May 11, 2025 • 51 mins
What happens when a former military officer who thought he was the epitome of health receives a devastating Type 2 diabetes diagnosis while standing in a gym? Stephen's powerful story reveals the shocking moment his doctor told him he had "the second worst diagnosis possible" that would cut 13-17 years off his life expectancy.
Despite working out 5-6 days a week, Stephen's health was failing him. His journey from denial to determination unfolds as he shares how traditional medications left him with debilitating side effects—spending 20 hours a day in constant pain and contemplating whether life was worth living under those conditions.
The turning point came through extensive personal research and self-experimentation with the ketogenic and carnivore approaches. Stephen reveals his most profound discoveries: how stress alone can spike blood glucose levels even during fasting, the remarkable effectiveness of a simple 10-minute walk in normalizing blood sugar, and why his previous vegetarian and vegan diets were actually worsening his condition.
Through continuous glucose monitoring, Stephen gained unprecedented insights into his body's responses. He shares the exact moments of clarity that transformed his understanding of nutrition—discovering that starch is fundamentally sugar, that his afternoon energy crashes weren't inevitable signs of aging, and that mental clarity could return after years of brain fog.
For anyone struggling with metabolic health issues or seeking to optimize their wellness, this episode offers practical strategies backed by both science and lived experience. From navigating social situations to building an effective health support system, Stephen's military-honed discipline combines with compassionate wisdom to provide a roadmap for sustainable health transformation.
Listen now to discover how one man reclaimed his health against seemingly impossible odds, and what advice he would give his younger self if he could travel back in time with the knowledge he has today.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Lessons from the Keto-Verse.
Join Stephen and Graham as theyexplore the keto lifestyle with
tips, science and stories toboost your health.
This podcast isn't medicaladvice.
Consult your healthcare advisorfor any health-related issues.
Get ready to fuel your primalpower.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And welcome to another episode of Lessons from
the Keto-Verse.
I am here with my friendStephen In the last episode of
Lessons from the Keto-Verse.
I am here with my friendStephen.
In the last episode of Lessonsfrom the Keto-Verse, stephen
actually asked me a series ofquestions just to get to know
your hosts.
This time I am fortunate enoughto be able to ask Stephen some
questions about his background,how he was able to get to where
(00:40):
he is today, the achievementsand a little bit of background
as to how he started thatjourney, stephen welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Thanks very much, Graham.
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
All right, let's jump into the first question.
So general question for you,stephen.
Tell us a little bit about yourbackground.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Sure, so let's begin at the end as opposed to the
beginning.
I'm a 58-year-old male and I ama type 2 diabetic, and so how
that came about wasapproximately seven, seven,
eight years ago Actually on mybirthday I was diagnosed with
type 2 diabetes, and theremarkable thing at the time,
graham, was I was actually atthe gym when I took the call and
the nurse said could youperhaps add some additional
(01:22):
training?
You're going to need to getmore exercise.
And my response was did theyadd an extra day to the week?
Because it was clearlyimpossible.
I was already working out five,six days a week.
So I was kind of in shock.
I had precursors, like theprogression of the illness
initially was pre-diabetic.
I didn't think anything of it.
I just thought that, well, youknow what I'm stressed, it's
just a bad blood result, and Ikind of dismissed it.
(01:44):
But when I was a full diabetic,I believe at the time, my A1C
came back and I was in the highnines or tens, I think my
initial one was about 9.3 or 9.5.
So as a consequence, they putme on metformin gram and the
journey really from theprogression of the illness and
realizing how serious it wasBecause you can imagine sitting
(02:06):
with your doctor and your doctorinforming you Stephen, you have
the second worst diagnosis Ican give any of my patients,
second only to cancer.
This is the situation you canexpect to cut in your life
expectancy between 13 and 17years, which was a shock At the
time.
Cut in your life expectancybetween 13 and 17 years, which
was a shock At the time.
I could hear the words comingout of her mouth but I wasn't
(02:27):
really processing.
So from that, graham, we goback in time when I was always
very active in sports, alwaysvery engaged in my corporate
career, was a single fatherraising three kids, and so this
was all really a shock to me.
Candidly, and as a formermilitary officer in the Canadian
(02:53):
Forces, which is where mycareer began, I always had a
can-do, must-do attitude and didspend a lot of time focusing on
me.
It was know your people andpromote their welfare.
So I was always looking out forother people without
understanding that I had tocultivate and care for myself
the same way as I was expectedto for others, and I didn't do a
particularly good job of thator I wouldn't have got that
diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Excellent, and one of the many things I admire about
you, stephen, is your service,your military service, something
that we've talked a lot aboutand I know is a big part of your
life.
So thank you very much for yourservice.
Thank you, I know it's a bigpart of your life.
So, thank you very much for yourservice.
Thank you, you know and I thinkwe mentioned in the last
episode that you and I workedvery closely together at a
(03:32):
startup, a billion dollarstartup, building a wireless
company, and it was go, go, go,work your butt off and have some
fun in between.
And you were always there tokeep me a bit insane, keep me
sane from the insanity as wellas give me a laugh often.
And one of the things Iremember about you is you were
always the healthy guy you were.
(03:53):
You know if you weren't at thegym, you were looking after your
health, and you know a lot ofpeople out there are.
You know they feel healthy.
They certainly work towardsmaintaining or keeping and
maintaining their health.
How did it make you feel,knowing that you were one of
those people that other peoplelooked up to as a healthy
individual, but inside you wererealizing that that wasn't the
(04:16):
case?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
That's.
You know, it's kind of likehaving imposter syndrome in a
way, because I didn't knowpeople perceived me that way.
I saw pictures that you know mybrother had taken for family
and went you know who's the guywith the pot belly.
You know, meanwhile I wasprobably going in the gym
wearing clothing that mostpeople would have said why is
that guy wearing that?
Because I thought I was inbetter shape than I actually was
.
I believed it didn't reallymatter what I ate, I'm in the
(04:40):
gym, I'll burn it off at the gym.
I look gym, I'll burn it off atthe gym.
I look great, I feel great.
And the reality was that justsimply wasn't true.
Because if you looked at whatwas going on in my life at the
time, I had persistent,uncontrolled IBS.
That was obviously a result ofmy elevated sugar.
Unfortunately, with themilitary I also have PTSD that
exacerbated that stress that youso well and eloquently
(05:03):
described, that both of usexperienced at work.
I thrived on that, so I thought, but perhaps the adrenaline of
that, the excitement of beingable to build the first telecom
company in decades where we live, I guess in some way
overshadowed the effects it washaving on my body, the negative
(05:27):
effects and these symptoms Ithink for a lot of people sneak
up on you All of a sudden.
You're like oh you know, maybeI'm just not feeling well today.
Oh, I had stopped on the way towork and find a public washroom
because I felt so unwell.
Oh, I'm breaking out into coldsweat driving.
I must be stressed out from thetraffic and meanwhile I'm
(05:48):
literally having a diabeticreaction to extremely high sugar
, which at the time I wasn'twearing a CGM.
They didn't even exist, atleast not as pervasively as they
are now.
So, graham, I was just flat outin denial and unaware.
I just assumed well, I'm.
I'm just one of those guys thatyou know.
I react to certain foods.
So I tried going on a diet andnot eating any bread, thinking
(06:10):
that perhaps I was celiac.
My tests came back.
They were negative.
I was really kind of lost andagain, because I was so focused,
like you, on our respectivecareers and making sure other
people were taken care of andwe're always the last in the
line to worry about how do Itake care of Graham, how do I
take care of Stephen?
So I just got more and more ill, to the point where it was very
(06:33):
clear that there was somethingwrong.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, and I want to elaborate on something you just
talked about, which is therelationship with food.
You get this diagnosis from thedoctor.
Obviously, it's very scary.
A lot of things are goingthrough your mind, no doubt how
you know maybe you can talkabout from the moment you left
that doctor's office.
How did your relationship withfood change over the journey and
(06:58):
I know it's likely been abouttwo years now or so how has your
relationship with food changedfrom the moment you left the
doctor's office to a muchhealthier version of yourself
today?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Well, first of all, I think everyone's journey is
unique to them and I'm happy toshare my experience.
But I do want to point out thatI'm not a doctor.
The advice that I was given bythe doctor at one point, when my
blood results returned tonormal they were unaware that I
came off metformin because I wasso sick on metformin my quality
of life was literally making mecontemplate suicide.
I don't say that lightly.
(07:31):
That's how sick I was.
I spent 20 hours a day inconstant abdominal pain.
I couldn't leave the house.
My life was an absolutedisaster, so I had no recourse.
I could either succumb to thesymptoms and be angry all the
time.
I was angry at the kids.
I was short-tempered because Iwas in so much pain.
The metformin made me feel likeI ate glass and I believe it
(07:52):
must have stacked on top ofalready the inflammation that
was in my body, the irritablebowel syndrome that I clearly
had and there is some history ofthat in the family the anxiety
I was beginning to feel like Icouldn't even travel to work
without worrying about am Igoing to need to find a washroom
?
And I'm sure there's a lot ofpeople out there with IBS.
(08:12):
It's not a joke.
It's a very degrading,demoralizing feeling.
You just get out and you'relike, oh my God, I just left the
house, I'm going to have toreturn to the house, and that
happened numerous times to me.
So instead of just saying thisis how it's going to be, I
started doing research, and thatresearch started to give me
hope.
And that hope directed me toeven more research where people
who were further along the paththan me whether they were type 1
(08:34):
or type 2, whether they had IBS, PTSD, all of the above there
was strong indicators that therewas a path that wasn't just
strictly to be onpharmaceuticals.
So what I started doing in thatresearch is discovering the
power of eating the right foodat the right time.
I discovered Dr Fung's workaround intermittent fasting.
He's a Toronto nephrologistthat struggled with his patients
(08:57):
who were unable to recover fromthe consequences of stage four
diabetes, which is they'restarting to have renal failure,
and it was very frustrating forhim.
So he discovered, in essence,from his own research how
effective intermittent fastingcould even be for people who
were literally on dialysis to atleast extend their life.
They weren't necessarily goingto get their kidneys back.
(09:18):
So that gave me hope, Graham,because I didn't have at that
time any strong indicators formy kidneys being out of whack.
I likely had something that wenow know as non-alcoholic fatty
liver, so I started researchingthat.
I started consuming a lot ofwater with lemons In that period
.
What inspired me to do that was,for the very first time in my
(09:40):
life, I ended up having kidneystones, and as a person of 58
years, that is definitely one ofthe most painful experiences of
my life.
I've had plenty of injuries,but that one was certainly one
of the worst.
So I have not had in the lasteight years any kidney stone
recurrence whatsoever.
Regimen of beginning, just asyou said, this continuous
(10:02):
improvement process where youknow, I initially started doing
research and then I tried evenbeing vegan vegetarian for a
while.
After vegan vegetarian didn'twork as well as I had hoped, I
tried to find other methods andmethodologies, which in turn,
led you and I in the same place,as you said from our previous
discussion, which was directlyinto keto, carnivore and let's
(10:22):
dive into the idea of ketocarnivore.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So the ketogenic diet is something where our macros
are carbs, protein and fat.
All foods can be put into oneof those categories.
The ketogenic diet puts anemphasis on protein and fat and
a de-emphasis on carbs.
If you think about your journeyas it relates to the
(10:49):
nutritional science that youinvestigated by yourself, you
took things into your own hands.
You wanted to do your owninvestigation.
You were, I think, like me,tired of relying on the sort of
standard American diet advice orthe advice that you might see
in a magazine, and to gettingmore granular.
Were there some surprisingthings that you uncovered as you
(11:12):
got into the macros aroundcarbs, protein and fat?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, it's amazing when you find out that starch is
a sugar.
Sugar is starch.
They're the same thing.
There's no such thing as goodsugar.
We only have, I believe, amatter of like three grams.
I heard from one expert of sugarin our entire bloodstream.
So when you look at a can ofsoda and I'm not going to name
any, but a can of soda and youfind 31 grams of sugar in just
(11:38):
that one can, I mean that'spretty easy to research.
That's usually where most of usstart.
But the aha moments come later,when you start realizing that
that spaghetti you had is alsoturning into sugar.
For me, that was incredible,and so the progression of
understanding what my body wasdoing and I mean you've
highlighted this before is stayout of the middle of the grocery
, stay to the ends, where you'llfind the keto carnivore foods,
(12:00):
the fresh produce if you're ketoand obviously high select meats
and the other sections.
We're not talking about ultraprocessed foods at all and I
achieved a certain level of A1C.
It started to decline.
I'd lost 50 pounds over thecourse of a few years.
I got back down to the weight Iwas, and for our folks at home.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
A1c is the sugar level in your body.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
That's right.
So the A1C is an average ofwhat your sugar has done over
the last 90 days, and somepeople may say well, why is it
90 days?
The reason is that our redblood cells refresh
approximately every 90 days, soin that 90-day period you're
getting a nice graph of exactlywhere your sugar is sitting.
It's not absolute, and I dothink it's unfortunate that we
(12:48):
don't measure insulin to starttesting for insulin resistance,
because by the time your sugar'sout of whack, people also have
insulin resistance to addressand we could probably pick that
up in a future podcast.
We can talk a bit moretactically about the strategies,
but again, these were allthings that you and I learned in
the process of our research and, with the added benefit of
(13:08):
seeing the results, with the CGM, I could dial in right away and
go okay, well, that strategydidn't work for me.
Were there other underlyingfactors?
Yeah, I was trying to eat thatwhen I was stressed, while I was
taking my kids to some activity, which caused a hyper state
where my body really wasn'tinterested in food.
But I just ate it, as you said,because we've been told, as
(13:31):
part of this industrializedrevolution, that we must eat
three times a day when ourforefathers did not.
So if you don't feel likeeating, you're not going to
perish from skipping lunch orskipping dinner.
So if your body's under duress,it's already trying to deal
with a certain level of stress.
It's not unreasonable toperhaps stick to a broth, a nice
beef broth, something veryhealthy, lots of nutrients, and
(13:54):
your body won't be cravingpotassium and sodium because
you're putting it in there.
And what's remarkable aboutthat?
As we talk about what weconsume.
Going back to your earlierquestion, what I was amazed is
all my cravings went away, andthose cravings disappeared
because I wasn't consuming theseaddictive sugars that were
unbeknownst to me.
I didn't know at the time.
This came in my later researchand you now see this is very
(14:16):
common now in news briefs thatnot only will some of the foods
we consume raise our level ofdepression and anxiety, but
it'll actually create anaddiction similar to other
things like cigarettes andalcohol.
Where we will, our body willcrave that sugar after a meal.
And the reason for that and youand I've discussed this before
(14:37):
is because you're not eating asatiating meal where you feel
full.
Your brain's sending a signalto the body, body's back to the
brain saying hey, tell this guyto eat some more, because you
know it's 20 minutes after hisChinese food and he's hungry
again.
Why?
Because there's rice in it.
The rice turns to sugar Sugarand again, whether it's cane
(14:57):
sugar or sugar that your bodyturns starches into, is still
sugar.
So what that does is cause amassive elevation, or what they
call a spike, in your sugar.
That's your spot glucosemeasure, not your A1c.
But you get enough of those andthat trend line that you're
having daily with those spikesand those valleys are going to
raise your A1c over the 90 days.
(15:18):
The valleys and those spikesare what creates hunger.
That's why sometimes, when weweren't eating well, you know
you eat a bagel.
That's all sugar.
It's.
Basically you might as welljust eat cake.
It's going to have the sameconsequence in terms of your
sugar.
Two hours after you eat it,you're as hungry as a bear again
, whereas if you eat a ketocarnivore diet, like you and I
(15:40):
do, I can eat three or four eggsin the morning with healthy
bacon with no nitrites in it,and I really honestly don't need
to eat again until the eveningyou mentioned three really
important letters there.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Cgm, which is a continuous glucose monitor,
something that interestingly, Ibelieve in the US has.
They're now making it availableto people, I believe over the
counter, but certainly throughinsurance companies.
Canada has been a little bitfurther along as far as allowing
people to take some controlover their body's response to
(16:16):
certain foods.
You've had a CGM for quite sometime now.
Are there some things thatreally surprised you about
wearing a CGM, being able to getthat instant feedback on the
impact certain foods have onyour body in particular and how
that has changed the way you eatover time?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
First of all, I'm so grateful for these wearable
technologies.
I really am, and I have noaffiliation whatsoever with the
particular model that I wear.
I've had great success with it.
So the success is reallyderived from watching it and
realizing okay, I just had ameal and everything looks good.
I had because I know that it'sheart healthy, 90% cocoa
(16:59):
chocolate, with a huge pound ofnatural peanut butter that's on
top of it and it will cause aspike, a slight spike, because
there's microns of sugar that'sin that.
That's on top of the steak thatI just had, which in turn, is
on top of the salad which theycall stacking.
So I'd have my salad and if I'mdoing keto, I'd have my salad
and then my meat, and then Iwould add something that's
(17:20):
that's still full of fats, like,for instance, yogurt with a few
blueberries or that sort ofthing on it.
So I'm getting the um, thephtonutrients, lacing it with
flaxseed, chia seed and allthese other things, so that I
can address the other issuewhich I had had, obviously
exacerbated by a high sodium,high ultra processed diet, which
was I started to haveendometriosis forming in my
(17:44):
colon, and that's basically forthose and that's, I guess,
extremely bad for most peopleit's just a series of
malformities in the colon thatkind of look like wrinkles, and
that type of diet can also causepolyps, which I also had.
So I was looking at ways,obviously at the time, to
understand what's going on withmy IBS.
(18:04):
Well, I've since had anothertest, and I'm completely clear
of that, which is all a resultof the keto diet yes, thank you,
after going out on the ketocarnivore diet and adding when
I'm on the keto and when I sayketo it's not like I'm saying I
do three months of keto, I justwant to clarify or three months
of carnivore, I mix them to whatI know my body wants.
(18:26):
So, for instance, tonight I hada dental procedure that was
quite traumatic.
It was surgery and I didn'tfeel like trying to chew
anything.
That was too too hard.
So I had a steak.
But I buy the steak graham thatis grass fed and grain finished
from my butcher that literallyI don't even need a knife, it
just pulls apart.
I could sufficiently eat thatwithout causing a migraine from
(18:50):
this severe root canal.
That was done.
So, consequently, I listened towhat my body does.
I looked at my sugar after Iate that and actually I want to
footnote what I just said too,because I think it's important
for the audience to understand.
After the procedure, I was underenormous duress in that
procedure.
It started to trigger my PTSDbecause I was starting to choke
and I literally got up from thechair after an hour and 15
(19:12):
minutes, when I walked into thedental office, my sugar showed
6.1 and that was fasted.
I hadn't eaten anything andthis was approximately 10, 10 AM
in the morning.
What happened was after myprocedure.
It's now well into myintermittent fasting period
where I would normally, if I amgoing to skip breakfast, I would
start thinking about eatingbetween 12 and 2 pm.
(19:33):
Well, the sugar, which was notnormal, was in the nines, like I
had.
My sugar was like 9.5.
That was my spot glucose.
So what that meant is theduress and the stress that was
on my body from that procedureand I'm no longer insulin
resistant.
I'm technically no longerdiabetic.
I've reversed.
My symptoms still showed a verystrong diabetic response in the
(19:54):
absence of the context.
So that's what I love about theCGM is because you can look at
it and go right now.
Is this a physiologicalreaction from working out in the
gym?
If you work out in the gym andyou're raising your blood
pressure and you're puttingexertion on your muscles, you're
working your muscles.
You're going to see anelevation.
That's a physiological reactionto the actual training, the
(20:15):
same way as stress is.
There's no problem with that.
The issue is when it's systemic, inflammatory and constantly,
constantly a part of youreveryday, where your sugar is
always up there.
Not because of exercise, notfor any other reason, but just
pure, unadulterated stress.
And what I want to highlight ishere's a perfect example where I
was my own guinea pig in thehands of my dentist and seeing
(20:37):
the net result to my body, whichI could not obviously know if I
wasn't wearing a CGM.
So what did I do?
I went for a walk for five to10 minutes before I was picked
up, on a cold day.
Everything normalized because Iwas relaxed.
It was a stressful situation.
So that shows my metabolicflexibility, to quote Dave
Asbury, my metabolic flexibilityto go out of that situation.
(21:02):
Much like a gazelle will getchased by a lion in the safari
it it's an amazing thing.
After it gets chased and getsaway from the lion, it'll stop
starting to eat grass right,because it knows how to go flip
between the sympathetic,parasympathetic, parasympathetic
to sympathetic.
Now we live our lives likewe're being chased by lions all
the time and, as a consequence,our bodies are in a constant
(21:25):
state, inflammatory state.
So what happens?
And this is an interestingaspect of IBS and what was
happening with me?
I get triggered because somebodycut me off on my way to work.
That would cause my elevationin cortisol.
So what happens then is my bodygoes there must be a lion
chasing us and it pulls all thatblood away from the digestive
process into the muscles and thebody will naturally go hey,
(21:46):
whatever was there, we don'tneed it right now.
We got more serious stuff goingon.
You're about to be eaten by alion.
Obviously, that's a metaphorthat gives you some idea of the
cycle that we get into.
Then add on top of thatfrankenfoods that are consumed
because they're quick, they'reeasy, you're on your way to work
oh, I'll grab a bagel, I'llgrab this, we'll grab that, and
(22:11):
you're setting yourself up forfailure.
It's like that poor gazellethat's in the savannah having
two of its legs tied togetherand still expected to run and to
make it.
It's not going to make it andthat's eventually the
compounding effect of thisinflammation that we're
absorbing.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
And I think this is such a critical point and I
think will be a surprise for alot of people.
You were in a fasted state.
You also were well aware of,you know, the impact that foods
had on your glucose levels.
You were in a fasted state atthe dentist and your blood
(22:44):
glucose shot through the roofbecause of stress, not because
of the food you ate and I thinkwe will explore this in future
podcasts.
But I think this will be asurprise for a lot of people
that it's not just about thefood you eat, certainly in the
moment, over time, but it's alsoyour stress levels that can
(23:08):
actually contribute toeventually ending up being a
diabetic or some otherhealth-related issues 100%.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
I mean just using the military as a baseline.
So let's go beyond me for amoment and take those of us who
have served, who have seenterrible things, and that's
certainly been a catalyst orfully attributed to PTSD or
other issues, including IBS inmy case.
Well, it stands to reason thatany form of stress, whether
you're a first responder thatwould be firefighters, ambulance
(23:38):
attendants, even doctorsworking in the merge you don't
know what you're going to getwhen you're in those situations.
So to your point.
A great parallelism is I was upat 530 in the morning doing my
meditation, practicing a form ofhypnosis that's specifically
engineered for PTSD and,ironically, a couple hours later
, it didn't save me from thereality of what my body was
(24:00):
experiencing in that moment.
I'm not going to tell you thatit wasn't painful, it was quite
painful.
The process itself was veryunpleasant and I was in the
hands of a 30-year veteran ofdoing exactly that kind of oral
surgery.
So she was excellent.
It's just how my body reactedto it, and no amount in that
moment of mindfulness, which Ipractice constantly, no amount
(24:21):
of meditation, which I used toteach, was going to save my
glucose from rising.
So why is that important?
It's because with the CGM, Ican see it and I can create a
resolution to cut the spike offby going for a walk, and I
really want to zone in on thatfor a second.
So if you were to say, pick onething, you could only do one
thing.
I will only allow you to do onething to address the spike in
(24:44):
your sugar.
What would you pick?
Would it be meds?
Would it be a particular food?
Would it be a particularsupplement, like berberine?
What would you do?
Hands down.
I see it every single daybecause I do it as I jump on my
elliptical.
If the weather is nice enoughI'm blessed to have a woodland
property I'll go for a walk,either by myself or with the
dogs, practicing mindfulness,grounding with nature, and
(25:06):
immediately, within 25 minutes,my sugar will go down.
Now what's interesting is it'sstarting to go down already
anyway, almost immediately toyour earlier point.
But a CGM has a 15 minute delay, so you don't see the results
of what it is you're doing until15 minutes in, and it's
remarkable.
You can take anywhere from 50to 75% of that spike out just by
(25:28):
catching it before it goes upbeyond what normally here is
considered high, which isanything over 10.
So typically after I do that,my sugar normalizes.
It may go up a little bit afterI've finished exercising
because there is a physiologicalcomponent.
And keep in mind I'm notsprinting, I'm just doing a
light walk or I'm just lightlywalking an elliptical low impact
I save just doing a light walkor I'm just lightly walking an
(25:49):
elliptical low impact.
I save the high impact stuff forthe gym, the low impact when
I'm walking or doing that sortof thing, and it works wonders,
better than metformin, betterthan any other even supplement
that I've tried, because theimpact is so obvious.
And that even includes applecider vinegar.
A lot of people use apple cidervinegar.
I use it every day, to thechagrin of my dentist.
(26:10):
I do dilute it.
Please make sure you do thatwith lemon and apple cider
vinegar.
Make sure you dilute it withenough water or you will start
damaging your teeth.
But the effects of that as wellis quite significant.
I learned that actually from theglucose goddess, who is a I
would call a celebrity of sortson YouTube that speaks about
stacking and the importance ofACV and she's a, I believe, a
(26:33):
PhD microbiologist.
So very, very smart lady andshe's been on a lot of programs
and I really admire her insights.
Along with Dr Berg I alsofollow, and Dr Stan, who used to
be an Olympian.
He's a great resource for me,very matter-of-fact about things
.
So, again, it is a continuousimprovement process.
(26:53):
Graham, I always look at newresearch.
You and I talk about it andthen I get a chance to be my I
guess my own scientificexperiment.
Because I'm willing to test.
As long as it's not harmful tome physically, I'm willing to
test to see how my body reactsto me physically.
I'm willing to test to see howmy body reacts Because, like
David Asbury said, I want thatmetabolic flexibility, that
(27:18):
responsiveness Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
And yeah, I love, when I'm listening to podcasts,
being able to take somethingaway and try it that day or the
next day, and I certainly do thesame thing.
I've dedicated myself to walking10 kilometers a day.
The same thing, I've dedicatedmyself to walking 10 kilometers
a day.
It has been a huge benefit inme controlling my blood sugar as
well.
And, you know, right after ameal, going for a walk not only
is fantastic for us, you know ingeneral, but knowing that it
(27:43):
actually has a fairly quickimpact on our blood sugar can
mean just walking if you changenothing else and obviously we
encourage people to get rid ofthings like ultra-processed
foods you can quite literallychange the course of your health
by doing something like a20-minute, 25-minute walk after
(28:05):
a meal, even if it's, you know,walking up and down the stairs,
whatever it is getting on theelliptical, some kind of
sustained, low-impact exerciseis going to do wonders for our
long-term blood sugar levels.
I wanted to talk to you aboutthe ketogenic carnivore diet and
its impact on your mentalhealth, and maybe you can relate
(28:25):
this to your extensive militaryexperience and why you think
the ketogenic carnivore dietmight benefit military personnel
not only from a physicalbenefit, but also from a mental
benefit.
Maybe you can elaborate on yourexperience.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Sure.
So, first of all, what I didnotice when I was still eating
ultra-processed foods andthinking I was healthy because I
was on a vegetarian and vegandiet was brain fog.
I had massive issues with brainfog.
That clarity is so critical.
When you're deployed in anenvironment hostile environment
the last thing you want to haveis any form of physical or
(29:04):
mental impairment, because youneed to be at your very best,
because there's people on theother side that may not
necessarily have your bestinterests in mind.
If you don't mind me saying so,one of the key things that I
believe would be helpful for themilitary, particularly on
deployments.
Currently, what we typicallyconsume is what in the US is
called MREs and in Canada calledIMPs, which stand for
(29:26):
individual meal packs, and MREsare meals ready to eat.
They're full of sodium, theyhave lots and lots of
preservatives in them, naturally, because they can last for five
or 10 years, and I thinkthere's an application for that.
Obviously, in the absence ofeating anything, when you're in
a particularly hostile situationand you may not get a chance to
eat Otherwise, you're certainlynot necessarily going to have
access to fresh food.
(29:47):
But it begs the question withall that you and I've learned
from intermittent fasting.
Perhaps it's not in their bestinterest to consume that the way
that they do, particularlybefore an operation.
Perhaps it's better.
I've noticed my mental acuity ismuch higher after having fasted
all night in the mornings and Ialso know also as a military
person is I would have ratherpreferred to wait for a good
(30:07):
meal than consequences of eitherbeing on a plane or in the
field and all of a sudden IBS orsomething else hits you.
It could literally cost youyour life, because you're now in
a situation where you've gotanother factor that's
contributing to your level ofstress, which is your body's
reaction.
So certainly I wouldn't wish mypost-military career these
(30:28):
things set in for me the PTSDand the IBS in a much more
significant way.
I'm grateful at least that itdidn't earlier, because that
could have been quite risky formy well-being had it occurred in
situations where there werehostilities.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
And I think that's something that we are going to
explore further in futurepodcasts.
Absolutely, I, for one, knowexactly what you're talking
about when it comes to this sortof brain fog, the extent of
that brain fog until you'vegotten rid of it.
That's when you really know howimpactful that was to your
(31:15):
day-to-day and that is certainlya major benefit of going down
the path of a ketogenic orcarnivore diet.
I wanted to ask you, stephen,about staying on track.
So you know you certainly trieda number of eating lifestyles,
diets, whatever you want to callit.
You settled on the ketogeniccarnivore diet at this point.
It has been working for youseemingly longer than any other
(31:38):
type of lifestyle eatinglifestyle that you've tried in
the past.
How do you stay on track when itcomes to the keto carnivore
diet?
You're going to have peerpressure.
You're going to have holidays,which we just went through.
You're going to have travelwhere, all of a sudden, you may
be in less control over thefoods that are in front of you.
(32:00):
What are some of the thingsthat you recommend our audience
think about as it relates tostaying on track when it comes
to fixing your health?
Yeah, that's something ouraudience think about as it
relates to staying on track whenit comes to fixing your health.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yeah, that's something that I think most of
us will have to acknowledge canbe a challenge, and the reason
why it's a challenge is becausethe realities creep in.
Your favorite aunt with thebest cake on the planet shows up
.
It's her birthday.
She wants to have a piece ofcake.
Well, have the piece of cake,or a very, very small piece of
it, and say, look, I'd love tohave more.
(32:30):
Perhaps I'll save my extra halffor you and kind of leave it at
that.
When it comes to your questionconcerning travel, I simply fast
.
I don't go into airportsituations with a full stomach.
I just don't take the riskbecause I don't know how I'm
going to react when I'm there,because they tend to be
stressful situations in troublethese days, particularly
post-COVID.
So really, it fundamentallycomes down to manage
(32:52):
expectations around yourself andwhat your levels of tolerance
are in the environment you're inMeaning.
If you have a three-hour drivesomewhere, it's probably not the
best time to reintroduce foodsthat are candidly, demonstrably
not good for you and just simplytake a pass.
I doubt that there'scircumstances that warrant, as I
(33:13):
would say, where you can becontinuously pushed to eat
certain foods, because in thosecircumstances it's been very
rare People have said hey, youknow, your nickname when you
were a kid was Cake Face.
You always ate desserts.
What's wrong with you?
I said well, you know, you'reabsolutely correct.
I love, love, love cake and pieand all those things, but I
love my toes and my eyesight waymore.
(33:33):
So that's just the reality.
And I want to say something.
I'm not superhuman.
I'm human like everyone else,and there's always a certain
amount of hubris in this processwhere you're like oh yeah, I
read three research papers fromlongitudinal studies or metadata
studies cross-sectioning awhack of different people that
have contributed all respectedresearchers.
(33:54):
This is great.
I've reversed my diabetes, so Imust be cured.
So I'm going to go ahead andhave that fast food burger
somewhere and think everything'srosy.
It is not.
I can tell you from personalexperience with my CGM getting
up in the middle of dinner withmy wife and partner and saying
I'm sorry, but you're going tohave to ask the guy to hold that
main meal because I've just hada beer my favorite beer and my
(34:17):
sugar's gone to 15 and normal isfour to six.
So I've literally had to get upin a suit with dress shoes and
walk around a big city aroundseveral blocks to try to get my
sugar under control.
So it's, candidly, just notworth it.
Because when we come back to thecomment about brain fog, if
you've experienced that and, asyou said, you won't know
necessarily what it's like untilyou don't have it anymore so
(34:41):
when you feel it creeping backin because your sugar's too high
, as an example, it's scary.
It's really scary because youstart thinking I don't want to
feel this way again.
It'd be the same thing as ifyou, graham, or me, just got
over a stomach flu and then aweek later I bring you over to
my house and I say hey, you knowwhat, graham, I made this
perfect dish for you, but it isprobably going to give you your
(35:03):
stomach flu back.
You'd say, no way, no how.
So that's kind of how I look atit.
It's not worth me putting asmile on your face when I'll be
in a grimace for the next twohours.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Very well said.
One of the things that I'vecertainly experienced I think a
lot of people experience, and Iknow you and I have talked about
this is this can be a lonelyjourney at times, because we are
.
Although the percentage ofpeople that are going to the
ketogenic carnivore diet isincreasing exponentially, it is
(35:35):
still a fairly small percentageof people that are actually
embarking on this adventure.
One of the things that I knowyou and I have talked about is
there are enlighteninginfluencers out there.
They may be farther along inthe journey or they may have had
a positive impact on yourjourney.
(35:55):
Maybe you want to talk aboutsomebody in particular, or maybe
you just want to talk about astory that helped guide you.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, I would say it's probably appropriate for me
to begin by explaining myapproach to this.
So there's kind of layers ofapproach in my particular
circumstance because it's notjust a physiological thing, it's
also a mental thing because ofmy severe PTSD.
So I sort of came at it a bunchof different ways and I'm
blessed with a team of not justinfluencers online, but I have a
(36:38):
psychotherapist who isexcellent.
I have a nutritionist slashnaturopath who is outstanding,
just recently finished school,so he's up on all of this stuff.
I have a proactive attitude, asupportive spouse.
Even my children, who are quiteolder adults now in their 30s,
applaud the changes in my bodyand reinforce the positive
(36:59):
feedback loop on how I look,because, keep in mind, I'm six
foot two.
At my worst I was 235 pounds.
I looked great until I tried toput my tuck shirt on and my son
at the time he was only 15 backthen was laughing because I
couldn't get the buttons closedon it and still took a picture
of me anyway.
I literally looked like awell-dressed Humpty, dumpty.
And of course I was going to amilitary event, so anybody who's
(37:20):
in the military will understandthat showing up with your
buttons undone is worthy ofridicule Getting myself in a
condition where I wasn'tembarrassed by family photos,
where I was taking better careof myself and making sure that I
felt better.
I mean, consequently, the lossof weight, graham, was secondary
to how well I felt, where Ididn't have to catalog in my
(37:42):
mind where every washroom waswhen I was traveling, in the
event that I needed it, and thatwas critical to quality of life
.
In fact, I even said that to myspouse today on my way to my
oral surgeon for my dentalprocedure.
How nice it was to drive for anhour and 15 minutes and not
worry once about whether or notI would need to use a washer.
So it's not just one thing andevery single person will have to
(38:04):
find what dynamics work forthem.
So, by way of example, I useself-hypnosis from Paul McKenna.
I'm a member of the Mindvalleyand I thank the founder of
Mindvalley for creating it.
It's basically the equivalentof Netflix for mindfulness,
meditation and self-awarenessand self-development.
That helped me immensely.
(38:24):
The therapy helped me immensely,making sure that my diet was
improved, but also taking asnapshot and I have to give full
credit to my naturopath forthis taking a snapshot and
saying okay, because sherecognized.
It wasn't one thing.
She recognized the mental, sherecognized the physical,
physiological, the stressfactors that were in my life,
the kind of things I wasconsuming that perhaps were not
(38:48):
good.
Because we did a fecal test tosee what was going on in my body
.
Because I've done from themilitary and for my corporate
jobs, I've done a lot ofinternational travel, so we
wondered oh okay, well, we'veruled out Crohn's and colitis,
we need to find out what's goingon in your gut bio.
It took me seven months, graham, to get up the courage to find
(39:08):
out if I had a 1,200-foot-longtapeworm, because I was worried
about what they were going tofind.
I'd already been told from yourcolonoscopy eat more fiber.
And please do that.
Folks, if you're going tolisten to just one thing, make
sure you eat lots of fiber.
When I went through this processof trying to figure out what
needed to be done, I had tosurrender into that process and
trust the experts that I feltrepresented my mindset and how I
(39:32):
view the world.
That means my psychotherapist,my naturopath, my dietician, who
is dialed in, and so, as aconsequence, I found out that
one of the things that wasworking against me was something
called dysbiotic bacteria, andwhat that means is our
microbiome is full of all kindsof bacteria.
You got good bacteria and yougot bad bacteria, or sometimes
you have the absence of bacteriaand they don't show up.
(39:52):
So dysbiotic bacteria are thosebacteria that are actually
driving the urge or desire tohave more sugar.
They're feeding, much like theysay, with sugar and cancer
cells.
They feed off of that sugar.
It causes an anabolic reactionin the body when you have this
dysbiotic bacteria and all thesetoxins are floating around in
(40:16):
the stomach, which is killingmore of the good bacteria, and
then very soon, this imbalancein your stomach makes you
reactive to everything.
And I actually arrived at thatpoint and this was all pre-PTSD
in terms of not finding out thatit was dysbiotic in terms of
four specific bacteria, a fungus, a couple of other kind of
nasty things.
But just understanding that Icould literally before I did all
(40:40):
this research, graham, I couldeat potatoes in front of you and
get sick for no apparent reason.
I could, I swear, eat onechicken wing in water and get
sick because my body was so outof whack and I believed it was
because of what I was eating.
It was what was going on in mystomach wasn't ready really for
anything and it was so inflamedfrom vegetable oils and other
(41:01):
processed stuff that I wasconsuming that it didn't matter
even if I put something healthyin there.
It had to be a progression.
I did the broth and I sort ofmoved along the continuum of
healthier and healthier foods.
I practiced intermittent fasting.
It gave my body a chance to gointo something called entophagy,
and entophagy is when the cellsbegin to self-cannibalize.
(41:21):
They go after the call it wornout cells, where they have the
shorter telomeres that can besalvaged and consumed and
flushed out of the body.
What's amazing and I want toreally highlight this that's a
natural process that we get fromintermittent fasting.
Our forefathers didn't knowanything about intermittent
fasting, but they would only eatonce a day, twice a day.
(41:42):
Maybe on the weekends theywould eat three times, but it
would be a very, very small mealin the evening a day.
Maybe on the weekends theywould eat three times, but it
would be a very, very small mealin the evening, no snacks.
So they were constantly.
It's not a surprise that wehave more cancer and more
diabetes in society because wewere eating too much of the
wrong things that don't providethe nutrition that result in
dysbiotic bacteria in thestomach, that result in a person
like me being always sick,always feeling miserable and
(42:03):
having to literally change how Iinteract with the world in
order to address IBS, ptsd andso forth.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I think you made such an important point about the
fact that there are no quickfixes when it comes to sorting
out our health.
For a lot of us, me included, ittook decades of eating the
wrong way to get to where I was,and it took many, many months,
years to undo decades.
(42:33):
The good news is it doesn'ttake decades to undo it, but it
does take some time and somereal commitment to trying to get
back to that, and I think yousaid it better than anything
that photo that you're proud ofwith the family, as opposed to
that photo where you just lookaway and you can't believe where
you've ended up.
I certainly know that feelingvery personally.
I wanted to talk to you becauseyou've got a somewhat of a
(42:56):
unique journey where you wereactually a vegan at one time, I
believe a vegetarian as well, asyou're going along this journey
and you're ending up in more ofa ketogenic, carnivore type of
healthy eating lifestyle.
Were there any issues withaddressing the environmental or
ethical concerns that somepeople might have about the
(43:16):
ketogenic or carnivore aspect ofthese lifestyles?
Speaker 3 (43:20):
So I think that's really an individualized thing.
My wife actually is apracticing vegetarian, vegan and
has been for the majority ofher life.
She's a wonderful lady and soforth, although I will say that
in terms of quality, Idefinitely out eat her.
It's one of the things that Inoticed with in terms of the
quality of what she consumesversus what I consume, because a
(43:40):
lot of these vegan andvegetarian foods she's a huge
fan of Beyond Meat burgers andso forth.
They're absolutely full chockerblock, full with all kinds of
things that, as you said in ourprevious cast, you know you need
to be a PhD chemist tounderstand what is in those
right.
And they take three lines inthe ingredients because they're
(44:02):
mono, something, something,something with all these hyphens
.
So clearly, if you can't readit, it's not likely your stomach
can either.
So you know where it's going toend up.
It's either going to beembedded somewhere in your
system where it's trying to dealwith it almost like a poison or
a neurotoxin.
So I guess my answer to thequestion with respect to being a
vegan vegetarian is I also atthat time didn't realize how
(44:22):
significantly a lot of thesefoods because you have a limited
it's got better, but at my timeit was a limited number of
foods you can choose in thegrocery store.
That didn't break the bankright, and I noticed my grocery
bill was a lot higher, certainlyhigher than it is now.
With keto carnivore I eat thegrocery in five minutes because
I'm just either getting saladsand meat or just salads or just
(44:42):
meat, so it's a lot faster.
I avoid all the other stuff.
So that was the big epiphanyfor me and again I want to thank
Dr Berg and others for that.
Insight is just by cutting outthe carbs, which most of what I
was eating, I went as avegetarian vegan, probably
eating 100% carbs, because Iwasn't getting the amount of
(45:03):
protein I needed.
My naturopath was not happyabout that.
She said are you having thesesymptoms or those symptoms?
All those things werecontributing to the growth of
the wrong bacteria in my stomachand I wasn't really getting
better.
I was losing some weight, but Iwas nutritionally deficient.
Now, as far as the ethical thingis concerned, you're speaking
to someone who I don't do itanymore, but I didn't have any
(45:26):
issue with eating wild game,whether it was venison, whether
it was moose, what have you?
I don't really have an ethicalissue with that.
I've actually seen and beenadjacent to slaughterhouses,
working with a company in the US, and I'm quite aware of how
that's managed ethically today,versus perhaps maybe how some
people perceive it.
I'm personally not a fan oflarge industrial farms, Graham,
(45:48):
because I don't think that theyare the best, and I think you
and I, both, ethically, willsearch out butchers that are
buying locally from farms withfree range chickens that have
grass fed, cattle that are freeto graze, and so on and so forth
.
The reality is the way my bodyworks.
I've tested it.
Ethically or not, people haveto make their own decisions.
(46:09):
But I'm far healthier.
And how do I know that?
Because my CGM says so.
How do I know it?
Because the amount of weightthat I can lift in the gym, how
do I know it?
I don't require a nap, and Ireally want to stress this when
I was on a vegan vegetarian diet, two o'clock in the afternoon.
I you know, fortunately, I'vebeen working from home for the
last few years, but if I hadn't,I was beginning to wonder what
(46:30):
life would have been like if youand I were still working
together in a corporate office.
I'd probably be curled upunderneath my pod trying to get
a little shut eye after lunchbecause I I had no energy.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I just absolutely crashed because I didn't
understand those starches forsure and I want to point
something out that a lot ofpeople are going to chalk that
up to getting older, andcertainly this is something I
did, or I was guilty of doingbut you don't need a nap today
and you are older than you wereyears ago, when you did need
(47:01):
that nap, and I think that's animportant difference, and just
lifestyle has meant that youactually have more energy today
than you did even a couple ofyears ago, when you were much
younger.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
Yeah, and I think the other really important thing
that people are beginning torealize that we haven't touched
on yet and that was interestingbecause it was in the context of
dementia, the study and myfather has dementia, so that's
the purpose of me reading it butthey were saying that generally
healthy people.
So we know, for instance, let'scall healthy people who are
(47:36):
consuming a meal at dinnertimebut never closer than three
hours before they go to bed andare not snacking in between.
So their digestive system atthat point has started to really
deal with that meal.
That's certainly a factor,because this study showed that
for people who are normal, theytend8 minutes.
So do the math we're talkingalmost three hours before they
(48:09):
go into a REM state.
And consequently, what happensit's almost the same as
endophagy for the brain to use.
The mechanism or the physics ofit is, their body isn't able to
get rid of the plaque and theproteins, the malign proteins
that are in the brain and dowhat they call like a neuro dump
of toxins, so that exacerbatesproblems with the illness.
(48:32):
So, whether you have diabetesor not, if you have a healthy
brain, the same applies.
You need to keep your brain ina healthy state so everything
else works as it should.
You know, you could have aperfectly healthy body, but if
the brain is failing you, it'snot really a perfectly healthy
body, is it?
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Very well said.
Very well said.
I wanted to have some fun withthis last question, stephen.
So think of pre-keto Stephen anumber of years ago.
If you were able to jump in atime machine and go back and
talk to pre-keto carnivoreStephen, is there any advice
you'd give to that person?
Because maybe our listenersmight be thinking well, I'm that
(49:12):
person today.
I'm going to be perhaps adifferent person in the future.
What would you tell yourself somany years ago?
Speaker 3 (49:19):
I'd have four words for him just to get his
attention, because I know himpretty well.
Look at me now.
This is how I feel.
So that would definitely havegot my attention in my 30s and
early 40s because I was sofocused, like you, on the kids.
Yeah, you know, piece of pizzahanging out of your face while
you're driving the minivangetting one kid to soccer and
the other one to ballet, youknow, it was just, it was.
(49:42):
We were road warriors.
We just, you know, we consumedthat that life in the corporate
office, caught public transit,got into respective vehicles,
got our kids to their tasks 8,30, 9 o'clock at night.
You put them down especially ifyou were a single dad like me
and um, then you startedthinking about what you were
going to eat if you hadn'talready, and by then it's too
late, you know.
(50:03):
And what are you doing?
You're throwing something inthe microwave and warming it up,
and it's too late.
You know, and what are youdoing?
You're throwing something inthe microwave and warming it up,
and it's just absolute garbage.
So your body doesn't even havea chance to get the proper
nutrition in an environmentwhere you're already 16, 17
hours of active, stressfulactivities.
For those of us that have kidsout there, you know it can be a
lot of fun trying to getthree-year-olds and
five-year-olds andseven-year-olds where they need
(50:23):
to be, and it's almost neverthat they're.
It's a quiet transition fromone task to the next.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
So there we are Very well said.
I can't think of a better noteto end on Stephen.
Thank you so much.
This has been fantastic.
Thanks to everybody who haslistened to another episode of
Lessons from the Keto-Verse.
We look forward to joining youagain soon.
Thanks everybody.
We look forward to joining youagain soon.
Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Thanks, graham.
Thanks for tuning in to Lessonsfrom the Keto-Verse.
Join Stephen and Graham nexttime for more keto tips and
stories to fuel your health.
Subscribe, share and let's keepthe keto vibes going.
Welcome to Lessons from the Keto-Verse.
Join Stephen and Graham as theyexplore the keto lifestyle with
tips, science and stories toboost your health.
This podcast isn't medicaladvice.
Consult your healthcare advisorfor any health-related issues.
Get ready to fuel your primalpower.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And welcome to another episode of Lessons from
the Keto-Verse.
I am here with my friendStephen In the last episode of
Lessons from the Keto-Verse.
I am here with my friendStephen.
In the last episode of Lessonsfrom the Keto-Verse, stephen
actually asked me a series ofquestions just to get to know
your hosts.
This time I am fortunate enoughto be able to ask Stephen some
questions about his background,how he was able to get to where
(00:40):
he is today, the achievementsand a little bit of background
as to how he started thatjourney, stephen welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Thanks very much, Graham.
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
All right, let's jump into the first question.
So general question for you,stephen.
Tell us a little bit about yourbackground.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Sure, so let's begin at the end as opposed to the
beginning.
I'm a 58-year-old male and I ama type 2 diabetic, and so how
that came about wasapproximately seven, seven,
eight years ago Actually on mybirthday I was diagnosed with
type 2 diabetes, and theremarkable thing at the time,
graham, was I was actually atthe gym when I took the call and
the nurse said could youperhaps add some additional
(01:22):
training?
You're going to need to getmore exercise.
And my response was did theyadd an extra day to the week?
Because it was clearlyimpossible.
I was already working out five,six days a week.
So I was kind of in shock.
I had precursors, like theprogression of the illness
initially was pre-diabetic.
I didn't think anything of it.
I just thought that, well, youknow what I'm stressed, it's
just a bad blood result, and Ikind of dismissed it.
(01:44):
But when I was a full diabetic,I believe at the time, my A1C
came back and I was in the highnines or tens, I think my
initial one was about 9.3 or 9.5.
So as a consequence, they putme on metformin gram and the
journey really from theprogression of the illness and
realizing how serious it wasBecause you can imagine sitting
(02:06):
with your doctor and your doctorinforming you Stephen, you have
the second worst diagnosis Ican give any of my patients,
second only to cancer.
This is the situation you canexpect to cut in your life
expectancy between 13 and 17years, which was a shock At the
time.
Cut in your life expectancybetween 13 and 17 years, which
was a shock At the time.
I could hear the words comingout of her mouth but I wasn't
(02:27):
really processing.
So from that, graham, we goback in time when I was always
very active in sports, alwaysvery engaged in my corporate
career, was a single fatherraising three kids, and so this
was all really a shock to me.
Candidly, and as a formermilitary officer in the Canadian
(02:53):
Forces, which is where mycareer began, I always had a
can-do, must-do attitude and didspend a lot of time focusing on
me.
It was know your people andpromote their welfare.
So I was always looking out forother people without
understanding that I had tocultivate and care for myself
the same way as I was expectedto for others, and I didn't do a
particularly good job of thator I wouldn't have got that
diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Excellent, and one of the many things I admire about
you, stephen, is your service,your military service, something
that we've talked a lot aboutand I know is a big part of your
life.
So thank you very much for yourservice.
Thank you, I know it's a bigpart of your life.
So, thank you very much for yourservice.
Thank you, you know and I thinkwe mentioned in the last
episode that you and I workedvery closely together at a
(03:32):
startup, a billion dollarstartup, building a wireless
company, and it was go, go, go,work your butt off and have some
fun in between.
And you were always there tokeep me a bit insane, keep me
sane from the insanity as wellas give me a laugh often.
And one of the things Iremember about you is you were
always the healthy guy you were.
(03:53):
You know if you weren't at thegym, you were looking after your
health, and you know a lot ofpeople out there are.
You know they feel healthy.
They certainly work towardsmaintaining or keeping and
maintaining their health.
How did it make you feel,knowing that you were one of
those people that other peoplelooked up to as a healthy
individual, but inside you wererealizing that that wasn't the
(04:16):
case?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
That's.
You know, it's kind of likehaving imposter syndrome in a
way, because I didn't knowpeople perceived me that way.
I saw pictures that you know mybrother had taken for family
and went you know who's the guywith the pot belly.
You know, meanwhile I wasprobably going in the gym
wearing clothing that mostpeople would have said why is
that guy wearing that?
Because I thought I was inbetter shape than I actually was
.
I believed it didn't reallymatter what I ate, I'm in the
(04:40):
gym, I'll burn it off at the gym.
I look gym, I'll burn it off atthe gym.
I look great, I feel great.
And the reality was that justsimply wasn't true.
Because if you looked at whatwas going on in my life at the
time, I had persistent,uncontrolled IBS.
That was obviously a result ofmy elevated sugar.
Unfortunately, with themilitary I also have PTSD that
exacerbated that stress that youso well and eloquently
(05:03):
described, that both of usexperienced at work.
I thrived on that, so I thought, but perhaps the adrenaline of
that, the excitement of beingable to build the first telecom
company in decades where we live, I guess in some way
overshadowed the effects it washaving on my body, the negative
(05:27):
effects and these symptoms Ithink for a lot of people sneak
up on you All of a sudden.
You're like oh you know, maybeI'm just not feeling well today.
Oh, I had stopped on the way towork and find a public washroom
because I felt so unwell.
Oh, I'm breaking out into coldsweat driving.
I must be stressed out from thetraffic and meanwhile I'm
(05:48):
literally having a diabeticreaction to extremely high sugar
, which at the time I wasn'twearing a CGM.
They didn't even exist, atleast not as pervasively as they
are now.
So, graham, I was just flat outin denial and unaware.
I just assumed well, I'm.
I'm just one of those guys thatyou know.
I react to certain foods.
So I tried going on a diet andnot eating any bread, thinking
(06:10):
that perhaps I was celiac.
My tests came back.
They were negative.
I was really kind of lost andagain, because I was so focused,
like you, on our respectivecareers and making sure other
people were taken care of andwe're always the last in the
line to worry about how do Itake care of Graham, how do I
take care of Stephen?
So I just got more and more ill, to the point where it was very
(06:33):
clear that there was somethingwrong.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, and I want to elaborate on something you just
talked about, which is therelationship with food.
You get this diagnosis from thedoctor.
Obviously, it's very scary.
A lot of things are goingthrough your mind, no doubt how
you know maybe you can talkabout from the moment you left
that doctor's office.
How did your relationship withfood change over the journey and
(06:58):
I know it's likely been abouttwo years now or so how has your
relationship with food changedfrom the moment you left the
doctor's office to a muchhealthier version of yourself
today?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Well, first of all, I think everyone's journey is
unique to them and I'm happy toshare my experience.
But I do want to point out thatI'm not a doctor.
The advice that I was given bythe doctor at one point, when my
blood results returned tonormal they were unaware that I
came off metformin because I wasso sick on metformin my quality
of life was literally making mecontemplate suicide.
I don't say that lightly.
(07:31):
That's how sick I was.
I spent 20 hours a day inconstant abdominal pain.
I couldn't leave the house.
My life was an absolutedisaster, so I had no recourse.
I could either succumb to thesymptoms and be angry all the
time.
I was angry at the kids.
I was short-tempered because Iwas in so much pain.
The metformin made me feel likeI ate glass and I believe it
(07:52):
must have stacked on top ofalready the inflammation that
was in my body, the irritablebowel syndrome that I clearly
had and there is some history ofthat in the family the anxiety
I was beginning to feel like Icouldn't even travel to work
without worrying about am Igoing to need to find a washroom
?
And I'm sure there's a lot ofpeople out there with IBS.
(08:12):
It's not a joke.
It's a very degrading,demoralizing feeling.
You just get out and you'relike, oh my God, I just left the
house, I'm going to have toreturn to the house, and that
happened numerous times to me.
So instead of just saying thisis how it's going to be, I
started doing research, and thatresearch started to give me
hope.
And that hope directed me toeven more research where people
who were further along the paththan me whether they were type 1
(08:34):
or type 2, whether they had IBS, PTSD, all of the above there
was strong indicators that therewas a path that wasn't just
strictly to be onpharmaceuticals.
So what I started doing in thatresearch is discovering the
power of eating the right foodat the right time.
I discovered Dr Fung's workaround intermittent fasting.
He's a Toronto nephrologistthat struggled with his patients
(08:57):
who were unable to recover fromthe consequences of stage four
diabetes, which is they'restarting to have renal failure,
and it was very frustrating forhim.
So he discovered, in essence,from his own research how
effective intermittent fastingcould even be for people who
were literally on dialysis to atleast extend their life.
They weren't necessarily goingto get their kidneys back.
(09:18):
So that gave me hope, Graham,because I didn't have at that
time any strong indicators formy kidneys being out of whack.
I likely had something that wenow know as non-alcoholic fatty
liver, so I started researchingthat.
I started consuming a lot ofwater with lemons In that period
.
What inspired me to do that was,for the very first time in my
(09:40):
life, I ended up having kidneystones, and as a person of 58
years, that is definitely one ofthe most painful experiences of
my life.
I've had plenty of injuries,but that one was certainly one
of the worst.
So I have not had in the lasteight years any kidney stone
recurrence whatsoever.
Regimen of beginning, just asyou said, this continuous
(10:02):
improvement process where youknow, I initially started doing
research and then I tried evenbeing vegan vegetarian for a
while.
After vegan vegetarian didn'twork as well as I had hoped, I
tried to find other methods andmethodologies, which in turn,
led you and I in the same place,as you said from our previous
discussion, which was directlyinto keto, carnivore and let's
(10:22):
dive into the idea of ketocarnivore.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So the ketogenic diet is something where our macros
are carbs, protein and fat.
All foods can be put into oneof those categories.
The ketogenic diet puts anemphasis on protein and fat and
a de-emphasis on carbs.
If you think about your journeyas it relates to the
(10:49):
nutritional science that youinvestigated by yourself, you
took things into your own hands.
You wanted to do your owninvestigation.
You were, I think, like me,tired of relying on the sort of
standard American diet advice orthe advice that you might see
in a magazine, and to gettingmore granular.
Were there some surprisingthings that you uncovered as you
(11:12):
got into the macros aroundcarbs, protein and fat?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, it's amazing when you find out that starch is
a sugar.
Sugar is starch.
They're the same thing.
There's no such thing as goodsugar.
We only have, I believe, amatter of like three grams.
I heard from one expert of sugarin our entire bloodstream.
So when you look at a can ofsoda and I'm not going to name
any, but a can of soda and youfind 31 grams of sugar in just
(11:38):
that one can, I mean that'spretty easy to research.
That's usually where most of usstart.
But the aha moments come later,when you start realizing that
that spaghetti you had is alsoturning into sugar.
For me, that was incredible,and so the progression of
understanding what my body wasdoing and I mean you've
highlighted this before is stayout of the middle of the grocery
, stay to the ends, where you'llfind the keto carnivore foods,
(12:00):
the fresh produce if you're ketoand obviously high select meats
and the other sections.
We're not talking about ultraprocessed foods at all and I
achieved a certain level of A1C.
It started to decline.
I'd lost 50 pounds over thecourse of a few years.
I got back down to the weight Iwas, and for our folks at home.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
A1c is the sugar level in your body.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
That's right.
So the A1C is an average ofwhat your sugar has done over
the last 90 days, and somepeople may say well, why is it
90 days?
The reason is that our redblood cells refresh
approximately every 90 days, soin that 90-day period you're
getting a nice graph of exactlywhere your sugar is sitting.
It's not absolute, and I dothink it's unfortunate that we
(12:48):
don't measure insulin to starttesting for insulin resistance,
because by the time your sugar'sout of whack, people also have
insulin resistance to addressand we could probably pick that
up in a future podcast.
We can talk a bit moretactically about the strategies,
but again, these were allthings that you and I learned in
the process of our research and, with the added benefit of
(13:08):
seeing the results, with the CGM, I could dial in right away and
go okay, well, that strategydidn't work for me.
Were there other underlyingfactors?
Yeah, I was trying to eat thatwhen I was stressed, while I was
taking my kids to some activity, which caused a hyper state
where my body really wasn'tinterested in food.
But I just ate it, as you said,because we've been told, as
(13:31):
part of this industrializedrevolution, that we must eat
three times a day when ourforefathers did not.
So if you don't feel likeeating, you're not going to
perish from skipping lunch orskipping dinner.
So if your body's under duress,it's already trying to deal
with a certain level of stress.
It's not unreasonable toperhaps stick to a broth, a nice
beef broth, something veryhealthy, lots of nutrients, and
(13:54):
your body won't be cravingpotassium and sodium because
you're putting it in there.
And what's remarkable aboutthat?
As we talk about what weconsume.
Going back to your earlierquestion, what I was amazed is
all my cravings went away, andthose cravings disappeared
because I wasn't consuming theseaddictive sugars that were
unbeknownst to me.
I didn't know at the time.
This came in my later researchand you now see this is very
(14:16):
common now in news briefs thatnot only will some of the foods
we consume raise our level ofdepression and anxiety, but
it'll actually create anaddiction similar to other
things like cigarettes andalcohol.
Where we will, our body willcrave that sugar after a meal.
And the reason for that and youand I've discussed this before
(14:37):
is because you're not eating asatiating meal where you feel
full.
Your brain's sending a signalto the body, body's back to the
brain saying hey, tell this guyto eat some more, because you
know it's 20 minutes after hisChinese food and he's hungry
again.
Why?
Because there's rice in it.
The rice turns to sugar Sugarand again, whether it's cane
(14:57):
sugar or sugar that your bodyturns starches into, is still
sugar.
So what that does is cause amassive elevation, or what they
call a spike, in your sugar.
That's your spot glucosemeasure, not your A1c.
But you get enough of those andthat trend line that you're
having daily with those spikesand those valleys are going to
raise your A1c over the 90 days.
(15:18):
The valleys and those spikesare what creates hunger.
That's why sometimes, when weweren't eating well, you know
you eat a bagel.
That's all sugar.
It's.
Basically you might as welljust eat cake.
It's going to have the sameconsequence in terms of your
sugar.
Two hours after you eat it,you're as hungry as a bear again
, whereas if you eat a ketocarnivore diet, like you and I
(15:40):
do, I can eat three or four eggsin the morning with healthy
bacon with no nitrites in it,and I really honestly don't need
to eat again until the eveningyou mentioned three really
important letters there.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Cgm, which is a continuous glucose monitor,
something that interestingly, Ibelieve in the US has.
They're now making it availableto people, I believe over the
counter, but certainly throughinsurance companies.
Canada has been a little bitfurther along as far as allowing
people to take some controlover their body's response to
(16:16):
certain foods.
You've had a CGM for quite sometime now.
Are there some things thatreally surprised you about
wearing a CGM, being able to getthat instant feedback on the
impact certain foods have onyour body in particular and how
that has changed the way you eatover time?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
First of all, I'm so grateful for these wearable
technologies.
I really am, and I have noaffiliation whatsoever with the
particular model that I wear.
I've had great success with it.
So the success is reallyderived from watching it and
realizing okay, I just had ameal and everything looks good.
I had because I know that it'sheart healthy, 90% cocoa
(16:59):
chocolate, with a huge pound ofnatural peanut butter that's on
top of it and it will cause aspike, a slight spike, because
there's microns of sugar that'sin that.
That's on top of the steak thatI just had, which in turn, is
on top of the salad which theycall stacking.
So I'd have my salad and if I'mdoing keto, I'd have my salad
and then my meat, and then Iwould add something that's
(17:20):
that's still full of fats, like,for instance, yogurt with a few
blueberries or that sort ofthing on it.
So I'm getting the um, thephtonutrients, lacing it with
flaxseed, chia seed and allthese other things, so that I
can address the other issuewhich I had had, obviously
exacerbated by a high sodium,high ultra processed diet, which
was I started to haveendometriosis forming in my
(17:44):
colon, and that's basically forthose and that's, I guess,
extremely bad for most peopleit's just a series of
malformities in the colon thatkind of look like wrinkles, and
that type of diet can also causepolyps, which I also had.
So I was looking at ways,obviously at the time, to
understand what's going on withmy IBS.
(18:04):
Well, I've since had anothertest, and I'm completely clear
of that, which is all a resultof the keto diet yes, thank you,
after going out on the ketocarnivore diet and adding when
I'm on the keto and when I sayketo it's not like I'm saying I
do three months of keto, I justwant to clarify or three months
of carnivore, I mix them to whatI know my body wants.
(18:26):
So, for instance, tonight I hada dental procedure that was
quite traumatic.
It was surgery and I didn'tfeel like trying to chew
anything.
That was too too hard.
So I had a steak.
But I buy the steak graham thatis grass fed and grain finished
from my butcher that literallyI don't even need a knife, it
just pulls apart.
I could sufficiently eat thatwithout causing a migraine from
(18:50):
this severe root canal.
That was done.
So, consequently, I listened towhat my body does.
I looked at my sugar after Iate that and actually I want to
footnote what I just said too,because I think it's important
for the audience to understand.
After the procedure, I was underenormous duress in that
procedure.
It started to trigger my PTSDbecause I was starting to choke
and I literally got up from thechair after an hour and 15
(19:12):
minutes, when I walked into thedental office, my sugar showed
6.1 and that was fasted.
I hadn't eaten anything andthis was approximately 10, 10 AM
in the morning.
What happened was after myprocedure.
It's now well into myintermittent fasting period
where I would normally, if I amgoing to skip breakfast, I would
start thinking about eatingbetween 12 and 2 pm.
(19:33):
Well, the sugar, which was notnormal, was in the nines, like I
had.
My sugar was like 9.5.
That was my spot glucose.
So what that meant is theduress and the stress that was
on my body from that procedureand I'm no longer insulin
resistant.
I'm technically no longerdiabetic.
I've reversed.
My symptoms still showed a verystrong diabetic response in the
(19:54):
absence of the context.
So that's what I love about theCGM is because you can look at
it and go right now.
Is this a physiologicalreaction from working out in the
gym?
If you work out in the gym andyou're raising your blood
pressure and you're puttingexertion on your muscles, you're
working your muscles.
You're going to see anelevation.
That's a physiological reactionto the actual training, the
(20:15):
same way as stress is.
There's no problem with that.
The issue is when it's systemic, inflammatory and constantly,
constantly a part of youreveryday, where your sugar is
always up there.
Not because of exercise, notfor any other reason, but just
pure, unadulterated stress.
And what I want to highlight ishere's a perfect example where I
was my own guinea pig in thehands of my dentist and seeing
(20:37):
the net result to my body, whichI could not obviously know if I
wasn't wearing a CGM.
So what did I do?
I went for a walk for five to10 minutes before I was picked
up, on a cold day.
Everything normalized because Iwas relaxed.
It was a stressful situation.
So that shows my metabolicflexibility, to quote Dave
Asbury, my metabolic flexibilityto go out of that situation.
(21:02):
Much like a gazelle will getchased by a lion in the safari
it it's an amazing thing.
After it gets chased and getsaway from the lion, it'll stop
starting to eat grass right,because it knows how to go flip
between the sympathetic,parasympathetic, parasympathetic
to sympathetic.
Now we live our lives likewe're being chased by lions all
the time and, as a consequence,our bodies are in a constant
(21:25):
state, inflammatory state.
So what happens?
And this is an interestingaspect of IBS and what was
happening with me?
I get triggered because somebodycut me off on my way to work.
That would cause my elevationin cortisol.
So what happens then is my bodygoes there must be a lion
chasing us and it pulls all thatblood away from the digestive
process into the muscles and thebody will naturally go hey,
(21:46):
whatever was there, we don'tneed it right now.
We got more serious stuff goingon.
You're about to be eaten by alion.
Obviously, that's a metaphorthat gives you some idea of the
cycle that we get into.
Then add on top of thatfrankenfoods that are consumed
because they're quick, they'reeasy, you're on your way to work
oh, I'll grab a bagel, I'llgrab this, we'll grab that, and
(22:11):
you're setting yourself up forfailure.
It's like that poor gazellethat's in the savannah having
two of its legs tied togetherand still expected to run and to
make it.
It's not going to make it andthat's eventually the
compounding effect of thisinflammation that we're
absorbing.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
And I think this is such a critical point and I
think will be a surprise for alot of people.
You were in a fasted state.
You also were well aware of,you know, the impact that foods
had on your glucose levels.
You were in a fasted state atthe dentist and your blood
(22:44):
glucose shot through the roofbecause of stress, not because
of the food you ate and I thinkwe will explore this in future
podcasts.
But I think this will be asurprise for a lot of people
that it's not just about thefood you eat, certainly in the
moment, over time, but it's alsoyour stress levels that can
(23:08):
actually contribute toeventually ending up being a
diabetic or some otherhealth-related issues 100%.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
I mean just using the military as a baseline.
So let's go beyond me for amoment and take those of us who
have served, who have seenterrible things, and that's
certainly been a catalyst orfully attributed to PTSD or
other issues, including IBS inmy case.
Well, it stands to reason thatany form of stress, whether
you're a first responder thatwould be firefighters, ambulance
(23:38):
attendants, even doctorsworking in the merge you don't
know what you're going to getwhen you're in those situations.
So to your point.
A great parallelism is I was upat 530 in the morning doing my
meditation, practicing a form ofhypnosis that's specifically
engineered for PTSD and,ironically, a couple hours later
, it didn't save me from thereality of what my body was
(24:00):
experiencing in that moment.
I'm not going to tell you thatit wasn't painful, it was quite
painful.
The process itself was veryunpleasant and I was in the
hands of a 30-year veteran ofdoing exactly that kind of oral
surgery.
So she was excellent.
It's just how my body reactedto it, and no amount in that
moment of mindfulness, which Ipractice constantly, no amount
(24:21):
of meditation, which I used toteach, was going to save my
glucose from rising.
So why is that important?
It's because with the CGM, Ican see it and I can create a
resolution to cut the spike offby going for a walk, and I
really want to zone in on thatfor a second.
So if you were to say, pick onething, you could only do one
thing.
I will only allow you to do onething to address the spike in
(24:44):
your sugar.
What would you pick?
Would it be meds?
Would it be a particular food?
Would it be a particularsupplement, like berberine?
What would you do?
Hands down.
I see it every single daybecause I do it as I jump on my
elliptical.
If the weather is nice enoughI'm blessed to have a woodland
property I'll go for a walk,either by myself or with the
dogs, practicing mindfulness,grounding with nature, and
(25:06):
immediately, within 25 minutes,my sugar will go down.
Now what's interesting is it'sstarting to go down already
anyway, almost immediately toyour earlier point.
But a CGM has a 15 minute delay, so you don't see the results
of what it is you're doing until15 minutes in, and it's
remarkable.
You can take anywhere from 50to 75% of that spike out just by
(25:28):
catching it before it goes upbeyond what normally here is
considered high, which isanything over 10.
So typically after I do that,my sugar normalizes.
It may go up a little bit afterI've finished exercising
because there is a physiologicalcomponent.
And keep in mind I'm notsprinting, I'm just doing a
light walk or I'm just lightlywalking an elliptical low impact
I save just doing a light walkor I'm just lightly walking an
(25:49):
elliptical low impact.
I save the high impact stuff forthe gym, the low impact when
I'm walking or doing that sortof thing, and it works wonders,
better than metformin, betterthan any other even supplement
that I've tried, because theimpact is so obvious.
And that even includes applecider vinegar.
A lot of people use apple cidervinegar.
I use it every day, to thechagrin of my dentist.
(26:10):
I do dilute it.
Please make sure you do thatwith lemon and apple cider
vinegar.
Make sure you dilute it withenough water or you will start
damaging your teeth.
But the effects of that as wellis quite significant.
I learned that actually from theglucose goddess, who is a I
would call a celebrity of sortson YouTube that speaks about
stacking and the importance ofACV and she's a, I believe, a
(26:33):
PhD microbiologist.
So very, very smart lady andshe's been on a lot of programs
and I really admire her insights.
Along with Dr Berg I alsofollow, and Dr Stan, who used to
be an Olympian.
He's a great resource for me,very matter-of-fact about things
.
So, again, it is a continuousimprovement process.
(26:53):
Graham, I always look at newresearch.
You and I talk about it andthen I get a chance to be my I
guess my own scientificexperiment.
Because I'm willing to test.
As long as it's not harmful tome physically, I'm willing to
test to see how my body reactsto me physically.
I'm willing to test to see howmy body reacts Because, like
David Asbury said, I want thatmetabolic flexibility, that
(27:18):
responsiveness Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
And yeah, I love, when I'm listening to podcasts,
being able to take somethingaway and try it that day or the
next day, and I certainly do thesame thing.
I've dedicated myself to walking10 kilometers a day.
The same thing, I've dedicatedmyself to walking 10 kilometers
a day.
It has been a huge benefit inme controlling my blood sugar as
well.
And, you know, right after ameal, going for a walk not only
is fantastic for us, you know ingeneral, but knowing that it
(27:43):
actually has a fairly quickimpact on our blood sugar can
mean just walking if you changenothing else and obviously we
encourage people to get rid ofthings like ultra-processed
foods you can quite literallychange the course of your health
by doing something like a20-minute, 25-minute walk after
(28:05):
a meal, even if it's, you know,walking up and down the stairs,
whatever it is getting on theelliptical, some kind of
sustained, low-impact exerciseis going to do wonders for our
long-term blood sugar levels.
I wanted to talk to you aboutthe ketogenic carnivore diet and
its impact on your mentalhealth, and maybe you can relate
(28:25):
this to your extensive militaryexperience and why you think
the ketogenic carnivore dietmight benefit military personnel
not only from a physicalbenefit, but also from a mental
benefit.
Maybe you can elaborate on yourexperience.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Sure.
So, first of all, what I didnotice when I was still eating
ultra-processed foods andthinking I was healthy because I
was on a vegetarian and vegandiet was brain fog.
I had massive issues with brainfog.
That clarity is so critical.
When you're deployed in anenvironment hostile environment
the last thing you want to haveis any form of physical or
(29:04):
mental impairment, because youneed to be at your very best,
because there's people on theother side that may not
necessarily have your bestinterests in mind.
If you don't mind me saying so,one of the key things that I
believe would be helpful for themilitary, particularly on
deployments.
Currently, what we typicallyconsume is what in the US is
called MREs and in Canada calledIMPs, which stand for
(29:26):
individual meal packs, and MREsare meals ready to eat.
They're full of sodium, theyhave lots and lots of
preservatives in them, naturally, because they can last for five
or 10 years, and I thinkthere's an application for that.
Obviously, in the absence ofeating anything, when you're in
a particularly hostile situationand you may not get a chance to
eat Otherwise, you're certainlynot necessarily going to have
access to fresh food.
(29:47):
But it begs the question withall that you and I've learned
from intermittent fasting.
Perhaps it's not in their bestinterest to consume that the way
that they do, particularlybefore an operation.
Perhaps it's better.
I've noticed my mental acuity ismuch higher after having fasted
all night in the mornings and Ialso know also as a military
person is I would have ratherpreferred to wait for a good
(30:07):
meal than consequences of eitherbeing on a plane or in the
field and all of a sudden IBS orsomething else hits you.
It could literally cost youyour life, because you're now in
a situation where you've gotanother factor that's
contributing to your level ofstress, which is your body's
reaction.
So certainly I wouldn't wish mypost-military career these
(30:28):
things set in for me the PTSDand the IBS in a much more
significant way.
I'm grateful at least that itdidn't earlier, because that
could have been quite risky formy well-being had it occurred in
situations where there werehostilities.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
And I think that's something that we are going to
explore further in futurepodcasts.
Absolutely, I, for one, knowexactly what you're talking
about when it comes to this sortof brain fog, the extent of
that brain fog until you'vegotten rid of it.
That's when you really know howimpactful that was to your
(31:15):
day-to-day and that is certainlya major benefit of going down
the path of a ketogenic orcarnivore diet.
I wanted to ask you, stephen,about staying on track.
So you know you certainly trieda number of eating lifestyles,
diets, whatever you want to callit.
You settled on the ketogeniccarnivore diet at this point.
It has been working for youseemingly longer than any other
(31:38):
type of lifestyle eatinglifestyle that you've tried in
the past.
How do you stay on track when itcomes to the keto carnivore
diet?
You're going to have peerpressure.
You're going to have holidays,which we just went through.
You're going to have travelwhere, all of a sudden, you may
be in less control over thefoods that are in front of you.
(32:00):
What are some of the thingsthat you recommend our audience
think about as it relates tostaying on track when it comes
to fixing your health?
Yeah, that's something ouraudience think about as it
relates to staying on track whenit comes to fixing your health.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yeah, that's something that I think most of
us will have to acknowledge canbe a challenge, and the reason
why it's a challenge is becausethe realities creep in.
Your favorite aunt with thebest cake on the planet shows up
.
It's her birthday.
She wants to have a piece ofcake.
Well, have the piece of cake,or a very, very small piece of
it, and say, look, I'd love tohave more.
(32:30):
Perhaps I'll save my extra halffor you and kind of leave it at
that.
When it comes to your questionconcerning travel, I simply fast
.
I don't go into airportsituations with a full stomach.
I just don't take the riskbecause I don't know how I'm
going to react when I'm there,because they tend to be
stressful situations in troublethese days, particularly
post-COVID.
So really, it fundamentallycomes down to manage
(32:52):
expectations around yourself andwhat your levels of tolerance
are in the environment you're inMeaning.
If you have a three-hour drivesomewhere, it's probably not the
best time to reintroduce foodsthat are candidly, demonstrably
not good for you and just simplytake a pass.
I doubt that there'scircumstances that warrant, as I
(33:13):
would say, where you can becontinuously pushed to eat
certain foods, because in thosecircumstances it's been very
rare People have said hey, youknow, your nickname when you
were a kid was Cake Face.
You always ate desserts.
What's wrong with you?
I said well, you know, you'reabsolutely correct.
I love, love, love cake and pieand all those things, but I
love my toes and my eyesight waymore.
(33:33):
So that's just the reality.
And I want to say something.
I'm not superhuman.
I'm human like everyone else,and there's always a certain
amount of hubris in this processwhere you're like oh yeah, I
read three research papers fromlongitudinal studies or metadata
studies cross-sectioning awhack of different people that
have contributed all respectedresearchers.
(33:54):
This is great.
I've reversed my diabetes, so Imust be cured.
So I'm going to go ahead andhave that fast food burger
somewhere and think everything'srosy.
It is not.
I can tell you from personalexperience with my CGM getting
up in the middle of dinner withmy wife and partner and saying
I'm sorry, but you're going tohave to ask the guy to hold that
main meal because I've just hada beer my favorite beer and my
(34:17):
sugar's gone to 15 and normal isfour to six.
So I've literally had to get upin a suit with dress shoes and
walk around a big city aroundseveral blocks to try to get my
sugar under control.
So it's, candidly, just notworth it.
Because when we come back to thecomment about brain fog, if
you've experienced that and, asyou said, you won't know
necessarily what it's like untilyou don't have it anymore so
(34:41):
when you feel it creeping backin because your sugar's too high
, as an example, it's scary.
It's really scary because youstart thinking I don't want to
feel this way again.
It'd be the same thing as ifyou, graham, or me, just got
over a stomach flu and then aweek later I bring you over to
my house and I say hey, you knowwhat, graham, I made this
perfect dish for you, but it isprobably going to give you your
(35:03):
stomach flu back.
You'd say, no way, no how.
So that's kind of how I look atit.
It's not worth me putting asmile on your face when I'll be
in a grimace for the next twohours.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Very well said.
One of the things that I'vecertainly experienced I think a
lot of people experience, and Iknow you and I have talked about
this is this can be a lonelyjourney at times, because we are
.
Although the percentage ofpeople that are going to the
ketogenic carnivore diet isincreasing exponentially, it is
(35:35):
still a fairly small percentageof people that are actually
embarking on this adventure.
One of the things that I knowyou and I have talked about is
there are enlighteninginfluencers out there.
They may be farther along inthe journey or they may have had
a positive impact on yourjourney.
(35:55):
Maybe you want to talk aboutsomebody in particular, or maybe
you just want to talk about astory that helped guide you.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, I would say it's probably appropriate for me
to begin by explaining myapproach to this.
So there's kind of layers ofapproach in my particular
circumstance because it's notjust a physiological thing, it's
also a mental thing because ofmy severe PTSD.
So I sort of came at it a bunchof different ways and I'm
blessed with a team of not justinfluencers online, but I have a
(36:38):
psychotherapist who isexcellent.
I have a nutritionist slashnaturopath who is outstanding,
just recently finished school,so he's up on all of this stuff.
I have a proactive attitude, asupportive spouse.
Even my children, who are quiteolder adults now in their 30s,
applaud the changes in my bodyand reinforce the positive
(36:59):
feedback loop on how I look,because, keep in mind, I'm six
foot two.
At my worst I was 235 pounds.
I looked great until I tried toput my tuck shirt on and my son
at the time he was only 15 backthen was laughing because I
couldn't get the buttons closedon it and still took a picture
of me anyway.
I literally looked like awell-dressed Humpty, dumpty.
And of course I was going to amilitary event, so anybody who's
(37:20):
in the military will understandthat showing up with your
buttons undone is worthy ofridicule Getting myself in a
condition where I wasn'tembarrassed by family photos,
where I was taking better careof myself and making sure that I
felt better.
I mean, consequently, the lossof weight, graham, was secondary
to how well I felt, where Ididn't have to catalog in my
(37:42):
mind where every washroom waswhen I was traveling, in the
event that I needed it, and thatwas critical to quality of life
.
In fact, I even said that to myspouse today on my way to my
oral surgeon for my dentalprocedure.
How nice it was to drive for anhour and 15 minutes and not
worry once about whether or notI would need to use a washer.
So it's not just one thing andevery single person will have to
(38:04):
find what dynamics work forthem.
So, by way of example, I useself-hypnosis from Paul McKenna.
I'm a member of the Mindvalleyand I thank the founder of
Mindvalley for creating it.
It's basically the equivalentof Netflix for mindfulness,
meditation and self-awarenessand self-development.
That helped me immensely.
(38:24):
The therapy helped me immensely,making sure that my diet was
improved, but also taking asnapshot and I have to give full
credit to my naturopath forthis taking a snapshot and
saying okay, because sherecognized.
It wasn't one thing.
She recognized the mental, sherecognized the physical,
physiological, the stressfactors that were in my life,
the kind of things I wasconsuming that perhaps were not
(38:48):
good.
Because we did a fecal test tosee what was going on in my body
.
Because I've done from themilitary and for my corporate
jobs, I've done a lot ofinternational travel, so we
wondered oh okay, well, we'veruled out Crohn's and colitis,
we need to find out what's goingon in your gut bio.
It took me seven months, graham, to get up the courage to find
(39:08):
out if I had a 1,200-foot-longtapeworm, because I was worried
about what they were going tofind.
I'd already been told from yourcolonoscopy eat more fiber.
And please do that.
Folks, if you're going tolisten to just one thing, make
sure you eat lots of fiber.
When I went through this processof trying to figure out what
needed to be done, I had tosurrender into that process and
trust the experts that I feltrepresented my mindset and how I
(39:32):
view the world.
That means my psychotherapist,my naturopath, my dietician, who
is dialed in, and so, as aconsequence, I found out that
one of the things that wasworking against me was something
called dysbiotic bacteria, andwhat that means is our
microbiome is full of all kindsof bacteria.
You got good bacteria and yougot bad bacteria, or sometimes
you have the absence of bacteriaand they don't show up.
(39:52):
So dysbiotic bacteria are thosebacteria that are actually
driving the urge or desire tohave more sugar.
They're feeding, much like theysay, with sugar and cancer
cells.
They feed off of that sugar.
It causes an anabolic reactionin the body when you have this
dysbiotic bacteria and all thesetoxins are floating around in
(40:16):
the stomach, which is killingmore of the good bacteria, and
then very soon, this imbalancein your stomach makes you
reactive to everything.
And I actually arrived at thatpoint and this was all pre-PTSD
in terms of not finding out thatit was dysbiotic in terms of
four specific bacteria, a fungus, a couple of other kind of
nasty things.
But just understanding that Icould literally before I did all
(40:40):
this research, graham, I couldeat potatoes in front of you and
get sick for no apparent reason.
I could, I swear, eat onechicken wing in water and get
sick because my body was so outof whack and I believed it was
because of what I was eating.
It was what was going on in mystomach wasn't ready really for
anything and it was so inflamedfrom vegetable oils and other
(41:01):
processed stuff that I wasconsuming that it didn't matter
even if I put something healthyin there.
It had to be a progression.
I did the broth and I sort ofmoved along the continuum of
healthier and healthier foods.
I practiced intermittent fasting.
It gave my body a chance to gointo something called entophagy,
and entophagy is when the cellsbegin to self-cannibalize.
(41:21):
They go after the call it wornout cells, where they have the
shorter telomeres that can besalvaged and consumed and
flushed out of the body.
What's amazing and I want toreally highlight this that's a
natural process that we get fromintermittent fasting.
Our forefathers didn't knowanything about intermittent
fasting, but they would only eatonce a day, twice a day.
(41:42):
Maybe on the weekends theywould eat three times, but it
would be a very, very small mealin the evening a day.
Maybe on the weekends theywould eat three times, but it
would be a very, very small mealin the evening, no snacks.
So they were constantly.
It's not a surprise that wehave more cancer and more
diabetes in society because wewere eating too much of the
wrong things that don't providethe nutrition that result in
dysbiotic bacteria in thestomach, that result in a person
like me being always sick,always feeling miserable and
(42:03):
having to literally change how Iinteract with the world in
order to address IBS, ptsd andso forth.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I think you made such an important point about the
fact that there are no quickfixes when it comes to sorting
out our health.
For a lot of us, me included, ittook decades of eating the
wrong way to get to where I was,and it took many, many months,
years to undo decades.
(42:33):
The good news is it doesn'ttake decades to undo it, but it
does take some time and somereal commitment to trying to get
back to that, and I think yousaid it better than anything
that photo that you're proud ofwith the family, as opposed to
that photo where you just lookaway and you can't believe where
you've ended up.
I certainly know that feelingvery personally.
I wanted to talk to you becauseyou've got a somewhat of a
(42:56):
unique journey where you wereactually a vegan at one time, I
believe a vegetarian as well, asyou're going along this journey
and you're ending up in more ofa ketogenic, carnivore type of
healthy eating lifestyle.
Were there any issues withaddressing the environmental or
ethical concerns that somepeople might have about the
(43:16):
ketogenic or carnivore aspect ofthese lifestyles?
Speaker 3 (43:20):
So I think that's really an individualized thing.
My wife actually is apracticing vegetarian, vegan and
has been for the majority ofher life.
She's a wonderful lady and soforth, although I will say that
in terms of quality, Idefinitely out eat her.
It's one of the things that Inoticed with in terms of the
quality of what she consumesversus what I consume, because a
(43:40):
lot of these vegan andvegetarian foods she's a huge
fan of Beyond Meat burgers andso forth.
They're absolutely full chockerblock, full with all kinds of
things that, as you said in ourprevious cast, you know you need
to be a PhD chemist tounderstand what is in those
right.
And they take three lines inthe ingredients because they're
(44:02):
mono, something, something,something with all these hyphens
.
So clearly, if you can't readit, it's not likely your stomach
can either.
So you know where it's going toend up.
It's either going to beembedded somewhere in your
system where it's trying to dealwith it almost like a poison or
a neurotoxin.
So I guess my answer to thequestion with respect to being a
vegan vegetarian is I also atthat time didn't realize how
(44:22):
significantly a lot of thesefoods because you have a limited
it's got better, but at my timeit was a limited number of
foods you can choose in thegrocery store.
That didn't break the bankright, and I noticed my grocery
bill was a lot higher, certainlyhigher than it is now.
With keto carnivore I eat thegrocery in five minutes because
I'm just either getting saladsand meat or just salads or just
(44:42):
meat, so it's a lot faster.
I avoid all the other stuff.
So that was the big epiphanyfor me and again I want to thank
Dr Berg and others for that.
Insight is just by cutting outthe carbs, which most of what I
was eating, I went as avegetarian vegan, probably
eating 100% carbs, because Iwasn't getting the amount of
(45:03):
protein I needed.
My naturopath was not happyabout that.
She said are you having thesesymptoms or those symptoms?
All those things werecontributing to the growth of
the wrong bacteria in my stomachand I wasn't really getting
better.
I was losing some weight, but Iwas nutritionally deficient.
Now, as far as the ethical thingis concerned, you're speaking
to someone who I don't do itanymore, but I didn't have any
(45:26):
issue with eating wild game,whether it was venison, whether
it was moose, what have you?
I don't really have an ethicalissue with that.
I've actually seen and beenadjacent to slaughterhouses,
working with a company in the US, and I'm quite aware of how
that's managed ethically today,versus perhaps maybe how some
people perceive it.
I'm personally not a fan oflarge industrial farms, Graham,
(45:48):
because I don't think that theyare the best, and I think you
and I, both, ethically, willsearch out butchers that are
buying locally from farms withfree range chickens that have
grass fed, cattle that are freeto graze, and so on and so forth
.
The reality is the way my bodyworks.
I've tested it.
Ethically or not, people haveto make their own decisions.
(46:09):
But I'm far healthier.
And how do I know that?
Because my CGM says so.
How do I know it?
Because the amount of weightthat I can lift in the gym, how
do I know it?
I don't require a nap, and Ireally want to stress this when
I was on a vegan vegetarian diet, two o'clock in the afternoon.
I you know, fortunately, I'vebeen working from home for the
last few years, but if I hadn't,I was beginning to wonder what
(46:30):
life would have been like if youand I were still working
together in a corporate office.
I'd probably be curled upunderneath my pod trying to get
a little shut eye after lunchbecause I I had no energy.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I just absolutely crashed because I didn't
understand those starches forsure and I want to point
something out that a lot ofpeople are going to chalk that
up to getting older, andcertainly this is something I
did, or I was guilty of doingbut you don't need a nap today
and you are older than you wereyears ago, when you did need
(47:01):
that nap, and I think that's animportant difference, and just
lifestyle has meant that youactually have more energy today
than you did even a couple ofyears ago, when you were much
younger.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
Yeah, and I think the other really important thing
that people are beginning torealize that we haven't touched
on yet and that was interestingbecause it was in the context of
dementia, the study and myfather has dementia, so that's
the purpose of me reading it butthey were saying that generally
healthy people.
So we know, for instance, let'scall healthy people who are
(47:36):
consuming a meal at dinnertimebut never closer than three
hours before they go to bed andare not snacking in between.
So their digestive system atthat point has started to really
deal with that meal.
That's certainly a factor,because this study showed that
for people who are normal, theytend8 minutes.
So do the math we're talkingalmost three hours before they
(48:09):
go into a REM state.
And consequently, what happensit's almost the same as
endophagy for the brain to use.
The mechanism or the physics ofit is, their body isn't able to
get rid of the plaque and theproteins, the malign proteins
that are in the brain and dowhat they call like a neuro dump
of toxins, so that exacerbatesproblems with the illness.
(48:32):
So, whether you have diabetesor not, if you have a healthy
brain, the same applies.
You need to keep your brain ina healthy state so everything
else works as it should.
You know, you could have aperfectly healthy body, but if
the brain is failing you, it'snot really a perfectly healthy
body, is it?
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Very well said.
Very well said.
I wanted to have some fun withthis last question, stephen.
So think of pre-keto Stephen anumber of years ago.
If you were able to jump in atime machine and go back and
talk to pre-keto carnivoreStephen, is there any advice
you'd give to that person?
Because maybe our listenersmight be thinking well, I'm that
(49:12):
person today.
I'm going to be perhaps adifferent person in the future.
What would you tell yourself somany years ago?
Speaker 3 (49:19):
I'd have four words for him just to get his
attention, because I know himpretty well.
Look at me now.
This is how I feel.
So that would definitely havegot my attention in my 30s and
early 40s because I was sofocused, like you, on the kids.
Yeah, you know, piece of pizzahanging out of your face while
you're driving the minivangetting one kid to soccer and
the other one to ballet, youknow, it was just, it was.
(49:42):
We were road warriors.
We just, you know, we consumedthat that life in the corporate
office, caught public transit,got into respective vehicles,
got our kids to their tasks 8,30, 9 o'clock at night.
You put them down especially ifyou were a single dad like me
and um, then you startedthinking about what you were
going to eat if you hadn'talready, and by then it's too
late, you know.
(50:03):
And what are you doing?
You're throwing something inthe microwave and warming it up,
and it's too late.
You know, and what are youdoing?
You're throwing something inthe microwave and warming it up,
and it's just absolute garbage.
So your body doesn't even havea chance to get the proper
nutrition in an environmentwhere you're already 16, 17
hours of active, stressfulactivities.
For those of us that have kidsout there, you know it can be a
lot of fun trying to getthree-year-olds and
five-year-olds andseven-year-olds where they need
(50:23):
to be, and it's almost neverthat they're.
It's a quiet transition fromone task to the next.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
So there we are Very well said.
I can't think of a better noteto end on Stephen.
Thank you so much.
This has been fantastic.
Thanks to everybody who haslistened to another episode of
Lessons from the Keto-Verse.
We look forward to joining youagain soon.
Thanks everybody.
We look forward to joining youagain soon.
Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Thanks, graham.
Thanks for tuning in to Lessonsfrom the Keto-Verse.
Join Stephen and Graham nexttime for more keto tips and
stories to fuel your health.
Subscribe, share and let's keepthe keto vibes going.
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