#2069 - Dr. Shawn Baker

It's bizarre that this kind of, you know, that I'm a source of information in some sort of strange way, because that's certainly not what I set out to do. Just along the line, you know, I'm curious. I wanted to talk to people, you know, including you and this diet. And, you know, I tell people I, I'm not strict with my carnivore diet. Like Saturday night I had sushi.

But I'll tell you, I felt like shit. afterwards. I ate a ton of it. I ate so much I'm a glutton. But all that rice, I was like, oh, it just makes me realize like how much better I feel when I only eat carnivore.

When I just eat mostly meat, I feel so much better. I mean, maybe it's anecdotal. Maybe it's just me and you and many other people that do it. But there's something to it. But you're an extreme example because you have been doing it now for how many years?

Eighth year? Yeah. So when I came to see you last time, it was almost six years ago. So I had just finished seven years now. So, yeah, it's been a while.

They want you to, you know, keep the engines turning, so to speak. And so I, you know, said, hey, look, I want to practice some lifestyle stuff. And that ended up, you know, leading to a long battle with myself in the hospital. The hospital basically suspended my privileges and went to the state. The state said, hey, you can fight this, you know, in our sort of state medical board situation, or you can get independently evaluated.

And I said, well, let me just get independently evaluated, because I don't see eye to eye with the hospital. And so that was done. It was like right at the time when I saw you a couple days before. And they came back and said, there's nothing wrong with you. Go back to work.

And so I got that. And then I had, to, you know, reapply to the board, reapply for a license. They granted my license. And I renewed it three times since then. So I'm a licensed medical, you know, licensed doctor, you know.

But I just, you know, right now I'm not actually actively practicing because I got frustrated with the medical system. I think our health care system has some serious, serious problems, you know, some serious conflicts of interest, some serious, I think the incentives for providing what I think is appropriate health care is misaligned. And so, you know, over the last few years, so we set up a company. It was called Rivero. And we're licensed in all 50 states.

We have physicians all across the country. And we're basically set up to provide what I call actual health care, root cause, medicine, get people off the medications, actually, you know, try and fix their disease and not just medicate everybody. because we have such a system where everybody's just like, you know, you go to the doctor, you know, here's your diagnosis, here's your drugs, stay on them the rest of your life, which I think is the wrong course.

And so, you know, so, like I said, it's going to be something that I think will provide health care, as it should be, you know, instead of, like I said, instead of just the symptom management, putting band-aids on stuff, actually getting people healthy. Because I think a lot of diseases are reversible. And we've seen that all the time. You know, we see that pretty frequently.

I mean, there's too many of those stories for it to be ignored.

I get people from Germany and Greece, and, you know, China and Japan and Africa that have all done this analysis. Same thing. Look, I was sick and now I'm not sick anymore. And so whether or not that is, you know, enough evidence to say this is, you know, a good treatment, you know, I can't say that. But you can't deny it's happening.

And I've been trying to get research done. In fact, there was a study done out of Harvard University two years ago. I don't know if you saw that. So there's a guy named David Ludwig, who is a senior author. And David, I've talked to him.

He is the most ethical, you know, just like he does not want any money from industry. He refuses to take anything. He's like, I want to make sure I do pure science. And they did a study and they looked at 2,000 people on a carnivore diet. And basically what they saw was, like 95% of the people, significant improvement across the board.

Now, the thing that was interesting to me is that diabetics, we had like 225 diabetics in that population. 92% of them came off all their insulin. These are all type 2s, you know. That's insane. So that's, you know, 100% came off all these other injectable drugs.

There's GLP-1 receptor agonists, which we've heard so much about lately, you know, the ozempics and things like that. Semaglutide, right. Came off something called a PCSK9 inhibitor. No, sorry, the SGLT2 inhibitors. 84% came off.

their metformin. So it's just like. this is clearly a, at least at the very least, a therapeutic tool. And that's how I push this. I don't tell, like, you know, I wrote a book on this.

I didn't say humans are carnivores. I said humans are opportunistic omnivores. If we were living in the Middle Ages and we came across, we're out hunting mammoths and all of a sudden, you know, the ice age is around. And we came across a tree full of Twinkies. I mean, we'd, well, shit, I'm going to eat that.

We'd try, right? We'd eat it, right? Because you know we would. But I mean, and, you know, there's people, there's obviously people that eat plants that aren't bad and are doing okay. So we're omnivores.

But from a disease, you know, mitigation standpoint, I mean, a therapeutic carnivore diet is tremendously effective. I mean, it's one of the more effective things I've seen across the board. And so, at the very least, you know, you'd say, let's explore that aspect of it, because, you know, like I said, there's people that are suffering. And we've got so many people. I know we may talk about vegan, carnivore, all the, you know, everything in between.

But I think at the end of the day, everybody's eating processed garbage. We're just eating bullshit. I mean, and that is really one of the problems. And the one thing, and you said this, Joe, when you eat this meat, you're like, I don't want that other bullshit, because you're actually satiated. And this is a thing that's, I think, problematic.

because if you look at, there's a study that just came out now, looking at the financial incentive for ultra-processed food. Why do we have this stuff? So you look at the big asset management groups. You know, you've got BlackRock. You've got Vanguard.

You've got State Street and Capital.

But those guys collectively own huge portions of Nestle, PepsiCo, all these other processed food companies. And they also have significant shares in pharmaceutical manufacturers. So you, basically, you sicken the population by feeding them garbage. And then you just, you know, you profit on their disease. And I think that's what's going on.

And I think it's really unfortunate, you know. And I think, you know, some people make an argument, you know, is there a net benefit from feeding more people versus how many people are getting sick? And I think there's a point where, you know, the line goes, you know, if most people are getting sick from this and only a few people are benefiting, then you've kind of crossed that line of, you know, is it for the greater good? And it becomes, you know, the realm of almost evil in my mind.

I think it's just opportunity. I think they just look at profits, and that's what these corporations are established for. Their bottom line is they're supposed to make as much money as they can for their shareholders. That's their responsibility. Their responsibility is to have like a cute cartoon guy that sells you sugary cereal.

because, you know, when I was a kid, that's what I wanted. I wanted Coco Pops.

Clearly.

You can't blame them. I mean, this is what any business wants to do. This wants to be successful. Exactly. It's about making money like everything else, really.

All this crap where they say that meat causes cancer. If meat caused cancer, most people would have cancer. Ninety-five plus percent of the population on Earth eats meat. And all this propaganda you hear about, you know, you're going to get cancer. Diseases are going to go.

All these different things. It does not seem to be the case in people that just eat meat. When you're looking at my experience, I have not—and, again, anecdotal. I've never met anybody that went on this diet that didn't have a positive result. Everybody that I know that goes on this diet.

Now, clearly, there's genetic differences. Some people have—well, definitely there's people that have that lone star tick issue, where a buddy of mine has that. He got bit by a tick, and he developed an allergy to red meat. It's a real pain in the ass for him. And it went away.

He had it for a year, and it went away, and it started to come back again.

But that's rare. For most people, red meat is a very nutrient-dense food.

I don't sit there, like, you know, for instance, my son's birthday was, you know, a couple days ago on Thanksgiving. He gets a cake? I had a piece of pumpkin pie, man. So, you know, I hadn't had that in 10 years. But I'm like, you know, no big deal.

I didn't die. But it's not—like I said, my diet, literally, is probably 98% red meat. I mean, I just eat steaks every day. You know, it's kind of crazy.

He's like, oh, my God, everything feels great, but his cholesterol shoots through the roof. And he's like, oh, my God, I'm going to die, right? So he's freaked out about this stuff. And he starts looking into it very mechanistically and spending years and years and years studying this stuff. And finally puts together this sort of theory.

And it's still theory, but they're showing that there's a lot of evidence showing that it's probably likely true called the lean mass hyper-responder. And there's something called a lipid energy model. And so what this Oreo cookie thing was is another guy, is another researcher. He's a Ph.D. from Oxford.

He's also finishing his medical degree at Harvard. And his name is Nick Norwitz. And he basically said, look, this lipid energy model works like this. When you cut carbs low and you get lean, right, your body says, hey, there's not a lot of energy in my cells. My liver glycogen isn't full.

My muscles aren't full of energy. So I need to get energy there somehow. And so what happens is the liver starts sending fat out into the bloodstream, right, so you have energy to work, right? And so what he's showing is that if I just add Oreo, cookies or some other energy dense, maybe junk food in there, the body will say, hey, I've got plenty of energy now. So the liver shuts down.

It doesn't traffic the cholesterol anymore or the triglycerides and the cholesterol. So that sort of validates what's going on here. And so. but the question is, is it bad if my cholesterol is really high, but I'm fit, I'm lean, you know, I don't have diabetes, I don't have prediabetes. I don't have insulin resistance.

I don't have high blood pressure. I'm otherwise metabolically healthy. because you see these people. So you see they're lean athletes. You know, they go on a diet like a carnivore diet or even a ketogenic diet.

And they're like, I feel great. It's the best I've felt in years. But my cholesterol is through the roof, so I got to stop. And so that's the real question. So on December 8th, there's going to be a landmark study that's going to be presented by a guy named Matt Budoff, who's a cardiologist at UCLA.

I think he's attached to UCLA somewhere. And basically what they did was they took 100 people, all who have sky-high cholesterol. We're talking like total cholesterol, 500, 600, 700 milligrams per deciliter. It's enough to give your doctor a heart attack. You know, you walk in there with your cholesterol, it's like 600, what the hell?

So he's got all these patients. They're that. They are all otherwise metabolically healthy, though. None of them are diabetics. None of them have blood pressures.

They're relatively lean. And what they did was they did high-level CT angiography of these people, looking really detailed at how much plaques in their blood vessels. And they're all older guys. They're like average age, like our age, like mid-50s, like mid-late 50s, right? So this is where you'd expect to start seeing heart disease.

And when they did that scan, almost none of them had any level of significant, you know, vascular disease. They were like clean, clean arteries. And so what they're doing is they're running them for a year, and then they're going to repeat the study, right, and say, in one year, has anything occurred? Now, the criticism of that will be that, oh, it takes 20 years to do that. But Matt Budoff is like the world-leading expert on how fast vascular disease develops, right?

So he's a guy that designed the study. He knows his stuff. So he said a year will show us for sure if vascular disease is going to occur. So what they're doing on the 8th is they're showing the preliminary data that shows all these people have almost no heart disease, and they compare it to something called the Miami Heart Dataset, which is like the perfect dataset for if you want to compare what's going on with vascular disease. And so in February, they'll finish up the collection of data, and then we'll get to see what happens after a year.

Now, I suspect what will happen is they'll show no progression, little progression, or even reversal, which would be shocking, because all these people are saying cholesterol causes heart disease. Because if you listen to guys like – because I know you've got Peter on here, Peter T. on here, and he says, look, it's just a matter of how much cholesterol over how much time. If it's high for a long period of time, you're going to get heart disease. But if this turns out to be what I think it's going to show and which it likely will show, then that throws a monkey wrench in that whole theory, because it's like, wait a minute, maybe it's a dependent variable.

Maybe if you're not fat, you know, out of shape, have high blood pressure and diabetes, that that LDL cholesterol being high is not as much of a problem as we thought it was, which is – I mean, that's really – I mean, that's paradigm shifting, quite honestly.

And so a guy named Ancel Keys was one of the ones that started promoting that theory. They did, you know, associational studies where they say, well, look at these countries. They eat a lot of saturated fat and they have high cholesterol and they die more commonly of heart disease. And so that basically data has been done over and over again. I mean, they've done Mendelian randomization studies, which there are some problems with those types of things.

They've done, you know, studies where they can show that, you know, we can lower cholesterol and cardiovascular disease decreases. So we know that, you know, that's the whole premise behind statin drugs. Some people think it's a pleomorphic effect or it's like a side effect, like, maybe it's decreasing the inflammation. And by decreasing the inflammation, you're actually improving heart disease. But there's been, I mean, there's a ton of evidence that would point to, yes, that is what's going on.

Now, what I would say is, again, you're looking at a general population. And the other thing is all-cause mortality. So clearly there's a lot of evidence that points to like. normally they like your total cholesterol below, like 190, LDL below 100, something like that. But if we look at like population studies and all-cause mortality, cancer, heart disease, dementia, infectious disease, so on and so forth, the people with higher cholesterol actually live longer.

They're the ones who live longer. And so the question is, you know, maybe I won't get a heart attack, but I'm going to get cancer instead because my cholesterol is too low. perhaps. Now, the critics of that will say it's reverse causality. It's like, well, the only reason your cholesterol was low was because you had cancer, right?

And cancer is making your cholesterol go down because cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and some of the other lipoproteins actually have a function. They participate in our immune response. So it's there for a reason. It's not just for the hell of it, right? We have a reason for this stuff.

But there's a plethora of studies on this stuff. Some of it's been paid for by the pharmaceutical industries, which, you know, of course, there's a little bit of conflict of interest in some of that, you know, I would imagine.

But again, if you talk to 99% of the cardiologists, they'll be on board with this. But, like I said, this sort of population, which we never studied, we have no data on these people. Like, if you go on a carnivore diet, Joe, I know you've gotten lean. You feel good. Probably your blood pressure is good.

Probably your glucose is good. Does that mean it's dangerous for you? And the answer is we don't know yet. But this study will shed a ton of light on this. And so this is coming out, like I said, the preliminary data, December 8th, when Budoff presents to the big conference.

And then, when they finish collecting the full data in February, they'll probably publish that, probably spring, summer, something like that.

That's what I think is going to happen. Now, we'll know for sure on December 8th when Budoff presents.

There's so many doctors that aren't aware that the demonization of saturated fat was specifically caused by these papers, by these doctors that were bribed.

I mean, it's paid for. Companies are going to benefit from it. You think about a lot of these academic institutions, a lot of their funding comes through industry. And they don't get funding if they don't get the results that they're getting paid for.

These people work for the government. They make these laws and they make these recommendations. And then they go on to get these incredible jobs where they get paid lucrative amounts of money.

So it's kind of crazy. And the USDA is not any different, because we talk about our food stuff. I mean, these guys that go on to become executives, big people in the USDA often do the same thing. They'll go into these food companies and they'll have the same sort of situation.

And this is a study done by Harvard. Walter Willett has been the chair. He's been vegetarian. He's been conflicted for years. But basically what they did was they said, well, we're going to count lasagna as red meat.

We're going to count sandwiches as red meat. And the people that eat red meat, they're overweight, they're smokers. We didn't really correct for that. But the headline is, red meat causes diabetes. Meanwhile, you've got a study that Harvard did three years ago with David Ludwig.

He said, look, these people are eating nothing but red meat and their diabetes is going away. How can those two things coexist?

Well, what I'm trying to do is get an interventional study done. So I, you know, it's kind of interesting, because this is how far what I think the problem is. So I went to something called the NCBA. This is the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. This is supposed to represent all the cattle producers in the United States, right?

And there's something called the Beef Checkoff. You remember that? Beef, it's what's for dinner. You remember that thing? It was like Robert Mitchum back in 92..

And then, I think, Sam Ailey. They got great voices, right? Beef, it's what's for dinner. You know, that type of thing. This is what they're supposed to do.

So they collect, as part of the Beef Checkoff, like every time a cow moves in the United States, like if you're a cattle ranch and you sell your cow, you've got to pay a dollar. If it goes to, you know, if it goes to a slaughterhouse, it's got to pay a dollar. If it goes to a feed yard, it's got to pay a dollar. So this is, so every year, and there's like roughly, we slaughter about 34 million head of cattle every year in the United States, which, you know, interestingly, India slaughters more cattle than we do, which I didn't know that, but they do. They slaughter 38 million head of cattle every year.

And you think about India, it's like they're all vegetarian and eating cows. They export most of that. But they have the biggest herd of cattle in the world in India. There's 300 million head of cattle in India.

In fact, there's a lot of carnivores in India right now. It's kind of crazy. I did conferences in India, and it's just like, wow, it's kind of a growing movement down there. But back to the point. So we've got this beef checkout system.

So every cattle rancher, they pay a buck, right? And then so at the end of the year, they collect $30, $40, $50 million a year. It's supposed to be to promote beef, like beef, it's what's her dinner, to do research and all that stuff. And so I, you know, the U.S. Cattlemen's Association, which represents the cattle producers, but the NCBA represents Cargill and Tyson and the packing things.

And so there's a little conflict between that. But they have all the money. And I went to those guys, to the beef checkoff, and I said, hey, look, we want to spend a little bit of money to do a study on beef versus diabetes, because we know the results are going to be. The people are going to, they're going to go on an all-meat diet or a close-to-all-meat diet, their diabetes is going to go away. It's simple.

And it takes all the confusion out, because whenever you do a, you know, you hear all these dietary studies, it's like, oh, but he was eating hamburgers and French fries. And there's all this, confounders. And it's like you can't really test it. I'm like, the perfect way to test if meat is healthy or not is to just put them on a damn carnivore diet and see what happens.

But they keep doing it over and over again, because they generate headlines, you know, the headlines they want. But anyway, back to this beef checkoff thing. So I said, hey, look, you know, every year you award money, you know, hundreds of thousands, you know, tens of millions of dollars to promote beef. I said, let's get a little bit of money to do a research study on diabetes. And they literally said, no, we're not interested in doing that.

And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. The beef industry is taking a beating right now. You know, you listen to it. It's like, you know, everybody wants to get rid of beef. The cow farts are boiling the oceans.

And, you know, it's going to kill you. It's going to give you cancer, which all of it is largely nonsense. And this is, you know, in my view, this type of study would clearly, clearly demonstrate that not only does beef not cause diabetes. In fact, I talked to the CEO of the NCBA two years ago. I sat down.

I presented in front of the California Cattlemen's Association. And literally, the president of the association stood up and said, I went on a carver diet and cured my diabetes. It's like, yeah, it's clear. And the guy said, yeah, I get it. We're going to help you out.

We're going to get this going. I didn't hear. I heard nothing from these guys. So what I think is going on is the USDA kind of oversees, all these checkoffs. And they just kind of say, look, you can't say that because we want to promote, you know, because, again, they have all these processed food lobbies, Nabisco and PepsiCo sitting on the, you know, they're on the board.

And they're like, if we promote this one food and people stop eating all this processed food, right, then what are we going to do? We're going to lose a lot of money. You think about it, you know, not that I'm advocating that everybody on a carnivore diet, because I don't think that's, I don't think it's necessary, you know, for one. But if you significantly cut back on all these people consuming all this garbage, you know, what does that do economically to this country? I mean, you think about how much money is spent on garbage food, the drugs that are needed to treat.

You're talking, I mean, we spent $4.3 trillion a year on health care in this country. And what do we get for it? We got one of the sickest populations in the world. Our life expectancy is going down. Everybody's fat.

Everybody's depressed. Everybody's on drugs. It's crazy.

This is all, like, this religious stuff.

He was a really nutty guy. You read about some of his stuff.

I know there's people that are, like, putting weird stuff up their butt. Man, it's just kind of like...

I've never done it. But apparently there's a tube, and they look at it. Oh, look, here's your problems.

But it's like, there's these crazy, crazy videos where they're just pulling all this, like, gelatinous black stuff out of their butt. But it's like, you just ate all that stuff. That's what's coming out of you.

Yeah, that's what's going on. You know what clears your toxins? Your fucking liver. Yeah. That's what that thing's for.

Most doctors would agree that fruit juices are very high in sugar. Yeah. And to get it in that sort of liquid dose, where it just goes right into your fucking bloodstream, in your liver, that's a lot of sugar, man.

But we've changed the nature of the food so much that it's interesting. You know, I saw Darius Muzaffarian, who's a researcher at Tuftu. He's got to put out the study that says, or was part of the study, that said, you know, like Lucky Charms are healthier than eggs. You saw that last year. That's total BS, right?

Hilarious. But one thing he did point out was that, like, over the last 20 years or so, we haven't really been eating much more calories than we were. Like, from the 1960s to about 2000,, we ate more calories. And maybe that explains why everybody got fat. But since that time, we really haven't eaten much more, but we've eaten so much more ultra-processed food.

In fact, right now the U.S. diet is close to 70% ultra-processed, which you think about. That's, like, crazy. And our kids are getting fat. But one thing that's interesting is, like, because you're talking about the microbiome, right, our gut flora.

When you eat, like, whole food, you know, it goes farther down your digestive tract. And then, you know, our microbiome actually consumes some of it. But when you're just eating sugar, it goes straight in you. So those calories, your gut microbiome doesn't get any of that. So it's like you're absorbing more calories.

So just by changing the quality of the food, you're changing how many calories you absorb. And that is what some people say is part of what leads to this obesity thing. But we know, like, for instance, well, here's another thing. The USDA came out with a study, like, I don't know, three months ago. 91% processed food diet is healthy.

You know, this is what they're pushing, trying to get us. Because they're trying to position us to say.

I mean, I think that gets into, you know, freedom of choice and things like that. So you shouldn't ban. Just like you can still smoke if you want to. But, you know, it's not the best for you, so you don't want to do that. But at the same point, you know, they're saying, like, this stuff is, there's a lot of backlash.

And, like, people like myself and probably you and others are saying, look, this ultra-processed garbage is literally killing us. It's making us crazy. It's making us depressed. All these people with mental health disorders, a lot of that. nutrition is part of that, and we can talk about that.

But, you know, what they're saying is there's a backlash against that. Yeah, so that's the NOVA study.

We first developed a list of foods that fit NOVA criteria for UPF, ultra-processed foods, fit within a dietary pattern in the 2020 DGA, and are commonly consumed by Americans. We then used these foods to develop a – what is that, 7-D?

This menu provided adequate amounts of all macro and micronutrients except vitamin D, vitamin E, and choline. Conclusions. Healthy dietary patterns can include most of their energy from ultra-processed foods, still receive a high diet quality score, and contain adequate amounts of most macro and micronutrients. Boy.

I mean, you see what happens to our pets. Yes. And everybody's fat. So we're going to still eat. We're going to say, well, it's still okay.

It's okay if you eat your human dog chow or your human chow. Just keep doing that. Don't ask questions. And, oh, by the way, here's an azepic shot or a semaglutide shot. Well, semaglutide shot will give you to kind of keep you chilled out.

So it's really, I mean, it's almost sinister in a way.

It has nothing to do with exercise. It's all disease and genetic. And there's nothing you can literally do. And she's also sponsored by Nova Nordisk, who makes ozempic, right? And she's on there.

She's also a member of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Panel. So 95% of the people that sit on the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Panel today, for this next one, when they're going to come up for 2025 guidelines, all have financial ties to processed food companies. Yeah.

Which, I mean, you think about it. It's just like, this is crazy. It's so wild. So if you go to, like, Brazil, like Brazil's dietary guidelines, or at least one they released a few years ago, it was like, here's what you should do.

Cook at home. Don't eat processed foods. And eat with people around that you love. That's their, literally, that is their recommendation, which I think is better than our guidelines. Because, you know, I mean, if left to our own, you know, I mean, we are now being told we've got to eat all this garbage, and it's just making us sick.

It's crazy. And I think, you know, like, you know, I mean, it's like, this is the most – can you remember a time, because you and I grew up the same time. Like, I turned 57 in six weeks. Yeah, I'm 56.. So we grew up the same time.

Back when we were kids. I mean, it's like, when we were kids, we all watched the same fucking shows, because there was nothing else on, right? There was, what, CBS, ABC, NBC, and maybe, like, PBS, right? Maybe a local news station. That's all you had.

So we're all watching Gilligan's Island, and the Brady Bunch, and Dukes of Hazzard, and Charlie's Angels, and stuff like that. And everybody had the same thing. But now it's so fractionated. Everybody's divided. I mean, I don't know.

I can't remember a time when this country's been more divided. I mean, can you? No. It's just like every single issue, Palestine, Israel, COVID, shot, not shot, climate change, no, climate change. It's like everything's a war.

It's like crazy. But I think part of that is, I mean, I don't think half people's brains work anymore. I mean, because we're just so nutrient-deprived.

I think it's exacerbated by people's poor physical health.

He's a good dude. He's like an Indiana country boy, but he's at Harvard. And he just wrote a book called Brain Energy, where he talks about how nutrition and metabolism significantly affect mental health disorders. And we've got something like 25% of Americans are on a drug for mental health, which is insane. I mean, it's like, how the hell do we make it through millions of years as a species, or hundreds of thousands of years, rather?

But what they've shown? in one study, they showed that they took like 30 people that were inpatient, like psychotic. I mean, schizophrenia,

manic bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder. And they changed their diet. They put them on a clean diet, kind of a lower-carb diet. And all of them, every single one of them, saw a significant improvement in their mental health. And so, but, you know, what do we do now?

You know, if you go to like rehab, drug rehab, or you put somebody in an institution, they just feed them garbage. And they just keep them, perpetuating this horrible brain. When you go to the hospital. Yeah, the hospitals are horrible.

What about fiber?

So if I'm some poor guy and I'm eating these potato chips and cookies, I don't get a lot of fiber. If I got a little more money, I'm probably buying the fruits and vegetables, probably out of guilt. But it generally represents higher socioeconomic status, better overall diet quality. And I think it's beneficial in that situation. But if you go like, is it providing anything that I can't get from meat?

So there was a study that got in Tommy Wood and the other researcher was Maylor. I can't remember her first name. It was female. They did a study looking at what happens to the microbiome, because we're always hearing, oh, you need fiber to feed your microbiome, right? You need those short-chain fatty acids.

You need the butyrate or the butyric acid. Well, they looked at that and they said, look, the gut has, our gut has incredible metabolic flexibility. And so even in the absence of fiber, you can get the same short-chain fatty acids from protein. You can get it from being a low-carb state where you have more ketones being produced, because, you know, the main ketone that's in our blood is called beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is very similar to butyric acid. It's only one, you know, hydroxyl molecule, when it reverses all the time.

So they indicated that that, you know, we don't need fiber for that particular aspect. And the other thing, there was a recent study, because I see what I see is so many autoimmune conditions. You know, you know, like. I know you've talked to Jordan and Michaela and, you know, you've seen these crazy autoimmune conditions, which I've seen in the thousands. now.

It's crazy, like Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, eczema, asthma, you know, anything.

That there was a study looking at fiber actually exacerbating problems with rheumatoid arthritis because of its interaction with a particular bacteria called Prevotella coprii, I think, or something like that. And so we're seeing, yeah, so high-fiber diet synergizes and exacerbates rheumatoid arthritis. So basically, you know, it's showing that, yeah, I mean, there can be problems with fiber for a lot of people, particularly if they have these issues.

And it's not because of me. I'm like, I tell people, hey, we're omnivores. This is a therapeutic protocol. Use it for as long as you like. If you want to do it for a lifestyle, have at it.

It's fine. I'm not going to.

But what I think was happening with fiber in a lot of ways, because this fiber goes back to, oh, what's the researcher's name? I'm blanking on his name. He had a cancer named after him. But anyway, 1920s, 1930s, goes to Uganda in Africa and notices, like, oh, these people aren't fat and sick like they are in England. And Dennis Burkett's the guy's name.

And he says, well, oh, they're eating a lot of fiber. But also, they weren't eating a lot of sugar, and they weren't eating a lot of garbage like they were in the U.K. Because sugar's been around since about the 1600s and progressively has increased. I mean, the U.S. right now, it's kind of interesting.

Compared to, like, the early 1800s, the average kid by the age of something like eight has eaten more sugar than they would have in a lifetime back 150 years ago. So it's kind of crazy.

We got this food addiction stuff. So I interviewed a gal. She was 800 pounds, right? It's like, how do you get to 800 pounds? It's, like, impossible.

Like, I don't think I could do it if I tried, right? I mean, I don't, you know, food addict. Couldn't stop eating chocolate and ice cream and all that stuff. And this is her. She's almost 800 pounds, or 350 kilos, which is the most I've ever deadlifted.

So that's kind of an interesting weight. But 22 months, she goes on carnivore, right? I interviewed her a while back. And she's now lost almost 500 pounds on carnivore when nothing else would work for her. I mean, she literally, I mean, she told me it was like, I finally found the off switch.

She tried weight watchers. She tried, like, gastric band surgery. She tried vegan diet. She tried juicing. She tried weight watch.

She tried every single thing you could think of but could never stop, stop. And finally, for the first time in her life, she's like, I finally found freedom from this food addiction. And, you know, recent studies show that that other guy in the hat, this is a funny guy. This guy in the hat right there, his name is, what's his name? I'm blanking on it.

Todd. He's a dude out in Montana, right? He was 770 pounds, right? Same sort of situation. Started drinking Cokes when he was 14 years old.

I'm doing the interview and he goes, yeah, I didn't know who he was. And he starts telling me, he goes, yeah, when I was 14, I was 600 pounds. I'm like, what? 600 pounds at 14.. It's like, how the hell can you get to 400??

But, you know, their poor family and his mom and sister and everybody in the family was, you know, very obese. And they had tried gastric bypass and it didn't work for them. But same thing with this kid. I mean, he's just like, I call him a kid, he's 40.. He went carnivore for the first time in his life.

He's like, I don't need the sugar and I don't need the Coke. He was drinking like 20 Cokes a day or some ridiculous stuff. And he just blew up and blew up and he could not stop until, and this is why, one of the reasons I think, I think they know this. I mean, the food industry knows they're making addictive food. They clearly know that.

In fact, I had a gal who worked for one of the major food manufacturing companies. And her job, she was a chemist, and her job was to design food to be as addictive as possible. And she literally told me that. She goes, I can no longer live with the guilt. I want to come work for you guys.

You know, she was just so, like, just beside herself. She says she realizes what she's created with this epidemic of disease and suffering. I mean, because these people are suffering. Did you see that movie, The Whale? Did you ever see that movie?

He can barely go to the bathroom. Refrigerator next to him, and his whole life is in it. And this guy did the same thing. He said he spent like, he said he fasted one time for 40 days trying to lose weight, and he never left his chair. He just sat there for 40 days and didn't eat.

Wow. Can you imagine? That's like hell. That's like hell on earth. You know, but now he's like, now he's going back to work.

He's getting out in the field, and he's working, doing electrical work or something like that. But, I mean, it's just the sugar in one, you know, I know there's people out there saying, listen, sugar's fine. Salty oils and stuff like that. But I think clearly there are people that are addicted to either sugar or sugary foods. You know, it's like, you know, because you're like, would you eat chocolate if there's no sugar in it?

I mean, it's like, you know, that 100% dark is kind of like, you know, have you tried that?

You see these people that are so addicted to this stuff.

And the processed food companies actually pay these guys, right?

You know, it's like Doritos and cookies and Cokes and all the garbage that they're chowing down on. And, you know, we've got this whole, the body-positivity movement is being funded by the processed food industry. I mean, if you didn't know that. I mean, it's like they've clearly shown.

That's what they come out and say. It's, you know, it's like there was some article. like, you know, working out is a right-wing conspiracy. Do you see that stuff? Yes.

And so they see these things, and it does affect the way they view the world. As ridiculous as it sounds. And maybe one article won't do it. But if you see enough of them over time, you will associate that activity with some sort of problematic label that could be put on you. Which is incredible that we're so easily influenced.

Some of us.

I let people live. I'm not political one way or the other. And all of a sudden the whole spectrum just shifts way over. And it's like, if you're not promoting like craziness, you're all of a sudden this racist, crazy person.

I think we should subsidize the schools and we should fix the roads and we should fucking fix inner cities. And we should, if you're going to use tax dollars, that's, and if I thought my tax dollars were being used very appropriately in that way, I'd be 100% in favor of all that stuff. If I thought it really was an overall benefit to society. The problem is bureaucracy and big government is insanely inefficient. Like if you were talking about, if there was some sort of private industry.

And the private industry only profited if something was successful. And they got involved in these particular activities. If they got involved in education, if they got involved in dietary health. And the only way they were profitable is if their methods were effective. Because there's a free market.

That would probably work. But when you get the government involved, all it does is make the government employees more wealthy. It makes the government larger. And it makes them protect that industry. We covered that with the homeless thing.

in California. If you're not aware, there's people that are working on the homeless. There's like a shitload of them. And some of them, they're making a quarter million dollars a year. And they are not putting a fucking dent in it.

They're not effective at all. In fact, the only thing that I saw that was effective at all in stopping the tents and the homeless situation. Was when Xi Jinping visited San Francisco. They fucking cleaned it up like that. Like you, could have done this the whole time.

Which is so wild.

We have less than a year. Like, what are they going to do? I mean, you could, look, if Biden died tomorrow. And then what do they do with Kamala Harris? They're going to put her on the moon?

Like, what are they going to do? She's the vice president. So if he dies, she becomes the president. Which is fucking wild when you hear that lady talk.

And they said, well, let's give it to Newsom. I mean, do you think that's a plausible scenario?

I mean, and imprisoned. rather. I don't know if that's going to happen. I don't think it is. It doesn't seem to.

It just seems like it's a bunch of trumped up charges. No pun intended.

I'd fucking buy it immediately. If that shit was $18 million and you were the only one that was able to buy it, you'd be a fool not to scoop it up. Because you could sell it right away. You'd get a loan. And you could sell that bitch right away.

for who knows how much. I mean, I think Forbes valued it. I think it was like well over $700 million. Wow. And Trump thinks it's worth over a billion.

And he might be right. That's what's crazy. It's a giant piece of property in one of the most valuable pieces of land in all of America. I mean, a house next to him, down the street, a much smaller place, sold for $50..

What if a war breaks out? What if things get even crazier? What if nationalism really upticks? Then you have someone who is now in power that is far right, like has happened all over the world. If that happens and that person, if that precedent has been set for prosecuting your political opponents and going after them with trumped up charges, we have a horrible situation.

And that's one of the reasons why we have to stick with the rule of law. We have to stick with the way this country was founded on. These principles were set up because they wanted to mitigate corruption at its base level at every step of the way. They wanted to stretch it out so no one could be an authoritarian dictator and run America.

And so they had this, I guess it's PVV or PPP party, freedom party, and they won that by a landslide. And so when you saw in Italy, Maloney takes over. So you've got this, I think, backlash coming back. It depends on how far does a pendulum swing back the other way. And you kind of like, I don't know, I mean, day-to-day to me, it doesn't really affect me that much because I'm not like a political crazy person.

But I'm just like, how does it affect my day-to-day stuff? I mean, a little bit of the COVID stuff, I was a little annoyed by that. I don't know. I was very annoyed. I don't know.

I just spoke at a conference in Florida and I had Robert Malone sitting next to me in the car when it was going out there. I just kind of saw some of the craziness there. And I know that's a really sensitive issue.

big chains labeled as essential. But these small mom and pop stores were forced to go under. People had worked their whole lives to develop these businesses, and they took them away from them. And it's fucked up. And the fact that no one is outraged still and that this narrative has been allowed to be portrayed through the mass media, that this isn't a major problem and that this cannot happen again.

This is fucking madness, man.

Right. And he made a video and it went viral. Yeah. And the cops, the Seattle police commissioner, said, hey, Greg, we agree in principle what you're saying, but you got to take down a video. And he just said, no, fuck you.

I'm not going to do it. So they fired him. And so he got like a GoFundMe page and he raised much money and he opened a jujitsu studio in a CrossFit gym. And he's like, I make more money now as a jujitsu guy than I ever did as a cop.

And that's what the stem cells are for today.

But the question is, is it because, again, there's a conflict of interest there? Because if you're not getting surgery because you're getting stem cells, I'm losing out on shoulder arthroscopy. money, right? So, I mean, there's a little bit of a conflict of interest there. So I go at it with a little bit of skepticism, but I'm open-minded and we'll see.

Like I said, if I notice, because I want to get back to rolling.

But, I mean, it was just like I want to, because I got a long neck. I don't know if you can tell. I got a pretty long neck. I'm a pretty big, strong guy, but my neck is an area where I didn't really like spend a lot of time developing. Because, I mean, when I played rugby, I did.

I'd do some neck bridges and wrestler's bridges and neck bridge and start bench pressing with the weight on there. But I hadn't done that in years, you know, because I was just like. So then, you know, when I got into jiu-jitsu, what I've been doing, you know, two years into it, basically. And then I just got dumped, man. I was just like, you know, we were talking about that.

I just got landed on my head. Dropped on your head. Dropped on my head and flexed under me. Because I'm about 250, 260.. And the other guy was like, I don't know, 220..

And it was just like that combined weight. It was just like.

Because that's part of the problem with it not being completely approved by the FDA is they're limiting their applications. But in Mexico, they're not. And so they've had tremendous results. And they inject directly into the discs. They put you under anesthesia.

They inject you directly into the discs. And they told them, I want you doing anything for eight weeks. Nothing. You're walking. That's it.

Nothing straining. That's hard to do. It's hard to do. But it's important. It's so hard for guys like you and I that work out all the time.

But it's so important. And one of the things that I realized. I was getting a lot of stem cells in my left knee in particular. I had a torn MCL. And I just wasn't letting it heal properly.

I would get the stem cells. And then, four weeks later, I'd go back to Muay Thai. And I'd be smashing the bag and kicking the pads. Then my knee would swell up again. And I was like, fuck.

And I was thinking, god damn it. I don't want to get surgery. And then I would go back again. Get more stem cells. Do it again.

And then I finally got the stem cells. And I said, okay. I am going to take a year off of kicking. And I didn't do any kicking at all for a year. Now it's back to full strength.

I have no problems with it. I'm slamming the bag. No problems. It doesn't hurt. It's still, I'm missing meniscus in there.

Because I had it scoped in 2003,. I believe it was. And so there's a chunk of, I had a bucket handle tear. It was a real problem. It was a nasty meniscus tear that I had.

So they removed some meniscus, which can contribute to arthritis if you're not careful. But it just gets a little sore sometimes. But the structure is not a problem at all anymore. And I did a lot of that. knees over toes, stuff.

That guy is amazing. He's amazing. And I love that. he puts all that information out there for everybody. He just lets you know for free.

He shows his mom doing it. He shows how he had all these knee surgeries and all these problems. And now he can dunk. He can run. He can sprint.

Do all these different things. So I started incorporating all those knees over toes things, the Nordic Curls, the Tib Bar Raises. My knees are significantly stronger than they've been in years.

So most of my work was, I was doing rucking. I was doing a lot of farmer's carries. I was doing elevated treadmill with weight on my back. I was doing a lot of things like that, that is just designed. Stairmaster.

I was doing all the different knees over toes, stuff. Box steps. All these different things, just specifically to condition my legs for the mountains. And I didn't want to fuck my knees up. But that's over, so now I can go back to jiu-jitsu.

So I'm like, the biggest problem for me is, like, I can't get in as enough as I want to hit that learning curve.

And then you go through a pass phase. You know, you go through a guard pass phase. Or you go through a back mount phase. You know, whatever your routine is, that you do. Just fucking.

do that over and over and over and over again. I made my biggest leaps when I was a blue belt, because I'm good friends with Eddie Bravo. And he and I would drill twice a week. We would just get together and nothing but drill. Nothing but drill.

And it made massive leaps in my improvement because I was conditioned to hit those. My body knew what, just like tying. He would describe it like tying your shoelace. You don't even think about tying your shoelace, right? You get it.

Once you know how to do it, you just, bing, it just does that. You want that with your jiu-jitsu techniques. And the way to get that with your jiu-jitsu techniques is to drill. Just drill over and over and over again. Practice on white belts.

kind of let you work a little bit. But I always try to get the harder ones because I'm like a big guy.

because it's so rare. Because big guys can just get on top. They get on top and smash the smaller people, and that's fun. And so they do that more often than not. And it's very rare that you get a big guy that has really sharp, sharp technique.

Most people say the best jiu-jitsu to learn is learn jiu-jitsu from a smaller person. You learn jiu-jitsu from, you know, like one of the Mendez brothers or Hoyler Gracie, or someone who's a smaller person physically, Marcelo Garcia. So their technique is just sharp.

Then he, of course, figured that out and still armbarred me anyway.

It's just whoosh.

It's just like you listen to him talk on his videos, and he'll just say something off the wall. It's like, oh, yeah, it's like if you were hanging out at the strip joint last night. I'm like, what? He throws these funny things in there, and he's such a good guy, describing what you're supposed to be doing, what you're supposed to be thinking, why you're doing it. I enjoy that.

But again, then you go to a live role, and you're like, wait a minute. It's changing too fast for me to keep up. Yes. You can't really picture that well.

When my friends who realize that they really love jiu-jitsu and they started teaching lower belts to make a living, they didn't want to do their job anymore, so they got a job teaching private lessons. Those guys got so much better. It's really incredible. It's extraordinary, the leap that they make, because they're concentrating on the basics, and they're explaining it to people. So when they're explaining these things to people, it's like cementing it in their mind, like really carving those grooves deeply in their mind and their body, so their body knows exactly what to do in those situations.

You're good, and you're very dedicated. If you teach, you can train here for free. So I was great. I was like, this is awesome. Now I don't have to pay dues.

All I have to do is show up and teach, which I love to do anyway, and it helped me. I got big leaps in my improvement from teaching.

The nicest people I've ever met. I've been amazed at how just super nice all these guys are. I've met a lot of them now, and it's just like, wow.

And so you're like, you're fighting for your life, and then the rest of life is like, well, at least I'm not fighting for my life right now.

Right. You know, you're just trying not to get your arm broken. You're trying to, you know, like literally. I mean, how many people are running around all day where multiple times a day you're trying not to get your arm broken?

You're not thinking, fuck, my electric bill. I forgot to pay it. Oh, my God, I've got to do this. And at the end of the month, I owe taxes. You're not thinking of any of that shit.

My spouse, she sees me coming in, my face is all scratched up, I've got black eyes. She's like, what the fuck are you doing with this stuff? It doesn't compute to her, but I'm like, it's so fun. It's just like it's. so, there's such a positive trade-off for that.

Like I said, I'm just thinking about longevity and stuff like that. And it's like, if I get hurt, then I can't train, and that's going to have a negative impact on me. So it's kind of balancing that out so that you can still continue to do the things that keep you healthy and still enjoy this activity.

You know what I'm saying? It's like the problem is the actual chaos of rolling, where knees get yanked and, you know, fucking backs get fucked up. That's where the problem lies. But if you can train smart and train with other people that are also dedicated to training smart, you can continue your improvement.

I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Like, all I was thinking is like, how long do I have to recover from surgery before I can get back to rolling again? That's all I was thinking. I was not thinking like, oh, I have to stop now. I was like, what?

He was saying stop. I was like, stop, what? Stop? the one thing that keeps me sane? Like, because, you know, especially if you're a person that deals with other high-pressure things, it makes those other high-pressure things so much easier.

Yeah. It really does. And it elevates your human potential. Like, whatever you do in life will be easier to do because you do something that's so much more difficult than anything else.

I never want to do it. Every single time, my bitch-ass brain tries to find some way to override my discipline and tell me, you don't have to do it today. You've done it three days. this week. I'll take a day off.

Let's go inside and get a cup of coffee and watch TV. I'm like, shut up, pussy. Let's go. And then you get in there and I just stare at my stopwatch. I stare at the watch and I go, when three minutes is over, I'm going to be so happy.

I did this. And every time three minutes is over, I get out.

You can turn it off. It's still cold. It's still cold as fuck. But if you really want to experience the stuff, the real suffer, crank that bitch up, and it's a raging river.

We do, and I tell them, if you can only do five, do five. You don't have to do 100.. You know, like I'm doing sets of 20.. If you want to do sets of five, do five. The most important thing is we want to build a base.

So, if you get to like five and you're struggling, stop right there. I'm not trying to kill anybody. I'm just trying to give you guys a base. so you have a good time. So, we're all laughing.

We're having a lot of fun. I'm running them through these workouts. We're doing it three, four days a week, and then we get in the cold plunge. We get in the sauna first, which is the way I've been doing it with them, so they get to the point where they're actually kind of looking forward to the cold.

This is the whole. I know you can do this. I know you don't want to do this, but the whole idea is, when it's done, you're going to feel better because you did a thing that you didn't think you could do or you think you had to quit. You don't have to quit, because sometimes they'll be in there like, I've got to get out. No, you don't.

You have four more minutes. You can do anything for four minutes almost, but just fucking concentrate. Concentrate and relax and just deal with it. Count to ten and then count to ten again and then keep doing that. And eventually, it'll be four minutes.

Just do it. And then afterwards, I get them in the cold. And when I get them in the cold, they get out. They're like, oh, my God, I feel amazing. I go, don't you feel great?

So, by doing it this way, where I'm just introducing them first to bodyweight exercises, then to very light kettlebells, like 12-pound swings, cleans, presses, some windmills. And then now I've got them doing renegade rows, a little bit more difficult. And then now I've got them doing, you know, like the rogue glute-ham machine. So I've got them doing like those sit-ups where you hang low and come all the way up. I'm like, if you only do three, do three.

I'm doing set to 15.. You don't have to do what I'm doing. Just do because I built up to this. We're going to do those. Then we're going to do some back extensions.

I'm going to strengthen your core. We're going to do some reverse squats with the pulley machine. So we're going to do those at 50% of your bodyweight. If you can only do two, do two. I want you to get up to 10..

And we're going to do sets of 10 eventually. But we're going to build a base. And so we build this base. And now these guys are fucking happy. They're confident.

They're coming to the green room before the show. It's like, dude, I feel fucking great.

I mean, are these guys, because, I mean, obviously, the UFC fighters are a different breed than the comics. Yes. And are you finding that, like in your own personal experience, that being in shape helps you with your craft?

You're an entity. Your existence is all symbiotic. It's all working together. If you eat better, if you rest better. Look, if I'm tired, like if, for some reason I, you know, I had to travel.

or this or that, or something woke me up and I'm not getting any sleep and I have to do stand-up and I have four hours sleep, I don't have as much juice.

There's not a thing you can do other than sleep, where, when you have less energy, you do it better. Nothing else. So if you have more energy, you'll be better at comedy. You'll be better at talking to people. You'll be better at whatever the fuck it is you do.

Whether you're an accountant or a fucking songwriter, you'll be better at it if you have more energy. It's not, like, mutually exclusive that you have to be a drunk fatso in order to be a funny comedian. It's just not true. A lot of drunk fatsos are funny comedians because they're wild, impulsive people, and that's fun to watch. But they can still be all those things and be healthy.

I mean, I would, you know.

They get things. They understand people. They're armchair psychologists. They understand what makes people think and behave. Like, Patrice O'Neill is one of the greatest comics of all time.

He was diabetic. And he was a big, overweight guy. But he was brilliant. And he had an understanding of human psychology that came from life experience. And whatever shit he went through when he was younger that he brought to the stage.

And he would have been better if he was healthy, which is crazy. Because he was so good already.

And, you know, it's like, I don't like that term team building. Because I don't think about it as a corporate environment. But there's something to that. Like, we're all brothers. And we get together and we have fun together.

And they're learning. They're learning. They're like, oh my God, this actually makes me feel better. And I was never, they were never involved in anything like this before. They never had like organized workouts on a regular basis.

But the fact that they're all going through it together as beginners. And that they're getting guided by someone like me who loves them. And who is already fit. And they can see the benefits. And I'm telling them, dude, keep going.

You will have a fucking six pack before you know it. You will be better. You will feel healthier. Change your diet. Change what you do.

Change how you live your life. Make sure you get your sleep in. Start taking vitamins. Listen, athletic greens is the fucking easiest thing to take. Take a scoop.

Put it in water. Spin it up. You got vitamins. Give your fucking body the nutrients it deserves. Do these things.

And you will feel better.

Probably the obesity didn't help them. But is there a danger of like once you become that role. Like you're the big, heavy guy. You got to stay that way to get the jobs. I mean, like maybe in Hollywood and stuff like that.

And I can't remember what his name was. But he was in like Superbad or something like that.

If you made a movie like Tropic Thunder today, everyone's going to jail. Meanwhile, it's one of the greatest comedies of all time. Or Superbad. You couldn't make Superbad today. Jesus Christ.

The backlash would be insane.

He's smart. He doesn't party. And he's still hilarious. You don't have to be dying to be a good comic. It's not necessary.