Chris Irvin is nutrition researcher, writer, and educator specializing in low carb dieting for metabolic health. Chris has his Master's in Nutrition Science from The University of Tampa where he studied the ketogenic diet in both human and animal models. Chris is the author of Keto Answers, The Carnivore Diet for Beginners, and Mommy, Do I Have to Eat This? Chris is the Chief Marketing Officer of BioCoach a company focused on improving metabolic health for the masses

Key point topics and studies mentioned:

1. Role of low carb/ketogenic diet in addressing today's high prevalence of chronic disease

2. Pathogenesis and disease progression to indicate metabolic dysfunction and inflexibility

3. BioCoach and its goal to help people eating and living healthy lifestyles

4. Neurodegenerative diseases: Are we just living longer and our brain degenerate over time or is it a metabolic problem?

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Hi, this is Dr. Latt Mansor, research lead of Health Via Modern Nutrition here on HVMN Podcast. This episode I interviewed Chris Irvin, who is a nutrition researcher, writer and educator of low cup dieting for metabolic health. He's also the chief marketing officer of a company called BioCoach. In this episode, we talked about difference between exogenous ketones and ketogenic diet with regards to performance and exercise. We also talk about the importance of ketones in metabolic health and solving neurodegenerative diseases. So if you are interested, stay tuned and enjoy this episode. Hi Chris. Thank you very much for coming onto HVMN podcast. I know today is a quite early recording for both of us, but thank you very much. We made it.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on Latt. I think taking a little shot of ketones before this episode is going to help me wipe that sleep from my eyes so we can have a good episode.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, so did I. I did take it about 15 minutes before, so I think it's about time kicking in now.

Chris Irvin:

It should be kicking in.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

All right, cool. So this episode of HVMN podcast, I would love to pick your brain around your field of study, your current passion, your current interest and let's start with telling our listeners and our audience who you are, what your passion is and what's your background.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, so my name is Chris Irvin and most people know me on social media as the Ketologist. Still sticking with that, despite the fact that everybody thinks keto is dead and it's no good, I'm still riding that out and posting a lot of keto content. My background is ... so I went to my undergrad, I studied primarily exercise science. I was a two sport athlete in college, played basketball and baseball. So I was really into studying human performance and just really for just personal use, like what can I do to optimize my human performance? Kind of along journey I got a little bit of an introduction to nutrition but didn't really ... I had some early interest in it, in undergrad but it didn't really strike me too ... it didn't really kind of set me off on a tangent to dive into nutrition. I looked at it a little bit from a performance aspect, what can I do before basketball games to improve my performance? Besides that, I didn't really look at nutrition from the health lens and then, after I graduated, I was on ... kind of my career path was to get into strength and conditioning. I was training high school and collegiate athletes, was looking to get into strength and conditioning at the professional level, wanted to be a strength and conditioning coach in the NBA. Kind of had that as my peak thing. That would've been top of the line goal for me to hit, and during that journey I kind of got introduced into body building. Actually I had a coworker who was doing body building and kind of thought that was interesting, got into it a little bit. Because of that, got a little bit heavier into nutrition. As anybody knows, it does any sort of physique or body building type stuff like nutrition is huge. You can't get down to four, 5% body fat just by doing crunches in the gym. You really have to dial in your nutrition, so that got me really interested in nutrition. I realized how little I knew about it and had a desire to go back to school. So I went back ... after a year off, I went back to school to a master's program down here in Tampa, University of Tampa for ... it was a exercise science and nutrition program and was introduced to the keto diet. Actually, my first class, the first day of my first class, I was in a sports nutrition class and we talked about the ketogenic diet for endurance performance. I heard a little bit about the diet but didn't really know much about it. Started looking at a lot of the evidence that was out there and got super interested in it, even though I wasn't really an endurance athlete and didn't really have a lot of interest in that area, it was interesting to see this, "Oh, endurance sports I've always been told is you need a lot of carbohydrates. It's kind of like a must. You have to replenish that glycogen." Then, we start looking at these studies that were coming out at the time from Dr. Volak and Tim Noakes was putting out a lot of good stuff in that area and it's like, "Holy cow, I've been wrong about this." So I went home that day and started the keto diet. Actually, that first day after class, I went to the grocery store, bought the traditional, what used to be keto. All the bacon cream, cheese, ranch dressing, all of that stuff and jumped into it. Even though I was making a lot of mistakes with the diet, really started noticing that I was feeling incredible from it, and that just made me start to wonder a little bit, "Wow, maybe there's something to this." I'm starting to feel ... at the time, I had this crazy schedule where I was working in the lab at our university from like ... Well, I would go and I would personal train because that was how I made money in college. I would go personal train from 5 AM to 8 AM and then, I would go into the lab from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM and then, I would come back and train from 5 PM to 10 PM. That was six days a week I was doing that, and before ... I was doing that for a while, before I was on keto and my energy was just zapped. I was hungry all the time and moody and just waking up tired, and after a couple of weeks on keto, I was like, "Damn, I feel really good. This is crazy." So I naturally started looking a little bit more into it and was just blown away by how much research was actually out. This is back in 2015 where there's a lot more now, but even then, it was like, "Wow, there's a decent amount of studies out here," and at the time, it was still mostly around performance. The lab I was working in was in exercise science lab. So we were doing research on keto in basketball players and I think we had some soccer players in La Crosse and baseball and stuff like that, and was finding a lot of cool stuff in that area because there wasn't a lot of research on that, keto for sports performance outside of endurance, there wasn't a lot of research. So I naturally kind of just really got into that part, that specific niche of the ketogenic research, and then, I think midway through my graduate studies, I came across the book, Tripping Over the Truth by Travis Christofferson, who is a really great friend of mine now, and one of my favorite authors. I read the book, it was one of those things, I picked it up, I couldn't put it down, read it in two days and saw there was an introduction into the therapeutic side of keto. I was like, "Oh, interesting. I didn't even know about that. I didn't know that there could be some therapeutic utilization to this diet." I kind of was just looking at it as a weight loss and maybe some sports performance applications. So I kind of started diving into that a little bit and it was amazing. I was blown away that ... so I stumbled across Dr. Angela Poff's research. She was looking at exogenous ketones and the ketogenic diet in different models of cancer. So, I remember I read her full dissertation in the lab one day and then, found out the next day that she was a guest professor ... I didn't even realize that she was at USF right down the street from us and found out she was actually a guest professor that semester in our program. It was a special topics class, so I had actually chosen already a biomechanics class because I was still a little bit more into that side and I didn't choose her metabolism class. I was so mad at myself, I was too late to switch. I was like, "Oh my god, this girl has this amazing research that I'm reading is literally in the building teaching and I'm not in her class." So I reached out and was like, "Hey, I want to get in the lab over there. Can I intern? Can I help in any way?" She was really nice and took me in and I went over there and was without a doubt the dumbest person in that building. I don't say that to just be mean to myself. Those people over there, were so incredibly smart and I got to learn so much from them about the therapeutic application of keto. This was really during a time when it was less talked about, like not many people were talking about keto for diabetes or keto for neurodegenerative diseases or maybe even the cardiovascular implications of it, and getting to be around all those incredibly smart people, I got to have a little bit of an intro into that and see that there was a lot more to this diet than just the weight loss and sports performance side. During that time, this is where my passion I think comes from is I started to get really upset that I was like, I see these researchers who are just working their asses off every single day in this lab. Their research is being tucked away in these journals that people either don't have access to, or if they do have access to it, it's hard for them to understand just because reading research as you know is not an easy thing. It takes some training to do it. So I started realizing that one, I was nowhere near smart enough to be a PhD or to be somebody that was going to work in the lab setting. I kind of saw ... it's kind of like as an athlete when you realize one day, it's like, "Oh, there's the elite and then, there's me." That was my realization that I wasn't quite as elite as them, but what I found is that maybe where I could make my impact would be through taking that information, I was good at reading research. That was the thing that I ... and I had a passion for it, so I was like, maybe what I can do is be the person that can take this information and distill it down in a way that it could be applicable. So that's where the Ketologist brand came from, is I started making infographics, breaking down research. At the time in 2015, 2016, there wasn't a lot of people doing that. I think maybe Ruled.me was out at the time. I don't even know if Diet Doctor was out yet. Maybe it was, but it was still in its infancy. Actually, probably it was available but it wasn't maybe as mainstream. So I got some pretty good early growth just from being one of the only people that was doing that. Then, once I started doing that, a lot of that was just driven on wanting to highlight and make the information that these researchers were working so hard on just making it available to people so that it could impact more people. Then, once I ... so that was kind of the early passion. Then once I started seeing the impact that was having on people ... and so you start hearing these stories of people losing all this weight and getting off their diabetes medications and reversing cardiovascular disease risk and stuff. Then, from there, it just spirals out of control and it's just like, "This is amazing. I want to do whatever I can to help progress this field forward and raise awareness around this diet, I think that can be really helpful." That kind of led down a couple different career paths that we can get into later in this episode, but a lot of ... that's really where the passion stem from, is just realizing that what I had learned about nutrition was wrong, as many of us find out, I think once we really dive into it, is that we've been told the wrong thing. The wrong thing, not only is it just misinformation that we have, but it's harmful to people because there's a lot of lifestyle solutions, dietary solutions that are available for people who are dealing with chronic disease, and they don't know about it and they don't really have access to it and they're sick when they don't necessarily have to be. So I think a lot of my passion stemmed from just not thinking that that was okay and realizing that this is a broken industry and we have to do something about it, and that's how we got to where we are today.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Thank you very much for the comprehensive answer.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

I really love your backstory, but by the way, first of all, you are a very smart individual and I've got a PhD and never say that you're not smart enough to do a PhD. If anything I learned from doing a PhD from the University of Oxford is that ... because honestly, I didn't think that before I started. Even after I got accepted, I didn't think I was smart enough to do a PhD and going through it and doing all these experiments in the lab, I think having some form of common sense, some form of logical rationale sort of thinking, critical thinking is important to do a PhD. Most importantly what the whole PhD training really taught me was persistence and perseverance because you are doing something that is so narrowed down, so niche and so novel that no one else ... you're not supposed to do something that someone else is doing, right?

Chris Irvin:

Right.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

You're supposed to do something completely new as a PhD. So you don't know what the outcome is, and that's what science is and that's what's fun about this.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

At the same time, it also doesn't just turn around overnight. People don't understand, let these scientists figure out something, A, B, C cause X, Y, Z. At the end of the day, you still need to go into the lab, spend time, refine the experiment, problem solve and really figure out is your experiment working, first of all? Is it answering your research question, second? And then third, can you then take this to the next level, to the next step? So the persevere and the persistence, it's most important for me to complete my PhD and I can totally see you doing it. Knowing you for a while now, Chris, no doubt, I have no doubt you can complete a PhD, but maybe do it in the UK where last three years because you can get it in three years and instead of in the US where you are put through masters classes within the first two years and then, you go into the lab.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, I think it's interesting though. I think part of it too was not just, I think that I have some brains, I don't think that I'm a complete idiot, but I think what I realized is that I was never going to be able to be singularly focused on a single topic that would be required to do a PhD. It's like reading a research, I would find that, "Oh, for these three months, I'm reading every single cancer study and book that's out there," but then, three months later, I'm just like, "Yeah, cool. I'm good. I want to read about diabetes. Let me switch over to diabetes." I think that's what our ... and I remember I went to a national strength and conditioning association conference in New Orleans back in 2016. I remember sitting down and listening to a professor who was ... I don't remember his name, but older gentleman towards the latter half of his career. He was studying post activation potentiation, so a very specific part of biomechanics and exercise performance, and I remember him going through or watching his presentation, he's presenting decades of research that he's covered on this single topic. As he's talking, I'm kind of realizing, "Man, I don't know that I could ever study just one single facet of a topic for that long." Then, I remember him getting to the end of it and saying, after all these decades of research, I've realized that I still don't know anything about this. I remember that just being like, "Man, I think for me it's just a little like ... I like to be kind of a jack of a lot of trades." I guess I don't have a preference to be a master of none, but I think that kind of comes with the territory of when you want to be interested in a lot of different fields.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

I was going to say, when you read a topic for three months for example, and you really dive deep into it, you will realize then there's so much more to know.

Chris Irvin:

So much.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

And the less you actually know. For example cancer, I doubt you can actually go through everything in three months because after that, you're going to figure out that there are different types of cancers. There are different types of cells, there are different types of pathogenesis and it's going to be more and more and more. So like what I did, I chose diabetes and cardiovascular disease as my specialization, but my research itself is looking at metabolism of type two diabetic heart in hypoxia, specifically and using hypoxia as a subset of ischemia, which is the lack of blood flow that causes myocardial infarction or heart attacks. While that is very specific, I also needed to know everything to know about cardiovascular disease, about diabetes, about metabolism. So there's so much to learn in three years but obviously, if I'm comparing myself to academia, to a professor, they do it for decades. They do it on another whole level, like a beast level. So that was why I left academia and come into industry because I feel exactly the same way you do where all these research, all these insights, all these learnings and knowledge are bottled up in a lab or just written up in a published paper. It needs to go out to public, it needs to be applied and absolutely can save lives. The first company I worked for was the diabetes management program, a company based in Singapore. They use an app to track food and track weight and activity and glucose. That really ... as you said earlier, it really changes people's lives because some people got off their medications, some people really reversed their diabetes. That's when I see my knowledge and my work impacting others' lives. So let's switch gear a little bit, and I know you talked a little bit about performance. Let's start there then we'll go into the metabolic health part of things. What do you think the role of ketogenic diet versus exogenous ketones in performance, and as you said, you went quite deep outside of endurance athletes, endurance performance using ketones or presence of ketones. Tell us more about what you found in exercises or workouts that are not endurance and then, the role of exogenous ketones versus keto diet.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, for sure. Well, I think the biggest thing that we found is that ... and this was a little more novel at the time versus now, I think more people understand this, but was that, we actually can perform a lot of really impressive physical feats without carbohydrates. It really was this notion for the longest period of time that you have to have carbohydrates to fuel, you have to carb load before exercise, you have to replenish glycogen through carbohydrate consumption post exercise, and there really was no other way. There was no coaches really teaching anything different, and if you did teach anything different, you were a quack. Once we started, the endurance component of it was really easy to understand, right? You could look at it and you could see, "Okay, what we see is that when you consume a lower carbohydrate diet, you become fat adapted, your body is able to transition into this much larger fuel source and fat that it can burn for energy and then, it can also produce ketones, which is an additional fuel source that can allow you to continue exercise." So it kind of makes sense that it works. Then, as the years went on, we saw Volak publish that monumental study in 2016 where he found that glycogen resynthesis rates, which was this big driver of why people were consuming carbohydrates were actually the same in people who weren't consuming carbohydrates, people who are kind of longer term keto adapted athletes. That was kind of the nail in the coffin on, not that one is necessarily better than the other, but that one is just as good of an option as the other and that you can choose which way is best for you. For a long time there was still this notion that more glycolytic things like strength based and power based stuff would ... we would see a big detriment through not consuming carbohydrates, and a lot of this was kind of centered around those age old thoughts around carb bloating and stuff, but then also, it was based on these very short duration studies, three to five day, maybe seven day studies, looking at athletes on the keto diet, and then seeing decrements and strength and decrements and different power metrics, and what we know now, and especially for anybody who's done keto is it takes your body some time to keto adapt. If you've never done keto before and let's say you go in and you do your one rep max for bench press and then you start the keto diet, and three days later, you go in and do it again. Anybody who's done keto knows, you're going to be a little bit weaker at that point because your body has not adapted. So we were running a little bit longer duration studies in athletes and we were doing it. We had some athletes, but we also had just generally like ... one of the studies that I helped head up was just college students who weren't necessarily athletes, but they were all well trained, people who were training like three to four days a week. What we saw is that once their body got adapted, that they were able to hit a lot of the same marks. They were able to meet the same strength metrics, the same power metrics. They weren't really seeing decrements as they started getting adapted to the diet. So that kind of opened the door to like, "Oh, maybe there's some application utility into these other things." Then, there was some really good practical studies that came out around that time too. Rachel Gregory published a really cool study looking at kind of general population CrossFit athletes on ... I think it was like eight week or 12 week keto diet, and saw that they were able to maintain a lot of their performance stuff. So it started to become really clear that for the average Joe, when I say average Joe is anybody who's not getting paid to play professional sports or who's not doing extreme sport things, that if you tailor your diet the right way, your keto diet the right way, which I think involves consuming more protein than probably what's the traditional recommendations, timing up your food well, supplementing with electrolytes, things like that, that you can perform just as well. That I think is a big finding because for the general population who's exercising, your goal isn't necessarily to be in the 1%. You don't need to go into your gym and be in the 1% in strength. You're trying to be healthy, right?

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Yeah.

Chris Irvin:

You're trying to feel good, day in and day out. So not consuming for those people, especially if they're metabolically damaged, is going to be a good way to help them get more out of their exercise. You're going to be able to still make a lot of improvements. You can also gain muscle without carbs contrary to what people had thought at that time. So I think that was a big thing, and then, as I started working ... and this is where the exogenous ketones came in, is that when I started working with professional athletes, and professional football players and baseball players and stuff, I started realizing that for them, performance is their number one goal. Being 1% better for them is a big deal. That's the difference between winning their competition, getting that salary that kind of sets them up for the rest of their lives. It really is a big deal for them and for them, carbohydrates can provide an orogenic aid. They can provide a boost in sports performance, especially if you are metabolically healthy and your body is carb tolerant and insulin sensitive, then these things are really good for you to consume, and that's when I think exogenous ketones started really getting really interesting because exogenous ... or ketones in general, have unique benefits related to performance. Outside of just being a fuel source, they have the ability to reduce inflammation produced from metabolism, they can increase natural antioxidant production. There's even some interesting research around them, being able to stimulate protein synthesis, which I think is another interesting thing around them. So there's a lot of utility to them, but for the wide receiver in the NFL who's 6% body fat and is extremely metabolically healthy and can take carbohydrates and perform really well, it doesn't make sense for them to just go full keto 30 grams of carbohydrates ketogenic diet. They may see that kind of one or 2% dip in performance that can potentially harm them and affect their performance, whereas exogenous ketones come in is that you can get the best of both worlds. You can have elevated ketones, you can get those benefits from the ketones while also ... they kind of call the dual fuel approach, while also getting the benefits from the energy that you get from carbohydrates. Then of course ... and we can get into this a little bit later. Of course, there's the ... in football specifically in that example, the utility for traumatic brain injury and concussion, which I think is something that is not talked about enough, kind of the metabolic side of that. Even outside of that, there's just a lot of benefit to being able to have both of those things available. So exogenous ketones have created this ability for people to not have to choose between one or the other. You don't have to choose between having glucose as your primary fuel source and having ketones circulating, you can do both. Just anecdotally, somebody who still plays basketball at a fairly high level and everything is that I've seen an incredible boost in performance. I feel better on the basketball court now at 30 years old than I did at 21 when I was actually a young college athlete and everything. So it is an interesting thing and I hope it's kind of an area that will continue to grow with awareness around it because I'm a sports junkie, I love human performance, I love looking at these top athletes of LeBron James and all these people like that. It's like, I would just love to see these guys on ketones, right? I would love to see what could be the extra one to 2% for them if they were kind of maximizing the metabolic component of their human performance. So hopefully we get to that one day where that becomes a little bit more mainstream. I think we're heading in that direction, but as we know with anything, science and ... especially sports science is very dogmatic and there's a lot of resistance to change from the status quo. So there's always that famous saying that a lot of people have to die for change to happen, and I don't know that it has to go that far, but a lot of people are going to have to put their egos aside and realize that maybe there's other ways to optimize human performance for these athletes.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well said, and for our listeners as well, when you go on ketogenic diet, you are depleting your carb sources, you're depleting your glycogen, and therefore your body will start creating ketones from fats in your liver. So that's why in a physiological state, it's almost impossible to have high glucose in your body and high ketones because when you have high glucose, you're spiking up your insulin levels and that insulin level is what inhibits the ketogenesis or ketone production in your liver. I'm going to ask you this question as well, Chris. I know a lot of our customers or our listeners also have asked this question, is if it is not a naturally physiological condition, am I tempering with the wrong thing? Am I playing with fire here if I'm having exogenous ketone? Will I one, screw up my metabolism or two, build up tolerance to it? What are your thoughts about it? I can share about what my thoughts are, but I'm curious to hear what your thoughts about it.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, I mean it's an interesting concept and admittedly, we do need a lot more research into questions like that. I think it's becoming well-established that ketones are safe, it's well-established that they can be effective for a number of different things. Some of those little mechanistic things I think we still could benefit from some more research around. I think if you just look at the way that ... especially, a product like HVMN has, that is more bioidentical to what your body produces versus some of the other things that are out on the market, the utilization by the body and which you can just tell by the way that you feel when you take it, the utilization by the body is a lot superior versus something else. So I think that's one thing. I think the big question that a lot of people tend to have with this is like, if I take exogenous ketones, is it going to stop my natural ketone production, because one of the big mistakes that was made early on with exogenous ketones is that they were marketed as a weight loss thing because for some reason people would associate having elevated ketones with weight loss, but as you kind of highlighted, the ketones that are produced naturally, those occur from low insulin levels stimulating the body to release fatty acids in the body, to burn those fatty acids and some of those fatty acids being burned in the liver and converted to ketones. So in that sense, ketones can be a marker of weight loss and fat loss. In the sense of taking a drink, they're not going to directly ... now, I do think there's some interesting supporting mechanisms. They're not going to directly cause weight loss. So I think people, they get a little bit worried about that, like "Okay, if I'm going for keto for weight loss for instance, and I take this, is it going to prevent my body from producing ketones naturally and burning fat?" The answer I think can be ... again, we don't know this for certain. There hasn't been a great study that's looked at this and really to design a study like this would be hard. I think what we ... you can just see it through yourself, and you can actually test this yourself, if you get a ketone meter, you can just measure your baseline ketones. Let's say that there ... and I'll give an example, I did it recently. My baseline ketones, I woke up passive, is sitting around 0.5 millimolars. I take the HVMN somewhere around ... between 15 minutes and an hour is when I typically start to see the peak or I see the rise and I start to see the peak in there. It gets up to anywhere between 1.5 and two millimolars and then, two hours and then ... two hour mark, three hour mark, it starts tapering back down and then, I go back down to 0.5 at the end and I kind of maintain 0.5 and then, if I were to continue fasting, maybe it would start creeping up again from the fast. What doesn't happen is that my ketones never go back to zero. I think that's kind of one of the indications of if it was blunting my natural ketone production, if it was making my body resistant to burning fat and producing ketones, then I would expect that number after I burnt through those exogenous ketones to be at zero, which I've never seen both in the lab setting when I was studying exogenous ketones in the subjects that we would have or in myself. So I don't think that there's anything to fear about it and being somebody ... I mean, I've had exogenous ketones in my system for a long time. Back in 2015, we were ... raw powders in the laboratory, testing all these different things and I've had them in ... So I don't know that there's probably not a lot of people that have had more exogenous ketones in their body than me, and I haven't developed any sort of intolerance to them over the last six years of doing that. So of course, that's an antidote but I haven't heard that from anybody else either. So I think that they're ... when you look at them that way, you realize that they can't be looked at as a ... I think the only situation where ketones, exogenous ketones could be looked at as a replacement to the diet would be in that professional athlete elite. They're not looking for any other benefits other than just really performance than they could be a replacement to it, but for everybody else who's looking for the other benefits that come with keto, the overall improvement metabolic health and stuff, they're not going to ever be a replacement for that, but they're really good support for that and they're a really good way for you to get more out of that and to kind of maximize ... and especially, I always like to just drop this line in there too, that I think the best utilization of an exogenous ketone is in conjunction with a keto diet for the general population, because you are ... on keto, you become really efficient at utilizing ketones and your body is kind of primed to do. So getting that pump up that you get from the exogenous ketones, your body is in a great state to be able to use those versus somebody who's maybe following the standard American diet is incredibly insulin resistant, hasn't really ever been in a state of natural ketosis, so they don't have this upregulation of these transporters that are really important to help get ketones into the cells. It might not be as beneficial as somebody ... and I'm not saying no benefit, but not beneficial as somebody who is primed to take those ketones in and use them. I think that's why we see people in this space. I remember introducing HVMN to a couple keto dieters and them just being like, I took this 20 minutes ago and I just hit a PR in the gym or I took this before a presentation for the first time and my brain was just firing on all cylinders. It's like, yeah, because your body is ready to soak up those ketones and use them. So I haven't seen anything yet that has made me be concerned about blunting any sort of natural production or making us intolerant to them, but I'm curious if you've seen anything different on your side with the research?

Dr. Latt Mansor:

No, I haven't seen either and the way I explain it as well is not to compare ketones to drugs, to stimulants because our body is naturally and evolutionarily have been designed to be able to one, produce ketones and two, metabolize ketones. So we already have all the enzymes sitting there, we already have all the DNA codes that can produce those enzymes that transport ketones into the cell, metabolize them and all that, right? So you, providing the substrate in and of itself will not create something that is not natural. So unlike a stimulant, where you need something to stimulate brain activity, for example, like coffee for example, over time, that stimulation builds up tolerance. That's the difference here because ketone is a natural substrate. It's how ... we are not resistant to proteins, we are not resistant to fat, they are just substrates that provide energy, but on top of that, also having signaling properties that help with everyday sort of task and inflammation and all of that. So I think people need to switch their thinking around exogenous ketone that it is not a drug, but it is a ... I think the first, sort of two episodes ago when I interviewed Dr. Dominic D'Agostino and Dr. Angela Poff, and she worded it very nicely, ketone is a substrate or a molecule, a food molecule that has drug-like properties because of the effect that it has on your brain, on your metabolism, on signaling. So in and of itself, it shouldn't build any tolerance. As you said, it does not really blunt your production of ketones in the long run because when you have exogenous ketones, what they have seen in studies is that they do regulate these enzymes. Enzymes are transporters that bring ketones into the cell as well as the enzymes that metabolize ketones for energy. So if you think about it, you are basically priming your body to be able to metabolize these ketones. So when your exogenous ketones has gone off, you've metabolized them, you are switching it back to your internal, to your endogenous ketones that you produce yourself and you are now more efficient because all these enzymes are already fired up as well, because they are upregulated during your exogenous ketone consumption.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, and I think that's one of the interesting possible utilities of exogenous ketones, really when I first started researching exogenous ketones, this was kind of the first use case that I had kind of stumbled across that I thought would be great, is really to help with that ketone adaptation period because of what you just said. We do have research that shows ... and I'm not sure, it's been a little bit since I've looked at this part of the research. So at the time, it was more cell culture stuff, but we do see that when these cells are exposed to even exogenous ketones, there is an upregulation of these transporter, these MCT transporters that are required for these to be taken into the cells and used for energy. What we know is that it can take a little bit for that to happen. If you're somebody who is really insulin resistant and you've been following Standard American Diet for a really long period of time, you haven't really ever been on a low carb diet, it can take your body a while to get to the point where it's producing a sufficient amount of ketones to be able to upregulate those transporters naturally. That's why we kind of see a lag in people between, "Oh, I started seeing 0.3 millimolars on my ketones meter, but I still feel like crap, what's going on?" It's like, well you haven't really reached that threshold where you're starting to upregulate those transporters to use those efficiently. So I think that's a really good utility, is taking those things early on can get you that higher level than what you would be able to achieve at that time naturally, that I think can upregulate those transporters a little bit more quickly and help you get through that. Just as kind of an acute benefit, the exogenous ketones provide a lot of things like energy and mood boosting and cognitive function improvements that are just naturally going to make the diet easier. I mean, so many people start keto and they fall off because they feel like crap initially, right? Sometimes that's because of electrolytes, but a lot of times it's also because their body is not keto adapted yet. It's not really used to utilizing these ketones. So if you feel like crap all the time, you know are more likely to ... hunger is another one, you're more likely to be hungry and binge eat carbohydrates and then, think that keto is not for you or you're more likely to be like, "Oh, I tried keto ..." I hear it all the time, "I tried keto and it just wasn't for me." You're like, "Well how long did you try it for?" And it was like, "Seven days and I felt like shit." And you're like, "Oh, okay, well, you didn't get to the part where it's great. You didn't get to that part where you're keto adapted." So I think that acutely they can help you just during that time feel better, but then also, I think that they can help you get adapted more quickly, and that's something I would love to see a study at, is just looking at different markers of keto adaptation and seeing the difference between somebody just starting the keto diet under 30 grams of carbs as is, versus somebody doing that plus exogenous ketones and just from what I've seen anecdotally and myself and other people, that period is a lot smoother. It's a much easier transition when you have the aid of exogenous ketones.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Yeah, I think a study like that would be very informative and also, it should be quite straightforward study as well. We can measure the transporters themselves, we can do some biopsies and looking at upregulation of different proteins that are related to keto metabolism and then, we can measure subjective feeling of how that person is during that transition. Remember guys, every time you introduce a new diet, you introduce something new, you introduce a change in general, you are introducing stress to your body. You need to let your body adapt to it. You need to let your body really get used to the new change. Usually, that's when the adaptation period takes place, and you may feel not great, but give it time and then, you will feel the benefit. So I'm going to switch gear a little bit here from performance to metabolic health. Since I know you're part of BioCoach and I would love to talk a bit on role of BioCoach, and what BioCoach does and the question for you, Chris is, is low carb or keto diet the answer to this ever growing chronic disease prevalence in America and a lot of developed countries and all around the world really? So is this the answer or is this something else that we should be looking at?

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, so I think that it's a answer, right? It's one potential answer, by way of ... the reason why I'm the Ketologist is because I believe that it's one of the best ways that's out there. I think that if we look at, the reason why we have poor metabolic health really does stem from nutrition. Now of course, there's other things, lifestyle factors, environmental factors, sedentary lifestyle, all these things that can contribute to it but really, for 80/20 ruling nutrition is the big driver, and I think that there's kind of two big parts of nutrition I think that are driving this metabolic health epidemic that we have, and I think it's the overconsumption of processed carbohydrates and then, the overconsumption of seed oils. So we'll talk about the carbohydrate component of that first. If we look at ... and generally too, just the overconsumption of food, just consuming too many calories. So the combination of these things make us insulin resistant. I kind of use the terms insulin resistant and poor metabolic health interchangeably, because if you are insulin resistant, you have poor metabolic health. If you have poor metabolic health, you're insulin resistant. I think when we look at it like that, if that's the big issue, well, what are the ways that we can improve metabolic health and improve insulin resistance? There are several ways you can do it. You can do it by eating lower calorie diet, right? You can do it by cutting out carbohydrates, you could do it by intermittent fasting, which is going to also kind of ... you're going to reduce calorie consumption naturally because of that and you're going to probably reduce total carbohydrate consumption. So there's a lot of different tools that you can use to get to this goal of pulling back on calories a little bit, lowering your carbohydrate intakes so that you can allow yourself to become more insulin sensitive. You can reverse that insulin resistance, you can improve your metabolic health. While there are a lot of tools out there, the reason why I think keto tends to be the best one is because of the other things that come along with it. So it's very well-established that on a ketogenic diet, through reducing your carbohydrate consumption, you're going to improve your really key metabolic health markers. You're going to improve fasting blood sugar, fasting insulin, A1C, a lot of cardiovascular markers, inflammation, all these things that you're going to improve. So we kind of know that, but then in addition to that, there's the components of the diet that make it a little bit easier to stick with this change long term. So we know that when you follow a low carb ketogenic diet, you see improvements in hunger hormones typically, which if you look at a low calorie diet for instance, we see the opposite where hunger hormones spike when we're on a low calorie diet and it makes it hard for us to maintain that diet and not want to binge eat and things like that. So I always like to make that kind of distinction because there's not just what happens in a laboratory setting in a controlled condition. What matters is what happens out there in the real world, and if I'm trying to diet and improve my metabolic health and I'm walking around every day tracking my calories and saying, "Oh, I'm going to eat 1500 calories today." Then every time I walk by a bagel shop I want to go in or I walk by a bakery, I want sweets really bad. Then one day, I just break and I binge eat and then, I decide I'm not going to diet for another three months because of that. That isn't going to work, even though it would've worked if I would've stuck with it, it's not practically very effective for a lot of people. What a lot of people will find a lot easier than that is to say, "You know what, I'm just not going to eat this food group and carbohydrates," and that's going to make a big difference for improving these metabolic health markers. Actually, I feel a lot better when I do that, instead of feeling tired and groggy like most people do when they diet, I actually feel energetic. I feel like I have a better mood. My brain is functioning really well. I don't have hunger, I have this stable blood sugar, which is kind of the reason why you're experiencing all those things that I just said. So that is why I think it is such a great option is that it's just an easier way to do it. I hear time and time again, people being ... and it's funny because we have this argument with the calories in, calories out folks, where it's like, people will be like, "Oh, well the only reason why keto works is because you're in a calorie deficit." While I don't think that's true, there's a lot of additional benefits to it. A Lot of what you get out of keto is because of a calorie deficit, but the point is that it's easier to maintain that calorie deficit on a keto diet than it is on other diets because of those factors that I just mentioned. So that's why I think it's easier. For a lot of people, you're going to find that it's a lot easier to just not eat the candy bar than it is to eat half of the candy bar. It's a lot easier to consume meat and vegetables rather than going to McDonald's and getting a happy meal to keep your calories low and then, trying to make it to three hours before you have another snack and stuff like that, that's hard. Whereas, for a lot of people find keto is like, it's just a lot easier way to do it. You don't have to maybe track your calories, you can naturally fall into that calorie deficit. So I think that's the reason why I get excited about it. I think that it's a much more sustainable approach. Now, of course, there's the mainstream kind of growth of ketogenic diets and low carb dieting, has introduced new obstacles to this. Now, we do have food products that are hyper sweet, hyper palatable that can kind of make it a little bit more difficult for us to maintain the kind of ... even kill hunger and stuff like that or you have these products that really ... they say they're keto, but they're really not. You test your blood sugar and they spike your blood sugar like 100 points and people who aren't testing their blood sugar wouldn't know that that's going on, so they can't figure out why they're not seeing the benefits that everybody talks about with keto. So there are new obstacles that have been introduced as the industry has gotten involved in this, but I think as a whole, if ketogenic dieting is done the right way, it's the fastest, easiest and in my opinion, a most sustainable way to improve your metabolic health. So I think that for most people it is going to be the answer to this metabolic health epidemic.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Yeah, thank you so much. That was such a great explanation. You covered it very nicely and even if people say is ... even if it is the calorie deficit that comes of ketogenic diet, some people actually can use some of the calorie deficit because of the excess calories that we've been consuming these days because of the hyper palatable food that we are having that are calorie dense, maybe we could use some calorie deficit in our lives.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

And that could eventually improve your insulin sensitivity and also, ultimately just having that relationship with food, having that clearer, healthier relationship with food, also puts our mind in a better place in order to work out, for example, in order to live that healthier lifestyle. That all ties together in really combating this chronic disease prevalence because it's not just food, it's not just exercise, it's not just mental health, it's all of them combined together and if you can ... I wouldn't say control, but if you can improve one aspect of it, you can certainly contribute to the progress of the other aspect of things.

Chris Irvin:

Totally. Yeah, I mean I think that's a really big thing and we see that all the time. If you're metabolically damaged, which if you look at the wide variety of health impairments that come from insulin resistance, I mean it's everything from type two diabetes, all the way to you, just having a bad mood and low energy, right? It's such a broad spectrum of issues that you have and you start seeing that if you're insulin resistant and you're metabolically damaged, and you feel that way, not only is your health going to be poor but like how ... and you're going to be craving poor foods, you're going to be hungry all the time, you're going to be more likely to mess up the nutrition component but also, how are you going to get to the gym if you don't feel great? How are you going to maintain that schedule if waking up at ... for some people, waking up at 5 AM is what's required for you to get in the gym. That's the only time that's available. Well, how are you going to wake up at that time if you feel like crap? How are you going to perform well at work if your brain isn't functioning optimally? So I think that is what we see is that when people follow this, they get the weight, weight loss happens very quickly on keto. You can see improvements in some of those metabolic markers like A1C, blood sugar and insulin very, very quickly on it. Then, once those changes start happening, then people start realizing like, "Oh, I can actually go to the gym now and actually because I lost 20 pounds, my knees don't hurt anymore when I'm at the gym they used to." "So I actually enjoy being here, and I woke up today full of energy, not feeling like I needed to guzzle a pot of coffee to get out of bed, and I'm actually excited to go into this work presentation because I prepared really well for it and I'm pumped to talk to my coworker." It's like, all of these kind of downstream trickle effects that happen that just generally lead to a better overall quality of life. We actually, at BioCoach, we published an article recently looking at quality of life metrics from low carb dieters, or low carb dieting and diabetics and there really is ... you see a drastic difference in those things because rather than walking around feeling sad that I can only eat this many calories which by the way, taking the calorie approach doesn't usually give you all those other benefits, those downstream benefits that we're talking about. Instead, people feel like, "Oh, I get to eat steak again. I didn't realize that steak and eggs was actually good for me, holy cow. Oh, I can actually make these, this cauliflower taste pretty darn good." So, the nutrition component is good but then, you get these downstream effects being in a better mood, having more energy, that there's quality of life improvement just in those things, but then you think about what those things impact. "Oh, now, I don't feel guilty about the fact that I had no energy to play with my kids. So now I feel great and I feel happy just because I was able to be a good parent and give more to my children." So then you get even another level of downstream benefit that you're getting from these things that happen. So there is just a big quality of life improvement. I think that's a big thing that's missing in these calories in versus calories out or dietary debates as like, "I don't care what happens in the lab setting when we're looking at five different markers. I care what happens to the mom who doesn't feel good and is dealing with all these health issues and it's going into their doctor and looking for answers and not getting them and put on all these medications and then, all of a sudden starts this diet and all of those things improve." That to me matters a lot more about ... than a study that tells me that keto versus this diet leads to the same amount of fat burning or something like that. It's like, let's look at the bigger picture.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Absolutely, and what role does BioCoach play in all of this?

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, so what we're doing at BioCoach is we are ... so to give a little bit of a picture of what we are, so we're both a hardware and software company. We have a medical device, I actually have it right here, our blood glucose and ketone meter. So we've talked about tracking ketones and glucose in this episode. So we have this and then, this tracks and reports all of the data into an app, and there's a lot of other companies that have similar products to this. An app that will track your trends over time and show your charts and show your responses to food. What we're realizing through just talking to customers and people in the space, me talking to people on my social media is that people just need guidance. They need to know what to do. And then not only do they need to know what to do, they need support in getting that done. They need somebody to walk with them along the way, and that's really what the purpose of BioCoach is, and what we're doing in our app is we're creating these health journeys that you can join where these health experts are walking you through, what intermittent fasting looks like, what ketogenic dieting is, how to interpret your numbers, how to know which foods are best for your metabolic health right now, where you are today, what is the best kind of approach for you to reach your goals. Then, putting around these behavioral change components so that you can better stick to this. So adding ... we have a gamification and reward systems built into the app to help people with those things. So the goal is to ... there's a subset of the population who will look at the research and they'll figure out what's best for them and they'll do it, they'll run through a brick wall to do it. Admittedly, I'm one of those people, I look at food as function a lot of times. If you tell me that something's good for me, I don't care if it tastes bad, I'll just do what's required for me to be healthy and it's a little bit ... to be honest, it's easier for me to maintain health because of that, but a larger percentage of the population, they're not really willing ... most people know that they're not supposed to have a donut for breakfast, right? Nobody is thinking that that's a healthy thing to start your day with. Nobody is going to a gas station getting a 52 ounce soda and thinking that's good for them. So maybe there are people that are doing that, so we are trying to reach them too and show and tell them that that is not good for them. Really, what we're trying to do is we're trying to show them why it's not good for them. Hey, why don't you drink that soda and test your blood sugar and then, let me show you what your results are and then, here's what ... that result, here's what that means for you but then also, telling them, I know you don't want to eat that donut and we want to help you not want to eat that donut anymore either. So we want to show you options. We have meal planning as well as meal prep, like at home meal delivery services are built into our program as well where it's like, "Oh, if your biggest problem is that you're at lunch at work and they just keep having junk food in the break room and you're going out on all these ... you're traveling and you're having a hard time eating good food, we want to provide these foods for you to help you actually reach that goal." So it's not just about telling people. I think the simple way that we like to talk about is that a lot of these other apps out there will tell you what you've done based on the data, but we're trying to tell you what to do and how you can improve that. So we're trying to be a little bit more applicable and so, that's really the mission that we're on, and it's a mission that ... it's a big one, 89% of the population is metabolically damaged, and that means that almost all of the population is who we're trying to help, which as somebody who's in the marketing department, that's not really how you typically go about product development and marketing is to say, "Oh, we're going to try to reach everybody." That's generally not a good idea, but that's what our goal is. We are trying to help as many people as possible who are ... on both sides of it, whether it's the people who know and then, they want to make the improvements or it's the people who don't know. We want to help them realize that there's another way and that being like, here's what comes with improving your metabolic health. So we're on the journey and we have a lot of work to do. We're in the product development stage and we have beta testers, testing the app right now. We're gearing up for January 1st launch out to the public, and it really is exciting, it's like to see the product really come to life and to see the feedback that we're getting from our users. It's a motivator. You talk about passion earlier in this episode. It's like, it's so easy for me to wait. I wake up every day and my feet just can't hit the ground soon enough because I want to get out the door and get this done. It's like your motivation and your why becomes so much greater when you realize that there's so many people that can be helped. Then, you get that feedback from people that you're actually helping. It's amazing. So yeah, we're trying to do a lot and we're making tons of mistakes and breaking a lot of stuff along the way, but I think that we're making a lot of headway and I think that we're making progress towards something that I think is going to help a lot of people.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

That's absolutely great. So guys, if you guys feel like, you could benefit from this, follow them. Make sure you know when the product is coming out from BioCoach and sign up, right?

Chris Irvin:

Yeah.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

So one last pillar of questions that I want to cover before we end this podcast is neurodegenerative diseases. We talked a lot about metabolism, metabolic health. Do you think that neurodegenerative diseases is just a progression where it's because our lifespan has extended over the past few centuries or so or is there something to do with metabolic health?

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, that's a really interesting way to phrase that question, and I think it is a little bit of both. And because definitely as we age, aging in general is going to lead to deterioration, but the way that we live our lives and the poor metabolic health that is kind of characterized by most humans now is what determines the rate in which we age. So we're progressing that aging process more quickly and poor metabolism is making us age in maybe unnatural ways or inefficient ways, I guess I could say. So I think that it's a little bit of both, but what we're seeing with neurodegenerative disease is irrespective of age, is that there's this metabolic component that is there and it's really one of the defining hallmarks and a lot of people have thought that genetics is the big thing or the big kind of thing recently was the amyloid plaques, and we realized that the research on that was a little bit fudged, not really what we thought it was. That was what was defining a lot of the new research that was coming out and is what was kind of determining the direction in treatment protocols and pharmaceutical development, and all these things. We realized that those things aren't as consistent as we thought they were. But one thing that is definitely consistent in these neurodegenerative conditions is poor metabolic health. We see the brain having neuroinflammation, we have ... it's insulin resistant, it's inefficiently using glucose, there's an energy deficit, all of these things and that's regardless of ... you can see that in somebody as young as 30 years old. Maybe they're not displaying very noticeable signs yet, but the metabolic component is there and you can see it in people who are 90 years old. So I don't think that age is really the best factor there, and I think I'm kind of drawing a ... I believe the study that Dr. Bikman points out is there's a study that kind of look in its epidemiology, but it talks about how insulin resistance is actually a better predictor than even age is when it comes to your risk of neurodegenerative diseases. When you look at the fact that yes, older people ... you will tend to have a larger decline in cognitive health as you get older, but the question is that because you're getting older or is it because that you're living longer with poor metabolic health, right?

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Exactly.

Chris Irvin:

If people were dying at 50 with poor metabolic health versus now dying at 90 with poor metabolic health, well, that's just 40 more years of having poor metabolic health. It's going to just be leading to continued deterioration of the brain. So there's so much work that needs to be done in this area, and I think that the recent findings with the amyloid plaque thing, I think is going to help drive more focus on this metabolic side of neurodegenerative diseases, so I hope that it will help accelerate the research and accelerate the treatment, and even the pharmaceutical development because I do think that there's a role for pharmaceuticals in this side of things if we know the right pathways and we kind of understand the metabolic side of it. So I hope that it will kind of accelerate it, but irrespective of the research that still needs to be done, what we know is that being insulin resistant and having poor metabolic health is going to be something that is a massive driver of neurodegenerative diseases, which to me, I think is the best news that I've ever heard, because when you think that it's a genetic issue and you think that there's nothing you can do about it, well, that sucks and that's scary and that's sad. When there's something you can do about it, to me, that's the most enlightening, exciting thing like, "Oh I could actually do something every day to reduce my risk or avoid this." "Even if I do have fall into that category of having a genetic predisposition for neurodegenerative diseases, I can actually choose through my decisions whether or not I'm going to let that progress and turn into something that's going to be harmful to me or I'm going to suppress it with the decisions that I'm making on a day to day basis." So not that that's an easy thing, it's not to oversimplify it and say that maintaining a lifestyle that's conducive of optimal metabolic health is easy, but it is something that's within our locus of control, which to me is a lot more exciting than thinking we have to just flip the coin and see if our genetics are going to cause us to have Alzheimer's when we get older.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Right, right, right. Yeah, thanks for the answer and I think that's definitely a very good way to look at it. Are we just extending our lifespan or are we extending our lifespans while being metabolically and healthy?

Chris Irvin:

Yeah.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

I think that's where it is, and that's what increasing the prevalence and the risk of neurodegenerative disease is. One last question about you really, you went from being an athlete to a scientist to now, a chief marketing officer of a company. What drove your decision and if you have any advice for people, who would want to be jack of all trades like yourself, what would you give them?

Chris Irvin:

Well, you just got to have ADHD, that's the thing. You just got to, not be able to focus on one thing. No, it's an interesting question because I would've never ... I'm chief marketing officer at BioCoach and I have no formal training in marketing. I did not go to school for it or anything like that. It really was kind of this natural progression. When I graduated from my graduate studies, I was working in a laboratory with Dr. Ryan Lowery and he was starting ketogenic.com and I was just a scientist at the time. My job title was exercise scientist and he kind of came to me and said, "Hey, I got this domain. I want to build an education site." He had a lot of other things he was focused on, so he was like, "Why don't you just get this off the ground?" So I had to learn social media marketing and graphic design and email marketing and SEO and blog development and web dev and all these different things. I started to realize that, "Oh, that goal I talked about early on of being able to help this research reach more people, like having understanding of that stuff and an understanding of the marketing is what's going to be able to make that possible." I can't just stand on the rooftops and shout it out and hope that I can reach a lot of people. In the age of technology, digital marketing is a way in which you can help people ... help get that message out to more people. So I think I realized that during that time. So then I decided to do my own masters, my own MBA and marketing by starting my own marketing company and running that for a couple years. And that really helped me get to learn a lot about marketing as a whole and then, I took that and was able to join the perfect keto team and work in their marketing department. I was an education manager there, really focused on the science and education, but I got to learn from some of the best marketers in the world, these people that are just incredible, like definitely get to go to a marketing room and be the dumbest person in the room, which is great because it means I get to soak up all this knowledge and through that got to gain all of these skills that then I could come to coach BioCoach ... come to a company like BioCoach that has this incredible mission and then, be able to apply that to the science background that I have and to their mission to try to help reach more people. So I think that if I'm giving advice to anybody on it, I think it's just not limiting yourself, not putting yourself in a box. It would've been a lot easier for me to say, "Well I'm a scientist at this point, so I should go get my PhD and I should work in academics." I think that would've been a limiting belief that I don't think I would've been happy with 10 years later at this point in my life. I think it's to just say ... and it's such a cheesy line, but the only thing that I've done consistently ... I make the ADHD joke because I've done so many things and I changed so many things, but the only thing that's been consistent for me has been following my passion and working hard. So while that passion is maybe changing at different frequencies, it's always going along this line of trying to help people with nutrition and health. That has just led me into this area of marketing, of being the tool to help people do that and to help get that message out to more people. So yeah, no fancy real video telling you the four best tips to become a chief marketing officer or anything like that-

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Maybe it's coming. Maybe that's the next step.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah. Yeah. It's something. I don't know if ... I think that if you're looking for marketing advice, there's a lot better marketers out there than me, that I think would be better to give you advice, but I think what we're doing over at BioCoach and what I get to do on a day to day basis is so fulfilling, and I made that comment about waking up and feet hitting the floor. I really do wake up with just this level of excitement that I know not everybody else is fortunate enough to get to experience in their lives, to wake up and feel fulfilled and be able to work a job that you're actually excited about. You go to work ... I dread going to bed at night because I can't continue working because I want us to keep focusing on this project. So that's a luxury that I try not to take for granted, and I think that the more that you do that thing of following your passion and working hard at it, the more likely you are to put yourself in a position where you can live a lifestyle like that as well.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Yeah. Thank you for the advice. You always will be good at what you love to do and then, you always love what you're good at, eventually. So try to build that relationship and build that positive cycle and feedback loop and ultimately before you realize it, you are doing so well at something you already love. Let's wrap this up with one last question. I know I said last question a couple of times. What is health and modern nutrition to you?

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, that's such a great question and I think the modern part, I think is what's really important about that. I think nowadays we have this ... we're seeing this big ancestral movement, which I think is great. I think the idea of like, trying to live more our ancestors lived is generally beneficial and probably going to get us closer to living how a human is supposed to live. So it's going to get us closer to optimal human health. We also have to realize that we live in our modern society. We live in a much different environment than what our ancestors lived in. So health is different now than it was back then. Exogenous ketones weren't necessary for our ancestors a thousand years ago, but they have a lot of utility now. These little biohacking things, like wearing blue light blockers didn't matter when blue light didn't exist. When we didn't have cell phones and things like that. So I think the modern component of that is huge. It's like ... it's we have to find how to ... if you have the luxury of buying 100 acres of land and living in the country off the grid and removing yourself from society, that's great. Some people have a desire for that and also, have the resources to be able to do it, that's cool too, but there's also a lot of people that live in the heart of New York City and that's where ... and they love it and that's what they do and that is a lot different than that. That doesn't have to mean that you're unhealthy for living in those areas. So I think health in a modern world means figuring out what it takes to combat the things that we're ... to both combat the things that we're faced with today that we weren't before, and to integrate the one ... or I guess two things, integrate what is still beneficial from the ancestral way of living. Then, take advantage of the new things that we have today that are so great. Our ancestors didn't have the ability to isolate these compounds that can be super great for now. They couldn't isolate lion's mane and be able to take that and stuff, but that doesn't mean that it's not an awesome thing that we are able to do today. So I think that's the idea is just adapting to this new world that we live in and finding a way to live with optimal health despite of that.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. It has been a really great pleasure as usual, Chris. I know I've been on your podcast. We do IG live every Friday morning, 10:30 AM PST. We talk a lot about metabolism and we still manage to go over one hour on this podcast. So yeah guys, please join us on IG live and we do answer questions live as well. Chris and I are also working on a book together soon, more details to come. So exciting to work with you and it's been a pleasure.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much for having me on Latt. Yeah, really looking forward to doing our IG live tomorrow and going to have to bring you on for round two I think on the Keto Answers Podcast because it's time for me to pick your brain again, so we'll have to do another episode over there.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

I got a prep before that and before you go, I want to really open the platform up for you to tell our listeners where can they find you and what would you like to promote in your website and all that.

Chris Irvin:

Yeah, so I'm on all social media platforms as the Ketologist. Instagram is kind of the primary one. I think I'm on TikTok, but I'm not doing anything on there. I think I'm just too old for that, but I'm primarily on Instagram. That's where I put out a lot of my educational content. I have a newsletter that is the Thinking Health Newsletter, that you can be found on Substacks. You can find that through the link in my bio. That's where I do a lot of ... it's kind of a hybrid of nutrition with philosophy. So there's kind of this mindset component to nutrition. I have the Keto Answers Podcast you can find on any platform that does podcasting. Then, we talked about BioCoach today, so biocoach.io is our website as well as our social media handle. We're also putting out a lot of really awesome content. We have a great content team over that's putting out a ton of great information. We have a blog on our website, so even if you don't decide to subscribe to the platform, we would love for you to take advantage of the educational resources that we're putting out there.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

Amazing. All right, well, thank you very much for this episode and I will speak to you soon.

Chris Irvin:

All right, sounds good Latt. Thanks a lot.

Dr. Latt Mansor:

If you have enjoyed the episode, please like, share and subscribe, and if you have any comments or feedback, please leave it in the comments section. You can find us at HVMN on all social media platform and myself, @lattmansor on all social media platform as well. The HVMN Podcast and myself are powered by Ketone-IQ, the most effective way for you to elevate your blood ketone levels for optimal, cognitive and physical performance, as well as metabolic health. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.

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