Cutting Through Health Misinformation - A Conversation with Dr Allan Bacon

In our latest podcast, Dr. Allan Bacon and I dive deep into the world of health misinformation on social media. We explore how influencers often spread misleading nutrition and fitness advice that can lead to disordered eating and harmful health practices.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Dr Allan Bacon (Maui Athletics Fitness Coaching) 

Alan Aragon Research Review 

Thanks for listening to our podcast and please feel free to get in touch:

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Transcript

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Thu, Jul 03, 2025 9:45AM • 1:16:19

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Functional medicine, social media, misinformation, scientific rigor, nutrition, fitness, disordered eating, peer review, anti-nutrients, ketogenic diet, carnivore diet, muscle building, injury reduction, cardiovascular health, holistic approach., Muscle building, cardiovascular health, body fat percentage, weight training, strength training, perimenopause, atherosclerosis, lipid guidelines, obesogenic environment, calorie restriction, fitness and nutrition, stress relief, scientific rigor, disordered eating, overall health.

SPEAKERS

Dr Alan Bacon, Peter Williams

Peter Williams  00:00

Un welcome everyone to new functional medicine. Bitesized, just a guy I've been trying to get on for ages, not because I've known Dr Alan bacon for a long time, and that's usually one of the prerequisites for coming on, but simply because he is literally my favorite person on Instagram, and I'll tell you why. Number one, he does an amazing job. And we'll put all of his details at the end of the podcast, in the show notes. He does an amazing job of just breaking down the messages that are just not correct on Instagram. And that goes right through nutrition, right from cortisol, belly to basal muffin, but basal metabolic way to you name it, Alan. And I suppose it's double Alan, isn't it? Because it's not just you, it's it's your sort of, your other sort of brethren as well. That does just, this is amazing job of breaking things down so that we actually get the real answers through scientific rigor, rather than the Instagram answers from well, I don't even know what they're looking at, because it's clear that they're not going into the science to look at it. So as I said to you, Alan's got one of the best Instagrams out there, from a point of view. He's really funny, but he does an amazing job of bringing this sort of comedic nature to bringing breaking down people who just generally talk nonsense on social media, and we're actually just going to talk about a few of them today. So sir, thank you so much for getting on the call. It's six o'clock in London. It's seven o'clock in Hawaii. So make Can you introduce yourself? Because we had that conversation. How did you end up in Hawaii? And you're like, because it's Hawaii, and so why don't you introduce yourself?

Dr Alan Bacon  01:51

Well, first off, thank you for having me on. Pete. I really appreciate the the opportunity to get to talk with you, because I think that you know, what do you want to talk about today is a lot of really good kind of controversial topics. And I think that these types of things need to be talked about. You know, my, my whole thing here is that, just like you, I noticed that, unfortunately, there were a lot of people that seemed to have credible credentials running around the social media spaces, and instead of using that, that knowledge to actually help people, what they're doing is they're grasping onto the kind of like the hyperbolic, the crazy claims around all of these different subjects that are controversial. And it seems to be something that's being bred a lot recently, because if you make an insane claim, it tends to spread on social media, and it becomes something that is monetarily expedient for these people and and, you know, just like you, I had a bit of an aversion to that, because when you have credentials, when you've worked to further your knowledge in these these realms, you essentially have a responsibility to put out some good information, because people are going to be looking at you as a source of good information. And so this is, unfortunately a time period where it's becoming harder and harder to tell what good information is going out there. And so I think that both you and I started getting into, you know, the things that we do because we wanted to be able to help people and give some clarity in a space that is getting less and less clear as the years go on, you know. And I started getting into this over the years because of a passion that I had had for fitness and nutrition, you know, I always wanted to live a healthy and enjoyable life, which is why I ended up in Hawaii. I actually ended up, I tell the story that I tricked my wife into coming out here, and she loves when I put it that way. When we were getting married, she was asking me all these questions, like, hey, you know, what would you like for the the center pieces at the wedding? What would you like for this and this? And I'm like, hey, look, don't take this the wrong way, but I just don't care. There's, you know, a guy doesn't care about the colors of the wedding or anything like that. And I had said, hey, well, how about I plan the honeymoon, you handle this, and that way we can kind of split up duties. You can get what you want for there. I can have some fun doing that. And I and she was, you know, very accepting of that, that compromise. And so I plan to come out to Hawaii. We spent 10 days out here, and I turned around at the end, and I was like, Can you see yourself living here? And you know, there's no better time to ask that question than when you've been on a honeymoon. And she was like, Absolutely, let's do it. And so we saved up money, ended up buying a house a few years later, and have been out here trying to make a difference ever since.

Peter Williams  04:37

Well, that's that's awesome, buddy. And can you talk to us about your relationship? As you said to you, is that I first came across you because you are associated and work with some, some really good sports nutritionists as well, again, respected people within the with. Within the sports nutrition industry. So can you just expand on that? Because for them to give you the leeway that I sort of feel as though they give you and they trust you, sort of gives us the sort of confidence that, well, if he's giving Alan the chance, if Alan's given Alan the chance to to talk, he must know what you're talking about.

Dr Alan Bacon  05:20

Well, I've had, I've had the great opportunity to work with a lot of people. I mean, Alan, Aragon, Stu Phillips, are people that I work with regularly and and who very, very, you know, humbling to me. Will will message every once in a while with questions and say, Hey, what are your thoughts on this? You know, new studies come out. People get together and they say, Hey, like, let's take a look at this together. It's just kind of like a peer review process, almost, right? And so that's been a very humbling experience for me. And you know, these are the pros and cons of the of the social media experience, right? Because the con is what we were talking about before, where you have supposed authority figures out there that are making things a little bit more problematic. And the pro is that it also connects a lot of people that are looking to do the right things. And Alan and I had Alan Aragon and I had briefly, or kind of superficially known each other way back in the day, and the bodybuilding.com boards, which he used to frequent in the early to mid 2000s and we had had some interactions, and you know, it was just a general air of respect whenever we were talking on the boards and everything like that, but it was never like a personal type of relationship. And then when Instagram started coming out, and especially within the last two or three years, we were collaborating more and more on work, and then I started writing a bit for the Alan Aragon research review. And, and so we which is, yeah, his his research review is, is the best out there. I mean, he does, you know, every month he puts out breakdowns of the new fitness and nutrition research that comes out, and it's an excellent resource for anybody that's looking to get some credible information, you know, and saying that, I don't get any kickbacks for saying that, by the way. So this is, you know, this is entirely just, it's a great thing to look into, and it's really cheap. I think it's like 10 bucks a month. It's not

Peter Williams  07:11

really look I think this comes back to why, why we on this call, and I think it is because, and she said to you that what I find frustrating gears is that some people who are influencing what I believe is the wrong message, and we can argue about what the wrong message is, have reasonable science backgrounds. There are other people saying just rubbish that. But the problem that I see, and and you've mentioned this quite a lot, particularly around nutrition, is that my worry about this is that it's driving people to disordered eating tendencies, and for me, that is where I get my feathers ruffled enough to think this is not good. And I will tell you that because Alan, I see so half I mean, people come to see me, they're spending a lot of money to come and have a consultation with me, and I spend a lot of that consultation trying to trying to debunk what they've been shown on social media. And it can be really quite difficult

Dr Alan Bacon  08:16

to do. Yeah, it's becoming harder and harder, and it's becoming harder and harder because we have this appeals to authority fallacy coming into play. You know, if this person has a million followers and they were on Oprah, well, they clearly know what they're talking about. And the answer is, that's probably not the case. And unfortunately, what's it sounds very strange to say this, but these days, if you have a very large podcast, there's a better or better than not chance that you're probably putting out bad information, and that's because bad information spreads with the way that social media works. Bad information spreads when you see bad information. People that have that this is probably the wrong way to put it, but kind of like a conspiracy theorist mentality, will look at and they'll say, That's right, and they'll comment, and they'll like, the people that know that it's wrong, we'll comment. It'll say, Hey, this is not right because of this. Or like, Let's talk this out. And that gives double reach to these types of of messages, right? When you look at the stuff that really works, the standard nutrition, fitness, sleep, stress, relief, I mean, these are the four pillars of optimal health, right? And it's not as complicated as people think. The little nuance bits can be can be a little complicated. But if you ask yourself, what would a healthy person do in this situation, 99% of people probably know the right answer. You know that you should be eating more fruits and vegetables, you know that you should be eating more lean meats. You know that you should be getting an appropriate calorie level but losing excess body fat if you have you know these things right. But the problem is these days, there's got to be a secret, because if there's a secret, you want to tune in and figure out what that is. And so that's why we're seeing this black and white thinking with nutrition as opposed to a more holistic view. And I hate using the term holistic because it's been subverted so much recently, but the idea that the. Um, that we can have all of these different types of foods and things can fit in a diet. And it's not like a good or bad dichotomy, it's okay. Well, how does this fit in within the overall context? But instead, we're being driven towards you have to go vegan, you have to go carnivore, you have to go keto, you've got to use hydrogen water, like if you listen to all these people, you literally end up with nothing that you can ingest by the end of the day. And so somebody's got to be wrong. There's got to be some nuance in there somewhere. And unfortunately, with the way that this spreads, we're going to see more and more of this dichotomous thinking because of the social media algorithm. And so we need to step back and, like you said, be a little bit critical about these things. And as professionals, I'm seeing exactly what you're seeing. I am spending a lot more time debunking nonsense and trying to get people to focus on what really works than in years past, where we could just focus on, okay, well this, these are the big rocks. If we're trying to fill a basket, pick up the big rocks. Put the big rocks into play, not the tiny little pebbles. And these days, all we're focusing on are tiny little pebbles. And you know, you bring these things up on social media, and there's most people will look at it when you present one of these major claims, or these, these bombastic claims, and you debunk it with credible, peer reviewed research, most people look at that and they'll say, Okay, thank you. This is Thank you. This is really cool to see this, because a lot of times these larger accounts are not presenting the research to begin with. But there's certainly a decently vocal portion of society too that says, Well, why do you have to debunk these people? Why can't people just believe what they want to believe? And I think that this goes back to the responsibility that we have as professionals to put this type of thing out. One I think that just like you said, most of them probably know that they're either missing nuance, they're lacking nuance, or they're just straight up fabricating information because it is popular,

Peter Williams  12:01

and that's okay, Alan, do you think? Because I think, you know, one of the things that we can talk about, and you know, maybe we can use useful names on this is Dave Asprey. I don't know him, and he's been incredibly popular in the biohacking circles. And I've got, I've got really great associate friends that love him, but I just feel as though, at the moment, so, and this was, he came out with the, you know, oats, oats of poison. And I'm just like, and I thought, come on, Dave. I mean, you must know that you can simply go on, and this where it comes back to scientific rigor, there is a process that you can go that doesn't make sense, I mean, and again, it's just, I say to people, you can just basic, do a very basic search on PubMed or use chat GPT to say our bad for you, you know, give us both arguments and give us the studies. And you know, and I know that, that when the biggest, highest forms of scientific rigor is Metro analysis and mesh analyzes are, you know, getting lots and lots of studies on whether oats are good for you. You group them up, and you overall get an indication about what does the what is the general result, or the general direction of core from all these studies. And you know that oats are probably, you know, they're a great thing to eat,

Dr Alan Bacon  13:23

sure, and so we but, but these social media influencers like to point it out, as if it's peasant food, and that's the exact term

Peter Williams  13:29

that they use. They do, they peasant feel that it's poison. I mean, I mean, it is one where I'm just, I can't believe it's got to a point where I'm being baited by them, but I do think it's come to that point, there is a responsibility to start biting back. Because, again, this is where we start getting into disordered eating that I'm never going to touch oats, you know, because they have, you know, anti nutrients. They're going to damage your gut. And whilst there are subtle, subtle nuances that we could maybe discuss with certain small groups of individuals. You have to start with. What does the overwhelming science tell us? And it tells us the complete opposite of this argument. Well,

Dr Alan Bacon  14:12

it's funny, because when you're when you're talking about, Hey, we should probably acknowledge these minor subsets of people. That's that's being very generous, because there are very few subsets of people that oats are going to be problematic in any way for, as this example is. But I think that what people really need to focus on when they're listening to people like you know, people that you've mentioned, is is the message attempting to speak to my emotions, or is it attempting to speak to my brain? Yeah, and these people, it's, it's, it's subversive, and it's very subtle, but you'll notice that they'll use a lot of things to speak to emotion. And when somebody is speaking to emotion, when they're trying to impart this type of information, they're probably trying to manipulate you, and that's a big thing to really look out for. And like you said. And you know, you there can certainly be grains of truth in some of these messages, and that's where it becomes a little bit insidious, because do do oats contain things like anti nutrients? Yes, they do. And somebody can show you, yes, these oats contain anti nutrients. Does that matter? No, it doesn't, you know. And as an example, oats can contain phytic acid. And, you know, phytic acid can lower the absorption, can deplete the absorption of iron and zinc, right in isolation. The problem is, there's more iron and zinc in the oats than the phytic acid causes a problem. So it's a net benefit. You gain iron and zinc from eating oats. There is no there's no drain from eating oats. I mean, if you were just sitting there throwing in phytic acid into your mouth and nothing else, this could be a problem, but it's being misrepresented as if that's what you're doing, and that's not the case. And to your point, when you look at meta analyzes on things like oats, and this is just one example, but you can literally do this for any of the things that they fear monger. Things that they fear monger. It's only benefits cardiometabolic, blood lipids, body weight, I mean, body weight maintenance, literally all of these things. Blood Glucose are improved from these foods. Yeah. I mean, if you want something that is that is greatly improved, I mean gut health from these type of things, they'll tell you. I've actually seen Gundry claim that it that oats poke holes in your gut, yeah. And yet, oats are one of the best things for your GI tract. So if we're looking at overall gi health, and we only see positive outcomes from eating oats for overall gi health, even if, first off, it does not poke holes in your gut. But even if it did, you would have to say, Okay, well, when I look at this and the outcome data, which is one of the most important things that you should be looking at, no matter what a person claims is the mechanism, look at the outcome data, what is the actual effect in the organism? If the outcome data is not in alignment with what they're claiming the mechanism is doing, then either what they're claiming doesn't happen. It happens, but it's so small, it doesn't make an effect, or you have to ingest so much of that food stuff to cause this that it's prohibitive from a practical sense. And so we want to be really critical of these types of things, and when you talk about pushing back against these type of things, I think that that this is a necessity these days, and I know that a lot of professionals want to shy away from that, and they want to say, well, just put out information and don't, don't, don't bring people up. Don't debunk anything directly. Either, don't debunk the claim directly. Don't debunk the person correctly. And you can do either. But I think that one of those is necessary. And the reason that I think that you need to actually debunk the claim itself is because in social media, if you just put out, if I just put out, a post that said, oats are good for you, nobody would pay attention. Not only would nobody pay attention in the back of their minds, they would never associate oats are good with you, good for you to that counterbalances the claim that oats pokes holes in your gut. They would never associate those two. So they would hear, oats poke holes in your gut, and they would say, well, that trumps what he said, because people are very good at remembering the negative we like negative emotion, or negative emotion impacts us more, we notice it very, very strongly, and so by directly addressing these things, whether or not you call a person out, is personal preference, but we need to directly address the claims, and we need to do that because addressing false and misleading claims with accessible and verifiable, objective, peer reviewed information is the only way for people to really learn the context around those claims.

Peter Williams  18:46

So I want to bring that onto a point that maybe we can talk about. I'm at the point where I'm probably going to be asked to, like, write a book, which I'm sort of, we're speaking to the publishers at the moment, and they've asked me. We're sort of at the point where they want me to write a chapter so they can get a real feel of the way I write. And of course, the chapter was about scientific rigor and what it was about, it was about what information do we trust? And, you know, there's a hierarchy of, you know, how we validate whether what was being said is, is more truthful or not, depending on the quality of the studies. And they go from anecdotal, which is, oh my God, I've just taken this resveratrol, and I feel 10 years younger, which is highly unlikely that that's true, but that is the person's experience, and that is the lowest form that sort of then of one i This is, this is what I talk this is how I feel. Is the lowest form of evidence anyone can say that. And that's predominantly what we see on the on social media. And then it goes up and goes up from sort of low quality studies, observational studies, and then we get sort of slightly bigger studies where they're more cohorts. And then we're getting into bigger studies where, you know what. We're looking at randomized clinical controls, and then we get into the big, sort of almost, where we start getting the guidelines, where we're doing meta analysis and meta meta analyzes. And then from a lot of that is where the the guidelines get formed. And that's where we we generally take, I take most of my starting points with with an individual, is that this is the highest quality of evidence, so generally, that is going to fit the majority of the population, even though we know that, you know, some people might be completely outliers. So for those people, regardless of the highest quality of evidence, this may not fit them, but that's where you start, I mean. And as far as I know, that's where most people who have grown up in a scientific background understand and start from. And it can be probably, I think it comes back to your point. It's like what you said. It's that it's probably a bit boring. You know that this is, this is what you got to do, and this is what, to be fair, I almost feel as though I'm coming back like everything you know you sort of you push against what the general consensus is, because maybe you're young, and then 25 years later, after you've been trodden down by it all and sort of put through the washing machine, is that you actually come back and realize that, do you know what they were probably correct? Because the data has not really changed that much, you know? And actually, yeah, it makes sense, because the data is consistently showing us the sort of same outcomes. And that's where the scientific rigor comes in, and that's what I love about what Alan's doing. So when you see any of Alan's posts, or his brother, Alan, if you like, is that there's always a PubMed identification number isn't there that you put up, and what you're trying to say is everything that I'm saying is back up in that right hand corner with lots and lots of studies that show that probably what I'm saying is correct. And I think that's super important. Well, I

Dr Alan Bacon  21:59

want to give that because I think that one of the ways that one of the ways that you can identify whether you're getting good information or not is how one how open they are with the backing for what their claim is. If a person isn't very obvious about where the claim is coming from, you should probably be a little bit questionable. And I know I can think of a couple of PhDs that are super popular out there that will not show research citations for their claims, and that can become a huge red flag. And you know, so that's the first thing to start looking out for when you're trying to identify credible sources of information. And can

Peter Williams  22:33

we just say that? Is that not everyone who was, you know, degrees has come through scientific backgrounds, PhDs, etc, actually tell the truth. You know, some, I think there's a lot of people who want to jump off on on something that is completely different to what we think is, you know, is the is, the guidelines on certain things.

Dr Alan Bacon  22:52

Well, I mean, when money's involved, people are willing to do pretty much anything, unfortunately. And so we need to be really conscious of that. So first you look for these types of of research citations. I like to give them because I want people to even when they're following me, not trust me. I'm my entire message is be more critical, right? So please go and look at the stuff that I've presented, particularly if it is a controversial topic that you thought the opposite of, go, go and read that. Then if you've got a person that's that's credible and really wants to help you, I mean, reach out to them, you know, comment in posts and say, hey, you know, I read what you presented first. Read what we present. Please don't just make a statement without reading it, because you're just going to waste both of our time, because we're going to say, Go, read what I presented. So read what you present first, what they present first. If you have questions beyond that, then certainly ask those questions, and then back it up with, well, the other side says this, and give the research citation for why they're saying this. And then you can have a conversation about that type of thing, because that's where you can get that nuance, you know, and and I think that the people that are credible. They don't just present the information for their stance. They can actually explain why the other stance is wrong. And so, as an example, the phytic acid from the oats, oh, it's got these anti nutrients that are going to cause malabsorption of iron and zinc. Cool. Yes, it does. It's so low and it also contains iron and zinc in the food that this is a net positive. And so there's the explanation that can counterbalance that spurious claim from the the influencer doctor that's out there. And so Alan,

Peter Williams  24:30

I'm going to stop you there, because it brings me in beautifully with regards to plants are trying to kill you. So that leads beautifully onto that one. So why don't you explain that? Because we're talking about the concept of homeesis, and there are many, many doctors and influences out there that are telling you, but basically that don't eat plants because they have anti nutrients that are trying to kill you.

Dr Alan Bacon  24:59

Well, I mean. I kind of point out whether or not somebody says don't eat plants, or somebody says don't eat meat, both sides are probably wrong, because there are health benefits that are rather apparent to all of these major food groups. And so to start this off, it's not like I'm I'm a vegan coming in here trying to to have a diatribe about why plants are the greatest thing in the world. What we can acknowledge is that there are benefits to all these different foods. And in the context of an overall diet, we probably should be including all of them in some in, you know, some ratio or another, and it's different based on your goals, your health, what you're trying to achieve. But anti nutrients themselves. The entire idea of anti nutrients kind of came up because it was a buzzword that is also rooted in fear, right? And so if they can tell you, Oh, there are these things in these plants that are that are meant to kill you, and then they'll show you a study about how some of these things were evolutionarily, you know, came about because they wanted to fight off bugs that were eating them. Well, we're not we're not insects. And so the relevance of an anti nutrient to us, is completely different than what it evolved to do, and so these anti nutrients never evolved to harm humans in general, there's there are a few rare exceptions to these things that can come into play, but they tend to be situations that aren't practically relevant. But if we look at the meta analysis, just like you were talking about earlier, with anything you know, lectin containing foods, phytic acid containing foods, all of these different anti nutrients that these people will point out, the foods only have benefits. There's stuff for general population of otherwise healthy people. We're going to not mention people that have significant pathology for one reason or another, because then you're an outlier, and then you need to follow whatever your pathology is for otherwise healthy people, these foods have never been shown to be negatives. In fact, only positives. You know, fruits, vegetables, name me one fruit or vegetable that is a net negative in a health effect when you're eating the whole fruit or vegetable.

Peter Williams  26:57

Yeah, and that was one of the battles around glucose, but, of course, around fructose. And you know how fruit will make you fat, and, you know, it's like, I could show you, I mean, again, it's the same thing. It's lazy because you can just simply, well, you know, and I know that there are Metro analysis after mesh analyzes showing the anti diabetic effects of fruits. I mean, it's quite ridiculous that, you know, we're suggesting don't eat fruits and vegetables, because we know conclusively in the science that one of the best things that you can do in the general population, of course, yeah, I know

Dr Alan Bacon  27:35

it's one of the best things that you can do from literally every aspect. You know, people will point out, well, fruits contain fructose, therefore they're going to damage your liver. But when you eat fruits in the meta analysis, your liver health improves and so and people just they assume that, because there is data suggesting that fructose in over abundance, particularly when it's causing unnecessary weight gain, can cause problems, and certainly it can, but the fructose Constant Content in most fruits is less than half of the sugar content to begin with in most fruits. Now it's going to vary, but that's okay, and there's there's no one fruit that's like all fructose. But again, this is not an ingredient in isolation, and so you're taking in a food that is low calorie relatively, has fiber, has a lot of micronutrients, has a lot of phytonutrients, has all of these benefits. And the food matrix itself is something that these gurus are essentially ignoring. The net effect of all of these ingredients in the dosages that are contained within the food and how it affects your body. And so with these things, we can, we can almost, you know, science is a very funny thing, and they say that anybody that speaks in absolutes should probably be ignored. And I'm kind of towing the line here, because I would ask people to send me a legitimate research, you know, an RCT that shows that practical intakes of whole fruits and vegetables cause a net negative health effect in an otherwise healthy person. And like I said, there are, there are a couple odd examples, and like one of those would be something like raw red kidney beans that can cause problems because of anti nutrients, but nobody is eating raw red kidney beans, and when you cook them, you remove the problem. And so we have these very odd examples. And if we are trying to, you know, misrepresent the effects of these things, you point out these odd examples, and then you're sitting there going, what person is just tossing raw red kidney beans into their mouth? I mean, they're gonna break their teeth first off. But why? You know who's doing this? Yeah, in

Peter Williams  29:49

effect, I can remember the rat studies done with broccoli. And basically, you know, they the rats were having to eat. You. X amount of their body weights in broccoli formulas, or, I can't remember how it turned out, for a long time, and it adversely affect their thyroid gland. It's like, well, that's a right study. And the opposite is true when we look at broccoli intaking humans. And yeah, it

Dr Alan Bacon  30:19

actually helps with thyroid Yes. And what's really funny is people will look at these things and they'll think that they're an equivalent. Rats are not equivalent. Marine Studies are not equivalent to human studies. And I looked this up briefly one time, so if somebody wants to fact check me on this, certainly do it. But when we were looking at the shared genetic code of a rat to a human, it was like 80% so there's a 20% discrepancy, right? 20% discrepancy in a genetic code is massively different. Like, people think that that doesn't sound like it's that much, but that's huge. Because if we were going to take 20% away from the rat and compare it to something that's equivalent, it's like a banana, and so we wouldn't do studies on a banana and think that that would be equivalent to what we would see in a rat. But for some reason, we're seeing people present these studies in rats and say, Okay, well, that's an equivalent to a human. Yes, we use mice and rats for research studies. We want to use it as a jumping off point before we start testing things on humans. So we can get kind of an idea how things work in in an organism, right? And we can get, we can extrapolate some information, and maybe get some information on, well, okay, well, what would be, you know, a a lethal dose in a human, if we're seeing something happening in a rat, what would be, you know, a toxic amount in a human? And we can make some guesstimates, and then we can make some studies to run in humans, where we stay away from whatever that is to see how things work, and then essentially run that up and up and up until we get the better controlled studies to make calls in humans. So these studies in mice, if somebody's using them to prove what's happening in a human, they're being disingenuous to begin with. If they're saying, hey, look, I gotta, I got a theory about what might happen based on the mice, but we're not sure that's completely fine, because at least they're being honest about what's being said there. But we cannot use these as proxies for what happens in humans. At best, they're hypothesis generating for future studies that we run in humans to determine what actually happens. And that's that's where people need to really understand and become critical of these types of studies as presented information.

Peter Williams  32:21

My thoughts on why we've got to this point, I do believe is probably because of the way probably scientific communities and governments handle the COVID situation. I think that is why a lot of the public probably mistrust good science. Why is it good science that the right word for it? So I think that has unfortunately changed the landscape, and therefore anything that isn't good science from major organizations is seen as either government involved or Big Pharma involved as well. And again, I understand that, but I think we're in this we're in this realm now where it has to change, and we're getting these sides, which feels a little bit like a social contagion to me, I mean, and I think the for someone who spends a lot of time in cardiometabolic disease, I see this with the social contagion of where we are with whether LDL, LDL cholesterol, is a causal mechanism in the development of atherosclerosis. Now, again, I tried to apply scientific rigor here over the last 50 years, and the data is very clear over the last 50 years, that it's a causal mechanism. And the argument is, you will not have atherosclerosis if you don't have cholesterol. And again, I think the the scientific rigor that's got in to give us that point, I think is incredibly robust. I mean, I don't know what you think on that. Yeah, that.

Dr Alan Bacon  34:02

I think that we certainly have to be conscious of things like saturated fats and cholesterols in a diet, particularly if we're just saying as a blanket recommendation of, you know, the interesting thing about talking about this type of concept is, again, this really goes back to what is the context in an overall diet. You know? What are the sources that are bringing these things into play? And there's certainly nuance. And I think that the problem is, just like you said, because of the distrust in science, we're now moving into this very black and white realm. And it's, it's becoming now it's always bad, or now it's always good, or, you know, and this is the same thing where we see with like insulin levels and collect and and cortisol levels and all it. You know, people are portraying them as these things are either good or bad, and that's probably missing the forest for the trees, and we need to be a little bit more nuanced about it. But people don't like those nuanced conversations because nuanced conversations

Peter Williams  34:56

are confusing. So let's pick out some of those. Let's pick out because I. Looking at some of your posts, let's pick out glucose spikes, because I think this is one where, you know, I get lots of people coming in, they've got the Zoe, they've got the ZOE app, you know, the Oh God, and, you know, the orthorexia app, yeah. And spiking. And I'm like, it's sort of, that's sort of what should be happening, normal, that's normal. That's normal in a day. So, Alan, why don't you unpick that? Because, you know, there are, again, some very major influences on social media who are suggesting that glucose, and there's probably, you know, there's a tiny bit where you probably go, Okay, well, that are those spikes norm, you know, different to where they were, you know, a few years ago and, and how does that relate to some of your blood work along that? But I get people coming in who, you know, I'm spiking. I'm like, Yeah, but your insulin elevens at five, your HBA 1c is at, you know, 4.9 you're as bad as in chill, insensitive as I see. So, you know, what more do you want me to tell you that? You know, glucose spikes are normal, you know, well,

Dr Alan Bacon  36:09

what food? What food order should I eat them in to be to minimize all of these spikes? You know, this is, it's a really funny this is a really funny conversation, because

Peter Williams  36:16

doesn't that, doesn't that. I mean, I find that really quite serious from a point of view of, there is a certain way that I'm going to eat this meal that I used to think was delicious, and now I'm going to have to think about, in what order do I need to eat vegetables first, and then I'll eat my meat second, or my fat third? I mean, come on,

Dr Alan Bacon  36:38

it's, it's complete. It's orthorexia, is what it is. And so, you know this, this glucose and insulin are obviously intimately tied. So we're gonna, we're gonna, kind of go in and in and out of both of those when we talk about this type of thing. So first off, people really need to understand that the body's reaction when we have insulin spikes. I mean, that's the body working as intended. This is a feature, not a bug, you need this to function correctly. I mean, you know, we're going to get, we're going to get spikes in these things from, you know, a variety of different things. Literally anything that you eat is going to spike it. So this whole idea of, okay, well, we need to eat in a certain order to to minimize this one. This is not relevant in otherwise healthy people, because your body can maintain homeostasis just fine, you know, unless you have a cardiometabolic risk, this shouldn't even remotely be on your mind. And I'm not telling people that have a, you know, like diabetes to eat things in a certain order. What I'm saying is you probably need a little bit more thought going into your meals than other maybe you should include some fiber in every meal to help with, you know, as an adjunct to the medication. But for an otherwise healthy person, this isn't really anything to be concerned about. You know, two hours after a meal, whether you use something like meal food sequencing or not, you're back to baseline anyways. And so when we look at these, these issues, you know, it's, do we have chronic hyperglycemia that and that that doesn't mean in the two to eight hours after you eat, is there a massive problem? Because that's the typical acute setting in research, right? And so by two hours, we're typically back to normal. But when you had mentioned HBA 1c I mean, that's the most definitive, relatively non transient marker that we should be watching anyways. And meal sequencing, all of these different hacks to try to control your your glucose spikes and your insulin, I mean apple cider vinegar, using continuous glucose monitors, which are notoriously problematic at getting very accurate readings, trying to use something like the glycemic index, which is notoriously problematic in otherwise healthy people. None of these things have shown a benefit when we look at diabetes risk, when we look at things like HBA, 1c and so that should tell us that this is another major in the minor type of thing, and even in the instances where we look at things like insulin and oh, well, I don't want to eat this food, because it's going to raise my insulin, and therefore I'm going to be more hungry and I'm going to be more hungry and I'm going to eat more. No, actually raised insulin levels suppress hunger, but it's been presented in the exact opposite. And then people resort to things like, Okay, well, I need to go keto, or I need to, you know, do something else, because of the carb insulin theory of body weight gain, which essentially says that insulin is what's the driver of fat gain. Now, certainly higher insulin levels and higher cortisol levels in the presence of a calorie surplus can add to adipose tissue deposition, right? But a calorie deficit trumps the effects of insulin and trumps the effects of chronic cortisol raise, and so fat mobilization is going to happen no matter what, if you're trying to lose body fat. And so that's not really something to worry about. And even when we compare things like carb forward diets and ketogenic diets, we don't see any differences in body weight or fat loss profile when calories and protein are equated. So that. Point out, and this is over literally every study that has actually equated these and held them together. I mean, the one, the one study that people will really try to point out that goes against this claim, is Ebeling 2018 and Ebeling 2018 had to have some redactions and adjustments because they found out that they were throwing out some of the data that suggested that what they were concluding was wrong. And so the one study that these people tend to refer to is one that was caught, essentially, I'm going to say, supposedly manipulating the data. And so we have all of this data that, when you actually control the intake, suggests that energy balance, the calories in, versus calories out, theory is what controls weight loss or weight gain, and that seems to be repeated ad nauseam 1000s of times in the research, and there's nothing to actually go against this. We should stop focusing on insulin and things like blood glucose spikes, unless we have a disorder that makes it so we need to micromanage those, and then those are typically micromanaged through both food choice and medication, anyways, but this is something that the general public is like grasping onto, and like you said, is causing disordered eating tendencies. We're now no longer we're no longer having a good relationship with food. We're micromanaging everything that we put in our mouths. And we're doing these crazy things, like trying to adjust, you know, the food sequencing, wearing these continuous glucose monitors that you do not need to pay for and need to, you know, need to become concerned over. You don't need to follow things like the glycemic index, which is, by the way, an index that suggests that Kit Kats are healthier than watermelon. And I'm not saying that to say, hey, you know fear Kit Kats. What I'm saying is these things have errors, and they're not generalizable, and they're certainly not generalizable to the healthy public. And so this is something that we probably shouldn't be focusing on, because it's driving our focus away from what actually works, and from that healthy relationship with food that we're trying to foster.

Peter Williams  42:04

Yeah, and I want to bring in, because it's been a bug bear of mine. So the again, there is a sort of, almost like a social contagion that, certainly in my world, that you should eat as much saturated fat as you want, because Cato is the way to go. And there are, certainly, there's a phenotype called lean mass hyper responders. That means that you they will again, it's, it's something that we could look at and suggest that this is a way to eat. And yet this they brought a study out of 100 participants. And it was a study really, which I think the general scientific community has rightly pulled them up with, because at every stage, they failed to report their primary outcomes. They've said a lot of things that were untrue, and they hid the data that actually on the ketogenic approach, your amount of plaque that is being stored in your arteries is four times more than what we'd see in the general public. So I look at that and and look, it's not actually the guys who did the study, because I reckon they're actually bright, really bright people, and I think you've had a conversation with them, you know, I think it would be, it would be really good scientific sort of vigor, you know, throwing to and throw with them. But what I find disingenuous, and I think this is great with it, I think that a lot of the scientific community are biting back, is that it was really poor science, and it was, it's leaving the general pub, and I still look on Instagram now, I had a crack at someone last night to say, really do know that that's that that is one of the worst design studies that didn't everything was wrong with it on every level. And if you are going to eat that way in that specific group, you're four times more likely to put on, to put, to put unstable plaque in your arteries. So, you know, quite an incredible result

Dr Alan Bacon  44:21

that they've had. Well, first off, if you're going to be doing a study, you can't just dismiss, you can't just hide information that you dislike because it goes against what you want to prove. I mean, that's, that's, that's like research 101, right? You can't, you just can't get rid of information because you don't like it, and so that that should probably be a warning sign to begin with. But we've got a lot of research in ketogenic and low carb diets, and pretty much everyone, if you look outside of the acute timeframe, if you if you're looking at like somebody cutting for like eight weeks, and you equate protein and calories, you're going to see. Very in like a weight training scenario, you're gonna see very similar outcomes. The problem is, when you take that out for longer periods of time, and particularly if you're trying to maximize lean muscle gain, we see every time, a blunted hypertrophic response with ketogenic diets compared to two normal diets. And I mean, they have a lot of issues. I mean, they increase the concentrations of muscle protein breakdown metabolites, because they increase reliance on essential amino acids for oxidation. They decrease muscle remodeling and repair. They decrease anaerobic strength performance over the long period. And it's funny, because we'll see people that are showing those eight week studies as well. Look strength was maintained during this period. And it's like, yeah, you know, one, this is a short time period, but two, maintenance and then continually improving strength are two different things as well. And so what we see is we tend to see that strength performance increases greater when you actually have carbs in play. And this is completely ignoring all of the other benefits that these carb related foods bring you. And you know any any diet that tells people to cut out fruits and veggies in large extents, for me, is is a really bad diet because of some of the things that you just mentioned. And actually this is one of the consequences of cutting out fruits and veggies to the extent that these people are you will see coronary artery calcium scores increase dramatically in a very short time period. And and certain things like these keto and carnivore diets can be very misleading to people. And they can be misleading because losing excess body fat is the most important single thing that you can do to see blood levels improve on a variety of markers in a short time span. And so if you have obesity in play, and you go on carnivore, and you start to lose a lot of body fat, yeah, your blood levels, your your a lot of your blood markers will improve. Now, typically, these people are not monitoring things like coronary artery calcium scores, unfortunately, because they would start to see these usually go in the wrong direction. But in the short term, people will see all these benefits. You know, their HBA 1c will improve. They will see improvements and many, many blood lipids, they will see improvements in a lot of different things. And this gives

Peter Williams  47:10

them the key on that, though, is that, again, is the general public are not going to be aware that it's like anything for a small picture in time, many of these approaches may have benefits. It's just standing what those benefits are. And you know, as you said to biomarkers come down. Cardiovascular markers come down, probably because actually, you've lost a bit of weight, you've lost

Dr Alan Bacon  47:33

the fat loss, yeah, systemic inflammation markers will go down. But this is giving a false sense of of effectiveness, and this is going to give you something like survivorship bias. Oh, I did. I did keto, and all of my things improved, therefore keto always works and is the best. And that's what we're seeing a lot of, because even in the beginning keto, keto has a lot of of kind of ancillary things that will make people think that it works a lot better than a regular diet. I mean, you You shed muscle glycogen and water very, very quickly in the first four to six weeks. And so you see an accelerated weight loss during this period compared to a continuous standard diet. But you do not see accelerated fat loss. You see accelerated weight loss because you're losing things other than fat. And this will give people that that impetus to start screaming online, keto does everything that I've always wanted it to do, and it's amazing, but then you don't check with them a year later when they fell off the keto diet, because it's not sustainable long term for the large majority of people, you know, the carnivore diet, they fell off because of Paul Saladino. Is a good example of this. Paul Saladino was the poster boy for carnivore. He was actually one of the people that made it very, very famous, and then he had to stop doing it because it was killing him, yeah, but, but we don't, the carnivore crowd doesn't talk about that. And so, you know, cutting out things like these fruits and veggies, like we were talking about, which provides tons of benefits, including fiber, which can help maintain a healthy cardiovascular system and prevent atherosclerosis, you're cutting these things out of your diet that long term, provide massive health benefits, and you're not going to notice that in the short term. So it's great that you've been running this for a year or two. Run it for 10 or 20 and see what ends up happening, and in the meantime, the problem is you're spreading this message that this is the greatest thing in the world, and you're ignoring all of these problems that it could potentially cause, like increased CVD risk over time, increased cancer risk over time. I mean, if you want to increase your cancer risk outside of things like smoking and just sitting in the sun with no sun, suntan lotion on for you know, extended periods of time, stop eating fruits and veggies. And we're not thinking about this from a long term perspective. And unfortunately, we're going to have a lot of people that are being caught up in this because a social media influencer was very charismatic in the message that they put out, and it's only a part of the overall message, and it's wonderful that it's making you lose weight very quickly in four weeks. But this isn't a process that is only four weeks long. You know. Health is a lifelong thing, and this is where people start to get into those problems. And when you bring up the issues of people having these coronary plaques that are building up, yeah, we see that. And we see that in some instances much quicker than we thought we would, under conditions like carnivore, where people are essentially front loading things like saturated fats. And again, I don't want to vilify saturated fats, because certainly a certain amount can fit in the diet. And we need to think think about things in an overall context. Is lean, minimally processed red meat something to worry about when you also have a diet that is rich in fruits and vegetables? Probably not. Yeah, I mean relative risk increase for lean red meat when we're not monitoring fruits and vegetables is like four or 5% that's like nothing for a CVD risk, relative risk increase when we put fruits and veggies in play, there's probably next to nothing, if, if, if not nothing as an increase in CVD risk. However, that's also not a carte blanche to just Add butter to everything that you eat. Great, you know, because the effect from the food matrix of a lean steak, of dark chocolate, of full fat dairy is different than something else, you know. Then, then you know, hydrogenated fats, or, you know, something else that we're considering. So we have to consider these things on a case by case basis, and then we have to consider them within the context of an overall diet. And then we have to make that decision, and when we're considering it in the context of an overall diet that does not look kindly on things like carnivore or keto, where you're intentionally cutting out the foods that would have made these other foods that you want to eat both healthy and sustainable long term and in larger quantities and in higher frequencies. And this is that, that conversation of this is that nuance that people don't like, because this is where things kind of get a little bit confusing, and where it's like people don't like, it depends. And we're omnivores, and all of these things provide benefits, and you can incorporate them in amounts that complement each other, and I think that that's where we really need to focus on. And I'm sorry to take you a little bit off track there, but this is, this is the message that needs to get out there. And it's not sexy, and it's, it's, it's not going to make that sound bite

Peter Williams  52:21

 I chuckle, because obviously I'm reasonably well known in my field in the UK, and sometimes you get referred patients who go and see this guy, he'll sort you out, and they're expecting all the bells and whistles. I'm going to do 1000s of 1000s of pounds worth of testing, and I'm not we can do but or you should. You shouldn't. Well, we can, we can do whatever you want, but the fundamental is, is that you don't, you don't sleep well, you don't exercise enough, you're not even hitting basic guidelines, and your diet is inappropriate. So maybe we should start trying to work on those for the next three or four months, and then maybe we'll have a look at some testing as we go forward on that side and look, and it's not again. We had this conversation last time about personalized medicine. We do a load of that. And don't get me wrong, in with the right person, with the right data set over time. And when I mean that, we work with patients. We've got some patients who've been on our books for 30 years now, nearly 30 years. So we've got massive individualized data sets where we can start saying this is maybe something that we just need to just always be aware of from a point of view. Let me give you an example. We might get some people where we've done a load of the genomics, and you know, there are, if you like, a pro inflammatory gender type and well, what does that mean? Well, maybe we've got some biomarkers, like CRP that we should watch. You know, that should be in a Basic panel anyway. And you know, you should always be on an anti inflammatory diet. But when I look at that, I'm like, Well, how much of that is different from the general guidelines anyway? Not much, because I sort of put my stall out for most people coming in, our starting place is probably, you know, Mediterranean light dietary approach to start, and then we'll individualize over time and see whether that is where we're going to go. But it comes back to, you know, high, high amounts of plant food, high amount of fiber and the right fat. Doesn't mean to say that you need to not worry about. You know, the amount of saturated fats in your diet. Particular genotypes, in my opinion, struggle more pro inflammatory, and then the APOE fours as well. I would be suggesting that if you're going to be on a Keto then if we start seeing your lipid markers jump, then, you know, maybe we should certainly do something about that. And if you've got a family history of cardiovascular disease, we should probably stratify that. Maybe that's not the right approach for you, and maybe we should look at that over time. But for having individuals having the capacity to do that is going to be completely rare. Well, there's

Dr Alan Bacon  54:55

a difference in what you're there's a difference in what you're saying here and what a lot of these people are doing. You know, when you use tests strategically in indicated situations, they're great. This blanket battery of like every test possible. When you first start out, you're probably trying to sell tests. And so the way that you're explaining it here, in the way that you do it in your practice, sounds like it's the right way to do it. And I think that there's that's the difference between what you're doing and what we see in a lot of these, these online spaces, where they're like, oh, you know, if you just take this entire battery of tests, then we can make everything work for you. And people have to realize that there's a difference between genotype and phenotype. You have to take, you know, all of history into play. You have to take how you react to some of these things into play. And I like what you said, where you were talking about, well, you know, maybe months down the line we will do these tests, if they're appropriate, at that time, after having some consistency with the big rocks. You know this, you're taking that big rock approach, which is what I really like here.

Peter Williams  55:57

Yeah, I think the myth again, is that the the gold dust is in the tiny nuance, and the gold dust is always in the big, big ones, yeah? And, you know, so we will have people, I can literally see them, who think I'm going to sprinkle five grands worth of cool testing on them, and it's still and I might do Alan, you know, there might be some, yeah, yeah. No worries, mate. You know, if you're good money's not an issue. Let's, let's let's do some really great tests. But then, usually I'm bringing them back to say you need to eat some vegetables and, you know, probably need to get a bit more fiber in you. And, yeah, you know, maybe, you know we do, or we don't, maybe need to think about the percentages of saturated fat within your total fat structure. So why don't we do a fatty acid panel, and have a look at that. I mean, I'll give you an indication of what I've seen over the last 20 years. I do a lot of fatty acid panels. And again, I think one of the key things, it's almost and I've, obviously, I've got a certain population group who've got a mini bit of money coming to see me, and I will tell you time and time again, the the big thing I can see, I know the supplement in non omega threes, because we can see that in the test results, and they are always deficient on some of the pathways on six. And I know why. It's because sixes have been demonized in in, you know, in the general popular media. And you know, again, the nuance of the anti inflammatory aspects, the immune modulating aspects of some of the, some of the, you know, fatty some of the Omega six fatty acids, is that I can literally guarantee what that panel is going to look like, because it always comes back like that. And there are, as I say, there are, again, you know, there are seed oils, and there's seed oils, and there's science that was done 30 years ago, and it's the updated science. And it's like, Guys, listen, you know, it's, it's okay, let's get it big.

Dr Alan Bacon  57:42

You're what you're saying there. I mean, it's really funny how this is kind of taken over, because if we look at, like, Omega six data, originally, the mechanistic data was suggesting that it could be inflammatory, but the the better controlled studies that are coming out in humans are suggesting that it's probably not, not not, unless it's creating a calorie surplus that is causing these issues. And so people were always trying to essentially minimize their Omega six in their intakes. But if you look at high omega six containing foods, and we account for actual calories in an overall diet, they're very health promoting, yeah. I mean, very health promoting, yeah. You know. And so this is, this is kind of funny, when you were talking about really old studies giving these misinterpretations, one of the things that I can think of is, and there were, there were two or three very large studies that the anti seed oil crew typically points to to say, hey, look, these cause a whole lot of problems. They were done in like, the 50s and 60s, and they included trans fats as part of the seed oils. And trans fats we know are problematic, and in the United States, they've been banned for years now from being able to be used in the food supply. I don't believe they're fully banned in the UK. I believe that they are recommended against.

Peter Williams  59:05

Question, I'm pretty sure the band trans fats. But you know, again, I think this is where sometimes the data is like, oh, okay, but I must do, where are we? I probably must do one fatty acid panel a week, and it's always the same. That comes back. It's always the same. And the laugh about it is that the arachnodontic acid, I've never seen it elevated on anyone ever, not even to the 50th percentile. And so, you know, I'm like, Listen, this is maybe not a good thing, because arachnodontic acid has lots of effects of muscle building. This is definitely something with regards to its anabolic response. It's also helps immune system. And I'm trying to say to these guys, you know, maybe you know, if we are going to supplement, you know, or maybe we, you know, we don't just give you a balance on omega threes, is it we, you know, we either suggest you can go and get some, you know, really. Good, organic, unrefined seed oils from the local supermarket. They're not going to do any damage. But it's trying to get over that aspect. It's, as I say, and that's where, on an individualized basis, the data really helps you to go and here's what we probably need to change. So that's where data really helps on an individual basis.

Dr Alan Bacon  1:00:18

But you're fighting social media, because you're fighting all of that message out there that that omega six is always bad, and so this is making you spend more and more time in your consultations to get somebody to do what will actually help them. And that's, that's a that's a problem.

Peter Williams  1:00:32

Well, it's going to be a problem for them, because, as I said to you, then a lot of the fee is being spent up with me trying to debunk in a really nice way to say, look, well, maybe we'll go to the data and that will change how we can change things. Maybe we could go on for hours here, and I'm going to, I'm going to absolutely ask that you come back at some stage, but I'm going to pick one more out, because this was actually from and I was just, I'm not going to say who she is, but you did a post on this one, and I've been following her, and she says a lot of she's very what's the words I'm looking for. She can put up a really good argument for stuff that is wrong. And it's not that she doesn't have a scientific background, but she was the one who did the post that was saying that you should never lift as you get older, because big muscles as you age is going to be counterproductive. So that's the sort of conversation that, you know, we were seeing. And she put her, you know, she can craft a really good argument for it, but the reality is, it's absolute nonsense. And that was one of the posts that you broke down. Just, I mean, you break them down so good. So as I say to everyone, I'm going to put Alan's Instagram on here, because you have to follow him, because at least it gives you. And I am actually, what I'm doing here is using my confirmational bias, which I've got. He says what I want, yeah, because Alan is, I am going to Alan because my confirmational bias of who I think is telling the truth is, because I think that is the way we should look at it. And I think we've all got to be what's the word. We've all got to be honest enough to realize that we don't know what everything, but if we don't have scientific rigor that we think as a starting point, we don't have anything. And that's how I look at science. It's not perfect. What we know now might be, might be disproven in 10 years, but this is the highest quality of evidence we have now, and whilst it might not be 100% it's the best we've got. That's how I think about it. And yeah, that might not be appropriate for an individual. And I know I'm going around the circles here, but I want to give to go back. And I mean, I can't remember what she was saying, but it was, again, here's another message which, oh, well, I better not work out. I better not be getting in the gym and trying to build those muscles as you age, because my Instagram is all my Islam is only about exercise, exercise snacks. Because obviously I'm, you know, I'm a sports medic from an original background. And it's like, this is one of the best things you can ever do to age well and to be healthy as you age, and you've got to be doing it, and people don't even hit, which is the joke that people come in, you know, I want to do here, and I'm going to do double splits. I'm like, mate, you're not even hitting the basic guidelines, you know, you're just not doing enough. So I don't really care what you do. It doesn't matter at this point, because you're not doing enough. So let's go out and do more. And then when you're got to a point where maybe a four or five hours a week, and we're on a pathway somewhere, then we can maybe talk about, you know, how you might want to think about your hypertrophy, or what you're doing with your aerobics. But should we just go and do that first before we start getting, you know, into the nuance of that? So can you just read just because I know, as I said to you, the key why I wanted you on is that because you do this so well. Can

Dr Alan Bacon  1:04:05

you remember that post? I do remember that post.

Peter Williams  1:04:09

Just break it down, because it was, it was hilarious that someone who actually probably should know better was saying that. I mean, I would think I'm just like, are you delusional?

Dr Alan Bacon  1:04:21

So the basis, the basis of her claim, was that as you grow older, you don't want to build muscles, because your brain and your heart need energy, and if you build muscles, those muscles are metabolically active tissue that also require energy, and therefore it will, her hypothesis is that it will drain energy from your brain and your heart. And this, it was, it was literally one of the funniest things. And like you said, she has a huge audience. He does, and so, so a lot of people listen to it. And I were the first time I saw that. I was like, Wait a minute. This, this makes absolutely no sense, because we're. Coming at it from a like an assumption that the organism in question is, I guess, starving to death, because the one thing that we don't have a problem with in modern society is being able to get in calories. I mean calories, energy for both the brain and the muscles is in large abundance. And so the entire idea behind it doesn't make any sense, I mean, and this was me trying to rationalize where she was coming from, like I'm literally trying to prove her point for her. Because when I do these things, when I try to do these debunking for people, I go, Okay, well, how are they viewing it? And if I wanted to argue for them, how would I argue for them? And it was very, very difficult to do that. Because if I because if I can understand how I can argue for somebody, I can either learn what their perspective is and take something away from it, or I can debunk it a little bit more effectively. And so hers was so off the wall that the only reason that you would even remotely think that is if you're like, dying, you know, like you're starving to death, yeah, because in reality, I mean, assuming that you are a natural athlete, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna remove people on, on every ped possible. Building as much muscle as you possibly can is only a net benefit at literally any point in life, because building too much muscle is self limiting for a natural lifter, both men and women, you know people, people will go into this and they'll think, Okay, well, when I lift I'm gonna get bulky really quickly. And that's just not really what happens. And women in particular have this, this misidentification of that. Because what I believe is happening in those situations is, I think they're experiencing the residual pump from weight training for the first time, and so your your muscles feel a little bit engorged, and it lasts, yeah, you know, multiple hours. There's

Peter Williams  1:06:45

probably an up regulation of the central nervous system, so maybe proprioceptively, the body wakes up a bit more, and then suddenly they can feel their bum, and they can feel their legs a bit. Yes, I think there's, there's a neural drive aspect to it as well, well

Dr Alan Bacon  1:07:01

and and the muscles, when muscles are used regularly, they will assimilate more glycogen. They will they'll pull in more glucose from from exogenous sources, and that fills them up a little bit. But like this is the difference between, I don't want people to get scared of this type of thing. Men want this to happen in most, in most situations. Women, I want to, I want to point this out, because I want you to realize what's happening. Because after that first week or two, it's not gonna that that level of like, of what feels like growth, is not going to continue. You're going to essentially level out and then you're fine. So you're not going to become the Incredible Hulk. Now this is actually a good thing in practice, because it's training your muscles to say, hey, we're being used a lot. Therefore we need to use we need to assimilate more glucose, which means your muscles, your skeletal muscles, are actually acting as a metabolic sink. You're teaching your body to shuttle carbs to where you want them to be, instead of adipose tissue, instead of storing it in fat tissue, instead of storing this energy as fat, you are now storing it to be used later in exercise. And so there are so many benefits to building this lean muscle. It's, it's absolutely unreal. I mean, you're, if you want to talk injury reduction, if I were to ask the average person, what would you do to give yourself the best injury reduction possible? I would say that most people would say, well, I need to stretch more. Need to stretch more. If we look at the data on stretching, stretching reduces injury risk anywhere from zero to 4% it's basically nothing. If you look at strength training, it's up to 69% it's the number one thing that you can do to reduce injury risk, particularly as you age. It acts as a metabolic sink. It is beneficial for the cardiovascular system. It's beneficial for the brain, it's beneficial for mood, it's beneficial for function and mobility. There's literally nothing that is bad about building muscle. And if you're a natural lifter, you're never going to become too big. It's just not possible. And people have used those analogies to say, hey, you know worrying about this is like worrying about, well, if I get my driver's license, I'm going to become a NASCAR driver. It just, it doesn't happen. You know, there's, there's no way for that to actually happen unless you are trying to become bigger and bigger and bigger in a very dedicated way. I mean, it takes so much effort and dedication to get very large. You're going to be forcing food for a lot of instances. You're going to be, you know, it's just not, it's a self limiting thing. So

Peter Williams  1:09:23

you can't be big and Lee, well, you can't be bit. You can be big and lean. But as I said to you, it's, it's, I mean, I try to hang out as lean as possible, but there is always a consequence of that, you

Dr Alan Bacon  1:09:36

know, I mean, two, two, but this is the bell curve type of thing. You know, you can be too lean. You can be too there can be too there can be too much body fat for overall health. So you want to kind of fall within that bell curve. And as long as you do that, that's perfectly fine. And if people are looking for a rough estimate for that, now you could tell me that you're slightly above or below this, and that's perfectly fine, but this is the bell curve for most people. For men, 10 to 20% body fat. For women, 20 to 30% body fat, that's what this the research suggests we. Find optimal health within these ranges. I have certainly seen athletic men that sit at like 8% and they have optimal health. That's fine. You're right outside the bell curve and that. That's cool. Women, I've seen 17 18% and they're perfectly healthy. That's fine. What's that? It's rare. It's rare. Yeah, the problem, the problem with those levels is it becomes really hard to maintain in a daily life. You know, people want to have pizza occasionally. They want to go to the pub occasionally. They want to do, you know, these things in their life that you're probably not going to sit at eight or 9% Yeah, but you know, certainly a guy will say, Well, I'm a triathlete and I sit at eight or 9% cool, very well. Could, you know, that's the way that it is. But the the reality is, when we look at any of this data that looks at muscle mass, it all points to the same thing. The right time to start is now, and you try to build as much strength and bank as much lean muscle as possible, because over time, if you are not weight training, you will start to lose muscle mass. And it can begin in your 30s, and it ramps up significantly in your 60s. Yeah, but if you're weight training you can largely at least maintain and if you're beginning weight training in your 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond, you can certainly gain at least up to a point, and you will certainly gain to improve mobility, improve your quality of life, improve your longevity. And I mean, this is the really important thing. It isn't just about living longer. It's about living better as we live longer. And if you want to do that, you need to build muscle, and you need to start now. And I've seen this really big push right now with women that are starting to enter perimenopause, and they're like, Okay, well, now is the time that I need to start weight training. No, the time to start weight training was 20 years ago, but there's no better time than now. But you should have been doing this before, because of all of the benefits this would have brought you, and it would have allowed you to go through the perimenopause transition more easily than had you not now. This isn't to discourage anybody, but this is to say for everybody that's listening to this, it is now time to start strength training and weight training if you are not doing it, because it is one of those key tenets of overall health.

Peter Williams  1:12:06

And this obviously came from a point of view of that this is quite a good influencer, with good numbers saying something that is so devoid of what all the scientific literature has told us for the last 100 years. Really, it sort of beggars belief that she would, and I'm just not quite understanding why. I want to just go back to one point, Alex, I'm going to stop to I really appreciate your time. Is that the lipid guidelines at the moment, certainly some of the big guidelines, what you were saying is, is that the reality of where they're going now is actually given the atherosclerosis. And I'm just saying this because of a point you just made, is that they are suggesting now that you probably want to be probably doing some bloods with your teenagers to start sort of tracking over time whether things are moving, particularly with teenagers who have a strong family history of cardiovascular disease. So even the even the sort of major guidelines, Accha and ESC are also the National lipid Association are all starting to say, Hey, do you know what the time is now? The time is for your parents to think about what you're giving your kids. They need to be fit and healthy. Don't give them too much food again, or too much crap, and start them then, because by the time you get to 50, your ather Sclerosis is already really well developed. And this is what you were saying about is like, don't wait and look, start when, anytime you want, because there's always benefits, but you've got to live this life that we're designed to do, and that is, is that we've got to be moving all the time and, you know, probably eat with which is difficult in a, you know, obesogenic environment, but at some stage, it probably might be a good idea that you maybe miss a meal or two, you know, because that is way that you might want to easily think about how you can calorie restrict in some way, shape or form At certain times and again. Look, I want to finish off me, because I know we're way over time. I'd love you to come up on again, because I'm going to pick somebody who are absolute classics. I will put your all your stuff on our case notes. But with my confirmation bias that, as I said to you, I'm mate, I really appreciate your time. It's been great to have you on again. We obviously see things in the same lens. Whether that is always right, I'm not sure, but I think what we're trying to say on here is that we've got to start pushing back against some of the, I think, irresponsible messages that are out there, because I do believe that you said some things that really resonate with me. I think a lot of the nutrition is promoting disordered tendencies around food, and that's only a bad thing for me, and I see that with people coming into me, that's a bad thing, and that worries me. I. And that's where I start to think I've got to start pushing back on this. And, you know, we've got to, we've got to think about the bigger picture. We've got to think about these messages. We have a responsibility to give the appropriate messages. And if these responsibilities we see influence talking shy, which a lot of them do, we have to fight back on that. It's at least give a difference of opinion based on good scientific rigor, yeah. And, I mean,

Dr Alan Bacon  1:15:23

if anybody has any questions about these types of things, reach out to me. Reach out to Pete. You know, we're happy to talk about these things. But I think that the really big message in a lot of the instances when you're talking about fitness and nutrition is keep it simple. You know, the main tenants of fitness, nutrition, sleep and stress relief will handle 99% of what you're trying to achieve. And if you focus on those things, you're going to be doing the right thing. If something seems overly complicated or brand new or strange, be critical at least, you know. And I'm not saying that that these things are always wrong, but going into it with a healthy bit of skepticism is probably the right move.

Peter Williams  1:16:05

Great way to finish, buddy. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you getting up so early to come on and do this. Oh,

Dr Alan Bacon  1:16:12

no problem. Thank you for having me on. Pete. I really appreciate the offer and being able to talk these things out with

Peter Williams  1:16:17

you. Cheers, mate. You.