Lessons from the Ketoverse

The "Animal" Documentary: Meat, Myths, and Modern Health

• Graham • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Link to the documentary "Animal": https://tv.apple.com/ca/movie/animal/umc.cmc.6rxcx3o5sz7epd1ocgz17k6qe

The myths about meat have shaped our health choices for over a century. In this eye-opening episode, we take a deep dive into the powerful new documentary "Animal" that's challenging everything we've been told about our natural human diet.

The documentary features an all-star lineup of medical professionals who've discovered that the path to optimal health runs counter to conventional wisdom. We explore how figures like Dr. Robert Kiltz, Dr. Anthony Chaffee, and Dr. Sean Baker—all initially trained in standard nutritional paradigms—found themselves questioning everything when they saw how animal-based diets transformed their patients' lives. From resolving fertility issues to eliminating suicidal thoughts, the clinical outcomes from carnivore diets have been nothing short of remarkable.

What struck us most was the historical context that explains how we arrived at our current anti-meat bias. The documentary traces this back to Ellen G. White, whose religious views influenced a young John Harvey Kellogg (yes, that Kellogg), followed by Ancel Keys' deeply flawed Seven Countries Study that cherry-picked data to villainize saturated fat. These ideological foundations—not scientific evidence—have shaped nutritional guidelines for decades.

The anthropological evidence presented is particularly compelling: during the Ice Age when plants were scarce, humans developed larger brains and grew taller. Only after switching to agriculture did we see decreases in height, brain size, and overall health. As Dr. Lisa Weidman so perfectly states in the film: "What you're putting in your mouth is either leading to health or harm."

Having both experienced dramatic health improvements through keto and carnivore approaches—Stephen's diabetes in remission without medication and Graham's freedom from chronic issues—we can personally attest to the documentary's central message. If you're questioning your own health journey or simply curious about an alternative perspective, "Animal" might just be the most important documentary you watch this year. It could change your relationship with food forever.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Lessons from the Keto-Verse. Join Stephen and Graham as they explore the keto lifestyle with tips, science and stories to boost your health. This podcast isn't medical advice. Consult your healthcare advisor for any health-related issues. Get ready to fuel your primal power.

Graham:

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of Lessons from the Keto-Verse. Today we are doing something a little bit different. We are going to be giving our opinions, maybe a little bit of a review, on a new documentary called Animal. Just like it sounds, a-n-i-m-a-l. Stephen and I both watched this separately on Apple TV+. It's gonna be available in various places to either rent or purchase, so you can always Google that and see if you can find it if you're interested in watching it.

Graham:

Certainly, I think by the end of this you'll get the sense that Stephen and I really enjoyed the documentary. It's good timing, I guess, because our recent podcast we talked about the biggest influencers in our journey towards ketoverse, keto and carnivore ways of eating or lifestyles. Many, many of the influencers that we mentioned in that episode and we welcome you to jump over to that episode afterwards many were in this documentary, so you got to hear them firsthand talk a little bit about their background, their experience and how they came to realize that a keto carnivore lifestyle was the healthiest lifestyle for them. How does Animal describe their new documentary on the keto carnivore way of eating? They talk about exposing how outdated agendas have warped our natural relationship with meat, fueling ill health and big pharma reliance, reclaiming our ancestral diet and you'll hear that a few times, probably in the podcast today Stephen, welcome. And what jumped out at you initially with the documentary that we watched?

Stephen:

Yeah, it's good to be here again. Graham, thank you for the great intro. I was gobsmacked by Animal, to be frank, for both personal and professional reasons. There were certain topics that they touched on that I had a personal relationship with, either directly or intellect directly, through my family, and I was also really touched by the level of transparency and urgency of these particular practitioners. You know, we have Dr Kiltz talking about his own mental illness. We had Anthony Chaffee, you know, pointing out that genetically we're supposed to live to, we're 120, based on just genetic telomeres, which just blew my mind. Even jumping to Maasai, who are five inches taller than their cohorts that are on a vegan diet, and the Maasai principally consume only a meat diet. They're taller, leaner and have a higher life expectancy. So yeah, there are so many things that we can certainly speak to, but off the top of my head, having only watched it yesterday, it still has left an impression. How about yourself? What? What inspired you about this?

Graham:

Yeah, I think that's a great summary for me and, you know, certainly, having spent literally thousands of hours researching different ways of eating and the impact of various foods on our bodies and our metabolism, I didn't necessarily hear anything that was brand new, but I thought it was such an excellent way of summarizing the learnings, giving you kind of the Cole's Notes or whatever this out to a couple of family members as well is. The influencers that they interviewed had all gone down this journey very similar to you and I, stephen, because their health was going in the wrong direction and they couldn't figure it out. In a lot of cases they are medical doctors treating patients and they were telling their patients, you know, the standard sort of procedure for what you should do when you're getting some kind of metabolic disorder. Much like you, stephen, you've been so transparent about getting people on statins, getting people on metformin just the usual prescription to try and not reverse the issue but slow down the issue. And so each of these influencers you know, like I said, medical doctors, phds, have a heck of a lot of credibility, but one of the things that I noticed was how healthy they were. They were. You know, I've heard stats that over 60% of uh doctors uh in the U S probably in the West are overweight or obese. Uh, tough to take advice from somebody whose uh personal lifestyle isn't leading them down a path of health.

Graham:

Um, with each of these doctors, not only were they healthy, they looked younger than they actually were. In a lot of cases they were serious athletes and, you know, even in their 50s and 60s they were able to keep up with their fitness regimen on the diets that they had chosen to go with, which is primarily an animal-based diet. And so you heard a lot about back in the Ice Ages. During the Ice Age, plants were basically wiped out. There was no way in that era to grow anything in the ground because the ground was ice, and so our ancestors were forced to go down a different path and eat animals as their primary source of nutrition, and this is what turned humans into what humans are today, and one of the things that I really resonated.

Graham:

I wrote down a bunch of lines that really resonated with me. One of them was Dr Weidman talking about the fact that what you're putting in your mouth is either leading to health or harm, and I thought that was such a profound short statement and it really. It really summed up the way I look at food these days, and I don't know about you, stephen. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Graham:

You know I go to family events, extended family events, where I'm not, you know, sort of picking on anybody or trying to isolate anybody or have them stand out, but I'm noticing what people eat and I'm noticing what their general health is all about. And I've gotten to the point now where I can look at a particular food and I can decide it's worth it like the ribeye ground beef burgers that I had tonight or it's not worth it. The bag of chips, the cookie, the cake, whatever it is. It's not that I don't love to have a good oatmeal cookie every now and then, it's just that question what you're putting in your mouth is either leading to health or harm, and I especially notice that when I'm in social functions.

Stephen:

Now, stephen, yeah, it's great that you mentioned that. Yeah, dr Lisa Weidman, as you mentioned, I had written exactly the same thing and I think it's fair to tell our viewers and listeners that we do not live side by each, we do not share the same roof. So here we are listening to for myself it was last night, I believe, for you today, I actually copied down the same thing and, funny enough too, you mentioned about ancestral man, mankind. I found that fascinating because when you build a little bit more on what you described by the narrators, so two and a half million years ago, our brains were bigger, we were much taller and, as I said at the beginning of this, we could have very well lived to 120 years old, assuming that we could outrun the saber-toothed tiger and, um, it was interesting that when we we, when essentially ice age, to your point receded 12 and a half thousand years ago, that's when agriculture started, yeah, well then we started eating plants, which we've learned um and I'm.

Stephen:

I'm keto, more keto than carnivore, but I'm very selective with plants I consume and I'm always learning about keto than carnivore, but I'm very selective in what plants I consume and I'm always learning about them that they have a defensive mechanism, which was interesting that they pointed out. But you know, you can't really argue with anthropology. I mean, the records are there, they're more or less indisputable. But we lost height, we lost muscle mass and it seems that it was all centered around about the time when we started eating Our meals consisted of plant food as well as meat. So that was really a striking part of this overall presentation. That hit me.

Stephen:

And then, when we sort of fast forward to more modern times, the other thing that that I know you and I want to talk about is the fact in in 2025, according to this show animal that's on, apple plus 10 corporations feed 90% of the planet, and it all goes back to this, this pre conceived notion of being anti-meats and pro-breakfast the most important meal of the day all came from Kellogg, who was like a celebrity doctor back in the day which I did not know, and then teamed up with his brother and started this whole evolution or devolution if you want to call it, with this predominance of the food guys insisting on 50% or 60% of what we're consuming needs to be in some form of a carb, usually from a grain of one sort, or a bean, lentil, that sort of thing.

Stephen:

And perhaps you know when you and I talked about this in earlier missions, maybe when the soil was really good, maybe when it was my grandmother that was doing it in her garden, in her backyard, the quality was better. But we're talking about combating against industrial farming now in every form, whether it's meat or whether it's plants. So I think it's prudent to take what they're saying to heart and recognize that we have to adapt to the highest quality outcomes. Why have to adapt to the highest quality outcomes? Why? Because what you said, you know, and what Dr Lisa said. Lisa Weidman, is like every, every thing that you look at before you put it in your mouth decide is helping or harming, and I actually naturally do that.

Stephen:

So, by way of example, yesterday I wasn't feeling particularly well but I had to do some stuff. I had family here and we went to a local restaurant. I live in a very small community, so there aren't a lot of options and there's always one option that can be practiced and that's abstaining. So all I had was a club soda I had with some lime and lemon in it, because I was so dialed into my body I knew at that time, at two o'clock in the afternoon, I had had eggs earlier and bacon after I did my usual workout. Didn't feel great after the eggs. It could have been the eggs were a little bit off, I'm not sure, but I didn't feel well enough to want to eat again. I didn't feel the social pressure. I really, candidly didn't care if my family was upset with me eating. I just simply said I wasn't feeling well enough to do it.

Graham:

Four hours or five hours later, my body healed itself and I had a regular carnivore dinner. How about yourself? Yeah, there's a bunch of really good points that you brought up there, and one of the things that was an aha moment for me and I had to hear the story probably six or seven times to really understand it from beginning to end, and I'm certainly no expert on the story of why we as a population believe that saturated fat and red meat are harmful to us and you mentioned Kellogg. A woman by the name of Ellen G White had a big influence on how we perceive saturated fat and red meat today. At the time this is the late 1800s, so late 19th century she had an epiphany that God told her that red meat caused lust in men and probably women, but I think she was focused on men at the time and she felt that this was a sin, and so she went on a crusade to basically vilify red meat and saturated fat. So her protege was actually a typesetter. Protege was actually a typesetter the person who would put the uppercase and lowercase printing press items on a book that she had written. This LNG white individual, the typesetter at 12 years old, was named Kellogg exactly the same person that you just mentioned. So that person who ended up being Dr Kellogg. And, yes, same person that you just mentioned. So that person who ended up being Dr Kellogg and, yes, the same as the cereal company he followed. That mission of you know plant-based is the right way to go. This same group is a major funder of nutrition studies even today. So keep in mind, one of the biggest funders of nutrition studies in the world today still believes that red meat and saturated fat are bad for you, even though there's no randomized control studies that have ever been done to show that that's the case. A lot of the time people will say you know this carnivore or ketogenic diet, there's no studies to show that it's actually healthy for you. My answer to them is there's no studies to show that the standard American diet is healthy for us, but for some reason we believe that over something like a keto or carnivore diet. And so the momentum was there in the 1900s, early on.

Graham:

The second thing that happened that sort of solidified our belief in the fact that red meat and saturated fat are harmful to us was an individual named Dr Ansel Keys. This was another superstar doctor, let's call it very popular. Everybody wanted to go and see him, just like everybody wanted to go see Dr Kellogg, so very influential people wanted to be in Dr Kellogg's practice. They wanted to be in Dr Ancel Keys' practice. So, of course, whatever Dr Ancel Keys was telling them was going to be shared by the bigger population, and he put together what he calls the seven country study. And there was one big problem with the seven country study that he put together and it's highly recommended to check it out is the fact that what he was trying to identify was see these seven countries where they eat more red meat, they eat more saturated fat from whatever it is butter, eggs that their heart attack risk increased. And so he took this to what would, I think, be the sort of National Institute of Health today and said we need to recommend that people restrict or eliminate red meat and saturated fat from the diet.

Graham:

If you get into some of the details, a lot of the people in that committee were saying no, no, no, we shouldn't be saying this until we dig into you know the studies or put on the studies to make sure that this is actually true. And Dr Ancel Keys showed well, listen, look at this seven-country study that I did. It shows that there is a correlation. He couldn't create a causation scenario, but he talked about correlation. The big problem with that study is he left about 14 countries off the list because those ones did not show an increase in heart attacks or heart disease as a result of an increase in red meat and saturated fat. And this was the big problem that these committee members said. They said this is too risky. We shouldn't be telling people this unless we have some kind of study to show that it's true. We don't have any studies to show that it's true, so we're making this up.

Graham:

Well, something else happened around this time. Dwight Eisenhower, the president of the United States at the time, had a heart attack and we've covered this off a little bit in the past and dr ansel keys said there's no time to waste. It's saturated fat and red meat that caused that. Saturated fat and red meat that's causing all this heart disease. We need to go out and tell people not to eat that anymore. Well, the problem with all this is it was based on absolutely nothing.

Graham:

An interesting little anecdote that I heard, and I want to hand it over to you, stephen, is Dr Ancel Keys, when he was in his early 90s, admitted finally that saturated fat and red meat do not cause heart disease. It took till 2015 for the American Diabetes Association to admit that red meat and saturated fat do not cause heart disease. So if you go on some of these government websites, even five years ago, you can read that they do not cause heart disease. There's no known link between the two and one of the things that I heard in the documentary, and this really hit home for me meat, red meat and especially fatty red meat. Call it a ribeye, whatever you want. Ground beef meat has all of the amino acids, essential fats, vitamins and minerals that we need. It's the only food that has all of those things. That's not a coincidence, in my opinion, and it comes back to what if the food we were meant to thrive on is red meat? And that's the conclusion I came to Stephen.

Stephen:

Yeah, thanks for that, graham. You made some really good points. I mean, it's startling that so few people had such a significant influence and so many others and because of their positions of power, all the way up to presidents they could actually influence in the absence of actual data, and this is still going on today. I mean, even I don't recall which one it was that spoke to it in the actual show I think it might have been Dr Anthony Chaffee again but it was mentioned that the NIH, the National Institute of Health, spends less money than Kellogg and others do on research programs. So yes, the question is why do you got to keep restudying something you've been making since the 1900s? So there must be something that you're observing and that you're trying to to. You know, make make sure that it doesn't get to the public or you're engineering certain outcomes. But one thing I wanted to mention to you that I thought was historically interesting is I looked at the vilification of red meat and how it progressed and different sources suggested that yes, it's a keys certainly didn't help and and Kellogg.

Stephen:

But one of the the scandals that came out around this the late 1800s was the Spanish American war and it was called the embalmed beef scandal. So at that time I'm pretty certain ships weren't floating around on the Atlantic coast with refrigerators. So it stands to reason that meat would go rancid. And of course they had scurvy and other issues too from that time period. But it was interesting that they were accused at the time. The US was accused of using embalming fluid and other chemicals in the meat in order to prepare it. Ergo, maybe that's the first example of ultra-processed food. So we don't call it a scandal anymore, we call it selection and variety in these grocery stores. What do you say to that?

Graham:

You actually brought up a really interesting point around scurvy that I want to touch on, stephen, because I had a number of people let me know that you know my scurvy was imminent. I heard this woman who's been carnivore for 65 years and she had a line that I heard recently. She said you know, I'm still waiting for the scurvy to kick in, 65 years later. And I had a discussion with this individual because I said tell me your understanding of the history of scurvy and how they identified it in sailors and how they treated it. They had no idea, and this is generally what I find is you ask one question and you realize that they don't even know why they believe what they believe. They just believe it, and people's beliefs can be very, very powerful and it can be very, very hard to undo those beliefs. Certainly, I found it very difficult to undo all the beliefs that I had built up over time, and so I let them know that the sailors that actually ended up with scurvy were eating this food called gruel. You can look it up. It's plant-based, it's awful, it's like an oatmeal slop. There was no meat that they were eating. Let's go over to the Vikings. So how they ended up, they identified the scurvy, because if you're eating that kind of food, you are going to go through that problem.

Graham:

And what they realized is, through a test and this was probably the first randomized control test they gave these sailors, split them up into groups and they gave them different things. You know, split them up into groups and they gave them different things, and the group that received vitamin C through fruits were the ones that actually were able to fix their scurvy. Let's take a look at the Vikings, who did have meats, probably had salt to preserve those meats as they went through the high seas. No history of scurvy there. Red meat has enough vitamin C to avoid you getting scurvy. Most people don't know that either, and so these belief systems. Once you start asking certain questions, people realize they don't actually know what they're talking about. They just have a certain belief in the truth, or what's correct and what's not correct, but they have never necessarily taken the time to really ask whether that truth is the truth or it's just something that I've been told over time. Stephen.

Stephen:

I think that's really important because if you even take the doctors that are in the show and we all are in a state of growth and hopefully stay hungry and curious about what we learn and if I went back to my younger self and talked to my younger self, I would say that most of what you believe is just that it's a belief, it's a construct based on what you were told at the time and you know, obviously, the data. You can't lie with science and data, the data you can't lie with science and data. I mean, we both had serious illness outcomes as a result of pursuing the standard American diet, and sure we were busy, sure we were stressed.

Stephen:

I don't think either one of us is any less stressed than we were before, but our you know blood results and everything else as we talked to, are quite significantly different Me as a diabetic and you with other metabolic issues at the time, and so I think that's hard to dispute when you can say the sample size is limited, but it's really not, because if you do enough research and these gentlemen have, and ladies there's obviously tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people out there that that have improved their health, and contrast that with the fact there's 400 million people across the world with diabetes. So you got to ask the question is it the?

Graham:

air Diabetes, which means it was something that happened to them later in life, not something that they were born with like a type 1 diabetes scenario.

Stephen:

Yeah, yeah, thanks for clarifying that. We're talking about the lifestyle diabetes that I like to say had in the past. Tense, because it's clearly in remission. But again, that's what you know. How much, how large of a sample size do you want to have? We talked in the last podcast about Japan and what they do and they're, you know, they're eating a lot of starch, they're having rice, but what's absent is the sugar, the way in which they eat.

Stephen:

There's all of these other factors, like, again, and not to pick on history, but again, people have a tendency to to line up and go well, because you did this or you ate this, that's why you got sick. Well, maybe you just had the flu. Like, let's look at the Franklin expedition and back in 1845, they sent two ships, 129 crew members, and they disappeared. And when they later did their analysis, you know it was like oh, it was canned. It was the canned meat that killed them. It wasn't the meat that killed them, it was the lead in the cans that killed them. Because you know, frankly I'm not sure about this, we'll have to ask an anthropologist, but I'm pretty sure they didn't find Vikings buried that had consumed meat their whole lives, with cans of meat beside them because they didn't can. So we are our own worst enemy. You can say the same with how we process meat.

Stephen:

When we don't look at local markets, when we're not taking advantage of people like texas slim, who's featured in this show about regenerative farming where they're, they're essentially allowing everything the animals to graze naturally on these fields and uh, there's. It's far healthier than doing a monocropping. That really struck out for me because I live in a rural area, I live on what used to be a farm and I see the consequences of leaving the land alone. I've gone from probably, according to the original owner, 12 apple trees. I have about 97 now in a 30 year period All kinds of flora.

Stephen:

The bees consider this the Taj Mahal of places to go to when it comes to pollination and cross-pollination. I'm forbidden from cutting any milkweed because of the butterflies. So I say forbidden by my family. So if we give the earth a chance to rejuvenate and then work with nature as they are doing in Texas and other places where they don't necessarily have the greatest soil, but they in fact are having some of the greatest outcomes in terms of the quality of cattle, their relationship is going back to more of an ancestral agrarian relationship. The animals are respected the same way, which I highly respect, the same way that First Nations treat all life really, not just what they've domesticated.

Graham:

So I don't know if that struck you. You know generally, yes, it did, it really did. And it was probably a year and a half into this journey before I started learning about regenerative farming in more detail. So I'd heard it constantly and I know you and I both prioritize farmers and butchers who respect regenerative farming, and it really struck me at the time that if you had a few cattle and you had some chickens, that the cattle would go and graze and they made a big deal of this in the documentary, which I thought was good. The cattle would go and graze and often they'd be grazing on land that you could not monocrop, grow anything. It was up on hills. So you know it's not like that would turn into a place where you could go wheat, even if you thought that that was a good idea, which I don't personally. But the fact is these cows would would graze in these areas and obviously they would leave their droppings after they do their grazing. And the idea would be you'd move the cows to a new area, you'd move the cows to a new area. Well, what the chickens would then do is come in and they would stamp down the cow crap all over the ground, which is, of course, manure, which is one of the healthiest things that you can put in the ground. Anyone who's ever planted anything knows. And so now the chickens not only are eating the bugs, which makes them healthy, but they're pattering and separating this cow manure that's now regenerating that land, and the cows can come down into that area a year later and they've got even healthier grass to eat from, and the soil is even better than it was the year before.

Graham:

So if you had a farm as a family with some cows and some chickens, you could eat red meat. One cow would feed the entire family, probably for a year. You would have milk, you would have eggs and you could have chicken, if that's what you wanted, in your diet as well. You had every single nutrient that you needed to thrive in the world, and I'll challenge anybody to open up an app like MyFitnessPal or Chronometer and type in a sufficient amount of red meat, like ground beef, and a sufficient amount of eggs and see if the app tells you that you are low on nutrients. You'll find that you aren't. It may be calcium and that would come from the milk, but again, to me it's not a coincidence that red meat and some milk and some eggs gives you almost all the nutrients you need. You might want to have some fish every now and then fish Fridays, whatever you want to call it to get your omega-3 intake, but at the end of the day, that's the healthiest way of eating.

Graham:

And one of the great lines in this is Dr Sally Norton, who wrote the book Toxic Superfoods. We've talked about that a few times, including the one where we talked about our biggest influencers, and Sally Norton has written a brilliant book called Toxic Superfoods. She had a line in this documentary that really resonated with me. She said we live in an era where we have a Disneyland view of plants that are completely benign. So, in other words, all plants, all vegetables that you buy in the store are perfectly good for you. There's not a single thing that's bad for you. It's nothing but 100% healthy.

Graham:

If you read her book, you're going to realize that that may not be the case and some people are going to react differently to things like oxalates than others.

Graham:

But if you're eating your rhubarb and your spinach and you know chia seeds things that are high in oxalates some people are going to do worse than others because those plants do not want to be eaten. They have self-defenses that they want to have in place so that they can thrive. The same thing with animals. They have defenses whether it's teeth or whether it's being able to kick you. All living things have defenses to try and defend against attackers and, of course, if you're eating a plant, you're that plant's attacker. And so it really dawned on me when she said that that when you're talking to people, they will absolutely believe in their minds that red meat and saturated store is 100% good for you. And I think that's a big mistake for people to have that assumption when it comes to food Because, at the end of the day, their health outcomes are potentially going to be negatively impacted having such a strong belief in both of those things. Stephen.

Stephen:

Yeah, I was just looking at some adjunct information related to what you were saying and I wanted to just draw a line on how the sands shift around, what is considered healthy or not healthy and what the natural reaction is. And it's a little suspicious and they highlight this in the actual show Animal, and that is what I quoted was we have a pill for that. So as soon as the health outcomes begin to degrade, as they did for you and I, then all of a sudden they want to put you on a statin, which, by the way, I've seen with my own family in their 70s. Now they have wasting muscle, sarcopenia, they call it, and so, and my father also has Alzheimer's, which they call type 3 diabetes. I think they're all contributed by the overpresence of ultra processed foods in his diet, but I wanted to underline this because I find this particularly interesting.

Stephen:

So in the 1960s they didn't really use A1C as a marker for your blood sugar, and this goes along with the whole notion of okay. Well, this is the point. We need to put you on a statin. This is the point where we need you to put on metformin. And actually one of the doctors I think it was Dr Sean who talked about not really caring about what his HDL and LDL are. What he cared about was what his triglycerides are, and he's a doctor. So again it shows they're measuring the wrong thing.

Stephen:

I would say the same thing applies, as many doctors have said, including Dr Burke and Dr Berry, that when we measure diabetes we're measuring the wrong thing. We don't measure insulin resistance. We look at the extent we can measure for insulin resistance. I've had those tests and they're barbaric. They want you to eat a whole bunch of sugar and then see how long it takes for your body to respond. It's very unhealthy and it's a bit like stabbing yourself and determining how much blood you have in your system. Yes, you'll be able to calculate that we have the means and the pale solution enough to catch it all, but it's not a very healthy outcome for the patient. So these sorts of things kind of naturally annoy me. And what's interesting is that Dr Ken Berry quoted that the use of a statin because there isn't a lot of solid research really reinforcing the benefits to extending your life. He said it approximates three to five days. Meanwhile, those three to five days, to quote Dr Adia, in terms of house span over lifespan, do you really want those extra three to five days Because chances are, if you're anything like my folks, they're having trouble getting in and out of vehicles and they're having all these huge issues, but where I wanted to go with A1C and really underline this, graham

Stephen:

is A1C really only became a thing in the 1980s and was the emphasis, particularly for diabetics, was more around hypoglycemia. So the levels for a diabetic typically in that time period were 7.0. 7.0. So a person above 7.0 was considered diabetic. The average target is very common goal between 7.5 and 8, depending on age, health outcomes and other factors. So right now they want to speed between 4 and 6. If you're not between 4 and 6, they want to put you on metformin. So now you're on a statin, now you're on metformin, with all the side effects. So here I am. I could pull it up right now and actually check it. We can check and put me on the spot and find out what my spot glucose is on a keto carnivore diet. Let's do that If you will give me half a second.

Graham:

Yeah, so this is Stephen's continuous glucose monitor, CGM, which he wears on a daily basis so he can check his glucose levels. I think it's within 15 minutes accuracy at any given time.

Stephen:

Yeah, and right now my trend is 6.0 and I'm not taking any medication 6.0. I've seen it as low as 5.8. So the point is and these things tend to be a little bit higher than your, they're designed that way and I'm not actually putting mine in the spot that you're supposed to, because I don't have a fat in that area. So mine is probably slightly off, but probably it's lower than that. But the point is I'm not doing anything other than keto carnivore and I've had the disease for eight years. It's been in remission. It's gone up and down.

Stephen:

Anytime I break back into ultra process or something like that, ibs returns all these other factors. This is consistent with what they said with patients and there was one particular outcome. It's amazing how incredible our bodies are. But one thing that jumped out at me, because I have a daughter that's in law school. But they had an instance. It was Dr Keltz, I believe, who both commented about veterans, which resonated, but also he had a 38-year-old lawyer that came in to see him that had 12 miscarriages which resolved themselves within six months. She was able to in fact have a proper well. In fact, I believe they must have been extracting her eggs, but she had like six or eight viable eggs that they were able to get from her six months after she went on a strict carnivore diet, which is extraordinary.

Graham:

Yeah, and I've heard from a number of these doctors, phds, that when they have obviously specifically women, when they have got them to go on a keto carnivore you know, high protein, high fat, low carb diet what they realized and it was unintentional was some of these women were getting their periods. Many of these women were getting their periods back after not getting a period for a very long time. I certainly am not no expert when it comes to this. I'm only repeating what I've heard. The second outcome was that women were getting pregnant again who didn't think they could get pregnant because the diet they were on basically had resulted in no ovulation, no periods, and so they were turning around. And you know, at 48, 51 years old, doc, I've got my period back, but I'm also pregnant, not something I expected. So they had to start getting people to sign a understanding that this is a possible outcome. That the fact is, the diet lifestyle that you've been on has basically put your body into a situation where it, for one reason or another, does not ovulate, does not want to procreate for one reason or another, does not ovulate, does not want to procreate. When you put people back on a proper human diet you know, high protein, high fat, low carb. In our opinion, there's a chance that your body says, okay, we are now in a healthy scenario where we can bring children into the world. That's mind blowing to me, especially with the rise in fertility clinics and the fertility process among people. I can't help but think that diet isn't contributing to that in a big way.

Graham:

And one of the things you talked about was the statins, and it really dawned on me that it was not just taking statins, but taking statins over many, many years may increase your life by three to five days, and one of the things that statins do is it lowers your cholesterol. It also lowers your cholesterol. My understanding is that it lowers the cholesterol in your brain, and your brain really needs cholesterol. It is a fatty organ and it needs cholesterol to thrive, and anybody who's, you know, gone from a high carb diet and that brain fog that often comes with it, has switched over to a meat-based, high protein, high-fat diet. One of the things that is very common and you and I have talked about this is all of a sudden, our brains are working properly again. We're able to figure out things that we weren't able to figure out before. We don't need naps anymore because our brains aren't running on glucose. It needs saturated fat, and there are even scenarios where they're starting to test things like coconut oil or the pure form of that MCT oil, which is a pure fat from nature, and people are slowing down or reversing their dementia scenario. So any of these natural processes that people can take can potentially help.

Graham:

And you know, when I talk to my parents about some of the people in their lives because they're in their early 80s and no people in their mid to late 80s they'll often talk about. Some of them are going through dementia. They're forgetting where they parked the car, they're forgetting where they put their keys, and the question that I always ask is how long have they been on a statin? And they'll say, yeah, it's a couple of years that they've been on a statin and I'll say you know, if they're interested in looking into something, it may be worthwhile to up the saturated fat. I'm not here to give medical advice, but certainly something that comes naturally from food. To me, there's no downside when it comes to that, other than the fact that you've got to get past the fact that saturated fat and protein aren't actually bad for you, or red meat specifically, steve.

Stephen:

Yeah, that's a great catch, and I've continued to go, of course, over some of the things that relate to so many of us who are diabetics, and I was just looking at a study that was set up by the American Diabetes Association that was picked up by Rodney Hayward, who's an internist, back in 2018, who indicated that some of the ratings that they were calling for were far too aggressive and their concern was hypoglycemia. So hypoglycemia is when your sugar gets usually below three and you can die from that. It can become a very serious issue, and the eight years that I had the illness, the only time I was hypoglycemic was from going for a walk in the woods on my property and being on metformin a walk in the woods on my property and being on metformin, so it never happened ever, ever, ever again.

Stephen:

As soon as I got off metformin, so, and my A1Cs, my sugar results have varied between, I would say the lowest has been 5.7, and I've had higher ones. When I had the re-onset of the illness because I wasn't taking care of myself properly, I started eating ultra-processed foods and what have you. But any time it's been in control, it's been without any medication. Any time I've been in the danger zone call it, you know, in the 3.2. And I felt it. Believe me, it's a very horrible feeling, but probably like most diabetics that would be listening to us, you get a feeling. You know that something's not right and it's whether your sugar's high or your sugar's low, and typically those ranges are pretty significant. But it's amazing how you know. I was just looking at this data, laughing, because I've got so many blood results done over the course of the last few years and I keep stressing about the fact that I'm not 5.7. This article that I just saw is in Everyday Health and it actually, graham says 6.5 for most people is like anything. You know, that's great.

Stephen:

That's just fine. Yet they have a pop-up window in there that says anything over 5.7 is basically diabetes. So it's a conflicting ad. It's embedded in there. And what do you want to bet? When I click on that ad, it's going to push metformin or one of the other drugs. It's, it's, you know, it's. We all suffer to a certain degree of white coat syndrome, even actually the doctors themselves, and, like I've told you before, I even lived with a doctor at one point. They can, they have to go by what they're told to go. And that's another big aspect. I don't know if you picked up on that as well. When I was watching the show Animals, you could see the frustration and maybe a bit of shame in these doctors following guidelines by people they trusted who just passed on the same information. And the Hippocratic oath is do no harm. And yet they were. They were.

Graham:

It's so interesting that you bring that up, because I am a big fan of hearing an alternative opinion, and probably my whole life I've been a pretty analytical guy, like you have, stephen, and so when I hear something and maybe the older I get, the less that I'm just believing what I hear versus digging into the details to see whether it actually makes sense or not so when I hear something, I'll often do some research on the opposite opinion, something I'll often, you know, do some research on the opposite opinion. I think one of the things that I really appreciate about this animal documentary is, for a lot of people, this is going to be an alternative opinion. So there's, you know, millions of people that are eating the way we eat, who are thriving. I have very rarely, if ever, come across somebody who's on a keto or carnivore diet. That says that it made things worse.

Graham:

I don't actually think that I've heard of it. I've searched for those people. I haven't found any, not to say that they don't exist, I just haven't found any. It uncannily goes in one direction, and so what people are going to get if they are open to alternative opinions is they are going to get alternative opinions here. One of the things that I heard a couple of weeks ago was oh, I eat carbs because I need glucose for energy. And yes, the body certainly not only needs glucose, but it certainly can use glucose for energy. You can also use saturated fat for energy and the brain can use glucose for energy.

Graham:

You can also use saturated fat for energy in the brain can use and ketones and ketones, yeah, and so the one of the things that Dr Siwees brought up, c Y W ES and he brought he he actually talked about a couple of things and I've listened to a lot of his podcasts and and he's been a guest on a lot of the influences that I listen to as well, and a lot of people don't know this your liver will make all the glucose you need. It detects what's needed throughout the day. So think about your liver and your hormone systems are all constantly monitoring your body, like a computer in a car, just checking to see if the fuel-air mixture is just right, are the cylinders running properly, is the exhaust going the way that our bodies have that monitoring system in place, and if it detects that it needs increased sugar, it's going to deliver increased sugar, and so that was the first thing that maybe not a lot of people know. So you don't need to eat carbs which turn into glucose, which the body then stores in the cells using insulin. The liver can produce all of the glucose that you need. You have to ask yourself why the body has the ability to produce glucose that it needs and you don't need the glucose from an external source like food. Well, if you go back to the ice age, when we were only able to eat meat, well, the body had to come up with a way to produce enough glucose to keep the body going without an overabundance of glucose, which can turn into insulin resistance over time.

Graham:

The second thing he talked about and I thought this was a really, really good perspective or good way of putting it his quote was being healthy is removing harm. We are meant to be healthy as a baseline and I think this is the more important the older you get Our bodies in their optimal state. And, of course, there are health issues that are outside of people's control. I was born, you know, without the ability to hear out of one ear. There's nothing that I can eat that's going to fix that.

Graham:

So I'm not suggesting that you know food and protein and saturated fat, red meat these kinds of things are going to solve all of your problems, but our bodies are meant to be in a healthy baseline and so if you're able to remove the things that cause you harm, you are going to be more healthy, more your optimal self. Optimal self and one of the things that Hippocrates is credited for saying. Obviously, I wasn't there, I didn't hear him, but he's credited with saying in order to be healthy or less sick, you need to be willing to give up the thing that causes you to be sick, and in a lot of cases, that's food. Stephen.

Stephen:

Yeah, I concur completely. I mean generally. I think that the show was fantastic because even we haven't talked about her yet, but even Judy Cho talking about she's a holistic nutritionist. I mean, she talked very openly. As to Dr Robert Keltz about mental illness, in her case it was bulimia and it was so severe she would rather purge than, as she said, go and take care of her infant child, and it cost her dearly, not just her physical health, but she ended up, from the sounds of things, losing custody of her child for a while. So these are very visceral examples of people who are trained of people who are trained.

Graham:

Just to compliment what you just talked about, there was one individual I didn't write his name down, but he was relatively early on in the scenario His father and his grandfather, I believe, had both committed suicide and he was getting these suicidal thoughts, Dr Klitz.

Stephen:

Yeah, it was Dr Klitz. Yeah.

Graham:

So he was also getting these suicidal thoughts and he went carnivore and all of those thoughts disappeared. And I can't help but think that somebody in his life would have said to him eating red meat and saturated fat is going to cause you harm. And this person was going to do the ultimate harm to themselves and is no longer doing that. That's the kind of you know crazy scenarios where people are talking about the fact that their blood works better, they feel better, they're mentally more stable, maybe their mental illnesses have significantly improved or gone into remission, and people will still say, oh, but the way you're eating is actually dangerous and not good for you. And that's the part that I just I can't understand, because the vast majority of the people that I listened to would rather if saturated fat, red meat and all these things actually cause problems and cause you to die earlier. Most, if not all, of them would say well, I'd rather be living the way I'm living than being sick and dying later.

Graham:

Now I firmly believe that it is not the case that you know things like red meat and saturated fat are going to cause harm down the road, because the science simply does not prove that and the facts and the data around that statement are completely unfounded if you actually look into it. So it's this whole idea of people showing or demonstrating and talking about these stories that have put them in a significantly better place. I got emotional at times because I'm watching these people and realizing they had gone through hell and back and they'd figured out a way to come out the other side not only healthy enough to thrive, but also motivated to want to make a difference in other people's lives without anything in return. Yeah, and I think one of the things I just want to make a difference in other people's lives without anything in return.

Stephen:

Yeah, and I think one of the things that I just want to repeat his name again was Dr Robert Kiltz. That's the same gentleman you know. Thank goodness he was around because he was the one that intervened for this 38 year old attorney who had had the 12 miscarriages. So it was the same guy he also, and it resonated with me as well. His story was very, very deeply personal. But he also referred to veterans, of which the listeners know I am one, and stated that he had great outcomes with keto carnivore.

Stephen:

Putting them on that and I can say just from personal experience, I could not agree more because of the rating of my severe PTSD and I'm diagnosed clinically with severe PTSD and I don't mind sharing that it definitely improved my you know mindset way beyond just just you know brain fog and so forth. I felt well enough to continue with my care beyond just simply diet, by looking at mindfulness, meditation and other things which ironically, had a, had a knockdown effect on blood sugar because I was less stressed. So all of these feed feed into one another. There's no panacea per se. It's not a. You know you can't take a pill and fix this which we've more or less proven, but you can have a lifestyle which begins right at the, at the tip of the mouth, is even. They showed you know the second that you know, and I'm probably salivating talking but the second you go to put something that's sugar in your mouth, you're already getting a reaction from the liver, you're already getting an insulin spike. It's not even in your throat yet. So if you are aware that, that's how responsive your body is and it's an extraordinary biological, biological mechanism, I don't want to call it a machine, because our medical community tends to treat us like like we're, we're machines, like a car or something. It can be fixed, just replace the part, uh, so uh, we're you know. And and actually that brings me back to again like I really resonated with dr anthony chaffee too, because he said, you know, it was such a basic thing for a guy that's clearly so smart. I believe he's a geneticist, because you know we are made of meat, right? So because the best thing for us to eat is meat, because it's the easiest thing for a body to go oh, I know what that is and then process it accordingly, as opposed to aspartame.

Stephen:

And there's been like serious warnings recently of erythritol, which is hidden in a lot of foods and is often sold to diabetics like me, by the way. So be very careful with that, folks. If, um, like my wife, you've had a tia or other things like that, there's a lot of evidence suggesting that it radically increases the likelihood. They actually use live cells and tested erythritol on these cells and noticed that there was a constriction in the in the vessels and a lack of uh, of pliability as well. So they were actually getting rock hard, weren't flexible like they're supposed to be, and it was. It would increase the likelihood, too, of clotting. So this is a pretty extraordinary thing.

Stephen:

And meanwhile we're like oh well, you know, my blood sugar looks good, erythritol is great, and yet you know you might have a stroke or a heart attack as a result of this stuff. So, once again, what's fascinating about it is, if you take it from monk fruit, it is a fruit alcohol, but again, it's all this processing. People are like oh well, you know the root of that. That particular product is, you know, monk fruit, and it's fruit, sure, um. But I go back to my original examples I've used before. Poinsettias are pretty natural, but you chew on a few of those and please don't um, you're probably not going to have to worry about making your uh you know your investments uh come to bear because you're going to be retiring a lot sooner than you thought, probably permanently.

Stephen:

So I mean, everything has to be taken into consideration and um and I love the fact that you know you talked about um, gluconeogenesis, the liver, liver, is actually making it the liver makes cholesterol, ldl and hL. You know, these are natural things that are going on.

Graham:

And it's healthy.

Stephen:

Yeah, and it's these ultra processed foods that are shooting up, or triglycerides, and more often than not they're not even measuring it. They're only looking at your LDL and your HDL, which could be secondary factors to to the ultra processed foods. And anytime that I go in and have my blood tests, I'm not the least bit, even without Dr Scott Baker's most recent, or sorry, sean Baker's most recent yeah, thank you. Most recent comments around. You know the the lack of significance of LDL and HDL in isolation. Dr Burke said the same thing, so I would encourage people to go and look at what he has to say around that. Dr Burke said the same thing, so I would encourage people to go and look at what he has to say around that.

Stephen:

And one test that I'd never heard of it before and maybe this is worthy of us doing some research for our listeners, but I may get the pronunciation wrong, but it was metabolomic testing, which was something that was purported by Dr Burke, and that's really an infusion of genome and epigenetics and it looks at the core chemical reactions in the body, like the base ones, including the formation of ATTP, and I thought that was fascinating because I've seen 5-H ATTP offered at drugstores for or health food stores actually I shouldn't say drugstores for helping, I assume, as an amino acid to help build muscle and so forth.

Stephen:

So here, once again, is a great example of your body's capable of doing it itself. You don't need necessarily to use all these nutrients, and even to credit my naturopath she is so dialed into what I'm doing she said I need you to start taking less supplements. They're just expensive urine at this point because you're doing everything you need to do and your blood tests are showing it. So I'm still gonna take my magnesium, so gonna take my zinc, and I listen to my body and you know I'm on this keto carnivore journey like you. Uh, you know I want to ask like, when's the last time you were sick?

Graham:

I can't even remember. I mean I am healthier today in my mid-50s than almost the entire 30s and 40s that I can remember. You know I was always pretty good about avoiding getting sick, but I think we talked before about, you know, sinus infection. I was always pretty good about avoiding um getting sick, but I think we talked before about, you know, sinus infection and I'm I I'm sort of programmed for sinus infections just because there's this divot in my sinuses that the bacteria loves to hang out in. I think it's been three years Um. Usually I'll get two, two a winter um for the last 25 years I haven't gotten one in three years, so I'm not going to go to hope that continues.

Graham:

You had mentioned Dr Chafee, who's a medical doctor, he's a neurosurgeon, and the fact that you know we are made of meat and so it makes sense. You know we're not made of plants, we're not made of wheat, we're not made of cereal, we are made of meat, and it would make sense that you know meat um could be an exceptional uh the best vitamin um and mineral that we could possibly take. I think um trying to trying to wrap this up, I my my favorite line um just because I hadn't heard it before. Um was at the end and I think it was either Dr Sean Baker or Dr Chafee.

Graham:

I apologize if I got that wrong, but the quote was if you live like a lion and some people will hear lion diet the lion diet is basically meat and salt, or meat and water, depending on who you speak to. So you're getting rid of dairy, you're getting rid of cheese, milk, eggs, that kind of thing, and you're solely focused on meat whatever meat that you want to have, and maybe some fish. But the quote was if you live like a lion, you'll feel like a lion, and I thought that summed it all up for me. That summed the last two and a half three years up for me. And again I got a little emotional when I thought that summed it all up for me. That summed the last two and a half three years up for me. And again I got a little emotional when I heard that, because you really do feel like you can take on the world in a good way and really help others when you put yourself in a position where you're the healthiest you possibly can be.

Stephen:

Yeah, and who doesn't want to be a lion? Right? I mean, that's a great way to end the program. Yeah, and who doesn't want to be a lion? Right, I mean, that's a great way to end the program, absolutely so.

Graham:

I I'm I'm going to give a very, very, very big thumbs up to this documentary. Stephen, how would you sum it up?

Stephen:

No, I think it's a. There's very good reason. It's one of the highest rated documentaries you know, pretty much ever, and I, I, you know. Again, I would say have a listen, listen, see what resonates, because there's so much information. I'm sure you know. You and I did a pretty good job because we were both watching it independently and we both took notes which crossed over. So it speaks well to um the uh, the writer, josh feldham. Um is the person that wrote it, and um and the cast of people that he brought on were extraordinary Dr Berg, among others, ken Barry, whom I'm a big fan of, we mentioned, anthony Chaffee, dr Kiltz, the holistic nutritionist, judy Cho, dr.

Stephen:

Sean Baker yes, I know he's one of your favorites, dr Berg. You know it was amazing to get them all to come together and speak the way they did. It was like I consider it kind of the health version of the secret, because it is a bit of a secret. It's about time that we realize that the power is in our own hands and we don't have to go, you know, too far beyond our own body's ability to heal itself if we give it the opportunity to do so. And it's funny I was just seeing something as you and I were doing research for this. It said you have to be the lead person in your own story when it comes to your health. And I'm paraphrasing, and I think that that's really important is be the center of that story, be the main character in your own health, and it'll pay off dividends.

Graham:

Agreed and you know, if somebody asked me, should I watch Animal, I would say 100%, absolutely. You should never believe everything that somebody says. You should always question everything, including whether the standard American diet's healthy for you, et cetera. But I think what Animal does is it exposes you to a number of very, very, very smart people that are coming from a good place who are really trying to help others. They're not asking you for money.

Graham:

Obviously, you need to rent or buy the movie, and I think you and I were happy to do that because we feel like that money is going to the right place. But if you end up renting this for $9 or buying it for whatever $13, you're not going to remember where the money was spent. But you'll probably remember some of the information that you listened to in the documentary and, who knows, it might just have a major impact on your life. It might just be the best $7 or $13 you've ever spent. So I want to thank everybody for listening to another episode of Lessons from the Keto-Verse where we reviewed the animal documentary. We believe it's on Apple TV+ I'm not sure if it's elsewhere, but hopefully it'll show up in other places and if you do get a chance to watch that, even with some family members or yourself. It might just make a big difference in your life. Thank you, stephen.

Stephen:

Thank you as well, Graham.

Graham:

All right, Thanks everybody. Have a great evening.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning into Lessons from the Ketoverse. Join Stephen and Graham next time for more keto tips and stories to fuel your health. Subscribe, share and let's keep the keto vibes going.