In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast, we talk about what blockers are in the Thermo Diet, some of the biggest blockers that we see in everyday life, some tips to avoid them, and how to add in some activators at the same time as taking blockers out of your life.
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Full Transcript:
Chris: All right, we're back in action. And we're going to be talking about blockers today on the Thermo Diet Podcast. My name is Christopher Walker.
Jayton: I am Jayton, otherwise known as J. Milly Rock or Research Cowboy.
Chris: Nice. Alright. We're racking them up. We're going to have a contest at the end of the season of how many nicknames Jayton has. If you can name them all, you'll get a free UMZU supplement. First person to name all the nicknames because he has a ton and we've already heard three.
Jayton: Sounds good. Heck yeah.
Chris: All right. Today we're talking about blockers like I said. The important part of Thermo and the Thermo Diet is getting rid of blockers. And as we've talked about in a couple of other episodes the idea of Thermo is to basically identify things that bring you back toward a state of more perfect health, which is what we define as Thermo.
Chris: The definition of health is being hormonally balanced and not deficient in important nutrients that your body needs in order to fuel all the processes. The nutrients are the raw materials that it needs. And if you become deficient/when you become deficient because it's almost this constant state of deficiency. So it really is more about progressions instead of perfection.
Chris: When you're deficient, your body ends up pulling the nutrients that it needs from other areas of the body or other systems. Just organs, bones, osteoporosis things like that. And so you start to have issues down the line when you have too many blockers in your life. And blockers can be any range of things from a nutrition element, something you're eating. For example, polyunsaturated fats, easily oxidized oils. All the way down to habit patterns.
Chris: It could be even thinking patterns, playing the victim instead of playing the creator in your life. Or thinking about being more empowered rather than choosing to allow the world to do things to you. There's a lot of elements to this. So in this podcast we're going to be talking about all the different stuff.
Jayton: Heck yeah. PUFAs, what's up with PUFAs?
Chris: So PUFAs we've talked about it before and we'll probably talk about it a lot more is just, it's probably one of the foundational elements of Thermo is getting rid of the consumption of added PUFAs. There are certainly a natural tiny, tiny amount in certain things like beef or whatever. But they're so small and also in the presence of a lot of saturated fat where they're less harmful.
Chris: But polyunsaturated fats in general come in the form of what people know as vegetable oils, which are really seed oils in a lot of different forms or just almost fake oils, chemically manufactured oils, down to even fish oil. Just they're unstable oils, unstable fatty acids that are easily oxidized with heat and light. So you want to avoid them because they're basically to wreak havoc on your body.
Chris: All the free radical stress that they introduce into the body is terrible for your metabolism, it's terrible for your hormones in general. And so the easiest way, probably one of the biggest things that you could ever do for your health is just stop eating them. It's one of the chief blockers that you want to get rid of. And a good way to think about activators and blockers.
Chris: Just the idea of like, you've got these categories of things. You could even say you wrote down in a notebook and you said, "These are 10 blockers that I've just realized now that I'm doing daily, as part of my life." You don't have to eliminate all 10 of them at once. Again, it's more about progression not the perfection here. It's picking one or two and say, "All right, today I'm going to be more cognizant of the oils that I'm eating."
Chris: And instead of choosing some potato chips that are fried in sunflower oil, I'm going to find some that are made out of coconut oil. Maybe with coconut oil, I mean, which there are a lot of good options nowadays for that.
Jayton: And you're simply eliminating a blocker and adding in an activator at that point too.
Chris: Exactly. And that's a good way to think about it is like daily on my Thermo journey, can I just get rid of one blocker today and add one activator. And the chip example is a good one because you do both at the same time and you still get a better tasting chip and you still get to eat potato chips. Obviously you don't want to rely on chips for your diet but there are some good chips out nowadays that are made with organic potatoes, salt and coconut oil.
Chris: And it's super simple. And then if you go look at some Lays or something, the ingredient list is super long. All this random stuff you don't need. And they're all lot of them are blockers and then it's fried in high PUFA oil, which is rancid. So just by swapping them out, you're going to have an activator by introducing just better quality food.
Jayton: And some of the main ones that I typically see are canola oil, peanut oil.
Chris: Soybean oil.
Jayton: Soybean oil is a big one.
Chris: Corn oil.
Jayton: Yeah. And from my understanding, a lot of people think that these are necessary and there's three different types of polyunsaturated fats. We have the omega-3s and the omega-6. Which most people know of and they think that if you have a certain ratio of them in the body, then it'll be healthy. A lot of people think that you have too much omega-6 and not enough omega-3 whenever you have too much of both of them. You really just need to get both of them.
Jayton: And then we have what are known as the endogenously made or the ones that are made inside the body. It's known as Mead acid or omega-9. And they've actually shown in studies with rats that whenever they've completely eliminated these 'essential fatty acids', the EFS-
Chris: They are not essential at all.
Jayton: They've taken them out completely of the diet and these rats began to produce the Mead acid inside of their body and their metabolic rate actually ramped up very significantly. And the only thing that kept them from not dying in this case was by replenishing their body with the micronutrients that they were burning through more consistently during that time. Whenever they were not nutrient deficient in that case, then their metabolism just began to crank up, infinitely almost.
Chris: And that's really part of the bedrock of Thermo nutrition in general. High nutrient, dense nutrient, rich diet with a low amount of polyunsaturated fats ends up drastically increasing your metabolism. And the healthy function of really important glands in the body. Did you read that study? There was a really old study on it was the lab, I forgot the name of the lab.
Chris: The original lab that the guy, I think it was back in the 30s or 40s, he was the guy that coined the term essential fatty acids. And in his lab during the experiments, they were doing all these types of experiments on rodents. His research assistant decided to do the same experiment on himself and he said, "I'm going to stop, just stop eating PUFAs and I'm going to eat a diet that was rich in fructose."
Chris: It was high in a lot of different minerals that they knew the body needed like zinc and magnesium, potassium and all the electrolytes essentially. And good dairy. And some shellfish. It was a very unsustainable diet but interesting because it wasn't something a normal person would eat everyday. But foundationally it was interesting because it was very high in fruit, fruit juice and then very mineral dense.
Chris: And what ended up happening in low to non-existent PUFA, he had had a, I forgot what his issue was, I should have prepared this for this. But he had this persistent issue from... it was migraines, that's what it was. He had migraines since childhood and they went away during the 12 weeks that he was doing this.
Jayton: I have read this story.
Chris: It completely went away and he started losing weight and he lost a bunch of body fat. And he said he'd never felt so much energy his entire life. He'd never felt so good in his entire life and all his migraines were gone that he had his whole life, I think he was a 30 something year old research assistant.
Chris: And the ironic thing was that even though with these results, even in the face of it that lab still put out the essential fatty acid hypothesis, that you need PUFAs to survive.
Jayton: Really?
Chris: Which is wild and backward. But they also got a multimillion dollar donation from the American Heart Association, which was interesting. So there's a lot more than meets the eye to these conventional thoughts around nutrition and it's really telling when you start to trace back the real story.
Jayton: Yeah, I think whenever it comes to these polyunsaturated fatty acids, they're very unstable so they oxidize. And basically when you think of oxidation, think of the rust on metal. That's basically what's happening, is this molecule is breaking apart and has become, it's very degradative. And so it begins to break down certain things in the body and-
Chris: Corrosive I think is the word.
Jayton: Yeah. And a lot of people they think that they're fighting inflammation with a lot of these things whenever it's actually doing the opposite. It's causing a lot of their inflammation in their body. And they're just running in circles trying to fix this problem with it.
Chris: Yup. And one important thing to fight that inflammation caused by PUFAs is vitamin E. Which a lot of people are extremely deficient in vitamin E. And these oils, a lot of the plants interestingly enough have intact vitamin E but it gets stripped during the production process of the oils. But the plant itself was protecting itself from the PUFA.
Chris: So that's what we recommend even on the 80/20 Thermo rule of, say you do want to eat out somewhere and you're not sure if they can cook your food in butter. Maybe it's fried in some vegetable oil. We would recommend highly that you take a good healthy dose of vitamin E before and after you go out and do that. Just to take a protective measure against the corrosive nature of this type of oil.
Jayton: Yeah. A big one is Chipotle for instance. If you're in a [inaudible 00:11:12] you need something quick and they cook in rice bran oil, don't they?
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Jayton: And so you can just take some vitamin E before that and mitigate the amount of damage that's being done.
Chris: Yup. Exactly. And then they're just better choices even at a lot of these restaurants. If you make more Thermo choices, then it'll help. But if you want to be pure Thermo then just avoiding PUFAs as often as possible is a good idea. And you'll feel way better.
Jayton: Yeah. And it's a lot easier than people think. People feel trapped whenever they're trying to avoid these oils. But if you stick to whole foods and keep it very simple-
Chris: If you grocery shop, it's easy.
Jayton: Avoid processed, prepackaged food. And then you're basically golden, you know?
Chris: Yeah. And you feel better. It tastes better. Cooking with saturated fats tastes infinitely better than PUFA.
Jayton: Yeah. Like eggs cooked in butter? It's delicious.
Chris: A little salt on top. It's good.
Jayton: And if you think about this logically, fish for instance. In very low temperatures in water, these fats are made so they don't solidify and sink to the bottom. If they had saturated fats-
Chris: They would just be heavy and sink.
Jayton: It sink down to the bottom of the ocean.
Chris: It makes sense why they're high.
Jayton: Yeah. And so these PUFAs are in these fish to stay liquefied at very low temperatures, which makes them stable at very low temperatures. A core body temperature of a fish can be anywhere from 30 degrees. And whenever you take those fats and you put them in a body that's supposed to be around 98 degrees, then it's going to cause those fats to break apart and cause all kinds of damage.
Jayton: And another interesting thing is these fats actually tend to have an affinity or a liking whenever they begin to break down in the body for more sensitive tissues like the brain, the thyroid, the ovaries, the testes, things like that. That's something to keep in mind too. If you're struggling with reproductive health, then eliminating polyunsaturated fats is going to help you tremendously.
Chris: Yeah. And brain fog sort of thyroid issues definitely, which are extremely common. A lot of people have thyroid issues.
Jayton: And then in plants for instance, these oils are in these plants to protect them from solidifying at very low temperatures. They want to stay alive during very cold times. And so these fats are necessary to keep them liquefied so they can transport water and other nutrients during those times. And the-
Chris: Most of them are in the seed.
Jayton: Yeah. And then you have something like coconut oil, which is very tropical. It's usually around very high temperatures and it's almost completely saturated fat. There's no reason for it to have the polyunsaturated fat because it's in warm temperatures all the time.
Chris: Yep. So what other blockers can you think of?
Jayton: Soy.
Chris: Soy. Yeah.
Jayton: Soy is a big one.
Chris: Foods in general that are endocrine disrupting essentially, whether it's goitrogenic or estrogenic.
Jayton: Goitrogens are a huge one, especially that's why we avoid cruciferous vegetables. Because they're very high in these goitrogens that basically they have the opposite charge. A lot of the minerals that we have in our system and so because of that, they attract those minerals whenever they're passing through our system and literally pull them out. And then through defecation we're passing all of those minerals from our body.
Chris: Yeah. And the goitrogens specifically impact the thyroid, make it unable to uptake, it makes it more difficult to have the proper uptake of iodine in the thyroid, which is essential for good thyroid health.
Jayton: Right. And the thyroid's the only gland that uses iodine too, right?
Chris: Far as I know.
Jayton: I think so. Yeah. But so the goitrogens are huge. That's why we stay away from cruciferous vegetables, specifically leafy greens like kale is a huge one. Kale's terrible-
Chris: Especially raw. If for whatever reason you insist on eating them, the thing is they don't even taste good. I don't get it why people like them, but I think they convince themselves that they like the way it tastes, but whatever to each his own. But if you insist on eating them, cook it highly to help break down this stuff.
Jayton: And then another thing is fiber. First of all, a lot of these vegetables are very high in cellulose, which is what makes up the plant cell wall. And it's very high in fiber. We lack the enzyme cellulase within us, so we can't actually break down that cellulose.
Jayton: Cooking it first of all breaks down a lot of this fiber and a lot of the cellulose, so it doesn't sit in the gut and begin to ferment and cause all kinds of things to go haywire.
Jayton: You have intestinal overgrowth of bad bacteria and stuff like that. And then you have ammonia because it slows down protein digestion and that begins to ferment and it's just terrible. Then you have protein farts that are really bad.
Chris: Whey protein is another one. Proteins in general are interesting. Some are easy to digest, others aren't. And then you have the supplemental form of whey proteins or dairy derived proteins essentially have been widely found to be highly contaminated with heavy metals.
Jayton: Yes.
Chris: That's another blocker in general. That's why we typically, at UMZU we like just pure good collagen protein, very easy to digest, extremely good for your gut lining. Helps your digestion and also is rich in amino acids that are typically hard to find in some of these other sources of protein.
Jayton: Back to the soy. This is one of the biggest things I see to get man boobies. So for gynecomastia, I see guys walking around with man boobies all the time and they're just pumping themselves full of soy.
Chris: Well, yeah, gyne is generally just an imbalance of the estrogen testosterone ratio. People can get rid of it by rebalancing that. You need levels of all these hormones in your body, but when it becomes excessive in terms of stress hormones like cortisol and estrogen, that sort of thing, it ends up throwing off.
Chris: It's all ratio based. It ends up just throwing off the balance in the body and you start to have these sorts of issues. Luckily once you understand that they can be completely reversed.
Jayton: Interesting. What are some of the things that you would do to reverse that in some cases?
Chris: High estrogen. You want a methylator or more methylators in your diet or supplements. Two really good ones are choline and butane. The methylation is essentially, it's almost akin to an anti nutrient, how it's going to pass a nutrient out, bind to it. So you can think of it that way. That's essentially simplified view of the methylation processes.
Chris: The methyl group is going to take the estrogen molecule and make it to so they can't be bound to anything and therefore it's inactive. And so the methylators are good. Choline deficiency's massive across populations.
Jayton: That's why fatty liver is so bad to you, isn't it?
Chris: Yeah, it's actually a choline issue. That'd be an interesting episode. Talk about fatty liver.
Jayton: Definitely.
Chris: A lot of misunderstandings about that. So methylating, losing body fat, usually the estrogen itself is going to be bound in fat tissue. So losing body fat to a point, obviously there's a point where there's too much lost where your body's in a stress state because it's so lean. But most people that have high estrogen don't ever have to worry about that.
Chris: And people can tell, you can tell with high estrogen, you're going to hold, especially guys they're going to hold the fat tissue in certain spots like love handles and man boobs. But you can get rid of that body fat with simple energy balance in equations [inaudible 00:20:15] thermodynamics.
Chris: And that's the cool thing about Thermo and that's like a nuance that a lot of people, they get mad when I say that because they're like, oh, you know, because a lot of people oversimplify it especially if it fits your macros group, they're like, oh yeah, it's all about energy balance. So you can eat pop tarts and do whatever you want.
Chris: The thing is that's not supporting a nutrient rich environment. And it's also you're consuming a lot of these blockers, things that are going to throw your body out of hormonal balance. Therefore the metabolism is still going to be low. But if you can by eating Thermo increase your metabolic rate, now you can actually eat more and you're still going to have an energy deficiency or an energy deficit.
Chris: So you can still lose that body fat because ultimately that's going to be what burns the body fat, is a change in the energy balance. And that could be just doing, you know, it could be all completely nutrition. But we also highly recommend activity too. There was a study that showed that within just a few days of inactivity, the body, the human body of the subjects in the study became pre-diabetic in terms of insulin markers and stuff.
Chris: Even if it's just going for a walk, ideally if you do resistance training of some kind and just developing a habit pattern in that sense that's a good one. You also want to lower prolactin levels. Some good ways to do that is consuming something like Mucuna which contains typically about 20% of L-dopa active ingredient.
Chris: And the increase in dopamine is going to help to lower the prolactin levels, doing things to increase your testosterone levels in general are going to lower prolactin levels. B6 is super good for lowering prolactin levels and just some stuff like that. What else? That's probably about the big levers that it would take to decrease the estrogenic environment I think.
Jayton: One thing that I want to talk about real quick is the difference between estrogen being a stress hormone and estrogen being a female hormone. A lot of people think that estrogen is the key female hormone, which it is very necessary and it's in naturally higher amounts in women, but it's a stress hormone, especially when in excess.
Jayton: For women specifically, progesterone is a key female hormone is produced at a thousand times the amount that estrogen is produced in the female body. So mitigating excessive estrogen in women and actually raising testosterone in women as well has been shown to alleviate anxiety, depression, excessive fat gain.
Jayton: So what's this starts with a c like the, cellulite. You can mitigate cellulite as well. Isn't grains a big one that raises prolactin as well?
Chris: Yeah.
Jayton: What are some, like most of the grains that you see people that raise prolactin?
Chris: I think its mostly from the anti nutrient content and potential contamination of the grains. A lot of the way that it's grown. A lot of them have heavy metals in them, like brown rice, full of arsenic. It's a ton of it. So those are going to throw off the balance there. What we recommend in terms of grains with Thermo is just mostly just pure white rice.
Chris: The best types that are very low to no contamination is Basmati and jasmine and then fermented grain like sourdough, which thank God because sourdough is so freaking good.
Jayton: Oh my gosh. It's amazing.
Chris: Yeah. We got to get our good organic sourdough.
Jayton: Make sure that it's goes through the full process because and make sure that the quality is always something that we need to stress. Because if you get a commercial sourdough, a lot of the times they'll just add vinegar to it to make it taste sour and they won't actually ferment it.
Chris: Yeah, read the label. Also a lot of them, I was looking around in Whole Foods for one, I didn't find one. But all of them in Whole Foods have, like you're reading the ingredients, you're like, oh, awesome. This looks good.
Chris: And then right at the end it's sunflower oil or something. It's like damn it. Why did you add that in there? It doesn't even need to be in there. I think they just do it to make it moist or something. But read the labels on this stuff. It's a minefield.
Jayton: Yeah. Another big one's flax, isn't it?
Chris: Yeah, flax.
Jayton: That's huge. It's the isoflavones, is that the molecule that's in there?
Chris: It's like genistein. So flax is interesting. The research on it. It's actively used in medical communities to lower testosterone levels in women. A lot of studies are done in women with a condition on is hirsutism where they have too high of androgens. And they end up growing a mustache or something like that.
Chris: So to fight it, and scientists know this, they've known it for many years. To fight it. They feed high doses of flax oil or flax seeds to that woman's diet to lower the testosterone level, the androgens in general. And yet, you know, so it's an extremely endocrine disrupting food or whatever you want to call it, seed. But most people's just still think it's a very healthy thing, it's not.
Jayton: Yeah. Fibers, another big one. We touched on it with the cruciferous vegetables but isn't it an anti androgenic as well?
Chris: Yeah, in too high of doses for sure. Especially when it's separated from the natural source of it. Fruit contains fiber for example, but when in the natural source of that fruit, like maybe an apple or something, the effect isn't nearly there at all really. Especially when opposed to people that are eating like deliberately eating fiber for stuff.
Chris: There's research showing that high fiber diets lower, disrupt androgens entirely and are endocrine disrupting. We did a good article on that on anabolic men back in the day. So people want more info on that specifically. There's an article on anabolicmen.com if you just search anabolic men fiber, you'll find it.
Jayton: What are some mental blockers that you see, psychological blockers. Because that plays a role in it too. People separate the mind and the body but they're intimately connected. And I notice that a lot of people with a negative mindset tend to have very poor health and a lot of cases too.
Chris: Yeah. Mindset is key to, it's a worldview thing and that's how I've always thought about it. If you see yourself as somebody who can be a productive person and be a creator in that sense of like, I can create the reality that I'm living in, you don't tend to have as many stress issues. You're not as reactive.
Chris: You don't feel the world is out to get you, which there's definitely, I've met many, many people, I've met more people who feel that way than not. Who feel everything's being done to them and they can't catch a break and just all this type of language like that. And they just repeat these thoughts in their mind over and over and over.
Chris: And it's not a healthy place to live in your head. As long as you're telling yourself these things, you're never going to get out of it. But when it's sounds strange and woo woo maybe, but when you stop telling yourself that stuff, you start describing a different narrative of your life that's way more positive. You start to see things that were right in front of the whole time, opportunities that are everywhere.
Chris: I feel I could look under any rock and find an opportunity. Just by the way that I look at it, there's always new ideas everywhere. New ways to improve the world in general, whether it's through a business or just through your personal life. You can find opportunities if you know how to look for them. That's how I've always thought of it was just a worldview thing.
Chris: You're living in the same physical environment yet you could have two people that look at that rock and could see a completely different thing. It's really just your choice in terms of are you going to let that block you from having a good life and stay in these negative thought patterns? Or are you going to choose a different way? It's up to you. It's your choice. No one else making your choices. It's all your choice.
Jayton: And it's hard because the more that you have those thought patterns, the easier it is to start thinking them because you just do it over and over and over again. So breaking that cycle.
Chris: That's what I've seen in general. I realized at first with in neuroscience then in endocrinology. Then in just in life, you see it's all feedback loops, everything. It all feeds back. Because it's all connected.
Chris: And that's how the body works. That's how the universe works. It's all this just constant feedback loops. So the more you think positively, the better your life is going to be and it's going to just continue to get better.
Jayton: Yeah. One of the biggest things that helps me greatly. So there's a book on this Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink-
Chris: Yeah, the Navy SEAL?
Jayton: Yeah. Or Jocko. This dude, his mindset is just crazy. But just looking at the situation that I'm in and taking full responsibility for everything that has happened. And whenever-
Chris: Even if you didn't think it was your responsibility at all. If you say that, "I'm totally responsible for all this." Then it helps.
Jayton: And just looking at a situation or a challenge or something that went wrong and looking and saying, "Well, what did I do? What could have I had done better and how can I overcome that in the future?" And that just completely changed the game. Because I was stuck in the victim mindset for a very long time.
Jayton: I used to think everybody was out to get me, that I was stuck in the situation that I was in and there was no way to get out. Whenever all I had to do was look in the mirror and be like, okay, you're the one that's doing this.
Chris: Who else was making your choices for you? You are. That's it. No one else is.
Jayton: Heck yeah. But-
Chris: We should do a podcast on books. Our favorite books.
Jayton: Any other blockers that you can think of right off the bat?
Chris: Halogens, chlorine, fluoride sort of stuff. Very disruptive to your hormones.
Jayton: Especially the thyroid.
Chris: And reproductive system in general. You want to avoid those and if you are exposed to them, iodine is a very good way to flush it out, which is interesting. And or just like, say if you go on a pool or something that is not a saltwater pool, then just immediately take a shower, make sure you wash all the right spots that are highly absorptive, like your armpits and your groin. And then take some iodine after. It should be okay.
Chris: That's more like the 80/20, if you're in these situations, I'll give people situational tools so they don't feel that they're trapped in some certain lifestyle. We still live in the world that we live in. It's nearly impossible to avoid plastics, which is one that's another blocker.
Chris: It's nearly impossible to avoid a lot of these situations. I would recommend lessening your exposure to all the blockers and having some tools in your tool belt to deal with them when you have to.
Jayton: Yeah. And that's a holistic approach to in itself, being social and actually going out and doing things is very important for the psychological aspect of your life too, right?
Chris: Yeah. It helps you avoid that orthorexia mindset that some people can easily develop. Where their psychological stress becomes detrimental, far more detrimental than any nutritional stress they might've been incurring on their body before they went into that mode.
Chris: So it's all like you said, a holistic system that you have to be aware of all aspects of it and try to moderate stress. Moderating stress is just like major win in life in general. If you did nothing else but became way less stressed, you're going to live a better life anyway.
Jayton: The psychological aspect's very interesting because you see these people who live to 90, 95 years old and they can be running marathons or walking across town or back in Texas they used to be herding cattle back in the day.
Jayton: There'd be 80 year old men out there throwing around these casts. Just and they'll smoke, they'll drink beer, there'll be dipping, they have the most terrible lifestyle but they love their life.
Chris: There's a reason for their existence.
Jayton: They have such little psychological stress. And they're happy with where they are that everything else just kind of-
Chris: Do you see that story of the guy that went viral last year I think? He was the oldest veteran of some war. I think he was 108 or something. They did a news story on him that went on social media and stuff. And the dude smoked 12 cigars a day and drank a couple shots of whiskey every day and whatever. But he was just like, they were interviewing him. He was like, he was so chill, super relaxed in his mind and his lifestyle was not stressful whatsoever.
Chris: Because when you get that older you really don't have to do anything. You can say whatever you want and just do whatever you want. But he clearly in the interview had very little stress. He had people in his life that he felt love from and so therefore he had a very good lifestyle. And I think he was even dating some other old lady. So he was pretty happy and he was still killing it. A hundred something years old.
Chris: It's really like, if you just, I always like to think in terms of leverage. There are high leverage things that are going to make a huge impact. And I always advise people to focus on that stuff first because, and it goes almost back to that 80/20 rule in general. You're going to get most results from a small group of actions that you take. And then the rest of it's the cherry on top, but it should be addressed after you do the big leverage stuff that's going to get you the big results and that'll make you just more successful in your life in general. If you start thinking that way.
Chris: It's really applicable to business and career stuff. Don't focus, don't sweat the small stuff is probably an adage for a reason. Don't worry too much about these tiny things that don't make a big impact on your life. Worry about at all especially in the Thermo context, there's different stuff like stress moderation is probably one of the biggest things you could do to be more Thermo.
Chris: Avoiding PUFAs and then correcting micronutrient deficiencies. If you were to do that and then still not be completely, perfectly Thermo you're still going to be extremely healthy compared to what you were before. And then you can start focusing on other stuff like red light therapy eventually in like all of all that stuff. And that's why I think biohacking gets it backwards, because the biohacker community and like all that and everyone listening to this probably knows what I'm talking about.
Chris: They're overly obsessed with that one to 5% of stuff that makes an acute impact but very little major impact and is not sustainable for most people to do. It's more of a hobby and less of a lifestyle. They get really into doing all this radical stuff when they haven't really addressed the main giant leverage things that are in their life. I think Thermo is almost the opposite of biohacking where even though we can get into some interesting stuff like doing red light therapy or cold water exposure, whatever.
Chris: Trying different supplements for different mind states or whatever, that's more just the icing on the cake. That's the fun hobby stuff. And it makes an impact but it doesn't make nearly as big of an impact as the basics, the foundational elements. And it won't make really any longterm impact if you're not doing the basics, which most of the biohackers aren't. They're following things like the keto diet and trying all this stuff.
Chris: That's really how I think about all this stuff. And I advise people to think about leverage because it'll serve you well. It'll be more successful.
Jayton: So I guess as a takeaway from that, what are the biggest foundational elements that someone should instill first whenever starting Thermo?
Chris: I think basically what I was just saying. Probably the major foundation is the same as it was with [inaudible 00:37:59] of the foundation of the optimization pyramid is micronutrient stuff in terms of just physical stuff. Correct micronutrient deficiencies. Make sure you know how to measure them when you need to. Make sure you can get them from good sources. And just have a way to correct them.
Chris: The PUFAs I think is another huge lever. If you were to just eat a micronutrient rich diet and easy to digest foods and avoid PUFAs is probably all you got to do in terms of diet to have just a massive impact, like 95% impact. Then stress wise, stress is a huge, huge one. Outside of diet, just stress moderation in general. That was one of the biggest things that helped me with all the issues with the tumor.
Chris: It sounds too simple and strange, but I reevaluated everything I was doing that was causing stress because my hormones were so just effed with this stuff and with the tumor. And I noticed also that a lot of my behaviors were not helping. I was racing triathlons competitively. I had walked on the track team at Duke. I was just hammering stress into my body.
Chris: And I was also in the neuroscience program at Duke and that was really stressful. I even took a different attitude toward my classes and I'll tell you I wasn't a very good student after that point. But it helped me not stress out. I still learned exactly what I wanted to learn, but I didn't stress out about stuff I didn't want to learn.
Chris: Then with the physical activity, I stopped all endurance sports and I left, walked off the track team, I stopped doing triathlon stuff. I sold my bike, I stopped swimming in chlorine pools. And I started just walking for exercise and then just learning how to weight lift at that point.
Chris: And it made a huge impact in my life. Just something as easy as evaluating what was causing me excess cortisol and then stopping it and finding other things to do. That was the original blocker and activator situation, I think. I would say those are probably the big pillars in terms of high leverage.
Jayton: Yeah. Eat simple, sleep well, be happy. And move a little bit.
Chris: Yep. Sleep definitely.
Jayton: Heck yeah. Well, that's all I got.
Chris: Cool. Well, hopefully you enjoyed this episode on blockers. If you want to learn more about the Thermo Diet, all you got to do is go over to thethermodiet.com and or subscribe to our podcast here. And we're going to just keep cranking out cool episodes talking about Thermo, talking about how you can go Thermo and improve your life.
Jayton: Definitely. And we have a Facebook group too that's killing it. You want real time live help then people are in there all the time answering questions and it's a really supportive community. So getting in there and seeking help is really good.
Jayton: And we also have our YouTube channels and all of our social media in the description down below. If you want to check those out, feel free.
Chris: Yup. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to the show and we'll see you on the next episode.
Jayton: Have good one.
