How To Stop Seizures and Migraines! 100 Years of Clinical Evidence!

[Music] hey everyone simon and anthony here again the how to kind of podcast and it's the first one we've filmed for a little while so anthony welcome back how are you hey good man how are you yeah very good thanks good to be chatting again yeah the uh the topic for today is epilepsy um which we know uh can certainly be helped or or completely emitted or gotten rid of with a ketogenic diet or a carnivore type which is even more effective um so i'm wondering if you might be able to start off by explaining what epilepsy is yeah so epilepsy is a medical condition where just essentially people are just more predisposed to having seizures so they'll have chronic seizures and without medication or intervention of some form or another they'll just continue to have seizures and once you have a seizure you are more predisposed having further seizures specifically a seizure is over excitation of your neurons either in a focal area or broadly across your whole brain and and they present in different ways so a focal seizure in a certain area may be you'll have like little muscle twitches so your arm's sort of shaking and you're looking at it going like i'm not doing that you know that's i'm not doing that and you can't necessarily stop it and so just little twisters or even just facial twitches or your face just twitching and twitching and twitching that could be a facial uh like a focal seizure as well i mean it could it could also be you know low calcium and uh and you know getting little like even even like maybe muscle fatigue is it sort of sounds similar to is it kind of like a cramp then um it wouldn't wouldn't well so so maybe you could get uh like the facial twitches uh which which could be similar to cramps um but they're more like spasms that you would get like with low calcium um yeah you can certainly have that that's just muscular you know just something is going on with the muscle and it's just sort of sort of twitching um but this would be a little different that you're just you're just you're just moving and you can't stop your body from moving and it's just moving on its own constantly and that can be that could be a seizure um then you have other things like temporal lobes seizures they uh you they could you could have those manifest in different ways uh where you're actually experiencing you know different sort of sensations and environment and different you know sounds and smells uh and everything like that that are um that aren't you know not really happening you're experiencing things in a slightly different way so then you get the the uh you can get other ones that are like uh what's called an absent seizure or petite mall seizure where you're just it's like a blank staring episode and the person's unconscious but they're just sitting there and they don't uh they don't really move they don't slump over or anything like that but consciously they're not there they just sort of blank out and so you'll try to get their attention you're like what's going on and they're just sitting there staring and uh it's a bit bit scary if you were to find a loved one like that you didn't know what was going on it's also scary for them because they're they they can be aware that they're losing attractive time so if you have someone you know if you have a group of people and people started sitting there and you were experienced that well maybe you would be you know unconscious essentially for a couple minutes or a few seconds or whatever but maybe something's different maybe people are talking about a different topic or sitting in different places and you just went whoa you were sitting there and you were sitting there and then you know billy's gone like what's going on and like and they'll tell you that like oh yeah no billy got up to do this and then we switched because of that and blah blah blah and you're realizing like i miss all of that like where where was i um and that can be a sign that you're having some of these staring episodes then there's the the grand mal seizures the tonic clonic seizures that uh you know people are more familiar with where your your entire body is completely rigid you're shaking and you're arching your back and bite your tongue and you can and you can damage yourself you can fall obviously a big risk of seizures is that if you're driving or you or you're on a ladder or even just walking around you will clinch up and you will fall or you will crash or you will come off a ladder and you can you can seriously harm yourself that's why you know it's a law in australia and in the us that if you have a seizure you can't legally drive for a certain period of time it's usually six months uh seizure-free and that's because if you were to have a seizure while while driving a car that would be very very dangerous you know like there's a high chance of of someone dying you you and some and other people so it's you know it's very dangerous but you know i always always advise people that you know the reason that we're you know it's the law that you can't drive is because of that because of that risk but you should also take that principle home with you and other things and just think about them because you know if you're you know and think about it it's like you know if i had were to have a seizure right now would that end really badly you know if you're driving a car and you're having a seizure would that end really badly yes like you said like yeah exactly climbing a ladder swimming in the ocean yeah you're going to sink down in a swimming pool with other people you swing down well you know maybe someone might be able to help you if you're in the ocean and it's murky probably not you know and so uh even a pool i mean that would be that would be probably a bad idea yeah but um certainly it's all these things you know going up on the roof to clean the gutters you know that would end badly and so it's that it's that principle is that if you have a seizure then uh then you're in trouble and and again so one seizure can be get more seizures so if you if you were to have a seizure that that will predispose you to having more seizures so it's really important to sort of get on top of those why is that um you know you're just i i don't know fully i don't know if that's that's perfectly understood but it's it's it's probably do with you you're sort of you're electrically priming yourself uh to have these things and so you're you're you know triggering something in your brain you're having this big basically over excitation and sort of electric uh currents are changing in your brain as well and that could make it easier for you to get back in that state again in the future just like if you get hit by lightning you actually charge yourself in a way that you're more likely to be hit by lightning in the future and so i sort of think of it like that but that may not be an actual accurate description physiologically but that's sort of the way i think about it um that's yeah that's the thing i didn't realize you were actually more likely if you've been hit by lightning once oh yeah yeah yeah well that's what they say you know it's like oh like you know like you know it's not going to strike twice or something like that actually yeah i think it was um was it chichi rodriguez or something like that maybe i'm getting the name wrong but it was a golfer who's a pro golfer and he um and he got hit by lightning on the golf course and then he was out again he got hit again so like any time the clouds roll in he's like yep screw it and he just like just tossed his club's like yep i'm out nope not doing that again he just gets out of there because he's just like this you know he's like a you know a lightning rod out there a lot in europe oh man so yeah so that yeah that's what that's what epilepsy is and um and obviously you know seizures are are very very hard to deal with they're very difficult they're hard on your body you can they can be fatal even just even without falling or crashing your car uh seizure can kill you and so if that's not reversed you go into what's called status epilepticus where you you uh you're not able to get out of a seizure and you know and unless you're given a lot of different drugs it's um you know you could you could die from that um if you the longer you're in the seizure and having like a you know a little grand mal tonic-clonic seizure the harder it is for your body to stop naturally so you get over five minutes basically it's going to be difficult it's less and less likely that you're going to stop that uh on your own that you'll need um intervention with uh medications yeah i think be very safe yeah that's that's actually um one of the ways you know i i mentioned hemlock uh you know the north american i think it's like water hemlock is one of the most dangerous plants in the world and certainly in north america and how that kills you is it it just trashes your brain it's just like a neurotoxin and it puts you into seizures and you have such outrageous seizures that you will die in a couple minutes from the seizures that it gives you outside of hemlock do we know what's what's called seizures or epilepsy um so you know i i think that that's going to be multifactorial because you can have a lot of different causes of seizures you can have you know brain injuries that's the number one risk factor for developing epilepsy is trauma you know you know traumatic brain injury and also having like a lesion so if you have like a tumor or either cancer or benign in your brain that's causing pressure that can sort of you know trip up uh the normal workings of your brain and predispose you or at least increase your risk of having seizures and you know having a you know bleed or all these sorts of things these all do that this is why when someone comes in they have a an extreme insult to their brain either from injury or from tumors we put people on anti-epileptic medication even if they haven't had a seizure or if we do brain surgery and we're cutting into the brain we'll put them on seizure prophylaxis usually for about a week usually that's enough that you know you're more you're at more risk at the beginning of that and that you know exponentially decreases as you go and so after about a week or so uh you're you know pretty good odds to be out of that window so there are a lot of things that can cause that but you know just people just having epilepsy all on their own there could be you know genetic issues it could be uh structural issues they could have had an injury or an insult and and but you know one of the interesting things is that food certainly affects this now we know about you know the hemlock that causes seizures well that you know who's to say there isn't there aren't other things in plants and different toxins that will cause that as well we certainly know that there are a lot of neurotoxins uh out there that are that have been developed over you know millions and hundreds of millions of years to stop insects and animals from eating these plants and they were designed in order to do that and and maybe they were designed to you know ward off an insect and we're not an insect so it doesn't quite work like that with us but you know things like caffeine i've i've spoken to people with epilepsy and they've uh they've said that that has been a big trigger for them is is caffeine and they sort of think of caffeine as a neurotoxin and so you know and we do know that a ketogenic diet has actually been used clinically for roughly 90 years to treat epilepsy and and it's actually still very effective and it's still used in top centers such as johns hopkins i was reading a study about them they've had you know a number of publications over the years where they're just saying like yeah this is actually still a good treatment modality we still use this here's a case series of people and these are the benefits that they that they got from that um i was i was is that you know that's an australian hospital right johns hopkins no that's in that's in baltimore that's america so that's that's one of the top um hospitals and uh was one of the top universities medical schools and hospitals in the world and um so that's having no idea but yeah because it was fantastic like is that a stream yeah okay cool yeah i know and they're one of the one of the top neurological centers and certainly neurosurgical centers that they would absolutely be uh you know you know if not number one the number one neurosurgical center uh pretty close to it um that's where you know people like um you know ben carson uh who uh you know was was the first neurosurgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins at the head that's where he was he was a head of pediatric neurosurgery at johns hopkins for decades you know and he was just you know really you know probably the most famous neurosurgeon of his time and and and deservedly so and a very interesting guy has a very interesting backstory he's written a number of books on that he even had a movie made about him with cooper gooding jr cooper cody jr played his and his life story pretty badass and uh it's called gifted hands it's just it's a very very ins i mean it's probably one of the more inspirational stories you'll ever see someone coming from from extreme poverty in extreme um conditions in like you know very rough area of detroit and just just working it as just working his ass off and and getting into um uh yale on a scholarship i believe he was on a scholarship and then i don't think he would have been able to pay for it otherwise because he did come from very humble means but uh and then you know gone into yale uh medical school and then accepted into johns hopkins uh neurosurgical program and he was so good that when he finished his residency program they made him head of pediatric neurosurgery and like what's trending straight away you know and so like that that doesn't happen it's i believe it was straight away i believe it was just i think it was like 32. i got to see these maybe now yeah yeah you check it out yeah that's good and so that's that's that's really one of the top centers and and they use this um it is surprising to me that that more neurologists aren't using this at least there's like a first line now someone can't can't stick to it you know and i've spoken people like well you know yes we do know it actually has you know very good evidence for it and it's very helpful in seizures but you know it's it you know people like carbs and so they want to do it and and i think that's kind of giving up i think you should at least try because you know you know something works and it's and it's and it's not a bunch of heavy medications that are that are going to have all their own side effects and then also also you're a doctor and a patient like they'd probably take you seriously so give them the best advice you've got yeah don't just assume that they're gonna go for donuts uh instead of eating meat when you haven't even given it a try no most most people really trust their doctor particularly when they're in a vulnerable position like that absolutely yeah and i mean you know and that's why i always uh you know have a lot of of um regard and respect when i'm for people when i'm when i'm speaking to them because you know they are you know hurt and they're scared and they're and they're worried and they need help and so you know you have to have that frame of mind that that's that's why these people are coming to you and so you know it just helps you take that um as seriously as you should and and you're right people do listen you know when i when i see people that have been having seizures you know in the brain surgery setting they've just had you know seizures since this sort of thing happened i just you know i all mentioned it and i was like oh actually you know this has been shown for you know decades that this this is really helpful and they're like really like wow that that would be great and um and some of them try it and they have great results and i've had a number of people uh contact me um you know based on on on that and you know mentioning that in other other talks and uh them trying it or maybe you know just coming across it on their own and and then saying like wow actually you know i really you know i had that same experience like i'm off all my medications and i was on like five different medications and you know just could i just have still having seizures and i went ketogenic and like i was able to come off most of my medications and i was i was able to control it with far fewer and then they went carnivore and then they really got rid of everything and then and at least for for these people they have not had seizures since then i'm not saying that that will happen for everyone and you know sort of lesional seizures like you know something like you have a tumor there pushing on things that you know you may still have have issues with that but it will certainly reduce them and make them far better to control absolutely i have no qualms saying that definitively and and um you know and some things you know uh like temporal lobe epilepsy we have this nidus of tissue that's just freaking out for some reason and that's sparking these seizures um i don't think it's as effective for them but uh that's ketogenic i don't you know there's no sense which part of your brain is the temporal lobe right there yeah so that that's your your sort of your temporal bones in there but that's that's where um you would call this like the temporalis muscle so we call this your temple yeah right yeah and so yeah you have that the temporalis muscle there which is you know makes you clench your jaw um the uh there's a lot of bones there that meet of different uh um just like sort of suture lines where like the different frontal bone temporal bone prod well they all sort of meet right there and and it's thinner and so and because these are where bones are meeting and knitting together it's sort of a weak spot it's like a you know you know a um uh crease or whatever i'm liking on the uh seam and um it's going to be a little weaker and there's like a big artery that runs behind there that's like yeah it's just you know if if we're thinking about how to design a person worse like you probably couldn't come up with too many better places worse places to like put that little artery and so you get it a knock there and it's weaker and so it kind of fractures in and just slices that uh that artery there and you get these this is this is why the advice is that if you have a bad head injury especially if you lose consciousness um you get a concussion or whatever uh that you shouldn't go to sleep for eight hours is because if you've cracked that bone and that sort of sheared that vessel then it's going to present sort of in the next eight hours because it's an arterial bleed and it's going to start putting pressure on your brain and it and it is high pressure because it's coming from the artery so you're going to see it fast and so you shouldn't go to sleep because you need someone there to monitor you to see if you start going goofy and and see if you you start you know slipping into a coma because of the pressure on your brain and if you're already asleep they're like oh they're just sleeping you know they're comfortable and then you try to wake them up in the morning and they're they're not waking up you know they're in a coma so that's that's why specifically if you get hit in the temple and you get uh you know bad injury there or knocked out or whatever that's that's the danger thing if you get hit in other parts of the head probably still good advice to just stay awake for a while and have someone keep an eye on you so you don't start getting goofy but that's specifically what it is it's specifically for an injury right there above the temporal lobe yeah i mean you can just feel in your own head like so much stronger in the in the forehead or even the back and i know whiplash is terrible but at least it's less it feels like it's less likely to crack anything well it is much thicker and when you're and when you're cutting through uh the skull to access the brain there are just areas of the skull they're just thicker and and this is a very thin part and so we would we actually access this it's called the keyhole is going right there because you sort of go there that's the key to several different areas and and fossa in the brain or in the in the skull that you can access different areas of of the brain and even even the eye and so that right there when you're sort of drilling that down i mean it's a couple millimeters you know over there so that that bone is very very thin a couple millimeters thick and then you go over here and you know it can be like a centimeter yeah and then other other people you know um you know people from you know like sub-saharan africa or um uh aboriginal uh australians uh their their their skulls are much thicker much much thicker and so when you're doing surgery on these and you're trying to do a burr hole and trying to get in there you know some sometimes we have these craniatones that that sort of drill out uh an area so you you drill a little hole and then you stick the saw in there and you can sort of you know drill it out um that's insane there's so i've seen guys that are that have their skulls are thick enough that we can't actually use the cranial tone like it won't work it's so it's so thick and so it takes a lot longer to get that piece of bone off and you know when you're working on a on a time crunch they've got this big bleed or a pressure or something like that like you know it gets it gets a bit anxious because you're like oh shoot this is you know this is taking longer than i wanted to you know and did i reckon i could do with a bit more thickness in my skull like i've had i've had a few passions and i reckon twice thick it just wouldn't have been such an issue you know well you know the thing is jews that like you know the skull is um is one part of it but also it's just your brain's sitting in cerebral spinal fluid and it's just sort of floating there right and so if you get a knock you just like you know like shaking baby syndrome you're shaking that around that's going to damage the brain and so you know you you bang your head the problem is is not that your your skull has let you down and shattered in and smashed into your brain is that you hit with such force now your brain is rattling around in your skull and it's smacking against the walls of the skull um so yeah it's uh it's uh yeah you're sort of going to get a brain injury either way but yeah we should do let's do an episode on like neurosurgery uh and that kind of like more technical side like you're talking about like soaring through the skull that sort of thing um yeah that's a very fascinating topic um just wanted to like we talked about uh that seizures are caused by over-excitement of neurons it just for my simple brain it just seems so obvious that when you have caffeine like you said the caffeine can be a trigger like i can feel when i have a lot of caffeine that my my neurons my brain is overexcited and i suppose you could say the same thing about having a lot of sugar um but it does feel like uh you know quite an intense kind of bright burning light has sort of come on um and that might be advantageous for some things like you know for example uh like if you really need to study or smash something out like short term i think that can kind of be helpful um but yeah it makes sense to me that that would be a trigger actually oh my god imagine um ecstasy or cocaine right yeah talk about neurons firing yeah and um yeah when you when you have sugar and that sort of turns the lights on you know that that's dopamine you know which is an excitatory molecule it turns on other molecules makes them go and so yeah you get too much of that you can you can have a problem um interestingly um there's um you know that and dopamine has a lot of different things but like different you know interestingly like parkinson's is you're not having enough dopamine and so you can't like initiate movement and so you just don't have enough you don't have enough dopamine to tell these things to go right and so it's harder to get going um and then schizophrenia seems to be influenced by dopamine as well by having too much to having having too much dopamine and so the treatment for parkinson's is trying to increase the amount of dopamine or the efficacy of dopamine in your brain or even supplying dopamine in the form of carbodopa or levodopa as it can be called and um and and so increasing that amount of dopamine uh to help them sort of move more and if you get too much of that you can actually start displaying schizophrenic experiences and and having sort of psychotic breaks uh or hallucinations and the flip side of that is that people with schizophrenia they're giving getting medication they're trying to dampen down that dopamine response and so that reduces their uh you know hallucinations and experiences brought about by schizophrenia but if they get too much of that they actually start um displaying parkinson-like uh features so it's sort of interesting there's more going on to it than that i don't think it's as simple as that but that's a major contributing factor so yeah dopamine plays a big role in your brain and so that's why people uh you know try to take drugs and different things that increase dopamine cocaine heroin uh methamphetamines and uh sugar you know fructose specifically they all uh give a dopamine response to your brain to the addiction centers your brain your life your brain's like yeah i like that let's do that again and so that's why they can be you know neurochemically uh addictive hey guys happy to 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weight 10 pounds of pemmican is two weeks of perfect nutrition you know at 2000 calories a day so you know it's not something that that you would just eat uh as a meal uh but um because it is more expensive than just buying meat so if you have meat just eat meat but this is something that's great on the go something you can bring to work or you know if you're doing like a i like you know training fasted and performing fasted some people like doing like ultra marathon things or you know iron man things that they want to eat halfway through this is perfect for that you know going hiking you're not going to bring a tupperware you know container full of cut up steak but you can bring a carnivore bar and you can bring it too and then you're going to have perfect nutrition for your entire endeavor and you know with with hardly any uh you know size restrictions um going out for dinner and don't want to gorge on all the crapola that everybody orders you can't have a bar in the way keeping your handbag in your pocket and you're ready to rock and roll yeah exactly so you know if you're in a situation where you do want to eat and you don't have access to something new that it would be uh in keeping with what you want to eat you know this is a perfect this is a perfect uh uh you know um option for that and i think i heard about jordan peterson carrying steak around in his product in his pocket he'd have a kind of finest pocket it's less messy you know i mean i'll cut up a steak and put it into you know a tupperware thing and i bring that with me or like a t i've been known to like cook a t-bone and uh and just eat that in the car like a popsicle and just you know just like have a car steak but that's not necessarily you know some people are less you know savage than that and they just want to do something normal but um you know you can always bring you can always bring a steak to work or or some or on the go but sometimes it's just it's just very inconvenient sometimes you just want to grab something and have it ready to go and you know i've certainly done that when i'm on call and i'm running out to the hospital and i'm like damn it i really want to eat you know i i do grab one and i'll have that out the door i did that you know last night when i was on call so it's something that's that's very convenient it tastes good it's sort of got a crunch to it that is like just a nice different texture and that's one thing that people have spoken to me about that they really like the different textures and they want something salty and crunchy like chips you know they were talking specifically about chips but this is salty and crunchy it's something different and it's and it's enjoyable i i wouldn't uh i wouldn't just eat them like you're eating you know you know a meal but i would absolutely i absolutely have these and use these um for those occasions that they are just very convenient and they are 100 so go and get yourself a kind of obama but in in the context of seizures um you know we do know that you know you know again like we when you eliminate carbohydrates you you are significantly benefiting uh your your epilepsy or your seizures and you are significantly reducing your risk for having future seizures i was talking to professor ben bickman at byu and you know he was talking about as well and that he's been doing research on on insulin metabolism for well over 15 years and you know he's a professor of biochemistry and and then bioenergenics i i think is the um his title but you know i couldn't i could be mistaken there but anyway he's a professor at byu and does a ton of research on this and you know he was saying we were talking about that uh phenomenon where if you go on a ketogenic diet you know this significantly helps that and he was saying that um that that people on uh um for epilepsy specifically it seemed to do they actually seemed to be helped by the amount of ketones that they had and they actually wanted higher ketones you know so eating more you know fatty meat that's going to bump up your ketones and that that for them was actually even more protective that not just being in uh you know the correct metabolic state and not you know dumping a bunch of sugar into your brain but having it run on ketones which it prefers as ben dickman said like you know when you're going into yeah ketogenic state or just your normal metabolism which is called the fasting metabolism but i disagree with that i think that that's our primary metabolic state that's that's where our body and biochemistry work much better and when your your blood sugar is sort of going down and and it's not being just stuffed into every orifice um by insulin you know it starts coming down and then your ketones are even like you have like oh you know somebody i forget the exact amount but you have something like a quarter of the amount of ketones as you do glucose all of a sudden your brain just goes yep that's what i want and it only runs on ketones you know it just it just throws the glucose away and so when your brain is preferentially using ketones even when there are less ketones than glucose available that lets you know that that's that's your brain's primary energy source and even when you're in a so-called fed state which is your carbohydrate insulin driven state which i think is a pathological state and you have constantly chronically too high of blood sugar and your insulin is just stuffing it into your brain and other parts of your of your body um even then your brain still runs on some ketones your brain never doesn't run on ketones it will always have some ketones uh that it runs on because it needs them and that's what it wants to run on so if there's any ketones available you know it's using them and then when it gets just enough ketones it's just like yeah we're only using that and it just shuts down the glucose even when it's available so um that was very interesting to me and specifically with with epilepsy you know being in a ketogenic state preferably a carnivore state was was helpful and then just having higher ketones was seemed to be added to that and that that was that was a protective thing to the brain your brain is getting its preferred and primary energy source and that seems to make a big difference in epilepsy is that is that two i've heard people talk about therapeutic ketones before or thera therapeutic places are you familiar with that at all no i don't know what that refers to maybe maybe it's something like that that they you know they they've improved uh their life by by going on a ketogenic diet and getting their ketones up because when you go on ketogenic diet a lot of people think of that as the ketones i need my ketones up i need my ketones up i need to be in ketosis and they're checking they're they're getting monitors and things like that i think that if you're eating naturally you don't need to do that you know we didn't have these monitors even 20 years ago maybe well maybe 20 years ago but not really before that and certainly not 100 years ago or a hundred thousand years ago and so you know life just worked okay so you can if you're eating what you're supposed to eat life will just work and you don't need to micromanage anything and uh yeah and that goes for ketones as well however um it you know from what uh professor bitchman was saying you know uh that that people with epilepsy are benefited by it by having higher ketones and not just being in ketosis but having a higher level of ketones that's that's kind of i was about to ask about that like uh uh people with epilepsy being prescribed exogenous ketones maybe you know that yeah interesting yeah i think that would be an interesting thing to do so even people that they're like yeah i can't do carnivore i can't do keto maybe you know taking in exogenous ketones your brain would potentially you know kick over and just start using those as well now maybe you know and i do know people that like take ketones and like my brain just wakes up i feel really good but you know they're not on a full carnivore diet yeah that's right um so i don't know if that would make a difference for them though but yeah maybe but they'll be really interesting with someone with a standard american diet you know western diet where they're eating carbohydrates and doing that you know would that kick over and and have your brain running on that how often would you have to eat them how often you have to take them like what doses that would be i think that would be very interesting and you know would that help uh with um with with your epilepsy that'd be very interesting but um you could be you'd be easier and it would be easier and and you'd be better served by just you know just just getting rid of that crap anyway and and just in just eating what you're supposed to eat anyway yeah i totally agree with that that's i mean that's kind of one thing that we talk about all the time it's like there are so many of these like band-aid measures that you put in place because you're doing damage at the root of things and and that would be an example of that so that's not ideal but on the topic of exogenous ketones have you taken them before no i i haven't taken them before um you know i i'm a big proponent of just just letting letting your body do its thing and um so i don't take that you know i i don't take supplements i don't take vitamins i don't take things like that i get everything i need from meat the one thing that you know i do qualify that with is if i'm not getting in the sun because i just you know i get up before you know i'm at work before it's light out i'm leaving after it's dark again like i'm just not getting in the damn sun and so you know i'm not going to get the vitamin d that i that i want to be at the levels that i um you know feel are most beneficial um in that regard you will get vitamin d from animal fat and you know butter and things like that but you know if i'm not getting in the sun you know sometimes i'll take i'll take some vitamin d3 but that's really it and you know i don't think that you i'm not too worried about like what my ketone levels are just because whatever whatever they are they're physiological yeah and you know if i had epilepsy for some reason and and i found that that to be beneficial great you know i think i think if someone's doing that and they're doing carnivore already and it's not quite getting rid of all their uh seizures try it you know see how it goes you know it may well be beneficial and that would be uh very interesting and it could be very beneficial to that person i don't think that i need that i think that i'm that you know i'm good just getting uh what i need for me yeah totally i mean i'm i'm the same with you i i feel the same and i think taking exogenous ketones would seem to be unnecessary like why don't you just get to the core of things but i have taken them before and um i took some the brand's called prove it prove it ketones and uh first of all it tastes really nice it's like like saltiness um but it's really it's really intense um so like if you take ketones in the morning like maybe instead of having a coffee you go into like obviously a really deep state of ketosis fast like faster than you would if you were just doing a little bit of fasting and eating fatty meat you actually got a little bit quicker um and it's it's really intense like probably too intense you feel like you can concentrate really really well um and i know that a lot of people i'm not recommending this a lot of people have had success losing weight on on private on ketones um because you take that in the morning you take some at lunch time you do not need to eat and you're your brain is absolutely firing so it's basically like a really it's like a hack to fasting like i would maybe recommend it to somebody who has a lot of fat to lose and like has trouble you know managing their diet but then the idea is to get off them not to be on them the whole time but you could easily take um ketones twice a day and then only have to eat one meal a day and you would lose and if you know if you're just eating meat for different then you'd lose body fat pretty fast yeah i mean i would i would worry that you know if you're if you're doing that and you're just sort of supplying this energy and it is energy so it's going to have like calories nutrition in that sense but you know you maybe you might be losing out on on the other things that that meat brings you and if you're you're sort of your body's saying oh yeah you know we're good on energy like everything's fine you don't need to eat you know are you losing out on other nutrients or things that your body would like otherwise maybe um you know because that's not that's certainly not something we've ever supplemented with before and that hasn't come across we haven't come across just a natural source of ketones apart from animal fat in the wild and in the bush yeah yeah just growing off of uh like like a keto fountain or something just pouring down and um you know so you know i'm happy just sort of just doing things physiologically and biochemically that's interesting though um that sweet flavor is that is that from artificial sweeteners or what are they happening maybe yeah okay i would certainly want to avoid those anyway i recommend anyone listen to this does that i'm just saying that's yeah oh that's just experiencing that's interesting though you know and you're just sort of you know just mainlining your brain's fuel source you know that's that's uh that's not an unreasonable you know response to that as your brain just goes yeah yeah yeah you're here and you're like yeah yeah that's interesting um but yeah you know and that's the thing too you know you you know you're really just going for the source there like this is just this is just energy you're just taking in pure energy um and you're not taking in all the other things and i think that's um you know specifically with carnivore versus a keto keto diet is that is that difference is that you're eliminating more things out on a carnivore diet and i've certainly spoken to people that have um you know had had a better time with carnivore versus keto for their epilepsy like you know be like on you know five different medications and and still having seizures and then they discover keto and and um and then they're like they're coming off all their medications they're maybe only like one or two now and they're doing much better or maybe they you know they're off their medications but they still have a seizure every now and then and so they're still on the stuff and an agent for that um and then they go a carnivore and then that's it they haven't had a seizure since and that's not necessarily everyone's going to have that experience but these people certainly did and you know carbohydrates are going to screw these things up it's going to screw up you know the energy metabolism in your brain and for some reason that that kicks off epilepsy and those that are susceptible to it and or can anyway and so eliminating that you're just you're just eliminating one of these triggers but there are other triggers and so you know caffeine being one of those things and so you know if caffeine is one of those things and hemlock is one of those things and carbohydrates are one of those things all of which come from plants really then even honey comes from plants because that's just concentrated nectar that the bees puked up you know and so you know that comes from a flower really um what's that heard it here first yeah yeah makes makes a lot of sense like you know exactly how it can be carnivore just because just because he takes it from the plant and then puts it in their hive happens that's when they make it that you're eating an animal well we'll think about this right you know a cow eats grass and then basically pukes back the cud into their mouth and they chew that more and then they swallow it again right so if you took that cud would that would that be an animal product is that a cow now no you know it's what the cow is eating to make a cow right so the bee is eating nectar to then puke up honey and have a store so that they can eat that later and that feeds bees and then you eat the bee that if you wanted to eat you know sort of you know animal base or carnivore you'd eat the bee you wouldn't eat the bee vomit you wouldn't eat the beef food you know and so you know if you just sort of think about it that way you know it makes more sense that that's that's not an animal product and you you don't get honey also you don't get honey from milking beef just to be relaxing that's why dairy is slightly different it's like you don't get almond milk from milking almonds either yeah little almond nipples but uh yeah so you know like carbohydrates you know these things come from plants predominantly obviously you know animal you know meat has glycogen and certain carbohydrate stores as well but you know the main sources of carbohydrates come from plants you know coffee caffeine comes from plants you know what water hemlock is obviously a plant in there i don't know what the chemical is there and there that triggers these seizures but they're severe and so you know that that is that are those the only three things in the plant world that are going to do that probably not and so you're probably going to have other triggers as well in in you know plants and vegetables and so that is you know carbohydrates are a major trigger but there are other triggers and so you know going on a ketogenic diet does help significantly we've known this for 90 years and but coming off these other things as well and getting rid of those triggers as well is is going to help even more and maybe you you don't have you know i was talking to um you know nate the bodybuilder from reno uh had him on the show a few weeks ago or a couple weeks ago and and he cured his epilepsy oh really wow yeah yeah yeah yeah and so he was he was seizure free just from from keto and then he you know went on um you know a carnivore and he got even better i mean he didn't have any seizures on keto so he was already good from that standpoint but his health benefits his you know depression anxiety and other things or were just completely gone uh after he went full carnivore and you know he's you know breaking records in uh weightlifting in in nevada and you know it's it's you know it's um uh you know it's not like as big of a lifting culture and competition as like california would be but he is still breaking records in in nevada and he's really just just getting going with a carnivore uh weightlifting set and he's and he's just accelerating so much faster than other people are so i think i think he's going to do very very well if he um you know keeps it up and and keeps competing but yeah he he got rid of his seizures and you know those other other people that i've spoken to where they were on like five different agents and they still were having seizures you know that does happen it's rare but it does happen they were never told or even suggested like hey you're a difficult case this is really bad you know it's something that would help or could help just don't eat carbs and sugar it was never suggested to them like these guys have to figure it out themselves and you know and then they they do and they they have good good outcomes from it you know try like why aren't they trying i i know that that some are and i know that there are neurologists who do uh recommend that but i i would i would have thought that this would be you know part of the you know the canon of treating epilepsy is you know is saying hey you can give this a try you know if it doesn't work if you can't do it you can't maintain it that's fine but there's good evidence uh that this helps with epilepsy and especially when you get someone who's on five medications or or you know multiple medications more than one that's a difficult case you know and that's and that's that person's having a hard time and they are at high risk uh for for death you know because they could have a seizure at any time and any seizure could be fatal any seizure could be your last night and it's a sort of a scary thing to say um and and you know the majority of seizures are not fatal but you you never know you don't know and you don't know if you just have a seizure and you just fall you crack your head on the corner of the table and that's it you know you don't know and so that's sort of the worrying thing about epilepsy and having seizures and so just at least trying that or suggesting it just say hey by the way this could help you know i think that it would be i just think it should just be part of normal practice to at least suggest it and recommend it and then and the patient can do what they want it's their body it's their life you know if they just go yeah you know you know having you know having seizures is uh is is small change compared to giving up pizza fine you know that's you that's your decision but you know i thought a lot of people would give it a shot a lot of people do not like the fact that they have seizures do not like the fact that they have to take medications they don't i mean so sort of do you thinking about life thinking about like a doctor who might be hesitant to suggest hey go on a ketogenic diet it's going to help with your epilepsy i'm guessing the ones that are hesitant would be either the ones that maybe the ones that aren't very don't care very much so they're happy to just prescribe the standard remedy put them to side to the side there'd probably be some who would say oh no i can't go ahead and encourage you to consume a lot of saturated fat and not eat your veggies um i just don't feel morally comfortable with that um and you know my i to that sort of response which i assume is what they would say you know i say oh but you do feel comfortable recommending these prescription drugs and chemicals so they could be on for the rest of their life that they have to pay for for the rest of their life as well um that are made in like a laboratory on the other side of the world so you do feel comfortable with that but you don't feel comfortable getting asking them to eat a whole food diet of meat and fat which we've been eating for thousands of years um even for three months as a trial to see if they have another epileptic episode yeah yeah i think i think um i think some people are uh you know do do uh have a lot of empathy for their their patients but you know maybe they're just in their experience it's difficult to get them on it and and you know the the you know the modality in medicine right now is you know and the and the incentives are such that you're trying to find a product that will you know help people but that you can also sell because that i mean that's you know that's where people are getting returns right you know i suspect you're trying to have a business and you're like okay what can i do that can help people what product can i make that can help to help this person oh okay i figured out this medication and it can suppress seizures well that's a great product you know and you're helping people you know telling people not to eat carbs doesn't doesn't sell a product you know and so that incentive is just a little different and so that's why it needs to come from doctors it needs to come from um you know other other sort of health advisors because that is your product your advice is your product you know so so you're giving people proper advice so that's where it needs to come from but unfortunately in the medical community you know we get taught by people that have these incentives that that you know like harvard there was a there was a study that came out or an article that came out uh rather that um was talking about how basically you know their their professors that were teaching they were they were very much in the pockets of these pharmaceutical companies and like someone in uh like first-year medical student at harvard you know asked about the the side effects of statins like you know and and the guy like openly mocked her in uh class and uh oh my god you know basically like oh you're just being crazy like there's there are no side effects this is just perfect it's only good only roses and you know they sort of you know thought that was a bit you know uncalled for looked it up this guy is like you know on the board of like you know all these companies that make statins and like you know and it has like you know ties with like 32 different pharmaceutical companies and you know financial ties with them and so and then they found that um there's a grading system that uh basically looks at you know how how financially compromised and ethically compromised are your professors in your medical school with the with the pharmaceutical companies you know how much of these people have all these decides that they aren't reporting they aren't telling people about um um and you can find it somewhere it has to be reported at some point but um but basically they got harvard had a had a grade of f so they were they were they fed a failing grade of of their uh you know financial ties with their professors with the pharmaceutical companies so you know these are people teaching cd dogs yep this is the treatment you have epilepsy this is how you start with these i mean i was never told about a ketogenic diet helping epilepsy when i was in medical school and we were learning about this we learned about the different classifications of drugs and what they did and how they worked pharmacologically and you know physiologically in your body because that's what you tested on the usmle step one you're looking at physiology you're looking at pharmacology and you're just and that's just what you're getting taught you know they don't tell you that for 90 years you haven't needed medication except in very extreme circumstances and so you know that's unfortunately uh how medicine is taught you know you're taught that you have a problem you have a you have a treatment you know and that treatment is a product you know what i mean and then there's diet lifestyle low you know lose weight blah blah blah but the the recommendations also go back to these influences from industry like the sugar companies paying off all these professors um you know like ansel keys like these guys from harvard who became the head of usda who then put forward the policies so even those recommendations are compromised uh from engine from from these payoffs and these um unethical uh actors so you know it's difficult you know but that's what people but people are trying they're like oh yeah here are these recommendations but they're you know they're also contaminated but a lot of these things you're just you're taught to prescribe medications it's like asking the stock broker should i buy this stock you know the letter say absolutely buy it for me or no actually buy this stock through me or invest in this little fund through me where they get a slightly larger commission and you know and the farmers get the same thing when they have an agronomist come out to their farm and they're like you know does my topsoil need more fertilizer do i need more pesticides yeah absolutely you know like people in this local area usually yeah i've got some in my truck unfortunately there are incentives but you know yeah i don't i don't know if it certainly wasn't taught to me and obviously i'm not a neurologist so i don't know if that's regularly trained in uh you know in in neurologic neuro neurology uh residency but you know i certainly have spoken to a lot of people that had no idea uh that that's that that's what it is neurologists and and other ones who did but they just sort of dismissed it by like oh yeah but it's really hard to do that so maybe it was it was relayed to them you know that like yeah this is something that works but it's really hard to make people change their life and drop carbs so they've just basically had that mindset without even trying it you know that they're like oh yeah well that was told to me by someone i respect and admire so like obviously that's true so there's no worse it's not worth wasting your time um but i think it is worth it i think that you know maybe not everyone's going to get um get on board but some will and it will help those people and every certainly every person that i've spoken to that's having problems with seizures you know that i run into in my neurosurgical consults they're absolutely uh thrilled to hear about something that could potentially get them off medication and help them not have seizures and can get them driving again and not have to worry about uh you know locking up and killing themselves and others you know they're very excited to hear that you know and so you know i don't think that that's as difficult of a hurdle to get over as as some may think and then and then i think the others unfortunately just don't know about it you know and because we're taught pharmacology you know and uh you know we're not we're not taught uh you know prescriptive um nutritional advice except for you know don't eat fat don't eat meat vegetables are good you know and so you know that's uh that's that's as deep as it gets uh to nutritional sciences in uh in medicine in medical school you know it's and it's wrong you know so it's like you know um you know very not helpful all right that was really well said um thanks for ending there i think i'll turn it into a clip and uh if you've got somebody who you know i do personally if you know someone who's got epilepsy maybe send that clip to them and they can hopefully ask more questions or do a bit more research themselves yeah well and there's plenty there's there's plenty of studies out there i mean literally like a century's worth so are there any names we should be looking for like should should i be looking at ben beekman well yeah i mean ben beckham is a great place to start and you know he's been he's sort of the guy doing research into you know you know carbs and insulin and how this affects your your brain and body um and you know you've been doing this for over 15 years and even even migraines as well i was talking to him uh sort of off the camera as soon as the camera ended and i was just like oh why didn't you know why didn't we get this but you know he was saying that you know migraines you know another neurological disorder is uh is very well treated by um by being on being on a ketogenic diet and again carnivore diet is going to be even better than that because there are known triggers for migraines that are not carbohydrate related but they do come from plants and so you know just doing that's going to be better sorry like um seed oil well yeah well maybe i don't know um but like caffeine you know caffeine can absolutely trigger these things and um and uh dehydration you know just simple things you know you can set these things off but you know um but as far as uh ketogenic sort of thing you know she's like oh yeah you know being on a ketogenic diet is absolutely helpful there were studies back in the 1920s as far back as the 1920s that he was telling me about that and like you know 90 percent of people with migraines who went on a ketogenic diet stopped their migraines completely and the other 10 still had a significant reduction in uh number and severity of their migraines so it just helps and so probably that ten percent were people who were being triggered by by other things in plants not carbohydrate related um so and he was saying specifically there now they just need to sort of be off carbohydrates and in a ketogenic state um you know they don't even need like the high ketones like that it's more important for people with epilepsy to have high ketones with with people with migraines it's just get away from carbs and be in in a ketogenic state predominantly you know when you eat meat and you you know a number of protein amount of protein your blood sugar will blip up a bit and you'll you know technically drop out of ketosis transiently but you know overall this is still part of a physiological process and and um but yeah so as long as you're not taking an exogenous carbohydrates for migraines you know you're good with people with epilepsy that's good but also having higher ketones seems to be beneficial as well um and so yeah i mean you can just you can just jump in the literature i mean just go on google scholar everyone has access to that if you have access to pubmed even better but just google scholar will at least bring up things with abstracts and and you can just look up you know ketogenic diet and and epilepsy you know ketogenic diet epilepsy johns hopkins like things will come up and you can you can do your own research and you know like you said you know if if you know people know someone with with epilepsy or seizures you know please share this video with them you know this is something that that will help them and you know if it's something that they can do and they can get on board with it it will change their life and it will significantly uh benefit them from a from a seizure perspective and then then you'll get all the other benefits as well you it will it will you know heal your body and and and have your body working optimally in every other aspect as well and it will help their seizures so it's it's only a win-win there are no drawbacks to this realistically apart from like oh but i like eating carbs or whatever that's the same argument as like you know it's like oh you're having health problems you should really stop doing drugs and alcohol yeah but oh but i like drugs and alcohol i like smoking you know fine i i appreciate that you like that and if you're an adult you get to make your own decisions i'm i'm fully on board with that i'm very libertarian when it comes to people making their own decisions with their own bodies but but but i think a lot of people will look at that and go like i can get off medication potentially i can have less seizures like i'm going to give that a try and and it will help them you know like even the people that it may not cure completely you know it's going to help it's going to significantly reduce your uh burden of seizures and it's going to reduce your reliance on medications as well and i think that's always a good thing 100 all right anthony thank you so much that was really really really good yeah no problem man you