In an effort to stay up to date with all of Kiefer’s prolific work, here is the next series of notes I’ve taken. This is the fourth edition of my Kiefer notes.  Again some of these are from his own site, Body.io and some from when he appears as a guest on other podcasts.

For those that don’t know, Kiefer is the author of both The Carb Nite Solution and Carb Back-Loading, both ways of eating that I’ve been playing around with recently.  Here is the official link to all of his guest appearances.

Previous Notes:

• Carb Back-Loading Pearls and Criticisms
• More Carb Nite and Carb Back-Loading Tips
• More Carb Nite and Carb Back-Loading Tips Part 2
• More Carb Nite and Carb Back-Loading Tips Part 3
• More Carb Nite and Carb Back-Loading Tips Part 4
• More Carb Nite and Carb Back-Loading Tips Part 5

Kiefer’s special content released when his new Carb Shock supplement came out:

• Carb Shock Q&A Notes from Kiefer’s Secret Body IO Podcast
• Carb Shock Notes from Kiefer’s Insulin Timing Tricks Webinar Part 1
• Carb Shock Notes from Kiefer’s Insulin Timing Tricks Webinar Part 2
• Carb Shock Notes from Kiefer’s Insulin Timing Tricks Webinar Part 3

I’ve tried to make sure any of my own personal thoughts are placed in parenthesis.

Body IO FM 36 – Keith Norris – Paleo and Strength Training

• Kiefer says he tries to provide a framework for people… not specifying exact macronutrients, but instead a framework to allow people to create the perfect program for themselves.
• Chronic stress is bad.  If your workout or your diet causes you stress, that’s bad.
• Cyclic ketogenic diets have been around for couple hundred years.
• Kiefer says the thyroid issue that people complain about with ketogenic diets can be fixed with 1 carb re-feed per week (hmmm).  He’s seen this many times in Rocky’s clinic.
• Kiefer says at the end of the day a carb is a carb, whether it’s a processed carb or natural healthy carb, carbs will get burned the same way in the cell and will cause the same type of cell damage.  Introducing carbs on a regular basis will cause you problems no matter what the carb source is.
• Kiefer going on about benefits of cortisol in the absence of carbs and insulin.
• Kiefer and Norris both think it is a virtue to change your mind when in the presence of new information.  It means you’ve learned something new and your not dogmatic about what you thought before.
• Norris says his framework is: if it doesn’t make sense through an evolutionary lens, he discards it.
• Do the best you can with what you have where you are and don’t stress out about it.
• Resistance training changes that game for you no matter what diet you follow.
• Now they’re talking about the ARX fit machines… which matches your maximum force output in whatever range of motion you decide.
• http://arxfit.com/
• Kiefer thinks this would be great for a ketogenic athlete and asks if Norris has experience with these folks.
• Norris responds basically by saying he’s not sure if the clients he has who claim to be ketogenic truly are.
• Keith says that in times when he’s been low carb, he sees his efforts bottom out on the machine after 2 reps and can’t generate anymore force production, reflecting the depletion of glycogen and at the limit of ATP production… and this clues him in to start pigging out.
• The machines tell you exactly when this happens
• Kiefer pretty much calls this the ultimate workout machine… that he’s dreamed about for 10-15 years.  He actually called this the ‘holy grail’ of resistance training.
• Now they’re talking about shamanism?
• The book Religion Explained ties shamanism to modern religions and cognitive sciences.

Body IO FM 37 – Ben Pakulski

• Kiefer liked Pakulski’s MI40x video series
• Pakulski places a lot of emphasis on biomechanics
• Pakulski studied biomechanics in University. He’s a competitive body builder, so he had to figure out the most biomechanically optimal way to exercise.
• Kiefer disses someone on the internet who’s trying to get a following of athletes, who’s only experience been working with mice (I wonder who?… after listening to a few of the later podcasts I think he’s referring to Bill Lagakos)
• Kiefer doesn’t like to promote things but he’s very happy to promote Pakulski’s MI40x.
• Pakulski only coaches people who are committed to the results because he doesn’t want to end up being more committed than they are.
• Kiefer provides competitors with a 4 week post competition meal plan, so they have some guidance afterwards and don’t go nuts.
• Pakulski only coaches at minimum for 6 months in length for the same reason,5 months before a contest and 1 month after.
• Kiefer asks what was Pakulski’s motivation?
• Pakulski was hired by Vince Delmonte to prep for physique shows. Vince won them, and encouraged Pakulski to share is program.
• Vince asked him what are the 5 things he could teach people that could make the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time.
• This made MI40 become a best seller.
• He was just scratching the surface with MI40… and MI40x is what’s next, like the advanced program.
• There are 3 different parts to the program, beginner, graduate, and pro.
• Videos have tips for tips for those three levels too.
• One thing is how to manipulate tension, which can allow you to work out your back during a bench press.
• He focuses on time efficient workouts.
• The people used in his videos have never done those movements before, so he’s correcting them on the spot, which has been helpful for the people who bought the program.
• Kiefer asks if he’s building a certification model, and the answer is yes, with a planned release at the end of 2015.
• Kiefer asks if Pakulski ever had a moment where he realized he was one of the top body builders in the world.
• Pakulski replies, that he can’t remember a particular moment. He was doing a well and then got to a competition in 2010 where he was disappointed at getting 7^th place and quit because he was so disappointed.
• He realized that he was training so hard that his strengths became glaring strengths and his weaknesses became glaring weaknesses.
• This started his quest to apply more biomechanics.
• His program will get you there twice as fast with half the injuries.
• Kiefer use to not believe in therapeutic massage, chiropractics, muscle activation etc. when he was younger. Now he depends on those things as a way to keep your body tuned up.
• Pakulski has to fly to places like Denver or Toronto for treatment because he can’t find anyone good in Tampa.
• Kiefer found that his sleep significantly improved when he got regular chiropractic work, because he was keeping a lot of stress in his necks.
• They’re talking about MAT, muscle activation therapy?
• Kiefer says that with MAT you can see instantly how things were deactivated and what happens when they start firing properly.
• Around that time Kiefer had started looking at motor activation patterns, and he found some interesting exercises in the literature that enforced patterns to fire completely.
• People who have issues with winging of the shoulder blade, there was a movement called shoulder dumps, which when Kiefer tried it out, he could feel tension and stability in his shoulders when working out.
• Kiefer asks if in the MI40x program, if Pakulski constructed around these things
• Pakulski teaches people to lock down movements and chains so that there isn’t any extraneous movement. Make sure the muscle you’re trying to work is actually moving. He doesn’t really getting into corrective exercises because he says he’s not an expert.
• One of his next ventures will be corrective exercises.
• Kiefer says Bosu ball stuff is crap because it actually screws up your neural patterns.
• Part of the MI40x is teaching tempo because helps people get strong at extremes of the range of motion.
• Kiefer hates when people bench with feet lifted off the ground.
• mi40x.com

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Body IO FM 38 – Test Results, Testosterone Boosters, and Rants

• Rocky is treating a patient with type 1 diabetes, who also has an endocrinologist, who has been on insulin for quite some time, started a low carb diet. She has a continuous glucose monitoring device, and after 8 weeks of being low carb, her glucose curves normalized with very little variation.
• A lot of times type 1 diabetics can have lots of lows and lots of highs which will give you a normal HBA1c, so on surface it looks well controlled, but if you have those big variations, that’s actually telling you that the control is bad.
• So this patient who now has super well controlled glucose, got a cholesterol test which freaked out her endocrinologist, who works at Mayo Clinic.
• Her total cholesterol was over 300 and LDL over 200. Her trigs were 60 and her HDL had improved 15%.
• She’s one of the patients Rocky sees that go low carb and have a paradoxical increase in cholesterol (like me!), and she was very fearful and upset.
• She didn’t know what to do because she was really feeling good, but the doctors at Mayo clinic made such a big deal about her cholesterol.
• Rocky does say that he doesn’t know if this is a good thing or bad thing… but he thinks she can be one of the type 1 diabetics that he could get off of Insulin.
• The endocrinologist actually recommended her to eat more carbs.
• Rocky removed cheese and dairy from her diet, but left the heavy cream in there, and said let’s see what happens. He adopted this after their prior podcast with Dr. Gundry.
• He’s not expecting much of a difference because when he did that for his own lipid panel and he didn’t see a difference.
• Rocky thinks HbA1c is a bad test. It’s good as a positive predictor, because if it’s over 5.7, it’s a good indication that your sugars have been too high.
• But if it’s below 5.7, which is considered normal… it doesn’t MEAN that it’s normal.
• A lot of people with normal HbA1c’s can still fail a glucose tolerance test in up to 93% of patients, and be pre-diabetic.
• Rocky brings Peak VO2 which his the oxygen consumption at peak exercise, which has a plethora of data in literature showing that when Peak VO2 is low it’s associated with all sorts of chronic diseases and cancers (higher colon, prostate, lung, and breast cancer, and obstructive coronary disease, and all cause mortality).
• Peak VO2 = VO2 Max (Check out my own VO2 Max test!)
• Kiefer chimes in and says that if your VO2 Max is low in an exercise state, that means you’re very heavily carb based in your metabolism, and probably anaerobic based, so your oxidative cycle is not able to come up to the capacity to help with energy needs, so it goes into the anaerobic process which causes a lot of reactive oxygenated species build up which can trigger all sorts of damage in the cell, which can turn on oncogenes and so on.
• Kiefer says people don’t understand statistics and how they are applied to disease risk. Then he brings up Basian statistics.
• Rocky says the fix is simple which is to reduce carbohydrate exposure (I don’t agree with this… what about endurance athletes with high VO2 Max’s that are carb based?)
• Rocky tells his patients that they don’t even need to go ketogenic, just cut carbs by 50%… maybe just down to 80-100 gm.
• Kiefer says it’s amazing how many facets of health carbs can effect and make worse.
• Kiefer still maintains that for long term health and longevity, you need carb spike at least once a week, maybe once every other week.
• Rocky’s B-diet that he prescribed to a diabetic patient – Brussel Sprouts, Broccoli, Beef, Bacon, and Butter. Eat only this for 2 weeks and come back (LOVE THIS)
• They refer to Gundry who said, “food was put on earth to make you fat.”
• The Kiefer takes a shot at the “Bullshit Exec” who used that phrase in a video… and says nothing in this industry is safe.
• Pure fructose is not bad and can actually lower blood sugar and incite ketone production.
• But when fructose is in combined with glucose/insulin, that’s when all the bad stuff happen. The insulin makes the pathways all the negative stuff for the fructose to go down. Fructose has an unlimited capacity to go down those pathways… towards fat production.
• So if you eat anything that’s a combination of glucose and fructose, this includes sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, fruits, will create a strong environment for all kinds of metabolic issues… like getting fat.
• Rocky specifies that this is what happens with chronic ingestion… as opposed to cyclic.
• Kiefer actually takes an ancestral approach, and says that this was a way we used to go into the Fall, when fruits like apples and pears were ripe, which are supposed to make us fat, when we are moving into the winter when there is less food available.
• Kiefer used to eat oranges, bananas, and pears all the time… both Rocky and Kiefer love pears. But now he doesn’t miss fruit at all. He’ll eat it occasionally… and doesn’t see how it fits in his diet… but now just sees it as candy. Rocky says the same thing happened to him with cherries. He used to really look forward to cherry season.
• They both now rarely eat fruit… unless cherry turnovers or lemon stuffed donut.
• Now they’re talking about people who have something to sell anything useful and say they don’t really help people, and just crap on other things.
• Kiefer crapping on talking heads on youtube because of all the ads that are on there, so these people are saying things just to get more views to make money from ads.
• Kiefer intends to make Body IO an educational company.
• Rocky says there is one youtube show that is redeemable is the “Broscience” guy (just checked this out… cracked up at “gains rapists”).
• Rocky really enjoys that one!
• Kiefer enjoys it as entertainment, but says to not take what they say as credible.
• Now Rocky instigates by asking Kiefer about Butter Coffee.
• Kiefer NEVER drinks butter and coffee
• Rocky now drinking straight black coffee. He’s taken heavy cream out.
• Kiefer drinks an Americana with shots of espresso in it… if he has it black.
• Rocky will see patients drinking butter coffee and are not getting the results that they want.
• Kiefer refers to the ‘promoter’ of butter coffee, and saying that over the past few years, he hasn’t been looking very good (Jeff Fry brought this up in our conversation when he had me on Health Nuts Anonymous)
• Kiefer also says other experts like in Paleo and etc, also starting to look bad, and they need to take a step back and analyze what’s going on.
• Kiefer hasn’t been working out lately, like maybe once a month, because of lots of injuries and pain, and life has been hectic. He’s been on carb nite and mixture of carb back-loading. Even though he’s lost mass… he’s leaned out at the same time.
• Kiefer’s rule is… look outside.. is it dark? Then you can eat carbs.
• Kiefer going to turn 40 in three months.
• This whole process gives him confidence in what he teaches people.
• He respects when other gurus try to put stuff out to help people… but when it’s not even working for themselves then they need to be honest and acknowledge that it’s not working… or be honest and admit that they weren’t following their own diet.
• Kiefer says he would rebrand everything Bulletproof to Bullshit exec.. Bullshit MCT, Bullshit Diet, Bullshit Diet (ouch… SHOTS FIRED!  The hate is strong in this one..)
• Brain Octane is brought up.. Kiefer says he wished there was more research on it because the research Kiefer’s looked at shows pure C8 doesn’t have the Brain enhancing properties that it’s supposed to. AND it’s actually the dangerous one, that you shouldn’t be ingesting too much of. It can screw up membrane function if it’s incorporated into membranes, it has lipid effects that are not positive. This is the one you DON’T want to take a lot of (as I’ve said in some of the prior comments… I haven’t seen any of this research he’s referring to)
• Now they give credit back to Asprey because they were introduced to larger communities through him.
• Kiefer sour that Asprey ‘borrowed’ information from that podcast without giving Kiefer credit… one of these was the ‘eating carbs at night’ thing (maybe Asprey saw the same primary research? Maybe not. I mean Kiefer doesn’t own the science behind nutrient timing either. I mean they both borrowed the information from the folks doing the primary research).
• He never talked about MCT oils until after his podcast with Kiefer.
• Kiefer just wants a nod of acknowledgement… which is why he’s sour.
• Rocky now goads Kiefer, by saying, “so you’re turning 40, that means your testosterone must be in the toilet.”
• Kiefer says a lot of people have been asking him about testosterone boosters.
• Kiefer had his testosterone levels checked and they’re fine (Here are my testosterone levels).
• Kiefer says his nutrient density is good because he doesn’t eat “poor people food,” which is what he calls salads and vegetables.
• He says it’s amazing that Whole Foods has created a model where they can get people to pay a premium for ‘poor people food.
• They’re now making fun of paleo people who say potatoes (night shades) are toxic.
• Vegetables were considered food for people who were impoverished.
• Now they’re crapping on the whole resistant starch thing and potatoes.
• Kiefer satirically says that potatoes are night shades and can potentially contain chemicals that you are allergic to, but on top of that they’re paleo approved… and don’t realize that potatoes were only introduced to Europeans 500 years ago. Rice is now ok… because Okinawans eat it.
• Kiefer wondering when all the stuff about white rice being a safe starch came from…
• A couple years ago, Kiefer put out an article about the sins of organic, and that if you want to talk about the cleanest, non toxic, carbohydrate that you can eat that was grown is white rice. It has least number of carcinogenic substances of any crop out there. He says that it was shortly after this when he started hearing white rice being touted as a safe starch (I think he’s trying to claim credit by this reference, but I guess he can say whatever he wants, it’s his show!)
• Rocky says that this was popularized by Paul Jaminet in the Perfect Health Diet.
• They both liked Star Trek The Next Generation
• Kiefer now going on about the Bulletproof Brand should be renamed Borg Brand — “Resistance is Futile.”
• Kiefer’s testosterone levels are ok right now
• But he started wondering what guys with low T can do now, in terms of testosterone booster?
• One thing that natural testosterone boosters do is that they increase leutenizing hormone, which cause testicles to release more testosterone. This is how the HPA axis helps regulate testosterone levels.
• All these testosterone boosters based off of raising leutenizing hormones.
• Elevated levels of leutenizing hormones actually correlate with increased incidence of Alzheimers.
• Another alternative would be hormone replacement for men, direct injection of Testosterone, Rocky does this for his patients once a week, which decreases incidence of Alzheimers.
• Rocky says the people with low testosterone are people with insulin resistance, and insulin resistance is correlated with Alzheimers dementia… so using testosterone boosters is like putting lighter fluid on the fire.
• Rocky gets a lot of patients that want testosterone. There are lots of causes of low testosterone. One such thing is hemochromatosis, and Rocky recommends checking for this.
• Treatment for hemochromatosis is donating blood.
• In Kiefer’s opinion, if you have low testosterone, from the research out there, he would completely stay away from testosterone boosters, and would rather opt for hormone replacement.
• There is inconclusive data out right now linking testosterone replacement and heart attacks, and this is what’s scaring some people off right now.
• Sometimes Rocky has patients whose estrogen go up, people who are over aromatizers, he either backs off on dose of testosterone, or uses some herbal aromatase inhibitors, or sometimes prescription aromatase inhibitors which are used off label.
• Kiefer asks what the herbal remedies are?
• Rocky says there’s one called DIM (sp?) derived from cruciferous vegetables. It’s considered an estrogen balancer supplement. He’s had some limited success with this.
• Kiefer looking into the paleo idea of avoiding conventional milk because of conventional milk passing along hormones that were injected into cows. So he got curious to see if anyone has actually looked into this
• Difference between conventional cows that were pumped with estrogen and organic grassfed cows… it turns out the level of estrogen is identical across all milk products between the two.
• It doesn’t matter if it’s organic or grassfed (although he doesn’t go into the antibiotic thing and the omega 3 vs omega 6 fats or the conjugated linoleic acid thing).
• Kiefer says sometimes the paleo thing that says everything modern is dangerous is makes weird logical sense, but many times these paleo assumptions are just false.
• Kiefer says that not everything modern is bad.
• Then he goes on satirical rant about undergarments like briefs and panties causing cancer…

Body IO FM 39 with Dr. Frederick Navarro – Pattern of Health

• Navarro identifies patterns of health that can predict different things about a person.
• He is a PhD and the father of Alex Navarro
• Alex was a previous Body IO guest, client of Kiefer’s, and author of Transforming Recipes: Ultra Low-Carb Edition and Transforming Recipes: Ultra Low-Carb Desserts which were published by Body IO.
• What are the different behaviors people engage in that affect their health?
• Their decision making?
• How they respond to their illness?
• Downstream effects of utilization costs.
• If you can recognize these patterns then you can change them.
• Study where he found that they saved up to $570 vs controls depending on how nurses talked to patients while making use of these individual patterns
• People don’t recognize that they have these patterns.
• Rocky asks Dr. Navarro to give us some specific patterns
• Example 1 – Path 2 – Health contented people – They are happy with their current state of health, whether it’s good or not. They aren’t motivated to improve it or to seek care. They tend to avoid care. This occurs across all age and educational groups. Slightly more common in males.
• Example 2 – Path 7 – Health care driven – They are the opposite of Path 2. Very into healthy dieting and seeking information into health, but not exercise. They are very attuned to their health. They claim they exercise a lot, but only do a moderate amount (like walking or gardening). At the first sign of a problem, they’ll contact a doctor. They have the highest cost for physician visits and prescription medications. The have the highest health care costs of everyone out there. Because they go to the doctor so often, they have a lot of diagnoses. They have the highest rate of specialist visits.
• Example 3 – Path 8 – Independently Healthy – Moderate level of going to the doctor. Very involved in eating right and vigorous exercise. Very cognizant of health information and seek information. Want their family to be healthy but not engaged in it. They have the best health and have the lowest rates of all diseases. They have average medical costs because they go to regular checkups. The one bad behavior they have is that they like their alcohol. They have the highest rates of drinking, but it doesn’t impact their health.
• Kiefer asks if paths can overlap. He really resonates with Path 8, except for the fact that he doesn’t drink alcohol… EVER. But he also resonates with Path 2 because he always avoids going to the doctor and would prefer to figure things out himself.
• Navarro says that pattern can be close or far apart together. Like 70% one and 30% another, 0% of everything else. So the answer is yes.
• There are 9 total patterns
• Patterns form from our responses to our normal surroundings.
• Kiefer asks what you can do to influence young people towards a particular pattern, and Dr. Navarro doesn’t know.
• Navarro says that there is a group of people in the age group of 18-25 that don’t have a pattern. After that age, the pattern really manifests.
• There is also a relationship between the population density and urbanization and the formation of patterns. In rural, less dense areas, there are more people with no patterns.
• Once you know you’re in a pattern, then there is a possibility that you can change it.
• Now they’re talking about his book, which Kiefer is helping to publish.