#13 - How Does a Low-Carb Lifestyle Affect Children 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

children, ketosis, kids, seed oils, low carbohydrate diet, celiac disease, metabolic, eat, gluten, heartburn, childhood epilepsy, ultimately, ketogenic diet, metabolically healthy, raised, life, podcast, astronomical rates, carbohydrate, guess 

SPEAKERS 

Jack Heald, Dr. Philip Ovadia 

 Jack Heald  00:00 

All right, we're back. Stay off my operating table with Dr. Philip Aveda Dr. of adea, you have stuffed my head with a lot of good science, good, objective realities about taking care of our bodies keeping metabolically healthy studies, all the stuff that I guess a scientist would be interested in. One of the things that we haven't talked about at all, you're a family, man, you've got a wife, you've got a couple of kids. You were obese for I'm guessing most of your marriage for most of the lives of your kids, how has this change in, in how you eat? How has it affected your family? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  00:56 

Great to be back, Jack. And I think this is a good topic for us to cover. So I think that, you know, first of all, I guess I'll go back and say that, you know, my wife was actually the start of this whole journey for me. We had been, you know, married that as you said, I was obese, you know, when I met her, and got probably more obese during the early part of our marriage. And then my wife had our children. And two years apart, she had our daughters, and, you know, after throughout the pregnancies, but but noticeably after the pregnancies. She had very bad heartburn all the time, and was taking a lot of medications. And she saw one of her, you know, health care practitioners. And it was suggested that she should try going gluten free. And so she came home, and she told me, you know, that she had seen this person, and they suggested going gluten free. And I said, Well, you know, that sounds kind of crazy, you know, you don't have celiac disease. But I said, if you want to try it, you know, I'll certainly try it with you. And so that that was the first sort of, you know, really dietary change that we we made together, we went gluten free. And this was back in 2015 or so. So they didn't have a lot of the gluten free products that are so common these days, you know, so basically, we eliminated bread, we eliminated pasta. And we both noticed pretty significant improvements, her heartburn got a lot better pretty quickly. And I just noticed that I felt better, my energy level was better. I wasn't getting as tired in the afternoons as I, you know, typically would, and I started, you know, I lost a little bit of weight, but not anything, you know, shocking or really noticeable? And, you know, so we just did that. And I didn't really think much about it, you know, in the back of my mind was sort of that question as to, you know, why did this do anything, you know, when neither of us had, you know, celiac disease that we knew about. And that's all I knew about gluten, you know, the gluten cause celiac disease. And then ultimately, you know, and I've told the story before, you know, I came across Gary Taubes, and went low carb and learned all about metabolic health. From there, so my wife really started the journey. And my wife has largely been, you know, on the same journey with me, she has maintained a low carbohydrate diet in various forms. for, you know, the past five or six years as I have, it has helped her lose weight, overcome her, you know, guest or esophageal reflux disease and her bad heartburn, and she's happy to help me, you know, to maintain it as well. Our children are now eight and 10 years old, at the time that we're recording this and we really don't, you know, in any way force, low carbohydrate or, you know, certainly not a carnivore diet on them. I would say they're pretty normal kids in the house, they eat a low carbohydrate diet because that's what we that's what you have, right? Yeah. And they see you know, kids, as you know, are very good at picking up on you know, what their parents are doing. So when we go to restaurants routinely, they now order their hamburgers without buns you know, very routinely and and you know, they're happy to do that. That's how they like doing it. My kids love steak. You know, when I say whenever we ask them, you know, where do you want to go out to dinner tonight if we're going out for a special meal or something? The answer is always a steak house. You know, one of the steak houses that we go to so they love steak, they love seafood, and you know so again, but They go to birthday parties, they eat the pizza, they eat the cake. And you know, they're now old enough to start to realize that sometimes when they eat that stuff, they don't feel so good afterwards. And so it's just sort of naturally I would say, influencing them without, you know, having to, you know, kind of forces or be real strict about it. And I think, you know, I'm hopeful that as they continue to get older, you know, that will be a positive influence. The other thing they certainly notice is that, you know, we still have, you know, the pictures from our wedding and from when they were really young around the house, and they always comment, they're like, daddy was much bigger back then. And I'm like, you're right. And, you know, I talked to him, I say, this is, you know, it is because of how I was eating, then, and this is how I eat now. And and you see, you know, how much healthier daddy looks? And oh, you know, honestly, I say, you know, I'm not doing any of this for me to, you know, I'm doing this for them, you know, everything I do in my business, you know, and trying to get this messaging out about, you know, metabolic health is really, you know, yes, I want to help the people that I'm helping directly, but what I really want to do is help their children, you know, and the generations that come after them avoid the problems that we have gotten into as a society, you know, we know that childhood obesity rates are at astronomical rates, and, and getting worse every day. And that is the problem we ultimately need to solve. You know, so I'm very hopeful that by doing this, you know, by promoting metabolic health, to the parents, it's going to influence the children of my club, you know, of my rights, and the people that listen to this podcast, so that they don't have the same health struggles, you know, that that people today are going through? 

Jack Heald  06:59 

Well, I guess you also have all the benefits of just being somebody who has energy. I know, being the parent of children, especially the small would you say, eight and 10? Correct? Yeah, that's a high demand age. That all by itself is bound to make a difference in, in family life. So yeah, right. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  07:25 

I, I, you know, when they were very young, and before, you know, I had made these changes, I can certainly think back to times that I was, you know, too tired to do the things with them, you know, I couldn't, you know, physically keep up with them a lot of times, you know, now, now I can, and, you know, my plan is to be able to, you know, again, that is a big motivating factor for me. Yeah, you know, is able to do that through my life, you know, I still oftentimes will carry my 10 year old around the house, and, and, you know, my wife always says, Well, at some point, you're not going to be able to, you know, do that anymore. And I said, My goal is to be able to do that for my entire life. Yeah, you know, that, that I will remain strong enough and vibrant enough, you know, to continue to, you know, pick up my girls whenever they want to be picked up. And then ultimately, you know, looking down the line picking up their children as well. 

Jack Heald  08:24 

Oh, my goodness, I'm thinking about my my oldest son's my first set of grandkids, my oldest son's kids, I could probably pick up the, the oldest one. Because he's, he's smaller than normal. Number two is going to be a really, really big kid, he's closing in on on this, I'm not gonna be able to pick him up. And I'm not sure there's any metabolic thing I could do about that. But maybe that would be a good goal, be able to carry Eli around for for the rest of his life. Okay, I'm going way off way off base now. All right, well, I appreciate you just given us a little bit of a peek there into how it affects the family. It's, it's good to know that you're that how the kids respond without actually. I guess prohibiting them from eating certain things. You're seeing habits be built? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  09:25 

Yeah. Ultimately, I think, you know, that's another common question that I get asked, you know, how do I, how do I make my kids do this? And my answer is, is exactly what I said, you know, don't make your kids do anything, just model the behavior, and they're going to see the benefits, and they're going to want to do it. And, you know, 

Jack Heald  09:46 

I've got a question about the difference between a child's metabolism and a post adolescent metabolism. I'm sure that Ideally, it would make sense to, to, to have ultra healthy eating habits our whole lives. I'm wondering if, you know, at least prior to, to the onset of puberty if if there's a difference in, in how our bodies process foods, like is it less important for for children to be? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  10:28 

Yeah, so, you know, well, no, I certainly don't think it's less important for kids to eat healthy. You know, when we look specifically at low carbohydrate diets, so the ketogenic diet was originally described as a treatment strategy for drug resistant are really actually pre drugs for childhood epilepsy for seizure disorder. And it was discovered that eliminating carbohydrates and getting kids into ketosis or you know, low levels of carbohydrate with high levels of fat, getting children into ketosis helped with Cesar seizure control. You know, prior to having effective you know, pharmaceutical treatment for, for seizures for epilepsy. When you look at those children who were raised on a ketogenic diet, they they do very well, with one caution that, you know, there was some, some of the studies of those children have shown some, perhaps, you know, shorter stature, and they don't develop as well physically, but realize that the ketogenic diet, as used for childhood epilepsy is actually a low protein diet as well. So that is probably, you know, a big factor there. So all of the evidence that we have seems to, you know, I would say that I don't really have any reason to think that, you know, low carb diets are dangerous for children. I think metabolic health is very important for children as as it is for adults. But I do think children have more leeway, you know, children are growing, and they are burning, you know, a lot of energy. They're very active, and they're growing. So that all takes energy. So, you know, they probably can consume a higher level of carbohydrate and still remain in ketosis. Hmm. Compared to adults, we also know that children very quickly go into ketosis. So, you know, if you're actually measuring ketone levels, you know, in people, we know, for instance, that children, you know, even with an overnight fast, you know, just not eating, you know, when they're sleeping, will will oftentimes go into ketosis. Wow. Whereas adults, you know, it oftentimes will take a longer period of time. And the, the damage that is done with poor metabolic health is certainly a cumulative thing. So in the end, you know, I think that children have more leeway. But I think it is very important, you know, if for nothing else, we're establishing those eating habits that are going to carry into adulthood. And unfortunately, you know, raising our children on, you know, highly processed diets with all of the extra sugar and the vegetable and seed oils, and all of that is really just getting them addicted to these substances. You know, it's clear that there's an addictive component to sugar. It's clear that vegetable and seed oils are damaging to our cellular metabolism. And unfortunately, when you look at, you know, infant formulas, you know, for infants who are not breastfed and are raised on formula, they contain their very high carbohydrate, and the fats that are in them are largely you know, processed vegetable and seed oils, unfortunately. And I think that is probably part of the reason that we are seeing worsening and worsening obesity at younger and younger ages. We're literally starting them off on the wrong foot, you know, right from the get go these days. 

Jack Heald  14:15 

Gotcha. All right, well, wow. Another mind blower. And I mean that literally, I, I actually feel like I know more about this than the than the typical layman. And I, the depth and breadth of my ignorance is being exposed in these conversations. So I am really I personally am really grateful for the opportunity to talk with you about these things. All right. Well, this is the stay off my operating table podcast with Dr. Philip Aveda. I'm your host, Jack Heald. Please be sure to subscribe so you get notified when we update and issue a new podcast. These are coming out about twice a week right now and we will talk to you next Time