Shaun Newman Podcast - #326 - Shawn Baker

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

He is an orthopaedic surgeon, world leading authority on treating disease with medical nutritional therapy, an Amazon best-selling author (Carnivore Diet), world champion athlete, international speaker & podcast host. November 5th SNP Presents: QDM & 2's.   Get your tickets here: https://snp.ticketleap.com/snp-presents-qdm--222-minutes Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Brian Gitt. My name is Patrick Moore. This is Dr. William Macchus. This is Bruce Party. This is Tom O'Lago. This is Steve Barber, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome on the podcast, folks. Happy Monday.

Hope everybody's Thanksgiving weekend has been enjoyable. What a beauty day on Sunday. On this side, we got out, did a little, I don't know, we call it tennis ball, you know, baseball with the tennis ball. I was hoping for a little blue jays action on Sunday, and obviously they blew the, that so uh we got outside and and played with the the kids through the ball around a little bit uh always uh great to spend some time with family and friends and then of course like the day was just like gorgeous

and anytime we get uh you know gorgeous days in october you got to take them while you can because we all know uh winter is around the corner i hate reminding myself and you that but coming sooner than later either way it was a great weekend and i hope you got uh wherever you're at some time uh you know I got to spend some time with family and friends. And, you know, we didn't do Friendsgiving this year. Normally we do. I don't know, was it kids. I was trying to think about it.

I have no idea. But at least we got to see some family and get the cousins together and all that good stuff. Now, hopefully, wherever you're at, you enjoyed it as well. We got a good one on tap for you today on your holiday Monday. But before we get there, let's get to today's episode sponsors. Canadians for Truth, they're a non-profit organization consisting of Canadians who believe in honest and integrity and principal leader. leadership in government as well as the Canadian Bill of Rights,

Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Rule of Just Laws. I was out there in Calgary hosting their Canadians for Media on Vail. And if you go to Canadians for Truth on Facebook or to Canadiansfortruth.ca, you can see the full event. Man, the video from it was superb. So if you go check out that, you can see what we did there a few weekends ago. And by all means, let me know what you think. and keep following them to see what Theo Joseph and Jamie are all up to as they have unveiled their shows,

and they'll be coming here pretty quick, and it'll be interesting to see where they go with it, and I'll be certainly following along. Clay and Smiley and Prophet River, man, I drove by Clay and Ed, if you're listening to this, you've got to let me know. I don't recall seeing the giant Prophet River logo symbol, name across the building on the one side. Anyways, it's huge. We were driving home and I'm like, is that in there? Is that they in there the entire time?

I don't know. Either way, they specialize in importing firearms from the United States of America and pride themselves in making this process as easy as possible for all their customers. And all you got to do is go to Profitriver.com to find out more. They are the major retailer of firearms, optics, and accessories serving all of Canada. It doesn't matter where you're at, Profit River can help you out. Tracy and Tyson, Mitchell, with Mitch Co. A family-owned business that has been providing professional vegetation management services for both Alberta and Saskatchewan and the oil field in industrial sectors since 1998.

They're always looking for good people. So right now is a bit of the off season, but I would put the note in the back of your brain because, you know, as the winter months will certainly roll along, it will be no time flat and they'll be looking for people again. So go to mitchco corp.ca if you're interested. We had a guy come out, and I'm facing on your name. But he reached out to all. Sounds like pretty much a ton of the sponsors, which is super cool. Came from Ontario. And it sounds like he's going to hang his hat to the west side of Alberta, which is, well, I can't blame the guy for, he came out to Lloyd and everything, and experienced, talk to a bunch of them.

Anyways, you get the point. Super cool. So if you're looking for work, there's tons going on here in Alberta. and of course we got a new Premier, was at that event as well with Daniel Smith. And, you know, it went to the sixth ballot and she won with 53%. But interesting days ahead, I think, for Alberta,

as we march along to another election in May. But Daniel Smith at the helm for the UCP, so it should be interesting nonetheless. Carly Cawson and the team over at Windsor Plywood to the podcast Studio Table for everything, These are the guys. I had another guy in the studio, a guest cop coming up soon.

And he walked in, he's like, huh, so this is the table, ain't? He kind of gave it the old rub, but I'm like, yeah, this is the table. He's like, man, this is solid. Well, whether you're talking about mantles, decks, windows, doors, sheds, or, you know, that table, Windsor Plywood is the team. Give a call 780-875-9663. Gardner Management is a Lloydminster-based company specialing out all types of rental properties. to help me your needs, whether you're looking for a small office

or you've got bigger requirements. Give way to call, 7808, 808, 50, 25. And before we get to the tail of the tape, I should remind everyone, QDM and two stand-up tickets are still on sale. That's November 5th here in Lloyd Minster at the Gold Horse Casino.

Would love to have you guys there. The link is in the show notes. Now, let's get on the tail of the tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol and chemicals, delivering to your farm, commercial oil field locations. For more information, visit them at Hancock, Petroleum.com. He's the co-founder of Riverall, Orthopedic Surgeon, World Leading Authority on Treating Disease

with Medical Nutritional Therapy, and Amazon Best Selling Author, World Champion Athlete, International Speaker, podcast host, and consultant. I'm talking about Dr. Sean Baker. So buckle up, because here we go. This is Sean Baker, and you're listening to the Sean Newman, podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Sean Baker. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Yeah, my pleasure. I'll be interested to, you know, have a discussion with you and reach out to your audience. So great. Thanks for having me. Well, and I want to start

there. I assume my audience knows exactly who Sean Baker is, but I best not think that. I'd like you to tell them exactly who Sean Baker is. You can go wherever you like with that. And from there, we'll jump off and see where we get to. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm a 55-year-old man. I'm, you know, I've got a father of four kids. I train as an orthopedic surgeon. I was a foreign military guy, a professional athlete. You know, had world records in a number of different sports over the years. I still still have been very active as an athlete. And I've been pretty interesting for the last 10, 15 years, as most as it impacted my own health initially. And eventually got down this crazy sort of, path on nutrition, which ended up with me on this all-meat, crazy all-meat diet, and I ended up writing a book about it called The Carnivore Diet and, you know, got a little bit of notoriety when I on Joe Rogan's podcast and, you know, a lot of people were exposed to, you know, either what they thought would make sense or what they did. And, you know, I've been pursuing this

for the last, you know, six, six and a half years now and continue to promote, you know, meat as a healthy part of the diet. And in some cases, a meat-only diet for some people, depending on their medical condition. And we've got a company that we started called Rivera, which we basically take people, we put them on sometimes all-meat diets, sometimes other types of diets, and we basically get them off pills, get them off drugs, reverse their disease, and do what health care should be doing in the first place. And, you know, instead we have this system that is bloated, expensive, and not very efficient. So I'm trying to provide an alternative to that. And thus far, have been doing very well.

I hate to stop right now, but I'm wondering your internet connection keeps bouncing on me. So I'm wondering two things. One of the things we've tried in the past is having you go out, come back in. Another thing is it could be your background, just the extra, you know, trying to have the virtual background. I don't know if you're willing to just, I don't know what you have behind you. It doesn't matter to me. It doesn't matter to me. I can drop it off.

Um, just, uh, otherwise the audio is going to be shit and, uh, nobody's going to enjoy that. I mean, it's, uh, we just, to the listener, we pause for a second here to just see if we can figure out a couple things on the, the audio quality. Obviously, what we both love about a zoom call is, well, everybody knows it by now. I mean, geez, we've had two plus years of Zoom calls everywhere. So, um, you, you mentioned a lot there, Sean. And I, I guess I'm curious about the, the, the, that, the journey into the carnivore diet. You mentioned a whole lot of things there, you know, doctor, athlete, I think military in there somewhere.

And I go, were you always paying attention to your body? Like, was it, was it something you focused on like what you're putting in since you're 18 years old? Or is this something that's kind of matured over time? No, I always was cognizant about eating enough protein. I mean, you know, from the age of about 14 when I first started lifting weights, I was, you know, very, very cognizant about eating plenty of protein-based foods. But beyond that, I didn't give much thought to that until about 40-ish, 42-ish when I started to see I was like every other 42-year-old.

Despite training, I was starting to get, you know, things were hurting. I was in his shape as I wanted to be. And then I really started to just sort of really, really looking into nutrition very hard. And so I've always, you know, trained and I've always been an athlete, so I've always been interested in performance. But, you know, outside of, you know, not eating pure junk and eating enough protein, I didn't really give that much thought to nutrition. And I think for the most part it worked pretty well. I was able to, like I said, win world championships with that sort of attitude. But eventually, and I think probably when I look back at it, probably by my mid-20s, I was probably starting to see signs of chronic.

health disease starting to appear, you know, now that I objectively look back. But, you know, back then, I think I was strong. I was winning, winning sports. You know, it didn't seem to matter then. What, uh, when you look back, what, what do you mean? What, what, what sticks out to? What, what were the early signs to you? And the reason I bring it up is if you're somebody sitting in maybe their 40s or maybe they're 30s or maybe they're 20s, just, you know, when you're young, you don't think anything. Yeah, I mean, like, geez, Louise, you just kind of keep, plowing through everything, you never take any notice of anything. And the ones that do are special by all means. But when you look back, what are the ones that stick out to you? Like, what were the

chronic, you know, oh, oh, if I go back, I was doing that. And I didn't realize what that meant. Well, I think, you know, one, I mean, I started to see just signs of oxidative stress within my skin. I started losing hair in my 20s. I was not as lean as I probably could have been given all the the output I was putting out, I mean, I was training, you know, several hours a day, very effectively. I mean, you know, it was very strong. I mean, I was, you know, back then I was deadlifting, you know, 350 kilograms as a drug-free athlete. I mean, I was a very strong fit person could jump. I mean, I could 360 dunk a basketball at, you know, 260 pounds. I mean, all those things I could do, but I mean, I was seeing, you know, some of these things creeping up, you know, and it's just,

It's just a very, the problem with chronic disease is very slow. And so on set it's very slow. And, you know, it's hard to say when it starts, but there's a point where, you know, maybe recovery wasn't as good. You know, maybe, you know, I could, well, I can contrast it to where I am today where I can train extremely hard, you know, put my body through a pretty brutal workout. And I recover better and I feel better. And I don't get to sore.

Whereas back then I got sore, which, you know, I thought that was as part of the deal. Now, you train hard enough. You're supposed to get a sore. You're supposed to be beat up. That's part of being an athlete. That's part of the sacrifice. And while some of that is there, the degree to which I was experienced it was probably, probably common, but it wasn't probably necessary to that extent.

You know, skin issues, I mean, I used to have really horrible acne when I was a kid, you know, and it's probably related to diet. Clearly it is now that I look back in it. Sleep wasn't great, you know, things like that. I remember sitting in class in medical school and falling asleep. I mean, I thought, well, God, the guy's so boring. I'm going to fall asleep, but it was probably due to blood sugar fluctuations and things like that. It wasn't just the guy that was particularly boring.

I just couldn't stay awake in my classes. I ended up, I mean, I ended up graduating with honors because I did well in class, but I'd have to go home and read the books, you know, so I could really, you know, assimilate what was going on. But, I mean, certain times a day you put me, you sit me down and, put me in a dark room and, you know, I'm going to fall asleep. And I noticed that. I just remember that. I would, you know, it was pretty reliable. I can remember listening to a urology lecture. And I was sitting in, I used to sit in a front row because I wanted to participate. And I literally

fell asleep and my head like hit this guy's projector. It was a little embarrassing. But yeah, just stuff like that, you know, that I look back and I say that, that was probably signs of poor metabolic health. I assume when you look at the American population, I mean, obviously, I won't test you on Canada. When you look at the American population, your fellow countrymen, I mean, I assume you just see, I don't know, I'm trying to put my, I'll let you, tell me what you think. But like when you see people walk around and, you know, like, I've been to different countries on the planet. And I can't find a place quite like the United States of America for where the amount of fast food, junk, just like, it's just at your fingertips everywhere, every little town. And that has, I mean, obviously, they wouldn't all be there if they weren't making money.

So you look at it and go, like, the issue with American health or people's health in general isn't just as simple as, or maybe it is. I have no idea. I guess I come back to with you. When you see that, what do you see? Well, I mean, you know, it's truly saddening to go out and look at the general populace because, you know, I've said, you know, I've been around for 55 years and, you know, even looking at people for most of that time. And so you just see this, you know, incredible increase, not only in obesity. I mean, you know, as you probably know, 42% of Americans are obese as of, I think 2019, it's probably closer to 45% now after this pandemic. 70, I think it's like 75% if they're not obese or overweight. So majority, Most people are fat, just to put it mildly. And not only that, but the rest of them appear either frail or what we call skinny fat, where there's just no visible tone to them at all.

Most of them are suffering from some sort of affliction, you know, particularly after you get past age even 30 now. My gosh, there's 20-year-olds and teenagers that are already morbidly obese and suffering from disease. I think something like 20, 25 percent of our population is currently on some sort of. sort of psychiatric medication for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or some other issue, you know. And it's just getting worse and worse and worse.

And so it literally is kind of depressing to be out in the population except for the fact that I'm generally pretty happy because I'm not afflicted with that stuff. And I have what I think is a very good diet, you know, and lifestyle overall. So, yeah, and it's, you're right. America leads the world in a lot of the stuff, but we're rapidly exporting this. You know, I just got back from the UK, and I certainly saw that. I think it's, I think there were about 20 years behind us, you know, probably Canada. I don't know.

I'm suspecting something similar where you're starting to see this level of obesity. And it's becoming multi-generational. Now in the United States, we've had fully three generations of seriously obese people. And they just, you know, pass it right on to their kids. And it's lifestyle and it's epigenetic modifications. And it's, you know, intrauterine environment. all these things where you just continue to develop this. And we've gotten to the point where many people have just given up.

Instead of saying, instead of trying to fix this issue, let's just normalize it and say, okay, everybody's beautiful and, you know, have it at it and just, you know, don't worry about it. There's no bad foods. Just keep stuff in your face with donuts. No one should judge you. And those messages are going out there. And I think it's just people that are, I mean, they're literally frustrated.

They've just given up. And so the answer is either I'm, you know, doomed to be sick or I'm just going to accept it and enjoy it for however I have on Earth, which is, I think, really sad. A sad way to go. Yeah, you enter into what I'm just really complex problem, I think. Could be wrong on that. Like, I feel like the easy, the easy answer is the toughest one and people won't like that. And governments, you know, will probably be ousted. for it if they just told everybody like listen we got to start taking care of yourself right like

we got to find a way but it's so intertwined with um what's been built in the western world over you know uh i always joke like if i had a if i had a time machine Sean I go back in time to I think it's 1950 something quote don't quote me on that uh to when the colonel is going around with his KFC truck trying to you know like even in Canada going around Canada trying to pop these KFCs and I would have put it to stop to it because I look at what fast food industry the fast food industry employs how many people now is to become this juggernaut and yet it's almost slowly killing our entire population on the west and it's led to habit forming things like you say generational obesity and things like that and I don't even know the health ramifications of that

I just look at that and I go those are things that aren't easily untwined by one simple change or maybe you have a different thought. Well I think, you know, and I'll just go back to this, you know, the last two and a half years where we went to this pandemic and, you know, it's very clear that the people that suffered the most were the people that were, you know, had underlying illnesses, whether they're, either it's due to age, but more often it's age plus, underlying illnesses, obesity, diabetes, and malch disease, and so forth. And clearly we know that those things are affected by lifestyle modifications. And in many cases, those things are rapidly changed.

You know, I mean, people can improve their blood sugar, you know, in a week. You know, they can lose weight, significant weight in a month. And not once, never, by any government agency, did even a person say, hey, it would be a good time to drop some of that excess body fat. Even if they disagreed about how to do that, just to let the people know that, hey, if you just do something, I mean, I think everybody would agree that, you know, Just being more active is beneficial, being less sedentary. I don't think there's any controversy around that to tell people stop sitting around so much

and just get outside and, you know, go for a 15-minute walk a couple times a day. That is not, that's not even controversial. There's no one that would disagree that that is generally a helpful message. And yet none of that was shared. Now, the underlying issue, you know, really, I mean, it's very complicated because there's so much money and conflict of interest, you know, built up into this stuff. You know, how much money is made on health care. How much, you know, in the U.S. it was $3.5 trillion a few years ago.

I'm sure it's, you know, significantly more than that now. How much money is made by, you know, our agricultural system, which is basically, you know, our USDA, you know, promotes wheat and corn and soy and sugar. I mean, this is what they do, and yet they also write our food guidelines. And so look at the conflict of interest there. They want to have his produce, maximize, produce, wheat corn, sugar, and soy production, and yet write the dietary guidelines. And when you look at all the ingredients that we corn, sugar, and soy make, it's basically just processed food, which ultimately ends up being horrible for us. I think, you know, if you were to tell people, hey, just stop eating stuff that's in a box

that's hyper-processed, ultra-process, I know there's controversy about what is processing mean. But, you know, when you pick up a package and it's got, you know, 27 ingredients in there, and most of them aren't food, most of them are thickeners and stabilizers and flavors and, you know, whatever preservatives, so they can be on the shelf for six years, that's not good for us to eat. And so if you just reduce that from your diet, that's going to have a huge impact.

But what is the financial impact to the economy? It's huge. I mean, you know, can you imagine if all these shops that make their business, you know, selling this stuff, you know, had to shut clothes up their doors. You know, if we were to suddenly start getting all these people healthy, you know, the health care sector would, dramatically drop. What about all these employees, all these healthcare employees, all the doctors and

nurses and nurses, A's and radiology techs and lab techs. And, you know, on and again, this is a, you know, a trillion dollar industry that we're talking about here. So you're, you know, you're taking that out. You're taking a lot of the food stuff out. A lot of the restaurants, it's all basically kind of crappy food would be, you know, out of business. And so that's a, that's a huge hit to economy. So does anybody want to do that? Does anybody want to have the appetite to do that? I don't think so. And, you know, you mentioned the fast food places, which, yeah, absolutely this idea of I can get a meal in under five minutes. That's great. You know, it's very convenient so you can do other things in life.

But what does that ultimately do to us? And, yeah, I mean, I think if, you know, when I look at the nutritional guidelines, the country of Brazil came out with guidelines a few years ago, quote-unquote, call them guidelines are more just how to eat. I mean, they basically said, eat at home, cook home, cook meals, use whole. you know, unprocessed ingredients and eat with people you love. And that's their guidelines, you know, and not that Brazil is a healthy place in the world, but I mean, that sort of, sort of guideline of people would follow that would have much better impact than, you know, what we see now, which is don't eat something, don't eat saturated fat, don't eat this, don't eat that, eat this amount of this and this amount of that, all of which which is

controversial. Much of it is argued is not even evidence-based, or at least not based on current science and you know it doesn't really it really doesn't serve the purpose of getting people to what it should be is eating at home eating whole foods cooking your own food you know if you do that that solves a huge number of these problems if you uh if you're listening to this and uh let's say you've been struggling with your weight or or even even medications and stuff like that because I've always argued in my brain or with, well, with myself and with others. If I start to have an issue, the first thing I do is I'm like, okay, what have I been doing lately? Instead of what can I take to help fix this, if that makes sense.

And certainly sometimes, that's changing diets, certainly that's vitamins and different things like that. But let's say you're sitting here, you're listening to the two Shons go back and forth, and you're going, okay, what are some steps I can take? I know I've been indulging a little bit too much. Maybe I'm not going to the gym, et cetera. How do I break out of where I'm at? What are some simple things that Mr. Baker thinks? Well, I mean, what I advocate, I think, you know, you're going to a meat-based diet

and that largely, it addresses a number of issues. One, the nutrition is as far superior. I know people say, well, plant, you know, vegetables and fruits have all these antioxidants and polyphenols and phytonutrients, I will just tell you that, you know, the reality is meat is a better source of nutrition by far. It's more bioavailable. It supports what we need as humans with animal cells and animal tissues.

That's what we need to consume. It sounds simplistic, but it actually works in practice. It very much helps with cravings and providing you actual satiety. Most people, you know, you eat and you don't. don't get much nutrition and you continue to be hungry and you continue to eat and you continue to think about food and you continue to prepare about food and you continue to you know you know it's a constant feeding fest for most people it's either all day long thinking about food or actually eating the food or preparing the food and you know we get up at you know whatever 6am 7 a.m.

We start eating we don't stop eating until we go to bed you know 9 or 10 p.m. whereas you know contrast to what I do once or twice a day you know it takes me literally five or ten minutes to prepare my meals and about that much time to eat them and I'm done. And so I've got all this time to do all these other things. Meanwhile, I'm completely, you know, nursed and I'm able to, you know, train, work out, you know, do whatever I'm doing work-wise, family-wise, you know, enjoy things. I'm not obsessing about food. I enjoy what I eat, you know, without even, you know, not exaggerating all.

I mean, I had two New York strips and, you know, ate eggs for breakfast. Completely enjoyed every bit of that, you know, and it's something that I find is very easy to do. Most people will, you know, what about this? What about heart disease? What about gut? What about fiber? You know, what about vitamin C? All these things that will be questioned.

I can, you know, I mean, the short answer is, most of that is not really a concern if you really want to look into it. And the long answers are very long answers. They're podcast length answers to go into that stuff and do it real service. But, you know, I mean, I think, you know, cutting out the hyper-processed, you know, very palatable. And any times, of course, it's very palatable. I had a lady who was a chemical engineer with one of these food companies, and she said, hey, I want to come work for you guys because I've been doing this for 20-some years, and my job has been to make processed food addictive.

And I no longer can just, I can no longer ethically live with my job. myself because of how many people I know that ultimately have been hurt by this. And so, you know, just, you know, I mean, just have to make a commitment that if you're really serious about this, you know, it can't be, you know, I'm going to crash diet and drop 20 pounds, you know, over the next month. Great, that's fine. But, you know, two months later, you're going to be back on the same garbage. So you just have to make this, be willing to make this lifelong, you know, change of philosophy,

I suppose. and what do you value? And the older I get, you know, the less some of these things that were important to me when I was 20 and 30 become. And it's more you value your time, you value your health, you value experiences. And when you are chronically sick due to a bad lifestyle and much of it being diet, then, hey, life is not that fun. And, you know, it's kind of like, I mean, I can't tell you how many patients I used to take care of.

I mean, they were, I mean, gosh, they were in their 40s and 50s, and, I mean, they were effectively dead at that point. I mean, they had nothing to look forward to. They were in chronic pain. I mean, their schedule was a doctor, you know, and that was it. And that's no quality of life as far as I'm concerned. Well, take me back then to you starting to dabble with the carnivore diet. because I'm curious. To me, it just seems, certainly it's like, Joe has had yourself on and others to talk about the carnivore diet.

Carnivore diet has become where you walk around and even here, I can bring it up and people are, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And I'm like, it is interesting. But it is still to this point. I don't know. I guess the word that pops to the, my brain tron is extreme, I guess is the way that I would, and I don't know if that's the proper one,

but that's what jumps to my brain. So take me back through your steps of how you get introduced. Like, did you ever think of going, maybe I should just stick the plants? Maybe I should just try, try that style, because there's been an awful lot written about it. So I never went, you know, vegan or vegetarian. I just never did that. But I, you know, I went to a point. Like, so, you know, I'm 42 years old. I'm 290 pounds. I'm sleep apnea, you know, mildly hypertensive, probably pre-diabetic, you know, blood pressure slightly elevated.

I'm walking around. I'm a surgeon. I'm like, this is bullshit. So I said, I'm going to diet. And so I go on this, you know, I ramp up my activity where I'm getting up at 5am and doing 3,000 jump ropes. And on my lunch hours, you know, between clinic I go get a workout and then I get home, put my kids asleep to another 3,000 jump ropes.

I dropped my caloric intake from, you know, whatever I was eating back then to about half that. And it's mostly plants, you know, a lot of leafy, green vegetables, a lot of fiber, beans, and a little bit of protein, a little bit of chicken and fish. And I successfully drop, you know, 50 pounds in three months. I get lean. And I am the most miserable son of a bitch on the planet because I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm cold. The nurses are like, God, we like that fat Dr. Baker a hell a lot better because you're kind of an asshole. It's because I was, you know, I was just damn pissed off all the time. I didn't have enough food.

And, I mean, people say, well, that's extreme and that is extreme. And it certainly wasn't sustainable for me. But then I was like, well, I can't do this for the rest of my life. There's no way. And I didn't like it. I mean, I didn't like what I was eating. I was letting freaking eating, you know, leads all day long. And it's like, this sucks.

So then I, you know, then I'd start looking at, well, then paleo was popular back then. I said, let me try this paleo thing. And I, you know, started looking and making all these paleo recipes. And honestly, I thought, well, it tastes a lot better and enjoyed a little more. and was able to maintain my body weight. And then as I got, I started to read about nutrition. You know, this is back, you know, what year was that probably 2010, something like that. And, you know, I started really looking at it and started, you know, kind of looking at some of

some of this low-carb literature and started to kind of just question my preconceived beliefs about nutrition, which weren't very strongly held anyway. I just kind of had this general fruits and vegetables are good for you and too much fat's bad for you and sugary stuff and junk food is bad for you, and nobody eat cookies and cookies and ice cream all the time, which most people understand. I mean, most people would fall into that category

and a balanced diet. That balanced diet was important and this and that. And then as I got in a low carb, I started doing that. And finally I went on a ketogenic diet, and that was just, it was a wound for me because it was the first time on my life I wasn't hungry.

You know, I wasn't, I was just like, well, well, maybe I'm burning my own body fat or something, but I'm not actually hungry for the first time my life, I could skip lunch. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. I never never would do that for. So there was something, a physiological shift that occurred to me.

At this point, I was, you know, I had a lot of patients, had a lot of fat patients that needed knee replacements and hip replacements. And truth be told, it kind of sucks operating on fat people. And they're harder to operate on. There's more blood loss. There's more risk for infection. They have higher rates of blood clots. The exposure is more difficult.

You know, they don't do as well generally, although they generally, you know, Mostly they do pretty good, but in general, it's just not as fun. And so we, as a collective community of orthopedic surgeons said, hey, we don't like the higher risk and complication rates in these obese patients. And so we are going to, as a collective community, say we're not operating over people over a certain BMI. 35 was a cutoff. And that's a lot of people come in, you know, BMI above 35, won't enjoy replacement. So you would explain to them and said, hey, Mrs. Jones, hey, yes, you need any replacement.

So unfortunately, you're, you know, you're 30 pounds too heavy. Let's get you, let's get some of that weight off you. And so I'd send them, you know, tell them that, try to tell them, hey, lose weight, exercise more, you know, eat less calories. And, you know, they come back in, you know, two, three weeks, and they'd lost five pounds. I said, good job, keep going, and they come back for the next visit. And they've gained it all back.

And now they're crying in the office and say, you know, they're never going to lose weight, and they're in horrible pain. And then you're just writing a chart, okay, patient unsuccessfully try to to lose weight loss. We're going to get a waiver and we're going to do the genre placement anyway. And we did that. And then some people went to, you know, weight loss to bariatric surgeons to have their anatomy, you know, reorganized or dissected and resected. And then I started putting people on this ketogenic diet as I did that.

And I started to see something really unusual. I saw not only were people losing weight, you know, the ones that would do it, not everybody would do it. You know, probably less than a half the people, maybe a third of the people would actually try it. But some of the people would come back, you know, very early, two weeks in, maybe lost a couple pounds, not much, but they profoundly noted that their joint pain was gone. You know, somebody that I literally was going to schedule for surgery because they were in such severe pain and they had a radiographic findings consistent with it. And they would say, hey, you know, doc, my knee doesn't really hurt anymore. I'm like, well, hell, there's no point doing surgery at that point. And so that got me really, really, really sort of, they really sort of piqued my interest and I really started digging into some of this stuff.

And then eventually I found these crazy people doing an almeat diet. They called them zero, zero carb diet. And there was a group called zeroing in on health, actually on Facebook. And I was reading this stuff. And I was fascinated. I thought this is, this sounds like the stupidest thing I've ever heard of my life. It sounds crazy. But shit, these people are getting healthy.

What's going on here? And then I started, you know, looking at it. And I said, well, you know, it's very plausible in the world or even a day an almond diet is kind of the norm. You know, if you go up circumpolar, you know, regions, you know, some of the, you know, First Nations people in Canada, particularly the Inuit up there in Nunavut and stuff like that, that's

kind of what they're eating, you know, and they weren't obese, certainly, and they didn't have the chronic disease that we have today, you know, the one criticism with the Inuit is, you know, they had some level of heart disease and some mummies they found, but you realize that they don't get ridiculously high rate, something like, something like 75% of these folks, they smell.

and they start smoking about age of eight so there's this little confounding factor there but so I you know I didn't you know after following these people and reading about it looking at the plausibility look some of the old athletes used to do it and I was an athlete still interested in performance I said well I'm gonna I'm just gonna let me just try for a day it's steak and eggs for a day I did it and I was like it's not bad take I enjoyed the food I like steak and eggs anyway and I really didn't miss the toast and I didn't miss the you know the green stuff and I was like okay well I could do this and then then I said I'm the next time I was like I'm

gonna do for three days and then I did it for a week and then I did it for two weeks and finally in 2016 I did for a straight month and you know I kind of I was on social media and I was kidding around I said hey guys I'm gonna do this crazy all meat diet for a month I know I'm gonna die what do you think I'm gonna I took a poll what are you don't think I'm gonna die scurvy is my heart gonna seize up and stop from all the cholesterol uh is my colon going to fall out from lack of fiber as a joke you know and we had a good laugh of that. And, you know, of course, none of those things happened. In fact, the only thing happened to me was like, I felt frigging fantastic. I was like, this is the best I've literally felt

in two decades. I mean, chronic pain in my leg used to have this tendinitis in my right quadriceps. You know, I remember I squatting 500 pounds one time, felt something pop, and I think I partially tore my quad tendon. And that just bothered me for literally, you know, years and years, and it would come and go, and it would be, but it was always there mildly and sometimes it was pretty severe and to the point where it was hard to walk. And that just went away. Two months in, I was like, this stuff is gone. And I was like just amazed.

I mean, I did it for one month and I stopped. And I said, well, that was a cool one month experiment and went back to my more balanced diet. And I immediately started feeling bad. Immediately my gut started hurting. Everything started getting inflamed. I was like, I don't really like, I much like feeling better the way I was feeling when I was on this all-meat diet.

So I just hop right back on it. It was doing it about a year. and then Joe Rogan, you know, I guess caught wind of it, invited me on the show to chat about it. And that inspired Michaela Peterson to do it, and then her father did it, and then all these other people started doing it. And I've been doing it now for, you know, six years, and I literally continue to feel great. And, you know, I'm trying to try to get the message out there that, you know, as a middle-aged male, you know, like I said, I'm 55, you don't have to be fat.

and have that big beer belly or that big gut, and have pain and back pain and depression and poor energy and all those types of things. Those are all, they're very normal. I mean, they're very common, but they're not normal. And we just see it over and over again. You know, most guys are like, oh, you know, I'm over 30 and they're ready to hang up their cleats.

I'm like, you've got to be kidding me, man. You're not even halfway through life yet, and you're hanging it up. So that's what I found. I just find that I think when we have a good night, extreme, right? And it is. I mean, it certainly is. It's very restrictive in ways. It's very liberating others. I've had so many people tell me that it's liberating not to be, you know, morbidly depressed or, you know, have chronic pain or have some autoimmunities or some horrible gut issue where I have to go to the bathroom 20 times a day and I'm bleeding out

my, you know, my rear end. Those things are very restrictive. And when you're saying, I'm free from all that. I literally, for the first time I'm in life, my brain, is clear, you don't hurt all the time. I actually can, you know, that becomes very liberating for people. So I think there's, you know, this sort of interesting thing where if you, if you decide, hey, that other, that other garbage out there's not for me, you know, and most of it, you know, like I said, I don't blame necessarily people eating bananas for all their illnesses, but, you know, there's very few people that eat just whole food. I mean, there's some people

that will claim they're on a whole food vegan diet. And I can talk about the problems with that particular strategy. But, you know, I think, you know, once you've kind of fixed everything, and I see so many people do it, they spend three months, six months a year doing, you know, an all-meat diet, and then they are able to, you know, add back in a few things. They add back in a few whole fruits and vegetables or rice or something like that. And then that becomes their diet, and they become very happy with that. I think it's a really cool story because very, very,

few people, and I shouldn't say that. It took me until being 32, 33, someone there, where I actually started paying attention to my body. My brother had colitis when he was 18. And so had one of his intestines removed. I remember having a health issue and asking him about it. And he said, well, you just got to start paying attention what you're eating, you know, see what happens when you eat certain things. And if there's, you know, kind of a repercussion from doing said thing. And by no means, am I perfect? And when I listen to yours, I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Like, you, you've really paid attention to your body for a long time. But I think for a lot of people, they don't understand that you can't have pain. So they just, it's just the way their body is, right? It's just kind of sore. You mentioned gut, you know, I didn't like that feeling, depression, tired, poor sleep. All these things for a lot of people are probably just life. And it's really cool to hear you talk about it because it's, it's a lot of feeling. kind of like once you realize if I do something, oh man, it's like, I love how it's that immediate. I look for things that are that immediate. Do you eat honey at all? Just a random side note.

I do not. Yeah, I mean, I know there's some people that advocate honey and fruit and all this stuff. You know, I just don't feel as good when I do that. So I do what works for me and, you know, more powerful people that do that and they do fine. But I don't. The reason I bring it up, Sean, is one of the first things, I was having a poor sleep and I wasn't sleeping that well. And I took some honey from, just like whole honey from a farm and put it in my tea. And at the time, I thought it was a really, really stupid idea. I'm like, I'm literally giving myself sugar before bed. This is a terrible idea. And it knocked me out two nights in a row like drooling on myself. And I don't, you know, you're the doc. I don't fully understand.

everything. All I know is when you talk to old timers from the area, they talk about the healing powers of honey and different things and remedies that back in the day they used to do not only with the humans, but they're livestock and everything else. And so ever since I experienced that, I'm like, what else don't I know about food that they're not telling me and or that we've just forgotten? Yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot. Obviously, we've forgotten this because we're not exposed to that. I mean, I think, you know, unfortunately, we go another generation into and people forget what even being healthy even means because no one will actually have experienced it. But, you know, when you look at the data on sleep and food, yes, there's data that shows that

for some people carbohydrates at night are actually beneficial for sleep. There's other studies that show it's not. And it's very, you know, it's kind of all over the place there. But you know, like I said, I always tell people, if something's clearly working for you, then by all means, I mean, that is, you know, there's so many people that don't get good sleep, and that has a huge impact on so many different health variables. So if, you know, a teaspoon of honey before you go to bed helps you sleep, then I'd be like great to do it. I don't have, you know, personally, I don't have problems sleeping.

You know, and food does impact my sleep, and I know if I eat really late at night, for instance, I eat a big giant protein meal before night, I'm not going to sleep as well, and there's, you know, clear physiology while that occurs. But so I mean, you know, I do it for me that works well. But yeah, that's an important thing. If that little hack helps you by all means, do it. Well, and I should point out, it was the first hack that I found led me down trying different things.

Because I don't, I definitely don't have honey before. Like, I sleep, I don't need the honey anymore. Like, I sleep really well. But it was the first thing that it was so evident that it was like, wow, I didn't think I could do that. I didn't think I could have an immediate impact, you know, just like boom and there it is. And so I bring it up because I think a lot of people don't pay attention to their body. And to hear your story, I hope a lot of people hear that and go, huh, you could literally

tonight try different things that you think are a little bit outside the box and have immediate impacts on your body. It's not that hard. You could literally monitor it because it's you. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I think really is sort of interesting is, you know, If we look at it like our digestive system, for instance, you know, many of us, you know, we're used to belching and bloating and farting and having to, you know, discomfort. That's kind of normal. Most people have experienced that, you know, if not on a daily basis, on a fairly regular basis.

And I would argue that most of that is abnormal. That's not supposed to happen. And the reason it happens is either one of two things, either there's something wrong with their digestive system. There's a pathology going on or you're just sticking the wrong food in there. And so if those things are happening, because if, you know, if I walk, you know, up and down the stairs and my knees are hurting, I'm going to say, hell, there's something wrong on my knee. That's not supposed to be happening. Or if I'm, if I go for a run and all of a sudden, my lungs are really hurting, I'm going to say there's something wrong. Or if I have chest pain when I exert myself, all of us would agree there's something wrong.

I get a headache. We're saying something is wrong. But we seem to accept this discomfort and pain and bloating and with our digestive tract and just chalk it up too well, that's kind of normal. I will tell you, it's not. Because, you know, I, you know, literally, like I said, I had, you know, two and a half pounds of steak and ate eggs for breakfast. I mean, I could have went out and ran 10 miles afterwards. I mean, I just have no perception of any discomfort at all while digesting food. And I think that's how we're designed.

And it's something that, you know, so it's an immediate feedback. And so if you're, you know, if you're like, hey, every time I, you know, I'm trying to, this is kind of a really goofy thing. It's a silly observation. I've noticed. Since I've been on this diet, you know, I haven't hicked up in six years. Most of us, you know, we get it every once in a while. We're like, well, that's, you know, why? It's because we have diaphragmatic irritation.

Sean, you cut out on me for a quick sec. Did you say hiccup? Hick up. Yeah. I haven't hiccup in six years. And I'm just thinking, like, that's interesting. You know, it's not anything. No one really care about that.

We're like, you know, okay, you didn't hiccup. Who cares? But why are we hiccuping in the first place? There's something wrong. It's like, you know, your computer's rebooting or something like that. Well, I mean, it's, you know, the physiology is, some people think it's diaphragmatic, you know, irritation. And so, why isn't my diaphragm being irritated anymore?

What was irritating it in the first place? So it's something probably nutritionally speaking. And now there's other things you see. It's like, you know, I don't really, I really itch. You know, sometimes, you know, you know, scratching yourself, you know, from time. I really have that occurrence. It's like a least sort of normal. sort of things you just notice as your existence go away.

It's like, well, that was weird. I just never do that anymore. And does nutrition have a role there? Well, it seems to, at least in my view. And many other people have noticed this observation as well. That's cool. I mean, as a guy who's certainly I've never tried the carnivore diet. I listen to you.

I'm like, hmm, that sounds interesting. And you're making my brain churn on it. I, you know, I'm watching the clock here as, you know, as it rolls along. One of the things I wanted to, uh, to talk to you about was, um, when I first reached out, it was when Health Canada was going to put warning labels on ground beef here in Canada. And I thought, you know, I come from an agricultural background. I come from an agricultural part of the world. Uh, and I'm like, this seems strange.

And I was curious, you know, your thoughts on it. You know, there's all these, no one that we're talking beyond meat. And I was chuckling, I was actually just talking my brothers about that. It went from a high of $178 a share. And as of today, you know, a year later, it's at $15 a share, right? Like you can see the, but the push for that, the push for all these things that aren't what they are. And then, you know, to have Health Canada come out and say, you know, we're going to put warning labels on ground beef, you know, what are your thoughts on that?

Mike, is that an active direct attack on meat in general? Because I know it's been linked. They try and link it to climate change and everything else as well. Yeah. I mean, there is a narrative there. There is a clear agenda to sort of shift you onto a more centralized food supply and processed food supply for simple, you know, I think it has to agree quite honestly. And I mean, the purpose of warning label is, you know, this is a product that has, you know,

a higher amount of saturated fat, and therefore it's going to increase your risk for heart disease. The problem with that is that's not conclusively been shown. In fact, there was a nice study here in a European Journal of Preventive Cardiology just came out a few weeks ago. Saturated fat has nothing to do with heart disease. You know, all the randomized control trials and all the, you know, the synthesis of all the data doesn't seem to suggest that. And moreover, if we look at, for instance, the United States stat, which we mentioned is just absolutely horrible, the majority of the saturated fat that is in my diet, or not my diet, but my country, it's coming from desserts and processed food and chips and cookies and crackers and snack foods.

That's where most of the problem, that's where most of the saturated fat that Americans get. And the question is, is it a saturated fat or is it the fact that it's in a lot of junk food? That's a problem. And so instead of saying you should eliminate beef because of saturated fat, I want you to say you should eliminate all this processed garbage. that would do far better. You know, there's no warning label on, you know, is there a warning label on, you know, a can of Coca-Cola?

I mean, is that on there? I haven't seen that. I don't think it is. That would be more apt to actually have an impact. Yeah, there's, obviously there is a kind of a war on meat, so to speak, you know, and, you know, it's the health argument, I think most people, you know, when you look at it's very nebulous as to whether it's good or bad.

I obviously believe it's a very good food, and I think the data actually supports that when you really dig into it. And it's something that you can test yourself. Like I said, going on steak and eggs diet for three months and see what happens to your body. I mean, unequivocally, most people will notice they just get tremendously healthier.

So if that's true and that occurs more often than not, then how do you make me to meet a bad food for you when people are getting healthier? I have people that are literally getting off lifelong medications, just by eating steak. And it's like, well, how is that a damaging food when you're actually literally curing diseases? But so then they go after the climate angle.

You know, it's a climate change. You know, so they're losing the health battle. So now they're going to switch to the climate battle. And, you know, again, the climate stuff is also, you know, it's nonsense to think that cows in a field are driving climate change. You know, if you want to point to, you know, an anthropogenic, you know, problem, You're going to be looking at, you know, gas plants and coal mines and all the fossil fuel industry and all the transportation and all that stuff.

But they continue to try to scapegoat, you know, meat eating because, you know, there's money to be made and some of those other stuff. You know, and we're seeing that repeated. And it's, again, the data on this stuff is pretty clear that animal agriculture has an impact on the environment for sure. but in the United States, for instance, if we look at it, you know, the EPA data clearly states that 5% of our greenhouse gases come from plant agriculture and 4% come from animal agriculture. So why are we trying to get rid of animal agriculture when you can't even have plant agriculture without animal agriculture? Does it make sense to continue to make it more efficient and more sustainable? Arguably, yes.

I mean, I think there's some good and some silliness that's coming out there. You know, having cows walking around with masks on. And, you know, having the population eating crickets, as, you know, you guys haven't, I can remember which province is a big cricket province. Ontario. Ontario is just, it's just stupid. I mean, it's literally stupidity. Well, it just, I look at this and I go, it just seems like another agenda where no matter what one side is saying, they're just pushed down. And they're given zero voice.

and it just keeps happening, well, to me, where I sit, because I get to talk to all these different wonderful people talking about different things that seem to be working in their given field. And certainly today we're talking meat and food. But like it goes into different, there's a narrative. This is what we want you to say and we don't want to talk about anything else. And maybe that's follow the money. Maybe that's something a little more nefarious or maybe that's just as simple as

follow the money and you understand what's going on. I think a lot of it's fault of money for. Sure. You know, and, you know, I mean, obviously there's people who are worried about the World Economic Forum and this giant global, you know, global communist takeover and we're all going to be eating bugs and strapped into, you know, have computer chips in our brains and, you know, on this central bank, you know, digital currency and every move is going to be tracked in this biosecurity state. I mean, how much of that is realistically going to happen versus not? I don't know. I mean, I think there's some people that would love to see that, quite honestly. are they you know is that significantly really likely to happen i don't know i mean i think it could i have kind of i'm kind of optimistic to think that there'll be enough people with enough

common sense and we're saying you know we're seeing some of the pushback you know and some of the recent elections italy sweden some of these other countries are saying hungry we're going you know you've you've just uh promoted i mean one of the i can remember the name pierre poliav poliyev yeah he is now conservative party candidate you know head and maybe you'll have that. I don't know how the Canadian election system goes. If there's a lack of confidence, they switch parties or if it's on a scheduled time, I'm not sure.

But it seems like there's a shift back, and maybe common sense is prevailing. And maybe these people that just wanted to, hey, let me just go, you know, raise my cattle out in my ranch and leave me alone. And they're starting to wake up and say, hey, maybe they're not going to leave you alone. Maybe you need to stand up for yourself.

I think on a lot of issues, a lot of those people are waking up and realizing if you don't, you know, there's a lot of people who just want to be left alone. Just let me do my thing. I'm not hurting anybody. I'm paying my taxes. I'm, you know, contributing to society as a whole. And that's not good enough right now. And it seems like it continues to spiral. And I would say a lot of fronts are being hit. And maybe they've always been being hit. That could very well be the case. Bringing it back to health and everything else, Do you think there's signs or hope maybe for your fellow countrymen that it can, you know, buck the trend and go the opposite way?

You know, there's a lot of people wanting to do something with their, with their body, with their mindset, with everything. I mean, like, it's a huge industry in itself, you know, coaching and trying to help people move through, you know, you mentioned right after a hop a lady who literally made food addictive. I mean, geez, you're fighting something that's made to make you want to have it. So do you think there's hope on the horizon of more people going that way and maybe setting a new trend of, I don't know, when the next pandemic comes around, we keep gyms open. We tell people to maybe shed a few pounds. We let people outdoors, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, you know, it's interesting because we see a definite, almost a politicization of nutrition now. You know, we've seen it through all these different issues. And so one of the nice things is, you know, the number of people that maybe didn't care about nutrition before, they were just, you know, and this is how to come down as a conservative and a liberal side of this things. And, you know, as much as I hate to see it, I think everybody should have access to good nutrition. It should be important. But we're seeing that people that were before really didn't care about nutrition. Now they actually care about it because it become politicized. And so they're standing up and maybe they're going to say, well, guess what?

I'm going to start taking care of my health and I'm going to start eating. I'm not going to eat the soybeans and the crickets. I'm going to eat steak. And I think that's, you know, eventually that's going to bring more attention to this. And perhaps as enough people that there's a threshold amount of the population that sees the nonsense that's occurred. I mean, I think, you know, just as we've been maybe misled about a lot of issues, we've been misled on nutrition too. I mean, it's pretty clear. I mean, the same motivations you see these big drug companies have made literally tens of billions of dollars on the back of a lot of

of people's misery on the back of a pandemic and they're not ethical. I mean, it's clear these companies are not very ethical. These same things are happening in nutrition and, you know, it's the same thing. It's just, you know, how gullible we are. And when we really, you know, pull back the shades and see the emperor has no clothes on, a lot of people are waking up and they're like, wait a minute, you know, I mean, I think the health care system, there's a lot of corruption within the health care system. I mean, that's clear as well. And, you know, it's, you know, unextricably intertwined with the pharmaceutical, industry, which is very corrupt in many cases.

And so as people see this and they start to wake up, you know, again, it's how many people do that. Now you've got a lot of people that don't think about this stuff. And, you know, if it tastes good and it's cheap and I'm marketed to appropriately, I'm just going to continue to consume this stuff. But I think we're seeing more and more people, you know, sort of realizing this. And I think, you know, once you get to this certain critical threshold mass, you know, it's going to become obvious to the rest of the people.

it becomes so obvious that, hey, there's something wrong going on here, and how do we fix it? Well, before I let you out of here, I'll slide into the final question brought to you by Crude Master Transport, show it to Heath and Tracy McDonald. Support is the podcast in this very beginning. Using Heath's words, he said, if you're going to stand behind something, then stand behind it. What's one thing Sean stands behind? Well, I think that, you know, I think you should be, I don't think you should outsource, you know, important aspects of your life to other people.

I think, you know, like your health is one thing. I don't think, you know, expecting your physician or health care provider, whoever it is to take care of that for you, make sense at all. I think you've got to take things under your own hand. You know, if it, you know, used instinct and common sense. I know that is something that sometimes seems controversial. or so when people are telling you stuff that's obviously wrong and they want you to go go in there and believe this and you're like that's clearly not stick to your uh you know you stick to what reality tells you and not be you know led by like like these people that want to you know sell you something or convince you of something or you know have you believe you know it's like two and two and two plus two is four and when people start telling you two plus two is five continue to to tell them they're crazy because because they are well i appreciate you uh giving me some time today and uh you know one day i would love to to do it in person because uh you know uh seeing

um well you know this as much as good as anyone uh being in person and and doing these things across from one another is just so much better uh but uh the day that happens will be a treat i'm sure either way i appreciate you giving me some time today and uh responding to my uh you know i probably hassled you just as much as the next podcaster, but I sent an artillery of emails your way and messages, and I appreciate you responding and giving me some of your time. Well, I appreciate. Thanks for being patient. And as you mentioned, I'm often running around pretty busy.

But I appreciate it. Thanks. And I love to be a person sometime. I want to do Canada anytime. So I know they've restricted who had come in for a while. Maybe they'll open up eventually. And we'll see if it becomes a little more freer over there, hopefully. Well, I think that goes both ways in both of our countries.

The United States isn't exactly the easiest place for Canadians lead into right now. Either way, thanks, Sean. Sean, appreciate it. Thank you very much.