Shawn Baker Challenges the Norm with his Carnivore Journey - #98

Certainly was one of my early introductions to it as well , and I've been honored to work along Shaw and speak along him now for a number of years . So

with that , Shawn , why don't you just give maybe a little brief back story as to how you came to the carnivore diet ?

I was , you know I was , I guess , aging , I mean , as most of us sort of come to the realization that , hey , I'm not 20 anymore and experiencing what I thought were the normal symptoms and signs of aging , which included , you know , poor sleep , gaining weight . You know I had .

You know , in retrospect I had many of the signs of symptoms of metabolic syndrome , metabolic disease , and I didn't like that particularly .

I mean , I , you know I was , you know I was , I was a physician , I thought as a physician you think you have some special immunity to health problems , which we don't is , we realize , physicians , just as much as anyone else , are susceptible to the same things everybody else is .

I was an athlete , so I thought that , you know , maybe , you know , just training hard would protect me from some of that , and I mean , arguably I did to some degree , but certainly I was experiencing , you know , the eventual .

Well, I say , you can't outrun a bad diet And you know , I think you can for a little while , but then it catches up to you , and I think some people catch us up very quickly and other people are able to avoid it for a number of years .

And so I think I was around 40 , you know , 40 to 43 , I started to realize that I needed to start to look into nutrition a little more aggressively and not just rely on being able to exercise things .

And so with that, I embarked on about it I think at that point , about a seven, eight-year journey of playing with different nutritional strategies , and the first thing I did was what I thought was the right thing, just dramatically cut calories , exercise more , you know , eat a very low-fat diet , and that actually did actually allow me to lose some weight .

And, but the problem with that is I was , I was miserable . I mean , I was . I remember . I remember all the nurses in the office and the people I worked with . We much liked you when you're fatter , you know , because you were , you were a nicer person and I was hungry and I was angry and just , you know , I just didn't like that .

So I sort of evolved the diet into a more of a I guess , more of I guess .

To that time it was more of a paleo style of diet , a diet which was more sustainable for me , And then eventually started reading , understanding , you know , looking into the literature kind of critically and reading some of the stuff that was available at the time and I ended up on a more of a low carb approach And that eventually pushed me personally towards a ,

you know meat-based fully carnivorous approach . And during that journey I started to apply lower carb diets to my patients you know orthopedic surgery patients who , interestingly , you know the ones that would do it many of them lost weight .

But the thing that really struck me as interesting was the fact that these patients who I had on the schedule , on the operating room schedule for knee replacement , hip replacement you know different large surgical procedures came back and said I don't have any pain anymore .

And I thought that was really sort of surprising to me that someone who's had before surgery . This is before surgery . This is someone with you know , clear radiographic and clinical symptomatic signs that would indicate you know you need a knee replacement . You failed all the other nonoperative you know , or minimally you know knee arthroscopy type things , injections .

You failed all those things and now the only thing left we can do for you is replace your joint . And they came back and said I don't have any pain anymore . And I was like well , if you don't have pain anymore , there's no indication for the indication for surgeries no longer there for the most part .

So we ended up canceling a lot of surgeries , which I thought was I thought was pretty cool , you know quite honestly , but you know . Back to my own .

you know , as , as you know , I mean I think we undertrained vastly and nutrition as allopathic medical providers , and I think that's intentional , honestly , I think looking back for it , it's like well , why do you want to spend time doing that when you've got all these wonderful pharmaceutical inventions that you can utilize , or these procedural things which also

drive a lot of pharmacy, I mean you don't do it . There's no surgery you can do without pharmaceutical drugs , right ? I mean , we know that . I mean all the anesthetic drugs , the post-op or pain drugs , pre-operative , pre-op and post-op antibiotics , the you know , the blood thinners . I mean there's , you know it's .

I mean , even though it's a surgery , there's still a tremendous amount of pharmacy that goes into that . So you know . So you're not really trained in it . You don't really know . I mean you don't really get much . you know you get the basics of , you know this is a vitamin deficiency and you never expect to see that again in the rest of your career .

I mean , I don't know how many times you've treated pellagra or beriberi or you know , scurvy . I mean you never see it . I mean you just don't ever see it in Western , western medicine . So it's kind of like , well , why did I even learn about that stuff ?

I mean , it's kind of like you know , I mean I guess it was just sort of a gratuitous , you know , touching the basis . So you had a little bit of nutrition , but we don't really get much , and yeah . but I mean , you know , I mean my journey into carnivore was strictly selfish . I wanted to be better , physically , health-wise for myself .

I didn't have any altruistic reason for doing it other than I just wanted to be a better athlete . Really , I mean I was like you know , hey , I'd already been low carb and I was like you know , I think this can make me a better athlete And it did .

It ultimately turned out that it , you know , made me stronger , recover better , train harder , you know , so on and so forth , and so that's kind of how I got into this .

But I mean , along the way of trying to fix myself , I realized that there's broader applicability towards you know a large segment of population that we , you know , as physicians , are tasked to treat And I think we in some cases underperform . I mean , you know , like I said , if I'm having a heart attack , yeah , I want somebody like Phil that can do something .

Or if I , conversely , if I am in a car crash and my femur sticking out through , you know , the front of the windshield , you know you're not going to treat that with diet , but I mean , short of that

, much of what we do can be treated with , you know , diet , lifestyle , all those types of things that we all understand now as a group .

But if we stop you from having the heart attack with diet and lifestyle , that's a major win that we just don't focus on enough .

I would kind of pat myself on the back Hey , look , I did a good job , they want me , they trust me , to do another surgery on them . But in retrospect, I kind of let that patient down because I probably could have given them advice so they could have avoided that second requirement .

You know , and you know , had I known , you know , 10 years ago , I would have avoided the first knee replacement in many cases . And likewise, the people you've done , you know , bypass grafting on, you probably could have , if you could have gotten to them 10 years earlier , they might have not needed that . And I know that's what you're trying to focus on now .

And we all , you know , as physicians that have kind of made that . You know , and correct me if I'm wrong , Phil , but the reason you came to this conclusion is because you looked into your own health Same , just like I did , but probably most of the physicians out here , except for treatment at a computer their own .

And I think that's what pretty much most of us doing this now have come to that realization . And so a lot of

you know , you see these , a lot of these people that are just freshly minimized physicians are , you know , 30 years of age and are like , well , I'm , you know , you don't , you know we've got all these new , new , powerful drugs and medication .

But I think , you know , you talk to them when they're 40 , when they're 50 , when they're 60 , and they've kind of , you know , realize that , hey , you still got to , you still got to address the lifestyle stuff .

So , you know , you now certainly , I would say , lead probably the largest community of carnivore dieters and I think it would be great to get into a little of the advanced stuff . You know , I think much of our audience knows about carnivore , knows the basics of it , but I'd love to touch a little bit on , like you know 400-level the carnivore diet .

What are some of the challenges that you see people having ? And maybe we can start getting into some of the maybe not obvious conditions that show improvement with carnivore diets as well . But let's start with , like , what are some of the common challenges that within your community come up for people doing the carnivore diet ?

What I've seen over time is , you know , there seems to be some people where certain , I guess , habits tend to work better than others . I mean , I think one of the biggest things you know when you're thinking about , you know , a carnivore diet is , you know , it's a lot of meat basically . There's not much to it .

I mean , there's protein and fat for the most part , and so some people will get into how much fat should I consume ? How much quantity of food should I consume ? Am I, you know, what am I trying to solve with this issue ? So , I think , for what I like to talk about is a lot of people that come to this , come to this with the baggage of addiction .

You know food addiction in a lot of cases , you know , it's usually not that they were eating too many broccoli salads that got them obese . It was usually because they were eating the, I mean the garbage , I mean the ubiquitous human, you know pet food .

I like to call it that's out there , that it takes great and it's and it's incredibly , uh , addicting and it's cheap and it's ubiquitous , and you know it's like , how do you get away from that ? You know that's step one .

I think you know , because I think you know , any person that can remove that stuff from their diet for a period of time will often benefit . That's why we see success with really anything that's not the standard American diet . And what I find is so , initially for those people , I tell them you just got to eat enough , so you don't want that stuff .

Because they're like , well , how much this and that should I eat ? And I think step one is just , you eat enough , so you don't want the cupcakes or the pizzas or the whatever , whatever your Oreo cookies or whatever your , your demon is , and so that's . I think that that helps people for the first few months .

And then we get into um , what are you treating ? You know , because I think we've gotten pretty comfortable about treating diabetes with nutrition . I mean , I think most of us will agree that , hey , I can go low-carb diet and I can improve my glycemic control and that makes sense from a just basic physiology standpoint .

But then you start looking at why are you know, why are people with autoimmune conditions getting better ? Why are people with mental health issues getting better , neurodegenerative diseases in many cases or neurologic diseases getting better ?

And I think you start to see there's different things that play there besides just how many carbs you're exposed to , and so I think that's something that I see in particular . Um , you know , I see some people where they just eat mounds and mounds of fat , which can counterproductive be in some cases .

I mean , we see people latest or they're told , hey , I'm supposed to be eating sticks of butter with my food , you know , like the old ketogenic diet where you had people that were , you know , putting all this fat on everything , and I think it's beneficial for a subset of the population .

I think people with neurologic and you know , mental health issues , that seems to be that they , they do better a little bit on a higher fat side of things , at least for a period of time .

It may not be a permanent situation but , if we look at things like , uh , for instance , MS and we've had a lot of success with multiple sclerosis , which is a horrible , horrible disease , you know , particularly as it progresses and a lot of people die early from it And it's a significant uh problem with quality of life Uh , we know that from both animal and

human studies that uh , it is almost impossible to remyelinate damaged nerves and one of the hallmarks of multiple sclerosis is a demyelination that occurs . So myelin is the kind of the insulation that kind of surrounds the nerve endings that's made out of , uh , you know fat basically , and so we know that .

You know , animal studies studies show that without exogenous cholesterol , and the only place you can get exogenous cholesterol or dietary cholesterol is in animal products .

You know , animal cell walls , not cell walls , cell membranes have a cholesterol , as was plant walls , cell walls don't , and so that's one of the hallmark differences between animal food and plant food is is the presence of cholesterol , and we've been told , for you know , gosh , 50 years , cholesterol is bad for you , you know .

And then you know 2015 , the US dietary guidelines said hey , dietary cholesterol is not the problem . It doesn't seem to have an impact on uh , have an impact on our uh serum cholesterol , which is a whole another topic Phil, I'm which I'm sure you've , you know , explored , you know , ad nauseam probably at this point .

But , um , so we see that , like for , for instance , MS , I have a number of MS people that we see , and they almost universally do better on a skewed , higher fat approach for a period of time , And that's a little different . Whereas , you know , you might see uh , someone with uh , you know obesity is their main concern .

They may not need such so much fat . I mean , fat is certainly important And , and you know , when I say low fat , i'm talking like 60% of your calories are coming from low I mean in the context of a carnivore diet . I mean , you know , I eat a rib eye steak and people will say , oh , that's a lot of protein .

But you know , in reality , 60 , 75% of those calories are coming from fat . So I'm eating , you know , you know what I consider moderate fat for a carnivore diet , whereas there's people that skew where they're 80 , 85 , maybe even 90% of their calories come from fat .

And these are the people that have neurodegenerative problems , MS , uh , uh , you know , some of the mood disorders where , where they tend to require that , at least for a period of time , and it might be a few years even and then they start sort of kind of normalized to what I think is a , you know , 60 to 80% of your calories coming from fat , which I

think seems to be the the spot for most people . It's pretty hard to , um , you know , survive on 50% or less fat in the context , without carbohydrates . Now , you had carbohydrates in the mix and certainly, you can bring that number down And I don't , you know again , even though I'm a proponent of a carnivore diet .

I don't think everybody needs to be doing that . Uh , you know , I think , many people . One thing I will say is meat is , i think , a health food . I think it's an improperly vilified , uh , you know , demonized food that we shouldn't have . We should have never done that , we should .

You know whatever that , whenever that happened , you know 1914 or 1917 , when the American Dietetic Association was formed by the seventh day at Venice , or when Eisenhower had his heart attack in the fifties despite the fact that he was smoking three or four packs of cigarettes a day .

Or you know whatever , Ansel Keys or the US dietary guidelines , you know , with George McGovern , blah , blah , blah , whatever that was . I mean it was . I think it was incorrectly done and I think it's been . We've been suffering the consequences that , uh , ever since that time . Um , some of the other things .

I mean I think women just like men , uh , women versus men . I think women again , maybe skew a little bit more , slightly higher fat . So maybe maybe , instead of 60% cowers , they need 65% of their cowers from fat . Women are fatter than men .

I mean , that's just one of the that's one of the realities of the differences in the sex , and women carry more body fat than men , and there's reasons for that . Um , you know , maybe they have , maybe they have more developed brains , I don't know . I mean jokingly , but there you go . I mean , no , they would , they would probably fess to that .

But I mean it's interesting because you know what's interesting if you look at the difference between human physiology and dogs . And like dogs is another example . you know , I have dogs and I feed them a carnivore diet . Dogs uh , there's actually interesting .

There's feeding studies on dogs where they self select foods , they self select their macronutrients and they'll put fat , protein and carbs down . And dogs initially will eat a high fat diet, relatively high-fat diet , something like 67 , 60 , 70% fat , and then , after a week or so of that , they'll , they'll , they'll automatically revert to a much leaner diet .

And the reason for that and they will , they'll , they'll consume almost no carbohydrate . Uh , the reason for that is because , you know , dogs' brain size is much smaller than ours .

I mean , it's , it's just you know , you know , for , for its body size , dog has a very , you know , like a brain , the size of , kind of like a walnut , or you know , slightly a large walnut , whereas we have , you know , brain , that's , you know , two and a half , three pounds or something like that , 20% , we're sorry , 2% of our mass , but 20 something

percent of our energy production goes to our brain . So it's interesting .

That's that those are some of the things I've seen , um , some of the other things that I think are a little more , uh , maybe not the average person sees , because , like I said , I've been doing this now for God's seven years and I literally spent every single day of my life meeting with people on this diet and seeing what works from what doesn't work , from

what's unique about them . Uh , you know , I think there's differences , like I said , like , like I mentioned , between men and women . I think there's differences between , uh , you know the age , you know and , and the athletic , uh , you know , the , the , uh , maybe the , the , the desires of the particular person .

I am a very protein centric person , that is , i think protein is incredibly important . I think , just in general , across the board , americans don't get enough protein . I think the RDA is woefully abysmally too low I mean , it's a bare minimum , not to basically fall apart , you know , with the 0.8 per kilogram .

And so I tend to push for , for more protein , uh , in the context , and then I also try to push people to exercise and maintain lean mass and put on lean mass , regardless of age and sex and and and , uh , other things , and so I think , again , you might have to .

you know , you know , in the absence of carbohydrates , um , you know we cause , we talk about the fact that you know , low carbohydrates in general tend to drive insulin secretion down to a degree . You know , we know that . you know , you know , certainly , carbohydrates are pretty good at causing insulin release .

We know that protein kind of has a moderate effect and fat tends to be a little less, you know , it's in a sense to be fairly , fairly low with regard to that And um , so one of the things we know that carbohydrates and insulin can do , it doesn't seem to , there seems to be no

advantage to adding carbohydrates to protein when it comes to muscle protein synthesis , but there may be some advantage when it comes to muscle protein breakdown .

So if you don't have carbohydrates , you might have to eat protein of an above , over , over and above that um for muscle protein , since it's over above what was , which , you know , if you talk to guys like Don Layman , stu Phillips and some of the other big names in protein , would recommend 1.2 to 1.6 grams for kilogram .

But then you see some people where the recommendations might be hired at 2.2 , even size 2.6 . And I think again , if you , as you drop the carbs , those numbers may go up . Uh , all right .

Like we know , for instance , uh , heavy , chronic endurance activity actually breaks down a lot of muscle . When you're out there running and pounding the pavement , a lot of your muscle breaks down .

And so some of the new research has come out showing that , uh , if you're a low carbohydrate athlete and you're an endurance athlete , you need up your protein percentage fairly significantly . So I mean , these things have roles . Again , again , it depends .

I mean , I think that's the way some of the some of the current understanding works .

And so that is to say , um , you know , an average , say , person , an athlete , the strength to put on muscle , will eat X amount of protein and X amount of fat and X amount of carbohydrates and and and maybe optimized for putting on muscle , whereas if you're not including carbohydrates in the diet , you might have to increase , actually eat a little bit more

protein than somebody who's eating carbohydrates . So carbohydrates don't necessarily promote any more protein , muscle protein synthesis . They may just limit some of the breakdown .

And so because of that , if you're eating , if your goal is to put on muscle in a low carb or a no carb position , you might have to just eat a little bit more protein beyond what bodybuilder normal might have . Now this also brings into the context of diabetes . I mean , this is another topic that you know .

You talk about some of the more advanced things diabetics , uh , you know , depending on that , you know , of course we have , you know , two major types type ones and type twos . And of course there's now the Lottas and the Modi's and some of the other sub types of diabetes , and some people say there's up to five types of diabetes .

Now We see that for them , for some of those folks you know , depending upon how much their beta cell , their pancreatic beta cells , are putting out beta cells or , remember , responsible for insulin , the alpha cells are putting out the glucagon , and so we have this sort of balance between beta cell function , or insulin secretion , or insulin, I'd say insulin function ,

because insulin , insulin , the net effective insulin , is the best way to get rid of the beta cell . Insulin is dependent upon , just like any other hormone , how much hormone is produced and then how receptive , how , how , how sensitive the receptors are .

So if you have uh , you know , that's one of the hallmark problems with type two diabetes we have , you know , maybe over secretion of insulin , but the receptors are so bad , you know , they're so resistant that you , you know , the , the insulin doesn't work .

So you have a net effective , not very effective insulin, and then glucagon still seems to be working pretty well , and so you have glucagon , which is trying to do the opposite of insulin . Glucagon is trying to make our glucose go higher , uh , by causing the liver to release glucagon and some of the other things . That's more catabolic , so it's great .

Whereas insulin is making a store of things , glucagon is making us release things , and so when you have a diabetic person , that has a sort of an imbalance between , you know , insulin sensitivity and insulin function , and glucagon , some of that extra protein , can cause hyperglycemia .

And so we see a lot of people where they go , whatever low carb , and they notice that you know , oh my God , the protein is turning . This is the whole thing where the steak is turning into cake . You know , we've gotten this sort of thing and you know we've got this .

Well , it's gluconeogenesis And I think it's probably more glycogenolysis , because you know , you know you see , whoa , whoa , whoa .

Okay , slow down , Gluconeogenesis versus glucose , something So so gluconeogenesis , basically , when you you probably heard of that , it means making glucose from other compounds , usually , you know , glycerol , from a triglyceride or , more more common than we see it , from amino acids , and some , some amino acids can be turned into glucose .

Some of them can be turned into ketones and many of them can be turned into both .

So , anyway , but so so gluconeogenesis , you know , I think , what we see post-prandtlally , because this is , you know , let's say , you eat a , you know , you I class , they see this with some of these chugs of protein shake , and we know that the amino acids from protein are very rapidly bioavailable . It's not , we're not , designed to eat powders .

I mean , this is a thing If you look at how our digestive system is set up . We're not supposed to eat powders , whether it be flour or sugar or protein powder or quite honestly , concentrated fats , so concentrated things like butter or cream or whatever oil , that's not what our human system is set up to do .

Now , we do that and we can handle that to a degree , and people do all the time . But it's not like how we're . We're ideally designed to make food . We're supposed to take a bite out of something , whether it's a piece of fruit or a nut or a big old hunk of you know the backside of a more or something like that .

Whatever we eat , it's got protein and fat bound in a matrix and it goes into our stomach , which , you know , the average time in the stomach is about four hours .

It's typically what gastric emptying time is and that can be modulated by some , as we know , some dark and cretin hormones which can increase or delay that , and so we churn it and we break it down slowly And then that fluid , that food , is basically slowly released into the first part of our small intestine called the duodenum , and so we have this slow release

of food . But when we you know we I think this is one of the things with processed foods when we eat powdered food , whatever it is you know , a cake is basically powdered food .

It's been put back together , but it's still powder , and so the surface area is very small and therefore the absorption capacity is very quick , and so , like you know , you put whatever it's sugar or protein powder or oil into that system and it really doesn't have to spend much time in the GI .

It does have to spend much time in the stomach because the stomach's like what am I doing ? You're already broken down into the smallest component it can be . So our body , i think , senses that and it's just dumped into our duodenum . So sometimes we we can exceed the capacity to absorb that .

So it's still a lot of times we get malabsorption or steateria or , you know , GI symptoms and so on and so forth . And so I think again with the , I guess I kind of wondered quite a far way .

You know as , whereas body fat is what we store on our belly and our butt , and glycogen is stored actually within the muscles themselves , within the liver itself , and so under the influence of glucagon and some of the other hormones to cortisol , some of the catecholamines like norepinephrine , will cause that glycogen to break down .

So we have rapid availability for glucose . Why is that so important ? It's because you know the fight or flight thing . You know , if we get all of a sudden we're walking down the walking through the forest and a bear pops out , we want to be able to run . You know . I mean we've got this ATP system that allows us to expend energy for about 10 seconds .

This is what true sprinting is . And so we've got this . You know this sort of rapidly progressive way of , or you know a progressive way to expend energy or to move , and so the first thing is ATP or the phosphogen system or the creatine phosphate system .

You know it's just pure AT that breaks ATP , that breaks apart , right , and so we have that available to us so we can kind of react for about five to 10 seconds . You know we can . We can have this rapid fight or flight thing . And then we go on to what's called anaerobic glycolysis , where we start to

use some of those glucose . And this is what happens when we dump that glucose from the liver , or the so-called glycogenolysis , so break the lysis of glycogen , glycogenolysis , so breaking down the glycogen that's in the liver to rapidly flood our blood supply with glucose .

And so that is sort of the , i guess , some of the physiologic foundation upon why we do that . And then we get into this oxidative , you know , oxygen using aerobic metabolism , where you can go run 20 miles or whatever you want to do Realize crazy people like to do that sort of stuff .

But anyway , so that I mean that's , i mean those are , you know , some of the basic physiologic underpinnings and what's going on , and some of that , you know , some of that breaks down under these different pathophysiologic conditions , like diabetes , where you know we have this . Now we have this system where we're really good at producing glucose .

We're still having , we still have the capacity to produce glucose . And it's interesting if you look at some of the macronutrient studies on what causes blood glucose to rise . One is you know there's studies on protein . So you know there's studies I've seen where they take protein and they feed people protein and they don't see glucose .

And they don't see glucose and they don't see glucose until a certain threshold . So if you feed somebody pure protein and I think it was like 75 grams , and this is again based on the average size individual , all these you have to scale to people . I mean , yes , the , yeah , the , the , the , the , uh .

Phil probably knows the average human was supposed to be 70 kilos . You know a lot of these studies are based on the 154 pound , five foot 10 male I think was supposed to be average Just now .

The average male is quite a bit bigger than that , you know , as far as at least weight is , I mean , but used to be 70 kilos And so I think a lot of those studies were normalized to that . So at 75 grams of pure protein you'll start to dump glucose out of your liver . And it's because And it stimulates glucagon , I guess .

I think that's what's going on . I'm sure there's a lot of intermediate steps in there , but effectively that's what's happening now . If you have a diabetic , you know who's got this sort of uh , poorly functioning it's insulin side because they're insulin resistant , or they're a type one diabetic where they just don't produce insulin .

Either way , the effect of that is we're not secreting , we don't have enough insulin function to overcome what's happening with glycogen and , sorry , glucagon which breaks down glycogen in the liver to dump in and we get hyperglycemia And rather than that steak turning into cake and being stored via gluconeogenesis which it does occur but I think it's a much slower

process .

Like I said , if we see like , for instance , if anybody wears a CGM and they eat a protein meal and I've seen this because I've worn a CGM at times and all the you know carbohydrates , obviously you know you snarf down , you know coke and some donuts , your blood glucose within about 30 to 45 minutes of shooting upwards , right , but if you eat a protein meal

and it depends how much fat is there more fat means it's going to take longer . If you eat a protein meal , you're not going to see that release of , you're not going to see that glucose rise until about three , four , five , six hours afterwards , and why , and you know , i think some of that is because those , those nutrients are not even getting into the .

They're not even getting into the system until that time . You know it's it's like I said , sitting in the stomach , still in the stomach for four hours maybe , maybe longer . You know , if you eat a big meal , you know we have this .

You know one of these new things that people talk about , glp , glp one , glp one agonist or receptor agonist , which is a new drug class , a drug the ozympics , that will govies and things like that , and that one of the one of the effects of GLP one is to slow gastric emptying time so that the food stays in the stomach even longer .

And we know we we can do that with just food . I mean , food has an impact on GLP one . That's why it's there . It wasn't there because it was waiting for a drug to be , you know , injected into us . It's there because it's supposed to respond to foods and we know , like a big steak , for instance , will cause that gastric emptying time to slow down .

And you know we have even slower , you know , acquisition of nutrients . And so , again , i think what's happening with the initial spike in blood glucose and diabetics is that you know , a lot of them have this . You know , insulin is secreted in two phases . There's a rapid phase and a delayed phase and they have very or phase one response .

So I mean , you know , normally you would see , you know , in normal physiology , you eat some food , the body senses that's there , it releases some insulin .

We even have a cephalic phase , which means the head phase of digestion , and so when we smell food , when we , when we see it , we start salivating , we secrete salivary amylase and salivary lipase And then , you know , we start releasing hormones and one of those could be glucagon And then so glucagon will be in effect but insulin is also being secreted and usually

kind of balance each other out and our blood glucose is kind of stable . But in a diabetic you have this release of a poor release of insulin because a phase one response is broken or blunted , but we still have the glucagon response .

And so we start seeing , early on this , this rise in blood glucose with with exposure to macronutrients , whether it be carbs or often protein . Anyway , that's kind of off . I guess it's kind of a weird diversion .

mean . I mean , if you look at things like the pedicast and the diast , these are ways to measure how much protein , what Something it's called the pedicast is protein digestibility correct ? an amino acid score . It's just a way to score how well amino acids get into our system , you know .

And what they would classically do is they make you eat something , they dig through your poop and they calculate how much of that protein was still absorbed . That's what's pedicast .

And they've upgraded to something called the diast , where it's a little bit more sensitive because instead of taking digging through their poop , they dig out what comes out of the end of your small intestine , because what was happening is within your poop is a lot of bacterial protein , because we have a lot of bacteria that have our coke or our colon .

So it was a less accurate way to measure protein availability for absorption . So now they have something called the diast , which is the digestibility of indispensable amino acid score the diast . So that's a new one . But regardless , I mean , what it shows consistently is whey protein , number one .

Whey protein is the best way to get protein , you know , if you want to go basically on what's really absorbable , and then we see , following that , we see things like egg protein and then beef protein and pork and chicken and all those things and whey down the list . And soy is actually a pretty decent protein when it comes to those metrics .

Soy does contain things called trypsin inhibitors which tend to , you know , limit that a little bit . And then you get into things like corn and weed and all these other you know proteins which are not well absorbed , based on those scoring .

Now what I find is that , you know , I think , honestly , i think egg protein and dairy protein and beef protein are all great sources of protein . Now , the problem is a lot of people don't tolerate dairy , for whatever reason There's . A lot of people have sensitivities to some of the caseins and , you know , lactose and things like it .

So it's problematic and that a lot of the things that come with it can be problematic . I think that you know same thing . Some people have problems . You know eggs are a pretty common allergy . There's a lot of people have sensitivities , that so I still find that you know , meat protein probably meat or fish protein are pretty good .

And then the problem with that is , you know , when you , when you start going to things like chicken and I rarely have ever eaten chicken it's not a bad source of protein . The problem is it's not a very good source of fat . And so you get into this . I'm just going to eat chicken breast And what is you know ?

I mean , from an appeal standpoint , it's like I don't go look at a chicken breast at store and start salivating , but if you show me a marble steak , I'm like , wow , that's , that's going to do it for me , because I , you know , I think that the fat is is incredibly essential . I mean , we have to have fat in the diet .

We know that if humans get less than about 20% of their calories from fat and this is even on a diet includes carbohydrates they start to run into problems . And you know , 20% is not that much fat when you look at it on a per calorie basis , because we know that .

You know fat has nine grams per calorie or nine calories per gram or other , and you know carbs and protein tend to have about .

So I think you know , like I said , when it comes to muscle protein synthesis , another thing we see there's studies out there that show that actually , again , dietary cholesterol has an impact , has a positive impact , and so when we have just protein , without some of these other nutrients , whether it's the cholesterol , perhaps some of the you know fat soluble vitamins

, vitamin A , D , e and K , you know we , we , we make compromise .

I think there's studies out there that showing , like directly comparing a diet where you feed people pure egg white protein versus egg white plus the yolk , where the protein is matched , you know you get 10 grams of protein , because there is a little bit of protein in the egg yolk and people don't know that .

But if they , if they say exact amount of protein , 10 grams versus 10 grams , egg whites only or whole egg , the whole egg people do better . They do better with muscle protein synthesis . So why is that ? What's in there ?

Cause , the same amount of protein , but clearly there's other other ingredients in there , whether it's the fat soluble vitamins , whether it's the cholesterol , we know that that has a has an impact on on muscle protein synthesis .

In fact there's actually studies showing higher cholesterol diets show more muscle growth and it may be maybe it has an impact on the hormones . I mean we know that , like , for instance , cholesterol has the backbone for all of our , many of our hormones , all the sex hormones vitamin D , for instance , you know , progesterone , proknein alone ,

testosterone and all the other derivatives of that are based upon a cholesterol backbone .

I want to be able to work out harder , i want to be able to recover faster and I want to be able to build muscle . Now , what you just described to me , those three qualities , are touted as benefits of taking testosterone supplementation .

If they were , if they were to do the right things , that exercise and that sort of stuff . But yeah , i mean it's you know .

The reason I say that is because , just like we talked about insulin and insulin resistance , there is such thing as androgen resistance . We have receptors . Every hormone has a receptor and every receptor whether it's insulin or glucagon or testosterone or thyroid has a level of sensitivity which is modifiable .

There's a great paper from Stu Phillips from , i believe , 2018 , where they looked at a bunch of 20-year-old college kids 2022 , whatever they were and they had them work out and they measured all their labs .

They looked at testosterone , free testosterone , sex hormone , binding globulin , dha , dha all these sort of androgenic muscle growth hormone , things like that all these hormones that have a role in there . They also did muscle biopsies on them and they measured the androgen density , the androgen receptor density and sensitivity .

What they found was the only thing that correlated with muscle protein synthesis was the androgen receptor , not how much testosterone was floating around a little bit , but how sensitive that receptor was . That was a real clear correlate .

Now it's not to say that guys taking drugs , exogenous hormones , don't see that , because we know that that has an impact on our androgen receptor . Things that are known to increase the androgen receptor sensitivity include exercise , exogenous hormones , which I'm not a fan of .

Meal frequency actually less , i would call it almost intermittent fasting , not eating constantly , seems to increase the androgen receptor . Then another thing called carnitine . Now Phil knows that you get . Where do you get carnitine from ? in the real world You basically get it from red meat . I mean it's in a few other foods , but I mean where you get it ?

in animal products . There could be some argument made that you become more sensitized to androgens . Perhaps maybe you might increase your sum a little bit . I mean that might be occurring . The net effect usually not for everybody , but for most people is an improvement in what I call testosterone function , maybe not the level , but the overall function .

Maybe their androgen receptor is more sensitive . But it usually looks like this People get a little bit leaner , they put on a little bit more muscle . Their sexual function often improves with erectile function and libido . There's another thing . There was a study in the urology literature that looks at they were looking at this is for erectile dysfunction .

They looked at comparing testosterone versus carnitine . Testosterone is a replacement hormone . They found actually carnitine was superior for erectile dysfunction than even testosterone . Again , where are you getting carnitine from ? You're getting it from a steak . Eating lots of carnitine has benefits . We know they have benefits on the brain .

We know they have benefits on the health . It's vilified . In fact . There's something called TMAO , trimethylamine oxide which is being a Cleveland clinic is out there saying well , tmao levels are higher in people with heart disease . Therefore , you should avoid choline and carnitine . Where do you get choline and carnitine ? from Steak and eggs .

Basically , there's a lot more nuance to that particular sort of thing . I'm certainly happy to talk about that , but that's something that's out there .

Yes , in brief , many people , men and women notice that maybe their overall either testosterone level or function of the testosterone because I think it remembers , depending on the receptor as well seemed to often improve as their metabolic health improves

, which makes sense . You see a lot of guys that are just overweight , out of shape and they're put on testosterone . It doesn't really make a difference because all they do is they get on , and it often as long as they keep all this extra body fat . It just turned .

The aromatase enzyme just turns it into estrogen , so they just kind of continue to fuel that . So I think you really have to make those lifestyle changes . Again , this is a recurrent thing . There's no free lunches here . You can't just keep put on a magic pill . You've got to make the lifestyle changes .

I know the pharmaceutical industry wants to keep saying we got this pill , we got this drug , we got this injection and it's going to make you everything wonderful . But there's always a gotcha . I think we'll see that with I don't know if Phil's opinion on his empigas , but I think we'll see that with these GLP1 agonists .

I think we're going to see three years , five years from now , we're going to see some real potential train wrecks , but we'll see .

But I want to pivot a little bit and talk some about some of the work you're doing on improving and protecting access to meat , And I know you've been working with ranchers and some of the Cattleman's associations . Talk a little bit about that stuff that you do .

and as anybody who's not living on a rock has heard , well , to save the planet from impending disaster , the cow farts are boiling the oceans and we got to get rid of the cows and we got to get everybody to eat more insects and soybeans and plant-based foods and that type of stuff , and we just need to cut back , whereas I think the opposite is true .

I think we need to cut back on the ultra-processed foods and include more high-quality proteins in the diet . And the interesting thing is that a lot of us that do this , we actually consume far less food than the average person . We make far less waste .

I mean , i can tell you my , you know , i literally fill up a trash bag about once a week , you know , with I mean kitchen trash bag with , because I mean I throw a couple bones in there and that's about it . There's nothing that I , you know .

Whatever , you know , maybe there's a little bit of plastic from the thing if I do that , but I mean it's very little . But I , you know , i think first of all I've been trying to convince the cattle producers that number one , you're producing a health food . And I go to lecture these guys and they're like what ?

Really They don't even know that the food they're producing is actually literally reversing diseases in people . So we get them to sort of buy off on that . And you know , i've been kind of pushing , you know , some of these big cattle organizations to start funding some research on the effects of meat on health .

And you know , in the context of these carnivore type diets , because to me that is the ultimate non-confounded way to do something like this Well , if meat is bad for us , then a diet of pure meat should be awful . I mean , people should just be getting sick , as can be , and of course , as you know , phil , the exact opposite is happening .

You know we're seeing it anecdotally and it's growing , and now there's got thousands , if not hundreds of thousands , even probably millions of people now have tried this .

So we're trying to get research there , and so I'm right now I'm in the middle of negotiating with well , myself and several other people are negotiating a study to show the impact of a carnivore diet on , for instance , diabetes , which we know is gosh . It works really , really well for that At least , that's been my experience .

So we're currently , you know , in negotiation with the , the beef check off , or the NCBA National Academy of Beef Association , to do that . We've had and I've got some researchers lined up that are just chomping at the bit to do this research .

So I'm not a researcher myself , so I'm not going to throw my hat in that arena because I don't want to mess it up . So I want professional researchers to do this . So that's , you know , that's one of the things that we're doing . You know , obviously I'm I'm I'm lobbying on social media , trying to just educate people that want it's a healthy , it's healthy .

Now , the other side of that is , you know , well , people say , well , maybe it's healthy , but it's bad for the planet and we need to get rid of that And I think there's just a just tremendous amount of information that would show that that's not to be the case .

And you know , i don't think the time constraint of this podcast will be enough to go into that . A lot of people are coming around to that as well . I mean , they're seeing that you know . You know we see like in the Netherlands where You know they're trying to shut down farms .

The sad thing and this is a sad thing is that in the United States , you know , we're seeing all this backlash in the Netherlands about , you know , 3,000 farms being having to close . In Ireland having to coal 200,000 cows to meet their net zero climate goals for whatever for 2030 .

In the United States in mid-1970s we had 1.3 or 1.4 million ranches , cattle ranches in the United States . Today we have under 700,000 of them . So in the last 50 years we've lost nearly 50% of our cattle producers or , you know , ranchers . Now some of that's been taken up by big corporations that have kind of taken over those , but we've had a net loss .

I mean , for instance , our cattle population in 1970 , again was about 130 million . We're now down to about 90 million . So we've lost something like 40% of the cattle . The average American used to eat almost 100 pounds of beef a year . Now it's down around 56 pounds , 55 , 56 pounds .

So we've seen a 30 , 40 , 50% reduction in the amount of beef that's being consumed in the population over the last 50 years . And we can see what's going on with the health . If we just look at the health numbers , i mean the health numbers are abysmal .

I mean our BC rates are , you know , they're 42% , pre-pandemic , post-pandemic , they're probably closer to I don't know 46 , 47% , soon will cross 50% not just overweight but obese . And that's quite an accomplishment , you know , to be able to do that . And so I think it's , you know , it's in everyone's interest that we figure this stuff out .

And we noticed , i mean , fortunately , we've seen a massive rejection of the plant-based fake meats . I mean we've seen those companies where they you know they're just , it's just the interest is waning in that , despite this massive , massive push and financial backing behind that , no one's buying that stuff .

People are saying , hey , i don't want , it , doesn't taste as good too , i'm just not buying it . And then you know , i mean the cell-based ag has also got similar problems , which you know I've talked about many times . But I am trying to .

As you know , i'm not , i'm not an , i'm not a atmospheric scientist , i'm not anybody that has any kind of stuff , but I know a little bit about health And so and I can show receipts on that , as far as you know , patients , we've helped , and so I think , from my standpoint , i just want to show people that meat is a health food and we need to keep it

in the diet and we need to , you know , not demonize and get rid of it for that reason alone And I'll leave it to other people that are in the industry that can can demonstrate the beneficial of packs or the non . I mean everything has an environmental impact . There's nothing we do that doesn't .

I mean the healthcare sector , phillip , you don't know that produces something . We're somewhere up to 10% of our greenhouse gases . In the United States , cattle produced two 2% healthcare sector produces 10% . I mean I don't know you can remember you go into the operating room and how many trash bags full of garbage do you produce every time you do a surgery ?

I mean they're rolling like these big 55 gallon trash bags six or seven , eight of them out of the room with all the trash you create every time you do an operation And that's just , you know , and that's just all this stuff that goes into garbage , all these single use items .

So if you can prevent you know a few of those surgeries , and I know we certainly can how much do you save there ? and just amount of pure garbage and all the , all , the all the you know the fossil fuels are going to making that garbage , to making the products in the first place .

you know , like I said , anytime you , you know it's just like when , anytime , you sort of sort of get this , you know , monocular vision and it's all this , this sort of black and white stuff , this is , this is it , and you don't look at all the , all the external things that go into that .

Like I said , i mean , if we're looking at greenhouse gases , look at the healthcare sector 10% . What happens if ? what if I ?

if I go on a , on a , on a meat-based diet , which impacts arguably 2% of the U S greenhouse gases , but I get out of the healthcare sector , i don't need the doctor anymore , I don't , i'm not going to ER twice a year and I'm not all these chronic meds anymore . I'm like , is it's a net effect of that positive ?

I think it probably is , you know , but no one's doing that calculation . But you know , we clearly see , you know there's there's a lot more . it's a lot more complicated than than a simple well , cows part and therefore there's methane and therefore we need to get rid of all the cows . I mean there's . I mean I can go into . you know some of them .

you know with biogenic versus , you know other sources of methane there's there . there's a lot of stuff that goes into that , but it's not as simple as people are telling you , i suppose .

explode , And I appreciate it . I really do . but I'm thinking about the transcription here . It's going to be a lot of fun going through the transcription . We're going to find out just how good our , our language recognition software is .

So if you want to join that , you can go to carnivorecom , carnivorediet or reverocom , which is our company , which we'll be launching very soon . I am on social media . I've got a YouTube channel , sean Baker MD .

I've got a Instagram account at Sean Baker 1967 , which is a year I was born , and then I'm on Twitter at S Baker No , sorry , yeah , s , what is it ? Yeah , s Baker MD , you know , then a KER and then MDs and capital . So that's where I am primarily . You can find me there and you know cause and trouble probably .

But I'm really kind of I'm worth big surgeon hammer hit it man , and to me it's like here's a steak and whack somebody over the head with a steak and their health gets better .

So I mean it's kind of cause it's all kind of a black box still as far as I'm concerned And I mean I know it's fun to talk about this stuff , but I mean I'm , i'm really I like to keep things simple , you know , in many cases , and I know you cause Phil wanted to talk into some more nuance and this stuff But I mean I think it's really just stop

eating ultra process garbage start . You know and this is the other thing is I think you have a lot more power than what you think you do , and but you , if you're sick , chronically sick , and you're eating this ultra process human pet food , you can't access that power . You got to get off that stuff And I think that's you know .

I think that's just such an important message .

I was fine Tuesday before I go to the bathroom and I did this workout on Friday . So it was kind of it was kind of weird . We were laughing . I mean , I was hiking on Sunday , but I was waddling . I was waddling up and down the hill and I couldn't flex my hips . You know it was painful . So anyway , it was a fun one .

I'm doing jiu-jitsu now and the all time greatest guy who's ever done jiu-jitsu is guys named Haja Gracie . He's just called me and said Hey , i'm going on carnival Man . I feel great As best I felt in years . So it's kind of fun to see that . So we're seeing it even in the athletes . So it's cool .

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