The Joe Rogan Experience - #1050 - Dr. Shawn Baker

Episode Date: December 7, 2017

Dr. Shawn Baker is an orthopedic surgeon, weight lifting world record holder, and carnivore diet advocate.

And we're live. Alright, Sean. Welcome aboard, man. Thank you. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Joe. You're one of those guys that came up so many times on Twitter, I had to reach out to you. So many people were like, have you checked out what this guy's doing? He's eating nothing but meat. And he's a doctor. And he's super healthy. I was like, okay, let me check out what this guy's doing he's eating nothing but meat and he's a doctor he's super healthy i was like okay let me check out what this guy's doing and i saw you and i was like he's serious about this and i was like okay this isn't a gimmick you're actually an educated guy and um you you're pursuing this carnivore diet yeah i mean it's you know if you would have asked pull this thing up close to you

if you could there you go if you would have asked me two years ago i would have said that's fucking crazy i mean i mean that's what i would have said you know if you'd ask me even five years ago i'd say yeah that doesn't really matter that much just train your ass off because i had been an athlete just training my whole life and you know i didn't really until i got in my mid-40s and all of a sudden i was like crap training ain't working i'm getting fat i'm getting you know high blood pressure you know probably pre-diabetic. And then I, you know, then I went down this, you know, this dietary journey where I went from, you know, doing the low fat, uh, low calorie fish and vegetables, almost vegetarian training three days, three times a day, just about

trying to try and get lean. And then I went down to, you know, then I was like, man, this sucks. I'm miserable. I can't, can't, can't maintain this. You know, then I went down to, you know, then I was like, man, this sucks. I'm miserable. I can't maintain this, you know. Then I went on the paleo diet. I started looking. I was like, man, bacon looks pretty good. And then I went and I started reading some more. Then I went on to, you know, low-carb, high-fat.

And then I did ketogenic for about two, three years. Because I think you do stuff like that too, don't you? And then I just started reading about these people that do this carnivore diet. And then I went and started reading. Where'd you read about it? Well, there's actually a Facebook group. It's called Zeroing In on Health. There's a guy named Charles Washington. He's been doing about 10 years. And so they got about 10, there's about 13,000 people, right? So he's been exclusively on a carnivorous diet for 10 years? 10 years. So no vegetables, no carbs, no nothing? Nope. I mean, he basically eats, you know, I think he eats steak and pork ribs and stuff like that. And there's another guy that's more impressive.

There's a guy named Joe Anderson and his wife, Sean. They've been doing it for 20 years. And, you know, I could probably show you a picture of that guy. But he, I mean, he's 60 and he looks like he's 30. His wife is in his mid-40s and she looks like she's 25. I mean, by looking at these people, you're like, they're crazy healthy. You know, what happened was she had Lyme disease real bad and was kind of overweight and really sick.

And he started doing like the same stuff I was doing. He was reading about these old-school bodybuilders. You remember, I don't know if you remember, Vince Caronda. So he promoted this steak and eggs diet back in the 1950s, 60s, and he was just jacked. I mean, this is, you know, 1956. It was kind of before most of the steroid stuff was hitting. You know, I mean, there were still some steroids back in the 1940s.

You know, the Nazis played with that with the troops. But, you know, it didn't really get into the bodybuilding culture until probably the 60s, you know, and then the 70s. Now it's, you know, now it's everywhere, right? But he was doing this stuff. And if you look up Vince Garanda and look at his physique from the 1940s, 1950s, he's freaking pretty amazing. And he's just eating meat. His diet was basically, I think it was five days of just eating meat and eggs.

It was steak and eggs. And then every one day, like every fifth or sixth day, you could eat whatever. So that's what he did. So that was his diet. So that's what he looked like back in 19—that's probably in the 50s. Wow. So that's pretty he did. So that was his diet. So that's what he looked like back in 19, yeah, that's probably in the 50s. You know what I'm saying? Wow.

So that's pretty decent for back then. Pretty jacked. Well, I mean, for a non-steroid guy. Yeah, and also taking into consideration how little they really knew about training back then, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, they didn't know. I mean, if you go back into history, well, we can talk about that,

but then there was a guy named Larry Scott who was like the first Mr. Olympian. He was another guy that was eating just tons of meat you know four or five pounds of meat a day and he won mr olympia and i again you know there's some of their drug use you know and some of this stuff but i was just reading about this stuff and i was just like well i'm you know i'm an athlete i like trying this stuff and so i said well i'm just going to try it for a month and so i did it for a month and i was I did it for a month. And I was like, man, I feel pretty good, right? So I was like, well, I'm going to decide.

I was like, I did a month. And I'm like, well, I'm going to go back and go back to my ketogenic diet. And so I started. Remember that day? The day I did, I was like, I'm going to eat some apples, a little almond butter. You know, I had some berries and cream. You know, stuff you'd normally eat as a treat. And I just didn't feel as good.

You know, like my back started hurting a little bit. And I was like, well, maybe that's where someone. So then I went and said, well, I'm just going to go back to eating meat again. Wait, your back started hurting from eating apples? Well, I mean, it was just like, you know, this is one of the things that I've seen. And we can talk about this, you know, in detail. But I've seen a lot of people, what they'll say is, you know, and this is what I saw, you know, when I was working as a surgeon. When I put people on a ketogenic diet, their joint pain was starting to go away.

Right. So this is pretty common. A lot of people believe that joint pain is connected to the consumption of simple carbohydrates. Well, I think, yeah, I think it's, you know, I don't know what it is for sure, but it's something we eat most like, you know, a lot of cases, not always, but I think there's something out there we're eating. I'm pretty convinced it's not meat. You know, that's what I can tell you for sure from what I know.

is not meat. You know, that's what I can tell you for sure from what I know. You know, whether it's, you know, sugar, whether it's, you know, processed gluten or wheat or stuff like that, whether it's vegetable oil, whether it's, you know, or even some vegetables potentially. And so this is what I'm seeing. This is what I saw. You know, I studied these large Facebook groups like an anthropologist, you know, like they used to study these people, you know, a hundred years ago, they go out, you know, 100 years ago. They'd go out, you know, Weston Price would go out and see all these people and study their teeth and stuff. The problem with that is, you know, you don't speak their language.

You know, it's pretty remote. You've got to translate. And so some of those observations, you know, while they're valid, they're hard to do now, you know. But so when you go in these groups and you just, all you can do is like reading this like a scientist going, okay, this guy went on this diet and his joint went away. This guy went on this diet and his thyroid disease went away.

This guy went on this diet and his skin got psoriasis. I kept seeing this over and over and over and over again. I mean, thousands of them. But the big thing for most people is removing refined carbohydrates, removing sugar, and a lot of people, dairy. Yeah, I would say that that's a good strategy for most people. You know, here's the deal. I don't care what people eat. You eat whatever makes you healthy.

You know, I think this is a thing. We have these national guidelines that tell people what to eat, but they don't work for most people, you know, obviously. I mean, look at our country. I mean, it's just sad to see all these people that are, you know, really getting sick. And so I think, you know, there's a guy named Vinnie Tortor, who has this no sugar, no grain. I think that will successfully help a huge percentage of people, you know.

But I think you have to be objective about it. You have to do it long enough for it to have an effect. And, you know, I think you have to, you know, be really clinical about it. And so one of the big problems I see as a physician, and this is a big problem, because people will go on low- diets or ketogenic diets and they'll say, I feel the best I've ever felt in my life. I mean, my mood is better. My mental cognition is better. My joints feel better. My guts don't hurt. My skin is better. My sex drive is better. Everything you would say is that means you're getting healthy and they'll go to their doctor and they'll get some blood

drawn and their cholesterol will be high. And their doctor will say, well means you're getting healthy and they'll go to their doctor and they'll get some blood drawn and their cholesterol will be high and their doctor will say well you're going to kill yourself you're going to have a heart attack right so people get scared away from that and they go back to eating their other stuff and then they feel crappy again but they're like well at least my cholesterol is not bad so one of the big problems and i'm trying to sort of basically preaching this stuff is i think and this is a problem with health care in general is we have so gotten away from just defining what's healthy. You know, if somebody comes into your office and you say, you know, you talk to them for two, three minutes, because healthcare is just, you got 10 minutes to see a patient, make a decision. So what you're going to do is like,

hi, how you doing? Order a bunch of labs. You look at the results of the labs and say, okay, this lab is low, this lab is high, this lab is normal. Go on this drug or, you know, do this or that. And the patient may be saying, well, but I feel great. Or maybe converse. They may say, I feel like crap. Well, you look at your labs, they're fine. So go exercise a little bit or something. Well, let me bring you back to the beginning.

So you're a physician, right? So you understand a lot about the human body. Were you worried when you decided to go on this carnivore-only diet? Were you worried that you were going to be deficient in some sort of nutrients and vitamins and fiber and all these different things? And were you cautious? Yeah, I mean, I was very, very, I'm still skeptical. I mean, that's just the way you should be. But I mean, I was aware of what's not in meat. If you look at the R know, if you look at the RDA and it says meat is low in vitamin C, it's low in manganese, it's low in, you know, potassium, it's low in, you know, vitamin A, vitamin E. There's a whole bunch of things that's low in, you know, on paper, right?

So I was like, well, I don't, I can't rectify why these people are doing so well, you know, just eating meat. And we know historically that there are populations out there, the Inuit, the Maasai, the Sami and all these people are doing so well, you know, just eating meat. And we know historically that there are populations out there, the Inuit, the Maasai, the Sami, and all these people. Anyway, it's probably the best example, right, because they had extremely low incidence of cancer and no vegetables. There's nothing up there. Yeah, I mean, you know, if you go to northern Alaska in the wintertime, good luck trying to find a fruit or vegetable.

I mean, you're not. But what people would say, they would they would just they would justify say yeah but they ate a lot of their organs and i got some vitamin c from their liver and you know some of the some of the whale skin had some and so they would just try to justify that and try to make this is how it worked and then the same thing with messiah they would say well sometimes they would eat some berries once in a while so they would always try to justify it i'm like you know those things aren't available year round so you know you can't get berries you know especially in Alaska or wherever the anyone are you know you can't you can't

get that 12 months out of year so that's not what's having a significant impact on their diet I don't think so it's it's coming from the meat itself well this is this is what this is what I after doing a lot of research on this stuff so we've known so it's interesting. So when we look at the development of the RDAs, you know, the Recommended Daily Allowances, those were developed back in the 1940s, and they were developed basically for soldiers to figure out what the heck you're supposed to feed people so they can survive. And so they did research on this, and what they did was they take populations of people

that are consuming a normal diet. Like, you know, back in the 1940s, you know, people would eat a mixture of everything that was fairly high in carbohydrate, not as high as it is now, by the way. But it was a mixed diet, and so what they see is, you know, if you eat that diet and you're deficient in this nutrient, if you don't get X amount of this nutrient, you're going to develop some sort of nutrient deficiency syndrome. So they said, okay, well, we know that this level of nutrient deficiency causes disease,

so therefore we're going to recommend this, you know we know that this level of nutrient deficiency causes disease, so therefore we're going to recommend this. You know, everybody gets this amount, right? But they knew what they found out back even in 1897, there was a study where they were looking at animals, and they looked at something called thiamine. They didn't even know it was thiamine back then, but they saw that certain animals, if they were on a lower-carb diet, they didn't get this disease,

where animals on a high-car high carbohydrate did get this disease, and that disease was called beriberi. And so that's a thiamine deficiency which causes neurologic problems or congestive heart failure type problems. And so they were noticing that these animals are on a low carb diet, even though their thiamine levels were really, really low, they weren't getting diseases. So if you look at that and you look at all these other nutrients,

you know, things like manganese, you know, manganese is highly required for carbohydrate metabolism. And so if you're on a diet where you're not taking in any carbohydrate, all of a sudden you got to say, maybe I don't eat as much manganese and despite what the RDA says, and you can look at that after nutrient after nutrient glucose and vitamin C is a huge one right so vitamin C you don't if you don't take vitamin C and you get really really you get scurvy you get sick you die I mean they'll kill you I mean you end up with bleeding in your joints your teeth fall out your gums rot your skin opens up with sores horrible disease and these people are not getting scurvy and so what's happening is we know that a molecule of glucose and a molecule of vitamin C are almost identical. And so they compete for the same transporters.

And so if you don't have a lot of glucose floating around, you need way, way less vitamin C. Really? So there's some, and this has been known for quite a while as well. That's fascinating because obviously orange juice, tons of glucose, tons of vitamin C. Yeah, right. They basically cancel each other out. So I think what's happening, and this is one of the things I think potentially, and this needs to be investigated, but I think that a lot of people that we have all these vitamin deficiencies,

vitamin D deficiency, magnesium deficiency, a lot of that may be caused by just ingesting too much carbohydrate and creating a higher-than-normal need. So basically we're creating higher needs for vitamins. Now, do you do blood work on yourself? I haven't, you know, I haven't yet. I'm going to probably do it once I get, you know, I'm a year at this. You haven't done any?

No, I don't, you know, here's the deal, Joe. I mean, I've got a lot of people that do it all the time. I'm not that interested in it because I just don't, I don't think it makes that big of a difference for me. I'll do it just to satisfy other people's curiosity. I don't really have that much curiosity personally. About your blood work? Not really.

A radical change in your diet where you're just consuming only meat. I would want to see what kind of results I'm getting. Well, I mean, it depends. If you can tell me what blood test tells me I'm healthy, and I don't think you can. Well, I think if you get a really good doctor who understands different genes HDL cholesterol and LDL cholesterol and free testosterone available and all the different nutrients that are essential and if you get someone who really understands that and can have a comprehensive examination of your blood

work I think you benefit from it greatly but also, the knowledge that you can tell them, like how do you feel? I feel great. You know, and they can get a look at this. What are you eating? And what kind of meat are you eating? Where are you getting in it? Yeah, so that's an interesting point,

because we've started this, you know, again, I started doing this and got public on it on Twitter and a lot of people were saying, well yeah, you're doing well, you know, I'm breaking some world records and stuff like that. Yeah, but explain explain that like what world records are you breaking so on the you know so i've been a yes so i've been an athlete my whole life john i mean i've done you look like an athlete look pretty well i mean you know i'm about 240 right now but i mean i was you know so when i was when

i was younger i played rugby in new zealand i was playing with some of the all blacks you know at a high level this is before it was professional that's the name of the team blacks, you know, at a high level. This was before it was professional. That's the name of the team, by the way. New Zealand. So don't get weird. No, it's not a race. What, he's playing with blacks? Is that what he's saying? No, New Zealand all blacks. You know, this is, do you want to know the history on that?

It's kind of an interesting sort of thing. So back in the 1900s in New Zealand, guys were so fast. And there's forwards and backs. Forwards are like the linemen and the backs are the fast guys. And they were all so super fit. And so they said they looked like they're all backs but somebody type made a typo so they call them all blacks so that's what that's interesting but they're they're like the best rugby players in the world you know some people say south africa's

pretty good but new zealand's pretty much the best so i played down there with those guys and then i went into weight you know power lifting and i had an american record in the deadlift i was dead lifting close to 800 pounds as a drug-free athlete back in my 30s. And then I went on to, I did some strongman stuff for a few years and then I went on to throwing, you know, like track and field, like discus and shot put

and then the Highland Games where you run around with a big caber and wear a kilt and I won the world championships in that. And then, you know, when I got in my mid 40s, I was about close to 300 pounds back then. I was about 280, 285. And I was like, man, I just can't keep me doing this side. So that's when I

started dieting and stuff. And so I got down to pretty lean, about 240-ish where I'm at now. And I started doing this indoor rowing stuff, which is not a concept too. So you remember, I know, you know, Conor McGregor on his, I mean, you remember that machine he was rowing on? I mean, I'm sure a lot of the MA guys know that. So I got on there, and I started training for that. And so what I did was there's a 500-meter row, which is, you know, and this is kind of interesting because it's highly, highly glycolytic. I mean, it's like, it's not like running a marathon like Zach Bitter.

Explain glycolytic. So glycolytic means you're burning glucose. You're using muscle glycogen. You know, I know you had, who was the fellow on a couple weeks ago? Chris Kresher? No, it was the other guy. It was Andy Galpin. Okay.

He was saying, no, you've got to have glycogen. And I'm like, well, to do highly glycolytic activity. And so this is a highly, highly glycolytic activity. It takes about a minute to a minute 30. And that's intense, like you're going all out, right? And so I was able to break the 50-plus world record in that. And it was when I got to 50, it was 1 minute, 18.3 seconds. And so I put it down all the way down to 114.

So I took four seconds off the world record without a single gram of carbohydrate. Totally, I mean. But doesn't when you, I mean, this is one of the issues with the ketogenic diet. If you eat too much protein, your body converts that protein back to glucose. That's one of the things that they were saying that you have to have like you're supposed to have like somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 percent fats, 30 percent proteins. Right. So this is this is another sort of thing that I think a lot of people sort of have have questions about. One of the things we know about gluconeogenesis, so that's converting protein or fat into glucose, is it's demand driven. So your body doesn't just make it. So if you eat a lot of protein, it doesn't just say, I'm just going to make a bunch of blood sugar for

the heck of it, because your body doesn't need it. And so one of the things that glucose is extremely important to the body. I mean, we need it. I mean, it's absolutely. So the nice thing about it is if you regulate it really, really well, and the best way to regulate it really, really well is just to make your own. So rather than, you know, getting it from kombucha or, you know, eating a bunch of carbs, you know, where, where, where it's going to be all over the place. So this is what happens. So, so ketosis, again, I probably spend, you know, significant periods of time in ketosis, but I'm not always in ketosis. And that's not the point of this. But I think ketosis is probably a good thing periodically.

But like I said, I don't think we can talk about evolutionary stuff. But why would it vary if your diet's not varying? Why would you be in ketosis or out of ketosis if you're not varying your diet, if you're just eating only meat? Right. So, you know, because it depends how long I go between meals. Why would you be in ketosis or out of ketosis if you're not varying your diet? If you're just eating only meat? Right. So, you know, because it depends how long I go between meals. Oh, okay. So if I'm not, you know. Do you intermittent fast?

So I intermittent feast. So this is what I think is, you know, I think this is probably more. I will often go. Well, here's the funny thing. So I was in Denver a couple nights ago. I went to the big Brazilian, you know, get down, all-you-can-eat meat place. And I just. Chujas Korea.

Yeah. Yeah, I just picked it up. Fogo de Chão. So I went there and I just, I had them come back 50 times. Wow. I clicked everyone. I said I had 50 frigging orders of food. It was about six pounds of meat.

I just put it away in one setting. You ate six pounds of meat? That's insane, dude. Yeah. So I put away about six pounds. And then I'm not hungry for like 30-some hours. So I'm basically, it's not that I'm intentionally fasting. It's just I feasted so much that I just don't feel like eating. So I think, here's what I think.

Huh. You know, you haven't, why do you think we have an appetite? I mean, what's the point of an appetite? Tell you when to eat? Right, right. That's exactly right. But if you're eating the crappy wrong food, your appetite's all screwed up. So one of the problems we have is people eating the wrong food.

We have all this processed garbage that's full of calories, sugar and crap, but it doesn't have any nutrients in there. So every time you're hungry, your body's saying, give me more nutrition. Well, if all you do is pour in garbage, your body, you're always going to be saying, I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Plus the insulin spikes. Yeah, all that stuff. I mean, so you want to, you know, insulin is not, you know, we need some insulin, right? I mean, we need insulin for muscle growth. It's a useful

thing. The goal of insulin is not zero. You know, that's what people need to understand. It's not, we don't want our glucose to be zero. We don't want our insulin to be zero, but we don't want it always, always, always spiking. And so, you know, when you eat a big meal of something you're supposed to be eating, and I'll argue that I think meat's a pretty damn good meal and we can, we can talk about how it's complete and not, but, um, so when you do that, you know, you're just like the next time you're hungry, it's time to eat. Right. Your body said, I need some, I need energy. So you get it from fat when you eat meat, but I also need structure. And so by, you know, eating meat, you know, you're basically giving your body what it's asking for.

And I think that works pretty well. Whose phone was that? That's very interesting because most people would say you should eat a balanced diet, right? Most people would say that in order to be healthy, you should consume a certain amount of fruits, a certain amount of vegetables. You should have some whole grains. You should eat some meat. And if you come along and tell people, like, this is what I'm doing. I'm eating six pounds of meat and I only eat for 30 hours. Like, this guy's out of his fucking mind. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I mean, it sounds crazy. You know, 2017, that's crazy as crap. I mean, I can

point to thousands and thousands of people and do it in excellent health, which is interesting. But I mean, you know, balanced diet is just a freakingging cop out. I mean, it's like, I don't know what the fuck to tell you. So I'm gonna tell you to balance diet. But I wish you'd done some blood work. So you should get us some data. I mean, it seems like with someone who's espousing this diet, like it'd be nice. You had some hard data. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, cause I didn't know I was going to do this. I just started doing it. I'm like, well, I, you know, I've already done it. I'll probably get some, you know, so what, but it. I'm like, well, I've already done it, so I'll probably get some. But did you just decide, like, hey, I'm going to try this for a month and then just keep going?

I said, I'm going to try it for a month, and I just felt so good. I was like, well. And you've been on it for? I started last December, so a year. Wow. So a whole year of just eating meat. God, you've got to do some blood work, man. Well, I probably will. But the point I'm making is, what is it going to

tell me? Here's the thing we don't know. One of the things is, I'll tell you what will probably, because I've seen hundreds and hundreds of people who've already done blood work, so I know what it's going to show, basically. So I've gotten, we've got this study going. We've got all these people submitting blood work. But the, you know, probably

my HDL will go up, my triglycerides will go down, my blood sugar will stabilize to a low level, my inflammatory markers will be normal. That's because I've seen lots and lots of other people's blood work already. So I know it's going to show my cholesterol may be up or down. And that's something that we get a lot of people worried about that. And, you know, I can talk about cholesterol, in my view, is a pretty worthless marker you know by itself you know you have to take it into context and so there's a you know there's a couple people that are really really intelligent about cholesterol that are

really testing this sort of stuff one guy's name is Dave Feldman on Twitter his name is Dave keto there's another guy named Ivor Cummins who's an Australian it's both engineers and so this was what happened this guy Dave he goes on a ketogenic diet his cholesterol goes sky-freaking-high it's both engineers and so this was what happened this guy dave he goes on a ketogenic diet his cholesterol goes sky freaking high it's like 400 you know way way up there and his doctor's freaking out and he's freaking out so he's like i don't understand this i mean i feel great everything about me is just best health i've ever felt in my life so what he does is he starts drawing his blood every single day he gets a blood test And what he finds out is that his blood cholesterol is all over the place. One day it's 300, the next day it's 200, one day it's 350, the next day it's...

So when we go to the doctor every six months or a year and they get a blood cholesterol, you assume, well, that's my cholesterol and it's always that way. Well, he found out that it's so variable. They've actually known about this since the 1950s, but no one has been talking about it. So what he figured out, and he's a systems engineer, and these engineers are some smart guys. I mean, that's one thing I kind of talk about. Just because somebody's an MD or PhD doesn't mean they know everything. There's a lot of people that are plumbers and whatever.

They don't have any formal training that can figure. They're smart people, and they can figure this stuff out. So he's an engineer, a real smart guy. figure this stuff out. So he's an engineer, a real smart guy. And so what he does is he figures out that cholesterol is basically, all it is, is it's traveling around in your blood based on energy flux. So if you've eaten a lot, so if you've eaten a whole bunch of food and you're full, your liver is saying, I don't need to put out a bunch of fat because we burn fat as fuel, even if we're not on a ketogenic diet. So what it does is it transports fat. So when you're hungry and you haven't eaten it for a while, like you fasted for a blood test,

your liver says, we need fat in this because we're low on energy. And so it shoots out all this fat. And what happens is cholesterol is just cruising around for a ride. So it's just sitting there, you know, as a passenger. So depending on how much you've eaten, when you've eaten, that will change your cholesterol. And so it's not a very good marker. I mean, you can find studies that show for all-cause mortality, like if you're like you and me, because you're the same age as I am, I think you're right.

Fifty? Yeah, we're both fifty. So if we look at, you know, and again, associational studies are not that great, but if you look at that and you say all-cause mortality, am I going to die or not? If your cholesterol is high, you're less likely to die. If your cholesterol is high, you're less likely to get Parkinson's disease. If your cholesterol is high, you're less likely to get a bunch of cancers. So it's like—

So you're saying that, though, but most people hear this and they go, but, but, but, but, but, but, if your cholesterol is high, you're going to get a heart attack. Well, here's the deal. You're going to die. Here's the deal with heart attacks. And this is interesting because vegetarians and vegans, I don't mean to pick on vegetarians and vegans because, you know, I know some great ones are great people. And I think, you know, there shouldn't be a war between this. But vegetarians and vegans, the number one killer of vegetarian and vegan is heart disease. I mean, that's what kills them, too. It kills

everybody. So it's just like, you know, you know, do you trade? Am I going to die of cancer? Am I going to try to have heart disease? You know, which one, pick your poison? Well, most people don't understand that the sugar industry's hijacking of science in the 1950s, the way they paid off those scientists to literally false advertise the idea that sugar is safe for you, but that saturated fat and cholesterol is what's causing all these issues with people and heart attacks. To this day, people just sort of repeat that. Like they think it's gospel.

Yeah, I mean, it is. It's part of the framework of society now. What was the push that got you to say, I'm just going to eat nothing but meat? Was there anybody that you knew that was doing it really well that you were talking to? Did you get some? Well, like I said, it was just reading about people online. You know, there's a you know if there's a i'll tell you what if there's a guy named joe anderson on twitter and his handle

is joe charlene 98 88 98 or 98 88 it's this guy you know it's just the guy he's been doing it for 20 years i'm just like this is pretty cool like i said reading back on that stuff and then just because i've been an athlete i'm like and i don't you know i've never taken drugs and stuff like that and i was always like what can get me to the next level as far as athletic competition I'm just a really competitive guy I mean I just I just like to you know push myself and see what works I know a lot of savage people that eat mostly meat my friend Cam Haines eats almost all meat yeah he occasionally eats like something else but

most of what he eats is meat my friend Jocko Willink yeah when he's tired he goes I need more steak it's a freaking health food. It totally is. I mean, and you know, there's a guy named Bobby Maximus, who's a fitness guy. He was, I guess he was used to being an MMA guy years ago or something like that. But I know he did this steak every day thing. And so if we look back into history, I mean, there's all kinds of accounts of people using meat as an athletic performance enhancer. You know, back in the original Greek Olympics, those guys knew that they ate a lot of meat. They performed better.

You know, the beef feeders out of London, you know, these guys were the guards for the kings. You know, they gave them extra meat because they knew they would fight better. You know, the Mongols, you know, they just decimated, you know, all through Asia. They basically just ate their horses and their meat. You know, that's what they did when they traveled with that, you know all through asia they basically just ate their horses and their meat you know that's what they did when i traveled with that you know and so you've got all these historical examples of people performing better you know the inuit they were they were they were known to have this incredible work capacity and all they you know all they was seal meat and and reindeer and you know stuff like that so what's a typical diet for you like give me a normal day you wake up in

the morning so what do you do well i'll tell you what to do so today, I mean, eating-wise, generally I eat one meal or two meals, depending on what my workout training is going to be. So this morning, because I knew I was coming up here, I trained real early in the morning. Well, that's fast. I set a new record, by the way, and my personal record is doing that. But I had a couple of New York strips. I had about two pounds.

You ate two pounds of meat. Well, that's a snack, man. Is that your phone, man, that keeps you keeping? It could be. It might have your little thing on there. Yeah, I think I'll probably two pounds. You ate two pounds of meat? Well, that's a snack, man. Is that your phone, man, that keeps you keeping? It could be. It might have your little thing on there. Yeah, I think I'm probably getting notifications from this. People are saying, hey, bro, see you on YouTube, bro. Let me turn that sucker up.

It's amazing, man. You look just like you. Yeah. So you had two New York strips today? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, you know. Two pounds of meat. You know, it took me a while to build up to this.

Before, you know, like a pound of meat would be, you know, that would be tough. Now I can put down four pounds at one time. And people looking at you would go, well, he's super lean. Like, obviously, whatever you're eating, your body's processing it really well. I mean, you don't have what someone would think of as a steak eater gut. Like you tell a guy, someone, a guy eats two steaks a day and like oh he must have a gut but that's all the mashed potatoes macaroni and cheese and bread yeah i mean it's the stuff you eat with it i mean you know i'm just uh you know i put like i said on that instagram page i've got

you know me exercising doing stuff and you know pictures that was something you talked about uh outside the studio right before we came in that the studies that have been done on people consuming meat, and I brought this up as well, that there's a lot of misconceptions about these studies because they're not very clear. When they say that people who eat meat five times a week are more likely to get cancer, what they're not telling you is what these people ate along with the meat. Are they eating cheeseburgers? Are they eating grass-fed beef where it's grass-finished, grass-fed, high in essential fatty acids, healthy for you? Or are they eating some bullshit cheeseburger with a sugary drink? Like what is the rest of their diet? Are they consuming a lot of refined carbohydrates? Are they consuming a lot of sugar?

Are they drinking alcohol? Are they smoking cigarettes? All you're saying is they're eating meat five days a week. It's not specifying in any way their actual overall diet. Yeah, they don't sort that very well out. And so they've got all these epidemiology studies. And basically, a meat eater is basically someone, and statistically, we know they're more likely to smoke. They're more likely to drink. They're more likely not to wear their seatbelt. They're more likely to likely to drink. They're more likely not to wear their seatbelt. They're more likely to be in accidents. They're more likely not to go to their doctor.

They're more likely just not to care. So you've got, that's what a meat eater is. Why is that? Because if I tell you, as I say, Joe, eating meat is bad for you, and you say, F you, I don't care. I don't care about my health. Right. Right? So you just don't care.

So they can't separate that out. So they've got all these studies where they try to separate it out and say, well, we'll kind of even up the smokers. But they never can take that I don't give a fuck thing out of it. And so you've got this stuff. And then all the studies are really, really low strength. So if we look at, you know, and we can talk about this about meat causing cancer because there's some concern about that with colon cancer. this about meat causing cancer because there's some concern about that with colon cancer. But if we look at smoking, you know, when they determined that smoking caused cancer,

the epidemiology showed a 2,000% increase in the incidence of cancer in a lot of studies. When they compare that to meat and cancer, they found an 18% increase, which is nothing. I mean, it's like it doesn't even matter. It's so low. 18% isn't high? Not, not when you look at relative risk, right? So if your risk, if your risk of getting colon cancer is one or say your risk of getting colon cancer is, uh, five in a million, right? And now it's six in a million. I mean, it's like nothing. I mean, it's like it's so minor. But if your risk is going from five in a million to 300 in a million, then you're like, well, that's pretty powerful.

Right. So this is a problem. So it depends on the incident. So if it's really low to begin with and you only raise it by a tiny amount, it's so small. And so what we know, there was a guy named Bradford Hill who talked about statistical correlations on when these things actually matter. And not until you get to 200% or 300% does it even matter. You can't draw any conclusion from that. The problem is—

200, 300% difference out of like 1,000. Yeah, right. So instead of two, it would be six, something along those lines. Right, so instead of being 18% more likely, you're 200 percent more likely. Those numbers are confusing to people, though, the way you say 200 percent. Like what? That's a lot of people. Right. So so you would have to double or triple your risk. OK, 18 percent is not double or triple.

Right. Only putting it up by by a fraction. Right. So when you when you separate all that stuff out and then, you know, there was, you know, the World Health Organization two years ago, last year, two years ago, declared that red meat was a class two carcinogen and processed meats was a class one carcinogen. You know, they said it's like plutonium and smoking and, you know, everybody runs all over the place with that. Why did they do that? So here's why they do that. So first of all, and you can go on their website and, you know, they'll tell you what their conclusions were. So this was done by an organization called the International Association for Research on Cancer. They're based out of Lyon, France. And they are, you know, that's what the World Health Organization uses to determine their stuff.

And so they're, and this is, you know, besides the point, but right now the IRC is under investigation by U.S. Congress for using crappy science and, you know, promoting political agenda. So I don't know if that's true or not. Part of that's generated by probably big corporations who don't like their findings. So they're under investigation for that. But what they say is we have some weak epidemiology, which is this 18% stuff, but we think we have some strong mechanistic reasons for this, right? but we think we have some strong mechanistic reasons for this right so if everybody you know there's a there's a doctor named George Ede Ede who's a who's a psychiatrist out in Maryland who's got this just tremendous she analyzed the whole thing she has a website called diagnosis diet comm so she did an

analyst analysis of all the 800 studies they used and she found that what they ended up doing is most of them showed that meat didn't cause cancer there was a small percentage that did they looked at all these rat studies and there was about 20 2025 rat studies and they found like three or four of them showed that meat you know if we gave this type of cancer if we gave this rat a certain you know amount of meat and we genetically bred them and we gave them a medicine that makes them get cancer that they get a little bit of change in their colon that might turn into cancer. What medicine makes them get cancer?

Oh, I don't remember. There's a special way to make rats get cancer. So they have this model that makes them get cancer really, really easy. So what they did is they felt that. Why would they do that if they're trying to find out if something gives someone cancer? Well, because they want to make it, they want to be able to? Well, because they want to differentiate as quick as possible. Because, oh, they've got to use a million rats. I get it. I see what you're saying.

This is a real fast way to show if they get cancer. But the problem with that, and she explains it very well, is that we don't know that they would get cancer. It's not shown. And the other thing, and we talked about this before, is that if you want to look at rat studies, and it's not to say that plants give you cancer, but there are pesticides in plants that have been studied in rats that we eat every day,

natural foods and vegetables and fruits that also give rats cancer. And so the only difference is we've got some really weak— By pesticides you mean things that natural compounds that plants extract or that plants secrete in order to discourage predation. Exactly. So these natural substances, when they feed them to rats and they isolate them and feed them to rats, it gives the rats cancer. Of 52, they tested 27 of them. And these are just normal foods that we eat on a daily basis.

Normal stuff we eat on a daily basis. So it's not to scare people out of eating that stuff. But it's just saying that's how much BS this stuff is based upon. But it just seems to me to be so crazy that they're doing a cancer study and they give the rat something that induces cancer in order to find out what gives them cancer more. So they give them this compound, and then on top of the compound, then they check their diet. Right.

And they also feed them sugar with it. So it's kind of like it's just the way they do it. And so you can extrapolate. Does that really matter to humans or not? It's just so hard to tell. I mean, there's so many things that animals can eat that we can't. It's just the whole thing is bizarre. Yeah, I mean, we're not rats.

You know, that's interesting. You know, it's like the same thing when we talked about, you know, cancer rates in the historical populations. You know, in Messiah, they didn't have much cancer. You know, not until we started feeding them, you know, the 1940s, 30s, and stuff like that. Not until we started feeding them all our crap that they started to get those diseases. Yeah, that's, it's all very strange, right? When you think about diet and health, you also have to take into account geographic, the geography that your ancestors evolved in and what they, what they accustomed to eating like there's different adaptations for the Inuit for example adaptations to

cold they probably have requirements for certain amount of dietary fat yeah I think it's you know this is what I think I think we're all you know this is one of the things that people talk about there's like you know everybody's so different we have all this different genetics we all need special diets I tend to say that you know in certain circumstances that makes sense. But I think, you know, evolutionary, you know, we sort of split from primates, you know. We shared a common ancestor with, you know, primates, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, somewhere 8 to 10 million years ago.

We don't know for sure. You know, it's back in then. And so what happens is, you know, the human, the pre-humans kind of went one way, and then the apes and chimpanzees went up this way and went up into the trees. And if you look at even the difference between a chimp and an ape, an ape, not an ape, a gorilla, a gorilla crushes all these really fibrous food, lots of fiber and stuff like that. Chimpanzees can't tolerate that as well because their their

their colon got a little smaller well humans colons got way way smaller right and so what happened is why you and i can throw a rock really far you know in a chimpanzee you know chimpanzee can throw you know if you give a chimpanzee a baseball they can throw it about 20 miles an hour it's not very strong you and i can throw a baseball you know 60 miles an hour average guy you know if you get you know major Baseball players are throwing at 95 plus, right? The reason we evolved to do that is because we were throwing shit at animals we were hunting, right? That's what drove, I mean, our scapula is rotated. You know, if you look at a chimpanzee scapula, it's on the side.

It allows them to climb trees and do this stuff. And so these strong climate-based evolutionary pressures, which drove us to saying, you know, there's all this Ice Age stuff going on. The climate's drying out. The fruits in the jungles are going away. Now it's all this grassland. And, you know, there's not much to eat in the grassland except for some animals. You know, people eat some bugs and stuff like that for a while.

And that's what chimpanzees do. Even chimpanzees, you know, 3% of their diet. You know, there's a lot of people say we're frugivores and all like that for a while. And that's what chimpanzees do. Even chimpanzees, 3% of their diet, there's a lot of people who say we're frugivores and all we should eat is fruit. But even chimpanzees eat about 3% of their diet. It comes from killing other animals. There's this red colobus monkey somewhere in Uganda or somewhere in Africa.

The chimpanzees are hunting this thing to extinction. They're good little hunters. Yeah, there's a David Attenborough documentary on it. It's terrifying. You see how organized they are to kill monkeys. They have chimps at one end of this tree line, and they're coming this way, and they have chimps on the side,

and they chase them in, and they corner them. They ambush them. They get them in the center, and they just swarm them. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, and, you know, think about it. Their brain is not even half as big as ours. I mean, so when humans sort of... I think it's pretty clear that what drove a lot of our evolution, our ability to communicate, to strategize, you know, some of the anatomic things was based around hunting.

I mean, hunting, I know you're a big hunter, Jill, and I know it's not an easy thing to do. You've got to think a lot. You know, you've got to be pretty smart to outsmart these animals, especially when you're in big groups. And back then when they've got, you i got a spears basically you know you look at uh there's a population in central europe called the gravettians right so if you look at population markers for nutrition right the uh one of the things i look at is population height so if there's a real top height tall population it means that they had really good nutrition and so if you look at the tallest people that probably ever lived were these Gravetians.

These guys were just decimating mammoths. I mean, they were so efficient at killing mammoths. And so that's probably basically all they ate, you know, for the most part. They might have a little bit of vegetables. But their average height was like 6'2", and this was like 30,000 years ago. That's crazy. They must have been giants. They were giants.

And so the people that have sort of genetically are related to those people six foot two and this is like 30,000 years ago. That's crazy. So these people. They must have been giants. They were giants. And so the people that have sort of genetically are related to those people now are the people from Croatia and the Netherlands, which are again the tallest people in the world. The only other group that rivaled that are the Nelotic Africans, which are like the Watusi and the Maasai,

which are all about six feet tall on average. And their diet is primarily, as we know, livestock based. And then the other tall population historically were the Plains Indians, particularly the Cheyenne Indians. And they just lived on mostly buffalo. So it's kind of interesting as far as what's the best food for nutrition, you know. And, you know, that's what I'm finding from a performance standpoint. You know, it's just what makes me feel the best and work the best. Do you supplement?

Do you take vitamins or minerals or anything? You know, I don't. You know, I just, you know, I kind of, you know, just, I mean, well, I won't say, I take some salt, you know, I'll salt my meat, you know, and I'll have some Himalayan salt or some regular salt on it. How do you normally cook? You cook for yourself most of the time?

Yeah, man, you get pretty good at cooking steaks, you know. So I'll either reverse sear, you know, I don't need, you know, I don't reverse sear, I reverse sear a steak and I cast iron. So you cook know, I don't reverse sear, reverse sear a steak. So you cook it slowly, at a low heat to about internal temperature. Yeah, I do. I just like medium rare and then I throw it in a pan for a couple minutes and sear it up and then eat it. Or I just throw it on the grill.

You know, it depends where I'm at. If I'm California, I got a grill here, so I'll throw it on the grill. If I'm back, you know, in New Mexico, I'll just, I'll do it because I don't have a grill there. So I do that. But that's, you know, takes, you know, a mexico i'll just i'll do it because i don't have a girl there so i do that but that's that you know takes uh you know a couple minutes to you must do a lot of supermarket runs does that get expensive it's got to be an expensive diet yeah so i mean it's you know it depends you know it depends on you know again how much i'm probably eating more than the average person that does this diet that i'm aware of she only goes about two pounds two pounds of

meat and so they can A day, right. And so a lot of people, you know, people that are, you know, don't have the budget, they'll just do like ground beef and stuff like that. And you can do, you can eat two pounds of ground beef for, you know, under ten bucks a day, which is really, you know, two cups of Starbucks, you know, something like that. So it's actually not that bad for a lot of people. Now, there's also people that have ethical concerns about the consumption of animals, especially the consumption of factory farmed animals on a mass basis. I mean, you're probably responsible for a whole goddamn field of dead cows. Yeah. So, I mean, I think I have a concern.

I think people that eat meat should be concerned about it, and we're the ones that primarily need to make sure that's not happening. And so I think, you know, as you know, you know, I would argue that, you know, since evolution began, humans have been eating meat and that's just what happens in nature. You know, if you look at how an animal is killed in a wild, if a lion takes down a zebra, it's not a pleasant experience for that animal. And so most of the way that humans kill these animals now, you know, from a, from a humane say, it's pretty darn humane. I mean, even as a hunter, you know, if you hit an animal and you don't hit him in the right spot, you've got to track him down. It may take an hour or longer. The issue is not necessarily

even just the eventual death of the animal. It's also the life of the animal before it was killed. Yeah, I agree with that too. So I think that you have to look at... If the animal is like... If you've got chickens in cages and they can't turn around, right, and they're just cramped in there, that's awful and that shouldn't be allowed. One of the reasons they put chickens in cages is because they'll peck the hell out of each other. You know, if they don't separate, they'll just tear each other up. So that, you know, there's different considerations on that.

You know, if you have an animal that you're, you know, because I talk to a lot of cattle ranchers and most of them i mean most of them they really care about their animals they're out in the snow and the rain making sure their animals are fed making sure they're sheltered you know if an animal goes down they're taking care of that so you know there's probably some bad apples out there and if we know about that stuff and some vegan documentary guy wants to make a film about that then yeah those guys should be saying hey don't mistreat your animals you know don't you know intentionally hurt them don't have them standing animals. You know, don't, you know, intentionally hurt them. Don't have them standing in a pile of crap. You know, give them some, you know, fresh air and some ability to move.

But, you know, if you look at cows or animals in the wild, they're hurt animals anyway. So they hang out together anyway. It's not like if they're indoors. Now, if they're indoors and they've got, you know, room to move around and they go in and go out, I don't think that's a big issue. And so I think you have to kind of, you know, you can't just make it all black and white. There's some people that are good at it. There's some people that are bad. The bad ones need to be made not to do that anymore.

But, I mean, it doesn't change the fact that we all need to eat. There's a company called Butcher Box that will sell you grass-fed, grass-finished beef, too. They send it to you. They're one of the sponsors of the show. And I've eaten their meat it's very good and if you're a certain if you're in a place don't we have a like a isn't there like some sort of a like a like a password or something that we give them see if you can find that but um there's there's ways to get mean, you have to search for it, though.

It's not most of the meat that you get. You don't really exactly know how the person is raising it. It's hard. I mean, unless you go to some sort of a farmer's market or something like that. Oh, okay. You can get $10 off plus free bacon by using the code word ROGAN at ButcherBox.com. So ButcherBox is one option. I'm sure there's, like I said, farmer's markets are great too.

You can actually meet the ranchers and, you know, get a sense of how they raise these animals. But I think for health-wise, it's really critical to get grass-fed, grass-raised to get the best. Do you pay attention to that or do you just take whatever you can get? Yeah, so I think you're right in the fact that if you say what is the most nutrient dense, what is the best quality I can get, grass-fed, grass-finished, it's going to fill that bill. Now, if you compare that to something that was fed corn, right, and given hormones and given antibiotics and what else do they do? Yeah, so you've got those, and it's fed grain.

The difference nutritionally compared to, because if you don't have any money and you can't afford this stuff, compared to the rest of the crap in the supermarket is, so I'll use an MMA analogy for you. So if grass-fed grain, fed beef is Conor McGregor or GSP, right? Then this other stuff is say some guy who's like the number three contender or something like that. Really? Is that, that close? The difference is, you know, because you look at hormones in beef, you know, so, so you don't want to eat hormones in your meat, right? Right. You don't want antibiotics in your meat either, right? So you're in your grass-fed, even, even the elk you kill, you've

got hormones in that stuff because the animal makes it naturally. Of course. So you're getting a very low level. And so what they do is they give those animals generally the same hormones. And it increases the percentage a little bit more compared to what you and I make normally. So if they, if we look at like nanograms, you know, maybe, and I can't remember the numbers exactly, but the scale is what's important. nanograms, you know, and maybe, and I can't remember the numbers exactly, but the scale is what's important. So if they give you, if grass fed beef gives you five nanograms of estrogen, okay, grain fed beef gives you 10 nanograms of estrogen. And then you compare it to eggs, which give you maybe 90. And you compare it to dairy, which gives you 110. And then you compare

it to, you know, if you look at phytoestrogens you know that's that's in the millions right so so things like soybeans and stuff like that and then you compare it to what does your body naturally make and that's like 30 or 40,000 and so it's a really small level so I think if you can afford grass-fed and grain-fed you know I'm not saying how can you solve the world's problem but I think if you're think if we just isolate for health only, say you're a poor guy and all you can afford is, you know, I can't afford this grass pit. I mean, I can't afford 20 bucks a pound for this stuff, right? Right. And ButcherBox is still too expensive for me.

Then that's probably still a better option than going back and eating, you know, the other crap. You know, the other crap, the Cheetos and, you know, all this other stuff. And even though, you know, like the organic fruits and stuff like that you know it's just expensive for people so i mean i think it's you know like i said it depends on who your audience is you know if you've got unlimited resources and most people don't then you have to say what's you know what's you know from a health standpoint what is most affordable and what's practical how do i get my health back because this is you know i don't like i said i don I get my health back? Because this is, you know, I don't, like I said, I don't really, I'm not like saying this is the best diet in the world for everybody.

I'm just saying you need to find out what works for you. Right. But basically what you're saying is that grass fed beef is better, but it's only slightly better for you. Right. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, right? So if you're saying I want to be as good as I possibly can be, then I said probably grass fed, grain fed, grass fed is probably better. If you're like saying I'm just sick and I don't want to be sick anymore, then I said probably grass-fed, grain-fed, or grass-fed is probably better.

If you're like saying, I'm just sick and I don't want to be sick anymore, then I'd say get what you can afford. So you really think that meat is, in some ways, a panacea for health? You think that it really, if you just eat more meat, that your body will be, what, more vibrant, more healthy? What is it about meat specifically? Well, I think it's, you know, so this is another sort of misconception. So I think a lot of people, it's extremely well absorbed in our body.

I mean, look at the end result of why we, what do we do when we're eating, okay? What's the end result? We eat for two reasons. We eat to get energy and to build animal tissue. I mean, you and I are animals. We're animal tissue. The most efficient way to do that is just to eat some because your body has, it has, it says everything in the, in the proportions that

we need it. Right. Right. And it's, you know, it's a misconception, you know, when you hear a lot of people will say, you know, if you eat a bunch of meat, it's going to sit there and rot in your intestines and it's going to putrefy and stuff like that. So they've done studies on people that have had ileostomies and these are people that have had their colon removed, right? So they've done studies on people who have had ileostomies, and these are people that have had their colon removed, right? So you've had colon cancer, you know, inflammatory bowel disease, like Crohn's disease, where they take out your whole colon, and now you've got a little bag, which you poop into this little bag, right? So they've looked at people, and they've looked at what comes out when they eat meat. Almost nothing comes out. There's a little bit

of liquid, right? So that means all that meat is being absorbed, you know. But when you eat a bunch of fiber and vegetables and plants, all that stuff goes up in the bag because you can't digest it. You have to have bacteria in your colon to do that. And humans are not really good at it compared to other primates. We're really bad at it. What about probiotics? So I think probiotics, you know, the microbiome is microbiome is fascinating and there's a lot of

research going on there's a lot of people just talking all about this stuff how it affects your health one of the things that we we try to say is how do we define a healthy microbiome you can't yet we just don't know enough there are you know we can't we don't even know everything about the human body and then to put in tens of billions of different bacteria all different different species and say this is a perfect combination or that's the perfect combination. We're so far away from knowing that. We're in the very infancy of what that means. So what I would say is if you're healthy, you know, if your joints don't hurt, if everything's going good, then probably by definition your microbiome is fine.

If you're eating just a meat-based diet, your microbiome is going to be different and the probiotics are probably not going to make a difference for you. But if you're eating, again, if you're eating a crappy diet, you know, and you're feeding your gut a bunch of sugar, you're going to get this dysbiosis, which is bad, you know, bad bacteria. And then, you know, maybe the probiotics might help in that situation. I'm not convinced, you know, I just don't think there's, you know, enough evidence to show that that's a big deal. That's interesting. So you think that perhaps maybe the probiotics exist or maybe the probiotics are healthy. Freaking out? Audio levels? Yeah. Too loud. Not loud enough. I'll talk over it. So the probiotics you think may be only beneficial if people are consuming a lot of variable things or a varied diet like carbohydrates, all sorts of different things.

And maybe the probiotics are necessary to sort of balance you out. Is that what you're thinking? I mean, that potentially could be the case. So you think that the microbiome of someone who eats meat is probably designed to eat meat? Well, it is. I mean, your microbiome of someone who eats meat is probably designed to eat meat? Well, it is. I mean, your microbiome reacts to whatever you do, how much sleep you get, how much exercise you do, how much you eat, how much stress is in your life. This is very, very adaptable. It can change in a day.

Right. So whatever you're feeding it chronically is going to change what bacteria live there. So it's like this thing about, again, back to this meat putrefaction thing. So if we look at the definition of putrefaction, you know, it sounds awful, right? It's putrefying, right? Putrefaction is the actuary of bacteria on protein, right? So protein gets in your colon, it'll putrefy, right? So again, when we go back to these ileostomy patients, they studied people that were getting soy protein and meat. And guess which one had more protein going into the colon? Soy protein. So eating a bunch of soybean stuff means more proteins going into your colon,

and you're going to get more putrefaction that way. Is that rumor, like I know very little about what soy is supposed to do to you in terms of like raising your estrogen levels. Is that supposed to be a real thing? Well, I mean, there's a lot of people think so. I mean, there's some studies that support that. I don't know for sure. I mean, I don't think soy is a particularly good food for us.

I know some people will say that fermented soy, you know, is a little better. Yeah, I've heard that's good for you actually, right? What is that called, natto? Natto, yeah. I think it's an Asian type thing. But, you know, I think that, you know, there's certainly some people that,

I think there's a lot of associations. Guys getting gynecomastia and stuff like that from eating too much soy. Have guys really done that? I feel like that's one of those things where people just tell you, hey, man, you're going to get bitch tits. You know, I've got no idea. I've never heard of guys getting that from anything other than steroids. Yeah. I mean, they're supposedly are.

I don't know for sure. I can't say for sure. Okay. Yeah. There supposedly are. I don't know for sure. I can't say for sure. Okay.

Yeah. So now that you've been doing this, do you plan on, you've done it for a year now, do you plan on continuing this for life? Is this your diet now? Are you going to mix it up a little? Right. So I'm going to, you know, I seriously doubt I will not eat a ton of meat. You know, I just think I feel too good. I mean, I think I'm going to feel good and perform as good as I can for as long as I can. I feel too good. I mean, I think I want to feel good and perform as good as I can for as long as I can. So whether I say, and this is what I tell people, you know, do it for a couple months,

you know, because this is one of the problems. So many people have health problems and I think a lot of it's food related and it's really hard to sort that out. You know, if you're eating a hundred different types of food, which one is it? I don't know. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to drop this out. Right. So, and it's obviously variable in terms of, like, your own individual biology. Right, right. But, I mean, when you drop down to just meat, then it's pretty easy. You just say, okay, I'm going to eat meat. Now if I add fruit back in, does that F me up or not?

You know, if it does, then I'm like, man, I shouldn't probably eat that. Right. If I eat dairy back in. So probably there will be a point when I'll say, hey, I'm going to, you know, maybe once in a while I'll have some berries again and then just see how I do with that. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. There are a lot of people I'll tell you that, especially these guys who have been doing it for 5, 8, 10, 15 years, I mean, they're like, man, that stuff just screws me up and I don't want to do that.

Who was the guy that you were saying? Did you find that gentleman online, young Jeremy? Did you get the tab? I had a few people up but i pulled him off which one the guy that he was saying joe anderson joe anderson i couldn't actually couldn't find him that was uh can you if you go if you go on my instagram there's about i don't know about a month or two ago i've got a picture i put up four of these people these are all people that have done it for a total of 55 years okay And there's one guy who's a marathon runner. And then these other two, a couple that have been doing it for 20 years.

Another gal, there's another gal named Kelly Hogan that she was like a big, morbidly obese woman. And she went on a carnivore diet. She's done it for eight years. And she got super lean. She was totally infertile, couldn't have kids, right? Super lean, carnivore diet, three kids later, happy as can be. All she does is eat hamburgers every day. I mean, that's right.

I mean, it's, you know, the stories I get, you know, this is because now I'm this kind of central point, and I get all these crazy, crazy stories of people just talking about it online. Just from talking, yeah. How fascinating is that? Well, it's kind of like a little movement, I think. And I think what you'll see over the next year or two, there's going to be a lot more people doing this just to try it. You know, it's crazy. Some people are going to do it just to say, hey, it's cool.

I'm going to be a carnivore. I'm just going to screw around. But I think there's people that honestly are doing it, and they're really seriously improving their health. And I think whatever works is what you should do. Well, I think that the removal of refined carbohydrates almost helps everybody. No, I agree 100%. If not the removal, the severe restriction. Just restrict most carbs.

I mean, I think a day a week, just have at it. Have a fucking slice of pizza. Who gives a shit? Go to town. I don't think there's anything wrong with a cheat day. But I think overall, refined carbohydrates just do not seem to be a healthy nor normal thing for your body to consume. Well, if we look at, you know, historically, I mean, you know, we didn't start consuming dairy until about 12,000 years ago. We didn't start farming until about the same time. So those things are relatively novel.

You know, we didn't start eating all this processed stuff until about 100, you know, Crisco came out in 1910 or something like that. So all that crap we've invented in the last century and then when high fructose corn syrup came in in the 70s, all this stuff our human body just hasn't evolved for yet. So I think we're getting seriously messed up by that stuff. Yeah, and if you look at the change in our diet, there's a corresponding uptick in diabetes and all sorts of other obesity factors and health issues. Sugar and refined carbohydrates. Those are the two big ones. The other debate is whether or not eating all this meat is healthy for you. And what about diverticulitis?

Have you ever heard about people getting that? Because I know that's what Brock Lesnar got. And one of the things that they said that he got it from just eating mostly meat. Yeah, this is interesting because there's actually a guy named Pery, P-E--r-y did a study in 2014 he did colonoscopies right so he actually looked at people that was one of the first ones to do this and he looked at people on these diets and he found that the people that ate the highest amount of fiber and had the most bowel movements had the most incidence of diverticulosis so diverticulosis precedes diverticulitis so diverticula is just a little pouch that shoots out from your colon so it it's like a little sack. So what happens is that

eventually gets infected and then you get diverticulitis. But the people that were developing diverticulosis the most in his study, he did two or three like this, showed the ones that were eating a bunch of fiber. And there's also studies on... So that fiber gets caught or something? Is that what that is? Potentially. So the question is one other thing people don't understand, you know, because a lot of people when they talk about ketogenic diets and they cut out their fiber, they're like, you're going to get all constipated, right? I mean, you know, so basically I haven't had a bowel movement in a year.

You know, it's not true, obviously. So what happens is you just don't make anything. I mean, all that meat, it goes right into your small intestines. It absorbs from next to nothing, gets to your colon. Really? Yeah, there's nothing. There's hardly anything. So you take little tiny poops? Exactly. What if you're like one of those dudes that's backed up and you don't even realize it and you've got 20 pounds of undigested... Isn't that

always the funny thing? Yeah, that's the thing. Like John Wayne and stuff like that. But what happens is... What was the story? Well, he died with a colon full of stuff. Like a bowling ball. Well, but I mean, who knows? It wasn't meat. Look at this, Joe. If you go to the bathroom and you eat a bunch of corn you look down there sometimes there's some corn floating around when's the last time sometimes almost every time when's the last time you saw a piece of steak floating around in the toilet bone

t-bone yeah maybe if you're eating bones but i mean meat this doesn't get there i mean it's it's a total myth and so when we talk about what causes constipation, it's probably a neurologic thing. It's probably a neuromuscular thing. So the colon is not contracting correctly. It may have to do with electrolyte deficiency. It certainly varies depending on my diet. When I eat a lot of vegetables, man, it just comes flying out like... Well, it's because you're just putting more in, right? So you're not constipated. You're just shoving more stuff through the tube sort of but it seems like it comes out quicker Like when I drink the craziest thing for sure for me is kale shakes when I drink kale shakes. Whoo Well, you're gonna buy your I mean you're getting a bunch of you know, liquid fibers getting your colon a lot quicker

Cleans it all out makes you feel good though. Well, maybe you know, there's some people do it But there's no real prize for the most but when you at the end of your life You're not gonna get an award for more having more about moments. You don't there's some people who do that, but there's no real prize for the most bowel. When you get to the end of your life, you're not going to get an award for having more bowel movements. You don't? You don't. You don't. Shit. Yeah.

Are you sure? Well, I'm not 100% sure, but I'm not. Damn. So, but that's. Lie to again. But most people think that just in all seriousness, that that consuming fiber is important for for bowel movements and overall intestinal health and all that stuff. Yeah, there's no doubt the more fiber you eat, the more bowel movements you're going to have.

But what happens is if you get constipated, and there's another study about this. They looked at people with chronic constipation. They were always constipated and the only thing that helped them was taking all fiber out of their diet. Really? Yeah, there's a study. But that's crazy because that's what people like, what is that called?

Musa still, what is that stuff? Metamucil. Metamucil, yeah. It's not like, yeah, it's fiber. Yeah, but what happens is what you have is you've got a neuromuscular problem where the colon is not contracting the right way, and so you're blacked up, and then you just shove more fiber in there, and it just fills up more and more, and eventually you might be able to force it all through.

there and it just fills up more and more and eventually just come maybe you might be able to force it all through but that but that's not you know how that's you know it's a lot of people will say that i will tell you there's a lot of people who'll tell me fiber just jacks up their intestines i mean they feel awful when they take in a lot of fiber huh i i have heard that before when people try fiber supplements that they have issues now do vary? Do you eat lamb occasionally or wild game? Yeah, I mean, it depends what's available. I mean, you know, I'm pretty happy with beef, but, I mean, when I was in France earlier this year and I had just a bunch of lamb, you know, that's easier to get.

Sometimes I'll have chicken. You know, I haven't had any game meat since I've started this, but I've eaten elk or foreign deer and, you know, chilies and stews and stuff like that. So that's fine. But you don't necessarily eat a lot of chicken, huh? It's mostly red meat? Yeah, I just find it.

And there's a lot of people like me that do this. They just find chicken is not as satisfying. It's probably not as nutritious, you know. It's just kind of like. It doesn't feel as satisfying when you're eating it. Yeah. No, it's probably not. You know, I think it's just harder.

Yeah, I'm always trying to figure out, like, what is that response that you get when you slice into a steak and it's juicy and delicious and your whole body goes like, oh. I think that's a primitive thing that goes back 100,000 years. I mean, that's like the point of, you know, all the hunting we did and it's just what, what, what kind of satisfies us. That's why I always try to explain to people that the difference between like domestic beef versus like a slice of like moose tenderloin, like the difference in the richness of the flavor and the darkness of the meat and the, the nutrition content of the food is so much higher that the, is higher too. Like the, when you slice into it and you're like, Oh my God, it just, your body's like that more that there we go

I think it's a primal thing. I think it's just like this is satisfaction Well the vegan army has they've got their troops pointed in your direction, right? I'm sure yeah Yeah, I mean a bunch of tweets about you and one of the one of the tweets was Talking about your record as a doctor in New Mexico and stuff that you and one of the one of the tweets was talking about your record as a doctor in New Mexico and stuff that you and I went back and forth about sure sure so let's let's get that out and try to figure out what the issue was sure all right so so you know I was you know like I said let's go to my background a little bit so I you know I go to I go to medical school you know I go to you know degree in biology then I go to medical school. I have a degree in biology. Then I

go to medical school. Then I drop out of medical school to play professional rugby. I had this kind of crazy, crazy career. Then I go into the military and I launch nuclear bombs for five years. Nuclear bombs? Yeah. I was a nuclear bomb launch officer for about five years. Where do you still launch nuclear bombs? Well, I mean, up in Wyoming and Nebraska and Colorado. They actually detonate them? No, no're that's where you shoot them from right okay so

you didn't actually launch them but you were working i was out and i was a guy that if we went to war donald trump says we want to nuke north korea out of him and the guy goes boom so i did that so you know they do all this crazy psychological screening to make sure you're not some psychopath you know so i'm just like straight ethical guy that's just like you know you know a good you know just a good solid guy that's top secret clearance and all this stuff so i do all this stuff so then i go play rugby and then i get tired get my head kicked in you know i was playing you know i remember my last match i was playing at some russian team i'm laying on the ground and they're just teeing off on my head kicking me in the head i got bloods coming out of my ears. I'm like, I'm 30 years old. I'm like, eff it, I'm going to go back to medical

school. So I go back to medical school with military pays for it this time. So then, you know, I do my time and, you know, go through school, do my training. I graduate top, you know, right at the top of my class in medical school. Because getting orthopedics, you got to be like, it's one of these real competitive fields. So you got to be really at the top of the class to do that. So I do that stuff, do all my training, bust my ass, do really well, get all these awards and training. Then I get in the military, and then they send me to war, right? So they send me to Afghanistan.

And if it's okay, I'll tell you a little bit about this stuff. Yeah, please. So I come out of training, not long out of training, and me and this other dude, his name's Tom Large. He's an excellent, excellent surgeon, just a great guy, great people. Me and him are the only two guys at the main center in Afghanistan. So you fly out there. It takes you about three days.

You go to Bangor, Maine, and these old ladies give you lobster bisque on the way out. It's kind of cool. Then you fly out to Turkey, and then we sat there for like six hours on a runway. They wouldn't let us move. They wouldn't let us off the plane. Then they fly us into Kyrgyzstan, which is they used to be part of the soviet soviet union so we've got a u.s base and what was usually the soviet union so we stay there for a while and it's freezing cold and then we then we get on this c-130 which is a military plane you know you're packed in there

with the cargo and you fly in afghanistan they're shooting at you so they turn off the lights so they you know so hopefully they don't hit you they're shooting at you as you come in so we get in there and then i get off the plane and then they put you in this giant hall with like 300 guys on cots first night and then we go to the first day to go to work right and we're taking over from the army and i was in the air force at the time so we're taking over for the army the first thing rolls in is poor i mean i remember this man it was it was like welcome to war there was a guy canadian guy he was 23 year old kid his special forces guy you know full beard because you know special force guys would wear beards because it was so they could

blend in right both legs blown right off i mean what kind of holy shit you know so this is like this is you know stuff just got real so every day boom boom boom boom trump crazy trying we would get people blown up by bombs i mean their whole their legs are being on i mean the second third day we got there, we had a kid. He was a 17-year-old kid. This is an enemy. We were taking care of enemies too, right?

He's setting up a roadside bomb to kill our guys, right? He's a 17-year-old kid from Pakistan. He blows himself up. Blows off both his legs above the knee.

Blows off one of his arms and most of his hands. So he's basically, I mean, he's got nothing left. So we're operating on this guy. We do all these operations to basically save the kid's life. Even though he's an enemy because as a physician, that's just your job. So what happens to this guy is so we fix him up.

It takes us a month to get him stabilized. And they take him out the gate. The Afghan army just goes and shoots him in the head. Really? I mean, we're like, fuck. We're like, what the hell are we doing here? It's like we're doing all this work, and they just go out and kill these people. They did that because they knew who he was and what he had done?

Yeah, they knew he was an enemy. And so, you know, they don't, you know. They don't play games. They don't play games. And so, and this happened the other way, too. That seems like a lot of wasted money. It is. It's a waste.

It's heartbreaking. You know, you get in there, and so I'm getting these people there blown up by rockets. Their whole legs blown. Do you get attached to, I mean, even if it's the enemy? Like, you're in the military. You're working as a surgeon. You're overseas. You're taking care of, I mean, obviously, it's a 17-year-old kid.

Right. Like, it's almost like it's not even his fault. This is the thing. I mean, a lot of the, you know, it was the Taliban at the time. And these guys are like, you know, if you don't come fight for us, we're going to kill your family. Right. So a lot of these little kids are out there doing this. They don't, that's not what they want to do.

It's not like they're the big guys. So you kind of do. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like, hey, you know, it's not my job to punish these people. It's my job to take care of these people. Were you there when they shot the kid? No, we just heard about it. We're like, what happened to him?

Well, they killed him. You know, we heard about it. Several of our patients just happened to us. It was pretty, pretty frustrating. So we get in there and there's like people like, I mean, little kids, we're getting these little kids, two, three year old kids stepping on landmines, legs blown off. We had one little three year old kid. I mean, he was, I mean, he was, I mean, somebody drug him behind a truck for like a mile and they drug this kid

through the streets to the rough, asshole and they his legs fucking ripped off i mean his kids road rash actually his legs were ripped off he was burned everywhere and we're in there treating his stuff why did they do that to him i don't know just mad at their parents i don't know it's just this is not this is not a life-friendly place right this is life is inconsequential there there was a guy there was our we had a pediatrician who was talking to this guy who was a farmer right and he And he was telling us about his tractor, right? He was real proud He had track goes real expensive to have a tractor in there So what he would do because tractors real valuable he would have his kids walk in front of the tractor So they didn't hit any landmines. Oh my god. So if your kid had he's like I can make another kid

Oh, I can't afford this This is the mentality there. You know, it's just, Oh my God. I can't even hear this. I mean, it's crazy stuff. So we get in there. Imagine you have kids. Could you imagine telling your fucking kid to walk in front of landmines? I couldn't do it. I mean, it would be, it would be, it would be awful. Oh Jesus Christ. So we get this stuff and then it just gets, it just keeps getting worse. I mean, it's like every day we get these people with, you know, they're blown up and you're looking at their hip socket. You're like a guy's laying there with his leg completely gone. You can see his spine, his hip socket.

Day in and day out we're seeing this stuff. We had this one. So remember Dick Cheney was a vice president, right? Yeah. So he flies into the base right and it was supposed to be secret no one's supposed to know about it but the taliban guys found out about it right so what they do is they go to our gate set off a suicide bomb and they just kill i mean tons of people and we get all these casualties you know most of them

most of them are civilians right so we get all these civilian casualties little kids and adults and you know in their suicide vests they put all these more you like these metal bearings you know like half inch thick metal bearings and they cover them up and cover them shit so they get infected and they blow through people i mean you get people with stuff going through their brains and shattered bones everywhere and all these people that are just you know dying so it's chaos you know all these people get swarmed in there we were getting this stuff all the time this was the biggest one we had and so we were i mean we literally 40 hours straight you're working you know you're trying to save people's lives you know i'm operating with the general surgeons on people's bellies which i'm not trained to do but i'm just helping you're trying to do this stuff

so in the middle of this operation we're in there operating you know take trying to take care of these people and you're in the operating room is just a little, I mean, it's like a little metal storage building, you know, it's like a, like a, like a little, like if you're moving, you know, little pods things, you know, so they stick a couple of, uh, uh, operating beds in there and we're going as fast and we're wearing body armor and we have nine millimeters strapped to us and we're trying, operating, you know, it's hard to move around. It's real small. And we're sitting in there and they say, Hey guys, we think there's another bomber inside the hospital, you know it's hard to move around it's real small and we're sitting in there and they say hey guys we think there's another bomber inside the hospital you know and the hospital may blow off so you're you're going you know your butthole tightens up and you're like well

fuck i gotta keep operating you know because i'm trying to save this guy's life so we keep we just like well we're gonna go we're gonna go all right so we just keep you know we keep operating fortunately you know they didn't they didn't find because what they thought they did is somebody snuck in as a casualty so they sometimes do that they blow people up and then they sneak in as a casualty and blow more people up oh jesus christ so it's like you know it's kind of freaky and so i you know i was like what an insane environment how long were you there for six months yeah yeah so that's, I mean, that's pretty crazy stuff. So, you know, we get out of there, and, you know, I mean, it was just a tremendous experience.

I mean, it was just like, because there was nothing I could see after that. It was like, that ain't nothing. Everything I saw after that as a sergeant was like, this is no big deal, right? Right. So then I get out, and then I, you know, I get out of the military. I do another five years just taking care of normal guys in the military right doing you know taking care of troops and stuff like that doing fine I work for all these other hospitals and did fine I never had any problems and then I get to this other hospital and I you know I joined this group and they make me the

head of the group right what kind of group it's just like an orthopedic surgery group so and they were when I got there they were like two guys and they weren't doing hardly any business at all. It was like really slow. No one knew they were there. You know, they were in part of this big, huge group, had all these other doctors, but they didn't even know they existed. So I got there and I said, well, this is crap. One of the reasons, because no one was seeing anything, they refused all these patients. I got there and I said, hey, man, I'm going to go talk to all these other doctors and let them know we're alive, that we're here,

and that we're going to see anything you want to send us, and we'll take care of it, and if we can't, we'll make sure it gets taken care of the right way. So that happened, and then we started growing, right? So we went from two guys to 12 guys in about three years, and we were a very, very busy, real busy group. And the rival group from out of town, from across the street, didn't really like it that much because we were taking millions of dollars,

I mean tens of millions of dollars in their business, right? Because orthopedic surgery is very, very lucrative for a hospital. There's things like cardiology where they're putting in stents and surgery. All these procedure-based practices make a lot of money for hospitals, so they really like it, right? So they're really happy. They're happy with me. I'm like the hero, right? Because they're like, man man you're making us a lot of money The group across town doesn't like me very much because I'm taking all their money away So they approached us and they said you know, why don't you join our group? You know, you know, we'll take care and I said no

I don't want to do that and the two of my partners did they eventually left so I'm the only holdout guy But I'm still going I'm still building the group and so I'm like the head I'm like the head of the snake the rival, right? But here's what's kind of happened. So I'm busy. I'm doing well. My patients are happy so I'm like the head of the snake, the rival, right? But here's what kind of happens. So I'm busy. I'm doing well. My patients are happy. I'm doing really well.

I've got low, real low complication rates. You know, everybody's, you know, I'm very popular. You know, I'm on billboards. I'm on magazines. I'm on radios. You know, I'm just their poster boy, basically, right? So then as I found with my diet, I started seeing patients getting better by just changing their diet.

And when you look in the orthopedics, you know like bone disease, like arthritis, there's nothing about diet in there. I mean you study about it, if somebody comes in your office, you know, you'll tell them, you know we can give you some Tylenol, we can give you some, you know,

another anti-inflammatory drug, we can stick some cortisone in your knee. You know, if that doesn't work, maybe we'll send you to physical therapy. We might put a scope in there. And if none of that works, you know, this is an end stage, we're going to replace your knee, right? So what I was finding, you know, as I started doing this with patients, is that these patients are getting better just by changing their diet,

putting them on a ketogenic diet. At that time, I was doing keto. So I was like, hey, man, try this. So in in my nurse and I had this, and this is one of the things that kind of, I'm very jaded about the way the business side of medicine is now. This has been a pretty, pretty interesting experience for me. So I had a nurse that was just, I mean, she was a wonderful person. I mean, the nicest, sweetest gal in the world. She would work so hard for these patients. She would take care of, you know, anything you needed done, you tell her, Hey, take care. And she was just awesome. just awesome right the hospital said you're staying too late we're having

to pay you overtime and she's like well i'm taking care of patients well we don't care i don't want you to work late because it costs us too much money so it's just like it was one of these things where you're starting to see that you know it's all about the money and then we were like so all these surgeons are you know one as a surgeon you get used to using certain equipment you know it's like you know i'm using this particular thing to replace people's joints. And you do it for years and years and years, and you get pretty good at it. And so what the hospital said is, hey, we got a bargain deal with this other company. So your guys are going to use that. You know, we're like, no, we don't want to use that. We learned how to do this. We don't even

know how to use that stuff. So they force everybody to do this, you know, just to say, you know, whatever. Some new surgical equipment. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Well, basically, you know, there's a system. It's like if you drive a Ford truck your whole life, you know, just to say, you know, some new surgical equipment. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Well, basically, you know, there's a system. It's like, if you drive a Ford truck your whole life, you know, Oh, I understand what you're saying. And then they say, no, you're going to drive a Chevy now. Right. But this is surgical. This is surgical stuff. The whole reason is that we're going to save you money. All the surgeons were pitching. The ones, the guys were already using it. Like, I don't care. And this is the other group. We don't care. But our group was like, we don't use this stuff, man. It's stuff we don't even know how to use. Right.

You're not adapted to it. You're not adapted. You're going to compromise patient care a little bit for this. So, you know, this is one of those things where I was very vocal against this. I was like, man, I don't, you know, this is BS. This is what we're trained on. You know, we're going to end up, you know, there's going to be patients that are going to be problematic from this stuff. So that was an aside thing.

And then there was a system where, it's another thing. This is one thing that all physicians hate. It's a thing called an electronic medical record. It's a computer-based record. Not that it's a computer-based thing, but they're awful. I mean, they sit there, and their main function is to collect billing and to do coding. So it's to capture as much information as you can so you can bill more. That's why hospitals like them.

So they put this on you and it's like, no, it's really hard to put good information there because all it is is generate a bunch of data that's totally illegible. You look at it, it's like you get 20 pages of BS and two paragraphs of stuff you need. So where did it all go bad? So basically what happened is when I started telling people, I don't want to, you know, I started talking to people out of surgery, right? I started saying, I don't think you need surgery. And then I started talking to the administrators and saying,

hey, guys, I really want to spend a day a week just doing lifestyle counseling. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to, you know, constantly do this because I think this can work really well. Constantly, you're making the cutting motion, like constantly do surgery. Right. And so they basically said, no, there's no appetite for that. Your skill is a certain. We want you there. And, you know, in other words, keep making us a lot of money. Right. Right. So I'm like, you know, you know, and my nurse will tell you, I was printing out, I made a list of all this reading. You remember like Gary, I know you had Gary Toms. I'd had his book and I had Anita Teichholz's book on,

and I had this guy named Butter Bob Riggs, you know, all these ketogenic things, references. And I was handing them out 20, 25 of those every single day, and I was spending time with the patients, you know, because normally you'd only get, like, eight minutes to see a patient, you know, figure out the problem, figure out a plan, go, go, go. And I was like, now I'm spending 20 minutes talking to these guys about diet. And so, you know, then I'm seeing less patients and the hospital keeps saying,

you know, you know, we don't, we don't really like that. So because I was ahead of the group and I was well liked by everybody, I had really good patient records. I mean, really good patient satisfaction, you know, really low complication rates. I mean, they were, they were like, well, we don't like that. So then they go, there's something called peer review, right? So they can just pull your records and say, we don't like the way you did this. And, you know, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to criticize your work. And so they did that and they went through there. And this is one of the things they said, well, every surgeon will have X amount of complications, right? It's like, you know, if you do, you know, 100 surgeries, about 5% of the time there's going to be some complications.

Somebody's going to get an infection. Somebody's going to bleed too much. Somebody's going to get a blood clot. You know, if it's an orthopedic surgeon, maybe one of the screws you put in breaks or something like that. Those things are all complications. That happens to everybody, no matter what. So what they said is there's a low threshold, right?

There's like a, you know, we're going to say every year we're going to give you two complications that were your fault, right? Because most of the time you have a complication. It's like, man, there's nothing I could have done differently. Equipment failure. Yeah, or they'll say you made the wrong decision. That led to a complication. So they'll say you can get two a year, right?

And it doesn't matter if you do 100 surgeries a year or you do 500 surgeries a year. The number is still two, right? I'm like, you know, because I was there for like five years, and like every year it was like one, one, one, one, just nothing, minimal, right? One year they go back and say, oh, you had three this year. I'm like, yeah, but I did five times as many surgeries as anybody else. And they said, well, it doesn't matter. We're going to still put you through peer review.

So what they do is they hire. Remember this other group that I was pissing off that I was taking $10 million a year from? They hire their guy, that guy, to look through my stuff. Why would they do that? Because that's what they wanted to do. But why would they do that if that person on that other side is the competition? Because he was in the position to do it, right? Okay.

And that's not supposed to happen. It would be like if you were a bellator guy and said i want the bellator guy to review the ufc right i think joe rogan sucks as an announcer i'm gonna have a bellator guy go after him right so it's total conflict of interest right so i you know i mean i'm like this naive ethical guy that's like well you know i i know i had good care and patients were doing fine and then um you know i, I was just like, okay, well, okay, that's fine. And so they get it back, and they looked at a dozen cases they've selected, you know, so they could pick whatever they want. And they said, well, he said, I think six of these cases were below average.

You know, I don't like the way you documented stuff, and I disagree with what you did. So I'm like, fine. And they said, well, that's okay, you know, you're fine. I said, well, do I need to stop operating or something like that? They said, no, no, no, no, you're fine. What we're going to do is we're going to get an independent review, right? And this is supposed to be someone with no conflicts of interest, right? So the way this is supposed to happen is that they were supposed to let me see what the cases are and put my comments in there, right?

And they were supposed to be totally in there. So what they did instead is they wouldn't let me know any of the cases. They told me you can't see anything, right? And the guy that had the conflicts of interest, they gave him all of his findings and sent them to this guy, right? And this guy, and I, you know, I don't know the situation for this guy, but, you know, I found this out about six months later, he is either senile or totally drunk. I mean, it was just like, you know, so he gets this guy, but I found this out about six months later. He is either senile or totally drunk. I mean, it was just like, you know, so he gets this report, right, and it's just bad. It's like, looks really bad. And I'll talk about some of the details in a second, but it just looks really bad.

And they pull me in the office and say, we got this really bad independent report, right? And I'm like, well, what case? We can't tell you, but it's really bad, and we're going to suspend your privileges. We're not going to let you work here anymore. So essentially what you're trying to say is they targeted you, and they targeted you because you were changing what you were doing, and you were trying to counsel people with lifestyle, and they decided to pick on you

and try to find things that were wrong in some of the past surgeries that you'd done. Well, I think there's a combination. I think there was a combination of problems. Some people weren't doing it intentionally, but there was definitely possibly some of that going on. But anyway, so they get this report, and the guy, there's two people. They bring him in the office and say, you know, we're going to shut down.

You can't go to your clinic. You can't talk to anybody you work with. We're going to deny you access to all clinic charts. We're going to shut off your clinic. You can't talk to anybody you work with We're gonna deny you access to all clinic charts. We're gonna shut off your email. You can't look at anything Right, like I'm like I just committed murder like I'm some pariah and then they say then the guy and I'm like, you know I'm like, I mean, it's like something my kid just died. I mean, this is something I spent my whole life training for You know, I'm doing this stuff and it's like, you know, I mean it's like you're like days and confusion No, I mean, I'm doing this stuff, and it's like, you know, I mean, it's like you're like dazed and confused and numb. I mean, I'm like numb. I'm like, I don't know.

I'm like, I'm going to drive my freaking car off a cliff. You know, you're like suicidal almost, you know. So the guy comes to me and he goes, hey, man, we got this really bad stuff on you. It's going to go really bad. We're going to take it to a committee in a couple days. And I think the best thing you can do is just say you're sorry, write a letter. I'll even help you write this letter, you know know, basically say confess that you did the wrong thing. So I'm like, I didn't have a lawyer at the time,

I didn't know what was going on, so I said, okay, I'll do this. And so I write this letter saying, yeah, you know, I probably could have done stuff different. I don't know what the cases were, but probably. And so, you know. So you're saying this without even have reviewed the cases that they're condemning you on?

Absolutely. How the fuck did you not get a lawyer? I did afterwards. Oh, Jesus. Because I'd been a straight-laced ethical guy my whole life. So when you did afterwards, did the lawyer go back and look at that confession or whatever you would call it and say, well, this is preposterous because you're not even talking about a specific case? Well, she said it was probably something you shouldn't have done and I wouldn't have counseled you. But this guy was on the committee that condemned me, right?

Right. So this is a guy that's on there. So they set you up. So. In some ways. So this is what. You don't want to say that because you still want him to be a doctor. Well, so this is, so basically they take this committee, right?

And they hand this report that says all this bad stuff and they hand my confession, right? And this is all, this is basically what they have to go on. No one knows anything about the cases. And this is all these people that are doctors, but they're not surgeons, right? And this is basically what they have to go on. No one knows anything about the cases. And this is all these people that are doctors, but they're not surgeons, right? All they are is, it would be like if you were reviewing MMA guys, like say you want to kick somebody out of the UFC because you said his performance isn't up to snuff, and you went to a bunch of tennis players and golfers and said, hey, man, we don't think he has his takedown percentage sucks. So these people have no frigging clue, right? They have no clue about what I do., we don't think he has his takedown percentage sucks. Right. So these people have no frigging clue, right? Right.

They have no clue about what I do. And they don't have specific cases to go on. And they have no specific cases. And I'm not allowed to talk about this. Right. Because I don't know the specific cases. So then I get a railroad job. So then I kind of come out of this haze.

And I look and I said, we'll give you a fair hearing. This is what they call it, a fair. Federal law requires us to give you a fair hearing this is what they call it a fair federal law requires us to give you a fair hearing right so i get a lawyer and this is expensive as you know i'm not i don't have an income anymore so i'm spending all this money on lawyers fees and it's taking the hospital that drags out they won't release records for like six months so six months goes by i'm in here i got four small kids i'm like am i going to feed my kid my kids are in school i want autistic son it needs and he's therapy. And you know, this is, this is tough, you know, so I'm going through this stuff. So six months go later and then I finally get the cases, right?

And I started looking through the cases and what the guy wrote and not only are there errors, there are egregious errors and there's multiple of them and they're just horrible. I mean, they're just so wrong. I mean, that's why I said the guy was senile or drunk. And I'll give you a couple of examples and any orthopedic surgeons listening to us will know immediately what I'm talking about, but I'll try to make it make sense for other people. So of these 12 cases, two of them were something called a reverse shoulder replacement. So what happens is, you know, if your shoulder wears out, you can replace your shoulder, right? You did shoulder replacements on people? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you put in there? Like some sort of an artificial joint?

Yeah, so this is what I'm talking about. So normally it's a ball and socket joint, right? So there's something called a reverse shoulder replacement, which you basically switch it around. You put the ball where the socket was and the socket where the ball was, which sounds totally crazy, right? Right. This was developed in France in the 80s, and then the FDA approved this in 2004. So 2004 was approved in the U.S. And originally it was approved for one reason, right? If your shoulder is totally arthritic, you know, real bad arthritic,

and you don't have a rotator cuff anymore, it's completely gone, right? So that's what it was first approved for. But over the years, over the next 5, 10 years, people started using it for all these other things and getting really, really good results with it. So if you come in there with a blasted apart shoulder that's crashed and broke and you're an older person, people do that all the time. And so that's what I did.

I basically put a reverse shoulder in a person that broke their arm and did this twice. And not only did the patient do well, I mean, the patient was happy as can be. They're great. They're like, no one knew what the outcomes of these patients were. This patient is happy as can be. But the guy writes because he's old, I think, or drunk or doesn't know the new record he hasn't read literature and he writes he put it in backwards no he puts it's not indicated for this student the only reason to do it is for an arthritic guy with a missing rotator

cuff but he doesn't know that over the last 10 years all kinds of different reasons to use it so he basically tells this committee he's doing the wrong operation when anybody today knows that's's not the case, right? So there's another case. No, it's okay. We don't have to keep just going over case after case. It's going to get a little dragged down. I know, I know.

But where does it stand right now? So basically what happens is they drag this out for a year and a half, right? And at the end, I got to tell you this part. So I go through, this is important, I go through and compile all these cases, right, and get all the data to refute this and pull all these references and textbooks and all this stuff. And I'm like, this is a walk in the park, right? I'm going to, you know, anybody that sees this in their right mind is going to see that they screwed up and there's all these errors and it's wrong.

So in discovery process, you send all this information in, and then they, then they realize that, wait a minute, there's a lot of errors in here. So now they have to pick a hearing officer, right? Who's like the judge, right? His word goes, they pick another, they get another search. They give me a list of surgeons to choose from. They say, you can have any of these guys you want. And I looked through the list and there's one guy, you remember that group that I was competing with? He's in that group. And I'm like, I don't want him because he's on the other group. And they said, no, he just retired. And we went and we're going to make you use him. Right. So they pick the judge. And then on top

of that, they pay him. So they're paying this guy. Right. So they review all this stuff. And I've got this stuff and I'm going through case after case where I'm like, the patient didn't get the patient was doing great. didn't get hurt there's nothing wrong with them and the lawyers from the other side are like well you can't do this no harm no foul stuff like what are you talking about you know no one got everybody's doing great but he's like well I think you know you could have done something different or something like that and they like if you look at a malpractice case the first thing you have to do is prove harm right you know

if no one gets hurt there's nothing there and it's not that anyone knowing I hurt no one did but it's just like so the so the guy at the end of it goes through he says yeah there were a lot of errors right and they're paying this guy and they chose him but i think you gave patients too much choice in their care which is i'm like what are you talking about you know so if i if i so the criticism was that was that's all they had after the errors? No, he said it was really bad errors, and he said you gave patients too much choice, and you didn't document stuff as well as you should have, right? And I still think that they should have just suspended you.

So this is a decision they make based on that. And I will guarantee if anybody was on that committee that knew me, because those people that knew me on the committee knew I was a good guy. They never had problems with me, so that's why they were shocked when this came out. But if they knew that information, I'm 100% convinced that would be a different story. So where does it stand? So then, you know, I get done with that, and then the state gets involved because the state has to respond to any complaints.

So the state gets this complaint. The state of New Mexico. And it's kind of weird because my next-door neighbor is on the state board. I'm just, like, totally avoiding the guy because I don't want to influence anything, right? I'd be giving him flowers. No, but I just didn't want to do that. And I even told him, I said, hey, my next-door neighbor is on your board, right? So I want to be totally ethical about this.

This is a story. So I, you know, they said. Actually, dudes don't like flowers. Yeah, well, maybe give them an elk steak or something like that. So then, you know, the board gets this and they say, hey, man, this is a bad recommendation. And we're going to give you two options. You can suspend your license. You know, you can voluntarily suspend your, surrender your license, or you can go to trial. You know, we can do another hearing,

which is probably going to take a year. It's going to cost you tons of money, you know, which I don't, I'm just tired of this. I'm tired of lawyers spending all this money and I'm not, I'm still trying to figure out how am I going to feed my kids. So then, you know, the state says, or what you can do is we'll send you to a place that'll evaluate you independently and then if everything goes well we'll give you a license back so that's i said okay that's what i'm gonna do because i'm tired of this i don't want to spend a hundred thousand dollars and wait a year when i can go to this place and spend twelve thousand dollars and get evaluated and go from there so i was that's where i was this week in fact i was in denver meeting with these other surgeons they

were just like going through all these case, case, case. What would you do? What would you do? What would you do? And I am clearly, you know, even though I haven't done this stuff in two years, I'm clearly convinced that they're going to say, hey, man, you're fine. And they're going to say, here, go operate with somebody for two, three months. Are they allowed to look at those cases where you were judged upon poorly?

They're not. They're not. They're not because they wanted to be totally independent. Fucking insane. So how do you make a living now? I'm living off my savings. You know, I saved up some money, so I'm living off that, and that's mostly it. You know, so I'm just kind of slowly watching my savings dwindle down. Jesus Christ, that's got to be stressful.

It's kind of stressful. I mean, you know, I've got a girlfriend who makes a good living, but I don't want to be, you know, but I've got kids. So we've got kids. I've got a kid with her and I've got three kids and my ex-wife and they're all young kids. And so I'm back in, so I said, I'm traveling back and forth, back and forth, you know, trying to support these kids. You know, I had to pull my kids out of school. I had to put them in a different school because the income wasn't there anymore. And, you know, it's, so it's, it's kind of a pain. It's kind of, it kind of sucks. So where's the stand as far as like getting your license reinstated? Yeah probably so i just in denver they said it'll take about eight weeks so they'll give me a they'll give me a plan they'll say okay

we think that you know i am almost 100 convinced they're going to say you know we need you to go work with some dude for a couple months because you're out of practice and i think i'll probably end up doing that then the board the state board will review what they say and as long as they say hey man you're you know what you're doing, they'll give it back to me. So it's saying, yeah. So anyway, it's it's you know, it's again, I don't blame the state board. I don't blame the people who are on the committee because they were clueless. I didn't know what I blame some incompetence by the administrators, you know, and just whoever reviewed me.

You know, if it were a caveman times, Joe, I'd go with a big club and like, what the right. No, I understand. Man, that's very disheartening. But I have a friend who's going through a very similar type situation who is also a surgeon. Yeah, I think people need to understand that the medical business is in fact a business. And we think of hospitals as being these completely, you know, egalitarian places that just, they exist to heal people and to do the best job. They sort of do,

but they also, they need to make a lot of money. Well, they got to pay the light bills. I mean, I understand that, but then there's a point where, you know, it's kind of like you've got to make a decision between patient care and, you know care and the CEO making a little extra money. No, they do that with animals, too. I mean, you've got to be really careful. I had a friend who had a recent situation happen with his dog where they were telling him his dog needed to get some crazy surgery, and he didn't have the money for it.

And he's like, are you sure? Are you sure they need it? And he said, I had to ask them over and over and over again. And he said, and finally the veterinarian said, well, we could try a steroid on the dog and see if that works. Fucking fixed it 100%. And the steroid cost like $150 versus some $30,000 surgery. But they kept pushing the surgery, which would have fused the dog's discs. They were like, this needs to happen.

You need to do this. And he's like, there's no other other options we've exhausted all possible options and then finally after asking over and over and over again she suggested meekly this which instantly fixed it yeah it's kind of you said within like two months the dog was a hundred percent you know it's kind of because I know he hit Chris Kresser on here a while and I listened a little bit of stuff and then in his premise at the beginning which I have her read his book yet, but I think it's great. I mean, here's the problem with Western medicine.

You know, we are facing this. I mean, it's like a war against chronic disease. It's like we're being invaded by, you know, remember Independence Day? Yes. You know, and doctors, we got BB guns. I mean, the stuff we are shooting at them doesn't work for chronic disease. Now, acute stuff is different. You know, there's some stuff that we have this wonderful technology, but the run of the mill diabetes and obesity.

Doctors are great for fixing broken joints, broken bones. Yeah, I mean, that's fine. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. But even like arthritis that I saw every day, you know, if we were trained properly in nutrition and exercise, you know, that's what I've done my whole life. You know, I know what I'm doing exercise wise, but you know, if we were allowed to do that and instead of training all these, you know, radiology technicians and blood draw technicians and nursing assistants, if you had an army of preventive people, preventive medicine people, you know, and we train all these people to go into people's homes, you know, I think Cress was talking about that and just get the crap out of their diet and show them how to be healthier.

You know, I mean, you would save. You know, it's funny watching the politicians debate about health care, how to fund it. You know, it's like you guys are arguing about the Titanic as it's coming up in an iceberg. And you're arguing about the color of the deck chairs. I mean, we are going over a cliff. And we're not fixing it by keeping putting, you know, band-aids. You're not going to, the technology is not going to fix diabetes. Nutrition is, you know, this is. Yeah. You're essentially dealing with the problem when it's

already gotten to a point where you're in the hospital. Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, like I said, there's a guy, Peter Atiyah, I don't know if you know who he is, but he, he talks about when he was a certain, he felt like he was at the bottom of a building and somebody's throwing eggs off and his job is to catch the eggs. Oh God. Right. And he's like, well, why don't we just have the guy stop fucking throwing down eggs? But that's what medicine is. You're just catching the eggs. And so instead of that, we should be investing, you know, we talk about prevention, but it's bullshit. We don't do anything for prevention. It's so little. And then the problem, the problem is a lot of it of it doesn't work the way we've designed it.

Yeah, there's a lot of money in fixing you. And there's not a whole lot of money in telling you to eat well. No, there's not at all. But it is a changing climate, though, because of people like Chris Kresser and Rob Wolf and Dr. Rhonda Patrick and a lot of others. They're giving out really good nutrition advice, and people are changing the way they eat and think about food, and it's having a massive effect on the inflammation that they carry in their body. I know so many people that used to have joint pain.

A great example is the Primal Kitchen. Mark Sisson. Mark Sisson's book, which is fantastic. The Primal Kitchen, Mark Sisson's book, which is fantastic. And his story, Mark's story about having his own inflammatory issues with his hands. He had some pretty severe arthritis that he thought was just going to be with him forever. He changes his diet, reduces all the refined carbohydrates, goes on this protein, high-fat diet, and it all goes away. I mean, there's so many examples of that and i just watched this documentary called what's with wheat and it's all about uh glyphosate in the wheat

roundup and um how when they say it's safe for people to consume they say well it only affects plants and bacteria they're like what about your microbiome your microbiome is filled with bacteria you're killing that stuff. Like we don't think of that as being an issue. You know, we don't think of sedentary lifestyle as being an issue when it comes to the, the, the ultimate cause for you to wind up in the hospital needing surgery, but it absolutely is. No, it is. I can tell you one of the things I used to see, cause you know, when you're, when you're a surgeon, you like somebody comes in with bad arthritis and you replace their knee and they feel better for a while.

And you're like, oh, that's great, man. I really helped this person. Then they come in next year, and their other knee is all jacked up, and they need to replace that. Well, you should have just done something so they didn't need arthritis, didn't need surgery any other time. Yeah, I've had conversations with people that their dad needs an artificial knee, and I'm like, are you sure? Yeah. Are you sure? Like, yeah, he's limp and bad.

I mean, he really can't take it anymore. Like, have you exhausted all possible options? Like, what have you done about the diet? Oh, he won't. He's not into that. Oh, he's not into that. Okay. Well, here's the problem, because no one's demonstrated the diet works,

but I will tell you, and this is a, you know. Well, no one's demonstrated it in terms of, like, scientific. Right, but I will tell you that, you know, just because I told you now, because I'm a freak because I'm just eating meat and I'm doing this athletic stuff. And everybody says you're an outlier, you're a genetic freak, whatever. Right. You're an N equals one. So we made this website called N equals many.

Me and this other Air Force guy that he's also a carnivore. We got this thing. We said, well, what if people started gathering this information together and we could start documenting that? And that's what we did so we I put out a survey on Twitter I said hey how many you guys would be willing to go 90 days and just eat eat a bunch of steaks and I had like 400 I didn't have that many followers by like 400 people yeah we'll do it that's amazing so we put the we you know we developed this website and it's called n equals many dot com for

people want to see so we developed website, and we start getting these first group. And equal sign or EQ? No, EQ is spelled. I don't think you can put an equals on a website. No? N-E-Q-U-A-L-S many.com. Right. So we do this, and we get all these people that sign up.

And we ended up having about close to 100 people just do 90 days of just eating meat. And again, there's a lot of scientific root things you can criticize about this you know it's just guys eat meat anecdotal study anecdotal stuff but you know when we got done and i've got the results we just you know we're still analyzing the data because we're all doing this for free and we're not you know we're trying to get people to help us analyze the data and you know but of these 100 people you know there's about 85 actually of these people we asked them what happened to your general health what happened to your sexual

health what happened to your exercise capacity what happened to your gi health your skin right everything we asked all these questions and all there was maybe one one percent where they said it got worse 99 percent got better much better or say to say you know so it was just like unanimously everybody got you know pretty much either the same or the same. Is it possible that there's some bias in that group because they're following you? Absolutely. I mean, I'm well aware of that. But it's interesting.

But then we're getting some more lab data because I know you like about lab data. So I get people, and I don't have access to all the data, and I didn't want to have access to the data. I don't want to bias myself against it. So I'm getting fed the data, and I'm seeing that people's blood pressure is normalizing. People's hemoglobin A1C, which is measured glucose, is normalizing. People's inflammation markers are normalizing. You know, all these markers of disease are going in the right direction. You know, we're just seeing good stuff, you know, because a lot of the people will say meat causes diabetes,

meat causes hypertension. See, at that only time I've ever seen meat causes diabetes is in that wacky What the Health documentary, which has been widely disproven. You know, we had on it, we wrote a whole piece about that, debunking that and, like, how much stuff in that is, like, fake science. Like, what they're saying about meat causing diabetes, there's no evidence of that.

Yeah, I mean, they use some associational stuff, and that's all they ever do. I mean, it's like some associational stuff. Yeah, but they're putting it out as if it's 100% factual and, like, sounding the alarms. Like, this is what's causing diabetes. It's meat. Meanwhile, they're completely ignoring the consumption of all these refined carbohydrates these people are eating with the meat. Yeah, I mean, 100%.

I mean, that's totally true. I mean, the, you know, and so one of the things that's so nice about studying these people, they're just eating meat. I mean you isolate. That's the only variable you got to isolate. So we know what happens when you just eat meat. Now are they allowed to take supplements during the time? Yeah, we had some.

What we said was- They have to document it? Yeah, we had them document stuff and some of them did some, you know, it was kind of like one of those things where we, because we'd never done this before and like we made them document all kinds of stuff and a lot of people some of the people initially dropped out because we made them document too much stuff like it's too much of a hassle like you know all this stuff so we had certain percent that dropped out because they just didn't want to document stuff we had a certain percentage that dropped out

because they didn't feel they felt like they had a low energy right and so a lot of people when they do this they just can't eat very much i, they get full and they're not eating enough. And so that's one of the biggest things I tell people when they switch over to this. Eat meat like it's your job. That's what I tell them. You got to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat initially. But shouldn't they just eat until they're not hungry anymore? Well, the problem is you the problem is a lot of people lose weight on this. You know, a lot of people get lean on this stuff is that, you know, your hunger goes down pretty low because you're, you know, you're eating a lot of fat and you eat a lot of protein, you know, especially if you're eating,

if you're eating ribeye steaks, you know, that's probably about 70% fat, 30% protein, something like that. So, I mean, it's, it's really, really satisfying. And so, you know, they, they, they tend to, they tend to under, cause no one's used to like, if I sold you Joe, go eat four pounds of meat a day, you're going to be like, well, I mean, I know you like eating meat, but I mean, even that's probably a big, it's a lot, you know? And so to get used to that, it takes a while, you're going to be like, well, I mean, I know you like eating meat, but I mean, even that's probably a big task. It's a lot. It's a lot, you know, and so to get used to that, it takes a while.

You know, it depends on your activity level, because I work out pretty damn hard, and I do it pretty often. So, I mean, I... Yeah, you do some crazy shit, man. I saw you box jumps. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, this is, like I said, this is, you know, back to that glycolytic stuff I do.

I mean, I'm, you know, you know, my capacity to exercise is great. One of the things is because I, you know. You felt no difference? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you felt no difference between going from the ketogenic diet to eating meat, or did it feel like you had more energy? I had more energy. I had better libido. You know, you wake up every day, you know, you're ready to go.

You know, it's like, you know, I've had a couple people that, and I haven't tested this, but I've had a couple people that have done this, and again, we need to get more data. I've had a couple people that have done it and said their testosterone level went up. You know, they went on all meat, their testosterone went up about 20%. And so I'm like, well, that's interesting. You know, I don't put a lot of faith in just a couple anecdotes. But that happens to a lot of people that go on the ketogenic diet because the cholesterol is actually the precursor for testosterone.

Sure, absolutely. It's kind of interesting. If you look at red meat consumption in the U.S. since about 1977, so red meat has gone down about 30% to 40%. Really? Yeah. We used to eat way more in the 70s. We ate about 30% to 40% more red meat than we do now. No kidding.

Yep. And also our testosterone levels have dropped significantly. Population testosterone levels have dropped significantly. Population testosterone levels have dropped about that same amount. I thought people ate a lot of red meat. I would have never imagined we eat less now. We ate way less than we used to. Wow. Yeah. So there's another interesting fact, Hong Kong, right? Hong Kong right now, if you look up, if you Google Hong Kong life expectancy, they live the longest out of anybody in the world, right? They eat about 40% more red meat than we do in the U.S.

And they have the longest-lived people in the world, which is interesting. Yeah, I'd read something that said that 100% of all people that live over 100, no, it was some high number, of all people that live over 100 consume red meat. Yeah, I don't doubt it. You know, it's interesting because, you know, I know the vegans really like to point out Okinawa. It's a blue zone and they eat a lot of vegetables. They looked at the people that lived over 100 in Okinawa.

None of them were vegetarians. All of them ate meat. Yeah. Yeah, so it's... There's not a lot of good solid evidence that being a vegan is a solution to a long life. Well, I mean, you know, obviously there's different propaganda out there. And I think, you know, here's what I'd say. You know, if you want to do veganism and it makes you healthy, fine. Most people can't do it.

I mean, we know that about. Right. But the thing is, we're not just talking about if you want to do it. We're talking about people that are proselytizing. Like they have this idea and they push this idea down everybody's throats. But if we're just looking at the actual data, the health data what's good for you what's bad for you it's it there's no like overwhelming evidence that the vegan way is the way to go no there's not i mean there there are studies they like to push but there's also studies that show that you know the opposite

effect you know if you look at the epic oxford study which had about 60 000 people in it you know they showed that vegetarians vegans live no longer than meat eaters. There's no difference, right? Even though the meat eaters are probably the guys that don't care about their health. True. So they may, not only is it not protective, but it may be a negative. You can look at a study out of Australia that looked at 240,000 people called the 45 and up study. Same thing. Vegans, vegetarians, no, no lever, no longer life, no better health. And so it's kind of like, you know, who do you believe? And these guys have their studies that they're going to quote. And I can cherry pick all day, and other people can cherry pick all day.

It's just BS. So my best advice is, and this is, I think, the best advice you can give anybody. You know, until we start seeing dudes walking around that are in shape and jacked at 120 years old, you're not going to know what the right thing to do is. And so the best advice you can have is to get strong, get healthy, you know, move well, do everything you can to make your health good. And that's the best you can do. Because if you're healthy today, odds are you're going to be healthier tomorrow. So, you know, the fact that, you know, Joe, you're still got a lot of muscle on you at 50

means you're more likely to have someone you're 60. I mean, there's just no doubt. That's the biggest correlator. One of the best predictors of long life is your exercise capacity. And I think we should bring this up while we're talking about vegan diets versus other diets. If you have a standard American diet of even eating a bunch of shitty food and fried chicken and bullshit and cheeseburgers and sodas, and you go vegan, you will be healthier. Sure, of course you will., you will be healthier. Sure.

Because you're going to remove all that shitty processed food out of your diet, all the nitrites, all the stuff that's unnecessary, all the preservatives. If you do that, you will be healthier, but it doesn't necessarily mean the vegan diet is the way to go. I mean, it just, it means that the American diet that everybody like rightly criticizes is the wrong way to go. Vegan diet is certainly better than that. Yeah.

I mean, you can do about any diets better than that. I mean, it's like in a lot of things, you know, this is another point I bring out, you know, because one of the differences between what I sort of think is healthy, and I'll come out and say, I don't know for sure. I'm still learning this stuff, but I'm willing to investigate it. I'm willing to put my body to the test and have other people, you know, give me data. But what I, what we, well, there's a big group out there that says you shouldn't eat a lot of protein. You should really restrict your protein. There's some data that talks about something called mTOR that, you know, maybe,

you know, it causes cancer. Maybe it inhibits longevity in these lesser animals like mice and, you know, little tadpole nematode things and, you know, bacteria. And then there's another group of scientists out there, a guy named Stuart Phillips out of Canada that's looking at that. And it shows that, you know, the more protein you have, especially when you get older, the longer you're going to preserve muscle, the better your quality of life is and likely the longer you're going to live, you know. And so what, you know, what happens if you autopsy an old person you know you get somebody and you go to an old folks home their brain has shrunk i mean their muscles have shrunken

away the protein in their bones have shrunken away their kidneys have shrunk their heart is shrunk their skin has shrunk everything's shrunk because lost all this protein and what happens is as you get older and older you lose some of the capacity to digest meat and so what happens is where does your body get that protein from? It just starts taking it from yourself. You start auto cannibalizing yourself to sustain function, you know, to sustain cellular function. So if you're not getting that replaced, you know, through diet and meat is an outstanding source of that, you know, you're going to be frailer and frailer. You know, we have an obesity epidemic, but we also

have a frailty epidemic. There are people that are just, I mean, by the time they're 40, you know, you're going to be frailer and frailer. You know, we have an obesity epidemic, but we also have a frailty epidemic. There are people that are just, I mean, by the time they're 40, I mean, they may be obese, but they're weak as can be. Yeah. There's so many people that just sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest killers of your body for sure. And there's so many people that you look at. I'm like, I was talking to a guy the other day and it looked like you could just grab his arm and pull it off his body. Like his shoulders were sunken. There was like no muscle tone at all. He had no exercise. There was none in his life ever.

Like maybe they made him do gym in high school and that was it. And he's just younger than me and he was falling apart. I can, you know, you and I at 50 are like the bar for a healthy 50 or normal 50 year old is, you know, way down low. And, you know, we're like total outliers. You know, just the fact that we exercise and have a little muscle. I mean, that that puts you in the 99 percentile. And it's interesting if you just continue it.

The thing about it is like if I take a week off, man, boy, do I feel it more at 50 than I did at 30. It's crazy. That's true. But I could still get back in shape. And once you get back in shape, you just got to keep it going. And if you just keep it going, it will work for you. What we compare, it's really interesting, because what we compare in terms of normal body function,

like the normal capacity that your body has, we're really generally looking at people that are just the average person. Well, the average person doesn't really exercise very hard. So we don't have a lot of data on people that are in their fifties that still go, you know what? I'm not letting this go. I'm going to keep this fucking body strong. I'm going to make sure I lift heavy weights. I'm going to do hard cardio. I'm going to do sprinting and kickboxing and a bunch of shit that requires explosive energy. And if you do that, your body can stay vibrant, But you have to be diligent. It's very important for people to understand this.

If you're just a casual person who just kind of like half-asses, oh, maybe I'll take a spin class, good luck, bitch. Your body's going to die. It's going to rot off and fall apart. But if you just decide to be militant about this, you can keep a functional body far longer. And it's not just about ego. It's also just about the use of your meat vehicle. Like my body could do a lot of shit that most

people's bodies can't. Like if I want to pick something up, I don't have to call somebody. I just pick it up, you know, and that just that alone, you know, to know that you can carry yourself, to know that you can do 50 chin-ups, to know that you can move your body around in a way that most people find to be almost impossible. It's like, I want my body to work better. It's like having a race car, and you can choose what horsepower engine it is based on how much work you put on it. I mean, that's essentially what your body is. You can choose how much tread you have in your tires. You can choose how good the suspension is how supple it is and how well it can maneuver based on how much plyogenic exercises you do or how many different explosive maneuvers you know clean and presses and things along those lines you can get that body to work right yeah I

think that you know if you look at animals in the wild right you know if you're looking at a pack of animals getting hunted which one's gonna get killed which one are they gonna pick out the flare to the frail the slow weak one right the old one so if you're a human and we don't get hunted, which one's going to get killed? Which one are they going to pick out? The frail. The slow, weak one, right? The old one. So if you're a human, and we don't get hunted by lions, but if you're a human, if you say, you know, when was my peak athleticism? You know, maybe 25, maybe 30, you know, somewhere in there, or 33, 35, somewhere in there, that's like your top performance for most people.

Yeah. The closer you can maintain to that ability, as long as you possibly can, and do whatever it takes to get there The farther you are away from death. I mean, that's just that's just simple nature, you know, the slow the weak they get eaten They die they get disease they become disabled. I don't want to be if you know, I'm 50 now I don't want to be a 60 year old guy that's walking around limping around, you know needing assistance somebody that you know Lift my groceries for me and that's what we have or even a woman I mean women should be out there strength training, getting stronger, swinging heavy kettlebells, jumping.

That's the other thing that you brought up explosiveness, because I think we're finally starting, you know, we finally went away from jogging, right? You know, we went from the 1960s to the, you know, early 2000s, everybody's jogging. That's what you do for health. Then people started discovering strength training. So now we get people that are in there lifting a little bit. I think what you also have to do, and this is something because I've got this little training system that I'm helping people with. But I think you have to do the explosive work too. So I do. I get in there with medicine balls.

And I think a lot of people under you, I take medicine balls and I try to break the fucking things. I mean, I throw them as hard as I can. You know, I'm jumping. Like I said, I'm jumping with a vest on. You know, the stuff you have to build up to and it has to be done in a safe manner. You know, and I'm spring. I'm on an Airdyne bike. Have you been on an Airdyne, Joe? Yeah. Yeah. I love those. I can just, those are the, I was going to say, you got to get one for here.

Yeah. We're getting one. Yeah. Good. Here's what I'll tell you. Have you bought one yet? Rogue ones. No. No. Here's what I would tell you to do. There's a company called Octane Fitness. It makes an Airdyne X. It's probably better than that aerosol bike. Really? Yeah. Pull that up. Octane. What's it called? Octane Fitness? Octane. It's called. Airdyne X. It's probably better than that aerosol bike. Really? Yeah. Pull that up. What's it called? Octane Fitness?

Airdyne X? What's better about it? It's just solid. I mean, it's solid as can be. I mean, and it's just you just, you know, in my view, you know, because I've done everything training. I mean, I've broken world records on the concept, too, so I know how to do the intense stuff. That Airdyne, those type things are the best thing you can do for those short sprints.

I mean, they're so... There is right there? Yeah, they're so metabolically demanding. I mean, I don't know if they charge. I mean, I think they're... The only thing that I've always had reservations about is like the sitting down part. As far as what?

Well, I feel that like you would get more exercise if you're supporting your body weight. Well, I mean, you know, I don't... You know, there's a skier. You can do stuff like that. Right. But I mean, if you get supporting your body weight. Well, I mean, you know, there's a skier. You can do stuff like that. Right. But, I mean, if you get on that thing and you go as hard as you fucking can for 30 seconds

or a minute, a minute's even worse. Every time I do it for a minute, I feel like I'm literally going to drown. I'm going to die. You know, it's just like, because, you know, here's what I do. I call these things chainsaw intervals. So I tell people,

pretend there's some fucking maniac with a chainsaw. It's going to cut you off. You know,. You got to go as hard as you can. You know, there's a, I've got a, I've got, I don't have that at home. I've got the regular air down version. I keep breaking the damn thing. Cause I go too hard. You know, it's just not strong enough. But when I go to the commercial gym, there's a guy that they just made that and they showed, they told, they had me doing it ahead. There's another MMA guy that, man, I can't remember any members name, but he was like a pride champion guy, like pride six or seven that won it. And he's at the gym I'm at sometimes in Southern California.

But, but I mean, that thing is, you know, just try, do you have those guys? I'm sure those guys would come up here and let you demo it, you know, and just get on there and go, you know, and this is the thing I talk about when I talk about high intensity interval training, you know, a lot of people, they don't get the high intensity part. You know, they'll do, they'll do Tabatas where they'll go 90%, 100% of the first one. And by the time the third one, they're down to like 60%. Right. Because the rest intervals are too short.

So I'm like, man, go like somebody's going to kill you for 20 seconds and then rest three or four minutes and then go again. Because then you keep hitting that high intensity. That's what I do with exercise when it comes to weightlifting. I take big breaks now. I used to, for weightlifting, I used to do likelifting I used to do like I just try to burn myself out you know go to failure look short is like if I get 30 seconds break all right come on next set next set I mean I don't do that anymore the problem with that is you're just tired and that's not what you're training at the time now there's a time

to do the training you know like I said I you know I break it up when I tell people how to train I'm like look you train it for explosiveness the only thing you care about you don't get tired because you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna waste you're not gonna be intense enough the same thing with the sprinting the same thing with lifting give yourself enough of a break so that you can focus and do what you need to do then when it's conditioning time then you can go get tired right and so do it with light weights yeah i mean that's one of the problems with like you know i think crossfit there's a lot of good elements to there i mean there's a lot of people that do well with it but some of the exercises they pick you know

like when you get tired doing snatches the odds are you getting fucked up are high very high so i will so i tell people do something that's you know it's hard and it's tiring and when you get tired and your form breaks down you're not going to get hurt you know so you may do medicine ball slams right if you're jumping up and down on a box and then you fuck up right now your shin's bloody you know what's the point of that so i mean you know i just have a you know i've been battle ropes are a great one for that too there's no consequence to being too exhausted exactly i think that's that's the way to do that and i've been you know i've been training now for almost 40 years joe and i haven't taken a week off taking a week off is all i'll take a week off the same thing with you i know is you take too much time you just don't feel good that's

the other thing about this diet. My recovery capacity is huge. I mean, I can train super intense every single day, you know, without a break, which is kind of nice. I mean, this is the other thing that I get people telling me all the time is, you know, they're, I mean, they're hitting PRs on deadlifts. They're doing all this stuff. Personal record for non-athletes. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm not used to, you know, you know what I'm talking. I'm sorry. I'm not used to, you know, you know what I'm talking about, but I mean, it's like, you know, I get these people all the time. They're like, man, I'm hitting pushup records, chin up records. My deadlift went up a hundred pounds in three months from, from just eating meat and stuff like that. So I think there's something to it. I mean, I have people that are telling me my dad, I put my dad on this diet, right? He's 74 years old, two months into the diet. He goes, Hey man, this is the biggest, my biceps ever been in my life and he's just eating meat that's crazy so he's like he's just putting on muscle just because

he's taking in so much animal tissue so well listen man keep us posted on this keep me posted on like how your yeah you know your own personal journey's gone and whatever evidence that you collect with other people and i'm very curious i'm curious about this i might give it a try for one month yeah here's what I'll tell you, Joe. So January is World Carnivore Month, right? Oh, Jesus. So we're trying to get as many people. We can get thousands of people on there.

Just give us your data at n-equals-many.com. Just do a month of World Carnivore Month. There's instructions on how to do that. And just submit your data. So are you allowed to eat anything else? Yeah, so I tell people you can eat meat, eggs, dairy, cheese. You can drink coffee, stuff like that. But just no vegetables for a month?

No fruits and vegetables for a month. No plants for a month. You can put a little seasoning on it. I'm going to give it a chance. I'll give it a chance. I'll try some month. One month. I don't know if I can do January. I'll try to find a month. Tell me if you need help, Jim. All right. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it, man. That was great. Thank you.

All right. All right. That was great, thank you.