#1131 Dr. Shawn Baker On The Carnivore Diet

Dr. Shawn Baker is a physician, a former orthopedic surgeon and Founder of Revero Health. In this conversation, we discuss the carnivore diet & the potential health impacts, how Shawn changed his life, and competing at a high level late in life. Shawn also gives insights into what individuals can do about their consumption of sugar, salt, light, water, caffeine & more. ======================= With a Messari Pro subscription, you gain access to exclusive industry-leading long-form daily research reports, daily crypto news & insights in your inbox, advanced asset screeners, curated sets of charts and metrics and so much more. Try Messari Pro today! Get up to 25% off their Messari Pro membership by visiting www.messari.io/pro and entering promo code "POMP" at checkout. ======================= Arculus knows a thing or three about security. Your assets are accessible through 3-factor authentication and by using the Arculus Wallet App and Arculus Key Card. Your keys are generated and encrypted on the Arculus secure element, rated CC EAL6+. This means you – and only you - own your keys and therefore, your crypto. Keep your digital assets secure and safe from exchange freezes, bankruptcies, and hacks with Arculus. Save 20% through 12/10 with promo code POMP ======================= This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The Eight Sleep Pod is a tech layer that fits onto your mattress like a fitted sheet. The Pod dynamically cools and heats each side of the bed, to maintain the optimal sleeping temperature for what your body needs. With the Pod, you can start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. The result: Clinical data shows that Eight Sleep users experience up to 34% more deep sleep. Go to eightsleep.com/pomp for exclusive holiday savings and ring in the most wonderful time of night. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. ======================= Valour (formerly DeFi Technologies) represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U. S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at valour.com ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin. Visit https://compassmining.io/ to start mining bitcoin today! ======================= Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It’s supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Trezor hardware wallet - making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com/pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Playstore. =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Dr. Shawn Baker is a physician, a former orthopedic surgeon, and a co-founder of Verro Health. In this conversation, we talk about the carnivore diet, the potential health impact, how he's changed his life, how he's able to compete at such a high level late into his life, and also exactly what he thinks individuals can do when it comes to caffeine, water, salt, light exposure, and much, much more. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Shawn Baker, and I hope that you all enjoy it as well. Once you get done listening, jump onto Twitter and let us know what you liked, what you didn't like, what you agreed with, and what you disagreed with. The feedback is always welcomed, and it helps us improve

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  these conversations. Here is my conversation with Dr. Shawn Baker.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:15Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Dr. Shawn Baker here with me. I thought a great place to start would be, most people know the food system is broken, and they also know the healthcare system is broken. But I think you've really kind of focused on like, food may be the solution to two of those problems, not just either or. How did you become so interested in food being a solution, given that you have this medical career where like, they're more focused on Band-Aids, maybe than on actual like, first principle solutions?

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, just like most people, I, it was very personal to me. You know, when I was, like I said, I'm in my mid 50s now, sometime early 40s, I started to realize that my health was not going where I wanted it to. And I was looking at, you know, what are the possible solutions? As a physician, I, you know, supposedly know how to take care of health, but I realized that we're ill-equipped to do so with a, with Healthcare system that we have. And so I started just playing with different, different sort of nutritional strategies. I was already an athlete. I was already kind of maximize that part of the, the equation, which I think is an important part of it. But as I, you know, started to experiment on myself, I found what worked for me, uh, which I thought

• 2:23Speaker 02

  was great. That's great. But then I started to have the audacity to try this out on patients. And, and that's where I really saw a really interesting thing as I started to shift the patients' nutrition, the ones that would do it. Not, not everybody wants to do it, but the ones that did, I started to see people that I had scheduled for surgery, like people lining up for knee replacements, you know, had horrible x-rays, horrible pain, and we would change their nutrition and all of a sudden their pain would go away, which I thought was quite, quite shocking, even in absence of weight loss, you know, people that they would lose just a few pounds and yet their knee pain, which was, you know, nine out of 10 is now minimal to none. So we would end up canceling surgeries for these people. And I, you know, I, I persisted doing that for a couple of years and I realized

• 3:06Speaker 02

  that there has to be a better way. You know, our, our healthcare system is so bloated. It is, you know, we spend way too much money on that and the results we get are, are quite frankly awful.

• 3:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's a lot of people who I've had on talk about different diet and food and all this stuff. Uh, the two people who I've been most interested, I had a heart surgeon come on and he was like, hey, here's the way to not have to have the, the heart disease, heart surgeries, all that stuff. Uh, you as an orthopedic surgeon, uh, you've tried this stuff on yourself, but also you have a bunch of data points. I don't know how many surgeries or patients you've had over the years, but a lot. Let's kind of drill into this idea of the knee surgeries. Usually what were you going to operate on? And like, why did a change in diet have an impact on the knee, right? And, and pain and kind of all these aspects? I don't think people would connect what you're eating with maybe literally knee pain.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the way I was trained and most orthopedic surgeons today are still taught this, it's all about mechanics, biomechanical forces. As we gain weight, we, you know, we magnify how much load is put through the knee joint. And the biomechanics are true. So the assumption is, you know, you've got somebody who's overweight, they're going to have arthritis, it's a consequence of them carrying too much weight. And the typical progression would be, you know, somebody coming in with knee pain, say they're in their 30s, and you say, well, you know, maybe lose a few pounds, do some physical therapy, strengthen things, maybe you, maybe you hand them some sort of pill, a medication, an anti-inflammatory drug. That goes on for a few years, maybe they come back five years later, and none of that's really helped that much because they haven't fundamentally changed their, their nutrition. And so now they are, maybe they've got an arthroscopy you do.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  So you put a little camera in their knee, you'll clean out some of the, some of the rough cartilage, torn meniscus, and then, you know, that, maybe they'll do two or three of those. Maybe they get into their mid 40s, early 50s, and now you're, you're injecting them with steroid injections, corticosteroids. There's injections called visca supplementation, where you put in a lubricant in there. And then once that fails, you go on and eventually you replace their knee. And so that's, that's, that's a typical progression. And so what we fail to realize, and some of the new research is showing this, is much more is biologically dependent. So our biology, not just our mechanics, but our biology actually has a huge impact

• 5:22Speaker 02

  on progression of arthritis. And so we have these so-called inflammatory cytokines, which are released inside the joint, and they damage, and they basically damage the joint, they destroy the cartilage. And if that continues over time, we end up with arthritis. It's one of the reasons, you know, you, you know, the question for me was always, why do people get arthritis in their fingers? Why would, why would being overweight affect your fingers? Why would you get arthritis there? Or your neck? You know, it's not like people are gaining a lot of weight in their head. I mean, some people you call them fat heads, but realistically, there's not, you're not really changing that. I mean, most of the weight we see is across the, the weight-bearing joints, but the non-weight-bearing joints also would develop arthritis. And the reason for this is biology. And so we have these, like I said, these cascades of inflammatory cytokines. We know, for instance, there was a study, I think in 2019 or 2018, or I blank on the exact year, but

• 6:07Speaker 02

  They looked at insulin levels. High insulin levels were correlated with inflammatory cytokines. And so as we start to get to diets that start to lower overall exposure to insulin, insulin's not bad in itself. We have to have some. A type one diabetic who has no insulin, insulin will die, right? So insulin has to be there, but when we start seeing these excessive levels, we start to see that affects these inflammatory cytokines, which speed up the arthritic process, and that causes pain. And so we're seeing, you know, that's one mechanism. There's multiple going on here, but one mechanism I see is when I get people change their nutrition to a point where they lower their exposure to hyperinsulinemia and bring it down to a more normal level, their knee pain goes away to the point where, like I said, I was canceling surgeries,

• 6:50Speaker 02

  which I thought was great. The healthcare system doesn't think it's that great because that's not their business model. Their business model is throughput. More, more sick people, the more problems we have, the more money we make, which, you know, at the end of the day, that's what businesses want. Unfortunately, you and I and everybody we love and our loved ones are in the middle of that and we're, you know, it's, it's more beneficial for, for people to be sick, at least as far as the healthcare model goes.

• 7:13Anthony Pompliano?

  If I was to take all of the food in the world and I was going to draw a line in terms of food that would potentially bring down knee pain versus food that would inflame or activate more knee pain, where do you draw that line? Is it just as simple as meat and, and everything else? Or is there?

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you certainly can draw the line there. And as you probably know, I, I'm an advocate of a, of a meat-based diet, but I think you start with the ultra-processed food, you know, everything, all the packaged carbs, all the stuff that we didn't eat a hundred years ago, all that stuff is contributing to disease of, of various types, you know, it's the thickeners, the preservatives, the emulsifiers, the stabilizers, the flavoring, the preserve, you know, all the, the artificial colors and flavor, all the foods that have all that stuff in there, we, we think they're, they're probably causing problems. So if you can just go to a whole food diet, whether it's You almost hesitate to say this, but a whole food plant-based diet or a whole food diet of some sort, you're generally going to see significant improvement. Now, the problem is, that stuff tastes pretty damn good. You know, it's tough. I mean, you've got this stuff everywhere.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  It's ubiquitous, it's cheap, it tastes good. We're constantly told to reward ourselves, treat ourselves, you know, why not? You know, your life is tough, why not have it, why not have a donut? That's the sort of society we live in at this point. And so it's really challenging to say, I'm just going to eat, you know, you know, just pure carrots and lettuce and, you know, some of these things that people will talk about. And so people struggle with that, they really do. Now, my approach is, I don't think meat is bad for you. I think, in fact, I think it's a superfood. And, you know, a recent study just out of Washington University just came out like two weeks ago, saying that almost all of the data showing that red meat is bad for you is, is just basically shoddy research.

• 8:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do they say it's shoddy research? Because this is interesting in that like, a lot of people will point to previous studies that say meat is bad for you. What is the thought process?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Well, the problem with that is, most of it is what we call epidemiologic studies, where they just take a large population, they ask them, hey, what did you guys eat for the last 10 years? And nobody really knows. I mean, nobody really keeps accurate records. So at best, it's a guess. So you've got really poor data coming in at the beginning, and then it's horribly confounded. So it's like, well, what else were you eating with that meat? Were you eating fast food at McDonald's? Is it shakes and fries and, you know, and, you know, seed oil or, you know, french fries cooked in soybean oil? Is it, are there other factors that go on with this? You know, we see meat eaters have higher rates of auto accidents. Why would that be? Why would that make sense? It's just a, it's just a confounder that we know these people tend to engage in less healthy behavior. So if you get someone like me who takes care of himself, exercises regularly, you know, doesn't, you know, sleep,

• 9:47Speaker 02

  gets good sleep, and we can talk about all these other factors, and happens to eat a lot of meat, my health is generally pretty good. In fact, my health is generally better than by far the average American. And so, so the research, you know, again, has been that over and over again. And the problem is, researchers say, well, that's, that's the best we can do, because we can't do an ethical study. We can't do a, you know, 20, 30-year study. Just feeding people this and randomizing them, you know, it's just, it's just technically, you know, impractical to do and it costs too much money. So they're saying like, well, that's the best we have. So we have to deal with the data and we just, you know, we'll look where the trends lie. And to me, it's like, you know, if, if you were to get on a plane here at, you know, Miami International Airport,

• 10:30Speaker 02

  and you kind of got in there and you looked and the door was, wouldn't shut all the way. And you looked in the cockpit and one of the pilots was drunk and, you know, one of the landing gears broke and one of the wings is kind of wobbly. You're like, I'm not getting on that. There's no way. But, but this is what we accept for nutritional, uh, um, um, science. And so it's really bad science in general. It's just not a hard science. You can't take all your, your subjects and, you know, sacrifice them and cut them open and see what happened. That's just not what you can do with humans because unethical to do so. So we've got this huge, huge, you know, fifty, sixty, seventy years of, of nutritional information, which largely is just not very good science.

• 11:05Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of that is ignorance and like, just like bad science, best we have type, uh, argument versus there's malice? Where it's food companies saying, hey, we know what we're pushing. We understand. We've engineered the food to be more addictive and like, that's actually the problem, not so much just like, hey, scientists are doing the best they can.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  I think there's, yeah, I think certainly both of those things exist. I think there's people just trying to do the best they can, just like most physicians are trying to do the best they can, but they're in a limited system. But you would have to be incredibly naive to not realize that there is a lot of financial interest in what goes into these studies and a lot of, a lot of these companies, like for instance, there is this company called Beyond Meat who makes this, you know, I like to call it human pet food burger, right? It's, it's ground up pea protein and canola oil and fifty seven other ingredients or something like that. And so they've partnered with the American Cancer Society to show that their burgers, uh, are going to lessen rates of cancer. Now they're basically paying for that outcome. I mean, and, and we know that, we know that when corporations pay for studies about ninety percent of the time or eighty five percent of the time,

• 12:06Speaker 02

  the outcome agrees with whoever's funding them. So they know they can, they can, they can pay for the science and they can, they can measure what they want to measure and they can spin it, you know, of course, we have the media that's being, you know, also paid for to, to spin the story the way they want to. So a lot of it is manufactured and the problem. The nice thing around health, you know, when people tell me like the climate is getting warmer. I have really no way to personally verify that. I can't go outside and say, well, it was hot today. It must be, or it was cold today. It must not be. I can't, I can't confirm that. What I can do is I can look at a mirror and say, am I healthier? Am I less healthy? I mean, that's pretty easy for all of us can verify that. So. Whatever you're doing intervention wise, you should be able to know that. My energy is better. My joints don't hurt as much. I sleep better. My mood is better. My libido is better. My body composition is better.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  That's something you can independently verify. So this is a nice thing about that. They can, you know, it's hard to gaslight people into, into. You know, although they're trying, you know, they're trying to, to try to normalize obesity and say, oh, it's healthy and everybody should be this way. And we're promoting that there. And the problem with that is we're, we're accommodating that. We're normalizing it and we're creating more of it. And, and those people, guess what? Guess, guess who makes a lot of money on those people? When everybody's sick and overweight. They require more medication. They require more services. Companies that benefit that are, you know, those are the recipients of that.

• 13:21Anthony Pompliano?

  When you started to experiment on yourself, because I think that's a really good point of like, there's studies and people can read them and some people agree with them. Some people disagree with them. There's studies that contradict each other, whatever. But like, you do know whether you feel better or you feel worse. You do know whether your own vitals are getting better or worse. You said that you experimented with a bunch of different things. You were trying to figure out your specific solution. Was that like the scientific method where you like were very regimented and like actually running experiments? Or was it more so like, hey, I'm going to try to eat this way. Okay. I don't feel so much better. Let me try a different way. It was more kind of. Uh, uh, lackadaisical, but you eventually came to the conclusion that meat was a, was a key component.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, they're kind of a little of both. And so I'm an athlete and I've competed at a number of sports and I'm very sort of meticulous when I compete and I know what I'm doing better. It's objective performance. And so. In the beginning, it was like, hey, I'm, you know, I'm 42 years old. I have sleep apnea. My blood pressure is getting up there. I'm probably prediabetic. I'm heavier than I want to be. Those things either get better or they get worse. And so I noticed that, you know, first of all, just cutting my calories dramatically and exercising, that did work. That's what we hear a lot of people say, just eat less, exercise more. And that's been the mantra forever. That did work. However, for me, it wasn't sustainable because I was, I mean, I was literally, I was, I was a practicing surgeon. I was getting up at four, five o'clock in the morning, jump rope 3,000 times, you know, on my lunch hour, I'd go get a workout in, then before I go, I get home, put my kids to sleep, jump rope another

• 14:42Speaker 02

  couple, 3,000 times. I did that. I dropped 50 pounds in a period, in about three, three months, got lean. I went from 290 down to about 235. And I was lean and I was miserable. I mean, all the nurses at the hospital said, hey, Dr. Baker, we like the fat Dr. Baker a lot better than you are now. Cause I was kind of becoming an ass, you know, I was just like grouchy and hungry all the time.

• 15:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  So then I, you know, then I just kind of experimented with different diets. I said, I can't do this. I can't do this low fat, you know, mostly sass, lean meat all the time. It's just, it's just not, I don't enjoy it. And so I experimented with all these different things. Eventually ended up on this crazy, you know, eating, you know, basically all meat. And

• 15:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you try to become a vegetarian at all?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  I never, no, I never, I was never, I was never that brain damaged enough to do that.

• 15:27Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I, I, I, you know, I was, I was eating a lot of vegetables and lean meats and stuff,

• 15:32Speaker 02

  a lot of fiber. And I did that, but I just was like, I can't give it up. I'm just, you know, I, I, I'll be, truth be told, I never really liked vegetables that much anyway. Even as a kid, I never liked them. I still don't, which, which worked out well for me. But as I, you know, as I got towards, you know, as I'm getting closer and closer to 50, I'm starting, you still compete as an athlete. And I started taking up this competitive rowing sports, Concept Two Machine, CrossFit runs them, you know, the Olympic rowers, they have these competitions on there. You can kind of see what your physiology is doing. So I got on there and I was able to set several American records on that. And then, then I switched over to this fully Carnivore diet. And I, I literally blew all the records I'd already set out of the water.

• 16:08Anthony Pompliano?

  So you, hold on a second. You're, you're nonchalantly mentioning this, but you at almost 50 years old, showed up To basically a brand new sport that you'd never competed in before and you started to break the American records for them. Was it age specific or this is American records overall?

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when I was 49, I broke the 40 plus age record, which was about a second or two slower than the 20 plus. I was pretty much compete like I routinely over the distance I was competing could could beat could beat Olympic athletes in their twenties over those distances and I still can even at 56. But when I turned 50, about six months after switching to this all meat diet, I fully increased my performance. I looked at the power up by eight percent, which is significant. When you already have the American record and you you increase by eight percent, that's a big performance difference. And I noticed a lot of other things. I like my I had chronic tendonitis in my right knee that had bothered me for about a decade. As an orthopedic surgeon, I know all the tricks that you're supposed to do therapeutically and none of it really worked. I just I just kind of resigned myself

• 17:09Speaker 02

  that I'm gonna live the rest of my life with this knee pain and I'm getting older and slowing down and you know, the stuff that we all tend to tend to accept. And literally within two months, it was like it was gone and it just disappeared. It was gone. It's been gone for six years now. So I'd

• 17:22Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you switch to the all meat diet, is it literally all meat or is it like all meat plus some vegetables? Like, how do you think about like what you eat?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Right, right. So my day to day diet, and people think this is totally crazy, is basically steak and eggs every day, all day, every day, three, four pounds of steak a day, 12, 18 eggs a day, something like that, depending on how big I want to be at the time. Like, right now, I'm kind of bulking up a little bit. I'm close to 260. But so that's pretty much what it's been more or less for six years. I've gone periods of two years where I ate nothing but red meat, nothing. I mean, steaks every day. I got I probably cooked six or 7,000 steaks in the last six, five, six years. I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating. I mean, every day, two or three

• 18:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you good at cooking them by now?

• 18:05Speaker 02

  I'm good at cooking them right now. I've got it down.

• 18:07Anthony Pompliano?

  A little bit of practice.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  I've had a lot of practice. I've fortunately not ruined too many steaks. But I mean, sometimes, you know, like I'll sometimes I'll throw a little dairy in there. I'll be off some seafood in there from sometimes. Sometimes I'll eat chicken, fish, things like that. Every once in a while, I'll have like, for instance, we were here visiting Florida. We went down to the Florida Keys. I had a bite of key lime pie because I was like, okay, I'm in I'm in Key West. I want to try a piece. It was

• 18:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Just one bite?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Just one bite. It was Kermit's Kermit's something like that. I don't know if you've ever been down there. It's supposed to be a good one. So. I mean, so I, you know, every once in a while I'll go off, off, off track, but I mean, generally ninety eight, ninety nine percent of the time, I'm, I'm pretty, I pretty stick to this. And the reason is not because I believe in it or anything. I just feel better that way. It's just like, I like feeling better. You know, after a certain point, you're like, I could eat that and it'll taste good for like three minutes, but then I'll feel like garbage for, you know, the next six hours and the next day or two. Is it worth it to me? And at this point in my life, it's really not. I, I, I have a lot of fun just living and doing stuff and being able to, to, to, to enjoy our life. I don't get my entertainment from, from what I put on my plate.

• 19:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Um, what about during the day? Are you eating three times a day, five times a day, one time a day? Like, if you're just eating mostly meat or meat and eggs, how many times a day?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  So this is the interesting thing about this diet. You know, like I said, I don't care what people eat. I'm, I'm happy for anybody, but they can find something that makes them healthy, good for them. The unique thing about this is it's extremely satiating. And so there's this concept of satiation and satiety. Satiety is how long you can go between meals. Like if I eat a big old meal, if I, if I sit down and eat, you know, two pounds of ribeye steak and six eggs, I'm good for eight, 10 hours. I don't have to eat again. Right? And I, you know, again, I'm also a big person. So that's a lot of food, it sounds like. But say for the average person, they go and they, they, you know, they eat a ground, a pound of hamburger, four eggs, they're usually good for about eight, 10 hours. And so you have this long period of satiety. But also you have this satiation where you eat enough and you're like, I'm good. I don't need anything else. So typically my pattern has been, and,

• 20:03Speaker 02

  and that's been the pattern of the tens of thousands of people that I've now seen do this. It's about twice a day for most people. Some people can do one meal a day. Some people eat more frequently. But I mean, it's honestly, you just don't need it. You're just not hungry. You know, I had, I had two ribeye steaks for breakfast and I'm good until, till dinner tonight. So I'm, I don't feel any need to eat. I don't think about food. I'm not always obsessing about it. I'm not shopping all the time, planning. So it's, it's convenient. But the other thing is because it drives cravings away so well for so many people. We have so many people, we mentioned this problem. Everybody's addicted to all this processed garbage. It's everywhere. And so.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  It's tough to to overcome that with, you know, you can go on a diet, you know, you're on a diet, you can feel it because you're just you're you're sacrificing your your your I'm just gonna be good. And then on the weekend, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna blow it out or whatever. But with this, I mean, they asked me about what are my cheat meals? I'm like, I eat a frigging ribeye steak every day. I have a cheat meal every single day. Every meal is a cheat meal for me. So I don't feel like I'm I'm sacrificing, nor do most people that do this over over the time of a long period.

• 21:04Anthony Pompliano?

  It's interesting, you eat in the morning, you eat at night. There's a lot of people who do intermittent fasting and those types of of diets. And they'll try to pack a bunch of food into a very short window of of time. Any credence to the intermittent fasting stuff? Or is it you actually look at like the 10, 12 hours that you're not eating as part of, you know, that type of diet?

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, certainly, I mean, there is some benefit to to to a fasting window or or, you know, feeding window. And I think certainly some of the circadian bodies, like biology would point to that. Now, ultimately, most people will argue that that basically cuts down the amount of time you can eat. So then you eat less. And I think there's pretty good literature to support that, you know, but it's a convenient way to restrict calories. Now, what I find particularly is that my sleep is better if I don't eat late. So if I'm eating at eight, nine P M., I'm gonna have a less restful night of sleep than if I eat earlier in the day. So I think there is, and I think the circadian biology studies seem to support that. I think part of it has to do with protein metabolism. If you're eating a big, huge bowl of protein before you get to bed, your body has to deal with that nitrogen.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  And so usually what happens is you end up having to go pee, you know, you get up to go, you know, to urinate in the middle of the night. And you get up at three o'clock in the morning and do it, then you just don't sleep as well. So I try to, like, I'm on vacation now, but at home, when I'm when I have more control over what I have, I'll usually have my last meal usually before five P M.

• 22:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, interesting. So you try to eat before five P M.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  I try somewhere in there, somewhere in that timeframe, yeah.

• 22:28Anthony Pompliano?

  When you began the all meat diet. Did you measure blood? Did you kind of track the changes to your body? Or was it just going off your intuition and kind of how you felt?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Well, you know, that's a good question because when I was on, so when I was on Joe Rogan's podcast several years ago and I said, what labs? And I said, Joe, I'm not sure what labs are going to tell me the most information. I still have that sort of thought. I mean, I think the things that we really want to pay attention to are what's actually going on with regard to disease. And so can we look at our blood vessels? Can we look at our heart? Can we look at our body composition? Can we look at our performance? To me, those things are more indicative of what's going on chronically with health. Now, I can check my blood cholesterol today and I can check it tomorrow. I'm going to get a different number. So which number is the right number? I don't know. And they can, they can, they can vary quite dramatically. You know, you can look at your, your blood glucose is varying every five minutes. Quite honestly, if you're wearing a CGM,

• 23:23Speaker 02

  you'll see it can go up and down. So what number is the right number? And so I, I, I think these labs can be useful and helpful. And, and you know, some people use them as risk factor, particularly lipids. But at the end of the day, it's like, you know, what is your, what is going on with your body composition? What is going on with your blood pressure? If you look at your arteries, and I've had a heart scan where I've looked at my arteries, perfectly clean, zero evidence of any calcification, which again, generally, I mean, there's, there's a lot of things, there are a lot of ways to assess cardiac risk, but this is generally accepted as very, very low cardiovascular risk, which is a major concern with red meat and heart disease. Now, again, we just talked about this new study that came out that said, all that's bunk anyway. And, and this is what I'm seeing, you know, I get a lot of people that are clearly sick.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  And we'll talk about autoimmunities, because I think that's uniquely interesting. You know, they're overweight, they're diabetic, they have high blood pressure, they don't feel good. And they go on an all meat diet and all that stuff gets better. I mean, they're literally, blood pressure normalized, their diabetes goes away, they lose all this weight, they get leaner, they, they put on muscle, their libido goes through the roof. That to me is indicative of getting healthier. I don't care what anyone else says, say about this or that lab marker. You know, we really want to assess is how we're feeling. And if you ask people what they care about, you know, like, do I really care if my oldeo cholesterol is 97 or 116? Does it really matter to me? Or do I care about, I don't have depression every day, that I don't hurt all the time. And I think those things are what we should be, we should really be focusing on.

• 24:53Anthony Pompliano?

  If you had a patient come to you and say, hey, I'm going to try this, is there a protocol of what you would say is like, okay, write down how you feel, uh, go get a lab, go get your blood pressure taken, like, what would you tell them as to kind of put a snapshot in time? And then how often would you have them look at that?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's a good, that's a great question. And so I'll mention, you know, we have a company, Rivero Health, which that is exactly what we'll be doing. I mean, not everybody will go on a car and wear that, but for those that will need it, I think, certain autoimmune diseases, certain gut issues and things like that. But at the end of the day, what we want to do is, you know, first of all, you have to know who you're dealing with. So if you've got a patient that's on a lot of medications, you've got to be a little bit careful with that because if you take a diabetic and you take them off a significant amount of carbohydrates, their blood glucose may bottom out unless you taper down their diabetic meds, particularly things like insulin, same thing with, with, uh, blood pressure. If somebody's got really high blood pressure and they're on all these meds and then all of a sudden you take away that inflammatory component, now they've got hypotension and they're, you know, at risk of falling down, passing out, things like that. So we have

• 25:53Speaker 02

  to know who you're dealing with. Um, I, you know, as I've done this sort of in the non-medical space for years, just telling people about, you know, how do you, how to deal with diet. Most people you have to deal with some level of addictive behavior. There's always a psychological aspect. And so I, I, I tell people at the beginning, just eat enough to stay, to stay full, to stay content. And, and, you know, if you do that, uh, over a long enough period of time, then all of a sudden those other trigger foods, whatever they might be, chocolate cake, or candy, or potato chips, or pizza, or whatever it might be that you're, that you really, really like to eat, all of a sudden becomes less appealing to you and you don't really need that. And then at that point, and that's usually somewhere two, three months in, then you're able to start, let's, let's start tapering things, you know, maybe

• 26:36Speaker 02

  you can, maybe you can adjust how much you eat, when you eat, with that to protein ratios, things like that. And then, and then that usually, you know, stabs them on for quite a while. We see that, you know, we, we collect the data on about 12,000 people doing the diet. But the three-month point was when we saw a big inflection point for, for when these diseases started to resolve pretty consistently. Some people within days, I mean, literally within two or three days, their blood glucose will normalize, like particularly these diabetics. Uh, so it really depends on who you're dealing with. So there is some degree of personalization. So I can't just say, everybody do this because, you know, some people you're gonna, you're gonna have problems with that.

• 27:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What about on the steaks themselves? One of the things I see people do is they'll be, hey, I'm eating healthy and they'll go and they'll get something that's supposed to be healthy and then they put a bunch of bullshit on it, right? And all of a sudden, it's not healthy because of all the additives, all of the sauces, all that type of stuff. Do you just eat steak that you've cooked with nothing on it? How do you cook it? What do you kind of do to ensure that you're actually getting as many nutrients as possible and not screwing up the quote unquote healthy food?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean, you know, I guess, you know, if you go to the grocery store and you've got this prepackaged, you know, meat dish, which comes in soybean oil and wheat gluten and barbecue sauce with 75 grams of sugar. Yeah, you're probably, you're probably diminishing the overall healthfulness of that. Again, staying with whole foods that, single ingredient foods is always a good answer. For me, I mean, I've gotten to where, you know, in the beginning, and I tell people in the beginning, hey, if you need some seasoning on there, go for it. You know, it's going to help you to transition over. But most people, myself included, over a period of time, we really get to where we really appreciate the flavor of a good cut of meat. You know, you get a really high end quality steak, it shouldn't need much. You know, a lot of these sauces and seasonings, because you're eating, you know, low quality

• 28:14Speaker 02

  food or food that needs that to taste palatable. A really well, you know, well-marbled steak, a little bit of salt, a little bit of fire, and that's basically all I need. And I'm a happy man, you know?

• 28:24Anthony Pompliano?

  You mentioned salt. And how do you think about salt intake? How do you think about making sure you have enough? Or what do you just kind of do there?

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Well, you know, we've seen a lot of literature that says sodium is a problem. You know, salt is a problem in society. Well, I think the real issue with that is because it's really salty food. And what is salty food? It's all this processed stuff, potato chips, pretzels, you know, biscuits, you know, breads, you know, things like that. They all come with a lot of salt in there. So when we cut all that out of our diet, our sodium intake dramatically drops. I still think we tend to need some, or many people do. Meat has some sodium in it, it has some potassium in it. But I tend to, and I think this is a simple feedback mechanism, it's salt to taste, you know, what tastes good to you. And there's a reason why it tastes good to you. When you over salt something, you clearly know, it's like, oh my God, I can't eat that. It's too salty. That is your body's way of regulating your sodium. And your body does a very good job of protecting that, you know, for if we've got intake.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Intact kidneys and an intact functioning, you know, metabolic system, then it's pretty well regulated, but most people just salting to taste is all you need to do. Now, if you're living, you know, if you're exercising a lot, like I, I'm, you know, I do a lot of exercise, I'm sweating a lot, I sometimes have to add a little bit to that. So I'll, I'll take an electrolyte drink or just increase my salt intake a little bit for that.

• 29:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what about liquids like water, uh, Gatorades, electrolyte drinks? How do you think about that?

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm pretty much mostly just water. I mean, I'll, I'll, uh, you know, sometimes I'll add an electrolyte powder to that, but, uh, you know, every other animal on the planet drinks water, right? I mean, that's, that's what they do and that's, that's what we're supposed to drink. So water works pretty well. Um, I, you know, as far as like dairy and things like that, I tend to stay away from drinking calories in general, just because I think one of, this is one of the problems, one of the reasons we have such a problem with obesity is that it's, you know, like, like I, I won't knock on Gatorade, it's a Gatorade Zero, so not so bad, but you know, if you're drinking pure sugar, like the soft drinks, we know are awful for us. I don't think anybody out there would say that soft drinks aren't a problem. It's liquid calories, it's very easy for us to assimilate that, but the same thing with

• 30:23Speaker 02

  these powders, you know, one of the things, if you and I were to run around in the wild, you know, I don't, I don't, maybe not on the beach here, but let's say we're, we're out, we're out in the woods in North Carolina, right? We're gonna go, we're gonna go looking for food, we're, we're, we, we may find some, you know, some squirrels or whatever, we, we might find a deer or something like that, we maybe might find some berries. What we're not gonna find are powders. We're not gonna find flour, we're not gonna find refined sugar, we're not gonna find protein powder, we're not gonna find Gatorades, we're not gonna find even butter. So all these, um, highly processed, refined, um, highly increased surface area foods, that's not what our ju- digestive system is designed to do. So when we challenge it with that, we get all these gut problems, we get these, uh,

• 31:04Speaker 02

  weird, uh, you know, uh, so our gut is supposed to work in a very sequential fashion and there's a timeframe which is supposed to happen and like our GI empty time is supposed to be about three or four hours and then food is supposed to slowly widen its way through our small intestines. When you hack that with liquid sugar or protein powder or flour, you know, or all the foods made out of flour, you know, there's, there's this high surface area, it overwhelms the system in a lot of ways and we have this sort of differential, uh, impact on something called the incretin hormones and that leads to metabolic.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Disregulation in some way, too much insulin, too much glucagon, you know, you know, different signaling. And over time, you know, that tends to to harm us. Not to mention the fact that a lot of the ingredients in there cause problems with our gut health in general. There's something called increased gut permeability or or

• 31:55Speaker 02

  yeah, or leaky guts phenomenon, which I think is very real and it does impact us.

• 32:01Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Messari. Your days of spending hours scouring the internet for quality crypto insights are over. Messari is your one stop shop for all your crypto data and research needs. With Messari Pro, you gain access to exclusive, industry leading, long form, daily research reports, daily crypto news, advanced asset screeners, and curated sets of charts and protocol metrics. You can try Messari Pro today, and listeners of this podcast will get 25% off the Messari Pro membership by visiting www.messari.io/pro and entering promo code POMP. Again, that's messari.io/pro and use promo code POMP. Navigate the market with confidence with Messari Pro. This episode is brought to you by Arculus. If your cryptocurrencies are stored on an exchange,

• 32:45Anthony Pompliano?

  they may not be secure. And as we've just seen, your crypto can be lost in the blink of an eye to a freeze, exchange bankruptcy, or malfeasance. Now more than ever is the time to keep your crypto safe and secure in the Arculus cold storage wallet. Arculus knows a thing or three about security. Your assets are accessible through three factor authentication and by using the Arculus Wallet app and Arculus key card. Your keys are generated and encrypted on their secure element rated CCEALP 6+. If you don't know what that means, that means you and only you own your keys and therefore your crypto. Keep your digital assets secure and safe from exchange freezes, bankruptcies, and hacks with Arculus. Save 20% through December 10th with promo code POMP. Go to Arculus and use promo code POMP today.

• 33:29Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The holiday season is here, so give the never ending gift of deeper sleep. About two years ago, I started to sleep on the Eight Sleep, and I sleep on it every single night. It quite literally changed my life. I get deeper and better sleep, but don't just listen to me. Clinical data Shows that eight sleep users experience up to 34% more deep sleep. It is not a holiday miracle, even though it sounds like one. If better sleep is on your wish list, look no further than the new pod three. You go to eight sleep.com slash pump for exclusive holiday savings and ring in the most wonderful time of the year. Eight sleep currently ships with the US, Canada, the UK, and select countries in the EU and Australia. Go check them out, eight sleep.com slash pump today.

• 34:11Anthony Pompliano?

  So when people hear that you're an athlete, I think that they expect you to be taking a pre-workout. Maybe some creatine, protein powder, a multivitamin, fish oil. You know, you just go down the line, basically just walk around like a GNC store. You take none of it or?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  No, I did. I mean, I did. I did that all for years. It's probably, I probably made some very expensive urine over the years, but um, yeah, I, you know, literally I eat a bunch of steak and eggs and drink water and have some, some salt and that's, that's it. I mean, I've literally broken world records on that with that, with that sort of regimen.

• 34:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And for the individuals who say, hey, I can't put on weight. I can't, you know, do XYZ thing that I want to accomplish with my body. Just through food. That's why I take the protein powder. That's why I take the creatine. That's why I take whatever. Are they, are they full of shit? Do they not understand something? Is it, no, actually, if you want unrealistic human goals, then you're going to have to take some of it. Like, how do you think about those individuals?

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, if you look at the average bodybuilder, this is not a normal human physique. I mean, particularly once you're taking all the drugs. I mean, in fact, you know, me being at 65 to 260 is kind of a little weird anyway, but um, you know, so you're, you're pushing the, the bounds of physiology to be a super big athlete. Right. A lot of muscle. It's just not, you know, if you go out and look at these, you know, indigenous tribes, there's nobody jacked running around there. You know, they're lean and they're not too fat, but they're not running around like they're, you know, you know, on a bodybuilding stage. And so to get there, you have to sort of hack your physiology. And so sometimes you've got to eat to a point where it's not fun anymore. You know, I mean, if you look at these, you know, big giant strong men guys, I mean, they're eating eight, nine, 10,000 calories. They didn't like it. It's not fun for them.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I could eat as much as I want, but they're literally struggling to constantly eat is more is just as hard for them as training is. And so constantly having to eat when you're not hungry, you know, it's fun for about a day or two and then it then it then it kind of grinds on you. Um, the other thing is, you know, like with my diet, in fact, that's why so many people have success losing weight. It's hard to eat six, seven, eight pounds of steak a day. I mean, this is hard. I mean, I've done it. It's really, really challenging. I mean, I top out around four pounds. I'm like, I'm good. I don't need.

• 36:23Anthony Pompliano?

  How many calories is that?

• 36:24Speaker 02

  For me, it's about four thousand calories, which is pretty much on par. If you do, if you put my stats into a, you know, a uh, metabolic rate calculator, that's about what I'm supposed to use. So I'm it's.

• 36:34Anthony Pompliano?

  The average person is probably like two thousand.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, the average, you know, I like, like somebody you'd probably like twenty eight hundred, something like that. So you're looking at about two and a half pounds of steak a day, which is, you know, you'd think of that and you're like, well, that's a lot of food. But it's not really, I mean, it's not that many calories, but you you'd feel very satisfied with that.

• 36:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, uh, you mentioned water. Uh, do you drink out of water bottles? Are you worried about plastics? Like, as you think about health, what what is, uh, what's kind of you there?

• 36:59Speaker 02

  I mean, I think there's something to it. I mean, I think, you know, we are being exposed to plastic. Is that the big picture piece? I think that's a minor player, quite honestly. I think, you know, would I rather eat steak and drink out of a a plastic water bottle? Or would I rather eat, you know, Oreos and drink out of a glass container, you know? Clearly, I think the steak one would be make more sense. So there's some things that I think are clearly there. I don't think that's the biggest player. I don't think these pla- these plastics, while we should, you know, if if if it's no difference just to drink out of a glass container, then that's that's that's a minor, you know, sacrifice to you, right? So why not? Makes sense. But, uh, to sit there and think that all your problems are related because you ate, drank out of a plastic bottle, to me, doesn't make sense.

• 37:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it it's a kind of one of these things of like, hey, uh, I don't eat healthy. Uh, I don't work out.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 37:44Anthony Pompliano?

  But I took this vitamin.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, right. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like people don't want to do the basics, you know? It's like, you know, there's no pill. I don't care if it's a pharmaceutical drug or a supplement that is going to make you a healthy person if you don't have all these other healthy basic behaviors in place.

• 37:59Anthony Pompliano?

  When you go to a restaurant, uh, I'm assuming you order steak, any special instructions or anything that you ask them to do so that, uh, you feel like it's healthier?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  You know, generally not. I mean, if I'm going out at a restaurant, I I accept that one, it's going to cost more than I'd spend at home. Two, it's not going to be probably as good as what I can make at home in many cases, depending where it is. And so I don't worry. I I'm not like, hyper, hyper sensitive about all this stuff. I'm pretty, you know, it's like, hey, you just do the best you can and don't, you know, like I said, it's it's not for me a religion. It's not, you know, like I said, well, you know, a lot of people say it's just like veganism, but the opt spec was not, it's not really because we're not really out there. There's no ideology attached to this, at least in my view. So if, you know, if if the steak comes with a little, you know, uh, herb butter on there or something like that's fine. No, no big deal. I'll have that. And it's not a, not a big issue. Like I said, I think it's what you do. The vast majority of times they're gonna, gonna have all the, the impact. Now,

• 38:52Speaker 02

  there's some people, you know, if you've got this horrible autoimmune disease, you've got Crohn's disease or something, you know, that's multiple sclerosis or something, and you have to be super tight about this, you know, then you're gonna have to be more cautious about that. But, you know, for the general person, that just wants to be healthy, you know, I think generally I go order a steak at a restaurant, I know they're gonna probably cook it, you know, they probably got it in, you know, canola oil, and they probably got some sugar on the, you know, that's, that's how they do to make it taste good, right?

• 39:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  That's what they do. So I know I'll be getting that to a little degree. And I I don't eat out that much, to be honest. You know, it's kind of, I've gotten to the point where, you know, is it, is it worth it? You know, like, like I said, we're, we're here on vacation. The first thing I do is I hit the grocery store, load up on a bunch of steaks. I've got a, I've got a grill in the backyard. We rent it at a little Airbnb and that works well.

• 39:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Um, when you go to the grocery store, grass fed, not, certain cuts, like, what, what are you maybe more worried about in trying to say, hey, if I get the big decisions right, obviously just getting steak, sounds like that's a big decision?

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Are there other things that, uh, you try to focus on?

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And so I really focus on if I'm gonna like it or not. I mean, honestly, I mean, I'm gonna eat it. I want it to taste good. So I think that's, that's number one. I mean, and that's really what drives most of our decision making. You think about what people think about when they, they pick food. It's like, how much does it cost? What does it taste like? I mean, that's what driving 95% of the food decisions in this country. And I think that's still a very important thing. And so I will eat both grass finished and grain finished. I think the differences on those on human health are minisculely different, there's not much difference, in fact, the literature, and I've looked into this tremendously. And I'm a huge proponent of regenerative agriculture. And I'm always promoting those guys and support your local ranchers, and I think that's a great message. But when we're talking to the general population, eat what you can afford, eat what tastes good to you. Steak is a hundred times better than Cheerios.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  I mean, it's just, that's just the bottom line. It doesn't matter if it comes from Walmart, from a, from a, you know, feedlot. It's still a health food. And the data, the data I've collected did from Harvard University all supports that. And until, until some definitive studies are done showing that that's not the case, that's still what I'm going to tell people. I'd like it, there's a, there's a researcher out in Utah State, Stefan, Stefan von Bleed, who's doing this research, trying to see if there's a difference between the two. Thus far, there's been about two or three studies have done. So far, they haven't been able to show any significant differences between the two types.

• 41:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What about eggs? Anything there that you pay attention to?

• 41:12Speaker 02

  I, you know, I will, I mean, I think there, the one uniqueness about a ruminant animal, so a cow that has, you know, quote unquote, four stomachs or four chambers and, you know, goats and deer and sheep. They uniquely are able to really detoxify what they eat. So, so even, even things like glyphosate, which is on everything right now. Mammals in particular are able to metabolize it, so it doesn't really show up in their, in their products. So if you're worried about pesticide exposure like glyphosate, then don't eat grains, don't eat legumes. All the things they're telling you to eat, because they're, they're, they're pretty much covered in them at a much higher rate. Whether or not that's truly a problem or not, that's debatable. Some people say it destroys your gut microbiome, you know, on and on. Some people say it's not an issue.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  But, um, yeah, so when I, you know, when I buy, buy the food in the store, I just look for something that looks good. I think fat content is important. I'm not eating carbohydrates, so I have to. I have to get my energy from somewhere, right? So, so fat content becomes important. That's why grain finished tends to have a little more fat in there and it tends to be a little more mono and saturated fat than saturated fat for people that care about that.

• 42:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm. And then like on the eggs front, like cage, not cage.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, the eggs, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the point of the room of things. So a chicken, a pig, they're monogastric animals or like us, you got one stomach. They tend to maybe accumulate more problematic issues from what they eat. So it probably makes more. So if you're gonna spend an extra two bucks on, on grass finished steak versus cage or organic eggs, I'd spend it on the eggs.

• 42:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting. And when you go and you are cooking this, is there anything to the finish of the steak in terms of like heat, uh, uh, medium, medium rare, anything there that has like a health impact?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Uh, well, so it's interesting. So there's been, there's actually a study out there on pigs eating ribeye steaks, believe it or not. You look it up, pigs eating ribeye steaks. And they cooked them to various different temperatures and they wanted to see what the protein absorption was like. And they found, I think, a medium ribeye steak had the most absorption and there was some other, for some reason, bologna was absorbed pretty well. And I think rare ground beef actually showed quite a bit of absorption. So it's kind of all over the place. Um, I think a well done steak is a, is a tragedy. I think you're dishonoring the animal for that. So I, and I live with someone who likes her steaks well done. It always pains me when I have to cook her steaks well done. I'm always just like, you know, so she doesn't, I hope she's not listening. I won't give her my high, the high end stuff. I'll give, if you're just gonna have a well done, let's just cook one of these cheap steaks.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Um, I, you know, but I mean, there are some, there are some evidence that maybe some of the nutrients are a little better preserved if they're not, you know, turned into leather, right? So medium rare, I mean, that's what most chefs will prefer, you know, like au poivre in France or el punto in Spanish, you know, that's because that's supposed to be, it's supposed to be prepared that way. I like a nice sear on the steak. I mean, like probably most of us do. It just tastes good. Human beings have been cooking steaks over fires for Arguably hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years, depending on your your particular bias. Um, so yeah, I'll, I mean, the way I cook my steak, I sous vide them at about a hundred and twenty five degrees. And then I put them in an oven that goes to fifteen hundred degrees. I've got this one thousand five hundred degree oven at home

• 44:24Speaker 02

  that nice here and a little bit of salt and, and that's, that's it. That's good for me.

• 44:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Like eight minutes, 10 minutes total?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, if you don't count the sous vide time, it's, you know, cause I'll, I'll, I'll often throw it in the sous vide and go do something, you know, whatever. And I leave it in there till I'm ready to cook the steak. And but it takes about three minutes to heat up the grill and it takes about a minute per side. So I'm, you know, it's five minutes prep time and then I'm eating. Yeah.

• 44:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty, pretty simple. Um, you, you mentioned a couple of times now, kind of ancestors, uh, early humans. I think a lot of people look at the carnivore diet and they try to make, uh, um, uh, some sort of connection there.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:59Anthony Pompliano?

  You buy that, don't buy that. Do you think it matters what our ancestors ate?

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think that, you know, yeah, it can inform us a little bit. I mean, you wouldn't take zebras and bring them to the, to the zoo and say, well, when are we gonna, let's go grocery shopping with the zebra. You're gonna look at what they were eating and you would say this is what they're supposed to eat. Right? So the problem is how, we don't have a time machine. So we can't definitively go back and say humans were eating this or that. And there's always a debate about that. I mean, there's pretty good evidence that we are clearly meat eaters. I mean, there's, you know, cave paintings, there's cut marks on bones, there's radioisotope status, all, you know, data on and on that shows that humans consumed a lot of meat. Um, but at the end of the day, like I live in 2022, I gotta do what works for me today. And so this, you know, I, like I said, it doesn't really matter so much what they ate back then as far as what, how it affects me today. But, you know, what they, but what they ate back then can inform me what we

• 45:47Speaker 02

  might be eating. What it can show you is what we weren't eating. I mean, clearly, none of us were eating, uh, canola oil 50,000 years, even 500 years ago. We, we know those. No one was eating Twinkies. No one was eating Doritos. No one was eating, you know, uh, you know, honey bunches of those or whatever, whatever. Pick your food. I mean, none of that stuff existed. Right? So if we know that, then we can say, well, you know, maybe they're eating meat, maybe they're eating berries, maybe they're eating some tubers. If you limit your diet to just that, gosh, you know, you're gonna be at least more in line with your species, you know? Like the only obese creatures on the planet are human beings and our pets, right? These are the only obese animals that, that exist. Well, why is that? Well, it's because we feed them stuff they're not supposed to eat.

• 46:27Anthony Pompliano?

  It's crazy to think it's that simple. Um, we talked about how to prepare and, and cook a steak. What about the eggs? Anything there that matters or anything you prefer?

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Uh, I end up drinking half of them. I mean, honestly, I throw them in a blender and I throw it, I, I'll throw a little bit of flavor in there. I'll throw a little like, uh, uh, vanilla in that, you know, and I just, I'll drink them down.

• 46:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So you, hold on, rewind. You'll take six, eight, 10 eggs, whatever. You'll crack them. Just throw, throw in, turn the blender on for a few seconds.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll, I'll usually add water and I just give a little more volume just to kind of fill me up a little more.

• 46:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And you just drink it?

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just drink it. I mean, if I'm in a hurry, you know, if, if I feel like cooking it, sometimes I'll do that. But I've gotten to where I'm, I've just gotten more and more lazy as time is going by around cooking. I'm just like.

• 47:09Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's basically raw egg?

• 47:10Speaker 02

  It is. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's fine. I mean, it's, well, I mean, um, the risk of you catching a, an issue like salmonella is a concern. About one out of every 20,000 eggs will have a contamination with salmonella. A lot of times you can detect it. So odds are pretty low. I mean, I, even though I probably eat, you know, thousand eggs a year or if not more, I've not even had enough opportunity to run into that issue. So it's not, it's not really a big concern.

• 47:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Uh, if you do prepare the egg, what do you do?

• 47:40Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll either scramble it, you know, or I might just kind of fry it up. So.

• 47:45Anthony Pompliano?

  What, whatever the fastest way to.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, whatever I'm in the mood for, you know, like I said, I eat what I like, you know, it's not, I'm not, I'm, I don't, you know, I don't sit there and, you know, there's some people, their life is so dictated by trying to live forever. You know, I'm, I'm first thing, I'm going to get up in the morning and I'm going to, then I'm going to, I'm going to meditate and then I'm going to ground and then I'm going to face whatever direction. Then I'm going to walk in the sun and then I'm going to spend 15 minutes in a red light there. Then I'm going to jump in my cold plunge and my, so, you know, you see these people that are, and it's like, when do you have time to do anything? You know, it's just kind of like, so I, I'm kind of like, hey, if I feel like it, I'll do it, you know, and it's, it's, it, the nice thing about it is so simple. It's a simplicity. It just kind of simplifies things to where. I don't have to constantly worry about all these other extraneous things.

• 48:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So we talked about what you're putting in your body, which is not much, but very simple. What about in the gym? What are you doing there and why do you do it?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think this is, you know, when we talk about longevity and health and whatever you want to talk about. I think quality of life has to come into effect there and functional lean mass is incredibly important as we get older. You know, I'm, you know, like I said, I'm closer to 60 than I am 50. It's very important for my quality of life to be able to do things and to do things like I could when I was my twenties. And so part of that equation is, you know, obviously eating right, getting adequate sleep. Uh, but you know, resistance training is incredibly important. And so I focus on, you know, getting stronger, basic heavy compound movements. Uh, I focus on being able to move well. So a lot of jumping and sprinting and throwing. I do some conditioning stuff. So it's mostly, I, I prefer to do what's called sprint interval training or high intensity interval training.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Cause just from a time, time management standpoint rather than, and then I go for a walk. I'll take my dogs for a walk. You know, we live out in the woods out in Washington state. So we'll go for a couple of times a day. I'll go for a couple of mile hike with the doggos if I can. And that's usually my, my, my routine in general. Now, um, you know, if I'm competing, like right now I took up jujitsu. So I'm, you know, I'm kind of focusing some of the training, uh, to hopefully benefit, benefit me in that. If I'm rowing, if I'm competing and rowing, then it'll be a lot of rowing thrown on the top of that. And so, but I like to, uh, be able to, uh, not only be strong, but able to move well. I think that's important.

• 49:54Anthony Pompliano?

  How many hours a day you think you're doing physical activity?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I mean, that's a great question. So I think sedentary activity, like, you know, sitting here, like we're doing now is detrimental. Like, like when I'm at home, usually I'm standing when I do these types of things. Uh, so, but as far as actual like working out type stuff.

• 50:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Dr. Baker just said, I'm killing him.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  I'm just, we'll, we'll make up for it later. No, I mean, I, I spend probably, um, actually like working out, working out less than an hour a day. You know, sometimes, sometimes only 15 minutes, depending on what I'm, what I'm doing. But I try to minimize the sedentary behavior. And I think if most people would do that, you know, if you can, like I said, instead of sitting, standing, if you, you know, instead of standing, walking, like if you're on a business call. If you can take the phone and go for a walk, that's gonna, that's gonna stead you. Most of your caloric expenditure is with this non-exercise activity thermogenesis, this so-called meat. That's where probably, you know, forty, fifty percent of your calorie expenditure is gonna come from. So whatever you're doing in the gym, unless you're, you know, unless you're four, five, six hours a day in the gym, which is not practical for, you know, anybody but a professional athlete, you know,

• 51:00Speaker 02

  then it's just minimizing your sedation or your, sorry, sedentary behavior.

• 51:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Standing desk, you just try to stand there all day? Do you have like a walking treadmill thing?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:11Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what people have.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, no, I just stand. I'll stand and if I wanna go for a walk. Like I said, I, I have this wonderful exercise, piece of exercise equipment called a dog. And, you know, that, that works pretty well, you know, take it for a walk a couple of times a day. So that's, that works out pretty well for me.

• 51:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. In the gym, you mentioned the compound movements. Is it high rep compound movements? Or are you just trying to put as much weight on the bar and do it, you know, two, three times? Like, how do you think about like your philosophy?

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like I said, I'm, you know, like I said, I'm fifty-six years old and I have gotten away from really, really heavy, heavy repetitions. Like when I was powerlifting, like back in my thirties, I was deadlifting close to eight hundred pounds. I was, and I was a drug-free athlete as well, just to put that aside, that, that, that in there. I don't do those super heavy lifts now, but I still, I'll still put, you know, four hundred, four hundred fifty, five hundred pounds on the bar and do eight, ten reps with that. I tend to stay in a little bit higher rep range right now. But I mean, the, you know, the data on this shows that as long as you're able to, you know, produce close to momentary muscular failure, or you know, you're doing reps until you start to struggle, or you're, you know, you're getting close to failing, that's, that's all you gotta do. Doesn't matter how much weight's on the bar for most things.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  I mean, this is an average, you know, if you're tailored for strength training versus bodybuilding, there's some nuances there, but in general, I just try to push myself pretty hard and, and usually I pick kind of a moderate weight for that.

• 52:32Anthony Pompliano?

  You mentioned sprinting earlier. I don't think a lot of people would say, hey, a guy who's almost sixty years old or closing in on sixty is still doing sprints, is still doing some of things that they would assign to younger, athletic people who are trying to compete for actual sports. Sprinting just kinda sucks. Like, I think a lot of people are just like, I just don't enjoy it. Talk a little bit about the cardio component. Is sprinting the main component or are there other things you'll do?

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, I think older people should be doing some form of sprinting. I mean, I think that's incredibly important. You know, it's just from a time management standpoint. But yeah, the, you know, if we look at sort of VO2 max, which is a measure of our cardio respiratory fitness, we know that short sprint intervals are very effective at developing that. So there's like, you know, just even on a bike, you don't have to run hill sprints. I do that too. But I'll get on a bike and I'll just crank, you know, five, 10 second sprints as hard as I possibly can. I call them chainsaw sprints. I pretend, you know, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre dude's chasing me and I, you know, go as fast as I can for, you know, five or 10 seconds because we can only truly sprint for about 10 seconds. This is when we change from different energy systems. You know, if you try to sprint on a bike, you

• 53:42Speaker 02

  know, more than about 20 seconds, you just start slowing down. There's no way you can maintain that because we switch from this pure sort of ATP creatine phosphate system over to anaerobic glycolysis or mostly that way. And, you know, you just, you just don't have the power up. But so I like to keep, when we talk about this term, high intensity interval training, the intensity has to be high. And the only way intensity can be high is if it's short because you can't, I don't care who you are, you're going to run out of gas soon. You know, you get in a fight and you run, if somebody runs out of gas after about 15 seconds of, you know, you know, swinging and stuff like that. So that is, you know, the way our body is designed, there's no changing that in the human species. And so I try to capitalize on that. So it's sprint, adequate recovery. And that's the

• 54:26Speaker 02

  other thing that people run into. They fail to give themselves adequate recovery. So if you're doing a 10 second sprint, you probably need five times as much recovery time, 50 seconds. So 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off, every minute on the minute. That works out pretty well. You can do that. Five rounds, you're done in five minutes. So that's, that's an effective way to do that.

• 54:44Anthony Pompliano?

  On the topic of recovery, you've mentioned sleep a couple of times. It sounds like that's pretty important. What do you do there?

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Uh, well, if I can remember.

• 54:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Other than close your eyes.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I can try. If I try to, you know, keep, keep the, the damn phone out of my, my hands and that type of stuff, I get a pretty good night's sleep. Uh, like I mentioned earlier, uh, not eating real late helps me quite a bit. Um, you know, having just kind of a, you know, just a general routine, you know, we sleep hygiene, if you don't know, cool room, dark room, electronics off, you know, uh, not engaging any kind of stressful activities over a period of time. You know, it's like, uh, you know, going out and running sprints before you go to bed is not going to work very well, right? So you're trying to try to just have this sort of, uh, routine where you kind of slow things down. Um, I find that, you know, at this point, about seven hours is, is adequate for me. And this is interesting thing about this diet is most people will find their sleep is much higher quality. The volume is a little bit less.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  And I know most of the studies out there show eight hours plus seems to be ideal for longevity. Uh, but interestingly, uh, I sleep really well. I sleep extremely well generally. Uh, and when I wake up, I feel I've got plenty of energy.

• 55:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Wh- why do you think the diet has that impact where you still get really high quality sleep? You feel energized. So kind of sleep did its job, but it's actually a shorter period of time.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Right, right. So if we look at, and there are some studies on, for instance, both very low carb diets, and they look at the, the, the phases of sleep, you know, we've got these different phases, REM sleep and non REM sleep and deep sleep. They show that low carb hydro diets, more people spend time in the deep sleep range. And so that, you know, arguably more restorative. The other thing is if we look at why are we sleeping? And there's a lot of reasons why we do that. But some of the reasons are, you know, it's kind of repair. It's kind of this repair process that's going on. So we're, you know, we're, we're basically dealing with all these reactive oxygen species that have kind of developed through the day. So we've got these antioxidant systems kind of revved up and taking care of that stuff. Well, on the diet, we tend to, like a, a lower carb diet tends to produce less of these reactive oxygen species. And so you have less just damage to deal with. Um, the other thing

• 56:45Speaker 02

  is, uh, like if I, you're like, about one to two percent of our muscle mass is turning over every day. And then our, you know, our skin's turning over, our gut lining's turning over, all these tissues are constantly turning over. And what do they need to rebuild those things? Well, I mean, the, the simplest way to look at this. Is, you know, you and I are basically animals. We have animal cells and our animal cells. You know, if we look at the individual components of that, where do we get the building blocks from? Well, if you provide other animal cells and there you're going to have the actual ratios and the amounts that you need. So I'm probably doing less damage and I'm providing myself a higher quality nutrition to help repair the damage. So probably I need a little bit less sleep with that regard, you know, like I said, if you're trying to build a brick house and you know, you have a big pile of bricks here and you're like, well, that's pretty good. Or you got straw and mud.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  You're like, well, I gotta make the straw and mud. It's gonna be less efficient to do it this way. So this is why. You know, a carnivorous approach tends to be more efficient. In fact, if we look at the history of planet Earth and all the animals that have ever existed, all the things that swam, crawled or flown on Earth, something like 80% of them are carnivorous. You know, through all, all, all the time that's there because it's more efficient. It's easier.

• 57:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you think about sleep, there's a lot of people who have all kinds of crazy sleep routines. They drink teas, they use melatonin, CBD, like all these things that some people swear by, some people say, hey, I'll dabble when I need it, whatever. What's your general read after having so many different patients and kind of even testing on yourself, all these different protocols?

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Well, I think that honestly, most of them probably you can't extract, you can't, you can't generalize it to the population. I mean, I'm not going to say somebody says, hey, I do this and I sleep better. I'm not gonna you know, disagree with that person, but I don't think there's any really great data that you can say this is definitely going to lead to better nights. There's a lot of things we know that disrupt sleep. We know like for instance, alcohol, we know it's a sleep disruptor. We know that intense exercise, you know, you know, our, you know, stress, all those things are going to disrupt sleep. And so as far as can I take this magic pill and sleep? I mean, obviously there's a whole bunch of people that are taking Ambien and, you know, Zoloft and all these, well, not Zoloft, but Ambien and all these other sleep meds. That initially work and then over time they stop working and then over time you become

• 58:58Speaker 02

  where you're dependent upon those things. And so I think that, you know. Sleep is a product of needing sleep and you need sleep by, you know, using your body to where it's supposed to be. So if you're sedentary all day, laying on the couch all day, you wonder why you can't fall asleep because you haven't done anything.

• 59:15Anthony Pompliano?

  In 2020, uh, like most people, life gets disrupted and I started paying a lot more attention to what am I eating? What am I drinking? What am I doing? Whatever. And that was one of, uh, the dumbest yet most profound breakthroughs for me was like, you will sleep better if you are tired. And it's so simple, but, uh, even when you talk to people who, uh, are focused on exercise or diet or whatever, it's just never like, just do enough physical exercise till you actually want to go to sleep. And, uh, what I found for me personally is like, if I'm tired around eight PM, I won't go to sleep at eight, right? I just, it's hard for me to do that. Uh, but I know like, hey, I moved enough today and you, and you, then you have the better night's sleep. You wake up and so,

• 59:55Anthony Pompliano?

  is there anything to this kind of like, uh, the rhythms of sleep, the time of day you go to sleep, the time of day you wake up? How do you think about all that and what do you do?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, there, there's clearly, uh, science on this topic, you know, we know, we know that melatonin production increases, you know, uh, as the sun's going down. And so we know that light plays a role. Some people say, well, look, why people like to watch the sunset, you know, this is, well, you have the sunrise on this side of the coast, but if you lived on, you lived in Tampa, you could go out there and watch the sunset. Light has an impact on this. And so if we're in there and we're staring at TVs or looking at our phones, that's going to, that's going to impact our melatonin production. So there is definitely a circadian biology, circadian rhythm that's associated with this. And so, you know, you see that, you know, it's like eight o'clock, you're kind of sleepy. But then if you go, screw around on your, on the internet for two hours and all of a sudden you're wide awake again because the light, light rhythm has disrupted that. And then you know, then you don't go to sleep till,

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  one o'clock in the morning or something like that. So, you know, you start to get that, that natural sundown effect. And then if you just kind of, if you just say, hey, this means I'm supposed to be getting ready for bed. And if you actually stick to that, you're probably going to sleep better. But if instead you say, okay, let me go watch a movie or go play a video game or yell at somebody on the internet, you know, you've disrupted that.

• 1:01:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Uh, you mentioned earlier, you're waking up at four or five o'clock in the morning. Uh, is that something you still do? How do you think about waking up super early in the morning versus if you woke up at, you know,

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I never need an alarm clock anymore. So I, I think for some reason, you know, maybe it's a general lifestyle and, and the lifestyle in general, or perhaps the nutrition has a role on this. But I am very much tied to the sun, you know? I mean, when the sun is starting to come up, I just feel like, you know, we have this natural. Biology where we have a surge of cortisol and cortisol in the morning, we have our testosterone increases, our production of glucose increases. That's, you know, because we go from this very, very placid state of sleep to all of a sudden arousal. And there's hormones that are, that are, that are just hardwired into, you know, every mammal's physiology that, you know, every, every, uh, non, uh, you know, uh, nocturnal animal, uh, is going to sort of experience in that.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  And that's, you just kind of suddenly wake up. So I, I literally, I wake up probably within 30 minutes plus or minus the sunrise, either before or after, pretty much regularly.

• 1:02:12Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Valor, which represents what's next in the digital economy. They provide simplified trusted access in crypto, decentralized finance and web three investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, all through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. They currently are listed in the U.S. under the D E F T F stock ticker and on the Canadian Neo Exchange under D E F I. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at valour.com. That's V A L O U R dot com. This episode is brought to you by Compass Mining, the world's largest marketplace for mining hardware and hosting.

• 1:02:57Anthony Pompliano?

  With Compass, everyone can mine Bitcoin. You can do it at home or in one of their 23 hosting facilities around the world. All you need to do to start mining your own Bitcoin is go to compassmining.io today. Again, if you want to get into Bitcoin mining, go check out compassmining.io today. This episode is brought to you by Exodus. Accessing Web 3 across multiple networks just got a hell of a lot easier. Exodus is one of the most popular crypto wallets for mobile and desktop, and they just added Chrome and Brave web browsers to the lineup. The new Exodus Web 3 Wallet is a multi-chain browser extension that lets you safely navigate Web 3 and DeFi apps on Ethereum, Solana, and Algorand from one wallet. Manage Mint and Sell NFTs on multiple networks in one wallet.

• 1:03:40Anthony Pompliano?

  You can swap Solana and ETH tokens natively right within the extension. And if you ever hit a snag, world-class customer service is available 24/7. More of your favorite chains are on the way, so run, don't walk. Over to exodus.com/pomp to download the Exodus Web 3 Wallet right now. Again, exodus.com/pomp. Go check them out today. You mentioned earlier autoimmune disease. There's a bunch of research and also reasons as to why people develop these or have them. What are the ones that you would put the most weight on? Are there genetic arguments? Are there lifestyle arguments? Are there?

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Well, clearly autoimmune diseases are increasing in frequency. That's not a genetic shift. I mean, you can, just like we look at obesity, you know, you're looking at, well, it's my genes. Well, people in the 1920s had the same genes as you, but there weren't, you know, 50% of the population wasn't obese at that time. So what we're seeing is a dramatic increase in autoimmune diseases. You know, they tend to favor females for some reason.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  It is increasing dramatically. I think it's very likely that most of that is caused by external, something external. Probably it originates in the gut. We see this so-called gut dysfunction, which is very closely tied with autoimmune disease. Many people that have one autoimmune disease will have two or three because they have the same underlying biology. And so what we see and what I've seen with our company and another group that's done some similar work is that if you can fix the gut physiology, the autoimmune diseases often will remit, will go away. The inflammatory markers will drive down and they'll become symptom-free.

• 1:05:15Anthony Pompliano?

  You mentioned gut. Explain for people a little bit more detail. What is it exactly that's off on the gut? And why is the gut what's driving?

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  Right. So if we look at, you know, like our relationship to the environment, like what is the biggest interface we have with the environment? Well, most of us say our skin, right? Our skin's an organ, it's the biggest organ we have. We're touching the environment, but the skin is designed to keep things out, right? We're, we don't want, you know, if we have a cut in our skin, then we have problems. We get an infection. Our gut is the opposite. Our gut is designed to bring things in. That's what we, you know, most people don't know this, but between, between our mouth and our, and our butt, that's all external to our environment. That's outside of our body technically. The way our body perform, you know, forms it, you know, from an embryo is basically circles around this, this empty tube. And that's still external to our body. So most of our immune system is our gut and the gut is designed, like I said, to absorb everything.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  And so whatever we're exposed to environmentally is going to come to us through the gut largely. And so any problems within our external environment. The gut will mediate what's going through there. And so the gut has a selective barrier. So it can say, these things come in, these things stay out, right? Unfortunately, over time, exposure probably to the modern, you know, modern junk food diet, that barrier starts to break down. And we have this selective hyperpermeability, AKA leaky gut. So now we're absorbing things we're not supposed to absorb. And so that leads to an inflammatory response, an immune response. A lot of times, autoimmunity is associated with that. There's a researcher out of Boston's, Boston Children's Hospital by the name of Alessio Fizzano,

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  who has published fairly extensively on the relationship between gut dysfunction and autoimmunity. It seems to hold up. And that's what we see all the time. As far as if you restore gut permeability to its normal situation, the markers of autoimmune disease tend to go down, as do the symptoms. And I see people reversing Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, asthma, you know, eczema, on and on and on, all kinds of things improve.

• 1:07:15Anthony Pompliano?

  How does somebody know that their gut's messed up? Is there a test that they can take? Is there something that they can do? Is it something they feel that like, hey, that's probably a gut problem?

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you know, honestly, you know, we, and I didn't notice for 50 years, you know, when you would eat something, you know, damn, my gut, it kind of swells up a little bit, you get discomfort, you think that's normal. That's like, that's just eating. We're experiencing it. You're gas, you're belching, you're farting, all this stuff. You think, well, that's just kind of normal physiology. It's actually not. That either indicates you the food you're eating is wrong, or your gut is messed up. So that's, that's a pretty clear sign. If you've got, you know, if you've got chronic diarrhea and all those things, you're going to know it already. There are, you know, like I said, there's a group in, in Europe that does something called a PEG 400, which is a polyethylene glycol, glycol test where you drink this and they can see what appears in your urine. And that's, that's a way to assess gut permeability. But generally, your digestion, like, you

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  know, I had two and a half pounds of ribeye steak before I came here. I literally don't, don't even know I ate. I mean, I literally don't feel anything. And that, that was, that was one of the biggest shocks to me is when I went from, you know, years of, you know, you'd eat something, and then two hours later, you're like, ah, you know, my stomach's a little sore, you know, I gotta go to the bathroom. When you go from that chronically to, it's like nothing. It's like, it's like, you know, if you, you know, if you get some of these noise cancelling headphones, the first time you put them on, you're like, wow, it's really quiet in here. That's the same sort of sensation you get. So your gut is not, it shouldn't feel like it's problematic. Like, like I said, if you were, you know, walking down the street and all of a sudden your lungs hurt, or your heart hurt, or your knees hurt, you would say that's a problem. That's not healthy.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  But people accept the fact that they're, you know, you got a sore stomach, you know, you you're bloated, you're gassy. We accept that as normal and it's actually not.

• 1:08:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you see people make this change, is it just food or the other things? There's, I've seen probiotics, I've seen all sorts of, uh, kombucha. And like, you can imagine the, the kind of, uh, closer to the hippie places of town, you get crazier and crazier things. Uh, from my opinion, does any of that stuff work or is it just literally just eat the right foods?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Well, I think, you know, it's like, it's like if you have, um, you know, this is a funny thing. Somebody come in and they'd have arthritis in their knee and you give them an anti-inflammatory, right? And it helps, right? The question you ask is why are you inflamed in the first place? Well, no, no one ever asks that. You never ask your doctor, you know, it's like, oh, well, here, take this pill. And, and that's as far as it goes. Most, most physicians aren't even curious about that. But I think a lot of these things, whether it's turmeric or, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, whatever elderberry sauce, or, you know, they've got all these things you can do. All that probably is used to mitigate problems that are being caused by the foods you're consuming in the first place. So if you're not, you know, it's like, I've got a headache, well, stop hitting your head against the wall. Right? That, that's simple advice, but no, people just rather take the, take the pill or the supplement.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  So we are constantly trying to plug holes in a leaky diet. You know, we're eating a diet that is, you know, really not well suited to us. I mean, certainly the modern diet, you know, certainly all this high qual- high, not quality, high calorie nutrient poor food where you're constantly trying to plug holes in because you're just always nutrient deficient. So I think, and you're always inflamed, so you're taking an anti-inflammatory and you're, you're trying to mask these symptoms. So why not remove all the inflammatory stuff, the, the, uh, and improve the quality of nutrition? And you don't need all these things.

• 1:10:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Are there things that people would consider healthy, uh, fruits, vegetables, things like that, that also are creating inflammation? Like I, I think I read one time, uh, Tom Brady and the whole like TB 12, there's a big thing around like tomatoes. Yeah. And supposedly he's not eating that stuff because he thinks it could inflame.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, these so-called nightshade vegetables, um, have, have had a bad rap. And in fact, you know, there was a period in time where tomatoes were considered like deadly. I mean, there was, there was a period like three, four hundred years ago where there was a big, you know, pushback against tomatoes. And so. I think for certainly for some people, I'm not here to say that all fruits and vegetables are bad and poison. There's people out there within this community that say that. I always cringe when I hear that because I'm trying to say, look, this is this is for selective people. But I think that one, I think we have this phenomenon of everybody's gut is being destroyed by the modern food system. You know, 20% of us have IBS clinically diagnosed IBS and probably ear, uh, ear or a little mouse syndrome and probably more have that sub clinically that have not been diagnosed. So we've got all this underlying

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  gut pathology. And so we've already in a situation where guts are broken. And then you add these foods in there that maybe 100 years ago, we would have tolerated fine. But now people aren't tolerating that and it's causing issues because all the plants that do have some toxic, you know, that's not even controversial to say that, you know, apple seeds have have cyanide in it. We know that. We know that tannins and glycol alkaloids and lectins and, you know, phytic acid, all those things have a potential for negative issues. Now, generally, it's low dose, such a small thing. It's not an issue for most people. But as the gut gets more and more destroyed with a modern diet, then these things become, I think we have less resilience to deal with those things. And

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  so what I see is there's people that'll go on a whole food diet, you know, and it might be just clean, no junk food, no sugar, no, no processed food. They're eating, you know, seafood, a little bit of meat, you know, fruits and vegetables. And you think that's a great diet, you know, and I think for many people it would be. But they still have issues. And then they eliminate all the fruits and vegetables. They just eat just meat and they do better. And I'm like, well, that's it is what it is. I'm not there to say that's bad or good. It just is what it is. And so for some people, that's clearly an issue. Now, what I like to see is, you know, if somebody goes three, six months, they do this elimination diet. And they solve all those issues, hopefully they can add those things back in because, you know, I think everybody should be able to eat food they enjoy.

• 1:13:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, as you talk about the modern diet, one of the things that jumps to mind is uh, the invention of the toilet may actually be uh, screwing over uh, health. And so uh, somebody sent me an article once and they were like, oh yeah, we're all pooping wrong. And I was like, wait, hold on a second. What do you mean? And basically what they were like, well, if you look at other cultures, you know, take India or whatever, uh, literally the position in which somebody takes a shit is completely different than here in America, where they're sitting, you know, kind of perpendicular uh, their thighs to the ground. And so I've seen, I think maybe even on Shark Tank, uh, I've seen articles written about things that uh, people will put their feet on as they're pooping in the toilet to lift their legs because it's supposed to put them in a different position. I've had friends

• 1:13:44Anthony Pompliano?

  who live in other countries be like, what are you Americans doing? What is the uh, the view maybe that you have in terms of like, is it something with the gut? Is it, could be like the way that we're pooping? Or is it all bullshit and people just want something to talk about on the internet?

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  I think it's mostly bullshit. I mean, honestly, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think the toilet is actually, I mean sewage systems, you know, it's has greatly, greatly improved the quality of health for humanity. I mean, you know, the, the biggest impacts for life expectancy have been sanitation and access to, to, to fresh water. Um, you know, I mean, you know, the same thing, people talk about how, how we birth kids, you know, it used to be they would birth them sitting up, you know, or I've seen some guy give an lecture on that. So I think there may be some slight validity to that. Do I think that's the root cause of all of our problems, why we're all obese and have chronic disease and cancer because we're not pooping right? No, I don't think that's it. I think, you know, maybe you can make a slight, you know, it may be nice that you can, you know, I mean, the one thing is, you know, I, I made a, a post on Twitter the other day about this. As we

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  accommodate illness and obesity, we create more of it. And so the fact that I can go to the bathroom and not have to get into a full squat, then I never have to squat down all the way. Then I never need to do that. And then what happens to my knee health over, over the 10, 20 years, I loosen that cartilage in the back of my knee, never see stress. And so it probably starts to flake off. Uh, so I think indirectly, you know, people that sit in a full squat all the time are going to have generally better fitness. I mean, it's hard to do that when you're 200 pounds overweight. I mean, it just doesn't happen. So if all the toilets were turned into like little holes like they have in China. There'd be a lot less happy obese people. Now, I'm not saying we should antagonize them, but I mean, the reality of the situation is it would be really hard to live life in that

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  situation. Whereas right now, we've got mobility scooters, we've got people handing you medications, we've got, you know, we've got Uber Eats, we've got, we make it so easy to be basically disabled, which is, I think, facilitating that.

• 1:15:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, it's interesting that in some way, if you had to do basic physical functions without society, which has been amazing, and we live in this great civilization, accommodating you not doing it, that you actually may just be in better health from your day to day life, and you wouldn't have to put such a big focus on your diet or your exercise, whatever, because you're just moving around.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think that's completely valid. And I think we've gotten to a point where, I mean, I know there's this transhumanist movement, some people are saying, you know, we're all going to be these supercomputer people, but really, we're going to be like these dependent, you know, I don't know, integrated blobs that, you know, just sit there and I don't know, maybe our brains are harvested for some, for some purpose.

• 1:16:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Founder's Fund has a quote, they say, you know, we were promised flying cars and we got 140 characters, a similar thing, right? It's where promised like the singularity, but instead we're all just fat and dying. Talk a little bit about quality of life over time as well. I, it's a topic I really didn't think that much about. I'm a relatively young guy, healthy, but I read a book, Being Mortal by Atun Gawande, and he talks about how, you know, here in America, our experience with old age is basically you go to an assisted living, then you go to a retirement home, the death experience is inside of a hospital, right? You're hooked up to all this stuff. We're trying to preserve, how long can we make your life? Not how good can we make it? Other countries, some of them are similar to us, some of them aren't. How do you think about with some of your patients who maybe

• 1:17:01Anthony Pompliano?

  are on the older end, do their diets change over time? Do you think it's like, not one size fits all of the patient, but like one size fits an entire life and whatever works for you at 30 or 40 should still help you persist later in life? How does that work?

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, the question about does diet change over time as we get older? I mean, in many cases it does. I mean, you know, we see a lot of old people, they start losing their teeth and they can't chew harder food. And so they end up with a more soft diet. We see people with dementia where, you know, it's interesting. There's a lot of thought that Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia are really just a form of insulin resistance of the brain. And so the brain cannot access energy, it can't get glucose. And so I saw this happen to my grandmother. In fact, now, a lot of people that are listening to this that know demented people will attest to this. As they get older and older, they just want to continue to eat high sugar foods because they're having such a hard time getting nutrition to their brains. So all they want to use, grandma, all she wants to eat is cake and cookies all the time. We see that occurring.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  We see that protein, our ability to digest and absorb protein goes down as we get older. Now, I don't know that's a direct consequence of getting older, but more so a consequence of becoming more and more diseased. And I think if you, you look at the way we age versus just becoming more diseased. And if you think about death as the ultimate disease, where finally we succumb to, you know, an overwhelming amount of disease state. So it does change. And I think unfortunately, we are, we are, you know, if you go, if you go to, if you ever have the, you know, the misfortune of spending a lot of time in a nursing home, because I don't think they're very nice places in general, it's dismal when you see what's going on. You know, everybody's in there, you know, they're, they're zombied out, they're just kind of sitting by themselves.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  They're serving them low quality food, it's very low in protein, it's high in refined, refined foods, carbohydrates, fats and things like that. And they just circle the drain until they finally succumb. And so I think the best thing we can do is we get older. Like I said, you're, I think you're in your thirties, right? Right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, this is a time you put on a lean mast, you focus on that. And that will stead you into your 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. And then, you know, if you get anything beyond 80, I think it's, you know, I think that's a blessing, you know, assuming the quality of life is good. I mean, I've met at several hundred, most of the 100 year old people I've met, unfortunately, have all been literally old ladies that are demented in diapers with a broken hip. I mean, that's where, those are 100 years old people I would run into.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  And rarely did I ever see any that were vital and fit or something I'd want to emulate. So you look at this and you're like, I don't want to spend 10 years of my life just in this absolute, you know, abysmal existence. And so you've got to be mindful about what you're doing now because, you know, Some people, you know, you start talking to 70 year olds and talk to them about 70 year olds. And you're like, hey, wouldn't it be great to live to 100? And many of them are saying, hell no. Cause they're miserable. I mean, they literally are, and it shouldn't be the case. You should be, uh, in my view, robust, productive, vigorous, uh, enjoying life. And then you drop dead at whatever 92 or something like that.

• 1:20:01Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things that I took away from that book was, uh, uh, there's a bunch of studies that show like the more that you try to prolong uh, or prevent death, uh, the faster it may come to some degree. Like if you, if, uh, you're in the hospital and you're constantly pumping yourself with drugs and this, and, and there's knock on effects of that. Versus, uh, in many cases, the doctor would say, hey, you got three weeks. Somebody goes home, six months, a year later, they're still living now. Why? How? Was the doctor wrong? There's a bunch of questions. Uh, but in some ways, just like literally go live your life, be healthy, go outside, do the, do these, what some people would just assume are simple things, uh, and that may be enough. And, and so you don't ever want to say that that is the solution and you shouldn't go to the hospital.

• 1:20:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But at the same time, uh, it's interesting to look at two different approaches of one being very medicinal and another just saying, listen, you know, it, it's up to you to just live your life.

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, if you spend your whole, all of your waking hours trying not to die, you're, you're not really living. And so that's the whole point here. So we, like I said, we get one of these and uh, I, I prefer to do that in a, in a healthy body that, that allows me to experience the things, you know? At some point, like I said, you've eaten enough cupcakes and you've had enough, you know, chocolate brownies that you said, I know what that tastes like. I don't need to constantly do that. And, you know, if you're willing to, uh, sort of dissociate yourself from that part of it, you get so much more in return.

• 1:21:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What about sunlight? I, I've seen some studies recently and some conversation that, uh, actually people aren't getting enough sun. Some people say, hey, uh, I think like in China, uh, the whiter your skin is means the less that you fit in the sun, which is supposed to, um, uh, go ahead and, and share that you're wealthy or you have a high status in society. Like, how do you think about sun for health purposes?

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, as a species, we evolved under the sun and we weren't hiding in, you know, air conditioned building the whole time. So, I mean, we, we are designed to get sunlight. I mean, sunlight is crucial for, uh, Vitamin production, you know, vitamin D obviously is is associated with with sunlight exposure. We are, you know, a species that is tied to the sun. So I think it does make sense to get out there and be in the sun to agree. Now, you know, the caveat to that is don't get sunburned. You know, if you're not getting sunburned, then you're going to have issues with skin cancer and other things. Now, the interesting thing, and this is a very controversial topic, we see a lot of people when they clean up their diet, their sun tolerance improves. They don't get sunburned as easily. It's not that you can't, you know, I noticed like

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  years ago, I'd spend an hour out in the sun. I'd have a pretty good burn and now I can spend three, four hours out and I don't get burned. And so I think the diet has, does have a modifying effect on our sun, sun tolerance.

• 1:22:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, you say it's controversial. So, uh, what is your best guess right now, what the connection between the diet and the sun tolerances? Is there something specific to point to that you think it could be?

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, one of the, one of the persons that has done a lot of sort of look into this is a guy, he's a guy's name, uh, Tucker Goodrich, and he really posit that it is some of the oils we're exposed to, you know, these soybean oils, canola oils, things like that, uh, corn oils that we've been included in our humidite has changed the nature of our, you know, of our, of our tissue, of our, of our fats. And so you can actually do biopsies on humans. I was interesting when I used to operate on people, I would do either knee or hip surgery and you cut them open, you get these obese people. And it was, it was, it was something that I observed, but I didn't know why, but I would see some people and they would have, uh, a lot of times they'd have this very sort of bright yellow fat, you know, you, you'd cut into people and it's kind of weird talking about humans.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  And then you cut into some people and it'd be really, it would be, it would be a really white and almost like a, like a little, um, almost like Rice Krispies in there. It's really kind of granulated fat tissue and it's probably based on their diet and what's going on there. And we know that like, for instance, we look at animals, an animal's been finished on grass, tends to have a yellow or fat and a grain finished animal has more white fat. It's probably the same thing we're seeing in humans.

• 1:23:48Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think is causing the, the difference in color?

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's, it's, uh, some of it's the carotenoids that are in there, some of the, some of the nutrients that are in there is what's causing that.

• 1:23:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, why is yellow healthier? Is there anything?

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, again, it depends on who you talk to and whether that's healthier or not. We know it's different. Whether it's healthier or not, I think it's still controversial. Most people would say it is. Uh, the belief is that, you know, this is a natural native diet for whatever the species is, whether human beings or, uh, you know, cows or pigs or chickens or whatever.

• 1:24:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, if I venture into meat Twitter, uh, and I see people talking about meat, uh, you're smirking. So like, uh, there's positives, negatives and everything in between. Great memes, uh, which, uh, definitely is true. Um, sunning your balls. I've seen it over and over and over again. I've seen the mainstream media laugh at it. I've seen them try to say it's real. Sunlight the human body and just like the private parts. Is there any, uh, seriousness to this?

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  You know, I think it's mostly goofy. I mean, I mean, you know, as crazy as I may seem from a nutritional standpoint, here's this guy that's bucking the system and going to its all meat diet. I just don't get into some of that. So I think it's kind of goofy. I mean, it's like.

• 1:25:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Goofy because it's goofy like, uh, from a social standpoint.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, that is just like, I don't think it has any real significant physiologic, you know, effect. I mean, is sunny or, you know, is sunny your butt any better than standing out and getting some sun on your face? I don't know. I don't know that it is. I, and if the difference is, is probably small and me and largely meaningless. You know, I can think of about a thousand things I'd rather do for my health and, and, and, you know, laying outside. Oh, it might be fun. You know, it might be fun to go out there and lay out naked, but you know.

• 1:25:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I always wondered who talk about it, how often they do it, right? Some of them probably do it every day. Some of them probably don't ever do it. And it's interesting. Uh, you've mentioned a lot of academic studies, uh, but I also see you tweeting on Twitter as how, uh, I think I started following, uh, some stuff you're putting out. How do you think about like the traditional academic world and, and like traditional studies versus like, hey, Joe Blow down the street, you know, uh, posted something and it works for me. Like, the world is maybe not, uh, uh, blurring to the degree where people are confusing a Twitter account for an academic study, but definitely it feels like people are getting information from just more than their doctor.

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Sure. And I think, I think, I think it's fair. It's a fair question. I think that, you know, there is a value to the scientific method in doing rigorous studies and to exclude confounders, but we shouldn't ignore.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  These other observations, this is how science starts. And so if you start seeing, you know, one or two people that say, hey, I did this and this happened, you're like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Then all of a sudden, that one or two starts turning into thousands and thousands of people, then you have to start to take notice of that. That's where we're at with this crazy all meat diet and say autoimmune disease. I cannot tell you how many people now. Who have not only said, hey, look, my ulcerative colitis went away, but I've got, I've got an endoscopy to prove it. You know, I've got, I've got before and after. So there's, that's coming on. And so this is how you have to start to. Pay attention to these things and, and to stifle that and to say dismiss it, dismiss it, dismiss it. We're only going to pay attention to. Uh, the status quo of the science, because you know, we have this sort of belief that, you know, well, you might've been aware of this, this sort of stuff with this pandemic.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  We have this censorship to where we have a consensus, but the consensus is produced through censorship. That's not a consensus. That's just basically a religion, basically at that point. And so, you know, we're seeing, you know, uh, these, you know, N equals one, N equals 10, N equals a thousand. Uh, bits of information coming out there and, and you know, I've been a big champion of that because I think that's something people need to share their stories because as physicians. Um, if you're not paying attention to your patients, you know, all your information is coming from, you know, drug companies. They don't care. I mean, they're, they're, they're about there, they're back, you know, they, you know, they're, they're there for their shareholders. And, and so we have to get information from where we can, where we can obtain it. And so if enough people are seeing this result.

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  It's hard to deny that, you know, somebody's posted a picture of them at 300 pounds and now they're 150 pounds. That's pretty realistic that that actually really happened. They did really something, something did happen. Um, obviously there's a lot of emotion tied into this, you know, I, I, as you know, I, I. Constantly battling against the, the forces of evil from the vegan empire. No, I'm just kidding. I mean, you know, I'll say this, I think most vegans are probably nice people. But there are some that are very, very aggressive and annoying and, you know, calling you a murderer and a rapist and a, you know, a cow molester and stuff like that. It's like, that's just, that's just silly, you know? But yeah, it's, it's, you know, like, like for instance, uh, next week, not next, two weeks, I go to Nashville, Tennessee, I'm meeting with researchers from Harvard and the U S Cattlemen's

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  Association to set up a study on autoimmune disease, a bona fide interventional trial, a high-quality study, uh, to, to look at this stuff. And I think both of these things are important, you know? What I think about what impacts you, like, if I read a study, does that really change my behavior? Or what if I see somebody that looks just like me and has the exact same issues as me and does this? You're, you're just as likely to do that as you are from a study. So what's going to actually change people's behavior? And I think, you know, having all of these things together helps, but you can't discount, you know, I mean, how many things have you done because somebody else did that? I mean, a lot of us, we, a lot of us do that. I mean, it may not be scientific, but we at least are willing to entertain that. And if, the, the good thing happens to me, too, then I have a little bit more, uh, you know, that, that thing becomes a little bit more accurate.

• 1:29:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Um, one of the things that I see a lot of guys, uh, as they get older, start talking about, um, testosterone, uh, various hormones, uh, different deficiencies that aren't necessarily just tied to, uh, their diet. Uh, it would make sense, I think, just anecdotally, as you get older, things change, you don't have as much, uh, testosterone or whatever. How do you think about diet as a way to, to supplement that?

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:29:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And kind of combat what I think most people just say, hey, like, that's what happens when you get older?

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, and there is this sort of belief, and I was, I was certainly in that, you know, that camp, you know, fifteen years ago. I will, you know, like I said, I will, you know, I will just say, I was a, a religious zealot anti-drug guy as an athlete. When I was powerlifting, I always used to yell at the guys who were taking drugs. I thought they were cheating. I was always anti this. I never, personally never did. I still don't do that. I don't take testosterone. There's a lot of men on testosterone. There's a lot of men in their twenties and thirties now, which is really kind of shocking to me. I think for most of them, it is a consequence of poor lifestyle choices, and this becomes a metabolic Band-Aid. You know, testosterone industry is like a three-billion-dollar industry right now. That is basically, you're putting Band-Aids on people, and if you were to legitimately

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  really, really clean up the diet and lifestyle. Get good sleep. Most of us want to do that because a lot of hard work. It's easier to take a pill. This is a, this is a society we're in. So I think it's, it's, it's a, for many men, it is beneficial. I see a lot of guys on testosterone. I saw as a doctor, a lot of guys on testosterone, they're still fat, they're still out of shape, they're still miserable. I'm like, the testosterone's not doing anything for you because in a lot of cases, it just can, it gets converted to estrogen anyway, because you just kind of maintain this horrible environment. I, you know, I, you know, we've seen that overall men's testosterone has declined pretty dramatically over the last, you know, four or five decades, you know, and I think that's just as much has to do with, you know, our,

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  our diet, our environment in general. And so I don't think that decline is inevitable. I don't even think age-related decline is necessarily, you know, an inevitability, you know, for most men up to a certain point, maybe at 90 or 75, but I think 30, 40, 50, 60, you should be able to maintain high levels of testosterone function. And I, and I want to be specific about that. Testosterone function is what does testosterone do for me? Maintains lean mass, keeps my fat mass down, sexual function, libido, cognitive. So those things should continue to work well. Now, there is a concept of testosterone resistance. There's a receptor, just like, just like there's an insulin receptor, there's an insulin molecule, there's a testosterone molecule, and there's an androgen receptor. And we know that the

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  receptor sensitivity modulates how much testosterone we need. So as long as your testosterone is within normal range, and your function is good, then you should be fine. You shouldn't need to supplement. That a lot of people will go in there and say, well, you know, I'm 40, let me get my testosterone checked. And some people will actually, you know, I'll tell you how to lower it naturally. How to, how to trick your doctor into, you come in there with a low testosterone so you can get the script. So you can sit there. No way. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, of course they do. Yeah. So they, they will artificially drive their testosterone down. So they'll get a prescription so they can just sit there and, you know, shoot up and, you know, get stronger. Because I've seen guys on testosterone and they're just beasts in the gym. I mean, they're like, you know, they're, I mean, literally, I mean, testosterone's a steroid, just like any other steroid hormone. And so they'll use it just so they can, you know, maybe boost their ego or something like that. Whereas

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  it's not a legitimate. Health issue for the most people. I think most people don't have primary hypogonadism. I think they have, you know, secondary low testosterone, second to prediabetes, obesity, crappy lifestyle. And again, if you'd addressed this, because you think about it, why would you want to take an injection or whatever, whatever form you're going to get it when you don't need it? You know, I think most of us would rather not need it. But again, that requires getting good sleep, eating well, training. You know, most people don't want to do that, unfortunately.

• 1:33:10Anthony Pompliano?

  What are some of the other things that you think people maybe are looking at as Band-Aids? They don't realize they're Band-Aids and just they clean up the diet. So like all of this kind of external supplementation, protein powders, all that.

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Obviously, the testosterone. Are there anything else that kind of just jump off the page to you?

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  I mean, most, most of our modern medicines. I mean, almost every medication out there is a Band-Aid. I mean, I'm amazed to see, you know, like I said, our company is focusing initially at autoimmune diseases. And I was just, you know, looking the other day, I was in an ad for a multiple sclerosis drug, which I've seen, by the way, multiple sclerosis improved dramatically on this diet. It's two injections a year. Each injection costs $16,000. It's just $32,000 a year for these injectables. You look at things like Humira and all these other, Stelar and all these, you know, also colitis drugs and rheumatoid arthritis. You're looking at people paying, you know, upwards of $50,000, $60,000, $100,000 a year for these medications, which are simply Band-Aids. All they do is blunt the immune response so that you have a tamp down immune system. You're more susceptible to infection,

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  more susceptible to cancer, just so you can mitigate some of these disease symptoms. Those are all Band-Aids. You know, what I did as an orthopedic surgeon was putting Band-Aids up. I could replace somebody's knee, but I didn't really take the arthritis out of their body. I mean, I, you know, this is the thing that used to really, I changed my perspective. I would go in and technically I'd do a really nice knee replacement for somebody and they would feel better. Their knee would feel better. It was crooked, now it's straight. They can walk better. Their quality of life improved in that knee. They'd come back to me a year later with their other knee. Like, hey, doc, my other knee's ready for one, too. When are we going to do this one? And they had dread because they know the surgery's, you know, it's a tough surgery and they got to get through it. And I was thinking, I was, you know, patting myself on the back. Good job, Dr. Baker. This person likes you because you did such a good job with his first knee.

• 1:34:55Speaker 02

  Really, what I was doing was letting that person down because had I known, hey, you can probably avoid ever needing another knee surgery. If you just do these things with your lifestyle and your diet, but I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know to do that back then.

• 1:35:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. One of the things we haven't talked about is caffeine. You mentioned earlier that you drink water, pretty much, maybe a little bit electrolyte. Do you drink caffeine?

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  I don't. I just don't like coffee. This is kind of funny. When I was 14 years old, my first like official job, I worked as a dishwasher. I'd come to the Hilton Hotel cleaning dishes. I had to be there like four o'clock in the morning to mop the floors. And you know, as a 14 year old kid getting in at four o'clock in the morning is, you know, it's kind of tough as a teenager. So I'm in there and I roll in there. And I'm looking like crap. I'm just tired. You know, it might've been the weekend or something like that. And the cook goes, hey, kid, here, have some of this. And he hands me this cup of coffee, I think it was straight black and I think it was a day old, I think, if I'm not mistaken. I drink it. I was like, oh my God. This is like the worst stuff in the world. So it put me off coffee. I dated a gal for a while. She was a school teacher up in, up in Wyoming.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  And when I lived up there and she was into the flavor. I tried one. I was like, ah, I just never liked the stuff. I liked the smell of it. I just, I just don't like, it's too bitter for me for whatever reason. And so I'm one of these weirdos that doesn't drink coffee.

• 1:36:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So 11, 12 years old, I think that I like took a cup from one of my parents and it was steaming hot black coffee. And I tried to drink it because I saw them drinking it and I burnt my tongue and I remember like, oh shit. And so I didn't drink coffee until I was like 27, 28.

• 1:36:17Anthony Pompliano?

  But then I started to drink a lot of coffee and I've thought about getting off, maybe, maybe not, whatever. And then I read studies that say caffeine is good for you. Is it? Is it actually good for you? Is it not good for you? Like, how do you think about the health impact?

• 1:36:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, here's a, and this is a problem with nutrition research in general. You can find studies that say it's good for you, studies say it's bad for you. What, what the hell is the difference?

• 1:36:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I've got an orthopedic surgeon here who's going to tell me the answer, obviously.

• 1:36:40Speaker 02

  Well, right. I don't know. No, I mean, I think, and this has been my experience because this is, this is a very common question. There's a lot of coffee drinkers out there and a lot of people try this diet. And they asked me about coffee and I said, I wouldn't give it up initially to start with, you know, because you got all these changes with dropping carbohydrates, dropping fiber out of your diet. Increasing your protein. There's a lot of stress on the body to initially do that and then to go through caffeine withdrawal at the same time. Is not a good thing. So what happens is most people they'll transition to the diet. They'll do it for three or four months and then they'll say, hey, I'm gonna try giving up caffeine now. Interestingly, this is interesting because there's a new drug on the market. It's called a GLP-1 agonist. And so this is a glucan-like peptide incretin hormone, which we talked about earlier, that people are taking this medication. It was initially prescribed for diabetes and they're losing a lot of weight, which is great. And you know, it's a drug.

• 1:37:24Speaker 02

  And of course, the pharmaceutical companies are gonna make billions of dollars and they're all happy about that. But one of the side effects a lot of physicians have been reporting is a lot of people are noticing that they're suddenly losing cravings for things like alcohol, coffee, you know, drug addiction. So it may have a role there. I see the exact same thing with the diet that we see here is that people suddenly lose the urge to drink alcohol. Suddenly they lose the urge to smoke cigarettes or to abuse whatever drugs they're on. So or drink coffee in many cases. So there's something going on physiologically that commonly that affects the brain, I'm sure. But as far as, you know, my experience has been about 50% of the people that quit coffee notice a definite health benefit. The other 50%, no difference at all.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  So I was like, yeah, maybe it helps, maybe it's not. In caffeine, if we look at technically, what, why do, why do plants make caffeine? Why does a coffee plant make caffeine? It is a neurotoxin for insects. That's exactly what it's designed for. It's just to dissuade whatever things eat their leaves, grasshoppers or caterpillars or ants. When they congest that, it literally is a neurotoxin, so they die. So that's what caffeine's function is now. What does it do to humans? Obviously, it's a stimulant. Obviously, it impacts our appetite in a way. You know, it can, it can block mineral absorption. So there's pros and cons to it. So it's kind of one of those things where, you know, if you're not drinking, you know, if you're drinking six cups a day, then it's a problem. You're in one or two in the morning. For most people, it's not that big of a deal.

• 1:38:50Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not a big deal. Last thing I want to talk to you about is Bitcoin. There's a crossover between meat and Bitcoin. And I would have said, if I wasn't so informed, that it was the meat people who found Bitcoin. I think in some ways, the Bitcoin people found meat, it seems like. Like I see people coming to Bitcoin, they all of a sudden start eating more meat. Take away all the memes, all the craziness and the fun stuff. What do you think is it about these two communities that kind of come together and maybe talk a little bit about your interest or non-interest in Bitcoin?

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So I am a Bitcoin hodler, just for reference. And the guys that got me, Saif Dean, you know, Saif Dean, who wrote Bitcoin Standard, a guy named Mike Goldstein, who I don't know if you know either of those guys, but they're obviously big in the Bitcoin community. And they are both carnivores and they've been doing it for longer than I have. I think both of them have been doing it probably a year or two longer than me. I think that, you know, obviously when we talk about a lot of people in crypto, I know the Bitcoin guys will be mad to say Bitcoin is crypto. It's different, right? That's, that's the thing. And I know we just had that, what was it? The SBF guy and the FTX blow up. He was vegan, by the way, which I think, or was proposably a vegan.

• 1:40:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I almost was willing to bet that you were going to bring that up.

• 1:40:04Speaker 02

  Well, I think you should. It's appropriate. So anyway, you can't trust, I don't trust people that don't eat meat. I'll just put it that way. But anyway. So I think that with regard to why do we have this crossover? I mean, a lot of us, you know, we've sort of been jaded about what we've been told about the system. You know, it's like, you know, we don't necessarily trust the people telling us what to eat. We don't trust some of these major healthcare entities, you know. Some people don't trust the central banks, you know, you got the same sort of level of mistrust. So there's that just general willingness to, to, to, to take the road less traveled. I think that's where a lot of the relationship is. And, you know, I know we talk about fiat food and fiat money and there's, there's a commonalities there.

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  But I think, um, I know, I know with the, with the FTX collapse, a lot of people talking about self-custody. Everybody's pulling everything off the exchanges now because they don't trust, you know, what's going on there. If they even have what they say they have, or like, are they, are they holding only 5% of what they think they have? And you're going to lose out. So I think, I think the concept of self-custody of your health is important too. Because, you know, if you, if you outsource your health to even your physician, I can tell you as a physician, not to be callous or anything, most physicians don't really care that much. I mean, they're, they don't have the skin in the game that you do personally. And yeah, they can be a consultant, but they're not going to lose sleep at night because your elbow hurts. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's just, it doesn't impact you that way. So you have to really.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  You know, make it your mission to take care of yourself and you can't outsource it to someone else.

• 1:41:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I like the idea of self custody of your assets, self custody of your health. But also you're, you're mentioning basically like a first principles approach or like a willingness and a courage to think for yourself when it comes to your health. Talk a little bit, the Bitcoin community obviously gets immense pushback from the legacy finance people, the mainstream media, their mothers and fathers and cousins and people who just think they're crazy or whatever. Health also, like, I'm sure you get tons of pushback, I see them tweeting at you, right? How do you, one, deal with it, but also two, like, are there arguments that the critics have that you're like, you know, this would be the best argument that the critic has against an all meat diet or something like that?

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's funny, I mean, I've, I've watched it evolve over the years, you know, the, the initial argument was you're gonna die, I mean, clearly you're just gonna die, I mean, you're, you're gonna scurvy within three months, you're gonna drop down, your teeth are gonna fall out. So that doesn't happen. So then it becomes, well, uh, it's, you know, you're not gonna die, but you're gonna, you're gonna develop some sort of health issue within three years. So that doesn't happen. Then it's like, well, some people may get healthier with this, but, but it's not sustainable. And then you're like, well, there's people doing this for 25 years. Okay, well, so, so they just keep, the, the, the, the counter argument keeps getting reduced in significance. And so, you know, the longer you exist, the longer you sort of, you know, walk the walk, it's harder to contest that. And that's what we're seeing, you know, this is one of those things that we're like, I

• 1:42:56Speaker 02

  guess with Bitcoin, it's, how many times is this supposed to be dead, right? It's, it's been, it's been going, supposed to be dead since 2013, every year it's gonna die, and then it keeps going, keeps going, keeps going. So, again, no one knows what's gonna happen in the long term. I don't, I mean, I don't know if I'm gonna stay on this diet for 20 years. I'm just saying, I'm gonna, I'm gonna live every day, day by day, you know, make adjustments as I need to, and so far I haven't had to. I've had to just, you know, continue doing what I'm doing, which makes it quite easy.

• 1:43:21Anthony Pompliano?

  What would change your mind? Like, what would be something that you'd say, hey, I would reconsider?

• 1:43:26Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, if I, if I, if I saw my health significantly faltering, you know, I think that's, I think that's a reasonable approach, you know?

• 1:43:33Speaker 02

  You know, when I talk to some vegans about this, I say, look, what would happen if, you know, your health significantly was compromised, would you, would you eat meat if you had to? And the answer usually for them, most of the time they refuse to answer the question. They'll say, well, that would never happen. I said, well, I see it happen every day. Quite honestly, I, I literally take care of ex vegans all the time. So I don't, you know, like I said, I, I'm not crazy to the point where I'm on a, I have a death wish or anything like, I don't want to have heart disease. I don't want to have cancer. I want to have a good quality of life. So if I see that where I'm convinced that, that what I'm doing is significantly harming myself, I'll be happy to switch.

• 1:44:08Anthony Pompliano?

  We've talked a lot about steak and, and, and meat, chicken, fish, other things. You mentioned a couple of times, but just before I let you go, like, how do you view the balance between steak versus these other meats?

• 1:44:24Speaker 02

  Well, steak's the best. No, I mean, I mean, you think about it, well, you know, one, it just, you know, if, if you were to sit down and you have a ribeye steak here and a grilled chicken breast and a piece of salmon right here, ninety times, nine times, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I'm going to pick the steak. And I mean, it's because it tastes better. I want it. It's, it's viscerally satisfying. But if you think about just from, again, we'll go back to, we talked about our ancient, our ancestor people. I know that's kind of a goofy topic, but when we looked at how we acquired calories, you know, and what the technology they had, they, they clearly, you know, before a hundred thousand years ago, before range weapons came into technology around eighty thousand years ago, the bow and arrow and the atal atal, that occurred as, as, as sort of these megafaunal animals died off.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  But prior to that, I mean, you had a spear. That's what you have to hunt for your food. Now, if you can take down a big elephant with a spear, which they clearly could, versus a chicken, right? How much effort is it going to get to be, to get a million calories worth of chicken versus, versus a mammoth? You can kill them, you can track a mammoth, kill it in two, three hours. I mean, this is routinely what, what we see even today in Africa where they kill, hunt, kill elephants, it doesn't take long. So you've got that option, so you get this big giant hunk of ruminant meat that has, you know, an elephant probably provides six million calories, and then you've got a chicken where you're going to get, you know, a few thousand calories. How many chickens are you going to chase with your spirit? So I think we, I think that's what we're hardwired to do. I mean, most of us, you know, if we're honest about it,

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  are going to say that steak was much more satisfying to me than that chicken, a little piece of chicken. So, I mean, I still eat those things occasionally, but I just don't, you know, again, I eat what I like, what I, what I feel like eating. So it's, you know, nine times out of 10, it's just like, I want a steak.

• 1:46:06Anthony Pompliano?

  My last question for you is if somebody wants to kind of go down this path and do some personal experimentation, what is your suggestion as to how they get started? Is it really go to the grocery store, buy some steak, go home, start eating and like try not to eat other stuff? Or, or is there other?

• 1:46:21Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I'll tell you how I did it. I mean, I, I lurked on social media for about a year, watching these crazy freaking freak people eat nothing but meat for a year going, this is so frigging stupid and crazy, right? I just watched them. And then I kind of like, you know, I was like, well, shit, I'm gonna try it. And, and so I did, literally I did one meal. I had steak and eggs for one meal. And I was like, eh, that was pretty good. I enjoyed it. I didn't miss the potatoes or the toast or anything like that. So then I did a day, then I did two days, and I did three days, and then I did a week, and then I did two weeks. And then back in 2016, I did a full month of it. And I was like, shit, this is the best I've felt in 20 years. And so that's how I progressed to this. Now, again, like I said, if you've got a lot of health issues and you're on medications,

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

  you're probably going to need some assistance. You know, we've, we've got like at carnivore dot diet, which is our website where we have a lot of people we can translate. We've, we've got the communities and coaching and all that stuff. So that's one way to do it. But I mean, in general, just, you know, start with a, start with a meal, find something you like. I think you gotta, you gotta enjoy what you do. Don't just sit there and eat plain ground beef, you know, and just stare at that and go, God, I gotta eat this for the rest of my life. That's not the right way to do it. Just find something you like, make it exciting. I think, I say one, I think I should comment on this because there's a lot of people out there within this carnivore space, you know, they're, you know, these guys are eating raw testicles and all this stuff. And you look at that stuff and you're like, that's gross. I don't want to do that. And that's not necessary. I don't care how much

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  primal ancestor crap, that's not what the data shows. Data shows you can do fine to eat steak by itself, steak and eggs. All you gotta do, you'll be healthy, you'll lose weight, you'll feel better. You don't need to be eating raw brains and monkey penises and, you know, you know.

• 1:47:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I just got to ask, you're talking about testicles and raw brains and ancestral primals, liver king.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:48:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's your take?

• 1:48:02Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, he's doing a good job of marketing himself. I mean, it's a lot of marketing, obviously, and he's, you know, obviously, he's conflicted. He's selling a line of liver supplements, which, again, I think are unnecessary. I think they're overpriced. I don't think you need to do those things. But, I mean, you can't, you know, I mean, you give the guy credit. I mean, he's, he's, he's obviously putting himself out there and he's impacting a lot of people, probably quite positively. So I'll give him, you know, I'll take my hat off him for that. But again, I don't think a lot of that stuff is necessary. That's not what the data shows. And, you know, like I said, you know, if your goal is to cure autoimmune disease or something like that, you don't need to do that. You don't, you don't have to go to that extreme to, to, to, to do those things. And I think when you make it with that approach, you turn a lot

• 1:48:43Speaker 02

  of people off, you know, that otherwise would perhaps try it. You can literally go to Walmart and buy ground beef and regular eggs and you can get really healthy doing it. And I think those people need to understand that. If you want to do all this other stuff and get goofy and put yourself on Instagram, eating, you know, pounds of raw liver every week, that's fine. It's fun, but it's unnecessary.

• 1:49:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Sunning your balls and eating, eating liver is unnecessary. All right. Where can we send people to find you on the internet, both on Twitter and then I think you've got a couple of websites?

• 1:49:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Twitter is actually nice now that we don't get so much censorship there. So S Baker M D on, on Twitter, on Instagram, which I'm still being shadow man on, so pissed because I made fun of the World Economic Forum. So they're shadow batting me about that, which is stupid.

• 1:49:28Anthony Pompliano?

  They probably deserves it.

• 1:49:29Speaker 02

  They do. They do. So Sean Baker, 1967 Instagram, and then Sean Baker M D YouTube, and also, God forbid, Tik Tok, which is, you know.

• 1:49:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you on?

• 1:49:38Speaker 02

  I'm on, but, you know, kind of eh, I'm not putting a big effort in there yet. Maybe later.

• 1:49:42Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Awesome. And then carnivore dot diet.

• 1:49:45Speaker 02

  Carnivore dot diet is a good place or rivero.com. So carnivore dot diet, if you just want to do the diet, you don't need any actual medical care from a physician. We'll start accepting patients at rivero.com probably this spring, which we should, we should have a physician's license in all 50 states by the spring. And then, then if you need help, if you need somebody to help you taper down medications or change medications, that's where you'll go.

• 1:50:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. How do you spell that?

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  R E V E R O. Rivero.

• 1:50:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Awesome. So rivero.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  Dot com. Yeah.

• 1:50:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this. I learned a lot and I think a lot of other people will as well. We'll definitely do it again in the future.

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Awesome.

• 1:50:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends and I'll see you all for the next episode.