The Root of The Matter

Harnessing Bioenergetics: Diets, Vitamin D, and Gut Health for Optimal Well-being

• Dr. Rachaele Carver, D.M.D. Board-Certified, Biologic, Naturopathic Dentist • Season 2 • Episode 13

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Unlock the secrets to optimal health by understanding the crucial connections between bioenergetics, nutrition, and overall well-being in this eye-opening episode of "The Root of the Matter." Dr. Rachaele Carver sits down with bioenergetics expert Mike Fave Independent Researcher & Health Clinician to explore how cellular metabolism and mitochondrial function are key players in health and disease. Discover the hidden impact of toxins and infections on your cellular energy production and why addressing these root causes can help combat fatigue and boost your overall vitality.

Ever wondered which diet is truly the best for you? We break down the complexities of popular diets like keto, carnivore, intermittent fasting, and paleo, with insights from thought leaders like Dr. Ray Peet. Learn about the benefits and drawbacks of these dietary approaches, the role of anti-nutrients in plants, and the significance of diet individualization. Hear personal stories that illustrate the challenges and triumphs of dietary transitions, and understand why moving away from the standard American diet could be your first step toward better health.

But that's not all. Mike and Dr. Carver delve into the intricacies of vitamin D metabolism, the balancing act between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, and the paramount importance of gut health. This episode is packed with actionable insights, from maintaining the right nutrient levels for bone health and inflammation to practical tips on raising children with long-term nutrition in mind. Tune in for a wealth of information designed to empower you on your health journey.

Connect with Mike Fave here https://mikefave.com/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MikeFaveScience
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikefavescience/

To learn more about holistic dentistry, check out Dr. Carver's website:

http://carverfamilydentistry.com

To contact Dr. Carver directly, email her at drcarver@carverfamilydentistry.com. 

Do you want to talk with someone at Dr. Carver's office? 

Call her practice: 413-663-7372



Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner. Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider. This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed. Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests. We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

Hello everybody, Welcome back to another episode of the Root of the Matter. I am your host, Dr Rachel Carver. Today we have Mike Fave, and I'm geeking out right now, guys, because I have been listening to Mike on his podcast now for about five, six months. They have over 100 episodes. I've probably listened to 90 of them. I skipped the men's health one, sorry.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

But, he has really made me rethink a couple of things when it comes to nutrition, and so I really wanted to have him on for my own edification and to discuss these questions surrounding omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D, and he's going to talk to us a little bit about how some of the dental pathogens affect our metabolism, lead to other stuff. Just want to let you guys know again his podcast. He has 100 episodes, so we're going to talk kind of surface level about stuff, but please do a deep dive. You're going to have questions. You're going to want to listen to this podcast called the Energy Blueprint. Really important that the basics is all bioenergetics, so maybe we can start there. Mike, what is bioenergetics?

Mike Fave:

Yeah, it's a pleasure to be on, dr Carver. I appreciate the invite. So bioenergetics is a focus on cellular metabolism as the central piece involved in disease processes and also optimal health. So the lens with which we look at these components through is what is going on in terms of energy in the cell, particularly inside the mitochondria, so what is going on with mitochondrial function and what are all the factors that could actually impair mitochondrial function or improve mitochondrial function. And so we actually have this unified lens to start to understand disease processes and the multifactorial elements that are actually hitting disease process in general. So that's the general gist of the bioenergetic perspective, and I do actually want to leave a nod here to Dr Ray Peet, who was one of the kind of originators of this perspective, one of the individuals who got me into understanding this stuff and got me interested in the research, and so his work was the body that kind of linked a bunch of elements together and created this perspective that people are now running with it like myself.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

Yeah, so what you're saying, too, is we're looking at the cellular level. So sometimes on traditional medicine, we're going with a symptom, we go to the doctor and they're trying to figure out the symptom or give you some drug to make that symptom go away. But the body doesn't really work that way. Right, you could have a symptom in your hands, like me, for instance, eczema, but it's actually coming from my liver, right? So we have to understand at the cellular level, right? So this mitochondria, which we're all taught, is the energy factory, but it's much more nuanced than that, right, that a lot of our immunity is in our mitochondria too, and I've always been taught that that mitochondria we can be in energy production mode or we can be in defense mode.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

And I think this is where, in my opinion I've said it many times on podcasts I really think a lot of disease comes down to toxins and infections that, at the cellular level, are messing up our mitochondria's ability to produce the energy properly, and that's why fatigue is most often one of the most common symptoms we all have, because at that cellular bioenergetic level, we're not making the energy. So that's my understanding. Now, myson, tell us a little bit more about this, and maybe let's start with the oral pathogens here and how that can affect our metabolism, which can lead to disease.

Mike Fave:

Yeah. So when we're looking at energy metabolism inside the cell, what we see is there are multiple factors that can directly impair mitochondrial function, and one of the major factors is endotoxin. Now, endotoxin is a component of bacterial cell walls. It's also endotoxins, a catch-all term for a variety of different toxins that can come from gut-derived bacteria or bacteria inside the oral cavity as well, or even if you have chronic UTIs or chronic bronchitis, you can have colonization of bacteria in all these places and they will leak certain endotoxins or bacterial toxins. Endotoxin is, in the research it is understood as a cell wall component of gram negative bacteria, which is just a type of bacteria, whereas in the alternative health sphere, endotoxins are catch all because there's actually different bacterial toxins that are problematic that aren't necessarily the same as endotoxin. So overall, the general idea is that we have these bacterial toxins and what happens is they are picked up by our immune system. So there's multiple factors here I'm going to talk about them but they're picked up by our immune system and our immune system recognize, say, hey, we shouldn't have these bacterial components floating around, and so it creates a kind of danger response to this and says, all right, we need to clear out these components, we need to increase our immune defenses, and then they start releasing cytokines, which are cell signaling molecules, and then the cytokines signal to the body that we're under attack to some extent by these bacterial components and it signals an inflammatory cascade, a variety of detox processes. And the reason why it's doing all of this is because the bacterial components and the bacterial bacteria in general are not ideal for the body's functioning. You do not want to have a bunch of bacteria that are degrading the structure of the body or damaging cells to any large extent. So the body is trying to keep out these bacteria, to avoid these problematic components, because essentially the bacteria would be competing with our cells to some extent, and so some of the bacterial toxins, like endotoxin directly, have negative effects on mitochondrial function, and so that's what they wind up doing is they can impair and it's through the endotoxin directly and through this immune response, but they can impair mitochondrial mechanics and energy metabolism across the board. So the immune system is basically trying to minimize that and clear that out.

Mike Fave:

Now, with dental health, this is actually a huge one. There's certain pathogens like porphymonis gingivalis that have been shown to people who have periodontitis, people who have gum disease, people who are dealing with inflammation in the oral cavity, all of these different components are usually colonized by some of these pathogenic bacteria and then it's leaking this endotoxin from the oral cavity into the bloodstream and chronically triggering a low-grade inflammatory immune response. That's through signaling the immune system system plus the endotoxins have a damaging effect directly on different cells and tissues. And so over time, while the immune system is upregulating these detox processes, these events, processes, that is, using resources, energetic resources and shifting metabolism towards dealing with detox and with the immune defense and kind of away from certain components. And so that's through the regulation of these different cytokines.

Mike Fave:

And the cytokines interact not only with the hormonal systems and not only on the cellular level and not only on the neurotransmitter level.

Mike Fave:

They interact with all of them all together. So the cytokines can come in and shift what's going on with neurotransmitters, shift what's going on with energy metabolism and shift what's going on with the hormonal profile. So you can have this chronic problem that's coming from having problems inside the oral cavity or the gut or chronic UTIs and that can drive inflammatory profiles and drive chronic disease directly. So it's important but, as you said, some of the major issues with the or some of the major components that people are dealing with are chronic infections and toxins, and so this, these are some of the chronic infections that you can deal with, and the oral cavity is a huge one. I have quite a few clients actually where improving their oral health actually drastically improve their blood glucose numbers, because the oral pathogens or the theory that we ran with was the oral pathogens and the oral infections they were dealing with were impairing their glucose tolerance via this inflammatory mechanisms and the low-grade chronic inflammation.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

So that's a really important point you make, right. So these cytokines are these little kind of chemical messengers that are given up when we have inflammation and infection and, like you said, they affect neurotransmitters, they affect glucose metabolism. This is why when we have a certain toxin or infection, we can have all sorts of seemingly disparate symptoms, when really they can all be coming from the one same endotoxin, like my eczema, for example. Right, that is toxins pushing out of my bloodstream, pushing into my skin, right, and that also was messing all my hormones were messed up, brain fog, all sorts of things were happening. But again it wasn't like I was having all these different issues. So when I solve, get those parasites that are blocking it, or because it's not just bacteria, right, that can give off endotoxins, like any kind of parasitic infection, right, or fungal infection, and we all have these in our body. It's not abnormal to have parasites or fungus. It's when things get, the body gets out of balance with poor nutrition, all the chemicals and stuff, that's what kind of pushes these home.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

So I just want to backtrack a sec. I normally start with people telling me their story. Sorry everybody, I want mike to tell his little story how he even got into this kind of work in the first place. So go ahead, tell us. And again, he has a very full version on the on his podcast, so he'll give you the over the highlights here, but if you want to know the nitty-gritty details, he's got a great episode. It was one of my favorite ones to listen to. I think people can really relate to other people's stories, and yours is a good one, so go ahead.

Mike Fave:

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to share my story here, so I think my story is pretty relatable to many people because I think they've gone through similar circumstances, and so I started out getting into the dietary stuff when I was quite young. I was doing bodybuilding stuff. I was trying to change my diet to see how I can improve my health or my function or my performance in sports, and that led me down the path of a variety of different fad diets that eventually led to me causing myself some health issues, pretty significant health issues. Essentially, I was doing all the juicing and I was doing the plant-based stuff because I and as I got into that and that led me to losing a bunch of weight very rapidly.

Mike Fave:

I was a freshman in high school. I was 185 pounds I'm six foot two and I got down to 150 pounds when I started doing this plant-based stuff and I also became extremely hypothyroid. My resting heart rate was in the 40s. I was freezing cold all the time. I'm assuming I was hypothyroid because none of the doctors actually tested my thyroid values that I went to because the major complaints I was having were serious digestive issues and so, like most people, I had these problems. They were self-induced for me, but I didn't know that they were. I didn't know that this, the things I was doing, were problematic. I didn't know juicing all this kale which was rich in goitrogens is going to goitrogens are compounds that will inhibit thyroid function was going to cause these problems for me, and that was one of the old. That was one thing that was causing the problem is the other sources of foods I was eating were also causing a problem. So I'm going to the doc and the doc saying oh, it's just GERD, it's just gastric reflux, it's just this, it's just that they're trying to give me Prilosec, they're trying to give me Tums, it's not doing anything. And then they send me to the GI specialist same stuff, not listening to what I'm telling him. They send me to the cardiologist because my heart rate was too low. Cardiologist oh, you're just so young and healthy. No, my heart rate's in the forties at rest. I actually have a problem going on and I feel terrible. No, you're just young, you're healthy, you're lean, you're athletic, whatever, you're probably fine. And so then, after going to a bunch of docs, they sent me to the surgeon. Surgeon says oh yeah, just your gallbladder, we're just.

Mike Fave:

Basically, I got better because I decided that the diet after that point, the diet that I was doing was causing problems. So I shifted everything. But then I started to try to work with alternative docs and so I was going to all these alternative docs and I was spending a lot of money on testing like quite a bit of money on testing and then I was still like some. My diet was still like plant-based ask, but I added in more protein and minimize things that maybe cause bloating and gas like FODMAP foods, and they weren't really touching the diet. They're like yeah, it's super, your diet is super healthy, there's nothing wrong with it, all these types of components and it has taken a lot of subs and they just weren't solving the problems. So I had gone through this traditional medical route. I got burned pretty bad, I got injured pretty bad. The gallbladder surgery has left me with pretty much permanent digestive problems going forward under certain contexts.

Mike Fave:

And then, when I went the alternative route, I spent a lot of money to try to figure out what's going on, but it wasn't solving things. So essentially at this point I was getting to college and I started pre-med. I eventually went to nurse because I didn't really like school that much. So I only have to have the four-year degree and then I could go be a nurse practitioner. Once I was done I wouldn't have to have the huge loans, all this type of stuff. So I was in school and I was like I need to just figure this out myself because I'm not getting the results that I want.

Mike Fave:

And then eventually, after four years of school, going through keto, carnivore, intermittent fasting, paleo and then doing hardcore bioenergetic stuff, I started to just take principles from each piece, started to put them together, start to understand the fads, start to understand the supplements, all the alternatives here. And then after that I worked for six years in the ice as a nurse, as an RN, so I got to see, like an in-depth clinical side, what was going on. So I got a full view of the alternative sphere. I got a full view of the traditional medical sphere, both as a practitioner in both and also as a patient in both. So it allowed me to really get a sense of how these things are working.

Mike Fave:

And also I do enjoy reading research. I think I'm pretty weird like that. So I've been reading the research all throughout the process to try to understand what's going on, to make sense of things, to start to distill principles, and Dr Ray Peet was a big influence on me and his work gave me a nice lens with which to understand things and to start to parse through some of the research and have a holistic perspective, a comprehensive perspective, instead of a reductionistic perspective. So now, here I am today, with all of my trials, tribulations and then the knowledge, going through them and combining these different things together.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

Yeah, it's awesome and I love your listening to your story because I'm like, yes, I've done that too. I tried all the different diets when I was trying to solve my eczema and I remember one January I was like I bought a juicer. I'm like I'm going vegan this month and the only thing that happened to me was like I was so constipated. I was like that's so weird. I'm having way more fiber. Shouldn't it have the opposite effect? But I think what you guys point out in the podcast that's so important is that a lot of us have success when we try a different diet, and it's not necessarily the specific diet, but it's that we are changing our diet. Like you said, you were juicing and doing all plant-based, which I think the average person would say that's the healthiest diet on the planet. Right, because that's what's being pushed out in the media. Plants that's the healthiest thing.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

There's some downside to plants too. They have a lot of what we call anti-nutrients, right, and so a plant is designed to have its own defense system right so that it can survive and propagate, and a lot of these mechanisms right are what we call anti-nutrients. But, like you said, kale everybody thinks, oh, we've got to eat so much kale, but we know, especially eating it raw, it's less problematic if it's cooked, but still there is the downside. So maybe tell us a little bit about expand on what I'm saying about plants and why maybe eating too much and again, everybody's different right, we can all tolerate different things, but tell us a little bit about how plants can be problematic.

Mike Fave:

Yes. So I think I want to back up just a bit to the diet stuff and then we'll get into the plant stuff. So with the diets, I think in each of these diets there's actually ounces of truth and what the heart, the hard part about the diets is, some of those ounces of truth do give us quite a big benefit, and especially just not being on a standard American diet and switching over to some of these diets and having nutrient density and having the polyphenol compounds and starting to worry about the microbiome and all these different components is quite helpful overall. But I also think that a lot of these diets come with a high degree of ideology, and what I mean by ideology is they take this perspective and make this black or white around it and they don't want to get into the nuance, and so people will jump from diet to diet and they'll get some benefits in this place and then other areas will get worse and then they think while they're in, it's like this diet's the best, but then they throw out the whole diet when they jump to the next diet because they had some problem and it wasn't getting solved. So as an example, just to put this in actual, real terms, not talking about it abstractly.

Mike Fave:

When people go on a plant-based diet they start to notice maybe weight improves, maybe they are finding that some types of digestion have improved a bit, maybe they have a bit more fiber, maybe they're not getting as constipated as before, maybe some inflammatory symptoms decrease pretty significantly coming from the standard American diet. But then over time maybe bloating and gas gets worse. Maybe they're having a hard time putting on muscle in the gym, maybe they're getting rashes or different responses to different foods, and so you have this benefit. And then you also have this detriment, and it's I'm doing plant-based. And so then all plant-based is bad. I'm going to go to carnivore. So then you go to carnivore and you're like oh, my digestion is way better, but now it's I can't sleep at night after a couple of months and maybe I started to get a bit of the runs when I have too much fat. And then now my mood isn't as good, a little bit more irritable, and you solve some problems by minimizing irritating foods from plant-based and you have a much higher quality protein source and fat sources than if you're doing a bunch of nuts and seeds on plant based. But now you don't have enough carbohydrates so you're digging into stress and you don't have enough fiber, so you're starting to cause problems in the microbiome, giving you the runs with all the meat and the fat, and so it's.

Mike Fave:

Are there benefits to both diets? A hundred percent. But the goal is let's take some of the lessons and valuable information from plant-based, let's take some of the lessons and valuable information from carnivore and let's start to put them together. So maybe we want to have red meats great. Seafood's great. If you tolerate dairy, that's great. But maybe we want to have some fruits. Maybe we want to have some vegetables, some cooked vegetables that we do well with, but maybe ones that aren't going to cause bloating and gas and impair thyroid function or have excessive amount of toxic components.

Mike Fave:

So that brings me to the specific plant-based question that you had asked me and the idea that plants have toxic components. So they do. They definitively do. They do have anti nutrients, they do have defensive compounds.

Mike Fave:

Now, does this mean that all plants are bad?

Mike Fave:

No, it doesn't mean all plants are bad. It means that some plants are highly problematic, like raw kale is not good to eat in large amounts, nor juice in high quantities, because it can have a negative impact on thyroid function. So we don't want to be doing that, but say you have broccoli and you don't have digestive problems from it and you're cooking it really well and minimizing some of the goitrogenic compounds, which are much lower in the broccoli than it would be in like a purple kale. This is where the nuance and context is like. If you add a couple ounces of broccoli that was cooked for dinner, you boiled it for 15, 20 minutes, get rid of the goitrogenic compounds and you're having that with your piece of steak and maybe you're having some berries and a bit of chocolate or something like that is fine.

Mike Fave:

Especially, again, individual tolerance and context becomes important here, because if you tolerate that, it's not a problem. If you get bloating and gas from it, okay, have carrots, have squash, have peppers, have eggplant, have potatoes, have yams. Choose the options that work for your system and then also parse out by the individual foods where the actual problems are. If you have an issue with nightshades or solanine, that doesn't mean that you won't necessarily deal with potatoes. If you peel the potatoes and cook them well, perhaps the content is so low that it's not a problem for you. So it's starting to figure out where's this threshold and nuance for some of these components, and where are they actually problematic and what does that mean in your individual context, instead of trying to wholesale buy an ideology from somebody else who doesn't know what you have going on?

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

This is a really important point in which we talk about on the podcast what have to individualize. When we put these diets out there, everybody's gonna react differently because everybody's body is totally different. We all have different genetics, we all have different lifestyles. And this is where it gets tricky, because trying to figure out, does my body tolerate, does it not? And again, it's. Did you have some? Did you feel really bloated that day? And I always think, well, what did you eat? For One of my favorite cereals back in the day was the Akashi brand and that it was always by by afternoon I would always feel that tight, bloated, and I never put it together until later I was like, oh geez, my body was not tolerating the grains and all that in in in that cereal.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

That's what you would want. If you're having those symptoms, it's not normal. Some people think it's just normal. Certain foods are just supposed to make me feel that way. But no, if your microbiome is healthy, if your digestion is healthy, you should be able to tolerate most things. But most people have some degree of leaky gut or digest. You just can't help it. Because of the toxic world that we live in. We all are dealing with some, I believe, some degree of digestive problems. So we have to, as Mike was saying, figure out what are the things that we tolerate and trying to find the variety. I was just talking to a doctor on my last episode saying that variety is really important. So we want to keep trying things and knowing what we can and can I tolerate.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

There it was really interesting because I was a big proponent of intermittent fasting. I feel like when my eczema the first time I got it to go away for years it was a combination of getting rid of the parasites and also the intermittent fasting and I did that for a long. It was convenient for me because when I wake up in the morning I'm go trying to get the kids out the door myself and you know, because I'm so busy I don't necessarily feel that hungry and I would be fine, I could go, whereas my husband, he cannot do the fasting, he gets hangry and all and I would be like, come on, it's not that hard. But some people, the metabolism, he has a lot of liver issues, right, and somebody recently told me if you are a person who tends to get hangry you need a lot more liver support.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

But then my cycle started to get really wonky, started to come way too often I didn't have a lot of energy and listening to the putt to the energy valve putt I'm like, okay, I should do more carbs and I'll just do a lot more fruit and, holy cow, my mood improved almost instantaneously just eating more. And I think I was so under eating and that you guys talk about this all the time, that a lot of us really under eat and maybe talk a little bit about that, the whole downfall maybe of intermittent fasting and the not eating enough, especially protein, right as we get older.

Mike Fave:

Yeah. So those are all great points and that's also an excellent question. So with intermittent fasting, for example, in your circumstance with the eczema, I think that it can be quite helpful if you're dealing with gut issues, because you don't put this fermentable substrate into the colon if there's dysbiosis. So with something like eczema, right, say, you have dysbiosis going on in the microbiome and the colon. Usually what you'll see is that when you eat different fibers and different foods will be taken up by the bacteria, they'll be fermented, they'll produce these different compounds and the different gut derived toxins and then that will trigger an immune response that can lead to eczema, can lead to psoriasis, can worsen autoimmunity, can be directly involved things like arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and so when you intermittent fasting, oh wow, I actually I feel better and so, yes, because you are limiting the amount of substrate that is reaching the colon and then is being fermented into these toxic components. But this comes.

Mike Fave:

There's a problem with intermittent fasting and what happens is it makes it very difficult, first of all, to eat enough on a regular basis. Most people who just skip a meal wind up running into a caloric deficit, and if the deficit is too high, if it's too large, you can really start to drive stress to your body. When it doesn't have enough nutrients, when it doesn't have enough fuel in the form of protein, carbs and fat, winds up happening and starts to break down its own structure. Its fat stores, its muscle tissue, its carbohydrate stores, its muscle tissue, its carbohydrate stores and start to cannibalize itself to provide energy sources. Because if you don't live, you need energy to live. It's the currency of life, right? It's the main piece driving everything forward is the energy that's being produced by the cells. And so what winds up happening is if in the beginning you can get away with it, but over time it starts to beat up on the system and you start to drive these stress hormones that are carrying out this cannibalization process that's glucagon, that's adrenaline, that's cortisol and then they start to lower the metabolism, they start to lower thyroid hormone function, they start to lower gonadal function that's testosterone and dihydrotestosterone for men and that's estradiol and progesterone for women because basically the body's saying all right, we can't really optimize this fertility stuff at the moment because we're we don't even have enough energy for us to function appropriately, so we don't want to carry a baby right now. When things get better, then we'll upregulate things back in that direction. And so you start to see these shifts and they're just.

Mike Fave:

It's a calculated shift by the body to prioritize survival over these other processes. That wouldn't be ideal to occur in that point in time. And something to mention here as well is that the very long periods of time without eating also drive the stress response. Even if your calories were relatively the same, because you are in the period of time that you're not eating, you are relying on glucagon, adrenaline and cortisol depending on the timeframe will depend on the amount of these hormones that get elevated and which of these specific hormones get elevated, so that you can provide fuel continuously in that timeframe. Because, again, energy metabolism is going on whether you're eating or not. So it's gonna occur, and if you're not eating it's breaking down your stores, and if you are eating you're replenishing your stores and also using that fuel source that's coming in.

Mike Fave:

So we don't want to be in a circumstance where we are heavily breaking down our stores and we are heavily relying on this stress, because it comes at a cost in the long term, because the body has to prioritize survival over thriving and you start to run into issues there. So the intermittent fasting can be used as a modality to be helpful if you're dealing with gut problems. I think there's a famous fighter, george St Pierre, got ulcerative colitis and fasting. The intermittent fasting stuff really helped him, and a lot of people I've worked with similar experience to yourself have had eczema or psoriasis or severe gut issues or something and the intermittent fasting actually really helped. And again, it's through that substrate elimination. But it doesn't necessarily mean that there's not downsides to it as well, despite the fact that it has some benefits in certain contexts.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

Right. So it's like you got to take all these. So working with somebody like you can help the person looking their all the system, all their lifestyle and everything. And how do we take these certain modalities or certain things from certain diets that's going to best work for you. You know, for me I always thought, okay, the intermittent fasting is good too, because if I'm trying to eat while I'm stressed I'm going to make more endotoxin anyway, right, so I shouldn't. You know I need to do it. So it's tough for those of us who are, you know, type A and go all the time trying to figure out the best way to time your meals you know what should be in them. That can be really interesting.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

So on that note, I would love for you to discuss a little bit about vitamin D. So a few months ago I read a book I was introduced by a colleague to, morley Robbins, who wrote a book called cure your fatigue, or it's very. Highlights the kind of copper and iron ratio in the body, talks a lot about how too much iron is very bad and how to distinguish cellular from extracellular iron and all this kind of stuff. But one of the things that he really talked about was not supplementing vitamin D, and I first heard about this a couple of years ago with Cellcor. They did a lot of research and there was a lot of studies showing high amounts.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

Some people say they've got vitamin D and maybe in the single digits they may be put on 50,000 units of vitamin D, and I think the thing we need to distinguish is, most of the time, when you're testing that vitamin D in your blood, you're testing the storage form, you're not testing the actual active hormone. So that's a really big distinction that we need to talk a little bit more about and also need to talk about if I think there was a recent study out of Johns Hopkins that was saying anything over 20 was clinically irrelevant, which is like mind-blowing, because even in all this alternative world, we're all trying to reach that magic goal of 60 to 80. But why, if you're, if you are below that 20, what's going on? Do you have an infection that's blocking your vitamin D receptor? Do you have genetic issues that don't allow you to absorb that? So just dumping supplement on there? Is that really the answer? Unpack that for us, mike, please.

Mike Fave:

So the vitamin D topic is it's not as prominent as it was. A little while ago there was a huge outpouring against vitamin D. There were people like morally talking against it, and there's a gentleman named Jim Stevenson and then there was an influencer, matt Blackburn, who were going on and on about how vitamin D we don't want to take vitamin D and they're specifically referring to vitamin D3, which in the blood would be measured as 25-hydroxyvitamin D or vitamin D3. And then there's another form of vitamin D which they distinguished as 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 in the blood was storage and 125-hydroxyvitamin D3 was active form, and the difference was a change in the structure a little bit. That's where you see the 25-OHD3 versus the 125-OHD3. So the 1-25 is indicating change in structure. Now, the ideas around this came out because what they were showing in some of the literature was that the immune cells could shift the conversion of vitamin D from storage to active, depending upon what was going on, if there's like inflammatory immune state or things like this. And then there was also talk about issues with the vitamin D receptor, and so this was focusing largely around, I think, immune regulation with the vitamin D components, and so those were interesting components that they brought to light, and so people started to look at what was going on with the 25-OHD their actual storage form, as they call it, vitamin D, and also active, which is 125 vitamin D. But something else that's important to understand in this full perspective, and I guess before I get to that, the value of this perspective, at least to me, was understanding the context of vitamin D metabolism and why somebody was low and where things were going. But for me at least and this is my two cents on it was I still think that vitamin D in general has beneficial properties, especially when it's consumed alongside vitamin K, vitamin A, calcium, magnesium and zinc, so that things are working effectively.

Mike Fave:

But we also wanna look at the ratio or the vitamin D level, the parathyroid hormone level, the serum phosphorus and the serum calcium level to see what's going on with your calcium metabolism as well. Because we want to have parathyroid hormone suppressed, because parathyroid hormones job is to break down the bones, to provide calcium, and then it also links osteoporosis, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and vascular calcification all function through parathyroid hormone directly. And that's because parathyroid hormone upregulates another system in the body called RAS, the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, that actually directly causes cardiac hypertrophy and damage to the heart as well as damage to the vasculature. And then parathyroid hormone has negative effects of metabolism as well and it breaks down the bones and it raises serum ionized calcium levels that, in states of inflammation in the vasculature, can drive the arterial calcification. So we want to understand what's going on with vitamin with 25 OHT3 and 125 OHT3 in terms of what's going on with the immune system and immune regulation. But we also need to understandD3 in terms of what's going on with the immune system and immune regulation. But we also need to understand that in the context of what vitamin D is doing with calcium regulation, and vitamin D is very important in suppressing parathyroid hormone. With adequate calcium-magnesium intake, vitamin K helps to move the calcium into the appropriate areas and also vitamin A has a balance with the vitamin D3. And vitamin A metabolism is dependent upon zinc a lot of times. So there's a whole system working together. We want to understand we have this whole system. We have this hormonal regulation between vitamin D3 and parathyroid hormone and we also have this interaction of vitamin D3 in terms of its immune function and regulation with the immune cells.

Mike Fave:

But another important piece to consider is, a lot of times, the conversion to vitamin D from storage vitamin D3, 25-oh-d3 into 125-OH-D3 or the 125 vitamin D. So the active metabolite also involves a lot of stress systems. So I don't think we want to, we don't want to be like optimizing to move towards this active form and I say it in quotations because I don't think it's as simple as active versus inactive, because the 25-OH-D does have active form. And I say it in quotations because I don't think it's as simple as active versus inactive, because the 25-OHD does have active properties. So there's this we want to see are you shunting into active form because of an inflammatory state or because of, maybe, problems with the vitamin D receptor? But we don't. That doesn't necessarily mean that we don't want people to get to an appropriate target of vitamin D3 in the blood.

Mike Fave:

So I usually shoot for a serum of 50, a serum value of 50 nanograms, and then, at the same time, if somebody is low, they could be low because they have inflammatory stuff going on and their vitamin D is being metabolized to different areas, or they could just be rankly deficient, and so we want to delineate between which of those circumstances going on. So I know there's a lot of pieces that I threw at you there and there's multiple components, but it is a relatively maybe complicated picture to see the different interactions and for me, I'm trying to most times I'm not just correcting somebody's vitamin D3 like, all right, here you go, take vitamin D, you're good to go, your vitamin D is low, it's going to solve all your problems? Because that doesn't. I don't, I haven't seen that happen.

Mike Fave:

So it's more of let's correct all of these things.

Mike Fave:

Let's correct the immune dysfunction, let's let's bring this parathyroid hormone value down.

Mike Fave:

Let's see if you're deficient, let's correct the deficiency.

Mike Fave:

But let's also do it with k, calcium, magnesium, vitamin a and also, if somebody's able to get sun exposure, that is better than just supplementing vitamin d3.

Mike Fave:

However, if they can't get the sun exposure, then I would still like try to correct with supplementation and also try to get some access to light, whether that's red light because of the other beneficial effects of sun exposure beyond just vitamin D3. And there also is an idea that a lot of the benefits that they see with associated values of serum vitamin D3 levels could be a function specifically of, or a proxy marker of, people being exposed to sunlight as well. So we want to understand that sunlight is extremely valuable and it can also be. Vitamin D3 can be an indirect marker of that. But there is some studies showing value for supplementation and obviously there are different contexts where, if you have people with autoimmunity or inflammation where their vitamin D3 metabolism is being shunted and that is why they're low and not it may not necessarily be just that they're super deficient, because a lot of times these people are taking vitamin D3 and seeing that effect.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

That's awesome, yeah.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

And the bottom line. Again, as you stated succinctly at the end, there is why is your vitamin D low? That's really important. Yes, you can shove supplementation on there, but, again, if there's an inflammatory reaction and you're just using it up faster, then that's not really going to solve the problem. We really need to understand the nuance of that. Like Mike said, let's check the parathyroid, because we see that like a lot in dentistry. Well, we're seeing rapid bone moth out of the mouth. What's happening? What's going on with the parathyroid? Because, as you stated, the parathyroid hormone is responsible for breaking down the bone. So we have a lot of women come in and they're just been diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis right, and they've been taking their calcium and vitamin D.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

But another really important point which we tell all of our patients it's much more complex than that. Right, you need the vitamin A, you need the vitamin K and, fortunately, a lot of supplement companies. Now you will see the D3 and K2 come together, which is great, and so that's good. But we also need vitamin A, we also need the magnesium, we also need the calcium and we also need the zinc, and these are minerals that are really lacking in the standard American diet, even in organic, just because our soil is so deficient now. So I think everybody needs to be supplementing with minerals because we just we're not getting them. Even if you think you're eating the cleanest, healthiest, most organic diet, you're probably still lacking in these minerals. And minerals are something that we use up so quickly when we're trying to process all the toxins and stuff that we can't avoid right? The stuff is in the air, it's in the water and again, minerals become super, super important. So that's why, when you just go to the doctor or nutrition or somebody and they just want you to take one specific supplement, that's not how the body works right. All of these things interact with each other and that's why the best source of vitamins and minerals is from food, because in these foods they're already in there and they're in the right combinations, right, so they're already in the right dosages and they're in a form that is more readily accessible and absorbable to our bodies. However, as I said a lot of times, those foods are lacking and there's so many studies showing nutrient levels are like 50% what they were a decade ago. But so the important point is vitamin D does not work alone. Let's figure out why it might be low and that supplementation is not a bad thing.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

So this is really where I wanted some clarification. I was like, oh my gosh, should I not be doing vitamin D supplement? Now somebody like me? I have a genetic defect at my vitamin D receptor and so I don't know totally the ins and outs of that. Mine is, I think, the highest I've ever seen. My vitamin D was 44. And that was right after I cleared all my parasites and it just by getting rid of that inflammation, infection, my storage shot right up because I wasn't using it as much. But I also have a genetic defect. I'm very lucky with my genetics. I have a genetic defect with my vitamin A where I do not convert beta carotene into vitamin A properly. So I could eat all the carrots I want, but my body isn't that effective at making that into pure vitamin A. So that leads me into the next topic. I want you to really dive in for us. We're talking about the fatty acids. One of the other big things I've always been a proponent of was telling my patients cod liver oil, because it's a natural source of vitamin D, a natural source of vitamin E, the vitamin A, the retinol, like. For me, that's what I need. I need pure and I had skin issues as a kid.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

In college I took I never had the eczema, but I had acne. I took Accutane, which is like a synthetic, and overnight my skin was beautiful, it was the smoothest, cleanest and I was like wow, and because again, I think I didn't know obviously at the time, but my body wasn't effective at making vitamin A, absorbing it, whatever. So when I got this high dose, my skin was amazing. So obviously there are a lot of side effects. I don't even know if you can get acutene anymore because there were a lot of problems with that, but to me I loved Vandrol. I thought it was great. When you have a lot of acne as a teenager, it changes your whole personality. You don't feel good, it's just not good. So I felt amazing after that. But let's talk a little bit about those omegas, because there is some science out there saying that these are supposedly essential. But are they? Should we eat any saturated fat? Are they really the devil? Talk to us about the fats.

Mike Fave:

Sure, this is a great question. So the fatty acids there's three different types there's saturated, there's monounsaturated and there's polyunsaturated. Now there's obviously different types of fats within those categories as well, but I'm going to hone in here on the polyunsaturated, because there's two main categories that get discussed. There's omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids and then there's omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. The difference of them is where their double bonds are located in the molecules and also amongst them. There's also a different number of double bonds, so a double bond in the molecule changes. All you really need to know is there's also a different number of double bonds, so a double bond in the molecule changes. All you really need to know is there's the way the molecule is structured is a little bit different, and the more of these double bonds that you have in the molecule structure, the more fragile it is, the more easy it is to break. And then also, what's with the double bond structures? You get a more fluid fat. The structure makes it a little bit looser, so it moves around a little bit easier, so it's more fluid, whereas when you have saturated fats, which don't have any double bonds, you get these very solid fats. And the way you can see this in real life is if you look at something like, let's say, corn oil or let's say your vitamin three, your vitamin or your omega three3 supplement, excuse me that they are way more liquid your fish oil, your cod liver oil, than your butter or your beef tallow or your ghee or something like this. And so that's all you're seeing. There is. You're seeing the fats are much more liquid. Now other fats, like coconut oil, are almost entirely saturated, and MCT oil as well, but they're liquid because the length of their structure is different, not necessarily because they have more double bonds in them.

Mike Fave:

Now, going back to honing in on the unsaturated fats, the unsaturated fats the omega threes and sixes are the precursors to a large portion of the inflammatory molecules in the body, as well as the anti-inflammatory or some of them are immunosuppressive. So omega-6 tends to be inflammatory, omega-3 tends to be anti-inflammatory, and what happens is these enzymes in our body. When we have an inflammatory response, they break these fats down into these signaling molecules, so they're used as a substrate to make these signaling compounds. So what a lot of people talk about is omega-3s tend to be anti-inflammatory. So we want to have enough omega-3s and we don't want to get too much omega-6s.

Mike Fave:

Now the omega-6s are really easy to get in the American diet because most of the fat sources in the American diet are corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and these are very rich in omega-6 fatty acids, which is problematic because, again, these fats are very fragile. They can be broken down very easily. When they're broken down, it triggers inflammatory responses, it triggers oxidative stress, lipid peroxidation. These are all things that we do not want and they also convert into the inflammatory mediators. So there's dual full effect of why we don't want to have a high amount of omega-6 fatty acids. With omega-3s people say, oh, we want these because they're anti-inflammatory. But the problem is the omega-3s the vast majority of them, are even more susceptible to being broken down than the omega-6s overall, and so you have this very fragile fat and when they are broken down, the products they create, these lipid peroxidation products these broken fats are also very inflammatory, are not good for the cells at all. So we don't want to have a high amount of omega-3s because of the lipid peroxidation effect is not ideal.

Mike Fave:

Now the requirement for omega-3s and omega-6s, especially for adults, is exceptionally low. It's very difficult to actually get a deficiency of these fatty acids under normal dietary intakes, especially omega-6. Now a caveat here is that if your diet is super high on omega-6, then it is easy to induce problems with omega-3 metabolism because they compete for the same enzyme. So if you're super saturated on omega-6, you'll have a problem with metabolizing omega-3s effectively to the anti-inflammatory signaling molecules. The class of them is called eicosanoids, and so essentially that's basically what the problem is is that if you have way too much omega-6. So people say let's balance with omega-3. But again, you have to be careful here because the omega-3s are also very liable to lipid peroxidation, and so the goal, my perspective, is to lower omega-6 as much as possible in the diet, to bring them down as much as possible.

Mike Fave:

We do not want to be eating large amounts of omega-6. We want to minimize the corn oil, the soybean oil, the sunflower oil, the safflower oil, sesame oil, all these types of oils. We don't want to be eating large amounts of fatty pork on a regular basis because they're mostly fed corn and soy. So the fat matches the corn and soy fat. And same thing with excessive amounts of fatty chicken, although small amount here and there's not really a big deal. So we want to be minimizing those. But then the question is okay, we're all agree that we want to minimize omega-6. So what do we want to do with omega-3s? So in terms of omega-3s, so in terms of omega-3s, what we want to do is we don't want to have a super high amount either.

Mike Fave:

Pharmacologic doses of omega-3s to lower triglycerides are like four grams per day two to four grams, depending on what your goal is and so that's actually not that much fat overall in the base of a diet. And that's again that's for a pharmacologic effect to lower triglycerides. This is not talking about enough to prevent deficiency. The amount to prevent deficiency, especially for adults, is significantly lower than that, so we don't need to have that much omega threes. Now, the next problem with omega threes is that when you have supplements like cod liver oil or like the encapsulated omega threes, the the omega-3 supplements, they're all usually rancid by the time you're taking them. So the fats are usually damaged by the time you're taking them.

Mike Fave:

So if you want to get omega-3s in your diet, or if you want to get enough omega-3s, my recommendation I don't think that the requirement for them is very high.

Mike Fave:

I'm not optimizing for high amounts of omega-3 content.

Mike Fave:

My goal is to actually get the omega-3s through seafood and that's because the seafood itself has a variety of beneficial compounds in them besides just omega-3s vitamins, minerals, selenium, iodine, copper, iron, manganese also good protein sources, also different in anti-inflammatory peptides, also rich in vitamins, minerals and certain types of fatty acids called furin fatty acids, which actually protect against lipid peroxidation.

Mike Fave:

So we want to shift towards having the seafood and, again, we don't want to have an excessive amount of omega-3s. So I don't usually prioritize having salmon every single day or sardines every single day. I'm looking more at shellfish, I'm looking more at crustaceans, I'm looking more at lighter fishes cod, sole, flounder, haddock. If somebody has sardines or salmon once a week, fine. Smaller amounts of tuna, usually albacore to keep the mercury content low. So these are the priorities for me and people will get enough omega-3 to prevent deficiency just doing that. They don't have to go and supplement more omega-3. And then I want to leave the floor here because I like went on for quite a bit and we could talk about the vitamin D and vitamin A and ways to get those.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

So awesome. Okay, because this here. I had a question. I just recently ran blood work on my 15 year old and her omega-6, no surprise was through the roof, right. And her omega-3 was really like cause she goes and she eats school lunch and she eats whatever the terrible stuff is. She comes to my to home and says we never have any food here Cause God forbid, I only have like healthy, nice food most of the time. And so that was my question and you answered it for me.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

So I was thinking maybe just because I used to when they were younger, I would give them cod liver oil One little. The way I got them to eat it was pretend to be Mary Poppins and we had a pretty little cute silver baby spoon, and probably wasn't every day. I was trying to do that and then I heard your podcast was like, ooh, maybe I don't want to be doing too much of that for her. So for her, in the last week blood work I was thinking, oh, maybe I just need to supplement her just for a week or two so I can maybe try to balance out that omega-6. But what you're saying is that's not real. We really need to just cut that omega-6 out of the diet. You don't want to add more to try to balance because you're still going to have that potential of all that peroxidation.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

So one of the interesting things that came up also on her test was that she needed vitamin E. Vitamin E is what protects us from that lipid peroxide. So vitamin E is super. But interestingly, vitamin E is mostly from, like plant seed sources and I've been just been giving her a supplemental one because I had it on the shelf and as a teenager I often more easily get her to take a supplement than have her eat something that she considers too healthy. Is there any other way? So vitamin E is one way to prevent about that lipid peroxidation that's going to happen Any other. And of course, my kids like seafood, so we've been making sure we're eating plenty of that and not as much salmon more of the they really like the shrimp. They love lobster. They're pretty good with all that kind of stuff. So how else can we mitigate that effects of the lipid peroxidation?

Mike Fave:

So the major way to go about it would be to lower omega-6 as much as possible and shift towards the monounsaturated and saturated fatty acid sources. So that's gonna be switching the fats over towards things like butter, towards beef tallow, towards chocolate, towards olive oil, high quality olive oil, avocados, macadamia nuts, these types of sources. Coconut is another one coconut oil, coconut fat these are going to be much better, all much better, in terms of keeping omega-6 low. And then the other thing to do is to take the vitamin E. Take some vitamin E. Now, when you're taking vitamin E, it's very important that you're using one that has both alpha and gamma-tocopherol, because excessive amounts of alpha-tocopherol will compete with gamma-tocopherol and you can lower the gamma-tocopherol in the body. It's important to have an adequate amount of gamma-tocopherol and you can lower the gamma-tocopherol in the body. It's important to have an adequate amount of gamma-tocopherol because it protects specifically against nitrogenous species reactive nitrogenous species whereas the alpha-tocopherol protects against the lipid peroxidation. So you actually want to have both.

Mike Fave:

Now a little side note here on the nuts and seeds being really rich in the vitamin E. The reason they have vitamin E is to actually protect their own structure from lipid peroxidation, and the thing is they actually? There's a ratio of omega-6 to vitamin E that needs to be maintained. I'm forgetting the value off the top of my head. I was trying to look it up really quick so I could share it with everybody here. But most of the seeds, most of these nuts and seeds their vitamin E content is actually not enough to offset their polyunsaturated fat content in the form of omega-6. So I think ideally we want to use a good quality vitamin E source that has a decent gamma to co-for-all component as well as alpha to co-for-all component, bring the omega-6 intake down by shifting towards those other fats, and then incorporate seafood into the diet on a regular basis.

Mike Fave:

Now, I'm not saying this to get super doses of omega-3s, but what I'm saying, the reason to do this, is there's a variety of benefits from the seafood, even beyond the omega-3s, that I think are worthwhile to incorporate on a regular basis. And then there is some talk about omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, and so you could try to keep three to one, five to one, omega-6 to omega-3, or some people go one to one. I don't think you necessarily need to go there based on some of the research, but essentially the idea would still be if you're doing that, still keep the total amount of the polyunsaturated fats quite low overall. So you wind up getting a diet that's fruits, vegetables, the fatty acid sources that I mentioned, beef, lean chicken, lean turkey, a variety of seafood options, dairy, if you tolerate it, lean pork if you do all that.

Mike Fave:

So it's not really that restrictive of a diet. It's really just minimizing processed foods and added seed oils and then not cooking with the seed oils, things like this, and then also not eating a variety of the nuts and seeds. Most of the other things are on the table with this dietary structure. There's other things to prioritize, but these are the components to hone into in terms of making a reasonable diet that lowers the polyunsaturated fats, maintains the balance omega-6, omega-3 ratio, which, again, you may not even not necessarily have to do that. There's some studies that will bring that into question. But overall, that's the strategies that I go about when I'm working with a client to try to organize their diet appropriately from the polyunsaturated fatty acid perspective. There's other things to dial in as well, but that is one main area to look at.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

Awesome. So for me I'm going to pick your brain. So if I need more of my pure vitamin A and if I'm not going to have cod liver, oil liver probably nice grass fed liver is probably going to be the best. I have a hard time with that. Are the liver capsules that you can buy? Is that sufficient, or do I have to eat so many capsules that it's not? I can handle pate, but what do you think about the capsules? Am I getting enough vitamin A or not? Really.

Mike Fave:

So the actual requirements for vitamin A on a daily basis is not massive. So there's the liver capsules. The freeze-dried liver capsules I think are not really a problem overall I think they're okay To do. I think most of the liver capsule companies six capsules as a recommendation, which winds up being, I think, like almost the six capsules would be like 20 grams of liver, so again, not super high. So essentially, even if somebody was to do three capsules or two capsules, they would get almost with three capsules. For most of the liver supplements.

Mike Fave:

The one that I'm thinking that I know the most about that I've used is the Ancestral brand. Their liver caps will give you about 51% of your vitamin A or 50% of your vitamin A requirement for taking half the dose, as well as give you your full copper requirement in the day. So you don't have to overdose on it If you're getting, because the vitamin A does accumulate over time. It is fat soluble. You don't need to take super high dosages to actually meet sufficiency for the vitamin A requirements. And the other thing is you also don't want to get excessive amounts of vitamin A.

Mike Fave:

Some people in the bioenergetic sphere go super hard on high dose vitamin A supplements and tons of liver and you can actually run into problems from getting too much vitamin A or getting too much copper or getting too much iron or things like this. So again, it's about finding the appropriate amount and then running with that appropriate amount. You want sufficiency, you want to have enough of what you need, not too much, not too little, and I think that's important to understand with all the dietary components and there are research values to start to understand this. But the liver capsules you could do like three of the liver caps a day and you would be probably pretty solid on vitamin A because it's all active retinol form, and then the rest of the diet would cover the other components or the other elements that would be needed.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

Yeah, awesome, all right, guys. Like I said, this is just surface level stuff and their podcast, the energy balance podcast, goes into such in depth and they have like series of things. So they did a great series on fatty liver. Right, that's a very prominent in today's and so really understanding what is really causing fatty liver. They go in a lot about insulin weight loss. This is another problem that we think if we just eat less and exercise more, that everything will be hunky-dory. But no, a lot of that it goes hand in hand with that fatty liver. When the liver is not working properly, it can't protect the pancreas. We've got all sorts of insulin and glucose issues there.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

So they've got a great series on women's health. They talk about oral health. Again, there's over a hundred episodes and the latest ones were all about this omega-3. So if this kind of piqued your interest and you want to find out more, they go really in depth. They have. They list all the references of all the studies and stuff. So it's such a great podcast and I have learned so much, which, I have to say, I thought I knew what I was talking about with nutrition. So it's always great to learn more and to be able to tweak this protocol, so I'm giving my patients the best advice with the most up-to-date research, so I encourage everybody to check it out. Energy Balance Podcast is on YouTube. You can listen to it on audio. Mike, are you working with new clients now or are you too busy at the moment?

Mike Fave:

So I am still taking clients. I am full at the moment but I am still taking people as things turn over. I'm also in the process of building out a course I'm almost done with it to help people to actually structure their diet. That'll be a group-based course, so there'll be a limited number of people that I'll be accepting at first because I'll be doing cohorts, so they'll have the full access to the course. Plus, there'll be group calls. That'll be limited to 10 people per call on a weekly basis. So that'll be coming out.

Mike Fave:

And then I do have a free nutrition blueprint that they can pick up on my website, mikefavecom. That actually goes through and starts to help people to set up their diet with specific targets. So it's a PDF guide and there's a video course. Those are the things currently in the works and those are the. I have the course in the works and I am still working with people. And then, outside of Energy Balance Podcast, I do have a YouTube channel that I recently launched. It's Mike Fave YouTube, so people can check that out as well and see some of the most recent content, where I actually try to break down some of the health topics and research into more plain language and avoid all the research jargon, so that people can actually use this to improve their health and not have to get this PhD to understand these different topics.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

It's hard Some of those research articles. It's hard to understand them and to read them. So I really appreciate everything that you're doing to make, Unfortunately, most of the time. I think Harvard did a study right that it took 17 years from publication of research to get into the mainstream and after 17 years it's not even relevant anymore, Right? So thank you for doing your work and to bringing all this stuff. It's amazing. You go on a PubMed, you type something. It's unbelievable.

Dr. Rachaele Carver:

The amount of information is out there but it's not getting out right, and so I really appreciate what you're doing and trying to help us practitioners be able to give our patients the most up-to-date, relevant information. It's helpful for me, as I'm always working on my gut and always working on stuff and the stress and figuring out what's the best thing for me to eat and all that and trying to raise my kids so they're healthy and they don't develop all these problems. So appreciate you coming on and we could talk for 10 more hours, but again, everybody go check out the podcast, Check out his YouTube it's Mike Fave. That's F-A-V-E. It's got a lot of awesome content. So thank you so much for taking the time today, Mike, to educate us about some of the things that I think are really important and that I wanted some clarification on, and I hope we'll talk again soon. Thanks everybody for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a nice review and let us know if there's any other topics you want to hear have.