Joe Rogan Experience #1176 - Dom D'Agostino & Layne Norton

1. 0:01 – 2:18

   Meet the guests: science-minded strength athletes with different nutrition lenses

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:01

      Here we go. Four, three, oh, two, one. (claps) And we're live. Gentlemen, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Um, let everybody know who you are. Layne?

   2. LNLayne Norton0:15

      Uh, I'm a meathead who likes science. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      (laughs)

   4. LNLayne Norton0:17

      Uh, got into bodybuilding when I was young. Uh, and then did a BS in Biochemistry, PhD in Nutritional Science. Um, kept lifting, did power lifting, won two national championships, got silver medal at worlds, set a then world squat record, and did also bodybuilding and won a natural pro card. They actually have natural bodybuilding, believe it or not. (laughs) And, uh, throughout that time just, you know, when I first got into it, one magazine said one thing and even in the same magazine, they'd have an article one month and the next month it would contradict it.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:50

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LNLayne Norton0:50

      So I was like, "I'm just gonna try and figure this shit out for myself." So-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:54

      Which is the place that a lot of people listening are at right now.

   8. LNLayne Norton0:57

      Yeah. And it's, it's tough 'cause it's kind of like, who do you trust?

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00

      Right.

   10. LNLayne Norton1:00

       Because no, not everybody has the time or the energy to go and do a degree in this stuff. So, but that was me. I kind of got down the rabbit hole of, all right, let's try and figure this nutrition stuff outAnd of course, the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know. But, uh, yeah, it just became a passion for me to and to this day, I'm still very... I, I love this stuff. This is what gets me up, gets me going.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       Well, guys like you are very important, guys who actually train very hard and really understand the science. This is 'cause it's usually one or the other.

   12. LNLayne Norton1:30

       Absolutely.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:31

       Yeah.

   14. LNLayne Norton1:32

       And I, like, when I was doing it, I, I graduated my PhD in 2010. When we started, we actually both knew each other from the bodybuilding.com message boards. So this was back before social media.

   15. DDDom D’Agostino1:43

       Trained together back in 2006 or 7, yeah, yeah.

   16. LNLayne Norton1:46

       7 at Experimental Biology.

   17. DDDom D’Agostino1:47

       Yeah, yeah.

   18. LNLayne Norton1:47

       So this big, there's a big symposium every year for science geeks.

   19. DDDom D’Agostino1:51

       (laughs)

   20. LNLayne Norton1:51

       And, uh, we were both going to it and we found out about each other on the forums and we went and trained together and he's a, he's a beast. Uh, and, uh, yeah, we really hit it off and we've been friends since then. So for everybody-

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:03

       Awesome.

   22. LNLayne Norton2:03

       ... who's looking for a fight, so- sorry.

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:06

       (laughs)

   24. LNLayne Norton2:06

       We're probably gonna be pretty friendly.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:08

       Well, it's gonna be a conversation. We don't need to have a, a fight. And Dom, uh, you've been on the podcast before, but for people who didn't listen-

   26. DDDom D’Agostino2:14

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:14

       ... to that one, please tell them who you are and what you do.

   28. DDDom D’Agostino2:16

       Yeah. Uh, um-

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:17

       Keep this sucker glued.

2. 2:18 – 5:13

   Why the military cares about ketosis: oxygen-toxicity seizures and operational readiness

   1. DDDom D’Agostino2:18

      Yeah, yeah, sure. Uh, I, well go, getting back, I, I majored in nutrition actually as an undergrad, but didn't actually see a career in it that much. (laughs) So I went into neuroscience. The ni- '90s was the decade of the brain and, uh, my, my, you know, formal training is in neuroscience and it got steered towards basically changing the neuropharmacology of the brain with nutrition. And that's what the ketogenic diet does and it has tremendous benefits, I think, for military personnel, which is, um, funded by the Office of Navy Research and the Department of Defense to develop ketogenic strategies to enhance readiness, uh, resilience and, and performance and safety in military personnel.

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:59

      And what, what did, why specifically, um, does the ketogenic diet help military people? I know there's a thing with, uh, Navy SEALs with, uh, preventing epilepsy-

   3. DDDom D’Agostino3:07

      Oxygen rebreather.

   4. JRJoe Rogan3:09

      Yeah.

   5. DDDom D’Agostino3:09

      Yeah. So, uh, central nervous system oxygen toxicity, a limitation of that is, um, or a limitation of Navy SEAL diving is oxygen toxicity seizures. And, uh, anti-epileptic drugs are not really a viable option because they can, uh, there are side effects. It can decrease cognitive, uh, you know, resilience, physical resilience. Uh, a ketogenic strategy is something that's being studied now from a basic science mechanistic perspective to animal work to now human studies. So it's not, you know, out in the field yet, but some guys are actually doing it. Uh, and I study the science of that. And-

   6. JRJoe Rogan3:44

      So for people who don't understand what we're saying, um, for some folks who have epilepsy, the ketogenic diet has been shown to stop seizures.

   7. DDDom D’Agostino3:51

      Absolutely. Go Google The Charley Foundation. So that's how I actually got linked in and actually I met, uh, a natural drug-free bodybuilder. His name was Mike Dancer and he had severe terminal epilepsy. Google Mike Dancer ketogenic diet and you'll find an amazing story about a guy who used nutrition to manage his epilepsy when drugs failed and he used it to prep and win bodybuilding shows and compete in bodybuilding.

   8. JRJoe Rogan4:17

      And the rebreathers sometimes cause seizures with some of the soldiers.

   9. DDDom D’Agostino4:22

      They can. So, uh, for example, just 50 feet of seawater using a closed circuit bre- rebreather, like a Dräger rebreather, at 50 feet of seawater, your poten- potential for getting oxygen toxicity seizure can occur in just 10 minutes. So that's a little bit of time and that's not very deep. So there's no way to predict that and there's no way as of now to prevent that. So we study physiological biomarkers that could warn people of an impending seizure and we also develop, uh, countermeasures to mitigate oxygen toxicity seizures. I focus mostly on drugs. I'm in a pharmacology and phys- physiology department, but I realized that people with epilepsy, the ketogenic diet was more effective than drugs. So I got steered into, you know, nutrition, which was my undergrad and then that kicked off about 10 years ago and I've just been deep into probably a dozen or more different applications of nutritional ketosis.

3. 5:13 – 6:53

   Diet tribes, ideology, and “calling bullshit” in nutrition culture

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:13

      Awesome. And Layne, I've been paying attention to you online for a long time. One of the things you do-

   2. LNLayne Norton5:17

      Uh-oh.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:17

      ... a great job with is just calling bullshit-

   4. LNLayne Norton5:20

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:21

      ... on, I mean, you love to call bullshit clearly. But whenever people are overstating claims or people get ridiculous, and I think this is one of the things that is a problem with any diet where people get really enthusiastic about it. That becomes an ideology, whether it's the ketogenic diet or the carnivore diet or the, you know, fill in the blanks, vegan diet. People decide this is the end-all be-all. It's gonna cure cancer, make you smarter, your dick's gonna grow a foot.

   6. LNLayne Norton5:47

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan5:47

      All these things are gonna happen and you do a great job of calling bullshit on that kind of stuff.

   8. LNLayne Norton5:53

      Yeah, I mean, I, I'm not anti-keto. I'm not anti-vegan. I'm anti-bullshit. And one of the problems we have is nutrition is replacing religion for a lot of people. So you find something that you identify with...... and then people start to try to say because they identify with that movement or, like for example, vegans, they identify with, many of them, uh, protection of animals. Uh, not my job to judge their ethics on that sort of thing. But then they kind of try to backtrack to find the science to support them as well, and they, they pick and choose. And this is guilty of all groups, not just vegans. This is also, uh, a lot of ketogenic diet zealots, uh, carnivore diet, whatever have you. If it has the word "diet," there's zealots out there who are going after it. And I will stick up for... Uh, I've stuck up at a scientific conference for the ketogenic diet. Uh, you were, we were having a roundtable about something different and somebody said, "Well, we know that the ketogenic diet impairs exercise, performance in endurance athletes." And I said, "I don't

4. 6:53 – 10:03

   Calories, macros, and fat balance: insulin models vs energy balance (with fructose nuance)

   1. LNLayne Norton6:53

      think that's necessarily true." Uh, you know, the, the, it's pretty am- ambivalent, uh, or ambiguous as to whether or not it does. It seems to be kind of individual, um, but on the whole, on the average, it doesn't seem to impair exercise performance. So it's kind of what you like. But when you have people who, you know, like, like a Gary Taubes who says, "Well, calories don't matter. Uh, it's all carbohydrates," um, that sort of thing, the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity, I mean, the, the research is you're able to do a lot of hand-waving about insulin and, you know, when you burn so much fat when you're on a high-fat diet, which is true by the way, you, you burn a lot of fat, but what they don't talk about is that it's, it's overall fat balance, how much fat you store versus how much fat you burn. And when you're on a high-fat diet, you store a lot of fat. You also burn a lot of fat. The overall caloric balance is what determines whether or not you will have net storage or net deposition. And the same thing for a high-carb diet as well. You know, this idea that with high insulin, uh, it just completely shuts down all fat burning everywhere. That, that's just not true. Now, if you have high carbohydrate, you will burn less fat, but you're also storing less fat as well. And again, the net caloric balance is gonna be what determines how much you store because you don't really store carbohydrate as fat, for most people. They did a study, uh, overfeeding women where they overfed them 50% above their caloric maintenance, and they found that of 282 grams of fat they stored during a day in adipose, only four grams came from carbohydrate. 278 came from fat.

   2. DDDom D’Agostino8:26

      So glucose... What about fructose? So fructose causes, we think, you know, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. So that could be, you know, that's... De novo, de novo lipogenesis is higher with fructose and you're, you're... Think about people consuming it in liquid drinks, 100 to 200 grams a day, which is not uncommon, even for my wife. Not uncommon. (laughs)

   3. LNLayne Norton8:46

      So fructose does seem to have a little bit of different hepatic-

   4. DDDom D’Agostino8:50

      Yeah.

   5. LNLayne Norton8:51

      ... metabolism. But I was actually across the hall from, um, a professor who was doing a lot of the research on, on fructose and obesity and, and fatty liver disease, and even he came to the conclusion that if you overfeed fructose and it creates a caloric surplus-

   6. DDDom D’Agostino9:06

      Calorie surplus, yeah, yeah.

   7. LNLayne Norton9:06

      ... and you're overfeeding fructose, then you can have some wonky stuff start to go on.

   8. DDDom D’Agostino9:10

      Relative to other macros.

   9. LNLayne Norton9:11

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan9:12

       I try to keep this, try to keep this right next to your face. Sorry.

   11. DDDom D’Agostino9:14

       Got it.

   12. LNLayne Norton9:15

       That's what she said.

   13. JRJoe Rogan9:15

       'Cause Lane, Lane is so powerful.

   14. DDDom D’Agostino9:16

       (laughs)

   15. LNLayne Norton9:18

       I talk loud and a lot.

   16. JRJoe Rogan9:19

       It's good.

   17. LNLayne Norton9:19

       Um, so if you're, if you're doing that, if you're creating that caloric surplus, what you find is when you're in net storage, when you're driving more, uh, nutrients into adipose and sometimes liver, depending on metabolism, but it takes... It takes a lot of fructose to do that, and a caloric surplus. You start to create a lot of wonky stuff going on. Um, the mitochondria starts to become dysfunctional and, you know, people make a big deal about, "Oh, well, you have..." We have claimed now that everything causes, uh, obesity and type 2 diabetes. For, for first it was fats, uh, then carbohydrates, and there's actually professors out there who actually will claim that protein gives you diabetes, type 2 diabetes.

   18. DDDom D’Agostino10:02

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:02

       Can I stop, can I stop you for a second?

   20. LNLayne Norton10:03

       Yeah.

5. 10:03 – 12:56

   A mechanistic detour: mitochondrial dysfunction, metabolic “backup,” and insulin resistance

   1. JRJoe Rogan10:03

      What do you mean the mitochondria becomes dysfunctional? How does the mitochondrial... How, how does that happen?

   2. LNLayne Norton10:09

      Okay, so I- I'm gonna state for everybody that I'm going out on a limb. This is my opinion.

   3. JRJoe Rogan10:13

      Okay.

   4. LNLayne Norton10:14

      Um, if you look at the research on obesity and diabetes, what happens is you have everything start to elevate in the bloodstream. So if you measure, like... There was a professor who thought that branched-chain amino acids were causing obesity because they were elevated in the bloodstream during, uh, or sorry, during type 2 diabetes. Well, yeah, branched-chain amino acids are elevated. So is fatty acids, so are triacylglycerides, so is glucose. So is it really those things causing it or is it possible that when you are overfeeding relative to what you burn, relative to that turnover, that m- mitochondria start to become dysfunctional? Probably a lot due to inactivity. Um, and the mitochondria is, as we call it, the powerhouse of the cell, as you probably learned in high school biology or whatever they taught it to you as. That is where everything fluxes through. So that is where you're creating ATP. That's where you're burning through lipids, carbohydrates, that sort of thing. If that becomes dysfunctional and you're not getting enough flux, enough pull through that mitochondria, what happens is you start to back up every part of metabolism. So all the metabolic byproducts, almost all of them-

   5. DDDom D’Agostino11:28

      Yeah.

   6. LNLayne Norton11:28

      ... inhibit everything within the cell.

   7. DDDom D’Agostino11:29

      There's a metabolomic signature for that and an epiphenomenon, if you wanna call it that-

   8. LNLayne Norton11:34

      Yeah.

   9. DDDom D’Agostino11:34

      ... would be elevated branched-chain amino acids could be-

   10. LNLayne Norton11:36

       So-

   11. DDDom D’Agostino11:36

       ... a consequence of that in, in some people. Yeah.

   12. NANarrator11:39

       Sure.

   13. LNLayne Norton11:39

       So these things start... These byproducts, these metabolic byproducts, because you're not fluxing enough through the cell, they start accumulating within the cell and start to inhibit the Krebs cycle, glycolysis, and so everything starts backing up to the point where you also start inhibiting the insulin receptor. And now you have glucose, fatty acids, and, uh, amino acids also backing up to the point where they start to overspill into the bloodstream. And you see these- this accumulation of all of them in the bloodstream in type 2 diabetes. And-... I actually think that, again, me going out on a limb, that obesity doesn't cause type 2 diabetes and type 2 diabetes doesn't cause obesity, that they develop in concert from the same problem, which is overfeeding under activity.

   14. JRJoe Rogan12:23

       Mm.

   15. LNLayne Norton12:24

       So a lot of it is about how much nutrients you're fluxing into cells versus how much energy you're creating fluxing them through the cell and out. So when you're overfeeding, whether it be carbohydrate, fat, you're fluxing more energy in than you can dispose of, and now you have to do something with it. Well, when you run out of... When you do that much to it and mitochondria start to become dysfunction- dysfunctional, you start to not have enough places to put it away and it starts spilling into the bloodstream, and now you cause all kinds of problems.

6. 12:56 – 16:17

   The core debate setup: high-carb vs low-carb for weight loss, adherence, and performance

   1. JRJoe Rogan12:56

      So one of the things that we really wanted to talk about here is high carb versus low carb-

   2. LNLayne Norton13:01

      Yep.

   3. JRJoe Rogan13:01

      ... because this is a- a- just a giant point of contention today in nutrition, especially in terms of, uh, athletes w- with performance, uh, in mind. That's- it's a big factor, whether or not high carb or low carb is the way to go. And there's a lot of zealots on both sides, and there's a lot of bullshit, and there's a lot of, you know, online experts. And one of the great thing about bringing you two guys in here is 'cause you could really actually explain the science behind it. Now, uh, you've been great, Layne, at pointing out that there's- it's not a magic bullet. And, you know, and so many people like to s- sort of stress it that way, that- that they- they- they like to portray ketogenic diet as, "This is it. This is the end all, be all. I figured out what to do. This is the way everyone should be eating." You don't think so.

   4. LNLayne Norton13:47

      I don't think so because if you look at the- the weight loss problem in our society, uh, and I'm- I'm writing a book called Fat Loss Forever where I talk about this in detail, we don't have a weight loss problem. Six out of every seven people are able to lose a significant amount of body weight in their life who are obese or overweight. The problem is the weight regain statistics are absolutely, like, terrifying. Uh, within one year, 70% will put it all back on. Within two years, uh, it's 85%. Within three years, it's 95%. So that means diets have a 95% failure rate. And of those people, one-third to two-thirds will add more than they originally lost, and this gets kind of into yo-yo dieting, and I talk about that as well. But the- the real problem is that people don't stick to s- pick something that's sustainable for them. All the research... If there's one bit of research out there that- that we have that shows how to create lasting weight loss and you look at the people who are the 5% who actually keep it off, uh, it's that they pick something that's sustainable, whether it be ketogenic, whether it be low carb, high or low fat, whatever it is, vegan, something that they can sustain and make a lifestyle. If... 'Cause if you look at, uh, meta-analyses, uh, uh, for our listeners, meta-analyses are- are kind of a study of studies. So they take... Researchers take studies that have similar parameters and they kind of lump them together, and they look at, okay, what's the consensus amongst these studies? And they have advanced statistics they use to run this. If you look at low carb versus low fat, there's no difference in adherence overall on the whole. There's no difference, and there's no difference in weight loss. There's no difference in, uh, blood lipids, even glycemic control. So there was a study where they... a meta-analysis of I think it was 23 studies, over 3,000 people, where they looked at, okay, if you control calories, so calories are equated, does low carb versus low fat make a difference on weight loss, glycemic control, those sorts of things?

   5. DDDom D’Agostino15:52

      Not necessarily the ketogenic diet.

   6. LNLayne Norton15:54

      Right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:54

      Mm-hmm.

   8. DDDom D’Agostino15:55

      So by definition, we have an objective biomarker that defines the ketogenic diet. It's the only diet that actually has something that you, you know, you can measure in your blood to say you're on this diet. And when your ketone levels are elevated, that confers many different benefits, uh, that I believe can enhance adherence to the diet.

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:13

      Before we get into the woods here, uh, I wanna clarify one thing.

   10. LNLayne Norton16:17

       Yep.

7. 16:17 – 29:28

   Discipline vs sustainability: finite willpower, stress, and individualized diet fit

   1. JRJoe Rogan16:17

      The difference between, uh, someone being on a diet and being able to sustain it and not being able to sustain it and gaining all that weight back, isn't that a discipline issue?

   2. LNLayne Norton16:26

      Well, partly, but we kinda have to start looking at, okay, if we- if we go and... Let me re- let me re-circle. We have to find what requires the least amount of discipline for somebody to stick to because discipline is- is... While some people have more, some people have less. Um, it is a- a f- finite resource. So when do we normally find that people, like, kind of drop off whatever they're doing? It's when they're stressed out, work's stressing them out, uh, they're going through a divorce, those kinds of things, right? That's where our- our discipline kind of wanes because we're trying to be so disciplined for this other thing.

   3. JRJoe Rogan17:05

      Mm-hmm.

   4. LNLayne Norton17:05

      And it's draining us. So what happens w- with- with diet is, you know, people who are busy, people who have a lot of stress in their life, that's where they really start overeating. So we have to find something that require... I look at it as, let's find something that requires the minimal amount of- of discipline for a person so that when your life goes to absolute shit, you can still stick to it. And so for some people, that is a very, very individual thing. And they see this in the dietary studies, that what works for one person to create a deficit and sustainable isn't the same way for another person. And Dom even commented on this about his wife, Chilla. Um, she does much better on a higher ratio of carbohydrates to fat.

   5. DDDom D’Agostino17:49

      Yeah, I- I mean, early on, it was obvious that she wasn't gonna change her diet. I... The time that we met, like, 10 years ago almost-

   6. LNLayne Norton17:55

      (laughs)

   7. DDDom D’Agostino17:55

      ... we- I was really getting into this, and I really felt that, for me at least, uh, but she would stop at Checkers and, you know, get a burger and with a-

   8. LNLayne Norton18:03

      (laughs)

   9. DDDom D’Agostino18:04

      ... sugary drink in. And she's tremendously carb intolerant. She was very skinny as a kid, and, uh, she tolerates-

   10. LNLayne Norton18:11

       You mean intolerant?

   11. DDDom D’Agostino18:12

       ... uh, carbohydrate... She's very carbohydrate tolerant.

   12. LNLayne Norton18:14

       Yes.

   13. DDDom D’Agostino18:14

       Did I say intolerant? Okay.

   14. LNLayne Norton18:15

       Yeah. (laughs)

   15. DDDom D’Agostino18:16

       Uh, yeah. Uh, so- and- and, you know, if-... the diet, low carb I feel and maybe-- and ketogenic, putting it under that umbrella, works, I think, for up to 25 to 30% of people, uh, especially if they're carbohydrate intolerant. And I believe that it does that by virtue of elevating ketones, shifting your, uh, the neuropharmacology of the brain. For example, it works through ghrelin, it works through... There's new science emerging right now showing that appetite regulation is influenced, uh, positively by, uh, nutritional ketosis in ways that we're just starting to learn now.

   16. JVJamie Vernon18:56

       Well, you can certainly feel it. It's one of the weirder-

   17. DDDom D’Agostino18:58

       Oh, yeah, yeah.

   18. JVJamie Vernon18:58

       ... things about-

   19. DDDom D’Agostino18:59

       Yes.

   20. JVJamie Vernon18:59

       ... the ketogenic diet. When you're in that state, y- all of a sudden you're just not hungry the same.

   21. DDDom D’Agostino19:03

       Yeah.

   22. JVJamie Vernon19:03

       It's- there's not a, an overwhelming need-

   23. DDDom D’Agostino19:05

       Yeah.

   24. JVJamie Vernon19:05

       ... for food.

   25. DDDom D’Agostino19:06

       Yeah. I'm, I haven't had anything to eat today. I mean, when I was eating massive plates of pasta 25 years ago, and I went to this, this long without food, I would start getting shaky. I would, I would have a hypoglycemic response. And I'm completely resilient to that, and that has major implications for military personnel being keto-adapted, not just for performance, preventing seizures, and I think for, uh, cognitive function too. But you, uh, it's very liberating. So meal frequency is not an issue. So if you're in austere environments where you have limited food availability, that becomes a major issue. And if you're working as a scientist and you can't, you know, you're working with animals, you're doing experiments, you don't have time to eat, I need to maintain that cognitive function, I need to be sharp, you know, with limited food av- So it worked very good for me throughout my professorship, you know, getting tenure and things like that, where I could just put more time and energy into my work without having to stop, prepare a meal, eat a meal, clean up. Like, I think I wasted a lot of time doing that when I was eating five to six meals a day. Yeah.

   26. JVJamie Vernon20:10

       He, he said something that I think you've called bullshit on before, the, the phrase-

   27. DDDom D’Agostino20:14

       (laughs)

   28. JVJamie Vernon20:14

       ... carb intolerant.

   29. LNLayne Norton20:16

       So yeah, so that was-

   30. DDDom D’Agostino20:17

       Yeah.
8. 29:28 – 42:30

   Flexible dieting, “Pop-Tarts,” and why restriction style changes adherence

   1. LNLayne Norton29:28

      You bring that up. Interesting though, um, if you look at people that think they're addicted to sugar or that sugar's a lot, if you look at things like cookies and cakes and all, it's actually, they have more calories from fats than they do sugars. It's sugar and fat together is hyper-palatable, right?

   2. JRJoe Rogan29:44

      Mm. Yeah.

   3. LNLayne Norton29:44

      So, we, one of the things I was, was gonna bring up is, um, you know, this idea that, that, that sugar is so inherently bad, and you said the, the cookie, you know, we view that as an inherently bad thing. But what if I told you that there were certain people, not everybody, everybody's different, but there are certain people who if you tell them, "Hey, you can have that cookie every once in a while, if you track it, work it into your macronutrient intake, that that's fine," that that actually improved their adherence to diet-... so-

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:10

      Because you give them a reward?

   5. LNLayne Norton30:12

      No. Not a rewards system. You're not a dog. Don't reward yourself with food.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:15

      Oh, okay. (laughs)

   7. LNLayne Norton30:16

      Be- because, because increased flexibility, uh, actually usually improves adherence.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:21

      Oh.

   9. LNLayne Norton30:21

      So, a- we see this actually with training too. Uh, athletes, uh, when you do a flexible training model, uh, where they have to get in a certain amount of training but they kinda can pick and choose their self which days are hard and which days are a little bit ... They actually do better. Diet is very similar to that. So, now you always have to sacrifice something in order to, uh, if you wanna lose weight, right? So if you're doing a ketogenic diet, what you're sacrificing is saying, "Well, I like the spontaneous reductions in appetite, so I don't mind eating not these foods so I can get that." If you're doing, like, k- kind of what, I don't wanna say I popularized it, but myself and some other people on the message boards popularized something called flexible dieting, where you can eat essentially whatever you want as long as you hit your protein, carbohydrate, and fat targets. Now what you're sacrificing is, okay, you're tracking every day, right?

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:09

       Do you do that through an app?

   11. LNLayne Norton31:10

       Through what?

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       An app?

   13. LNLayne Norton31:12

       Uh, no, I'm old school. I actually just do it through Excel. (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       Okay.

   15. LNLayne Norton31:15

       I've, I've t- I, my girlfriend, Holly, she has a, an app on her phone and, uh, like, she, uh, she has me, like, if she's driving, she's like, "Oh, will you put in what I just ate?" I'm like, "Babe, I don't even, uh, know."

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:25

       (laughs)

   17. LNLayne Norton31:25

       "I have no idea how to work this thing." You know? So, because when I went to do my graduate studies, I mean, I wanted to find magic foods. I wanted to find something that would s- 'cause h- how else can you make a living? You have to set yourself apart. I mean, if I'm over here saying ... It's hard for me to sell what I, what I do, 'cause I'm saying, "Well, you, everything in moderation and, and you gotta be diligent and you gotta have these behaviors," and that, that doesn't sound sexy when there's another guy over here saying, "Nah, bro, it's just carbs. I know metabolism's complicated and everything, but i- i- it's just carbs." You know, when I started working with people, and I've worked with, uh, over 1,500 people coaching in nutrition online over the past 13 years, which actually probably taught me more than my, than my PhD did. Um, what I found was is that people were so different individually in terms of what, what made them tick. You know? Uh, now I feel like I should probably go back and get some kind of-

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:18

       What makes them tick? Biologically, what makes them tick or psychologically?

   19. LNLayne Norton32:22

       S- both. Both.

   20. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       Yeah.

   21. LNLayne Norton32:23

       So I can't sit here and say by the research that, that carbohydrate versus fat makes a difference on fat loss. But what I can tell you is that some people just seem to do better on lower carb, higher fat. But also, some people I worked with just seemed to do better with higher carb, lower fat. Now whether that's a psychological thing or a physiological thing, it's hard to tease out.

   22. DDDom D’Agostino32:46

       Genetically too, I think. I mean-

   23. LNLayne Norton32:47

       Yeah.

   24. DDDom D’Agostino32:47

       ... we all have different SNPs, you know, that-

   25. LNLayne Norton32:49

       Yeah.

   26. DDDom D’Agostino32:50

       ... you know, some people have suppressed fatty acid oxidation pathways. Others are, like, screaming fat metabolizers, you know, or, or fat or sugar metabolizers.

   27. LNLayne Norton32:58

       Yeah.

   28. DDDom D’Agostino32:59

       You know?

   29. LNLayne Norton32:59

       So but if you look at, l- like ... I remember I had a conversation with, um, with w- the re- the, the researcher, uh, Dr. Nakamura at Illinois who was doing, uh, some of that fructose, uh, stuff when I was a, when I was a first year grad student. I said, "Well, it's this, this high fructose corn syrup, this is what's causing obesity, right?" And he's like, "Well, it's easy to overconsume. You know, like if you take a, a di- uh, a soda and you drink it, you're not less hungry than you were. It's not very satiating." He said, "But if you're, if you're controlling your calories, it doesn't seem to be more lipogenic than comparable carbohydrate." You know, and I thought, remember thinking, "Well, that can't be right. I, all these people say that high fructose corn syrup is like the worst thing in the world for you." There was, there was a few studies that really changed my opinion on sugar. Now, the listeners are gonna hear this and think that I'm advocating for sugar. I'm not.

   30. DDDom D’Agostino33:49

       So you're not talking about in the, in the context of a calorie surplus-
9. 42:30 – 51:50

   Processed food, insulin spikes, and health markers: what matters in surplus vs deficit

   1. TFTim Ferriss42:30

      Tim, before you st- do that, why do you think that it would be an issue? What, what would be the issue with sugar and with Pop-Tarts and junk food? What would be the negative effects, biologically?

   2. DDDom D’Agostino42:40

      I think the accumulation of the postprandial spikes in glucose and insulin over time, especially in the context of a calorie surplus, could be a bad thing. If you are doing a calorie surplus, to example- for example, to gain weight and mass over time, which bodybuilders do, you know, following contests, in the off season, uh, I think it's even more important, almost, to actually stick with, um, uh, foods, carbohydrate sources that are lower glycemic. You know, you can only tolerate so much fiber, but I think if you are running a calorie sur- if you are doing a ketogenic diet, and you have a calorie surplus, that could be a bad thing. Your triglycer- your triglycerides will go up, so you are, you're putting too much fat in the system and that-

   3. LNLayne Norton43:25

      But it would go up on a higher carb diet, so, so this is me defending-

   4. DDDom D’Agostino43:27

      It, it would go up on a higher carb diet too.

   5. LNLayne Norton43:29

      Yeah.

   6. DDDom D’Agostino43:29

      So, I mean, I kind of would stay along the lines of maybe protein, but you just, you know, you titrate it in, in a reasonable amount. But I, I just think that, that the negative, you know, that could come out of that is that you're, you, you know, I, I'm following a blood glucose curve, right? And an insulin curve. And, and I see this very dramatically, for example, in my, my student, uh, who's a type 1 diabetic, Andrew Koutnik, who's an... And he wears a Dexcom, a continuous blood glucose monitoring system, and his insulin requirements dramatically dropped with low carb and his glucose fluctuations dramatically improved, and that's gonna pay big dividends probably... If you have type 1 diabetes, you ev- you know, the 10 top things, uh, on, on how humans die, you have a greater risk for every one of those. You know, dramatic... And, you know, it cuts 10 years off your life. If... The tighter you can keep your glucose, uh, levels, your blood glucose and your insulin levels, that, in the long run, I feel, is gonna pay. The, the science still has to show that, I think. It's not totally clear. Uh, but I think we can for type 1 diabetics, which I think we can apply that data to the, to the population, if they control their glucose levels, that pays big dividends in, in the long run.

   7. LNLayne Norton44:46

      Lane? So, uh, a couple of things. You actually touched on a couple of points I was gonna bring up, but I wanna address one thing first which is, uh, the higher postprandial insulin in those, the negative effects on health. Um, so if you have... They've done studies on this on BMI versus insulin. Now, BMI is a... We can debate about how useful of a measure it is, but in general, it reflects body fat in the average population. Not in lifters, but in the average. Uh, BMI, by the way, for people who are listening, is a, a ratio of your, your height versus your weight that generally reflects obesity.

   8. DDDom D’Agostino45:18

      And you're obese.

   9. LNLayne Norton45:19

      I'm obese.

   10. DDDom D’Agostino45:19

       And I'm obese.

   11. LNLayne Norton45:20

       Yes, yeah. Yeah, so if you lift weights and you have-

   12. DDDom D’Agostino45:22

       Lane and I are both obese. (laughs)

   13. LNLayne Norton45:23

       Yeah, I'm, I'm morbidly obese.

   14. TFTim Ferriss45:24

       It seems so silly.

   15. LNLayne Norton45:26

       It is, but if you look at the general population who doesn't exercise, it's actually pretty darn accurate. Um, they-

   16. DDDom D’Agostino45:32

       Gets factored into your insurance though, which is not-

   17. LNLayne Norton45:35

       Yeah, it sucks for me.

   18. TFTim Ferriss45:35

       Is it really? Yours?

   19. DDDom D’Agostino45:36

       It can.

   20. TFTim Ferriss45:37

       That's hilarious.

   21. LNLayne Norton45:37

       It does. Yeah, it sucks.

   22. TFTim Ferriss45:38

       They look at you and say you're obese.

   23. LNLayne Norton45:39

       Some, some insurances will do like a waist-chest measurement, which, which helps, but anyway. (laughs) So postprandial insulin, they've looked at the relationship between people who have... Their BMIs and postprandial insulin. They find that people with higher BMI have higher postprandial insulin, but the opposite relationship does not hold true.

   24. TFTim Ferriss45:58

       Hmm.

   25. LNLayne Norton45:58

       People who have higher insulin do not necessarily have higher BMI, and they've done this in meta-analysis. So what that says is, again, that if you are obese, type 2 diabetic metabolic syndrome profile, that you have elevated levels of insulin because your body's becoming insensitive to it because of all the dysfunction that we talked about. Um, but just because you secrete higher insulin, um, doesn't mean that you're gonna have more body fat. And there was a study done actually by one of the proponents of the carbohydrate insulin, uh, hypothesis, um, that looked at what's called Mendelian randomization, where basically the idea is you have different gene variants, like we were talking about, and if... For example, like they've done this with LDL cholesterol. Uh, or sorry, yes, LDL cholesterol. We believe, most people believe that LDL cholesterol has some contribution towards heart disease. It's a pretty, I would say, it's a pretty strong... Now people can over-

   26. DDDom D’Agostino46:53

       Very controversial.

   27. LNLayne Norton46:54

       Uh, okay, so-

   28. DDDom D’Agostino46:56

       Very context dependent and, and individual.

   29. LNLayne Norton46:58

       When they look at these, these gene variants, people who have gene variants where they run lower LDL have lower rates of, of heart disease. People who are higher, higher rates of heart disease.

   30. DDDom D’Agostino47:07

       Yeah, with gene variants, yeah.
10. 51:50 – 1:02:13

    Metabolic adaptation and yo-yo dieting: why regain is fast and dieting gets harder

    1. LNLayne Norton51:50

       ... and they're, they don't care about insulin. Anyway. They took rats, they took 'em through two diet cycles. Okay. So this is kind of back to the yo-yo dieting thing. Um, and they looked at... Okay, when they took obese rats, dieted them down to a kind of normal level, then they let... then they g- basically gave 'em as much food as they wanted, let 'em eat back to their original obese level, dieted them down again to the previous level, and then let 'em re-eat back up. What they found was absolutely astonishing. Their food efficiency went so far up because their metabolic rate became suppressed every time they dieted down. Your body has this self-defense system that you activate every time you diet. I talk about this in my Shameless Plug book. Um, so the first time they dieted, if that's the kind of one times rate that they lost, uh, fat at, when they let them regain it, they regained it twice as fast as they lost it. Then the second time they tried to lose it, they lost it at half the original rate. Then when they regained it the second time, they re- regained it three times as fast. Their food efficiency went way up. Yeah.

    2. JRJoe Rogan52:53

       Did their ability to lose it get-

    3. LNLayne Norton52:54

       Have you noticed, have you noticed-

    4. JRJoe Rogan52:56

       ... fast as well?

    5. LNLayne Norton52:56

       What's that? Yeah, so-

    6. JRJoe Rogan52:57

       Did their ability to lose it get, uh, uh, exponentially faster as well?

    7. LNLayne Norton53:00

       Wasn't, was... No, no. There, there-

    8. JRJoe Rogan53:01

       No.

    9. LNLayne Norton53:01

       It, it took 'em twice as long to lose the same amount of weight.

    10. JRJoe Rogan53:05

        Ah.

    11. LNLayne Norton53:05

        Sorry, I, I probably didn't explain it very well. Yeah, it took 'em twice as long to lose the same amount of weight, and they regained it in a third the time of the original.

    12. JRJoe Rogan53:12

        So your body's getting accustomed to famine.

    13. LNLayne Norton53:15

        Exactly, because every time you diet... And we see this with yo-yo dieters who spend... How many people do you know that seem to be perpetually on a diet-

    14. JRJoe Rogan53:22

        Yeah.

    15. LNLayne Norton53:23

        ... but they just have that short overfeeding period in between diets and then they-

    16. JRJoe Rogan53:26

        And it fucks with them.

    17. LNLayne Norton53:27

        It really does because-

    18. JRJoe Rogan53:28

        Yeah.

    19. LNLayne Norton53:28

        ... every time you diet, you're activating your body's self-defense system. How many fighters do you know that every time they diet, it gets harder and harder for them to make weight?

    20. JRJoe Rogan53:37

        Mm-hmm. Well, they're doing more than that. They're, they're cutting weight. The, the cutting weight is ruthless. They're-

    21. LNLayne Norton53:41

        Right.

    22. JRJoe Rogan53:41

        ... they're essentially almost dying.

    23. LNLayne Norton53:43

        Right. But the part of that is they're, they're having to crash diet super low. So what is the signal you're telling your body? 'Cause you have to always think about things from an evolutionary perspective. My PhD advisor was great about this. He'd always ask me... His name was Dr. Don Laymon, brilliant guy. And he would say, "Why do you think the body did this?" Well, if you think about what are the regulatory mechanisms on becoming fat versus becoming too thin, right? So one, one danger is you starve to death. The other danger is you get so fat that a predator can come get you. Which is more dangerous in the last 20,000 years? It's famine. It's famine.... so your body cre- creates much tighter self-defense system there. So when you diet, your metabolic rate slows way down. I mean, if you've, you've ever... These guys who cut weight. So by the time they're ready to get, um, a fight, for example, their metabolic rate's really slow. Then what happens after they, they fight, they eat a crap ton of food because their, their, their ghrelin is way up, leptin is way down, insulin is way down, and they regain it really fast. Now, what happens-

    24. DDDom D’Agostino54:49

        I think it's safe to assume, just to interject, that if you diet for 16 weeks for a show, for example, or a contest-

    25. LNLayne Norton54:55

        Or anything.

    26. DDDom D’Agostino54:56

        ... that w- what you, uh, actually educated me in, like, 10 years ago, and I thought there was this, like, post-contest rebound and in two weeks there'd be this anabolic window or whatever.

    27. LNLayne Norton55:05

        Your anabolic for fat. (laughs)

    28. DDDom D’Agostino55:06

        That it actually... If you diet hard for 16 weeks to make weight i- it takes an equal amount of time to get your metabolism back-

    29. LNLayne Norton55:13

        Actually-

    30. DDDom D’Agostino55:14

        ... up to that level again.
11. 1:02:13 – 1:48:34

    Ketones as brain fuel and performance tool: fasting resilience, cognition, and adaptation time

    1. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:13

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's that, that book I gave you, The Complete Book of Ketones (laughs) by Dr. Marian-

    2. LNLayne Norton1:02:18

       Ah.

    3. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:18

       Yeah. So, uh, so that-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:02:22

       Well, you know it's ... I don't think it's actually out yet, but, uh... Contest prep guide.

    5. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:24

       Yeah.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:02:24

       You want to get jacked, look at that.

    7. LNLayne Norton1:02:26

       (laughs)

    8. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:27

       So ketones are-

    9. LNLayne Norton1:02:29

       Hands have been on there.

    10. DDDom D’Agostino1:02:30

        ... a, uh... (laughs) They are, sort of by definition, have a metabolic superiority as a, as a fuel source, you know. And they readily cross the blood-brain barrier. They can largely replace glucose as a primary energy source in your brain under periods of fasting, uh, or ketogenic diet. So that, that offers a lot of advantages to someone dieting, because it makes you resilient. Like the guy that fasted 382 days, his glucose was, was like 30 and dipped down to 20. Uh, that would be universally fatal for most people, but his ketones were elevated, so he did not feel hunger. So that, that is tru-... Like the Cahill studies, George Cahill, uh, studies at Harvard Medical School, where they fasted subjects for 40 days, they injected insulin to increase-

    11. LNLayne Norton1:03:18

        What IRB did that get past? (laughs)

    12. DDDom D’Agostino1:03:21

        Yeah. (laughs) I remember presenting this at Layne's camp a while back, uh, and I... When I, you know, read this study, I had to call him on the phone. He was living... He passed away in 2012, but we had a number of conversations before he passed away. And I was amazed that he got ethics approval to do that, because it's basically like killing someone, injecting 20 IUs of insulin. But what was fascinating, that they were asymptomatic for hypoglycemia at a level of hypoglycemia that's typically universally fatal, and they were also, uh, very cognitively lucid. And that was a dramatic demonstration. At the time, it was thought that, you know, the brain could only use glucose. So this is a paradigm shift in the way, uh, we understand sort of fuel utilization, particularly in the brain. So that has major... And I can go kind of on in talking about the different applications of the ketogenic diet, which I did on the first podcast, but from a, uh, perspective of someone dieting to lose weight, dieting as a lifestyle, doing intermittent fasting, the ketogenic diet makes intermittent fasting much easier because your brain's adapted to it. That, for me, had tremendous, uh, practical applications that allowed me, I feel, to excel through academia. I was able to do a lot more work, not get hungry. And, uh, and, you know, Layne and I, we haven't trained in a while, but when we train, I re-... Last time-

    13. LNLayne Norton1:04:41

        Is it based? Is it based?

    14. DDDom D’Agostino1:04:42

        ... we did deadlifts. I mean, we were both deadlifting 675 for reps. And I was on, ac- actually, I was on the, the, uh, the classical ketogenic diet then.

    15. LNLayne Norton1:04:51

        Mm-hmm.

    16. DDDom D’Agostino1:04:51

        That's when I was just doing it. And it, you know, I would-

    17. LNLayne Norton1:04:54

        Classical versus?

    18. DDDom D’Agostino1:04:55

        ... like 80 to 90% fat.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:04:57

        Super high fat. Super high fat.

    20. DDDom D’Agostino1:04:57

        And I was doing that for about a year. And, um, you know, deadlifting like three times my body weight for, for reps, you know, uh, and it didn't hurt me. I can't say that would be the case for everyone, but I also titrated the calories in that. I wasn't really at a calorie deficit. I, I lost a little bit of weight, so I guess by definition-

    21. LNLayne Norton1:05:15

        Yeah. So-

    22. DDDom D’Agostino1:05:15

        ... I was at a calorie deficit.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:05:17

        Now, for people that are thinking about gains-

    24. LNLayne Norton1:05:19

        I want to-

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:05:19

        ... they're trying to gain weight, they would think that the ketogenic diet, that 80 to 90% fat would not be enough protein.

    26. DDDom D’Agostino1:05:25

        I believe that the ketogenic diet shines when you are in a calorie deficit. I, my mentor for the cancer work, Tom Seyfried, had published a study showing an unrestricted ketogenic diet can actually promote cancer growth in a, in a brain tumor model. And-

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:05:41

        Unrestricted meaning too much calories?

    28. DDDom D’Agostino1:05:43

        Yeah, they were feeding mice a sugary ketogenic formula that was on the market at the time.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:05:48

        Sugary?

    30. DDDom D’Agostino1:05:48

        Well, it was a sweetened... I'm sorry.

Episode duration: 2:59:44