Insights From The Ultimate Nutrition Bible

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finlay Lansin, and this is the Run to the Top podcast. The podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. We are created and produced by the expert team of coaches at runners connect.net, where you can find the best running information on the Internet as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. Wade Leithart from Bioptimizers joins the show today to talk about his new book, The Ultimate Nutrition Bible. We get into the 5 goals, your final weight loss journey, your lean muscle journey, achieving athletic dominance, maximizing your brain power, and maximizing your biospan before diving more deeply into the weight loss and dietary components. Specifically in those spheres, we talk about key things like clearing emotional blocks, eliminating food toxins, how to choose the best diet for genetics, and how metabolic data shapes destinies. Wade, it's great to have you on the Run to the Top podcast.

Finn Melanson [00:01:21]: How are you doing today?

Guest [00:01:22]: I'm doing great. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Finn Melanson [00:01:25]: Pleasure to have you. And we're talking all things about your latest book, The Ultimate Nutrition Bible. And I don't wanna give away too much. It's an excellent read. But, you know, you've you've got 5 kinda primary goals in the book. I'm gonna kinda read them off. You've got the final weight loss journey. You've got the lean muscle journey, achieving athletic dominance, maximizing your brain power, and then maximizing your biospan and joining the Century Club.

Finn Melanson [00:01:51]: Why these 5?

Guest [00:01:53]: Well, if you look at the composite of you know, Matt and I came from the personal training business. That's where we started before we got into Buy Optimizers. Those five outcomes are the general goals of the widest amount of people. Why do people actually look at their diets? They most people would fall in the weight loss category. That's a primary driver. And I would say a growing driver would be the longevity side of it. And then in the middle of those would be, you know, sports performance, which we maybe related to muscle mass or cognitive performance because you make money from your brain. And then athletic performance, which has a wide variance as, for example, you know, if you're doing bodybuilding contests versus doing, marathon running, Those are very different outcomes even though they would fall under the pursuit.

Guest [00:02:51]: And I'm using that as an example because I did that last I did I did that over the last 18 months. So I I get that go I get that variance between those two objectives. But there could be a variety of performance but re related components.

Finn Melanson [00:03:04]: I wanna break down some of these categories into some of the component parts you list out in the book starting with the final weight loss journey. You have this whole section around clearing emotional blocks. What do you mean there?

Guest [00:03:17]: So if you start the human psychology, if diets just was mathematics, you know, everybody would be successful. But the biggest problem with diets is adherence over the long term. And ideally, what happens is most people, and this comes from coaching thousands of of clients over years, is subconscious self sabotaging behavior. And those come in the form of 4 particular areas, which we we we identify in the, pyramid of nutritional choices, which is your, social or spiritual associations, and psychological and emotional considerations. So food is tied into For example, if I'm a Hindu and I don't wanna eat any meat, that may be suboptimal for my genetics, but there's my spirituality overrides that. So I'm gonna have to make a proper adherence on protein consumption, let's say, for adherence. If I'm, part of a social group that is deeply connected, where food is involved in many of the social occasions that we celebrate in America and every other culture is very strong cultural components. Or for example, let's say, I'm Muslim, and I'm going through Ramadan.

Guest [00:04:50]: And I'm going through the the whole culture is wrapped up around that. Or if I'm in the, you know, the Friday night drinks after work group. But to use 2 extremes to illustrate that there's a social component in being part of the human experience is social. And then if you look at psychological, okay, we are motivated by neurochemicals inside our body. So restriction and overconsumption are correlated with neurochemical production. So if I'm low in serotonin, my likelihood to crave sugar components are very high. If I'm high in dopamine, I'm gonna need to set a really good parameters of reward systems. You know, if I'm I set a choline oriented, I'm probably gonna be straight okay, whatever, you know, like, I'm probably gonna be able to settle long term goal and stick with it.

Guest [00:05:42]: So I I may have an advantage over there. So those are effects and then emotions. And emotions are, what it's not the event that causes the problem. It is our response to the event. So when I talk to, Navy Seal Special Forces Operators, which I've interviewed a bunch and I've trained with a bunch. And I and the common element that I have asked, I said, what makes a great special forces operator? And they've all said the same thing. Early childhood trauma and the ability to self regulate. So where self trauma that would be debilitating for someone in many areas of life.

Guest [00:06:30]: Some reason some way they found a way to manage that. And now they're actually seeking out environments that that that that that that that like, going to war is about as traumatic as it gets. Being a special operator is about as but they're so good at self regulating. They've actually built in a self reward system that, you know, the like, example in the Navy SEALs is the harder it gets, the better we like it because they get to exert the sense of, I did it, I survived, or whatever. Whereas, we live in a culture where our traumas and the emotional baggage that comes with it is now celebrated as the reason why I'm less than, why everybody gets a trophy at the event, why, I need special favors, whether it's getting into university or I've gotta meet a certain diversity requirement in hiring. And these aren't popular or the whole fat shaming ideology. Fat shaming and aesthetics are 2 big areas. And what's happened in society over the last 50, 60 years in particular I'll give you an example of that from my own life.

Guest [00:07:37]: Like, if I go home when my grandparents were alive on my dad's side, and let's say I'm £10 heavier, The first thing that's gonna happen is my grandfather's going, boy, you're putting on the beef? Now, it's not meant as malicious, but my dad, talking to him a couple weeks ago, he's like, oh my god. He's like, I got this big fat roll hanging over my gut. I gotta really get after it. Now in some environments, that one could be considered horrible and shaming. But in our environment, it's a social constraint that that shame becomes a motivator or that I'm not meeting the standards of what our our our inclusive environment is. But whatever the case is is the average person has 2 to 500 of these traumas built up as in their psychology, many of which which directly impair their ability to adhere to any dietary program. And it could be connected to their social environment. It could be connected to and at the psychological environment.

Guest [00:08:39]: It could be encoded to their spiritual community. Those are compensatory or accelerators. And, you know, one of the things I I why people turn to trainers or turn to fitness gurus or whatever is because they've recognized that I'm not able to manage my life and get the goals that I want. So I need to surround myself in a new social group. But inside of that, you're still going to have to get these emotional blocks can prevent you from fully integrating into that new self view social group. And when you start using programs like EFT and neurofeedback and, cognitive theory, cognitive behavior, like CBT, therapy. Also sometimes, psychedelic components to get space on that. All these emerging technologies in the psychological realm, you can start to realize as you let those things go, like something like emotional freedom, which is just tapping with a professional done.

Guest [00:09:38]: But we've seen people that couldn't adhere to a program, all of a sudden, that was the only thing they did from everything else was the same. They do that, and all of a sudden, they're able to achieve their goals.

Finn Melanson [00:09:50]: You know, you talked a lot there about the importance of social connections and the roles that those might play in your diet and sort of, like, your health circumstances. Another thing that I think about a lot, maybe as a hurdle in this whole emotional block thing, is the fact that a lot of the foods that we probably shouldn't be eating are are quite addictive. Right? Like, the people that make them, they program those foods so that it's harder than it has ever been to turn down the impulses and to, like, have the strength, the emotional regulation, the self regulation, like you mentioned, to change up. How do you think about that? Like, do do you think that, like, more than ever today, the whole dietary system is working against people? And maybe it it requires more than just individual initiative to to kinda make a big change.

Guest [00:10:40]: Oh, a 100%. So let's and I can and we break this down in detail, because I've thought a tremendous about amount about it. If we look at let's let's talk about and and and I first got into this about 2,000. So in 2000, I remember I was coaching kind of a an elite group of clients in a particular gym in Vancouver. And I was watching they had a news program on there, like, you know, CNN or something like that. Right? And then that was in the gym plane. And what I continue to notice is that the information they were presenting around fitness and health when they're over there was very low resolution and that it was either totally wrong, out of context, or impossible to apply to get a purported benefit, which was often the snippet in the news media. Concordantly, when I looked at the the government agencies that regulated food production and regulated health care, which was largely influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.

Guest [00:12:03]: And the food recommendations were largely influenced by the agricultural community. And then the, quote, unquote, trusted news authorities also had a political or agenda based bias. Now, back then, I could see, and I thought, oh my god. I've hired the best coach in the world in a bodybuilding world to get me to a condition that most people will never achieve. And you're fighting 2 evolutionary components. This is this is a long circuitous road, but people need to understand this in detail to get this. Bodybuilders and fitness competitors have solved the obesity program, period. The worst fitness competitor, the worst bodybuilder on any given stage at a local show at the lowest level is is is in better condition and better shape than most people will ever be ever get in their lives.

Guest [00:12:58]: And here's and and they all get there. Everybody does this. So there's no big mystery about you know, people talk about all my metabolism, all my genes, all the because they've got these snippets from these stories, or they've get an old, we've gotta have, you know, this many grains and everything to have a healthy diet, and we need this type of medication to manage my insulin. All of that low resolution stuff that's coming from our authorities and our regulatory bodies and information will guarantee that the individual following that advice will fail. And here are and the evolutionary biases that are that's built into the system that's gonna lead to your particular aspect is our systems are designed, because starvation was a big factor, is to limit the amount of muscle growth, which means the more muscle you have, the more your metabolism stays high and the more calories you burn. And the other thing is is the more the the the other bias is is we wanna store as much fat as possible because starvation has been a number one factor that that's taken out humans across the world. So those are 2 built in evolutionary parameters that we are fighting on a biological level. Bodybuilders figured out how to deal with those two things.

Guest [00:14:12]: Now, what happens is most of the dietary regulations, and that's coming from every regulatory board, every doctor who doesn't most of them which don't have any nutrition training, who aren't aware of the metabolic aspects of long term dieting or rigid diets or whatever, or the addiction factor that's involved in both the pharmaceuticals that they're involving and the consequences of that as far as metabolism and the ability to manage themselves or, the addiction factor that you're talking about, these high sugar, high fat foods. And there's a book by Eric Schlosser called Fast Food Nation. Yep. But in the 19 seventies, what happened is big farm big agriculture, big companies in food realized the cost of customer acquisition was the biggest fee that they had. And they really couldn't acquire any more customers because they were just trading customers between the big conglomerates. So what did they say? Well, let we need to invent ways to get people to consume more of the food that we're having so that we can accelerate that we can increase the pie, total volume of consumption. So what happened at that time, that's when they started increasing the sizes, and they started creating food chemicals that mimic nutritional elements that makes us consume more of those things. Because if we're in a deficient state and we consume more of this and we and we're tricked into thinking that our bodies are getting the nutrient we require, but it's a fake nutrient, we will consume these.

Guest [00:15:46]: And so, Coca Cola, for example, is the number one example of a zero satiety food. There if you eat blueberries, if you eat strawberries, if you eat beef, or you eat anything that we would traditionally consume, it has a satiety raging. Mhmm. And that satiety raging satiety is the number one factor for dietary discipline over time. You have to feel full so that you're not aiding into a starvation response. And the simpler, more refined, more chemically induced foods all do one thing. They have low satiety relative to the calories consumed. So what happens is and and I'll I use an example.

Guest [00:16:32]: I have a I have a one day a week that I get to eat whatever I want. And I'm not a donut guy. I don't eat donuts. But my business partner, Matt, is a donut guy. So he's in town. He says, let's go to the sidecar donut place over here in Santa Monica, which makes these outrageous donuts that come out of the oven hot, and they're get super high fat and super high sugar. Now, I ate one of those donuts. I was high out of my mind because it's not in my normal dietary component, even though I do have these spike foods that I have on that day.

Guest [00:17:08]: I was literally high. I was having, like, euphoric, heroin like response to this food, and certain left food scientists understand that it creates a heroin like addictive factor in our brains. And I ate, like, 6 donuts in about 15 minutes, 20 minutes. It was less than a half hour for sure. I I lost track of time in this euphoric state of donut heaven. And I was like, okay, I'm a person in the industry who understands the science. I understand the mechanisms. I I've exerted dietary like, I've got all of the tools at my disposal, and once I eat one of those donuts, I cannot stop the train.

Guest [00:17:57]: So that's what people are facing, and nobody is telling them this story. Nobody the doctor's not telling them, The food groups are not telling them. The agricultural groups are not telling. The pharmaceutical agents are telling. The government's not telling. Their friends aren't telling. Their spiritual community is not telling. Their social community is not telling.

Guest [00:18:15]: Their cycle and guess what? As they get fatter and fatter, they start to build up more of these emotional blockages in them. Like, well, there's something wrong with me. I'm not normal. I'm I don't have enough willpower. And what I'm saying is is you've been set up to fail. And I'm not it's not a conspiracy. It's not like everybody's trying to screw you over so that you're gonna die and all that. No.

Guest [00:18:36]: No. It's just a confluence of a total loss of responsibility with the people who are providing the authoritative position on this. You go to school for 12 years, no one teaches you how to be healthy, no one teaches you how to have good relationships with the people around you, and no one teaches you to understand your finances. Those three things are the most important things that a person can experience as a human. Like, those are gonna determine the quality of their life for us. So I can go to not only can I go to school, I can go to school for another 4 years at university, get a bachelor's degree in a debt that I can't get out of on top of it? So now I become an indentured slave, and I can go get a master's another 2 years, and then I can go another 2 or 4 years and become a PhD. So I could be in school for 20 straight years with a debt of somewhere between a $150 a half $1,000,000, and I still don't know the three primary things that's gonna drive the quality of my life. And and and and yet, bodybuilders and fitness competitors have figured out how to manage the 2 evolutionary drivers that leads to all the distortion in that.

Guest [00:19:59]: And that was a long convoluted answer. That is the state that we're in. And that's why we wrote this book as a reference guide to all the the lies, all of the misdirections, all of the misinformation, all of the things when you go online and you see competing narratives to go, what do they mean by this? Do I need minerals? Do I need vitamins? Can I get okay on a keto diet? Can I do a plant based diet? What if I'm a runner? What if I'm a weight lifter? What if I'm getting old? What if I'm trying to get over an illness? All of these questions, we have a standard chapter on each one of them to identify. Here's how you sort through the crap. It's essentially an accountability system for that which is unaccountable to the directors that they've been giving us.

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Finn Melanson [00:22:31]: Go to timeline nutrition.com and use promo code runners connect for 10% off, the plan your choice. I think that that's excellent context. And the well, as I was reading this book, and I wrote these these notes down, I had a question for you. And it kinda revolves around what you think is the best starting point from a dietary angle. And it from what I could interpret, you're okay with vegan. You're okay with paleo. You're okay with keto. You're you're you're fairly agnostic when it comes to, like, the categorical approach to diet.

Finn Melanson [00:23:08]: Is is that correct?

Guest [00:23:10]: Yes. We wrote we we try to write an unbiased review because what happens to the listener is they get on and they they follow the keto guy, let's say, and they start doing that. And there's a variance on a bell curve of, you know, 2% of the people that cured their diseases, they lost 30 pounds. It was the best thing ever. They got a promotion. They married the person of their dreams because they did all that. And then there is 2% that, like, they gained £30. They got a weird disease, and and and and their life went downhill.

Guest [00:23:40]: And now they've got a medical bill, like and the difference between that is the genetic variances on that diet. So, Matt is a keto guy, for example, my business partner. He does keto. And I'm a plant based guy. He's been doing keto for, what, 25 years. I've been doing plant based for 25 years. And so we were perfectly positioned to be able to debate the pros and cons of each of those diets. And we have literally done all of the diets that you've out there.

Guest [00:24:08]: Like, I've done raw food diets. He's done carnivore diets. I've done keto, a plant based keto. He's done meat meat, keto. We both done if it fits your macros. So we're actually experienced it, and we coach people in all those hours. So the dietary the the the this is the new diet that's gonna save you. That's another misnomer.

Guest [00:24:29]: You can be successful on any diet if you know how to optimize for your genetics and goals. There are some that would be more likely to lead to success, and there was some that would be less likely. But even within that variance, if you know how to offset the liabilities in your diet, you can be successful on any one of them.

Finn Melanson [00:24:49]: So then, what does it mean to choose the diet for your genetics?

Guest [00:24:53]: Yes. So for example, I'll give you a personal insight to this. So up until recently, the cost of having a genetic test was first, it wasn't possible, then it was really expensive, and now it's super cheap. And we thought that when we determine the human genome that we were just gonna know everything and that was gonna be it. No. Well, it turns out that wasn't entirely true. Genetics is like the blueprint, and there's often on switches on your DNA that entered the realm of nutrigenomics. So if you get certain things in your diet or in your lifestyle, then you will not turn on the suboptimal gene expression.

Guest [00:25:40]: And if you don't get that particular element, you will turn on that. So in my case, k, when I look at my genetics so here's my genetics. My genetics were, I've got, high likelihood, I've got a double bad gene for cardiovascular suboptimal gene on feeling satiated that I don't have a suboptimal gene on feeling satiated that I don't get hungry. Okay? So, let's and my 4th gene is I have suboptimal genes for, clearing out, toxins in the body, your detoxification pathways. Okay. So, understanding those things, I can craft a diet and a lifestyle that will go around it. So, for example, if I followed a body building style diet, high protein, moderate carbohydrates, low fat, I'm going to probably look great, perform great, and die of a cardiac event, probably in my seventies or eighties. Okay.

Guest [00:26:56]: So, if I do a vegetarian diet, which has good cardiovascular outcomes, you look at all the literature on there, the likelihood that I'm gonna because of the low protein content that I'm probably gonna trigger diabetic type or pre diabetic stuff. It's very likely I could run into problems with there, especially if I'm eating a lot of refined carbohydrates, which is easy to do in the modern world. And I like refined carbohydrates, so, you know, it's not and and guess what? With my my my low satiation factor like, in other words, what what that means is when I eat food, my brain doesn't tell me to stop eating very quickly. That's a that that probably allowed my ancestors to survive, so they overate when they had food and they could go long periods of starving. I can fast very easily, where someone must say Mediterranean genetics might have a harder time fasting because they never had to go through periods of fasting. So if I follow just the plant based diet, good cardiovascular, bad for insulin, guess what? I'm back to the cardiac event again. Right? I could can't seem to go out of it. Right? So that seems suboptimal on those things.

Guest [00:28:00]: So how do I find a happy medium? Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna go on a plant based diet. I'm gonna supplement my diet with plant based proteins to boost up the amino acid content that I'm extracting the protein from. Right? It's not necessarily protein you need. It's the amino acids from protein. And so plant based diets, it's not that you don't get sufficient, range of amino acids. It's that you don't have enough to pull from, particularly from that. So increase it and then, you know, engage in weight training to keep my muscle mass up, even though I'm genetically not great at building muscle mass.

Guest [00:28:39]: And then I'm gonna use fiber and protein, that combination. Because on a plant base, you can have lots of fiber. And fiber is really good for satiation. And the 4 types of fiber that you can get have a 12 to 35% reduction in all causes mortality. Each one of those alone. I don't know what the combination of those are. So I I get fiber points from all of those factors every day of my meal, a high protein, I hit the gym that keeps me satiated, keeps me in shape. Good enough, I can go to the world championships in bodybuilding and run marathons.

Guest [00:29:16]: And I don't feel, I don't feel, that I'm missing out. I'm easy easy to stay on my diet. I don't overeat. And then, I build in detoxification programs by regular fasting once a week. I fast once a week. And then I use biohacking technology, like I have, saunas and detoxification, technology that I implement in life to accelerate my detoxification pathways. So that's how I use science and genetics and experience and fitness and vitamin to craft what I feel is the ultimate program for me. And with the book, people be able to do something along the same line.

Guest [00:29:53]: So what works for the goose does not necessarily work for the gander.

Finn Melanson [00:29:58]: So one of the things that you said earlier which has stuck with me is eat high satiety foods. Right? Like, eat foods that will actually give you the feedback that you have consumed calories, that they're nutrient dense calories that you don't need to eat anymore. Like, there is these foods are provided in that cutoff point, which is good. Similarly, because I wanted to ask you about food toxins. Do you have any sort of shortcut there? Or I shouldn't say shortcut, but, like, heuristic for how you would think about identifying foods that are toxic versus nontoxic or have ingredients that Oh, you can use the water. Yeah.

Guest [00:30:34]: Yeah. So there is a group of people in the health space. I call them health terrorists. So, if you understand how your brain works, and this goes back to psychological programming. If I'm going to get your attention, the likelihood is I gotta create a fear in order to get your attention. The 7 foods you should never eat. The most toxic food on the environment if I'm going into a social media thing, oh, god. I better pay attention to that.

Guest [00:31:01]: It's like why people slow down for the car crash on the road. There is a self preservation mechanism that marketing points play on to get your attention. We don't live in the information age. We live in the attention age. And to get your attention, I've gotta create a calamity so that you go, oh, I gotta protect myself. I gotta watch that. And toxic foods in in the health industry are the biggest ways to lead to what I call psychological, emotional terrorism response. Okay? So I'm gonna say, sugar is going to kill you.

Guest [00:31:42]: Trans fatty acids will kill you. High cholesterol will kill you. These high cholesterol foods. Well, when you actually break through this, this is not essentially the truth. How much so, frequency, total amount, and your capacity. So 10 years ago, I wrote a book called staying alive in a toxic world. So we've got all these toxins. When you hear about the 10,000 or the 100,000 chemicals that have been made, the toxic stuff at all, if you go anywhere in California, like, they got all the prop 65 stuff.

Guest [00:32:17]: Well, there's mercury here, and there's this and that. If you go to the airport, they they they're not, you know, you know, you could die from flying on the plane. You could die from this chemical. You could die. And I do believe that there's some truth to the totality of all these toxins built up in the system do have negative side effects. I'm not discounting that. But what's relative to what you're doing in your life? And so, it's about detoxifying your pathway. So for example, one of the big elements that is out there is glyphosates.

Guest [00:32:48]: And glyphosates work by disrupting the enzymatic activity in, you know, like herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides, kill off the bugs, kill off the inflammatory agents of the agents that is disrupting the throat by disrupting the enzymatic format. And then enzymes control everything from thinking to blinking in their body. Nobody talks about them except us. And they're catalysts for everything. And and and hardly anybody talks about it. Yet every food company uses enzymes, and all the killing companies uses enzyme inhibitors to to destroyers to bring break food up. And raw foodists eat raw food because of the enzymes supposedly present. They sprout food.

Guest [00:33:28]: So every there this is this nefarious world of enzymes that everybody kinda knows about, but nobody talks about. And they're either killing the enzymes or activating the enzymes in order to produce health. So you take glyphosate. Now, if you looked at my diet, I probably get exposed to glyphosate more than although I try to eat organic. The USDA allows 50 different chemicals on your food. It could be shipped on another food that got bombed and all these agents on there. So would glyphosate be high in my life? Well, you can do chemical tests on yourself, and you can find out, do you have glyphosate? I have no glyphosate in my body. 0.

Guest [00:34:02]: Well, it turns out we found out later on that our enzyme formulation, mass times, actually breaks down glyphosate. We found this out in life. I didn't know that. But I wanted to find out, am I getting too glyphosate? Because I was using oats, for example. I eat oats regularly. And I was like, well, everybody's talking about oats are full of glyphosate. I better check. I thought, geez.

Guest [00:34:18]: I better find out if I got high glyphosates because I got poor detoxification pathways that could kill me. Well, turns out, no. I've got a mitigation strategy. You look at water filtration. I think a big source of, chemicals from plastics and chemical agents in our water. Water filtration is a big deal. So are you drinking out of plastics? Are you doing so there are mitigation strategies that you can reduce, you know, like, remember when, was it BHPs became a big, thing to get out of plastic bottles. Now there's other toxins in the plastic bottles they're showing that aren't BHPs, that are still getting into you.

Guest [00:34:54]: But now we got BHP's out. It's BHP free. Might be some other toxins, but they don't nobody knows about it, so it doesn't matter. Right? So so, again, a little bit of information is dangerous because you may overreact to it or you may underreact, but we provide an insight of what test you should look at. Look at a spectra cell, what you're absorbing. You can look at your detoxification pathways on your genetics. Is that a problem for you? You can look at your diet and see if you have these disruptive agents. And then based on that, you can drink out of glass bottles of water all the time.

Guest [00:35:22]: I'm gonna put a a really, high performing performance, water filtration system in my house or the water that I drink in the house. Maybe I'm going to do fasting or detox program. I'm gonna use a charcoal element every year because I've got high heavy metals, because I lived on a farm for a bunch of years and got a bunch of poisoning. And you can implement a strategy based on removing that particular agents. Not the totality of it because you're likely suffering from a small to a little amount. But that small to little amount with the right strategy will allow you to hit your goals better, and we have strategies addressing that.

Finn Melanson [00:36:07]: Going back to the genetics piece, were were were you doing, like, a 23 and me type test to get a baseline on, where you were at and how you should be acting accordingly with your diet?

Guest [00:36:17]: Yeah. So, I didn't use 23 and me. I was a little concerned about the, lack of security controls on my genetic data with that company as they were bought out by another firm, and they grabbed all that data. And I'm not saying so if you are going to use I'm not gonna recommend any particular DNA company. I've done a wide variety of DNA companies. And my caveat for choosing a DNA company is that we are using a company that ensures that they protect my genetic information for a variety of security reasons why I want that. And a little insight about genetic companies that people don't know is it's not just the genes, it's the algorithm that they are running the tests and the insights from the genes. So your genes are not going to change from test to test to test.

Guest [00:37:12]: The algorithms that they're applying, so they're using composite levels of data of the sample set that they're applying that to, and then they're drawing conclusions from that based on these large model databases. So if you are developing databases based on, you know, psychological conditions about neurochemical dominance or deficiencies, you're gonna have a different result than someone that's maybe looking at longevity. It could be cross correlated versus genetic factors influencing, diabetes. So what we're seeing now is we're seeing different companies focusing on different areas with data sets that are relative and scientists and doctors who are experts within that field, and they're setting those parameters, which is gonna determine your results. So that's way beyond the the the thought process of the average person doing a genetic test. But that's the reality. Every one of those genetic tests are gonna give you some insights that you can apply and you can take those insights. We we cover a bunch of them at the one of the last chapters of the book.

Guest [00:38:20]: Some some major things that you wanna look for. If you have some of these things, then go here and get that addressed with a professional in that field. Also, if you're comped, if you have the double MTFR gene, if you have whatever, you can look at those things and say that. And that that's what I did. So I hired, a genetic expert and a naturopathic doctor to interpret the results. And then I looked at the mitigation strategies with our team, to say, okay. What are the things that I need to do? Now, the good news was I figured that out to about 95% from trial and error, but that took me 30 years, to get there before genetic test. When genetic test came, I remember my natural passage.

Guest [00:39:01]: Well, how is it that you're doing all these things that you're already compensating for? I'm like, well, I just figured it out over time, but nobody has the time to do that. I made this my profession. And those 5% things that I didn't know, may were big needle movers for me. Like, when I implemented those 5% of things that I don't know, the average person's probably got 50, 60%. So, understanding that will really determine. So, for example, I don't metabolize fats very well. I knew that when I tried to do the ketogenic diet based on Matt's insights, said the ketogenic diet is great. I would do fat diet.

Guest [00:39:33]: I felt terrible. It didn't work right. I got oil in my stool. Well, turns out in my genes, I don't metabolize fats very well. Well, I found that out from my experience. So, yeah, you could take the time and try all these things, but most people are gonna drop off on their diet in the 1st month or so, especially if it's suboptimal for them. And every diet has disadvantages. So you'll see this all the time.

Guest [00:39:57]: Someone went from vegetarianism, and they went to a carnivore diet or paleo diet. And like, oh, my god. I feel so much better. Well, what they did is they just addressed the deficiencies in that diet for them with the new diet. And then, at a certain point, those benefits are gonna tail off 3 to 6 months. And then, whatever deficiencies in that diet are going to start to emerge in their lives. And if they don't know their genetics, they're not gonna be able to predict that. But if they know their genetics, they could do better good on either one of those diets.

Guest [00:40:29]: It depends how many mitigations they're gonna have to make in order to be successful in that.

Finn Melanson [00:40:34]: Okay. Coming back to the toxicity conversation, I I'm kinda taking this. Tangent here. No. No. I did too. So I took some notes with in terms of fighting toxicity. You know, you mentioned that water filtration system, the Mass Zymes product, the charcoal element, fasting.

Finn Melanson [00:40:52]: Did I miss a couple? Were there any other things that you recommend in sort of that process of removing as much toxicity as possible from your diet?

Guest [00:40:59]: I think I think well, I but some of these strategies are mitigation. So saunas and like, I have a HEICO machine, which is a very advanced technology around detoxification using, you know, ozone and a capsule thing. Like, it's it's really far out machine. That's outside of the range of most people purchases, but I'm like a freak. So I I I wanna go to the extreme and then extrapolate what could give you similar type benefits. Yeah. Yeah. Fast for most people, fasting one day a week, and a little bit of sauna work, we'll probably cover most of their detoxification stuff.

Finn Melanson [00:41:41]: Okay.

Guest [00:41:42]: Just provide it. If you're gonna do saunas and and and and that kind of stuff, make sure you're getting, lots of electrolytes, because you can run into mineral deficiencies from sweating excessively.

Finn Melanson [00:41:53]: Right. Yeah. Okay. I don't wanna give away too much in the book. We will make sure to link to in the show notes. The last topic I wanna cover with you is, I think it ties in everything we just covered, but, like, how how data shapes destinies. Unpack that some more.

Guest [00:42:08]: Yeah. So so Matt loves data, and I love intuitive observations. So we're really good at the variances on how we determine So, some people are more feeling intuitive based, some people are more data. Some people are, you know, so so, skepticism and optimism are built into those things as well. So, what we did is we would make internal observations about what's going on us, and then we would do data tests, so that we could correlate the data with how we feel, how we look, how we sleep. What's right. And so, for example, if anybody wants to get really clear about how data can determine your behaviors, just go get a continuous glucose monitor, put it on your arm for a month, and watch how corrective it becomes. So in that case of the sidecar donut experience, let's go back to that for a moment.

Guest [00:43:13]: And I'm this is actually an advertising for sidecar. I'm not throwing Sidecar into the bus. They do make incredible donuts. But if I had a continuous glucose monitor on my arm at that point, it probably would have looked like I was on my way to the hospital for a diabetic coma. Okay? So how you metabolize, say, potatoes versus how I metabolize potatoes or how you metabolize rice and how I metabolize rice will vary significantly. And you don't know this, and no dietary experts knows this about you. You might say, yeah, when I eat rice, I feel really good. And when I eat potatoes, I don't feel very good.

Guest [00:43:59]: K? If you got data to correlate with those feelings, it gives you an extra level of confidence to stand up in the face of somebody proclamating that everybody should have rice or nobody should have rice or everybody should eat potatoes and nobody should eat potatoes. Because you know the truth about you and your response to that. That's a data piece. And what does data do? If you have good data pieces that are connected to your behavioral actions, your destiny will be clear because you can course correct to get the objectives that you want. Likewise, if you don't have those data points, you may be making incorrect assumptions because you're essentially a victim of these agencies of food and convoy that are that are leveraging your biology to distort your self perception. Okay? So, yeah, I know that's probably bad for me at Sidecar Donuts, but if I don't have any data points to go back, you know what? I'm gonna bring my friends next week because it was such a good time. And it feeds my biological tendencies, that my biological tendencies are gonna override my discipline towards my diet because I'm dealing with millions of years of evolution here, and I'm using and I'm dealing with the latest food science technology over here. That combination against me, I need a data point, an inference point to create a quadrant here.

Guest [00:45:27]: It's just like flying a plane, you need altitude, you need to know your drift, you need to know the direction, you need to know your speed. You know, you you need these data points to fly in a blind world. And as I illustrated before, the general person in America or in around the world is blind to what's influencing their decision making from all of those things that we talked about. The authorities, the evolutionary biases, the the the food, chemicalizations, and the profit motive around those things. So everybody is incentivized to keep you fat, to keep you sick, and to keep you from hitting your goals. You have to understand you're in that. So you need data points and inference points so you can course correct and fly through the fog that everybody's living in. And I can say that confidently because consistently since the seventies, obesity rates are going through the roof, disease rates are going through the roof.

Guest [00:46:23]: And we're spending for every dollar that we spend in quote unquote, the health care industry, which is a misnomer in itself, we have a great system to deal with acute conditions. You're in a car accident, you need a disease, you need a surgery. We're world class. We do the the the medical industry is not the health care business. It's the sick care business. It's the it's the illness management business. It's not in the illness correction or management or preventative maintenance. And by optimizers, we're building a new paradigm.

Guest [00:46:53]: We're driven by passion and experience and science and innovation to create this data points and the products and services and strategies that allows people to be successful in the short term and in the long term so we can change the paradigm of living long and living strong.

Finn Melanson [00:47:08]: Wade, this has been an awesome conversation. Really appreciated the time. Like I said, the book Ultimate Nutrition Bible is excellent. We'll link to it in the show notes. Any any final thoughts or other calls to action that you wanna leave listeners with before we go?

Guest [00:47:22]: Yes. Do not be terrified by the size of this book. It's huge. The average person will need maybe a 150 pages, to figure out their own self. But more importantly, once they have it, you will be able to see through all the misdirections of the world, whether that's intentional misdirections or, unknown misdirections out of ignorance. Whatever that case, you'd be able to see it clearly, you'd be able to apply it for yourself, you'll apply it for your family. It'll be something that'll sit around your house forever, and that when the when the debate happens with your friends, you'll be able to pull out the book, get that chapter, solve that, it'll be over and done, and, you'll be on your way. And you put to bed a lot of arguments and a lot of confusion and save yourself a lot of suffering.

Finn Melanson [00:48:23]: Thanks for listening to Run to the Top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Apple Podcast Players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, behind the scenes experiences with our guests, and premier access to contests and giveaways, and subscribe to our newsletter by going to runnersconnect.netback/podcast. Until next time, happy trading.