What Are The Benefits Of A Ketogenic Diet? | Prof. Eric Westman

what are some of the other benefits of a ketogenic diet I mean obviously you're you're in a specific scope of practice but do you do you apply this to other you know other other conditions as well well you know one of the reasons I stayed in a university practice was uh to be in an insurance pay system so I could understand the ins and outs of billing and and on and then also to be able to treat pretty much all comers so someone comes to me with four or five different diseases they're on 10 or 15 medicine bring them on I mean that I I'll I'll handle it um and what's been fascinating is if you shift the body toward fat burning so you cut the carbs out and what I teach I guess you could call a carnivore is because what I was taught was you know eat as much as you want to fullness of meat fish and shellfish and eggs and then you know two cups of leafy greens one cup of a non-starchy veggie it's under 20 total grams per day I I joke that it's carnivore is because carnivore I I see as a metabolic subset of the low carb kind of in keto approaches so when your body starts burning fat amazing things can happen and in fact people themselves find them uh in a couple instances they fixed themselves when the medical community was kind of add odds with what they were doing one example is the community of type one diabetes of course many of them follow Dr Richard K Bernstein's approach he has Type 1 diabetes himself and a father of someone with type one developed a Facebook group and we actually surveyed Facebook group of super users of low carb for type one and it it was truly remarkable how good the blood glucose control could be how they parents weren't worried about the low blood sugars at night anymore and the paper that David Ludwig and the Harvard group had uh validated the doctor uh um lab values U basically was the most cited journal in the journal pedi atrics that year so the type 1 Community figure this out the mardal disease is a even rarer or well type one I would say isn't rare but mardal disease is a kind of glycogen storage disease meaning the bod's uh the body has trouble storing glycogen making it and so storing sugar so for years for the last 50 years the medical experts would say wake up the children at night and feed them them sugar feed them starch because they can't store Sugar and and so I met four individuals with mardle at a meeting one of these you know it was a society of metabolic Health the low carb USA meeting in San Diego and I said get up and tell your story and and they found that they could now walk up mountains where before they would feel exhausted after Walking 50 ft they uh one of the people told me the story she would pretend to tie her shoe when really she was just exhausted she she pretend to Window Shop because she was just exhausted one of the gentlemen told me that he ran for a train and became uh I had rabom myolysis had total muscle breakdown with CPK elevation kidney failure hospitalization that was totally transformed when they didn't eat carbs m now they didn't know it but what they were doing is shifting their body to Fat utilization fat fatty acids and ketones and the muscles loved to run on fatty acids and ketones it was the medical and and even research level fixation and belief that the muscles needed glycogen and needed to sort it that they were actually giving the wrong advice and developing well you know this is what happens with type 2 diabetes eat more carbs take my medicines right it's not the only time but it's one of these things that the medical world had no answer for and these people figured it out plus the story continues the one of these people wrote a case series on it and I helped them get into literature and then now the world's experts on McArdle have shifted and they're studying low carb keto diets so it's possible that you'll encounter people who have a new situation that no one else could fix you know they'll tell you i' feel great and and and you know you have to just scratch your head and think a little bit that well one thing major thing that's happening now is your body is running on fat and the the benefits of that I think for these other conditions especially the glycogen storage diseases is going to be you know one of the future major changes that this field you know of course Beyond type two diabetes that would be even major for you know monetarily in helping humans suffering type two diabetes and obesity are are even more important but but um these other orphan conditions just don't get much attention and so if you're someone watching this and you've had a rare medical condition and suddenly you're better you know we want to know about it in fact we um there are mechanisms now to get that information out uh and that all started with people going to a meeting and and sharing their experiences absolutely yeah you you mentioned uh Dr vck before he I mean he published a um the faster trial in 2016 we looked at Elite athletes on a ketogenic diet and they they had been on a enic diet for 9 months to 6 36 months average 20 months so they're very keto adapted and they and they looked exactly at that um at at what their muscles were using and they found that they were still oxidizing fat you had you're using um fat oxidization for their muscles at over 90% V2 Max and so this is the old rumor that you to be an elite supposed to Happ yeah exactly yeah and um but now he's showing that it is and so obviously someone and and so that that makes perfect sense with people with cardal syndrome when they're they're not at 90% V2 Max however they they could they could be and so that's obviously going to cover them uh throughout their normal their normal daily life you know people get very worried about that no you have to have glycogen your muscles have to have glucose and they and they clearly don't and it's very important to show that although for decades the teaching if you were going to run was that you carblow the night before right so having Professor Tim noes recant basically in in the movie serial killers c e he rips out the chapter and says I was wrong and run on fat for fuel uh again was even today in my area people well I'm going to go on a marathon I have to car blow the night no no no no um but uh and the ultra marathon champion uh is a low carb guy but most ultramarathoners still are in the old view of eating carbs and you know uh but yeah the uh the I I I think what happened is because these things were discovered first and medically discovered uh in in the context already of us as humans mostly eating lots of carbs that the medical world just kind of assumed that this was optimal you know normal the glucose got discovered first going back to the 1800s and when something's discovered first and the metabolism described sometimes that takes Primacy over other things uh I I've become kind of not begrudgingly but very slowly um into that area now where I do think that metabolically things work better if fat and ketones are the the main fuel the primary Fuel and even you go back to drct Atkin's time he had a slide I remember he said you know fat is the backup Fuel and he even he had that sort of bias toward carbs being first I don't think that's really necessarily the case and you know after two or three days we all become fat burners because we store energy as fat on our bodies it it's that seems like the default mode and it's only recently we've had carbs in our but that's our life experiences so and you talk to uh world-renowned researchers they don't seem to get the idea that we live in a moment and you know they I think um you know we think we know everything when you know we're really just learning yeah hey everyone really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show and for everybody down in Australia Stockman steaks who are delivering highquality 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 high fat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver kidneys and beef heart as well so use code chaffy today for free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at Stockman St akes .com. and I'll see you over there thanks guys yeah we thought the Earth was flat for a while too you know that one didn't age so well and uh and I don't think this one will either I I I totally agree with you I think that the reason that we call the carbohydrate metabolism as a Fed metabolism that's why there was you know the terminology when I was taking biochemistry and then uh ketogenic metabolism is a as a fasting metabolism and this is when you're lost in the desert and your body's just trying to survive that that only makes sense if you you know if everybody's just eating carbs all the time we were you know by the time we were able to look at biochemistry from a at a molecular level everyone was eating carbohydrates so he said oh when you eat it looks like this and when you don't eat it looks like this it's normal to have a glucose rise after a meal yeah exactly oh then insulin Rises normally and that just drives energy in a cell this is a normal process ignoring the fact that insulin affects hundreds of other physiological processes in your body and those are really important to keep in balance and also that ignoring the fact maybe not understanding the fact then that when you eat anything at all except carbohydrates it also looks like you're in a so-called fasting metabolism and I think that's starting to come around now in fact my niece is taking she's Premed and she's taking bioch or just took biochemistry and she said you know Uncle Anthony like they they don't call it a Fed metabolism there they call it a carbohydrate metabolism and a non carbohydrate metabolism at least at University of Washington and so so that's good that's that's a bit of progress but I agree I think that that all of our heavy machinery biochemically comes to Bear when we're in that so-called fasting metabolism ketogenic metabolism which I would argue looks to me as if it's our primary metabolic State and that seems to be the metabolic state of most animals in the wild they' they've tested the blood of lions and wolves they're in ketosis even herbal well 70% of animals species are carnivores and so they're getting fat and protein as their main fuel source but even herbivores that eat fibrous Foods they don't break that down for their constituent glucose molecules the bacteria and protozoa the microorganisms eat that and as a byproduct make short chain fatty acids and and die off and and make protein and so they're still getting fat and protein as well so I think that you know we're we're looking at this well no carbohydrates are our main our main fuel I guess we're thinking that we're more akin to hummingbirds than we are to any other form of life and we just need sugar all the time but I I would disagree and I think that when you see so many people's Health improve when you just have that that shift that metabolic shift I think that that speaks to this being a more of a Primacy State well but you know this is all testable so I I hope at least what i' like to do now you know is to give the Baton to new researchers and clinical people as to say hey look don't worry too much about this okay you know study it right so yeah 25 years ago we our our first study was almost shut down because the hospital director got lobbied by a dietician to say we would kill people well the friends on the my friends on the research Committee just made me sanctioned me to do more reports to say you know is everyone still alive it was a six-month study of low carb but back then that you know it was a heightened awareness and sensitivity to it so now you know this is worthy and and needs to be studied and there should be no IRB concerns about you oh my god someone's not eating carbohydrates for two weeks so you know so um I'm hoping that that communication has has made its way out and I mean for those of you who are doing this and you know I still think that we should monitor you know see a doctor every now and then and and uh um maybe look at the blood levels a little differently but but it's not like I have been telling people to do low car keto carnivore is diets and then oh yeah don't you know see it in 20 years I mean I I follow people I I help them get off medicine and some people even need to come in every year to just make sure that you know everything's still okay and and um and even to come to a safe place where I'm not giving them a hard time about not eating carbs that that's still kind of frustrating that the a lot of the medical world is still giving push back about this it's um I understand if you have a different agenda and you're you're worried about um you know the people eating meat and things like that I mean that's an ethical reason ethical agenda but from a medical scientific standpoint we shouldn't be hearing our patients get told that they're going to kill themselves by doing this you know 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 your meat but also because 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 yeah definitely I like I like how you about a carnivore is sort of diet I I explain that to people as well because you know a lot of the a lot of the uh d and science that supports a carnivore diet it comes directly from the ketogenic uh studies that have been done because it it is a ketogenic diet and so very similar yeah exactly and so you should you should be able to get similar results on a ketogenic carnivore diet as you do on a on another ketogenic diet I sort of so I've I've described ketogenic diets as carnivore with a side salad and that's how I sort of get that across to people and they're oh okay that that makes sense and um and um I actually wanted to you mentioned type 1 diabetes I actually wanted to to to see if you've come across this before I've seen a number of people that I've spoken to online you know type 1 diabetics definitely getting much better control U much more regular blood sugar levels very very regular um insulin dosages and things like that they're not having the big swings that can be unsafe and and even life-threatening but I have been hearing people saying that when they're in that honeymoon period that they just get diagnosed with type one and then they go on to a low carb ketogenic diet um that some of them have been able to actually even come off insulin and I've actually had one patient where that was the case um she was in her early 30s she was a new presentation as a type 1 diabetic she uh presented to the hospital with classic dka diabetic keto acidosis you know had lost you know like 20 pounds in in in a in a week and uh was voraciously thirsty just just could not drink enough water and her husband took her into the hospital and she was in dka he brought he was a patient of mine he brought her in to see me about a week after she was discharged from the hospital uh we spoke about everything got her on to uh a very very yeah low ketogenic diet close to a carnivore diet but more keto than carnivore she still had a few uh non-starchy vegetables in in her diet and immediately her blood sugar normalized it was all over the place before that she was having these dips at night she was having all these hypos and problems couldn't get her dosing right and fair enough she's new to it but as soon as she went ketogenic it just leveled off completely leveled off and she was using very very clear defined amounts of of uh insulin and then steadily less and so I start I started checking her um C peptide and it actually after about 6 weeks it registered it was very low but it but it was there and so that's great that's very promising we continued on another six weeks later her C peptide was Plum normal her insulin was dead normal and she was not taking any exogenous insulin and so that was to my mind a pretty good result had you seen anything like that yourself yeah I've wondered that that might happen and it makes sense to me and I think that's a case study if you can get it together the on the editorial editorial board of the Journal of metabolic health and not that that matters it's just that they they accept case studies and the reason that it might actually occur and it might be the tip of the iceberg that if there's an insult to the pancreas that makes it so it can't produce insulin it's going to look like type 1 diabetes if it's a temporary insult you know it's a it's a infection a cross reaction um and and you get into the medical world they'll test you and they'll say you have type 1 diabetes and they'll never look again so I wonder if that is a tip of the iceberg meaning there are a lot of people who just have a temporary damage you know if like Ms can affect the the pancreas and other uses but they don't let's say they don't do a total autoimmune destruction of the cells that make insulin it makes sense that some people's pancreas will wake up over time and and yet the medical world won't look right so it would be really interesting to look for more you know again hearing listening more anecdotes like this put them together or even say if you had a group of type ones um and after X year so the honeymoon period you have to get through that because most endocrinologists will ackowledge that sure it's going to come back but then it's going to be gone uh but I wonder if you took a hundred people maybe five have had the insulin come back so testing the I I'll always T the C peptide in someone even if they tell me they have type 1 diabetes just in case uh and uh what what's interesting over time I've been to meetings where the the story was you know middle age my wife came down came down with type one and so then the husband came down I mean it it's the history was infectious so fascinating uh but no that's the first time I've heard a documented case of that and I'm not surprised I mean there's a so there's a biologic why that would be yeah definitely oh that's great cool cool food very low in cars buer is going to come down and it will help with diabetes for sure uh but so diabetes obesity uh heartburn your fowel syndrome um PCOS uh arthritis pains um all of these things reliably will improve yeah