Do You Need Supplements on Carnivore? Dr Shawn Baker on Fibre, Creatine & Collagen

Transcript

00:00
who should never attempt carnivore diet.

00:02
I think the carnivore diet is best served for people that are struggling with health issues. And I think if someone's just already healthy and, you

00:10
know, maybe they don't have just to lose a few pounds, it's probably not necessary. I'm not dogmatically religious about this diet. I I don't care what people eat. I tell people, hey, eat what's going to work for you.

00:18
You might want to try this for, you know, 3 months, 6 months, a year, depending on what you're dealing with. I think if you're trying to run a sub 2hour marathon, which is, you know, world record pace,

00:26
then probably some amount of carbohydrates is going to be beneficial.

00:30
I'm Veronica Larisova and today I sit down with Dr. Sha Baker. This episode challenges some of the most common

00:38
assumptions around carnivore nutrition and athletic performance and we dig deep into fibre, creatine and collagen and whether we really need to supplement.

00:51
You are listening to the Chief Life podcast.

00:56
Dr. Sean Baker, welcome to the Chief Life podcast.

00:59
Hey Veronica, thanks for having me. It's awesome being here. First time down in Australia, so I'm really excited about Is it your first time in Australia? First time. I I lived in the early 90s.

01:07
I was playing sort of semi-professional rugby under the table in New Zealand, but I never got to Australia. So this is my first time. First time I've been back in this part of the world in gosh almost 35 years.

01:16
Next time you have to come to Sydney, chief head office. Yeah, I love it. I'm so excited to have you here in person

01:23
because it's always better to speak in person.

01:27
And I will start with some quick questions. Just short answer, just some interesting questions.

01:34
Who should never attempt carnivore diet?

01:38
Uh well, I think to be honest, I think the carnivore diet is best served. I can tell you who should best do it for for people that are struggling with health

01:45
issues. And I think if someone's just already healthy and, you know, maybe they don't have just to lose a few pounds, it's probably not necessary. And I I would say I don't think there's any

01:54
contra indications like, oh my god, you're going to die if you do it. But I think there's people that just don't need to do it. And and you know, as a physician, my focus is on getting people

02:03
with, you know, autoimmune disease, metabolic disease, inflammatory disease, uh various issues healed. And and that's who I like to to really push push for

02:11
that. So I mean, the carnivore diet is extremely powerful. Um but not everybody needs to do it.

02:17
Yeah. Is low T3 or low thyroid function on carnivor and ketogenic diet a warning sign or is it simply an adaptation?

02:27
Yeah, that that's going to be a dependence question. So there are physiologic expected responses we see uh and there's data that support this to

02:35
look at things like thyroid hormone sensitivity increase. Just like we're insulin resistant, we can become thyroid resistant. And conversely, we become

02:44
thyroid sensitive. And so some people become more sensitive to to to thyroid hormone and they just don't need as much D3, you know, the active form of thyroid. So we see that to a degree.

02:53
Now, so I would say if the lab numbers are, you know, maybe out of the range, but you're asymptomatic clinically,

03:01
probably, and I can't say 100% def definitively, but probably it's okay.

03:05
Now, if you have clinical symptoms of hypothyroidism, sluggishness, you know, hair loss, fatigue, colon intolerance, then, you know, that's that's more concerning.

03:13
Yeah. Um, what do you think is more important for longevity and health?

03:18
Exercise or diet? [snorts] Well, I think they're both critically important. I think that they they both feed into each other. I don't think you

03:26
can, you know, sort of optimise, you know, I hate to use the word optimise because we don't really don't know, but I don't think you're going to get a good result if you just focus on

03:35
one aspect of us. In fact, I think there are probably five major aspects of health that I think are critically important. One is nutrition, one is our

03:43
activity level, you know, whether we, you know, whether we're sedentary or not. And being sedentary is is awful. I mean, it's just let's get that out there. Anybody who just doesn't move is

03:51
they're just doing incredible harm to themselves. Beyond that, sleep becomes incredibly important. And then I think stress mitigation. And then finally, you

03:59
know, interestingly enough, the our circadian biology. So our relationship with the sun, you know, getting out in the morning sun, seeing the sunsets, you know, getting some, you know, a little

04:06
bit of sun on their skin. I think those things, those five things are critically important for some people um that are so

04:14
sick. Maybe diet might be the first option for them because it kind of opens the door for them. Yeah. You know, they they're just so inflamed and sick and they can't do anything. They don't feel

04:22
like doing anything. Sometimes switching that diet allows them to start to feel better and then I try to encourage people, hey, you've just opened the door now. Let's step through and and you

04:30
know, continue to, you know, carry on down that path.

04:33
Yeah. Thank you. And what's the main topic you're passionate about at the moment in the health?

04:39
Well, as you know, and and hats off to you. You know, we're both, you know, I'm older than you, but you're you know, you know, you mentioned you were 46. I'm I was blown away. You you're doing great

04:47
for 46. I'm about turned 60 and I would like to continue to experience life in a in a robust, vigorous and full capacity.

04:57
And I think that's different from say I'm going to live to 120 or whatever because you just don't know. There's no really way to know that. So I think that um being able to you know as many people

05:06
get older their world shrinks because they can't do things. You they can't they can't go to on trips. They can't do various activities. And so I think

05:15
there's no reason for many people once you kind of figure out these things you can start to expand your world. You know I just I started pull vaultting you know

05:22
as a as an 60-y old guy I'm going to learn how to pull vault and it's just kind of crazy and most people think why are you doing that but it's just something that interests me and I want to be able to do it and thankfully I

05:31
have you know taken care of myself to so that's an option for me for many people you know most 60-year-olds are not going to go up and pull vault because they can't not that they shouldn't or or you

05:39
know wouldn't enjoy it but they just can't do that. And I think turning that can't and why you can't is [clears throat] important and that's something I'm going to talk about at the

05:47
uh uh at the event we're going to be speaking at at Carnival Live tomorrow.

05:51
Amazing. I'm excited for it and I'm glad we both speaking about movement because it's such an important topic and we get back to it.

05:58
But let's just um discuss a few things about the carnivore diet that people are sometimes doubtful about. So I wanted to

06:05
ask you when someone is on a sad diet or aka standard American or Australian diet that's full of ultrarocessed foods,

06:14
might be alcohol, full of glyphosate, heavy metals and all those things and then they changed to carnivore diet and they all have amazing health results.

06:24
How do you know it was because they changed to carnivore diet and not because they just eliminated all the crap out of their daily diet?

06:32
Yeah, I mean it's a very fair question.

06:33
For some people that's the answer. I mean for some people they if they reduce the ultrarocessed garbage all the you know in the United States we have this this moniker generally recognised as

06:41
safe and it's basically you know they put a new ingredient into the food system and they test it on a couple rats if the rats don't die they say well we think it's safe for humans and it is

06:48
forced it upon the population and so for many people that's all they need to do now I will tell you as a clinician as a physician who's been doing this for now

06:56
a decade I see people who have already cut out ultrarocessed foods they've already cut out sugars and added you know uh oils and things like that that a

07:04
lot of people have problems with. And despite that, even though they're eating a clean, otherwise healthy diet, they still struggle with certain symptoms to include, I know it's almost heretical to

07:13
say, but some people just feel better when they eliminate fibre and vegetables. I mean, it's just that's just the reality. Now, what percentages do people respond to that? How often,

07:21
you know, what what conditions? That's where I think it gets a little more nuanced. Um but it's certainly um something that we're you know it's I I

07:30
wish there were more you know dedicated studies. There there are few they're going it's very expensive to do these studies. It's you know when people are talking to me about what about long-term

07:39
results and I'm like well you know in order to do that you're going to have to take a cohort of people that are carnivore and you're going to prospectively follow them for 10 20 30

07:46
years. That costs a lot of money and so you can't really realistically think that's going to happen. So I, you

07:54
know, because there's a lot of people out there that are longevity specialists, and I'm like, you know, do I get a money back guarantee if I don't live to 120 or whatever, whatever you're pitching.

08:01
But what I will say is I see people routinely that are really sick and suffering autoimmune disease, Crohn's

08:08
disease, ulcer, colitis, you horrible depression, bipolar disorder, and they go on these types of diets and it resolves, and it's like, well,

08:16
something's going on. I don't know. We maybe we don't understand all the mechanisms. I mean, there's things we can we can sort of speculate about and theorise about, but I mean, the clear

08:24
reality is it does help people. And it even helps people sometimes if they've already given up all the processed food and they just like, look, for whatever

08:32
reason, maybe that fibre is just messing my guts up. And I think that's a real issue for some people.

08:37
Yeah, for sure. I'm the primary example of it. I never ate any ultrarocessed foods. My diet was always healthy. And then as you know I changed to eating

08:45
more vegetables as advice of my nutrition professors at university. Had lots of health issues which I resolved

08:52
from going to returning to the carnivore diet. But then I reintroduced like small amounts of I told you I ate like five

08:59
plants and I'm fine. But my question is I give you an example. My parents are old. My dad is 82. He still is very physically active. He's fit and healthy.

09:09
He doesn't have any health issues.

09:11
doesn't take any medications for nothing. Yeah, he's great.

09:15
My parents diet is heavily meat-based because that's traditionally in Eastern Europeans, but they do eat some plants.

09:21
They're not full carnivore. So, for someone like that, how much healthier they can get from a carnivore diet. They

09:29
already are. You know, I mean, the only way to know is to try it, right, and see, you know, that's a fair way. I think for most people, it's about a three-month trial. I think that's a fair assessment of whether it's

09:37
going to work or not. But for a lot of people, and I'm glad you say your dad's physically active, and I think that's, as I mentioned, that's as big of a lever because I get a lot of people that are

09:45
going on a carnivore diet, and they are like, "You can't go negative carbs. I mean, there's nowhere else to go. Why don't you start pulling these other levers?" Well, why don't we work on your

09:53
sleep? Why don't we work on your activity, exercise, get you stronger, uh, get you more physically fit? And I think those are some things that are that are also critically important. Um,

10:01
but yeah, I mean, it's worth trying. I don't think I don't think there's a lot of downside to that.

10:06
I mean, and even if it just solves an issue for you, you know, and allows you to kind of get to a level where you're healthy. And as you mentioned, many

10:13
people are able to reintroduce foods. I mean, I'm not dogmatically religious about this diet. I I don't care what people eat. I tell people, hey, eat what's going to work for you. You might

10:21
want to try this for, you know, 3 months, six months a year, depending on what you're dealing with. And, you know, even myself, I am 98% carnivore, but every once in a while, I'll have something. I'm just like, I'm not

10:29
worried about it, you know, and I generally do do pretty well with that.

10:33
Yeah. Yeah. Know, I'm the same. But do you think that the carnivore diet like it's let's say strict carnivore diet it's suitable for everyone or are there

10:41
any people they shouldn't be on it like maybe in regards to their genetics or certain illnesses or certain demographics?

10:48
Yeah, I mean there's some there's a few like rare genetic diseases around protein metabolism where people might have run into issues but I think in the general population I think the biggest

10:57
issue is really compliance. I don't think like you know you know because you think about it we now live in a time where you can go to the grocery store and there are 5,000 products. I mean,

11:06
there's so much variety, right? And people are so accustomed to that that they just feel like they're missing out and it's very much a psychological thing. But if you go back 100, 200 years

11:15
ago, I mean, you you might have same 10 12 ingredients, you might cook the same two or three meals every day for their whole life.

11:22
And and that's what life was. And and you know, even if we go even farther back, we might argue that, you know, you go out and kill a big animal and you eat that and maybe you maybe you can dig up

11:30
a few plants here and there, but I mean, I think it's just what we've become used to. And I mean, when I talk to people that are doing this, and I've

11:37
interviewed gosh, probably a thousand or more people that have done this diet, the biggest issues are not like health issues. It's ju it's often social issues

11:45
like, oh, it's, you know, it's just like, what do I do when I go on vacation or I'm visiting friends or I'm out at the restaurant and things like that. So, it's not so much a, you know, a pure physiologic difficulty with that.

11:57
Although, you know, some people, I mean, there are some people that just, you know, maybe they don't eat enough. Maybe they just, you know, because very, very satiating for a lot of people. You get

12:04
in there, you, you know, you you put down a you guys like to call it scotch fillet, we call ribeye in US, like put on a big old ribeye and you're like, I'm done. I'm I'm checked out for the, you

12:12
know, next 8 10 hours. I don't want any more food.

12:14
Sure. Same as yesterday, we had the dinner and my eyes wanted to keep eating, but I was so a good restaurant. It was called uh what was it called? Smoke something.

12:22
Yes. Smoking. Smoking good. Smoking. And I'm still fasting today. I only had some bone broth because I'm still [laughter] full from the dinner.

12:29
I've had very little food today. I just I ate all that. You had a big feed last night and uh Yeah, that was that was that that was great.

12:36
Yeah. And um I wanted [snorts] to say something and I forgot, but I I think that um you're right. People use food these days

12:45
as entertainment and they use it a lot for increasing their dopamine without realising it. I think I really love what

12:54
my parents brought me up with. My mom always used to say to me every single day as a kid, you eat to live. You don't

13:02
live to eat. Food is your fuel. Is not an entertainment. Is not something to make yourself feel better when you feel bad. If you feel bad, go for a run or

13:11
something, you know. And I think a lot of people these days live sedentary lifestyle and they using food as you said for, you know, feel make themselves

13:19
feel better. And that's how they ended up eating all these other proof.

13:22
Yeah. I mean, we we suffer from a crisis of comfort. I mean, we have too much resource. We have, you know, it's like and it's going to get worse because we're going to, you know, how long is it going to be if we have robots doing our

13:31
housework and all we do is sit there and, you know, hey robot, bring me the the pizza or whatever. And and I mean, I just, you know, kind of worry. I've got,

13:38
you know, four four children and I'm like, what is their world going to be like? And so you have to instill um you know I'll just drop I've got a new book

13:46
coming out called generational health and we talk about how do you instill this into the next generation. Well it's fine enough to get yourself healthy. I mean that's that's that's a lot of work

13:54
that you know that's a lot of work in itself but then how do you pass that down so that your grandchildren are like on board with this? And I think that's

14:02
something that I think is incredibly important you know because health is so incredibly important. It makes you know what lead by an example and

14:10
talk to your kids. That's what my parents did. They always spoke to me.

14:13
They never forbidden anything, but they explained to me why certain things are not good for me. And as a result, I never I tried McDonald's first time when

14:21
I was 16 years old. And I didn't even like it because I don't know, I knew what it was going to do to my health.

14:27
So, I think talking leading by an example, which you are, you're fit and healthy at in 60s. It's incredible.

14:33
You're a beast. And I can't wait to do the sprints with you on Sunday. So, I think that's all you can do. I think the

14:40
big mistake is when parents don't lead by an example. They're trying to tell kids something while doing something else.

14:46
Yeah. I mean that's that's I mean we know that's very clear true that you know you can talk all you want to your children and they kind of if if they can get them to stop looking at their screen

14:54
for 5 seconds you know they're going to largely ignore that. But you know when you provide the example and you show it to them every day they they kind of just realise this is the way it is. And you

15:02
know it's it's not a it's not really an option. And I think that's something that, you know, I mean, because people will say, you know, I love my children. I would step in front of a speeding car.

15:11
I'd stop a bullet for my child. But would you be healthy for your child? Exactly.

15:15
Would you give up garbage food for your child? And a lot of people, you know, cuz that's like that's like real that's reality because how often is a bullet going to, you know, come down the road?

15:25
You can always say that, but I mean, it's just like, hey, why don't you just be healthy for your child?

15:28
And uh a lot of people when you when you push them on that, they they kind of get a little uh little squeamish. there is like you know no I know I know I should

15:37
make excuses right and even as health professionals we should be leading by an example for sure like I wouldn't want to listen to nutritionist who is obese and unfit you

15:46
know if they can have a lot of knowledge but if they're not a picture of what they preach then I don't want to listen to them yeah I mean you know and I think this is

15:53
and a lot of people say well there's coaches that are never good athletes and never good players and they've been successful but the reality is if you are

16:01
you know trying to like help someone with their health and you know there's a lot of nuance and a lot of different sort of you know factors going on and

16:08
you can't figure it out for yourself when you know all the confounding variables if you can't even do that how do you expect to help the vast majority

16:17
of people with all these different things going on so I think you have to be able to figure that out in very various situations and you know I know there's people that are like well maybe

16:25
he started out you know at 200 kilos and now he's down to 150 or something like that but I mean for the most part yeah I mean I think you should probably look the part of what you're trying to to do.

16:35
I think that's I don't think that's that controversy. Some people be offended by that.

16:38
I think you're the way you look is a reflection of your health, you know, and if you can't help yourself, how can you help others? So, I

16:45
think it definitely should always Yeah. I mean, when I was when I was training to be a physician, I mean, and the very first part of physical examination, taking history, the first

16:53
thing they would tell you is look at the person as they walk in the room and make some sort of assessment. Are do they look sick? Do they look old? Do they look overweight? Do you know you got it?

17:02
are they breathing hard? You just kind of get an initial impression and that is very sort of useful information, you know. I mean, you can

17:09
just tell somebody looks you can see you see an animal on the road and you're like that animal looks mangy and you know, it just looks pretty rough, you know? You're like, I'm going to give

17:17
that one a little bit of birth, wide birth. And so, yeah, I mean, it's it's I mean, appearance is is important for sure. Yeah, I am very grateful for my parents.

17:26
But let's open the can of worms and talk about this most spoke about topic when it comes to carnivore diet and that's fibre.

17:34
We all can agree if all educated people can agree that fibre is not essential.

17:39
We can survive without fibre. It's not like a vitamin or mineral that we need to survive.

17:45
We can all agree on that. But how about fibre being beneficial? Do you agree there is some benefits to fibre to some people?

17:51
Absolutely. I think it's conditionally beneficial. And I think if we look at like, you know, if you look at mechanistically, what do we think fibre does? Well, we know it can like limit

17:59
blood glucose excursions. You know, if you're having an apple versus a glass of apple juice, you know, maybe arguably same amount of calories, same amount of sugar, but

18:06
the blood glucose spike is mitigated by the fibre. We know that um it provides some level of satiety. Yeah, we know that, you know, um, you know,

18:14
there's some level and a lot of people like to talk about it effect on the gut microbiome and how it affects the the so-called colonocytes, which cells that are in the colon,

18:22
uh, with the mucus. And I'm like, well, it's not the fact that you have this indigestible kind of wood pulp is what it really is sitting in your gut that's making you healthy. It's all these

18:30
effects that it has. And then the question is, well, can I get those same effects via other mechanisms? And the answer is true. You know, if I'm not eating a bunch of glucose and I don't

18:38
need fibre to to mitigate my glucose spikes, if I have a food that's inherently satiating, like we just talked about, I eat a big steak and I'm hungry, I don't need the fibre to fill up my gut.

18:47
Um, you know, the the the issue around the colonocytes, well, we know that um, you know, butyric acid is one that's often pointed out. There's some other uh

18:55
short- chain fatty acids which also um impact the the the colon. But we when we go low carb like a carnivore diet

19:03
clearly is um we start to produce higher levels of butyrate you know beta hydroxybutyrate which is our ketone body and that can easily be converted right

19:11
into butyric acid and that can also nourish the uh colon cells. So I think that if you're eating a standard western diet, standard Australian diet, yeah,

19:20
fibre is your friend. I mean it's going to help to to mitigate some of those.

19:23
that might cause gut issues and might be other things but you can you can couch it in saying yes it's conditionally beneficial and there's a whole bunch of data that would support that

19:31
associational but when we say well why is it beneficial and you start asking why then you're saying can I get the same effects another way and the answer is clear clearly yes you can

19:39
yeah but there's some argument and I must admit that this research is only in animals it hasn't been done in humans

19:46
there's some research that uh the lack of fibre in a diet caused some of the microbiome eating the

19:55
mucosal lining of the gut. So that's that's a it's an interesting question because we just don't have a lot of data in carnivores. But there are a couple

20:02
studies now that came out of uh uh I want to say it might even been the Czech Republic, but there were two European studies that were published in the last

20:10
two years and they looked at carnivore gut microbiomes and they found that surprisingly uh the the gut microbiome was extremely

20:18
diverse which is what we think it it wouldn't be because we have this very kind of mono diet.

20:22
So very diverse microbiome. we saw fiberloving bacteria still in the gut even even in the absence of fibre. So in

20:31
general it looked like a pretty healthy gut microbiome. So that's uh um something that you know when we actually test that theory because it's just a

20:39
theory because we just don't again I will say again I'm not here saying that carnivore is going to make you live forever or going to cause you to avoid disease or any of that because I don't

20:47
know there's no one that knows but conversely those people that will say that oh carnivore is going to give you cancer heart disease they don't know either because we just don't have the data and and you know so I

20:56
tend to focus on you know actual um short-term results that we can actually see and measure you know was I

21:03
diabetic and I'm not diabetic. Did I have depression? I don't have depression. Did I have severe autoimmune disease, Crohn's disease, and I don't have Crohn's disease?

21:11
That isn't meaningful. And that's particularly meaningful for the individual. Now, we can look at population level uh data and say, well, on a population level, we should do this

21:19
or that. But when you have the individual in front of you, when you're a physician or clinician making those decisions, you want to take the patient in front of you and say, what's best for

21:26
that person, not what's best for 47 million people living in Western Europe.

21:30
Yes. I don't know. I mean, this is not you. So yeah, I mean fibre is, you know, like I said, on whole for the general

21:38
population. Sure. Yeah, I think it's I think it's beneficial.

21:41
What if hypothetically if someone was on a carnivore diet and they're doing really well, but they have some issues

21:47
with motility and they introduce partially hydrayed guar gum and that helps them to improve their motility and reduce some of their stomach symptoms.

21:58
Would you let them have it or would you remove it and why? Well, you know, again, it's always a risk benefit issue.

22:04
I mean, guar gum and some of the other, you know, emulsifiers and thickeners tend to be problematic. You know, depend if the person is suffering with colitis

22:10
or IBD, it's probably a net negative, but if the person is, you know, doesn't have maybe they're maybe they're doing it for other reasons, potentially it could be beneficial.

22:19
[clears throat] I always tell people do what works for you, you know, be objective about it, you know, and the nice thing like we have a company and we look over everybody's data like,

22:27
you know, dispassionately. were objective because you may like, well, I really like this dairy product or this particular thing and you just it can't be bad for me because I like it so much.

22:36
Yeah.

22:37
And you know, when you don't have an objective set of eyes, you're subjectively doing it, you kind of fool yourself. And so, um, yeah, I mean, it's it's something I mean, I I wouldn't like say I'm

22:45
recommending everybody should have guar gum. I mean, I think there's there's known issues with that for certain people, for sure.

22:51
Oh, but it's not guar gum. It's partially hydrayed guar gum.

22:54
Partially. Well, there may be some new ones and I may not be familiar with the the differences in there, but I know in general there are so many products as you know there are so many chemicals in

23:02
our food and it's hard to keep track of what all of them do and honestly we just don't know because you know they're not testing these these food additives against IBS or depression or autoimmune.

23:12
All they're testing for is did the rat die? Did it get cancer? Were there genetic changes? No. Okay, it's good.

23:18
Right. That that's literally how it gets gets passed at least in the US and and some other parts of the world. So, um, yeah, I mean, you got to you've got to

23:25
be objective about, you know, you because, you know, if I you can be the strictest carnivore and still have health issues, and I'm not going to tell you don't change. I mean, you if

23:34
somebody tells you just to to stay with that and not be willing to change, then I think you shouldn't listen to that person. I mean, again, it might be you have to pull these other levers, which we've already talked about.

23:43
Yeah.

23:43
But yeah, I mean, experiment a little bit, see what happens.

23:46
Yeah, that is true. I have a question, another question about diet. So carnivore diet, just for those who don't know, it's essentially ketogenic diet.

23:55
It's a highfat diet, right? Like if you do carnival ride, you eat at least 2 to one fat to protein ratio. Yeah. It's not

24:02
a just high protein diet. It's a high I mean it depends. I mean for many people um and I've seen sort of a a

24:10
basically a spectrum of where people fall on that. Some people are as as lean as one. A lot of people are 2:1, 3 to one, even four to one in some cases

24:19
depending on how how deeply ketoic they have to get. And I think there's different situations where more ketosis is beneficial. I think central nervous

24:26
system issues like neurodeenerative disease like multiple sclerosis or uh you know mood disorders like bipolar depression, things like that. Then we

24:34
see a greater uh tendency towards efficacy with higher fat diets. Whereas somebody just maybe they want to lose a little bit of weight, you know, maybe

24:42
maybe they got a little bit of pre-diabetes and they want to lose 20 pounds of fat. Those people might do better with, you know, 60% fat or something like that, which is more one to one, you

24:51
know, something somewhere in that neighborhood. But, but it's certainly compared to a standard diet is high fat.

24:55
Yeah. So, essentially, it's highfat diet, no carbs. And so, I did a day with a very renowned researcher in Australia.

25:04
He's researcher in sports dietetics and he specialises in endurance athletes.

25:09
And as we all know uh any uh endurance event that lasts longer than 3 hours

25:16
causes potentially exercise induced gastrointestinal syndrome. That's pretty common. Yeah. In like a ultramarathon events, iron man and all that.

25:26
From all the gels, you mean? Yeah.

25:27
No, not from all the gels. It's actually uh from the strain on the gut and the gastrointestinal the stress. So even if

25:35
you don't have any gels, this is going to happen. You're going to have some gastrointestinal bleeding. You have some damage to your gut lining and that's

25:43
just to point out events that last longer than 3 hours.

25:46
So the question be why the hell would you do that event, right? Like I wonder we do it. So that's like triathletes, ultramarathon runners such as myself. So

25:55
in those events even if you if you do event that's longer than 3 hours you can you can broad bring on yourself uh

26:03
inflammatory bowel disease if you have the genetics to it can happen just from one endurance event. So anyway we did this whole day of like he's doing a lot

26:11
of studies on nutrition and he said that um the highfat low carb diet or no carb

26:18
diet actually worsens these issues and causes even more gut damage. So he was saying that athletes that do ultra

26:26
endurance events need to have some carbohydrate or protein. So it will be either carbohydrate or amino acids

26:33
during the event to prevent a severe gut damage. And you're saying that if during the event you either fast, you don't eat

26:42
at all or you eat high fat foods, you will worsen the damage. What do you think about that? Well, you know, I don't have any personal experience with

26:50
that particular cohort because I don't have really interest in ultramarathon distances. I know there are people that have done, you know, backyard ultras where they'll

26:58
run for three or four days and we're eating carnivore diets. And again, remember, a carnivore diet isn't just fat. There's a lot of protein in there.

27:04
I mean, there's some high quality protein. So, again, I guess it depends on your fat source, how much fat is in there, how much protein's in there. Um, I think

27:11
that, you know, the the whole world of, um, performance is, you know, it's kind to me it's very nuanced. I mean, I think

27:20
if you're trying to run a sub two-hour marathon, which is, you know, world record pace, then probably some amount of carbohydrates is going to be beneficial in that case

27:28
for most people, myself included, the way I train, and I train pretty hard.

27:32
Um, you know, I don't really get into the situation where the car has become significantly beneficial for me, even though I'm, you know, putting out very

27:39
high amounts of intensity. Uh, but I just I just kind of I just kind of tailor my training to my nutrition. Uh, you know, and and for what I want to do

27:48
because I, you know, I don't I don't have a desire to be an ultramarathon person. I would be absolutely miserable running, you know, given that I'm 110 kilos right now or something like

27:57
that. It's just not I'm not really built for that. So, yeah. No, I know it's good to discuss this because a lot of people listen to a lot of advice but they don't really

28:05
actually consider whether the advice is suitable for them personally and as [clears throat] you said like you know we have a lot of people their general

28:13
population and they listen to advice for marathon runners who run marathon under two hours and then they start eating all these carbohydrates and they get sick

28:21
from it because they're not running a marathon they're sitting on their butt for eight hours.

28:25
Yeah. I mean it's it's that is a very very very niche group of of individuals and and it's hard to extrapolate their

28:32
needs to the needs of even most athletes recreational athletically high level athletes. I mean it's it's a different physiology. I mean you know you can be a

28:41
world champion Olympic lifter which I mean that that event takes one point 1 1.5 seconds or something like that to do a snatch or something like that. So it's a very different energy system. So I

28:50
think you know you have to like tailor your nutrition to your event. I would be the first one to to say that I think long endurance events of high

28:58
intensity probably will benefit from from some level of carbohydrates. Now, it's controversial how much. I mean, there's studies coming out of Andrew Coutin's

29:06
lab and some of the other folks that are saying that it's much lower than than is currently being pushed. You know, a lot of the, you know, the top athletes are pushing 100 grams of carbs an hour, 110

29:15
grams of carbs an hour. And is that detrimental? Does it lead to performance? Some people would argue yes. Other people say maybe it's going

29:22
to be detrimental to their health long term. We don't we really don't know.

29:26
It's it's kind of you know we're in a we're in a much learning phase like like for instance CGM continuous glucose mod which athletes are now wearing and you

29:33
see these people that are fit and lean and obviously just incredible shape and their blood glucose numbers look like they're crazy. They're up you know I know

29:41
super high and it's like why is that going on? Is it normal? Is it expected?

29:44
Is it something we we should do? Or is it pathologic? I don't think we know yet.

29:48
We don't know yet. And I'll tell you a story. So I know a guy who is almost as fit as you. He's trly different a different different type of sport.

29:56
And when he was 67, he's been doing the gels and all the traditional trily died his whole life. And when he was 67, he

30:03
was doing corner um triathlon and he wins it. He's like wins in his age category and he got a almost got a heart

30:11
attack at the starting line. He took himself to the hospital and he was assessed by traditional cardiologist,

30:19
not carnivore or anything like that, just traditional doctor. And the doctor told him that he damaged his heart and all his arteries from all the high sugar

30:27
diet throughout his whole life. And so then he changed to ketogenic diet and he still performs now on ketogenic diet and he's doing well. So I agree. I think

30:36
that carbs are beneficial to some of the athletes, but I also think they need to pull back throughout the year and instead of having the carbs all the

30:45
time, all year round, they can just use them strategically around the training and performing.

30:51
Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, I work with a number of, you know, high level professional athletes over the years and we'd always talk about, you know, some people, you know, can do fine without

30:58
carbs. Some people will find a minimum effective dose. It'll be it'll be tailored around certain workouts. you know, maybe I need 10 20 grams to do this particular very intense workout.

31:07
Exactly.

31:08
And you just got to figure out what you need because I think and again as an older guy, you know, as a as a master's athlete, you know, approaching 60, I

31:15
think that the things that, you know, will produce performance over the long term are not just necessarily energy,

31:23
you know, energy systems. It's it's like how do my joints feel? If I am, you know, heavily glycating my joints and compromising the the tissue quality of

31:31
the tendons, the ligaments, the articular cartilage, and I have knee pain, I'm just not going to feel like doing things. And so, I know that diet

31:38
can impact that. And so, if I can minimise the amount of pain I'm feeling as, you know, cuz, you know, you talk to anybody that's older, they're going to start to develop a little bit of pain.

31:47
You know, you work out enough, you're you're going to develop some. So if I can minimise that, then I can train the next day and the next day and the next day after that and I can train at a

31:54
higher level intensity than if I was in pain. So that, you know, that adds up over time for sure.

31:59
Yeah, 100%. Okay, let's talk about some supplements. I'm interested about your opinion about your opinion on certain supplements. What do you think about

32:07
creatine? [snorts] Well, as we, you know, we mentioned the other day, creatine is one of the best studied supplements. It has a wealth of

32:16
of data behind it that says it's efficacious. And you know, when it came out, you know, I mean, when I first saw it coming out in the general population in the late ' 80s, I used it, you know,

32:24
I was remember I was powerlifting and I remember I went from bench pressing like 100 a little over 100 kilos for it was like 16 17 repetition. I got to like 24 just by

32:33
taking cure creatine. I was like, "Wow, there's some there's something here. It helps." Yeah.

32:36
And it for years and years it's been known as an erogenic, you know, substance. It helps with with performance and um you know what the mechanisms are. I

32:45
mean, you know, talk about intracellular water and and, you know, efficiency of the muscle contractions, but as of recently, you know, more and more people have discovered that it has benefits to

32:53
brain health, it has benefits to cardiovascular health, and they're doing um some of that we're seeing like people with dementia, uh that and and I I'll give you my my

33:03
sort of suspicion on this. We see the people that are demented, you give them a big dose of creatine and they start to see cognitive improvements and I think

33:10
that they're low on creatine. I mean our body can you know to some degree we can make creatine but we also consume it and we see people that

33:18
are on plant-based diets their intracellular intramuscular creatine is tends to be lower that has an impact and so those people particularly would do really well by sub

33:27
by supplementing creatine but I think that these older people that have probably grown up in the 1960s7s 80s

33:34
we're told lowfat avoid red meat all these foods that have creatine in it right have depleted their creatine stores and so now when you finally give them

33:42
something that they need, you know, their brain starts to work again. So, I think that's uh I mean, I think it's a a solid product whether someone who's

33:50
eating, you know, a kilo of red meat a day needs it or not, I think that's debatable quite honestly. If you if you don't eat kilover red meat, you probably

33:57
get the benefits definitely for exercise and also for the brain health and for let's say when you sleep deprived, you get by the research you get the results

34:06
from creatine at like 20 grams per day dosage which that's very hard to get from meat. You would have to eat more than one.

34:13
Yeah. And and you know and I I guess I would look at you know is there uh some other factors that helps with the absorption with the bioavailability you know that comes with meat because you

34:21
know like I said I think it's generally good to get most of your nutrition from food because they're designed to be eaten that way. Right. Of course.

34:28
And you know for some people that have known deficiencies or struggle with whatever issue that's where the supplementation might have a benefit.

34:36
Yeah 100%. But what do you think about collagen then? Because that's very hard to get from the diet. Uh well yeah I mean it's true I think most people and

34:44
my friend Mark Sison is a big proponent of collagen you know that's the fourth you know macronutrient I think he's he's made that statement but yeah I mean I think collagen is is

34:52
important I mean we have a lot of collagen like our art ticular cartilage in our joints is made of cartilage you know our hair our skin our nails

35:00
everything has has some level of either type one type two type three collagens in there and um having the precursors

35:08
and this is something that a lot of people say well it's just broken down it's broken composite amino acids. It doesn't really matter, but we actually do have um

35:17
hydroxyproline and hydroxy receptors in our gut. These are diet tripeptides uh or we have diet tripeptide receptors

35:24
that can absorb those things intact. So they're they don't have to be manufactured. So I think you can get some of that from the diet and so it might make a difference. I know people

35:32
anecdotally um and you know obviously there's there's a lot of trouble with anecdotal stores but they'll say my nails are thicker, my hair's thicker, I feel

35:39
better. So, I don't know that it's um I know some people would be concerned that collagen might produce, you know, u uh

35:48
metabolites that might be problematic for some people like Sally Norton will talk about oxalates and stuff and I'm I'm not convinced that that is the biggest issue with that. But I mean, I

35:56
think in general um you know, if you can get your collagen from food, which you mentioned is somewhat hard to do, but you can do it. It can.

36:04
That's the best place. But if you can't do it, then perhaps and and you you need to for whatever reason the supplementation makes sense.

36:10
Yeah. Because like if you wanted to cover collagen from your diet, you would need to eat lot of bone broth, animal cartilagages, animal skins. Most people do want to eat animal skills.

36:20
Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, I think the volume of like a steak is about 2 to 3% collagen by by makeup. And so you still again that that if you're eating enormous amounts of that like I do.

36:29
You do? Yeah. I can do that. The average person is not going to is not going to do that. The average person is not going to sit down and eat a kilo of red meat, you know, for a meal. I mean, it just doesn't happen.

36:38
And so, as an athlete, and you talk a lot about athletes and tendon strength, do you believe that collagen has a huge impact on tendon strength and healing if you're injured?

36:48
Well, I think that there are a lot of factors that go into tissue quality in general. And I think there are things that are detrimental to that. You know,

36:55
things that are irritants, which lead to inflammatory changes, which lead to what called tendinosis. Um, and those can be multiple things in the diet that are

37:04
negative, you know, and then we're like when we get in the repair state because we're always constantly, you know, rebuilding, you know, taking things down, putting things back together, you

37:12
know, this is what we do every night when we sleep. Um, so having the building blocks, you know, it's like, for instance, if I were to say, hey, I'd

37:19
like to build a brick house and over there I have some straw and mud and I this is like plant-based diet and then over here I have some I have some

37:26
bricks. What's the most efficient way to do that? having the bricks already made is so much more efficient. So there's an efficiency uh thing that we see and I I

37:34
I certainly see that like and again this is anecdotal um that people that get injured on a high meat diet they tend to recover

37:42
better you know they just they just they just you know they recover quicker uh you know even even at older ages. So it's pretty cool.

37:49
I experienced it myself. The last time I did an ultramarathon I I was on a pure carnivore diet for a while. This is when

37:56
we did the podcast. The race was 50 kilometers. I did quite well. The race ended with 1,000 steps. It was in the

38:05
mountains and I was expecting to have huge domes the next day. I had no pain in my muscles. And I realised that

38:13
previously because I was doing what um a lot of athletes are doing. I was eating high meat diet, low carb diet all year

38:20
round. But then around racing, I would reduce my protein and fat on expensive carbs. So I would have more carbs and I

38:28
think because I was having more carbs and replaced the protein and the fat with carbs, I think that's why I was getting a lot of pain and injury because

38:37
I just didn't have enough protein to perform and recover.

38:40
Yeah. I've heard I've heard many uh ultra athletes have made that same statement that after they they do a 100 mile race, they're they can't even walk for two or three days. Their legs are

38:48
swollen. Exactly. and and some of those it'll go to a either a a meat-based full prep or even afterwards in part of the recovery phase they just notice that

38:56
it's so much better. they, you know, the next day they're able to walk around and and you know, even maybe jog lightly, which is, you know, I again, I can't pretend to

39:04
imagine how miserable you feel after running an ultra because I've never done it. But I, you know, I can actually don't I feel good. And that's why I asked you about that research

39:12
before about that gut health and the highfat diet because I did ultras on pure carnivore diet and I didn't have any gastrointestinal issues. I didn't have domes. Like I just felt great.

39:23
Well, and again, I'm not familiar with that particular research. I would want to know what the fat source if they're feeding people soybean oil and high sugar diets and crap. I mean, I don't

39:31
know what the what the you know, what the makeup was of the diet was, but it would be interesting.

39:35
That's very interesting. But let's talk about what you are going to talk about at the carnival life because this is going to be uh released after so we're

39:43
not breaking any secrets. and we had a chat and I was really glad to hear that you are going to talk about physical activity because I feel like a lot of

39:51
these events that I go to talk a lot about diet and diet is enormously important for our longevity recovery for

39:59
our metabolic health but it doesn't give the body the same stimulus as exercise and I think we need to talk more about

40:07
movement which you are going to do at the carnival life so tell us what your topic is and what you going to do yeah absolutely you know as my background you know my background is an orthopedic surgeon And so I I would

40:15
spend my years, you know, replacing people's knees and hips and shoulders and take care of people that just lost their capacity to, you know, to be

40:23
healthy because, you know, I look at it like, you know, if we have a a highowered race car, you know, Ferrari, Maserati, whatever, super nice engine,

40:31
but you [clears throat] get flat tires, I mean, it's not going anywhere. I mean, so you cannot maintain your cardiovascular, cardiorespiratory health, your brain health if you don't

40:39
have a, you know, a healthy muscular system. And we see that, you know, someone will get an injury or they'll have bad arthritis in the knee or hip or back and it just puts them out and then

40:48
their quality of life just deteriorates tremendously. Um, so I mean just a lot of that is recoverable. I mean I I' I've

40:57
seen people with arthritis and and and they are they able to regain function.

41:02
It's significant function in many cases, but it's a you know it's a process. It requires you know work. You know diet

41:09
can be helpful as we mentioned. diet will open your door to get you to where, hey, I don't maybe my knee doesn't hurt as much. Maybe I can do some more stuff.

41:16
And that's what I'm trying, you know, like, like I said, I've been in the space for 10 years. Everybody knows me as a carnivore guy. Before I was carnivore, I was an orthopedic surgeon.

41:24
I was an athlete. I've been my whole life. That that's really been where I just I've just lived and breathed at for so many years. And so, I think that, you

41:31
know, particularly as I get to the, you know, later half of my life now, I realise how I've always thought it was important, but I I realise how much more

41:39
important it is. And I think that when we look at people who are ageing, you know, you can put two people in two categories.

41:44
One of the biggest differentiator from people that age well functionally that have a lot of capacity are those that just regularly, you know, train those

41:52
capacities. And it does it doesn't happen accidentally. I see people, well, I do a lot of farm work or I work around a house. I'm like, that's like leaving up to random chance. You need to have a

42:01
a plan, a systematic sort of process to maintain those things because there's a lot of things that, you know, when you're a kid, you take it all for

42:09
advantage. You know, you you can you can pop up from the chair and go run sprints. No one no one, you know, when you're older, you got to like, okay, what do I got to do? How can I prepare my body for this? Am I flexible enough?

42:16
Am I am I strong enough? Do I have the body composition? Do I have the, you know, the energy to do these types of things? And so, it's uh it's something

42:23
that requires not an enormous amount. I mean, I don't want to say you need to spend three, four, five hours a day in the gym. You can do these things fairly efficiently.

42:31
Yeah.

42:32
But, you know, like like mo, you know, there's this stat, which I don't know how how true it is, but they'll say that after age 30, 95% of the people never

42:39
fully sprint again, which may or may not be true. I mean, I'm I'm certainly sure that most people do not, but most people do not because they don't try.

42:48
Well, they can't and they'll get hurt.

42:50
But I just think it's because they stop doing things, right? They lose their stop doing it.

42:54
Like it's it's like I have so many people that tell me, "Oh, I can't do this because I'm so old." I'm like, "No." I I literally said to a cl because

43:02
I still work as an exercise physiologist to extend. And I had a client recently who told me he's 60 like you and he's got very poor mobility and he just can't

43:11
even squat properly. And he's like, "Oh, everything hurts. Ageing sucks." And I'm like, "No, ageing not sucks. You suck because you've done nothing for 30 years

43:19
and now you want to do everything. But like for 30 years, you haven't challenged any of these systems. You haven't sprinted. You haven't squatted.

43:26
You haven't done anything. You're just sitting at your desk, chased money. And now after 30 years of not using those systems, you lost it.

43:34
Because if you don't use it, you lose it.

43:36
So I believe that most people can't sprint at my age, for example, because they haven't tried to sprint for the last 20 years.

43:44
Yeah. Yeah. they can they can they might be able to run somewhat fast but they can't actually sprint.

43:48
Um and it this is something I saw as a surgeon. You know I would see people that would work their whole life. You know they come to my office 65 70 years of age

43:56
and you know the dream is I'm going to work and then I'm going to go hang out in you know hang out in Bali and the Maldes and the Amalfi coast of Italy and just Greek isles and this is my retirement. I'm going to enjoy life.

44:06
But most of them can't do anything.

44:07
They're like they're in pain all the time and their existence is basically going from doctor appointment to doctor appointment to doctor appointment. I was just one on the stop. I'd be like,

44:15
"Okay, Mrs. Jones, we're going to, you know, we're going to need to replace your knee in 2 months and I got to go see my kidney doctor and then I got to see my diabetes doctor." And it was just

44:23
like that becomes their existence, which is a very sad existence, quite honestly.

44:27
And it doesn't need to be that way. I think for the vast majority of the people um how we age is is so incredibly um modifiable by by ourselves.

44:38
100%. And that's the thing we discussed today. Okay? You're 60, I'm 46. We flattered each other saying how good we look and how fit we are. But it's

44:46
because we regularly exercise and we move and most people don't. Most people sit for 10 hours a day at work. They sit

44:54
on the way to work on the way from work and then they sitting on the couch and then they complaining they got sprint and that everything is hurting. Like I think the movement is the missing link.

45:04
It's interesting that when you actually get people moving, they'll often say they actually feel better. For sure.

45:10
Pain goes away when they move. But you you know you've got to you've got to kind of progress into that. And you know it's kind of interesting. I'll be talking about some of the studies that have come out on

45:18
things like articular cartilage which is something we've always thought was just it wears out and goes away and never comes back. But there's some more data coming out that's showing that we might

45:26
be able to preserve our cartilage a little better as we age. And maybe just maybe we might be able to restore some of that through activity, movement,

45:33
loading and then diet. You know diet has a role here too.

45:37
So explain to us because I know you're going to talk about it in your talk.

45:40
What would be the main things to improve or restore or preserve your articular cartilage in your joints?

45:47
Yeah. Well, so I think first of all, if you're on a a crap diet, you got to fix that. Get away whatever is irritating you. You know, it might be grains, it

45:55
might be, you know, gluten, it might be uh processed sugars, it might be oils, it might be something, maybe even vegetables. I don't know. Just figure that out. Figure that out.

46:04
And then you need to get body composition where it needs to be. And and I like to use something called a waist to height measurement. I think that's a very useful tool.

46:11
Um, basically, you know, if you're well, I'll just use an easy number like if you're 180 cm tall, your waist should be no bigger than 90 cmters. And that's

46:18
measured at the at the belly button, you know, [snorts] relaxed. And and if it's bigger than that, you need to work on that. That's that's non-negotiable. You got to get

46:26
down there because when we have excess atosity, it it, you know, causes these inflammatory cytoines which then go on to damage our joints. if your insulin

46:35
levels are very high, there's other there's other data that shows that that that can also lead to articular cartilage damage. So, we're fixing those things through nutrition. And then from

46:43
there, um movement like we talked about, you know, there a lot of the research certainly supports low to medium load

46:50
movement as you know uh as important. Um the other thing and a question is what is medium load? What is you know it's

46:57
very like for me you know I can walk up and pick up 200 kg and it's light. It's not heavy. for somebody else that's incredibly they'll see me like why are you doing that so heavy I'm like it's

47:06
not heavy I do way more than that so it's like what is you know what is a high load for one person might be different and that's something you can

47:13
progressively increase and you want to because the more uh you know kind of youthful strength and capacity you have the more you're going to act like a

47:21
younger person and then I think that um besides that um you know for instance

47:28
our cartilage does not have any blood supply how do you feed you know our muscles are fed fed by our our blood vessels. Our bones are fed by our blood vessels. Our skin is fed by our blood

47:36
vessels. But the cartilage in our body has no blood vessels. So where does the nutrition come from? You know, it's basically the fluid that's in the joint.

47:43
It's made by cells called synovio. And when we move and we have this cyclic loading and unloading like this cyclic motion, [snorts] the the the nutrition

47:52
gets pushed into the cells. And then when it comes the other way, it pulls out the the the uh you know, the metabolites that we need to we need to

48:00
dispose of. So this is how the the knee or the you know whatever joint pick your joint is nourished. Um so those are uh incredibly thing important things. I

48:08
think that um the other thing is alignment plays a role like like if we look at our knee there are obviously a

48:16
number of muscle groups that go around the hamstrings the quadriceps you know the adductor muscles the glutial muscles actually impact that you know muscles above and below the joints above and

48:24
below affect the knee and so a lot of people will will go out of alignment you know because they've maybe overdeveloped one muscle or underdeveloped another one or they've gotten weak for some reason

48:32
and so what happens is the stability of our joints is dictated by a couple things. The shape of the joint like my

48:39
hip is a ball and socket. My knee is a trimpartmental bicondular joint. Yeah, it's just the name. It's not important, but it just it dictates how it moves in

48:47
the shape and the alignment. And then beyond that, we have these secondary supportive structures like the ligaments that connect bones to bones to keep the bones from shifting around. And then we

48:55
have like some padding things like the menisci and the knee and you know the labreum in the hips and shoulders. And then besides that, we also have the

49:04
dynamic control which is our muscles. So our muscles help to align things. It's like if you take your car and the tires are out of alignment, what's going to

49:12
happen? They're going to wear out too quick. So that's what's happening for us in people that don't have properly uh developed musculature or balanced musculature. And so that's something

49:20
that you know like most people in general have underdeveloped glutial muscles. I think the glutes are one of the most important muscle groups. You know, it's just so incredibly important for that.

49:29
They underdeveloped because they sit on our butt all the time.

49:31
Yeah. And yet we don't do the things that would develop. You see these older folks, these old like older men with this like pancake flat butt, you know, [laughter] and then you see them walk, they're just kind of like walking super slow.

49:40
Yeah.

49:41
And you know, it's like I said, if I were to, you know, to say what one muscle is really important, I'd say your big big butt. I mean, it's the most volume intense muscle we have in our body. It's got the greatest [snorts]

49:50
muscle volume. So, it's incredibly important muscle. It's why we stand up.

49:53
You You look at a dog. A dog ain't got a big booty, right?

49:56
They [laughter] can't stand up very high, very loud, but a human does. And that's what keeps us upright. And and you know, we want to stay upright. That's uh part of being you.

50:04
Yeah. So, work on your glutes. Works. Absolutely. Absolutely.

50:07
So much interesting information. I can't wait to hear your speech at the Carnival Life. And I'm also excited for our workout on Sunday morning. Are you going

50:15
to do pole vaultting? Because we're going on to race.

50:18
We'll see what we have available to. I know for sure we should be able to at least high jump, maybe pole, maybe run some sprints or something like that. I'll sprint with you. I probably will.

50:24
Yeah, because pole vaulting is is very very technically challenged. You got to get the right polls and it's just like it's a it's a I just started doing that by the way.

50:32
I've done two I've done two sessions.

50:34
I've done two 90-minute sessions. Two sessions.

50:36
I'm a complete newbie at this a completely fight.

50:39
It is hard. It is incred because it's cuz you know you run as fast as you can carrying a 15 16 foot pole in your hands and you punch it into the ground and you

50:47
got to swing your body up in the air and invert upside down and and I can't I haven't been able to do these things yet. And it's like it's like sprinting

50:54
plus jumping plus gymnastics plus all these and you got it's kind of scary, you know, because the first time you're running down there like,

51:01
you know, it's the first time I did it, I remember I was like a little bit scared, but I've gotten through it and I just I just keep doing it now.

51:07
But that's what keeps you young, doing something scary, something hard, challenging yourself, learning something new.

51:12
Yeah. It's just like how do you you know, don't get hurt. That's important.

51:15
I mean, that that's something I would say about with regard to join. You don't want to get hurt. So, you got to be you got to be prepared. It's not you can't do things that are that are that are

51:24
challenging and and potentially somewhat dangerous, but you got to be very mindful and you got to be very smart about how you do it.

51:30
Yeah. Well, I'm excited to see it. Thank you so much for making the time today. It was great to have you here in person.

51:37
Thank you. And um I'm excited for the event. Me, too. Awesome. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening.

51:45
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