The Science of Metabolic Flexibility and Chronic Inflammation

Founder, True Healing Strategies

Founder, DrJockers.com
- Discover how unstable blood sugar can keep the body in fight-or-flight mode, increase inflammation, and make fatigue, cravings, and poor recovery harder to break.
- Understand why protein, electrolytes, whole foods, and meal timing can help stabilize energy before adding fasting or other stress-based healing strategies.
- Learn how mitochondria respond to feast-and-famine cycles, and why people with complex chronic illness may need to rebuild resilience before pushing fasting, exercise, or detox too hard.
Full Transcript
High-Polyphenol Olive Oil and Inflammation 0:00
High polyphenol extra virgin olive oil is like the greatest supplement you can take. You want to get a really high poly phenol count, not a $10 bottle of extra-virgin olive. Oil you're looking at like a 40 to $60 bottle typically in that range. It seems like it's a lot, but when you look at your supplements, you are paying that much for supplements. Get a really good high quality high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil that's going to be rich in things like oleocanthal which they call nature's ibuprofen which shuts down inflammation in your body and it's gonna help stabilize your blood sugar.
Powerful for your brain, so good for you body. So take a tablespoon or so of high-polyphenols extra-virgin olive with each meal And that's going to help you. If you're overwhelmed with chronic health symptoms and still don't have answers, you are not alone. I'm Dr. Javan and on redefining wellness with Dr Javin, we'll be exploring root causes like Lyme disease, mold and parasites. And I'll guide you with simple and practical steps towards real healing. Welcome back to another episode of the redefining wellness podcast with your host, Dr.
Jamie Moore. Today I have Dr David Jockers, one of giants in the industry who has gone from blogs to social media to summits. He is an expert in fasting and blood sugar and inflammation.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Overview 1:14
We've done a summit together and today we're going to be talking about how Well, let's just put together blood sugar and the way that you eat can create inflammation within your body and The way you can apply strategies to your diet like fasting that are going to absolutely change the game for you So thanks for joining me today. Yeah, absolutely always great to connect with you. Dr. Javin So, you know what I tend to talk about a lot is complex chronic illness and right now in the industry we're dealing with just this flood of people post-COVID that are sick, that have spiked proteins, they have blood sugar issues, dysautonomia, their fatigue, weak, tired, dizzy, passing out, and I'm seeing so much happen with blood sugars where people are really starting to have these spikes.
I mean, in my own practice, people all of a sudden unable to control their blood, gaining weight, hungry. What are you seeing with the people you're working with right now? Yeah, for sure. That's definitely a major issue, especially people with complex chronic illness because they have mitochondrial dysfunction. So their mitochondria aren't working well. And the mitochondrion are what they're the organelles within our cells that burn fat for fuel. When they are working, well, they can burn very well and then our body is very metabolically flexible when we have healthy mitochondrio.
We can burned sugar and fat. People with complex chronic illness due to all the things you talk about, infections, chronic stress, bad sleep, circadian rhythm dysfunction, toxicity, all these different reasons, just bad, diet, right? Bad nutrition in general, they are stuck in sugar burning mode and their mitochondria are not functioning well.
Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Blood Sugar Issues 2:57
And they have a buildup of these senescent or aged mitochondrion within their cells. So when they eat food, even if they're trying to eat a healthy diet their body is still struggling to use fat as fuel because their cells are full of these senescent aged mitochondria. So they're still stuck in sugar burning mode. And sugar, burning sugar as a fuel source is important. It's necessary. All of us do it. But when we're at rest, when were relaxing and we have enough oxygen, we should primarily be burning fat, as the fuel sources.
I always call fat clean energy and sugar dirty energy. Like I said, all of us, even the healthiest person out there, we're all burning glucose or sugar as a fuel source. Our neurons need it. And especially when we are in a state of oxygen debt, like if we were running or working out, sugar is a very quick energy source and we don't need oxygen to break it down. The problem with burning sugar, is that we produce a lot of oxidative stress. in small amounts for short periods of time. That's great, actually.
It actually helps prime our cells and we create more cellular antioxidant systems, better antioxidants systems within our cell. And that's actually one of the great benefits of exercise. If you're kind of a normal, healthy person like I am, I worked out today, 30, 45 minutes. Then I refueled. I'll get good sleep tonight. My body will adapt, become stronger and more resilient. And that's key, right? And during that workout, I was burning sugar. I producing a lot of oxidative stress. In fact, if you had done my blood work right after that work out, my C-reactive protein would have been sky high, it would've looked like I had a heart attack or I chronically inflamed.
But my body will adapt, you know, because I got the right nutrients, the and now my body will get stronger, my mitochondria will gets stronger and more resilient. People with complex chronic illness, as you know, you're an expert in this, they don't adapt, right? This is why when they exercise, They tank, Right? They sleep worse. They feel terrible the next day. Okay. And they're struggling to burn fat for fuel on a regular basis. So they end up with more blood sugar swings, more cravings throughout the day.
Fasting can be really hard for them oftentimes. The reason why, the root cause is that they have a buildup, these senescent damaged mitochondria within the cells. Interesting. I'm just sitting here thinking and I like typing questions for you as we go through so I don't forget how to ask questions because There's so much meat to what you said. A lot of people that have come into my clinic, they have exercise resistance. So they feel worse when exercising. Instead of getting better, eventually as they continue to get sicker and sickier and after COVID, now going up the stairs is harder and doing the same activities that they were doing before is hard.
And it's not because they're getting older, right? So you're saying that these mitochondria They aren't able to produce energy appropriately and now they're wanting dirty energy and they are not able really to burn fat which is that long term fuel. So how do people, what do they do about this sort of thing post getting into this sickness? Yeah, for sure. So there are a couple key principles that we want to start with. The first thing is you want make sure that your meals, you're taking out the ultra processed foods.
Now, there's a difference between processed and ultra-processed. Olive oil, For example, is actually a processed food. You're taken olive and you are pressing out that oil. Ultra process would be like crackers, right? Like there's no cracker tree, you know what I mean? So like there is massive amount of processing that goes into that. We call that ultra process. All those ultra processed foods, they're full of chemicals. They are high glycemic and highly insulogenic. So they drive up insulin really high and oftentimes they have seed oils in them.
And so all the things we want to avoid. And that's really key. We wanna avoid real high glycemic, high insulogenic foods, particularly processed foods. Not real foods real whole foods are not gonna be like that. And so we avoid the processed food they also have seed oils and chemicals. So we wanna to avoid all of those things. and we really wanna prioritize protein in our meals. I always recommend getting 30 or more grams of protein and every meal you eat. Okay, so, you know, what does 30 grams or protein look like?
One egg has about six grams a protein. An ounce of chicken has about eight grams of protein, an ounce steak has seven grams, could have eight if you get really lean, like real lean grass-fed beef, you could get about 8 grams per ounce. So you're looking at somewhere around, really about five to seven ounces or so of meat in a typical meal. Okay, so really prioritize good protein. If you really are lean like let's say you are under 100, your going to be fine with 20 grams. But for the average person, say 150 pound individual, You're really going to need about 30 grams of protein to stabilize your blood sugar,
Ultra-Processed Foods, Protein, and Healthy Fats 7:49
provide key amino acids that your body needs. So really prioritize good protein. Typically, your protein foods have healthy fats, you know, like eggs have. Healthy fats. You know grass-fed beef would have, healthy fat, wild-caught salmon. In some cases, if you get really lean meat, add in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. In fact, that's actually, you know, I always say high polyphenol extra-virgin olive is like the greatest supplement you can take. You want to get a really high-polyphenyl count, not a $10 bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
you're looking at like a 40 to $60 bottle, right? Typically in that range. It seems like it's a lot, but when you look at your supplements, you're paying that much for supplements. So get a really good high quality, high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil. That's gonna be rich in things like oleocanthal, which they call nature's ibuprofen which shuts down inflammation in your body. And it can help stabilize your blood sugar, right? Powerful for your brain, so good for you body, So take a tablespoon or so of high-polyphenols extra-virgin olive with each meal.
And that's going to help you now if you lost a gallbladder or something like that. If you're having a fatty piece of meat, don't do the olive oil with it because we don' want to overstress your bile flow. However, in general, try to aim for like really lean protein sources if possible, and then add in that extra virgin olive. Well, that will actually extra Virgin olive is actually a really powerful synolytic, right? Meaning that it helps to break down these old damaged mitochondria. So it's one of the best things we can be doing with this.
So you got your protein, healthy fats on board, right? And then you wanna add in colorful fruits and vegetables. And the order that you eat these foods is also very important. So let's say, you know, for dinner, let say I have wild caught salmon, I've got a side salad, a Mediterranean salad with feta cheese on it, tomatoes, cucumbers, and I got some olive oil and some lemon juice in there and herbs. and then I've got a side sweet potato, okay, with grass-fed butter on it and cinnamon and salt, right?
Tasty meal. The order I eat this is important. If I ate that sweet potato first, it's actually gonna increase my blood sugar and insulin higher than if I had to eat it last. So what I do is I protein first. Now, if you have access to fermented food or apple cider vinegar, that's the best thing to start with. Let's say you had a little bit of sauerkraut on that plate. Taking maybe two tablespoons or so of Sauerkraut, unless you histamine intolerance, which some of your audience will, that will actually help trigger bioflow, right?
And if they do, what I recommend is a little bit of ginger. Just take, get ginger root and take a small amount, half an inch of gender and just put it in and chew that, okay? That's gonna be lower histamine. So you're not gonna get that histamines response and it's going to help activate the vagus nerve to stimulate digestive juice production. Then eat your protein. And then you're, you know, that side salad I was talking about, and then at the end, I'll have my sweet potato, right? Or fruit or something like that.
My, my colorful, colorful higher sugar root vegetables or fruit, which you have a lot of polyphenols, a lotta great nutrients in there. And people that do have, this sort of. complex chronic illness are gonna need some of those carbs, because again, it's gonna take them some time to transition into fat burning, but they need to eat it last at the end of the meal. That's the key there. So you're eating three really good meals, making sure you getting 30 to 50 or so grams of protein in each meal, good healthy fats on board up to your tolerance point.
Some people do real well on, you know, more fat, let's say more than 30 grams of fat in a meal. some people need to do like 10 to 15 grams, right? They might not even be able to that full tablespoon of olive oil, they might just do a teaspoon, and so depending on how well their bile is flowing. So just remember with the fat to try to personalize that right there's no kind of cookie cutter there you got to personalized that for you again for me I can do high amounts of fat and feel great a lot of other people they need maybe they can get up to maybe 10 or 15 grams beyond that they start to not feel as good when they're when you know when You get better bile flow, right?
All those drainage pathways are opening up and over time you're noticing, hey, I can eat 20, 25 grams of fat in a meal and I feel really good. But in the beginning you might not be able to. And then colorful fruits and vegetables up to your tolerance point and with the ones that you do best with, for example, you may not do well with broccoli. For your spouse, they might do broccoli and feel great. You might feel gassy, bloated, but you my do great with cucumbers, then do cucumbers. Does that make sense?
So you're trying to personalize that diet as well as possible to yourself, but a whole food-based, minimal process food diet. That's really the first thing. You want to take out snacking. In between meals, make sure you are hydrating well and use electrolytes. People with complex chronic illness, I mean really almost anybody, like even high performers like you and I, Dr. Jaben, that are working hard, we're depleting our electrolyte. And when your sodium levels go down, cortisol goes up. Cortisol is a glucocorticoid.
It elevates blood sugar, but also at the same time, it responds to the signal of lower sodium. And believe it or not, most of us, especially when we start to be on a real food diet, we tend to not get enough sodium because our insulin is dropping. You know that we hear things about like a low salt diet, lowering blood pressure. When you have high insulin, when you're insulin resistant, which typically is going to be related to eating a lot of processed foods, high Insulin will cause you to retain sodium.
And that will Cause more water because water comes with sodium and that would cause more pressure in your blood vessels. You'll end up with high blood Pressure, edema, things like that in Your system and it can stress your kidneys. When you go on a real food, lower, like insulin friendly, blood sugar stabilizing diet like I'm talking about, then what happens is your body starts excreting that sodium. And when your sodium gets too low, it'll trigger cortisol. So having some electrolytes, Whether it's just salting your foods well, right, just to your taste, eating foods that are naturally rich in sodium,
Meal Order, Histamine, and Electrolytes 14:02
like for example, seafood is naturally-rich, grass-fed meats are natural rich, celery, cucumbers, naturally, rich and sodium. Sea vegetables can be a really great source of sodium but also taking some electrolytes outside of meals, or even if you can't afford like a good electrolyte powder, just taking a little bit of like Redmond's real salt, for example, and putting it on your tongue in between meals and drinking water, right? That can be really helpful. That will help stabilize cortisol. It's actually a natural antihistamine as well.
So one of the best things I found for people who are having histamine reactions is just take a bit a of good quality, unrefined salt. Put it in on you tongue, drink some water and it's like symptoms go away, like they significantly reduce pretty quickly. I used to do that in my practice when I would see people, they have seasonal allergies in the spring, and we would just put a little salt on their tongue, have them drink good clean water. And it was like, They noticed, you know, within five minutes that they felt better.
So it's lowering cortisol, lowering histamine right there. That's what you want to And then I recommend going 12 to 14 hours overnight without eating. So that means, let's say you finished dinner at 7 p.m. You always wanna finish your last meal at least three to four hours before you go to bed. Let's you finish at seven p,m, okay? You don't wanna eat anything with calories until let's say seven to nine a.m. the next morning. So this is where we start with people with complex chronic illness. That's enough intermittent fasting for them.
Okay, 12 to 14 hours. In the morning when you wake up, hydrate, drink 16, 24 ounces of water before you think about food. Again, a little bit of salt in there or electrolytes or something like that. that will help lower cortisol or stabilize cortisol, because you actually want some level of cortisol elevation when you first get up in the morning, but it'll help smooth out your cortisol levels, right? Giving you wakefulness, it will help you move your bowels more effectively. And I like warm drinks, especially early in a day, to trigger the vagus nerve, trigger peristalsis, so you can really clear out.
Our colon is most active between 6am and 9am in Having one to two really good bowel movements when you first wake up sets you up for a great day. If you're not moving your bowels early in the day, then those, all the toxins from the meal, right, they're literally putrefying in your system, releasing endotoxins into your bloodstream, driving inflammation, and that's gonna make you feel terrible. So you should be moving your bowels one to two times within really like the first hour to 90 minutes of waking up.
And good hydration will help you get there. Especially if you do like a warm drink, like warm herbal tea can be really helpful. You can do if your on some of these different binders, maybe you're taking a zeolite powder or a fulvicumic powder like carboxy or something along those lines. I actually like it in a war drink. Like I drink that in the morning. almost like a herbal tea right and it's great and so that can be a great way I don't know what is there a specific like black powder or a binder that you have a lot of your clients take Yeah, we use a ton of different binders.
We'll use Carboxy, that's one of them. I'll used Total Toxin Binder as another. But something that you said in here, and I'm like taking notes, I've got the doctor recommended 2026 mitochondria diet as I started typing out here as listening to you. Let's avoid the seed oils as they cause inflammation, avoid their processed food because that spike in blood sugar, get the protein in because if you don't eat enough protein, then I can't tell you the number of people that come into me. And like, hey, track your food for three days.
Oh, you're at 10% protein. you're not getting out of fight or flight that way. You're staying stressed out. Add the olive oil to make sure that we're getting enough quality fats in. I love the Vegas nerve trigger by the ginger. Taking all the histamine notes because that is just the peak of what everyone's talking about right now. One of the things that you said to me and I'm just sitting here kind of going, wait a minute, A long time ago, they told us to stop doing salt. Not that I ever agreed with that, but they taught us a stop using salt and you're saying salt decreases histamine and cortisol responses.
So I'm like the anti-salt diet is the spike your cortisol diet, is what just came to mind for me. Yeah. The anti salt diet works to lower your blood pressure if you have high insulin. However, it's not actually addressing the root cause, which is high insulin. Like that's, we have to bring insulin down. And so as we bring Insulin down, you deplete more sodium. So you actually need the salts. Well said. So this whole problem that we ran into from 1950 to now where we've said fats bad, eat more processed sugar.
Basically is what that came down to. Fats bad eat, more process carbohydrates, spike your blood sugar, make everyone diabetic. To solve that, we got to get rid of the salt. Now that your your, blood pressure comes down, which then causes your cortisol to go up. Now we're stuck in the mental health crisis where everybody's stressed out, they're toxic with cortisol in their brain, their HPA access is being shut down. So this is the brain connection between your hypothalamus, your thyroid, you're pituitary gland.
Those glands in your brain that control what you are doing, it's all just basically waiting in cortisol for most of the population. And I started doing this research on the neurotoxic loop, and I go, what is happening with everybody? And when I went into the PTSD category, because I was like, oh, it's happening. So I want to the extreme of stress. I'd go wait a minute when you have extreme stress, You release so much cortisol that it actually becomes a toxic response to your own stress hormone, which generates more stress, hormone release.
And that can happen from, as you're saying, blood sugar that's off because of the diet. So then the next solution was get rid of salt, Which then creates more adrenal stress. Then we have more stressed that creates. More stress so I'm just loving the connections that you building as we're going through this from what I already talk about. So, you're bringing back non-processed food, adding salt back. You're going completely against what the last 50 years of recommendations have been. Your decreasing the number of times we're eating instead of having breakfast be the most important meal of the day.
Oh yeah, without a doubt. I mean, blood sugar stability is one of the most important things you have to address. If your blood is sugar is off, your body is going to be in fight or flight. Like it's literally survival. And so we have get blood sugars stable without doubt and that's really the first big thing that we focus on. Now again, I think one the big things that most people miss, you know, people will say things like, You have 30 grams of protein the 30 minutes after waking up. If you're not hydrating, that's really key.
If your hydrate well, you don't, right? That rule doesn't apply to you. But this is where most people go wrong is, it's kind of like this one size fits all. Okay, You've got to get that 30 grams of protein. People's cortisol will balance and stabilize if they're eating enough protein throughout the day on a day-to-day basis and keeping out the processed foods. And then also, like we talked about making sure electrolytes are on board. and then hydrating well throughout the day, particularly first thing in the morning that will help get things moving in your bowels, which will reduce your overall toxic load.
I've heard it said, I think it was our mutual friend, Dr. Jay Davidson, he said something along the lines, when we wake up in morning, we're more bacterial, more microbial than we are,
Intermittent Fasting and Morning Hydration 21:38
you know, our own human cells. And then after we have a really good bowel movement, We're more human than bacteria, right? And so we gotta get that out. Gotta get those endotoxins out of our system. And when we do that, you're gonna notice you feel better. Now, there's other inputs like good light exposure. I've noticed, if you can go out and get sunlight early in the morning, You will just notice smoother energy the rest of the day. So if you can do that, that's super helpful. And especially if can you do it in a grounded state where you've got like barefoot, your bare feet are on grass, dirt, sand, something along those lines, it's gonna really help you.
Going out just for a walk, 10 minute walk or something like that. Take your dog out, you know, and do and that and it really helps you, its gonna set you up for success. Now some people do better eating earlier in the day and thats great. I just don't think they need it first thing. If they do happen to miss it, as long as they stay hydrated, they can still do okay that day, right? And as long as they're getting enough protein in their other meals, as I go on, they could do quite well. And there's a lot of people out there that have had tremendous success with intermittent fasting, I mean, millions of the people all over the planet that I've done amazing with this, and many of them started it with higher cortisol levels or a cortisol dysrhythm, like where they had higher cortisone at night and lower in the morning.
Intermittent fasting really helped them balance their blood sugar, bring insulin down, and reduce overall stress on their gut and their overall body. So intermittent fasting is amazing. Now, it's not my first go-to though with these complex chronic illness individuals, like the ones that, many of the one that are listening here that you're seeing, because it is a stressor on the body, and so we don't wanna overwhelm the system with stress. That's where we start out with, again, just a 12 to 14 hour overnight fast.
But that is not a stressful fast, as long as you're eating sufficient calories, enough calories a day before, and enough protein. Every person should be getting 100 grams of protein or more on a daily basis, okay? Unless you know, a five-year-old kid. You know once you get to about 10, Right? You should be really aiming for somewhere around 100 grams of protein or more. Once you get to, I would say maybe not 10, but a hundred pounds. If you're a 100 pounds, you should getting a a100 grams or a more of a protein on a daily basis.
So however that looks for you, that's a great goal to shoot for. It's only 400 calories. You know, so, um, even a, a one hundred pound individual, their basal metabolic rates typically going to be somewhere on 1500 calories, Um, So that is only four hundred of them. I mean you can do that. Yeah, you know, I'm on the protein kick with you, man. I am 100% game. So like everybody listening, there's the, let's eat more protein, less protein. The bodybuilder versus the fruititarian conversation out there.
And I always trying to figure out like, okay, why would one work for someone and another work, for a different person? And here's what I found recently. i've been running labs looking at the branch chain amino acids, looking, at different other protein Particles in the body and in blood labs people that are doing more of this low protein diet end up Whether they feel it or not slowly losing Normal ability to build muscle build tissues rebuild ligaments and tendons and I'm just seeing and it's not a personal opinion and the more I see this I've gone crap like we have to up our protein well then I've had a lot of people that have done all the fun things.
They've have the peptides, the IVs, eBoo's, they've done the all fun stuff and they aren't getting well. A woman come to me, she was spending $50,000 a month. I was like, that is incredible. Didn't see any results. Then I said, can you just, let's just go back to the basics. Let's I know you have access to anything and everything. Lets go to back the very basics We took a look at the diet, 400 calories a day. I was like, that can't happen. That can work. Had another woman come in in a similar situation where she'd done all the big things, but she had gone into that fruititarian diet due to a guy that wrote a book on it and has a big following and hit her MVX, her metabolic vulnerability, said that she was going to die in the next five years is what the test was looking at.
And I was just like, wow, that is pretty incredible as a negative impact on your life, not having protein. So for me, the jury's not out anymore. You have to have the protein, you just have. Now it doesn't have be a steak, it don't has to be one specific form of protein but we got to get it in. Yeah, no doubt about it. And when people like do well on a short-term basis on like, let's say an all fruit diet or some sort of like a partial fast, maybe the fasting mimicking diet, or even, you know, even doing like water fasting, those are meant for short term.
Mm-hmm. Short-Term protein restriction can actually be really, really beneficial because your body needs the amino acids. So it'll go in and break down the old damaged mitochondria that we talked about, the senescent mitochondrion. Some level of protein restrictions for very short periods of time can have a really positive benefit, but that's not long-term sustainable plan. And before you even do that, I recommend this high-protein diet to set you up for a period of time where you do a protein restriction, like maybe a water fast or like a fasting-mimicking diet, ProLon fasting mimicking, diet or something along those lines short term.
to get some level of senolytic activity, where your body actually breaks down these zombie cells, these old damaged mitochondria, because it needs those amino acids. So it goes in, grabs those amino acids, and rebuilds new, healthy, stress-resilient mitochondrion. Triggering autophagy can be really, really beneficial, but you gotta get yourself in a state where you're going to a positive response from that.
Protein Needs, Feast-Famine Cycling, and Autophagy 27:28
It starts with having this high-protein, blood-sugar stabilizing, insulin-stabilizing diet. You know, it's interesting because it is like we're going from need protein to protein restriction. And that gets confusing for a lot of people. Yeah. Because here's what I would say, Dr. Javen, is this is our ancestors were on a feast, famine diet, and they weren't intentional about it. They would have loved to be in feast mode all the time, like most people in America, but they didn't have access to it, so they were dependent upon a really good hunt or a good harvest.
And they weren't eating processed foods. They were eating all real foods and so when the harvest was great, when The Hunt was good, they feasted. But then they also had periods of time where they were calorie restricted because they didn't have very good food storage and they would go through periods where there wasn't a good hunt or a Good Harvest. And so oftentimes they will go days without food or very little food. This is just part of a normal seasonal cyclical eating pattern for our ancestors.
Our genetics knows how to do that. Like we actually know how handle periods of time of famine, but only short periods a time. We need to have that good hunt at some point. And so this is how we teach the body. Protein helps teach our body, when we're eating a lot of protein, we are telling our bodies to build, right? We're telling out body hey, it's time to repair, to grow, build. Okay, even higher insulin, like if we were eating lot fruit for example, or starchy vegetables, We are tell the the bodies hey food is abundant right now, food abundant.
But we want to kind of cycle between periods of time of telling the body food is abundant, food as scarce. When food scarce, insulin drops and now our body can go into repair mode, right? Triggered by this autophagy, okay? And so we start to break down these old damaged mitochondria, replace them with new healthy stress resilient mitochondrion. Ultimately the quality of our life is going to come down to the amount of high functioning stress, resilient, mitochondrial in ourselves. So feast, famine cycling is the way to get there.
What I'm saying, my thesis here in our conversation is for the people with complex chronic illness, let's start with feast. Let's not start the fast. We want to get there, but we start it with the feast because we want tell the body, hey, we started with a feast but not a modern 21st century feast, you know, not, a bunch of processed foods, fast foods. Okay, were starting with whole real food feast and then we're moving in too fast, okay? And then, we cycle it. Once we get blood sugar stable, once we are getting that individual sleeping well, really getting good sleep, then now they can repair.
Blood sugar is stable and sleep is good. We know their body can heal. They just need time. And now we can start to pulse in some periods of time of intermittent fasting or maybe doing like a one day 24 hour fast or a partial fast for a period of. So we're starting to get more of these old damaged mitochondria broken down and rebuilt right into new healthy stress resilient mitochondrion. Does that make sense? It does. I'm just thinking through like explaining this to a client. Cause that's always what I was thinking.
It was like, how do I make my dad who's 72 years old and construction worker and doesn't even have an Instagram or a YouTube to go learn about this? How do make this make sense? And as I am thinking it through this, it's like if you're not working out, you get weaker. If you are not doing your Sudukos when as you age, they say, your brain starts to, if your not strengthening it, It starts decay. And it is something that As a population, we have to get back to understanding even with all of the modern conveniences that we.
And we don't even have get out of a chair. You don' have leave your house anymore. Just Amazon will deliver to your door. The human body requires stress. It requires stress in every different way. You want to overeat, under eat, you want work out hard which is stress that breaks down muscles. you wanna force your brain to think really hard for a period of time to then pull back because too much stress is then going to give you a whole different problem. So when it comes to the protein situation you have to have the reserves.
to be able to handle the stress of whatever you're doing. So in this case, you have to have the protein reserves to to do the Protein Restriction. But if you can do that and you push and pull in an appropriate amount, that is actually how you clean out the damaged, decaying, broken, weak tissue that your body is holding onto when it's in a good time. and it will break down when it's not in the good time anymore so that you actually optimize your body for physiology. Because something I do say a lot is the human body is amazing at adapting to survive and is awful at optimizing to thrive.
Yeah, absolutely. And so these are all hormetic stressors. A hormetric stressor is a stresser that our ancestors would have endured. So our genetics, our DNA knows how to adapt to it, just needs the right environment. These hormotic stressers are meant to be for short periods of time. I'm really fit, but if I were to go and do twice as much exercise as I did today, I would feel awful, right? I did the right dose for my body, to get the adaptation. If you go well beyond that, you overwhelm your system.
And so no matter how fit somebody is, even the highest level athletes, they really need to prioritize good recovery or they burn out. They over train. So when I'm looking at somebody that's got complex chronic illness, Their body is already overwhelmed and overstressed. So what we're trying to do is get them to the point where we can put them into a healing state more, right? Spending more time in a feeling state. We got to pull them out of fight or flight more. and more into that parasympathetic rest, heal, digest, that mode.
So it starts with really good sleep, blood sugar, stabilizing nutrition, proper light exposure, right? Like that's kind of your basics, getting some little bit of walking in, just some basic movement, not overstressing the system, keeping everything really gentle on the body, and start moving them in the right direction. And then their body's gonna start to catch up and it's going to start And then we can implement small amounts, and it might be a month or two in, we could start implementing small amount of these hormetic stressors.
Very well said. Hermetic Stress is something I think a lot of people need to have more understanding of. I tell people, I want you to push your body about 20%. So if you have a little bit more fatigue when we're going through a protocol, that's okay, a Not a lot. If you go to the gym, hermetic stress tends to break down around 30%. So your body can handle 30% greater load on it as far as pressure in a day. Before, if you do that too long, it starts to brake. And that understanding helps people to understand like, hey, you know, I know how to work out.
But most people are not out there screaming from the rooftops. You need hermetic stress for your mitochondria, for. Yeah. Your neural pathways for every part of the human experience needs her medic stress.
Hormetic Stress, Recovery, and Personalization 34:48
Otherwise, well. You break down. Yeah, you atrophy, right? So you're either building and adapting, or you are getting weaker, and that's really the key. Now, with the hormetic stress, there's a level of day-to-day personalization too. You can be working with Dr. Javan and he could say, okay, this is what you need to do and set you up on a plan, but let's say you didn't sleep well that night, like the night before you were supposed to a little bit of a workout. Right. You might need to dial it back a little bit because you didn't sleep the night before.
Right? So there's also just a level of kind of understanding your body and your limits that really goes into this. Not a cookie cutter approach. That's kind the tricky part of it, especially with complex chronic illness. If I were to take, you know, I've worked with so many men that are, let's say 40, 50 years old, right? They are They're working hard, right? But they're 30 pounds overweight and they want to get a six pack, and it's like, I can get these guys intermittent fasting really quick, blood sugar stabilizing diet.
Typically they like steak, you know, eating higher protein diet, they enjoy it. If I get them off the bread, that's always the key, like get him off of the bed, get the exercising, stand compliant with this, prioritizing good sleep. It's they feel amazing, weight starts coming off really, really quickly, but then you get 50-year-old post-menopausal woman, 55-year-old post menopause a woman who is underweight, right? 10 pounds under weight, has got Lyme disease and can't sleep at night. And that person, it's like, It's going to take longer, to get you there.
It is just so much more challenging. Their body is already in this catabolic state. Now we still can, and I know, Javen, you're doing it all the time. You're working with these types of individuals. just take a little bit longer to get to the point where, yeah, we're intermittent fasting. We are, you know, working out, lifting weights in the gym and things like that, so. Can only go at the pace that their body can handle. That's what I tell people every day. Exactly. You can only at pace your body handle and we are going to go as fast as we can let your go without causing further side effects because the goal is let's get better fast we came with as few possible interventions that we have to have, but That's going to be specifically customized to you and your body in the day that we're working together.
Well, Doc, I feel like we just got a master class on how to modify your lifestyle, your diet, and bring your buddy into a synergy that's gonna allow it to able to heal. And I mean, shoot, a lot of things you're saying here, like you said, for those men that are needed an extra 20% of function.
Where to Find Dr. Jockers 37:18
This could be the game changer for them that takes them all away. For the complex chronic illness, maybe we've got to get into testing for mold. We've gotta get in to some of those more complex pieces because there's some burdens that are weighing these people down. But I mean, as I went through this, I got my notes like the 2026 Mito diet from Dr. David Jockers here. So I love this and people are gonna wanna know more about what you're doing because I know for instance, I used to go to your site because you were always putting out information all the time.
How do people learn more from you? Yeah, for sure. Well, you can go drjockers.com. I also have a great podcast where I talk about this, these kinds of topics all of the times. You've been on there several times, it's Dr. Jocker's Functional Nutrition Podcast. And I'm also on YouTube doing these kind of trainings. So you could check me out Dr David Jokers on Youtube and Instagram, Facebook as well. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you joining. To everybody listening, until we talk to you next time, keep staying well, see you then.
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