Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett Insulin Doctor: This Is The First Sign Of Dementia! The Shocking Link Between Keto & Brain Decline! About this episode No.1 Keto Doctor DR. ANNETTE BOSWORTH reveals how to reverse insulin resistance, cut belly fat, avoid early dementia, why eating late spikes glucose, and the sardine-only reset for ketosis.
Dr Annette Bosworth, commonly known as Dr Boz, is an internal medicine doctor with over 2 decades of experience, who helps reverse medical problems through healthy Keto living. She educates the audience on her YouTube platform ‘Dr Boz’ and is the bestselling author of several books, including, ‘KetoCONTINUUM: Consistently Keto Diet for Life’.
She explains:
◼️How keto done wrong can actually damage your brain
◼️The fastest way to generate ketones and reduce inflammation
◼️Why breakfast is the most dangerous meal for insulin resistance
◼️The simple test that tells you if your brain is running on fat or sugar
◼️The science behind the “Dr. Boz Ratio” and how it predicts healing
(00:00) Intro
(02:16) What Made You Who You Are Today?
(03:23) Medicine 2.0 (Fixing) vs Medicine 3.0 (Preventing)
(04:17) Predicting Chronic Illness 10 Years Before You Get It
(08:29) Best Time to Eat
(13:05) The Biggest Issue With Insulin Resistance
(14:27) Scary Signs You Have Excess Insulin
(18:35) Check for Skin Tags and Hairless Toes
(20:42) My Patients Reversed Grey Hair on Keto
(21:40) How to Measure Your Ketone Levels
(23:15) Benefits of Being in Ketosis
(25:19) Brain Differences on a Keto Diet vs Not
(27:38) How Long Did It Take Annette to Achieve Ketosis?
(31:14) Weightlifting on Keto
(32:38) Improvements in Strength and Power
(34:16) Can Keto Help Neurodegenerative Diseases?
(38:39) Testing Steve's Ketones and Blood Sugar
(41:06) Testing Dr. Boz's Ketones
(42:37) How Cortisol Affects Metabolism
(43:41) Jack's Ketone Levels
(45:13) Do I Need to Fully Cut Carbs?
(46:27) My Mum's Cancer Journey
(47:32) 12 Steps to Get Into a Consistent Ketogenic State
(51:33) The Difference Between Men and Women on Keto
(54:49) The Sardines Challenge to Start Keto
(57:31) What Macros Do I Need to Get Into Ketosis?
(58:07) Grocery List for a Keto Diet
(59:15) What About Net Carbs?
(59:36) Woman Who Ate Only Sardines for 30 Days
(1:02:58) Will High Fat Affect the Gut Microbiome?
(1:06:56) Will My Microbiome Be Diverse Enough on Keto?
(1:07:36) The Role of Vitamin D
(1:08:33) Lowering Insulin for Higher Vitamin D
(1:09:49) Ads
(1:10:43) Magnesium
(1:11:43) Omega-3
(1:11:54) Taking Exogenous Ketones
(1:12:24) Exogenous Ketones vs Ketones Produced in the Body
(1:14:32) Putting My Mum on Keto When She Was Dying of Cancer
(1:20:41) Will This Reverse Cancer?
(1:22:55) Methylene Blue
(1:24:47) Do You Take Creatine?
(1:27:01) GLP-1 Natural Alternatives
(1:28:55) How to Stop Cravings
(1:31:45) How to Keep People Motivated With Their Health Journey
(1:32:57) Ads
(1:35:08) They Tried to Sue Me for Fraud
(1:46:54) What Helps You Find Inner Peace in Stressful Moments
Follow Dr Boz:
Instagram - https://bit.ly/4pjpvvs
YouTube - https://bit.ly/4p9b5ha
Website - https://bit.ly/3X0aHWo
You can purchase Dr Boz’s book, ‘KetoCONTINUUM’, here: https://amzn.to/49YxIQZ
Independent research: https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DOAC-Dr-Annette-Bosworth-Independent-Research-further-reading-1.pdf
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Transcript 21,304 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Welcome to the sardine challenge. So the only thing on the menu for the next three days is sardines. I challenge you to try and eat three of those cans in a day. Because that's a hell of a tool to help you get into a ketogenic state. And when you're in a ketogenic state, it helps burn fat. Muscle mass gets higher preserve. I've seen patients that have reversed their gray hair and that brain performance, concentration and energy, all of those things improve. And so I'm going to teach you how to do an advanced ketogenic diet.
0:25 Steven Bartlett? Sorry, the sardine juice has gone on my iPad.
0:27 Speaker 00 Good luck getting that off.
0:29 Steven Bartlett? Dr. Annette Bosworth is the insulin resistance specialist.
0:32 Speaker 00 With over two decades of experience, she's discovered that the key to your health isn't more treatments.
0:37 Speaker 02 It's to get into a ketogenic state.
0:39 Speaker 00 Most people have been making buckets of insulin without knowing it. But when you have excess insulin, it's a chronic disease maker. It is what makes high blood pressure. It is what makes cancer. It is what makes debris in the brain, which is linked to depression, rain fog, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And so to reverse the high insulin state, I really push my patients to do the ketogenic diet and what unfolds is your best life ahead within a year. Like I really rescued my mom from the edge of death.
1:06 Steven Bartlett? So where do I start?
1:07 Speaker 00 First thing is quit eating late at night because you're stimulating excessive production of insulin. The next thing, keep the carbs low, put the fat up, more eggs, beef brisket, ribs, pork belly.
1:16 Steven Bartlett? But then people often say, when you talk about the ketogenic diet, that it's not sustainable. So you have this idea of this keto continuum, consistently keto for life.
1:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, I've been on a ketogenic diet for 10 years and there's 12 steps for it and you're not going to have to try very hard. So the first step is.
1:32 Steven Bartlett? Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show. Thank you.
2:16 Steven Bartlett? Dr Annette Bosworth, or shall I call you Dr Bos? What is it that you know and believe and understand that you think the general public doesn't know, believe and understand?
2:28 Speaker 00 That most of the reasons people come to see me could be reversed if they knew how to make ketones on a regular basis. So I'm an internist. That means if you go to an internal medicine doctor and we don't know what's wrong, you're going to die. We take care of tough puzzles and we do this over a long management, chronic disease management. So I've got 25 years of studying chronic problems that deteriorate the quality of life. Lifespan, health span, both go in the toilet when you're chronically seeing me. And you could abort all of that destiny if routinely you were making ketones.
3:09 Steven Bartlett? An internist sounds like an intern. I'm trying to understand.
3:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's terrible. The marketing on this is terrible. It just means you're supposed to take care of very complex answers. Your job, I mean, the buck stops with you. If the internal medicine team can't figure it out, you're going to die.
3:23 Steven Bartlett? So you're basically a chronic illness doctor?
3:25 Speaker 00 Chronic disease management is absolutely it. You know, I love the way Peter Attia uses medicine 2.0, which is what we are the masters of, managing it, making sure the prescriptions are there, making sure you are treating all these problems. The internist being one of your best buddies because you're having to see them routinely, you've got to get the meds refilled, you've got to check for the side effects. It's a mill.
3:46 Steven Bartlett? What is medicine 2.0 in your definition?
3:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I can keep you from dying from childbirth and infections and I have an antidote for every one of your symptoms. We are in a world where medicine has answered a lot of problems. Little things like high blood pressure, little things like it's a few extra pounds around the middle, little things like brain fog, oh, my eyes are aging. All of these are signals that your body has made more trash than it cleaned up and there were some rules to humans that you missed.
4:17 Steven Bartlett? And for my listeners that have clicked on this conversation? What are they going to get out of giving us their time and staying with us and listening to this? What is the end goal going to be for them in their lives?
4:28 Speaker 00 Listening to the way I talk to my patients and teach them the steps, how to reverse the medical problems that you've already got on the roster. And by doing that, the freedom is to be the kind of grandparent that you dreamt of, but you've surrendered, can't be there anymore.
4:45 Steven Bartlett? And what is the list of predicaments or illnesses that are relevant here?
4:50 Speaker 00 Yeah, so the most common one is being overweight and a brain that's not working right. What really is behind all of the patients I've seen for 25 years is we're working on peak brain performance. Even if you don't think about that, that's what I think about. So when you come in and you're 55 years old and I can see the worry of Parkinson's headed your way, super young is 55 years old with Parkinson's. That is a brain that's got too much trash and you don't know it yet. And I mean, in the history of Dr. Boz versus Parkinson's, Parkinson's has like 3,500 patients, I have zero. Parkinson's wins every time. And the biggest moment of people who have chronic problems under the hood is they have no idea that it's coming.
5:34 Speaker 00 And once that lands, the reversal is much worse. Seeing it 10 years before it's supposed to be there, this is a gift of saying, let me show you how to undo that. Back away from the edge. It's that brain function that you're going to miss the most when it doesn't work. And it's linked to all of these things, like the arthritis, the, you know, weight around the middle, the high blood pressure, the severe connection to mental approach, meaning you can say depression, but people say, oh, I don't have that diagnosis. I'm talking about a brain that doesn't want to engage, that doesn't find joy in their life anymore because it's been too many years since they took out the trash. Let me show you how to take out the trash and you're going to have to do it a few times. But what unfolds is your best life ahead within a year.
6:19 Steven Bartlett? So you're going to teach me how to take out the trash?
6:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:22 Steven Bartlett? The trash in my own brain?
6:23 Speaker 00 Yep.
6:24 Steven Bartlett? And if I take out the trash in my own brain, how is my life going to be better?
6:27 Speaker 00 You live in the 21st century where there's lots of processed foods and lots of ways that your body did things without telling you. So any injury that you've had, like a joint injury that keeps coming back every time you injure it, it is a little easier to injure the next time. Is there a ring around the middle that's more than pinch an inch? Is there a distance in time where you say, "I can focus for this many hours, but I can't do it for this many hours anymore"? Those are all places where if you did this, if you were able to say, "Don't stop taking out the trash", several times a year, several times a month, if you ask me, then you never have to come into this world that... I just see people, they're in quicksand. They're up to their waist.
7:11 Speaker 00 And getting them out, they need a real lifeline.
7:14 Steven Bartlett? And what are the current solutions people are typically offered when they're feeling, you know, all the ways that you described there, where they just don't feel good, they have brain fog, they're... They might have chronic pain setting in in various ways. What are the typical solutions that medicine 2.0 would offer them?
7:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, especially if they have good insurance.
7:30 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
7:30 Speaker 00 That doctor is going to be with the covered insurance plan and he's going to say, "Tell me the symptoms. I have a matching game. I will give you the drugs that will take away that one and take away that one and take away that one." What is always a downside is, "Well, play that forward for 10 years. Play it forward for five years. And are the symptoms gone? No, but it will bridge and hold up the architecture of the body and the human without actually fixing the problem, without actually diving in and say, 'You've got some chemistry problems under the hood that you don't measure and you don't talk about.' But if you did, even if you're not perfect, even if you're 70%, you're going to find yourself at the age of 54 with vitality and energy and sleeping through the night
8:15 Speaker 00 and not having what every other 54-year-old, which is chronic joint pain, a brain that can only focus for three to four hours without a break, a stamina of endurance and health and joy that falls apart."
8:29 Steven Bartlett? So when I'm... You're 54 years old. When I'm 54 years old, I want to be as young and energetic and articulate and cognitively astute as you are. So what should I be doing now to make sure that I don't decline, decay in all those areas I've described?
8:47 Speaker 00 Well, what'd you have for breakfast?
8:48 Steven Bartlett? Today?
8:49 Speaker 00 Yeah.
8:50 Steven Bartlett? I have not eaten breakfast yet.
8:52 Speaker 00 It's okay. That's not a bad thing. But when you're 54, you should probably put the calories in the morning, not at night. We know that as you age, the cost of a calorie turns into timing. If you eat that food... One bite of food after 6 o'clock is worth 10 bites of food before noon.
9:13 Speaker 00 So if you're trying to say, how do I get the best out of the nourishment, but also eating's fun? If you only get one bite after six o'clock and 10 before, move that food towards morning. When you're your age, what'd you have? What's the last meal you ate?
9:28 Steven Bartlett? Yesterday?
9:29 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:30 Steven Bartlett? For dinner, I had this cod and I had salad. I also had pasta.
9:36 Speaker 00 Okay.
9:37 Steven Bartlett? But I ate pretty late, which is a problem.
9:39 Speaker 00 What did you have the rest of the day before that? Was that your first meal?
9:41 Steven Bartlett? Just a salad, just a big salad.
9:43 Speaker 00 Was that more towards lunch or noon or?
9:46 Steven Bartlett? Probably about four o'clock.
9:47 Speaker 00 So waited all the way till four o'clock to eat? Very common. This is a really common pattern of people doing what we would say intermittent or time restricted eating. They put that eating window in this, but it's got that balloon at the end of the day.
9:58 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
9:59 Speaker 00 And it really does. I mean, what you're stimulating is an excessive production of insulin. And you're going to wake up the next morning. What time did you wake up this morning?
10:08 Steven Bartlett? Today? I went to bed fairly relatively early for me. I woke up at about 7:30 AM.
10:14 Speaker 00 Oh.
10:14 Steven Bartlett? Usually it's later.
10:15 Speaker 00 And do you have? Did you have a solid seven, eight hours of sleep or how?
10:20 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
10:20 Speaker 00 So during that time, you finished eating around 10 o'clock then it sounds like?
10:24 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
10:25 Speaker 00 Okay, so then it's seven.
10:26 Steven Bartlett? A bit later.
10:27 Speaker 00 Okay, so 11 o'clock and you've got,
10:30 Speaker 00 7:30 in the morning is when you woke up. So that's about eight hours since you've eaten. Your insulin is still churning, especially if the meal was large and there was carbs in it. So now you've got these processed foods late at night and you're at the beginning of the disease, right? You're at the beginning of the chronic inflammatory churn of how do you age faster and faster? You don't do that. You don't have high insulin throughout the night.
10:52 Steven Bartlett? So can you explain to me, like I'm a 12 year old, what insulin is and the role it's playing? Cause you know, I guess we're focused here on how to, I guess longevity, aging.
11:02 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:02 Steven Bartlett? For a second, but how does insulin play a role in all of this? And what is insulin?
11:05 Speaker 00 So insulin insulates.
11:08 Speaker 00 Okay, so think of it as it makes you fluffy. It makes you, it puts the fat on. It's got some other roles too, but we're going to talk about chronic diseases here where it's not a scarcity problem. You, you make plenty of it. And when it's in excess, it will store energy for when you go through a famine. It will also cause you to grow. Now, grow means get a little fatter, but it also means things like their skin gets a little thicker, they have skin tags. And what I always think about is what's going on in their brain. And when that insulin is high for years and years and years, uh, just like yours, because if, if you didn't eat the rest of today, and then you got up tomorrow morning, it would
11:51 Speaker 00 be about that long after a late meal last night, that's how long it would take you to say, okay, we're back down to where we started from or where we should be in the morning.
12:01 Steven Bartlett? For someone that's never heard about insulin before, there's some context to give on in terms of what it's doing. So it's coming out like a transporter and helping put away the sugar or deal with the excess sugar?
12:11 Speaker 00 Right, so it is what lifts, yeah, it lifts glucose or sugar from the circulation into a cell. That's its first primary job. But if all the cells are full, their storage is full, it's going to start to pack it into the liver. I mean, let's say all those stores are full too. This job of the, of insulin, this hormone oozes into every part of your body to say, make sure it's got fuel, make sure it's got that sugar. But most people are like what I would guess you are, most of the time you don't, you aren't a shortage of sugar. And so it fills, it tops things off and then it will turn things into fat. It's too much sugar, they can't store it, all the storage is full. So you can send the signal out, make me some more cells, I need some more storage units. This guy's eating more than he thinks he is.
12:56 Speaker 00 And we're going to be prepared to live through the famine.
13:02 Speaker 00 But in the meantime, turn it into fat. Make him a little fluffier.
13:05 Steven Bartlett? Is that the only consequence of high insulin is that I'm gonna, I might be a bit more fat?
13:10 Speaker 00 No, that's just the one people hear about the most. When you look at chronic disease management, it is the growth of, of the diseases, of the inflammation. It's the making of the trash. So I keep saying, you need to take the trash out routinely, which means that insulin, which has been smoldering higher than you think it is because you live in today's world, because you eat processed food, because you eat super late at night. You don't go two to three days without eating. You've, you've got storage filled in your body. The high insulin levels in a healthy person hides that the debris is being made and you don't know it.
13:45 Steven Bartlett? It hides it?
13:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's gonna put it in between two cells in your brain. It's gonna put it in between the skin cells. The trash doesn't get taken out until the insulin gets lower. And unfortunately, most people have been making buckets of insulin without knowing it.
14:02 Steven Bartlett? Why? What are they doing to create buckets of insulin? All the things you said about-
14:07 Speaker 00 Carbs, foods that comes from boxes and barcodes and bags instead of whole foods, instead of a fat-forward diet, which would then push that body into making ketones. So you can't, you cannot make a ketone if your insulin's high.
14:27 Steven Bartlett? Are there any signs that I might have high levels of insulin or insulin resistance?
14:32 Speaker 00 Abdominal girth is the first thing that, is the first place that the fat goes. So you do this really great part where you don't eat until later in the day. How does that feel during the day?
14:42 Steven Bartlett? During the day, I feel really focused. I actually don't even know that I'm not eating.
14:45 Speaker 00 So that's really good. So what I would love to know is, show me what your blood sugars are doing during the day and show me if you make ketones. That'll be, the answer is, you, when you have excess insulin, which is this chronic disease maker, it is what makes cancer. It is what makes high blood pressure. It is what makes debris in the brain where, call it depression or brain fog or Parkinson's. It's the aging of the brain.
15:10 Steven Bartlett? It's linked to all of those things.
15:11 Speaker 00 All of those things. And that excess insulin, nobody tells you about. But the symptoms are, dang, I feel like I gotta eat every two to three hours. Their debris, or their fuel keeps running out. When you say, boy, I can eat- Uh, once at the end of the day, and I'm pretty good. My focus stays really good. What I want you to prove is, what are your ketones during the day? So, when, when you've got a patient who has done that, their ketones will be point seven, one point oh. And they're taking out the trash all day long.
15:44 Steven Bartlett? So there's these two energy sources. One of them's glucose, one of them's, which is from like, you know, eating pasta, which I ate last night. Um, so that probably put a lot of glucose in my, my bed. I probably had a high glucose spike and then insulin came out to deal with that. And then there's ketones which start to appear when I'm fasting or when I haven't been eating carbs for a while and my body's looking for an energy source.
16:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
16:05 Steven Bartlett? In terms of these two energy sources, there seems to be a lot of hype around ketones.
16:11 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
16:12 Steven Bartlett? So, why doesn't our body just run off ketones?
16:15 Speaker 00 It will as soon as you're done lowering your insulin. And I mean, insulin grew in these patients. They didn't know that it was growing high. They went to their blood test and their glucose looked normal. What nobody checked for years is how much of that insulating hormone did it take to keep the glucose controlled? And that's where chronic diseases are, are grown in spades. That's where autoimmune disorders.
16:36 Steven Bartlett? The insulating hormone being insulin?
16:38 Speaker 00 Yes.
16:38 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
16:39 Speaker 00 So that excess insulin for the last decade. Had you come into my clinic, we'll put a label on it. Call it PCOS, call it in, uh, high blood pressure, call it, um, autoimmune problems. All of them are linked to high insulin. Glucose, when you want to store it, we put it in a fancy string called glycogen. And it's just an efficient way to store glucose. But as soon as your body needs it, it will unlock all that sugar back into your access, back for you.
17:06 Steven Bartlett? Mm hmm.
17:06 Speaker 00 What you don't realize is, well, how much glycogen that you got stored over there? How much is there in storage? And that is what high insulin has been doing. Just put it in storage, put it in storage. And then, when you stop eating, you'll know if you emptied out all your stored sugar, which is some of the regular sugar you just ate, but then all this glycogen, this packaged sugar. How empty are you? I don't know. Have you made a ketone yet? You cannot make a ketone, you cannot burn fat until that that tank is empty.
17:38 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so I have these glycogen stores which last for, what, a day or two?
17:41 Speaker 00 Oh, no. Think of it as brown sugar. So you package the sugar really tight, and then you put it in the back of the drawer and it turns crusty because you never lowered your insulin. I have patients that are overweight and we put them on a ketogenic, we put them on a 20 total carbohydrates per day, so super low carbohydrate. It is 15 days before they make a ketone.
18:02 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so it could be a one, it could be up to two weeks, for example,
18:05 Speaker 00 Right.
18:06 Steven Bartlett? before my glycogen stores are empty. And it's not until my glycogen stores, my glucose stores are empty that my body can start producing ketones.
18:13 Speaker 00 Correct.
18:13 Steven Bartlett? So it's going to exhaust all of those glycogen stores and then, once it's ran out, it's going to switch into this ketogenic state.
18:19 Speaker 00 Right. Yeah, so think of it as your short-term, easy-to-access sugar has to decrease and that means your insulin has decreased. That hormone for insulate, they both run in tangents. You decrea, you're emptying glycogen, your insulin's going down.
18:35 Steven Bartlett? So how do I know if I have insulin resistance? What are the key signs? You mentioned skin tags. I've never had that term before.
18:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, skin tags are not moles. So moles, you can feel this bump on your, on your skin, right?
18:48 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
18:48 Speaker 00 But a skin tag has a neck and like a little mushroom. And it's the most annoying thing when patients come and say, "Well, I just tried to cut them all off, but they kept bleeding." I'm like, "Do not cut them off." They'll fall off when your insulin's lower. So that's the first place. It'll be found in their armpits or places where their skin rubs, so armpits and their groin. And once insulin starts to grow them, it's like a crop, a crop, a little baby cauliflower hanging out in their armpits.
19:14 Steven Bartlett? You talked about velvety skin
19:16 Speaker 00 Yes.
19:17 Steven Bartlett? as well being an indicator.
19:18 Speaker 00 Velvety skin is this Latin word, acanthosis nigra cans, which is fancy word that means the skin is darker and thicker. So the, the places that usually happens is the back of the neck and you'll hear, you know, stories of, "I tried to wash my neck. It's, it's dirty all the time." It's not dirt. It is the way the skin is under the, the curse of high insulin. And you see it in teenagers all the time now. They put on weight and their growth hormones are already doing that teenage thing. Now you put high insulin in there and they have this dirty neck syndrome. Or on the creases of their elbow, it's just darker here. That is pathology, that's not normal from high insulin.
20:01 Steven Bartlett? You talked about weight changes as well. What's this thing about hairy toes that I was reading about?
20:05 Speaker 00 Right, so as my patients age, so most of my 55 year olds that have had high insulin, I will tell them, look at your toes. They're supposed to have hair on them. And when your body has had that high insulin state for a couple of decades now, it will start to say, we don't send resources to a couple of parts of the body anymore. And the follicles in their toe are one of them. Like, just stop growing hair on your toes. And there's an ascending problem with this, where the toe starts, then it's the ankles, then it's up to the knees, and they don't have hair anywhere on their lower extremities. It is a process that started from high insulin.
20:42 Steven Bartlett? What about aging? You talked about how if you have high insulin, there'll be an impact on your aging. Now, I'm thinking about, you know, I'm getting a couple of gray hairs now. This is because of my insulin levels.
20:53 Speaker 00 I have seen patients that have reversed their gray hair on a ketogenic diet. It blew my mind. They asked me for the reason why that happened, and I thought, well, the cells are healthier that are making your hair, that's all I got. Aging is exactly that enemy, which is they are going around the sun with more growing of the trash than they needed. So that high insulin, they don't know about it. They've not produced a ketone in years. And that chronic disease is now difficult to get their, the eye to clean out. It's difficult to get that brain trash removed. And you're supposed to do it every night when you sleep. It's not supposed to be behind this far. You're two decades from taking out the trash in your brain.
21:38 Speaker 00 That's aging.
21:39 Steven Bartlett? How do I, for a start, even know my ketone blood levels?
21:44 Speaker 00 Well, when a patient first comes in saying, how do I begin? I want them to tell me what they had for their meal and then say, how many carbs do you think that was? Because this education, like, an apple is 20 grams of carbs, 15 grams of carbs for some of them. And we're gonna ask you in the first six weeks to take your carb intake down to less than 20. 20 total grams of carbohydrates or less is where we begin. And again, I did this in a medical grade. There are people who play with a ketogenic diet, and there's people who try to reverse medical problems with a ketogenic diet. In order to do this, it is not a lazy kind of keto. You have to actually be on the same team as me, using data to reverse this medical problem.
22:26 Steven Bartlett? And how does one measure their blood ketone levels?
22:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think blood is the best. There is a way you can measure them in urine. The burning of fat, if you turn that string of fat into ketones, there are two destinies for that. You either put it into a mitochondria and turn it into energy, or you pee it out. So especially when they're early in a ketogenic journey, they overshoot. Evolution said, don't let them die. Turn that fat into energy, help them through the famine. So the excess ketones they make end up in their urine. We call them peetone strips. And they're cheap and easy, and we don't have to cross that barrier of somebody pricking their finger at the beginning. So they're gonna pee out ketones every day, as long as they're not chronic insulin resistant.
23:14 Steven Bartlett? So if I avoid carbs for a sustained period of time, which could be a couple of days, it could be up to two weeks, eventually my body's gonna say, listen, we need energy. So it's gonna start burning my fat stores.
23:26 Speaker 00 Yes.
23:26 Steven Bartlett? You know, from some of that fat around the midsection, and it's gonna start turning that into ketones, which are a different type of energy. Are there any reasons why ketone, as a source of energy, is better for me in terms of performance, other than the insulin reasons that we've talked about? Like, are there any other parts of my body or my health that benefit ketones?
23:49 Speaker 00 So for starters, when you're burning a ketone, there's less trash. Okay? It is a cleaner fuel with less byproduct, especially as you age. So you get the longer energy, and you have less debris floating around. You hear the word antioxidants all the time. Well, burning ketones is an antioxidant state. It is a, and it's in the space where you need it, which is inside that cell. You swallow antioxidants, and you have no guarantee that they end up where they're supposed to. So number one, the fuel is reducing trash at a cellular level. It lasts longer and it penetrates through that blood-brain barrier to fuel a brain that even if it's insulin resistant, it can use a ketone.
24:34 Speaker 00 So the problem with somebody who's chronic insulin resistance, their brain needs a lot of glucose to stay online. And I can try to get it there, but insulin is constantly fighting that. It's a war to try and keep the glucose in their brain. My hack is ketones will go right around that. It doesn't need the same transporters to get across the blood-brain barrier and especially to fuel those cells in the brain. So for performance, I mean, name a game where you don't use your brain. There isn't one, right? You're gonna, if you're looking at performance to say, let's begin with the sharpest brains and the most focused, the most disciplined, the less impulsivity. All of those things improve when that brain is being fueled with ketones.
25:19 Steven Bartlett? So let's focus on the brain part then. So what have you personally noticed as someone who I assume is in the ketogenic diet right now?
25:26 Speaker 00 Yes.
25:27 Steven Bartlett? What have you noticed the variances between when you're in a keto diet and when you're not?
25:31 Speaker 00 Right, well, I've been doing this since 2015. So the onset of it was really messy, but the seasons where I would do a great job and then I would think, ah, I'm fine. I mean, I can tell you, you see 25 patients in a day and I feel bad for the last five. They've got a sluggish brain. I don't care how much coffee you've got in you, you can't keep that focus for that length of time. When you're in a ketogenic state and not in a ketogenic state, the brain power, the concentration, the ability to keep your mood controlled is, it's just, it is a night and day difference for most people, but I think especially for me. And pretty high energy. And when it runs out, I get crabby.
26:16 Speaker 00 And that's not a good place to be if you're the patient.
26:20 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, I think I've noticed that as a podcaster, but I've also had a lot of very well-known podcasters say the same thing, which is the variance in their ability to speak and articulate themselves and think and sit here for three to four hours having a conversation.
26:30 Speaker 00 Right.
26:31 Steven Bartlett? Is night and day when they are in a fasted ketogenic state versus or on a ketogenic diet versus when they are in a higher carb diet.
26:40 Speaker 00 Right.
26:40 Steven Bartlett? And it's so profound to me that I that I almost wonder why like more people don't.
26:44 Speaker 00 Well, it's it's insane. Like, one of the best things that I've done in 25 years was I went on a limb and said, I'm going to try and teach 200 people at once how to do this intense ketogenic diet for three weeks. It is hardcore. This is not playtime. You're checking your numbers every day and you're comparing them to your classmates. And what you get to see in this class of 200 people going with an extreme ketogenic diet is the testimony you just said. I cannot believe how good I feel. By the end of three weeks, they're naming babies after me.
27:17 Speaker 00 They think this is a miracle. And I'm like, exactly. I mean, when you do it in a group like that, I don't need to advertise. They tell their friends, they tell their like, if you want to be on a ketogenic diet that really wakes up your brain, that I didn't think I could do this. I thought I was too old for this level of energy. And it's there within three weeks of doing it right.
27:38 Steven Bartlett? How long does it typically take on average for someone to feel those brain benefits from doing the ketogenic diet typically? How long does it take you?
27:47 Speaker 00 Me?
27:47 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
27:48 Speaker 00 I rarely go out of it. Meaning, I might have a couple of days where I fly to LA and have a fancy meal and then I need to be back on it. It just doesn't feel good anymore. So, but let's go, let's go to when I was overweight. Okay, so you say, who's insulin resistant? Any person who's had a baby. Okay, you have to be insulin resistant to hold that baby for nine months. Okay, so I had three of them and then the weight never came off on that third one. So here is an insulin resistant person at 40 something years old. And I am probably 60 pounds heavier than I am now. In the first time, I tried to get into a state of ketosis for like nine months. I was about to give up on like, why can I not pee a ketone? Why does every, I mean, I'm a doctor.
28:32 Speaker 00 I'm trying to use this for my brain patients, but I'm afraid to tell them about it. Cause I personally cannot pee a ketone. I mean, I was trying to follow 50 carbs, then I tried to do 30 carbs and then I tried to do none. But I just couldn't make it long enough into that ketogenic state. And what had happened is at least a decade of high insulin, three babies, full practice, busy life, you know, on call, those kinds of things that are all dangerous. If you're gonna try to have a peak brain. I took my kids on a 22 mile hike around the city on Memorial Day in the name of Troops as Mental Health. And I said, if I am not peeing a ketone after walking 22 miles, having fasted for a day,
29:16 Speaker 00 then I'm for sure that this diet is a hui. So that's how much energy it took for me to pee a ketone because I was very insulin resistant. I had been making excess insulin for a decade and I'm a doctor. I, I should have known that. My sugars were fine. My hemoglobin A1C wasn't bad, but that excess insulin, that stored sugar, that stored glycogen, it took forever to get that low. And only after I fasted and then walked 22 miles did I pee a ketone. So when you ask the question, how long does it take? I don't make, I do a much better job now of telling people how to get there. Cause I, I almost gave up thinking this is junk science.
29:55 Steven Bartlett? If you, if you were to eat a high carb meal now and take a couple of days off, how long would it take you to get back into a ketogenic state where you have those brain benefits now?
30:03 Speaker 00 Uh, I could probably flip back in within 12 hours.
30:07 Steven Bartlett? So that's how long it roughly takes. For someone who's got this in better metabolic shape, it will take a couple of days.
30:12 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
30:15 Steven Bartlett? Is there a downside to living in ketosis the whole time? Because people often say, when you talk about the ketogenic diet, that it's not sustainable.
30:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, I hear that a lot, but I have thousands of patients that have been doing it for years. And what happens is, as soon as they exit from the ketogenic diet, and they start to feel the trash build up again, meaning the joints that didn't hurt forever now hurt. The vision that was super clear is now foggy again. The brain that wasn't irritable and depressive is back to doing those things again. I mean, it is within a week or two that, I mean, I like to think of when you're in a ketogenic state, you wring out that inflammation and trash in their brain, and the brain is like crisp. It is doing a great job. And when you put the sugar back in, the swelling goes back into their brain.
31:05 Speaker 00 Insulin and water flood the body, and it's almost like a minor concussion. And their brain is now working right, and they now know it.
31:14 Steven Bartlett? And are there any other benefits to being in a ketogenic state? You mentioned strength briefly.
31:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, so when you're looking at, do you do weightlifting?
31:23 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
31:24 Speaker 00 Okay, so when you weightlift, how's, grade your soreness on the day after your lifting day?
31:32 Steven Bartlett? If I've been using that muscle consistently, there's no real soreness.
31:36 Speaker 00 Good, so let's just take a day where you're pushing it harder. You're deadlifting harder, and you've got a strain in those muscles. One of the key components for repairing that as quickly as possible is to be in a ketogenic state, to take that inflammation way down. And you probably didn't need the help of repairing that muscle when you were, you know, 18, 22. But as you get into the 30s, and especially into the 40s, the amount of inflammation that tries to help you repair that, it overshoots. And that's where the chronic pain is from. That's where the delay in repair comes from. So when I look at power and muscle training, I, the first place I talk to my patients about it is, how many days does it take you to get back to feeling good after you've had an injury?
32:22 Speaker 00 Let's, let's be on the side of a ketogenic setting where your inflammation is super low. And when you tear something, which you're going to tear things when you're lifting heavy, the repair part is so quick.
32:35 Speaker 00 The power is a little hard to talk about. If you want me to go there, I can.
32:38 Steven Bartlett? Yeah. So is there going to be any impact on my my ability to train?
32:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
32:43 Steven Bartlett? If I'm in a ketogenic diet, am I going to be impacted in terms of endurance or strength or power or anything like that?
32:49 Speaker 00 So we looked at this in in military people. It's one of my favorite ones, where they are all insulin resistant. And we put them on a ketogenic diet, and so they're trying to meet the standards. And at a month of being in a ketogenic state, they've lost weight, but their power and time didn't do anything too sexy. Then you look at those same soldiers at a year, or I think it was six months was the next time they did another big check. And by golly, they've lost even more weight, and their power is about 20% more than their counterparts. When they get to 18 months of a ketogenic diet, their power is almost 50% more than what their counterparts were. So let me explain that.
33:33 Speaker 00 As you're looking at a muscle, it will choose which fuel it wants to use. And when you've been glucose using, when you're on a non ketogenic diet, it's going to use glucose first to fuel. But if you can train it to to use fat in that training, it's a longer, better fuel with less inflammation, and especially in a state where it will use both fuels quickly, that takes time. I mean, it takes and what I tell patients is, you'll love me in 18 months. You'll think I'm pretty great at six months. But if you're trying to run a marathon, and we're only three to four weeks out, you should not start a ketogenic diet. You're going to think it's the worst thing ever. It's meant to train muscles to use fat, and that takes time.
34:16 Steven Bartlett? And is there a link between some of these cognitive degeneration diseases like Alzheimer's, dementia, etc., and the ketogenic diet? Because I know that there's been some research that's underway and has been done to try and establish causality. Is there a link here?
34:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, you know, it's one of the saddest places where if you look at what patients regret in life, they come into the clinic and they're already starting to say, I was driving the other day and I got lost. And when I hear that, we are 15 years too late. It is 15 years of building up trash in that brain that we have to clean out that debris. And I had the privilege of an amazing story that taught me, I don't have the gift of, you know, seeing into the future. Am I gonna reverse these Alzheimer's before they show up? We don't have the research for it. But I have a lot of clinical experience saying, boy, they are so much better. I don't know if their memory is gonna stay this good. We're only three years into a ketogenic diet, but it's way better than when it started.
35:19 Speaker 00 And then I had a Down's Syndrome patient at 40 years old in my practice. So her mother came to see me first. She said, I, I wanna try this ketogenic diet. I've been helping my daughter who has Down's Syndrome. We've lost 100 pounds because the doctor said that she might do better if, if we lost some weight. And it's not an uncommon thing to see they have advanced insulin resistance and advanced Alzheimer's earlier in life. So it's a great place to study Alzheimer's because they have a more rapid onset of it.
36:00 Speaker 00 So the woman comes, she's lost 100 pounds, and during that time, her mental cognition got worse. So now she's got 100 pounds down, but none of those brain things are better. And I said, alright, if we're gonna do this with your daughter, we're gonna make sure we're pricking your finger. It's not gonna be fake, we're gonna do a real ketogenic diet. So the mom starts on a ketogenic diet, and I think both her and mom are genetically superpowered to make ketones, because they have ketones of like, three within a couple of days.
36:28 Steven Bartlett? Which is, the average would be?
36:30 Speaker 00 Like, one. If I, if they hit one in a few days, I'm thinking, good job. And the mom calls me at the end of the week saying, do you think it could possibly work this fast? She is, she's, you know, doing the little jobs that she used to do around the house. And I said, well, call me again in a week, let's see how she's doing. And the mom goes, the most profound thing just happened. I've taken care of this girl for 41 years. And I asked her the other day if she was doing something. She wanted to go to the church with me, which means she left the house. And she was at the church, and she was giving her instructions to do this, go around here, and put it over there, and, you know, give her a little job. And she said, do you understand? And the girl replied, I understand.
37:11 Speaker 00 I said, what's the big deal? And the mother said she had never said a three syllable word in her whole life. Two syllables is all her brain could ever put together. For the first time in her whole life, three weeks onto a ketogenic diet. And this Alzheimer's diagnosed patient who had Down's syndrome now had a brain that was not only working great, it was doing the best mom had ever seen it. And on a ketogenic diet, not only did she lose about 15 to 20 more pounds, but her world opened up again because her brain, which had Alzheimer's, no longer had that diagnosis.
37:48 Steven Bartlett? I was looking at some of the supporting studies around this, around the impact that can have on the brain. And studies show that in dementia, especially in Alzheimer's, the brain struggles to use glucose efficiently. Ketones provide an alternative cleaner fuel source. Ketogenic diets can boost mitochondrial function and energy availability in brain cells. Keto lowers systemic inflammation, which is linked to slower cognitive decline. Ketones may protect neurons from damage and promote the growth of new neural connections. And Alzheimer's is something called type 3 diabetes, which I've had a lot. And keto improves insulin sensitivity, potentially reducing this risk. And lastly, small studies show temporary improvements in memory and cognition in people with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's. But the evidence is early stage, long term adherence can be hard and the diet isn't suitable
38:34 Steven Bartlett? for everyone. For example, underweight people and people with certain medical conditions.
38:39 Speaker 00 Right.
38:40 Steven Bartlett? So how do I measure my blood ketone levels? Is that what these devices are here on the table?
38:45 Speaker 00 I mean, when I look at giving patients the freedom to say, don't, don't come to me for the things that I, that you can do at home. First thing is be willing to check data. Okay. So blood, way better than any other way to measure this. We're going to be able to see, should we have a contest? Which one's better?
39:01 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
39:02 Speaker 00 Okay. So you want to go first?
39:04 Steven Bartlett? Okay. So what I'm going to do here is I have a finger prick here, which is going to take some blood, it's going to prick my finger. Then I have this little reader and I also have this little strip here, which I'm going to put my blood onto. And within a couple of seconds, it's going to tell me how many ketones I currently have in my body right now.
39:21 Speaker 00 And so we're going to look at that at the same time as your blood sugar, which is how you can measure insulin. It's the best proxy for saying how high is his insulin? So put both of them in there before you go, because then you don't have to prick yourself twice.
39:34 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
39:34 Speaker 00 So a blue one is going to measure the ketones and a brown one's going to measure your glucose.
39:40 Steven Bartlett? Okay, and this device, how much does it cost if people want to buy it at home and start pricking their own?
39:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think there's a kit that comes with about fifty strips, so you can have ketones and glucose at the same time. I'm guessing it's around seventy bucks, or maybe it's sixty to seventy dollars. They have quite the, yeah, put it all in, there you go. And so there'll still, little lights on the other one too, right? Perfect, okay, so prick your finger. Best to do it on the side of your finger, because there's less nerves there. There you go, good job.
40:07 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so I'm gonna put my blood onto this one, which is the keto reader.
40:12 Speaker 00 And it'll, it'll count to, uh, let's see.
40:14 Steven Bartlett? I think it's about...
40:18 Steven Bartlett? My glucose is eighty-six.
40:21 Speaker 00 Takes more blood for the keto than...
40:23 Steven Bartlett? And my keto levels are point nine.
40:27 Speaker 00 Okay, so that's a Dr. Bowles ratio of eighty-six divided by point nine, which is probably like ninety-five or something, ninety... Five-ish, right?
40:36 Steven Bartlett? So my glucose levels are eighty-six, is that high or low?
40:39 Speaker 00 That's good, uh, so I would say that's not low, it's just good.
40:43 Steven Bartlett? Okay, and my keto levels are point nine?
40:45 Speaker 00 Right, so when you look at them in comparison, like you want to have a blood sugar that's not triple-digit, so that's very good. And the closer, the higher you are above point five, the better the result, so that's a pretty good number.
40:58 Steven Bartlett? So if I'm in ketosis, what reading would I have on this keto meter?
41:04 Speaker 00 Point five or greater, but it would be also that you have that reading without a triple-digit blood sugar. So when I look at the combination of them, I do a little math and say, your Dr. Bowles ratio is like ninety-five. So you are burning fat right now.
41:17 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
41:18 Speaker 00 Okay, so that's a good sign. When I am trying to help people who are trying to undo cancer, or autoimmune, or brain injuries, they have to have a better Dr. Bowles ratio than that.
41:29 Steven Bartlett? Let's do your readings,
41:29 Speaker 00 Okay.
41:30 Steven Bartlett? to see where you're at.
41:32 Speaker 00 All right. Drum roll.
41:36 Steven Bartlett? Eighty-three and 1.7. How are you at 1.7? What have you done?
41:42 Speaker 00 So I've learned I would love to be thirty-three again and be able to eat that late at night. You said that I'm like, oh, it's been a while since I've eaten that late at night. It's probably the hardest thing to teach my patients, too, is like, you don't appreciate how much insulin you make that late at night. Now, you're still in a season where you get to just kick your heels and enjoy youth. But at my age, you cannot do that. I can eat in the morning. I can have good calories of high fat and good protein in the morning. And I've learned to stop eating somewhere around three o'clock in the afternoon. In fact, if I, yeah, I know.
42:18 Steven Bartlett? Three o'clock in the afternoon, you stop eating?
42:20 Speaker 00 That's usually the case. You know, what's really hard, though, is how much of your life is social? Like you said, oh, there was this dinner party last night and I had pasta. And you're like, yep, that would be something I have to teach my patients. You have to say no to that. You cannot be eating at ten o'clock at night if you want your insulin to not, to not do that debris thing. And, boy, when their memory isn't going well, when their friends are dying of memory problems. You know, I don't like using fear tactics. I don't think they last very long. But it is such a reality of poor performance that I can't do that. I cannot eat at ten-thirty at night.
42:59 Steven Bartlett? What is it about being asleep that causes the sort of deregulation? Like, what is it about doing it at night?
43:06 Speaker 00 So now it's going to take that metabolic curve and in order to store all of the part that gets stored and then turn the part into fat that needs to be tucked away and get back to baseline, it's gonna be eight hours, at least eight hours.
43:19 Steven Bartlett? Which is fine.
43:20 Speaker 00 Right.
43:20 Steven Bartlett? Because I don't eat till, I'm probably not gonna eat till 2:00 PM today.
43:23 Speaker 00 Right. Well, you missed one part. The sun will rise. When the sun rises, even if you're in solitary confinement, you cannot see the sun.
43:32 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
43:32 Speaker 00 Your brain knows that the sun just went up and cortisol rises.
43:35 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
43:36 Speaker 00 Cortisol leaves your brain, goes to the liver and says, you know, that stored sugar, that glycogen, release. You make glucose first thing in the morning. How much glucose? Depends on how insulin resistant you are. So you're gonna, you're gonna have an uneaten meal when you wake up in the morning. Glucose has been stored for this purpose. It's gonna wake you up. It's gonna give you the energy when sun rises to fuel you. If you got a bunch stored, you're gonna have a high blood sugar.
44:03 Steven Bartlett? Can we do Jack's ketone levels? I'd like to know where Jack is at.
44:06 Speaker 00 Ooh, let's do that. What's Jack do for his?
44:10 Steven Bartlett? We're about to find out.
44:13 Speaker 00 No, wait a minute. Is Jack the one that did the VO2 max with Peter Attia? And you, well, you know, peak brain performance is my thing. And one of the hardest brains to heal are chronic runners. That trauma thing is real. Like, it's so hard to explain to them, too. If you're a vegan who runs, you're in trouble.
44:31 Steven Bartlett? Ninety-five percent of vegans that listen to this podcast frequently don't subscribe.
44:35 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, well, all right. So his glucose is eighty-eight, not too bad. Ketones, boo. Absolutely. Yeah. That's an example of he is making trash. There's no trash going out.
44:46 Steven Bartlett? So his keto level is what?
44:48 Speaker 00 Point one, and his blood sugar is eighty-eight. So if you take eighty-eight divided by point one, it's like, what, a thousand or something? It's really high. Eight hundred and eighty-eight, probably. That is a lot of trash being made. When that Dr. Bowes ratio is high, you can't take it out.
45:04 Steven Bartlett? Do I say that to his face? I mean, I feel like...
45:08 Speaker 00 I just think that when Peter Attia did that and said, "Oh, I had no idea," I'm like, "You could have. Just check this first thing in the morning for five days." If you have that kind of a Dr. Bowes ratio, you're insulin resistant. You're insulin resistant. You have to be hitting that in a routine, regular interval in life to not have those problems. To have osteoporosis at such a young age, a ketogenic state would not allow that. You would be using the resources much better.
45:34 Steven Bartlett? He actually did a test. It turns out he doesn't have osteoporosis.
45:36 Speaker 00 Oh, good. That was shocking.
45:38 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
45:39 Speaker 00 I was like, "You shouldn't have osteoporosis at your age."
45:42 Steven Bartlett? No, I think that was a misreading because of the scanner, but...
45:44 Speaker 00 Right.
45:45 Steven Bartlett? But on this, on this point in particular, his keto levels are zero point one. So he's basically running off glucose.
45:50 Speaker 00 All glucose. And, and so why is that happening? Okay, whatever he ate, the insulin went up. So let's say he was your exact same eating pattern. He ate last night, he had the six, eight hours of sleep. The cortisol said, "Oh, the sun's rising," and it rose his blood sugar a little bit. Okay, when the sugar's high, you can't, you, you, you can't, your, your insulin's gonna be high, too. You're not making ketones.
46:12 Steven Bartlett? When I did these, this keto test with most of the team here, they were all around that region. They were in the region of zero point one ketones in their blood to zero point three.
46:21 Speaker 00 Welcome to my clinic in ten years. That is trash being made, never being taken out.
46:27 Steven Bartlett? And so you'd say to them, you need to do some fasting, you need to
46:31 Speaker 00 You need to cut carbs, yeah. I mean, if you're looking for a quick, okay, if they're in their twenties. I mean, I have three kids, right? And they have heard this chirp for 10 years. Uh, I mean, how I got into this was my mother was very sick and she was sick because of a high insulin problem that caused cancer. So we put her in a ketogenic state and everybody in the family got on board. So here's three little boys who no longer have candy around. Now they're in their young twenties and for the first time, they're actually listening to say, gosh, mom, one of them's at Georgetown. He has to read for long periods of time for Georgetown Law School. And he's like, if I'm not in a ketogenic state, I can't keep the focus. And I said, yeah, I said, well, how are you doing that? At first he tried some of the supplements, okay.
47:13 Speaker 00 But what really happened was he cut the carbs down and said, I can say no to that because of the sustained brain power. I mean, it's really easy in your early twenties to do this. Cut the carbs even to 50. But prove to yourself that you made ketones and that return on your dividends is you won't be seeing me in 25 years.
47:32 Steven Bartlett? So you have this idea of this keto continuum.
47:34 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
47:35 Steven Bartlett? What is the ketone continuum? I read about it. I mean, it's a, it's a book here that I have, which you published in 2020, called The Keto Continuum: Consistently Keto for Life.
47:47 Speaker 00 Right.
47:47 Steven Bartlett? So the keto continuum is this 12-step process.
47:50 Speaker 00 Right.
47:51 Steven Bartlett? To get into a consistent
47:52 Speaker 00 Consistently keto, yeah, that you're constantly taking out the trash. The first part is the beginner.
47:57 Steven Bartlett? Okay. So the first part, the beginner section has four stages to it.
48:00 Speaker 00 Right.
48:01 Steven Bartlett? What are, what are those four stages?
48:02 Speaker 00 Well, I like to tell patients that you never fall all the way off of the continuum. So the first part, the first step is really not keto, but it is that they're eating every two to three hours. And if they fall off the wagon, that's usually where they land. So that's what most people start at. They're eating every two to three hours. They are not keeping their carbs less than 20. Step two is cut your carbs to 20. That's the only thing I need you to measure. And you're gonna be able to use a pee tone strip, you know, measure ketones in your urine. Uh, and that will ride, you'll, you'll ride a wave. And that ketone production is happening, the fat-based hormones in your body are starting to resurrect. They're starting to do the things that they need to do. And there'll be this magical moment in the not-too-near future.
48:48 Speaker 00 Where you skip a meal.
48:50 Steven Bartlett? And this, that beginning stage, how long does that last? I'll put this on the screen so everybody can see.
48:56 Speaker 00 Sure.
48:56 Steven Bartlett? The continuum. How long does that initial beginner stage last for people?
49:00 Speaker 00 If they've been severely insulin resistant, this is the ones where I've said they took their carbs to 20 for, for two weeks before they pee the ketone. So I use some other steps if that's how severe that is. But let's just take the average person. That's like not, they're not 100 pounds overweight. They're hitting menopause and they've put on 25 pounds. When they drop their carbs to 20, they're peeing a ketone by the end of the week and they are missing their first meal by day 10.
49:27 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so day 10. And then it says, when we get to stage five in the keto continuum, it says 1680, 168. Is that?
49:35 Speaker 00 Yeah. So then we start to use time restricted eating. Where I want, we, we're gonna, your body will adapt. People say you can't stay on the keto diet because they go to step four and then they think that that's all they needed to do. There are several steps to reversing this problem. And you'll know you have the right step if the ketones are still present in your gl- in your blood. Your body will adapt though. So we start to say, all right, we're gonna learn some new behaviors. We're gonna learn what the nothing burger looks like, at least for 16 hours out of the day.
50:05 Steven Bartlett? What does that mean?
50:06 Speaker 00 You do not eat a thing in those 16 hours. Now, I, I give them a little hedge because most people come in like you. They don't start eating until two o'clock in the afternoon and then they eat until 10 o'clock. And I want them fat forward. I want lots of fat going in because insulin resistance, that high insulin state means they've locked or they've insulated their fat on their body.
50:29 Steven Bartlett? And then we get to stage seven where it says 23.1. Is that fasting for 23 hours a day?
50:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
50:35 Steven Bartlett? And eating for one hour a day?
50:36 Speaker 00 And the, there's a little bitty line between 16.8 and 23.1. But there's a whole bunch of life there. Meaning we don't actually have patients go from 16 hours of fasting to 23. We have them slide it down by an hour, slide it down by an hour. And then we do that harder thing, which is move it towards sunrise. Quit eating so late at night.
50:57 Steven Bartlett? And then the last stage here, so, so step nine, 10, 11 and 12 is prolonged fasting between 36 and 72 hour fasting.
51:07 Speaker 00 Right. So those folks that have high insulin for 20, you know, 15, 20 years. They're gonna have to do a nothing burger for thirty six hours in most of them to really give a good reset of their metabolism. And although you you look at other folks saying, oh, you should never do that if you're a woman. You should never do that over the age of fifty. I'm saying you have too much insulin in your body. You have to do that to get the pancreas to make less insulin over time.
51:31 Steven Bartlett? On that point, between men and women, are there metabolic differences that need to be mentioned here? Because, you know, when I sometimes when I do ketogenic fasting, my girlfriend, she takes much longer than me to get into a ketogenic state. And I'm wondering if her body is in some way trying to defend the switch.
51:47 Speaker 00 Have you ever seen the the reality show Alone?
51:50 Steven Bartlett? Oh, no, I'm not a reality show guy.
51:52 Speaker 00 I'm not either, but they drop these people off in the middle of nowhere and they starve them to death. And you watch the fat come off of them. And the men, the fat just melts off of them. And the women, they do what your girlfriend does. It just holds on to them. That we are designed to have that fat on them. So asking them to do a ketogenic state, you'll hear people say, oh, it's gonna ruin your hormones. Oh, it's going to, you can't do that. And I would say you can have all those conversations once their insulin is normal. But I have lots of women in childbearing years that are excessive producers of insulin. And their vitamin D is low, their estrogen is low, they have hair loss on the top of their head, they have skin tags throughout their body, or maybe the first sign was they had PCOS.
52:37 Speaker 00 Okay, all of these are a sign that insulin came in and it's too high in their body. So lowering it has rules. And if you want to have a baby, carry a baby, have the weight come off after you've gestated a baby, have weight not be your enemy during menopause. You have to be making ketones at a routine and regular interval. And start with the food, start with the menus in the kitchen. Don't run to the gym first.
53:05 Steven Bartlett? I've noticed in women in my life that they've told me that their menstrual cycles become more synced up when they are in a lower carbohydrate diet.
53:13 Speaker 00 Right. Their hormones can hear each other. I mean, when insulin is high, insulin dictates what that sugar does, but it also is the dictator for every morsel of fat. And estrogen, testosterone, vitamin D, they're all a derivative of fat, of cholesterol. And they are, they're put into the fat cells. If you biopsy an obese woman and say, can I see, is there any vitamin D hidden in there? Is there any estrogen? Is there any, yes, they're all in those fat cells. You start to lower their insulin and the fat mobilizes. So the hormones that are naturally communicated between women, they can actually hear them again. I mean, that tribal thing.
53:53 Steven Bartlett? If a woman were to stay in a ketogenic state permanently, would there be any disruption to her metabolic health?
54:00 Speaker 00 You mean like me?
54:01 Steven Bartlett? Yeah. Like, you know, menstrual cycles, her, yeah, anything.
54:07 Speaker 00 No, I think it's, you're going to find people that it shouldn't be extreme, meaning, I've been on this for 15 years. The ketogenic phase is at least 20 out of 30 days in a month, the first few years I was on it. Now, at 55, menopause in the last year, I'm like, without a ketone, my brain doesn't work right now without a ketone. My energy goes to pot. And I've been walking women through menopause for 25 years. It is not a fun story when they're insulin resistant. So prepare, have the flexibility of that mitochondria to use both ketones and glucose. And that's what a ketogenic state is.
54:49 Steven Bartlett? Well, we have 12 cans of sardines here. And I wondered why you brought sardines.
54:56 Speaker 00 Well, yes, that's a hell of a tool.
54:59 Steven Bartlett? Why?
55:01 Speaker 00 So when you're trying to help patients change behavior.
55:08 Steven Bartlett? Sorry, the sardine juice has gone on my iPad.
55:11 Speaker 00 Good luck getting that off. Yeah, sardines rank for the worst smelling, but they're not the worst tasting. Now, when it comes to bitter in fish, they don't have the bitterness that tuna does, so.
55:23 Steven Bartlett? Tell me about sardines. Why should I be eating sardines?
55:26 Speaker 00 When you're trying to teach patients, those stats that you read off a minute ago, they don't care. They need a very clear step on how do I begin? And when you're working with somebody who cannot seem to get their ketones to rise, and I give them a whole list of menus, it's too noisy. Let's take it down to one food that is high in fat, high in some of the best fats, high in protein, it's whole foods, and it's affordable for everybody under the sun.
55:51 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so you do like a sardine fast?
55:54 Speaker 00 Yeah. So in fact, that 21 day, I mean, 21 day is that three week course where I say, I will teach you how to do an advanced ketogenic diet where everybody will be peeing keto, making abundant ketones. On day six, I say, all right, the only thing on the menu for the next three days is sardines. There's no eating window. You can eat as much as you want. There's no limit to the amount. And what I'm pushing them to do is not only eat a nutrient dense food, but I want them to feel satiety. I want them to feel full.
56:26 Steven Bartlett? Do I need to be consuming a lot of fat as well?
56:28 Speaker 00 There's plenty of fat in there.
56:29 Steven Bartlett? But I mean, generally, because this is one of the things always puzzles me is I'll go, say I went a week without eating carbohydrates. Sometimes I'm still not in ketosis. And I think I heard somewhere that it's because my fat isn't high enough, so.
56:45 Speaker 00 Yeah. So again, at the time, you went, you went seven days without eating hardly any carbs, right? And you still didn't make a lot of ketones. Okay, so you had fat on your body?
56:54 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
56:54 Speaker 00 Okay, so why didn't the fat get to your mitochondria?
56:58 Speaker 00 Excess insulin, okay? You had been in a high insulin state. So if you swallow the fat, then you can turn it into ketones. Right now, all your fat's locked under this insulin bed. If you kept going, it would eventually hit. But that's painful. I mean, I have patients who do it for two weeks.
57:13 Steven Bartlett? So what are you saying? You're saying that I need to eat more fat?
57:16 Speaker 00 Yeah. So if you put the sardines in oil, that's a great high fat, high protein. It's also a little easier to masticate the meat. And you'll have high fat, high protein, and you'll have beautiful ketones by 48 hours, maybe 72.
57:31 Steven Bartlett? And what is the composition of my diet in terms of protein, fats, and carbohydrates? When I'm trying to get into a ketogenic state?
57:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, I don't let people get distracted by this, right? I say, look at your finger. If it's got a high ketone, you have got enough fat and enough protein and low enough carbs. What most people have is the story you told. I've been doing this for five days. Why don't I make any ketones? And the answer is, what is hidden behind the chemistry is too much insulin. You've got to have, and so that's a great place to say, put the fat up, keep the carbs low, and the ketones will come.
58:07 Steven Bartlett? When you say put the fat up, you mean eat more fatty foods? Give me an example of the type of shopping list that if I was trying to get in a ketogenic state and stay there, I would have?
58:17 Speaker 00 Yeah, one of my favorite things is pork belly, more eggs, beef brisket, ribs.
58:24 Steven Bartlett? Avocado?
58:25 Speaker 00 Avocado have a beautiful marketing team, but they do have carbs in them. And I've had people overeat them. Like, I have four avocados today. I'm like, that's, you're on the wrong bandwagon there. Avocado makes the list, don't get me wrong. But it's not a diet of mostly avocado with a sprinkle of chicken breast. That's not going to get you into ketosis. The fat has to be higher than that. Most of the time, when I'm really struggling with a patient who just can't seem to make ketones, can't seem to make ketones, and they won't do the sardines. I've said, eat butter for a day. That's 100% fat.
58:58 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so you can just have, increase the butter.
59:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, you could have that. Okay, so that.
59:02 Steven Bartlett? Are there carbs in here?
59:03 Speaker 00 No.
59:03 Steven Bartlett? No.
59:04 Speaker 00 No, it's just fat. Mm hmm. And it's not awful, but it is a great social experiment where they haven't felt what satiety feels like in a while.
59:15 Steven Bartlett? People talk about net carbs. They say, you know, avocado has 12 grams of carbs in, but it has 10 grams of fiber. So the net carbs is two.
59:26 Speaker 00 If you've never had insulin resistant, you can do it that way. My patients have had high insulin and I don't play that game. It's gotta be total carbs.
59:34 Speaker 00 Fiber is for farting.
59:36 Steven Bartlett? Do you recognize this photo of this lady?
59:40 Speaker 00 Oh, yes.
59:42 Steven Bartlett? Who is she?
59:42 Speaker 00 She is just a great story. Jane had, uh, oh, she had pathology with how she thought about food, like many patients. She, she had food as the way she coped with a lot of things. And as long as she was clearing her plate and using that food, it comforted a lot of wounds. When you start to address some of these things, I mean, the ketogenic diet doesn't fail if you just follow the chemistry. The ketogenic diet fails when you have humans who've had wounds, who've had a history, who have stress, who don't sleep. And Jane was a great story where all the goodness in the world couldn't undo some of that relationship she had with food. Uh, so the first time, she's one of the coaches that I used for that 21 day.
1:00:27 Speaker 00 And she just has the best outcomes because she was doing a strong ketogenic diet, you know, for those three weeks, twice a year. And she decided that after, I think the third class, she was gonna do sardines only for 30 days. And she writes me at the end of the 30 days, can't believe how great she feels. And really kind of addressed some of those demons associated with why she would eat, what she would eat. And then life hit again and she put on some of the weight again. Um, she'd use sardines intermittently. And she called me and said, all right, I think I'm gonna do this again. I'm gonna just go on sardines and really have a, some come to Jesus moments on why it is, why it is that I do some of the things I do. I mean, it's a really vulnerable moment where you can hide those moments. You can never tell a soul what's really going on through your mind.
1:01:13 Speaker 00 And she was going to address them. And I said, well, I have a bone to pick with Joe Rogan. He has said some inappropriate things about sardines, like they're arsenic poisoning. So I'd like to check a few blood levels in you before you start. So I check her vitamin D, we check her arsenic, selenium, and a few other things. And she starts on her sardine challenge, her sardine journey, and she goes 100 days, 100 days of only sardines. And not only does she, first of all, her vitamin D, she did not take any vitamin D, she stopped her vitamin D, it went from like the 30s and 40s up to just maybe over 100, 108 or something. Her selenium didn't do anything naughty, her arsenic did not do anything naughty, like Joe Rogan said it would.
1:01:58 Speaker 00 And she was able to not only shed the pounds, but really say some truths about why she was eating so much.
1:02:09 Speaker 00 And she confronted the pathology about why, why is she using food for those other things? You know, I do this thing in the 21 day where I ask them to find their best day in their life. And I'm trying to just get them to think about, what does that feel like? What did that look like? And then we go to the worst day in their life. And Jane wrote something that really touched me. She said, "I don't think I've ever had the best day of my life." This was probably the third or fourth time we'd done that exercise. So she'd done it in a way where it didn't bring any extra attention, but she was, she spoke a truth that just said, "I've had this fear for so long that for the first time, I'm going to say out loud that I'm looking for the best day of my life and I feel like I have the freedom to do it."
1:02:56 Speaker 00 That's what happened after 100 days of sardines.
1:02:58 Steven Bartlett? So if she eats up sardines for 100 days, she's probably not going to get like the gut microbiome.
1:03:06 Speaker 00 She has the best gut microbiome.
1:03:08 Steven Bartlett? Doesn't she need to be eating plants to?
1:03:11 Speaker 00 Oh, no. Fibers for farting. So you're looking at a gut biome, right? And so tell me what you think that is.
1:03:19 Steven Bartlett? Lots of bugs that have been feeding on plants.
1:03:24 Speaker 00 Okay, yes. Butyrate has, uh, has part of that equation. So gut biome is this slime layer inside your gut. And it's where the critters live. It's where they set up homes and they, if you have a really good slime layer, it's squishy. It's dense. It's not moth eaten. It's not aqueous or water like. It's squishy. And when you put plants in there, when you put fiber in there, it tears that down. Uh, and you say, well, fiber's needed for this because some of those bugs eat up on the fiber and they put out some butyrate and that helps these other bacteria to, to grow. You're like, yeah, that's one way to get a good microbiome. But we haven't been fiber eaters forever. And when you
1:04:06 Speaker 00 look at many of my carnivore patients, especially when they've got, you know, some of those little fish scattered into that carnivore diet, um, their symptoms of irritable bowel, of chronic diarrhea, of, you know, bloody ulcers, reverse. Why? Because that gut biome got a lot stronger and a lot healthier.
1:04:27 Steven Bartlett? So the things that are from doing this podcast for a long time, the things that I'd, I'd be concerned about if I just ate sardines for a prolonged period of time, or really any diet, I guess, for a prolonged period of time, a narrow diet would be the fiber issue we talked about. Um, and then all the other things that are just not in sardines. I mean, vitamin C.
1:04:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, you still get a good vitamin C. So vitamin C has different rules when you go carnivore.
1:04:48 Steven Bartlett? What about magnesium?
1:04:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, lots of that. Uh, magnesium, I still think is one supplement we all need.
1:04:52 Steven Bartlett? Well, sodium overload, because these are very salty, right?
1:04:56 Speaker 00 Your sodium churn, how well you use sodium is dependent on how well you've eaten in the last week. So when you increase the sodium, those receptors get better. When you decrease the sodium, those receptors shut down. That's a, that is an adjustment that everybody will make.
1:05:10 Steven Bartlett? What about things like mercury and the other sort of metals toxins?
1:05:13 Speaker 00 Little fish, little problems. You've got the right one for mercury. Again, we tested that for her too. Hundred days, no problem.
1:05:20 Steven Bartlett? Especially in the can as well. I think I've got a bit of an issue with canned food these days because I've had so many-
1:05:25 Speaker 00 Microplastics.
1:05:26 Steven Bartlett? Microplastic toxins, etc.
1:05:28 Speaker 00 I think you're majoring in the minor leagues there. That the amount of benefit that people get from sardines versus whatever might be in those, in that can, I tell patients not to worry about it.
1:05:41 Steven Bartlett? And then the last point I said was about digestive and mood issues because the microbiome is so-
1:05:46 Speaker 00 So linked to brain, absolutely.
1:05:48 Steven Bartlett? Serotonin, isn't it?
1:05:48 Speaker 00 I mean, serotonin's in the gut, but it's a huge part of like a GLP-1, the GIP. They're all produced hormones in the gut that are hugely impacting your brain. And when you want GLP-1 to be made, have a strong, thick microbiome. You do not need fiber to do that. You need butyrate. Butyrate is that two-carbon fat that comes from acromansia, you know, chewing up the fiber, right? Or beta-hydroxybutyrate in your blood. That's that ketone thing you got over there.
1:06:22 Steven Bartlett? Oh, these things.
1:06:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, all of them.
1:06:26 Steven Bartlett? Hashtag ad.
1:06:26 Speaker 00 There you go, yes. It's a beta-hydroxybutyrate is what that is going to turn into your circulation. Butyrate is a fat chain that's two carbons long. That's what you're asking that microbiome to say, here, this long string of fibers coming along and that little bug is going to eat a piece of it and make butyrate, two carbons of fat. That's one of these things that you're talking about. You need to have butyrate. You need to have butyrate. That's what every, every, why are you even fiber? You gotta have butyrate.
1:06:56 Steven Bartlett? All these, you know, experts come on my show and they talk about the importance of having a diverse-
1:06:59 Speaker 00 I know. I've watched a bunch of them. Diverse microbiome, yes. And what I think-
1:07:04 Steven Bartlett? So it's not going to be diverse if I'm just eating one thing?
1:07:06 Speaker 00 Oh, yes, it will. Measuring. So that's the whole point of a microbiome is what, you know, diverse enough to be supportive. I mean, diverse enough to have the two-chain fat that you want to have in there. I mean, go back and look at when our bodies were just eating, you know, fish or carnivore. The beauty of a microbiome is how much it does adjust in-
1:07:35 Speaker 00 Every patient.
1:07:36 Steven Bartlett? What about supplementation? What are the key supplements that you don't live without on a daily basis?
1:07:43 Speaker 00 Vitamin D turns out to be a really important one. If I'm eating sardines, uh, four or five cans a week, I probably don't need vitamin D, but.
1:07:51 Steven Bartlett? Why is it so important, vitamin D?
1:07:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's a hormone, right? A hormone that goes and talks to every one of the cells in your body, and it tells that cell to be its best version of itself. That hormone goes to the nucleus and it makes that skin cell do something different. It makes your brain cell do something different. It makes your heart cell do something different. You read all the benefits about vitamin D and you think, it's like, it's like, it does everything. How can it do all of these things? And the reason why is, it is not just a vitamin, it's a hormone that changes how the cell functions. Unfortunately, it's made of fat. So if you have high insulin, it gets stuck parked in your fat cells and it didn't get to the cell.
1:08:33 Steven Bartlett? Is there a link between vitamin D and ketosis and weight loss and insulin?
1:08:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's actually why I pointed out that when Jane did that hundred day, uh, she's been struggling with her vitamin D in the 30s or 40s.
1:08:46 Steven Bartlett? Right.
1:08:46 Speaker 00 But for the best brain, we want it to be over 50. So she starts on the sardine challenge. It's in the 30s or 40s and she's supplementing. She's taking as much as she can. But what's happening, her insulin was putting it in her fat. She goes on sardines, which have vitamin D in them. By the end, her vitamin D was 100 and 5, 108, something like that. So you can see the experts say, don't go above 100, but I don't, I don't have any worry about hers being 108. What happened was, she lowered her insulin and now fat can move around in her body like it's supposed to. And part of that fat isn't just her estrogen, it was her vitamin D.
1:09:23 Steven Bartlett? She looks like 20 years younger.
1:09:25 Speaker 00 Isn't it amazing? You should see how joyful she is. That's the part that you're like, what unlocked during those 100 days of, you can say food restriction, but vitamin D went up, uh, insulin went down, and she really said, how many things am I going to comfort in my life from food? And let's, let's, let's tackle that demon.
1:09:45 Steven Bartlett? Did it stick?
1:09:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's the cool part.
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1:10:34 Steven Bartlett? So if you want to give it a go, head to Shopify.com/Bartlett and sign up for your $1 per month trial period. That's Shopify.com/Bartlett. What about the other supplements that you would not live without?
1:10:48 Speaker 00 Well, I think the whole world's low on magnesium. I wish I could.
1:10:51 Steven Bartlett? Magnesium?
1:10:52 Speaker 00 Yeah. So magnesium is required for every little. It's like the spark plug in our bodies. It's a little metal and it's how ATP gets recycled. And you need it for almost every enzyme, but our food is low in it, our food, our soil is low on it. You just got to replace it. I use magnesium supplements, but I also have my patients go for a magnesium float.
1:11:14 Steven Bartlett? What's that?
1:11:15 Speaker 00 Ever seen pictures of people in the Dead Sea?
1:11:18 Steven Bartlett? No.
1:11:18 Speaker 00 They're floating, right? The salinity or the salt level is so high and it stinks, right? It's a stinky place. It's magnesium. So they go in there, they soak in the magnesium and you're like, oh my gosh, I feel so much better. Like, that's gotta be junk science, right? Well, it turns out it's not. So you can get magnesium absorbed through your skin. And just like, I don't know, in the 1990s, you'd go rent time in a tanning bed. You can rent time in a magnesium float.
1:11:43 Steven Bartlett? Any of this?
1:11:44 Speaker 00 So omega-3, if you're not doing fish, you can't go wrong with omega-3. And you know, I, Stephen, I really push my patients to have ketones around.
1:11:54 Steven Bartlett? When you say ketones, you mean?
1:11:56 Speaker 00 Exogenous ketones, yeah.
1:11:58 Steven Bartlett? So the word exogenous means external, externally consumed. And there's some on the table here, I'm an investor in this company, actually. So that's probably worth saying, ketone Q.
1:12:06 Speaker 00 Right.
1:12:07 Steven Bartlett? You've got some other ones here, which are, what's this?
1:12:10 Speaker 00 That's ketone salts. So this one is just beta hydroxybutyric acid. My husband is deathly allergic to stevia, so I said, I'll make this one for you, honey. It's just liquid ketones.
1:12:20 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
1:12:20 Speaker 00 No, no sweeteners, no fillers, nothing.
1:12:23 Steven Bartlett? And is there a difference between taking external ketones through a drink or through the salts or whatever else versus actually being in the ketogenic state because of your diet?
1:12:34 Speaker 00 When you make it, it is much more abundant. But when you do what people do, they fall off the wagon or they're very insulin resistant. So their body is trying to catch up to, to equilibrate. You want ketones put back in circulation because it will spark their liver to make ketones. So it really is a jump start for patients with chronic insulin resistance, chronic problems. We got about, you know, six years of getting them to the healthiest version of themselves as long as they don't fall off the wagon. So when they are doing okay and now they need to get back on track, give them a dose of ketones. And by putting ketones in their circulation like that, by checking their blood, the liver will make ketones. So it's not just a fuel, they will feel better.
1:13:18 Speaker 00 It's a signal for the liver to make more ketones.
1:13:21 Steven Bartlett? But I'm not going to be burning fat, then am I?
1:13:22 Speaker 00 You will. I mean, again, ketones beget ketones. When you are making ketones, your body makes more ketones. So if you jumpstart it by swallowing some, you get better tomorrow, get better tomorrow. And usually if somebody's fallen off the wagon, I'll have them do ketones for like three days. And the fourth day, they are on their own again and they'll stay steady for a couple of weeks. And then they'll have pasta.
1:13:46 Steven Bartlett? That's why I invested in this company because I'm actually a co-owner of the business now. And because I saw the benefits of having exogenous ketones on a regular basis.
1:13:56 Speaker 00 Right.
1:13:56 Steven Bartlett? So if anyone wants to try them, go to ketone.com.
1:13:59 Speaker 00 And your brain will use it like that.
1:14:00 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, it's super fast.
1:14:01 Speaker 00 Beautiful, right.
1:14:03 Steven Bartlett? When I use my ketone reader, it appears in about 15 minutes or 20 minutes or so, so.
1:14:07 Speaker 00 And their liver then makes more ketones for the next 12 hours. That's the part that I, especially for my cancer patients or people who are really, I mean, we need ketones high for their, they got chemo tomorrow. They can't afford to say, go fast for 48 hours. They don't have the time. So let me help you. And there's nothing better than going into that chemotherapy, going into that radiation with a bunch of antioxidants in circulation coming right out of your liver.
1:14:32 Steven Bartlett? Explain why that matters. I mean, I've got a photo here of a.
1:14:36 Speaker 00 Grandma Rose.
1:14:37 Steven Bartlett? Grandma Rose.
1:14:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's my mother. Yes, she is the reason I'm here.
1:14:46 Speaker 00 Been five years. Yeah, 2015, the most stubborn patient. Walks through the door after 10 years of the best healthcare I know how to give.
1:14:59 Speaker 00 And she's gray and she looks like a zombie.
1:15:03 Speaker 00 And she's got big lymph nodes in her neck. You don't need to be a doctor to know that.
1:15:09 Speaker 00 She's dying. Cancer was back again.
1:15:14 Speaker 00 And we go to see the oncologist and he says, you need chemotherapy. And she says, like hell, the last two times you did that to me, I didn't know what a sewing machine was. And she made all of my clothes until I was the age of 10.
1:15:31 Speaker 00 And she's nervous because she has six months to live if we don't do something.
1:15:37 Speaker 00 And she asks me a question that.
1:15:41 Speaker 00 Lots of patients have asked me this question and I just sometimes lie.
1:15:47 Speaker 00 She said, if it was you, what would you do?
1:15:51 Speaker 00 That's a really emotional question because there's guidelines, there's rules, here's what you're supposed to do as the doctor.
1:15:59 Speaker 00 I want it's your mom.
1:16:03 Speaker 00 And I saw what chemotherapy did to her. It was terrible. She didn't know the grandkids. It was terrible. And we just got her back to functional again.
1:16:16 Speaker 00 And so I had been reading about the ketogenic diet on brain injuries. And I'd come across a couple of studies on what it can do to a cancer patient, especially an insulin-driven cancer patient like she was. I said, "Mom, do you trust me?"
1:16:34 Speaker 00 I'm like a fool.
1:16:36 Speaker 00 She said it with my whole life.
1:16:41 Speaker 00 We were standing there in the waiting room of the hospital. One way was to schedule the chemotherapy and the other way was the front door.
1:16:49 Speaker 00 I said, "Mom, let's get in the car together."
1:16:52 Speaker 00 I left my car there. I drove to my family farm, which was 100 miles away, and explained to my mother what a ketone was. And her brain wasn't working right, so she didn't quite remember.
1:17:03 Speaker 00 And we went to the house. We threw out every carbohydrate. And man, at six weeks with chemotherapy, her numbers were supposed to drop by 30% of her cancer. We didn't tell the doctor. We just put her on a ketogenic diet and said, "We'll come back in six weeks." So she's walking through the door of the hospital. It's six weeks from there. And it is like God has...
1:17:27 Speaker 00 Just the Holy Spirit is rising out of her. She looks amazing.
1:17:34 Speaker 00 So we go to get her blood drawn. We're sitting in the waiting room for the cancer doctor. And he's my friend. He's known me for 10 years. So I'm scared to tell him what we're about to do.
1:17:46 Speaker 00 And so we're sitting in there waiting, and they come and draw her blood again, which either means it's really good or it's really bad.
1:17:53 Speaker 00 And so I get really nervous at the end. We've been in that room for about an hour. And I said, "Mom, if he asks you what you're doing, just shut up, because I don't know what to tell him."
1:18:03 Speaker 00 And he walks in and he slides the piece of paper over to me and says, "How did you get her numbers to drop by 70%? There's no drug on the market that would do that."
1:18:14 Steven Bartlett? When you say "numbers"?
1:18:16 Speaker 00 Her cancer numbers. So the chemo would have dropped it by 30% and the ketogenic diet dropped it by 70% in six weeks.
1:18:25 Speaker 00 And she went from a 70-year-old that looked 100
1:18:30 Speaker 00 to a 75-year-old who looked 40.
1:18:35 Steven Bartlett? How did your mother get on from that point onwards?
1:18:37 Speaker 00 Yeah, she lived her best life. I mean, I talk about her being from this little town of 800 people. She was Mary Poppins. I mean, like, you don't have a lady's aide unless you're a part of the lady's aide in the little, small town. You don't have a Sunday school teacher unless you're doing the Sunday school. She was in every aspect of this little town. And she went back to doing all of it. And the pandemic hit and there's a thrift store that she would volunteer at because, well, it's just a good place to put your time. And the community needs it.
1:19:15 Speaker 00 And while she was at the thrift store, she got COVID.
1:19:20 Speaker 00 And her cancer was of the T cells, which means it's gonna be the first line of defense against COVID.
1:19:27 Speaker 00 And her T cells failed.
1:19:30 Steven Bartlett? Some of the science point in this talks about how cancer cells often rely heavily on glucose for energy, a phenomenon unknown as the Warburg effect. The keto diet drastically reduces carbohydrate intake, forcing the body to produce ketones for fuel instead of glucose. Healthy cells can use ketones efficiently. Many cancer cells cannot. So in theory, keto could starve tumors while supporting normal tissue. And they've done some animal studies that show it can slow tumor growth in some cancers, especially brain cancers like... Glimo blasto.
1:19:59 Speaker 00 Glimo blasto, yeah.
1:20:01 Steven Bartlett? Enhance response to radiation or chemotherapy in certain models and reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, creating a less cancer friendly environment. However, results are mixed. It may also benefit muscle mass and weight stability in patients losing muscle from treatment, may improve energy levels and mental clarity for some people and could reduce insulin and IGF-1 levels, hormones linked to cancer growth, may improve quality of life when used alongside standard treatments like chemotherapy. There's also a list of potential risks which I'll throw up on the screen. And I guess the summary here is keto may help by lowering glucose and insulin, reducing inflammation and supporting metabolism. But it can be risky if it leads to malnutrition, fatigue or worse, and treatment tolerance.
1:20:40 Speaker 00 One patient, I get a lot of people calling and saying, is it going to help my cancer? Is it going to help my cancer? Stephen, I go back to the same thing. The amount of trash that you've not been taking out, we have to start. And when you put them in a ketogenic state, I mean, it really helped her cancer. It really did that Warburg effect. She was a new human within three weeks. But she had a lot of trash to take out. This was a year and a half before she got to be the best version of herself. And it really did return and restore her to health. When I look at patients now who say, you know, am I going to reverse my cancer with a ketogenic diet? I'm like, no, but you are going to deal with it a lot better.
1:21:17 Steven Bartlett? I guess that's really what it comes down to. It's like creating a better environment so that if disease does arrive, obviously, there is a, you know, with a lot of diseases, there is a causal element where the way we eat and our lifestyle does create the disease.
1:21:29 Speaker 00 Right.
1:21:30 Steven Bartlett? But also, when that disease arrives, what like environment is your body in to deal with it?
1:21:35 Speaker 00 Amen.
1:21:35 Steven Bartlett? And I think a lot about this, I think in part because of the pandemic, where for the first time in my fairly young life, I saw that your current physiological environment, so your current, the current state of your body was the single biggest predictor of your outcomes.
1:21:49 Speaker 00 Amen. Oh, it was terrible.
1:21:50 Steven Bartlett? So I hit thirty years old and it was like, well, if you're currently overweight, your chance of dying from COVID is really, really high. And so I think that was one of the big protagonists in me getting into shape was realising that, you know, disease is probably going to happen to me. But how my body responds to it is to be determined.
1:22:08 Speaker 00 And I look at how much when you're asking an elder person to lose weight. And you just read something really important there, which is when those ketones are in circulation, it is a signaling agent to make more ketones, but it also signals the body to say, don't use muscle mass as a resource, go for the fat. So you can see this protective, I mean, you take people through chemotherapy and they have, you know, they shed way too many pounds, right? You put them in a ketogenic state and their muscle mass gets higher preserved, their brain function, their ability to handle this, you know, one of life's most enormous fears is death. And that mood stability and muscle mass protection, because they've got ketones in circulation,
1:22:50 Speaker 00 boy, that's the gift that they need right now in in high numbers.
1:22:56 Steven Bartlett? What is, I've heard you talk about methylene blue.
1:22:59 Speaker 00 Oh.
1:22:59 Steven Bartlett? For brain health.
1:23:00 Speaker 00 Ever done that?
1:23:00 Steven Bartlett? No.
1:23:01 Speaker 00 Oh, my goodness.
1:23:02 Steven Bartlett? What is it?
1:23:02 Speaker 00 Well, it's old as dirt. So nobody's making money on it, but it is a dye. And so if you swallow it, you'll pee blue, but it's also a bridge for how to help mitochondria move fuel along. So one of the worst parts, you asked me this question about supplements. And I really have a tough time saying which supplements actually get to the cells that the patients are looking for. There is a really great fact about methylene blue, that when you swallow it, it actually was used for malaria treatment or anti malaria for soldiers. And they would check compliance by making sure that their pee was blue.
1:23:44 Speaker 00 But when they died, at autopsy, they had blue brains and blue hearts. It would dye these organs blue. You say, my gosh, that's so strange. But you know what that tells me? It got to the cells that it was advertising it was going to get to. So you look at methylene blue, it's supposed to supercharge your brain. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard this before. So I read about it, I'm like, wow, there's a lot of literature on this. And then I did what I normally do, which is, well, let me take it for a couple of weeks. It was amazing. It was amazing, like.
1:24:17 Speaker 00 I was floored at how well that little turkey works. So there's no money to be made on it. It's been around as long as dirt. But it's a powerful brain energizer. Like it helps the electrical stimulus of the mitochondria in your brain keep energy high, especially for like high energy brains. I love it. I'm like, I put that in my morning coffee, which is where the April Fools joke because nobody can see it in their coffee, but they definitely pee blue.
1:24:47 Steven Bartlett? And do you take creatine as well?
1:24:48 Speaker 00 I do take creatine, yeah. Yeah, that's great. That brain supplement is awesome. You do?
1:24:52 Steven Bartlett? I do, but my doctor the other day, I think he was suggesting that I might have taken too much.
1:24:56 Speaker 00 Why?
1:24:57 Steven Bartlett? Some liver scan I had and he was saying that.
1:25:00 Speaker 00 Liver scan or kidney scan?
1:25:01 Steven Bartlett? Kidney scan.
1:25:02 Speaker 00 Kidney scan. So that's a trick. Don't fall for that. I mean, I've done a couple of big shows on this where creatine is what you're going to measure kidney function with. Even your doctor checked your kidneys. He probably had you pee in a cup and check your blood.
1:25:14 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
1:25:14 Speaker 00 Yeah. So he's looking at what did you pee out and how clean is your blood? That's what kidneys do.
1:25:18 Steven Bartlett? You just did a blood test.
1:25:19 Speaker 00 Okay. Well, even the blood test, the trash was looking like it was a little higher because the trash we're measuring is creatine, creatinine, which is made from your supplement. So you put the supplement in and it looks like there's more trash around, but that's just the supplement. It's falsely elevated. It's not true. Your kidneys did not get hurt by that. I answer this question probably 30 times a week. I have a standard email saying, here's what happened. Don't measure that. There's other ways you could have measured your kidney that would not have been manipulated by that supplement. What it does for brain function, especially if there's any ADHD, man, they love it. They just focus for a long period of time. I mean, it's got other great findings, like how often do you fly over to London?
1:26:04 Steven Bartlett? I fly a lot.
1:26:05 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's the best part about it is that the jet lag part of it, there's really good studies on this. Like your reset of sleep is going to be augmented if you take like 20 grams of it after the flight, 10 in the morning, 10 at night. And those are great studies, like Navy SEALs, sleep deprived. Watch what happens when you add creatine.
1:26:28 Steven Bartlett? A lot of women don't take creatine because they've historically thought of it as like a bodybuilder thing.
1:26:32 Speaker 00 Right. It's a brain thing.
1:26:33 Steven Bartlett? And you take creatine every day? How much do you take?
1:26:36 Speaker 00 So two scoops.
1:26:38 Steven Bartlett? Every single day?
1:26:38 Speaker 00 Every single day.
1:26:39 Steven Bartlett? Seven days a week?
1:26:39 Speaker 00 I put my methylene blue in it too. Down at first thing in the morning. I got blue dyed creatine. I mean, those two supplements are just, they blew my mind with the amount of research out there, and then I did them. I mean, I'm not a big bodybuilder. I do some CrossFit-y kind of stuff three times a week. So there's that, but I do it for the brain stuff. The brain stuff is really impressive.
1:27:01 Steven Bartlett? At the moment, in society, people are talking a lot about GLP-1s and Ozempic and all this kind of stuff. And I was wondering if there's any harms or downsides in your view of using these Ozempic, Wegovy, GLP-1 protagonists.
1:27:17 Speaker 00 Antagonists, yeah.
1:27:18 Steven Bartlett? Antagonists.
1:27:18 Speaker 00 Agonists, agonists.
1:27:19 Steven Bartlett? Agonists. And if there's a natural version for those of us that are looking to have less cravings, but we don't want to take GLP-1s. We don't want to be injecting ourselves.
1:27:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, so those hormones are powerful. I mean, if you think that weight loss isn't a hormonal problem, show up at a medical clinic. That, that, they are powerful hormones that hijack people into a healthier, or at least a weight loss stage. But when you're looking at using this powerful hormone, okay, and use it for a short time, use it for a long time, what are the rules? These are brand new. One of the analogies I use for patients is, Stephen, if you wanted to have legs with no hair on them, how would you accomplish that?
1:28:02 Steven Bartlett? Shave them.
1:28:03 Speaker 00 Right, because that would be short-term, easy, and reversible. You would not take chemotherapy. The most powerful, amazing, there'll be, every hair on your body will be off in the next two weeks. And it's short-term, they'll come back, but there's a price to pay when you're using a really powerful unit to do something for a vanity reason. So it's where I like to begin when I talk about GLP-1s. It's, it's amazing. You will lose fat and...
1:28:30 Steven Bartlett? What do I do instead, then?
1:28:32 Speaker 00 So, there's great ways to lower GLP-1s, or great ways to raise GLP-1s, right? For starters...
1:28:41 Speaker 00 When you're overweight, it suppresses it a lot. So getting the weight off is a huge part of it. That's why this ketogenic diet is so powerful. We'll get the weight off. And that will lift naturally the GLP ones.
1:28:51 Steven Bartlett? Is there other ways to suppress? Well, I was gonna say suppress my appetite, but more to just get rid of the cravings?
1:28:58 Speaker 00 Well, you'll suppress the appetite by raising those hormones. So you put in Alulose, that's a great little boost to that. You put in Butyrate, whether or not that's the bug that you were talking about, or the supplements. Butyrate increases and stimulates GLP-1.
1:29:14 Steven Bartlett? And Butyrate, just for those that might not know that word again?
1:29:18 Speaker 00 Right, that is what a ketone looks like floating around your blood.
1:29:21 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
1:29:22 Speaker 00 Yeah. So a ketogenic state will raise those hormones and suppress appetite.
1:29:26 Steven Bartlett? I've seen a bunch of studies on that that show that when people are high in
1:29:29 Speaker 00 Ketones.
1:29:30 Steven Bartlett? Ketones, they have a suppressed appetite.
1:29:32 Speaker 00 Right, and that is linked to the production of some of these hormones, these really great hormones. But you make them naturally, and so it's not the addiction part, it's the natural way to make them.
1:29:40 Steven Bartlett? I do find that anyway. I find that when, I guess it could be something to do with my dopamine receptors as well in my brain, but I find that when I'm in a ketogenic diet, my cravings for the things that I once craved, like, I don't know, like carrot cake or cinnamon rolls, they just completely seem to vanish.
1:29:55 Speaker 00 That's the same thing that happens when you give them that shot, too.
1:29:58 Steven Bartlett? Oh, really, when you give them GLP-1?
1:29:59 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:29:59 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
1:30:00 Speaker 00 And, I mean, the beautiful part is, you're young, you'll make a lot of GLP, you've already made healthy GLP-1. You'll hijack and suppress it by being overweight and high insulin. So constantly delivering ketones to your blood, that's how you keep it high. And you don't end up on the shot, which is expensive and very powerful.
1:30:19 Steven Bartlett? I always think, you know, when we give people advice on things like weight loss, there's always a part missing, which is this part about like discipline and motivation, or whatever one might call it, which is the, is gives somebody the sort of activation energy to even stick to it. Do you think about this much in your patients? Do you think about motivation?
1:30:37 Speaker 00 It's huge. I mean, again, most people show up because there's been a recent crisis. Somebody died, they had a diagnosis, something broke, they didn't repair well. All of that is true, and I can get them motivated for a little while. And then we have the long game. And you look at that story with 100 days of sardines. Okay, that's two years into her journey where she finally says, okay, there's this demon that keeps coming about and I keep falling off for all the wrong, you know, all the reasons everybody else does. And so she commits to this 100 days. And what happens is a whole bunch of things go right. Her hormones go up. And she was, has an amazing story. But most people are not going to do that. So in my practice, I do say that these, the smallest dose of these hormones, I'll help you when you're struggling.
1:31:20 Speaker 00 I want you in a ketogenic state before we, we begin. I can use much less that hormone. And then you have ownership of this. Because if I come in and do all of the work again, that's like every other thing I've been doing for the last 20 years. Here's your symptom. Here's my diagnosis. Here's the prescription. And I need it to be you that succeeds here. I'll lift you a little bit.
1:31:41 Steven Bartlett? So what do you, is there any tricks to get someone to be motivated? Is there any, do you have to focus them on their why?
1:31:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly right. You're right. Uh, that, that first trick is get out of crisis mode. Okay, that crisis is what brings them in. But to stay the course, you have to get to a very serious moment where you say, what, what motivates me? What at the deepest heart am I most insecure about that I'm going to do when all else fails? When, when everybody else gives up? I'm going to find something that I'm this little farm kid from the middle of nowhere who was, you know, third grade stinky girl. You know, like I was a farm kid. I was a hog farmer's daughter. I wasn't the smart one. I wasn't the, you know, the best one. I'm going to carry that insecurity with me until the day I die. What has that done? It makes me work really hard when everybody else gives up.
1:32:29 Speaker 00 Now finding that for them and, and using that, using that harness to say, your biggest failure, your biggest insecurity can be your power by reframing it.
1:32:43 Speaker 00 That why, we work on that every time we do that 21 day. Jane, she did that four times before she really got to the core center. Why do you keep doing this? That's how people stay motivated. It's a truth serum.
1:32:59 Steven Bartlett? All I had to do was brain dump. Imagine if you had someone with you at all times that could take the ideas you have in your head, synthesize them with AI to make them sound better and more grammatically correct and write them down for you. This is exactly what Whisperflow is in my life. It is this thought partner that helps me explain what I want to say. And it now means that on the go, when I'm alone in my office, when I'm out and about, I can respond to emails and Slack messages and WhatsApps and everything across all of my devices just by speaking. I love this tool. And I started talking about this on my behind the scenes channel a couple of months back. And then the founder reached out to me and said, we're seeing a lot of people come to our tool because of you. So we'd love to be a sponsor. We'd love you to be an investor in the company. And so I signed up for both of those offers and I'm now an investor and a huge partner
1:33:43 Steven Bartlett? in a company called Whisperflow. You have to check it out. Whisperflow is four times faster than typing. So if you want to give it a try, head over to wisprflow.ai/DOAC to get started for free. And you can find that link to Whisperflow in the description below. Have you ever heard about this before? This thing I'm holding in my hands now? This is called Ketone IQ. Their website is ketone.com. You've heard me on this podcast talking about the fact that I stay much of the year in a ketogenic state, which is a highly restricted diet. And the reason I do that is plentyfold. One of them is I spend hours and hours talking to people for a living. So I want to make sure my brain is firing in an optimal way. And the other reason that I do the ketogenic diet is because I just feel better.
1:34:26 Steven Bartlett? So when I discovered this, which is what they call an exogenous ketone product, where you can drink it and it increases your blood's ketone levels, I was blown away. I contacted them, I met them, I invested extremely heavily into their company and I've become a co-owner of the company accordingly and they sponsor this show now. So if you want to try this out for yourself, I recommend you try it. Just visit ketone.com/steven and you'll get 30% off your first subscription order. You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. That's ketone.com/steven.
1:35:00 Steven Bartlett? I was reading about what happened to you in 2011, 2010, 2011, when you reached what you referred to as your breaking point in corporate medicine.
1:35:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:35:08 Steven Bartlett? And you had some issues because you were, I think, helping some people who were homeless.
1:35:16 Speaker 00 Yep.
1:35:17 Steven Bartlett? What do I need to know about that? And how has that shaped you?
1:35:20 Speaker 00 Corporate medicine has lots of flaws. And you get tired of answering the same question over and over and over again. So you put some stuff up on YouTube and you start to say, here's the education I wish I could give you. And this starts to work. But that's not the, that's not the path if you're in a corporate medicine. You're gonna ruffle feathers, you're gonna tick people off. Well, I left corporate medicine, started my own thing, and I'm living out a two-year non-compete. Do you know what that means?
1:35:48 Steven Bartlett? That you can't do medicine for two years?
1:35:50 Speaker 00 In that same market where they recruited me and they had advertised for me.
1:35:55 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
1:35:56 Speaker 00 Okay? So you can't compete with what we just put money into for two years. And they said, you can see the homeless and you can see Medicaid.
1:36:03 Steven Bartlett? Medicaid being the like government-funded medicine program.
1:36:06 Speaker 00 Low income. So I said, they don't know me very well. Those are just as much my people as anybody else. I'm taking care of some Native Americans. They were the ones in the shelters. They're the ones with the low income. And those teenagers were overweight and they were eating kitty litter. They were eating toilet paper. Their iron was so low the machine couldn't measure it. So they're super malnourished. I started doing what I would do if you had all the money in the world. I took care of these patients. I gave them IV iron.
1:36:35 Steven Bartlett? She gave them iron, which goes into trouble.
1:36:37 Speaker 00 Which was expensive. It caused a ruckus. I got put on the radar of somebody that did not like that. So this is the budget. The whole state gets a budget for how much you're gonna spend on each patient.
1:36:47 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
1:36:48 Speaker 00 I mean, by expensive, it was like 350 bucks per person. That's not that expensive. But it was, and nobody else was doing it. And I got a sticky note inside an envelope from the state Capitol. Stop doing Cadillac medicine.
1:37:02 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:37:03 Steven Bartlett? So you were sued eventually?
1:37:05 Speaker 00 Oh, they call it Medicaid fraud.
1:37:07 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
1:37:08 Speaker 00 They thought I was wasting Medicare's numbers because I was giving IV iron. And I said, no, I didn't bill for it. I paid for it. And when I paid for the medicine for these impoverished patients, they said, well, that's Medicaid fraud. So the government tried to sue me for that and they lost, but now they're ticked off. They've brought me to court and they lost. And what happened next is a lot worse. I don't know if you want to hear that. You want me to go there?
1:37:36 Steven Bartlett? Of course, yeah.
1:37:37 Speaker 00 Okay.
1:37:39 Speaker 00 So when you are being investigated for Medicaid fraud, all income stops.
1:37:44 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
1:37:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I have to come home to my husband and say,
1:37:50 Speaker 00 I just can't, I can't give in. I think we need to fight this. He said, okay. He, God bless him. He said, okay, let's fight it. Have you ever tried to fight the government? It's very expensive. So they hold off. When you're under a Medicaid fraud investigation, you get no paychecks. So we have no paychecks to pay payroll, to pay house payments, to do anything for about nine and a half months. Actually, it lasted longer than that. During that time, we started doing things like we sold the lake cabin. We sold the boats. We sold the extra car. We sold our own house. We moved into a donated RV.
1:38:29 Steven Bartlett? You moved into a car?
1:38:30 Speaker 00 An RV, yep. In South Dakota, where there's 50 below zero weather with three little kids. We actually used, we took our wedding rings in for the last paycheck. I just can't give in. And then I won. Okay, so Medicaid fraud wasn't there. But in the midst of that, I said, I, this was when Obamacare was really happening, and I got asked to run for US Senate. There's only 100 of those in the country. I run for US Senate and I did really good.
1:39:07 Speaker 00 I raised insane amounts of money, saying, "I am a doctor that serves the poor. I am a physician that runs their own company. I think I am a great voice to send to Washington DC to make policy about patients and care, as opposed to the other opponents." But that same Attorney General, his best buddy was running against me. And when I am in a mission trip in the Philippines, that has nothing to do with it, but I was on a mission trip in the Philippines, and I left a petition behind. I don't know how you do it in London, but a petition means, if you're gonna run for office, you gotta get some people saying they believe in you. So we needed 2,000 signatures.
1:39:52 Speaker 00 And we got 6,000 signatures. We submitted them to the state. We think there's no problem. But then the quarterly earnings come back for a campaign raising. And my opponent had about 70 donors at about $10,000 a pop, and had something like $740,000. I put my earnings in, and they were $780,000. So I outraised him. You have to report to the government whenever somebody gives you more than $200. So his donors are right there on the list. My list is empty, because the average size of the donation was $45. And they know they can't win with that.
1:40:37 Speaker 00 I have a grassroots behind me. And that's when the black cars started showing up in my life. It sounds like I've got a tinfoil hat, but it was real.
1:40:46 Steven Bartlett? The black what?
1:40:48 Speaker 00 The state car started to show up outside my house. They started to say, "Find something on her." And I am the first person in the history of the United States of America To be investigated for not witnessing a signature on those petitions.
1:41:05 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so there was these petitions, you had to get 2,000 of them signed, and you had to witness them, so you had to be there when they were signed by people?
1:41:13 Speaker 00 Well, that's what it says, and you're right, it says, "I bear witness." So, as I'm, I left them in my clinic, my staff signed it, the preachers in my clinic signed it, and those signatures were collected while I was in the Philippines.
1:41:29 Steven Bartlett? And so, you signed to witness them when you were back from the Philippines?
1:41:32 Speaker 00 Right, so I didn't witness them, I just vouched that, "That's my sister, that's the preacher, I know who these people are."
1:41:39 Steven Bartlett? And so, they charged you for, they realized that you were in the Philippines at the time, so you couldn't have witnessed them based on the dates or something?
1:41:46 Speaker 00 Yep.
1:41:46 Steven Bartlett? And then, they arrested you?
1:41:49 Speaker 00 Twelve felonies.
1:41:51 Steven Bartlett? They gave you 12 felonies?
1:41:52 Speaker 00 And 24 years in prison.
1:41:56 Steven Bartlett? That's what they charged you for, or that's what?
1:41:59 Speaker 00 They charged me with 12 felonies, six counts for each of the six petitions. Six, so there's 12 felonies, there's six mistakes, but each mistake counts for two felonies. I mean, if you're gonna make a mistake, there's one felony. When you're trying to make a statement, there's 12 felonies. And you're the first one in the history of the United States of America to ever have this charge, let alone brought to trial, and then found guilty. The trial didn't happen in my state, my town, it happened in the state capital, where everybody knew that Attorney General, everybody knew the opponent.
1:42:37 Steven Bartlett? So, they tried to get you to serve 24 years in prison?
1:42:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, they sentenced me to 24 years in prison.
1:42:42 Steven Bartlett? They sentenced you to 24?
1:42:43 Speaker 00 Yeah. My kids were sitting behind me, "You are guilty of 12 felonies and 24 years in prison."
1:42:51 Speaker 00 And then, he says, "But the stack of papers in front of me, might be the biggest..." He'd been a judge for 20-some years. And I had patients who had written in saying, "This is the best doctor I've ever seen." I didn't ask them to write that, they just sent them in.
1:43:05 Steven Bartlett? That moment when you hear that you're gonna be in prison for 24 months, 24 years?
1:43:10 Speaker 00 Oh, God, it is the lowest moment of my life. Because, I mean, I do not like that that story cost the state of South Dakota any money. But I also don't like that when you oppose the political giants.
1:43:29 Speaker 00 And you stand there with all of the right intentions. That if they need to find something on you, they will. Six petitions. And we had a thousand extra signatures. There was noth— this was a nothing for her. But it was enough. And that Attorney General said prosecute her to the fullest extent. And I'm not a martyr. I do things that aren't right. And if there was a mistake that I made, I—I would take full ownership. And to that judge, I made—I took full ownership. That—the Attorney General was—he won. I got sentenced.
1:44:09 Steven Bartlett? But you didn't have to serve the 24 years.
1:44:12 Speaker 00 He said, "I'll probate that. Uh, I will suspend that with, um, the highest number of service hours ever in the state of South Dakota." It was 500 community service hours, serving the poorest patients in the state. And when he said those words, I thought, "Oh, my God, you don't know who I am." That's what I've been doing. I was already working in Pine Ridge.
1:44:31 Steven Bartlett? How do you—how do you feel about all of this?
1:44:33 Speaker 00 I mean, I—I think of it as a test. It was a test of—I mean, most marriages aren't gonna make it through that. You've got kids, they'll end up in rehab with that much stress. And I didn't want that life. I didn't want that to be my ending. I framed it different. I said, "All right, God, you're testing me. You're testing to say, can I be—can I stay true to who it is that you've called me to be?" That our marriage was incredibly, uh—that's a lot of pressure. I mean, I was the number-one news story in the whole damn state for three years running by a mile. I can't go anywhere without—that's her, that's her.
1:45:18 Speaker 00 My parents were ashamed. My kids would say, "This is the woman that takes me to Haiti. She is Mother frickin' Teresa." And now she's on the front page of a newspaper as a 12-time felon. And your teachers at school say, "I read about your mom in the newspaper." I mean, is that—
1:45:38 Speaker 00 It should have crushed me.
1:45:42 Steven Bartlett? But it didn't.
1:45:42 Speaker 00 It did not.
1:45:44 Steven Bartlett? When did your life begin to turn upwards from that point onwards? When was the moment where things were?
1:45:52 Speaker 00 Well, the first thing is we appealed that to the Supreme Court. That's where the big legal bills come from. And you're fighting an attorney general, that's where. And the Supreme Court said that that attorney general abused his power for at least six of them. And then that judge said, I'll erase all these because of the work you've done. So the 12 felonies went away during.
1:46:12 Steven Bartlett? All of them?
1:46:13 Speaker 00 All of them. I think on the edge of that story, I work to resurrect people's health back to a place where they get their best life. And yes, ketones are a really big part of that. But as you look at the relationships you've got around your life, take the core ones and nurture them to a place where your best life comes out of those relationships. Find the purpose that you've been designed for and take those relationships with you as you seek that. I know that's what happened to me. I cared about the ones on the inner circle and I had a one track of this is what I'm designed to do.
1:46:54 Steven Bartlett? We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next. And the question left for you is, do you have a daily practice to find deep inner peace when you are emotionally triggered? And if so, please share it with the audience.
1:47:11 Speaker 00 Yeah, I have a devotion that I do every morning that centers me, keeps me in line with my faith. And it's not that you do it on the bad days. It's that you've got the foundation for doing it on the good days. And there are generations.
1:47:31 Speaker 00 A daily devotion, like Upper Room is a spiritual devotion for my church.
1:47:37 Steven Bartlett? What does that look like? Is it a prayer?
1:47:39 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's a prayer.
1:47:40 Steven Bartlett? And how does that sound? What is?
1:47:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's usually a scripture and then it's a prayer that has been paired with that scripture. And again, it's easy to not do it routinely, but when you practice it on the good days, it's what lifts you on those really tough days. And sometimes you forget, you're not the first person to run through these problems. But there are thousands of generations that have taught you how to do life and get through those hard places. And I'm gonna use their rules. I'm gonna follow what that scripture says and lead for my best life.
1:48:20 Steven Bartlett? Dr. Bos, thank you.
1:48:21 Speaker 00 Very good.
1:48:22 Steven Bartlett? We are done. I really appreciate so much about you. I appreciate your personality.
1:48:27 Speaker 00 Well,
1:48:28 Steven Bartlett? It's incredibly engaging. But I also just, I appreciate that you've taken the time to make so much content over on your YouTube channel, which I'm gonna link on screen and below now, to sort of demystify and break down some of these really complicated subjects that people struggle with. And they're looking for someone who they can trust, who has a bit of personality, who can communicate some of these very complicated things to them. And on your channel, you talk about everything from the ketogenic diet to many things we talked about today, to the creatine stuff, to cancer more broadly, the idea of autophagy and fasting, and lots of other things. I mean, everything we've talked about today and much, much, much more. So I highly recommend people go and check your channel out if they would like to learn more. It will be linked below. And you've written some wonderful
1:49:12 Steven Bartlett? books, some of them that we've referenced. We've got the Keto Continuum, which I'm gonna link below as well. This wonderful book called Any Way You Can: A Beginner's Guide to Ketones for Life, which talks a lot about Rose and has some wonderful photos of Rose in that book. And we have the Keto Continuum Workbook, which is a much more practical.
1:49:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, it goes hand in hand with the other one. And it's what I give my patients in the clinic, because they gotta go through that workbook.
1:49:37 Steven Bartlett? I think a lot of people are looking for exactly that. They're looking for something that they can follow step by step, which gives them a framework for progress. And I guess in a way holds them accountable, which is exactly what the workbook does. Thank you so much. You're helping millions of people. You've had a fucking rough ride, if you've been outside, 12 felonies in 24 years in prison for something as little as what you did, I think is bizarre, quite frankly. But, you know, it's a story of inspiration, that it didn't hold you back. And you've risen like a phoenix and created so much incredible work. Therefore, that's benefited so many. So please do keep going.
1:50:08 Speaker 00 God bless you. Thanks for having me here. I'm really excited to be on your show.
1:50:12 Steven Bartlett? Thank you so much, Dr. Bos.
1:50:17 Steven Bartlett? This is something that I've made for you. I've realised that the Diary of a CEO audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health. We all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learnt is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny, small steps. And we call this in our team, the 1%. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries. And we released these last year and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back,
1:51:02 Steven Bartlett? but also to introduce some new colours and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours now at thediary.com where you can get 20% off our Black Friday bundle. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below.
Previous Most Replayed Moment: Anxiety Is Just A Prediction! Rewrite Old Stories and Build Emotional Safety Next AI Expert: We Have 2 Years Before Everything Changes! We Need To Start Protesting! - Tristan Harris Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
