Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 927: Raising Healthy Pets in an Unhealthy World with Victoria Field

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Victoria Field about the necessity of diet for raising healthy and healing sick animals. Raising Healthy Pets in an Unhealthy World with Victoria Field The fitness connection she shares with Mind Pump. (4:40) What could she do to make a difference in her dog’s life? How she took what she learned from going through her fitness/health journey to her pets. (7:56) How many dogs are in the facility? (11:29) What are they finding through the research at Keto Pet? (13:21) Was Keto Pet an established association before she linked up with them? (14:55) What does a Keto diet for a dog look like? (17:22) Are we seeing a rise in pet cancers? (20:57) Are there common shady practices she sees in the pet food industry? (23:30) Is she getting any veterinary support or push back? (25:00) Are they using fasting with dogs? (27:00) What kinds of antidote and feedback are they getting from people? (29:31) What does the cost look like? (31:05) Are they looking at alternative treatments besides Keto? (32:30) The ground breaking brain cancer research they are finding through pilot studies (35:45) What dog food brands does she recommend/stay away from? (38:45) Is there are target number of ketones they are looking for with the dogs they are treating? (40:30) How do people at home check their dog’s ketone levels? (42:12) What negative effects do they see with animals who have levels over the limit? (43:50) Why every dog’s threshold is different and the importance of testing. (45:17) Do dogs get the ‘Keto flu’ as well? (47:36) What types of services does Keto Pet supply? (48:58) Any tips for people with cats? (50:53) Have they helped enough dogs to see patterns in certain breeds? (51:54) Do they recommend people feed their animal’s organic food? (55:27) Are they finding that their dogs do not want to eat as much on the Keto diet? (56:06) Any changes in mood/energy/anxiety? (57:51) The focus on education and furthering research. (59:53) How are they funded? (1:00:30) Do they recommend an exercise protocol to go along with the Keto diet? (1:01:17) The need to start the conversation around the Keto diet and its overall benefits. (1:01:57) Are there situations where the Keto diet is not a good option for your dog? (1:05:12) Has she changed the way she eats based on the research she has found? (1:07:02) Have they researched dog’s lipid profiles? (1:13:14) How are they spreading the message of Keto Pet and education on how food affects us metabolically? (1:16:10) Her take on the ‘vegan pet movement’? (1:21:18) Featured Guest/People Mentioned: Victoria Adelus Field (@victoria_field_)  Instagram KetoPet (@ketopet)  Instagram Keto Pet - Human-Grade Cancer Therapy for Dogs Keto Pet Non-Profit Metabolic Health Summit Products Mentioned: December Promotion: Enroll in Any MAPS Program – 1 Year of Forum Access for FREE! Mind Pump Free Resources MAPS Starter 4 DAYS Left For Launch Promotion - $20 off  **Code “STARTER20”** Could a Change in Diet Cure Your Dog's Cancer? Is the KetoPet Sanctuary Curing Cancer? | The Bloq - Quest Nutrition aafco Pet Fooled | Netflix RAHU - Home Warburg effect Cornell takes the lead in cannabidiol research Brain Tumor Research - Cedars-Sinai Valiant Pet Nutrition: Best Keto Raw Dog Food Precision Xtra Blood Ketone Monitoring meter Kit Bundle 10 Abbott Ketone Strips + 30 Alcohol Wipes + 30 Lancets + Abbott Ketone Test Meter Epigenix Foundation | The study of you Virta Health: Clinically-proven Treatment for Diabetes Reversal Reversing Type 2 diabetes starts with ignoring the guidelines | Sarah Hallberg | TEDxPurdueU

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You know, a little while ago, we were having some conversations around pet health on the podcast. It was like part of one of the intros of our Q&A episodes. And we were speculating on like cancer rates and illness rates amongst pets and how we thought that they may be going up. And so I went home and did a bunch of research, and I was shocked at how little information there is on this. Like I couldn't figure out, there was nowhere where I could find cancer rates for dogs and how they've been training or changing.

I could find cancer rates for dogs and how they've been training or changing. Couldn't find much at all, but I did find somebody who is a part of the studies working with pets where they're utilizing the ketogenic diet to treat cancers and manage cancers. And so we have somebody coming on the show or somebody on the show that you're here is talking to who does this stuff. Her name is Victoria Field. Great conversation. I had to enjoy it. What a treat. I actually was not ready for that conversation. And how neat was it that we didn't even know her affiliation with the IFB and how she competed and that kind of led her down this path of diving into nutrition. She has a lot of the same contacts as us, Tom, Bill Eugh, and you know, question nutrition, and Dom De Agostino. And so, yeah, she was a very sharp intelligent guest. It was great.

Yeah, so she was a part of the keto pet sanctuary, which was this where they saved some animals, about 40 of them, and then they used the ketogenic diet to see how it would help these animals, and they found that it did help quite a few of them. And now she's a part of this movement in looking at diet as a way to combat and manage some of these chronic diseases in both pets and in humans.

If you want, you can actually go on the website ketopetstanksuary.com to learn more about that. Then you can find out more about Victoria Field, that's who we're gonna talk to. You can find on Instagram at ketopet. You can also find her at Victoria underscore field underscore. And then she's a part of the metabolic health summit that's going to be happening. I think at the end of

January next year where there's gonna be some pretty amazing speakers talking about just metabolic processes and how to change food and how to supplement in order treat certain conditions and just improve general health. It's kind of a who's who in that field that will be speaking there. And we got invited. I don't know if we'll be able to make it, but it's a pretty interesting. You can maybe party. We'll see. We might be invagants. That might be what we're doing. This is a must listen. If you have, if you have tats in my opinion, for sure, for sure.

Absolutely. Now, you can find out more about the metabolic health summit at metabolic health summit.com or on their Instagram page at metabolic health summit. I also wanna mention that there's only four days left for our new program, promo, maps starter. This was a program designed for beginners or for people who want to build muscle, don't have a lot of experience and want to work at home.

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off. It includes a free Maps Starter t-shirt and one year of free access to our private forum. So that promotion ends in four days. And if you want to learn more about our other Maps programs, you can go to mapsfitinistproducts.com. And that's it. So without any further ado, here we are talking to Victoria Fields. I had no idea there was a fitness connection here. So would you mind talking about that again? You were a pro competitor and...

Yeah. connection here. So would you mind talking about that again? You were a pro competitor? Yeah, so my world kind of started in TV news. And I was a TV news reporter and anchor for quite a few years for a couple of NBC affiliates. And I actually had decided to do a sweepspeast, which is sort of a long, you know, great for ratings story on a professional fitness competitor, just because I thought it would be interesting to document somebody who was a mom and you know just training for the stage. And when I watched her what she was doing I was like I have to try this. This is amazing. I had a gymnastics background and it was it was an interesting time because my news director was you know he was kind of

like doesn't really fit with the image we're going for here. At the NBC affiliate, the time they said, you can do it, you've got a great potential career in TV. If you want to do that, it could hurt you. So I said, well, of course I want to do it, I'm going to do it. And, you know, it was a choice I made.

And at the same time, I was actually running a fitness program with my husband. And so we were already sort of, it was reported by day, you know, fitness person by night, and decided to give it the full plunge into the bodybuilding world and ended up getting my pro card about a year or so later. And then that's fast.

That's really fast, yeah. Yeah, it was fairly quick. I actually competed in fitness first and really suffered a pretty significant injury that I still battle with today. I partially detached the tendon in my hamstring on the stage at Nationals. Super awesome. Well, on the stage, what were you doing?

Just a hit and a pose? Oh, you had to do gymnastics. You're doing gymnastics, the routine. That's right. Yeah, so it's like a two minute routine. You've got split jumps and flips and one handed pushups and you know, you're competing on a hardwood floor. It's not like gymnastics. So I did the split jump. Literally, you land in the splits and I didn't feel at the time, but as soon as I walked off stage, it felt like somebody stabbed me in the ass. What just happened? And from that point forward, I really thought,

my career was over, but I said, you know what, I'm gonna give it a try. Anyway, I really love the process in getting to the stage. And I actually boxed my way through for cardio because I couldn't do hit training. I couldn't do any of that because my hamstring was still

partially detached and competed and got my pro card and figure. And then did that until about 2015, suffered another injury that, and right around the same time, my dog actually had suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was about six months old and started to develop grandma seizures. And I hooked up with some of the founders of Quest Nutrition, and they started working

on a protocol at keto pet sanctuary. And the rest was really history after that. I got involved in cancer research. I've since then hooked up with Dr. Dominic DeGasino, Dr. Angelopov. And we put on a large scientific conference called metabolic health summit where we bring in all the top people from around the world to push this whole movement forward. So it's been a wild, crazy ride.

This is so fascinating. So you applied ketogenic science or nutrition to your dog to prevent the seizures? Yes. And how well did it work or did it work? Amazing. So our dog, she suffered a brain injury from a dog bite when she was six months old, and she almost didn't live. She was in an oxygen tank for the first 24 hours.

They said she may not make it through. She did. And about a year after that, they said she could develop grandma seizures, because she was so young at the time, and she sure enough did. And so we then started anti-convulsive medication to try to stop the seizures. And she was a completely different dog.

She went from this like spunky little, you know, her name Sasha Fierce, like Beyonce's alterie. And she was this, but, yeah, I know. It's pretty ridiculous. That is great. The other ones, Roxpin, Teddy Roxpin. You guys never have a Teddy Roxpin, okay. So, that was all the rage in 1980.

You guys are so amazing. So amazing. Right, right, I never had one, so I'm kind of living out through my pomeranian. Anyway, so she was such a spunky, great little dog and just started losing her hair. Her skin was turning black. She wasn't the same to Sasha we knew.

So it was around 2014-2015 that Ron and Shannon Pena were starting up keto pet sanctuary, which essentially was to backtrack a little bit. They actually had a great conversation with Dr. Dominic Dagestino and Dr. Peter Athea. They sort of walked into Quest Nutrition and sat down and said, hey, we need to talk about fat metabolism, ketones and their application and disease and performance.

And really the guys behind Quest at the time had such a passion for, well, understanding nutrition and its application in these areas, but two, answering questions that really nobody else has been able to conquer. Cancer being just a small, simple thing to tackle, right? But yeah, so from there, they said, how do we get started with this right away?

How do we start validating this diet? And there's such dog lovers, we all are, that it said, well, we could open a place where we could rescue dogs with cancer, that are otherwise going to be euthanized, put them on a ketogenic diet, and see what happens. But even though it wasn't a research facility, why don't we do it with the same sort of scientific rigor? So there was actually PET CT imaging on site, which is sort of the gold standard for human cancer diagnostics. They had metabolic conditioning, a beautiful facility that they could play in. And it was right around the same time that I was trying to figure out a different option, because as

somebody from the fitness world, it's like there's got to be something I can do to make a difference in my dog's life. And it was more, even though it was more of a cancer-focused at keto pet, there were some dogs that had epilepsy. It was still very much unmarked territory because the ketogenic diets only really been used in humans for the last almost a hundred years

when it comes to epilepsy treatment. So we were really kind of going into the unknown, but we said, hey, you know, it can only get better from here. I mean, Sasha's not doing well. We put her on a ketogenic diet, and it was in, within a matter of weeks, she started to her tumor, or her not her tumor, her seizure started to reduce. And we slowly started to pull away her medication

until now we control it entirely through food. Wow. Now, the facility, about how many dogs that you guys have in the facility? So, we have had a total of a little over 40 dogs go through. Okay. But since then, what was really interesting is we started to share some of the data that was coming out through scientific conferences and in that process it word spread like a wildfire because there's really nothing.

There's nothing on this. Nothing. I tried doing some research. We were talking about this and I tried doing some research on cancer rates for example in pets. Very hard to find any kind of data. You can find it with humans but you can't find it with pets. There's a lot of anecdotes.

A lot of people are talking about how their dogs have cancer and tumors and how common they're becoming and being in fitness and health and looking at the types of foods that we feed our pets. It's like a hundred percent process. Like they don't eat, I guess, what you would call real food or whatever. And so to me, it's like, geez, why isn't there this research? Because I wonder if it's the food that we're feeding them or their lifestyle that's contributing it,

just like it would be, you know, to humans. So you guys are providing some of this research. Sounds like. Yeah, so even, like I mentioned, even though it's not a research facility, we said we've got to do this in a way where we can, we actually have data to back it up. So all the dogs were, they had their blood glucose

ketone levels tested six times a week. They would all go through standard of care as well. Some did get chemotherapy, some did get radiation, some did get surgery, but we said if we can essentially validate this in dogs who are very similar to us in many ways, then maybe we could start a conversation with humans. So that really led to actually some human pilot studies from there. But a lot of the information that you do find on the ketogenic diet around canines has come from ketopet because we're the largest organization that's

actually been validating it in dogs. So tell us what are some of the things you're finding? Yeah. What are you seeing? So we had about like I mentioned 40 dogs go through the program. 22 of them finished. So we had about like I mentioned 40 dogs go through the program 22 of them finished so it's about 120 day protocol 22 of them finished that Eight at the end of that showed up with no evidence of disease. So pet negative one probably our most well-known study or well-known dog, I should say was Cali She was our first graduate. She's a Vichla, and she was diagnosed with magia sarcoma,

which if you know anything about canines and cancer, that's probably one of the most deadliest forms of cancer for dogs. You have maybe a couple of months, it really just depends on a variety of factors. So she, what we thought was a litter of puppies was one puppy, and the rest was tumor. So she, it was pretty brutal. She had it taken

out. So she went through surgery, came to keto pet and we put the her through PET CT imaging and found out at that point it was metastatic, it was, it was all over. So we put her on a ketogenic diet and with 120 days on the diet she was pet negative, no evidence of disease. So pretty incredible things and it's not just cancer. So some of these dogs suffered from joint issues, a lot of inflammation, and usually when you're seeing a dog with cancer, they're also dealing with other ailments and issues along the way.

So we've seen some pretty incredible results. We've got about a 55% success rate in getting dogs through the program, and about 11 of them have lived beyond their prognosis, which is really exciting. So from there, we started working with people. So keto pet, I'm just backtracking a little bit. Was it an established organization when you brought your dog there, or were you part of

the formulation of it? Yeah, so that's a good question. So it was established by some of the founders of Quest and another PhD. And from there, I actually had to happen to be friends with the founders of Quest. And so at the time, they were telling me, why don't you try a ketogenic diet? And coming from the bodybuilding space,

even though I wasn't like low fat, I was like, that sounds insane because like, he carbs like it's my job because it was. So I was like, at the time, I was like, really sort of hesitant about it. And my husband started it before me, and then I got my dog on it. I said, okay, well, let's at least try it with Sasha because it's worked so well. I mean, with refractory epilepsy patients, so where drugs fail in children, they'll implement as part of standard of care, a ketogenic diet in a hospital setting, and it'll, it can stop seizures within 24 to 48 hours.

This has been an epileptic treatment for a long time, away before we had drugs that could treat epilepsy. Yes, a long time, and so it's interesting. Now everybody's like, have you heard of the new keto diet? It's like, it's been around for a while, guys. But to answer your question, so I sort of then linked up with what they were doing at keto pet, used that on my own dog actually at home.

So my dog wasn't at the sanctuary. The sanctuary actually started in Texas because there was more land less regulation on pet CT imaging and things along those lines. It's not usually used with canines. And so I essentially was making up my own sort of protocol at home in conjunction with, oh, yeah, there's my little dog Sasha. There's before you can see all her hair and then there she is, a little fluff ball.

Wow. After which you're different. Yeah. So it's, it was a little fluff ball. Wow. After which she's pretty. She's different. Yeah. So it was a pretty incredible process. And from there, it was like for me, with such a passion for nutrition and fitness, I said, I've got to get involved in this. This is something that, you know, I saw my dog transform. It was like, okay, what would,

what kind of effect would this have on me? Other people that are suffering from cancer, epilepsy, and we really started to get passionate about it. And then actually came on board with Epigenix Foundation, which is the overarching nonprofit of keto pet. And then we've done some wild studies, pilot studies with oncologists throughout the states. Now, what are some of the common foods that you're, what are the fat sources that you guys

are using? Like walk us through what a keto diet for a dog looks like. Yeah, it's fairly similar except for his raw. So I wouldn't suggest doing that. You're like bulletproof coffee or anything like that. It's weird, they have MCT and butter in the morning. Yeah, oh. Yeah.

So no, it's fairly similar to where they've got ground grass-fed beef, turkey, chicken, as sort of protein sources. For vegetables, you're looking at green beans, cabbage, you name it, essentially, what you would eat. And then, for fats, coconut oil, heavy cream, butter, dogs actually really love that stuff. I usually start with heavy cream or butter because they gravitate more towards that than coconut oil. But that's kind of what you're looking for. And obviously we had our own sort of supplements

and things that we would fill in. But that's, it's really fairly basic. So we, as we started helping all these people and designing protocols for other people that had dogs with cancer. Because it's really, once it's one person got word of it, it was like a wildfire. And we were getting thousands of requests for programs. So we actually built a keto calculator for canines on the keto pet website.

And literally it'll ask you, do you want what's your protein source? What's your fat source? What's your greens? And yeah, it's fairly simple to create. And so do you, are you literally feeding them that? I mean, you're steaming green beans and you're throwing some butter on there. I mean, what are they?

Are you feeding it like that? Are you guys, do you guys put it together like as like a dog treat? I mean, how does it work? Right, right, serve it on a platter. Yeah, yeah. What's this look like? Because I'm envisioning my dogs.

And no, my idea, I have bull dogs. So they'll pretty much eat almost anything. So it probably would work for my dogs, but I know some dogs can be picky about texture and things like that. So do you serve it up a different way or recommend that? Or that's a great point, because some dogs are very picky kind of like children

in some cases. So you kind of have to work with what they like. But yeah, we would just grind it up in a food processor, just mix it together. Just that makes it a little bit more palatable. However, if a dog is kind of a little finicky, I might separate it out just to figure out what they don't like about it. Maybe it's the coconut oil or whatnot. And then yeah, just we feed it raw just because cooking fats under high heat, especially when it comes to dogs, we've found that it may increase the chance

of pancreatitis with canine specifically. Oh, interesting. So that's why we're such big advocates of raw, and dogs are very different in terms of, like for us eating raw would probably be dangerous. You wouldn't probably wanna throw down some raw grass-fed beef, but for dogs, they can handle things

a little bit differently. If you kinda think about how they evolved, you know, they weren't sitting around a can fire, a cook and potato. Oh, I was just going to ask, what's more, is this more of a natural diet for canines to eat this way? In my opinion, I would say yes. I think you have to really think about what is on our store shelves at the dog food store,

right? I mean, it's kibble. And for it to be in that form factor, it's got to be upwards of 60% carbohydrate. And if you think about, again, how dogs sort of came to be and evolved, they certainly didn't eat a ton of potatoes, a ton of fruit even. You know what I mean? For a weed, which isn't all the dog food.

Right, and now you're seeing all these same problems that we're dealing with as a society, diabetes, cancer, on the rise in our animals. And I think there's certainly a relationship between how we've been feeding ourselves is exactly the same way we're feeding our animals. Are we seeing a rise in pet cancers? Do we know any statistics in terms of how many of them are starting to get it and what kinds are more prevalent and survival rates and all that stuff?

Yeah, so I, it's interesting because as you mentioned before, it is challenging to find some of those statistics. There's a lot of the pet food world is a very interesting space. I mean, we think of our food supply and supplement supply as being a little, there's a little bit of shadiness going on these days. You look at the dog food world and it's like times 10. Really? I would argue that. Yeah. Wow, how so? Just because there's not a lot of regulation on how these pet food companies or what they're using in

their products, how some of these vitamins and minerals and things that they're kind of claiming on the labels are in there, not to mention the fact that up until recently, it was actually you couldn't as a dog food company because of AFCO regulations, which is sort of the governing body of dog food, you couldn't list carbohydrate content on the back of the dog food. So, if you can imagine that as a consumer, or somebody who wants to be that educated consumer, and you're looking at the back of the food label

granted you have the ingredients, but if you don't know any better, you might think, oh, this has protein, this has fat, this has, you know, ash, whatever. But I guess it doesn't have carbohydrates because it's not listed. Can you imagine it on the human side, if we were to just take off carbohydrates

and sugar on the label, what that would mean? Now, they actually tell you that they can't, they actually say you can't label them. Right, so it is part of, even if you wanted to, you couldn't list carbohydrates on the label. This has changed. Now why wasn't that way?

That's so strange. Yeah, there's... Protect the shading-ness. I mean, there's a lot of theories around that and things like that What's the name of the governing body again? Afco and are they a government agency? It is not I don't believe it's okay. I'm wondering who's funding who's right? Yeah, if you did some deep dive digging on that and and just really break down sort of the pet food industry

And I can send you guys some really interesting Please and just really break down sort of the pet food industry. And I can send you guys some really interesting please documentaries and things. There's a documentary called Pet Fold and a variety of other things that are actually taking a deep dive into that whole industry and space because it's really hard to navigate as a consumer right now. And I think that's why you're seeing a lot of

raw food companies and people starting to talk about what we're feeding our dogs. There's so much focus on us. But if you look at what we're feeding our animals, oh my gosh, it's even worse. Are there common shadiness that you see in the space? I mean, are there like hustles that people do? Like, you know, we talk about on the show, like protein spiking and things like that.

They're common in the supplement world. Are there common things that fillers or shady things that people do on labels to? Yeah, there are like fillers and things they add in, but also they're using certain types of like in terms of quality of food. I mean, we all know the quality of our food makes a massive difference. And so using like rendered meats or, you know, by part or like nasty parts of animals essentially and things like that, that we wouldn't ordinarily like eat ourselves, how they're cooking the food. So binding it together to be in that form factor again,

as you can imagine, what does that do to some of the nutrients that you're giving your dog? So there's definitely a lot of controversy and things around it when you just scratch the surface. It's quite scary. Now in terms of cancer rates, do you, are they going up in pets? Do are we seeing it start to rise? I would say so. Yes, I think it's hard to. Now, in terms of cancer rates, do you, are they going up in pets? Do are we seeing it start to rise?

I would say so. Yes, I think it's hard to find some of those statistics right now, but I would say just in my experience in being a part of keto pet and watching over the last like three years, how many cases and people are contacting us and it's just going up and up and up and up. It's shocking to see, and not just cancer, it's also diabetes, which,

when do you ever find that? A dog having diabetes. A dog having diabetes. No, are you getting any veterinarian support with this or any kind of backlash with this? That is a great question. We actually do have some great support. I will say there's still much like in the human world.

I mean, even with the ketogenic diet and its application potential in cancer, you still have a little bit of pushback on that, right? Because it's new, it's not normally used for that. It's not part of standard of care. With animals, there is a great group of veterinarians that we've linked up with. Actually, three of them will be speaking at the conference that I put on the ketogenic

diet for canine. So it's a really exciting time because we're seeing more and more veterinarians realize because much like, you know, in the medical world, there's not a whole lot of education around nutrition when it comes to how we're treating our animals or people. And so there's a lot of proactive veterinarians that are starting to sort of step up to the plate and educate themselves and link up with us. And then they take that formula from ketopet and they make it their own. There's a great veterinarian out of Florida, Dr. Lauren Nations, who literally has this

clinic dedicated entirely to metabolic therapies, inclusive of the ketogenic diet and cancer. There's a couple of veterinarians that run this organization called the Royal Animal Health University, and they are dedicated to educating people about the diet and some of the current concerns in the dog food world. So it's an exciting time, because it's starting to catch on, I would say.

Yeah, it's been well known for a long time that there's an effect that happens in humans on a ketogenic diet in regards to cancer. I think the name of the effect is the warberg effect if I'm not mistaken. How do warberg? Yeah, and this is where the cancer cells basically get starved because they can't, many of them, not all of them, because some of them actually can feed on ketones, but many of them start out because they don't know how to, they can't process glucose. They have to use glucose. You start them with glucose, they die because ketones don't work for them. This effect is

also noticed even more profoundly in humans with fasting where you avoid all food. Is that a part of the protocol as well? Do you also do fasting protocols with dogs with cancer? Some of the dogs, yes. And I do think fasting can be a powerful tool when it comes to that, especially those that are going through standard of care. I mean, some emerging evidence is showing that fasting prior to going through chemotherapy radiation actually

may improve the efficacy of it, which is pretty interesting. And I think definitely needs to be looked into and more depth, but yes, we would do fasting with some of our dogs. And what's interesting is, as we started to work with people outside of the sanctuary, it was really interesting because some people eat much like maybe with themselves, some people had a sort of distorted perception of where their dog was in terms of body condition score. And they found it very hard to literally go one night

without feeding their animal. Like, oh gosh, but poor, you know, Fufu needs to eat tonight. I get into this all the time with people with my dogs. They fit me. I will, if I feed them according to their activity. So if I was busy that day, they can get anywhere between two to four or five walks plus playtime with me if I'm and then they can be sometimes completely sedentary

and sleep all day. And so I'll skip feeding them one meal. And when someone sees me doing that, they freak out on me like, yeah, why is that mentality any different? I don't get it. Yeah, I find that really fascinating. It's really interesting because there's so much, much benefit to doing that, especially if their activity is lower that day, it's like, why would you feed them the same amount, right? And so it was hard to educate, sort of one of my passions is being able to educate people about sort of the benefits of that, but how to properly implement it in a way that makes sense. And so it was part of our battle was really helping people understand that it's okay to not feed your dog one night or maybe

a whole day. They're going to live. I promise. And there's a lot of benefit, especially, you know, granted, I will say there is, you have to be cautious when a dog is already underweight. Sure. But nine times at a 10, most dogs that would come to us would be overweight. I would have to say that to a lot of the problems we have, the health problems that humans have

and their pets have today is not the result of underfeeding, it's the result of overfeeding, and there's no way we evolved having food, you know, two or three times every single day. Right, both humans and dogs. No way, there's absolutely no way. And so, and that's why we see so many health benefits when you take the average, you know, westerner who has food all the time, and you fast them. You take somebody who doesn't eat all the time and you fast them, it's, it's, it's starvation.

But you do it to someone like me, and I get all these health benefits. So the same thing would happen with animals. You're saying that you're getting lots of people now who are hearing about what you're doing and are trying the protocols on their animals. What kind of anecdotes and feedback are you getting from these people?

Pretty profound feedback from some of them. A granted, like you mentioned before, you know, most cancer cells exhibit that alter to energy metabolism or the auto-warburg effect, right? But not all. And we get dogs at different stages of cancer that maybe have other factors going on, much like a human that also goes through

sleep disturbances, stress, and all these other environmental epigenetic factors that come kind of come into play. Same thing with our animals. So, but we have seen, I would say, more often than not, people will come to us, you know, with a cancer diagnosis, just sort of out of desperation saying, oh my gosh, I didn't realize the food was a big deal.

And they change the dog's diet. And like I mentioned before, sometimes they see whether the dog had a bad knee or maybe skin issues. All of these other things, even beyond just the cancer diagnosis, start to kind of clear up. And it's like this sort of light that goes off for people, and they never look back. It's like not only do they make sure every, every one of their dogs is following a low carb lifestyle,

but some of them actually then themselves transition onto a ketogenic diet and start to, you know, it's this whole chain reaction and transformation. The spike got leaner on the style, I think I'll try. It works for him. Yeah. That's really cool. How about an expense wise? It sounds like it would be really cool. How about expense wise?

It sounds like it would be really expensive. Is it, or do you find that the dogs are having to eat less because they're eating a higher fat diet? That's a great question. It is, I mean, if you think about what the majority of food is, the cheapest kind of products, most convenient, dog hibble, is going to be less expensive. It's much like if you were to feed yourself off of twinkies or your whole life or whatever.

Well, the McDonald's 99-Sitman. Right, you're getting what you pay for, right? So there is a little bit of an increase in expense because you're feeding your dog better food. So that's one thing I think people have to kind of wrap their heads around is that it's okay because it just means that you're not gonna end up spending a ton of money in medical bills when something pops up down the line, much like humans.

What percentage? I forgot, I read this a long time ago, it was like a large percentage of pets are on regular medication, much like a large percentage of Americans. Do you know what that number is? I don't, but I'm sure it's very high. But the point you made is perfect. Like, I know as people have spent thousands of dollars on veterinary bills and medications when exercising and eating right, it's going to probably save you money.

Well, for us, I mean, we had our dog on Capra for so long, and that is not cheap. And so it was even though we were maybe spending a little bit more in food, we were saving on medication. So it balances out and I think you really have to much like with ourselves. You have to think about long-term. Now are you guys looking at other treatments in addition to a ketogenic type diet? There's a lot of anecto that's been going around recently and it started with humans also with epilepsy but also with epilepsy, but also with cancer, with the use of

cannabinoids like CBD and some of the other cannabinoids, including THC, but mainly CBD. And now I'm seeing people use CBD or hemp oil products for pets when they have cancers and I'm in these are anecdotes, so I don't know what percentage are doing well but I'm reading some stories and people like, man, my pet's cancer got so much better one away. Are you guys looking into this kind of stuff as well? So it wasn't official, an official part of our protocol at all, we've not used it with dogs. However, I will say a lot of the people that we have worked

with outside of the sanctuary come to us and saying, hey, I've started with this already. I'm using CBD based products It seems to be working. I want to combine that with metabolic therapy or the ketogenic diet. So I have personally heard a lot of benefit and actually a lot of the veterinarians that I work closely with have also experienced some great benefit. So I think much like, it's really difficult because as you guys know, just in terms of like recent law changes and things like that, but up until this point, there's really not a whole lot of information

on dosing, especially when it comes to using it therapeutically. I mean, there's a lot of information you can find out there on the internet, but there's really not a great standard yet, I think, and it's even less of that when you look at animals. So it was, it's really difficult for us to be able to use something like that. However, I will say we get a lot of people coming to us saying they've experienced benefit. What gets me really excited about this

is part of what gets me excited about the internet in the sense that in the past, anecdote was, in order for anecdote to be considered for scientific study, you'd have to have an overwhelming amount of anecdote where scientists were like, wow, everybody's talking about this, let's get this going. The internet is allowing that to happen much faster. I talk about a family member who was stricken with Crohn's disease

about 10 years ago and his mom is a very intelligent woman and there wasn't that much out there in terms of how to solve this problem aside from these very, very harsh, immune, suppressing drugs. So she went online and got on these forums with thousands of people who had crones who were talking about diets and things that they were doing that were helping. And she found something called the carbohydrate-specific diet, which she applied to to her son and it worked and put him in remission. Never would have found that otherwise.

Now, the carbohydrate specific diet has got some study behind it because of this anecdote. I think of the same thing with CBD and epilepsy and the resurgence of the ketogenic diet and how that's, you know, starting to help people. So I think it's really good because with pets, it's easier to control. Like you tell a person, eat a ketogenic diet and fast, and they just don't like, I can't do it.

You tell them to do it for their pet and they get more control. Like, okay, well, my dog's not, he's gonna only eat what I give him. So I find it exciting because it almost seems like it's gonna reflect back to what's happening with people. Are people excited about that? Are they looking at it in those ways as well?

In terms of like, okay, we're doing this with pets. Let's see how this will work with them and then maybe. Yeah, well, that's kind of how we founded Epigenics Foundation, right? So that's how that came to be because it was like, we were seeing so much benefit in canines. It was like, well, what could this do with humans? And clinical trials are so important, incredibly important, but they take a long time before you get the, and result in the information, right? And a lot of money, super expensive yet.

A lot of money, right? And we're talking about nutrition here, and nutritional intervention, so, you know, funding, and things like that become a little bit more complicated. But we said, gosh, let's start working with people. How do we start working with people right now? So we then started partnering with oncologists who had heard about the ketogenic diet

and these nutritional interventions being beneficial, but really not knowing where to start. One of those neuro-oncologists was out of Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles. So we teamed up with him. He would refer patients out to us who this was a late-stage brain cancer pilot study, including patients that had glioblastoma, which is, again, one of the horrible.

The worst, I would say the worst cancer you can get with a really dismal prognosis, maybe two years, two to five years. And if you throw standard of care on top of that chemotherapy radiation, you're not looking at much of an increase in survival, right? So these people need something else. So when we teamed up with him, he was very much open to this because of a lot of the information coming out, not just preclinical, but anecdotal evidence about it. So he said, well, it can't hurt if these patients want to do it. Let's give it a try. And we started a pilot study with about 15 patients, and it was mind-blowing. Some of the results we saw with brain cancer patients specifically. That's one thing that I'm

so incredibly passionate about. And just in my mission is education around its potential with brain cancer patients, because much like how it works in some similar mechanisms with epilepsy, you see, I mean, I had patients suffering from aphasia or alexia losing their ability to read and write because of either surgery or the brain tumor itself to within three to four weeks on the diet, regaining that, giving me a call saying, I just read a paragraph in a novel again. So that's pretty powerful stuff that we started to experience with, working with people because we knew it had to be so important.

And what's really exciting is that pilot setting has actually inspired a clinical trial that's now going on at Cedar Sinai with a pond diagnosis, glioblastoma patients, they will implement a ketogenic diet. Which is huge. Wow, wow, because it's earlier in the process. Right.

Which is, I think, a key thing for brain cancer specifically, because once you get a patient, they've gone through surgery, they've gone through radiation. Maybe they've gotten a creosis. And all these complications, it becomes a little bit more challenging to really get in there with this, you know, warberg effect, if you know a metabolic theory of cancer. So.

Now, when you guys get somebody in, do you ever have a challenge with some people that just don't want to put the time and effort into making the food for their dog and preparing like that? And if so, are there some dog food brands that you recommend or that you would say stay away from? That is a great question. So we at Ketopi ran into this problem just even within the sanctuary. There was our spent on formulating individual diets for each individual dog based off of

their activity level body conditions, all these things. So you're taking about 40 dogs and having to formulate programs. It takes a long time and it's very, you could be spending my time doing something else, right? So, there's actually a company, some of the founders are investment partners in a company called Valiant Pet Nutrition, which is the first ketogenic dog food

that to hit the market, but it before it hit the market, it was something that we actually used at keto pet sanctuary because we needed something. So, they donated the food to us. And now they're commercially available and they donate some of the funds back to us. Which is really kind of cool. But you can really keto-fi, if you will,

a lot of dog foods out there. Oh, really? Yeah, more so, you have to be really cautious because again, you're not knowing what you completely get on the label. Nine times out of 10, I tell people, you know, try the formulation first, like get grocery store items, understand the diet, and we even with some people are able to get them to actually test their dog's blood, which is key, especially if you're dealing with the cancer

diagnosis. And then if they just can't say they travel a lot, then we'll recommend using something like ketogenic dog food like valium. Is there a target level of ketones that you're looking for in the dogs that you're treating? Because I know that there's different applications of a ketone concentrations from just the normal person

who may have autoimmune type inflammation to like epilepsy, which probably requires, I would assume, more ketones. Is there a number you guys are looking for? It's so interesting. This topic specifically, because there's so many things that, while there's a great building, sort of, mountain of research, there's so much more that I think needs to be done around, specifically ketone utilization.

Like, what does it even mean if, you know, I have 0.5 minimal for ketones and you have 2.5, like it used to be when we were first starting these organizations that we would all compete and like whoever had the higher number was better. But I don't think that's the case in lean mass and all these things kind of come into the equation. What's interesting though is that dogs will actually their level of ketosis is much lower, whereas humans, it's typically 0.5, and the normal and above is technically your in ketosis.

With dogs, it's 0.3. We typically found between 0.3 to 0.7, and that was sort of where the sweet spot is for dogs. And what's a really great indicator to though, and that's important to test alongside ketones, is blood glucose. Because if that's low, there's a really great indicator too though, and that's important to test alongside ketones is blood glucose. Because if that's low, there's a good chance insulin is also low. So, you know, you've really got to have a whole picture for each dog because one dog could be, you know, 0.3, but they have incredibly high blood glucose, which isn't really ideal.

Whereas the other dog could have maybe their their level of ketosis is 0.2, but their blood glucose is in the 50s. That in my opinion would be a better case scenario. So you really got to have like a whole picture. Now how do people at home test their pets ketone levels or is it just blood? Because I only have those P-strips that people can imagine the dog that's a dog. Yes, you would be, can you guys film that because they think that would go viral? Testing your dogs here in. Yeah. No, we don't use pastrefts. We use precision extra.

Or that's what we used at the sanctuary to kind of validate. That was really the only thing that was available in terms of key tone testing. And it worked really well with all of our dogs. But it is a little bit challenging. So you can either test the side of the paw under or inside the lip or in the ear,

just making sure you're cleaning the area well first. We typically don't use that lancet device, that clicks and sort of stabs you because it scares dogs. So instead, just taking that needle and just a light little needle prick and you get enough blood. And if the dog is not comfortable

with their paws being touched, the ear, that's what I found was best for my, because I have a little Sasha's like tiny. So I would always feel so terrible, like hooking her, but I would get her ear and she could barely feel it. So this is something you do at home. You can buy a device.

You just get it on Amazon and you buy a device and test your dog's blood. And I think, you know, if you're using it for more of a lifestyle based focus, I think you don't necessarily have to test blood. I find it really interesting in nerd out on that stuff, but you don't have to. But for a dog that's dealing with cancer, I would definitely want to see where the blood glucose and ketone levels are, because much like with some of the human or, you know, at least animal model research, there may be a sweet spot for where you kind

of want to be when it comes to ketogenic diet that's therapeutic cancer. Were there any negative effects from going above that 0.7, you know, millimole level because you said 0.3 to 0.7. So what happens after that? What did you guys notice? So it's really interesting and I think it all comes down to much like with people because I've worked with gosh, over 100 cancer patients as well, but much like with people where the dog is at, I mean insulin resistance and just hormone balance and stress and there's

so many different factors that kind of come into play as well as just what our thresholds are individually for different macronutrients, right? So not everybody's the same. Like I can get away with a big fat steak on a Friday night, but maybe my husband can't. So and maintain ketosis. So just in terms of that sweet spot range, that's just on average where we would see dogs at.

I see. But some dogs, I've had dogs strangely in the threes for ketones, which in my opinion, and granted, you know, we would have to take a much closer look at this, but I feel like metabolically, there's something a little bit off there. Like most dogs, I think, are lower on the ketone range because they are able to utilize ketones, maybe even more efficiently than we are. That's why they don't sit at that, you know, 0.5 to in the twos most often.

But, you know, you don't usually see that. And I think that there could be some issue with the dog actually utilizing ketones or insulin resistance or something strange along the side. Let's talk more about the diet because I know with people when they're trying to get into into ketosis for the medical applications, because it's different from low carb. You can go low carb, not going to ketosis for the medical applications. Because it's different from low carb.

You can go low carb, not going to ketosis, but if you want the therapeutic effects of ketosis, you have to get your ketones elevated. One of the things that can throw a lot of people off is just too much protein. Like they'll eat too much protein and their body will convert that protein to glucose and that'll throw them out of ketosis.

Does this happen to dogs as easily or can they eat more protein? That is a great question. Every dog's different. I think it's very similar. That's why testing's so important. Totally. Every dog's threshold just like us

is completely different to the next dog. So some dogs, especially really active ones, can get away with more protein, much like those who train and use of facility like this, and here could probably get away with more protein or even more carbohydrate consumption. And four dogs that are following the diet in a lifestyle sort of approach, in my opinion, an experience in following a ketogenic diet just personally, not so much in working with it as a sort of metabolic therapy for disease, but more so a lifestyle approach. I think there may be some benefit time to time

to popping out of ketosis. And I don't think we all evolved in just a constant study state of ketosis. And I think there's a lot of, oh, you're right, you're wrong. This is how you do this other you don't. The end of the day, I think there's something to having that metabolic flexibility, cycling through. And same goes for maybe dogs on a low carb diet

that are keto from time to time, but you punch up their protein. Yeah, just like humans, dogs are opportunity eaters. So humans, although we evolved, probably eating a lot of meat, because it was so energy dense, if we walked, it wouldn't pass up a fruit tree. Yeah, we're not, we're not gonna be that good.

That's not on my diet. Same thing with a dog. That a fruit tree. Yeah, we're not gonna be like, that's not on my diet. Same thing with a dog. That's the key to it. Yeah, that's the same with a, but how do I stop my dog from eating dog shit? That's the one. Please tell me. That is a problem.

Yeah, you know, it's funny. Some people say that my dog's poop intake, yeah, it might be key to it, depending on what that dog's eating. But some people say like, actually my dog's poop intake has gone down a little bit. It's not, they're not as interested

or brass consumption, things like that. So it's really interesting what happens when you clean up your dogs or your own diet, right? Now some people get digestive issues when they switch to keto constipation being the most common. Do we see that in pets as well? Yes, that is a great question. Absolutely.

Dogs can get the keto flu just like we can. Okay. So you may Yes, that is a great question. Absolutely. I mean, dogs can get the keto flu just like weekend. Okay. So you may see, you know, I've had some people say, oh, my dog's so tired and doesn't want to do anything. And it's like, well, you know, let's add in a little bit of sodium. Let's, you know, maybe you want to supplement with some electrolyte. So much the same way that you can experience that.

Typically with a human, usually if you have the constipation headaches, fatigue, nine times out of 10, it's because your electrolytes are off because of when that insulin drops, it triggers the kidneys to excrete excess water with all that water comes electrolyte. So same exact thing can happen with a dog as insulin drops. So we usually will suggest if a dog is having issues

with maybe, especially when a dog has been fed Kibble for the majority of its life and then you switch over to a high higher fat diet now We kind of transition a little bit more slowly in the beginning. It was like immediate, you know on a two-to-one or 80 plus percent of calories coming from fat Now we kind of suggest kind of easing into it because a lot of these dogs Now we kind of suggest kind of easing into it because a lot of these dogs their guts are just not Ready yet and they're got microbeyle has potentially been altered in a negative way and you need to kind of work up to and build those enzymes to be able to consume that higher fat diet now If I if I'm listening to the show right now and I'm very interested in everything you're saying is what kind of service

Do you guys provide I mean do you guys do anything for someone like if I called in and you guys charge and maybe I can send the blood to you? I mean, what exactly do you guys do? That is a great question. So keto bet really was something that we started to help people, but it was me and maybe one other person and it was like thousands of people started to reach out and it was like not sustainable. We weren't, you know, Epigenics Foundation,

the overarching nonprofit, is a nonprofit. We don't want to charge people. We want to provide education. So, ketopet is really transformed into an educational-based program now. So, we've taken what we've learned at the sanctuary, and we actually have an e-book on the ketopet website that explains the ketogenic diet.

It's application and cancer some of the research behind it and some great resources scientific journal articles and things like that So people can find sort of that base knowledge of how to implement a diet because I think there's a lot of importance in Understanding that yourself and not just having somebody else do it for you because when you have have somebody else in implementing the ketogenic diet for your dog, you don't know the difference between like, oh, I just gave my dog a little sweet potato, just as a treat. Well, you should know that if a dog is dealing with cancer on a therapeutic level of ketogenic diet,

you probably don't want to feed treats at all. You want to take some of its food, roll it up into a little ball, and that's its treat, because it's cool orically restricted. So we really provide educational tools now. So keto pet dot org or keto pet sanctuary dot com, you can go there, you can use the keto calculator that's on

there to formulate it yourself. It'll also send you an ebook that really explains the diet for canines. And we still have an interest in further exploring, you know, cancer or the ketogenic diet and its application in cancer with canine specifically, as well as people. So our main focus now though is in education. Is this also something that, like in terms of cats and like other animals, like is there any sort of movement

in that direction? We get asked about cats all the time. Not that I'm a cat person. I'm just gonna bet out person. For the record. Yeah, no. I love cats, but we would love to have information on cats. We've not validated it the same way that we have with dogs. So we can't really properly provide that information because cats do have different nutrient

requirements than dogs do. So, but I would tell the listener to check what's in your cat's food and ask yourself is that something that you would consider natural for a cat? I would imagine a cat is probably more carnivorous than a dog. Everybody's had as a cat knows that those fuckers go out and bring you a mouse or a bird to your door

and they try and hunt things. I would think that it would probably benefit even more than a dog with it. They're like carnivore diet. Yeah. Keto carnivore. Have you guys done enough, um, or have you guys helped enough dogs to start to see patterns in certain breeds? I asked this because my entire life, we've had all different breeds of dogs.

And this was my first time owning English bulldogs. And man, are they, I mean, it seems like I'm dealing with something all the time. They're allergic to so much stuff. They seem like they're intolerant to a lot of certain foods. Like, I, they're diet. I've never had to be so strict about a diet as I have with these English bulldogs. Do you see patterns like that in certain breeds? You know, we've worked with all different types of breeds. It's been so mixed across the board

that it would be hard because we weren't a research search facility. We essentially would rescue the dogs that we could get that had cancer that were otherwise going to be put down. So we really didn't have a big choice in like getting a specific breed much like you would find at a research facility. So it's hard for me to really say, but I will say, you know, like, you know, boxers getting more in terms of cancer and situations like that, what you're explaining, we get a lot of that sort of anecdotal,

like individual information, but I don't have enough information to where I would be able to give you more of an idea on that. I will say it's interesting because so many things affect not just our animals, but us beyond just, like, as we've grown up over the years, or what we've been eating, but what are moms' eight, right? What was the gut microbiome of our mothers?

And I think the same would apply to dogs. So especially when you're looking at, like, purebred dogs, I think there's a lot that's sort of passed along and whether or not that kind of comes to be in terms of like gene expression and all that really can come down to a lot of epigenetic factors and food. So that makes that point makes me that's why probably you see these you have people say this all the time If you have like a mutt it just seems to be resilient Just can handle anything anything toy fine and then you have this two thousand dollar dog that you bought That's your bread and their fucking weird

Issues to your point right there that makes a lot of sense because though the pure breads are getting same same family jeans in line And probably fed the same way. And so, and if you're crossbreeding a lot and a mutt is probably picking up all kinds of things, which is probably more advantageous for a dog to be more resilient to all different environments and foods and things. 100%.

I would almost argue that the food that's been passed down from generation to generation, what they've been eating, which has probably been the same for the last, like, however many years of breeding the breeders have gone through. Because it's so crazy, if you can imagine, I mean, providing, like, a dog, I've definitely met some dog owners or breeders or whatnot that are like, here's their food, do not change it. You know, make sure they stay inside.

They don't get, don't get this natural sunlight and all these things, like we protect these little, and protect these little animals. But at the same time, it's like, could you ever imagine like a physician saying to you, like, okay, I have this one box of cereal, this is only what you're supposed to feed your child for the rest of their life.

If you stray at all, they will have an upset stomach. Like, that's a problem. Yeah, and we inherit our microbiome from our mothers. And that diversity in humans, I don't know if there's any studies on animals, but the diversity in humans is declined dramatically. And so humans are having all these gut issues and autoimmune issues.

And it only makes sense that our pets would start to suffer those similar things. Do you guys also recommend that people feed their pets organic food to avoid things like glyphosate residues and things that can affect the gut or the microbiome? I personally think that that would be a great idea to go that route.

I do know that some people already are dealing with the struggle of cost in the transition process. So much like with anything, it's like how do you make something sustainable, but also help people stay compliant in the process, which money is a big factor for a lot of people. So I say, if you can make those better choices of quality of food do,

because I do think there's benefits to that. One of the side effects of a ketogenic diet is weight loss. And it's not due to the, to the, some magic fat loss properties, or at least this is what the study shows, no magic fat loss properties from a ketogenic diet, aside from the fact that a lot of people just, it satiates the hell out of them.

Like, I go in and add a keto genic diet all the time. I've had issues in the past and they were really beneficial to me in the past. Right now I'm not because I don't necessarily need to. But I do find when I eat a keto genic diet, I'm just, I don't want to eat as much. I just, I'm more satiated. I just don't want to eat as much food. Are people saying that they're finding this with their pets as well, or they're losing weight and that the pets don't necessarily want to eat as much as they did before?

Yeah, I mean, it affects them similarly, and that, like, it's very satiating. Not only that, I think a lot of people have a difficult time with just how the food looks on the plate, because before, it was all this, like, carry stuff, and that was bulky, and, you know, it looked like it was all this like carry stuff that was bulky and you know it looked like it was a lot of food to like you know this minuscule amount but it's like you understand that fat is more colorically dense right so it's gonna be small but same if not maybe more amount you know in terms of of calories so yes some dogs not, like people would switch up feeding times. We used to feed the dogs twice a day. I've found that to be most beneficial versus like one large feeding, just in terms of what

we were doing. But yes, I would say they experience the same things and it's very similar in the process of transitioning a human as it is a dog except for dogs can't run down the street to 7-11 and grab, you know, some bad dog food. So, a little easier. Yeah. Do, um, any other behavior changes in these, in these animals that are trying ketogenic diets, are they noticing any changes in like energy and anxiety or fighting? Do you notice any patterns like that? Yeah, some people have, and we've noticed as well, but some people have said, like, my dog is like a puppy again.

I don't know where this energy came from, but there's so much more energy. They just are non-stop. Like, I can't even keep up with them. So we get stuff like that. You know, their coat, their fur changes a lot through the process, so shinier coats. Can imagine the fat would do that, right?

Right, exactly. Fat is so supportive of everything. So there's a lot of benefit there, but energy levels for sure. Anxiety, yes. I mean, our dog, Ruxpin, experience is pretty significant anxiety, and it's helped him quite a bit as well. So I think, I mean, much like with people,

there's literally areas of research. It almost sounds like when you explain like to somebody that doesn't know a ketogenic diet, I feel like I'm almost talking about snake oil because it's kind of like, yeah, so it works potentially for cancer, for ALS, for skin issues, and people are like, what do you, what, can you imagine if there's like a drug in this world that did the same thing. C-B-D, it's marijuana. That's how we feel when you talk about marijuana. Is that what you bring? Sure, marijuana is good for your health. You feel like, yeah, it's weed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think it's probably, it's not necessarily that it's magic. I think it's just, we eat a particular way all the time and we constantly feed ourselves that changing that and removing something that we probably shouldn't always have all time gives us all these benefits because I've noticed with athletes and even with myself, if I stay key to genic too long and too consistently, I also start to notice negatives and I pull myself out. Even Dr. Mccola, who's like this one of the biggest proponents of a key to genic diet,

probably one of the first guys online to really push it, says it's a good idea. Unless you're treating something therapeutically, it's a good idea to pop in and out of it to promote that metabolic flexibility. So are you guys going to work with more pet, you said you guys are on the education route? Does that mean you're going to stop now, taking animals and working with them independently? For the time being, because it was very expensive, as you can imagine, to run a facility like that. So we are now focused on education,

but that's not to say that we're not continuing to explore ways, other ways that we can continue to further this research with canines and inhumans. But sanctuary wise, we don't have the sanctuary right now in Texas, and we have shifted gears to really be able to provide people the education while we're on hiatus with some of those studies. How are you guys? How are you funded? That is a great question. So, one of the founders of question nutrition just has this insatiable passion for really exploring this. I mean, he found out about, you know, auto warburg and the warburg effect and the metabolic theory of cancer and really doven

and hasn't come out. And I think it's much that way, like with myself, you once you go down that path and you explore the potential of the ketogenic diet, especially in disease, it's hard to kind of go the other way. And so he, in terms of funding, that was largely how this all started, but in addition to that, we

also take donations. And then third, valiant pet nutrition donates back to us from their sales. So donations, and it's also privately funded, and then also through valiant pet nutrition. Excellent. Do you guys also recommend an exercise protocol for these animals while they're doing this ketogenic protocol? Yes, that's a great point. That was actually a big part of our protocol.

So 20 to 30 minutes, two times a day, kind of like high intensity interval training, you would sort of participate in as a person. We would do the same for dogs, because that does help in the ketone utilization and fat metabolism process for these dogs. And it's so important. Yeah, I mean, you guys know, I don't have to.

For sure. For sure. Now, I know how religious people can get about nutrition and I know when we talk about nutrition, we get pushback from people all the time and it's hilarious to me because people just treat it like dogma, no pun intended. Do you guys, are you guys getting lots of pushback

from anybody for saying some of the stuff that you're saying about, you know, ketagec diet for cancer for pets and it's helped all these, you know, yeah, I mean, the thing is is that we're not waving to people saying this is a cure by any means. This is just a tool in the toolbox that is under utilized right now and just need there needs to be a bigger conversation around food and its application in disease in human and canine performance. I mean, it's obvious that we're sort of missing this key component

in the conversation. So while we do get, I think the most pushback we get is on raw feeding. I think there's a lot of people have a lot of issues around that. But on the ketogenic diet, it's so interesting because there's a lot of people in the dog world or veterinarians or whatever you want to say that will say a dog cannot get into ketosis and we have a lot of blood data to show that they can, in fact, get into ketosis or that it could be potentially an issue with pancreatitis.

Like high fat diets are an issue with pancreatitis is what you typically hear. And we did not experience that at the sanctuary at all because we didn't cook the food. So there's something in terms of fat proxeteration, like issues with damaging those fats, that feeding raw may help you avoid that. So I think for us, it's more so, let's talk about what we know, what we've learned,

let's have an evidence-based conversation. I mean, the ketogenic diet is being studied right now, preclinical clinical trials. If you look online, you can find studies that are going on all over the world. That is very evident that this is sort of the future of nutrition science. This is a big important part of it.

It might not be all of it, but it's an important part of it. And so you feel pretty much all dogs could benefit from this in terms of also being preventative from seeing cancer and seeing tumors occur. So do you see people seeking you guys and your information before their dog is getting sick or pretty much the opposite? Yeah, we actually, so usually people will contact us out of either inspiration or desperation, one of the two. But if it's inspiration, maybe they've tried the diet themselves

and has experienced great benefits. Or maybe they, I don't know, just are inspired for some reason to want to change our dog's life. And so we do get a lot of people that will contact us wanting to kind of make that shift over into the ketogenic diet as a lifestyle. I think you made a mention of prevention, which is still something that's definitely up in the air. I would never feel comfortable saying, you know, this for sure will prevent cancer in your dog. Like, don't quote me on that. Hopefully that doesn't get taken out of context in this.

But I do think we got to think about the fact that the ketogenic diet is known to lower insulin and inflammation in the body. It's known to have all these benefits. So if we know that inflammation, high insulin, blood glucose levels are pretty detrimental and can lead to other issues down the line, I personally, in my opinion, would say it might be a good option from time to time, at least, or maybe through

fasting, to enter into a state of ketosis. Do you, do you, are there situations where you're like, we don't recommend acutogenic diet? Are there particular animals or maybe symptoms that people can look for and say, okay, this may not be best for my pet? Yeah, so I think one big factor, which is fairly rare, is when a dog is already dramatically under weight. So that is kind of a little bit of a trickier situation.

If a dog is really far gone, like end stage of cancer, it's like at that point, it doesn't make sense to completely like upper this dog's whole lifestyle. Maybe not. Maybe. It's hard to say. I think there's a lot of people unfortunately contacting us that that literally their dog should be on, if it was a human on hospice, at that point, I think you need to like kind of weigh all factors, or if the dog is really under weight, you know, kind of figuring out the bet. Because because, you know, what we did was calorically restricted. And I think that's kind of a key component when you're dealing with something like cancer, right? So you don't want to do that if the dog is already

drummed like very thin. So those are a couple of things that you want to kind of keep in mind. There's also certain cancer types. Inflin, no, my believe, is one of them. I might have just said that wrong, but it basically where you're dealing with something or even like a dog that's on insulin that maybe has an issue with diabetes in addition to cancer, you have to be really cautious even as a human. If you're a type 2 diabetic or you type 1 diabetic and you're insulin dependent, you know, as you transition on to a diet like this, it will drop your insulin and you will need to work with your veterinarian who hopefully is on board with this nutrition approach and truly understands how quickly

that transition and dosing has to change because otherwise it can be really deadly potentially. Yeah, now because you were so, you know, into fitness and into nutrition before, which I thought was fascinating, I didn't even know that. Which before you started working with this kind of research, has that now affected how you guys eat? Because you ate, you probably watched your diet before. So it's not like you ate really bad before.

Have you changed how you eat now, and how do you guys eat now as a result of this? Oh, I'm totally a keto head. Yeah, no. So once I saw, it took a bit for me to actually make the transition. And we've always been big fans of including fat in the diet, especially when it comes to female hormones and all of those things. So we did diets differently than the average, you know, coaches in the bodybuilding world.

But it took us back to really, even more so because it was sort of unmarked territory at the time. Now there's all these great resources online. At the time, and I have a family history, like a variety of people in my family have heart disease, right? So, and my mom's in the medical profession, so,

so when I said, hey, I wanna translate I should on to this high fat, motor protein, low-car diet, it the what? So for me it was and we could get into like the weeds with it was kind of interesting because I approached it I said if I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do it with the same amount of you know crazy as bodybuilding where I want to test my blood prior to starting I want to follow a specific protocol when I follow a ketogenic diet I want to test my blood prior to starting. I want to follow a specific protocol when I follow a ketogenic diet.

I want to retest my blood because I was specifically interested in cardiovascular markers because of my family history. And so I wanted to say, because I wasn't really happy on sort of your traditional like lower fat, car, protein diet. I was hungry all the time.

I was one of those sort of freaks in the industry that I was going into shows at like 3,500 to 4,000 calories a day. And tons of carbs. And so for me, it was like constantly thinking about the next time I was gonna eat, which I definitely didn't wanna live that way for the rest of my life. So I was really open to exploring this,

because for me, it was like, if this works, and my cardiovascular numbers improve, maybe this is, maybe this is the answer to a lot of, you know, issues we're seeing as a whole. So I went through all this blood testing and it was actually interesting. I don't know if you guys have heard the term hyperresponders. You've heard of it. Yeah, so I was one of those.

I basically what that means is my cholesterol went off the charts. So I, and it was quite scary because there's no information at the time on hyper responders. I just was exploring this myself and I got a test done called an NMR lipoprofile test,

which isn't your traditional total cholesterol test, which really doesn't tell you a whole lot of anything because you're just looking at total numbers of LDL HGL, doesn't tell you particle size, quality of particles, all of these factors, your particles actually more atherogenic than not. So I went and took a deep dive. And for me, my numbers went through the root.

Where were they before and where they end up going? So my number, I think my cholesterol was around 200 or a little bit lower and I was way over 350 for total. Oh, wow. Big jump, yeah. But then my particle concentration went from around like 1,000 to way over 3,000. But what was interesting is I was testing like CRP, so C-reactive protein, which is essentially

systemic inflammation in the body. We tested a variety of other factors, you know, triglycerides, insulin, things like that. So there's a lot of markers that were really great. So my inflammation tank through the floor, my triglycerides were super low. So all of these things that may potentially be the actual risk when you're looking at these sort of markers as a whole were great. But it was just that, and it was really interesting, and I was fortunate enough to be able to work with Dr. Peter Atia on my blood work

Which was really great because he's one of the most amazing People on the planet when it comes to lipidology Especially and it's relation to ship to the ketogenic diet. So we kind of Just broke it all apart and he he was sort of like, you know, you might have familial hypercholesterolemia Which a lot of doctors will throw out there, but you actually can get a genetic test for it to see if you, in fact, have it. And I did that. I didn't have it. So it's like, this is so interesting.

And for whatever reason, for me, a higher level of saturated fat, specifically, because I literally, when I go back to my bodybuilding days, I did 60 days of a high saturated fat-based ketogenic diet. I did another 60 days of where I dropped my saturated fat under 20 grams and punched up my monoinsaturated fats. I did like specific, you know, so I really was strategic in how I did it because there was no information out there at the time on this and I really wanted to maybe help other people in the process as they transferred on to it.

And so we did a lot of testing and really it came down to, I went through months of blood testing and decided one day, you know what, I need to just, my coronary calcium screening was zero. My, I went through a crotted IMT scan, everything was great, except for these numbers for whatever reason. I was hyper synthesizing and absorbing cholesterol. So I just one day said, I'm stopping this, I feel good.

I love this nutrition approach, my training's great. And it was about, I think, recently, about six months ago or so, I went into my primary care doc and she's like, okay, we're gonna do a basic blood plan, I'll total cholesterol, I'm like, just don't. Just don't. Just don't. You're gonna freak you out, I don't wanna hear it.

You're gonna give me the statin' talk and then we're gonna have to go down this rabbit hole. And anyway, so she actually ran the numbers in an Amarlo profile and it came back the best it has ever been. And I think- She's just normalizer. I think my body just found homeostasis.

I think because of the way I ate before, was so carb heavy. And you think about the effect of that on hormones and how that's all tied to cholesterol and everything. It took my body a second to really understand. It was a shell shock, huh? Crazy. It was crazy. So anyways, that was a long-winded answer to your question. Oh, that's crazy.

It's funny because high cholesterol numbers, of course, the total number doesn't mean nearly as much as, like you said, the particle size. Right. But higher numbers are also connected to longevity and a lot of people, like reductions in Alzheimer's, improvements in muscle mass and strength in the elderly. So I think there's a lot more to it than we've been led to believe.

Did you guys measure these numbers in the dogs as well and looking at the lipid profiles and all that as well? Not so much the lipid profiles, but inflammation and sort of your overall metabolic function, but not so much the lipid profiles, but inflammation and sort of your overall metabolic function, but not so much lipids. Now in humans, we did do some of those tests. And actually, we had an early stage breast cancer study that we did actually out of Baton Rouge Louisiana, which was an incredible study because these ladies were very early on almost before you would essentially detect

cancer on a mammogram sort of where they were in terms of risk and all that for this breast cancer study. There was about 15 women and we said, okay, I had at the time experience some weird stuff with my lipids, so I said we have to include this in the mix so we can learn more about what's kind of going on. And there were some hyper responders in that. For those, we lowered saturated fat, which seemed to help improve a little bit in terms of actual traditional standards of where cholesterol should be, but really is that beneficial? So is the question. But these ladies, we also experienced some that had sort of that hyper response as well.

But what's really interesting, it was a cancer-focused study and it was over 120 days and these ladies are baton-roos Louisiana. So eating out there, culture, shrimp and grits and lots of yummy carbs, it was a massive life soul food, yeah, good stuff, right? And they actually combined lost over 300 pounds in 120 days just in following the diet and then

their lipids over time started to improve. Now could you talk about the effect it had on their breast cancers? Yeah, so we just, we had used, it was a blood test that we were kind of using to sort of monitor progress, a blood test as well as sort of their overall health and their blood markers and things along those lines. And so many of them actually went through that and some of them came out negative for the specific blood test and they're doing great and continuing to follow the diet. What was really cool is many of their husbands.

So we had this like party at the end of it, it's sort of like a party, like a end of study, like celebration, we make keto cakes and all kinds of fun things. And- Bacon appetizers. Lots of bacon, lots of butter, and everybody, no that's not all that keto is,

everybody thinks it is, but yeah. But everybody showed up and it was like, I hadn't seen these ladies because I was doing this out of Los Angeles, they were in Louisiana. I hadn't physically seen these ladies and it was almost like, even and it was like, I hadn't seen these ladies because I was doing the Sado of Los Angeles, they were in Louisiana. I hadn't physically seen these ladies and it was almost like, even though it was more of a cancer-focused study, it was almost like an episode of the biggest loser,

but doing it the right way. And they showed up and it was like, oh my gosh, not only had they lost a significant amount of weight, their skin was glowing, their hair was, they just looked so vibrant, but their husbands rolled in like, yeah, it was less 25 pounds too. It was really cool to see.

Very, very cool. Now you're talking about how you guys are trying to educate. What are the methods of education? How are you guys getting the word out? Is it just through new media like YouTube and podcasts like this or are you guys going to specific places? Yeah, that's a great question. So for KetoPet, one big resource for us is

obviously social media. So we do a lot of educational content there. Our website, which has the e-book, which we update frequently, is also available. Podcasts like this, being able to actually talk about it or speaking engagement. So I spoke at a veterinarian conference in Chicago in November. So there's a lot of people who are really wanting to learn more about this because it's not something that's often talked about. And so we do it through those means.

And then personally, I've started an organization called Metabolic Health Initiative alongside Dr. Angela Poff and Dr. Dominic DeGastino. Awesome. That, yeah, so we bring a scientific conference. We've hosted it the last three years. The last two hasn't been in Tampa. This year is in Los Angeles actually next month.

You guys should totally come. It's January 31st. And we bring in all the top scientists, top physicians, top thought leaders in the world, together in four days of presentations, scientific poster sessions. So you'll see research, not just on the ketogenic diet, but a variety of metabolic therapies,

so fasting, hyperberecmedicine, you name it, from around the world that some of it's not even been published yet, and we really are passionate about using, it's called metabolic health summit, using this as this educational platform to help push this movement forward, and bring nutrition and metabolism into the conversation around human disease and performance.

And as I mentioned to you earlier, we do have like three veterinarians speaking because our goal would be able to have like this whole four days of conference talks on the science for humans, but have like a whole animal segment to really bring to light, you know, their current issues and how we can maybe potentially resolve it with food. Yeah, like I was saying earlier, I think some of the advantages of doing it with pets is that you can control so much easier. I think it's so much easier to tell a pet owner,

do this with your pet than it is to do this yourself for yourself. So I'm really looking forward to the data and research that you guys collect from all this information because I do think, and this is not a controversial statement, but I think our diet and lifestyle plays a major role in both getting cancer and then of course surviving it. So... Huge role.

I would 100% agree with you and I think that it's almost crazy to me. When you're in the thick of sort of space and you really know about all the research that's going on, it's hard to come out and just understand how food has not been a bigger part of all these diseases. We know there's an incredible online medical clinic called Verda Health. I don't know if you're familiar with it. Dr. Sarah Hallberg, if you've not heard of her, she has an incredible TED Talk, you should definitely watch it, but she is a, she's the medical director of Verda Health, Dr. Jeff

Follick, who's a researcher primarily focusing on a lot of endurance and athletic based performance in the ketogenic diet, but they've started an organization where they're actually helping hundreds of type 2 diabetics with a ketogenic approach through its physician-assisted. They actually, each type 2 diabetic has a health coach with high touch points each day through a mobile app. They're reversing type 2 diabetes in a lot of people. They actually just had a clinical trial year long, which they've extended beyond just a year because it was so impactful. And about 60%

of the people on the study, and if you think about compliance, 60% is a really good number in terms of dramatically carving off probably 30% of people aren't even doing it, right? That's what you're supposed to do. They're actually following it. Right. I mean, if you can think about, if we had some sort of, like I mentioned, like some sort of drug that produced those same statistics or numbers in the study, it's like, so the information is out there, the research is being done. It's just, I think, having conversations like this where we can really educate people and bring to light the evidence, not talk about who's right, who's wrong, and have a ridiculous ego contest, but let's

actually talk about the science. Yeah, it's crazy to me. I had a family member who passed away from cancer years ago, and I remember we went to the, I would go to the, her oncologist appointments with her, and I'm a fitness and health person. I'm doing all my own research, and her diagnosis was terrible. She had zero survival, survival rate with the type of cancer she had. So here we are sitting with the oncologist and I'm like, okay, obviously the methods aren't gonna work.

I can, I know, you know, you already told me that chemo's probably not gonna help and radiation's not gonna help. What about diet? There's anything, well, just see whatever you want. There's really nothing. I couldn't believe, you know, hearing that diet couldn't at least, even just getting yourself healthier,

it would just make you feel better, even if you were still not gonna make it. And it's like they didn't, it was like, no, it's not gonna do anything. It's either chemo, radiation, or whatever, and it's really, really frustrating. I have a question about using the keto diet on pets. I'm starting to see a movement.

It's a little bit, I don't know, I think it's funny, because I think the way we feed our pets kind of mirrors the way we feed ourselves. I'm starting to see this vegan pet movement where people are trying to put their pets and dogs on a vegan diet, which vegan cats. A purely vegan diet. That's not a vegan cat.

Yeah, we're talking about that. Yeah, like this. Which cat. Don't search that on Instagram. Well, and if you're a vegan, you might want to. Yeah. Which don't don't search that on Instagram. Well, if you're a vegan, you might want to. Yeah. And I think it's first off being purely being in as a human is complicated and difficult enough. You have to be really, really structured and planned. And there's a lot of nutrients. You may be missing. You want to supplement to do it for a pet, I think, is even crazier, especially a pet like a cat. Yeah. What are you guys getting? You push back from the

vegans who are like, Hey, pets should be eating vegetables only. You know, we have in, which is interesting, like personally, like what maybe like one or two people that are like, I can't believe you're feeding this to your dog. And it's just like, it's unfortunate because I think a lot of people are pushing what they do on their animals, but not thinking about what's actually species appropriate, right?

So it's kind of a, I don't know, I can not speaking on behalf of keto pet, I just can't believe that, you know, you really have to be careful about that because the bulk of that is carbohydrates. And cats and dogs aren't meant to nosh on spinach on the above. I'd find it hilarious. Well anyway, this has been very fascinating. Yeah. It's been so fun. Yeah, great conversation. I really appreciate you coming in and talking about this.

I think more research needs to be done. I would love to see statistics on cancer rates and survival rates and pets. I could not find it for the life of me online. I think that's terrible. We're kind of all in the dark. So I look forward to some of the stuff that you guys bring to light.

So I really appreciate you doing that. Yeah, no problem. And I don't know if people want to know where they can maybe find Quito Pet. I don't know if I mentioned maybe the website. Yeah, so we will actually do a full on intro for you. Amazing. Yeah, so you'll give us everything. We'll hype you up. I was like, I'll tell you where you can find me. No, that's great. And I really appreciate you guys having this conversation because it's

so important. And the more of these You know we can have as like a collective community that you know truly feel that food needs to be a big part of our Health equation the better so I appreciate what you guys do. Thank you very much. Thank you Thank you for listening to Mindpump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

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