S3E34 Dr. Tony Hampton
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, patients, clinicians, carnivore, medicine, low carb, eat, keto, diabetic, health, doctors, hampton, life, live, person, model, struggle, coach, metabolic, thinking
Announcer 00:10
He was a morbidly obese surgeon destined for an operating table and an early death. Now he's a rebel MD who is Fabulously Fit and fighting to make America healthy again. This is Stay Off My Operating Table with Dr. Philip Ovadia.
Jack Heald 00:37
So pretty simple stuff. Hey, everybody, welcome back. We're doing back-to-back recordings today because we can, although these are gonna land a couple of, probably a week apart. We've got Dr. Tony Hampton, who I am, I can say without fear of being contradicted, you have by far the most organized “how to get a hold of me set up” of any of our guests in 2 years. Thank you. And that's basically a teaser to make folks listen to the end of the show, to find out how to get a hold of Dr. Hampton hang around to the end and we'll tell you. Phil, why we got Dr. Tony Hampton with us today?
Dr. Philip Ovadia 01:23
Well, we have Dr. Tony Hampton because he is just an all-around great guy. And not only his organizational skills for his website would make you question whether he's actually a doctor, but I think his whole approach to medicine and his laid-back style kind of raises alarms in certain circles because most doctors just aren't like Tony. I was fortunate to, I think first interact with Tony probably about two years ago, and real lucky, a few months ago to be able to spend some time with him on the set of the carnivore documentary series that's going to be coming out shortly. And really been looking forward to having this conversation with him. So, with that, Tony, why don’t you introduce yourself to our audience?
Dr. Tony Hampton 02:21
Yeah, I feel the same way, getting a chance to interact with you. And the rest of the reverse kind of work crew was very inspiring, particularly since I kind of started my journey, as many of us having some issues with my stomach, my wife having to deal with diabetes. And what I found is that diet was the key. So, I kind of went from this vegetarian plant-based model where I felt better, but I still suffer from irritated stomach bloating, I would still have layers of irritable bowel, and then I just needed something better. I will use probiotics. Probiotics actually made things much better as well. But then if I stopped with probiotics, here it comes. So, for me, it was like, let me look at something different, I kind of fell into the low-carb space. And I noticed that as I took more and more plants away, I felt better and better. So, I kind of went low carb, and it kind of eased into keto. I'm kinda in a carnivore, I know kind of keto-vore. And then but most days kind of war because I find that with that dietary pattern, I have no worries at all about my stomach flaring up. So, if I want to live in harmony with the world, I minimize plants totally. Oh, there are some things I tolerate. And I will do those things if my wife look and find out because she prepared it right. But for the most part, we have understanding that I do better with animals. And since I've been introducing my patients to this model, I've kind of shifted from a doctor who primarily was trying to meet my HEDIS goals, which is dealing with quality of care. And I was trying to make sure bio’s on the stand and make sure everybody was getting their diabetic eye exam, making sure everybody's A1C was being managed with medicines to a model where I'm trying to convince patients to take a different path, which is we’ll bridge the medicine. We’ll use the medicine as bridge therapy. And for most patients, particularly a type two diabetic as example, they have a path to getting off medicine. I saw a patient just literally a few hours ago and he was like nobody ever told me that diabetes type two is reversible. Nobody ever told me that I would not be on medicines for the rest of my life. And if we can't live in a world where that's true, we can't live in a world where patients are not giving a path to heal. And so, for me, and I'm sure for you, Dr. Ovadia, it's like it changes everything. So, when I come to the clinic, they're like they look at you as a healer. And that's something that I'm not sure they really did prior to this approach, that's been great. And I can't go back to the old model that I had before I started doing this.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 05:25
Yeah, and I think one of the things that's most inspiring about what you're doing, and what's unique about what you're doing is the community you're doing it in, and the types of patients that you have. So, talk a little bit about that, because I'll preface this by saying one of the criticisms that you often hear about carnivore diets and maybe even low-carb diets, in general, is that they're hard to do. They're expensive, you need to have access to all sorts of things that the average person can't get, can’t do to do these approaches.
Dr. Tony Hampton 06:12
Yeah, well, the first thing is, when you eat the standard American diet because you're not eating a lot of healthy proteins and fats, you may actually be hungry. And so, you're going to be more prone to snack in that setting. So, if you're snacking, you have to, but what does it cost to snack all the time, right? So, you have to start thinking about that. The other thing I think about in this community I serve, and I'm on the south side of Chicago, predominantly African American population, though it’s absolutely diverse beyond that. What happens is in that population, yes, people are thinking about costs. But what I tell people is, it does not have to be organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised blessed by the man above, it didn’t have to be all of those things. All it needs to be is ground beef or I remember when I first started my journey, I wasn't a big fan of chicken thighs, but you need a little fat. And I find that the thighs are juicier. And all of a sudden, I prefer the thighs any day over like a breast for example. So, what I do is I remind them that when you eat this way, the hunger tends to go away. So, what happens is you may have been eating breakfast previously, now you're just kind of doing brunch and dinner, you're doing intermittent fasting. So now you've, you've eliminated an entire meal. And then they are given an example of what that can look like. And, for example, I know eggs are not cheap anymore, but it's a carton of eggs. So, what does it cost to get a carton of eggs? Sometimes even lunch? Because I tend to eat animals for lunch, what does it cost to go to Sam's and get a chicken that was a rotisserie chicken? It's like, who knows how they raised the chickens? That's another subject for another day, but it's 4.99. Now, I might eat half a chicken, but for a lot of my patients, they'll eat a third of a chicken. So, you got, for five bucks, you got chicken for lunch, right? So, I think it's all about holding their hand and coaching them and saying to them, there is a way to do this, you're gonna eliminate those costly processed foods. No, you do not have to be, you don't have to buy any keto anything. That's a, buy real food that's on the outside of the grocery store. And what you'll find, if you're willing to prepare some food and eat leftovers, is not going to cost you a lot of money, I find that it's cheaper. I would spend and it costs more now, but I would go to Subway, get a sandwich, some chips, and even a soda back in the day. And I see my team members doing that. Now, I clinic. And these are people who make maybe a 10th of what I make as a doctor, and they're constantly running to the fast food, spending money. And then they're like sleeping right after they ate it because it knocks you out. But what I tell people is keep it simple, be prepared to prepare food. And when you do it smartly, it's actually cheaper. So, in the communities of color, you have a very high number of poor metabolic health. And so, if you think about the 7% who are metabolically healthy and 93% aren't metabolically healthy, that percentage is going to be way higher. There's way more people of color who are not metabolically healthy. So, we have a little bit of an obligation to save the system, money to save the patient money by healing them, and then they won't have to spend a lot of money on medicines and procedures and surgeries and of course, we save money on food if we just tweak it and show them how to do it the right way.
Jack Heald 10:06
That's kind of a mic drop
Dr. Tony Hampton 10:09
Do you think so?
Jack Heald 10:11
What more do we need to say? It doesn't cost more, it takes less time, it helps you recover from the diseases that have been considered chronic, it saves you from all kinds of problems in the future that we can pretty well guarantee you're gonna have based on your current situation, what's not to love?
Dr. Tony Hampton 10:33
Well, if you think of, I just had a conversation with my endocrinologist and I was kind of having a conversation about medicines like Jardiance is that essentially make you urinate out the glucose, right? And an issue with those medicines is that they increase the risk for what they call euglycemic metabolic acidosis. And that means your blood sugar can be normal, but you just have this acidotic state, particularly if you're on keto, right? So, and I have all these patients on keto and low carb, so I'm saying to her, well, this is what I'm learning in my training on low-carb, I should be cautious. How do you feel about it? But the point of me bringing it up is to say if you look up that medicine and it probably costs 3-400 bucks a month, if not 500, right? And it may only reduce your A1C by a point if that, right? So, in what universe does it make sense to say to somebody, instead of focusing on not eating the foods that turn into glucose, we're going to just give you a medicine so you can pee it out? That's not, that doesn't make sense. And we're going to charge you $500 a month for it. And it's only going to reduce your A1C by a point. So, we have to completely shift the paradigm to one where let's avoid the poison.
Jack Heald 12:00
Yes, there’s an idea. Let’s not ingest the poison.
Dr. Tony Hampton 12:03
And then what we do is we, if we use antidotes like that medicine will use it as bridge therapy until you adopt the lifestyle changes that we are attempting to adopt because it does take time, life happens, give people grace, it takes time. But once you adopt these lifestyle choices, there's no need for the Jardiance. And the irony is that we love these medicines that they come up with that don't increase insulin, rather, Ozempic or Jardiance, or any medicine out there, including Metformin. And they're like, Man, I wonder why these medicines don't increase your risk for heart attack and stroke? Well, any medicine that treats diabetes, it doesn't cause hyperinsulinemia is going to do that. So, this is not rocket science. This is like, duh but are we putting all of this money into these medicines when we can simply avoid the poison? So again, if we can help our doctors understand this simple concept, we would again, save money, avoid side effects like getting a UTI because you keep urinating out glucose, and then we can guide patients towards a better model. The thing that people will assume what that they're not going to do to lifestyle change, I say yes, they will. I see it over and over again. Because they have been giving bad advice. So, if you give me advice in the past that says it's okay to eat 45 carbs per meal as a diabetic, then of course, I'm gonna not be successful because you're giving me the poison. How about if we eat an egg omelet instead, instead of eating the grits in the oatmeal and a toast and the bread and all of that stuff? So, I think it's the poor advice that has led to failures. And it's also clinicians not really understanding the value of nutrition, they are not trained to think that way. And our job is to provide a path for them as we continue to educate them that there is another way that's way more effective. And as you have suggested, cheaper, and people will do it because nobody's really looking to be sick, they just need a way to heal. And you really don't heal with medications, medications, like I saw that recent episode with a guy who created his own company, no insurance needed, we're gonna do it as a group. Well, there's another way to do this. And I just think that the doctors are oblivious to it. And I don't think they read... We read nutrition studies, as our hobby. They read studies that are based on medicine as their hobby. And so that so there's a disconnect, and I think we need to work on that.
Jack Heald 14:38
Well, you were trained in the traditional model...
Dr. Tony Hampton 14:42
Yes, and I think...
Jack Heald 14:44
So, something happens, you’ve become the Surgeon General the United States, what do you say to the American people and specifically the American medical community now as the America’s top doc, what do you do?
Dr. Tony Hampton 15:01
Well, yeah, I'll sign up for that job any day. And what I would say is we have to shift the paradigm. And I would start with, and I think me and my colleague, Dr. Ovadia, both agree that we didn't get a lot of nutrition education in our training. So, the first thing I would do is not just make nutrition training, which is not required, I don't think. I think my understanding is that it’s recommended that you get 24 hours of nutrition education, right? And that means some people get it, some don't. The so my nutrition education won't be this parenteral nutrition, where we learn how to put food in your vein, if you're not able to feed yourself, it'll shift to if a person is in front of you, and you need to advise them instead of just training me how to click the nutrition referral button, and we do want to keep those professionals involved to kind of help coach our patients, teach the clinician how to get people started on basic nutritional information. And so, I would start with that. I would also train our doctors to meet the patient where they are, I may be a carnivore, I may have a vegan in front of me. And because we all are different, and I then advise that vegan in a way that honors their belief systems. I think one of the most important things we need to think about is research. And most doctors are busy, literally, I'm running home to make time for you guys. I was just seeing patients and we're busy. So, I need to have clinicians trained to look at research studies in a way that is going to add value. So, if a clinician can't distinguish between an observational study that shows Association correlation, versus a randomized controlled trial, which is what we rely on as causation, then we're gonna continue to say eggs are bad one week, and eggs are good the next week. And so, and in fact, I'm not even sure why we keep doing studies that are observational, if we already have studies that were randomized, controlled trial. So, what are we doing? So, we keep confusing people, confusing doctors, and the people who advise the patient. So, I really worry about that. And the last thing I would think about is training our clinicians to and I learned this from my, when I got a master's in nutrition and functional medicine, I've learned about how we are really focused on diagnosing diseases based on an organ system. So instead of doing this organ system diagnosis, we need to help people understand that everything's interconnected. And you should always ask yourself, we should never say to a patient where we've done all the tests, we don't know what's wrong with you. We should never, we should always there's something wrong with them because they're not healthy. So, our job is to retrain clinicians, and or partner with like functional medicine clinicians or docs, integrative docs, who have a different scope, who can see things differently. And if I were to use an example, so, if I'm a regular doc, patient comes in, and they're anemic. And they take iron, and we think it's because of blood loss. We stopped the blood loss. They’re anemic, so we're gonna give them iron, and they're still not getting better. Is it possible something else is not allowing them to get better? And what I learned in my functional medicine training is that maybe they need copper so maybe they're copper deficient, and you need copper to work with the iron to resolve the anemia. And these are little and so you can give them all the iron they want, they'll just remain anemic. And guess what that will cost the health system as we continue to transfuse them and kind-of where they went to the GI doctor, they didn't see anything. And we kind of chase our tail, when there's things that should be fairly obvious that we should be looking for so I would really focus on the next generation of clinicians. And I would look to and I would also reward our clinicians for keeping people healthy in a way that some of the other countries do. And I think that we do a poor job of if I think about my average diabetic, if a diabetic has diabetes with retinopathy or some eye issues or diabetic with neuropathy, or some nerve issues, or some renal issues, or nephropathy, I get paid more money to manage their diseases with those diagnoses than I do... But if I take that same patient, and they were on insulin. They get off insulin, I take them off of their metformin and they're technically not diabetic anymore by their criteria. I make less money. That's a conundrum. Exactly.
Jack Heald 19:45
I wish... Phil, there's your snippet. Holy smokes.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 19:51
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think really, that's one of the central problems is that we as doctors expect people to be sick, quite honestly, we need them to be sick to help them. That's how we know how to help them. That's how we're educated to help them. And the concept that you know that like you talked about that patient that you saw earlier that you were the first one to say to them, that you don't have to have type two diabetes for the rest of your life. And I hear the same thing often. When you tell a patient that you don't actually have to be sick, you don't have to just manage this condition that you have, in many cases, we can reverse it, we can make it go away. That's very empowering, very inspiring. And most of them are like, yeah, sign me up, I'll change what I eat. And so, and then, like you said, we can then give them advice that actually works. And everyone benefits from it. You have taken the extra step, well, you've taken lots of extra steps. You've already mentioned that you went and got functional medicine, training, and you got nutritional training. But you are truly trying to change not only your patient community but the medical community around you. So, talk about some of the things that you've been doing to try and influence the health care system that you're a part of.
Dr. Tony Hampton 21:34
Yeah, is what the first thing that I like about Advocate Health, which is in Illinois, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, is that they allow clinicians to be their kind of their independent clinicians. So, me being kind of a low-carb, keto-carnivore diet does not conflict with them in a way that would make me nervous about my job. So, the first thing I want to do a shout out to them for doing that. I would say, I don't know, maybe seven or eight years ago, we were having a conversation around us doing what we call the Toyota lean model, where we would improve the processes within our system, little things like, okay, you walk into the room, have the hand sanitizer by the door, and not by the sink, right, because you need to do your hands before you interact with the patient. In that journey, there was not clinician leadership, I was blessed to become the medical director for that. And during that journey, I was asked, what is it that you need to do to improve the health of the populations we serve, and for me, it was obvious lifestyle. So initially, what we did was we created this Healthy Living Program where in that program, we would partner with other clinicians, other team members, it could be somebody from respiratory, physical therapy, nurses, doctors, etc. And then we would get in front of a couple of hundred people and talk about nutrition. We partnered with the Chicago Food Depository, and we would also okay, you take the cauliflower, and you can do some fancy things with it before we started seeing cauliflower rice in the grocery stores, we would share, you can turn your cauliflower into rice, and we did things like that. That then merged into our COPD program, which is now virtual, was in person before the pandemic diabetes prevention program. I would just spin it since I had some leadership roles to be kind of a lower carb version of those programs, diabetes prevention programs exist throughout the country, but we did kind of a low carb version. And then we then kind of ended up doing a food pharmacy. So, when people come to see us at the hospitals, we would have on a certain day of the week an opportunity for them to get food that was provided by the Chicago Food Depository, but it came with a caveat. We're going to also teach you about what to do with some of the foods that maybe you're not accustomed to, and prepared in a way that would suit your needs. So, and then, so we're doing those things. We have, we're working on this smart farm, where we're gonna, we have some land and we're gonna grow some food. And that's going to then add to what the Chicago Food Depository is doing. We have Advocate Aurora Enterprises, and what advocate enterprises is going to do is say we're going to take care of our women and young families, we're going to take care of our seniors. And the third bucket will be wellness and, in that bucket, we're gonna create programs to support the wellness journey. So, what I'm trying to do within my health system is bring this crazy, low-carb metabolic health message to a large health system, that's going to take some time. But my hope is that if we're the sixth largest health system in a country, then the impact would be substantial. Because it is true that there is some truth to what I said earlier about being paid for keeping people well, with Medicare Advantage, which is a lot of our patients, particularly on the south side, if we manage their care well, we're not refusing care, they get their MRIs and CTs. But if they're healthier, then we have more resources for programs like this. So, my goal is we had this model before we merge with Atrium, which is the south part of our organization before became Advocate Health again. And I'm saying to them guys help people live well, that's a nice message. But how do we define that? And when I try to do is help them define it as help people live well is not just making sure they're on their statin. Helping them live well is to help them heal. So, if we can help people heal, what would that say to the world about Advocate Health? What would the perception be, it'd be like if you hang out with this organization, you won't just get a great doctor who's going to try to take care of you, you're going to actually reverse chronic conditions that you thought were chronic. We should do chronic with quote because people are getting off their blood pressure medicine. People who used to have polycystic ovarian syndrome don't have it anymore. People who are having problems with acne, they're not having their acne problem anymore. People with type two diabetes are doing better. And guess what type one diabetic who historically never saw A1Cs in the five range can see A1Cs in a five range because if you follow that model that Dr. Bernstein has set out for us with the book Diabetes Solution, or doctor... There's another doctor who's a nephrologist whose name eludes me right now, I think of in a moment. But if you take that model where you use lifestyle, and medicine for a type one diabetic, you can now get your blood sugars in a normal range. And that was and that was impossible because of hyperglycemia. But so now we have a path to help people who otherwise would never get the type of numbers necessary to prevent chronic disease. And what people have to understand is that if you have a blood sugar as an example in the seven range for A1C right, and it stays there, you're still gonna get all these chronic medical conditions. You have to put it, why would it be normal for a diabetic to have an abnormal A1C, which is averaging 150, from a glucose perspective, which is like a seven. And it's not normal for a person like me who's not diabetic if you continue to have that inflammation. So that's another example of how we can retrain our clinicians to think that normal is normal, abnormal is not normal. And I think that that's what I've learned is that it's possible to be normal. If you have lifestyle, add it to the, in most cases, temporary medicine for a type one, better control, you're not going up and down, you're just kind of doing a narrow range for your blood sugar. And that's it. And then in your life, your quality of life issues through the roof. Because hypoglycemia impacts more than just your blood sugar, it impacts your relationships, it impacts how you feel, it impacts your confidence, it impacts your ability to do things that you otherwise you wouldn't have done, because you're afraid that I'm gonna go to something and have a low sugar. So just so we can get our lives back, but it takes lifestyle to make that happen.
Jack Heald 28:53
Nest and rope. Now, in my mind, that's something a bird lives in and something you hang your nest with. But I'm guessing there's more to talk to us about the nest and rope.
Dr. Tony Hampton 29:05
Well, I am a fan of acronyms. So, I just had to come up with a way to have a person in front of me and address the things that may or may not lead to their success or failure. So, when I did my functional medicine training, they have this functional medicine tree and the functional medicine tree, the roots of it are the things that lead to chronic illness, right? So, but in order to protect those roots, you have to do certain things. So, we've already talked about nutrition, I would throw intermittent fasting in and that's the end. And then you have to think about movement. And I always tell my patients, you can't leave your car in the garage. You have to take the car out of the garage. That’s movement, and you need to put the right fuel in it, that's nutrition. And if you don't do those two things, it shouldn't surprise you that your legs were weak, which led to that fall, which led to your hip fracture. Are you hitting yourself on the head leading to a bleed? So, you need to think about those things, the obvious things that the S represents are stress and sleep. When you don't get enough sleep, when you're under stress, your cortisol levels high, that's going to then ask your liver to release some glucose. So now you have a person who's under stress, not getting enough sleep, no surprise that they're having issues with their blood sugar the next day. And then the T is for, we have a Trauma Recovery Center with Advocate Health. So, people who have suffered trauma, need to have an opportunity to recover from that, because they're not going to do low carb, or any of these other dietary or lifestyle interventions if they're not dealing with that. Your T is also for how you think, and now what I try to do is live a life of purpose. So, if I'm thinking, and my thoughts are not self-limiting, it's more likely I'll be able to do the lifestyle that the doctor is recommending. If my thoughts are right, and I'm focused on my purpose, then even when I do a podcast, I don't it's no stress because I'm living my life purpose. My purpose is to teach the world about metabolic health. So, I'm not as worried about how I say things and I just focus on am I living my purpose, right? Now, in order to live my purpose, the rope talks about the R for relationships. So, I need to have a partner who is adding value. And what I mean by that is we're working in partnership to achieve a similar goal. Now, it doesn't have to be just that spouse or that type of partner, it can be the community that I'm in. I need to be in a community that serves me, one of the things I love about Dr. Ovadia and the low carb, keto community is we have like a community that supports each other. So, when everybody else thinks we're nuts, we can at least touch base with each other and say, well, he must be nuts too, because we're off doing the same thing. So, that's what that is. And then the O and P organisms and pollutants. Those are about and this is functional medicine thinking, I need to have, I need to avoid things that harm me like toxins and pollutants. And that could be the sugar or it could be the plastic, right? And then I need to have organisms in my gut that are serving me. Now the good thing about, what I love about the need for research and carnivore, is don't you need your microbiome, is that going to disrupt it? And the reality is, people need to understand with different dietary patterns, you have different needs in terms of your microbiome. So, one of the most obvious is that the ketones, the fats that the beta-butyrate's and things like that, that we think about from a Keto perspective, help protect your GI lining. So, do I need to take a probiotic from carnivore or keto? Probably not because I'm going to get it from my diet. So, but you'll have people that argue, oh, your microbiome says, well, my microbiome feels great now that I'm eating this way. So, I think it's about being nuanced. And understanding that the microbiome will be different from a carnivore versus a plant-based person. And then, the rest of the rope is to E for emotions and life experiences. And we just want to make sure the things that we do serve us, that's our life experiences. And then we want to make sure we protect our emotions. Because if our emotions are not good, if we're sad, depressed, and anxious, and we're not addressing those things, then we're not going to be able to add value to our lives, because we're distracted by that. So, I really, so I want to so when I see a person in front of me, and they're interested in changing their lives, maybe they found me and they're like, you're the guy who's going to help me, I always have to make sure there's no like blind spots or gaps in those other areas. If you don't think about those other areas, you will look at people and say they're not motivated, or they're not ready to change.
Jack Heald 34:21
Oh. You’re using this as a diagnostic template is... It's not, oh...
Dr. Tony Hampton 34:26
Yeah, I use it to literally, if you don't, you have to be a problem solver as a clinician, and then what you do is when you find those gaps, and you're like this, they'll say this stuff never worked for me before, but they never addressed that trauma they had right. It could be a trauma because they get physically abused as an adult or a child until they address that, they may not be successful. And luckily within my health system, we have tools. We literally have an embedded intake person who will reach out to patient within a day or two, if they are struggling like emotionally. If they're depressed or anxious, and getting a behavioral health professional is very difficult. So, it used to take three to four months. So, what happens is they will reach them within a couple of days. And then they'll be talking to a therapist within one to two weeks, which is really unheard of. And so now we can start to heal in that regard. Or maybe it's just getting some tools, when you struggle, what do you do in those moments? My therapist team would do is say, here are some tools when you're struggling, I think everybody should have a coach personally. And we just literally within the past week, have a program now, where we have access to coaches, and anybody who does this work, in terms of lifestyle knows that the coach is maybe the most important piece. Even the research that Dr. Tro and his team did, recently, getting people. working with an industrial company and saving 4000 hours per year, by doing low carb and reducing the cost of care, getting people off medicines. The research that Virta Health does, by the same methodology around low carb, in all of those models, even Dr. Eric Westman and Adapt Your Life, they all have coaching. So, if you don't have coaching, you will be successful with a portion. But there'll be a large part of that group who will struggle because you're asking them to turn the ship away from the iceberg. And they then used to go into this iceberg their whole life. But if you got coaching involved, that'll increase the probability of success. And I'm really excited that my organization is doing that. And I'm also just hoping that other clinicians who think there's something wrong with the patient or with them, understand that we need a team to make this work.
Jack Heald 36:59
Wow. I want to follow up with this idea of tracking where folks are going, but I am watching you, Phil, I don't want to stomp on something here.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 37:10
No, good. Go ahead.
Jack Heald 37:12
Okay, so you've got somebody who comes into your, into your office, their physical, mental, emotional mess, and you're able to set them on this path. So, what are you looking for as their... What are the signposts? How do you measure their progress, their success? I mean, if they're grossly overweight, and they start losing weight, obviously, that's a signpost, but I bet more. What are you looking for?
Dr. Tony Hampton 37:41
Well, I think part of it is it's almost like when somebody walks into a room, the first thing I measure is, when I walk into that room, what is, what do I feel in the air, right? Now, so that's the first thing and I can tell when I walk in a room if a person is doing better. Number two, we have our medical assistants and our teams work together to do like it's called PHQ9. So, we have a questionnaire that helps to measure how are they doing in terms of their mood, and we want to see there, we want to see an improvement in their scores, right? So, if they if we start to see improvement in their score, that's another way that we measure success. Now, the other parts are more metabolic health related. So, if I, so if they're mostly doing better, their scores are getting better, I feel that positive vibe in the room, I always measure their health, measures of metabolic health. So, I'm always interested in are they becoming more metabolically healthy? Because the thing that's value about I mean, if you think about the study that Dr. Eric Westman, Dr. Georgia Ede recently done with a US keto for refractory mental illness, and it showed like 100% of the symptoms got better with this model. It showed that like 40 something percent or so of the patients left the hospital, rather it was schizophrenia, bipolar depression, with remission. Now, I don't know how a diet puts schizophrenia, bipolar, or depression into remission in hospitalized patients, but that's what the studies show which is astounding 96% lost weight, etc. So, I guess what I'm getting at is if I start to see things that I measure looking better, and they're doing better then all of a sudden them and I can share that information with them. By the way Miss Jones, your triglycerides are going down. By the way, Mr. Jones, your HDL is going up. Oh, look at that fasting insulin is going down. Oh, look at your particle sizes for your LDL, they're looking better. So, what I'll do is that and then I'll share that because part of the success we have in the clinic is to celebrate, we notice and we celebrate success. We're comfortable with incremental change, but we notice and celebrate success. So, and then it feeds on itself. They come in. I mean, one of the things that I need to get back to doing I had stopped about six or seven months ago, is I would give them a happy face sticker. Right? And you're like, what, what is it a 70-year-old gonna do it a happy face sticker. But they will, when I was doing that, they literally would like, if you didn't give them the sticker and they has success, there will be a problem. Yeah, they wanted their sticker.
Jack Heald. 41:01
Where’s my sticker? I've been working for two months, I was just coming for the sticker.
Dr. Tony Hampton 41:09
And I'm sure Dr. Ovadia sees this, when you walk through the door, they're so excited to celebrate their success. And rather, it's A1C has gone down. Rather, my relationship is better thanks for the referral. The therapist was wonderful, they are just, the weight loss. They're just like Doc, he didn't say anything about my weight loss. So, and then as a clinician, you walk out of that room feeling like you did something, you're not walking out of the room because you added that extra medicine, you're walking out of the room because you're you had to learn how to deprescribe. And many times, I kind of coach my patients to say, listen, you don't have to call me to stop Metformin. If your blood sugars are running low because you're doing this diet stop the metformin. We have a conversation in advance about, be prepared to do this, because this is about to happen. I tell him to take pictures, take a picture now, before and after. Because you're gonna get skinnier, the worst thing I can tell you is that you're about to be broke, because you're going to need to buy some more clothes. And it's gonna happen. If you struggle, we give you grace. But we also are comfortable saying to them that lesson. We're going to celebrate your success. And we're not doing it because we like you skinnier, we're doing it because you told me about that granddaughter that you are going to visit and you want to have the energy to take the trip, you want to be able to get down in the ground if you need to. And we're gonna focus on bigger things. And I remember when I was talking to Coach Bronson, who's also in the kind of community I was part of, Reversed Carnivore. And that's why, he kind of gave a good example. He was like, listen why do we need fitness in our lives? It’s not what you think. It’s because we want to be fit enough to do the basic things in life. So, if I can go to the mall, hang out with the group from church. And for me, go take a hike, right? And I feel like taking a hike, I want to be able to do those things. And so, for me, it's all about having a body that allows me to live my best life. And the only way you're going to do that is to take that body out of the garage, put the right gas in it, and then do those other things that the NEST and ROPE speak of. And if we do that, and we train our next generation to think that way, they will find an easier path to help their patients and it's been like, I sometimes, I'm still not sure why there's not this floodgate of clinicians like myself, like Dr. Ovadia, who are, haven’t gotten the memo yet. We're, I mean, I respect Ovadia but we're not that smart. We're just guys who went to school got a good education. We're not that but it seems like there's a disconnect, which still perplexes me.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 44:12
Yeah. So, and that's what, talk about how this has changed your career, your approach to go into work every day.
Dr. Tony Hampton 44:25
Yeah, I had to learn to be honest, which I had to learn to not get too excited. Because when you learn that you can help people heal with lifestyle, you want to help everybody heal with lifestyle. So, the first thing I learned is that I had to learn to take it down a notch. There will be people in front of me who would be like so motivated that you're saying things and they're ordering stuff and downloading stuff as you taught because they were so motivated. And then you have the other people who’d just sit there and shake their head. And then you see them the next appointment. And they're like, they just like they didn't hear anything you had to say, right? And so, I had to learn to not get frustrated because I found myself, particularly for those who have like, borderline kidney function. Let's just say they're, we measure creatinine and microbium, let's just say their microbium 1500 and their creatinine’s 2.3 and they're all moving towards progressing in kidney disease. I know, based on the research of Dr. Unwin and his wife, Jenna, and when David Almond, and Jenna, I went to UK, that they've done studies that show you can reverse kidney disease just by simply changing your diet, they and so what happen is, they are and this is a funny thing, this is what we struggle with, they will see a nephrologist who will say to them, you can't do that. You can't do keto; it's not going to improve your kidney function. And I will... So, I give all of my patients and that, I'll say, here's the study if someone asks you or questions what we're doing, here's the study, and you're just asking for their support, while you try this at least for six months to nine months or so. So, part of the struggle is if that person is not motivated to do that, then I have to honor that, like I have to be okay, that everybody's not going to do it or, and maybe those that NEST and ROPE thing I look for, maybe there's nothing there that allow me to help them. So, having said that I've gotten so much better at coaching people, and I do use the motivational interviewing principles that we sometimes learn. So, I do kind of look at their, are they motivated yet, where are they at in their journey, and I will tweak my message to fit where they are. But at the end of the day, I have through the process of being comfortable with meeting people where they are, having tools like motivational interviewing, and obviously, the biggest tool is we know what to do with people when they struggle. And I've found a way to integrate all of that so the number of patients I can help has been exponentially greater than it was when I started my journey. And so, seeing success has become the norm. And I just tend to identify why people struggle better than I do. And I think that's partly my own experience getting better, knowing what when you get a stall or something what's going on with the weight, just knowing what's out there. I was just, there was this, this is unrelated by there was this inspire sleep thing that they have now where you can literally doing it implant people who have sleep apnea, and you put the implant in it Oh, kind of like a pacemaker for your breathing. So, to open their airway. I hadn't even heard that until recently. But my point is, as you have conversations, as you do your research, you open up this wealth of information, even the functional medicine training, going back to the car, for example. And all of a sudden, in front of you is a patient who's very motivated, because they're hearing things through a different lens. And because they're hearing it through a different lens, and it's about healing wellness, they're very motivated to take that journey with you. So, for me, I had to grow as a person. And then as I've grown, my patients have kind of come along with me. And I see again, a lot of people even today I had a patient with schizophrenia and bipolar, who I hadn't seen for a while, it's been nine months, but since I saw them, even with those diagnosis, had lost 30 plus pounds. And although it didn't help their musculoskeletal complaints as much, their mental state has dramatically improved. So even the people that you question have the capacity to do this. A lot of those folks are doing just fine. You just have to coach them. And when they struggle, give them grace and that and with that kind of a mindset, there's not a lot of tension. So, if people come in here and they're struggling, I'm like you didn't expect to struggle? I mean, that's normal. So, we're gonna I'm just here to kind of get you on your bottom again and get started again. That's all I'm here for.
Jack Heald 49:46
Wow.
Dr. Tony Hampton 49:50
Yeah. It's been great guys. I don't know what to tell you other than I just hope more people find what I found. I hope more people are able to meet people where they are. And I never thought I'd be carnivore. But I'll be honest with you. It took the knowledge of knowing a few things that I would say, surprise me when you've been plant-based for eight years or so. And you are kind of into this whole Blue Zones thing, right? And you're thinking, well, that's where they live along. And so, we got to do that. So rather it’s Japan, Italy, Greece, I love Greece. They do live 7 to 10 years longer, although they actually do eat pork, they just don't talk about the fact that they eat pork, that's another subject. They probably deal with the deficiencies by doing that. But then you learn about, like the Mormons who live 10 to 17 years long, and they eat meat, right, just like the folk at in Loma Linda, Seventh Day Adventists. Then you learn about Hong Kong, and they eat on average two steaks per person per day, and they eat meat. So, what I tell patients Listen.
Jack Heald 51:11
The Hong Kong user’s my spirit animal. I love it. Two steaks a day. That sounds right.
Dr. Tony Hampton 51:18
That sounds about right, that's heaven for me. And I just meet those vegans where they are, they respect the fact that I was plant-based guy at one point, and we just talked about, that's not my ideal diet anymore. I don't like to take supplements. But if you want to do that, let's show you how to do it. Let's talk about the vitamins that you may need. And most of us are aware of the B12. So, say doc, I'm good I can, I can get my B12 from my mushrooms, and I can get my B12 off my nutritional yeast. And I say you can, but you probably need more than that. So, let's supplement that just to be safe. Let's make sure your vitamin D is okay. And we'll make sure that's okay. And then we'll make sure the vitamin A is okay. So, what I do with those patients who want to do a different dietary pattern, I walk with them, they may need to take Omega-3. So, we just walked with them, we explain why we think they should do those things. And the reason why this is important, in fact, I'm thinking about making my topic for the symposium for metabolic health in the realm of how vegans and carnivores can kind of coexist. This is important because I was just talking to one of my dogs with an Indian background from India, and he said, “you know, we worship cows.” What am I going to do with that?
Jack Heald 52:49
Not an option for them.
Dr. Tony Hampton 52:51
Exactly. So, we have cultural issues, we have religious issues. And obviously, we have ethical issues that people have, my job is not to change any of those things, but to walk with people where they are, and say, if that's where you are, here are some areas that you may become deficient in. And this is how we resolve that. And then we can kind of coexist and understand and respect each other. What we don't want is to live in a world where there is no mutual respect, and that they can't see the world at all through the lens. Because my ethics is based going back to that rope, my E, my life experiences are different than yours. So, my interpretation of what's ethical to an animal may be different than yours based on my life experiences. Some of that's knowledge, some of that's just what my mama taught me, right? And so, can we then live in a world where we mutually respect each other, where we both can agree to disagree, just like a marriage, but we still can live in harmony, and that, if we live in a world like that, with some because it takes a little knowledge, right, so if a vegan never heard that Hong Kongers live, probably most years, they are the top for longevity. If they've never heard that, then they're gonna not know that that's a possibility. So, my job and our job is to put it out there, and then pray that the people who hear the message are willing to open up their minds and receive it. And if we can live in a world like that, we won't have to fuss about carnivore versus vegan. It'll be here are dietary options for everybody. Here's the pros and cons of each. You choose the one that your body receives the best and for me, it just happens to be animal-based. Yeah. And I had to open my eyes to that first if I had not, once you put vegan in YouTube, all the rest of the videos are going to be vegan. So, you get looped into that. Same for carnivores. So, we have, and I tell people what if the first video that popped out when you said wellness or trying to be healthy was carnivore? And that's what you get looped, you saw Dr. Ovadia, and you get looped into that. So that's how life is, it's a little bit random. And so, we have to be honest about that and say, Yeah, you're right. If I hadn’t seen that person, and YouTube decided to only send me Dr. Shaun Baker and Dr. Chaffee and the rest of the crew, that's what it would have been. Yeah.
Jack Heald 55:26
So, there are people listening to we, I mean, thousands of people a week listen to this. And I know that no matter how efficient and effective you are, you can't treat thousands of people a week. What are you doing to replicate your way of looking at the world, your way of treating patients so that you got a way that is very appealing, but how do you replicate yourself? What are you doing so that more people are able to find a healthcare practitioner like you?
Dr. Tony Hampton 56:08
The first thing I do is to just be Tony, right? So, let me see, oh, I have darker skin than yours. So, by being myself, I may attract some folk who may need that to feel comfortable, right? Like, I know, I haven't, like the Black Carnivore, for example. So, she kind of had, she has this kind of niche, right? So, part of it is to just be yourself, because you may bring a different kind of, like presentation to the conversation to the next person. The other part and that means I gotta be out there doing YouTube videos and podcasts. Right? So, beyond that, my hope is that the society and metabolic health practitioners, so we have an outreach committee. And with the Outreach Committee, which I'm involved with, my goal is to think through what we need to do to get this message out, part of it is have conferences and things like that, but that's kind of like gathering the cult, the herd that's already in the...
Jack Heald
You’re preaching to the choir there.
Dr. Tony Hampton
Preaching to the choir, right? So that's not as effective as what I just did last week. So, one of the videos I just released was advocate health, how to heal conversation. Now that's going to not a low-carb community, but the advocate community and I was able to lead a discussion that touched on metabolic health and how it's so beneficial. So, in those programs, I've mentioned through advocate health, I'm hoping to help lead that, be involved with those programs to help. But the other piece with this side of metabolic health practitioners is can we volunteer, to teach via their conferences and or teach some of the curriculum that's going to be like the, there's a new ketogenic textbook that's coming out, I think, this month in April coming up, right? At least depending on when this is released. So, if we can have textbooks like that, and then we can have clinicians like myself, Doctor Ovadia and others who can then say, you know what, I'll be willing to go to the American Medical Association Conference and teach a lecture related to metabolic health, carnivore, whatever. So I think the goal is to be more mainstream, we already have the larger organizations indoor endorsing low carb and keto, the American Diabetes and American Heart, Association of Clinical Endocrinology, so we have to bring it to mainstream not to say this is the better way, but to say it should be a dietary option so that when people are facing their clinician who's like, don't do that, they can then say, well, it seems like it's endorsed by all the large organizations. They're going to be talking about that at the American Medical Association Congress, so we have to make it more mainstream. And I think I call myself a metabolic health doc because I thought that was more palatable as opposed to the Carnivore doc, right? I mean, how dare Dr. Ovadia have all that meat on his book cover? How dare he? It's like, every time I show you a book cover to patients, men are like what? So, we want to socialize this in a way that people can, like, start to digest it because you're going to get conventional thinking. And then we want to do it in a way that says, Man, I was thinking that way too. I had no clue that there were more nutrients in a steak than in kale. The way I was trained, Kale was god, and the steak was risky, you can do it. But you need to be careful now it's completely flipped. And I think a lot of people are still in the kale space. And they haven't been taught any of this. They haven't heard your podcast. So, I think we need to just put it out there. And people will start to hear the right message, be open, and they're going to honor the science for what it is. And that's why we have to teach people how to read these studies better.
Jack Heald 1:00:36
Wow. This is like, this is so cool, Phil. Our prior guest was a layperson, not a healthcare practitioner, and he and Phil are talking basically, it, I don't think it was English. It didn't sound like English to me. And I feel like I can understand you, I'm talking to a I'm talking to doctors out there healing people, and I get it. So
Dr. Tony Hampton 1:01:02
That’s intentional, though. I can't, when I wrote my book, “Fix Your Diet, Fix Your Diabetes,” I had to talk in a way that my mom could understand, that my brother could understand. And I think that's necessary, we can... Now if I'm having a conversation with Dr. Jason, fine, we may go into the minutia a little bit. But for most people that will view my YouTube channel, you guys, YouTube channel or podcast, it's okay to go there. But it's also important too, you're going to meet people who you think know stuff, and they just don't. So, we got to keep it as simple as possible. And when we deviate from simple, we have to try to throw in a quick explanation. And that way people can, you won't lose people. Because this is not complicated. I tell people their keto, eat all the meat you want and some nice starchy vegetables. We don't need a meal plan. We can give you a meal plan, but just keep it simple. And when people say that's it, I said, yeah. But then you didn’t know that rice has a lot of carbs. But they don't know that. And they need to be given that information as well. And then they can just kind of pick and choose how they do things. So, it's really important. We keep things simple.
Jack Heald 1:02:27
Yeah, this would be a good time for you to just kind of tell folks where they can connect with you best. Now we're going to post your incredibly organized link tree on our show notes. But there's probably one or two that are great places to learn from Dr. Hampton better than others. So, what are those? Yeah.
Dr. Tony Hampton 1:02:51
I always like to start with the YouTube channel. So, if people search my name, Dr. Tony Hampton, in YouTube, I think that's important. Many of my patients struggle with the podcast theme, just because of the nature of my patients. I have an eighty-year-old who is like... And I'll put it on their phone. And when I see him next time, they haven't listened to anything, it's just too much, right? But for some reason, YouTube is like the best place to get people to connect. So, I would just start there. For those who don't mind doing podcasts, I think that that's a great place to go. Because I think it'll definitely provide a great resource. And I think people who are starting their journey, they're borderline diabetic or diabetic, they can just go to Amazon and get to “Fix Your Diet, Fix Your Diabetes” tax because I think that's helpful. One of the things on that link tree is my handout. So, I have a handout that says on one side, eat this. On the opposite side, don't eat that. Yes. So, it's very simple and straightforward. And then, of course, I think the video I asked people to watch to get started is How to Adopt a low-carb diet. I think that's a great video that's on that Linktree. And if they're trying to do carnivore, I had a great interview with AJ Fox of the Black Carnivore, and that's a link how to get started on carnivore that I did with her. And I think those are just foundational. And then and one more thing, somebody else’s channel thanks on my Linktree is the Beat Diabetes guy. His name is Dennis Pollack. He's a pastor, and he has some foundation of videos that I think a diabetic should check out. Because they need to know that a Hershey's Bar is gonna raise your sugar less than a banana. Like nobody knows that. So, Dennis does a good job of saying here's the meter he calls it Mike the Meter and people will literally eat something an hour later, does it raise my sugar? Now, this is not rocket science, we’re keeping it simple. So rather it is not what Dr. Ovadia says Jack or Dr. Hampton, or even Dennis Pollack is what the meter says. So that's a great place to get foundational videos because this is a community. And I think we all have to kind of make sure people know what the resort, I remember that Christmas movie that made I think it was the Macy's guy that Santa Claus was sending people to other stores or something. I think it was my wife loves those Christmas movies. And so, I will send you to another store if he's going to help you heal. That's kind of I think we all should do, There's tons of people 7% metabolically healthy, right? So, 93% of the country is saying we need help. And I don't care if we all start doing it, it wouldn't be enough. So, we're going to share what we're all doing, and then help people heal. Thank you
Dr. Philip Ovadia 1:05:57
Very well said. Thank you, Tony. There's been a great conversation, and just keep doing what you're doing.
Dr. Tony Hampton 1:06:06
I'm gonna try man, I think you inspire me. I appreciate what you guys are doing together as a team. And I will absolutely promise that I'll be doing that this year.
Jack Heald 1:06:16
Well, I hope our paths crossed in real life as well. I just want to shake your hand. I love your message. And I love your vibe to that. I liked that thing you said about walking into a room, and you can just tell by their vibe.
Dr. Tony Hampton 1:06:33
Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks.
Jack Heald 1:06:37
Phil? Another good one, man. Thanks a lot. I love getting to never run into people like this for one this show with you fail and I'm really grateful. All right, well for Dr. Philip Ovadia, this has been the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast, I guess was Tony Hampton. All the show notes will have links to all the various things that Dr. Hampton has talked about. Go there. I don't know what I'm saying anymore. Good stuff. We'll see y'all next time.
Jack Heald 1:07:13
America is fat and sick and tired. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy and at risk of a sudden heart attack. Are you one of them? Go to ifixhearts.co and take Dr. Ovadia's metabolic health quiz. Learn specific steps you can take to reclaim your health reduce your risk of heart attack and stay off Dr. Ovadia's operating table.
Jack Heald 1:07:41
This has been a production of 38 atoms