Ever pondered whether diet and lifestyle modifications could be as potent as medication in reversing and preventing chronic diseases? In this thought-provoking episode, we bring in Dr. Laura Buchanan, a passionate family medicine physician, who shares her personal journey and how her family's aging process piqued her interest in medicine. Her belief in the power of low-carb nutrition and how it can be a substitutable for the current standard of care, especially in combating chronic diseases, is an eye-opener.
Dr. Buchanan recounts her experiences from medical school, emphasizing an important gap in the current education system - the need for more focus on nutrition. She talks about her time in residency and shares her surprising discoveries around the ketogenic diet and other nutrition-related treatments. Dr. Buchanan also introduces us to the world of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) and shares how these empowering tools help patients self-correct and manage their chronic diseases.
This compelling conversation will expand your perspectives on health, nutrition, and the art of living optimally well. So, buckle up and get ready to challenge and transform your understanding of health and wellness.
Find Dr. Laura Buchanan at-
https://doctortro.com/
IG- @laurabuchananmd
TW- @laurabuchananmd
Substack- Aging Successfully
Find Boundless Body at-
Ever pondered whether diet and lifestyle modifications could be as potent as medication in reversing and preventing chronic diseases? In this thought-provoking episode, we bring in Dr. Laura Buchanan, a passionate family medicine physician, who shares her personal journey and how her family's aging process piqued her interest in medicine. Her belief in the power of low-carb nutrition and how it can be a substitutable for the current standard of care, especially in combating chronic diseases, is an eye-opener.
Dr. Buchanan recounts her experiences from medical school, emphasizing an important gap in the current education system - the need for more focus on nutrition. She talks about her time in residency and shares her surprising discoveries around the ketogenic diet and other nutrition-related treatments. Dr. Buchanan also introduces us to the world of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) and shares how these empowering tools help patients self-correct and manage their chronic diseases.
This compelling conversation will expand your perspectives on health, nutrition, and the art of living optimally well. So, buckle up and get ready to challenge and transform your understanding of health and wellness.
Find Dr. Laura Buchanan at-
https://doctortro.com/
IG- @laurabuchananmd
TW- @laurabuchananmd
Substack- Aging Successfully
Find Boundless Body at-
Hello and welcome to another episode of Boundless Body Radio. I'm your host, casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce you. Now.
Speaker 1:Dr Lara Buchanan is a board-certified family medicine physician with a passion for using lifestyle modification as the first-line standard of care wherever possible. She completed her family medicine residency at Wake Forest in 2022, and what is a valedictorian of her class at the University of Florida College of Medicine? The mission that drives her is to help people age successfully. She has been passionate about health and fitness since she was a young child, a passion that was initially derived from a love of sports, but has since evolved and expanded to include a passion for healthy living generally, including the importance of nutrition, exercise, mental wellness and an optimal use of the medical system. Since entering the field of medicine, lara has been interested in the intersections of longevity, metabolic health, lifestyle changes and chronic disease. But Lara wants her patients to know that she will still be there the entire way, not just when something breaks. She likes to describe her role as a physician as that of a guide on the Oregon Trail. The trail is life itself, and reaching the end represents dying peacefully and fulfilled.
Speaker 1:Dr Lara Buchanan, what an absolute honor it is to welcome you to Balmust Body Radio. Thank you so much for having me Thrilled to be here. It is such an honor to have you. I have here four pages that could have made up your introduction. There is so much more that I could have included in your introduction, but I went out of my way to make sure that we kept the part about the Oregon Trail. That is amazing.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I loved hearing that actually. I mean, it is so true, life is a journey. It talks a little bit about my passion started with sports but kind of drove into healthy aging. Generally living in that is really stemmed from watching people in my own family. I love age successfully and then others age, unfortunately not very well. I consider the Oregon Trail. Getting there that is the perfect. That would be a wonderful, just a wonderful way to help people make my life amazing and hopefully I can help make theirs better on the way.
Speaker 1:I love that. That is so wonderful. Now you are a lot younger than I am. When I played the Oregon Trail I remember it was in our computer lab. You only had one per the entire elementary school. I remember there were green screens and we would play Oregon Trail. I do not ever recall getting to the end and dying peacefully. Is that how the game successfully ends?
Speaker 2:No, I think that was a little more imagination on our part.
Speaker 1:Because all I remember is either running out of food or dying of dysentery. I know I did those things multiple times.
Speaker 2:Yes, Unfortunately that was fairly common for me too.
Speaker 1:That is fantastic. Yesterday I was in a store and Aisa Bay songs started playing on the radio in the store. I said to the cashier holy smokes, this was the first cassette tape I ever bought with my own money. It was Aisa Bay's. I asked her what was the first piece of music you ever bought with your own music and what was the format? She just shrugged and goes Spotify. Totally different day and age.
Speaker 2:That is great, yeah, oh man, I could have told you. I think it was maybe iTunes.
Speaker 1:Okay, there you go. Yeah, different day and age. How did you play Oregon Trail? Was that just on a normal desktop, or is it even still available to play?
Speaker 2:I do not know if it is still available. I would hope so. It is such a great game. But it was, yeah, desktop.
Speaker 1:This weekend when I get home and yeah, when I get some free time, I'm going to investigate that for sure. That's great.
Speaker 2:You just had a baby.
Speaker 1:Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, it has been an amazing two months. He's 10 weeks old now.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic, and your husband, matt, is with her. Now You're your baby, yeah, yeah, and I said her as boy or girl.
Speaker 2:A boy, okay, boy, yeah he says this is his name, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, that's awesome. What have you enjoyed so far about being a mother?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, everything. I think I mean this is kind of a personal thing, but the feeding. So I am breastfeeding and I'm still doing that wallow carbon endermint and ketosis and it's been amazing. But those moments and him just staring back up at my eyes and we just kind of look at each other is really special.
Speaker 1:That's incredible.
Speaker 2:But then he recently started doing a lot more cooing and smiling and so those just tug at your heartstrings like no other when he smiles at you and coos that's adorable.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Well, we probably use the word passion and love in your introduction like five or six times and it just oozes off of you. So I know we're going to have a great conversation. One other quick note about your son. It's true that kids are pretty much always in ketosis as newborns. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of the time they actually are born into ketosis all the time. I'd say they do go into ketosis and between feedings they'll go back into ketosis even if it kicks them out of it.
Speaker 1:For a bit Wow, and they don't shiver because they have so much brown fat, which is the activated fat tissue that keeps them warm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you might actually be more familiar with that than I am, but I do know they have a lot more brown fat and that I believe is correct why they don't shiver but yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 1:And ketones activate brown fat, so that all makes a lot of sense. I think it's interesting to reflect on our evolutionary pathways and the things that we sacrificed as humans to live the way that we live and to take over the world and live in all the continents that we live on. Like one of the things that happens is we have narrow hips and so we have to have our babies. When we have big heads, we have to have our babies. When they come out, they're pretty much like pretty useless. They need the parents or some type of community around them where other animals. They come out and they're walking within like 30 minutes or whatever. They can sort things out themselves. And it's interesting the things that we exchanged and understanding that that we needed so much time of development outside of the womb. Ketosis would be an amazing tool to be able to grow the brain after the child is born.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. There's a what I would love to see done and I don't know if this will happen. I've been debating actually doing this myself, because I know one of the persons who did is they sent in their breast milk to be analyzed while in ketosis, while on a carnivore diet, and then just kind of a low carb diet, and watched how the composition of the milk changes and the different micronutrients as well. And I think we need that data out there because, I mean, populations have nursed in ketosis for millennia and so it'd be. You know, we don't know what's optimal or maybe it doesn't make a huge difference, but I bet there is something. The nutrition you give to your baby, which what you're eating is what's going to be being passed down, is important for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is absolutely fascinating. I would have my own hypothesis on what numbers would come back from that and I'm sure you would as well. You think about, like the possibility of even like almost not giving birth in that type of state. It almost would have been impossible to have a child in a state where you've been fed tons of carbohydrate because it just wouldn't have been around and available so often all the time, depending on where you lived in the world. So that is very interesting. And you mentioned offline the baby's temperament is just wonderful, Happy baby. You mentioned smiling and cooing and like I have to imagine that the diet your diet being passed down to him would be so important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I think so because we really have been blessed. He is just a bundle of joy and you know he'll get fussy every now and then, but I think it would be abnormal if he did get a little fussy every now and then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, Totally. Yeah. Well, you hear, you know parents of older children that go on low carb diets and their temperaments get better and I don't even think the kids mind it that much. It seems like they enjoy, you know, doing better in school and sports and all that kind of stuff, and so, yeah, I think it's a great way to go and awesome for temperament. So very cool. We'll have to follow up with you down the road and see how things are going If you, you know, stick with the low carbohydrate and kind of leaning towards carnivore diet, which once you start it's pretty hard to get off, Definitely.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I have no plans of changing at all. I'll just fluctuate between very low carb and carnivore slash keto Perfect.
Speaker 1:That sounds great to me, yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel too good and I think he will be better off for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that I think of you and your story as something that gives me a lot of hope that there are. There is this like younger generation that's coming into different information and they're discovering metabolic health earlier and earlier. And you know it's interesting to talk to some of the older doctors and ask them like what their careers would have been like. You know how they discovered this much earlier. We're talking to Dr Peter Brueckner about this recently. You know what would it change had you known some of this stuff earlier? And it's interesting to hear them reflect on. You know the lives they could have saved, the things they could have done a little bit differently and how they're trying to repay the favor now. So let's tell your story. You said you grew up loving sports and that was a main motivator for you. Did you know pretty early on that you wanted to be a doctor?
Speaker 2:I knew I wanted to go somewhere in medical. I kind of debated between nursing physical therapy and becoming a doctor and my brother really nudged me. He said you know, you should go become a doctor. If you're thinking medical, just do that. And so I was like you know what that sounds great.
Speaker 2:And then I knew, as I watched my family members age some age well and some not I clearly saw that was just purely lifestyle. It wasn't medicine, it was lifestyle all the way, eating and exercising right All the way, all the way through their upper 80s and 90s. And so my thought is in family medicine that is when I have the most opportunity or chance to help as many people, because you work with people from before they're born till they pass on, and so I could really help the most number of people age successfully in family medicine and so I knew pretty much going in that's that was where I wanted to go. But I didn't learn and really discover low carb and how much power it has to help people's lifestyles until probably a third year of medical school, a little bit after my nutrition curriculum in medical school, which was a two week intensive. That unfortunately left me just kind of wanting more and a little bit annoyed.
Speaker 2:We got taught some kind of plastic dogma, saturated, bad as bed, classic vitamin deficiencies, but there's nothing practical about.
Speaker 2:How could I help with nutrition, help the person in front of me?
Speaker 2:How could I reverse chronic diseases or prevent them in the first place with nutrition in that course, and so I started doing my own dive and I found Nina Tyshuls' Big Fast Surprise, jason Fung Low Carb MD podcast and I just kept digging at that point found Low Carb USA conferences and realized how one, how misled and really kind of partially incorrect at least we were being taught about nutrition in medical school. And two, that there was this other way that you could go that was successful and was changing people's lives every day. And so that was where I really started getting just super excited about this is how I was going to practice medicine, wow. Well. And then, fortunately, I, after graduating medical school and going to residency off out of the gate, I was able to actually start practicing Low Carb from. I became a certified metabolic health practitioner through the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners and, through just all the other learning I had done on my own, was able to start helping people reverse their diabetes just on day one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. Maybe this will be hard to remember, but, as you mentioned, growing up and seeing your grandparents age people in your family age, you recognize that it was directly tied to lifestyle. What did you tie in any associations Like? What was it specifically? Was it like process food was made people, people at age worse? Like what were some of the patterns that you noticed?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was totally eating out processed foods, more sweets, versus eating whole food, pretty much exclusively cooking for my it was really my granny, so her she cooked for herself. She ate real foods. Almost never ever bought anything processed. She would occasionally have sweets, but not very often and if she did, they're typically homemade. And and she exercised. She walked every day, she played tennis multiple times a week. So she just lived a very active, healthy lifestyle. She got sunlight all the time. She stayed well hydrated. She might have a glass of wine every. She had one glass of wine every night, but never overindulged in anything, almost so yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just seems really reasonable. My grandparents in their late 80s, early 90s, and it's just that kind of simple stuff. They just live a very simple life. They cook at home. My grandpa rides his bike every single day, is 93 years old Like it's just those little things. And yeah, my grandma had really good success as her diabetes was starting to come back a few years ago. She just stopped buying sweets and stopped bringing them in the house and, sure enough, she lost like 50 pounds and her butt sugar is normalized again. And so it's not about like your, your nanny, we call her your grandma. It's not about nanny, like like being on a specific diet or low carb diet. You're just eating real foods and moving around. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1:I also want to talk about the course that you did. I, I, I never miss an opportunity to ask somebody in the field this question, which is do you think that people in the medical establishment should be given more education about nutrition, or will more education about nutrition just further indoctrinate them into the wrong things? What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:Ooh, that's a great point. I think we desperately need more education on nutrition. I think, depending on where the education is coming from, you hit the nail on the head where that's just going to be end up being indoctrinated further with, potentially, advice or recommendations that actually aren't going to be helping patients.
Speaker 2:So the American College of Lifestyle Medicine has now created a course, a curriculum that is implemented in a lot of medical schools, on healthy eating, nutrition, and I think a lot of what they say is actually good advice and can be helpful. But they also say red meat is going to cause cancer, red meat is going to harm you, and I think that being put in a ton of medical schools as a the nutrition course is harmful to patients and I think that is the wrong. It's just the wrong advice. I don't think the data even backs that up, and so I would want more nutrition, but I would like different education, different nutritional advice. Yeah, I would too.
Speaker 1:It seems unlikely that we're going to get there anytime soon. What was the?
Speaker 2:The SMHB, so the Society of.
Speaker 2:Metabolic Health Practitioners has, and I've been working on this through residency. There's a little bit of a stall on it now, but hopefully we are going to be picking this back up or working on a nutrition course. So I think that's a really good nutritional educational course that could actually be implemented in residencies and medical schools. And my current residency, where I finished, one of my colleagues who is now working as faculty, has actually created with us an elective that residents can take. That's a month long and will actually include some low-carb education among like reviewing the dietary guidelines, how to properly analyze the papers that say red meat causes cancer, and when you do analyze those papers, you realize that red meat doesn't cause cancer At least you cannot make that conclusion from that paper and so trying to make people think more critically, and so this is now open for residents to actually take. So that, I think, is a big step. It's just there's a lot more ways, steps to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, that is a huge step, though I'd love to see that put into practice and at least be an option for people Like you said, selective, which is totally fine. Just to have it be an option is so super helpful. The data that we have and the anecdotes we have are just piling up. It's amazing, and so more of that information needs to get out there. What was it about you and this two week nutrition intensive that made you question things? Because if you don't know a lot of this stuff, everything they say sounds pretty darn good Like saturated fat. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So if I'm eating saturated fat, just the term saturated makes it sound like it's going to clog my arteries. Whole grains are great. I'm on board with that. Fruits and vegetables awesome, lean proteins. Of course, I'm going to have some chicken over red meat. Like what was it about you that made you question things?
Speaker 2:So I think there was several different things that just all piled up to basically being enough to make me start diving. But one I actually had pre-diabetes. My A1C was 5.7 in undergrad and that was while I was playing soccer. But I was trying to eat more of a low fat, healthy diet, although admittedly it was probably closer to a standard American diet, with me trying to be low fat. So that was one thing.
Speaker 2:Who my brothers I had come home and I'd tell them what I was learning and talking to them about the nutrition course, and they love red meat and say they've been eating it for a while, whereas I had avoided red meat for about a decade, and they're like that's not true, you should look into that. And then from there, my boyfriend at the time, who's not my husband he also was just very curious. He comes from a physics background and and then, I believe, around that time too, finding the low carb podcast. We just with that little bit of background suspicion from my brothers from my own kind of, I would say, maybe failure from the way I was eating was clearly not working. If I'm exercising five days a week and I have pre-diabetes, there was just something missing.
Speaker 1:And so started started looking Wow, that's amazing. I'm gonna steal this from your personal story because I absolutely love it. This could have just as easily made it into the introduction. Her idea your idea of a perfect date is printing out medical studies and debating them with her husband, mount Colkins, over a massive ribeye and a huge pile of broccoli. So it sounds like you found your soulmate.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:And our son James, his first meal is gonna be ribeye.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. I love it, I love it. That's fantastic. So you guys are kind of learning this together. Were you pretty much on board as soon as you started learning this stuff?
Speaker 2:I was, and Matt was fairly quick to follow me. Another thing that also happened during this time as we were starting we'd already started doing the research is I wore continuous glucose monitor and I was trying to get all my fiber in and be. I was still thought I was lower carb, but just trying to eat a bunch of healthy fiber with quotes and one of the healthy oatmeal fiber things that I was eating on a daily basis was spiking my blood sugar above 180.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:And I had been doing that for months and months before I got a CGM and realized what I was doing to my body. So it was just many things came into place and was like this is so clearly not the way, at least for me, this was not the way to live. It was not. And then when I went low carb and got my CGM, just went much closer to a flat line, I mean I felt amazing and, going into bits of ketosis as well, I really felt great, even though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that's fantastic. I'm assuming that the continuous glucose monitor was just because you were prediabatic at the time.
Speaker 2:So I'd actually reversed my prediabetes before getting the CGM. So once in medical school I had already reversed it and I think that was not necessarily through low carb but just through, in general, eating less processed foods, less processed, more whole foods, cooking for myself, more medical school. I was very diligent about meal prep and I was definitely lower carb and a higher fat than an undergrad when I actually had that. But the CGM was. I had been listening to different podcasts and people recommending them and I was like you know, I should see what my diet is doing and how that's going. And that's when I found out some of the things I was doing was definitely going to lead me back to prediabetes if it had been going on, probably much longer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and maybe this is jumping ahead of ourselves, but it sounds like a good time to wax poetic about CGMs. What a wonderful tool these things are. Have you noticed huge differences with your patients when they use them?
Speaker 2:Oh, 100%. I mean, it's been a game changer. I had a patient residency who came in and a brand new diagnosis. Didn't know about it a week prior His A1C was over 13. And I was like, look, the recommendations from the guidelines are that you need to be put on insulin and then we'll work on dietary changes. Or, if you want, we'll check labs, make sure this is safe. But if you go on a ketogenic diet, I'll give you a CGM today. You could avoid all medications, basically, and that was what he wanted. He didn't want to go on medications as a 30-something year old with this new diagnosis and so he put on the CGM, started the ketogenic diet and we were monitoring his sugars and within a month his sugars were normalized almost and his A1C at three months was 6.7, I think, or 6.9.
Speaker 1:Halfed, so basically went down by half.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that was no insulin. This was. Here's a CGM. Here's how you can eat on the ketogenic diet. Basically a page four meaning.
Speaker 1:Dr Eric Westman who does.
Speaker 2:A ton of research in this realm has created a wonderful one-page document for patients. If you eat this way, it will work. You'll go into ketosis and you can reverse your chronic diseases.
Speaker 1:So incredible. It's such a cool self-correcting tool also because the patients very quickly understand how the thing works and how to choose different foods or maybe different times of day.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think there's also a lot of patient person-to-person variability. Some people can get away with eating some onions on their ketogenic diet, whereas other people they'll have a little bit of onion and their sugar is going to 150. So they're not going to stay in ketosis if they're eating onion on a regular basis. It just won't work. So that, like you said, that patient can just use the CGM for them to see exactly what happens. They don't need the doctor or anyone else to sign them what to eat. They can use that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fantastic. When we go back to the nutrition intensive, was there anybody else that you could tell who was going through? That was also kind of having doubts about the information that was being given to them, or were you kind of alone?
Speaker 2:We had a few friends that we kind of would talk to and were like, eh you know, doubtful about some of what we were being told and kind of dubious on some of the things about saturated fat. And he was our friend who would go on all the rabbit holes, all the deep dives with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool. What was your favorite? You mentioned already some of your resources early on the podcast, the Carb MD, the books. What was the most influential, would you say?
Speaker 2:I think when I read Nina Tyshull's big fat surprise and just realized how we had gotten to where we were and how the studies themselves had been misinterpreted, and I think that really was a big part of it me understanding how we got here. And then there's also, I think, Jason's funds, the obesity code and really understanding insulin resistance a little bit more. And the idea behind treating how silly it is to treat diabetes with insulin just makes no sense. You're just propagating the problem. Those really stuck out in my brain as I was diving into this. We've got this wrong. We need to do a 180 turn here, yeah.
Speaker 1:The obesity code totally changed my career when I was using metabolic carts to test metabolism and people were fasting but their metabolic rates were really high. I couldn't figure it out, because it should be that their metabolic rates were lower because they're eating less calories. So it was Jason Fung's obesity code that taught me how that worked, and Nina Tyshull's, my favorite book ever. I mean, that thing is so bulletproof and you will walk away from that book probably pissed off. First and secondly, you will understand how studies are done and how they're hidden and how the headlines grab attentions but have nothing to do with the way studies are done. She breaks down every single study that's ever been done that talks about low fat versus low carb, and it is amazing. She did a wonderful job.
Speaker 2:She really did. I recommend everyone read that book.
Speaker 1:Totally totally OK. So there you go, you find the new information, you go into residency Easy. All sunshine and rainbows from there, right, no problems whatsoever.
Speaker 2:Almost. Yeah, the tough thing about telling someone with an A1C of 13 not to go on medications is in residency you have to precept your patients, meaning you go to the attending and say, hey, here's my plan for this patient. And so I go up to the attending and say, hey, have this patient, his A1C is 13. We're not starting medications, we're going to do the ketogenic diet and I'm going to give him a continuous glucose monitor and that is not standard of care. That is sort of going against the guidelines. So the attendings obviously and they question oh, why aren't you starting an insulin? His A1C is above 10. That is the recommendation. And so initially there was that pushback and I had to either bring in papers or just kind of explain them, my reasoning, and say, look, we're going to do this very safely. We're going to check that he's making his own insulin, so we're checking C-peptide. So I'd have to explain that logic to say this is a safe thing. I've got his glucose readings. We're not going to let him sit with a glucose of 400 for days on end, like this is going to be rapid with the ketogenic diet.
Speaker 2:Similarly, when I would order other calcium scans on people, so that's a CT scan of the heart to look to see if there's any calcifications around the heart arteries. That is becoming more regular, more part of standard of care, but it was not at the time and so I would get pushed back similarly about that why are you getting the CT scan on this patient who maybe they're a 50-year-old and they have no cardiovascular risk factors? And so I'd have to again kind of explain my reasoning and initially they would let me do it. They wouldn't stop it. It's a wonderful group of attendings, so they would respect my logic and then they'd say OK, but I'd say over time people started seeing the results.
Speaker 2:The attendings saw the patients coming back that went from an A1C of 13 to 6.9 without medications, and then when the CT scans would come back and the patient had maybe they had a high calcium scan and now we know that they're at a much higher risk for heart attacks. We're changing our management because of that. They would see how all these things I was doing were actually really helping patients and so I stopped getting pushed back and some people actually showed a lot of interest and some people started implementing low-carb themselves for their patients with diabetes, and so it was a really cool transition to go from having to kind of fight my way through to people coming to ask me what would I do in this case, or sometimes telling me stories hey, I got this guy to go low-carbon. He's off his medications now just to tell me that they were also having success in this method.
Speaker 1:Wow, ok, that was an honest question. By the way, I didn't know how that story was going to go and I did not expect it to take that turn, so you were actually seeing success in influencing other people.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, and it was really super exciting to see that. I didn't know initially when I was getting the pushback where it was going to go. But we also have to give a lecture in residency. Each year we give one and I give my lecture topic on the guidelines published by the SMHP on therapeutic carbohydrate reduction and similarly, from giving a lecture on that topic there is a lot of interest was sparked Because in that lecture I gave 10 of my patient stories and amongst those 10 patients there was over 30 points drops in A1C and I think it was over 180 pounds lost amongst those 10 patients and that was while pulling back on medications and so people were seeing those kinds of results. They were like, wow, this is really cool.
Speaker 1:I want to learn more Interesting. Well again, the only story you hear is all of the pushback, and the common narrative is you can't practice this way because the system doesn't make any money. The person that went from A1C of 13 to 6.8 without medications does not make money for the established medical system. How were you able to influence the people around you without getting that same type of pushback? I hear that stuff all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not sure 100% on why I didn't get all that pushback. Maybe it's because when they saw someone it wasn't just an anecdote they were hearing from online or from someone, but it was someone that they were working with side by side on a daily basis. They're patients that they were seeing those results and in the residency setting it might be that there is less of the focus on RVUs or money saying, hey, we have to get you turning through patients and seeing more patients and we want them to have basically more chronic conditions, because then you can bill higher. There's less of a focus on that in residency than potentially to private clinic that is run by business.
Speaker 1:I've never considered that. That's a really good point. Another kind of limitation you hear about all the time is one of time. You only get 8 to 10 minutes with a patient. How are you going to talk about anything other than writing a prescription In that residency? How are you able to spend time with people adequately to give them the right information?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was always running behind in clinic. That was part of it. I also would typically would go into my lunch hour with patients that was fairly common and then I would also call patients after work. So I was spending additional time outside of usual clinic hours to follow up with people or try to give them a little bit more education, and then I would also try. I couldn't always do this because again I was getting pushed back that hey, you can't do this, you have to see X number of patients. But I would say, hey, can I get a 30 minute time slot for this patient instead of a 15 minutes time slot because they have poorly controlled diabetes, and so I couldn't do that sometimes. So at least that 30 minute appointment helped with the other three 15 minute appointments I had that day or that morning, and so that was part of it. And then I guess I don't think I could have done what I do now, or I mean, I definitely could not have done. So I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:I had a patient in residency who is really sad and fortunate. He had lost one below his knee to diabetes, so he had an amputation and we talked about the ketogenic diet. He actually did it for a very brief period of time and then went back to eating his old ways and by the end of my residency he had lost both legs above his knee. And I just feel terrible that I totally failed that patient. I gave him recommendations, he required insulin and then more insulin and he didn't make the dietary changes.
Speaker 2:But I couldn't provide him the support or the education that he actually needed. I wasn't prepared or trained to do that and in a 15 or 20 minute time slot, even with calling him sometimes after clinic, it wasn't enough, whereas now I've learned through training with Tro how to actually help people who have that food addiction, because for him it was clearly a food addiction that was driving this. So now I think, if could I go back in time and actually use the tools I have to help people that are struggling with food addiction, I think maybe I could have. But there are several patients in residency who I think really needed that extra piece that I just was not educated on.
Speaker 1:Sure, Sure. Well, that just takes time. It takes time and experience and you're going through it and gaining that over time. It sounds like I know you spent some personal time with Dr Mark Cugizella. It sounds like some of his energy rubbed up against yours, Because the last episode we did with him we named Compassionate Health Care and he said the same thing. It's like look, I work through lunches often times Like I found out that one of my patients what was the story he was telling me One of his patients had like a fasting blood sugar of like 400 or something, and so he wrote a prescription for insulin and the pharmacy gave him insulin but said they were out of needles so they didn't give him any injection needles.
Speaker 1:And he finds out about this the next day and he's like no, what are you doing? Like he can't take insulin without needles, he needs them both. And like he says all the time like if you're in this industry, you might have to put in a little bit extra time or work, but these are your patients and your number one goal is to help your patients. I love his approach and I love your approach as well, Like really compassionate health care and doing what it takes to really help the person get healed.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. It was an honor to go work with him for a week during residency and I still use some of the stuff I learned from him in my practice today. I mean it was it really was. He is just incredible with his patients. He cares so much and he's just and he's a wonderful educator person all around, so he was great to learn from and similarly was the stories and the successes that I was seeing from his patients in that one week was just so exciting that, like this, is what my practice could look like after residency.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. You also got to spend time with Dr Eric Westman, is that true?
Speaker 2:I did and that's the same thing. I mean just so exciting, because you hear in residency, you hear in medical school about how bad burnout is in medicine and how, sadly, the suicide rate is actually one of the highest amongst our professions, and so you hear these really sad things. And but then when I would go work with Mark and go work with Eric and see the success they're having with their patients and just the positive energy and excitement that they would have when patients would come off of medications or lose weight was really exciting and I was like there's no way I'm going to burn out doing this. This is I love doing this.
Speaker 1:It sounds absolutely joyful. It's the same reason why I do what I do with nutrition coaching and personal training. When you can wake up and know that you have information that can really change people's lives, it's just so easy to bounce right out of bed and get on with the day because it is fun and exciting. Once you learn this stuff and see this stuff in practice, you can't unsee it. So tell us about how your training continued and where you ended up today. You already mentioned Dr Trough.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So during residency I also got to go up and spend one week with Trough and that was just again another amazing week. I saw that was when I really started learning more about food addiction and then just seeing how he helped his patients and how we advocated for them. So the key called multiple doctors. While I was there he was helping people off of the same thing medications. He has an amazing team of people. So I'll jump ahead.
Speaker 2:I was fortunate enough to actually get hired and now I work with Trough and that has been just a dream job. It's been over a year now that I've been working with him and the rest of the team and it's been amazing. We've been working with this employer company that has hired us to take care of their employees and the results we've published kind of a first pilot's program study with them, those results which were great, saving the company on average $4,500 per employee and we're hoping to get some maybe two-year data outcoming in the not too distant future. But it's been just. I mean when I say a dream, it really is. I had a patient recently who I've just been kind of following as close to 100 pounds lost. Trough has several patients with over 100 pounds lost off of numerous medications. And so we're doing practicing metabolic health, getting reversing chronic disease and, I believe, truly preventing a lot of future chronic disease across all 50 states, because Trough is licensed in all 50.
Speaker 1:And I am licensed in about 30 states now at this point. Wow, that's fantastic. Ok, so if somebody were to know Dr Trough on Twitter, but not necessarily know him in person, can you describe what Dr Trough is like?
Speaker 2:It's a very different persona his Twitter persona than in person. In person, he is just the sweetest, kindest person you can meet. He cares so much about each and every person and his interactions you really wouldn't really believe that it's the same person. But it's just. It's coming from someone who is so deeply passionate and has been hurt by the system and he really is fighting now to change the system that had really hurt him. But yeah, he truly is an amazingly kind person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, We've gotten to host him and his wife, rosette, on the show. We've hosted Rosette recently to talk about her baking mix, which is amazing. I got to meet them at Low Carb Denver this last year and they are just the most wonderful people. They are awesome and he cares so much about his patients and I don't even think at this point like the Twitter persona. I don't look at it as a bad thing. I think he needs to make direct points in a way that people will understand and he does that quite effectively on Twitter and sometimes that can come across a little bit abrasive. I know him personally so obviously I know that's not where that kind of comes from, but I do think it's a powerful way to connect with certain people out there, so I respect that he does it that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, I think someone has to, and someone has to be bold enough to do so, because it's you get attacked from the other directions and there is so much pushback and there's so much that it's an uphill battle, so you've got to have thick skin to fight that battle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Okay, so before we talk about the employees which I think is amazing that you guys are working with companies to help them with their healthcare Savings I want to talk about the clinic itself, with troll like what, what things are different, that somebody wouldn't normally expected a normal clinic that they would go to.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think one of the really important things is just the accessibility. I mean, we have a basically a texting service. You can also call in, but it's super easy texting in and you can just tag either my name or, if you'll have a health coach, if you're a part of our program, you can put at you know the health coach's name and We'll get back to you that day. If it's after business hours, we'll get back to you the next day, unless it's urgent, and if it's urgent, you can press one and get us that night.
Speaker 2:So we are that accessible because we want people, if someone's struggling and they're at time zero, which that's the time that they maybe are about to go eat something sweet, or maybe they already did, or they're Going not good, going off the dietary plan we want them to reach out right then and there.
Speaker 2:We don't want them to wait a week or a month or three months to reach out. So I think the accessibility is huge. Also, the along those same lines with we have a six-month program. You'll have weekly appointments with either our Troy or myself or the health coach and, again, between that weekly appointment you can reach out at any time. We also have an app that has a whole ton of information resources, different articles that have been written by, again, any of the health coaches trove myself, and then we have now created courses courses on how to use continuous glucose monitors, on cardiovascular health we're working on a diabetes course that should be out this year, and so we want to empower patients with the knowledge about their medical condition, or you know what they're fighting, what they're up against, and so that asynchronous Learning, I think, is really important, because power is not their, knowledge is power.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so the app, and within that app, besides just the you know, there's also recipes, meal prep ideas. There's a wonderful community that now has over 9,000 people a part of it, and there's that's the community chat that people can join. There's some chats, so there's an exercise accountability, a fasting accountability chat and then a good help. Now where again that, like with this instant, you're struggling, posting that chat and immediately you'll get responses from people who have been doing this, have are going through the same struggles as you are and can provide support, and what did they do when they're Undergoing that same thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so powerful. And then with the app as well. Since you're tracking people remotely from all over the country, presumably they would have different devices that would communicate with the app that will give you information about their health. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:so we're working on Getting so. We get people's continuous glucose monitor data. We collect their blood pressure, weight scales, all of that remotely that comes into our system and we're able to see that it's not set up yet, we're there seeing that in the app, but we get all of that data so we can. Also, you know, we're tracking someone's blood sugars and we see whoo, they just spiked up to 200. Hey, let's reach out. Hey, you know what happened. How can we help you With what's going on? Or, you know, did something happen? Same thing with the weight scale. We're seeing their weight scale trend down over the course of a month and then all of a sudden they Start going the opposite direction. You know, reach out immediately and say, hey, what happened? How can we help you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, okay. So I'm gonna qualify my next question by asking this question first, which is do people know when they come to find you guys? Do they know what you're going to put them on? Like, do do people know what you're gonna do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say Almost all. Most people know they're coming to see us to get low carb, ketogenic health nutrition advice and Then from there, hopefully we can give them a whole lot more than they were expecting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I see. So it's not like I just randomly chose a weight loss clinic and I chose yours randomly because it was weight loss. Okay, that that. Maybe that answers my question really well. So there may be some selection bias, right, like people are coming into this knowing kind of what they're doing and so hard question to answer Without the selection bias. But what have you found as far as like compliance, like, are people doing it? Are they succeeding? You know, what are you noticing with the patients themselves?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been seeing most people succeeding. I would say Probably, on one hand, I could count the number of people who either left the program or, you know, said this is I can't actually make these Types of lifestyle changes at this time. You know, can I put things on pause until I can? But, yeah, my personal panel, I would say, on one hand, people who yeah, this is just not working.
Speaker 1:Less than five. Yeah, that's incredible. There's not a surprise, like if you've been in this world long enough, you know what to expect and that people will be very compliant. And I think that's just such a big misconception out there, isn't it that, like patients don't want to do this, they do want to be on medications. It's a lot easier to prescribe them. You know a pill. That's just not true, is it?
Speaker 2:No, I mean when. And people just feel so much better if you could convince them and try to work with them very closely, like give this at Least two weeks trial. You know, maybe some people don't feel very good at that first week, especially if they're they were on a really high sugary diet because they're almost withdrawing from the sugar and the carbohydrates. But help them pass that. They will feel so much better that for the most part it's a no-brainer to them. They're gonna continue that because they feel so good.
Speaker 2:And then with the thought of getting off of medications For so many people is a huge relief, a big burden off of their chest. I have one patient who's gotten off of eight medications. Another patient who I think actually one had gotten off of nine medications, and so that's, I can't imagine taking nine medications a day. I was, you know it's hard enough to take my prenatal every day. So I mean they feel so much better and I think you can't you can't undersell that yeah, in med school, at any time, did they teach you anything about deep prescribing?
Speaker 2:The only time deep prescription really comes up is in the setting of what geriatrics and polypharmacy, and that primarily it so more than five medications would be its usual definition kind of a polypharmacy. And when we think of patient, geriatric patients, so we'd say someone over the age of 65, they have much higher risk of falls, fractures, low blood sugar, events that end them in the hospital, several, I mean there's even associations. The more medications are on, the higher chance of death. I mean they're just a lot of risks of medications and the more there are they're interacting with each other, the higher the risk. And so in that population, trying to get them off of maybe blood pressure medications or sometimes switching their diabetes medications, that is discussed, but in outside of that, no, so it was never a 30 year old who was on insulin. How can I get this 30 year old off of his insulin? That you just didn't really doesn't come up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. What about the cost savings for the patient? Because obviously you know the app that the FaceTime with all of you guys like that's a lot of work and you think that type of a program would be pretty expensive. How are you able to keep your cost be at a reasonable level for people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, for Really working with the employers and having the employers pay for their employees is a wonderful way and I think that is, you know, in my eyes, the optimal way, because we're gonna hopefully and save the employers money Actually by helping get the patients off the medications and a lot of the employees might not be able to pay for our services actually, because it is a ton of work and it's a ton of people involved. Our front desk, front office staff just puts in so much work and does really great job. Our health coaches, and so there are. It's definitely harder for people patients to afford if they're not going that route.
Speaker 2:Yeah but for the patients who can afford it and they definitely, I think, do get great benefit from again coming off of medications and so for some people that you could almost the GLP ones if you're paying out of pocket, so that's would go be common weight loss medication. Now, some of the time without insurance, that medication costs $13,000 per year, so so we're way less expensive than that. And so if you get that medication and we can have better results or equivalent results or without the side effects, I mean we are saving that individual a ton of money and hopefully providing them a much better quality of life At the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would submit that a patient would think that getting their leg amputated Would make them think a little bit differently about where they spent their money during their life doing too much fast food, carry out Kind of stuff, versus maybe taking care of their health a little bit more. You know, maybe they got a really nice car, but if you don't have a leg to push the brake pedal, it's not gonna go very far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah, I saved. Is it penny wise and pound foolish?
Speaker 1:Yeah totally, that's a great way to say it. So okay. So, working with this company, you guys have been able to show that your cost savings More than accounts for the price that they're paying you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly so. In the pilot program it was, and these were people who were on, you know, several medications. So if we're helping someone who is not on any medications, it's gonna be obviously harder to show that we're saving someone money. But if there are people that are on medications and we can get them off of it, in that instance we were able to save on average $4,500 per person per year.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's incredible. That's incredible. Well, we've talked a lot about the ketogenic diet and its benefits. What are some tips and tricks you would give our listeners to maybe start to get into this, because we know all the things We've talked about today. You know weight loss and diabetes. Those are all wonderful, but there's so many other benefits that people get the mental health protection and anxiety, depression, like you name it. Pretty much everything seems to get better when you eat the proper way, but but it might be challenging for people to get there. What are tips and tricks you would give somebody if they were just starting out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think one just making sure that you're eating the right foods and that Can be if you go online. Now to this is the SMHPorg. We've got resources for both patients, providers and there's a one-page handout again. That's basically if you stick with this list of foods, then you're very likely going to do wonderful. You're gonna go into ketosis. You should hopefully feel really good eating that list of foods, and so that's pretty simple. You can put that on the refrigerator.
Speaker 2:If you're having side effects a lot of the times, that is hydration, because when you go into ketosis, your You're basically your kidneys are gonna be peeing out more water and electrolytes, so you might actually need to, you're going to need to increase fluid. So more water, more electrolytes, and I think that's where a lot of people in this first two weeks it's can experience. The keto flu is really. They're just not stable, hydrated or getting enough salt, sodium, magnesium, and that can make a big difference. And then, if you know you're doing those things and maybe either you don't have enough support at home, look for community. You know, if you're going to join the app, you can join the community for free and it that can feel that support that you're missing if, say, this person that you're living with doesn't want to eat this way or live this lifestyle, and so I think support is a big thing about helping make something be a sustainable lifestyle Rather than a short-term diet to lose weight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think those are really good tips and tricks that people can implement and get excited about. What makes you excited about the future? What do you have coming down the pipeline?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I would love to start working with some more companies just to be able to start kind of spreading this further and further. I think the work at the SMHP is really exciting. I think it's going to take a while to get that nutrition curriculum up and running, but if we can do it, that would be amazing. And I think the we are actually working on or we have partnered, and now there is the Journal of Metabolic Health. So that is going to be huge to have an official journal associated with the SMHP. And and If again, just trying to reach more doctors, providers, through education, through things like this podcast, that's where, again, where I was started with a lot of my motivation, so just trying to get more people Starting early.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I think it works on both fronts that we're getting more patients excited about this stuff. They're finding out this information, and also the providers eventually having all these people come to them and ask them questions about these Tons of things, you can really build awareness and I just I absolutely love your work. Talking to you makes me very Optimistic about the future. I don't always feel that way, but, but talking with people like you and Tro and and all these people that are doing such amazing work and putting that work out there, it really does make me optimistic that we can start to turn the ship might take a while, but we can make it go in the right direction. You're a huge part of that. So, dr Lorb, you can't. Where would you like people to go to contact you and follow you and your work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they can go to dr Trocom and you can also find me on Twitter and Instagram. At lard you can an MD and then on sub stack, at aging successfully that sub stack calm.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, we will link to all of that in the notes. I really just appreciate this conversation, appreciate taking your time away from your baby to come and chat with us today. Thank you so very much for all of your work and everything that you do and thank you for taking the time out of again You're very busy life to come and speak with us today. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:It's been my absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much it was such an honor, and this has been another episode of balance body radio. Hello and welcome to another episode of Balanced Body Radio. I'm your host, casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce you. Now, after years of corporate job pressure, followed by a fast-paced aerospace startup, poor health finally caught up with Dana Hemmingsen, both physically and mentally. As he looks back, dana now understands that his health didn't have to go in that direction. There were physical and mental signs along the way, but, like many of us, he just didn't know how to recognize them.
Speaker 1:It took a couple of years for Dana to recover, which led to a career shift and dedicating himself to helping others. Based on his life experience, coupled with his health work over the past 12 years, dana has further fine-tuned his practice and approach. His signature 10-week program, which he named the Belly Fat Reset, focuses on excessive insulin, where he now employs a CGM, aka a continuous glucose monitor, to encourage healthy client eating habits and behavioral shifts. Dana's mission is to help others enhance their physical and mental well-being so they can live fulfilled and vital lives. Dana has been married for 46 years. Wow, dana's children has five grandchildren. You can learn more about Dana at wwwinsighthealthzone. Dana Hemmingsen, it's such an honor to welcome you to Boundless Body Radio.
Speaker 3:It's awesome to be here, casey, as we were talking earlier, I just freaking love your work. I think you do an awesome job, so thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so very much. It's so honored to host you, and I apologize for stumbling through your introduction.
Speaker 3:I do that from time to time, no worries, I think it makes it more real.
Speaker 1:That's our story and we're sticking to it. We're going to say that's a thing that's great. No, that's awesome. We are here primarily today to talk about some of your recent health changes. It's kind of cool that you stumbled upon some of these things more recently and you and I were talking offline a little bit about how it's not that you don't appreciate the changes. You almost settle into a new lifestyle and you almost forget about those little niggling things that you had to deal with for so many years and they just kind of like magically go away and you almost like forget, like, oh yeah, like my shoulder always used to hurt or my joints always used to hurt or you know, a terrible sleep or anxiety or whatever. It's really amazing when you kind of you don't take it for granted, you just get used to the new lifestyle.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and you know your audience. I mean, they've listened to a bunch of people regarding the carnivore diet and my approach to this was more of a really a clinical assessment. But yeah, you're absolutely right, I mentioned that yesterday before getting online with you. Today I just I'm just kind of accepting of how I feel, you know, and I'm already transitioning away from which we'll talk about, from both the physical and the mental challenges that I was experiencing and really, you know, during the pandemic, I just went off the deep. You know, I was just becoming a terrible role model for my clients and the readdiction to starchy carbs and sugars like, oh my goodness, it just went crazy. You know, I mean weight gain, but just the physical and the mental side of that. So so, yeah, I am accepting, but I am not forgetting and you know, yesterday, before again before getting online with you, it was kind of reminding me to reflect back on wow, this is really cool, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we definitely need to keep that in mind and, and you know, reflect on our journeys and know that we still have places we want to go, but also that we come so far with all of these different changes. So ironic that to be able to get to that space, you have to really reject everything you've learned in your career and do something that is quite the opposite. And we are going to be talking about data. So it is important to point out we're going to be talking about some things that are subjective and some things that are objective, and so for the listener, this is pretty obvious. But just to point out, subjective is more like how you're feeling. It could be an opinion, it could be a scale of like one to 10, where objective things are facts or data.
Speaker 1:So I weigh 185 pounds. That's just a fact. That's just what it is. Being objective, you can't really argue with it. It's same as saying, like Utah University of Utah, football is better than BYU. That's objective science. Like everybody knows that. That's been decided up and now. We can't really argue about that. Those are objective things. I just wanted to point that out in the beginning.
Speaker 3:Like the analogy and also just a perfect segue as well.
Speaker 1:Just lost all of our listeners in the valley down south of me, down by Provo. But anyway, before we jump into the data, you do have a very interesting story which I would love to hear. Your career was not in health and fitness, so tell us about kind of your life, what you got into as far as your primary career and how eventually that shifted over to health and fitness.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I started off in corporate America working for a large company and I was there for about 14 years. I'll just say it was very. I was negotiating, I was in purchasing and contracts. It just was very aggressive back in those days. It didn't really fit my demeanor, so that's not good. And then, because it wasn't a good fit, it's great training looking back, especially looking at things as a system, at root cause, which sucked me in on the other side and on the health side.
Speaker 3:I laughed and eventually hooked up with my actually my brother-in-law's company, aerospace Startup and I'll just fast-paced through that. So that was a couple of years. We went from beans and rice to pretty successful and we were selling to a large system an overwing heater system for the MDA aircraft, which was American Airlines was the largest carrier. But we were a small company. We outsourced everything. I was the only non-technical person that was brought in more from the manufacturing side and getting that and just the pace of it.
Speaker 3:Anyway, just basically it just pretty much killed me physically and mentally. And so after that I did, I was really forced to take a sabbatical. I did that. I started coaching high school football as part of that and then that kind of got me into looking at the young athletes and going, okay, because I've always trained. I mean, I started doing resistance training, which I really started with, like you, back when I was probably in my early teens. So I started training and I started working with some higher end athletes, some long-distance runners, and then eventually I got sucked into working with everyday people, which was great. I got my NASA certification, like you, performance enhancement specialist, also functional movement specialist, started training people. Eventually I partnered and had a small boutique gym and we were doing really functional training. So we're kettlebells, dumbbells, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:But, as I mentioned to you before, we got online. You develop these bonds, these relationships, relationships with people and when they come in, you ask them like, well, how are you doing? And you know what? Like half of them were still challenged. Yeah, they were getting stronger, they were moving better, but they had maybe some headaches or some joint pains or some stomach issues, longer high blood pressure still having issues, right.
Speaker 3:So back to my business side, looking at things as a system and looking at root cause. I'm like, okay, well, what's going on here? I mean I just couldn't ignore it. And that really sucked me in because I started looking at nutrition. Then I became a FDN practitioner, which stands for Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, which was a great program. It was a mentor program and that got me deep into functional labs. So a lot of experience that I got from that and then doing the work.
Speaker 3:So I transitioned into last really six to eight years, I guess, really doing that kind of more health work, working with people with all different types of issues, not just weight certainly, but getting blood pressure, different issues. But so my background really I mean I've done extensive hormone testing, I've done extensive gut testing, microbiome testing, gi map, bio-methacs, doing work with people doing that. One of the labs that really spoke to me and I know you're going to get this in your listeners too is I dove into organic acids testing, which is kind of looking at metabolites, and so you're looking at urine but you're looking at how your body's working basically and you're looking at the Krebs cycle. We don't have to get into that, but basically, just to summarize, it's like how are nutrients being utilized by your body, or maybe where the deficiencies are, and so you're just looking at from fatty acids, fatty lipids, to amino acids, to vitamins and minerals. It's not, it's just looking at just basic nutrients that your body needs to function. That got me into looking at things in terms of metabolic function or metabolic dysfunction, and then that's where my head went and then ultimately even led me into the carnivore diet.
Speaker 3:Because for me now when we're talking about health, we're really talking about metabolic function and that means how cellular function, so how your body's receiving these nutrients, how it's not receiving it, or how lifestyle factors in terms of stress or sleep may be impacting those, and we don't have to get deep into that. But that organic acid testing, that really kind of sparked me. So ultimately it led me to really where I am today with my belly fat reset program. It's not a plug, but I do want to talk about it, because then get a shout out to Dr Benjamin Dickman, because I think when we look at people's health these days, we have obesity pushing almost half the population and that means that it also insulin resistance, and when you look at insulin resistance and the complications metabolically, I mean just about every health issue can be attributed to that.
Speaker 3:So for me now I started doing upfront lab work with my clients before I started using the CGM Continuous Glucose Monitor, and I wanted to look at that because I wanted to get a picture of and be able to share that with my client. Like, hey, let's give them some data. Like, oh, this is looking so good. You have some challenges to support the lifestyle work. Because you got to do the lifestyle work, I use an approach called authentic eating, which is just it's a low-carb, real food-based approach for most people. I'd like to do the carnivore diet it's everybody almost, but a lot of people aren't ready for that yet. But when we look at insulin and we can monitor that, then that led me into using the CGM and the reason for that is we can look at glucose levels that are going to correlate to, eventually to insulin response or over response, maybe insulin resistance.
Speaker 3:And the tagline for belly fat reset is reset your waste, reset your health. And over the years my practice and my work is really focused on messaging around health complaints, health conditions, and over the last year people around me are like, hey, you got to niche down, man, you got to really hit people where they're at, throw a little salt in the wound, as I say, and that's what led me to belly fat reset. And so when we look at where people are today and we look at reset your waste even. There's a lot going into that. It's not just about obesity, it's about that gap in terms of visual fat and that's something I really want to emphasize too when we start getting into some of the numbers, because I think when you look at the carnivore diet maybe segue into this a little bit. I think for me, the implications of reducing visceral fat has lifelong implications in terms of positive health outcomes. So I'll roll through that pretty fast. You're so good at what you do, I'll let you draw out anything else if you want for me, casey.
Speaker 3:Or that maybe I didn't hit on or that I overstated.
Speaker 1:That's great. No, it's such a cool journey, like we talked about earlier. It's fun to look back and see all the little steps that led us to where we are today. You mentioned Ben Bickman. What a wonderful person. I actually just reached out to him to see if he would want to come on for the second time on this show, which now he's not going to because I've already trashed BYU in this episode, so that's out now, unfortunately. What an amazing man he is and his research into insulin and how his book why we Get Sick, how that's impacted so many lives of people out there. He's got such a wonderful way of taking a very complex subject and making it really simple to understand. We love Ben Bickman around here. I do want to ask when you were first starting to get into nutrition you were getting that certification. Were they promoting any particular type of diet? Was it in the low carbohydrate space? Was it like a whole foods diet? Was it more like a Mediterranean style? Did they have one that they were more trending towards?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So see, you're so good at what you do, so that's a great question. And at the time, cicin and the Paleo diet was really coming into bogue and that was kind of. You know, that whole CrossFit thing was really going, which, you know, it was neither here nor there. I kind of look at it as functional training, but it really was around the Paleo diet, which for me is still pretty cool. You know, there's so many really positive things around it.
Speaker 3:So I'm not really a labeling kind of guy. I mean, I like to talk about the carnivore diet, I like to talk about different diets, but I think, as you've really started to emphasize too, you know, I think it is look, there's some things we don't want to do, okay, like process foods and all that kind of stuff. But everybody individually, metabolically, can handle things differently. Like, for me, my autoimmune issues and gut issues, like a plant stuff isn't too cool, you know, and we don't have to talk about oxalates and all that kind of stuff. But I think there are a lot of people that are probably have those types of issues and I've done enough, enough gut work. So but to answer your question, it was really that really kind of sucked me in was was really the Paleo diet yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, you mentioned Cicin. That's a really good example. It's almost like a gateway kind of a thing, like if you're, if you're on Paleo, I'm going to be pretty happy, because I kind of know in the back of my mind, like, for however long you want to hang out in the Paleo space, eventually you're going to go lower carb. Eventually you're going to try keto. Eventually you're going to try carnivore, which Mark Cicin has done himself. He's now seven years old and carnivore and is thriving and kicking ass. Even though he's writing so much in 2016 about Paleo, in 2018, more about keto. Now he's doing the carnivore thing as well, and it's almost like, if that gets you on the path, eventually, I know you're probably going to get in that realm and start feeling really, really good. So that's great. Now, eventually, did you even hear about a carnivore diet?
Speaker 3:I don't really know and I knew you were going to ask me that. But I think, just to summarize, living in the space that we do as health coaches, health practitioners, I'm just always listening to podcasts and whether it's you, ben Bickman, whoever, dr Baker, dr Berry, jp, I mean everybody on that side of it. But also I listen to. I forget her name, but I really love her and she's the Levels founder. You probably know her name.
Speaker 3:But just listening to people and then I started listening to, I think what really got me going were just the probably now they're getting into the certainly hundreds, but maybe thousands of people's personal experiences with the carnivore diet, and it just became I just couldn't ignore it because these were not I don't even want to say they're anecdotal, because, look, you can get into, is it a proper study or what have you. But give me 100 people that line up that are being interviewed by somebody that's a professional, that has credentials and they're describing what the benefits and their outcome are. It had a huge impact on me. So I would say just a lot of inputs coming in that I just couldn't ignore. And then for me, I started looking at some different elements, maybe a little more deeply in terms of, for example, cholesterol ratios and things like that. That we'll get into. That I'm going okay, that sounds something like I want to get into. I want to get into experience personally, yeah.
Speaker 1:The anecdotes. There's just too many Now there's too many. There's too many people that are describing exactly the same thing to where it's like expected results. If somebody starts carnivore, I know what they're going to tell me if they stay on it for 30 days and it's so consistent every single time. It's almost like a reverse causality where you can explain it based on so much anecdote out there. And so for you, when you first started carnivore, what do you remember still kind of dealing with? Obviously you had kind of pushed into paleo and probably much lower carbohydrate than what you were doing before, but what were you still dealing with when you started carnivore? That ended up kind of resolving itself.
Speaker 3:Well, that's an interesting question because I think from my experience I dove in too quick and underestimated my readdiction that I mentioned to sugar and carbohydrates. So I went in way too fast and the withdrawal was pretty humbling and reinforcing of the power of glucose addiction. I mean it was unbelievable. But I made it through. And because of my experience, because I've worked with clients, typically even with my approach autotic eating with belly fat reset I have to take in mind how somebody might withdraw. I get a feeling for what their intake is and then I can work it through that, through that in terms of number of days. So I jumped in too fast. So that was one element. The other element for me, because of my history with autoimmune, I went breast fat, breast finish, salt and water and I haven't given up coffee, the last sub-passion of giving up. I don't know that I will, I still just really enjoy it. I don't think it's had a big impact to me in terms of my autoimmune issues. I would say I just kind of dove in and once I got through that I went through maybe a period I'll use a real technical term where I shall loopy, when I knew I was transitioning metabolically at a much deeper level, from not really switching maybe necessarily from glucose to ketones, but just my body adapting and really getting into that fat burning mode. And it was kind of weird because it wasn't all day or whatever. I might have a couple of hours. I just kind of wasn't dizzy, I just kind of felt kind of loopy and at the time though I was thinking, well, are my electrolytes down Salt? And I'm getting into all of that.
Speaker 3:I do think it was just a transitioning and then later on the transitioning, the only thing I experienced was definitely some of that weird kind of significant cramping. You might get the calf or whatever, even in the abdomen. You're getting up, you might bend a little bit and you fire that, you recruit that muscle fiber and it just goes off like pretty significant. So I played around with that and I'm like, well, maybe not enough magnesium, not enough potassium, I just think it's partly my body was transitioning and even in the last so I'm on six months now even in the last few weeks at the most, I think my body has settled in a little bit in and I think, if I look back, it probably was more around salt than it was magnesium or potassium. And I still do. I still am doing electrolytes.
Speaker 3:That's probably the only supplement that I really do, but I kind of feel like the salt and the cramping thing settled out a little bit. So in retrospect it's a great learning experience that I'm doing yet, because probably I would just kind of get people a little bit more on the salt thing, the sole water and dilution and getting that whole going and just kind of do that every day and not just very moderate amounts, but other than that, I mean I really once I got through the loopy part, which maybe that lasted two weeks, maybe a week, I don't recall. Now I probably should have recorded it, but so I didn't really do a really nice documentary on my experience. But that's probably about it. Something else has been like just so positive off the chart. Those things that I'm talking about don't even really factor in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. Well, it's cool that you documented what you did. Maybe it wasn't everything, but I've got here all of the blood work that you've done. You did a first panel on March the 5th 2023 and your second one on July the 3rd 2023. So we've got all of these numbers that we can go over. I do have to point this out. I pointed this out to you via email. Your height has not changed. Your height is still 71 inches. So, before anybody gets too excited about the Carnivore diet, it's not a cure-all. It's not going to turn you into a power forward in the NBA, unfortunately, so I'm sorry for that. No change there.
Speaker 3:That was so funny. I do remember when you said that I have cracked up about that a couple of times.
Speaker 1:It's just this diet. You think it would be amazing and it just sucks Unbelievable. So would you like to just start at the top? We can talk about the top number. I would also love to discuss your understanding of these numbers that we're talking about. What is this doing in the body? Where would we like to see this? Is this very important? Is this less important? Just any commentary that you have on some of these numbers, I think would be fantastic. And the one at the very top, the top two ones I think we can talk about kind of together, is insulin and hemoglobin A1c. So yeah, let's deep dive into those numbers and I'd love to hear your input on what they are and why they're important.
Speaker 3:Well, first off, if you had Benjamin Bickman on, he could talk for more than two hours about those two markers, absolutely so. You know, in fact, right now, if I had to pick, if you had to pick one health marker and this word, this is through LabCorp, this was a blood draw, a fasted blood draw. I would say it's insulin and fasted insulin. Yeah, and again, when we look at and this is where Dr Bickman really got me into it when you look at the health implications and where everybody's at, I think, look the bottom line for people. You know and that's one of the reasons I kind of rebranded my the work that I do into the belly fat reset.
Speaker 3:You know most people are interested in aesthetics. It's still that it's about their waste, it's about their weight. You know the health benefits for most people, unless they're really a type 2 diabetic or something. It's kind of a sideline, it's a byproduct, which is cool. However, I can get people to do the work.
Speaker 3:But pretty much you know if your insulin is under an established level and you're not insulin resistant, it's like impossible to get fat, you know.
Speaker 3:So when you have that excess insulin and certainly if your insulin resistant, where your cells are not receiving the insulin as much and your body's going to pancreas is going to start spitting out more of that is you're going to start pushing glucose into fat cells, you know, and that's not cool health wise and certainly in terms of aesthetics, and I would say one of the big ones with insulin for me, related to that, is just highly inflammatory, you know. So if you look at the implications of having, you know, excess insulin floating around your bloodstream too long, you know you think like related to inflammation, you know you start thinking about blood pressure, you start thinking about arthralosclerosis, you know plaque and all of those types of things. So, for me, insulin, you know, impacts both aesthetics and health and just a huge, huge way. And this marker should be. If people aren't doing this, I want to use the word demand, but they should assertively request this through their physician. Yeah, fasted insulin level yeah, absolutely Yep.
Speaker 1:I agree, and I think the implications on that are so huge and we see your numbers going from 9.3 to 6.2 as far as the insulin goes. And then what happened with your A1C?
Speaker 3:Well, the A1C. That's why, you know, I went into this initially as a 90 day, you know, assessment in terms of the carnivore diet. But I want to add another 30 days because, as you know probably many of your listeners in, a1c is an average blood sugar reading. Maybe two to three months might pick up the last couple of weeks a little bit more. And with the carnivore diet it's interesting because we're just seeing that that marker is not changing that much. It's kind of a deep topic, you know. So mine just remained at 5.4 across the, you know, throughout this four month period and it's probably more than theory.
Speaker 3:You know, with the carnivore diet they're saying your red blood cells are leaving a little bit longer, maybe even more robust. They're healthy, so it's hanging on, it's showing that glucose that's stuck to them a little bit, so it's throwing off. To be honest with you, I mentioned this to Dr Sean Baker when I chatted with him that I'm not even sure it's a viable marker anymore. Somebody's on the carnivore diet so I kind of look at it as a flyer out there. But if somebody is definitely not doing a carnivore diet, this would be a marker they definitely would want to check and just looking at.
Speaker 3:You know it's obviously related to insulin, but I think one of the things that Ben Bickman really got me thinking about too is that this idea of going in and for people that may be in that realm of they need to have a glucose check. You can check your glucose and if your pancreas is still producing enough insulin you're not looking at the insulin. Your blood glucose could still remain below that diabetic or even pre diabetic level, but you could go on for years with insulin sensitivity and all that inflammation and everything else that's going on. That to me, that understanding that was absolutely remarkable. When it comes to metabolic health and I know there are a lot of physicians that don't understand that and certainly aren't considering it for various reasons we don't have to get into that, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I totally agree, and you're right. Ben Bickman does such a great job explaining that the bike. It doesn't matter if your glucose is flat line. As long as your insulin is going up, you're going to have problems. It's just you're not going to be able to detect them because you're looking at the wrong number. You're looking at the glucose. Glucose will be controlled even if it takes a lot more insulin, but that's still going to lead to problems. We could diagnose type two diabetes so much earlier and more effectively if we're looking at the insulin number, not the glucose number. So I'm really glad you pointed that out.
Speaker 1:I tend to agree with you as far as A1C. There's just some contextual things. When you eat in this way, that throws the kind of standard narrative out the window like vitamin C is a good one. I literally have not had any considerable amount of vitamin C in like four and a half years and I don't have scurvy. And people ask me about certain markers and I'll say that and they'll be like oh yeah, that is a little bit weird and just, if you're eating a lot of carbohydrates you need a lot of vitamin C, but those rules change if you're eating a carnivore diet. So I tend to agree with you.
Speaker 1:I don't put as much emphasis on that A1C numbers I used to, although I think you made a really great point, which is, like population wise, eating the standard diet, if your A1C is 12, it's almost like saying your BMI is a 40. Like I can take a pretty good guess that something is not going that well, if that makes sense. It doesn't tell you you know the body fat percentage or the muscle mass, but it's still directionally like okay, something's up, so anyway. So we've seen. I agree with all that, yeah. Well, I think you explained it really well. Let's go down to C-reactive protein, which has to do with inflammation. So show us where you were measuring in March and how that changed into July.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so let me preface that. So I have a long history of autoimmune issues which you know. I know from the gut work I did, like I had Giardia which I discovered, and some other issues, probably some gluten things. So you know we don't have to get into this, but I think it is important. And why it's important to my assessment here, If you look at me as a client, is the intestinal permeability in the leaky gut aspect of that.
Speaker 3:And that relates to my history and you know that work gut work was pretty woo-woo even six to eight years ago. Now, at leaky gut is it's not woo-woo at all, it's pretty well science established and so C-reactive protein being a marker of, let's say, systemic inflammation, you know. So it's not going to tell you that you have a wound on your knee, necessarily, or anything like that at you, but and it's not going to tell you exactly where the inflammation is coming from. But my experience in looking at people, I think for many people I think that they have a high C-reactive protein. I do think it's related to the gut and so that's one element for me.
Speaker 3:My marker went. So for the most part, you know, when you look at optimal ranges, I think less than one would be a good healthy marker and we don't have to get into what the readings are and that's just for the general purpose. Just less than one. I started off at 1.38, but I think if I had continued with how I was eating, you know, moving out of the pandemic and just can't contain that would have just really increased dramatically. But it went from 1.38, which is still high, to 0.81. My guess is it's probably lower now, but that's pretty phenomenal and for people that are familiar with this marker, that you know, health practitioners, physicians and certainly rheumatologists, you know to look at people that can reduce that marker that significantly over a four month period, pretty monumental. And we'll get into that because I think that really relates into some of the, as you described, some of the more subjective things that I was considering in this assessment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and again, that would be an expected marker. I would expect you to say I went carnivore and my CRP dropped which again it did, and I would not be surprised with your hunch as well that it's probably even a little bit lower now. So that's fantastic. If we move down the list, we've got what looks like some of my favorite numbers to look at, which are numbers taken from a lipid profile. So we've got a ratio here of triglycerides to HDL. We see HDL cholesterol. We see LDL cholesterol. Everybody knows HDL cholesterol is called good cholesterol, LDL cholesterol is called bad cholesterol. I see triglycerides on here. Now you're missing one. That seems to be very important. Dana, why did you not list your total cholesterol?
Speaker 3:I am so glad that you asked Casey, because let me just put this in very scientific terms because it's silly, thank you, okay, it's silly unless you want to sell a medication, and then it's a really effective tool. So I think that summarizes it. If you want to go into more detail for your listeners, but for me I think it's about there's more detail in terms of lipids and cholesterol, if you want to look at but for most people, looking at the three that we're talking about here, I think and looking at healthy ratios, okay, ratios, not good, bad, as you no, maybe I sensed more than a little sarcasm there, but your point is very, very valid, I think. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope that the listener will go and look up silly. It's a highly technical term. You might not be able to understand this really technical mumbo jumbo, medical speak. But you're right, and I think we have to keep in mind that when we started experiencing heart attacks, like 100, 200 years ago, heart attacks really weren't a thing. They were exceedingly rare. They were increasing in the 1950s. We needed to figure it out.
Speaker 1:We started to notice that there was an accumulation in people's arteries that included cholesterol and other things that turned into the thing that we blamed. We have to remember that back then we were really new in even being able to measure cholesterol and we couldn't, we didn't even know there was LDL in HDL cholesterol when we started demonizing cholesterol itself. It was just cholesterol. The learning later that there were different factions and sub fractions and all that stuff. That came much, much, much later. And so in the beginning, when people said cholesterol is bad, they were talking about all cholesterol and the lower it was just the better, which we all know is absolute nonsense, garbage and is very, very silly. The markers that are more important you've included here, so triglycerides to HDL ratio. I don't know how you feel about this marker, in particular for me, that if you don't have any other numbers on this page besides insulin, I would say this ratio tells me pretty much everything I need to know about your metabolic health, would you agree?
Speaker 3:I absolutely agree with that and again, I learned that from Benjamin Bickman and I think that that is a really easy one for people. Just take your triglycerides divided by HDL and it's going to give you a number and depending on your heritage can impact this. Some people will say it should be less than 1.8, that ratio, or less than two. Maybe some people might even go a little lower than that. I'm just averaging. I'm just going to say, look, a really optimal range would be less than 1.8. So I was.
Speaker 3:Mine wasn't bad, but again I want to emphasize that I went years with eating real food and doing it really, really well before the pandemic, and so that helped me in terms of my readdiction. I went from 1.61 during this four month period down to 1.09. And that's again a significant reduction. And this is really easy because for the most part, any standard lab that your physician is going to pull in terms of your blood work, you're going to get HDL and you're going to get triglycerides, so you can easily adapt this ratio and get an idea. And what that really is looking at is an indication of potential insulin resistance, which is you know. So if your physician said, you know, we can't afford to test her fast at insulin, which is you know it should be.
Speaker 1:It's silly.
Speaker 3:I was going to use that, but I don't want to overuse it. But, thank you, I'm glad you did, I'm glad you did Absolutely. But this is really easy for people to be able to do and they don't even need their physician to do it. They can just take those markers and divide them up. It's really easy and you can come up with that. So you want it to be, let's just say, even if it's less than 2.0, you know, I think that's a. Yeah, I completely agree with you on that, that ratio, and, yeah, how significant it is.
Speaker 1:I would be very happy with those numbers. You made a good point too, that like if you can't afford more advanced blood work, maybe this is again like a gateway where you can get a lipid profile. I was doing these on clients. They were paying like 30 bucks and it's just a little finger stick. Should be easily accessible and inexpensive. That can at least tell you whether you need to do additional testing. And your numbers look great. One thing that people are normally surprised by is triglycerides. So triglycerides would be like the liquid fat that's traveling around in the body and what we notice is people that start eating more fat and eating less carbohydrates.
Speaker 1:The triglycerides actually drop which is a little counterintuitive, because you would think like if they're eating you know, rib-eyes cooked in butter you would imagine that the fat in the blood would actually go up. And it really doesn't. It tends to drop, and that is an understanding of how we actually make fat. Fat does not make you fat. It is turning carbohydrates into fat in the liver when you consume them In the liver. That is what people need to concern themselves about. Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Sort of interrupt you. I just got enthusiastic about what you were saying. But yeah, absolutely, and you know that's why we'll get down to it. But you know, when you look at the implications of fatty liver and when I was emphasizing, talking about the carnivore diet and visceral fat, you know you can assume that if you've got a thick belly okay, whether you're obese or whether you fall into that, you know what's called skinny fat, where you kind of don't have a lot of lean muscle, that you get that haunch, that's pretty significant. You're probably going to have fatty liver, you know. So that's a big consideration and that is going to be correlated to those high triglycerides. So I think you summed it up pretty well there. I mean, my triglycerides went from 100, which still is not. You know, I really I thought it was going to be a lot worse. I really did.
Speaker 1:I was kind of happy with that.
Speaker 3:I was kind of happy with that number, but it went down to 84. Yeah, you know so, which is no surprise. Again, you know, when you look at all the people that are lining up with the benefits results from the corner board, diet if they're, if they are looking at blood work, these are, these are not surprising numbers at all.
Speaker 1:No, not at all, and we see that again. Quote unquote bad cholesterol. Ldl cholesterol went up 136. So already kind of borderline high to 155, which is definitely high. Most doctors would be stunned and they would want you on a statin. Does that high LDL cholesterol concern you at all?
Speaker 3:No, not at all. In fact, we're on that, I do think sometime eventually, if you, if you look at my ratios to answer your question, and I have a good balance between HDL, ldl and triglycerides and where the LDL, at least through the historic eyes of, of of evaluating LDL, you know, went from 136 to 155, as you said. But I look at, I look at that as a sign of vitality, agreed, okay. And when you look at, and again, you, you know your, your psychat sarcasm in terms of talking about good and bad cholesterol, hdl and LDL, look, cholesterol is essential, like it's vital, like you die without it. Right, how does the ratio? Absolutely, don't get me wrong, but I think you know it's involved in hormone production and LDL.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of information starting to maybe surface a little bit more too. And support, because it has a lot to do with supporting our body's response to inflammation. Absolutely, and I touch on that, don't ask me a lot of questions about it. I haven't researched that, I haven't personally studied that aspect, but I have seen enough study headlines to know that I think there are implications around that. So I am totally cool with my ratios and where my LDL cholesterol is at, especially with my history of autoimmune issues and and I think that there you know, there's starting to be some, some information and studies starting to come out in terms of you know how people were low LDL or not doing that well in terms of longevity and and inflammation.
Speaker 1:So absolutely no, there's. There's some really cool research out with people that have familiohypocolesterolemia, which means they're born with a genetic disease where their cholesterol is really really high and up until they've got a higher mortality rate, until they turn about 40. And then they reach a crossover point. So if you have this condition really unfortunate condition kids die of heart attacks at like age six. It's really tragic. But again, if you make it to a certain disease, they actually survive much better than the general population and they're like disproportionately protected from other diseases that people die from, like cancer, um, you know, hypertension, dementia, and so it's interesting that that genetic condition in the beginning of your life isn't great, but if you survive past a certain point you're even more protected and I think there's great evidence that LDL cholesterol in particular is really good for things like immunity.
Speaker 1:You mentioned inflammation. I would be really happy with that number. You already mentioned the fatty liver, so we see the ALT number. So that went from 35 to 26, which is right in range. That's phenomenal. Yeah, I totally cool with that yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Very much agree with what we've talked about already with visceral fat. If you are storing fat inside the middle part of the body, um, if you have hard fat, not the jiggly fat but the hard, firm fat in and around your belly, that is your body depositing fat where it really shouldn't go, and you would really rather not have that happen.
Speaker 3:That's a great. That's a great description, kasey. Seriously, the way you how simple that's simply, you broke that down to everybody can relate to that. So, uh, agree.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we go to your body metrics and the first one we come up to is waist to height ratio and your waist. Here we go. If, if you can't do any of this, if you are, you know, so poor that you've got none of this. That's my next most important thing is what is your waist circumference? Go, grab a piece of string, measure waist circumference. That again is another proxy that tells me whether you're metabolically healthy or not, and we can make inferences about where we think the other numbers might be. But let's talk about waist to height. Um, your waist and and your overall weight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, um, the my waist height ratio went from 0.58, which is high, so optimally maybe 0.43 to 0.52, um, and a drop to 0.52. And uh, yeah, we'll, we'll, yeah, we're going to talk about my waist and let's, let's just jump right in because, and this really was less than the four months Again, I went into this assessment at really 90 days, but my waist went from 41 to 36 and it's actually less than that. Now, yeah, think about it and that's sure sort of timeframe, and I'm not, I'm not like I'm not watching you
Speaker 3:know again, calorie counting is just also a silly thing to do. But for most people, vast majority of people. But I'm eating, I'm full, I'm necessitated, I feel nourished. But again, when you look at that waist reduction in terms of inches, 41 to 36, you know, to be honest with you, my waist and my weight, from an aesthetic perspective, had more impact to me personally, psychologically, than I would care to admit. Amazing, and I would just use the word pride, you know, and I've never, you know, again looking at things, but when it impacted me personally, it just feels really frigging good.
Speaker 3:And then when you think about the health implications, because that, that, that we'll get into my weight, but you know that's visceral fat, you know, and you know, let's just jump down to my weight, because we don't need to talk about my height, which you mentioned, because that's that's remain static. No surprise there. So my, that's so funny, my weight from from 211 pounds to 181, I think I'm like 178, 178. I I really have, you know, I don't really weigh, but let's just say 30 pounds. And if you want to just take four months again, satiated, full, nourished, not craving, and then you get that kind of response right. So I mean, this is frigging off the chart. I mean, that's results, those things, just absolutely I'll speak from a client, a personal perspective, not a health practitioner absolutely blew me away. Blew me away, you know, and the fact that I can stay satiated. And the big thing is I won't talk about this too much because I do resistance training, I don't do it crazy, I know what I'm doing so I can really dial it in. I mean, my, my resistance training is like 20 minutes, you know. But but the thing about this is so I'm 65, okay, and I have, you know, because of years of accumulated maybe doing resistance training and not off the chart, right, I mean, I went through the bro days early on and some semi bodybuilding and car bloating and all that that was a long time ago.
Speaker 3:But the big thing I want to emphasize here is I have not lost any lean muscle, okay, and and I, you know, for for a lot of listeners that are following people on, you know, out there in the space, but I want to emphasize that because that is huge and and especially when I see we don't have to get into the emphasis more to you know plant based diets, you know that aren't going to have enough protein, you know amino acids to help build that lean muscle.
Speaker 3:But to maintain your lean muscle at 60, like, like, look when you, when you start to get over 50, man, the last thing you want to do is lose lean muscle, and not only just in terms of. I'm talking about aesthetics, I'm talking about health. And also when you look at insulin and you look at lean muscle and implications for being supportive of healthy glucose levels, it's a big deal. So, again, I don't lose any lean muscle. Yeah, in fact I have gained. Yeah, I'm not measuring, I'm not measuring and doing all that stuff, but I could just tell you know, you're looking in the mirror and I'm not looking in the mirror and flexing or anything like that, but just, you know, getting out of the shower, glancing, you know kind of a thing, I have maintained a lean muscle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, so you and I share many of the same kind of certifications. We've gone through some of the same things. These are nationally accredited, very well respected, with lots of different education and manuals and, according to them, impossible. What you did is impossible. You cannot do that. You can't lose the maximum recommended amount of weight to lose in one week, which you lost at the rate of about two pounds per week. You would lose fat, but you would also lose lean mass, you'd lose muscle tissue, you'd lose water. It's impossible. You can't do that. And why is it that I see it all the time? You can absolutely maintain and grow muscle and lose fat at really high rates and keep that up for a long time. It's amazing.
Speaker 3:So a bit of yeah, so a bit of sarcasm. So so, yeah, I weigh my food, you know, before every meal and I'm making sure I'm at about 1200 calories. Yeah, exactly, healthy snacks, not, not, not, so, yeah, so the point about that is is that you're absolutely right and it's, it's, it's phenomenal, and you know, again, I'm, you know, I'm not counting calories. I mean, if I'm hungry, I'm going to eat more. I mean, tomorrow night's, friday, I usually celebrate with a hound and a half grass fed ribeye, and that's going to happen. I mean, you know, yeah, it's not, we're not watching calories, you're just frigging, nourishing your body. Yeah, you know totally different paradigm.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. So again, you know we're looking at. The next marker down that they see is blood pressure. That takes a drop of 144 to 86 to 123, over 80. Very healthy blood pressure, you would think. Again. Increase in saturated fat, increase in salt, would make that go up and went down. See that all the time. That's amazing. And then we have health complaints and diet discoveries and now we're on a scale of one to five. So now we're in objective land. This is going to be fun. So let's talk about all of these different things that you were kind of experiencing, you know, kind of day to day, and did you rank these on that day? Like, did you, did you look at some of those conditions and say this was on March, the 5th of 2023? This is how you felt on that day. It was more like retrospective, thinking back on it after having felt really good.
Speaker 3:No, it was on that day, cool, yeah, I wanted to go in this. Yeah, absolutely. So what I find terrible is how I, how I, how I, how I rank these, and the first one, which is psoriasis. So you know there's involved plucking and also psoriatic arthritis. So my experience with that and I didn't have a lot of psoriatic plucking as people might understand it, but there were certainly skin implications, because for over 15 years I've been taking a, a biological drug, anti-inflammatory drug, and I'll just mention the emerald.
Speaker 1:Emeral, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:Over 15, over 15 years, wow, okay, now did it help? Yeah, because I didn't know about this, but a couple of elements there. So, my, my, my, my. My complaints regarding psoriasis went from, if I rated it, a five, which is pretty terrible, went down to a one, okay, amazing. And the point I want to mention there is, after 15 years of a weekly injection of this biological agent, that has, like, if you read the, you know, if you, if you see the, the, the commercials and the, all the disclaimers at the end, like it's not good, right, like you know, it's not good at all. I have weaned off.
Speaker 3:Okay, like, if anybody has any understanding of autoimmunity and something that has gone on for a number of years, and certainly if it's developed into things like you know, hashimoto's, which you know your body's, anyway, your body starts attacking itself in some form or another. For me it was Soraya's Asoriatic Arthritis to be able to use whatever term you want to call I won't use the word cure, I'll use the word dampen, I'll use the word remission if that's required, but to be able to do this, that is off the chart, okay, like people are not walking out of their rheumatologist's office and getting these results and they're going to prescribe medications to mitigate these symptoms, which is, you know, some people need that. Don't get me wrong, I didn't. I didn't know any better. I felt like I had to sign a contract with the devil, which I did back then. In terms of the disclaimer and looking at the significance of potential long-term side effects, I'm weaned off. Oh, amazing, done yeah, and it's not inexpensive, not inexpensive at all. So that's huge. You want me to roll into these?
Speaker 1:other ones. Yeah, absolutely Fatigue, negative mood, body stiffness, discomfort, like all of these huge drops.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so fatigue went from four to one. That's easy, and these were health complaints that I was aware of going in, which is an important point yeah, the discoveries are different?
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally. The discoveries are different, right, so my fatigue, you know, just radically improved my negative mood, which I, you know I was a I definitely had some negative mood and I you know that little guy on your shoulder talking to you sometimes and saying all that crazy stuff and then also just general body stiffness. You know not bad, I still train him. You know I do brisk walks, I mean for 65, you know pretty, pretty good, probably from the years of the work that I've done and but that went from a four to a one as well. And I think, when I look at, if you think about the psoriasis and the body stiffness and all of these issues, really gets back to that. That C-reactive protein blood marker and that reduction in systemic inflammation, yeah, so, yeah, I mean those were, those were off the chart. I think the biggest thing for me that was, I mean it was more than interesting. But were these discoveries of things that I just was not aware of? And I would say, if I had to put most of it in a category, it would be on the mental fitness, the mental health side and my work with clients that I do now? Whatever would I always look at, you know the people that have metabolic dysfunction. Right, the bodies aren't working there. They have inflammation, whatever the mental health part, you know, whether it's cognition, maybe some elements of anxiety, maybe even going to pressure me, whatever it is mental clarity. They're not aware of it, that's right, they're not. They're not aware of it because it's insidious and it just creeps up on people. And unless you have a switch which I actually have a switch on my website, a little little graphic for that unless you could take a switch and go, hey, feel this, this is how you should feel, right, just that for a day. Okay, tomorrow I'm going to turn this switch off. They'd have no idea, right? So for me, this like turned the switch on, I mean, when I look at like like ruminating thoughts, I didn't realize like, yeah, I was I mean another technical term funky along with silly, but it was not good. And I went from a four to a one. Now, these were done.
Speaker 3:These numbers that I put on here were were, you know, kind of post in terms of how bad they were, because I wasn't aware of them. So I had to kind of go back and go okay, this is where they were. The state of constant uneasiness went from a four to one. These have improved. Actually, I would say both of these are a zero now. It's incredible I still think. I still think about things. I still worry about things. That's natural. You've got to go through. However, your brain's working to deal with these things. The other one was a really big deal and this sounds like one of those things like when somebody talks about it like it's too good to be true or whatever.
Speaker 3:So I was having these tension headaches and the work that we do looking at musculoskeletal issues I kind of attributed to I always had these thick traps. I had my collarbone severed because of a surgery, so compensation tension. I thought it was going over my neck, over top of my head, into my forehead. I would say once a week I was getting a headache from that. That I thought was tension. I would get out these misogynial elements and gouge them in and my traps to loosen it up on my neck and it would help a little bit. And every couple of weeks, to the point of I got to fix my profaneness. It's kind of messing up my day and that didn't really help that much. And this is one that I like.
Speaker 3:I was sitting with my wife who, absolutely, I got to give a shout out. She has been so supportive about the carnivore diet and she goes gathering and get grab some grass-fed steaks for me at places. So, yeah, yeah, I'm going to mention her, yvonne, she's phenomenal. But anyway, these tension headaches, they're gone. I was like, oh man, they're gone, they're gone, it's gone. So I have since, you know, I don't know, maybe I was halfway through this I have not experienced one. Amazing. And this went on for, I don't know, more than six years. Yeah, it's amazing. So you know my I mentioned this on Dr Baker's interview. I think it has to do. You know, you can get back to the inflammatory mark or whatever. I think somehow these healthy saturated fats and maybe the peptides, these little amino acids and different components, are getting out there and reaching to our extremities in terms of dealing with inflammation. I don't know, that's total speculation on my part and probably nobody knows this right now, but all I know is really yeah.
Speaker 1:It's amazing yeah, it's absolutely amazing. This last column, your diet discoveries, with everything mental that you're describing. Again, we went over this ruminating thoughts, constant uneasiness, mental clarity. This is why I am planning on being carnivore for a very, very long time, because when I go off I re-experience all of those things and that spinning voice of all the things that will never happen to you, in anxiety when that goes away. You are not willing to bring that back into your life for any price. No donut really tastes that good. No pie is really that good Like it is worth it to eat steak and eggs and be happy and satiated and have all these numbers correct themselves.
Speaker 3:Sometimes when you say things Casey, I get so enthusiastic. I just want to jump in and rumble with your comments.
Speaker 1:Please, please, absolutely.
Speaker 3:But you know what? I completely agree, and I didn't mention this, but part of my sabbatical after my corporate narrow space startup, I mean, I tell, with some significant depression. I'm on that side and I think sometimes when people experience that, I'm not sure it ever kind of goes away, so to speak. So not that I was depressed during this period, I'm not saying that but I do think those ruminating thoughts, the cost on easiness, there's some deep seed in this, down there and where I'm getting at when you have been on that side of the equation of mentally just feeling like crap, it's like man, you do not want to go back. And so now it's even to a different point. It's like my mental cognition. I mean I feel like I have literally gone back in time. I feel like I'm on a sled, like almost a dosage of anabolic steroids. I know that sounds really kind of out there, but I feel like I have never thought more clearly and focused more clearly than I have I don't even years, let's just say that. So I think that kind of sums it up in terms of mental clarity. I mean just the improvement is just significant and, as you said to it, really I mean I'm not even I'm six months in and I am not even thinking about anything. I mean I'm just kind of doing my thing and eating. I mean I do.
Speaker 3:I am doing some, let's say, conventionally raised beef. Right now I was eating lamb which was grass-fed New Zealand stuff, and I've done that. That's a great value, by the way, because a lot of people don't like lamb, so you can get real healthy stuff pretty inexpensively. But when I look at it I haven't noticed any implications in my autoimmune activity related to maybe the composition of commercially raised beef versus grass-fed, grass-finished. I think the animals help us out. I think they help us out to a certain extent. I do think they clean some things out through their process of metabolizing.
Speaker 3:But so I'm just kind of mixing in a little bit, like I have a source for ground beef that's grass-fed, grass-finished, up in our area, which is up in the Sonoma kind of north way north Bay Area, and it's a phenomenal delivery to the house and so it's a great source. So I'm kind of mixing it in now and I also do some water in case I do sardines and I do mackerel. In fact I'm going to have that for lunch today. It's very inexpensive. I mean, if you look at like don't make it three healthy fats that it comes with, it's like because it's so reasonable. I mean I might have four tins at lunch, I might have two sardines and four mackerels and go for it, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing and what a what a cool journey, and I agree with you that you know if you can have a source of grass-fed, organic whatever and you you support that and you know your farmer. That's awesome. But I also, just before this interview, went to the clearance section of the meat department in my local supermarket and bought what they had on sale. I'm going to have burger patties tonight because they were on sale. They were going to go bad. I don't believe there's much of a difference ethically between those two things, and so don't make a carnivore diet prohibitive. You know, cost-wise, if, if you can just deal with whatever meat you have, find the meat that you enjoy. I love that you're doing the sardines and mackerels as well Super inexpensive and a great way to get those nutrients, like you mentioned. I do want you to tell us about your program, the Bellyfat Reset Program. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do and how you work with people?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's such an awesome question. Yeah, so it's a. It's a 10-week program. I'm working one-on-one, which is what I've done. I'm only now venturing out in kind of the social space a little bit. I've I've been like a quail running around them and the bush is making a bunch of noise, you know. But it's a 10-week program and really it's kind of a trick because it's 12, because the first two weeks there's education and so I'm working one-on-one with, with, with clients. So it's, you know, it's a VIP or whatever, but it's very personalized.
Speaker 3:So I coach people up on on, you know, some lifestyle implications. I have a Zoom session. These are all about 30 to 45 minutes. I have a session on authentic eating and for people again that want to think about it, that could think more paleo if they wanted to, but definitely low carb. I'm pushing low carb pretty heavy and prioritizing protein. And then during that two weeks too, I'm also ordering the. I'm a approved practitioner for a signals for the CGM, the continuous glucose monitor, so I order their prescription for that, get it shipped to their house, so it's all done virtually. So get them hooked up with that. They typically like to do a little of experimenting when they first get it on and maybe eat some pancakes with maple syrup or something.
Speaker 3:They go oh, wow, Okay, yeah, so I try to get them kind of comfortable. So a big part of it is, you know, I teach people how to fish. I'm not doing meal plans, I don't believe in it. I'm teaching people how to live a healthy lifestyle and and in terms of really prioritizing food, my only other requirement I'd love to have them resist this trend, but my only other requirement, aside from attending their weekly coaching sessions with me, which I'll describe is that they get in a 30 minute brisk walk and I tell them look, here's my coaching advice, this I don't want you to look dorky out there. Just go out your front door for 15 minutes and then turn around and come back but get those arms swinging. You know like again, you don't have to look dorky, but get those arms swinging a little bit. And I really pushed that a lot. There's just so many scientific elements of that and just getting outdoors psychologically.
Speaker 3:But then I do my weekly. Every every week there's a 30 minute check in. I do an assessment, I do, I look subjectively, I look at energy levels, I look at, rate them on a one to five, I rate their mental clarity and I rent, rate their focus and and their mood Sorry, their mood and then I try to get like, how are they doing with authentic eating? And get that. But then what I can do is pull up their CGM dashboard right and go, oh, maybe we're not as committed to authentic eating as we thought we were, and it's a great dashboard. Signals is doing an awesome job. So you know that. You know.
Speaker 3:So client has to log their food, but that's awesome because it's really easy to do. Now, it's super easy. They can even take a photo If push comes to shove doesn't take maybe a minute and a half, maybe two, after every meal or snack, which I'm not encouraging snacks, by the way I'd rather have them go for three or four hours. But and so I can look at their dashboard and we have some goals in terms of where their average glucose is. You know, you can look at all the spikes. You can look at a weak average. It, quite frankly, it's. I don't even know how I worked without this tool. Now, and why do I like it. Yeah, it's glucose, because I always remind people, as we're not just looking at glucose, we're going back to Benjamin Bickman and that, that, that insulin, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it's so different to measure glucose one time versus seeing it continuously. That's where the value comes is seeing it go up, seeing it go down and and having people try to make that roller coaster ride as boring as possible, make it my kind of style of a roller coaster, where it's not very big at all and flat, and for that a continuous glucose monitor is just. It's a wonderful tool. Your program sounds amazing. That sounds really reasonable and thoughtful and I know you're having tons of success with it, and so thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:This has been an awesome conversation, dana. We've gone through a lot of these numbers. This is like we said, for me and I think for you as well, these are expected results. If you have been in this world long enough, we we probably could have predicted that most of these things would have happened, but to actually see the data, see how you did, see how you felt, rate all those things, I think is a wonderful resource and, yeah, I just so much appreciate the work that you're doing. Where would you like people to go to find you and connect with you and your work?
Speaker 3:Right now they can go to insighthealthzone, which you mentioned, thank you, and I am working on a club model concept, and so it would be a group that would also have a CGM and be working with it, so to be able to take it out to the masses a little bit more. But the big thing is, I want to, I want to move into a, an area where people have a supportive community and then having a platform that would be able to encourage that as well, and it would be as well offline, and then would have virtual. You know our virtual weekly meetings as well, so I'm just starting to dig into that. But, yeah, insighthealthzone, and then there's a discovery call 20 minute, I think right now.
Speaker 3:I charged 10 bucks for it because, you know, everybody's just scheduling things, but but for your listeners, you know, so it's a way of qualifying. If they have to put a credit card in for 10 bucks, I know they're probably going to make the appointment just because they took the time, but and I, I I'm not selling, I'm teaching, I share people with the implications, and then they can decide whether it's a good fit and for. For your listeners, though, if they go in there and do free pass free, pass all caps. They could schedule it and they'll have to do the 10 bucks.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. I actually don't think that $10 is a bad idea. We get no showed all the time from people that don't put any money in, but we will add that to the notes. We will add your website to the show notes as well. It's a beautifully done website. You did a really good job with that, Dana Hemmingsen. Again, thank you so very much for all of your work. I'm so glad you found the Carnivore diet and had the time to come on our show today. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 3:I suppose Casey is still doing what you do and I just, I just so love how you engage clients and how you, how you facilitate the question answering and bring out the best. So, you know, thank you, thank you for the opportunity and to you too as well, I think, sharing this information and keep sharing it. And you know, and even if it's repetitive for a lot of people, I think it's essential right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need those repetitions though. Right, Like the first time you heard of Carnivore, like you couldn't have.
Speaker 1:You couldn't have said, like, oh, this sounds great, Go out and do this. Well, no, I appreciate the kind words, but honestly, it's our guests like you that make it really easy, and you know what it's like. You start to do this and you really just get so lit up by it. You want to learn about it and then you want to share about it. So that's what you're doing. You're doing a great job. So again, thank you so very much for coming on our show today.
Speaker 3:All right, casey, take care, we'll meet up someday. I need to get out to some events. I haven't done that, so I need to start doing that.
Speaker 1:They're pretty fun and I would just watch out. Maybe one Friday I might just show up at your house for Friday night stakes.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely I want to see how you sport that hat in person. You sport that you wear that hat really really well Thanks dude.
Speaker 1:Thanks, just like. This is fine. Well, thank you again very much, and this has been another episode of Balanced Body Radio.