Dr. Anthony Chaffee: Reversing Chronic Disease Through Carnivore Diet | MMP #266
Doctor Chaffee, welcome back.
Anthony:Yeah. Thank you very much.
Harry:We are stoked to have you back on.
Anthony:Yeah. Me too, man. It's good to see you guys.
Brett:Dude, it's crazy. We had you on episode 76, which was July of twenty two, and I feel so much better now.
Anthony:Yeah. What are you guys at, Tim? What are you up to now?
Brett:Dude, it's honestly just been
Anthony:%. Yeah.
Brett:I know. I think we're episode two. This is, like, episode two's long.
Anthony:Dump it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible.
Anthony:That's awesome, man. Great job.
Brett:No. We appreciate it, man. It was so good to connect with you too. And I think we were saying this when we first came on the podcast, you know, because we've been, you know, heavy into the carnivore space for probably, like, five or six years. I think I was telling you I had ulcerative colitis, had a lot of success going carnivore, but it's so helpful having MDs and people that are in the medical field like yourself that are promoting this movement because I see with my parents and family friends that are a little bit older, it's like they're they're probably not gonna listen to me, but if there's someone like you that's an actual neurosurgeon that's been doing this for twenty plus years, they're so much more likely to listen to it.
Brett:So I know we've talked about that before, but I always just think it's an interesting point that I come back to.
Anthony:Well, but but I think it's it's just as important, if not more important to to speak to people like, you know, yourselves that that you've had serious medical issues that have been ameliorated by simple dietary changes. And and, yeah, and it it's it's it's a good, you know, weather vane having something like Crohn's or ulcerative colitis because there's such a an acute change in your health if you if you eat the wrong thing. You can see really what's what's happening to you in real time. You go outside of you you eat a certain way and you're doing better, like, okay. But maybe that's coincidence and you try to eat something else, and all of a sudden you have bloody diarrhea.
Anthony:I was like, well, that's pretty clear. And so having having people show that and and, you're seeing testimonies like yourself, it's all well and good. You know, we were talking about this sort of, you know, before we started, but it's all well and good to have a study that says something. But if it doesn't line up with reality, if it doesn't actually happen in the real world, it doesn't matter what a study says because it's wrong. And so, I mean, studies can be made inappropriately.
Anthony:They can be made with vested interest, and they can just be garbage. They may just not be able to to lend information in the way that they're designed and built. And so if you have a study that says, you know, you should eat x, y, and z for ulcerative colitis, and then you do that and it causes a huge disaster and you do the opposite of that, and it helps. So it really doesn't matter what the study says. So it's good to see, you know, people like yourself coming out with with your stories to say, like, hey.
Anthony:I've I've done this. I've tried this. We have these two competing arguments, and you should have evidence with which to test that those theories against, and you're living proof of that. You know, you you are the evidence. You've done both, and you have very clear results, and that's what we're seeing more and more and more.
Anthony:So it's great to have, you know, those stories out there.
Brett:Yeah. So you can show me all the peer reviewed studies that you want, but when I'm telling you that I was on drugs that were 400 k a year and all I did was eat red meat, eggs, bone broth, water, and that's what got me off those drugs. I don't really care what your peer reviewed study says. I know it works for me. And to your point, doctor Shafi, you were the one that taught us about, I think it was doctor James Salisbury in the eighteen hundreds, '19 hundreds, and you're like, this isn't anything new.
Brett:He was treating soldiers with IBS and Crohn's and colitis on a what was that? Hot water and red meat removal diet? Was that what he was doing?
Anthony:Yeah. Yeah. Just, yeah, just just, beef and water. He said lamb was was, you know, distant second best. And, yeah, warm water.
Anthony:So, you know, he he wrote a book called the the relation of ailmentation and disease. So the relationship ailmentation being our elementary tract is our digestive tract. So the relation between what we eat and the diseases that we get. And he just showed that, you know, people that were eating just, you know, more vegetables and grains is long before the processed food industry existed, long before refined sugar became such a huge, you know, marketed item, and long before seed oils really hit the market as well. So just just plants.
Anthony:You know, he found that people were getting diseases that that other people simply weren't and that you could you could remove these problems and just get rid of them by putting people on a a beef and water diet. So, you know, he was he was sort of the first one to codify that. But, you know, I mean, it goes back millennia that we know that that meat was very healing and that that you'd eat plants basically if you had to, and that may not be the best for your health. You know, the wealthy classes of pretty much every country, they would they would reserve the meat for themselves. And, you know, like in England, it was those woods, that was the king's woods.
Anthony:It was the king's deer. You were not allowed to hunt them. You're not allowed to eat animals. You had to just subsist on, you know, gruel and and maybe a bit of dairy and rabbits that you could catch. And a lot of people didn't catch rabbits, and that's basically how they survived.
Anthony:And it was it it's always been the case that the wealthier individuals that could afford meat, they were generally the healthiest people as well, and they would live longer. They were taller, better stature, better skin teeth health, all these other sorts of things. And, you know, that goes back to antiquity. There was, I was reading up on, like, cholera epidemic in, like, I think it was, like, the eighteen thirties, and they even noted there that that that meat was basically had healing properties, restorative properties, and was was beneficial for people at that time and that that eating plants, vegetables, and things like that seemed to cause harm and hurt people, and they were getting more sick as a result of it. And so this is something that that has been long understood to be a very important it's necessary.
Anthony:We need meat. And, and that plants are not even secondary. They're just they're just, you know, a a survival mechanism just in case you can't get enough meat, then you have this alternative, which is great. I mean, that does that would confer a survival advantage that we can survive on certain plants if we can't get meat. But that in no way means that it's as good as meat.
Anthony:And so that's something we should focus on or comes without any harm. You know? It's very important to remember that.
Harry:How have you had success breaking through the mainstream opinions on what people should and shouldn't be eating? Because I think, like, to what you're what Brett was saying before, like, having a doctor tell our moms what you know, eating eating red meat only, it has a totally different effect than what Brett and I can possibly say. So I'm just curious, like, how have you actually had success doing that? Because it is such an extreme opinion for most people to hear.
Anthony:Well, just facts. You You know? You just you just stick to the facts. And the fact is that humans have been eating meat for over two million years. We've been apex predators for two million years.
Anthony:That's what the best evidence shows. And apex predators by definition are carnivores. And so the the hard rule of biology is that of adaptation. We adapt to our environment or we die and go extinct, and so we have not gone extinct. So we are clearly well adapted to eating meat and being apex predators.
Anthony:We would not have survived as apex predators if we could not survive as apex predators two million years ago. So even two million years ago, we were very well adapted to eating meat and to benefit from eating meat, and then that just that that symbiotic relationship, just continued on and improved as time went on as it does. That's how biology works. And so you just stick to the facts. You know?
Anthony:Biology is a hard science. Nutritional studies are not. They're not even science in a lot of cases. Some more propaganda. 11 time or Coca Cola spends 11 times the amount of money on nutritional research per year than the National Institutes of Health, the NIH.
Anthony:And that's just Coca Cola. That's not PepsiCo, Nestle, General Mills, Kellogg's, all the other, you know, major food brands. So the vast majority of studies are in published in nutrition are coming from conflicted sources. And that's not even to say the NIH is is a is a pure, entity in and of itself. A lot of them have, you know, corporate ties and and get money and and, you know, above the table or under the table.
Anthony:And so and a lot of so called independent researchers have a lot of conflicts as well. The main vegan nutritional researchers such as doctor Gardner at at, Stanford and doctor Walter Willett at Harvard are both, you know, self proclaimed vegans, have been for decades. So they have an ideological bias from the beginning, but they also have extreme, conflicts of interest and, and financial conflicts of interest with the the processed food industry and the Seventh day Adventist Church who are religiously anti meat. I know doctor Willett. I don't know if he's involved with the church, but I know that he's done a lot of work with the Seventh day Adventist church.
Anthony:And so, you know, this these are conflicts of interest. And so you just sidestep that, and you just talk about facts, and you talk about how this is how humans have been designed. Most people understand that because we've all been taught that. And that's what the evidence shows is that humans have been carnivores. So why wouldn't meat be bad for us now that hasn't been bad for us for the last two million years?
Anthony:It doesn't really make sense. And we just improved and gotten better and taller and smarter and stronger over the past two million years, and then something happened around ten, fifteen thousand years ago, and our brain just and dropped by 11%. That coincided exactly with agriculture. And so you look at the skeletal remains, and you just say, okay. Well, before agriculture, people were five inches taller.
Anthony:Males had 11% larger brains. Females had 17% larger brains, and they had perfect straight cheek teeth, big wide jaws, and, you know, perfectly developed signs of organ healing infections infectious disease such as tuberculosis. And immediately after agriculture, that's exactly what you find. It didn't take hundreds of years. It didn't take thousands of years.
Anthony:It was immediate, and it happened exactly the same way everywhere on Earth regardless of the time, regardless of the of the food crop that they ended up transitioning to. And we saw this in real time in the last hundred years with the Plains Indians in America when we you know, the American government killed off all the bison. They were just high fat carnivores. They were just eating bison and pemmican the whole year. And there's a study in 02/2001 that showed that the Plains Indians in America, they're just eating bison in the eighteen hundreds were the tallest human beings on earth.
Anthony:There were no one else was taller. People, oh my, even the Dutch. Yes. Even the Dutch, they were taller than everybody. And so they were just eating the most meat.
Anthony:Now they are not. You know, they switched over and you saw that same decrease nearly instantly when they started eating a lot less meat and a lot more plants. And this again before processed foods came into place into play. And now processed food is is a major component of everyone's diet in America. They're actually hit a lot harder.
Anthony:They have a much higher prevalence of chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and the rest. So they're they're being much more strongly impacted. You're we're seeing this in real time. We're seeing what we saw on the fossil record in real time right now with the Native Americans, with the Native Australians. With the Masai.
Anthony:They've been getting more and more sick over the past century. You know, studies in the early nineteen hundreds, '19 twenties, '19 thirties showing that they were extremely healthy. They were five inches taller than their compatriots, the Aikikuyu who are eating largely whole food plant based diet. And so do that the exact same disparities that we saw on the fossil record we're seeing in real life people in between the ones that are eating animal based and ones that are eating plant based. And then as the twentieth century goes on, they're very healthy, especially the the adult the the male, mastoid are extremely they were the healthiest out of everyone looked at, males, females from both tribes.
Anthony:And the males were the healthiest. They ate the most blood, ate the most meat, and, you know, the women would have a bit more milk, a lot more milk, and maybe have some a bit of plants. And that was new too. That was that was a new introduction. They just in the nineteen twenties, they just started eating more millet grains, and that was that was new.
Anthony:That was a new addition. That that was specifically noted in the study that that was a new addition, a new recent addition. They were still very healthy. Then you get it till the nineteen seventies, and their health starts declining. They had no signs of heart disease, no mention of heart disease in that study in the nineteen twenties and thirties.
Anthony:And then in the nineteen seventies, all of a sudden, they're, oh, yeah. Look at this. They're starting to get heart disease, and now they have higher rates of diabetes and teeth problems. They have Coca Cola trucks going in every day, and they sell out of Coca Cola within, you know, a few minutes because they have no idea this stuff is so bad for them. Now their diabetes rates are are actually a real problem now.
Anthony:They're damaging their teeth, so they're not living their natural, lifestyle. They're not eating their natural diet, and they're getting sicker. So we're seeing this happen in real time. And you can point this out to people, and you can point out the fact that meat was was wrongly vilified. It was, you know, it it it there's hard evidence that this was fraudulently vilified by the the major food manufacturers, the sugar companies, the sugar association, sugar research foundation.
Anthony:And, you know, we have hard evidence of that. That's been published in the the journal of the American Medical Association in 02/2016. You know, actual internal memos from the sugar companies talking about how they were perpetrating this fraud on people to have Harvard professors and others falsified data and publish frauds on studies to make it appear as a cholesterol cause heart disease when it was more likely to be sugar. There was a there are strong associative studies showing that there was a clear association between heart disease and sugar and seed oils. And so they're like, okay.
Anthony:Well, we need to get opposition research out there just like the tobacco companies have done for decades. You know, they say, oh, well, we our studies show that, you know, it doesn't cause emphysema. It's not addictive, and it doesn't cause cancer and all these sorts of things. And and they knew that it did, and that's why they got, you know, fined for, like, $400,000,000,000 or something like that when those tobacco memos came out. They had memos for thirty years of the tobacco companies showing that, like, they knew exactly what was going on, and they were just trying to protect their their interest, which sort of to me, I think that that's that should be a criminal act at that point.
Anthony:They're knowingly causing harm. They're knowingly keeping a product out there and saying that it's safe when they know it's not. And they're harming people and they're killing people. How is that not a criminal offense? I mean, that should not be just a a $400,000,000,000 fine.
Anthony:I mean, first of all, they made trillions during that time. So, like, what's 400,000,000,000? But they should have been in prison. You know? First of all, they lied under oath.
Anthony:They perjured themselves, and they knowingly caused harm to hundreds of millions of people. And so that that should be criminal. Same thing with sugar. You know, they know this stuff is causing harm. They've known it, you know, for probably seventy, eighty years, and they've been putting out counter research as a result of that.
Anthony:So you point out all these things. You point out that, you know, the arguments that they have are are largely fraudulent or based on fraudulent ideas and studies, and you show the sort of the hard evidence because it doesn't matter what a study said. Like you said, it matters what happens in real life. Okay. Well, what happens in real life when the Inuit just eat blubber, fat, and meat?
Anthony:They're healthy as hell. What happens when they stop eating that and they start eating more plants and and processed foods throughout the twentieth century just saw them getting a little bit a little bit higher rates of heart disease and cancer and chronic disease. But even into the nineteen nineties, they still had lower rates of heart disease than the rest of Canada. And so they there was a study, I believe, in 1996 that said, okay. Well, you know, maybe maybe there's some sort of genetic factor here that they're specially adapted to eating this sort of diet.
Anthony:Well, if you think about it, we're the adaptations. Europeans and other populations that have had agriculture for ten thousand years, we're the adaptations. They are living in the same way that we've been living for two million years throughout the ice ages. Right? So they're they're the original.
Anthony:And we're the adaptations. And so they looked at it, and they found that, no, they don't have any, genetic defenses against heart disease. They're actually more predisposed to getting heart disease. So we've developed some defenses against developing heart disease, and they they haven't done any. Right?
Anthony:Because they don't need to because meat does not cause heart disease. And then in the February and 02/2010, you start seeing studies pop up. So, oh, well, you know, everyone says at the end, you would have lower rates of heart disease, but, you know, they don't actually look at this. Their heart disease rate's higher. Like, yeah, idiot now because they're eating a whole bunch of garbage that they're not supposed to eat.
Anthony:But you go back if they're only eating and if you if you distinguish out between the people that are eating modern diets, living in the cities, doing doing what what you do in cities, distinguish that between the population only eating what they're supposed to eat, just meat. It's a very different story. And so you you see that in real time with Masai. You can see that in real time with the Inuit and the native Americans. And so, you know, you make this claim and you say, okay.
Anthony:Well, you know, this should get worse, but in all the populations that are doing this, we we're actually seeing the exact opposite. So these these things are just simply wrong, and you and you point these things out and you and most people will have specific, oh, what about cholesterol? What about fiber? What about nutrients? And there's answers for all of these things.
Anthony:You just systematically go through them. But, I mean, it's just these are the facts. You know, humans are carnivores as a species. It's just the kind of animal we are. And as such, we don't have robust defenses against plant toxins and their best to be avoided.
Brett:I feel like when I'm hearing you speak, doctor Chaffee, it makes me think about when when people are saying that we're evolutionarily omnivores. I think it's actually a I think it's actually a cop out answer the more that I think about it. And I think there's so much it almost seems like tribalism between vegans and carnivores. So I think it's easy for a health influencer to be like, well, we're evolutionarily omnivores. That way I'm not that polarizing.
Brett:I can kind of main trace maintain sway to both sides of the equation. But to your point, it's like evolutionarily, we've been eating meat for over two million years. It's the introduction of plants that have really hurt our health overall. And probably if you are an omnivore because you're eating so much meat, that probably will offset some of the negative side effects of of a plant based diet. But it's really meat is what we're supposed to be eating.
Brett:So everything else has just been introduction from modern society.
Anthony:Yeah. And and, you know, it it does depend on your definition of of an omnivore. And what first of all, the definition of a carnivore or hypercarnivore or an obligate carnivore is is an animal that eats over 70% of its it gets over 70 and its its calories from from meat. Right? And so cats are obligate carnivores.
Anthony:Right? But so are we. Right? I mean, most most, humans living naturally would just they just eat meat. You know, you have these these shows like, what what is it?
Anthony:Like, Alive or something like that where they they go out. They put these people out and just like some remote, you know, wilderness area, and you just have to survive. How many of those guys are vegan? Right? They're all eating meat.
Anthony:They're all hunting, trapping, fishing, and that's just like, this is important. We need the fat. We need the meat. This is how you survive out here. I I would bet that even the staunchest vegan out there, you know, and maybe maybe some people can take up, you know, like, you know, the Simon Hills of the world can go out and then say, okay.
Anthony:You go on that show and see if you can survive on a vegan diet, see how far you get. You know, it's not gonna you're gonna be tapping out in the first couple days. You know? Like, it's not gonna work. It's not compatible for life.
Anthony:You know? You you cannot live in the wild living on plants like that, to any to any real extent. You know, it's it's just you you have to get meat. So when we are out in the wild, that's what we're eating. We're eating meat.
Anthony:And historically before agriculture, that's what we were eating. The way we ate had to change because the megafauna died out. And so most people didn't have access to meat, such as the Plains Indians where they still had a hundred million buffalo roaming around and migrating through, and they could they could get a year's worth of meat in one buffalo drop. And so, you know, most people didn't have that, and so they had to to go to other means. And and agriculture was one of those survival mechanisms, which allowed them to survive, but it didn't come without a cost.
Anthony:Omnivore, you could eat both. But is it optimal to eat both? That's the important thing. You know? Or does does something make you an omnivore because you just can eat plants and animals?
Anthony:Right? Because cats can do that too. They can get up to, you know, 60% or so of their calories from carbohydrates, and they can survive. Right? But they are termed obligate carnivores.
Anthony:And, you know, dogs, same thing. You know, a lot of they're they're not as sensitive to to the toxins in plants as felines, but they still die from a lot of things that we would be able to weather. So just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should do something. And just because you can eat plants does not make you an omnivore. It certainly doesn't make you an herbivore just because you can survive on it.
Anthony:So I think it's important to to distinguish that and distinguish what what we mean by omnivore and carnivore. I mean that humans are carnivores because we are optimized by a carnivore diet. We we our health is optimal and optimized by eating exclusively fatty meat and exclusively drinking water. I think that our we can survive, And most people can do just fine, including some plants, but that does not mean that that's optimal. And that's the important distinction there.
Anthony:Are we omnivores because we could eat plants? Okay. Fine. If you wanna, you know, make a you know, make that distinction. But the distinction I make is what what we can eat that will optimize our health, and you cannot optimize your health on an omnivorous diet.
Harry:Yeah. It's it's interesting to think that a lot of people don't even really know what it feels like to optimize for diet and lifestyle. Like, it I think part of the part of the main ethos of our show has been trying to, like, really inspire people to get more curious and actually experiment with their own health, particularly around diet, because most people just hear something or read something, and then they they use that as a validation for them just to, like, not try to, you know, tinker. And, it's really sad. Like, I I just feel like most people just get, like, trapped in, like, the the palatability of, processed foods, and then they never really wanna go experiment and optimize their health.
Harry:It's obviously a generalization, but I I just feel like so many people fall into that trap.
Anthony:It's it's easy to. You know? I mean, the the stuff is is made to be, you know, extremely addictive. You know, that that's what food science is. You know?
Anthony:We we we sort of look at these things with through rose colored glasses where we think, oh, food scientists are out there trying to make food healthy and perfect and wonderful. That's not what they're doing. They're trying to make things addictive and palatable and make it so you want to eat more of it so they sell more product. This is this is a product development, science. You know?
Anthony:And they're and they're using very technical scientific means to to do that. And it you know, it's it's very interesting. You know? What they're able to do is very clever people figuring out very clever things, but the the purpose is not to make things more healthy. It's to make things more addictive, more palatable, and and and consumed it at a higher level.
Anthony:There was a sixty minutes, story on exactly that. And they went to these these, food scientists, and they were making these natural flavors. What natural flavors were were actually they took out the different sort of flavor chemicals from, like, an orange or cheese or something like that, and they mimicked it. So it's actually not natural. It's actually not a natural compound necessarily.
Anthony:They're just getting compounds that mimic that. And but they but they design it in a special way. So they find molecules that, first of all, these if if these are new molecules and are sort of just using actual natural things, we we don't know what these things are. And so you're introducing chemicals into your body that are not supposed to be there that don't exist in nature necessarily. And this is like trans fats.
Anthony:You know, they don't they don't exist in nature. Our bodies don't know what to do with them, so they just get deposited all over our arteries, and this was a major driver of heart disease. And so, you know, you have to be very, very careful and circum introducing chemicals into your body that didn't exist fifty thousand years ago during an ice age. That's how I so that's my sort of distinction. We weren't eating this when we were putting this in our body fifty thousand years ago during an ice age.
Anthony:Probably best to avoid at least to be safe. So they they get these chemicals, and what they're trying to do, they're trying to front load the flavors. You get this big burst of flavor, and it goes away quickly. Because they don't want that flavor to linger because then you just go you have this nice taste in your mouth. You're like, oh, that's nice.
Anthony:And you don't need to eat more. You want that big taste. You go, wow. I like that, and then it goes away. And then you have to go eat another chip and another candy and another this and another that.
Anthony:And that's what they're doing. And they said this. They said, you know, this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to we're trying to get that big burst of exciting flavor, and it goes away quickly so that you want more. And it becomes sort of addictive at that point because you're you're just using more of the product.
Anthony:So that's what they're trying to do. And so, you know, they've done a good job. And so a lot of people are addicted to these things. They are addicted to this flavor experience, and people say, oh, I couldn't do that because it couldn't do a carnivore diet because it, you know, it just sounds so restricted. It sounds so boring.
Anthony:Food's not supposed to be entertainment. It's not supposed to be, you know, your you know, just the you know, you go out to to an event and your event is eating things. I mean, that's that's that's sort of sick, honestly. You know? It's, that's not how it's supposed to be.
Anthony:Food is nutrition. Food is energy. And then you use that to live your life and have a life. If your life revolves around just eating, there's a problem. And, you know, that and that's, it's honestly it's a bit unfortunate when people are are stuck in that where they're just their their main entertainment throughout the day is just eating things.
Anthony:And I think that that's a very important thing to get away from. Food addiction is a major issue. And so, you know, you're you're right to point that out. It's it's difficult for people to get away from this because they are addicted to food. And having food addiction and addressing food addiction, I think, is one of the main main benefits of going carnivore and and something you have to do.
Anthony:You have to understand your relationship with food is pathological, that it's been driven by, you know, this industry to make you addicted to food so that they can sell their products. And and they don't care if it makes you sick. They know it makes you sick. But they're they're fine with that because they're heavily invested in pharmaceutical companies that sell you the medications to paper over the you know, that sickness, that metabolic distress and illness. So, it's a matter of of recognizing that recognizing that you are addicted to food and that you have an unhealthy relationship with food and that you you can enjoy your food.
Anthony:I'm I've enjoyed every single steak I've ever eaten. If it doesn't taste good, you're not hungry. I mean, that's the whole idea. The problem with hyperpalatable food is it's designed to always taste good regardless of whether you're hungry or not, and it triggers hunger signals and it raises insulin, and it blocks leptin, and it does all these things to make you eat more. And so it is difficult for people to get away of away from.
Anthony:You need to sort of recognize that you're in that situation before you can break out of it.
Brett:Yeah. My mom made a prime rib on New Year's Day. Prime rib with, like, some salt and French butter. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, you're telling me that not only is this the most delicious thing I've ever had, it's also the most nutritious thing for me too. And it's that mindset shift, doctor Chiqui, that I think is so powerful.
Brett:My one of my favorite pieces of content that you've ever done, it was a clip. You were on some in person podcast. I think it was in Australia, and the clip went really viral. It was basically you talking about the benefits of a carnivore diet, and you're basically like, do this for two eat these foods for two weeks, and you're gonna be amazed at how good you're gonna feel. And not only you're gonna be amazed, you're actually gonna be pissed off that you didn't do this longer in your life.
Brett:And it's like I think it's it's tough because of the three of us know how good you feel. It's like you get shredded. Your mental acuity is amazing. Your gut health is amazing. You're flooding the body with nutrients, but it's tough to describe that for someone that doesn't have that comparison of going from processed foods to then evolutionarily consistent carnivore foods.
Brett:But if we could get them to focus on what the role of food actually is, it's not for entertainment. It's for purpose. Oh, and, also, once you rewire your taste buds, it's gonna be delicious, and it's super easy to follow. I think that's, like, the big ticket item that you just hit in on that. Like, hopefully, we can just make that more mainstream.
Anthony:Yeah. Well, it it'd be great if people did get that. I mean, it it it most people find that they get such a dramatic improvement in their health and how they feel within a few weeks or a month or two. Some people take a bit longer, but most people will feel a lot better in that time period. You know, like, in two weeks, they feel better than they ever have.
Anthony:In a month, they're just like, this is amazing. And that's not that long. You know? I mean I mean, you can you know, Jordan Peterson said, when when, his daughter Mikaela sort of talked him into just doing just meat and water only, he's like, alright. Well, I can try for thirty days.
Anthony:You can do anything for thirty days, and this is gonna affect, you know, the the grand scheme of your life is gonna, you know, really improve your life, then then why not? And so I think it's it's really important to just sort of encourage people. Like, you know, things like like now, it's like World Carnivore Month. Just try it. Try it for thirty days.
Anthony:See how you feel. You you are going to feel better. You should. The vast majority of people will feel dramatically better. Others, you know, may have a bit more of a teething, issue, and, it can take a couple months.
Anthony:But everybody eventually will feel better than they ever have, and and it gets to a point where you look back on your life and you feel you realize that you felt like garbage your entire life. Even though you thought you felt good, now you see the comparison. Now you see what what good actually feels like, and it will piss you off. It pissed me off. I was 38, and I and I remember looking back those five years that I was there was just not eating plants because, you know, plants had toxins, and I was just like, I'm not gonna eat them.
Anthony:And I felt absolutely outstanding. I've never felt better. I've never played better, you know, rugby, athletics, anything else. And, during that period and I remember always trying to get back to that. I was like, what was that?
Anthony:There's just this zen moment or just this perfect zone of of health and and athleticism. And I asked, how the hell do I get back to that? I was like, well, I just I'm just too old now, and I just will never get back. At 25, I thought that. I'm like, woah.
Anthony:What's going on? I guess I'm just over the hill now. And, but looking back, the 25 was when I when I slipped off the meat only diet. And then at 38, I'm like, that's it. Like, that period of time was a weird carnivores, and that's when I was eating as a carnivore.
Anthony:My body was working the way it's supposed to work. I got rid of the plants. I wasn't eating processed food either. I wasn't I I was just just eating meat, but lean meat and not getting enough fat, not in getting enough meat, and also just eating whole vegetables, rarely any fruit. I just I naturally avoided carbs just because I noticed that my back hurt more.
Anthony:I got, like, you know, soreness and stiffness more when I would eat things with carbohydrates. I'm like, okay. I'm just not gonna eat that crap. And, so it's just vegetables and meat, and that was it. And I didn't feel great.
Anthony:And I felt it was I'm just 38. I'm just middle aged, and it's just like, that's it. I'm just dying on my way out. And and that's not the case. You know, I stopped eating greens, and I started eating a lot more fatty meat.
Anthony:And I within two weeks, I lost 23 pounds, and I felt like I was 22 again. And I started and I went back out and started playing rugby again, you know, with, with the the top team here in Seattle, and I felt great. I felt like I was 22 again. I could just run and sprint as far as I could forever. It just I'd never ran out of energy, and I was completely out of shape.
Anthony:And yet I was able to keep up with all the professional athletes that have been training. It was midseason. You know? They were all in great shape. I was not in great shape, but my diet was such that I could keep up and that I could do everything that I needed to, which was which was great.
Anthony:So, you know, I looked back on my life and realized that I could have been feeling like that my entire life. And I was pissed off because I was robbed of my birthright. I was robbed of feeling good, and and everyone has been. Everyone's been robbed of that. Everyone's been robbed of good health.
Anthony:The natural state of of human beings is that of good health. The natural state of all animals is that of good health. If you have just an entire population of sickly animals, they're gonna die out. You know? We're in a position now that we you know, we're sort of anchored in, you know, because of our of, you know, our our civilization and our industry, but our health is extremely poor, and that would never have worked in the wild.
Anthony:You you just cannot survive in poor health. Now the argument is that meat is actually causing these chronic diseases. And and there was and I made this point, you know, that people like Simon Hill and others will say that meat causes these diseases, meat causes this illness. And, you know, and so and, you know, people were dying, you know, young and this and the other. And just because we were eating meat for two million years, it doesn't mean that we're adapted to it.
Anthony:Well, first of all, it does actually. And second of all, you say, oh, well, people could have died just right after they gave birth. I'm like, who's raising the kids? And there's, like, generational, benefits to having your grandparents, great grandparents, and things like that. And that's what we saw in studies with the native Americans, native Australians, and others that you had four generations up.
Anthony:You had people there, and they were the the the the the wise men and things like that that were they're making the decisions and then the younger people going out and hunting, but the older people will go hunting too. So, you know, that it just doesn't that conflicts with the observed phenomena. But but they're saying, well, maybe you weren't adapted to me and it was making you sick, and so people were dying shortly after, they, you know, they had kids and raised those kids. And so I pointed out that, you know, that, you know, it didn't make sense for a lot of reasons, but, you know, we we didn't see signs of of chronic diseases and heart disease and diabetes and all these sorts of things in in the pre agricultural record. And, and then Simon Hill said, oh, I never said that.
Anthony:I never said that they got chronic disease. I said that, you know, when people died of, you know, you know, lions and and starvation, this, that, and the other. It's like, okay. Hold on a second. You said that we didn't adapt to meat and that meat causes disease.
Anthony:That means that they would have had to have been getting these chronic diseases that we're getting now that you're attributing to meat. And so if we're exclusively eating meat or predominantly eating meat, obviously, we'd be getting all of these diseases. So, you know, even their own internal you know, their their their arguments are internally conflicted. You know? And so it's, you know, it's just sort of interesting to to sort of see these these sort of mental gymnastics to try to try to jump around, and and go away from the observed reality and facts, which is that we've been eating meat and we've been thriving as a result of that.
Harry:It's funny. It feels like the vegan movement is very forward looking in a sense that they're trying to pull answers out from science that hasn't been discovered yet. Mhmm. And the carnivore movement is very much focused on this ancestral way of living, which is like, let's just redesign a blueprint around what we would have been eating, you know, for centuries. So I guess it's it it seems like veganism is very much more propped up on, like, this, new new age of science.
Anthony:Well and, also, you know, it's it's, you know, it's called fudge factors. You know? I mean, you you have you said, well, if if this were the case that humans were designed to eat plants, which is like, no one's even suggested this, you know, outside of the last, like, ten years or so. No one no one outside of an Insaneless album has suggested that outside of the last ten years. You know?
Anthony:I mean, no everyone everyone has accepted that and, you know, the paleo anthropologists and things like that. There's one there's one guy that they that, Simon Hill brings on. It's, oh, well, this is the guy you listen to. Okay. Well, he's, like, the only one in that field that that is saying that, and that's fine.
Anthony:He could be right. He could be the only one who's correct in that field, but the things that he does are clearly incorrect. They're going to the Hadza and saying, oh, well, this is this is how people were eating back then because this is how hunter gatherers eat now. No. Just because the Hadza eat that way now doesn't mean that we were eating that way during the ice ages.
Anthony:You know, the Maasai eat differently to the Hadza. The native Australians eat different to to both of them. The native the native Americans and Plains Indians who were only eating, bison were eating, different to all of the above. So, you know, you can't actually say that. The Inuit, those guys those guys would be likely eating very closely to how we were eating during the ice ages because there's nothing else available during the ice ages.
Anthony:And they were all, oh, well, you still shouldn't eat fat even though we were eating more meat. Wouldn't eat fat. You eat you know, game is very lean. How how lean is a seal? Not worrying.
Anthony:You know? Oh, how lean is a whale? Not really. Howleen is a mammoth because that's what we were eating. How what about what about a giant sloth?
Anthony:You know? The larger an animal is, the larger the proportion of fat of body fat that they have, generally. And this is why we'd go after the megafauna because we wanted the fat and we went after the fat. And so it wasn't until we lost that, and then we started turning other things. We started, you know, cooking and cracking open marrow bones, which is very labor intensive, but that's that's where fat is, and we needed the fat.
Anthony:And pick pemmican, you know, we get dried meat and mix it with an equal portion of of rendered fat, and that's about 80% calories from fat. So it's very high fat, you know, everywhere you go, when you look back. And so, you know, those are just, you know, they're just they're just trying to fit an ideology. And so there's they're fudge factors. They're trying to just fake something.
Anthony:You know? And so then they'll say, okay. Look at this proven here here. Okay. But, well, if we look at this, we'll just need these studies, but, you know, this this is gonna come out.
Anthony:And then, you know, something else comes out, proves them wrong, and they they, you know, pivot to something else because their idea is their ideology is sacrosanct. You know? They that can never be shaken. It's like, it doesn't matter what the facts and the evidence say. You know?
Anthony:There's always something that has to be, I know it's true. And I I've even heard this with, the sort of circular logic with, physics. You know? There was a professor from Berkeley that I saw on a on a on a, sort of, you know, space documentary sort of thing, astrophysics sort of thing. And they said, we know that dark matter exists.
Anthony:Dark matter, if it's dark because it's you can't you can't measure it or recognize it at all ever. Right? But for their equations to work, their 97% of the universe has to be made up of dark matter, which can never be measured or seen. Right? It's pretty convenient.
Anthony:You know? It's just this magical stuff that doesn't behave as matter otherwise, but it's the predominant, you know, matter, stuff in the universe. And then that didn't work either. So that 76%, had to be made up of dark energy, which is energy that we don't know what it is. It's not magnetic force.
Anthony:It's not electricity. It's not anything. It's something else. And it's but it's the major energy source in the world even though you can't measure it, you can't see it. These are fudge factors.
Anthony:You know? And this professor from from Berkeley said, well, we know that dark matter exists because if dark matter didn't exist, then the big bang could not have happened. And since we know the big bang happened, therefore, we know that dark matter exists. It's like, well, hold on a second. You're you're saying yourself that if dark matter didn't exist and the big bang couldn't happen, it would disprove that.
Anthony:So what is your evidence that the big bang existed? Well, it's all these fudge factors. There's actually a lot of equations that show that, no, really probably didn't exist. There's whole factions in physics that actually say there's a book written called the Big Bang never happened. It's very clear.
Anthony:And there's a documentary of the same name. It's very interesting. And there's some of the Nobel Prize winning top physicists and researchers in the world that that are saying that, like, this this is this is against the the observed phenomena and facts. And they have these fudge factors. It's okay.
Anthony:Well, dark dark matter. I was like, okay. Well, there should be this much matter. It should be this much gravity. It should be this much.
Anthony:And then they go and observe it, and it gives them, you know, ten years. And then you get the the equipment to measure it, and it's like, oh, it's off. Okay. Bet you there's dark matter. Okay.
Anthony:Now we'll start measuring things and, like, oh, no. Not that's not even enough. Probably dark energy too, and they just keep doing this. So the vegans keep doing this as well. They have an ideology.
Anthony:They are they'll be damned if that's ever going to change. They know that it's true because, you know, obviously, they're brilliant, smart, wonderful people. And if they believe it, then it must be true. You know? And so they're just looking for reasons to make it so.
Anthony:And so that's why they're looking for their like, well, I this is gonna turn out. And then it turns out that it's not a problem. And it's okay. Well, but there's other thing that's gonna happen. They just they're just, you know, clinging to rocks, you know, in a in a storm, but it's, eventually, the storm's gonna get them.
Anthony:I mean, the the preponderance of evidence is completely against them. So they can they can say these things all they want, but the evidence is totally against them. And eventually, you know, the truth will out.
Brett:Yeah. When you when you speak, there's so much conviction behind what you're saying, which may intuitively make so much sense because Harry and I know that you've done so much research over the last decade to support what you're talking about. I'm just curious for the listener. Are there any, like, esoteric or not super well known books on health, nutrition, meat that most people don't know about that you really like that have taught you a lot about your current beliefs around, you know, us being evolutionarily carnivores?
Anthony:Well, I I think a lot of those ones that like doctor Salisbury's, you know, I mean, a lot of these things are are very interesting. I think they, you know, they they supported, you know, a lot of what you you'd observe in in reality you put people on. This is this is why I think that that the truth will eventually, you know, come to bear is because more and more people are trying this. This is, you know, this is getting more and more attention and even mainstream sort of channels that are detracting from this saying, oh, this is dead. This is horrible.
Anthony:Well, only kooks could do this. And, you know, quack doctors and things like that. You know, they at least have to talk about it. And so, you know, it's getting popular enough that they have to address it even if just to, detract, from it. I think it's very, very interesting to see that other people have come to those exact same conclusions and with, similar evidence, but but different evidence because we had difference available in the eighteen hundreds.
Anthony:And Salisbury did a thirty year research project onto the, you know, best nutrition for humans. He lived with the plains. India saw that they were living. It'd be a 15, hundred and 20 years old and in great health. You know, they weren't just turning to dust slowly over forty years in a nursing home.
Anthony:They were they were active healthy adults at a 10, hundred and 15, and that seems far fetched out. They were just making it up. Well, maybe. But if they were, it's a it's a very coincidental number because we know as geneticists that we are designed to live a 20 on average. Meaning that if you just stay out of your own way and don't mess up or get killed by something, you should make it to a hundred and twenty without doing anything special.
Anthony:So why are we dying in our sixties and seventies, and why wouldn't it be the case that people living in a natural state and not being killed by anything wouldn't make it to a hundred and ten, hundred and fifteen, hundred and twenty years, hundred and thirty years. Right? And they were. And a lot of these different indigenous populations even go back to, you know, the ancient Greeks and the Ethiopians and the Persians, you know, Herodotus, you know, the first historian chronicled that. The Ethiopians talking to the Persians.
Anthony:The Persians said they ate bread and grains, and they lived about seventy years. And then the Ethiopian said, well, actually, we only eat meat. We only drink water and and milk if we're not drinking water, and we'd live a hundred and twenty years, some people much longer. And, again, it's exactly that. It's a hundred and twenty years.
Anthony:So, you know, it's it's it's interesting when you see that and you see things like doctor Salisbury. That's I mean, that that's amazing. He he was studying this, and he was saying, okay. What what is the best thing for people to eat? And he's noticing, hey.
Anthony:Look. Not only is it better to eat meat, but you these diseases go away if you stop eating plants. And then the works of, Vilhofer Stefansson who lived with the Inuit, traveled with them, living there for, like, twelve years, learning their language, learning their culture, wrote a book called wrote a lot of books. We wrote one book called the fat of the land and just talking about, like, this is this is how we're supposed to eat. We're supposed to eat fatty meat.
Anthony:This is how we do best. And the polar explorers knew this. You know, if you went up there and you didn't just eat a high fat carnivore diet, you were gonna die. And, and many people did, and then when they switched or they had serious nutritional deficiencies and health issues, and then they got rid of all the other crap they were eating and just gave them fatty meat and fish, and they recovered. Right?
Anthony:And so, you know, this is this is this is a again, you go out in the wild, you're not gonna survive on a vegetarian diet. You're just not. And, and you'll be be very harmed and potentially die if you if you try that. And, you know, so, you know, there's you're you're seeing this in in in real time. You know?
Anthony:The the Stefansson was seeing that in himself and in the people there that this was very healthy. And he wrote another book called, you know, is cancer a disease of civilization? I believe that's the name. Basically showing this. Like, these indigenous populations, they only eat meat.
Anthony:Not only are they healthier from in other respects, they just don't get cancer. Yeah. And the cancer rates in the Inuit were extremely low throughout the twentieth century, and they were eating other things as well. And, again, you saw the change in health happen in real time. There are studies that sort of look at twenty year chunk, you know, 1920 to nineteen forties, say.
Anthony:I forget the exact actual dates, but there there are a series of studies that sort of looked at twenty year chunks with the Inuit population and cancer rates. It's very, very low towards the beginning of the of the twentieth century, if really any at all. And every twenty years, it's a little bit higher and a little bit higher and a little bit higher and a little bit higher. Now it's it's higher and higher now the more they, you know, involve themselves in Western society. So I think looking at those are are fantastic.
Anthony:You know, they're they're looking at these populations alive at that time. They were eating a high fat corn or poor diet, and they're showing this is what they were like. This is how long they lived. This is the what their health was like. Another one would have been Weston a Price, who went around to these he was a dentist in the early nineteen hundreds, and he, you know, retired and started traveling.
Anthony:And he found there was a lot of these indigenous populations had perfectly formed teeth, perfectly formed jaws, no cavities, no crooked teeth, things like this is this is crazy. You you don't see this. And then he was seeing people near them that had horrible teeth, rotting teeth, crooked teeth, small, you know, micronapias, you know, small jaw, and and, you know, crooked nasty teeth as a result, impacted wisdom teeth, all these other sorts of things. And you see that in in families. You know, you have one person had beautiful, you know, facial development and teeth, and the other ones would have crooked, nasty teeth.
Anthony:And he found that it was actually he he thought it was his nutritional deficiencies and that you're you weren't getting these fat soluble vitamins like vitamin k two, vitamin d three, and calcium. You weren't getting enough of these things from a plant based diet, and you give them raw milk. You give them meat, and actually you actually reverse these issues, if if they're young enough and they're still developing. And so that's something we know now as well. It's it's in the current dentistry literature I found studies and papers published in in recent, times talking about how crooked teeth are not genetic.
Anthony:You know, pre agriculture, no one had crooked teeth. Everyone got their wisdom teeth in, and they didn't really have signs of rotting, decaying teeth. Now, obviously, we do. And immediately after agriculture, we did. And so, again, they they identified k two, d three, and calcium as major as major factors if you have a deficiency of them that, you can get, you know, crooked teeth and misdevelopment of your jaw and face.
Anthony:And so so, Price was, you know, seeing this again in real time, and he was showing you pictures of, you know, someone from India who had been, you know, hunter hunter gatherer, if you wanna call it, but eating a lot of meat, big strong jaw, perfectly straight teeth, wisdom teeth in, then, you know, that that person moved to England. And his son, smaller jaw, recessed in, recessed chin, crooked teeth, you know, impacted wisdom teeth. His son, even smaller jaw, worse teeth, all these sorts of things. So it's not genetic. Right?
Anthony:It's just one generation after the next, just worse, worse, worse. Right? So, you know, it's it's, and, you know, when they were breeding with other, you know, Indian you know, ethnically Indian people, you know, it wasn't like they were, you know, breeding with with other, ethnic, communities. And so you know, but their teeth and their jaws were getting worse and worse and worse, and he was seeing this in families as well. And, and and you do.
Anthony:You see this in people. I saw it in my family. My little brother was very picky eater, would only eat sort of rice and tempura sauce. He needed braces, and none of us did. My sister went vegetarian sort of as a as a early teenager because, you know, I don't actually don't know the reason, but she started eating a lot more plants and that she she got over that.
Anthony:But, you know, she needed braces as well. No one else in my family needed braces. You know? And, and and it lines up with the observed facts. So I think those those sorts of books are fantastic, and they're they're a little known about, but they were they were quite seminal works.
Anthony:You know? Salisbury actually made a huge splash at the time, and he influenced a lot of people to go on really just meat meat only diets and especially for health reasons. You know, some people call it, like, the first fad diet, the the Salisbury diet. But, you know, you can't call something a fad diet if you've been eating it for two million years. Right?
Anthony:What you've been eating for two million years is by definition not a fad diet. A fad diet is, you know, restrictive. You're not eating what you should, and you're not getting all the nutrients nutrition you need, and you're very restrictive. You're limiting, and it's it only lasts a short period of time, and people realize, wow, that was a bad idea, and you move on. Okay.
Anthony:So two million years, obviously, it's not a short duration, and it has everything you need in the proportion that you need it because it's what we're designed to eat. And, eating plants and certainly eating processed foods, that's the fad. That's new. We've always been eating meat. You know?
Anthony:That's established. Plants, that's the fad. And so I think these sorts of books are excellent reminders of that. There's even a more recent one by doctor Voechlin called The Stone Age Diet. That was in 1975, and he was a gastroenterologist and he argued that humans were carnivores.
Anthony:He was like, look. We're carnivores. This is what we're supposed to be eating. And, you know, sort of the first paleo diet, the stone age diet, and, you know, sort of the idea of a paleo diet, we should be eating what paleolithic man ate. Well, he didn't eat a bunch of roots and tubers and things.
Anthony:He ate meat when he could get it. And certainly during the ice ages, there wasn't really anything else he gets. You got meat or you died. And so he, wrote the book, the stone age diet. He just made that point.
Anthony:He said, look. We're carnivores. Here's the evidence for that. And there are diseases like I would treat in gastroenterology that don't would not exist if you didn't eat plants. Basically made the argument, you know, to paraphrase that if, you know, that his profession is of gastroenterology, his specialty didn't need to exist if you didn't eat plants, and that's something that that you've noticed yourself.
Anthony:You know, I'm sure you've had your fill of gastroenterologists, you know, throughout your life, and then all of a sudden you stop eating plants, and I I don't know if you've ever needed to see one again.
Brett:No. I got, I think the last time I saw him was 2021. That was my last colonoscopy. Haven't had to go back. I've been completely drug free for over two years.
Brett:I'm the only patient. And out of the thousands of patients that he's worked with that hasn't had that happen before. So I said to him, I'm like, do you want the playbook of what I've done? Because it works super well for me. It's worked for my friends that also have autoimmune issues.
Brett:And he's like, ah, now if you wanna send it, you can, but didn't even care. And I'm like, you've seen thousands of patients over twenty years. Don't you wanna know what could potentially work to get these other patients off their drugs? But just totally mindset. So I try not to argue it too much, but I do think about that a lot.
Anthony:That's really sad. You know, it's, I if you do see that, I mean, you would you would hope that doctors would react like my my mom's doctor did when she reversed her diabetes in two months. Wow. And you just said, you know, diabetes is a progressive disease. It only gets worse.
Anthony:We mitigate it. We can slow it down with diet lifestyle medication, but it only gets worse. It does not go backwards. And and she did. She reversed it.
Anthony:She came off her medications, came off her insulin, and, and her h b a one c went down to normal levels within two months. You know? And so her doctor was like, how the hell did you do this? This is not supposed to happen. So she was very interested.
Anthony:She was like, I want I wanna know what happened. I wanna know what you did. So I I would hope that more doctors do respond like that, and some do. Some, you know, to give them credit and others others, unfortunately, yeah. You know, if you didn't learn it in residency, if you didn't learn it during your specialization or during medical school, it means it doesn't it's not real.
Anthony:It doesn't exist. Because obviously, you would have been taught everything that's real, and this is this is, you know, the scientific endeavor and everything. But but, you know, forgetting to realize that most of what you learn in medical school will be obsolete by the time you finish medical school. And the things you learn in residency will be built upon, improved upon, and changed by the time you finish residency. You know?
Anthony:And so it's it's ever evolving, and and you can't sit still. You and and if you observe a massive improvement, someone says, hey. I did this very different thing, and I got very different results. You know, it behooves you as a medical practitioner to investigate that. And I think more people will, more people are.
Anthony:And I think when more clinicians, you know, get more and more interested in this and look at this and try this with their patients, like, oh, crap. This this actually works. Objectively, this is improving their diseases and their health. They're gonna be influencing more and more of their colleagues as well, and and at least it's gonna be more heard of. And so maybe by now, our diet's making a bit more mainstream news.
Anthony:More people are doing this and that your your gastroenterologist will go like, you know, I had that patient. He really improved on this. You know, maybe maybe I should look into it. Hopefully, eventually, they'll come around. I did talk to someone who had, GBM, glioblastoma brain cancer, who tried, you know, keto carnivore diets.
Anthony:And, basically, their doctor was like, yeah. You know, it doesn't have anything to do with it. You know, it's just a fluke, you know, but you're gonna die. You know? It's invariably fatal.
Anthony:And ten years down the road, sort of the last time they saw them, the doctor was retiring and just said, hey. Listen. I made a mistake. You know, this obviously means something. I wanna know everything you did and everything about it.
Anthony:What can you tell me? And he literally just took notes with him, just sat with him for a couple hours and just took notes on it. So, eventually, he came around. He realized that, wow. This this is something that could really could have helped my patients.
Anthony:Unfortunately, from the sounds of it, he was retiring at that point. But, hopefully, he was able to pass that on to his colleagues or or impart that on, you know, what patients he saw before he did finish off for time or maybe maybe stayed in practice. But I think I think it will happen. Unfortunately, people you know, just like you're tied into food addiction is just the way that you're used to eating a lot of people are used to practicing medicine the way that they've been taught to practice medicine. And you just get in that rut.
Anthony:No. This is just how you treat this disease. That's just how it is. And until all my colleagues tell me, oh, no. No.
Anthony:No. We wanna do this differently. You know, they they just basically tow the line. And, and and, unfortunately, a lot of doctors practice guideline medicine as opposed to evidence based medicine. Evidence you know, one doctor, in a book wrote a book called, Better.
Anthony:He also wrote complications and other sorts of books guy named doctor Atul Gawande. He's a he's a professor of surgery at, at Harvard, and he's at Brigham's, Women's Hospital, or at least he was. And he and he's, specializes in oncological general surgery. So he'll he'll take out, you know, different sort of adrenal tumors and things like that. And, so a very good writer, very interesting guy.
Anthony:Wouldn't necessarily agree with everything that he's concluded, but, but excellent excellent information and excellent very interesting. Funny enough, the first season of Grey's Anatomy, like, all the the medical stories and and things came directly out of his first book, complications. I mean, like, word for word. And I was like, they better pay that guy for that, you know, because they just robbed his book. It's interesting guy, very interesting stories, and very, very good writer.
Anthony:And he wrote about a doctor in, that his second book called Better that treated, cystic fibrosis. And he had very different outcomes, and he did very different things. And, and he had better much he had the best sort of outcomes and best, rates of treating people with cystic fibrosis. He had a patient who's, like, 63 and and symptom free, well, essentially, you know, living a normal life at 63 with cystic fibrosis. A lot of people die in their twenties from cystic fibrosis or, you know, thirties or forties.
Anthony:It it's a very, very serious disease. And and he was having much better outcomes. And he was doing things that were different than than, you know, the evidence based. You're subdued this, that, and the other. And, you know, Gowanda asked him.
Anthony:He just said he's like, okay. So you're doing something different than evidence based medicine. You know? Why is that? And the guy sort of, like, smiled and smirked and he just said, if you follow evidence based medicine, you'll always be two years behind the cutting edge.
Anthony:And so he was the one making the evidence. He was the one trying new things and and making the the new evidence based protocols for other people to follow two years down the line in his footsteps. So that's evidence based medicine. If you're practicing evidence based medicine, you're gonna at least be two years because you're you're doing something, wow. This work, here's the study, takes two years, get it published.
Anthony:Okay. That's in the evidence now. Okay. So you're you're gonna be two, three years, four years behind the curve behind the the cutting edge. Then guidelines, though.
Anthony:Guidelines are bureaucratic mess. And sort of every five, ten years, they'll come together and and relook at the guidelines, and they'll say, okay. Here are the experts in the field. Give us what you think is the best evidence. And they'll take that and based on their own personal predilections or their, you know, their their financial conflicts of interest with different industries, they'll just make whatever guidelines that they want.
Anthony:And so the guidelines are not evidence based, and they're generally ten to fifteen years behind evidence based medicine. Right? Because they only come around every five, ten years. And then how much can you get in there of the current literature? So they're way behind.
Anthony:And so and they're and they're biased, frankly. And so I've spoken to people that say, well, this goes against the guidelines. This is like, right. But it goes with the evidence. This is evidence based medicine.
Anthony:And they're like, oh, I I you know, you can't go against the guidelines. You can't go against the guidelines. I was like, well, what if the guidelines conflict with the evidence? No. You you you I I I will never not not follow the guidelines.
Anthony:I'm like, okay. Well, the guidelines are there as a guideline. It means that you don't know what the hell you're doing, and you're not confident in your practice. And so you just you need to be babied and spoon fed in your practice. That's what that's what following the guidelines is, and it's a good structure, and it protects you.
Anthony:Because, you know, well, I I follow the guidelines, and they killed fifty people, but when they follow the guidelines, you know, like, fine. You know, that protects you. It's a it's a CYA practice, cover your ass sort of medical practice, but it's not necessarily the best thing for your patients. And so guideline I've I've spoken to people that said, well, this is the this is the evidence based medicine. They're they're like heads of department.
Anthony:Even people in in in a position where they they should know better. They said, I don't practice evidence based medicine. I practice guideline based medicine. It's like, well, then you should lose your license because that's a really bad thing to do. And and it's it's gonna be ten, fifteen years behind the cutting edge.
Anthony:You know? So it's it's something that I believe is is gonna keep changing, but there you know, if you want if you want to get something new, you have to try something new. If you want the same results, you keep doing the same thing. But if you if you're unhappy with the fact that we're getting fatter and sicker than we've ever been in human history, then you obviously need to try something new. And we are, and we're getting different results, and I think that's the important thing.
Anthony:And I think a lot of people are seeing that, and they are seeing that people are getting dramatically better. And it goes against the guidelines, and it goes against, you know, what they've been told and taught. But it's happening, and it's true. And that's the only thing that matters and and more and which is why more and more people are coming to this. And I get more and more doctors contacting me saying, wow.
Anthony:I just came to this and, like, this is something that that I want to do and I've done for myself and I've done for my patients, and this is amazing, and I'd like to learn more about it. And then patients saying that, you know, they go to their doctor and their gastroenterologist is saying, hey. You know, the best thing for you to do is go on a carnivore diet. That's gonna be the best thing for your Crohn's. It's like, wow.
Anthony:That's amazing. So it is happening, you know, because because you you cannot ignore the real world outcomes and facts forever. And we're just building up and building up and building up, and then and we're sort of hitting that critical mass now that people at least know about it. And then people they've known have tried it, and most people have had very positive results. So I think that we're hopefully just about to see an increase in in acceptance from the medical community, and more and more studies are are going underway to sort of show the efficacy.
Anthony:I think there's more than enough evidence to show that this is the way to go for yourself and and to treat patients with. But, you know, the more studies, the better. You know? The more more evidence, the better, and that's great for for other people. But I think we're already getting to the point where people can see with their own two eyes.
Anthony:Wow. This makes a huge difference, and this improves their life. I think the only sort of stitch in that is is the whole idea. Oh, what about cholesterol and LDL and heart disease? And and that's been roundly disproven, I mean, just by so many different different ways.
Anthony:But that seems to be like, okay. You're getting all these other improvements, improving all these other sorts of things. Oh, we're just sort of always a bit nervous about that. So people like Dave Feldman, you know, putting out the lean mass hyper responder studies, you know, that that's that's gonna help be health. That is fine.
Anthony:As soon as we find put the final nail in the coffin of that nonsense, you know, that cholesterol causes heart disease, then the the floodgates are just gonna open with this, I think.
Harry:Mhmm. Doctor. Chaffee, you mentioned, January is World Carnivore Month.
Anthony:You probably got
Harry:a lot of people listening who are just experimenting with carnivore for the first time. What's, what's, like, one piece of advice that you would give to people who are just starting carnivore and just trying to figure it out?
Anthony:Well, just just try to do it as, as closely to just meat and water as possible. A lot of people think that carnivore is just you eat a lot more meat and eat more fat than you're used to, but, you know, really what it is is excluding all these other sorts of things. So it's it's an elimination diet, as much as anything else. You need to eat meat. You need to eat the fat.
Anthony:The fat's really important. That's another thing people avoid fat because you're just used to eat the damn fat. It's really good for you. It's an essential nutrient. There are essential fatty acids that you have to have that you cannot get from anything else to set the animal fat, And there are essential fat soluble vitamins that you have to have that you can't get from anything else except animal fat.
Anthony:So you need to eat the fat. You wanna eat the fat. You don't eat enough meat, but you also don't wanna eat every anything else. So my hard rule is no plants, no mushrooms, no, and, no sugar or any sweeteners, and nothing artificial. So that goes for sauces, seasonings, and drinks as well if you wanna do this as as, you know, to to the most benefit.
Anthony:And so if you're trying this out for thirty days, I mean, just give it a try and just eat meat, Cut out all the artificial sweeteners. Cut out all all any sweeteners and nuts and seeds. And people always ask, well, what about coffee? Well, what about seeds? Well, what about nuts?
Anthony:Well, what okay. Well, all those are things are plants. What about honey? Well, that's sugar and and so on. So and then, obviously, you know, like, stevia.
Anthony:I mean, oh, well, that that doesn't count because it's not carbs. It's like, well, it's a chemical, and it goes in your body and has a chemical reaction, and it wasn't there during the last ice age. So I wouldn't use it, and it can, you know, can cause harm. So I would just try to do it just really just fatty meat and water. Make sure you're eating enough.
Anthony:It's very easy to under eat on a carnivore diet because your hunger signals just change dramatically. So just keep eating fatty meat until it stops tasting good. Cut out all of the rest and see how you go. You're you are almost certainly gonna feel better than you ever have. You'll likely lose a significant amount of weight, you know, depending on your size anywhere from, you know, 10 to 20 pounds in that first month, especially if you're avoiding dairy.
Anthony:I would cut out dairy as well. That can be a a sticking point for weight loss in particular. I mean, dairy is very nutritious, has a lot of good things, but, you know, at least initially try it without, and you can potentially reintroduce it if, and see if it if it causes a problem. But, you know, people with autoimmune issues or, weight issues, that can be a sticking point for them is dairy. So just try to just go meat and water.
Anthony:Nothing else. Eat enough. Make sure you're eating until fatty meat stops tasting good. Listen to your body. Let it, you know, tell you what to how much to eat.
Anthony:And, and just see how you go and focus on the good things. Maybe you don't lose as much weight as you wanted to, but maybe you're sleeping better. Maybe your energy is better. You know, maybe your your skin clears up. Maybe your skin doesn't clear up.
Anthony:Maybe you get a bit of a rash and but other things are improving as well. So you you may have a bit of a a teething issues early on, but you're gonna have a lot of benefits as well. So focus on those benefits. You'll work through all the rest of it. You know, sometimes you have fat soluble toxins that that just sort of live in our fat tissue.
Anthony:And then when you start losing weight, you start losing fat. Actually releases these toxins, and that can manifest as skin issues or other sorts of weird, you know, muscle aches and soreness and things like that. And there's just weird sort of symptoms. They go away, you know, once the when your body works through those things. And so just give it time and, just keep it simple.
Anthony:Just eat meat, drink water, don't eat anything else, and see how you go.
Brett:And you'll be pissed you haven't done this for years after doing it for thirty days.
Anthony:I certainly was. Yeah.
Brett:Us too. Well, doctor Chaffee, we could talk to you for three hours. We're gonna see you in Austin in a couple months, which we're very pumped about, but we appreciate it. We appreciate having people like you out there that are fighting a good fight, real really leading this whole movement. You've had a huge impact on both of us and a lot of our listeners, and we just appreciate you making the time.
Anthony:Oh, we're you're very welcome. It's always good to to talk to you guys, and thank you for having me on. It was a pleasure.
Brett:Awesome. Thanks, doctor Chaffee.
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