The Sevan Podcast - #1 - Tom Siskron

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Tom Siskron - fractured penis, covid19, keto The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Now am I recording? You can see the boys oh yeah hey i love your jumping videos y'all are awesome they can't hear you you're in my ear all right affiliate owner crossfitter doctor tom siskron yeah my uh my friend, sorry, friend, fourth, but friend, friend also. Yeah. Very important. So to answer your question, my, my day to day life hadn't changed a whole lot other than, obviously, my clinic is down because non urgent stuff is being deferred into the future. But in my especially, there are certain things that come in that just can't wait. So I've been having to do that too, going to work every day. Other than that, you know,

trying to stay at home and not eating out as much and not going to, going to our gym, but we're finding ways to work out anyway. Tom, Ciscron, doctor, CrossFitter, affiliate owner. CrossFit Medicus owner, yeah. Co-owner with Ken Sanders, really. Say that again? Co-owner. I'm the affiliate of record, but Ken Sanders also is with me in CrossFit Medicus.

I'll give him a shout-out. Okay. And I want to add to that list, you stay in ketosis. For two years, your body burns ketones for energy, not glucose. Is that correct? It's been probably closer to two and a half now. I think it was September of 2017, right after I met Greg and Brian and all of them, they came down to Shreveport. Soon after that, I went full board keto.

And, you know, everybody hears the word keto and thinks you're some weird, you know, way out whack. It's really all I do is I avoid sugar and processed carbs flour rice processed corn you know I want to I want to avoid corn if there's a few kernels in my salad or something but I'm not gonna go eat a piece of cornbread or cornmeal or something that's been processed where that is higher insulinogenic loading dose. So, you know, I say sugar, flour, processed corn, rice. I don't eat a lot of potatoes, but I don't avoid them like the plague. And I've been to a few parties with you and you don't drink alcohol either. It's very rare. Very rare.

Sorry, I ran to get a pen. That's okay. I'm getting a little rusty at this, but'm but i'm but but but i'm gonna knock that rust right off uh what's your specialty tom i'm a urologist and um you were saying that you don't you're just doing the appointments that are essential give me like essential verse a couple examples of essential versus not essential for urologists well you know when people can't empty their bladder, that's pretty important. So I've got guys come in who have to have catheters placed or haven't changed. You know, I sent you a picture a few days back without any identifying information, of course, of an emergency that came in.

So you know about that one. Can you talk about that one? Well, I can, sure. I kind of jokingly with you called it unintended consequence of quarantine. There was a young man who was at home in the middle of the morning rather than at work. And he had a what we call a penile fracture, which is where the corporal body actually tears. And I had to repair that for him. Give me, give me. So I don't know much about my penis other than just my daily interaction with it. When you say a corporal fracture, give me, is that a broken penis?

It's a penis fracture, broken penis. I mean, however you want to say it. Basically, the way I describe it is the penis is like one of those balloons that the clowns tie and make animals out of. It inflates, and it has a fascia covering it. So there's actually two corporal bodies, we call it the corpora cavernosa, that inflate with blood. And once they inflate to their maximum extent, they become rigid, just like the little balloon does. But also just like the balloon, it can tear, that fascia can tear. And if it's bent, or usually it's a trauma where it comes out and then goes, hits the pubic bone or whatever of the partner, it'll actually bend and break and that has to be repaired

surgically. So does that mean the blood will leak out when you get erect if it's torn? Absolutely. It immediately turns into like an eggplant. It gets really ugly really fast. So it needs treatment right away before the next erection comes around. That's right. Or, you know, the next one won't even come. It's just a flat tire, basically.

So this guy was having intercourse and his penis broke. When a client comes in like that, do you ask questions like what position you were in or how did it happen? Well, you know, he comes in through the ER and, you know, I don't ask anymore. It's almost always the same answer, although his was different. He volunteered the information uh i don't want to get into all the details of position but it's usually i would love to when the man is not in control of the of the thrust oh wow okay cowgirl cowgirl position is very dangerous it's amazing how you make everything sound smart yeah they uh you know, the jumping up, moving back and forth, rapid style is very dangerous

because if it slips out and it goes back down on her pubic bone or your partner's pubic bone, then that can fracture it. Yeah. We didn't waste any time getting right into the penis. No, no. I actually called to talk to you about COVID-19, but this is fascinating. You're going off on the penis tangent again you this is a great PSA though I mean there's there's value here and the fact that people really are home and that people either probably are having

a lot more sex or they're filing for divorce would be my guess yeah that's why I said it was an independent consequence of of quarantine that guy should have been at work rather than requiring surgery. Another patient, I've had a couple of older gentlemen who, unfortunately, another unintended consequence of quarantine, they got an infection because they're diabetics, both of them. That's always what happens. But they got an infection in their private area and didn't want to go to the doctor to get it checked. And they just sat at home and festered for a few days, and it turns into gangrene.

And that's another urologic emergency that has to be taken to the OR pretty quickly. So I've had two of those in the last week. What's a non-essential? What's something that someone wants to come see you for, and you're like, hey, we've got to wait until this thing? I just told one not two hours ago in the clinic my my uh nurse came to me and said a guy wants to be seen for a hydroseal which is just a benign fluid collection around the testicle and he wanted to

come in now and i said well that's not essential that's kind of me breaking the rules if i if i accept that i mean i don't know who's watching but you know i'm sure someone is big brother's probably watching what kind of uh patients we're, and I don't want to be seeing anything that's totally can wait. Right. Most of these patients, anyway, as you and I will probably discuss later, most of these patients don't need to be out in this because, you know, COVID, even though I'm personally not afraid of it, there are plenty of people who need to be afraid of COVID-19 and they need to be self-quarantined for sure. What do you think about this thing I keep hearing that over and over that we're making a mistake by not letting the kids get it, that they should have left the schools open. They should have let all the kids get it. Kids need to build antibodies against this.

They should have let all the kids get it. Kids need to build antibodies against this. It's how the civilization gets herd immunity, that this is going to backfire in the long run. And our kids are going to be exposed to this further down the road, that there's no stopping it. My personal opinion is, is this virus is here to stay. It's, it's something we're going to have to learn to live with.

Oh, sorry. Oh, that dog is really red. Yeah. he's a irish setter uh come here irish setter poodle mix wow that is red kilo um so you know it's here to stay we got to learn to live with it and if we lock everybody away so they don't get it, that virus is going to come around next season, next year, whatever. And are we going to do this every year? You know, there's things to be said. I certainly don't have the right answer. I don't know.

But, you know, there's certainly an argument to say let it run its course through those of us that are not really at risk. us that are not really at risk. Is socially isolating everybody going to, quote, flatten the curve? Of course it is. And I bet you the data for flu rates is going to plummet this year because nobody's getting out spreading the flu either. And this disease obviously is more significant to me at this point, more significant than the flu for certain populations, for certain percentage of patients. Unfortunately, our country, our society, our world has a higher percentage of those patients than we should. And then we have historically, which is making it a very serious illness,

but you know, whether we, the death rate so far in people under 18, I printed out some are like 0.2, oh, 0.1%, 0.1%. So that's one in a thousand less than that, right? You know, it's funny, you'll say that, or I've said that, and before you can even take your next, before you can even take your next breath, someone will jump on be like so what are you saying that we you don't you don't value you don't value older people's lives and you're like no no i'm not i'm not whoa i'm just presenting facts to you i'm not suggesting that there's not a quarantine i'm not but let's be honest and i bring this up because i for my google alerts i google alert underlying conditions and comorbidity. In the newspapers, whether it's Fox, the New York Times, the Washington Post, they are constantly putting out articles that say things along the lines with, and this isn't verbatim, I paraphrase, this disease also kills young people. And then I

look and it'll be some obscure case in Indonesia whereia where they don't have a hundred percent guaranteed that the kid had covid19 but the kid did have dengue fever and was already hospitalized and i'm just like it's never been malnourished or may have had diabetes or whatever and i'm and i certainly spent an hour every night i'm no doctor i'm just a numb nut but i know that greg has been warning about the wave of chronic disease that's coming for the 14 years I've been in CrossFit. How prophetic is this whole message? Yes. And so now, because I Google those two words, underlying conditions and comorbidity, I cannot find anyone who's died.

I cannot find anyone who's died. Even recently, three days ago, Fox News said 21-year-old dies perfectly healthy. And then I look at the picture of the gentleman. He is clearly not healthy. He clearly – I've shown it to five or six people, and I go, what would you diagnose this guy with without knowing anything? And they go, well, I would immediately want to check his sugar levels and see if he's diabetic and check his insulin. And, yeah, I mean, he was 80 pounds overweight.

Well, in Louisiana, 45%-ish, 43% to 46%, it varies day to day, have diagnosis of diabetes. Now, to me, that means – Wait, say those numbers again? Say those again? Depending on the day, for the last week or two, those numbers again say those again depending on the day for the last week or two 43 to 45 percent of deaths in louisiana have had the diagnosis of diabetes by death what do you mean with the comorbidity of covid 19 right anybody who has died in louisiana let's say 100 people have died 43 of them had the diagnosis of diabetes oh of what, regardless if they had COVID-19 or not? No, no,

no. Well, of COVID-19. Okay. Just wanted to be clear. Okay. If a hundred COVID-19 diagnosed patients died in the hospital, intubated, whatever, 43 of them had diabetes today. It was 46 a few days ago. Now what that tells me is that number is actually low because I diagnose people in my clinic every day with diabetes. And they say, well, my doctor never said anything about that. Or I never knew about that. It's because we're not hunting for it the right way. We're checking a fasting glucose and it'll be 105, 110. And the doctor says, Oh, you're fine.

But we don't understand in modern, modern days, a sugar in the morning over a hundred is sick you should not have a blood sugar over 100 in the morning I don't care what your normal lab values are and the way lab values are calculated is the lab takes a sampling of their of their tests of their population and they they then develop a bell curve. It'll be the mean and then two standard deviations from the mean. That's the normal range.

So, you know, in the year 1900, Johns Hopkins University did a, they went back and reviewed Johns Hopkins outpatient clinic data from the year 1900. Out of 20,000 outpatient visits guess how many had the diagnosis of diabetes zero ten okay so it's like zero ten out of 20,000 patients you show me a single doctor's office in the country today that doesn't see ten a day in their own practice. So are you going to tell me that the blood sugar fasting levels from the year 1900 and their normal values are the same as our normal values? No, of course not. You know, if I check fasting insulin, if I check insulin, insulin,

insulin, A1C or an insulin challenge, we got diabetics walking around all out there. I bet you 50% of, of at least 50% of the people dying from COVID have diabetes. You were saying 43, you were saying 43 out of a hundred that have died in the last three days, roughly in Louisiana. Cumulative right now. That's the data the Louisiana department of health published today. From, from Jan one or what's the date they start at yeah when all deaths total

deaths let me see right now our first death was it was all the way back in March 14th our first day March 14th. Our first death was March 14th. We've had 702 deaths. Tell me about the other 57%. 43% had diabetes as an underlying condition. What about the other 57%? Well, let me look on my phone because I put it on Instagram the other day, a snapshot of that data. Depending on which day I see the article.

All right. The reports coming back from Italy are always like 95 to 99% of the people have underlying conditions. They quit. They quit publishing the no comorbid conditions data in Louisiana, which I'm, I'm upset about. They just put the ones with the diagnosis, but everything I've read from other countries and when the cdc and when louisiana was publishing it it was anywhere from 95 to 98

with no diagnosed again keyword no diagnosed comorbidity now i think that number is low i bet it's 99 plus that have right some comorbidity and i don't know if you can see it but this is you probably can't pull back just a little bit Pull back just a little bit. Pull back just a little bit. Let me see. Okay. So I see asthma, 4.6. Cancer, 9.9. Cardiac disease, 22.

Chronic kidney disease, 25. Congestive heart failure, 11. Diabetes, 43. Hypertension, 66. Oh, so you could have multiple. You can have multiple. And the average comorbidity is, and Greg said it multiple. You can have multiple. And the average, the average comorbidity is, and Greg said it on call today, is 2.7. The average number of diseases each person

who dies from COVID has is 2.7. So they'll have hypertension and diabetes, or they'll have coronary disease and chronic kidney disease. And the reason is because all of these run together in metabolic syndrome and in metabolic disease. I mean, you know, diabetes. So when I see this, that seems so damning for chronic disease that basically like, hey, there's something called COVID-19 passing through your civilization. And the people who are not healthy are gonna die if you get it are dying yeah yeah no not or die they have a greater chance significantly greater chance so why are people bringing up stuff like age sex race like why am i hearing that um more men are

like why are they even introducing that variable like i don't give a shit about that what should i because i just think hey all you have to do the the big real cause doesn't have to do with your race your sex or your age if you're 80 you've clearly been smoking for 40 years so that plays a factor but not but it's not necessarily your 80 so you got people like my mom who are crossfitters um who have a duper, don't eat any sugar. And she's 76 and she's terrified because the media keeps reporting that the elderly are getting it. And I'm like, hey, it's not, I don't think, I don't think it is the elderly. It's practitioners, long practitioners.

The reason age is important. Number one, yes, a 79 year old, even healthy like your mom woman is going to have a higher chance of dying. 76, buddy. 76. Careful. She's listening. Than a 20 year old healthy woman, you know, without a doubt. You know, as you age, we are more susceptible. But the number of healthy aged people that are dying is very small. And, you know, that's not to downplay or minimize the ones that are dying. And, you know, that's not to downplay or minimize the ones that are dying. And, you know, you hear Governor Cuomo get on there and say, if I can save even one death, all of this is worth it. And I was like, you know, I don't want to be, I don't want to sound callous

or cold, but that's just not reality. If that were true, we would all be living in bubbles, sitting in our homes, not driving our cars, not, you know, plugging in anything into an electrical outlet because people get electrocuted every day, you know, not doing all these things that put us as human beings at risk of dying. You know, everybody talks about the flu and that you get ostracized if you mention the flu, but, you know, people die of the flu every freaking day, every year, up to 60,000 a year in bad years. Before we had antibiotics, it was even more than that because a lot of what kills you when you get the flu is not actually the virus, it's your susceptibility to secondary infections. And now that we've got, if you look at the spike data, the death data from the flu, from influenza-like illness, pre-1945, the spikes

of deaths were four, five, six times higher almost every year than they are now. And it's just because we have better medical care, we have more antibiotics. But all these things we're at risk for. We are fragile organisms on this very hostile earth. And there's a lot of things that are going to potentially kill us. We can't save every life and we have to weigh the risk versus benefit in our own lives. And as a society, particularly if we're all going to be expected to pay the cost for every death. And one analogy I've been kind of saying is, is if, if Sivan, if I give you the ability to say, okay, you have the power to end COVID-19 right now, eradicate it from the earth, would you do it to save one life versus not, well, if you have the ability to stop the shutdown, let me say it that way,

stop the shutdown, we can all go back to our normal lives and not worry. Can we pick one random person around the world or around the country that says, okay, you're the unlucky person at random, you're going to die from COVID, but the rest of us can live normally. Would you make that trade? And I think a rational, honest person would say yes. You know, for societal benefit, one death for everybody else to live their lives is an acceptable trade-off. The question then becomes,

where do you draw the line where it becomes not? And I would venture if you said, okay, can I pick 100 million people to kill at random for not having to shut down? I think most people would say, no, that's not adequate. But somewhere, somewhere in the middle is a number where most people would say, okay, you know, the shutdown is worth it or the shutdown is not worth it. And I can go ahead and tell you right now, we already know a good idea what that number is. It's not 60,000 because we

don't shut the government down or the country down for flu every year. So the number of COVID deaths has to be over that to make all of this hysteria worth it. Now, this is just rational. Now, as a doctor and as a human being, you want to save every life you can. But that's where i want to address the focus away from this disease like it's something we can control and manipulate we as humans we think we can control everything every down to the amount of carbon the earth has you know it's but we can't we mitigate our risks and but we can control some things and what we can control is how prepared we are as human beings to to combat the disease if it comes on our doorstep that's where we ought to be

directing our energy it's interesting whenever i bring up the fact that you know if you if you have chronic disease there's a good chance you've been walking around with your middle finger in the air for 30 years and um while the rest of society and you know maybe making fun of people who do crossfit or people who do zumba or people who do um sp and you know, maybe making fun of people who do CrossFit or people who do Zumba or people who do Spartan Race, you're making fun of those people calling them fanatics or fitness junkies or whatever, right. And we know being a part of a community like this, that it's more about fitness, it's about fitness, nutrition and peer pressure. And it's the kind of peer pressure you choose to be around just like maybe like if you go to church,

you want a certain moral peer pressure. We hang out with CrossFitters because we want a certain healthy peer pressure. And we want good examples. I don't want to hang out with people who drink Coca-Cola. I want to hang out with people who drink water. Right. So and I know I'm susceptible if I only hung out with people who drink Coca-Cola. So I'm susceptible to drinking it. So you're bringing up the fact of having a really honest conversation,

a moral conversation. How many kids have to be trapped at home and be molested by their parents? How many women during the quarantine, how many women have to get beat up by their husbands? How many armed robberies do they have to be at the ATMs now? Right. Right. Right.

Even look at this. Sorry, buddy. Josh Bridges. He's trying to get on the podcast. Sorry, I got a doctor on. Doctor? I got a doctor. You heard a doctor? I need to go get my Josh Bridges shirt.

He is a urologist. I need to go get my mustache shirt. He wants a mustache shirt. He wants a mustache shirt. I've got one. I need to go put it on. I can't hear him. He's a mustache shirt. I've got one. I need to go put it on. I can't hear him. Yeah, he's in my ear.

Is there anything you want to say to Josh before I kick him to the curb, Mr. Siskorn? Tell him I love his work. He says he loves your work and he didn't say this, but he's a urologist and he'll check your penis for free for a sponsorship because we know you're big

into sponsorships. All right, I'll bug you later. Hey, Mr. Kimball, why aren't these screws going through these slots? Don't force anything. I'm going to call you back in a little bit. Bye. Josh is getting into, he's going to do some – because of the quarantine, his videographer can't come over and work with him. So I've been helping him get some camera gear and some gimbals and shit, and so he was calling me to bug me. He doesn't normally FaceTime me. That was great. What a great – Good dude. Yeah, helps my status. Yeah, good dude. things um unethical or um um the social justice police want to make it so it's not okay to have that conversation exactly and um and everyone's terrified to bring it up because you don't want

to um affiliate owners i've talked to who who want to keep the gym open um some of them have said straight up hey we just don't want to damage our reputation but really we don't give a shit like we're not afraid. And so it's this interesting thing you're bringing up. You want to have an honest conversation of how dangerous the disease is versus the damage we're having to society. I want to save people, but I want to save them the right way. I don't want to just put a Band-Aid on their problem by giving them some wonder drug or quarantining them so they can go on with their unhealthy lives and die of something

else later. What this virus has done is it has shortened the time of death. People walk around eating donuts and cookies and sugar day in, day out, every day on, insulin spikes through the roof, getting sick and saying, oh, everybody dies. I'm going to die in 20, 30 years. What's the difference? Well, now we're saying you people are going to die maybe within the next two weeks. That's a big change. And that's really grabbing people's attention. And there was a nurse on the floor today that asked me, you know, why I didn't wear a mask. I just, you know, if I'm around a patient that's potentially ill, I will obviously take precautions to protect them just in case I'm an asymptomatic carrier. I don't believe I am. But, you know, I don't wear a mask because I'm not afraid of it.

She said, you're not afraid of getting the virus? I was like, not at all, because I know that it's the chances of it killing me are so incredibly low that I have a better chance of dying driving to work. You know, I'm not going to live my life in fear. But she didn't have the same confidence because she was overweight. And I can guarantee she probably had hypertension, may have been pre-diabetic. And, you know, she said, well, I wish I she said, I really need to change. I know I need to. And I was like, well, I'd love to help you with that. You can reduce your risk and reduce your worry of not only this virus, but all kinds of different illnesses. And there's ways to help you with that.

I'd love to help you with that. And that's my message to people is let's not just protect ourselves from this virus right now by hiding from it. Let's protect ourselves by getting healthy and doing the right thing. And the number one thing is reducing our processed sugar and flour intake. The number two is eliminating, maybe on par with number one,

is eliminating processed oils, manmade oils. Even though they have the heart healthy sticker on the canola oil in the grocery, it is not heart healthy. It's man-made polyunsaturated oil that's not stable. It's more susceptible to oxidative stress, and you don't want it in your body in higher percentages than it's supposed to be, which is what drinking all these oils or cooking in all these oils is doing. So, you know, and then the third thing, and Greg's always said this, exercise is the last thing, really. It's at the top of the pyramid, right? The base is nutrition. Nutrition, CrossFit, nutrition. People don't know that.

And just as an example of that, there's a patient that I saw today. I mentioned him on the call earlier. I was doing a telehealth visit with him. He's 70 years old. And I was just talking to him about his yearly PSA check. It looked great. And he said, by the way, I've lost 25 pounds since December. And I got his lab checked a couple of weeks back and his liver function, his ALT, which is a test for liver function and fatty liver disease was 70, which is high. He had fatty liver disease. It's now 12. It is well within normal, way in the bottom of normal. And he said, I feel great. I've lost 25 pounds. I quit eating sugar. And he said, I want you to know, I think you may have saved my life because about two weeks ago, I had a dry cough and a fever and I had chills for about two days. And I felt bad, but it was before this COVID fear went out.

I didn't have anything and I got better. And I said, you know, you may be right. You may have had it. Had you been sick back then when you caught it, your chances of dying from it would have been significantly higher. caught it, your chances of dying from it would have been significantly higher. So, you know, that's what I want to help people with is realizing that they have control over their health and they have control over the ability to not be afraid of COVID-19 or influenza, which kills plenty of old sick people as well, or you name it. What infectious disease that kills human beings are we not afraid of? But you mitigate your risk by staying healthy. And that's what

my goal. And like I said earlier, you know, one of the best moments in my life is when I had the epiphany that what I was doing, trying to help patients get healthy, and what I was doing on my own, trying to stay fit, were the same thing. It's, you know, CrossFit is healthcare. It's preventive medicine. And it's the same thing. We have the same goals, whether you're an affiliate owner or a doctor in your clinic. I helped that guy with just diet. I didn't, I didn't train him. I didn't send him to a CrossFit box. I didn't do anything.

I just corrected his metabolic disease. And that was a diet that you started as a CrossFitter because you were in this community and it came to your attention through this community that focused on health. You know, mentioning that, let me just say, mentioning that community I was in before, the triathlete community was exactly the opposite. It was carbo load, bagels, cereals, bread, sandwiches. You'd be dead. I was insulin resistant. I had a dad bod pooch. My lab values show that I was probably pre-diabetic

back then about 10 years ago when I got into all this. Had I continuing along this path, I'm 50. Had I been continuing on that path, I would probably be 50 and metabolically sick, if not diabetic right now. What did you snatch the other day? I saw on your Instagram, 205. 200. Congrats. 205 is my current PR. I'm hoping to break that here soon. I want to say two things and then ask you a question. One, I want people to know that Tom started CrossFit Medicus and what it is, and correct me where i'm wrong i'm going to take some liberties here it is a crossfit gym that he specifically takes his clients to that he feels would benefit more from a better diet and who are who are let me recreate let me modify that a little bit you take your

clients to it to crossfit medicus which is sort of a virtual gym, and you actually feed them into a real affiliate. And you do that if your clients are open to the idea of what you already know. Medicine does not have the cure for many, many, many ailments and that it really requires a lifestyle change. So kudos to you for walking the walk. You don't just prescribe Viagra. You also tell people, hey, if you want to get that shit naturally, start exercising, get off the sugar and that blood flow to your junk will increase. And guys come in to me for low T rather than just write a prescription for testosterone. I tell them, look, this is why your testosterone is low. You know, you got to take care of yourself. Can you just look at someone

and tell if they're on testosterone? I often can. The telltale sign is really, really red face. Dave Castro, is he on it? I haven't seen him with a red face. All right. No, he doesn't have a red face. He has low T though.

He doesn't have the roid appearance. But yeah, you can look at a guy who's using a pretty good bit. a real rosy appearance to their skin it's it's almost tough looking leathery okay and then the second thing i want to say about you is um can't read my own notes here okay let's skip over the second thing talk to me about cholesterol and the importance of that in the immune system because cholesterol has been vilified and i'm hearing that healthy people who don't eat sugar but with high cholesterol levels have a better chance of fighting this thing off all right this is that true this is a big topic let me grab a book okay okay

god what if i took these notes while i was uh while you were talking and now I can't read them. This is an important topic. I would encourage everybody to get this book. Okay. Fat and cholesterol don't cause heart attacks, and statins are not the solution by – oh, yes, I read that book. It's an anthology, right? It's by Thinks, the International Network of cholesterol skeptics uh paul roshid it's got a lot of um very smart you just passed away by the way oh really yeah um so 90 something

years old you know i used to say the same thing oh your cholesterol is high you got to get it down my goal now is to have a high cholesterol as i age because when you know the real data the higher your cholesterol as you age the lower your chances of death from all causes it is not cholesterol that's the enemy cholesterol is a vital component of our bodies it's in every cell it helps make every hormone it's vital to our immune system why would we want to limit something so vital? And it just does not make design sense or evolutionary sense, whichever you want to believe in, that something so vital to survival would be so dangerous. And all of the data that's really been able to hold up to scrutiny shows that high cholesterol is not what kills us.

It's the underutilization or the mismanagement of fat storage or over fat storage and stat fat buildup in our bloodstream. So a much better indicator of your health is your triglyceride to HDL ratio. The reason they say cholesterol is being high as bad is because most people who are metabolically ill have elevated cholesterol, but for very complex reasons. But if you read on the subject, there's plenty of books out there and plenty of literature. I'm certainly not going to step on the toes of all the books that I've read of the authors that know a lot more about it than I do, I've read of the authors that know a lot more about it than I do, but I'm definitely a skeptic nowadays. So my cholesterol has gone up in the last five years. In the last two years since I've

been keto, my cholesterol has been over 200 for the first time in my life. I was always 130 and thought I was awesome, great. The problem is my triglycerides were 200 and my HDL was 50. Triglycerides were 200 and my HDL was 50. And that gives me a ratio of four. And anything over two is insulin resistance almost diagnostic. So you take your triglyceride, divide it by your HDL. You want it at one or below. Mine, right, last time I had a check, which was a little over a year ago, was 0.6.

My triglycerides were 30- something and my HDL was 70. So, you know, it's, it's not the substance in and of itself that's dangerous. It's how it all interplays in your body that's important. And if you're metabolically healthy, your cholesterol level is going to be high because you're shipping it around to the body to make hormones, to help make cells, to help your immune system. It's a natural product in our body. It's all the other things that are going on that are more important. But it's a very, very, very, very touchy subject. And if you say that to a lot of docs now, even now, they'll say you're a heretic and run you out of the doctor's lounge.

Well, also, I think statins might be the largest. There might be more dollar values behind statins in this country than any other drug. I mean, I think I saw 13 billion or something. You look into the data that the drug company funded, studies show that they push this these drugs with they are so miss misrepresenting the effectiveness and the side effects it's not even funny i mean they can see the videos talking about that at crossfit.com yeah absolutely they they do they do run-ins um on their studies where if you have a side effect of the medicine you get excluded and then they do this study and they say oh our side effect profile was only one percent well what about all the people who stopped before you even did the study you know it's just lying to the public so you're saying

that they'd start a study with 100 people and it's 10 weeks long two weeks in if someone shows something weird they pull them out if four weeks in they show somewhere they pull them out if they end the study with 40 people then you only hear about the side aspects from those people who made it through the entire program and they're they're they're reasoning is the reasoning is we have to have people on the medicine long enough to get good data on its efficacy so they have to weed out those who can't stay on the medicine but they don't tell you that in the in the newsprint headline, you know, statin results in such and such improvement in health. They don't tell you about all the people who have side effects or have negative health effects. I remember what I was going to bring up. Let's go back to that conversation we were having before.

It kind of ties in this whole call. It's a good note to end on. I don't want to alienate anyone or say that we don't realize that there are outliers out there, that there are people out there who were born with conditions that made them more susceptible to COVID-19. You know, anytime I bring it up or I read about it on a message board, someone will be like, well, I have a sister and she has X, Y, Z, and people have issues that occur that are, that are outside their control.

But it's a, but it's a very small number. And you and I are not talking about those people. What we are talking about people, to quote my good friend Dr. Will Wright, is we're talking about people who are 30 years complicit in their own demise, people who've had really poor lifestyle practices who, fortunate for them, can change them and within three months receive incredible benefits, even faster, right? It's really quick. Like I said, that patient I've been helping since December, January, February, March, you know, three and a half months, he's reversed his fatty liver disease.

How important is it for people during this quarantine if they're terrified of getting COVID-19? What are, give me three things they can do that you would do if you were scared? If I had all those comorbid diseases, I would stay at home. Yeah, I would not. What are some practices you would change while you're at home? Would you immediately quit eating sugar? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's the first thing that I need to do is sugar and any processed oil, any man-made oil that comes from a vegetable or a nut like peanut oil, safflower oil, canola oil. All those man-made oils are made in factories with chemicals and heat, and they're not natural. You need to stay in natural oils. If you can, if you can take something and press it, if the oil comes out like an olive,

that's good. That's a natural oil. Animal oils, you know, lard and animal fats are good fats, but olive oil, coconut oil, things that are naturally cold pressed oils are much healthier for us than these manmade artificial oils. So, so let's leave people with that. I like and i'll throw exercise in there three things if you're at home listening to this right now these are three things that we should learn from dr tom siskron stop eating sugar yep only consume man-made oil sorry don't consume don't consume man-made do not consume man-made oil

don't consume man-made do not consume man-made oil and exercise yeah and your healing begins my my personal opinion is is processed any processed carbohydrate like flour or cornmeal needs to be high on that list also to take out to quit although i tell people to start with sugar because and you got to be very sneaky i mean careful because they're sneaky they put it in 80 of our foods that you buy it in the store i tell my patients if it comes in a bag box or a cellophane wrapper it's probably not good for you it's probably got sugar and oils in it that are man-made so what are you going to eat today what are you going to eat today well i'll tell you what I have eaten so far I didn't eat much I didn't eat breakfast at all I had a big lunch with lots of fatty brisket and squash

broccoli greens and on the green squash and broccoli I'll put olive oil and vinegar red wine vinegar and it was a heaping huge plate of food. My goal is to eat when hungry and eat until full. And that makes me but eat the right things. And that way, I'm not hungry. I'm not a slave to food anymore. I used to be a slave to food. I would have to eat every two or three hours or I'd get a splitting headache. I'd get groggy. I'd get hangry. You know, you've seen those commercials for Snickers, you're hangry. It's because of that insulin spike. And if you are feeling like you're a slave to food, like you have to eat every two hours or the world's going to end, that's the problem. Human, no animal on the planet, humans included, were designed to eat that way.

And, you know, I eat like a wolf. I stole it from Epic Nutrition or Epic Provisions and their new company, Force of Nature. You know, I eat like a wolf. That's my goal. I try to. You don't look like a wolf. Well, you know, wolves are lean. I just don't have the beard. Oh, you are lean. I worked out with you a few times you are a lean strong monster yeah so you know that's my my my my instructions to people would be eat whole natural foods vegetables that grow above the ground not the ones that grow below because those are more insulinogenic and if you do eat the ones that grow below eat them in smaller amounts

don't sit down with a whole bowl of carrots and ranch, you know, but if they're carrots, carrots, shavings in your salad, don't pick them out. You know, that's the way I eat. If there's a few potatoes, you know, I'll grab a new potato every now and then and eat it as part of an otherwise healthy meal. But I don't sit down with a whole big monster baked potato and heap other stuff on it. My carbs are the secondary fuel for me. The first fuel in my diet is fat, moderate protein, about one gram per kilogram per day. And then I can eat as much of the natural carbs as I want. If it grows above the ground, it's fair game for me. I do not have a restrictive diet. I never run out of energy. game for me. I do not have a restrictive diet. I never run out of energy. I'm just as strong as the next 50-year-old, if not stronger, who is carbo-loading. I did a 100-mile bike ride

back in September, beat my time from when I was 36, and only stopped once, ate zero on a seven-hour trip. I ate nothing on the bike i just hydrated with with how long have you been doing crossfit since 2012 okay so you've been doing a long time yeah but uh you know i've been i've been really low carb um keto for two and a half and i was low carb but still had an occasional coke occasional bread occasional this that and the other pre-2017. I wasn't strict, but I avoided sugar for the most part, but I would still splurge every now and then. The interesting thing now is that I've been so fat adapted for so long is I can eat whatever the hell I want in one meal and it doesn't even kick me out of ketosis. I don't even feel it. I mean, like for Christmas morning at my mom's house, you know,

I had everything. I had the dessert sampler tray and dressing and, and everything. And I went home later that night and check my ketones. I was still in ketosis barely, but still in ketosis the next morning, fasting blood sugar of 80 something and strong ketosis. So, wow. And that's the way it's designed to be when we were historically pre-historically we would we would come across a fruit tree in season and probably the whole community would engorge themselves in apples or oranges or whatever

but then they'd go back to their normal hi hayley they go back to their normal lives i think that's a sign that you're done huh he says is that a sign that you were done uh to say that finish that last thought so so basically they would stuff you'd stuff yourself with the oranges or the fruit you find on the tree and then go back to your lives go back to your lives which is when we were having having to scavenge for our food and hunt for our food, you woke up hungry. You had to go hunt it. And, you know, people say, oh, I'm a vegan.

I can live off of vegetable foods. And my answer to them is like, all right, well, let me come drop you in the woods of northern Louisiana and let me see how long you last without killing an animal. You know, when you don't have your whole foods produce section there to feed yourself let's see how long you last right no whole foods back uh prehistorically you know they yes they vegetables yes they dug up potatoes when they came across them well the potatoes were poisonous back then probably tomatoes were a lot of foods we've actually cultivated and bred out the toxins so a lot of the foods we eat now that we think are healthy have been genetically and crossbred to be that way, to bleed out the toxins. But, you know, you didn't eat vegetables every day at every meal.

You didn't eat fruit every day at every meal. You'd come across a fruit tree in the spring, and then you would not see it again for a whole year. What did you eat through the winter? You didn't go to Whole Foods and pick up your kale, you know, you killed. And this isn't that long ago we're talking. Exactly. Pre 10,000 years. Pre 10,000 years ago. We've been agricultural, an agricultural society for about 10,000 years. Sugar was not even in our, hardly pre-1600.

You know, that was really, really rare. The wars of the 16, 17, early 1800s were fought over sugar like the wars today are fought over oil. It's because it was such a new, high-prized commodity at that point. And the amount of sugar intake in our society has just skyrocketed ever since. Talk about an exponential rise. You know, the COVID virus is nothing compared to our sugar intake over the last 200 years. And it's killing us, literally.

Literally. There's plenty of good books and lots of good literature out there to support these theories. It's not just me being crazy. And I'll put my lab values up against any 50-year-old carbo loader out there and my snatch weight. I love it. Tom, thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I was trying to ambush you all day. I know you're busy. Thanks for taking time. You're welcome. Hope to see you at the next DDC. You will. All right, man.