Howdy campers. Recently regular reader Joey Lott interviewed Matt for his website. The plan is to feature several other writers alongside Matt on the topic of helping people restore their metabolic rates and take back their health. It may be compiled together as a printed resource one of these days, but you can access the 180 goodness right away here.
It’s a good interview both for new readers and long-time followers. They talk about how Matt’s work has evolved over time to where he is now, thoughts on coffee, iodine, the Buteyko Method and Bill Murray. All that and more, right here: Joey Lott Interviews Matt Stone.
First?
First!
Sorry Vizzy- Moonflower’s comment was in moderation, and just barely edged you out. Next time :-D
It’s great to have a good summary of the 180D approach to health. Joey did a good job of hitting the main points and asking questions to help clear up some common misconceptions. This reminds me how much we depend on Matt’s level-headedness to find the best research on health while weeding out the nonsensical ideas that can be embedded in even the best reseacher’s efforts.
Woo hoo! :D
“If you believe that there is some happily-ever-after awaiting you if you study and ponder something enough, and eat the perfect diet for example ? or believe that there is a key out there waiting to save everyone from horrible diseases, then you are extremely eager to rush out and find the answer. Now that I’m a realist, and focus on mastering a few basic fundamentals of self care instead of aiming for some fictitious Utopian state of health perfection, I’m not nearly as irrationally passionate. My information is much better, and I have my life back from health fanaticism.”
This quote from the first paragraph hits the nail on the head for me. Now that I am not expecting some miracle or cure all, I can actually do some reasonable and sane things for my health. This whole interview was very to the point and I think summed things up wonderfully. By the way, I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!
P.s. ” irrationally Passionate” I like that phrase. I have been there with to many things in my life. Nothing wrong with being passionate, it’s the irrational part that gets ya! ; )
P.s.s Cusack and better off dead, hands down.
I love that. Over the last 10 or so years I have been battling hard to find the right diet for me, that would help with the multitude of health issues I have. Culminating in a disastrous 18mo of low carb paleo/ GAPs. I desperately wanted my “Eating X way cured my…” story.
After quitting paleo I learned that my symptoms are actually caused by a genetic defect in how I make collagen. Not food intolerances. Not inflammatory. Not autoimmune. And so on. Of course it helps with the fatigue, pain, weakness and so on if I feed myself well, but there is no magic cure. Giving up on that idea is hard! But I guess that is just part of the journey otowards acceptance of having a lifelong chronic condition. Being limited in terms of my ability to “get a life” makes it harder I think. I am stuck at home, bored, tired and sore, it is easy for my mind to work overtime looking for answers. Probably taking a nap would be more productive!
Acceptance. It’s a pretty tough thing to wrap my head around sometimes. I feel like I’ve come to the point in my life where not accepting things as they are is no longer an option for me. I don’t want to get to mystical about things but sometimes I feel like life is designed to test and to teach. I feel like I’ve hit that spot where I’ve struggled, fought, kicked and screamed against my condition. In the end all I’ve done is make things worse. Like you, I may just have some genetic condition that I will never be able to manipulate through diet like I once hoped was possible. I’m lucky in that I have this particular period of my life where my kids are grown and my bills are low and I can take a hiatus in my work. Now hopefully the only place from here is up. Once I start accepting the things I have less control over I can get back to doing the things I am capable of in order to utilize my limited time here on this planet a little better than I have been the last couple years.
Good work, Matt & Joey! That was very thorough and well presented.
This interview was bad fuckin ass! Much thanks to Matt, Rob, and Joey!
Great interview – thanks.
Great interview. Asked exactly some questions I had myself – about thyroid, RBTI, etc. Looking forward to the book on anxiety. Initially I dieted for weight control. Then for health, but now most of my do’s and don’ts about food are related to the effect they may or may not have on my anxiety. The anxiety I have about this doesn’t help my anxiety!
How many goitrogens are too much? I used to think a green veg at dinner was essential, and I still tend to do that, but I’ve started to have non-goitrogens like asparagus and snap peas more often. But is having two big servings of broccoli and a serving of cabbage a week too much? What about a can of beans every two weeks?
I would doubt that that would be too much, especially if those things were cooked. I don’t think beans in general are believed to be goitrogens? (not sure). I think it’s just soy.
Even the Jaminets of Perfect Health Diet (seemingly reasonable people, but much more nutritionism-ist than here) say goitrogens are only a problem if you don’t have enough iodine, and I *seem* to remember they suggest eating fish/shellfish twice a week to get the iodine, and that’s likely to be enough. Supplementation, they said, should be approached very very gradually and with caution.
After getting scared about this once, I spent a lot of time reading and my personal conclusion was that eating crucifers/brassicas in a normal way (mostly cooked, and in moderate portions as krauts and slaws), and eating quality, fermented soy sauce as a condiment was no danger at all. The big danger was from all the juicing of raw crucifers like kale, etc., that has become trendy. I mean, it would be really difficult to *eat* as many vegetables as some folks have been juicing. And the second danger would be to vegetarians/vegans who eat/drink large amounts of processed soy. As smart as he is, I think Chris Masterjohn’s article on goitrogens (Crucifers: Bearers of the Cross — talk about bringing the melodrama to something as boring as vegetables!) gets way caught up in nutrition nerdism and, perhaps inadvertently, ends up being alarmist.
Have been thinking about Buteyko today. I’m breath curious I guess. This guy Michael Grant White http://www.breathing.com/articles/breathwave.htm says buteyko is lame and advocates a deep breathing approach to eventually achieve effortless and natural breathing. He does have a long list of testimonials, but I’m not prepared to hock my guitar to spend 80.00 on his program. I have experimented with Buteyko a little and the one thing I can say is that it is extremely uncomfortable to practice! My understanding is that most (maybe all) the exercises produce symptoms of air hunger, which is extremely stressful to experience. That actually has kept me from pursing it further. When I think about it I’m very averse to the idea of actually doing it. It just doesn’t seem natural. There are other things too, like they say that sighing, yawning and I think sneezing are all unnatural and unhealthy. WTF is that? Tell that to all the yawing animals, and sighing is universal, though probably not a sign of outstanding physical and emotional health. I do have a very low breath holding time though and I’m curious about Buteyko’s ability to improve that and what it actually means healthwise.
I did a Butekyo course. It cost a LOT. I found it way too hard to keep up the exercises, but I did learn to keep my mouth shut and that has been very helpful, not just for me, but for the people around me :-) I think it may have some benefits for asthmatics, people with sleep apnoea etc.
I have been putting some thought into breathing and keeping my mouth shut lately. It’s a good practice to try to be aware of your breathing and i believe it helps keep you mindful. I just have to shake my head though at some of these expensive new agey courses that are supposed to be the perfect diet equivalent of breathing. I looked at that site Stephen, and have to say it seems like they make some big claims and the practice is probably unsustainable for most of us average humans. On that same note, in the past I read a couple of books on yogic breathing and a lot of that was designed to keep you alive longer. Supposedly through the process of slowing down you metabolic rate. Kind of the opposite of what a lot of us here are trying to do. I also tried the fire breath technique for a while which involves very rapid short thrusting breaths that are supposed to improve your energy. I found out after a short while that those particular exercises are very bad for people with a hiatal hernia. I think it’s like Matt stated in his interview. It’s all about finding a few solid fundamentals that are somewhat easy to adhere to and then building upon that foundation.
” I think it’s like Matt stated in his interview. It’s all about finding a few solid fundamentals that are somewhat easy to adhere to and then building upon that foundation.”
Sure, but I think breathing could be one of those fundamental things for a couple of reasons. One is that we all do it all day, just like eating and drinking and we have some control over it, just like what we chose to eat and drink. Also, it is very tied to stress and lack of, and pretty much what we do and think affects our breath almost universally. Ideally, I suppose that we ought to be able to just breathe, like we just eat, but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem far fetched that if we breath as if we are less stressed or happier or whatever, that we could end up more that way. I admit to some resistance to this idea and similar ideas. It’s like you’re tricking yourself or something. It doesn’t seem fair somehow! But then if it works, the proof is in the pudding and it’s not like negativity, stress and unhappiness are things worth holding onto jus’ ’cause. And, with lifetimes of stressors and experiences behind us, maybe we become the breaths we breathe out of habit and could do with a little retraining to give us a wee shove in the right direction. Mouth breathing is an excellent case in point. I suspect that my narrow palate is largely due to mouth breathing for most of my life. I formed the habit early and it just stuck. I learned over the past year to Nose breathe and I feel like it was a great move (recommend to any mouth breathers out there. It seems impossible at first, but it’s not).
I’m leary of anyone trying to sell anything of course, and the guy definitely looks a little on the new age side (also noted that he’s pushing raw food diet and the little giff of him surrounded by a daisy of colorful religious symbols is just too precious :) but he does have quite a lot of testimonials. Like I said, I’m just breathing curious and there is a lot of contradictory information out there to try to sift through, but I do feel like my breathing is wonky and always have. I also feel like if I was healthier in general it would fall into place more and I have noted such before during some periods of better health. Ideally one finds the person who has already sorted it all out, because we can’t be experts in everything, but who are they, if anyone? Artouro or whatever his name is that promotes Buteyko a lot, has a ton of research that seems to be convincing as to why everyone should practice it and enjoy perfect health because it cures A to Z, but then that’s an old story right? Of course, just because someone says their thing cures everything, doesn’t mean it’s not valid and may help some things. It’s good to keep an open mind, just not so open that our fucking brains fall out, and it’s not always easy to know where to draw the line, especially when searching for answers to difficult questions… as in religion and health for instance, fittingly included cozily in the same sentence.
I also have a big problem with being a mouth breather. That’s why I am trying to become more aware of it, especially during exercise and before going to bed at night. I also wouldn’t be adverse to learning some techniques or exercises. Like I said though, for myself I would keep it basic. Anytime I try to dive into anything to big or unwieldy, failure to follow through always results. That’s where for me,learning a few rock solid, easy to practice breathing fundamentals would come in handy. I am not totally against new age types of things, although my tolerance for some of that stuff is less than it used to be in my younger days. I just think that a lot of people do themselves and their product or point of view a great disservice by over hyping everything. I feel it causes people to possibly overlook what benefits they can derive from these things.
I also spent a lot of time researching hiatal hernia the past couple days as my ex has it and I’m experiencing some pretty bad reflux stuff that seems to point to it as a possible culprit. It’s greatly interfering with my being able to eat enough. Have you tried any of the remedies like drinking water and jumping, or ACV or adjustment maneuvers below the sternum?
Re breathing: Singing and learning to play wind instruments (brass, reed like trumpet, clarinet, flute) are really effective and fun ways to develop your breathing capacity and control! Sounds about a million times more enjoyable and purposeful than the Buteyko stuff.
Being a musician I have noticed that when I get really into what I’m doing I forget to breath sometimes or that my breathing becomes very irregular. I have been working on becoming more aware of that. It really makes a difference when I do. I think the same thing can be true for sport or exercise.
@steven e
If you’re researching hiatal hernia, here’s something else for you to consider. I think that it is very unnatural for humans to always to be “sucking in” our tummies in order to look slimmer and to always be keeping our farts in because we’re too afraid of what people think. Also, in relation to farts, the opposite, which some people have a habit of, is PUSHING really hard in order to release a fart.
Hopefully what you read spurs more research as well!
http://www.alignedandwell.com/katysays/under-pressure-part-1/#sthash.VpB3qgL1.dpbs
I have tried jumping off my bottom step and putting pressure on my sternum. Not sure if its doing anything for me but I still do it. I have noticed that poor digestion causes bloating and bloating sucks for a hiatal hernia. Most of my reflux though seems to start up at four in the morning. It seems like during the day as long as I keep eating its fine. If I stop eating for more than a few hours the bloat starts and the acid starts rolling on up the throat. One of my big downfalls is carpentry work. Bending over all day to frame walls or pound shingles or do hardwood flooring seems to throw me out of whack for days. At that point the acid is almost constant and there isn’t much I can do about it.
I did the daily drinking water and jumping thing for that. It worked after like a week or something?
Haven’t had a problem since.
I also read the Buteyko stuff and found most of it to be too hard, even the “test” to see how good or bad at breathing was a deterrent. However, the things that I have taken away have been helpful; closed mouth breathing during the day and taping my mouth at night. I found that I slept noticeably better when taping vs. not taping, however I stopped because I was just using what I had on hand (scotch tape, ha!) and the adhesive was annoying my skin. I’ve been thinking about getting some better medical tape, but I forget each time I’m at the store.
I am really considering taping my mouth shut. I wake up at least fifteen times a night to take a swig of water because my mouth is so dry from mouth breathing. That and chronic nighttime peeing(which is getting better since lowering my water intake) have left me with pretty poor quality sleep
“Now that I’m a realist, and focus on mastering a few basic fundamentals of self care instead of aiming for some fictitious Utopian state of health perfection.” This is what’s setting you apart. When people let go of the idea that they can control everything, they’re more open to actually doing what they can (resting, feeding themselves).
now if you would only find a synonym for yummy.
Nummy? Scrumptious? You see what I’m up against here Zilla?
lol omnomnummynumalicious – it sounds alpha.
I’m confused by one of the interview questions. He says that Ray Peat is anti-pufa I.e. coconut and vit E but coconut oil is a saturated fat! Nuts also seem to be demonised but I thought that maca’s were pufa free. Being underweight I tend to eat until I am completely full but I have read that you should only eat until you are 80% full. Does anyone know which is metabolically better?
@Heather, some one else more “Peaterized” may answer this better, but just quickly, the vitamin E and coconut oil are taken to counter PUFA intake. Most PUFAs become rancid, which means oxidized, quickly and can do the free-radical spree throughout the body. Vitamin E is an antioxidant, so he encourages its use to stop the free radicals caused by ingesting PUFA. I think. That’s how I read that without reading any of Peat’s words on that specifically.
Thank you; I was getting a tad worried…
Matt, what is the BBC documentary on overfeeding that you mention? In looking for it, I came across another interesting, 6-part, BBC documentary, called The Truth About Food. Some of their observations line up with yours, such as sugar doesn’t cause hyperactivity, and drinking extra water doesn’t help dry skin.
Doug, pretty sure it’s the documentary “Why Are Thin People Not Fat?
Great interview with Matt!
I would really love to see a post on this documentary Matt mentioned. I have seen it and it was interesting but I think someone could walk away with the wrong idea i.e. overeating makes you fat, end of story. My favorite was the guy who just got really buff from overfeeding:) I would love to see what Matt and the other contributors thoughts on this study/documentary were.
We discussed that years ago when it came out. Rob also breached the topic of that documentary last summer. http://180degreehealth.com/2012/07/fat-is-officially-incurable-response
It’s framed in kind of an annoying way, as both fat and skinny people respond the same way to overfeeding. Gain fat, hate food, go hypermetabolic, move back towards original set point. Obviously some gain easier than others, but how easy a person gains also depends on how dieted they are going in, their dieting history, and other factors.
I just watched the above and found it really interesting. Made me think that maybe I am meant to be underweight and maybe there is no point to trying to put weight on! Also they said that once fat cells are generated you cannot get rid it them! That’s a worry!
The sugar thing is interesting. Ever since I have increased my sugar intake I have felt calmer and have been less fidgety.
“Overall calorie intake is the most important factor in increasing metabolism.”
“When was the last time you had a kale craving?”
“If my name was Roxanne I would not put on the red light.”
Classic awesome Matt Stone! You should know that after being one of those health fanatics for almost 30 years now, your blog is the only health-related one I read. Thank you for your work.
“If my name was Roxanne I would not put on the Red light” – LMAO!! Classic Matt, nice reference to the Police.
Hi Matt,
I thought of something. I believe that I ruined my thyroid and adrenals during the stress of being on low carb for three years. I think my body went into a kind of starvation mode even though I wasn’t feeling hungry. As a result of my low carb starvation diet, I now have thyroid issues and am overweight.
Then I thought about the survivors of the Holocast. They were on total starvation for many years. Yet, I have never heard that “most survivors of starvation” then become obese? So there must be more to the story. Perhaps the PUFAs make the whole difference?
Anyways, I’m not sure where I’m going with this but I guess I wonder why the survivors didn’t all ruin their thyroids and then ended up becoming overweight? Just like the St Petersburg study, people got heart disease and hight blood pressure, but they did not become overweight.
Same in the Ansel Keys study, the subjects gained weight then lost it over time. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for us in our modern life to loose weight. Is life really that much more stressful for us than it was in the 40s and 50s?
Amazing interview. Just finished reading it. It hit exactly every question I would have asked Matt myself. It makes me feel totally normal to know that other people out there are thinking and reading about the exact same things I am. I love Matt’s relaxed attitude. It’s helpful, and de-stressing to me to feel like I don’t have to do everything so perfectly right. That I’m on the right path and I don’t have to do much more than “eat the food”.
Thanks for the interview, it was extremely helpful to have all the info there in one concise spot with lots of questions I myself would ask about Matt’s current stance on. Thanks!!