Joe Rogan Experience #1551 - Paul Saladino
[Laughter]. [Music]. um. listen man i've been telling everybody. that uh i eat mostly meat. and they look at me like i'm gonna die. and it's kind of funny and i. i've had these conversations with people. and they were like oh well if you too. much. jimmy can we get more waters we don't. have one water out here. i've been telling these people like it.
that i eat only meat and they're like. well you know. if you eat too much meat it causes colon. cancer cuts this causes that. and one of the things that i say and as. a talking point that i actually stole. from you. is that most plants are inedible. but almost all animals are edible and. when you say that to them they look at. you like oh. [ __ ] like if you just go out and eat. like random plants. you'll get sick as [ __ ] that's real. so like when i tell people i eat mostly. meat they look at me like.
like you're doing something really stew. like rob lowe started laughing at me. i said i have like an animal-based diet. you know some people are plant-based. i'm animal-based i love that word yeah. animal-based yeah just steal what. they're saying. and make it better but what you said. what i've heard you say that is. that's an accurate way of describing it. most plants. are not edible but almost every animal. is edible. i mean and i think that if people spend. time in the wilderness. regardless of the latitude they'll start. to appreciate this yeah. and i've mostly spent time in in. latitudes that are further from the.
equator than not but even at the equator. if you go walking around the woods and. or the forest or the jungle there and. you try. to eat leaves or stems or bark you're. gonna die you're gonna die. really freaking fast well how about. people who collect mushrooms like they. make mistakes. you know like so easy i remember there. was a story about a guy in a nursing. home. and he had went out and picked mushrooms. for the people the nurses come and. cooked them up. and they all died it's like because he. [ __ ] up.
probably his older guy couldn't see or. maybe just forgot what's edible or. maybe he was just losing his mind but. the point is most of these things you. see are not edible. and if you think about it from the. perspective of a plant it makes more. sense yeah we never do that. anthropomorphization we never think. about that but as i was learning about. this. and thinking about carnivore diets and. animal-based diets i had to learn. a lot of stuff myself i'm a i was. trained as a physician i wasn't trained. as an anthropologist and i took ecology. in college but. when you look at like the what we know.
about the timeline of life on earth. 500 plus million years of plant and. animal co-evolution. and there's a lot of people who have. speculated this that essentially. plants evolve animals evolve animals. start eating plants plants evolve. defenses. animals evolve defenses against the. defenses and there's a whole series of. enzymatic systems in our liver the phase. one and phase two detoxification systems. they're called. cytochrome p450 and other reactionary. systems in our liver that are meant to. detoxify things.
and a lot of people speculate and i. think this is really reasonable that the. majority of the reason we have those. is so that we could eat plants from time. to time so we didn't starve during our. evolution. but there's a there's a real interesting. interaction here this is warfare. this is this is an arms race yeah that's. 400 million years old between plants and. animals. and so what was so interesting for me as. i got deeper and deeper into this. this idea around can humans exist should. humans exist. will humans thrive on a completely. animal based diet you start to realize.
wait a minute. why are we imagining that plants are. benign they're beautiful they're fun to. look at. but they are rooted in the ground they. can't run away from us what's their. defense. well if you're out in the desert a cacti. has got a thorn. or a rose has a thorn a spine but most. of them just have plant defense. chemicals and that's not even conjecture. that's just known botanical science that. plants make chemicals. broadly called phytoelectins that are. meant to dissuade. animals insects fungi from over.
consuming them. and so my fear is that we've assumed. that plants are good for us. and we see everything with these plant. compounds through the lens of these are. good for us. how can we prove they're good for us. there's a whole different part of the. story. what if we think about it from a plants. perspective what if these plant. chemicals are not good for us. and we're misinterpreting the research. and i can talk about why i think we are. and maybe the plants are just making. these chemicals to say hey. if you eat a lot of me you're not going. to feel good i'm going to affect your. thyroid i'm going to affect your.
your androgens your sex hormones or. whatever i'm going to make you have. diarrhea or nausea. or i'm going to kill you and we've just. been thinking more plants more plants. more plants when it's like wait a minute. why are we eating plants in the first. place yeah well. here's here's a question though is it. good to eat some of them. because there's this thing and i know. you've discussed this as well. the hormetic response right like where. your body responds to. these uh effects that these plants are. producing and it actually.
the response by your body is good the. same way the response from a sauna. is good your body really doesn't belong. in 180 degree temperature. but when you put it at 180 degree. temperature it develops these heat. heat shock proteins is actually good. it's good for you to do that. for short periods of time is that. possible with plants that lay. maybe some like i know dr rhonda patrick. is really into broccoli sprouts and i. think for that very particular reason. yeah so this is really interesting and.
it if you. think about it differently it starts to. make more sense i believe or there's a. whole different paradigm whole different. lens through which we can view this. so as i was writing my book i came up. with these terms. environmental hormesis and molecular. hormesis i'll grab your book it's right. here. molecular hormesis is broadly termed. xenohormesis by some people xeno is this. latin term that means alien or foreign. so when you think about these a lot of. in common parliaments. people lump together exercise ketosis.
sunlight sauna. with plant compounds but i think that's. that's not accurate i don't think we. should be doing that i think we have. environmental hormesis. and molecular hormesis and they're. different things so i won't debate that. plants can be beneficial as. medicine but to use them as food. presupposes that molecular hormesis is. good for us and i'll tell you why i. don't think it is. so when you go in the sauna or when you. are in ketosis or when you're in the sun. or when you exercise. you do generate reactive oxygen species. superoxide radicals.
and they activate a system in your body. called the nrf2 system i can pull up a. picture of it in a second. and that turns on genes that are. involved in the antioxidant response to. manage these free radicals. life is this elegant dance of electron. movement. and protons two and other functional. groups in chemistry. but the movement of electrons is. oxidation and reduction with the loss of. electrons being oxidation the gain of. electrons being reduction. and so when we think about oxidative. stress we're talking about molecules.
pulling electrons from other molecules. creating free radicals which is broadly. means that there are unpaired electrons. now these are very reactive molecules. that can then create things like lipid. peroxides or. you know free radicals within proteins. which change the confirmation of the. protein. and we know these can be damaging for. humans one of the reasons that cigarette. smoking is bad for us because it creates. a ton. of free radicals lots of oxidative. stress. but a little bit of oxidative stress or. just the right amount the goldilocks. amount is necessary for life. we don't want to get rid of all of the.
oxidative radicals in our body they're. critical signaling molecules at the. level of the mitochondria. so this whole movement toward. antioxidants and. more antioxidant you know chemicals is. eventually if we snuff out all of the. oxidative radicals or all the. reactive oxygen species in the human. body we'll be dead we need these for. signaling. so a little bit of oxidative stress is. good too much stressful. creates problems not enough stressful. creates problems it's definitely a. goldilocks thing. so when you are in the sauna or you are.
in the sunlight or you exercise you will. create oxidative stress. that oxidative stress turns on nrf2 this. is essentially a transcription factor. that translocates to the nucleus turns. on genes involved in the antioxidant. response things like. glutathione peroxidase thyoridoxin. things like this. they manage those free radicals and. that's just it's kind of clean right you. have. an input to the system it turns on a. gene molecular hormesis is a little. different it's like going to the. pharmacy and taking a medicine.
but what we never get with plants is the. package insert. quote unquote that comes with. medications in the pharmacy if you go to. the pharmacy and you get a drug lysine. prometoprolol. a statin drug even if you get ibuprofen. or naproxen and leave at the pharmacy. on the bottle there's a list of all the. side effects when we use exogenous. molecules for humans. we know that they don't really play well. with our biochemistry they're going to. do one thing which may be an intended. effect. but then they're going to have other. effects elsewhere which could be. damaging. and invariably we see this with. medications we take we know that beta.
blockers can affect. glucose tolerance and they can affect. sympathetic signaling in the human body. with the nervous system. and we know that lysinopril and drugs. like this which affect the kidneys can. have problems with. electrolyte balance or other things so. they can affect the lungs because. they're affecting the way that. angiotensin converting enzyme works and. they have side effects. and so my concern is that we're. conflating the two and we're forgetting. about the side effects that are. associated with molecular hormesis. i think that there certainly are studies. with molecules like sulforaphane.
which is this isothiocyanate compound. from broccoli. that show that it also triggers nrf2. it triggers this antioxidant response. system but what we aren't told about. much is the other side effects of. sulforaphane. the so-called packaged insert that. sulforaphane has. and when you look at that there's a. large amount of evidence that this whole. class of molecules. isothiocyanates actually have many. negative effects in the body. and when you think about it from a. plant's perspective sulforaphane is.
pretty clearly. a toxin it's a booby trap so one of the. things i like to ask people is how much. sulforaphane. is in broccoli seeds and the answer is. zero. until you chew them there's no. sulforaphane in broccoli. or kale or kohlrabi or any of these. brassica vegetables to. chew them and ron has talked about how. does that work there's a precursor. molecule. called glucoraphanin which is a. glucosinolate. and it's like a booby trap it's like. super glue you get two things combining. so you get glucoraphanin is the. precursor molecule there's an enzyme.
called myrosinase in a separate. compartment of the cell. when you chew the cell and you break the. cell wall they combine. and then out comes sulforaphane so it's. a booby trap it's like if you're going. to eat me. i'm going to make this molecule it's. going to affect you. it's going to be a pro-oxidant right. because if you look at the chemistry of. sulforaphane. it actually is a pro-oxidant meaning. it's pulling electrons from other. molecules it's not actually coming into. our body and acting as an antioxidant. it's turning on our antioxidant defense.
system. but it's also doing other negative. things in the human body. in the case of isothiocyanates it's. actually been shown to damage dna. which is a process called clastogenesis. and it inhibits iodine absorption at the. level of the thyroid this is also. furofance. also fluorophane yeah and there are. other molecules like this that are also. found in these type of foods the. brassica family of foods. things like goitrin or allyl. isothiocyanate they're all. isothiocyanates. so they're widely known to affect iodine. chemistry at the level of the thyroid.
have you ever seen people with a big. necks in africa like the goiters there's. an endemic goiter. you get this huge neck that's. hypothyroidism because they're consuming. lots of foods. that have goitrogenic that are. goitrogenic foods lots of foods that. have. similarly isothiocyanate compounds that. are inhibiting the absorption or at. least the. the utilization of iodine at the level. of the thyroid. so they're it's working against the. thyroid so the intent of plants is very. clear here. it's saying if you eat too much of me. i'm going to affect your thyroid.
negatively. and that's going to affect every other. hormonal system in your body. so yes sulforaphane can be beneficial. because it turns on our antioxidant. response system but it also has many. side effects which are ignored. and we see this pattern over and over. and over and this is what was. fascinating. we see this pattern over and over and. over with plant molecules. and then if you look at these two people. might say well is the risk worth the. benefit. and i would argue it's not or i would. argue the benefit is not worth the risk. because you can get your nrf2 system.
turned on. without those molecules because you can. do environmental hormesis. you can go in the sauna you can exercise. you can fast. you can be in ketosis there's really. good studies um. in cold water swimmers in berlin and. their show they show that cold water. exposure so they go and they swim in. cold water for like an. hour and they'll show that their. glutathione level. goes down meaning that they their. oxidized level of glutathione goes up. the reduced level of glutathione goes. down. they're using their endogenous.
antioxidant molecule one of them which. is glutathione. to mitigate these newly produced. oxidative radicals these free radicals. in the human body. produced by cold water swimming and then. the next day they'll see their. glutathione is a little bit above normal. that's hormesis that's environmental. hormesis so my argument is. can we really say that plant molecules. give us a net benefit i don't think we. can there's lots of interesting studies. here that would argue that. we don't really get a net benefit from. plant molecules it's kind of a redundant. effect we can get. this nrf2 system this antioxidant. response system turned on without them.
and then we're getting all of the. downstream negative side effects of. these plant molecules have there been. any independent studies that show people. taking. like broccoli sprouts and then doing it. for. a prolonged period of time measuring. their system and then. doing environmental hormesis and seeing. if. they measure up well there's actually. studies that show. they have two groups of people and i can. pull these up if you want there's. studies that compare people that ate. essentially no vegetables.
or low fruits and vegetables to high. fruits and vegetables. and they'll compare them at 4 8 or 12. weeks. and at the end they see no differences. in the oxidative stress markers the. inflammatory markers. markers of dna damage so it's pretty. shaky ground to say that. invariably all the studies with fruits. and vegetables show that they provide. this benefit. in the short term sulforaphane can. create more uh antioxidant response you. get more glutathione. but if you take it out a little bit of. time it doesn't look like there's any.
difference between people who are eating. things like. broccoli or jerusalem artichokes or. carrots or cabbage or any of these other. vegetables. compared to a group that eats none of. them so there's these fruit and. vegetable intervention studies which. don't show any differences between these. people. that's bananas so all the people that. are. thinking that they're doing a good thing. for their system. by taking these vegetables and fruits. that have this horm. your body has this hermetic response for. you can have the exact same response. from cold plunge from sauna from.
exercise you're turning on the exact. same system in your body. but what about the vitamins that you're. getting from plants right. there are there there are essential. nutrients and phytonutrients that you. get from plants. what about those so this is really. interesting when you look into it. there are really this is going to sound. extreme when i say it but i'll back it. up there are no nutrients in plants that. you cannot get from animal foods in. essentially equivalent or more. bio-equivalent forms.
how come when like cats eat an animal. they go for the guts first and they'll. actually eat the grass that's in the. guts of the cow. i don't know guts of a room in it i. don't know why they would do that i. guess it's fermented. i don't know because if you look at the. nutrients. in um in animal foods right. there are many nutrients and animal. foods that do not occur in plants. and we know this b12 but the list is. much bigger vitamin k2 choline.
carnosine carnitine anserine taurine. the list is extremely long but you can't. say the same thing about plants there. are no nutrients that are current plants. that you can't get from animal foods. none vitamin c you can definitely get. vitamin c from animal foods and you get. it from what do you get from liver. liver heart muscle it all has vitamin c. so in the 1930s from 1935 to 1942 or 43. they did a series of studies i think it. was in sheffield england i've got the. study i can show you.
and they had conscientious objectors to. the war and they had them. take different amounts of vitamin c to. see how long it would take to get scurvy. and doses as low as 10 milligrams of. vitamin c per day. could prevent scurvy they experimented. with conscientious. objections yeah yeah wow yeah that's. kind of creepy. 10 milligrams a day there it is yeah. 10 experience carried out in sheffield. unconscientious objectors to military. service. and if you scroll down to the next page. jamie that's kind of creepy you'll see. the doses.
but yeah there was um. 10 milligrams of vitamin c will prevent. scurvy. right but obviously that's not an. optimum level for health. well we don't know no yeah because if. you look at the. um if you look at the the amount of. vitamin c. the they should they say there that. between the 70 milligram group and the. 10 milligram group. there was no difference in clinical. outcomes the prevailing thinking is at. 10 milligrams is not enough for optimal. health but. we don't actually know there are rolls.
of vitamin c beyond the formation of. collagen which is the main. thing that gets broken when we see. scurvy or at least that's the physical. manifestations you get bleeding gums. your teeth fall out this is all. collagenous tissue. the connective tissue in the human body. starts to break down because you can't. hydroxylate. proline residues on the collagen. molecule but. when you look at it beyond that there's. actually some pretty good studies i'll. see if i can. find one i've definitely got one in here. that shows that if you look at people. eating.
they did another experiment with excess. fruits and vegetables. and they had one group that had small. amounts of fruits and vegetables. and now we're going to skip up to 70. milligrams so it's a little bit more. than 10. there's no experiments with. like long-term 10 milligrams of vitamin. c per day. but there's an experiment that compares. 70 milligrams of vitamin c per day from. low fruits and vegetables. to 270 milligrams of fruits and. vegetables 250 milligrams of vitamin c. from fruits and vegetables and there. were no clinical differences in those. outcomes. in those people so one group has low. fruits and vegetables one group has high. fruits and vegetables. and how long is the study i think it was.
eight weeks i'll pull it up. is that long enough to see a detrimental. effect or a positive net benefit. well i think that if you're thinking. about things in terms of oxidative. stress that happens pretty quickly. you would definitely i think begin to. see increased dna damage. we measure it with this marker called. 8-hydroxy2-deoxyguanosine lipid. peroxides. inflammation i think you would see it. you start to see it pretty quickly when. you get lower levels of vitamin c. the the higher vitamin c group with more. fruits and vegetables certainly had a. higher level of vitamin c in their blood.
but they didn't have any differences in. terms of those markers. so this one is what about the benefits. of vitamin c. in fighting off uh colds and infections. right the um so the interventional. studies with that have generally. failed really yeah yeah but the. consensus wisdom is that like. if you have a virus right take vitamin c. take vitamin c yeah. i'll show you this one so if you go to. the vitamin c folder jamie and then you. go. to the vitamin c from an evolutionary. perspective study.
you'll see a list of all the. interventional studies with vitamin c. scroll down to the. table two. so one more table down that one. so you'll see these are interventional. studies with vitamin c and. um there's an rct there for. um the common cold it's a meta-analysis. actually which uh 11.
306 participants and there was no effect. on the incidence of the common cold. so this gets into the interesting. conversation about epidemiology and i. know you know about this. the way that epidemiology is so. misleading for us. and if you look at the association of. vitamin c. in the blood there's an association with. better outcomes. but when we do interventional studies we. don't see it and. with in this table you can see no effect. on mortality. no effect on the incidence of the common.
cold no effect on cardiovascular events. and essentially no decrease in systolic. blood pressure with intervention. no effect uh no incidences no effect on. the incidences of the common cold but. what about once someone has a cold it's. just like when emergency. and all these different vitamin c. supplements this is what they're always. claiming is that. taking it while you have the cold is. what's going to reduce the. duration of the disease concluded that. vitamin c supplementation has no effect.
on the incidence of the common cold. however a modest reduction of symptoms. was consistently found in reviewed. studies. yeah so maybe so so good while you have. it maybe while you have it. so if you have something then jack up. the dose. yeah vitamin c is a complex one because. there are many things which can lower. vitamin c as well. so metabolic dysfunction decreases. levels of vitamin c in our body. so the playing field is not always level.
right okay so if you have a cold. your your vitamin c level is going to be. lower could be lower right. or if you have a baseline of unhealth. something that's been super relevant. with the current covet conversation. yeah if you have a baseline of ill. health or baseline of metabolic. dysfunction sometimes synonymous with. insulin resistance. per a given vitamin c intake there's. lower levels of vitamin c. in the body so if you look at. animal foods like if you eat nose to. tail if you're eating a couple ounces of. liver per day. and some meat per day and other organs.
you can get pretty close to 70. milligrams of vitamin c a day which is. basically the rda i think the rda might. be 70 or 90 milligrams of vitamins. this expression nose to tail a lot of. people don't know what we're talking. about. what you're talking about is organ meats. yeah yeah. it's eating organ meats because most. people when they think of. eating animal products they think of. just eating tissue muscle tissue. and you know it's so funny i recently. was hanging out with steve ronella. and he was telling me historically the. trappers like these fur trappers maybe.
in the 1800s. at some point along the way we lost this. ancestral knowledge. that eating organs is so important and. that all indigenous cultures do it and. they savor the organs. really above all other things and they. distribute them among the tribe and. these trappers went out and they started. to just not. they get started to get sick from just. eating the muscle meat and they had to. start incorporating organs. and they died it was a historical. reference i'm not sure where he read it. but yeah if you look at the way that. indigenous cultures do this and you look. at the way that other animals do this as. well.
they don't waste anything particularly. we've talked about it many times in the. podcast wolves. the alpha wolf will eat the liver and. the other wolves have to stand by and. there's a. crazy documentary about a guy who lived. with wolves. and one of the ways he tricked these. wolves and thinking that he was the. alpha. was he would have an animal and he would. put a liver in the animal so they would. bring a carcass and he would be growling. at them while he ate the liver and they. were like wow i guess this guy's the. [ __ ] boss he's eating the liver. if you eat liver you get to be an alpha.
male or an alpha female well it was it. was weird that. he knew and that this is just the wolves. know. in their pack mentality that the alpha. is the one that gets the most nutritious. piece of the animal and there are even. organs beyond the liver that are. uniquely nutritious the heart. is is prized i mean the spleen the. pancreas these are things we. don't eat much as westernized humans but. yeah kidneys are. prized i mean so there was this really. interesting. arctic explorer villemar steffensen have. you heard of his adventures in the early.
1900s. yeah so he wrote the fat of the land not. by bread alone and. he he had quotes um i think i have a. quote from him here. in the um let's see i think it's in the. anthropology. so he would say that the um. actually it's in the nose to tail folder. jamie if you're looking for that. there's a screenshot there so he would. say that um. while meat of any kind is in great. demand it is interesting to note the. following are the favorite cuts.
the brisket of the beef with the fat and. the cartilages. so these indigenous cultures in the. um in the arctic would uh they would. favor things with fat and connective. tissue. the skin and subcutaneous fat of the. warthog. pigskin hog's head and brains. and number four is the liver of any. animal look at that pigskin is never. saved for rawhide and leather it's too. valuable as. food and is eaten after singeing off the. hair. and a prolonged boiling plump cow skin.
is similarly eaten a lean cow skin will. be saved for rawhide and leather. the hog's head brains and fat are both. delicacies. the liver of any animal the hands and. feet of monkey. because of the fat content whoa so they. tend to favor the fat and the organs. brother eating monkey hands should we. really listen to them i've never had. monkeys. you ever had brain i've had calves brain. what do you think when i was a child i. don't remember it was a long time ago.
but my uncle vinnie. used to uh they used to i guess it was. calves brain or lamb's brain. i don't remember but i remember they. would. grill it and i found it so strange that. we're eating it. i wish i could remember if i liked it or. not but i also like. i i was probably six you know. and i don't know if i had a sensibility. towards. different you know interesting like i. enjoy liver now i actually like it. i enjoy heart i eat it i i like.
some things that other people i like sea. urchin i like things that people might. find weird because of the texture alone. so i don't know if i felt that way when. i was little liver is amazing. i i know you had the guys from um black. rifle on and they were saying that when. they were taking the desiccated. organ supplements they had a rush of. energy but. i i kind of have this thing that i like. to do with people where i have them eat. raw liver. and it's really cool to see how it turns. their brain on. the baseline nutrition depends you know. will determine how much of a buzz they.
get but. of course there's always food with bile. like when you slice the liver and squirt. the bile on it i haven't. i'm hopefully going to hunt this year. and i want to do that with a gallbladder. yeah but i i think that it's so. interesting to to see that they would. savor the things that were salty there. was a little bit of salt in the. gallbladder and. yeah i've heard of indigenous cultures. using the gallbladder as a condiment. i think vanilla did that on one of his. shows where he cut raw liver and ate it. with the gallbladder yeah. yeah that's that's got to be a strong.
flavor. i'll report back i've eaten a lot of the. animal but i've never eaten the gall. the gall fluid so i've never eaten the. you know the nile. the comanche used to love to do that. with buffalo liver they would take the. buffalo liver raw and warm. right from the fresh kill and squirt. gallbladder on it. yeah i mean it can't be that i would say. can't be that bad but then you hear. about. like the people in iceland that eat that. pickled shark that. anthony bourdain told me was the single. most disgusting thing he's ever eaten in.
his life. and they love it it's like a delicacy. well i've eaten. warm liver out of a deer so i hunted in. is this ranella doing it oh. okay so he is that's the gallbladder. he's cutting open or he's. tearing open i should say he's taken out. look at that all the. grass and everything in there not crazy. it doesn't look appetizing not at all. no is that what that is right there i'm. not sure. i mean if it's if the bile but what's.
all that grass. i don't know if it's grass or just bile. it could be just. coagulated yeah let's give them some. volume and all their food goes from. their crop. which is a little holding tank oh that's. a bird down. this must be like a turkey oh it's. turkey edible organic pulverizes. okay else digestion oh it's a gizzard. yeah okay that makes sense. i've had gizzards from chickens before. you know. my family i'm italian as you are right. yeah yeah we uh.
we ate a lot of gizzards when i was a. kid i don't know why um see if you. fi the edible organs thing that's that's. wild turkey. see if you can find um ranella eats. raw liver with uh bile. have you ever had have you ever had raw. liver i have not joe we could do it yeah. i brought some. you did go get it let's forget it let's. eat it it's right here. i'll eat some raw liver jamie's gonna. throw up look at him he already started. making noises. [Laughter].
he already started making noises you. already had milk. what does that have to do with this. milk's a bad choice joe milk's a bad. choice so what grab a piece anchorman. yeah okay here we go while over rye. liver. what kind of liver is this it's cow's. liver this is from grass-fed. grass-finished regeneratively raised. cows from white oak pastures in georgia. it's quite chewy so what's supposed to. be reaction it doesn't taste much. different than cook lover. i think that the in the tribe so there's.
a interesting tribe in. africa called the new air tribe and. liver is so sacred that they couldn't. even touch it with human hands i don't. know how they got it from the animal to. people's mouths but. they would they would eat it a lot of. cultures eat it raw they'll just cut it. up and eat it raw i think. the idea is you lose a little bit of. nutrients when you cook it not much. but you lose a little bit so i've always. been fascinated by how many of this is. such a nutrient-rich organ how much of. it can i actually preserve. in terms of nutrients and do i feel. differently when i eat it raw. and there's you know there's a lot of.
interesting nutrients in liver that. aren't. well represented in the muscle meat. which we were talking about so muscle. meets a great source of. b12 and zinc and. iron and other things but so in the nose. to tail folder jamie there's a. graphic from my book that compares this. one i was guessing. whoa look at that yeah those cool ass. cave paintings. those i i've i find that so fascinating. those cave. cave art cave paintings uh price also. added the notion that liver is truly a. prize food.
for indigenous people regarding an. african tribe known as the how do you. say that. new heir new heir he stated i learned. that they have a belief. which to them is their religion namely. that every man and woman has a soul. which resides in the liver. and that a man's character and physical. growth depends upon how well he. feels feeds that soul by eating the. livers of animals. the liver is so sacred that it may not. be touched by human hands. now if that's the case how do you.
explain bert crusher. because that motherfucker's liver is. overworked. pickled even maybe delicious maybe. yeah he probably has like foie gras. right. human fogwa yeah i mean a liver liver is. totally over fed completely fatty that's. not what you want that's. non-alcoholic is not good well no fugue. is probably. i don't know that i'd be excited about. eating fogua they're like over feeding. the. the ducks right it's so good though it.
is it's so good. it's probably it's a it's a diseased. liver we can admit yeah well. people are like well you shouldn't do. that because the weird thing about is. the ducks. go to the feeding pipe they go to it. they want it to happen. like in our eyes like this forced. feeding is a terrible thing. but they actually gravitate towards that. pipe it's a very. like i'm not in favor of doing weird. [ __ ] to animals like that i'm not in. favor of giving them food they're not. supposed to eat i'm not in favor of. over feeding them or force feeding them.
but i just find it odd that they go. to that pipe like there's a you ever. seen how they do it i wonder what's in. it i wonder what they. feed them pretty sure it's grains um i'm. pretty sure that's what it is like. see if you can find them uh ducks. getting fed grains for fog. i wonder if they do anything to the. grains to make them overeat it because. there are lots of studies in rodents. sometimes you can use rodents that are. genetically predisposed to become. obese but if you alter the food and we.
know this with humans. you can alter food in some ways to make. it more palatable. and to kind of short circuit this time. these ducks are not into it this guy's. grabbing him by the neck. but this is a different setup this is. this is a handmade one. like or a handheld one and they're just. pumping it in there the video that i saw. like this these are all being force fed. yeah well i'm sure it's. the way i saw it was like there was a. pipe in the center of the room.
force-feeding ducks at hudson valley fog. i'll go up that feeding ducks. for fog walks this i think this is. probably. one where they uh yeah see it's. it's weird because you're grabbing the. duck they're not going to be into that. no matter what you do. and you're making them open their mouth. it just seems gross. yeah it is here's what's weird about it. is that any grosser than things that are. legal. you know because there's a lot of stuff. that's legal that we do to animals like. when do we decide what's legal and.
what's not legal because. factory farming should be [ __ ]. completely illegal and it's legal in. california you can get factory-fed. animals. and you could buy them left and right. what you can't get as far guard anymore. and i'm like well listen guys you got. you're not making any sense like this is. one small moment of this duck's day. where they're feeding them and they're. they're shoving a tube in his mouth and. over. feeding them the life of a pig that you. eat for bacon. is a terrible tortured life and you're. okay with that. you're just not okay with this [ __ ].
duck getting. extra grain pumped down its mouth. meanwhile they just live in a normal. life other than that. and feed lots i mean i think i agree. with you completely factory farming is a. scourge and it should i don't know why. we keep doing it i think there's a lot. of corn and soy subsidies that are. supported by it and it's really. unfortunate but. there's a lot of really interesting. discussion about the sustainability of. grass-fed grass-finished meat. and this regenerative agriculture. concept but is it sustainable. in at scale though like could you still.
have jack in the box. if you have grass-fed grass-finished. meat i think we can both agree. that grass-fed grass-finished meat is. healthier to consume. but the disagreement comes like bourdain. again. rest his soul would say he prefers grass. grain fed cows because he finds the meat. to be more delicious and tender. he liked it better as a chef um. and you know that's that's a culinary. choice like he. as an artist creating food he preferred.
an. animal that was you know like people. like wagyu. you know they like that kind of i think. that's that's a. [ __ ] dying animal man i agree with. you they're i mean if you look at the. way that cattle. are factory farmed the reason they have. all that intramuscular fat is because. they are less metabolically healthy than. their. grass-fed grass-finished cohort. the sustainability or the scalability. argument is so. important to consider so when i think. about this i think about it from a. couple of perspectives there's the land.
use perspective but there's also just. the actual. mathematics of it that 99. ish percentage of cows that we eat that. are grain finished. had 85 of their life on grass they don't. they're not raised. from calves in the factory farm so and. you then i think. wait a minute we haven't we're already. raising all of our cattle on grass for. 85. of their lives we're just sending them. to factory farms at the end. and i think it's a consumer-driven thing. it's people who want that type of meat. or they're not familiar with the gamey.
flavor or texture or they want it to be. intramuscular fat they want it to have. more marbling. and then the other the other aspect is. is the actual land use and then when you. think about how much land is used to. grow. corn and soy and then if we get rid of. all the corn and soy that goes to. animals and feedlots we can. graze cattle there and then there's. actually i believe it's called the. conservation reserve program. the federal government pays farmers to. let their lands. lay fallow for decades there's hundreds. of thousands of acres in the united.
states that are not being farmed. because they were monocropped to basic. they were monocrop. so badly that they had no nutrients they. can't grow plants on it. so what i think what everyone is missing. well not the people in the regenerative. agriculture space not you but. i think that the mainstream is missing. the fact that in order to regenerate. land in order to make land healthy. you put animals on the land right that's. why the center of the country where. there were millions of bison and elk and. antelope and deer and pronghorn. had the richest soil anywhere until we. monocropped it.
right and then we deplete the nutrients. it's a negative it's just a it's just a. sink we're just pulling nutrients out. but when you talk to the folks at white. oak pastures in georgia or other. regenerative farms. and you look at the soil it's incredible. that when animals live on the soil in an. ecosystem. it puts nutrients back into the soil the. soil is like the color of coffee grounds. right so i was in georgia recently at. bluffton at white oak um doing. photographs for a cookbook i'm writing. and will harris who's um a colleague of. joel salatin i know you've had.
joel on the podcast yeah love him yeah. and so will. has a two jars in his in one of the. churches on his property. in bluffton and one jar is soil from his. farm. and it's the color of coffee grounds. it's like five percent soil carbon. the other jar is from 25 yards away on. his neighbor's pasture. growing cotton or soy it's it's it's. like a. it's like the color of this wood table. it's a light brown they're completely. different and if you look at the soil. content of carbon it's point five. percent.
so you have 10x the amount of carbon in. the soil when it's farmed regeneratively. they've been doing regenerative. agriculture there for 20 years. and you can see this steady increase in. the amount of soil carbon i'll pull it. up there's a graphic from this in my. book. well it just completely makes sense. because manure is fertilizer. animals eat the grass they make manure. the manures fertilizer. worms and bugs live under the manure. there's an entire ecosystem that evolves. around these animals living the way. they've lived for.
hundreds of thousands if not millions of. years it makes sense that. it all works together synergistically to. feed the soil. and to provide nutrients for the very. animals and those animals will die. on that land and they will rot they will. provide even more fertilizer. and then other animals will live off of. them and live in that area and they too. will die and they will. [ __ ] all over the place and piss all. over the place and they will feed the. soil. and this is a system and we [ __ ] that. system up by growing corn. we [ __ ] that system up by growing you.
know a million acres of soybeans like. whatever the [ __ ] we do. why are we eating those things well it. seems like we thought it was a great. idea during world war one and world war. ii because they needed food. the reason why all this like subsidies. of farmers happened. it's not that you know the um. agriculture. business is evil uh and the government. is in bed with them. what happened was during the the first. and second world war. there was a need for surplus food.
there was a need for food because there. was back then there's a. very real concern for supplies for. troops for. supplies for the united states what i. mean we were at war. i mean a crazy war that i don't think. today in our. 2020 version of war which always happens. in some remote faraway land and. it's always a domination by the united. states i don't think we really. understand the. the desperate and terrifying times when. they were you know. asking people to donate metal and rubber. i mean it was it was a crazy time and.
the government stepped in and said we're. gonna pay. farmers to grow corn we need food and so. they subsidized. these farmers to grow all this food now. it's become a different animal because. now they're subsidizing people to grow. corn that is mostly in a lot of like. have a friend who has a farm and they. grow it for livestock. they have a huge area that they grow. corn. and it's all by the way monsanto corn. right they're spraying that [ __ ]. roundup on it. which is you know glyphosate is terrible. for you.
and i had a podcast about that recently. about environmental chemicals and how. bad. they are for you and then how that stuff. actually can be in the meat. and can in turn get into your system and. provide you with all sorts of problems. and. this is why there is there's. subsidizing of farmers i mean it's also. because we need farmers we need to keep. them. healthy and this is just not the way to. do it though. this mod if we could just get people off. the tit of corn. get people off the tit of these mono.
crop you know. mono crop agriculture we would be a. healthier country if we can. have these giant areas where people can. grow all kinds of things like. like polyface farms the way joel salton. runs things. he moves all of his animals around he he. lets all of his his pigs they live like. wild pigs they just eat acorns and nuts. and all these different things and he. supplements them sometimes and. and and he has incredible soil like the. other farm you're describing and. incredibly healthy animals.
that's the way it should be yeah and i. love that you said that it's just we. have this. dependence on soy and corn based. economies now and i love that the. regenerative agriculture movement is. starting. and that peeps slowly slowly there are. more farms that are shifting and. shifting and shifting. before the podcast i was telling you. about a ranch in fredericksburg called. rome ranch. yes and they're they're really cool they. have they raise bison. and if you look at the ground so when i. was out at rome i stood like a couple of. feet from a buffalo or a bison i don't. know.
was there a fence in between you and the. bus why are you doing that man. once you watch videos it was don't you. watch youtube it was just this. universal moment bro this is a great. video of a bison. charging another bison and launching it. into the air. think about how big what is a bison. weight like 2 000 pounds it was intense. it was just kind of like this we had. this bond those are. amazing animals beautiful animals. they're so amazing and if you look at. the ground at rome ranch this is. fredericksburg texas this is land that. was mono cropped i believe this is land.
that used to be fertile. in southern texas that was destroyed. okay. and then actually you know they're. starting to regenerate it they've been. regenerative i think for. three or five years and they start to. get more grass. growing on a piece of soil so if you. look at a square foot. hold up scroll that down there the hunt. how are you going to hunt something you. stand right next to. they have access out there oh okay. that's a different yeah yeah they will. not let you stand next to them. they will let you stand next to this. here oh they won't let you stand at the. axe but you can stand next to them.
no i'm saying i'm saying axes deer will. not let you stand next to them. also they have access to your hunts. there yeah and so this is only like an. hour plus from here. yeah yeah oh they have archery hunts. there too absolutely holla. yeah it's a great spot but if you look. at the ground. and you look at a square foot of the. ground at rome ranch you can see that. on the pastures that the bison are in. maybe only 30 or 40 percent of that. earth is growing grass but you know that. in the future if you you know move it.
out 20 years like. like white oak pastures has done when i. was in georgia. every inch every millimeter of that. ground is growing grass it's like thick. grass. right and and that's feeding the cattle. in a much more rich way and so that's. what regenerative agriculture is about. we should go there we should go there. and we should make a video we should of. us go in there and talk to them about. that throw it up on youtube i think that. would be really interesting i'd love to. they're great. i'm not gonna get near the [ __ ] bison. though you might i'm gonna learn my. lesson from other people. well we go out there with like we go out.
there with katie and taylor who. who own the farm and take care of it and. there's people out there who you work. with the bison and they know which. animals or more yeah see that's. aggressive [ __ ] all that man what if you. make a mistake. oh i thought it was mike that's bill. bill's crazy don't go near bill. the head of the buffalo the head of the. bison was big the size of my torso. it was moving man i was like wow yeah i. like experiences that make me feel small. yeah well that will do it man you know. back country skiing or. being on the pacific crest trail or any.
of the stuff this whole area used to be. overrun with bison which is really crazy. i mean this is where the comanche lived. and that was their primary food. yeah the comanche were an animal-based. culture which is really interesting is. that book empire the summer moon right. yes yes fantastic book but they. they really didn't eat much else they. ate a little bit of berries here and. there. but most of what their diet was was meat. and. that they also had there was a benefit. to that in terms of the way they could. travel. because they could go without food. longer than people that were mostly.
carbohydrate-based. the carbohydrate-based guys would like. the soldiers would crash. and the comanches could keep going. because their body would just go into. ketosis and they would live off fat. it was a natural like shift back and. forth between eating meat eating fat and. eating organs. to not eating for a while and so few. humans in 2020. have gone for more than 18 hours without. eating food. yeah very few of us in in how many. decades we've lived or. have utilized the fat burning systems in.
our body. you know you can use glucose or fructose. or. sugars you can use carbohydrates and you. can do glycolysis. but there's a whole other system where. you can either use fat that's coming in. or use fat from your body in beta. oxidation and ketones move the. you know the fat basically precursor. molecules around your body and. when we get adapted to that we have this. extra engine we have two engines we're. both hybrid and gas. but if we go long enough without ever. using the the hybrid. you know fat burning engine we kind of. lose it but you can get it back pretty. quickly it's kind of interesting today.
that there are a lot of people that are. interested in intermittent fasting. or you know having a very specific. feeding window. and they're they are seeing benefits of. that and i was reading some article. recently. that was saying there's it's a study. shows that there's no. weight loss benefit to intermittent. fasting and i'm like who made that. [ __ ] study and who are you studying. and how is that. everybody that i know that's done it has. lost weight like what are you talking. about like how. what is that study about and who why. would someone be.
even interested in promoting that. so much of what gets done in the. nutrition community in research is. [ __ ] yeah it's a lot of [ __ ] and. the devil's in the details right. um what were they feeding them what were. the ratio of oils in the food what. what were they doing for intermittent. fasting were they intermittent fasting. with. junk food were they intermittent fasting. with standard american diet food. i think it's pretty clear there's a lot. of compelling data in both at least in. animal models and i believe in human. models too. that having a feeding window and having.
time when your body shifts from. quote carbohydrate burning or using the. glycogen sort in your liver to making. ketones. even on a daily basis that cycling is. beneficial for humans you're flipping. back and forth between. anabolic and catabolic pathways at a. broad level you're looking at systems. like mtor the mammalian target. arapamycin. amp kinase they're they're they're. balancing systems this is a. i mean they're kind of this seesaw and. we know that when you have. amp kinase at a very broad level when. you have more of this. ketogenic physiology when you when you.
exhaust the glycogen in your liver. you turn on these autophagy mechanisms. you do the cellular house cleaning and. that's beneficial for humans our. ancestors would certainly have done. please explain that to people the. cellular house cleaning the the. that your body actually does get rid. of some damaged cells damaged cells and. damaged proteins within cells and. damaged mitochondria so within the cell. there are these. quote powerhouse factories which are. probably. ancient bacteria you know billions of. years ago that combined with a.
single-celled organism and we became. eukaryotic with a membrane-bound nucleus. and a membrane-bound. organelle called mitochondria which. produces atp for the body and so. within the body there are all these. organelles within our cells and some of. them. the the job of that that organelle is to. basically be the trash compactor. old proteins are ubiquinated and they're. moved to organ to the organelles that. recycle them. and so you do this cellular house. cleaning but and it seems to happen more. when you're.
in this state of ketosis or. when you're not using the glucose from. or when you're not in sort of an. anabolic physiology. and so you can see that with our. ancestral with our ancestors we would. have switched back and forth. we wouldn't have been successful in. hunts every day we would have had some. hunts that were successful and some. gathering sessions were. which were successful and others which. weren't and when they're not successful. you're. you're fasting and so that's a that's a. beneficial thing i mean. i think that that that intermittent. cellular house cleaning is an ancestral. pattern that we would do well.
to to a spouse to mirror like so your. body. doesn't have any food to digest so it's. like look let's do some cleaning up we. got a bunch of junk. laying around the attic let's sweep it. up but if we're. doing the standard american thing which. is to eat constantly and snack. throughout the day and then. can't wait to have dinner and then can. we have breakfast and can't wait to have. lunch and. your body never really gets a break it's. always digesting it's always digesting i. mean. it would be so interesting to look at. the the western population of the. american population and see how many of.
them. actually exhaust liver glycogen. overnight how many people actually wake. up with ketones in their blood. i think it would be a fraction i think. the majority of people. never get rid of their liver glycogen. never actually flip and. to be fair i i actually don't think we. should always be in ketosis either i. think that that can. present some challenges to the human. physiology and that intermittent. you know inclusion of carbohydrates can. be beneficial for humans and. this is a cycle it's a circle like many. things are in our life and our ancestors.
in spite of the fact that they favored. meat and organs they certainly would. have had carbohydrates from time to time. when they were available. so this this balance i think that. personally when the people i've worked. with and. in the reading that i've done everything. i've learned it's it works better to be. cyclic ketosis rather than persistent. ketosis all the time though ketogenic. physiology i think is. intrinsic to humans it's beneficial. super healthy. and a lot of people find massive. benefits from it well ketosis. particularly for people that have. epilepsy. or and for seals that work on those.
rebreathers. you know um they found that being in. ketosis can keep them from having. seizures yeah. which is really kind of fascinating it. changes the neural physiology yeah yeah. well for children. children that have epilepsy they found a. great benefit in being in ketosis. it just it makes sense that your body. would. fare best on the things that it evolved. with. the things that it evolved with are. mostly animals. fish and fruits i agree with you.
whatever you could mean you know. obviously you don't get fruit all year. round. you get it a specific time when the. fruit falls from the tree. but animals were available 365 days a. year and that's most likely what a lot. of people ate. and if you look at hunter-gatherer. tribes that's what we see yeah they're. and. it's so interesting to me that they have. a preference for. animal foods yeah a lot of them will eat. tubers occasionally there's. actually a pretty cool study i think. you'll find it in the. the anthropology folder jamie or.
that's termed hards of fallback foods. it's the fourth one there and this is. such a cool study i i really want to go. spend time with the hazard next. time david cho did i heard him on the. podcast that is one of the most intense. uh things that i've ever heard described. on the podcast when he's talking about. them. hunting baboons because the area where. they live has been so depleted of game. that they're they're reduced to baboon. hunting. you know and he was like it's really. crazy and really dark. when you know you see a baboon got hit.
by an arrow and they grab the arrow. like with their hands like yikes that. that story was poignant for sure. that's too deep for me it was intense. but when i heard that conversation with. david show. a couple of things stood out for me and. one of them. was that when he asked them what was the. best day of your life. they all the people he asked said it was. the day that i killed the biggest animal. and fed the tribe. yes it wasn't the day that i found this.
huge patch of berries or i got i dug the. biggest tuber. right it was the day that i killed the. biggest animal and fed the tribe. and the other thing that they. communicated to him was that. the animals that they hunt now are. different that they can't hunt the same. animals which has probably changed their. food patterns. in modern day yeah and that he even said. this in the podcast that they're. they were sort of describing him there. used to be big animals everywhere. and you can imagine what it was like for. the comanche as they came to the plains. and they were hers of. thousands of buffalo yeah like there is.
no scarcity of food. there is a ton of big animals and these. animals are not even big relative to. what might have been here when they were. megafauna. you know tens of thousands of years ago. but you just think about the way that. currently living hunter-gatherers might. have changed their their food stuffs. to survive and if you had wooly mammoth. all the time. man i think you're probably gonna eat. some honey if you can find it but honey. and wooly mammoth sounds like a good. diet to me i mean that's a huge huge. smorgasbord i want to get into the honey. thing but i also want to talk about.
what is what is it called i always screw. up the word is it glucogenesis like what. is it called when your body. converts protein into glycogen. gluconeogenesis gluconeogenesis. okay so that is what occurs if you just. eat. nothing but meat you will develop. some glucose you have to you have to. in ketosis your body will do. gluconeogenesis. and your body does this without. you don't need any carbohydrates you. don't need any carbohydrates to do it it.
will use. there are certain amino acids that are. gluconeogenic the backbone of a fat. molecule is glycerol that's. gluconeogenic lactate. their acetate there are other molecules. that can make glucose we have a. backup system to make glucose because. there are. tissues in the body that require glucose. and this is why. if you eat only meat you will get. knocked out of ketosis if you have too. much protein. yeah which may not necessarily be a bad. thing it's just. it's human physiology it's pretty. fascinating though that your body has.
it knows how to do that it doesn't. convert it yeah yeah because you you. would die otherwise yeah if we didn't. make glucose from protein and glycerol. backbones and. other substrate we would die we need. glucose one of the things that i found. when i did. a total animal diet for a month is. my energy level was really sustained. throughout the day it was very even and. i found it to be very unusual like there. was no difference between me. at 11 a.m versus me at 7 pm it was.
a flat line throughout the day and i. cannot say that. about any other diet that i've ever been. on there's been these ups and downs and. especially when i'm eating just normal. whatever whatever i feel like eating. cheeseburger. have a bowl of spaghetti whatever i'm. thinking about you know whatever i feel. like eating when i do that. there's horrible crashes like and the. way i. feel after meals is so different the way. i feel after meals when i was on the. carnivore diet which again admittedly i. only did really. strictly for a month like now i'm on the.
carnivore diet until i go out to dinner. and then i eat whatever the [ __ ] i want. like last night i had sushi. um but for the most part during that. month. uh i had like real amazing energy and. a lot of clarity and i felt extra. aggressive. which was weird and i i don't know if. that was just because i felt better and. that's just my nature. when i'm not tired but uh not aggressive. in a bad way but aggressive. like i was quicker to like mock things. like [ __ ] that. i was i had more energy and more it was.
more fun to make fun of things too i had. more energy. to exercise i had more more uh. ambition to do things it was very weird. and i was thinking like. there's without a doubt some sort of. physiological change. to my body that's that's happening while. i'm on this and i lost a lot of weight. too i lost. 12 pounds in a month which i thought was. pretty extraordinary that's a. that's a very large amount of weight to. lose in a month and i heard you also say. your vitiligo got better. yes it did yeah that is amazing that's.
really. started filling in which is really. strange because i first got interested. in the carnivore diet because of. autoimmunity. and and the way that just the hypothesis. could some of these plant toxins that we. were kind of talking about earlier. could these be triggering immunologic. reactions in humans and we know they do. gluten is a plant lectin and it. certainly triggers an immunologic. reaction in the small intestine. could that model be at play on a bigger. scale for people with. vitiligo i had eczema and asthma which.
is an autoimmune condition. what about autoimmune thyroid disease. what about psychiatric illness which i. believe is autoimmune as well. i think there's probably quite a few of. them that are now when you said you had. eczema and asthma was that cured with. the carnivore diet or is it in remission. like. i think that's just syntax right of. course so i have not had. any flares of eczema since i've been. eating a carnivore or carnivore-ish diet. for the last two years. except one time when i reincorporated. some plants back in my diet and. experiment with squash so i'll get.
eczema unlike my. wrists so you got it just from taking. squash. yeah the squash and it kicked it back in. it kicked it back in you had. nothing for two years and then you have. squash then it kicks in. it had a little bit of xm on my lower. back and then you stopped eating squash. goes away yeah wow and there are i mean. squash is one of the foods that i would. think is fairly ancestrally consistent. and. fairly less offensive to humans because. in the book i. don't the book is not meant to convince. everyone to stop eating all plants.
the book is really meant to do a couple. things it's meant to help people. understand that. animal meat and organs are the foods. that we've been eating throughout our. evolution they're wrongly vilified today. and we can talk about why with the. epidemiology. and they should be a part of any they're. an integral part of any healthy human. diet and then i created kind of a. spectrum of plant toxicity thinking. about hunter-gatherer tribes. and which parts of plants they favor and. which parts of plants they discard. and then thirdly i think it's important. to understand what we talked about. processed vegetable oils and processed. sugars. hugely bad for humans but i'm really.
interested in carnivore and. carnivore-ish type diets. so that it can the most number of people. can benefit now. what about fruit what when you say you. eat a carnivore-ish diet i know you. incorporate honey but do you eat any. fruit. i've experimented with it and i so for. about a year and three quarters i had. just meat and organs and fat. and i was in ketosis all the time. depending how much protein i had. and then i had um some thoughts about. what is what does my blood sugar look. like when i do this. i got a cgm i got one of these.
continuous glucose monitors. and i started um i started incorporating. carbohydrates first as an experiment. and what i noticed was that with sort of. these less toxic carbohydrates or what. what i think of as. more ancestrally consistent sources of. carbohydrates i felt even better the. eczema didn't come back with honey. i had occasional fruit i found that i. couldn't overeat fruit. i couldn't if i ate too much fruit i. felt bloated and kind of just. farty and didn't feel good fruit seems. to have this built-in mechanism where we. can only eat so much of it.
honey is you know i can eat a moderate. amount and feel just fine. but the inclusion of those carbohydrates. actually made me feel a little better. i slept a little better with long-term. ketosis for myself and what i've. observed for some people perhaps not all. with long-term ketosis electrolyte. deficiencies a lot of times develop. people get cramps they get palpitations. and we know that when ketogenic. physiology happens our body partitions. electrolytes differently. sodium you know sodium retention in the. kidney is different and then when sodium. becomes a little bit funky our body.
wastes a little magnesium a little. potassium and so. that started to kind of make sense to me. i thought oh maybe it doesn't have to be. as dogmatic as. full meat and organs um maybe we can you. know. maybe more people would benefit if we. think about this more like our ancestors. right more like the hadza. eating berries or bob or baobab and then. honey occasionally and you can always. look at your blood sugar. with a cgm or other metrics what was. fascinating and i. actually have my all my blood work if. you want to see it or any of my. continuous glucose monitor readings but.
you can see. this is all in the lab work or the blood. work folder jamie. and there at the bottom there's those. three images of my. blood sugar and there's a few other ones. but you can see that with with honey and. and meat and organs. don't really have much of a change in. the blood sugar at all it's pretty. pretty mild most of the time and it. stays very consistent. honey has a lot of really unique. properties too doesn't it. yeah there's there's a certain honey i. want to say it's from new zealand my. wife was just talking to me about it the. other day.
yes that actually helps people heal. better. i think a lot of honeys do that actually. now manuka has a very good publicist i. haven't seen anyone what it is. i think it might i think it's super. expensive yeah. i think a lot of honeys can help with. that but if you look at the literature. on honey. there's studies so when i first thought. about honey i thought this is going to. cause dental cavities. and i'm good friends with a periodontist. incidentally a periodontist who has. an advanced uh leukemia who's on a. carnivore diet and doing really well.
but he was pointing me to a bunch of. evidence that honey's been used to treat. oral candida to treat it actually. can have activity against caryogenic. bacteria in the mouth. they use it to treat oral mucositis it's. incredible these compounds and honey. look very different. so the associations that we have with. sugar and periodontal disease. is really just processed sugar probably. yeah there might be something different. about honey and then if you look in rats. again we're moving to an animal model. when you give rats a lot of fructose.
they don't do good. right rats have nor do we right nor to. humans. nor to humans but moderate amounts. humans seem to do okay with. like fruit amounts but massive amounts. in rats or moderate amounts in rats do. don't do well because rats do their. biochemistry a little differently they. convert fructose to fat. and do they give it to them in fructose. corn syrup or do they give it to them. and. it's in their facial fruit it's in their. feed so they add. to the feed they add fructose and they. might actually be sucrose as. glucose and fructose yeah which is.
essentially the same as high fructose. corn syrup just has to do with. what the ratios are of the glucose and. the fructose and if you look at. rats given honey versus rats given sugar. they have different outcomes really yeah. yeah that's in the honey folder jamie. the honey rats protective so there's. something about the consumption of honey. that's actually. net beneficial well it seems to mitigate. the oxidative stress so. if you look at the bottom there see. where it says compared with those fed. fructose yeah. interesting well it tastes good too.
honey. it's delicious it doesn't taste like. you're doing anything wrong. like when i eat a piece of chocolate. cake it tastes great but it tastes like. i'm [ __ ] up. you know what i'm saying yeah i don't. know if that's psychological or what but. when i have honey with my tea. like it's delicious and it feels like i. crave it like it's i'm enjoying it. like it's doing something for me i like. it hopefully in the future when i get to. go. spend time with the hadza i'll be able. to eat in the comb like they do. but in the in the anthropology folder. jamie there's a study the hards of. fallback. foods the hadza both the men and the.
women in the hadsa tribe rate honey as. their favorite food. and the men say meat is their second the. women say. meat baobab and berries are all so if. you go down to the third or the fourth. page you'll see this graphic. baobab and what is that uh b-a-o-b-o-b. so you see that's the the black bar is. how many people like honey right. and the next bar is meat and then baobab. berries and tubers so both males and. females. they don't they don't really like tubers.
a whole lot vel digum has a fallback. food and. actually the title of this paper is. heads of fallback foods. but at the end of the paper they say. there's this observed behavior that. there's a lot of meat in the camp. the women will stop digging tubers for. two to three days baobab is this tree in. tanzania that has this fruit i've never. had it but it has this kind of dry. this dry fruit pulp on the outside of. the seeds maybe you can find a picture. of baobab. jaime but um yeah it's interesting stuff. but they all love honey. in the hadza tribe and the that's it wow.
yeah it's a really cool looking tree. freaky tree if i saw that i believe. that's a trap that's not a real tree. that one in the upper left-hand corner. like that looks really different i'd be. like dude that is not a tree something. there's someone in there. they're gonna grab you when you walk by. that almost looks like the tree from. that tree in the princess bride. yes look at this guys he's climbing into. a hole in the tree the hard to have this. special axe they use. and if they if they see wow those are. crazy. yeah that's the weirdest tree look it's.
for folks that are just listening. they're really fat and wide and then the. top they have these tiny little branches. jamie go to the left side the left of. the other images that you. you were gonna go drop down into the. lower right hand corner of that one the. bulbous one it looks like an onion. look at that thing that is so crazy. amazing. apparently this tree is common and the. fruit are fairly prevalent. interesting baobob baobab okay i think. that's how you pronounce it. but if you look at and if you look at. tooth decay and the hadza there's some.
interesting findings. the women actually that are in that eat. indigenous in each ancestrally don't. really have significant tooth decay. the men have higher rates of tooth decay. and we don't know whether that's because. they're eating more honey or because. they also smoke tobacco and marijuana. and tobacco and marijuana are certainly. associated with dental cavities or. periodontitis so. there's been some concern about that but. at least in myself i haven't seen. anything and. i've actually talked to a number of. dentists who have said no honey is. protective in the mouth which.
goes against everything we think but. there are studies that look at the ph of. the mouth so i'm not a dentist. i'm a medical doctor but when i've been. educated by. dentists tooth decay appears to happen. when the ph of the mouth drops when we. eat sugar or something that's. fermentable or. in the setting probably a fat soluble. vitamin deficiency the ph of the mouth. drops. and the back the karyogenic bacteria are. able to thrive. well if you look at the ph of the mouth. when you eat honey it drops and then it. rebounds more quickly. so it's interesting is there something. in the honey that prevents that it's. certainly an ancestrally consistent food.
if you look at where honey is available. in the world it's eaten everywhere it's. available. it just makes sense i mean you see. animals eat it you see bears eat it of. course. you know they're famous for those. letting bees bite them while they just. sting them while they eat their honey. yeah um what what's. there's things about high fructose corn. syrup that makes it particularly. damaging. to the body what are those things so. fructose and glucose are different. molecules. and fructose and glucose have different. biochemistry.
in glucose biochemistry there's a stop. gap there's a rate limiting enzyme. called phosphofructokinase. meaning that if you try and overeat. glucose your body is going to put the. brakes on it and not do glycolysis which. is the process by which you. turn glucose that you're eating into. energy right. there's no break on fructose so fructose. bypasses phosphofructokinase and can. essentially move down the shared. glycolytic pathway into the formation of. the glycerol backbone and triglycerides.
which are essentially fats. without any without any breaks so. the problem is not high fructose corn. syrup itself. it's that you can eat it in without. without stopping right that you can get. massive amounts of it and they're. calorically bereft so. if you were to eat if you if i were to. give you if you look at isocaloric. studies of fructose. there's no evidence that they that. fructose increases uric acid or blood. pressure or weight gain iso caloric. but when anything with high fructose.
corn syrup is going to be. so enticing is going to short-circuit. your satiety mechanisms. so much that you're just going to. overeat it in a way that fruit doesn't. do right like we said you fruit has this. stopgap it kind of has this break on it. you're like i can't eat any more fruit. that's another thing that i noticed. about doing the carnivore diet for that. one month was that satiety. um when you're only eating meat you. don't eat as much. you just don't i mean it's it's it's a. you could. call it it's not just an elimination.
diet but it is. it's in many ways it's you're reducing. calories. just because you're just not as hungry. and you eat to. satisfaction but overall the calorie. consumption is much less. than if you were eating it along with. like. macaroni and cheese or you know creamed. corn or. bread or all these other things you. would keep eating like if you have a. steak. and you only eat this 18 ounce ribeye. you will.
you're you're only gonna eat a certain. amount i mean maybe you'll eat the whole. thing. but maybe you'll get like three quarters. away and you'll be like i'm good but if. you've got. mashed potatoes and gravy and bread. you'll just keep [ __ ] eating and it's. weird it's weird your body just wants to. stuff. more stuff into your mouth there there. are different satiety mechanisms i think. happening at the level of the. hypothalamus in the brain when you're. just eating protein and fat versus. protein and fat and carbohydrates. and there's nuance there as well i. there's some really interesting evidence. that polyunsaturated fatty acids.
probably hijack these satiety mechanisms. as well and that linoleic. acid specifically and other omega-6s. can have negative consequences of the. level of the brain and you don't get. that satiety response to turn off but. yeah i agree with you every once in a. while on strict carnivore diets people. can't eat enough. because of this yeah and they and they. do benefit from including some. carbohydrates in their diet and i think. you know our ancestors have done that. occasionally but again. i do think that for humans to thrive we. should not fear meat and organs and you. make that the center of your diet.
and like you're saying i think that. there is a benefit to a carnival-rich. diet. just like you how many people are going. to eat just meat and organs for their. whole life. some a devoted few and they're. definitely going to benefit. but i think that the number is 10 to 20. to 100x. who might benefit from understanding. that meat and organs are valuable. incorrectly vilified and that there's a. spectrum of plant toxicity. and that expands it because when i tell. people that i eat meat and organs and. fat they look at me really funny. but if i tell them that occasionally i.
eat an avocado or some raspberries. or some blueberries or some honey their. eyes kind of. the gears start turning they're like. maybe i could do that. and it starts to look like. i would say a reimagined version of a. paleolithic diet because that's what. we're essentially asking. what is the species-appropriate human. diet what is the genetic. congruence between our environment and. our genetics in 2020 i believe we're. really still programmed to eat like. our ancestors and that we still thrive. doing this but it can be a little bit.
more broad for people than just a strict. carnivore diet for those that will. will espouse that you know if i say hey. what about avocado so in the book. in chapter 12 i talk about this spectrum. of plant toxicity. and if you think about it from a plant's. perspective there are parts of a plant. that it wants you to eat. usually like the fruit and a lot of. parts of the plant that it doesn't want. you to eat. and it doesn't want you to eat its. leaves why would the plant want you to. eat its leaves. it doesn't want you to eat its seeds. those are the reproductive parts of a.
plant. right so if you chew the seeds that's. where this you were talking about these. negative compounds. that only happen when you choose. certainties like apple seeds. apple seeds have amygdalin it's a. cyanogenic glycoside and yes. you can there there's enough it actually. can release cyanide moieties in the. human body. it's frankly toxic apples do not want. you to eat the seed but they don't mind. if you swallow them and [ __ ] them out. [ __ ] them out in a nice pile of. fertilizer. right which is how they wind up growing. how they grow. and it's the same with all the stone.
fruits all the stone fruits uh peaches. plums. even almonds they have this cyanogenic. glycoside amygdalin and. they're toxic like apricot kernels the. fda i think had to. step in or the usda to step in and have. manufacturers remove. apricot kernels from trail mix there was. a big. uh there was a big fervor about the. hunza a couple of years ago maybe a. decade ago. and there was this this widely. promulgated false notion that they were. having this longevity benefit from this. amygdalin and the apricot kernels and.
it was really potentially dangerous for. humans so. they ended up with these apricot kernels. the apricot seed. in trail mix and the usda or the fda had. to step in and say no no you can't do. that that has a toxic. compound and almonds were very toxic and. we kind of bred it out of them. so a lot of the foods we eat today are. sort of we're stripping the toxins away. from the plants but the intentions were. clear. was one of those goofy vegan doctors who. looks like [ __ ] was uh. on this podcast and he was talking about. how he got really really sick. because he picked these berries.
elderberry yes i've seen the videos. elderberry's completely toxic raw how. the [ __ ] are you giving nutrition advice. where you don't even know that this is a. toxic berry. and so some berries are toxic but if you. think about fruit more fruit is edible. than not. right but yeah i thought that was a. hilarious video he's talking about he's. talking about drooling. and that guy look i don't want to make. much his name i'm sure he's a nice. person and i think he's doing he's. trying to do well. i think he's just trapped in an. ideological paradigm he's like in this. he's locked into this world and.
applauded and that's where he gets his. love from. and if you leave that world by god i've. seen people do it and they get attacked. in the most vicious. and horrific ways it when their body is. falling apart. and they incorporate salmon and also. they start getting erections. and they start feeling better people. will attack them it's like. it i understand where these people are. coming from in terms of them not wanting. to do harm. i understand it i i i see their. perspective. but the vicious ways they attack people.
that leave. that that i'm going to call it a cult. because it's kind of like a cult. it's it's a dietary choice it's a. lifestyle choice. but it's a very it's it's an ideology as. well there's there's there's parts to it. it's a meme that poor guy. looks like dog [ __ ] he looks so bad. and for him to be espousing. this as a method of achieving health and. wellness you're like come on man do you. have a [ __ ] mirror in your house.
i want to do like he's bloated it's like. crazy. it's crazy he's got his barrel chest. he's no muscle at. all he's like his neck is barely holding. his head up. it's so strange it's like my god and. there are very healthy vegans by the way. i mean. the ones that do it right like my friend. rick roll he looks fantastic he's great. he runs ultra marathons i have. friends that are athletes that are. vegans they figure out how to do it. right. i think some people can pull it off but. some people that are like in the.
community that are giving advice. like they're they look like [ __ ] looking. horribly. with the people with the vegans that are. thriving i always wonder. how good would you be if you ate meat i. know. well maybe not i wonder i mean i think. that there are some. people whose ancestors developed in. certain parts of the world or maybe meat. was scarce. i mean this is a hypothesis it's just a. theory but i think that. it's very likely that there are places. that are rich in. edible plants and not very rich in.
wildlife. it's possible um so the story that i. hear. and i've done a podcast with rich i'm. not friends with him but i did a podcast. on the minimalist where we had like kind. of a friendly debate. how did you guys how did that go i. didn't listen to that um it was pretty. good because the guys at the minimalists. are so cool and it was very civil. but um i i wasn't. it wasn't bad it was okay i'd love to. talk to him more but rich. rich isn't a scientist right he's a very. nice guy he's a super nice guy but not a. scientist. he's the best version of veganism.
he's not trying to convert anybody he's. just talking about his own personal. experiences and. and they've been net positive for him. you know and the story that i've heard. and i don't want to put any words in. rich's mouth but the story that i've. heard from. him and other vegans is is valid but. it is often i was eating a diet of junk. food right. i was drinking a lot and and i did this. intentional choice which is. freaking amazing i would give anybody a. high five i think anyone deserves. congratulations for making any.
intentional choice in their diet i just. want to provide information. to help them make the best choice right. and so. i think that they've made intentional. choices they've cut out processed. seed oils they've cut out you know. processed food and they feel. better and my question is have you done. the other thing. right exactly have you eaten meat in. organs and have you eaten buffalo yeah. that's. bison that's grazed on like really. healthy ground. yeah with real good grain raw liver. ritual. because.
i don't think he got me high it was okay. it was edible. but there was a point in time where if i. was queasy when i was the texture of. that when i was. chewing on it i was like if i was of a. weaker constitution we might have had an. issue. but you're stronger now so check this. out you'll appreciate this so in the. evolution folder. jamie i don't know if the study will be. great to pull up but there's a study in. there the vegetarian erp. brain study so they've done studies with. with vegetarians and vegans and.
omnivores looking at the eeg. so looking at the electroencephalogram. and looking at the way the brain. responds. at a neocortical and a more basic level. and so the bottom thing there is kind of. a complex statement but they. you see what they say the findings. suggest that vegetarians aversion toward. non-vegetarian food prevails at the. subjective level. and it's consistent with personal. beliefs but at the neural level. the intrinsic motivational salience of. animal food.
remains so that means that in the deeper. brain. they still crave meat yeah well they eat. it when they get drunk. exactly there's such a high proportion. of them that you eat it when they get. yourself. the number i think it's 30 to 40 joe. let's find i love this statistic it's a. weird statistic right because who's. answering these. i always wonder like who's who are you. asking like there's so many people that. never get asked. yeah like how many people are. vegetarians that get drunk and eat meat. and you never ask them and how many. people stay strong and they don't they. stick to their diet when they get drunk.
what does it what does it say let's see. proportion. of vegetarians percentage of vegetarians. that eat meat when drunk it's a big. number i think it's i remember reading. it in the high 30s. yeah it's a big number yeah and that's. the ones that are willing to admit it. that's the other thing about that. thing it's like you just got it like he. there was one girl who got in real. trouble. because um someone photographed her. eating fish right wasn't it like a fish.
taco or something like it could have. been yeah i don't know exactly but i've. heard the stories yeah. yeah 34 thirty-seven to sli. oh thirty-seven eating meat when drunk. and thirty-four. percent of those admitted to slipping. every time they're hammered. just twenty-two percent answer they only. drop their standards rarely. well that means they all do it then. they're all liars. yeah yeah it's it's it's in our brain. right. it's in our brain and i like you i. respect people making an intentional. choice. and it's certainly a better choice than.
the standard american diet of shitty. absolutely sugar and processed foods. yeah. yeah it's um that's a subject that we. should get into. processed vegetable oils that this is a. fairly recent thing. in terms of the human diet over the past. 100 years or so and there's a direct. correlation between. incorporating these processed. seed oils and terrible health results. it's a fascinating story joe because if.
you look at how healthy we are in 2020. it's pretty abysmal so jamie and the. folder metabolic health ir. at the bottom there's a series of. graphics that really illustrate this. well i think it'll. be really cool for everybody to see so. my friend jeff knobs let me borrow these. graphics from his blog. so start with the one on the row below. that jamie um. the red one it's just the row below. that's like the. chronic disease oh you don't see the row.
so this is screenshot uh 1018.58. there we go so if we look at chronic. disease prevalence in america it's. clearly. rising um it's a scary thought so what. is causing that right that is a massive. spike. look at that from 1940 to 2020 i mean it. is just like a [ __ ] skateboard ramp. it is a skateboard ramp what is causing. that and you know a lot of people the. prevailing narrative today. is we eat too much and we're too. sedentary. and i think that's a gross.
oversimplification because if you look. at the data. we smoke less now so in 1955. there were 45 percent of people who. smoked and today there's 14 percent of. people that smoke. we now have essentially the same cancer. prevalence. that we had you know 20 years ago. more of us exercise in 2018 54. of people reported exercise relative to. 1995 44. and more americans are quote eating. healthy in 2018 there's 59 percent of.
americans. adhering to healthier eating and yet i. think that's crazy if you look at rates. of obesity so this is the screenshot. that is 10 1940 jamie. look at the percentage of obesity in. america but that's just nuts that so. many more people smoke. and yet there's less people smoking i. mean so many more people smoke in 1940. but yet there's less cancer. yeah look at obesity that's just obesity. if you look at. obesity and overweight it's over 70. percent these are just. arbitrary so this is just from the 70s.
just the 70s to today. so what is going on what is going on. we're exercising more smoking less rates. of cancer are the same. we drink essentially the same amount of. alcohol and that's where the story gets. to be really interesting and this isn't. none of this is causal none of this. is um you know interventional studies. these are just kind of detective work. so look at the 10.18.41 jamie that's. diabetes prevalence it tells the exact. same story. it's just it's scary so something is. going on and we kind of have to say. we kind of have to be as a medical.
community we have to be honest and say. look at diabetes. that's formally diagnosed diabetes with. hemoglobin a1c. and fasting glucose like these are. people who are very. far on the spectrum of metabolic. dysfunction again it's. it's skyrocketed and so what's going on. here. and so now jamie if you go to 10.16.56. that was the first one you brought up. we can look and this is just this is. detective work but we can start to make. inferences or guesses at least based on. trends and calories from major food.
troops this is actually a pretty cool. graphic. so the top line there the green one is. grains it goes up a little bit. but since 1995 it's gone down. you can even look at sugars and. sweeteners again they go up a little bit. but in the last 20 years they've gone. down. and the consumption of meat has gone up. so. we'll consider meat as a probable driver. but look at that red line in the middle. we see what that line is yeah that's. vegetable oil man. and then if you dig into that meat as a. driver.
this is the 10.18.5. jamie look at the total meat consumption. by. type um that one. so what are we eating more of it's not. red meat the type that's getting. vilified we're eating more chicken. so you might say oh red meat is driving. the problem no we're eating less red. meat than we did. and clearly that doesn't quite work. quite a bit quite a bit less red meat if. you look at the middle. between 1970 and 1980 the spike.
to what we have now in 2020 that's a. that's a significant drop. yeah and then if you go back to one of. those other ones jamie the 10.18.26 you. can see americans are eating less. saturated fat. cholesterol and sodium because those are. all things that that. get vilified right and i don't believe. saturated fat is a villain at all. saturated fat is incredibly healthy for. humans when it's from. well-sourced animals but we're eating. less saturated fat that's the blue line. or just essentially. exactly the same so these are not. driving it. red meat is not driving it nobody thinks. chicken is driving the chronic disease.
epidemic. and then you look at 10.18.19. we're eating more plant foods i'm not. saying that plant foods are driving this. but. that doesn't look like we're going you. know like that's certainly not. you know and the real driver here i. suspect. is the last one jamie 10.18.09. if you look at the consumption of. vegetable oil by. um by americans in since 1910 whoo. and that is a staggering amount you.
don't want to skateboard that ramp. that's tony hawk are they man yeah. that's sodium. look at that man and you can see soybean. is the main one but canola sunflower. cottonseed peanut and other. this is completely evolutionarily. inconsistent this is completely. dissynchronous with our evolution we. would never have been grinding. soybeans up into oil we didn't have the. ability to do this. and then you can get into all of the. reasons this might be doing this but. you know as i kind of dug into this it. gets a little bit deep in the weeds but.
at a molecular level. these polyunsaturated fats they act. differently in our body and we don't. fully have this figured out. but at the level of our mitochondria it. does look like these polyunsaturated. fats this linoleic acid rich vegetable. oil. is signaling things differently and it. i'm i think it's really there's a lot of. compelling evidence to suggest that. linoleic acid is driving adipocyte. hypertrophy. meaning fat cells are getting bigger and. their fat cells can do two things they. can get bigger or they can divide. when fat cells get big and they don't.
divide they eventually start. leaking out inflammatory mediators. leaking out free fatty acids. and so what you see is you start to see. this this interesting set of data that. points to the fact that maybe all these. excess linoleic acid. is driving our fat cells to get really. big but isn't allowing them to divide. the way they're supposed to. you can imagine evolutionarily that as. winter is coming we might have had a few. more seeds. which are foods in nature that have. linoleic acid but nothing like our. consumption today. so maybe it was advantageous to get a.
little bit more linoleic acid. when things might be scarce in the. winter in you know northerly climbs. maybe there's an evolutionary mechanism. here but the potential is that. every single day all of us in the. western world if we're eating excess. vegetable oils excess polyunsaturated. fat specifically linoleic acid. we are driving a signal to our. adipocytes that winter is coming. get fat stay fat whoa so it's just this. evolutionary inconsistency and it's not. rocket science it's like wait a minute. just stop eating those oils and really.
stop consuming animals. fed corn and soy especially pigs. and tur and and monogastric animals like. chickens. ruminants are unique because they have a. rumen ruminants can take polyunsaturated. fats and put and make them into. saturated fats. humans can't do this monogastric animals. humans chickens. pigs they can't do that anything any. polyunsaturated fat you give a pig is. ending up in its fat. any polyunsaturated fat that you or i. eat is ending up in our fat tissue. we don't we need a small amount but.
there's an evolutionary amount that i. think has always been seen if we look at. cultures of indigenous people. they all have two to three percent of. their calories as linoleic acid. you look at how much is the source of. that usually usually animal fat. there's about 1.6 to 1.8 animal fat in a. grass-fed cow. and to be fair in a grain-fed cow it's. not a whole lot more there's about two. percent linoleic acid in the fat. of a of a ruminant animal a deer a cow a. bison. but if you look at chicken they're up at. 23 24. pork 15 to 16 because they're fed porn.
and soy. like you said earlier if you let a pig. like if you're out hunting hogs. that that hog is gonna have a fat you. know maybe five to six percent linoleic. acid. and you can totally it totally changes. you know chickens the same research has. been done. showing that chickens in the wild i. don't know what a wild chicken looks. like but like wild flightless birds. their fat looks different than when. they're fed corn and soy not. surprisingly because. monogastric animals chickens turkey duck. pork you know pigs humans we store the. polyunsaturated fat.
so i think this is a really interesting. hypothesis we don't have enough data to. say this but man it's so compelling. and you know the other side of the. equation is certainly high fructose corn. syrup is not helping anything. but i think it's important people. understand that that might not be the. only villain. and that a lot of people might get rid. of the sugar but then continue eating. processed food or. hummus with canola oil or you know chips. from the store that are cooked in. soybean oil and not understand it and. this could be driving a lot of the. disease that we're seeing in a really. subtle way. it's fascinating because the narrative.
has always been unsaturated fats are. good. saturated fats are bad and a lot of this. came from those studies that were sort. of. uh they were kind of hijacked by the. sugar industry. and this is this has been proven. and this is something that is not that. widely known because a lot of people. aren't aware of it still. there was a time where the sugar. industry bribed off scientists. to pass the blame off on saturated fat. for heart disease.
look it up jamie it's in the new york. times look up sugar industry pay you. know. not that much either they paid him like. 50 grand and. in that in those bribes they literally. ruined the american diet. and because the narrative gets like most. people work all day they have kids they. have hobbies. they have friends how the sugar industry. shifted blame to fat. yeah this is from 2016. this is a. four-year-old it's not even that old. well yeah not that old that that this. happened yeah they discovered that they. discovered it. but this was the the actual studies were.
from what was the 60s. i think so yeah this is the 1967 review. of sugar fat and heart disease. the studies used in the review were. hand-picked by the sugar group and the. article which was published in the. prestigious new england journal of. medicine. minimized the link between sugar and. heart health and cast aspersions on the. role of saturated fat. so that scared everybody and got. everybody eating margarine. and margarine is [ __ ] terrible for. you vegetable oil yeah and now people. know what's really good for you is. grass-fed butter the grass-fed butter is. actually not bad for you at all. suet yeah animal fat have you had suet i.
haven't i heard you talk about it. kidney fat and it's particularly high in. steel it's good it's kind of waxy. i think that you'd eat it if you were in. the wilderness but you might not eat it. other times jimmy's just growing again. you want some of that raw liver bro. jamie we got some raw liver for you you. said that it was going to give you a. thing. 100 i would regurgitate. but it didn't it would though but it. didn't to me. i could tell how about slice you have a. nice little slice just a little tiny. piece. just need some salt salt oh char okay we.
could do that for you. we could make it happen we need a little. traeger in here i brought you guys some. desiccated organs too maybe desiccated. organs or more jamie styles. i take those i take pill for them yeah. because i'm not gonna get it in my diet. every single day so. i take a bun i know you have a company. but i was actually taking a different. company's stuff yeah yeah well you know. i thought about that that a lot of. people. when i talk about spleen and kidney and. pancreas people do like. what i'm never eating that right but i. wanted like my mom and my sister. to have desiccated organs and when you. put them in a freeze dryer you can. freeze dry them at like 38 degrees.
preserve most of the nutrients put them. in a capsule it's amazing. and yours is heart and soil hardened. soil heart and soil supplements and i'm. sure that. is that available on amazon it's. available it's available on amazon or. there's a website people can go to for. heart too yeah i buy everything on. amazon it's just so easy i'm so addicted. to. only clicking once i know i know well. i'm pretty sure in austin we'll get you. hooked up if you want so i'm joking. yeah yeah but it's so cool to be able to. put organs in there we start with like. liver. but we have a beef organs that has. pancreas liver kidney heart and spleen. that's really cool there's unique.
benefits to all these different organs. how much is lost in the transition. between it being raw. and in in natural form and then. put into pills not a lot because it's. freeze-dried so you think about. you still save some if you dehydrate at. 140 but in a freeze dryer they lower the. pressure and then they pull out the. water. at a low pressure it's essentially. sublimation where you can go from solid. to gas without going through liquid. so you you preserve as much as possible. like a pretty good amount stays in there. so maybe you lose a certain percentage.
of that and you could make that up with. volume. probably volume yeah volume and it's. just. what's so cool is you know when you hear. about these desiccated organs you think. that's not to work. and then you get i get hundreds of. emails from people who are like. i took your organ pills and i feel. better i'm like is this for real. you know yeah and it's just so cool like. my mom takes it my dad takes it. my sister takes it she like opens it in. the food for my niece and nephew she. like puts it in their avocado or. applesauce or mix it in a ground beef. and i just think. that's cool you know and people feel.
different we've got all kinds of. different stuff people can check out but. there's thought about selling it in a. spoonable. like powder so you can add it to. whatever. people don't want to taste it no no they. don't want to taste the capsules are. amazing because you can just take them. and they're portable. maybe if people really want the powder. we'd make it but i think the capsules. are better for people and it's portable. and it's easy and. you can condense you know an ounce of. organ into you know a reasonable amount. of pills it's real. food so there's no additives or. preservatives or anything in there so it. doesn't get that you'd have to take six.
to eight pills to get an ounce of organs. but that's a good amount of organs is. that what you. recommend on your on the bottle yeah six. to eight six day capsules of each and so. if you are really going home about. organs like get the fresh stuff if you. can i want people to eat fresh liver and. fresh heart and fresh pancakes i don't. know if you want to eat it. but if people can't do that i just. thought this is a cool thing that i can. do that i believe in maybe somebody's. shaking his head. he's just made for me i think yeah the. pills i'm gonna get something i'm gonna. get some for you right now jamie hold on. hold on. is it gonna help him you think.
immediately yeah. jamie you should try to eat the raw. liver just once we'll get you a bucket. it's not that i'm not like i've tried it. and i know that the response that's. gonna happen you've had raw liver before. i've tried all sorts of like weird [ __ ]. because i worked in a restaurant for 10. years so like i wasn't afraid to try it. right but like i once i tried it i was. like okay this isn't for me. and yours are all from grass-fed animals. yeah they're all grass-fed. grass-finished animals from new zealand. and we're actually working really hard. to develop a regenerative chain. in the u.s really yeah so that's in the. pipeline trying to do that with those.
folks at the. is it hope ranch is that what you're. saying uh white oak pastures. what's the one that's in rome rome yeah. how many should it take like two or. three or you want a water break no i got. a water over here okay. oh all right all right that's a lot. yeah we're going to talk to you in about. an hour and 20 minutes which is. exactly how long it takes mushrooms to. kick in i'll do uh six. six okay yeah should i do eight do eight. two eight. go [ __ ] savage come on get after it. now how much.
um liver do you think i just ate there. about an hour. about an ounce yeah so that's about what. it you can get in those 68. yeah yeah if you if it was a pure liver. pill so this one is a beef organs pill. so there's a little less it's a little. like a fifth of an ounce of every organ. because it's liver heart pancreas and. spleen but. yeah what does your diet consist of like. what is a daily. daily uh meal like what do you eat on a. regular basis so i eat twice a day. i like to do intermittent fasting but i. like to do it earlier in the day. so i like to eat my dinner quote at.
three or four o'clock. and i eat breakfast at eight or nine so. i've got like an 18 hour. eating window 16 to 18 hour eating. window most days. and why do you do it that way because i. think there's some evidence or at least. i think there's a little bit of evidence. at least in. diabetics and then personally i've. experienced better sleep when i finish. eating dinner earlier. melatonin and insulin do have a little. bit of a contradictory effect you know. if you eat late at night. is the insulin spike going to affect. your body's ability to release melatonin. from the hypothalamus and actually.
initiates sleep it's like are you. supposed to be eating right before you. go to sleep i'm not sure i just thought. ah it's easier to sleep if i eat earlier. in the day. what do you do if you're on a dinner. date oh in that case i'll i'll eat later. in the day i'll make an exception. i'll make an exception but um yeah so. when i have total control over my. my choices yeah it's morning and night i. ate two meals a day i don't really find. that i need more than that. and you exercise so when do you exercise. i. i've actually started doing a lot of the. pavel sausalin grease the groove stuff. okay so i've got a little gym outside my.
house it's outdoors and i'll just go out. probably three or four times a day and. do pull-ups do some kettlebell swings. hit the punching bag for 10 or 15. minutes multiple times if i do. multiple if i do like a big exercise it. could be something stuck on your thumb. there yeah. amazing just it's extracting it's like. when you walk out of the bathroom and. you have like a toilet paper. cotton from your bottle yeah so uh i do. a lot of that. power stuff too i i enjoy working out. that way i think there's some. real benefit to these long pot like.
sometimes. i'll lift weights for two hours and the. reason why i do it is i have these. giant gaps in between my sets and then. you know i drink. electrolyte drink i drink liquid iv and. watch some fights. and i it's a casual workout and then but. i'm still getting. a lot of reps in a lot of work done but. after the the day is done. i feel great i don't feel completely. crushed. because i'm not trying to get my. endurance in that way i get my cardio in. through other methods. so that is just really just strength. training and i've i've.
actually gotten some good benefits from. doing it that way i love the idea. that he said when he was on your show. you want to feel better after you work. out. than when you started yeah that's kind. of cool and again it's ancestrally. consistent like. right we're our ends unless you were. running away from uh hippopotamus you. know. or or a wild cow which we talked about. before the podcast or something. like you're are you gonna like crush. yourself it doesn't make a whole lot of. sense right. the only way time makes sense i think is. like endurance training yeah there's. some like you have to kind of. push your threshold yeah when you're.
hunting yeah like persistence hunting or. anything you know. i mean david cho was talking about that. he was just running after the hot zone. he couldn't keep up and they were. running and running running and you can. imagine a long. you know but i also wonder how fast they. run so there's lots to learn there you. know. i don't think they're sprinting or. running six-minute miles maybe but maybe. there's kind of like. cruising along like ultra marathon pace. i used to run ultras but not anymore. did you really yeah it was intense when. did you stop doing that. uh a number of years ago it was too much. for me it was like this is. this is a lot it was because you know.
you're running an ultra you're like. racing you're trying to go really hard. i like long distance hiking though so. when i was younger i threw hike the. pacific crest trail. which is one of the coolest things i've. ever done and i love that i love just. like. walking 30 miles a day more than i like. running 30 miles a day. well it's it's interesting to me that. there are people that thrive. doing that that they can do like my. friend cameron haynes that. [ __ ] dude can run a marathon a day. impressive he does it all the time. what is this staying fit isn't a new. year's resolution for these.
hunter-gatherers oh that's the hot zone. 2017 they did a study where they. strapped uh. heart rate monitors on a 200 or so 198. different odds of men and women. and track them to see what their. cardiovascular fitness was. probably off the charts um their. findings here. examination of blood pressure. cholesterol and other biomarkers showed. no evidence of. risk factors for cardiovascular disease. yeah they're probably super fit. i mean it makes sense it's kind of that. low level activity throughout the day. constantly. it just feels good for your brain too.
and i'll be at home working. writing or answering emails or something. and i don't want to do that for three. hours i want to like do it for 45. minutes or an hour get up do some. pull-ups. go outside breathe some air go see the. natural world go outside barefoot and. move around. this is something that i want to discuss. too cardiovascular disease and heart. attacks the difference between. the rate of cardiovascular disease and. heart attacks today. versus like the early 1900s there's a. giant spike. a big change same as those other graphs.
we could it would be essentially the. same. the same reflection on the graph it. would be an up angle that you would not. want to skate you know. and it and again it's the question what. is driving this what is driving this. because we were eating more saturated. fat in 1900. we were eating way more saturated fat in. 1800 or 1840. and the only oils we used were animal. fats which are not entirely saturated. they're about half mono and half. saturated half monounsaturated half. saturated. with a very small amount of. polyunsaturated so to say that it's.
to say that it's saturated fat driving. this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. again this is just. correlation but there's no there's not. even a correlation there. the correlation is with vegetable oil. and if you get into this research it's. complex but it's pretty darn striking if. you look at linoleic acid. so and you look at the molecule it's. polyunsaturated so it's a long chain. carbon and polyunsaturation means it has. double bonds between the carbons. and those double bonds can be oxidized. remember we talked about oxidation. earlier. and this formation of lipid peroxides.
well those molecules polyunsaturated. fats and even monounsaturated fat any. unsaturation point in a. carbon skeleton molecule like a chain. long-chain fatty acid. is going to make it susceptible to. oxidation and then lipid peroxides which. are lipids that have had an. electron stolen from that double bond um. then those are more susceptible to those. are more reactive with other lipids and. they create these lipid peroxide. reactions. as then you're getting oxidative stress. from the lipids and if you. look at so uh we should back up for a.
moment this goes back we were talking. about earlier. the reason one of the reasons saturated. fat has been thought of as bad. for so long is because it raises ldl. but if ldl is not de novo. causing atherosclerosis then we have a. whole different equation well let's. let's get into that because this is one. of the big questions that i got when i. told people i was gonna eat an animal. only diet for a month they're like. what about your cholesterol what are you. gonna do about you and i'll be like ugh. and i try to tell them that dietary.
cholesterol does not. raise cholesterol in your blood lipids. and they just glaze over and they're. like well. you know you're taking in a lot of. cholesterol and it's just. most people don't have the time to. research this. or to get into the weeds and to try to. shift their perception. about what cholesterol is about the. the benefits of cholesterol the. necessity of cholesterol for the human. diet for production of hormones. so let's get into that ldl and hdl. what is the difference so ldl is low.
density lipoprotein. and it's formed from vldl after it. becomes idl which is intermediate. density lipoprotein so. when you eat fat in your diet it is. generally in triglyceride form which is. packaged into molecules called. chylomicrons which. move from the intestines to the liver in. the liver. cholesterol which is actually a steroid. backbone molecule. is packaged with triglycerides into a. vldl. a very low density lipoprotein particle. it's like a bus.
it moves triglycerides and cholesterol. around the body because they're. nutrients because they're essential for. human life. because like you said hormones are made. from a cholesterol. backbone and if you did not have. cholesterol you would be very sick and. die. there's a genetic condition called smith. lemley oppet syndrome which is. a mutation in one of the enzymes that. makes cholesterol it's pretty far down. in the pathway. but a lot of these kids die in utero. those that are born. have severe retardation both mental and.
physical. they're extremely resistant they're. extremely susceptible to infections. and they have a lot of problems with. sleep and diabetes and other issues. because they don't make cholesterol they. have extremely low ldl because they. can't make cholesterol in the liver. any probably in peripheral tissues. either and so the way we treat these. kids is with egg yolks we just give them. tons and tons of dietary cholesterol in. hopes that that will be some sort of a. supplement. that they can use to make ldl as their. ldl goes up they do better they're never. going to have a normal life but. there are so many studies that point to.
the. value of low density lipoprotein and if. we just think about it evolutionarily. why would nature why would evolution. have designed a particle. that kills us within our body that at. the same time. defends us from infection so there are. good studies in animal models. that show that if you knock out the ldl. receptor. in in in mice and rats they the levels. of ldl in the blood drop a lot. and those mice and rats are protected.
against infections. so they can infuse bacteria gram. negative bacteria into those rats and. the higher levels of ldl are protective. in those studies and the same thing has. been true in human you can look for this. correlation so this is epidemiology. at some point we should definitely talk. about why that's not why epidemiology. can be so misleading. but higher levels of cholesterol are. correlated with lower admission to the. hospital for. infectious complications and we. definitely see in animal models and. essentially with humans with the. smith lemley op it's genetic model that. lower levels of cholesterol. predispose to infection because ldl.
lower levels of serum cholesterol. meaning low density of protein. predisposed to infection because that. low density of the protein particle is. part of the immune system. and so is hdl so hdl is high density of. protein. it leaves the liver as kind of an empty. bus ldl leaves the liver as vldl a full. bus. drops off people along the way becomes a. less full bust vldl becomes ldl. hdl is an empty bus that goes along the. body picking things up and then. returning to the liver. but hdl and ldl both have roles in the. immune system.
so why do we think that a molecule a. lipoprotein particle that serves an. indispensable role in human biochemistry. or at least human physiology. is killing us that's just the first step. can i stop you what is the standard. model like what do people believe like. if you. asked a doctor that doesn't have a lot. of nutrition training about hdl and ldl. what would they tell you. at a very high level they would say hdl. is good ldl is. bad you want less ldl and you want more. hdl why would they say that. because there's something called the. lipid hypothesis and the lipid.
hypothesis. is that essentially in a concentration. dependent manner. ldl ends up in the arterial wall. okay this is the lipid hypothesis i. disagree with this i think it's an. incomplete hypothesis. and so they would say if you have more. ldl. it's just going to kind of leak into. your arterial wall because it naturally. gets taken up. and as more ldl ends up in your artery. wall you get more atherosclerosis. and more plaque what's the root of this. hypothesis. it's a lot of epidemiology mendelian.
randomizations and genome-wide. association studies. so this is really interesting we should. dig into this. so if you look at um. if you look at basic epidemiology so. let's just think about epidemiology. you've talked about this on the show. before but i want to define this for. people. so epidemiology is essentially. an observational study there's no. experiment done they're giving people. surveys and they're either following. them moving forward prospective or. they're looking. back at what they've done in the past a.
retrospective study. and so epidemiology can generate. correlations but we cannot draw. causative inference from that data we. can. have a correlation which we then test. with an interventional study. ldl is kind of tough with tough to test. with an interventional study. but there's some really cool stuff here. that starts to break it down. if you look at overall cohorts of people. so if you look at the framingham study. for instance and you look at. ldl on the x-axis and incidence of.
cardiovascular disease on the y-axis i. actually have two graphs of this that. i'll show you that'll make. that'll make it really um helpful to. break it down. um so if you look at those two and you. don't do anything to this is in the. lipids and cvd folder jamie. you see that cac ldl only graphic. so if you look at this this is the basic. data from framingham. okay this is correlation this is. epidemiology. increasing risk of cardiovascular.
disease on the on the y-axis. ldl on the x-axis okay so it's things. like this that make people say oh yeah. ldl it's probably causing. atherosclerosis which is the formation. of plaque within the arterial wall. but go to the other one jamie. c-a-c-l-d-l-h-d-l. so this is the exact same data. stratified by. a third variable and this is what is. never considered with ldl in my opinion. the lipid hypothesis is flawed because.
it's incomplete. it misses the third variable or fourth. variable. in this in this stratification we've. looked at hdl. we've looked at the quote good. cholesterol which we really don't know a. whole lot about probably an immune. participant. but hdl levels do correlate with. metabolic health. synonymous with insulin resistance so. what can we say about these people. this is the exact same data that i've. split into four four lines here. those with the lowest level of hdl are. the most metabolically unhealthy these.
are the most obese the most likely to. have. coronary the most likely to have. diabetes the most likely to have insulin. resistance you can see they have a. pretty good risk. of relative risk of cardiovascular. disease as ldl increases. but look at the bottom look at the. people who are most insulin sensitive. there's essentially no correlation or. the correlation is. massively different between people with. a high hdl. good metabolic health and ldl increasing. does that make sense. sword it says increasing ldl is very.
little increase in the cardiovascular. disease risk with. high hdl yeah so as you increase your. ldl as long as you. have high hdl increasing ldl has. very little risk very little cardiac. risk and we see that over. and over and over but what if you just. have high ldl. and low hdl then you probably have. diabetes and in that case you have. then you're in trouble so the issue is. not ldl. it's low hdl well the issue a low hdl is.
reflective of an underlying pathology. which is metabolic dysfunction. and or insulin resistance the issue is. insulin resistance metabolic dysfunction. so we're using hdl level as a proxy for. metabolic health here. what is an optimal ratio of ldl to hdl. yes. i actually it's it's tricky because. there's a whole group of people now. right so i have a good friend dave. feldman who's doing he's an engineer. super smart guy doing a lot of really. cool work on this and they're actually. about to start a study with. lean mass hyper responders within the.
space. the carnivore ketogenic space there are. people who begin eating this way. and they see their ldl go up. significantly. so some people don't see ldl rise but i. did. i have a pretty high quote ldl and so. within the space there's a lot of people. with high ldls who look like me. pretty fit active don't have chest pain. don't believe i have cardiovascular. disease we can talk about my blood work. and what i've done to confirm that. but there's a whole group of people. called lean mass hyper-responders. and dave's hypothesis which i agree with.
completely is that elevated ldl. alone is too simplisticometric. mainstream. medicine gets hyper focused on ldl or. more specifically apob. which is a proxy again for the number of. ldl particles. that's too simplistic because i think. there's context here and the context is. that i don't believe there's sufficient. evidence to say that. high ldl in somebody that's. metabolically healthy is the same as. high ldl. in somebody that's metabolically. unhealthy there's a third variable. we have to think about multiple. variables because there's a context and.
it makes sense right. there are other things that are like. this uric acid is a good example too. and incidentally both ldl and uric acid. rise. when humans fast so if you stop eating. your ldl is going to go up. and that's been demonstrated multiple. times in studies fasting. raises ldl they've even shown this in. hibernating bears. hibernating bears see have a rise in ldl. but they don't develop atherosclerosis. over the course of their hibernation. period there's actually.
a screenshot at the bottom in the lipid. cvd. folder jamie and i'll pull up there's. another study here with the. hibernating bear study it's pretty. fascinating the bears athero. hibernation and so we see this over and. over in humans that fasting raises. ldl fasting raises uric acid but. fasting people who fast people who do. ketogenic diets they don't get gout. they don't get atherosclerosis in quite. the same way or at least that's the. hypothesis.
certainly bears don't and it's strange. that fasting would raise ldl. it does until you think about ldl as a. nutrient. a nutrient carrier so. dave is developing something called the. lipid energy model and i want to give. him all credit for this i've actually. got a set of slides that'll probably. make it clear. when i talk about but dave's hypothesis. is that. if you are burning mostly fat as energy. and even somebody that eats some. carbohydrates can be burning mostly fat. as energy. you are going to be moving more ldl in. your blood.
to move that fat around okay and we. certainly know. that interventions can do that and it. makes sense when you fast. you're depleting liver glycogen your. ketones are going up and you are burning. fat you're not burning as much glucose. you're burning more fat. your free fatty acids are going to go up. your your ldl is going to go up. and so you kind of scratch your head. there at least i did and looked at this. and thought. are you telling me that in something. that would happen routinely for humans. fasting like we talked about. intermittent fasting unsuccessful hunts. that's killing us in a way that's. causing atherosclerosis that doesn't.
make any sense. and it certainly doesn't happen in bears. and other hibernating mammals. so ldl will rise in response to fasting. ldl. seems to rise in response to what we. choose to burn. as our primary fuel now there's still. we're still kind of trying to figure. this out dave's had he just texted me. this morning he's like i've got all this. really great data he's almost ready to. share it's super interesting stuff but. the whole idea of what ldl is doing in. the human body i think has been. misconstrued and misunderstood again the. lipid hypothesis would say the more ldl.
the more atherosclerosis. well if that's the case if and it's kind. of tied into that model. is the notion that ldl must cause. atherosclerosis de novo or in and of. itself because if more ldl equals. atherosclerosis then ldl is causing. atherosclerosis i don't think. anyone who subscribes to the lipid. energy model is going to debate that. but if ldl causes atherosclerosis de. novo. why don't we get atherosclerosis in. veins why do we only get atherosclerosis. in arteries. there's the same amount of ldl.
throughout our body veins and arteries. are our contiguous system. and so why are we developing plaque in. arteries but not veins and that's. we we never see plaque in veins unless. they are transplanted into the arterial. system. so there's clearly more things going on. and in the case of arteries versus veins. the prevailing hypothesis is that it's. endothelial damage so the inside of a. the inside of a blood vessel is the. endothelium and something has to damage. the endothelium for this to happen it. seems and. higher pressure systems the arteries.
seem to damage the endothelium and this. network of glycoproteins on the surface. of the endothelium called the glycocalyx. and that doesn't happen in veins they're. lower pressure at least this is one. hypothesis but for ldl to cause. atherosclerosis in and of itself it just. doesn't seem to be. it doesn't seem to work and studies like. that with framingham make me think. there's a third variable so if you look. at the general population. sure you might see a correlation between. ldl and cardiovascular disease. but if you look at it a little more. precisely or a little more carefully.
you start to separate out those who are. metabolically healthy which granted. is the minority from those who are. metabolically unwell. if the majority of people in our society. are metabolically unwell of course it. looks like there's a correlation. but what about this group over here you. and me who are metabolically healthy. if our ldl goes up is that going to. cause atherosclerosis i think the. evidence for that is. paltry at best and is not there and. this i'm i think that we are eating a. diet that we believe to be ancestrally. consistent why would that kill. us right and so one of the things that.
i've done so i have an elevated ldl i. will freely admit that my hdl is also. very high. i have all my labs if you want to see. them what would happen can i stop you. here what would happen if you went to a. cardiologist. like if you went to a cardiologist said. doc i'm feeling great but i just. don't tell them [ __ ] just say but i just. like to get my. blood work done get a little checkup. tell me what you think i should do. they would fall out of their chair when. they saw my lipids they would say that. is it. all right what is the number. uh it's high so and the re and so.
the um the ldl has been above. 300 for 300 milligrams per deciliter. which is. essentially a density measure for all. two years. that i have done a carnivore diet before. that i don't have familial. hypercholesterolemia though. but my ldl is as high as people with. homozygous is it that you say you don't. have what was that hi. familial hyper cholesterol that means. it's not in your family it's not a. genetic there's a there are there's. about. 2 000 plus genetic polymorphisms that. actually result in a high ldl. independent of diet right and they.
change. lipid metabolism okay so this is really. important the problem. a lot of people are other proponents of. the lipid hypothesis would say look at. people with familial. hypercholesterolemia. they get accelerated atherosclerosis the. problem is that in order to get an. elevated ldl. you had to disorder normal lipid. metabolism within the framework. of healthy that is non-disordered lipid. metabolism. there's no evidence that elevated ldl. leads to atherosclerosis. so in my case my most recent ldl.
was very high it was 533 milligrams per. deciliter. what's normal uh less than a hundred or. around a hundred. so a hundred is preferred preferred by. the mainstream cardiologist right. now again i can pull up labs are there. any cardiologists that agree with you. there are. okay yeah i've had a number of them on. my podcast there's definitely. cardiologists who do not. subscribe to the lipid hypothesis. certainly the majority. do and any mainstream doctors who are. hearing this are. just wanting to throw daggers at me.
right now it seems like there's uh. that's got to be very controversial if. you're a cardiologist that. follows your line of thinking yeah i. think it is but i think it's gaining. traction because. what what often happens is people will. do that they'll go into their. cardiologist. and they'll and the cardiologists look. at them and say frank you look great. you've lost 20 pounds your diabetes is. better. i mean nothing but margin bike right no. but then they'll say. let's say and they'll say great and they. say doc i feel good and they say oh wait. but your ldl is too high you got to.
change. and then they won't they won't tell. anything and they'll say oh i'm meeting. me and they oh you got to change that. whatever you did that cured your. diabetes cause all this weight loss. that couldn't that's that's bad for you. because your ldl has gone high because. we have this. myopic ldl centric perspective that. excludes the contextual variables. metabolic dysfunction metabolic health. insulin sensitivity insulin resistance. how did that gain such prevalence like. why is that so why is that so. universally agreed upon by so many. cardiologists i think it's. because um it's hard to say so before i.
went to medical school i was actually a. physician assistant and i worked in. cardiology. for four years and i think it's a lot of. what we are taught in medicine. is all we know right we're taught this. is the model and if you look at it there. are. there is evidence there is correlational. evidence that shows the lower the ldl. the the lower the incidence of heart. disease but it misses the context and if. you start to put in the contextual. variables the model breaks down. and so i think it's just it's been. parroted over and over and over. and the prevailing thinking is just this. is what it is this is what it is but.
there certainly are cardiologists i've. had. three or four cardiologists on my. podcast that don't don't subscribe to. this model and there's a lot of them out. there a lot of my. friends and colleagues in the medical. world are skeptical of this model. so i'll finish my story because i talked. about my super high ldl before we get to. that. these doctors that don't prescribe to. that model it seems to me. that if you're gonna step outside the. mainstream it's kind of a precarious. route. and would they be hesitant to do so if. you're dealing with. non-metabolically healthy people so. would they make the distinction.
like hey i'm looking at you paul you. look very. fit you're you're lean you exercise you. look you look great. your ldl is high your hdl is high but. all the other biomarkers are excellent. or would they look at a guy who's fat. who doesn't have a good diet who's not. metabolically healthy but. also has high ldl will they treat them. differently absolutely. okay absolutely because these. cardiologists are savvy enough to. understand. context so if i if if if you go to a.
cardiologist and they don't check. fasting insulin or hemoglobin a1c or put. a continuous glucose monitor on you. they're missing the context and so these. are just laboratory markers that give. you a sense of your metabolic health. and so absolutely these these colleagues. of mine would treat those people. completely differently. because it's context right the way that. i've talked about in the past is just. this analogy. if you have dry wood for the winter in. your garage. it's not just going to spark a fire. right dry wood can be good you can build. things with it you can build a house.
with dry wood. ldl can be good in the absence of. metabolic dysfunction it has all these. roles it's protective in the immune. system it moves nutrients around the. body. so do you think that it is detrimental. in the presence of metabolic dysfunction. it looks that way yes yes so it's all. about the context so ldl is getting. wrapped in. and people have said ldl is not the. arsonist it's the firefighter who shows. up to quell the blaze. and that that's kind of a complicated. analogy but you get the idea like. a policeman shows up at the scene of a.
crime does that mean he committed the. crime. because there is evidence that ldl ends. up in atherosclerotic plaque. and so there's both pathology you know. pathologic evidence and. you know this epidemiology evidence but. when you bring in the contextual. variable it starts to break down. what do you think does cause that plaque. then if it's not ldl it's. it's the fact that in the setting of. metabolic dysfunction. the ldl and this is just my hypothesis. right i don't think anyone knows this. the ldl perhaps gets retained so. ldl is a lipoprotein it i think it moves.
in and out of the endothelium into the. sub-endothelial space. freely and there's something about. there's potentially something about the. ldl moving into that sub-epithelial. space getting retained. in that sub-endothelial space so in if. you were to take a blood vessel and cut. it. you know lengthwise and look down at. like a tube there's multiple layers look. i got more foam. here so distracting for joe. you know there's multiple layers right. the inner most layer if the blood's in. here the inner most layer is the. endothelium. and below that is the intima and then. the the submucosal layer and the.
adventitia. and just below the endothelium are. immune cells called macrophages. and what appears to happen with. atherosclerosis is that the. the ldl particles get retained in there. for some reason and the macrophages kind. of. pick them up they eat them they. endocytose them they phagocytose them. and so they kind of eat these ldl. particles potentially as. you know they're trying to take care of. something that could be problematic and. then they become foam cells. they get full of more and more lipid and. that's the beginning of a fatty streak. and again this is very high level basic. stuff. it's not it's a little more complex but.
there's something going on i think at. the level of that sub. entema that endothelial sub-endothelial. space. that these macrophages are not. responding properly to ldl or the ldl. looks damaged. and so now you start to get into ideas. of oxidized ldl versus. native ldl and what causes ldl to. oxidize well. there's good evidence that excess. linoleic acid in the diet might be doing. it. xx oxidative stress might be doing it or. at the level of the macrophage when you. have metabolic dysfunction it's broadly. disordered insulin signaling.
is there a correlation between artillery. arterial plaque. increase and increase in vegetable oils. uh yeah well i mean there's a. correlation yeah we could draw the same. graphs yeah so what you're saying about. uh ldl. and hdl is this something that you have. ever. debated with a cardiologist that. you know follows the mainstream ideas of. what what is good or bad about hdl and. hdl.
there's a ldl there's a family doc who's. going to come on my podcast soon that. i'm planning to debate about it i think. he's open to the ideas but yeah it would. be interesting to debate these yeah i. would like to see someone who hardcore. disagrees with you on this because i'm. too dumb to know. who's right i think it'd be super fun to. talk to those guys and you know have all. the studies up and stuff but you can. find studies so. there are studies and i've got these on. the folder again i'll put all these. studies on the website so that people. can find all the stuff if they want to. dig into it. there are studies that show that the. more linoleic acid you eat the more. enriched and linoleic acid your ldl. particles become.
and then the more oxidized your ldl. particles become and if you decrease ld. if you decrease linoleic acid. there's a decrease in the oxidation of. the ldl particle so there's a lot of. kind of pieces. that look like the dots are connecting. it so pretty compelling ldl is not. created equal. all ldl is not created equal and even. mainstream lipidologists so i recently. heard a podcast between. two folks who are pretty prominent in. the lipid community and. even they were admitting and they're. they're proponents i believe they are. proponents i don't want. words in their mouth of the lipid. hypothesis and even.
they were admitting that the the quality. of the ldl particle matters. and as soon as you introduce quality of. the ldl particle you introduce that. third variable. and what determines the quality of the. ldl particle it's the context it's our. overall metabolic health as humans. and we cannot and we should not be. looking at lab markers or metrics in. isolation as humans. for i know that cardiologists are. intelligent and well-meaning. but i fear that within the medical. establishment we're just myopically. looking at ldl and i worked in.
cardiology for four years as a physician. assistant before i went. back to medical school and did a second. resident did my residency and all this. stuff so. like we're very ldl centric and it's. becoming it's becoming more and more. sconce like it's just all about lowering. apob which essentially means lowering. ldl. and i just don't think that's the right. thing for people if someone is not. willing to make dietary lifestyle change. yes. you probably should lower apob but if if. we are telling people the full truth in. my opinion. it is hey your lifestyle is causing this. do you wanna and here's how you should.
eat now the problem there. is that the mainstream medical. establishment is so hung up on the fact. that saturated fat raises ldl that they. can't possibly recommend the animal. foods that people should be eating. so they don't even know what to tell. people they'll tell people eat more. vegetable oil which is the wrong thing. and there are some really good studies. the minnesota coronary experiment and. the sydney diet heart study. were pretty fantastic studies i've got. them both in the notes here if you want. to see them. chris ramsden who is the investigator on. both of those or at least the second.
publication of both of these is. national hero in my opinion but in the. minnesota coronary experiment they were. randomized it's a randomized. interventional trial. um and it's a blinded trial where they. had one group that was higher saturated. fat and one group that was higher. polyunsaturated fat. and the polyunsaturated fat diet clearly. did worse clearly did worse. more heart disease more death more. cancer that's the other thing about. polyunsaturated fat is there are a lot. of signals for increased. cancer the city diet heart showed. exactly the same thing. more polyunsaturated fat more death more.
cardiovascular disease. more cancer so it's it's there's some. interventional studies that are pretty. hard to ignore just putting them head to. head and yet. because we are so myopic because we are. so focused on ldl. and we don't think about context or. metabolic health how could a physician. recommend tallow. well just breaking down all the [ __ ]. that you've said in this podcast is. giving people a headache right now i. guarantee you they're listening to this. and most folks who would just say to me. if i said i'm eating only meat well what.
about your. cholesterol they really don't know any. of this stuff. so it's they have a tiny piece of. information in their head cholesterol. equals. bad you put that in there heart attacks. heart disease you're going to die. you're going to die you're eating like. that you're going to die but why do i. feel so good. why do you kick so much why did you lose. weight why did your vitiligo get better. why did you have energy throughout the. day. it's weird it's very weird back to your. lab results yeah your lab results are. very high. you have high hdl high ldl and low.
triglycerides. what about arterial plaque zero whoa. so now there are a lot of people who. would criticize this finding but. i mean zero zero and i'll tell you so. it's with a cac so it's a coronary. artery calcium score. it's a ct scan of the heart it's not a. perfect test but it's a pretty darn good. test. so dave and his colleagues are doing a. study where they're going to do cta. which is ct coronary angiogram and i'm. going to try and be a part of that study. as well. they're going to take people who are. lean mass hyper responders they just got.
all the funding for it i think. and they're going to do ct coronary. angiogram one year apart. so what's interesting here um joe is. that for kids with familial. hypercholesterolemia. now again granted they're disordered. lipid metabolism disordered lipid. metabolism they're not healthy lipid. metabolism right. so they don't look quite like me they. have a high ldl but their ldl metabolism. doesn't work properly. they develop atherosclerosis within the. first few years of their life. okay and they have ldl levels that are. equivalent to mine. now i've had an ldl above 300 for more.
than two years. i also have a family history of early. heart disease and a primary relative my. dad. had a heart attack when he was 43. so. i'm 43. whoa my dad had a heart attack. when he was 43. so i have risk factors. for coronary artery disease what was. your dad's diet like. what was his lifestyle like i mean he. was he was an internist so he was not. sleeping well he was not eating well. he didn't think about this at all he. didn't know right and that's what's so. ironic is my dad is such a role model. for me you know. amazing guy he was texting me all. excited i was coming on the podcast.
today and he's such an amazing guy and. he meant so well for his patients. but i just don't think that mainstream. medicine thought about this contextual. stuff. is he following your diet he's not but. he did wear a cgm and i think he's going. to try and move his diet in the right. direction when he sees what his. postprandial after eating blood sugars. are what kind of diet is he on. it's getting better and better but the i. saw a part of his dietary recall. from the folks at uh nutrisense which is. the company that does the cgm. and it was he was eating grass-fed meat. he takes the desiccated organ.
supplements. and he's eating some white rice and i. think he had like some banana bread. and the thing i keep trying to get him. to stop is eating lucerna or. vegetable oil because he's eating these. weight loss shakes that have soybean oil. in them. and you know i i need to he hasn't. shared with me his cgm and i want to be. respectful and. if he will share with me his continuous. glucose monitoring we can look at his. metabolic health because i'm not going. to order blood work for my dad. but i can look at his continuous glucose. monitor like this is the kind of stuff. that. really tells you about your metabolic.
health there's no way to lie. with a continuous glucose monitor and so. i think that he has some room to improve. but it's slow he helped me like edit the. book i think he was so proud when i. wrote the book. and just so excited that i was thinking. this way it was so interesting to have. this. traditionally trained father this. internist. read my book and go whoa that's kind of. interesting paul i mean he's reading the. chapter on lipids going. this isn't what i learned maybe maybe. there's more i should be thinking about. so we've had a lot of conversations and. i mean one of the reasons the whole. reason i think about the stuff joe is.
because. i want people that i care about to be. around and then i want to be able to. share that with other people so that. they can experience their life better. what are you going to tell him about the. diarrhea. the disaster pants because there is a. diarrhea. that you get from the carnivore diet. that i only got for the. aft for the first like two weeks or so. but my friend tom seguro tried it and. his words were it's astonishing. he says this diarrhea is astonishing i.
go dude it's no joke. i took some photos of my toilet bowl and. it looks like a goblin threw up in there. i mean just just black tar it was crazy. yeah. so what is that so there's physiologic. changes in. the human gut that happen when you stop. fiber. abruptly so we don't. know entirely but i think that the most. compelling theory that i've heard. or been able to come up with is it has. to do with bile salts.
and you know you we talked about the. bile earlier in the gallbladder. and you know putting it on liver so your. bile is in your liver on your right. upper quadrant. and um when you eat meat or fat your. bile contracts. there's hormones cholesterol you release. bile. bile is a combination of cholesterol. bile salts. bilirubin and bile salts are supposed to. be reabsorbed in your small intestine. so you know you have this stomach a. duodenum a jejunum and ilium which is. your small intestine then you have the. ileocecal valve.
and the large intestine the large. intestine is like the colon. right and the colon goes up and over and. down and so. the if if bile acids end up in the colon. they are cathartic meaning they will. cause diarrhea. and so i think that for the majority of. people if they are going to do a. transition from. a fiber full diet to a zero fiber or a. lower fiber diet. you want to do it slowly because i think. that in the small intestine the small. intestine needs to catch up and reabsorb. these bile acids. if the bile acids move through the. ileocecal valve into the colon they'll.
cause diarrhea. and so your body takes time and so i. think what happened in your case because. i was following it closely. i was texting mark bell i was texting. mark bell i was like joe's having. diarrhea see i mean if he just send him. this information maybe it'll help him. you know. so what can you do to mitigate it you. would you would want to tran you would. want to go slowly on the fiber so when i. work with people and they get the. diarrhea i have them add back avocado. or something with a little bit of fiber. to help because the fiber will bind up. the bile acids a little bit. but in your case it sounded like what. happened was something adjusted and. eventually stopped and my suspicion is.
that. the small intestine eventually catches. up and says hey there's more bile acids. i'm going to reabsorb them they don't. end up in the colon it was a dangerous. two weeks. it was very a little bit of avocado. would have gone a long way i think for. you i. i got through some podcasts where i was. like boy i barely made it out of there. just like sweating. you saw some of those where i ran out of. the room i like like. clinching my butt cheeks like i'm trying. to make a diamond. ran out of the room and so again that's. why. i think there's a lot of ways to do this. you know it's not that.
i don't think the only way to benefit. from the things we're talking about is. to go 100 carnivore. i think it's you know i understand that. meat and organs are critically important. i understand there's toxicity of plant. foods on a spectrum. and if a little bit of fiber helps you. get through that do that you know and if. a little bit of fiber doesn't bother you. don't do it. but for a lot of people the complete. elimination of fiber in their diet is. really helpful it's a really amazing. thing how many people say. less gas less bloating even less. constipation when they remove fiber. so but a little bit of fiber can go a. long way in that sort of transitional.
disaster pants phase the common. perception of fiber is that it's. essential that it cleans out. your body and that to live without fiber. you're going to get constipated. you're going to have all these problems. why is that not true. there's so the fiber is such an. interesting thing so it's none of it's. true if you actually look at the medical. literature. there's no evidence that fiber improves. constipation. so fiber can give you bigger poops but. there's good meta-analysis there's.
interventional studies. that show that fiber doesn't relieve the. other symptoms of constipation which are. pain difficulty with passage bleeding. constipation. sucks nobody wants that but fiber will. give you bigger poops that are usually. more painful to. pass and fiber also causes a ton of gas. and bloating for people. there's a really fascinating study from. 2012. it's an interventional study with fiber. and they had three groups of people i. think it's 60 people they divided into. three groups of 20. and they all had idiopathic constipation.
so the doctor doesn't know why you're. backed up. one group fiber is normal one group. moderate fiber one group zero fiber. which group did the best zero fiber how. many people resolved idiopathic. constipation. a hundred percent what a hundred percent. jamie 100 it's in the concept of zero. fiber. jamie it's in the constipation folder. what is the cause of constipation. it's complicated i don't think it's the. fiber constipation oh not the meta. um it's the uh let's see.
stopping fiber constipation in the. constipation um. folder yeah so you see. stopping or reducing dietary fiber. intake reduces constipation it's. associated symptoms that's bananas. so constipation is probably. multifactorial. um it probably has to do with dysbiosis. the overgrowth of the wrong type of. organisms. i think it's potentially inflammatory in. the gut but in.
these this interventional study it. completely reversed it in these people. well when i was drinking kale shakes. for a while i was drinking kale shakes. in the morning and it had a similar. effect to uh the carnivore diet in the. first two weeks. like it just whoo it opened up the. canyon. and uh lubed up the old water slide and. things were just flying out of me maybe. not a good thing. well i think it was also i was doing it. with mct oil. and i was i was adding fruits and all. sorts of other stuff to the kale shakes. but i thought i was doing the right.
thing and i was feeling pretty good. while i was doing it. but um not absolutely not as good as i. did when i went to the carnivore diet i. just. i think i was getting this burst of. carbohydrates and sugars and nutrients. and uh and also i was feeling good i was. thinking because. the poop was coming out so easy and. quickly i was like this has got to be. good it's cleaning out the old pipes. because that's what you want right you. just want to clean it up but i know. that's what i was thinking. my thought process was like all that. fibrous plant material was just scraping.
them scrubbing them like a little tail. that's not how it works at all there's. so much interesting stuff about fiber. but i'll tell you you know i was a vegan. i was a raw vegan for seven months when. i was a physician assistant. and i want to take this opportunity to. apologize to the people i shared an. office with because i was such. an olfactory nightmare oh you're far. apart. it was so bad joe well you're you're. breaking down and fermenting. all these things inside your gut right. it was just everything i mean people. couldn't even be around me.
you couldn't hold it in oh i i there's. only so many farts you can hold in. before your intestines explode man. they're that bad. they're that bad i mean i always hoped. you know that if you just hold your. farts and they would come out as burps. and it never worked it never worked and. then when i was a vegan i lost 25 pounds. of muscle mass and all kinds of other. issues 25 pounds from where you are now. yeah wow you must have been very very. very thin very skinny so i'm 170 to 175. now and i was around 140. so even maybe. 30 pounds.
wow 30 pounds of muscle mass how did you. feel. not great and you did it for health. because you thought it was a good thing. to do. yeah so it was the beginning my medical. career it was probably 15 years ago. i hadn't read the literature and the. ideas are interesting right. right the ideas are interesting meat. causes problems this is a pure diet it's. not cooked it's what our ancestors have. eaten. except these are the far too backhand. sisters yeah there's a lot of people. that think that. going you know air quotes plant-based is. the move for heart health yeah for for.
you know to to be a healthy person. my friend c.t fletcher he uh is a power. lifter and he. um had a terrible diet at one point in. time and wound up. having uh heart disease and it runs in. his family. and he had to get a heart transplant oh. yeah and so now he has a heart. transplant. and um he has a new heart and he's. exercising again and. he's gone completely plant-based and uh. he thinks it's a good thing for his. health and for his body and you know he. used to be a guy who ate a lot of.
cheeseburgers and. mcdonald's shakes and stuff and just. wasn't really eating that healthy. and now just kind of completely changed. his diet. and i don't have the knowledge to tell. him that that's not. the way to make your heart healthy what. would you say to ct. i would i think that the first thing is. i'm glad that he's making an intentional. choice with his diet. like you said earlier what he's doing. now. is probably better than the standard. american diet yes if you are very.
careful about supplementation. and you think about creatine and. carnitine and choline and vitamin k2 and. b12. and bioavailable proteins i mean. you could sustain yourself on a vegan. diet in my opinion i'm sure he's doing. that he's a very disciplined man. yeah i don't think i don't think it's. optimal but i don't i would also. encourage him not to ignore the evidence. on polyunsaturated fatty acids. and to be sure that with his. transplanted heart. um that he is that he's carefully.
watching it and looking at the right. metrics and really looking at. the right measures which may give him. some indication of. atherosclerosis progression so if. somebody were to do a vegan diet. with no vegetable oils they might be. able to do okay given. they were getting enough calories enough. protein enough of these nutrients and. we're supplementing with the right. things. but i fear that a lot of vegans are. going to think canola oil that's great. that's vegan or soybean oil that's great. and. or they're going to eat you know these. plant-based garbage burgers which are. full of this. this vegetable oil we got to get to that.
yeah that we have to get to but. and it's just not and it's not it's not. a precise enough approach and i hope. he's working with a cardiologist so. i would i would respect his choice 100. if he's doing good that's amazing but. there's a lot of nuance there and. there are a lot of nutrients like i. mentioned earlier in the podcast that. are not. found in plant foods that are only in. animal foods we'll give them some of. these he probably won't take them. maybe he would maybe he would take the. pills yeah but if. you could get him to just completely. objectively learn and not disrespect his.
choice to become plant-based. what would you say would be the optimal. thing for someone to do. having recovered from heart failure in a. heart transplant. what would what would you recommend this. is for ct or just anyone. anyone let's just have ct listen to this. because i'm going to send it to them. right but anyone in that particular. anyone without. any ideology what would you say would be. the optimal thing to eat. eat like your ancestors eat like the. hadza you know. not your doctor so eat like eat eat meat.
and organs as a center of your diet from. well-raised animals. rome ranch white oak pastures polyface. farms. don't fear the organ meats don't fear. red meat i really think i mean there's. tons of stuff in the book about why this. information is bad. know which plants are the most toxic. eliminate the most toxic plants. and eliminate vegetable oils and process. sugars like the plague and. you know i think if you do that you're. going to thrive and i think you're going. to feel really good now. we're at a crossroads joe you know like.
the mainstream medical establishment. doesn't agree with this and i'm. fully ready and i think this is going to. become my life's work you know it's just. it's it's really exciting to be in this. pace and say. hey i think these ideas are wrong and. they need to be refined and i think that. more people will benefit if we refine. these ideas i think people are suffering. because of incorrect information voiced. upon us for the last 70 years by the. mainstream medical establishment. well it's fascinating when people follow. along with the mainstream ideas. and like professional athletes they.
watch. game changers and they go well that's it. i'm going to go plant based. and they're getting injured and they're. not recovering well and they have on all. these issues. yeah yeah i mean this is uh it's a real. concern and when you bring it up people. go oh. here you go again with all your [ __ ]. propaganda and it's been proven. having you watch the documentary yeah. i've watched it. i watched it i've talked to experts i'm. not impressed by any of this. you know i think you can do it i think.
you can be healthy. and you can live off a vegan diet the. way you said before but. i don't believe it's the optimal way to. do it i just don't i don't think it is. for everybody i think people. like to think it's the optimal way to do. it because it makes them feel better. ethically and morally that they don't. that they're not responsible for the. death of animals even though they. absolutely are. and i think that's where we need to. shift the perspective i think that vegan. diets have become popular because. they're a meme because they've become an. identity and that identity is something. that we all identify with as humans. being a kinder person a kind of person. an empathetic person.
but the reality is that the actual. practice of a vegan diet is. nothing like that nothing like that. there's a there's an instagram handle i. think it's so true. carnivore is vegan and it's such a it's. not my handle it's somebody else's hand. that's so true if we're actually talking. about empathy talk about the least. amount of suffering you raise. one animal in an ecosystem that is a. cycle. that's the way it's been going for. thousands millions of years. maybe even take that animal ethically by. hunting it maybe you even. spend time in the wilderness while. you're hunting an animal maybe you spend.
time with people while you're hunting. animal and. i'll tell you so i've hunted twice in my. life joan i'm gonna hunt this season. with a bow and i found it twice before. with a bow. both times that i killed an animal. walking up to that animal was one of the. most spiritual. experiences of my life it was just this. strike like responsibility very. psychedelic. be a responsible human you took this. life. right i think that as humans it's okay. to to be a part of the cycle of life and. death and we will all die. and we will all go back to the earth at. some point these atoms that i am renting. will return to the earth.
and so i think that it's okay to take. life respectfully in a hunted way. but if more people did this and this is. not necessarily. scalable in 2020 but i think if more. people did this it's like a sacrament. and i don't mean that in any. sacrilegious way but it was just like it. was the one of the most clarifying. things i've ever done to remind me be a. good person. here is the universal bounty to you and. i hope this doesn't sound too woo-woo. but it was my personal experience like. here is the universal bounty to you in. this moment. like you better be a good person because. you are so fortunate to have this.
nutritious food here. it's just very striking i think it would. i think it would change and that's. completely different than the vegan. ideation that were being harmful to. animals or were being disrespectful it. was like wow. it was almost like that animal gave me. the gift like be a better human. well i had this thought before i started. hunting that i was either going to. become a vegetarian or is going to. become a hunter. i had seen a lot of those documentaries. and those videos online about. factory farming and it's a it's. appalling it's disgusting it makes you.
sad it makes you. sickened and i was trying to figure out. what can i do. like would i be capable of killing an. animal i never killed an animal before. and then after i did i went hunting with. steve ronnell on his television show i. shot a mule deer. we ate it over a fire and i said right. away i'm doing this. from now on this is what i'm doing. because it resonated it made sense it. felt good. it was a very difficult thing to do it. took. days and days of hiking many many miles. in the mountains. to find a mule deer and to shoot it and. then to haul it out of there and then.
to cut it up and eat it and cook it or. cook it and eat it it was. it was it was it's a it's a weird word. spiritual. but it is a spiritual experience because. it it. connected you with the life that. sustains you. like you were there i looked at that. animal when i squeezed that trigger off. and watched it drop and then when we. were. cutting it and hauling it out and eating. the liver and eating the heart. and and cooking meat over the fire. immediately it all made sense to me i.
was like okay this. feels so much different than buying meat. in a store. when i take a piece of elk meat i shot. an elk. last week in utah when i take a piece of. elk meat two weeks ago. and i put that on the traeger i season. it i put. put it there and i cook it and then i'm. eating it i'm feeding it to my family. i have a connection to that meat i. looked in the eyes of that elk when i. released that arrow. i watched it drop 15 seconds later i.
felt the relief. i felt the the the the happiness and i i. felt the gratitude. that this this animal is gonna be how i. get my meat. and hundreds of pounds of meat i'm gonna. give it to my friends i. give it to your tribe yeah i i love it i. love. i love all of it about and the people. that i've met through this pursuit. have been some of the best people i've. ever met in my life some of the nicest. most disciplined. most warm friendly loving people.
they're not animal haters they're not. cruel people they're people who. understand where their food comes from. and it's a different connection to food. the hunters have. a different idea of life and death in. the average person who's shielded by it. who's using their credit card to pay for. a supermarket hitman. to make cheeseburgers for them and. that's that's not the way to go. and i know that it's not sustainable for. everybody to do it like you said. in 2020 but there's a lot of things that. everybody not not everybody becomes a. black belt in jiu jitsu right not. everybody.
becomes a race car driver not everybody. becomes a doctor. it's [ __ ] hard to do or there's a lot. of [ __ ] that's hard to do like i'm not. saying you have to do it. but for a person who chooses to have a. connection. it is available for you but the price of. entry. is difficult it's hard to learn how to. do it properly. it's really hard to learn how to do it. with a bow it's it requires a lot of. physical exertion. there's a lot of workouts that i do all. throughout the year specifically my. cardio workouts. that i'm doing so that i have endurance.
in the mountains that's why i do it. because i've been exhausted. trying to make it up a hill especially. my friend cam haynes hunting with that. [ __ ] guy just trying to follow him. just. trying to walk behind him forget about. running. i i'm doing it because i understand that. come the moment of truth like you have. to be at your best. it's not easy but if you don't want to. do that. you can get meat from sustainable farms. you can get meat from places like. polyface farms butcher box which is a. great company that's one of the sponsors.
of my podcast. all of their all their meat is grass-fed. grass finished. from sustainable places that are. ethically raised animals. you can get that food you can you can. get it the right way. you don't have to hunt it but if you. want to hunt it that's available too. most people are not going to have the. time. or even the desire to do it but it can. be done. but i don't like that argument where. people say well. it's not sustainable for everybody well. neither is. most things that are hard to do most. things that are hard to do. you're not going to do you know most.
people are not going to win the crossfit. games. does that mean we should stop the. crossfit games well it's not sustainable. most people can't do it. but does that mean we should stop. marathons because most people aren't. gonna run a marathon. there's hard things to do that are very. rewarding. and most of those things come with like. there's there's a immense satisfaction. in completing them and this is where. hunting. is different than any other source of. gathering. food because it is it's a discipline.
it's. in many ways an athletic pursuit and. then it also sustains you and sustains. your family. it's a very different connection with. food and i think it's a spiritual. pursuit and like you said every time you. eat you have a story yeah. you remembered like every time you eat. that elk that you got with a bow you're. probably gonna remember. that time in the wilderness and think. about it if that was all the food you. ate. every food had a story like that how are. you gonna live your life. in a different way and so one of the. things that's been so interesting for me. recently is realizing that the carnivore.
diet and thinking about animal-based. diets was just a stepping stone it was. kind of. on the entree to think about a broader. concept about the way that we as humans. have. forgotten that there's this broad. amnesia and. and i've thought about this and kind of. called it the remembering just this idea. that. it's about more than the way we eat it's. about the way we live on the earth. being in nature and doing things like. hunting and getting back to these roots. like this to me is what gets me really. excited that we're starting to think. about the way our ancestors ate in an. ancestrally consistent diet but we also. need to think about.
how the heck did they live and i've. heard you talk about this so many times. but. social media is such a double-edged. sword and it is such a. i think a destructive thing this new. documentary out social dilemma like. it's amazing we are not communicating. with humans in the same way that we used. to we're not over a fire you know you. got to cook that first meal to you with. steve ranella over a fire. that's a freaking human connection. that's real i remember him. laughing because uh he said so what do. you think and i said. i'm doing this from now on i go this is. it i'm a hunter. and he started laughing because he was.
it was a satisfaction it was like all. right. you know it's like a happy thing where. he. saw that i was hooked welcome to the. chat. yeah i was in 100 and i've been in uh. that was 2012. i've been in 100 for the last eight. years i think about it all day long. especially now that i've become a. bowhunter like it's funny i was with my. friend john dudley and we were at. a ufc fight john was in the crowd right. behind me it was a big fight about to go. on. and i said this is what i'm thinking i. was thinking about archery.
that's what i was thinking i was pulling. a bow back and i was when i'm. in my like anytime something's boring to. me. i think about archery someone's talking. about something that i'm not really. interested in i'll listen. but in the back of my head i'm thinking. about centering my pin center in the. bubble. drawing back pulling with the scapula. getting a surprise release it's like. it's a. massive obsession and there's that's. there's a different spiritual connection. to bow hunting i think. because it is so difficult and it is so.
physical and that. it it requires this. being in the moment in a way that. nothing else does because there's so. many moving parts. that you have to align correctly in. order to execute. oh it's amazing it's one of the hardest. things i've ever done and i just got a. new release i just got one of the thumb. releases and so i'm all over the place. now it's super frustrating. yeah but i love i love that pulling with. the scapula and i love that surprising. release and. have you ever used a tension based. release like a silverback uh this one is.
a. wise choice. the thing about those is you cheat you. hit that button with your thumb. right you know if you had a real good. coach no i need to talk to john. yeah you should get with dudley he would. put you on a tension-based release. but people don't understand what we're. talking about is it's hard in the moment. of truth. to uh when you're anticipating the shot. to not flinch or move and with archery. it is so important the shot goes off. in a surprise manner and i'll say this.
for most people because there are a lot. of people that are. extremely good archers that don't do it. this way but. they have practiced their way by pulling. the trigger. and consciously pulling the trigger what. they call a command release they've. practiced it for so long. they could pull it off my friend cam. haynes is one of those people. my friend remy warren he's another one. of those people there's there's. great archers there's a guy named tim. gillingham he's one of the best archers. on earth he wins world championships and. he pulls the trigger.
he he has a thumb a finger trigger and. he he pulls it and he. beats everybody and he's very you know. very well. uh celebrated as uh one of the best. archers in the world. but for the most part for most people. you're better off having a surprise. release. you're better off taking the idea of the. shot going off and you just go through. the motions. of getting to go up but you really have. no idea when it's going to go off yeah. but it's hard to do with the thumb thing. yeah really a lot of people cheat they. pretend they're doing that like yeah i'm.
getting a surprise release and i'm. watching my pitch. you're hitting that [ __ ] with your thumb. i know what you're doing i think i'm. cheating everybody's i need a good coach. i need a good coach yeah. i mean it's hard man it's hard but i. love how everything kind of drops away. and i'll tell you joe for people that. haven't bow hunted. i've actually never killed an animal. with a rifle so i don't know if it's the. same way you can tell me if it is. the first time i drew back on an animal. it was like it was like i got hit with. adrenaline i mean you know yeah like. your heart is just pound it's. such like that's a primal instinct it's. like. whoa there's something cool about that.
and it's like everything. fades it's absolute flow state if you. can. go through the pounding but it's a it's. a special experience when you pull back. on an animal. my elk in utah this year was very. unusual in that i had to run. to get to the to the water hole before. the elk did i was in a patch of trees. and i was hidden and i heard the elk. screaming and then. we knew there was a water hole here and. he was trotting down. and there was no i tried a couple spots. but there was no clean path to shoot.
through the trees and i managed to do it. quickly. and quietly enough so that he didn't see. me moving and i was hiding behind trees. but i knew i had to get all the way to. the water hole before him so i had a run. and i had a jump over log so i'm there's. these downed. trees i'd hop on top of these trees and. jump over them so i ran. about you know 50 60 yards until i got. to this spot where he was. i really had a sprint and then i had to. calm myself down. and i looked at him arranged him i. and i was i had the bow in my hands he.
looks up at me and i drew back as he was. looking at me. and he was just because i'm in full camo. with gloves face mask head gear the. whole. full sitka gear he was like what the. [ __ ] is that and then. you know i probably had a second before. he realized what i was before he was. gonna bolt. and i i released the arrow right at that. moment so it was. intense and it was super adrenaline. packed because i knew i had a run. too so there was all this like like he's. at the waterhole. i range him he steps away from the. waterhole and then he looks up and.
as he's looking up i'm just drawn back. and i i think i had a second or two. before he was like oh that's a [ __ ]. person man. dressed up like a tree and he but it was. so. it was so it was. it was a moment where if i hadn't. prepared properly. i would have never been able to pull it. off if i wasn't physically in shape i. would have never been able to run there. and have my heart rate drop down. if i wasn't confident enough in my. shooting that shot. so many thousands and thousands and.
thousands of arrows i wouldn't be able. to execute. because it was a weird shot too it was. downhill 52 yards it was. a lot going on but uh i'll never forget. that when i eat. that food i think about that animal. absolutely it's like such a cool thing. to have the story wrapped up in all of. it. it's so rich it's such a different. experience than we get as humans as soon. as i think about the irony. of 2020 or even the last century that we. have. we've put ourselves in digital worlds to. work on computers indoors. to make fake numbers in a bank account.
or green pieces of paper that allow us. to go. hike and do the things that we were. doing in our whole i mean. how enjoyable is hiking how enjoyable is. being in the wilderness how enjoyable is. hunting and just. just hiking alone is cleansing right. like there's something about being. around trees. i don't know what it is i mean whether. it's the oxygen that you get from them. or whether it's just. a sig a signal to your body that this is. a natural way to exist. to be in in wilderness in nature. it feels good for you like to just be.
walking. through and just seeing it it enriches. your soul. there's something about looking at. mountains and. trees and like a stream that it's this. crazy. natural beauty this natural artwork. that your your senses react to this in. this incredibly pleasing way like. wow like i remember we we came over this. ridge and there's a creek below us and. there's this beautiful green hill. and there's a mountain behind it and i. heard this bull elk on the hill above it.
screen and i'm looking at this i'm like. this is. gorgeous it's so pretty like everything. about it just made my whole body just. feel good like. like a drug like a happy drug cell phone. didn't work. you know there's no signal out there. it's just peaceful. just peaceful just just nature the way. it was for. who knows how many hundreds of thousands. of years before people ever even came. here. i think that's what the remembering is. about and that it's like there's. something bigger than us and i'm not.
religious maybe a little spiritual in. nature but. i've had those same experiences on a. long run or just being in the wilderness. you're like. there's something here there's a. connection that we have to the this. this wild world that we evolved through. that we don't we're just we're like. neutered. when we're out here with the concrete. we're looking at buildings and it's you. know the way we live and it's there's a. lot of great benefits to living in. cities and all that stuff. but there's something about it when. you're in a car or you're just you know. you're sitting at a desk.
you're you're muted you're muted and. neutered both those things it's like. you're not. connected to the wild world i agree with. you completely and i think that. in some ways i suspect that it's built. into our consciousness just like that. erp study that i showed you with meat. and i think there have been similar eeg. studies with nature scenery that it. respo. we just ultimately we're animals yeah. and we. we try to pretend that we're not and i. think that we're trying to become the. best animal that we can be the most. ethical kind empathetic animal. but we still i think that we would do.
well to consider the fact that if we. discard. everywhere we've come from we may end up. in a position that's pretty miserable. for humans. yeah if we discard wilderness if we. discard what i believe are the most. ancestrally consistent foods if we. discard the patterns of human. interaction. we're just going to go further down my. fear is that this is inevitable and that. what we are going to become. is some sort of a a symbiotic. connect thing where we're part. part we're going to be a cyborg we're.
gonna be part electronics. we're gonna be more immersed in the. electronic world than even we are now. and that this trend of becoming addicted. to your phones and. constantly online and all these. different things that we all see with. people that this is just a step. in this inevitable process. but right now we're not there so right. now that is not enriching to us. it doesn't feel good this might be what. a person is a thousand years from now it. might be. out of our control we might be just the.
way of entropy. the way the world works the way of. innovation. the way of just the the just the. evolution of the. the biological thing that is a human. being it might. inevitably move in that direction but. it's not that way right now. and if you live that way right now. you'll be miserable you'll be depressed. you'll be disconnected and that's why. you see all these people that are living. online. most of the time on twitter just [ __ ]. arguing and throwing [ __ ] at each other. like insane patients. they're like people in a mental.
institution and they really are mentally. unwell. they're they're they're in a depressed. crazy agitated state. most of the day arguing with people and. this is i would imagine like i don't. know what the number is but maybe 40. of all interactions on twitter are. people yelling at each other it's so. scary and i've experienced it firsthand. because when you. start i mean i'm new to this whole thing. you know like i went to residency i. didn't expect this to happen. i got interested in stuff i started. talking about my ideas and then suddenly. you put ideas out there and there are.
people. slinging [ __ ] at you all the time angry. angry. charlatan calling you a clown or an. idiot it's like. you know like would you do that to me in. person i don't think so like i would. love. i love debating people i love having. respectful conversation that's what. we're about you know. if i'm wrong awesome because then we. understood what's right good. that's ultimately and i want to live up. to that you know i think there's all of. us have ego. right that's the best version of you. though right like. when you're confronted with an idea. that's contrary to what you believe you.
recognize it and you adjust. and i've had to you know when i first. started the carnivore diet i thought. okay. all carbohydrates are bad even in the. last year and a half i've kind of said. you know what maybe there's some nuance. here. and it's so strange because there's. definitely a religiosity in the. carnivore community that i don't. identify with. and there were people just you know. hating well there's a lot of people in. the carnivore diet that are basically. meat-eating vegans i know and it's it's. a it's a sad thing. it is weird like they they just have. this idea. in a way that is it's.
they they've got an identity you know. and their identity is meat-eating and i. don't know if. i don't think that's a good way to sell. it i don't think it is i think we've got. to move past that yeah. and say you know what it's about human. health yeah it's about people being able. to live. in the best way possible there's a lot. of ways to do that and if these tools. are unique. they certainly challenge the mainstream. so i think they're valuable i think. challenging the status quo is is. indispensable because we have to have. the dissenting voices. sometimes the descending voices are. wrong and sometimes the descending.
voices are right. but we can't silence the dissenting. voices and they're valuable and i think. it's i love the. i love the disrupters i love disruptive. ideas they challenge us and. but as a society we rebel against. disruptive ideas i mean look at the. canceled culture that's happening now. and so the carnivore diet and. animal-based diets these are disruptive. ideas. and at the same time i think that could. be really helpful but let's let's. understand let's find out. well i think when i was younger i would. look at any idea that was. contrary to mainstream as likely being. incorrect.
but then as i've gotten older i realize. like. most people are not really paying that. much attention and then when you find. out how little. when it comes to nutrition how little. nutrition education. doctors receive so many doctors that are. giving you advice. like i've had doctors say you don't need. to take vitamins just eat a. well-balanced diet. and i'm like what are you talking about. first of all you look like [ __ ]. like tell me what a well-balanced diet. is you have a gut. this is a crazy conversation you look. like your shoulders would rip apart if.
you tried to pick up. a piece of weight i think they would. yeah herniated disc in their back. a lot of people that are just there's. their their physical condition is so. poor and yet they're giving advice about. sustaining their physical condition i'm. like. come on man you know very little about. nutrition this is crazy that you're. giving advice and then you start to look. at people outside the norm like yourself. and you go okay this guy has spent so. much. time thinking about this stuff maybe. he's got some insight. that other people have not acquired we.
hope so and that's why we have. productive respectful conversations. you know yes and then people can decide. because ultimately it's just about. everybody understanding what's going to. benefit them the most so. i wanted to before we get going i wanted. to talk about the benefits of. like what when you talk about grass-fed. grass-finished meat what is the. nutritional benefit of that. over um in terms of like essential fatty. acids and. nutrient content over animals that are. fed grain. so if you look at the absolute. nutritional content of grass versus.
grain grass finish versus grain finished. animals. they're pretty similar okay what's. different about grass-fed animals in my. opinion is what they're not. fed what they're not subjected to so you. remember that the majority of any cow's. life is spent on a pasture so most cows. are eating grass for the majority of. their life. when you bring them to a feed lot. they're kfowd you know they're clustered. animals and they're fed great. concentrated or clustered animal feeding. operations and they're fed grains and.
cookies and plastic and waste products. and the grains. yeah they're fed like waste products. they're fed like cookies and garbage. yeah yeah why they've had plastic i. think they're just trying to fatten them. up sometimes it's just in the feast. yeah yeah there's a reference in my. purpose it may be mixed in with stuff. they used to be able to. feed them incinerator waste i think they. can't feed them incinerator waste. anymore but incinerator waste yeah. like what are they burning in the. incinerator either other animals or just. waste products yeah oh so they're. they're not.
i mean they're not even feeding the cows. they're not feeding the cows organic. grains first of all so the cows are full. of. legal plastic content in animal feed. could harm human health. what small bits of plastic packaging. from waste food. makes their way into animal feed is a. part of the uk's permitted recycling. process. also it's so they don't they're not. penalized for accidental plastic. so it's it's allowed microplastics yeah. it doesn't seem like they're doing it on. purpose maybe not yeah it's part of it. and so this is. what they're showing is that their poop.
that's their feed oh so. so those little pieces of blue and [ __ ]. that's plastic i think so yeah. oh gross and so you gotta figure. the grains that are making that are. moldy right. the grains are sprayed with glyphosate. and atrazine which is a known. xenoestrogen so it's a it's a pesticide. that. turns male frogs into females it's. feminizing look at that 600. now you're going into alex jones. territories they're making the frogs gay. 650 000 tons of unused food from leaves.
of. loaves of bread to mars bars. are saved from landfills each year in. the uk by being turned into animal feed. whoa so this is what this is what grass. finished cows are not fed. so it's you gotta figure the fat of a. grass-fed animal you got you talked. about this with frank von hippel. franklin right yes uh you know the pal. the polycyclic aromatic hydra no the. persistent organic pollutants the. dioxins. so you've got to imagine that cows. eating good grass are going to have less. of that in their fat. yes it's in the it's in the soil so the.
longer a farm has not been using those. the better but the cleaner the cow. it's going to have less of that in its. fat less less of this less glyphosate. glyphosate's water soluble so it'll. probably be in the muscle. atrazine is fat soluble but this is the. kind of stuff that's never been really. looked at so. grass feeding is not as much about the. increased nutrient content. grass-fed grass-finished or grain finish. they're both nutrient-rich. but the grass finish is going to have. less of the bad stuff in the meat and. less of the bad stuff in the fat in my. opinion. and it's also a thousand times more.
ethical and part of an ecosystem which. is the only way humans are going to. persist on this planet. what about the essential fatty acid. content of grass-fed grass-finished beef. is it similar pretty. freaking similar really yeah pretty. similar so is the talk of it being more. nutritious is it just propaganda or. is it just it i think wishful thinking i. think it's probably wishful thinking. yeah i mean i think there are. there's no shortage of reasons to eat. grass-fed grass-finished meat but they. look different that's what kills me like. when. if i buy domestic cattle if i would buy.
domestic beef. and i buy grass-fed beef it looks closer. to like what i get from an elk. or a bison it looks like wild game it's. red and. dark whereas if i buy grain fed it's. like. pinkish maybe yeah i mean they might be. depleting some nutrients at least in the. studies that i've seen they're. they're comparable comparable but i mean. maybe it's just the the quantity that. you're eating because i'm look. when i look at it i'm like well. something's going on there's it's a. different color yeah. and you see the same thing in fish too i. mean certainly you can imagine there's. going to be more.
carotenoids from the grass if the cow is. finished on grass versus the grains. which are not going to be. you see that with salmon you know they. have to give salmon these coloring pills. right if they're farm-raised to get them. to make the flesh not. not you know not pale yeah not pale and. sometimes you'll see that with grass-fed. fat it's more. it's more orange because it has more. carotenoids but at a basic level i mean. i do think. there are probably nutritional. differences but there's not good. literature to support it at this point. and there is literature to support it. with wild game. in terms of protein content yeah it's.
far more protein rich like a piece of. elk is. much more protein rich than a piece of. beef you get. like ounce per ounce i think it's almost. double is that because of the lower. fat is that because elk is so much more. lean that's a good question. um i don't know if the the fat in a. beef steak could be that prevalent where. it's fifty percent. no it wouldn't be fifty percent but i. just think it's an athlete i think when. you're dealing with a cow. you're dealing with something that's. kind of just chilling and eating grass. when you're.
if you eat an elk you're dealing with. something that's running from mountain. lions and and wolves. i mean it's just a different kind of. animal i love i mean i prefer venison. and elk when i have it. i love the gamey flavor and everything. so well do you know what you're saying. if you eat. liver that it gives you like this kind. of booze nothing gives me a boost like. elk meat. there's something about that dark red. gold that. rich meat that when you eat it she's. like. just you you feel great it just it just. like there's. it's rewarding to your body your body is.
saying oh yeah yeah. yeah dude give me some more of this this. is what we need to recover. this is what we need to rebuild cells. this is what we need to rebuild tissue. it would be super interesting to do some. studies on that you know to take the elk. meat that you've hunted. to put it through like gas. chromatography mass spec. do some analyses and look at it compared. to like grass-fed beef or something yeah. see if it's like excess carnitine or. maybe some more choline or carnosine or. something. i'm sure there's something in there that. makes it special i mean it's wild. well acetylcholine is a nootropic and.
it's one of the ingredients in alpha. brain is that the same thing as choline. that you're talking about or is there a. different kind of choline. choline is a precursor for acetylcholine. so acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter. and i think um alpha brain has hooper. zine a which is an acetylcholinesterase. inhibitor. and that makes that allows more. acetylcholine in the synapse. so if you increase acetylcholine in the. synapse it can be enotropic. um absolutely but choline is a precursor. for acetylcholine and. phosphatidylcholine which is the.
phospholipid that makes up all the cells. of our body and the myelin sheath on. neurons and. again really really really hard to get. an. optimal amount of choline without eating. animals that's why. uh this one bring it up that's why it's. there's been studies that have connected. eating meat to brain function oh yeah. this is creatine too yeah and this is. very. controversial because people get up in. arms about this. i don't i think it's pretty. straightforward it's kind of like.
straight maybe straightforward. scientifically but. i don't think it's covered the. plant-based folks get very they get. their panties in the water about this. one in a big. way so jamie and the folder nutrients at. the there's one called creatine enhanced. veggie. there have been interventional studies. on um vegans. and they give them 20 grams of creatine. for five days which is a loading dose. and they get smarter. and what are they using for the source. of creatine i think they're just giving. them synthetic creatine. and how does one make synthetic creatine.
i think there are a couple of different. ways to make it. um we'd have to talk to a manufacturer. so let's say. consumed either a placebo or 20 grams of. creatine supplement. for five days creatine supplementation. did not influence measures of verbal. fluency. and vigilance but in vegetarians rather. than those who consume meat creatine. supplements resulted in better memory. interesting and there's another study in. the responsive of dietary style the. supplementation of creatine. decrease the variability in the. responses to a choice reaction time task.
creatine is a critical nutrient for. humans for the human brain. there's another one also jamie there. this one's even a little bit better. study it's. creatine drbp um. do you see that one yeah so. oral creatine monohydrate. supplementation improves brain. performance a double-blind. placebo-controlled crossover trial i. have read that creatine can be. a nootropic do you take it or do you. just get it from me me. so you i think that it's the studies.
pretty clearly show that if you're. eating. what i would consider to be an. ancestrally appropriate amount of meat. you don't benefit from more there's a. place at which you can saturate your. muscles with creatine. it's about five grams a day which is. about the amount of creatine in one. pound of meat a lot i eat more than one. pound of meat per day. but if you're eating one pound of meat. per day you're probably a supplement. no need to supplement with creatine. would supplementing it increase your. uh muscle strength though um because. that's what a lot of people do. that's what they do it for yeah yeah. i've done it maybe kind of fat.
like i gained well it can cause puffy. you can super supplement and you might. be able to retain more water. yeah yeah but i think if you're eating a. pound of meat per day plus. you're probably not going to get a whole. lot of performance benefits. supplementing with creatine but the. gaining the water though i think was why. people like your muscles are getting. larger because of that i think they felt. stronger. right in people who are creatine. deficient certainly supplementation is. powerful and again there's no creatine. in plant foods. right you can make a small amount of it. in your body but there's a lot of. evidence that it's inadequate but you.
would recommend if someone is on a. plant-based diet. they probably should supplement. absolutely creatine absolutely. yeah absolutely and again there's so. many nutrients like this creatine b12. niacin that are probably essential in. the formation of the human brain. you know we talk about we didn't talk. about it today maybe we can if we have. time. um or offline you know if you look at. the way the human brain grew. we got all the time in the world paul. this isn't the presidential debates. this is the joe rogan experience well. it's the internet i love it you can just.
go as long as you need to make your. point if you go uh to the evolution. folder jamie there's a. brain size change graphic that's pretty. cool. so this is a graphic from my book and. you can look at the the size of the. human brain. based on the cranial vault size and this. is fascinating and there's a lot of. theories as to why this happened but. some of the most compelling in my. opinion are around the advent of hunting. in humans and. when you had bill von hippellon so you. can see here. um uh this is millions of years on the.
x-axis. and uh the size of the human brain on. the y-axis you have the primate. ancestors. australopithecus homo habilis homo. erectus fire. and then neanderthals and then homo. sapiens so something really clearly this. is another. this is another tony hawk skate ramp. right what the heck happened there. something happened i think the most. compelling ideas are right there that i. labeled in the graph. that around two million years ago we see. the occurrence of stone tools these. bi-facial tools these are schulian tools. and evidence for hunting cut marks on.
animals bones. and evidence from mass animal graves. this is really cool i would. postulate that humans becoming hunters. becoming hunters made us human so you. know steve ranella is like doing the. happy dance right now because he's right. like hunting animals made us human by. providing. indispensable nutrients like creatine. that were prime releasers. or allowed our brains to grow in this. special way it's kind of written into. who we are. there's probably a bunch of other. coinciding factors too right.
well i mean other people hypothesize. some people hypothesize fire the oldest. evidence we have for fire is about a. million years after you start to see. that cranial vault size increase. so that was because of the increase in. the nutrients that were bioavailable. because of. cooking things over fire supposedly but. what's interesting is that. nutrients and meat are bioavailable. whether it's raw or cooked. nutrients in plant foods or at least in. tubers are more bioavailable. when you cook them or at least the. calories are you ever tried to eat a raw. sweet potato i used to do that a lot. when i was vegan.
no not a good thing is it nasty nasty. not a good thing i've never tried it. um have you ever listened to terence. mckenna in his uh discussion. yeah yeah fascinating idea i mean it's a. crazy yeah crazy theory. yeah yeah absolutely possible as well. his brother dennis makes a very. compelling. argument for it as well because he goes. his brother dennis is a scientist and he. goes. deep into the actual physical. changes to the brain and to synapses. and to the the body's ability to produce.
language. that occur while under the influence of. psilocybin. and he thinks he thinks well it could be. their co they were happening at the same. time. i mean this is also they think that. it might have made people better hunters. because. psilocybin particularly in low doses. increases visual acuity. and probably makes you more creative too. makes you uh figure out how to hunt. better and maybe. responsible for the development of tools. and other forms of creativity that. benefited human beings to evolve.
and become better hunters i've done it. once only once. only once i'm interested i want to do it. again but i think about it. set in setting and kind of respectfully. the first time i did it um. was a few years ago and so that was i'd. never done it before in my life so it's. only within the first few years that i. tried it last few years. but my experience was profound and i. don't doubt any of that. with what i experienced it was clarity i. felt so at home in the natural world. yeah it was incredible and um i was.
i was out hiking in seattle where i was. doing my residency. and i was with a friend and we were by a. lake and it was just me. and the wilderness i was by myself i was. just i had a different connection with. trees. and plants and it felt so different it. was just like a door opened. to this this experience it was like a. whole different unique thing. and um i was with a friend he had to go. back he was on call and i said just. leave me here i just want to i never. wanted to leave i felt so. at home in the wilderness and so you. know i hope that.
um it's probably controversial maybe not. in 2020 for a mainstream physician to. say i've used psilocybin you know. it's now being used in trials for ptsd i. mean it's incredibly powerful which. actually gets to an important point that. i should make about plants. which is that i don't want anyone to. think that i'm. that i'm against plants as medicine i. think there are many plant compounds. that are very valuable for humans. medical marijuana psilocybin clearly. impactful for humans but there's a real. dividing line between that and using.
plants as food or using plants to make. you better every day so we should just. say that but. yeah i mean my experience with cytosimon. was profound and i think that uh it's. something that i hope. more trials will happen with with the. fda but i was so curious you know i was. reading about it i knew they were doing. studies at hopkins. and they were doing studies nyu and i. thought it's i almost felt irresponsible. as a physician not knowing what this. experience was like i wanted to. to to to change to turn off the default. mode network i wanted to see what it was. like without ego. and it was it was an incredible.
experience so having had that experience. i don't doubt it. when i was at white oak pastures a. couple weeks ago i was walking through a. pasture with cow pies and they were. silicibe sinuses growing and i was like. ah. stoned ape it just makes sense that they. would try it right. i mean they flip over cow patties if you. watch primates they do it to get bugs. and. grubs and all it makes sense they would. try the mushrooms and if they did try it. and start tripping and. and found it to be incredibly euphoric. and enjoyable i would imagine they would. consume it quite a bit and.
what terence mckenna's research shows is. that it corresponds with a. climate change and a decreasing of the. rain forest and. it's rescinding into grasslands and that. that would also. increase the number of romanents and. these cattle that were. these ungulates that were leaving these. piles of [ __ ] and then these mushrooms. would grow on them. all makes sense it totally makes sense. i've never seen it before and i was like. that's actually real. yeah they do grow it's a fascinating. theory. you know but who knows listen man uh.
this was an awesome talk i really. appreciate it. your book the carnivore code is. available. right now uh is there an audio there's. an audio i do i read it. thank you i'm so glad you do the reading. because most people are gonna [ __ ] up. half of the words in this thing. it's very complicated you do a fantastic. job of breaking this down though and the. fact that you do this. all on memory with no carbohydrates. it's quite amazing i had a little bit of. honey today well not a lot i'm. definitely. definitely in ketosis right now and some. grass-fed bison all right uh.
paul saladino uh the carnivore code. thank you very much brother thanks for. having me on brothers it was very fun. thank you bye everybody. you.
