Key Supplements That Make Keto Even Better
It’s likely you already know that we’re big fans of the ketogenic diet.
Just in case you’re unfamiliar with keto, at it’s very basic foundation it’s a low carb, moderate protein, high (healthy) fat diet. With carbs out of the picture, your body enters a state called “ketosis” where alternative energy sources called ketones are produced. It’s fantastic for fat/weight loss, to minimize inflammation, and to increase energy levels.
People often have many of the same concerns regarding keto. The keto “flu” when you’re starting out. Digestion issues. Electrolyte imbalances. While these are all valid concerns, there are extremely simple steps to combat them. Trust us, the benefits are well worth it.
Meet Carrie:
On this week’s episode we speak with Carrie Pattison, a national educator for Natural Factors (amongst other things). We wanted to Pick Carrie’s brain about some supplements that can help not only ease the pain of the keto journey, but make it even more rewarding with the addition of supplements. Whether you’re just starting your keto journey or if you’re a seasoned veteran, there’s plenty of things to take away from this episode.
Some Topics We Discuss:
What are some common problems and issues people have when on the keto diet? (8:31)
What are some tips to keep the keto diet as more of a lifestyle vs a fad diet? (11:54)
How does berberine impact the body when on a keto diet? (13:54)
How do you combat lack of energy on the keto diet? (17:56)
How do you address electrolyte imbalances when on the keto diet? (22:51)
Why is taking greens so important? (26:59)
How do we address constipation when on the keto diet? (32:49)
Some key takeaways from this episode:
The keto diet is designed to help our bodies burn fat for fuel. (3:04)
Berberine is one of the best herbs to help manage insulin levels. (13:23)
Coffee all day long will not solve your energy issues. (18:17)
A lot of the negative effects of keto are associated with an electrolyte imbalance but they are very easy to fix. (24:24)
You can absorb up to 40% more protein when it’s fermented. (29:27)
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CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:07 Hey everyone and welcome back to The Holistic Navigator Podcast, where we believe in the body's capacity for self healing, if it's given the proper nutrients and care it deserves. Thank you so much for tuning in today. My name is Brian Strickland. I'm the producer of the show. And here with me in the studio, as always, is your host, Ed Jones. We're excited to welcome back Carrie Pattison today on the podcast to chat about keto. Carrie is a national educator with Natural Factors, and we wanted to pick her brain about some of the symptoms that accompany the ketogenic diet and how to overcome them. She walks us through an extensive list of supplements that can help mitigate typical concerns about the keto diet, like the keto flu, nutrient deficiencies and digestion issues. And she gives us a great explanation about how the keto journey can be even more rewarding when paired with these particular supplements. If you're curious about the keto diet, or if you're a diehard veteran, it doesn't matter. This episode is going to cover it all. And with that being said, let's go ahead and get this thing going. Here's your host, Mr. Ed Jones.
Ed Jones 01:39 Thank you everyone for joining again, on The Holistic Navigator. The passion in my life is educating others as far as how to be healthy in this kind of chaotic, sometimes confusing world of information. It's not that we have too little, we have far too much. And the key is to be able to find ways to clear the fog and get to the core answers that are applicable to each and every one of us. And if you don't do it, or have a person who's helping you do it, you're going to be lost in today's health jungle. Because aging is not in our favor. And certainly traditional medicine is sometimes in our favor. And sometimes it's actually against us. So we have to be very informed. And you know, everyone who's ever listened to me speak on either my radio show on The Holistic Navigator, on some of the blogs, on YouTube, watched on Instagram, you would have to know if there's one thing that I kind of keep coming back to, at least for my own personal and also advising others is the diet. In most cases, I believe to lower the side effects of aging and to improve our health significantly. We need to be leaning at least leaning toward a keto diet. And basically again, the keto diet is a diet where we're teaching the body to burn fat for fuel. And when we do that, it makes our bodies so much more metabolically fat flexible. And what does that mean? That means that if you get sick, it can rebound quicker. If you have injuries, inflammation, anything that kind of pushes and shoves and pulls the body one way or the other is kind of like the tree that the willow that bends in the strong winds and some of the other trees that are brittle, they'll break off. Well we want to be the the willow type of physical chemistry. And so what we're going to do today I've got a great guest. In fact, I think she hit this will be her third time on The Holistic Navigator. And I don't know if anyone's hit three yet. So this will be obviously we love having Carrie on The Holistic Navigator. So Carrie is a licensed licensed arborist, acupuncturist trained in home birth midwife and a graduate of the National University of Natural Medicine, and is a national educator for Natural Factors and is an adjunct professor of herbal studies at Huntington University of Health Science. Welcome to The Holistic Navigator Carrie Pattison.
Carrie Pattison 04:25 Thank you so much and good morning. I'm really excited to be here well, morning for some of us and other times a day for those who are listening to the podcast at their leisure.
Ed Jones 04:36 Absolutely. Because it certainly will be I mean we are listened to now in all 50 states and actually connected with a number of other countries. So there's no telling what time someone might be listening and we appreciate every person. Again, if you go back to I think it's April of 2019 on The Holistic Navigator you will listen to me speak about how I embrace the keto diet. You know, in my life I've been doing this almost 43 years and I am a self appointed guinea pig. And so I'm experiment how all these theories work. All these supplements work in different everything from in the gym, to my knife and fork. And you know, several years ago, well, actually a lot of years ago and you know, this Carrie, the first rage and keto, which is high protein diets, high fat diets and low carb diets is the kind of general terms of it is Dr. Atkins. Dr. Atkins was a cardiologist who came up with this theory that we should eat less carbs and eat more healthy. He said eat more fat. He did not say healthy fat. And so there was this huge rage back. Gosh, Carrie, you might know that year I don't probably.
Carrie Pattison 05:52 Oh, I want to say like early 2000s.
Ed Jones 05:55 Oh, yeah, maybe late 90s, actually.
Carrie Pattison 05:58 Yeah, late 90s, early 2000s. Yeah.
Ed Jones 06:00 And so everybody started eating bacon and eggs, and then losing weight like crazy. There were some dropping dead a lot of gallbladder flare ups.
Carrie Pattison 06:08 I remember the first person that I saw doing Atkins, and they were drinking diet root beer with whipping cream.
Ed Jones 06:21 All the things that satisfy the taste buds. But the thing is, that is that proofs of good things to us. One is how not to do the keto diet. But it also proved that there was a significant amount of the population who finally lost weight when everything else had failed. Carbs are a demon to us excessive ones. And I want to say again, there's a lot of people who believe as long as a food has nutritional value and grown in a healthy environment is healthy for us. And it's simply not true. The only thing that makes foods extremely healthy or unhealthy is the impact it has on our blood chemistry, because that is where all of the diseases most of them will be created. And certainly aging will be increased by an improper and unbalanced blood chemistry. In fact, one of my podcasts, Dr. Lavalle, on how to analyze your own blood work. So please, for people who are getting it, don't expect your general practitioner to be doing this for you, please. So we're going to talk today, now that I've actually been doing keto and keto leaning for several years. Even I can make many mistakes on that. One of which is I didn't cycle at first. I do Monday through Fridays, and I do Saturday and Sunday different. But all the people I speak to, I mean, there's a host of, of kind of aggravating things that probably prevent the successful use and embracing of a keto diet. And we're going to go through that today. Carrie, I know that you and I both know about the fog, the brain fog, the physical fog that can come from being in ketosis, the constipation, sometimes the bad breath, the whole number of things. So I want to go through because there's an answer to all of these for most people. I will have to say, Carrie, and I know I'm rambling way too much here. I did have one single client that I felt could not be on keto, regardless of what we did. We kept looking at blood chemistry and things just did not work. So I'm not saying it's 100% keto, but I really believe it should be 90% of population can embrace this, but we need people like you in order to help us fine tune it so it's comfortable. So let's just start talking Carrie, what are the most of the common kind of problems and issues that people have that are struggling with keto?
Carrie Pattison 08:42 Well, it's interesting because I'm like you where I had some patients, you know, pop up and say, hey, I'm curious about this keto thing. And I don't want to have anybody go off and do something that I haven't tried myself or I'm aware of. So I've done it a couple of times. And the first time I was not successful, because I was not paying attention. And I learned a lot of lessons. And I think I went through pretty much all of the kind of feelings that people experience, the symptoms and the struggles. So that you know, now I'm very aware of how we can really, I like to say we can fuel because right, the whole point is adding getting extra fuel in our body. We can fuel our keto success with some really just basic supplements. You know, when we think about some of those main keto concerns, I think the biggest one that people think of is the keto flu, that first thing that occurs when they start the transition to a more low carb lifestyle. And yeah, we might be talking about specifically the ketogenic diet today, but I think about anybody who's transitioning into a low carb lifestyle is going to experience some of these things. You know, people who are determining, determined that you know, they need to stay away from gluten or grains, you know, they're focused more on paleo, anything where we're removing those carbohydrates from our diets, we're going to see some shifts in the metabolic state, like you said. So you know, the keto flu. Yeah, it is, is there's a lot of a lot of fun things that people are may or may not experience with the keto flu. I find it really fascinating that the people who have the most extreme sort of symptoms as far as feeling just, I think there's a reason they call it the keto flu, right? You feel off, you have headaches, your digestion isn't happy, your foggy brain. I've had some people that have told me, you know, their number one side effect of the keto flu is crankiness. And it really depends on how carb heavy our diet was to begin with, because our body is shifting and essentially utilizing up those stores. And so we have to kind of get through that process to where those, you know, we've passed through those stores. One of my absolute favorite favorite products for somebody who's starting the ketogenic diet. And, you know, this is actually what we talked about on one of the shows is berberine. I think everybody should be on berberine. But it's kind of the, you know, the perfect like, I can't think of anything that would be more appropriate for the ketogenic diet than a berberine supplement.
Ed Jones 11:32 Right, because the research is volumes, actually of research on this natural herb that many people, you know, who are searching alternatives to pharmaceuticals. So, you know, they're looking at Metformin, and they look at berberine. You know, berberine is shines pretty strong in the light of research as far as a product that can accomplish many similar things. Of course, again, I want to encourage people, just because keto may sound like what you're hearing these side effects, some may say, Well, why would I do this? I truly believe that we're, if we don't do something like this, we are going to accelerate aging at a very, very fast pace, if nothing else, and we also will not have the proper, probably optimal body weight if we if we keep getting older, and not addressing the ratios of macros, protein, fats, and carbs and fiber. And again, I do 50 carbs Monday through Friday, approximately. And then on weekends, I do probably 150 to maybe sometimes 250. The cycling is what keeps me going and makes me feel well. So but berberine is, again, if we want to optimize if I want to optimize my my gym workout. I'm going to you know, talk to people who can number one, help me do the practice itself with the right technique, but I'm also going to try to optimize when do I drink my protein? How do I go into the gym with the proper stuff on my stomach or not? Do I do this? What supplements do I take? Well, why would I not do that if I'm going to put out the effort, I want the best success? Well, the same with keto. So you know, you can do keto without any additional supplements and still get your probable goal if you really stick with it. But why not make it even more effective. And as we age, we start losing insulin sensitivity. And berberine is one of the greatest herbs to help us in management of healthy insulin of anything. And that is the number one blood test to me, that indicates a corrosive nature of our own chemistry. And I love insulin to be under two to three. But at least in the single digits. If you have double digit insulin, you are going to not fare well as the years go on. So there I go rambling a lot again, Carrie, but let's talk real quickly about berberine. And maybe the dosing of it, and how would they do that?
Carrie Pattison 13:54 Yeah, so when we talk about I'm gonna list some things off here. And you tell me, is it berberine? Or is it keto? We'll do a little game here, where you want to, we want healthy weight loss. We wan you know, support blood sugar levels, we want to support healthy cholesterol levels. We want optimal aging from a cellular perspective. What is that? Well, that's berberine. But it's also keto. Right? It's both of them. So that's why I say they're the perfect thing for each other. Everything that people are expecting to experience on a ketogenic diet is what berberine does as well. But I also really love that it's so better. It's a better compound. And we know in herbalism, that bitter compounds are the things that help support the digestive system. So especially when we're transitioning to more of a high fat diet, we need those better components and are in our food. And it's, you know, completely lost in our standard American diet today those bitter foods. So here We have another thing that's amazing about berberine is getting a little extra bitter in our body to help with the enzyme breakdown of those excess fats. So I think it's really funny when I talk to people and I'm like, what are you looking for with keto? And I'm like, wow, that's exactly what I would suggest you utilize berberine for clinically.
Ed Jones 15:19 Well, and I love the fact that conversation about bitters and is very few people actually know that, you know, wild animals will seek out bitter foods when they are feeling less than well, and they instinctively know kind of what their body is crying out for, we've lost those instincts along the way. And so it's, you know, we have to go back to some ancient wisdom and to me, you know, looking at the history of what's going on with ancient cultures even and then pairing that with something like PubMed research. So is knowledge not just all anecdotal, but it's also not just scientific. And, you know, I've really liked recommending the herbal bitters in a spray form for people who are having gallbladder issues, digestion issues, because it stimulates your own body to optimize its own enzymes. And I love that whole theory. And I will have to say, you know, you are the educator for Natural Factors. I went up to natural factors with three of my co workers, about three or four years ago. And again, I've been in this industry 42 years, I've never, ever been as impressed with a company with their quality standards and their ethics is I was Natural Factors. Absolutely amazing. Nothing is cutting corners there. So if you get berberine, from Natural Factors or anything, you know, you are getting the very best product out there with the potencies and everything done the right way. A lot of hidden stuff going on in every category of life. But Natural Factors, they are the gatekeeper, and they will definitely make sure they do the right thing. So okay. berberine.
Carrie Pattison 16:59 There's one other thing we haven't talked about with berberine, though, that's really important for keto.
Ed Jones 17:03 What?
Carrie Pattison 17:04 Is the digestive complaints? Right? I know a lot of people get constipation, but then I have, I have had a lot of people telling me that they have excessive diarrhea issues as well. You know, just from the aspect of their liver, not knowing how to break down those fats appropriately. So and you look at historically berberine and that is that is its history in Chinese medicine is that it was used for diarrhea. So here's another thing that it can do really effectively for the ketogenic diet is support, you know, any sort of issue that you might have in your bowel, whether it is constipation, or diarrhea, we're really going to get in there with not only the bitters, but just this herb in general is known for that. And I think that's a pretty, pretty awesome, awesome aspect of it as well.
Ed Jones 17:56 Okay, so how about the next one, which I hear a lot of complaints sometimes about lack of energy. And so what do we tell people advise them on this?
Carrie Pattison 18:07 Yeah, I really like you know, lack of energy, there's a lot of things you can do for it. I think a lot of people know about bulletproof coffee, right? That's, you know, kind of the, the secret sauce, but you know, the people that are doing the ketogenic diet, and also adding in intermittent fasting, or, you know, they're just doing their Bulletproof Coffee in the morning, I think that they tend to end up with an the opposite of too much energy where they're fried, right. They have the caffeine jitters. And then they have that big kind of dump in the afternoon, where they do have a lack of energy. And, you know, just hitting coffee all day long is not effective at all. So this is where I really like the Sun-Theanine, it's also going to support that crankiness thing that I was saying earlier. So you know, Sun-Theanine is all about mental calmness but acuity at the same time really helping to sharpen the focus of the brain, or at you know, this is what l-theanine does. If we look at what l-theanine is it's originally derived from green tea. So we're getting those nice aspects of it as well. So you know, I really really like an L-theanine supplement, I specifically like Sun-Theanine anything because there is research that it it being utilized alongside with caffeine actually will increase the value of both of them. You're going to get kind of a double benefit of of that increased mental clarity aspect thing happening.
Ed Jones 19:41 Well, that's I love, you know, having a toolbox for myself first, and then of course, being able to tell others that can help them through improving their quality of life. It wasn't 15 minutes before I came on with you, I had a lady who was you know, I'm having real trouble like so many people do. And I've certainly done podcasts on sleep. The early morning awakenings from midnight to four o'clock in the morning. It's just so common because we have what I call cognitive popcorn that really starts going in sometime because the filter at night is is not as effective as it is during the day to keep the chatter down. So I use GABA or theanine, which works on a certain receptor in the brain during the night when I wake up, you can't take anything at 9:30 at night and expect it naturally to last through the night. And if you have trouble waking up, but you can go to sleep, I always put two pills of theanine or GABA next to my bed with a cup of water. And it really helps calm the brain back down. And what I want is calmness. We don't want things that that put us into an amnesia state because there's side effects with all of that. So you know, again, using and I know that Sun-Theanine has, you know, even studies on students who needed to be calmer, but yet focused, and it doesn't make you sleepy, it makes you calm and focused. So they actually improve their test scores on a pretty reliable basis just by the use of Sun-Theanine. And again, I have to sometimes take a little more I have to sometimes take an extra pill if it says one I might need to do two to truly get my personal effects from that. I want to say real quickly again, if people have listened to me, they know that I'm really I want to meet people where they are and not everyone's ready to change to a keto diet. And again, I really think we should teach our body to be flexible by teaching it to burn fat for fuel. The way to do that: A keto diet first two weeks or even a few more weeks can be challenging, but we're trying to help people to fine tune that challenge by the right advice. I will say that the 50% of the the real screw ups with keto begin sometimes or challenges begin in the breakfast. So if people listen to me, they know that I had this combination of three different products that I really put together. And I advise people to be on these and one of them it does include some MCT oil in one. But that's where you really start making it successful. Because if you start your day wrong, you I don't care what you do the rest of the day, you're toast, you can't fix it. If you start at perfect, you actually have maybe some room to make some mistake. But again, we're going back to okay, we're all you know, embracing the keto diet, we're eating 50 carbs or less, we're teaching the body to burn fat for fuel. And so we've kind of dealt with some of the brain fog and lack of thinking with the Sun-Theanine, we've dealt with the herbal bitters for the digestive tract and also the berberine will help the keto diet actually work even better, because it's helping the re insulin receptor sites. So I know that one of my co workers Adam and myself, we recommend salt, not just plain old junky salt, but a full spectrum of mineralized salt, that helps people to do much better sometimes on keto, because it seems to be depleted based on how the keto diet works. Tell me about that Carrie.
Carrie Pattison 23:15 Yeah, I think that you know, that is something salt is great. As far as getting all of those minerals and micro minerals and electrolytes back in our body. And it does I do kind of cringe when I see online where it just says, you know, like, like a like a handful or you know, like a handful of salt or something. I'm like, Oh my goodness, I hope people are just doing Morton Salt. And that's not the point. The point is to get, you know, those true rich like sea salt minerals in you, but you can do the other things, then just salt. I think that magnesium is absolutely super critical in this case, as well. What let's go back and talk about like, why is there an electrolyte imbalance? So I think we should start with that and then come back to magnesium. And it's because you know, the first kind of transition, were going to you should be drinking tons of water no matter what in your life, but people do see, you know, more of a thirst. They're also going to see more urine excretion at the beginning of the ketogenic diet. And all of these sorts of things can actually throw off your electrolyte balance really, really rapidly. And so part of our part of that feeling tired part of the brain fog part of everything that we experienced, you know, if you have any sort of like, you know, muscle issues at all, I think a lot of the side effects of keto that people find negative actually are due to a lack of, you know, these different types of electrolytes in our body and it's a really easy fix actually, something like magnesium. I think most people are unaware that you know, we get we get A good amount of magnesium from our diets. But the food that makes these magnesium rich foods in our diet tend to be the ones that are high in carbs. So all of a sudden, you cut out these carb heavy food, and you're missing magnesium. So, you know, and it's hard. It's not easy to get magnesium on the ketogenic diet, I think about like, the beloved avocado right one of those things that everybody thinks about for keto. Well, an eight, eight ounces of avocado, and that's a lot of avocado only contains 11% of our recommended daily value of magnesium. So supplementing with magnesium is I think, you know, just an it's an absolute necessary for me with the ketogenic diet.
Ed Jones 25:47 That's a great point, Carrie. I had not realized the connection between magnesium levels are found higher in higher carb foods. So that makes total sense. And I did a podcast on The Holistic Navigator that talks about the miracle of magnesium and actually is involved in probably more processes 300 plus than any other nutrient that we probably know about. So you know, what, if 300 things on your automobile started not functioning optimally, you would know it very quickly. Well, why is it we don't seem to pick up on that with our body? One is it happens slowly. But we can we can address many of that with magnesium and I do sometimes recommend a whole type of salt like Celtic or something, I don't want to get a salt taste for taste for in my tastebuds. So I actually use salt capsules. When I feel the need for that from a Himalayan. I don't use the junky ones of course. And you know Yhe Holistic Navigator is sponsored by nutritionw.com and their online store, you know, carries all of the products, Natural Factors, the salt, everything we speak about. Now, one thing, Carrie, that, and again, I go back to my Ed's breakfast drink is what's it's listed on the website. But I've experimented more than anyone I know about putting combinations together. And the three things that I rely on for my breakfast six days a week is my keto protein, a certain fiber but the third one, which has to be in here is a greens product. And I honestly only recommend two different manufacturers, one of which is natural factors, the one I use at least half the time. Because I've seen how it's produced. I've seen how it was grown. I've seen everything about it have total confidence in the integrity of this product. But I'm telling you and you know, sometimes you think why would a greens make a difference? It's day and night difference from multiple reasons. So maybe tell our listeners, why would they really need to have this greens in a product?
Carrie Pattison 27:56 Well, I think the first thing is for people who are assuming that the ketogenic diet is just bacon and eggs. And that's a very, that's a very wrong assumption, right? It's really what it is, is it's should be a plate of lovely non starchy vegetables with a little bit of protein and a lot of fat, right? Good healthy fats. So but if you are that person were like, hey, you know, it's a lot easier for me to eat this way, then I think adding greens into your diet is you're going to get fiber in there, you're going to get a lot of micro minerals, micronutrients. So we're just looking at it from a nutrient perspective, then some of those things that might be missing in the ketogenic diet, because we've cut out different food sources. But you know, for me, it I love the Protein and Greens from Natural Factors our fermented protein and greens, because it has plant protein in there. And I think that's, that's another thing that can happen with a ketogenic diet is too much protein too much, you know, maybe excessive amounts of protein that's causing inflammation when we're actually trying to prevent inflammation. So substituting something with a healthy aspect, you know, like looking at a protein source that comes from plants is a really wonderful thing. And actually, this is interesting. I didn't know if you knew this Ed, but you can actually absorb up to 40% more protein when it's fermented.
Ed Jones 29:38 Really?
Carrie Pattison 29:38 So yeah, when you ferment your plant proteins, you're actually removing more of those excess carbohydrates and you're concentrating down the amino acids, which makes them more available for digestion. So that's great, right? And so that's where I'm like, I suggest fermented protein for athletes, anybody, you know, elderly people have digestive concerns, children, where you're worried about growth percentiles, anybody who's really needing to get a good rich protein source in their body fermented plant protein, you're going to absorb it, your body's going to utilize it appropriately. And you're not going to see the negative aspects of, you know, too much of those omega sixes and some of those pro inflammatory things that we can see in excess protein consumption.
Ed Jones 30:32 That's a great point. And, you know, fermentation changes the game on so many think foods that are grown on this earth, because it quadruples or even more, so some of the absorptions as you say and the nutrient level. And history is replete with so much about people who fermented foods, who seem to be a healthier lot of people. And, and it certainly is growing in popularity at you know, at this point, because of the sauerkraut and all the fermentations that go on with the podcasting and all the talk. And I can't say I'm a huge fan of things like kimchi. I'd really don't like that my daughter could eat jars of it. But I guess that's something you do have to acquire a taste for. I do believe that the greens also are vital because of the fact that we need more alkalinity in our diet, and I don't care what protein you get is probably going to end up being acidic, in the end result, or at least leaning that way. So I want to balance that with the alkalinity that comes from the greens. And you know, grains have spoke of this many times. It's not about the vitamins and minerals in greens, it's about what's called phytochemicals. phytochemicals are a whole host of 10s of 1000s of molecules that plants use to be healthy themselves. Well, they use them to protect from ozone and disease and pests and heal themselves. Well, if we take in the phytochemicals correctly, well, we can inherit some of this magical blood chemistry of a plan. And that's why you know, like last night, you talked about, you know, the way to eat or kind of, you know, you don't want too much of this or too little that. Well, last night, I had a bison burger at a restaurant, and I had broccoli and I had brussel sprouts, and I had a side order of avocado, and my liquid was non carb. And so there was my perfect to me my perfect meal had the cruciferous vegetables, lots of fiber in those healthier fat with avocado had my protein in the bison and bison is much cleaner meat in most cases. So that's just an example of one of my meals of greens. Last I think the last one unless you have any other ones Carrie is constipation, the kind not really trying to maintain regularity, but we're talking whoops, it's been three days now, what does a person do?
Carrie Pattison 33:03 Yes. And I think that these are more, you know, now we're getting into more of the long term things, right? You could be you can set yourself up for success with keto at the very beginning, by helping your transition into that ketobolic state that we're looking for. But then there are things that you can just be doing continuously, like the greens with MCT oil in it, right. You know, that sounds like the perfect thing for me to replace a meal in the day for somebody to do. But you know, there are some of these long term things that we need to be addressing. And certainly, you know, digestive enzymes like we were talking about bitters earlier, but I think fiber. We I you know, like I the other day, I was writing up some things on fiber. And I was like, man, I need to do an entire course on like fun with fiber, because fiber is fun. But it is something that I think we completely forget about. It's not super sexy to talk about, right? It's not exciting, but it's so exciting when you actually dive into it. And when you look at these types of diets, any sort of low carb diet, any sort of, you know, gluten diet, free diet, any sort of paleo diet, we're removing fiber sources from our body so significantly, that it does it jams things up. So adding in a source of fiber is so critical. Also, with that fiber source, you know, there's there are certain fiber sources that help to slow down the rate of carbohydrate digestion. So I think about like you, doing your carb cycling, that's perfect. People could do carb cycling, and add, you know, excess, add even more of these fiber supplementations in during their carb heavy days, which are even it's going to slow down the digestion of the carbs. Their body doesn't necessarily go into like, oh, what's happening right here, you know, another transitionary state. So I think that adding fiber is the key at the end of the day to making sure everything is flowing correctly.
Ed Jones 35:16 Well, that's great information. And the other thing that I know that I failed to mention on the greens too, and of course, we all know the massive significance of this is greens and fiber is food for the microbiome, the good bacteria within our system.
Carrie Pattison 35:32 Berberine as well.
Ed Jones 35:33 Oh, you're right. And berberine, yes.
Carrie Pattison 35:36 Magical berberine.
Ed Jones 35:37 There's a threesome there, the grains and, and the berberine and the fiber. I will say that my number one most popular podcast, I think this will be about 96 that I've done at this point is on constipation. And I really, I go through a big step by step of this is, you know, at first you do this, if you're really constipated, which is fiber based, then you do this, but if you get in an urgent situation. I mean, urgent means super urgent means go to your doctor, but you know, just critical like always been four days now instead of every day. I don't recommend senna except as a last resort. I do lean stronger to Triphala and cascara sagrada if those work appropriately, but everybody's different. So, you know, you got to kind of experiment but to learn more about constipation, please go back to my Holistic Navigator podcast on constipation. I have so much good information on there from me watching people for 40 years deal with this issue. Luckily, that's one I haven't. Well, Carrie, you've been so informative. We talked about berberine Sun-Theanine, the fermented greens, the the magic of magnesium and how vital it is, introducing fiber and keeping it going every single day in the diet. I mean, it's all good common sense for everybody. But you really have to do this on a keto in order to achieve your results. And again, I don't want people to think well, it's just that's just you sound like this all side effect based. No, it's not. Because the the miracle of keto will, I believe, will make you live more quality years. And if it doesn't make you live more quality, you're going to have quality, if not even more, and it's going to reduce inflammation, it's going to give you the ability to burn body fat like you were when you were younger. And you know, I will say that if you weren't burning body fat extremely well at 20, I don't know if it's going to turn you into super person, but it will take you back to about where you were at 20. And no, by no means bragging I very strict, almost too strict in my life. You know, I'm now wearing size 30 pants weighing 174. Same thing I did in high school. And I did not do this until I was about 59 years old. Actually, I'm 63 now. So even with all my healthy foods, supplements, training five days a week never was able to achieve what I have achieved by cycling in and out of keto diet. So I highly encourage people to experiment. I do use intermittent fasting somewhat, or not somewhat at least two days a week and generally five if I can. So those are big, big pluses for me. So I think we've armed people with the ability now to not only do keto, but to do it successfully like you originally said Carrie.
Carrie Pattison 38:28 Yes, yes, it is. It's a wonderful journey for people to have and knowing that there are things out there like you know, I just want to remind people that keto isn't just in the grocery department. There are some really amazing things to help them help them have the most success that they can possibly have with this with this kind of you know, it's it's life changing for a lot of people.
Ed Jones 38:48 Those good words life changing. And you know, I'm home safe real quick. I rarely watch TV actually had didn't even get a TV until about four months ago and for the past six years, and there's a show on there. And I've only watched two shows and both are reality was called alone. Alone was the name of it. It was so cool. The one from Antarctica, they put these 10 people out in these separate locations, and they have to fend for themselves for food and everything and they carry 70 pounds of cameras. It's the coolest show I've ever seen in my life. But what it taught me something about keto diet that was absolutely a billboard statement to me. Well, this one guy, he was an amazing hunter. He hunted with a recurve bow. And he was there about 70 days. I was freezing cold there was no vegetation to eat after the first frost came and he shot a moose. Well there I figured this guy's he's got it. He's got all this meat and food and nobody else has that much. He started wasting away because all he could get in his diet was protein moose. He was starting to suffer terribly so he had to actually go out and find an animal that had fat in it which was a trout. So we went and caught a huge trout it was the game changer. All that protein was killing him and he said that he said this protein is killing me until he caught that maybe five pound trout which we know has a lot of omega threes in it. Completely game changer well he was on that not the kind of keto diet you and I would want to be on but with the trout and the moose he was kind of heading that way. Without the trout he was dying. So just a great example of how we can how we should know what we should be putting in this engine of ours. Well, Carrie, again thank you so much for joining me on The Holistic Navigator about i think just like I said number three times and i know people are going to be great find value in these tips and I hope to see you sometime soon if you ever come back this way to Tennessee.
Carrie Pattison 40:57 Yes, enjoy the rest of your day everybody listening. Yhank you so much for joining us. It's an honor to be able to come and spend this time with you.
Ed Jones 41:05 Well same here Carrie. We've had we've gone around the block many times in our life and i'm hoping that you know i do know people appreciate us sharing our passion our heart and our experience as teachers. I mean I really feel that my evolution is becoming more of an educator and a teacher than probably anything else. Well everyone take care of yourself. Know that fear is a toxin please try to not fall into the big wagon of fear using things like theanine. I mean I use that when my mind starts hitting that crazy monkey mind where it's running on so I'm just wanting to throw it out at this stage of life in history with kind of chaos going on. Know that healthy foods can't always counter the kind of toxic fear that sometimes we swim in so take heed take care of yourself the loved ones and family and join us next time for another very educational Holistic Navigator. Thank you.
Brian Strickland 42:09 The information on this podcast and the topics discussed have not been evaluated by the FDA or anyone of the medical profession and is not aimed to replace any advice he may receive from your medical practitioner. The Holistic Navigator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of any purchaser or listener if these materials. The Holistic Navigator is not a doctor or does claim to be please consult your physician before beginning any health regimen.