Hello, ladies and gents Robert Sykes, keto Savage.com. Today I would get special guest. Stephen Thomas on the line, Stephen is a carnivore coach. He's been at it for quite some time, he's also a trained phlebotomist so we dive deep into blood work and various land panels and what those could possibly mean for your health. But also talk about symptoms and just honestly how to dial in a species appropriate diet to make the most of it. We dive deep into some of the
science on this. So grab a pen, grab some paper, take some notes and see what you can learn. I took a lot from it. I've got no doubt that you will as well. So that further Ado, sit back relax and do a podcast with Steven Thomas. We are live. Steven, how are you sir? I'm very well and really excited to do this. Robert. Yeah, I'm excited to chat with you so we can as we were discussing before hit record a, you know, very little about me. I know very little about you.
One of my clients, I forget which one it was reached out to me and they said that they'd gotten some blood work done by you and kind of had you analyze, their blood work. So I just proved online found your profile, like will shoot, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's been the carnivore space for quite some time. I was going to bring him on the podcast and that is where we Inner self today. Yeah. And and I will reciprocate this because you approach me.
And I'd already heard of you from clients that were singing your Praises. So, I just said, yes, without even checking you out. So I trust my clients. Well, I'm certainly glad to hear. They've been saying good things. So yeah, give me some backstory, man. Like, how long have you been doing carnivore? Right. Okay. Well, if I can give you a bit more back story, after I've told you, it's a three and a half
years. So when I turned 55, I decided to go Carnival because I was doing keto before that, I know your name is Kita Savage. And I did that for a good couple years and low-carb from my 50th birthday, because everything was going south before, that one of the things that have been pointed out, to me on numerous occasions is most People come to low, carb, keto, and Carnival, they've been eating rubbish and they've been doing all the wrong things.
And their health has deteriorated, whereas I was not that story, I'm completely different story because I did everything. Allegedly correct, I followed all the guidelines. I didn't have any fat. I was a non-smoking non-drinking, Semi-Pro soccer player. When I started, I did a bodybuilding tournament. I've won a singles, tennis tournament. Which is not bragging. By the way, is trying to give people a little bit of context here and in my 40s. Sadly this is not video.
I've got a lot of medals for running for Middle distance running. So by the time I was 50, I should have been really fit. I should have been able to see my apps. I shouldn't be pre-diabetic, I shouldn't be getting Tapia. I shouldn't have lower left, quadrant pain, I shouldn't need colonoscopies, I shouldn't have a coronary artery calcium scan of 639. So I knew because I wasn't doing anything. Is that the mainstream cause deleterious to your health.
There must be something that's not quite right? So in at that time, what was your night looking like? What when I was high carb, was yeah. Like the start, it was, it was the classic skim, milk oatmeal in the morning fruit and freshly squeezed orange juice and lean protein. If I did have any meat, it would be, you know, very lean, chicken breasts. Very unoriginal, rice rice cakes, all that, sort of things, protein, shakes, all the, all the things that we allegedly
should, And sorry. If I'm upsetting you because I know you got the key to thing, but, you know, it was, it was healthy ish food in, you know, allegedly. But it wasn't for me. I certainly didn't work for me and in my faulty as I took my personal training certificate. Bit further. I trained an Olympic Athlete was really seriously into it, and I wanted to get into a piece of tea and diabetes as I specialism, which I now have
that and had that front. I'm the specialist practitioner status here in the UK. Okay, and it was doing the diabetes course that I started to realize and I'm going to actually put a little bracket in here or a you know a little section where I'll say it wasn't the course that taught me
carbohydrates are problematic. It was the content of the course that made a light bulb go off in my head because they constantly, you know, we had to learn about all the medications and the, you know, contraindications and what to do. If someone has a problem with their training on these meds, and everything was about car, Hydrates. And I just kept putting my hand up in class and saying, why don't we just cut the carbohydrates?
Is they seem to be problematic, you seem to medicate in relation to carbohydrates all the time. But obviously that's not what the course was about. The course was about being able to talk to an allopathic doctor for them to refer and keep on the medications which is ever enough, that's the rules of the game. So, that's that's I understood that. But I realized for me, I became pre-diabetic. And as you did mention, the
Bloods also qualified. It's a The bottom is so the NHS I could have gone into the NHS hospitals. I went down the private blood work Avenue where the blood would be sent off to a lab have a doctor's comments, and that's how I learn. I was pre-diabetic, which wasn't a surprise because I'd joined the dots basically. And realize that what I was doing was the perfect recipe according to the mainstream media to be really healthy, but actually was not the right recipe.
So I did the local. Sorry, it's a long answer to the guys out there listening but you know it was it was an interesting Journey for me because I tried low carb 50. It was really surprised at how quick the tub Enos around, my waist went a lot of water weight left me and I know that's pretty obvious for most people to understand this way of eating, but other things just cleared up.
I didn't Little Nicky things. I have not had athlete's foot since my 20s and I tried all the acids and duct tape and doing this and doing that. And Urinating on me in the shower, every sort of old wives tale and all the medical stuff, and as soon as I went low carb that cleared up. I had a rash on my face, that would come up in times of stress. People might say, I'm not stressed now, because because of the way he eats but that that rash doesn't come up, the lower left quadrant pain went.
I mean I've not been to the doctors for as long as I can remember. And literally eight years, nine years, something like that. I've not had I'm not a problem at all. No medications, nothing, no painkillers. Nothing at all. And the more I have reduced the carbohydrates. The fitter I've felt training is another thing at age, 57.
And remember, I've done a bodybuilding tournament in my twenties age 57. I gained more muscle in one year that I'd ever gained and that was on Carnivore and the other thing that ties into the blood, sorry, Robert long answer. The other thing, it ties into the Bloods and list I find a stunning To this day was my testosterone went up as soon as I started carnivore within three months, he had gone up 30% with
no artificial, no juicy nothing. Nothing at all other than just eating meat and continuing to work out. So so yeah. Short answer is three and a half years. I can't see myself ever turning back. It's delicious. Its nutritious. It's a really interesting way, I more variety now than I've ever. Eaten in my life. Because when I was doing the high carb stuff, it was literally porridge, we call it here, you call it oatmeal. Every single morning, skim milk honey, you know, fruit freshly
squeezed? Orange juice, always, and I thought I was doing the right thing, low fat, yogurts protein, shakes everything, before I trained, I just feel for it. All, absolutely feel for all. So, when you, when you switch to low carb, you started noticing, you know, pretty significant benefits right off the ban and Then you just progressively took the carbs lower and lower and lower.
Because I would assume that there in the beginning you weren't really pursuing a state of ketosis necessarily just drop the carbs down pretty low. So we're you doing low-carbon then that progressed to Quito and then from there straight up carnivore. Yeah yeah and I think that's a journey. A lot of people do and strangely enough in a parallel parallel universe watching dr. Ken Berry all of his changes and it wasn't because of him.
I've only realized now in hindsight, I remember watching him and laughing at one of his videos because he was continually saying, Eat Your Greens. Eat Your Greens and I was at the point where I think and I don't think that's right. Actually I don't think I need to eat my greens and then he started to go carnivore. So when I was Ingram with it. So it was it was never about ketosis. It still?
Isn't I understand why? People get hung up on being in ketosis but you don't have to be in ketosis to burn fat, you just have to have low insulin, which is one of the things that happens. You get ketosis sometimes when you're in a low insulin state, but I'm not knocking ketosis. Certainly therapeutic. Ketosis has a huge part to play in some major developments in. One's health or improvements, I should say. So that was never never it for me. I did do it for things on my
YouTube channel. You know? I did some experiments did some live experiments in the steak and butter gang last year where I was doing my glucose and my ketones. But that actually just pretty much nailed that you don't have to be in ketosis to lose weight because I wasn't in ketosis. Very much. Yeah I deliberately put on weight for the experiment but over the three months where I lost 27, Pounds.
I'm not you know I wasn't I'd be so I put that on deliberately then took it off just to prove that you don't have to be in ketosis and you don't have to fast to lose that amount of weight. As long as you're looking at what you are eating, you should be, you should be back to the body composition that you want to be which yeah, which happened. No, I totally agree.
I feel like people definitely get hung up on what their Ketone readings are on a meter and I It's a carnivore like a subset of Quito. That's I mean, there's kind of some new ones there because if you're not registering ketones and technically you're not in ketosis but if you feel great on Carnivore, you're obviously deriving that energy from fat and ketones and not carbs and glucose maybe gluconeogenesis to an extent, but I feel like if you are thriving on Carnivore,
you are certainly fat adapted. Yes, and I say I would say, yeah, it's a subset of the ketogenic diet because there's many different forms of the ketogenic diet in the end. It's to me, it's actually even more simple than that, Robert, it's just about keeping your insulin low.
Yeah, one of my medical textbooks, which I always celebrate people who want to re decent physiology is the guyton's medical physiology textbook and I actually use that with PT clients for personal training clients and when Come in and say, I want to exercise to lose weight and I say Warhol, let's talk about nutrition first, and they don't want to, I say to them. Look my livelihood. Is you working out and I might now show you a book that talks you out of working out. Okay.
So I'm thinking of you, not me, not my pocket, not my bank account and I show them a couple of pages from there which talks about how low levels of insulin enhance fat metabolism and also the flip of that obviously. We that in high levels of insulin that metabolism is Switched Off, and I say, if you want to lose weight, that's the first thing you need to look at is you nutrition? And I know it's call me, you know, abs are made in the kitchen.
Absolutely true. I never take anybody on to exercise who wants to do weight loss, the exercise for weight loss. Without talking about the nutrition. Doesn't mean, I Falls carnivore on them, but I do definitely say to them. You do need to think about your health, what you're eating and your longevity. And then we can talk about body composition because I'm not going to have you looking slightly better. But going out and eating all the wrong Foods because it's not sustainable.
There's a big possibility that once you stop the working out, if it's not a doesn't become a habit, which is a huge huge part of what I tried to get into is you replace bad habits, good habits. So, it's not even about willpower or or getting yourself off the couch. It's because you like doing it. You like you like, eating this
way? So you do it, you're like training this way so you do it. You don't feel like it's forced and he gets just a it's nice to see the penny drop and people do listen, I don't really get much pushback when I say about the nutrition doesn't mean everyone goes carnivore but they certainly go low carb and then it's that rabbit hole that possibly with with your neighbors keto Savage. I'm assuming a lot of your listeners know. This Rabbit Hole, you start to reduce carbs and you think,
well, let's just try. A bit of Kita. Let's try that. See what happens and then you realize that there's certain carbohydrates may be a tripping you up and take them out. So yeah, it's been great. There's definitely like you having competed in bodybuilding yourself on the past and me as well. Like there's it's obvious that people can reach a great composition physically with a variety of dance, like a lot of these competitors that are, you know, 45 percent body fat on
stage. Look, Amazing. But as you can attest, they feel horrendous. They have no energy, their hormones are tank, their blood markers are, you know, catastrophic like they're not the picture of Health by any means. So I think being able to achieve the compositional desired look that you want. But doing so through a well formulated diet that is sustainable and does check on the boxes from a health standpoint. So it certainly be the priority Yeah, absolutely.
And I would say the light is start been since since my 20s was in the ketogenic parts of my life. But when I look at the photographs of myself, I don't feel I look particularly healthy. That's also when I was running at, you know, pretty good pace and doing middle distance, and half marathons, those sort of things. But I look at my face and I think, wow, people are right, I was gaunt, you know, I wasn't healthy. I mean, I'm looking at your face
on this recording here. You know, I don't know how old you up, but you look very healthy. I feel like 58. You know, if people want to check me out my YouTube channel, I feel, I don't look 58. Yeah, I don't feel 58. And I think how you aesthetically look is secondary. I understand why people want it. I want it to you. Don't do a bodybuilding show. If you're not interested in trying to get your physique to
look pretty awesome. But, you know, if I could have Have if I could go back in time now in and do a back to the future. So I think I would be screaming at my 20 year, old self change. How you eat because actually, everything's going to be better for you in your future. Yes, you look great. And I know it's hard for you to believe me but it will catch up on you and I'm going to just change how you eat. But I can remember, actually, flicking through a magazine. You might have heard of it
muscle and fitness. I don't know if it's still around and flicking through and seeing Sonny Liston or a couple of the body builders of Era. I am showing my age now. Shawn Ray they were talking about high-fat diets and I can remember dismissing it as a possibility. Completely without even reading the article thinking that I can remember just sort of well that's not going to work.
Yeah, so it was obviously around at some point through my 20s and I think that was when acting sort of started, but at that just totally just went over my forehead. You know, I didn't notice it and didn't really take it into consideration as a Way of eating. Well, let's have an insulin for a because I like your definition being you're keeping that the primary goal to be keeping
insulin low. And it's funny because like in the bodybuilding space that we're talking about here, there are certain Pro bodybuilders that will use exotic has insulin as a growth factor to try and, you know, put on more lean tissue because it is a growth agent for sure. Yes. But it can be very dangerous. Like many of them have died trying to increase their insulin
to Super physiological. In a very unhealthy manner when it comes to instant, like a body, obviously excretes insulin to shut up glucose into the cell and it's a normal physiological response and some people in the mixed dieting background. You know flexible dieters things of that nature, they argue that insulin is totally fine, there should be no reason to try and keep it down regulated as long as it's within a healthy range. Do you feel like there is benefit for healthy individuals
to still strive to keep that? Do you know shuttle down as much as possible? Well, I think it's more about the appropriate level of insulin. So you, if you let your body regulate everything and you don't put things into your body, that requires a disproportionate and rapid response, you should be okay. So if you I agree, obviously insulin is a growth hormone, but it's not something that you want to be taking. If you don't know, if you look at first, let's go to the real
basic. So in 1922 before insulin was discovered Those that had type 1, diabetes, however, many calories, and that's another thing we can talk about. If you like, let's talk about the amount of food, whatever amount of food, those type 1 diabetics, 8, they would waste away, and then we discovered insulin, which was fantastic. Because then we realized that there was insulin that were shuttling, like you say, there's the energy into the cells and
stopping people wasting away. So then you go into the like, the 50s and the 60s, and there's the big increase in Sugar refined. Traits, you know and and then the 80's 90's when we get into other stuff. What's happening is the biphasic response to the pancreas is just not evolving as quickly as the diet.
So when people are things that are food-like substances or Coca-Cola which is 99 teaspoons of sugar which is 9 times as much sugar as you need in your bloodstream at any one time you need about a teaspoon in five and a half liters of blood. What's going to happen is the insulin production Going to be ramped up, its going to be a bit disproportionate because that's a toxic level calling to the body.
And therefore, you get the spike of insulin, which will bring down the blood sugar and then you get the trough, which is the infamous of had breakfast. I had my sort of sugary fruit juice or whatever you had. I had my oatmeal by 11:00 in the morning. I'm starving. And I need to eat again because what's happened is the insolence, done? Its job a bit to efficiently and therefore You have that low blood sugar feeling?
Yeah so it's more a is more about sort of a modulated reasonable amount of insulin to keep your blood sugar at that, that level of about a teaspoon in five and a half liters of blood. So so that's that. So, to try and answer your question, if you then decide to use the, you know, the anabolic side of it by adjusting injecting insulin. If you're a bodybuilder, you are Safely training, pushing your body.
Having a lot of protein. Most bodybuilders do eat a pretty good diet but you're still biohacking in the wrong way. You're looking at the wrong thing, you should be looking at your own body's regulation of instinct rather than artificially raising it and I know people get good results aesthetically but like you say some people die because it's it is not a thing that you should be playing with and there's there is more to blood sugar
regulation than insulin. This is the other thing when people to about Diabetes don't talk about it in enough depth. If you in introduce blood glucose directly into the vein, you won't get the same insulin response. He certainly won't get such a big insulin response as if you eat something that has contains the same amount of glucose because in Cretin hormones, which are sort of on the brush will order of the small intestine which talk to the pancreas. They really help to regulate the
amount of insulin you need. So your your that I mean, that's been proven, that's not controversial. Tool. That's in clinical studies. We know that the brush border and increase in creating hormones, make a huge difference to the regulation of blood sugar because it's a little bit nuanced, fits very difficult for the big influences to talk about it.
I think they think people will switch off, but definitely, there's a big difference between eating and glucose going through the digestive system than there is through sort of injecting anything. So once you start to Inject with inside with insulin, what's going to happen? There is you're going to get this dish report, disproportionate amount of energy going into the cells. I mean, I've never never answered this question before.
So I'm going through in my mind now but it is disproportionate to your going to have some dysregulation going on because you still get feedback from the cells to say, well, you know, we're sorry to be Layman's about this, but the cells will give you feedback. I mean, this is, this is when you get into the exercise physiology and you start to look at the glute for translocating, from the cytoplasm to the to the
membrane. There is a huge amount of signaling and response to what you're doing all the time within the cell and obviously outside of the cell. So, once you start to change the hormone of signaling artificially to me, that that that's just going to be a mess
in the future. Yeah, I understand it as a bio hacking and I totally get why people do it because you know, the one percent difference that gets On the podium I understand you know in the state's, no pun intended, a high but in the end I'm going to go back to health. You see? I still feel that that health is the bill one end or whether everything if you eat the appropriate way and train the appropriate way your body will respond.
So I was really lucky because when I trained and I just a boy from Gravesend who happen to be in a gym that was full of really very good. Oil or semi professional bodybuilders. It was just pure luck. It was in a sort of back alley, alley place, you know, behind a shop and my training partner who I didn't know it was a big week went on to be a mister Natural England, you know.
So I was training with all the right people and my training partner was 100% natural, very clean when you know, to the point of being pretty boring with his diet and he was cut all year round, whose massive really strong Very healthy. And we because we had guys there that were juicing and and they were bigger, they were bigger, but they were injured a lot. They, you know, started to the longer.
We went to the gym, the more we realize that that it wasn't the answer and it's really tempting to start to to look at artificial ways of boosting your performance. Totally get that but you know it's never been for me but I certainly you know what? I'm Doing some of the Bloods, you know, of bodybuilders come in, and they're a bit sheepish, it first and they say it. My testosterone readings might be a little bit high. And I'm like, yes, okay.
I get what you're saying and we can make the note of that. It's not a big problem so then it goes off to the lab and you will get doctors comments so it's not accepted but it's it's understood that this does happen, we need to factor in so sorry Robert has a very long answer, I hope actually answered the question yet. It's really interesting. So got my mind working. But yeah.
So keeping insulin to an appropriate level I think is the is this the key to to everything but we know high levels of insulin will shut off fat metabolism. Now if your lean body builder, obviously that's not a big issue because you haven't got sub containers fat that you want to burn. So shutting it off, doesn't matter. Does it because you're lean.
So you will get Get all of the anabolic effects and not have to worry about the fat burning, but I think if you're trying to cut, you know, the obviously that's gonna be a problem. Yeah, I would think that, you know, appropriate levels of insulin secretion if you were to compare, you know what, the average insulin level is now to the standard demographic of people versus what it was 500 years ago before all of the sugar processed foods came to the market.
I mean, I would imagine that we are taxing. In our systems, much more extensively. Now with just the sheer amount of carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates, coming in. And if you were to rewind the clock 500 years, we would never really be at that consumption of carbohydrates. I mean, from a physiological standpoint, I can't imagine that it makes sense for anybody to
need that many carbohydrates. I'm you've got people that are not active at all walking around a consuming 500 + grams of carbohydrates a day and Knots burning those off which is just going to wreak havoc Downstream. Yes, the non-essential. I mean a lot of the ways of talking about carbohydrates is that you need carbohydrates to body build. But that is only true in the fact that we make the carbohydrate, we need from non carbohydrates, substrate. So the liver will do it demand-driven.
You do not need to ingest them, but I also would say people that use a blood glucose monitor for instance, and I do do this in a couple of videos. Leo's.
Actually I show from the blood that we have historical data of certain patients where you look at their bloods and it's we're lucky to have it from Back to the 1970s and you look at their fasting insulin and you look at their blood glucose and what you can establish is that among this cohort that in the 1970s 80's 90's their blood glucose was average, you know is it was within range and they were probably thinking this is hunky-dory but in the Ground. Their fasting insulin was
shooting up so you could have predicted that they were going to become diabetic. If if at the point of every single time they did a blood glucose monitor reading, they also did a fasted insulin or an insulin reading. We could have seen and said to those people. Yeah, you think you're okay because you're looking at your blood glucose, but actually, when we look at your levels of insulin they are just going through the roof.
So at some point and it's in, it's shown in the The graph quite you know, I'm quite proud of the growth of produced because it's like an animation is there's a Tipping Point where that insulin production just can't keep up anymore and it starts to drop. And it's at that point that the blood glucose management goes out of the window. And that's at the point where most people are diagnosed as a wall, you've got a diabetic problem.
But actually that was 20 years in the making that's not rocket science. I think that's pretty much. Now everybody would accept that that's really what's been happening. And you know I get little pushback saying you're demonizing carbs and I said, well I'm not really I'm just talking about what science estriol. There's no way you take the glucose tolerance test for instance and I have clients say no, my doctor said I failed it and I said, well, there's no way
or in nature. You would have had 15 teaspoons of glucose in a drink. Yeah, you haven't failed. It actually your body has come through with shining you know. We're flying colors because it's Same to you.
This is a toxic drink. Don't drink this, please, because it's too much for my pancreas to produce insulin in relation to. So I think everything's very messed up at the moment because the way we look at glucose testing and the way you know I've just done a video about the hba1c reading mean flawed for carnivores and there's pretty good reasons for that and that's a theory I've been talking about for a couple of years and it's nice to see people like been
bickman talking about it now. I'm not saying He didn't think of that independently because again, it's something that if you take a step back and you look at what's happening, just to give your listeners a bit of background to that. Because they've not heard of me before I read, Because I see a
lot of blood. I was also getting a lot of carnivores saying my daily blood glucose readings, they show an actual average every single day, if she's not reflected in my hba1c which has gone up slightly. Why is that? I think this is a worry and of course it isn't a worry because if you Have someone that's hemolytic, which is a, which is a person whose red blood cells, die, too soon. You have to ignore their hba1c
because it's artificially low. So my thinking was, if your red blood cells live longer than the average person, then you're going to have an artificially high hba1c, that makes sense to me. I mean, that's what happened. So yeah, so I was saying, you know, and I've said this publicly quite a bit if your daily blood glucose, which is your actual blood, Comes from your blood that you are measuring every day and you get a, an average or your
continuous. Glucose monitor gives you an average that's better than a calculated. Assumption of your hba1c, which is, which is just an idea in the standard American diet or the standard, Western diet is a good proxy it because probably the red blood cells are dying after whatever period. The lab is using this a calculation normally 90 days. Sometimes, it's And 20 and even that shows as a variation in the calculation.
So I'm assuming that red blood cells are lasting longer in people that eat other species, appropriate diet. And that seems to be borne out by all the rubber readings, because they're fasting. Insulin is good, the faster glucose is good, their daily blood. Glucose is good and yet their hba1c says it isn't, but it makes no sense. So so you have to find a reason. Why is that happening and that and that Was a big thing.
I've been talking about for a couple years now and like I said, I think as a bit more accepted because I'm big person when it comes to symptoms. I don't really believe that the numbers should be the trump card over symptoms. You know, another big one in, the carnival spaces, they tend to have lower folate, but if you're not anemic in, not got bleeding gums. And you've not got issues that are associated with low folate. Is that a problem? You know, and it tends not to be right.
So I think the blood in general, those ranges are normative ranges, they're not optimal ranges. So I think that's another way of thinking about things as well. Is it are you out of range? Yeah. What does that actually mean? Does that mean that there's something wrong or does it mean that you're operating on a different parameter to the rest of the people that have given blood? Because 80 Send people that give blood and their bloods end up in these normative ranges are not.
Well, you know, so we're looking at these ranges from a cohort of people that aren't particularly well. So should we be using those ranges? I mean, they are just a yardstick and I certainly think that you know, if you start having a subset of people that are eating a particular way and their numbers are slightly different, and all of them are doing well and healthy and strong and their blood pressures coming down and their blood glucose is being Managed and pains are go in there.
Arthritis is progressing. They're off their diabetic medications. Well, you've got to, you've got to look at those things rather than the numbers because these people have been the example of fitness and health and and reversing all these conditions. And yet you can have some blood. Say, this doesn't look so good. So I also get into that again, to the like the context of why certain things happen and why
they're different. Carnival obviously things like the blood urea nitrogen because you, you're eating more protein, you will therefore, get more nitrogen. You'll get more urea because of that.
And that's pretty much accepted. Again, if you go online, you won't see many influences talking about it won't see many doctors actually talking about it, but on the nursing websites because they're at the front end, they would always mention high, protein intake will put your blood urea nitrogen up a bit. They don't worry about it. They accept that. That's, that's one of those
things that happens. I mean, obviously, you then look at all the other kidney function, tests and liver tests and things just to make sure there isn't anything, but most of it is explainable with this as light anomaly in. Most people call it the bun but it is the blood urea nitrogen reading, you know, so the brighter fascinating I find, you know, the doctors comments are always really interesting but people don't just want those comments. They want, but what does that actually mean?
What is it? Hba1c, what does what is it that you've has actually been tested? So then you can say, what it's actually the hemoglobin is glycated by glucose and it sticks in your bloodstream for three months and it gives you a rough idea of just how much collocations going on and they're quite happy with that to have explained in some of that layman's terms along with you, like the doctor's comment.
So how much goes how much are you typically see in those Baseline numbers increase by in your Contour page? Patience is at like by three or four basis points. Well, Robert that's a really good question and I'd see so many different readings. I mean, the biggest thing at the moment is reversible things like thyroid conditions, where we see T P0 + TG antibodies, just absolutely plummeting and, and it's only possible really with people that are that have had
Bloods before. They've been carnivore for it to be meaningful. So you got that full data set and you can actually see Trends. But you know, All readings like blood pressure for instance, that pretty much always goes down. Yeah, it's too big a question because there's so many different things that people are interested in living rooms signs across the across the board. I would say, you know, if I have someone that's had three sets of
Bloods done. I'm really struggling to think of anyone that is sing - things I think with the that's but there is a Hot Topic where some people with the TPO antibodies problem with their thyroid, if they supplement with iodine and I'm not saying people should stop, they just need to be aware that sometimes the antibody start to go back up again, which is something I'm trying to research to get to the bottom of why that happens. There might be some very simple.
Simplistic mechanism, why that's happening? And I'm not saying that that's a problem either. It might just be a sort of side effect of taking the iodine and the, the greater production of thyroid hormone just may temporarily flip up the antibodies but yeah, I think I think Bloods are fascinating but I know you wanted know about them but I still go back to sort of symptoms and how good a person feels more than the numbers. They are interesting and they are good.
Good indicators and empirical data is is fantastic to have, but in the end if someone comes in with a photograph of their skin, you know, six months ago falling off which are you know, which is you know, psoriasis or something like that and they got beautiful glowing skin in their blood pressures down. They got energy and they want to train and they can move. And I'm going pains, you know, their numbers are secondary to me because I think. Wow, this is good.
I mean, obviously you want to look at what could possibly go. Wrong. Long-term. But even the long-term carnivores, I've got one, you know, 22 years and got some in there, so a decade and a bit and you know, there's no sign of any issues coming up quite the reverse. I just think some of the longer-term ones seem to just get better and better. I know from my own personal experience it's easier and easier to eat this way and I feel better and better and more
energized and I'm getting older. So allegedly I should bring in a with my pipe and slippers and sitting by the fire and not doing much better. 59, I just feel Unstoppable. Yeah, that's good. That's what you want. You alluded to this earlier with regard to the oral glucose, tolerance test. But I'm assuming one of the Kickbacks that I see, you know, out there quite a bit for long-term, keto diet or a carnivore diet.
Is that you develop insulin resistance and their course, talking about physiological and some resistance not pathological and some resistance or I've heard it. Termed adaptive glucose pairing. Is that of any concern in your mind or no, Not really, again, it's because it's driven by the fact that people say you should be able to tolerate a lot of glucose. If you're going to eat an appropriate diet, you know, why should we tolerate something that's bad for us? If you wouldn't say to an
alcoholic, do you know what? There is still a problem here. Because if we give you a glass of whiskey, every Saturday starts to cause problems, you should be able to cope with that now. So, it's just ridiculous, just ridiculous thinking, I understand it. And it's difficult to see a mechanism where that would be problematic. I agree with because you are. Yeah, I did. I just, yeah, I don't, I don't get the ration out, but you can also have fun with it.
I had a client that was really worried and she said didn't know, my pancreas is not going to produce insulin ever is that?
I mean, you know, I'm, I've read about this and I've seen some influences talking about it. I said, well, if you want to go and eat a chocolate brownie and going to me, Block because you tell me what happens and we had a little bit because she said, I will go through the roof sit, now it will go through the floor because your pancreas will produce a lot of insulin, which you wouldn't believe. Yeah, because it is now so efficient and that's exactly what happened.
So, she had a brownie, chocolate brownie. And normally her blood blood glucose was around 98 sometimes or 90 and went into the low 80s. So, I can't believe that. I really thought it's going to go like 120 130. It said, no, your your pancreas their produce, the insulin possibly more than you would have. Thought because it's had a bit of a rest, you know, I know that's very Layman's, and I don't want people out there
listening think, right? I'm going to go and experiment with all these things, but if you just think about it sensibly, your body should not be trained to accept things that are poisonous to it or toxic or going to be problematic. I want When you look at your factory nerves and you know your sense of smell and taste to things that are sour or potentially off good as they smell bad. Would you want them to not be as good to be dulled down? So you could pick something up and not know that.
That shouldn't be eaten. No, you did. That's ridiculous. You want your body to be able to say? Well, we can't cope with that. We want that. So you don't do it again. I mean, that's how you learn in nature. Nobody tells the animals out there or here's your guidebook to what you can eat and what you can't eat. You know, they they learn they know what they can and can't eat by smelling and obviously I I'm assuming there's some sort of genetic passed down of knowledge as well.
I don't know about that but Why do why do we need to be able to eat too much carbohydrate? What was the point of that? There is no point? Yeah, totally wholeheartedly agree. I feel like I would be remiss if we did not touch on cholesterol as it pertains to blood work and a lot of people start the day and then they just go to this cholesterol Rabbit Hole. They'll oftentimes see it slight elevation and the beginning if they're doing a higher fat
version as well. What's your what's your take on cholesterol? Slightly higher, what typically I mean I'll it's interesting. Like when I started key do with a higher fat approach, all of my cholesterol markers, you know, quote unquote improved, as by the book recommendation Improvement. Some people will see an elevation and LDL and total cholesterol. Some people will see a decline in LDL total cholesterol.
What do you notice in that? Because you do with blood work much, much, more than I do. What do you seen as common Trends? Right. That's a great question, actually. We'll all of them been good. If you look at the nhanes data, think from 1999 to 2014 when you, they looked at 19 individual studies, They concluded that higher LDL seems to be associated with longevity and that is repeatable, time and
time again. So there's a lovely graph but is produced in that study where it shows that if you have lower cholesterol lower LDL cholesterol. At some point, slurring it under And 20 your risk of dying because it was using hard endpoints, went up almost twice as much. So from about 120 up to about 280 audio, your chances of dying were much much reduced to the point where the, the confidence figures. Even implied that there's a slight protective element to the
high LDL. And I think it's the wrong metric to look at anyway because a much more convincing combination is high HDL and lowered triglycerides that seems to be more important. When you look at studies like that, I'm still going to go back to, you know, the health of people and their vitality and how they present is still the top. But they always want to talk about cholesterol because that's you know, it's a lipid panel that many people get and then you obviously get into
lipoprotein. A and B, you know, a Napo lipoproteins. I mean a poe just means attached to, you know, it's if you keep you start with the premise that is wrong. If you start with the premise that high LDL is deleterious to your health, then anything that's attached to a audio is going to come up as a risk, right? So that's why that happens. I'm not saying it is. Pletely. The best advice to ignore everything.
Obviously, getting to particle size, you look at oxidation and glycation of LDL, and, and that being problematic in the formation of foam cells and all that sort of stuff. You can get into it. But even when you look at your with your pattern, a or pattern B, there's still some really predictive things you can do and strangely enough, if you can't afford to have that test, you can pretty much extrapolate from GL and triglycerides. So they seem to be really good
marker or of mortality risk. But also you could if you want to get into the particle size and if you want to get into oxidation, glycation of LDL and what's happening there, you can pretty much see whether your pattern, a or pattern B, depending on your triglycerides HDL. So it's a handy thing, but in the end What you going to do about it? I mean if you if you are getting better, if all of your other health markers are improving. And the only one that's going up.
Is it LDL you have to think? We'll hang on a minute. This is the way everyone's thinking about it wrong and that's what that study shows. Yeah, they are because it seems that higher audio is not problematic. It's just, it's been implicated when it should have been sugar. That was implicated, then you get into sort of what happened with the sugar industry and how they implicated saturated fat rather than sugar being the big problem. But I don't wanna get into also the politics.
And stuff like that, but I just give people the information, they can go and research it if they want. But I do always send them. The studies for LDL on, explain them. If if we do in a zoom call I do a screen share and say you might want to print this off. Have a look at the study, print it off, take it to your doctor and you know present this information and see what happens. Is there a tipping point at
which, you know elevated. Elevated LDL So high that it starts to become a longing for you. Like some people is, you know, north of 500 like, is that a red flag at all? Or is it just all relative? Well, I think when you get into extremes of anything, you've got to, why is that happening? You've got to ask why that's
happening the nhanes data. I think the graph only goes up to 350 and it seemed unlikely from the way the line was curving, which was very minutely that if you went up to 500 is still would not be as problematic as as lower than 100 but I didn't I don't got those figures so I don't know.
I would always say that. I mean if some there is always people that are going to have a different issue when the numbers are way off, but it is it is about context because if you have someone with a high sensitive CRP and the range and I'm going to, I'm just Just going to give you a rough idea, because different labs in different countries, have different ranges but they want that CRP to be sort of 0.5 or less. So if it's too, that's a problem. Well, I've seen a CRP of 80 So,
2 is not a problem, right? But it is to that person because they think, well, it's got to be 0.5. And 2 is is, you know, threefold is quite a big difference. But then when you say yeah, but I've had a client 80 and they did the kind of a diet and it came down to 30, and they were
really happy. It's all about that context of all, you know, what's actually, what do these mean, you know, and it's the same with, you know, when you look up blood sugar's, when you look at 100 and 110 You think well that's you know that's 10% increase, that's pretty bad. But if you look at volume so you're going from a teaspoon of sugar in five and a half liters of blood to a teaspoon and a quarter in five and a half liters of blood doesn't seem
such a big problem. So I think that's we need to get more into sort of, what's the context of this? What's a frame of reference and really get into sort of tangible tangible? Things like the presentation of symptoms, how A feeling, you know, are they dizzy to have chest? Pains is, there is a problems with their toilet habits are their gums bleeding. What do their eyes look like other yellow? The, you know, it's there's so many things are much more
important than the numbers. The numbers are there to then be forensic and get down into what's going on. So you know the liver you can have elevated, ALT because you've trained because it's you know, there's a breakdown processes going on in the liver. So is That is that meaningful, is that good to know what it would be if you had a St. G, g, g g, t, and also a LP. So, the for enzymes and, and the diagnosis of any problems is always those four in ratios to
each other. So if you had high LDL possibly, the question would be. Well, let's have a look at your triglycerides in your HDL and maybe a vldl would be really interesting to look at which is very underestimated. Mated. Because vldl was like your income in food. Really. Where does it go first? What will the cell was thinking of? I personally think that could be used as a test to see if a fat adapted.
So there's many different things you could do to look at this one number and explain it. It makes sense. Yeah, I think yeah. And as you said, I feel like all of this is secondary to just looking at the overall symptom that the individual and how they're feeling performing, what what other markers are able to recognize tangibly?
That should be first. Yeah, I mean I'll flip this rubber because you, you know, I don't know if you get this but I get many clients that come in and say I've got a problem, but I've had all the tests and they say, there's nothing wrong with me and there clearly is you Because they can't be all these people running around with his completely imaginary problems. So how does that fit in? So the presentation is been being ignored. The patient's actual real
experience is being ignored. You know, I've got joint pain, I've got this, I've got that, you know, I've run all the tests and I'm fine and I also but you're not because you're here, you're talking about this, you've got our problems. So we got to we got to find out what the problem is and your problem is not. Showing up yet.
So we look at the symptoms and we could make a prediction of what these symptoms will look like in testing the future and that's what we keep an eye on. But if you eat this way, the chances are you're going to reverse all these things anyway so it's not a worry. So maybe this is like your wake-up call. This is your beginning of something so it's not detectable but you going back to my thing about the Bloods, you know, where the blood glucose was.
Great 20 years ago, but the incident has really high, you know, that, but that was a wake-up call. If you had a slight symptom that said, your insulin is high in the background, even though you look fine in a blood glucose is fine. Here's my little thing where you've been going? Yes, you got a problem.
You need to look into it. I think that's that's how I look at it. If someone's got any sort of issue and it's not detected and we could get into clinical studies about supplements that allegedly don't work because there's no scientific background but how studies of setup I'm sorry I've digressed here. But it's the same principle.
So something like encased glucosamine, which is a supplement that many people say relieves their pain, symptoms in their joints, doesn't have much scientific background because when you do a study, they want you to have a physical thing that they can see on an image to categorically say something has changed which you see as a researcher, I totally understand I'm not going to take this guy's word that is his ankle is bad because I can't see it on an X-ray.
So all the supplements, That helped people that haven't got a thing, that's detected and an image. But definitely is a pain because why would people be lying about a painting, their ankle for years and trying to sort it if there wasn't something wrong. So then they take glucose glucosamine and that pain goes and they say well what's with the science of this? And I'll stash were there is no studies that really, that say it works.
But that's because the studies are flawed because they will only take Which but I'm not actually critical of that research design because that makes sense too because the nothing beats. I mean, I love it when people come with a dexterous gain and and I can see everything and they can see everything because he's very convincing. You know, I've had a woman come and you really worried about the fact, she gained some weight and I said well look you look terrific. I'm assuming the weight is
muscle and bone. And luckily, you had a dexa scan me many months ago, why don't you get a dexa scan when I will? I will be pretty convinced that you have lost body fat and you've gained muscle and bone course lo and behold she had. So you saw it in the image. So, you know, there's, there's two ways of looking at a thing there because I liked the image.
So, I was exactly like those researchers because it proved it proved the concept that you can gain weight on the scale but it doesn't mean you gain fat, you know? No, you gain muscle, we've lost body fat, which allegedly you can't do because you can, because we keep seeing it in this, the especially this way of eating, you can gain muscle, gain bone, density, and lose body fat.
Yeah, that happens all the time and the decks are was just that brilliant image that prove that categorically that happened. Yeah, I think having data like that, that is it's so strange like people get so fixated on the scale but they don't take into account all the other factors. Like I see this a lot with my clients that need to do a reverse dieting basically. Increase their intake because they've been chronically restricting. So they'll often times see an increase in scale weight.
But a lot of that is fluid weight but they sleep better. They've got more energy, the recoveries better, they're stronger, they're building more lean tissue and all of that needs to be put into context and and recognized, as well as the post is simply looking at the number on the scale and seeing that increase and then getting disheartened. Yeah. I mean, I'm in the sky. Oh, I mean, it is not your friend in any way because you're
looking at the wrong. Wrong thing because you're looking at White and not mass, and then people get hung up on calories. I'm just about to release a
video. I've been putting the putting the final nail in the coffin of calories and and the challenge will be for anyone to watch this and actually tell me it doesn't make sense what I'm saying and prove me wrong because it narrows it to wait for the YouTube video because we just we just look at food in the wrong way and there's so many Force paradigms about A calorie is a complete waste of time to look at. Really, you need to look at mass
and you need to look at energy and the usage of those nutrients. So I'm, I've got an experiment that actually proves categorically is going to be video that calories. Do not make a difference to White. It is all about Mass. So Yeah, I like to look at things differently and have a bit more common sense. So when people come in and like I say they've got a pain and they've been told, there's nothing wrong with them. That makes no sense. Yeah. What the answer is?
There's nothing wrong. We can see or text, but there is something wrong with you because you've got pain. So we need to look at why you've got pain and how we can regress that how we can get that better rehab it or whatever and You know that that's basically my job. I do a bit of rehab as well. Bit manipulation at a tattooist
in the other day. Really fascinating guy used to be a child, you know, the book a children's book illustrator and because kids don't read books with that sort of illustration in anymore, it's all like computer done and everything, he became a tattooist, you know, because he wanted to be illustrating and he couldn't move his neck anymore and he said You know, I've had an MRI. I've spent thousands on this,
can't move my neck. And within 20 minutes, I wish I'd video dis he got his full range of motion, completely back, then, that happens a lot. I don't do the rehab very much, you know, like the physical manipulation, but it was a an ex bodybuilding friend of mine, who recommended that, this guy come to me and his faith. He just can't believe it when he had. How can you do that? How can you do that? I mean, you just, you know, Palpated my neck and looked at how I moved and it's perfect.
Now I said, well, that's because I've not been led to believe that the image is the be-all and end-all. I think there are certain things that you can just tell from how somebody's biomechanics are. We can fix it on my YouTube. I started video in these rehab things, but that's not really my thing. I don't, they are interesting and I loved seeing the reactions, but in the end, I'm not in it to get clicks. I mean it. For that person's life to be much, much better.
And I think just having that specialism as well. So basically, I did like a osteopathic, spinal manipulation Advanced certificate thing. Just looking at that and how manipulation can help make a big difference. As made me very open-minded to to everything when it comes to physiology and that we don't know everything and The more I learn the more I realize, I don't know. Yeah I think it's a really fascinating area.
I just I just think Health at the moment is such a big topic and sadly, the mainstream media are obsessed with an empathic medicine and just medications, and it's just a completely wrong way to look at, we need to get back to eating the right food. Bit of movement, that's not saying eat less move more, but I think we should eat the correct food and we should do the right. Right amount of movement for us and you're just so your health improves so much and don't get hung up with numbers.
It's better to use a mirror and how you feel and your mood how you're moving, how pain-free you are. And that's that's a much better guide. I think and your mental Clarity and how a sleeping all these things are really important. Yea and all that will likely improve. So like for you personally just kind of will round out here out here but I want knowing all that. You know what is a typical day of eating? Look like for you, for instance, are you doing you doing Corner Wilbur?
Is it like a like a two meals a day one of those meals? Well, you're asking a question. I asked a lot of people and I and I'm more intuitive and Engine enough. Somebody I spoke to today, I interviewed Brett Lloyd and we actually a birds of a feather because we just are intuitive. So, yes, it tends to end up being two meals a day, but that's not by Design. If I wanted a third meal and I felt hungry and I was genuinely hungry.
I wasn't just doing it because board or really fancied, another rib eye because I'm being greedy today, it would it tends to land at two meals a day? I'm really not hung up on on that at all. I'm not hung up on fasting, if I wanted to drop some weight for some photographs, some body fat on might fast. But I think that's because my health is so good, so I'm yeah, sorry I'm that's really rubbish answer. So yeah, I'm on my YouTube
channel. I do have a thing called what I eat in a day because people like to see. So eat a lot of fish sea bass and sermons, gallops prawns shrimp. Cool, that sort of stuff. I have a lot of rubberized T-Bones at rib eye on the bone the other day which really nice some ground beef. Fitz take you get a lily pads and some you know, dance So again Robert sorry you get the the leaner Cuts with a lot of the seafood there within the fattier cuts with the ribeye.
So pretty good ratio of both fats and proteins. Yeah. Yeah. But again, that's it, that's not how I approach it. I like sea bass. And I mean before I was low carb, I was hospitalized because I had high allergic reaction to fish just to all Seafood. So, twice, in my life, I've been hospitalized and now I can eat it. So yeah, I was told I'd never get rid of these allergies, there's many things we haven't really covered that have been
miraculous. And that's that is one of the, one of the Things when I was bodybuilding, that guy used to train with. He used to eat a lot of fish and that was really handy because you would have these tuner and rice after training and I would be really jealous because it looked lovely. And I couldn't eat it because I was allergic to fish and then I got into my 50s. Lo and behold when I did the low-carb, all these allergies started to disappear. I was lactose intolerant.
That isn't the case. Now have raw milk and kefir, not so much now. Actually I'd little phase of loving it. So I think the more you eat this way, the more your body sort of adapts and becomes natural and adapted to the animal proteins, animal fats. And I just eat, that's the one I fancy that day. And if we got it in, no nice. Juicy ribeye is about my favorite thing. But I hadn't eaten ribeye until I was 55 never eaten one before. So that's my favorite at the moment. That's a good one.
That's a good one. You can't go wrong with a good rib eye. No, from a mechanistic standpoint. What do you think? The primary reason for the the allergies disappearing was like just the anti-inflammatory nature of removing the Quorum. So what do you think the primary driver was there? Well, that's a good question. I don't know, possibly a little bit of a systemic inflammation. Possibly dysregulation of my
cell membranes. Yeah, I don't I had not really thought about, that's a great question, Robert. I was just pleased that I had not got it anymore. But yeah, but I said, I suppose if I relate it to the antibody effects of people, with thyroid this way of eating, definitely just these are, you know, we'll see. Reduction in TPO and TG antibodies.
So I'm assuming, yeah, that immune response is dampened down by a species appropriate diet, for whatever reason it is and I would imagine it would be systemic inflammation and obviously probably something to do with the mast cells and histamine regulation. So yeah, not thought about that. I'll have to look into that. I'm just so pleased.
I could eat fish. I didn't really think any more about it. Hey, we're fish is good, you don't have to ever worry about About the the Mercury account in the the seat Master, you don't have a have you tested your levels on there? No, you're getting very nuanced here. I don't think sea bass is a predatory fish that would have high levels of mercury. I think I don't eat it enough for it to be problematic.
And don't forget, I've had 50 years where I've never had any of it. Yeah, so it makes sense. You know, I probably have it. Three times a month and it is fresh and, you know, freshly caught. Yeah, so billion. Oh yeah, could look at that, I suppose. I mean, I am open-minded. That's one of the things I pride myself on being. All right, you've asked a question then, I realize I will really go into that and look it up and trying to find out why
that might have happened. But sometimes, you know, you're so close to it, so you can't see the action because you're in it, so that's a great question. I'm Replaced view asked that, so I'll try to find the answer to that. Yeah, definitely, keep me posted, I'm curious for sure. Well, awesome. And we are more than an hour in Steven. I want to be respectful of your time. Where do people go to dig deeper into your world and find out more about you, where the
website is the UK carnivore.com. And I'm also on Instagram, you can Carnival, I will be bringing out a nap soon actually, I think so that will be detailed on the Website. So, yeah. Lots of different things on the website, which I'm trying to improve Instagram. Yeah. They're the two things, really. And your podcast is on the website as well as it separate.
Yeah. So yeah, that's why buzzsprout, but you can find the the carnivore experience I've called it. So that's yeah, that's on Spotify and you know, on Apple and all those sort of places. So yeah, and I've been doing that for a month but that's more about success. There is no science on that yet so that's just just real people and some experts we got heart surgeons fertility, specialist mental health experts dietitians even all talking about low-carbon.
Yeah plenty of doctors on there were talking about their own personal successes and what they do for their clients. So I'm really proud of the podcast. I've only been doing it a month, I'm not an old hand like you. So I've got to learn what to do with podcast so I should Know how to get people to it. But yes, I think I do cheekily called it, the kind of experience a sort of echo, The Joe Rogan Experience really? Hey no, I'd say it's makes total
sense, man. He's obviously doing something right with podcasting, so mimic him is not a bad thing, I love it. Well, I will link out to all of those sites make it easier for people to find you and I will definitely tune in to YouTube channel. To watch that video on calories when it comes out. I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation man. Will I have to keep in touch. If there's ever anything I can do for you, by all means, let me know. Good, sir. Okay, thank you. Take care.