- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science
and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm
a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from
my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of
my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the
sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a
personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've been getting my blood
work done for many years now, and that's where the simple reason that only through quality blood work, and now through the advent of DNA test can one really get a clear picture of what's going on with their health. Things like metabolic
factors and hormones, all the various triglycerides. These are things that can only be measured from a quality blood test. And now with DNA tests, you can get an additional window into your current health status and the trajectory of your health. What's really wonderful
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InsideTracker's plans and use the code Huberman at checkout. Today's podcast is also brought to us by ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a virtual private network that keeps your data secure and private. It does that by routing
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of not securing my data well enough. A few years back I had
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to us by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink, that gives you a total foundation
of vitamins and minerals and probiotics to support
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Greens once or twice a day because it's the simplest
and most straightforward way to get my basis of
important vitamins, minerals and probiotic taken care off. All of those things combined
to support various aspects of my health, such as brain health, such as gut health. For instance, there's a
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is important for things like focus and cognition, as
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Greens late in the day and not have it keep me awake. If you want to try Athletic Greens, you can go to
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supply of vitamin D3+K2. Vitamin D3, as many of you know, you can get from the sun, but many people even if
they're already getting a lot of sun exposure, still have vitamin D3
levels that are too low. And vitamin D3 is very important for a huge number of
cardiovascular, immune, metabolic and other aspects of health. So once again, if you go to
www.athleticgreens.com/huberman, you'll get the five travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3+K2. Today is the third episode
in our series of episodes about physical and
athletic skill performance and skill learning in general. And today we're going to talk
about the science of tools for fat loss. And fat loss is something that interests a large number of people. Many people want to lose fat, many people are athletes
who need to lose fat. And in general, we know that
having body fat percentages that are too high is unhealthy for us. And most people struggle to lose fat. Most people struggled to
lose weight generally, but most people especially
struggled to lose body fat or what we call adipose tissue. Now, this is a huge topic on the internet. There's a lot of controversy. Today, we're going to
talk about some things related to fat loss, and that are powerful for fat loss that I'm guessing most of you
have never heard about before. You may have heard about a few of them, but I'm guessing you haven't
heard about all of them. This episode is going to be
rich with science-based tools that are gleaned from a variety of aspects of the literature, including the use of cold, including brown fat, including something called beige fat. We're going to talk about
something called NEAT. We're going to talk about all
sorts of aspects of fat loss that are governed by your nervous system. And this is I think an important gap that's missing in the
discussion about fat loss. You can hear a lot of
information out there about the role of things like insulin and various diets like ketogenic diets or vegan diets or Mediterranean diets. And there's some great stuff out there, and there's some really
terrible information out there, and there's a lot of controversy. We did a number of episodes talking about the role of hormones on metabolism and the role of food
on mood and wellbeing. So if you're interested in those topics, please check them out. I will touch a little
bit on hormones today. Things like insulin and
leptin, just a little bit. But today's episode is mainly
going to be focused on, how the nervous system, neurons, and some of the cells
they collaborate with, like glioma and macrophages, how those encourage or can
encourage accelerated fat loss. Because it turns out they can. Remember your nervous system
which includes your brain and your spinal cord
and all the connections that they make with
the organs of the body, governs everything. It's the on switch and the
off switch for immune system. It's the on switch and the off switch. It turns out also for fat burning. And so the nervous system
and the role of the brain and other neurons has
been vastly overlooked in the discussion about losing fat. Now, I would be remiss and I'd probably come under
a pretty considerable attack, if I didn't just acknowledge upfront a core truth of metabolic science and also of neuroscience, frankly, which is that calories
in versus calories out, meaning how many calories you ingest, versus how many calories you burn is the fundamental and
most important formula in this business of fat loss and weight management in general. There's simply no way around the fact that if you ingest far more
calories than you burn, you're likely to gain weight. And a good portion of that weight is likely to be adipose tissue fat. It's also true that if
you ingest fewer calories than you burn, that you will lose weight, and that a significant portion of that will come from body fat. What portion? Depends on a number of factors. But that simple formula is important. On a previous episode, I
mentioned the complications with the statements of
a calorie is a calorie. And indeed there is
evidence from for instance Robert Lustig, who's a
pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco has talked about how highly processed
foods change the way that we utilize food, and can lead to higher
incidences of obesity and other metabolic syndromes
that go against the idea that a calorie is a calorie and that's it. So a calorie is a calorie
as a unit of energy, and we need to accept and
acknowledge this calories in, meaning calories ingested
versus calories burned formula. But the calories burn portion
is strongly influenced by a number of things that you can control that can greatly accelerate or increase the amount of adipose tissue or the proportion of adipose tissue that you burn in response
to exercise and food. So your hormones are important. Your thermogenic milieu, meaning how warm or how cold your body is? How cold you make it, how warm you make it? But also your level of metabolism. Your levels of thyroid hormone and something that's
hardly ever discussed, but is well supported by
the scientific literature, how much innervation? Meaning how much connectivity there is, between your nervous system and fat. Today, we're going to talk about the fact that your body fat of various kinds, and there are several kinds of body fat are actually innervated by neurons. Neurons connect to your body fat and can change the probability that that body fat will be burned or not. So your nervous system
is the master controller of this process, and it plays a strong
role in the calories out, the calories burned component. So as usual, we're going to
discuss a little bit of science. I promise I won't go
too deep into lipolysis and all sorts of things
related to fat oxidation. We're going to break down that process into two important steps. And if you can understand
those two important steps then the rest of the tools
will be very straightforward to understand and manage. And I do believe that
today you will walk away with many new tools that
you could incorporate into any kind of fat loss regimen that will greatly accelerate that process, because it's grounded in
quality peer-reviewed science. Throughout the episode, I'm going to talk about
some behavioral tools. In fact, I'll mostly talk
about behavioral tools. I will also talk about
compound, supplements. Many of you are into supplements. Some of you aren't, and that's fine. For those of you that
are into supplements, an important issue in a
discussion about supplements for fat loss or otherwise
is going to be the quality of those supplements and the accuracy about what's in those
supplement bottles and tablets, et cetera. I usually mention this at
the end of the podcast, but this podcast we've partnered
with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E. Because Thorne we believe
has the highest levels of stringency in terms of
the quality of the compounds in their supplements and the
amounts of those compounds. If you want to see the supplements I take, you can go to www.thorne.com/u/huberman. You can see the supplements that I take, that will also allow you to get 20% off any of those supplements, or 20% off any of the other
supplements that Thorne makes. Thorne has partnered with the Mayo Clinic and all the major sports teams. So there's a very strong
basis for their stringency. Again, you don't need to use supplements. I'm certainly not encouraging
anyone to use supplements if that's not your thing, but if you're going to use supplements, make sure that your supplement source is one a very high quality. With that said, I want to get started and talk about the
various tools for fat loss and how neuroscience,
neurons control fat loss. Before I do that, I want to set the context correctly and extract some of the key takeaways from previous episodes, because if your foundation of health and your foundation of hormones and your foundation of
metabolism isn't right, it's going to be very hard to get the most out of any kind of exercise
or fat loss protocol. In previous episodes, I
talked all about the science and the details going
into particular protocols. We don't have time to do that now, and I want to get to the new material. However, there are a couple bins, a couple items that you should make sure you're getting correctly. And if you're not perfect about
these, don't worry about it, most people are not perfect about them, I'm certainly not perfect about them. But we should all be
striving to get quality and sufficient sleep. I did four full episodes on sleep and how to get better at sleeping through things like light
exposure, temperature, timing your sleep correctly
for your so-called chronotype, if you're a night owl or a morning person. That's the first four
or I think five episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast. Get your sleep right, get your light exposure right, avoid bright light in your eyes at times you wanted to be asleep, and get bright light in your eyes at times you want to be awake. So get your sleep right. The other thing is essential fatty acids. I talked about this in
the food and mood episode, but I also talked about it
during the hormones episodes. We need fatty acids. They are vital to so many
aspects of our health. You don't have to get
them from supplements. You can, if you want to, but you need to get them from your food. They are essential. There's a reason there's an
E the essential part there. Of the fatty acids, there are multiple kinds, but for the antidepressant effects where the levels of fatty acids
that will promote good mood and also healthy metabolism and we'll start to shift the
needle in the right direction on bloodborne cardiovascular factors. The key thing is to get the levels of EPA that you ingest above
1000 milligrams per day. So that doesn't mean just
taking a thousand milligrams or more of say fish oil or krill oil or whatever your preferred source is. It means getting above a
thousand milligrams of EPA which may require that you
ingest more essential fatty acids than just a thousand milligrams per day. That of course can be
done through food sources, things like fatty fish, or if you're not into eating fish, you've quality meats that
are grass raised can do that. There are other sources
of essential fatty acids, of course also from plant sources. So look, those up online. It's really easy to find. But the research and the literature shows that you want to get above
a thousand milligrams of EPA per day, because that's when you can
best support your metabolism and position yourself for good fat loss. As well for people who
have cravings issues, they crave sweets all the time, I talked about this in
the gut-brain episode and hormones and food. That you have neurons in
your gut that are craving, they're seeking essential fatty acids and they're craving and seeking
amino acids from your food. Now, these are not supplements
that they crave per se, they're craving those things because that's what your body
needs and your brain needs. But those same neurons
will respond to sugars. And so many people who are craving sugar can satisfy that sugar
craving by giving the neurons so to speak what they actually want, which are amino acids and
essential fatty acids. That includes EPA, but
also things like glutamine and amino acid that can
really reduce sugar cravings if you take a teaspoon of that, or even a tablespoon of
that a few times a day. You have to ease into that a little bit, because some people can get
a little bit of GI distress from too much glutamine. But glutamine has also been
shown to improve symptoms of leaky gut. It's a powerful amino acid. And yes, you can also get it from food. Things like cottage cheese are
high in glutamine, et cetera. And then finally you can't
really position yourself to have a strong metabolism
if your iodine levels aren't correct, and your thyroid levels aren't correct. You can overdo iodine. So you don't want to do that. A lot of table salt
has iodine added to it, but some people need to add iodine, by ingesting things like kelp, et cetera.. But one of the best ways to
support the thyroid system and metabolism in general, is to make sure you're
getting enough selenium. Sometimes called selenium each day. Simple way to do that is to ingest the highest concentration of selenium food that I'm aware of, which is Brazil nuts, one or two or three of those per day. You'll have more than enough selenium to meet the thyroid needs. You don't want your
selenium to be too high, you don't want a diet
too high in anything. So again, sleep, sufficient EPAs, glutamine if you have
issues with leaky gut or sugar cravings can really help. Get your gut microbiome, right? I may have missed saying that, but get your gut microbiome right. That does not necessarily mean you need to ingest probiotics. You can, if you want to, but you can also just
simply ingest a serving or two of fermented foods per day, that can greatly assess. So things like sauerkraut, kimchi, every culture has a different source or sources of fermented foods, those can really help the gut microbiome, and then make sure that
your thyroid hormone is supported through the ingestion of sufficient iodine not too much and sufficient selenium, not too much. Okay? Sleep, EPA, glutamine, fermented foods, iodine and selenium. That sets the basis for how things like exercise, cold and
some of the compounds and other things that we're
going to talk about today that are I'm guessing going
to be truly new to many of you that can really increase the
burn factor in the equation of calories in versus calories burned. Okay? So on the one hand we have
this reality of calories in, versus calories burned. However, I would also be
remiss if I didn't mention an incredible study that
was done by my colleague, Alia Crum at Stanford. She's a faculty member, professor in the psychology department. Looking at how belief affects, just thinking can impact
the effects of things like exercise on weight loss. These are just incredible results. What they did was they took subjects who were hotel service people
that would clean the hotels and come in and change
the linens and so forth. Divide them into two groups. One group, they were told moving around and doing your duties for your job, meet the standards for US
guidelines for activity and movement, et cetera. And a basic lecture about how movement is good for you, et cetera. But mostly just that
their daily activities met the standards for the US. The other group, however, was
given a bunch of information about how movement and their daily routine was very good for cardiovascular health, it could be good for
weight loss, et cetera. And then they tracked these subjects over a period of many weeks. The take home message from this study was that simply being told
that movement is good for you can lead to weight loss, et cetera. Led to significantly more body fat loss, waist-to-hip ratio
changes in the direction that most people would want. But essentially a slimming
down, if you will. And all sorts of other positive effects on things like cardiovascular health. Simply by the knowledge
that movement and exercise can help various health markers. So this is remarkable and it speaks to the power of the nervous system and the power of belief in
governing aspects of our body and our physiology that
one would otherwise think we're outside our conscious control. Now, of course, any of you
that think scientifically which I imagine if you watch this podcast or listen to this podcast
is all of you by now probably thinking, well, maybe they just moved around more, or maybe they stood up and sat down more, maybe they did something
else that was different. And indeed there's a strong possibility that they did things differently
than the other group, but the mere knowledge that
exercise is good for you, that movement is good for you, shifted their behavior
and their physiology in the direction of enhanced weight loss, fat loss, et cetera. So how we think about a
given set of activities affects how we perform those activities. And how we think about and
perform those activities has a real effect on our physiology. So somewhere between
the hard and fast rule that governs fat loss and weight loss, which is if you ingest more
calories than you burn, you'll either maintain or gain weight. Typically, you'll gain weight, although not always. If you ingest about as
many calories as you burn, you'll maintain weight, typically. And if you ingest fewer
calories than you burn, typically you'll lose weight. That's the kind of rule of fat loss. And yet we also have these
belief effects which show, and this has been
replicated again and again, that how we think about a process, whether or not we think it's beneficial can change our physiology in ways that can be beneficial to us. Somewhere in between those two extremes of hardcore metabolic science and belief of why a bunch of protocols that are grounded in quality
peer-reviewed science and in physiology that you can leverage to increase the rates of fat loss. And so that's what we're
going to talk about today. I love this topic and it's not that I'm so obsessed with fat loss, but rather the first the project
I ever worked on in science was thermogenesis and fat loss. I joined a laboratory as an undergraduate, and the guy I worked for
loved to explore new compounds and how they impacted thermogenesis. And so we looked at how
things like MDMA/Ecstasy, how antipsychotics, antidepressants, various weight loss drugs
that were on the market. How those impacted body temperature and fat loss and metabolism? And we just had so much fun doing it. So if you detect a smile on my face, that's what that's about. And I also learned a lot, and I also came to really appreciate that this tissue of our bodies, adipose tissue and fat, we think of as just this unfortunate thing that's like we're told
it's a core energy source if we ever entered a famine
and that's all true, et cetera. You come to realize that
the cells in our body, they are there as fuel for
the furnace of our body, which is our metabolism. And there's a third player. And that's where it
really gets interesting. That the nervous system,
neurons has the opportunity to turn up the intensity of that furnace. It has the opportunity to
increase the amount of heat that we produce and therefore
the amount of energy that we burn. And I was also really intrigued
by something which is that, growing up, I think we all know people who can eat a tone and never
seem to gain any body fat. Or people who seem to eat very little and seem to gain body fat very easily. And I was always intrigued by that. And it turns out there are a
number of different factors that relate to that. But the nervous system is the one that we can really control. Both through behaviors and what we eat, but also in terms of this thing
that we call thermogenesis. There was one particular
story I want to relate to, that does not suggest any protocol. In fact, I'm going to discourage you from following this protocol. Please do not try the compound
that I'm about to describe. One of the favorite things
that we like to do in that lab was to find rare compounds and test them. And at the time I was
reading about thermogenesis and I learned about a compound that was actually discovered
in the armory factories of World War II. And it was discovered
because women in particular who were working in these factories would take a brush and
dip it in a compound or a paint rather, and they would then paint
the numbers with a stencil onto things like bombs and
ammunition of various kinds. And they were losing weight like crazy. It turns out that occasionally
they'd lick the brush, and then they would go back
just to get a sharper point on the brush, and then they would paint
onto these various bullets and missiles and so forth. Bombs and so forth. And they started shedding
all their body fat. And many of them losed, excuse
me, lost a lot of weight, a significant portion of their weight without changing anything
else that they were doing, what they were eating, et cetera. It turned out that that compound is something called Dinitrophenol, DNP. And over the years Dinatrophenol,
DNP has gained popularity in some niche cultures, mainly bodybuilders, athletes
even in the modeling industry. It is a absolutely terrible
compound for anyone to use, because it's highly fatal
if your body temperature goes too high. Hyperthermia will kill you. And indeed many people have
died using Dinatrophenol as a weight loss drug or attempting to use it as a weight loss drug. But Dinitophenol really
illustrates a principle which is that your
metabolism includes things like thyroid hormone and
growth hormone, et cetera. But your body temperature and the way you utilize energy is controlled by your nervous system. And the way Dinatrophenol works
is by changing the neurons and the way that the
neurons that connect to fat change the way fat burns up. So we are not going to suggest, I am not suggesting that
you use Dinatrophenol. However, there are other things that you can do that can
change the relationship between these neurons
and the fat of your body in ways that can powerfully
accelerate fat loss. And I don't know why we don't
hear about these things more, but probably because most of what you see out there on the internet focuses more on what you could eat and should eat or shouldn't eat. It concentrates on exercise regimens which we will also talk about. But the burn factor, your thermogenic
environment is one of the, if not the most important factors in this business of fat loss. And since I'm a neuroscientist that's what we're going to talk about. So let's talk about fat utilization. Let's talk about how fat
is converted into energy which is sometimes also
called fat burning. What I'd like you to know is that this is a two-part process. Okay? In reality, there are
many biochemical steps. And if you log onto the internet, or you open up a textbook
and you want to learn about fat utilization, you're going to see a lot of chemistry. And I'm happy to go deep into
that chemistry if you like. But I think most of you
are probably interested in what are the leverage points? Where can you exert control
over this process in ways that benefit you? So I'm going to focus mainly on those. Okay? This is not to upset the aficionados and I will put in some
nomenclature, but here we go. There's two parts to this process. One, is fat mobilization. And the second is fat
oxidation or utilization. Okay? So the first thing that
has to happen for body fat to get burned up or used and reduced is that it has to get mobilized. And that's a process called lipolysis, but I actually don't care if
you know the name lipolysis, you just have to move that
fat out of the position that it's in. You have to get it out of the fat cells. All right? Fat cells can be visceral
around our visceral organs or they can be subcutaneous
under our skin. Most people are thinking
about subcutaneous fat when they think about fat. So here's the deal. And if you want more detail, great, I'll touch on that in a bit. But basically stored fat has two parts that are relevant here. It's got the fatty acid part, and that's the part
that your body can use. And that's attached to
something called glycerol and they're linked by a backbone. So already, probably too much
chemistry for both of you. But what you want is you
want to break the backbone. So if you just can
remember to mobilize fat, you got to break the backbone between glycerol and these fatty acids. Okay? That's accomplished by
an enzyme called lipase, but you can forget all that if you want. Remember, we're just
trying to mobilize fat. So the first step is to
get those fatty acids moving around in the bloodstream to get them out of those fat cells. And then they can travel
and be used for energy. And that second part, remember first part is mobilization. The second part is oxidation. Is then those fatty acids, those are potential fuel. They're just potential fuel, but you haven't burned the fat yet, you've just moved it
out of your fat cells. They're going to go into cells
that can use them for energy. And once they are inside those cells, they're still not burned up. You need to oxidize them. Think oxidation is the burnup part. They need to be moved
into the mitochondria and then they can be converted
into ATP into energy. So just to really zoom
out again to make sure I don't lose anybody. You got to mobilize the fat, then you have to oxidize the fat. In other words, you have to mobilize it, then you actually have to
convert it into energy. If you just mobilize it, and you don't convert it into energy, you don't oxidize it, it can be returned to body fat. And many of the things that
the nervous system can do, is to increase the mobilization of fat, but also the oxidation of fat. Okay? So you have two opportunities
to burn more fat, and both of those
opportunities are governed by your nervous system. By neurons that literally
send little wires that we call axons into
fat and release chemicals that provide a stimulus
for more of that fat to be mobilized, and then later for more of
that fat to be burned up. Okay? So we could go really deep on this, but I'm not going to go
much deeper than that, because this isn't a biochemistry of fatty acid metabolism lecture. This is about how to burn fat
using your nervous system. But remember, there's a mobilization step, and then there's an oxidation step. I think anyone of you, all of you should be
able to internalize that. Mobilize then oxidize. Okay? Mobilize then oxidize. So what are these neurons
that connect a fat doing? What are they releasing exactly? How do they actually
increase fat mobilization? And how do they increase fat oxidation? Burning of fat. Well, there are a couple
of things that they release that encourage that process. And the main one that you need
to know about is epinephrine or adrenaline. The conversion of these
fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria of cells
is favored by adrenaline. Okay? And adrenaline is
released from two sources. Adrenaline is released
from the adrenal glands, which set a top our
kidneys and our lower back. And it's also released from the so-called
sympathetic nervous system. Although that name is a bit of a misnomer, because it has nothing
to do with sympathy, has to do with stimulating alertness and promoting action of the body. There's a big mistake in the literature that is finally being
corrected among those who know. The mistake in the literature
is that the adrenal glands and the release of adrenaline
is what stimulates fat loss and fat oxidation. In fact, it was thought for a long time that adrenaline swimming
around in your body of when you're fasted, because fasting can increase adrenaline or when you're engaging
in intense exercise or when you're stressed is
going to promote fat oxidation. That's actually not the case. The adrenaline that
stimulates fat oxidation, the burning of fat is coming from neurons that actually connect to the fat, not hormones like adrenaline
that are swimming around in your system. It's a local process. And this is very important
because it means that, what you do, the specific
patterns of movements and the specific environment you create that can stimulate these
particular neurons to activate fat, meaning to release fat, to mobilize it and then to burn it, is going to be a powerful
lever that you can use in order to increase fat loss. So what have we said so far? We've said that you've got to
mobilize and you got to burn fat and that your nervous system
is in control of that process. It's not just about calorie deficit. Okay, so let's talk about how to activate the nervous system in
ways that it promotes more liberation, movement,
mobilization of fat and more oxidation of fat. So one of the most powerful
ways to stimulate epinephrin which is also called
adrenaline from these neurons that connect to fat and
to thereby stimulate more fat mobilization and
oxidation is through movement. But I'm not talking about exercise. The type of movement
that I'm referring to, is extremely subtle. And some of you may be familiar
with this type of movement, but I'm guessing you're
probably not familiar with what I'm about to tell you, which is that shiver or
shivering is a strong stimulus for the release of adrenaline
epinephrin into fat and the increase in fat
oxidation and mobilization. But shiver is not just induced by cold, and there are other
subtle forms of movement that can greatly increase
fat metabolism and fat loss. There was a group in England
during the 1960s and 70s that discovered a pathway by
which subtle forms of movement can greatly increase fat loss. This is the work of Rothwell and Stock. It's very famous in the
thermogenesis literature. And I learned about this early on, when I was an undergraduate and I asked, how did they come across this? And here's how the story goes. They were aware that some people overeat and yet don't put on weight. Other people overeat
even just a little bit and they seem to accumulate
extra adipose tissue. Now, this is long before
all the discussions about microbiome and
hormone factors, you know it was long before many
of the hormone factors besides insulin had even been discovered. What they did was they
examined people who overate and did not gain weight. And what they observed was
that those people engaged in lots of subtle movement
throughout the day. In other words, they were fidgeters. And that's what they call them. I'm not going to do the British
accent version of fidgeters. But Roth and Stock were British. What they found were people that overeat but don't gain weight as a consequence. And in fact, many people who
had low levels of body fat had a lot of resting tremor, not of the Parkinsonian type, but they would bounce their
knee while they were sitting, when they would talk, they would engage in
very angular movements, they were sort of electric. In fact, now in science, I was chuckling about
this as I was diving back into this literature, because the other day I
heard a wonderful lecture on a totally different topic
from a colleague of mine and we all adore him. He's over in Europe and he's this tremendously
successful scientist. So we like to poke fun at him. And every one of his movements
is incredibly electric and staccato. And he's rail thin and
he eats like a horse. And so it fits very
well into the discovery of Rothwell and Stock who discovered that fidgeters people
that bounce their knee, people that have a head bob
while they're listening, people that nod a lot, people that stand up and sit
down a lot throughout the day, and people that pace
burn anywhere from 800 to 2,500 calories more
than the control group in the experiments that they looked at. And indeed, there's been a
modern look into all this, and these numbers check out that simply moving around a lot, even if those are subtle movements, greatly increases the amount
of energy that you burn. And people who overeat, the people who can have the
second or the third doughnut or doughnuts at all and
don't seem to put on weight to the same degree, they are people that move
around a lot even when seated. They're are people that
will often move their limbs very quickly as well. There even have been studies
that have explored other things that correlate with fidgeters. Fidgeters stand up very
quickly at the end of a lecture or they start to gather
their things very quickly, whereas non fidgeters don't. So dogs like my bulldog Costello,
definitely not a fidgeter. Every movement is incredibly
slow and deliberate. Sitting down as a process, if you ask him to sit down
and sort of a slow motion. You ask him to get up and he kind of looks at
you sighs and stands up. The fidgeter is the
opposite of that, right? You say, how are you doing? They go, great. So even sometimes their
speech will be accelerated although not always. But staccato movements,
fidgeting, et cetera. And in 2015, and again in 2017, there've been studies
that have explored this, using some modern metabolic tracking and indeed simply moving a lot, being a fidgeter, bouncing your knee, standing up and pacing several times or many times throughout the day led to considerable amounts
of fat loss and weight loss when people were ingesting
the same amount of food, if they overate, they
were able to compensate and burn off that food. And if they were trying to lose weight and they incorporated
this fidgeting protocol of deliberately trying to fidget more and move around during the day, pace, stand up more quickly, sit down more often, sit down and stand up more often rather. They found that they greatly
increased their weight loss anywhere from 20 to 30% increases. And in some cases, you know,
there always those few people who burned a lot more. It seems to work best in people who are already slightly overweight. So for people that are overweight, who are kind of averse to exercise, fidgeting might actually
be a good entry point. And 800 to 2,500 calories
is a considerable amount of calories when you
really think about it. Now, why am I telling you this? Well, there's clearly a
tool to export from this, which is that you can increase
the amount of calories burned without having to go on
additional long runs. I do hope that people
are exercising regularly because it's so important
for other aspects of brain and body health. But nonetheless, we are all time limited and we are not all so
ready to embrace exercise. I have a family member
who has been slowly coaxed into exercise, but if I were to tell her, for instance, you need to fidget more,
she'd probably go for it. So this is a powerful way
to increase the calories that are burned. Now, that's great. And you can think about the protocols. But I want to nest that protocol in what I said before, which is that, fat is
controlled by these neurons and the epinephrin they release. You might say, well, how could
these little micro movements lead to so much caloric burn? And that's where it
really gets interesting. Rothwell and Stock and
others that they worked with, subsequently found that these
little fidgety movements, the engagement of certain
aspects of our musculature that are nothing like exercise. It's not these large coordinated
or rhythmic body movements, but rather subtle little
bits of fidgety movement. And here I am doing a lot of
fidgety movement as an example, tapping the pen, this kind of thing. I was probably that kid
in class most of the time. And I was like, I try not
to do it to irritate people, but I was definitely a knee bouncer. I'm not particularly lean or not. But I was definitely... This is a common activity for me. People that do that sort of thing, it turns out that it's not
the kind of caloric burn that we normally think of, of like, oh, you'll
running, lifting weights, swimming, yoga, et cetera. Those subtle movements
of our core musculature, not just the core, but all our limbs and our musculature, those low level movements, they trigger epinephrin
release from these neurons, and they stimulate the
mobilization of fat. And then that fat is
oxidized at higher rates. And I find this fascinating. I wish more people knew about it, which is why I'm telling
you about it today. This has nothing to do with exercise in the traditional form, and yet 800 to 2,500 calories per day. That's a considerable
amount of fat oxidized. If you are in a calorie maintenance mode or if you're sub caloric, that's going to add to it
still additional fat loss. The data on this are tremendous. I'll link to a few studies. If you're really interested in learning about what's called neat. N-E-A-T which is non-exercise
activity thermogenesis. NEAT. So what's the protocol? Fidget. If you're really interested
in burning calories and you already exercise, you want to burn more or you don't have the
opportunity to exercise or you're averse to exercise
for whatever reason, fidgeting, movements, staccato movement, standing up, walking around, pacing, all the sort of nervous activities that were so critical of other people and sometimes in ourselves are actually mobilizing and oxidizing a lot of fat and a lot of energy. And while this probably won't compensate for chronic overeating, the caloric burn from
this is considerable, and very likely can offset a meal that had excessive calories or a kind of steady
state of eating too much. And it also starts to open
up all sorts of thoughts and discussion about when you travel, you tend to eat foods
that are kind of outside your normal ones. We tend to eat foods that
aren't so great for us, we also tend to be a
little bit more sedentary when we travel we're on
the plane, et cetera. But all of that aside, just the use of something
like low-level movement. And it's almost like a tremor, but also these select short,
small fidgety movements. I'm intentionally doing
a lot of these today. So you have examples that you can use to select from if you like. These can have a major effect on fat loss and it raises a second tool. If these low, meaning
these small movements that we engage in trigger
epinephrin adrenaline release from these neurons of the
sympathetic nervous system that innervate fat and increase fat mobilization and oxidation. Now, it should make sense why shivering is one of the strongest stimuli that one can incorporate
to stimulate fat loss. Now, shivering is almost
always associated with cold. We think shivering, we think cold, because when we get cold, we shiver. And there are two ways that
shivering can increase fat loss. And there are several ways
that you can use shivering, you can leverage shivering and you can leverage cold
to accelerate fat loss. But you have to do it correctly. And most of the people that are using cold and frankly suggesting cold as a means to increase metabolism fat loss are suggesting the exact wrong protocol. In fact, the one I'm going
to recommend is 180 degrees in the opposite direction
to the typical protocol that you'd hear about. So let's talk about how to use cold and how to leverage shiver as
a particularly strong stimulus to increase fat loss through
mobilization and oxidation of these fatty acids. So in recent years there's
been a growing interest in the use of cold for
various things like, improving stress tolerance, improving metabolism,
recovery from exercise. I've talked about a number of those things and the uses of cold on this podcast. In fact, did an episode on
how to supercharge performance through palmer cooling, cooling the palms in specific ways or the
bottoms of the feet. And if you're interested in that, and how to improve performance
in endurance and strength, you can check out that episode. But most people out there
are using cold exposure typically by taking cold showers or by getting into cold
water of some other kind, a lake or a river or a
cold bath or an ice bath. And they are doing that
probably with mixed goals, meaning they both would like
to increase their metabolism and burn fat, as well as
improve mental resilience. Since today, we're talking
about accelerating fat loss through the use of science-based tools. I want to emphasize a study
that was published in nature just a couple of years ago, showing exactly how cold
increases metabolism and fat loss. Okay? So we have several kinds of fat. Three kinds in fact. We have white fat, white adipose tissue, and we have brown fat
or brown adipose tissue. And there's a third kind
which is beige adipose tissue. White fat is the type
that we traditionally think of as fat, subcutaneous fat. And it is not particularly
rich in mitochondria. It is there as an energy storage site and we have to mobilize the fat out as we talked about before
and burn it up elsewhere. Brown fat largely exists
between our shoulder blades and on the back of our
neck, between the scapulae. And it's rich with mitochondria which is why it's called brown fat. And brown fat has a
particular biochemical cascade whereby it can take food energy, it can take food, basically, break it down and convert it
into energy within those cells. And there's some
additional steps involved, but unlike fatty acids from white fat which have to travel elsewhere get broken down in mitochondria and convert into ATP, et cetera. Used by the mitochondria rather. Brown fat is thermogenic. It can actually use energy directly. It skips a step, and I
don't want to get diverted by going into all the biochemistry of it. Beige fat is sort of in between. It's white fat that could be brown fat, because it has some mitochondria in it, but not as many as brown fat. Now, cold exposure does several things. Making ourselves cold
can allow us to build up mental resilience because
getting into cold of any kind, doesn't matter if it's a cryochamber, doesn't matter if it's a cold day and you forgot your sweater or your parka. It doesn't matter if it's an ice bath or you're lying down in the snow. Cold causes the release of
adrenaline from your adrenals. And it causes the release of epinephrin from these neurons that connect to fat. Now, the big effects of cold on metabolism and fat burning are going
to be through two routes. One, is that if you
expose yourself to cold, you have the opportunity to
trigger activation of brown fat as well as to convert more
beige fat into true brown fat. So you essentially create a
stronger or a hotter furnace. That's the way to think about brown fat. It's like a furnace. And so with this principle that we started with a calories
in versus calories burned. What you're doing is you're
increasing the amount of burning, you're increasing the burn of energy by increasing the intensity
of the heat inside you so to speak. Okay? I'm talking here kind of metaphorically. Now, how can you do that? Well, if you get into cold water or an ice bath or a cold day, and you try and remain
calm and resist shivering, you actually short circuit this mechanism for increasing
brown fat thermogenesis. The paper published in nature shows that it is shivering itself that causes the brown fat
to increase your burning, your burn rate and your metabolism. And it works like this, when you get into cold and you shiver, the shivering that low level
movement of the muscle, those small movements triggers
the release of a molecule called succinate. S-U-C-C-I-N-A-T-E, succinate. And succinate acts on the brown fat to increase brown fat thermogenesis
and fat burning overall. It actually increases body heat through this brown fat
thermogenesis pathway. And it also over time can
increase the amount of brown fat by converting beige fat
into true brown fat. Now, how much cold exposure and how often? That's the key. But before I give that
detail or set of details. Remember if you resist the shiver, you are not going to get the
increased metabolic effect, because you are not going to
get the succinate release. So if you want to get your body heat, your thermogenic level to go up, you need to shiver. So now we have the NEAT, the non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So low levels of activity
as I described before, which are done away from cold, maybe do them in cold as well. As well as shiver in response to cold. And so the shiver itself is valuable for triggering the release of succinate. In fact, succinate is being evolved now by various drug manufacturers as a potential treatment for obesity. Although it hasn't really hit the market in its final form yet. Succinate is powerful for
its effects on brown fat. So how many times a week do you need to expose yourself to cold? Will depend on how much
fat you're trying to lose, and how much you're trying
to increase your metabolism. There are studies that describe
positive effects on fat loss of exposing yourself to cold, either through cold
shower or through ice bath or other cold water. It doesn't have to
actually have ice in it, provided it's cold enough
for anytime, anywhere, excuse me, between one
and five times per week. But it turns out that
just one exposure per week can be valuable. The question then is how long to get into that cold environment? And how cold should that environment be? So first let's talk about how long to get into that cold environment? The answer here might be
a little bit different than you might imagine. Most of you might think, oh, well if one minute is
good, three minutes is better, and if three minutes is better
than 10 minutes is best. But remember the goal is
to get the shiver induced release of succinate, so that succinate can
trigger the brown fat. It turns out that if you
want to trigger the shiver, what you want to do is
to get into the cold and then get out of the cold
and typically not dry off, and then get back into the
cold and out of the cold, that will definitely
stimulate more shivering than just getting into the cold itself. So what I'm not referring to, is getting into the cold
environment like an ice bath and waiting until you shiver
and staying there shivering. Okay? You also don't want to get hypothermic. And I want to be clear. You want to get approval from your doctor before you do any of this. When you get into cold water, there are two factors that will dictate whether or not you shiver. Probably three, but let's just talk about the main two. One, is how cold it is. So how cold should it be? And look, if you get into
water, that's very, very cold. It can actually shock your heart. It can actually give you a heart attack if it's truly, truly ice cold, and you're not adapted to that. So proceed with caution, please. I'm not a physician and I don't
want to see anyone get hurt. Just cold enough to be uncomfortable is a good place to start. So for some of you that's
going to be 60 degrees, for some of you that's
going to be 55 degrees, for some of you it's going
to be high thirties, right? Depends on how cold adapted you are, and people vary in terms of how
well they tolerate the cold. So what you need to do
is find a temperature that you can get into one to five, probably one to three times a week. If you really want this
to accelerate fat loss. And you want to get in until
you just start to shiver, and then you want to
get out and not dry off, wait anywhere from one to three minutes and then get back into the cold. Now, you'll notice when
you get back into the cold, it'll almost seem soothing, it might actually not induce shiv... It might take away the
shiver that you had. So here's a potential
kind of sets reps protocol that you can play with. Find a temperature then
induce a shiver for you. That's going to vary depending
on your cold tolerance and how cold adapted you are. One to three, maybe five times a week, get in until you... Or get under the shower or whatever it is, until you start to shiver. Genuinely shiver. Then after about a minute or so, get out, spend one to three minutes
out, but don't dry off, get back in for anywhere
from one to three minutes, but try and access the shiver point again. And you might do three
repetitions of that. So it's three times in
and three times out total. Okay? That's a great starting place. And what you don't want to
do is build up your tolerance to cold so fast, that pretty soon you're
able to resist the shiver, because remember the shiver is the source of the succinate release that will trigger brown fat thermogenesis. So if you'd like to see
this protocol spelled out, you can access it zero cost at a website which is www.thecoldplunge.com. The Cold Plunge is a company
they make cold plunges, and they were kind enough to gift one to the Human Lab Podcast. But I want to emphasize that
these protocols are free of cost. The folks at the Cold Plunge
are not just interested in marketing their product, but one of their main
interests is encouraging people to engage in cold exposure
for particular end points and goals like fat loss,
resilience, et cetera. Resisting inflammation. But their main focus is
providing people protocols and encouraging people to use
cold exposure of various kinds not just through their products, but through cold rivers
and jumps in the ocean and things like cold showers, whatever is most convenient and accessible for various people. And so we needed a place
where we could house these protocols in a permanent way, and not just for this episode. But so what they've agreed to do is, to post the protocols there, they should be very easy
to find on their website. This particular protocol we're referring to as the fat loss optimization protocol for lack of a better name. And it's really grounded in how cold it can be used to induce shiver. And again, it doesn't really matter how you're accessing that cold, provided you access to the shiver, and you're moving from
the cold environment to a slightly warmer environment. So getting out of the cold shower or getting out of the ice bath, et cetera, or out of the cold plunge, and then back in. Because it turns out that the cooling and rewarming process of the
body is where shiver kicks in. And so that's distinctly different than just trying to get into the cold and stay in the cold
for as long as possible. And if you zoom out a little bit and think about some examples in life, you'll understand why
that must be the case. For instance, people who do
a lot of cold water swims, you have these polar bear clubs, I think they call themselves. They do these cold water swims. I would sometimes see these
people swimming back and forth to Alcatraz and stuff like
that, which it seems risky. and they tell me it's very stimulating for the mind and body. Great. Sometimes those people are very lean, oftentimes they're not, and they're getting a
lot of cold exposure. And one of the things that happens is, if you expose yourself
to cold over and over, you adapt, you become cold adapted. And when you do that, you no longer get the epinephrine, the adrenaline release from the cold and therefore you don't
get the succinate release and the shivering and the
brown fat thermogenic effect quite as intensely. So if you want to use
cold for other reasons, and certainly cold water swims can be fun. And there's, you know, long
as you can do them safely, they're great. I've gotten into cold water swimming for some period of time. You can use cold for
resilience, et cetera. But if you want to use
cold to increase fat loss, then getting this shiver
process going the cooling and rewarming which
accelerates the amount of, or increases the amount of shiver. That's going to be the way to go. One note about cold
and some of the factors that it releases. A few years back there
was a lot of excitement about this hormone called
irisin, I-R-I-S-I-N, which was associated with cold. And there was a lot of excitement about its potential role
in increasing metabolism so much so that people
were starting to explore this as a potential fat loss drug. To my knowledge that went nowhere. The science eventually
shifted over to succinate as the main factor in
cold induced thermogenesis through this brown fat pathway. But if anyone out there is aware of any positive effects of iricin or of any signs of irisin
that I'm overlooking here, or that I'm speaking about
incorrectly, please let me know. I'd be very curious to learn. Now, I want to just talk about
brown fat a little bit more, and talk about a period in your life in which you were rich with brown fat, you had a ton of brown fat, and that's when you were a baby. Babies can't shiver. These neurons that release
epinephrin into fat are not wired up and really aren't present at sufficient levels or
in sufficient numbers when you are a baby. And therefore you can't shiver as a baby, and you can't warm yourself
up in cold environments very well. To compensate for that, mother nature installed in all of us an excess of brown fat early in life that exists again in the upper back, and the middle of the back
and the back of the neck. Over time if we don't expose
ourselves to cold environments or do other things that make a shiver, we lose a lot of that brown fat, but what's interesting about brown fat is that there's some evidence that brown fat just like white fat can both increase in size, but that you can also add new cells. Now, there's a little bit controversial. People always say you can't
change the number of fat cells, you can just shrink them
or increase their size. Well, it turns out that
epinephrin released from these little nerve
endings in brown fat and succinate circulating in the body may and I want to underscore
may have the effect of increasing the amount
of brown fat cells probably by converting these
beige fat cells into brown fat. So that allows us to become
much as we were early in life, where we metabolized like crazy and we'd heat ourselves
up without shivering. Some people have taken the
cold thing to the extreme, putting ice packs on
the back of their neck throughout the day. Did a episode all about
testosterone and estrogen, and there's this, let's
just call it a very niche, I have to imagine very,
very niche culture of people who are wearing literally, I'm not joking. They are these cool pack
ice pack underpants. They go by a name that I'm
not going to repeat on here, but you can find them on Amazon. Those are people that are
using cold packs on the body and on the groin to
try and increase things like testosterone. But as well to try and
increase thermogenesis and trying to increase their metabolism. Just remember if you become cold adapted, you're not going to get
the fat burning effects to the same degree. So cold is a powerful tool for fat loss, but you don't want to adapt. This is reminiscent of a rule that you hear about in endurance exercise and in strength exercise as well, which is, that you want to use
the minimal effective stimulus to promote growth or progress. So growth of a muscle or
improvements in endurance. If you go 10% further
on a run or 10% faster, you will likely see an
improvement in performance provided your recovery the
next time you come back and do that same round of exercise. You'll be able to do more work or complete the work
more easily, et cetera. You've adapted. If you do 20% more distance
or 20% more weight, you won't necessarily see the same commiserate level of gain or improvement. And so likewise with cold, if you're quickly moving
from 30 seconds of exposure to 10 minutes of exposure, you're overlooking the opportunity
to get the most fat loss and increase in metabolism
by stepping it up in smaller increments. Okay? And this also speaks to the rationale for using cold exposure
to accelerate fat loss for certain periods, but then maybe not doing it year round. If fat loss is your goal, maybe use it for two,
three months at a time and then stop for two,
three months at a time, because it is such a potent stimulus provided you engage in the shiver. Next I'd like to move to exercise
and how particular timing and types of exercise can
vastly improve fat loss. Before I do that, I just want to mention a
really important reference for those of you that are
interested in learning more about how neurons connect to fat? This is certainly a paper
that you'd want to look at, if you're interested in diving
deep into the literature and reading all the various studies. It's a review. And the title of the review
is neural innervation of white adipose tissue and
the control of lipolysis. That's neural innervation
of white adipose tissue and the control of lipolysis. It was published in Frontiers
in Neuroendocrinology. You can find that free online. They have the full text available. The first author is
Bartness, B-A-R-T-N-E-S-S. It's a great review. And I've talked about a number of things that are mentioned in the review. Follow the references in that review and the reference trail as we say, if you're interested
in learning more about also how neurons control brown fat. And before I moved to exercise, I also just want to highlight something that comes up every few years and has largely been considered myth now, but that is actually more interesting than most people might think, which is this issue of spot reduction. You know, in the 80s and 90s, there were a lot of commercials, late night infomercials, where they would talk
about spot reduction. If you do sit ups, will
you lose abdominal fat? If you do hip raises or glute raises, will you lose gluten hip fat. And I think everybody
knows now believes that, and understands that fat metabolism is something that happens
systemically throughout the body. That some body fat is
quote unquote more stubborn than others. Everyone varies in where
they tend to store fat or lose fat last. Number of factors that influence that, and in particular hormone receptors. But now at least in the
scientific literature, spot reduction and the possibility of real true spot reduction reductions
in fat in a targeted way, a body part or body area targeted way is becoming more of a reality
and may be a reality soon, because exercise that
triggers the activation of these nerve fibers, these neurons that innervate fat. In theory, if you can increase
the amount of epinephrin released at those particular
fat pads as they're called, they're actually called fat pads in the scientific literature. In theory, you could increase mobilization from those particular body fat sites. Okay? So because the new view that
the modern understanding is that it's not adrenaline
released systemically kind of bathing all your fat tissue, but rather its neurons
releasing adrenaline epinephrin locally that in theory, exercise that stimulates
the release of epinephrin or exercise coupled
with things like shiver or low grade shaking movement, or the NEAT, the non-exercise
activity thermogenesis could in theory lead to local enhancement of mobilization of fat tissue. So I think that spot reduction actually will soon be
something that's possible using the appropriate technology. What does this mean for you now? What could you possibly do
with this information now? Well, I think it speaks to the fact that if one is going to engage in exercise that doing exercises that involve lots of different body parts and movements is likely to encourage the maintenance and or growth of these neurons that innervate fat throughout the body. What this means is changing
up the pattern of exercise, engaging in novel types of movements may actually be one
way that one can access these so-called stubborn body fat pads. Now, there's a little bit of speculation in the statement that I'm making, but if you think about it it makes sense. If you become very adapted
to a particular pattern of exercise, whether or not you're subcaloric or not, you're on maintenance calories are not, you are oxidizing some fat always, and you're utilizing the
neurons that innervate fat in a regular way. And pretty soon this innervation
is going to shut off, because there's no reason why
this neural innervation of fat should continue to release epinephrin unless you give it a
strong stimulus like cold or the fidgeting or in this case to do novel forms of exercise. And there's some anecdotal evidence and I don't even want to call it data, but anecdotal evidence
that people who have, quote on quote stubborn body fat, if they start to adopt
new patterns of exercise, they can start to access
those stubborn fat pads. And again, fat pads is the correct way to refer to these in the
scientific literature. So what we're focusing
on today is the fact that fat indeed will be
mobilized and oxidized in response to a deficit in calories. But that the way that neurons
control those fat pads and those body fat stores, affords you a lot more control than perhaps you ever previously thought. So let's talk about movement. And the more traditional
kinds of movement, aka exercise has been
shown to lead to increases in metabolism and fat
loss to greater degrees depending on whether or not for, instance you're fasted
when you do it or not, whether or not you do your cardio first or your resistance training first. And this is again in the literature for which there's a lot of controversy, but in digging through
all the studies on this, we're finally starting to
arrive at a consensus of, when is best to do exercise? And what types of exercise to
do if your goal is fat loss? The topic of exercise is a
kind of controversial one, not as controversial as nutrition and diet which we will talk about in a few minutes. But it's a particularly interesting one, because different types
of exercising gauge the musculature of the body
and the heart and the lungs in different ways, and can have vastly
different effects on things like hormones and metabolism
depending on whether or not it's of high intensity, moderate intensity or low intensity. So rather than think about weight training versus cardiovascular exercise, I think the most simple way, the most fluid way to have this
conversation about exercise and fat loss is in terms of
three general types of training. Whether or not it's done
with weights or body weight doesn't really matter. And those are high
intensity interval training. Something that's seems to have
gained a lot of popularity in recent years. So-called HITT, H-I-I-T. So high intensity interval training. Sprint interval training. So that's going to be very
high intensity or SIT, or moderate intensity
continuous training, M-I-C-T. So we've got HIIT, SIT and MICT, M-I-C-T. And we can get a little bit
more precise if you'd like. I'm not somebody who measures
my VO2 max or anything while I exercise. I generally know whether
or not I'm doing something I could continue for a very long time, or whether or not I'm doing something that I realize is going
to be of short duration high-intensity. But if you'd like to
map this to VO2 max SIT, this sprint interval training was defined as all out greater than 100% of VO2 max bursts of activity that
lasts eight to 30 seconds intersperse with less
intense recovery periods. So this would be sprinting downfield for eight to 30 seconds, then maybe walking back
for about a minute or two and then sprinting again
and then continuing. So that would be SIT. HIIT, H-I-I-T is defined as submaximal, so 80 to a hundred percent
of VO2 max bursts of activity that lasts 60 to 240 seconds intersperse with less
intense recovery periods. So on a standard 400 meter track, just to give this a
little bit of a visual, a four minute mile would be
fantastic for most people, although people run faster
than that of course. So that's four 60 seconds laps, but that's back to back to back. I think in my best shape or
maybe it was in my dreams, I don't recall which I
was able to do 60 seconds around the track, but of course I couldn't
get that on the second or third or fourth if I
did that was certainly in the fantasy land and not reality. But 60 seconds would
be about one revolution around the track, maybe 90 seconds, depending
on how fast a one is running. So 60 to 240 seconds. MICT okay. This moderate intensity
continuous training is steady state cardio
sometimes called Zone 2 cardio these days on the internet, which has performed continuously
for 20 to 60 minutes at moderate intensity
of 40 to 60% of VO2 max or if you prefer heart rate
55 to 70% of max heart rate. Okay? So we can think about high, medium and low intensity exercise. Although low intensity usually means that you could carry on a conversation, or maybe you have to gasp
every few steps or so, while trying to talk and run. That's I think going to
be the most useful way to have this conversation
that we're having now, because there's so many
different forms of exercise that people do and intensity is important. Let's ask the question
that I think many people are wondering about, which is, is it better? Meaning do you burn more fat
if you do your exercise fasted? And fasted in this respect
could be that you wake up in the morning, you've been fasting all night, you just hydrate and you exercise or sometimes people will ingest caffeine, there's controversy as to whether
or not that quote on quote breaks the fast. It has to do with whether
or not your caffeine adapted something for another episode. In any case that would be fasted. So probably not having eaten anything for anywhere from three to
24 hours or maybe even more. As you could also be
fasted in the afternoon. If you had lunch at noon and it's four or five or 6:00 p.m. Is it, will you burn more fat if you exercise without
an eating anything first, without ingesting any calories first? And people have tried to
really split hairs on this, every which way people say, well, you can fat fast, because fat and protein doesn't lead to as great increases in
insulin as other things, maybe you can have a few
almonds and then still train. And indeed insulin will
prevent fat oxidation. I want to be really clear. The burning part of fat in the cell, the movement of the fatty
acid and into mitochondria and the conversion ATP,
insulin inhibits that process. However, it's been shown that it least for short
periods of training, it doesn't really seem to
matter whether or not you eat before training or you don't, if your goal is fat oxidation. Now, I want to put an asterix near that, because there are some exceptions. But there were several studies done that, and the kind of the classic ones of these, I'll read out to you. What they basically did is they
gave people glucose, sugar, to increase their blood
sugar before training or not. And the kind of classic study
of this is Al Borg at all. So in 1976, so it goes way back, which is that glucose reduces
fat burning and exercise. And then some other studies
if you want to look these up, they're very easy to find on PubMed. You put in Horowitz 1999, [indistinct] is another
one where they have people drink milk with glucose in it. So sweet sugary milk
before exercise, et cetera. And you can find a number of examples where eating before exercise
reduces the amount of fat that's oxidized during the exercise. And you can also find a lot
of studies showing that, eating during exercise
or prior to exercise will not reduce the amount
of fat that is oxidized. However, the types of exercise whether I was medium
intensity or high intensity or low intensity is all over
the map for these studies. So it's very hard to
target an ideal protocol. And then if you look really
deep in the literature, you start to find meta analysis where people have actually
aggregated all the findings and some modern studies where it points to some very specific
and useful protocols. And so here's the rule
that or the protocol that I extracted from that literature. At a period of about 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, I want to be clear, at about or after 90 minutes
of moderate intensity exercise. There's a switchover point whereby if you ate before the exercise, you will reduce, excuse me, you will burn far less fat
from the 90 minute point onward than you would if you had
gone into the training fasted. So let me repeat that. If it's moderate intensity, so-called zone two cardio type exercise, at the 90 minute point, if you happen to have
eaten before the exercise within one to three hours
prior to the exercise, then you reduce the amount
of fat that you will burn from 90 minutes onward, whereas if you had fasted
prior to the exercise, you hadn't eaten anything
for three hours or more prior to the exercise. At the 90 minute point,
90 minutes of exercise you will start to burn
more fat than you would had you eaten. Now, 90 minutes of moderate
intensity exercises is a lot. So that's a pretty long run. Even if you're running
at a pretty slow pace like a 10 or 12 minute mile,
that's a lot of running, that's a lot of swimming. So that's a lot of walking, that's a lot of hiking. However, there are people who
are going out hiking all day or running all day or walking all day. And if you want to burn
more fat per unit time, you want to oxidize more fat
then you would do that fasted. Now, there are also studies
that pointed the fact that you don't have to wait to 90 minutes in order to get this
enhanced fat burning effect. The studies I was able to find and that looked to me like
quality peer-reviewed studies with no company bias or no
product bias of any kind. These are studies that were largely funded by the federal government
in the university context pointed the fact that if one
does high-intensity training, or even the very high
intensity forms of training like sprints or squats or deadlifts or any kind of activity
that can't be maintained for more than these, you know, eight or I would say up to 60 seconds. So a set of lifting
weights repeated, repeated, if that's done for
anywhere from 20 minutes, so weight training or power lifting or these kinds of things
or kettlebell swings or up to 60 minutes, we'll then the switchover point in which you can burn more fat, if you go into that fasted comes earlier. And this makes sense
because there's nothing holy about the 90 minute point
for a medium intensity Zone 2 cardio. That 90 minute point is the point in which the body shifts over
from mainly burning glycogen, basically, sugar that comes
from muscles or the liver and realizes this is going on for a while, I'm going to shift over
to a storage site fuel that is in reserve like body fat. This is going to happen for a while, so I'm going to start
tapping into body fat stores. Now, fat doesn't have
a little brain there. It is innervated by neurons,
but it doesn't have thoughts. And you don't actually control
this switch with your mind. This is something that
has to do with the milieu of various hormones. What has to happen is insulin
has to go down far enough. So if you ate before the exercise, you'd have an increase in insulin, if you ate carbohydrates you'd have a bigger increase
in insulin, fat and proteins indeed you'll have
lower amounts of insulin and fasting will give you
the lowest amount of insulin. Well, then that switch over
point is going to come earlier in the exercise. And if you think about if
you were to do something high intensity for 20, 30, 40 minutes, so maybe lift weights and
then get into Zone 2 cardio. If you are fasted, the literature says that you're going to burn
more body fat per unit time than if you had eaten before
or during the exercise. So what does this mean? This means if you want
to burn more body fat, if it's in your protocols and you have been approved
to do this safely, exercise intensely for 20 to 60 minutes, the higher the intensity
obviously the shorter that about is going to be, and then move over into Zone 2 cardio. And if you do that fasted or
the medium intensity cardio I should say. And if you do that fasted, then indeed you will burn a
higher percentage of body fat. If you need to eat or you
like to eat before you train that also can work. And if you train very intensely, you're likely to shift over
to the fat burning pattern more quickly as well. So again, this isn't really an issue of how long you exercise. It's an issue of how
intensely you exercise and therefore what fuel
source you're drawing from. So hopefully I've made that clear, but basically you need to deplete glycogen or through high intensity exercise and then move to a steady state exercise that will allow you to burn more fat. Or you need to perform a medium intensity or low intensity type exercise
for a long period of time before you shift over to burning fat. And indeed it seems that
going into all that fasted will facilitate the burning
of more fat overall. But if you can't even get to the exercise, if you're somebody who just
can't do the training at all, you're unwilling to or
you're incapable of training, unless you eat something, then obviously eating
something makes the most sense. And what you eat prior to exercise, that's a whole other biz
that people argue about and fight about whether
or not you should go into it with low carbohydrates
or higher carbs, all of that. But in general, the theme
there is very simple. Which is that you want insulin
levels to be pretty low if your goal is body fat reduction, if you want to oxidize body fat. So fasting in some cases, fat fasting and other cases where you're just ingesting fats. Fat and protein, in some
cases or for some people it will be eating carbohydrates. I'm not here to dictate a
particular nutrition regimen. That's just how the hormone
balance of these things and fat oxidation works. Now, one thing that's very interesting and cannot be overlooked is this issue of how much energy you burn
during and after the activity. And some of you probably
already know about this, but the whole business of
calories in versus calories out, and people counting the number of calories they burn during their aerobic session or during their whatever session is only one half of the equation and it really eclipses
the more important issue, which is how much of an
increase in metabolism does a given exercise
create after the exercise? And we could talk for hours about this, but the simple way to view this is that, high intensity training,
anaerobic training of weight training, sprints,
burpees, any kind of thing. I don't know these days I
hear that you're not supposed to do burpees that people
think burpees are dangerous. So I'm not suggesting any
particular movements here. You have to decide what's right for you. I do burpees. I don't seem to be injured from them, but I hear that they're
terrible for some people. So anyway, push-ups, sit-ups, whatever it happens to be
that anaerobic exercise that's of higher intensity or sprints taps into glycogen stores
during the movement and we'll burn more energy per unit time than moderate intensity. High intensity burns more
than modern intensity. That's straightforward. What's interesting is that all the studies that I was able to find on what happens after that type of exercise showed that the percentage of fat that you burn after high intensity
exercise is actually greater. In other words, you burn a lot of glycogen during the high intensity exercise. And then after the exercise, the post exercise oxygen consumption as it sometimes called goes up. We know this after you train intensely that post exercise oxygen
consumption goes up sometimes for up to 24 hours. And it is during that period of time that you oxidize more fat not glycogen. Now, what's interesting is
that the reverse is also true, for people that do long bouts of low or moderate intensity exercise. So typically this would
be things like running, swimming, biking, et cetera. So 60, 90 minutes, two hours maybe even people that
are training for marathons or half marathons, when they stop training, they burn more glycogen,
more carbohydrate, even though they were burning
more body fat per unit time during the low intensity exercise. So there's this kind of inversion. High-intensity burns more
glycogen during the activity, more body fat afterwards. Moderate to low intensity
burns more percentage-wise more body fat is oxidized than glycogen during the actual exercise
afterward it's more glycogen. So I don't want this
to get too complicated. The point is you should
pick exercise that you like, that you're going to do regularly, but it does seem that the
high intensity exercise followed by moderate intensity exercise is going to be optimal
for fat burning overall. Because when you look at the
percentage of body fat burned, and you look at the overall increase in basal metabolic rate, moderate and high intensity training followed by low intensity training or even just followed
by going back into life is going to be the best way
to continue to burn body fat because of the ways that it
increases basal metabolic rate. This could be distilled
into a simple protocol whereby three or four times a week you do high intensity training
followed by either nothing or followed by low intensity training especially if you're
able to do that fasted. And I should just mention
that none of this stuff about fasted is about performance. If you want to perform really well, this is for reasons of performance and you want to, you know, it's
for a sport or a competition, it's not for body fat purposes. Well, then all of this kind of falls away and is modified by what's
ideal to eat for performance. But what we're talking about today is how to optimize body fat loss. So train moderately to very high intensity and then moderate to low intensity, or train moderate to high intensity, and then go about life. And in fact, I have a friend
who uses this strategy. He likes the train intensely and not that often protocol
cause he's a very busy person. So he'll train for 20
or 30 minutes intensely with weights or just body
weight movement doing a lot, he does burpees and push-ups
and sit-ups and pull-ups and just kind of moving and
kind of circuit type training. But where he's breathing really hard, the goal he always says is, I want to breathe hard
for 30 minutes every day. And then afterwards he
hydrates and drinks coffee and moves into his day. And he's walking around and taking calls and carrying around his children and doing all these kinds of things that keep him really busy which is kind of like low intensity work. So I think you get the principle now. But you should all be asking yourselves as scientists of yourselves. Why would it be that
certain patterns of exercise would lead to more or less fat loss? I mean, it can't just be
about the energy burn. We already established that. And again, it has to do with the neurons. It has to do with how we
engage the nervous system. So while non-exercise activity
induced thermogenesis, NEAT, the fidgeting and cold
can induce thermogenesis by engaging shiver tight
movement or low-level movements. Big movements that are
of very high intensity, meaning they require a lot of effort, deploy a lot of adrenaline
epinephrin from our neurons and signal particular types and amounts of fat
thermogenesis, fat oxidation, whereas low level intensity exercise, low or moderate intensity exercise, walking, running, biking where you can do that easily, there's not very much adrenaline release. So adrenaline aka epinephrin is really the final common path by which movement of any kind, whether or not it's low level shiver, whether or not it's lifting
a barbell sprinting up a hill or doing a long bike ride. Adrenaline is the effector of fat loss. It's the trigger end, it's the effector. So now I want to turn our
attention to compounds that increase epinephrin and adrenaline, as well as compounds that work outside the adrenaline epinephrin pathway to increase the rates of fat loss. I almost always save
compounds and supplements and things of that sort to the end, because I do believe that
people should look first towards behavioral tools and
an understanding of the science before they look toward a supplement or a particular thing that
they can extract from diet. This is mainly to try
and shift people away from the kind of magic
pill phenomenon or the idea that there is a magic pill
because there really isn't. And frankly, there never will be. But there are some compounds that can greatly increase fat
oxidation and mobilization. And understanding which
compounds increase oxidation or mobilization can be very useful if your goal is to accelerate fat loss. There are things that people can ingest that will allow them to oxidize more fat. And that occurs mainly
by increasing the amount of epinephrin that is
released from neurons that innovate fat tissue. One of the more common ones is one that you may already be
using which is caffeine. It's well-established that
caffeine can enhance performance, if you're caffeine adapted. I talked about this in an earlier episode so I want to make sure
I'm very clear about this. If you are not used to drinking caffeine and you suddenly decide I'm going to drink a big cup of coffee before training, you will vasoconstrict and
you will limit performance. So that's performance. If you're caffeine adapted however, there's this kind of
interesting phenomenon where ingestion of caffeine serves more as a performance enhancer, both by increasing alertness, but also by way of dilating vasculature of allowing more blood flow. Now, caffeine for burning
more fat for oxidizing and mobilizing more fat
is an interesting one. It can be effective at
dosages up to 400 milligrams. You have to be careful if
you're caffeine sensitive. Some people have just the
littlest bit of caffeine and their mind goes crazy, and they're very uncomfortable. It can have cardiovascular
effects for some people or hypertension, et cetera. So please check with your doctor. But 400 milligrams is roughly
a cup and a half a coffee or two cups of coffee. Nowadays, there's a lot
more caffeine in coffee. So if you go to a typical cafe and you were to get their medium-sized that would have close
to a gram of caffeine, which is why, if you're a
regular caffeine consumer and you don't get that gram of caffeine in your coffee each day,
you will get a headache. It can cause constriction
and dilation of blood vessels in ways that's complicated, but you'll get a headache. Some people like the
way they feel drinking 100 to 200, 300 maybe 400
milligrams of caffeine before training. And indeed that will lead
to increase fat oxidation. It will do that because you
will release more epinephrin and adrenaline. So let's just place this in the context of what we said previously. Let's say you normally do Zone 2 cardio, so you're going out for
a moderately intense run for 30 to 60 minutes or so. I think the current recommendation
guidelines in the States are that people engage in 30 minutes of moderate intensity
exercise five days a week for that's 150 minutes. If their goal is to improve or maintain health of the
cardiovascular system. 80% of people in the United
States fail to do that, or anything close to it. We are way below threshold
for what the government has recommended. In this case, the
government recommendations, I think are pretty good. That's one could always
do better of course. But 80% of people aren't even doing that. However, just using the logic and the understanding of
how epinephrin adrenaline is affecting this fat oxidation process. If you were to go out for 15 minutes and you drank caffeine before you went, yes, you'll probably oxidize
more fat per unit time. Can you compensate for the exercise you're not doing just
by drinking caffeine? Well, probably if you were
just talking about fat loss, if that caffeine makes
you fidget a lot, right? The amount of calories that
you burn in a 30 minute run, unless the run is very intense and you're wearing a weight
vest and it's up a hill, it's not that great, right? Then you probably get you in somewhere into the 400, 500 calories burned area. But I said earlier, and
there are a lot of data now to support that fidgeting for a day can burn anywhere from 800
to 2,500 calories a day. So you might say, well,
fidgeting is better than running, ah, but it doesn't trigger the activation and the positive health effects of the cardiovascular system. So fidgeting alone can be great, but you need exercise for other reasons. Caffeine can enhance the amount of fat that you burn in any duration of exercise. And it can shift the percentage of fat that you oxidize compared to glycogen. Unless you take that caffeine
and it ramps you up so much that you're training
really, really intensely. The bottom line is, if you like caffeine and
you can use it safely, ingesting somewhere between
104 milligrams of caffeine prior to exercise somewhere
between 30 to 40 minutes before exercise can be beneficial if we're talking about fat
oxidation burning more body fat. So that's caffeine. There are a number of other things that have existed over the
years that are in this pathway, things like ephedrine which
is now illegal in most states, I think maybe an all states because people were dropping
dead from taking ephedrine, because they were heating up too much. It's interesting it wasn't
direct effects on the heart causing heart attack. It could trigger by way
of adrenergic receptors. If you'd like to know, increases in body temperature and heat. Now, those drugs turned
out to be dangerous, because people were overheating and dying. There was also the big Fen-Phen craze. That was a drug that was
released fenfluramine which actually was quite effective as an anti obesity drug, a treatment for obesity that
had to be outlawed as well. It was FDA approval was removed because again people were dying because of cardiovascular effects. I don't know if people were
overheating on it as well. So what is the solution? If caffeine is the kind of the
entry point for most people of using compounds to increase the rate or percentage of fat loss in
exercise and even at rest, what are some of the other
things that are useful and interesting? Well, in terms of tools
that are actionable and have reasonable safety margins, I've talked before about
something called GLP-1. This is something that can be triggered by the ingestion of yerba
mate, which is a tea, and I guess because I'm half Argentine, we grew up drinking mate. I think I was drinking mate from the time I was about three or four years old. I don't suggest that for kids. I don't think kids should
be ingesting caffeine. But anyway I did it and
I still ingest mate. Mate increases GLP-1. GLP-1 is in the glucagon pathway. So let's just quickly
return to our biochemistry. As you recall, fat is
mobilized from body fat stores and then it's burned up. It's oxidized in cells. It actually needs to
be converted into ATP. And those fatty acids are
essentially converted into ATP in the mitochondria of the cell. High insulin prevents that from happening and glucagon facilitates that process. Glucagon facilitates that process through increases in GLP-1. The short takeaway is mate increases GLP-1 and yes, increases the percentage
of fat that you will burn. It increases fat burning. And that is especially true, it turns out from the
scientific literature, if you ingest mate prior
to exercise of any kind. So if you want to burn
more fat drinking mate before exercise is good. Drinking it at rest when
you're not exercising will also help shift your metabolism toward enhanced burning of fat
by increasing fat oxidation. Now, there's a whole
category of pharmaceuticals that's being developed right now that are in late stage trials or are in use for the
treatment of diabetes which capitalize on this GLP-1 pathway. They go by various names and there are people on the internet who are selling these things. They are prescription drugs and I want to emphasize that
they are prescription drugs and you obviously wouldn't want to use any of these without a
prescription and a requirement. It does seem that they are effective for the treatment of
certain kinds of diabetes and lead to fairly significant weight loss and reduction in appetite. So this is kind of the
modern version of GLP-1 is pharmaceuticals of GLP-1 metabolism are drugs such as somatical, I can never pronounce this. I can't seem to pronounce
many things it seems. Semaglutide is the way
I would pronounce it. S-E-M-A-G-L-U-T-I-D-E. Semaglutide but that's not
the way you pronounce it. But Semaglutide is the way
that it's been described on the internet. In any case, this
compound increases GLP-1. It's actually a GLP-1
analog in some cases, and they go by various
types of trade names. So the GLP-1 pathway is interesting. Most people, including myself, are not interested in
taking a prescription drug to increase GLP-1, I do it through the ingestion of mate. I just get the mate leaves,
pour water over it and drink it. What's kind of interesting, that's not often discussed is that you can increase
the amount of GLP-1 by, you can essentially reuse the tea. The first time you drink it
it can be very, very intense. And in fact, some people find that mate almost tastes like burnt leaves. It's too intense. You don't want the water to be too hot. But I learned this trick from a friend. You can reuse the leaves
over and over again, probably for about a
day before they go bad. And in doing that, you start
to extract more and more of the compounds from the mate
leaf that increased GLP-1. So it's kind of cool. You can kind of get an increased effect. So what I'll typically do is
make a about 16 to 30 ounces and just sip it throughout the day, and I do like it before I train. Some people who don't like mate might prefer something like guayusa, which is spelled G-U-A-Y-U-S-A. G-U-A-Y-U-S-A, guayusa
which is from Ecuador, despite the USA ending to it. It's from Ecuador. And it's a sweeter tasting tea. It doesn't have any sweetener in it, but the leaf of the
guayusa plant is sweeter than the mate plant. I sometimes will mix the two and then make the tea with that. There's no mate or guayusa
sponsor of the podcast. These are just tools to increase
GLP-1 and fat oxidation. And again, the Semaglutide
is the prescription version of the that's kind of the heavy
artillery GLP-1 stimulant, and again should be only
explored with a prescription. So those are the compounds that really increase
fat oxidation directly. There are going to be a number
of things that impact insulin and glucagon that are
going to shift the body toward more fat burning. We talked about a lot of
these during the episode on hormones. We talked about it. We did a whole episode on
hormones and metabolism. And so for instance, berberine, which comes from a plant
or metformin are compounds that are now in kind of growing use for reducing blood glucose. They are very potent at
reducing blood glucose, which will reduce insulin because the job of the hormone insulin is to
essentially manage glucose in the bloodstream. So there are a huge gallery of compounds that will reduce insulin and thereby can increase fat oxidation. And that's because, as I mentioned before, fat oxidation, this conversion
of fatty acids into ATP in the mitochondria is
inhibited by insulin. So if you keep insulin low, you're going to increase that process. Which brings us full circle back to the issue of diet and nutrition. There is really solid
evidence from the Gardner Lab at Stanford and from
other labs showing that, when you look at different diets, you look at low fat diets, high fat diets, keto diets, intermittent fasting, provided people stick to
their particular diet, it doesn't really matter
which diet you follow. You can still get a caloric deficit and you get weight loss. Adherence however is always an issue. And so what I always say is, that you want to use the eating plan that is obviously
beneficial to your health, but the one that allows you to adhere to whatever it is that the
particular nutrition protocol is, right? If you can't stick with something, then it's not very worthwhile. But from the purely scientific standpoint, there's also an advantage
to keeping insulin low. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you go to zero carbohydrate. I've talked before about
my preferred way of eating is to go lower or no
carbohydrates throughout the day for alertness to get that
adrenaline release and the focus that goes with it, et cetera, and the ability to think and move and do all the things I
need to do during the day. And then I eat carbohydrates at night 'cause it facilitates
the transition to sleep. That's what works for me. But when insulin is low, you do place your system in a
position to oxidize more fat. And so that's why I think a
lot of people do see benefit from lower carbohydrate or
moderate carbohydrate diets, because when insulin is low, you are in a position to oxidize more fat. Both from exercise and at rest. And I should mention,
because I often mention and it's appropriate to mention that if you're interested
in looking at the effects of caffeine, of mate,
guayusa things of that sort, GLP-1 you want to learn more about those. You can go to this wonderful website which is free www.examine.com. You can put in yerba mate, it will describe the three studies that show increased fat oxidation, both during exercise and at rest, and as a consequence not
surprisingly and increase in metabolic rate. One thing that's interesting about mate is it causes a slight
decrease in heart rate for reasons that still escape me. There's a single study showing that heart rate is slightly reduced which is kind of nice because if, when I drink too much caffeine my heart rate goes up, maybe that would increase my
fidgeting and my fat burning, but I don't like the feeling
of having my basal heart rate being up too high. I like my heart rate
elevate during exercise, but not when I'm just kind of resting or working and throughout the day. And for some reason
that I don't understand there's an effect of mate
of increasing fat oxidation but reducing heart rate just slightly. So that's interesting. And it probably lends itself [indistinct] explains the subjective experience that I've had of that mate
has kind of a little nice even mellow stimulant. It's not this really supercharged
stimulant like caffeine from coffee or other sources. Although if you drink too much mate it will also make you jittery. And there's one more compound
that I think we should discuss in terms of increasing fat loss, and that's carnitine
or acetyl-L-carnitine, they lie in the same pathway. We can return to our basic
knowledge now of fat mobilization and oxidation. After fat is mobilized
and makes it into cells and needs to be oxidized. So the literally the burning of fat and conversion of it into energy that is accomplished and is facilitated by the presence of
glucagon being elevated, GLP increases that process
and insulin being low. And we talked about some
ways to manage insulin both in this episode
and in previous episode. L-carnitine and acetyl-L-carnitine in particular facilitates fat oxidation. It helps convert fatty acids into ATP. And indeed supplementing
L-carnitine can increase fat loss. That's been shown. At what dosages? Well, people ingest
anywhere from 500 milligrams to two grams per day in
divided doses typically. Some people who are really extreme are taking injectable L-carnitine, I've certainly not tried that. I confess I have used it in
pill form from time to time but in part, because of
the fat oxidation effects, but also because of the other
effects that it tends to have. So in exploring the effects
that acetyl-L-carnitine has, it has a huge variety of
effects on cellar metabolism. It can reduce ammonia in the blood that is actually a quite strong effect. It can reduce things
like C-reactive protein, which is you want to
C-reactive protein levels to be managed. You do not want them too high. Can slightly reduce blood glucose. I can slightly increase HDLC, the good form of the blood lipid and slightly reduce overall cholesterol. And as I mentioned, it can slightly modify the pathway involving glucagon, such that you get a considerable effect, not a huge effect on fat oxidation, so it can improve pat oxidation rates. It has a number of other effects, some of which I talked
during the month on hormones and that sort of thing. It has strong effects
on rates of pregnancy and sperm quality. So clearly carnitine is doing
lots of different things and lots of different cells. It's impacting sperm motility. They're in a large number
of studies supporting that. Slight reductions in blood pressure and has these interesting
effects on reducing fatigue during exercise, reducing inflammatory
markers like interleukin 6. So it has a number of
effects that on the whole are quote unquote positive
or at least in the direction of things that you may want. And I should emphasize may. You certainly don't need
a acetyl-L-carnitine in order to lose fat, but now that you understand
the cellular process by which fat is mobilized and oxidized, it should make sense that if L-carnitine is important for converting
fatty acids into energy, then supplementing L-carnitine make sense. Acetyl-L-carnitine is
the type of L-carnitine or the form of L-carnitine I should say, that is transported and utilized
most easily by the body. And so that's why sometimes we distinguish between L-carnitine
and acetyl-L-carnitine. So once again, we've covered
an enormous amount of material. We've talked about the science of fat loss and in particular, we've
explored this topic from the perspective
of the nervous system. How neurons and in particular
the release of things like adrenaline, epinephrin
can facilitate fat mobilization and oxidation. We talked about NEAT, fidgeting, this non-exercise type movement that can greatly increase caloric burn. And why that is. We talked about shiver, another form of non-exercise movement that can really increase
both caloric expenditure due to the shiver, due to the movement, as well as increase thermogenesis
the heating up of the body through things like brown fat, and even the conversion
of white fat to brown fat which is a good thing if
you want to oxidize fat. We talked about cold as
a particular stimulus to induce shiver and
how to use getting into, an out of cold as a
way to stimulate shiver and avoid cold adaptation
so that you continue to oxidize and burn fat,
if that's your goal. If you want to check out
the protocols for that, there at www.thecoldplunge.com and in weeks to come
we're going to be adding more protocols to that website not just for fat loss, but for things like resilience, reducing inflammation, et cetera. So be sure to check those out again, those are totally cost-free. Talked about exercise. How rather than thinking
about cardiovascular or weight training exercise, that we should perhaps
look through the lens of this adrenaline system
and how it interacts with fat stores and
think about low, medium or high intensity exercise. Whether or not we show
up to that fasted or not. Turns out showing up to
that fasted can be useful, if you start with high intensity movements and then move into lower
intensity type exercise. If you're going to go long duration, it probably doesn't matter
unless you're exercising longer than 90 minutes, whether
or not you eat or not. We talked about caffeine as a stimulant and a stimulus for epinephrin
and adrenaline release as a way to access more fat metabolism. And we talked about compounds that come from things like
yerba mate and guayusa tea, this GLP-1 pathway that can
trigger increased fat oxidation so much so that the
pharmaceutical companies are now developing compounds specifically to increase GLP-1 for treatment
of diabetes and obesity. But you can leverage the GLP-1 pathway through the ingestion of things like mate or guayusa if that's of interest to you. And then we talked about L-carnitine and how L-carnitine itself is critical for the fat oxidation
within individual cells. The conversion of fatty acids to energy. And why having your insulin low and things like L-carnitine
and glucagon levels high or sufficient at least can facilitate the burning of fat, fat oxidation. So we covered a lot of material. That's a lot of protocols
I realize that didn't... The little list I just gave right there didn't even begin to
get into all the details and corners that we discussed. I hope you found this
conversation interesting both for sake of understanding fat loss and how to lose fat more
quickly and to lose more of it, if that's your goal. As well as simply to
understand the biology of fat metabolism from
a different perspective, from the perspective
of the nervous system. If you're enjoying this podcast and you're benefiting from the information that you're learning, please subscribe on YouTube. That really helps us a lot. There's also a notifications
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