Transcript:

Episode 23: Weight Loss Resistance

Warren:

Welcome to Health Hunters Radio. Thanks for joining us today. We have an amazing topic and amazing guest. Dr. Pompa’s not here today. This is Warren Phillips. I’m going to lead the conversation, and it’s going to be a great conversation because it’s one that requires a lot of education and insight because so many people suffer with weight loss resistance and weight loss problems.

I brought on a guest today, a good friend of mine, has done so much for this industry, meaning the health and wellness industry, on radio shows. He’s a doctor of chiropractic. He has a degree in human nutrition. Radio shows has really made an impact, one of the largest health and wellness practices in the Caribbean, Costa Rica, right, Don?

Dr. Don:

Yeah, we were in Costa Rica for eight years.

Warren:

That gave him some time to really crush it make some difference in lives there. One of his big focuses right now where he’s become an expert in is the area of weight loss resistance, metabolic syndrome. He’s taken that to the population health, meaning the general public where he’s helped people with simple strategies and solutions that have moved them forward to get major changes in not only weight, but waist size, their energy, and helping them move their lives back and really solutions that you think would take a lot of time and effort and energy.

In this public market where people don’t have the education that we do as health hunters, if you’re seeking it, many of us know a lot about this. Dr. Don is an expert in this area to move us forward. I want to pick his brain today and give you a bunch of health hunter solutions when it comes to weight loss, metabolic syndrome. Obviously, that moves into diabetes, insulin resistance, things like that. Dr. Don, thanks for joining us today.

Dr. Don:

Thanks for having me, Warren. It’s fantastic to be here. This is a great topic.

Warren:

We love it. Don, tell me a little bit about your life. Tell us your story, why you’re so passionate about this topic, and why you spent so much time over the last decade becoming an expert in the areas of diabetes, weight loss resistance, insulin resistance, and this whole metabolic pathway within our bodies to help people not only lose weight, but feel amazing.

Dr. Don:

Thank you for that opportunity. I graduated college with a degree in human nutrition. Then I went on with my doctorate in chiropractic. Then we took off internationally to practice in Costa Rica and Spain. We did a lot with sports and health promotion. It was for peak performance type of thing.

It wasn’t really until I came back to the United States that I dove into this concept that we’re talking about. Being out of the states for ten years, having three kids with one born in California, one born in Costa Rica, one born in Spain and coming back is when the shock wave hit me of the change that happened in those ten years here in my homeland. I came back thinking there’d be one sort of environment. I came back to a completely different one.

As I enrolled the kids in school and sports, I noticed a big change. A lot of kids were overweight. They were very immobile. I went to different functions and saw what was being served, what they were eating. I went to the family and the parent meetings and I saw the same thing happening in the parents.

As we opened the practice and started to see people, we saw more and more chronic issues, a lot of health-related issue with weight and other degenerative lifestyle based problems. I realized something’s going on. What I did was I looked at my kids and said if I want to get them off that path to go where every other kid in their school or in class or in our society is going, I need to make some changes first in me, my family, and then teach them.

From that is when we started to teach and expand into our practice. We had a very integrated practice, a holistic practice with a gym, with a massage therapist, a wellness psychologist, chiropractor. I did nutrition and really tried to wrap it together. That’s when I really dove in deep to see how did this happen, why did it happen, why did it happen so fast, and where is it going? Most importantly, how do we get off that path? Does that make sense?

Warren:

That makes total sense. I know that so many people in this country right now, no matter what they do, how much they exercise, no matter how well they eat, they’re still suffering. It sounds like you’re on a mission, Dr. Don, along with the health hunters’ community here to really bring these real solutions to the forefront. Let’s dig a little deeper. Tell us a little more about what you’ve done in the population health to really help people move out of this state of disease to a place where they’re taking control of their health again.

Dr. Don:

That led me to the practice where we had the integrated practice. We were able to mix a lot of different holistic approaches to our care and our programs and started having some great success. I started working with thyroid patients, with diabetes patients where I met you and Dr. Pompa and some of the other people in our camp going to different seminars to learn more and catch up on the modern-day epidemic that was going on. We had some great success.

In that success I had a friend, he started a population health company. [06:20] is the name of the company. It’s a corporate wellness provider. He was seeing lots of big populations. He came to see my practice, and he loved it.

He saw the benefits and the results, and he thought it was great. He asked me, “Do you think you can translate the success that you’re having with people one-on-one into larger populations, into different groups of society, different populations at the corporate level and so on?” I said, “I don’t know.”

He asked me, “Do you want to try? Do you want to find out?” I said, “Yes.” That’s how I got to the population health world. We wrapped up our practice in New York. We came out to Seattle where they’re based.

I started working with the population health. My wife bought a practice and started practicing here. That’s when we got into it. Essentially what I did is I was brought in and evaluated their programs. I helped upgrade all of their health and wellness, weight loss [07:09] and things like that.

Then I created a metabolic syndrome program, and I created the signature diabetes prevention program, which is a lifestyle based insulin resistance core program. Then we launched that to some big corporations that have hundreds of thousands of employees. Tens of thousands of people have taken these different lessons and different programs. We’ve had great results. This was the first alternative program to the National Diabetes Prevention Program.

When I got there, I looked at the national program because I’ve seen it. I’ve been a part of it before. It’s taught through different states. It’s taught through the YMCA and different areas like that. I looked at it and I really was confused because it didn’t look good to me. It’s the same old rhetoric that people have been using for 60 years.

We created a new program based on the teachings and the newer research that is the base of our programs in our camp. We launched it, and it did better than the national program by far. We’re the only program to show actual changes and biomarkers like cholesterol, blood sugar, triglycerides, waist circumference, not just weight. Not only was it a success, it beat the national program. It did it faster. It has better results.

Next thing you know, a concept was launched. It was through doing that program, developing it, I wrote every word of it. It’s a 16-week program with tens of thousands of words in the scripts and the teaching materials. As I did, I had to really dig into the research of why this different approach was working better.

When I would go through these companies, a lot of them were very large, multi-national companies. Like I said, 10,000 to 100,000 plus employees. They had their own medical staff and wellness staff. They were full of MDs, PhDs, [09:00]. I had to be able to talk them through the program of why we’re using this program and why we’re taking a different route.

That was a whole learning process. I really had to had to have all my stuff stacked behind me. I had to have the research. I had to have data. I had to be able to communicate it on both the population level, which is the average person out there that was taking the program, as well as a really high level medical board staff.

Some of our clients were large healthcare systems, hospital systems themselves. There were a lot of people I had to communicate this with. That’s what made me really dig into it, really understand it, and communicate it the way I do now.

Warren:

That’s awesome, Don. We’re going to come right back. I have some great questions for you after we hear some sponsor activity here for you. We’ll be right back.

Welcome back, health hunters. Dr. Don Clum is on the show with us. What a powerful story and transition you have made into the general population and facing what is tough for the alternative practitioner at times is established systems. I love what you’re sharing, Dr. Don. I always learn more.

We’re good friends. We work together on our own with our team a metabolic program for doctors to bring out to patients around the world. That might be something we can introduce to our Health Hunters tribe in the future. What I love about what you’ve accomplished is not only did you break down some of the barriers to these alternative systems – and let’s be clear, we’ve had Dr. Pompa and other guests talk about the broken system like we talk about the National Diabetes Program, and they’re still feeding them whole grains. Your program weans them off of that.

It’s a counter message. It’s counter culture to that culture. Then you’re able to reach the general public who’s just showing up to work day to day. They’re not an educated group, and that’s part of the Health Hunters strategy is not to bring on guests and solutions that we research, but to be able to reach the general public with education. Education is the key to transforming a nation.

You’re one of those key educators. What I want to dive into in the second segment, Dr. Don, is you’ve uncovered in dealing with the general public on one hand. Then two, bringing the science in a way that’s not offensive to say the way you’re doing it is wrong, but to bring the real science to a place where these established medical staff is able to look at this, really smart people, really brilliant.

They understand the human biology better than any of us at some level, except for some of these breakthrough secrets when it comes to the alternative view on how to move someone out of insulin resistance and move someone in a positive direction out of glucose issues or weight loss resistance. You found some gems in there, and we’re able to break both of those barriers where you can help the general population make significant changes. I want you to talk about that, and then some of the science on what you found and presented to these highly educated medical communities that were able to adapt this amazing population health program that you launched in the general public when you worked for that company.

Dr. Don:

It was quite an experience. I appreciate you laying that out. The key is not to make what was done or what’s being done in a different camp wrong because it’s not. It’s based on their lens and what they’re looking for. The analogy that I like to use, instead of three –

Warren:

We cut out.

Dr. Don:

Are you there?

Warren:

There you are. You’re back.

Dr. Don:

It’s like putting on those 3D glasses at the movies. We’ve got one lens that’s blue, one lens that’s red. It’s the same pair of glasses on the same set of eyes. If they’re on my face, it’s on my eyes, looking at the same scenery. If I close one eye versus the other, the landscape changes dramatically. It’s a completely different tint and hue to what I’m looking at.

The whole point is all we did was shift the hue. We look through a different lens. Instead of looking at these type of programs through a blood sugar and caloric lens, we change it to an insulin and hormonal lens. When you did that, the entire landscape changed just like the glasses did. It went from red to blue, completely different.

When we started looking through that lens, it made our actions become different; therefore, our actions being different made our outcome become different. You want to get a different outcome, you’ve got to do something different than what people have been doing. That’s what we did. We’re like wow, this is pretty neat. We analyzed what we’ve done and practiced, and we went back to the science and we wanted to know why so we could explain it at all different levels.

It all started to add up and helped us refine it, helped us tweak it, helped us course correct when needed, and it made it more effective as we went. It’s not about making one model wrong. You just can’t apply a glucose and calorie solution to a hormone and insulin problem. It just doesn’t work that way just like you can’t flip those over and go the other way either. The key is looking through the right lens and doing what’s appropriate according to the landscape that you’re looking at.

Warren:

Let’s dive into that. Let’s look at some of the science of what you did. It goes far beyond this, Dr. Don. You’ve moved out of that. You’re not with that company anymore, but I want to learn some of the strategies.

You worked with so many people and you have so much data. What I want to share with the health hunters on today, they’re searching for the best solutions. They’re searching for the science of what you did to help these people move forward. This is information that’s going to be great for them and it’s going to be great for their friends as they move into the holidays.

There’s always a new holiday coming. Any time we air this show, there’s a holiday coming, but it’s the true holidays. This is a November show. There’s a lot of these things people are going to be looking for coming into the January/December weight loss movement that’s going to happen.

What are some of the things that you learned, some of the strategies you applied that really create the greatest impact? What are the gems that you were able to extract from all this data in looking at the science? As it filtered out, what were the major movers in this program that really helped people?

Dr. Don:

When you look at the different issues we were dealing with, metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, and even weight loss, when you move upstream or go take a step backwards from those issues, you find out that the core root driver of all of them is insulin, which is a hormone. Therefore, it’s the insulin that changes the blood sugar, not the other way around. The blood sugar becomes the effect, not the cause. The hormones in the cellular function maintain the cause.

By doing that, what we saw was we worked on things to effect insulin versus blood sugar. Guess what? The blood sugar fell in line. We noticed that meal timing and how often you eat was more important in the beginning in particular than what you eat and how much of it you ate. We had people not eat less in the beginning, but eat less often.

We didn’t change what they ate. We didn’t tell them to eat this or not eat that for weeks into the program. All we worked on was frequency and timing. When you do that, you shift your hormones, and that’s what shifts your blood sugar versus trying to manipulate blood sugar and hope your hormones follow suit because it doesn’t work backwards.

The biggest takeaway was it’s about not eating too much, they were eating too often. We all talk about that. Dr. Pompa talks about it a lot. That was a real core realization because then you can take somebody who’s not ready to go 100% to full-on change their life, stand on their head, go organic, do all these different things; all they start doing is timing out their meals, not eating as often, cutting out snacks, starting with just three meals a day. They’ll start to see a shift in their hormones, and that will lead to a shift in their lifestyle and how they feel and how they look. That was the biggest takeaway.

If you start like that, people don’t feel like you’re taking things away. You’re actually adding something to their life. They start to see the benefit. Once that ball is rolling, then they’re like what’s next? I’m ready to more. Then we move on that.

Warren:

That’s important for our health hunters to hear. Sometimes we do talk about intermittent fasting. As a matter of fact, I’m doing a water fast right now. I’m on day two. I actually called Dr. Don last night and said is it bad if I did a little bit of bone broth?

The neat thing is the incremental results we’re going to get. It’s three meals a day. I want to dig more into that and then some of the next solutions and strategies and why that works in the next two segments. Thanks, Dr. Don. Here’s a word from our sponsors.

Welcome back, health hunters. Such great information from Dr. Don. We really set up these last two segments to be super powerful for you. Stick with us here. This is where the rubber meets the road.

We’re going to pull some information typically we’re not going to get. I so appreciate this, an opportunity to take the general public, this means your mom and dad who don’t know much about – depending on how old they are, they probably know more than us because they’re in a generation where they ate three meals a day. Snacking wasn’t the culture. Today it’s a snacking culture.

The information that’s being populated into the general population is just not something that’s going to help someone with insulin resistance, weight loss, energy. It’s just not the true reality. What I want you to build on is the first step you took the general public.

You didn’t say you need to go organic. You didn’t say you need to go Paleo, vegan, cellular healing diet. You didn’t say that. You said all I want you to do is cut out snacks, eat three meals a day. Just from that, did you see some changes with this general population?

Dr. Don:

Yes, absolutely. I travel around the country doing this. I went to the Midwest. I went to the actual factories with people coming off the line in their boots, in their full gear to promote this [19:50]. What we learned is that people aren’t ready to do this.

Because this was population based, they were signing up through their employer. Their enthusiasm to do it was at different levels. We started talking really basic. We said just shift to three meals a day, and we did start seeing change. People would start seeing change within a week.

Some people, the more stubborn people who didn’t want to make all the changes we recommended, that’s all they did for the 16-week period, and they lost enough weight to qualify for the program and to shift their numbers as well. Is that all they have to do? No. Like you said, we do build on it.

They start with three meals a day and you get comfortable with that. Snacking was developed on an old concept, and we can go into that at another time. Three meals a day is where we start. Then all we had them do was skip breakfast every other day. That’s what we built up to.

Warren:

My father never ate breakfast. A lot of fathers never ate breakfast intuitively. I don’t have time for breakfast. We’re told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I cannot go without breakfast. Skipping that meal causes an additional hormone shift, that’s what you’re saying, I believe.

Dr. Don:

It depends on the person. A lot of people start doing this, skip breakfast, and they eat less. They go on the calorie model and go I’ll cut back my calories. I’ll lose five, eight, ten pounds. Then it balances out.

They cut back more calories, and they get to a point where they’re hardly eating anything. They eat 100 or 1,000 calories, but they’re not losing the weight. Something has shifted. In our program we told people if you’re eating one or two meals a day because you’ve gone down that road, go back to eating three meals a day first. Reset that mechanism.

Some people have to eat more before they eat less to see the hormonal response because they got it all upside down. It’s almost like your body is speaking Chinese when all I speak is English. We’re not communicating. We get them eating a little bit more or more often as far as three meals a day.

Once that’s stable, then we have them cut out breakfast twice a week, like Tuesday and Thursday. Then we move to Monday, Wednesday, Friday and get into the alternate day thing, and that kind of resets and gets that system going. Because they’re doing it every other day, they get their three meals one day, and then two meals the next day.

That variable really is positive for the body. They body likes it. It’s not a daily constant thing, just like working out. If you do the same workout, same intensity, same weights all the time, eventually it gets easy and your body adapts, and you don’t get the results like you did at the beginning. Same thing here.

Warren:

To wrap up this part, and I know after you got some changes, there’s a few dietary secrets that had massive impact on insulin resistance. Insulin, which is this hormone that controls so much, and we might be able to touch on that a little bit. You went three meals a day. They start seeing a response. Then you start cutting out a meal. What were those days that you cut out breakfast?

Dr. Don:

They start Tuesday/Thursday.

Warren:

They start Tuesday/Thursday. Now you’re throwing a little more shift into their life, shocking their body more, just like working out, causing a hormone response in the body to respond in a positive way to decrease their insulin levels. What is that doing in the body that’s causing this metabolic shift and this weight loss and more energy and all these things that are happening before we move into some of your diet secrets? What’s going on in this block fasting or intermittent fasting is what we’re tapping into now? What is the hormonal benefit that creates this massive change?

Dr. Don:

We call it meal timing, rotational meal time. It’s not even really intermittent fasting yet at this point.

Warren:

It’s good to say that because you’re saying meal timing. I think this is a point, health hunters that are really down the road that we’re on or some of the new people that are just exploring and listening and they’re just the general population, you’re calling it meal timing. As soon as you [23:41] fasting, it’s scary. I say the word fasting even to some of my healthier friends, and they’re like I don’t want to do that.

I’ve been talking to them. I’m doing a water fast right now. I could never go without breakfast. That’s literally their response. I love the vocabulary of meal timing. That’s really important because there’s psychology behind eating. That was another important takeaway that I wanted to highlight.

Dr. Don:

I’m on day three of a fast myself getting ready for the weekend that we’re all about to go into. The other thing is fast is a four-letter F word in medicine. When I went before these boards, when I went before these committees, when I went before these CEO executive teams, if I talked about fasting, the switch was turned off. They just didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t understand it. That was a longer conversation.

The popular term of intermittent fasting and these type of things, when you look at the definition it’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about rotational, as in every other day, meal timing. That took the pressure off. They stayed open to the concept, and we were able to have that conversation.

Technically it’s not fasting. That was absolutely a big part of it. What happens is when you shift to three meals a day because every time you eat, you raise insulin and blood sugar. You can imagine when you eat a normal American type of model, you have breakfast. It starts to go up, start to come down, and then you have a snack. They both go back up, start to come down, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, nighttime snack.

You get this beach ball bouncing through a wave crowd at a party of at a concert of both insulin and blood sugar. The problem is the blood sugar will come down faster and stay in a nice range in that model, whereas insulin keeps going a little bit higher. If you end the day with this really high over exposure throughout the day of insulin, you go to bed with that, that throws off other hormones like cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, like thyroid. Then you wake up with a higher fasting insulin level to reset that whole pattern again because it can only go higher and higher.

It’s both the stimulation of the insulin with each meal and the general overexposure throughout the day that compounds and creates the metabolic dysfunction that we see that causes metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, cardiometabolic and heart disease, as well as weight gain because insulin controls weight coming on and staying on our body. The idea of breaking that pattern up, eating just three meals a day allows the insulin to come back down in between. That’s the first step, just giving your body a little break, getting your body to bring that insulin over time, that fasting insulin comes down, and we start to see a shift hormonally.

Insulin stops terrorizing cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, thyroid, and so much more. We start to see a shift. That shift alone can cause some people to see inches off their waist, weight to go down, sleep a little better, feel a little better, hunger disappear, all that kind of stuff. As we do, then we start taking away the meals and you get a little more break for insulin and you keep doing it. What happens is you are actually improving the insulin function by not over stimulating it and being overexposed to it all day long.

Warren:

You said some really good stuff in there, which I think is very inspirational to our health hunters community is that when you’re controlling this insulin, it’s such a powerful hormone, it effects the thyroid cortisol, a lot of things, stress and anxiety. The reason you don’t adapt to stress, the reason you don’t sleep well at night, there’s so much that goes on with this meal timing that can completely transform your life. For example, I went through a season where I was snacking at night. I ate a perfect diet for eight years.

I started snacking at night, and I put on inches back on waist because I was spiking that insulin and glucose. Dr. Don, let’s get back into in this next segment the dietary shifts that had the major move on this as well. Thanks for much, health hunters. We’ll be right back.

Health hunters, welcome back. I’m really excited this last segment. We just discussed, if you weren’t on the last segment with Dr. Don, about when we eat and the massive insulin impact that has and the hormone cascade and the problems that causes. We’re talking about when you eat for weight loss, diabetes, insulin, and the impact that has.

The when you eat section where I just was saying I got fat when I did my fourth meal of the day, and I intermittent fast and do those things and do meal timing shifts, but just adding that insulin spike right before I went to bed, I started gaining weight. Also, drinking alcohol towards bedtime, wine and stuff like that was also causing that. When I cut that out, I see the inches go away. Dr. Don, I just want to pick your brain from the general population health, some of the gems of what they ate. We’re moving from the when into the what that also affected that insulin pathway and created even more results for this general population in your study.

Dr. Don:

You mentioned psychological triggers for people. One of the things people were expecting, they signed up for this program. We had cohorts of 500 at a time. What they were expecting, they’re joining this group and they’re just waiting for us to take away their favorite foods. Instead of doing that, we looked at the metabolic and the hormonal profile.

What can we do instead of just taking away their foods and filling that expectation? What we did is we found out that fat has no impact on insulin. You can eat pure fat, and you will not raise your insulin. You will not throw off those hormones.

You also notice in the study that when you eat some fat with other foods, even foods that do promote insulin, it doesn’t promote it as strongly. It actually improves the benefit in the short term. What we did, instead of taking anything away, the next step was to give them something back that most of them have taken off, and that is add fat to every meal as an ingredient, not just something to cook with.

Don’t just make your veggies with some butter. Add a fat, an avocado, some nuts, some extra oil, some coconut oil, some coconut crème, some sour cream, something with extra fat. If you’re eating breakfast, don’t take those egg yokes out. We want those yokes. Put them back in. Bring the yolks back and add some fat to each meal.

Now they’re expecting us to take something they love away, and what we did is we gave them something they love back. We gave them fat back and we also told them to start using sea salt again. Sea salt is not the demon we thought it was a long time ago just like fat is not the demon. They’re both healthy when used right.

We just gave them back fat and salt, and we just improved their palette of every meal they’re eating without taking a single thing away. That was the next step. At the same time, as you’re doing meal timing rotation, you start to drop and improve that insulin response even more by adding that fat to each meal.

Warren:

You named some of the really good fats out there, avocados, olive oil, butter. Coconut oil is good even though there is some negative publicity on that, but that actually is still a good oil for fats. You added fat. You increased sea salt. What does the sea salt do?

I know that’s big when I’m doing a fast. I hear it from you and other experts in the fasting arena, more sea salt. It really helps you with energy, focus, even headaches and things that would happen if you skip a meal when you’re following a program. How do these two particular ingredients create so much more metabolic shift, hormone balance, and the weight loss that we’re all looking for as we regulate insulin?

Dr. Don:

The first benefit is it tastes good. That’s what people want. They’re tired of eating bland food. They’ve taken out all the fat. They’ve taken out salt. They’ve taken out a bunch of stuff, and they’re expecting it to get worse, and it gets better.

A little bit of fat, a little bit of salt, that’s a good deal. It’s almost like a bacon diet, as a joke, because that’s what makes those foods taste so good. First thing is it tastes good. Second thing is we need to raise our minerals. We are all mineral deficient because of the stress levels and the way we live our life.

When we raise those minerals, in general it helps our body work better. It helps our hormone work better. It helps calm our mind, especially at night, and helps us sleep better. One night of poor sleep can throw off insulin. You create insulin resistance in the short term, just one night of sleep. It’s an important thing.

It’s all compounding on itself, but also, salt helps with how we feel. When we have a lot of insulin, it forces the kidneys to hold onto water and minerals. It’s not what it’s supposed to do, but it’s doing it as a default, and we’re not getting any in the diet. It’s even harder now.

When insulin is coming down and getting better, it’s not forcing the kidneys to artificially hold onto those minerals. It dumps the minerals and the electrolytes go down. By taking that extra salt, you’re just bringing them back up, and you don’t get what a lot of people think is low blood sugar symptoms. Most people get these symptoms, they get weak, they get shaky, they get a headache, they get anxious, they get hangry, and they think it’s because they have low blood sugar because they’re not eating.

The reality is they’re dropping their electrolytes, and they’re feeling that. Their hormones are off. When you add that back in, you get a lot less of that. Most of those feelings are an electrolytes imbalance or a detox that happens when you stop eating as frequently. You can attenuate that, you can make it a lot less by making sure you get plenty of sea salt leading up to your changes that you’re making.

Warren:

The two missing ingredients in our diet that are taken away through fear and bad science, which was salt – not table salt. We’re talking sea salt because of heart attack risk and things like that. You’re adding back into the general population things they were told they can’t do like fat and sea salt. Because their bodies are getting the things that they need, fat for efficient non insulin spiking fuel for their diesel engine, highly efficient cellular energy, and they start cranking that out. Then they also start realizing they feel better.

They’re not getting the glucose or energy issue. It’s more of a hormonal shift that’s happening during changing up your meal timing, maybe skipping a breakfast meal. Just to repeat what you said and summarize, the sea salt balances that out because it’s an electrolyte deficiency. We’re not having salt in our foods, and this electrolyte deficiency leads to poor hormonal response, fatigue, hangriness as well. It’s not necessarily a blood glucose thing.

We have just a few minutes left here. What are some other key secrets? We’re changing our meal timing. We’re doing three meals a day for the general public. We’re getting them to skip a couple of breakfasts. I said breakfasts, didn’t I? I’m from Pittsburgh. We don’t have the best English.

Then we’re adding salt and fat, two delicious things that everybody can do. We named some good fats out there, full-fat butter, full-fat sour cream, almonds, walnuts. Those are good fats. Pure olive oil, coconut oil, avocado, which I just bought a bunch of for when I break this fast a couple days from now. A lot of great solutions, but what are some other key things we could tell the general health  hunter that’s out there that’s exploring this health hunter concept of life, and what can we continue to work them down this pathway of health, weight loss, energy, and hormonal optimization?

Dr. Don:

The single biggest return on your wellness investment will come from improving your sleep. People always underestimate that. Everyone is sleeping so poorly that they believe it’s normal. I work with practitioners in the population health. I was working with cardiovascular surgeons and MDs and nurses.

These are educated people and you ask them how are you sleeping? They say pretty good. They only say that until they’re sleeping better. The truth of the matter is the metabolic magic that happens in our bodies, the hormonal resetting and improvement, most of that comes while we are sleeping and in the deepest phase of sleep.

Therefore, if we’re not getting enough sleep or we’re not getting deep enough sleep when we do sleep, we will miss that opportunity. It will accumulate in the negative factor towards us. Working on simple efforts to improve your sleep like making sure your room is as dark as possible, turn off electronics a half hour to an hour before bed, you drink water throughout the day, you don’t have any stimulants like caffeine after 2 o’clcok, things like that; you de-clutter your room, you make sure you’re comfortable, you don’t have restrictive clothing, you prepare yourself for a good night’s sleep, you make proactive steps will pay off big time and you’ll get more out of whatever efforts you’re making right now.

Warren:

Can you sleep naked? Is that a good sleep habit? I’m being funny for everybody on the show, but I heard that’s a good thing for sleeping.

 

Dr. Don:
You can. It helps you stay cool. One of the secrets of sleep is you’ve to keep the room cool. Sixty-seven degrees is what they shoot for. If you’re too warm, then your body doesn’t cool down at night. It’s the cooling down of your body that turns on the hormones like melatonin that help us fall asleep and stay asleep and get in that deep sleep. By having a room too warm or too many covers throughout the night can negatively affect a lot of people.

Warren:

You just caused the biggest battle between husband and wife because there’s always that battle. I have it. I like it cool because I can’t sleep unless it’s cool. That’s a great way to end a show with a little controversy.

We’re talking about meal timing, salt and fat, and getting good sleep for hormone optimization. This is a great call. Thank you so much, Dr. Don, for your time, wisdom, and expertise in this area. We’ll see you on another show sometimes. Thank you, health hunters. Have a great rest of your week.