133-AMA with Mike Vera

Are you practicing medicine based on outdated teachings? Welcome to an episode that boldly challenges entrenched beliefs in the medical field and brings to light the dynamic nature of medical research. 

We'll take a deep dive into Alzheimer's disease, and its intriguing links to metabolic abnormalities. Shifting our focus from the traditional amyloid and plaque model, we'll explore the theory of Alzheimer's as a form of diabetes - termed as type 3 diabetes. Join us as we explore the potential benefits of ketogenic diets and exogenous ketones in managing Alzheimer's, and ponder on the ongoing debate around sugar and refined carbohydrates. We'll also uncover the concept of insulin resistance and its relation to type 2 diabetes, while debunking the misconception that all calories are equal. 

We're delighted to have Chris Palmer, an esteemed psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School, who shares his success in using a ketogenic diet to treat patients with psychiatric conditions. He provides valuable insights into the controversial carnivore diet and the importance of avoiding harmful food components. We wrap up by addressing challenges faced by doctors for speaking out against the establishment, and highlight the significant role health coaches play in implementing lifestyle changes. Whether you're a medical student, a healthcare professional, or a health-conscious individual, this episode is bound to provide thought-provoking insights. Tune in to unlearn the lies, and relearn the truth about health and wellness.

ReverseAgingRevolution Summit June 20-22, 2024 https://robertlufkinmdcom.ontralink.com/t?orid=49&opid=2

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Path of Longevity Show, and I'm your host, dr Robert Lufkin, and I've joined by my co-host, dr Steven Sitteroff. I'm excited to announce that our long-awaited book Lies I Taught in Medical School will finally be published by Ben Bella Books and distributed through Penguin Random House. This is a publishing powerhouse that has delivered such masterpieces as Ben Beekman's why we Get Sick, rick Johnson's Nature Wants Us to Be Sick and, most recently, chris Palmer's Brain Energy. I don't know how I got included with these authors who, frankly, are all heroes of mine, but I'm honored. You can download a free sample chapter of the book on my website, or even pre-order a hard copy if you'd like. If you are enjoying this program, please hit that subscribe button or, even better, leave a review. Your support makes it possible for us to create the quality programming that we're continually striving for. Also, let us know if there is a certain topic that you would like to see covered or a particular guest that you would like to hear from. And now please enjoy today's program.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Dr Robert Lufkin, thank you so much for being here and I've got to say, out of all the books that I've ever read, which is a lot, yours has to be one of the coolest titles I have seen. And Lies I Taught in Medical School. So how do you even get to a point where you're teaching lies?

Speaker 1: 1:46

That's a great question.

Speaker 1: 1:47

I mean, the title is obviously designed to get people's attention and even click bait sort of thing, but it underscores a basic principle that a lot of people don't know or a lot of people forget, even in the medical school business, and that is that there's a famous quote that one of the leaders in medicine once said, and that was 50% of what we learn or what we're taught in medical school within five years is either incorrect or dead wrong, and the problem is we don't know which half, and that it just highlights the fact that medicine is changing rapidly.

Speaker 1: 2:34

Every year it changes and unless we as healthcare professionals engage in the process of the science and staying up on things, it's very easy to get left behind. Especially modern medicine has a lot of silos that different people specialize in, so it's even easier to lose track of what's going on outside your silo. And that happened to me and it's happening to a lot of my colleagues. And that's the point of this book is just to underscore some things that have changed and some lies that I used to teach, and sadly, some of my colleagues are still teaching at leading medical schools.

Speaker 2: 3:21

That's a good point, cause a lot of these lies are still being propagated and that can make things confusing for the average person who does not have a background in medicine to know what's right when it comes to their health. And I'd like to get into some of that, but first, what woke you up to these lies and that sort of thing?

Speaker 1: 3:43

Well, like so many people who've become interested in this space, I had a personal event that sort of drove me out of self-interest to learn these things. I, after being a professor for many years and teaching in medical schools and everything, I suddenly came down with four chronic diseases that the people get. In fact my father even had them but and he died of them. But he was in his, he was almost 90 when he died and at the time I came down with him, I still had, I had young children who weren't even in elementary school. So you know that wasn't gonna end well. So I, you know, out of really literally self-interest, I began going back. Well, first I went to my doctors and they said, hey, you know, you've got these things, no problem, we'll prescribe you medicines. And they did. They prescribed me a medicine, four different medicines for each one, which I began taking. But also I simultaneously began looking at things and looking at the research. The latest research that I wasn't aware of and that many of my colleagues weren't aware of. That indicated that there were things that I could do with my lifestyle that would change these. And, long story short, I implemented these changes, looking at nutrition, sleep, diet, exercise, and, lo and behold, I went back to my doctors and they go what? What did you do? You know what happened. You know you. Basically you've reversed these diseases, they've gone away, you don't need these pills anymore. And I was deep prescribed off all the pills and I still follow the lifestyle techniques that I adopted then.

Speaker 1: 5:32

And the purposes of this book is just to help people understand the possibilities of what they can do with lifestyle and also to educate people, and also you can hand the book to your doctor if you want. It does have a lot of references, so when I say something, I include the original research paper and the reference there, because it's always, you know, it's always important to document and support what we say. Like I didn't discover. All the smarter people than I have been doing the research and they've been writing about it, and all I did was gather the research, like we should all do, and examine the evidence and then make a decision. You know, and some people will disagree intelligent people can agree to disagree on things, but at least this is a point of view that I think deserves listening to.

Speaker 2: 6:24

Definitely, and I think, from what I've read so far and from the stuff you put out on social media, I think a lot of the points that you make are very important for people to hear and maybe even have the possibility to wake some people up who are not. And, of course, here on Healthy and Wake Podcast, that's what we're all about, and there does seem to be two different realities playing out at the same time, where, on one hand, you have these mainstream doctors who are immersed in the lies and you have people who are outside of that mainstream world, who you know. Some of them are doctors like yourself, who have seen the other side. Some of them are people who are not doctors, who've had similar experiences to you, who, hey, I listened to my doctors and I got worse or not better, and then I changed my lifestyle and I got better. Why aren't more doctors talking about this? What do you think it is that contributes to this disparity? You know this difference between these two realities that are playing out.

Speaker 1: 7:25

Well, let me clarify one thing, too, that I have to admit that I am a mainstream doctor. I was and I still am. My entire career has been, as I have been or am still, a professor at two of the top medical schools in the world, and I've spent my life really not only practicing medicine, but also I have an extensive research lab that's received millions of dollars in grants from the federal government, from the NIH, as well as from pharmaceutical companies, as well as from equipment manufacturers, and also I enjoy teaching residents and doctors in training and other healthcare professionals. So I am literally the establishment on this. So I'm speaking from the ivory tower, and this was really a wake-up call for me. But anyway, to your question why aren't more people aware of it?

Speaker 1: 8:24

I think well, first of all, it's just a matter of time. There's a flow of research. 7,000 papers a day come out in medical research. It's impossible for any single person to keep up with them. And then, as I alluded to earlier, those of us in medicine, but even more so in medical school areas.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Once you specialize, everyone is very narrow in a silo.

Speaker 1: 8:52

There may be an orthopedic surgeon who only by necessity has to focus on the orthopedic literature, and you may have an endocrinologist who looks at the diabetes literature but doesn't necessarily see the Alzheimer's literature and notice that the same people who get diabetes get Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 1: 9:13

And what we're talking about here is there's links that occur between these four diseases that I had, that I had no idea they were related and that the same common lifestyle and, ultimately, metabolic factors that were affecting me and affect most adult Americans were driving all four of these diseases. So there's this issue of just ignorance outside of my lane where whatever lane, that is as a medical specialist. And then, secondly, there's a darker side to it. There are perverse financial incentives that strongly motivate people to do things, and some of this may be unconscious motivation, that may be at an even unconscious level. I don't think anybody gets up at the beginning of the day and says I'm going to go do things that hurt people or that make them unhealthy, but in fact that's what's happening by some of the strategies that are being employed today.

Speaker 2: 10:21

I gotta say, for a self-proclaimed mainstream doctor, you are saying a lot of things that are challenging the status quo At least, it seems that way to me, and I appreciate you speaking out on these things. I think we need people like you and to get a little more specific into the lies and some of maybe the misconceptions within health and medicine. You just mentioned Alzheimer's and for maybe the past few years now, I've heard this idea that Alzheimer's is like a type 3 diabetes, and is there any truth to that sort of thing?

Speaker 1: 11:02

Yeah, let me just preface Alzheimer's disease. Unlike the other chronic diseases that we talk about in the book cancer, heart disease, stroke, the main killers, diabetes Cancer is unique in that it represents really the ultimate failure of the healthcare research system. Because, if you think about it, we've been spending literally decades on research, with unlimited amounts of funds for Alzheimer's research, and now, after all this time, we still don't have a single pharmaceutical intervention from the main drug companies that have any significant effect on Alzheimer's disease. And so it makes us question the underlying models for Alzheimer's disease, the idea that there's amyloid, plaque and neurofibrillary tangles. They're certainly there. The associated question is are these causal? And for many years these dominated the research interest targeting those. And if we fix the amyloid we'll fix the Alzheimer's. But this lack of success and there's been some questionable scientific behavior with some articles recently that calls this into question. But basically it appears now and there's a growing body of evidence, a champion by such luminaries as Dale Bredesen, who's written the New York Times bestseller called the End of Alzheimer's. He's a basic research scientist, md, who spent his whole career doing Alzheimer's research, and he and others following him are, I believe, that Alzheimer's disease is really. It's not a single thing, but it's caused by a whole symphony of things and, for example, one person had Alzheimer's disease a high functioning lawyer and he suddenly got memory loss. They said, okay, you got Alzheimer's disease too bad. And anyway, long story short, he had just gone to a tropical country and it turns out he'd gotten a parasite infection and when he was treated for the parasite infection the brain fog went away and so did his Alzheimer's diagnosis. We can get similar effects with vitamin D. It's been linked with Lyme disease can present with brain fog. Oven could present with brain fog and types of memory loss that can mimic Alzheimer's disease. But to your point, metabolic abnormality, specifically glucose metabolism, are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. That's how it's diagnosed. On a PET scan, a positron emission tomograph is, we see abnormal glucose metabolism in the brain. So yeah, famously now, due to this strong association with type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, it's been referred to as type 3 diabetes just because the high rate of people who get this, and they're interesting.

Speaker 1: 14:14

One person, Kara Fitzgerald, who is a protege of Dale Bredesen, runs Alzheimer's disease nursing home. She's a naturopathic physician there, but her nursing homes are unusual in that, unlike most Alzheimer's nursing homes. Her goal is to basically fix the patients and let them go home afterwards, and she does it by a number of different strategies. It doesn't work for everyone, but one strategy she employs is a ketogenic diet, which is a very low carb diet that reverses type 2 diabetes in many cases and, interestingly, with the Alzheimer's patients, it can have dramatic effects. I spoke with her recently and I said Heather, how do you know the? How do you? You put all your patients, anybody who comes into her nursing homes, her Alzheimer's nursing homes, everyone gets on ketogenic diets. It's just the only food they serve. They serve ice cream or cake and that sort of thing.

Speaker 1: 15:19

I said how do you know it works? Is there any evidence for it? And she goes. Well, yeah, every once in a while there's a dramatic case like Mr Jones here. When he's in ketosis he recognizes all his grandchildren and gives them a big hug when they come in the room and smiles, but we can tell when he begins eating junk food or if he gets out of ketosis, which is the metabolic state that that the nutrition drives when he gets out of ketosis. When the grandchildren walk in the room, he doesn't even recognize him and just walks away because the changes in his brain kind of revert back to whatever the memory loss that was before, and that's a. That's a very dramatic case and ketogenic diets don't work for everyone in Alzheimer's disease but given the fact that nothing else works, I mean I mean there's no reason everyone shouldn't try at least try a ketogenic diet for that.

Speaker 2: 16:19

Yeah, that's super interesting and I wonder. I would imagine that that benefit or the improvement is a result of the change in lifestyle and diet. But I definitely be curious to see some studies on exogenous ketones implemented in people who don't change their diet at all. I think that'd just be interesting to see.

Speaker 1: 16:40

Yeah, there's that famous story of. She was a pediatric neurologist, mary Kelly I think, and her husband tragically came down with Alzheimer's disease and his amokas scores, which is his mental status exam, were very poor. He could no longer function well. But she had done reading about the use of exogenous ketones in her pediatric patients for seizures and other things. So she basically took a coconut, a derivative of coconuts that was medium chain exogenous ketones, yeah and had her husband take it and within literally overnight his mental status cleared and he was able to return to normal function and it dramatically slowed the progression of his Alzheimer's disease, which he sadly eventually succumbed to. But she's written a book about it and she has a new book coming out about it. So, yeah, exogenous ketones are another approach if people don't want to tackle a ketogenic diet which for some people they struggle with.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Interesting man. I have so many questions on that, but I don't want to make this whole episode about just that.

Speaker 2: 18:00

So when it like. So, whether we're talking about Alzheimer's or diabetes and these types of conditions that can develop, there's so much confusion out there about even something as simple as sugar. There are some people out there saying sugar is the devil, stay away from it at all costs. Then you have people on the flip side, like maybe Dr Lane Norton I don't know if you're familiar with him, he's probably one of the biggest people in the space is basically challenging. You know, oh, you don't have to stay away from sugar. You can definitely have plenty of it and be okay if it meets your macros. A calorie is just a calorie, and so there is so much confusion, even for a lot of health professionals. So how do we make sense of this?

Speaker 1: 18:45

Yeah, I mean, obviously intelligent people can agree to disagree and from my book I disagree that a calorie is just a calorie. But specifically the question about sugar and refined carbohydrates some people can tolerate it well and it does less harm to them. Personally, I think sugar and carbohydrates do certain things on a basic metabolic level. Aside from the glycation of the red blood cells and the damage there, they also turn up a basic protein called mTOR and they turn mTOR on, which causes hyperfunction, which causes aging and, I believe, a lot of the chronic diseases, the main killers that determine our longevity. So for those reasons I recommend not consuming a lot of sugar, a lot of carbohydrates. The other factor is these sugar and carbohydrates are a risk for type 2 diabetes and people with type 2 diabetes should definitely not consume those. And type 2 diabetes is diagnosed, among other ways, either with a glucose level or an HA1C level. I don't know if you've talked about that with your audience. It's a blood test that just measures glucose damage to the red blood cells and above a certain point, above a certain percentage. If it goes up past a certain percentage, then your doctor says okay, you're now a type 2 diabetic, I can charge for this visit. I can prescribe metformin, I can prescribe insulin, et cetera. It sort of activates the whole healthcare chain. The problem is and something I wasn't aware of before before I always thought of type 2 diabetes is something you either get or you don't get. You know, and maybe you get it because your parents or you know, but you either have it or you don't. And type 2 diabetes, by the way is is is an epidemic in our country and in the world. There's never before in the history of the world have we seen so many people with type 2 diabetes now approaching 50% of people with pre diabetes or diabetes and it drives Alzheimer's disease, cancer, amputations, blindness, renal failure, all all these things. So it's not a good thing to have.

Speaker 1: 21:13

But the interesting thing with about type 2 diabetes is this marker for type 2 diabetes is diagnostic switch the HA1C levels with the average population. A study came out recently looking at large numbers of adults who don't have diabetes, who are otherwise normal adults, and their HA1C level increases over time with age. So the older they get, the higher their HA1C levels. And what that means is, if you think about it, ha1c levels increasing. Eventually you're going to cross a number 6.5% and be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Speaker 1: 21:52

So what it made me think differently about type 2 diabetes, it's that that most of us maybe not all of us, but on the average our HA1C levels are increasing, so most of us are on a path to type 2 diabetes. And what does that mean? It means, if we live long enough. It's sort of like gray hair If, if I don't die of something else, I will get gray hair and I'll get even more wrinkles than I already have.

Speaker 1: 22:19

So now, the way I think about type 2 diabetes is, for for many people, perhaps even the majority of people insulin resistance, which, which is another name for type 2 diabetes, and the type 2 diabetes itself are an age related condition that we're all on the path to. So what's the implication for that? It's for me, I take that to mean that, even though my HA1C level is now below the diabetic threshold, but for me and and anyone that I can talk to, I recommend thinking of yourself as on the path to diabetes and avoiding the drugs that are the foods that cause diabetes sugar and refined carbohydrates, as well as seed oils and some other things. But sorry for the long winded answer there.

Speaker 2: 23:08

No, don't be sorry, that was great, and I was thinking about this idea of a calorie is just a calorie, which was in the beginning of that, and it is something I think about a lot because, if you're going to be super technical, a calorie is a calorie, just like an inches, an inch or a mile as a mile. But I think when people say that me included I think we mean there's something deeper there. When we say that sort of thing and I'd love to hear your take on on this I actually thought of this last night when, when it comes to a calorie is just a calorie. This might sound totally dumb and if it does, I'll just cut it out.

Speaker 2: 23:47

But let's say you have one person on the left. They're eating an apple. It's a whole, natural, real apple. Then on the other side, on the right, you have somebody who's eating a chemically broken down apple, so it's a plate with fiber, with sugar, with everything else that constitutes an apple, just completely segmented. Just by intuition and critical thinking alone, I would think that the body would not respond the same way to that broken down apple, even though technically would have the same amount of calories Really, because it's just the same apple, broken down. Does that make any sense at all?

Speaker 1: 24:27

Yeah, and actually people have done studies with that literally a very similar experiment, where they take an apple and people eat the apple and they look for a glucose spike which indicates the amount of glucose from the apple in your bloodstream over time. Then they take that apple and they take another apple the same size and they crush it and make apple sauce out of it. Then the person consumes the apple sauce and what do they see? They get a much higher insulin spike and glucose spike from the same apple. Well, how could that be? Well, the fiber is broken down, the insoluble fiber that slows the absorption in your gut and that protects us from the glucose, so it actually makes it worse. And then they do. The final step is they take another, exactly matched apple and this time they juice it, they squeeze it, they make apple juice and you take the apple juice by itself and of course, your glucose shoots through the roof and as does your insulin. So there are other factors that, for literally the same amount of glucose, as far as the delay absorption, that play a role there.

Speaker 1: 25:43

I think with the, a calorie is a calorie. There's another sort of nuance to it about calories in different macronutrients that I like to stress. If you want, I can talk about that a little short. Yeah, the calorie is a calorie is something that we're told all the time and, sadly, it's still being reported at the medical schools that I'm affiliated with, and it's it's the, it's the teaching that you know an obese or overweight person comes in. What's the advice?

Speaker 1: 26:13

The medical advice is eat less, exercise more. Of course that's a fallacy. I mean, exercising more generates an appetite and we eat more. You know, given the number of calories you can expand when you run a mile versus what you eat in a Twinkie, you'll never outrun a bad diet. But I think it goes more than that. As you say. You know, obviously a calorie is a calorie. So if you are calories, you will lose weight. That's true. That's like telling an alcoholic to drink less and you will, you know you will, you'll improve your alcoholism. But it doesn't say anything about the, the cause or the factors that drive it.

Speaker 1: 26:54

And there's important, important fact that isn't stressed enough in medical school, I think, and that is that there's a hormone called insulin that I mentioned before, and insulin not only is involved with glucose metabolism but it also tells the body to store fat. So when people get fat is because of the insulin it tells the body to store the calories is fat. If someone doesn't have insulin, no matter how many calories they eat, they will not get fat. That's a type one diabetic, and you know. This is this is a known fact. Similarly, I can make anyone fat even if they eat very few calories, by giving them insulin, and that's why type two diabetics who get extra insulin actually actually gain weight. So the problem is, or the way to lose weight is avoid drugs that drive insulin, avoid food groups that drive insulin, and of the three food groups, fat, protein and carbohydrates, carbohydrates spike insulin and the other two don't. So that's the secret to losing weight.

Speaker 2: 28:01

Hey folks, sorry for the interruption. This will be really quick and it's very important. So, obviously, healthy and awake podcast. Here I am on a mission to spread truth around health and to help wake people up, which is why your support is very important. I cannot do this without you sharing this message, sharing the episodes, sharing the short clips that I post onto all of my social media platforms, but especially, please follow the platforms where I am able to speak most freely, most notably rumble, for the video episodes that I don't post on YouTube, and Twitter, for the shorter posts that aren't necessarily episodes. So you can follow me there. On Twitter, my handle is red pill health, with underscores in between. So that's red underscore pill underscore health. And then on rumble, I am healthy and awake podcast, where you'll see every single episode there. But other than that, yeah, I would just appreciate your support by continuing to follow my pages and sharing and spreading the word. So let's get back to the show.

Speaker 1: 29:09

And so that's exactly why bodybuilders use insulin because they know that it helps them put on weight, and so they use it strategically, which is yeah, and I mean there's a, there's a nuance there that insulin literally tells the body to store fat, it literally tells the body to take up glucose as well, and it insulin turns on mTOR, which drives cell proliferation and cell growth, which builds muscle, but you also store fat. So it's it's. It's a double-edged sword there, but I believe that the negative of the effects of insulin by far outweigh the positive effects, although for certain conditions, like type one diabetes, insulin is life saving. We all need a little bit of insulin, but for most people, most adults in the world today, we have too much insulin on board because most people are on the path to insulin resistance, as I mentioned.

Speaker 2: 30:06

Right. I've heard Dr McCullough say something like 80 percent of people in America might be insulin resistant, which is really scary, and especially when you think of the apple example that we just talked about, it sounds like something like even a smoothie. We try to be healthy and make a smoothie that might be more detrimental than anything else, and you know we already covered the controversy of a calorie is just a calorie. But then there's the controversy of processed foods is something that a lot of people are talking about now.

Speaker 2: 30:34

So, would a smoothie, in your eyes, be considered a processed food, especially given this apple example we just discussed?

Speaker 1: 30:42

Yeah, I mean a piece of advice I try to follow and I give my patients is try not to drink your calories, because when you drink things, when you, when you juice them or make them into a smoothie, you you break down the insoluble fiber that slows the absorption in your gut and basically take any fruit. How do you make it worse? When you put it in a blender, it makes it less healthy, in my opinion. So so basically, yeah, you don't want to drink things that that have calories in them, if you can.

Speaker 2: 31:21

So another thing in alignment with that that I've heard you say online is that obesity appears more driven by what we eat rather than how much, and I think we probably went into that already. So then let me go into mental health and metabolism. This you know. You look around even if you just open up TikTok, you can see there's a mental health epidemic in the country, and so it's interesting to think that metabolism, the food that we're eating, the lifestyle that we have could be playing a role in that. Can you talk a little more about that?

Speaker 1: 31:56

Yeah, it's very scary. Let me start with the extreme case. There's a great scientist physician named Chris Palmer out of Harvard Medical School, who's a psychiatrist, who deals with psychiatric patients, who very sick, people with schizoaffective disorders and manic depressive disorder, who are literally hospitalized for it. They can't even exist in society. And Chris got interested in. The problem is most psychiatric drugs don't work very well. There's, you know, we don't do very well with psychiatric conditions, we don't understand them and the drugs we have don't work that well at all. So Chris went back and looked at he has a new book called Psychiatric Conditions. He has a new book out called Brain Energy that I recommend for everyone. It's aimed for a general audience but it goes into this in much more detail and explains it better than I ever will.

Speaker 1: 32:57

But he got interested in the fact that epilepsy is a neurological condition. Seizures and some of the same drugs used for epilepsy are used for psychiatric conditions, so there's an overlap in the pharmacopeia there. The other thing he noticed was that the oldest treatment for epilepsy, over 2000 years ago, everyone knew that if you want to stop seizures, you just stop people from eating. In other words, you make them fast. What happens when they fast, it makes the body go into ketosis, like we talked about before, this alternative metabolic state where you don't burn glucose but you burn ketones. So if you want to get anybody to go into ketosis, just fast. So anyway, long story short, he began experimenting with ketogenic diets on his patients and what he found remarkably was that some of the patients not all of them, but some of them had a dramatic response to this ketogenic diet, to the point that they actually went off their medications and were discharged from the hospital. And a ketogenic diet for people on seizures who use ketogenic diets. They're on it for their whole life and they do fine. Otherwise the epilepsy comes back. So it is sustainable.

Speaker 1: 34:14

I've been on a ketogenic diet for about four years now and I've never felt better. So it's not that difficult if I can do it. But what Chris found was I said well, how do you know it's working? How do you know it really works? He says well, one of my gentlemen, he went off the seizure medicines because the voices were talking.

Speaker 1: 34:38

I mean, he went off the psychiatric medicines. He had schizophrenia. The voices came and talked to him. When he went on a ketogenic diet, the voices went away. He went off all medicines and went back to society, got a job. And Chris said, yeah, I was talking to him the other day and he said he goes. I know, when I cheat and I start eating junk food again, the voices start talking to me again and his schizophrenia recurrent returns. So it's similar to Heather Sandiston and almost on that Alzheimer's patient with brain fog when they start going on junk food and go out of ketosis. So at least for some people, there's a very, very powerful metabolic effect on these neurodegenerative diseases. You know, seemingly unrelated, but something's going on there that's fascinating.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Yeah, yeah. That is fascinating to think that something as simple as a ketogenic diet can have such a powerful impact. And we know ketogenic diet is a pretty specific thing somewhere around 70 to 80% fat. The rest is pretty much protein, absolutely minimal carbs, if any at all. And today you see carnivore and I wonder about your thoughts on that, because this is another controversial thing. I've heard some medical professionals say you know, in theory people should die eating the carnivore diet, Yet on the other hand, you have people thriving on it. So what are your thoughts there?

Speaker 1: 36:06

So, first of all, a political disclaimer that these diets, which extend really from a vegan diet, which is purely plants, no animals at all, to the other stream, which you mentioned was a carnivore diet with just all animals but no plants have been a little bit politicized. So it's almost like you know, people get very angry with each other and take political views. I want to say that I'm the Switzerland of diets. I have no, I have no dog in the game with diets. In fact, I believe it's possible to eat a healthy lifestyle, have a healthy lifestyle that type I recommend, with a full carnivore diet or a vegan diet or anything in between. You just have to watch what you eat and pay attention to it. So you know, in the past I've been vegan for many years. I drank that Kool-Aid. I've been carnivore, I've drank that Kool-Aid. You know I experimented with a lot of them. So there's, you know there's a lot of range in there. The common factor of all these diets that I that I avoid and the my, my true north on these, is not whether there's animal or plants in it, but whether there's junk components, and the junk components that that I avoid are basically sugars and refined carbohydrates, rice flour, this kind of thing that's spike my insulin, that drive my in toward the drive inflammation. Second thing is seed oils. This is a little more controversial but these are the industrial oils that are that are mistakenly referred to as vegetable oils because there's no vegetables in them. They were originally developed in the early 20th century as a possible lubricant for German submarines, german U-boats, and Chrisco was developed that way. But there's there's strong evidence, I believe, that they drive inflammation and insulin resistance. So the problem with seed oils is they're ubiquitous in junk food and they're ubiquitous in salad dressings and everywhere else. So I try to switch to avocado oil, coconut oil and and these kinds of things, to an olive oil to avoid those.

Speaker 1: 38:17

The last group I avoid in my diet spectrum is grains, and a lot of people go what grains? What about whole grains? Aren't those healthy? And well, I don't avoid them because they're not whole or not. I avoid them because grains contain proteins that you know. The famous one is gluten and you know there's celiac disease If you're resistant to, or, if you're, if you have problems processing gluten. I don't have celiac disease and most people don't, but I believe that gluten and other proteins that are in grains drive inflammation in our immune system, that have negative effects in patients, and that we all have our inflammation driven by grains. And if that's not bad enough, most grains in the US are soaked in an herbicide called glyphosate, which is a problem. Also, and finally, a lot of grains have a lot of a lot of carbohydrates in them refined carbohydrates and that weren't bad enough. The price of grains are subsidized by the federal government, so that junk food is actually cheaper because of our tax dollars and all the subsidies that make it inexpensive to buy junk food.

Speaker 1: 39:36

So no bread, no bread. And let me be clear I love bread, I love bread, I love. I'm not a freak or anything. I just want to live to see my grandchildren, and I would, I will give up bread to see my grandchildren. And the other side of the spectrum I get to eat stuff that I never used to eat, like butter or meat with a lot of fat on it, or cream cheese or a whole bowl of guacamole. I mean, I only eat one meal a day. So basically I don't count calories because I can't. You know I can't eat enough one meal to make a difference. So you know, it just makes it really simple.

Speaker 2: 40:15

So then, bread is bad, but it sounds like saturated fats, something that's often demonized, still in the medical establishment. Very often it sounds like maybe that's not as bad as it's made out to be.

Speaker 1: 40:27

Yeah, I don't worry about saturated fats. I worry more about sugar and, as a driver, for all the chronic diseases, including heart disease.

Speaker 2: 40:39

Hmm, okay, well, that's good to know and, as we start to wind down here, I have a few questions really geared towards advice for some listeners. I have a lot of doctors that listen to this show, maybe even some med students who are, you know, receiving some potential lies. So what advice would you have for the medical students or currently practicing doctors?

Speaker 1: 41:05

Well, it's just to keep an open mind and to look critically at anything we're told. You know even what I'm telling you. You know some of it's going to be a lie and of course these are not intentional lies. These are just things that you know that we get wrong with our science. So the medical students, everybody, including the lay people, now I urge you, I urge you everyone, to look to the extent you can, at the primary research. And now on the internet. You know we can pull original articles and you can begin to educate yourself about them and read them. But science keeps changing all the time and you know it's a moving target. Whoever said you know they want they completed their education doesn't really understand education, especially for medicine and healthcare, because it's never completed, it's always changed, it's called medical practice for a reason, yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:08

So this is one of my favorite questions because it is. You know, I'm a board certified health coach. This is a perfect health coaching question. If you had a magic wand and you could change three things about the status quo, what would you change?

Speaker 1: 42:20

Well, I would make 10 times as many health coaches, because I think you guys are at the tip of the spear. And these lifestyle changes. You know our healthcare system, you know, take type two diabetes is set up. Somebody comes into a doctor's office there that that blood marker, the HA1C, goes above a certain point and being their type two diabetic, well, that you know. That doctor says I'm going to start you on metformin and I'm going to follow you until you need insulin. Then I'll give you insulin and I'll do all this stuff. And then they, you know, stay away from carbs and sugar. The problem is they go to the American Dietetic Association website and they said it's okay to eat sugar, just cover it with insulin. And you know there's a lot of misinformation out there. The ADA is funded by supporters such as there's a large company, that a leading dialysis company, which is what you go on when your kidneys fail, fail, and what's the leading cause of dialysis in the US. And that, of course, is type two diabetes. So it's, it's anyway.

Speaker 1: 43:26

But health coaches, I think, are the key, because these lifestyle things are so important to implement and it, you know, it's not a matter of even just me talking to somebody and convincing them oh yeah, sugar is really bad and it's, you know it's going to hurt you.

Speaker 1: 43:44

These are the bad things can do, because I've seen it so many times. Intelligent people, even my colleagues, we have the conversation, they agree they know sugar is bad. Then they walk out and have a cup of coffee and pour sugar into it and it's, it's, it's almost it's part of, I think, to change the behavior, their, their mental health issues, not not on the order of psychiatric conditions, but there's addiction issues that we all have. I'm a processed junk food addict. I'm in recovery, but I struggle with it every day. So joining community, a coaching community, is key for people to change their lifestyle. It's not enough, just in my opinion, to you know, read a book, even a book as good as mine, or you know it's more being engaged with people like yourself, and teaching and everything like that in the community and and a sense of growing in a family.

Speaker 2: 44:41

Well, of course, as a health coach, I really appreciate that answer and I'll go ahead and say check the show notes for my business, red Pill Health and Wellness. You know one of the things that happens when people talk about lies and challenge. I know in the beginning you said you know I'm part of the establishment, but you know a lot of these things that you're saying are still going against the establishment in a sense, and I wonder if you've faced any kind of censorship or pushback or anything like that as you've been speaking on these sorts of things.

Speaker 1: 45:14

Well, coca-cola dropped my podcast as a sponsor, so that, no, I'm just kidding, I don't have any junk food sponsors and I, you know I never will from what I say, you know. But I haven't. You know I haven't read, like anybody who's on social media. There's always, you know, negative comments that you hear, that you know some of them are very personal and you know, aren't really about the conversation or the content. But you know, that's just, that's human nature and you have to have a thick skin.

Speaker 1: 45:51

But professionally, I haven't really received any significant pushback. I think, you know, it's people who are engaged in science and they understand science, understand that it's necessary to question science and every time I question it in the book, the chapters, I try and show the article that makes me question it and it's just my interpretation of the research from this article that makes me question it. So anyone who goes to it and says, hey, you're wrong, I go, you know I might be, but I don't think so, you know, and I'm betting my life on it and it worked for me. But you know it's continually evolving and I try to be open minded about it. So maybe that's been helpful. But I really haven't received any, any big pushback. I still have my job, but that might be due to tenure, I don't know. Oh, there you go.

Speaker 2: 46:48

Awesome, I'm glad to hear that. Is there anything else that we have not discussed yet today that you think maybe we should?

Speaker 1: 46:56

Wow. Well, just to circle back on one thing, on the mental health issues, with metabolic disease and junk food that's driving all these, the, the, the really scary thing to be. I mean it's, it's great the work Chris Palmer's doing with psychiatric conditions and everything else, but I worry about the mental health and the effects of these metabolic conditions that we all increasingly have, the effects on our mental state as we interact with our colleagues, with our friends, with our spouses, with our children. Just the levels of anger. You know we've seen it in politics there's a polarization. You know different political parties don't even go out for a drink anymore.

Speaker 1: 47:42

You know it's like something is happening and I can't help but wonder that it's somehow tied to some of the effects, maybe metabolic issues. Like you know, there's a famous study where they it's a correlation study. It's not causation, as you know, epidemiological studies are, but it was a famous study that looked at soda consumption versus violence in children and it corrected for socioeconomic status. It could correct, correct it for age race, you know, gender, all sorts of things, and it's still there was still that, that correlation that more more so do people drank, or the more violent, or the more so that they drank and you know you can't help but wonder that something's going on there.

Speaker 2: 48:32

Well, when I finally do start Brazilian jujitsu and MMA, I'll be sure to maybe pick up a soda drinking habit. Where can people find more about you and more about your book?

Speaker 1: 48:46

Sure, well, the easiest thing is just go to my website. It's my name, it's Robert Lufkin L-U-F, it's in FrankKINMDcom and all the connections are available on that they want, and also there's a free sample chapter you could download on the website, both in audio form and PDF form. It's the first chapter. If you want to take, take the book for a test drive.

Speaker 2: 49:14

Awesome. Well, I'll be sure to put all that in the show notes. And again, Dr Robert Lufkin, thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation we had and I really highly recommend to listeners to order pre-order the book, because this is good and important stuff that I think people really need to hear.

Speaker 1: 49:34

Well, thanks, thanks, mike, it's so much. It's a great pleasure being on the show. I'm a fan, I'm a follower of your podcast, so it's an honor to be here, and thank you also for all the work you're doing to make the world a better place.

Speaker 2: 49:49

Well, thank you so much, folks. Stay healthy, stay awake.

Speaker 1: 49:53

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Speaker 3: 50:15

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