Exploding Myths: Dr. Shawn Baker on LDL, Kidney Health, Thyroid, Fibre, Vitamin C & Big Pharma

This is my latest interview with Doctor Shawn Baker, an advocate of the carnivore diet. Shawn discusses the health benefits of eating a carnivore diet, including improved body composition, mood, and digestive health. He also addresses concerns about getting necessary nutrients and agrees that more research is needed. He mentions that Elon Musk may be trying out the carnivore diet. Baker also talks about a new healthcare model he is working on and the need for healthcare reform. The interview ends with a discussion about the environmental impact of pharmaceutical companies.

We discuss myths such as the chance of getting scurvy with this lifestyle. Shawn states “I've never seen anyone with a verified, bona fide case of scurvy.” Dr Baker believes that obesity and type 2 diabetes are largely caused by diet and lifestyle, and that medication and surgery should be a last resort. He also questions the current theories about the cause of heart disease, pointing out that over 50% of people with very high levels of LDL (so-called "bad" cholesterol) do not develop heart disease. He also expresses concern about the side effects of a popular type 2 diabetes medication, Ozempic, including muscle and facial fat loss. 

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Transcript

Shawn Baker Transcript

Summary

This is my latest interview with Doctor Shawn Baker, an advocate of the carnivore diet. Shawn discusses the health benefits of eating a carnivore diet, including improved body composition, mood, and digestive health. He also addresses concerns about getting necessary nutrients and agrees that more research is needed. He mentions that Elon Musk may be trying out the carnivore diet. Baker also talks about a new healthcare model he is working on and the need for healthcare reform. The interview ends with a discussion about the environmental impact of pharmaceutical companies.

We discuss myths such as the chance of getting scurvy with this lifestyle. Shawn states “I've never seen anyone with a verified, bona fide case of scurvy.” Dr Baker believes that obesity and type 2 diabetes are largely caused by diet and lifestyle, and that medication and surgery should be a last resort. He also questions the current theories about the cause of heart disease, pointing out that over 50% of people with very high levels of LDL (so-called "bad" cholesterol) do not develop heart disease. He also expresses concern about the side effects of a popular type 2 diabetes medication, Ozempic, including muscle and facial fat loss. We talked about nutrition and stated a good start is to stay away from processed foods and sugar.  We then dived into the role of fiber in our diet. We both believe fiber is not essential for our diet, it is mostly indigestible and can actually have negative effects on our health. He also mentions how meat has a wide variety of phytonutrients that many claim we can only get from fruits and vegetables. These statements are backed by many studies done by various scientists. We also revisited the idea of subclinical health. He explains why society is driven by profit rather than optimal health and shares his own personal experience with the Carnivore Diet. He addresses the misconception about protein and kidney health and talks about the need for a more personalized and attentive approach in healthcare. 

Subjective perception of food: There is a lot of misinformation about nutrition and the government is not always a reliable source of information. Eating a plant-based diet will not save the planet but improving agricultural practices regardless of what we eat is important. Nutrition and nourishment should be the focus rather than just consuming calories. We should strive for a population of healthy and vigorous people and stop supporting companies that promote unhealthy food.

We talk abou thyroid issues in the context of obesity. He explains that people with obesity tend to have higher levels of thyroid stimulating hormones (TSH) because their bodies are struggling to produce enough thyroid hormone. However, he also notes that these hormonal levels are not always an accurate indicator of thyroid health and that it's important to assess overall clinical function and symptoms as well. He also highlights the importance of looking at individual variations and not relying on population-based reference ranges. 

Dr. Shawn Baker answers a question about LDL cholesterol and its role in heart disease. He states that while LDL may play a role in causing heart disease, it is not the only factor and there are likely other contributing factors. He mentions that there is data showing that some people with high cholesterol do not develop heart disease and believes that managing weight and fixing metabolic health can be more effective in preventing heart disease. He also discusses conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry.

 Transcription

 Hi there, and welcome to another interview today I've got, um. Well, should we call him the grandfather of Carnivore Diet? I don't know, the main man. Whatever you want to say, doctor Shawn baker. 

Hi, Shawn. 

Steve. Hey, man, it's good to have you. I'm sorry I couldn't be here. And, uh, like I said, I apologize. I was supposed to be on your your, uh, your online sort of conference a few weeks ago, and I just for some reason, you know, my mother was in town and my 81 year old mother and I was trying to show her a good time and taken around. And I just totally like I still focus on my mom, that I was like, oh, crap, I missed this damn conference because we just get it on Saturday. And I think we were going like I was going to take her to on a cruise to a ferryboat cruise. And she was excited about that. So I apologize, but it's good to be here. It's good to talk. And I talk to the folks in the, I guess, the UK, but I'm sure you got listeners all over the all over the world, I suppose. But, uh, it's good seeing you again, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. It's good to see you and you looking so healthy. I felt really bad saying the granddaddy of her kind. Well, yeah, well, I'm old enough to be a grandpa, but, you know, I'm trying not to act like one, but we'll see. You know what? I'm two years older than you, and I always will be. So. I mean, I've got you. You know, we talk about Longy. I always say, well, he's older than me. He knows he's doing right. Yeah, I think we're good advocates for it. Um, I feel the people don't don't know that. What made you actually go carnivore? Can you remember the moment when you thought, you know, this is it? I'm going to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I do I mean, you know, this is back in sometime in 2016 when I was I, I'd been probably aware of these wacko, nutty, crazy zero carb people or eating all meat since about to for 2015, 2014, something like that. There was a group called Zeroing in on Health and Kelly Hogan and Amber O'Hearn and Charles Washington and the Anderson couple and all these people were doing this and talking about it. And on my first impression, these people are freaking nuts, you know, which is what everyone kind of thinks. And, uh, well, I was sort of morbidly curious and I kind of was just, you know, checking out their little social media posts and saying, well, this sounds maybe plausible, maybe there's something here. And I was already on a ketogenic diet at that point, so I was already sort of, you know, and, you know, kind of convinced it. I, you know, there's other ways to have nutrition. Car riders aren't necessary for, for really anything, um, that I, you know, absolutely have to have. And so, you know, 2016, you know, I said, well, I'm going to dabble with this. And I remember I did like one meal. I just said, I'll have steak and eggs for breakfast, hold the orange juice, hold the, you know, the whole wheat toast, hold the cup of yogurt, hold a piece of fruit or whatever I might normally have. And you went fine. I was like, it was pretty good. I did. Okay. So then I just gradually went, you know, two meals and then I then I went a whole day and then I went a couple days. And, you know, by the end of 2016, I had managed to go for a week or so, a month. And that was, you know, that was kind of the the start of it. And I remember specifically, you know, like I said, like I had suggested, well, surely this is going to kill me as if I'm going to die for sure. One month and only me, I'm going to die of scurvy. Oh, my heart's gonna clog up. Um, my colon would fall out from lack of fiber. Uh, none of that, of course, happened. I actually felt really good at the end of it. Uh, and so, I mean, that was early, like late 2016. And so I that that began the sort of carnivore journey for me. And, uh, you know, I literally when I was done with those 30 days, I said, okay, that was a fun experiment. Let me go back to my normal diet and me, within 24 hours, I started feeling bad. I was just like, well, my, you know, my, like, just kind of feeling bad. My, uh, my back was hurting a little, me a little bit, a little inflammatory stuff going on. So I said, you know, I don't I like feeling good. So then I started doing that. And then, you know, here I am now, eight years later and, uh, you know, I've convinced a few people to try it, I think. I think you have, I mean, I, I got to my 55th birthday enjoying metrics and a great time. Did your online course and, uh, I will always be thankful for that. And I think, I mean, you have also that knock on effect where I've recently got over a thousand clients that I've been talking to, uh, and over 200 success story videos out of that. So, uh, your experience then knocked on to me and that that's helped other people. Um, I want to put a bit of meat on the bones because you've already touched on it. Just then there were all these naysayers and you mentioned a few of them, but I wouldn't mind just expanding a little bit more. You mentioned scurvy. I mean, that is such a classic one. I've never encountered a vitamin C deficiency, and I've done private blood tests for over a decade. So what would you say to someone that still brings that old chestnut up and says, well, where's your vitamin C coming from? Yeah, well, I mean, we know that meat has a small amount of vitamin C in it. It's not RDA amount unless you eat a ton of meat or you or you're eating, you know, certain, uh, other animal products, some organ meats. You could probably do it, you know, with a reasonable amount. So but I mean, I think the reality is, is that we are able to be more efficiently utilize vitamin C on a carnivore that we need less of it. You know, if we look at the rules of vitamin C, you know, antioxidant, uh, collagen production, uh, carnitine metabolism, all of those things are largely supplied independently through a carnivore diet. Um, and, you know, I can go through all the various things, but suffice it to say, I literally encountered now probably close to tens of thousands of people doing this that I've never seen a bona fide case of scurvy. And this was known, gosh, 150 years ago, we knew that with the guys that were exploring the the various poles, north and south poles, I mean, they literally knew that access to, you know, not dried meat, but un dried meat, you know, fresh meat was curative for scurvy and it was preventive and both preventive and curative. So no one's getting scurvy, you know, I don't think there were any ending with, I don't even think they're having these so quote unquote subclinical vitamin C deficiency, which is the other thing. Oh, you may not get screwed, but you're gonna have this subclinical deficiency. And I, you know, like there's several that you can name the critics that have said this. And I'm like, well, what does that look like? Explain to me what subclinical vitamin C deficiency looks like. And I'm like, does it look like you're you're breaking world records and getting stronger and faster. And you know, you know, that to me does not sound like a vitamin. And that's that's been my experience. And so and I like you said, I've yet to see anyone with a verified, bona fide case of scurvy because scurvy is fatal, you know, and typically we understand it to start to take effect in about a month, You know, a month or a couple months, you should have full blown scurvy. You should be, you know, bleeding out. You you know, EMR throws, you know, skin wounds dying. That's not happening. I've seen a couple people with my gums got a little sense it ever bled. I said, well, you know, I mean, there could be a lot of things to cause that, you know, sometimes it's. We're used to this really soft diet, and you're eating this meat that's not hard to chew. Maybe you're overcooking your damn meat and you just kind of do that. But I, like you said, I've never seen a legitimate case of scurvy. Or if there has been one that has been so infrequent, you're more likely to get scurvy on a processed food diet. By far, I mean, the few modern day cases we see are people just absolutely dis completely eating non fresh food, whether it be fruit, vegetable or meat, they're eating a bunch of non fresh food all like straight up, uh, ultra processed crap. And even then it's pretty rare. But you do see those cases of scurvy in those situations. Yeah, I think I think one of the things you mentioned, subclinical and I've got, uh, something to show you later. I don't want to take up too much of your time. I want to get you on because you're the guest. But I will get into, uh, some TSH subclinical readings that I think we can do a good thought experiment on. Um, but I would like to just know a couple of other the most common questions. Because your doctor, you've been around this a long time. The other question, I think you again alluded to what about fiber? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's it's not essential. Clearly, you just don't need it. I mean, I you know, I think the confusion with fiber is it is, um, associated and again, association is not causation, but is association with better health outcomes in a number of studies. And we look at all kinds of research outcomes. They'll say higher fiber diets are associated with less cardiovascular disease, less death, less obesity, less cancer, and so on and so forth. But really, I think the real reason for that is that it is just it's it's largely a marker of a higher dietary quality. And so what do I mean by that? Well, if you're eating fibrous foods, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and things like that, you're less inclined to eat ultra processed versions of those whole foods. So the difference between eating, you know, whole grain versus refined flour and that just changed absorption characteristics. It slows down the amount of food we consume. We actually absorb, um, you know, it basically. Um, increases the microbial or the biome interaction with the food. So the, you know, our microbiome utilizes some of that food instead of us to utilize when we turn something into powder, let's say some flour or some sugar or something like that. It's powdered. Our body absorbs it pretty easily. The surface area is so high it's easy to absorb. Therefore we absorb more calories. Therefore we get fatter basically. So I think that's really the protective effects of fiber that we do see. And I think it's there. But again it's relative to what it's relative to an ultra processed garbage standard Western diet. Okay. There are a number of studies that are showing that that are out there now that show the fiber can be deleterious. I mean, there's a great study on rheumatoid arthritis, you know, showing that fiber interacting with a particular bacterial species called privately. And I can't remember the species name, but, um, you know, it shows exacerbation of rheumatoid arthritis flares by consuming more fiber. Um, there are obviously the, you know, the cost basis that everybody's familiar with by now. You know, removing fiber actually, um, improves or cures chronic constipation. Uh, you know, the other, um, thing that a lot of people like to talk about is, uh, the or is the, the role that fiber may play. In the protection of the intestinal mucosa, particularly the colonic mucosa. You know, there's this thought, this belief that fiber is converted into short chain fatty acids, particularly butyric acid. And that is going to provide a protective role and provide energy for the colon side so they can develop this protective mucous membrane or mucosal layer. And we know and there's a great paper that um, Tommy Wood, Doctor Tommy Wood, Doctor Lucy Malin did one other author I can't remember about two years ago looking at the metabolic flexibility to gut. And they show unequivocally that yes, you can get that protection from fiber, but there's about six other ways you can do it. Protein and can do it. You know, being in ketosis can do it. So you don't you don't need the fiber. It's not essential. It's clearly not essential. I would argue relative to meat, it's probably relatively detrimental. And there are all, you know, as you know, I mean there are there are many, many people that see their gut health dramatically improve by the removal of fiber from their diet, whether it's IBD, uh, IBS, gastrointestinal reflux disease, you know, you name it. I mean, there's any any kind of, you know, uh, issue often gets better with the with the removal, removal and avoidance of fiber. So it's just not eat. I mean, it's it's literally indigestible. We have no capacity to digest fiber. I mean, I've talked to people that have ileostomy where their colon, colon has been removed. Right. And they they will tell me if they eat whatever they eat and they eat vegetables and they cut up into little triangles and swallow up in little triangles, it comes out of their bag in the shape of a little triangle. Literally, there is zero digestion of this stuff that's occurring in our intestines, and the only thing that occurs is a little bit fermentation in our in our, in our distal or sorry, in our distal intestine or colon. And. What I study that came out, I think, in 1978, and they compared a high fiber diet to a very low fiber diet, and they looked at the protein and the carbohydrate and the fat content of the feces and see how much is being wasted. The fiber doubled it. So basically, if you like to poop all your nutrition into the toilet or not all, but most of it, or a large part of it on there, and you can lose weight doing that by just, you know, eating this food and then crapping it all out, not absorbing most of it. It's an incredible waste of money. All right. You think about food prices in US right now. Food prices are high. You know, it's like you're just paying to make more poop and you're not even nourishing yourself. So why do you want to do that? Why don't you just eat something that you can actually absorb and actually provide the benefits of nutrition, rather than just making larger bowel movements? So there's no prize for that. You don't get a prize at the end of the at your entire life saying, look, you you crapped out, you know, you know, 17km worth of shit. I mean, you're not going to get a prize for that thing in your life. I mean, it's just it's unnecessary. It is conditionally beneficial if you're eating a standard American Western garbage diet and you eat more fruits and vegetables. Yeah, that's probably a net positive. But to say it's essential is, you know, I think it's we got to we have to have the nuance that goes with that. Yeah, I think it's very harckham there's a wonderful phrase where she said, what is the definition of fiber? It's an indigestible polysaccharide, lots of sugar he can't digest, which is what that translates to. And I think that sums it up. That's a great answer, Sean. Um, the the last one, which is I mean, I know the answers to this, but, um, what about fruit and veg? I mean, aren't you going to miss out on all those vital nutrients from fruit and veg if you go carnivore? Yeah. Um, well, again, uh, there's a great paper that is done courtesy of Stephan Van Vliet and Fred Provenza. I think 2021, 2022, something like that. Uh, meat has. A whole host of phytonutrients in it. Phytonutrients. The things we think we get from plants. Beef has that. I mean, probably element like was any grazing animal, uh, particularly ruminants. And so they have, you know, a cow can eat so much more diversified plant food than I could as a human. I would get sick if I try to attempt to eat all the plants that cows can consume. Uh, and because of that, they actually have a wider range of phytonutrients they have access to. And believe it or not, it's actually stored in their tissues, and it's stored in concentrations which aren't, you know, inconsequential. And oh, by the way, they're more bioavailable to us anyway because of the way they're packaged. They're not packaged with any nutrients. They're not packaged with a fiber. Uh, and so you will get phytonutrients from eating meat. Now, most people think of beef as, you know, protein, some fat, a couple vitamins and minerals. But the reality is beef has something like 70,000 potentially nutritional compounds in it. I mean, this is again based on Metabolomic work by Ben and others. And so. Knowing that. And, you know, to be honest, we probably don't owe those £70,000. We only know what a fraction of them do. So we get all this nutrition, most of which we don't even know what it does for us yet. Uh, and there was a, you know, this is this is, uh, another paper they did comparing, you know, the Impossible Burger. You know, that that that ultra processed sludge that's trying to pass off as meat, which, fortunately, no one's buying. Are they compared to those, you know, side by side. And and they did a mental block, a blank photo. They looked at thousands of compounds, uh, phytonutrients, you know, regular nutrients, um, that are found in both, uh, both. And they found that there's only a 10% overlap. So that Impossible Burger only provided 10% of the overall nutrition that you could find in beef. And even though if you look at the label and it shows you, you know, fat, calories, protein, fat, you know, like five ingredients, whatever's on the back of the label. And they've shown they're relatively equivalent. They're no, they're not even close. I mean, there's there's a 90% difference in the nutritional, um, makeup of these things. So it's it's, uh, you know, I mean, that the fruit and vegetable stuff, as you know, you point out, Zoe, she wonderfully points out that the whole get your five a day or whatever was this totally marketing bullshit they just pulled out of their ass and said, we think five per day is a good number. Let's go. Let's go with that. There's no real science to support any of that. Yeah, the flavor is actually copyrighted or trademarked, and in other countries they have to say seven a day or something. Um, I want to go back. That's the real thing. You're smiling. But that's the real thing. Um, you mentioned subclinical, and I wasn't going to do this so early, but I want to share some blood with you, and, uh, if that's okay. And we have got people listening on an audio podcast, this will be audio. Um, but I think it's really interesting because people worry about their doctors or their physician and health care providers saying this is subclinical and they worry. And I just I asked the client if I could share this because he's been really worried about his thyroid for about four years. We've been tracking it. And um, for those that can't see the screen, uh, the TSH is the thing that the physicians are always worried about because the range is 0.4 to 4, and in 2020 his was 0.34. So yes, subclinical. But he's there is uh thyroid or T4 was was 17. The range is 10 to 20. And and every single year 20, 21, 22, 23. It's always been very low. I mean it's 0.13 now as he's gone carnivore and he's still got a t T4 of 17. We also did some T3 and it always converts well to T3. So the point I wanted to get to you is I spoke to this client and said, look, the problem is we are constantly wedded, not not myself, but many influences are wedded to these normative ranges. And therefore you get the phrase subclinical, and it scares the living daylights out of you because he's absolutely petrified, even though he feels fantastic. And I said, let's, let's imagine you're the first person that ever gave blood, and you've been doing this for four years. And we looked at your T4 and we know that you needed to bring between 10 and 20. And you are every time. Therefore, your TSH is perfect. It's not subclinical or, you know, flip it around. If you have ten times as much TSH, you would produce way too much T4. Do you have any comments on sort of the normative ranges that we seem to be wedded to that don't seem to be relevant? Yeah. I mean, I think clinical function is far more instructive to us and than any lab number for the most part. I mean, there's I mean, there's obviously some weird exceptions to this, but I think that particularly with thyroid, I mean, you look at what TSH is responding to, TSH is called thyroid stimulating hormone. It is a hormone that's produced in the pituitary. And it's it's basically sensing how much thyroid we have available. There's you know, there's mechanisms that feedback. And if the body says we don't have enough thyroid, the TSH goes up. And then when we see an hypothyroidism the H goes up quite high and it'll go above the range. Right. Now there's a concept. And this is something that's hard to measure. So we don't measure it on. The thyroid has a receptor, right. And just like an insulin there's insulin receptors or androgen receptors or estrogen receptors, receptors for every hormone in our body and the sensitivity of the receptors. When we talk about insulin sensitivity, I was like, oh, I want to be insulin sensitive. It's real important, right? What if your thyroid sensitive? Right. Well that's good. I mean, I guess it would be I mean, you think you would assume it is, or maybe I just need less hormone to get the job done, you know? But I mean, it's, you know, I think, um, I've not seen I mean, outside of graves disease. Let's see, he has graves disease and he's got, you know, the eyes and the super high metabolism. He can't keep weight on. He's got all the weird, you know, graves disease signs and symptoms. But absent of anything like that, um, I mean, clinical function, I feel great, you know, I'm not. You know, I'm not. I'm not clinically, uh, hypothyroid or hypothyroid. I don't get too excited about the numbers out of that. That honestly. Because there are. People that just are numbers are just not wealthy. It is lined up perfectly like that, like the average population for whatever. Maybe they're on a weird diet. Maybe there's some other thing going on with them. I mean, I will share the fact that I do not have super high testosterone. My testosterone runs in low, normal. Um, yet here I I'm stronger than 99.99% of the guys my age. I don't take steroids. I don't take TRX. I know people give you accuse me of that. But I don't take any of that stuff. But I likely have very sensitive antigen receptors. And why might I have that? Well. One we know that carnitine can do that. I mean, I, you know, tons of carnitine I work out. So I'm obviously stimulating my, on my receptor, uh, receptors. And um, I don't eat that often. And we know that all the combination of those things have all been shown to improve our engine receptor sensitivity and probably density. And so I don't get too excited about, um, you know, some number, some random number, Unless, you know, if this was if he was coupled with, you know, let's say he had clinical hypothyroidism, then you say maybe there's something wrong with your pituitary. Maybe your pituitary has got some sort of issue. Maybe there's a pituitary, you know, adenoma or something like that that's leading to, you know, whatever, insufficient hormone production or, you know, TSH production. But outside, you know, and, you know, you would expect a lot of pituitary, you know, you have visual changes because, you know, it's it's right near that optic chasm. Um, you know, I just can't get too excited about that. You know, if the guy had clinical symptoms and was saying, look, I feel kinda like garbage or there's something off, and then you would say, hey, maybe there's something here. What are you going to do about it? I mean, there's there's various thoughts on that, but I mean, this is one of those things where, gosh, um, you know, I mean, most people, I mean, he might even be having really good thyroid function. It may be the opposite situation where he's like, wow, you know, normal people, the normal person to have, um, just maybe to just be really effective at producing thyroid now, you know, and And that might be that some some testament to to a good thing perhaps, you know, uh, if it was like, you know, if it took a TSH of 2.5 to get the same result, you said, oh, that's fine, you know, you're doing okay. But it might be saying, hey, look, you just need less thyroid to my hormone to do this. And remember there are, as you mentioned, these normative ranges or these sort of reference ranges are just a guess based on a population of people who probably aren't you. I mean, you know, like I said, when you're a carnivore. I guarantee you we just don't have data. I mean, we we, you know, it'd be nice to do. And hopefully we can do that over time as we get more data is to start saying, hey, these are carnivore average ranges. And they look a little different. I think we'll see things like, you know, certainly cholesterol. We'll see things like thyroid hormone will see things like folate levels and all these different things, vitamin D levels perhaps that are um, maybe not lined up with the general population, but perhaps maybe completely normal for that population. And again, it's like just like the difference between men and women. I mean, we know now, I mean, after 5000 years of this that the women have different numbers in men. I mean, the obvious, obvious thing is, you know, estrogen and progesterone is right for testosterone. That's pretty clear. But women and men tend to run different in other men numbers, too, like, you know, red blood cell counts. You know, I mean, women tend to have a little lower on average range, and men do. And that took a while to develop that. Right. It wasn't something that we just. I mean, that's half the population. I'm running a little more than half slightly more women than men in the world. It took us a long time to figure that out. And you say, well, the carnivore population is not even 1% of the population right now. It's going to grow as we as I'm sure it will. So maybe at some point someone will have the broad ideas. Well, let's see what the normal range is in this population. Maybe it's a little different. We can explain that rather than oh my God, you don't conform to the average sick, fat, you know, UK person or the average sick fat American. Oh my God, there must be something wrong. So that's how I look at those things. Yeah, I think, you know, this is my experience. And again, I'm gonna take my hat off to you to give me a chance to be a coach because I see thousands. I've seen thousands of bloods now and and clinical presentation, how the people present does not reflect in their bloods. And and I get both ends of the scale. Like that guy there. He he has no problems at all. And he's constantly being told that subclinical. But I get that all the time. I also get the reverse where people will send me bloods and say, look at this, I'm perfect. And I will say, how do you feel? And they're like, absolutely terrible because we are different. I definitely think I mean, Amy Berger as well was also talking about this, that the normative ranges are irrelevant and your testosterone is sort of another one that shows. I mean, what is the point of testosterone is sort of your it makes you male, it makes you strong, it makes you what you are. And clearly yours is working, you know, so you're not struggling when you're doing your deadlifts. Uh, you certainly are. I mean, you know, I just did a lifetime PR, literally a lifetime PR two days ago on the on the trap bar. And I have not to be fair, I've only been doing that for about ten years, but still, I'm I'm almost 58 years of age. I'm hitting lifetime strength PRS. At this age and that, you know, that doesn't go with someone who's clinically hyper gonadal or anything like that. I mean, I've got enough testosterone to do what I need to do. And, you know, my brain works, arguably, but I think that sexual function works. You all have to take my word for that. But I can tell you it does. But, um. Yeah, I mean, it's it's one of those things that, um, you just have to. I mean, a good physician will first examine the patient, take an H and see what's going on, and then look at the labs. And so many people in these days is look at the lab. What's wrong with me? Well, hell, maybe nothing. Or maybe a lot of things, I don't know. Let's talk to you. Let's figure it out. But that's the problem with access to labs. And as you know, the reason we, um, uh, focus on labs because they're easy to get. They're not the most, maybe most instructive thing for us. And they're dynamic. I mean, I mean, I changed my cholesterol almost 200 points in 18 hours. So, I mean, knowing that it's like, well, how reliable are these things for chronic outcomes? You know, if my cholesterol can change 100, nearly two, 200 points from one day to the next, I'm like, well, what? How much how valuable is that piece of information? To me? What's more valuable to me is how much belly fat to have hanging on, because I guarantee that ain't changing in 24 hours. That's months and months and months of something. You know, the direct lifestyle thing. That's a measure of what's going on really chronically. And so the fact we're measuring blood for all this stuff is just made mostly out of inconvenience and not because of it's, you know, that that clinically relevant for us. I mean, we we there's a whole I mean, there's hematology, there's a whole entire spiel about this, you know, lab clinical science is based on this stuff, but it's still it's basically inferring things the best we can from a really suboptimal piece of information. You know, it's like it's like, uh, you know, I don't know. Try to try to solve a crime when you know you've only got a flashlight with really low battery power at night, it's like, well, shit, I can only see so much. Let me make take my best guess be a lot better. We turn the lights on, right? Uh, but anyway, that's my thoughts on that. Or some of them. Yeah, well, you you you snuck in that word there. Cholesterol, which is, you know, one of the things it's a bug. Bear in mind, because there's many influencers out there seem to be wedded to the, the normative ranges and, uh, absolutely can't seem to understand that 70 years ago, the Sugar Research Foundation perpetuated, you know, actually were fraudulent and got scientists to say that the fat was bad, when in fact it was sugar. So they're still hanging on to this. And and the audio comes up as a, as another thing that people are worried about constantly, you know, even friends of mine who should know better, um, will say, oh, my LDL is a bit high. I'm really worried about this diet. I mean, what would you say to those people? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in part I mean, you know, there's a couple of ways to tackle this questions. First of all, um, I think that if we look at LDL as its role in causality for pathogenic cardiovascular disease, right. I think there's some potential role for this now. I think it's conditional. I don't think it's the be all, end all necessary. I mean, perhaps necessary, but is it sufficient on on its own? I think probably not. And I know some people would disagree with that. Um, I mean, and the reason I say is, is because more and more data has come out showing that there are people with high cholesterol that do not ever develop heart disease or develop it at such a slow rate that it sort of makes you ask a question, why is that? And I mean, the counter that is, well, there's people that smoke packs a day every year and they don't get cancer. Right? Okay. Fair enough. But why don't they get cancer? Maybe we should ask them. Maybe we should study those people and say, why is this guy who smokes two packs a day never gets cancer? Maybe there's something different about him lifestyle that is actually protective, right? I mean, you know, we can still say it's causal and maybe you shouldn't do it, but what if we what if we actually looked in those people and said, hey. If you've got X, Y, and Z in place and you're immune to cancer, you know, and then maybe cigarette smoking isn't something we have to do. Not. I'm not at all don't don't just misconstrue and say that I'm promoting smoking because I'm not because I think it's bad in many other ways. But I think that, um, there is obviously you're I'm sure for you're familiar with the work of, you know, the Des Feldman initiated and now being expanded by Matt Rudolph and others and ignore what's and so on and so forth. The lean mass hyper responder cohort, you know, Mortensen, out of Denmark two years ago published a really nice study looking at zero score. Well, it was a Danish. I think Western Danish heart registry study had something like 50, 60,000 patients really followed them and they had zero CAC score. Their LDL cholesterol was irrelevant. It had no bearing on whether their outcome showed, you know, major adverse cardiac events, you know, heart attack strokes, you know, revascularization, sudden death, something like that. LDL was meaningless. Um, what was meaningful in that study was smoking and diabetes, you know, you know, so if you got a zero score, but you were diabetic. Yeah. You're still going to have an issue. So I mean it's I think we're finding out that, you know, while LDL cholesterol. Well, let me just I guess I should say this, if you are on a standard UK diet or standard American diet and you're obese and you are pre-diabetic and you have high blood pressure and you, uh, you know, uh, whatever in chronic inflammation and your cholesterol is high, that's probably a bad situation. And if you're unwilling to do anything else and you're not going to lose weight and you're not going to fix your metabolic health, then you probably should lower your cholesterol. I mean, I think that's I mean, it's it's it's it's it's in the sense of like this. I mean, if I bring my cholesterol down to zero, the chances of me getting a heart disease are tremendously diminished. I think that's a fair statement, right? Now, if I don't want to have a sexually transmitted disease, I can always lop off my penis. And I would I would minimize that risk, too. But there's some downside to that, I would argue. I think most people would agree with that. So I mean, it's like, is that the right tool for the job? Why not instead lose a weight, fix the diabetes, you know, do all the things that we talk about all the time, change your risk stratification profile and then you can say, hey, what's the residual risk? Or in any imaging of course, has a tremendous, uh, role there because you can actually see, you know, and I know people say, well, the late stage, you shouldn't wait till the end and blah, blah, blah, but honestly, I think. The data that we are, that we're seeing in the data that hopefully will be popping already. Some of it has been published. Matt Rudolph, study on the lean hyper responder cohort that Mortensen said that I alluded to, and some others. I think within that Mortensen study, they also saw, I think, something like a huge number of people with FH, familial hypercholesterolemia. These are people with genetically, chronically super high LDL cholesterol. And guess what? In that population, 60% of those people had no advanced signs of heart disease, you know, in their 50s and stuff like that. So that's that's also eye opening, like why 60% of the people that have chronically lifetime super high LDL cholesterol not developing heart disease, what else is going on? So I think when we start to look at what else is going on, then we have this, um, very different perspective on, um, how to how to manage cardiovascular disease. And like I said, I'm, I'm not the guy who's going to tell people to ignore it. I think if your LDL cholesterol is high, your APB is high, your total, whatever you want, whatever match you're going to measure, they all run the same direction. I think they basically show more or less the same thing. Get some more information and then make your decisions there. Because what I'm comfortable doing with myself and my own body, that's different because I know, I know what's going on with me. You know better than anyone else because it's me. But, I mean, I don't know everything about every other person, so it's hard for me to say ignore it. I mean, yes, there has been a lot of deceptions going on in research. Yes, the sugar industry tried to sabotage fat. I mean, that all happen. There is there's a lot of conflict of interest in science. There's a lot of unethical things in science. There's a lot of, quite honestly, bad and malicious science out there. So we have to deal with deal with that. And the other thing that I'm seeing and I and I, I think this is what we're going to see. They've made, you know, they've made it in excess of $1 trillion on lipid lowering drugs, statins in particular, a trillion. That's a lot of money. Now those are all off patent. They're still making a couple billion a year. So it's still a lot of money. I mean, hell, I'd be happy with a couple billion a year, right. They're still making that money on that. But what are they going to do now? What are they pivoting to now? Well, they're pivoting to the GLP once. All right. Well you know we go with the merger now you know these they're talking about. Oh look at the cardiovascular protective profile these drugs have. So we're going to see a shift from a drug that doesn't make as much money anymore to a drug that makes a lot of money I mean this is another trillion dollar drug right. And so what are they going to do? They're going to start, you know, changing the narrative. And the narrative will change when the money incentive changes. And this is what we're going to see. We're just going to see more and more cardiologists talking about. The greater importance of, you know, GLP one. You know, because God forbid you actually do a low carb diet and get the same benefit anyway without the side effects and the expense. But, you know, uh, they're going to be talking about that more and they're going to kind of just soft, you know, soft, be a little more softer on the on the cholesterol thing. You're seeing the studies out right now, 40% of the mainstream media, 40% of the people on statins don't need to be on them. Why is that? Because they need to be on GLP ones. So we're going to see that we're going to see this narrative shift. I mean, and it's all financially driven in many ways now. Is it clinically going to be any better? I don't know. Um, you know, I mean, the, you know, the silicon me is probably not. I mean, I hope so. Maybe it is. I mean, I like that just for the health and humanity. Maybe it'll help. But I mean, it's all I mean, it's just tired of money, as you know. I mean, gosh, you can't be right. You can't live long enough in this world not to realize that greedy people do unethical things to get money. And I think that's what we're seeing here. And, I mean, they have great marketing. When you've got a when you've got $1 billion marketing budget. How many scientists can you pay? How many you know, media people can you pay? How many influencers and celebrities can you pay to get your message out there? And that's what they do, right? So so you know, that's what we're looking at. And you know, we're out here talking about I need to stop eating garbage, you know, to see some food. You know, get out there and, you know, sleep, get some exercise. And of course, there's not as much money to be made in that, or at least not as much quick money. I think there's money to be made in this, in this space. And I think, you know, like I said, is, um, for you guys to know, um, you know, the founder of a company called Rivero, and we that's our mission. You know, we're licensed in all 50 states, and we that's our goal. We have physicians that get this. And so I think we can actually provide not only tremendous clinical value to patients, um, to fix them, to get them off the medications, but also we can save companies money, tremendous money on health care costs. And that that is a financial incentive. So I think there's there's ways to to leverage that. So yes, we've obviously got physicians are on board with this way of thinking, just just for um, just for balance, I mean, I believe in from a genic. Uh, yeah. Malcolm Kendricks clot thickens. Yeah. I mean, sure. Okay. Yeah, I we can talk about that and. Yeah. And I, you know, I've read Malcolm's book, I've interviewed Malcolm, and I think that, uh, you know, there's probably certainly something there. I mean, for sure, I mean, you I mean, you know, you can point to the pathogenicity of triglycerides and the, you know, all the all the other things that go on when you have, you know, rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, you're now more Arthur Genic and more inflamed. And the rates cardiovasculaires go up tremendously. Yeah. I mean, certainly there's there's a lot of that going on as well. Yeah. And I think when you mentioned FH, for instance, that's a great example with 60% of people with very, very high LDL and not getting heart disease. Then you do have to question that theory. And after 70 years, it is still a theory. Um, and I do believe like damage to the, the, you know, the endothelial and blood vessel damage and all those sort of things have, you know, I mean, if you look at the animal models, the animal models to develop atherosclerosis, they they generally have to damage the vessels first to make it work. I mean, they generally go in there with some sort of mechanical. Yeah. Roto-Rooter. And they go and they rush out. They rough up the the endothelium and watch and watch the, the disease progress. I mean, that's, that's a model for developing cardiovascular. So yeah, I mean, sure, it has to I think that's part of the pathology. Oh, I know as I was going to talk to you about that, but you brought that in earlier. I mean I like talking about increasing hormones and all that. Um. I'd like to just expand a little bit on that, because one of the things that I've noticed is that not only do you lose body fat, you lose muscle. And it's something like, uh, for £8 of fat, you lose, you lose about £5 of muscle. And there's this thing now ozempic face, because you even lose muscle in your face. I mean, do you see maybe 2 or 3 years down the line that, um, people that have taken this will be doing, like a class action? Can you see any possible. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah, there will be. I mean, they're there, they're already poison. But I mean, I mean, there's going to be enough people harm by the drug. There will be class action lawsuits. I mean, it's already those things are already being developed. I mean, there's lawyers that say they have tens of thousands of claims already. Um, so, yeah, I mean, there are going to be a number of people that are harm from this. I mean, you know, probably at some point they'll pay a fine, you know, it'll be some slap on the wrist, maybe it'll be $1 billion, but that's literally their spare change. Let me go, go, go look in the cookie jar. I've got a billion laying around it that's built into the product. I mean, that's literally built into the pricing structure. They know they're going to get caught, um, harming people. And that's just the cost of doing business. And I think that, I mean, yes, well, most diets you're going to lose some degree of muscle loss now is ozempic driving greater proportionally than others? I think for some, some people, certainly. And you don't want to lose that lean mass. Now, can you mitigate that if you're on his epic. Yeah, you can to some degree. I mean eat a lot of protein work out. I mean, that's. You know, that's what if I was on the drug and I'm not I'm not necessarily advocating the drug, but I would say, hey, man, make sure you loading up on a protein, make sure you're training your ass off. I mean, you know, you should be doing that stuff anyway, right? And you probably wouldn't need to be on the damn drugs in many cases. Um, there are a number of concerns, as you know. I mean, the GI side effects alone are going to going to harm thousands and thousands of people. And this is because we look at what is, you know, GLP one receptor agonist. Well, they they mimic GLP one. What is GLP one? GLP one is is an increase in hormone. What is GLP one specifically. It's in creating hormone. It's produced in the small intestine particularly in the ilium. Right. And so the ilium is the end of our small intestine. And why why is that there. Well we look at there's there's this phenomenon known as the illegal break. Right. And so when I consume nutrition, what's meant to happen is I break it out of my stomach and then I start my small intestine, And then hopefully, by the time whatever's left gets to my small and my my my bowel, I've sucked all the nutrition out of there, I've absorbed it. If you consume food and there's too much and it starts like making its way down to the small intestine into the ileum before it's fully digested. The ilium senses that and it says, whoa, whoa, whoa. Things are coming in too fast. Sends out some GLP one. The GLP one slows down, digestion, slows down the migratory motor complex and the stuff that slows down. So now you have more time to digest. That's why we can change our gastrointestinal transit time. That's why we need a bunch of crappy fiber. Your body says, I don't we don't need this crap. Oh, you know, get it to get it out of here. Poop it all out. A lot of people, you know, I eat this big old green smoothie, and then, you know, an hour later, I was crapping my brains out. Um, so. The normal function of GLP one is to slow things down in response to to appropriate nutrition. And by the way, the studies on beef isolate shows a tremendously effective at slowing down or releasing GLP one. So beef is a great food. It is. You know, you could call it nature's ozempic if you want. I know it's kind of corny, but I mean it it has that impact, but it's in a physiologically appropriate way. You know, like I said, it's like, you know, people that take I don't know any, you know, any whatever drug. I mean, they're supposed to be a small bolus and it goes down and then, you know, physiologically when you need it. So when you go up and you just you don't get this small bolus, you get this massive, you know, to the ceiling 100ft up in the air, and it hangs around for weeks, for a week until you have to bolus it again. And what happens then is like the gut is just slowed down permanently. And it's like everything you put in there, you know, doesn't go through. You get full, you start burping, you start. I mean, literally stuff that's supposed to be digested is rotting in your stomach, like these foods that are normally supposed to be being passed through. So people will say, well, they'll have belches. It says that it smells like a dead animal is in their freaking, you know, in their stomach, or they have, you know, or they get gastroparesis. You know, sometimes it's a permanent thing. Gastric paralysis is stomach and your stomach is permanently paralyzed. In some cases that fs you up for the rest of your life. So we're going to see a lot of that. Um, the other thing that is interesting and some of these GLP ones do this, maybe not all of them, but some do, uh, they, they lead to what's called fat cell hyperplasia. So when fat cells grow there's basically two options. The cell itself can get bigger or it can turn into more of them. And the small little cells tend to be considered healthy. Right. And so while you're on the drug you have maybe more fat cells even though you've lost weight. But there's more fat cells. They're just really small. What happens when you have to come off the drug side effects? You can't afford it. Your insurance stops paying for it. They run out, right? So now you got all these extra little, little tiny fat cells. So guess what? They start getting hungry. Guess what happens when they get fat? They go get bigger and bigger. So now you got more fat cells. And he started with and you know and so let's say you don't tolerate the drug now you're like fatter than you used to be. And so I think what we're going to see is these people that are going to be like, oh, I took those for a year or two, and then they couldn't take it. And then three years later they're going to be like, it left me up. I'm miserable. Not on my life. It's probably life is worse. Maybe I'm going to sue the manufacturer, you know, whatever, whatever. I mean, it's it's ultimately, again, it's a it's a it's a therapeutic Band-Aid. I mean, obviously the business model is people on this drug for the rest of their life. And this is what they're positioning people is, you know, with obesity is like diabetes. It's just a it's just a, uh, it's as you know, diabetes is un reversible. It's a lifetime progressive disease, which is also bullshit, right? I mean, but that's the that is the narrative they're going to sell and people are going to buy it. Oh, I can't, I'm, you know, oh, woe is me. I'm a victim. I just need to be on drugs for the rest of my life. And you, the taxpayer, have to help subsidize it. Or you, the insurance premium payer, has to help subsidize my my, um, my disease, which is lifestyle driven, which I, for some reason can't fix. You know what I mean? I get it, some people are it's like they've tried and they can't do it. But it's my belief that the vast majority of people have it within their own power. They're not disempowered, have it within their own power and capability to fix most of their issues. Now, some people prefer the the, the victim card and some of that, you know, like I said, I know some people get mad about this statement, but that's the reality. But I mean, I mean, you know, some people need a lot of help. I mean, I and I get it, I do it every day. I mean, they're holding people's hands, you know? I mean, not literally, but I mean, you know, digitally or whatever I'm trying to do just saying, look, you know, a motivation, you know, accountability, setting up, you know, these things. This is the one thing I found as a physician that even if I wanted to do the right thing, you know, as an orthopedic surgeon, damn near impossible, because, I mean, my job, there was just a grind. I mean, just it's like it's like a darn treadmill. Patients coming in all day long, you know, it's go, go go go operate, operate, operate, make the hospital lots of money, money, money. In order to effectively treat people with a lifestyle intervention, you need a tremendous amount of resource in my view. You know, for many people, not everybody, many people do. And the resources that we have spent for that in, in sort of mainstream medicine is almost zero. You know, like I said, for me to do a surgery or take care of a surgical problem I have at my disposal, or I had at my disposal literally millions of dollars of resources. I had an operating room that cost 200, $200 a minute to run. I had an entire operating staff, I mean, an anesthesiologist. I had a guy from radiology would walk down there for a surgery and standing there in a lead apron for three hours, You know why? Well, I dick around doing, you know, fixing x ray, x ray. You know, I don't have that for life. So I got nobody's going to stand there and the LED apron for three hours doing lifestyle stuff for me. You know, I don't have a lab. I don't have a team. I don't have an imaging center. You know, I don't have a, you know, multi-million dollar clinic. Um, but that's, you know, I mean, to truly fix that with lifestyle, we would need that. And we just don't we don't want to pay for that. Because why? Because it doesn't make certain people as much money. It doesn't make the hospital CEO money doesn't make the, uh, pharmaceutical companies money doesn't make the. I know the guy who owns the pet clinics morning or something, you know, on and on and on. I mean, when you were in there, I mean, you did some of that stuff. And so, I mean, it's it's a very different paradigm and it's not well resourced. And we're trying to do that. So what we're doing, Rivera, we are literally providing those resources that are needed. And, you know, I think we're going to be very successful. I think you will. Yeah, I mean, you're very inspirational. And you got a good team there. I will come back to that. I got about three questions. I do want to add that, I mean my my little contribution is online coaching. When you said about the, uh ozempic, what would you say about muscle loss? You said, well, you know, train, lift heavy weights, eat enough protein. You know, the third bit there is eat the right food, then you don't need it at all. And it's it's really frustrating because it can be that simple. I was really shocked when I looked at the American Diabetes associations, uh, standard of care for physicians, literally admitting in writing that it's probably better to tell people to eat carbs because at least then the patients are compliant. Which which I find astonishingly bad. And that's a that's in the documentation just to make sure that the patients are following what the doctor says, don't even rock the boat, you know, which is an admission that carbohydrates are a problem. Uh, and for people that can't believe that, I will actually put a link in the description so they can actually read that. And I know people like Ken Berry and I think in cahoots with Ben Beekman and uh, Tony Hampton and a few others. But doing the alternative to the American Diabetes Association, which is the American Diabetes Society or something, I think. Can I ask you on I think on his live stream, when I was talking to he announced that a couple of months ago. Yeah. Oh, boy, is that needed. So you are doing Riviera and you know Ken's doing that. I think, you know, together you're going to make a big difference. I would like to just cover two. Two final questions. I am aware of your time. Uh, one is a really simple one, I think, because when people talk about carnivore, a lot of them are worried about the kidney health. Despite the fact that I have absolutely tons of success stories on my YouTube channel and also some written reviews. They're still wedded to this idea that protein is bad for kidneys. I mean, what would you say about kidney health when you're eating? Well, I mean, that's I mean, I mean, there's been numerous studies have shown that to be completely false. I mean, starting with Stu Phillips meta analysis in 2018 basically showed that high protein diets versus low protein diets, no clinical difference. You know, uh, David Hanlon, who's who's there in the UK, has literally published papers on diabetics with with renal failure. I mean, not renal failure but chronic renal insufficiency. That have gotten better by increasing the protein that have actually, you know, reverse their kidney disease. I mean, there's another paper just came out. Um, I think another meta analysis came out a couple of weeks ago, same sort of thing, you know, you know, protein, higher protein diets protect kidney function. So this is a unfortunate, uh, bit of misinformation. If you want to, I'll use that term that has been around for, gosh, 40 years now since the 1980s. I mean, they were they and this has worked on This is based on some of the work Doctor Brenner did on mice, you know, and mice and humans just have inherent differences. And you mice on a high protein diet. Yes, they all have glomerular damage, but it's never been shown in humans. I mean, again, we see the associational data, people that eat standard American junk food, diets that have more animal protein, you know, have higher rates of kidney disease because they have higher rates of diabetes, but because they have a garbage diet, it's not the meat. Um, we know that, um, when kidneys are failing, they spill more protein. Does not mean that the protein is causing the disease. It's just a symptom. It's just like having a fever when you have, uh, you know, a bacterial infection. It's not the fever that's the problem. It's a symptom. So it's not like, oh, I gotta avoid staying by open flame because fire causes disease. Uh, I mean, don't burn yourself, but but you get it. I mean, it's just. And even physicians who theoretically are intelligent people, I mean, some are, some aren't. But I mean, it's it's like, um, they're they're just kind of duped into this stuff because, you know, they've never really, like, taken care of people on a high protein even limit the way we measure kidney function in the context of a high protein setting. I mean, you know, like I said, the simple fact that we use serum creatinine to calculate a GFR, an estimated GFR, and we've been doing that for 100 years or whatever it's been, I think it's about 100 years we've been doing this. There are better tests and there are tests that, you know, because protein can dietary protein is a confounder. It's not a disease problem. It's not a disease pathology. You know, if you got a little old lady that eats, you know, like a bird has barely any protein in her and her sky high. Yes, her kidneys are failing. You get a big muscular person who works out at the time, means a lot of protein and has high creatinine. That's just because they work out all the time. They have a higher muscle. Most higher protein turnover is not kidney failure, but most doctors are too stupid to know this. So what do they do? Oh well, I recommend you cut back on your protein. Why don't you order the right damn test? And why don't we figure out this is actually a problem? Go get us a stat and see if nothing or directly measure it. I mean, both of these are estimates, but you could directly measure kidney function. And I'm sure there's been countless nephrology consoles that have been done where they say, oh, this guy's got elevated creatinine. So the nephrologist just actually measures, you know, because you can actually directly measure, not estimate. And they say, I did nothing wrong with you. I get out of here, kid. So, you know, it's, uh, it is a, um, unfortunate, um. Bit of, you know, I don't want to say, you know, it's just it's just bad information. The health care system has been subject to it. Most people don't think about it. U.S. doctors, we don't have time. I mean, literally, you think all these doctors are sitting there thinking all they're pontificating on are here? No they're not. They got ten minutes to make a decision. They're following a damn algorithm that was produced by some frigging drug company representative at one of these organizations. And that's what it is, is cookbook medicine. You know, fill in the blank, and you got computers to tell you not to do it. I mean, you get on the screen, it says, oh, this patient's blah, blah, blah. You know, creatinine was high. Recommend this diet. You know, and it just tells them what to do in many cases. So they're just basically automatons or like robots. And because because I get paid, the more patients they can get through their clinic, the more they get paid. And they're they're already, you know, you know, in the financial hole, at least in the US, you know, you're taking out a quarter of $1 million of loans and, you know, you've got three small kids and you got a mortgage. You're just like, shit, I'm just going to let me just grind so I can make my money. You don't have time to sit there and, like, sit there with smoke your pipe and think and like, you know, ruminate on the spaces problem. It's like, get them in and get them out. And if I can just check a lab, give them a drug, pat them on the back and get them out of my clinic. That's better for me. My day is less complicated. I don't have to think too hard, you know, because you're tired. Maybe you've been on call the night before, didn't get any sleep. You're like, just want to get through my day, You know, just. I mean, that's the reality, unfortunately. And, you know, it's like, unfortunately, it's not not an ideal way to do health care. I mean, it's. I mean, some people would argue it's as good as it is. It's the best we got, you know. You know, and you know, and mistakes were made, but hey, that's life. I mean, that's true, but I think there's a better way, you know? But it's like I said, it takes more time, takes more effort, takes more thought. Um, takes, you know, you know, actually. You know, listening to the patient in front of you and, um, you know, actually thinking about these things, thinking about these things in a, in a non sort of kneejerk reflex way, which is what many physicians have been well trained to do. I mean, I was trained as a I was good at it. I mean, I graduate with honors. I'm one of the top guys in my class. I went into a really, you know, really competitive specialty, uh, because I was good at memorizing crap. I could regurgitate anything. You know, you put a bunch of a gazillion facts in front of me, I can I could regurgitate 99% of them with 100% accuracy, right? I mean, I just I just figured out how to how to gain the system to way where you just learn. I mean, I learn all the patterns and then learn the exceptions. I said, okay, this matches this pattern. Boom. This is an exception. Boom. And get A's on it. I got A's on every test I ever took in, uh, in medical school, I don't think I think I did it on every damn test I took, I believe. Or that would were exception, maybe like an 80 at one time or something like that. But but anyway, I mean, it's it doesn't allow for critical thought in, in most cases. No I agree. So the last question in it right at the end, I do want to go back to Riviera and just talk a little bit about that. You use the word misinformation from the government. So, uh, that made me think, I really need to ask you about this, although this is already in my notes. Um, what about people that say we have to eat plants because it's going to save the planet? Well, no, it's not going to save the planet, you know? I mean, you know, I mean, again, I'm not here to tell, uh. I'm not here to say that every person on the planet needs to be on a carnivore diet or should be or even, you know, I, you know, I don't care what you eat. I mean, if you want to eat a plant based diet, good for you. More power to you. Hopefully you have good luck with that. But do you think that, um, that is the solution to saving the planet is is complete garbage? I mean, you could make the argument that how we produce our food rather than what our food is, but how it's produced, whether it's plant or animal, will have a bigger impact. Yes, we can we can pasture animals and maybe, perhaps a different way. Yes we can. We can, uh, instead of, you know, maybe have no till crops, you know, things like that, that, that that can be better. So we're going to talk about how are we going to adjust the agricultural system to improve. And I don't think it's going to save the planet regardless. Um, can we improve the outcomes? Yeah. I mean, should we stop putting plastic and garbage all over the all over the world and polluting our streams and oceans? Absolutely. I mean, I think those things are there, but going planet is not going to be the answer to that. We still have to eat. I mean, we still I mean, if you. Do that to the two, largely to the detriment of the human species, which I think would be a tremendous detriment, you know, make more sick people, sick people are more environmentally harmful than healthy people are. I mean, in many ways, I mean, you know, sick people, you know, the health care system, the health care system is incredibly pollution intensive. Uh, in the United States, between 4 and 10% of our greenhouse gases, if we want to use if we want to use that particular metric. And I know some people think it's nonsense, but if we use that metric health care system 10%. Right. Well, who. Who uses health care system? The sick people do. What if he had. You know what if you feed them all? A deficient, plant based, ultra processed. It's going to be ultra processed, guaranteed. You know, it's not. It's not really going to be eating blueberries and chickpeas. It's going to be ultra processed fake crap products. That's that's what always happens. As with historically happens. There's studies out there to show that people the more plant based they are, the more likely they are to consume ultra processed food. I mean, that's just what happens. And they know that. And it's more profitable, by the way. So that is absolute to to borrow one of your guys's terms. Bollocks. I mean, it's just total B.S. it's it's not going to save the planet by any stretch of the imagination. Um, you know, in my view, and I think this is supported by a lot of guys. I mean, we would do better if we put more, you know? Grazing animals on pasture and graze them, you know, appropriately to, you know, sequester carbon, uh, on and on and on. So, I mean, we there are things we can do, but agriculture is still not the big player. I mean, I mean, you know, I mean, well, to put it in this way, we have to eat. There's no negotiation. The fact that humans need to eat something. And yes, it's going to have some sort of environmental impact. Of course it is. I mean, is it the major driver of whatever, whatever or whatever? I would argue no, particularly given the relative return we get on that, you know, uh, and when we look at, you know, because one of the, one of the ways that people often look at make this argument, I look at it, they look at it in terms of calories poor per unit of greenhouse gas production. Right. And that's a very you know, it's not a particularly helpful metric or a goal. And that's the goal post. Right. But if the goalpost like what about not just calories. Let's talk about nutrition. What about actually nourishing people and providing them nutrition that they actually need that is beneficial to them? When you start doing that, you know, then we start seeing beef come way down and other lettuce start going way up. You know, because lettuce is a waste of money. It sucks up so much water. There's no nutrition in it. People eat it, you know, just rabbit food, whatever you want to call it. So, I mean, it's just. What are you measuring? Are you measuring the human thriving and human nutrition and what it takes to produce it? Are you just measuring how many calories can I throw in front of my face? Which makes me fat and stupid and mentally ill and stuff like that? So, I mean, what do you what do you what do you want the world to look like? And I would like to see healthy, robust, vigorous people. I mean, we're at a point in society where there's never been this much wealth, there's never been this much opportunity worldwide even, you know, and particularly in Western countries, United States, it's so ridiculous. I mean, we have so much wealth and resource, and we got the fattest, damn sickest, most depressed people in the in the world just about. And there's no excuse for that. I mean, we should have a bunch of people that are just like, lean, robust, very vigorously fit, you know, warrior people, as far as I'm concerned. If it was up to me, man, I'd anyway, it's not up to me and probably probably for good reason. You know, it. You know, if I, if I was there, I'd probably piss a lot of people off. You know, something made me the surgeon general. I'd be up like. Like. All right, let's go, man. I don't know, I mean, because we got, you know, we got this presidential election RFK has talked a little about. I talked to his running mate, Nicole Shanahan. She interviewed me the other day about this, and I you know, I said, if you're leading, if you think about it, if you're the leader of a country, you know, whatever UK, British, you know, British PM or the monarch or whatever, how do you sit there and sleep at night knowing your your population health is a much a sad, fat, sick to depressed people that should be like it's just a matter of pride. Like, hey man, let's let's have a company. Let's have a country of vigorous people. Why not? You got the resource to do it. Why don't have a national campaign like, let's get off your ass and get out there and start doing stuff. Start eating well. Stop eating the garbage. You know, when we have these elections in which we have and, you know, this year you guys just had one in the UK. I mean, you vote every day by what you by who you chose to keep in pot, choose to keep in power is based upon what you give your money to and what you know, knowingly or unknowingly. You know, every time you go into, I don't know, one of your Tesco or something like that, you buy the ultra processed garbage. Guess what? You give those guys more money. To do whatever they want to do to you. Right? And so you're voting every day with that. When you give it to the local butcher, he's not going to screw you, you know, or these other guys. Yeah. They're going to make you addicted to their product. They're going to, you know, overcharge on the markup. They're going to make you sick. They're going to they're going to put you prey to the the widely inefficient and predatory health care system. So think about that. You know, stop voting for the criminals. Yeah. That's great. And you know, the phrase I used to use is how do they sleep at night until someone said because they have different values to you? Uh, you couldn't sleep, Stephen, because you care, but they can sleep because they don't. I mean, I thought I mean, well, I mean, they self-selected. I mean, you know, if they weren't sleeping, they wouldn't be in the job. I mean, they, you know, they basically said, hey, look, you know, whenever I sleep well, I sleep well in my, uh, you know, my $20,000 custom bed in my, you know, my 6000 square foot mansion or my on my yacht in the Mediterranean. I mean, they sleep well. Sure they do. Yeah. Now, one of the things you missed out on the 24 hour live stream, and I'm very conscious of your time, is you didn't meet Richard Smith, the Quito Pro, and I thoroughly recommend I've talked to him before, though I think we've talked before. I think that little livestream you did here before I met with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you should have him on your podcast because I have had him on. I have had him on. So I say, all right. Excellent. Well, um, then I'm obviously I'm misinformed. The reason I say that is because he's organising the carnival conference with a guy called Ben Hunt, and that's, uh, Saturday, Sunday, 14th, 15th September 2024. So if you're in the UK and you're thinking, hey, Steve's got another American doctor on, he's not thinking about the UK, well, I've got a show on because people will watch and then they'll hear what I just said. So if you want to. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. Get out. Get out there and come check it out. I unfortunately, I think I'm actually speaking in Ohio that weekend. I think I'm going to do some crazy. I'm the keynote speaker at this, uh, uh, veterinarian conference. I don't know why. It's. It's sort of weird, I mean, interesting, I'm speaking I'm speaking literally at the end of this week, Friday and that, you know, Saturday in Nashville, um, at the Bitcoin conference. And Trump is actually speaking at the same day as me and, you know, the same area. So it's gonna be kind of weird. I'm sure there'll be all kinds of Secret Service and all that stuff. And I think RFK is going to be there and. Much of the Russell brand is going to be the Tulsa divers going to be there. So it'll be interesting if I run into Russell because he's a vegan. So I think he maybe he's not anymore. But but anyway, it's going to be a big event and we're going to get some we'll get some information out there. It's going to be kind of fun. We're reaching larger and larger. And in fact, I just saw that maybe Elon Musk may be trying out carnivore, uh, which will be quite interesting to see if he ends up doing that. So yes, I noticed that you mentioned he had steak and eggs for breakfast in his name. Yeah, but I think I think he just did an interview with Jordan Peterson and he basically on the air. I think I'm hearing that. He said, look, I'm willing to try this before I undergo some sort of surgical procedure. I can't remember what he's thinking about surgery, maybe back back issue or something like that. So he said he's willing to try a carnivore diet for for a couple of months. And so we'll see. That would be you know, if he does it and he gets a good result, that could be quite influential. So we'll see. Well, thanks for your time. Uh, you were a big miss on the 24 hour live stream, but you've more than made up for it. And like I said to you before we started, uh, Doctor abs, uh, sat in for you and was absolutely brilliant. I like your abs. Thank you for doing that. And I apologize to anybody that that missed me on a lot of stories. I like. I said, I totally got messed up trying to take care of my mom, and I just forgot about it, and it's my bad. Okay, fine. Finally. Then on Riviera, I just wanted to ask, is it am I right in assuming that Ben Beekman is on your team? Ben Beekman is part of a research team. Yeah, so we will be publishing our research. They are our clinical data as we as we accumulate. Yeah. He's he's one of the researchers that we hired as a consultant. And so yeah, we've got like I said we are we got some good people man. We got some great doctors. We're licensed in all 50 states. We're rolling out mostly we're in Texas and Florida. We'll be expanding to other states very shortly. We've got something like 12,000 patients on the waiting list. So, uh, you know, I think I think we're going to be doing some good things, and I think we're going to change the paradigm for health care. And it's needed, you know, and I think, you know, it's like something that I really appreciate the people that are willing to. You know, team up with us in a way. I mean, I mean, obviously as a patient, our goal is to fix you. But at the same time, you are also helping to shift the entire paradigm of health care by willing to do this. And it's really important to realize that this change is not going to come from the top. It's just too conflicted at the top. It's going to come from people like you and me doing the groundwork and getting it done, and the patients that are willing to say, we want to support something like this, you know, and we want to, you know, because it's going to take millions and millions of us to, to actually change the markets, to change the landscape. Um, so, yeah, we need we need support. We need, you know, we obviously trying to provide the best care we can, but, you know, it's something that, um, has to change in my view. I mean, I just don't see society. It's going to implode upon itself if we don't fix things. And I think, you know, you know, there's too many people that make too much money on the old system. I mean, it's just so lucrative. Uh, you know, like I said, I could have easily, at this point done some very, you know, probably unethical things and made a lot of money. And I'm not willing to do that. You know, it's just it's just not who I am. And for good or bad, hopefully, hopefully for good. But we'll see. Yeah I agree and I if I was pushing high carb and all the things I don't believe in, my YouTube channel would be ten times as profitable. But yeah, you're doing the right thing. I want to thank you for your website as well, by the way, because when people ask for success stories, I always put them to my website, which like I say, it's got a thousand, but I think you've got in the tens now, tens of thousands of people that have done some testimonials and it's it's an amazing website. So there'll be a link in the description to that show. I just want to thank you one more time and just just before you go, I spoke to Ken Berry a couple of weeks ago, and, uh, he, he, off the top of his head, said, I wouldn't mind the figures for the carbon footprint, the problem of the pharmaceutical companies and also for hospitals and, uh, both of them, when we were looking at the damage they caused to the environment when I did the research or worse than the automobile, automotive, uh, trade. So running a pharmaceutical company does more damage to the environment than transport. Simple as that. Yeah, yeah. No it does, it does. I mean, I mean I mean, yeah, like I said, healthcare is incredibly, um, it's it's resource intensive. I mean, I mean, I can just remember doing one surgery, I would do one surgery and literally they'd be literally 8 to 1255 gallon cans of garbage, paper and plastic and crap and draping. Just for one procedure I can remember. Bags and bags of trash. Every time I did a surgery and I would do multiple a day and it was just like, you know, you just kind of, you know, that's the way it is. But you in retrospect, you're like, God, look how much, how, how wasteful we are for this, for this stuff. What if you didn't need the surgery? Well, you just how much trash would you say just on that. I mean, it's it's amazing. Joan, thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it.