 What happens if you eat eggs every day for 30 days? Well, if you've read my books, you know as a general rule, the less animal protein you eat the better. So let's go into the problems with eating eggs every day for 30 days. First of all, let's talk about insulin-like growth factor 1, IGF 1 and animal protein correlation. So first of all, what is insulin-like growth factor 1? Well, insulin-like growth factor as the name implies is a growth hormone growth factor and it looks a lot like insulin. Now most of us produce insulin-like growth factor and we should. In fact, up until the age of 40, we in general produce a lot of growth factor because we're growing. After age 40, however, our insulin-like growth factors should decline. Why? Because if you look at super super old people, late 90s, early 100s, in my practice and in other practices, they tend to run very low insulin-like growth factors. And if you look at people who have low insulin-like growth factors, they have a very low incidence of cancer development as opposed to people who have a high insulin-like growth factor actually have a very high rate of cancer development. And it makes sense. Growth factor. As we get older, quite frankly, there's nothing in us that we want to grow. There are really three factors that influence our level of insulin-like growth factor. One of them is the more sugar we eat or things that turn into sugar, the higher our insulin-like growth factor goes. But the second is the more animal protein we eat, and that includes eggs, the higher our insulin-like growth factor goes. The third factor, which I talk a lot about in unlocking the keto code, is the more time-restricted eating, intermittent fasting we do, limiting our eating window to about six to eight hours per day, the lower our insulin-like growth factor. And as I talked about in one of my earlier books, St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, has a big nutrition center where they've studied calorie-restricted individuals. And this is the Calorie Restriction Society, where in general, they eat 30% less calories per day than normal in an effort to live a long time. They took these people and asked some of them to substitute a purely vegan calorie source and followed their insulin-like growth factor. And their insulin-like growth factor in these calorie-restricted people dropped over 50 points just by eliminating animal protein. So that's one of the factors of limiting egg consumption. So how much protein should you be eating? Well, Dr. Walter Longo from USC. And I agree on this, and it is controversial, except Dr. Longo is one of the great longevity researchers who's followed this. I use his protein formula that I publish in all my books. And in general, all you need to eat in terms of protein is about 20 to 30 grams per day. Now, I know you've heard that, oh, my goodness, for adequate protein, you actually should eat as many grams of protein as body weight in kilograms. The average human being who is 150 kilograms, that's 150 pounds, that's 70 kilograms, so you need 70 kilograms of protein, not so fast. Again, protein stimulates insulin-like growth factor. Plus, unbeknownst to a lot of nutritionists, is we recycle our own protein. Every day, we slough about 20 grams of protein into our digestive tract from cells that line our intestines. And we eat that protein. So every day, you're eating 20 grams of protein that you didn't know you had to eat because it came from yourself. The other thing that's important to realize is that you don't need protein to build muscle. For instance, from the American Dietetic Association, there's a fascinating study looking at young adults and senior citizens. They were given either 90 grams of protein per day or 30 grams of protein per day. It turns out that the 30 grams of protein completely provided for muscle synthesis in both the young people and the old people. So the 90 grams of protein did nothing more for protein synthesis. Nothing more, whether you were young or old. So where did that extra 60 grams of protein go? Well, we don't waste calories. So if we're not going to use it for protein synthesis and clearly we don't, we convert it into sugar. And it's called gluconeogenesis. And guess what that sugar does? It becomes fat. So you're fooling yourself into thinking you need more protein. Now, there's one thing that Dr. Longo and I do disagree with. He thinks that after the age of 65, you need more protein in your diet. And he's right, but he's wrong. The reason he's right is if you look at senior citizens and look at their protein requirement, it appears that they need more protein. But what that doesn't take into account is that normally we have a surface area for absorbing nutrients of about the size of a tennis court. But because of damage from our diet, particularly from lectins, senior citizens have a surface area of a ping-pong table. So naturally you would have to have more protein that you ingest to get absorbed through that ping-pong table. And what I've shown in my patients is I reduce their protein but take away their lectins and their total protein and their albumin, which is how we measure protein in humans, actually goes up, lowering their protein, but taking away the lectins. So it's the damage that's been done. The older we get because of the foods, not the fact that we need more protein. Dr. Adkins, this year I turned 72, which is the age that Dr. Adkins died at. Dr. Adkins was originally, was a cardiologist. He was originally a high fat doctor. He got into so much trouble with the American Heart Association that he morphed into a high protein doctor because what's wrong with protein? Unfortunately, if you watched him through the years, he actually became obese from eating a high protein diet because he was taking that extra protein that he couldn't use for protein muscle synthesis and turning it into fat. And that's really one of the sad legacies of the Adkins diet. All right, so to answer the question, is it okay to eat eggs every day for a month if you are very careful to limit your protein consumption, especially animal protein? So two and a half eggs meet your entire protein needs every single day. So if you wanted to get all of your protein from those two and a half eggs, be my guest. But you should view those eggs as a way of getting other nutrients into your body, particularly olive oil. If you go to Crete and ask for breakfast, they'll bring you a bowl with about a half an inch of olive oil with two lightly poached eggs. And they give you a spoon and you stir those eggs into the olive oil and you basically have an olive oil and egg soup. And it's a great way for the eggs to be a vehicle to get olive oil into your mouth. So if you want to do that, great. Another option, as I write about in all the books, in general, the value of the egg is in the yolk. That's where all the nutrients, all the vitamins are. The protein is mostly in the whites. So do yourself a favor, have mostly yolks, take like three yolks and one white, give the other egg whites to your dog. Your dog will just think you're the best person. But not just any eggs. Make sure they're either pasture raised or at the very least, omega three eggs. In general, omega three eggs are fed flaxseed and or algae. And they actually do have a very nice content of short chain omega three in their yolks. The yolks also are excellent sources of choline. Choline is one of the most important factors for brain health. And the egg yolk is one of the best sources for choline. Now, beware if you see free range or cage free. Those chickens by law never have to go outside. Be wary of the words organic. First of all, you can't make bugs organic. But you can make corn and soybeans organic. And so if you see organic chicken eggs, the odds are that those chickens have been fed corn and soybeans. And you certainly don't want that. Unfortunately, I have a number of patients with autoimmune diseases where it was the organic chicken eggs that was part of the problem in causing their leaky gut. Instead of eggs for breakfast, try some alternatives. Most store bought yogurts have tons of sugar, so buyer beware. Most store bought yogurts, even Greek yogurt, contain the wrong protein called casein A1. Get yourself some plain goat yogurt. Get yourself some plain sheep yogurt. If you want it sweetened, buy some allulose. Allulose is a true sugar that has no calories that is actually a prebiotic. So you can get the probiotics from yogurt, mix in some prebiotics and you're good to go. Also, there's another great yogurt that I've actually had in my podcast. The founder called Lava Yogurt, L-A-V-V-A. It has pilli nuts and coconut. And it has a generous dollop of prebiotic fiber from green banana already in the mix. And it has living bacteria by certification. It's a great option. Look for it in most whole food stores. Have some pop sorghum cereal with coconut milk, but please make it the plain coconut milk. Have a sliced avocado drizzled with olive oil. I recently returned from Paris. That's what I had for breakfast every morning. They didn't blink an eye. Out came my sliced avocado with olive oil. No one said, gee, what a funny request. This next one is sure to surprise you. Good sleep actually stops you from becoming insulin resistant and good sleep stops you from becoming carbohydrate hungry.