Fueling for Success
Upgrade Your Energy, Upgrade Your Life
“Have you done a finger prick before?” Geoffrey Woo, cofounder and CEO of HVMN®, asked me, as we sat in the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.
HVMN (pronounced “human”) believes the human body is a system that can be quantified, optimized, and upgraded. Their nootropic products are widely popular among Silicon Valley employees, whose aggressive “hustle culture” requires them to work harder, longer, and faster to appease investors and drive revenue. Nootropics are drugs, supplements, and other substances that enhance cognitive function, memory, creativity, energy, and motivation in healthy individuals. I wanted to learn more firsthand from a company whose investor list reads like the who’s who of Silicon Valley, including Marissa Mayer (former CEO of Yahoo!), and Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos).
I had flown from Saint Petersburg, Florida, to San Francisco with one burning question: “How do we fuel ourselves for success by upgrading our energy to upgrade our life?” I needed more energy to help close the gap from who I was to who I needed to become to reach my goals.
Midway through the interview, Geoffrey stopped and asked if he could check my ketone levels via a blood test. He wanted my baseline before giving me a taste of HVMN’s new product, Ketone, made from pure ketone ester. The ketone ester had originated from a program run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA’s interest in ketones was the result of an effort to enhance elite soldiers’ performance during mentally and physically demanding missions.
After 15-plus years of research, $60 million in funding, and a collaborative effort between HVMN, Oxford, and NIH, they developed a drink that consisted of 98.24 percent ketones, with the remainder being water. The effects were astounding and kicked in within 30 minutes of drinking it.1 Individuals on the currently popular ketogenic diet can take anywhere from two to seven days to get into a ketogenic state, depending on their carbohydrate levels. At this point, some may suffer flu-like symptoms as their brain switches from running on carbohydrates and sugars to healthy fats and proteins. This new optimal fuel is called ketones. The ketogenic diet has gained in popularity as more research has been conducted. Some scientists now believe ketones is a fourth fuel source for the body—one that has the ability to increase focus and energy and has countless health benefits.
The ketogenic diet was first used to treat epilepsy patients more than 100 years ago; it has been shown to effectively reduce seizures. Current studies into the treatment of Alzheimer’s suggests that ketones might be useful for delaying cognitive decline in older individuals. Researchers now understand that in Alzheimer’s disease, the brain loses its ability to use glucose to produce energy. Some believe ketones could help close this energy gap.2
“OK, nice. You bleed well,” said Geoffrey.
My ketone levels measured at 0.3 mmol/L. Of course, I wasn’t on the ketogenic diet. In fact, I was just coming off the candida diet (more on that later in this chapter). In a 2014 Nourish Balance Thrive podcast with Christopher Kelly, Dr. Dominic D’Agostino, a researcher at the University of South Florida, said he believed the optimal level of ketones, based on anecdotal data, is somewhere between 1.5 and 3 mmol/L.3 I was nowhere near it.
I unscrewed the cap on the little clear bottle, leaned back, and drank it down in one hit. It was like having a shot of tequila at ten in the morning. I wasn’t prepared! I tried hiding my reaction from Geoffrey but couldn’t. I was tingling and twitching all over. This wasn’t your typical sugary sweet sports drink—this was for the pros.
Geoffrey had told me they had been testing the ester on the NFL, the Grand Tour cycling series, and various military outfits. They were getting stellar results. If anything was going to give me energy, this drink was going to be it. The research that had gone into it was staggering.
We continued the interview, but 15 minutes later, I could see Geoffrey desperately wanting to ask how I felt. He patiently waited, then tested my blood again.
“OK. Let’s see what happened here,” he said. “Wow, your ketones are at 3.5. That’s .5 above Dr. Dominic’s optimal ketone level! To give you a magnitude of how interesting that is, that’s equivalent to about five to six days of fasting.” Fasting, whether it’s intermittent or longer periods of clean fasting, can help reset your body’s ability to optimize its fuel source. Fasting naturally creates a cleaner-burning fuel system for your brain and body; it takes about five days to create this pathway. That is intimidating for the novice faster. Going from a sugar-burning machine to using your own fat as fuel is the mechanism behind fasting to regain energy and vitality.
But after just one bottle of ester, I felt incredible. My brain was lit up like a Christmas tree. I hadn’t had this much energy since I was ten years old.
As I sat back in the Uber after leaving the meeting, I felt like a little kid. I couldn’t stop looking out the window. It was as if my brain had switched from viewing the world in 2D to 3D. The colors were crisp, and the energy felt clean and consistent. It wasn’t like caffeine, which causes my heart to beat a million miles per hour; it felt natural.
I don’t think Geoffrey knows how much that day meant to me. It helped me remember what it was like to feel great again. It reminded me of what was truly possible. It also reminded me of the survey we had done online, in which 75 percent of the people who responded admitted to suffering from brain fog. The unfortunate reality is that the general population doesn’t feel great. We accept low energy as the new normal, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
For the rest of the day, I was buzzing. Tasks I had been putting off since I had arrived in San Francisco were suddenly completed in a matter of minutes. The fear, procrastination, and general malaise I had been experiencing had disappeared. This continued into the next day. It was then that I realized something surprising: My need for willpower had completely vanished! I didn’t need to convince myself to work.
When Your Energy Decreases, Your Need for Willpower Increases
This experience got me thinking. The ketone ester had turned me into a Catalyst for 48 hours. In this state, everything felt easy. I didn’t have to fight through negative thoughts, fatigue, or brain fog. Trying to force myself to eat well, think positive, or stay focused simply wasn’t required, because I had the energy available to effortlessly manage those activities outside of conscious awareness.
By definition, willpower means to exert control or restrain impulses. This had me wondering: If willpower is to exert control that implies something is out of control that requires management. The question is, what is out of control? If I could work that out, my life would become much easier. All my energetic resources could be aimed at achieving a greater level of success. Instead of managing energetic ups and downs that come with brain fog, slow response time, poor memory, mood swings, and cravings, I could achieve my goals.
What I found was that applying willpower results in more energy being expended, not just on the intended goal, but also on managing whatever is draining your battery behind the scenes. It’s like the unnecessary “bloatware” of your cell phone, which drains the battery dry just when you need it the most. You must keep charging your phone throughout the day. The bloatware doesn’t get blamed, because it’s hidden from sight. Instead, your battery gets the blame for having insufficient power.
Simple activities that flow easily when you have energy (e.g., unloading the dishwasher, doing laundry, paying bills) suddenly become a battle of wills when energy is low. Think control vs. flow. When we master our energy, we master our state of flow. Everything comes together easily because there is no need to control our behavior. Low energy plays havoc on our body and mind.
In my case, my energy levels were impacting my drive and motivation much, much more than I had originally comprehended. I, like many people, had placed too much emphasis on the need for more willpower, not realizing that this way of thinking was throwing me into a greater state of disarray.
After this, I started observing my behavior and need for willpower on a daily basis during the final 60 days of my mission to become unstoppable.
As you can see in Figure 4.1 on page 72, as my energy went up, my need for willpower decreased. During the first 30 days, in which I was trialing Halo Sport and conducting the daily CrossFit workout challenge, my need for willpower was sky-high. At this point, I was still unwell. I was fighting food cravings, fatigue, brain fog, and an inability to focus, on top of trying to manage a highly demanding workout and research regimen for the book. I was also battling a barrage of negative thoughts, like I don’t know if I can finish this project! I had less energy for decision making, and I hit my decision fatigue threshold earlier in the day, which limited my ability to get more done. This took energy away from the critical tasks I wanted to focus on.
Procrastination and fear crept in because I had been unknowingly going into self-preservation mode due to inconsistent energy levels. My brain was trying to save what little energy it had for critical functions, and that didn’t include working on my goals. The question is, which model are you working from, Model 1 or Model 2?
I started asking myself: Should an increase in willpower be the goal? The personal development industry rams it down our throats on a daily basis. They say that to be successful, you just need to follow these habits, but they don’t ask why it’s easier for highly successful people to follow these habits than it is for the rest of us. Yes, you need willpower to push through and complete certain tasks when your reputation or career is on the line, but you shouldn’t apply it when there’s an energy deficit. People recommend willpower like it’s a pill, but they don’t understand that low energy is influencing their behavior and mood. This simplistic way of thinking isn’t just limiting—it’s damaging. If we don’t close the gap between our goal and the energy required to meet it, we’re going to live in a constant state of struggling to gain control. Having an energy deficit means we will fall short of success—or, worse, we’ll achieve it, but still be miserable because we don’t have the energy to enjoy it.
Picture a racetrack. Everyone is stepping up for the 100-meter sprint, but with your low energy, you have to start 10 meters back from the starting line. The peak performers are starting 10 meters in front of the line. You have twice as much ground to cover as they do. You’re not only going to have to exert greater willpower to make up for the disadvantage, which comes at a higher biological price, but you also must exert greater control of your thoughts, because your brain will be looking for every shortcut it can find due to insufficient energy available to power it. And, as we know from the decision fatigue study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, this will result in choosing one of two options: 1) Making less effective decisions, or 2) Deciding to do nothing and sit out the race. In this state, Defender or Guardian mode, you are at a point of diminishing returns. No matter what you do, it’s going to require twice as much effort as if you were in Catalyst or Synergist mode.
What Is Your Set Point for Success?
As you already know, you can’t have a high level of psychological output without paying a biological price. You pay an even higher price when you have an energy deficit because you are trying to manage a body and brain in a state of exhaustion on top of the goals you have set for yourself. When we identify what our set point for success is, we gain instant awareness of what may have been holding us back.
Your set point for success is the point at which your energy supply becomes greater than what your goal requires.
Having a surplus of energy available to not only maintain the status quo, but also to pursue your vision and manage any setbacks along the way, puts you ahead of the pack. This may also explain why so many of us default to our biochemistry when we’re attempting to reach outside our comfort zone: Our brains have gone into self-preservation mode, and our energetic resources have been redirected.
To increase your energetic resources and become a Catalyst with an abundance of mental clarity and focus, you must turn your attention to three key factors: your mitochondria, gut microbiome, and fuel. Each of these factors will alleviate the need to exert willpower and increase your tolerance for internal and environmental stress that depletes your battery. Increasing your tolerance level for stress means you will bounce back from setbacks faster, regain your focus when it’s been stolen from you, and methodically work through problems without getting overly emotional. And, in my case, eliminate my need for the asthma medication that I had inhaled daily since I was a teenager, a highly unexpected result of my mission to become unstoppable.
Marvelous Mitochondria: The Fuel Source for Life
A topic of intense fascination for Dave Asprey, and rightly so, is the mitochondria. These are the little cigar-shaped parts of our cells that create ATP, the energy our cells need to thrive. Mitochondria extract energy from what we eat and convert it into ATP. When your mitochondria are functioning at full capacity, you experience enhanced mental performance. ATP stores the energy you need to charge you both mentally and physically, the perfect balance required to keep you functioning as a Catalyst. This energy production, or the Krebs cycle, is one of the most important functions in your body. The brain uses its energy to think, remember things, learn, and make decisions. The cells in your brain are filled with mitochondria. They are the power supply fueling your entire system. When our neurons have lost energy, you can experience cognitive impairment, fatigue, and brain fog.
When the Krebs cycle converts sugars, proteins and fats into citric acid, it creates the raw materials for optimal energy. However, environmental toxins, as discussed in Chapter 3, impact our mitochondria. Our body’s increased need to process a higher level of toxins in our food, medications, household products, and polluted air stresses our whole energy system. There are a number of important antioxidant enzymes found in the mitochondria; when not enough are available, we may suffer from oxidative stress. This is a sign of mitochondrial problems. Some scientists believe it may be linked to many diseases, including depression, chronic fatigue, Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, and ADHD.
Dave said, “If you’re suffering from a trauma, not a physical trauma but an emotional trauma, even then your mitochondria will sense that you’re stressed, and because they think you’re stressed they’ll get you ready to run away from something scary, even if it’s not present.” He added, “When they do that, they stop turning on your rest, repair, and recover mechanisms. So no matter what, if you have any of these things going on, there’s a likelihood that increasing your body’s ability to make energy will reduce your stress and allow you to address depression, anxiety, and trauma.”
Mitochondria are a critical fuel source required to keep you fully charged and alive. Without them, you would die. Taking simple, easy steps to optimize their function can have a significant impact on your overall well-being.
YOU AND YOUR MITOCHONDRIA: A TEN-STEP FUEL-YOURSELF-FOR-SUCCESS PLAN
To fuel yourself for success and enhance your focus, energy, and mental performance, there are ten easy yet critical steps you can take to boost your mitochondrial health, including:
1. Reducing toxins in your food and environment
2. Lowering your stress and cortisol levels
3. Oxygen therapy through effective exercise and circulation
4. Optimal hormone levels, including having a functional doctor check your thyroid level
5. Drinking filtered water
6. Testing for food sensitivities/food elimination diet
7. Ensuring your magnesium levels are optimal. Magnesium does important work in all kinds of processes that keep your body functioning normally from keeping blood sugar in check to making your muscles and nerves functioning properly. It also helps make ATP and improves mitochondrial function.4
8. Getting a good night’s sleep (more on this in depth in Chapter 8)
9. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). One study reported that two weeks of HIIT significantly increased mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle.5
10. Rely on fat instead of sugar. Fatty acids are the best fuel for mitochondria and burn cleaner than carbohydrates. When they produce ATP via fats/ketones, fewer free radicals are created (and fewer need to be cleaned up).6
The second key factor we need to delve into is the microbiome. According to a 2016 article by Yann Saint-Georges-Chaumet, many studies report a link between the quality and diversity of microbiomes and mitochondrial function.7
Microbiome: The Key to Better Health, More Energy, and Better Mood
I constantly felt hung over, despite only drinking one to two glasses of wine per month. I’d never been much of a drinker; I knew it didn’t agree with me, I just didn’t know why. Sitting down in Dr. Garcia’s office, bathed in fluorescent light, the pieces of the puzzle finally started coming together.
“What do I have?” I asked him.
“You have an overgrowth of candida albicans in your digestive tract,” he replied.
Otherwise known as gut fermentation syndrome or a candida infection, this unusual digestive disorder can result in feeling intoxicated all the time. The symptoms include extreme difficulty concentrating on simple tasks, brain fog, chronic fatigue, depression, sinus infections, asthma, low mood, a weakened immune system, bloating, and constipation, to name a few. If the effects are severe and you drive, you can get a DUI. For example, CNN reported that in 2015, a woman’s DUI was dismissed after she provided evidence that she had been suffering from similar effects, referred to as “auto-brewery syndrome.”8
Candida albicans, often described as an opportunistic yeast, can be found in 80 percent of the human population. It normally lives in places like your mouth, skin, and digestive tract without any problem. But when the environment is right, it can quickly multiply and grow out of control. It’s often thought of as a condition only experienced by people with suppressed immune systems, such as patients with AIDS or diabetes. But, surprisingly, astronauts whose immune systems have been compromised by space travel can also get it. According to Harvard Health Publishing, it can also cause symptoms in healthy people due to corticosteroid use (such as from asthma inhalers), malnutrition, and certain medications.9
This sentiment is echoed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.10 Research has shown an overgrowth of candida can occur after a course of antibiotics, from which our microbiome may not fully recover. Antibiotics take a scorched-earth approach, wiping out both good and bad strains of bacteria, which can spark the overgrowth.11
The Gut/Brain Connection
Our gut microbiome contains tens of trillions of microorganisms. It can weigh up to 4.4 pounds or 2 kilograms.12 To put that in perspective, it weighs more than the average human brain, which comes in at 3 pounds or 1.36 kilograms.13 Many scientists are now referring to it as our “second brain,” as new research has discovered the communication between the gut and the brain is bilateral and has a significant impact on our mood and energy levels. I’ve come to think of it affectionately as an extra pilot helping to steer the ship.
There’s been an explosion of research into our microbiome in recent years as scientists discover more and more vital information about it. There’s even a field known as psychobiotics, the treatment of mental health issues by changing the gut microbiome through probiotics and prebiotics.14 This gained further traction with the 2017 book The Psychobiotic Revolution by Scott C. Anderson. Once thought of as an out-of-the-box idea, a growing number of scientists have become interested in probiotics and prebiotics as possible treatments for depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems. A small study conducted at Leiden University in 2015, in which 40 subjects were given four weeks of probiotic treatment, showed a decrease in negative thoughts and feelings.15
This made me ask: Can we hack our own thoughts through our gut microbiome? It’s not as crazy as it sounds.
Some experiments show that changes to diet can spark large, albeit temporary, shifts in a body’s microbiome within 24 hours. This is key, as studies have suggested the intestinal microbiome plays an important role in modulating chronic diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.16
I sat down and thought about every significant event in my life in which I was at my worst and my best, and I noticed something interesting. My depression, fatigue, and inability to focus had flared up after each international trip or course of antibiotics. I wondered, was I just depressed because my holiday was over, or was I depressed because my gut had just been exposed to foreign microbes it didn’t know how to deal with?
I reached out to Richard Lin, the CEO and cofounder of Thryve, for an answer. Thryve provides gut health tests and the world’s first microbiome report. They have scientists from universities including MIT, Stanford, and UC Davis, as well as from the FDA, working on their team.
After submitting a sample, they begin by breaking down which bacteria are most active in your gut, and then create personalized probiotics that will be beneficial for your microbiome. They also recommend specific microbiome-boosting foods and where to source the ingredients with customized recipes.
About my travel theory, Richard said, “I don’t think that’s far off at all, actually. We’ve seen significant research because we have customers from around the world. Their microbiomes are completely different. That could be due to food and the environment. We’ve seen it with studies where when you actually travel across the world, due to your certain cycle changing, daylight savings and whatnot, the microbiome actually shifts pretty drastically. Sometimes it’s not beneficial. You sometimes have microbes that cause inflammation. You have microbes that cause mood issues to be shifted to a larger population due to traveling. And then you’re also exposed to microbes in that environment that you’re not normally exposed to, so that’s why people come back with traveler’s diarrhea. It’s not just you ate something bad, it’s literally because the surrounding microbes are just completely foreign to your body and your body’s trying to flush them out. They’re not used to it.”
Delving deeper into the research, I started asking myself, could a candida overgrowth be a silent epidemic many doctors have yet to recognize? I asked both Dave and Richard, and they both answered with a resounding yes. And that’s when Richard blew me away with two incredible case studies that demonstrate just how much influence our gut microbiome has over our health.
He said, “We’ve seen, for instance, an example of a person balding due to an autoimmune disease, and who had C. diff [clostridium difficile, a serious bacterial infection], causing severe diarrhea. He got a fecal transplant. A fecal transplant is healthy stool from a person’s gut, homogenized and turned into a slurry and transplanted into somebody who has a bad gut. So you’re introducing good microbes back into a bad gut. The guy’s hair actually started growing back.”
Richard continued, “And we’ve seen results with Parkinson’s. There’s a doctor called Thomas Brodie from Australia. He’s the one who led the fecal transplant and FMT movement here in the States. He had patients with Parkinson’s that also had constipation symptoms, so he treated these patients with a triple antibiotic therapy. The three different types of antibiotic wipe out the microbes that cause constipation. Then he did a fecal transplant to reinoculate good bacteria. What he realized was not only did he remove the constipation symptoms, but he also reversed the Parkinson’s symptoms.”
Could Our Diet Kill Our Healthy Microbiome and Trigger Inflammation?
A 2018 study by the University of Bonn and published in the journal Cell likened a fast-food diet to a bacterial infection based on a similar acute inflammatory response in the body. In addition, the researchers found there can be long-term consequences for an “overly aggressive immune system.” As such, we may be doing permanent damage to our bodies’ immune systems by following a diet high in fat and sugar.17 This, combined with the overuse of antibiotics and a diet laced in sugar, which the bad bacteria feed off, is a recipe for disaster, killing our energy and our drive to succeed.18
I wasn’t just taken aback by Richard’s answers, but by my original diagnosis. I hadn’t known if I would ever get an answer or ever get better. One doctor had told me, “Most people with fatigue never work out what it is.” My thought was, Yeah, only because they have you as a doctor!
Finally, I had an answer that explained the way I was feeling: the dizzy spells in the morning after breakfast, the general fatigue, the overwhelming anxiety, and the aggression. This was the underlying cause. Digging further into the research, I found I had unknowingly created a perfect storm for the overgrowth of this bad bacteria and for my asthma symptoms to become exacerbated. Here are the factors of my “perfect storm”:
Traveling throughout the U.S and Canada for three months exposed me to many unfamiliar gut bacteria.
Corticosteroid overuse may have suppressed my immune system, making me susceptible to a yeast/candida overgrowth. I was getting sick constantly!
A course of antibiotics I had taken to rid myself of a bad sinus infection had killed my healthy gut bacteria, allowing the candida overgrowth to take hold. My immune system was already depleted when I got ill. What happened next, an increase in my asthma symptoms, wasn’t surprising since some studies suggest a correlation between taking antibiotics and later developing asthma and allergies.19
My asthma symptoms heightened due to sensitivity to this bacteria, again, no surprise since asthma’s connection to candida albicans is well-known.20 Candida overgrowth can also prevent nutrient absorption, possibly resulting in my low vitamin D levels, further exacerbating my asthma and fatigue.21
Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in individuals with candida.22 Sufficient levels of vitamin D reduce your risk of infectious disease by strengthening your immune system.23
Food sensitivities may have contributed to the compounding problem.24
The candida overgrowth was confirmed when I took the EverlyWell food sensitivity test. It came back positive for being sensitive to baker’s yeast and brewer’s yeast—both indicators of a yeast overgrowth.
The surprising thing was that when I corrected my vitamin D levels, took a course of antifungals to rid myself of the candida, and eliminated foods I was sensitive to from my diet, my asthma disappeared. As I write this, it’s been five months since I have taken any medication for asthma whatsoever. My personal experience doesn’t constitute a cure for asthma; it may come back. But if it does, I know several steps I can take to deal with it.
What jumped out at me was how interlinked everything was, but my doctors had treated each symptom separately. Multiple vicious circles had come into play, resulting in my cognitive decline.
It all made sense. Dr. Garcia had asked if I had been treated with antibiotics as a child; the answer was yes. My symptoms had first flared up after the last course of antibiotics I had taken. Not only that, I was constantly sucking on asthma inhalers shown to spark candida overgrowth.
Taking Extreme Measures to Fix Myself
Per Dr. Garcia’s advice, I tackled this challenge from multiple directions, including two vitamin IVs, a colonic irrigation, the candida diet (no or minimal carbohydrates and sugar) for four weeks, and a course of Diflucan, a commonly used antifungal medication. Interestingly, the colonic wasn’t the most unpleasant thing I tried; it was the detoxing my body went through when the bacteria started dying off, which led to headaches, fatigue, and severe brain fog. My mood went up and down constantly. I either wanted to sleep or high-five someone in the face with a chair (demonstrating my anger/fatigue).
Then, finally, I started feeling better. My energy was beginning to return, and just in time, too. I had lined up interviews with experts in San Francisco and Canada. After I visited Dave Asprey in Victoria, Canada, I decided my partner and I would spend a few days in Vancouver. While there, to our surprise, we learned we didn’t have all the required paperwork to reenter the U.S. It was going to take a full month to get what we needed! Needless to say, this put a crimp in my plans.
While I was involuntarily spending the month in Vancouver, I noticed something interesting. My digestion was working like clockwork. I had color in my face again, after looking like an even paler Anderson Cooper for four years. I was able to have sweets without putting on a pound of weight once I resumed my normal eating routine. My microbiome had balanced itself after the candida diet and the course of antifungals. But when we returned to St. Petersburg, my gut became completely imbalanced again, fatigue set in, and I felt like I was starting over from scratch.
However, this time I acted the second my digestive issues kicked in (bloating, diarrhea, and constipation). If I was to have the profound levels of energy I needed, I had to heal my gut. The shock of going from great to horrible had provided the wake-up call I needed.
Validating What Was Happening in My Stomach
For every part of this project, I wanted scientific evidence to back up what I was experiencing. My doctors had applied basic testing and guesswork, which is roughly as good as throwing darts at the board blindfolded. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, I had discovered Richard Lin’s company, Thryve, so upon returning from Canada, I decided to do their gut health test. They mailed me a testing kit, consisting of a specimen jar, a swab, and a prepaid box to send my sample in. I had been worried that I would have to somehow poo in a jar; thankfully, you only need to provide a rice-sized fecal sample. I received my results four weeks later, and they were unexpected.
Thryve gives you access to an online dashboard that explains in basic terms what your results mean, and tells you which foods you can eat to recalibrate your stomach and rebalance your microbiome. They also give you an overall gut bacteria wellness score. I scored 65 out of 100. (See Figure 4.2, on page 84.)
This score determines how well your body is functioning. The higher the score, the closer you are to achieving your health goals. Typically, Thryve notes, individuals in Western countries have a lower score. That’s to be expected, considering the changes to our food supply and the prevalence of junk food. The usual score in Western countries is somewhere around 50 to 80 out of 100. I was smack in the middle of this range, but well below optimal. That’s when I dove deeper into the data.
The graph (in Figure 4.2) pinpointed key issues that I would never have been able to learn about without taking the test. I was lacking specific types of good bacteria, which is what was causing my stomach upsets and digestive issues. One type flew off the screen at me: bacteroides. Bacteroides support gut integrity and provide immune support. I was well below the healthy average. The bacteria alistipes was also low. They aid in digesting fats, protect against pathogens, and assist in digesting whole grains, something I have had issues with for years. As a result, I have avoided grains, especially oats, altogether. Lactobacillus was another bacteria I was depleted in. Commonly found in probiotics supplements on shelves worldwide, its benefits are well-researched: It assists in breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and fighting off unfriendly organisms; it has antifungal properties; and it is beneficial for those with Crohn’s disease and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).
Another bacteria I barely rated in was bifidobacterium, which aids in gastrointestinal and immune support and has anti-inflammatory properties. Other benefits include the inhibition of pathogens, which can include harmful bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that colonize and/or infect the gut mucosa.
If I could correct these imbalances, would my gut heal, brain fog lift, and energy increase again?
First, I started taking the personalized probiotic Thryve sent me based on my results. An off-the-shelf solution would have still left my gut imbalanced because they didn’t have all the beneficial bacteria my body needed, or the diversity I required.
Second, I started eating foods that were known to have the bacteria I lacked, such as apricots, which contain bacteroides. I started noticing a difference within two weeks. My digestion improved, my brain fog began to clear, and my bloating dissipated.
I had thought I had tried everything to correct my gut imbalance, but nothing had worked. Now I finally knew why.
Our gut, just like our biochemistry, is like a fingerprint. The balance and makeup of our gut bacteria, good and bad, is unique. What is right for you may not be right for me, and vice versa. Once we recognize this, we can correct these imbalances based on data, not guesswork.
By focusing on increasing our gut bacteria diversity, we can influence a whole host of areas when it comes to our health, including weight, digestion, energy regulation, cognition, allergies, and our immune system. In fact, a staggering 80 percent of our immune system is in our microbiome. Thankfully, one easy way to tackle this is to learn the best foods to eat that can populate our gut with beneficial bacteria, which influence our mood as well as our digestion.
Fueling for Success: Why a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Nutrition Does Not Work
The gut health test changed the way I looked at everything.
In Australia, I had been eating clean most of my adult life: avoiding refined sugars, carbs, and gluten as much as possible. I had adopted the popular dietary program Body for Life, created by Bill Phillips. This consisted of eating multiple times throughout the day and having one “fat day” per week. I could easily manage a healthy eating pattern the rest of the week. In no way did I feel restricted, experience food cravings, or suffer from brain fog or fatigue.
But now, I was eating the same way, but in a different country, and after a course of antibiotics, and I was gaining weight and body fat. Even after I cut calories, my body didn’t respond. I could tell I was nutritionally deficient just by the way I felt, but I didn’t know why: My diet, like always, consisted of a balance of healthy fruits, vegetables, and proteins.
New research has shown our gut bacteria don’t just aid in digestion; they also play a crucial role in whether we lose or gain weight. According to a 2016 report in Scientific American, researchers conducting a study of twins who were both either lean or obese found big differences in the gut bacteria of the two groups. The guts in lean subjects were abundant in bacterial species, while those of obese subjects were less diverse.25 I concluded most (not all) diet plans are questionable unless they factor in our microbiome health and how we each respond to food individually.
As a society, we have been quick to blame our genes for our weight gain. But we all have similar DNA. The real question is: Why do we each respond so differently to food? Why can some people eat carbs freely, and others gain ten pounds the second they glance at a slice of pizza? Why do some succeed on a ketogenic/paleo/Atkins diet, and others struggle with digestive symptoms due to severe detox? Why can some eat poorly, yet feel great?
While some companies are now claiming they can personalize meal plans based on our genes (backed by little research), one factor we fail to take into account is our gut microbiome genes, which outnumber the genes in our genome by about 100 to 1. The role they play in our relationship to food cannot be ignored.
Is it the diet or my microbiome that I should be focusing on to increase energy levels and focus?
I looked at countless dietary protocols, and for every positive effect, there was a reported negative one, or a case study showing an adverse response to the plan. Each had its benefits as well as setbacks, such as managing food cravings, or the side effects of going ketogenic in the first five to seven days, which are hard for some to endure. One minute, scientists say carbs are bad; the next they proclaim that carbs are good. The truth lies in the fingerprint of our microbiome. What’s great for you may be detrimental to me.
With more than 100,000 papers published on nutrition in the peer-reviewed medical literature each year, it’s hard to keep up. And all this research fails in one key area: It doesn’t consider that everyone’s microbiome is unique, which means our responses may vary greatly—especially from country to country, as I discovered from my conversation with Richard.
Any meal plan must be personalized to ensure we each have the energy we need to not just feel good but feel great, and have the energy to pursue our goals and navigate this minefield called life. This personalization will increase the likelihood of successfully following the plan and eating in a way that benefits us.
Regardless of the dietary protocol you choose, to improve mood, memory, and drive, the following are a few key factors that must be included and then tweaked to match your individual response to various foods:
Remove sugar and processed food from your diet. This will rid the body and brain of toxins and inflammation. In a 2016 article in the Canadian Journal of Diabetes, Dr. Robert Lustig wrote we are inundating our bodies with so much sugar that they can no longer process it. It’s a toxin our body must rid itself of, but it’s losing the battle.26
Eat foods that increase your microbiome’s diversity. This includes fermented foods that populate your gut with healthy bacteria (e.g., pickles, kimchi, unprocessed yogurt, and kombucha). These foods are rich in prebiotics. Prebiotics feed probiotics and encourage the growth of healthy bacteria. Prebiotic fiber is a type of carbohydrate that we do not digest, but our gut bacteria thrive on. Since discovering my gut imbalance, I have been supplementing with a prebiotic fiber from Dr. David Perlmutter’s doctor-formulated range. I add one tablespoon to a smoothie with a banana. This has been particularly useful in curbing my afternoon cravings when combined with a dash of medium-chain triglycerides, more commonly known as MCT oil. It helps prevent constipation, I no longer experience a midafternoon crash as a result, and it helps me maintain my weight by preventing me from snacking too much. According to research from the University of Calgary, prebiotics may even assist in the fight against childhood obesity by helping to “reduce body fat in children who are overweight or obese by altering their gut microbiota.”27
Eliminate foods that cause you discomfort. This includes any food you are sensitive to that causes constipation, diarrhea, sluggishness, brain fog, headaches, fatigue, or mood changes. For greater insight, have a food sensitivity test done. It would take years to methodically remove foods from your diet and work out which ones are the culprit. With the test, you can get your answers within two weeks.
Repopulate your gut with healthy bacteria. I went to the extreme and did a probiotic enema every few days for one week to regain my gut health after returning home from Canada. This was based on Dr. Perlmutter’s treatment approach. There will be more on this and the probiotic I recommend (and why) in the 90-day plan later in this book.28
Fuel up with fats. I began supplementing with MCT oil, as well as upping my healthy fats from avocados and olive oil. More on this in Chapter 5. This helped curb my cravings and reduce the midafternoon energy slump and cravings.
Eat anti-inflammatory foods. This includes green leafy vegetables, beets, blueberries, bok choy, broccoli, celery, chia seeds, coconut oil, flaxseed, ginger, pineapple, salmon, turmeric, and walnuts. Exclude any foods that cause you sensitivity.
Eat diverse organic fruits and vegetables. This will increase microbiome diversity and promote overall gut health.
Drink filtered water. Much is still unknown about the impact chemicals like chlorine can have on our delicate gut microbiome. Filtration is crucial regardless of which city or part of the world you live in to prevent unnecessary exposure to toxins from rusty pipes or compromised water supplies.
Switch trans fats and vegetable oils for olive, avocado, or grapeseed oil. One study found the participants who took in the most trans fats increased their risk of depression by 48 percent. Those in the same study who consumed more than 20 grams of olive oil per day had a 30 percent lower risk of depression than those who consumed little olive oil or didn’t consume it at all.29 Trans fats are often hidden in highly processed foods at the supermarket and used to deep fry food at various fast-food chains. The Food and Drug Administration has required trans fats to be declared on the nutrition facts label since 2006 to help consumers understand their dietary intake.30
Consume more omega-3 and less omega-6. Both are essential fatty acids important for good health, but we need them in the right balance to help protect our joints, pancreas, heart, skin, and mood stability. We consume way too much omega-6, commonly found in corn and vegetable oils. Too much can cause the body to retain water and raise blood pressure, which could lead to blood clots, thus raising the risk of heart attacks and strokes.31
Consume foods with antifungal properties. This includes cayenne pepper, coconut oil, garlic, ginger, lemons, limes, olive oil, onions, pumpkin seeds, and rutabaga to help fight off bad gut bacteria. Do not consume any foods that you are sensitive or allergic to. Find substitutes that work for you.
Keep activated charcoal on hand. Dave Asprey first introduced me to this when I mentioned I had been detoxing as a result of the candida diet. He mentioned that when detoxing, especially with such an intense dietary protocol, toxins can build up. The activated charcoal can assist by binding itself to these toxins, which are then excreted by the body. Activated charcoal has been used for years in emergency rooms for certain kinds of poisoning, including alcohol. It helps prevent the poison from being absorbed from the stomach into the body. I now use it intermittently, especially if I am feeling flat and have potentially consumed something that isn’t agreeing with me. It can also assist with gas, bloating, and even lowering cholesterol.
Practice intermittent fasting (IF). I grew up believing I would lose muscle mass if I didn’t eat six small meals per day (a belief that has since been debunked). While this helped me maintain my energy levels throughout the day, it didn’t help me maintain a lower body fat percentage. A month prior to beginning the 13-week challenge, I chose to do 30 days of intermittent fasting, and took a picture every day in the mirror to observe the changes and keep myself accountable. It is widely reported that IF is effective for weight loss, inflammation reduction, and boosting brain power by increasing ketones. IF was made popular by Hugh Jackman, who used it in preparation for his Wolverine movies. It is a pattern of eating, not a diet. It doesn’t change what you eat so much as when you eat. Instead of consuming food all day long, you eat within a set window of time. The most popular protocol is to eat for eight hours per day and fast for 16. You can start by gradually closing your eating window until you hit the 8/16 goal, this being by far the easiest protocol to follow. I chose to eat between noon and 8 P.M. each day and allowed some flexibility on weekends. If I ate earlier, I would stop eating earlier. It was incredibly easy to maintain, and my gut benefited from taking a break from digesting food all the time. According to Mark Mattson, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University, fasting has been shown to increase rates of neurogenesis (the growth and development of new brain cells and nerve tissues) in the brain.32 Higher rates of neurogenesis are linked to increased brain performance, memory, mood, and focus. It has also been shown to boost production of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). BDNF is considered “Miracle-Gro for your brain” and plays a role in neuroplasticity, which makes your brain more resilient to stress and adaptable to change. IF has been shown to boost BDNF by 50 to 400 percent.33 It also has positive benefits for your mitochondrial biogenesis, the creation of new mitochondria. I didn’t notice any physical changes in the first two weeks of IF. It wasn’t until week four that I was pleasantly surprised when I compared my before and after photos. That stubborn back fat that I had never been able to get rid of, even when restricting calories, was gone. This protocol was far easier to follow than I expected, especially with the loss in body fat and boost in energy and mental clarity. I drank plenty of tea and sparkling water in the morning to keep myself satiated. It is an easy change to make, with numerous added benefits.
Find What Works for You
By following these easy-to-apply guidelines, you’ll begin to notice a significant change in your energy levels, as well as your mental clarity. Don’t allow yourself to be overwhelmed by all the different dietary protocols out there. Find one that works for you, but always stay focused on your microbiome health; this is the fundamental building block many fail to factor in. A dietary shift can help repopulate your healthy bacteria; however, if you do have a yeast overgrowth or an intestinal imbalance, you may need a course of antifungals to reset and reboot your digestive system. Talk to a functional doctor to learn more.
As we’re learning, our willpower and our thoughts aren’t just influenced by our upbringing. There are many factors that come into play when you’re trying to become a peak performer and have energy to hit all your targets. Food and an increase in toxins may have added a barrier to your success you aren’t aware of, because it happened so gradually. By removing these factors and fueling yourself with consistent, clean energy sources that keep you focused throughout the day, you can achieve a lot more in less time. Catalysts and Synergists rely on clean food sources; Guardians and Defenders rely on caffeine, refined sugars, and carbs to get them through the day. Which one are you? Once I corrected my gut imbalance, my cravings, brain fog, and fatigue vanished. I was eating a fraction of what I was previously and feeling better. I stopped counting calories and focused on how food made me feel. Instead of immediately blaming someone or something for my bad mood, I looked immediately to food. I hadn’t felt this calm in more than ten years. The ketone ester drink I had tested provided the kick I needed to keep going. But before I could make the necessary dietary changes and turn them into habits that would reboot my entire body and brain, I needed a MAJOR kick-start!
I want you to stop right now and ask yourself if you feel great. I mean, really great. Or do you feel just OK? OK isn’t OK. We want to feel amazing. But to get to that, we may have to give ourselves a major kickstart to increase our energy for long enough that we can make our new habits stick. To do that, we need to delve into the world of nootropics and supplementation.
CHALLENGE FOUR
More Fun with Colonic Irrigation: How I went from 16 percent to 13 percent body fat.
I jumped online and started seeking out research that backed the benefits of a colonic irrigation. Dr. Garcia had recommended it as a way to jump-start my treatment. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I had committed myself to getting better. Colon cleansing has been around since ancient times. It was thought of as a procedure to help the body dispose of waste and toxins. It was then discredited by a number of professional societies, including the American Medical Association.
Coming up blank on well-researched benefits, I decided to go ahead with a skeptical attitude, after speaking with several friends who had done it on and off throughout the years and were willing to attest to its benefits.
The nurse made me feel welcome in the dimly lit room as she calmly explained the process and shared case studies of other clients, one of whom had not had a bowel movement for an entire month until his colonic! You can’t tell me there isn’t a benefit to be had there.
Here’s the nonromantic version: I put on a gown, and she inserted a tube into my rectum. On the wall was a series of clear pipes that would show what came out. I swear she found a set of keys from ten years ago. I had felt relatively empty going into the procedure, but boy, oh boy, was I wrong.
My stomach felt queasy for the rest of the night, but when I woke in the morning, I felt incredible. Like a weight had not only been removed from my intestines, but from my head as well. Friends I told about the treatment dismissed it as water weight. The scales told a different story. I had lost 4.4 pounds, or 2 kilograms, and in the following weeks I continued to lose weight, as well as body fat. The colonic, in combination with the antifungals, had rebooted my digestion. I went from 16 percent body fat down to 13 percent. The last time I was at 13 percent, I had had to starve myself. This time, it felt natural and better, and my energy increased as a result.
