Improve Chronic Disease

Overview

In the Episode 6 of Redox Revolution, key topics explored include cellular health, dysfunction, and metabolic adaptation. The discussion emphasized how cellular dysfunction arises from a cell's inability to adapt to stress, leading to chronic diseases, and highlighted the growth of the cell health screening market. A Rubik's cube analogy was used to illustrate the complexities of cellular signaling affected by metabolic dysfunction, particularly due to excessive glucose leading to insulin resistance and the role of diet and the gut microbiome. The episode also covered the benefits of intermittent fasting for enhancing metabolic flexibility, while cautioning that it may not be suitable for everyone, particularly post-COVID patients experiencing energy down regulation. Practical advice for a structured 4-day fasting protocol was provided, emphasizing a phased approach to improve cellular efficiency. Action items included planning a future episode on AI's impact on cellular health and organizing a live-streamed chess match. The next episode will focus on the revolutionary role of peptides in medicine.

Notes

Understanding Cellular Dysfunction(00:00 - 10:06)

• The episode focuses on how cellular health impacts chronic conditions
• Cellular dysfunction occurs when cells lose ability to adapt to stress
• A healthy cell must maintain flexibility and efficiency to handle daily stressors
• When cells can't adapt properly, messaging goes wrong, leading to dysfunction and chronic disease
• Cell health screening market is growing ($3.3 billion last year, projected to reach $7 billion by 2030s)
• Biomarkers and indicators can be used to assess metabolism, oxidative stress, and identify early signs of dysfunction

Metabolic Dysfunction & Redox Imbalance(10:07 - 21:50)

• Cellular dysfunction explained through a Rubik's cube analogy - proteins need precise conformational changes to signal properly
• Too much glucose creates reactive oxygen species (ROS) that disrupt cellular signaling
• Using the pancreas/beta cell example: excess glucose creates stress leading to insulin resistance
• Modern diet (processed foods, additives) and environmental factors contribute to cellular dysfunction
• The gut microbiome plays a significant role in cellular health
• Standardized testing can sometimes cause patients to fixate on numbers rather than how they actually feel

Intermittent Fasting & Metabolic Adaptation (21:50 - 31:32)

• When fasting, cells must rely on alternative energy sources (glycogen, protein, or fat)
• Cells prefer using fat (through beta oxidation) as an efficient energy source during fasting
• Using fat for energy creates less cellular stress than using glucose
• Fasting helps reprogram cells to be more metabolically flexible
• Glucose utilization is described as the 'easy way' for cells while fat metabolism is more efficient
• Fasting may not be appropriate for all conditions (e.g., post-COVID fatigue patients)

Adaptation & Cellular Stress(31:32 - 40:18)

• For post-COVID patients, cells downregulate to conserve energy and minimize stress
• Fasting might worsen conditions for patients whose cells are already in a downregulated state
• Treating chronic conditions requires understanding where the cell is and what decisions it's trying to make
• Need to force cells to adapt appropriately to break out of dysfunctional states
• Basic lifestyle factors (sleep, diet, exercise) remain fundamental for cellular health
• Understanding cellular pathways is more important than focusing on individual biomarkers

Practical Protocol for Fasting(40:18 - 50:19)

• Recommended 4-day fasting protocol: Day 1 at 50% normal calories, Days 2-4 at 25% normal calories
• Follow with 10 days of normal eating, then repeat cycle
• This approach is research-backed, doable, and sustainable long-term
• During non-fasting days, eat protein and vegetables first, carbohydrates last to control glucose levels
• Implementing small changes incrementally leads to improved cellular efficiency and flexibility
• Announcement: Next episode will discuss how peptides are revolutionizing medicine

00:00
Dr. William Seeds
Can chronic diseases be healed or fixed or changed with cellular medicine? Today on Redox Revolution, we're going to dive into some of these questions and try to give you some good answers to give you an overall look at what we do in improving cellular health. Welcome back to Redox Revolution, and I am very fortunate to be here today with Matt and Maddie. Let's go. 

00:41
Matthew Seeds
So today we want to focus on how cellular health impacts chronic condition. And so I think a good place to start is defining cellular dysfunction. You know, what is it and how does it lead to chronic diseases like, you know, diabetes, heart disease, things like that? 

00:59
Dr. William Seeds
I like this question and I like this direction. Matt and Maddie. I think this is a great place that continues to solidify what we're talking about in cellular health. And in order to understand chronic disease, you have to understand what keeps a cell. Cell healthy. And it's what. It's what we. It's what we preach, it's what we live by in understanding all the mechanisms that keep the cell healthy. And basically, it comes back to that same point that we have been professing probably since I was born, that the cell has to do its job. 

01:51
Madison Lepore
It's a long time ago. 

01:52
Matthew Seeds
Since he was born. 

01:53
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, since I was born. 

01:56
Matthew Seeds
You were born. 

01:58
Madison Lepore
Since you've been born. 

01:59
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah. 

01:59
Matthew Seeds
I would have like. I would have liked to seen that didactic of, you know, you in a diaper professing exercise. 

02:06
Dr. William Seeds
My first words probably weren't mama or it was probably cell. 

02:10
Matthew Seeds
I. I bet. 

02:11
Madison Lepore
I'm sure circadian rhythm. 

02:14
Dr. William Seeds
It was all those things. Okay, so let me. Don't let me lose my thought here, guys. Let me come. Give me. Give me a shot here. So we've been talking about adapting, you know, what is the key to a cell and its job every day and what we do to maintain an efficient and flexible cell. It's being able to adapt to the stress that is placed on the cell from the minute you wake up until the minute you go to bed. And then the stresses that happen, you know, during your sleep, which we haven't even talked about. But that is the key in how we have understood how a cell really functions in its adaptation. And when I say adaptation, I don't want to get complex here, but I want people to really understand that this cell is so magnificent in what it does. 

03:09
Dr. William Seeds
Did you hear that word, magnificent? Yeah. 

03:11
Matthew Seeds
So now lead that into cellular dysfunction. So how do we get from there to where things are going wrong? 

03:19
Madison Lepore
What is the cell losing? 

03:21
Dr. William Seeds
So that's where I was going. And you Guys interrupted me. 

03:24
Matthew Seeds
That's my job. 

03:25
Madison Lepore
Okay, we're there to land the plane. 

03:28
Dr. William Seeds
Jeez, give me a little. 

03:30
Matthew Seeds
No. 

03:31
Dr. William Seeds
Okay, so it leads to cellular dysfunction. Because if the cell is losing its ability to adapt, to meet the requirements to be flexible and metabolically able to reprogram itself for the situation at that moment in time, if those dynamics change in the cell, and more specifically in the nucleus and the mitochondria, as they're always talking to keep the cell healthy, if they're not able to respond, then messaging goes wrong. And that is the beginning of the dysfunction of the cell where it can't meet the needs of handling that adaptation. I think that best answers what you're trying to qualify there. With chronic disease, what happens? It's just the cell starts to lose its ability to handle that process. Communication goes wrong, and then that sets a spiral. 

04:43
Dr. William Seeds
It sets a process of more problems along the road of how the cell is trying to adapt. 

04:49
Matthew Seeds
Now, before people go down that spiral, the next question kind of is then, can we predict the onset of these chronic diseases? Can we start to. Can we start to monitor the cell and see when these things are coming up? And, I mean, just looking at kind of where the market is right now, obviously the answer to that is yes, because cell health screening, that market is like $3.3 billion as of last year. Right. And it's supposed to keep growing and growing to the point where it hits over 7 by the2030s with the US only being a third of it. So this is going to be a worldwide thing where this market keeps growing. 

05:33
Matthew Seeds
That process of evaluating the health and the functionality of the cells primarily gets kind of defined as analyzing biomarkers and indicators to assess a lot of these things that you're talking about, like metabolism, oxidative stress and damage, to identify those early signs of dysfunction and disease. So now that we've answered that question, that we can track these things, that we can see them starting to come up, what ways are we getting better at it, and what are the ways that we're still falling behind? Some of the growth drivers of this industry have been the growing emphasis on preventative healthcare. That's kind of what the whole redox revolution is about. Right. There's also been advances in cellular health screening with things like next gen sequencing, which you've talked about a lot at the ssrp. 

06:27
Matthew Seeds
And then, you know, the big one coming up here is AI and being able to. 

06:32
Dr. William Seeds
Whoa. Big topic right there. 

06:33
Matthew Seeds
Yeah, I know, right? It's not even. It's not even worth diving into. 

06:37
Dr. William Seeds
I could go days into that. 

06:38
Madison Lepore
So let's not. 

06:39
Dr. William Seeds
No, but there's some good things. There's some. 

06:41
Madison Lepore
We could do a whole episode on it. How about that? 

06:43
Dr. William Seeds
But I think. 

06:44
Matthew Seeds
Oh, I like that idea. 

06:45
Dr. William Seeds
But I think we're going. Are we going to go in that direction here? Are we going to. 

06:48
Madison Lepore
Not on this episode. We will do a whole episode. 

06:51
Dr. William Seeds
Because that just opened up some. 

06:52
Madison Lepore
Yeah, let's shut those back down circuits. 

06:54
Dr. William Seeds
That I'm just ready to go on. 

06:56
Matthew Seeds
We could do a whole AI episode. 

06:57
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah. Like, is that going to. 

06:59
Madison Lepore
Be a. Yep, it'll be an episode. 

07:01
Matthew Seeds
With this growing demand for personalized medicine and, you know, at home testing and the rise of just being able to do it on your own, that has made it a lot easier. And your favorite buzzword, AI, will also continue to make it easier. The pitfalls have been that with a lot of these new things coming out, you know, how reimbursements and insurance can be anywhere from like a 7 to 17 year delay, there's limited reimbursement coverage. And then with everything being new, there's also a lack of standardization. So not to beat it into the ground, but with there being tons of growth drivers, it seems like the biggest thing to overcome is these pitfalls. There's only a few of them, but they're huge. You know, working with patients and everything. How have you guys navigated the lack of reimbursements, the lack of standardization? 

07:47
Matthew Seeds
How have you guys found success working with all these things as the environment continues to adapt? 

07:56
Madison Lepore
So we don't take insurance just because insurance is frustrating. But I also think patients are getting just as frustrated with the insurance. So we haven't found as much pushback about the reimbursement issues. But I will say I feel like these new standardized tests of this is your new biometric age. This is where you're at, this is where it's heading. It's honestly making our job more difficult because patients are fixating on it. And patients will come to us and they're like, I feel awesome, but this test told me that I'm 10 years older than I am. And we're like, but you feel awesome. And then they just get it stuck in their head. 

08:40
Matthew Seeds
So are you saying that the onset of chronic disease is being kind of pushed as a market driver? 

08:49
Madison Lepore
Yes. 

08:50
Matthew Seeds
And they shouldn't worry about it as much. 

08:51
Madison Lepore
Yes, I am. 

08:53
Dr. William Seeds
I see where you're going. 

08:55
Matthew Seeds
Well, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just following her. 

08:58
Dr. William Seeds
Genius. 

08:59
Madison Lepore
Yeah. And I mean, I Like this, you can see someone, you see someone overweight, you're like, okay, you're in an inflammatory state. You know, they're not eating healthy, they're not getting exercise. So you can just look at someone and know like you are at risk. But someone who is healthy, doing all the right things, they're going to get these tests done and then they are like, oh my gosh, I need this and this, this test said this. And then they're going to get more tests and it just starts a spiral. 

09:31
Matthew Seeds
So how do you keep people then from straying off the path? How do you stay, how do you walk on this line, this fine line? Of, of course we want to monitor your health. Of course we want to be able to predict the onset of chronic disease. But we don't want this to be some sort of fear induced scare tactic game where you're just coming at us with 60 to 300 pages of biomarkers that just don't mean anything. 

09:56
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah, and that is, that's, that's a great place I think, to be right now in how you guys put this together. Now I see where we're going. You guys try to keep things away from me and then you bring me into the conversation. 

10:10
Matthew Seeds
Well, we got to keep you walking on this fine line. Stand the line, stay in the line. How do you keep patients on the line? 

10:15
Dr. William Seeds
So this is bringing us back to this whole aspect of if you understand how a cell stays healthy and what it requires to maintain its health, to maintain its ability to adapt and be flexible and efficient. And if we know the pathways in all of the different disease states and metabolic problems and immunologic issues and cancer and how these pathways go wrong? Well, you've got this picture of why I know what I need to do to get this cell on the right path. Is a biomarker going to tell me what I need to do to get that cell to control its environment change and adapt its proteome of the mitochondria to regulate its metabolism and all these other things? I know the pathways. 

11:13
Dr. William Seeds
It's like, why would I even care about where that with that biomarker or that methylation change and how people think it makes a difference, which we'll get into some detail on if we need to. It's getting to the basics of, my gosh, if you know what happens as a cell ages, as a cell gets dysfunctional in too much exercise or too little exercise or cancer or metabolism, well, why wouldn't you start in that direction and Then you tell the patients, because a patient, like when Maddie brought up the fact about an overweight person. An overweight person can come to you and feel perfectly healthy and say, I feel great. This is what I do. I'm active every day. I feel like I'm at the top of my game at work and at home. 

12:07
Dr. William Seeds
But I have a few of these things happening, and you kind of have to relate. Well, let me just tell you what's happening in the cell. So if you can take the patient into the. Make them join the story of the cell and say, hey, let's go on a journey here in the cell, let me tell you, or help you understand that we have all this research. It tells us everything about where your cell is at this point in time. Why wouldn't you go down that road to work on improving? 

12:44
Matthew Seeds
So let's tell one of those. Let's tell one of those stories. You know, how does redox imbalance, say, contribute to metabolic syndrome? Why is redox imbalance more important to focus on than maybe a couple specific biomarkers and Madison maybe, you know, some of the biomarkers that maybe people may be coming in with if they're focusing on metabolic syndrome? 

13:08
Madison Lepore
There are a 1C insulin levels, C peptide. But back to your original question, though. How do we keep patients on the line? I do think a big way we do it is we say, if you want to get this test, go ahead, go get this test. We're not going to stop you, but your test results aren't going to change the way we're going to treat you because they don't mean anything. 

13:31
Matthew Seeds
That's an important distinction. Maybe instead of saying they don't mean anything, maybe it's like, hey, this is a static. This is a static number. It's not necessarily where you are in the morning, in the afternoon, at night. We just got to focus on getting everything back into redox balance. 

13:51
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah, well, and that's a great way for me to introduce just a concept right now. Think of this. Think of this cell that we're trying to improve efficiency and flexibility, meaning how it uses energy and how it creates energy. In order for the cell to do that, it has hundreds of thousands of proteins that are messaging different aspects of the cell and other cells outside of that cell to work in this symphony of making things happen. And imagine that if you can imagine these proteins, imagine them spinning like a Rubik's cube, and at a certain instance when thermodynamics are there, isn't that cool? At that instant, all Of a sudden, everything stops and a message is sent. That is how the cell works in this complex world of working to adapt. 

15:05
Dr. William Seeds
So imagine that you've got hundreds of thousands of Rubik's Cubes just rotating, rotating, meaning at a certain conformational change, meaning a shape or whatever, it has to get in a position to signal the cell to do something and it has to have. The thermodynamics have to be just right on. And that's how things happen. Well, can you test that? Hell no, you can't test that. But if we know that's happening, if we know that there's a multitude of processes like that going on, well, then we have to back up and say, what knows that though is the cell knows how to take care of that. 

15:49
Dr. William Seeds
So if we can help the cell, again, controlling its environment, having the advantage of being able to make thermodynamics better or make that those conformational changes of those Rubik's cubes and all that kind of stuff, if it has that ability to do that, whoa, watch out. Because that's what we're doing. We're working on complexities that we can't even comprehend. And this is when we get into AI talk about things that I think are going to be really significant. 

16:22
Matthew Seeds
So when it doesn't have the ability to do that, let's dive back into that example, that story. So if that redox falls out of balance, how can that contribute to things like metabolic syndrome? Since that's kind of the patient case were discussing before for. 

16:36
Dr. William Seeds
And way to bring me back. So the, this cell. So when redox is out of balance, remember, redox is basically the cell that is, it's making energy to respond and adapt for that energy to be used for that stressor. And when it does that, it creates a little bit of a stress. And so it has to create or signal antioxidants to kind of balance it out so that the cell is never. Because those are the stressors that lead to problems. So let's say somebody's overeating. Just very simple. They're getting too much nutrition because you can get too much, too little. Right. And that nutrition is, consider it as glucose and amino acid or a fatty acid that's in the food they're eating. And let's just assume, let's just make some assumptions that a lot of that food is more glucose oriented. All right? 

17:44
Dr. William Seeds
It's more sugar oriented or glucose. It's a, it's a carbohydrate. And that carbohydrate is going to be converted in the cell into energy. And let's just say that in order for that energy to be created, it has to go through some processes in this. Specifically in something called the mitochondria, which is just this beautiful organelle in the cell. 

18:11
Madison Lepore
The powerhouse of the cell. 

18:12
Dr. William Seeds
It is the powerhouse of Maddie. Very good. Matt. You need to catch on to this. 

18:19
Matthew Seeds
Something we learn in like seventh grade. 

18:22
Madison Lepore
His focus is figuring out the pancreas is. And the beta cells. 

18:25
Matthew Seeds
Yeah, my focus is figuring out when he's off the rails, when I need to get him back on the rails. 

18:29
Dr. William Seeds
So this glucose, let's just imagine it. Let's just go from glucose to energy. Okay, so glucose makes energy. Well, can you make too much energy or can the system, if there's too much glucose running through the system to make energy, can that create problems in the cell? And the answer is absolutely. What happens is you can. It's. It's just like a car. I like using the reference of a car because people understand if you're running a car across country and it's. You're going on that 13. I like to compare it to when, you know, I used to drive all the way to the mountains to ski when I was younger, you know, 1300 miles. I get in a car and just drive, drop off or some coffee here or there. I just keep driving. Well, that engine would get pretty hot, right? 

19:22
Dr. William Seeds
It gets heated, it gets, it's losing efficiencies. It's creating stressors on that engine. 

19:29
Madison Lepore
Did you say a gas guzzling Chevy in your book? 

19:32
Dr. William Seeds
I think I do get. He read my book. 

19:36
Madison Lepore
I did. 

19:37
Dr. William Seeds
Impressive. Did you read my books? 

19:39
Matthew Seeds
I can't read. 

19:41
Dr. William Seeds
I have another. There it is. Yeah, well, so just imagine that glucose is an issue of just constantly putting stress. It's a stressor now on the cell because the cell has to deal with that energy and control the oxidative stresses that are made by making energy. It's just, it's just how it works. And if there's constantly glucose running through that, then the cell produces these reactive oxygen species that everybody hears about. And then those reactive oxygen species have the ability to do disruption within the signaling of the cell and the metabolism of the cell and the redox of the cell. Meaning the cell can't keep balancing out that problem with energy and stress because it's constantly trying to do that and it only has so many resources to do that. 

20:43
Dr. William Seeds
So over time you're building up this process of making stressors that the Cells like, oh, I've just. I'm exhausted. 

20:52
Matthew Seeds
All right, so you went down the. You went down the path of, so glucose and everything. 

20:56
Dr. William Seeds
So we know how redox gets. If we know how redox can go out of balance just by understanding how we use too much energy or we take in too much food to create the energy that continues to create energy, but creates a stress. Well, oh, my gosh. There you go. We understand. And so what are the pathways that go wrong? And what are the most specific organelles that go wrong? 

21:19
Matthew Seeds
That's perfect, because we need to continue to hit on things that, you know, affect a lot of people, right? Things like insulin resistance and chronic inflammation. So keep down this path, kind of focus on those. 

21:30
Madison Lepore
But thyroid. Feel like thyroid's affecting a lot of people too. Part of that. Chronic. 

21:37
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah. Well, so this is where we get back to all these issues. So imagine this inflammation. Imagine the. If we're in the pancreas, right? That makes your favorite. 

21:48
Madison Lepore
Matt's favorite place. 

21:49
Dr. William Seeds
Matt's favorite beta cell. Right. The beta cell is what makes insulin pancreas. Pancreas mat. Beta cell. Beta cell makes insulin that allows you to live. Basically, it produces insulin to tell the muscle, every tissue in the body that, hey, let's pull in some glucose and use that energy, right? Well, you need receptors to make that happen. Insulin has to connect to a receptor to send this pathway, molecular pathway of signaling to make things happen. Well, imagine that's how things are supposed to happen. But you have this stressor in that beta cell where it's got constant glucose stimulation in someone who may be eating a lot and may be getting overweight. It can handle it for a while, but then it can't adapt any further. 

22:45
Dr. William Seeds
And it creates reactive oxygen species that are inflammatory agents that initially are trying to help the cell to adapt like I help you guys every day adapt to life, but it can't make that up. And so what happens is that insulin, that beta cell, that receptor for insulin, is affected by that reactive oxygen species. So it kind of. It starts to shut down. So insulin is no longer being. It's not sensitized. It's not. It's becoming resistant to using that insulin. Whoa. Is that cool or not? Is that. We're talking about cool stuff now? So that insulin is not effective is because that receptor is. Is controlled by those reactive oxygen species that are making it not work as well. And so what does the cell do? It says, oh, my gosh, I've got this insulin that's not working. Maybe I make more. 

23:44
Dr. William Seeds
And so Then it makes more, but then that sends off other signaling to the liver. Lots of things happen where the cell thinks it has to make up for stuff and it can't. And so then you have all this glucose hanging out there. And so hence if the glucose isn't being utilized the way it should. And this is. This is not just. This is not. Matthew, this is. This is brilliant. You brought this up. And Maddie, brilliant that we're discussing this. This just doesn't have to do with being obese or being overweight. This is the stuff that leads to chronic disease, metabolic syndromes, cancer. Because thyroid. And Thyroid. Well, and thyroid's very interesting, but we'll touch on that in a second. Thyroid's always that last player to kind. 

24:35
Madison Lepore
Of tuck her out. 

24:37
Dr. William Seeds
Tuck her out. That's a. That's a great. 

24:39
Matthew Seeds
Well, let's bring it back. You said it's not necessarily just about overeating. Right. So you always have to add context to things. So how is the modern diet then maybe affecting all of this? You know, the. We're having a rise in prevalence of seasonal allergies, eczema, food allergies. And so a lot of the industry has essentially said this underscores the need for cellular inflammation testing. Do you think that kind of testing is helpful and do you think that specifically our current diets are playing a role in that? 

25:13
Madison Lepore
I think it all comes down to the gut. 

25:16
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah. No, there's. There's no doubt that's true. It's the food we eat. It's the. It's the processed foods, it's the additives, it's the environmental aspects that are out there that can affect the cell in. And create. I mean, air pollution can create reactive oxygen species that make the cell ineffective and not utilizing substrates or energy appropriately. I mean, it can be a multitude. What it is. This is the way we have to think about it again, this kind of symphony of things in our world today. It's so many of these things coming together. It's the food sourcing, which is no secret. I mean, and it's. Are the food sourcing? Are the plants that the potential animals are eating, or for the vegetarians, the plants that people are eating, do they contain the appropriate minerals? 

26:17
Dr. William Seeds
We're losing control of our food sourcing sometimes and the soil and things that really make a difference. So that's one area. But we have many ways that to sell. Yes, can absolutely be affected. And just like you guys right now, you're probably stressing because Doc went off the path here and they're like get them back on. Well, I'm creating a stressor that you have to adapt to. 

26:39
Matthew Seeds
Well, what about stressors that people can create in their diet? Right. So if you go off the path, AKA intermittent fasting, how does that potentially impact or reverse, you know, metabolic disorders or inflammation of the gut? 

26:54
Madison Lepore
Intermittent fasting is a good point. 

26:57
Dr. William Seeds
How does it help or lead to it? What do you mean help or work. 

27:02
Madison Lepore
For or work against it essentially. 

27:05
Matthew Seeds
What is its role here? 

27:06
Madison Lepore
Yeah. 

27:07
Matthew Seeds
Is it a weapon? Is it a double edged sword? Just dive into intermittent fasting in regards to cellular dysfunction, chronic inflammation. 

27:16
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah, so wow, that's a, that is a double edged sword because there are absolutely great places for intermittent fasting or calorie restriction, whatever you want to call it. 

27:30
Madison Lepore
Which don't you say intermittent fasting is essentially just calorie restriction? 

27:35
Dr. William Seeds
I tend to say that it is calorie restriction because most of the people that will do like a 14 hour, 16 hour fast, it's hard when you have an 8 hour window to eat, then it's hard to get three meals in and so well you're seasoned at what you do. 

27:55
Matthew Seeds
I've been intermittent fasting pretty much ever since one of your talks you gave years ago, like for the past three or four years or so. I don't have my breakfast until noon. The biggest. 

28:05
Madison Lepore
You make sure you get all your calories in that eight hour. 

28:08
Matthew Seeds
Oh yeah, no, I eat, I've seen. 

28:09
Dr. William Seeds
It, it's for real. 

28:11
Matthew Seeds
But the biggest difference I've noticed, just like as a personal anecdote is when we have to travel for work, right. And so got to get up in the morning, got to pack real quick, got to head out the door, don't necessarily have time to make, you know, a full balanced breakfast. My body doesn't care as much anymore. Like I can make it to where I'm going by 2pm and I'm not dying, I'm not dry heaving for food. 

28:37
Madison Lepore
You're not hangry like someone gets. 

28:40
Matthew Seeds
It's almost like my body has. 

28:41
Dr. William Seeds
You've adapted. 

28:42
Matthew Seeds
I've adapted. 

28:43
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah, well, and that's working for you. But what people have to know is that fasting can be good. And when we say fasting, I like to think of it more as calorie restriction because it ends up. Not for you maybe, but for most people they end up not eating as much in that window of time that they're able to eat that eight hours. So they definitely not for fat so they end up missing, like, almost a meal. So it's a calorie restriction. And, and so by. If we understand. So what are we trying to accomplish with this? Let's say what are we trying to accomplish with fasting? So make it very simple. 

29:26
Dr. William Seeds
We're trying to make the cell then rely on another source of energy instead of the glucose or protein or that fatty acid from the food that you're not getting because you're fasting. Then the cell has to do what does it go after glycogen, glucose, and convert it from glycogen in the cell to glucose? Does it rely on breaking down muscle and using protein as a source? Or does it rely on fat and utilizing breaking down fat into fatty acids to utilize that as a food source? Well, the cell has a preference, and in the right environment, it chooses to use fat, your fat, as a source of efficient energy. Because what it does, the cell recognizes that if it can convert that fat through something called beta oxidation, it's going through a much more efficient way to make energy without creating stress. 

30:31
Dr. William Seeds
Remember, that cell is already stressed. It doesn't want to create more stress. So it follows an efficient pattern of making energy. And by using that fat, it not only makes that system efficient, but then it also helps the energy production of ATP. It makes that more efficient. So it's. It's almost like it's reprogramming the cell to better at being more flexible. So when it does have the choice of glucose, protein, fatty acid, it uses it at the right time, in the right place. 

31:05
Matthew Seeds
So you could kind of relate it to going to the gym, how you're putting, like, muscles in a state where they. It's like fight or flight. Like, hey, you gotta, you got to step up here. You're essentially saying the cellular systems, you're making them more efficient so that somebody who, say, doesn't exercise, doesn't intermittent fast, their cells are always just kind of sitting there in, for lack of a better term, a lazy state, just waiting for glucose to just come on by? 

31:32
Dr. William Seeds
Sure. 

31:32
Madison Lepore
So isn't, like, glucose, like, glucose is just the easy way that a cell does, and then using your own fat is the harder way, but it's the more efficient way. 

31:41
Dr. William Seeds
Essentially, it's a more complicated mechanism that can be turned off when things go wrong in the cell, because it, Remember a cell, when things are getting tough and stressed, a cell gets more. It wants to be more. 

31:59
Madison Lepore
It wants to go the easy out. 

32:00
Dr. William Seeds
It wants to go the easy way. Yeah. 

32:02
Madison Lepore
So that's the glucose. 

32:03
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But hey, here's something really. This is a. This is a great thing to talk about here because let's take another angle on this, which I'm sure no one has heard of this and I think it's just worth. Well, okay, I might be wrong, but let's just bring this up. Let's say that we're dealing with a different population. Now, about fasting. Remember I said in the ideal state, people, maybe they're a little overweight, maybe they want to work on more efficiencies, or they're not even overweight, but they want to work on efficiencies with fasting. Great. But let's say you're this post COVID patient. Let's say you're this patient that's gone through Covid and you're in a fatigue state. It's years down the road. What do we know about this? Well, we've talked about this. The cell, remember? 

32:53
Dr. William Seeds
The cell is so ingenious. It wants to survive in this state. Right. Of COVID that it got it into this place of where it had to make a decision and it couldn't handle all of the decision making. Like you were saying, to be efficient. It says, okay, I've had so much here, I'm going to just change. I'm going to downregulate myself and I'm going to change the way I live. Meaning I'm going to live on minimal energy. I don't want to make too much stress because that's going to make it bad for me. And I know I'm going to make you miserable, I'm going to make you fatigued, but this is how I'm going to survive. 

33:31
Madison Lepore
And this is how you're going to survive for a long time. 

33:34
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah. So screw you. Well, imagine that cell that's in that state and then you come along and say, oh, I saw this on YouTube and I saw this on I'm going to intermittent fast and make myself better. What have you just done? You're fasting. That's the environment. The cell wants that. Fasting is actually the cell thrives in that environment. Holy shit. 

33:59
Madison Lepore
But what if they did like a four day calorie restriction instead of the fasting when they're in that state. 

34:05
Dr. William Seeds
Great point. Because then it's adaption cancer. You have to be careful about fasting too, because depending on the cell type of the cancer. 

34:14
Madison Lepore
That's why you can't have protocols. 

34:16
Dr. William Seeds
You. That's exactly why you can't have protocols, because you have to understand what the cell demands are. How is it going to go through its adaptation to deal with what it has to deal with. How are you going to, how is that important? Well, if I can't make a bigger point about this fasting, it's why when people say, well, fasting didn't work for me, well like okay, let's figure it out, why didn't it work? Because we'll be able to figure it out. It's a matter of where that cell is and what decisions it's trying to make or what environment it's already set up to make that cell thrive. Force it to adapt. Because that's kind of the thing when to break people out of that post Covid stuff. You have to force it to adapt. You gotta tell it's okay, it can do it. 

35:09
Matthew Seeds
So let's force it to adapt then. What lifestyle changes can people make to get all of this back into redox balance? 

35:18
Dr. William Seeds
Well, weren't we talking about fasting or. 

35:21
Matthew Seeds
You know, we're talking about fasting is like one component of it, right? We said it's a sword. We said it's a double edged sword. 

35:26
Dr. William Seeds
So this is where exerc is, where diet again, this is where all these things come into play. But it's not too much of something, it's just enough. It's sleep and sleep, right? And circadian clock mechanisms. It's like putting all the, it's putting the pieces together to allow that cell to start incrementally getting more efficient. 

35:50
Matthew Seeds
It's the boring answers. It's the stuff that we said on every single episode. It's the stuff you say at every single training. It's like sleep, diet and exercise. People are coming asking what's the magic pill? What's the cheat code here? And we discussed at the top of the episode, you have these billions of dollars of industry being built on trying to track and figure out all these things to the most minute detail, when in reality you're just saying it's consistency, just keep living the right kind of lifestyle. 

36:23
Dr. William Seeds
The lifestyle is where you want to be. But a lot of people, you have to help them get to that lifestyle. And that's where I think you got to just kind of break it down into understanding. The cell has needs, it has energy needs, it has metabolism needs, meaning how it makes, you know, your cell does things to build, to reprogram itself. It goes through this Krebs cycle, beta oxidation, it goes through protein metabolism. It does these things to make things happen in Metabolism, but at the same time, the cell changes inside different cells like the mitochondria change its morphology to deal with things. And then we have this big thing, redox balance that has to be in check. 

37:17
Dr. William Seeds
So if you know that and you just stay, you stay to, you stay on course in improving the basics, what are you going to do? You're going to give the cell, if you give the cell the basics, you improve the basics. I guarantee you, I guarantee you're going to improve the efficiencies and the flexibility of the cell to handle all of these things we've been talking about. So it'd be like, why am I. And we don't want to discredit any testing that's done. I don't want to say that is an evil. 

37:54
Matthew Seeds
That's a good point. That's a good point. We're not saying the testing's a bad thing. What we're saying is at this point, people are clearly over tested. And the way that it's being marketed, maybe unintentionally, but it's kind of a scare tactic. Like, hey, if you're not staying on top of this stuff, you're going to have chronic disease pop up and you're screwed. 

38:13
Madison Lepore
Yeah. And people are over testing and then they're just getting hyper fixated on it too. 

38:18
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah, yeah. Numbers are big for people and we get that. It's just if you can get them, if you can get people thinking in this course of. Guys, if we know what keeps a cell healthy and how it stays healthy and how diet, how exercise and how sleep contribute to that and we understand all those pathways and receptors and enzymes and hormones and you know, it's just such a beautiful thing if we know that. Well, why wouldn't we want to implement all those things? Like, it'd be like me saying, hey, I look at this test, I say, oh, okay, we'll work on this one marker. Like, what the hell does that mean? One marker. I'm, I'm working on things. I'm, I'm on. I'm playing 12D chess. I'm like, I'm trying to help the cell. 

39:19
Matthew Seeds
12D chess adaption. 

39:22
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah. All right, that's it. 

39:23
Matthew Seeds
Continuing to make things up. I like it. So let's. We talked about swords. 

39:28
Dr. William Seeds
That was a, that was a little blow he hit me with there. 

39:32
Matthew Seeds
12D chess, you know. You know, we used to play chess a lot growing up. 

39:36
Madison Lepore
Remember when you kicked my butt in chest in two moves? 

39:38
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah. 

39:38
Matthew Seeds
Well, you suck at chess. But he didn't suck at chess. 

39:42
Dr. William Seeds
And I thought that's one of the first things they learned. 

39:44
Matthew Seeds
Before he taught me how to play, we would play every Tuesday. And now every Tuesday, you can catch a new episode of Redox Revolution. Look at that. We used to play every Tuesday. And he would just blow my doors off, right? And then I started beating him. And he didn't want to play anymore, and he didn't want to. He didn't want to adapt. His son got better than him, and then now every time we play, I just wipe the floor with him. And so we don't play anymore because he's bad and he loses, and he doesn't like losing. 

40:13
Dr. William Seeds
So this. This is. This is. Goes a level beyond adaptation. This is where the dad says it's time to let him win a little to get him to build confidence, because confidence helps adaptation. So that's. That's where it goes. It's always, I'm one step ahead, Matty, one step ahead. 

40:34
Matthew Seeds
No, and I'm two steps ahead, because coming next month, we're going to be live streaming a live chess match between me and him, and I'm going to kick his ass, and he's going to have no way out. 

40:44
Madison Lepore
You better start practicing. 

40:46
Dr. William Seeds
I think. I think we'll. Let's. 

40:48
Matthew Seeds
All right, let's. Let's get. Let's get back on track. Let's get back on track. So if were going to do today's performance protocol, I think it makes the most sense to do it around fasting, since that's like, one of the biggest tools we've talked about here. So if you could put today's performance protocol into a couple sentences, how to utilize fasting and who should utilize fasting. Go. 

41:10
Dr. William Seeds
So this is a great place maybe to introduce what Mattie had talked about and what we do with our patients. And. And I think it's this next level of what is really fasting, and I think. 

41:19
Madison Lepore
Because it's safer. Like, it's safe. Anyone? 

41:22
Dr. William Seeds
Well, it's a combination of. It's using the knowledge that the cell has to adapt and having the data to show that the cell does adapt in many different ways. Not just in metabolism, not just in energy production, but also in things like the microbiome and how significant that can be a player in improving overall health. Right. And some brilliant work was done years ago in looking at all of these aspects of how people fast and looking at specifically making something simple for people to do, which is all what we're all about in this method. And it's something I think we introduced in Hawaii. Yes, the microbiome. We talked about this study. 

42:15
Matthew Seeds
SSRP mastermind 1111. 

42:19
Dr. William Seeds
So ideally fasting, if we could come up with a program that makes it easy for people to accomplish right. No matter what their diet is. Let's say right off the bat this program specifically is a four day fasting program or let's say it's really a four day calorie restriction program where the first day you just do you eat 50% of typically what you eat. Okay. Just 50% of what your regular diet is. Then day three day or day two, day three, day four, you're going to eat 25% of what you typically eat in a day. So that's you're removing 50% of your calories. Day one, you're removing 75% of your calories. Day two, three and four. 

43:07
Dr. William Seeds
And then you go 10 days of eating what you want and you go through this cycle of four days of just changing and restricting the DIET and then 10 days of going back to normal, you know, three times a day eating without fasting or changing calories. 

43:29
Matthew Seeds
I feel like that's almost what we unintentionally do when we're on the road for work. 

43:33
Dr. William Seeds
It is. 

43:35
Matthew Seeds
That's what we just did yesterday. 

43:36
Dr. William Seeds
It actually is. And this is what I've actually that's interesting. I haven't seen anything today when people ask me doc, do you fast? And I say absolutely I do. I've lived that way forever. It's because of the travel. And I intermittently my fasting mechanisms are like when I saw this study, this made so much sense to me. Especially the changes it makes in the microbiome and, and where I think this is going to make it easy for people to do. It's when I'm in my experience I take it even a step further that my four days change. Like it could be two days here, it could be five days, three days. It's like, it's like I really make it into something that's very complex. But it's all due to my schedule. 

44:26
Matthew Seeds
Yeah. 

44:26
Dr. William Seeds
And I'm constantly having to adapt. So it's actually amazing over time what happens with that because I feel like I'm very fine tuned with that. 

44:37
Matthew Seeds
So that's nice. So you're saying that people don't have to up. Your whole life's changed. You're now going to be intermittent fasting every single day. You can't eat when you want to eat. You're saying no every Two weeks, just take a couple days, do this small restriction and this can be something that can help prevent cellular dysfunction, help kind of push off some of this inflammation. Chronic disease states, just keep your body working efficiently by force. 

45:04
Dr. William Seeds
It's a great way to start and it has the research behind it. And it's doable and it's long term doable. That's what you want and you don't want people getting into trouble. And this is, I think we've been very successful with it. And it's. 

45:20
Madison Lepore
And people kind of do it and they don't even realize they're doing it. 

45:23
Matthew Seeds
Yeah. And having things be doable I think is important because you know, you get these people who are like, oh, I gotta work out seven days a week. And then when you fall off the wagon, it feels like you just ruined everything, like your streak is over and it's hard to get back on and this is just something you can just throw in for a couple days. 

45:37
Dr. William Seeds
How simple does it? I mean, I think it can't be anything. It makes so much sense. It's common sense. It's simple, it's doable, it's repeatable. Why wouldn't you embark on this little trip of just trying it out and seeing what you do for that period of time and look at what happens. So typically we'll tell people, you know, give it two, three, four months to really start to take its effect. You know, it's not going to be something overnight, you notice. And for some people it changes. I mean it's all different. It's the heterogeneity of the population, as I always say. Yeah, but I'm telling you, or I'm letting people know, I think that this is something that they can control their destiny with and then get more focused on diet to make that even better. Right. The nutrition, the sleep, all the things. 

46:38
Madison Lepore
It's a buy in way for them to want to do more and want to better because they're feeling the difference. 

46:44
Matthew Seeds
And I think that is a good place to wrap it up because when they want to do more. What's next? On the next episode, we're going to be talking about how peptides specifically are revolutionizing medicine. All this stuff's important because you want to make sure that your base is set and that you're ready to go. Because you discussed many times. Yeah. That peptides aren't going to be as effective as they should be if you're unhealthy. But it's good we got this out of the way we'll move on to peptides next. 

47:13
Dr. William Seeds
Can I add one little thing here? 

47:14
Matthew Seeds
Yeah. Your closing thoughts, for sure. We'll take from his closing 15 minute monologue. 

47:19
Dr. William Seeds
Just take from what we said in other episodes earlier here where we just talked about the little. So you take that four days that you are eating right or you're fasting, and then that 10 days that you're normally eating whatever you want. Well, in those 10 days, make it a little better by eating your protein source first, your vegetable source next, or either or, doesn't matter, and then your carbohydrate last. Fatty acid maybe in the middle. Fatty in the middle. You know that routine we talked about in the other episodes? Use that to control the way that the cell handles glucose and how it can control that glucose, the hyperglycemia and insulin sensitivity, just by changing how you eat the food on your plate. So do you see how we're massaging in. We're like, this is how we take people down that track. 

48:18
Dr. William Seeds
We say, okay, let's start with these four days. Let's see where we go. And then the next time you go, okay, let's do this. So you can incrementally keep changing this process. And that's awesome, right? 

48:30
Matthew Seeds
And it's that incremental implementation where we've gone all the way down into the valley, we gotta come all the way back out now. Can the original question from the top, can chronic disease be cured with improved cellular health? And so if you're making all of these little changes to improve your cellular health unintentionally, theme today ended up being intermittent fasting, because it's something people can do easily. Right. And we wanted to focus on that since previously we have focused on things like sleep, diet, exercise, the basic pillars. But when you are slowly implementing all these things, are you helping to stave off chronic conditions? 

49:14
Dr. William Seeds
Yeah, and I like to just go back to that word, cure. We're not. We can never say we're curing anything, but we're improving the efficiencies, we're improving the flexibility, and that's our goal. 

49:24
Matthew Seeds
Yeah. 

49:25
Dr. William Seeds
And absolutely true. We're doing that perfect. 

49:30
Matthew Seeds
Well, it's nice that we don't have to remember to intermittent fast every day, but if you can, please remember to like subscribe and share. Only have to do it once a week. It's kind of our little intermittent fast of the redox revolution. So we'll see you next week. Thank you for joining us. 

49:46
Speaker 4
Please note that the information shared on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your health regimen, including starting new therapies, supplements or treatments. While we discuss cutting edge research and advancements in cellular medicine, individual health needs vary and professional guidance is essential. By listening to this podcast, you acknowledge that neither Dr. Seeds nor the podcast team is providing personalized medical recommendations. 

50:15
Matthew Seeds
Next time, we're going to explore how peptides are revolutionizing.