Welcome back to the Diet Doctor podcast
with Dr. Bret Scher. Today I'm joined by Dr. Ken Berry. Dr. Berry is a primary care physician
in Tennessee who has had his own journey
into the low-carb world and now that he's here
he's hard to ignore; he's a large personality
with a great message and he is not shy about shouting this message
about the benefits of low-carb diets because he's experienced it with himself
and with his patients. He has a website kendberrymd.com and a very popular YouTube channel
where he produces a ton of videos to just give as much information
to as many people because he believes so dearly and so
strongly in the benefits of low-carb lifestyle and he approaches this
from a very unique perspective. He says if we're going to change the way
we've been eating from an ancestral standpoint we need to have extremely strong data
to support that and as he points out, that type of approach,
that type of data or perspective is lacking in almost every recommendation
we currently have as a mainstream nutritional guidelines or really flies in the face of common
practice in medicine and nutrition and he is not shy about pointing that out. So as any discussion with Dr. Berry this is
very entertaining and energetic, with a great perspective from him
so I really hope you enjoy this. Please visit us at DietDoctor.com
to see the whole transcripts and of course to see all our recipes
and guides and all the other wonderful information
at DietDoctor.com. Enjoy this interview with Dr. Ken Berry. Dr. Ken Berry, thank you so much for joining
me on the Diet Doctor podcast. Hi, Bret, my pleasure.
Good to be with you. It's truly a pleasure to have you here. I mean you're so prolific in your information
that you provide on your YouTube channel and your Facebook and I want to get into a little bit
about your journey because you've been out and practiced
as a primary care doctor for about 20 years now and I know the way you started
is not the way you are practicing now. And I'm sure it's been a crazy eye-opening
journey for you. So tell us a little bit about that background,
about the journey, and then we'll get into some of the specifics
of what you're doing now. Sure, so I graduated in 2000 from a state
University medical school in Tennessee and was trained allopathically and practiced
traditional allopathic medicine. If you came to me and you were morbidly
obese and diabetic and in high cholesterol I would immediately start you
on two medications... three actually: two for diabetes,
one being a statin for your cholesterol and I would tell you
to join Weight Watchers. And I would tell you that you need
to lose some weight because it's not healthy
being this overweight. And it's very simple, it's simple science,
you just eat less and move more. That's all you have to do. It's calories in calories out. And I fully believed that. I fully believed that the laws
of thermodynamics applied to human nutrition and trying to lose fat, or adipose tissue,
I thought that that applied. And so therefore - simple science,
you just had to get up off the couch, put down the Cheeto's and the bacon
and you would start to lose weight and that's as simple as it got. And at that time
when I first started practice I was a relatively slender, healthy,
young physician and I had my own health and I just noticed through the years that
people kept getting better and sicker and their A1c's kept going up and their
inflammatory markers kept going up. And you know this, as a doctor you always secretly suspect
your patients are noncompliant. Right, noncompliant,
they are just not listening to me. That's the great protector
of a doctor's pride and self-esteem is these people aren't listening to me. And so about 35... 32 to 35 I started to gain
weight and became very inflamed and at one point at my worst
most unhealthiest I was 297 pounds, A1c was 6.2,
so well into pre-diabetic, working on becoming a type 2 diabetic,
chronic joint pain, chronic reflux, severe reflux, dandruff,
allergies, itchy skin, everything was inflamed
and I felt miserable. But you knew you were compliant
with your message, right? Exactly, and that's the thing and so the next step for me was
I got to start practicing what I preach because if you know me you know
that's an integral part of me is I lead by example and I walk the walk. That's what I do.
I either walk the walk or go home. And so I thought, well, I'm obviously in crap
and sit on the couch too much and so I climbed up in the attic,
got all my nutrition notes down, which you know, the listeners might see
as this huge tomes... it literally was a paperback book
about 3/8 of an inch thick and a maybe a half semester's notes,
probably a quarter semester... Because it was only one day a week
we had nutrition. Which is more than most people got
by the way I would say. That sounds like a lot. So let me explain that a little more
because I don't touch on this often. What we were really taught
in our nutrition class was how to take over the nutrition
for a very sick patient. So if you'd been in a car wreck and you
were unconscious and you were in the ICU they taught us how to calculate
your total calorie need, your total protein and how to how to feed you properly
until you recover. Then you could take back over yourself. Or if you were in the burn unit, you know,
your calories and your fluid... you have to double and triple that
for somebody with a severe burn. So really the bulk of my nutrition education was how to take over the nutrition
of somebody who couldn't feed themselves. So maybe out of that half semester,
maybe 10% of that, probably less, was the care and feeding
of just a normal human out on the street. And I can sum it up in three statements
that we were taught. Number one - eat lots of whole grains,
number two - eat no saturated fat and number three - jog. Like that is the totality
of my medical school nutrition education on how to just give a normal guy with a wife and a job and a family and a dog
and a recliner, this is what I should tell him to do. And that is the totality
of what I was taught. And so I'm like okay I got that...
three basic premises there. I'm going to implement those immediately
and so I got rid of all saturated fat, I had lots of whole grains and even spent the extra money
for the stoneground, blah-blah-blah and then I started to jog every day
or every other day at least. And I did this religiously for a month or two
and gained another 5 or 10 pounds. And my numbers got even worse. And it was at that point,
that was my epiphany... "Oh, dude, you don't know what the hell
you're talking about." That was me looking in the mirror, going,
"You have no idea what you're talking about." These people have not been noncompliant. You've just been giving ignorant advice to all your patients
who you thought you were helping. So to have that awakening you needed
that personal experience. So you think that's why so many other
physicians haven't had that awakening because they're missing
that personal experience? Well I think they just have
a thought about it, because you know, as a physician
it's very easy to get into a rut and just do what you do and you know, the drug rep comes around and they reassure you
that you are practicing appropriately because you are writing
enough numbers of their drug. And then you go
to drug rep's sponsor dinners and there's a preeminent professor there
who is going to lecture and everything you're doing in your job
is what he said and so therefore you're doing
a pretty good job, the state medical board
hasn't come calling so obviously you're not too far
outside the bounds of normal practice. And I think doctors get
false assurance from that. And then they fall back
on that self-esteem protector of, well my patients are just noncompliant. And that gives you the conscious
wherewithal to say, yeah, I'm doing a good job,
they are just not listening. Because I know I'm doing what that
professor with a long white coat... I am doing what he said. The drug rep is very attractive and you know, they seem
to know they're talking about. So they're not upset with me,
so I must be doing a good job. So you realize the message was wrong,
you didn't know you're talking about, but then what's the next step? Because imagine that's a state of confusion,
of "What do I do now?" Yeah, absolutely. So what did you do next? So I started reading
outside of my little medical box. I started reading books by Lauren Cordain,
<i>The Paleo Diet</i>, I read the Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson,
I read the Atkin's <i>Diet Revolution</i> and I just kept looking
and read lots of books, but those were the three books that
really pointed me in this direction. But I read multiple other books
about vegan vegetarian, all kinds of other things
and they were just more the same. Because when you break down
almost every other diet on the planet ultimately it's a calorie restriction diet that's dressed up
with different window-dressing literally. You know, if you're talking about
Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, biggest loser, they're all calorie restriction, they all basically teach you
to semi-starve yourself for the rest your life. And yeah if I took people
and locked them in my barn and just fed them lettuce and water,
they would lose weight, they would approach
their ideal body weight and even surpass it and lose even more. But they would be miserable,
they would hate me... It would not be a fun life. So the very fact that the biggest diets that get the most advertisement
and the most talk up in the media are long term semi-starvation diets. That's what you're telling people -
starve yourself for the rest your life and you will lose weight
and you will keep it off and then pretend that's sustainable,
which is not, obviously. And so I had to look for a diet
that's sustainable, that was enjoyable,
that people would actually do and that would move all their markers
of disease and inflammation in the correct direction. And so I thought, well this high-fat
or high-protein, moderate fat and low, low carb, that was everybody's
message on that side of the fence was you got to cut out all the grains
and sugars and carbs and stuff. And I thought okay that's exactly backwards
to everything I thought I knew, but let me try that for a month because that
sounds like a diet that I could actually do. So you tried it on yourself first. And that makes sense because to try that on patients would seem
crazy for most doctors from that standpoint. Absolutely, and I would never do that. I thought, I'll try this for a month
or two and see what goes on. And I'll eat lots of ribeye and bacon and
butter and eggs and see what happens. And at the end of that month... I hate to sound snake oil-ish
but everything was better. Every single thing
without exception was better. Was there still something
in the back of your brain saying, "I'm going to kill myself
doing this"? That's exactly right. So I was reading more and more
into the lipid hypothesis and you know, the cholesterol is bad...
is that really true? And so then I was also checking
my markers every six months and I noticed that my total cholesterol
went up a little bit. So that gave me another homework
assignment to start reading about, but I felt better and my A1c was better. And I've always been a bit of a contrarian
just by my nature. And so the drug rep who sells statins will focus you on how important lowering
someone's LDL cholesterol is and they'll exclude all everything else,
they wouldn't even talk about it. But most doctors will harken back
if I remind them... You know, an elevated A1c,
being a diabetic... that's probably a bigger risk factor
for heart disease stroke and all the other complications, that's probably more important
than LDL cholesterol. Even if you think LDL cholesterol is real
and you should treat it. Still, somebody with an A1c of 12, that's probably a bigger risk factor
for morbidity and mortality than that slightly elevated LDL. And so I kind of ignored the total
cholesterol and LDL increases because I felt so much better. I could actually talk to patients without constantly having to clear my
throat and move my neck and swallow because of the chronic severe GERD, reflux,
it was really, really bad. And so when the Nexium drug rep
would come to my office I got all those samples... the patients
didn't get the Nexium, I got them all. I took two a day for years before I learned
about this way of eating. So after two or three months I was like,
"Dude, I feel so much better and I've lost I don't remember
how much weight." But I was well back down under the 297
that I was at my peak. And I thought, I'm going to try this
with my most metabolically ill patients. With the highest BMIs... They have a BMI
of 45, 50, 55. They are on the list for gastric bypass. I'm going to say,
"Why don't you try this for a month? "You got nothing to lose, you're going to get
your gastric bypass, your Roux-en-Y, "you know, your bariatric surgery
in a month or two. "Why don't you try this in the interim? "Because I think it's going to shrink
your liver size if nothing else "and the surgeon will appreciate that
when he's doing your surgery, but also it might help." And so I had a large percentage
of those guys... probably 20 or 25 I talked to
about this diet. And back then I was also looking
at the bulletproof diet, which is basically the same thing,
just a different way of talking about it. And they all came back
for the monthly checkup and they were like, "Dude, I feel better
and I have lost 10, 15, 20 pounds. Is this something I can do
for another month?" And I'm like, "I think you should do it
for another month because I'm doing this myself." And that kind of gave them
some reassurance, "Oh, this is not some crazy thing
you don't know anything about. Dr. Berry is eating this way too." And so they come back for their two
months checkup and they lost more weight. Their numbers were better,
they felt better... I had people who were on the list
for a knee transplant, a replacement to get an artificial knee. And two or three of those guys said, "I'll call the surgeon and cancel
my appointment." And I told them, if it gets worse,
I'll call you and we'll do it. But it feels so much better now,
I'm just going to keep doing this diet. And you know, as a Dr., anything that
makes everything better, you are like, "That sounds fishy". Right. But I'm like these are real guys, these are patients I've known
for five, six, seven years. These guys are salt of the earth,
real people, they got no dog in the race,
they just want to feel better and not have potentially life-threatening
and definitely life altering surgery. And they enjoy the diet
and they are not getting tired of this diet. They actually enjoy it,
they want to do it for another month. They are asking me, pretty please,
can I do this for another month? That's got to change your perspective
at work and your interaction with your patients
and your enjoyment of work and seeing his whole new field open up... So on the one hand
is sort of like invigorating but on the other hand it could be pretty
frustrating to say why wasn't I taught this, why has this been like swept under the rug
and maligned when it can be so beneficial? And it seems like you reacted a little bit
to that part of it by reading your book-- by writing your book,
<i>Lies My Doctor Told Me</i>, which by the title is a little incendiary,
is a little sort of accusatory. Yeah, meant to be. So I just think it's interesting
how you came to this process of realizing for yourself first,
then your patients and then kind of get a little angry...
is that about right? Yeah, and I'd actually been collecting
these lies since I was an intern. But you know in residency
you don't question, you don't argue, you just write stuff down,
memorize and move on. So I can remember the very first thing
that made me go, "What?" I was on my obstetrics rotation,
family practice... So we in Tennessee are actually trained. We do C-sections and, you know,
vaginal births and all that and so we were on call the night before, the next morning we were discharging
all the vaginal births and the chief resident said, don't forget
to write vitamin D drop prescriptions for all the exclusively breast-fed babies. And I'm like, "What? Why?
Why does that mean?" And he said, "Humans don't make vitamin D
in their breast milk." And I'm like, "There's no way that's true." Yet somehow we survived
to be here today. For a quarter of million years as a species
we've been here, we're not extinct, we didn't all die of rickets...
that's exactly what went through my head. I am like, "What?" And so I look at the attending physician
over in the corner who's doing something but he's nodding
like yeah, that's right. And I am like, "Okay, obviously I don't
understand something, because that makes no sense. And so later when I did have time
to research that I didn't argue, I just went along,
wrote the prescriptions, but later when I researched and I found that a doctor in the Carolinas
had already done the study and she found that when you put breast-feeding women
on 6400 IU of vitamin D3 three a day which is mimicking what we've gotten
thousands of years ago being outside all day and do what we do women make plenty of vitamin D
for their baby. And so looking back my chief resident who was a very smart guy, very intelligent,
very well-read, my attending obviously was the attending
at a teaching university for a reason, he's a smart guy. But they both had no idea...
not only they were wrong about that fact, but the underlying concept of how did we
get here if that is in fact true, to me that blew me away. Like I looked up to those guys and still do, they are very intelligent
when it comes to certain things. But even just that basic premise
they missed the magnitude of that, like no, that's totally wrong. It's a great example,
because they are not being malicious, they are not trying to hide something,
they're not trying to promote an agenda. It's just who's got time to investigate
every single recommendation. Some things you have to take at face value but it takes someone like you
to question those. Exactly and so that's one of the lies
in the book that I talk about in multiple chapters
in <i>Lies My Doctor Told Me</i> came for my journey back to good health
and back to just being vigorous and vibrant and happy and eager to live my life instead of groaning and complaining
when I get out of bed in the morning. Good point. So there's a number of examples
you have in your book and one is whole grains,
healthy whole grains. So this concept of healthy whole grains came by comparing whole grains
to refined grains. No question, it's going to be better for you. But then it's got blown into this concept
that everybody needs healthy whole-grains so tell us a little bit about that lie. So every medical concept
that I kind of roll over in my mind, initially I'm all about the common sense;
does this make good common sense? Number two - does it make ancestral sense
like the vitamin D thing. Really, how did we not become extinct
from rickets? Right? We would've all have rickets if we didn't get
our vitamin D drop because we were all breast-fed. Right. And then the third one
is any meaningful research and not just drug company funded research
but meaningful research with large enough numbers
that are blinded and controlled so you can actually glean
useful information. So I tried to take those three things: common sense, ancestry
and the available research and form an opinion about this. And so that's what I try to do
with each and every lie. And so the whole-grain thing, first of all human beings have only eaten
grains of any kind, in any meaningful percentage
for the last 10 to 12,000 years. And so we've been on this planet
as a species for at least 200,000 years. And so anything that makes you more fit
to reproduce and live, that's good. So you were to think
we would've discovered the grain thing 10s and 20,000s of years ago
if it was that big of a deal. And so I'm always suspicious
of any new finding or discovery that flies in the face of our ancestry
and just good old common sense. And immediately that flies in the face
of two of them and then when you start to look
at the actual any meaningful research about grains or whole grains,
it's ridiculous, there's nothing there. So therefore yeah,
you don't need grains at all. Our ancestors for 99.95% of our existence
on this planet maybe ate a grain
every now and then by accident. They might have eaten a grass seed as they
were picking up the meat off the ground but they didn't go out of their way
to look for grains or to try to grow grains...
that's not what they did. You know, it's interesting,
there's sort of new data, people are trying to come up
with new anthropological data saying, no we did have grains
earlier than we thought, but even if you accept that as true it's still a drop in the bucket
in terms of the long term evolution and though then you apply it
to modern-day and the people
who are talking about today are not the people we were
in evolutionary time who were active all day long,
were in the sun all day long, who never sat, who weren't eating at all-you-can-eat
buffets and junk food and processed foods so even removing all that and saying
modern-day studies of whole grains... What do you find in your patients
when they eat whole grains and how they do? Every patient without exception,
their inflammation gets better and that can be inflammation in their skin
or their gut or the joints or their brain, their mental activity. Inflammation and the consequences
of that inflammation get better when I tell my patients to remove all grains, even stoneground organic
non-GMO whole grains. They get better physically and mentally. And so then there you go there
is that confirmation of not only does it not make
any common sense or ancestral sense or there's no research to support it. And so if you come to me with some new
thing like oh everybody needs this now, if you're going to try to override
the common sense of the situation and the ancestral appropriateness of it,
you better have some damn good research. I mean some over-the-top research if you hope to cancel out
the ancestral appropriateness and the common sense of the situation
because that's why we do research. So you mean not like a weak
observational study with a hazard ratio of 1.1. Exactly, you don't even
come to me with that because if you're going to tell me that what
we've done for the last 200,000 years is dumb you better have some over-the-top control
research that proves that, or I'm not going to listen to you. How about dairy? What do you have
to say about milk and dairy? So let me as a method of full disclosure
let me tell you I grew up being a milk baby. When I was playing football in high school
I used to drink a gallon of milk a day. -A gallon?
-Yes, every day. And I thought that was really going to build
my bones and muscles and make me a better ballplayer
and so don't think I've always hated dairy. That's not who I am,
I grew up on milk. You didn't leave my grandmother's house
without having at least one glass of milk. You would get a spanking. That was mandatory,
you had to drink your milk. And so then the more
I started to look at this and like, wait a minute, we've only been
ingesting dairy products like this for about 8000 or 9000 years. I mean, you know,
of course we had it before, but once a human being was weaned from
the breast, they drank water their entire life. That's it, that was it for 99.99%
of our time on this planet. There you go, there is your ancestral
appropriateness... We didn't do that. And then also another thing I like to bring
into this is life always finds a way, we've heard that, right? And so if dairy were really that magical
of a nutrition source there would be some weasel or some
vermin or some rodent or some bird that would have adapted its behavior
to steal the milk of mammals. There would be some weasel that snuck in and suckled at the cow's tit
in the middle of the night or something. It would have some kind of anesthetics
so the cow would know... just like mosquitoes suck blood
because it's very nutritious for them. There would be some other animal
that did that, because we know of animals
that will sneak in and steal eggs, that will actually confiscate other bird egg
and put their eggs in that nest so that that bird does all the work,
very, very evolutionary smart, but there is no example of any other animal
stealing the milk of mammals. It just doesn't happen
and so that's weird. Also no mammal drinks the milk
of another species of mammals. There is no example of that in biology. And a big part of my training was
comparative anatomy and animal biology and so that didn't happen
and that doesn't make sense. If it's such a great source of nutrition some animal would've found a way
to steal that nutrition, because that's what animals do. We try to get stuff the easiest possible,
but no animal ever did that. So with all that in the back of my head
I started looking at the research. There's none there. There is no meaningful research
that trumps all those other things. And then we go back
to kind of how I live my life. If you tell me this common sense thing
is wrong you better have
some good data to back that up, that's very hard data
that can't even be argued with. And nobody has that. So I stopped drinking milk
and that's one of the biggest reasons that my chronic allergies
and my chronic dandruff... And that helped the reflux as well. All those things got better when I stopped
any liquid dairy at all. And so the only dairy I'll even entertain now
is full fat cheese, real cheese or butter or ghee, maybe some
heavy cream every now and then, but I just don't touch liquid milk because
it's made for the species that made it. And I use to tell my patients, "If you want
to gain weight as quickly as possible, then you need to drink
lots of cow's milk every day, because that's why cows
make their milk like they do, because the calf has to gain
about 1200 pounds in a year. That's what they do. And so if you want to gain weight
and when I say weight, I mean fat, drink lots of milk
because that will get it for you. And a lot of people have noticed
that their health improves and their weight loss quickly accelerates when they get the liquid milk
out of their diet. But it's okay with the solid dairy. So my thinking with that is cheese is cheese
because there's a microbe that's active and so the microbe ate all the sugar;
that's what it was after. And in the process it actually bent
the protein molecules. That's why cheese is solid, not liquid. And so you've got rid of all the sugar
which I think is the main problem with milk but then for many people the proteins
in milk are not species appropriate. They are made for cows or goats
or whatever and so when you bend those proteins you potentially make them
much less inflammatory to your system. So all you're left with is no sugar,
all the fat and then a modified protein, because the microbe bent the protein
to make cheese or to make kefir or to make yogurt and I think that's why a lot of people find
they can include those things in their diet and they are not nearly as inflammatory
or fat provoking as just drinking milk. Two really good examples
of your thought process which I think is very helpful. And it's interesting how people would react
to that thought process, because some people would say, oh that's
not based in science... show me the study. But your thought process is saying
show me the study to counteract the hundreds of thousands
of years of evidence. So how are people reacting to this? I mean both from, you know,
sort of an accusatory standpoint almost versus a science standpoint...
how are physicians and--? I get the full spectrum of reactions
as you probably do as well, but if somebody's really sick,
metabolically ill, very inflamed and they feel bad and they try this
then they feel better. And I don't have to talk to them anymore,
they are done. They are like, okay, I got it.
And they do it. And so I have a lot of kickback from this subpopulation of young
healthy, lean twentysomethings who are in the
trainer's sphere or the nutritionist's sphere and they've never been obese, they've never been overweight
or inflamed or sick, they've been blessed with good genetics and they can eat whatever
and feel great and look great. And that worked for me, I mean when I was 22 I was this tall
and weighed 185 or 190 pounds. I had a sixpack without trying,
I mean I was a very lean guy. And so if you had taken nutrition advice
from me at that time I didn't know anything
about what I was talking about, because whatever I did worked for me. That's who I get the most kickback from
is these young healthy guys saying, no, it's all about calories, stupid...
it's science. And it's like you don't know,
because first of all you're a young punk who has never had to even think
about his diet. You could live on Doritos and Twinkies. And you'd still look that way. Look great and feel great;
I used to be that same guy back in my 20s. -Come and talk to me in 20 years.
-Exactly right. I know, I used to live your life. I could be like,
"No, you need to eat more honey buns. Look at me"... right? And they would've looked at me and went,
"Boy, he looks great. Maybe I should eat honey buns." But these young guys don't know
what they're talking about and so that's where I get
the biggest negative kickback. Most doctors were like, "Wait a minute,
show me the science", and I flip that on them and I say,
"No you show me the science. "Because what I'm talking about is
evolutionarily appropriate, "ancestrally appropriate,
it makes common sense. "So for you to trump that in your medical
practice and recommend something "that is contrary to what we've done for
99% of our time on this planet, it sounds like it's you who should have
the data, not me." Yeah, great perspective especially when
you're in the context of a study that you've just posted
on social media recently that 40% of docs are overweight
and 23% are obese. Now that's where
your information is coming from, without the data to back up
what they are doing. There has to be a broader reawakening
and it's almost crazy that there hasn't been. I totally agree and that's why sometimes
I get a bit harsh on social media, because I think that fat, unhealthy
miserable doctor, he need somebody to get it in his face and say hey dude, ultimately you're not
just harming yourself, you are not just making your own family
miserable with your miserable existence. You're actually harming people
who are paying you to help them. And in my mind that
is the ultimate malpractice. Is that if you're so mentally lazy, you're
not even going to think about this, you're just going to repeat
what the drug rep said or you're going to repeat something
you heard on CNN or Fox News last night. That's it, you're going to read
the conclusions of medical studies and that's how you're going
to practice medicine? That's pretty crappy. And you know
and so I try to get in that guy's face and say, "What are you doing?" I made an YouTube video,
"Why are there fat doctors?" -Explain that to me.
-Right. So if you had a mechanic and you went
to him and his car never started-- You'd stop going to him. You wouldn't talk to him. You'd be like, "Thanks dude,
I'm going to look elsewhere." If you had a cosmetologist or, you know,
a hairdresser and their hair was ratchet, you would not go to them. And so why are you going to entrust
your health and your one life to a fat, unhealthy diabetic doctor? No. Crazy perspective.
It makes so much sense. But not something that we live with
or think about. Right, but we have to and it's not fair
and I tell patients this. It's not your fault but it is your problem... And I had patients and we have a
preeminent gastroenterologist in Nashville and he tells every patient who has
a flare up of diverticulitis to avoid seeds and nuts
and that's his number one piece of advice which you may know is completely
meaningless advice. He is probably actually increasing the risk
of having a flare up of their diverticulitis because there was a huge study done
with 43,000 participants that shows without doubt what causes
diverticulitis or flare-ups at least. It's being overweight,
is eating processed foods, is smoking, is alcohol,
it's all those things. It has nothing to do with,
oh, you ate some strawberries and a seed got trapped in your diverticuli-- Somehow that has been passed down
from generation to generation. But even preeminent board-certified
gastroenterologists tell people this message. And I've talked about that myth relentlessly
for at least seven years on social media and it's still out there. I've just talked to a lady who her
gastroenterologist just told her husband, you got to stop the seeds and nuts because
that's what's causing your diverticulitis. Even though that is based on no research. Human beings have eaten nuts and seeds
since before recorded history, but yet somehow
now that's the cause of diverticulitis. But that's the kind of doctor
I'm trying to reach. And I think we're having an effect. I think they're here in this
and it's making them uncomfortable. -Yeah.
-Which is good. That was my next question. We are talking about a lot of sort
of the negative side of things, but are you seeing the tide changing? Are you seeing that this movement
is having an effect both for focusing on the quality of research and focusing on the low-carb movement
that is now gaining so much steam? What do you see
among your colleagues? I think it's having an effect at all levels
which is actually my goal because it's having a huge effect
in the patient population because they're now awake. Like, oh, you are now telling me
that what I eat actually has a meaningful effect
on my health and how I feel? Oh, interesting... Let me look into this. Nurses and mid-level providers
are really coming on board with this and I have had numerous physician
assistants and advanced practice nurses come to me as a patient
and say I believe in what you're doing, but my supervising physician
won't allow me to talk about. And so then we discuss ninja level ways
of getting this information to the patients without them getting in trouble
with their supervising physician. I think currently what we're doing
mainly with physicians is just making them very uncomfortable. Because, you know, physicians like to know
what they're talking about. They like to know that they know. When there is no doubt about this; this is settled science,
that's the term we hear a lot. And now we're throwing up in their face,
no dude, this is not settled science at all. You are practicing actually
quite precarious medicine. You may be standing
on a foundation of sand. You may be giving
your patient bad advice. And if that makes a doctor uncomfortable,
good. Because doctors jobs are to think
and to read and to research and to read outside their field especially. You don't get to just do what the drug rep who came and brought
the new samples to you. That's not... uh-uh... You don't get paid and you don't get
the prestige of being a doctor if that's how you're going to practice
medicine, you don't deserve it. Interesting, a doctor's job
is to think and to read and I think if you asked most doctors that,
they would not agree. Exactly, their job is to follow
the standard of care and to practice EBM which they think
stands for evidence-based medicine, but which I propose
stands for Eminence-based medicine. And so whatever the guy with the longest
white coat in the room says, that's what we are all going to do...
that's asinine. I mean you are literally harming your
patients if you practice that kind of EBM which I would posit as the most common
kind of EBM practiced. It's supposed to be evidence-based, like oh, we tell you this
because it's based on all this research, but in reality especially when you start
talking about things like Statins and the new medications
for type 2 diabetes and all that kind of stuff there's no meaningful research
that backs these drugs though, right? Nobody looks at all-cause mortality
if you are taking these drugs. They just look at all, oh, look, it lowered
your A1c by 1/10 of a point. And they don't even compare it
to the other drugs on the market. They just compare it to placebo. Right. So these studies are weak, weak,
weak to start with and then you're going to base
your entire practice on that? Come on. Yeah, great perspective about
the Eminence-based medicine. There's this a study that came out in JAMA looking at the guidelines by the American
Heart Association, American college of cardiology and how many of them
are truly evidence-based. There was like 10% were actually based
on high-quality evidence. The majority of them
are consensus statement, but somehow the consensus statement
becomes evidence-based medicine. That's exactly right, yeah. And so if you get a bunch of old doctors
in a room with long white coats and let them discuss something
and come up with their opinion, somehow that now that's evidence?
That's research? I don't think so. When it comes to treating metabolic
disease, when it comes to treating diabetes in your 20 year career have you seen
anything even remotely as effective as a low-carb diet? Nothing ever, nothing ever. If you could patent a pill that does
everything the low-carb diet does you would be a trillionaire. But there is no medication,
there is nothing except... And I've started calling it
the proper human diet. Because if I'm giving you a slow poison
every day, you're going to be sick. I'm not going to kill you today or even
tomorrow, you might not die for 25, 30 years. But I'm poisoning you
a little bit each day. You're going to have inflammation,
you're going to have bad lab markers, you're not going to feel good,
you're going to be irritable, you're going to get obese,
too overweight or too skinny, you're just not going to be healthy
and vibrant and vigorous. And so then when I remove that slow
poison from your diet and you get better everybody is surprised by that. Really, is that shocking? And so I think what most low-carb diets do is they remove the slow poison of sugar,
grains and industrial seed oils. That's the three big steps of any ancestrally
appropriate diet and people get better. But it's not because you've added
something magical to their diet or to their medical regimen
or to their supplement regimen. That has nothing to do with this. What you've done is
you just stopped poisoning that mammal and then the mammal gets healthier
when you stop poisoning it. And so I think when you feed a human
being the proper human diet, they get healthier and they get happier and they get more productive
and they get more successful. It's almost like you give them a superpower when you start feeding them the diet
that their DNA knows what to do with. That makes complete sense but you mentioned earlier when you hear
that X, Y, and Z and everything it's better, it sounds almost like a snake oil salesman. So is there a population that doesn't thrive
with this type of diet? Is there somebody that you've seen in your
clinic that-- just doesn't work for some reason or that you would caution against this? What's the downside, if there is one? I haven't found it yet. There is a very minuscule subpopulation
that may not be able to eat a high-fat diet if they have some inborn errors
of fatty acid metabolism they may not be able to eat this diet. And I was doing research to do a YouTube
video about this population, but literally in the US it's about 750 people
in the entire US who cannot eat a high-fat diet because
they just can't digest that much fat. Everybody else can do it. There is no patient population who
shouldn't eat this way, at least I have yet to find them. What about, "Doc, I don't have
a gallbladder. I can't eat fat"? I've had that question hundreds of times
on the Facebook lives that we do. And then so I have that question like I don't
have a gallbladder, I can't do keto, right? And then I have about 80 to 150 people
chime in in the comments and say, no, I don't have a gallbladder
and I'm doing great. And so we have all these N = 1 experiments,
all this anecdotal evidence, but you yourself know when you've got,
you know, 1000 anecdotes that's probably something
you should pay attention to. And so I think if you don't have
a gallbladder you can eat low-carb, I think if you have thyroid problems,
you need to eat low-carb, if you have fatty liver you absolutely must
eat low-carb to reverse that. Gastric bypass, yes you can eat
keto/low-carb. You could just keep asking me the questions and so that's why I've started calling it
the proper human diet, because then it makes the question silly. Hey Doc, I don't have a gallbladder...
Can I eat the proper human diet? You're like, think about your question.
Yes, of course you can. And so now when they say,
"I have X, can I eat the proper human diet?", it becomes a silly question. Of course you should eat
the proper human diet. I'm sorry that you had the misfortune of having one of your body parts
taken out by a surgeon that you may or may not
have needed done but you still need to eat
the proper human diet because that's what
we're talking about here. Do you coach people to sort of ease
into it at different levels maybe if they don't have a gallbladder
or if they have kidney disease or if they have
some other medical conditions as opposed to somebody who just wants
to lose weight and jump into it or can everybody transition the same? I think the transition period can be
different for different people and I think for some people
it probably needs to be different. If you're treating a severe alcoholic... there are some alcoholics
who are young and healthy... You can just put them in rehab
and cold-turkey them and it's perfectly safe to do that;
you know that as a doctor. There are other very sick alcoholics who you run the risk of seizures and
electrolyte abnormality, all kinds of stuff, and so you might wean them slowly
over a month or two, but both of those guys need to stop
the alcohol because they are alcoholics. Same goes for eating lots of carbs
and sugars and industrial seed oils. Some people might feel terrible and you might increase the risk of having
certain things if they transition too quickly. It doesn't mean they shouldn't eat
the proper human diet. It just means they might need to take
a month or two or three. And for some people it's a social thing. None of their family
is on board with this. And so if they did an overnight change, it would just destroy the household
dynamic, so they can't do that. Other people who are young
and metabolically healthy, I think they can switch
to low-carb overnight. I think there's zero danger of doing that. But yeah, I think different people
should come at this with different speeds just like some alcoholics need to wean
slower than others. Is a carnivore diet a proper human diet? I think for many people it is. When I first started low-carb high-fat,
you know, the ancestral, the primal, there was a big proponent in the paleo
community who was carnivore and I thought, yeah, it's a little too much...
I don't know about that. And so I kind of came to low-carb and keto and then now I consider the carnivore diet
which is eating only animal products, only full fat animal products...
some people think it's eating only red meat but I think probably... thinking again of the
common sense and the ancestry ideas, we probably ate nose to tail;
we ate the liver and we used the bones. We ate the whole animal. I think that the carnivore diet
is a subset of the ketogenic diet and I have actually had people come in
and say I'm not going to follow you because now you are carnivore,
you're not keto anymore. And I'm like no, I think carnivore
is the ultimate ketogenic diet and also the ultimate low-carb diet
because it's almost zero carb. And I have been eating carnivore
or carnivore-ish for months over a year now and it's actually taken me a step further
in reclaiming my health. And I actually feel better now at 50
being a carnivore than I felt at 35. And, you know, if somebody's 20,
that's not going to mean anything to them. But somebody out there listening who has
been 35 before and now been 50, they understand
what a huge statement that is. Like I'm not on any drugs,
I don't take anything, I don't take any supplements,
I don't take anything and I feel better at 50 than I felt at 35...
that's powerful. That is powerful. So do you use a progression then
with your patients, to say go low-carb and then
if you're having trouble go keto and then if you're still having trouble
go carnivore? Or you just jump the order and go straight
to carnivore for anybody? I follow a rough algorithm just like that. Most people, I'll have to say probably 80%
of people do great with just a ketogenic diet whether their ketogenic diet is high-fat
medium protein or high-protein medium fat. And for some people
they like the high-protein better. Not many, but some. And so up for 80% of my experience
that's all they need. They feel great, they are doing great,
but for some people and I'm one of them, I have to go even lower carb
than 50 total grams a day or even lower than 20 total grams
of carbs a day. If I get above 10 g of total carbs a day, I will start to get inflamed
and I'll start to bloat. And so I don't know if there's something
even in the keto approved veg that inflames my gut which leads
to inflammation elsewhere, but all I know is when I eat
lots of fatty meat and butter and bacon and eggs
I feel amazing, all my numbers and my labs which I get
checked every six months look exquisite, my energy is off the chart... You know, Neisha is a little bit
younger than me and basically she's like, "You know,
I feel like I'm the old one in this couple, "because you never shut up
and you never sit down. How's that possible?" And so for a while she was not on board
with the low-carb, because she's younger and she's just more
metabolically healthy. But now-- and she has Hashimoto's. And so she kept kind of pooh-pooh
in the low-carb like, that's silly, I don't know whatever. And then she got mono. And usually for her mono when she has
a resurgence it's six weeks on the couch. And she just happened to think, "I'll
try the stupid low-carb thing he's doing" and within a week she's already recovered
from her mono and her Hashimoto's, which also gave her daily symptoms...
was much, much better. And so at that point she was a convert. And so she didn't listen to me
and do what I said. She just tried it for herself
and she felt so much better and now she's here with me today
at this conference and she's 15 weeks pregnant
and she's eating lower carb... She is eating so low-carb right now that
would make any obstetrician very nervous to know that she's eating that low-carb. But she's doing great,
the baby is doing great, everybody's great,
we are very healthy and very happy. And, you know, the official guidelines
from the nutrition entity... I can't think of their initials right now is that the average pregnant woman
should eat about 300 g carbs a day. 300 grams! Yeah, and that's average. And of course it's based
on rigorous academic studies. An excellent point, let's talk about that. With sarcasm. And so then, you know, here's Neisha
eating maybe 15, 20, 25 g a day which any nutritionist or obstetrician would
make the face you just made, like, "Holy crap... This can't be good." And so if that obstetrician
is listening right now, I would say, "Okay, Bubba, show me
the research that you're basing
your diet recommendations on. Let me see that research. And so to any registered
dietitian out there what research are you basing
your recommendations on? All you're doing is you're parroting
what you were taught by the professors at the nutrition school that was sponsored by Kellogg's
or Post or Kraft. So you maybe should reassess that... are you actually harming patients
with your research? Because I promise you, you don't have
a single controlled trial that you're basing
your dietary recommendations on. You should probably think about that. Great perspective. And I love the story that your wife
didn't listen to you to do the low-carb diet, she had to try it on her own right. Common dynamic
I'm sure in a lot of couples. But also same thing
with the doctor-patient relationship or friend relationship
or family relationship. Sometimes it takes that personal
experience to have that awakening because we have to go against so many decades and generations
of a different paradigm. It's not easy and that's why you
with your YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of views
for every-- actually I don't want to inflate the numbers, I don't know, but I know there's thousands
of views that you get and the number of people you reach
with this message-- I mean this is the groundswell that we need
that's happening. We're never going to see a press conference
held by the American Diabetes Association saying, all that dietary advice we've been
giving you for the last many years, we were exactly wrong about that. That press conference will never be held. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying
to reach the parents and grandparents and the children who will die
or who will be maimed before the American Diabetes Association
finally backtracks and says, well okay-- And you know they just issued
new guidelines and they actually list low-carb
as a viable option to try. It's at the very bottom of the list,
that's great... but you know yourself,
big changes like this take decades. And there's a joke in the academia
and in medicine that before you can change
a treatment paradigm all the old guys have to die. Because they are the ones who thought
of what we currently practice. And so it's my calling, it's my mission to not
let there be grandparents that we lose and limbs that we lose
and kidney function that we lose waiting for all the old guys to die
before we can change the paradigm. I'm trying to change the paradigm not from
the top down, but from the bottom up. And so I've actually had people come to me
and say, you know, I took your advice... It changed my life...
my husband was not onboard. But after he saw the change in me,
he's now keto. And we have changed so many people
in our community that our doctor that we all go to finally had to say,
"Whatever you're doing, keep doing, and I'm going to look
into this keto thing myself." And so it's a very powerful statement
about this way of eating, about eating the proper human diet that when you do it, the change in you
is so drastic that your neighbor sees this and says, "What are you doing?" Your husband finally stops seeing
what you're doing as nagging and starts seeing it as lovingly trying
to say, you should really try this. And then the doctor in this community
has seen so many of his patients who failed on his nutrition advice...
suddenly they are like they've bloomed, they now have superpowers compared
to what they used to be as a human so much so that he's looking into this. He's like, what the heck! Or they go talk to their doctor and he's like,
"Me and wife are doing keto, but I was afraid to talk about it.
But I think it's a great thing, keep doing it." And so you and I and everybody in this
community are changing the world, changing the paradigm
from the ground up and I think that's just the most beautiful
thing that I could ever be a part of and I am very grateful. We are glad you're part of it
so keep spreading the message and keep doing your job of taking care
of people, making people healthier, happier and living better lives. I will never stop. -Thanks a lot.
-Thank you, Ken.
