93% of Americans Have THIS Metabolic Disorder | How to Fix It Naturally | Ben Azadi | Ep. 48

Intro and Ben Azadiu2019s background 0:00

In the US, we spend $4.6 trillion on health care every single year. Yet we rank amongst the worst first world countries. We're sicker than ever before. Meet Ben Azadi, holistic health expert, bestselling author and founder of Keto Camp. Known as the health detective, Ben empowers people worldwide to transform their metabolic health through keto and fasting. He's also the author of the upcoming book, Metabolic Freedom, a 30 day guide to restoring your metabolism and healing hormones. Get ready for an inspiring conversation.

What is metabolic health? 93% of Americans lack metabolic. The average person in America is consuming around 300 grams of primarily processed carbohydrates. That's an issue. You're going to age faster than anybody. Touching up on how important mindset is. Would you say that's one of the top things that people have to focus on? It's the most important thing. I make the case in the book, I think a lot of people who are obese, not because of necessarily what they are eating, but what's eating them.

Make America healthy again. What's your input on this whole movement? It's unfortunate that as soon as we bring it up, it just triggers some people. Don't rely on the government or anybody. RFK is not going to take care of you. What do you recommend for people who just want lifestyle? Like what's the easiest route to go? Yeah, I would recommend some easy first steps would be of a Healthy Point of View podcast. I'm your host, Sam Tahara. And as you know, we always bring experts in health, wellness, beauty to talk about different things that we really need to consider when we're taking control of our health.

Right? So today we have an expert specifically on metabolic health we've got to talking about metabolic disruption. We're going to to about the different nutritional hacks that you can implement on your day-to-day basis And we're just going to get into all the details about toxins, a lot of things that you've heard before, but now you're going hear it from a different perspective. And today we have our expert. He's local here from Miami, and that's why I'm wearing some Miami gear today. We have Ben Assadi.

How are you, Ben? Sam, I am doing fantastic. I love the jersey. You're rocking it very well. Yeah, man. you know, i really don't watch sports, But I'll rock the fucking gear. Messy he's all I mean, he is huge in Miami, so I could appreciate that. And he lives here now. He does live here. Actually, my business mentor actually sold his house to messy. Well, his neighbor's house too messy, which then the neighbor bought his and then he went and bought a 15 million dollar house on the inner coastal elsewhere.

Wild. Yeah. Not a bad deal. No, not at all. So, Ben, man, you know, listen, we run into each other at although the different biohacking functional medicine conferences and we're just like, hey, men, We got to do a podcast swap. We gotta like really share the information like you got your new book that it's you've got the book launch coming up next month. You know I got I'm fortunate to get copy number three. Copy number. Three. Top three, my friend. I love it. Love it, so I appreciate you bringing it by.

So I want to talk about your story, man. Like you have a very compelling story of how you got into the whole health and wellness stuff. And initially, when I asked you about like, if this is true about you journey, I couldn't believe it because I can't see you being where you were at before. So, so I wanted the listeners to hear it from you specifically of what got you into this journey of taking not care of just your health, but other people's health. Yeah. Well, it's an honor to be here. Love the work you're doing.

So I appreciate it. The studio is sick. I'm somebody who had metabolic disease, like 93% of Americans do currently. Like you said, I look physically lean and healthy and I am, but when I was in my childhood, followed a standard American diet. We know how toxic it is. As a matter of fact, my mom worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken when i was a kid. Wow, free Kentucky Fried Chicken. Exactly. That would be dangerous. Myself being Dominican. Dude, exactly. It was dangerous for me. And she was just trying to make ends meet.

She worked three jobs and two of them was at a Kentucky fried chicken. So she would bring me home Kentucky, fried, chicken, my parents were divorced and I ate a lot of fried food, fast food. Got into drugs when I was a kid, a of addictions to food drugs, alcohol. And yeah, I was very overweight. Iwas obese as a kid.I was bullied,Iwas picked on. Low self-confidence and low self esteem. Very toxic lifestyle. And when I 23 years old back in 2007, i was rock bottom. So at this point,i was searching for answers.

iwas going to my doctor's appointments.iwas explaining all my symptoms. I had high blood pressure. My pre-diabetes, my blood sugars were increasing. Of course, I was obese, erectile dysfunction. Iwas depressed. And when I say depressed, Sam, that's an understatement.I was on the internet looking for ways to end my life. Wow. That was exploring suicide over and over, and every time that I did that,I thought about my mom and it stopped me from pursuing that because I didn't want to hurt her. It's the only reason why I don't do it.And the doctors didn' have any solutions for me.

they had, instead of asking me about my lifestyle, and instead asking what I was eating, they were thinking, what can I prescribe for this man? It was an antacid, it was something for maybe testosterone. In my early 20s, something was for the high blood pressure, but it never was talking about reversing or getting to the cause and reverses the symptoms. So it's frustrating and I'm depressed and wanted to give up. and then I got into books. I started to just read books and it started with self-development before I even got in to health and nutrition.

It really started the mindset shift. Tony Robbins, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Bob Proctor, a whole bunch of legends out there. OGs in the space. And it just helped me take ownership. my enabling family members, I was blaming my slow metabolism, my bad genetics.

Mindset, purpose, and overcoming depression 5:49

And when you take ownership, all that goes away. You can't take on ownership and blame people at the same time. So that was the first step. I started to change my mind by changing my thoughts, by reading books, eating whole food, moving my body. and I went through this incredible transformation where I lost 80 pounds in nine months. That went from 250 pounds to at my lowest, 170 pounds. And then 34% body fat at my highest to 6% at the lowest at that time. And it completely just transformed my health.

That was 17 years ago. It's what got me into the health space. Along the way, I became a personal trainer and I used to train clients, travel to them. Eventually I opened up a gym in Miami, a CrossFit gym that I operated for five years. Yeah. And then in 2018, I sold the CrossFit gym and went full virtual and that's where I created like keto camp and created the podcast and the YouTube. Then I started writing books and now I'm here with you talking about the new book, Metabolic Freedom. So when you lost all that weight, how did you feel?

I mean, all my symptoms started to go away. The afternoon fatigue, the low libido, low testosterone, I felt better. I had more energy. Actually felt like my true self. But not one doctor could help me. Not one conventional doctor talked about lifestyle, toxicity, anything like that. No, it was all about a symptom, a pill for every ill was never about getting to the cause. It was always about the symptom. Well, one of the things you mentioned earlier was like the severe depression, right? Where it led you to basically to the point where you wanted to take your life.

So when when you change your health and you start having these positive outcomes that you had, how was your self-esteem at that point? Did you still feel depressed or did you just did it finally turn at the. The depression was starting to get lighter and lighter. The suicidal thoughts started to become less frequent and less frequently to the point where they just completely disappeared. I'm the complete opposite of how I was back then. Yes, I was eating toxic food and I had a toxic lifestyle, but I also wasn't living on purpose with my purpose.

I lacked any goals. And once I started getting clear on my goals and aligning my with purpose and following my on-purpose is what I'm trying to say. I was just lit up and the depression started to go away. And then I started eating better because I wanted to feed my body the fuel to achieve those goals. So it was kind of like a cycle, a positive cycle. But yeah, all that's gone now. I didn't take any medication for it. A lot of people who struggle with depression, the big part of it is that they're uninspired.

They also think a lot people are not tired, they are also uninspired, not living a life on purpose with their purpose. And you know, you hitting that point about living life with purpose, right? And understanding that we all have a mission. God has given us a certain mission and we just have to figure out what our purpose is. You know that's a way that you can really have that true fulfillment. And I can assure you one thing, man, I follow you on social media, and you definitely live a life with purpose.

And you inspire other people. I could tell you I get inspired by a lot of your content. Likewise. So the purposeful type of life that you're living now, i can tell that, you are definitely fulfilling that. For me, And personally, you know, that's what life is all about. You know It's not about just making money and having all the flashy things I think those are great but as a side effect of being able to fulfill that purpose So it's amazing to hear you say that because other people have to resonate with that as well, too And maybe implement that in their lives Yeah.

Well said, I agree. I think that's the number one thing. Like obesity, for example. In the US, Harvard is saying by 2030, 50% of the population will be obese. That was one of those people. A lot of people who are obese are not because of necessarily what they are eating, but what's eating them. They lack purpose. There's a void they want to fill. And once you find that purpose, you're going to want to treat your body better because you want the energy and the vitality to achieve that. I think only 3% of people know what's important to them and follow those steps.

They live on purpose with that purposes. 97% people like Earl Nightingale used to say, they tiptoed their way through life hoping to land safely on death's door. And when someone feels that sense of depression, because they're not living life with that purpose, people tend to sedate. And a lot of people, when they hear, oh, they are sedating, and they just think, ah, you're going to drugs and alcohol. But no, us as humans, we sedated with other things. We can even sedates with working out. If we're targeting and addressing the root issues that are causing these stressors within our body, Working out can be a sedation.

It's probably a much more healthier sedations, but then you get people who sedate by eating junk food, right? Because it makes them feel better. So then that's where the weight gain can start coming in and the bad health and everything else. Touching up on how important mindset is, would you say that that is one of the top things that people have to focus on before even worrying about any of these supplements and anything else? It's the number one thing. In chapter 10 of Metabolic Freedom, it's all about how your thoughts influence your metabolism, longevity, anti-aging, or the opposite, how it influences disease.

And I'll share a story with you that I start the chapter with, because it is really important that it illustrates how important those thoughts are, and how powerful those thought are. This is a true story that Bob Proctor shared with me from the 1960s. It was in the newspapers in 1960. It was about a train station employee. He worked inside of a refrigerator cart in a Train. Okay. And he worked late one night. he didn't realize it had gotten so late. All of his coworkers had clocked out and they accidentally locked this guy in the refrigerator Cart.

and he's trying to open it up.He's banging on that door. Everybody's gone and He was starting to freak out. His thoughts started to get the best of him.he started panic and realized nobody was going to be around for the next few hours until the Next morning. So he started writing down on the wall documenting his night. The newspapers caught this on a photo the next day. At 12 a.m. he wrote the words, I'm stuck, freezing. I don't know if I am going to survive tonight. 1 a m. He wrote words. Still stuck.

Temperature keeps dropping. 3am he wrote the words, still freezing, I'm gonna die. 7am rolls around, his co-workers clock in, they open up that refrigerator cart, and they see this guy dead. Hypothermia, he froze to death. Here's the interesting thing about the story. When they investigated that temperature apparatus he was looking at, it had been malfunctioning for days and never dropped below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. His thoughts literally created death, And if our thoughts could do that, I make the case in the book, your thoughts can heal you as well.

We have 60,000 thoughts a day. That means we have sixty thousand opportunities to put the body in a healing state with a single thought. So yeah, to answer your question, Sam, it's the most important thing because you could take all the supplements, eat the cleanest food and even do detox and you should do all of that. But if you keep having the stinking thinking thoughts, those negative thoughts you're not going to allow your body to heal itself. You're absolutely right. And you've heard Joe dispense a talk.

Of course. Yeah. I mean, he's really big into that. Yes. On how that can really heal your body. So thoughts of extremely important. Let me ask you this. Do you do positive affirmations every morning? Every day. Every Day. I gratitude journal, I write down my goals. i carry this around with me everywhere I go, which are, uh, i write Down my Goals in the present tense, Which are affirmations and it works. A lot of people like they woo woo. They think it's woo or they poo poo it, but you're essentially putting this new idea in The subconscious mind and replacing the old idea.

And if you have all these, all These negative thoughts and ideas in your subconscious Mind, you got to replace it. And the only way to place it is to affirm it over and over. So I'm huge on affirmations, vision boarding, all that stuff. I do it every single day. What about you? Yeah, same thing. You meditate? I walk in meditations. Okay, sit down at least right now. So I've been doing brain tap. Brain tap's great, yeah. So my mentor in the functional medicine space, which unfortunately passed away right before COVID at the age of 80, Dr.

Willix, he was a shaman as well, besides being a heart surgeon. Wow. And Dr Willx told me, hey, you really gotta get into that delta wave. You gotta be able to really meditate and calm your mind, especially yourself as someone who's a business person who is always on the go, always thinking, And I would try to actually meditate on my own. I started doing all the steps he told me, he gave me this little green book, I forgot the name of it, and I'd go in the closet, turn off the lights, it's just like I could not shut off my mind.

So once I got exposed to Dr. Porter's Brain Tap, that guided meditation is really what has helped me relax the mind, you know? It's a great tool. It is. This is your wheelhouse, man. Metabolic health. What is metabolic health? Metabolic health is the way God designed us to thrive, to take food, turn it into energy, burn it as fat, and live a long healthy life to make it short. But 93% of Americans lack metabolic. They have symptoms, they're inflamed, They are overweight, have high blood pressure.

It's all about metabolism. Every single cell runs on metabolism, which is simply... I like the way the Greeks refer to metabolism... they call metabolism the term they use for metabolism is transform. So we take food, protein, carbohydrates, fat, or our own body fat and we transform it into energy. That's metabolic health, that's the way God designed us, but we've interfered with this metabolism and all of a sudden it's not functioning that way. We start storing fat, it leads to metabolic diseases like diabetes and cancer and heart disease and autoimmune.

So metabolic Health is the Way that God Designed us and that I'm on a mission to help everybody achieve this metabolic, what I call metabolic freedom. Yeah, and one of the things that you talk about a lot is metabolic disruption. Yeah. Right. So metabolic health is the way God designed us. But as humans, we're so smart that we are stupid. Where we start implementing a of these things to disrupt our metabolic. I mean, just walking outside in our environment, there's all kinds of. toxins, environmental toxins that disrupt our metabolic health, the foods that we're eating.

I mean, you said it, when you were a kid you're reading KFC and all this other processed food. So what is it in today's world why our metabolic health is so disrupt? All of that for sure. Definitely the toxicity part which we'll get into which I know you guys are huge on here, which i love. I would say it starts with insulin, the hormone insulin. Insulin is a really important key hormone. It's a very powerful hormone and it has a bad PR team but it's really imporant. So insulin is an energy sensor.

it senses energy coming in and signals to your metabolism store energy which essentially means store fat. And when you're constantly spiking insulin, because you are spicking blood sugar, you disrupting your metabolism. That's the first domino to fall that leads to metabolic disease. And the average person in America is consuming around 300 grams of carbohydrates per day, primarily processed carbohydrates. And Sam, they're eating every two to three hours. A colleague of mine, Dr. Don Klum, did a patient population survey where he had hundreds of patients just write down every time they ate something, whether it was a snack or a full meal.

The average person was eating 17 to 23 times per day. Per day? per day, glucose and insulin spike, signaling fat storage, signalling sugar burning. That's an issue. If your body's only burning sugar, you're going to age faster than anybody you know. It's going trigger a cascade of metabolic diseases that I mentioned earlier and so much more. And there are studies that I put in the book that show you could have full-blown insulin resistance, which is also called hyperinsulinemia, for six to 14 years without your blood sugars changing or even your A1C changing because your pancreas is so busy producing massive amounts of insulin

What metabolic health means 18:38

to clear the glucose until it can't. And then you're diagnosed with pre-diabetes and diabetes, right? Which is a big issue because 60% of Americans have either pre diabetes or diabetes. And once you're diagnosed with diabetes, it dramatically increases your chances of getting cancer, heart disease, kidney failures, amputation. I saw this with my dad. So for those listening and watching, I encourage you to go get a fasting insulin blood test. It's cheap, very affordable, and it's also quick to do.

But it's also going to show you how healthy your levels of insulin are. You want to see that between three and six is considered healthy, sensitive insulin levels. If it over that, then there's something you got to work on there. So I would start with insulin as the first domino here. Ben, with Insulin, from a scale of one to ten, ten being the most aggressive, how much does your metabolism truly slow down when you have those insulin spikes? It's not that it's slowing down, it is that its getting inefficient.

And on a scale of 1 to 10, well it depends on how long you're doing it for. Like if you had one day where you just ate 17 to 23 times and you have 300 grams of carbs, that's no big deal. But if the question was, if your doing this for years, what's the scale from 1-10 in terms of how it disrupts the metabolism? It is close to a 9 or a 10. It significantly just destroying the way that the metabolism is supposed to function. So I remember back in the day, this was probably like 15 years ago, it was on 2020, and they had a whole episode on how metformin is the true anti-aging drug.

What are your thoughts about some of these medications that control glucose levels and also insulin levels, even like the GOP-1 drugs? What's your input on that when it comes to aging or metabolic health? Well, when we think about, let's talk about diabetes in relation to the question and then more anti-aging. If you're taking a medication that's lowering your blood sugar levels because you have high blood-sugar levels, whether you are diabetic or not, that is treating the symptom because that as a result of high insulin and high inflammation.

Right. So metformin lowers the blood sugar and then you might pat yourself on the back or your doctor will saying we're lowering your blood Sugar. Meanwhile, the actual disease is getting worse like the diabetes. The person still has cancer still gets heart disease still loses their vision still losses their feed through amputation. So it doesn't help with that. Now, there are some benefits to some anti-aging people, I should say. Take metformin, because it helps with managing your blood sugar levels.

But I'm always a fan of doing everything natural. Like berberine, for example, is an herb that acts very similar to metiformin. So if I am going to take something that's going manage or help lower my bloodsugar levels, it will be something like berberein not metforamin. With the Ozempic and the GLP-1 stuff, I don't use it. And I'm not an expert on it, so I can't say too many thoughts on, but I know that I've seen studies showing that long-term use can lead to organ shrinkage. They have the ozempick butt, as they call it or you lose your butt.

Ozmpic face. A portion of the weight coming off when you take these GLp-2 drugs is muscle. That's not good. I'll make the point that that's really bad because when I started writing the book and I sort of researching metabolism, this is a really cool study I'm going to share with your audience. It's the most comprehensive study ever done on the metabolism. Because I hear so many people, Sam, say, use this as an excuse. They say Oh, there's nothing I can do. I'm 50. My metabolism is slowing down.

60. 40. 30. Whatever. And they use it as an excuse not to do the work. Well, this study just throws those excuses out of the water here because it showed it was a Duke study. 6600 people in the study from ages one all the way to 95 and everybody in between. And it involved several countries. It was a worldwide study. Oh, wow. They used the gold standard of testing metabolism, which was this really sophisticated urine test. Here's what the study said. The study says our metabolisms do not change at any significant rate between ages 20 and ages 60. Nothing at all.

Then it said once you reach age 60, they see a 0.7% decline in the metabolism every year after that. So you might be watching and listening if you're age, 60 or above thinking, oh, that's bad news. But the study said the only reason that happens is because loss of muscle mass. Wow. If you build lean muscle, mass in your thirties, forties and fifties or if your over 60 and start building lean, muscle-mass, you could be 75 years old and have the same metabolism as when you were 25 years. Oh, it's super cool.

Yeah, lean mass definitely has a powerful effect on your metabolism. Longevity as well, you know, in mass. And you this is one of the reasons why we encourage people that you should really get a body composition analysis, regardless what journey you're going to put yourself through health wise. But when you actually do a buddy composition, analysis versus just getting on a regular scale that just tells you total weight. understand what that weight's made up of, and understand how much lean mass you have versus fat mass, visceral fat, et cetera, so you can actually work and trend throughout that process.

Yeah, it's so important. I know you guys do a lot of DEXA scans and different ways to test that. Right. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so metabolic health, we're talking about it. We talked about insulin, how important that is for your metabolic. Health. One of the things that you focus on that, you're an expert on is the ketogenic diet, right? Because you try to go more of a natural route. And one of the things that I've read when it comes to the ketogenic diet, it's really good on controlling, you know, glucose and insulin levels.

How does the Ketogenic Diet feed into all of this? It's a powerful tool. Unfortunately, with keto being so popular, a lot of misconceptions around keto.

Insulin resistance and metabolic disruption 24:58

So chapter seven of book goes deep into ketosis and how it works inside of body. I love it. Love it as a tool I'll first say that I'm not a fan of long-term continuous ketosis. I am a fans of cyclical ketoses, which is the way I teach it in the book. That's kind of like to just kick off your weight loss journey, you would say? Yeah, it's a lower inflammation, lower insulin, exactly. And then there comes a time where you don't have to stay in it, nor should you. You know, there's nothing new about keto.

It's just new to some people or nuanced. That's been around forever. Right. it's not even a diet. Technically, it is a metabolic process. that's called ketosis. All of our ancestors did it because how do I know that? Well, they didn't have food available all the time. So they had to fast. And when you fast, you produce ketones. They helped the brain function so they could hunt and kill and it kept them alive, essentially. Now fast forward, when I mentioned that study, 93% of Americans are metabolicly unhealthy, I call them being in a keto deficiency in the book.

They forgot how to burn fat. When you're in ketosis, ketones are simply a byproduct of burning store fat, that's it. Insulin is the hormone that unlocks ketoses, meaning you have to lower insulin to produce ketone. So you lower insulin by lowering carbohydrates because carbs spike insulin and glucose more than any other macronutrient. And most people need to take their total carbohydrates under 50 grams per day to enter ketosis. When you're in ketoses, Sam, incredible things start to happen. The biggest benefit for ketones is what it does at a cell level, what does to the mitochondria.

I know you are all about the Mitochondria the little energy factories in the cells that are doing way more than just producing energy. When you're in ketosis, those ketones act like signaling molecules that actually communicate with the cell and the mitochondria within the sell, and it signals to that mitochondrion to reproduce. It creates mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the creation of these battery packs within cells. With this new creation of mitochondria, more energy is being produced, ATP is produced.

The studies are showing that when you're burning sugar, like most people are, your mitochondrion will produce about 32 to 36 of these ATP energy units. versus when you're in ketosis, when it's using ketones as a fuel source, it produces over 130 ATP molecules, about 400% more energy. With that energy being produced, obviously you have more, but also it increases your metabolism, your basal metabolic rate, because you are producing more energies, so you burning more fat. And the cells that have the most mitochondria are the cell that benefit the brain the highest concentration of mitochondrion.

So if you struggle with brain fog, just mental fatigue, you are forgetting people's names, and you're just not productive in your life, this is profound. Ketones are profound because it really helps the mitochondrial in the So I love it, it lowers inflammation, It lowers insulin. It's one of the best tools to use for insulin resistance, PCOS and diabetes, but it is a tool and there's not one way to do keto. There are thousands of ways to it. So you need to be doing it the right way. Yeah. I personally have always enjoyed doing a keto type of diet.

Sometimes I improvise it and I remember when I first started, I actually started when Dave Asprey came out with the whole Bulletproof Coffee until this morning. I still do the bulletproof coffee. Yeah, I don't use the Bulletproof brand. I follow the recipe where I put the grass fed butter. M.C.T. oil I use his brain octane oil. That's the one I love it. The C8 molecule. And then I I. Put the heavy whipping cream in it and I tell you I do that first thing in the morning and it's just like my neurons and stuff are just firing off.

Whatever it is, I'm already feeling good first thing in the morning. So for people to understand what a ketogenic diet kind of looks like, can you give us a quick breakfast, lunch, dinner, what would that look like? A typical ketogenetic diet. It's mostly protein and fat. You can have some fiber, you can some non-starchy carbohydrates, so I'll give a day's worth of what it looks like. Breakfast would be eggs and avocado cooked in, the eggs would cooked like butter with maybe half avocado or a whole avocado with some bacon or turkey bacon, depending on what your style is.

That would an example of a breakfast. So it has mostly protein fat. There's some fiber and a little bit of carbs from the avocado, but not too much. And then the butter is a good oil, good fat to cook it in. Lunch would be like a fatty salad. All right. A Cobb salad would an example of that, which you can find at most restaurants. So, it's green leafy vegetables. It has some eggs, bacon, cheese. But a Fatty salad, and ideally you want to have a, a Good protein source with that fatty Salad. so that could be a piece of steak, some salmon, but a fatty salad.

Olive oil would be the best dressing for that versus like a vegetable oil. And then for dinner, steak, let's say steak or salmon with a cup of like steamed broccoli with melted butter or a Cup of Brussels sprouts with Melted butter. That's a full day worth of eating and it sounds pretty good. I could eat all that myself. All that's keto friendly. Yeah, and the one thing I liked about the keto diet is like my food actually still had flavor Yeah You know instead of eating like this cardboard stuff and sorry to bash Mrs.

Dash But that when I used to do like men's physique bodybuilding and stuff And I had to restrict like by sodium intake and everything else like the food just tastes horrible, you know So with the ketogenic diet One of the things that you know I started like how I do with a lot of things in health where I start kind of getting into like the granular portions of it. I Started testing myself right to make sure that I was putting myself in ketosis. So I doing the urine strips and all that stuff. Do you recommend for people to actually go that far and start testing at that level?

I think it's a good idea to test to see where you're at with not just ketones but also glucose. Now I would say not a big fan of the urine strips if you are doing it more long term. In the beginning it is fine but once your cells are familiar with using ketone it will not spill out in the urine and it might give you some false negatives. Yeah, so there are three different ketones. There's acetoacetate, which is what you measure in the urine, there's acetone, a breath meter, and then there is beta hydroxybutyrate, like you just said, the finger prick.

Beta hydroxybuterate the blood is the gold standard. So I would recommend that because that way you could test blood and use that same blood to test glucose, blood glucose and ketone. And if your blood ketons are 0.5 or higher, urine ketosis, and then you can also get a glucose measurement. So not everybody likes to prick their finger and it's also something else you have to buy, a device to pick your finger, so you don't have do that, but I do recommend it. It's a great tool. What about the continuous glucose monitors?

Do those help get that information as well too? That's a great tool, but it's not giving you ketones. Now they're coming out with a continuous ketone monitor, which is cool. And then I can't wait till they develop a dual glucose and keton, I would use that for sure.

Keto, fasting, and practical meal examples 32:28

But a CGM is valuable. It's it a Continuous Glucose Monitor. For those who don't know, it is like this circular device that you put usually behind your tricep. I've worn it several times and then you just download the app of whatever you're using and you scan it on your phone and it gives you 24-7 look at your glucose levels and wear it for 14 days. Versus a finger prick, it just gives that one snapshot and prick it again later and again. But I love a CGM, I think it's a valuable tool. It definitely helps you stay accountable.

Oh, for sure. That's the biggest benefit, especially when somebody's looking at your scores, you know, like if you have that pizza, they're going to ask you what happened Friday night at 8 p.m. You're gonna see a huge spike. So, yeah, it holds you accountable. Yeah, so so the ketogenic diet, I remember I went to the certain stage where I was actually actually making fat bombs. It wasn't bad because I enjoyed the fat bomb. They taste good. I did it with a little coconut and stuff. So it was like a treat.

But it got to a point where I told myself, I said, you know what? I want something where don't have to think about it too much. What do you recommend for people who just want lifestyle? What's the easiest route to go? Yeah, I would recommend, some easy first steps would be just eat whole food. I mean, not whole foods supermarket, but wholefoods. That's whole paycheck. Yeah. And by the way, whole Foods is not necessarily healthy though, the supermarket because we could talk about the seed oil thing.

They're loaded with seed oils. We'll talk About it later. Simple thing I talked about in the book. So the Book was written for the masses. It's not a niche book, it's like keto books, not fasting book. Although there's a chapter on keto and a chapters on fasting. It is written for 93% of people that are metabolically unhealthy. Where do I start? And it is also for those who are already in the space, biohacking keto fasting space because there are 275 references. So you just learn more about the metabolism.

But to answer your question, In the book, I talk about simple things. When you go to the grocery store, we hear this before, but it's really the truth. Just shop the perimeter. I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. If we're looking at a potato and we turn it around and look at the ingredient list, you don't see an ingredient because you're seeing what the ingredients list is. It's a But when we go to the inner aisle, and we grab potato chips, we turn it around and see the ingredient list.

There's 20 ingredients in there, things you cannot pronounce. So potato, whole food, fine. Potato chip, not fine, right? So that's an example of what I mean. Avocado, Whole Food. Eggs, Whole Food Now the simplest way to live your lifestyle And I think it will have profound benefits on your metabolic health. It's going to sound extreme to a lot of people, but if you're looking for something really easy, you don't have to think about it like you just said. You'll burn fat. you'll reverse in a lots of ways autoimmune conditions as a carnivore diet.

All right. Or you just eat meat. That's it. And I do it from time to time. It's so easy because you know whether it's an animal product or not. You could only eat if it is an animals product. So you eat just meat, dairy, eggs, fish. So what about fiber and stuff? No fiber. No needed. Not needed? Zero. Fiber is overrated. Like I said, I'm a steak. Steak and potatoes kind of guy. Meat you, bro. Potatoes, you can't have that on carnival. But I'll go with the steak by itself. Same. If I went to just a solo carnivore diet, I would honestly like buy the best cut of steak possible.

Yeah, that's all I'm eating. Oh, yeah, rib eyes all day. That's what I do. Good mobilization. Like my mouth is watering. Grass fed, put a butter on top of it. It's a really simple diet. it's simple to follow, meaning like on paper, like it is really clear. There's no gray area. With keto, there's gray areas. You could have keto friendly foods that are not necessarily healthy. with carnivore, it needs to come from an animal. If it doesn't, you don't eat it, which is pretty black and white. Wow. What type of clients do you typically put on the carnivore diet?

Well, I mean, a lot of people could benefit from it, but the people that really would benefit it is those who have autoimmune conditions, especially like advanced auto immune conditions. So people who are dealing with severe inflammation, they have a lotta inflammation. Oh yeah, and leaky gut, intestinal permeability, yeah. They really do well when they eliminate all these plant toxins that might be fine for you and I, But they haven't and it activates their immune system and then their auto-immune gets on overdrive.

So if you have autoimmune, great. If you a PCOS, insulin resistance, diabetes, it's also great for you as well. And then I just use it to feel incredible. Yeah, when you do that with those type of patients, do you, like, an elimination diet? The reason why you're going to the carnivore, you reintroduce some of those plants down the line? I recommend that. Yeah. It's a great question. I do. But then it comes a time where you've done the work and a big part of that work is taking care of the toxicity component, which I know you're a fan of.

And then you start to reintroduce, maybe it's broccoli, a nightshade like the red pepper on the book. but you introduce one food at a time. The best way to do it is one four days at time and see how your body responds. So you still feel great, no symptoms, joint flare-up, post-nasal drip, then that food is safe. But if you start to get symptoms you identify that as something not to bring in. I do recommend reintroducing some of these foods, yes. Ben, Dr. Willix, who was my mentor in the functional medicine space, a world-renowned guy, Any patient that he would first start seeing, and he'd see some of the most affluent people on the globe, there were five items that would eliminate from their diet.

and he was big into making sure he's addressing inflammation, right? The five ingredients that he would eliminate was rice, pasta, potato, bread, and alcohol. Alcohol, yeah, great. And his whole thing was like, at least the first 90 days, we're gonna get rid of these five things, remove it from your diet. You can have anything else. Substitutes, you can cauliflower rice. you could have chickpea pasta. Things of that nature. But everything else, you had to remove those five things. He says just naturally you're gonna lose weight just removing those things five.

That's great. You sound like a brilliant guy. All those by glucose and insulin. So when you eliminate that you will lower glucose in insulin, lower inflammation, start to lose weigh. I love that approach. It keeps it really simple. They will work. But we always talk about what we could do for our health as adults. But I know that we have listeners and viewers right now that are just scratching their head. And they're taking care of themselves. They're scratching there head and they say, man, only if I can get my son or daughter to start eating healthy.

These are parents that probably, they had a lot of things going on as a child was growing up, and they took the easy route. Here goes a bag of chips, here goes this, go eat the school lunch. And now they feel like they're in such a deep hole with their kid's health that they just see the health declining, declining and declining. They have no clue on how to get their child. back to normal right and when i say normal is the way that god made us like what how our bodies are supposed to be what's um some advice you can give these parents about helping them get their child to take control of their health it's an important question and I don't have children, so I'm not speaking of a place of like, this is what I am doing, but this what would do.

Well, full disclosure, I do not have any children either. Yeah, there you go. Two guys without children talking about children. But this would I would buy healthier swaps at the supermarket. Good thing about this day and age is that you could find healthier versions of the cookies, the chips, this whatever the soda. So give an example like soda, I would swap that with like, a Pepsi or Coca Cola or a Sprite with an Olipop or something that has like a stevia flavored drink, something, that's a healthier version of it.

I would swap like potato chips from like Cheeto Lay's or Doritos with Lesser Evil or some other healthier brand. So there's a lot of options out there that you could make swaps for. I know that the kids, human beings, are resistant to being changed. We're open to change but we're resistant being change, there is a difference. So that's a sneaky way to get them to eat healthier without them having to give up all the foods they're used to eating. So, that is what I would do. Now, ideally, I'd do that right off the bat where I didn't have to make these changes, but you're right.

It's easy to feed your kids these Doritos, these chips, and I understand it happens. My mom did it with me. You're trying to do the best you can, so now you are trying make changes. And if you do it all at once, There's some resistance so start with like one thing every few days Maybe it's the soda first to like olipop or different options out there. Uh, then it' the chip swap then It's like a cookie swap. So there's a lot of options up there, but I would say the main thing To not let them eat the seed oils Make sure those products do not have seed oil because that is highly inflammatory for your kids.

Wow All right, cool so Children, we're gonna take care of them, gotta give them those substitutes, and there's a lot. In today's world, there are options, substitute options. I was talking to a buddy of mine, I'm just telling him about what Dr. Willicks would say, eliminate these five things. He's like, ah dude, Haitian. There's no way I can't eat rice, I cant do this. I says, did you ask me for help? Now you're making these excuses? I said, give me one second. So I went online and I took pictures of cauliflower rice.

You can have some sweet potato, obviously in moderation. As a matter of fact, they have almond flour crust pizza or cauliflower crust. Put your ingredients, put some cheese, a little red sauce, And then you're making these healthier options. There's chickpea pasta, lentil pasta that you can utilize and eat. And I sent him all these pictures and he looked at it and said, man, you just made my life a heck of a lot easier. I had no clue that these things exist. So doing that switch can probably get that child where they need to be.

Yeah, that's fantastic. That's a great example. Exactly. The great news is that there's so many of those options out there. You just have to find it. So Ben, when we're talking about metabolic health, let's talk about the three different categories that I want to touch up on because sometimes we get stuck in these different buckets when it comes to like the biohacking space. I wanna talk prevention, early detection, and then actual treatment. Right. So I'll let you lead the way. You know, when it comes to metabolic health, what are the things that we can do for those things?

For prevention, early detection, and then actual treatment? Prevention is the best. Einstein said intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them. We want to be genius and prevent. Measuring your fasting insulin is a prevention piece. You want to make sure that never goes above 10. Once it does, you're getting yourself into some trouble. Meassuring you inflammatory markers are also a good prevention marker to see that you are in a healthy range. So when I say inflammatory marker, I'm referring to HSCRP, which is high sensitivity C-reactive protein.

Homocysteine, another inflammatory marker. Insulin is kind of an indirect, to me, an incorrect inflammatory marker. A1C is another marker I would get done on a yearly basis as a preventative approach. a1c is looking at the three month average of your blood sugar levels. You want to see that 5.2% or below. I didn't mention the other ones. HSCRP you want see under one. Homocistin you wanna see in the single digits. Fasting insulin, three to six. So as long as you're seeing that on a yearly basis, you are going to prevent a lot of issues down the line.

Now, early detection, once you start seeing, do you want me to do more on the prevention piece? Any follow up there? I mean, whatever you feel comfortable, for anyone listening or viewing. Yeah, so those four or five markers that I listed, that's how you were being proactive. But we can't give them all. We've got to get them to the book. The book looks so much. You know? Yeah. Early detection would be when you start to see your inflammatory markers increase. So if you see C-reactive protein 1.5, 2, 3, 4, even higher, early detection that you might be at risk for cardiovascular disease.

Same thing with homocysteine. When you go over 10, maybe 12, 13, 14, you're starting to increase your risk of cardiovascular diseases. when you see you're fasting insulin around 10 to 20, you are heading towards pre-diabetes. And if it's over 20 you, are about to get diagnosed with diabetes. You probably already are diabetic. With early detection, your symptoms play a big role here. So you don't have to pay for this. This is not a blood test, but your body's always communicating to you. when you're healthy, you don't have symptoms, your body doesn't Have to communicate that there's something that you need to change, right?

Because you doing all the right things, he removed the interference. When you start to have systems, this is early detection time, because your bodies actually is like a check engine light, I drove here from Miami on the turnpike. And my when I got into my car, Um, it said that you're due for an oil change. It had that little wrench on my little car, uh, on, my dashboard and it's been there for two weeks and I haven't gone to get an oral change now. Imagine this is my, the car telling me you got to do something about this.

Otherwise this early detection, right? Same thing with our symptoms. Maybe it. Okay.

Detox, toxins, and environmental exposure 46:38

Now we're starting to. Joint pain or a headache, or we've tired in the afternoon and we starting get five to 10 pounds. These are early, early signs of detection. Your body. A little wrench sign is popping up, like go to the mechanic, meaning find out what's causing this and get to bottom of it. Now, the third one was what? So early detection, so preventant early protection and what is it? And then treatment. Oh then, treatment, yeah. Well the treatment part, keto is great depending on what type of treatment you're doing.

So if it's like an insulin issue with like PCOS, obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, Keto, fasting, great for that. Detoxification is a big thing for treatment. I know a bit part of my story was being mercury poisoned and mold toxicity and even though I was doing the keto, the fasting, and the supplements, not the detox, but the the fast thing, I wasn't doing detox and I still didn't feel well. So reversal would be going upstream. at a cell level and detoxing yourself at cell-level. A lot of people have a toxicity issue, you know this, and you could be eating clean, fasting, exercising, taking supplements, but if your toxicity load is high, your not going to get to that optimal metabolic health.

So reversal requires detox at the cell levels, opening up those detox pathways, moving those toxins out and lowering your stress bucket. Yeah, yeah. And to put emphasis on that, people have to understand even if you're living a very healthy lifestyle. meaning that you're eating right, you are exercising. If you have toxins in your body, those toxins will sit in fat cells, they'll sit on your bones, your intestines, right? So there's things that we have to do to detoxify the body. So I want to talk about some of the experience that have and some the things you've seen with some your patients that You've noticed, man, this person has a lot of toxicity in their body.

And it's not necessarily just the toxins in our food. It's toxins and our environment. There's other type of toxins like mold that you just mentioned. But what have you seen and what do we do about it? I'll give my own personal story because I mentioned earlier, and this is a really important question, I'm glad you brought it up. I mention earlier I went through my old my weight loss transformation, 80 pounds of fat, nine months, i already explained all that. Around 2015-2016 I started to get more symptoms.

The weight started coming back, started getting more belly fat. Brain fog started occurring. Afternoon fatigue, would have to cancel appointments with my clients to just go take a nap. I would struggle to keep my eyes open on I-95 traveling to clients. And this is after the initial weight loss. Oh yeah, this was several years after. So you're already taking care of your health. Yeah, I'm doing keto at this point. I own my CrossFit gym, so I am training pretty consistently. yet my health started to decline.

And then I came across Dr. Pampa. You know, he had a conference here in Boca in 2018 and he's talking about silver amalgam fillings and how it contains 50% mercury and that mercury goes into your brain and it just disrupts your whole endocrine system leading to an upstream stressor. Then I go to the bathroom, I look at my mouth and I'm like I see eight silver fillers in my So I addressed it. I went to a biological dentist in South Miami, got them removed safely, two different appointments, started to do detox to clear the mercury and other heavy metals.

Then I started actually feel better. And I was doing everything right. But I didn't do the detox part. At the same time, there was mold in my house as well. So, I got out of that exposure and did a, you know, a detox for the mold. You said it really well, Sam, but I see this all the time. people doing everything right. How many times have you heard that? Ben, I'm doing right, i'm following keto, doing carnivore now, taking the supplements, and doing my fasting. I just can't lose this weight. Well, those toxins go into your fat cells.

They're called obesogens, they're lipophilic. The body does this on purpose. It wants to survive. Number one priority for the body is survival. So when these toxins enter the body, it activates a pathway called PPAR gamma, which shuttles these toxins into the fat cells, because it does not want, the bodies does want these to freely circulate in the bloodstream and enter vital organs. So the solution to this pollution is dilution. I'm going to shove it into your fat cell. Oh, there's no room? I'll create bigger fat cells.

Oh, that's out of room. I will create new fat cell. And then we start to burn fat because we're doing keto exercise or whatever it is. Every time we burn the fat and we use fat for fuel, we dump those toxins and reabsorb them. The metabolism thinks, every time I burn a fat, I dump toxins, and recirculate them, then I'm going to stop burning fat. Then it's weight loss resistance. That's what's happening to a lot of people. So what is the magic pill? Well, number one, keep those detox pathways open.

I talk about this in the book. What do I mean? Our downstream detox pathway are the lymphatic system, the gut microbiome, kidneys, colon, and the liver. That's the fifth one. So there's many things we can do for each of them. The lymphatic system, it's the body's drainage system. When you move your body and exercise and sweat and do rebounding, dry brushing the right way, these are ways to move the lymphatics to get things flowing out of the For the liver, eating bitter rich foods are great for the livers.

I give a whole list in the book. Bitters would be apple cider vinegar, arugula, dandelion greens, ginger, lemons, limes. These bitters stimulate that liver to produce bile to start detoxifying those toxins. You could do things like coffee enemas and liver flushes and other things for the liver supplements. That's all great, too. And then for kidneys, controlling your glucose and insulin levels so it's not just excreting glucose all the time is great. Taking some kidney support. The gut microbiome, that's where carnivore, keto, fasting comes into play.

Yeah, so there's a lot of things you can do. Then you could other thing like phosphatidylcholine, which you talked about earlier. Sauna you could go really upstream and do a full heavy metals detox But keeping those detox pathways open is the first thing you want to do and I love when I showed up here And what is a state was a Stacy was it name was his name? Ricardo Ricardo offered me water and I said, which water do you have? And I wasn't sure and he came out with the glass. Ricardo came up with a glass and, I love that because that's a simple tip I talk about in the book.

Stop drinking out of plastic, drink out a class. They're finding these microplastics in men's testicles. There finding it in, the brain. Their finding in in arteries. The average American consumes credit card size worth of plastic every week. So some simple things you can do. Glass instead of Plastic. Wooden cutting board instead a plastic cutting boards. A glass Tupperware instead plastic Tuppenware. There's a lot of things we can. I would start there. And you know, like you're hitting the nail on the head, removing those toxins so you not continuously feeding them.

Because it's one thing to enhance the detox pathways. But if you keep on introducing these toxins, you kind of like just in this vicious cycle. Right. So I'm with you on it. Exactly. You know the reason for the Saratoga water is, there's all this social media stuff happening with Saratova. I was hoping that you'd do like a crazy TikTok video for us or something. Got a bucket of ice here or what? Ricardo, we'll get the ice, bro. Exactly. It's good water. I mean, I love that it's in glass. No, no, that's that important to us.

You know, it is making sure that we're not introducing more toxins, especially on this podcast. So it wouldn't make any sense. Yeah, so Ben. All right, man. We're getting towards the end here. I want to talk about the book. Like, what was your main purpose putting this book together? And what can people really expect having the Thank you, bro. The book, well, the book's dedicated to my dad, who died in 2014 from a metabolic disease, diabetes, which led to a stroke, and then he died nine months after.

So I dedicated it to him. I wish I would have had this as a resource when my Dad was going through his issues, because he would still be around today and I'd be able to share all the cool things I'm up to. He'll be to see what I am up too. It made it my mission to get this information out to as many people as possible to show them like, You don't, your symptoms are not your problem. They're a result of the problem and conventional medicine hasn't taught us the exact opposite. they teach you how to mask symptoms.

That little wrench in my car. Conventional medicine would have given me a piece of tape to just cover it up, right? It doesn't get to the cause. We're talking about getting to cause in the US Sam. In the US, we spend $4.6 trillion on healthcare every single year. That would be the fourth largest GDP in the entire world if it was a GDP, yet we rank amongst the worst amongst first world countries, even though we spent the most money. We're sicker than ever before, but these pharmaceutical companies are richer than every before.

And one out of every four dollars spent on health care is on diabetes. primarily type 2, which is a metabolic disease that is 100% preventable and 100% reversible.

The Metabolic Freedom book and MAHA movement 56:28

So I want to write this book to strip the power away from Big Pharma and give it to us, the people. The book is split into two different parts. the first half of the book Is all about the causes. This is what leads to metabolic disease. We need to first identify the interference before we remove it. so the First five chapters are all The second half is all about the solutions. Okay, now that we know these are the problems, and we talked about a few of them today, here are solutions, then in chapter 12 it's all tied together in a 30-day plan to now implement what you learned, because information alone is not power, it is potential power.

If we don't apply, it doesn't mean anything. It's just another book you read and that's it. Execution is key. execution is everything. So we apply and I show you week by week what to do, whether you're a beginner or an advanced. There's two different plans. And then there's fat burning recipes, keto recipes different recipes in the back of the book. My friend, Dr. Mindy Pals wrote the foreword. The book has endorsements from Gary Brekka. I know he spoke at your conference. Dr Pampa, JJ Virgin, Mark Sisson, and Dr Jason Fung.

A lot of amazing people in the space. And I don't say that to impress, but to press upon that the book is going to change lives. and I wrote that book, I read this book to get it out to the masses, man. hardcover uh what you see here you got the third copy third audible which i narrated myself in the studio yeah pain in my ass to narrate that thing 27 hours in a studio for a seven hour edit wow but i did it and i'm happy that i didn't and then kindle and we have a special gift for your audience to to get the book.

So we have a free course we're giving away with anybody who gets the Book. It's a 12 lesson course on the metabolism with interviews in the course with Dr. Pampa, Gary Brekha, Dr Jason Fung, Mangan Remo, Cynthia Thurlow. All that's for free when you order the books over at metabolicfreedombook.com. You simply just choose whatever retailer you want, put your name, email, order number, and then you're sent that entire course. There's no credit card we collect. it's completely free as a gift to just for thanking you for getting the Amazing, amazing.

I love it, man. You got the guide for people to really be able to take control of their health, you know, and that's what's needed. Speaking of, we got a big movement that is happening right now, the MAHA movement, Make America Healthy Again, which everything you're doing feeds into that. What's your thought process and your input on this whole movement? Yeah, you know, it's unfortunate that as soon as we bring it up, Maha, like it just triggers some people, right? It's just unfortunate, that it so polarized, but everybody should want America to be healthy again.

Agreed. Right? Our cells do not see red. It does not blue. it sees health. Just recently, a month ago, they're doing this official MHA documentary. Jeff Hayes is the director. RFK is in it. Brekka, Pampa. And they reached out to me and they flew me out into Utah a month ago to record for it. It was a cool opportunity and I posted about it a little bit on my social media. I was little hesitant because it just turns people off whenever you discuss anything that's related to politics. And I had comments from people saying, I've been following you for 15 years, 10 years and, and can't believe you're all in for this MAHA movement.

You don't want America to be healthy? Like this has nothing to do with Trump or politics? I mean, it does kind of cause it's associated with that. It's about being healthy. And right now, the system, I used to say, Sam, this system is broken. It is not broken, it is functioning the exact way it was designed. Its sick care, its a cash cow. it's a system to keep people in this subscription model of Big Pharma and Big Gov. That needs to be disrupted. So if this movement, that Maha movement is going to disrupt it, then I am 100% in, bro.

I'm all in with RFK. I know his heart. He's been on a coaching calls with Dr. Pampa and the group I've been with him many years ago. he has a huge heart I think it's an incredible movement I pray that it goes forward but I will also say that don't rely on the government or anybody to take to Take over your responsibility. It's still your responsibilities to do what you got to Bob Proctor used to say, if everybody swept their own front porch, the whole entire town would be clean. Meaning you still gotta take care of yourself.

RFK is not gonna take of you. I'm not going to take you, we'll give you the information. We care about you but you need to still take ownership and responsibility. So I am really excited about the movement. And I know you are as well. It's cool to contribute in a small little way to it aswell. Amazing brother. Love it. Ben, If people want to find you where do they find? Benazati.com is where you can find all of my information. I have my podcast, which Sam's gonna come on at my studio. It's not as nice as this studio, but it's pretty nice, Which is Metabolic Freedom, podcast same title as the book.

Amazing brother. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast and We just got to get the word out to the masses. That's it. Amen, brother We're doing it this is how we're doin it it was an honor a great conversation Thank you so much for having me Sam amazing guys. Make sure you guys check out all of the different links Get the book. This is going to change your life. As you guys always hear me say, we're here to changed the course of medicine, right? Because the way that we've been doing it, it hasn't been the right way.

So what Ben has done here is helping throughout that process, allowing you to take control of your health. And these are some easy steps for you do so. Make sure you subscribe, share, do all that fun stuff and we'll see you for the next one.