The Diabetes Doctor: 80% Of Adults Are Heading For Chronic Disease! Keto’s Shocking Effect On Your Brain!

26:50So I actually came across this diet a little over a decade ago. What I found is that almost every blood meter that I was taking this before CGM for present, I had to just prick my blood, you know, six to ten times a day to see what my blood sugar is where I was finding that I was very rarely outside of the normal range. And I was also finding that I wasn't feeling these extreme highs and lows anymore when I transitioned to a ketogenic diet, almost immediately. My insulin requirements dropped substantially around 40, a little over 40%. So the amount of insulin I needed to take dropped dramatically.

27:25But I didn't have continuous glucose more. I didn't have this instant feedback of like, what is my blood sugar doing? I just know I needed a heck of a lot less insulin. And so what happened was I went into my doctor's office at the time. He happened to be the American Diabetes Association president at the time. He's like, I've I've never seen a blood sugar level in the normal range with someone with type 1 diabetes before. He said, what are you doing? From that point forward, that's when, for me, like transition, Stephen, into like a lifelong journey of like, wow, you know, obviously nutrition had a huge impact on me losing weight when I had obesity.

28:02Now it was directly regulating this very powerful disease where upon diagnosis, nearly all patients are going to have high and variable glucose levels for the rest of their life. 99 % of patients will never see normal metabolic control again for their life. A hundred percent of them are expected to get insulin resistance. And within three years, we see neuro anatomical changes within the brain of children who are diagnosed. What does that mean? So it means that when we look at MRI scans of the brain, we see that children with high and variable glucose levels, with this disease with type 1 diabetes, they have shifts in the type of white and gray matter.

28:45The sections of the brain that are associated with normal brain development and childhood, they're not developing the same way. And we see this within three years, and it's directly linked to the poor glucose control. We also know that we see signs of the early signals of athletic progression in children within four years. Athletic progression was that. So one of the primary cause of death in individuals across the world is cardiovascular disease. And how do we get that? Well, you have changes in your blood vessel and how it functions is the first and earliest signal of future, what will ultimately be plaque or this kind of blockages within the blood vessel, which ultimately cause things like heart attacks or strokes.

29:34Well, in type 1 diabetes, we see that children who have high and very vocal levels, again, 99 % of patients are expected to just live this way for the rest of your life. If they follow standard of care, if they follow the doctor's orders, they're going to see changes in how their blood vessels literally functionally and structurally change. Their blood vessels will now shift from being this very compliant, almost like a smooth wave, to that blood vessel now becomes very rigid. It starts to build collagen, more and more collagen around it, becomes stiffer and stiffer. It's almost like taking a hose and turning on a hose and pinching the hose.

30:14When you pinch the hose, on stiffer and as you shrink the size of the blood vessel, it goes faster. So we can measure that by the speed of the blood in the body. Another clear signal, one of the most powerful signals that the blood vessel is starting to change before you see plaque, before you see blockages, I mean, decades prior. These are all happening in childhood, by the way. You know, 10 to 14 year olds with diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. We see that the blood vessel isn't able to respond to what they call shear stress, Stephen. So that means, let's say you go for a run this morning, Stephen, and your blood pressure initially increases because as your heart rate increases, the speed of the blood increases, the amount of pressure on the vascular wall increases, that the phenomenon when the blood moves fast through blood vessels, it causes stress against the blood vessels.

31:06That's not a bad thing. It's actually a signal for the blood vessel to release something called nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a potent called vasodilator. It causes the blood vessels to open up. And this is how your body responds normally to stress. Okay, you go for an exercise, vasodilation, or vasoconstriction, then vasodilation. Or, you know, and these are normal responses the body has. Well, what happens in type 1 diabetes very early on is that the ability to produce nitric oxide is diminished. You're not able to respond to high stress loads. So not only are the blood vessels becoming stiffer, But now the blood vessels aren't able to even respond as well to the stress.

31:49And so as you're looking at this and you're looking over time, you see these early signals of athletic progression. You also see very early on that it was once expected that all patients with type 1 diabetes would have eye damage. Some form of eye damage called retinopathy, where you start to lose vision, eventually can go blind within 20 years of diagnosis. So most People are diagnosed in 10 to 14 years of age, which means by 30 to 34 years of age, you're going to see a lot of patients who have altered eye function and or some who are blind. Now that has extended out over time, but we know that all patients with this disease, because of high and variable glucose levels, are expected to get at least one complication and their lifetime.

32:39If they follow standard of care advice two day, even with the best technologies out there, there is no pharmaceutical intervention, there is no technology that normalizes this disease. And the effects of these high invariable glucose levels and insulin resistance that a company's at is cumulative, dose dependent, and not completely reversible, which means that once you're diagnosed, the clock starts ticking. It just like smoking the more you do the earlier you do it the earlier the impact and the more lost life You probably will get and there's a study done with 326 participants that found that the keto diet can increase glycemic control of patients with diabetes That was in the precision nutrition publication When it says it can increase glycemic control What does that mean?

33:31So, is that what we were talking about there? Yes. So, when you do a diet known as the ketogenic diet, you're reducing carbohydrates. Well, when carbohydrates are consumed, they elevate glucose levels. Well, if you dramatically reduce the amount of carbohydrates consumed, you're not having those same type of glucose elevations and fluctuations because you're not consuming the most potent glucose elevating factor in our life, which is carbohydrates. And so when they talk about improvements in glycemic control, it is the measure of 24 hour over multiple day levels of glucose in the circulation and how well is that being controlled within a normal healthy range.

34:14And so is your goal then to encourage people to restrict carbohydrates traits in their diet. But you know, because carbohydrates and sugar have been somewhat, I guess, demonized because they never really hear many good things about sugar. So what is your goal here? What is the advice to the list there? Is it to restrict their their carbohydrates? To be very conscious of what they're consuming because nutrition has a powerful potent impact on overall health. And for those patients who have chronic disease, which is unfortunately the overwhelming majority of us. Yes, carbohydrates can be a very restricting carbohydrates, can have a powerful therapeutic effect on diseases like type 2 diabetes, the American Diabetes Association and their 2019 Consensus Report, described type 2 diabetes as the most evidence -based nutritional strategy.

35:10We know that it can have potential positive impacts on things like Alzheimer's disease or studies that have looked at this. we also know that for carbohydrate restriction, which we're talking about. And I like to term this therapeutic carbohydrate restriction because it's the therapeutic outcome of a carbohydrate reduction. And that's really the goal of this is, can you improve your overall health? Many people will just do this simply to improve, you know, to lose weight, to feel like you say, to feel more cognitively alert. But in my case, where you're further along the metabolic spectrum with diseases like diabetes, it has a even more potent impact on how you feel, even more potent impact on your overall health.

35:54But unfortunately about 93 % of Americans have some form of metabolic derangement as cited by multiple studies and multiple research groups. You did a 10 year study on the impact of the ketogenic diet on a patient that had type one diabetes. I think this is most certainly the longest study ever done of its type, where you took one individual And over 10 years, you, I guess, controlled the diet? So we had access to the ability to monitor a unique patient who had type 1 diabetes. And they were diagnosed and had followed the American Diabetes Association diet, a healthy diet for six years. And then switched over in 2013 to a ketogenic diet.

36:41Upon the initiation of the diet and post, they had dexas scans. they controlled their calorie intake, their body composition, they weren't taking any additional medications. And we were able to monitor the impact over a 10 -year period while controlling all those variables. And why that's so important is because one of the common concerns of a ketogenic diet is the hypothetical risk it can increase cardiovascular disease. And the reason that they think that it can increase cardiovascular disease or a typophysize that it will is because of the elevation in LDL that often accompanies an increase in saturated fat in the diet.

37:18Now saturated fat comes from things like animal proteins. It's incokeness as well. What we found is that despite a near doubling in LDL cholesterol on this diet, which again should be associated with worsening cardiovascular health, we did an advanced cardiovascular assessment in this patient and found that despite doubling LDL, they had maintained completely normal glycemic control, which again, based on all the data says the number one risk factor, they reduced their insulin load over 40%. And their cardiovascular health was not only better than the average patient of similar age and sex with type 1 diabetes.

38:02It was better in almost every single category than people even without type 1 diabetes. Despite the doubling of LDL cholesterol, it illustrated that over a 10 -year period it maintained not only no sign of cardiovascular disease, but remarkable cardiovascular health. In fact, we actually followed on that study with the largest ever analysis of the impact of nutrition, particularly carbohydrates, in over 46 ,000 patients with type 1 diabetes, we show that in over 70 % of all reports of very low carbohydrate ketogenic diets, that patients were completely able to normalize their glucose control, normalize the most potent risk factor for disease of type 1 diabetes.

38:53And this is a sort of a spectrum of, I'll put that on the screen to be able to see the different sort of stages in categorizations of being normal, pre -diabetic and diabetic, right? Correct, yes. So normal is anything less than 5 .7 % HBA1C. Pre -diabetic is that 5 .7 number up to 6 .4. And then diabetic is anywhere between 6 .5 all the way into, essentially, there's no cap on how high that number can go. I mean, I noticed your blood sugar levels have risen quite dramatically. Yes. So what you see initially is probably only the first phase of this, right? So started at an average of around 100 milligrams per desolate or on average.

39:39And once the food is then consumed, because once you consume the food, it takes some time to break down into glucose, that glucose then goes in the blood, and then the blood moves glucose into this compartment around the cells, which is called the interstitial fluid. And now we're starting to see the direct impact of just consuming probably a fifth of the amount of carbohydrates I should consume from a superfood This you know oranges are considered both a citrus in a fruit and is considered like a superfood by the American diabetes association In the context of diabetes. So when the glucose spike is high So you just eat in some oranges the spike is going up.

40:19Yeah What does someone feel and then what do they feel when it's then crashes down and goes below because it started at about a hundred. So I imagine that it's going to go up to whatever it goes up to you. And then it's not going to drop back down to a hundred. It's going to drop below 100 typically in a normal non -diabetic person, right? So hundreds right around the normal. So what you'd hope would happen is that you're going to go up just a little bit. insulin is going to respond quickly and you're going to come back down to normal. If you have total healthy metabolic function, again, and the vast majority of us do not.

40:54But in this case, what's gonna, what would be predicted to happen is that as blood sugar elevates and insulin responds, it's gonna go as high as the amount of glucose that's present in the food, okay? But at the same time, my pod is also, which is holding my insulin, is immediately trying to respond. It's immediately trying to say, okay, oh no, we need to bring this and keep this into a normal range. And so it's trying to release insulin. and so you can see on the screen, there's a massive uptick in the blue line, which is the initial response and insulin immediately to the elevation and glucose.

41:30This is exactly what happens in normal physiology, yet no one can measure it, but you can see it here. So how would I feel when the glucose spike is high? Do I feel energetic? Do I feel focused? Or do I feel tired? My personal experience here, Steven, is that as blood sugar becomes very high, I become my focus reduces, my become fatigued. I can also, according to my wife, become irritable. But you can even look this up. You can look up what are the symptoms of hyperglycemia, what are the symptoms of elevated glucose levels above the normal range, which is normal 70 to 120. That's when you can start to see very clearly that the evidence over time has shown a very clear impact, not not only how you feel physically, but also your mental health status as well.

42:20I've just looked up the symptoms here and it says, the common immediate symptoms of having a high glucose spike is you feel thirsty, dry mouth, frequent urination, headache, brain fog, fatigue, sluggishness, blurry vision. And then once you go down and you crash, where your glucose really drops below the normal range, what do you feel then typically? So a lot of how I like to describe this is almost like imagine your outside and sunny outside and you have a great day, great conversation with other friends and then all of a sudden very rapidly clouds come over top. Everyone kind of dissipates and it starts to rain.

43:01It's almost like it's it's we know that glucose levels have a direct impact on the neurobiology of the brain meaning how the brain functions, how it operates, and particularly at very high glucose levels, you know, typically above 180 milligrams per desoleter, you start to see signals of inflammation, signals of stress, like oxidative stress in the body if people have heard of that before. And that can start to cause damage on tissues, and cause a stress response. But the problem here, Steven, is that most patients are living there 24 -7. I was looking at some of the symptoms here, and it says, the short -term crash you get after a spike, after a rapid rise is a bit of an insulin overshoot.

43:45So it's reactive hypoglycemia, which is the sugar crash, and then you might feel in that crash, jittery or shaky, hungry, often craving carbs and sugar again, irritable anxious, weak or light -headed. I stayed up until 3am the night I first tried a replica, and it blew my mind. Reply or sponsor of this podcast, one of the most powerful AI platforms I've come across. They allow you to turn any idea you have into real working apps in minutes using plain English. Just describe what you want to create and Replicate AI agents will create it for you. And you don't need any coding experience to get started.

44:21I asked Replicate AI agent to create a brand new to -do list for me, based on exactly how I wanted my perfect to -do list to be, and it built it for me in minutes. And I didn't need to know how to code to create it. That is now the to -do list that I'm using. Super cheap, super fast and completely personalized to exactly what I wanted it to do. And now I'm an investor in the company as well as them being a brand sponsor. And Replic connects to payment systems like Stripe or services like OpenAI and has a built -in database and user authentication system. If you're a founder or a freelance or anyone who's been searching for someone who can code, you can build your next app with Replic.

44:58Head to Replic .com and use code Stephen to get 50 % off your first month of Replic's core plan. You did a study in 2025, I believe, on the impact of the ketogenic diet on physical performance? You know, if the ketogenic diet has all these therapeutic potentials, you know, going back for over two centuries, what is truly the impact of it on performance? Because that's one of the primary reasons where at least someone were to walk into a clinical setting and say, well, yeah, you can do this, but I've heard it's going to decrease my performance. Physical performance. physical performance. And so we were very, very interested in this because we thought, okay, it, you know, when we look at why carbohydrates are currently being recommended as sports nutrition is because since 1921, they've been shown to improve performance.

45:47And how they showed that 1921 was that physicians out of Harvard and Boston actually watched Boston marathoners half of which you would come wouldn't even finish the race. Slurred words, they would have like almost pale skin, shaky, weren't able to articulate their words or some wouldn't finish at all. And what they were finding was that these when they tested the blood of these individuals that they were finding that glucose levels were low. Basically they reached what they call hypoglycemia. It's a medical term described very low blood sugar levels. And Because then next year they provided carbohydrates and these marathoners and the Boston Marathon and all of them improved their performance.

46:29And so since 1925 actually, we've known that carbohydrates can improve performance. But what has happened though over time is that in 1960s, there was a measurement technique called the Bergstrom mess that where you actually did a muscle biopsy, pulled out, muscle tissue and found that, oh wow, there's actually glucose stored in the muscle. So it must be really important for physical performance. If the muscle which is used to contract and move the body during physical performance, that if glucose is in that tissue, it must be essential for performance. And then after they discovered that, there was all these associations between low glucose levels in the muscle called glycogen, low glycogen, and fatigue.

47:12Then, after that, in the 1980s, they were able to look at the amount of sugar or carbohydrates and fat that the body was burning during exercise. What they found at that stage is that, oh, wow, it looks like the amount that people are able to sustain and intense exercise is proportional to how many carbohydrates they're burning. And then there was a few modeling studies, Stephen, that then looked at, okay, what's the relationship between, let's say, the intensity of exercise and what type of fuel you use, whether it be fat or carbohydrates. And they found that they modeled it, okay, and said, okay, well, at lower intensities, you must burn almost all fat.

48:06And at very high intensities, you must burn carbs. And there was a number of studies in 2017 to 2020, three different studies that looked at the ketogenic diet over a five day to three week period. And they saw that in those studies that there was a decline in performance by around 2%. If you in the ketogenic diet, if you were on the ketogenic diet. Correct. Compared to a high carb diet. Yeah. And so what did that tell these researchers? Well, said, okay, well obviously the keto -jank diet must have been a pair of performance. And there's all this evidence since 1921 that the amount of carbohydrates glycogen, how much carbs you're consuming is essential for performance.

48:46But here's the kicker. Is that one major confounder of all of this is that we've known for quite a long period of time that the adaptation to a keto -jank diet is not one week. It's not two weeks, not even three. It's four weeks or more. And when you say adaptation, you mean your body's transition to being in a Estate where it's efficient at burning using ketones so the body's ability to Lower its glucose oxidation the amount of carbohydrates. It's burning for fuel because you're giving your body less of it The amount of fat that's being utilized for fuel goes up dramatically and then you produce way more ketone bodies and ketones are now being used as not only a body tissue substrate, meaning energy for the muscle, but also for the brain.

49:39And so it's this transition over. But when people were looking at these studies, they were just looking at some of the metrics of what happens when your body transforms when you reduce carbohydrates. So what we wanted to do is say, okay, if there's all these health promoting benefits of a ketogenic diet. That sounds great. But all these studies and sports dogma would say that's going to impair performance. Okay. So let's test that. Let's actually put athletes on a QJ diet four or four weeks. We are going to control not only their calories, we're going to control their body composition, we're going to control their activity level.

50:21We're going to control all these key confounders that many of these prior studies never controlled. So that we could truly test the diet in due. So the macro nutrient, meaning the shift from carbs to fat, affect on performance. But we're going to do it in the same person. So now we're going to control their genetics. We're going to control their environment. Once we did that, Stephen, we tested what most people think is a very glucose dependent form of exercise. We asked them to do six by 800 meter sprints. They were on a high carb diet, and then they switched to a low carb diet. Now what happened is all randomized and controlled.

51:00When they switched over, they had no deterioration in performance at four weeks, at the four week mark in a form of exercise that we would expect would be extremely glucose dependent, extremely carbohydrate dependent. But before four weeks was there an impairment in that performance. So what we were interested in, Steven, is studying at the end. So we didn't look intermedially. We exclusively look at the end time point. Because the question was, well, is there a difference once you stick to this diet? Because if you go on this diet, ideally, you're sticking with it over time. And so if it is true that you require carbohydrates, we then also measured how many carbohydrates in fact, they were burning during exercise.

51:52And it was over what we call 85 % of their VO2 max, which means 85 % of their total maximum oxygen consumption during exercise. That is when we would expect almost no fat to be oxidized or to be burned, and almost exclusively carbohydrates. Well, we found that these athletes recorded the highest levels of fat burning during exercise, every port in the literature, illustrating that when these athletes ketogenic diet, that when these diets adapted to the diet for sufficiently long, they had record levels of fat oxidation, even at very high intensity levels, which means that fat was able to provide nutrients and fuel at very, very intense form of exercise when we would expect only carbohydrates would be relevant and utilizable.

52:52So many of my friends that are endurance athletes or that are involved in things like cycling talk about exogenous ketones. I'm a co -owner of a company that produces exogenous ketones, so that's my disclaimer. I've got the product here. What can you tell me about products like this? Exogenous ketone products. Exogenous meaning externally supplemented, I guess. Right, so with a ketogenic diet, you produce them, your liver produces them for you with exogenous, you're consuming these. Well, why would you consume them? Why not just do a ketogenic diet? Well, we know that a ketogenic diet takes time to adapt.

53:34We just talked about that with physical performance that we see that you know at the four weeks to see the full effect on performance or more. Well, what happens if you're, let's say a warfighter or someone who's going out into the field or immediately wants to flip into this state? You can't do that. Unless there was a molecule that you could consume that could rapidly elevate ketone bodies in circulation within minutes, insert exogenous ketone bodies. We have known since the 1960s that the product in there was studied by MIT in the aerospace department called 1 -3 -b10 -dial, that it was able to be consumed and rapidly elevate ketone bodies in circulation.

54:21There was a study in 2016 called the Metabalk Oppositions, $10 million program from DARPA. Oh, but being the... DARPA is an advanced research organization from the United States government where they fund very high risk -heavy word programs. And one of which was the use and testing of ketone bodies. And so that molecule that they tested was utilized the same molecules in there, and they kind of tweaked some of the formulations a bit. And they showed that, and we know that this is the same for this molecule as well, that when you consume them it rapidly changes metabolism. Almost not identical to what happens with the ketogenic type, but it has almost direct impact.

55:03It has a but glucose lowering effect. It directly binds to receptors like the They call GPR 109A or some other key receptors that directly impact inflammation. So it directly box something called NORP3 -inflammation, which is a molecule that leads to increases in inflammation. We also know that it changes the way that our genes are used in the body, called epigenetic signaling. And so the consumption of ketone bodies can actually change the molecules on our genes and how those molecules are ultimately manifested. And that increases our antioxidant capacity, meaning our ability to block oxidative stress in the body.

55:51We see all these powerful effects, these rapid shifts in metabolism within the body in this 2016 study showed that just, orally consuming these molecules could rapidly shift metabolism. But there was also link to improvement in physical performance. But if you look beyond that and just like these kind of studies, because we looked at them and athletes, we looked at them in healthy individuals, and then also in military settings. But we've also, there's studies looking at this in patients at risk for cognitive decline. So patients at risk for Alzheimer's disease, they've shown that in a six month study, administering exogenous ketone bodies was able to attenuate the decline in cognition that we know happens with advanced age.

56:34And just to be clear that you're saying it reduces the decline. It doesn't correct. Cure outside, muscle fix outside, and correcting. Correct. It just delays. Accurate. Yes. It's, we know that as individuals age, you're on a precipitous or steady decline in brain function. And so the goal is to offset or to stop the decline. You know, that's our goal. We want to maintain normal brain function and our ability to think clearly and to understand things clearly like reading and doing problems and solving problems. There have also been these emergence of studies and the world of psychiatry. I think there's around 11 ongoing active clinical trials looking at the impacts and and ration of ketone -based therapies and brain health, particularly serious mental illness.

57:26One in four adults in the United States, actually over one in four adults in the United States, has serious mental illness. In fact, I believe the numbers are over 20 % of adults are taking some type of psycho -altering medication. Now, it's core, we see all these relationships between underlying metabolism, being a key factor contributing to mental health status and the application of this unique diet, which we know increases ketone bodies, which appeared to have direct impacts on the brain, now seems to be linked to improved serious mental illness. And it'll be interesting to see where that evolves, but it's just a fascinating world to imagine that nutrition, not a medication, not a technology, but the they simply go into the grocery store and swapping the things you choose in there can lead to these powerful, powerful therapeutic effects and people of all sorts of different conditions or disorders.

58:27One of the studies that I read about the administration of exogenous ketones and the impact it has on brain networks stability was from 2020 where they investigated a brain network stability responds to two major brain fuels, either glucose or ketones. And participants came to the laboratory on two occasions, end -rank exogenous ketones, or glucose. And after consuming these drinks, they underwent an MRI scan. Strikingly, the study showed that ketones increased the stability of brain networks. In contrast, glucose decreased the stability of the network. The network's stability was 87 % greater after ketone consumption than stability measured after glucose consumption.

59:05And in that study, which is on PubMed, the last line of the abstract says, dietary interventions, resulting in ketone utilization increase available energy, and thus may show potential in protecting the aging of the brain. Just super interesting. So we did a study looking at cancer and applying exogenous ketones in a very aggressive form of metastatic cancer. And what we saw in my work graduate school is that when applying just exhaustion as ketones that it delayed the progression of the metastatic cancer. But it also, when looking at body weight, reduce the rapid decline in body weight we sometimes see with cancer, a phenomenon called cacaxia, which is a way, a term described the rapid wasting of body tissue with disease.

59:56And it is no more aggressive than the context of cancer, particularly metacetic cancers, where it's most common. And when we saw the lack of decline in body weight, I then looked at where the body weight was coming from. And it was clear that the lack of body weight decline was because of the preservation in muscle mass. So it also appeared, and there's been a number of what they call clinical physiology studies. So studies that actually directly manipulate human beings with molecules and tests, you know, like muscle tissues and how they function, we see that exogenous ketone administration can dramatically reduce the amount of muscle breakdown or breakdown of muscle tissue.

1:00:44Essentially, illustrating it may be a powerful mechanism in promoting healthy muscle mass as well. Well, in terms of being an eukitogenic diet, one of the things I'm always quite concerned about is, am I still able to gain muscle mass if I'm in a ketogenic diet because when I go into a ketogenic diet and I stop having carbohydrates, I tend to lose weight rapidly and shred. Yeah. And the fat falls off and I get very lean but it's more skinny. You smile though because maybe you like to be more shredded. So a phenomenon with the ketogenic diet, so there's no deterioration in muscle mass with the ketogenic diet.

1:01:24There have been plenty of studies that have shown that you're able to maintain muscle mass. And build it? Yes, and build it. So they've shown that as well. So Jeff Volok out of Ohio State University has done a number of studies in this area looking at individuals who were actually on a reduced intake diet. So they're reducing less calories, so they had less energy in the diet, and they were also doing the ketogenic diet. It was actually a military study. And they showed that they were able to maintain muscle mass just as much as if someone was on a high carb diet while under a caloric restriction, or another way of describing that is like a semi -starving, starvation state.

1:02:02So there's no impact, negative impact, that we see with these diets on muscle mass. However, to your personal example, one of the first things that happens when you go on to ketogenic diets, There's a natural or natural ease of effect, but basically you reduce the amount of sodium in the body so you piss it out basically. And you hold that water weight. And that's one of the first things is why people see this rapid shift in body weight initially when they're on a cubic giant diet, which for many people is great because if they're trying to do it to lose weight, that's like a immediate reinforcement, but sometimes it's water weight.

1:02:37Well, water is in both the fat and the muscle. So it's not necessarily that you're losing any muscle mass per se, but it just might be in a funnel in a really less water way. And in some contexts, that might be beneficial, right? If you're in a sport where you have a power to weight ratio, but you're able to maintain the same power at a lower weight, simply by shifting water, that's great, as long as you're able to function equivalently. Is there anything I do need to be thinking about in terms of my diet to make sure I'm still gaining weight just to keep my protein levels high. So the most important thing related to your diet when it comes to trying to build muscle mass is to exercise hard and with resistance exercise.

1:03:19That's the most important thing. When it comes to your diet to enhance that effect, protein is one of the most powerful nutrients you can consume to augment that response. Another is to ensure you're having sufficient calories, right? So if you're in a caloric deficit, so you said that you tend to eat less calories because you're probably not as hungry. Well, yes, that's one of the most powerful ways to lose not only fat, but also muscle is to just not eat food. Or I think that's it. Because I lose my appetite when I'm in the ketogenic diet. I also lose my appetite a little bit when I take these exogenous ketones, like ketone, I cure.

1:03:56And I've seen some of the studies that show that there's roughly 20 % decrease in appetite when you take extra genus ketones, according to one particular study that I read. But when I'm in the ketogenic diet, it's like food is, I get hungry, but then I start eating and I stop very quickly. Yeah. And it's really bizarre. Like I was in Cape Town for 10 days or two weeks writing my book. And so I had the chef there and the chef cooks me my food and it makes this amazing food. And I'm so hungry. I look it out and look how amazing I'm. I start eating it. I have like five or six bites and I'm done. And only when I'm in the ketogenic diet, there's something going on in my body which just doesn't just doesn't want to binge eat like I sometimes fit.

1:04:40So there's two things to talk about. One is the type of foods you're consuming on a ketogenic diet and the other is what is happening in your body, in your metabolism on the diet. So there's a book called Always Hungry by a physician, an inter -cannologist named David Ludwig, and he's kind of coined this carbohydrate insulin model. And it's somewhat controversial, but the reality is that there's some important notes in it, one related to hunger, which is if you're able to have a fuel source on a ketogenic diet that's sustained over time. So you don't have the up and downs of glucose and up and downs of insulin to these constant swings.

1:05:15Whereas on a ketogenic diet, you have the sustained level fuel influx, right? So you have this nutrient availability the blood, so glucose levels are much more stabilized, insulin is much more stabilized, and you don't have those fluctuations, particularly those specific molecules. That might be one potential reason, but the other potential reason is that when you're on a keto -jank diet, you tend to not consume the type of foods that drive hunger. So again, we talked about in the grocery store, the 70 % of the grocery store, and particularly in the center of the grocery store, that is highly processed where they combine carbohydrates with salt or fat or some combination there and that makes it highly palatable or very, very tasty.

1:05:56You know, increase the dopamine response, this positive reinforcement response of the food. That drives people to seek more of that pleasure response. And as a result, they want to consume more. So everyone has probably felt this example where you're in a restaurant, you eat enough food to where you feel physically fully like, I'm totally full like I don't want you to need more food. Someone walks by, we have a favorite dessert. And you're like, oh, I can eat that. You're literally physically full. But yet, you want to consume more food. This is a phenomenon that has been the struggle of, in America, and the rest of the world, essentially now, where the food environment often drives people to over -consume.

1:06:46And it's not by accident, these are like well -conducted strategies in the food industry to lead to these positive plus responses. I have to butt this with bread in the restaurant. You know, they give you bread first. Yeah, it's a good, it's a solid strategy, Steven, to cause you to want to consume. Start to finish, not only the bread, get a big meal, and follow on with dessert. You know, it is a great strategy for ensuring that, but it's also the same strategy that Doritos is using, where like you combine this mixture of molecules in the food that you consume it and you get, oh, it tastes great.

1:07:25Pringles. The same exact thing, where you combine these different components and it forces you, this is like, oh, this tastes great, I need more. And you never feel full. One of the most common tricks that the food industry utilizes in these environments is that they certainly are aware of this, right? And so when you consume these type of foods together, they know they consume more of it. But sometimes people aren't even aware of it. And the best example of this, go look at the back of most of the bacon on the grocery store aisle. Go look at the back of most peanut butter, almond butter, nut butter, and the grocery store.

1:08:07Most of them have added salt and added sugar. Even to levels where you don't even taste it. But go look at the label. The reason those are added is to increase the flavor profile, the positive brain response to the food so that you consume more of it. And this is a huge part in why people always feel hungry in today's food environment. They're always seeking more food and they can't get off that hamster wheel. They're always over consuming or always referring to this phenomenon called food noise where they always feel the drive to consume foods or they never feel full. And it's because of the sugar in the soap.

1:08:52So it is because the food is composed and made in such a way to have a flavor profile that your brain says not just eat one bite, eat as much as possible because we're always seeking this pleasure responses in our lives and our world. This is even independent of food. So what do we do about this? So the solution for most people in this situation is to try to focus, number one, don't consume liquid calories. That's like a dead giveaway bad move because those are abundance of calories will drive people often to over consume them and very drive this pleasure response in the brain. Liquid calories, what's a liquid calorie?

1:09:39So let's say you have a soda or a coke. Yeah. So basically completely void of any nutrients and really high in calories, spice your glucose through the roof, insulin through the roof, and then often makes you hungry later afterwards, not less hungry by having... Like orange juice. ...as a mother -grade example. Smoothies. They're free. Smoothies people have. Exactly. In fact, just taking fruit and then blending it up actually increases the speed by which of absorbed, changes the hormonal response and leads to a worse outcome for most people. These people think a fruit smoothie is a healthy thing.

1:10:15Yeah, I don't know about that. I would think that when you take fruit, which for most reasons isn't terrible, right? It's not, these are nutrient -dense foods. If people can consume them and get away from them great, if you have a metabolic disease, you might be more vulnerable to, let's say, glucose elevations. But when you then take foods like that, it could be any foods. It's gonna be taking potatoes and then making mashed potatoes. By simply changing or blending that food up, you are now taking a lot of these structural components that your body would take time that I adjust and you're removing them.

1:10:49And you basically almost are like, oh, I'm just turning on like a small hose that's just giving you a little bit of water at a time and is turning it on all the way. You know, you're rapidly increasing the speed of how the nutrients enter the body. And it completely changes the hormonal response of molecules like GLP1 and normal levels of GLP1 in the body are completely altered. The insulin response is also altered. And GLP1 is the hunger, human. It's known for being related to hunger because it's released in response to food. It changes the brain's hunger drive. And most people know of it because of...

1:11:26It's epic. OZMPIC, somagletide, will gov, trizipotide, all these GOP1 receptor agonists that are increasing GOP1 levels, not to normal levels. They're increasing them to super physiologic levels, levels that would never be observed or ever seen in normal settings of the body. I've just invested millions into this and become a co -owner of the company. It's a company called Keytone IQ. And the story is quite interesting. I started talking about ketosis on this podcast and the fact that I am very low carb, very, very low sugar, and my body produces ketones, which have made me incredibly focused, have improved my endurance, have improved my mood, and have made me more capable at doing what I do here.

1:12:13And because I was talking about it on the podcast, a couple of weeks later, these showed up on my desk in my HQ in London, these little shots. And oh my god. The impact this had on my ability to articulate myself, on my focus, on my workouts, on my mood, on stopping me crashing throughout the day was so profound that I reached out to the founders of the company and now I'm a co -owner of this business. I highly, highly recommend you look into this. I highly recommend you look at the science behind the product. If you want to try it for yourself, visit ketone .com slash Stephen for 30 % off your subscription order and you'll also get a free gift with your second shipment.

1:12:51That's keytone .com slash Stephen. And I'm so honored that once again a company I own can sponsor my podcast. Just give me 15 seconds to explain how you can build a viable business online. The people I see winning in life don't have a perfect plan. They just take the first step and then the next and then they keep going. They stay obsessed and they stay consistent. And Stan Stahl, a platform I co -own and one of our sponsors, is the best first step to help turn your knowledge into income. It only takes a couple of minutes to launch your business and start selling digital products, coaching, memberships, or communities online.

1:13:24Without any tech headaches or endless setup, thousands of entrepreneurs, creators, and risk takers use Stan to take control of their future. Because Stan is for entrepreneurs for those willing to put in the work and bet on themselves. If you're ready to start building, join us. Launch your business today with a free 14 -day trial at stevenbartlet .stan .store. So I want to give the audience that are listening some practical ways that they can change their life, to live a better life, and to navigate the food environment we live in. But just to, just generally the advice that you would give, if you had the ear of, I don't know, five million people right now, and you could say something to them to help them live better lives, to perform better, what advice would you give them?

1:14:08Number one is I would say, be conscious of the food you're consuming and what you're consuming on a daily basis. The impact of food is equivalent to medicine. It is, and sometimes more powerful than medicine. So what you drink, what you eat, focusing on whole foods, not consuming liquid calories. And if you're someone who could benefit uniquely from stable glucose levels, lower insulin levels like someone who has some type of metabolic disorder like I do, reducing carbohydrates oftentimes can be a very powerful strategy. In fact, known to prevent and reverse things like obesity and type 2 diabetes with emerging evidence for its potential ability to put things like serious mental illness into remission, but we'll see as more evidence comes out.

1:14:50Exercise on a regular basis. We know that exercise might not be the primary, the lack of exercise might not be the primary driver for why someone is or isn't obese, but we do know that physical activity promotes health. We do know that physical activity is extremely important for overall well -being. And so... You've got big muscles. Oh, well. Is that somewhat linked to your type of diabetes at all? Is that part of your strategy? Yeah, look, I was obese at one point and so I've since that point taken a very, I've become obsessed with trying to find out how to be a bigger, stronger, faster, optimized my metabolic health, optimized my performance.

1:15:29And so it's been a lifelong kind of self -experiment in that journey. But exercise is just important in general. But it's for me, it's about all the different experiments and strategies I can use with exercise, with resistance exercise and beyond to kind of play around with what affects my body, what affects my insulin, how do I increase my overall metabolic health, and what I have seen is that that's directly linked to my performance. How often do you exercise? I try to exercise every single day as much as I... How long for and what types of exercise? So what I do right now is I I typically do weight lifting for 30 minutes to an hour or six days a week.

1:16:11And then I will go typically ride a bike to Jiu -Jitsu, so Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu, which can be uniquely almost like a mixed exercise, intense exercise, where it can be extremely intense for like five minutes and then you have a one or two minute break, extremely intense and then a break. And I do that typically around five days a week. I also try to purposely engage in some type of aerobic exercise when I can if I wasn't able to do as much due to one day or as much resistance exercise. I always try to add on some type of cardiovascular work, whether that be a run, a bike, or these aerodine bikes where it's just lower in upper body.

1:16:48I find those to be incredibly effective and powerful tools and actually just not causing damage to muscle tissue, but also allowing you to improve your overall cardiovascular health. What does your diet look like? So I tend to wake up and not think about food. That's one thing that I've also experienced similar to you that when I switched to a keto junk diet, not only improved my glucose and insulin, but I also found that with a keto junk diet that I don't feel hungry. So I would wake up and I don't tend to eat food right away. In fact, I enjoy when I don't eat food more, so the one I do eat food oftentimes, just because not because I don't enjoy the feeling of sitting down and having food.

1:17:30I love that. But the experience and lived quality of life of not having high variable glucose levels, high insulin levels and the uncertainty that comes with that in my daily life, I enjoy the 23 hours or 22 hours of my day where I have this stability, not the moments in time where I'm introducing uncertainty and variability. To dumb that down a little bit, what I'm saying is that when I don't, I wake up and I don't eat food because I find that I'm not hungry, but I also find that it makes managing diabetes easier. And so do you want today or twice a day? I tend to eat two to three times a day, you know, sometimes right before, or weightlifting just it's always afterwards and always before, sometime before bad.

1:18:19Try not to do it right before bad because it tends to impact my sleep quality a little bit. But I find that I just eat whenever I feel hungry and I try to give myself sufficient protein to be able to respond to the exercise that I'm doing. So I've got the first one about being intentional about your food choices. is the second one is about exercise. Mm -hmm. Anything else? Well, sleep's really important. You know, these are, you know, Steven, this isn't like, oh, like this is the most revolutionary advice of all time, but these core foundational components, good nutrition, tailored to your specific needs, exercising as much as you can, and getting good sleep are the pillars of health.

1:19:00If you don't have those corrected, then you're wasting your time everywhere else. Is there anything as it relates to glucose? That surprised you because you're someone that sees a lot of this data. I mean, you walk around with the two devices on that you've mentioned and you're looking at the insulin and glucose response. Is there anything that people don't understand as having a really pronounced impact on their glucose levels that they wouldn't expect? Like orange juice is one of the ones that growing up, I thought, I thought this was a healthy thing. I used to drink sunny delight, thinking I was putting all these amazing vitamins in my body.

1:19:39And now I actually look back and regret it. And I, you know, not to be judgmental over any parents because parenting is very hard. But sometimes I'll see parents giving their children a big glass of orange juice. And in my head, I just see the glucose spike that that child's about to have. It's funny when you mention parenting because I have a three and a six -year -old at home. And it's amazing when they try one of these foods, these very sugary foods, these very tasty foods, they, it's almost like they become incessant on wanting it again. You know, like normal food isn't good enough anymore.

1:20:15And I think that's a great illustration of what many of us adults are challenged with on a daily basis. But yet, many people are just unaware of the impact that is having on them metabolism, impact on it's having on their hunger, the impact that that's going to lead to on their future health. And is there anything that you've spotted from your experiments with your CGM and your insulin device that people should most certainly avoid? So you said liquid calories. Is there anything else that causes a really pronounced or unexpected glucose response? Yeah, you know, there's so many, honestly, Stephen, over time that it's honest, it's really hard to pinpoint any singular one.

1:20:51A lot of the foods that are out there are often surprisingly challenging on glucose levels, on insulin levels, particularly the processed foods. Because what happens when you make these food products is that you're trusting the food company to put ingredients in it that you're going to respond favorably to, that your metabolism will respond well to. And the truth is that that's far from a guarantee. And in many cases, maybe less likely than it is likely. And so, yeah, I don't have a single example for you, Stephen. I just, but I've experienced it numerous times. So, I've got a small list here.

1:21:26Sugar drinks, white bread and bagels, white rice. That's surprised me a lot, because I used to think white rice. Oh, really? I thought growing up rice was like a health food. Okay, well, so on that note, white rice, potatoes, pasta, potatoes, in any form. Sweet potatoes tend to have less of a glycemic response, but it's still going to have a potent glycemic response. So, mashed or baked potatoes, obviously, french fries, yeah. For sure, french fries. Most of, like, pasta's a big one. Serial? Refined cereals? Most cereals are actually worse than the foods that I just described on Blutcher and insulin.

1:22:04By a long shot, in fact, most of the, you know, these heart healthy cereals, these, I would never, Blutcher would just spike through the roof, portion of the amount of eight. So yeah, I wouldn't be consuming a lot of those. And I think most people at this stage in the health and science world would also generally align with that. The dose aren't necessarily the best foods to consume. We would think more of the less glycemic or the foods that have less of an impact on glucose levels, less of an impact on insulin levels. You know, one thing I constantly hear, especially in the research in clinical community, is like, well, look, you know, not everyone needs to be concerned about that because, you know, people can respond to a lot of these foods just fine.

1:22:55I say, you're right, except that over half of America has prediabetes. And a 90 plus percent have some form of measurement that indicates that their metabolic health is impaired. And over 86, 68 percent are obese. And now children are affected with these diseases, with obesity and prediabetes at around 20%. So it's the fact that we are now less healthy than we've ever been. We didn't have the foundation to support. Correct. And I think when we think about healthy nutrition, we think about exercise, we describe them as medicine. But the reality is, these are just normal aspects of things you should do every single day because that's what our bodies were made to do.

1:23:45And when we don't do those things, this is when health deteriorates. This is when we're challenging our body to maintain normal health. One of the surprising ones for me was dried fruits. And it said, while fruit contains natural sugars, the process of drying it concentrates those sugars. This removes the water and can make the sugar more readily available for absorption, leading to a higher glucose spike compared to fresh fruit. Typically, people think of dried fruit as being a health food. As well. I don't touch those because Unless I don't have any glucose on me and my blood sugar is going down for some reason and I stay in dangerously low levels, that's when I consume those foods.

1:24:21Otherwise, I would not consume them just because of how quickly they raise blood sugar levels. Do you think everybody should try the ketogenic diet? Oh, that is a good question. I think, wow, what I would say is that you will never know the potential of its benefit or lack thereof if you don't try. Like anything in life, we're left to assume what everyone else is like. You might have, we talked about the ketogenic diet numerous times here. We talked about exogenous ketones, numerous times here. But if you don't try it, you don't know how to work for you. In science, Stephen, one of the most important things to appreciate is that we often publish bar graphs look like this, you know, the align that illustrates the average outcome of a group of people.

1:25:19But what you don't appreciate is that that line or that bar graph is made up of numerous individuals who all averaged to that number. But what if you're the person who's at the very high dot or the very bottom dot, Meaning that you're the what they call an outlier or someone who responded negatively or positively to that. And then you just follow the average advice that that study showed. Well, oh look, I tried this approach and it didn't it didn't work for me. I'm just gonna keep trying because the study said that I should. Well, no, you might be the person who wasn't that study who didn't respond just like the person on the opposite end of the spectrum who did who averaged out to the metal.

1:26:04So in that study that talked about the impact of exogenous ketones on brain stability, someone might have had a hundred percent improvement in brain stability, and someone might have had 20 % improvement or whatever, and they've averaged it out across a bigger group of people. So if you are that person that had a hundred percent gain in brain stability, it's a pretty unbelievable tool for you to understand based on your body. Exactly. And that's always the case in science. I mean, There are and this sometimes we look at this as responders and non -responders But actually in the study where we gave the product from Atrium and InQ to my Q in the the so -com study We actually saw that nearly all of them saw an increase in SBO2 nearly all them saw an increase in heart rate But that's rare That is rare.

1:26:51SPU2 So the amount of oxygen in the blood so the the measure that would indicate whether someone in these low oxygen environments had more blood or less oxygen or less oxygen. Ultimately, it's important to try. I think it's, I would always say yes, you should try, because or any nutrition strategy, because you should try different ones. I've probably tried over 10 plus different diets, but honestly, maybe like 15 or 20 at this point in my life. I've just come to find that the ketogenic diet for all the reasons we described, and because I have type hyponibus and I had or have type hyponibus but had obesity, find that a ketogenic diet is remarkably powerful at helping me live a dramatically improved quality of life, not having increased risk for the high and variable glucose levels, high insulin levels that lead to a near guarantee of complications and 10 to 20 years of lost life and so I can see.

1:27:48That's why I do it. I have a closing tradition on this podcast where the risk gets leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And this is a really tough question. So it's a very strange question as well, but I'm going to ask you anyway. Yeah. The question is, what is outside the simulation?

1:28:13I think it depends on your philosophy on how our existence is with the limitations of understanding that our awareness of our world is completely limited to our brain's capacity. and our interpretation and then explanation of the world and the term of a simulation or lack, you know, who have you on a frame at, I believe it is always going to be limited by our brain's ability to understand and articulate that. So what do you think is outside the simulation?

1:29:04Contristence. You think consciousness is outside the simulation? I think that our ability to have, not consciousness, Stephen, but our ability to operate beyond consciousness. Got me on that one, man. That was a, that's a question. Yeah, it is a tough question. That's a, that's a, that's a, the burner right there. I don't know. Do you think there is, do you think there is a God beyond, beyond this, all this stuff that we see, I'm going to give you the most real honest answer possible. Yeah. I don't think we ever can actually answer that question accurately. So your answer to that is, you don't know.

1:29:46I don't know. And I don't think I'll ever know. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for doing the work that you do. I really appreciate it because so many of my friends in this field, and even Michael, the founder of the key term product on my table here, talk about you as being the gold standard of research science and thought leadership on the subject of ketones and more broadly on the subject of glucose and all of the adjacent subjects like insulin. So you've really pushed the field forward and they're thinking forward in this basic and really profound way. And you're only just getting started at 34 years old, which is remarkable.

1:30:19We're basically the same age. And you've had such a tremendous impact on the field of health and that's born out of the story that you told the start through your own complications. So although it's such a tragic thing to have such a diagnosis at such a young age, what's come from that is a beautiful thing for so many people that will better understand themselves and their illnesses but also their performance and everything correlated related to that because of you. So please keep doing the research you're doing and spreading the word and the way you're spreading it because it's much much needed work and it's important work.

1:30:49So thank you so much and thank you for giving me your time today. Just be there, I was not all right, appreciate it, sir. Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10 ,000 of you to come even deeper into the diorevasio. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my pad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never ever released.

1:31:20And so much more. In the circle you'll have direct access to me, you can tell less what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember for now we're only inviting the first 10 ,000 people that joined before it closes. So if you want to join our private close community, head to the link in the description below or go to doccircle .com. I will speak to you there.

1:32:09If you're someone running a business today, that means you're probably operating in a world that doesn't sit still. Tariffs and trade policies are dynamic. Customer expectations shift constantly and the pace of innovation is relentless. So your margin of error is becoming increasingly smaller. Making decisions without full visibility across your business is not only risky, but it inevitably slows down everything. And I see it all the time. Businesses with the right ideas, but they're stuck because they're spread across five systems that don't talk to each other. Many of my companies now use our sponsor NetSuite by Oracle, which has an AI -powered business management suite that allows you to see your business more clearly.

1:32:46Everything from financials to HR to operations lives in one place, So instead of chasing information, you've got it all in front of you. It operates in real time so you can forecast with assurance, spot problems before they even become problems and generally move faster without blind spots. If your business is generating seven figures or more, there's a free ebook that's worth your time reading. It's called Navigating Global Trade, three insights for leaders. And you can download it now from netsweep .com slash Bartlett. That's netsweep .com slash Bartlett. I'll link it below.