People who regularly drink coffee seem to be protected against cardiovascular disease and even neurologic conditions like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, and M.S.

And when you bring it back, man, you see, you know, what a potent drug coffee really is.

So, what is the concern?

You know, coffee seems like this kind of miracle drug because everybody can point to the upsides of having coffee in the morning, whatever.

But nobody has been able to really articulate to me the cost⏤and all these things in life have a cost, right?

We live in a society now where many people will have multiple cups of coffee before 12 o'clock, before midday, and nobody seems to be able to tell me what the cost of that is.

There must be one because nothing in life is free.

- Yeah. - So... so, what is the cost?

Well, everybody's different.

So, you know, people metaboli⏤some people are slow caffeine metabolizers, others are are not.

And, so, you know, you have to⏤you really have to, like, determine for yourself whether or not coffee is something that works well for your body.

It is a type of stress, I will say that.

So, for people who are chronically stressed, adding coffee to the mix is probably, you know, just adding fuel to that fire.

And it's not that I want you to get rid of the coffee; I'd rather see you get to the root cause of where that stress is coming from.

But, you know, it can stimulate cortisol release, and it's... it is... it is a powerful stimulant.

We know that.

It can also negatively impact sleep.

It... it actually affects your brain similarly to bright light.

So, that's why, you know, I mean, for many reasons, you want to make sure that you're⏤you are consuming it, you know, far, far away from your... from bedtime.

But it is⏤it honestly is hard to find a downside to coffee, I mean, there there really is good... there is good research on it.

Recently, it was discovered that the caffeine in coffee acts like a natural PCSK9 inhibitor.

So, I know that's, like, an unfamiliar⏤it's, like, a mouthful.

But there's a new class of, I think, relatively, you know, benign cholesterol-lowering drugs on the market called PCSK9 inhibitors.

Now, I'm not anti-cholesterol or anything like this⏤some of our most healthful foods actually act like natural PCK... PCSK9 inhibitors.

Dietary fiber, in a way, is like a PCSK9 inhibitor.

But they found that high-dose caffeine actually, at about... a dose of about 400 miligrams,

can actually act like this drug where it makes your liver more effective at recycling cholesterol-carrying lipoproteins like LDL.

And, so, that... that kind of, like, adds a mechanism to the observation that we've seen that

people who regularly drink coffee seem to be protected against cardiovascular disease and even neurologic conditions like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, and M.S.

So, it... there seems to be this... this protective effect of coffee.

But it's always important to caveat these findings with the fact that these are averages.

So, an average coffee seems protective, but certainly, within those... those cohorts that are being studied, some people are doing really poorly with coffee as well.

So, you just, you know, it's... it's something that you really have to, like, regularly take inventory and ask yourself, like, is this working, you know, for me?

I think one of the healthier ways to ingest coffee is to not consume it immediately after waking up, which, you know, I'm guilty of doing many days.

But, like, you know it's... it's generally something that's, like, you're better off consuming, like, an hour or two after you wake up, and again, not, you know, not too late into the afternoon, either.

And... and, like, also, you know, the dose, I think, is really important.

People that develop caffeine dependency, you know, they think that they're... they're improving their performance with caffeine, but what they're really doing is they're treating their withdrawal from caffeine.

So, another way that I like to, kind of, make sure that I'm consuming it in the most mindful way possible is I'll take, like, occasional weeks off from caffeinated coffee and I'll switch to decaf.

- Interesting. - Yeah.

And, so, I feel like it sort of helps, like, re-sensitize my brain, breaks the dependency a little bit, then I bring it back.

And when you bring it back, man, you see what a drug, you know, what a potent drug coffee really is, you know?

But, in general, I'm a fan; I'm a fan of... of coffee... in polyphenols.

It... it's a natural activator of our bodies's NRF2 pathway, which is, like, a detoxifying pathway in the body that's also stimulated by cruciferous vegetables.

Something, again, I've been thinking a lot about ever since I bought myself a whoop, which tracks my sleep and gives me some data in the morning about how I slept, is how to improve my sleep via my diet.

What advice would you give me there, if I wanted to have deeper, deeper, more quality sleep?

What should I be eating, not eating, avoiding, what times, etc.?

Yeah, I mean, generally, you just... you want to not eat too close to bedtime.

There's sort of, like, a goldilocks zone, where, you know, I think we're made as diurnal creatures, meaning creatures that are... typically eat during the day.

You wanna eat your last meal about two to three hours before you go to sleep.

You don't wanna go to bed hungry.

I mean people... people obviously have different, you know, different preferences, and I think preference, in many ways, reigns supreme.

But what... what we know from circadian biology is that we're meant to eat about two to three hours before we go to sleep.

And... and you don't, you know, like, that's to give space between your last meal and sleep because sleep is a time for rebuilding and restoring.

We see this, like, interesting hormonal shift in the body that is really like...

It's why sleep is, you know, we rejuvenate in many ways⏤like our bodies, ourselves, our tissues⏤when sleeping.

Part of, like, how we get there is a change in body temperature.

And, you know, we see this, like, this... this dip in body temperature right before we go to sleep or just after, actually, we... we go to sleep.

If you eat a, like, a really, like, meat-heavy meal right before you go to sleep, a lot of people notice that doing that can negatively impair sleep.

And I think one of the... one of the proposed mechanisms why that happens is that we have⏤the thermic effect of protein is quite high, particularly compared to fat and carbohydrates.

And, so, you've got this, like, internal furnace, like, burning in your gut, like, to try to break down and assimilate all of the precious amino acids that you've just ingested,

and, so, I think, that can sometimes be at odds with... with, like, that wind-down process, that circadian, you know, wind-down process.

So, yeah, just... I would try not to eat too close to bedtime.

Many people feel like eating carbs before bed does help them sleep for that same reason,

like, maybe they have cortisol, you know, still, like, you know, a bit of cortisol dysregulation, and carbs before bed seems to... seems to be able to help with that.

What do you... when do you eat, if not before bed?

Like, you know, sometimes I've been guilty of eating while I'm falling asleep.

This is old Steve, not new Steve.

But when do you eat⏤you talked about intermittent fasting.

I read some things that said you start eating roughly at, like, 11 o'clock in the morning.

Yeah.

What... what's the window in which you... you eat?

I generally will...

Yeah, I don't⏤I generally won't have my first, like, food until... these days it's about 10:30, 10:30, 11 in the morning.

I've been experimenting with carbohydrates before exercise.

For a long time, I was... I really enjoyed fasted workouts, and...

And lately I've been experimenting to see what a little bit of peri-workout carbohydrate does for my... for my lifts 'cause I'm really into⏤I love fitness.

So... so I've been, kind of, experimenting a bit with that.

But the general rule of thumb that I practice is that I don't eat for an hour to an hour and a half after I wake up.

Part of the reason for that is, and again, just to, like, preference, you know, personal preference is... is really, like, key here.

So, you know, a lot of the, like, recommendations that I'll make, like, you might see a smidgen of benefit.

But at the end of the day, like, if you can't, you know, work out at the optimal time or, you know, eat in the optimal windows, like, you know...

Still, what you eat and making sure that you are getting exercise is better than, like, not, because of, like, fear that you're not doing it, you know, optimally.

Like work⏤exercise is crucially important, eating whole foods, you know, animal-inclusive plan, inclusive diet, I think, optimal.

But, you know, what circadian biology is showing us is that when you eat immediately after waking up, you know, you might not have had your melatonin, for example, fully subside, which is a sleep hormone.

When melatonin is elevated, as it starts to, you know, it starts to rise once the sun begins to set, that sends the signal to our bodies, essentially, that the kitchen is closing,

That the kitchen is closing and that, you know, we're... we're now approaching the time where, you know, we're gonna change the guard, it's like a changing-of-the-guard, essentially,

where we're gonna focus on rejuvenation and repair.

When people wake up in the morning, that hormone hasn't fully, necessarily, subsided yet, and that can have the consequence of making us not as insulin-sensitive.

So, it might impair glucose regulation while it's still elevated and... and, so, like eating carbohydrates in that window, particularly, like, as they typically appear in the standard American diet,

the brand muffin, the glass of orange juice, like, that's... I don't think, you know, like, an appropriate breakfast for that time of day.

You know, I mean, you might be able to get by with something like that later on, but generally, like, after you wake up, you want your melatonin to fully subside.

And also cortisol, which is your body's, you know, we talked about that as a stress hormone.

Cortisol is not bad; It's also your body's chief waking hormone.

That's the highest that it's gonna be throughout the day in the morning.

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