Podcast 039: Superfoods, Enzymes and Metabolism

Discussion of obesity and general eating habits – why small indulgences really add up when it comes time to stand on the bathroom scale. This is exactly what metabolism is: the regulation of the foods we eat by the body.

Exsula Superfoods has cut down greatly on Scott’s weight. Martin explains why this change has taken place. Basically, he says, it comes down to a combination of an increase in metabolism and a decrease in insulin resistance.

As Martin says, an improperly balanced metabolism is one of the five main sources of illness, and as such it’s an issue which should not be ignored.

Podcast 039: Superfoods, Enzymes and Metabolism

Scott Paton: Welcome back everybody. You are listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-Op podcast, restoring vitality to you and to the planet. I am Scott Paton your co-host along with Martin Pytela. Hey Martin, how are you doing today?

Martin Pytela: Doing good and you Scott?

Scott Paton: I am doing excellent. I am doing excellent. Recently, we have been talking about obesity and losing weight and we have had just some great conversations with Patrick[Phonetic] over at Generation Plus and it really has been fascinating and I have to tell you sort of as a reporting in that my weight is dropping.

Martin Pytela: Excellent.

Scott Paton: Not only is it dropping, pairs of pants that I couldn’t get into a month ago are fitting nicely as opposed to…

Martin Pytela: Oh, that is so nice.

Scott Paton: Being a problem to zip up and everything else.

Martin Pytela: Okay and so the main change that you made to your lifestyle is adding the load of enzymes we had sent to you, right?

Scott Paton: That’s right. Yeah, I have just been taking Zymitol and of course I have been taking Excela-50 every morning to start my day and what is amazing to me is at night before I go to bed, I have got this craving I need to have a bowl of cereal or a piece of toast or a fruit or something and I did notice the last little while that I am going to bed and I am not hungry; I don’t have that craving at all. So…

Martin Pytela: So, that… you know that’s a sure sign that your metabolism is changing and your insulin resistance is diminishing.

Scott Paton: Oh.

Martin Pytela: Yeah. You know there are essentially five main forces of illness and impaired metabolism is one of them. Maybe we could highlight that today.

Scott Paton: Yeah. I think that would be great topic for today. I have never actually heard of impaired metabolism, right? Usually everyone talks about having a low metabolism or fast one, but what’s an impaired metabolism?

Martin Pytela: Well, I guess that would be known as the low metabolism because people are used to… you know like all these folks they say, I used to be able to eat like a horse or like anything goes in my twenties or thirties even, but all of a sudden something changed somewhere in the middle age, then things don’t work like they used to. For some it arrives in their thirties, for some in their forties, but it does arrive.

Scott Paton: Yeah, I have had that happen for sure.

Martin Pytela: All of a sudden you start putting on weight in the middle and then it actually gets worse. I mean you can sort of maybe start sweating or having your heart race or feel anxiety that sort of grabs you in the heart area or shortness of breath, you know, it sort of feels like you are going to have a heart attack. Well, that’s not what that is. That actually is a metabolic problem, a hypoglycemia type of thing.

Scott Paton: Oh, interesting.

Martin Pytela: You know blood sugar level swings and it is actually caused by eating too many carbohydrates. Actually, let me make a list of this. Three biggest contributors to adding to our weight can be either insulin resistance, cortisol from the adrenals or the insufficient supply of iodine to your thyroid so your thyroid is running too slow. So, the thyroid is sort of like the main regulatory body. So, it is like the gas in your car, like you step on it and it burns gas good. The insulin, that’s if you have insulin resistance, your body will not process the sugars correctly. In fact, sugar will not get into the cells and that causes problems of its own kind and the third one if from the adrenals where if you are not relaxing, if you are living too stressed, the cortisol levels go up and it starts changing the overall metabolism making you fatter. So, now where does this come from? #1 cause is sleep deprivation.

Scott Paton: Oh, interesting.

Martin Pytela: So, if you stay up too…

Scott Paton: That’s not something I would have thought of.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, if you stay up too late, you don’t sufficiently relax overnight, you know, like the best hours for your body to actually, what should I say, undo the effect of cortisol are between 10 pm and 2 am. So, of course, if you don’t get to bed until midnight or 1 o’clock you have pretty much missed the window.

Scott Paton: Yes, that’s right.

Martin Pytela: So, people will… you know when you are young, it is not a big issue, but the older you get, the more of an issue it becomes. So, going to bed to early and getting up early works. It is a good thing. Second thing that’s involved in that is you don’t start eating, you know like if you skip your breakfast, you don’t kick up the metabolism. You just allow it to coast on what it has in the stores, which sort of seems like well, I am skipping a meal, that’s a good thing, but it isn’t because what it does it puts your body in a starvation mode and so by the time you are going to eat later, you are going to be just ravenous, you are going to eat a larger serving and you are going to try and make up for it late in the day like after 10 p.m. with a bowl of cereal or an ice cream or chocolate bar or whatever it is that you just can’t resist by then. For me, that would be a bag of chips. So, anyway I remember myself, you know this is now almost 20 years ago, I was working in an office and I was working hard and all of that and all of a sudden I started getting these heart pangs and I thought this is anxiety attack, what’s going on? And I started putting on weight in the waistline and I started you know having all these symptoms that I just described and it was all caused by incorrect diet. I was addicted to sugars, to too much carbohydrates, and I was eating too much of it and I was eating it at the wrong time and soon as I changed, I switched to the fit for life diet, all of that went away.

Scott Paton: So, what were you eating instead?

Martin Pytela: Well, I switched to mostly raw. You know, two-thirds or more of everything I ate was in the raw state, salads and fruits. So, it was uncooked and in any one meal there would be only one concentrated food. So, my salad with rice or salad with a piece of chicken or salad with a piece of fish or salad with spaghetti or salad with a potato. So, I was on salads all the time and my morning meals were all raw fruit. So, I would start my morning with some watermelon or some other soft fruits and progressing to harder fruits like apples and pears and finish up with a banana, maybe at 10.30 or 11 and then I would be ready for lunch. All of this is described richly on the Life Enthusiast Co-Op website in the health education under nutrition. We have a nutrition principles page there where people can explore the different principles. Not all of these things work identical for all blood types. Some people are more, how should I say it, it is much easier for them to be vegetarian; for others, it is actually appropriate to eat meat.

Scott Paton: It’s not a one size fits all proposition, is what you are saying.

Martin Pytela: No.

Scott Paton: Although there are basics, right? And we all need to drink water. It doesn’t matter who you are, you need that, right?

Martin Pytela: Oh, yeah, water, we all need water. We all need air. We all need fat solubles. Lecithin is the universal solvent for fat soluble things in the human body. It is so under appreciated because you need to carry the fat type of cells in and out of the cellular structures and the carrier is water, but the emulsifier which is lecithin, is what you need to actually marry the fat cell or the fat molecule to the water molecule so it can be carried into the cellular structures. It is sort of like soap right?

Scott Paton: Right. Right.

Martin Pytela: You cannot wash the dirt off your clothes without the use of your soap because that’s what you have connected to the water and then the water will carry it away. The same thing works in the human body. You cannot move the fat in a medium like blood because blood is mostly water based. You need to actually emulsify it somehow and it is the lecithin that serves as the emulsifier in the body fluids.

Scott Paton: Cool. Well, I want to get back to this impaired metabolism.

Martin Pytela: Oh, yes. Okay. So, here we are…

Scott Paton: How do we unimpair this metabolism?

Martin Pytela: Okay. So, one is the stress from the adrenals. It is that… I mentioned that the adrenals will contribute to the cortisol and all of that. So, you need to relax that away.

Scott Paton: Right. So, what you are saying is we are spending way too much time rushing around, going here, going there, when what we should be doing is spending a little bit of time sitting on a beach, enjoying a good book or walking through the woods or…

Martin Pytela: Yeah, any sort of, form of meditation and clearing your mind and undoing the stressful stuff, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Paton: So, would you say like… I mean obviously any amount of time is better than no time, but in terms of an ideal amount of time would you say like 20 minutes a day of….

Martin Pytela: 20 minutes twice a day would be wonderful.

Scott Paton: Okay.

Martin Pytela: You know morning to just get going, you know morning meditations are great because they set you up and evening meditations are wonderful because they allow you to close up, shut down, but it could be anything really; any time, it works as long as you can, as long as you do it.

Scott Paton: That’s the key, is to do it, right?

Martin Pytela: Yeah, that’s right.

Scott Paton: I think for most people to do because they are you know, oh, we got to go get the kids, we got to run here, we got to do this.

Martin Pytela: Oh, yeah.

Scott Paton: We lead such busy lives, but [Voice Cross Over]

Martin Pytela: Yeah, sorry. I am visualizing the relaxing meditation when you drive home.

Scott Paton: Yeah. [laughs] That’s an oxymoron isn’t it?

Martin Pytela: Yeah. Sorry about that.

Scott Paton: Honk, honk, get out of the way. Most of us have a very relaxing trip home.

Martin Pytela: Yeah. Okay. So, the second one, second one in this equation is the insulin. Insulin is produced by the pancreas and if your insulin levels are high, it is just… you cannot win this. It acts on your brain and it creates… pardon me… acts on your brain and increases the appetite, especially the appetite for sugar. That’s why people have these dessert cravings and as that happens your LDL cholesterol goes up, it lowers the HDL, the good cholesterol, it raises the triglycerides and it raises your blood pressure, which is all of the stuff that your doctor would test and he would say, oh, you know you need to eat less fat, he will tell you; completely wrong. You need to eat less carbohydrates. This is where medicine has it completely wrong. They tell you well, it is cholesterol, so you need to eat less cholesterol and cholesterol is in fatty foods, but it is so wrong because the cholesterol in the body is a response of your metabolism or digestive system to carbohydrates. So, the correct response is you need to put in superfoods in your diet.

Scott Paton: Oh, okay.

Martin Pytela: Yeah because you see what happens is the, what’s it called again, [laughs] I get lost in my conversations, the insulin will increase the homocysteine levels and it will decrease your B6 and folate. Folate is the folic acid which is the stuff that comes out of the green foods. So, going back to the beginning, what you need to do is add a nice protein starter in your morning like one or two teaspoons of something like the Exsula superfood and that gets you going in the right direction and then you need to add to it omega three fats so that you can fix the cellular membranes because when the cellular membranes become resistant to the insulin, they need to be repaired and the best repair is the omega threes so that something like flax oil or hemp oil or primrose oil or any oil, the other omega three rich plant foods and then you need to trace minerals like chromium, vanadium that regulates that and you need magnesium. You know magnesium is the mineral that helps regulate all of this metabolism.

Scott Paton: Magnesium is something that just keeps coming up over and over and over again in our conversations as such an important component of having really good health.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, it is tragically under appreciated and misunderstood. You know you hear in the popular culture calcium, calcium, calcium, supplement with calcium, keep your bones strong, all of that stuff.

Scott Paton: Yeah, osteoporosis.

Martin Pytela: Right. Interestingly enough, it is the magnesium that binds the calcium in the bone. So, it is like as if we… I don’t know… if you are trying to build a bridge, you need to have both the bricks and the mortar. Well, the calcium is like the bricks, magnesium is like the mortar. If you don’t have the mortar, the whole thing will fall apart. Anyway, so, the magnesium, you know magnesium is deficient in all the foods you eat. There is just… you know it has been measured and tested over and over and over, there is just not enough magnesium. 80% of Americans are deficient, 60% are severely deficient in magnesium.

You are listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-Op podcast, restoring vitality to you and to the planet. Part 2 of this very, very interesting episode aired later in a couple of days [music overlap]

Author: Martin Pytela