Good Energy

June 8, 2026

Book Notes

When I read a book I have the habit of highlighting certain passages I find interesting or useful. After I finish the book I’ll type up those passages and put them into a note on my phone. I’ll keep them to comb through every so often so that I remember what that certain book was about. That’s what these are. So if I ever end up lending you a book, these are the sections that I’ve highlighted in that book. Enjoy!

Good Energy is also known as metabolic health. Metabolism refers to the set of cellular mechanism that transform food into energy that can power every single cell in the body.

The reality is that every institution that impacts health – from medical schools to insurance companies to hospitals to pharma companies – makes money on “managing” disease, not curing patients.

We have become from the awe about our bodies and life, separated from the production of the foods we eat, made more sedentary by our work and school, and detached from our core biological needs, like sunlight, quality sleep, and clean water and air.

Good Energy is the goal, and the state of mind – and what it can create – is incredible, a world where we are eating beautiful food, moving our bodies, interacting with nature, taking pleasure in the world around us, and feeling fulfilled, vibrant, and alive.

An immune cell can’t stop you from drinking a soda, filter your water, turn off the stress-inducing notifications on your phone, prevent you from eating hormone-disrupting pesticides and microplastics, or get you to go to sleep earlier. So the immune cell will use the tools at its disposal: it will recruit more immune cells and just keep fighting until things resolve. But the problems don’t resolve, because the damaging environmental inputs never resolve. This is chronic inflammation.

Metabolic health gets destroyed by 10 main things:

  1. Chronic overnutrition
    • We eat approximately 700 to 3,000% more fructose, all of which the body must process. Imagine being asked to do 700 to 3,000% more work than you normally do daily–you’d collapse.
    • So things back up, damaging by-products are produced in excess, and the strain of excess leads to the inside of the cell filling with toxic fats.
    • When the production of these damaging molecules exceeds the body’s capacity to handle them, a damaging imbalance called oxidative stress can occur.
  2. Nutrient deficiencies
    • 75% of people are not eating the recommended amounts of vegetables and fruits.
  3. Microbiome issues
  4. Sedentary lifestyle
    • Exercise stimulates our body to generate antioxidant molecules. When we’re sedentary, we have less protection from free radicals, which can then damage the mitrochondria.
  5. Chronic stree
  6. Medications and drugs
    • Many medications hurt the function of mitochondria. These include several antibiotics, chemo drugs, beta-blockers, high blood pressure medications, alcohol, meth, and cocaine.
  7. Sleep deprivation
  8. Environmental toxins and pollutants
    • Alcohol can be considered a mitochondrial toxin and has been shown to change mitochondrial shape and function.
  9. Artificial light and circadian disruption
    • We are being exposed to constant sources of artificial blue light.
    • We now spend little time outdoors, depriving ourselves of viewing direct sunlight ealry in teh morning.
  10. Thermonutrality
    • Interestingly, experiencing swing in temperature is great for mitochondrial function, as cold stimulates the body to generate more warmth by increasing mitochondrial activity and stimulates more ATP generation.

The root of pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes is as follows: It’s a domino effect of mitochondrial dysfunction caused by several environmental factors which leads to a backup of glucose and fatty acids that convert to toxic fats that fill the cell, thereby blocking insulin signaling, leading to a cell that struggles to take in glucose from the bloodstream. This leads to a rise in blood sugar levels. The body then tries extra hard to encourage the cells to take it up by producing an excess amount of insulin (Leading to high insulin levels in the blood). For years the body can do this basically undetected and blood sugar levels can appear to be normal. Over time though the cell struggling to take in glucose from the bloodstream can’t keep stuffing glucose into itself – this leads to sharp rises in blood sugar levels seemingly out of nowhere. Elevated blood sugar floating around the bloodstream will lead to excess sugar sticking to things. Structures in the body with excess sugar stuck to them won’t work properly and are considered foreign to the immune system, triggering the immune response, which leads to inflammation, and if this happens consistently, becomes chronic inflammation.

Today life includes too much sugar, too much stress, too much sitting, too much pollution, too many pills, too many pesticides, too many screens, too little sleep, and too little micronutrients.

A basic and accessible way to check your metabolic health is to test for 5 markers: Blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference. When these markers fall into an optimal range, in the absence of medication you’re good. Typically you’ll feel vibrant, healthy, and pain-free.

Metabolic syndrome is clinically defined as having 3 or more of the following traits:

All symptoms are the direct result of dysfunction in our cell; symptoms cannot arise out of thin air.

Just twelve weeks of a vegetable-filled, low glycemic diet can improve all key biomarkers.

Key contributors to bad energy are processed foods, refined sugars, refined grains, sweet beverage, high-fructose corn syrup, fast food, low fiber and phytochemical intake, habitual eating close to bedtime, sedentary behavior, and oxidative stress.

Our culture has normalized giving one-year-olds packaged, ultra-processed foods like cake, Goldfish, rice puffs, juice, and french fries. We slather toxic, artificially scented lotions and shampoos all over their tiny bodies as soon as their first hospital bath. We damage their livers and antioxidant capacity with too much acetaminophen (Tylenol) at the first sign of fussiness or a cold. We blast their microbiomes with heavy-duty antibiotics at the first sign of a possible ear infection. And we interrupt their sleep for unconscionably early school for six or more hours a day. We create terror and chronic stress in their bodies from social media and overall media exposure.

Rather than leaving my mom in the hospital, where she likely would enevr see or touch my brother, father, or me again, we drove back from Stanford to my parent’s home in Half Moon Bay and spent her final days together. On my Mom’s final day of conciousnes, she woke up weak and started to lose control of her speech. Later in the day, in a burst of energy, she urged us to take her to the place where she would soon be buried–a rustic forest grove overlooking fields and ocean, just three minutes from her house. We quickly drove her there and took her in a wheelchair to the natural burial site. My mom expressed amazement at the beauty of the ocean view and the trees she would soon be buried under, and we hugged as a family. She asked my dad to kneel beside her in the wheelchair and cupped his face in her hands. She looked at hiim and talked about how magical their life was together. On this small patch of eather with the Pacific Ocean behind thej, the exchanged silent looks tha expressed emotion and gratitude for each other that are impossible to fully convey in words. The awe and connection they shred as the exchanged their final embrace will forever be my definition of the meaning of life.

Every institution that impacts your health makes more money when you are sick and less when you are healthy makes more money when you are sick and less when you are healthy–from hospitals to pharma to medical schools, and even insurance companies.

We should consider listening to the medical system if we have an acute issue like a life-threatening infection or broken bone. But when it comes to the chronic conditions that plague our lives, we should question almost every institution regarding nutrition or chronic disease advice. All you need to do is follow the money and incentives.

Saying “You have the best medical team” after a cancer diagnosis is like saying you have the best mechanic after totaling your car.

Many doctors are doing the wrong things, pushing pills and interventions when an ultra-aggressive stance on diet and behavior would do far more for the patient in front of them.

You need to reduce the amount of carbs that are overwhelming your liver and turning into fat. This means cutting out the soda, sugar-sweetened beverages, juices, added sugar of any kind, candy, products with refined grains (breads, pasts, crackers, tortillas, chips, cookies, pastries, cakes, cereals)

If you pair dietary strategies with comprehensive Good Energy habits (such as sleep, stress management, toxin avoidance, exercise, etc.) your whole metabolic system will churn through excess energy substrates from food and maintain mitochondrial health.

I will not see new patients unless they agree to temporarily keep a food journal. I can’t counsel them if I don’t know what 2 to 3 pounds of molecular information are going into their bodies every day. (Imagine a patient taking 2 to 3 pounds of medications every day but not telling the doctor what they’re taking.

More movement means we have an increased quantity and quality of high resiliency energy-producing machines in our cells to work through all our energy substrates, reducing the likelihood that the foods we consume will end up shunted to toxic intracellular fat that leads to insulin resistance.

We turn over our skin cells entirely every 6 weeks or so, and our gut lining turns over almost every week. Everything is rebuilt from food.

If your body is pushing you to acquire specific foods (cravings), that is a signal that your human cells or your microbiome’s cells biological needs are not being met, and they are employing their tools–like hunger hormone secretion–to get you to aggressively seek food with the chance that you’ll eat something that scratches their fundamental itch.

Research has shown that intense cravings often happen after a blood sugar spike followed by a crash (reactive hypoglycemia). When you load your body with sugar, like after eating refined carbohydrate foods or foods with added sugar, the body releases a surge of insulin to help take all this glucose out of the bloodstream. What can result from the surge is a stark crash in blood sugar, with levels often dipping below the pre-meal baseline. This time of post-spike low blood sugar–or hypoglycemia– has been shown to be the time when people often crave a high-carbohydrate snack, the average post-meal glucose dip relative to baseline can even predict an increase in hunger at 2 to 3 hours post-meal.

The choice of blood sugar–spiking (and crashing) foods puts the body into a confused panic, seeking food to stabilize itself.

Many people who believe they or their kids suffer from “hypoglycemia” actually find that the real problem is that they are spiking their blood sugar too high, which is then followed by a reactive hypoglycemic crash.

The best advice I can give anyone in transforming their health is to find a way–any way–to stick with totally unprocessed, organic food for just a month or two. By the end of this time, I can guarantee that your preferences and craving will have changed.

Often, ketogenic diets are theorized to be problematic partly because they lack fiber.

All the energy stored in the cellular bonds of the plants I’m eating was originally a packet of photon energy that started in the sun, traveled through space, and then was absorbed by a plant’s chloroplast, transformed into glucose, and taken up by an animal that I might eat.

A healthy society without well-functioning humans. We can’t have well-functioning humans without well-functioning cells. And we can’t have well-functioning cells with mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and cellular and hormone disruption from toxic chemicals in our food.

Many of us are addicted to processed food but have had trouble mustering the strength to quit because we don’t really know what awaits us on the other side.

So many food studies are funded by food companies. 82% of independently funded studies show harm from sugar-sweetened beverages, but 93% of industry-sponsored studies reflect no harm. Policymakers use this highly compromised research.

You will either pay for healthy food up front or you will pay for preventable medical issues and lost productivity in the future.

It is cheaper for a lower-income family to purchase a Coke than a bottle of water at many supermarkets (because the Coke has so many subsidized ingredients).

Cutting the unholy trinity of these 3 ingredients from your diet will completely change your health: refined added sugar, refined industrial vegetable and seed oils, refined grains.

These seed oils are extremely high in omega-6 fats, which skews our omega-6 to omega-3 ratio and increase inflammation in the body. Creating seed oils often involves extraction with chemical solvents like hexane, heating to over 150°F, bleaching, and de-waxing.

A “whole grain” is a type of grain that has all of its main parts: bran, germ, and endosperm. The bran is the outermost layer of the kernel and is generally rich in fiber, B vitamins, and mineral. The germ is the small, nutrient-dense part of the kernel that contains fat and micronutrients. Inside the bran is the endosperm, which is the majority of the kernel and contains the most starch. If you imagine a kernel as egg, the bran is the shell. the germ is the yolk, and the endosperm is the egg white. If you remove the brand and germ, it can give the product a chewier, fluffier texture. Since most of the vitamins are removed when the bran is removed, manufacturers will often “enrich” a refined grain product with synthetic versions of vitamins and minerals.

Without natural fiber, endosperm-predominant preprocessed carbohydrates are more rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream from the gut, which leads to increased blood glucose levels soon after eating. Fiber slows digestion and contributes to more stable blood sugar, while also supporting the health of the microbiome.

Chronic over-nutrition is largely reflected in the huge swings in glucose we can experience after eating foods with added sugars and processed grains. High glucose levels in the bloodstream leads to sugar sticking to things (Glycation)

The exact same meal will likely cause a lower glucose spike if it’s eaten in the morning instead of late at night. Our bodies are naturally more insulin resistant at night.

If the battery if an electric car can run for 400 miles and require 8 hours to fully charge, you operate the machine within these parameters. If you instead charge the car for 6 hours and expect it to travel 700 miles, you’ll sorely be disappointed at its output.

Don’t confuse setting boundaries to what information you allow in your ears and eyes with putting your head in the sand; it’s understanding and protecting your biology so you don’t implode. This allows you to show up with maximal energy to positively impact the world.

The hierarchy of competence is a learning model popularized in the 1960s and is as follows:

@joekotlan on X