I've seen people improve rapidly using a ketogenic diet.

In this conversation, Dr. Rachel Brown, a consultant psychiatrist known as 'Carnivore Shrink', discusses her holistic approach to mental health, emphasizing the importance of metabolic strategies and lifestyle changes over traditional medication. She defines mental health as mental well-being, explores the complexities of recognizing mental health issues, and critiques the reliance on antidepressants. Dr. Brown shares her experiences with patients, particularly those with bipolar disorder, and highlights the benefits of ketogenic diets. The conversation also touches on the impact of environmental factors and the upcoming Keto Brain Health Conference.

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Transcript

Coach Stephen Thomas (00:01.582)
Hi there and welcome to another interview today. Slightly different. I've got Dr. Rachel Brown with me, who's also known as carnivore shrink on Instagram. So that might give you a clue as to what we're going to talk about. And that little fanfare there is for Rachel. Hello, Dr. Rachel Brown. That's all right. It's always nice to see you. Thanks for supporting the 24 hour live stream and being so good on Instagram and stuff. So just for people that don't know you.

Rachel Brown (00:19.203)
Hi Stephen, thanks for having me.

Coach Stephen Thomas (00:32.165)
Just give us a little introduction as to who you are and what you do.

Rachel Brown (00:35.993)
Sure, yeah so I'm Dr Rachel Brown, I'm a consultant psychiatrist. Although I prefer to be known as a holistic functional medicine type psychiatrist these days because that's certainly where my interest and passion lies. I've been working in psychiatry for 20 odd years at this point in time but over the last number of years my approach to patient care has evolved and changed quite significantly.

And really now I find that I have the most success with clinical outcomes with patients by using metabolic strategies and some other lifestyle type strategies to get people out of episodes of major psychiatric illness. So that's me.

Coach Stephen Thomas (01:21.836)
Yes, and it's all about success. Analogous to you is I was high carb when I started my rehab sort of personal training and doing rehabilitation and I had abysmal success rates for five years and I was also training diabetes and obesity and everybody that was doing well was ignoring me basically and then that's how I found out about low carb and it was all about nutrition.

Rachel Brown (01:38.499)
What?

Rachel Brown (01:46.745)
I'm out here.

Coach Stephen Thomas (01:50.663)
To try and sum up a very complex, a very complex subject. How would you define mental health? Because we all talk about mental health. What does what does that actually mean?

Rachel Brown (02:04.322)
gosh, one pet hate I have which I encounter a fair bit just in my day -to -day work is when people refer to mental health as a problem and what they're really meaning is mental illness or mental disorder but in terms of what actually constitutes mental health I would say it's about mental well -being and being able to think clearly, not suffering from brain fog or anxiety or...

persistent low mood or you know sometimes the problems can be more serious than that and people can become entirely detached from reality but certainly in terms of having good mental health it's being peaceful and calm and having the ability to think and think critically I might add.

Coach Stephen Thomas (02:45.91)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you count anxiety, for instance, over small things? People get very anxious about, you know, they ate the wrong thing and then they get anxious. Do you count that as a mental illness or do you just count that as an addiction or what? What do call that?

Rachel Brown (03:04.759)
No.

No, I mean think there's a whole spectrum of what's just considered to be normal human experience and so all of us can feel anxious or experience anxiety from time to time and in certain situations but I wouldn't necessarily label that as a mental illness or disorder and the same goes for having difficult social circumstances and going through grief and bereavement. There's a whole range of normal human experience so I don't like to over...

pathologize that or medicalize that.

Coach Stephen Thomas (03:38.626)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think that's one of the things people come to me and they say, I've got brain fog and I think I've got ADHD and they they they're very keen to sort of diagnose themselves based on limited information really or pretty poor information online. So I know this sounds like quite a strange question. If you're living in that brain fog, cognitive issues, you have a mental disorder.

How do you know to go and get help? Because I'm assuming to the person they're in that situation. So how do they know that, whoop, there's something up.

Rachel Brown (04:19.341)
I think it usually comes down to whether it's impacting on your ability to live. So just to function in life, be that, I don't know, being part of a household and being able to look after family or be that being able to work or fulfil your life's purpose. yeah, I think probably what we mostly think about is functional impairment. So when difficulties get in the way of just being able to live as you would want to live.

If that makes sense. I don't know if that's too wishy washy.

Coach Stephen Thomas (04:49.196)
Yeah, yeah. No, it's not wishy washy at all. I mean, the thing is, it's not, it's not as objective as you might think. I mean, you know, if you break your leg, you break your leg and it's pretty self evident. But I think because you're the person that has the problem, but it's also your brain's ability to make the decision to go and do something about it. That's the thing. You know, if you broke your leg, it would be difficult to go and walk to a doctor. So

if you've got something, you know, a mental impairment, to make the decision to go and see somebody is possibly impacted by the impairment. So do you think that there's many people out there that don't know that they have a mental issue and are just getting by, but maybe could be more optimal if someone diagnosed them better?

Rachel Brown (05:38.213)
yeah, certainly. So there are certainly a lot of people who experience just an insidious sort of gradual decline over time. And I think a lot of us have experienced that in other ways in our lives in that you just accommodate and get used to living with certain symptoms. And if something doesn't happen very suddenly, then there's not necessarily a very obvious aha moment when you know that you need to go and seek help.

Quite often I see it's family members or loved ones who might start to raise concern about the person themselves before the person necessarily recognises they might have an issue. But equally, it can be helpful just to look at your current situation and then maybe compare it to how things were five years ago, for example, and just see if things have slipped or deteriorated in any way. So it can be difficult.

Coach Stephen Thomas (06:29.932)
Yeah, think one of the things I'm sort of alluding to is, well, one of my best friends from school, his father got Alzheimer's and knew that he was occasionally sort of having outbursts of swearing. You know, his dad was actually a lovely Scottish guy, wouldn't say boo to a goose, as they say, but then all of a sudden he would swear and

sort of a stream of invective would come out in anger and then he would realize, I don't know where that's come from, where's that come from? So he was obviously aware and it very difficult to get him to take sort of medical advice because there surely is a little bit, well he was in denial, he just didn't believe it even though he knew it had happened. Do you find people find it hard to accept that there is an issue?

Rachel Brown (07:20.675)
Mm.

Rachel Brown (07:25.431)
yeah, definitely sometimes. mean, there's a... It's not that people necessarily fall into two camps, but you do encounter the worried well, is what we would talk about in mainstream medicine, is there's certainly a group of people who are very quick to come forward to seek help. And then there's the other group of people who just continue to try to get by despite living with persistent symptoms of any kind or...

a deteriorating picture in terms of their symptoms. And I mean, that sounds like frontal lobe dysfunction, just what you were describing there in terms of losing inhibitions. And I think if it's particularly a sort of gradual personality change almost in terms of the situation you just described there, can be even more difficult, not just for the person, but the people around them to know when is the right time to seek help. And it can take a bit of time to build up.

Just an impression of whether this is going to be a persistent difficulty or not does become quite complex and difficult.

Coach Stephen Thomas (08:30.924)
Yeah, I mean there's two things I'd like to talk about which are very mainstream and very possibly not in your remit but I'd like your opinion on it and that firstly is menopause because many women say they feel like a completely different person and they can't control their emotions you know the mechanical things like hot flushes and those sort of things but also feeling a little bit irrational

Rachel Brown (08:41.464)
Okay.

Coach Stephen Thomas (08:57.295)
Does that come into your remit or is that again just something to do with hormones and...

Rachel Brown (09:03.875)
Well, yeah, mean, that sounds like it is largely hormonal based. I don't specifically deal with menopausal people. It's not a particular specialty that I have, but certainly hormones are very relevant in terms of how the brain functions. And we know, for example, after childbirth, even when there are huge hormonal shifts that people can experience quite significant mental health difficulties that they may never have had before. And so it's...

certainly not something to be ignored. it's interesting to me, I just, know a number of people within the specifically the carnivore community, but also keto as well, who managed to sail through menopause without really having any of those difficulties. so yeah.

Coach Stephen Thomas (09:48.44)
Yes. Yeah, I am leading up to a question. So the other one would be someone like a bodybuilder has taken a lot of testosterone and therefore becomes quite aggressive and they seem to make different decisions. Is that is that another thing that you don't really get involved in or is that something you can understand why that happens?

Rachel Brown (10:09.099)
mean, yeah, absolutely. I can see why that would happen. haven't had anyone very recently who's come to me with that specific issue, but it's certainly an issue that does crop up from time to time.

Coach Stephen Thomas (10:21.154)
Yeah, so what I think you might have guessed I'm alluding to is, is it a chemical imbalance that causes mental health issues?

Rachel Brown (10:29.099)
No, I don't think it is. That's my honest opinion. I think there can be some chemical imbalances as a piece of the puzzle, but I don't think that's the main driving factor behind mental health difficulties. That would be my honest opinion.

Coach Stephen Thomas (10:30.818)
You

Coach Stephen Thomas (10:46.894)
So do you feel that medicating is possibly not really the first line of treatment?

Rachel Brown (10:54.263)
Yeah, absolutely, because I'm always in favour of people trying to use prevention rather than, you know, prevention rather than cure. So there's a reason why people end up in a situation where they are experiencing mental health difficulties. And I don't think we can be as simplistic in our thinking to think that that is due to having a deficiency of a psychiatric drug. It sounds slightly facetious, but that's essentially how I look at it.

I think some of those medications have a role at certain times and they can suppress symptoms but I don't personally think that they fundamentally treat the root cause of mental health issues. I think they're more there to suppress symptoms as I said.

Coach Stephen Thomas (11:40.974)
Yes, and it seems to me that when you research some of the treatments, they don't seem to really have much to back them up or a success rate that makes you think, well, well, that's why they use them. For instance, like serotonin reuptake inhibitors. mean, could you just talk about those or that as a treatment and how you feel if it's efficacious or not?

Rachel Brown (12:03.223)
Yeah, so I have seen people over the years benefit from antidepressants or appear to benefit. The difficulty in clinical practice, so just in the real world, working with people is that you don't know how much of that may come down to a placebo effect. So we certainly have a number of studies comparing antidepressants to placebos.

And many studies suggest that there isn't a huge amount of difference in efficacy between the two. And so essentially some studies conclude that antidepressants are no better than taking a placebo. I have a slightly different perspective in that I know that antidepressants essentially act as antibiotics. And so I think for some people who gain benefit, it may actually come down to there being changes in their gut microbiome because our gut health is...

hugely important in terms of our mental health and we have a connection between the gut and the brain that goes in both directions. So that's the only reason that I can really deduce as to why in certain situations some of those medications can be helpful. So it may be somebody who's been living with a gut imbalance in the form of a dysbiosis who then...

Perhaps that's been corrected by the antibiotic effects or antibacterial effects of the antidepressants. But essentially I don't think we can be so reductive in our thinking to think that it purely comes down to serotonin.

Coach Stephen Thomas (13:32.622)
Yeah, and that's why you put holistic in your title, I think, and I 100 % agree. And recently at that carnivore conference, what Ben Hunt was saying about the soil reflects, the microbiome of the soil reflects the microbiome of the human. And I love that phrase because it's a connection I have not heard elucidated in such a simple sentence. So we're not feeding ourselves properly.

because we're not feeding the soil properly, because we're not feeding ourselves properly, and that sort of circular argument. And I think with mental health, firstly, there is a stigma of admitting there's a problem, even the family admitting there's a problem. And secondly, the medical profession seems too based on a chemical or a pharmaceutical solution. And I think for the people I deal with that are coming off antidepressants or coming off antipsychotic drugs,

The coming off is quite horrific, but they know that they want to do it. So obviously they can see the benefit from people around who have got off the medications and how they're living their life. Do you feel that medications to some people seem like a life sentence of imprisonment, of being tied to these medications and no end in sight?

Rachel Brown (14:51.031)
Yeah, I mean, I certainly know colleagues who tell people that they need to be on medication for life. That's not something that I think I've ever said to anyone. However, I do know, I know some people just prefer to take a pill because it seems like the easy option. I just don't know that longer term that that's the best option because the body makes adaptations whenever you take medications. And certainly if you stay on a drug for

a lengthy period of time. So for example, I don't know, it's a bit arbitrary to put an exact time limit, but I certainly know people who've been on the drugs for years who have major difficulties trying to reduce and come off the medications. And then you have to consider about the side effects that come with taking a drug to fundamentally treat a mental health disorder. And I think there's not enough recognition about some of the difficulties that people get run into.

with antidepressants, are one of the most commonly prescribed drugs from the BNF, but also the antipsychotics and all of the drugs really.

Coach Stephen Thomas (15:58.04)
So what are some of the body's adaptations? You said people take medications but the body adapts. So could you give us an example of that?

Rachel Brown (16:06.337)
Yeah, so for example, in relation to your dopamine receptors, so specifically your D2 receptors, and some of the research literature talks about high affinity D2 receptors. So your body has a natural set point and when you take antipsychotic medications, for example, for a long period of time, the body then adjusts according to how much medication is on board and it...

up regulates or down regulates receptors. Essentially it down regulates D2 receptors and this can cause difficulties over time and this is often what leads to withdrawal symptoms when somebody is trying to reduce the dose of their medication. Because you need to do it slowly enough so that the body has time to readjust its homeostatic set point so it's just a set point for those receptors.

Coach Stephen Thomas (16:56.184)
Yeah, I suppose just a very layman's analogy is if you eat less cholesterol, your body makes more. I you know, you know what's coming in. So you hit on one of the buzzwords that's in our industry, which is dopamine. And this is a really broad thing. I want to ask you, Rachel, is is addiction a different thing to a mental health problem? Because many people think it isn't. They will say, I just.

Rachel Brown (17:01.719)
Yeah, that's a good one. That's simple. Yeah.

Coach Stephen Thomas (17:25.1)
I don't know what it is, I do two days carnivore and then I go off the rails. It's like I can't control myself. I've got to eat a donut and I've got to eat sugar. Is it different?

Rachel Brown (17:34.253)
Yeah. So I don't know if I have a slightly different view to other people you may ask about this, but I view all mental health symptoms as having an underlying physical basis. And so I think no differently about addiction. So addiction definitely involves the dopamine -ergic system, so dopamine in the body. But there are many things that can be addictive. It's not just...

It's not just drugs of abuse, it's food as well and it can also be tech and that can cause major problems for some people.

Coach Stephen Thomas (18:07.288)
Yes.

Coach Stephen Thomas (18:11.97)
Yeah, I think people are very reductive. They just want those buzzwords like, well, it's a dopamine hit. So I'm going to ask you, what do they mean by that? Or what do they think they mean by a dopamine hit? What are they talking about?

Rachel Brown (18:18.019)
Mm.

Rachel Brown (18:26.009)
So I think this all comes down to down regulation of the D2 receptors that I'd mentioned before. So within the carnivore space, Dr. Sarah Zaldivar has spoken a fair bit on this topic. And I know that was her area of research in terms of her PhD. I think I'm correct in saying that. But, you know, when people talk about getting a dopamine hit from like scrolling on their phone, looking at social media or from

or from eating typically sort of carbohydrate based foods. They're not necessarily wrong in that, but what they're trying to do is to overcome the down regulation that happens over time of these dopamine receptors when you are exposing your body to habit forming drugs. And now I'm starting to sound a bit like Dr. Chafee here, but yeah, I think sugar would would come into that group for me in terms of actually being a drug of addiction.

Coach Stephen Thomas (19:24.972)
Yes, yes, I wouldn't say you're very akin to Dr. Chafee, very different. So are there tests now, you know, people keep telling me I'm the blood guy, which I suppose is true. I like looking at bloods in context of this way of eating. Are there tests that people can do?

I'm not talking necessarily in the mainstream tests that you do where you can look at certain labs and make decisions on what's going on.

Rachel Brown (19:56.353)
there are plenty of tests that we can do, not specifically looking at dopamine, although you can get neurotransmitter testing done. Although to be honest, I don't massively favour people doing that because I personally don't think it adds a huge amount of information or useful information to the picture. But there are other tests that you can do, such as microbiome testing can be one that can be helpful.

I've got a huge interest in environmental toxins, so heavy metal testing or testing for mycotoxins because all of those can certainly cause mental health issues. And that's an aspect of my approach to patients that I suppose goes beyond just using purely metabolic strategies because I think environmental toxins are a huge issue for many, many people, especially the people who

may not have had the amount of success after adopting metabolic strategies than some other people who just seem to do amazingly well when they change to a ketogenic diet. So there are different layers that you might need to think about.

Coach Stephen Thomas (21:01.624)
again.

Sorry to put you on the spot there. if you're doing microbiome testing, there certain proliferation of certain bacterias where there's too many or what you're actually looking for?

Rachel Brown (21:18.069)
Mostly looking for diversity and abundance essentially of the bacterial groups, although probably one of the most useful things can be if you see a specific overgrowth of a pathogenic bacteria. So C. diff, for example, can cause major issues. And that's probably the main thing that I've seen on microbiome testing for people.

There are other tests as well, like an organic acids test that gives you markers of mitochondrial function. So that's again can be a really useful one to know what your toxic exposures may have been, but also just generally how your metabolic functioning is and the health of your mitochondria, which is what everything ultimately comes back to.

Coach Stephen Thomas (22:04.002)
Yes, and I think you're alluding to energy getting into the brain as one of the main problems, I suppose, for want of a better phrase. So could you go into that sort of thinking, which I know you talk about and Dr. Georgia E. talks about?

Rachel Brown (22:20.781)
Yeah, so in terms of the brain energy thing, really comes down to the main issue that we tend to see is that people have been living with high levels of insulin for many years. And what we would term ultimately, it ends up becoming insulin resistance, which is when the body just, your body cells are unable to respond fully to the insulin or the insulin doesn't perform as it should within the body.

And the role of insulin, insulin has many roles in the body. It's the hormone of growth. So it's often when levels of insulin are too high, that's why people struggle to lose weight. Because having a weight issue is fundamentally a hormonal issue as opposed to just thinking simplistically about calories and calories out. But when it comes to the brain, the insulin, part of its role is to allow brain cells to access energy from glucose.

Usually, just with the sort of normal, standard diet that most people have, the brain would be used to running on glucose. And we maintain a constant proportion of glucose in our brain relative to our bloodstream. But if you have insulin resistance, also known as type 2 diabetes or pre -diabetes, then the insulin isn't able to...

change the glucose or allow glucose access to the brain cells and so the brain cells essentially are starved of energy. And if you're not using a ketogenic diet then you don't really have an alternative fuel source for the brain cells. So the beauty of a ketogenic diet is that when you switch from being primarily a sugar burner or a glucose burner to becoming a fat burner then the ketone bodies

act as an alternative fuel for the brain and a much cleaner fuel and in fact a more efficient fuel for the brain and that's why if you have a brain that's insulin resistant the ketone bodies can bypass that mechanism and provide fuel and energy for the brain without really needing insulin to be involved in that particularly.

Coach Stephen Thomas (24:29.516)
Yeah, I think it's sort of simple but complex at the same time. We're looking at eating properly or not eating certain foods that are going to exacerbate that problem, I think. So what do you feel is driving the rise in depression and ADHD and things like that? do you think? Do you think it is just mainly food?

Rachel Brown (24:34.759)
Mm

Rachel Brown (24:42.201)
Mm

Rachel Brown (24:54.062)
No, well I think it's partly food, I think it's partly our light environments as well, so it's circadian rhythm disruption comes into it and so much tech use and blue light toxicity is definitely a factor because that can raise your blood glucose as well. However, the vast majority of people aren't eating a species -appropriate diet so that's a really good place to start. So I can't say it's one issue over another, I think it's a combination of different issues.

And then the environmental toxicities come in as well because they all impact on mitochondrial function and also about how our brain is protected in terms of the blood brain barrier that surrounds the brain.

Coach Stephen Thomas (25:34.35)
So when you talk about environmental things, we're talking black mold in the house and endocrine disruptors.

Rachel Brown (25:39.331)
can be, yes, and heavy metals and pollution from diesel exhaust fumes and plane exhausts and other just generally toxins that are in the environment. So we need to be detoxing from those as well. We're building up our defenses to those different ways of looking at it.

Coach Stephen Thomas (25:59.63)
So.

Coach Stephen Thomas (26:03.81)
Yes. Yes, absolutely. If your environment is difficult and you're not robust, you're to be susceptible. So you've got to make yourself robust in your health. You'd be able to fight off the things that we can't avoid. For instance, looking at screens for a long period of time when we shouldn't be. I'd like to get very, very specific because you've dealt with some people with bipolar and seen some remarkable results. Would you be able to just go into firstly what

bipolar is and secondly what's happened in your own clinical experience with people.

Rachel Brown (26:39.897)
Sure, yeah. So bipolar, some people might know it as manic depression. It used to be referred to as it's a psychiatric diagnosis. There's some evidence of genetic predisposition to having that set of symptoms, but not everybody has a family history who develops bipolar disorder and you would receive a diagnosis if you've ever had an episode of mania or hypomania, which is just a slightly milder form of mania.

Typical symptoms of mania would be lack of sleep, often mood becomes elevated, so high mood rather than low mood, people can experience irritability, function is typically impacted when the symptoms become more severe and some people go on to experience symptoms of psychosis, so becoming detached from reality, hearing voices for example, having psychotic symptoms.

It's considered a severe and enduring mental disorder. So it's one of the main diagnoses that psychiatric services would tend to deal with. And it's typically managed using mood stabilizers. So lithium is considered the gold standard mood stabilizer, but quite commonly people find themselves on antipsychotic medications. And typically in terms of that diagnosis, people have also experienced episodes of depression in the past as well.

Although one person's own experience of the disorder shall we say can vary. So someone might experience more in the way of depression over the years and only have one episode of mania, whereas other people might have persistent episodes of mania. So it can look different for different people. I have started a metabolic psychiatry clinic within the NHS, but I've also been working privately with people and I have seen...

much, much superior results to treatment using metabolic strategies than with any of the medications I've prescribed over the years. And I say that it might sound controversial and I still sometimes struggle to believe it myself because I've seen people come out of severe, know, severe to the point of needing to go into hospital, episodes of depression with prominent agitation and

Rachel Brown (29:02.505)
One or two people who've been on the verge of being unable to speak, they've been that depressed. And I've seen them improve rapidly using after implementing a ketogenic diet. So within one to two weeks, that has been the average, I would say. And just to put it in context, if somebody is experiencing a severe depressive episode in the context of bipolar, it wouldn't be uncommon for us to be working with them for six, seven months.

possibly longer, trying different medications, trying different medication strategies. Some people end up getting ECT, so electroconvulsive therapy, so completely different types of intervention. So it's really quite remarkable and eye -opening to see people recover so rapidly using just a purely metabolic approach.

Coach Stephen Thomas (29:52.898)
Yeah, I'm not going to get into the weeds about the NHS and private, the difference, because I think that might not be politically a good thing to talk to you about, but people can make their own assumptions. I actually had a friend when I was in my 20s who went through a depressive stage and had electric shock therapy, which is what it was called then. And he was never the same person, completely different person after that. And not in a good way.

Rachel Brown (29:58.232)
No.

Rachel Brown (30:02.594)
Okay, yeah.

Rachel Brown (30:14.451)
Okay. gosh. Yeah.

Coach Stephen Thomas (30:22.382)
almost like he'd been someone to turn the knob down from 11 to five or something. You know, he was just much less of a person, less bright and couldn't look at you when he talked to you and things like that. So my only close first hand experience of a very good friend of mine is not good. So I'm a little bit tainted talking about that as well. So I'm not going to I'm not going to get into that because it's just a one one example. I think

Rachel Brown (30:22.808)
Mm

Rachel Brown (30:28.437)
my gosh.

Mm

Rachel Brown (30:42.369)
Okay.

Rachel Brown (30:47.575)
Yeah, I know that's fine.

Coach Stephen Thomas (30:51.554)
You know, what you're doing is remarkable. And I know because you've still got a foot in the NHS camp, it's difficult to talk about these sort of things. But you're to be unleashed on the public soon. So you're talking at the Keto Brain Health Conference. Do you want to just talk a little bit about that?

Rachel Brown (31:09.133)
Yeah, sure. It's probably more of the same of what we've been discussing here. So I just want to give people a rapid run through of what causes common mental health disorders, what are the different aspects of health that we need to consider, what are the underlying mechanisms, because there are quite a number of different mechanisms and connections within the body that can be responsible for somebody experiencing symptoms of mental illness.

Probably the most controversial slide will be towards the end, which will be a comparison of standard treatments in terms of benefits and side effects and then using metabolic therapy in terms of benefits and side effects. It's quite a stark comparison when you actually put it down on paper and look. This is why I would always prefer that people try to address their health issues using lifestyle.

interventions which don't carry the same burden of side effects. They really only carry benefits. Although in rare circumstances, know, there can be contraindications, but for a lot of people, it's definitely the better way to go, in my opinion.

Coach Stephen Thomas (32:20.29)
Yeah, well, I agree. And I've been lucky enough to be doing this long enough to have over a thousand clients. And I can assure you that once they start eating either low carb or keto, you know, and especially carnivore, I think with the mental health benefits, even if they haven't come to me about that, for instance, they might come about weight loss or they might come about lack of sleep. They pretty much all to a person say so much better. Everything so much clearer. I think better.

Rachel Brown (32:31.523)
Mm

Coach Stephen Thomas (32:50.695)
It's just remarkable. So maybe this way of eating is stopping those people getting to the point where they have to come to see you because their mental health is deteriorated. Because I do hear that ever such a lot and such simple things, such simple interventions with what they're eating can make a huge difference in... Well, it is inflammation as we're talking about with the brain and the pathways to get the energy into there, but...

Once that inflammation goes down, it reveals to the person, wow, I didn't realise, I was in a brain fog. They didn't even know, that's why I was asking you at the beginning, because many people don't realise how bad they are until they start to feel good. Because it's been over years where everything's dampened down and dulled down. It's very sad when you have someone that's 20 years in pain and when you look at the medications, because I get people to fill out a...

Rachel Brown (33:27.63)
Mm

Rachel Brown (33:38.221)
Mm

Yeah.

Coach Stephen Thomas (33:48.248)
health and activity questionnaire was quite in depth that a lot of the medications are just dulling the senses, dulling the perception, not really fixing the root cause. And literally within weeks, as you say, you can see remarkable differences. you know, understanding the ascending descending pathways and the sematesentery part of the brain is telling you things about pain. And that's being dulled. mean, pain is there for a reason, for instance, and the answer is not to dull it.

Rachel Brown (34:12.906)
Mm

Coach Stephen Thomas (34:17.388)
The answer is to get to why there is pain there in the first place. So it's exactly the same with the brain, isn't it? You've got signals. And if you just dull the reception of those signals, then your brain is not going to function so much. I'm sorry to make it very layman's, but to me it seems you've got these receptors. They're there for a reason. If you over stimulate them, under stimulate them, don't supply the nutrients they need, then the brain's not going to function. So I think it's a really important thing you're doing.

Rachel Brown (34:21.048)
Yeah.

Rachel Brown (34:32.461)
No, no.

Rachel Brown (34:44.199)
Absolutely.

Coach Stephen Thomas (34:46.71)
I do feel that you're on the cusp of making a huge difference. I know you're making a big difference locally with patients one to one, but I just feel, Rachel, you're going to explode on the Internet. So you will be a bit like JV in that way because you just speak common sense. And also you're doing these turnarounds for real people and that in the end, that's the proof. get real people off the medications and functioning better. So I take my hat off to you because it's very brave of you what you do because

Rachel Brown (35:08.323)
Yeah.

Coach Stephen Thomas (35:15.182)
your colleagues are not 100 percent behind you or maybe they are. But, you know, the system isn't behind you. Maybe we rephrase it. And that's that's a sad thing.

Rachel Brown (35:20.577)
No, it's not. No, thank you. No, I really appreciate that. I've been really humbled recently because, and I don't think it's to do with me before I say it, but I've had, I had a week recently where two people coming to the metabolic clinic in the NHS both independently said to me, thank you, you've changed my life. And I put it back to them saying, well, actually you changed your life because you're the one who did this for yourself.

I've never in my 20 year career ever heard that from anyone else in any other situation and the same happens, you know, out with the NHS in terms of people just actually transforming their lives to get their lives back again and some of them after many, many years of persistent and pretty severe impairment because of mental health symptoms. So yeah, I feel a moral obligation that we need more people to hear about this.

Coach Stephen Thomas (36:16.62)
Yeah, I think we're quite similar in personality because it feels like you're blowing your own trumpet, but nobody else is going to do it. You know, if we're getting real people saying you've changed my life. Yeah. And it's them as well. It's actually them, isn't it? They're the ones that have come to you and taken control. And I think that is really one of the nubs is taking control. If you've lost control of your life, that's that and you have no hope. That is is about as.

Rachel Brown (36:22.765)
Mm

Rachel Brown (36:26.457)
Mm

Rachel Brown (36:30.519)
Yeah.

Coach Stephen Thomas (36:42.67)
That's despair. That's my definition of despair. And people do come to me and say, I've tried everything. It's the last resort. I don't know what to do. Everything I've tried has failed. And I say, well, you're here. You haven't tried everything. That's the first thing. And secondly, I have success stories. And I suppose the analogy would be, you know, the biggest thing in my life is reverse or type 2 diabetes. Not just for me personally, but for, you know, tens to hundreds of people who have reversed it. And of course, when they first came, they...

They were told it's a chronic progressive disease that you just can do nothing about. And that's just not true. And it's just taking the hope. could cry now. I've got to be honest. And it's it's it's close to a scandal. But, you know, we're skirting around the edges of what we really want to say. So, you know, the the Keto Brain Health Conference, for those that watching, it's October 19th, 2024 on a Saturday in Manchester. There is a code.

Rachel Brown (37:17.997)
Not true.

Rachel Brown (37:29.987)
Yeah.

Coach Stephen Thomas (37:40.59)
UK carnivore you can use and you'll get a discount. And I just think that the array of speakers are going to be brilliant. And brain health is one of those things that is underestimated. know, body composition, losing 120 pounds, that gets a lot of traction. You know, if I put a thumbnail up, someone's lost 120 pounds in nine months, it gets a lot of views. If I put someone's reverse their issues with their brain health, it doesn't. So we need and it's such a big endemic problem at the moment. I think we need to.

Rachel Brown (37:56.675)
Hmm.

Rachel Brown (38:01.064)
I'm sure.

Coach Stephen Thomas (38:10.072)
shout it from the rooftops and get people to the conference. And you just have to stop having your light under a bushel Dr. Rachel Brown because it's a thing that convinces people. Real stories. Honestly, you know, last week I coached someone who was off their antidepressants. You know, again, I'm feeling a little bit choked talking about it because the reaction to getting off the meds and it's hard. You know, it's not easy coming down with the help of the physician.

Rachel Brown (38:17.987)
Ha ha ha ha!

Coach Stephen Thomas (38:40.174)
you know, halving, halving, halving, eventually coming off to zero and three very tough weeks. But you know, it's 20 years of being medicated and feeling completely different to she feels now. And so determined to change her life. Even, you know, any any age you can do this. It can be when you're very young and sadly, yeah, I'm getting people in their 20s coming to me with ADHD and, you know, brain fog. But you can change it any

at any point by just looking at your diet, I think. So I want to thank you for coming on. It was a bit short notice, but everyone was singing your praises yesterday in a meeting. And I just thought, well, I've got to get Rachel on and I'm going to see you at the Brain Health Conference. Is there any sort of final thoughts you want to say to people that maybe have a relative or something that's got a problem?

Rachel Brown (39:12.006)
Agreed.

Rachel Brown (39:19.743)
Okay.

Rachel Brown (39:28.448)
the only thing I...

Rachel Brown (39:33.349)
The only thought I had just when you were speaking before was that the science is incredibly complex and I know that can be very off -putting for people but actually you don't really need to know all of that. I'm just trying to put that stuff out there to try and make sense of why people should make changes but the actual lifestyle changes you need to make are fairly simple and that's the beauty of it. So I just have a huge amount of hope for everyone that if they're willing to

put in the effort and make some changes themselves, then there can be absolutely massive rewards that can be reaped.

Coach Stephen Thomas (40:08.374)
OK, and how can people contact you if they want to? What's the best way?

Rachel Brown (40:12.841)
So yes, I'm on Instagram as carnivore shrink and there are various links in my profile there where people can watch more. I have a bipolar webinar that people can watch and sign up to the mailing list if they want to have more of the science and more useful information from me.

Coach Stephen Thomas (40:31.224)
Dr Rachel Brown, thank you very much.

Rachel Brown (40:33.293)
Thank you for having me.