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Dr. Martin Picard

lines on the record: 185
first: 2026-07-02
most recent: 2026-07-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“What we know is there's some initial evidence that GDF15 increases throughout the day, right? So the purpose of sleep then might be to reduce energy resistance, like what we were talking about earlier. It's not about having finding this one optimal level of resistance and sticking there. It's about this movement of increasing resistance and then decreasing resistance and increasing resistance, decreasing resistance. It's kind of this movement of life.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. Yeah, because if you're getting the signal, like when you're sick, right? If GDF 15 is made somewhere in your body, it goes to your brain. You're getting the signal. You're running out of energy.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This point, we don't know if it makes a difference if it's from mental stress, if it's from physical stress, if it's from an organ struggling, that's sick and trying to heal itself. High energy stress, high energy resistance in the body based on this marker is called a prognostic indicator. It's an indicator that something bad might happen. And people with high GDF-15 also, they don't like to take the stairs. They don't like to walk for pleasure. They don't like to go out to the gym. They don't like to go out at friends.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would the best studies show on this is when you have a high level of this energetic stress marker, this protein, you're more likely, if you follow people, studies were done where you take the blood, you measure this protein. Some people have very high levels, some people have very low levels, and then you wait 14 years. This is actually a study from the UK called the UK Biobank. So if you measure the protein energetic stress cytokine and you ask, what happens to people with high GDF-15 versus people with low GDF-15? Turns out people with high GDF 15 are more likely to develop mental illness. Bipolar disease, depression, schizophrenia. People with hydrogen at 15 are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, hypertension. People with hygiene defeatine are more likely to be dead.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When stressed hormones are up, right, and you're increasing blood glucose, increasing blood lipids, if the rest of the body doesn't need it, which is what kind of happens during a stress response like this, that fat gets lodged where it shouldn't, called ectopic fat. And that's what belly fat is.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Doesn't feel worth it. We know this specifically from animal studies. If you inject animals with GFN, they hunch in a ball and they don't do anything. They go into this sickness behavior. That's number one. Number two, the brain says something's running out of energy. First, let's conserve energy. Number one. But two, let's mobilize energy, right? Let's put glucose into the blood. Let's put fat into the blood because there might be cells out there that are running out of energy and we need to rescue them.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something and the body is not right. There's something running out of energy and then the brain makes two decisions, very similar to when you're sick. That protein GDF15 is called acidokine. It's the same thing that immune cells produce when they're activated during an infection.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's right in here. Yeah. So in the brainstem, the brainstem is where kind of the basic survival systems of the body are. And there's a region in the brainstorm called the area postrema. Doesn't matter. It's known as the vomiting and nausea center for the brain.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that protein is called GDF15. Growth differentiation factor of 15. The name doesn't matter. But that energetic stress marker, you're asking the right question, what does it do? And what does it matter? And it turns out this protein goes to the brain. And that protein can be made by any organ in the body except one. What is it doing? It's very useful to know where's a receptor, right? Because you need to have for signaling and biology to happen, you need a signal and you need a receptor, a sensor, right? Where's a receptor for this protein? In one organ in the body.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most people start to feel the anxiety, and then we monitor heart rate at the same time and blood pressure, and then we draw blood. And so you can see everyone's physiology wasting energy, right? The energy at a cost of stress. You see this on the monitor on the other side in the control room. And then we put a camera in front of them that mocks video records them. And then we have a white coat wearing old white men who feet in front of them, looks at them straight in the eyes, they start talking. And then they have to look into the camera and they do their defense and they know someone's looking at them. And what we saw was that this energy stress marker goes up just with mental stress. You're not doing exercise. You're not doing anything strenuous. You're just going through this phase of what's going to happen to me, to my ego, to my sense of self.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is not doing well. It's not efficient, right? That's almost a marker of inefficiency. We did this study where you bring people in, we put an intravenous line so we can measure the blood markers. And then we tell them, okay, just relax, everything's fine. You're doing great. And then they sit down, they relax for 30 minutes. Cortisol goes down. The heart rate goes down. Blood pressure goes down. And then our lovely study coordinator, Catherine, walked into the room and then looked at the participants and said, now you're going to be judged. You're going to have to deliver a speech. And here's a situation. You were in a shopping mall. You were, you know, you grabbed this car if you put it on just to try, but then the security guard caught you and then they were accusing you of shoplifting. So now you're in court. You need to defend yourself in front of the judge. You lose this job. And then we tell them you have two minutes to prepare your three minute defense in front of the judge.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's so powerful. My hunch is that most of what we call depression is a loss of coherence. And when we're isolated, we did a study recently to look at the energetics of mental stress when you feel like you're being pulled aside and judged. What does that do energetically to the body? And there's this protein marker in the blood that reflects energy friction, energy resistance, right? If the mitochondria can't flow energy smoothly, this protein gets made and then it's in kind of a blood biomarker. It's elevated in cancer where we think there's increased energy resistance. It's elevated in Alzheimer's, where we think there's increased energy resistance in the brain. It's elevated in diabetes where there's increased energy resistance with the insulin resistance. It's elevated in all sorts of pathologies, hypertension and the heart disease. And it's a marker that the organism energetically”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably fatigue is the first thing that kind of starts to pop up. You feel drained, you don't feel you have enough energy. Probably feels like burnout and you start to lose enthusiasm for the future, you become more pessimistic. So there's kind of a constellation of things we call depression or burnout or we put labels on these things, but really every person starts to experience life as less enjoyable, less purposeful, less meaningful regardless of the diagnostic title we put on it.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. People have done studies in animals, and we've done some of those studies where you can basically change the state of mind of a mouse by like stressing it out chronically. And then you make it feel defeated and like a really stressful life. And you ask, does this change the mitochondria in the brain? Can the experience of stress change the mitochondria in the brain 100%? That happens. Now you can say, okay, now let's change a mitochondria in the brain. You can like open up the brain, inject a little something that either boosts the mitochondria or inhibit, inactivate the mitochondria, increase, or decrease resistance. And then you ask, does this change how the animal appears to feel, how the animals behave in terms of anxiety or social interactions with other animals, sociality or dominance? 100%. So the best science shows it goes both ways. So how you feel can change the mitochondria, the mitochondria can change probably how you feel.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it could mean that having mitochondria on your brain that can flow energy more easily just changes how you see life.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The resistance was lower. This could mean that if you feel more life purpose, the mitochondria in your brain can flow energy more easily.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After they die In the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. So that little part of the brain that's involved and active reasoning and executive function. And the mitochondria and the people who felt more purpose had a greater energy transformation capacity.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is as beautiful study and was run in Chicago. Every year people would come to the hospital and then fill out questionnaires and meet with a therapist and neuropsychologist and they would ask them questions and test their memory and their cognition. And then every year they would report how much purpose they felt like they had, how much sense of connection with other human beings or with something greater than themselves, how optimistic they were about the future, right? And some people are like more optimistic, happy and purposeful than others, but there's always kind of fluctuations, right? Like we go through fluctuations. We go through life no matter how lucky you are, life always ends up being challenging in some ways. So we asked how people felt, how much purpose people experienced before they died. Is that related to the mitochondria in their brain? And the only way you can ask this question is to look at the brain after the person died.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so. And people are energetic processes. So my six year old son is this beautiful movement of energy. My goal is to nurture it, right? And not just with food physically, but to nurture his curiosity and his transformation”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like me putting constraint. No, you can't do this. No, you can't do that, then it damages the system. It traumatizes the system. No, exactly. So the art really of parenting, and I think the art of leadership is providing the right structure, right? So that the energy has some constraints. There's a challenge. There needs to be a challenge for the team to meet, right? Challenge is a barrier. It's like a little resistor. Of course, there are challenges. It's difficult to get there. And if it's not difficult, then everywhere everyone's bored. If it's like, yeah, we're going to do the same thing as we did last year. And then next year we do the same thing. That's not the same kind of energy as we need to double this year. And then we need to double the year after. This kind of goal or challenge is a form of constraint, something you have to work through. I think that's why the human mind is naturally drawn to challenges. Like, what's the next challenge? Why go down deep in the ocean to discover new creatures? Why go in the Amazon trying to discover new species of little bugs? Why go into space? Like this is all curiosity driven. It's like the mind wanting to have something to hit against.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's what amazing people do. They're able to see something, hold that vision so strongly, and then mobilize others. And then new things become possible. I think that's what great leaders do. And I now approach other human beings. And my son, like my six-year-old son, Noah, I see him as, yes, a little boy. And yes, a lot of energy. And yes, you know, some challenges that come with this. But he's this beautiful little energy pattern. Right. He's this energy flowing through this little child's body. But my role as a parent is to provide just around the right amount of resistance, right? The right amount of constraints. If I don't provide any constraint as a do whatever you want, have whatever you want. Anytime, then that's not good for development. Kids need to feel, you know, some boundaries. And so those are like resistance, right? Little constraints. But if every minute...”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's clear to make something like this happen is you need to feel that there's something compelling. Like you need to feel something is important. And again, that's not a rational thing. Like you need to feel it in yourself. And then you need to kind of bring that energy into focus and bring attention to it, right? And then that's where ideas start to come. You build a structure around it to sustain that flow.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's an energetic quality. And in physics, if you have something that has a really strong energy, then it can entrain other things. If the source resonator is strong enough, people will come in resonance. And then it looks spooky. It looks like, whoa, this thing, you know, synchronicity or this thing happened. And somehow, you know, he was able to mobilize this donor and fundraising is easier than it should be. And so all of these things snowball because you hold that vibe. You hold that energy. It amplifies.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe this gets to like vibes. You have that vibe. You have like the founder's vibe, right? Or like the entrepreneur's vibe. I think this is real. And this is the energy that's flowing through mitochondria somehow becoming coherent and aligned. And it feels meaningful. It feels purposeful. And then you live. Like that. And then other people around you that resonate with it, right? Like people are drawn to a pure signal. Like if you have that specific signal, it's like a music, like a symphony. When it sounds, when it's on tune, then people that want to come on board, like they feel this, and then it gets amplified.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the reason this is because of a physical principle about energy, which is called resonance, right? If you walk through life with such clarity of mind, right, like this is what the truth is. This is where we're going, right? And you live and you breathe that. You become like a resonator. You hold this energy pattern and it comes out not just in your actions and your emails. It comes out in the way you speak. And it comes out in the things you turn attention to, right? It turns out in your tone of voice, in the care that you look.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. But when you somehow find yourself in a place where you feel like those things that are in your life are meaningful, right? And that the path you're on is purposeful. I think what this does is it brings all of your energy that might be diffused like a light bulb and boom, it brings it like a laser. And then you can go that distance, right? You can go through that half day without eating. You can go through that month, right? Where it's like you have all of these meetings. And it doesn't feel as difficult as it would if you were going kind of all over the place. Focus, I think, brings our energy into a coherent state. And then it feels like coherence, right? It feels like I know what I'm doing this. Then it becomes very easy to say no to this and to say yes to just the right thing because there's this coherence, not just energetic coherence.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is what purpose does. Purpose focuses energy. And I think the reason purpose is so powerful, right? And why you need to have that to feel it? I want to say like you have purpose. It kind of becomes this must find my purpose. You know, must like I'm on a spiritual journey to find you out.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With one another And then there's a coherence to it, right? And it's the coherence that gives a laser its power. It's not the total amount of energy, the same amount of energy if you put in an incandescent light bulb. Now it's the same energy, but it's diffuse, right? Every photon is doing its own thing. They're all going in all over the place. And then if you want to look at how far can these photons go, right? How far can my mind go, caring about things? The diffuse energy doesn't go very far, but the laser can go super far. So my mind had become like a diffuse incandescent light bulb.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I remember that. So I was still me, right? I was still Martin, but I felt completely different. The quality of my mind, the quality of my intention was completely different. I was just trying to survive. I didn't care about anything else. So that episode went on for like two days or so. Day number three, I was able to take my computer and start to feel again the purpose. But it was so interesting that just what it felt like when I was able to write about it and really feel into it, it felt like I was diffuse energy. Like the light, for example, right, there's a form of energy. You can have a laser. And the difference between a laser and an incandescent light bulb, like an old style filament light bulb, is not the amount of energy, is the way the energy is patterned. And in a laser, you have every photon that are kind of in phase.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I remember thinking it wouldn't be a whole lot of energy if I just pulled my laptop, like prepped myself on the bed and then start to write what I'm experiencing in the moment, right? But I couldn't muster the strength. It's like, what the fuck? Why would I care? I couldn't care, right? And this is the stuff I care about on a daily basis. But in that state of my energy being disrupted, I couldn't care about this. And then I started to think about work and about, you know, the lab and about, you know, family things. I was like, whoa, my whole life feels so different.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was out and I was so depressed, and I was like, I should write about this. I'm writing a book on energy and energy constraints and like the vision partitioning of energy and the body. I was like, I should write about this. This is so interesting. My immune system is in full-blown defense mode. And it's not like I was like, I could feel my heart. I'm wearing this aura. My heart rate was like 110 at rest instead of being like 60, you know, normally. So there's all of this energy flowing through. It's like, wow, like my metabolic rate objectively is higher. We know this is true from good studies on that when you're fighting something. You burn more energy. Yet I'm feeling completely drained. So it's not like the amount of energy that's flowing through that I should feel more energetic. My immune system and that moment was draining all my energy. Sucking away my energy from my mind, from my brain perhaps.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And food is one thing that influences where energy goes in the body, how it flows. And just maybe to close the loop on that example, like when you're sick and you're fighting an infection. I had a beautiful opportunity to understand, not just understand, to experience this one day. It was New Year's Eve 31st in the evening, and I started to feel like little scratchy throats. I was like, oh, I think I'm getting sick. So I go to the evening dinner. I didn't cough or anything. I don't think I was contagious, but I just could feel, right? Like something was coming up. I felt terrible. I started to have like full-blown flu symptoms, went home early at like 9 p.m. And then I went to bed. It was horrible night. I felt I was in pain. And then I had like massive fever. I took a bath, a warm bath to help my fever kind of go up so that I could fight the high fever, stimulates your immune cells and weakens the virus. So it's usually a good thing. And next day.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I did until recently until I started to feel into this. I would have this big bowl of cereals. That's how I grew up as well. And then I would feel like this load, like this, you know, low energy. And I think now I understand why, because I was overloading my system with way too much kind of rapidly available sugary energy that I didn't need. And then the body needs to find a way to handle this. Either you get fat, which I can't do. So then it goes kind of into my brain and then makes me feel lousy.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More friction in your whole body, there's more inflammation, which is a signal of that energy friction or resistance. And then you don't feel as good, right? You don't feel you have as much energy. So many people who go from eating three meals a day plus or minus snacks to intermittent fasting, they just say, I'm going to eat whatever I want, however much I want, but just in those four hours or six hours, most of those people have a lot more energy. They experience, right? That they have more energy. It's not because there's more energy in their body. If anything, they're putting fewer calories in the body, but the way energy flows now, it flows more efficiently. And we don't perceive the amount of energy we perceive the flow energy or the transformation of energy.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's harder to overeat if you restrict your eating window, right? And that works really well for some people. Like eating, for example, a very severe kind of window would be 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. So you eat for four hours and you kind of put this around dinner time so you can be social with your partner or something like that. That tends to work well for a lot of people who have been in the habit of overeating. And my dad still thinks to this day he's 69 now that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's what he learned when he was a kid. And he wants to believe that this is true. I don't think it's true for most people. And especially if you're in your 60s, 70s, right? Metabolism changes. And if you're always eating, the body never goes into this state of I must be efficient, right? And then if you go into that state of I must be efficient, you accumulate poorly functioning mitochondria and then there's more.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of us eat not because we're hungry. I think a lot of us have learned to eat, to serve some other need. And eating is quite rewarding. It taps into the same systems as gambling and kind of connecting with other human beings. So we know some people eat emotionally, right? When they're stressed out, they eat more. So I think hunger is something to be skeptical of because there are many pathways that I think kind of converge on hunger. Like if you feel sad, you feel like bored. Hunger will kind of get you out of boredom. because of the salt because of this, especially if you had salty, sugary things around. It's a rewarding thing that will get you out of uncomfortable, other uncomfortable sensations. I think most of us overeat. That's a good general assumption to make. You're probably overeating.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The record, the world record for not eating is over 300 days. Irish man. And he lost, I forget the exact numbers, 250 pounds, 300 pounds.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most people have enough energy on board, right? In the form of fat, some glycogen in your muscles and your liver to live at least a month.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Develop that awareness of what your body needs. So when I think about how I eat, I don't think about my weight or my body. I think about how am I feeling? And do I need more food? Am I like depleted? Or am I tired and exhausted because there's too much food on board and my organism is like struggling to keep up with this excess friction or excess energy pressure on my brain, my mitochondria. So I think about it from the perspective of my mitochondria, what do my mitochondria need? And in general, it's much harder to deplete the mitochondria, like not eating too much. So if you're thinking about, okay, there's this food there. Do I snack? Do I not snack? Generally eating too much, their clear consequences to this, like it increases the resistance or the friction in your mitochondria. Not eating enough is typically innocuous. Most people.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the visceral fat is linked to increase inflammation and it's linked to a bunch of diseases. But this is just a symptom, like the increased fat. And I think the reason why obesity. In general, we say obesity is bad. It's because obesity reflects a deeper state, a more important state, which is this increased energy resistance. Like there's too much energy in the system and the system can't flow it, like the mitochondria can't keep up. So to protect themselves, they store that and store it away and then you become obese.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Western diet, western life. Behavior, these people move all the time and they don't eat too much. Most of them don't need to kind of rely on their fat capacitor. They don't have excess energy to just store away. And for some people, there's congenital leanness, right? Like you're born lean and you can't put on fat. If you eat too much, the high sugar or high fat just accumulates in the blood and then it gets lodged in ectopic ways. So it gets lodged in the muscle or in the liver or in the brain. And then that causes damage because of this excess energy pressure and then the system overheats. Skinny fat”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With ketones, or overwhelm the body if you eat fat. Like it's very easy to feel like I'm full. I've had, you know, a good enough meal. If you bring sugar into the picture and you mix sugar and fat, now things like taste so good and there's like an extra reward and a lot of people eat for different reasons, not just because they're hungry. That's because it's so rewarding to eat something fatty and sugary. Especially the sugar part, then you lose regulation. And that's why I think the GLP1 drugs are so powerful, because they address the problem where it starts. How much food are you putting into the system?”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It. It's not because you eat more calories. It's because those electrons that are stuck on ketones instead of being stuck on glucose can flow more easily. And those ketones are made by mitochondria in your liver. This is a really beautiful story of the sociality of mitochondria in the organism. The liver mitochondria is where ketones are made. If you eat fat, right? Avocados and oil and meat and butter and those fat molecules and go in the liver and then the mitochondria and the liver take those fat, transform them into ketones and then put the ketones into the blood. The kidneys also do a little bit of this. And then the ketones go to the brain and then they feed the mitochondria in the brain. So you have mitochondria in the liver talking and feeding mitochondria in the brain. And the path for a ketone to go from blood to mitochondria is much shorter in terms of number of enzymes, number of resistors, if you want to think about it energetically than for glue.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know the literature on this, but it's clear that people who, if we look at what makes you more likely to have Alzheimer's, what makes you less likely to have Alzheimer's, all the things that make you more likely to have Alzheimer's contribute to increasing this energy resistance, right? Too much sugar in the blood, diabetes, physical inactivity, right? If you don't move, energy doesn't flow through your mitochondria. So it just stacks up, accumulates. And the things that protects the brain, protects you against Alzheimer's and dementia, or things that let energy flow, physical activity, not eating too much, especially not eating too much sugar. And then ketones, there's new data now showing that ketones can enter the brain and be metabolized more easily and can even kind of improve cognition. And the ketogenetic diet, which I know you've tried, many people report more energy on the ketogenic diet.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Much energy and circulation, too much sugar, too much fat. What can we do with this? And that's where fat stores at deposity comes in. So obesity is a protection mechanism against excess energy resistance.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So then you take the receptors that are sitting on top of the surface of the cell, you pull those out. So then the cell no longer is sensitive to insulin. So then the body is like, whoa, like glucose is way high, what a normal healthy body releases insulin, floods the blood, insulin goes to the surface of your muscles, and then says, take in the glucose because there's too much glucose in the blood, we're going to damage the brain. We're going to damage the eyes. We're going to damage the nerves. So muscle, please take in the glucose. But when the muscle is overwhelmed and the mitochondria is starting to be at capacity in terms of how much energy they can resist and flow, then they shut down the valves. So the muscle cells become insulin resistant and then glucose intolerant. And that protects the mitochondria in the muscle cells. But then gluca blood glucose starts to increase. So the next step in this cascade is, well, if there's too much”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't anymore. Like glucose, too much for me, too much resistance, too much damage that I'm exposed to. So if you're a muscle cell and you want to protect yourself against this excess energy pressure from the glucose, from the electrons, you can become insensitive or resistant to insulin.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you're pushing too much glucose on the system. If you load up the system all the time with glucose, with sugar, and the blood and glycemia is high, you have diabetes perhaps. This is all the time like pressure pushing energy onto the system that's really delicate. And it's not like jacking the voltage on your lamp that eventually is going to catch fire. We are a slow burning fire, right? Like the inside of our cells, you have the electrons flowing. And when there are sparks flying, it damages the mitochondria. It damages this, damages that. And that increases, that's what aging is. Aging, the most basic mechanism of aging, including brain aging, that leads to Alzheimer's, is the accumulation of a little damage, a little mutations, a little defects, a little imperfections. And as the imperfections accumulate, the system becomes less efficient. Insulin resistance basically and diabetes refers to the fact that muscles, but also the brain has the capacity to say,”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, a loss of efficiency, but an increased resistance or a decrease in conductance for energy, for glucose, for example, to get inside the brain, be processed, and be used.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so my hunch is that Alzheimer's and dementia more generally is a disorder of energy. And specifically, it's a disorder of increased energy resistance. So there's type three diabetes comes from the fact that when the brain gets sick, right? And symptoms of dementia start to appear, like loss of memory and mood and depression and that constellation of symptoms when you look in the brain, it's burning less energy. But it's also harder for glucose to get inside the brain.”
2026-07-02 · The Diary of a CEO · Why You’re Tired: How Stress Drains Your Cells - Dr. Martin Picard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT