Dr. Alessi, Author of The Bermuda Triangle Diet, Lose Fat Forever, and “The Promise Health and Fitness System has a doctorate degree in health and Physical education and a master’s in nutrition. He is wwner and operator of Dr. Derek Health & Fitness in New York. He has appeared in hundreds of TV and radio programs throughout the country and is host of the weekly TV show on NBC Cleveland & NBC Buffalo, New York called “Live it Fit Now. In this episode on “The Dr. Haley Show Podcast, Dr. Alessi discusses health and fitness from every aspect with a focus on an anti-inflammatory diet and maintaining stable normal blood sugar levels.
Discover your best foods for optimal health with Dr. Derek Allessi. He even uses medical tests on himself to see how his body reacts to different foods and substances. Find out how to prevent diabetes and other inflammatory diseases through diet.
RESOURCES
- Visit Dr. Alessi’s online store “Strength Genesis“
- Visit Dr. Alessi’s fitness website alessifit.com
- Visit Dr. Derek Alessi on Instagram
- Visit Dr. Alessi on Facebook
- Visit Dr. Derek Alessi on YouTube
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- Listen to this episode on iTunes
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro Snip
00:49 Introduce Dr. Derek Alessi
02:12 What is “Strength Genesis”
02:50 What is Macadamia Nut Oil.?
05:45 What is the history of hydrogenated oils?
08:39 Why do they call you “The High Octane Dad”?
09:00 Dr. Alessi gets his windows cleaned
10:44 What is “Black Ant Powder”?
10:50 What is “Mouth Taping”?
16:21 How many hours of deep sleep and how many hours of sleep do you need a night?
18:00 Why are people so tired all of the time?
20:23 What have you learned from measuring your glucose after certain foods?
24:08 Is it better to drink wine or vodka?
25:18 Why does the scripture tell you to drink wine?
26:40 What do you mean that “when you eat, you are feeding them”?
28:53 What peaked your interest in diet to the point where you chose this as your profession?
30:53 What are your current diet goals?
31:26 What do you eat to accomplish your diet goals?
32:38 What happened to the bread over the years?
35:01 What is wrong with seed oils?
36:40 Why do we need more omega 3 fatty acids?
36:06 What is the difference between the omega 3’s and the omega 6 fatty acids?
41:55 Why did you start selling Macadamia nut oil?
44:53 What is in your keto salad dressing?
45:28 What is a creatine chew?
47:22 What are the benefits of creatine?
48:02 What else helps with dementia?
52:13 What is the best protein supplement?
54:51 What is the difference between line caught and farmed fish?
TRANSCRIPT
I’m a fan of good nutrition, keeping blood sugar level low, making sure that you’re starting with protein first, taking in good fats, trying to limit the amount of bad carbohydrates in the diet. Couple that with of course the right fitness. Build some muscle, do cardio here and there. If you do that, wonderful things will happen in your life.
You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.
Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.
I’m Dr. Michael Haley, and you’re listening to the Dr. Haley Show podcast. On today’s show, you’re gonna meet a guest that uses facts and entertainment to help you learn better and healthier ways to live. Today’s guest is Dr. Derek Alessi, also known as the High Octane Dad on YouTube and some other platforms which I highly encourage you to subscribe.
You are definitely going to see some good videos that are not only entertaining,
but teach you. They really do help you learn. Some ways. The body works that you may not have known before. Dr. Alessi is author of the Bermuda Triangle Diet, author of Lose Fat Forever, and also
the Promise Health and Fitness system. He has a doctorate degree in health and physical education and a master’s in nutrition.
He’s owner and operator of Dr. Derek Health and Fitness in New York, and has appeared on hundreds of TV and radio programs throughout the country. He is host of the weekly TV show on NBC Cleveland and Buffalo, New York called Live It Fit Now. Dr. Alessi, thank you for joining me on the show today. And there was one more thing, actually, there were a lot of things I left out in this, you know, introduction to who you are.
But one of them, there’s also a nutrition company called Strength Genesis. Is that yours? It is. So strength Genesis is my supplement arm in terms of what I do. And, the back story is quite simple, and a lot of people share the same process. If you’ve been in this fitness and nutrition industry long enough, you’re typically looking for things that you may not readily be able to get in the market.
So you wind up developing or getting your own, which is essentially what I did with health and wellness products. It started with something called Australian macadamia nut oil, and it’s kind of gone on from there. So yes, Strength Genesis is my company. Okay. I love macadamia nuts. Is the oil tastes like the nut. Have you ever had it before?
No I haven’t
I’ve had the macadamia nuts. I got a bag of organic macadamia nuts sitting at home that I got from Costco. And we’ll snack on them because they’re delicious. But I have never had the oil, so I was turned on to this oil by reading the four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. Great book, not necessarily new.
It’s been around, I would say a good 10, 12 years by now. And he kept talking about this new olive oil. So of course I wanted to try it. And it was this Australian macadamia nut oil. And the benefits were that it had more omega fats and even olive oil, but it also held up to a much higher smoke point.
So olive oil was a little bit fragile about 350 degrees. And if you exceed it, you’re flashing the oil where this is 515 degrees rated. And once again it packs a punch. Regarding the omega 3’s. Lastly, though, it kind of tastes
nutty and buttery, which of course is very good for a lot of cooking. So people love it with protein.
They love with eggs, they love with vegetables because it’s delicious and good for you. Interesting. And I’m wondering, is it maybe similar to coconut oil and that it has more saturated fats and hence you can heat it up more? Yeah, very similar when you look at coconut oil, when you look at butter, when you look at avocado oil, when you look at macadamia nut oil, they share a lot of the same profiles of the saturated fat.
Getting a nutrition degree 32 years ago, of course, it was always taboo to talk about saturated fat, because that was the fact that we thought at the time was so bad. What we have found out from that, in droves, of course, is that is not the bad fat. In fact, that was always the good one. So yes, it is loaded with that.
Once again, very easy to cook with. And the taste is accepted by a lot of people. It tastes delicious. I’ll have to try it. One of the things, you know, just keeping it simple when it comes to oils, the probably the most unhealthy is maybe the seed oils that are actually hydrogenated or the vegetable oils that are hydrogenated, meaning they use a process where they’re attempting to saturate them by adding hydrogen.
And you come up with something that’s not necessarily naturally occurring. Now, why do they do this? It seems to make it last longer. And how do you make something last longer? You make it inedible, which is the truth, you know, that’s why they put chemicals in food and preservatives to make it last longer, so that even the bacteria can’t eat it.
Yeah. No. It’s funny. Right. So, being here, in fact, I should clarify. I’m in Western New York. Sometimes when I say New York, people think I’m in Manhattan or in the city, Western New York. And the difference is Western New Yorkers are more Midwestern, in general. So that’s kind of, kind of my background in this.
My joke, though, is, of course, this is made in some factory in new Jersey. So if you have fully hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated, it was made years ago in some factory in new Jersey. Also when you really look at it, a lot of it happened postwar when we were trying to build up a surplus and stockpile food, which initially started as a good thing.
But of course, looking at it through that lens, it was never designed to be a health product, which of course, got a complete rebranding in the 1970s, 80s and 90s as Being Good for you. And it never was, and it was never designed for that. It was exactly as you said it was to preserve food. It was to make it last longer and to feed populations that might not have it otherwise.
You know, when you talk like that.
This is what I love about PhDs You know what research is? You know what it means to, you know, dig in and find out the truth behind something. You’re not a medical doctor. You’re a PhD. You’re well studied and anyone could be a doctor. You go and you learn some things, and you pass a bunch of multiple choice tests.
You sit for a bar exam and do a few practicals. It’s pretty darn easy. A lot of doctors end up not really going to the scientific source and getting into the nitty gritty. When I’ve been watching some of your content on YouTube, I realize not only are you researched and you give all the background behind things, but then you use yourself as a lab rat
and test things and prove them in your own mind.
It’s pretty dang cool. Well thank you. I think part of it is being in an industry that you enjoy being in a profession you enjoy helps you do those types of things and have fun with it. I’m not speaking for every medical doctor, and I do agree with your opinion on a lot of that, but I don’t know how many of them love
that they do what they do for a daily basis, whereas I do, and I could tell already you do as well.
And I think that makes the biggest difference. Yeah. Well, you know, I am a doctor, a chiropractor specifically, went to the
similar schools as medical doctors, and took a lot of the same classes and got through my board exams and was practicing. But then I started researching and digging in, and, you know, some of my favorite sites were things like, you know, pubmed.gov, where you’re actually looking at studies that were done and, you know, you kind of decide how controlled the studies were and what the outcomes were.
And you’re and you learn from those things. And I’ve done so much more learning after school than actually in school. So yeah, we have similarities
and how we think. in that way when I hear your background on things and
you go into, well, historically this and this is where it came from, it’s like, okay, this guy does his research.
This is cool. This is good stuff. How did you come up with the high octane dad? My kids told me to calm down. Which is what it came down to. You know, I believe in, of course, being as active as possible. And that
is your fitness, that is your health. It is your nutrition, that is your sleep.
That is how your body keeps rebuilding and repairing. And with it comes a lot of energy. Now, you could use that energy in a lot of different ways. I’ve chosen to take a lot of that extra energy and put it into my kids. I have three kids, two girls and a boy, who are very active. All of them are extremely active and in sports and in performance and so on and so forth.
So I’ve kind of blended the two. I’m a fan, not just of, teaching nutrition so that, you know, just look better. I do think esthetics go a long way. And it’s hard to have good
self esteem if you’re not happy with how you look. But at the same time, though, it should give you more than that.
It should give you energy, it should give you stamina, it should give you vibrancy so that you enjoy doing these types of things. And you want to do fun things with your kids or grandkids or whatever stage you’re at. And that’s ultimately kind of what my approach has been with health and fitness. Yeah. And it carries over into all those other areas of your life.
You know, you end up being able to be a better father, you know, better husband, better employee, better manager. Whatever it is that you do, it carries over into all of those other areas of your life because you can think clearer. You can be present with customers or whoever you’re talking to. It just spills over and it starts with, you know, good nutrition, good rest, exercise and a mental attitude that says, you know, yes, this is good.
I want to talk about some of the, videos that I’ve seen. Now, first one I don’t think is a product that you carry. And I thought I was being punked. What is black ant powder? Black ant powder. I had so much fun doing that video. In fact, even my youngest daughter will say to me, dad, you’re not still drinking that ant juice,
are you? so with the bland black ant powder. So of course, black Ant. We all know that ants can hold 2000 times their body weight, and they have this unbelievable strength and so on and so forth. But is it just a fallacy or is there something to it? And I wanted to trace that back, and I looked into the different types of black ant powders out there.
And it turns out that there is a derivative inside, black ant powder that mimics a lot of the natural steroids that we produce in our body. They’re producing it in their body, we produce it in our body, and it mimics it. And there are benefits of the crossover. So in taking it, you try to see if A you could even see an increase in your strength or energy or stamina.
B are there any other side effects to it and see how bad does it taste? So when having all of those things and doing some research on it, and I am not an herbalist by any stretch of the imagination, it’s extremely interesting. And who knew that you could get ant powder from so many different places and how you’re looking for this one Tibetan ant powder, that benefits or gives you more benefit than some of the other ones.
But I did that on several occasions, and I should say this too. I’ve continued to buy the product even after just looking at it, studying it, and doing it in a video. So I think it’s fantastic. You do have to mix it though. I’m not gonna lie. It does taste like
you’re eating some mud. Very earthy, extremely earthy.
So I would hide it in a pre-workout drink. In that I got down pretty well. Yeah. Well, I couldn’t imagine. I would imagine there’s, possibly another way to, you know, maybe sprinkle it on steak or something. I don’t know, but, I thought that video was definitely entertaining, educational. And I had never considered eating ants.
And I’m wondering, you know, what is, what is the serving size like? You know, 10,000 ants, I don’t know. Yeah. So, it’s funny because if you read the packaging, it’ll say, mix it with water. Do not do that. That is terrible advice. You will hate it. It’ll feel like you’re just eating the ground. So, I would blend it.
I would mix it in there. In terms of the quality, I don’t know. It doesn’t necessarily say anywhere. I can’t get an exact number of how many ants. I mean, are you like an aardvark? Are you an ant eater at that point? Yeah, I guess I don’t. Yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know, maybe it’s 4000.
5000. It could be a lot of them. You’d probably have to. I guess. What? How much does an aunt weigh? And then how much does a serving weigh? But who knows? You know, it makes you wonder in the summertime, if you have an ant problem around the house, if you should just collect up all those ants and now you probably shouldn’t do that.
Now, there was another experiment. You did. And, my wife has been telling me that I need to do this. I’m a snorer. But to the point where, I don’t know, I’m afraid of dying or something like that in my sleep mouth taping. What was your experience with that? You know, by the way, my wife says the same thing.
I always say, I don’t hear anything. Nothing. Well, sometimes that actually wakes me up. Okay. Well, all right then is tough to deny it then now,
but
for real in the sense that, the sleep apnea for me, I’ll sometimes just stop breathing. And when I finally do wake up, it’s by opening my mouth and go, you know.
And I thought, well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that with tape on my face.
it’s becoming more and more popular, probably going back about five years ago, I stole the idea from Ben Greenfield. If you’re familiar with some of his work in which he talked about starting mouth taping and how he discovered it, and he wasn’t the first to get into it either.
But the whole theory was if you could force nose breathing while you’re sleeping, you’re going to get more deep sleep. So of course, in sleep, we all know about total sleep because we’ve heard our whole lives. Well, you need eight hours or so total sleep, which is extremely inaccurate. It does differ per person and it says nothing about quality of sleep.
So in the process of always trying to improve deep sleep or REM sleep. So light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, some people link REM and deep together. Some break it apart. In deep sleep you release growth hormone, and in growth hormone you rebuild and repair. So if you’re getting more of that, you’re making the sleep quotient or your sleep efficiency ratio higher and better, which of course, most Americans need desperately.
So mouth tapping is yet another way to potentially play with it. Now, one of the things too, and you can see in the video I was wearing the dream sleep machine on my head. The dream sleep machine would be an EEG machine measuring the brainwave patterns of deep sleep. So you get a very accurate score from it, you know, wondering how you did that.
Yeah. So because it was tied in with an app. Yes. That was that was exactly it. What I would say to most people is, yes, there are apparatuses that are super cool and there’s ones even better than dream and more modern than that right now. But let’s say you just have a Fitbit or an Apple Watch. You can still track your sleep.
I usually tell people charge your Apple Watch or your Fitbit during the day. Wear it at night, which is the opposite of what they do, to measure your sleep, which is even more important than how many steps you took in the course of a day. So that is something you want to look at, always trying to improve the amount of deep sleep.
Now, personally, if you ask me, how much deep sleep do I need a night? My answer is 3.5 hours. So I’ve looked at it a number of times, and if I get 3.5 hours or more of deep sleep, I’m highly recharged and highly rested. Now. My goal, though, is to try to get that in about six total hours of sleep.
So I need a high sleep ratio. Yeah. Now, what you’re saying, might bother some people because some people are convinced if you don’t get, you know, 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night, you’re doing yourself a complete disservice. But the way you just put it, saying I need this much of deep sleep. And the other thing you mentioned was the, growth hormone.
Well, I read Guyton’s Book of Physiology probably 30 or 40 years ago, as a long time ago. But if I recall, about two hours into your deep sleep is when your growth hormone is peaking the highest. So if you don’t get to that two hour of deep sleep, you’re probably never going to get those peaks of growth hormone.
And what’s that going to do? Well, you know, drive your repair and your metabolism so that, you know, you’re burning fuel like you should. And that is definitely going to be a key to, to health, you know, living lean
and energetic. So I like the way you put that in explaining the deep sleep versus, you know, what, you can lay in bed for ten hours and never hit that.
Yeah. Which is what most people do. So, you know, I would always say tested. Check it out. And then of course, over time try to optimize it. You always want that deep sleep to increase. I’m not trying to necessarily steal sleep from people. In fact, I’d love them to get more deep sleep. More quality sleep, what they might find over time by doing things that might be mouth taping
It might be fitness. Weightlifting is going to increase deep sleep. The right diet, lowering insulin, all of that will improve deep sleep. You might find that you’re having a more enjoyable life without the need of constantly chasing so many hours. A lot of people in my business, probably in your practice as well, are talking about how their constantly tired.
And when you look at it, they’re sleeping. They’re laying in a bed seven, eight, nine hours a night, but they feel exhausted. I would once again turn it around and look at the deep sleep. How much of it are you really getting?
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the, measuring that you’re doing I think is very, very cool.
I like the fact that there’s a simple app and, you know, Fitbit or whatever you had called it. I don’t have one of those, but I want to get one and I want to encourage people, you know, go check out Dr. Alessi’s, YouTube channel and subscribe. And I think you’re on Instagram and, and a few other things.
Good, good videos. Another thing that I saw you measuring a lot was glucose. You’ve got a glucose monitor that you wear and connected to your phone, and you’ll get a baseline of where you’re at. And then let’s see what happens to my blood glucose when I drink wine, when I drink vodka, when I eat crackers, when I eat.
This was this is the one that got me. I said, what did he just do? Tablespoon of butter. Yum. That’s got to be delicious. But in doing those crazy little things, it’s entertaining and informative. You’re showing us the measurements and then giving us the reason why you got the results that you got. Yeah, it’s become easier to do than ever before in terms of measuring glucose, something I’ve really been into for a long time.
The old fashioned glucose monitors, we’d get a little fingerstick of blood, test it, take it up against the test strip and get, a blood sugar reading. I used to do that five times a day for well over ten years. I would get a number when I first woke up, just before I went to bed and in between my three meals.
But it’s not overly convenient. You’re constantly doing it. However, I would log it for a long time when it finally became available for non diabetics to get the CGM. These continuing glucose monitors game changer. So convenient, so portable you could constantly see. And also to the best part is you don’t have to time it up. So with measuring your blood sugar with a glucometer I have to eat a food and then approximate.
Should I check it at ten minutes I check it at 15 minutes. I check it at 30 minutes. With the CGM, it’s doing it for you and it’s sending it via Bluetooth to your phone. So it’s really cool to see when things are peaking or spiking when things are, or dipping because of your insulin release and you don’t have the time it up as much.
And now you have all of these data points which hopefully are helping you learn when you eat certain things of what it’s doing to you. Yeah. What did you learn about yourself in all of those, glucose measurements? I’ve learned that I’m a geek, and I really like doing these things. But on top of that, though, I’m always trying to stabilize my blood sugar level.
So for a lot of my clients or even customers at Strength genesis, they’ll ask me what will this do to my glucose? What will this do to my insulin? I’m trying to drop body fat, which is what most people are trying to do if chances are I’ve done it before, but if I haven’t done it, at least I’ve done something similar where I’m in the neighborhood and I can give them an idea.
If you were to eat this, drink that, this is what I expect to happen. And this is about the timetable I would expect to see it happen. So once again, trying to get into ketosis, trying to burn body fat, trying to improve longevity and health and fitness is all very important. And I would recommend measuring it based on your
expectations prior to doing these tests on yourself.
The things that you had learned from books. How did you measure up to what you expected as far as results go? No, that’s a great question. Of course, anybody in research will say, well, what’s your expectation bias to the whole thing? Are you changing your behavior based upon your perceived outcome, which is something of course, you do have to be careful of?
Because yeah, you can you can sway the results of anything. That being said, I love it when something tests out the way you didn’t think it was going to happen. And the best thing, and you mentioned it earlier, is what happens when you eat butter. Most people would think death and destruction, but it turns out whenever you’re having a pure fat, you’re not changing your glucose at all.
So that’s that’s important to see. Something like before when you, when you try red wine or vodka, probably no surprise, but they do differ. Red wine will increase your blood sugar level much quicker than vodka will. So on that note, most people say, well, okay, if I’m going to drink and I don’t want to gain body fat, I better have vodka over red wine.
And that is true except for the fact expect that you’re not going to sleep as well. If you do have vodka as opposed to the red wine, because the vodka on the flip side will cause your insulin and blood sugar to tank during the night. I’m. I’m sorry. Your blood sugar will take during the night. Your insulin will go up during the night, which will increase your body temperature, which will prevent deep sleep.
So you’ll typically sleep better with some wine than vodka. But you might get fatter having the wine than the vodka. But you might like the taste of the wine more than the, So there’s so many combinations. Yeah. You know, in my circles, a lot of people will justify drinking wine by, quoting a scripture that says something to the effect of use a little wine for your stomach and your frequent infirmities.
A little disclaimer here. My take on that, from what I know about health and nutrition, I believe what was being said is have a little bit of a fermented beverage ferment being. Well, wine is kind of like our sauerkraut, you know, it’s a fermented food. Use a little wine. It was a live beverage, like a kombucha with things, you know, moving around and living organisms
in it. And what you were having is a probiotic. Use a little wine for your stomach, a probiotic for your stomach and your immune system for your frequent infirmities. I don’t think you’re getting that really from today’s wine that’s been, well, fermented and then had things added to it to kind of kill it off and freeze it where it is and that particular taste, and you’re certainly not getting that from your vodka and strong liquors that are mostly ethanol, not necessarily the bacteria that made it that way.
Yeah. No, that’s a good point. And also to based upon whenever in ancient times that was mentioned, I’m not even sure of the quality of the water they were drinking or what they were drinking otherwise. So that might have been the safer option. It’s impossible to say, but, I like your point, though. In fact, I’m gonna start utilizing that with my clients as well.
In terms of the fermentation. Yeah. You know, I, I like my fermented foods. And, you know, when you’re eating, I like to think about the fact that I’m not really feeding me. I’m feeding them. Meaning I’m going to swallow the food and it’s going to get, you know, a little acid wash in my stomach. And, you know, as it moves into the intestines, in the small intestines, we’re going to have some microbiome going to work.
And there’s enzymes, too, that are digesting from the time you’re chewing, you know, all the way through. But your microbiome is going to finish the processing of your food. And where are you? They’re feeding something that’s going to feed them well or things that are going to kill them. If we’re feeding them chemicals, we’re killing them. Yeah, I in fact, I couldn’t agree more if you were to ask me what the next five, ten years looks like in terms of, where health fitness supplements are going to go, I think microbiome in the gut is going to be a very big area.
We think we know a lot about it now. You know this as well as anybody, hundreds of billions of bacterium in the gut that we’re only scratching the surface on that. So there’s going to be huge developments in, microbiome, in gut, performance over time as well as the brain. We’re learning more and more, too, about the brain, brain health and something that maybe we took for granted as well.
But you’re seeing the research pour into those and how it’s playing out in the supplementation market. In all the products that you see now
for vitamins and minerals, no longer is it just protein powder and like Saint Jones work or something like that. There’s so much more to it now. Yeah, yeah. Tell me a little bit about your, well, influences that you’ve had as far as, bringing you to the point of where you are and understanding diet, what organizations with diets, what fads?
What got you to the point know where you are now and what would your if you associated with a particular diet, what would it be? Yeah. In fact, I’ll take a step even back from that. The biggest thing was being a very heavy kid. In fact, as my kids would say, dad, when you were younger, you were really heavy.
You were really fat. And I tell them, I appreciate their candor on the whole thing. I didn’t intentionally get into the fitness of or get into the field of health and fitness and nutrition. Believe it or not, I was starting undergrad to go to dental school. I thought I was going to dental school for two reasons. Number one, of course I was very heavy and I never thought of health, fitness, nutrition, exercise, science or anything like that.
Number two though, is I had an uncle who was a dentist and, he was my favorite uncle. I was kind of following in his footsteps. So that’s initially where I started from. And I got into exercise science and nutrition as a way to change myself. Initially. And then I found it ridiculously interesting. I enjoyed doing it.
I like my transformation. So while I was still in college, when I’m still in undergrad, I figured maybe I start training or working with people on the side. Just until I go to dental school and help them improve their health and fitness. So that’s really how I got into this whole field, and everything else came much later.
Now, to fast forward this, my nutritional philosophy has changed considerably. When we first jumped onto your podcast, you mentioned a bunch of books. The first of which that I wrote was called The Promise, Health and Fitness System. In that book, I talk a lot about things that I don’t practice. I’ve changed over time, but I was the influence of 32 years ago getting a lot of this information.
I was taking it a lot more carbs, a lot more grains, a lot more wheat, a lot more everything. That over time, learning about it. I’ve changed now. Currently I don’t eat or teach pure keto or pure carnivore or pure Atkins. It’s not that it’s not safe for effective. It’s just too difficult for a lot of folks to stay with on a daily basis.
Unless they’re extremely advanced. But I am a fan, of course, of keeping blood sugar level as low as possible, keeping insulin, really, which is the whole key to this whole thing, as low as possible to keep out inflammation, keep body fat down, improve sleep, improve, growth hormone restoration and all of those things. That’s good. So for the most part, you would eat foods that are low carbohydrate or specifically low sugar, not necessarily low carbohydrate.
To simplify what I eat and do, it’s really extremely boring. I focus on eating protein and my carbohydrate source comes from vegetables, so I’m having proteins, fats, and vegetable based carbs most of the time. If I get into a cheat day scenario personally, let’s go back to our previous conversation. I would rather have the wine, than have a piece of bread, or have rice or any type of grain like that.
I’m just more inclined to wanting to have wine, you know, I like bread every now and then, but I want it to be more like it used to be. A few simple ingredients, like real wheat with all of the fiber and everything. If I was to take my own grain and grind it down and put the whole thing in, not just the endosperm, that’s going to give you the sugar spike without all of the fiber that goes with it.
You know, I think, back in the day, it was probably wheat water or maybe a little salt, and that’s pretty much it. And then probably yeast from the air, you know, mix it up and bake it. And they had bread. Now we have, things that you can’t even pronounce in it. It’s not the same. Yeah. Awesome.
From my bread making days too. I also noticed that, some do have more gluten, and you liked leaning towards those because it’s stuck better and it wouldn’t crumble in your hands. I think over the years, we really have farmed that wheat into a high inflammatory gluten type of wheat that is no longer as healthy as it was a couple thousand years ago.
Yeah. No doubt, no doubt. I guess if you go back far enough. I mean, we had really two choices when it came to eating. You could fish or hunt, and then, a long time later came agriculture. But, when you look at today’s American diet, it’s nothing close to any of that. It’s just so processed and, so haphazard that, to getting back to older times is, is makes a lot of sense.
The most interesting thing and you might see it in your business too, is a lot of people will say, well, you’re telling me about this new diet. In fact, we’re doing anything but tell you about a new diet. We’re telling you about the diet that has led to human evolution over the last 2.7 million years, which has nothing to do with postwar, American diet, which has just become more and more preserved, as we talked about earlier and processed.
Yeah. What were humans meant to eat? What did they eat? You know, historically. And yeah, I agree
with that. What would you say is the most, crazy nutritional test that you’ve done on yourself? And what did you learn from it? Well, it’s hard to compete with the ants. I mean,
that, of course, is way up there whenever you’re drinking.
Ants that’s pretty high. I would say this, that in looking at any of these tests, whether you’re drinking oil, eating butter, drinking ants any of those types of things, Taping your mouth shut, which, by the way, my grade school teachers would have loved it if I did it back then. All of those things are just number one.
Interesting. Number two fun. And lastly, I think you’re learning. So I’m always game for checking the next great thing out. I think, we’re right on the edge of a lot of really cool things becoming more mainstream. If you’re into this field and you’re looking at things like longevity and health and fitness like we do, you see the information before it’s becoming commonplace, but now you see things becoming more commonplace, which is good.
The example of it is just five years ago, most people were not staying away from seed oils. They were doing everything in canola oil, vegetable oil, corn oil, soybean oil, and they didn’t give it a second thought. At least now it’s more commonplace that maybe, at least for anybody trying to improve, you shouldn’t be doing that. So I love that when that information starts getting to the general population.
Yeah, yeah. And would you say it’s the seed oils are the seeds themselves. Is there anything wrong with eating flax seed and seed crackers. You know, I think it’s the oils which is much worse. You could argue that the seeds themselves are not as good as the proteins, the fats and the vegetables. You could argue that. But also too, you could argue that there’s a place for it when you process it.
The way we talked about before with the processing in a refinery of oil, trying to make something that’s extremely, durable, that will last years in terms of food, you root it so it becomes, extremely detrimental, leading to a lot of inflammation. Inflammation is the key. If you’re if you’re creating inflammation in the body, it’s not just that your joints are going to hurt.
Although they will it’s the inflammation that you can’t visibly feel. And that’s going to be in two areas. It’s going to be around your vessel walls and or it’s going to be around your vessel walls, in your in your brain. So a lot of the information is, yes, it could be heart disease, it could be kidney problems, it could be liver problems.
But also too it could be dementia, Alzheimer’s, which is something you never want to push the button on. You always want to diminish it. So getting rid of the seed oils is a great first step. The second thing that I would do is try to increase the amount of good omega three and nine oils. I know we talked before about the macadamia nut oil and how powerful that is.
Also too. If people aren’t using a cold processed fish oil, I think they’re missing out. So when it comes to fish oil, of course you always want the best source of it. And the pharmaceutical companies did kind of monopolized it for a while.
they did the, micro distillation cold processing. They had that locked up for eight years, but that has expired a long time ago.
In one of the products that we make, we call it omega three. It uses the same processes that Lavazza does in making their oil to make sure that you’re getting the high quality, micro distilled, which just means the toxins been taken out. Cold process. So you’re preserving the omega three and nines so they could lead to the anti inflammation that you’re looking for.
Very important to add that to the American diet right. Right. And because we’re out of balance I would say completely out of balance. So it’s interesting and I’m glad that you mentioned that. It’s recommended that you’re at about a 1 to 1 ratio of omega 3 to 9 to omega sixes. It’s estimated that we’re a 1 to 14 ratio in the United States because of our consumption of processed foods.
Now we know the answer to this. But if you can give a brief explanation of the difference between the omega three and say, the omega six, yeah. So omega 3’s and 9’s are generally considered anti-inflammatory. They all come from fats. And once again, when it comes to food, you have three choices. You can have protein, fats or carbs.
So this is coming from fats. And the reason why fats are beneficial and needed, of course, is because A
they produce the backbone to your endocrine system. And B they fuel the brain. Now the next question is, is the fat good for me or not? And how does that look? Well, the omegas, threes and nines are the ones that not only will help the endocrine system help fuel the brain, but also it leads to cellular repair by diminishing inflammation.
Now the Omega sixes can still be utilized by the body. The body is metabolically flexible to a certain degree. So if somebody says, well, if I’m taking in canola oil, if I’m taking in soybean oil, if I had margarine for a long time, years ago, was my body able to utilize it in process? And the answer is yes.
It can, not to the same degree, but there is a limitation to it. But it can not do it without inflammation. So the omega sixes will inflame the vessel wall not help or aid in cellular repair, and you never want vessels that are
being bombarded with sugar and
being destroyed without repairing. So it’s the worst one two combination you could ever imagine.
So the bad fats that we’re alluding to right now, the and we mentioned a bunch already, Crisco, shortening soybean oil, canola oil, vegetable oil, corn oil, safflower, sunflower all of those oils will lead to more inflammation, and they should be limited if not eliminated. All right. Well said. You know the the Omega Sixes. We need some we need to be able to produce inflammation.
But you know, if we’re supposed to be at 1 to 1 and we’re 10 to 1, omega six to omega three, we have way more of the inflammatory, makers than the anti-inflammatory. So that’s the issue. That’s why we need more omega threes to get those things in balance.
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What would you say some, of your favorite products are on strength
Genesis, your website. And why are you making them so strength Genesis I would say what products are my favorite? All of them. Okay. Well, there’s a reason you put every single one of them there. But that’s a story. Yes, everyone does have a story. I alluded to it before I started making what I couldn’t get.
I fell in love with the Australian macadamia nut oil. Once again, that was the Tim Ferriss, influence on me. Just to continue that story, though, it kind of went on from there. So it’s kind of fun. So initially I bought a couple bottles of,
macadamia nut oil. I cook with them. Loved it. So I thought I would do this.
I have a clientele, so I bought like 12 bottles and I gave them out to some of my best VIP longstanding clients, and they enjoyed it. They loved it. Which of course led to can you get me more? So then I started buying this oil in 12 packs in 24 packs, buying a couple dozen here and there and then reselling them to my clients.
Now I just kept selling more and more and more, sometimes ordering up to 50 bottles or so at a time to sell them or give them away. Then one day I noticed it was getting harder and harder to order the macadamia nut oil. I, my normal source, seemed to not carry it anymore. It was back ordered further and then I couldn’t get any at all.
So I decided to reverse the process. Call the refinery in Australia asking where I can buy it from now. They told me on the phone that, currently they don’t have a US distributor anymore. They asked me if I wanted to be a distributor and my answer was no, I’m not looking to be a distributor of
oil.
I’m just trying to buy some for my clients. And they said, well, we can sell you some oil. I said, okay, I said, how does this work? And they said, well, you do have to place a relatively larger order now, mind you, I was buying up to 50 bottles at one time, so I figured, all right, I’m going to have to bump that up.
I’ll just store it for a while and keep it. So I’m thinking, okay, so I don’t know. Let me buy 250 bottles of oil. And I heard silence on the other end. Crickets. And I said, what? And they said, we only sell it by the metric ton. I said, you sell it by the metric ton? They said, yeah.
And I said, well, how many bottles is that? And they said, well, it depends how large your bottles are. But, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 Yeah, 2000, 2500 3000 bottles at one time. And I said, well, so it doesn’t come in the bottle. They said, no, it comes in a big it comes in big vats.
And I said, well then what do you do with it? They said, well, you have to sell it across the Pacific. They said, then what do you have to do with it? They said, well, you have to import it. You have an importer license. I said, no. And then what? They said, well, then you have to get a bottle.
And I said, well, how do you do that? They said, well, you have to get labeling and FDA and so on and so forth. I’m like, oh my goodness. There’s like 10,000 steps to this whole thing. That’s how I started with this whole thing. And it was way above my head at the time. But now it’s over.
The last ten years has been the probably the most popular product that I’ve ever sold. And when people try it, they typically love it and they continue to order it. They enjoy this as their number one oil. So that has been great over time. During the holiday season, New Year’s resolutions, I sell a ton of our orange and keto salad dressing as well, which has been off the charts hot lately.
Oh, what’s in it? Yeah, it’s based on extra virgin olive oil, so it’s an EVOO base with a bunch of spices. Oregano. It doesn’t change blood sugar. Level it. Also, to get this, it’s a salad dressing that does not need to be refrigerated because it doesn’t have any of those bad fats we were talking about in it, like soybean oil.
So just like olive oil, you could keep it right out on the counter. Okay. So that’s been very, very hot lately. We just started making this brand new creatine chew. It’s a creatine gummy. I thought that was interesting. I haven’t seen a gummy type of creatine. I just started taking creatine a couple weeks ago and experimenting because I heard it was good.
And let’s see what happens. I actually started working out again, probably, I don’t know, maybe six weeks ago. And, and now that I saw what the working out is doing for me, let me see what happens if I start taking five grams of creatine a day. Tell me about the gummy and why you went to that form.
So for adults, some of them are not exactly keen on mixing the powders. So creatine has been around a long time. I started taking it. I’m going to call it 1991. Fell in love with it. But there is a process of getting the powder mixing in with something, spilling it all over the place, going through seven days of abdominal distress.
Just to get it into your system, which a lot of my clients that are 45 years of age plus will not do
they’re not at the level where they’re willing to go through all of that. So it was always about trying to encourage them to take more in. I hid it in a pre-workout drink that we sold at Strength Genesis, our Pure pre-workout, so they could get the five grams of creatine in.
But I wanted to make it even more so where it tasted like a treat or a snack. So we put it into a chew or a gummy form that looks just like a starburst and tastes a lot like a starburst. To it. Is sugar free, but it’s a way to get in five grams of creatine and not have to worry about it and really enjoy it.
Now, the next question, of course, is Will, what will they see or what will they do from it? In. The benefits of creatine have been well-established for a long time. Help rebuild it. Repair your muscle. Great for, your orthopedic system. Good for bone health. Wonderful for cognition. Good. Now we’re seeing a lot of reports of how well it’s working with diabetics, helping manage and control their blood sugar.
And lastly, you are seeing some great effects in terms of anti dementia on it. So there are a ton of benefits of taking creatine. Yes you are getting it when you’re eating protein but not to this level. So this is a great way to make sure that you’re packing in enough of it to get the benefits from it.
You know, it’s the second time you mentioned dementia on this program. Behind me you see a picture of an aloe vera field. And we have similar stories. In how we got into this nutrition business for me was I had one of my patients drinking aloe when she was fighting a horrible cancer and doing a bunch of other things, juicing and completely, you know, changing her diet and leading her towards a more medicinal through plants to strengthen her immune system.
And, she got well, and, that was 15 years ago, and she’s still doing well. I’m not saying the aloe helped her, but I realize that it was a key component for helping a lot of people. And, I essentially rescued a product line from where I was getting it. Similar to yours when you’re supply kind of got cut off, it’s like, okay, what do I do now?
And I had to figure out a way to import and get bottled and all of these other things. But when it comes, I just learned this, a couple months ago, I had Dr. John Lewis, who is a researcher at the University of Miami School of Medicine, Miller School of Medicine, and he researched a certain multi nutrient, supplement that was primarily aloe powder and flaxseed and a couple other things.
But the aloe powder was the primary thing, and they were testing it on people that had dementia, and they were actually able to reverse dementia to some extent and prove this actually changes the direction of dementia and can reverse, literally, Alzheimer’s. The cool thing about it is it’s believed that the muco polysaccharides, the breakdown of it, there’s a sugar molecule called mannose.
Now mannose not like glucose. It doesn’t raise your blood sugar somehow lowers it. They gave mannose to rats that were in ketosis and they stayed in ketosis. Apparently cancer cells will bind to this sugar molecule, not be able to use it for energy, but can’t release it. So it kind of hinders their ability to consume glucose starving cancer cells.
But somehow it will stimulate the release of stem cells and kind of anti-aging in that sense, and literally even to the point of stem cells being able to neuro regenerate at a faster rate to reverse dementia. So that it was interesting. We have similar stories in how, we got into our nutrition companies and the whole discussion of dementia and glucose and all of those things had to throw that in there.
A lot of similarities. No doubt about it. When you look at dementia, so much of it is, of course, self-inflicted. It’s not just the seed oils that we’re talking about, but at the same time, though, I mean, for the last 85 years or so, our amount of carbohydrate, especially high glycemic carbohydrate, has just been so prevalent in our diet, we’re just causing it.
So when you look at the correlation between diabetes and dementia, they move parallel to each other. So they’re going up at the same rate. Anything you could do to lower your risk of that is super important. Now also when it comes dementia, I’m a throw it out one more time. One of the products that we sell is high octane MCT oil, which a lot of people believe that that all came from the bulletproof coffee phase in.
The answer is it didn’t. It just became extremely popular because of bulletproof coffee. But MCT oil has been researched since the late 60s. Initially is anti dementia? No, it never gained the popularity. Until Bulletproof Coffee and in how that whole phenomenon came because people wanted to get into ketosis and they wanted to lose more body fat.
So I think it’s really important, though, that you’re doing the right things, eating the right things, taking supplements, of course, to help it, but it’s not going to work in a vacuum. You still have to do the right lifestyle. You still have to eat the right things. I can’t think I’m just going to eat poorly. A lot of sugar, a lot of high glycemic carbs, no exercise, no protein, and just take supplements to help save me.
I think that’s not a good approach. You need the right behaviors, too. Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk about one more of your products. Whey protein. Yeah. And the source and the source of it. Yeah. So when it comes to protein powders, it’s extremely confusing. If you walk into a health food store, you could see a ball lined up in the dog food bags up and down the aisle.
And then most of my clients, the best information they can get is if they
walk up to the kid at the GNC counter and ask him what he recommends. Now, mind you, this kid is probably in high school, maybe in college, and you’re turning to him about nutritional information. So it is extremely confusing when it comes to protein, though, a term that we use, and I’m sure you do, as well as bioavailability, which how well does it absorb into the body.
So that always measures the quality of the protein in the second part is, is what is the level of good omega fats? As we just talked about before, we always want good omega fats. If the animal we’re talking about whey protein here, if the animal was fed its natural diet. Now. That of course leads to our product, which is New Zealand grass fed whey protein.
Why New Zealand? Well, New Zealand has the highest standards of something being labeled grass fed. In fact, in New Zealand you have to feed it 100% of the time grass fed for to be considered grass fed, highest standard in the world in North America. Nowhere near that. In fact, it’s well below 20%, some places even less than that.
So all in all about getting protein quality. It does matter because you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of it. More availability and less, omega six fats higher. Omega 3´s and 9´s. Yeah. So I’m going to just add a little bit to that. What I heard. in it and a lot of people when it comes to dairy they’re anti dairy.
But a lot of it is based on what is the source of dairy. And cows that eat grain are going to be higher. Omega six inflammatory. And cows that eat grass are going to be higher. Omega three anti inflammatory anti-cancer anti you know a lot of things better for the immune system and bioavailable. So that’s what I heard in it.
The short summary. Totally agree. In fact we see it now not just amongst beef but also to chickens, turkeys and even fish and fish farms. You don’t even think of it with fish. We all think that the fish are just caught way out in the deep waters. And the answer is that’s really not true. The majority of fish
that most people consume are from fish hatcheries in which they’re feeding them
Chum, which is just some type of mixture of grain and or corn product. So
it’s indicative, it’s quick and cheap. So once again, we’re getting back to, food sources. Initially it was how do we feed more people quicker and cheaper. So you have quicker turnover. The animal gets to maturation or full size faster. And it costs less to do it.
And that’s why we started this whole process. However, in that process of what has become the destruction
of our food. So you do have to look at why they did it, why it’s happened, and then what you have to do personally, of course, to make sure you’re taking in the right nutrition. And that’s essentially what I’ve done with Strength Genesis.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I’ve kept you almost an hour already. Is there anything that you wish I had asked? I love that question. In fact, I ask that question myself to people all the time. In the answer is yes. You should start, of course, with the right beliefs. So people
always ask me about strategies for fitness and about nutrition and strategy is important, but we are seeing that there’s more than one strategy to improve your health and fitness.
It starts though, with the individual. The individual has to have the belief that they want to improve. So my story to my clients is always the same. Think of it just like school, if you want to improve your grades, you are a student. You go to a teacher, you ask the teacher, how do I improve my grades? And the teacher says, well, to improve your grades, if you’re serious about it, you have to do the right classwork, you have to do the right homework, and you need the right evaluations.
And then your grade point average will improve, which is exactly what we’re doing in this field. Here, though, if our classwork is fitness, if our homework is nutrition, those two things have to be done to the right student who wants to improve. So we start first with the ability to want to improve. Then we get into the strategies of fitness and nutrition and they’re
endless. I’m a fan of good nutrition, keeping blood sugar level low, making sure that you’re starting with protein first, taking in good fats, trying to limit the amount of bad carbohydrates in the diet. Couple that with of course the right fitness. Build some muscle, do cardio here and there. If you do that, wonderful things will happen in your life.
Lastly, if you want to supplement, check strengthgenesis.com is a place in which I believe and created all of those products. Not only do I take them myself, I feed them to my kids. That’s how much I believe in the products that we have on there. I will have links to your website, in the description of whatever platform people are consuming this on.
And what if they wanted to meet you personally and, possibly get trained by you? Come over to Western New York just outside of Buffalo, will meet up with Josh Allen, and I’ll have him throw you a 50 yard bomb, and you could catch it in my parking lot. But I also have a sister company at alessifit.com
It’s A L E S S I F I T .com all of our information is on there as well for our private services. Well, Dr. Alessi thank you so much for, teaching us today, educating us and being on the Dr. Haley Show podcast. Thank you, Dr. Haley. Appreciate being on. And it was a lot of fun today.
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