Well, hello ladies and gents. Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com
and today I've got special guest David Robinson on the line.
I met him at the Metabolic Health Summit this past January
and he is an accomplished author.
He has a pretty impressive story as it pertains to his journey
through the ketogenic diet. He was diagnosed with epileptic
seizures or he had epileptic seizures when he was 28 years
old, followed the traditional path taking the medication.
Then he had a pretty profound awakening when he had a car
accident. Decided to dive deeper and look
at the ketogenic diet as a viable solution to coping and
dealing with the epilepsy. And that pretty much was the
catalyst for him totally turning his life around, writing the
book, changing the nutritional pattern and the gist finding
true health via the ketogenic diet and lifestyle.
So very compelling story. Very interesting journey.
Thoroughly enjoyed having him on the podcast.
I've got no doubt that you will take something from it so that
further delay, sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation with
David Robinson and we are live.
David, how are you, Sir? Good, thanks.
How are you doing today, my friend?
I'm doing wonderfully well, man. So we met in person at the
Metabolic Health Summit, I guess, this past January, and we
were talking about a little bit everything.
I think I interrupted you, honestly.
You were talking with? Who were you talking with?
I believe the Keto Mojo team and I, I jumped, right?
Yeah, kind of made myself part of the conversation, so my
apologies. There No, no, not at all, not at
all. It was great meeting you and and
you know, I've been following listening to your podcast for a
long time. So I felt like I was meeting a
big celebrity here, you know? No, I appreciate it, man.
Definitely not a celebrity, just another guy, but I I want to, I
want to peel the curtain back on your story, man.
Like you've got a pretty interesting journey as far as,
you know, your epilepsy and then that kind of being the countless
for your journey to keto. So kind of give me just a back
story, man. I wanna I'm gonna flesh that out
in detail. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So, so it's funny, 'cause I, I did it backwards in a way, you
know, I found, I found low carb the lifestyle, you know, when I
was trying to lose some weight and you know, I, I hit 40 years
old, you know, started to develop a bit of, a bit of a
paunch. You know, I called myself a, a
middle-aged pathlete. You know, it's a weekend
warrior, you know, I was involved with the local rowing
team and all that, but still, you know, putting on little
weight by little by little. So I was trying one thing,
trying another. I tried, you know, paleo and,
and clean eating and all this sort of thing.
And actually what got me to finally try low carb was I don't
know if you know Vinny Tordorich.
Yeah. But his, his thing is NSNG no
sugar is no grains. And I said, wow, that's just two
things, you know, cut out sugar is cut out.
That's not not a big deal. Little did I know it's that's
about 80% of the food that that you'll find in any supermarket,
right? But I said, well, let me, you
know, let me try this, let me check it out.
And I'm starting, starting to have some success with it.
And, and his podcast Fitness Confidential, he does a, he does
a similar, you know, a long form interview every week with a
different guest. So one week he had, he had this
guy Jim Abrams. And I don't know if you're,
you're familiar with Jim Abrams, but he, yeah, you know who he
is. He's been around for a for a
very long time in this space. His son back in the back in the
early 90s, his son Charlie was two years old and, and started
having had epilepsy. He started having seizures, you
know, dozens of seizures a day. And so he had this incredible
story of, of just, they had tried everything.
They tried medication, they tried surgeries, they tried, you
know, he was at the end of his rope and he happened to be in
the medical library. I I think it was UCLA and
looking through, you know, these, these neurology books
and, and kind of, you know, trying to find out anything he
could. And he, and he finds a reference
to the ketogenic diet and, and so he goes to his, you know, to,
to Charlie's neurologist and says, you know, hey, could we
try this? And they're like, well, we don't
really do that here, you know. And so you know, his story, he
went, of course, you know, being a big Hollywood producer, he's,
he's the guy behind the airplane movies and, and you know, some
of those really hilarious comedies from the 90s.
And so he, he managed to find the one doctor in America, the
one neurologist who still practiced the ketogenic diet
with his patients. And so, you know, it was, it was
kind of serendipitous, I guess, that they, that they found this
guy John Freeman and became patients of his.
And, and lo and behold, you know, Charlie's seizures clear
up almost right away. So I so back to my story.
You know, I'm, I'm driving to work one day.
I'm listening to this and I'm like, Oh my God, that's, that's
crazy. You know, unbelievable story.
I'm listening to, to, to Jim, who's who's, you know, an older
man now he's in his 80s. He's he's breaking up in tears,
still telling the story, right. And I was like, wow, that,
that's incredible. And and so, you know, again,
backtrack all my story. I had been living with epilepsy
by that point for 15 years or so.
And you know, knock wood it, it was going well.
I was on medication and I took my pill in the morning.
I took my pill at night and, and said, you know, it's able to
live, you know, a pretty normal life, but you know, sure enough.
And so it's so, you know, I heard it and I, I didn't hear
it, you know what I mean? I sort of said, well, you know,
that's interesting, but you know, what I'm doing is working.
Let's not rock the boat, you know what I mean?
And so Fast forward, boy, about a year from that, when my
seizures came back out of the blue and nobody knows why, you
know, whether it's, you know, just changes in hormones,
getting older, you know, whether it's you develop tolerance to
the medication, whatever it might be.
But sort of in the worst way possible, I was, so I was, I was
on a trip, on a camping trip with my brother.
And I was driving home from, you know, driving home from upstate
New York back to where I live here in the Washington, DC area
and started to feel lightheaded and started to think, you know,
uh oh, what's going on here? You know, my particular type of
seizures tend to, they, they originate in the, the hearing
portion of my brain. And so in addition to the music
that's on the stereo, I start hearing like other music on top
of it. It's, you know, sort of this,
what they call a auditory hallucination.
And I think, Oh my God, I think I know what this is, you know,
so I try to start pulling the car over.
I'm on a, on a highway, you know, pull the car over to the
side of the road. And next thing you know, I was,
I was in an ambulance, you know, driving away, sort of you're
totally disoriented and look out the little, the little ambulance
window behind. And, and there's my car sort of
up on the grass sitting at this weird angle.
You know, I'm like, Oh my God, what happened?
And so that's really the, the, the point that was kind of the
catalyst for me when I, when I decided, OK, let's, you know,
let's take this thing a little bit more seriously.
Let me see look into this this keto diet thing and and see what
I can do, see if it'll help with my seizure control.
Rewind even further, you when you when you were first
diagnosed with epilepsy and getting the seizures for the
first time 15 years ago or so, you know, at that point, what
was, I mean, how, how old were you when that came on?
Was there any inclination as to what the countless for that was?
What was your thought process when you first started getting
these seizures? Yeah, great question.
So I was 28 years old. I was living in New York City,
you know, the sort of bachelor lifestyle.
I had two roommates and so living with two other guys and
and up the West side of Manhattan.
I was a teacher, high school teacher, and so one of my
roommates was, was also a colleague, you know, also taught
at the school where I taught. And, you know, we were just
hanging out one night and, and talking about what we're going
to eat for, for dinner or whatever.
And we're so we're just chatting back and forth and all of a
sudden I started to feel like this really light headed
feeling. And actually as they were
talking, I could hear ever, ever when you were a kid, you'd put
like a cardboard tube over your ear and, and, you know, it
sounds like everything's kind of echoey at the end of a hall.
That's kind of what I was hearing as they were talking.
And so I, I remember I stood up to kind of like, you know,
thought it might, you know, shake my head, kind of clear,
clear my head. And, and that was it.
You know, I, I fell backward down into, I was in kind of one
of those easy chairs, you know, fell backward into the chair,
went into a full on seizure. And, and, you know, there's all,
there's all different kinds of seizures, but mine follow the
sort of the, the, the, the one you see in movies, right?
The, the full on convulsions and, and what they call it tonic
clonic seizure. And so yeah, kind of really came
completely out of the blue. And so they were freaking out,
you know, of course my roommates didn't know what to do.
They're running, running in circles.
They call 911. They're making so much noise,
yelling and screaming that our neighbors come from down the
hall and they knock on the door and they're like, what the
Hell's going on down here? You know this guy that we didn't
actually get along with real well.
We used to call him the buffoon. And so my roommate goes, you
guys say buffoon, go get an ambulance, go find us a name.
It's like, okay, And he runs out of the house.
So what is going on here? But yeah, anyway, ended up in
the hospital for a couple of days and they did every test,
you know, they did Eegs, you know, which is they measured the
brain waves, did an MRI, the brain scan, you know, battery of
tests. And really nothing came up.
Nothing came up unusual out of out of the ordinary.
And so the doctors there. And now, as it turns out, my as
it happens, my younger brother grew up with epilepsy.
He had what they call, what they used to call absence seizures,
which is where he kind of, you know, he might be in mid
sentence and just trail off and then kind of stare blankly into
the, into the distance. And what's happening at the time
is the brain is actually having a seizure, even though it
doesn't have the, the motor, you know, the motor effects of on
the muscles and everything. And then he'd come right back,
you know, after 30 seconds, 45 seconds and not know that
anything had happened. So because there was that
genetic connection, you know, of, of my brother having it,
they, they said, well, OK, you know, it runs in families.
So likely this is, you know, epilepsy.
So they so they put me on medication and and it was you're
asking, you know, what did my mind state at the time?
You know, it was a bit of a threw me for a loop.
I guess you could say, you know, OK, what can I do?
What can I do? You know, luckily, like I said,
I lived in New York City at the time, so I didn't have a car,
right. But but one of the things about
epilepsy is once you have the seizure, they take your license
away. So, OK, something to think
about, right? So, so it does really upend your
whole life. But you know, I was fortunate in
that I had good friends and, and a good support system and
everything. I'll tell you one other funny
thing. I mean, maybe one of the reasons
why I was why I guess you could say I'm biased toward diet or
other lifestyle treatments. They, they look me up, they look
me up and down. Check me out.
They, they prescribed at the time I, it was Dilantin, which
is a, a epilepsy medication that has been around for a very long
time. And what they prescribed was 100
milligrams three times a day. What somehow ended up in my
little, in my little orange bottle there was 300 milligrams
three times a day. I'm not sure where the mistake
happened, but sure enough, I mean, after a week, I actually
ended up with toxicity, I think taking three times the amount
of, of medication that I was supposed to be taking.
So when I'm wound wound up back in the hospital, I was like
having, you know, headaches and fevers and, and, and delusions
and weird dreams of rainbows and, and unicorns and things
like that. And so, so it's, it's been an
adventure from the start. I guess you could say that.
So when, when you were 28 got diagnosed with with the epilepsy
and you were having these seizures, they gave you
medication, you, you, you got that dosage dialed in and you
didn't really have any seizures from that point on until the car
accident, 15 years. Later.
Well, yeah, I mean not exact. I mean, so I went so after that
first, after that first go around, I did, I started seeing
a neurologist regularly, you know, doing and, and taking that
again, taking the medication as prescribed, got that dialed in,
as you said. And after about two years, I had
moved, actually, I moved out to Colorado to go to grad school.
And so that's another great thing about, about, you know,
living with a chronic condition, every time you move, you got to
find a new new Doctor, you know, a new this and that and, and
start all over again. So I was talking to this
neurologist down in Colorado and she said, you know, you've only
been, you know, it's been 2 years they've been seizure free.
And it, and it was true that, that the medication worked.
I didn't have any seizures for, for those two years.
And she said, you know, protocol is, you know, and you, and she
said, you know, you've only had the one seizure really, that
you, they wait usually until you've had at least two, maybe
more before they start prescribing medication.
So do you want to try going off and, and the, and the medication
Dilantin's pretty, the side effects are pretty harsh with
that. You know, your teeth, you come
start, start bleeding and, and you have all kinds of weird
problems. And so I said sure.
So, so I went off the medication and then within a month or so, I
had another seizure. And so then it was like, OK,
well, yeah, it looks like you really do need this medication.
So I was able at that point to switch to a different, a
different medication, Trileptal is called.
And that was what I was on. Like I say, for for ten years or
more without without a problem until that sort of fateful day.
What what do they do with regards to your driver's
license? Like they like, is there like a
certain amount of time that can elapse without any seizures that
they allow you to drive again or how how's that work?
Yeah, yeah. And it varies state by state.
So some states are mandated reporting where the doctor, if
you go into a doctor and you've had a seizure, the doctor is
required to actually report you to the DMV.
Some other states don't have that, but you're expected to
sort of self report. But then there the, the amount
of time that so you have to establish, you know, seizure
freedom for a certain amount of time, but the amount of time
varies. I mean, so I live, like I said,
I live in Virginia just outside of DC in DC.
If I lived a mile away in DC, it would be 12 months.
Where I am in Virginia at six months.
If I live a mile in the other direction in Maryland, it would
be three months. So it's, it's actually pretty
arbitrary, you know, and that's, that's one of the sort of one of
the weird things. I mean, and I understand, of
course I understand the reasoning behind it.
You can't have someone, you know, behind the wheel driving
a, you know, 2000 LB vehicle, you know, if they're if they're
going to lose consciousness. But there is some, it, it does
bother me that there's something sort of arbitrary about it and
something almost, you know, that you, you don't hear the same
restrictions if someone has, let's say, a heart condition,
right? But there's, I think some of
this is, is a vestige of, I don't know if I'd call it
prejudice or, or, or, or stereotypes around people with
epilepsy, their capability to, to, you know, to function in the
world and that sort of thing. Yeah.
No, that's that is interesting for sure.
I would have assumed that there's like a more standardized
protocol, but seems to be at the discretion of each individual
state. It is, it is, yeah.
And, and, and some of the organizations like the Epilepsy
Foundation have have done some good work advocating were more
evidence based, you know, protocols and things, but still
a lot, a lot of way to go. Yeah.
So, OK, so Fast forward now you, you have the the accident and
that's kind of like the awakening for you to take things
more serious to get nutrition dialed in, re refocus or kind of
get back dialed in with regards to what you'd learn on that
podcast with Vinny, What was that journey like?
Did you automatically just take out the, the sugars and grains
and hope for the best Or did you like go 'cause I know with, with
the traditional ketogenic diet for epileptics, I mean they're
doing like a four to one ratio. They're going super high fat.
Did you just, like, rip the Band-Aid off and go to that
degree? Yeah, no, good, good question.
So, and, and, and I'm glad you asked because, you know, it is,
it's important to clarify that I, that I did find a neurologist
to work with a doctor. In fact, I went back to my own
doctor after that seizure while I was driving, you know, and
then again, big scary event. I mean, my friends, my wife, I
had to call all my friends and then four of them came, you
know, drove 3 hours to come pick me up and sort of, you know,
upended a lot of things for me. And I went to my neurologist and
he said, yeah, I'm not too worried about it.
Well, I am. And he said, yeah, no, we'll,
we'll just up your medication a little bit.
And so I said, OK, well, let's try that.
So it so we did up the medication for a little while
and then I did have a second seizure another six months after
that. And then he said, well, let's
let's up the medication again. And that's when I really said,
OK, let me let me really get check into this into this
dietary treatment thing. So I'm very lucky in the fact
that just an hour or so away from me is, is the Johns Hopkins
Hospital, which is sort of doctor Eric Kossoff.
There is, is one of the and has been one of the the leading
voices in dietary treatment for epilepsy.
Now he's a he's a pediatric neurologist.
So he, he works with kids, but he helped to found the adult
epilepsy Diet center, which is there at which is there at
Hopkins. So I, I was able to, to get
myself enrolled as a patient there and, you know, after a bit
of a waiting list and, and, and that sort of thing.
But so, so for six years now I've been, I've been in their
care and I've been working with the doctor, Doctor Savanka there
who's, you know, I'm very lucky that that one of the leading,
you know, world leading neurologist for, for ketogenic
diet is, is right up the road. But, but to talk, yeah, just to
talk a little bit about the, about the protocol they use.
They use what's called modified Atkins diet there.
And so it's, it's basic, it's similar to the induction phase
of the the classic sort of Atkins.
The old Atkins book where it's about 65% fat by calories, about
65% fat, about 30% protein and about 5% carbohydrate.
And So what they do, they have an intake where, where I went in
and, and they did a whole class, you know, they had a group of us
that they taught us, you know, what's a carbohydrate?
What's a, you know, what are fats, What are the, and, and
guide us through eating guidelines.
And, and their guideline is basically stick to 2020 grams of
net carbs per day. And then they, you know, kind
of, and, and they had injured, they, they, you know, set us up
on a chronometer, you know, just a food tracking app to kind of
track and to figure out, you know, the macros and that sort
of thing. And even that, you know, they
sort of they say, you know, after six months or so, once you
once you've got the got it down, you know, and you kind of know
because you do know after a while, you know, you can kind of
in the back of your mind track it.
So, so I actually don't sometimes I track just to if
I'm, if I feel like I might be slipping, if I might have some
carb creep, but but I don't actually even even track my
macros every day. But yeah, so that so it's and
and it's actually, you know, you mentioned the four to one, which
is the classic ketogenic diet, the one that's been around
since, what is it 1921 where the first doctor, Russ Conklin from
I think it was the Mayo Clinic came up with the the ketogenic
diet for epilepsy. And, and that was the main
treatment for a long time actually, that the, the more
before there was medication, there was this diet.
And then over the years, different protocols have been
developed that are a little bit less, less stringent, I guess
less harsh than the four to one. There's a three to one.
There's, like I said, the modified Atkins diet.
There's even a diet where it's even more liberal with carbs,
but you supplement MCT oil like every meal and every snack.
You're sort of supplementing MCT oil throughout the day.
Yeah, I would imagine there's like a threshold for each
individual, like they're going to be more sensitive to the
macro distribution than others. So you kind of just, you know,
start and figure out what that threshold is for for you.
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
And, and it seems like it seems like many of the clinics that
I'm aware of now or start with something that's a little bit
less restrictive. And then if it's not working,
then they go more restrictive versus, you know, it used to be
more of a, you know, the older, the old days that they would
start with a three day fast in the hospital, right, to to
really kick you into ketosis and then start with a four to one.
And if it's working, OK, we can ease back a little bit.
But it seems like different, different centers use different
protocols as far as that goes. Yeah.
And so how old were you when you were going through that program
initially? So that would that was six years
ago. I'm 49 now.
So that was, that was, yeah, 43 years old when I when I started
there. Gotcha.
And at that point, were you, were you pretty optimistic about
the dietary interventions being the, the thing that's going to
work for you? Were you hesitant to remove the,
the medication? Were you just trying to find a
way to remove the medication? Like what was your mindset
there? You know my mindset.
I'm glad you asked because I I to be and, and I'm always trying
to be completely transparent. I'm still on medication.
As a matter of fact, I've been able to transition to an even
less invasive, you know, less, less difficult medication, one
that's more modern, you know, newer, has better side effect
profile and and a fairly low dose as well.
But my my approach is just let's throw the kitchen sink at this
thing. You know what I mean?
If there's a chance that that eating this way is going to
help, you know, keep seizures away, you know, and then then
let's go for it. And, and I really have come to
believe too, that eating this way is, is the best, is the best
way to eat for our brain in general, you know?
No, I totally agree, man. I feel like I've got, you know,
I've had clients over the years that have had like, you know,
medical conditions and whatnot. And it seems that at the onset
that having those conditions is like a negative, like it makes
you hindered in some form or fashion.
But I think at the end of the day, like, it just really
tightens the, the margin of error and, and creates a better,
you know, window to look through life with as far as like what
should I allow and not allow into my, my, you know, diet, my,
my activity profile. And I feel like you can gain a
lot more clarity as to what is a positive or negative into your
life much more expeditiously when you have those ailments, as
opposed to someone that seemingly has no ailments, but
then just often times as a result of that allows a lot more
things into their life they probably shouldn't.
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, you know, I've thought
about that a lot over the years. I mean, would I go so far as to
call it a gift? Maybe not, you know, but but you
know, I wouldn't go so far as to call it a curse either.
You know, it's, it's a it's a part of my life and it's
something I need to deal with and it but it's not, it's not my
entire life. It's not my identity.
It's not, it's something that that I, you know, everybody's
got a something right. And so, and, and you know,
you're right. I mean, I have thought about how
it, it has forced me to, about to take better care of myself
really, you know, take better care of my body and my brain.
You know, the, the, the first, again, going back to when I
first heard about this, one of the, one of the resources that
the Charley Foundation has on their website is a, it's APDF
called Does What I Eat affect my seizures?
And that was the 1st, first time I'd ever heard that question,
right? How many of us even think that,
oh, what I eat has anything to do with how my brain functions,
right. In our culture, we're kind of,
we're kind of conditioned to think, well, the brain's over
here, the body's over there. Two totally different things.
And you know, so, so even just the awareness of that has been
has been a gift for for sure, No. 100%, man.
Did you notice a pretty profound improvement in, you know, how
you were feeling and as it pertains to the epilepsy
specifically and then just what we can kind of branch out from
there in a second. But as far as the epilepsy is
concerned, did you notice a pretty stark contrast as soon as
you started implementing the diet?
I did. I did notice, I noticed having
more energy. I noticed, you know, I would
definitely like pre before I started the diet, I would get
the afternoon slump, you know, 3:00.
I was looking for a snack or a cup of coffee or something to
get me through the afternoon. You know, definitely profound
influence on, on the energy levels throughout the day and,
and hunger levels. You know, the leptin and the
ghrelin, All the stuff you read about just gets sort of brought
under control, you know, So wasn't having having.
I haven't been hangry in years, you know what I mean?
Yeah, no, that's good for sure, man.
What else? Like when you were when you were
first starting, were you finding it difficult to find foods that
fit the criteria? Was that pretty easy to do,
especially with the chronometer M?
Yeah, no, you know, once you start, once you kind of get your
head around it and you know, I'm sure, you know, Doctor Robert
Saivas, he's got this this perspective.
He talked talks about carb addiction, right.
And then being the carb addiction doc and you start to,
you know, he talks about how how vegans have this, whether you're
whether or not you like the vegan diet, they have this
perspective where they look at a piece of meat and say, that's
not food, that's something horrible.
I would never touch it, you know, and in order to succeed,
what I found is that I have to think it that way about carbs,
you know, and they look at, you know, a piece of pizza or a
doughnut or or whatever and just say that that's not food and I'm
not going to touch it. It's, it's not even part of my
world, you know what I mean? And so there's a lot I think of,
of the mindset shift is a, is a big, big part of it.
And then once you, once you were able to adopt that mindset
shift, you can start to look around, you know, and it
actually, I think it becomes simpler.
You know, the first thing I did was, was to start eating hard
boiled eggs. I would get a dozen eggs, you
know, Sunday afternoon sometime. I'd just boil them up, put them
in the fridge and said, OK, you know, mornings because I used to
before that I was into the, you know, the smoothies, the cereal,
whatever might be. And it's so much easier to grab
2 hard boiled eggs out of the fridge than it is to make a
smoothie with the vegetables and the juice and the blah blah,
blah. So I was like, all right, this
is great, you know, so, OK, breakfast done, taken care of,
right? Dinner.
I do the cooking in the house, so, so that helped as well
because I can control what goes into what goes into dinner,
right? So OK, dinner's going to be a
piece of meat and a vegetable. Saute it up, you know, some
olive oil, boom, done. And then lunch is going to be
leftovers of the night before, you know, So once you sort, I
feel like once you sort of understand the, the, the
parameters, the rules, you know what I mean, then then the
details become a lot easier to fill in.
Yeah. 100% man, I feel like they're especially now, there's
just way too many options for what to eat and a lot of it is
not food. Like especially all these, you
know, heavily processed, hyper palatable, you know, lab created
foods. Like I, I think it's totally
reasonable to look at that and view it as this negative
connotation that is not food, you know, mentality.
So I, I, I like that, you know, example you with the, the vegans
and meat and a lot of people like they throw shade on that.
They're like, Hey, you gotta be able to eat everything in
moderation. Having any form of elimination
is an eating disorder in and of itself.
And I totally disagree with that.
Like some people are definitely better suited to eliminate as
opposed to moderate. And like, when you're looking
through it as far as moderating some of these prepackaged junk
foods in the 1st place, like I don't even feel like removing
that is a disservice at all. Like I don't feel like I'm
missing out by not having that. Right, right.
Do I need to moderate, you know, polysorbate 80 and and other all
these additives that are chemicals that are not even, you
know, found in nature, you know, or am I better off just without
them completely? Well, I would say just get them,
get rid of them completely. You know, 100%.
So with you being the the primary chef in the house, I
guess your wife is kind of doing keto now by default, right?
A little bit, a little bit. So, so she's from the
Philippines. And so in the Philippines, it's
not a meal without rice, right? You try to, you try to serve a
meal without rice, you're going to get kicked out of the house.
So I, I'll make, you know, I'll make something, you know, gosh,
and I've, and I've learned to make some, some Filipino
recipes, you know, adopted for, for a low carb like adobo is
big, you know. Yeah.
So make a nice chicken adobo chicken with soy sauce, the
vinegar and all the good stuff. And she makes the rice and I
just have the chicken, you know? So it's so we make it work, you
know? You couldn't get her bought into
cauliflower rice, and that wasn't the same thing.
We tried, she did. She did go for it for a little
while, but you know, she goes back and forth, yeah.
Yeah, cauliflower rice is definitely the same thing as
rice. There's that miracle rice too,
which I'll do like when I'm trying to go ultra low calories,
but that is just eating like water balloons, you know?
Is it? Yeah, yeah, No, I haven't tried
that one. OK.
Yeah, you're not missing. Out but but, but even she has
noticed like so, so we never have wheat, you know, but once
in a while she'll have a piece of bread and she's noticed that
her that her joints, you know, her, her knuckles start to hurt.
You know, she gets a little bit of a rheumatoid reaction to
that. Yeah.
I mean gluten, man. Like we're just plain simple,
not designed to breakdown and assimilate gluten like that.
Like everyone is gluten intolerant.
Not it's varying degrees, like some people can notice it more
profoundly than others, but as a species we are 100% not designed
to to breakdown and assimilate gluten.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and in fact, even in the
epilepsy world, there are people who that's all they need to do.
They don't even need to go ketogenic.
They'll they eliminate gluten and it'll and the seizures will
go away. Yeah, that is super interesting.
The, the psychological component is, is really component to me.
Like I feel like there's, you know, like Chris Palmer's
putting out some great work right now as far as the, the
psychology around, you know, what you're eating and how that
impacts things, especially with the the rise the of people
suffering from depression and all the SSRIs and just the
medications involved in that. And I feel like if if we can
just simply improve what people are eating and then so much of
that can be resolved relatively quickly and painlessly.
Yeah, yeah. No, I, I agree completely.
His, his book is fascinating. I read it and I had the
opportunity to meet him at that the Metabolic Health Summit.
I was, I, I, I, I talked my way into being in the, the, the book
signing the first night. And so they set me up with a
little table and I've got my books there.
And sure enough, right next to me is Chris Palmer and he's got
a line going out the door, you know, and here's me, nobody's
heard, nobody's heard of me, right?
But I ended up, I finally just got up and started talking to
people who were in line to, to, to meet him, just had something
to do. But yeah, he's great, a great
guy. And I actually went and I, and I
said to him, thank you for helping me to understand my
epilepsy, because a lot of his research and his, his book Brain
Energy, you know, is based on epilepsy research and connecting
it to mental health research, right?
And, and so you know, who, who, how did it take us this long to
kind of realize that, Oh, wait, you know, psychology and
neurology, they're both dealing with the same organ.
You know what I mean? Like.
Yeah, 100%. And it's kind of crazy because
like right now, I mean, you've been doing this for a while,
like keto kind of saw its, its peak probably in 2017,
2018-2019. And then now it's kind of like
like there's carnivore, but it's, it's kind of like getting,
you know, hedged that as this like quote UN quote fad diet.
But then it's like all you, all this science and research is
coming around around the ketogenic diets as it pertains
to, you know, Cancer Research and, and neurological health and
function. It's like, how can you not
excited to be in this keto space?
Like, how can one possibly assume that it's just some fad
that's gonna go on the wayside when all this research just
keeps coming out and out? No, exactly, exactly in my, in
my book, I call it the 100 year old fad diet, right.
So everyone thinks it's this big fad, but it's been, you know, as
you know, it's been around for 100 years as a as a treatment
for epilepsy. And, and if you look at there's
this cool feature on, on pub Med where you can put in a search
term and it gives you a graph of how many papers were published
each year with that topic. And so if you put in ketogenic,
you just see this flat line right around zero for, for years
and years and years, you know, maybe one or two papers each
year. And then all of a sudden in the
last 10 years, it just spikes up like crazy.
And I think it's only going to keep going, you know, because
the thing at that, at that conference, you could just feel
the energy, the excitement. You know, I just felt like
everybody I talked to knew that we're sort of on the cutting
edge of something that's that's only expanding and that that
we're only beginning to understand.
You know, I mean, you talk to when I certainly when I started
2016, you know, there there was I, I was being trained on, OK,
we know this works. We know this thing helps reduce
seizures. We have no idea why, right?
So 100 years, I still don't know why exactly, but it does work
and we're starting to understand why there.
But it looks like there's a bunch of different mechanisms,
right? There's anti inflammation and
there's the energetics of the brain and there's the gut
microbiome, you know, whole whole new area of research there
as well. Yeah, no, I'm super excited
about, I think I'm, I'm incredibly optimistic about the
future of the diet as a lifestyle.
And, you know, like I'm just excited and, and honored to be
part of it 'cause I feel like we are on the cutting edge.
And I feel like there's just, you know, take all the
scientific studies and throw them out the window.
Just look at all the anecdotal evidence.
Like half the people that are at these conferences are there
because they've drastically improved their own health or
they know someone in their family that has that's, you
know, gained them years of their life back.
And it's like once you've experienced that, you can't
unknow it. And then it just becomes like a,
a part of your identity. It becomes something that you
want to share and help others to achieve as well.
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, I was looking around
at the conference and you know, there was in the presentations
fell into basically two camps, right.
There's the pH DS who are who are presenting the latest
science and most of what they're saying is completely over my
head, but you know, that's fine. And, and then there's like the M
DS that are talking about how they use it in their clinic with
patients, you know, and then, and so the, the, the attendees
are also, you got the pH DS, you got the M DS, you got the, the
students and you got the people who are trying to heal and the
people who are trying to optimize.
And it's kind of, that's kind of interesting to me that that this
one thing, this one ketogenic diet, it can help, can help
people heal, you know, if they're needing to heal, that
can help people optimize if they're trying to, you know, win
athletic competitions or whatever it might be.
Yeah. And I think I mean, if you if
you just step back and look at it holistically, that makes
sense. We are so far removed from what
we are designed to eat as a species that the closer we
return to that, it would stand to reason that we would heal.
We would mitigate these pain points and inflammation and
chronic, you know, stressors on the body and that we would
optimize performance and overall recoveries and strength metrics,
endurance components like all these things would improve in
the context of a properly formulated species specific diet
that lo and behold, I think is pretty eloquently illustrated by
a well formed ketogenic diet. And if you get that dialed in,
everything else will improve as well.
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
And it's it's fascinating to me. And and, you know, it's again,
you know, it's a journey. I'm not perfect for sure.
You know, I've stumbled, I've had, you know, screw ups along
the way, but, but just, you know, being part of this thing
and being, you know, being I, I often say, you know, and there's
a sense of agency with it, right?
I mean, when I was first, again, going back to when I was first
diagnosed with epilepsy, it was like, OK, well, looks like
you're going to be on medication for the next 50 years or so.
All right, You know, take this pill and, and, and good luck.
And you sort of that puts all the power in the hands of the
the doctor, right? Because I don't know one
difference between one. Yeah, there's 25.
Sure. There's 2526 medications on the
market for epilepsy. I don't know which one's better,
which one's going to work, which one's not.
You know, it's all it's, you know, it's all Greek to me as a
patient. But here's one thing that I know
that I can control. And here's one way that I know
that I can participate in my treatment, you know, And there's
something very empowering about that.
Yeah, I think there's something incredibly empowering about
that. And I mean, like just the the
compounding effect of what we eat every single day and its
impact on our livelihood and existence.
Like when you just take the guesswork out of it and you
return to that empowering nature of, you know, having control
over what food you're preparing, where you're sourcing that food,
how you're cooking that food, what you put into your body.
Like you just feel like you're now in control of your own
health and destiny. And I feel like we're so far
removed from that and everybody's leaning on whatever
the doctor says or whatever medication schedule they're on.
I feel like, you know, the further we can get from that and
the closer we can get to just how we should be eating, the
better for sure. I think the conferences are a
great way to to illustrate that because it shows people, you
know, that they're not alone in this journey.
And I think that's the main thing.
Like people need to have some sense of camaraderie and know
that other people are are doing something that they can resonate
with. So like you having gone through
this from an epileptic standpoint, you know, and having
dealt with seizures, people that have gone through a similar
journey themselves can appreciate what you're saying
heck of a lot more than they'd be able to resonate with what
I'm saying, having not gone through that.
So you can touch people and, you know, get them on the right
track, which is, I'm assuming, part of the reason why you why
you wrote your book. Yeah, no, exactly, exactly.
You know, so, so the book was sort of my, my lockdown pandemic
project, you know, back in 2020, I had, I had the opportunity to,
to join this book writing online book writing class and start
thinking, well, what am I going to write about?
You know, so I'm trained as a writer.
My background is as a writer. I'm an English teacher.
So what am I going to write about?
And I decided, well, let me, let me, you know, I've been doing so
much reading about this and listening to so many podcasts, I
might as well to, you know, try to write about my, my experience
and, and about this whole ketogenic diet thing.
And I finally said, well, you know, let me write the book that
I wish I had when I'd started, you know, not so much a how to,
but you know, a, a companion along the journey, if, if that
makes sense, you know, And so the first part of the book is,
it's, it's kind of a weird book 'cause it's three different
things in one, right? It's part, first part is sort of
my own, my own experience, my own journey.
The second part is profiles of other people who have, who have
gone down this road, both other patients, entrepreneurs, you
know, a number of doctors and researchers, a number of people
in this space. And then the third part is, is
sort of principles, you know, the power of community, right?
The power of everything's. Every chapter in part three is
the, the power of one thing or another, right?
The power of thinking differently and being a
maverick, you know, and, and using sort of bringing together
all those my story, yes, but all those different people that I've
talked to dozens of, of interviews and what themes
emerge and that kind of thing. So hopefully, you know, a number
of, of folks have reached out to me and said that actually the
best, best review I ever got was I got a message on Instagram
and, and a woman said, thank you for writing this book.
I, I don't feel so scared about what's happening to me.
That's awesome. And I was like, wow, my God, you
know, that's, that's more than I could ever have have hoped for
you. Know that's that's truly
amazing, man like that. And when you write a book like
you're able to just scale your reach and you're, you're
impacting people in ways that you'll never even know and that
that's a good thing, man, that's a positive thing because like,
like I said, I'm all for the studies, I'm all for the
research. Like we need that.
But people resonate with stories.
They resonate with, you know, human interaction.
They resonate with anecdotal, you know, evidence.
And I feel like a book written like that is the best way to do
that. Yeah.
Well, thanks.
Thanks, man. I appreciate that.
You bet, you bet. Well, what's in the pop up for
you, man? What, what what do you got
coming? What's exciting you now?
And, and is there another book at some point in the future that
what, what are you thinking? I'm I'm thinking there is.
So I continue to write. I write unremarkable brain.com
as my website and you if you go to that, that side, it takes you
to my sub stack page where I write a newsletter every week.
And you know, it's, it's sort of wherever my curiosity takes me
at this point. You know, I've gotten really you
mentioned that like the food system and where does our food
come from? So I do posts about that, you
know, I do posts about the latest research, whatever study
has come out recently, you know, whether it be, you know, a
profile. I did an interview with Doctor
Mary Newport about Alzheimer's and her research.
And so just sort of, you know, different, just different topics
and always with sort of that, that sense of humor and and down
to earth kind of approach, you know, it's I don't try to get
too sciencey or too, you know, too cerebral about it, but just
telling the stories and, and finding out, finding out what's
going on in the world. So, yeah, I've been doing, I've
been doing that for the last couple of years and, and
continuing to research, continue to write.
I'm also because I just, I'm, I'm a learning junkie, you know,
I'm working on my certification through nutrition network on
becoming a, a nutrition advisor. So who knows, Maybe I'll, I'll,
I'm not sure if I'm going to move into the, the coaching
space or any of that, but you know, it, it's right now it's
for my own learning. But we'll see, We'll see.
Maybe I'll start working with some folks.
What is Nutrition Networks framework like?
Oh, so they're the the they're run under Tim Noakes in South
Africa and the Nokes Foundation, and they're the educational arm
of the Low Carb USA organization, which is now
called the Society for Metal Metabolic Health Practitioners.
I just had one of their representatives on my podcast
and we're talking about it and I think it's super compounding.
Like I love what they've got. So I'm excited to hear what
you're you're thinking of it from a user, from a participant.
Yeah, yeah. And so and I went to their
conference a couple years ago down there in Florida.
Great organization, great people who are just in it for, you
know, in it for the love of it. You know, you get the same kind
of energy that that I think I'm sure you could feel it.
Metabolic Health Summit, there's that energy there where they're
really just trying to trying to help people and trying to unify
this, this mission of bringing, bringing metabolic health into
the mainstream. And so, and so, yeah, I, I'd
gone to the, the conference and met some folks and one of the,
one of the people that I met there was working on his
certification. And So what is that, you know,
what's that all about? And so it's an online course,
you know, and, and the number of videos and, and modules that you
work through about everything from everything from diabetes
reversal to, you know, to weight management to, to, you know,
they, they do touch on neurology and epilepsy.
They touch on sort of all the aspects of all the aspects of
metabolic health. And then within that they also
have specialized courses. So I took this, I also took the
specialized neurology course that they have, they have
courses on, also on, on, you know, exercise and then exercise
Physiology and stuff. So really fascinating stuff.
And that did a great job putting up putting together, you know,
again, some of the biggest names and, and, and some of the
biggest experts in the space. Yeah, I, I perused their website
after having her on the podcast and it seemed like they've got a
pretty comprehensive list of just different topics to learn
about. So I, I think what they're doing
is, is awesome work for sure, especially what they're doing in
South Africa and just that region as it pertains to, you
know, food quality there locally.
I think they're making some massive gain waves there as
well. Yeah, yeah.
And that's, and that's the cool thing about it too, is that, you
know, they have, you know, of course you've seen the same, the
same news stories on TV that I have, you know, about poverty
and, and, you know, the the, the underprivileged folks in South
Africa. But they've, they've really made
it, you know, made it clear that you could do this even in, you
know, even if you are an underprivileged person and
you're not, not, you know, you don't have to be wealthy to live
low carb. Totally, totally, totally
talking about sub stack, man. Like I've heard a lot of people
reference that. I've not done any significant
research on my own. That's basically like where you
write your content and that's accessible to anybody that wants
to read around. Like what what is the benefit of
that versus like having like a newsletter or something?
I guess it is a newsletter. Yeah, it is, it is I, I've tried
a couple of different blogging platforms like blogger.com back
in the day. And this one.
I, I, it's so a couple of things about it that I really like is
that it's very intuitive. You know, you don't have to
spend a lot of time on design and, and those sorts of things.
You know, it's, it's designed for writers who just want to
write basically. And it is it, it enables you to,
if you want to publish your post as a news, as a newsletter to
straight to people's inboxes, you can do that.
They have, they also have layers where you can, you can add a,
like a, a paywall, you know, and put certain posts behind a
paywall or not. I haven't done any of that yet.
All my, all my stuff is up there for free.
People just, you know, go to my website and sign up or not sign
up. You can click through without
signing up and just read what's on there.
And but they also do they, they sort of seem to be adding
features every year. So, so now you can actually post
a podcast and it will create the RSS feed to go out to, you know,
to go out to the podcast platforms and videos and all
kinds of things. So it's a lot of fun.
You know, it's, it's a, it's a good, it's my creative outlet, I
like to say. Yeah.
No, I like that for sure. So is it kind of like did you
ever use medium? No, I never did.
But yeah, I think it's it's kind of similar to medium as well,
Yeah. Yes, my concept and what what is
the? So the website for the sub stack
is separate from your main website?
Or is all one in the same? It's one in the same.
It's just I, I, I bought the, the domain
unremarkablebrain.com. And so it just refers to, you
know, if you, if you put that into the browser, it'll refer
you to unremarkablebrain.substack.com.
Same thing. Yeah.
Nice, nice. Well, I will definitely link out
to that and make it easy for people to find you.
I'll be doing some perusing myself because you're writing
about the same topics that I find interesting as well.
So I'm, I'm excited for it, man. I'm excited to see what the
future holds. Are you going to be going to any
other conferences this year? I appreciate it, man.
I hopefully, I definitely have my sights on Low Carb USA in
January when in Boca. I was hoping to get out to, to
San Diego for their for their conference in August, but I got
some work obligations I can't get out of.
So yeah, just keeping an eye on on what's going on and, and
what's coming up here. Very nice.
Well, if I am going to be going to any of those as well, I'll
definitely let you know. We'd love to see you again in
person, man. Absolutely.
Well, David, I certainly appreciate the time.
I appreciate the work you're doing.
I'm so grateful that you have discovered the ketogenic
lifestyles way to mitigate the epileptic seizures, and doing so
has allowed you an outlet to create content that has likely
improved the lives of many others.
So keep doing the good work man. Thanks man, I appreciate it and
thanks for having me on. My pleasure to be man.
My pleasure. Till next time man, take care.
You too.