Read Transcript
Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
This episode is sponsored by Zero Acre Farms… an innovative and healthy alternative to seed oils. You probably know that seed oils are a HUGE problem. They have been linked to widespread health and environmental issues yet they’re in everything we eat. This is because seed oils are cheap and are found in most restaurants and packaged foods. They are high in inflammatory linoleic acid and Omega 6 fatty acids. But Zero Acre is here to change that. Their Cultured Oil is an all-purpose cooking oil, with over 90% heart healthy and heat stable monounsaturated fat, meaning it has more monounsaturated fat than even olive and avocado oils. And up to 10x less omega-6 fats than olive and avocado oils.
It has a high smoke point (485F) and clean neutral taste making it perfect for everything from cooking and baking to salad dressings. It is a one-to-one replacement for all liquid oils and is great for frying, roasting, sauteing, stir-frying, baking, dressing, drizzling, and baking. I love the neutral taste and have been using it in baking, salad dressings, and homemade mayo. Since it’s made by fermentation, Cultured Oil has a 10x smaller environmental footprint than vegetable oils. It uses 85% less land than canola oil and requires 99% less water than olive oil. It is Gluten-free, vegan, free of any glyphosate residue, allergen-friendly, and Whole30 approved. Zero Acre is offering our listeners FREE SHIPPING on your first order. Go to wellnessmama.com/go/zeroacre or use code WELLNESSMAMA at checkout to claim this deal.
This podcast is sponsored by LMNT, which is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don’t. It is a science-backed electrolyte ratio, with none of the junk found in electrolyte drinks. No sugar. No coloring. No artificial ingredients. No gluten. No fillers. No BS. I love this company so much that I invested in them and am a daily user of their electrolyte mix. Many of us are not hydrated enough, and this doesn’t just mean we need more water… electrolytes are an important part of this balance as well, which is why LMNT is so helpful. Electrolytes in this particular ratio can help prevent and eliminate headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleeplessness, and other common symptoms of electrolyte deficiency. They can also boost performance and recovery. Electrolytes facilitate hundreds of functions in the body, including the conduction of nerve impulses, hormonal regulation, nutrient absorption, and fluid balance. Many people find that these electrolytes support a low-carb lifestyle by preventing, mitigating, and eliminating the “low carb/keto flu” and they can also support healthy fasting. LMNT replaces electrolytes without breaking a fast.
As a listener of this podcast, you can get a free sample pack with any order. The LMNT Sample Pack includes 1 packet of every flavor. This is the perfect offer for anyone who is interested in trying all of our flavors or who wants to introduce a friend to LMNT. This offer is exclusively available through VIP LMNT Partners – you won’t find this offer publicly available and is available for new and returning customers. They always offer no questions asked refunds on all orders if you aren’t completely happy. Grab the deal at drinklmnt.com/wellnessmama.
Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And today I’m here with my friend Dr. Molly Maloof, who is an MD, as well as an author and a researcher. She’s passionate about extending Health span through her medical practice, and through her entrepreneurial and educational endeavors. And she has a really active Instagram I recommend following where she talks about a lot of the cutting edge health stuff. And today we go deep on how to supercharge your batteries and your mitochondria for more energy, and a fitter, stronger, and more resilient life.
She talks about why biohacking is different for women, and how to be careful if you’re a woman who’s into biohacking, how to use current technology to improve mitochondrial health, the way that stress changes metabolism, and why weight gain, or trouble losing weight, can actually just be a symptom of high stress and low mitochondrial function, why recovery is so important, and how to avoid burnout, how to nourish your mitochondria effectively, things that damage your mitochondria, how chronic stress directly damages it. We talk about what mitohormetic stressors are. We touch on the war over vegetables and what she thinks about vegan versus carnivore and some of the more extreme diets that are out there right now. We talk about microbiome and mitochondrial crosstalk, what HRV can tell us about health, and how to use at-home trackables, like wearable Oura rings, or Apple watches, and glucose monitors to dial in your own health and hormones. We talk about the glycemic index and some nuance to understand, to actually personalize response to you. She talks about looking at the body from a first principles approach, which I love, because you’ve probably heard me talk about a first principles approach in other areas before, and so much more.
And then we end by talking a little bit about peptides and some cutting edge stuff that she thinks is really promising. So, as always with Dr. Molly, such a fact-packed episode. She’s always so fun to talk to. I know that you will enjoy it as well. So, let’s join Dr. Molly Maloof. Molly, welcome back.
Molly: Thanks for having me. Katie, I love being on your podcast. It’s one of my favorites.
Katie: Well, it’s so fun to chat with you, and I think today’s topic is super important because we’re gonna get to go deep on some of the many things you talk about in your new book, which I think is very timely and very important for women especially. So, to start broad, I would love to hear just a teeny bit about the inspiration for this book, and then I wanna really get to go deep on some of the topics you cover.
Molly: Sure. So, I have been trying to understand health from a first principles perspective for, like, my entire life. Like, I was always interested in health and becoming a doctor, and when I got to medical school, I just really felt like we weren’t being taught about how to be healthy, we were taught about disease. And I just kept on asking myself when I was in my residency, like, “Why is it that I’m seeing 80% of these diseases are preventable? They all have the same risk factors. Why are people getting so sick? And why is this system not doing such a good job at managing these chronic illnesses?” And so, when I started my medical practice, I really started from, like, two perspectives. One was I wanted to work really closely with individuals as, like, a one-on-one doctor. I wanted to have a practice that was, you know, perfect world medicine where you had a doctor who had your back and did research for you and optimize your health instead of just treated you with drugs and surgery.
And I got to build it in Silicon Valley, and in the process, I got to be a part of a bunch of different movements. One was the technology movement around personalized health technologies, the second was the biohacking movement. And I really learned from some of the best doctors how to not just fix sickness but how to make people healthier. In the process of learning about biohacking, I started noticing some patterns, and that was that a lot of the things that worked really well for men, didn’t really work really well for women, and specifically, like, when they were done, you know, on top of each other. So, when I saw women doing fasting and ketosis and HIIT training and Barry’s Bootcamp and weightlifting, they were getting burned out, they were getting hormone dysfunction, they were having all sorts of problems. And I wasn’t necessarily recommending this to these women, but, like, I was just noticing that, like, everybody in Silicon Valley was trying to get an edge in performance boost, and yet women’s bodies seemed to be different than men’s. Who knew?
And so, I was inspired by this book because, A, I really believe that we have an imperative to, like, have a paradigm shift in the way we see health in this country, but to get there, we’re gonna have to just honor the differences between being a man and being a woman, and how those different biological imperatives actually create the conditions for different outcomes for biohacking. And so, the big main gist of the book is all about mitochondria. It’s like, okay, if mitochondria are the seat of health, they’re literally producing energy, they’re directing where the energy goes. How do we tune our mitochondria for better health? How do we actually, like, maintain their function as we get older? Because it looks like mitochondrial dysfunction precedes a lot of metabolic diseases. Who knew? I mean, it’s like metabolism is basically to hide to mitochondria.
So, I wanted to write a book that tried to dispel some myths around mitochondrial health, and really try to focus on things that individuals could do with technology that’s available today, and also give people a preview of what’s coming in the future, because a lot of the stuff that I’ve been using for, like, over 10 years, maybe since…I mean, at least since 2014, is now becoming more mainstream, but it’s still very much in, like, a small part of the population. So, this is, like, kind of giving people a preview of what’s to come, and if you are a biohacker, it’s giving you new insights into new tools that you can use to optimize your health.
Katie: I love that. I think the more I read, the more I am fully in agreement with you about mitochondria being so important, and I’m glad this is becoming more of the conversation, like, you’re talking about. I also think it’s so important to really delve into the difference between males and females when it comes to a lot of these things because so much of that conversation in biohacking has been very male-led for a lot of years, and I know… I think we’ve even talked about before how women weren’t even included in medical research until the ’90s, and often women were thought of as just smaller men, and it’s so not true, and actually, I think can be a superpower all of our hormone fluctuations if we know how to work with it. But if we’re following the same advice that would work for men, sometimes we can fall short, because our hormones are different.
So I’d love to hear a little bit more about ways that you approach that, because I know you also yourself are into a lot of different biohacking, and that you have figured out how to do this in a way that is friendly with your hormones and probably uses them to your advantage. So what are some of the things you look at differently?
Molly: Well, having been burned out before, which sucks, by the way, I basically, like, learned firsthand that when you’re burned out, you have to biohack completely differently. You actually have to biohack your way back to balance. And, I mean, it turns out that, like, somewhere around 90% of people were burned out during the pandemic because we were all under so much stress that our bodies were just starting to break down, and I, like many women, experienced weight loss resistance. And I don’t know the…I mean, I really considered…
Like, there’s been a few points of time in my life that were extremely stressful, but I’d say the pandemic was one of the top 10, probably, like, top five, and I think a lot of people could also say that. And so, I was just trying to understand, well, why is it impossible for me to lose this 10 pounds I gained, you know? And I think a lot of women are, like, still asking themselves, like, how come I’m still haven’t taken off this weight? Now, I’m fortunate I did get the weight off last year, but a lot of women are still struggling with the weight gain that they had from the pandemic. And I think the problem is, is that we are living in an incredibly chronically stressful society, and the mitochondria are integrating the stress response. They’re not just producing energy, they’re literally deciding where it goes. And so, for people who struggle with long-COVID, for people who struggle with, you know, chronic illness, for people who struggle from burnout, your mitochondria are often stuck in survival mode. And when they’re stuck in survival mode, it’s really hard to actually get into the mode of, like, releasing energy and letting go of weight because your body is trying to hold on to energy to keep you alive.
And when you really look at the body from the lens of what’s called allostasis, it’s constantly trying to maintain stability through change, and if someone puts on weight during stress, it’s for a reason. It’s because your body is trying to protect you from danger, and the best way it does that is search for resources because your body’s always trying to predict the future. It’s trying to, like, figure out what does tomorrow look like? Can I prepare for tomorrow? Can I have enough energy for tomorrow? And so, it creates the conditions of insulin resistance during high stress, and that means that your body’s gonna hold on to weight. And one of the things it does is it makes it harder for you to actually put the blood sugar away. And so we see, actually, blood sugar rise in people and insulin levels rise in people who struggle with chronic stress. And really high stress for long periods of time can actually really hurt the metabolism.
And so, in that situation, you really wanna do everything you can to recover. Like, recovery is this, like, really important word that… Like, it really got popularized in the athlete movement. Like, athletes are very vigilant now about recovery because we’ve basically learned that your heart rate variability is a pretty good marker of your recovery. And so, if your heart rate variability continues to be low and your heart rate continues to go higher, it’s important to really take a stop and ask yourself, am I really stressed out? And am I in need of, like, a real break? And it’s just been really hard for people to take breaks, especially people in the medical community. I mean, most doctors are still gearing up for a triple epidemic this winter. But a lot of people don’t take vacation time, a lot of people don’t properly rest, a lot of people don’t even give themselves recovery days between exercise.
I worked with a woman who worked out seven days a week, and she was really experiencing hormone dysfunction. And I’m like, you know, “I know you’re a bodybuilder, and I know that you’re really powerful and you’re gonna win these competitions, but you’re gonna do yourself, you know, some disservice by not getting that proper recovery in.” And so, it’s one of those things where I just have to make it a habit of using my red light, laying on my biomat, laying on my PEMF mat, doing yoga, laying on my acupressure mat on weekends, using the sauna, doing the Theragun. Like, all these things I do as a practice because you gotta pay attention to your body signals.
Katie: Yeah, I think so many important things in that, and I think back to my own life. And I know you’ve talked about, at least on your Instagram, the importance of sort of, like, re-patterning the stress response, especially for someone who has trauma in their history. I think that could be a whole series of podcasts on its own, but I know for me, when I identified that as a source of stress and then started trying to re-pattern that, I went through a very pretty intense recovery phase where for a long time I was really not working out at all. I was really prioritizing sleep, gentle sauna, recovery. If anything, I was just walking, and I was really focused on hyper-nourishing my body because I realized from, like, all those years of stress, I was nutrient depleted, I needed to reverse diet, I needed to give my body the signal that it was safe. And so I really didn’t work out for months and months during that. And that was the phase where the weight just came off effortlessly, my sleep improved dramatically. But I think the message we often get is so contrary to that, if we should do more, we have to work more, and that’s definitely not always true for women.
And I think I love your approach because you talk about mitochondrial function really being key. So what are some of the ways we can start thinking of to improve mitochondrial function? I think often this is a little bit more complex for people because we may not be able to feel directly if something’s affecting our mitochondria or not, whereas we can feel if the food makes us not feel great in the moment. I think, like, understanding the mitochondrial aspect is a different layer, but one that in the long-term, to your point, is even more important.
Molly: Yeah. So, I think the first thing people need to understand is, like, mitochondria are these really important organelles that are basically producing energy. You know, when you breathe air and you eat food, you’re basically burning the oxygen to burn the food and to create, like, a little power plant in your body, right, these little power plants in your cells, which we learn about in high school. But then on top of that, what we don’t get taught is how those power plants can be damaged by our lifestyle. So, some really obvious, but actually maybe not so obvious directly damaging mitochondrial toxins are things like smoking, things like alcohol, things like vaping, because of all these heavy metals you’re getting in vaping and smoking, you’re actually, like, throwing wrenches in the mitochondrial function.
You know, I go out. I’m single, I go out in Austin. I see a lot of people vaping. In fact, I’ve even tried the vapes and turns out… The first time I even took a hit of a vape, I was like, “Oh, my God, I cannot believe that this is legal.” Because it turns out that…I was reading yesterday that they say now that vaping is about as addictive as crack cocaine. Okay. So, that’s pretty wild. That’s a lot of dopamine, and, you know, you gotta protect your mitochondria. So, like, smoking was really a big problem, and now we’re really starting to address the vaping epidemic. Like, initially, it was, like, oh, vaping can help people get off smoking. It’s gotta be healthier. Now we’re starting to find out there’s no free lunch, right?
Alcohol also used to be known as this, you know, oh, there’s a safe amount of alcohol. You can have one to two drinks a day and you’ll be fine. Well, new recent research suggests that there’s actually no amount of alcohol that’s healthy, and that it is actually really problematic for metabolism and that you probably shouldn’t consume it. So, those are two really important topics that I think a lot of people don’t think enough about, especially women who are often coping with stress with alcohol.
And I think when people are under really significant stress, they really turn to substances in order to try to, you know, mitigate their pain, but it’s, in fact, like, you have to… When it comes to stress management, like, one of the things that nobody tells you is that, like, stress is actually in itself…it’s obviously a part of life, but significant chronic stress actually does directly damage the mitochondria. So, like, it just uses up the batteries.
And so, the thing is, like, we’re supposed to have stress, and it’s supposed to make us stronger. And if you have an attitude that stress makes you stronger, you’re gonna be more resilient, which is cool, but there’s really a point where stress…like, specifically even caregiving stress, a lot of people don’t realize this, but there’s literal research by Martin Picard that demonstrates that caregiving stress is really hard for the mitochondria. It’s unrelenting, right, like, having to take care of people that are ill, or perhaps maybe you have a family member who has dementia, it’s really, really draining on the body.
And so, we think about mitochondria from the lens of metabolism, but we just kind of need to see them as, like, batteries and capacitors. They’re, like, little parts of the cell that are carrying charge, and we drain that charge with our life. When we do work, we drain our energy. So it’s normal to be tired at the end of the day. When we have really significant chronic psychological stress, it affects mitochondria, and there’s actually mitochondrial dysfunction found in things like depression and anxiety. So, whether it’s the cause or, like, the end result, it’s probably bidirectional, and I don’t think we can just necessarily say that like all stress is…I mean, the reality is that, like, some stress is gonna make your mitochondrial stronger.
So if you’re at a baseline level of decent health, you’re not burned out, you have enough capacity to meet your demands. That’s the way I describe it. It’s like, if you have a cup, and you could fill it with stress, if it’s, like, maybe quarter tank filled, you’ve got a lot more room before it overflows, in that situation, you can fill it with what are called mitohormetic stressors. So, these are stressors that make you stronger. So, things like intense exercise. You know, I love weightlifting personally. It’s, like, my favorite form of exercise. It’s a stressor. It makes you stronger. It literally breaks apart of your muscle so that they can grow back stronger. It’s, like, the simplest example. Things like sauna. You know, like, 20 to 30 minutes in a sauna is a mitohormetic stressor. It’s going to activate heat shock proteins, it’s going to enhance longevity and resilience, it’s going to tone your nervous system by enhancing your parasympathetic tone.
And then, a little bit of cold stress can be good for you, but too much cold stress can be problematic. There’s this whole culture in the biohacking community where people are going out and doing, like, 20-minute cold plunges to just prove how strong they are. Look, I’m telling you, like, unless you’re Wim Hof, you probably aren’t best suited for that, especially if you’re really stressed out, which most people are. So, I just think that we need to be a little bit more gentle with our bodies, and, like, I think two minutes of cold plunge is great, but don’t necessarily go to 10 minutes and think that you’re somehow better than everybody in the world and somehow stronger, because I’ve seen that actually lead to burnout for people.
And then, other things that are kind of interesting are things like xenohormetic stressors. So, there’s this whole massive discussion in the carnivore and the vegan world, it’s, like, this war over vegetables, which I find completely absurd, but, like, obviously, there’s a nuanced argument here. So, I talk a lot about in the book, that, like, you can eat things like wild foods and foraged foods and get these xenohormetic benefits. So, I love foraging for things like fiddlehead ferns and, like, ramps and mushrooms. And, like, when I’m in, you know, the Midwest with my family at our lake house, I’ll go do that. But, like, not everybody has access to foraged foods, but it is one of those things where, like, almost every community has woods, and you can find… If you wanna go out in the woods, you can learn to forage, you can join foraging groups. But you can also just buy things at the grocery store like mushrooms, and you can buy things that are like herbs, for example, and cruciferous vegetables.
Xenohormesis is when you eat a food and it has a stressor that makes you stronger in it. So, sometimes little bits of plant toxins can be interpreted by the body to activate the body’s natural defenses in order to make you stronger. So, the problem is that this gets confounded with the lectin argument. So, there’s a lot of people, Gundry, the carnivores, who had autoimmune conditions and problems with weight, right? And they all basically described that, oh, I gave up plants and I somehow miraculously healed my health. Well, I kind of look at this problem from a bunch of different directions. First and foremost, like… You know, this is kind of switching arguments a little bit. We’re kind of going into different topic besides mitochondrial health. But there is this, like, kind of sidebar conversation we need to have around vegetables because vegetables are fundamentally good for you. Now, some people are gonna have problems with certain categories. Things like nightshades may not be great for people with autoimmunity. Things like lectins, people who need to be more careful with. People who have diabetes need to be much more vigilant about grain. Like, the government recommends grain for people with diabetes, and I see it time and time again cause massive blood sugar disturbances.
And so, you have to really look at your body, look at your chronic conditions, and eat in a way that’s in accordance with what’s best for you. All that being said, you know, like, if you have SIBO, if you have problems with digestion, you may not tolerate cruciferous vegetables easily. You may not digest them well. In that situation, you have to look at the gut and really focus on healing the gut first and foremost, and really focus on just, like, figuring out what diet works best for your gut health. I love the GAPS diet, the specific carbohydrate diet. Using that kind of diet to heal your gut can actually greatly improve your ability to digest vegetables and actually tolerate things that would be considered intolerable by a lot of people.
So, that kinda leads me to my next point, and that’s that there’s a lot of microbiome mitochondria crosstalk, because your gut is where your immune system is. And so if your microbiome is dysfunctional and dysbiotic, you’re gonna have a lot of systemic inflammation because you’re gonna have leaky gut that’s gonna leak endotoxins into your bloodstream. And in that situation, that just sends signals to your cells that there’s an alarm going off and we don’t know what to do. And so systemic inflammation really has to be addressed from every direction if you wanna have optimal health and optimal mitochondrial function.
Katie: Oh, my gosh, so many important points there. And I think you’re right, I think we as a society tend to take things to an extreme, and it’s like, some people have problems with lectins, so we should all completely avoid lectins, or refined sugar isn’t great for us, so we’re gonna avoid fruit and all brightly colored starchy vegetables, too, because that obviously is the same thing. And I think, like, regaining balance, like, the pendulum has swung so far in both directions. I’m hopeful eventually we’ll come back to center a little bit. I also think especially in the more extreme part of the biohacking community, there is, like you talked about, that more is more mentality. And when it comes to things even like sauna, which is great for you, more is not more. There is an upper limit, at which point it becomes an actual stressor, not a hormetic stressor. And, like, to your point, I think that limit is different for all of us depending on where our kind of baseline is and our resilience and how we build our stress response.
A couple follow-up questions to that, I know also nicotine gum and patches are being used as a nootropic in a lot of ways, and certainly, like you said, the data is strong on smoking and vaping. What do you think about those with nicotine separate of the inhalation aspect?
Molly: I personally think nicotine’s an awesome nootropic. I have these toothpicks called Zippix. They’re nicotine toothpicks, and when I’m really drained at the end of the day and I still have three more calls left, I’ll just chew on one of these things, and it’s such a nice little boost and it tastes good and it’s kind of, like, it keeps you from snacking and it’s like… You know, sometimes, I can’t even get up between three hours of calls. And so, it’s kind of fun to have a little bit of, like, a, you know, little nootropic boost. But I think it’s a lot healthier than perhaps, like, some of the other things that people are using. Like, sometimes they put, like, fiberglass apparently in those little chew packets that people put in their mouth, right? Like, I wouldn’t recommend large amounts of nicotine. I wouldn’t recommend, like, any tobacco snuff or anything like that, but I do think that, like, a little toothpick dipped in a little bit of nicotine is probably not gonna hurt you.
Katie: And probably as anything, like, if you’re cycling it and it’s not becoming a habit, it seems like the data is, like, if it becomes a regular habit, then your dopamine baseline is actually then sort of controlled by the nicotine response, and if you come off of it, your baseline dopamine is lower, so you actually feel worse than you felt before. I was curious about that because it seems like a very popular nootropic in the biohacking world right now.
When it comes to mitochondrial function, what are some of the ways we can tell at home without maybe, like, extensive testing, how are mitochondrial are doing? Is it more symptom-based? Are there things we can pay attention to know?
Molly: I mean, I hate to be overly simplified, but anybody who’s dealing with fatigue, if you’re… Like, I wake up in the morning at, like, 5:30/6:00 and I actually have a lot of energy, and I’m really lucky. But I recently got my cortisol tested and I found out my cortisol was high and I was like, “Oh, I was wondering why I was waking up in the morning feeling a little bit, like, edgy.” And so, I wouldn’t say that I had necessarily mitochondrial dysfunction from that, but cortisol can cause some insulin resistance. So, I weaned off of coffee, I started lowering my intense exercise in the morning, and I just noticed that I needed to make a shift. So, I think anybody who’s dealing with anxiety or dealing with depression or dealing with, like, metabolic disease, like prediabetes, anyone who’s got PCOS, like, you gotta be really, really careful because these are all symptoms of mitochondrial issues.
So, long-COVID, I believe fundamentally is a mitochondrial disease, and it affects almost every organ system in the body. And so, when you have global power outage, you see problems. So, the thing people need to realize is that chronic intracellular infections, these drain your body’s capacity because they affect your mitochondria. They get inside the cell, they hide from your immune system, and they use your machinery to take over and to do what they need to do for themselves to survive. This is why people with chronic fatigue often get it after major infections, like Lyme, even syphilis can cause it, it’s another sphere sheet, like, Mycoplasmas, chlamydia infections. You know, there’s all sorts of intracellular infections like EBV, HHV-6, like, COVID, you name it. Anything that hides inside the cell is gonna drain your capacity.
So, if you’ve had mono, if you have had COVID, if you haven’t recovered properly from these conditions, then you probably have some mitochondrial dysfunction. So, you know, people who carry a lot of visceral fat, it’s pretty safe to say that they probably have some mitochondrial dysfunction. People who have osteoarthritis, a lot of people don’t know this, but there’s actually a relationship between mitochondrial DNA being found inside the joints of people with osteoarthritis and there’s a belief that basically, it could be a complication of metabolic diseases. It’s often found in people with metabolic dysfunction. So, I would really look at, you know, anybody with a chronic inflammatory condition is definitely looking at probably some mitochondrial dysfunction.
Katie: That makes sense. And I know you also, at least on Instagram, talk a lot about a lot of the things we can use at home now with the availability of more data and wearables and tracking to also help dial in some of these things. So I’d love to kind of get your perspective on things like glucose trackers, wearables like Oura Ring, and how we can best use this data that we now have access to improve these factors over time.
Molly: Yeah. Well, I’m, like, deeply passionate about wearable technology because it’s something that you can use and you can guide yourself with. And there’s also a lot of coaches now out there that are learning to use these devices to help train people to be optimally well. So, I’m an advisor of a company called Heads Up Health, and they integrate a lot of wearable technology into a platform where you can actually see how different data streams from your body are, like, interacting.
So, I specifically love continuous glucose monitoring and I love heart rate variability monitoring. And I’m also a big fan of the Oura Ring because it gives you sleep, stress, movement, intensity of exercise, oxygen saturation. It’s just a great tool in the toolbox. A lot of people love…I mean, a lot of athletes like Garmin devices because they’re a lot more tailored to an athlete and they offer a lot more data. The Apple Watch is probably the most popular wearable in the world. And this company, Hanu Health, is a very new company, I’m an advisor there as well, Ben Greenfield’s an advisor. It’s a really remarkable simple concept. It’s basically a polar heart strap that links to your phone and it can give you, like, an in-the-moment mobile telemetry view of your stress levels. So it can show you what your heart rate is and it can show you what your heart rate variability is.
And a lot of people don’t know that when your heart rate is high when you’re under a lot of stress, your heart rate variability is gonna be low. And when your heart rate variability is low, you don’t have enough space to adapt to demands that you might be faced with. And so as a result, you just often feel more stressed because your body can’t really do much about extra stress because its heart rate’s already up high.
And then, you can do all sorts of things like breathwork, and, you know, cardio is actually great for improving HRV. But, like, you don’t wanna do too much intense cardio, but definitely adding some moderate-intensity cardio to your regimen is good. A little bit of HIIT training is good. I wouldn’t do a ton. I’m not really a big fan of people who do, like, Barry’s Bootcamp six days a week. I think that’s not healthy. Turns out that if you do, like, over 150 minutes of HIIT training a week, it actually can contribute to mitochondrial dysfunction, which is interesting, which a lot of people don’t know. So that’s worth even talking about a little bit, but…
Then, there’s glucose monitoring. So, glucose monitoring is something I’ve been using since 2014, and I have been kind of a CGM zealot because I discovered I was borderline pre-diabetic. And I have been, like, preaching for years, like, “Everyone, sky is falling. One in three people have pre-diabetes. This contributes to all sorts of conditions like hypertension and heart disease and cancer and diabetes and dementia, Parkinson’s. We have to protect our mitochondria if we wanna live a long and healthy life.” And blood sugar is this, like, ultimate lifestyle biomarker because it responds to movement, it responds to rest, it responds to stress, it responds to what we eat, when we eat, how much we eat, the ratios of carbohydrates and fats and proteins that we consume, the food order that we consume. So they’re really, really cool tools for optimizing your blood sugar.
And I’m just such a big fan of people putting these on and just getting an understanding of, like, okay, what can I do to improve? Like, we could go into, you know, how to read a blood sugar monitor. You know, it’s kinda up to you where you wanna take this convo.
Katie: Yeah, I think just a brief kind of primer on how to use it to our advantage. I know for me personally, I’m a big fan as well. It’s helped me dial in my response. Like, I don’t have a spike from wild blueberries. Like, those are one of my for sure safe foods, but then some other things that you would think would be pretty safe, spike it like crazy. So it’s been helpful for me to personalize.
Molly: This is so interesting because I do spike from wild blueberries. Like, I learned that if I put a couple of blueberries in my smoothie, I get a blood sugar spike. This is the thing about…people don’t realize, is that the glycemic or response curve, this is basically… When people talk about, like, the glycemic index, it’s the average of a thousand people’s blood sugar. So, it’s not an individual’s response to food, it’s, like, a thousand people had of the same food and then they averaged it out. So it’s kinda like the BMI. Like, you really shouldn’t use BMI to, like, perfectly gauge your health because you can have really, like, massive muscle mass and, like, be a higher BMI, but still not actually be obese. So, you know, I like people to understand that, like, there’s also these kind of current guidelines that as long as you’re not pre-diabetic or diabetic, you’re okay. But there’s actually progressive changes happening in your cells, the higher and higher your blood sugar goes.
I kind of try to teach people that you want your fasting blood sugar not just below 100, but probably below 90, and below 85 would be even better. And then, like, your post-meal blood sugar, ideally, like, according to the guidelines, less than 140 is fine, but really you’d be better if it was less than 120 or even 110. And that’s kind of a lot of work. Like, even I during my highest stress state this summer, was like, “Oh, my gosh, like, this is even hard for me to make and, like, I’m an expert in this kind of thing.” So, you know, during the pandemic, I moved away from California, spent some time with my family in the Midwest, and I decided I was just gonna give myself a pass and, like, be more normal.
Well, I learned the hard way that being more normal led to weight gain, it led to SIBO, it led to higher blood sugar numbers, it led to… A lot of things that I worked so hard to fix were actually coming back because it was a pandemic, I was under a lot of stress, and I didn’t really wanna do all the things that I was doing to optimize my health, because I was just like, everything is too much. And then, this summer when I was like, okay, this book is done, I know that I need to get back into all of my habits, I know that I need to get back into, you know, the things that I know are best for me, I started going to the gym again, I started putting a blood sugar monitor on, I started doing all the things in my book that I knew worked for me, and I got stronger, I got fitter. I feel like I aged in reversed. Like, I got more energy, and, like, it was really an interesting cool feeling to, like, know that, yeah, no, you’re not gonna be able to do everything all the time all at once, but these tools, you put them on and they can help you get back onto the saddle. They can help you remember, oh, yeah, I really shouldn’t eat refined carbs. Oh, yeah, as much as I wanna eat honey, I can’t have very much of it, you know? Oh, yeah, like, I thought that maybe it’d be okay if I had a little maple syrup. It turns out that it spikes me.
And, like, if you find yourself kind of, you know, decidedly getting kind of fatigued with health and wellness, sometimes putting on these wearables can just remind you, okay, you know what? Like, I can hold myself to a higher standard. I can actually do better than this. Like, it’s so easy to be, like, everybody in America and just… You know, like, we eat like it’s a national sport. You know, like, it’s birthday every day in most offices, you know? Like, I grew up working for my dad, and there were donuts in the office, like, all the time. And I think that’s what a lot of workplaces are like, I think that’s what a lot of homes are like. I think a lot of people are just, like, tired of the chronic stress. But the problem is, is that the way that we’re eating and the way that we’re not being cognizant of how our eating’s affecting us is contributing slowly to the development of metabolic diseases. And unless you take a look at your body using a blood sugar monitor and actually see what’s going on, you might end up…
Like, one of my clients, this woman that I was working with, she literally came to me because she was like, “Four years ago, I had normal-looking labs.” Four years later after a major lawsuit and a lot of life stress and all these things we going wrong for her in her life, she’s like, “I now have full-blown diabetes.” And, like, this stuff can creep up on you. Like, I have a friend who literally got a levels CGM because she saw me preaching about it constantly on my Instagram. And she goes, “Molly, I am full-blown pre-diabetic, and I had brunch last weekend and I hit over 200 after a really starchy meal.” She’s like, “I bought 20 of your books because I now really get it.” And she’s young and skinny, by the way. She’s young and healthy and skinny. Well, she thought she was healthy, like me, I thought I was healthy in my, you know, early 30s, and I wasn’t.
So, this book is really…if there’s one thing I want people to take away from this book, it’s, like, the metabolism section was written because I know that there are millions, if not, like, multiples of million…there’s probably 100 million people out there that were just like me, 100 million people who have…maybe actually 80 million who don’t know that they have a problem. That is, like, an enormous number of people in the country who are on their way to getting metabolic disease because they have prediabetes. And so, I specifically, when I really think about why I wrote this book, it was, like, I want everyone to get better blood sugar because I want everyone to age in reverse. I want everyone to live long and healthy lives. And I think that this is one very specific lever we can pull to really boost our health and prevent getting sick.
Katie: Yeah, I agree, and I love that this is now something available for us at home. Like, the personalization of that data has been so helpful, and I think it also helps break that cycle of people wanting to know. Like, people ask me like, what exactly do you do? What exactly do you take? And I’m like, that’s not the helpful thing because I had to figure out and dial in all those things specific to me, and I could tell you, but at best it would be a foundational blueprint for you to start experimenting with, whereas things like my Oura Ring or a glucose monitor actually give you your own data that you can start to build from.
And so, from those things, I know things like, I can eat carbs after a workout and need to for recovery without a spike, but I don’t wanna do that, like, first thing in the morning because that’s not great for my cortisol. Or if I stop eating at least three hours before bed, my HRV’s higher, my fasting glucose is always 75 to 78. Like, I now have the data, which also is more motivating. It’s easier to stick to these things when I have clear black-and-white data of this is affecting my health in a serious way. And I think it’s also a great shift away from the old model, like you mentioned BMI. I’m glad that things like this are starting to seem outdated and being used less. Like, I have a friend who’s an athlete who on the BMI scale would be considered obese, but he’s 4% body fat, and his HRV’s, like, 200.
Molly: Oh, my God, 200?
Katie: 200 on average.
Molly: Who is this human?
Katie: He’s an athlete.
Molly: I mean, come on.
Katie: Yeah, I know. It’s crazy.
Molly: That’s not fair.
Katie: You know…….
Molly: I don’t know anybody with HRV up to 200. That’s wild. What’d you say?
Katie: On a bad night, it’s 150, if he’s, like, really recovering. I’m like wow.
Molly: He’s gonna live forever.
Katie: Probably. So, yeah, like, resting heart rate 38.
Molly: Oh, my God, that makes me wanna work out even more, you know?
Katie: Right, right.
Molly: Yeah.
Katie: But a couple of other things I wanna make sure we get to touch on from an initial read of the proof of your book I think are really important to talk about. The first one being some of the movement biohacks you talk about, and especially posture and play, because I think play is the best lesson I’m learning from my kids right now, and I think this is what everybody needs to hear.
Molly: So, I don’t have kids yet, but I know that when I do end up having children… I think a lot of people look at kids as these energizer bunnies that are exhausting, but I kind of feel like kids are free exercise, right, because they’re constantly playing. And I went and I played with my niece for an hour after dinner when I was on vacation for my sister’s wedding this summer, and I remember running around in a circle with her being like, oh, my God, this is better than any drug I’ve ever taken, this feeling of pure joy of just running around with a child.
And it was so fun because it was just like, kids just do this naturally, right? Like, they’re constantly growing and they have tons of mitochondria because they’re literally, like, building other bodies. But we often slow down as we get older. We do less movement, we start sitting in front of desks, we stop playing outside with our friends, and we don’t realize that, like, exercise can be fun, you can enjoy it. You know, like, one of the things that I love doing at the gym is I love, you know, the skier machine and the rowing machine. They have these, like, little games on there where you can, like, eat the fish. Like, I hate cardio, but I will totally do things that make me feel…like, that are fun. And when I was in San Francisco, I used to run to different farmer’s markets because I was wanting the reward of vegetables and fruits and trying things at the market. So, like, I think novelty and cognitive engaging activities are really powerful for enhancing brain function and physical function.
So, like, they say that cognitive… We are basically involved to be cognitively engaged endurance athletes, and yet we don’t spend it all day long in moderate intensity exercise like we used to and the way our genes are designed for. So, as a result, like, by just being sedentary all day long, we’re basically slowly affecting our mitochondrial function because our bodies have this thing called the adaptive capacity model, and we will make more energy by the signals that we get from our behaviors that tell our bodies that we may need more energy tomorrow. So, when you spend more time playing with your kids or your friends and join team sports and, like, go to the gym and do things that you actually like doing, you’re basically sending signals to yourself that, like, oh, I’m gonna need to make more energy tomorrow because I might have a harder exercise tomorrow.
So, I’m also just a really big fan of play and group exercise for the social benefits. I think it’s really important for social connection to actually engage with people outside. To me, it’s really important, really key. And then, posture is really important that a lot of people overlook, but, like, it’s so problematic for our society because so many people are just, like, on their phone all day long crunched over. And, like, you know, 50 years ago, they used to teach posture in school. They used to make kids sit up straight. They used to actually, like, punish children for not standing up straight. And, I mean, obviously, I’m not necessarily recommending that, but I think we have to learn to discipline ourselves to actually have better posture, because I noticed that this summer when I was, like, really exhausted from moving, that my posture was really taking a hit, and I was like, wow, I’m feeling really just, like, tense. I’ve got a lot of tension in my body.
And so, yoga is really, really great, tai chi, qigong, all of these sort of restorative exercises are awesome for just getting your body a better posture. And you can even see a posture alignment therapist if you really struggle because bad posture over time can really wear down your back. It can actually wear down your muscles, and you need strong core strength if you want to have flexibility and mobility as you get older.
Katie: And something I’ve seen at least anecdotally is that there seems to be a connection between posture and mobility and HRV. So I think there’s a big nervous system connection that also relates to stress, and I would put, like, tons of mobility work in that great category of non-stressful exercise. So, even if you’re in recovery mode, I feel like mobility is a great thing to lean on and it’s gonna help your nervous system in your sleep. I don’t know if there’s studies there, but there seems to be a lot of crossover, and I feel like a great starting point.
This episode is sponsored by Zero Acre Farms… an innovative and healthy alternative to seed oils. You probably know that seed oils are a HUGE problem. They have been linked to widespread health and environmental issues yet they’re in everything we eat. This is because seed oils are cheap and are found in most restaurants and packaged foods. They are high in inflammatory linoleic acid and Omega 6 fatty acids. But Zero Acre is here to change that. Their Cultured Oil is an all-purpose cooking oil, with over 90% heart healthy and heat stable monounsaturated fat, meaning it has more monounsaturated fat than even olive and avocado oils. And up to 10x less omega-6 fats than olive and avocado oils.
It has a high smoke point (485F) and clean neutral taste making it perfect for everything from cooking and baking to salad dressings. It is a one-to-one replacement for all liquid oils and is great for frying, roasting, sauteing, stir-frying, baking, dressing, drizzling, and baking. I love the neutral taste and have been using it in baking, salad dressings, and homemade mayo. Since it’s made by fermentation, Cultured Oil has a 10x smaller environmental footprint than vegetable oils. It uses 85% less land than canola oil and requires 99% less water than olive oil. It is Gluten-free, vegan, free of any glyphosate residue, allergen-friendly, and Whole30 approved. Zero Acre is offering our listeners FREE SHIPPING on your first order. Go to wellnessmama.com/go/zeroacre or use code WELLNESSMAMA at checkout to claim this deal.
This podcast is sponsored by LMNT, which is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don’t. It is a science-backed electrolyte ratio, with none of the junk found in electrolyte drinks. No sugar. No coloring. No artificial ingredients. No gluten. No fillers. No BS. I love this company so much that I invested in them and am a daily user of their electrolyte mix. Many of us are not hydrated enough, and this doesn’t just mean we need more water… electrolytes are an important part of this balance as well, which is why LMNT is so helpful. Electrolytes in this particular ratio can help prevent and eliminate headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleeplessness, and other common symptoms of electrolyte deficiency. They can also boost performance and recovery. Electrolytes facilitate hundreds of functions in the body, including the conduction of nerve impulses, hormonal regulation, nutrient absorption, and fluid balance. Many people find that these electrolytes support a low-carb lifestyle by preventing, mitigating, and eliminating the “low carb/keto flu” and they can also support healthy fasting. LMNT replaces electrolytes without breaking a fast.
As a listener of this podcast, you can get a free sample pack with any order. The LMNT Sample Pack includes 1 packet of every flavor. This is the perfect offer for anyone who is interested in trying all of our flavors or who wants to introduce a friend to LMNT. This offer is exclusively available through VIP LMNT Partners – you won’t find this offer publicly available and is available for new and returning customers. They always offer no questions asked refunds on all orders if you aren’t completely happy. Grab the deal at drinklmnt.com/wellnessmama.
Another thing you talk about that I think is really relevant to women, because I hear from a lot of women who are struggling with this right now, is the idea of kind of hacking it and improving hormones, especially related to, like, sexual hormones and orgasm. It seems like an area that we’re seeing a lot of maybe decline in women, or maybe it’s just, like, the population that listens to this podcast in age range, but I hear from a lot of women about this. And I would guess if women are willing to talk about it, there are even more who aren’t talking about it. So are there things we can do to help hormonally in that sense?
Molly: I mean, there’s just so much controversy when it comes to female hormones, and it’s like a Pandora’s box the moment you start talking about it. So I do try to address it in the book as best I can, but with a caveat, a disclaimer that, like, “This is highly, highly, highly, highly personal. This is between you, your partner, your doctor. Like, this is also very much dependent on your genetics. So, with those caveats, like, there are some things that people should understand, and, like, one of my friends’ parents are actually in the process of getting divorced because she’s going through menopause and is not on hormones because she has a family history of breast cancer, and it’s really affecting her marriage.
And so, turns out that, when women have BRCA mutation, extra hormones can contribute to breast cancer development because they’re just more likely to have breast cancer in the first place. And so, hormones are basically, like, fertilizer, and so they literally are fertilizer, like, they make you more fertile, and when we get older, we have less, so we’re less fertile, okay? So, like, look at the body from a first principles angle always. And so, if your hormones are a fertilizer, they’re gonna make things grow, and if something is growing that shouldn’t be growing, it’s gonna grow faster. But the Women’s Health Initiative was a really problematic study for a variety of reasons. They used a very weird form of progesterone that was from horse urine that really wasn’t bioidentical to women today, and as a result, like, well, they also started women on hormones, like, way after they had gone through menopause.
So, if you’re gonna use hormone replacement as you get older for libido, you definitely wanna go to…I would ideally go to a functional doctor trained in hormone replacement. I would definitely get a, you know, ideally… I have friends that specifically do personalized hormone design to make it look exactly like your menstrual cycle. Nobody has created this for, like, mass market. This is, like, highly personalized medicine, but you can, you know, basically dose your hormones like your menstrual cycle would go through. Like, it should totally be a product. Somebody should commercialize this.
It’s not surprising that, like, a lot of women also have concerns about birth control these days, and the thing is that, like, estrogen is technically a class one carcinogen. So, like, I still plan to use estrogen when I go through menopause, but I will be getting MRIs probably every other year or so. I will probably be getting, you know, breast ultrasounds, and, you know, you can even get specific high-resolution breast MRIs. And, you know, like, as you get older, if you are gonna go through menopause with hormones and decide that you’re gonna try to avoid the consequences, then you also have to be really vigilant about breast cancer, and it’s a great reason to keep exercising, it’s a great reason to, like, do breast checks. But during birth control, I decided to go off of it when I was younger because I was, like, talking to one of my doctors at the time and I was just like, you know, “I figure if I don’t really need to be on this, probably I shouldn’t be on this.” You know, like, I wanna use the natural rhythm method, I wanna track my hormones, I’ve never been pregnant, and, you know, she was like, “Well, that’s totally your choice to do.”
One of the other reasons why you wanna be careful with birth control is it can actually just change the way you perceive your partner and the way they smell and the way that you’re attracted to them. So that’s kind of an important point as well. But when it comes to libido, there’s a big controversy around whether or not testosterone is a booster for libido or not. And I was actually on another podcast and I was talking about how I accidentally got dosed with testosterone when I was at work by sitting on a chair that a bunch of testosterone cream was on from another guy that had sat down. And this guy on Instagram, @moreplatesmoredates, literally made an entire video roasting me, basically claiming that, like, “This could never have happened to me.” And I was like, “Wow, a guy mansplaining me about testosterone because he doesn’t actually realize that women use testosterone for libido.” Like, I’ve seen it prescribed many times to women by other doctors, including my own practice, specifically for testosterone deficiency. And, like, the reason why this guy interpreted the story wrong is because I was summarizing a 12-hour event in 30 seconds. He basically claimed that, like, I sat down in the chair and I immediately, immediately got turned on. And I was like, that was actually not what I said. In fact, it was very much a…I found the whole thing kind of comical that this guy who has a ton of followers would literally rip me apart given, like, I directly experienced this thing. But testosterone cream can be a great tool for libido for women, although clinical research studies have basically found that it doesn’t work for all women, and that’s a shame. But I’ve actually met younger women who are in their 20s who have hormone dysfunction and testosterone deficiency, and they started taking testosterone replacement and they were able to really, like, improve their libido.
So, it’s one of those things that’s worth testing and trying. You gotta get the dose right. The minimal amount is the best, typically, for the results because too much testosterone can lead to facial hair and other side effects like acne. But there’s also a couple of drugs that are approved for libido. One’s called Vyleesi, and I’m really a big fan of peptides, by the way. Like, I think peptides are, like, the frontier of medicine. I didn’t write about peptides in the book a lot because it’s super cutting edge and I wanted to wait till it was more established science. But Vyleesi is actually FDA-approved for arousal and for desire for women, and basically, it’s a melanocortin receptor agonist, and it’s been, you know, studied and shown that it has some effects on improving arousal. Now, Addyi is, like, sort of controversial, sort of got branded as a Viagra for women, but it’s not really Viagra because you have to take it every day and you can’t mix it with alcohol or you can pass out. So, it’s not super popular. Some women love it, but it’s definitely… You know, you gotta try it to see if it works for you.
Katie: I’m glad you mentioned peptides, and I understand not wanting to go too deep on them until there’s more established science, but I have been playing with them a little bit as well.
Molly: Ooh, which one?
Katie: And I’m curious… Well, you mentioned the…
Molly: Melanorcortin receptor, yeah.
Katie: Yes, and I’ve done melanatan a couple of times and noticed that from melanortin, for sure.
Molly: Wow.
Katie: But I’ve been experimenting with… Well, what do you think about, like, for instance, semaglutide or Ipamorelin or some of those?
Molly: Okay. I’ve done Ipamorelin, and… So, I had a concussion during the pandemic, which was not pleasant. And a lot of people don’t realize that concussions can lead to hormone dysfunction, and the reason why, is your hypothalamus is in your brain. So, I was running my labs and I was like, oh, crap, I have central hypothyroidism. I had to start taking thyroid hormone because my TSH and my thyroid hormones were all low, and I was like, uh-oh, signal’s not coming from the brain. And typically, if you had, like, hypothyroidism from your thyroid, it would actually be a high TSH in low thyroid hormones. So, I knew that this was a problem, and then I also saw that my growth hormone was running low and I was like, okay, well, I feel like crap, and I need to heal. So I started experimenting with Ipamorelin, and it made me feel like I was 18 again, I loved it, it was awesome, but I started breaking out like I was 18 again. Started getting backne, and I was like, this is not cool. So, I do think in short bursts it can be useful, but I think you gotta be… If you’re prone to acne, it can make it worse.
Now, I’m very excited about the GLP-1 agonists in the whole category because we have not had an actual drug for weight loss that worked in a long time, and it’s really cool to watch, like…I mean, I don’t know if this is cool or not. I don’t know how I feel about this, but, like, the Kardashians basically set the standard for a beauty in this country, which is, like, not pleasant. And they basically went from promoting an extraordinarily curvy body to now a very lean body. And I do think that they’re on, you know, some semaglutide right now. And it’s like, the only downside of all this is, like, it’s not available for everyone. It’s really expensive. There’s a shortage. And even the company… There was a company that was doing a really great job creating a…you know, it was, like, a drug-assisted weight loss therapy. They decided to stop the direct-to-consumer line because it wasn’t making as much money as going direct to, like, through healthcare systems.
So, I just feel like it’s a little unfair that it’s not really widely available to the world, but I’m very optimistic about these peptides. I do think that there are some risks for long-term use. Like, there may be an increased risk of thyroid cancer. So, I would definitely look into the side effect profiles of these things. They’re not perfectly, like, safe. There’s no free lunch when it comes to biology. There’s always gonna be some side effect. But I think for short-term weight loss and jump-starting weight loss, I mean, I think they can be really helpful.
Katie: And I think that touches on another point that we didn’t have time to really delve into today, but I’m a big fan of cycling everything because to me, the other big goals is metabolic flexibility and adaptability. So, one of my core things is I don’t do anything every single day. Supplements, I always rotate, even different exercises, I rotate foods and macros, I rotate everything because my goal is to get more adaptable over time, not less. Like, I don’t wanna get so rigid in a system that my body only responds well when I eat in this super narrow, very restrictive diet and take only certain supplements. I want my body to be able to handle whatever I throw at it and still throw only good stuff at it most of the time, but I want it to be able to handle it. And I think that’s hopefully another thing that’s gonna be talked more about in biohacking because I feel like a lot of people got kind of pigeonholed into this super restrictive diet and lifestyle to feel optimal. And I was like, wait a second, isn’t the goal that we can handle a lot more varied inputs and still feel great?
Molly: I mean, I’m actually just, like, writing this down for my talking points because I do talk about this in the book. This is this concept of toggling. So, toggling mitohormetic stressors is the way that you get the biggest benefit from them. So, things like feasting and fasting. Like, last week, I just felt this deep desire to eat a lot of kabocha squash, and I just knew my body was craving carbs and it needed more carbs, and I had been… I do eat more low-carb on average, but given that, you know, I’m, like, lowering my cortisol levels, I’m like, oh, what does my body need right now? It needs regular meal times, it doesn’t need fasting, it doesn’t need so much intense exercise. It needs more relaxation, I need more time off, and I need to have more carbs.
And, like, I felt such a boost in my mental well-being last week from just adding kabocha. And, yeah, I gained a few pounds of water weight because when you eat low carb, you take off water weight, when you eat more carbs, you put on water weight. But, like, I didn’t look in the mirror and be like, oh, like, you look fat. Like, no, it’s part of the experience of building metabolic flexibility, and, like, one of the things that I’ve learned the hard way is that you can become metabolically and flexible to carbs and very fat-adapted. But that is, like, it’s kind of an issue on its own because now you can’t tolerate carbohydrates easily. So, one of the things I talk a lot about in the book, it’s carb cycling and nutritional periodization. This is really popular in athletes. But, like, there’s ways that you can time your carbs around your exercise, there’s ways that you can rotate eating higher carb and lower carb.
I go in and out of eating, like, higher protein diet to lower protein diet. If I’m not doing a lot of intense weightlifting, I’m not gonna eat, like, you know, over 100 grams of protein if I don’t need to because I’m not using it. If I’m not building muscle and I’m just maintaining. And so, when you’re in, like, a phase where you’re building muscle, you do wanna increase the protein intake, but if you’re just trying to maintain, you don’t need to eat, like, super therapeutic amounts, which is something that, like, is really popular in the bodybuilding community. Some people will go upwards of, like, 2.2 grams per kilogram to put on, you know, muscle. I personally think the magic number for protein is 1.6 grams per kilogram. It seems to be, like, the number for athletes, the number for elderly once you hit 65 or older. But, like, the protein argument is definitely something that a lot of people are still like, “What do you do about it?” You know, and there’s, like, the Sinclair camp, which is, like, don’t eat a lot of protein because it’s associated with longevity. They’re, like, anti-mTOR stimulation.
And then, there’s the, like, you know, the Alan Aragon world, and he is super fit. Him and his wife look incredible. They’re in their 50s, I think, and they look like they’re in their 30s in terms of, like their fitness, and basically… I think they’re in their 50s. I might be wrong on that, but, you know, he’s all about protein for lifting, you know, for maintaining muscle. And so, one of the ways to kind of mitigate this argument is protein cycling, which I do talk about in the book, which is basically, like, what I’ll do is on days where I’m lifting a lot of heavyweights, I’m gonna eat a lot more protein because I need to recover. And women need to especially be careful by, like, eating at least, you know, 30 grams…if you’re menstruating, 30 grams of protein, but if you’re postmenopausal, you actually need to get more like 40 grams of protein after exercise just to really get that muscle protein synthesis because you wanna recover from that hard exercise.
If you don’t eat enough protein after a hard, like, intense weightlifting session, you’re gonna get really sore, and it’s not gonna be good for your immune system to actually not eat enough protein. But on days where I’m, like, not exercising a lot, where I’m like, maybe I wake up and maybe I need more rest that day and I just need to take a rest day, I will eat very little protein on those days. I’ll do, like, half as much, or even a quarter as much. And it’s not because I’m… You know, it’s basically this idea that sometimes depriving yourself of a little bit of protein can actually be good for the body. And so, it’s like, really, I like to do a lot, like, what you’re describing as cycling because I think it makes life more realistic. And, yeah, I’m not trying to win a competition in bodybuilding, I’m just trying to stay fit and be healthy, you know? If I were trying to be like…
This book is not about bodybuilding. Like, if you wanna read a bodybuilding book, there’s plenty of great books out there. But this is a book for, like, the average female woman who’s exercising or maybe, like, isn’t exercising and wants to get in better metabolic health. Like, how do you do that? And what are these different ways that you can do that? So, toggling, feasting, and fasting. Toggling high carb, low carb, toggling high protein, low protein, toggling, like, the light cycle and the dark cycle, like, getting… I have sunlight in my face every morning and preferably I like to see the sunset, and then I like to have my room pitch dark, heat and cold, breathwork, hyperoxia, hypoxia, right? Like, all of these different switches basically create the conditions where our bodies adapt to these new demands. And, like you said, if we give our body the same message every day, it’s gonna adapt to that and it’s gonna plateau.
Katie: I love that. And there’s so much more we can talk about. I hope we can do more rounds in the future because there’s so much more we can go into in all these topics, but I know you are on the podcast circuit and have another one right after this. So in the name of respecting your time, we’ll end here for today. I will make sure the book is linked in the show notes as well as your Instagram because you are very active in posting health tips all the time there. Is there anywhere else people can find you and follow you? And do you work with any patients directly if anybody wants more specific help?
Molly: Yeah, yeah. I’m in the process of getting my license in Texas. I’m licensed in California. So if you’re a resident of either of those states, you can contact me on my website, www.drmolly.co, drmolly.co. I actually have, like, a list… I’m gonna be putting up kinda, like, Dr. Raleigh’s favorite products on the website, which is cool because, like, all biohackers have a million biohacks that they use. So that’s one of the fun things, that’s the add-on on the website, and then I’m gonna have an entire part of the website that’s dedicated to the book. So, there’s a bunch of extras on the website that you can get, like things that I didn’t have room in the book to write about but I want people to know about.
So, definitely find me on the internet through my website, and then I’m also sometimes on Twitter @mollymaloofmd, and then find me on LinkedIn as well, and then I have a newsletter on Substack that comes out once a month. And so, those are probably the best ways to connect with me.
Katie: Awesome. Well, all of those will be linked for you guys listening at wellnessmama.fm so you can find everything in one place along with…I’ve been taking notes as Dr. Molly’s been talking and I will link to some of the content you have on these different topics. Always such a fun conversation. Like I said, I hope we get to do more rounds of this in the future, but thank you for your time today. This has been awesome.
Molly: Thank you so much.
Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
Leave a Reply