7 Key Reasons Dr. Ray Peat Recommends You Add Dairy to Your Diet

0:00 – Intro

4:01 – Understanding Dr. Ray Peat’s Work

8:05 – Calcium & Parathyroid Hormone

17:21 – Calcium’s Anti-Obesity Effect

20:34 – Quality of Dairy Proteins Vs. Other Types of Protein

28:56 – Low PUFA Content of Dairy

32:31 – Carbohydrates in Milk Lower Cortisol

40:06 – Low Iron Content of Dairy

45:11 – Cows Filter Out Toxins

47:58 – Additives in Dairy

52:14 – The Diary Spectrum

54:49 – Most Tolerated Sources of Dairy

1:01:25 – Key Takeaways

Welcome to the Mike Fave podcast. I’m your host, Ethan Wright, joined by Mike Fave. On this podcast, Mike and I help you make sense of the online health chaos while providing you with solutions to revive your health. In today’s episode, we are going to dive into Dr. Ray Pete’s work on the benefits of dairy and discuss seven key reasons from his article, milk in context, allergies, ecology, and some myths on why you should consider incorporating dairy into your diet.

So in many different dietary spheres, I think dairy is one of the first things that gets eliminated, and then it’s kind of the opposite when you arrive at bioenergetics. So the goal of this podcast, I think, is to provide some context for why that is, and then, you know, if someone does tolerate it and try to incorporate it, like how to go about doing that.

Right? I think dairy’s kind of a, a hit or miss type of deal. So we have another episode where we actually talk about some of the problems, but I think that it’s important also talk about what the specific benefits are if you do tolerate dairy. Then there’s multiple reasons, seven key reasons here on why you would actually wanna keep it in your diet.

If you don’t tolerate, that’s a different story and I’d recommend checking out the other episode so you can figure out what the workarounds are. But it’s not an all or nothing option either, right? Like that. There’s a spectrum here in terms of how you can incorporate dairy products or, or, or dairy in general into your, into your diet, into your lifestyle.

But there, there’s a bunch of really important reasons and I think that is what we wanna cover here today. Just before we get into it, one of the reasons, like for me, I mean I don’t tolerate dairy so it’s actually out of my diet. But like one of the appealing things about having dairy in the beginning for me was just the convenience of it.

’cause it’s like a food that’s perfectly ready to go. It has all the macronutrients there for you. You don’t have to prepare it. And for me, like that’s a, that’s a huge plus. He doesn’t really mention taste here or convenience, but I think those are two. Really good reason to actually incorporate dairy into the diet.

If you have lunch and you just eat Greek yogurt with some fruit, like you’ll hit your protein, your fat, and your carb target with that. And you don’t have to prepare anything, like, you don’t have to cook anything at all. And then as we’ll talk about like, there’s benefits to the potassium, to the calcium, to the carbohydrate coming in from the, from the dairy and the fruit as well as there’s high quality protein and things like this.

So it’s worth, again, like it’s, if you do tolerate dairy, it’s worthwhile. And just from a logistical standpoint, it’s worthwhile. They do have protein, they do have some fat, they do have good carbs. Uh, and all of that comes together and actually tastes pretty good. Uh, so I think those are two main reasons that we’re not gonna discuss.

We’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of like the, the physiology, the physiologic mechanisms here, um, that Dr. Pete cites in terms of why dairy would be a good thing to incorporate into the diet. We are going to not just take Dr. Pete’s word for it here. I actually went through the research. To see if these points were supported, uh, what Dr.

Pete was saying. And I pulled out studies that actually supported. Now we’re not gonna go through the studies in depth like we do in the typical videos. We’ll, we’re gonna mention ’em and discuss some of them. But the points that the, the, the vast majority of points here that Dr. Pete cited are actually very reasonable sound points, and they are supported by research, which he also supports in the article.

Um, but I found other, uh, sources outside of the things that he had specifically cited. Maybe it’ll be a cool series to just go through some of Ray’s work in general. And pull out points and talk about them. ’cause um, I mean, I think a lot of people don’t always go and read Ray like from the source. And having somebody who can provide some context around the things he said is, is pretty, pretty cool in my opinion.

And, and like when we were going through the different articles in preparation for this, you always find something that you didn’t necessarily remember him saying that you just go, wow, that’s, you know, it’s so interesting. Every time you read Dr. Pete’s work, there’s, there’s always some nugget that comes out of it or some interesting perspective.

And I think one of the critiques that I’ve heard from people say about Ray work is that his citations aren’t great because a lot of them are, or a portion of them, at least our cell culture study citations or some epidemiologic studies or animal models or stuff like this. And he doesn’t only cite randomized controlled trials or whatever else.

Um, and it’s true that some of his citations are that, but there is quite a bit of inform, like research and information if you actually do follow up. And the general themes and ideas that he discusses. Where there’s truth to what he is saying, even if it’s not the perfect citation. Because when I read Ray’s articles, what I tend to do is I’ll read the whole article and then I’ll look at the citations for the different points, and then I will then search afterwards for other articles or research that supports this general idea that he’s discussing and then go from there.

And that, for me, that’s when I really started to be like, oh, wow, this guy is like on the money with a lot of stuff. And he is like really broad, right? Because, you know, you, you get a lot of these diet influencers that you see. It’s like they have, they’re like a one trick pony. So it’s like, it’s just, yeah, carbs are the problem.

Like, that’s it. Like just focus on blocking carbs or minimizing carbs, or it’s like, oh, it’s just all animal foods. And it’s like, when you look at Dr. Pete’s work, it’s like endotoxin, uh, excessive estrogen radiation, polyunsaturated fatty acids, parathyroid hormone, thyroid function, the stress systems like this guy is just so broad.

Looking at all these different, these different topics, uh, writing long articles and how they interrelate and what the, the relationships are and how the systems work together. And it’s, I think it’s less approachable from like a marketing standpoint. You know, it’s, it’s harder to sell the general idea, but if you do actually go through raise work, uh, you’ll find like there’s like quite a bit of interesting and useful information and it helps to give a nice lens and broad picture of multiple systems and physiology in general so that you can actually make sense of this stuff, right?

Because you have some context with which to understand the information. Whereas I think in other areas, like the only context that you get, like, well this is what our ancestors did, or animal foods are just bad, and it’s like, that’s not really such a great context to be making decisions from. It could be one piece of a context, but standing by itself I think is probably not, uh, it’s probably not a very strong place to argue from.

I think a lot of the criticisms of ray’s work that I’ve heard like more recently too are not really critiques of his work or anything that he said, but more critiques of watered down versions or misunderstandings, misconstrued ideas about things that he said. And they just kinda lump him into that. And that’s just, it’s, it’s kind of unfortunate to see him.

Maybe, maybe at some point we could do like an episode, kind of like, you know, addressing those things because it just does make me, you know, grinds my gears I guess. But I don’t blame people though. ’cause to be fair, like Ray’s work is really in depth. I remember the first time I read one of Ray’s articles, I was like, my Lord, like this is, there’s a lot of stuff in here.

But overall, I think when you put it all together, like it, it’s like this massive conglomeration, like this quilt of information that allows you to see, uh, a huge picture and a, and a great lens. Even when you look at dairy here, like the reasons that he provides for it, uh, for incorporating into the diet are actually like pretty sound reasons.

There’s actually a lot of good reasons. Uh, there’s also reasons not to, again, we have another episode on this and it’s again, based on personal, uh, po uh, tolerance to it. It’s not like everybody should avoid dairy. I. I think we you, between these two episodes, if you see the pros and you see the cons, then you, and then you look at gauge from your own experience.

Like our goal is to give you the resources so that you can engage in your own perceived think act process. So that’s why we’re showing both sides of this. But yeah. Well, let’s jump into the first quote, um, that we have here. So this is about, um, the calcium content in in milk. He says, although the high quality protein and saturated fat undoubtedly contribute to milk’s anti-obesity effect, the high calcium content is probably the main factor.

The parathyroid hormone is an important regulator of calcium metabolism. If dietary calcium isn’t sufficient, causing blood calcium to decrease the parathyroid hormone increases and removes calcium from the bones to maintain a healthy, normal amount in the blood, parathyroid hormone has many other effects con contributing to inflammation, calcification of soft tissues, and a decreased respiratory energy production.

Ray was the first person that introduced me to the ideas of like, what parathyroid hormone does. And it’s actually not really a great hormone overall. So if you look at the research on parathyroid hormone, high levels of parathyroid hormone are involved in cardiovascular disease, vascular calcification, chronic kidney disease, and in a variety of metabolic disorders.

Um, and it’s directly related to high blood pressure and to, uh, two coronary artery calcification as well as aortic calcification. I’ve had multiple clients that I’ve worked with where helping to, one of the things that I do to help manage the blood pressure from a dietary perspective is look to lower parathyroid hormone as well as the RA systems.

And then I found that clients who had high blood pressure. Who, like, when you start to get those things under control, you actually start to see the blood pressure come down just with the dietary and supplementary intervention. Now, I’m not saying this is a treatment for this, of course talk to your doctor, all that type of stuff.

But in general, just knowing the effects of parathyroid formm in the RA system, which is rein, angiotensin aldosterone system, and they enter, they interconnect with each other. You can set up the diets. You have adequate calcium, adequate potassium, adequate sodium, et cetera, to lower these systems, vitamin D, vitamin K, um, and you can actually improve or, or seem to improve blood pressure with some of these adjustments.

And so the, that value of dairy is that dairy is a great source of calcium. It’s pretty bioavailable. Calcium and dairy has been shown to lower parathyroid hormone values. Just as an example, I have a paper here titled Postprandial Metabolic Responses of Serum Calcium, parathyroid hormone, and C Pelo Peptide C Telopeptide of Type one collagen to three doses of Calcium delivered in milk.

The researchers had three different doses of calcium delivered in milk. They had 250 milligrams, 500 milligrams, and a thousand milligrams. And what they found was all of them, you see the changes in serum PTH in the left hand column here, they all dropped parathyroid hormone significantly. And so this is uh, in pico moles per liter, but in picograms per milliliter, the 250 milligram dose drop parathyroid hormone by about 14 picograms per milliliter, and the 1000 milligram dose dropped at about 24 picograms per milliliter.

Now that’s actually a pretty significant drop ’cause the range goes up typically to about 60 65 picograms per milliliter. The goal is to actually have it less than 30 picograms per milliliter, ideally. And so if you’re having calcium across the day in dairy products, you can actually keep your serum parathyroid hormone levels, uh, at a reasonable, at a reasonable place.

Um, and then also something else that they talked about here is the C telopeptide of type one Collagen is a marker of bone breakdown. And so the higher the value, the more bone breakdown going on. And so we have a graph here. We see the changes in serum, uh, c telopeptide. And basically what you see is that after dairy consumption with calcium, the, the cpel peptide in the blood actually decreased over time.

So it actually decreases the breakdown of bone. So having adequate calcium and having dairy be a source is a way to lower parathyroid hormone and also lower, uh, bone breakdown. And this study was actually done in humans. And the last thing that I wanna mention here is they say there’s a, from the study, it’s title, parathyroid hormone, critical bridge between Bone metabolism, cardiovascular disease.

They say in the present study, Hagstrom etal showed that the highest quartile of parathyroid hormone, so about they say greater than 5.27 MLEs, which is 50 picograms familiar roughly in the cohort, was associated with the degree of, with the degree of atherosclerosis and increased risk of non-fatal atherosclerotic disorders.

Considering the causal role of parathyroid hormone atherosclerosis. As suggested above, a possible cardiovascular intervention for patients might be the lowering of specific subtypes of parathyroid hormone that do not affect bone metabolism. So basically if your parathyroid hormone here was greater than the fifties, there was a increased, there was associated with increased risk of a or increased degree, so a worsening of atherosclerosis and an increased risk of of non-fatal atherosclerotic disorder.

So basically an increase of vascular plaque formation and potentially calcification when parathyroid hormone was very high. So it’s also dri keeping parathyroid hormone lower helps to potentially, they’re saying here, um, decrease. The, the development of atherosclerosis or the progression of atherosclerosis.

So lowering parathyroid hormone may be a treatment strategy. So dairy here would be a way to actually lower that parathyroid hormone. And because it provides a very bioavailable source of calcium, which can help to manage atherosclerosis potentially and also may potentially help to minimize the resorption or the breakdown of bones.

So the general idea though, is that like with the, in, with the elevated parathyroid, it, it’s elevated because you’re not having calcium through the diet, so it’s pulling the calcium outta the bones into the blood. Like is that, I guess one of the re That’s one of the reasons for the parathyroid, it’s actually really important.

’cause a lot of people, a lot of people are scared to use calcium supplements ’cause they think that calcium supplements are gonna cause vascular calcification. But if you don’t have adequate calcium intake in your diet, you’ll raise parathyroid hormone and at higher levels of parathyroid hormone you will dr.

You’ll likely drive atherosclerotic pro processes or at least there’s an association and potentially vascular calcification. So it’s like, and you’re gonna break down your bones in the process. ’cause that’s what parathyroid hormone is doing. So ideally the goal would be to have adequate calcium intake in the diet.

And the thing is, they talk about supplemental calcium being the problem. And even with the idea, like it’s actually controversial to say that supplemental calcium causes vascular calcification. There’s some studies that say yes, although the funding behind those studies and then like how they were done is, is slightly questionable.

And there’s quite a few studies that also say, no, it doesn’t. And also dose and, and, and consumption with other factors is important to keep in mind with this. Uh, but essentially if you’re not gonna use like supplemental calcium, then dairy calcium would be a way to actually tag, take in enough calcium from a food source to lower parathyroid hormone and help minimize its effect on vascular calcification and also bone degradation.

What is a high parathyroid hormone? When I’m looking at parathyroid hormone, I like to see it less than 30 picograms per milliliter. Typically if you have dairy in the diet or you have at, so it’s usually dairy, vitamin D, vitamin K together and magnesium. ’cause the vitamin K and the magnesium help to minimize some of the concerns of too much calcium and vascular calcification.

Whereas the vitamin D helps with the absorption and uptake of the calcium and lowering a parathyroid hormone. The combination of those factors together can actually help to lower parathyroid hormone directly. But if you don’t tolerate dairy, then calcium supplementation can be directly helpful with those things together, obviously at appropriate doses per meal and, and with a meal, um, to help suppress parathyroid hormone and minimize some of these processes over the course of the lifespan.

And one of the worst ways to, one of the best ways. The worst things you could do to raise parathyroid hormone is eat a really high phosphorus low calcium diet with very minimal vitamin D, which would be like either a grain-based vegan diet with especially rich in phytic acid is probably one of the worst for bones and teeth in parathyroid hormone or a a diet that is a standard American highly refined diet with added phosphate additives.

Also pretty terrible. For parathyroid hormone in bones. And then further probably a meat, like entirely meat-based carnivorous diet that has no dairy products, calcium supplementation and things like this. Probably also wouldn’t be good for the bones by itself. ’cause you get a lot of amino acid, a lot of phosphorus, not enough calcium.

And if vitamin D status is also shot there, it’s, it’s actually a big problem. You know, you still, it doesn’t mean you wanna have a low protein diet, but you wanna have enough protein plus calcium. ’cause the protein helps and amino acids help with absorption of calcium, which dairy has both of those things, which we’re gonna get into the protein in a little bit anyway.

The one-to-one at least calcium and phosphorus ratio is like one of the pillars, you know, of the rapy kind of principles. Um, if you’re constructing a diet, right, and what you’re doing with clients as well, even if you have at least one gram of calcium per day. You don’t have like a high oxalic acid or high phytic acid based diet, which will bind up the calcium, then, then basically it would still be okay overall.

But ideally you’re looking, typically looking for a one-on-one calcium, the phosphorus ratio to help lower parathyroid hormone, um, in general and protect bone mass and things like this. And also the acid based balance is important. Calcium serves as a, a good source of alkaline mineral base. Um, so that’s, these are also important things.

Yeah. And if anyone wants to check out the episode that we did on oxalates where we talk about calcium and, and its relationship with the oxalates and everything, you can take a peek at that episode too. So another thing that he says here in the quote, he talks about milk’s anti-obesity effect, and he contributes that to the calcium content.

So how would the calcium in milk, how would it have that kind of effect? So we have this graphic here. This is from a paper titled Anti-obesity Affect the Dietary Calcium, the Evidence and Possible Mechanisms. And in the graphic here, what they, there’s a couple things. So calcium has direct effects on the, on the adipocytes, the fat cells.

And so it actually lowers differentiation, uh, uh, to, to create the fat cells, so both brown fat cells and white fat cells. Um, it also can change adipogenesis, so it can decrease adipogenesis and it can increase, um, what’s called, uh, lipolysis or lipolysis. So where basically the fat is broken out of the cells.

It can also increase thermogenesis. It can directly change fat metabolism and it can alter the absorption of fats in the diet. So at multiple steps, adequate calcium intake can then change or adjust what’s going on in terms of fat metabolism. Um, and there are studies in animals where they see dec with adequate calcium intake in the diet, decreases in body fat, uh, gain and, and, and distribution.

And then also in human studies there’s associations with higher calcium intakes and decreased amounts of body fat. So there’s multiple steps here where the, um, where essentially the, like calcium is able to interact with fatty with fat metabolism and fat cell function that lead to less fat gain overall.

And these are specific mechanisms from animal studies and human studies together. Those are some of the ways. I think that the, the calcium is helpful, and I think that’s what Dr. Pete was referring to in this quote when he said that although the high quality protein, saturated fat undoubtedly contribute to milk’s and anti-obesity effect, the high calcium content is probably the main factor.

So again, if you don’t tolerate dairy, then you could also use calcium as well, um, like calcium supplementation as well to get adequate calcium and, and try to optimize for some of these effects. When you were going over that graphic, uh, adipogenesis, is that the creation of fat cells? Yeah. Adipogenesis would be the increase of new fat cells in this article, and an adipocyte hypertrophy would be the, the increase of fat storage within the cells.

So what you see is an increase in number of fat cells, but a decrease in the amount of fats, fat cells per per storage. Um, so you get like more preadipocytes uh, proliferating. You have more of the stem cells committing to the preadipocytes, but you have less differentiation into white adipocytes and brown adipocytes with more, uh, browning of the fat than, than having a white fat.

And the brown fat’s important because it has creates more thermogenesis or undergoes more thermogenesis, at least in rodent models. Basically all of this together on top of the fact that the metabolism of fat within fat cells has shifted. And then you have more lipolysis going on with the calcium, um, at least based on some of these studies than you would having the, the fat storage.

Um, what winds up happening is it leads to less body fat gain overall with a high calcium intake. Let’s get to the next quote here. Dr. Ray Pete says, the amino acid composition and nutritional value of leaf protein is similar to milk protein, which is understandable since cows produce milk from the amino acids produced in their rus.

By bacteria digesting the leaves, the cows have eaten. The bacteria perform the refining processes that pure believed could be done technologically and they also degrade or detoxify the major toxins in allergens. There’s a lot of value to the, this quote here, because basically what Dr. Pete is saying is that the plant proteins, which typically can talk, come with like tannins and digestive inhibitors and lectins and components like this are actually kind of filtered out.

By the, the animals, by the cows, uh, and particularly by the bacteria in the rumen of the cows. And then the, the cow is concentrating the nutrients from the leaves and then creating high qu like high quality proteins. And when we look at different types of proteins in general. We see on this side here type of proteins.

We have beef, black beans, casing, eggs, milk, peanuts, soy protein, wheat, gluten, and whey protein. Pretty much across the board the dairy proteins and egg proteins are better than, than almost every plant protein, right? And then also beef, right? So the actual muscle tissue of the cow is all, is, uh, still a co a combination of the nutrients from the, the plants and, and leaves that the cow has eaten.

And we see the pro, like, so we have different scores here, protein efficiency ratio, the biological value of the protein, the net protein utilization, and then the protein digestibility corrected amino acid score. All of these scores are better for beef. For a casein, for milk and then for whey protein than they are for wheat, gluten, soy, protein, and black beans, and also peanuts.

And then eggs are actually pretty high as well. But in general you get a really high quality protein and, uh, other nutrients as well from the, the milk without so much of the toxin. Right? Because if you wanted to get the wheat protein or the soy protein, like to get a soy protein isolate, like you have to do a ton of processing to get that.

Whereas like with dairy, like the cow does it itself. The rumen in the, in the cow does it itself. It gets rid of tons of polyunsaturated fats. It gets rid of the irritating tannins and lectins and opponents inside the grass. So like the cows themselves, the back, the rumen itself has a a ton of value in terms of like serving as a filter of sorts and providing and selecting for like high quality nutrition, which is why the whey casein protein and milk in general have been considered some of like the highest quality proteins available.

And the different scores across the board show this, right? So if you look at whey protein, protein efficiency ratio 3.2, biological value 104, net protein utilization, 92 protein digestibility corrected amino acid scores, one. And then when you look at something like, say you look at weak gluten, the protein efficiency ratio is 0.8, biological value is 64.

Net protein utilization is 67. And protein digestibility corrected amino acid scores 0.25. Even soy protein scores are better than wheat protein, but still significantly less across every single score except the protein digestibility corrected amino acid score than the whey protein. So overall, and again, like the soy protein is, it’s not like somebody’s just eating straight up soybeans here.

Like you have to get like a highly processed thing. Obviously with whey protein, it’s similar. You do have to process it, but you could also separate the way. From milk in general without too much processing and just drink the way and get high quality protein. Whereas you actually have to go and like process the soybeans to get this protein like pretty significantly with a variety of technology.

And then the milk protein in general is still better than the soy protein across the board and so is Caine. So even if you just had the milk protein by itself without processing, it would still be better than the plant proteins on average. And again, that’s because the cow is actually breaking them down, minimizing the toxic components.

Um, and then it’s concentrating the nutrients. What do they mean by the biological value when you’re talking about biological value? We have a quote here from the same paper that I pulled that graph from, which is protein, which is best, um, biological value. They say biological value measures protein quality by calculating the nitrogen used for tissue formation divided by the nitrogen absorbed from the food.

So basically they’re seeing how much of that protein actually gets, uh, incorporated into the tissues ver and, and over how much is actually absorbed. So it’s giving you how useful that protein is to the body, essentially. So each of these values do similar things like the protein efficiency ratio, it, they say here.

The protein efficiency ratio determines the effectiveness of a protein through the measurement of animal growth. This technique requires feeding rats a test protein and in measuring the weight gain in grams per gram of protein consumed. So basically this is saying how well is that protein encouraged the growth of an animal?

This is looking how well it’s incorporated into the tissues. Net protein utilization is a measure of how much of the protein that is absorbed is retained, and then the protein digestibility corrected amino acid scores is, this one’s a little bit more complex, um, but basically they’re looking to some extent of like how digestible that protein is and also looking at that in relation to the amino acid profile of that protein, um, seeing like what the limiting amino acid is.

So all of these are different ways. To measure how, how absorbable and how usable protein is. They’re all different proxy metrics. Like it’s, they’re kind of abstract, more abstract ways, uh, of determining it or, or I guess indirect ways of measuring exactly how that protein’s used. But it’s to give you a general idea of the quality of that protein.

And again, on all of these scores, dairy protein score, some of the highest, and then even animal protein from cows like meat score pretty high as well. If you are gonna construct a diet and you want to hit a certain pro protein target, it’s probably best to do that through animal sources. Do you even see, like the vegans and stuff, they have a hard time, um, with protein, like hitting protein targets or like building muscle sometimes.

Um. Yeah. I mean if you exclude the most bioavailable proteins it’s gonna be tough. Yeah. And even with like if you wanted to hit a protein target as vegan, ’cause I’ve had clients who were vegans. It’s pretty much using a combination of pea and rice protein and then having to have like a really high intake of proteins over what you would for animal proteins.

’cause the absorbability and usability is just not the same. So it’s like the best sources from the metrics we have is going to be animal sources hands down. Plus you get a variety of other VA valuable nutrients from the animal sources that you don’t get from some of the plant sources. And they’re, some of those nutrients are more bioavailable and in the correct forms than the animal sources compared to the plant sources.

So it’s like, could you set up a diet as a vegan? Sure. Is it the most optimal diet to thrive? No, I don’t think so. Across like uncharacteristically, I would say no, it’s definitely not. Um. I think that you wanna incorporate animal foods. If there’s an ethical claim that’s different. But from like a thriving health perspective, I think that like incorporating animal products is like, gives you the best chances, um, from a logistical perspective as well as from a, from like a theoretical perspective and a practical perspective in hitting a variety of different targets with a diet.

And particularly too, like with some of like milk or some of the other dairy products, you have other macronutrients on board as as well. So it’s like you get bioavailable proteins, you get other things as well. But the dairy too is like, you don’t, I guess it depends on how you set up the argument, but you don’t, like you could run a reasonable vegetarian diet.

Incorporating dairy products and potentially eggs and still like hit like a pretty decent protein target in a variety of hard to get nutrients with those foods alone. And then if you like, uh, a lacto ovo, uh, pescatarian type of deal where you also incorporate seafood, then you could run a diet just in those things without eating animal foods and set up a really high quality diet.

And I’ve had multiple clients that I’ve done that for ’cause they didn’t want to do the chicken or the steak or stuff like this. So again, like there is options if you have some ethical concerns about eating certain animals where you can set it up. It’s just veganism puts such constraints on the, on the diet, like it can be set up, but it takes a lot more time, energy, and work.

And I still think it, it is, it is not as good as incorporating animal foods for a variety of different reasons, which maybe we’ll make another podcast on. Yeah. It’s already kind of, you know, figuring out your foundational setup in, in diet is. You know, it takes some, some trial and error and, and things like this and like to put that added restraints on with the vegan stuff.

It would just, for me, that would make it really difficult. Um, much easier just to include some of the proteins. The animal proteins. But that leads us into our next quote here. So Ray says, although the high quality protein and saturated fat undoubtedly contribute to milk’s anti-obesity effect, the high calcium content is probably the main fact.

It was hard to find a direct quote from this particular article because we wanted to contain this in from the one article. But the point here is that Ray also alludes to the high saturated fat content of dairy products. Um, and also throughout his work he directly talks about the low polyunsaturated fat intake, which.

I don’t wanna dig too much into it here because we have so many videos about this, um, either in the works or on the channel already. But in general, like having a lower polyunsaturated fat intake I think is, is a generally good thing. Uh, particularly the omega six polyunsaturated fatty acids. And if you tolerate dairy fats, they’re a great way to keep your po, your omega six polyunsaturated fatty acids low.

And so I have a graphic here from Chronometer, which pulled the USDA data about butter and what you see is for a hundred grams of fat from butter, you only have 3.1 grams of polyunsaturated fat with 2.5 grams being a mega six. So it’s 2.5% omega six polyunsaturated fatty acids, and I only 0.5 grams of Omega-3.

Um, maybe that’ll be adjusted if you have animals that are grass fed versus grain fed, but you have a very low amount of the, uh, polyunsaturated fatty acids. So it’s easy to set up a diet that’s low in polyunsaturated fatty acids with dairy fats. The other thing to show here is that the dairy fats are high in trans fats, which people are like, oh, that’s probably not good, is well, actually the trans fats in dairy have some health benefits.

So there’s, there’s, uh, there’s transic acid and then there’s conjugated linoleic acid, which both have very specific health effects. Um, and the bacteria in the cow’s rumen produce these fats, uh, by basically, uh, by like hydrating them to some extent. So they are, um, these fats have health benefits. Uh, the trans fats in dairy fats are actually not a bad thing.

They’re actually beneficial. And then also some people would say that cholesterol and dairy is not a good thing, but there actually are some benefits to cholesterol, but some potential anabolic effects from cholesterol. So some of the d the cholesterol in the dairy fat could be beneficial for some people if they tolerate it.

Again, we’ll talk about some of the downsides of dairy fats, but there are some upsides as well here and, and particularly the very low polyunsaturated fatty acids. There are, um, odd chain fats as well too, right? Yeah. There should be some odd chain. There is, uh, pento decanoic acid and I think Hep Heto decanoic acid.

I think it’s hept decanoic acid, um, which is C 15 and C 17 and dairy fats. I know c fifteens all age, but there’s, there are some studies showing benefits for odd chain fatty acids. Um, and dairy fats are a good source of those. So we have the next quote here from Ray. Dr. Ray Pete says, the presence of lactose in milk and of fat to slow absorption of amino acids helps to minimize the secretion of cortisol.

Combining milk and cheese with fruits adds to the anti-stress effect. The additional sugar and potassium and other minerals allow the milk protein to be used more efficiently by moderating the secretion of cortisol and helping to inhibit the secretion of parathyroid hormone. If you tolerate dairy, if you’re a lactase persister, then you actually can get good carbohydrate content from dairy, ’cause you’ll convert the lac, the lactose into galactose and glucose and.

So you’ll actually get some carbohydrate and the carbohydrate can actually help to lower cortisol directly. There’s a quote here from a paper titled, real World Intake of Dietary Sugars is associated with reduced cortisol reactivity Following, following an acute physiologic stressor. And the re authors say In contrast, this literature, several studies aligning with the results presented here show that intake of carbohydrates and dietary sugars is associated with a decrement in HPA access reactivity in both humans and rodents.

For instance, in humans, a single day of carbohydrate and sugar rich diet have have been shown to lower stress, provoke cortisol reactivity, and reduce feelings of depression after a stress-inducing mental arithmetic task. The consumption of sucrose three times per day for two weeks, but not of the artificial sweetener.

Aspartame has also been associated with an inhibitory effect on cortisol secretion following the Montreal Imaging Stress Task. Basically they have a graphic here showing us. So they, they expose these volunteers to a stressful activity. They put their hand in, uh, basically like almost freezing water for a couple minutes.

Um, and then basically what they saw was, uh, they gave them carbohydrate in the form of sugar, and they found that the group that got sugar had the lowest mean cortisol values. Um, all altogether. And then you see this on the graph. So this yellow bar is the group that had the highest amount of sugars compared to the lowest amount.

So this kind of vindicates, vindicates what Dr. Pete was saying about the sugars having an anti-stress effect. And dairy could be a source of sugars for you if you’re a lactose per persister. Um, particularly lactose, which you get lactose and glucose from. And he also mentions here that you could add fruit to this and the fruit would add potassium as well as further sugar.

And then the milk has calcium. So the combination of fruit plus dairy together provides calcium, potassium, and carbohydrate. And all of those things would help to lower the RA system through the adequate amounts of potassium. The, uh, parathyroid hormone system with adequate amounts of calcium. And then the cortisol glucagon adrenaline system because you’re providing adequate amounts of carbohydrates, you don’t have to rely on these.

Um. On some of these stress pathways altogether. So it’s like it’s, you see it just like an interesting strategy of like, how can I use these food components to directly interact with the hormonal system? And I don’t think a lot of people think about that that much. Like it’s becoming more in vogue now.

But for a long time it was like, how can I strong arm my hormonal system with drugs and supplements and like exogenous hormones? And you have like Dr. Pete’s coming along and it’s like, have you ever tried like just some, some like milk and, and uh, some, some fruit. And it’s like, it’s like, oh, okay, so that’s gonna have an effect.

And it’s, there are mechanisms by which it can have an effect. And there is some research to actually indicate this as well. So if anyone is still doing the cold plunges now, you know, now you have a study to back up how you can immediately lower cortisol after, instead of just digging down, you know, dipping your hand.

You go your whole body, but keep a nice giant glass of milk with a plate of fruit next to you and just drink that right after. Well, the thing too about the cold plunges is that like there, oh, you have this boost of metabolism. It’s like, yeah. Of catecholamines, of adrenaline or adrenaline. So the goal with this perspective is to keep these things low.

’cause the general idea is chronic long-term elevations of PTH, parathyroid hormone degrades your bones. Chronic long-term elevations of the RA system degrades the vasculature. Chronic long-term elevations of cortisol, gluon adrenaline degrade the protein and structures of the body ’cause it’s breaking down the proteins to actually make some of the, the carbohydrate.

And so having adequate carbohydrate, calcium, potassium in these components means you’re taking in the exogenous forms or these exogenous sources so that you don’t have to break down your stores and endogenously internally. It’s a very simple idea, but it’s a very powerful strategy. And it like when you start to understand things through Dr.

Pete’s lens, like, wow, this is actually like simply genius. Ideas of like, well, I just don’t wanna like degrade my body structure over time by making sure it has all of the components that it needs. And, and then so like dairy could be a good source here. ’cause it does also have potassium, it has calcium, it has protein, it has carbohydrate and it has fat.

So it has all of these tissue building and store reserving nutrients. So if you tolerate dairy, it actually, I think what could be considered a superfood, it’s also widely available too. Um, so people don’t have trouble getting it. And I think Ray also kind of considered like, you know, people’s affordability and stuff like that.

Um, when it came to giving like nutritional advice as well and logistically, right? It’s like you could sit down to Greek yogurt and fruit or even like some milk and some fruit for a meal or cheese and fruit or something like this. And you could have a complete meal as far as like protein, carbs, fat, fiber, and micros go from those alone.

And it’s again, like the biggest thing is just tolerance. So if you tolerate it, awesome, like it makes life so easy in terms of your prep, but at the same time, if you don’t like, then it can create, you know, then you obviously can have other issues. Again, we’ll cover, we cover that in other episode. The other thing just weird for me, it’s like you have all this stuff, like the whole Soylent stuff where they’re trying to make this formula of nutrients so that like you didn’t have to actually prep your food.

And it’s like, well we already have that. It’s called milk, it’s called dairy products. Yeah, that’s a good point. Okay, so we have the next quote here. Um. Dr. A Pete says, besides being an ecologically favorable source of calcium, protein, sugar, and fat, the composition of milk causes it to be digested efficiently supporting the growth of bacteria that are relatively safe for the intestine in the liver and reducing the absorption of endotoxin.

There’s a couple things here. The digestibility of the carbohydrate protein in fat and milk is actually pretty solid, so whey protein is very well digested. Um, so is Cain protein. Uh, and then also the, if you do, if you are a lactase per persister, the lactose and dairy is very easily digested. Dairy also has very bioavailable storms of forms of multiple vitamins and minerals, so it, it, it does, if you tolerate dairy, it is a great source of micro and macronutrients that can be digested easily without a bunch of food matrix and other components that impair that absorption by the intestine.

And then on top of that, dairy contains a variety of different components that stimulate the growth of lactobacillus and bifido bacterium selectively in the intestine. Um, and also help to inhibit pathogens like salmonella, bacterias, faus, and also potentially e coli that would lead to endotoxin production.

And some of the proteins present in some of the fractions of dairy, like some of the whey proteins, like the different lacto globulins can actually, uh, have potentially protective effects against things like endotoxin in the body. So that, again, like if, if you do tolerate dairy, that is the one caveat.

There’s a variety of benefits here, and in terms of providing you a very digestible food source that also has beneficial effects on the microbiome. Uh, so yeah, I, I think Dr. Pete hears again, this is another really great reason to incorporate dairy if your, if your body does well with it. Yeah. And when we’re saying tolerate your, there’s, there’s a bunch of different forms, right, that you can kind of go down the list to try, and there’s gonna be maybe some that are more likely to be tolerable than others.

And so when we. Get, uh, through all the quotes and everything, we will give that kind of, you know, spectrum of dairy and how you can go about maybe trialing the different sources. There’s the dairy spectrum, I like to call it. You just gotta see what works for you. And then again, like we’re gonna have a, we have another podcast ready to go where we talk about some of the three biggest issues of dairy to help you figure out like if you tolerate it or not, and what’s the reason that you may not tolerate it.

And then what can you do about that. And then we’re also gonna talk about some of the options here as well. Okay. So the next quote that we have here, Dr. Ray P says, however, for an adult, the low iron content of milk and cheese makes these foods useful for preventing the iron overload that often con contributes to the degenerative diseases.

Iron’s. A iron’s a big topic when you come into pee. It is indeed. I think, um, there’s been quite a few clients that I’ve worked with that actually had iron overload, particularly after coming out of a carnivore diet. Some people have a genetically, some people just smash tons of, uh, iron, like very iron rich foods.

And access. Well, so here’s the thing, too. Little iron is a problem because I’ve also had people coming from a bioenergetic sphere who did like tons of blood donation and their iron was too low. Or people coming out of root cause protocol who actually made themselves anemic. And then we had to correct that ’cause iron got too low.

So you can have too little iron, but you can also have way too much iron. And the too much iron can cause a variety of, uh, a damage to a variety of tissues. Incu, including pancreas, including liver, um, including muscle, tissue, heart, et cetera. So you don’t wanna have too much. And the dairy allows for people to actually have a decent amount of protein, carbs, fat, and other vitamins and minerals without getting a high iron intake.

’cause the other really bioavailable sources of protein and, and high quality fats is gonna be other animal foods. And a lot of those out, you know, besides chicken perhaps. Um, but like red meats and porks and some seafood actually provide a decent amount of iron. So, uh, having some dairy in the diet can is an easy way to help keep your iron intake in check.

And I do have a quote here from a paper titled The Effects of Iron Overload on CR Chronic Metabolic Disease. And what the author says, say, iron overload can affect major tissues involving glucose and lipid metabolism, including the pancreatic beta cells, liver muscle, and adipose tissue, and organs affected by chronic diabetic complications.

Because iron is a potent prooxidant, fine tuned control mechanisms have evolved to regulate entry, recycling and loss of body iron. Um, they say an imbalance of these homeostatic mechanisms results in systemic and parenchymal cirrhosis that contributes to organ damage such as beta cell dysfunction, fibrosis, and liver disease, and atherosclerotic plaque growth and instability.

So iron overload, if your tissues do get saturated with iron, basically rust you from the inside out through the oxidative stress that it creates. It’s not exactly rusting, but I think it’s just a good, easy analogy to kind of understand the process. And that can directly lead to damage to the liver, like fibrosis.

It can directly damage the pancreas, which can lead to diabetic complications or progress towards that because you damage the beta cells that produce insulin. It can also directly be involved in the formation of atherosclerotic plaques, um, and the growth of those plaques having too much iron because of this oxidative stress.

So dairy is a good way to prevent that excessive buildup of iron. And again, like if somebody wanted to check their iron status, uh, you could look at a typical iron panel, total iron binding capacity, serum iron, transparent saturation, um, and then transparent and also ferritin. So you could use those things to see where your iron status at.

And I would recommend you actually go and do that before you embark on any type of bloodletting, phlebotomy, um, or like a super low iron diet. ’cause again, I’ve had people come from these spheres whether iron is super low, and I’ve also had people come from other spheres like keto or carnivore, where their iron is super high.

And in both circumstances, we’re trying to shoot for the goldilock zone here with iron stores. Um, so that you don’t have a case where you’re too high or you’re too low. Is there something in dairy that, like chelates iron too? I can’t. I know in the Pete sphere when I originally like got there, was you always wanted to have like some source of dairy wi if you were having a red meat.

Like with it, and I know part of that is the calcium to phosphorus ratio, but if I’m remembering correctly, it was also, there was something, there was something with the chelation of iron lactoferrin can help to bind up and sequester iron and dairy is a source of lactoferrin. But I, I think, I don’t think that just taking, getting a lactoferrin from dairy would’ve that effect by itself.

Um, in large amount. Like, uh, you’d have to probably have larger amounts. Um. But you could take like a, an apple lactoferrin, so like an iron emptied lactoferrin, uh, as a saltman in away from meals and potentially inhibit the, inhibit some of the absorption. But the calcium content of dairy can actually inhibit iron absorption to some extent in the context of a meal.

So it can also help with an inhibition of iron absorption. Um, and then lactoferrin can help sequester iron as well. But it depends on the form how much iron is loaded into that lactoferrin. How often do you see clients coming to you with the iron overload profile? Uh, it just depends on where they’re coming from.

If it’s carnivore much more frequently than if it’s, if it’s a, a vegan diet or like they’ve been in a pea diet for a while. Right. And in some people, I’ve had quite a few clients who have genetic, either homozygous or heterozygous hemochromatosis where they have like. And they don’t know it, right? ’cause we pull their iron labs and in ferritin, which is a marker of iron storage, is like five or 600.

And it’s like, oh, this is way too high for ferritin value. Like you may either be heterozygous or homozygous, um, and you definitely wanna correct this ’cause this could create problems. Then a couple people from carnivore, super high iron levels and correcting that actually improved their liver function.

They felt significantly better afterwards. And I’ve had people with blood glucose dysregulation where high iron was like seemingly, uh, involved in that process and helping to manage the iron status, help to improve some of the blood glucose regulation directly. And you’re managing it through switching the sources of, of protein around a little bit and, and maybe some other things.

So it’s like dietary adjustments, uh, potentially supplementary things, and then usually discussing with them and their doctor if it’s reasonable to use phlebotomy or something like this or do a blood donation. But that again depends on like medical advice from a doctor. Okay, so let’s jump into the last quote that we have here from Dr.

Ray Pete. He says, the nutrients produced in the cow’s rumen are selectively absorbed into the cow’s bloodstream, where the liver can further filter out any toxins before the amino acids and other nutrients are absorbed by the udder to be synthesized into milk. So this is another, the interesting idea that the cow serves as a filter.

Its body serves as a filter from some of the toxic components in the food supply so that you get less of those in the dairy products. And in the article, I think he talks about strontium, which is a, a heavy mineral that’s a ra, like a, a lightly radioactive mineral. He was saying that he had calculated that the cow’s milk actually had less than if you were to get it from the plant foods.

And then it’s known that the, the cow, like milk in general, even in humans, filters out selectively some things. Not everything gets filtered out. You can still find some. Toxic components. If the cow eats it, it may be in the supply, like potentially like, um, mold based toxins like aflatoxin. But in general, you, you, like, you may find less.

And then also you, you may find that other things don’t actually get put into the milk. ’cause the cow’s liver and the body in general will help to kind of filter those things out. So you kind of has like a multi-stage filtering system going on with a cow or another rumen, an animal that produces milk because the first, the food goes into the rumen and the bacteria and microbes in the rumen are fermenting the plant matter and, and then absorbing the nutrients.

And then that goes into the portal vein, which goes to the liver. And the liver then filters it, and then it has to make its way to the s and then the S then filter it out as well. So you have multiple stages where the animal’s actually kind of clearing out potentially problematic things. So it’s an interesting idea that to use these animals to, to minimize toxic exposure, it can take the leaves, right?

That we, that has all the problematic compounds and create it into bioavailable proteins and simultaneously removed. All the, the toxins and low pufa. Yeah. And high quality protein. Yeah. And vitamins and minerals. So it’s like, you know, you have these biotech companies trying to make these, like these fake products.

Um, and it’s just like, if you used, I mean, the argument I think for a lot of people is like, if you use regenerative farming techniques with rotational grazing practices, you would actually, uh, help to regenerate the soil. Um, this is like, I think through some of Alan Savory’s ideas. Um, and then from there you would have the, you would regenerate the soil, plus you have this like, really high quality food source, whether it’s like from using the cows as meat to, or to make bone broth or for their dairy products.

It’s like actually some of the best technology that we have for, for some of the f the food processing and for en environmental concerns, it’s not necessarily, um, like this, these fake products that we get with like, uh, a bunch of lab components. And like, I feel like the, some of them, like the contamination may be even more of a risk.

Which has been I think, some of the problems with the biotech companies and production of their, of the fake meat products and things like this. And then the other thing is like, so it filters out all these toxins, right? But then they add fortification to it at times too. It’s hard to find a milk that doesn’t have like a vitamin A or a vitamin D added to it or like, um, um, car carrageenan or some additive, you know, which is quite unfortunate, right?

That’s just because the like industrial processing of some of the dairy products now, right? Because you get all this milk from like tons of cows all over the place. You mix it into a big fat, pasteurize it, pull off all the fat, add it back in at certain percentages, and then, you know, if you have less fat, like you remove a portion of the vitamins, uh, maybe less absorbable as well.

’cause they’re fat soluble vitamins. So they, they’re adding them back in, um, to kind of fortify them because of the lack of, because they took the fat off and changed the food from the jumps. Like, yeah, some of the processing and uh, it could be problematic. And then the other things that they’re adding, like.

You have what? Like the vitamin A and D, the lactic acid, citric acid, all the gums and stuff like this. Um, I think some of them are preservatives, some of them are for flavor, and then some of them are just like for texture and things like this. Um, I mean we could go through them if you want. Yeah. Maybe before we jump into the dairy spectrum, we just give like an overview of all the additives that you can find in the different dairies and which ones to avoid or I don’t know if there’s ones in particular with your clients where like these ones are a hard no-go for a lot of people, whereas otherwise you can test the tolerance to maybe some of them, like a vitamin A or vitamin D for some people is fine.

Yeah, so I have them range in tears. I would say vitamin A and vitamin D three. Some people may not do well with them, but largely I’m less concerned about that. Then you have like lactic acid, citric acid as soic acid, powdered cellulose in some cheeses and in an nato added some cheeses for coloring.

Those are hit or miss. Some people it’s not as big of a deal. Other people can cause issues for them. Then the ones that I typically recommend avoiding just in general is any of the gums, xanthin, gum gel and gum, things like this, agar agar, which is like basically a type of gum to some extent. Then you have carrageenan, which is a polysaccharide from seaweeds.

Then you have the microbial enzymes and vegetable ret, which those things are, uh, those are like microbial created enzymes. Now, some people may do all right with them, but some people can get allergenic responses from them. So that could be kind of person specific, but I typically try to avoid if possible.

You have certain preservatives like sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate, which I also typically try to avoid. Uh, a lot of people can get intestinal irritation from this bottom category that we just talked about. And so like some people who aren’t tolerating dairy may think that it’s a dairy and it’s just like, no, your sour cream has agar, agar, carrageenan, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, citric acid.

Uh, and then like all this stuff, and it’s like, do you really not tolerate your, your sour cream or your cottage cheese? Or is it all this other junk that they add into it so that it has this specific texture and flavor profile and it lasts this specific length of time? I think that’s, um. That for some people that’s more of the issue than the actual product by itself.

That’s why if you wanted to test dairy, it’s probably better to try to find products that don’t have any of this stuff. Like, so you have a clean slate and no confounding variables. Yeah. And then even if you, the local producer stuff, right? Like if you’re getting it for locally produced by like a regenerative farmer where the animals are taken care of and like, you know, you know what their feed quality is, um, and then like the products are handled a certain way.

So you’re not getting this like mass produced product where you have all these different types of milk from different cows put in one place and you’re removing all the fats. Like it’s just like straight from the cow to the bottle type of thing. Anecdotally, I’ve worked with people who say like they feel way better and they tolerate the dairy way better with these other sources versus if they go like some like store-bought dairy.

Um, and so I think there’s a spectrum even with. With like, even if you have products that don’t have that stuff, you still may tolerate this other like, like grass fed, locally sourced, maybe a two variety milk or like goat milk or something like this. Then your typical store-bought milk. That’s where it’s like, this actually is a spectrum and it’s not an all or nothing on whether like you just have dairy or you don’t have dairy.

It’s like, which dairy is gonna work for you? Because even for me, like I’m on the absolute lowest end of dairy tolerance and I still do whey protein every single day, just ’cause it’s so convenient makes my life so much easier. And that’s a good segue to get into what is the dairy spectrum like, how do people go about trialing, um, dairy in their diet and which sources maybe are more likely to be tolerable than others?

There’s a couple problems with dairy, uh, that you can have. So you have lactose intolerance, you have casein intolerance, you have potentially don’t tolerate whey, and then you have problems with potentially hormones in the dairy fat. If you have lactose intolerance, you’re probably wanna use like a whey protein, a casein protein yogurts, aged cheeses, or dairy fats like butter because they won’t have lactose.

Or like, we’ll talk about the specifics. You can use lactose enzymes or your micro adjuster microbiome. But that we cover in the, in the problem video with dairy. Then with casein, if you don’t do well with Cain, you could look to try like a whey protein or butter or cream, which should have much less casein altogether.

Or you could try a two varieties. ’cause the most problematic cain is a one Cain. And again, we’re gonna get into the specific details of this in a, in a, in a separate episode where you talk about the three major problems with dairy whey protein. Some people, depending on what’s going on in the microbiome, the high amount of cystine can cause problems for them.

’cause it’s a sulfur containing amino acid that may drive, uh, issues for people who have like a, a hydrogen sulfide overgrowth. ’cause those bacteria will use the cystine, uh, as a energy substrate. If, if you don’t do well with whey, you could still do yogurt, cheeses, cain, protein, butter, and cream. ’cause they don’t really have that much whey present in them.

And the last one is dairy fats. Now this depends on the animal it’s coming from. Um, a lot of the current dairy dairying animals, particularly the cows, are bred so that they produce milk like, like 300 days outta the year. And so, and it, and it also have extended pregnancy timeframes. So while they’re pregnant, they produce a lot of hormones and that can wind up in the milk, particularly the fat fraction.

So in that circumstance, you’re gonna wanna avoid the fatty fractions of milk, like che uh, like fatty cheese, um, ice cream, cream in general butter and shift maybe towards whe a lower fat milk or a skimmed milk, low fat cheese and low fat yogurt. And see if you tolerate those a little bit better ’cause they don’t have the hormones present.

So again, you can try any of these different options or you can maybe even try like a goat milk or something. ’cause I, I think it, it’s less likely that you have the, the goat like lactating all year round and having the same level of hormones present as some of these. These, um, these, uh, hybridized cows that are bred to produce large volumes of milk, stay pregnant for longer, produce milk for a vast majority of the year.

You’re probably not gonna see as much of that in some of these other animals that aren’t used as frequently. So like goat, sheep, uh, buffalo, camel, et cetera. Again, like, I dunno if you’re gonna get all those things, but you could use those other dairies as well and see if you have less of the hormonal response.

And also use lower fat varieties. So with your clients, uh, when you’re thinking about incorporating dairy or you’re trying to hit calcium targets when you’re setting up their diet, how often are you making dairy like a centerpiece, uh, of the diet to do these things? And maybe what sources of dairy are most of your clients using?

Like what’s the most tolerated in your experience? I typically stop dairy for a lot of people when I first start and then add it in and then test response. A lot of people do well with whey. A lot of people do well with yogurts and cheeses. A lot of people do well with a two varieties of dairy and goat products and stuff like this.

A one like typical store-bought dairy. A lot of people have problems with a two dairy products people seem to do better with. And it’s kind of like a, a varied response. And it’s really person specific. So that’s why I take it out in the beginning. Unless the person absolutely knows they don’t have a problem with it, then I take it out in the beginning, c how they’re responding, and then adjust from there and add in things one at a time so we could gauge what the problem is.

And so that’s typically how I go about it. But I’d say the, the like avoiding casein and then avoiding maybe some of the, the dairy fats with the hormones. It, it makes a big difference for, for a lot of people. Lactose intolerance is actually one of the least, uh, least concerns that I have. ’cause a lot of people tolerate a small amount of lactose, um, or they, or they can build up a little bit of tolerance over time due to shifts in the microbiome.

So it’s mostly the cain and the like dairy hormones that I see being the problem and less so the, the lactose. And then is there any like particular symptom or um, disease process that someone comes to you like. With, they’re including dairy in their diet, and maybe they’re saying like, I, I am pretty sure I’m tolerating dairy fine.

But because like they have this symptom, you’re, it’s a non, it’s kind of like a non, you know, negotiable or whatever to go, Hey, I think we should just remove this for now. I mean, it’s, for me, it’s never a non-negotiable. It’s entirely up to the person. So if they wanna keep doing it, despite what I say, like this is completely fine.

I’m not gonna push the envelope. But I would say if somebody’s, if I have a guy come to me, libido’s low, he is constipated, he is brain foggy, has acne I’m taking, I’m usually recommending taking out dairy. Yeah, it’s because most times it’s issues with casein and potentially with some of the hormones. Um, and I’ve seen it time and time again with a, a lot of people that are coming to me with the dairy stuff, or for women, if I have their diet set up and they’re still not losing the weight.

Um, and we’ve like, we’re doing all the things right. Then the, one of the first, next things I’m looking at is dairy, a potential issue. ’cause for some people that don’t tolerate it, they, it won’t let them lose weight. Like they’ll just be kind of resistant to, to the weight loss, uh, the hold water, stuff like this.

So then I’m typically looking at dairy as a potential option there, as well as other symptoms. Again, constipation, brain fog, low li bele, lack of motivation, p like worsening PMS symptoms. Now, on the flip side, I’ve seen people where dairy makes a huge difference for them, but it’s gonna be very person specific.

So that’s why it’s a spectrum and you just need to fi find where you fall on the spectrum and less and and less of like getting into this dichotomy of, well, dairy is good or dairy is bad. It’s like. No, is it good or bad for you? And then like, which forms, let’s get, let’s be more precise here than just this good or bad stuff that we see going on, um, in the different dietary spheres.

Yeah. And that’s why we did the two episodes going over both, you know, like here is like all the pros or a lot of the pros, right. Highlighted by Dr. P and why it makes sense if you are tolerating it versus, you know, the, the opposite end of the spectrum. Like, here’s some problems that are honestly less, you know, talked about kind of in bioenergetics or um, repeat circles in general.

And I know it was kind of helpful for me because I always had a suspicion that doing the dairy was giving me problems. But when I came to bioenergetics it was hard to find someone that was saying that, you know, and then when we, when we like, or that there was, could be a potential problem. And then when we spoke and started working together, it was like, okay, I actually felt, you know, a little, not vindicated, but.

Like this could be something going on that I had kind of suspected. And so it gave me more of a relief to go, okay, like I can have, you know, I can switch my protein sources to like beef and stuff like that, and I don’t have to be maybe worried about iron or, you know, all these other problems that you could potentially have if you don’t have dairy in the diet.

And the supplementation of, of calcium can cover some of the main benefits of including dairy and the diet. So hopefully people are able to get the context and they can check out both episodes and trial some of the strategies that we talked about here. Um. Is there anything you wanna say before we kind of wrap things up?

If you don’t tolerate dairy, then the things that you’re gonna look to try to correct is, do you have enough calcium? So that may be calcium supplementation. Then you’re gonna wanna get a high quality protein source, probably gonna, you want animals, it’s gonna be eggs, it’s gonna be fish, chicken, beef, things like this.

Um, then the next thing is you’re gonna wanna make sure you get adequate potassium. ’cause dairy is a very good source of potassium. So then you’re gonna start to look at tubers and fruits. And then from there is your fatty acid composition. So you’re gonna say, okay, well I don’t wanna have tons of polyunsaturated fats, particularly omega sixes.

So then it’s gonna be like, well, what are you gonna use to cover that gap? And it’s like, okay, dark chocolate, beef fat, like beef tallow. Um, you’re gonna look to do things potentially like some olive oil. You’re gonna look to do things potentially like you tolerate a bit of coconut oil, um, maybe some, some macadamia nuts, avocados, egg yolks, these types of things.

You’re gonna have to use these other fat sources if you don’t do well with the dairy fats. Uh, and the other component is the iron. So you just wanna make sure you’re not iron overloaded or anemic. Uh, and then you wanna have a circumstance where you either incorporate iron rich foods or if you’re iron overloaded, maybe you don’t go super heavy on all the red meat.

Uh, maybe you, or you take it a little bit easy and you incorporate some chicken in some seafood in there, some white fish that doesn’t have as much iron content. So it’s just the value of dairies. It has a ton of benefit. Like it has all of these components, right? It, it, it hits all of these targets across the board.

So it’s just, if you can’t tolerate it, you’re gonna have to make it up in these other ways. And also logistically, like making a whey protein shaker sitting down to Greek yogurt or making a milkshake in terms of prep time is way easier than, like, you gotta cook the steak and then you gotta get the potatoes ready.

So it’s also like adjusting for some of the logistical components as well, uh, becomes important when you, if you can’t tolerate dairy. So it definitely can be done if you don’t, if you can’t tolerate dairy, like it’s not the end of the world. Like both you and I. Are not like the be like poster boys for tolerating dairy.

Uh, I think both of us like have varying tolerances, but towards the lower end of the spectrum. Um, and so in that circumstance, like you just find workarounds so that you can still hit the principles that Dr. Pete has espoused to like these principles that he is talking about. It’s look like make sure you have enough calcium to suppress PTH.

Make sure you get bioavailable protein in your diet. Don’t have a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Have enough carbohydrate in your diet to keep cortisol low. Make sure you’re not producing endotoxin from the bacteria. Don’t be iron overloaded and avoid toxic components. So these are like these seven value values or valuable components of dairy are principles that you can extrapolate and then use other foods to hit those targets.

Even though like dairy hits a lot of these, like if you don’t tolerate it, which again, check out the other episode for reasons why as soon as you could experience all this type of stuff. But if you don’t tolerate it, then here’s, there’s like other things you can do instead. And again, it’s not an all or nothing, it is a spectrum of tolerance.

You can still be on a diet that uses key principles without having to, to include dairy. But if you can, there’s like massive benefits and it is a, it is a superfood. You could put it under the superfood category like you said. So where can people find you, um, you know, outside of the podcast? So they can find me on the YouTube channel, Mike Fave YouTube, and they can also find me at my website, mike fave.com.

And what about you, Ethan? Uh, Ethan, right on Instagram and Twitter. And then on the podcast here discussing various topics with you weekly. So we’ll be back next week and if you haven’t checked out the other dairy episode, go ahead and do that. Yep. Awesome.