How Mr. Salozzo Cured His "Incurable" Ulcerative Colitis
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eating, diet, carnivore, ulcerative colitis, biologic, brett, noticing, doctor, colitis, remicade, meat, colonoscopy, story, medication, disease, phil, twitter, mood, diagnosed, western medicine
SPEAKERS
Jack Heald, Mr. Salozzo, Dr. Philip Ovadia
Jack Heald
All right. It's the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Phillip Ovadia and his sweet-talking sidekick. I'm Jack Heald. Hey, Phil, it's good to see you. It seems like we've done this very recently.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
How you doing, Jack? Good to be back here again. I think today is going to be another great conversation. Following up on last week. We have the other leader of the meat mafia with us today. Mr. Salozzp, aka Brett, and Brett's got a great story to tell around his health. And just how he's come to discover, as many of us have the power of the foods that we eat, to make us sick and to heal us again. So welcome, Brett. And tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jack Heald
Yeah,
Mr. Salozzo
yeah. Thank you for having me. Dr. Phil. It's great to see you again. And Jack amazing to meet you as well. Honor
Jack Heald
Not amazing. It's, um, I'm a guy. Okay. Yeah, exactly. I love it. I just have fun here.
Mr. Salozzo
Yeah.
Jack Heald
So let's hear your story. It sounds it sounds intriguing. A little bit. I've heard already.
Mr. Salozzo
Yeah, it's definitely it's definitely an interesting story. And it's cool for me to be on here as well, because Dr. Phil and I initially got connected through our mutual friend mutual contact Texas slim, who runs the beef initiatives, for sure. And we had a Twitter space probably about two months ago. And that was the first time that Dr. Phil and I got to connect. And it was incredibly refreshing just to listen to a medical practitioner that truly is focused on improving metabolic health. And he doesn't claim to have all the answers but has had his own personal incredible journey through improving his own metabolic health. And that's something that I'm personally incredibly passionate about and actually just finished, stay off my operating table a few weeks ago, I think I finished it in like two days. It's like credibly readable, there's so much good content in there. There’re so many good nuggets, and I've actually bought a few copies from my friends too.
Jack Heald
I love that. one of the things that is that makes me enjoy this podcast is sounds like I'm second up here. Um, this is from the bottom of my heart. I love that Dr. Vidya is a medical professional with all the credentials, he knows that the system from the inside out. And he gets it in terms of what health is really about. You don't have to listen to this, Phil, I'm just bragging on you. But this this show is not about, not about him. It's about you today. So I'm reading the just some notes here. Ulcerative Colitis. Before you tell us the specifics about you tell us generally, what happens with ulcerative colitis? What is it? What's the long-term prognosis? And then we'll go into the specifics of your story.
Mr. Salozzo
Yes, so the way that I understand it is that ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune disease that affects the large part of your intestine other better known as your colon. I'm told that there are a number of factors that we think could be a cause of colitis, whether it's stress related diet related, there's probably some genetic component to it as well. You would think you think this wouldn't be the case, but it's most actually common within men amongst their 20s I actually got diagnosed with it when I was 20 years old.
Jack Heald
And my dad had it. He would have been 31 when he had his colon removed.
Mr. Salozzo
Wow. So he had a way worse than I did if he had his whole colon taken out. Yeah, so it's pretty, it's pretty nasty stuff. And there's, there's varying degrees of how people have it. it's commonly associated with Crohn's, which is like the sister disease, if you want to call it that, and then also IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. And you're told that there's no cure. Right. So for me when we'll dig into this I was on a biologic called Remicade, which was supposed to keep my ulcerative colitis into remission
Jack Heald
What’s biologic?
Mr. Salozzo
Doctor, you could explain it way better than me, but that was just the medication that I was taking to keep my colitis in remission.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah, so, um the irritable bowel diseases. Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis are our autoimmune conditions at their root and so the biologics are newer classes of medications that have come out really only within the past five to 10 years. I can tell you back when I was doing my training as a general surgery resident, which is now 20 years ago, hard to believe, but we didn't have any of these things, we people with all sorts of Colitis and Crohn's disease basically got treated with steroids and other immunosuppressive drugs. So the biologics seem to work better with less side effects than the more kind of broadly based immune modulating drugs. And they've been a great advance in the treatment of these conditions. But they still don't get at the root cause of these conditions. And I think that's something we're going to get into as we get into Bret story a little more.
Jack Heald
Okay, so young man 21 diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, I know it's bad because my dad had it and ended up having his colon removed and lived with a, whatever you call those things, for the next 5045 years. So I know that's a big deal that you were diagnosed with that. I know it can have bad outcomes. So how was how did you take the news? How did you live with it? And then let's get to the meat of the story. What happened after that?
Mr. Salozzo
Yeah, so I would say it's important to understand my background, because I think that there were a set of behaviors in terms of what I was doing that led to me getting diagnosed. So the whole thing for me, right is that I'm an athlete by trade. So I played baseball in college. And that's how I always justified what I was doing. Particularly in high school, I had somewhere between like, 20 to 25 scholarships to play baseball collegiately. And it was just, it was textbook fit, but metabolically unhealthy, right. So I was drinking my protein shakes, I was drinking my pre workout. I was lifting weights. And I felt like I could justify that I could eat whatever I wanted, because I was an athlete, and I was very active. So I get to college. And I transferred schools. So the initial school that I went to was Seton Hall University, which is a small division one program in New Jersey. And I was noticing that it was like kind of the textbook definition of like, work hard play hearts.
So 40 Plus Hours, Division One baseball schedule rigorous course schedule. And then on the weekends there's the culture of binge drinking. So you're having anywhere from eight to 10 drinks on a Friday and Saturday, that's normal. You're not getting a lot of sleep, you're eating a lot of processed fried food. And then on top of it all, there was just a period of my life where I was just chronically stressed out because at baseball, I was putting way too much pressure on myself, I wasn't having fun. I was second guessing all my abilities. And that was the first time that I ever started noticing blood in my stool was in 2020. And so I that was the first time I ever got a colonoscopy. I think I was either 19 or 20 years old.
Yeah, I was either 819 or 20 years old in 2014. And this the medicine that I got worked incredibly well, the bleeding went away. And I just went back to the pattern of my old behavior. Flash forward a year, I transfer school transfer schools to Babson College, which is a small division three school right outside of Boston. And I'm continuing the same behaviors, right? So I am still stressed out with baseball, rigorous class schedule, not eating great binge drinking, not enough sleep, continuing that. And it was really the summer of 2016, where everything started to go haywire. So at that period of time, I had an internship at a financial services company in New York City. I was living with my parents in New Jersey at the time, so I had about a two-hour commute one way so about four hours of commuting time total.
And so the summer, the June of 2016, that's when I started noticing that there was blood in my stool again. And even now, five to six years later, I still can't tell you why I just let it go unchecked. I don't know if it was embarrassment if I just didn't want to tell my parents or my friends. Or you're just you're a young 20-year-old guy that thinks he's invincible, but I just let the symptoms continue to get worse and worse. So I vividly remember in August you know you’re the thing with colitis is that your urgency to go to the bathroom is so bad that your life becomes a series of like trying to like pattern recognition of trying to figure out where the bathrooms are around you. So the summer is going on my earth urgency to go to the bathroom is getting worse, the blood of my stool is getting worse.
And then by August of that, August of that summer, I was literally going to the bathroom like 20 to 30 times a day I had lost close to 30 pounds. Like, I look like a gaunt version of myself. And I, I recall, it was weird coincidence, it was the last day of my internship. And I was going to take the train into New York City. And I was literally on the toilet for the entire two-hour train ride. And I felt like I was about to pass out. So I call my doctor, he immediately tells me to go to the hospital. So I take an Uber to the hot to the local hospital in New Jersey, get another colonoscopy and then get diagnosed with full blown ulcerative colitis. I'm told that there's no cure for it, I have to go on a biologic. And that I'm going to be on this medication for the rest of my life. And the medication was I would receive one infusion every eight weeks. And I think that it was the cost of it was like 50 to $60,000 covered by insurance per infusion. So you can do the math on the number of people that are on these, these medications are certainly not cheap at all. Wow, yeah.
Jack Heald
Okay. So you're 21 You've just been told your life has changed dramatically. They put you on the biologic, which is a quarter of a million dollars. No, it's more than that. Half a million dollars a year, I guess. Yeah. And then here we are today. 2022. You did an Ironman back in October. What happened in between? How did how did we go from that to this? Clearly not gone. Skeleton. Brett, but look, you look pretty healthy to me, young man.
Mr. Salozzo
Yeah, I've gotten healthy in the into the boy round. I don't I don't take any medication anymore. So I think when I think about my story, it's all been about taking autonomy over the food that I've been putting into my body. So everything changed for me in 2018. When I first moved into New York, I took a tech sales job, I moved out of the house for the first time. And that's really when I started cooking my own meals, right. And that's what I tell a lot of people now is like, if you just start cooking your own meals, and you can control your inputs of what you're putting into your system you're going to be healthier than 90% of the population. And I was making very basic dishes like ground beef steak, chicken thighs, just things that I enjoyed that were repeatable and easy for me to bring into the office.
And in 2019 I'm starting to do these endurance races, I'm cooking more of my meals. I'm taking the Remicade, but my stomach still not 100%. And there, there are still some days where I'd have a big sandwich for lunch or pizza for lunch, still some of the standard American foods. And I remember I was supposed to do a half Ironman in Lake Placid, and I had the first and only flare up post colitis. But since I got diagnosed with colitis, and I had to miss the race, so here I am, I'm like, I'm the healthiest I've ever been. But I'm still having issues with my stomach. And I there was just I basically just drew a lot line in the sand. Like no matter what I'm gonna do the research, I'm gonna figure this out, because it just isn’t a way to live your life. And I think that I can actually find some inputs to cure what's going on. fortunately, in 2019, my timing was really lucky because you start to see this carnivore diet that's popularized.
So I see Dr. Shaun Baker go on Joe Rogan's podcast and I'm thinking to myself, okay, here's this heart surgeon that's thriving on just red meat, eggs, animal products and water. it sounds pretty crazy. But he's a doctor, he's thriving, he doesn't admit to having all the answers but that that's that opened my eyes. And then I started seeing on the internet, there were 1000s seemingly 1000s of people that were talking about healing their Crohn's Colitis and IBS and autoimmune issues through a carnivore diet. And then that's where all the alarms went off in my head and I'm thinking to myself, okay, if I can try this diet and cure essentially cure this disease that's been plaguing me for the last few years and not have to go to the bathroom 10 plus times a day like what is that worth? Right? So I very I can very vividly remember going to Whole Foods buying steaks, ground beef, chicken, salmon, eggs, just everything that I would need for this two-week carnivore trial. We call it a carnivore trial, and I can get a week into the diet.
My stomach felt the best edited ever felt I was down to go into the bathroom like twice a day maybe less than that and I could never work Call a time that my stomach felt so good, my energy instantly improved, my skin got better. And I started noticing that my mood improved as well, which we now know we hear a ton of people that go on this animal-based diet, their mood, their anxiety, their depression goes away. So I ended up extending it from a week to two weeks to a month to two months, and just got better and better results. And so since that time, I would say my diet is more animal based. It's not strict carnivore.
So like I the thing, that carnivore that's so great is that it's an amazing removal diet. So you're, you're really it's a great way to get back to your baseline. So like now I eat fruit, I have a lot of raw dairy raw dairy sits well in my stomach, I navigate vegetables that work well for me. And I've just every it seems like every year, I just continue to get a little bit healthier, a little bit better, I cook more of my meals, I learned more recipes. And then in 2021, literally, it's been a year I got a colonoscopy. And not only did I have zero inflammation, but I also had zero micro inflammation. And I was able to get off of this this biologic that I've been on for five, five years. So it's a great story.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah and I just want to emphasize a few things about how amazing that is. Because as I said I spent plenty of time taking care of people with IBD, with inflammatory bowel diseases, as a during my surgery training, and the concept that you can undo that you can reverse that disease, certainly was completely foreign back then. And even today, I think for most gastroenterologist, most doctors that handle this disease, they would find that foreign as well. So two questions for you, when you started doing this, I don't know how much you were telling your doctors about it. But I'd be interested to knowing if you did, what their thoughts were on it. And when you just went for that recent colonoscopy, and it had truly completely resolved no more even micro inflammation. what did your doctor say about that?
Mr. Salozzo
Yeah, so that's, that's actually an amazing question. And it's something that I wanted to talk to both of you about, because my GI back home is an amazing guy. But it's very interesting to start to learn more about Western medicine and the way that most doctors don't see food as, as true medicine or prevention to some of these issues. So I would go I think I would go in, and I would see him twice a year. And every time that I would see him, he would say, oh my gosh, you look great. You like you look healthy your inflammatory markers are getting better and better. You'd be like, what are you doing? And I'm like, well, I'm eating this lower carb diet. I'm eating a lot of red meat, I'm eating a lot of chicken thighs, things like that. And he wouldn't. He was very, he didn't really have an opinion on it, which was frustrating for me, because I would the more that I would learn about the diet, I would want to ask him questions. Hey, what do you think about this? Have you had patients that have tried a low carb approach? And he just didn't. He didn't have like a reference point to give me even though every time I would go back in, I would look better and better and clearly what I was doing was working. So that was frustrating.
And then the thing with Remicade, and these biologics is like yes, yes, they do their job. I think that the Remicade was necessary to get me out of the chronic inflammation like you said, Dr. Phil, but it doesn't treat the root cause. And then when I was taking Remicade, I started getting this terrible cystic acne and I've never had skin issues in my life, but it was causing a side effect where I was breaking out in the cysts all over my body. Oh, God. Yeah. And so that's what led me to go to my GI and say, Look, my stomach feels great. I'm a young guy. This medication is having an adverse effect on me. Can we talk about getting the office this medication? So because I said that he was willing to give me a colonoscopy and then saw that there was no inflammation, no micro inflammation, and was willing to experiment with getting me off the drug. But what was frustrating for me, Dr. Phil, is that there was no preventative. There was no proactive conversation of hey, let's talk about maybe getting off this drug. If I didn't say anything, I guarantee you I would probably still be on the medication, whether it was Remicade and TVO. We he talked about switching into VO to help with my skin but until he really saw that I had no inflammation at all. There was no there was no possibility of me getting off the drug.
Jack Heald
My point of view when I first met Dr. O, I had him on my podcast and I got to ask him all the questions I've always wanted to ask a doctor. So I'm not remotely surprised by that, Brett. I have I've had the same experience over and over and over with Western medical practitioners. And that's part I think that's part of the reason why Dr. Vidya. Why this show is so popular, why the book is doing so well is here is an actual right there in the belly of the beast physician who knows exactly how the system works. Who is saying, “there's another way, there's a better way.”
So I'm thrilled and I'm thrilled at your healing, and unsurprised at the lack of interest shown by your doctor in in such an extraordinary story. So tell us about this meat mafia thing. I love the name. How, let's we talked to Harrison last episode, your partner in the meat mafia? Tell me about what your goal with the meat mafia is? What do you want the meat mafia to be able to? look back five years from now and say, yep, we did that. What is that that you guys want to have done?
Mr. Salozzo
It's a great question. And our focus. So we so this has really been this has grown way faster than we ever anticipated it to be. And so the backstory is that Harrison Clemens on Twitter, we went to school together, we play baseball together. And like a lot of friendships, we graduated from school, and there was no reason why we just drifted apart a little bit. And then when we had graduated, we both got simultaneously got into these endurance races. So when COVID happened, we both agreed to train for what we said, why don't we sign up for the same full distance Ironman, and it'll be a great way for us to come back together, keep each other posted with training. And so we signed up for Ironman Texas, which is in Waco, Texas.
And then we were both fully remote for work. So we got an Airbnb for a few months in Austin. And just living together feeding off of each other's energy, we started realizing that we had the same passion for cooking meals, we were both really into this animal-based style of eating, sourcing all of our food together. And we left, we left the three months basically saying we need to find some way to work together because we just have there's certain people that you just click with and have a great working relationship with. And we got fortunate because Harrison was he got very interested into the regenerative agriculture space, right. And he started blogging for Texas slim in the beef initiative. And for those that don't know that beef initiative is trying to connect consumers with your local farmers and cut out all these intermediary, big food processors, I
Jack Heald
can say it's working tomorrow, I pick up my first order from a local, a local meat producer. And my oldest son is placed a big order for I don't know what half a cow or something. He's got a bunch of kids. So yeah, Texas slim. The thing is working. It's working.
Mr. Salozzo
It's working. It's working. It's it. It's amazing when you start to eat with this hyperlocal approach because it's like from a selfish perspective, you're putting the best quality meat into your body and your family's body. And then if you're buying a quarter a half cow, it averages out to like five to $6 a pound. It's an amazing deal.
Jack Heald
About five and a half bucks a pound.
Mr. Salozzo
Yeah. And then so if that's going to be it's great for you and then you're incentivizing the system the right way because your money is going directly into the farmer’s pocket
Jack Heald
to the farmer, right really like that. I too, like that part a lot.
Mr. Salozzo
Yeah, in these regenerative agriculture these farms that practice regenerative agriculture, like they've intentionally chosen to do this, like it would have been way easier for them to quote unquote sell out and implement these monocrop practices or sell their meat to a big for meat processor that controls 90% of their meat, but they've stayed tried and true to these principles. They raise the cat, the cattle, grass fed grass finish low stress, so the Omega six profiles really high in the meat. It's like that's how you should be that's who you I want to choose to give my dollar to as a local farmer that's trying to supply me and my family's food as well as possible but so it's a long-winded way of saying what the meat mafia really is, is it's our attempt to help educate people. on their metabolic health, alternative dietary approaches with two guys that we don't have MDs, we're just we've learned through our own anecdotal experiences, and we want to tie it into regenerative agriculture and just provide as much good content to people as possible.
Jack Heald
So you guys are primarily the goal is you are, like a central clearinghouse for information?
Mr. Salozzo
Yes. So how we grown is right, there's this concept of Twitter threads where you can basically tell stories through a series of tweets. So Harrison's talked about he's done threads on just the myths behind cholesterol. I've done threads on Ancel Keys and the way that we mistakenly view saturated fat within Western medicine, just helping to explain the history behind how we've gotten to the state that we're in right, where 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, just trying to help to add perspective and stories and show people that there are these alternative dietary approaches that have amazing effects. Like I try not to be dogmatic about the stuff but I just I don't know of any other diets that are getting patients off of Remicade or getting diabetics off insulin. Yeah, exactly. It's just amazing. It's amazing to see, it's, it's changing lives. So
Jack Heald
You know, I'm old enough to remember when a diagnosis of diabetes, that of type two diabetes was, essentially, your life is going to not only be significantly changed, but also significantly shortened. And as recently as I want to, say, four years ago, a good friend of mine who had severe type two diabetes, he went to his endocrinologist. And for his annual checkup, he's in his early 50s, at the time, an endocrinologist said, well, Mike, you're, there's nothing more we can do for you eat whatever you want, you probably got a year to live. Um, long story short, his brother knew people and he ended up on a high protein, low fat, low carb diet, and for all intents and purposes, has almost completely reversed this type two diabetes that he's been he'd lived with for over 35 years. So we know now these things, it's not that we're just going to treat them it's that with the right kind of, of diet, the right kind of exercise and diet. We can reverse these things, we can make them go away. Dr. Ovadia, someone who should be saying this.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
I love about what, what the meat mafia is doing what other similar groups on social media do is that they get this information out there, because the sad reality is, is that the health care system, doctors aren't putting forth this information, and unfortunately, for the large part, still don't even know that this information is out there. we would expect in an ideal world that stories like Brett's and the many, many people who I now know that have successfully treated their inflammatory bowel disease, with dietary change. And the literally 10s of 1000s of type two diabetics now who have reversed their diabetes with these dietary changes, you would think that that would get the health care industry, that the health care system to change its ways, but unfortunately, it largely has had it has had minimal to no impact on the health care system.
And the I would say that for 99% of doctors that deal with these conditions, they are unaware or do not believe, you know that these conditions are treatable with dietary changes alone. And it's just, it's just unfortunate, but because of that, I have said and I've said it on this show, and I've said it in many other forums, that this needs to be a grassroots movement and this needs to come from the patients and from the people who are experiencing these life changing events, and they need to be the ones that are spreading this information, and I'm always encouraged to see that While many doctors kind of look down upon social media and think that it's a bunch of crazy people out there spreading a bunch of crazy ideas and conspiracy theories. You know what I see the power of it is real people like Brett who are out there telling their stories. And Brett's honest, he says I don't know if this is gonna work for you, but it worked for me. And that that's perfectly honest approach to take to all this. And it just again, it's giving people the option, at least at least they know that they have an option besides a lifelong battle with the disease, and medications and complications and everything.
Jack Heald
You know, the thing of the thing to me is, aside from the fact that you get healthy. And that's a silly, silly thing to say aside from, but there's this other I don't know, I, I hate to call it nefarious element. But there is definitely this element, where it appears that there is a concerted effort in our country to have as many people dependent upon pharmacological products as possible. And anything that threatens to, to break that grip that Big Pharma has on us, gets ignored, or poo pooed or cancelled. So I'm thrilled to hear stories like this, and I'm thrilled to get to be able to help be part of the megaphone to make this story a lot more obvious. So, IB, or IBS, no, ulcerative colitis, ulcerative colitis cured with diet, through diet, more drugs.
Mr. Salozzo
No more drugs have been offered them for over a year. So in the only thing that I've noticed is that if I go off my diet and have some fried foods, some spicy food, alcohol, I paid a price for it. So it, it just incentivizes me to want to stick to this approach. And so I've actually just, I know, use the carnivore approach more as like my get back to baseline. So I had gone a little bit off the diet the last few weeks. And then now for the next two weeks, I'm going strict carnivore, so primarily beef, some fish, some chicken, eggs, water, coffee, a little bit of raw cream. And that's, that's it. And even after just four days, the my, my GI, my stomach just feels great. My energy level, energy levels feel great, my mood feels great. And this is this is I have no skin in the game. This is live. This is just how I feel after a few days of doing this. I just
Jack Heald
Yeah, you don't have something to sell here. Exactly.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Talk about Bret talk about the mood issue a little more, because you've mentioned it a couple of times. And I think people will be intrigued by that as well. And what did you notice from a mental standpoint, as you made these changes?
Mr. Salozzo
Mm hmm. Yeah. And just so both of you guys know I'm 27 years old, and the amount of friends and acquaintances that I have, they're my age in their 20s that are on some type of anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication would absolutely shock you. It's, it's unbelievable how many people tell me that they're on medication. And so what I've been noticing is that I hear a ton about the weight loss, skin issues, energy from the diet. But I think the most common thing that I hear now from people that are going animal based is they love to talk about the mood and the fact that their anxiety and depression and things that used to bother them basically get crushed, and they no longer bother them. And that's what I started noticing too, there was just like this mental clarity that I was experiencing like this, this almost newfound confidence that I was that I was noticing by cooking the majority of my meals and eating this particular way.
And a good story is that when I went back to New Jersey, this for the for this Christmas, I said, Look, I don't want to be I don't want to be over the top. I want to enjoy Christmas. I'm going to let my die down. I'm going to have the Christmas cookies, the pastas. I'm just going to eat like everyone else in my family does just so I can prove that I can do this. And I also wanted to just use it as a self-experiment to see how I would feel. And I noticed that after doing that for a few days I started to feel twinges of anxiety and things that didn't bother me and then when I went out to San Diego and went back on a carnivore animal-based approach, it went away after two to three days of eating like this. So obviously anecdotal, but I noticed for me my energy levels are clear, they're consistent. My, the quality of my thoughts is great. I have high motivation. And it's like, it's just the, it's just the pillar in the baseline. And I hear a lot from people. They're like, Oh I don't know how I feel about paying 15 $20 for a grass-fed ribeye, or something like that.
And I'm like, that's such a short-sighted way to look at it. Because what's the price of getting rid of anxiety and depression and feeling great and having great skin? Like, what what's what confidence is that worth, right? If you're better in your job, and you're able to make more money, like those are legitimate, huge ROI, guys. So it's kind of a long-winded answer. But I continue to see a ton of people that personally messaged me on Twitter that talk about the mental the positive mental effects of the experimentation on their diet.
Jack Heald
Do you have any idea if most of your following is around your age?
Mr. Salozzo
It's a good question. I need to do some digging into it. I,
Jack Heald
I've got a follow up question based on that. And it's it really is more to do with my own. My own curiosity about generational differences, what you just said about anecdotally, you've got a lot of folks your age a lot of folks your age who are on some sort of mood-altering medicine or mood controlling medicine. I guess I'll have to admit that when really surprised me. I don't know why it surprised me when I think about how the world appears to be, but that still surprised me. So I'm wondering if that's if this mood thing? Is this, this shift to a better mood is experienced by everybody? If it's more confined to younger people? I'm thinking, how is this diet changing mood? That would seem to imply its regulating hormones, somehow? That would be my guess.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
You know, it seems to, there are two thoughts behind it one is just the inconsistent sugar levels, the highs and the lows that go with eating standard American diets. And the other that goes away on animal-based diets, and that that more consistent sugar level gets rid of a lot of the mood swings that go along with the sugar swings. And then there also seems to be direct inflammation within the brain that results from eating these processed foods, the vegetable and seed oils, and that that is contributing to mood disorders.
There's a psychiatrist at the Harvard system by the name of Chris Palmer, who has talked and researched this extensively. And he has, he has used dietary changes in the management of very significant mental health disorders, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, with success now, and again, it's just one of those areas that you would think that doctors would be more curious when they see this, and what we unfortunately see is they're just not to ask those questions again, it, it really just floors me that a patient can come to a doctor, and present with a condition that is thought to be incurable and reversible and progressive, and then they show up, and the condition has been completely reversed. And they don't ask why if someone came to me, and with advanced heart disease, and then all of a sudden they were back a couple of months later, and their heart disease was completely gone. I would be asking, what did you do? Oh, yeah, yeah, what happened? And we just don't, that just doesn't seem to happen enough. But like I said, I, I am encouraged. As I start to see this grow from the grassroots, and more and more, it will get to the point where the health care system where physicians just won't be able to ignore it.
Jack Heald
I'm reminded of that famous quote, and I don't know who said it first, but when it comes to making any kind of revolutionary change, the radicals the folks who are calling for change. First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you then you win. And I think we're moving from the Ignore to the mock stage. And people like Dr. Ovadia and Brett here, Salozzo at the meat mafia are making all the difference. Well, Brett, what's next on the horizon for you?
Mr. Salozzo
Yes. So we're at the point right now where our emphasis has been on just putting out consistently crisp, informative content to help teach people about nutrition, improving their metabolic health, the history behind Western medicine, farming, regenerative agriculture, trying to weave all those pieces together, I would say that that's version 1.0. And now version 2.0 is trying to get to a point where financially we can be doing this full time. So we're in the process right now of creating a line of healthy and regenerative cooking fats, beef tallow is something that we've both been utilizing for the past few months, and I've had great success with it. It's got a fantastic, it's got a very nice high smoke point and gets you a great seer. And it also supports a nose to tail style of eating because really what tallow is, is it's rendered fat from the organs of some type of a ruminant animal from like a cow or a bison.
So we're working on getting a tallow product to market. And then we're also really passionate about just the nutrition and education of our kids, right, you see things like in New York, where their rates and saying they're experimenting with meatless Mondays for public school lunches, and it's like, Alright, guys, if you want to experiment on yourself with plant based stuff, go for it, but to experiment on the kids is just screwed up. So we've been we've been working on almost like an ancestral or primal Lunchable alternative to what's out there now. So like real food for our kids is what we're calling it, it's like the working kind of like the working name putting something together like some grass fed beef jerky, some dehydrated cheese, some nuts, some honey, just real food that can be packaged up that parents could give their kids that want their children to be able to eat healthy, but might not necessarily have the time to prepare that lunch. So we want to be able to create products and food to put out to the public to help support this, this lifestyle. And we want to be doing this full time. So that's really like version 2.0. Jack?
Jack Heald
Well, if folks want to get a hold of you, there's gonna be a lot of folks who hear this podcast, they want to get a hold of you and say, hey, I'm interested, how can I help? What's the best way for them to do that?
Mr. Salozzo
Yeah, I would say Twitter is the best. And my handle is @MrSalozzo. And that's my pseudo anonymous account. But my real name is Brett Ender, and I, the only reason why we're pseudo-Anonymous is just because we were doing that ghost writing in the past. But I publicly support everything that I'm saying. And I think that there's something to be said about publicly sticking up to what's going on right now. And certain people need to make a stand. But yeah, Twitter's the best way to get in contact with me. And I, I've heard from a lot of people that have had autoimmune issues or stomach issues. But I'm happy to talk about this stuff. the meat mafia, we also offer coaching as well. So if anyone's interested in that we would be more than happy to have a conversation and connect and yeah, have a conversation.
Jack Heald
Very good. Well, Allah, we'll make sure that that Twitter handle shows up in the show notes for anybody who didn't get it. Mr. Salozzo on Twitter. You'll be able to link I will link it in the show notes. Phil, any last words? Or questions for Brad before we call it a day?
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Now? No, I just want to thank Brett, for another great conversation and I think this will be the first of many. Like I said, I just love what he and Harrison are doing with the mafia to get the word to get the information in the hands of the people who need to have it those that are suffering from these diseases and can improve their lives dramatically with changing the way that they eat.
Jack Heald
I love it. This is very good. Well, Brett, Thanks for Thanks for showing up. It's good to meet you. I loved hearing your story. For Dr. Phillip Ovadia. I'm Jack Heald for the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast. You can follow Dr. Phil on Twitter at IFixHearts. If you wonder if maybe you might be metabolically unhealthy, you can go to his website, IFixHearts.co and take a metabolic health quiz. Give you a good idea about where you stand and help you know what the next step to take is. We're gonna do another one of these here this time next week. And we'll talk to you next time.