Dr. Eric Berg is a well-respected pioneer in keto and low-carb circles. He's a man who's been there almost from the beginning.
So, rather than just cover old ground, we venture into the controversies and pushback from those industries that are threatened by the metabolic health movement.
As it turns out, it seems the rise of keto threatens the economic biases and informational control exerted by powerful food companies.
Who knew?
In our conversation, we venture into the heart of the global dietary debate, where the tension between corporate interests and individual health is palpable. Dr. Berg breaks down the complexities of the battle. On one side, the protein-centric ketogenic diet. On the other, the corporate-backed dietary guidelines that favor grains and sugars. The implications are vast. We touch on public health, the medical establishment, and of course, Big Pharma.
Finally, our conversation looks to the future of health and nutrition, with Metabolomics and personalized medicine taking center stage. Dr. Berg advances the revolutionary idea that healthcare should enhance our natural vitality, not merely manage disease.
-------------
Connect with Dr. Eric Berg
Website
LinkTree
Twitter
=====================
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
Dr. Eric Berg is a well-respected pioneer in keto and low-carb circles. He's a man who's been there almost from the beginning.
So, rather than just cover old ground, we venture into the controversies and pushback from those industries that are threatened by the metabolic health movement.
As it turns out, it seems the rise of keto threatens the economic biases and informational control exerted by powerful food companies.
Who knew?
In our conversation, we venture into the heart of the global dietary debate, where the tension between corporate interests and individual health is palpable. Dr. Berg breaks down the complexities of the battle. On one side, the protein-centric ketogenic diet. On the other, the corporate-backed dietary guidelines that favor grains and sugars. The implications are vast. We touch on public health, the medical establishment, and of course, Big Pharma.
Finally, our conversation looks to the future of health and nutrition, with Metabolomics and personalized medicine taking center stage. Dr. Berg advances the revolutionary idea that healthcare should enhance our natural vitality, not merely manage disease.
-------------
Connect with Dr. Eric Berg
Website
LinkTree
Twitter
=====================
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
Well, hey, folks, it's the stay off my operating table podcast with Dr Phillip Ovedia. We're glad you're here and today we are talking to that. Phil, this is your job. Tell us who we're talking to.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Yeah, we got a. We got a great one today. I've been excited for this conversation for quite a while. If anyone goes onto YouTube and just types in keto, you're most likely going to see his face first and foremost, unless it's, you know, being suppressed as it sometimes is, and we're going to talk about all that as well.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:But Eric Berg is really one of the you know OGs of our modern keto, low carb environment and really been innovative and out there social media built one of the largest audiences, I think, of anyone on social media in this space. So really excited and, more importantly, I've gotten to know Eric personally over the past few months, which has really been a pleasure as well. So with that, Eric, for anyone in our audience who doesn't know you and I'm not sure how that could happen but give us a little bit of your background and how you got to be where you are today- hey, thanks, it's a pleasure to be on your show and I was very, very sick, very, very sick, and in college, at ulcers, you know, I started getting trying to try everything, every single diet.
Dr. Eric Berg:You can imagine. I was doing colonics, I was doing ear candle, I was doing everything I could to try to get well Undone ear candles.
Jack Heald:Have you done that?
Dr. Eric Berg:Yeah, it didn't work. It didn't pull. Pulling all that wax out Didn't really help me. I stumbled on a book called I think it was called Beating the Zone or something with the zone diets, right. So I just read the first chapter and it said something about this insulin thing. You know, I studied this in school, went to chiropractic college, I went to pre-med before that and, you know, didn't connect the dots when I was in school, like the problem in school is that you get through it but you don't really apply anything until you graduate.
Dr. Eric Berg:And then I started looking at this insulin thing and I started changing my diet and it was so dramatic, with brain fog and my arthritis and my digestion, that I just got really excited about this area. So dove in, started to work with my patients. I was before that I was the sickest patient. I had People becoming and complaining about their problems and I mean I didn't I don't tell anyone this, but I I literally had a pizza crust right around my waist and I remember walking in one of these stores and I had his t-shirt, my wife's, like what has happened to you? Why don't you do something about that?
Dr. Eric Berg:So I was trying. You know I was. You know, I mean, some people have greater weight problems than I do, but anyway, it was a situation where I started getting into it and then applied it to my body and then I also stumbled onto this thing called intermittent fasting, and one thing led to another. And you know, I've been in practice for 30 years, have been out of practice probably for like 10 and doing YouTube primarily. We have about 6,000 videos. I we get 28 million subscribers. So we're different, different languages, so we're trying to. Our goal is just to help as many people as possible using things that really work with your diet. So that's kind of my short story in a thumbnail sketch.
Jack Heald:Well, phil, I want to, I want to ask, I want to follow up on something that you mentioned just before we started recording about the opposition. Somebody who's got an audience as big as you do, Dr Berg, is going to attract, it's going to attract flak, and I'd like to hear more about that. What's going?
Dr. Eric Berg:on. You know here I'm very much against refined carbs, sugar, junk foods, so you can imagine there's some pretty big industries behind that right. So I in social media I used to dominate so many topics all across the board for years. I mean just, I mean the whole page, because I guess a lot of people didn't do videos on that. So it wasn't just the ketogenic diet, it was data on gallbladder and all sorts of things. So I built up a big, big audience.
Dr. Eric Berg:So what, what they've done? Last? I think it was last May, yeah, it was May they introduced a new policy with YouTube and they partnered with certain medical institutions because they want to, just, you know, use COVID for all the misinformation. So they want to filter out all the misinformation. And when they did that, they included everything alternative the diets, natural remedies, folk medicine, relaxation techniques, everything. So when you type on these keywords now, you'll see a bunch of medical health sources which basically have no clue. What's what's going on with these topics, especially if you're typing like the ketogenic diet or low carb. Now, because people have been, you know, when they search they a lot of times, they'll search Dr Bergen and the topic, so they'll find me. So I still have a lot of views.
Dr. Eric Berg:Don't get me wrong, but if you try to type in anything on keto or low carb, it's very difficult to find anyone who used to rank before and so, and it's mostly negative. It's mostly negative. You know keto is dangerous. So what's happening is that there's definitely this, this backend agenda to give keto a black eye. Not just that, but just kind of create doubt in the minds of people. So you know, when they think keto, they think it's dangerous.
Dr. Eric Berg:Now Dr Phil and I did a convention several weeks ago and I left that convention in Boca, got in the cab with someone who was apparently is watching my channel but didn't look like he was applying anything because he was literally like 300 or 400 pounds. But he said you know, I was going to apply it, but I was a little nervous to start keto because I've heard so many dangerous things. I said I just talked about that at the convention. So there was a lot of misinformation being put out in the name of misinformation. I mean this is ridiculous.
Dr. Eric Berg:So you know like if you start keto, you might lose weight, you might feel better, you might have better blood sugars, but we don't know what's going to happen long term. So it's kind of putting these little doubts in your mind. And it's interesting because when you see some bad news on keto all of a sudden it's like the news picks it up we have this keto like diet now. That's dangerous to your heart and of course it's not even the ketogenic diet. It's basically it's a high carb, it's a high fat and high carb diet. So you know, it's just. It's purely observational studies, questionnaire studies, a lot of BS Talk about.
Jack Heald:we've covered this before, but my brain just doesn't hold these kind of things because I'm not required to remember it. What is an observational study?
Dr. Eric Berg:It's a very low level, low credibility. Study where you're taking it doesn't show that any causation, it's some association. So they'll pick a variable. So, out of all the things that they've done, this, these questionnaires and they get people to fill out these questionnaires like, hey, what did you eat in the last year? You know, write all this stuff down and they'll pick. They can pick. Well, it's probably low carb and they'll take a certain variable. I mean, how do we know? It's not something else, like smoking or some of the preexisting problem or stress or all the sugar. So they kind of they can cherry, pick certain variables to make a study look in a certain way so they could say that this may increase the risk of something. But that's just. It may not too. So it's just really ridiculous.
Jack Heald:So again, you can see the observational studies are the ones where they basically say, hey, keep track of what you eat and turn it in, and then we're going to do our data analysis magic and decide that, well, I don't think we're trying to prove so.
Dr. Eric Berg:So, phil, I don't even think it's that. They don't even keep track, do they? It's just like you. Just you fill it out, and maybe it's several times during the year.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Berg:Remember what you ate.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Yeah, exactly, they're usually using what are called food frequency questionnaires. So it might be once a year, it might be a couple of times a year, and they'll say in the past year or in the past six months, how many times have you eaten this category of food? And, of course, most of us can't remember what we yesterday, let alone accurately judge what we've eaten over the past six months. And it gets even more nefarious about this because they'll intentionally lump things together in these categories. So, for instance and someone posted this yesterday on social media within this food frequency questionnaire, for instance, it has butter, margarine and vegetable oils all in one category, and it'll say how often have you used this in the past three months, six months, whatever it is, and then when?
Dr. Philip Ovadia:If you associate negative effects with that category, they'll always go to. Well, it must be the butter, right? It can't be the other stuff that they've lumped together in that category. So that's why these studies are so problematic. I wanted to get your thoughts, though, eric, on why do you think keto low carb, in particular is repeatedly targeted like this.
Dr. Eric Berg:Think about what keto tells people to do. Think about what kind of foods we're telling people not to eat. You're talking 87% or 83% of all the calories in the grocery store. They're like not keto. So you can see there's a food aspect to this. There's also a very large new agenda coming out. I'm sure you're aware of it. They called the planetary health diet that they're coming up with. They want everyone to be on this one diet, which is sponsored by Nestle and I think I don't know how many different drug companies.
Dr. Eric Berg:I'm like wait a second, wait a second. What are the largest junk food companies in the world sponsoring or partnering with this new diet that doesn't even allow you to eat much meat, like I think you could have a half an ounce of beef, one fourth of a cup a stick of bacon. You can have a fifth of an egg a day, so it's really low on the protein, but you can have 800 calories of grains. You can have quite a few calories of seed oils. You can have seven and a half teaspoons of sugar. So they're trying to push everyone into this one bucket Now at the same time Sounds like that bucket is the grave. Yeah, and then, at the same time, all these companies who sell beef are hedging and they're actually selling not just plant-based meat alternatives, but they're working on another project and it's lab grown meats. This is huge. All these companies have billions invested into having these lab grown meats. So you can imagine coming into a grocery store and everything is not just ultra processed, it's all synthetic.
Dr. Eric Berg:So they want to come up with this, but they have a big problem the demand. To try to create the demand. First of all, people don't like bugs, they don't want to eat bugs. They don't actually are not going for the plant-based meats and now this lab-based thing. So I think, unfortunately, this highlight that they're trying. I think it's not going to work because they're going to try to get people to eat that, but I don't think they're going to do that.
Dr. Eric Berg:So, first of all, I think, phil, and I know that you're going to get sick when you eat it. It's going to create nutritional deficiencies. It's not the same like they're saying. It's all identical to meat because it's manufactured with a certain microorganisms, genetically modified organisms like fungus and yeast. They're actually making these proteins.
Dr. Eric Berg:So, again, it's going to be a bad experiment going wrong, but there's a lot of money involved and they have all sorts of organizations that are pushing this in the name of climate change too, because they want to get rid of the cows. So they want to take these farmers and actually buy up their land and pay the farmer not to farm, and then it's called rewild so they can take basically their farm and turn it into a woods. I mean that's like their goal. Certain groups, I mean it sounds just almost ridiculous, but this is kind of the plan and Keto's kind of in the way, because we're recommending meat which, by the way, is it's almost like opposite day, because one of the greatest things you can eat to heal your body is beef, red meat.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:So yeah, and ultimately, I think another reason it's targeted so much keto, low carb is because it works Exactly exactly. People figure this out Quite honestly. You have 28 million people on your channel and a lot of those people have come and they've watched a few videos and they've tried it and they've had spectacular success. There has to be. The only way to keep that under wraps and suppressed is to spin up this massive campaign to try and discredit it, because more and more, when people try it, it works. So they have to try and discourage like your taxi driver, they have to discourage people from trying it, Because once they try it, it becomes pretty hard to convince them not to do it.
Dr. Eric Berg:You're spot on it's. The reason why it's being attacked is because it works so well. I'm talking about, I mean, you're in the medical community they don't really emphasize diet. It's not relevant. It's not like put at the top of the list as far as things to look at when you're evaluating for heart disease and stuff. So I mean, from my viewpoint, I mean, you put someone on this eating plan. You just turned their whole health around and guess what? They're probably not going to need as many medications. So it's definitely it is a powerful, powerful tool that can help so many people.
Dr. Eric Berg:So you can imagine there's a lot of people against this. I mean it's like, I mean, think about how many people I don't know I have. I have about almost 8,000 success stories on my website and if you read these, how many people have no longer need their medications. I mean it's just, you know, thousands and thousands of people that need less and less medications if anything. So it's a game changer and, of course, you know this is really it's pretty obvious what's happening. They I mean keto is creating a big problem. It's a disruption into the whole, the whole medical system really. And then they got. You know, you have people that invest in Google and YouTube. You know they're very large. Well, there's a lot of dollars going on into that area, so they they're, you know, invested in big farm and stuff like that. So it's just kind of they're coming in there and they have to do something about it.
Dr. Eric Berg:Even the largest pasta I talked about, that, the largest pasta company in the world was really nervous as soon as keto came out and it was so popular. It was the popular it's still the most popular diet out there, but it was actually even more popular a few years ago and they were just shaking their boots and so a lot of companies lost a lot of money and you can see the trends and so they started to come up with all these keto recipes. In fact, I remember this was five years ago. This company wanted me to do a webinar on keto and I didn't really it was a food company, it was. It was. They made certain type of dairy products. I didn't know any. I didn't know why, but there was other other manufacturing companies on that webinar.
Dr. Eric Berg:I talked all about it and then I, when I was done, I said who was on on this list? It was pretty much every single big food company. They just wanted to get more information on what is this keto diet. I actually I did the webinar on that, so, but they didn't initially tell me who was listening. But yeah, so they're. They're very aware of what's happening and they try to create some products, but they don't really have the trust. You know, you look at these ingredients and it's not even keto. It's ridiculous.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Yeah, and again, I think that's sort of an intentional effort. You know they they've created this whole cottage industry of of what I call keto junk food and so you know they steer people towards this and people say, you know, those are the people who I see, you know they say, well, I'm doing the keto diet and it's not working. And the reason it's not working is because you're still eating the junk food, it's just labeled differently. And I think, again, it's an attempt for these food companies to kind of corrupt corrupt the diet, corrupt the results that people get from this dietary approach. And I see that as a very intentional effort.
Dr. Eric Berg:Yeah, yeah, I was. I went to Walmart and I was looking at these foods. I was making notes of some of the larger, like the brownies and all these different junk foods in there. They say keto on there and I'm like, wait a second, this is not keto, this is. And so they're trying. But you know, it's just, it's not going to help people, they're not going to lose weight on it. I mean, even look at Akin's, some, all the Akin's diets. I mean, if Akin's was still alive, he would. He would just really not be happy with, with those ingredients that are in his products.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jack Heald:I mean. This reminds me that I was working in the IT industry a long, long time ago in the mid 80s, and worked for a company that sold everything computer related, and it was the probably one of the first times that the phrase artificial intelligence gained popular currency, and it was. It was really funny because back in those days, kids, you bought software in a box and it came with a disk in you. You don't know anything about any of that stuff, but what these manufacturers of software did was many of them literally just printed a sticker and put a sticker on the box that said now with AI, now with artificial intelligence, and we had the whole heart healthy thing. They did the same thing with the labeling. You know, whatever food you have now, it's heart healthy. It's just grab a word, stick it on the you know, label it and nothing changes. It's I'm. I'm struggling here because I I hope we don't.
Jack Heald:There's a very obvious problem that we everybody who's in this community wants to try to address a deal with, and that's that we're fighting giant corporations who really don't care about anything except the next quarterly profit report, and yet the people who are, who are benefiting from our show and shows like, like yours are, are desperately in need of help in getting healthy. So I want to ask this question, and it's it's not intended to be provocative, it's just there's going to be folks who who get the message from big food and big farm and big everything else that oh, don't do this, it's dangerous. So let's address it. There are, in fact, some folks who really do try to follow a ketogenic way of eating, do it right and have problems. Can you talk about what the what the characteristics of those folks are who try it and don't succeed, so that folks can self identify? Maybe I need to do something different. Does my question make sense to you?
Dr. Eric Berg:Yeah, I think this kind of rolls right into the next topic that we were going to cover, which, before we jump in there, I think, first of all, if you look up ketogenic diet, there's many different types of the key to take diet because really the ketogenic diet is just low carb. So you have the classical ketogenic ketogenic diet which is in the hospital to use with the epileptic patients, which literally, if you look at that diet, that would make you sick. I mean, it's, yes, it might be low carb, but they're using seed oils or using powdered proteins and in a can. So I always like the healthy version of the ketogenic diet. That's what I talk about. So there, if you do just low carb, they don't really. You know ketos and talk about the quality of your fat. You could literally be keto and just do all seed oils and fat.
Dr. Eric Berg:So that's one of the problems is a person trying to do keto and understanding how to do it healthily.
Dr. Eric Berg:Also, when you get on the ketogenic diet, the demand for certain vitamins go up, like the B vitamins. Now, also, when you do a high carb diet, the B vitamins go up too. So you can, if you know the pitfalls you take, your, you know if you consume more salt, for example, really important because you lose a lot of water weight initially, and so I think those people that might have reactions which is actually a lot fewer than you think I think probably the biggest thing is they might get discouraged because either they might hit a plateau or they might. Someone discourages them because they said, oh, you're doing the ketogenic diet. Oh, I heard that was dangerous, so you sure you want to do that. You know they might get off that way. But for the most part I would say, because I've worked with tens of thousands of people for a long time on this you put them on this, even a version of it. They get the results, they're sticking with it because it works and it gets rid of their hunger, so it makes it sustainable.
Jack Heald:You know I've heard Phil talk about that a diet that isn't sustainable is not going to work. No matter what kind of success you may have short term, it's got to be something you can become a lifestyle.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Yeah, and unfortunately, you know, as you mentioned, oftentimes the people discouraging them from the diet, despite the success that they may have gotten, are going to be medical professionals. You know there's a lot of misunderstanding in the medical community about what this diet does, what this dietary approach entails and what it does and these perceived effects that you know we always hear about. But you know those of us that are actually working with patients, you know, following this dietary approach, you know we never see it. You know there was a big one a few years ago about the keto crotch. You know that you supposedly got, and you know talking to like all of you know my colleagues, all of the practitioners I'm like has anyone ever actually seen a case of this? And no one ever has. So you know no idea where that even came from.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:And, of course, you know the perceived risks around heart disease are a big one that come up that we spend a lot of time trying to dispel for the people who are hearing this other information. You know certainly and you know this is the topic, another topic we wanted to get into certainly there's nuance to this approach, like there always is, and you know having better ways of assessing. You know why patients may not be getting the success that they're looking for is, you know, a valuable tool to us practitioners, and you've talked recently about one of those tools that's really, you know, being explored and being understood, and it's called Metabolomics, and I'd like to get into what that is and how it can help us better understand. You know how to refine some of these dietary approaches, so give us the basics first. What is Metabolomics and how can it be useful in these situations?
Dr. Eric Berg:Metabolomics is one of the fastest researched new technologies, but it's been around since the 60s. But it's the study of metabolites. Now what does that mean? What does that metabolize? Those are small molecules. So we've heard of the genome. Right, the genome was supposed to revolutionize medicine. Oh yeah, we've figured this out and you know. But that just looks at your weaknesses within the genes or your strengths in the genes, but then those genes get transcribed into proteins and enzymes, which, then, which are the metabolites? So now we're looking at the chain, the end value of that, the gene in relationship to your environment.
Dr. Eric Berg:So if you were to go to get a doctor and get a blood test, you know, and they look oh yeah, you have high LDL or you have high blood glucose. Right Now, if we compare, now getting a Metabolomic test, you're looking at like 3,000 different molecules and you're not even it's not even about those molecules. You're able to look at the entire assembly line, the pathway, the biochemistry in a whole dynamic way. So you're actually getting a picture of what's really happening behind the scenes. And that's really the problem with someone having this wow, your LDL is high, but that doesn't really tell you why. So with the metabolomics, you get a visual of what's happening in the mitochondria, for example. You can look at each different assembly like it's like a factory, right? You have this assembly line and you have each person on there, you have the raw material coming in and then we end up with ATP. So to be able to visualize each step, you can now pinpoint a lot better what the heck's going on, what's causing the problem, and you can predict it. As you know, it takes decades for diabetes to develop and checking someone's blood sugar doesn't tell you what's happening way before the scene. So with metabolomic testing you could see the early start of diabetes very easily. You can see, you can correlate someone's LDL with all these other factors, with insulin resistance, to see if this is a problem or not, and then you can actually it's individualized.
Dr. Eric Berg:So we're testing you, not against a huge other population, we're checking you over time to see what your body needs. So instead of looking at a vitamin C level, we're looking at how your body is using vitamin C for what you need and your demand for that nutrient. If we take magnesium, it's involved in 300 different enzyme reactions. You don't have to look at every single one of those, but you can look at several pathways involved with magnesium and you can get an idea if you're sufficient in a certain nutrient. So what's really fascinating about this metabolomics is I think it's going to be medicine of the future, because this is going to really show someone what diet that they need and what version of a diet that they need. So there's a little bit of biochemistry to learn on this, but to be able to just take one little piece of this and look at your mitochondria and look at the pathways and visualize what's happening is extremely valuable.
Dr. Eric Berg:I know when I was in practice, I would send people out for blood tests all the time and look at their nutrient levels in the blood, but that doesn't. It was still in a mystery about what's going on deeper. So this really gives us a snapshot in time of what's happening with someone's health. And we're not looking at the genes. We're looking at how your environment, your diet, your stress level, exercise is interacting with your genes real time. And I know you are probably going to talk about the microbiome, which is a whole different. That's really complex, right, and I don't think anyone has that even close to understanding of what's happening, because you're dealing with a lot more factors, a lot more variables, but the the the metabolomics looks right into your biochemistry and gives us a snapshot of what's going on and the type of fluid.
Dr. Eric Berg:You can do it with a dry blood spot test and urine. You can do it with saliva. You can do it with all sorts of fluids. You send it into this lab and and then you know you can target really key biomarkers. And there is a tremendous amount of correlation now with like really understanding what what it means and to go from one chemical to the next with this certain enzyme, if there's a bottleneck, for example, and there's too much of something or not enough. They've really done a lot of research now that, what that, what that, what the significance of that, what that means. So when a practitioner uses that, that method of evaluation metabolomics, they can. It's a wonderful test to do over time with a patient to really see the story of what's happening to them and how you can add things and take things away to see changes over time.
Jack Heald:So I want to understand this, this, this. Actually, you said a bunch of things that I have questions about. Yeah, first thing that I wanted to make sure I understood you can get one of these metabolomic tests from I spit in a tube and send it in and they can do the full test.
Dr. Eric Berg:Yeah, they can do it remotely because all you know, the, the, the doc that I'm working with, because I'm just for an experiment, I'm doing my, my metabolomics every other week. You wouldn't need to do that, but I'm just doing it as a human guinea pig because I'm trying different things. I want to see what happens. I'm just really so interested in the sun I'm like studying at hardcore right now. But yeah, you do a dry blood spot. So you pick your finger, get some blood on a little piece of paper, dries, and then you actually get your urine which tells it, tells you the, the byproducts of your chemistry, and you freeze it and you send it, send it to the lab and then it takes, you know, a week or two to get it evaluated and then you get a report and then you, you get an evaluation of what's happening. So it gives you a tremendous data on a deep dive into way, way, way better than just a blood blood test, you know because so this is.
Dr. Eric Berg:I just want to make sure this is a diagnostic tool, right, it's, it's not, we're not diagnosing diseases, we're looking at dysfunction, and that that potentially then you gives you a prediction of what you could have if things keep going the way they go Now. You can pick up a lot of diseases, but it's not necessarily like, oh, you have cancer. But we could say you know what your mitochondria is like not working, it's dysfunctional and you have a lot of inflammation, insulin resistance and it also shows that you're not having enough protein, and so it just gives you more of a dysfunctional approach where you're looking at aathways and what's working, what's not in the body.
Jack Heald:Well, let me ask an uncomfortable question. Then A health practitioner gets this report is is your typical primary care practitioner going to have any earthly idea what to do with this?
Dr. Eric Berg:No, no, you have to be trained in it. You have to have someone that understands biochemistry, and this is not necessarily. I mean, you taught in school these things, but you definitely it's. You're not applying it, so you'd have to, you'd have to take a course on it to learn what, what it means and how to interpret it.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Many of the practitioners out there are going to cringe when I say you know this can actually show you those steps of the Krebs cycle that we all had went through great pains to learn back in medical school and hope we'd never actually have to deal with. But it turns out that it's a pretty useful thing to understand. You know how the might of conjurer are actually functioning and to really understand where the breakdowns might be in. You know the biochemical processes that underlie all of these diseases you know that we've been so focused on. So it kind of shifts the focus away from kind of the, the symptom complex, the disease, to you know what is actually mis dysfunctioning, what is misfunctioning, I guess not functioning properly on a cellular level in our bodies. And that's what I found fascinating as I've started to learn about and dig into this.
Jack Heald:Is now, is the, the microbiome, an entirely different system, because you mentioned that as well.
Dr. Eric Berg:Yes, but you can indirectly assess certain things in the microbiome. You can look at certain indicators, that which called surrogates or proxies, that you can look at problems with, you know, pathogenic bacteria, missing friendly bacteria. So you can also take a look at that as well using using this. But we're not necessarily evaluating all the microbiome, because that's a whole other complex thing that it's going to take quite a bit of time to evaluate that because there's so much data. I mean, think about this right, we have about what 20 to 20,000 to 25,000 genes that make, you know, millions of proteins and that interact with each other. So you have 10s of millions of reactions, right? So metabolomics, we now are down to like 3000 biomarkers. So it's a lot more to wrap our wits around. And then certain biomarkers are in different organs, certain biomarkers are in the mitochondria, certain ones are in the cytoplasm, so you're able to use this and plug these into the thing that we all studied, that we didn't have a clue, you know, there's just, there's just not enough time in school to really digest and learn the stuff.
Dr. Eric Berg:You memorize it, you get through it and then like so this way, like I'm like what I'm doing now is I'm taking each pathway and just spending time. Okay, break it down, just like what's what happened. What does this mean? If it's increased or decreased, okay, good. And now it's like enjoyable to learn the mitochondria and the Krebs cycle. Before it was torture Because I had nothing to apply it to. So this is like very pleasurable for me. It's like I look forward to it.
Jack Heald:So what are you guys as health practitioners? I mean, how do you move the ball down the field with this? I'm Joe Sixpack here. I got no earthly idea. I'm trusting you guys to be the experts. What is your reaction? Both of you?
Dr. Eric Berg:I think this has to be simplified because it's very, very you know something that we wouldn't necessarily start teaching the average patient all this stuff. It's just something that I think a medical practitioner if they had that tool, they can better guide a patient to, instead of trying to rely on the next study. They can say, well, let's see what your body needs, and, yeah, maybe we need to make some adjustments on your low carb diet or whatever you're doing, and then we can actually see the results over time. And then, because you have a lot of different differences within individuals. So, but of course, we want to keep it simple for a guy like you, we're not going to, you know, go into that much complexity, and that's really one thing that I focus on is I don't try not to use a lot of big words with patients because you're going to put them to sleep.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Yeah, I mean I'm optimistic that this will be, you know, will help guide us better on that individualized approach. Because, you know, one of the, honestly, one of the mistakes I think we've made in medicine is trying to make medicine cookbook. You know all of these guidelines and trying to broadly apply them to, you know, across the populations, and thinking that you know each one of us is going to react the same way, is really, I think, a full, hard approach to medicine. You know medicine by necessity needs to be individualized and we need to figure out for that patient in front of us, you know, what is the best approach and I think tools like this are going to help better guide us through that process. So that's what makes me optimistic and makes me think that you know this is going to be a vital tool moving forward.
Dr. Eric Berg:This is what people want. This is they want to know why do I have this? They don't want just another prescription. My neighbor, for example, I think she's on 10 different. She's 36 years old. She's on 10 different medications. I mean, like we don't know. She doesn't know what's causing what. I mean she's just getting worse and worse and worse.
Dr. Eric Berg:So you know, we have all these symptoms which are indicators of something else. And wouldn't it be nice to go deeper and go? You know we need to make some, we need to work on the core problem, your diet first. Let's work on that. Let's, let's see if, let's see where you're at and let's not compare you to the next person and then start to get a visual, a deep dive in what's going on, instead of just covering up one thing that leads to another thing and the chain reaction.
Dr. Eric Berg:I mean, phil, I think you know that you start putting people on this just the basic eating plan, I mean the need for medication, the cognitive function, the overall mood improvements. I mean it's just so dramatic that with metabolomics we can actually see, actually see the see what's really happening, to why that's occurring, you know. So it's not just subjective. And then if someone doesn't respond like they should. You could see what, what's going on with their, their, their body, their chemistry, and get a snapshot and really understand why they feel the way they feel.
Dr. Eric Berg:So and then, because it's always, like you know, when you run into these mysteries, about these patients that have weird stuff, especially now, like I have people that I always say, well, what about this? They're on my, on my live show. Well, what about this? I'm like, well, I wish I had a test I could do to see why you have that. You know. So I need, I need more data. So you go get a test, go get a metabolomic test and bring it back to me and let me look at it.
Dr. Eric Berg:But so it's. That's, I think, gonna be the future of medicine, if, if it's, if we get enough practitioners doing it, because of course, you can imagine there's gonna be a lot of people against having this implemented, and again, I would. The way that I think this is the best way to approach it is on a grassroots campaign and have people doctors just do it on their patients, get the results and not try to change the medical profession. Let let the patients demand and increase demand to push the market in a different direction, but it's about time that the medical profession just has a disruption, because it's too expensive right now and it's I don't think it's working like it should.
Jack Heald:So I have so many questions I want to ask, and very few of them have to do with getting healthier. So, phil, should I keep my tongue here?
Jack Heald:Well, I'm actually kind of curious to hear where you're thinking about this, because One of the things I've pondered for a long time is our model of health, the dominant model of health, which is not the only model of health, but the dominant model of health seems to be entirely chemical, and I'm I have been exposed to, over the last several years, entirely different models of health, that that look at health as as as energy flows for lack of a better word, I don't know a better, a better phrase for it and one of the things I'm wondering about is is this snapshot you're talking about is simply a moment in time, and it seems to me that that we ought to be able, we ought to be to truly understand, we ought to be looking at at moment to moment to moment kinds of things.
Jack Heald:Obviously, we can't do that all the time, but is our, is our model broken? Are we looking at, at our, at health as something that's primarily just chemical, as opposed to there's this element of life, to it, of energy? I had somebody ask me just last week what's the difference between someone who is alive and someone and that exact same person who just died. You know, two minutes ago they were alive and now they're dead. Aside from the mechanical functions, all the, all the, all the matter. All the material is still there in the body, all the molecules are still there, all the chemicals are still there, but the processes that our life and health are gone. And I went, holy cow, that is a question. And I didn't have an answer for him.
Dr. Eric Berg:Well you're asking some heavy questions there.
Jack Heald:I know and I'm you guys are, you guys have pushed the boundaries and Well, obviously you have this, this life force that's animating things.
Dr. Eric Berg:I mean you have. I mean it's fascinating when you look at it. When I talk about proteins, just proteins, enzymes you have these entire mechanical workers that are just fascinating. I mean there are enzymes that rotate, that act like pumps. They rotate the speed of a jet engine. I mean that's just blows my mind. You have proteins and enzymes that are mechanically repairing things. You have fruit freezers on your DNA strands that are scanning for errors and then going in there and fixing them. So obviously there's some fascinating, mysterious life going on in the body which is just like very interesting and wild, but I will say bringing back to earth when you look at.
Jack Heald:I realize that way out in outer space.
Dr. Eric Berg:Here, right, mitochondria?
Dr. Eric Berg:I think big misunderstanding, because you're going in, you're going in the mitochondria from this, this chemical factory, biochemical factory, but right, and then it goes, flows right into this other topic, which is physics, which is electrons.
Dr. Eric Berg:So you're you're extracting electrons from food to make literally batteries, which are what's called ATP, and the ATP is not really not a lot of, it's not even toward that much, even though your body makes enough ATP that literally is equal to your weight at every single day. So it's this fascinating biochemical process done with enzymes and things that then, and then we go right into this it's called the electron chain, transport or transport chain, where you get all these electrons that are now doing this whole other thing, and so you really need to know physics now, not just biochemistry when you're talking about a hundred. So it's confusing to people. But we do have a battery, this amazing electrical part of your mitochondria that you can look at some of those enzymes metabolomically and see if that's where the problem is. Well, I mean, as you know, like because most diseases are related to this mitochondria, I mean. So if you just can keep that thing healthy, you're going to be in pretty good shape.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Yeah, and I think it's a.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:You know it is a pretty interesting dichotomy and, and you know I continue to struggle with this because on the one level, you know it's clearly important, you know what's going on at that subcellular level, what the mitochondria are doing, and on the other level, you say you know if you just get out of the, you know if we just get out of our body's own way, if we just stop poisoning our bodies, our bodies, you know, haven't figured out, they know what to do and they, they, you know they are prone towards health.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:I guess is one of the things I've started to think about and realize. And we look at it as our bodies are, you know, destined for disease, right, is we have become the, the, the, the thinking these days, and, and you know, our role as medical practitioners is to fight off all these disease, right, and our role as medical practitioners should be to support the normal, healthy functioning of the body. And I think that's the shift that we really need to make. And that brings us back to, you know, paying attention to basic things like what you eat and what you do in a day.
Dr. Eric Berg:You know you like, you nailed it because it's the intention. Are we treating disease or are we? Are we actually trying to create health? Right, I mean, it's that simple. And so when you take, look at food, let's just take a look at what is the worst thing you could do for your health out of anything. I think it's.
Dr. Eric Berg:My guess is it's called ultra processed food, aka junk food. I don't know if there's anything other thing that was worse than that, but what is ultra processed food? It is processed food. They're literally are taking, they're starting out with corn or something like that, and they process it so much that it no longer resembles the original structure, the chemistry of that original food. They're basically taking life out of that food. So it is so dead. Even the bugs won't eat it. It has no, no shelf life. It'll stay on there in the box and that's what we're putting in our bodies. Was it 67% of all the calories, with? Kids are eating ultra processed foods.
Dr. Eric Berg:So we have a combination of not just sugar but synthetic sugars. We have synthetic starches. I just did a deep dive into maltodextrin, which, by the way, is spectral stress. It's not even classified as a sugar. Multiduction is a synthetic starch made from corn. It has the glycemic index can literally go up to 185. So if we just compare that to glucose, I mean it's like way worse than glucose, which is a sugar, but it's a starch and it can be. It's put into low-carb foods. It's put into what is it no? Foods that are like healthy foods and foods that are gluten-free. I'm like, are you kidding me? So it's a filler and it's like it's like $15 billion a year business and that's one ingredient of this ultra-processed food. And then, of course, you have the seed oils, right. So now we're going to, we're putting this in our body. We're literally trying to create health by giving it something dead, really dead. I don't think you can do that.
Jack Heald:That's a cool way to think about it. We're trying to create health, sustain life, by doing something really dead, and that leads me to think about all right, when I'm eating meat, specifically beef, I'm eating. I mean, I very well could be eating something that was alive with if I had a butcher available two hours ago. I could be eating the muscle of an animal that was mooing two hours ago. It's very, very, very much closer to what it was when it was living. So that's a way I think about what it is I'm eating, like just how close to alive is this thing I'm sticking in my mouth? And that simplifies it for me, which is not to say I don't love me a good Dorito every now and then, but it's become a whole lot easier to turn away from it than it.
Dr. Eric Berg:And when you eat a Dorito, it's really hard to just eat one because it's like it leaves this emptiness. It's so delicious, but it leaves this emptiness because there's nothing in there for your brain to go. I feel satisfied. I used to have the big jumbo bags and I would down, without even thinking twice, a huge bag. Yeah, so, thus the ulcers that I developed.
Jack Heald:But wow, so I had a weird experience here just in the last couple of months. I eat pretty well thanks to being the co-host of Phil's show. I feel terrible if I have crappy food, but I had. I think my wife broke down and bought a bag of some kind of chip that I would never eat anymore, but she was gone and I was alone. There was a football game on and I ate probably a third of that bag of chips.
Jack Heald:Back in the day. That would have just been. It would have been. I would have loved every moment of it. And once when I was done stuffing my face with that stuff, I realized I feel terrible. That was not fun, I was, it was mindless, it was just it was gross. It was kind of helpful in some ways to remind myself how bad this stuff is, but it was also quite the interesting experience to realize I used to do this all the time and was not aware how crappy it made me feel. Right, maybe I just felt crappy all the time and it didn't change it. So, oh gee, there's so many places I want to go here, phil.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Unfortunately, that's all too common and experienced, that people don't realize how bad they actually feel because it's just the way they feel. And it's only when you change your diet and change your lifestyle and you do start to feel how you're supposed to feel that you can then recognize how bad you felt back then.
Dr. Eric Berg:Yeah, it's like a normal. You get used to this normal. I mean, the neighbor just decided he got sick and he says what should I do? And I said one thing. I said just stop drinking all the sodas. Well, that was such a big change for him. That was like to me. I'm like well, of course, but for him it was the biggest thing. He says, well, I feel so much better. I said, wow, that's interesting. So I'm like I think we're so used to feeling bad that we don't know what you get on the ketogenic diet or a low carb diet and then you start feeling better.
Dr. Eric Berg:I don't know if you ever heard of the story, doc, that I had this person reach out to me. They were suicidal, severe depression. So he decided to end his life by starving himself in his room. So he locked himself in his room. I'm just going to not eat or drink for three or you know, until I die. Third day of fasting he started to feel really good, almost like wow, I just feel wonderful and I'm happy and I'm. What's going on? This is weird. He starts going on the internet, find, look, oh, I was fasting. What's that? He's on my channel, you know. He starts learning all about fasting and apparently now he has a job changed his life. But he had no idea that that depression was not normal. He didn't know that anxiety and the anger was. He just thought it was just normal. It has to be like that. So you can imagine how many people are in that same. They're stuck in that trap.
Jack Heald:This is cool and almost like the summary episode of what the stay off my operating table podcast is all about. I realize we could go really deep into a lot of details, but this is just kind of like headlines, headlines, headlines. This is, this is why we're here, this is why we're doing this. Is this metabolic? Remind me of the name of the, the.
Dr. Eric Berg:My wife says metabolone, but it's metabolomics.
Jack Heald:Metabolomics are their places and people that a can, that Joe six back here can say, hey, I want to do this. And then people who can read it? Is that even an appropriate question to ask at?
Dr. Eric Berg:this point. It's just several, several companies that are doing it, but they're. I found someone in Greece that has also. They have a fairly big clinic, and what I like about this doc is that not only does he have an MD and PhD in metabolomics, but he's also in Italy and he's also creating a course, that he's converting it to English, and I was so impressed when I had my evaluations though you know, I'm I'm just like I'm picking his brain because he knows it and he, he really is.
Dr. Eric Berg:Um, yeah, I'm sure there's other people that really know it as well, but I just found someone that um can actually make it real and understand he's. He's been doing it for quite some time and he has close to over 50,000 people he's done it on, so that's helpful. And he also found that some of the normals, or even metabolic testing, are off. So he created his. He used certain um biologists and biochemists, um, with some of his research he did to figure out the normals because, uh, some of the normals were based on sick people that are. So he, he has a really good system and I, I really, um, I would like to. I keep encouraging him to complete that course so other docs can start learning it in in English. So, uh, I can definitely share uh his website on the description if people want to get more information.
Jack Heald:But um there's other companies that do it. Looked at, looked at them, yet Folks are definitely going to want to know.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Um, one other um, one other topic I wanted to touch on, uh before we wrap up. Uh, that you've you've uh focused on as well. I think is important to discuss is is you know that food quality uh aspect and, and you know, uh we talk about, you know, keto, low carb, carnivore diets, Um, but even within that, um, you know, there there are certainly better ways that we can be raising our food, uh and growing our food, and uh wanted to. I know that's another topic that you've been interested in and and become interested in Uh, so let's uh, let's talk a little bit about that before we wrap up.
Dr. Eric Berg:Yeah, I was. I was, I went to Europe and, uh, I just noticed that the food quality is so much better. And of course you go to the restaurant and I'm like where, where do you get your food from they? They work with like 60 different farms, so and then I want to go to other farms, so I started looking at the farm. So, to make a long story short, um, I, I have a farm, I live on a farm and I grow all my food.
Dr. Eric Berg:And um, so what's interesting is I sent, um, I, we did metabolic testing on the, our beef to look at the muscle of that, of that that animal. And um, about six months later, uh, the researcher called me up and says, well, because I entered into the study, and he goes what are you doing? I said, what do you mean? He goes, look at the, look at this. And uh, if you look at the comparison with the amount of I mean not just, uh, metabolic biomarkers for health, but also phytonutrients, I'm talking plant-based chemicals, polyphenols, which are in plants, it's in the beef I mean I'm like what? That's wild. I never even thought that was possible, but that's what's in there, like three times higher than any other farm in the United States and he says what are you doing different? Well, first of all, I didn't know at first, but, um, we're at 3000 feet above sea level, so we have uh, more, more, um stress for plants that have to survive because they're in higher, less, less oxygen. So the body develops, adapts to that and it develops all sorts of um positive things. It's like a formatic effect of adding more stress. And, plus, there's nothing flat, there's just mountains up and down. So these cattle get a lot of exercise and you know, of course it's grass fed, grass finished. But, basically, said you, you have, this meat is of an athlete, a top athlete, because if you compare the grain fed beef you're dealing with uh, almost close to being diabetic, horrible than just diabetic meat. So, yeah, we haven't proven this yet, but I think if you eat healthier animals, I think you might be healthier, um, but so where do you, where do you get this? Uh, you, you know, if you go to farmers markets and you can also online and look for a certain you know, like you, as wellness meats is a good one, where you get a chance to see more transparency of who's growing these, this food, you know real soils and um, great, great environment.
Dr. Eric Berg:I mean that that's really, I think, um, something I'm really interested in, because when people come to my farm and they I give them this meat, they just like they, just they don't even talk to like what, what is this? And they're like wow, this is amazing. I feel so good when I eat this. So, um, I'm getting used to, I'm I'm coming to spoiled, but when I go anywhere else, I'm like I can't even, can't even eat that. But I think we get so used to eating like just regular food.
Dr. Eric Berg:But there's different levels to take your health, you know, and I'm kind of trying to experiment with the higher level quality of food and to do that, I'm growing it myself. So we have, we have pigs, different types of pigs, we have goats, sheep, cattle, chickens, and so, um, yeah, we're doing it all and experimenting and just, uh, testing things, sending things to the lab. We also and I just sent some venison in and from deer meat and I just wanted to learn all about it and find out, um, how to actually grow food health here, cause the problem is the poor farmer has this as a hard time feeding these pigs certain food. So we're looking at alternative feeds, experimenting on that right now and, um, so we could figure out.
Dr. Eric Berg:What can you actually feed an animal, especially even to get eggs, that's, that are not too high in the Omega six fatty acids, because they use grains and the grains are high in Omega six. So there are, um, like, no corn, no soy grains that you can feed these chickens. So that's one thing we're doing as well. And I have a whole additional barn where I'm, um, I'm sprouting like barley now and I'm feeding that to the chickens and they love it. They it's like crack, they just eat it all up. So, and it's in the wintertime, so they're just eating these little sprouted barley um plants and they love it.
Jack Heald:Plus you're, plus you've got the, the, the starts for a whiskey distillery.
Dr. Eric Berg:I do that on the side as well, so I can do you now Rats yeah. Those days, um those days are over for me.
Jack Heald:Well, I understand, um, I'm trying to figure out which vices I can hold on to, and it seems like whiskey is, uh, uh, I read somewhere that whiskey is is by far the best antiseptic that mankind has ever invented. Um, and I choose to believe that. So yeah, it'll clean you right out.
Dr. Eric Berg:Sterilize you.
Jack Heald:Phil, you got to help me out here because we cannot have the show on that. On that note.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:No, I think this has been a great discussion and, um, you know, again, just applaud all the amazing work that, uh, that Eric's been doing and, uh, getting this message out, uh, in a way that obviously resonates with people, um, you know, to, to see the evidence of his audience growing worldwide, uh. So, uh, you know not that anyone's going to have any trouble finding you, uh, and probably has already found you, but if there is someone out there who hasn't come across you, where, where should they start?
Dr. Eric Berg:uh, on all your I've talked to Dr Berg on YouTube, or you can go to drbergcom and um and then just watch videos. That's I do a video a day, um, because I have not all this spare time and I'm being very sarcastic. But uh, so I was thinking, yeah, and it's really really nice to um that you, as a vascular surgeon, is are doing this education, educating people. I mean, if I don't know, if I had any heart problems, I would just love to go to someone like you because it's like wow, you're. You're not just doing the surgery, you're educating people on how to prevent the next. You know these problems. So I think that is I want to applaud you for that. That's like I wish more doctors are doing what you're doing. So well done, thank you.
Dr. Philip Ovadia:Thank you.
Jack Heald:All right, dr Bergcom will make sure. Uh, all the all, the all. The ways to connect are in the show notes. This has been a good one. It's been fun. Thanks, phil, it's been a good time. Dr Berg, thanks for being with us. Thank you Appreciate it. Have a good one. This is the stay off my operating table podcast. We'll talk to you guys next time.