Episode 28
Busting Health & Wellness Myths: How Diets Ruin Metabolism, Sugar is Not the Devil, Does Carnivore really “Heal”, Intermittent Fasting, Autophagy Might Not Be a Good Thing and the Myth of Running Out of Eggs with Kaya of Fundamental Nutrition
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Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast, a place to explore where female physiology and feminine energy dance together to shape our life experience. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, functional nutritionist and integrative health coach and I'm inviting you to journey with me through both the scientific and spiritual facets of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance and become deeply and fully nourished despite living in a society that is increasingly desperate to erase our female set-apartness. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary. And please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
Introducing Kaya
So today's guest is Kaya from Fundamental Nourishment. Kaya is an independent researcher and a survivor of numerous health world fads on a mission to challenge popular claims in the health and nutrition world. Through her work, she exposes flaws in generally accepted opinions of what's healthy or unhealthy. Her goal is to get to the root of issues, ask uncomfortable questions and help individuals make more informed decisions about their well being. I have always loved Kaya’s work personally because she's super thorough and exploring those commonly held myths or misconceptions that are so prevalent in not only the health space, but also the scientific space as well. She's not afraid to ask those hard questions and question her own belief systems, which I love. And today we cover a variety of topics around the downfalls of popular diets like low carb, keto, paleo, we talk a lot about our personal experiences and parts of our health journey, which I really enjoyed. We also discuss why the health and wellness industry is so dogmatic we touch on intermittent fasting and autophagy. We even cover this myth that women are born with all the eggs they'll ever have, and that menopause is triggered by running out of eggs. So we just had a variety of interesting topics.
And a theme you might notice in this interview is how science is not infallible. And in fact, it is very much influenced by not only people's personal bias, but religious background, or their lack thereof, and the political climate and agendas of the time. So you have to look at science within that context. I think a lot of us believe that science is akin to like God or the Bible, it's like the Holy Word, and can do no wrong. But as long as people are involved, and there are humans behind it, no matter how hard they try, they are just humans like us, they bleed just like us. So if you take away anything from this interview, I hope that you remember that the most important thing to trust is your gut. And hopefully, our experience with trusting our own guts along the way really inspires you. I hope you enjoy. Thank you so much for being here. Kaya.
Kaya: Thank you for having me on. I'm so happy to be here.
Jessica: As I was saying before we jumped on your work has inspired me so much there. I think the first writing or I don't know if it was an article that I came across some of yours was you kind of debunking myths about the Mediterranean diet and how the Mediterranean diet, the real Mediterranean diet is not the same as what is portrayed. And from that on, I've just really loved your work. I love the way that you look at things. And I know you kind of call yourself a self proclaimed health heretic. And so your writings I mean, everyone, I'm sure there's so many people that just love to read your work and your research. And I'm just curious, like, what is your story? What got you here?
Kaya: My story is not linear whatsoever. So one really quick thing which I find really kind of funny in terms of the timing that you mentioned, the Mediterranean diet post, I'm actually working on an article right now that's expanding on that topic. So I'm kind of like revisiting that, looking into like the data on like, what do people actually eat? And then like Spain and Italy, and yeah, all of that. But in terms of my story, so I think that I was kind of initiated into the health world pretty early on. Just because I had a pretty sickly childhood, there was something that triggered just an endless series of colds and flus nonstop around the age of six. I think it was related to you know, the things that go in your arm but not sure if that was the trigger. Whatever it was, it would be like three weeks of being sick at home with like pneumonia or whatever, back to school for like a few days and then sick again. So that basically lasted until I hit puberty which happened very early on, I think around like the age of like nine or 10. And I say that that was my like initiation because I think that it was what crumbled for me this kind of I think idea that a lot of people hold which is that doctors or people in medicine are almost like a demigod, you know that they know everything that they have all the answers because I mean, I saw an endless amount of dark during those four years, I mean, I was, you know, very young, but I remembered quite well. And alternative doctors had various tests done. And there was just no answers. But there was also no questions, which was something that I realized, you know, it was just kind of a lot of, hey, I don't know what's wrong with her. And here's more antibiotics. All right. Good luck. Here's your bill. So I think that that was kind of my early initiation to kind of just like, break that illusion. So I was kind of going into life without this illusion that I know a lot of people have, which is that our medicine right now is just invaluable, and it knows everything. But that didn't stop me from doing everything wrong throughout my life. So basically, the short version of the story is that things go better around puberty, but I still had different issues popping up here and there. So at one point, I had eczema, I had really bad acne on my back and like signs of PCOS, although I never got a diagnosis for it. But the signs were there. There was, yeah, Raynolds at one point, and at one point, I started taking birth control, which was kind of the tipping point where things went from really bad to worse. But around that time was also when I started really getting into, I would call it healthy eating, because I already knew that like, okay, birth control does deplete certain vitamins. So it's important to get more of them. And I started looking into like, okay, where to find them? Like, what is healthy eating? Even like, I was already a little bit of a skeptic at that point. So I think I knew like, okay, the food pyramid and six to eight servings of grains a day, it's probably not it. And I also knew that, you know, the vegan approach is also probably not it, because I think like I, my family comes from an ex communist country. So I grew up hearing the stories of how meat was a luxury that you had to, you know, get maybe once in a while, and it was not available. So I knew like, okay, rich nations have meat, I don't think that cutting out animal products would be the thing for health. So what I eventually stumbled into was the Paleo diet. So that was the gist of it, at least the way that it existed around that time, which I think that was like 2017 was, you eat like a caveman, you eat how people ate 1000s of years ago, for whatever reason, because apparently, that's how we evolved to eat and haven't changed since or millions of years ago, even. So no dairy, no grains, all the vegetables as raw as possible. A lot of seeds, a lot of nuts, a lot of meat. That was basically the basis behind the diet. And I mean, it doesn't, I guess explicitly cut out things like starches and fruit. But, of course, there's different voices in various diet worlds. And in the Paleo world, there were a lot of voices that were really emphasizing things like going low carb, and that, you know, back in the day, we had fruits that were tiny and just had a bunch of seeds, and you could barely get any flesh out of them. And you know, we're not meant to eat fruit and things like that. So I think by token of kind of going paleo, I kind of went low carb as well. I mean, the birth control, I didn't stay on it very long. I basically tossed it in the trash after three months, because I just had so many new issues that came up. But yeah, that left me with new issues that I had to add to my health arsenal of issues. But I started paleo. And I think at first, I don't I don't know if I even felt better, to be honest. Like, I think that if you're not eating, you know, just like crappy Western foods, there's gonna be certain things that improve. I was definitely getting some more nutrients than back when I was like in high school and eating deep fried food. But I noticed that on paper, I was doing everything right. I was you know, I was gluten free. I was grain free, dairy free. I was eating all the vegetables. I was drinking the kale shakes. I I was into lifting weights. So I wasn't really much into cardio. I was doing the weightlifting. Yeah, intermittent fasting at one point, basically, like by the book you like, if you go through, like, I don't know, mainstream, or not even mainstream, like more alternative health recommendations of people that I don't know, maybe are like the bigger voices in the health sphere. I was doing everything by the book. And it was just like, more issues every week. So I was basically bloated 24/7 and I think my digestion was always bad, like my entire life. But you know, if something is bad your whole life, you kind of become blind to it. You don't notice that it sucks because it's always sucked. But it was it was more sucky than normal. So I was basically bloated, nonstop. I was cold all the time. I started waking up in the middle of the night like cold sweats. Just a lot of really weird things. I even started getting like neuropathy and my hands and my feet at one point and I went to the doctors at one point, just like a regular doctor. I had labs done because I was suspecting that I think I'm hypothyroid because I was I was looking to the signs and I was like, why is it that I'm sitting in an office and everybody's wearing a t shirt. And I literally just put my winter jacket on and I'm freezing like that is not normal. But of course we know that, or at least me and you know that there are certain issues with thyroid labs. So when I went to get them done, I was told that they're absolutely normal. And that was it. So I kind of went back to doing what I was doing, because I was like, Well, I am being told that my labs are good that according to all the information out there, I'm doing all the right things. So I'm just not going to listen to this voice in my head. That's telling me that clearly something is off. And I think oftentimes, there was this intuition that was kind of like peeking through for me, like, I would be thinking to myself, Why am I supposed to be eating like raw broccoli? Or raw kale? Why would cavemen have been eating that like, there's nothing about that food that would indicate to me that, hey, it's edible. It's tasty, like, it doesn't smell nice. It doesn't taste nice. It doesn't make me feel nice. But then I guess my left brain would take over and kind of say, shush, intuition go away. And it would look at the nutrition data that says, well, kale has blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and has this much calcium and this much magnesium. So of course, it's good for you. So I would just kind of dismiss all of that until it kind of became impossible to dismiss because I lost my menstrual cycle. And I knew that, well, if there's one indicator that my health is in the toilet, it's that I don't have my period anymore. And at that point, I went to a naturopath and had my thyroid labs done again. And she confirmed that, yes, your thyroid levels are in the toilet. And at that point, I was already like tracking and chronometer and all of that, like I was already like, tip top and have my health, I showed her my logs, and she was like, Oh, your diet is perfect. And I was kind of sitting there. It's like, how can you tell me that my diet or whatever it is that I'm doing is perfect. When I'm sitting in front of you right now I'm a complete mess. I'm like 22 years old at the time, don't have my period, I broke down crying in the in the session, I was just like a complete mess, very dysregulated just very low capacity for anything resiliency out of the window. But I think that that was maybe like a little bit of an initiation for me like a deeper initiation, again, that okay, I can tell that something is wrong. I need to really listen to myself. But all the information that I'm getting is just not making like it's telling me that what I'm doing is perfect. So clearly, I have to go out and try something else. And I had a few of these moments already. Like for example, at that time, I was getting like cystic acne in the luteal phase of my cycle. And when I googled the type of acne I was getting, it was very clear, like, Hey, this is estrogen dominant acne. But then if I, you know, looked into the menstrual cycle was telling me well, the luteal phase is the phase of high progesterone and the follicular phase that's high in estrogen. And I was like, this makes no sense. So I went out of my way to actually look at some data. And I found some like studies that actually measured women's hormones in different parts of their cycle. And they found that a lot of women actually have estrogen levels that are, let's say, like five to 10 times higher in the luteal phase, then in the follicular phase, and I was like, Okay, interesting. Things are starting to make sense. Funny enough. Dr. Ray Peat was the only person that I've ever that was years later that I've ever come across that actually confirmed that like, yes, it's the luteal phase. That's the phase of high hormones. But again, it was like those bits and pieces of, I guess, events happening where I was like, okay, clearly, I cannot trust this stuff that's on the surface, or maybe not even on the surface, because I already feel like I was already like, five levels below the surface, compared to maybe like, what the average person would come across. But I was like, I need to, like, get to the bottom of the iceberg. Because clearly, what I'm finding here is not giving me the answers. And only once I really, really, really dig, I start to make sense of what's happening. And around that time when I was kind of going through this journey of okay, I can tell him hypothyroid I'm not feeling well. I'm doing all things perfectly, as I've been told, I started really being open to like anything that would shatter everything that I believe in. So around that time, I came across the carnivore diet. So that was like mind blowing for me, because I was like, Oh, well, these people are actually telling me that if I'm eating vegetables, they can actually you know, ruin my health or they can be adversely affecting my health. And I think I come from a background of, I never really liked vegetables very much. So I very much went down the route of forcing myself to eat them to like, hit all of my micronutrient levels and I I have this one memory which I wish my brain would have blocked out but I had a day where I guess I didn't hit all of my micronutrients. So I came home and I made a shake out of an entire bag of raw kale. And I was like, This is gonna help me hit them. And I just remember drinking it and gagging and being like, holy shit this. And it was like, again, just like such a disparity between like, you know, my body is literally telling me holy fuck this is poison.
Jessica: There's, there's a moment where you're just, you're thinking to yourself, What the hell am I doing?
Kaya: Yeah, and I would, you know, I wish that that came through more. But for whatever reason my left brain took over again being like, but the data says that all the nutrients that are there, how could they pay to be wrong? I already had my aversion towards certain vegetables from the silly things that I made myself do. So I came across a carnivore diet, which was all like, well, actually, there's certain compounds and vegetables that can be damaging to the thyroid, which it is true. But there's far more nuance to that than what the carnivore community actually tells you. And just, I guess, talking about things like anti nutrients, and I haven't heard about that before, how there are certain vitamins that are more bioavailable in meat. So at that point, I was like, Oh, my God, like I've been eating all these vegetables. Yes, yes there’s this whole thing, like, Finally, there's something different. That's not just like, Oh, you're doing everything right. Please continue until like, the wheels fall off the wagon, and you just disintegrate into a pile of dirt like. So yeah, at that point, I went full steam into the carnivore thing. And certain things really did improve. Like, I think that I was finally eating foods that my digestion was actually absorbing, because I do come from a background just having really bad digestion. So like, my hair started growing, my sleep got better and my cycle came back. But that was like my honeymoon period on the carnivore diet, until things started really going downhill again, because of course, I was doing like the zero carbs. I was definitely not getting a balanced intake of my minerals, like I was having like the tartar deposits on my teeth that basically show that you're getting way too much phosphorus, not enough calcium. But yeah, just certain things started really going not so well on the carnivore diet, like eventually my cycle started coming more and more rarely, I gained a lot of fat. So like, you hear the sentiment in the carnivore or low carb or keto community that it's sugar that makes you put on fat that like the second that you eat some sugar, you're just going to convert into fat and put it on your body and you're gonna get obese. And I was like, I'm eating zero sugar, and I gained like 20 pounds, and it's not muscle, because I was still like lifting weights at that time. And I could tell like, I'm not lifting more weight, I'm not putting on muscle, like I'm getting cellulite on my stomach, which I've never had. This is fat. So clearly, it's not that eating sugar is, you know, is making me fat because I'm not eating any meat. So that was again, like one of these instances where once again, I had to go deeper inside of the onion. And I guess think more outside the box. And yeah, just reevaluate what I was doing. Because when I was I guess, bringing these concerns up to meet people that were in the low carb community carnivore community, I just kind of got met with a sentiment of well, you must be eating carbs and you're lying, because it's only carbs that make you gain fat. And I'm like, Oh, well, I'm not eating them. And I'm getting fat.
Jessica: It's like total gaslighting. Yes. It's so interesting. And do you feel like I mean, there's so much we can unpack. There's almost this war that begins to happen as you wake up to Okay, yeah, maybe I cannot always trust outside sources to tell me what's right for my body. I think there's a there's a beginning, like you said, the onion starts peeling back. I felt like I have a very similar story to you down to like the birth control down to just the the way that I went with my diet. And I feel like at some point, your world shatters and you realize, okay, I can't trust these health professionals the way that I thought I could they're not I can't I call it white knight syndrome, where you're like looking for this white knight. You're like, okay, yeah, they're going to help me Okay, no, they're going to help me oh, they're going to help me. And we do that with everyone. We do that with doctors, influencers, nutritionists, whatever it might be, we jump from thing to thing to thing. And then we start to recognize, oh, they're not going to help me. I think I have to help me. And it can be a really rough road to figuring out how you help yourself because like you said, you're you're going to keep going and I think a lot of people you got to the carnivore place as I did. And I kept seeing dietary changes as always through the lens of restriction the more restrictive I was, you know, where I cut out sugar and didn't do this and had my micronutrients and did this. I was getting healthier and healthier. Even though the evidence was not there. I didn't know better just like you didn't feel better. It's your intuition is telling you something's not right. Something's not right. Which is why you can Keep seeking. But then once you get to carnivore, you're kinda like, what do I do from here? Because at the end of the road this isn't saving a theory. So we're going to only eat sun and light and oxygen. That's it. That's it.
Kaya: And then it's a cloudy day and you're fasting, I guess. But, yeah, you, you get to a point where there's nothing, nothing more to cut out like you said, yes.
Jessica:: So from there, what was your pivot? How did you get out of there because I was in the same place where it was always gaslighting, you must not be doing it right, you must be cheating. You're not going low carb enough. I remember one time I had a nutritionist telling me that he was having 30 grams of net carbs a day, which was like nothing. And I'm like starving for sugar. You know, I would I would literally just sit there, there were times where on Fridays, I would just be like, I can't do it anymore and go get a Haagen Dazs and juice and pound the whole thing. But they would say, well, that's why you're cheating. You're you're not getting under 30 grams of net carbs. And I remember this one lady said, Okay, go under 10 grams of net carbs. You got to get it down to 10. And it was just like, I remember crumbling inside thinking, how am I going to do this? Like, why is it feel so hard? Why does everything feel so difficult and so hard? So where did what? What changed for you once you were in the carnivore space?
Kaya: So what changed for me is I think I well, one, I just want to comment on what you said, because I think that there's this prevailing idea that the body is just always trying to, I've heard this in the Paleo world, something like nature wants you fat or something like that. You know, your body is always working against you that you shouldn't trust your instincts that you shouldn't trust your intuition, because it's all wrong. It's all trying to lead you astray and make you do naughty things. And you need to have restraint.
Jessica: Do you feel like that is kind of I almost feel like that's like a influence of religious dogma that has like infiltrated almost like a Puritan type mentality of I am at my core rotten and evil. And so they're thinner myself. Yeah, golly, it's very… it to me, I feel like sometimes the health space and the dogma there really parallels with religious dogma.
Kaya: Yeah I think so. I think that this could listen to us down such a different conversation, how I think like, I noticed this, too, how like, for example, a lot of people in the health world are also very Christian, and makes me go oh, I think maybe there's a connection, but I'm not sure if we want to go down this road.
Jessica: Yeah, I feel like it has shifted to that in the past, like 20 or 30 years. Whereas before, like the 80s, or 90s, I feel like it'd be very the typical, like hippie, you know, would be the healthy person, everyone else was like, Well, what are they doing, whereas now I feel like the space has been infiltrated by more, I mean, definitely a lot of have, specifically Christians, but just people that are religious overall, and it has changed the feeling or like the energy of the space, it has become much more dogmatic because I think what they're bringing possibly, is that we've talked about it, we've touched on it in the podcast, in the past that kind of authoritarian way of thinking, where it's like, yeah, this is right, this is wrong, everything is black or white. There can't be nuance here, right? You can't be we can't trust ourselves here. And I think that's what it really comes down to is that I cannot bring myself to trust myself, I have to look outside of myself, in order to find the answer, because the answer couldn't possibly be inside. I can't trust myself. nature wants me to be fat, my body is inherently bad.
Kaya: 100%. And I think it's interesting, you also bring this up, I guess, the religion piece. So I will say like, I think I grew up culturally Christian, but not very immersed in the religion, but I do have some like knowledge of it. And I think that there is a little bit of this idea there that you shouldn't trust your heart, or you shouldn't trust your body, you know, because you, it's trying to lead you astray. And then you know, there's this god authority. And I think that this does influence how we approach health, how we listen to ourselves. And I think that there are also other influences that basically make us so authoritarian and how we approach health and I think that there are so many layers to it. I think that there is this cultural layer of religion and school and parenting because you know, even I guess if you're not religious, that doesn't mean that you're exempt from developing this authoritarian perspective on life when you were you don't trust yourself, because I mean, a lot of parenting is basically Hey, do this. But why because I said so. And then a lot of schooling is basically like, hey, you need to memorize and repeat this and it's like, but why it's like because it's in a textbook. So there's a lot of I guess, just rewarding of pay this is information. And you do well when you repeat this information. And we don't I think have a culture of curiosity that would actually go back and even question maybe some of the information that is in those textbooks, because that's something that, I guess what I've been doing now, which is, you know, running my sub stack doing my writing, my favorite bit of what I do nowadays is just kind of going back to figuring out where certain ideas originated. And something that I have yet to figure out whether this is funny or terrifying, I think it's both at the same time. But sometimes you find an idea that is fundamental to certain things that are being taught in like, let's say, physiology, or just medicine. And you realize that maybe the reason that this idea got accepted was more so because of politics than it was because of how valid this idea is. But we never went back to question it. And we're building on top of it. So like a recent one, for example, I was diving into immunity and Immunology. And there is this concept in in immunology, that tries to explain like how the immune system functions, and it's called the self not self theory, which assumes that the role of the immune system is to discern between what is self like, what are your own cells versus what is foreign. And that is the main goal, find something that's foreign and attack it. But we have data now that basically shows that that model isn't complete. Like we have autoimmune diseases, showing that the immune system definitely does react to itself, we see that it doesn't react to certain things that are foreign, like we have a microbiome and our body is not trying to kill it all the time, a mom will have her fetus that has different DNA, and it doesn't try to kill it. But if we look at a lot of textbooks, we're still building on that model, because we haven't come up with a better one. So that is one of these scary, I guess, fascinating things that I've found. But I think that what would it really, it might be a little bit of maybe a wake up call to a person that hasn't thought about it this way. Because, again, we have a culture where if somebody is highly educated, we tend to just very much trust what they say what they think. And you know, it's not to say a bad word against this person, they've definitely gone through a lot of schooling, and they've definitely put into hard work. But I don't think that there really is an environment to question like, hey, this person might be very smart. But were the people way, way, way, way down the line that maybe generate us or an idea where they are equally as smart. Or maybe they were smart for a time. But we need to revisit that idea. And I think that again, we kind of have a culture where we just hold certain humans on such a pedestal, maybe, you know, almost we hold them like a godlike figure, because we're used to having these figures, these these figures that we're, we're expected to see as above us via teachers or parents or, you know, religious entity or whatever.
Jessica: Or even like I think of like the government as well. The government the same way. Yeah,
Kaya: 100%. And then we kind of just believe that somebody else out there is smarter than us, and that they have all the answers and that we shouldn't trust our intuition. Or you know, these glimmers that maybe we have of something peeking through. Like for me, one of those glimmers was I remember having a terrible migraine at one point. And I was at my grandparents place, and they had bags of Haribo, the gummy bears. And I was like, You know what, I'm really craving these and I ate a bag and my migraine went away. So you know, these are what I call the glimmers of you know, you do the things that are not healthy, and all of a sudden your health improves. But yeah, I think that we're used to ignoring these things on the assumption that somebody else knows better. And I think that, you know, the the state of our physiology also does affect how we receive certain information. I think that this is something I've seen you talk about before as well, you know, when you're in fight or flight, you do tend to go into this black and white thinking, believing that somebody has all the answers that let's say, this guru, or this person or whatever, they will have all the answers for you, as opposed to just kind of trying to take what they're saying, as one data point trying to figure out like, where are they right, where are they wrong? And I think that a lot of the health world, unfortunately also feeds into this because a lot of the information is presented in such a fear based manner, which it puts you into more fight or flight. So you can't even actually take it in a way that makes you think about the information in a logical way. You just kind of get scared and you're like, okay, okay, tell me what to do. I'll do it. I'll do it.
Jessica: Yeah, it's almost like a submission. Yeah, I think I think too, if you're already in that low energy state, that low metabolic state where you're already, I know Dr. Peat talks a lot about this, but that learned helplessness state of Yes, high estrogen, high serotonin, typically high stress hormones, low thyroid function, you're not perceiving anything correctly. You're perceiving everything in a sense of hyper vigilance where It's either an attack on you like it's going to hurt your safety, or you're going to hurt your own safety. So you're just you feel paralyzed, almost think of it as like trapped in a box where you're just like, oh my gosh, like I think of an animal that's being hunted, and then finally gets caught, and they just crumble into a ball. I feel like that's most of us right now, where our hormones are at and our physiology is that, like you said, it really impacts our perception of the world. And the answer is really taking our own personal responsibility back and like reclaiming our sovereignty. But unfortunately, that can be very, very scary when you have very little energy. It's like I can't possibly bring myself, what does that mean for me, because I'm, there's so many layers to that, if I have to take personal responsibility for my own health. And I have to really start to see the nuance, and I can't see things in black and white. And that's going to start, I think, for a lot of people that's going to unleash, I call it Pandora's box where it's just like, it's never going to stop. Because once you open that door, your whole world is going to in a way, crumble, the small little box that you created for yourself is going to start crumbling. And then you're going to have to really start exploring. And I think for a lot of us, especially for in a low energy state, it's really terrifying. Yeah, we think everything we're seeing everything through the lens of survival, like I don't know if this is going to kill me, or, or destroy me.
Kaya: Yeah, like your body is basically focused on surviving the next, like two seconds, it can't even think about, what can I do that's going to be best for me a week down the line. It's like, I need to do the thing that requires the least amount of energy in this very moment, because that's how I'm going to survive. And yeah, it's, it can be extremely difficult, I think to get out of that, you know, again, when that energy is, is lacking.
Jessica: Yeah but I love how you describe it. I think in one of your writings, you had said, this is like your villain origin story. And I think that's really where we all have to, there is a moment, there's a moment I don't know, it's not, you won't be able to look back and say that was that moment. But there is a moment where things shift. And you finally it's almost like you let go of no one's coming to save me, I am going to do this. And I'm going to trust and my whatever you believe in my higher power, the universe God. And I am going to finally listen to that intuition. You know, fuck the noise. We got a we've got to steal the mind. And let's focus on the step that's right in front of us. And it's a really, I think, you know, I can look back and say, I made the step and it's led me down a path that I'm like, Oh, my God, thank God, I made that. Yeah, they got me that stuff. But at the time, it's terrifying because sometimes you lose friends, you have people that say, You're crazy. You sometimes have those preconceived beliefs about yourself where you think I think I might be crazy.
Kaya: What am I? Same page.
Jessica: I mean, there was a time I can't remember what it was. The sugar thing was the hardest thing for me to wrap my mind around. And I remember the first time I like popped the top off a Mexican coke. And I was just like, I'm about to chug coke right now. You know, like, I am about to drink a Coca Cola, whereas I had not drank soda for years, and not that people have to drink cola to be healthy. But it was just one of those things where it was like, I am taking off the chains that I've put on myself. And wow, this is scary. But it also feels so good.
Kaya: You know, it's funny you say that because I think that kind of going back to my villain origin story that was really like, the moment where I just decided to be insane was the moment that things started going really well for me. But no insane was that was when I was still doing carnivore I came across the raw carnivore diet, like the origin is, is primal diet. So at one point, like I was basically seeing people thrive on like raw meat diets, and I was like, You know what, fuck it. I'm just gonna eat a bunch of raw meat and see what happens. So, yeah, that was a chapter that happened there at some point along the way. And I was bringing raw meat to work and like eating in front of my co workers. And I was like, You know what, at this point, I'm like, I've gone to the edge of like, what's acceptable or past the edge of what society acceptable? I might as well stay insane. And yeah, it's weird, but it's like, it's like one of those those points or like the initiation where you're like, Okay, I've done the thing where everybody told me that, hey, don't do that thing, because it's gonna be bad for you. And then if you do it, and you actually feel better, you're like, okay, maybe I should keep going this direction. Because clearly, like, there's something there that's unexplored. And I mean, I would say that I personally, right now wouldn't recommend raw meat to most people. But it was definitely interesting to see that I did it and nothing particularly bad happened. And I was like, Oh, I actually do feel quite good. My digestion is enjoying this and I'm not projectile vomiting everywhere. So I guess that's a learning.
Jessica: yeah i remember the first time that I did the same thing where it's like, you know, the typical like, they take the patty and they form it into you know, they put an egg yolk on it. Yeah, kind of, you know, your typical little onions, aromatic little pickles. Yeah, I remember the first time I took my bite of raw meat, and I was like, that's not bad. It's, I didn't die, you know? Yeah, it's okay. But I think yeah, just like you said, I don't think that's probably the best for anybody or most. Right now your digestion is poor. But it is one of those things where you just kind of have to experiment and trust yourself and trust that it is gonna work out. Yeah.
Kaya: And I guess to your earlier question, maybe to actually get into how I finally arrived at Peat, because I think that that itself is kind of an interesting story a little bit. So that was actually when I was still in the carnivore world. I was following somebody that I guess I listened to my intuition. So I was following somebody that basically was consistently saying some quite negative things about Dr. Pete for whatever reason, his name kept being brought up. And at one point, I just kind of stopped and I was like, Okay, this Peat guy must be doing something, right. If for whatever reason, this person is using their platform to basically just talk shit about him this whole time, I should really check him out. I guess, that didn't work out. They wanted it to work.
Jessica: Funny, same happened to me. I wasn't literally going through the bulletproof forum. I was looking for why my hair was falling out because I was I was card. And so somebody mentioned Danny Roddy. And so I said, and another person said, Danny Roddy is crazy. And I was like, I need to go. And that was how everything that's how I discovered Ray Pete and all his work, but sorry to interrupt.
Kaya: No, that was basically how Yeah, I started reading his website. And I was obviously skeptical at first, because I was coming from this very like, oh, high fat is the best diet, blah, blah, why is this guy telling me to eat carbs. But I stumbled through him on to Broda Barnes’s book. So I think I ordered it when it was still out of print, because I think it's being reprinted now. But I got it from like, a very old used copy that I found somewhere in the last crevice of the internet. And I remember just like reading it, and it had basically like a perfect description of my health journey. And it was all like, this is hypothyroidism. And this is how it all actually works. And, yeah, it basically just went on from there. I was like, Okay, finally, things are making sense. And I think like, it got to a point where intuitively I read it. And there wasn't, I guess, this part of me that was usually there with all the previous approaches, which was like just trying to ring a bell like, this is not making sense. That wasn't there. Because it was making sense. But yeah, that was, that was how I stumbled into all of this.
Jessica: Well, I felt the same way that it was because I had already been researching. I mean, as probably you, you come across so many different ideas, and you are pretty researched, or you you're pretty educated on like the key concepts of at least for me, it was like hormones, kind of understanding cortisol and those things. But there's never a connection or an integration with like the actual nutrition practices or the physiology and saying, If I do not consume carbohydrates, I'm more likely to respond to stress this way, there just seems to be a disconnect with my habits are going to result in the things that you guys are fear mongering about the very things your fear mongering about that is what's going to happen. And there's not a lot of connection, I feel like it's a there's almost a disconnect in the health space where it's, there's fear mongering and restriction about diet, and then the actual education, and they don't meet the two because if you start to meet the to the diet that they're promoting, is usually not going to actually result in what they're promoting. It's very, there's just a lack of understanding about physiology overall.
Kaya: Yeah, 100%. And I see this so much like, for example, you will see different herbs being promoted to lower cortisol, like, I don't know, take this adaptogen take ashwagandha, for example, or drink some reishi, or whatever it is that's being recommended for lowering cortisol. And it's not me saying that these things are bad, per se, but it's like, there's just out of curiosity and asking, like, why is cortisol high in the first place? And like you said, that's usually where a lot of these ideologies fall apart. Because when we actually look at a lot of the research, and also when we just look at, well, how we feel, carbohydrates are the main thing that lowers cortisol. So if you are on a low carbohydrate diet, and you're having cortisol issues, well, if you actually started looking to physiology, you're gonna realize that it's a low carbohydrate diet that's at the root of the issue. And by trying to take Ashwagandha or whatever, maybe you're masking the issue a little bit, but you're not actually addressing the root cause, which is you're in a state of, you're in a bad state, metabolically, your body is not able to make the energy that it needs and it's relying on the stress hormones to basically keep you alive. And I think that there are so many of these things that are in a health world that are just being taught to, yeah, that are just kind of disconnected. You know, you you learn one thing that like, hey, for example, carbohydrates are the cause of insulin resistance, right? Like that is such a common one. Yeah, if you eat carbohydrates or if you eat sugar, specifically, you're gonna develop insulin resistance, you are going to develop diabetes, but there's not really an explanation or a good explanation, I would say as to how that mechanism happens. Right? You are, I guess the the explanation that you have nowadays is that when you eat sugar, your body releases insulin, and eventually your body just gets sick of having to release insulin all the time and say, Yeah, I don't feel like it anymore. And it's like, well, the body doesn't do that with any other hormone. Really, I can't really think of an example right now. But I don't know, maybe like you ovulated. And your body won't just say it's like, Hey, I just don't feel like making progesterone, like there will be a reason why it's not making it right. Just like there would be a reason why it's not maybe able to produce insulin, but it's not because it just doesn't feel like it or because you gave it too many carbohydrates. And, you know, when you actually look at some of the literature, you end up seeing that it's actually higher carbohydrate diets and lower fat diets that usually try to or tend to help in insulin resistance, and you start to have to ask those questions as to like, okay, maybe there's a different mechanism, or you know, if it is carbohydrates that cause insulin resistance and diabetes. Why is that I'd like certain tribes that live in maybe like Asia, or Africa that are very high starch diets with very low fat, they're not diabetic, they're not insulin resistant, they're not obese. Why is it that certain European diets are traditionally so high in carbohydrates, like the French or the Italian diet? And you know, these people are not traditionally obese or insulin resistant or diabetic? But there's definitely yeah, there's a disconnect between, I think, like a lot of these ideas in the alternative health world. And then I guess the way that physiology gets explained. And I think that there's, again, a lot of shunning when you try to kind of dig holes when you get a certain explanation of physiology and still making sense. And you're like, Well, can you clarify why it's happening this way? And then, you know, the clarification is not there. Like I think one that resonated or maybe not resonated, but like something that stuck with me, from the carnivore days was, I think that there's a tribe, I think it's the Inuit actually, that their diet is traditionally a fat only ketogenic diet, but they actually have a genetic alteration that prevents them from getting into ketosis. And I was like, why would it be that the one I guess a group of people that is actually, I guess, forced to be on a fat only diet literally has an adaptation that prevents ketosis from happening, why? Why would this happen? And there was no good explanation there.
Jessica: I remember hearing that as well. And that was another red flag I, I started to really recognize that what happens a lot of times in these spaces, is they'll look at the exception rather than the rule. So they tend to, you know, for example, the Inuit is one of the only tribes on the planet, or that we know of that is on a high or only fat diet. Yeah. And like you said, even then they have a genetic adaptation to it. Or even I think of like the vegan more like vegan type research or propaganda, where they'll look at these, like East Asian cultures that have a high soy consumption. But then when you look at their genetic predisposition, a lot of them have a genetic mutation that keeps them from aromatizing Estrogen. So like, I think 70% of the population cannot aromatize estrogen. So it's like you see these adaptations, and then you'll have people that are trying to prove their own bias or their own research, and they'll use these things. These people are these cultures are these traditional diets that are an exception to the rule, and not the actual rule. Because when you look at traditional diets, most of them are quite varieties. Most of them are balanced. Yeah. Like you have a meat, you have an organ dish, you have some type of starch dish, whether it's like a tuber, or a grain, or both. You have usually some type of lagoon, like there's usually a pretty balanced diet there. And it's all cooked a specific way to a very traditional way. So it's just it's quite fascinating. Because when you start to really look, you realize, okay, there's more to the story. And when somebody is telling you like this, this is the healthiest diet because this group of people is the healthiest on the planet. Yeah. What is it about those people that are able to adapt to that diet, and maybe they're not actually an exception, and you're not exception to that rule?
Kaya: And it's also interesting because I think if you look at like dishes that are more traditional, like, regardless of which culture they come from, they just you look at it, and it looks tasty. You know, versus like, if you Google healthy diet and you see like, what Google serves you up like, I don't know anybody that would actually salivate looking at that.
Jessica Ash: I think about like the even the recommended like food pyramid of eight cups of grains a day. And I'm like, I don't even know how I would get eight cups of grains like I that would need to be work. I don't know how I wouldn't even do it.
Kaya: I'd be eating for a living like that.
Jessica: eating and pooping because truly like, a lot. So I guess I mean, we've hit so much, but I'm curious. Are there certain dogmas that you've come across in your research, wellness dogmas or health dogmas that you feel are the most dangerous that some people still believe? I feel like typical that I think of is like, carbohydrates are bad. Sugar is bad. Cholesterol is bad. But is there anything else that comes to your mind that you just see again, and again, that you feel like should be highlighted all of those.
Kaya: I think some of the dogmas, I think stem from maybe not understanding what it means to be in good metabolic health. So I do want to touch on that a little bit, because I think we both you and I talk about metabolism. And I think I've seen some misconceptions about what it means to have a high metabolism in the health world. For example, I will see somebody posted a picture of like a guy that's really lean and has a lot of muscles and be like metabolic health. And it's like, well, maybe, maybe he isn't metabolic. Maybe he is metabolically healthy. But maybe he's actually not metabolically healthy at all. And that's because we actually have to define what we mean by being metabolically healthy. So of course, the way that I kind of defined it on my substack, to try and make sense of it is that having a high metabolic rate means that your cells have all the energy that they need for maintaining their structure, their function, their maintenance, their repair, so very much into Peat sphere of things. And then the foods that you eat, well, first of all, you need to have enough calories to be able to actually turn them into the cellular energy to have enough of the various micronutrients that are involved in that like vitamin B1, B2, B3, zinc, magnesium, for example, you need enough protein to make the hormones that are involved in energy production, such as thyroid hormone, so a person that's in a good state of metabolism is able to actually take the food that they're eating, turn it into energy, and use that energy for the different functions of their body like digestion, the repair of the skin, growing your hair, maintaining your brain function, so that you're not experiencing, let's say, like mood disorders, or maybe having bad memory or things like that, like basically, every part of your body functions well, versus if somebody is in a poor state of metabolism, you might be having, you know, various things that are just not working optimally, maybe you have slow digestion, you're not going to the toilet every day, maybe you can't grow your nails or your hair, maybe your period is painful, maybe just like different things are not optimized. And when you eat food, instead of well seeing that's being used for these different functions, instead of seeing your symptoms get better. Instead, maybe the symptoms are staying the same, and you're just depositing all of it as fat. That's what I would, or some people even don't deposit as fat just wasted as heat. But you know, their symptoms are not getting better. So I guess I also want to make the distinction that like, you can be lean, and still be in a very bad metabolic health, which I think that that is like a dogma that I see so much, which is that as long as you're lean, as long as you have maybe a lot of muscle mass and little body fat, that means that you're metabolically healthy. And it doesn't mean that you are maybe maybe you are, but you can also be those things and not be actually using your your food well and creating energy out of it. Maybe it's because you're not eating enough overall, or maybe because you're eating foods that your body is not able to actually digest properly. And I say this, because that is definitely a place that I was in at one point where I was very lean. And you know, I got comments being like, Oh, you're so healthy. But I'm like, but all of the data is pointing towards me not being very healthy. And I think that this is also a dogma that's both in the alternative health world, but also in just mainstream medicine, where like, let's say if a woman is lean, she'll be less likely to maybe even get a PCOS diagnosis, because she'll be told we're like, oh, no, if you know, if you have PCOS, you wouldn't be lean. So I think that that's another dog right there, which is like this misunderstanding of metabolism and believing that like, hey, if a person's lean and muscular, it means that they're in a good metabolic health without actually paying attention to to symptoms. So this checklist of like, how's your sleep? How's your digestion? How's your menstrual cycle? How are your moods, all of that all the signs that are actually pointing that your body is functioning well, so I think that that's one.
Jessica: Thank you for clarifying that for everybody.
Kaya: Yeah. I figured that's maybe a good place to also go since we're talking about metabolism, because they do see this still to this day. And I think especially since we are talking about the low carb community, I see this so much in the low carb community, which is like defending, let's say, low carb diet saying like, Oh, they don't ruin your metabolism. Because look at this person, they're eating low carb, and they're lean. And like, that doesn't mean anything. Right?
Jessica: And kind of like, I still see the use of this, where it's like before and after, where women are using their before picture where they look perfectly fine and healthy. And maybe they were symptomatic. Like maybe they weren't feeling well. And that's totally valid. But then they're leaner now. And so they're using that as a predictor of see I'm healthier now, you know, because I'm leaner. And it's Yeah, I think that continues to push this idea of just because somebody is leaner does not mean they're necessarily more healthy, especially for women. And we also were looking for transparency here. And unfortunately, on social media, especially, there's not a lot of transparency. So we don't actually know if that person is ovulating. We don't know if they're sleeping well. We don't know if they just are like filled with anxiety and reactive to every little thing in life. So it's really hard to say, okay, okay, this is a healthy diet, because she was able to get super lean on it.
Kaya: I feel like, you know, the awareness is kind of growing a little bit among like, the younger population, like, I feel like Gen Z is more likely to call up bullshit and be like, hey, like, just because someone's lean doesn't mean they're healthy. But there's still so such a big issue with that I still see it on social media, like someone being like, my day of eating and just like a picture of their abs. And I'm like, Why is this necessary, but there is this, you know, association that like, Oh, if you're a healthy person, you have to look this way. And you have to be extremely lean. And for me, it's kind of like, I'm glad that I've gone through my initiation process, because I have gone through a period of being extremely lean. And my health was an absolute dumpster fire at that point, both my physical health and my mental health, I was probably at my lowest at that point. And I actually had a Yeah, and I had a bit of a funny, I think, again, one of those glimmers where my brain was like, You should listen right here. Where I remember I went through a period of really rapid fat loss in high school, it was not in a healthy way whatsoever. And I remember a dark winter, I was freezing, I was absolutely freezing. And I was thinking to myself, how is it that the last winter I was able to wear just like a leather jacket all winter, and I was fine. And now I'm out here in a massive winter jacket, and I'm freezing. And everybody's congratulating me on my health journey. And I feel so much shady.
Jessica: Yes, yes, I had a similar experience, because I feel like I was always chasing being leaner and leaner. Because I didn't have a lens to view my body through. And I think a lot of people are in that place where it's like, okay, turmeric is good for me, and we'll lower inflammation, so I'm going to just take it, or this is good for me, I'm going to take it. But when you start to see everything through the lens of oh, I'm looking for metabolic health, like I'm looking to truly have that physical vitality, that I'm after good sleep, good digestion, being able to utilize my food, just feeling good having good cognitive function, when we start to actually view our health through that lens, it becomes much easier to kind of weed through the dogma and the BS as well. Like, that's what I feel like because before it was just like, anything that's gonna get me lean is therefore healthy. And that's not true. And it's the same thing for if somebody's chasing a health issue, like let's say you have joint pain, for example. And you just Google like, how do I get rid of joint pain, and it's like turmeric and this and that, and this and that. You could throw a million things at it. But at the root of the issue, there's probably poor metabolic function happening. So no matter what issues we're struggling with, we can start to view things through. Usually when someone's struggling with a multitude of health issues, they're not metabolically healthy. And so it gives you a lens or a focus of like, okay, this is the focus. And I know people have a hard time sometimes wrapping their mind around that, because it's, it's almost like, Well, my situation is unique and special again, now. Yeah, it is your genetic expression is unique. But that is an expression of poor metabolic health at the core of it usually.
Kaya: yeah, 100%. And I deal with this to where like, I will often get messages from people being like, what should I do for X health issue? Or it's kind of expecting, I guess, like, maybe it's a supplement, or maybe it's just one food? Or maybe there's one imbalance? And I'm like, it's very hard for me to give you an answer, because it's probably metabolic. And you will have to work on these foundations. And then it's probably going to get better, maybe not 100%. But it's like you need to have the foundations in place. And then we can work from there in a in a way that's more specific, but you have to have the foundations right. And I think that it's about again, just how a person I guess understands health conceptually on like a larger level like it might be a little bit difficult to maybe understand this piece, okay. Everything is related to energy. And if you're having issues it's probably because your body's making concessions because it doesn't have enough energy to run. certain systems, so we need to go back and fix that energy issue by eating enough and eating foods that your body is willing to tolerate right now, and maybe you know, certain habits around when you eat how you eat. And by that, I mean, mostly making sure you eat often enough and you eat enough and that you eat consistently. And you know, from there, once we have those basics in place, we can work on the specifics. And it's crazy, because I'm sure that you see the exact same thing, you know, in your work, which is that oftentimes just doing that helps like 80% of the way,
Jessica: yes, yep, you have to get the food frequency down, and just make sure you're nourishing the way that works for your system. And so I guess this is a perfect place to say, when somebody is struggling metabolically, why is I mean, I guess across the board, why would intermittent fasting not be a good idea for most women, but when someone's struggling, specifically metabolically? And that's most of people today that are like jumping on the intermittent fasting train? Why is that maybe not a good idea, because, you know, the, the thing that's promoted is like, it's going to help with autophagy, this idea that, like, it's bringing down these old cells and like detoxing while you're fasting. And so it sounds really sexy.
Kaya: So much stuff there. I'll start with autophagy BS. So autophagy, basically what it means is self eating. So autophagy is one of the ways in which the body cleans cell debris, things that are broken, let's say like folded proteins, and I've talked to has been shown to help with things like Alzheimer's or other degenerative, degenerative brain diseases where there's maybe like protein aggregates, but I will use an analogy maybe to explain why autophagy is not always a good thing. So imagine that you just say that vacuuming is good, right? Well, if you have a messy kitchen, having the time and the energy to vacuum is good, but going into the kitchen and breaking a bunch of shit and throwing flour everywhere, just so you can vacuum isn't right. And the way that I see things like, you know, like, like fasting or intermittent fasting ketogenic diets, the reason why they increase autophagy is because, well, autophagy is good if it's controlled, if your body has enough energy to maintain all of its functions. And one of those functions is autophagy, when something's broken, it consumes that cell fragment to recycle it, that's great. But if you're doing fasting, or keto, or low carb, or just low calorie eating, or strenuous exercise, any of these things that basically increase your demands past your energy supply, your body has to make concessions. And when your cells are deprived of energy, they basically start self eating autophagy, they start self eating the cell fragments that are less, maybe important, that are less vital, to basically get, you know, resources that they're not getting from elsewhere. But this isn't autophagy in a sense that like, hey, something is being self eaten, because it's faulty. It's more so like, you're breaking things just to induce self eating. That's why I kind of used the vacuum metaphor analogy at the start to kind of make sense of it. So yeah, you have you kind of have this this disconnection again, where where context is so important, which is like, hey, autophagy good. And hey, fast, increase autophagy. And then you kind of make the bridge, they're like, oh, then fasting must be good. But there's context. Autophagy is good in certain contexts, but then doing things that specifically the pride ourselves on it of energy, so that they have to like cannibalize themselves is not good.
Jessica: Yeah, it's ludicrous.
Kaya: And then I guess in terms of intermittent fasting in general, like my own, I guess, little anecdote is, I've done a lot of stupid stuff in my life in terms of health, and I have never seen things fall apart faster than when I did intermittent fasting. And I think that you already have a body that's in a stress state, you're, you're I'm talking to, I guess, like the average person in the health world because I think that a lot of us come from this background of, we're not eating enough. In general, we're probably under eating on things that are not properly prepared. So like eating a bunch of raw vegetables as opposed to like cooking them or steaming them or fermenting them or whatever. We're just eating a lot of things that are like skinny culture foods, you know, a lot of fiber, little calories, you're pooping a lot and you're getting nothing out of it. So you're already in this energy depleted state. And then you're going to be like, Okay, I'm gonna take it one step further, and now probably decrease my calories even more because now you're most likely skipping one meal that would have provided you maybe a few 100 calories in the morning, assuming that you're doing this typical only eating in the evening and then your your body overnight. So if you're healthy, which most people are not, if you're healthy, your liver is able to store about eight hours worth of glycogen and glycogen is like sugar for later. So normally don't hold you over when you're asleep. hoping now you've slept through the night, you've depleted that while you still need to maintain your blood sugar somehow, because your brain cannot run on fat entirely. And there is like this is not just a Peat sphere thing, like there's research showing, if your brain was to burn mostly fat, it would create so many reactive oxygen species that it would injure your brain cells and your brain mush. So your brain that makes sense.
Jessica: Yeah, yeah, there's I can send you to paint, or it's really interesting. It's basically saying that like, the reason why the brain prefers sugar is because fat oxidation creates more RLS. And like, you can afford to injure other cells, you cannot really afford to injure the brain could so yeah, such an important structure in that paper, because I've seen a lot of papers, I've done a lot of digging in the need for glucose. I was trying to kind of figure out how much brain does the brain have and how much glucose is the brain? Actually, obviously, my brain needs glucose. How much glucose does the brain actually need a day? Because people always ask the question, like, how many carbs is enough carbs to eat per day? Because they're still trying to fit these like you said, like, well, intermittent fasting is so good for me. And like you said, it's the most ridiculous way to intermittent fast in my opinion, is to stop eating at like 5pm. Then not eat all night, have your liver glycogen completely.
Kaya: Yep, pulled, and then try to fast in the morning. Like, I do not understand the idea of starting your day off that needs energy, brain power with no food, if you're going to enter it fast do it and then at night, at least when you're like lounging around, and it's so it's so stupid to because I've always been a breakfast person. Like I know that a lot of women, a lot of women struggle with like not being hungry in the morning. Like that was not me, I would always just wake up just ravishing, like just so ready for breakfast. And I was so mad at my I was so mad at my body when I was doing intermittent fasting, like, why are you so hungry, everyone's talking about how like, they do it for a week, and they're not hungry anymore. I was like sitting there with a clock in my hand. Like just counting down until I could eat I was just thinking about food the whole time, my body did not adapt. And that was like, this was the stupidest thing I've done by far. And that says a lot.
Jessica: The same. I mean, I got to a point where I think I tried it for like a week with just water. And I was like, I'm not doing that. So that was a time when bulletproof was like really popular. So I was doing like the bullet, you know, like butter coffee. And I remember laying in bed at night just like dreaming like thinking I can't wait to have my butter coffee in the morning. Because I'm so hungry. I'm like, yeah, having a butter coffee. And then I'd go to the gym. Yeah, intense workout. Yeah, get home and be just ravenous and just eat so much. So it's just it's a poor practice. And I always think too, with fasting. I mean, because I know it's been done for centuries with like religious practices. And I've thought about it a lot. Because people always ask me that, like, Well, what about religious fasting? Or what about this type of fasting? And I'm always thinking, like, where do you see fasting in nature, it's usually animals when they're very sick, right? They like stop eating, but they rest, they rest. So I always think of, we're fasting while still just going about our busy and stressful lives, working out doing whatever. Yeah, that's not the same as like having a spa day, and just chilling for the occasional fast. We're trying to do this on the daily basis, fit it into our busy schedules, our lives, we still have high cortisol, we're still stressed out these high energy needs. It's a completely different story. Intermittent Fasting is not ancestral. I don't know where that idea came from, that our ancestors would have never chosen to not eat. That is ridiculous.
Kaya: Exactly. And it's, um, I guess if it like, if you look at it from a physiological perspective, there is I guess, bringing in research, which I'm happy, there's research to support that. But also, it's kind of like if you look at physiology, where of course, when you do fasting, you produce less of the thyroid hormones. And why would you produce fewer thyroid hormones? Well, that's a hormone that accelerates the rate at which you make energy. Why would you accelerate the rate at which you make energy when you have no food coming in to make this energy out of and since thyroid hormone is needed to actually create other hormones, when you're not making thyroid hormone during this period where you're fasting, you're also not making the other hormones. And that was one of those things that happened to me when I did my intermittent fasting. My luteal phase got shorter, because I wasn't making enough progesterone and it's like, I think that now there's also just like, divide where there's this belief that okay, some of these practices that are stressful are bad for women, but they're still okay for men. And I would actually counter that because thyroid hormone is also needed to make testosterone. And I did see research showing that intermittent fasting is lowering testosterone, so I'm almost I'm also not sure where this idea came from that intermittent fasting is going to increase testosterone Now if somebody feels better doing fasting because I got to a point where I was eating all these, you know, massive salads, lots of nuts and seeds, just like a lot of fibrous foods with SIBO with a very dysbiotic microbiome because I spent my entire childhood on antibiotics, I was born through a C section and I was not breastfed, so like the trifecta of shit microbiome. So you, so my body was just not doing well on these foods. And it definitely got to the point where I preferred going my entire workday without food, because I was like, Well, if I eat anything, I'm gonna have to fork the whole time, and I'm not gonna be holding it in, and I'm gonna be in pain, and it's gonna suck. So it's better that I don't eat until I get home. And that's going to be a lot more convenient from a social standing. But that should have been a massive red flag, you should not have to, you know, fast, because the foods that you're eating are making you so sick. And I do think that this is where a lot of people say that they feel better with intermittent fasting. It's like, well, if you have some nasty bacterial overgrowth, or if you're eating foods that are just not working for your body, that are feeding that overgrowth, maybe it's far too much fiber, or maybe you're actually sensitive to a specific food, like maybe you actually are sensitive to cow dairy, maybe to do goat like whatever it is, that's, you know, messing with your your digestion, cutting that out, can make you feel better, lowering this endotoxin can make you feel better. And the endotoxin is the one of the many bacterial toxins that are made by bad bacteria in the gut. Because when I did carnivore where I basically cut out all vegetation, and it was just meat, definitely not an optimal diet by any metric because it gave me many new issues. I mean, I stopped having bowel movements at one point, that was not a good time. But I could definitely see like for the first time I was not bloated at all, after a meal. Like I didn't know that it's possible to have a meal and not be bloated and not be in pain and like oh my god, I do not feel like I have food inside of me. And so many issues got better, just because I wasn't, you know, feeding this, this endotoxic mess, like I was able to sleep through the night, I wasn't getting woken up by my liver running out of glycogen because all this bacterial endotoxin is flooding it and it's you know, depleting all of its resources. So I empathize with people that say that fasting makes them feel better. But I would want to say like, if fasting is making you feel better, or if actually your health or even like I've heard some anecdotes of someone's fertility even getting better with fasting, which it shouldn't you're you're depriving your body of resources when it needs the most. That's the point where you need to ask the deeper why food should be nourishing you? And if it's doing the opposite. What's What, like what's happening here? Are you choosing the right foods for you right now?
Jessica: Yes, that's a great point. I always that was I get a DM like that pretty occasionally, at least used to. And it was always like, well, what if I feel better when I'm fasting or when I'm not fasting, my digestion just really poor. And it's a problem if you feel bad when you're eating? And yeah, you know, it's not, it's not that you need to not eat more, it's that you need to really figure out what's going on when you're eating that carnivore or intermittent fasting is helping with. And I think that's where a lot of people who, you know, I think of like the big people in the space that talk about carnivore like Michaela Peterson or people like that, where they have these very extreme progressions of like autoimmune diseases and things like that. And we know that that's being driven by low energy state, it's being driven by endotoxin, they're reacting every little food is there's something really severe going on. And by removing those fibers, it's helping lower endotoxin and take the stress off the liver, but it's not actually contributing to a high energy state. In fact, it might actually be lowering the energy state overall. Exactly. I know that you've done some research on PCOS and that's something that I you know, I spent a lot of time going into because I think a lot of times the idea that PCOS is this, you know, the state of insulin resistance and, you know, we need to low, low carb, dairy free, gluten free is kind of recommended, like, you know, intermittent fast, do hit or some type of exercise. And I think PCOS is widely misunderstood as I believe I think you do too, is I've kind of come to the conclusion that it's a what I call like a metabolic winter, the body is wintering itself and it's stuck in a chronic state of winter. I think there's heavy metals involved. I've definitely seen that connection. It's interesting that the most popular PCOS supplement inositol helps key late iron, which I think is overlooked a lot. You know, a lot of people say it helps lower blood sugar and I think it does do that. But I think for the REIT like the reason why it's doing that is sometimes overlooked, but are there anything because I know a lot of listeners have PCOS or may think that they have the symptoms of PCOS. Where does PCOS kind of fit into this conversation for you?
Kaya:I see PCOS as a state of extreme stress, physiological stress on the body. And the body trying to make concessions when it can't deal with the stress and its preferred way. So when I did research into PCOS and this is also pretty well accepted. I believe even in mainstream medicine that in PCOS, progesterone tends to be low. And in PCOS, the hormones of the stress cascade, like cortisol, for example, they tend to be quite high. Estrogen is also quite high. So they create a bit of a loop where when you have very high estrogen levels, they facilitate actually the release of cortisol. And what happens is your body needs to be able to somehow control the stress cascade, right? Ideally, you have progesterone. Progesterone is a very like anti stress hormone that helps to dampen all of that. But progesterone is a metabolically expensive hormone, you need to have enough thyroid hormone to actually make progesterone you need to eat enough and have all the right nutrients on board and have a minimum of the toxic energy inhibiting factors to create thyroid hormone. And I mean metals also play into this because various metals like mercury, for example, can mess with thyroid hormone synthesis by depleting selenium. So your body basically is stuck in this high stress state of like high estrogen, high cortisol. All these hormones are helpful short term, long term, they're extremely degenerative, it has to dampen them somehow. It cannot afford to make progesterone it can afford to make androgens. So what's interesting is that androgens can dampen distress cascade, similarly to how progesterone can do it. So I think that the reason I bring this up is because in PCOS, there's a lot of focus on lowering the androgens. Right? So again, we're not asking why we're not getting deep enough inside the onion, we're just seeing Okay, the androgen, the androgens are high, they're creating these symptoms that are not exactly pleasant. Like maybe you're getting, you know, hair in places where it shouldn't be, or you're developing acne, things like that. So let's lower these androgens. And the thing is that lowering androgens be it with herbal supplements or drugs. It does improve symptoms, but it doesn't actually get to the root of the issue. Like why is your body elevating these androgens? Why is it using them? And it's usually using them as an anti stress measure. Now why is it using androgens because it doesn't have enough progesterone? Why is it so stressed that it can't make progesterone, probably a thyroid issue. And it's interesting that you mentioned and also because it also facilitates the release of thyroid hormones, which I think is another function that's quite interesting. But I think that PCOS again, is like, that's kind of how I tried to usually explain it like when your body doesn't have enough energy, it's it's gonna start making concessions, you're not going to like some of these concessions, they're not going to be symptomatically pretty, but it's probably your body trying not to die and trying to function to the best of its abilities in an environment that is not optimal in some way.
Jessica: I love the way you put that because I don't think it's a coincidence that the PCOS incidences are just sky rocketing. I mean, I just think of how much every woman that I've met that has PCOS diagnosis, including myself or think, you know, has all the symptoms, but maybe not the diagnosis is there's so much stress involved. And it really starts young, a lot of times you look at this trauma that happens. I mean, when we even look at birth nowadays, it is almost like a traumatic event for the child. And even pregnancy for the mother. Yeah, for both. And pregnancy is often very stressful for women. Yesterday's, I think of you know, like my mother who was on the birth control pill up until like, she just decided I'm going off to have a baby and like got pregnant with me the next month. Yeah, so how many women mothers were on the birth control pill or some type of hormonal birth control very close to when they got pregnant. There's so many factors. But we have to look at all of these as these are all little micro stressors that build up to create an environment where the body's just responding. I also have made a connection. It's just a pattern. There's no research to support this. But a lot of women that I've met who have PCOS are firstborn. So they have this kind of like firstborn pressure put on their heads. And I've always thought like, it's it's very interesting to me that women who have firstborn pressure put on them start sprouting beards. You know, like, it's just so energetically like parallel where it's like, we literally put so much pressure on ourselves that we're sprouting beards.
Kaya: You’re the man of the family. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's, it's fascinating.
Jessica: And then I mean, this could take us down a whole conversation. As women we grow up and we're kind of told you can be anything, do anything you know, you better do something with yourself. That's like, worth something you know, and that pressure I think, for a lot of us is is almost too much to bear,
Kaya: 100% And just on PCOS, I'll give you two anecdotes, I kind of fit into this piece that we're discussing. So I had really bad like male pattern baldness going on at one point when I was 21. That was when I had a lot of the PCOS signs. That was also when I started a very high pressure tech job. So you know, very left, brain very stressful. And it was really interesting to me, because I was like, I feel like I am. My day is structured like a man. It's a typical nine to five, I'm going through gym after and, you know, there's a yeah, my body was not making any progesterone. And, interestingly enough on this iron piece, and on the stress piece, when I first got the acne on my back, which was a very clear PCOS symptom, which again, I never got a diagnosis, I had the symptoms there. But that was at a time when I actually switched schools. So it was distressful switching schools, and the school that I switched to was actually built with asbestos. And one of the toxic ways in which asbestos affects you is it makes your tissues pull in more iron.
Jessica: Very interesting. That's a really interesting connection. Wow. So that that happened? Yeah. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Just mind blowing. When things make sense? I know, I know. Yeah. Well, I just love all the ways that you look at AI, there's two recent articles that I just like I want to touch on, because I think people find them so fascinating. I mean, I found them so fascinating. So I'm doing this selfishly, but because you're such a good health heretic will say. And so one of the dogmatic beliefs right now in the women's space, is that and I call these like wacky health myths that we just kind of accept, as just, you know, and they're in medical journals like this is a widely accepted thing. But you had mentioned earlier how sometimes these are built mostly on politics and not necessarily facts or research. And so one of the wackiest health myths that I think exists is that we are born with all the eggs will ever have this idea. You know, I have a lot of followers who are menopausal. They see menopause as this idea of like, we've run out of eggs. And there's almost this mentality of once you run out of eggs or even, I'm seeing younger and younger women now being told that they're going through an early menopause or ovarian failure, just
Kaya: born with fewer.
Jessica: Or is it a variant failure, like your ovaries just fail? These are almost like misogynistic beliefs about women's bodies, that it's just like, well, we don't know what's going on. So your ovaries have just failed. And
Kaya: you're an old hag?
Jessica: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And women internalize this. And they think they, there's almost a separation where they believe now that they're different. And that like there's something wrong with them, or that they're like, crossed over the bridge, and there's no turning back. And it's so just puts a wrench in just your connection with your own body. So can you tell us about why that is the myth that we are born with all the odds that we'll ever have? And is it actually possible that new eggs are appearing on the ovaries,
Kaya: I would love to talk about this one. So as a bit of a disclaimer, this topic started a shitstorm on the internet. It was kind of funny to me, because I noticed like sometimes I'll write something and like, I'll expect it to maybe be controversial. And other times, I'm just like, really naive going into it. I'm like, Oh, that's cool. And I write about it. And then I'm like, not expecting what's about to go down.
Jessica: stuff always causes a shitstorm.
Kaya: Okay. So basically, it started, I was reading one of Dr. Ray Peat’s books, and I guess, maybe I would expect, you know, I probably think that our audiences are aware of Dr. Peat, but to the ladies are not aware of him. He was definitely a champion of women's health. And just the way that he perceived health was the opposite of misogynistic. It was very, just very fair, I would say, but in one of his books, I actually read an article I think that he published in it called aging ovaries, not the eggs, where he was actually talking about research that was showing that mammals including humans can make new eggs after just after the fetal period. And while menopause is a lot more complicated than Hey, you've just run out of eggs, like there's a lot of different factors that contribute to it such as, let's say, your nerves and your hypothalamus that release or control LH and FSH getting desensitized when you get exposed to much estrogen over your lifetime relative to progesterone, or that your uterus is no longer able to maintain an embryo even if your eggs are doing okay, just because of hypoxia caused by high estrogen levels, just various, you know, bits that add into it that make it a much more holistic piece than just like, hey, you've run out of eggs. And that actually, you know, tied back to metabolism because I think that it's one of those things that we learned that like, okay, you can control various things about your body. You can maybe control how well your hair grows or how good you digest food or things like that, but you know the eggs, you cannot control it, you're just born with all of them. Once you run out, you cannot extend how long you start, start, say fertile. So I was okay, that's actually really cool because it's tying it back into his metabolic perspective. And I remember when I first wrote this article about this, I had a lot of doctors coming at me being like, well, but my medical textbooks say that you're born with all the eggs you'll ever have. So you are wrong. I was like, Well, I know, because that's also what I learned. Like, why do we believe this? So I decided to kind of, I guess, go back in time to kind of try and figure out where this belief came from. And I think that this is where things get quite interesting. So in, I believe it was 1893, a man by the name of Auguste Weissman came up with this idea called the germ plasm theory, the Weissman barrier, and what this does is going to make sense in a second. So he theorized that there's two different types of cells, you have the germ cells, which he believed are put away at in the fetal period, and only these cells can become eggs or sperm, only these ones, and that any other cell is created from these cells only by deleting material. So you cannot add any genetic material, you can only delete it, so only the germ cells are complete. And everything else is basically downstream from them created by deletion. So that is basically the theory on which a lot of this was built was that well, you have these germ cells that are put away at conception or when you're in when you're a fetus, and only they can become eggs. Well, what ended up happening was that over time, basically, all of the aspects of the germ plasm theory have been disproven in various research. So I will say that nowadays, still in a lot of textbooks, I think that you will still learn about the germ plasm theory and device Mulberry. But it has been shown, for example, in certain animal studies, that if you actually take out all of their germ cells, the somatic cells, which are the cells that are not meant to have the full genetic material, create new germ cells. And when we were cloning animals, for example, when we made the sheep Dolly, she was made entirely out of somatic cells. And yet she had germ cells and she was able to get pregnant. And then also, another aspect of the Weissman barrier idea is that somatic cells can never add anything to the germ cells. So that you know, the germ cells are complete, they have the entire genetic material, they can never be changed from the environment, the environment cannot affect them. We also know now that that is not true somatic cells definitely can influence the genetic material of the germ cells. So I started thinking, well, let's actually understand why the climate, the political climate, the social climate, in which the Weissman barrier, and all of this was proposed. And what's what's interesting was that it was at that time that Darwin was first talking about evolution. And his ideas were actually not being very well reciprocated to at first. So he was actually it's funny, because I think that Darwin's name really came to be known in history as Oh, natural selection, blah, blah. But he was actually very much into epigenetics. So a lot of his work has been mis misrepresented. So
Jessica Ash 1:23:17
he took that epigenetic, yeah, the idea is along epigenetics and really theorize that it's possible that maybe we have evolved. But it was mostly a theory. Yes.
1:23:30
And a big part of his work was theorizing that cells learned from the environment so that the organism the matter itself, is always learning is always adapting to the environment. And we now know that that is true. We know that epigenetics are true. Weissman created his theory, in a world where the theory of evolution was not yet present. At that point, the leading theory was the fixity of species, aka creationism. So he never in his theory actually specified if the germ cells are perfect, and they carry the entire genetic material. Where did they come from? This was never actually specified. And to this day, everything is built on that theory, this concept of women having all the eggs they'll ever have is built on the idea that you're born with these germ cells that have all the genetic material that have apparently always been there cannot be influenced by the environment, and only they can become eggs. But again, we've seen research showing that when they're deleted from animals, the somatic cells hold do in fact, hold the entire genetic material and can learn from the environment and can adapt and can create new eggs. So this is the theory bit now I guess, getting into the practical bit, which is like well, do we have anything in humans that shows this and what is interesting is that well, when I read this and Dr. Pete's research I wanted to look into like, is there actually research showing this and there's one researcher, he was with a group whoop from Harvard, I think now he's at Northwestern. His name is Jonathan Tilly. And he was basically showing that, yes, women have ovarian stem cells, and they can create new eggs. And there was a different researcher that I found who's actually grown to be one of my favorite researchers because he published some really cool stuff. His name was antonian. Bukowski, or is he still alive in the Czech Republic. And this was a 2005 study showing that up until age 38, women are creating new eggs. But these eggs are replacing old eggs. So I guess going back a little bit where also the idea of women having all the eggs they'll ever have on birth also got cemented in 1951, there was this, I think it was a zoologist named Lord Zuckerman. And his experiment was counting the amount of eggs that are available in the ovaries of different animals, and showing that over time, these the number of these eggs is decreasing. So his assumption was that well, then you're born with all the ones you'll have. And there's a decreasing, he didn't consider that the number might be decreasing, but they're not the same eggs, they're constantly being replaced. And based on your current state of health, you might be replacing them faster or slower or not replacing them at all, which is interesting, because this would actually make it consistent across all species, and not make mammals different, because like, let's say in certain insects, they are always creating replacing new eggs. But also, as they become very aged, metabolically aged, eventually, they stop laying new eggs, they stop replacing them. And a lot of the research was basically showing like, if we know the rate at which different mammals lose eggs, if we were to just start with this fixed number and lose this amount every month, we'd run out extremely quickly, like the math is not mapping. Yeah, so it looks more like we are consistently creating new eggs to replace the old ones. And the rate at which we create them or the age at which we stop creating new ones and the quality of these eggs while they're more so driven also by our environment, so it's not entirely fixed. And I do find this also to be important to specify this because I've gotten my criticism like, Oh, if we were to create new eggs, we would never go through menopause. And it's like, that's such like reductionist thinking, if we know that we always renew our skin cells doesn't mean that we're going to look 20 years old when we're at right, as, as the metabolic you know, because we can, of course, we can control the rate at which we age based on just our metabolic standing. If we have enough energy, this tissue repair is going to be more perfect, but it's never going to be entirely perfect, you know, we're still going to age, right, but we're still gonna accumulate
Jessica Ash 1:27:38
toxins and stress we're supposed to like that's going to impact our bodies. But is it possible that we went through menopause at a much later exact life? That is the question exactly.
1:27:50
And I think that what this opens is a very different set of questions, because I think that it becomes a double edged sword, right? If you believe that nothing can extend your fertility, you will also believe that nothing can shorten it. But if we know that environmental factors can extend it, it also becomes known that they can shorten it. And what's really interesting is going back to the estrogen piece, and especially birth control, because I think that is a big menace that women unfortunately have to deal with, without, I guess, maybe understanding all the risk, or all the risks from the metabolic perspective, because I think we you know, we know that can make you depressed, it can make you gain weight all of that. But this is because it is adversely affecting you metabolically, and these are the downstream symptoms. And what is interesting about I guess, this unopposed estrogen, and without having progesterone is that it actually tends to shorten the fertile span in certain ways. So one of those ways I already mentioned, it tends to this is something that Dr. Apt wrote about in one of his articles based on research from guys whose name I can't remember, but maybe I'll remember the article at some point. But he was talking about how basically when you're exposed to unopposed estrogen for extended periods of time, it can desensitize these nerves in your hypothalamus that control the release of LH and FSH. And in menopause, you have these excessively high levels of LH and FSH because the control of those hormones has basically the control panels desensitized. And other thing that's really, really interesting is and this is something from the book The fifth vital sign from Lisa Hendricks Jack, she wrote about how basically in our cervix there are different crypts that create mucus or the fertile fluid, and the quality of the fluid that we produce dictates whether or not sperm can survive inside of us and while it has to survive to reach the egg. So unopposed estrogen actually decreases the amount of crypts that make the peak fluid that allows for sperm to survive. Meanwhile, progesterone increases the amount of those crypts so Oh, that was an interesting bit so that you know, eggs apart, estrogen can actually affect sperms ability to survive inside of the woman's inside of the the woman's reproductive tract. So even if you have healthy eggs, well if the sperm can't get to it, no can do. And then another thing that was really interesting this was also from the same book was that I looked at the studies that she mentioned, I found some other ones that saw the same thing, which was that women that were on birth control had shrunken ovaries, and their ovarian reserve was halved. So they had half as many eggs. What was interesting is months after coming off of birth, control, their ovarian reserve return to normal. What does that tell us?
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