Weight Loss and Blood Chemistry: Why It's Important to Know Your Numbers
The majority of people in America have struggled with staying at a healthy weight at some point in their lives. Obesity rates are sky-rocketing, but what’s to blame for this growing epidemic? Sure fast food and a culture of convenience play a part, but what if it’s more than that?
In this episode, Ed discusses some often overlooked contributing factors to weight loss. What we eat is important, but what our bodies and blood have to say can be life changing. Knowing how your body will react to the nutrients you put in is paramount to staying at a healthy weight. Join us as we teach you how to start and succeed in your weight loss journey.
Some Topics We Discussed:
What are some of the common things a physician might say in regards to losing weight? (4:17)
What would Ed recommend to anyone wanting to lose weight? (7:40)
What are some supplements that can help get our blood chemistry balanced to assist in weight loss? (11:13)
What is the difference between being healthy externally vs internally? (20:11)
Is there a one-size-fits-all way to lose weight? (28:28)
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
75% of men in this country is obese and 60% of women. (2:24)
Your blood chemistry plays a huge role in weight loss. (5:58)
Omega-3 levels are now regarded as the number one most accurate predictor of mortality that there is. (12:32)
When you alter nature significantly, you're going to pay a price. I don't care what it is whether you're underweight and you gain or you're overweight and you lose. (22:29)
No matter what diet you choose, include healthy fats and choose foods that don’t raise your insulin levels. Also, consider intermittent fasting. (28:51)
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CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:43 Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Holistic Navigator podcast. I'm the producer of the show, Brian Strickland and here with me in the studio is Ed Jones. Ed, how are you doing today?
Ed Jones 00:54 I'm doing quite well. I want to kind of turn the hands of the clock back. There was a time a few years ago, before I got divorced, that we were watching at Christmas, some of the old what was the kind of film that used to be on the reels, not a track. It was the reel to reel reel to reel. But there was I think another actual name for it. But it was the really old stuff from 1960s. It was actually my ex wife's family. And it was a film of the church football team. And it wasn't a super organized team. But it was something that they played every weekend. And I was watching it. And it didn't take me but a couple minutes to start realizing there was not one single kid and that was probably the ages of 15 those 18 that were that, you know I was looking at, they were all fit looking that none of them had looked like an ounce of extra weight. And at first I started assuming was because you know, they were of course just young and they were athletic. These weren't even athletes, these were just weekend warriors. And then I looked in the stands for the parents, there wasn't one single person who was overweight. Turn the clock forward till 2017. It's not even like in the same world. In fact, statistics say that three fourths of men in this country is obese and 60% of women. And I'm sure we would all agree to that. And what are the reasons for this obesity? Well, there is a multiple list of reasons, some of which you're not hearing commonly, especially if you go to your health care practitioner, I don't want to be super negative on health care practitioners because they can save our life. And that's what they're fantastic at what they're not great at is giving advice on how to optimize the physical chemistry of our body, in order to have the kind of physique we want the energy, we want the libido, we want the lack of depression that we want. They're they're kind of poorly skilled with that. And it's not always their fault, because I think the public should take some blame for this. And the reason I say that is because, you know, if you wherever you go get your hair cut, like I'll go to a nice lady, and you know, she'd been cutting my hair for years. You know what, she knows a whole lot about hair cutting. But if I go to her and I say, you know, why is it that I'm losing my hair in a certain spot, or, you know, I've got this funny looking thing on my scalp, even though she does hair five days a week. That's not where her scope of knowledge is? Well, for some reason, we think anyone with a white coat and a stethoscope seems to should know, pretty much all about the human body and physiology and should be able to answer the questions. They don't. They simply don't when it comes to nutrition, functional medicine, holistic and trying to optimize the chemistry of the human system.
Brian Strickland 04:17 So if I'm headed to the doctor, and I'm wanting to lose weight, what are some of the common things that I might hear from a physician?
Ed Jones 04:27 I think that's a great question because generally, they're still adhering to the old school philosophy of calories in and calories out. And that is what we all heard when the older of us were growing up is push the plate away, just simply eat less. Well, you know what, there's a time in our life where if you gained a few pounds, you could do something like that, and it would work because you were young, but the reason it worked was not primarily because you ate less here. Is the take home message, it worked because your chemistry was far more optimal and balanced than it is today. It really wasn't about the calories, it was about how efficient you are at burning calories. And that's why I here every single day on multiple times, the person and it tends to be a little more women than men, is I have eaten so good. I've gone to the gym six days a week, addressing every component I can think of, and I have not lost a pound, and I've been doing this for eight weeks, that is so common. So what some people do? Well, some, you know, especially if they ask their health provider is just about, you know, exercise more and eat less, exercise more and eat less. And I have watched this for 40 years how incorrect This is. And so what do we do? If if we're getting bad advice, then where where do we go, you know, if that's not going to work, then what does work? The reason the vast majority, when I say vast, I would estimate about 80% of the people who cannot lose weight past 30 years old, is because it's not so much because they're eating excess calories, which they might, it is because their blood chemistry has been altered in very unhealthy ways. And it's been altered by the lifestyle that we lead the environment that we have to be exposed to. The fact that we live under chronic stress and multiple layers of all this together creates a implosion of efficiencies so that when you eat anything, it turns to body fat instead of energy. That's where the rubber meets the road. Because if we can recreate the chemistry in our own physical body, we can turn the hands of the clock back people, we don't have to live in a spiraling series of diets and lose two pounds and gain three and nothing feel unhealthy and feel sluggish. And it's not just the mirror that we're looking at that makes us feel negative when your blood chemistry is not in the optimal range everything will eventually be going in the wrong direction, all the things that we used to see in people who are 70 plus, is now hitting people who are 43, decades earlier. And it's really sad. So here is what I would recommend for all people who are struggling with this weight issue. First off, we want to look at some blood work I have been an astute student of blood work for for 15 years. And it's totally different than when you go to the doc and you get blood work as a physical, they are looking for dis ease disease, that that is the only purpose of that blood work. When I look at blood work or a study it it is about what we call functional medicine or integrative type of of perception, so that we can see where you are and what would be optimal because keep in mind optimal blood levels is what we must attempt to achieve not average, average blood levels will take you close to the grave. And then all of a sudden, they're bad. When you see we attempt to be at optimal levels. I doubt most people at 45 years old are optimal because I see enough bloodwork to know that but they can become optimal if you do the right things. So what are the big tests that we want to really focus on if you get blood work, the number one test is C reactive protein, that is a test that is a marker for inflammation. When your body is inflamed, it is going to create far less health and far more increased disease, but on the other side, it is a factor that will play into how your body can be efficient in all regards including weight, you want c reactive protein under to do not believe the reference ranges you want them under to what causes it to be high stress, not sleeping, lack of omega threes, too many carbohydrates, believe it or not too much exercise can cause c reactive protein to be high. Certainly some diseases can do that. But the C reactive is a very important one. Second one huge importance is insulin, it's fasting insulin and fasting insulin. I think on a blood work has a wide range. It actually I think goes up to somewhere like 12 to 15 Let me tell you something Anything over three to four, and you're gonna start having trouble losing weight, in most cases. Now, insulins number one job is not to balance blood sugar, it is to store food for later. So if you have a certain molecule in your body whose job is to store food for later, guess what it does when it's elevated, it looks at a cracker and it puts on a weight. We are programmed to live through famines, we actually are very well designed for hardship. Throughout history we've lived through, you know, we haven't always had grocery stores, believe it or not. And so when we go through these famines, the job of insulin was if you found some food, it wanted to hold on to it as long as possible because the body chemistry was trying to preserve you, so that you could remain alive? Well, for some reason, due to all the multiple factors of stress, sleep blank, blank, blank, the body is escalating its insulin for those reasons. So you are giving your body something that's a magnet for food. So what we want is we want to and under on insulin.
Brian Strickland 11:13 So like besides just normal diet and nutrition, are there actual supplements that we can take to help control those insulin levels?
Ed Jones 11:20 Well, first off the knife and fork and sleep are the two strongest medicines for the insulin levels, missing meals in an untimely basis. Just because you're busy and stressed is terrible for insulin, not sleeping, because it raises cortisol, living under horrible types of chronic stress will raise cortisol, which then raises insulin. But as far as supplements, absolutely, I am a person who has watched people go from 10 and 12, insulins down to two by managing their life, their knife and fork and their supplement program. So the ones that I truly love to watch work is a first off omega three, omega three is the king of how insulin is processed triglycerides. And when you look at blood work of people who test for omega three, which I can almost guarantee you unless you go to a very holistically minded physician you've never been tested. And here's what really winds my clock up about this is my omega three levels in blood work is now regarded as the number one most accurate predictor of mortality that there is it's not cholesterol is not all the other things that you get checked out a physical it is your omega three levels. Well guess what if there was a test that predicted your mortality, don't you think or wouldn't you believe that the mainstream people would embrace this? No, there's a biased against bringing this kind of conversation into a medical office, if it's low, then they're going to have to recommend you to go to a health store, or at least a drugstore that sells Of course, the nutrients and that simply isn't in their comfort zone. So that's that's where the broken system is causing people grief. So yes, the knife and fork eating regularly, not eating too many carbs, taking omega three, if it's extremely high, you actually kind of call yourself a pre diabetic, even though instance not the way to diagnose that. And so you would want to consider herbs like berberine. That's phenomenal for balancing blood sugar. In fact, berberine is very similar to Metformin. So if you go into your doctor, and you did have high insulin and uncontrolled glucose of some sort, the Metformin is going to be your first drug. And it's actually not the worst drug on Earth, I think there's actually only five great drugs that I completely always recommend Metformin is number five on those if the herbs don't work, but most of the time berberine, if you have a quality brand, and you take the right dose will help you significantly on a lot of these issues. We've got we've covered c reactive protein and fasting insulin. The one thing the other thing is if you get a CBC and complete panel that's very low in cost, it's going to kind of rule out and rule in whether you have some significant other issues, like your blood work, you can look on that it's not specific for this weight loss. But if you're going to go ahead and order bloodwork, get a complete metabolic panel CMP and a CBC those two will give you a huge amount of information that is fairly easy to decipher. Now the last thing to look at, and this is where it's very definitive if we want to rule in or rule out a weather you have what we call insulin resistance. This is, believe it or not looking at insulin is not my number one method of saying if you're insulin resistant, it's actually looking at a lipid panel. And a lipid panel could of course consist of cholesterol, HDL, LDL and triglycerides. And here's the rule of thumb. We know that the marker for these blood tests means this if your triglycerides are four to one ratio with HDL, HDL being the supposed good guys, but the lipid panel if you have a triglyceride of 200, and you have an HDL of 50, you're full blown insulin resistant. What does that mean? Insulin resistance means that the answer is not being able to work. So it keeps elevating it higher and higher because it has a need to shuttle glucose into a cell for energy. So when you look at a glucose and triglyceride and HDL levels, and is four to one, we have to fix that, or you're gonna have too much inflammation, which will destroy your health eventually. But you're also going to have the weight thing going on consistently. So, again, you start priding yourself, someone is a pre diabetic, but you also embrace the nutrient that we would use and not the drugs. And you also don't, in my opinion, follow the old school, philosophy of the USDA and all of the in the terrible information that they have created. In fact, even through schools, and through all the things they teach, because we know that the US government subsidizes the very crops identified as being the most harmful to human health and the environment. And those top three are corn, wheat and soybeans. And so when the government is subsidizing these three foods that in anything beyond small amounts is devastating to the health of the human body and or that of our pets, then how can you trust the information and the food pyramid is ridiculous, it is absolutely going to create insulin resistance if you follow it. For those who want to get blood work, we are living in a wonderful age and time of certain freedoms that were never available back even before 2000. Really before 2010. And that is the ability to order blood work through the internet. And I'm super shocked that more people don't know about this is you will go online, and you will pick the tests that you want. And you will sign up you will pay for the test in about two hours, you will get a requisition from a physician who has signed off on this blood work. And then you will print that and in every big city there is a drawing station labcorp or quest are the two main ones. And you will take that paperwork in and just give your blood and two to four days later, you'll get an email saying your results are back, very efficient system. One reason you're not knowing about is because no one wants to tell you because the cost of say testosterone is about 10 bucks to do a testosterone test through these kinds of things in some labs not all I've seen it charged at a medical office for 100 to $200 for the same exact test. So that's one reason is the you know, they want the money part is continuing this parade of, of not being honest about the options, but you know, knowing that you can do this at a discounted rate is life saving, life saving. But if you're going to get bloodwork here's what you do always get vitamin D checked at least once you got to have it over 50 nanograms if you want to decrease disease significantly, so pay the money it's usually 30 or 40 bucks. You want to see bc CMP c reactive protein, fasting insulin and ferritin storage iron, just in case you're writing this down you want ferritin to be no more than 60 that is actually storage iron rust you like it does an old car in the junkyard so we don't want too much iron if you do you want to go get blood at blood assurance place. And then I think for men and women if you are interested checking the hormones would be a panel that you would check on the hormones and that would give you a good array of test. Now there is a gene that I will do an entire show on called MTHFR and I would highly recommend anyone who has any real concerns for longevity and health to at least do one hour just do one task because once you do a gene is never gonna change. mthfr I'm not sure if that's extremely costly. Last time I looked, it was about 100 bucks. But when you look at the implications of mthfr, you'll understand the value of that.
Brian Strickland 20:11 So and I know we're talking a lot about weight loss and what it means to be at a healthy weight. And I think a lot of people may have the misconception that a healthy weight may mean that you look thin and muscular on the outside. Can you talk about why that may be not always the case and how your blood chemistry and your internal health is just as important as how you look on the outside?
Ed Jones 20:36 Absolutely, because we don't know of people who have looked excellent who dropped dead. First off. So you know, there are certain people have just great genetics for a physique and for making the external look very well. And that doesn't really It does. It has modest connection to health, but not a significant direction, and weak connection. So we, you know, we need again to evaluate it from the parameters that we're speaking about. And one of the thing about healthy weight is many people, when we're all born, we have these certain tendencies, genetics that are really programmed in, they are the blueprint, as though you're building a building. And that's going to be the way it kind of is even, no matter how many years go by. There are people who are programmed like I'm programmed to weigh 173 pounds. In my early days, I wanted to be a big bodybuilder. So I ate a ton of food so I could become 200 plus pounds. And within a week when I ran marathons, I was weighing 150. But nature wanted me to be at 173. As we age, we have to find the connection and wisdom, intuitively somewhat to what it nature really want for us. Sometimes you can do that by going back and thinking what did I weigh at 16 years old. Not that we need that to be the ideal, but it's somewhere in the ballpark of where you wait between 16 and 20 is probably what your genetics kind of wanted you to be plus about 15% at most. And so looking at it your actual weight, I know women who I want to weigh 115. But we know for a fact that that nature wants them to weigh 135. Well, you're going to have to if you do and you all fall into that, you're going to have to use why I don't recommend that. Because when you alter nature significantly, you're going to pay a price. I don't care what it is whether you're underweight and you gain or you're overweight and you lose, we want to be within the realm of what you are programmed and blueprinted to be. So mentally sometimes we had to get past this. And you know the thing about weight, and we always have to bring in the concept of, you know, exercise. But the thing about exercise is, it goes back a little bit to the calorie and calorie out type of argument that's we've lived with since beginning of time. And yes, you burn calories I burned, I don't know, 300 calories this morning at the gym, I could see it on the numbers. What most people do with that is it just allows them to eat more food. It doesn't, in most cases is really not the math is not adding up. What exercise does is it lowers cortisol. That's why it works. Because anytime your stress hormone cortisol is elevated, it's going to drag insulin up. And we've already been fully tried to educate you about the implications of this insulin molecule. So anything that can lower insulin is going to probably lower your your tendency to gain weight. So if we could lower insulin through other methods, I truly believe you don't have to exercise to maintain proper weight. But we know the other benefits of that which is you look better, you're more tone, your heart will be healthier because of it. Your heart wants to be exercised, but the bigger next comment I want to make a sleep and why when you don't sleep, the body will accumulate toxins, it will keep cortisol high, the adrenal glands get exhausted, and then they start screwing up with all of their production of hormones and not hormones. And you go down this whole slippery slope of this causes 12 other things to happen and then all of a sudden you just out of control. I mean, then very few things work because we got to get yourself back balanced. And again, we come back to the blood chemistry, the type of diet that we should be doing is still a slight at least a slight keto philosophy does not have to be in ketosis. But the diet that you need is one with has the modest high protein when I say hi, maybe one half gram of protein per pound of body weight, up to three fourths gram that means if I weigh 100, and let's say you weigh 200 pounds, that means, you know, a half a gram of that would be 100 grams a day. So 100 to 110, maybe 10. And 20. That's easy to get many of us in this country eat way too much protein. I mean, it's easy to get 40 grams in one meal, if you go have, you know, a hamburger, you have even fish and chicken and a few other things. So, you know, working on on that part is is extremely important. Does that make sense?
Brian Strickland 25:24 Yes, yes, it does. I think it's important. You know, you're mentioning sleep, I think everyone thinks, well, I get close to eight hours a day, that should be plenty, right. And but it's important to understand that that's really the minimum recommendation.
Ed Jones 25:39 Well, there are individuals who can get by on six, I think the quality of the sleep is number one. And then secondly, is the amount of time I think when people say they got eight hours, that means that's when their head hit the pillow. And that's and that didn't count the time they got up to go the bathroom, if they did, and this and whatever I have now and believe it or not only that recently have I finally knocked myself in the head to understand this. If I count, if I counted, when my head at the pillow, I don't count that any longer. My head is a pillow, I go forward 30 minutes. And that way, if I go to bed at nine o'clock, I'm saying to myself, I didn't go to bed till 930 because that is how long it takes to really start getting into that kind of sleep mode. And then you know, you have to deduct away the time if you do wake up which as we get older, it is so common in is not anything unhealthy. I think it just comes with the aging process that we tend to wake up one is the bladder and the prostate. The other is that kind of like brain chemistry just just forces it to happen. And again, I talked about on the sleep Episode GABA is my absolute Angel of all time supplementally I take it during the night if I wake up 1000 milligrams is been a is actually I believe saved my life because it helps me to get back into that deep sleep. Then what does that do whilst lowering cortisol again, which is keeping the insulin low. So when you combine some exercise that lowers cortisol, good slate that lowers cortisol, not living a crazy life and having some downtime where you're connecting with something bigger than yourself. Something that is it has contentment and joy and peace in it. Whether that be climbing rocks or being with your child going to church, it doesn't matter. But it has to be on a regular basis. And then you look at blood chemistry, then you start doing the knife and fork correctly and adding your core four supplements, which we always talk about. I think there's only if you have to only do four things and the only things you ever do the rest of your life you have to be on a quality multivitamin Centrum is not it. You have to be on the right omega three, choose wisely because they're full of heavy metals if you don't find the right vendor, probiotics, most of them are worthless because they won't implant so you have to also know the territory of where that lies. And then lastly, superfoods. superfoods being the green drinks that contain all the phytochemicals that detox your liver make us less acidic, boom, boom, boom. So the core four is the longevity, it is the retirement account for your physical health. Don't start trying to put this retirement account together when you're struggling and you're 50 years old, do it with common sense early on and build this retirement account.
Brian Strickland 28:28 A lot of people often think that there's just one way to lose weight, right? There's one healthy diet to adhere to. I know you're a big fan of the keto diet and have been for a long time. And it's more of a lifestyle for you now and has been for for quite some time. But could you speak about there's not a one size fits all diet for everyone. It may work for somebody and it may not work for others.
Ed Jones 28:51 No, there's not a one size. We obviously know that we have people who are a perfect weight who've never even known what the word keto is and wouldn't do it if they did. When I say keto I'm never in ketosis. I just lean toward those principles. And those principles involve eating a lot of colored quality foods every day at least twice and doing the right choosing a foods. However, I'm also a huge fan of intermittent fasting where you don't eat 13 to 14 hours a day. I think that no matter what diet you are on, can help stimulate because it again helps to balance insulin and cortisol and and blank blank blank. You can eat some people can eat other types of diet and do well the issue with me is it still has to have healthy fat if nothing else comes from this conversation and you believe any shred of what I say or I have any faith in what I believe it's the one thing is you need to have added Fat Fat healthy fat with every single meal. Breakfast, lunch, supper and snack now can you do too much fat Why? Heck, yes, because they're calorie dense. The old thing I keep talking about about calories in calories out, there still is some significance to this. If I started eating all the exact foods I'm eating now, but I doubled it. Well, I can still say I'm on the right macros and the right proportions. But my calorie content would be on an insane level. So of course, I would gain weight. So we have to use some common sense on this now. But what the thing that fat does is it slows the, in the rate of which the carbohydrates, even healthy ones, are going to go into the system. And that is key, absolutely key to making the chemistry optimal. So what do I do the breakfast drink, of course has MCT in it. At lunch, I take ghee, I'd went today to an Indian place we had Indian food and my daughter, I take a little packet of ghee, which is clarified butter, I completely douse my food with ghee. And I take a small bottle of olive oil from high quality sources. Most of them are junk and counterfeit, so be careful who you buy them from. And I completely saturate my salad with the olive oil. So I've got huge amounts of fat. I will eat a bar at 230 that will have fat in it. I love the bulletproof bar. And then at supper, I'll do the same as lunch. And then I don't eat at night anymore because I'm intermittent fasting. So I will be done at supper at 530 and then I'll roll not eat again for 13 hours. And so there I go. Well guess what? That's it for this week's episode. Thank you so much for listening. And just so you know, you can now find us on iTunes. If you wouldn't mind leaving us a review and subscribing. That really helps us get the word out about this podcast. If you have any questions, be sure to visit the holistic navigator comm and drop us a note. We really love hearing from our listeners. And until next time, I'm Ed Jones. And remember, whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm. Thank you so much.