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 of 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.
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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 struggle to lose
weight generally, but most people, especially struggle to
lose.
He 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
In 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
I'm really terrible information out there and there's a lot of controversy
we did a number of episodes talking about the role of hormones
are metabolism and
the role of food on
mood and well-being. 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
Elaborate with like glia 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 your 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
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 up front 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 are simply No Way Around the fact that
if you
ingest far more calories than you, burn your
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.
Previous episode. I mentioned the complications with the
statement of a calorie is a calorie.
And indeed, there is evidence from, for instance, Robert
lustig, who is a pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco, is 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
He 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 burned 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 than 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
Etc. I usually mention this at the end of the podcast, but
This podcast, we've partnered with Thorn. Th OU are any because Thorn We Believe has the highest levels of stringency in terms of the
quality of the compounds in their supplement and the amounts of those compounds.
If you want to see the supplements I take you can go to Thorn.com / the letter 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 thorn makes Thorn has partnered with the Mayo Clinic and all the
Our 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 of 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 in 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
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 for 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 Chrono type. If you're a night owl or a morning person,
that's the first
for 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 want 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, if the levels of fatty acids that will promote good
mood and also healthy metabolism
and will start to shift the needle in the right
direction, on blood-borne, 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, if you're not into eating fish, you 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 a
Essential fatty acids, and their 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 in 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, have 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 is 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 Etc.
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, they by ingesting
things like kelp etcetera. 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.
Today, 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, epa's 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.
Ooh, of fermented foods per day that can greatly assist. 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, sleepy a glutamine, fermented foods iodine selenium, that sets, the basis for how things like
exercise.
Sighs cold and some of the compounds and other things that we're going to talk about today that are I'm guessing truly 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 crumb 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, the Linens and so forth.
Divide them into two groups, one group they we were told moving around.
And doing your duties for your job,
meet the standards for u.s. guidelines for activity and movement, Etc. And
basic lecture about
how movement is good for you etcetera, but mostly just that their daily activities met the standards for the u.s. 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.
Or weight loss
Etc. 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. Etc, led
to significantly more body fat loss waist to hip ratio changes in the direction that most people would
want, 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 expects 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 maybe you know they stood up in 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 mirror 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,
Etc. So, how we
think about a given set of activities
Affects how we perform those activities and how we think and pray 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 maintain weight typically, and if you
ingest fewer calories than you burn typically, you'll lose weight. That's
It'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 moment, metabolic science and belief effects.
Well, I 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 project I ever worked
on in science was thermogenesis and fat loss. I joined a laboratory as an
undergraduate and the guy 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 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, this like, we're told it's a core energy source if we ever entered a
famine and that's all true, Etc. 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 that furnace. It has the opportunity to increase the amount
of
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 ton 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. 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 you. 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. And turns out that occasion, they 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 and missiles and so forth, bombs and so forth.
And they started shedding all their body fat. And many of them lose, 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
Etc, turned out, that that compound is something called
Dyne Nitro phenol dnp
and over the years. Dine out your final DMP has gained
popularity in some
- 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 dine Archer phenol as a weight-loss drug or attempting to use as a weight-loss drug
but died. Nitro phenol really illustrates a principle which is that your your metabolism includes?
Like thyroid hormone and growth hormone etcetera, but your body temperature, and the way you
utilize, energy
is controlled by your nervous system and the way die. Nitro phenol 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 on our trophy Knoll
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
Janek 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
If you log onto the internet or you open up a text book 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 afficionados 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.
Use and that's attached to something called glycerol. And they're linked by a backbone. So already probably Too Much Chemistry for both 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 there, just potential fuel but you haven't burned the fat yet you 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 burn up.
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 you have to. 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
Turned
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 any one of you, all of you should be able to internalize that mobilize then oxidized. Okay. Mobilize then oxidized.
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 sit atop our kidneys in 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 your fasted because fasting can increase adrenaline, or when you're engaging an 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 got a mobilizing out of 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,
Possession of that and more oxidation of fat.
So, one of the most powerful ways to stimulate
epinephrine, which is also called adrenaline from these neurons that connect to fat
and to thereby stimulate more fat
mobilization in 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
And 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 epinephrine 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 a 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. And, you know, as long before it, many of the hormone factors besides insulin, and even being
discovered, what they did was, they examine people who over eight 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 fidget errs and that's what they call them. I'm not going to do the British, the British accent version of fidget errs, but Rothwell in 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 there.
While they were sitting, when they would talk,
they would engage in very,
angular movements, they were sort of electric. In fact, at 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 real thin and he eats like a horse and so it fits very well into the
discovery of Rothwell and stock who discovered that fidget errs people that bounce their knee people that have a head Bob while they're listening people, that not a lot people that stand up and sit down a lot throughout the day and people that pace burn anywhere from 800 to 2500 calories more than the
expect 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 the second or the third donut or
Donuts 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
there are people that
will often move their limbs very quickly as well that they're even have been studies that have explored other things that
Correlate with fidget errs fidgeter stand up very quickly at the end of a
lecture or they start to gather things very quickly, whereas non fissures. 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, he asked 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? And they go great.
So, even sometimes their speech will be
accelerated, although,
Always, but staccato, movements fidgeting Etc, and in 2015, and again in 2017, there been studies that have been 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,
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. Paste and up more quickly, sit down more often, sit down, and stand up more often, rather, they found that they
greatly increase their weight loss, anywhere from twenty to thirty percent increases. And in some
cases, you know, there are 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 2500 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
Early because it's so important for other aspects of brain and
body Health. But nonetheless we all 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. And what I said before, which is that fat is
controlled by these neurons and the epinephrine, 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
pain, this kind of thing. There's I was probably that kidding
class most of the time, I was like I try not to do it to irritate people, but I was definitely an e bouncer. I'm not particularly lean or or not but you know 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're running lifting weights, swimming yoga, Etc, do
subtle movements of our core
musculature. Not just the core but all our limbs in our in our musculature, those low-level
movements, they trigger epinephrine
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
Eating. 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 802, 2500 calories per day. That's a considerable amount
of fat. Oxidized, if you are in a calorie maintenance mode or a, if your 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, any 80, 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 your reversed exercise for whatever
reason.
Fidgeting movements. Staccato movement standing up walking around pacing all the sort of nervous activities that were so critical of in other people. And sometimes in ourselves are actually mobilizing an 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, you know, a meal that had
I said calories or a kind of steady state of accumulative eating too
much. And it also starts to open up all sorts of thoughts and
discussion about, you know, you 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
etcetera but all of that aside, just the use of something like low-level movement and it's almost like a Tremor, but also these
Short,
small fidgety movements. I'm intentionally doing a lot of these today so you have examples that you can use that 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 epinephrine, adrenaline release from these neurons of the sympathetic nervous system that innervate fat and increase fat mobilization oxidation.
Now, it should make sense.
Why?
Shivering is one of the strongest stimulus? 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 a hundred and eighty 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 mobile, through mobile.
Asian 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 in the uses
of cold on this podcast. In fact did an episode on how to
supercharge performance through
Palmer cooling, cooling, The Palms and 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, or 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
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 and can 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 and convert into ATP, Etc.
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 cryo chamber, doesn't matter if it's a cold day and
you forgot your sweater your
parka, it doesn't matter if it's an ice bath or you, you're lying down in the snow cold, causes the release of adrenaline from your adrenals and it causes the release of epinephrine from these
neurons that connect to Fat. Now,
the big effects of cold on metabolism,
Ilysm 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 of 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 is 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
Teasing 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 those that low-level movement of the muscle, those small movements triggers the release of a molecule called tsukamaete succ
inat e. Succinate
And supinate 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 sukkah Nate 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
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, tsukamaete 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 doesn't have to actually have ice in it. Provided it's cold enough
for anytime anywhere, scuse 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
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 you want?
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 to 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'm not, I don't want to see anyone get hurt.
Cold 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 30s, 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 125. Probably one, two, three times a week. If you really want this to accelerate fat loss
and you want to get in until you just
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 seemed soothing. It might actually not induce shift might take away the shiver that you were that you had. So here's a potential kind of sets reps
protocol that you can play with find a temperature. Then deuces shiver for you that's going to vary depending on your cold tolerance and how cold-adapted you
are.
One, two three maybe five times a week, get in until you forget under the shower, 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 3 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 of remember, the shiver is the source of the sukkah. Nate 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 the cold
plunge.com.
The cold plunge is a company. They make cold plunges and they were kind enough to gift one to the huberman Lab podcast but
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 interest is encouraging people to engage in cold
exposure for particular end points and goals like fat loss resilience Etc resisting inflammation.
But their main focus is providing people. Protocols and encouraging people to use cold exposure, various kinds, not just through their products. But through cold rivers and
Oops, in the ocean and things that 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 its really grounded.
How cold can be used to induce shiver and again it doesn't really matter how you're
accessing that cold provided. You access the
shiver and you're moving from the cold environment to a slightly warmer environment. So getting out of the cold shower, getting
out of the ice bath Etc 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 or do these cold water swims. I would sometimes see these people
swimming back and forth to Alcatraz and stuff like that, which is seems risky. And, you know, they tell me it's very
stimulating for the mind and body, great. Sometimes, those people are very lean, often times, 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 sukkah, Nate release on 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 done.
A gotten into
Cold Water, swimming for some period of time. You can use
cold for resilience etcetera, 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 arason IR
isin, which was associated with cold.
There's 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 arisen, or, you know, of any science of a written that
I'm overlooking here or that, I'm speaking about incorrectly, please let me know.
No, 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 epinephrine into fat are not wired up and really aren't present at
sufficient levels or
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
Epinephrine, released from these little nerve endings in brown fat and supinate 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, you know,
putting ice packs on the
Back of their
neck throughout the day, did 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. That's, those are people that are using cold
packs on the body and on the groin to try and increase things like
testosterone. But as
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 the muscle or improvements and endurance.
If you
go ten percent further on a
run or, you know, 10% faster,
you will likely see an improvement in performance provided. You 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, etcetera you've adapted.
If you do 20% more distance or 20 percent more weight, you won't necessarily see the same commiserate level of gain or Improvement. And so likewise with
Old. 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 show 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 time.
The review is neural,
innervation of white adipose tissue and the control of lipolysis
that's neural, innervation of white,
adipose tissue in the control of lipolysis. It was publishing Frontiers and
neuroendocrinology you can find that free online, they have the
full text available. The first author is a Barton sbar T NE SS. 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 in the reference
Trail. As we say, if you're interested in learning more about,
About also, how neurons Control Brown fat.
And before I move 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 was there were a
lot of commercials late night infomercials where they would talk about spot reduction, you know if you
Sit-ups. Will you lose
abdominal fat? If you do hip raises or glute razor, when you lose
gluten hip fat. And I think everybody 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 and where they tend to store fat or lose fat. Last number of factors that influence that and 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 maybe 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 epinephrine released at those particular fat
pads as they're called, they're actually calling 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 release,
systemically kind of the bathing, all your fat tissue
but rather it's neurons releasing adrenaline epinephrine.
Lee that in theory exercise that stimulates the release of epinephrine or exercise coupled with things like shiver or low-grade shaking movement or
these 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 for this? It 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
Sighs 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 your sub caloric, or not your maintenance calories or 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 epinephrine, 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 there, I don't even want to call it data, but anecdotal evidence, that people who have quote-unquote 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 in 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
additional 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, your fasted. When you do it or
not whether or not you do your cardio first
or your resistance training first.
And this is again, Anna literature for which there's a lot of controversy but in digging through all the studies on 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 modern 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 Hit HIIT. So high intensity interval
training Sprint.
Training. So that's going to be very high intensity or Si t
or moderate intensity. Continuous
training em, ICT. So we've got
hit. Sit and
micced. Am I? CT
and we can get a little bit more precise if you'd like, I'm not
somebody who measures my vo2max 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 realized is going to be of short duration, high intensity but
If you'd
like to map this to vo2max SI T, this Sprint, interval training, was defined as all out
greater than 100 percent of VO2, max burst of activity that last eight to thirty
seconds, interspersed with less intense recovery periods. This would be sprinting down
field for eight to thirty seconds, then maybe walking back for about a minute or two and then sprinting again and then continuing. So that would be SI T hit HIIT
is defined as submaximal.
So 80 to a hundred percent of VO2
max bursts of activity. That last
62, 240
seconds intersperse with less intense recovery periods. So, on a
standard, 400 meter track
just to give us a little bit of a visual, you know, one,
a four-minute mile
would be fantastic for most people although people run faster than that, of course. So, that's for 60 second lapse. But that's back to back to back. I think in my you know, in my best shape or maybe it was in my dreams I don't recall which I was able to do 60 seconds around.
On the track. But of course, I couldn't get that on the second, or third or fourth if I did, that was certainly in Fantasyland and not reality.
But 60 seconds would be about one
revolution around the track, maybe maybe 90 seconds, depending on how fast one
is running. So 62 240 seconds and my CT, okay, this moderate-intensity continuous training is steady state cardio. Sometimes called Zone to cardio these days on the internet, which is
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 percent 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 of 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 it, which is, is it better? Meaning do you burn more
fat? If you do your exercise fasted and fast it 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 unquote, breaks the fast has to do.
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 3 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 4 or 5 or 6
p.m. is it will you burn more
fat if you exercise
without in 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
to the movement of the fatty acid and into mitochondria and the conversion of ATP insulin inhibits that process. However,
It's been shown that at 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. They what they basically did is they gave people
glucose sugar, blood to increase their blood sugar before.
Training or not and the kind of classic study of this
is ahlberg
at all. So in 1976 so 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
lie, lie at all
is another one where they
have people drink milk with glucose in it. So, sweet sugary milk
before exercise, Etc, 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 will 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-analyses 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. Want to be clear. After, at about, or after 90 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise,
there's a switch over 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. Then you would, if you had gone into the training fasted, so let me repeat that
if it's moderate intensity
so-called Zone to 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 3 hours or more prior
to the exercise, at the 90-minute point, you will 90 minutes of exercise, you will start to
burn more fat than you would have you eaten.
Now, 90
Of moderate intensity
exercises in a lot.
So that's, that's a pretty long run,
even if you're running at a pretty slow pace, like a tan 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 than you would do that fasted.
Now, there are also studies that
Point to 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 look to me, like quality peer reviewed studies with no company bias or no product bias of any kind. There are studies that were largely funded by the federal government
In the University context
point to the fact that if one does high-intensity training, or, or
even the very high intensity forms of train, like, Sprint's 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 powerlifting or these kinds of things are kettlebell.
Things
or up to 60 Minutes. Well, 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 medium intensity Zone to 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. It's 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 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 have an increase in insulin. If you eat carbohydrates, you'd have a bigger increase in insulin fat and proteins. Indeed will have lower amounts of insulin and fasting will give you the lowest amount of insulin.
Well then that
switchover 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 maybe lift weights and then get into zone, two cardio. If you are fasted,
did the literature says that you're going to burn more body fat per unit time, then 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 your, you don't have been approved to do this safely
exercise intensely for 20 to 60 Minutes, the higher the intensity, obviously the shorter that
bout is going to be and then move over into zone, two cardio. And if you do that fast it or the medium,
See cardi 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
Of 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 of your, somebody who just can't do the training at all, you're unwilling to or you're incapable of training unless you eat something that obviously, eating something makes the
most sense and what you eat prior to exercise. That's a whole other is that people argue about and fight about whether or not you should go into it with low carbohydrates or higher cover, 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 fat, fat
and protein, and some cases or for some people, it will be eating
carbohydrates. I'm not here to dictate a particular.
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 their 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 is
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, Sprint's
burpees any kind of thing. I don't know these days. I see, I hear you're not supposed to do, burpees that people think burpees are dangerous, so I'm not suggesting a 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
Sprint's Taps into glycogen stores during the movement. And will burn more energy per unit time than
moderate intensity high. Intensity burns more than modern Tennessee. That
straightforward. What's interesting is that all of the studies that I was able to
find on
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's 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, Etc. So 6090 minutes two hours maybe even people that are training for marathons or half marathons when they
They stopped raining.
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 move during
the actual exercise afterward. It's more
glycogen. So,
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 for
Followed by going back into life is going to be the best way to continue to burn body fat because the ways that it increases basal metabolic rate.
This could be distilled into a simple protocol where by 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, you
That you're, 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 this kind
of Falls away and is modified by what's ideal to eat for performance. But we're talking about today is how to optimize body fat body fat
loss. So,
Train moderately to intensely 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 because he's a very busy person. So he'll train for 20 or 30 minutes, intensely with weights or just bodyweight movement doing a lot of. He does burpees and push ups and sit ups and pull ups and just kind of moving and kind of circuit type training. But
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 with kind of like low, intensity work. So I think you get the principal 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? They 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 type movement, or low-level
movements. Big movements that are a very high intensity
meaning. They require a lot of effort deploy, a lot of adrenaline epinephrine from our
neurons and Signal particular
types, and amounts of
Fat thermogenesis fat oxidation
whereas low
level intensity exercise low or moderate intensity exercise you know walking running biking it where you can do that easily.
There's not very much adrenaline release so adrenaline and AKA epinephrine is really the final common path by which movement of any kind whether or not its low-level shiver or whether or not, it's lifting a barbell, sprinting up a hill or doing a long bike ride adrenaline is the
Back door of fat loss, it's the trigger and it's the effector. So now I want to turn our attention to compounds that
increase epinephrine and adrenaline
as well as compounds that work
outside the, the adrenaline epinephrine Pathway to increase the rates of fat loss.
I almost always save compounds, and supplements,
and 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
It's 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 epinephrine that is released from neurons that innervate 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 your 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,
Gene 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 your 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 your 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 with hypertension etcetera. 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 size, 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 and ways. That's complicated, but you'll get a
headache. Some people like the way they feel.
He'll
drinking a hundred to two hundred, three hundred maybe in 400 milligrams of caffeine before training and
indeed that will lead to
increase fat oxidation. It will do that because you will release more epinephrine and adrenaline.
So let's just place this in the context of what we said. Previously, let's say you normally do Zone to 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 a hundred fifty minutes. If their goal is to improve or maintain health of the cardiovascular system, eighty percent of people in the United States, fail to do that or anything close to it. Their way, 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
epinephrine 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.
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? But you probably get, you know, 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 2500 calories a day. So you might say well fidgeting is better than running ah but it doesn't trigger the activation in 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 wraps 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
100 and 400 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 in all states, because people were dropping
dead from taking ephedrine, because they were heating up too much, it's
interesting there, it wasn't Direct effects on the heart causing heart attack it.
It could trigger by way of adrenergic receptors if you'd like to know increases in body temperature and heat.
Now, they're
those drugs turned out to be dangerous because people were overheating and dying. There was also the big fen-phen craze. There was a drug that was released
Finn Flora mean, which actually was quite effective as an anti
obesity drug a treatment for obesity that had to be outlawed
as well. It was, 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 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 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, I guess, because half Argentine the grew up drinking mate, I think I was drinking mate from the time. I was about 3 or 4 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
We returned our biochemistry
as you recall.
Fat is mobilized from body fat
stores and then it's burned up its 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'll 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 a try
Just when you're not exercising, will
also help shift your metabolism toward
enhanced burning of fat by increasing fat oxidation. 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,
there you 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
a size that they are prescription drugs and you obviously wouldn't want to use any of these with without a prescription and a requirement. They, 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 somatic, I can never pronounce us. Can't seem to
It's many things, it seems some Igloo tide is the way I would pronounce it. SEMA, Glu T, IDE
some Igloo tie but that's not the way you pronounce it. But
somatic Glide 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
Ting. 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 that the first time you drink it's gonna be
very very intense. And in fact, some people find that that mate. It 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 typically do is make a about 16 to 30 ounces of in 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 Guai yousa, which is spelled gu a
Why Us? A-- G UA y USA, Guai yousa, which is from Ecuador. Despite the USA ending to it, it's from Ecuador and it's a, it's a
sweeter tasting tea. It doesn't have any sweetener in it,
but the leaf of the gwaii, you supplant is sweeter than the mate plant. I sometimes will mix the two and then make the tea with that. The there's no mate or go. I used to sponsor the podcast. These are just tools to increase glp-1 and fat oxidation.
And again, the some semi glue tide is the prescription version. Where of the, it's kind of the heavy artillery glp-1 stimulant and again should be only explored with a prescription.
So those are the compounds that
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 Journal.
The episode on
hormones. We talked about it, we did a whole episode on hormones in 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
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 a teepee 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 Gardener Lab at Stanford and from other lab showing that when you look at,
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,
adherents.
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 my preferred way of eating, is to go lower. No. Carbohydrate throughout the day for
alertness to get that adrenaline release and the focus that goes with it, etcetera of
the ability and to think and move and do all the things I need to do during the day. And then I eat carbohydrates.
That night because 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, gwaii. You see things of that sort glp-1. You want to learn more about those, you can go to this wonderful website which is free examine.com, you can
put in Yorba mate, it will describe the three studies
that show,
increase fat oxidation, both during
exercise. And at rest and as a consequence, not surprisingly, an 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 in my
fat burning, but I don't like the
feeling of having my basil, heart rate being up too high. I like my heart rate elevated 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 effective mate.
Say of increasing fat oxidation but reducing heart rate just slightly so that's interesting and it probably lends itself to my see your explains the subjective experience that I've had of that mate is kind of a nice even mellow stimulant. It's not this you know really supercharge stimulant like caffeine from coffee or other sources. Although if you drink too much mate, you 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,
We talked about some ways to manage insulin, both in this episode, and then previous
episode.
L-Carnitine and acetyl L-Carnitine in particular
facilitates fat oxidation it convert 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 2 grams per day. In divided doses, typically
some people who are really extreme are taking injections.
Double 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 of the acetyl L-Carnitine has, it has a
huge variety of effects on cellular 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 see reactive protein levels too?
He managed you do not want them to high
can slightly reduce blood glucose.
I can slightly increase HDL, see the good form of of the blood lipid and slightly reduce overall cholesterol and as I mention 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 pad, oxidation, rates.
It has a number of other effects. Some of
which I talked about 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 in. Lots of different cells, it's impacting sperm motility there in a large. Number of studies supporting that slight reductions in
blood pressure
and has these interesting effects of reducing fatigue. During exercise reducing inflammatory markers like interleukin 6.
So it has a number of effects that on the whole are quote
unquote.
Native or at least in the direction of things that you may want. And I should emphasize may, you certainly don't need acetyl-l-carnitine in order to lose fat. But now that you understand the cellular process by which fat is mobilized in oxidized, it should make sense. That, if
L carnitine is important for converting fatty acids into energy, then supplementing
L-Carnitine makes sense,
acetyl L-Carnitine is the type of L-Carnitine, or the form of a
Auntie, 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 epinephrine can facilitate
Eight 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
Version 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 and 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 the cold plunge.com and in weeks to come, we're going to be adding
I'm more protocols to that website, not just for fat loss, but for things like resilience reducing inflammation etcetera, 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
fast, it 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 epinephrine and adrenaline
release as a way to access more fat metabolism.
And we talked about,
Compounds that come from
things like yerba mate and Guai you citee. This glp-1 pathway, that can trigger increase 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 Qui yousa, if that's of interest to you. And then we talked about L-Carnitine and how
L-Carnitine itself is
Article 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 two
can
facilitate the burning of fat fat
oxidation. So, we covered a lot of material. That's a lot of protocols, I realize in that didn't the 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,
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