The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #281 - 2024 Best Of Part 1

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Part of your healing journey is like whatever you don't express will express itself as a disease in your body. The ratio of these different types of fats in the cell membrane can actually just change like the membrane integrity of the cell.

Stretching protein intake down to recommended levels is the only thing I can find that can help block all levels of the aging pathways. The one change I would really encourage you to think about is to bring your fasting length down the week before your period.

It has an attachment style, it affects our adult romantic relationships, but all relationships, relationships, family, co-working relationships. Welcome to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast, where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more.

Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind, we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics lying here in you.

Are you ready? Let's do this. Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. Friends, I so look forward to this annual tradition every year now. Doing these best of episodes is such an incredible moment where I get to sit back, look at all the incredible amazing guests I got to interview over the course of the year, revisit some of my favorite topics and things that we discussed, and honestly,

just experience all the gratitude for everything that this show has become. And honestly, it wouldn't be what it is without you guys. So thank you so much for being with me again another year. Thank you for all your love and support and your curiosity and your open-mindedness.

I just adore you all so, so much. I hope you enjoy these highlights from the year. I would definitely love to hear what you guys think about today's episode. Let me know in my Facebook group, IF Biohackers, Intermittent Fasting plus Real Foods plus Life.

Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the channel. pinned post to enter to win something that I love, and then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post, and again, comment there to enter to win something that I love.

The show notes for today's episode will be at melanieavilon.com slash 2024 part one. Those show notes will have a full transcript and they will also have links to all of the individual episodes so that you can dive in deeper with any of these guests as you like.

And yes, just the merriest of Christmases, happiest of Hanukkah's, whatever holiday you may be celebrating, I am sending you nothing but love and all the things. All right, now enjoy this best of the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast, 2024 part one.

All right. So crazy story. I was trying to decide who to start off this episode with. And I pretty intuitively felt like Casey Means was the way to go with this. I've had her multiple times on the show.

I adore what she's doing. And she has really had quite a year getting much more out into the conventional popular world at large, like going beyond the health sphere and the biohacking sphere and really reaching a large population.

Her book, Good Energy is an incredible manifesto that I think could change the metabolic health of our country. If everybody were to just read it, it really helps give you a brilliant, beautiful, approachable, understandable picture of just why our country's metabolic health is often plummeting.

And in the toilet, it's the perfect blend of inspiration and science and all the things. And the crazy story is I asked chat GPT to help me create a lineup of the guests for this episode. And it also suggested doing Casey Means as the first guest.

What are the odds? In this excerpt from episode 260, we talk about something that I talk about a lot, which is the role of having an anti-inflammatory omega 3, 6 balance. And something that was so eyeopening in Casey's book that I had no idea about is how that actually works.

Like why are omega 3 so anti-inflammatory and why are omega 6 is a problem? She actually explains it. You will never look at your salmon or seed oils the same way again. So without further ado, please enjoy this excerpt from episode 260 with Dr.

Casey Means. What is the role of omega 3, 6s and what's actually happening in the cells? Yeah, so this is such an interesting one. So, you know, there's, there's these different types of fats we can get from our diet and we need omega 6s, omega 3s, omega 9s, saturated fats, all these different types of fats, because they're all involved in our function of our cells.

But right now we're eating a very high concentration of omega 6s in our diet because of industrial seed oils. And so there's this very much like a distorted ratio of omega-6 fats, which is just referring to the structure of the fat and omega-3 fats.

And these are both involved in several processes in the body. One of them is that they're incorporated into the cell membrane because all of our 40 plus trillion cells are just little bags. And then the bag is basically like a fatty membrane made of fatty acids.

And so the foods, of course, the fats we eat are what create our cell membranes. And our cell membranes are constantly turning over. And so we need to constantly be supplying the body with the right ratio of fats so that we can have the most functional membranes because structure determines function.

And so why this matters in part is because the ratio of these different types of fats in the cell membrane can actually just change the membrane integrity of the cell, for one. Like how fluid that...

lipid fatty bilayer is and how well it functions. The second has to do with inflammation because essentially the immune cells in the body when they are activated, they use the cell membrane to actually snip fats from it to use to manufacture inflammatory chemicals.

And these are called specialized pro resolving mediators. And basically these SPMs are manufactured products from fats that immune cells snip from cell membranes. Well, if the cell membrane has way too many omega-6 fats, the chemicals that they will manufacture from that omega-6 is actually a pro-inflammatory signal.

If it snips an omega-3 fat, it will be a resolving signal. The inflammatory response can relax and settle down. And so these cells don't have eyes. They basically are just snipping blindly. And so if you are eating in a way that creates a more reasonable ratio of fats in the cell membrane, you are more likely to have an inflammatory response that resolves and doesn't lead to chronic inflammation,

which is damaging. So the way I think about it, similarly what you are saying is the sort of anthropomorphized version. It's like when I am eating that salmon and that mackerel and those sardines and the anchovies and the chia seeds and the hemp seeds and the basil seeds and the flax seeds and all these things and the algae, all these things that have omega-3 fats, I am literally thinking about creating cell membranes that have more of those omega-3 fats so that when my immune cells get revved up,

which they will at different points in my life, they can grab an omega-3 from the cell membrane to create a specialized pro-resolving mediator that calms that war inside my body. And that to me is so empowering as I create my meals.

Next up, we have an episode that I am so honored to even be telling you about. I actually interviewed Dr. Michael Greger twice this year and lost the first episode. And he was so kind to come back and do a redo.

I am just in awe of his kindness and openness to coming on this show. Yes, Dr. Greger is a legend in the vegan sphere, and I have been following his work for probably around a decade now. I really like exploring all different perspectives on this show.

So it was nice to bring him on for his new book, How Not To Age, which is all about all the things you can do, diet and lifestyle, and of course, really focusing a lot on diet for healthy aging. For this excerpt from episode 276, we get Dr.

Greger's opinion, which is very contrary to what I talk about a lot on this show with other guests, and that is problems with high protein diets and how that may negatively affect aging. So here comes his opinion on that.

We talk about methionine restriction. I'm definitely excited to hear what you guys think. So without further ado, please enjoy this fabulous conversation with Dr. Michael Greger. What are your thoughts on animal protein when it comes to aging?

Maybe we can start there. Yeah. Well, when it comes to protein aging, less, maybe more, right? Reducing protein intake, meaning restricting protein intake down to recommended levels is the only thing I could find that could help block all levels of the aging pathway.

So it boosts NAD, improves immunity, decreases oxidative stress, inflammation and resistance, as well as the cancer-promoting growth hormone IGF-1. Surprisingly, there is no benefit to adding extra protein to the diets of older men and women in terms of muscle mass, muscle strength, and muscle performance.

Instead, what the excess protein that most Americans get causes a drop in the pro-longevity hormone called FGF21, a drop in testosterone, a worsening of the age-accelerating hormone, mTOR. So we really should strive to stick to the recommended level of 0.8 grams per health, a kilogram of body weight.

It comes out to be about 45 grams a day for the ever-typed man. Are those studies looking at, are they epidemiological data for people on high protein diets? Are they controlled trials? Interventional trials.

You can randomize people to higher or lower protein and you can affect their FGF21, IGF, their mTOR, easy, right? And the single greatest life extension you can do in a laboratory animal setting is methionine restriction.

If there was one thing, if you could only choose one thing in terms of longevity intervention, it would be methionine restriction, restricting the intake of this particular amino acid, which is found concentrated in animal proteins.

One of the reasons why legumes are the centerpiece protein for every single blue zone ever documented. What happens after age 65? Now, at age 65, we really should probably bump that up to 1.0 grams per kilogram, but of course sticking to plant-based sources to prevent X.

this IGF-1 activation. Okay. What do you think is happening when I bring on experts and they are saying there's a lot of negatives to low protein and that we really need protein to support muscle as our main organ and our metabolism?

Why do you think there are these different ideas about protein? Oh my God. Well, there's this massive protein marketing industry. God, you walk into a store, they have protein fortified water. If you want to sell something, you slap high in protein on.

I'm surprised Fruit Loops doesn't have a big protein, not with protein, whatever. It's just a way to sell stuff. I mean, so there's just like ton, you know, the protein supplement market is just absolutely huge.

And so there's just this like social, I don't know. But if you look at the literature, it's the entire longevity literature. Like you go to like the, you know, Luigi Fantana, Valter Longo, it's cutting down on protein.

to live longer. I mean, the peer-reviewed medical literature is very clear. But peer-reviewed medical literature often does not have much contact with kind of like the blogosphere or whatever is happening in the kind of, you know, in the crazy, crazy marketing world.

But the literature is really quite clear. I mean, that's like the one thing you see in the longevity literature. It is protein restriction. That's how you make everything from fruit flies to live longer.

The rats to live longer is like, you know, more. In fact, the benefits of calorie restriction may be from protein restriction. The benefits of protein restriction may be actually coming from the methionine restriction.

You can replicate many of the benefits of caloric restriction, restricting everything in your diet just by cutting down methionine. I mean, it's really, yeah. I mean, so probably the most powerful thing we can do is it would be methionine restriction, which is basically can be done either by eating less food period or by even, you know, restricting your protein down to recommended levels or switching,

even if you keep the same amount of protein, you just switch from animal protein sources to plant protein sources, you can reduce your methionine because the legumes have relatively low methionine levels compared to animal products.

All right, up next, we have a beautiful, blonde biohacking influencer in the space who released an incredible book called Biohack Like a Woman. Yes, I'm talking about Aggie. We had such a fun conversation.

I was trying to decide what to capture from that. So I decided to put in a little bit of a controversial bit that we talked about early in the episode, and that is reclaiming the word pussy. So please, please enjoy.

And then I realized I have an issue of the word woman because I was like, oh, you know, woman sounds old, you know, like that was my first impression. I was just like, and it was like a big healing journey on me realizing that that's just like in my head and how we've been brainwashed that even adult women are uncomfortable with.

the word woman, you know? And they're uncomfortable. I mean, you even go so far as to use the word pussy in your book and talk about that. So, oh my goodness. Yeah. And I, I love Dr. So for those of you who just like out of context, I, you know, I grew up in Poland, very Catholic upbringing.

And so obviously super conservative, I would get very triggered with the word pussy. And then I read this incredible book called Pussy the Reclamation by Mama Gina. And she basically said that one of the ways of keeping women small is coming up with these really inappropriate names or inappropriate, not in a sense of the word or like vulgar, but inappropriate in a way of like not exactly describing the power of your genitals.

And she said that part of embracing and breaking free from patriarchy is to embracing the word pussy. And so that's how it started. And as much as I was just, I still get like a little triggered. And it's part of my healing journey to just get comfortable with that word and just like claim her power back.

No, I love that so much. And I'm so similar to you. I was raised like super conservative, like Bible Belt Christian South, like sex was like a bad thing. I have a similar experience with you with that word and then like even reading it in the book and like still feeling a little triggered, but not, but so it's just, it's really, really empowering.

Yeah, I mean, I was triggered writing this book. I was like, okay, I really want to come from a place of like really like celebration. I think men don't really have an issue with the word for the, you know, for their genitals.

So to say, I don't want to x-rate your podcast. It's like start dropping words. And so I just realized it's like, I would love for me to say that word and really embrace the pride and embrace the energy of like, yeah, like, you know, like the only way we say it's like, oh, he's such a pussy or she's such a pussy.

And I'm like, pussy is the most powerful energy you can potentially tap into as a woman. So like, there's nothing to do with being not brave enough. No, I love it. We have to reclaim it, pussy. Yeah, if you're listening to it and you're like, oh my God, what are they talking about?

This is it. Like, I know, I know. Actually related to that, something else I loved in your book is you have a part on stress. Well, you have a lot on stress and you talk about how we can actually get rid of stress by being a bitch.

So would you like to expand on that? I love it. I love it. He has very different questions than everyone else. I'm really good. Like, it's definitely very different, unique angle of the book, but you know, we all go through stress there.

We have two options, right? We can either learn to manage stress after it happens, which would be great. And there are a lot of biohacks you can do, whether you supplement or do call plans, whatever it is.

Or you can also just adopt a mindset that makes you stress less. And you know, we are extremely. people pleasers as women. And we always want to make sure hypervigilance about what other people are feeling and thinking about us, their needs.

And we put their needs in front of our own when we celebrate a selfless woman. Oh, wow. She puts other people and her kids and her husband in front of their own. I'm like, that's just not something you should be celebrating, right?

That's time to change narrative. And so what do we call a woman in a society that speaks her mind or is true to herself, isn't afraid to say no, lives on her own terms, usually a bitch, right? Because it's like, well, she's such a bitch, right?

Essentially, it's like, oh, she didn't want to do what I wanted her to do. So she's a bitch. Or she spoke her mind. And so I realized that part of your healing journey is whatever you don't express will express itself as a disease in your body, like all the unexpressed emotions.

And so maybe for some of us, being a bitch would be the best medicine instead of grabbing out of the supplement. Friends, I love this next guest so much. Anthony Yoon is a top surgeon and media personality.

He has hundreds of thousands of followers and he's doing incredible things in the cosmetic industry. And his book, Younger for Life, is an incredible overview of how we can best reverse the signs of aging, particularly in our skin, by blending both a sensible approach to diet and wellness and cosmetics, as well as cosmetic procedures.

I love his opinion, I love his approach, and he is just such a kind human being. In this excerpt from episode 231, we talk about something I know people have a lot of questions about, and that is the pros and cons of Botox, which yes, I do get a little bit of Botox.

So please enjoy this conversation with Anthony Yoon. So what Botox is, as you mentioned, is it's a neurotoxin. And it prevents the transmission of nerve impulses to muscles. And so it started off, doctors were using it for the muscles around the eyes that would get spasmodic.

You inject it into the muscle and then people would have improvement in their muscle spasms of their eyeballs. Not the eyeball has muscles, but the muscles connected to it. And so they realized that as they were injecting it, that people's wrinkles were getting better.

And it was actually a husband-wife team where the husband was a ophthalmologist and then the wife was a dermatologist, and the dermatologist's wife was like, oh geez, the wrinkles are gone. And so we have wrinkles called dynamic wrinkles.

Certain wrinkles of our face are caused by muscles that contract. And these are called dynamic wrinkles. And there are three main areas. It's the wrinkles between the brows, the frown lines there, the crow's feet wrinkles, and the horizontal forehead wrinkles.

All these are caused by specific muscles. And if you inject Botox into those muscles, you can prevent the transmission of nerve impulses to those muscles for about three to four months. Eventually it wears off and the muscles kind of start working again.

So yes, you are targeting the root cause of those wrinkles by tackling those muscles. muscles. I'm not a huge fan of preventative Botox, you know, there are people who are in their early 20s who want to get Botox done because they think, oh, I just will never get wrinkles.

The problem with that idea is number one, it is a medical procedure and there are risks of it. Although the most I've ever seen of probably treating over 20,000 of them is a droopy eyelid a couple of times over the past 20 years.

So it's not like you're dealing with like big potential risks. But the bigger thing is that some people will get antibodies to Botox. If you do Botox too much or if you've done it for a long, long time, you can get some resistance to it.

You know, your body may create antibodies to that Botox, to those proteins and deactivate them so it doesn't work as well for you. So are you doing yourself a service by getting Botox when you don't really need it when you're in your 20s and the wrinkles are barely visible?

And then you find that when you're in your 40s and those wrinkles are getting deeper, you try to get Botox and it doesn't work anymore because your body has antibodies to it. And so you could be shooting yourself in the foot by doing it too early.

So for me, I'm not a fan of preventative Botox. Some people call it pre-juvenation, where you're actually, you know, preventing wrinkles. But I feel like it's a bit of a waste of time and money and effort and may even, like I said, be a drawback in the long run.

As far as complications and risks, you know, going other areas, Botox can spread. And that's why, you know, once again, I've seen a couple of droopy eyelids over the past 20 years. Not that we inject it into the eyelid, but you inject it, let's say, near the brows, and it may spread down to the eyelid and affect the muscle that opens and closes your eyelid.

And so it can spread, but as far as going anywhere else in the body, there was actually a rat study, and this is a rat study, so you don't know if that's the same in humans, where they injected Botox into the facial muscles of a rat, and then they tested the cerebrospinal fluid afterwards and found some botulinum toxin in the cerebrospinal fluid of the rat.

Like immediately after they tested? I'm not sure the timeline of it, but they did find it in the CSF of the rat, the cerebrospinal fluid. It doesn't appear to have any, you know, known complications that we can tell, but that was something that they did see in one study.

That being said, like I said, you know, I have treated over 20,000 people in my office with Botox. It's been used cosmetically for probably over 30 years now, and unless you're getting black market Botox or doing something really crazy with it, I just don't see significant complications from it.

Friends, it was such an honor to meet Brandy Gilmore. This woman is incredible. Her book, Master Your Mind and Energy to Heal Your Body, will completely inspire you and potentially change your whole paradigm when it comes to our ability to heal ourselves.

Brandy goes into the science of things like the placebo effect and the science of how our mind can actually heal our body. In this excerpt from episode 266, we talk about something pretty mind-blowing when it comes to multiple personality disorder and how people can actually have different illnesses in their different personalities.

And what does that mean? I adore Brandy and what she's doing. So please enjoy this part of our conversation from episode 266. Can you tell listeners a little bit about that personal journey that I referenced that you went on, you know, the accident that you had, where you ended up health-wise and, you know, the, like, how did you, how did you heal yourself?

Like, did you have an epiphany someday? Like, what was the turning point? I mean, there were, there were so many, but I have to start by saying literally, if somebody told me that I was gonna heal using my mind, I would have thought that they were crazy or they didn't understand that my situation and the accident and all of this stuff.

And one turning point was this, that was pivotal, was the awareness that people with multiple personality disorder can have different illnesses in different personalities. And I was like, wait a second here.

I mean, they can have high blood pressure in one personality, but not another pain or seizures, headaches, all kinds of things in one personality, but not in another personality. And they can even have a personality that's healthy.

And what was also really mind blowing was that it was consistent, meaning that like, if personality Jane has high blood pressure, and then maybe Mary, in the same physical body, has normal blood pressure, but high blood sugar, or pain.

And so it was interesting that mindset, that the same personality had the same illness, and that it was consistent, and that it can switch on a dime. And that was one of the things that was mind blowing to me.

So that was a pivotal place that really started illustrating the power of the mind for me. Does conventional medicine have an answer for that? No, I mean, even when I was researching, no, and it's written throughout the medical journals, and there was even a woman who was blind in some personalities and not in others.

That is crazy. Isn't it? Yeah. And when you stop and think about it, we know the power of the mind is, I mean, is everywhere. I mean, placebo, that has been proven time and time again. So we know that there's this mind body connection thing going on, or even stress impacting the physical body.

Or even if you think about a stroke where somebody can have a brain injury, and it then can paralyze the physical body. So we can see there is a definite brain body connection. And so we can see evidence of it everywhere.

Friends, it was such an honor. And I was actually so nervous to interview Leroy Hood and Nathan Price for their book, The Age of Scientific Wellness. They are legends in the medical sphere. Roy Hood has developed so much technology when it comes to the human genome, he actually developed the DNA sequencing technology that made possible the human genome project.

And Nathan Price is chief science officer of Thorn. No big deal. Their book was mind blowing when it comes to the future of anti-aging, in particular things like genomics, the role of AI and truly all that is in store when it comes to the cutting edge of the new frontier of medicine.

In this excerpt from the episode, we talk about the role of freedom when it comes to our medical information and what that means for the future. So without further ado, please enjoy this excerpt from episode 252 from my conversation with Nathan Price and Leroy Hood.

Yeah, I'm gonna weigh in on that too. I'm gonna be a little bit different than Leon this topic because I think I'm more liberal on this. It depends exactly, you know, obviously the nature of what you're giving out and and there is There are definitely things that you can get to in more detail.

That said, I think that the people that have tried to argue that there was actual harm to patients from, say, like a 23andMe test or an Ancestry.test is incredibly limited. I've never seen any. I think there's also, in my mind, a pretty fundamental right to the access to information if you want it.

I agree with that completely, Nathan. If somebody wants it, absolutely, we should give it to them. I think that it's important to be educated. I think it's good to say those kind of things. I think that often, though, people can be way too overly paternalistic about the kinds of things.

Well, I'll just say in my own state, I'm not allowed to order my own test. I can't measure my own microbiome because the state of New York thinks that I'm incapable of understanding it. Really? Wow. Yeah, which kind of pisses me off.

There are all these kind of things that you can ... We were on with the mayor's office a little while ago. They were very supportive, but we'll see if anything happens. There is a lot of that. The flip side is you can buy a 23andMe test for $50.

A hospital system will charge you $3,000 per gene for many of these things. If you're going to make a serious medical decision, yes, work with the hospital system. But if you want to have access to knowing a little something about what's in your genome or what you might have risk for, or what your ancestry is, or what this, and you understand kind of what that is, man, I wouldn't want to live in a society where we said,

oh, we're going to block people from having cheap and cost-effective access to the kind of information that's coming out of science if they want to. I mean, it would end all biohacking, you know, like in a large setting.

So anyway, there are nuances in balance, like in everything, but I would be more on the side. side of. I feel people have a have a right to get information if they want to. Okay, friends, now time for a spicy excerpt.

I loved interviewing Jaya for her work with the erotic blueprints. It is mind blowing when it comes to understanding why you do what you do in your sexual life, how you get turned on how you best cultivate romance with your partner, how you can foster compatibility in the bedroom, regardless of your sexual preferences.

It is so fun, so enlightening, and so eye opening. So please enjoy this excerpt from Episode 245 with Jaya. And then what's so interesting is like, you know, I'm 0% sexual, and then learning more about the sexual they're all about, in a way, you know, the certainty of having the sexual encounter.

So you can see how if you have two people together, like a person who's higher on the sexual scale, they're all about that certainty at the end, whereas the energetic is about the moment leaning up to it, what can happen there.

And and you do say, though, in the book that it's a myth of incompatibility. So is it a myth of incompatibility? Like, can the different types be compatible? So I believe that it is a myth about sexual incompatibility or that we're mismatches.

And here's why. If I'll just use the analogy of food. So if you really like to eat salad, and your partner really likes to eat fruit, and you like greens, and they like fruit, are you incompatible in relationship because you like two different foods?

Or are you willing to create fruit salad? You know, are you willing to, they can eat fruit, and you can eat salad, and that's okay, you can still chop up fruit and make fruit for them, and they can still make a salad for you.

You know, so I think that really what it comes down to is not compatibility, it comes down to are you willing to learn and understand your partner, and then do the things that actually turn them on. So if you have differences, you're not doomed.

If you have different libido, you're not doomed. If you have different blueprints, you're not doomed. It's just that you need a level of willingness to learn skill sets to learn if it were languages to learn how to speak their language to learn how to make a fruit salad.

Because that is, that's what we do for the people that we love. We find the areas of willingness, and we lean into those areas of willingness, we learn so that we constantly be innovating in our erotic lives.

So even if it's as intense as like a vegan and a carnivore, for example, where they're, you know, completely different, they can still learn. Absolutely. I mean, do you know vegans and carnivores who are in relationship with each other?

They make it work. It's actually a really good question. You know, I may not like that you eat meat, but I love you. Or, you know, we have had different health needs. You know, right now, I have to eat meat because of some health needs that I'm going through.

And my son's a vegetarian. I don't stop loving my son because he's a vegetarian. He doesn't stop loving me because I have a health thing now where I have to eat meat, you know? Like we still love each other.

Okay friends, now it's time for a legend. Gary Tobs, does he need an introduction? I don't know. I'll introduce him anyways. He is one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing today ever since I read Good Calories, Bad Calories all those years ago.

And it was such an honor to have him back on the show for his newest book, Rethinking Diabetes. In this part of the conversation, we talk about how so much of the focus with blood sugar control and diabetes is often on insulin.

But what about the role of glucagon? Is it actually more important? Time to find out. Please enjoy this excerpt from episode 246 with Gary Tobs. I remember the first time, I don't know where I heard it, but I read that when people have high blood sugar that it's...

primarily actually from the liver, not from what you just ate. That was such a shock to me. And I was like, how does nobody, even today, nobody really talks about that. I mean, we talk about the role of the liver producing sugar and all of that, but we're always focused on what we're eating more so, I think.

And so learning in your book, and you just mentioned both of it now and in the beginning, this idea that you can't even have high blood sugar, so have type two diabetes without the role of the liver or glucagon is just mind blowing to me.

And so like, can you talk a little bit more about glucagon? And cause like just now you were saying that, you know, the role of glucagon, but you talk about in the book how insulin, or it does affect glucagon, right?

Like it's affecting- Oh yeah, absolutely. So this was sort of mind blowing, and I couldn't actually believe I was writing these chapters and just as 1921, they discover insulin. Well, by that time they've discovered what are called the beta cells in the islets of Langerhans.

So they established that insulin is secreted by these beta cells and that it lowers blood sugar. That's one of the more obvious things it does. They also researchers like a year later discover the hormone glucagon and establish that it's secreted by the alpha cells of the pancreas that happen to be right next door to the beta cells.

And pretty much everything insulin does glucagon does the opposite. And so when insulin is secreted, it stimulates glucagon. As time goes on and they talk about how these hormones work, and this was fascinating to me.

So it's kind of the whole beginning of the world of systems biology. So when your blood sugar is going up and it stimulates insulin secretion and insulin is secreted by the beta cells. So the cells that see the very highest dose of insulin are the alpha cells next door that are secreting glucagon.

So they're the first thing to receive. And in the insulin and the glucagon, so the insulin stimulates glucoglucagon secretion to immediately begin to balance out the effect it's going to have. And as the insulin and glucagon go through the portal vein to the liver, the liver sees the next highest dose.

And both drugs, and 50%, and the glucagon, by the way, inhibits insulin secretion. So again, you've got all these negative feedback loops being created almost instantaneously in effect to maintain the system and homeostasis and balance.

Half of the insulin never gets out of the liver, so half of its action is happening in the liver. And the question is, what's it doing? And the glucagon, it's the organ that sees the second highest dose is the liver.

And what the glucagon is doing, insulin is telling the liver cells to take up. blood sugar and glucagon is telling him to secrete blood sugar into the blood straight. And the blood sugar levels elsewhere in the body are basically determined by this balance.

And this is all stuff that's worked out over by the 1970s mostly. And I could then this fellow Onger, Phil Onger at the University of Texas played the A major role. The blood sugar elsewhere in the body is the balance of insulin of the blood sugar taken up by the cells minus the blood sugar that's secreted back into the cells by glucagon.

And insulin is supposed to, excuse me, earlier said it stimulates glucagon secretion, I should have said it inhibits glucagon secretion. By inhibiting glucagon secretion, it's supposed to inhibit the secretion of blood sugar from liver cells into the bloodstream.

So the idea is you've eaten carbohydrates, your blood sugar goes up, you want to shut off this system for supplying blood sugar to the blood when you haven't eaten any carbohydrates or haven't eaten.

But if you're insulin deficient, or insulin resistant, that inhibiting the effect of glucagon fails. So yes, you've got blood sugar going up because you've eaten carbohydrates in your diet, you don't have insulin stimulating your cells to take it up and use it for fuel.

But the main reason that blood sugar is going up is because the insulin is supposed to inhibit the action of the glucagon and the glucagon stimulating. Just keep getting this wrong. I need my own AI to keep these things in line for me.

Insulin is not inhibiting the action of glucagon. So the glucagon is continuing to tell the liver to secrete glucose into the bloodstream when you don't need it. So the reason your blood sugar is high is is, you know, you could argue in part immediately after the meal because of the effect of eating a carbohydrate-rich meal and not having insulin stimulate, facilitate, uptake.

But the major reason is because it's not doing the job of inhibiting glucagon. So glucagon is still telling the liver to secrete glucose into the bloodstream even when you don't need it. It's like if you, let me see if I can get a bathtub analysis going.

You don't want your bathtub to overflow and you've got a drain that's taking the water out and insulin is telling more and more water to go out and glucagon is telling more and more water to go in and from the faucet and the insulin is supposed to stop the glucagon and so in effect turn off the faucet and it fails to do that.

So the major reason why your bathtub overflows is because the faucet is still pouring water into it and the major reason why you have high blood sugar and diabetes is because your liver is still secreting.

It's doing de novo on glucogenesis and creating sugar and dumping the blood treatment is not supposed to and yet nobody the I too read about this. I bet you my kids probably wrote about it 20 years ago because Mike sees all this stuff before we do and the role of glucagon I had read about occasionally.

I think Richard Feynman had also written about it, but I didn't take it seriously because the claims were so dramatic. You know, the reason for the high blood sugar and diabetes is not the carbohydrate rich diet, but the failure of the liver to shut off de novo glucogenesis and then when I started reading all the literature they used.

I mean you see it. You see the hypothesis be raised in the literature. Then you see the conflict, you know, blasting 10 or 20 or 30 years and then you see who wins and in this case pretty much everyone agreed that the problem is glucagon and the failure to inhibit stop the liver from secreting glucose and the bloodstream and didn't nobody care.

Had no effect and if you were to go to the NIH website today, it would basically describe the science as it was known in 1925 is our none of this happened. All right friends. So our next guest is so so special to me.

She is actually the only guest who came on twice within the same year. Yes, I did have her on the show twice this year. I am talking about none other than the radiant beautiful Alana Stott. I had her on first for her memoir that she released this year called She Who Dares.

Alana has done so much incredible international philanthropic work. She's raised millions for mental health awareness campaigns at the request of Prince Harry, and she was even awarded the title of Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire on the King's Honor List in 2023 for her work supporting vulnerable women and mental health awareness.

She does so much to empower women and raise awareness about sex trafficking, and she's finally starting her own personal organization as well, the Blue Rose Foundation. I am so, so excited for her. So like I said, I first had her on for her memoir, and then I brought her back for a few reasons.

One, I wanted to interview her about her book, How to Ask for Money. So we talk a lot in that second episode about how to actually go about raising money. And it really can help anybody when it just comes to understanding how to properly engage with finances.

It is so helpful. And I also wanted to bring her back on to share the resolution of my story with my own incident that happened in February of 2022 where I experienced sexual assault from a massage therapist.

So I had her on to talk about that because Alana has gone through her own things in her life so I thought she'd be the perfect person to have that vulnerable conversation with. In this excerpt we talk about the role of shame in things that happen to us surrounding trauma and how we often think other people have it worse than us.

This was a really vulnerable conversation. I adore Alana so so much so please enjoy this excerpt from episode 270 with Alana Stott. Feeling believed and feeling that you're not a bad person and that that it wasn't your fault and all these kind of things come into it.

I was speaking to a girl the other day she was in the military and she'd been abused in the military and she was you know immediately they turned on her because they you know obviously the military don't want shame on them and it's kind of she's now still 10 years later stuck in that trauma of people not believing her of being blamed for what happened and I remember when I was talking to her about it she kept saying similar to what you said just earlier on there she said that you know what yours was worse than mine and then I was talking to a lady that had actually been like violently raped in her younger years and she was asking me about mine and she was saying oh yeah but yours is worse than mine because you don't remember and you don't and I was like isn't that crazy that we all actually think that because I would think that being on a military base being sexually assaulted would be horrendous and this girl's saying like yours was worse I think what's happened to you being in such a vulnerable position on a massage table would be like such a traumatic thing to go through but I also think that being dragged into a pollution beaten up and raped that way but we all think that the other person had it worse and then the visual like the the world that I guess the male world almost say like when they think of rape they think about that violent assault.

So there's this perception but the whole point is like you were violated and you were in a position that you weren't in control and you were frightened and you didn't know all these thoughts are the same for each one regardless if you were beaten or if you were just touched or if you were videoed or whatever it might have been your your body was violated in a way that kind of sticks with you.

All right time for another repeat guest Loretta Bruning. I adore her work. She does incredible work analyzing our human behavior and how we compare to animals, why we do what we do with our neurotransmitters, and so I had her on for her newest book Why You're Unhappy biology versus politics and it will give you a perspective of surprise why you might be unhappy.

Prepare yourself for major paradigm shifts. In this excerpt from the interview we talk about the concept of happiness. and how it actually may not be the norm for us from an evolutionary perspective.

Pretty crazy. So please enjoy this excerpt from my conversation from episode 233 with Dr. Loretta Bruning. Let's look at like the core paradigm that has been wired into all of us is society is to blame for your unhappiness and society should fix your unhappiness.

Where does that come from? And what I explained is Rousseau, almost 300 years ago, introduced this idea that happiness was the natural norm and unhappiness was caused by society. And that philosophy has just been accepted.

And in today's world, not only is it accepted, but because academics absorbed it, they find data that fits. And then they tell you that the science proves it. So if you don't agree with this philosophy, you're dismissed as a nut who rejects and questions the science and you're not allowed to question the science.

So in the book, I show how happiness is is pitched as the norm for children, hunter-gatherers, and animals in the academic world, and how this is all really false. And I show that there's a mountain of evidence that happiness is not the natural norm for children, hunter-gatherers, and animals.

But if you say that in the academic world, it kills your career. So the information is just not available to us. And diving into those categories, we talked about children a bit. With the animals, do they even register, though, the concept of happiness?

Is that even a thing to them or is it just stimuli response? Very good question. So you use the word concept and concept is something that comes from the cortex which humans have a gigantic cortex compared to animals.

So animals don't conceptualize. When you say is it just stimulus response, well, like 90% of human life is just stimulus response so we don't really need the just. So the bottom line is that we have this little bit of extra ability to conceptualize, to generalize, and to reconsider.

But we rely so heavily on stimulus response because it built such big neural pathways in our childhood and the electricity in your brain flows into the biggest pathways. That's simply how our brain works.

All right friends time for another game-changing episode that might completely change your life with this new paradigm And that is the work of attachment theory as explored by Tyese Gibson who is a stunning radiant beautiful human Helping so many people with her personal development school.

I had her on for her latest book learning love So here is a little overview of how the attachment styles came to be and these attachment styles By the way can literally explain everything that you do in relationships Basically people tend to be either more secure or insecure and there are a lot of versions of insecure and it just explains So much and if you're interested in this work, definitely check out her personal development school It's all online You get to learn all about your attachment style have access to so much content and even talk with Tyese herself and you can get 50% off 5-0 with the code if podcast for that just go to if podcast comm Development that's if podcast comm slash development with the coupon code.

I have podcasts to get 50% off the personal development school It truly could change your life. So without further ado, please enjoy this excerpt from my conversation from episode 279 with Tyese Gibson It sounds like at least with kids you can Pretty quickly identify these attachment styles just based on how the you know, these kids act in these situations I guess my question is like how like how quickly can you identify these based on behaviors as children or as adults or both?

The experiment was kids right infants or what happened there? Yeah, so so this is an experiment so a traditional attachment theory came out of Cambridge University with John Bowlby and then later psychologist named Mary Ainsworth and Basically they had this experiment to be able to determine what somebody's attachment style was at a very young age and how they conducted this Is they would have the parents and the child go into a room that sort of look like a doctor's office waiting room and they?

would then have the parent leave the room just briefly and have a stranger come into the room and be there in the same room as a child. And they would basically study and witness how the child would react to A, the parent leaving and B, the stranger coming in, and then C, how the child would react to their own parent when the parent returned to the room.

And what they found was really interesting. So they found that with securely attached individuals, they remained pretty emotionally stable, maybe expressed a little bit of discomfort when the parent left and when the stranger came in.

But when the parent returned, they would... reapproach that parent in a healthy way. I'd be excited to be around them. But, you know, go back to playing, doing their own thing. They were pretty emotionally stable throughout the reaction, throughout the situation, compared to the reactions of the other attachment styles.

Anxiously attached individuals, they became, or children, became very anxious when the parent left. And when the parent returned, they would just cling to the parent like crazy, really clang clearly like we're anxious, worried that the parent was going to leave again, and dismiss the avoidant attachment styles.

What they would do as children is when the parent would come back into the room, they would avoid the parent. So when the parent would make a bid for connection and try to get close to the child or, or interact with the child, the child would look away.

And so what you could actually visibly see is that this, this individual was minimizing this child was minimizing their attachment needs with the parent as a strategy to protect themselves to feel safe because they felt, you know, obviously hurt that the parent had left them there.

Fearful avoidance or disorganized, they were extremely ambivalent. So they would be hot and cold, they would go towards the parent. And then when the parent would get close, they'd sort of pull away, they were very colicky, very fussy.

And they took a very long time to re emotionally stabilize. And it's interesting because the fearful avoidant attachment style, you know, all the anxious attachments, main way of meeting their attachment needs or attachment strategy is to try to cling and get close.

And the dismissible avoidant attachment styles main strategy is to push people away and minimize their attachment needs to others to feel safe. The fearful avoidance major attachment strategy is hypervigilance.

They read between the lines, they go back and forth, they're hot and cold and in and out and they're testing and they're trying to sort of figure out what they can, you know, take away from a situation because there's a lot of chaos and they don't trust their caregivers fully.

So they want closeness, but they're scared of it at the same time. And that really manifests as a lot of ambivalence in their behavior. And so you can actually observe all of these things between the ages of zero to two years old, which is absolutely wild.

And then of course, because our attachment style, are adult romantic relationships, but all relationships, friendships, family, co-working relationships, because it affects all of those different facets of life, then you can also view a lot of these patterns all the way into somebody's adult life, just manifesting in slightly different forms.

What better way to end part one of this episode than with a sensational woman doing so much in the world of intermittent fasting, which you guys know I am a huge fan of, and in particular, how it relates to women.

Yes, I am here with Dr. Mindy Peltz for her newest book, Fast Like a Girl. And in this excerpt, we talk about the one thing to change if you're going to change things to have the healthiest approach to fasting.

This is a great takeaway. I definitely think your friends will love it. So please enjoy this excerpt from my conversation from episode 255 with Dr. Mindy Peltz. We can't say that fasting is not good for the perimenopause or menopausal women, just like we can't say that a hammer is not good for building a house, a screwdriver would be better.

They're both tools that you can pull out when you know how to pull them out and what symptom you should pull them out for. Okay, so similar question. I'm really curious about this. So going back to women fasting differently during different parts of their cycles, and again, friends get fast like a girl because the specifics are all in there.

But for example, you talk about fasting less during I believe, ovulation and right before your cycle. Is that the? Yes. So even with that, how much is that an absolute versus a individual thing? So like if a person feels seemingly great, never changing their fasting habits, would you still suggest they attempt to modify it for their cycle?

It's such a good question. So the first thing I would say is that if you are like rocking your fasting lifestyle, and you don't want to make any change, the one change I would really encourage you to think about is to bring your fasting length down the week before your period.

That is the most important because that's when progesterone is really coming in. So I added in a reduction of your fasting window during your ovulation time, because one of the things that I saw with just fasting so many people is that a lot of times when our hormones are high, that it actually acts like a detox, it stimulates our toxins to come out of our tissues, lead being the biggest one.

And so like there's a lot of studies that show that when a woman goes through this wild estrogen ride in her perimenopausal years, that it stimulates lead to come out of the bones. And when it comes out of the bones, it can lead to osteoporosis plus it can where does that lead go, it goes up into the brain, it gets stored in fat and starts to affect things like memory.

So when we have this super power hormonal moment like during ovulation where estrogen is at her peak and test out… The progesterone is at its peak and you get a little bit of progesterone. It sure made sense to me that we should not be going into a three-day water fast.

We should not be going into a 24-hour fast. We don't want to stimulate a lot of detox because you're already having a bit of a detox with your hormonal production. Now, the second part of that is you have some progesterone showing up during that time.

Progesterone doesn't like when you fast. So I added in making sure that we use common sense as to if fasting works for you and you're doing great during ovulation, then keep it. But I've met a lot of women that don't do well fasting during ovulation and usually that's a toxicity issue.

Oh my goodness, friends. What a whirlwind. What an incredible collection of guests. Again, it is such an honor to have interviewed and met these incredible humans and learn everything they have to share with us so that we can better optimize our lives.

And again, friends, thank you so much for being here. It's been such an incredible journey. Happy holidays, and I'll see you next week with part two. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast.

For more information, you can check out my book, What Win Wine? Lose weight and feel great with paleo style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine, as well as my blog, melanieavalon.com. Feel free to contact me at podcast at melanieavalon.com.

And always remember, you got this.