Fixing Back Pain and Metabolic Disease w/Carnivore Neurosurgeon Dr David Johnson!

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically all right hello everyone this is Dr Anthony chafee here with you again for another episode of the plant free MD podcast today I have a very special guest with neurosurgeon over from Queensland Dr David Johnson Dr Johnson thank you so much for joining us how are you good Morning Anthony I am fantastic thanks I'm I'm delighted to be um having the opportunity to have another talk with you um we've had a chat a little while ago but it's been a long time and I'm following your work and and it's wonderful to see that another neurosurgery colleague is um is doing good work outside of the Neurosurgical specialty I think it's extremely important and um and it's kind of like as as medical professionals our Our obligation um uh when we have this opportunity to educate patients yeah absolutely so uh for people having come across you in your work can you tell us a bit about yourself and and what and uh your practice oh sure um studying Medical Science probably for getting close to 30 years now um uh I started medicine in 1990 um and uh I sort of worked my way into the specialty of neurosurgery um and now I run a uh a private practice in Brisbane City um my practice predominantly manages people with spine pain and disability so yes I do perform a spine surgery but I see my role um as a as a surgeon to do everything I can to educate my community and my patients to try to avoid surgery okay surgeries are highly invasive um intervention and um one of the offshoots of that is that about eight years ago I developed a um a rehabilitation program that has the the focus of um curing back pain symptoms curing back pain symptoms and um and back pain is one of the leading causes of disability on our planet um not just in Australia but effectively in every modern culture back pain is first or second in terms of uh economic or a clinical burden of disease so it was clearly a big problem and um for the first part of my career I was just seeing so many people with this condition back pain and it sort of was like a a light bulb moment when I I realized that patients weren't actually getting treatment that addressed the the cause of their back pain symptoms they were getting multitudes of interventions that addressed the symptoms of back pain but the Paradigm for managing spine related pain and back pain was to not really identify the root cause of the symptoms and that's the basis of my um my Rehabilitation Paradigm is treating the course not in conjunction with the symptoms and I started to sort of see very close parallels with metabolic Health as well you know there's so many treatment options out there um to improve on people's metabolic health and it becomes almost confusing we just have so much information at our fingertips now that people are lost um and it's it's so bizarre I mean you must think that yourself like why is it so hard for people to be healthy when it is just a natural process uh when a baby is born it knows what to do okay it's it's hardwired in our DNA to to start drinking milk from their mother um and as the baby gets older it's hardwired in their DNA to start crawling and to start squatting and and when you actually look at babies moving from a musculoskeletal biomechanical point of view you can see perfect movement proficiency and no one taught them anything but when you look at Patients um you can see very clearly their movement proficiency is completely corrupted and of course they suffer the consequences of that which is musculoskeletal Pain and Disability and then you look at their diet and you say why are you eating that like that's not what our our um our metabolism our liver our physiology was designed to eat um and and now you've got to do your job as a doctor you can't you can't miss that opportunity when you have an engagement with the patient to I be I became obsessed with not allowing that opportunity to slip by uh and not give them some form of information about about their metabolic Health as well so that's why we're that's why metabolism and nutrition is is a another thing that I'm very passionate about as well as the the the the the specialty of neurosurgery and spine related pain they kind of they kind of run parallel with each other yeah yeah well and that's great to do so that's that's kind of where we're at now and I'm sorry go on yeah hold on I'll say that's that's kind of where we're at now and um you know really enjoying um spreading the word through interactions with people like yourself low carb down under um in terms of the the metabolic Health side of things and in terms of the musculoskeletal side of how things we're trying to really rewrite the guidelines for uh for back pain management and um and the latest the latest initiative that I've I've established with some colleagues is a new College a new College uh and we call it the the College of a functional movement clinicians okay because that's kind of an entirely new skill set and Specialty that that focuses on movement proficiency as a as a paradigm to treat uh back pain hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right thanks guys so as far as the your treatments go so this is a lot of movement related uh treatments is that the is that the Mainstay and then do you tie in diet as well well when when patient when patients come to us with with back pain we I kind of try to um work through the understanding of why they are in pain and for the most part they are feeling pain because of the the expression of nociception or inflammation okay those are the the primary um ways that our body communicates pain from our extremities uh to to our brain um and there are other there are other ways of uh of the but of the body under perceiving pain and neuropathic pain would be the third and then there's another layer of pain which we call the central pain and that's that's a a sort of an a new level of pain that arises when we don't do a good job of managing the peripheral structural nocicept nociception and inflammation well the brain kind of goes okay well if you're not doing a good job managing my arthritis for example or my uh um disc annulus the disc capsule strain line if you're not going to do a good job of allowing that to settle robustly then I will reset the the pain thermostat so to speak and that's the central nervous system problem um and and and that kind of happens in The Chronic phase of pains but we need to we need to really help people in the early sort of immediate phase of when they start feeling pain so that they don't develop that secondary neurological Central sensitization form of pain which is extremely difficult to untangle one once it entrenches it's a little bit like a a PTSD um but it's a PTSD of pain and everyone knows that those kind of central nervous system disorders are really hard to unravel you know depression and and post-traumatic stress disorder anxiety but you've got to realize that patients have to realize that that pain can manifest uh in a similar way um where where the symptom is pain not necessarily anxiety or depression or or um or post-traumatic stress so what we need people to understand is why does their joint transform from a normal 50 year old facet joint or or spinal joint or sacroiliac joint what what is the mechanism by which that joint transforms into a painful inflamed joint and clearly the sole purpose of joints in the musculoskeletal system is movement that's why we have a musculoskeletal system primarily is movement obviously there's the support and and and and supporting our our organs and Locomotion but movement is the key reason why we have a musculoskeletal system um and if that musculoskeletal system is failing it by definition means that our movement proficiency is failing okay so if we are going to resolve that movement dysfunction the primary and default methodology of helping that patient is to deliver movement therapy and that's a difficult concept for people to understand at first because they will have all been guided down the the conventional Paradigm of doing lots of exercise lots of core strength lots of stretching um you know they will have all done some physical manual therapies such as Chiropractic therapy or or foam rolling or adjustments osteopathy there's a there's there's countless different types of physical therapies that people do and they kind of think that they've done movement Theory but they they haven't they actually haven't been upskilled and that's that's one of the characteristics that's a key characteristic of a functional intervention is that I have upskilled my patient okay and you can sort of say the same for the understanding of diet as well upskill their knowledge um and 99 of the interventions that are delivered for patients are couch based okay they come on into the studio oh where is it hurt it hurts in my back okay lie down let me do some dry needling acupuncture let me release the tight muscles there is no way that a patient can enhance their movement skill when they lay down on a couch okay and then for the last couple of minutes of the meeting they might receive a piece of paper and say go home and do these exercises right so that's kind of the that's kind of the Paradigm in a nutshell um and that's once patients walk out of the room they go oh okay I get it when can I start and then why didn't someone tell me this 10 years ago yeah so that's that's quite a that's quite a a satisfying moment when people realize oh I've been doing the wrong thing yeah yeah and so and so so how would movement therapy differ uh specifically from the traditional PT exercises things like that what's sort of the difference there all right excellent question I mean um if you think about exercises being something that is um discretionary and fitness as being something that's discretionary um and people choose to be people choose to develop their level of functional capacity or Fitness that suits their lifestyle okay um uh but movement skill is mandatory okay so what you've kind of got to do with patients is say okay well I've got a I've got to teach you the alphabet before you can write a sentence or if you if you really get good at writing the alphabet you can you can write a thesis or you can write a novel um or I've got to teach you to count before before you can do algebra and and how how far you take that that skill of understanding the alphabet and Counting is totally dependent on you so exercise programs are kind of putting the the horse before the cart the patients haven't actually or they did when they're a child or a toddler they had movement proficiency then because it's actually hardwired in it but modern society has corrupted their expression of vivid proficiency and so when they try to exercise to um get better they are exercising housing with movement dysfunction so that kind of sort of sends them crashing back down again because you can't you can't start to Overlay capacity before you've actually acquired fundamental proficient movement biomechanics um so movement therapy as far as the the lumbar spine is concerned um can be or movement proficiency as far as the lumbar spine is is concerned can be really defined by a set of rules um and our our rules for maintaining healthy spinal biomechanics is hip Centric rotation neutral spine awareness posterior kinetic chain powered movement unloaded knee positions and proficiency limited range of motion okay so those are the kind of like the five golden rules for lumbo pelvic movement biomechanics and so you can write them down on a piece of paper and that doesn't mean much to a patient initially okay but once they start engaging in movement training or movement therapy which is very different to exercise these are motor patterns right these are motor patterns that we're trying to instill in the brain so that when the patient sees their mobile phone on the coffee table and they bend over to pick it up or when they see the the dishwasher has to be emptied and they they start emptying the dishwasher and when they are bending the they are expressing a plus movement points of performance and once they start getting that movement pattern default that changes the biomechanical stress on the joint and when you change biomechanical stress on the joints you reduce biological inflammation and when you reduce biological inflammation you reduce no exception and pain and you start to prevent the accelerated structural changes to the Joint which is what we are trying to do is to prevent surgery okay because every week you know I'm in surgery tomorrow putting nuts and bolts in people who haven't had that message in a timely way their joints are structurally uh compromised to the point that I can never be repaired naturally and hence they need to have a spinal fusion or spinal decompression surgery and that's sad because that is entirely preventable if that patient was given this advice you know maybe five or ten years ago yeah um and and to date I haven't seen any other program that actually defines movement proficiency for the patient okay yeah I I have a friend of mine actually that interestingly enough he's a doctor of Physiotherapy in Santa Barbara and he's on Instagram and he's been for the last year or so putting out all of these movements exercise movements that mimic the movements that uh that a baby or a toddler would make and I always thought that was quite interesting wonderful yeah yeah and uh and then there's that that knees over toes guy who's doing similar things where you know squatting down you know baby spots all the way down it was bending forward uh with the knees past your toes and things like that um that's that's one thing that uh um my father's missing as well he had spinal surgery he had a he had a cyst in his lumbar spine and you know early 2010s and had to get had to get removed and uh you know minimally invasive surgery had a very good surgeon in Seattle so all that went well but he just did not recover well at all and he had back spasms and started getting worse and worse and started just crumpling more and more and more and now he sort of walks with the stoop now he's giving himself a scoliosis because his because he's just in so much pain that he's just crunched himself forward and the only things that are comfortable to him are are putting himself in these compromised positions and unfortunately he's never had a physical therapist or anyone else that has been able to straighten him out unfortunately he has the diet right he's been carnivore for five years now but unfortunately hasn't had the the right um physical attention yeah he hasn't had the he hasn't he hasn't been delivered movement therapy after his surgery um and if you think about this cyst I I would almost bet that the city this was a synovial cyst um that comes out from an unhealthy facet joint and then it squashes the nerves and that's extremely painful and yes it needs this structural intervention but if you actually say to the surgeon or the patient uh your dad you say well why did you get that synovial cyst in the first place that synovial cyst arose as a consequence of his movement dysfunction uh and it's an it's a micro insult day in day out for quite a few years and then the synovial cyst expands and then becomes clinically overt I.E they get pain so the surgeons are very good at addressing the downstream problems we are very good we've been taught to address the downstream problems very well okay no different to you know metabolic Health we can oh you've got you've got blocked coronary arteries have you okay wonderful here's your coronary stent here's your coronary artery bypass graft here's your beta blocker here's your ACE inhibitor we're so good at at helping people drowning but we're you know Greg Glassman we're so good at helping people drowning but we're terrible at being good lifeguards okay found it's just so it's so real and and so with you going back to your dad he's got movement dysfunction that created this is that then needed the surgery and then after the surgery no one got rid of the movement dysfunction so the very thing that caused his problem is still lingering and so of course he's not going to rehabilitate well of course he's going to continue to suffer Pain and Disability afterwards you know and and I'd love to have the opportunity to talk to your dad if he's interested we we you know over the last three years we've done a lot of work over video consultations and movement therapy can be delivered by a via video consultation but because we don't need to touch the patient obviously obviously it is easier to deliver movement therapy with tactile um tactile cues but um and that means yes being able to put people in certain positions and give them give them tactile choose to respond to but in actual fact our movement therapist and our team of movement therapists are so expert at seeing biomechanics from the other side of the room that we can deliver movement therapy to people on the other side of the world in fact I'm delivering movement therapy to a doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and she's had neck pain relate she's had neck pain for 10 years and she's in Mount Sinai Hospital so she's got the the world's best ivy league orthopedic surgeon the world's best you know physiatrist the world's best physical therapist and none of them are helping her and she's done movement therapy for five weeks now via Skype or Zoom or whatever it is and she's going I cannot believe it I cannot believe that my neck is starting to feel less painful every day because all we've done is we've improved the biomechanics so um yeah let's talk to your dad I mean it's never too late to start improving on movement Proficiency in case it's just like it's never too late to stop smoking it's never too right to start start you know uh low insulin anemic diets so um yeah that's this that's a sad thing that I hear all the time um you know I had this surgery and it worked really well for a year or two but then all of my pain came back yeah you know neurosurgeons would call that adjacent segment is disease okay did you do a bit of spine surgery in Oz yeah we call that a Json segment disease it's not a disease at all it's failed post-operative Rehabilitation syndrome okay because you put some fusion device in the spine and then if you don't correct the biomechanics you get a force Vector adjacent to the instrumentation okay that is like a crowbar just say just so you fuse L5 S1 because the L5 S1 disc is structurally compromised and that's causing a lot of pain symptoms yes the surgeon comes in very good surgeon doing his bit but he doesn't tell the patient that hey when you bend over to pick up your your coffee cup or when you brush your teeth in the morning try to keep a neutral spine and rotate through the hip joint if that simple message was provided to the patient and they expressed that as default biomechanics they would not get adjacent segment disease um it's that simple it is that simple it is and that's the parallel with diet too right the solution is so simple that it it it it boggles the mind of people who can see it clearly like yourself why do we have an epidemic of obesity and metabolic syndrome and heart disease it's all kind of curable with a very simple solution and that's why Occam's razor principle is so pertinent the most simple solution is often the best yeah absolutely yeah so when did you come on to uh your understanding about how diet relates to metabolic health and uh back pain oh yeah no come uh going back over 10 years um I the story was that I um went to get a life insurance policy and I filed my blood pressure readings and my general practitioner who I who I never saw normally um just kept putting the blood pressure cuff because he wanted to approve my blood pressure so that I I would have a uh a legitimate um policy and I had to sort of come back again and and do it until I had a reading that was satisfactory you know very honest uh general practitioner and I think this is bizarre like I do everything healthy I'm medically trained why is my blood pressure creeping up and it wasn't just my blood pressure you know I was I was disgraceful I had the love handles I had the big puffy cheek cheeks um uh I was not sleeping well um and I thought I was doing everything healthy I was having the multi-grain bread I was having the the cereal with the you know the healthy food ratings um uh I was not eating cakes I was not eating you know um confectionery which was obviously bad but I was I was having all of the complex carbohydrates um and that was creating pre-diabetes that was creating pre-diabetes and insulin resistance and and I thought um and a friend of mine who was actually my surgical assistant and at lunchtime we would be all hoeing into our sandwiches our healthy sandwiches and and wraps you know um and he would just had a couple of cubes of butter he would have a couple of tubes of butter and I know he said you're um you're gonna get blocked arteries eating that you know fat blocks your arteries and he goes David what are you talking about that's not how it works and so it was just so profound that that he said that and I really I'm grateful for him but that was like the light dive moment that made me think what do I really understand about health and so I just kind of went back to my first year textbooks I don't know whether you use guyton's textbook of physiology was another one yeah I do remember that yeah textbook of physiology yeah yeah and I actually I actually emailed I because you can in the insert you can you can contact the author so I emailed them I was surprised he actually got back to me um and um and and there it was it was um uh Harbor excessive consumption of carbohydrates or the consumption of carbohydrates requires an escalation of insulin okay and what do we know if we constantly Drive insulin secretion we then drive insulin resistance okay we don't drive insulin resistance and then it all started to come into into perspective and um well if I don't insulin resistance is synonymous with carbohydrate intolerance and if I'm carbohydrate intolerance the way I regain my insulin sensitivity is just stop eating carbohydrates okay so then then it was like okay throw the bread machine out and never buy rice again never bite and and it was just like bacon and eggs yeah butter and guess what happened guess what happened without even trying I I got a six yeah with not one sit-up not one sit-up because the sit-ups don't make six packs right um and um and my blood pressure just came and I started sleeping better and my brain started working better that was one of the disadvantages is that your brain just keeps thinking you just you just keep thinking you you just you your brain's functioning on ketones and that's like the the the the the turbo turbocharged V8 super fuel for your brain and um and so yeah all of the health metrics just came good everything everything um and so it was so profound and when you experience it personally um yeah you just want to you just tell the world about it and of course when you're in a Consulting room you know three or four days a week with patient after patient after patient who has all of the features of metabolic syndrome yeah you just go okay is your GP not telling you this like and then you know that well if I was as a duped then of course your GP is likely to be duped as well um and and then you kind of heard there's the same old same old story and and then I was fully in and I joined low carb Down Under And I gave a couple of talks at low carb down under as well um and and that's a it's a wonderful organization and and you're you're you're on that that Journey now too and um it's just the the challenges now not so much about the science the science is worked out the science has worked out the the the the challenges now is is getting the information into mainstream mainstream media because um there are as you said at the beginning I think conflicts of interest uh it's a brilliant dollar industry um that is being supported by misinformation and unfortunately the public are are kind of just the the Pawns in that industry um and you know we're doing the best we can to get it out there um but um you know there's different strategies and um slowly slowly it's it's it's gaining traction but you know when you don't have billions of dollars at your fingertips all it takes for Kellogg's or sanitarium is to just put a ten thousand dollar a week billboard on the highway that says you know the goodness of whole grains and puts a few ticks on it and a few food star ratings and boom you've now got a a a society of brainwashed people that go out and buy it and that's the challenge I think we've got to we've got to start with the the Grassroots approach educate the people educate the people and then the people demand the people demand um real healthy choices and the politicians then have to do what the people demands because a lot of people don't realize that the politicians are not our superiors we are their superiors but the politicians will do what is what is popular and if we can make the population have the majority with the mindset of of you and I then the politicians will actually do what we ask of them and they will start to um uh create uh taxes on unhealthy food and things like that that will just and subsidies for good food you know for the farmers and things like that who are producing the really healthy food out there um that make it much more inviting and acceptable and and tolerable for people to make to buy good food and you know how much a good steak costs now a mistake is coming up to about you know a a a really nice fatty steak and grass fed is coming up to around 30 or 40 dollars like yeah it's it's crazy um so a lot of people can't you know there are arguments of how you can but um a lot of people just immediately think I can't afford carnivore diet makes too expensive you know um but obviously you know if you're on a Carnival diet you probably only need to eat once a day so in some ways you've got to make people realize that and also you can ditch all your medications um and all your doctor's bills and your your private health insurance bills so if you actually do the math it is very it is Affordable but people haven't got that sort of um ability in the short term anyway to do that simple math um yeah and also you know how much is your life worth you know I mean I I think it's I think it's worth whatever cost you know to give myself you know the right food for for my life and my Health and Longevity and and that of my children and my parents you know that that's more important to me than than anything and unfortunately they they uh are taking advantage of that now with the prices but I think that the more we drive this and more Drive the demand and say like no no we're not we're not going to be dissuaded from this uh that's going to make people stop and and take a look and say okay well look the money isn't actually going ahead with with this and and making more ranches More Cows regenerative agriculture helping the land helping the people helping everyone it just it just grows from there you know I also think that in in the public sector public system in Australia Europe and you know in you know certain systems in America that it's actually you know a huge advantage for the politicians to to promote this because you know you you look at doctors like yourself doctors like Gary fetke or Dr Sean Baker in America who were promoting dietary and lifestyle changes to their patients and avoiding surgery that was saving the public system Untold millions of dollars and yeah yeah absolutely and you get prosecuted by by the system saying you can't do that you would think that they would be all for this saying hey you're saving me two million dollars a year in joint Replacements that we don't have to pay for fantastic here's a medal but you know they're not doing that and and so that's that to me is very strange I don't know if there's some sort of they just don't understand and they think that that because this is new this could be dangerous or they just have so many influences from lobbyists and things like that that they're very happy with the system as it is I'm not sure but I think that you're right that we have to make this a Grassroots movement and make people understand this from the ground up and that once that demand is there saying hey we don't want the surgery we want to just be better without surgery we don't want the medications and so on that that's when things are going to start to change oh exactly I think yeah it it's it's it is conflicts of interest that influence government policy like if you look at the uh um these American dietary guidelines you know they're not really based in science they're not really based on science so if you look at the the landsat um eat um yeah guidelines or or manuscript you know it's it has no it's not founded in in any scientific validity um and our I don't know whether you come across Dr James mukey he was um I think he was actually nominated Australian of the year um in 2020 unfortunately his his public um presence was a bit diminished by the lockdowns um so he didn't get as much exposure as an Australian of the year but he kind of um he kind of dived deep into uh food uh dietary guidelines in Australia and he exposed incredible conflicts of interest with our own nhmrc national health and medical research Council um and you know it was it was uh it was really revealing that um that the big food companies were well entrenched in what sort of information is kind of allowed to get out um so yeah those are the challenges it it's a big money game um and the government kind of has to turn a bit of a blind eye to us when they've got uh obligations to money coming in they you know they need those they need that lobbyist Lobby group money to do their thing as governments and so when we put the science out there so we could say you know Hospital waiting lists and and we could say Millions on the PBS and it's just you wonder why nothing happens it's kind of like there's a bit there's a bit of a roadblock and and um yeah it's gonna take a very brave politician to stand up and say no to the lobbyists and no we don't want your million million dollars um uh subsidy because that's how these big political parties function it's through through donations you know influence money money influences um policy yeah so yeah ground up approach low carb down under doctors started to blow how do you do their thing and the colleges you know the colleges of medicine the College of Physicians the College of Surgeons and they're so disappointing I'm just constantly disappointed by the AMA I'm constantly disappointed by how they just tow the political party line they're almost like a they're almost like an extension of the just the government policy um you know they don't really have uh they don't really have any bite um but um yeah yeah unfortunately I've spoken to you know it's always said and supposedly in most circles that you need to practice evidence-based medicine that's always been you know the sort of like the catchphrase for well at least since I've been in in medicine and but then you you start talking to people that they don't want to even practice evidence-based medicine you can argue with the evidence is but they practice guideline medicine they say I don't care what the evidence says I care what the guidelines say and actually spoke with with a doctor at low carb down under who said that they're you know out of the department uh where they worked uh said that and they were saying hey you know why don't we look at this why don't we when we enact this this is what the evidence says and they said that exact thing I don't care what the evidence shows I care what the the guidelines are and that's and that's pretty scary because obviously you know the evidence is you're always going to be if you're going evidence-based medicine you're always going to be two or three years behind the Behind The Cutting Edge so you know that's something that you accept and and that's fine but guideline the guidelines are about 10 to 15 years behind the cut behind the the evidence and then you know and then only if you get the right influences because these are bureaucrats writing the guidelines these are not doctors it's not like you know the the all the you know the Australian of the year and the best doctors all through Australia get their heads together and say these should be the guidelines no they they might take might give recommendations if they're chosen for that panel but they submit those recommendations and then it's a it's a panel of bureaucrats who then decide what to pick and and they may not come out anywhere close to what the recommendations are guidelines should be developed from contemporary research right um and but even the research now is is is heavily corrupted because when you do when you do big studies um yeah it takes millions of dollars and those millions of dollars usually can only come from um big big corporations big food and big Pharma um and so the it's it's pretty clear and we know from how many lawsuits pharmaceutical companies get you know millions of dollars of lawsuits but even then it's just a you know it's like a 20 20 cents on the ground for them it's nothing it's a slap on the wrist and and there's many ways that they manipulate the scientific literature um you know like they can do a study and it doesn't produce the outcomes that they want so they just won't get published right so we you know we can call that publication bias we can call it publication bison um and you know we can use statistical manipulation of relative benefits and versus absolute benefits you know that's rampant throughout the uh the cholesterol lowering uh research um so you know dietary studies as well like if you look at how people look at Mediterranean diets or carnivore diet or low carb high carb diets the whole the whole way that we collect scientific data in in in nutritional medicine is is very dubious like it's probably the most poorly performed uh science uh out there because it relies on patients sending in surveys of what they ate you know and and that's notoriously unreliable um or you can then go okay well I'll put you into it I'll put you into a lab I'll put you into a lab where I can dictate what you eat um and that's kind of moronic in a way because if I if I put someone into a lab and and give them a carnivore diet and I give someone and it's calorie controlled and I give someone you know a high carb diet of equal equivalent calories and they're in a lab what I've effectively done is I've suppressed that person's ability to express the hormonal influences of that carnivore diet and so how can I expect to see significant differences because if I'm on a carnivore diet I'm I'm active I'm moving around I'm going and going for a jog I'm I'm engaged in my environment because that's what it does to my endocrine system now I stick someone on a carnivore diet in four walls in a lab and I've I've kind of eliminated his ability to express that the benefits of that diet and so you know those those are the ways that we misconstrue the the evidence and then when people don't understand on how they don't understand bias and how to critically appraised journals then they come up with rubbish guidelines okay um so yeah I mean there's there's a lot of value in N equal one studies um in nutrition and and there you know if there was a way of collating all of those n equal one studies that have been incredibly powerful um and then the other little bias that comes up and you know say someone on a vegan diet or a vegetarian diet oh that that fixed my chest pain I fix my asthma or I lost you know 20 kilograms and yeah that's fantastic because anyone who starts to take up a diet is kind of it's called a dietary bias right anyone who takes up a diet is suddenly making health conscious decisions yeah so in in in collaboration with their vegan diet or vegetarian they also stop smoking they also stop drinking they started going to bed early um and they started going for walks or whatever right so okay here's all these other Association factors that came into the into the final outcome of the vegan diet is fantastic and and that's what then becomes the clickbait of what happened to me when I did the quick the vegan diet and the Mediterranean diet but if you go and give someone the vegan vegetarian diet who has insulin resistance that's not gonna work because a vegan vegetarian diet is going to be very high in glucose and we already established that um insulin resistance is equivalent to glucose intolerance and so that's no different to you giving someone who's got a nut allergy peanuts um and and you would never do that right you would never get oh okay kids you've got nut allergies that's okay everyone come in with your peanuts right but when when it comes to insulin resistance and they've got they've got glucose intolerance problems just keep eating a glucose you metformin you know here's your here's your insulin that seems to be okay yeah and also the you know those those epidemiological studies you know obviously the surveys are a bit flawed in many ways first of all I call because they say pizza has uh sometimes have toppings that are meat therefore Pizza is meat and so if you if you self-report that you eat pizza they count those as servings of meat and obviously that makes uh the the meat eating uh parties uh a bit worse and um so that that's I mean that's just fraudulent but the um you know anytime you go to a whole food diet from you know the standard processed diet you're going to get an improvement I would say and you know even even if you yeah even if you don't drop all the other things I mean you're just you're just cutting out things that are harmful to you and and you know what I point out to people is you go to a whole food plant-based diet from uh you know processed you know standard American diet standard Australian diet you're actually you're actually just replacing the worst plants for you know better plants right because it there's still like you know 70 of the standard American diet is plant-based it's just processed carbs and sugar make up the majority of that plant-based so now you're replacing those plants with you know just vegetables and things and fruits which are arguably much much better but it's still plants right you're still a plant-based you were already plant-based now you're just different plant-based and that that's something people don't understand as well and um you know but none of these studies you compare what we're looking at when we're talking about a carnivore diet or even a meat-centric diet because none of these studies look at a whole food plant-based diet versus a whole food meat-based diet they look at a whole food plant-based diet or more Whole Food plant-based diet versus the standard diet you know just just whatever anybody else is eating and they might try to say like oh well this person eats you know less servings of meat which pizza is included and all that sort of stuff and and but that's not that's not that's still not comparing like to like yeah yeah um yeah that's right and and um the the the plant-based diet you know there's a lot of push coming from the new um concern that everyone has which is you know Carbon emissions yeah and so you know that's I can see people going I know you know we've got to move towards this plant-based diet because that's healthier for the planet and now we've got almost this this new intermountable message that we've got to try to um overcome for the for the the people who are the environmentalists and all that yeah boy it it becomes even more challenging when you layer that on top of the whole discussion doesn't it yeah well that's a good thing about the regenerative agriculture movement with the you know regenerative livestock you know they're rotating animals around and their fields are just getting more and more verdant and then you contrast that I mean they'll have they'll have ranches right next to each other and and you know same same acreage you know one Ranch is able to support you know five times the animals because they they rotate these things in in such a way that it it promotes growth of the grass and and the the plant life there whereas the other side they're just like oh yeah just just cows on the field just let them do what their thing um but if they're they're rotating them moving them through like they were a herd of cattle or animals moving through the area but not eating it down to nothing and then they move on and different things come in behind them and there's always this whole big process that you would see with migratory roots and things like that um and it's very beneficial to the land and that's something that's becoming uh more and more uh you know people are made more and more aware of that which is great and I think people can vote with their pocketbook and say okay well I'm going to support that Rancher that's doing things the way that helps the environment I'm going to buy a cow from that guy I'm going to buy my meat from that guy which I I think is is the right way to do it and that's going to encourage people to to Ranch that way and to because that there's a market for that um I was just thinking too you know the only um we don't have any studies yet I think we should do these with you know comparing whole food plant-based with Whole Food meat base but there was a study uh published in Jama in the Journal of American Medical Association in 2000 almost hard 1931 looking at the the Maasai and akikyu's the if I pronounce that right um which is a an African tribe that lived right next to the Maasai so this is a genetically similar population because actually intraman an inch of bread so genetically similar populations and the akiki were actually displaced off their land so they didn't have their normal hunting and and uh you know the normal access to food that they used to have and so they went to a more plant-based diet this is in the 1920s that they were studying this and published in 1931. so there's there's no you know this wasn't like some large-scale you know industrial uh you know farming project a bunch of pesticides and chemicals this was in the middle of Africa you know just eating Whole Foods that they were growing or or foraging and very little meat and so that's a perfect you know it's a vegan's dream just the perfect you know plant-based diet whole food no pesticides no added chemicals and contrasted with the Maasai which you know famously eat as essentially a carnivore diet of just uh you know meat blood and milk and they looked at the the health differences and they looked they they did a very deep dive into their you know physical characteristics and uh their Dental Health their physical health and their blood markers and they found that the Messiah were far more healthy than the other than their than their neighbors who were genetically similar on average even though genetically similar population the Maasai adult males were five inches taller than their counterparts so right there that's that's a huge difference in development their teeth were better developed their jaws were better developed they weren't getting cavities like the akiki were um Dr Q were um more likely to have um you know developmental issues and and uh growth deformities and you know bone deformities uh tooth and Jaws they had mineral and vitamin deficiencies iron deficiency a lot of them were quite iron deficient and we get anemio as well and they would get sick more and they would get sick more often they had other sort of health issues and they found that when they tried to just supplement the missing nutrients that they found on blood work that they actually didn't really help them all that much but when they fed them meat again they basically reversed all of their health issues and they got very healthy again and so that's that actually is exactly what we're looking at that's exactly what the argument is Whole Food plant-based Whole Food you know meat base that's what we're looking at because you compare a carnivore diet to a standard American diet that's going to get better as well and that's like vegan proponents will say well that's all we're seeing all the people that are improving on a carnivore diet that's that's the only thing it's just improving from you know the Stan from the norm and it is improving from the norm but you know it they say that long term is going to be a problem well you know so far it's been 23 years for me I haven't seen a problem but you know that but they're saying well actually the most sustainable diet for longevity and health is is the vegan diet so we're sort of making the same argument as why they're seeing benefits and we're seeing benefits uh but when you actually look at that study you actually look at Whole Food plant-based Whole Food meat base you see a very Stark difference in in the generational uh outcomes in in health and development uh it's it's fascinating I hadn't heard of that that study but it's just so fascinating there's you the clinical model right there you know that's that's that should be that should be uh in the first chapter of any nutrition nutritionist textbook or dietitian's textbook you know um but I think the vegans to be vegan and vegetarian you have to be so meticulous to obtain all of your micronutrients you have to be very very methodical about choosing different plants and whatnot that will allow you to get the iron and allow you to get your B12 I haven't seen a single patient who's meat based with spinal cord degeneration you know like but there's a lot of vegans who whose spinal cord just melts you know we call that Subacute um degeneration of the spinal cord demyelination you need B12 to maintain the health of your nerves and and cholesterol and fat it's extremely hard and you know any vegan most vegans were probably taking some form of supplements you know if you're eating lamb chops and and and steak and chicken and pork and Duck and fish uh you don't need any supplements yeah so the diet is the diet as you said it's it's a whole food diet nose to tail you don't need to supplement but you know the the thriving stores out there now are the supplement stores yeah yeah to supplement people's nights when they're not on a proper diet yeah and and that's the thing you know if you have to supplement them by definition your diet is deficient and the argument that we're I think before is is remarkable to me for the simple fact that you you just cannot get even basic nutrition from from a vegan diet it just doesn't exist you can't get your B12 d3k2 I won't get enough vitamin A you'd have to eat you know two kilos of uh carrots a day to get enough vitamin A uh you're not going to get all the the essential fatty acids like DHA EPA we don't make them well enough ourselves you know we do need those from a dietary source and and there's so many more there's so many others that we we don't even know I mean you can get the the the the straw man argument is um is when vegan says like oh well people say you're not going to get it where you're going to get your protein from and all that sort of plot no one's actually arguing that you can't that you can get a complete protein from Plants you absolutely can it's not as bioavailable you know it's harder um but it is possible of course it's possible I'm saying you can't get well you know other things you know protein is fine you know you can get you can get all the protein you want that's not a big deal but there are other nutrients that are essential that you have to have there was a position paper um I think the the group was called like spec or spec or something like that it was anyways it's a group of Pediatricians in Italy and they they basically wrote a position paper on the vegan diet vegetarian diet and they said look this is a bad diet for kids this should not be promoted or or given to kids you know any diet that is deficient in essential nutrients cannot be a good diet so you should not give your kids this stuff they're developing this is this is when uh proper nutrition is is most vital and so that that actually isn't a you know a fringe opinion you know I mean this this is just a biological fact like we cannot get appropriate nutrition just by eating plants you have to supplement and that and they even argued that well but you can supplement so ethically you should supplement any of this other stuff but as we know from the akikyu study supplementation actually didn't didn't cut the mustard it wasn't good enough to get them uh uh back to Better Health or more supplements there's more nutrients that you're missing there too that we don't know about and you're bringing in different sort of plant toxins and things like that that was actually just to sort of go down and get down a tangent that was actually there was something I was speaking um with someone the other day and they said that uh you know uh Lane Norton you know who's a nutritionist said that you know well if plants are trying to kill you they're sure taking a long time to do it and uh well hey that's the point you know slow poison is still poison right you know if you uh if if you die 20 years early because you're smoking like that was a poison that was harmful no no one denies that um and so we say like well spinach and all these sorts of things like they're not they're not really poisoning well you know it can take a long time what really we don't understand is that things like Crohn's disease diabetes even heart disease even forms of cancer these all come from these things that we're eating and we just called them diseases but what we need to understand is actually that is coming from the toxicities from the food that we're eating so we say well it's taking taking a sweet time to poison now so like that's just someone who doesn't recognize that Crohn's is a symptom of you know that poisoning that those plants the poisoning from these plants manifest as Crohn's disease ulcerative colitis rheumatoid arthritis gout heart disease Cancer all these sorts of dysfunctions so that's the problem so in fact it's very it's very evident we're seeing this all the time it's very prevalent increase in in all these chronic diseases which really are the toxicities from plants so you know that's just uh that's just something that that we need to understand is that this is coming from uh things that we're eating perfectly evidenced by the fact that there are studies right now looking at Crohn's disease that if you put someone on an elemental diet would you just give them a core micro macronutrients and eliminate everything else that they're eating that is a better intervention to get someone out of an acute flare-up of Crohn's than prednisolone right which should just work like that but just having them not eat the things that are causing the disease is is better than the prednisone there was also a study that showed um that with two groups of randomized control trial with um with crohn's disease again looking at the intervention group was eliminating carbohydrates and fiber and so the group that eliminated carbohydrates and fiber stayed in remission from Crohn's for 51 months and then the group that still ate carbs and fiber stayed in remission zero months right so there's a big contrast there and so that shows again that there's something that you were eating that is causing the disease so what that is is toxicity that's fiber and carbohydrate toxicity your body is responding to this in a negative way and that's manifest in in Crohn's disease and that's also an argument against fiber saying whoa there's all these studies that say fiber so great fiber so great fiber so great well not if you have Crohn's because uh if you want to stay in remission from Crohn's you you obviously do not want to eat fiber yeah um yeah that's amazing and again the doctors are happy to prescribe prednisone or Orin or all of the other you know uh immune toxic bombs but they kind of leave something like hey just maybe um switch your diet towards something that's that your body is more more uh evolutionarily physiologically developed to consume um and what about the microbiome because I have heard the plant-based people talk about that you know that's what our microbiome likes they like plants and I'm not convinced I mean it's a it's a it's only an area that I'm starting to look into but um but carnivore died in the microbiome because our microbiome is extremely influential on our metabolism uh from what I understand um so can you talk a little bit about that yeah so the um yeah well I mean I think I think we're still figuring out the microbiome but I've spoken to a number of people that study this and they find that actually they're all for the carnivore diet because they find that people on a carnivore diet have a very biodiverse microbiome so there's you know huge array of different bacteria which they say that's a very good thing and the makeup of those bacteria are actually all the the more favorable bacteria so they're actually all for that uh the ones I've spoken to and um then you look at then you look at the you know the different sorts of bacteria I mean blanking on the names however they're the ones that really like carbohydrates that really like fiber in particular and those have strong associations with with different sorts of diseases like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis and so you know is that an association you're just sort of you're eating something that's triggering the ra or the Ms and that also promotes these bacteria or the bacteria have some sort of influence as well I don't know but but they do see that association with with these bacteria and those are bacteria that that are promoted by eating those things and we also see when people come off of those things their ra and their Ms actually improve so something's happening there um the other argument is that well this feeds your this your gut in a very direct sense by you know we we still have or can cultivate some of the bacteria that can break down fiber not much of it you know our appendix is a vestigial um you know cecum that used to be very long and that's where fiber would pack into and break down into short chain fatty acids and protein um we don't have that anymore but we can it still does it to a small extent and they say that breaking that down into you know was a butyrate uh that that is is really good for your enterocytes you know and so it's just like great so you want to eat fiber because that feeds your enterocytes well you make butyrate and butyric acid you know anyway uh just by your one of your major Ketone bodies uh is butyric acid so that's that's already going to give your intestines it's it's most preferred or if it is it's most preferred fuel source it's already there providing that also butter has tons of it that's where it gets its name and so you know the the arguments I don't think are too strong in that category and the bacteria complement that we seem to find in people on a carnivore diet is is perfect is exactly what is what uh it seems to line up with with proper health yeah it may be that that that's that gut biome discussion and that gut biome science and leaky gut syndrome related diseases is is going to be a powerful way of of kind of consolidating the the the the the um philosophy that we have and it may be so because the metrics of measurement are much easier um when you're talking about that type of thing you know what what is your gut Flora like um it's like it's much easier to see uh advantages and and I wonder whether that's kind of why it's not being heavily promoted because it's kind of so stuck um that a a meat-based diet creates very black and white improvements in these conditions and measurable inflammatory markers and um celiac disease and that part of the stuff that it's it's kind of too indisputable and it's kind of It kind of blows the other arguments out of the water when you when you talk about uh alternative styles of eating and um and so yeah as a general rule people don't really go down this path of talking about the the microbiome um and and maybe there's some maybe some factors happening out there that are aware of that to to minimize the science relating to it because they know the outcomes are going to be pretty detrimental to the the commercial food industry which is you know really based on on sugar and um the other interesting thing just add to what you said about that is that um cows cows are actually carnivore in a way you know they eat grass all day but as you said they're ruminants right and they've got these amazing guts that have the ability to convert their their carbohydrates cellulose and all that fiber they convert it to butyric acid so they're actually a carnivore they're eating fat yeah cow is absorbing fat across the gut membrane um they are not absorbing uh a glucose and cellulose they are converting it to Fat which is also profound and so because we don't have that type of gut we should be eating more fat because that's physiologically what what our our body needs so that's that's another little profound little um indisputable fact for the uh for the vegetarians and vegans out there yeah well and and your debt and your exactly yeah I think I think that uh you know describing animals as you know carnivores herbivores omnivores I think this is misses the mark a bit I think we should call ourselves fat and protein of Wars right that's what we need we need fat and we need protein that's what runs the animal kingdom and however you derive that that nutrition or however you can get that from what source you know is it is is a bit immaterial I mean the point is you're trying to get that to its its maximal you know extent and so a cow is able to do that through grass a gorilla is able to do that through specific leaves and you know and so on we're not you know we really can't derive we can't derive fat and protein from leaves or salad or spinach you know so we need to get that from another source and the best source to do that from is is an animal Source you know that the cow's already done the work for us and now we can you know we can we can subsist and thrive on that fat and protein but we're all running on fat and protein now you may be some like hummingbirds or you know insects and things like that that eat nectar you know they have a different system but the majority of animals on this Earth run on fat and protein yeah yeah and that ends up keeping the insulin sensitivity right um that ends up keeping their insulin sensitivity um you know the the funny thing that uh the patients always say to me um when I say has the doctor done are you diabetic and they say they clearly are pre-diabetic or actually diabetic no no no no no my doctor's done my my blood tests and I'm my sugars are perfect right the doctors never test fasting insulin right why do why is the standard metabolic health screening not testing fasting insulin because our government in Queensland anyway recently promoted at the free blood test health check and and I looked at it because someone came up to me and showed me their blood test and said what do you think of these David and of course the glucose is the farm fasting glucose was checked I said they haven't checked your fasting insulin um and you know like if we actually started checking fasting insulin we would identify so many people with pre-diabetes and insulin resistance um and therefore you know indisputable insulin resistance you've got to reduce your carbohydrate but a lot of people do not understand that they're glucose is uh is normal only because the pancreas is just working in overdrive so if you don't actually do a test to confirm that your pancreas is working in overdrive you you will not know that you are pre-diabetic um and and that's a big failure as well I don't know what is driving that I think GPS feel that that's an over investigation um but and whether they get a slap on the wrist if they order too many fasting insulins but I order it all the time I order it all the time and I find insulins you know well in the tens in the teens in people who think that they are metabolically healthy no or they're told that they don't have diabetes they they have pre-diabetes um uh so that's another systematic failure you know that could be easily changed yeah yeah I agree yeah I I checked that all the time that's a that's a very normal uh blood panel that I look for in the in the metabolic Health functional medicine clinic that I that I work in and um yeah I I remember one of the talks in low carb Denver just this weekend they were saying that uh you're you're going to have elevated fasting insulin for 10 to 15 years before you start getting those deranged uh blood sugar markers right so that that's really what you have to look out for and so you're gonna be picking that up well in advance of when there's actual problem when you start getting your elevated blood sugar that means your body is is decompensating you you cannot handle it anymore it's it's it's it's it's doing the best this can and then all of a sudden the wheels start falling off so you want to you want to get a tune-up long before your your axle you know flies off your car and you go off a cliff so it's it's um it's very important to look at those ahead of time I agree yep um what do you think about athletes so you know I work with a lot of athletes um and I see it I see it in the the functional fitness arena in in CrossFit and you know I follow some mathlets and they they love to show what they have for breakfast um and you know it's oatmeal and rice and potato you know and it's it's sad because it it goes very much against uh one of the the fundamental pillars of of the sport that I love which is CrossFit and and the the nutrition in 100 words that um Greg Glassman came up with you know 20 uh 20 yard years ago or or early late around 2009 or 10 11 years ago um and now the athletes who are at the top of the game are sort of flouting that and describing how many carbohydrates they're consuming um so it kind of thinks well it kind of portrays that oh look I'm I'm extremely fit and extremely healthy and extremely powerful and I'm doing it with carbohydrates and so that's that's a challenge as well in especially in social media where you're seeing these glorious bodies and people who are consuming a kilogram of carbohydrates a day because they they they kind of fear like this is what it takes to become a superb Elite athlete um yeah what are your thoughts on that yeah well you know at the peak of my athletic ability I was I was not eating any carbohydrates for years and years and years and that was a period of about five years between about 20 and 25 that I was absolutely Unstoppable physically I mean I kept playing at a very high level after that um in into medical school and through medical school and Beyond but I've never in my life felt to perform better than during that time when I was not eating carbohydrates I was just eating meat until I was 38 years old and I figured this out again and I stopped eating again and instantly I was back in the physical I had the physical stamina and endurance and Recovery that I did when I was 20 years old 22 years old and people say well you know you're in the early 20s of course that's when you're at your Peak but I peaked again at 38 I was better at 38 having not worked out having you know you know volunteered in a refugee camp for you know months and then not done any work and not run really significantly in a year or year or two and then but I was eating the right way I was only eating meat I was not eating any carbs and all of a sudden I'm doing dead Sprints and running up and down the field with a bunch of you know you know people in their mid-20s or professional athletes um on the on the professional rugby team Seattle Sea Wolves and I felt great I felt that better than when I did at 27 you know I was just absolutely you know shredded low body fat percentage playing you know high level you know Rugby's in the in the rugby Super League in America for uh the San Diego on back team I felt way better at 38 than I did at 2 27-28 so that that was my personal experience with that and so that's you know what I try to relate to people but as as we know from you know studying biochemistry when you stop eating carbohydrates you make all the carbohydrates you need you don't need to eat the carbohydrates sure you need glycogen you need blood sugar yeah you absolutely do that that's that's that's important you make them and the benefit of making them yourself is that you don't run out because you're tapped into your fat stores and you can keep replenishing your blood sugar and your liver glycogen whereas these these guys have to carbo load they have to eat just tons and tons and tons of this stuff so that they can fill pack their liver and their and their muscles with as much glycogen as possible but that's a finite resource that will run out whereas if you're not eating that at all it's unlimited because you will constantly replenish it so your recovery is much faster you don't get tired in the first place you never hit the wall also you're not you're not uh debilitating yourself in other ways you're not getting these these insulin swings and these uh which can also disrupt your metabolism in other ways it can disrupt your hormones in other ways so you're going to optimize your hormones you're going to optimize your health you're going to optimize your energy and you're not bringing in these different sorts of plant toxins that can also cause harm I don't get sore I don't you know I recover much better than I did I was always sore you know for years I mean I mean most of my life I spent being sore and I thought that was a good thing that means oh wow I've worked really hard look at me I'm so sore I'm crippled I can barely walk that means I put in a lot of work but that's actually not the case that comes from these inflammatory factors in plants and then you eliminate those and you eliminate that that pain stiffness swelling and soreness and you recover better and you can perform better and you can train more so so when you're looking you know when when serious athletes or people who want to become a serious athlete are looking for that significant advantage that they can get on their opponent this is it this is this is such a major one because I mean just that simple fact that you know you won't run out of energy in the same way you won't run out of glycogen but you'll recover so much better the next day for the next two days three days you're not gonna be just crippled and sore and pain you're going to be up and going again so you're going to be training when you know for three days before that guy is even able to walk properly that is the biggest Advantage you'll ever have in an athletic Endeavor is more time on the field more time on the track more time on the court and just more time putting in the work that you need to make yourself a top athlete and so even even if it didn't provide any significant advantage in the competition which I think it does it provides immense benefit just from being able to to exercise more work out more train more recover faster and get more from your workout so I think that that is one of the biggest advantages that any athlete or any aspiring athlete can take and it's something that that more and more people are are coming coming to I've worked with many athletes many top tier athletes one guy I've had on my my podcast I'll be interviewing him again in the coming weeks or months uh Ryan Talbot he's a division one NCAA um uh decathlete and he went on to a carnivore diet and was talking about like Hey how do I do this what should I do and so I was I was just sort of giving him some advice and his performance just started his athleticism in general just started increasing dramatically and he said to me you know I'm I'm you know this this diet has finally turned me into the athlete I've always wanted to become and he ended up in his second decath decathlon ever he won the Big Ten championship for Michigan State and won All-American honors and set the school record for the decathlon and and it was it was it was near uh Olympic qualifying level his score on the decathlon so that that is a massive massive massive benefit that he uh that he found and there's a number of rugby players that are doing this right now in Australia that are not telling anyone because like I said this is a huge advantage and they want to keep it an advantage they don't want other people to to get on this I want everyone to do this I I want everyone to be able to to get on this and see for themselves just how amazing it is and I know rugby players in America as well who I've spoken to who have like for instance one gentleman is on the on the USA national team um and uh he he said to me that he went on to a carnivore diet or a near carnivore diet and his testosterone levels went from like 450 up to like 1100 it was just this massive massive massive jump in his uh testosterone which is going to obviously help in athletic Endeavors so you know you're going to optimize your hormones you're going to Opera optimize your health you're going to eliminate all of these inflammatory factors and different sorts of toxins that are going to debilitate your ability to perform at your optimal level and it's going to allow you to train more train harder and get more out of it so if there's anything on this Earth that can help an athlete become the best that they can be and beat out the competition it is a carnivore diet wow well there you go I mean anyone who's listening who's uh he's a a high level athlete that could be the secret that's the secret weapon right the the carnivore died or the low insulinemic low carb diet because a lot of top level athletes they all train ridiculously hard they've all got a good head game and you think well what what is going to give me that edge on you know uh what is going to get me first place on the podium versus second or third they're all they're all equally talented and they probably at the moment their advice from their nutritionist team it's always high carb high carb high carb um as a you know and I you just see it all over social media um but there we go that's that's that's Sensational I'm going to show that to my to my gymnasium uh athletes you know the top level athletes um and in addition to that I think longevity of of cardiovascular health because yeah you know think what you're doing to your LDL profile what you're doing to your you know your your pattern B LDL profile when you're consuming crap loads of carbohydrate every day you know you're just producing your your sugar gets converted to triglyceride your triglyceride gets converted to to your yeah vldl and then that goes up the chain to your low density life of protein and then you get the the location and that that LDL does not get reabsorbed it then just hangs around and just becomes more small dense pattern B and these super athletes are actually lining their coronary arteries with oxidized uh LDL and so you know you occasionally see it where these amazing athletes have heart attacks at you know 45 or something and what they were they were Elite healthy athletes that that's what they don't realize even though they are muscular and they're not overweight um because they're they're grossly insulin sensitive from their muscle Health um even though they are consuming carbohydrated it is grossly insulin sensitive but what they cannot stop happening is the the liver's conversion of glucose to bad small dense lldl and and that's the that's the molecule that is atherogenic and I don't realize that so that's even another reason does not get a heart attack not just not just um to get on the podium but to not get a heart attack at the age of 45 um which I've seen a lot of people top level athletes with uh angina um and and how could it happen to me I'm a I'm a you know Elite athlete yeah so no it's fantastic we've covered a lot of stuff there haven't it yeah yeah absolutely well um you know I'm conscious of your time I know you're you're getting into your your work day but um just so just so people uh know what what are you eating now Are You full carnivore now and if so how long have you been doing that and and what are the benefits you've seen well you know there's there's a couple of nights of the week where we will just have a ribeye fillet or lamb chops or chicken okay so there's a couple you know I'm not as as um as fastidious as yourself being 100 Carnival but I follow this I follow what I would consider sort of an 80 20 or a 90 10 rule um and you know for sure there'll be one or one or two nights a week where I'll be out with friends and and we will have some carbohydrates but I try to explain to people that the 80 20 rule Works um from a position of health and a lot of people don't realize that you know when they always say yeah one one size doesn't fit all everything in moderation that's kind of a cop-out and and that if you have disease if you are obese if you are overweight or pre-diabetic or insulin resistant the 80 20 rule won't work for you the 80 20 rule you have to then apply the 100 100 rule okay and then you can earn the privilege to then apply the 80 20 Rule and so thankfully you know I am healthy I'm metabolically healthy I'm physically healthy so the 80 20 rule works for me and it's okay and if I maintain that 80 20 rule I will I will most likely stay healthy if I start to slip a bit and I go you know um 60 40. then I'm starting to compromise my metabolic health and to regain it I then have to be diligent and and apply the 100 100 rule so that I can regain that privilege to use the 80 20 rule so that's my message is that don't think that the 80 20 rule works for you when you are coming from a position of poor health you've got to earn the privilege to have the 80 20 rule apply so yeah we we are predominantly and like like you said it would be a a meat-centric whole food diet great that would be how I eat um but but like you you know you have to be pretty 100 low carb um less than 50 grams a day if you're unhealthy if you've got high blood pressure or if you want to lose some weight you've got to be even more diligent than for that for a little while maybe for six months and then you'll you'll then be able to restore insulin sensitivity which allows you to then be a bit more 80 20ish that's how our family eats and even my young even my young children you know they they already wake up and have bacon and eggs you know yeah no such thing as as porridge or cereal in our house you know I wish I grew up in that house yeah yeah they're so lucky they're kind of Lucky um knowledge at such a young age which makes me super super happy yeah definitely well Dr Johnson would anyone if anyone wants to learn a bit more about you no sorry no I'll just give a brief plug to the um yeah to the functional movement Training Center please do um anyone and there's a lot of people out there with spine related pain if anyone would like to get in touch with us about their spine related pain um uh please do on info at uh fmtc.com that stands for functional movement training center.com dot IU we also have a YouTube channel called functional movement training center and our um um the Instagram platform for our information uh relating to the College of functional movement clinicians is called neuro Hab which is n n e u r o h a b underscore movement underscore therapy and that's the Instagram platform for um our movement Therapy Program and for clinicians you know for say you're a yeah therapist or a chiropractor or um a a personal instructor in a personal trainer we we want you to get on board and collaborate with the College of functional movement clinicians so so that uh we can just broaden our reach of delivering movement therapy and trying to reset that as the Paradigm um to prevent this epidemic of musculoskeletal pain absolutely well thank you very much for that and I'll put all of that in in the description when I post all this and uh and and do all the links as well so um yeah I was going to say you know that's it so thank you so much I really appreciate it I've uh I really appreciate you taking the time that was absolutely fantastic I really I think people will get a lot out of that and um so please uh do find Dr Johnson uh there if you have any questions please contact him at the information provided um my social media is Anthony chafee MD at uh on Instagram and YouTube uh obviously the podcast is plant free MD and then on Twitter's Anthony underscore Chaffey please like And subscribe to these different platforms it really does help um you get the message out and if you like this and you think you have a friend or someone who would benefit from seeing this please do share it with them and thank you very much and we'll see you next time bye-bye now bye now hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcasts and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you could share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys [Music]