---
title: 'Eating for Better Sleep & Foods that Improve Metabolic Health | Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=jjaFnKtytqI'
video_id: 'jjaFnKtytqI'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 7025
---

# Eating for Better Sleep & Foods that Improve Metabolic Health | Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge

> Source: [Eating for Better Sleep & Foods that Improve Metabolic Health | Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge](https://youtube.com/watch?v=jjaFnKtytqI)

## Summary



## Transcript

What was it that they ate that day that
impacted how they slept that night? And
we found that higher intakes of fiber
were associated with more deep sleep,
higher intakes of saturated fat, less
deep sleep, and then more refined
carbohydrates, simple sugars, more
arousals. You're not getting deep
slow-wave sleep, REM sleep as much as
you would otherwise.
>> Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
where we discuss science and [music]
science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and ophthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. My guest
today is Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a
professor of nutritional medicine at the
Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia
University School of Medicine.
Today we discuss how you eat impacts
your sleep, and how you sleep impacts
what you eat, as well as how your body
utilizes food depending on how you
slept. Now, we've talked about food, and
we've talked about sleep many times
before on this podcast, but Dr.
St-Onge's work is unique because she
runs one of the few laboratories in the
world to look at the bidirectional
relationship between sleep and food. For
instance, you'll learn how even modest
sleep deprivation increases hunger, but
differently in men and women. In men, it
happens to increase the hormones that
drive the desire to eat, whereas in
women, it reduces naturally made
peptides such as GLP, which suppress
hunger. Today's discussion gets into the
specific actionable items that you can
do to improve your sleep and the way
that your body handles food and hunger.
We talk about the role of sleep in
regulating blood sugar, cortisol levels,
overall metabolism, and cardiometabolic
health. Now, because Dr. St-Onge's
research focuses on sleep and nutrition,
but she's also spent a significant
amount of time studying how specific
nutrients impact overall health and not
just sleep, we also talk about that. I'm
certain that you'll come away from
today's episode with a lot of new
information you haven't heard elsewhere,
as well as with the intention to make
small or perhaps even large changes in
behavior and nutritional choices that
the science tell us can significantly
improve your sleep, your metabolism, and
overall health. Before we begin, I'd
like to emphasize that this podcast is
separate from my teaching and research
roles at Stanford. It is, however, part
of my desire and effort to bring
zero-cost to consumer information about
science and science-related tools to the
general public. In keeping with that
theme, today's episode does include
sponsors. And now for my discussion with
Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge. Dr.
Marie-Pierre St-Onge, welcome.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Sleep impacts how and what we eat and
how and what we eat impacts sleep.
That's a different perspective than I
think most people take. I think most
people are familiar, however, with
not getting the best night's sleep,
maybe feeling like their
impulsivity to eat quote-unquote bad
foods is a little higher, and then also
hopefully familiar with
having a great night's sleep and feeling
like we're just kind of in control in a
different way.
Maybe you could just kind of share for
us what's really going on beneath that
experience and when subtle or
not-so-subtle chronic sleep loss, so not
an all-nighter necessarily, but you
know, 45 minutes less here, 90 minutes
less there, etc., etc., how that plays
out in terms of our nutrition, and then
we'll go in from the nutrition side to
sleep.
>> Sure. So, there's a couple of questions
that you have in there, actually, about
the extent of sleep loss and how that
influences your food intake, what we see
in the general population versus what we
do in the lab to address causality. So,
let me start with, you know, the
population-based studies, right? So,
when I started being interested in in
sleep, it was coming from an obesity
angle. My PhD is in nutrition. I trained
as a postdoc in
body composition, obesity research. And
we were getting a lot of information
from population-based studies that
people who sleep too little
have a higher body mass index than
people who get adequate amount of sleep.
Then it became there is a higher
prevalence of people with obesity in
this short sleep
uh group.
Then studies evaluating changes over
time
seeing that people who don't sleep
enough tend to gain more weight. There
was a famous uh Nurses' Health Study
that I really like to cite uh when I
give talks that was published in 2006
where uh they tracked nurses over 14
years and those nurses that reported
sleeping 5-6 hours had much higher rate
of weight gain over that 14-15 year
period than the nurses who had reported
sleeping 7 or 8 hours per night.
So those are observations that we get
from large-scale population studies,
cohorts.
But, you know, what they what those
studies tell us is that things are
happening
at a point in time or may influence
something that's happening over time,
but not necessarily that one causes the
other, right? So I started um my work in
this field trying to uncover whether
sleeping too little actually causes
weight gain.
And so in my opinion, because I was
coming from a lab where I trained in the
measurement of energy balance, so how
much energy how much energy you eat
versus how much energy you burn, I was
like, well, if sleep leads to obesity,
leads to weight gain, it has to impact
this energy balance
regulation. So it's either that we eat
more than we should
or that we exercise less. We burn less
or we
eat more or maybe it's a combination of
the two. Let's try this out and and see.
So my first my first study my first NIH
grant the big R01s, you know, was to
look at exactly at this. So we had
people who had adequate sleep
and we brought them in the lab and we
asked them in a crossover design. So
half of the participants started out
sleeping adequately. So they we gave
them a 9-hour time in bed opportunity
or we asked them to sleep too little. So
they had a 4-hour time in bed
opportunity, very short. But we did this
for 5 nights.
And then we took all sorts of
measurements in a controlled feeding
condition. So for the first 3 days, we
told our we had our participants eat the
exact same thing regardless of how much
time in bed they slept they got at
night.
And then we measured appetite regulating
hormones. We did neuroimaging
uh to really get at isolating the impact
of sleep duration on appetite regulating
hormones and and um
neuronal responses to foods. And then
on the last day, we let them self-select
their food intake and we measured that
in the lab. From that study, we showed
that in men specifically, uh we saw an
increase in ghrelin
in response to the short sleep. So this
hormone that triggers food intake.
In women, we saw a reduction in GLP-1,
interestingly enough. Glucagon-like
peptide-1. So the satiety hormone was
reduced as a result of short sleep in
women. And then when we measured their
food intake in the lab, they ate 300
calories more in the short sleep
condition than the
when they got their regular adequate
sleep of at least 7 and 1/2 hours, a
little more than that
per night.
Then you were asking about, you know,
brain responses.
We looked at neuronal responses to food
stimuli.
We found upregulation in reward centers
of the brain
in the context of sleep restriction
compared to the context of adequate
sleep. So all together really building a
case that when you don't sleep enough at
night, you have both physiological
signals to eat more for men or
not stop eating in women that lead to
greater food intake that's also could be
impacted by
just pleasurable centers that are
activated to a greater extent as a
result of insufficient sleep.
>> Amazing. This sex-specific split in the
data, if I have it correctly, that when
men are sleep-deprived, so getting 4
hours per night,
the
signals that drive appetitive desire to
eat are higher. In women, it's more that
the break
on eating, on satiety, is reduced.
>> Exactly.
>> Okay. As far as I know, the GLP pathways
are not
divergent by by sex, but of course I'm
not deeply versed in that literature. Is
there any evidence that GLPs are
functioning different in men and women
like circadian wise or anything like
that or this just this was just a
fortuitous outcome or as I say a
incidental outcome?
>> This was an incidental outcome. We
really didn't know what to expect. We
didn't really know at all that
we'd see sex differences
>> Mhm.
>> because there had been prior studies and
prior studies had shown that ghrelin was
increased as a result of sleep
restriction. They also showed that
leptin was reduced as a result of sleep
restriction.
And when we got our data, we analyzed
our data with
all of our participants together.
And there was no effect.
>> [clears throat]
>> And that was surprising, and people
would say, "Don't you know? Don't you
know sleep restriction
increases ghrelin?"
Like,
"Well, I guess I don't know because in
our study it doesn't." But
then we saw these sex-specific
differences, and it made sense then that
in the full sample, when we had an equal
number of men and women, we saw no
effect on ghrelin because there was no
effect
in women, but there was an effect in
men, which was reproducing what others
had found because all the prior studies
had been done in men only.
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Whenever I'm sleep deprived, though four
or five hours of sleep I consider sleep
deprived. I used to pull all-nighters
years ago. Now, I avoid them at all
costs. But, whenever I have that
experience,
I feel like
my whole body to some extent is in a low
level of pain.
It's a kind of it's like central ache.
Like you just And and I wonder uh
extent to which people eat to overcome
like to kind of quell the the pain of
sleep deprivation. Maybe people react
differently to sleep deprivation. Maybe
their subjective experience of it is is
very different. But, what do you think
is happening in that uh in that short
relatively short amount of sleep that's
missing? What is getting reset? Is it
neural? Is it endocrine? It's obviously
all those things, but what do you think
is the the switch that allows people to
enter a a day in a in a much more
healthy fashion or or a sick essentially
in a slightly sick fashion.
>> In our study, it was actually a 50%
reduction in sleep because when they had
9 hours sleep opportunity, they slept
around 7 and 1/2. And when they had the
They were all people who had screened to
sleep at least 7 measured by actigraphy.
So, and on average they get 7 and 1/2.
And in the sleep restricted condition,
they got on average about 3 hours and 50
minutes.
>> So, it's like staying up late working on
a deadline then trying to catch an early
flight.
>> Yeah.
>> brutal.
>> It's pretty brutal. Yeah. And that was
maintained, you know, they had 5 nights
of that. So, that
>> 5 nights of that.
>> Yeah.
>> Were they coming unglued mentally, too?
That I think I would feel terrible after
that kind of stretch.
>> That Yeah, they were done. Like there's
no way anyone would want to keep keep
coming for that. But they were in the
lab. They were under supervision the
whole time. We didn't let them go out on
their own.
Uh so, they were well supervised to make
sure that nothing
nothing would happen to them.
>> No naps?
>> No naps. Nope.
Nope. Uh but so, what happens is I think
there's some
subconscious need to to eat more when
you're sleep deprived. There's also, you
know, there's a thermic effect of of
food, right? So, it gives you a jolt of
energy to eat something. So, people know
that. You eat it wakes you up in a way.
You know, neuronal signaling that that
enhances uh pleasurable and reward
centers of the brain where, you know, if
when also fatigue sets in and now it's
like do you really have want to have
this
conversation with yourself about what to
choose at the buffet table?
You know, it
there's fatigue. And uh and others have
shown also that sleepiness tends to
correlate with all of this. That there's
these
triggers for more pleasurable food
consumption with um with the sleep
restriction. It's been reproduced.
There's been so many studies
and they all you know, agree to to the
extent of overeating. You know, a
meta-analysis showed 250 to 400 calories
of overeating.
>> Which might not sound like much, but
when you start layering that in day
after day and you think, you know, 3,500
excess calories more or less for a pound
of body weight and then you start when
people accumulate that over time if
they're in a night shift condition or
new parents or tending to a sick
relative or just final exams. Like it
it's a real thing.
>> It's a real thing. Naima Covassin in
2022 published a paper where
they had sleep restriction about 5 hours
per night versus 7 and 1/2 hours per
night for 2 weeks and participants
gained half a kilo in a 2-week period.
So, you do nothing and you just you
know, sleep less and gain gain almost
a pound in 2 weeks.
>> It strikes me that, you know, for a long
time in the stress research, the idea
was when people are stressed they reach
for kind of quote unquote comfort foods,
carbohydrate and typically starch fat,
starch fat sugar combination foods to
comfort them and and the the just-so
story was always that
okay, well, you know, cortisol's main
role is to deploy glucose and so people
are doing this as a way to bring excess
energy and and it all kind of fits
together. What is the relationship
between these forms of sleep deprivation
that you work on and stress? Is it
really a way of of I'm not saying just
inducing stress cuz I think sleep is its
own thing, but it's stressful just to be
less than adequately rested independent
of the things coming at you in life,
right? Is what you're studying stress?
>> So, if you're thinking about
physiological stress measured by
cortisol levels in that study, actually
cortisol wasn't
changed.
>> In the short sleep.
>> in the
>> sleep.
>> Tell me more about that. I'm fascinated
by circadian rhythms and cortisol. So,
what is it what is that what is that
mean?
>> There was no difference between the two
conditions adequate sleep or short sleep
on cortisol levels in our
>> For 5 days of sleep restriction at
basically 4 hours a night. So, cortisol
still peaking in the in the morning,
still dropping in the evening.
>> Yeah.
>> Wow, that's very surprising to me.
>> I don't know. I don't know if it's the
contacts of, you know, being in the lab
where everything's safe, taken care of
for them. There's nothing outside to
aggravate
>> Mhm.
>> this. [clears throat]
So, I don't know. Maybe when you're in
the context of sleep restriction, but
also dealing with
your daily life
>> Mhm.
>> you're needing to take care of your
kids, they're needing to get to work,
needing to do all of the activities of
daily living, maybe then that becomes,
you know, the the added stressful.
>> So, the message is if you
suffer
less than adequate sleep, get someone to
take care of it.
>> Everything else.
>> You better be [laughter] in a spa.
>> Exactly. Exactly.
>> [clears throat]
>> No, I and I'm not challenging the
result. I just find it really
interesting. I would have thought that
basal cortisol levels would would go
awry.
>> Well, in that study also, we didn't see
any effect on glucose or insulin.
Nothing.
Nothing.
The curves were superimposable.
>> Wild.
>> They were eating the exact same food at
the exact same time, exact same
quantity. The only thing we changed was
the amount of sleep opportunity they got
at night. So, to me, this means that
it's a combination of different things
that causes the metabolic abnormalities
that we notice in free-living
populations. People aren't isolated,
they're not in a box where they're not
sleeping enough, and they're choosing to
eat higher-fat, higher-sugar,
higher-salt poorer diet
that then triggers a worsening and maybe
compounded by the lack of sleep even
worsening of of those cardiometabolic
outcomes because we did a follow-up
study to this this severe sleep
restriction study. So the reason why we
did that was because exactly for this
reason because we did not find any
adverse impact on glucose or insulin or
lipid profile.
And we're like so what is it then? Why
is it that in population-based studies
we find that people who sleep too little
have higher risk of cardiovascular
disease, higher risk of hypertension,
higher blood pressure, higher risk of
type 2 diabetes. So
because we had seen that food choices
were different that they ate a diet that
was higher in calories, higher
in fat and saturated fat, we thought
maybe if you're in a free-living
situation
that's when you start to see those
cardiometabolic outcomes because it's
compounded by
maybe
more sedentary behavior and
alterations in in food choices and and
diet.
So the follow-up study then was to
recruit good sleepers, people who sleep
at least 7 hours per night verified by
actigraphy, who answer on questionnaires
that their sleep quality is good. And
then to take these people and say okay
now you're either going to continue your
excellent sleep or
you're going to now
go to bed an hour and a half later so
that you get an hour and a half
reduction in sleep. Because when we
screen people to sleep at least 7 hours
per night, they sleep about 7 and a
half.
And reducing by an hour and a half gets
to 6 hours which is short sleep,
insufficient
on average what people who don't get
enough sleep get?
>> They're missing a full sleep cycle.
>> Yeah, pretty much. And
uh and they can sustain that for
prolonged periods because that's what
people report in in population-based
studies. And now, when we did that,
we saw that insulin resistance was
increased after 6 weeks of sleep
restriction compared to adequate sleep.
We saw insulin sensitivity was reduced.
It was worse, actually, in
postmenopausal women compared to
premenopausal women. We saw blood
pressure uh was increased. Uh so, those
cardiometabolic outcomes were adversely
impacted in free-living mild sustained
sleep restriction for 6 weeks. 6 weeks
was something else, also.
>> [laughter]
>> It was uh it was tough.
>> I can only imagine.
Wow, okay. Because my mind always
goes to, all right, well, we wake up in
the morning because of an increase in
cortisol, that's circadian, and it's not
related to sleep, per se, it just kind
of overlaps with the end of the night's
sleep. If that's independent of sleep,
and cortisol drives glucose release, we
know this. At least in the first study
you described, glucose levels weren't
altered. You said it was isocaloric, so
people were it's not like they're eating
more. They're the hormones that are
driving the desire to eat more are
elevated.
>> But we didn't let them eat more, yeah.
>> Right. But you didn't let them. I think
that's a a key thing that you you
pointed out before, but I think we want
to uh underscore. And then, of course,
the GLP
uh levels in women being reduced, it's
not that that they were able to eat, as
we say, ad libitum, and then they happen
to eat more, but they gained weight. So,
what's kind of the action end of things
that causes them to gain weight if
they're basically in an isocaloric diet?
And I have a I have a I have an idea
what it might be, but I'm I'm curious
what the answer is.
>> Yes, I think they're they're more
sedentary.
>> During the day, less
>> Right.
>> Less spontaneous activity. Because we
also did a study to look at energy
expenditure. That's really difficult
actually to measure, in my opinion,
energy expenditure. There's multiple
components to energy expenditure.
Uh but we did a study where this was a
small study. We were enrolled only women
for that, and we have a metabolic
chamber
>> [snorts]
>> at Columbia where that we were able to
use for this. Uh so this small room in
which we keep people, and we measure
minute by minute oxygen consumption and
carbon dioxide production. And we were
able to show that energy expenditure is
actually increased in the context of
sleep restriction in the metabolic
chamber.
>> [snorts]
>> Because
it's more costly energetically to remain
awake
than to fall asleep.
So energy expenditure when participants
were awake was identical in both
[clears throat] conditions, regardless
of how much sleep they got the night
before.
>> So is fidgeting, movement? Cuz we've
talked before on this podcast about the
non-exercise thermogenesis. It's a big
number. I mean, you people who fidget a
lot, bounce their knee a lot. I mean,
sometimes these people are burning 1,500
calories more per day. And everyone
goes, "Oh my god, how could that
possibly be?" But I mean, that's a lot.
That's at the extreme. But it is kind of
interesting to observe people out in the
world. And you sometimes see that people
who are very, very lean, very let's just
say thin and lean. Nowadays, who knows
because of the GLPs, etc. But they tend
to have a lot of spontaneous movement.
They tend to stand up quickly. They tend
to walk quickly. Well, you're from New
York, so everyone there walks faster
than out here. But it's a real thing,
you know? Whereas some people, like me,
are kind of more middle of the curve.
But you know, I sit a bit more still
unless I'm very caffeinated. These
things add up over time in ways that I
think most people underestimate.
>> Yeah, so for us it was about 5% of
energy
increased. But it it and it it ended up
being about 90 calories, nowhere close
to the 300 calories that uh
more of intake they they got over a over
a day in the prior study. So it's still
an imbalance towards a positive energy
balance when we do the math.
But there is an increase in um in energy
expenditure.
Again, in the confines of metabolic
chamber, which you know, for most people
is the equivalent of the size of their
bathroom.
>> Right.
>> Right? Where you have like a bed, a
table, and a sink, a toilet, that's it.
So you can't can't do much in there.
>> But you can do studies, quote unquote,
out in the wild with um actometry or
what or uh
>> Yeah, digraphy, doubly labeled water.
Yes.
>> A little while ago I saw a study that
said that if you are one night sleep
deprived, like you get one or two hours
less
uh sleep than normally
you would get to feel rested, that it's
actually advantageous to exercise
because it offsets some of the um
increase in inflammation.
>> Mhm.
>> But then if you're going multiple nights
that way, exercising on a regular basis
when sleep deprived, it just sets up a
um susceptibility to illness,
susceptibility to injury, and so forth.
How much of what you observe in the
under the conditions of sleep
deprivation do you think are downstream
or upstream of this thing that we just
call inflammation? Like is this just
like a body wide response and there are
a bunch of things that have gone awry
and and so like a bunch of systems are
dysregulated or can we pinpoint, okay,
when you're sleep deprived,
this is what this is what's happening.
Cuz I think if if women knew that their
GLPs were down when they're down on
sleep, so that they should expect that
they would feel less satiety. If men
knew that their ghrelin levels were
elevated when they're down on sleep,
that they're going to feel hun-
hungrier.
And we have a pretty big prefrontal
cortex, most people anyway, and we can
intervene simply on the basis of
knowledge.
>> I think that's what's empowering. And I
think about this sometimes, too, when
I'm
when I'm
thinking about, you know,
my my diet at times, right? I'm like,
"I Do I really want to eat this or is it
because I really didn't sleep last
night?" Right? So, you can you can make
you can ask yourself these questions.
Take a pause and say, "Okay,
do I really want, you know, dessert?
Or
is it just that I'm tired and, you know,
I should just
I'm fine. I don't need it."
>> Mhm. [clears throat]
>> So, if you if you step back and think
that maybe part of it is because you
didn't sleep well the night before, then
you can
make your appropriate choices, right?
Say "Okay
I probably don't need the the extra
calories right now.
Or or maybe you say, "You know what?
I had a really bad night last night. And
those extra calories,
I don't really care because they're
going to make me feel good and I need
some pick-me-up."
But, you know,
that's it Oh, that's all the choices to
make, right? You know, because mood
comes into comes into play, as well. So,
>> Well, ultimately, that brings us to the
the other direction of the equation,
right? How does what we eat impact our
sleep? This is something that I think
most people have heard about in the
context of try not to eat too close to
bedtime.
>> Mhm.
>> Um this is an active debate in many
households, actually. Some people seem
to be fine eating close to bedtime and
sleeping and even if they track their
sleep. Other people, it really disrupts
their sleep. I'm interested in both the
timing of food intake relative to sleep,
but also the content of the food and how
it impacts sleep.
>> Mhm.
>> What's known about that, either from
your work or from other work?
>> When we started this conversation, I was
telling you about these population-based
studies, you know, cross-sectional
data where two things happen at the same
time and you
you know, you you don't really know
causality. They happen at the same time,
and I think early on
in this field we started thinking about
sleep as the promoter of food intake or
as a sleep causing changes in diet,
exercise,
but didn't really think that maybe it's
the other way around or maybe the other
way around is just as plausible.
So I started thinking about that and
said, "Well, what if what if we took the
other approach? What if we looked at
diet and examined how diet influenced
future sleep?"
And my first paper in this field was
using data from the Multi-Ethnic Study
of Atherosclerosis. It's actually
kind of hard to find good cohorts that
have good nutrition data,
good sleep data, and data over over
years, right? So MESA, Multi-Ethnic
Study of
Atherosclerosis, is one of those great
cohorts that we have in the here in the
US that has all of the above. So I
paired up with a colleague of mine,
Susan Redline in Boston, and
she's principal investigator on their
sleep ancillary study, and we asked the
question of diet quality and its impact
on sleep duration, insomnia symptoms,
and we found that having a diet that
more closely aligns with the
Mediterranean diet was associated with
better
probability of having adequate sleep and
reduced
insomnia symptoms in this cohort. So
then it launched a whole
field of study really to to keep looking
at this, and we've looked at this in
different studies and different cohorts.
Actually,
earlier this year we published data from
the Women's Health Initiative, another
large large cohort with good diet data
and and sleep information. We took a
really really nice approach in this
longitudinal analysis. I don't know.
Usually when we do longitudinal studies,
we exclude people who have the condition
at baseline, right? So if you're trying
to see this factor at baseline, how does
it influence hypertension 10 years
later? You usually exclude people who
have hypertension at baseline because
you want to see the development of
hypertension. In this case, we're
looking at insomnia symptoms, but
insomnia is one of those conditions
that's not necessarily
static. It resolves, right? So you can
have insomnia and then a few years later
not have insomnia.
Or you can
not have insomnia now and develop
insomnia. So what we did is we broke our
down our participants into two groups.
The people who had
no insomnia at baseline
and at 3 years follow-up,
participants who had insomnia at
baseline but not at 3 years follow-up.
So they were in the healthful sleep,
improving sleep. And then the other
group was all those women who had
insomnia at baseline and at 3 years, and
no insomnia at baseline but insomnia at
3 years. So they were the persistent
insomnia, progressing towards poor sleep
group. And we found that
the women who had a diet that was more
closely aligned to the Mediterranean
diet, but we also looked at
an American type of diet profile called
the DASH diet, the Dietary Approaches to
Stop Hypertension. Women who had a
dietary profile closer to those two
types of diets, healthful diets, were
less likely to have hypertension
insomnia at 3 years.
>> And the DASH diet is what?
>> Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension
developed to
reduce prevent hypertension, reduce
blood pressure in people by increasing
intakes of fruits and vegetables, nuts
and seeds, consuming low-fat dairy, more
plant-based types of diet and and can be
has been tested in a low salt or regular
salt profile.
>> How did those work out? I'm just
curious. Do you recall if the low salt,
high salt
condition
>> There's salt sensitivity, so there are
some people who are very sensitive to
salt and so having a reduced salt diet
will really improve their blood
pressure.
>> Mhm.
>> Others not so much, but the DASH diet,
regardless of its salt content, did
better than the equivalent non-DASH.
Which would be your average, you know,
American diet.
>> Whatever that is.
>> Yeah, higher in saturated fats and
sugars and
>> Which seems to be changing now because
of the GLPs. I feel like that's, you
know,
maybe that's a skewed perspective, but I
feel like the
the typical American diet is it might
not be changing so much in content, but
in volume it seems like people are
eating less. Certainly the snack food
companies, from what I understand, are
struggling. Alcohol companies, that's a
different issue, but that they're
certainly have
sales are way, way down, but it seems
like people's appetites are down.
>> Well, GLP-1s will do that, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And we were talking about this the other
day here, uh
how many Americans have tried a GLP. The
estimates are anywhere from like one in
seven, some people say it's it's more.
>> Mhm.
>> pretty incredible.
>> pretty high.
>> But this is interesting. So, how people
eat impacts their sleep, I'm sure the
listeners and I also am thinking, okay,
but people who are eating a
Mediterranean diet, right? Olive oils,
fish, you know, fruits, vegetables,
they are probably more apt to walk more,
exercise more, socialize more, all of
How do you separate out the variables in
a study like that?
>> Uh well, so So population-based studies
we adjust for a bunch of covariates,
right? We have all these questionnaires
that are given out to people asking them
about their race, occupation,
socio-demographic,
socioeconomic status, and then we adjust
we adjust for um different illnesses
that they may have, depression, uh
physical activity level,
uh
So we try to take all this into into
consideration. Obviously, we there's
always unmeasured factors that you can't
control for, social interactions like
you
um you mentioned. It's usually not
captured very well. It's not something
that we we can adjust for. But one thing
that we did in my lab uh going back to
that original study
was to look at uh
how diet influence sleep at night in the
participants in our inpatient study.
So we took
the 9-hour time in bed opportunity
phase, only that one.
>> [snorts]
>> In the 4-hour time in bed opportunity,
participants were very efficient. There
was not much variability in sleep
duration in in that phase. They slept as
much as they could in that 4-hour
opportunity.
But in the 9 hours, there's variability
there. Some people got more or less. So
we wanted to see if food intake was
related to their sleep at night. That
study
we had polysomnography assessments of
sleep every single night.
Like I mentioned, we had uh controlled
diet initially, and then we let them
self-select their food intake. So we
took a very systematic approach to
evaluating how diet could influence
sleep in that study.
We said first of all
was the diet that they chose different
than the diet that we gave them.
First step, right? It was. So they ate
almost 450 calories more. They ate 33%
more saturated fat.
Uh little less protein, I believe, a
little more carbohydrates. Not much, but
it it was different. So, I was like,
"Okay, so so there's difference between
the diets." Okay, now,
was their sleep at night different
when they were eating the diet that we
fed them compared to when they
self-selected?
And it did it was different. It wasn't
different in terms of duration, but it
was different in time it took them to
fall asleep, which was
almost over 70% longer to fall asleep
when they self-selected their diet.
And their slow wave sleep, so deep
sleep, was shorter. I think it was about
23 20% shorter
when they self-selected their diet
compared to what we had given them.
>> Was timing of food intake impacted
because when I think of what impacts
what reduces
slow wave deep sleep, it's eating too
close to bedtime.
>> Mhm. So,
we did not take that into consideration
in that study. We didn't We didn't look
at that. We had their
their food intake profile and didn't
specifically look in that
phase when when was their last eating
period. But it could have been different
than
in the controlled feeding condition
because in the controlled feeding
condition, they had set meals at
specific times. But they all went to bed
at 10:00 p.m.
Then the other question was, "Okay,
what was it that they ate that day that
impacted how they slept that night?"
And we found that higher intakes of
fiber were associated with more deep
sleep.
Higher intakes of saturated fat, less
deep sleep. And then more refined
carbohydrates, simple sugars, more
arousals. So, when we talk about
arousals in the context of
polysomnography, it doesn't necessarily
mean full-on waking up or awakening. It
really means going from a deeper to
lighter stage of sleep, so you may still
be asleep throughout the night, but
you're not getting deep slow-wave sleep,
REM sleep as much as you would
uh otherwise.
>> Do you create a buffer between your last
bite of food and the time you go to
sleep, you personally?
>> Me personally? Yes.
>> Is it an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours?
>> I personally like to eat my last meal at
least 3 hours before going to bed. And I
know there's variability there.
Different people have different uh
tolerance. You mentioned right before
that uh
you know, some people may be later
chronotypes, but you
what we know
is that eating earlier
is better overall. For cardiometabolic
health, eating earlier is better. Me
personally, I feel I feel better by
eating earlier. If I eat too close to
bedtime I
I get I get hot.
>> Right. Yeah, it's [laughter] a it's a
thermic effect of food.
>> don't want to be cooling off when we go
to sleep.
>> Exactly. Exactly.
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There seems to be something asymmetric
about sleep
requirements in my experience, and I
don't think I'm alone in this.
Whereby
if I go to bed at
10:00 p.m., I get into bed at 9:30, fall
asleep at 10:00, I need about 6 and 1/2,
maybe 7 hours to feel completely rested.
That's how long I'll sleep, wake up
without an alarm, feeling great.
If I go to bed at midnight,
I find I could sleep till
9:00 and still not feel completely
rested. So, there's some weird sleep
inertia stuff going on there, etc.
The old adage is every hour before
midnight is worth two after, but is
there any real data to support that, or
is this just all subjective and
conjecture?
>> I'm not sure there's data to support
that. I haven't seen anything. But, what
I can say from what you're saying is
that if you usually go to bed at 9:30,
10:00, and then all of a sudden you go
to bed at midnight, now you're kind of
out of line with your personal circadian
system, right? And it's always harder to
to get a good night's sleep if you're
not going with your internal clock or
your internal circadian
preference.
Um this is what happens with shift
workers, right? For example, they they
they're not sleeping at night, They're
trying to sleep during the day. They're
trying to sleep during the day where
their melatonin is low or it should be
when it's high. So, they're fighting
their circadian system. So,
yes, they should they should be getting
7 hours, but they're not getting 7 hours
because the body's not designed to be
sleeping during the daytime hours. Plus,
then you have you know, everything else,
right? That
>> Right. The light, the stress.
>> noise, the kids, the whatever life that
that happens during the daytime when
everybody else is awake and you're
trying to sleep.
>> Yeah, the only thing I can think of
that's an advantage to being nocturnal
is the quiet.
>> [laughter]
>> I used to sometimes shift to a nocturnal
schedule during holidays in graduate
school when everyone go home because I
lived my my parents lived relatively
close to where I went to graduate
school, so I could afford to just just
go home for Christmas, right? Just that
day or a couple of days and everyone
else had to travel. So, I could invert
my schedule. It just kind of drifted
that way.
>> Yeah.
>> I promise that's the only advantage of
going to bed at 4:00 a.m. and
sleeping until, you know, 3:00 p.m. at
least for typical people. Your brain
gets into a kind of weird space when
you're inverted from the rest of the
world.
>> Well, the things you do when you're a
grad student. I would be the opposite,
right? I I'd wake up at 4:00 a.m. and
then study because I felt like all of
the hours of studying before the sun
rose were like extras.
>> Interesting.
>> Extra time for me.
>> extra. You felt like you were extra
sharp at those hours?
>> Extra sharp. I could study and then, you
know, I got that time done and then, you
know, breakfast, but then I crashed
later in the afternoon.
>> the problem. The 1:00 2:00 p.m. crash.
Um, has your work explored napping at
all? I'm a believer in naps and
non-sleep deep breaths, yoga nidra type
things, meditation. Do naps factor into
this diet, nutrition, hunger equation?
>> So, we I done research on napping per
se. For me, there a lot going on with
napping. I don't think we have very good
data to be able to say what's
appropriate about napping. What we do
know is that
you don't want to nap too close to
bedtime because
you want to build sleep pressure
throughout the day. And if you're
dissipating the sleep pressure, the
sleep need too close to bedtime, then
you're not going to be able to fall
asleep when time
time comes to go to bed at your usual
hour.
And then, you know, you get into this
vicious cycle, and it's it's not
helpful. But, you know, there are some
studies that say, "Well, what should you
do if you can't sleep enough at night
and you're feeling tired?" You know,
should you sleep?
The
recommendations are that you should make
it a short nap, 30 minutes, no more than
an hour, early enough in the day, if
possible, so that you can have
sufficient time to rebuild that sleep
pressure to be able to fall back asleep
well when time comes.
But then there's also this this whole
question about
what's a nap for?
Right? Like why are you sleepy? Of
course, if you if you pulled an
all-nighter, it's easy to to know. But
if if you had sufficient sleep or
sufficient opportunity for sleep at
night and you're waking up and you're
not feeling refreshed, and not feeling
like you had good quality sleep, and
then you're not able to maintain
alertness throughout the day, and you
need a nap,
I think you should you should check to
see like what's going on at night. Like
why are you not getting that good good
enough sleep?
>> I'm chuckling because my post-doc
advisor sparked this huge debate. It was
a big lab. And we had a couple of people
in the lab who liked to nap at their
desk. These were people that could just
like put their head down and and nap at
their desk in the afternoon. You'd walk
in, they'd be napping, and then they'd
wake up and keep working. Everyone was
working very hard. And he had this
theory
uh
that if you're napping, it's because
you're sleep deprived. That like napping
is unhealthy, you know. And it it
sparked a big debate. And people because
it were a bunch of nerds, people bring
data in like, "No, you know, at the
sleep lab at Stanford says that naps can
be healthy." And I think it you what you
just described summarizes I think that
the takeaway. I'm a believer in the
short nap. But but I'm one of these
people that can sleep anywhere, anytime,
which may be reflective of sleep
deprivation.
>> Maybe, yeah.
>> Do you find that like when you're going
to design a study or when you're going
to like really work, like this 4:00 a.m.
time, that it's a time of calm or are
you like a lazy Are you Do you feel like
your mind is moving fast or you're kind
of in this like flow zone or whatever
you want to call it?
>> I'm very focused.
>> Mhm.
>> Uh, very efficient.
So, I try to be really attentive at my
task. I try to take take breaks once in
a while, but uh
most of the time it's it's very
efficient.
Get to the task and get it done.
>> Earlier you were talking about biking in
the work. You strike me as somebody who
I always think of people who I'm always
impressed by colleagues like this that
their life is kind of like a step
function. They wake up and it's like
they're into the day and then it's down,
right? Yeah. Interesting. I think some
of us are more like this.
>> But I think it's important to have a
little bit of both though. I think it's
important to have downtime,
you know,
speed time,
to to not just be go go go go go. Like
you were asking about
my personal you know,
actions. And
at one point
I was running a lot for exercise.
And uh
I felt like my whole life was just
running all the time.
>> Your brain, too?
>> Yeah, yeah. Run to get my kids to
school, run to work, get work done, run
to then run for fun. Run, run, run. And
then I thought, "Okay, I got to need to
>> [snorts]
>> I think I need a breather. And so I
started incorporating yoga into my uh
my exercise routine. I think that's I
think that's good. Actually, when I was
a grad student, I thought yoga was
stressful because I couldn't [laughter]
stand in those poses.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> But I think yoga evolved. I think the
yoga that I do now, it's not as static
>> Mhm.
>> as the yoga I was doing when I was a
grad student. I think it evolved to be a
little more active than uh than back
then. I see the benefit to having, you
know the
both types of uh exercise.
>> Thanks for being willing to explore
that. You know, the I'm not an Ayurvedic
practitioner, but the Ayurvedic folks,
they'll talk about people like more
fire, more more earth, where, you know,
and and I think it's just a different
lens and nomenclature on
there's a kind of array of phenotypes.
But when we talk about this thing,
sleep, it becomes very prescriptive,
right? It's like we all need 6 to 8
hours. I mean, I actually, from what
you're saying today, six sounds like
insufficient is what I'm hearing. I'm
probably a little sleep deprived is what
kind of hearing.
>> So, you know, a colleague of mine just
published a paper in nature about
biological clocks and aging in different
organs. And the sweet spot really was 6
and 1/2 to about 7 and 1/2 8 hours for
optimal
aging. Once you get to below that, it's
basically U-shaped, right? So, too much
of one thing is not good, too too little
is is not good. You want to be in the
sweet spot most most organs for uh
optimal aging was in this 6 and 1/2 to
7.8. And it differed a little bit by men
and women, depending on which organs he
was looking at. Uh a little longer for
women. Um some of the curves were
different, where, you know, some are
more pronounced U-shapes in in men than
women in different organs. So,
uh very interesting paper.
>> Mhm. Came out last week or 2 weeks ago.
>> I'll have to check it out. Um, what
other uh sex differences uh are known to
exist in sleep requirements, sleep
dynamics that from your work or from
other work? This is not something we've
really covered on the podcast.
>> No.
>> No, I mean, well, not in in any
sufficient amount of detail.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> So, women tend to sleep a little longer
than men across lifespan. Although, you
know, if you ask women about their
sleep,
they don't rate their sleep as very
good. Um, more women than men report
having difficulties with sleep,
insomnia, for example, insomnia
symptoms. More women than men say they
have difficulty falling asleep,
difficulty maintaining sleep uh across
the adult lifespan.
>> Why do you think that is?
>> There could be some physiological
effects, right? Some hormonal effects.
Women uh don't sleep the same across the
menstrual cycle.
Uh there's discomfort at different
times.
Uh and then there's different
responsibilities, different social roles
that come into play uh that may
influence women differently than men.
But, you know, we were working on a on a
review paper actually about hypertension
and and sleep and sex differences. And,
you know,
women are more sensitive to the impact
of poor sleep on different metabolic
outcomes than men. So, for blood
pressure, at lower sleep apnea, for
example, at lower thresholds of sleep
apnea, their blood pressure would be
higher
uh than men. So, I think that there
needs to be uh for sure a lot more
research in this area to be able to
uncover, you know, these these
differences. And then, you know, knowing
that there are these differences to
start
probing uh women about their sleep. Last
year, we published um a scientific
statement for the American Heart
Association about multidimensional sleep
health. And we concluded by uh
recommending clinicians that they
actually ask their patients about sleep.
And not ask a question a targeted
question, just ask their patients,
"How's your sleep?" Because if you start
asking about, "Oh, how much sleep do you
usually get at night?" Then you tell the
person that the only thing that matters
is how many hours of sleep you got at
night. That's not all sleep is about,
right? Sleep is not just about the
number of hours that you got, but it's
also about
the regularity, the quality, your
satisfaction with it. Uh you're There's
nighttime experiences, there's daytime
experiences from sleep. When you wake up
from sleep, are you feeling refreshed?
Are you feeling like you had Are you
satisfied with how much the sleep you
got the night before? During the day,
are you staying alert? Are you vigilant
during the daytime hours
uh from your past sleep experience. So,
having this open-ended question, maybe
maybe clinicians uh won't have time for
for uh for the answer, but, you know, it
allows the their patient to actually
tell them what's bothering them about
their sleep.
>> Mhm.
>> Then you can get to something like, you
know, my my spouse keeps kicking me
because I'm snoring too loud. Then, "Oh,
well, maybe we should test you for sleep
apnea."
>> Does apnea always include snoring? Yes.
So, are there some people who don't
snore who have apnea?
>> I don't think so. You stop breathing,
and then there's this gasping
sound that
people make when they uh they awaken
from that.
Or they get aroused from from this
breathing interruption.
>> I feel like so many people have apnea
and don't realize it. Not because I'm
sneaking into their rooms at night and
listening to if they snore, but it is
just remarkable how many people I speak
to who say, "Yeah, I found out I had
apnea because I saw that I was snoring
because they started monitoring their
sleep." And there's generally a snoring
index on these. Or now there are free
apps that can just record you while you
sleep. So, I know a lot of people are I
don't mouth tape uh when I sleep, but I
I did I do uh sometimes use one of these
nose strips that kind of pulls the
nostrils out a bit. That certainly it's
reduced the amount of snoring
>> That will reduce the amount of snoring,
but the sleep apnea is from the throat,
right? So, the closure in the throat
that it uh that uh obstructs
the trachea and that's what then prompts
the awakening and breathing and then the
sound that comes from there. Actually,
weight loss is typically like the first
line treatment if someone has excess
weight to start losing weight, that
might help with the uh with sleep apnea.
And then there's CPAP which yes, people
don't like, but if they are at a lower
weight where the apnea is milder, the
pressure may be
not as uh
not as high, so that might be helpful
for comfort.
I have a colleague of mine who does uh
sleep apnea surgeries. So, implantables
are also
>> Oh.
>> If people think they might have apnea,
is it just get a CPAP, pop that thing
on? Is that the best line of of entry?
>> I think they should uh they should get
tested.
>> So, how do we How does one do that? Cuz
that's the problem.
>> if you're
suspecting that you may have sleep apnea
because you've been told that you snore,
because you wake up and you're not
feeling refreshed, and you're feeling
sleepy during the day, I think you
should talk to your doctor about this
and definitely, we have polysomnography
is the first line you know,
is what we use to detect um sleep apnea.
But, there's in-home sleep testing that
can be done, so you don't have to stay
overnight in a lab for for uh to get
tested for this, and uh and your doctor
can prescribe that test very easily.
>> How come we can't just go buy a CPAP on
Amazon?
>> Because you need to have the the the
pressure
determined for you, right? So, you need
to know what kind of pressure to apply
and you know, how to set it up. Uh it's
not as as simple as just you know
>> Okay. All right, fair.
>> You need it it needs to have the proper
settings and someone needs to tell you
which setting to use because then that's
where you run to the trouble of having
the wrong settings and and not being
effective.
>> Yeah, I just know from having done this
podcast long a while that like if people
think, "Okay, I got to go to my doctor.
I got to find out or convince them that
I have apnea. Then they have to like
write me a script for a CPAP. Then I got
to buy a CPAP which I'm guessing is not
cheap."
>> I'm not sure.
>> I I don't think they're very
inexpensive. They might The price might
have come down. And I got to sleep with
this thing on my face like looking like
Darth Vader so I don't sound like Darth
Vader.
I just think very few people are going
to do it. So, somebody out there should
like come up with an at-home solution to
this. Something like apnea seems
important enough to daytime wakefulness,
cognitive function, longevity, metabolic
like it works out to so many things that
I feel like it
>> If you use
>> it deserves a like a public health
messaging.
>> Yeah, if you use it well and you feel
better during the day, that's a that's
reinforcing, right? To keep using it.
And and get treated for it.
>> Let's talk about food and nutrients.
You've done a substantial amount of work
here in this area and I have a bunch of
questions. But first I want to talk
about kefir.
>> Yeah.
>> I love Bulgarian full-fat plain yogurt,
but it's right next to the kefir.
>> Uh-huh.
>> And I'm always like, "Do I get the
kefir?" Well, I don't know. I love the
Bulgarian full-fat plain yogurt. So, I
haven't tried the kefir yet. What's
special about kefir and why are why did
you study kefir?
>> Kefir we we studied because it was a
fermented dairy product, uh probiotics.
We figured, you know, maybe it will
improve uh cholesterol synthesis based
on its impact on short-chain fatty
acids. So, that was a the the subject of
my uh master's thesis.
Over that study,
uh that was when I was at McGill. We
were recruited men that had mildly
elevated cholesterol levels. We gave
them two cups per day
versus just regular milk for a month.
>> So, two cups like two mugs like this?
>> Two cups like the measuring cup.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Um like 500 ml.
>> Okay.
>> And uh
and we measured their
the amount of cholesterol they they
produced at baseline and point in both
phases and there was no effect. It was a
null study. It was one of those.
It was hard to get published.
>> Mhm.
>> Kept at it and and we got it published,
but yeah.
>> So, these fermented yogurts and things
they don't do anything for
for cholesterol levels.
>> At least in our study, in this
population, at this level, with this
comparison
>> Mhm.
>> didn't have any effect.
>> What's your general thought about uh low
sugar fermented foods? I don't know if
kefir uh qualifies as low sugar, but
based on Justin Sonnenburg's work at
Stanford and others I've been I've been
a really bullish on this idea of
sauerkraut kimchi uh
full-fat Bulgarian yogurt. Fermented
foods are are interesting.
>> Yeah.
>> Are you a proponent in general?
>> I'm a proponent. Yeah, absolutely. I
think it's important to feed your gut. I
think that uh the gut microbiome is uh
getting a lot of attention for all sorts
of, you know, uh
health benefits.
So, I think that that's something that's
uh that's is important. So, also
it's important to
also consider that, you know, for that
study, right? Our main outcome was
cholesterol synthesis, but there's so
many other things we could have looked
at that we didn't look at, right? And
maybe it didn't have any impact for
cholesterol synthesis, but maybe
glycemic control might be better or for
gut inflammation it would be better.
But, you know, you you pick your
outcomes, right? You study something and
the
>> This is the challenge of doing
controlled science.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> So, the opposite end of the like
X, what used to be called Twitter,
science, where like people just like
report anecdotes, but
actually anecdotes of that sort have
become very powerful now in the public
health space, for better or worse. Like
people, you know, because
I
we can look at any study and say, "Well,
that's a very artificial circumstance."
You say, "Well, intentionally, because
we're trying to isolate variables."
>> Right, right, right, exactly.
>> People get frustrated. "Oh, that's an
observational study." Well,
uh I'm going to continue to eat
low-sugar fermented foods every day. I I
I do think in a study like the one you
described, occasionally there's just
there's
Let me state this differently.
Historically, in science, there's been a
lot of interesting discoveries that have
come from
researchers designing a study to look at
one thing and then kind of noticing,
"Oh, like all the subjects feel better
or sleep better or their skin they
they're reporting things that then lead
to an another another line line of
inquiry, but you moved on from kefir.
Tell me about this um this paper. I was
intrigued by this when I looked over
your CV. The uh a weight-loss diet that
includes a coffee beverage enriched in,
let me try this, mannan
oligosaccharides.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. All right, long word. Leads to a
greater loss of adipose fat tissue than
placebo beverage in overweight men.
>> Yeah.
>> Tell me about this study and what these
mannan oligosaccharides are and if
somebody wants to lose weight, should
they be including this in their coffee?
>> So, this was industry-sponsored research
that I did. Um they wanted to replicate
a study that had been done in a
different country
>> [snorts]
>> because they wanted to replicate the
findings. So, we did this study. Uh it
was basically a placebo-controlled
study. We got we were provided um
coffee mannan oligosaccharides. So,
these are extracted from spent coffee
grounds. So, it was basically sachets,
right? So, a white packet. One had the
coffee mannan oligosaccharides, the
other one didn't. We gave it to our
study participants. We measured their
body composition. We found an effect on
body composition in men, not in women.
>> Hm.
>> And so, that was the end of that
product.
>> Really? They wouldn't market it just
because [clears throat] it only had an
effect in men?
>> Yeah. Yeah, they were like
>> I assure you there are many men who
would love to drink a coffee drink and
lose weight as a consequence.
>> to be our market, you know.
>> But, do we know what the ingredients
were?
>> It was
mannan oligosaccharides. Just the
extracted Yeah, so it was just basically
a product that was
tasted like coffee, strong coffee.
But, it didn't have the caffeine or
anything like that. It just had this
this mannan oligosaccharide that was
extracted from coffee.
>> So, this substance comes from coffee
ordinarily, but coffee is very low low
calorie.
>> Right. But, it's from the spent grounds.
So, you No one really
consumes this really because you know,
when you brew your coffee, you're
you're not getting it to know.
>> Can you buy it? Can people get it?
>> I don't think so. I'm not sure.
>> So, what What do you First of all, how
much weight did they lose relative to
the
>> It was statistically significant. Yeah.
>> Hm.
Okay. I was intrigued by it cuz I
thought there's there's something that I
mean, you studied It's interesting you
say kefir
mannan oligosaccharides from coffee.
>> Yeah.
>> Now, I'm going to ask you about ginger.
>> Well, when I was in a graduate student,
I was interested in functional foods.
>> Mhm.
>> And I was interested in those foods that
provide health benefits beyond their
nutritional value.
>> Mhm.
>> Right. So, kefir
is a fermented dairy product. It would
We were studying it for its a functional
benefit on cholesterol synthesis.
That's not
a
uh that's not a function of dairy,
right? Dairy is you consume it for bone
health, right? So, it's the basically
when we talk about different claims that
foods have, you know, there is those
structure function claims, like
consuming dairy contains calcium that's
good for your bones, and then there is
um functional
claims. Those functional claims are
health claims, we call them, that say,
"Okay, well, health claim there's a
health claim for oats, for example,
right? So, consuming fiber from oats
uh reduces cholesterol levels."
>> That's been demonstrated.
>> Yes. So, that's that's a health claim.
That's an approved health claim. That's
why you see the hearts on some boxes of
cereal,
but that's different than
fiber
is good for maintaining regularity,
right? So, anyways, I was interested in
in functional foods for health benefits
beyond their their nutritional content.
And so,
uh we we study kefir for I study kefir
for my master's degree, and then for my
PhD, studied uh medium-chain
triglycerides,
um and then um
ginger, that was uh that was something
that I that I uh offered to a grad
student at Columbia. It was interesting
because uh the McCormick company
had an advertisement in uh one of the
nutrition journals, and they were going
to donate
um spices for research.
So, I was like, "Okay." They had a list
of different herbs and spices that they
were going to donate for research, and I
had a grad student, and I said, "Take a
look at this list,
come back to me, see if there's
something in there that we should
test in the lab
based on the things that I do. Don't
come to me with something that's, you
know, that I don't study, but and then
he did some research, and came back, and
he said, "I think we should study
ginger." And I was like, "Okay, and to
do what?" He was like, "I think, you
know, for energy expenditure,
look at thermic effect of food. So, it's
like "Okay."
So, so we did this study. I had some
some funds that I could use for him to
do that and uh
>> What did the study look like?
>> A study where we looked at the thermic
effect of food.
>> Like, so people ate ginger root with the
spice in their food. What was
>> We dissolved ginger powder in warm
water.
And so, that was one beverage and then
uh in the crossover, again, crossover
design. So, next time when they came, it
was just hot water.
>> And how many times a day are they
drinking it?
>> This was a one-time one-time uh
consumption period. And we looked at the
thermic effect of food over a 6-hour
period. So, again, they're they're under
this um
we call it metabolic hood, right? So, a
little bubble. And we measure their uh
oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide
production for I think it was 4 or 5
hours.
>> significantly elevated.
>> Mhm.
>> With ginger.
>> With ginger.
Yeah.
>> Wow.
>> So, we think through the capsaicin
receptor, there's an increase in the
thermic effect of food. So, yeah. So, I
was interested to see are there little
things that we could do, little changes
we can make to our diet to boost energy
expenditure relative to intake, you
know, just to tip the scale because
many adults over the course of their
life lifetime gain weight.
And it's not a big imbalance in calories
on a daily basis that leads to
10 lbs of weight gain over 10, 15 years,
right?
>> more. Now, again, the GLP's are coming
in and adjusting with Yeah, I'm very
interested also in foods that have
impact beyond their, you know, known
known roles. I mean, the the problem is
in this area, in the functional foods
area, not the problem with your work,
but the is that there are a lot of wild
claims that go unchecked. Like, oh, you
know, walnuts are shaped like a brain
and therefore they're good for your
brain or, you know, which is I'm they
have certain things in them which are
brain beneficial, but it's not related
to the shape of the food. So, you get
there's a that area I feel of nutrition
has been
um marginalized on the basis of the kind
of like
quackery associated with it. But, of
course, there are interesting things in
different [clears throat] foods. I do
think that the
the Sonnenburg and colleagues work on
low-sugar fermented foods has been very
informative for lowering the
inflammatome even more than fiber.
I mean, actually in that study, this is
kind of the like even Justin will kind
of downplay this a little bit. He's a
colleague, so I can say he
in the fiber group, when they compared
to low-sugar fermented foods, and then
they measured the inflammatome, they did
a crossover design also. Within the
fiber group, there was a fair number of
people who their inflammation went way,
way up when they consumed more fiber.
But, in the low-sugar fermented group,
or when they were in that group, it was
it was
always on average reduced.
Some people who increase their fiber
intake their
inflammatome decreases. For a lot of
people, it increases. Which is not to
say that fiber is bad, but I think now
we're starting to think about like
different types of fibers.
>> I was going to ask.
>> Yeah. They didn't control for that. They
just said increase the number of
servings each day. And and I know a lot
of people don't like to eat fibrous
foods because they don't feel good after
they eat them. It's like it's not that
they don't taste good, and I think
there's this whole like histamine story
that needs exploration. I think foods
and the healthy foods needs better
parsing.
>> Yeah.
>> In my in my opinion.
>> Yeah, I I mean, there was also
habituation. You don't go from consuming
6 g of fiber per day to 25.
>> them up, but but I have to say they
ramped them up pretty high. Like, even
the low-sugar fermented foods, I think
they got them up to like four servings
per day. It's a lot of kimchi. You're
not familiar with it. Like, it can be a
little hard on the gut.
>> Yeah.
>> I actually take an enzyme. I think it's
called DAO.
Very inexpensive. A little It's like a
tiny tiny pill that
that for digesting histamines.
>> Mhm.
>> Cuz I noticed after I had whey protein
or I had broccoli or something I would I
would get kind of sleepy. I was like,
"What is this?" And I
a colleague at Stanford, Sean Mackey,
who's our head of our pain center, said
that he had gut pain at one point. He's
a pain doctor, directs the pain center,
and he figured out by
elimination and trial and error that it
was onions and other
histamine-containing foods because it
avoids histamine-containing foods. I'm
not about to give up the things I just
described. Onions I can do without, but
So, I think that there's a there is food
to have real effect.
>> Mhm.
>> So, kefir, these manno-oligosaccharides,
I have to confess I'm a little
disappointed cuz like here it looks like
it has like a cool effect, but they
didn't they didn't want Now can't get
them. I'm not going to eat coffee
grounds.
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In your work or in your observation or
in your curiosity, what other foods are
kind of intriguing to you?
>> Someone had a really
great question for me at the Obesity
Society meeting a couple of years ago. I
was showing data that we had just
obtained in the lab that showed that if
you eat foods later in the day, your fat
oxidation is reduced. So, this is a
study that we're doing. We had
participants on a controlled diet, and
they started eating 1 hour after waking
up, and they had a 10-hour eating
window, or they started eating 5 hours
after waking up, so 4-hour delay
relative to the other condition. Again,
same thing for a a 10-hour window
10-hour window.
We gave our participants the exact same
foods. Same foods, same quantity, same
timing between meals. And this was done
in a metabolic chamber.
And the meals, especially the meals
later in the day,
that were consumed late relative to the
earlier version of those meals, led to
less fat oxidation.
And someone in the audience
stood up and said, "So, would you then
recommend that people eat medium-chain
triglycerides
in their evening meal as opposed to, you
know,
a different type of of fat?"
And my eyes just went like this because,
you know, my
the my time studying medium-chain
triglycerides was, you know, 15 to 20
years ago. I was like, "Wow, this person
knows my that work that I've done and
now is applying it to this work that I'm
doing currently." And I thought that was
fascinating and I think that, you know,
timing of intake of different foods and
how it influences metabolism is
something that's uh that's fascinating
to me.
>> I confess, I'm a like first bite of food
around 11:00 a.m. person. I'm trying to
eat breakfast these days and then kind
of shift things earlier. All it's really
done is added a meal cuz I I take my
last bite of food usually around 8:00
p.m. I just can't seem to get
much earlier.
But,
I and many other people have wondered
whether it's best to eat more towards
early day or whether or not it's just
overall caloric load. You're saying that
it does indeed make a difference.
>> It makes a difference, yeah.
>> You want to shift most of your caloric
intake to the first like two-thirds of
your waking day.
>> Roughly.
>> Mhm. Yeah.
>> As opposed to the last two-thirds.
>> Yes.
>> Mhm. Yeah.
>> [clears throat]
>> So, in that study, 1 hour after waking
up, so let's say basically 8:00 a.m. to
6:00 p.m. is our eating window. I mean,
this is a 10-hour eating window. It's
short. It's not, you know, our typical.
So, it could be
8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
>> That seems pretty
>> That's reasonable.
>> Yeah. Yeah, versus
>> 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
>> The New York schedule.
>> Yeah, the New York schedule.
>> that Yeah, well, I I sort of chuckle cuz
when I go to New York, like it's like if
you go to dinner at
5:30, 6:00, you're kind of alone in the
restaurant.
>> Yeah, the early bird special.
>> Yeah, depends on time of year. In In
California, it's it's kind of in it's
the early shifted.
>> Yes.
>> But, that's just more reflective of
culture, I think. In Europe, they they
eat very late often. Depends on where.
>> I I I was saying before we we started, I
was on a Fulbright uh program last year
in in Spain. And uh I would joke with my
with my colleagues there because they
eat very late. And even the children eat
very late. And I was like, "Okay, well,
you feed me, then you feed the children.
>> Right. [laughter] Right.
>> Then you have your dinner because they
can have dinner at 10:00 and 11:00 p.m.
and the children ate 9:00 p.m. and I was
like,
>> Can't be good.
If you my dad's from Argentina, if you
go to a restaurant in Buenos Aires at
9:00 p.m.,
you're not going to see many people. At
11:00 p.m., you'll see people in their
70s and 80s and they're up early the
next day. They nap in the afternoon.
>> Yeah.
>> I don't know how healthy they are as a
country on average, but haven't looked
at the data, but very, very late shifted
culture.
>> Well, there has been studies in Spain
that have looked at timing of eating and
their impact on weight management. I'm
thinking of work by Marta Garaulet,
where she showed that in her
weight loss program, the participants
who have lunch, so their big bigger meal
is is lunch, who have their lunch
earlier in the day, have better weight
loss than those who have their lunch
later in the day.
So, you know, even in those cultures
where they have they tend to eat late,
they still find that eating earlier
tends to be better for you.
>> I was very, very relieved when
Alan Aragon, who's a I consider one of
the best public educators on the topic
of protein and nutrition, body
recomposition, he's formally trained in
this, reassured me that, you know,
nowadays there's a lot of interest in
getting like protein rations. It's
probably over done a little bit, but the
people are striving to get more
high-quality protein, but that
except in rare circumstances where
people are really trying to optimize
every bit of muscle protein synthesis,
95% of the effect
of getting enough protein can be
accomplished by having like two meals.
>> Mhm.
>> Maybe a little snack. That you don't
have And they can be
evenly distributed or unevenly
distributed. You know, I think a lot of
people are feeling this protein pressure
and like, "Oh, I got to eat another meal
late in the day or I have to force
myself to eat breakfast in order to get
their protein ration." It turns out the
whole notion that you could only
assimilate like 30 g per meal is is
totally false. It turns out you can
assimilate up to 100 g. Now, there are
conditions that set that up like
exercise etc. but I find that very
liberating. Like you could have
breakfast and an early dinner
>> Mhm.
>> with a snack in the middle. You could
miss breakfast, have lunch and an early
dinner. What I'm hearing from you,
however, is that you really want to
avoid the
the the big even or just late dinner.
You just don't want to eat too close to
bedtime.
>> Correct.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> What about these
MCTs, medium chain triglycerides? These
were very popular in the health and kind
of biohacking space a few years ago, the
um the whole bulletproof coffee notion,
MCTs, butter coffee and that's more or
less faded away. I don't see a lot of
people
putting oil in their coffee these days
or coconut. What are some of the known
benefits of MCTs? Where do you find them
and what what brought you to them as a
research topic?
>> This was a topic for my PhD
dissertation. So, my PI got a grant
looking at the medium chain
triglycerides. He had done prior work on
this
but what we did was use purified MCT
oil. So, this is only
liquid oil that contains eight carbon
and 10 carbon chain fatty acids.
Those are not very common in our general
food source. So, it was purified
extracted oil that we then
gave our participants. We had created
this functional oil
that contained flaxseed oil also to be
able to get some more some omega-3 fatty
acids in there.
We had added plant sterols because that
was a big
big focus of my lab at McGill plant
sterols for cholesterol reduction and
reduce risk of cardiovascular disease.
And
but the idea was to evaluate the impact
on energy expenditure because the way we
process medium chain triglycerides is
different than how we process long chain
triglycerides. So the
12 14 16 and up carbon chains. So the
medium chain triglycerides they travel
directly to the liver they get
metabolized we burn them off more
readily than the long chain
triglycerides that travel across the
peripheral circulation get deposited in
adipose tissue and the sort.
And so what we did what we found we did
two separate studies in men and women in
both men and women there was an increase
in thermic effect of food so you burned
slightly more calories
from the the meal that contained medium
chain triglycerides compared to the meal
that contained your standard fat. For my
PhD the first study we did we did in
women.
And we were trying to match the
saturated fat content of the diets
because
medium chain fatty acids are by default
saturated or
C80 100.
So I said okay we're going to try to
compare that to a
saturated fat matched control comparison
and we used beef tallow.
It was a lot of beef tallow.
Uh [gasps]
participants were not happy with that
diet.
>> eat it direct like spoonfuls of beef
tallow?
>> put it on to mashed potatoes. You know
when you're when you're doing studies
like this where you're trying to control
the diet and you want to isolate one
aspect of it right and we gave real
foods half of the total fat of the diet
came from
the
the medium chain containing versus and
the beef tallow so it's like 20% of your
fat from
one of the two. So you have to pour it
mask it somehow.
And
there's also this issue about laxative
effect of MCT oil that that we had a few
participants who initially felt a lot of
gargling
when like just gargling from their
stomach from from consuming MCT because
it was a lot early on. It resolved.
>> Mhm.
>> So after a few days it was fine. It was
a one week one month I mean four week
study. So
after a few days no one dropped out for
you know any GI issues.
>> Okay, that's reassuring.
>> Yeah. So beef tallow it was initially
beef tallow because it has a lot of
saturated fat is solid at room
temperature.
So as soon as your food started to
get a little colder it would kind of gel
on your plate.
>> Mhm. Yeah, it's sort of like if you
bring french fries home from a
restaurant that used tallow and then you
like put it in the fridge cuz you
thought you wanted them as leftovers the
next day they're sort of like in this
like stuck to bottom of container
configuration. Yeah, it's not very
appetizing.
>> Not a feeling. No, there's like it's
white all underneath that.
>> always goes into the trash.
>> Yeah. A couple of women felt it gave
them headache just the smell of it you
know.
>> So with the MCT's big significant
increase in thermic effect of food?
>> That was statistically significant.
Yeah.
It was about
45 to 50 60 calories.
>> Oh, I thought you were going to say
percent increase.
>> No, no, no. So it's it's a small change
but it was
if you're going to use this versus that
you're getting a little boost here if
you repeat this a few times in a day
because when we measured the thermic
effect of food we measured it only after
over one meal but repeated over three
meals per day over a certain period of
time, we did find changes in body
composition, improvements in
in weight status with medium-chain
triglyceride consumption.
>> Lean mass to to fat mass ratio.
>> Interesting.
>> And then we did follow-up study of a
weight loss study with medium-chain
triglyceride. This time around it was
just purified MCT oil, not added with
other types, versus olive oil,
which is much more acceptable, and found
greater weight loss with MCT.
>> Based on what you're saying, it's
reasonable if somebody wants to improve
weight loss. I'm hearing a sort of a
constellation of things. Shift your meal
timing to in the first two thirds or so
of your day,
which sounds like it will also improve
sleep, which will also improve
uh
>> Your your ability
>> appetite and food regular satiety and
hunger signals. What is it like a
tablespoon or two of MCT per day? Is
that kind of what this looks like for
the typical person?
>> Yeah, about that.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> In place of some other oil, not in
addition.
>> Not in addition, correct.
>> Okay. Some ginger.
>> Yeah.
>> Are they additive? Are they synergistic?
>> I think they could probably be additive
because I think that the impact is
through different mechanisms. Obviously,
no one's tested that
you know, it's interesting
you bring it up this way cuz it makes me
think of
David Jenkins and the portfolio diet. It
actually made the New York Times uh
I think it was
in December or November.
>> The portfolio diet was a diet he
designed for maximal cholesterol
reduction.
>> Mhm.
>> So it was initially designed to have
four specific foods. So it was high in
soy protein, nuts, plant sterols, and
soluble fiber.
>> Yeah, it's going to be a tough one to
get past most of the American public.
I'll tell you as a as a public health
educator, I don't care if it comes out
in the New York Times or Wall Street
Journal, the New Yorker, and everything
in between. People hear soy.
>> Yeah.
>> Nuts they like, but easy to overeat.
>> Mhm.
>> They hear plant sterols and like they're
they're
they're someplace else.
>> This diet was went on a head-to-head
comparison with lipid-lowering
agent, right? Like a
>> Like a statin.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had the same
uh cholesterol reduction as a statin.
>> As a statin.
>> Yeah.
>> The portfolio.
Interesting name. People are definitely
unhealthy in this country and if you if
they can lower blood lipids
>> Yeah. They've expanded it to uh
to be more flexible. So, it's not just
soy protein now, it also includes
legumes. They've added monounsaturated
fats, so olive oil.
>> You know, when I look at a diet like the
portfolio diet, which I you just I only
know what you just told me about it. I
think about the the current food
uh
uh suggestions by by the FDA, which are
you know, we could call it kind of um
it emphasizes um
unprocessed minimally processed food.
So, I think that's a step in the right
direction, certainly. We look at these.
The issue that always comes up for me is
I think, okay, in in a more plant-based
um grain-heavy nut diet, it's very easy
for people to overeat calories based on
this whole like amino acid protein
foraging hypothesis. This idea that we
eat until we get enough of the amino
acids we want. Like a like a
a chicken breast or something and a
couple eggs or or or four eggs or
something is very satiating.
>> Mhm.
>> Whereas we can eat a lot of grains and
nuts before we kind of go, okay, that's
enough. There seems to be this issue
like how do how do you
ensure cardiometabolic health
>> Mhm.
>> while quelling hunger.
>> Mhm.
>> You can't have people walking around
hungry all the time. And the GLP's help
with that. And it does get down to sort
of like do you include animal-based
foods or not often?
>> So, how do you think just from a public
health perspective that we can reconcile
this? Cuz clearly the highly processed
food diet is not going to work. The
standard American diet that I think that
is fading away. But now there's this
kind of polarization of like are we
going to go mostly plants, grains, nuts,
and kind of think low saturated fat,
blood lipids improving, or we going to
think like
you know, more
protein satiety.
Do you see where I'm getting at here?
Like I feel like this is this is the
contour of things.
>> Yeah. Well, I I think that
there's there's no reason to pit one
another against the other, right? So
like this one on one. But what's
important is that also having a diet
that's more plant-based, is higher
volume, that's filling. It's hard to eat
a lot of food. So if your
food volume is high, but does not
provide as much calories, you'll get
that
satiety from the food volume, and then
you
you put in some some nuts, helps to
prolong the satiety because then you get
some protein, some healthful fats. And
so I think that's important. I'm not
saying animal products are bad. I think
they're they're important for a diet. I
think they're important for health. It's
just a matter of portion size and making
sure that
there's not over emphasis on animal
products over plant-based products
because we know that plant-based
products are so much healthier in terms
of heart health,
reduction of
>> type 2 diabetes, cancer risk, another
metabolic diseases.
>> Yeah. Well, I'm right there with you. I
love fruits and vegetables. I'm a huge
fan of
I do eat meat. Half Argentine, I mean,
you know, but and chicken and I'm not a
big fan of fish. I keep working on this,
but I can't seem to quite get there, but
but I I don't eat them in excess.
The things that I feel are very very
easy for people to overeat are starch
fat or starch sugar fat combinations.
>> Mhm.
>> It's just like the the brain and gut
respond with
signals that scream more. You just It's
very hard for people to do like a slice
of pizza. I I love pizza. It can be
done, but it's just very hard for people
to do. It's like it it the the stop
signals just are all pushed down and the
go signals are are all go.
>> So, are we reducing white foods as much
as possible as well?
>> White foods?
>> Yeah. So, the
white flour, white rice, white pasta,
white, you know, things that
>> Mhm.
>> [clears throat]
>> not as colorful. You know, if you're
eating a slice of bread and it just
dissolves in your mouth.
>> It's sugar.
>> Not so good.
>> This is more of a editorial reflection
again, but it's also I was looking at
the history of nutrition in this
country. Oh, you're Canadian by birth,
right? I detected that, right?
And [snorts]
I don't know what the the sort of
traditional fare is in Canada, but if
you look at the history of food in the
United States, it's never been
particularly healthy. The foods that we
consider like American foods, like
hamburgers, hot dogs, with french fries,
corn dogs, fried chicken, donuts. Like
we've never been healthy about food.
People probably just moved a lot, ate
less, smoked a lot more, which is an
appetite suppressant, but gives you
cancer, kills you. We've never been
that healthy with respect to food. Maybe
food volume was more in check. But if
you look at traditional food in
you know, in Europe, probably in I mean,
Canada, what what sort of the are the
foods nourishing and healthy? I think
we're sort of in this like delusion that
like we were once healthy about food in
this country. We were never healthy
about food. The food was always pretty
weak in terms of nutritional status
except for fruits, vegetables, and some
animal parts.
>> Yeah.
I think portion size
has a lot to do with it, too. So, I know
um
moving from Canada to the US, you know,
all the go to restaurant, the portion
sizes are so big. Uh it would never have
occurred to me to
take home doggy bag with for
at a restaurant ever.
And then here it's like kind of have to
or else
you know, you're throwing away half your
plate or unless you're finishing the
whole thing. So, portion size I think is
a big one. And also the foods are
different in a way. We're talking about
yogurt.
>> [snorts]
>> So, there are two things. When I moved
to the US, the first thing the dietitian
at my work told me was
do not buy bagged bread.
I was like, "Okay. What does that mean?
Don't buy bagged bread? Like I That's
what I always do." No, she says, "You go
to the grocery store, you go to the
bakery section, they'll cut it up for
you, you ask what you want. Don't buy
bagged bread." I was like, "Okay. I'm
not going to buy bagged bread." So,
apparently she was talking about like
too many additives, too many too much
sugar whatever.
Okay.
We're talking about like the bread that
just melts in your mouth. It's
So, and then the other thing was uh
yogurt. I used I ate yogurt quite a bit.
And then the yogurt in the here in the
US
tasted sweeter to me. The same thing,
the same yogurt.
Canada, here are the same name, the same
everything.
It was sweeter.
And I didn't know why, but then it
occurred to me that, you know, foods are
formulated in different ways in
different countries to appeal to the
population of that country. So, yogurt
was one where it's a little less sweet
in Canada than in US and it was less
sweet even than
in in Europe than Canada and US. So,
there's things like that that don't
necessarily help.
>> Yeah. Yeah, we we love our um sugars and
fats
in the United States. And and I think we
paid a substantial health debt as a
consequence. I mean, now
again, I don't have the numbers on this,
but with Wegovy and Ozempic and the
other GLP-1s, I've never tried them, but
a lot of people are finding it
much easier, if not easy, to lose weight
that they just couldn't before they just
could not control their appetite.
>> Mhm. And they're just not as interested
in these foods. There's this argument
that maybe they're not as interested as
in everything in life and that's a
important question that needs to be
resolved.
>> do things that think that things are
changing. I think we're finding a lot
more, you know, for example, the yogurt,
right? There was a lot more plain yogurt
options than there were,
you know, when I first moved to the US.
So, there's, you know,
>> Things are changing. It's been There's
been a lot of resistance and I think
that the the resistance has been um
sociological
in the sense that um
you know, there there's been a
resistance to people being healthy.
There really has, you know, that there's
this idea that like if you're eating
clean, you have an eating disorder. I
did an episode about eating disorders. I
talked to a lot of experts in this
including the group at Columbia Med that
works on eating disorders. You know, the
frequency of anorexia, the most deadly
psychiatric illness of all the
psychiatric illnesses, hadn't realized
that, is not increasing as a function of
social media or magazines or anything.
It's been very steady for maybe hundreds
of years. It's a real neurological
issue.
There's obviously social pressures and
things like that, but what I discovered
in in like talking to experts like
Joanna Steinberg at
Columbia and others is that you know,
like
there is this So, that was about
anorexia, but what I'm about to say is
separate. There's this notion that if
you're going to be thoughtful about what
you eat, you know, or maybe you're not
going to eat too late, or you're going
to skip dessert. Or until a few years
ago, like if you're not going to drink
alcohol, like there's something wrong
with you. Like that that you're being
restrictive somehow. I think again it's
kind of like the parallels to
Europe are kind of interesting that were
that the contrasts to Europe are
interesting where there's a lot of
social convention built up around food
that was healthy.
And I think in the United States the
social conventions built up around food
and alcohol were pretty unhealthy. It
was like everyone does this. Like
everyone eats hot dogs at the game. Like
and hot dogs at a baseball game are a
great thing. It's like a nothing is
as American as that except maybe apple
pie, right? But there's this when people
start making choices in in the direction
of their health it was and to some
extent it still is a there's this
quieter undercurrent of well like are
you being restrictive? Like are you
really going to live like that? But then
you look at the the health outcomes. And
culturally until a few years ago it was
considered very not okay to say that
obesity obesity was a health risk.
>> Mhm.
>> And now the open discussion about
obesity and metabolic health as as like
a real health risk.
>> Mhm.
>> I think now we're kind of like in the
actual discussion that for a long time
it was like
Speaking of which and um kind of things
outside the box uh there's a paper on
your CV that I could not help but ask
about. Snack chips fried in corn oil
alleviate
>> Mhm.
>> cardiovascular risk factors when
substituted for low-fat and high-fat
snacks.
>> Yep.
>> What?
>> Mhm.
>> What?
>> Yes.
>> Tell me the data. I believe you. I'm
just like what
This is wild.
>> This was funded by Frito-Lay. At that
time they had changed the oil that they
were using to fry their corn chips. So
this was Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, and
Tostitos. It's all the to- to- to-
>> all the e- e-
>> All the e- e-
And so they had changed to corn oil. And
I'm like this is an oil that's higher in
polyunsaturated fats than what we
usually have.
>> they using before?
>> I'm not sure. I forget.
>> But it wasn't tallow.
>> I don't think so. Like does it make a
difference? Is it going to improve
health if people choose those
snacks compared to other snacks?
So we had three arms in that study.
Uh each person went through each of the
three arms. It was for 25 days. The
question was
okay, let's say you have a choice for a
snack today. And you're going to go to
the vending machine
and you have your option. Do you eat a
low-fat, high-carbohydrate snack, a
high-fat,
high-monounsaturated high-saturated
snack, or those chips?
So, you just pick one and that's that.
So, I think we gave It was two snacks
today
for for 25 days. It was a rotation, so
they had four Yeah, they had four
different uh chips. So, it's two one
day, two the next day, like that for 25
days and then the controls.
And yeah, the the the better lipid
profile
was the one with
was the one from the the corn chips.
They had the better lipid. Yeah. And
they had less uh lipoprotein little A,
which is another you know, factor
cardiometabolic risk factor.
>> Data or data?
>> Data or data.
>> Well, I know that in the head-to-head
comparison of seed oils, of which corn
is,
>> Right?
>> with saturated fat, this is where it
kind of the contention starts to
erupt. Where
there are many studies now, I think,
showing that when you substitute
saturated fat with seed oils, that
cardiometabolic
risk factors go down and this is true,
right? Well, by the way, I'm just going
to say I I I avoid seed oils actively
cuz I like olive oil and butter.
>> Mhm.
>> Mostly olive oil.
I avoid seed oils. I don't like the way
they taste. I love olive oil.
>> Okay.
>> And there's some health effects of olive
oil and I eat small amounts of butter
and
I so I just like duck the whole
controversy, right? And uh you have to
make sure you're getting real olive oil,
but that can be done.
When you look at the studies that
compare saturated fat to seed oils, you
do see
uh better outcomes for seed oils. But
then there's this crowd that comes in
and says, "But that's on a backdrop of
reasonably high carbohydrate intake.
When you start replacing some of those
carbohydrates with lower carbohydrate
diet and increasing protein intake so
not keto but kind of like lower-ish
starch and sugar then maybe that
balances out okay. But the big
contention seems to be around the
processing of these seed oils. This idea
that when especially when you make
things like chips that when you take
fats and you combine them with
carbohydrate and you heat them up a lot
that you create factors that
are not good for the body. What is the
evidence for against that?
>> Also different oils have different smoke
points, right? So each oil should be
used for its appropriate usage, right?
So cooking process.
So
I think that's that's where, you know,
people think that they should be using
one type of oil for everything that they
do.
But some oil like you wouldn't put
flaxseed oil for example and and heat it
up to very high
uh temperature.
>> Are you a fan of flaxseed oil?
>> I'm a fan of every liquid oil. I use
I've no no personal
>> You seem very healthy.
>> restriction on the
on the types of oils. I think that, you
know, oils are that remain liquid at
room temperature
that should be your your your barometer
for what's better to use. I'm also not
saying that people should avoid butter
like the plague, right? So all in
moderation is is okay.
>> Is there any reason to
I just can't find the argument for why
anyone would replace olive oil with a
seed oil.
>> Olive oil has a lower smoke point than
than other seed oils. So peanut oil for
example has a higher smoke point. So you
can fry in peanut oil. You wouldn't fry
anything in olive oil.
>> I wouldn't eat anything fried.
>> Well
>> Yeah.
>> So that's that's a different
reason. But like, you know, so depending
on how you want to use your oil then,
you know, also some people find, you
know, olive oil in baked goods might
impart stronger taste. So, depending on
the type. So, some of them are more
flavorful, right? And so, they're more
fragile, let's say, and they'll impart
flavors to different different foods
where they're not supposed to be.
>> So, you're you're not seed oil averse,
[100:01] nor are you
[100:03] pro seed oil, is what I'm hearing.
[100:05] >> Personally?
[100:05] >> Yeah.
[100:06] >> No.
[100:06] >> Cuz I think that the um the seed oil
[100:09] debate has been very contaminated by the
[100:11] issues that I mentioned before, but also
[100:12] because many, many processed foods
[100:14] contain seed oil. They're much less
[100:17] expensive than using
[100:19] you know, grass-fed butter or or olive
[100:21] oil or even just ordinary butter. So,
[100:24] >> It's important to be
[100:26] nutrition facts literate.
[100:28] So, when you're talking about uh
[100:30] processed foods,
[100:31] so
[100:32] as much as possible, cooking at home,
[100:34] but that's something that a lot of
[100:36] people don't really know how to do, feel
[100:38] they don't have the time for.
[100:39] >> People aren't going to start doing that.
[100:40] >> And then
[100:41] >> I I'll tell you, they're not going to
[100:42] start doing that. I wish they would, but
[100:44] they they're not going to.
[100:45] >> At the grocery store to to look at the
[100:46] nutrition facts panel and be like, okay,
[100:48] what's in here, what's in there, and
[100:50] comparing products to one another,
[100:52] right? And and also, what's more
[100:54] important for your own health.
[100:56] >> Mhm.
[100:56] >> Right? What's relevant for my health may
[100:58] not be what's relevant for your health.
[101:00] You know, some people are we're talking
[101:03] about salt sensitivity. Some people are
[101:05] very salt sensitive. Some people are
[101:07] very active and need to replace salt,
[101:09] and so salt is not an issue for them.
[101:11] But, so being able to know
[101:14] uh where to what to pay attention to,
[101:16] because otherwise, it just gets
[101:18] overwhelming.
[101:19] >> Mhm.
[101:20] You mentioned uh the study was paid for
[101:22] by a company, and earlier you mentioned
[101:24] companies. I think this is an important
[101:25] issue that we've never really direct
[101:27] directly addressed on this podcast. I
[101:29] mean, anytime I've covered a paper and
[101:31] uh sometimes I do these solo episodes,
[101:33] I'll get back to them soon. I used to do
[101:34] a lot more of them, but I would always
[101:36] look, like are there financial conflicts
[101:38] of interest?
[101:40] What's the difference between a company
[101:42] funding a study
[101:44] and a financial conflict of interest, if
[101:46] any? Like it Like to me, a financial
[101:47] conflict of interest is if the
[101:50] investigators, the scientists running
[101:52] the study, um are have stakes in you
[101:54] know, they have uh shares in the company
[101:56] or they're being paid to do the study,
[101:57] obviously. But, when a company funds
[102:00] research on like this uh
[102:03] the snack chips study that you did,
[102:06] I think everyone would like to assume
[102:08] that they don't have any You're not
[102:09] feeling any There's no explicit nor
[102:12] implicit pressure for a particular
[102:14] outcome.
[102:14] >> Right.
[102:15] >> Could you like how do How does this
[102:17] stuff come about?
[102:18] >> So, I'm glad you're asking that question
[102:19] because that's something that people
[102:21] often have this knee-jerk reaction to
[102:23] industry-sponsored studies. And there
[102:25] are I know there are people who are very
[102:27] very vocal against industry
[102:30] uh sponsored research. But, as
[102:31] scientists,
[102:32] we do research. We do research to the
[102:34] best of our abilities, and we provide we
[102:38] we draft the research question, you get
[102:40] the data, you analyze it, you publish
[102:42] it. Some of the studies that I haven't
[102:44] been able to publish have been funded by
[102:46] industry that have had null results.
[102:49] >> Null results?
[102:50] >> Null results. So, so we did a we did a
[102:52] study. It was sponsored by industry. We
[102:55] didn't find any significant effect of
[102:57] the test product compared to the
[102:59] control.
[103:00] >> And you can't publish it.
[103:01] >> We wrote the paper. We wrote the report.
[103:04] We provided it to our sponsor.
[103:07] Just
[103:08] out of uh
[103:10] you know, courtesy. So, this is the
[103:11] paper. We're going to submit it to for
[103:12] publication.
[103:15] Do what you need to do.
[103:16] >> So, they've given you the green light to
[103:17] submit it. So, the companies aren't
[103:19] short-circuiting you.
[103:20] >> No, never. That's in the contract,
[103:21] right? Your right to publish. Because
[103:24] otherwise, why did you do research?
[103:26] There's no point [clears throat] in
[103:27] doing research if you're not going to be
[103:28] able to publish your research.
[103:30] So,
[103:32] you basically
[103:34] it's courtesy to show that the paper
[103:36] that you're going to be submitting for
[103:37] publication,
[103:39] that one paper that I'm
[103:41] referring to, I must have tried five
[103:44] different journals.
[103:46] But,
[103:48] the findings are not exciting. They're
[103:50] showing that there's no effect on our
[103:52] outcomes,
[103:53] and it got rejected, rejected, rejected,
[103:55] rejected. And I'm pretty persistent.
[103:59] I ran out of steam. So, if I run out of
[104:01] steam, I can imagine so many other
[104:03] people, other scientists who have no
[104:05] results have run out of steam much
[104:07] quicker than me.
[104:08] >> So, that's a no result issue. It's not
[104:10] necessarily unique to industry-funded
[104:12] studies.
[104:13] >> No, that's not unique. So,
[104:15] industry-sponsored studies, you know, I
[104:17] often also say they're
[104:19] we get um
[104:21] NIH reports of scientific misconduct.
[104:24] So, reports of scientific misconduct
[104:26] conducts can be found from NIH-sponsored
[104:28] studies where they find that the
[104:31] principal investigator falsified data
[104:33] that have been published in a specific
[104:35] paper.
[104:36] So, to me,
[104:38] if you're not going to if you're not an
[104:40] honest scientist,
[104:43] obviously, I don't think it matters
[104:44] who's sponsoring your research because
[104:46] the NIH finds misconduct.
[104:49] >> Right. I mean,
[104:50] doing science
[104:52] for any other reason than trying to find
[104:54] real answers is just insane. Like, I
[104:56] mean, these people are who do this are
[104:58] like legitimately sick. Like, you know,
[105:01] like yeah.
[105:02] >> It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.
[105:04] >> well, do they really think they
[105:05] discovered something if they made it up?
[105:06] It's like it's like it doesn't it's not
[105:08] it doesn't it doesn't compute. It
[105:10] doesn't compute. Well, it never ends
[105:11] well. And then, you know, we could spend
[105:13] hours talking about the case these
[105:14] things always it always comes out in the
[105:16] wash. So, I'm hearing that negative
[105:18] outcomes are hard to publish.
[105:20] When you
[105:21] take on funding from a company to to
[105:25] address a particular question about a
[105:27] product that they sell. You it sounds to
[105:29] me, I'm trying to I want to be careful
[105:31] I'm not like leading the witness here,
[105:32] but that you you don't it doesn't sound
[105:35] like you feel any pressure to give them
[105:37] a particular answer.
[105:39] >> No.
[105:39] >> So, what's their interest in doing this?
[105:42] Like like why are they why are they
[105:43] funding studies? I mean companies are
[105:45] selfish and they should be. They are
[105:46] shareholders and they need to um some of
[105:48] them are public companies and so the
[105:49] shareholders are the public and so why
[105:51] are they funding research? I mean plenty
[105:53] of people eat chips.
[105:54] >> Yeah.
[105:54] >> Why are they funding research?
[105:57] >> They wanted to know if it had a health
[105:58] benefit.
[105:59] >> So, they could market a health benefit.
[106:01] >> Probably. Market a health benefit at
[106:03] some point. That could be. And then if
[106:05] they don't find a health benefit,
[106:07] maybe they could switch it to something
[106:09] else, right? I don't know.
[106:11] >> I'm very uh
[106:13] sympathetic to the reality that there
[106:16] isn't a lot of research funding coming
[106:18] through NIH and NSF these days, but but
[106:22] always it's been you know, uh it's been
[106:25] low. I know cuz I sat on study sections
[106:27] which dole out grants. I
[106:29] got grants, but I it's very very very
[106:31] competitive. Are you taking money from
[106:34] companies to do this work because it's a
[106:37] it's a great way to fund studies. Like
[106:39] in other words, if if if NIH had more
[106:42] money to study nutrition,
[106:43] >> Mhm.
[106:44] >> I could imagine a world where you would
[106:45] just take money from NIH to do it. Like
[106:47] you wouldn't need the money from
[106:49] companies.
[106:50] >> are better from NIH funding than from uh
[106:53] from industry funding for nutrition
[106:55] research.
[106:56] But if you're if you could get an NIH
[106:58] grant, that's that's the ultimate goal,
[107:01] right? Or USDA or other governmental
[107:04] grant.
[107:05] That's the goal.
[107:06] >> Mhm.
[107:07] >> But sometimes also there's specific
[107:09] foods, specific products that would be
[107:12] kind of hard to study without industry
[107:15] support cuz you need to get access to
[107:18] the specific food
[107:21] or product.
[107:22] >> Well, I
[107:22] >> what the status of it is right now, but
[107:25] um my
[107:27] fairly frequent um kind of check-in on
[107:29] what
[107:30] the at least stated goals of the
[107:33] now being revised NIH are include um
[107:37] creating a forum
[107:38] even some incentive for publishing
[107:40] negative results or null results, I
[107:42] should say. Uh you know, Jay
[107:44] Bhattacharya who's been on this podcast
[107:46] I just put that out publicly. We need to
[107:48] we need those results that are
[107:49] important. They steer people away from
[107:51] certain things that need to be steered
[107:53] away from and also uh it seems at least
[107:58] from the whole food pyramid revision et
[108:01] cetera that there seems to be more and
[108:02] more interest in nutrition
[108:04] as a research topic and something to
[108:06] really understand. So, obviously it's
[108:09] really important. I mean, people are
[108:11] eating every day.
[108:12] Um they're making these choices. So,
[108:14] there should be more federal funding for
[108:15] these things. And then there's no
[108:17] chance of bias.
[108:18] >> Right.
[108:19] >> Right? Yeah, I think that people assume
[108:21] that if if industry funded a study that
[108:23] um especially on food that like
[108:26] something's not to be trusted in there.
[108:28] >> I don't know why for food in particular,
[108:30] right? So, if you think about it
[108:32] >> Food and drugs. Food and drug companies.
[108:34] >> But drug companies, they do research on
[108:36] their own product all the time.
[108:38] >> the R&D for drug companies is definitely
[108:40] done in-house. That's also part of the
[108:42] scary part about it. We don't see the
[108:44] null results. I actually would
[108:46] prefer if it
[108:48] took on a different shape. I don't know
[108:49] exactly what it would look like. I mean,
[108:50] drug comp we don't see a lot of the
[108:53] negative outcomes that might exist. So,
[108:55] I I don't think there's a lot
[108:56] >> they just die out before they make it to
[108:58] next step and
[108:59] >> Yeah, I think outright scientific fraud,
[109:02] people making stuff up is pretty rare.
[109:04] >> Very rare.
[109:05] >> But I do think there's a lot of
[109:07] questions about people because of the
[109:09] incentives to need to publish to as you
[109:11] described it's hard to publish null
[109:12] results. We will never know and And is
[109:15] when you run a lab as you know, you you
[109:16] want to create a culture where graduate
[109:18] students and post docs feel very
[109:19] comfortable saying there's nothing here.
[109:21] >> Right.
[109:21] >> Because the stuff that didn't work out
[109:24] you always you you know, it's just a
[109:26] question that you always have like what
[109:28] what stuff do we never hear about
[109:30] because the negative results like they
[109:32] say, "Well, that mouse was sick." Or
[109:34] this you know, there's a lot of
[109:35] the brain is a crazy
[109:37] >> Yeah.
[109:37] >> thing.
[109:38] >> That's why you need to teach the
[109:39] students well, right? You have a student
[109:41] who comes to you and says,
[109:43] "Hey this
[109:45] this is lower this is better than this."
[109:47] And you look at you look at the numbers
[109:49] and you say, "Well,
[109:50] it's 25 versus 27 and the standard
[109:53] deviation is 10." Like, "No, 25 is the
[109:57] same as 27, right?" So, you have to make
[109:59] sure you you teach well to
[110:02] know that you know, even numerically
[110:05] different effects may not be
[110:08] statistically significantly different
[110:10] and that's just
[110:11] part of the you know, the curve, right?
[110:14] >> Yeah, the ideal situation is when the
[110:15] student or post doc doesn't believe
[110:17] their own results. They're like, "It's
[110:18] not real." [laughter] And then you have
[110:19] to convince them, "Actually, you have
[110:21] something interesting." That's a good
[110:22] situation.
[110:23] >> situation.
[110:23] >> That's a good situation. And then
[110:24] eventually they're like, "Oh, okay, you
[110:26] know." That's the ideal situation, but I
[110:29] think this whole field of nutrition is
[110:31] is is contentious
[110:33] uh for some of the right reasons. It's
[110:35] so very important and I think it's
[110:36] contentious also for a lot of
[110:39] unfortunate and unnecessary reasons.
[110:41] Among the students and post docs and
[110:44] general public when you interact, what
[110:45] what are people
[110:47] most interested in with respect to
[110:49] nutrition? Like when people ask you, is
[110:51] it like, "What should I eat? What
[110:53] shouldn't I eat?" Like what what are
[110:54] what are what what's coming Like what
[110:56] are your antennae picking up when when
[110:58] you're out there?
[110:59] >> I think what should I eat or you know,
[111:01] or have you heard about XYZ fad? That's
[111:05] also one. Have you heard that whatever
[111:09] product cures everything in the world?
[111:11] >> Mhm.
[111:12] >> No, I haven't heard that.
[111:14] >> Peptides are like very peptides right
[111:17] now peptides are really big.
[111:18] >> It's always something else.
[111:19] >> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[111:20] >> So it's it's it's very specific to a
[111:22] product.
[111:22] >> Yeah, often very specific to a product.
[111:24] Yeah.
[111:25] >> You won't be held responsible for your
[111:26] answer but
[111:28] do you supplement your diet with with
[111:31] minerals like magnesium or anything like
[111:33] that or you just completely careful food
[111:35] choices?
[111:36] >> I prefer careful food choices. I think
[111:39] it's more pleasurable to eat a
[111:42] complete food
[111:43] diet. That said, I think that there are
[111:45] some people who may need to supplement
[111:47] their diets, but I think people should
[111:50] strive to
[111:52] to get their nutrients from
[111:56] from whole foods.
[111:57] >> Fiber recommendations are really
[111:59] growing. I I looked into this and many
[112:01] many people's doctors are now telling
[112:03] them you should take
[112:04] a little bit of psyllium husk. I always
[112:06] thought by the way psyllium husk was
[112:08] like the husks like you had to like
[112:09] they're like you're going to eat like
[112:10] the seed husk. It's actually ground into
[112:12] a powder or something like that. I'm
[112:14] still afraid to take it, but I should I
[112:16] should take a little bit of it, but
[112:17] doctors now are prescribing
[112:20] supplemental fiber
[112:22] and in a pretty high rate from what I
[112:24] understand.
[112:25] >> Oh, that's interesting.
[112:26] >> Yeah, people don't want to eat
[112:27] [clears throat] their fruits and
[112:27] vegetables.
[112:28] >> But they bring so much more, right? So
[112:32] yes, there is fiber in fruits and
[112:34] vegetables, but there's also all sorts
[112:37] of polyphenols, right? All sorts of
[112:39] non-nutrient components that themselves
[112:42] may have benefits for health that we
[112:46] don't fully understand yet that
[112:48] feed your gut that are maybe just as
[112:50] relevant that may
[112:52] enhance
[112:54] fiber's impact on health.
[112:56] >> Yeah, listen, I
[112:57] >> So you know
[112:58] >> preaching to the choir.
[112:59] I I love fruits and vegetables.
[113:02] Well,
[113:03] thank you so much for taking time out of
[113:04] your schedule. You have a very unique
[113:06] research program. You know, I have to
[113:08] say very few people can work on as many
[113:11] different things and find their points
[113:13] of intersection and
[113:14] I'm so grateful that you're exploring
[113:16] these things. I appreciate your
[113:18] openness about industry-funded research.
[113:20] This is something that I think people
[113:23] need to know about. I certainly learned
[113:25] about that from you today and based on
[113:27] your work, I think it's fair to say that
[113:29] we shouldn't just be encouraging people
[113:30] to get great sleep. We should be
[113:32] encouraging people to eat
[113:35] at times and foods that allow them to
[113:38] get great sleep, which will allow them
[113:39] to
[113:40] get better make better food choices
[113:43] >> Yes.
[113:43] >> and so forth.
[113:44] >> Yeah. So, you know, I talk often about a
[113:46] vicious cycle where you don't sleep
[113:48] well, you don't eat well, then that
[113:51] makes you not sleep so well and really
[113:55] hoping for people to get into a helpful
[113:57] cycle, right? Where you get good sleep,
[113:59] where you can make
[114:00] good food choices that then helps you
[114:03] get better sleep to keep propelling this
[114:06] this cycle of better health.
[114:08] >> I love it. It's a true integrative
[114:10] medicine and science. I also can attest
[114:13] that when you sleep well, you make
[114:14] better food choices. When you eat well,
[114:16] you sleep better. So, thank you so much
[114:18] for coming, for taking time out of your
[114:20] schedule. Really appreciate it and I've
[114:22] learned a ton. Thank you.
[114:24] >> Thank you.
[114:25] >> Thank you for joining me for today's
[114:26] discussion with Dr. Marie-Pierre
[114:28] St-Onge. To learn more about her
[114:30] laboratory's research and to find a link
[114:32] to her book Eat Better, Sleep Better,
[114:35] please see the links in the show note
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