it pushes the insulin levels up all the time an insulin essentially gets stuck in a high position and if we keep insulin high it's it's stuck we're eating carbohydrate the moment the person wakes up and every two hours later they eat more refined starch and more sugar so insulin is elevated almost every moment of the day so insulin gets stuck in a high situation that means the body gets stuck in sugar burning mode because insulin is chronically elevated we're never letting the body switch to burning fat for fuel we're stuck as sugar burners where we don't want to be and of course if we're only burning sugar in our blood for fuel or mostly sugar that means our body fat is never getting used for fuel and so what starts to happen well it starts to climb we aren't able to use this fat for fuel so this situation when the body can't switch to burning fat is metabolic in flexibility we've lost the ability to switch between sugar burning or carbohydrate burning and fat burning we need that flexibility to be healthy and of course the solution in this case is simply to start to reduce the carbohydrates so if we take away some of the carbohydrate we allow the insulin to come down and that means we can start using body fat for fuel now one thing I've learned as a professor and I teach 20 year olds and so I have to find clever ways to teach my students at my University one of the ways I teach my students effectively is that I use analogies so let's look at this lesson in a slightly different way let's pretend that our bodies are like this big fuel truck doesn't matter which country you're in you can find some kind of truck like this it's rumbling down the road and it's hauling fuel now this truck actually has two fuel sources or two areas of fuel can you see them one is very big and obvious and one is not now when this truck is driving down the road when it starts to run out of fuel it has to stop and fill up but of course it is only getting its fuel from that small little tank underneath the cab of the truck the main part of the truck but can you see the problem it's relying on that small little fuel tank but it has all of that fuel that it's carrying around but the truck can never access it it can't use that fuel even though it's hauling it around this is just like our bodies we have a little bit of fuel in our bodies stored as carbohydrate not too much enough to get through about a day but we have even in a person who's lean and is not overweight we have about times more energy in our body stored as fat all that stuff that we can jiggle and pinch we are carrying this fuel around but we never use it just like this truck he can't use that big tank of fuel he can only use the fuel that's in that small tank at the front so what would happen here we need to put some new connections in this truck so that he could not just use the fuel from the small tank but start to use the big fuel and insulin is the key if insulin is low that means this truck can stop only ever burning the fuel from the small tank and it can start using all of the fuel that it's hauling around this is just like our body's lower insulin means that we can use the big source of fuel now like I'd said a moment ago as a professor I like to show this in different ways I want to teach you this concept this lesson in one different way and to do this let's watch a video the human body is an amazing and complicated system that requires energy to function the food we eat provides this energy for us to go about our daily activities our food is made up of three primary macronutrients protein carbohydrate and fat our bodies are designed to use both carbohydrate and fat for energy we call this ability to switch between these macronutrients metabolic flexibility this ability has elegantly served us throughout history in times of surplus when food was plentiful and in times of famine when food was scarce however today because of the way we eat most of us find ourselves perpetually in surplus we've become better at storing energy than using energy this reality has changed the way our bodies function leading to an astronomical increase in poor metabolic health around the world so how does this happen and how do we stop it after consuming carbohydrates our bodies convert that food into glucose a simple sugar that travels through our bloodstream as glucose enters our bloodstream the hormone insulin increases and acts as a gatekeeper to ourselves opening the cellular door allowing glucose to enter and be used either for immediate energy or stored for later use this combination of glucose and insulin results in quick energy delivery throughout our bodies if there is extra glucose in our bloodstream insulin helps our body store this excess glucose in our fat cells so we can access it later when our bodies need energy and don't have any food handy it tries to turn to these fat cells for energy as long as insulin levels are higher the stored energy is locked in fat cells as insulin comes down the cells are unlocked and we can start using our stored fat as energy healthy metabolic flexibility is based on our body's ability to use glucose for energy at certain times and using fat for energy at other times when we have increased levels of insulin more often than not we prevent switching from glucose burning to fat-burning this is where our natural metabolic flexibility breaks down our bodies need constant fuel after all the glucose in our bloodstream has been distributed and the energy from stored fat is not easily accessible because of the presence of insulin we begin to feel sluggish hungry and start craving more food so we eat again and if the food is high in carbohydrates more insulin is released restarting the cycle of energy consumption and storage all over again our bodies remain constantly saturated in insulin insulin takes a toll on our bodies we age faster and can begin to develop insulin resistance which can lead to metabolic disorder and weight gain so how do we stop this cycle and return to our natural state of burning both carbohydrate and stored fat you Nissa T has studied and created products to help us achieve better metabolic health by following a few simple principles we can better activate the ability to access the extra fat we carry around and use it for energy and to improve our overall metabolic health the you miss 'ti principles include prioritized protein fuel with fat and control carbohydrates protein is critical in building and maintaining healthy muscle and bone and most people don't get enough often hunger and cravings sabotage the most well intentioned health plans FAT also has no insulin response and digests more slowly than carbohydrate helping us feel fuller longer by limiting carbohydrate consumption and focusing on less refined carbohydrates we allow insulin levels to fall which enables metabolic flexibility allowing our bodies to access fat stores to provide the energy required to function in addition to following these principles our bodies need time to allow insulin levels to recede you miss 'ti recommends a form of intermittent fasting we refer to as 4 for 12 by waiting 4 to 6 hours between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner and waiting 12 to 16 hours between dinner and breakfast with no snacking in between we can give our bodies the time needed to get into what we call the fat-burning zone the fat-burning zone or fbz is the time when insulin is low in our bodies use stored fat not glucose as energy people report a number of benefits from maximizing their time in the fat-burning zone including reduced cravings for unhealthy foods improved focus and concentration more mental and physical energy improved skin appearance in addition to healthy weight and body composition unicity has created several products that reinforce and support these principles making it easier than ever to activate an optimal health so now you know our bodies are amazing and complex metabolic machines and now that we are equipped with the right activating principles we can be on our way to returning to a healthier metabolically flexible state I hope you enjoyed that video I just think it is spectacular it is it conveys all of these ideas in a lovely accurate way now let me introduce one new concept in this talk and I hope that you're still taking notes stay off your phones pay attention if the body has low insulin for a prolonged period of time that means it's really burning high levels of fat you know that by now low insulin means high fat burning now within the body something very interesting starts to happen when it's been burning a lot of fat for a long time the body starts to make these small little things in the blood called ketones and this is from all of the fat burning so when the liver in particular is burning a lot of fat it starts to turn some of this into these small little pieces of fat that we call ketones now ketones in and of themselves are very beneficial molecules when someone's eating a diet that follows those three nutritional principles they can expect to have some ketones being produced and ketones have been found to benefit numerous aspects of the body we know from evidence from multiple published studies that ketones can help the brain the heart our muscles our body fat and even something called inflammation that you've all heard of in the brain there are studies in humans with Alzheimer's disease that when the brain is fed some ketones the brain starts to work better immediate memory gets better the brain starts to think more clearly in the case of the heart we know that when humans start to have heart failure when the heart isn't beating as well it will shift and start to use ketones more because ketones help the heart beat more blood every time it contracts so helps the heart work more efficiently muscle also is benefited by ketones my laboratory at my University published a paper just last year finding that ketones helped the muscle work in a way that produces less oxidative stress we're also just about to publish a paper that finds that ketones actually help our body fat have a higher metabolic rate so did you know that your fat tissue has its own metabolic rate and ketones help it be about three times higher than normal and then lastly inflammation is relevant to numerous chronic diseases including insulin resistance and diabetes and ketones help turn down the inflammation so from top to bottom ketones are known to help the body be a little better now in the video you were reminded of the three nutritional principles within you Nissa T and this guides the way we think about what we eat and I hope you remember these prioritize protein make sure you eat enough third our second fuel with fat help the body use fat for fuel by eating it and then the other principle control carbohydrates this just means be smart about your choices of carbohydrate now these three principles are very deliberate we came up with these ideas because of what they each do to insulin as I mentioned a moment ago if you eat a pure carbohydrate source insulin will spike up to 10 times and stay higher for up to maybe four hours depending on the person if you eat pure protein then you'll get a modest insulin spike it's small usually and then if you eat pure fat well there's no insulin phonce whatsoever now let's look at how this matters in a day someone wakes up in the morning and you'll see that we're gonna look at someone's insulin levels over time when we wake up in the morning our insulin is low but then we immediately eat a starchy sugary processed breakfast cereal or toast or a bagel or a bowl of rice and insulin climbs and then it comes down and right about when it's coming down a few hours later well then it's time for lunch and we eat a starchy or sugary lunch a sandwich or yogurt something with too much sugar in it or starch and we bump insulin up again and then right when insulin is coming back down we bump it up again with a starchy or sugary dinner now what happens of course when insulin is low is that the body has these brief moments of fat burning because remember the body can only burn fat if insulin is low and so we have these brief moments of fat burning and you'll see that it's a little bigger in the morning and of course that's because insulin has had more time while we sleep to come down and so we wake up in the morning and we're in a little higher fat burning than we will be for the rest of the day now this is in a good situation this is assuming that the person is waiting for hours between breakfast and lunch for hours between lunch and dinner and then waiting 12 to 16 hours between dinner and breakfast the next day that's the good way to do it to give your body periods of time in the day to burn fat now let's mix things up a little bit rather than start the day with the high carbohydrate breakfast what if someone instead were to focus on the two other macronutrients rather than eating a high carbohydrate what if they were focusing more on fat and protein the two Matt nutrients that have little or no effect on insulin well that would mean the low insulin when the person woke up gets to stay low all morning and that of course means that that little bit of fat-burning that was happening in the morning well it's bigger than it was before we're giving the body more time to have low insulin and of course that means the fat burning flame just gets a little bigger now let's take it one step further what if in addition to breakfast we also swap out a lunch and we mix both breakfast and lunch in to follow the three nutritional principles within unicity science well now in this case when insulin was low in the morning when they woke up insulin can stay low all day until maybe the carbohydrate heavy breakfast or dinner rather that we eat with our family or our friends of course what that means is all day from the moment we wake up we're Fanning the flames of fat-burning so that little bit of fat burning that's happening when we wake up it gets bigger and bigger and bigger every hour of the day that we allow insulin to stay low we keep turning on the fat-burning we let it just keep raging which is a great way to help our body fat stay at a healthy level or get to a healthy level now let's look at that last meal for just a second this is how I live my life as a father husband scientist professor I do this every day dinnertime is the most social meal for me because I sit with my family and I eat dinner with my wife and my beautiful children who are sometimes very naughty but they're always very cute so we're eating our dinner maybe more carbohydrate well we look at that insulin bump and can you think of a nice way to help that insulin bump be a little smaller well unicity has some good waise with the BIOS life or bio seven if you proceed the carbohydrate meal with the fiber well then you take that big insulin curve that insulin bump and you just bring it down you help that insulin spike be smaller than it would be otherwise and so you just help the fat-burning keep going now in conclusion as your temporary teacher and professor I hope that you've learned a couple things one when you eat refined carbohydrates and sugar your insulin levels will spike that will mean the body must switch to sugar burning mode that's the fuel you will use refined starches and sugars you become a sugar burner because of insulin in contrast when you focus on fat as a fuel source in your diet insulin comes down and now you can start burning fat for fuel and remember the key the critical component in helping the body learn to burn fat for fuel and glucose or sugar for fuel is what insulin is doing high insulin means sugar burning high fat a low insulin rather it means fat burning I hope you've been able to learn something useful on metabolic fuel and how to be the healthiest you can thank you so much for listening

Channel: Unicity International

Views: 152,562

Keywords: Low-carb, Insulin, Metabolism, Metabolic, Metabolic Flexibility, Ketosis, Metabolic health, fat for fuel, Ketones

Id: 3eMWbmXYuHw

Length: 30min 4sec (1804 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 12 2019