Dr. Shawn Baker - 'Evidence Based Nutrition?'

all right thanks guys um I want you guys to give yourselves a round of applause you guys are making history this is the first first card of our conference this is amazing you know when I when I when I did this and all credit to all the people have been doing this a long time you know the the original credit for the Carver diet has probably belonged to some australopithecines from two million years ago quite honestly but there's been a lot of people have done this before before I got up there and got crazy and done and I've done this but to see this happen you know all this room filled with people we just had a great meal you know when you go to most conferences after lunch everybody's asleep and we're awake because you know we're getting human appropriate food I want to do a little quick survey I know amber checked how many people are on a carnivore diet this morning and the majority of you were how many of you people here have been struck by lightening anybody in the audience ever been struck by lightening no one how about anyone ever won the Mega Ball power or lottery jackpot really won see me after that seam you have to talk how many people here have gotten scurvy what none no so we can we can conclusively say that winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning is equally as problem probabilistic is getting scurvy on this diet so I'm going to talk kind of in a broad sense I know you guys have a lot of real focused science type stuff and I'm gonna kind of kind of step out I'm kind of a you know I kind of tend to maybe a big-picture type of guy and sometimes I look at some of the stuff and I say does it really even apply to me or doesn't really apply to anybody and so I kind of look at it that way so let me find the green button we'll advance it what did I call this evidence-based nutrition with a question mark okay so this is kind of in general where we get our information from nutritional epidemiology which is sort of rife with problems historical cultural references there's in vitro studies animal studies human trials there's some anecdotes and then of course our own personal experience is how we decide what we're supposed to eat you know epidemiology is about 80% of our nutritional knowledge comes from epidemiology and usually for the most you can't infer any type of causation from it there are all kinds of potential confounders lots of biases or play including recall but you know when you hand people a food frequency survey what do you how many blueberries you eat in the last six months I mean nobody knows this stuff right but it makes for great headlines you know I saw yesterday there was a headline eating a low-carb diet increases your risk for fatal cardiac arrhythmia anybody see that the other day that came out it was like relative risk 17% increase which is meaningless but the headlines are generated nonetheless this is a quote from Professor John an it ass out of Stanford University he's one of the most well published public health officials physicians out there you know this is a long statement he made it and he made it more elegantly than I do but he basically says nutritional ebony lies a bunch of garbage nurses start over and throw it out and I mean not that I totally suggest we do that but it's probably not far from the truth then we talk about historical and cultural references well who's who's cults are we looking at you know this is what we typically think this is what my grandmother ate this is how we were eating for you know last 50 years 100 years but you know equally we've got people that do this that's what their historical references I mean if we were to go back to you know Mongolia 50 years and go on the rural area and say what do you guys think about a carnivore diet they say well that was Tuesday I mean no big deal we're up here acting like we're crazy people so whose culture we look at in vitro in animal studies again I'm not a rat I'm not a cell I mean you know we see so much information that comes out of this stuff you know that we we think we can extrapolate to and there's there's a lot of problems but a nice thing about animal studies are they'll be compliant with the protocol and you know you can even get that stuff so there's some advantage there but there's definitely some shortcomings to this sort of stuff and then we talk about you know human trials you know and there's a lot even you know like I said it's not like it's a hopeless cause but there are certainly shortcomings there you know often we when we look about when we look at nutritional studies and I'll go to the last point there people ask well there's no long-term Studies on a carnivore die how do you know you're not going to drop dead of a heart attack in 50 years or gate answer or not not lived to 92 and only lived in 91 I mean there are zero with a capital Z long-term randomized control studies on any diet there's none that have ever been done there probably none that will be done you'd have to lock up you know 500 twins in a metabolic ward for the rest of their life and don't n control every factor so we can never know this information but there's people out there saying well there's not long term data and yet there's no debt there's no diet that has that data you know often they're short-term because it costs a lot of money nobody wants to pay for that the end points are typically biomarkers and I biomarkers driving me crazy because you know Dave Feldman tours yet Hilti you know we learned from day you know cholesterol it changes everyday potential you can change it you know a hundred points in a week do you guys know this vitamin D we talk about vitamin D deficiency yellow stuff how much does vitamin D vary throughout the day thirty percent your vitamin D level can change 30 percent while insuring during the daytime you know if we talked we talked about the microbiome you know we get all these sill samples we sent off for a microbiome well guess what they did recent studies in the microbiome that you that you get from a stool sample doesn't even match what's in your colon half the time when they do biopsies they don't even line up so we have all these biomarkers where we try to figure out what's going on and we don't even know what they mean let's talk about uric acid right uric acid so she ate it would gout your gas is high it's a bad thing we're guess what if your uric acid is really high your likelihood of getting multiple sclerosis is almost nothing and so we have these biomarkers that go up they go down we don't even really know what's going on there so we you know what happens is we learn about a new biomarker we get an epidemiologic study guess what everybody that high homocysteine levels had a higher risk for cardiac disease and therefore we now want to do everything we can to possibly lower homocysteine we don't know if that's actually true or not we just assume it is and then we find out later that maybe that's not the truth it's very difficult to apply it blind participants for a nutritional study right I mean yeah bi I don't care how good the impossible burger tastes you're not fooling me you know I'm gonna no I'm not eating real meat so so there's some problems and real problems with this stuff you know anecdotes this is like this is a website meat Hills calm that self and Michael Goldstein are oh he's out here somewhere started this in one of our anecdotes and let me just ask you guys a question for you guys that have started a carnivore diet how many of you guys decided to do not do that diet based on some sort of story or anecdote how many you guys it did that so so most of us right how many you guys read through the literature and came to the conclusion that I'm gonna do a carnivore diet what what one person two people out there so but I mean realistically this is what kind of moves the needle for so many people and so I think it's very powerful that's one of the reasons I wanted to start this stuff up because I think you know changing the narrative requires a powerful tool and this works pretty well and then there you know of course the N equals one where we're all here about the end we're all our own N equals one and we always hear over and over again how n equals one doesn't really matter and and you know maybe there's some validity to that you know there's a lot of evidence for or against me but most of there's a lot of it out there that's basically against meat all the headlines say that you know and one of the reasons for that is again we talk about there's no long term randomized control trials with with meaningful endpoints you know we're talking about you know a lot of meat maybe or maybe your LDL cholesterol Rises you know perhaps maybe your TMO TMAO level goes up this is kind of nonsense that we talk about that we hear about all the time this is the other thing when we look at meat eaters in epidemiologist there's not even study there are no meters there's people who eat a few ounces of meat and the rest of its plant food so we don't really have any good endpoints on that probably the only modern population out there that we know about is probably Hong Kong where they eat a pound of meat a day which is nothing compared to what we and they live longer than anyone else on the planet and they have the highest IQ incidentally which is kind of interesting you know and again the short term studies with just that was just the biomarkers you know this is the other thing we often look at these in vitro are animal studies and they look at isolated compounds with unrealistic dosages and I point to you things like the you know polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and the heterocyclic amines you know if we have reach our meat we're going to get cancer but again those studies were done massive doses it's stuff most of us would never do we probably have to eat completely black steaks that are not gonna taste good anyway for that stuff to be you know relevant you know and again that's not in a functioning human with a functioning liver you know we talk about all these plant compounds and how they're the hormetic effects because they induce enzymes that will now make us tougher and stronger but when we make that same argument what about these these you know polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons does that do the same thing it actually the same systems often oh and then again this is the other thing it's just it's just really hard you know it's tough - it's expensive - and what they tell you is you know it's the best we've got we've got kind of not such good met techniques study mechanisms and so we just have to make the best of it and so that's what we have so I kind of equate that to like I call it the nutrition science airlines and so we were flying on it was kind of broken wing holes in the fuselage the wheels are broke and the ends is missing and the Botto is it's all we could afford and that really is nutrition sites in my view and so you know enjoy the flight guys I mean and when we look around in my I didn't fly those guys but I've heard some bad but I mean literally that's what our population looks like as a result of nutrition science in my view you know can we do better I don't know maybe we can you know but one thing we maybe should actually study people that actually eat meat like not a few ounces a day you know maybe we should look at truly meaningful input end points and so rather than what our cholesterol level is something that is actually meaningful and we can argue about what that is and then focus on human beings you know instead of these lab studies on rats and mice and you know whatever else you know what are the funding what are the obstacles to getting this done well funding you know and I put up NCBA those guys are the guys from the beef organization they've got a bunch of money maybe they'll kick in some hopefully private philanthropy you know industry users or other industries or universities you know the problems again we can't like we talks about we can't blind the participants you know can we get it through an IRB are they gonna still say oh it's so dangerous because you're gonna raise your cholesterol or you know meat is gonna give you cancer if you if you do a 30-day study we're all gonna get cancer we're all gonna get scurvy you know that's that question I don't know if that's you know something you can overcome you know they did obviously most you guys know about to stefan's the study from 1928 which showed people could go a year without problem industry push back you know we kind of see this today you know if you if you look at the headlines is becoming so obvious you know we you guys have all you probably some you guys heard about this keto crotch thing right that they made up you know yeah sir everybody here has that but I mean it's we it's not it's not even they're not even hard to hide this stuff anymore they're just out there they hate the ketogenic diet and in a car poor diet obviously for in many cases gotta be a ketogenic diet so there there's pushing back really hard against this and then and then one of the there's a bias because if I'm doing a study obviously I've got a bias I'm gonna be like yeah meats good for us right but I mean so we got to figure out how to how to eliminate some of that stuff and so what do we know so far about meat I know that it doesn't appear to grow limbs back it doesn't seem to have any giving you any powers of flight or any other superpowers and so far immortality does not seem to be one of the benefits although we're gonna we're gonna pitch we're gonna yeah like I said my goal is to live forever so far so good what do I know and this is the only thing I can say for certain a hundred percent sure I got something wrong I don't know what it is probably a lot of things but you know at least you know I know enough to know that I don't know everything and I'm learning every day and this is what the great thing about this conference and the podcast I do I learn every single time so it's just great it's got I feel like I'm teeing when I have a podcast I'll tell you I'm jealous at Joe Rogan that guy gets a lot a lot of knowledge put his way alright what can we not find out I don't you know I don't think we can do a study that's going to tell us if mediums gonna or alive will prolong our life it's just not going to happen we're not gonna be able to ever figure that out is it gonna prevent me from getting or dying of a particular disease and I can say I don't know except for ESV you know I don't know what you guys know what ESV is that's end-stage veganism I ice alright sorry - dr. Greger I always pick on him but it's it's just too easy sorry anyway so what wait we might find out we might get some subjective and objective clinical markers found out and we were seeing that that we can we can kind of look at that relative changes in body composition blood pressure lap markers imaging and so on and so forth new reference ranges amber alluded to some of this stuff in her talk on RTA's I mean I've maintained and she has for a while that maybe those already A's don't apply to everybody equally and I think we're seeing the fact that you know I'm not drop dead of scurvy none of you have kind of tells us maybe the already a is no apply to everybody and then the same thing can be said about a lot of these lab markers you know Willy's you know is our is a low t3 a problem you know is it normal we don't know that stuff and so I think those things can can possibly be figured out short-term impacts on disease and physiology again everything we're gonna know is really going to be short-term you know it's not gonna predict your future it's just not you know maybe we can guess and assume it is I mean I like to say what I like to say is the best predictor of your you know future health is your current health and so if you get healthy today and how are we define that you're likely be healthy in ten years and the converse is true we don't need to study we know we've discovered it but is there a reason to pursue that and it cycles out there I think we'll probably tell you we probably do need some studies you know in all these areas to kind of move that needle yeah physicians there's a lot of physicians that are doing this and they're brave enough to get out there and say hey I'm going to tell my patients it let's do something that actually works instead of you know fearing for their lives and I can tell you for sure that this stuff happens but you know but but if we've got studies out there physicians will be more likely to prescribe that diet and and benefit their patients you know the people are more likely to try it you know I mean again most of us did this on an anecdote where we're still a small minority but if there's there's some studies out there that say look we did a carnivore diet our inflammation markers went down our glucose got better and that's not hard to do and I think that's what would show there's gonna be more people than likely to try that and then just you know advancements for our knowledge who's gonna benefit who's not gonna benefit what what diseases work there are so many questions that I have and then we and we see a little bit of dissension among our participants you know is it grass-fed as a grain fin do we need it work eat organ meats do we not eat need to eat them which people need to eat them how much protein do we need how much fat do we need to is does exercise impact that so there's a lot of things that we can learn in this sort of karmic carnivore realm you know the traditional research paradigm you know decided to say as a hypothesis he looks at he has an observation although it seems like the observation doesn't count anymore cuz it they discuss this stuff it's more like let's let's just keep you know confirming the paradigm you know he designs a study they gotta get funding they to perform a study maybe he publishes maybe it not maybe doesn't you know we see that some of the criticisms from the drug studies a lot of those studies never get published and we never see the data and we only see the good stuff maybe it'll make an impact maybe it won't maybe what depends what jerilyn gets published in it needs to be reproduced for it to be considered you know a real thing and it's very long process you know I think it's you know it's several years from inception to you know changing our mind and there's something it might take 10 years if study after study to have people you know really change your paradigm you know you can outsource it and this is something like guys like Tim Noakes like to talk about is is the wisdom of the crowds outsourcing it to the crowds you know there are some advantages and disadvantages to that the good thing is you know most people will like if we want to look at much people that have some sort of medical issue they have skin in the game you know and they're they they have a vested interest in learning this stuff you know when I was when I was practicing I would get patients in there they would have some disease and I'd it was kind of a rare a rare thing I didn't really you know III didn't know that much about but they knew everything about that disease because they live with it 24 hours a day so these people really care about the outcome in that you know again that can skew it both ways but when you when you have you know via things like social media now we have the impact the ability to reach tens even hundreds of thousands potentially millions of people's very quickly and so you can get massive numbers of people participating you can figure out you know big problems pretty quickly you figure out what works and what doesn't you know lots of potential there are lots of pension potential problems you know all this the social media stuff it's a LAN mind of you know knuckleheads and trolling and all this crazy stuff but but there are there are a lot of good that can come from that um so I you know this is something that I did myself and a fella named Matt Mayer we met up in the spring of 2017 after I kind of started doing his diet and people were kind of commenting on it and I just kind of said hey would anybody want to try carnivore diet for 90 days and I mean literally he had hundreds of people said heck yes I'm here for rib eyes so we kind of did this stuff and I'm not I'm not a researcher by trade you know we had no money we had nothing to do we just said well it's gonna see what happens and so you know we got him to go for 90 days in there and I know some of the people in this audience participated in that study and so we you know we had some subjective measures some objective stuff it was all self-reported data there's lots of you know lots of problems with this survivorship by it bias you know you're unclear on the attrition rates because we couldn't tell you know who signed up who didn't enter data you know there's all kinds of problems stuff we had differential reporting for different metrics so we would ask people to measure this this and this and some of the measure would measure this some of them would only guys are certain other things again we're not professional resources we didn't have a control group we didn't we didn't have different start uni we didn't really select people based on different diets so there's all kinds of problems with this but nonetheless we got it done we got a little bit of data out there there's there's my man Matt he's a he's not here but I'm sure he'll be happy to see that we had you know arrange for about six you about a hundred people that actually entered data for different topics most of it most of it was males and it seems like the carnivore diet adherence tend to be more males all those quite you know this seems maybe close to what I'm seeing the audience now age range from 20 to 70 the biggest group was that most of the guy most of the people were in their 50s on average people ate about about two pounds of meat a day which is I think what most people would say is pretty pretty typical you know one of the problems is we he Matt designed a little app I mean he's designed it from scratch and there was it was clunky cumbersome a lot of people complain about it but you know we did it for free it was the best we could do on average on average the average starting weight was 90 kilos and people lost 14 kilos over the 90-day period that's about 30 pound weight loss for the people that stayed in so I think that's pretty significant and then we saw a drop of about 8 centimeters in their abdominal circumference which is quite a bit this is this is about poop because we all got questions about poop right so we said everybody Bristol stool chart ID so if you guys haven't seen this before they actually score this so I guess maybe the gastroenterologist would be excited by this stuff but the supposedly like a I think three four and five are considered better maybe four being the ideal poop if you will so anyway so this was what we got this is and this is if you guys see the average score was right about four about four point two and he averaged all those numbers out and so this is what the people that report it and so you know there's a lot of variability you know particularly at the end as less people got excited about reporting their data I know as I did it I'd every day i religiously stepping towards me I was like damn and I'm trying to put this stuff in so you get stuff where they where they weren't reporting data and so we had some variation but the average was right at about that Bristol for which again you know for all those people are wondering about bowel movements we reject and that's the information we got and this was this was the frequency so how many problems people have on average per day and this ended up about 1.2 bowel movements per day was what we what we ended up having so again this whole thing about you're gonna be you know constipated the whole time it doesn't seem to turn out in the end when you look at enough people this and I swear I did not pick this chart this is this is something it came here this is a erection hardness score and they used plant-based you know things to do that and and I swear it I had nothing to do with that but I find it funny the tofu gives you a flaccid limp thing there and so so are the average score the people who reported that was like a three and a half so between the the right I mean the banana and the cucumber I was a for every day I can tell you guys all right so this is some of the subjective data we collected again you know it's subjective but I think you know to me it matters and I think how you feel really matters these are a little hard to read but the the purple means that greatly improved the green means moderately improved that yellow is kind of unchanged and then the oranges was a little bit worse and then the one on the very left the dark purple I guess was or the blue was it got worse and so we looked at general health and this is from left to right general health you know everybody you know either no change we got better remember some of these people are already on the car number diet some people on a ketogenic diet join health again the trend on all of these joint health sexual health gut health mood energy exercise capacity skin health and sleep quality it was either they didn't get worse or they got better or a lot better and that was you know consistent throughout the rather people with one or two people that got a little worse but that's what we had with that you know despite all the flaws out there you know when we comes to meat based research we probably got as much as anybody I mean outside I probably you know dr. Clemmens over at Paleo medicina and that's study from 1928 that are the studies that were generated from the 1928 experiment I mean this is this has probably helped a little bit you know I can we do better of course we can't I you know I like I said my goal this year in the next couple of years is to try to see if we can get some research directed our way I just want to if I've got just a second I want to just one other thing that's more of a kind of a just a hope of mine that we can kind of start to match up all of us that care about our health and and understand that meat is a vital part part of our human nutrition it's start working with the the producers you know the cattle ranchers kind of form a coalition between these guys because III worry that you know we've got all these hard-working ranchers that are doing a job providing us this wonderful product it's going to be taken from them and we see these bigger and bigger companies that are out there you know the big processors that we're gonna they're they're investing in alternative sources of need plant-based means synthetic meat products and and will eventually kind of take that stuff over and you know we'll see you know plants mixed in with our mean and we'll see the push for synthetic meats which i think is a bad thing so hopefully we can find a way to get the producers involved and yet gets the consumers to you know team up with those guys okay thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Low Carb Down Under

Views: 123,776

Rating: 4.7464132 out of 5

Keywords: Low Carb Down Under, LCDU, www.lowcarbdownunder.com.au, Boulder Carnivore Conference, #CarnyCon, Shawn Baker, www.meatheals.com, carnivore

Id: g38-oGgQPrY

Length: 25min 16sec (1516 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019