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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia and this week on the podcast, I am joined once again with fan favorite Dr. Cliff Harvey. And we are chatting about what's trending in 2026 in the nutrition and health space amongst a whole host of other topics. This is the usual Miki and Cliff chat where we go far and wide on all the things that we're thinking about.

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related to nutrition and health and as always it's a great conversation and I know many of you enjoy being a fly on the wall of what we talk about. For those of you unfamiliar with Cliff, he's been on the show several times, least five or six. ah Dr. Cliff Harvey is New Zealand's expert on the effects of a ketogenic diet in a healthy population, but he is so much more than that. He's been helping people to live healthier, happier lives and to perform better.

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since starting in clinical practice in the late 1990s. Over this time, he has been privileged to work with many Olympic, professional, Commonwealth, and other high-performing athletes. He has also worked with many people to overcome the effects of chronic and depilitating health conditions. Along the way, he has founded or co-founded many successful businesses in the health, fitness, and wellness space, including Holistic Performance Institute, New Zealand's leading certification and diploma for health, nutrition, health coaching,

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and performance that has many of the world experts teaching on the course, so students are learning from the best. has over 20 years experience as a strength and nutrition coach, and in addition to his PhD research, he's a registered clinical nutritionist, a qualified naturopath, and holds a diploma in fitness training and health coaching in patient care. And you can find out about Cliff over at cliffhavi.com.

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and you can find out more about the Holistic Performance Institute at holisticperformanceinstitute.com. Alright guys, before we crack on into this conversation, I'd like to remind you that the best way to support Micopedia is to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform. That increases the visibility of Micopedia and amongst literally thousands of other podcasts out there. So more people get to hear from the guests that I have on the show, like one of my besties, Cliff Harvey.

02:29
I'm watching Record just because I know we'll probably have some real gems and we'd be like, man, if only we'd podcasted that. Yes, I always wear my over ears. And in fact, this is the first time I've seen you in over ears. Yeah, I've gone back to the old plugins. I usually wear my little earbuds, but I think my ear might have been a little bit swollen from wrestling. So it was not a big ear, just the earpod didn't really fit properly, which is the problem when you have cauliflower ears and stuff.

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I was actually going to ask, is that what wrestling does to your ears the same way rugby does? Yeah, possibly even more so. So if you want to know whether you should mess with someone, look at their nose, look at their ears. Their nose looks like it's been a bit smashed up and their ears are all cauliflowered. Maybe better to walk the other way. Yeah, give them a pass. Hey, Cliff, so I found out today that it is the busiest week for florists. I'm not surprised. Valentine's Day.

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That is the reason why it's the busiest. That doesn't surprise me. How does that surprise you? I just didn't think anyone really bought into Valentine's Day, but clearly I know nothing about, I don't know, people's purchasing decisions or what they like to celebrate or whatever. I just would have thought, I don't know, actually, you're right. I'm trying to think of another occasion whereby there would be this en masse sort of like people would be purchasing.

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bouquets of flowers and actually no, there's nothing. Like men racing home or like on the way home racing into the florist like, God, I forgot. Give me some roses. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Actually, it was ridiculously naive. Maybe I just didn't have my brain in gear when I'm like, oh really? This is your busiest week? But, um. I'm just too anti-consumerist and contrarian to buy into that. I don't think I would ever buy roses on.

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Valentine's Day. Like I obviously want to do lovely things for Bella, but I don't want to, I don't want to go and spend six times more than you usually spend on roses on that particular day. No. Yeah. In fact, I know lots of people make a point of not doing anything on Valentine's Day. Right. I mean, I think, don't even think, have some would even really know it was Valentine's Day. Even think about it. I look at it like Christmas, you know, I like the idea of, well, I really liked when I lived in Canada, the Thanksgiving idea.

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We just all get together and have a good meal and watch some sports and that's great. Same sort of thing for Valentine's Day. I just want to spend some time with Bella and have a nice time, eat some good food, maybe get her something nice, but nothing too extravagant, nothing too consumerist and just have a... The experience is what's important, right? Oh, that's quite lovely that you would even think Valentine's Day was the day to do it actually.

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So you sort of part by into Valentine's Day, is this what you're saying? Which is fine. Like I love that you do. Hey, you know what I'm going to say? Every day is Valentine's Day, Mickey. Yes. And there's something very Darren Ellis about the way you just said that. I'm not sure what it was. I'm like, way you, just that slight look on your face. I'm like, gosh, you look a little bit like Dads when you say that. I can imagine Darren's Valentine's Day, it'd be like.

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get up and do a mobility session with the wife and then go out for a surf with the wife and then go do some lifting with the wife. Yeah, that's true. That is true. Anyway, happy 2026. Yeah. uh It is already, well, clearly it is already like almost midway through February. This is why we're talking about Valentine's Day. And how was your, how's your year started, Cliff? Oh man, it's been...

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It's been crazy. That first, mean, New Zealand's such a funny place that we have all these long weekends throughout like January, February. So you never really feel like you're quite hitting your straps until late February anyway. But this year in particular has just felt like, where's it gone? You know, it feels like you should still be saying happy new year to people and it's, you know, what, six weeks in to the year. So it's, yeah, it's been an interesting one.

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And Halistic Performance Institute was all um up and running. Everything's up and running. You've got an exciting year planned. Yeah, cranking. ah Really exciting because we've made decisions over the years that we're not focused on growth. We're not focused on revenue. We don't have a lot of those traditional goals that businesses have. It's more just about trying to do better and better each day for

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the members. And I know that might sound a little bit trite to people, but I don't think I could be in the business if it wasn't that way. You know, there's plenty of things you can do to make money, but it's got to fill you up on a different level as well. And so that's always fulfilling. But what it means is there's not a huge amount of, you know, new courses we want to add or anything like that. It's more about just continuing to refine what we do, do that better. But one of the things we've had on our pathway for

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Well, since the very beginning really is, um, as you know, when I started out on my post-grade journey, originally that was in the mind body healthcare side. So looking at that from the Orthodox angle, obviously doing that at a legit university, AUT, uh, but I'd also done a lot of modality work through the years, some of which was more Orthodox, some of which was pretty alternative. And the idea had always been to really go down that route again of psychoneurophysiology, but provide some tools to practitioners.

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where they could really be helping people on a whole different level with behavioral change through that mind body angle. And it's never really come to fruition because we've had other foci, but I had some really good time to put into it over the last say six months. And I approached it quite differently because I went back to all the material I had from, you know, my studies, from modality work I'd done. And I tried to put that all through the lens of

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Let's try and distill down to the key things that are effective and have really strong evidence basis. So basically discard all the way, keep the things that have really strong scientific evidence and then distill that down even further into tools that fit within say a health coach, sports nutritionist, clinical nutritionist scope of practice, but are really effective for helping people to regulate their nervous system, you know, regulate their, um,

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Yeah, they did the body in terms of calming the body first before moving into the sort of more mental side of change and put that into a system that practitioners can use. So I've spent the last six months developing this modality, which can be used by practitioners. And so we'll be rolling that out at some stage in the next sort of couple of months, probably starting with little beta where we just provide some of the basic tools to people. And we'll just do that for free because the.

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tools that are included within the practitioner training, some of those that can be used by just anyone, the end user, they're really beneficial. Um, and it's just basically a way to distill a lot of the concepts that people might use in a disparate sense into really simple exercises. Like for example, we start with this thing called core 10, which is basically uses a little bit of physicality to basically dispense with some of that nervous energy, moving into breath work and

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um mindfulness. So super simple, but done in a very accessible way because we've also stripped out a lot of the terminology that's not accessible for people. You know, for example, Buddhist mindfulness of breath is really evidence-based. You know, that was sort of the foundation of um mindfulness-based stress reduction. So it's been medicalized to some degree, but a lot of the terminology still gets pulled in and that might be off-putting to people who don't necessarily relate to the Buddhist terminology.

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There's also you find with a lot of those mind-body modalities, a lot of things end up being carried through that, you know, some of the exercises and activities might be effective, but some of the rationale is not correct. You know, it's not scientifically valid and science moves on obviously. So, you know, to put it through that lens of making sure that it's accessible, universal and consummately evidence-based was something that I really wanted to do for a long time and finally got around to it.

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Cliff, can you give us any examples of, like when you're talking about things which are just sort of beliefs that we hold about something, but actually there's no real evidence to support it. Like in this, in that, um in what you're talking about, do you have a good example of something that I might know or think I know? And you're actually like, well, actually, Mickey, that's not why you do that. Cause that's not how that works. Like any sort of common belief thing, or is it more something which when someone gets in and sort of

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does the course and uses your modality, they'll figure that stuff out themselves. Yeah, to some degree it's the latter. It's more about, for example, I'll use a modality basis. We've seen really good results in people from utilizing PsychK, which is a particular modality that was quite popular quite a few years ago. What is that, Cliff? PsychK stands for Psychological Kinesiology, and it uses muscle testing.

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and then using positive affirmations and things to try and change people's beliefs. The problem is that it was never really proven and a lot of the elements of it we would know are probably not scientifically valid. Like muscle testing for beliefs, probably not a valid concept. However, there are valid concepts in terms of interoception. Do know what I mean by interoception? Explain it. So sort of... um

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Being the observer of what's happening within the body. rather than using muscle testing, which we know is not valid people, if they're saying something to themselves or about themselves or thinking about maybe a goal they have, and they're actually feeling something within the body, like resistance, it might be tightness in the chest or tightness in the gut. Like that is actually scientifically valid. There is a lot of research supporting, but those feelings we get within the body actually do result from, you know, resistance to particular beliefs or, you know, psychological.

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blocks and whatnot. So moving from testing using muscles to make some testing using interoception that takes it from being not evidence-based to evidence-based. Then with things like positive affirmations, there's kind of hooks within that too, because sometimes that's not always safe because people might further resist when they're just trying to implement positive affirmations or beliefs over the top of some real blocks. going

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Back to basics and really trying to calm the nervous system first. So it's not all just about top down control. It's about physiological calming first, central nervous system regulation first, then trying to implement some behavior change a little bit more gently is actually a lot more effective, but not only is it more effective, it's, it's based in strong evidence. So it's really about shifting some of those things that are not based in evidence or that might even be counterproductive when applied in the wrong way.

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I'm making sure it's all within the context of that scope of practice that's infringing upon you know psychiatry, psychology, counseling, etc. Because the idea is you you don't talk about the traumas, it's not talk therapy, you know that's way outside of scope. It's more so just working with patterns now to help people to live a healthier life in a more sort of broad sense. Interesting, so because kinesiology has been around for almost ever, so

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If I'm understanding you right, the physical sensation people get if they're using that modality, like someone says something or there's an... Because I've often seen it actually used in things like when they're testing food allergy type things as well, like the muscle reaction to food allergies and that this... I can't even recall how... I don't know how they do it because I've never had it done myself, but are you saying that that's not...

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that the beliefs that are integral to kinesiology, how we think it's working, isn't actually how it's working. But it doesn't mean that what you're experiencing isn't real. To some degree, yeah. I think that when people are using that as a test, it's just not accurate. When we're looking, especially at physiological things, it's just not accurate at all. And I think then it could well be more predicated on beliefs.

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You know, let's say someone's testing for an allergy and they're testing gluten. If the person strongly believes that they're allergic in some way to gluten, then they'll probably elicit some sort of response there. So it's more about what they believe or want to be true is going to basically predicate the test. But even for beliefs, you know, it's very washy as to whether it can actually indicatively show what someone's belief is or resistance to a belief.

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but there are simpler ways to do it that are more effective. And those aren't necessarily 100 % accurate either, they're just indicators. But most people would intuitively, or not even intuitively, most people would know from their own experience those feelings anyway. Like, you know, shit, when I see this person, get like tightness. Why is that? You've probably had stressful associations with that person, right? It's stuff that is...

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far more foundational, well-known and well-studied within, you know, not just psychology, but neurophysiology as to why these things occur. Nice one. And so what you're creating is a new course for HPI or is it like a little toolbox for the students going through to be able to use with their clients? It's a course and it's more of a, uh it's a practitioner certification and you know, I've created a name for it. It's called SOMA Neuethics.

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And it's basically, yeah, practitioner modality that people can use to help their clients with behavior change. And so it's again, working with those very foundational evidence-based concepts like using the breath to regulate the central nervous system, using mindfulness, but in a very uh actionable and universal way, very accessible. Yeah. With some other techniques as well around sort of implementing more positive

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beliefs and behaviors. That sounds great, Cliff. And it's like, because so many, if I think about people that I work with, with regards to what their own beliefs are, just coming into one of my programs, their ability to succeed in it, to make long-term change, I mean, that's often the sticking, that's the sticking point for everything. It's not, I don't know what to do. Well, sometimes it is, don't know what to do, actually. But for a lot of people, it's not that they don't know what to do, it's just that they don't know.

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one, where to start, but two, they don't believe that they're able to then execute and implement and make long-term change. And a lot of that is based on these narratives and these beliefs that we hold about ourselves. So, I that sounds awesome. 100%. I think, you know, and most people who've been in practice for a long time know that the tactics of nutrition are probably the smallest part. And the people being able to change their behaviors is the biggest part.

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And so this is why, you know, you and I have talked about it a lot. We always need to be taking that step back and looking at someone's psychosocial milieu in order to help them and provide the work with them on the tactics that are going to be most effective. But there can still be blocks there, especially when people have, you know, real self-limiting beliefs and their self-sabotaging. it's why is that happening? And although as nutritionists or health coaches or sports nutritionists, can't.

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delve into the why too much because the why is typically rooted in past stuff which might be trauma, et cetera. What we certainly can do is help the person now to change some of their beliefs and behaviors so that they're able to implement the tactics they need to be healthier. I mean, Cliff, you obviously, you're very well entrenched and you have a lot of knowledge around the situation with health coaches, particularly in New Zealand, like you're one. Are there only two institutions which

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Well, the two main institutions I see that certify health coaches, I'm sure there are probably more maybe. But I mean, what is the state of GP clinics and other places utilizing health coaches beyond, because I know obviously health coaches can be out there like nutritionists, just sort of like going direct to consumer, but are there more roles and like that available for people in New Zealand now? Yeah, it's growing really rapidly. And it's probably the

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fastest growth area within health in New Zealand because you know, most GP clinics and PHOs, know, primary health organizations, they're all employing or will be employing health coaches to support the doctors. So for example, a contract was just, um, actually the other two providers, Precure and Tamaki Health, uh, both providers now to the government training health coaches. Uh, and I think there's going to be

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I think it was around health coaches trained this year specifically to go into those areas. So yeah, it's growing really quickly. And I think it's a positive thing so long as people keep clear around what a health coach is, you know, because that's not clear at the moment. know, health coaches are people who have been trained extensively in behavior change with very strict scopes of practice. And they're trained to a level where they can register with Hacanza, the Australian and New Zealand body.

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The reality is a lot of people calling themselves health coaches aren't trained as health coaches. They're just people without enough qualifications to be say a nutritionist or something else. And they call themselves a health coach and it's just, just garbage. Wow. I didn't realize it that, I mean, you know, that, you know, that, uh, the, the industry. So, okay. That's, that is super interesting, but there's no, is it much like nutritionists? There's not a good regulatory system for being able to, um,

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to distinguish between someone who is qualified versus someone who is just calling themselves a health coach? Because mean, nutrition's rife with that, right? Oh, 100%. And I mean, that's one of the issues is anyone can call themselves a health coach, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. But there's a little bit more to it than people think. Because people say, well, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist, anyone can do whatever they want. But they can. But there are still legal implications if people aren't.

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qualified, registered, like if anything bad did happen and there was a, you know, HDC complaint, Health and Disabilities Commission complaint, the assessors are still going to look at whether the person is appropriately qualified, you know, what they're telling people to do, whether they're registered, because they'll take that into account, whether they're insured and all that kind of stuff. you know, for the end user, it's really important to look at, you know, is someone, if they're a nutritionist, are they a registered dietician, a registered nutritionist or a registered clinical nutritionist? If they are,

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you know, you're to be a lot safer than Joe down the street who just calls themselves a nutritionist. Similarly with a health coach, people should always look for someone who's registered with the health coaches association, Hacanza, because then they know that they're not just someone who decided to call themselves a health coach one day. They've actually been through a legitimate course of study that has most importantly, think, strict scopes of practice and ethics. Yeah. So for example, if you see someone on

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on threads or on Twitter or something, you know, saying uh I'm a health coach and I deal with hormonal issues and I prescribe these supplements and blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, unless you're a nutritionist as well, you're way outside of scope. So you're not actually a health coach. Yeah. Interesting. Have you seen the cortisol coaches out there? I've seen everything, Mick. I've seen the cortisol coaches. I've seen the perimenopause coaches. I've seen everything. Yes.

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I've seen the dopamine coaches. really, mean, both you and I could have been like, all we'd to to be a peri-menopausal coach, if you were interested, is to click a couple of buttons and pay about US $20 for a certificate that says, and you might have to listen to a video about something. It is rogue. I've got to say, it is pretty rogue in the whole space of...

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playing into people's pain points and providing solutions. And also people who would love, like they look on social media and they're, oh, I'd love to be able to do that. And it appears very easy to get yourself started in that space too. Yeah. And it seems very easy to get started doing very complicated and scientific sounding things, which seems like a real credibility indicator. I do these tests and I...

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based on these tests, I'm going to provide a customized supplementation protocol for you. And it's going to include this and this and this and this. And, you know, most practitioners with their salt in my experience tend to prescribe far less than those types of people. You know, they're working much more on behavior change, lifestyle change, general dietary change, targeted supplementation where it's necessary, like doing things in a, a really consummate clinical process.

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You can't learn a consumer clinical process from a weekend course. You know, it takes three to four years to learn that. You know, our full pathway is the equivalent in terms of credit equivalency of a degree plus a little bit more because it's 360 credits that terminates at level eight. So it's, you know, a level higher than a degree. And six months of that is in-depth mentoring with me or someone else. You know, that um changes the context entirely because so much of what we're working with people on is

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things like differential assessment, you know, are you mapping out all of the things that are going on for that person and how they're potentially interrelated, maybe how they're independent, but then taking a big step back from that and looking at what are the biggest pieces in play that could affect that person's health outcomes. And usually it's not the Dutch test and the 15 supplements. Usually it's the sleep. Usually it's the movement. Usually it's the general approach to nutrition, maybe some basic supplementation, et cetera, and then see where you're at.

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and work through that process. Yeah, I still am not 100 % convinced that I hate the Dutch test, if I'm honest. But I've never been an out the gate, oh, test, test, test first. And I know a lot of people do, because most of the time, my general, my base recommendations, to your point, wouldn't change regardless.

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I think people in era of data, they just want data. People come to me and they're like, what testing should I do? I think that I want to do this one and this one, and they're prepared to put several hundred dollars down just to get an answer that's not necessarily going to change the treatment plan, or at least what I can offer them as a treatment plan, given the scope of my practice as a nutritionist. Yeah, 100%. And I think that this is where we see the dichotomy in the industry, right? Because there'd be a lot of people who

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test everything first up, get all the data they can, and then prescribe based on that. Others will say, you know, Dutch testing is garbage. Don't do it. Now, I also don't hate Dutch testing because if you look at it, you know, it's baseline factors as a test. What would we as scientists typically look at? We'd look at things like accuracy, reliability, you know, the various things that we would run tests through in order to see whether they actually work.

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Now, Dutch testing actually works. The biggest problem is not whether it works or not, or whether it's not, you know, accurate enough when compared to say serum or tissue testing. It's more so what's the applicability? What's the utility? And that's the big thing that's missing. So is it a decent test? I'd say, yeah, based on the data, it probably is. But is it, it doesn't have a high degree of utility? Probably not in most cases. Because as, you know, to your point, if we're seeing, you know, aberrant cortisol metabolites,

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We could probably tell that from the person not sleeping, you know, sleeping four hours a night and being really stressed out and their dog just died and their wife left them. Like, yeah, you're to be stressed, right? I know that I don't need a test to tell me that. And so a lot of our prescription, especially in the initial stages is going to be identical. So why put the further harm on someone's wallet where we're just basically supporting what we already know with some additional tests. uh But to your point, I think there can be cases where it's useful. you know, Kirsten Vynon has done a little course

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or some modules for us at the Institute on that we're in specific cases that can give you just a little bit more information when those foundations have been covered that might modify maybe some of the supplement prescription and things like that. In the same way that genetic testing I look at in a similar way, you know, it's valid. In a lot of cases, it's accurate. It's going to show you really interesting things, but maybe in the first instance for a lot of people, it's not.

28:01
doesn't have all that much utility. But once you've covered off all the other stuff, what it often does is it gives you just a bit of an extra call to action that maybe you should avoid certain things or maybe you should do certain things a little bit more often. Usually not for right now, but maybe down the track. Yes, and in fact, like so I've, did the Fit Genes Practitioner course and I've run several Fit Genes DNA testing for people over the years.

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And the recommendations I really like or the things that I really like to see that I think feel are really actionable are, you know, how this person, what the inflammatory response might be or their ability to resolve inflammation. What's that like? Looking at blood pressure and cardiovascular disease genes, like how are they sort of playing out? Maybe even, you know, I think people can often tell if they're a slow or fast metabolizer or caffeine without a gene test.

28:55
They sort of intuitively know it, but having a look at things like that. so you can make some specific recommendations. What I do not like, and I'm not sure what the other ones are like, but there's almost this, a lot of the uh dietary pattern information that people have recommended come from these population-based studies and the gene, it doesn't matter what your genes look like.

29:20
you're going to be recommended the Mediterranean diet. Literally, that's the basic recommendation that almost... I haven't seen anything different in the tens of these tests that I've done over the years. I haven't made a career out of running the fit genes test, but I thought at once, I thought when I did, I'm like, oh yeah, this is going to be a goer. And then quite quickly realized that it probably wasn't the thing. I do think it is quite useful, but just the information on that personalized nutrition approach.

29:50
It's just not where we'd like it to be, I believe. Yeah, 100%. I think you're bang on. for certain things like the APOE4, homozygous for APOE4, that's going to potentially adjust some things that you do now, not for right now, but maybe 20, 30 years down the track, just to reduce your risk of Alzheimer's and whatnot. And that's information that's worth knowing for someone for their day-to-day patterns. But yeah, some of the information people get

30:17
based on the test from these big providers is, again, it's pretty much garbage because it's applying a lot of broad pop... It's supposed to be individualized, but it's the individualized test is then using broad population-based interventions. Like if someone's FOE4 homozygous or FOE4E3 or something like that, it's going to pretty much say, eliminate saturated fat as much as you can. Now, I don't...

30:46
agree with that based on the data. I don't think that someone with those gene patterns should eat loads of saturated fat, but I think residual saturated fat within the context of a normally healthy diet and assuming glycemic factors are all good and things like that, I just don't think it's going to have that big an impact because in studies that, well, in particular, I think we're biased towards our own research as well, but like in that study that I did with Grant and Karen and we

31:15
subsequently looked at the effects of um saturated fat within the context of a healthy low carb diet. Sure, it was only over 12 weeks, but there was no association between the magnitude of increase in saturated fat within these diets and changes in say LDL. ah Now that could just be a result from our research, but we see similar research being presented by others as well.

31:40
There's actually quite a lot within the context of a healthy diet. We're not seeing quite those same changes. So, you know, I do often default to, hey, let's not be extreme with anything. I don't think anyone should eat loads of sugar. I don't think anyone should eat loads and loads of saturated fat, but it's not about that. It's about is there a residual amount of saturated fat coming in within an otherwise healthy diet? I'm not going to worry about that too much. And this is an issue with AI now.

32:09
Because if practitioners or people are using AI to determine what they should do, unless you have really strong frameworks behind it that actually help to modify the outcomes to the individual, they're just going to get the same old generic stuff. Like, oh, you've got these gene factors, therefore you should do this, this, this, this, this. But that might not actually be appropriate to that individual, despite it supposedly being individualized, right? So question.

32:37
Because I em know ApoE4 and ApoE, uh the double plus the 4-3, I know the advice to reduce saturated fat. I remember, I think, hearing that someone say, an expert on a particular podcast saying, we actually don't know enough about diet to be able to make any real diet recommendations outside of ensuring you've got a high omega-3 index or something like that. uh

33:05
But my question, I don't know, I'm curious to know what you think about that actually. But Cliff, when you were talking about saturated fat in the context of your study, this is, you're gonna have to school me on this. So if someone has a higher LDL, does that increase the risk of Alzheimer's or something because of the FOE4 gene? That's my understanding, yeah. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, yeah. I'd forgotten that. I'd forgotten the links of that. Yeah, and you know, that's where

33:35
I would say, and I could, you know, I'm always open to being wrong, you know that, but I would say that we do actually have enough evidence to be suggestive, you know, that really high LDL is not going to be beneficial. And there's particular genotypes that that's going to be far more apparent for. But in line with that comment before, I think it is fair to say that we don't know enough or we're not taking into account enough

34:05
of the spectrum of research ways you know we focus down on particular things without necessarily taking into account the context of what else is going on you know and you and i and our colleagues will often say hey but but what about the stuff like is it actually as big a factor if the person has really good glycemic control is it actually that big effect if other things are apparent you know is it actually as big a factor if they're not having so much alcohol or not.

34:34
or if they're exercising appropriately. All those other factors are all going to be interrelated. We look at them independently because we kind of have to to try and piece out what is most important for health. But in terms of application for an individual, we can't really disentangle them because they're all interrelated. There are some very smart, smart people who absolutely limit their saturated fat despite doing everything to the letter.

35:01
Isn't that interesting? And then of course you've got Alan Flanagan, is that his name? He's very smart. I think you were even on a debate with him. It's funny, I don't like calling them debate, it wasn't really a debate, more of a discussion, I'll call it a discussion around low-carbon saturated fat, think. Maybe actually, I think you were on a discussion with him, but maybe the saturated fat one was a different one I was listening to. But they're very- that was probably with his colleague Danny, who I've done quite a bit of stuff with, Yeah.

35:31
these really smart people are just so bought into it. And I don't mean that as an, they're like drinking the Kool-Aid, but I understand why people get confused around saturated fat because there are so many people who, so many smart people who think different things. Yeah. And the thing is, I think they're actually correct if we just, if you just look at the evidence and you're just looking at LDL,

36:00
various health outcomes like cardiovascular disease, maybe not so much mortality, but cardiovascular mortality maybe, maybe not so much all cause mortality, maybe we start to see a bit of washing out there. But I think they're not wrong. you know, so what we would often say is, yeah, but what about if we're looking at saturated fat and outcomes? So take out the middleman, let's not look at LDL per se, because we know saturated fat can increase LDL, not always though.

36:25
That's the interesting thing, right? It's not universal and we have to look at the context around that, which is what we were talking about. But let's say we take out the middleman and we're just at saturated fat and say cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular mortality or cause mortality outcomes. Do we see an effect? Prima facie at the first look, we would probably say, well, no, there's not actually an effect or a strong effect there. Then they'll counter with, but a lot of those studies actually correct for lipids.

36:52
So you're not correcting for the lipids, you know, you still see a pathway, saturated fat, LDL, cardiovascular disease, mortality. They're not wrong. But again, some of those studies don't correct for the lipids. Some of those studies are quite different and still show that maybe there's not always this consistent outcome between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease or all cause mortality. So I don't think they're wrong. I think they're generally correct. And you know, I have a lot of time for Danny and Ellen because they are wicked smart.

37:20
Like I say, I don't think they're wrong, but I do think there's nuance there and I think there's context. And even, know, Ellen said to me in the past, you know, in reality, in the context of an otherwise healthy diet in which everything else is good and the person's exercising, all this kind of stuff, maybe it's actually not a very big factor at all. um I hope I was paraphrasing correctly there. If I got that wrong, Ellen, please tell everyone that I'm wrong. I'm completely happy with that. uh But I, know, it's one of those...

37:48
difficult areas where I think we need to be pragmatic. And one of our first duties as both researchers and practitioners is to do no further harm. So, you know, I get criticized a lot within the low carb community because people think that I'm too cautious. Saturated fats, fine. Eat butter, load up on towel, all this kind of stuff. It's like, well, but why? Like, what's the point of that apart from trying to prove your point? You know, I eat all this butter and I'm healthy. Well, good on you. Like that just seems like virtue signaling to me.

38:18
You don't need to do that in a uh healthy diet, even if you are including foods that have saturated fat, it doesn't necessarily have to be excessive in saturated fat. Plus you've got all the mitigating cofactors around it, lots of polyphenols and antioxidants and fiber and all the good stuff. Carnivores hate me. Because I like vegetables, right? And it's so funny, get, you know, people send me pictures of the ketogenic textbook and say, you should read this. It's like, dude, I wrote a chapter in that

38:47
in that book. It's so stupid. But there's a real lack of pragmatism because people want to be right and they want to take really extreme viewpoints. I just don't think there's a point. Yeah. Do you know what this um really highlights to me is how my algorithm is so far is really so quite removed from that ketogenic carnivore diet algorithm that you must be in when you go in, however often you go in, which isn't very often, I know.

39:16
Um, where's mines all geared towards GLP ones, perimenopause. Um, uh, and do you know, actually what I get a lot in my feed is this nutritionist that's just really blowing up. don't know her name. She's probably very good. Dr. Jessica is someone or other. I say doctor because I believe she has a PhD. Um, and, uh, and, and it's her watching someone else say something. And so the whole real is her just standing here like this.

39:46
And I'm watching and I'm like, what am I watching? And then she's explaining. And the hilarious thing to me is that she's not actually saying anything different from anyone else, but this is just like, she's very Instagram famous. And I believe she might be on TV somewhere also. That's probably why. But I guess my point is I didn't really have a point other than it really sort of struck me how the algorithm does work in different ways for depending on what you're into. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, in trying to push out

40:15
pragmatic message. Sometimes I probably do, you know me, I'm not, I'm not a logical fallacy person. So I don't like to get at home or anything, but I will draw the ire of the carnival crowd sometimes by, you know, making a point of, of certain things. Like for example, I did a post, you know, in which, um I said that I get really good results symptom wise from a carnival diet, but I also get great results from a diet that's way more expensive.

40:42
Plus it benefits my quality of life, dietary adherence, performance, et cetera. Now, whenever you mention carnivore and have any sort of implication that maybe it's not the perfect diet, you're gonna get a lot of blowback. But it doesn't make a lot of sense because I'm not anti the carnivore diet because I think that we still need to do more research. We need to understand why some people are getting great results from it. We need to, and...

41:09
The thing that carnival has done like keto did back in the day is that it starts to open the doors to people questioning a prevailing dietary dogma. And I don't think that's a bad thing, but we can't discount that there are people who eat 80 % of their calories from carbohydrates who are in robust good health. A hundred percent. I like, are so many people, I mean, you and I both know Brandon very well and he has, you know, a lot of his clients are on

41:38
very high carbohydrate intakes and their blood markers and all of their indices of health are absolutely perfect, which does fly in the face of what I used to think was like, well, no one could possibly handle that amount of carbohydrate and be metabolically healthy. And that's just not the case. Clearly they are. Yeah. I presented at medical conferences cases, like disparate cases that I've had, particularly with athletes.

42:07
Where, you know, uh a case that I presented quite a bit at conferences is the case of two world champion level Muay Thai fighters. One of my clients ate really high carbs and was ripped to shreds all the time, perfect blood markers and could get lean for his fights and cut weight just super easy. The other one really struggled and basically needed to be on a low carb diet. Now those are extremes that I don't think they're going to be relevant to most people who are somewhere more in the middle.

42:37
But here's the thing, right? If lectins and phytoch acid and tannins and fiber were as bad as some people claim, we would see evidence for that from population data. some people posit that they're as bad as smoking. okay, where's the evidence? Cause you would see that. You're going to see that straight away, right? We see that alcohol and in excessive amounts is bad for us easily. We see that smoking is bad for us easily from population data.

43:04
If these things were true, given that most people eat a high carb diet and actually eat a pretty shitty diet, like we would see it very clearly. Why is it that those people who are eating more whole grains and legumes and fruits and vegetables and things, typically they're actually pretty healthy. You can't put it all down to the fact that they have concurrent health factors, like they're more likely to exercise, less likely to smoke, less likely to drink and all that kind of stuff. And even if that was the case, you still can't conclude that they're independently bad for you.

43:33
because you'd still see a negative, right? You wouldn't see them actually healthier than other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such a point. There's got to be a smoking gun somewhere, right? Otherwise you're defaulting to this real reductionist, mechanistic stuff. That might be interesting, but hey, show me the data. Like show me the evidence, because you can't just have a theory. Like you can't just have a hypothesis. Why do we create hypotheses so we can go on and test them in research? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Hey, Cliff, I've got a question. You might not know this, but...

44:02
when we were like just sort of doing comms about what we might discuss today, which true to form, this wasn't on our ah little list, which is the best thing about these conversations. But I am interested because Creatine, I believe, was on your list of things to talk about. Is there any research to look at Creatine and APOE 4.4 or 4.3? I don't think directly. I'd have to look. I think I'm fairly over the research on Creatine.

44:31
But I haven't seen anything directly for that. But you know, if I have a client who has a predilection in any respect towards, you know, later life cognitive decline, et cetera, I'm probably going to have them on creatine anyway. Now that in itself is probably quite contentious because there are a of people out there saying, look, the data just aren't there, right? The data around cognition is not strong. uh

44:59
possibly, and a lot of research shows that it doesn't really provide a significant or meaningful impact on cognition. And, you know, a lot of the more orthodox researchers and practitioners that I know are probably in that camp. Most people, they're quite bullish about it. Everyone's got to take creatine. I think again, the devil is probably in the details. We are on balance. I think we probably do see effects, but to my knowledge, at least from what I've seen, the research and younger, healthy people, particularly younger, healthy athletes and whatnot,

45:28
doesn't really show much benefit. What we do potentially see though is in older adults, maybe there's more effect there. And people with TBIs, post-concussion, people with PTSD, maybe people with mental health challenges like bipolar, depression, et cetera, the research I've seen at least tends to show that yeah, we are seeing some effect there. So I think it's possibly uh

45:55
A function of, and this is just me theorizing here, it's possibly a function that, know, when you're younger, you haven't been beaten up so much, you don't have those other factors going on. You probably just don't see any meaningful effect because your brains already feel pretty well at that point. But where we have neuronal fueling crises driven by anything, aging, disease, know, trauma, maybe that's where we're going to see a much greater impact. And that makes sense, but it's all, it's consistent with the research. And I think that higher doses.

46:25
especially acutely are probably more impactful. I think that's something we can certainly see. And I would suspect as well that there's gonna be more movement in that space because I have a suspicion based on digging into the data a little bit that our common recommendations for creatine aren't quite on point. The five grams? Yeah. I don't think that that's applicable to everyone. And I tend to prescribe one gram per 10 kilos of

46:53
of body weight or 10 kilos of sort of lean body mass minimum. Because bigger people, you know, I just make the assumption, but it's also backed again by some of the research that bigger people are going to need bigger doses. I remember seeing there was a study that actually that did scale to body weight. There's more than one. I mean, you sound to me like you've been all into the literature. I've probably just picked up on a few studies that have sort of come in my feed, but there was one looking at postmenopausal women.

47:22
and I believe it was brain health and they were prescribing, I want to say 0.3 grams per kilogram body weight. If that sounds, so therefore if you've got a 60 kilogram woman, then is that 18, that's about 18 grams a day of creatine? Was this for cognition? I believe it was for brain related, brain related health outcomes, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What was the, I just pulled something up here. 0.3 grams per kg body weight.

47:51
Oh, was that the single dose? It may well have been. I just remember a study that only one study I've seen that I really looked at. Yeah, so 0.35 grams per kilo body weight, improved sleep deprivation, induced cognitive decline. That was in healthy young adults as well. So that's not the study you're talking about, but that's kind of interesting because that acute dosing for sleep-related

48:19
impairments in cognition looks very promising. But yeah, a lot of the standards of lower dose consistent dosing doesn't really tend to show us a meaningful effect, which is why I think slightly higher dosing is possibly where the research is gonna head, but I guess we'll just have to watch that space. It's one of those things where there's a lot of blowback when the data aren't really unequivocal.

48:47
But it's kind of, to me, it's a little bit like fish oil. We see enough benefits across enough domains that I'd probably say it's a pretty safe bet to creatine. And so that would be obviously one of the foundational supplements. Fish oil, creatine, and then other things as needed. Protein to help get protein requirements if you need it. A good quality multi. Well, even magnesium.

49:10
would not actually be in my first tier. And I don't disagree with you that it's really beneficial, but only because if I have a client who is meeting sufficiency, I wouldn't prescribe it. So, you know, do a dietary analysis and if they're already hitting like 500 mgs a day, maybe we wouldn't put that in initially. But yeah, I mean, it is, you know, super beneficial and a lot of people aren't going to be getting that. absolutely. But I'm also always going to dose based on what the rest of the diet's providing.

49:38
You know, so I sort of have a target dose, let's say at 600 mgs for a particular person or athlete, and they're getting 400 from diet, then I'll only give them 200 mgs before bed rather than the full dose because it's going to save them to die. Whereas I tend to prescribe magnesium like as a bit of a blunt instrument or like, there's 300 milligrams, you take that. I don't think is invalid either. And especially depending on the form.

50:06
Although I think that for most people most of the time form is relatively unimportant as long as it's a bioavailable form, like let's say citrate versus glycinate, I'd say pretty much same result for most people. Maybe for sleep purposes alone, glycinate might be a slightly better option just because of the glycine factor. That's actually something I'm looking into a bit now is glycine as a targeted higher dose supplement.

50:35
just purely because of the potential for triggering increased collagen synthesis. Now, it's just a theory and I don't think there's enough strong research on that. um But who knows, that could be a really interesting thing because one of the theories around collagen, of course, is that maybe it's not so much about the structural substrate alone. Maybe it's also just about the triggering for collagen synthesis in a similar way to say, leucine triggers MPS.

51:03
Yeah, yeah, because for listeners unaware, glycine is one of the three amino acids that you find in collagen peptides, is, um yeah, which, so I just wanted to clarify that. And as we've discussed, the peptide factor is still important because there is that myth that it doesn't matter, you don't get any benefit because collagen is broken down to its constituent amino acids. But obviously within the body, that's not always the case. And we do absorb diatripeptides.

51:33
And we know that through tracer studies, those do actually, you know, end up in connective tissue. um Interesting on the form of magnesium. When I was speaking to Dr. Lise Ulsua about, it was actually just, she was talking about breast cancer um survivorship in thriving. And we were talking about studies looking at magnesium and they did a study using 500 milligrams of magnesium oxide and that actually helps sleep.

52:01
So was almost like because it was 500 milligrams, it was such a high dose that even though it was poorly absorbed, this is like a clinical trial, it still had some benefits for sleep related, our country I thought was super interesting because I very, uh I only, I sort of shy away from oxide for a lot of people. So I'd never really recommend it actually. Yeah, I mean, I do because for, you know, my understanding is for most people it's more poorly absorbed.

52:30
For some people, it's not absorbed at all functionally. I'm pretty sure, I'll have to look back at the research, but I'm pretty sure that when I was digging into this years ago, there was research showing that there's quite a lot of inter-individual variability in their absorption and some people functionally didn't really absorb much at all. So I think it's just a safer option. To go with something else. 100%. And MagSitTrait is very cost effective. If people maybe want that extra benefit of the glycine, then MagGlycinate is a great option and it's not.

53:00
that expensive nowadays. And I kind of figured that, you know, given that it's not that expensive, just in case, you might as well take a form that you know is going to be well absorbed. Plus, of course, if you're taking, you know, let's say you can take 200 mgs of mag glycinate or 400 or 500 mgs of mag oxide, you're putting yourself at greater risk of reaching bowel tolerance too. You know, I'm relatively sensitive to magnesium, so I wouldn't want to be taking mag oxide because I'll probably have to... uh

53:29
probably shut myself in the middle of the night. Just to put it, just to, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Just to tell it how it is. Interesting, Cliff, I don't know how much research you've done on MAG3 and 8. I've, I purchased some magnesium 3 and 8 because people talk about how it crosses the blood brain barrier. And, but it, and I mean, maybe it clearly, want it to my mind it does. And people talk about it as

53:58
being helpful to help calm you down, didn't calm me down. I was awake. I took it three nights in a row and for three nights in a row, I was wide awake. And I'm like, this is impacting my brain and not, it's making me feel more wired and not actually calming me down, which I thought was super interesting. Yeah, I'm not sure why that would be. from what I've seen, it does cross the blood brain barrier more effectively, but it's not by a huge percentage. know, citrate's effective.

54:27
Yeah. Like compared to citrate, Yeah, yeah. Or gluconate or glycinate. uh I think there's quite a small difference. So 3N8 is, my understanding is it's the best in terms of most absorbed across that brain barrier, but it's also quite a bit more expensive. And so, you know, I was looking at this around, just a little article for our members. There was a new study came out which supports the earlier research on, for example, the absorption of

54:56
Lipospheric vitamin C versus standard vitamin C and it is absorbed, you know, a lot more effectively. Like we're talking about, think from memory is there at 2.3 fold more effectively, right? It's quite a lot, but when you consider it's, I think about 10 times more expensive on a cost benefit basis. I'm still going to go for standard vitamin C and the only clients that I would put on lipospheric, well, as if they wanted to obviously, or if, um,

55:24
They had real issues with bowel tolerance for the standard forms of vitamin C, because then you can get away with a lower dose um and or the same dose with much better absorption. So it's about, you know, the user in a case by case basis. But I always look at that cost benefit ratio in the same way with, you know, krill oil was really popular a few years back, but it was just really expensive. And compared to fish oil, yes, it's absorbed more effectively. So you get higher.

55:51
levels, but on a cost benefit basis, you could just take a little bit more fish oil, get the same effect, and it'd be a lot cheaper. Cliff, do you have any concerns on fish oils purchasing them here in New Zealand versus, like, if you remember, maybe 10 years ago, there was like, quite a big story that like a lot of the fish oils that we have here in New Zealand are all sourced from one sort of manufacturing plant, and a lot of them were, I don't know, either poor quality or oxidized or something, which then sort of made people shy away from

56:21
the ones that you can purchase that are pretty cost effective. Do you have a sense of the quality of fish oils here in New Zealand? I have a sense of it, but not really current because I haven't seen any brands for testing myself or anything like that. I do remember that study. And as a result of that study, I got in touch with a couple of the companies who sent me some assays of their product. And it was pretty good.

56:48
So I think there are decent brands out there and I would tend to off the shelf. um You know, again, I don't know exactly what the situation is now, but I tend to trust brands like go healthy and clinicians, which you can get anywhere as far as the quality. You know, Nordic Naturals has always been the gold standard. I think other brands like Wiley's, know I've seen their essays and it's really good stuff. So.

57:14
there certainly are good brands that are still relatively cost effective that you can get. ah But if it's some new or smaller tin pot brand, I don't think you can always trust the supply chain and the sourcing. But a lot of it's obviously also not just about where it's produced. It's about the supply chain, how it's put into capsules, how it's stored, how it's transported, et cetera. Yeah, I often also suggest uh Sanderson's and Ethical Nutrients. oh

57:43
as well, they appear to be like pretty good. So they're solid brands, I think. But I remember after seeing that story just afterwards, always having it in my head, like, oh, I'm going to suggest this because I know it's a little bit more cost effective for you than Nordic Naturals. And just sort of crossing my fingers that this problem was resolved after the big sort of expose. And I think, you know, there can be things that people can do in the home as well, but put your fish oil in the fridge.

58:13
Yeah, and then if you're worried to take a big bite out of your fish oil and you'll know immediately if it's rancid or not. Not that I do that, but in fact I do chew my fish oil capsules because they've got a nice sort of orange flavor and I'm like, I quite like that. It's quite nice. When I was taking liquid fish oil, I used to quite like the taste of the Melrose ones. Oh, nice one. Yeah, Melrose, of course. It's the other brand. something that I wanted to chat to you about, do you still have time? Yeah, I've got all the time in the world. Amazing.

58:41
uh is of course the dietary guidelines. And I just really want to get your take just because the dust is settled. feel like January was a very busy month with the dietary guidelines, that low carb um mechanism paper from Noakes and Prinz and Kootenakeetel. And then of course, the Epstein files, there's a lot going on. But within them.

59:08
The dietary guidelines was something that seemed to blow up the internet for a while. And I was just curious as to whether you had any thoughts. Yeah, to be completely honest, I didn't have an in-depth read of it. I did look over the new dietary guidelines. And to my mind, I think what we saw as a bit of a background to it is a real rebellion against the old food pyramid. But the food pyramid hasn't really been...

59:36
from an institutional point of view, a factor for quite a few years. You know, they had moved to the MyPlate idea. Now, if people have problems with the MyPlate idea, I think that's fine. But setting up the food pyramid as the bogeyman is probably not the right target because it's kind of already been surpassed now. It's already been, you know, surpassed by newer information. And so this new inverted food pyramid, I mean, I thought it was all just a little bit silly, to be honest.

01:00:05
Now, I don't think that dietary guidelines shouldn't have been revised. And you you and I have talked about it many times with our colleagues, we've proposed different dietary guidelines in the past. Not dissimilar to the probably details that have ended up in the DGAs actually, which is interesting, but yes, to your point, that. But simpler. Yes, and yes, yes. Because...

01:00:30
We were trying to take the focus away from having people be too concerned in the first instance about particular elements of the diet and move more towards if they can for the majority of their diet, choosing foods that are more unprocessed, more whole, et cetera, and not being so concerned with the nuances. And I think there's a real strength in that because most people are confused.

01:00:59
by dietary guidelines, they're confused by food labels. And if we can simplify it, that's great. Now, if the dietary guidelines help people to do that, I think that's great. But I think it was presented in quite a confusing way. I don't think it actually helped much because I don't think an inverted pyramid is a natural visual device for people to me. And I don't think it necessarily makes sense either to have foods like meat as being

01:01:27
the base of the pyramid or in this case the top of the pyramid because that's not gonna be necessarily the largest bulk of the diet or healthy diet so just in terms of the quantification and the visual representation of what people should do i don't think it quite hit the mark i think the scientific information was was probably rushed out based on some of the analysis i've seen where referencing was incorrect and you know things were.

01:01:54
It looked like some of it was generated by AI because there were hallucinations in there. um Also, the competing interests, you have something presented, but then there's still the recommendation to reduce saturated fat or choose lower fat options, lower in saturated fat and whatnot. Now, if I'm getting that wrong, correct me, but that's my understanding of what it was presented. I don't think it really helped to clarify things. I think it helped to confuse people even more.

01:02:23
Plus, you the whole context of what was going on behind it. I think if the goal is to make Americans healthier, I don't think confusing them is going to do it. I don't think cherry picking the evidence is necessarily going to help. Now, maybe that's been done in the past as well. So none of it's helpful. But I also think, you know, defunding research, taking the focus off vaccines that we know work. um You know, we see a measles epidemic in the States now. I think all of those things seem very conflicting.

01:02:53
to what we'd all agree is the outcome. A few, yeah, so a few thoughts or a few, and I'm in agreeance with a lot of what you talk about. wonder with the, and I'll sort of go through it, with the pyramid, for some reason, the pyramid represents so much more than just, you know, just in terms of nutrition and in terms of how arguments are, or arguments different.

01:03:21
food philosophies are presented. It's very symbolic, isn't it? This is why I feel that people continue to go back to the pyramid, even though to your point, the visual aid has moved on since the 1980s when the pyramid first came. I totally agree with you, Cliff. Meat doesn't belong in terms of the visual representation of what you eat most of.

01:03:50
And I think this is the problem. I understand that something's, you what the reality is, is that people think that you should get more of your calories coming from good protein. But the way it's represented, it looks like I just have to worry about meat on my plate and then I'm fine. And if anything, like put more vegetables in there anyway. But so I think that that's almost like because of the, maybe because of the people behind the visual aid and where they are in terms of not just

01:04:20
You can say it. What? I think they were placating the carnival crowd. Yeah. RFK eats carnival. One of his advisors, what's his name? You know the guy. It's just completely blanked for some reason, but he's very, very well-known advocate. But anyway, I think they're placating the carnival crowd to some degree, or maybe not even placating them. Maybe just that's an implicit bias that's coming through. Yeah. uh And ridiculous, right?

01:04:49
I feel like the, and it was almost like that, it's completely um does to your point contradict the recommendation to continue to keep saturated fat below 10 % of calories, which was almost like a concession. It was almost felt like that was left in as a concession to the traditional crowd. As I understood it, they tried to use just.

01:05:13
randomized controlled trial information to form the guidelines rather than rely on population based studies. So the cherry picking, as I understand it, was related to that. But I might be wrong about that actually. And in fact, I'm speaking to Don Layman about the protein, the changes in the recommendations for the DGAs in protein, albeit it hasn't actually changed the RDA for

01:05:40
dietary protein because they are actually different. The RDAs versus the dietary guidelines. think people were a bit confused there and I think I initially was confused as well. I think that there would have been easier ways to do it though. You know, I think I have to try and dig it out. Years ago, I proposed a food pyramid that I remember it having sort of vegetables on the base, mostly because of that volume issue, like on your plate, veggies are probably going to be the biggest component.

01:06:09
as generally agreed with some exceptions. can't always cater for the exceptions either. Maybe for a lot of people, protein and carbs are going to be fairly similar in terms of quantity. Although what I had proposed is that we don't really worry too much about the carbs. We have those on a sliding scale, dependent on activity, satiety and things like that. Now that might be getting a little bit too confusing, but the way it was laid out was not that difficult. Now what we could also look at is, as a lot of us use sort of modular approaches now,

01:06:39
Maybe I've helped to promote that idea, but you know, the portion sizes are not a new thing. And I certainly didn't, you know, formulate that it's been going on for probably a hundred plus years. That's an easy way to represent things as well as a starting point, maybe, Hey, try and get at least a palm size serving a good quality protein, you know, try and get at least two first sizes of vegetables. And then the rest, mean, honestly, the rest is fairly flexible. Maybe people need a little bit more guidance around that, but I think.

01:07:08
Overall, if people are getting enough protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, the relative macronutrient apportioning outside of that is probably not that big a deal. Some people might choose low carb, some people might choose higher carb. It doesn't actually matter that much. Yeah, and I do. feel like at the end of the day, it almost, not inconsequential, but I feel a little bit sad that some of the good recommendations within it will be chucked out.

01:07:37
in 2030 when the administration, you know, because the administration undoubtedly would have changed at that point and things will go back to business as usual. I don't, I don't really know we can say that this is progress yet. think you sort of at all. fact, like this itself, I don't think is progress. I think this to your point is quite confusing in terms of like, if you look at it its entirety, even though there are some really good things that come from it.

01:08:05
that had the potential to come from it. don't think that this isn't progress until, I don't know, it's got to be sort of years on the ground, if it is at all. Do you think maybe, and I'm just thinking out loud here, I wonder if there needs to be more synthesis too in the way health recommendations are presented. You know, because to my mind, let's say a pyramid, the foundation goes beyond food. You know, it includes social determinants of health, it includes sleep and movement and things like that. Now,

01:08:35
A lot of people would say, but that then becomes too confusing, but it only becomes confusing if there aren't really punchy, actionable things that people can have some awareness of, right? And maybe the social determinants of health are the most difficult one, but that's not really well addressed anywhere. Like we can tell people what they should eat till the cows come home, but it's not going to matter if you don't have enough money to afford to buy good, healthy food. Now, what are people going to say sitting out there? They're going to say, but healthy food can be cheaper.

01:09:05
Yes it can, but that's not necessarily temporarily accurate because if you have $10 left in your account, you can't go and stock up on vegetables and legumes or made or whatever. You're going to go to McDonald's and get a couple of burgers because all you can afford, right? Until the next paycheck comes in. So there are so many implications from the social and psychosocial side that play into what people can and can't do. And they're seldom addressed. Well, like what would be, what would be the.

01:09:33
The biggest thing to improve people's health right now, I believe that having a living wage minimum would probably have a bigger impact on health than trying to tell people what to eat. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, maybe. Yeah, nice one. And in fact, someone asked me what my, if I had one thing that I could, that I thought would really massively improve anyone's health, my thing was get moving, actually. So I guess both of us,

01:10:02
as nutritionists and naturopaths are looking beyond the individual in their food choice as like first steps for, you know, helping improve health overall, which is interesting, isn't it? Yeah. And it's absolutely critical to people then being able to eat well. You know, we all know of the value of those um lynchpin actions, you know, where people, we see it all the time. Someone starts going to the gym and they start eating better because they know then that they've got the signal that they're doing things.

01:10:32
that are good for their health. Am I going to get hammered by all the maha people after this, Miki? I don't know how many of them would actually listen to Mikopedia. To be honest, I think you're safe, to be fair. um... Hey, but just one thing, just jumping in there. I think it's something you alluded to, which is really important, is that, and it, you know, it speaks to a lot of our conversations through the years about the sort of the needless battles that people have. Even if we don't agree with...

01:10:59
current regime in the States. And even if we don't agree with RFK on a lot of things or Dr. Oz on a lot of things, if they do something that's positive, we should still appreciate that particular thing. You we shouldn't be against things just purely because of who's saying it. So if there are some more pragmatic, simpler recommendations that come through the new dietary guidelines, I think those should absolutely be retained. We just need to get back to, you know, a more consummately evidence-based approach, but one that's also pragmatic enough to allow people

01:11:28
to apply the guidelines. And I think that's been a failure traditionally. I think it's probably still a failure. So we haven't quite got there yet. Yeah. No, that's a really good point because I, you know, like with the new DGAs, like I'm like, okay, well, this is actually quite huge in terms of nutrition. I don't think it was exactly what I would have thought would come out of it. But I certainly, like when I knew RFJ, I always get his initials. I always want to say JFK, obviously.

01:11:58
RFK Jr. when he was in, the one thing I wanted him to do was shake up nutrition. And that was the one thing that which he has apparently done. I mean, knows, has the potential to do so who knows how this will actually roll out. Cliff, if we've, I've still got you for 10 more minutes, hopefully. And if that's the case, what I want to talk about is GLPs actually, like 2026, feel is the year of the weight loss medication, 2025 probably was, but.

01:12:27
It's more and more accessible and available to people. And I'm just really curious, much as I was about the DGAs, to get your thoughts on some of the major things we should be considering with them, maybe as practitioners, maybe as people who are using the drugs. And I'll just put my cards on the table. Obviously, listeners will know this, but I'm a fan of the appropriate use case of these drugs for people who need them.

01:12:57
And if I look out there on social media, I know that's not always the case with a lot of people, but I'm certainly not opposed to their use. Yeah. I think we do very much see coming through, maybe it's in the low carb community. Maybe it's in the sort of Maha crowd. It's also in the more natural and alternative side of the industry. We see very much a resistance and fear of pharmaceuticals. Very contrarian and very against

01:13:26
the pharmaceutical model very against orthodox medicine. And I don't think that's helpful and I don't think it's holistic. Now, I think within that understanding, we can all recognize that there are big flaws in some parts of academic publishing. There's big flaws in the pharmaceutical model, especially in the US, where there's lobbying and there are ridiculous prices for drugs and all those types of things. So we all recognize those problems around the periphery.

01:13:56
But in terms of any particular medication, you know, we do need to consider that if something helps improve someone's quality of life, that just purely on its own merits is a positive thing. Now, a of people then default to, yeah, but this person could have got the same results or better results through lifestyle. Fantastic. If they can do it, I always think we should go with a lower medicine intervention approach if we can. But to your point,

01:14:26
I think one of the things that we're all saying is that it's not like people haven't tried. You know, I know people that have tried every diet, including low-carb and it hasn't necessarily stuck, but they've used GLP-1 meds and it's helped to reduce the food noise to a point where they're able to be far more compliant. They've got good results. And I think that's only a positive thing. Now people will freak out about the adverse effects. I think there are

01:14:55
there's definitely a need for further research. And I think there are some potential, although very rare and minor adverse effects that need to be investigated a lot more. From memory, uh some of the potential cancer implications need to be investigated further. But I think on balance, what we see is that they look pretty safe. And a lot of the adverse effects that people really play out are consistent with any calorie restriction. Yes, and dosing potentially.

01:15:25
issues. uh Like for example, you everyone talks about the loss of muscle. Well, whenever that, when GLP-1 meds have been compared to, you know, so the resulting energy restriction from GLP meds has been compared to any other energy restriction, the muscle loss is basically the same. So it's not like our recommendations necessarily change. It's just that we, I think we need support around those GLP-1 meds so that people are encouraged like anyone else wanting to be healthy.

01:15:51
to weight train, to have ample protein, to make sure their nutrient replete, because if they're eating less of just the same foods, then there's a greater risk of micronutrient insufficiency, which has been, you know, talked about in the literature quite a lot at this point. So, you know, to my mind, I think it's very easy for people to be very vitriolic against these things and also against the people taking them. You know, you're just taking the easy way out. You know, when people bring up, who is it? Is it Serena Williams or Anis Williams? Yeah, it's Serena. Yeah, like saying she shouldn't be taking it.

01:16:21
It's like, why not? I I know so much. I've worked with athletes, you know, like on match fit, you know, we work with athletes who used to be the greatest rugby players on the planet and they're now struggling with some of their health stuff. some cases, former athletes, it's easier to do that. You don't have all that expenditure anymore. You you've developed maybe some bad habits, maybe post your career. You know, a lot of athletes, people don't realize also have fairly serious post career depression.

01:16:51
And they often eat to compensate for that. Why not allow people all of the avenues they can to achieve help, even if that includes medication? Like that's wholism. I agree with you. And on that Serenia Williams thing of reading some of the comments, which sometimes you should never do that. It's like roadkill. You don't want to look, but you can't look away. um Some of the comments were exactly that. She's a former athlete. m

01:17:20
imagine it and they almost, some of the comments were almost about her, you know, that, but she's beautiful or her weight didn't stop her from performing and being the best. basically not being able to disassociate Serena the athlete from Serena the, however she is old, early forties, whatever, woman now past her athletic career. Like it's very difficult for them to sort of, uh

01:17:49
to delineate between the two and the potentially two, I guess, two lifestyles, two lives that she's sort of led. And I found it very, people were very judgmental. And of course her husband, doesn't he run the company that she's getting the meds from or something. So that clearly didn't help her. I mean, that's, by who cares? I mean, that's nothing. It's very minor. If it's purely a commercial thing, then, you know, people can judge the ethics on that themselves.

01:18:19
But as an exemplar for people who might benefit from it, I don't think we can be too judgmental of people's motivations because, you know, as we said before, so many people have tried and failed so many times. If there is another avenue that's going to help them to reduce the food noise to actually achieve greater health, even with, you know, an albeit very small risk of potential adverse effects, I think most of us would agree that continuing with

01:18:47
excess adiposity, being with overweight, being with obesity for a long, long period of time, that's one of the greatest, one of the greatest risk factors we have in health. So people can get on top of that, even with some medicinal health, you know, I've got no, no issue with that. Sidebar, did see a dietician, 180,000 followers, who literally said, obesity does not cause disease. Her handle was, a uh

01:19:14
fight for food freedom or something, she's intuitive eating anyway. I just about fell over. You and I both know that she would be wrong in that state. Yeah, totally wrong. One interesting thing is that I see a lot of people pushing back on GLP-1 saying, we don't have long-term data to know how these are going to impact us in 10 or 20 years' time, albeit these drugs have been used at lower doses for type 2 diabetes.

01:19:42
for 20 years. we do have that data. But what I'm interested in, and I hadn't considered this until someone mentioned it in a podcast last week, is the potential unnatural elevation of GLP-1 for the entire week. So it's not like you take something like Callocurb, where you take it and it raises your GLP-1 by 600 times, and then it reduces. So you take it again. So you had that fluctuation that might

01:20:12
be just A, it will amplify your normal response. Whereas instead with the drugs, it's just elevated constantly. And I guess that's the thing that we might not know what impact that has in the long term at those doses. And I think that's a wait and see, maybe a don't know. That's a really good point. you know, I guess it does give some pause because you don't want to be too bullish about medications. And I never really am because

01:20:42
We were artificially adjusting, you know, hormone levels within the body. There are always going to be potential implications. And I think that's something to, for people to be very aware of, you know, obviously we do need more research, but to your point, they've been used at lower doses for a fairly long time now. And I think, you know, maybe that's also a case to be made for the sort of temporal use cases as well. If you have someone who's with obesity and they're at 60, you know,

01:21:12
maybe they're prepared to risk adverse effects that might spring up 30 or 40 years down the track because maybe they won't be around anyway. But yeah, mean, the pharmacokinetics and dynamics, the pharmacology side of things is not my area. So I won't delve into that too much. think more important for us as nutritionists are the narratives around it and the sort of sociological discussions that are happening.

01:21:41
uh around the ethics and virtues of using particular medications. And I think that's where we see this real polarization that's not always helpful. I've seen the same thing in low carb previously where a lot of people started going off their thyroid meds. It's like, I'm feeling great on low carb. I think it's probably helping my body, so I'm gonna go off my thyroid medications, usually leading to calamity. Because if you've got basically no thyroid left, you should probably take your thyroid meds.

01:22:10
Yeah, 100%. One last thing, I just read in an article last week that Brian Johnson thinks he's going to attain immortality by the year 2039. I think that Brian Johnson is probably similarly to that dietitian you mentioned before, wrong. How do you know that? How does he know he's going to be immortal in about years? Like, what the Well, the thing is, he's also...

01:22:39
reverse course on a number of things. yeah, like he was taking, wasn't he taking Rappamycin? He was, yes. And he stopped because of the, you know, potential adverse effects and things like that. And I mean, if you've been taking things that are very experimental with potential adverse effects, how do you know that's not the thing that's going to get you later on? Yeah. Oh man, that guy is just, I feel like he's just, I don't know, I'm trained to nowhere really. Cliff, do reckon people are going to find this talk interesting? I mean, I certainly did.

01:23:08
It's always great. This is just like a good, really good catch up with you. I've just got to spend 90 minutes with you. chuck it out there and see what happens. I guess you'll have to look back on our previous rambling discussions and see what the listenership was, but I certainly get pretty good feedback from people saying, I really enjoyed that chat you had with Miki. so do I. So do I. So I keep bringing you back that and the fact that I actually, get to, um not that we need an excuse or a reason, uh but we do get to catch up, is awesome.

01:23:38
And you probably need these chats to intersperse the sort of global superstars you have on the show too. That is true. Get your local mate from down the road. Exactly. Exactly. And thankfully my local mate from down the road is also one of these sort of like global superstars that people love hearing from. So I think I'm pretty fortunate. Cliff, just remind people where they can find you. I'll put links to the 12 other times you've been on the show in the show notes.

01:24:05
Yeah, they can just find me mostly at the Holistic Performance Institute, which is HolisticPerformance.Institute. Amazing. Thank you, Cliff. Thanks, Doc.

01:24:26
Alrighty, hopefully you enjoyed that. It's always so great to have a catch up with Cliff, which is really what the podcast enables me to do. We see each other several times in person each year, but we connect twice that often really because we connect in the podcast space as well. So I always appreciate Cliff's insights and his time. And I know that you guys do also. Next week on the podcast, I talk to Tim Gabbitt, Australian.

01:24:55
researcher and physiotherapist. Questions, comments, would love to hear them. I'm over on Instagram X and threads @mikkiwilliden, Facebook @mikkiwillidennutrition, or head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com and scroll to the bottom, input your name and jump on my weekly email list. I'd love to have you there. All right guys, you have the best week. See you later.