Dr. Ken Berry on breaking the diabetes epidemic! - podcast episode cover

Dr. Ken Berry on breaking the diabetes epidemic!

Sep 07, 201852 min
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Episode description

In this episode, I speak with good friend and fellow country boy, Dr. Ken Berry! We talk about how the internet and social media has impacted healthcare. We dive deep into the compensation structure and financial incentive for doctors and how it is all built on a house of cards. We discuss the standard of care and what happens if you go against that. We cover the responsibility of doctors and their role in society. We even dive into why Dr. Berry started keto and panda massaged meat! Always a pleasure talking to Dr. Berry, I really enjoyed the conversation, I hope you do as well!

Transcript

What's going on? Ladies and gents Robert Sikes keto Savage.com and I forgot the one, the only dr. Ken Berry online. How are you, man? Hey, keto, Savage. How you doing, brother? I'm good. I'm good. Little to people know this podcast is not going to be about anything scientific and medical or anything. It's just gonna be about us getting out of country-style having that accent really coming through two country boys, just talking. That's right, man.

It's right. So, how you been bring me up to speed brother, man. We've been, we've been good. We've been very busy with, you know, YouTube, Facebook got A couple of trips coming up some collaborations, we're working on but having a great time and you know always meeting good new and useful people and making making new friends. What do you guys been up to man? Pretty much the same thing just trying to like, you know, build the business and the social

platforms. I got to say man you are totally killing it on YouTube. Like you make me look like a freaking little peon up there. I'm not sure what's going on with you. Two there must be somebody in YouTube headquarters. That likes me or something because I know Early just get to work in the morning. I'm like what's piss me off today. I think I'll make a video about that and I literally 1 shot 1. Take Post-it no editing done and then go, you'll see a bunch of

patients. That's, that's literally how I do it. So I don't know if it's the real, missing the grit, or the lack of production. I'm not sure what's going on with that. But hey, I'll take it, you know, I'm just happy that I'm able to reach so many people and help people understand. That their, their health, and their nutrition.

See chairman, I mean, when I first heard you speak at the first conference that we ran together, I'm like you're just authenticity came through and I think people like appreciate that in the YouTube like the whole editing scheme and all kinds of special effects when at school. But I mean, people go to like the movie theaters. If they want to say that they go to YouTube for like just real,

you know, raw authenticity. And you I think she went through with you, I think so. That's what I tried to do from day. One is just be me. And if you like me, then let's let's journey together and Don't like me. Then go listen to Robert sides. Well, between the two of us we got something good to say, right? That's it. That's right. Jane will come up with a good Southern colloquialism and some vernacular and they'll be impressed and like I never heard that before.

That's right, man. It's right. So so for anybody that does not know you, which I find hard to believe now but remember that does not give us kind of like a bio just kind of like a little introduction to who you are. Okay? So I'm Ken Berry I'm a board certified Family, Physician Medical Call dr. I've been practicing in a very small town in rural Tennessee, called Camden for over 15 years now and I see patients in the clinic every day. I've done thousands of hours in

the emergency department. I've done thousands of hours of Labor delivery done, a lot of different things in medicine. And for the last 15 years, I've been seeing patients at the berry clinic on the court Square in Camden Tennessee. And then I started a little YouTube channel. I guess it's been a little over. Year now, because Nisha Barry, I would come home bitching about this or that or the other thing

I'd seen at the clinic there. You know, some authority of said, this stupid thing of that stupid thing. And she was like, hey why don't you shut up and make a YouTube video? And so the first 50 times she said that I just blew and you know went out chop down a tree or something but then one day I'm like fine I'll make a YouTube video, see how you like it. And so I did and then that kind of started David.

And then I've been putting up anywhere from two to four YouTube videos a week since then. And I've almost got 200 videos on there covering a wide range of all kinds of you know, Family Medical Health, Nutrition smoking exercise, kind of the full gamut of human health and nutrition when we were at the low carb Cruise, that's the first place where I met you in person. I think you were given a presentation on. That was a really, really good presentation.

Like I walked on that, I'm just kind of Blown Away. You talked about some of the, the miscommunications in the misunderstandings that were in the medical practice, you know, Years Gone by and it kind of how that's transcended in today's day and age and how its kind of become our responsibility with, you know, social media in the reach that we have to be able to make an impact on a grander scale.

So kind of just obviously don't give that presentation, but just kind of run down like a brief synopsis of that because that was just really compelling. Well, there was a time when the only of health and nutrition Mission Authority. We had was the, the the, the town doctor.

That was it, right? You didn't have nutritionist, you didn't have specialist, you didn't have a dietician or nutritionist, you just had your family doctor and that's where you got most of your information from about health and nutrition and wellness, and prevention. And you can pretty much trust him to be state-of-the-art, but starting back in the 70s 80s, doctors really kind of got sidetracked, bye-bye.

Big Pharma advertising to them and pushing to them and promising them, golf trips, and this inducement. And that inducement. If they would prescribe more of this pill of that pill and big pharmaceutical house has actually started sponsoring medical textbooks in sponsoring medical schools and in sponsoring like Chairman's ships of specific departments in medical schools. And Medicine really lost its way there.

And I think it's about to start turning back around because it's, you know, just a bunch of doctors just basically getting on Twitter and YouTube and Facebook and saying, what the hell is wrong with all you doctors, what are you talking about? And so, people really over the last 10-15 years, it really started to have to kind of get on the internet. Now that we have that, it's a powerful tool. And so, will my doctor said this. But I don't know.

That doesn't sound right to me. I'm going to do some Search. And the thing that a lot of people don't realize, is that if you have access to the internet, you have access to absolutely every bit of the medical research that your doctor has access to, not that the average doctor reads, a lot of medical

research. They don't at least in my experience, but they could if they wanted to and so if someone has a particular medical condition, they can literally jump on the internet, read the Wikipedia entry and then go to a

website called pubmed.gov. And look up, any research study that's ever been done on the face of the planet they and and many of the research studies you can read the full study from start to finish from you know five pages to 500 pages long just depending and on every study you can read at least the summary and the conclusion of what that study found. All that stuff is free on pubmed.gov. And so there are a lot of people in this space where I'm at right

now. Who will do research on a particular Topic in. They'll make a YouTube video or they'll make they'll write a blog post or they'll do a podcast and so, you know, in the past if you had some medical condition that was really weird and rare or there was very, very common. You only had, you know, Good Housekeeping and channel 4 and or CBS or ABC and your doctor that was it. You didn't have any other

resources. If you wanted a research study you had to write to the National Institute of Health and wait six weeks. For them to go and find a copy and print a copy and send you a copy and and that was just one study and you had no way of knowing all the studies that are

out there. But now if you have access to the internet at home or you can go to your public library and it's very, they'll let you sign on and you can read the state-of-the-art medical research on any medical topic that's ever had a study published ever.

And that's pretty powerful. And I think that at about the same time, all that was becoming available actors were really getting off track and thinking that, you know, that the only tool they had was that prescription pad and that every single thing that came through the door needed to peel.

And so I think we're kind of at a perfect point in history, where the patient is almost having to lead the doctor and it's very it's a very odd period of time but I think it's going to be ultimately very fruitful and very healthy for people ultimately. But there are people who have been suffering for For decades because of terrible medical advice that their doctor gave them and they had no recourse.

They had no way to verify the second guess but now you can jump on the internet and in with two hours of reading on a good website, you can know just as much about your medical condition as your doctor does. So with with the patient's kind of having that as an outlet, you know, being able to go to PubMed

and kind of self-diagnose. You know, they have that as an aloe, what's going to happen in the medical community for the doctors like how are they going to recover or It's their plan of action going to be. Well, I don't think they have one, most doctors and a lot of people don't realize the politics behind the scenes and Medicine nurses there. You know, they have a great Lobby. They stick together. They, you know, they're like,

they're very cohesive. They, they take care of each other, and doctors are almost like mountain lions. It's like, I'm gonna get on my Mountain, you get on your mountain and don't talk to me, leave me alone. Don't, don't tell me what to do. Don't ask me any questions and so that hasn't served us very well.

But it's actually, He's very vulnerable to that, you know, that slick-talking, good-looking, drug rep who came in and acted like they like this a lot of Doc's fall for that and so I think really you've got two different styles of practicing medicine. Now you've got the old style that says no, damn it. This is what the guidelines say and that's what we're going to do and I don't want to I don't want to see that crap you print it out off the internet.

I don't hear about it, you to do this it's either my way or the highway, right? And then you've got the second style Doctor Who's actually happy when you bring stuff that you've been researching. Right? Because that tells me, you're very motivated. You're very interested in your health or you wouldn't have taken the time, you would have just watch reruns of lost and ate some twinkies. And then come to see me and expected me to somehow magically fix it.

But I'm actually energized in very excited. When a patient brings me stuff that they've they've researched. And they printed out there, like I want to ask you about this and what about this supplement? And what about this new medication? And this looks like this is dangerous to me. What do you think about that? And so if a doctor is willing to stay up to date on his reading, And stay on his toes and and ready to interact as a learning Health partner with his patients.

Then I think this is a great time to be a doctor, but I would imagine that for the old style doctor that it's either my way or the highway, it must be a pretty crappy time. To be practicing medicine right now, because more and more patients are taking charge of their health and they're just not going to have it. They're like, no, I'm not going to take that stat. And I'm not going to take a cholesterol medicine because the research shows.

If you imagine, if you were a doctor, And you were one of those know-it-all doctors and the patient just basically bluntly told. You know, I'm not going to take that because the research shows it's not, it doesn't help. Mean it's bad when you sure. It's like, wow, I've lost every, I've lost it all, I'll they don't even respect my medical

opinion anymore. And so I think a lot of doctors are either going to retire or change careers or I think they're going to be a lot of doctors who step up to the challenge and say yeah, this is a new era in medicine where we've got an educated alert aware patient who Sees me as a as a Learning Partner but I'm not the medical boss. I'm not there, daddy, right? I'm just there partner. It's my job to tell them what I know, and but it's ultimately,

it's their health, right? They have to decide. Am I going to take this guy's opinion? Am I going to apply what he told me or am I going to keep researching? And so it's a very interesting time in medicine, very a lot of fun for doctors like me and I would imagine very uncomfortable for the other style of doctor. Yeah, yeah, totally agree. And it's it's kind of crazy. Like some people have totally like formed a front against dr. Which I don't think is the right way to go either.

I mean doctors that are four reasons. I've got a lot of respect for doctors you know the intentions are good and solid you know like doctors like yourself what? Wonder if it was you or Ted name and at the low-carb Cruise it was talking kind of about how the compensation structure around doctors goes as it pertains to whether they write a script or not and kind of like the time spent with the patient, can you kind of like pull the veil back on that a little bit?

Oh yeah. So If I have a, an established patient. So you're my you've been my patient Robert for a few years and you come to see me and you've got high blood pressure and if I say, okay Robert, here's what you're going to do. You're going to cut down on the carbs because it going, we want to get your insulin level down, and that's going to help you get rid of the inflammation. Get rid of the extra fluid and then, the blood pressure will probably come down. Here's a little notebook.

I want you to keep up with your blood pressure readings, and I want you to eat keto for three months and then come back and see me. I can build a level 2 for that at, but if I did all of that stuff and said, oh, and I'm going to write you a prescription for this blood pressure, man. Then I can build a level 3. That makes it a more complex visit that's just the way it's structured reimbursement, wise and so what's the what's the time difference? Because you used to like it

literally makes no difference. That's considered both of those are considered a 15-minute visit and so you can build medical visits by time or you can build them by complexity. And so, when you write a prescription that immediately bumps up the complexity of the visit, but it, but you see, I guess I'm going to get paid. Probably twenty dollars more for up for a three level than for a two level 20 or 30 bucks more, but I didn't help you. My whole point is to heal you,

right? My whole point is to make you healthier. My the whole point of my existence is to improve your health, right? That's what I'm there for. And so, did I do that by like literally I could write you that prescription in the visit could be over in 90 seconds or I could counsel with you for 15 minutes and I would get paid the same. Actually I would get paid less.

If I didn't write you a prescription unless I counseled you for 15 solid minutes and then but you see the doctors make money the more patients they see. And so if I can write you a scrip and have you out the door at 90 seconds, then the average doctor being just a just a guy, he's just a human like all the rest of us, right? He's going to do that because he's got bills to pay. He's got you know he's got a car payment, his kids want to go to

college. He got he's got to make that money just like all the rest of us, right? And so the average doctor is not going to sit in Counsel you to stop eating twinkies and to get up off the couch that he's not going to take the time. He just going to write you that script because he gets to Bill a higher complexity level visit, you know with not spending nearly as much time with you.

And so as long as the reimbursement schedule is set up like that, the average Doctor Who's just a, just a regular guy, he's going to take that shortcut, right? It's just human nature, is the like, how did that even come into place? Like I said that protocol. On forever, like I bring me up spilling the history of Medical Practice here, it's been around forever. So really what happened was back in the 70s? I think when Nixon was President, they passed the

temporary law that you. They had a wage freeze on workers in the US, but I don't know if it was inflation. I don't know. All the details. I just know that that like if you work for Monsanto or whoever they couldn't just give you a raise for a while, they're there was a wage hike fries. And so, they had to Figure out some way to compensate their employees and they're like, well, hey, we'll just start paying their medical bills. Well, medical insurance. Right?

So, really mellie's medical insurance came about for the just everybody, like it is now because of a federal government intervention into the free market. So that's kind of messed up to start with, because anytime the government messes with the free market, it tends to make it worse, not better. Most people know, that's, that's kind of a rule of economics. And so that's how it started. Then they had to figure out. Well, how we going to pay?

Of course, I mean it's the patient's just there for two minutes and he didn't do anything. We don't want to pay him as much as if he spends. You know, 20 minutes with the patient and write some five prescriptions and orders an x-ray, he ought to get paid more. And so then you know they're you know how people are some people like me and you just want to get stuff done in other people love to feed and count and make lists

forms and measure stuff. And so they had all the bean counters in Washington and so they sit down and they made up this billing thing called the Decodes and that's basically thousands upon thousands of codes for every different procedure that a doctor can do, including a very limited office visit a moderate office visit or Flex a very complex, and highly

complex. There's five different levels of office visits and that's that those are just five of the thousands of codes that the American Medical Association in conjunction, with the federal government came up with So that doctors could build the insurance companies that started offering health insurance because of a federal government intervention into the free market back in the seventh. That sounds really simple in, right? It's just like, wow, that's interesting, it's crazy.

It's crazy to begin with but now that's where we are. And so you can't just stop that, you know, that's like you can't turn around that big boat. We were on on the on the Cruz, it takes a minute to turn that boat around and that's where modern medicine is right now. They everybody on the boat knows, this is stupid. Everything we're doing is stupid. We're not helping people, there's obesity epidemic, there's a diabetes epidemic, there's kidney failure, liver failure.

Everything's at epidemic levels and we're doctors are almost powerless to do anything about it. And if a doctor steps out of the box enough to actually help his patients and he risks getting in trouble with his State Medical Board. And so It's just a mess.

It's really a mess right now and I don't blame a lot of patience for just saying to hell with it and just you know going to their chiropractor or going to a naturopath or going to a herbalist or something because sometimes doctors say the dumbest things man. What kind of like rules and regulations? Are you bound to on the State Medical Board? Like what kind of free-range do you have or do you have much at all? Well, you've got a lot until you don't.

And what I mean by that is is you can do a lot of things that it's not like the medical board is constantly watching. But if they get a report or a complaint, if another doctor says, hey, you know, Barry's not practice the standard of care or if a patient says, hey, this doctor did this to me, then they're going to come and investigate that, right?

And when they it's kind of like opening the can of worms, it's kind of like when the state trooper pulls you over if he wants to give you a ticket you going to get a ticket whether you did anything wrong or not, right? And so most of the time they're not going to come they're going to find something that's just the nature of that kind of investigation. And so Doctors don't want to, they don't want the the State Medical Board investigator there

obviously. And so most doctors are very risk averse about that sort of thing. So they're not going to take any chances. And so there's this thing called standard of care. And every doctor knows about this and some of its written down and some of its unspoken like if every doctor in my in a 50-mile radius of me rights of patient Zocor, Crestor Lipitor, a Statin drug for high cholesterol, right?

If they all do that and I don't Then even though I can show them research and proof all day long, I'm not upholding the community standard of care and that's a violation. They can actually cite me. Find me put reprimand me, put me on probation or take my medical license away just because I'm not upholding the community standard of care. Even if this community, standard of care is stupid and that's, that's literally the way it's set up right now.

And I'm sure that that made sense at one time in our history, but I don't really think it makes sense anymore, with as fast as things are changing in the medical landscape. So, I'm going to when a patient comes to you with high cholesterol for instance. And there, you know, talking about Quito, maybe they've done some research and they're saying, you know, I don't think the statins, the direction I want to go. If you like, do you not prescribe that stat and I like,

what position are you in there? No, I mean if they're like, I don't want to Staten Island, so I'm like, good, I'm glad I want you to fix. This this, I want you to actually fix the underlying problem. So then you're healthier, that's the whole point of my job is to make my patients healthier to make my patients less sick. That's what I'm for otherwise. Why do I exist? I'm not a pill Pusher. I'm not I'm not just a guy who's going to lead. Let you leave my office with a

handful of pills. That's not my job. My job is to help you be healthier. And so given somebody a Statin or their high cholesterol, does it make them healthier in any way? Does it make them happier? Does it make them feel better? It doesn't decrease their risk of heart attack and stroke.

That's been shown multiple times that huge studies, but yet many doctor, and a lot of doctors know that, but they're still going to write that Statin because they're afraid that if they don't and to see it. So here's the thing. Here's the bind that doctors ring. So I see you Sykes and you got high cholesterol and I don't write you a Statin, right? I say hey he cute. Oh don't worry about that. Just worry about your HDL and

your triglycerides. And then a month from then you are doing cocaine and you have a heart attack and died, right? Got it. Your family can sue me for malpractice and probably win because you had high cholesterol. I didn't put you on a Statin and you had a heart attack and died and I'll probably, I'll probably lose my medical license to Even though you had a heart attack because you're smoking crack, it's a good point that's in case right? Thank you.

That's right. So you have to, you have to hurt your patient, gradually with the Statin or you have to take a chance that something terrible happens and then you get jacked up yourself by the medical board. And by, you know, an attorney who says, Hey, I've seen the medical chart here. His total cholesterol was 2001 and you didn't prescribe him Statin and that's why he died. And we want, we want five hundred thousand dollars.

Yeah, and so doctors are kind of caught in these Vines where there's really not a comfortable answer because if You Buck the system and do what's really right for the patient, you could lose your career but if you just cower down and write the Staten, you're not helping anybody, you're part of the problem at that point. You see what I'm saying?

And so, so many doctors are just like, dude, this sucks and so there are a lot of doctors right now who are miserable In their medical practice because that's their choice every day. They go to work. It's either you're going to make your patient slowly sicker, or you're going to take a chance of losing your career if you actually try to help them become healthier in the proper way. So, I mean, what do you do, man? You just like, like, you're putting on this continent and,

you know, YouTube, social media. So you're definitely state in your opinion. Are you just kind of follow your heart and if you get booted off The Medical Board? And yeah, it's just happiness. I'm kind of like you, you know, I'm from a place where you, you either put out a get out. You, you either produce Or you go home, you either, you know what I'm saying? You either play, or give me the

ball, let me play. And so, I'm not about to just sit on my little doctor stool, and right medicines for the next 40 years and look up. And I'm ready to retire and I really haven't helped anybody be healthier. That's not why I'm at the medical school. And so also a lot of doctors, forget about that oath that they took. I actually meant that when I took that oath and I don't care. I don't care about the repercussions of doing what I think is the right thing.

I feel like I'm doing the right thing for my patient, then let the medical board come. And you remember I said that on the cruise important issue. I thought she was going to shrivel up and crawl under a table. But I've I mean it, I mean, if you want to make me the American Tim noakes or the American Gary fakie, then let's go. That would be a, that would be. I think that would be great fun and I think we could actually fix the problems in medicine.

What faster if they would try to pick on a doctor like me. It doesn't have to be me. Anybody who's doing what I'm doing? If they thought, you know what, we're going to we're going to show him. We're going to, we're gonna bust him down and and we're going to find him and put him on probation. I think that that would probably be the beginning of the end for for the current problems that we have in big medicine and big Pharma. I love a man think I think your

heart is in the right spot man. You're cool as dude for sure. I'll say that on the airplane. What just kind of recap, what happened with the whole team? No situation for him, but they did not know, or just kind of get like them, a brief overview of them. So notice from Australia, right? In fact, he's from South Africa, or maybe Vice verse. I think noakes is from South Africa, I can never remember.

But basically, he was a, he was a surgeon and he got paid to chop off legs, that were, you know, diabetics who had terrible. Diabetes control and he got paid to do surgery on these people. And basically, he was saying, hey, you know, if you'll just stop eating all the carbs, your diabetes will get better and then you can probably save your leg and a new nutritionist. Reported him and said, he's doesn't have any kind of credentials to be giving

nutrition advice. He just needs to chop off legs. And so this doctor was literally trying to save patients Limbs. And when a patient loses, a limb like, Like that to surgery like their their their chance of being dead. Within five years is like 80%, it's terrible. Like when that that is the literally the beginning of the end for a diabetic patient when they lose a toe or lose a leg.

I mean that you just they don't live for much longer because that just sets into motion a Cascade of medical events that you just don't recover from. Plus their diabetes is so awfully controlled that they lost part of their body because of the terrible control of their diabetes. And so this guy was actually trying to say You know, I don't want to cut your leg off even though that's my job.

I'm gonna you know, I'm an orthopedic surgeon, I want you to eat better, I want you to stop eating all these carbs and then your blood sugar will come down and then you can maybe keep your leg and he got in trouble for that. And, you know, we can just talk about this on this podcast and go. What the hell? Are you kidding? That really happened?

Yep, that really happened and it took him years to fight this and he won and then his Medical Board of Appealed and he had to fight it again and then he won again. And so now I think they're probably going to leave him alone, but I mean it's cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars

to fight this. And if other people like us hadn't jumped on board and you know, chipped him a five or ten every now and then to kind of help him, he would have been bankrupt and he would have lost because he couldn't, he couldn't afford his attorney to fight. And so, that's kind of what doctors are up against. We're up against this huge Behemoth, that if it decides to come down on us, we're going to

get crushed. That's Just how it's going to be. And so that makes most doctors afraid to fight but noakes infect key. And then recently Shaun Baker, the orthopedic surgeon. The US, he kind of had a similar deal where he wasn't chopping off enough legs to keep everybody happy and kind of got in trouble there for me. And so that that really happens in modern medicine in a lot of people don't hear that backstory and they don't understand what's going on.

But this guy was trying to save people's limbs by just telling them to eat better and got in trouble for it. And and you know his medical career has been on hold for I don't know 5 or 7 years. However, long he's been fighting it and could have been over. If he hadn't won his medical career could have been over if he had lost because he was trying to save. People's feet and legs and toes. And that's the true story and that happens every day in

medicine. And that's what doctors are afraid of. They don't want to be that guy. They don't want to be the guy that gets, you know, is made the example of for everybody else. And so they just hunker down and they take it and they do what they got to do to get by. And it's not it's not something to be proud of, it's not a pretty thing and I'm just, I'm not cut out of that cloth, I can't do that. I've got to do what I think is right though, the heavens may fall is the quote is right.

You get them, you don't throw away, man. I mean it's it's because of people like you and others that this is even making waves in the positive direction, the first place, man. So I appreciate you standing out against the, you know, the, the Norms. Well, it's not always fun but I think it's always worthwhile what what made you even get into space in the first place? But as far as like, Kela, what was the transition into doing

that? Like what, what research or evidence that you found compelled you to kind of go that direction the first place? Well, after I just started my Tickle practice in my early to mid 30s. I was very busy, working building the practice, and I started getting fat. And so, you know, like I said earlier, I'm from the, I'm from the kind of place where you put out or get out. You don't talk talk the talk, you walk the walk, right? That's how I was raised.

And so I could not spend 40 years being the fat doctor walking into rooms with patients and how you need to lose some weight. And then looking at me like, dude, your water is about to break. What do? Talking about, right? I can be that guy. I had to lead, by example, because that's just how I do it. And so, I'm like, well, I got to fix this. And so, I tried everything that I've been telling my patients, right? For the first three years of my practice, I was an idiot.

I told people to eat the American diabetic Association diet, eat, lots of whole grains, joined Weight, Watchers, join the gym, you'll lose weight that way. And and literally believe that every one of my patients was non-compliant because they all kept Getting fatter and sicker and I thought well they're just not doing, I'm telling you, right? Turns out when I started doing what I was telling them to do because I was starting to get fat. I was I was pushing 300 pounds

at one point. Is it didn't work for me and so I could accuse them of being non-compliant because I don't live in their skin, right. But I couldn't accuse myself of being non-compliant because I live with me. I know what I did. I know that I the heck out of some whole grains and I cut out all saturated fat, and was eating skinless, chicken breast and drinking skim milk all the time. And was gaining weight by the week and so I'm like, what the hell man?

You really this doesn't work. No wonder everybody's getting fatter and sicker. And so that's when I started looking kind of outside the box so to speak. Well I got to figure out, I can't be a fat doctor. I don't care what I have to do, I got to fix this and so I found a book by Robert Adkins the Atkins diet Revolution. I found a book by Mark Sisson the Primal blueprint and I found a book by Loren cordain. The Paleo Oh, diet.

And so I read all three of those and I was like, wow, that's exactly backwards from everything I've ever been taught, you know, in med school about nutrition which wasn't much to start with. I thought. Well, I'll give that a shot. See what that does. And so immediately, my markers of inflammation, and diabetes, started to go down. I started to lose weight.

I started to feel better. And so, I just kept researching and basically it when you do that, It's just a natural progression from Adkins to paleo to Primal to ancestral Taquito. That that's just where it that could. Because kiito's the answer in my opinion, that is the way human beings are supposed to eat. And so when you start down that road and some people get the Quito from the vegan root.

That's why I want everybody to be always respectful to the vegans because they're just look at their just searching. Just like we are. They know that the standard American diet, stupid, and they're right about that. It is But they didn't come at it from the Paleo, they came at it from the vegan, but I just saw two new patients today who come to see me from across the state over from Chattanooga and they were vegans for seven or eight years.

Lost a bunch of weight on vegan and but this, they were tired all the time. They didn't feel good, their skin was terrible. So they kept looking at kept searching and they found oh we can do vegetarian keto, so they did that for a while. They added some eggs at it's a fish. And now they're full-blown keto. They feel great. He's he he didn't have seizures anymore. Her EMS is in remission, all because they're on keto, but they came from the vegan path.

And so, we're all looking, because we're not getting any answers from the doctors and the nutritionist, and the dietitians that make any sense, you know, when you go to the hospital, because your diabetes is uncontrolled, and they give you oatmeal and orange juice for breakfast. They obviously don't know what the hell they're doing. I mean, that's pretty clear, right? And so then you start looking and so I don't blame people for thinking will vegans all-natural, right?

It makes sense. Let's try it. So I think we're all on that Journey, looking for the perfect diet, for us and, looking for the perfect Lifestyle, the should I work out every day? Should I nod? You know, all that stuff. That's, I think it's good that people are looking searching and reading and watching YouTube videos, that's way better than people just blindly taking the advice of their doctor and their Issues and getting fatter and sicker. I totally agree men.

Like taking taking your health into your own hands? Yes. I mean, nobody's going to care as much about your health to you are. I mean, nobody should. Anyway, that's right. Yeah. I mean you know, if you take the advice of an ignorant doctor, like I used to be back in 2003. If you took my ignorant advice back then and you became a type 2 diabetic in a worse diabetic, and then I put you on insulin and you wound up losing a leg and having kidney failure.

You're screwed, and you're screwed because you blindly took my advice and I thought I was right? I mean, I was, I was preaching, what all the medical journals and everything I'd learned in med school. I was preaching all that stuff, but I was wrong and so trust your doctor. Love your doctor, your doctor is a learning Health partner but he is not your medical daddy. He's not the boss. If that's the way your doctor wants to run the relationship. That's probably not healthy for

you in the long term. You want to talk to, you can talk to and say, hey, I saw this on the internet. Hey, what do you think about this? And if a doctor doesn't know he's to say, I don't know. Let me. I'll Google it tonight. We'll talk about it next time. That's the sign of a good doctor, but if your doctor's like nylon hearing that crap, shut up, here's a prescription. I'll see you in six months. That's, that's there's nothing therapeutic about that. There's nothing healing about that.

There's nothing healthy about that. That's an unhealthy relationship and you should probably look for a new doctor, right? I totally agree, man. Totally agree. What you In that there wasn't much learned in medical school from a nutritional standpoint. What is the the protocol for? Like, what is that curriculum look like for doctors? I think it's different at different medical schools. Some medical schools. I don't think touch on nutrition at all.

At least, that's what I've heard at the University of Tennessee, Health Science Center in Memphis. That's where I went to med school. We had a half of a semester. So in one semester is time half of that semester for like 2 hours a week was the Behavioral Science. And then the other half of the semester, it was nutrition. And so we had a paperback book, that was probably a hundred and seventy five pages.

And we have the notes we took in class and then that half semesters and it wasn't even like every day of the week. It was maybe every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour. We had nutrition for half a semester and that was literally the entirety of my nutrition education at UT medical school. And I think that's the way it is that most State medical schools. Get a, you get almost like a hat tip to nutrition. Like, oh, yeah. And then there's nutrition. You know? And so I could sum up

everything. I was taught in med school about nutrition eat, lots of whole grains eat very low, saturated fat, and Jog, that that's literally everything we were taught about nutrition in medical school. And the only time kito's ever even mentioned in medical school, pretty much is, is when the time I keep ketoacidosis, right, right? And that's why so many doctors and other health care providers are afraid of it because they've never Heard of therapeutic ketosis in like the therapeutic.

Ketogenic diet that's been used since the 1920s for seizure patients. The average doctors never heard of that therapy. I hadn't heard of it until a few years ago. When I really started researching keto, I was like, oh cool. Look at this. They've been doing this since the 1920s procedures. I didn't know that most dogs have no idea when you say he do then the the end of that is acidosis ketoacidosis. That's all they think about.

Because type type 1 diabetics. If their blood sugar is very high and they don't have enough insulin, they can get this very serious, complication of type 1, diabetes called ketoacidosis and that will wind you up in the Intensive Care Unit on all kinds of drips and maybe even in a coma for a few days and all doctors in our training, we took care of young people and old

people as part of our training. We've seen a nun newly diagnosed type 1 diabetic, come in with a blood sugar of 800 and go to the the Intensive Care Unit for three or four days in ketoacidosis and it's a real thing. But unless you have blood sugar far above 200 and almost no insulin your body, it's impossible to have ketoacidosis. It's literally impossible like you can't eat enough bacon to make yourself how ketoacidosis it just doesn't work that way.

It's that's not how it works. But the average doctors never heard of any of the stuff we're talking about. So all they hear is Quito and they think, well, that can't be good. Everything I've ever heard with the prefix, keto was always bad. So it must be bad. That makes sense. Feel like, if my daughter brought home this, this guy, and she said, Hey Dad, I'm here's my new boyfriend. His name is Ted and I Be like what the hell get him out of here.

And and so I ran the guy run the guy off, right? And she's like, what the hell? Dad. Why'd you do that? I'm like well, his name is Ted like Ted Bundy. Right? I don't want you dating a guy like that and so just because his name is Ted, he must be a serial killer. That's exactly the logic that doctors use when they hear the prefix Quito and think immediately old ketoacidosis. There's no difference in those two stories. Those are that's the same story, but just the names change.

Wow, man. At it, it's crazy like that. Do you see? You said that, you don't see very many doctors in this, current day and age leveraging. The new research coming out like they it's kind of an afterthought. Oh no. But it because the new research coming out flies directly in the face of all the old research and all the old research is what we were all trained under, right? And so many doctors look up to the professor's, that train them.

Almost as father figures. I mean, we really have that that utmost respect and reverence for them, right? Because we were just young punks and they taught us to be doctors And so it's really hard. It's almost like finding out that your dad was some terrible thing. And you thought he was always a great guy and you loved him and then you find out. No, he was actually worthless everything he thought you was crap and you're like, oh okay,

that's great. And so it actually it's actually a deeply psychological thing to go through this process of going. Wow. Everything I was taught about nutrition, was just crap, it was, it's ignorant, none of its right wow and every all of those Those professors who I looked up to and just you know almost worship. They believe that crap and they probably still do if they're still alive. And so I'm about to go against everybody who taught me and everything. I was taught in order to do what

I think is right. And so it's it you can you can imagine that's kind of an uncomfortable place and a lot of doctors don't like to be uncomfortable and so it just happened but that's the problem is all this new research is coming out that shows you know showing that that saturated fats, good for you. Not bad. That that whole grains are probably not good for most people. I mean, all that is exactly backwards. Everything we were taught and it's really hard for a lot of doctors to admit.

They were wrong and a lot of them still exist, is it just give me two generations for everything to kind of cycle through and kind of like cleaning the pallet basically.

Yeah and that's you know, that's kind of the way, it's always been but I don't think it's going to be that way this time Robert because I think we've got the internet now, if we were back in the 1970s, we would literally have to To wait for all the old guys to either retire or die for the new ideas to take hold, that's the way it's always been in academic medicine and everything else, economics and everything you could the old guys had, you know, their theories have become

popular. That's why he's the chairman of the department now. You had to wait for him to retire or for him to die before a new idea could have any hope of succeeding but I think that we've got to work around now. I don't think we have to wait those two generations because we got the internet. And we got people like you, and people like me everyday, speaking out and waking people

up and raising awareness. And so I think that we're going to really shorten the time it takes for The Paradigm to ship and I think that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to shift the Paradigm move way of thinking and that's a that's hard for people to say, okay, everything I thought I knew was wrong. So I now I got to learn all this new stuff, that's not comfortable for most people,

they don't want to do that. But I think now that we've done internet and everybody can see, I mean you can read you can watch a couple of podcasts by been bickman today. Fellman and listen to a podcast by keto Savage and Jimmy Moore and it doesn't take many hours of you listening and reading and watching to your life, wait a minute, wait a minute.

And now you know and then when you go back to your doctor, when you start talking about this stuff, you got to make him very uncomfortable and the first person that goes to him and says that he's just going to think they're Kook, right? But what about the tenth guy that comes in talking about keto? He's going to be like, what is there? Some kind of cult in town? What is this? Keto crap, right? But what is he going to do when the hundred person comes in

saying doc, I want to do keto. I don't want to take the stat many more at some point at some number whether it's ten patients, 50 patients, 500 patients, that doctors going to say what the hell and he's going to go home and he's going to Google Quito and he's going to start reading and he's going to watch a podcast listener. Podcast and watch a YouTube video, then he's going to know and then you just change the way he practices medicine for the rest of his career.

That's what I predict is going to happen with this go-round. I don't think it's going to take two generations for all the old guys to die off before the new idea wins, because I think we've got all kinds of shortcuts. Now with the internet that we can educate patients and we can educate doctors as well. Start now some as that's what I'm banking off you two, Tell me about panda. Massage meat, man? That's, that's a little saying that I came up with mid-speech.

I think maybe the first time I said it was on the cruise. And so, you know, you see a lot in the Paleo keto space like, oh, you want to eat the best quality meat, you can find you want, organic grass-fed grass-finished, you know, and you know how it is. You live in Arkansas and I'm in Tennessee. I'm Founded by poor people. And you know, they're lucky, if they're not the ones, eating the grass, much less buying grass-fed, grass-finished beef.

And so, I was kind of trying to make fun of that concept, you know? And so I just said something like, you know, if you can't afford grass-fed, grass-finished Panda, massage beef, that was raised in the mountains that, you know, the Himalayan Mountains, that's okay. You can still do Quito, and in one of my YouTube videos I say you can do keto on hot dogs and mustard if that's all you can afford. Because that's still a thousand times better than that family-sized bag of cheetah.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think that the highest quality grain-fed or grain-based, you know, meal is still worse than the lowest quality, keto meal exactly. Right. Exactly, right. And that's what I'm trying to get everybody to understand. If you can't afford that stuff from Sprouts or whole Mart a Whole Foods, it's okay. You don't have to, you don't have to, you know, mortgage one of the children in order to go to Whole Foods and buy some grass-finished beef.

If you don't have to do that, you can buy just regular beef at China Mark and it's going to that's still a thousand times better than eating that whole grain, whatever pasta. Yeah absolutely man. Absolutely. I'm going to come and see I've been think about this. I'm going to come Tennessee. I'm gonna I'm gonna meet up with you. I wanna get on my blood panel done through you man I'm doing this six thousand calorie experiment right now I'm gonna get all my markers.

Oh yeah you know to you if I can't absolutely man coming will check all your labs and then you'll have a good Baseline at this age. And so you're eating 6,000 calories a day. And so I am you're probably certainly. He can you gaining three pounds of week because that the calories in calories out model says you should be gaining about two or three pounds a week. Is that what you're doing? I'm actually kind of leveled out like that 185. I've been waiting five for a

while now. Well, that's impossible because you're eating more calories than you're burning. Yeah, that's impossible. That's that's impossible. Probably Sykes. Yeah. I mean I love I love I love doing things that ask that. People tell me you're impossible, the same. I'm the same way I love doing the impossible and so obviously

I'm being sarcastic. The the calories in calories out model is one of those old things that the Old Guard still believe in. They think if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight that it's the first law of thermodynamics and that's ridiculous. The first law of thermodynamics is definitely a law. You cannot break that law, but they're misinterpreting their Miss applying the law to the human body because the human body is not a campfire. A house fire.

We don't we don't we don't digest our food by burning it up in a little of it. We biochemically digest our food with chemicals, and with with chemical reactions, and enzymes and so that has nothing to do with the first law of thermodynamics ultimately. We do honor the first law but

not the way. Most people think, the way they try to apply that law to the human digestive system is very sophomoric, and it doesn't make sense when you think about the big picture, ER, but so many people think all you just have to eat more calories than you burn and you'll gain weight. That's it, the end, but you're obviously proven that not to be true on a daily basis. Yeah, it really sick of seeing

things dealt in absolutes, man. No matter whether it's, you know, training protocol and nutrition protocol, anything dealt in absolutes. It's just a very narrow-minded view of think maybe like Cal matter. Yes. But so the hormones genetics. You know, environmental factors like everything matters. Like your body. It's a symbiotic unit and everything has an impact. Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Very cool. What I know you and I get like 10. What's the next thing that you're excited about my like what are you working on right now that it excites you. Well son what's on the Forefront? I've got a ton of YouTube videos that I'm in the process of making and I'd like to put out two new ones a day but they tell me the algorithm doesn't like that. So I'm trying to I'm trying to put up through new YouTube videos a week and I just signed a two-book deal with victreebel publishing.

They're going to publish a second edition updated of Lies. My doctor Told me and it's going to have three or four extra chapters and all kinds of extra bells and whistles that it didn't have the first time because I self-published it and then I'm working on a second book called hacking type 2 diabetes with the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting.

And so basically if I have my way about it we're going to break the back of the diabetic epidemic that we're currently suffering from in the u.s. you know right now over half the u.s. population either has diabetes. He's or pre-diabetes. Like, that's the new normal is to be a diabetic or pre-diabetic. Did you know, insane? Man. I go look at some of their friends.

Yeah. I think you said that on the cruise and it just blew my mind, like, the fact that the majority of the population is either diabetic, overweight or divorced, I mean, those three statistics just blow my mind, right? Yeah. And so maybe can understand the divorce thing but not the pre-diabetes thing. I mean we know how to fix that and it doesn't Involve a Prescription Pad. It doesn't involve an injection. It doesn't involve appeal.

It involves fixing your diet and so that's what the second book is going to be about. So I'm really gearing up, I'm going to be super busy working working on, redoing the first book and then getting the second book out there, to try to break the back of this diabetes epidemic that we have in the western world because I'm sick of I'm sick of 12 year, old children, having type 2 diabetes, and I'm sick of people having their legs come and I'm sick of people have being

nonviolent. Think of that. Yeah, man. I totally agree. You said one thing on the cruise that really stood out like you were talking about the trends and kind of the norms and what is, the current Norm in our society and you said your entire goal as a doctor. It's just see that Trend, you know, move down. Right. I haven't downward tick. Absolutely such a like men would be. I mean, yeah. I mean, how fulfilling could that be like as a doctor to have

an impact on that? I mean, that's can't put a price on them. Exactly. But isn't that my job, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. Very impressive that that's my goal, that should be every doctor's goal. It's weird that it's not every doctor's goal to be to be breaking the back of the diabetes epidemic. Curve like every doctor that should be all they think about and study about because we are now sicker than we have ever been in our existence on this planet.

And if you're any kind of a doctor that ought to piss you off and you ought to be looking for a way to fix that and that's what I'm doing. You know? It's pretty cool man. I really respect. Where you going to matter because most doctors at my dad's Professor, he's, he's a doctor of science is not a medical doctor, but a lot of, you know, doctors they think very old school with regards to media and, you know, influencing and for me, you know, I'm not a doctor.

I would say I'm a social-media influencer influencer marketing, business owner, you know, nutrition bodybuilder. So like for me doing YouTube and like, seeing the impact that that's made, like the podcast needs to get my whatnot, but to

see you as a doctor. Doctor Who's come up, you know, through the traditional thought process and just totally, you know, smacking out in the face and turn your back to it and then doing what you're doing now with like the media and impacting people on a much broader scale. Like I really, really respect that man like more than you realize. Well, I appreciate that very much and I I can promise you that I'll never stop regardless of what gets in my way. I don't know, man.

You got the right look for sure for sure. Well, dr. Ken Berry, what can people go to find out more about you? Well, you can check out my YouTube channel if you just search. Dr. Barry on YouTube, I think I'll pop up pretty close to the top and then on Facebook, I have a page, I do a lot of work again. I think searching doctor burial, get me and I've got a website in a Twitter and Instagram and all that stuff. If that's your thing I'm on

there too. And then I have the book currently for sale on Amazon. It's a paperback or a Kindle and it's called lies, my doctor told me. And so now you can get the In addition, which will soon be a collector's item because there will be a second edition out soon. In the first conditional be off the market. Awesome, awesome, dr. Maggie man. It's been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate the time and I will be in touch because I ain't

lying, man. I'll come to Tennessee and I'll get that blood panel done and we'll catch up and face to face. Hey, come see me brother, will do it Tennessee style? Yeah buddy, take anybody lightly.

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