317. The SHOCKING Truths About Biohacking & Nutrition With Nathalie Niddam
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today, I'm joined in the studio with a very special guest who is a holistic nutritionist and a longevity educator, and she's dedicated to helping us all live joyful and vibrant lives well into our 50s, 60s, and beyond. So joining me in the studio is

Lucas, thank you so much for that intro and thank you for having me. It's, I mean, you know, all these years we've kind of moved in the space. I hear about you, I see your stuff, but we've never actually spoken. So it's a pleasure. I know, I know. It's well overdue. It's well overdue. Well, Nat, let's sort of start out with...

I know you have an interesting story, but maybe sort of condense that down into like how you found yourself doing what you're doing today. Yeah. So let's see if we can get that down to 30 seconds because I don't actually think it's that interesting. Yeah.

So I, you look, I started out, I've always been fascinated with science and the human body. That's been a go-to. And, but I spent most of my adult life in the corporate world. And, but you know, I did my education on the science side. Like I studied human physiology in university. And then about 15 years ago, I decided to go back to school and become a holistic nutritionist because the corporate thing just wasn't doing it for me.

And I was reading a lot of books and downloading a lot of information to my chiropractor. And one day he turned to me and said, dude, you need to, you should be getting paid to do this. Like, you know, like this is good stuff. So I went back to school and I became a nutritionist, which was great. Only then I was, I was kind of like, that's when biohacking was just really starting to take off. That's when Dave Asprey had first introduced the whole bulletproof concept, which I know now he's no longer associated with, but whatever at the time. Um,

And my next foray was really doing his coach training program that really, I guess it just, it brought me into this space in a different way. And the cool thing about that program was that it was a human, it was a coaching, like how to help people to help themselves, right? How do you get past your stories? Because the first thing you learn as a nutritionist is

Nobody needs to be everybody. The information is all out there. What people can't do is get themselves to do what they need to do. Right. So understanding human psychology, helping people to hear the stories and change their stories is, is a big piece of the puzzle. So that kind of happened. And then because my husband likes to say I have shiny object syndrome, I prefer to frame it as I have, I'm a, I'm a perpetual learner, right?

I came across peptides about five or six years ago, fell down that rabbit hole and ended up starting a Facebook group that just kind of mushroomed and then started a podcast. And here I am. Incredible. Incredible. Is that a minute? Maybe it was two. That's awesome. That was well condensed. So then, all right. So you've seen the biohacking space evolve quite a lot over the years. How do you think...

Where do you think people's heads are at these days in terms of when they want to get into biohacking? Where do you think most people start? Well, I think it's an interesting evolution, right? And I think the word biohacking itself, it's a very... What's the word I'm looking for?

It's a bit of a lightning rod. People hate it or they love it. And the people that have been in the biohacking space for a long time are feeling like it's over. Like the biohacking thing is not a thing. A lot of people are off the term. But for people who are just coming into the space, it's on the one hand, it's very masculine. It's very strong. It sounds like a thing. But on the other hand, it's also very exciting because it gives you...

It delivers the message that you can change the way that your body responds to your environment by manipulating different things. And I think in its best iteration, biohacking can put power back in people's hands because it says to the individual, you control your outcome. It doesn't mean that you have to have all the answers, but you really have a

a massive impact on what your outcome is going to be. And that's the best, that's the best of biohacking. The worst of biohacking is obsession. So it's obsession with supplements and gadgets and technology and wearables and all the things and, and, and completely losing control.

of what is most important and the foundation that you need to build before any of those things can really play a positive role in your outcome. So I think, you know, biohacking has evolved and,

I find sometimes I'll use the word biohacking on social media and I find it kind of turns people off a little bit. So it's, it's, it's an interesting, it's look at the end of the day, it's just a word, but it's been used and abused and overused. So you, it's, you gotta be careful with it. I've seen that as well. Yeah. Just definitely. And with the, with the rise of like guys like Brian Johnson, taking it to a, to a different level, it's sort of like,

It makes us actually look more normal because we're not as extreme. It makes us look kind of boring and mainstream. But in terms of like the common problems you're seeing people facing these days in terms of like the, what are the common complaints that people are just either messaging you about wanting help with? Like what are those common issues that people are talking about? You know, it's, it never changes. Energy, sleep, sleep.

weight, which is body, you know, you and I would say body composition, but to Joe Blow on the street, it's, I'm overweight. I can't lose the weight, uh, cravings. And so it's the, you know, I had this conversation with someone recently, I actually, and it was what gets people in the door. And I don't even coach people one-on-one that much anymore, but what really gets people in the door at the end of the day is aesthetics. They don't like the way they look.

Now, once they're in the door, you start the conversation. You find out they're not sleeping. They're eating the wrong things. They have crazy cravings. They're staying up too late. They're drinking alcohol. Like all the lifestyle things are out of whack and the nutrition. But what gets them in the door is I don't like the way I look and I'm exhausted. I don't have the energy or I can't think, right? That brain fog. And what's crazy is I think...

Until you've addressed the foundations, you don't know for sure that people need to go to the extremes.

And frankly, the extremes aren't necessarily going to help until you've addressed the foundations. And people are just sitting there going, oh, but God, but that's so boring. What do you mean I just need to sleep? Well, you know, just sleep is not that simple because people's circadian rhythms are so dysregulated and their nervous systems are out of whack. And so having that conversation and helping them to reconnect is

And bringing them, and you know, I think what's interesting about biohacking is it's kind of come full circle in a lot of the tools that we're using in biohacking, whether it's a supplement or technology is trying to recreate nature that we've so lost touch with. Yeah, that's a, it's a great point. I think it's like when it comes to the, the, the weight loss side of things, you mentioned the importance of like, just, just going back to the basics, getting your sleep in check, you know, optimizing nutrition, you know,

A lot of my audience would probably feel like they tick, tick. They're like tick, tick. And they're like, and now what? And now what? So then therefore, obviously you've... Yeah. That's another big topic is like the influence of hormones, insulin, things like that. So what have you sort of... I know you've experimented with a lot of different protocols and supplements, things like that.

from like an insulin sensitivity because that's a big hot topic at the moment. I think with insulin sensitivity, you have to ask people –

You know, if I had a dollar for every time somebody said to me, I eat a healthy diet. Yeah. Yeah. Or I, I, I clean. Yeah. I clean and you get them to keep a food diary and all of a sudden they come in a week later and they're all sheepish and they're like, Oh my God, I had no idea. Or they come in a week later and they're like, I can't do it.

I'm not going to do that. Right. And so I think that when it comes to insulin resistance, we have to look at a bunch of different factors. We do have to look at the foods that you're eating. We do have to look at your degrees of inflammation. We do have to look at your hormones. If you're a woman and you're getting anywhere close to menopause, your insulin resistance is going to go up.

We do have to look at exercise. Like, are you exercising so that those receptors can clean up a little bit so that you can, you know, create a need? Like we live in an overfed state and we're not expending enough energy. And that's not to say that the move more and eat less paradigm is necessarily going to work.

But sometimes it does. You owe it to yourself to take a hard look and say, am I really doing what I think I'm doing? Right? Was it possible that if my nervous system is not jacked and if I'm in a decent place in my life, is it possible that I might be able to stop eating for a few hours a day?

Maybe I could stop eating a day a week. I don't know. You know, I mean, fasting, you know, before we get into the fancy stuff, like sometimes just sewing your mouth shut for a day might actually do you a lot of good. Like I often will tell the story of an executive that I worked with a few years ago, and

And all he did was he implemented a 24-hour fast once. I mean, we cleaned up his diet. We did all the things. But then the next thing he did is he just stopped eating after dinner on Sunday and started eating again on dinner on Monday, which shouldn't sound too terrifying to people because sometimes you run into people and like, oh, my God, I haven't had anything all day. Well, what if you had an intention behind that?

Right. And what if you did that on a regular basis? This guy lost his gut, his, he, his inflammation came down, his cholesterol normalized, his blood pressure started to normalize. Like it is shocking how these foundational pieces of the puzzle allowed his body to kind of go, okay, we can do this. And, and then like the way I like to describe it to people, then we see how many dominoes fall. So now where do we stop? Right.

Do we have a problem with inflammation? Is there a problem maybe with mold? Is there maybe a problem with an immune system thing? Like what could be, what else is going on? But until you've laid that foundation, until you've addressed those basic things,

Starting from the other side, it's going to be a lot harder to get results. Yeah, I would definitely agree. Nat, do you remember your first time when you got into fasting at all? How did you get into that?

Well, I mean, it came through, it started with, you know, at the time, like 15 years ago, it was all about intermittent fasting. Right. And... Who was the main voice for that? Like popularizing that? I feel like Dave. I think Dave Asprey was the first guy, like really, because he was talking about the bulletproof diet. And then he was talking about intermittent fasting using bulletproof coffee, which...

Yeah. Or sort of ish, not really. Right. Like you're taking an energy and a lot of it. But, but I think with, with intermittent fasting, with fasting, it's, it's this, it's very scary to a lot of people and it's powerful. And sometimes people are terrified of it and they get into it and then they overuse it.

So the biggest thing with fasting I have found is helping people to understand what's the, what's the fasting protocol that works for you and how do we make it so that you just don't get so lazy that you just don't eat until one o'clock every day. Because if your nervous system is jacked and you're starving yourself to one o'clock every day, and then you're not eating enough of a nutrient dense diet on the other side, or you're

You find yourself standing in front of the fridge at 1130 at night because you didn't get enough nutrients in and now you have to start snacking. And you know what I mean? Like things can get really wonky. In my practice, I would typically for intermittent fasting, I would generally have people do it on alternate days.

What I learned from fasting and, you know, I did the five day water fast and I will tell you that my body fights fasting tooth and nail. All these people, all these people are like, oh yeah, by day three, you know, I have all this energy and I'm clear headed and I'm not hungry anymore. And I'm sitting there going, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like chewing my arm off. I got to fight every step of the way. Yeah.

And it's okay, but it's, you know, my body resists it. Right. So I've learned different strategies. I've learned that maybe five days, I like, I'm a big fan of the prolon, the fast mimicking diet, because it maybe makes it a little easier. You still get a lot of the benefits of fasting without actually having nothing. But for someone who's truly metabolically flexible, right.

That may be accessible. It might be a good solution for them. But I think with fasting, the biggest challenge is...

seeing a post on social media and going out and executing it with no regard to where you are and what your body, where your body's at. Right. Right. Right. Like it can just be so powerful, but it can also be overused. So then like bringing into the, um, the most popular drug in the world right now into the picture, um, the GLP-1 agonists, um, um,

What are your thoughts on them? Do you think there's a time and place for their usage? What's your stance on those medications? I think 100%. My position on GLP-1s is that used –

at the lowest effective dose for you. So I'm not going to tell you what that is. For some people, it's microdosing. Microdosing meaning it's a fraction of the starting dose, not the starting dose, a fraction of the starting dose. Or whatever that lowest dose is that gets the needle moving for you,

combined with proper nutrition, proper exercise, proper lifestyle, it becomes so much more important with the GLP-1s that you dial in all of those other factors because otherwise you're going to lose the wrong stuff. You're going to lose your muscle, which is going to put you in a way worse position down the road.

But I think that used properly, there's so much interesting research around brain benefits, benefits for the cardiovascular system, benefits for kidneys, benefits for inflammation. And yet the world wants to oversimplify and the world wants to say...

I read an article recently about how GLP-1s cause loss of heart muscle. And I was like, wait, what? Okay, that's bad, right? So then you go and read the research and then you read and you find out that it turns out that for obese people who lose a lot of weight, they do lose muscle and they do observe a slight loss of muscle in the left ventricle of the heart.

What the study says, though, is they're not so sure that there's a functional consequence to that. And obese people, I mean, anybody, whether you're obese or not, if you lose a ton of weight, which by definition means that you had a lot of weight to lose, so maybe you were obese, but we're not being judgy at all. But if you lose a lot of weight, you will most likely lose some muscle with that.

But if you work out really hard, if you get good guidance on your workouts and your nutrition, you will keep enough muscle so that, frankly, you don't need as much muscle to carry around 150 pounds as you did carrying around 300 pounds. So there'd be that. And we both know that for aging, we want functional muscle. We don't need to be muscle bound. We need to be strong and flexible.

but we don't need to be big. So, you know, it's, it's again, it's nuance. It's, it's,

I think they have their place. I really do. Because I'm sure you've seen it. Like so many people are metabolically destroyed from dieting. It would be more unhealthy for them not to take it in my opinion. Yeah, because you're getting them out of that like danger red zone, which is like they can't be living life in that extreme state of carrying an insane amount of excess body fat to the point where it's like just that by itself is going to shorten their lifespan. Yeah.

And then they bring in a medication like that. It's obviously, it's going to have some collateral damage. It might result in some muscle loss, but it's like, are we getting the patient into a healthier position? Maybe it's something, you know, it's worthwhile. You know, it's like, it could be. Yeah, 100%. I think where it gets trickier is the person that has 20 pounds to lose.

or 10 pounds. So this person's not that, but that 20 pounds, if you're carrying it around your middle can, it can be produced. That adipose tissue is producing inflammatory cytokines. It is driving inflammation. It is contributing to, to, um, it could be, you could be talking about visceral fat. You could be talking about metabolic issues. So, you know, it gets dismissed. I just think that

I think like so many things, we have to cut the rhetoric. We have to look at the individual. We have to say, it shouldn't be the first thing that you try.

For women in menopause, very often it's the one thing that will move the needle for them. Their systems are just, they've lost the sensitivity. They've lost the insulin sensitivity. What is happening during menopause that makes it so difficult? Is it the hormonal loss of estrogen? Yeah, and then testosterone. And you're dealing with a population on top of that that's probably with a lot of whom have been fighting with their weight their whole lives.

So if you talk to a guy like Joel Green, he would tell you that every time you lose weight and you put on weight, it's like it makes it that much harder the next time. And there's damage to the systems like the extracellular matrix of adipose tissue. So you get scarring. So your metabolism essentially gets damaged from all that up and down and up and down and up and down. And so now you're stuck.

And so I think it's particularly cruel to say to people, well, you don't, it's like saying to someone, you're pre-diabetic, you don't have to do anything. You're not diabetic. Well, just because someone's not obese, if they're carrying around extra weight and they need a little hand, they need a push with the right guidance and the right coaching. Why wouldn't we offer it to them? Yeah.

Well, let's sort of, I want to actually go closer in on that. If you're seeing this lack of estrogen, so you're seeing a decline in estrogen, surely thyroid has some role here as well. And then also like progesterone, like what's the sort of interplay that's going on there? So I'm not a hormone expert, but I would say that, you know, your adrenals are taking over your sex hormone production. So they now have more work to do.

Right. Plus, they're making your cortisol and your, you know, all the stress hormones, your thyroid, which may have been subclinical all along. Right. Right. So so often it's not properly diagnosed. And so now you're in a situation where you've got people who have all these different systems offline. And so this is why I think it's so important to to go see a physician.

Get your labs, understand what's happening in your, maybe your thyroid. Like, and this is why maybe the JLP one's not the first place to go, right? Like fix your, is your thyroid, and even sometimes if it's on the edge, right? Or I just interviewed Dr. Carrie Jones actually an hour ago, and she was talking about, you know, a woman who's in perimenopause or,

Who's still cycling. Her doctor's going to say to her, oh, well, you still have a cycle. You don't need estrogen, but maybe she's producing just enough estrogen to squeak through and, and have that cycle, but not enough to optimize your health.

It's not, it's no longer optimal. Now she's just kind of sitting on that ledge, right? So I think an estrogen we know is important for cardiovascular health. It's important for your brain. It's important. It's important for all the things. So to look at is the brain, is your brain working? Is your thyroid gland working?

able to function? Are your adrenals able? Because we know the adrenals and the thyroid, they work in concert with each other. And if the adrenals are dragging, they might drag the thyroid back and go, look, dude, you got to slow down. We can't keep up.

Right. Your body's not trying to work against you. It's just trying to survive to fight another day. So I, yeah, anyway, sorry, go ahead. No, in addition to that as well, I'm just sort of thinking about like common nutrient deficiencies that you're seeing, like to sort of discuss maybe what you're seeing nowadays in terms of like

poor dietary selections or there might be some extreme approaches that enable one to become deficient in certain minerals or vitamins. What are you seeing nowadays? I think the challenge we have is that soils are depleted. Let's be real. Most people are not eating a great nutrient-dense diet.

And whole foods is not a big part of the world. And actually, interestingly, one of the points that Carrie made, which is so important, is things like magnesium, B6, B12, B3,

And foundational nutrients, if they are deficient, if you're deficient in those, these are the cofactors that are required for your body to do what it needs to do. These are spark plugs. And so I do think that at a foundational level, most of us should be taking some kind of a trace mineral supplement. I've got my favorites. I'm sure you have yours.

Because, you know, because soils are, unless you're fortunate enough to be eating food that is not just organic, but is being grown in a biodynamic ecosystem.

So where the farmer is not just saying, I'm not spraying pesticides, but saying, I am feeding the soil. I am making sure that that soil is rich enough to sustain the growth of fruits and vegetables or to sustain whatever I'm growing to feed my cattle so that all that food that's being produced for us is as nutrient dense as possible. It's a lot of work, right? So I, again, like I think that

And testing, doing a spectra cell test or an organic acids test, like to see where are the micronutrients, where are the deficits, that's the stuff we want to be looking at. And we want to be restoring those things. And maybe when we go to that depth, when we go to that level and we fix the diet and we fix the sleep and all the things, maybe we don't need the GLP-1s. It's just that not everybody is going to go that far.

But in a perfect world, we would. Yeah, no, of course. In terms of, I'm actually really curious to know about yourself, Nat, in terms of your perspective on nutrition, how that's also like evolved over the years. Like, did you ever go through a period of your life where you were just adamantly just rampage experimenting with different sort of dietary models? And what have you sort of landed on to like today? Yeah. Talk about a lightning bolt. Yeah.

No matter what I say, somebody's going to be mad. Yeah, I know. Get ready. You're laughing. He's like, oh yeah, Nat, I just set you up. Here we go. I put you under the bus, right under the bus. Throw me right under the bus. I'm a firm believer in personalized diets. Personally, I come from a Mediterranean background, so I'm an obligate omnivore.

Now, it turns out I've had multiple different tests that have told me that eating too much red meat is not my friend. I happen to love a good ribeye. I'm not going to lie. So I eat my fish. I eat chicken. I've moved back to lots of vegetables.

Ever since working with Joel Green, I did his program. I brought back the dreaded legumes. Can we give a quick shout out to Joel Green? I'm so always blown away by how much great content he puts out because just the other week he posted about oats. Get over yourselves, people. I know. I know. I was like, man.

It's mopping up the ammonia from the high protein diets. Well, it's that, but it's also fiber for your microbiome. Like, don't forget that we are not just feeding ourselves. You are not alone. You're feeding a whole community, like this whole microbiome that is producing nutrients for you, that is producing neurotransmitters for you, that is communicating with your brain, that is

That is affecting your energy levels and your metabolism. So variety in the diet, I think is really, for the long term, I think is very powerful. There's no doubt that animal protein is exceptionally nutrient dense and saves us from having to do a lot of supplementation in a best case scenario. Are there problems with the food supply? Yeah.

Yeah. Like fish is full of microplastic. Like, you know, like it's, it's, I was watching a thing on the North sea the other day. I was like, Oh, I can't even, I can't. Is this about salmon specifically? No, the North sea is, is because there's from world war two, there's all this unexploded,

artillery in the bottom of the ocean. And so now you've got this stuff is leaching. And so they were catching these fish and the fish had, it was just, it was awful. But the point is don't eat fish from the North Sea right now. It's probably not the best. I think that building variety into our diet really helps us to solve a lot of problems.

Right. Were there any specific like foods that you wished you could tolerate that you just still can't? Ah, pistachio nuts. I'm allergic to those. But you know, you know, what's interesting, I didn't used to be able to tolerate whey protein. And this is going to be the Joel Green episode. Joel, I'm going to need money for this. I did his gut reset. I have no problems with whey protein.

So I want to quickly share with the whey protein and also the dairy as well. I basically cured lactose intolerance through just like three weeks on BPC-157. Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, you can't... I mean, it won't necessarily do it for everybody, right? So some people lack...

the enzyme to break down lactate a lot of people do actually because we lose it as we naturally as we age um but for many people i like i can't drink i could get my hands on raw milk here's what i discovered about me in raw milk it grows me like a calf it grows in terms of really makes me fat really oh my gosh it's horrible so i can have a whey protein shake after my workout

I wish I could eat croissant all day long. Sorry, with the milk and with the dairy, I've actually got a theory around this. If you look up some research on certain lactobacillus strains, in the animal studies, they literally do cause, they have obesogenic effects. Have you seen that? No, that's fascinating. I know. So some of these lactobacillus strains actually have the property of creating more fat cells in the body.

So I'm wondering if there's... It's entirely possible. You know, I mean, I can't, I don't do well with a lot of saturated fat. I can have some, but I can't have too much, right? I've gone back to being able to eat pulses and legumes. Do I think that they need to be soaked properly and sprouted? Like, do we need to cook them properly or can we just pop open a can? No.

Right? Yes. You need to learn, go back, figure out how to cook them properly. Cook them in a pressure cooker, whatever the case may be. I don't eat them all day because I do have a tendency to be insulin resistant. My blood sugar, you know, white rice will send me right to diabetes plan for some reason. But know thyself. But I didn't experiment with carnivore for a while. My labs were so awful. It was just...

For me, it was a collapse. After how many weeks? Was it more than like two months? Oh, it was a couple of months. It was just like everything was going off the rails. Also, I was so bored. I know. It's just such a boring life. It is a boring life. But it can be an amazing intervention for someone who just needs to eliminate everything and needs to heal. And I think this is the thing about extremes in nutrition is that

The extremes serve a purpose for a point in time. Yeah, I agree 100%. You mentioned pistachios. Any other foods that... All right, let's put it this way. Do you have any specific foods that you think are like absolute A triple plus, like they tick off everything, you're so happy to have them in your diet and you think a lot of people can benefit from? I...

I don't know. I just, I, I love, I'm a bit of a foodie. I love food. I'm sorry. You know, there's, when I used to coach, be a nutrition coach, I used to, I, the first thing I would find out about my clients, do you eat to live or do you live to eat?

because the world is separated into those two groups of people. There's some people who are like, I had clients who'd be like, just tell me what to eat. I don't care what it tastes like. I don't care what I need to do. I'll eat the same thing every day, which I'm like, no, no, no, don't do that because then you get deficiencies and stuff, but they, they don't care. Right. And then other people like me have the curse of living, just loving food. And so for me, I,

I make sure that I eat a ton of vegetables because I'm a hungry person. So I need food that is nutrient rich and energy poor. Otherwise, if you tell me I can eat a bucket of whipped cream, I'm all in. Right. And I just like, I feel like, like in my world, I mean, if you want to know what I wish I could eat, I wish I could eat as much bread as I wanted because I love bread.

I think most people do, right? Oh, it's amazing. It is so addictive. Like fresh bread? Yeah. There's always like three different types of bread in my house at all times, like a good quality sourdough bread, one with olives. Yeah. And then the most incredible grass-fed butter and it's just like that. That's all you need. I know. Sorted. A bit of salt and you're done. I'm done.

But another superfood that I adore is bone marrow. I've never actually – so bone marrow, I think I've only tried that. Have you not eaten bone marrow? I don't know. I've had it as like a – just really rare, like not often. I don't have that often. But it does – it's really nice taste, isn't it? It's beautiful. It's like – it's a bit like butter.

It's different. It's unique, right? So if you are able to get your hands on good quality bones that have bone marrow in them, if you roast them and then you scoop out the marrow and you spread, I mean, talk about sourdough bread, spread it thickly on your sourdough with a little bit of Maldon salt and life is pretty good. Amazing. Yeah.

Or eat it off the spoon. If you're not going to eat bread, eat it off the spoon. I don't know how we get on this. I don't even know. Did you see, there was a guy that ran an experiment. He tested how many eggs. So basically had like 700 eggs a month. He was having 24 eggs a day. And his cholesterol levels basically were unaffected. Unaffected. So N of one.

Right. So his body manages cholesterol really efficiently. And there's a huge body of knowledge that says that dietary cholesterol should not raise your cholesterol levels because the body manages it. It manages cholesterol. Problem is that not everybody's body is efficient at that.

I think we could see both. Like the croissant diet. When I heard about that, I'm like, sign me up. First of all, okay, I've heard about this. My audience will be like, what the heck is Natalie talking about? The croissant diet, I mean, that was peaking maybe like two, three years ago. Or probably longer, actually. Longer than that, yeah. Probably like five, six years ago. I heard about it and I'm like, what the heck is this all about? And what is this stearic acid? Why is this so special? Yeah.

Do you want to just explain to my audience a little bit about like, what's the principles behind? I think the guy just ate croissants for how long? How long did he just eat croissants for? Like a long time. Up to a year. Was it a year? Just croissants? No, I think he would have died of deficiencies. He just, like he would have, he would have, I don't know. You know, the point is that

N of one is one of the most powerful things for social media ever invented. Right. I mean, he made the point that stearic acid, which is an ingredient, which is a component of butter is very powerful. And in his, and I'm probably, and were they, was he American or French? I don't think he was American. I think he possibly was French. So it was probably better wheat. Right.

And in his case, he could handle, I mean, if the guy had been celiac, he would have died. I mean, you know, like it's, it's again, it's a, it's an N of one, but it was really interesting that he ate croissants for, I don't know how long, I don't remember how long he ate them for. And the outcome was shocking to people and it all came down to the butter and it worked for him. Is it going to work for me? Probably not, but I'd die happy. Yeah.

Just smiling into the grave. There's crumbs all over the place. An open coffin with a croissant in your mouth. A croissant in my mouth, exactly. Far out. We haven't even talked about bioregulators yet. Yeah, well, let's get into that because that's –

So the bioregulators, I've seen quite a lot of research published by Professor Kavinson. He's a Russian scientist and spoke about all of these incredible molecules that are found within these bioregulators. First of all, where did you hear about them? And secondly, what caught your interest?

So I'm going to go back to food. So here's what's interesting about bioregulators is they are found in organs and tissues of animals. They're found in our organs and tissues, like our body makes them. And so bioregulators are essentially tiny proteins. They're two to four, maybe five amino acids. I mean, people are now, there's a lot more other research going on. Professor Cavinson

studied them for over three decades. He did animal research. He did all kinds of scientific research and he did human research. And he found that what these tiny little protein molecules do is they are able to get into the nucleus of the cell, bind to DNA and restore DNA's ability to produce proteins. So essentially you're rejuvenating and renewing the body at a cellular level from within.

So it's pretty powerful stuff. But what I think is really interesting is if you go back to traditional diets or traditional ways of doing things, if somebody had a heart condition in some of these societies, they would feed that person heart.

And if the person had a brain issue, they would feed them brain. Like cures like. Like cures like. And so in heart, we will find, as a matter of fact, heart has really high levels of CoQ10, which is a nutrient that we know is really good for cardiovascular health. And so the heart bioregulator, when they're making a supplement...

from animal tissue, they're going to find that heart bioregulator in the heart. They'll find a liver bioregulator in the liver. And so I've often said to people, you know, I think what's really interesting is when you go on these websites for these companies like Heart and Soil or Ancestral Supplements that are drying and powdering animal organs and encapsulating them, and you read the reviews and there's some transformative stories about

Yes, it's the most nutrient dense part of the animal, but also you're probably getting some of those bioregulators in there. Just not at that same, you know, it's not at the same therapeutic dose that you will, for example, from the supplement. And then there's the synthetics. Yeah.

I've had a few clients that have experimented with just the pineal bioregulator and their sleep has just improved significantly. Like, yeah, real dramatic improvements in sleep quality. What are some of the...

What have you heard with some of the clients you've worked with or experienced? Yeah, so in my community, so first of all, yeah, for that pineal gland bioregulator, which if you're talking about the animal sourced one, it's called endolutin.

If it's called epitalon, then that is the synthetic version of it. So I think it's a four amino acid chain has been reproduced and synthesized in a lab. And so what I would say is that in people with dysregulated sleep, it can be a big piece of the puzzle for sure. And

I have so many people who've said to me, oh my gosh, my sleep is just amazing. But I'll tell you this, my sleep's good. So I'll use endolutin. It doesn't change my sleep. So which hits on the point of

a very interesting point about the bioregulators is that they normalize. They don't boost, they don't suppress, they normalize function. So they try to get the body back to homeostasis. Yeah. Yeah. A good way to look at them would be like similar to adaptogens. They're like adaptogenic peptides sort of thing, which sort of brings me to my next point is like, I mean, peptides are very like hot topic at the moment. And I've been looking into a lot of different, like a lot of new ones in particular, a lot of the

Have you seen any of the new like mitochondrial peptides? Have you sort of explored any of those ones? Yep. What do you mean by new? Like are you talking about SS31 and MOTC? SS31 and MOTC, yeah. They're the two ones that I'm pretty excited about and I'm actually really keen to experiment with them as well. Yeah. So I think they're great. I think SS31 is kind of more restorative to the mitochondria.

Whereas MOTC is kind of going to rev them up. So what I like to do with people is make sure that their mitochondria are kind of in good shape. You want to make sure that they can deal with an increase in reactive oxygen species because that's what happens. That's what gets produced when you rev up mitochondria. So I will, like one of the protocols that I've talked about is using SS31 for a couple of weeks before you introduce MOTC.

But MOTC is really quite interesting. The thing with MOTC is it's a four to eight week run and then you're going to want to step away. You don't want to overuse it for too long, but there's some really interesting things you can do. You can think about, okay, well, what if I used MOTC and methylene blue, CoQ10, PQQ, some red light? Like you start to think, you know, we start to think like our friend Kyle and think, well, what are all the different things I can start to put together that are, you

all going to work towards better mitochondria. And, but you know, and, and he's pretty brilliant that way, right? He's going to go at something from many different angles, but I think they're, they're interesting peptides. They're research peptides. They're not, well, SS31 actually has been patented by a drug company. So it can be more difficult to get your hands on. I'm not sure why they haven't brought it to market yet. MOTC, interestingly enough, there was a company called

C-O-H-B-A-R. And what they did is they were looking at different variants of MOTC and they found a couple that were really powerful, particularly for fatty liver disease. But they, I think COVID kind of did them in and they never really ended up bringing their research to market. What about like, because I'd imagine like, I mean...

If we take a step back, one step below that, because obviously there's really robust peptides for supercharging mitochondrial function, but then there's also a number of incredible supplements and ingredients and just actual over-the-counter things that can help with mitochondrial function.

You mentioned coenzyme Q10 before is like amazing for heart health. Are there any other like nutrients or supplements like oral that you sort of have used as part of like a mitochondrial stack? PQQ.

Right. So CoQ10 and PQQ are kind of like the two. I do use methylene blue, but I use it in very small amounts and I don't use it every single day. It's, you know, to begin with, I don't always want to look around, walk around with a blue tongue.

By the way, have you seen the new methylene? Well, not the new methylene blue, but like, you know, that methylene blue, when it gets into the body, it gets reduced into the reduced form called a leukomethylene blue. And then if you combine methylene blue, like outside the body with hydrogen water, it reduces it into leukomethylene blue so that when you use it, it's actually more potent.

I only just recently learned that. Okay. Well, that's real. I did not know that. That's really interesting. What I find interesting about that is when I was, I was deep into hydrogen before I came across peptides. Like that was my thing. If you went back far enough in my feed, you would find a bunch of posts about hydrogen. And what I've always found fascinating about molecular hydrogen is it amplifies pretty much anything you put it with.

Right. So I will often take my supplements in the morning with a glass of molecular hydrogen water. The problem is you got to really chug them because the hydrogen is dissipating as you're, the longer you wait, the more you lose kind of thing. So, um,

I, um, I, I, I think, I think that's really fascinating, but did you see the paper that came out recently about methylene blue and they did some autopsies on, on people who had died, not from methylene blue, but they had just died, but they'd had like very high dose methylene blue IVs and their brains were stained blue.

Yeah, it was crazy. I was, it was, and everybody was running around going, Oh my God, this is your brain on methylene blue. And, and, you know, it took a while for people to break through the noise and go, okay, just everybody stop. It was high dose. It was by IV. It's, you know, it was, it was not, you're taking your little two milligram trochee. It's not going to turn your brain blue, but I have sometimes joked, you know, if I ever got into a car accident, they kept me open. It's just like, would I be blue on the inside? Yeah.

Who knows? But it's, you know, it's, it's, so I do think that, you know, for mitochondria, red light is another one that's really interesting for activating mitochondria. But those, just those two PQQ CoQ10 are really sweet. I, sometimes it's,

If you want to get into the biohacking, if you want to go down the rabbit hole, you could look at your deuterium levels. And if your deuterium levels are particularly high, you might do a deuterium depleted period of time. And could that help the mitochondria to work more efficiently? Maybe? Yeah, with the coenzyme Q10 and the PQQ, I think another great strategy, which I've seen you post about, and I really like the fact that you emphasize this is like,

pulsing these compounds. It's not all about just constantly running them for weeks and weeks and weeks. Like it's like coenzyme Q10, I think has a half-life of like 33 hours. So it's like, you don't even need to take it. Yeah. Well, so it builds, right. And, but, but it depends, right. If you happen to be someone who's on a statin drug and

It's completely, it's depleting your CoQ10 all the time. So maybe you do need to be self, I, you know, I think this is the thing, like you have to look at the whole picture, but I am to your point. Yes. I'm a huge fan of pulsing and not just, or even switching out your supplements.

And especially in our business, we get sent stuff all the time. And so if I was taking all the supplements I've been sent, it would be ridiculous. You'd just turn into a walking supplement. That's what would happen. And I'm not a believer in 120 to 150 capsules a day. I'm just not. You can tell Brian Johnson that. Listen, he may be proven out to be –

the smartest guy in the room at the end of the day and, and, and that's okay. But I don't, I, and you know, his 120 pills, I don't, he's got to take more than 120 because it's actually not that hard to get there. Yeah. I know Joe Cohen's using about a hundred, at least a hundred. Yeah. Dave, I'm not sure about Dave Asprey. Dave's taking at least a hundred as well. I think I'll probably be taking maybe like 15 to 17 pills.

Yeah, I might be, and if I'm taking bioregulators, if I'm taking three bioregulators at a time, that's two capsules each, that's six pills right there.

Straight away. Right out of the gate, right before I've even opened my eyes. There's no urolithin A, which is another really good mitochondrial support. There's no omegas, there's no Bs, there's no C, there's no glutathione because I know that genetically I don't make glutathione, my pathways for making glutathione aren't optimized. And I happen to have some mold in my house right now, like I've had some leaks. So I'm pounding the glutathione. So I haven't

I haven't even scratched the surface. So I like to, I also, one thing I do like to do is mix it up. So I'm looking around on my desk because I have this little, I don't know if you've, I'm sure you've seen the live on labs glutathione. It comes in a little pouch. Um,

Like little squeezing bottles? Yeah. No, it's like a little plastic. It looks like a little plastic pouch. I may have used it yesterday. It's not here anymore. So it's like a little plastic pouch and you rip it open and you drop the contents into a tiny bit of water and you shoot it back. Okay. Yeah. So I'm a big believer in varying the method of administration of your supplements because it gets you away from taking too many pills.

There's flow agents, for example, that companies have to use in making their supplements to make sure that the machines keep running smoothly. If you're taking 120 supplements and every one of them has a tiny amount of magnesium stearate in it, at the end of the day, you've just taken a lot of magnesium stearate. Yeah, you've taken a therapeutic dose of- Something that's not therapeutic. Of magnesium plus croissants though. Right? Yeah.

It's too right. It's too right. Not the same. I wish it was. I wish it was. That would be cool. But magnesium is another, it's a supplement that, you know, you can take it as a capsule, which I do. You can also get it from Livon as a, as a squishy thing. I mean, I like, I really like the bioptimizers one because there's so many different types of magnesium in there, but they also have magnesium in a powder. So magnesium,

I do like varying, like if you look around at the supplement world right now, there's different ways of accessing the same supplements. There's that company Novoslabs, like they have a drink. Again, no flow agents. So I think to the listeners, like mix it up.

Yeah. I agree. I like that. I really respect that approach and I think I've tried to drive that home. I mean, if people have the privilege of having such an amazing array of different opportunities to try these different things, which again, a lot of my audience, they've got cabinets that their pantries are not food related. It's just supplements basically, which is like me. Yeah.

Then, yeah, if you have the opportunity to change things up, reduces tolerance, improves the responsiveness to these compounds, keeps the body guessing and minimizes side effects as well. So you're actually getting the best of everything, really. Yeah. Well, it's like going back to fasting. I think that the magic for the body is variation. Yeah.

So you can have a fasting day, you can have three intermittent fasting days, you can have a couple of other days where it's a high protein breakfast, and then you can have a feast day. I mean, Joel's all about that. I first heard about that from a guy by the name of Dr. Pompa. And he was very heavily into this whole diet variation concept.

And I think that makes sense because it changes things up for your body. What's the feast day involved? Feast day, even with Joel, like you eat big meals. So you eat the same foods but larger volumes or something? Well, Joel's funny. I think on his feast day, you're actually having a grilled cheese sandwich. I'm like, I will always love that man for giving me permission to have a grilled cheese sandwich. Yeah.

I'm like, you always hold a special place in my heart for saying on Sunday. He looks amazing for his age as well. He's just, I don't know. What is he? Is he late fifties? Yeah, no, he's totally ripped. But, but he works out. Right. I think one of the sprints, that's how you say young. Like you, you know, I, we were at an event, my husband and I, and these guys at one o'clock in the morning, these grown men decided, okay, we're going to have a race.

Well, out of the four guys that started the race, two of them pulled a hamstring within the first four steps. Oh, no. Right? Because we don't train that anymore. We barely get out of our chairs. Right? So, I mean, I figured out I'm happier. Like, I have a treadmill under my desk. I don't always think as well for podcasts when I'm walking as when I'm standing. But right now, I'm standing with one foot on a kettlebell.

No way. We're one foot on a kettlebell. There's my kettlebell. No way. That's awesome. I've actually never had anyone do that on my podcast. Pick up a kettlebell. And I've had some very interesting characters on my podcast. I've got my ab wheel. That is awesome. This is like totally old school, but amazing for abs. Jeez.

They call Nat. I've got my tattoo bent. That is awesome. Hey, I would be doing this podcast on my treadmill desk if I had my microphone set up over there. I would be doing it. I've done interviews whilst I was walking, but I feel bad as a host. It sort of makes me think that the guest is, you know, but we can all be weird together. That's fine. As long as it doesn't disturb the audience, I think it's okay. Yeah. My insulin...

That means our insulin by the end of it would actually have probably dropped as well. And I think that that's, you know, just as diet variation is important, so is movement, right? Walking is really important. Sprinting is just as important. Lifting heavy weights once or twice a week is mega important. And you can find all the exercise memetics that you want. Nothing is going to take the

It's nothing's going to change the fact that if you don't use your body, you're going to lose function. And it sucks. Like, let's be real. But I actually love exercising. I know that I used to be a fitness instructor and I would be working full time and I was last minute Lucy. So I'd go scream, come screaming into the studio at the last second, slamming my headset, my mic on my head, you know, tying my shoes, stress to the nines from my job. And at the end of that hour, I'm like,

everything in the world was good. Yeah. It does dissipate. It just dissipates like any sort of negative energy. It's like, it's almost like a transference of that negative energy and stress into the weights themselves. Could you imagine how much negative energy a dumbbell holds? Yeah. And then, but then you can think more clearly, right? Without all that

nervous energy, not to mention the endorphins that are released and make me make you a little bit happier and better able to put context around things. So it's, you know, it's, you know what guys at the end of the day, mix it up, have some fun, experience joy, invest in your relationships and community. Like all of these things are really the things that are going to ground you get out into nature and,

I think we can solve a lot of problems that way. I mean, it's not going to fix your mitochondria necessarily, but it might. You know, getting out in the sun, that'll help. I mean, right now I'm looking like Casper the ghost. My lighting is really bad for this podcast. So anybody watching this, I apologize. I've been looking in my screen going, oh, my God. Maybe if I stand back here. Oh, it's not that bad. Nothing I can do. Anyway, but get outside, you know, and ground and do all the –

Do all the things, find people who are like-minded, hang out, have some fun.

Yeah. No, I love that. Love that message. Now, if there's any, um, if there's any opportunity for my audience to connect with you, where can they find you online? Um, if they want to join your, your communities and stuff like that. Thank you. Uh, well they can listen. I have a podcast as well and we're going to have to get you. Well, we do have you on. You're coming. I believe so. We finally scheduled it. Yeah. So you'll be able to come hear me drill Lucas. Yeah.

Um, at some point on longevity with Natalie Nidham, that's my podcast. I do have a community. Um, and the best way, the best way to find me for the community is to go to natnidham.com to my website. There's actually, there'll be a pop-up that says, Hey, come hang out with me in my community. And we have a lot of fun in there. And then on Instagram, it's at Natalie Nidham. And that's about it. I got a newsletter. You can sign up for the newsletter.

Awesome. I'll make sure to leave those linked in the podcast show notes for my listeners. But otherwise, Nat, it was an absolute pleasure chatting. It was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. Could definitely do another one of these. So yeah, really appreciated that. And for those listening in, if you did enjoy today's podcast episode, please do leave a five-star review. That really does help to support the algorithm. And that's it for me today, guys. I'll see you in the next episode.

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