Is Coffee the Reason Your Carnivore Diet Isn’t Working? (Doctor Explains)

[Music] Caffeine will get into your bloodstream and strip out magnesium from your blood and strip it out of your body. So, and it will also dehydrate you. So, you know, drinking coffee or tea and taking caffeine, which a lot of people do when they're working out to give them a bit of a of a boost pre-workout, that's a perfect storm for cramps because it's not only going to strip your magnesium out, it's going to dehydrate you. So dehydration, low magnesium is, you know, yeah, you you're just sort of begging for cramps at that point. So if anybody's taking um caffeine or coffee, tea, etc. like that, I always tell them you need to be on a on a supplement because I I see so many people when they go on carnivore, everybody starts off below um an optimal range, I would say. Uh but then then it comes up, it can take months and months and months to come up u even with optimal nutrition. But when they're drinking coffee and tea and using caffeine or using caffeine, I I I see it, you know, it's very difficult for them to get into optimal range even with supplementation. I almost never do. Um so it's uh yeah, it's um yeah, things to consider. Anyway, another reason to quit coffee. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's got tons of antiutrients. I mean, that's that's the worst one. I mean, I see it even when people are on medications and they're having coffee in the morning or even like half an hour after or something like that. It just blocks out the absorption. It's just like they're not taking these medications anymore. You can measure these things like if someone's on on thyroid medication, thyroid is is a bit particular. It can it's it's very um temperamental. And so, you can't even have vitamins or breakfast or anything like that for half an hour after you have or any of your other medications for half an hour after you take your thyroid medication. take that first and then you um and then you take everything else half an hour later. But I found just through trial and error, I had about two dozen patients that were coming in, they they had been on thyroid medication and all of a sudden their thyroid they're very hypothyroid and um they were still taking their medications. The only difference was that they well the only thing was that they were having coffee in the morning. And we just through trial and error we found that we had to delay coffee by 2 hours minimum um after they took thyroid medication or they just really weren't absorbing it at all. And some people were you know increasing you know by you know 40 50%. Some people actually doubled or or nearly tripled their um thyroid levels, their T3 levels, the active active thyroid levels um just by stopping coffee or or delaying it at least 2 hours significantly improved it. I mean going from like you know 2.4 2.8 up to 4.5. One lady went from 2.8 jumped up to 8.6 just by stopping coffee. And so now that was way too high now she was like hyper thyroid. She was on too high of a dose. So we drop that back down, you know, now she's now she's in an optimal range again. Um, but yeah, it makes a huge difference and and so even, you know, borrowing all the acryumide and the lectins and all these other sorts of horrible things for just caffeine is a neurotoxin. It's an insecticide and is developed by plants to fry the brains of insects trying to eat them. you know, even you know, all that um all that aside, you know, it has these serious anti-nutrient uh properties and will just block out a lot of the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, proteins, um and potentially even fats and medications and certainly supplements that you're trying to take. And so, it's just, you know, it's uh it's much much better to at least delay it significantly after anytime you ingest anything, food, nutrients, medications, at least 2 hours. plants are literally trying to kill you. So, yeah, they're not they're not they're not trying to to help you anyway. Yeah. Last question I got for you, brother, because I know you got to get out of here. You mentioned Alley Stanley in one of your previous episodes that I was listening to. The bear is carnivore for like 50 years. And when I was reading through his stuff, he also recommends not doing the salt. So my current struggle right now cramping and stuff, it's I've kind of had to put my ego to the side cuz I want to tough it out like no, I don't even need a salt. It's like I need I need some help right now. So what he also mentioned is how the way that society has developed their current norms or like why we eat these things that we do is due to a culturation which is just passed down and we're used to it generation after generation. um started what like probably I wouldn't even know I'd be lying if I knew but inculturation and you also mentioned that people are going to get withdrawals from carbohydrates. So what makes carbohydrates so addictive? Would you consider them overall to be a drug not just refined sugar? Hey everyone, really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show for everybody down in Australia. Stockman Steaks, who are delivering high quality grass-fed and finished, pasture-raised beef and other meats, flash frozen and vacuum sealed to your door. Something I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well. They also have a great range of specialty items such as highfat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver, kidneys, and beef heart as well. So, use code chaffy today for a free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at stockmanstakess.com.au and I'll see you over there. Thanks, guys. I Yeah, especially how you how you sort of look at it. I mean, yeah, and and you know, the whole salt thing uh was um not eating salt in those communities. That was that was directly from um Alice like he he was very influential. He was a carnivore for like over 50 years. Just just did it on his own. And and then when these zero carb groups started coming up, they were talking about these things. All of a sudden came out was like, well, I've been doing this for the last 50 years and this is what I found. People like, whoa, hold on a second. So they had these long interesting, you know, threads on these Facebook chats and and people just saved them. They were like, this is gold. And so they just saved all these things and compiled them into the um you know the book of owls you know and um so and that was part of it was that say well you know it is true you know and um that you know we started you know really going after salt you know more uh recently with the advent of of um agriculture and it became extremely important after that and Ali argued that that's really why because if you're eating like sort of a a plantbased diet then you you do do need different amounts of of certain nutrients. That's that is 100% true. And um and so he he made the argument for salt, which you know, makes sense. You know, we didn't have access to salt lines and things like that 50,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago. Now, you found some salt. Would people eat it? Yeah, probably. You know, um just like, you know, deer go to a salt lick, they they'll lick some salt, but they're not sitting there just chewing on it, on it. They lick a bit of salt and they move on with their day, you know, and um and then it's going to increase your your thirst and all that sort of stuff as well. But, you know, if you if you didn't get that salt from a salt lick, I mean, are you going to die? Do I mean, do do all deer not able to survive in the woods unless people put up salt licks? Of course not. You know, you do get sodium from from the food that you eat. Um, and you get like 600 milligrams of sodium. Um, you know, which would be equivalent of like, you know, 1.2 gram of saltish um, you know, uh, from just eating steak all day, you know. So you're getting a significant amount of that, right? When you're transitioning, you may need, you know, uh more than that, you know, two, three times that, right? Um as far as um as far as and but again, that's a that's a that's a different state. You're transitioning, you know, if you were just from birth, you know, doing this, you probably would never need to solve anything, you know, and then once you're transitioned, you probably don't need to. Most people don't. I've met exactly one human being on this earth that long-term years on a ketogenic diet has needed to add copious amounts of salt and that's that's um you know Dave Feldman. He just he just really has to go he just does not feel good unless he adds a ton of salt. Now he's doing full he's doing keto. He's not doing full carnivore. So you know is there is there a difference there? I'm not sure. But you know certainly I haven't seen other people on keto that desperately have to have tons of um tons of salt like he does. he does and he feels a lot better doing that fine. Um, you know, just do do what works for you. Um, as far as carbohydrates being addictive, I do think they are. Certainly fructose, which is the sweetest carbohydrate that we know of. Um, and that's why it's in everything. It's very sweet, but it's also very addictive. So, that is a drug. That is that is by by by the strictest medical definition. Fructose is a drug whether we consider that a drug or not. I mean we've had cocaine and ladum and morphine and things like that. You could go to the drugstore and buy these drugs. You didn't need a prescription for a lot of these things for for a long time. And um I mean there was there was cocaine in Coca-Cola. That's where Coca-Cola gets its name, you know. Um you know, then they said like, "Okay, well no, this is a control substance. this is too much. So, okay. So, they replaced it with, you know, but load of sugar and caffeine, other addictive substances to make you drink their product so that you buy more of it, right? The more addictive it is, the more compulsive it is for you to to consume it, the more more money they make because they sell more product. It's drug dealer 101. You know, you need people coming back, right? And um so that is a drug. We know that's a drug. Um even though people even though it's not you know uh uh legally defined as a drug and age restricted which it should be it should absolutely be age restricted because this this can do serious harm to the neurological development of kids. And um so if you look at fructose, we've we've seen in human studies, people that are um well, we we know that that fructose will give a the dopamine response to the addiction centers, the reward centers of your brain, just like cocaine, meth, and um and heroin, right? So these hard drugs. Now, other things will give a dopamine response to gambling, just being happy, getting a hug, something like that. But but in much much much lower levels a gambling can be very high doses but these drugs massive massive quantities of dopamine are getting hit. Same with with fructose. Dopamine is an excitatory molecule means it makes uh your your neurons turn on and fire and go. Okay. Your neurons get damaged when they're firing when they're going. the the neurotransmitters actually, you know, which is how they chemically communicate is uh when they break down and get recycled, they actually are harmful. Those breakdown products are actually toxic to the brain, which is a really weird system where it's like, you know, their normal communicate acts of communication actually damage the brain. It's pretty interesting how that works. But, you know, that's why you need to sleep. That's why you need to rest. That's why, you know, certain parts of your brain are cycling on and off because they need to repair and rebuild and they need to sort of break down these products. need to repair the damage that was caused when they were on and firing. They just it's just wear and tear. Just like, you know, you drive your cars, things just start breaking down. You need to fix them and repair them and give them rest. You can't just drive for for 50 hours straight without stopping the engine and letting it, you know, sort of rest and cool down for a bit. The same with your neurons. The more you do that, you're just redlining your neurons, they they start to break down. They start to die. And so your brain tries to protect you from that by reducing your receptors. That's tolerance, right? So that now you want more and more and more of that substance to get that same effect, right? So you have, you know, more alcohol, more cocaine, more heroin, more whatever to get that same effect. And then if you keep doing that, you keep overstimulating those cells, they actually start to die. And so when they've done these they've done these studies with they've done um you know like functional MRIs where they're looking at um where this dopamine goes and what those areas light up. So you can actually see his colors light up. So you give someone like a like a dose of like aderal something like that like an amphetamine and you give someone who's just not addicted to anything just a normal sort of person you give them uh that that dose of of amphetamines and those areas of the brain will just boom light up like a Christmas tree on MRI. Then they give that same dose to a meth addict, right, who's a long-term meth user and it barely twinkles, right? Same dose just barely twinkles, right? Because a lot of those cells are dead and there's a high resistance as well, right? You have to have a whole whole um host more of that to overwhelm that to get a bigger signal. But then they gave that same dose of amphetamines to people that were metabolically sick. They were sugar addicts. same barely twinkle as the meth addict. So sugar kills the same areas of the brain as meth to the same extent as meth. This is a drug and um and you have withdrawals and people people report withdrawals. I mean we use the same terminology. We've used this since I was a kid long before that I'm sure. Um saying that kids have sugars. Oh, I got a sugar high. He's running all now. He's have a sugar crash. He's freaking out throwing things. Oh my god. And he'll say, "Oh, he's just coming down off sugar. We're using the same terminology as like drugs. Oh, he's coming off meth. He's just coming down off. Oh, he's on his meth high. Oh, he's just coming. He's his meth crash. Something like that. And we we talk about it all cute. Oh, yeah. He's just a kid. He's just crashing off off sugar. It's a drug. We've even we've even even been referring to it as a drug and in terms of a drug uh for a long time without even realizing it. But that that is what we are seeing. people has just sort of unconsciously been aware that people are getting the same sort of responses as as as someone would on drugs. So, um the other thing is too is they did they've done animal studies as well and these these go way back, you know, giving them sugar and things like that and they prioritize the sugar and they go after the sugar and all that sort of stuff. But they did a study a long time ago where they had these animals that um you know they had two panels and a light goes on and they they're trained to like they know they can hit a panel and they'll get a pellet from one side or a pellet from the other side. It's either a pellet of food or they're going to get a pellet of cocaine, right? And so, um, they found that, um, in in those conditions that, um, and there's some nuance to this, but in some of these things, they they kept picking the cocaine button until they until they died, basically. And, um, but then, you know, there's some nuance to that because, you know, some people have noticed that like, well, you have these rats that are social creatures. You have them isolated. They're all by themselves and they're doing that. They're picking the cocaine, cocaine, cocaine, but they're they're alone. they're isolated. Now you put them in a group and then you say, "Okay, pick cocaine or food." They actually were much more like just picking the food. They didn't actually want to go to that. So you having like, you know, social structures and networks. You have a you know, positive, healthy sort of, you know, life structure and community structure and things like that, people are much less uh, you know, interested in in doing a whole bunch of drugs all the time too, you know. But when you're depressed and miserable and your life sort of sucks, you're like, "Yeah, drugs are a great idea." you know, and so um and then when you get your social social structure is revolved around drugs, then that's a real problem because now you're you're socializing and interacting with people who are then now doing drugs. And so now there's there's both of those things there. So that's that's a trouble, too. But in any case, they also replicated these studies um in mice, but they added a third level, which was sugar lever, which was sugar. And so they know that they can get the food or the cocaine or the sugar. And they picked the sugar over both the cocaine and the food, right? They just kept picking sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar until they died. 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You know, this is this is a drug and it damages your brain the same way as meth and it damages your body in the same way as alcohol. know uh from the the the work that biochemistry department at um UCSF among others have done. I mean I was even taught this in 2009 and in um medical school we had actually showed that that fructose actually I guess gets broken down in the same pathways as alcohol actually has a fatty droplet turns into acid aldahhide napki all these other sorts of nasty things that damage your liver you get from fructose as well as alcohol. So fructose and alcohol get broken down into the exact same byproducts. Um and so you get the same damage to your liver as well. So it's damaging your body like alcohol. It's damaging your brain like meth. And is it and it's more addictive than cocaine in in mouse studies. Right? So this is a this is a drug. Now carbohydrates can be very compulsive because they can trigger hunger signals and hormonal signals that tell you to eat more, eat more, eat more. you raise your blood sugar, that raises your insulin. Insulin stays elevated even though the blood sugar drops. And so now you get what's called reactive hypoglycemia and your blood sugar drops too low and you you've blocked lipolysis. Your ketones are low and your blood sugar is low and you just feel you feel awful and so you're like, "Oh god, I have to eat. I have to do something. I have to have carbs." And so you have that compulsion to go eat more carbs. Just because you don't feel good, right? as you eat carbs, it's a sort of a learned behavior that you know that if you eat carbohydrates, you'll feel good again. You'll have energy and then you'll crash again, you eat carbs again, so you that you just sort of you have those swings up and down. It also does something more insidious though, which is insulin blocks something called a hormone called leptin. Remember, it's screwing up hundreds of different mechanisms. One of them that actually has a lot of farreaching ramifications is blocking leptin. Leptin is another master key hormone. it goes into your hypothalamus which controls a lot of hormones that go affect the hormones in your pituitary which affect all the other hormones in your body. So this hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis um and you throw your testicles and ovaries in there as well. So um you screw up your leptin and now you you're going to screw up all the hormones or many of the hormones coming out of your hypothalamus and then uh by extension your pituitary and the rest of your body. So there's a big impact and um insulin blocks that fructose also blocks that. So it's compounded. Alcohol blocks that. Lectins which are the plant toxins also block leptin and um and and a couple other things as well. But you know um so insulin will block that as well. Leptin is your satiety hormone. It comes from your fat cells predominantly. Some will come from your stretch receptors. You know, so you eat a whole big meal, sort of stretch, it will release some leptin and suppress ghrelin. But the majority of it comes from your fat cells. And so it's like a running gas gauge. It tells your brain how much energy you have. And so when you block that, now your brain thinks you don't have any energy. You're emaciated. You're dying. And so it's going to slow down your metabolism and tell you to eat more because you're going to die. So let's go eat more. We got to we got to store this fat. We got to get into a healthy fat percentage range. And so now your brain can't see your your fat. It can't see your leptin, can't see your fat. So, it thinks you're emaciated, thinks you don't have any fat uh left over and that you're just, you know, just you don't have any fat stores and your blood sugar is dropping. So, now your brain sends a panic signal that says if you don't eat now, you will die because that's the signals, that's the hormonal signals that you're giving your your brain. And even though you've just had 5,000 calories and pancakes and syrup, 2 hours later, your brain's just like, "You need to eat or you're going to die. let's let's go. And um and you can be enormously obese, but if your brain doesn't know that, it doesn't matter. And so, you know, you'll cause this compulsive eating. And so, you know, when when you're eating carbohydrates, it can cause that compulsion. It can cause that addictive sort of eating where you're just eating more and eating more and eating more. And a compulsion. If you don't want to call it an addiction, it is a compulsion. Your body's going to be compelled to eat more because it's sending the signal saying you're going to die if you don't. And so it can take some time for that to come down. I mean, leptin resistance preeds insulin resistance. And so you can have leptin resistance years before you have insulin resistance and your insulin goes up. And actually your insulin will come down first and your leptin will take a while to come down afterwards. But you know just the affecting that acutely it can be uh you know very difficult especially in the first two weeks. You have a lot of carb cravings and sugar cravings and your body's just like no we need this, we need this, we need this. Then as your insulin starts settling down, your leptin starts settling down. The thing is it takes months and months and months and months and months for a very high leptin to come down to normal. However, you know, your your brain can start to see the leptin and can start to um you know have less resistance before that um as far as um you know what what it can see. So you know but in those first first few weeks you can be very addicted to those carbohydrates especially as you're eating carbohydrates. you're eating carbohydrates begets more carbohydrates. And this is why I think it's very dangerous to add in things like sweet fruit and honey because you're going to run down that pattern and you're going to a the fructose is is highly addictive. And anytime you introduce something highly addictive, you are you have a high likelihood of getting addicted and so it can uh be a real problem. Um and um and you have a little bit and that turns into a little bit more and a little bit more and all of a sudden it's a lot. And um and that can be that can be a serious problem. And you start with fruit, you start with honey and then it turns into you know pizza and and um you know sodas and things like that. And I see a lot of people go down that you know carb hole where they they just start eating all the carbs around them because like no you have to have more more and more more. Um, so definitely when you're eating carbohydrates, any carbohydrates are going to be sort of that give that compulsion. And when you're coming off of that, it's usually about 2 weeks it takes before that that compulsion and that those those cravings go away. If you're eating enough eating enough fatty meat, that can help suppress those those compulsive feelings. And um and certainly after 2 weeks, if you're getting carb cravings, sugar cravings, it's because you're not eating enough or you've reintroduced some carbs or some sweetener, artificial sweeteners, that can that can trigger the carb cravings again, too. So, um, yeah, but, uh, yeah, I do think fructose is 100% a drug. I think that should be legally defined as a drug and should be age restricted. I don't think that that any kid should be I don't think anybody should be having fructose, but, you know, certainly not a lot of it, but um, I I no chance in hell that kids should be given uh fructose while their brains are developing. Absolutely not. Glad you kind of brought fruit into the picture at the end of that because that was going to be my followup because table sugar for those that don't know is half glucose um half fructose but fructose is the uh the sugar that would be found in fruit too. So everything that you just said literally applies to things that we consider healthy the berries acai bowls and such. And like you said carbs begets uh carbs like eating more of it. I noticed if in the past I ate like a little banana even though I was under my 50 grams net carbs for the day while I was uh more of ketoore. I just wanted more and more and more. It's like it doesn't stop. It's not satiating at all. And the easiest thing that I did was just load up on the butter as I was transitioning into this carnivore stage and I didn't get any of those cravings at all. So the carb guys were having to suck down sugar gels and the other group didn't. So that's already an advantage. But then they switched them and so the keto group became the carb group and vice versa. They gave them a two-eek wash out period. You can eat whatever you want. And then they they went back in another six weeks of keto adaptation.