Well, hello ladies and gents. Robert Sykes Keto savage.com to
Devgat special guest Nick Norowitz on the line.
And we dive deep into all the experiments he has been
conducting such as the Oreo cookie experiment, in which case
he ate Oreos and hydrostatins and the Oreos outperformed the
statins for dropping LDL. We talked quite a bit about the
lipid energy model, lean mass, hyper responders, all that good
stuff. We talked about his high calorie
experiment and what that did to his LDL markers.
We talked about the satiety per calorie model and what his
thoughts are towards it. And we talked about how he
scored a lifetime or a year supply of eggs rather because of
his recent egg experiment, which he was pretty much eating the
equivalent of 1 egg every single hour every single day.
So very interesting stuff. I got a lot of respect for Nick.
He is an academic, he is a researcher, he is a scientist at
heart. He's got a ton of curiosity and
that drives all kinds of awesome experiments.
A lot of respect form a lot of respect for what he's doing and
the attention he is bringing to metabolic health and therapies
within the ketogenic sphere, the low carb sphere, the carnivores
sphere. So happy to get him on the
podcast. Happy to die deeper.
Without further ado, sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation
with Nick Norowitz. We are live, Nick.
How are you, brother? Great, happy to be here.
Happy to have you, man. I, I met you.
I don't even know if we actually physically met, but I, I heard
of you saw you speak on stage at the Metabolic Health Summit back
in what it was January or February and you were, you were
just tearing up the stage alongside Dave Feldman with
regard to your Oreo cookie study.
And since then we've been in contact and you've just been
having one amazing experiment after the other.
And I'm all for self experimentation.
So I definitely want to peel the curtain back and dive deep into
all of those and some of your findings.
But I love a little intro as to who, what, what even led to the
person you are now as far as you're incredibly witty,
incredibly intelligent. You are very polarizing online,
which I admire because you do so in a very respectful, tactful
way, which is hard to do with social media.
So I kind of want to get a little back story on who you
are, man. What what gets you into the the
fitness, nutrition, health space to begin with?
Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks for our lovely
intro. I, I mean, I, I fancy myself
first, you know, an academician. My background is undergrad.
I studied cell bio and biochem at Dartmouth College.
Then I went to Oxford in the UK for my PhD and human metabolism
before coming back to the States to do my MD at Harvard, which
I'm finishing up in the last months of that.
So you know, along this journey that a lot of conventional
training, a lot of normal academics, publishing papers,
doing research. But along the way I got drawn
into the metabolic health community.
I'll call that based on a personal journey with with
ulcerative colitis where I was in a really dark place at the
end of college and beginning of grad school with some severe
inflammatory bowel disease symptomology, ulcerative colitis
symptomology and palliative care, IC level care.
I mean, my life really had gone downhill quickly.
I gone from being a competitive athlete and top academician to,
you know, being so physically depleted at getting up and
walking to the bathroom took the literal effort running marathons
used to. And I'm I, my mentally wasn't
there. I socially wasn't there.
I was like a shell of the person I was.
But you know, through desperation, you're willing to
try some crazy things, quote crazy.
And I found that a ketogenic diet was pretty effective for me
at helping me put my colitis into remission and helping me
regain my life and putting it back on course, finishing up my
my PhD and then going off to medical school.
So a ketogenic diet really changed my life.
And I'm not someone to, you know, get super evangelical
after just an N = 1 experience. But it did peak my curiosity
enough to get me to engage with more of the literature around
metabolic health. And one thing led to another,
and now we're having this conversation.
And you started in the ketogenic diets, was it like seven years
ago or something like that? A little over five years ago.
Five years ago. And so at that point, I mean,
the keto diet it, it's interesting because I've like
watch the trends. I've been doing keto for almost
10 years now and when I started doing it, there wasn't really
much literature on there wasn't really books or the popularity
that surrounds it now. I think it peaked in 2019
according to Google Trends at least.
And now carnivores, kind of a subsidiary of that that's taken
the limelight. But I always enjoy talk with
people that have been doing the ketogenic diet for several years
because it's obvious they're in it for the right reasons as
opposed to just following the trends.
And especially when it comes from a place of their own
personal desire or desperation to improve health and well-being
in some sort of an or another. So hearing that makes me respect
you all the more. Yeah, I appreciate it.
It's been, it's been quite a journey, an eye opening journey
in many ways. I mean, it's funny, looking back
from where I am now, I realized there are a lot of stereotypes
built around keto and carnivore. I guess is a as one extreme
therein that, you know, you have these caricatures and
stereotypes propagated by mainstream points of view, which
if I'm being totally honest with myself, given the ecosystem in
which I've grown up and the training that I've been exposed
to, I would probably hold those negative stereotypes if I didn't
have my own, you know, N = 1 experience.
So it's a funny thing for me because my whole life mission
now is to make metabolic health mainstream, including advancing
research on ketogenic diets, even carnivore diets for that
matter. We've had a couple papers on
carnivore diets and potentially some more plan because I do find
it metabolically interesting with physiological plausibility,
even though that butts up against, you know, conventional
narratives and how to diplomatically walk the line so
that I can introduce metabolic health therapy, ketogenic diet
therapy, these fringe ideas to the mainstream who I know will
be susceptible to them because they're based on, you know,
rigorous science and Physiology. And we're asking some
provocative questions like, there's no reason people should
be closed off to these approaches.
However, you put them through the social media filter and you
end up with these. I've used the word, but I'll use
it again. Like stereotypes and caricatures
that are just really hard to kill and get propagated by the
fact that, you know, things like keto bashing are just effective
ways to get social media points from the mainstream, be it
mainstream calorie defending influencers.
I know we both know a few or, you know, legacy media outlets
who will tear into these concepts of like there were
recently a couple papers on red meat and diabetes.
And it's like, it's a good click bait title.
But then you start to delve into the literature and it's like,
you know, I almost am embarrassed to say I'm in the
nutrition space. In fact, my parents, when they
tell people what I do, they're like, oh, he's in nutrition
science. And I'm always like, no, don't
tell them that because nutrition science understandably has this
like fluffy Halo of a fluff science because it is such a,
it's a field filled with so much crappy research that to dig
through it and find the diamonds in the rough is something that
it's intimidating. I understand it's intimidating
for the average person to understand what to do.
So my mission now is to try to, you know, make learning about
metabolism, which I see is like a broader umbrella under which
nutrition and diet fall fun to learn about.
So people can actually engage with hardcore metabolic science
and not just get the platitudes of what I used to think was
healthy. And I think what a lot of people
still think is healthy. What was the initial goal like
with you taking the academic path that you have before you
were playing dwarf with the IBS? Like what?
What was the the end goal for going the academic route that
that you that you chose? Like what were you planning to
do with that as you into? Your career I mean, imagine me
as like a kid 5678 like I was always super, super curious.
Like, I'd go out into the the yard to be a dead snake with a,
you know, lump in its belly. And even like 5 or 6, I'm like,
I need to do a dissection. I'd bring it in and it's like,
is it pregnant? Do snakes get pregnant like
that? How do snakes get pregnant?
Because I've never seen a snake penis.
Like that was thoughts that went through my mind at five years
old. And then you combine that with
being, you know, in a medical household.
So both my parents are MD, pH, DS.
It's like the default. You match up my level of science
with living with medical parents.
And you know, when you have parents that are in a certain
career field, be it medicine or the military, it's like you just
you take that on as, you know, something to aspire to,
something that's noble. And so I have had in my mind my
entire life, I wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to be a
Doctor Who did science. And the deeper you delve on that
path, the more you get a clarified picture of what
respectable looks like. You know, the professor who's
gone through the, you know, top trainings in terms of college,
medical school, residency, fellowship.
You get the right grants, you get the right, you know, you
know, research partners, publications in the right
journals. There's a very clear picture of
what to do this the quote right way looks like.
So that was always the aspiration because I thought
it's how I could bring good to the world.
And even after I had my, my own health experiences, you know, I
had this lofty idea of, well, maybe there's something's wrong
with Western medicine, but to change the system, you need to
work from within the system. And I have these privileges, you
know, training at some of the the oldest and most highly
regarded by the public institutions, although some of
them are doing some not great things for the legacies maybe,
but nevertheless, like things like Oxford and Harvard brands,
they carry weight. So I'm in a pretty particular
position, but I won't get into the details.
But what I've realized is that now, especially in in the twenty
20s, there's a lot more impact you can have directly through a
bottom up grass roots approach than you know, working from
within the within the mainstream with, you know, within the
system. I can work from without outside
the system and get people information now, get them
enthused about metabolism, metabolic health, and empower
them to take control of their own metabolic health and
journey. Even separate from changing the
system from within, which is a separate goal and one that it's
a difficult thing to communicate because they're just so much
wrapped up into it, familial, personal and academic.
But like, the idea now of actually changing the system is
it didn't sound Herculean before you know, it it I feel like it's
next to impossible to truly do if you don't have some sort of
muscle from another angle. So I have really loved getting
into the public space really over the last year or so and
finding ways to reach out to people, empower people, teach
people and learn along the way. It's been a lot of fun.
Yeah, no, it's awesome. It's funny because I too came
from a family that was, you know, steeped in conventional
medicine. My mom has always been in
healthcare and she's a nurse practitioner manager, went up
the ladder within the hospital setting.
My dad's APHD biologist. And you know, my, my upbringing
it 5 or 6 years old was doing full blown necropsies on
different wildlife he harvested for students at a farm to, you
know, see the entire digestive passage to everything.
So like, that was what I was subjected to as a kid, which
brought with a ton of curiosity and insight and just perspective
effective. But it is interesting because
like, their knowledge of nutrition is so predicated on
what they went through. I mean, it made part in part be
from a generational standpoint. Like they didn't grow up with
social media. They didn't grow up with people
questioning the conventional norms like we are with the
advent of social media, the Internet, and just the ease of
information flow. But it's funny because, you
know, I started doing ketogenic diet long before they were
accepting of it. They kind of, you know,
discredited. And then my mom started doing
it. She had a ton of benefits that
came as a result. My dad's still pretty skeptical,
but I feel like this anecdotal evidence can't be ignored, and
then once enough people have done it, most definitely can't
be ignored. So I think bringing or bridging
the gap between what you're able to do and how you're able to
impact people at scale through social media and just the
stories you're able to share is going to make a much more
profound impact than one could ever hope to from within the
conventional system. You said some things that
definitely resonated with my own background, especially with
regards to your parents, because as I mentioned, like both my
parents were very conventionally trained and I think have a have
an idea of science that a lot of people have, which is like, you
know, it's about the data, which it is, it truly is.
But when it comes to personal decision making, it is really
about the stories, right? That's not something that can be
discounted. We as humans resonate with
stories. So it sounds like your mom
really responded to your story. And actually the same with my
mom. She's now a keto, and she
adopted a ketogenic diet after me because, you know, she saw
how well it worked for me. And she's reaped her own
benefits, although they're distinct.
So it really is the stories that change people's minds.
And, you know, that's something that if you were to talk to me
three years ago, I would have discounted a little bit.
I think the idea of anecdotes has a, well, I know the term
anecdotes has negative connotation, but when we think
about, you know, just raw data like that doesn't, or just, you
know, data sets, P values, statistics, whatever, it doesn't
resonate with people the same way that stories do.
And so I think what you need to do when you're telling or you're
teaching science, talking about data, is you need to find a way
to tell a story around the data. Anybody that ever written a
paper and gotten it published even knows this, like you need
to tell a story around the data. And now that's a tricky thing
because of course, in telling a story around the data, you're
always going to introduce biases, you know, your
interpretations based on your framing.
Like that's the nature of things.
So I think practically speaking, we just need to acknowledge that
science, while the scientific method itself is, you know, cold
and direct and emotionless, the body of science that results is
a function of humans telling stories about what the data are
showing. Yeah, and humans are, so it's
not. Bad.
It's something we need to acknowledge in order to deal
with the practicalities that arise, including the narratives
that get propagated around things like nutrition.
Yeah, 100%. And nutrition is tricky, man,
because humans are so we're, we're so, we're so fickle.
Like we with any other animal. There's no debate as to what,
you know, types of foods they should consume, but there's such
a, you know, societal standpoint, such an emotional
standpoint tie with food and human consumption that is very
triggering for people for whatever reason.
And it like I'm trying to bridge the gap as I know you are as
well, because I, you know, having been brought up in the
scientific community, I do place a lot of emphasis on quality
data, But I'm also trying to, you know, take stock in the
anecdotal evidence and what is sustainable and what is, you
know, optimal from a health and well-being and vitality
standpoint. And oftentimes those don't sync
up. So I'll bring people on the
podcast like the Lane Norton's of the world as I respect their
opinion, their viewpoints, and you know, some of the, the, the
value they bring the table, but not at the complete exclusion of
this anecdotal evidence. And I feel like there has to be
a way to, to mesh that together as it, as it, you know, pertains
to human consumption, because we aren't Lab Rats in a controlled
feeding study. We have all these other
variables at play and we have to be realistic.
Yeah. I think we can talk through now
a framework of kind of how to do that, reconcile the anecdotes
with the data. And part of that is just
considering what data we have and what data we don't.
So for example, there are interventions that have clearly
worked for people or let's say people report that they clearly
work for people. I'll use myself as an example.
There's no doubt in my mind that ketogenic diet was highly
effective for putting my disease into remission.
That is my story. It's the narrative I tell
myself, but it's also backed with my medical history.
I suffered and I suffered and nothing was working.
I tried a bunch of different diets.
Nothing worked. And I tried this and it worked.
It improved my symptoms. My inflammatory markers went
down, and on biopsy there was no disease.
So that's my narrative. But if you look at the
literature, can I say that there are human randomized trials
showing that my intervention works for my use case, a
ketogenic diet for inflammatory bowel disease?
The answer is no. It doesn't mean it doesn't work.
It just means we haven't properly asked the questions and
investigated it. So I think sometimes people
confuse absence of evidence with evidence of absence and say this
isn't true because we don't have data to say it's true when it's
never really been investigated. And on top of that, there are
questions we just can't ask with certain forms of investigation,
say the human randomized control trial, which is something that I
think a lot of people point to is the quote gold standard,
right? But not all investigations lend
themselves to human RC TS. So we really just have to cobble
together the data we have access to be that human RC TS and
Cochrane reviews or just biologic possibility in animal
studies. And then I think use those to
frame the stories we we are hearing and we are telling each
other. And if anecdotes are arising
that cut against the data where there are conflict, I think then
it's appropriate to ask, are there other things contributing
to this story where, you know, the the biological reality could
be divergent from the narrative that a person is telling
themselves? Or is there something new and
unique to learn here? And at the end of the day, I
think we can have all the discussions about what the
published literature say. Well, also acknowledging and
celebrating individuals and their own healthcare journeys.
I mean, like, personally, one of the reasons I love metabolic
health is the proof is in the pudding.
Your biomarkers, how you're doing in terms of your health.
Like if you're doing great, I do not give a crap how you got
there. I don't care if it was
carnivore. I don't care if it was vegan.
I don't care if it was eating McDonald's patties and Wendy's
Frosties. I think Wendy's make Frosties,
one of those ice cream milkshake things.
Point being, I mean, I think that's unlikely.
But like, if you are doing well, that's all that really matters.
And all we can do is look at the literature and kind of inform
best practices and come up with ideas about how to get people
there. And it's a fun academic
exercise. But for the individual, at the
end of the day, all that matters is their story.
Their n = 1. Yeah, I completely agree.
And I feel like as more time passes, we'll have more solid
data to lean on. And I feel like there there's so
much that is left, there's so much lacking in that department,
especially as it pertains to performance athletes.
I mean, I never, I didn't get into keto because of some
ailment or disease or anything like that.
I came to it honestly because I had a negative relationship with
food, eating high carbohydrate diets.
But I love the sport of bodybuilding, which is what led
to the high carbohydrate diet. So I wanted to find a way to
compete at a competitive level in the complete absence of
carbs. And I got a ton of negative push
back there. And everybody was just, you
know, suggesting that that was not even feasible in the context
of a kid in doing that. So I was, you know, I, I love as
you do, proving people wrong. So that's what I set out to do.
And lo and behold, it worked beautifully and I've kind of
staked my, you know, flag in the ground.
And that's the hill that I'm dying on.
That performance not can only maintain, but honestly, you
know, outperform those with carbohydrate dependent approach,
especially in the long term. Play it because you're looking
at people now that are, you know, taking in performance
enhancing drugs. Obviously that's a whole another
world in and of itself, but you see all these athletes that just
really start to dwindle as time goes on.
And I'm, I'm excited to see what I'm performing like when I'm 73
years old, following this way of eating, you know, indefinitely
until then. No, no, no, your, your journey
is amazing. And actually I, I need to ask
and other people have asked me to ask.
One thing I really like about you is you.
You post pictures very like authentically and transparently,
both in like the extreme cutting and bulking phases, which if
people look at your socials like there's a huge discrepancy
there. The, the reason I like that is
one anybody who's been like a physique athlete or even
recreationally understands that, like, you know, those optimal
or, you know, based on societal standards, optimal male physique
photos are a function of like pristine timing, hydration
status, lighting, all these things.
And it's phasic. And so first I want to apply to
you from, you know, posting at both sides of the spectrum, but
also just ask out of my own curiosity, what is the time lag
between, say, like if you post a bulking photo and then your most
cut photo, is that like months apart, weeks apart?
Is that a function of actual body fat loss or hydration
status? Like what does the transition
from like that bulk photo to that cut photo really look like?
Yeah, great question. So I honestly do not cut water
like a lot of competitors do. And I think that's one of the
movies of phonic ketogenic prep protocol is I don't have to
dehydrate. So I'm fully hydrated in both an
offseason photo and a competition photo.
So that's not a variable at play there.
As far as the time, my last prep was 33 weeks.
I probably looked my best at 27 weeks, which is when I earned
the pro card on my third of five shows this past season.
So 27 weeks from peak bulk to peak cut.
I could have done it faster, but by going more slowly I preserved
more lean tissue and overall health and well-being.
So that's about 27 weeks roughly.
Yeah. Do you ever get your lipids
tested when you're at a cut versus bulk?
Yeah, I get all my markers tested.
I do. That's usually about every three
months as I'm going through a building phase, a peak cut and
then back to reverse dieting and finding that, you know, slight
surplus to operate at for extended periods of time.
So I'm getting my lipids tested through, I'm getting my hormones
tested through all Now when you take like naturally, when you
get that lean testosterone for instance, is, is very correlated
to overall body fat levels. So when you drop below 5% body
fat as a male, your testosterone plummets.
I mean, I think at my leanest of 3.9%, my testosterone was like
89 or something scary low. Now that's obviously not healthy
or optimal. So as I put on a healthy amount
of body fat in the building phase, that returns to a
healthy, normal baseline. But yeah, all these I try to be
very transparent with both the build and the cut because I
don't want to glorify just the cut because being that lean for
that long is not healthy. I know.
And I think it really effects young men.
Like I'm really I'm 28. Remember how old you are?
32 I'll be 33 next month. Right.
So we're like, we're both on the younger and where we, I mean,
maybe just missed the access of social media to like, you know,
preteens. I just think about how it would
have affected my psyche when I was going through like puberty
and like the 5th and 6th grade. I hit people to be a little bit
early to have access to what kids have access to now.
I mean, people talk a lot about societal standards for women,
but I think, you know, there's an effect on on men too.
So I think transparency around that, especially if people use
like there's some, you know, people, especially people like
actors, they're prepping for a role be like Crim's Hems, Chris
Hemsworth or Thor or something like it clearly use PEDs.
I think that's fine. It's part of the the journey.
He's preparing for his job. You're preparing for your sport.
I don't know if you use anything but there just doesn't seem to
be a lot of transparency in discussion about like what a
natural male physique is or what actually feels good because
people see you at that level. Or like I've been super lean.
I don't know if I've ever run DEXA at least in 3.9%.
But like I also know that on my leanest I feel like shit and
usually I'm there incidentally, not necessarily like willingly
for various reasons and discussion around that I just
think is valuable. But that was sidetracked from
the question I wanted to ask about the the labs lean versus
bolt. What do your lipids look like if
I may ask? I would assume your LDL jumps
when you're cutting and drops when you're bolting.
Is that accurate? What?
What was that last part? You.
Assumed your LDL, your LDL cholesterol, I mean, I mean,
we'll probably talk a little bit about cholesterol and you know,
a lot of my research around lean mass hyper responders.
I never asked you about your lipids.
Yeah, I mean, actually. LDL jump when you're cutting.
Actually there's like a, it's like a weird bell curve.
So like when I am in a peak bulk and I'm really trying to be
aggressive with the surplus, it is higher.
And then when I'm in a, you know, deficit with it's
basically on the extremes. So like as I'm dieting down LDL
drops typically, but you know, when I'm at that, you know,
peaking moment, it, it can be all over the place.
And it's very highly dependent upon what I'm eating then as
well. Because like I'll have refeed
meals in at that point which are predominantly higher in fat.
So it just depends on when I get the labs drawn based off of
where I'm at in the prep cycle. But my, my standard lipid panels
are typically around shooting from memory here, like my trigs
will get around 30 or 40. HDL is like 120.
I believe. LDL is typically between 120 and
200, give or take. OK, so you can approach sounds
like clean mass type of responder Physiology especially
with the HDL at high, I mean do you remember what it was on a
mixed diet? I assume it was much lower.
Yeah, the HDL was much lower. I, I didn't get labs drawn that
frequently when I was on a mixed diet.
I mean, it was a long time ago when I was eating carbohydrates,
but this is honestly the best. Myeliputs have been honestly the
best. All of my markers have been
since doing a ketogenic diet. I think it gets better the
longer you're doing it. I'm kind of like a lot of people
talk about metabolic flexibility and cycling carbs in, but I've
kind of fallen to the belief that your body is very
adaptable. It's going to make the most of
whatever you give it. And if you're staying strictly
ketogenic, your body's metabolic pathways up regulate to optimize
around fat metabolism. And if you do that for long
enough, everything improves for that function.
So I have no plans to deviate because my health has never been
better. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
So 100%, man, I, I've got like a million different questions upon
the different experiments you've done because you've done so many
of them. I've lost track of them all.
But my introduction to, like I said in the beginning was that
Oreo cookie versus statin study. But since then you've also, I
mean, you, you sent me a post on Instagram today about you
getting a year's supply of eggs. So we can talk about that.
You also made a post that I saw about the satiety per calorie
model, which I've I've got some thoughts on as well.
OK, Whatever you want to talk about man.
Like I want the floor to be used because I want to talk about
whatever is exciting you at the moment and where you think you
want to take the conversation. Sure.
I mean, Oreo versus Staten's always a fun thing to start with
and we can roll from there. But so this was a project I did.
A lot of people listening probably already know about it,
so I'll go through it quickly. But I want to bring attention.
The purpose was to bring attention to a lot of work we've
been doing. We have now 10 published papers
on this lean mass hyper responder phenotype, which is to
cut the jargon, when lean people tend to go low carb, they tend
to see these increases in LDL cholesterol, which some people
call the bad cholesterol, along with increases in HDL
cholesterol and low triglycerides, which is a
pattern that appears in and sounds like in you as well,
especially when you're lean. The high LDL, the high HDL and
low triglycerides. This is really important to
study because ketogenic diets are gaining popularity for a
whole host of conditions, inflammatory conditions, mental
health conditions, neurological disorders.
But when it comes to clinical medicine, a major sticking
point, an obstacle remains cholesterol, where some people
we'll see increases in LDL and that scares patients.
It scares doctors because of what we've been told around LDL
cholesterol and markers like Applebee for those who are a
little bit more cholesterol versed.
So it's become important for my colleagues and I to kind of
figure out why lean people see the increases in LDL when they
go low carb. And indeed, it does appear
particularly in lean people. So we, for example, did one meta
analysis of human randomized control trials.
This was led by my friend Adrian and published in the American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition. And what we found was an inverse
association between LDL and BMI such that when people went low
carb, the leaner you were, the higher your BMI went.
I'm sorry, the leaner you were, the higher LDL ones, lean LDMI,
the leaner you were, the higher LDL went.
And actually, if you broke up and did meta analysis by each of
the BMI categories, only lean people with BMI below 25, only
that group saw increases in LDL who had overweight or obesity.
Those groups did not see increases.
Class 2 obesity actually saw decreases.
So this is starting to, you know, explain a source of
heterogeneity in the data where it's like, OK, this is
interesting for the people that have the big jumps in LDL.
It doesn't appear to be things like, you know, even genetics or
saturated fat as much it is as it is being leaned.
And that's odd. So we have a model to explain
why that is. It's called a lipid energy
model. We can get into the nitty gritty
around it, but the lipid energy model makes certain predictions.
And one of the most rudimentary predictions of our model is
because it appears that when lean people go low carb, they
really shift over fat burning. Well and the fat trafficking
system depends on these particles.
LDL goes up, but if you reintroduce carbs, then you
remove the need for this liquid energy model flywheel to spin
and the phenotype reverts. And the way to say that is add
back carbs. LDL goes down if you're a lean
mass hyper responder. This is interesting Physiology,
but I wanted to get people to engage with it who might not
otherwise have been aware of it. And so I kind of had to envision
what was the most provocative way I could demonstrate a
principle of this model. And one way to do that would be
to lower my LDL with an unhealthy food, an unhealthy
food with carbs. And I chose Oreo cookies because
it's simply I could not come up with a better branded unhealthy
food that everybody would know. And I predicted that it would
lower my cholesterol, LDL cholesterol.
And because I know how to down my IS and cross my T's as a
researcher, I did it as a rigorous crossover trial, which
means I did the Oreo intervention.
But I also had a washout period where I reverted and got back to
my like, you know, set point for cholesterol when I'm on keto.
And then I tried a statin, a high dose, high intensity
statin, which was a 20 milligrams of rosuvastatin,
which is Crestor for six weeks. And the experiment was, let's
see what does better at lowering my cholesterol, Oreo cookies or
standard of care high dose statin therapy.
I went to Harvard's Institutional Review Board.
Their IRB got an exemption. I collaborated with
lipidologists and cardiologists and my primary care provider who
was ordering all my labs. And the results were that the
Oreo cookies, the Oreo cookie intervention, which was a pure
addition, I was not reducing my fat.
In fact, since Oreos have fat and saturated fat, that's
actually increasing my fat. But I was adding in carbs.
And what happened was the Oreos reduced my LDL by 71%, which is
dramatic, more than you could expect from any medication.
And the statins reduce my LDL by 32.5% over actually three times
longer a time period. So in the end, the Oreos were
twice as potent as at dropping my LDL as the statin in one
third time, which was a metabolic demonstration that was
effective in its purpose, getting people to have
discussions with us about the broader literature around Lee
Max cyber responders. I'm assuming the pharma
companies were probably not ecstatic about this study.
I mean, they didn't reply. I, I, I think it made waves.
It did not make waves so big that Pfizer is coming after me.
So no, I have not gotten any emails from Pfizer or anything.
I mean, I'm humble in what this is.
I mean, it wasn't N = 1. It's not kind of changing
guidelines or anything, and they know that.
But it did stimulate conversation, got word of our
work out there, helped us build more collaborations and gain
more resources to do future studies that are under way.
Out of curiosity, what were some or any?
Were there any symptoms that you had while you were doing the
high dose statin? Yeah, I had, I mean, myalgias
are very common. So like muscle pains and cramps
in my lower legs. This was a high dose.
Generally people would not start on 20 milligrams of Crestor.
It's pretty high. And that occurred with some
increase in my CPK, so a marker of muscle damage.
So there might have been a little bit of cramps and, you
know, increasing this marker of muscle damage.
It wasn't very high. It was it was low enough that
actually we noticed this early on in the study.
And I talked to a lipidologist colleague and he's like, look,
this is uncomfortable. But actually I had a patient on
this. I don't know that I'd keep him
on it for life at these levels, but it was safe.
Like it wasn't at risk of going into rhabdomyolysis or anything
like that. But I had some, I had some
muscle pains. It was pretty moderate.
Quite honestly. The Oreos had worse side
effects. Like my stomach was just not
happy with me. But yeah, you know, I think to
kind of put this in a clinical context, if this were to happen,
a patient were to start on this high dose of statin therapy and
have these symptoms, what will probably happen is their
clinician would just decrease the dose because you can get
most of the effect for LDL lowering for a statin at lower
doses. And I just started with a high
dose because I wanted the highest intensity protocol I
possibly could have because I'm a harder like you, so.
Totally. So a lot of people like speaking
from a layperson standpoint, they're concerned about going
keto for fear of what the mainstream media has inundated
them with over the years as to, you know, high fat clogging the
arteries, the need for a statin. They'll often times notice an
increase in LDL or cholesterol, total cholesterol, you know,
early on. And then they'll go to a doctor,
primary care, and they'll automatically always push them
towards a statin. So this study just basically
forces them to question the rationale behind all of this.
You know, I, I don't put in, in the Orient study any value on
LDL or statics like that is not the place of this study.
Inevitably people are going to try to tie that in, and the
reason I think they do so is because what inevitably is is,
or what's being presented here is an inevitable and unavoidable
tension where we have what we all agree, pretty much all agree
is an unhealthy intervention. Adding Oreo cookies onto your
standard diet is not a healthy thing.
I don't think anybody believes it is.
But my LDL cholesterol went down, which a lot of people
would presume to be a good thing.
So very, very simply, you have a bad intervention and a good
outcome, and that creates a paradox attention, a cognitive
dissonance that a lot of people are uncomfortable sitting with.
And that's not to put any value on statins or any value on LVL.
That's just to say, here's something curious and if it's
curious to you and appears paradoxical to you, that means
there's something you or we don't understand.
And I want people to sit with that curiosity and get
inquisitive and then go down the rabbit hole of our literature
and start asking the right questions to speak quickly on,
you know, that that patient scenario, the doctor patient
scenario patient goes keto and their LDL goes up and it's all
scary. What I would say is
reassuringly, we now have multiple studies showing that if
somebody is using a ketogenic diet for like type 2 diabetes,
obesity or overweight, they will tend not to see increases in LDL
and actually tend to see improvements in overall
cardiovascular risk markers, including markers like
triglycerides and HDL and LDL and Apple B.
Sometimes there are transient blips up in LDL, but typically
the LDL particle count in the Apple B will actually go down
and risk will overall be reduced in people who are starting from
a place of metabolic dysfunction with overweight or obesity,
which is actually most people. Which is also probably why in
general, if you look at all the studies, you don't see increases
in LTL on keto diets because those people have overweight or
obesity. But you do have this subset who
are basically lean and metabolically healthy who see
the increases. Now these people can be adopting
ketogenic diets for a variety of reasons, focusing on those who
are using for them for medical purposes, ketogenic diet.
For medical purposes, it could be mental health conditions,
neurological conditions, autoimmune or inflammatory
disorders. And that does create a rock and
a hard place scenario. If the LDL was up very high like
to 304 hundred 500, which we definitely see.
But the ketogenic diet therapeutic for that person, at
that point we have to have a discussion with the doctor about
what is their risk. And that is a question we are
openly investigating because the fact of the matter is we don't
know. And anybody who tells you we do
know is lying through their teeth or speaking beyond the
literature because this phenomenon, this phenotype is
unlike anything we've ever seen before.
So while you can say the quote preponderance of evidence, the
body of literature existing suggests that LDL particles and
Apple V have a causal role in cardiovascular disease.
When you have an entirely new population with the new
physiologic driver of this biomarker, they need to be
studied uniquely in order to understand the absolute risk
associated with this profile. So.
We're doing that at the present time.
We have preliminary evidence, some of which has been
published, some of which we're still writing up.
It looks very reassuring that this does not appear to be a
population in which there's any rapid progression of black.
It doesn't mean there's zero risks associated with the
profile, but the data we have thus far have been reassuring.
We can caveat them, we can say the preliminary, but the fact of
the matter is right now we're the only, well, I have a few
teams, but our teams are the only ones that are actually
investigating this question on this population.
So you can call the evidence preliminary, but it's all we
have at this point in time. Yeah, I had, I had Feldman on a
couple months back, I guess after Part 1 had been published,
but not Part 2. And what what was the average
LDL reading from the participants in in that study?
I mean it was around 2 or 300, right?
Yeah, the mean LDL was 272 milligrams per desolated for the
lean mass hyper responders 272 is very, very high compared to a
match control which had an LDL of 123.
So the difference is 149 milligrams per deciliter between
the groups. And the keto group have been
keto for an average of 4.7 years and we did not see any increase
in plaque in the keto group as measured by coronary CT and
geography. So high resolution scans looks
beyond just calcified plaque, including non calcified plaque
and we didn't see any increase in plaque.
In fact, the lean mass hyper responder group was trending
towards lower increase, not significant, but trending
towards sorry, not lower increase, lower plaque levels
than the match control. And there was also no
association between LDL and plaque amount in the in the lean
mass hyper responders. And we've actually now had more
data. We've also looked at the
correlations between Apple B LDL particle count, even small dense
LDL particle count and none of these things appear to predict
the amount of plaque in lean mass hyper responders for
reasons we are working to explain.
And now we're working on writing up the prospective data.
So where we actually monitor the individuals with multiple scans
over the course of time to see what is the progression in lean
mass hyper responders of plaque and if it has any association
with Apple B or if other things like pre-existing plaque might
be better predictors of Platt progression.
So I can't pull the curtain back on the data quite yet as it's
not published, but they're going to be provocative findings that
turn a lot of heads. Actually, after this Zoom
meeting, I'm getting on a call with Dave and Professor Adrian
Sotomoto to discuss some of our preliminary analysis on this
paper. We're rounding up in the
meantime. So you know, it's a, it's a cool
space to watch and I, I want to emphasize, I absolutely want
people to be cautious and have open minded discussions with
their physicians. Contemplate the potential pros
and cons of various interventions, the risks
involved, the risks involved with respect to maintaining high
Applebee levels even in lean mass hyper responders, the risks
of various interventions and that includes trying your best
to weigh the unknowns in these equations because there are a
lot of unknowns. For example, you know we don't
know what the effect of Ilean mass type of responder phenotype
is over 20 years because we just don't have those data.
But correspondingly we don't have great data on the long term
risks associated with say taking a PCs K9 inhibitor which is one
LDL lowering drug. And we can talk about data there
that I mean are concerning enough that I am not on one of
these medications. So it's like the art of medicine
has to do with trying to make the best decision you can given
an individual context, given what you know, acknowledging
that there is a lot of unknowns and it is a matter of best
guesses and updating your individual choice at any one
point in time. So I don't think there's a right
and wrong answer and all we're trying to do here is advance the
science and have open minded discussions and speak in a
nuanced manner as best we can about the data as it's evolving
so people can make their own informed choices.
Yeah, and I think the more data we have, the better we'll be
able to put their mind at ease. But I mean, the, the, the common
story I see unfold is that people will adopt ketogenic diet
and they'll, you know, depending on how frequently they've
checked their, their lipid panels in the past, they may be
slightly alarmed by what their, their LDL is showing.
But then they'll almost unanimously say they feel
exponentially better. They've got more, you know,
enhance cognition. They don't have any GI distress.
And to me, like as not a scientist, that just, I mean, I,
I like to let people lean into how they feel like truly be
observant and what their bodies biofeedback is telling them.
And if they are empowered enough to do so and they notice, you
know, benefits across the board, better sleep quality, better
performance, better recovery, like that tells me all I need to
know. Yeah, I, I get that.
I also get that people are going to make decisions with their gut
and a lot of people have that mindset.
I will caution that you do not feel progression of
cardiovascular disease. It's not something that you can
like, you know, just intuit in your gut and, you know, the
first sign could be a fatal heart attack.
That's very possible. I just want to put that out
there because I do not want to discount the fact that even if
you feel great, there could be long term consequences to a
particular lifestyle pattern. Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Just something to be cognizant of.
Yeah, 100%. And I'm, I'm a big advocate for
collecting as much hard data as possible, which is why I do
like, you know, three monthly. Like I, I do the lipid test and
the hormone test every three months when I'm going through my
own self experiments because I want to know the numbers.
I want to be able to be objective with that data.
I want people to also, you know, be able to listen to their body
because so many people seem to have failed to do that simple
task, which is important. A nice thing I'll just add is
you're talking about collecting data like you can collect
functional data on yourself. So like you don't need, OK,
we're trying to figure out at a population level the risk
associated with the mass hyper responders, right?
That is still going to be a a population average when it comes
to you. What you should really care
about is, is there plaque in your arteries?
And you can get scans to look. So you can go get a coronary CTN
geography and see is there plaque.
And if there is, I will be concerned.
If there's not, I will be less concerned, especially if you've
had high levels for a long period of time.
I'll use my mom as an example. She's giving me permission to to
talk about her case in broad strokes, but she for example,
unlike me at baseline, her LDL is pretty high.
I think it's always been above 160 and she's about to turn 60.
So that exposure alone is pretty high exposure.
But on top of that, she will manifest lean mass
hyperresponder Physiology when she goes to low carb.
She's very petite, probably about 100 and 510 lbs and her
LDL will jump to close to 400. So she has had this massive
exposure lifelong to LDL and people tend to say, you know,
it's about milligrams per deciliter a year exposure and
LDL and Applebee, she's had this enormous exposure and it goes up
when she's keto, but she's been now for several years.
So we've had a lot of discussions.
I mean, the last thing I want to do is gamble my mom's health and
like what she should do, whether she should take a statin or
ezetimibe or other medication, she should go off keto or low
carb. In the end, we got her some
scans, including a CIMT and a coronary CT angiography.
And lo and behold, her total plaque score was a flat 0.
No, I'm not going to say this is going to generalize to all 60
year old women on ketogenic diets.
But for my mother, it does not appear she has any plaque given,
even given, and despite very high LDL for a very long time,
which is sufficient for her. This is her decision.
She's medically informed and I'm not pulling the wool over her
eyes. She's an MD to say she doesn't
want to take a medication at this time because it's not clear
that there would be any benefit. She's had a big exposure.
She hasn't had any plaque accumulate.
That's measurable. So like, why would she take
therapy? Again, just going through an N =
1 thought process and the kind of thing you can do for yourself
if you measure your plaque. I mean, CAC for calcium score is
a little bit more rudimentary, but still pretty decent.
And there isn't any plaque. But that should be reassuring.
And the data shows that's reassuring even in people with
familial hypercholesterolemia. You know, if the CAC score is
zero, that is better at predicting, you know, future
events than an Apple B or an LVO.
So you can get a scan on yourself, is the point.
You don't have to guess about the plaque in your artery.
You can go get it measured. I think the CAC.
Scan nowadays is it's like less than 300 bucks in most places
right? Oh, it's cheap.
Yeah, you can get it cheap. And I mean, insurance should
cover it if you have, you know, hypercholesterolemia, which if
you're a Lima cyberresponder, you will, and also a coronary
CTN geography could be covered by insurance.
It was for me and I'm in my 20s. So, you know, these are these
are scans you can talk with your doctor and and they should be
tools you use to inform your decision.
So I'll use myself again as an example.
I got ACA coronary CTN geography years after I've been keto with
the stipulation that if there was plaque, I'd go on
pharmacotherapy. I told my doctor to look, I want
you to order this, and I'm telling you before the results
come in that I'll take medications if I have a positive
finding. Yes, I'm young, but my levels
are exceptionally higher. They had been exceptionally high
such that my overall exposure was above 5000 milligrams per
deciliter years, so it was plausible that they could have
been plaque. Turns out there wasn't.
I will continue to update my decisions as I collect more data
on myself, but like you, I am very attuned to my own data,
always getting lipid tests and we'll follow up with further
functional measures as as I see fit and then just update my
decision. I'm not closed off with things
like medication just for me, it doesn't make sense.
That's my. As as far as experiments go, I,
I don't know the context of what all you were trying to decide or
discover with the calorie experiment that you were doing.
And I know you were eating a ton of keto bricks and a ton of
macadamia. Butter, but what?
Was the. What was the objective of that
experiment? So first of all, thank you for
the keto bricks. They are incredibly delicious
and they were from what made this experiment feasible because
for people who don't know me, I'm a pretty petite guy, BMI
around like 21 at about 5 foot 75 foot 8.
So eating I was eating like well over 6000 calories a day is very
not very easy made possible like you, but but the purpose of the
experiment was actually to drop my LVL.
So other people, including for example, Siobhan Huggins have
able been able to drop their LVL by just going quote hypercaloric
even while keto, which is another I love my N equals ones
right. Another way to demonstrate
principles of lipid energy model and associated principles.
So basically the idea high level is if you acutely gain a lot of
fat, which if you eat a crazy amount in a short period of
time, you shouldn't still be able to gain a decent amount of
body fat or your fat cells should grow.
Then the there are a few things that happen.
One, your insulin will go up even if you're eating keto and
that will help with that storage and also the expansion of the
fat cells themself acting as storage depots will have a
structural demand. At least this is the thought.
So they will have a structural demand for LDL particles,
Applebee particles, and that will drop your Applebee.
So for example, Siobhan has shown that when she went
hypercaloric, I think it was like she did A5 day protocol
where part of the day she was eating 4000 calories.
Then she went up to 6000 and she was eating like tons of heavy
cream. I think that was her main source
of calories. Her LDL plummeted more than it
ever had. I forget how much you can look
up LDL drop experiment Siobhan Huggins if you want the the
detailed numbers, but she dropped hers well over, I think
it was over 150 milligrams per deciliter with cream.
And I wanted to replicate that. Other people have actually over
20 other people have shown that if they go low carb, but they go
like crazy high calorie for a short period of time, even
eating tons of saturated, the fact that LDL will go down for
the reasons I explained. So I wanted to replicate that.
I'd never done it. So that was the purpose of the
experiment. The interesting thing was, I was
entirely wrong with that experiment.
What ended up happening is my LDL didn't change much.
It actually went up a tiny bit, which was fascinating to me
because that was an n = 1 that contradicted the findings of 20
other people. And what was even more
fascinating is to think about why the results were what they
were in my circumstance. And so I was measuring a lot of
things along the way. And what happened to me quite
uniquely is my body temperature when I was feeding at this level
went up quite a bit. My heart rate jumped a lot.
And graph this out you can see in the video and you know my
subjective needs non exercise activity thermogenesis went up a
lot. So I was bouncing all around and
actually didn't end up gaining much weight at all.
And so the way I explained the results and the LDL not changing
or even going up, which are totally consistent with our
model is some people are heart gainers, some people are easy
gainers. I'm a hard gainer.
And when I over feed and it's been shown in the literature,
different people have different responses to over feeding.
My body just wants to burn that energy off.
So it increases my body temperature, it increases my
heart rate, I'm bouncing around all the time.
And as a result, my fat cells didn't end up growing that much.
So there wasn't a structural demand.
And in addition to that, my energy demands went up.
And what happens when you're lean and low carb and your
energy demand goes up? All things being equal, the
lipid energy model has to spin a little bit faster to get you the
energy you need. And that predicts an increase in
LDL, which is exactly what happened.
So it was a really cool experiment for me because it was
one where I was, I was, I'm not, you know, feigning humility
here. I was actually wrong, but in
being wrong, the results still perfectly fit the model.
And not only that, but the model explained an idiosyncratic
individual response in me while also explaining results in other
people. So it was an individualized
application of the model, which was really cool.
People can see the video if that's going over their head.
But that was that experiment. And it was one of those moments
where, yeah, did not turn out as I expected.
And so I needed to look back to the data and explain or evolve
the model and reinterpret, you know, the data and and see what
we could learn together. So I love my Anxious 1 and that
was a fun one. No, that's super interesting.
So are you familiar with Brad Marshall?
He's the fire in a bottle. Yeah, yeah.
So I don't, and this is definitely his wheelhouse and
not mine, but he is hypothesized that the stearic acid is going
to make the actual adipocyte themselves more insulin
resistant. And with you consuming such a
high percentage of your calories from Ketobrix, which are
primarily cacao butter, the highest source of stearic acid,
I wonder if that could have been a reason as to why you didn't
have any growth in the fat cells themselves.
And I don't think the stearic acid was, I mean, I was eating
other things. I was eating a ton of macadamia
butter and macadamia oil, which is mostly monounsaturated fat.
You know, I could replicate this with other fat sources to see if
it would have a similar response.
I have looked at some of Brad Marshall's stuff.
I'm not so sold myself on that model, so I don't know if I have
any further commentary. I do not know like that.
Like I said, that's not my wheelhouse by any means, but I
am curious to see how the different types of fats impact
fat cells, so I'd be curious to learn more on that as well.
Yeah, I think a lot of those things might be a function of
more chronic effects. This was a a short term study.
And so for things like, you know, saturated versus
unsaturated, let's even get more granular, different types of
fatty acids in the diet, be it linoleic acid or stearic acid or
Omega threes, Omega sevens, in order to I think affect
Physiology long term, it requires a more chronic time
scale. Yeah, that would be my high
level suggestion. Yeah, no, I agree.
I agree. What about satiety per calorie?
You want to dabble into that conversation.
We can, I'm, I'm going to try to refrain.
So there have been some, let's say, strong words exchange
between me and the proponents of society versus calorie.
I'm going to try to keep that in check because I think, let's say
we've both been aggressive towards each other.
I definitely think I'm on the right.
I'm sure they think they're on the right.
But we can keep this high level and discuss it at a academic and
intellectual perspective. I will start by letting you give
your two cents. I, I've had both on the podcast,
you know, Ted Naman obviously is a proponent of his PE formula,
which a lot of the satiety per calorie is based on.
And a lot of that is honestly very similar to what I started
doing with my traditional bodybuilding, you know, dietary
protocol. I mean very high fiber, higher
protein, relatively lower, you know fat model and from just my
anecdotal experience, I did not experience more satiety with
that. What I've noticed is that when I
have higher like if a calories are equated form and I'm
following a ketogenic approach with higher fat, moderate
protein, very minimal carbohydrate versus a calorie
equated model with higher fiber, higher protein, lower fat, lower
carbs, I experienced much more satiety with the ketogenic
approach. Even with calories equated, I'll
have fewer meals, I'll have less feeding frequency.
Some of that may be psychological, some that may be
sephalic phase of insulin response, not sure.
But what I've noticed and what I've theorized is that if I'm
consuming less fiber, that's not going to hinder absorption of
the nutrition that I am consuming, especially in the
context of a caloric deficit as I'm in when I'm in a prep.
And if I consume fewer meal frequencies with really high
quality, highly bio bioavailable food, that seems to be the most
satiant, you know, satiating form of consumption for me and
that they replicate that amongst my clientele.
So that is in stark contrast to the satiety per calorie model.
But that's just been my personal experience.
Yeah. What I'll say is first and
foremost, as I said earlier, I'm for whatever tools and
heuristics people want to use that serve them.
That's fine. And I think the levers of the
Society for Calorie model, which are things like hedonic factor,
a little pseudoscientific there, but you know, how much of food
gives you pleasure, the hedonic factor, the percent protein and
the fiber content. Each can be modeling, you know,
levers people can reflect on and, you know, toggle as they
see fit and as is useful for them.
That's fine. You know, it's similar to you
mentioned Ted Naman's PE model, Like PE is not a scientific
model. It's just a ratio.
But if it's a ratio that helps people make more intelligent
choices for themselves, I'm totally cool with that.
And I think there are people who have benefited from using APE
mindset. I've never said that wasn't the
case. Might take issue and maybe this
is just me being a Snooty academic and overly
intellectualizing things, but a lot of the claims that have been
made around satiety per calorie are just speaking beyond the
data, arrogant and pseudo scientific.
And those sound like aggressive terms, but they're actually very
accurate descriptors. Which is why, I mean, this can
be demonstrated by the results that are output from the satiety
per calorie model, which the proponents themselves like to,
well, let's say speak strongly about.
And it's always a slew of ridiculous things like, you
know, the claims and this, these are claims that they will make
about like things like, you know, what is the most
metabolically healthy ice cream? And they'll give a score to like
Halo Top ice cream in like the high 50s or the mid.
Actually it was like 53. So not high 50s.
Something like that would be 52 regardless, which scores better
than like things like avocados, egg yolks.
So they're making direct claims or very strongly implicit claims
about the metabolic health value of something like junk food Halo
Top ice cream versus cheeses and egg yolks and avocado and higher
fat foods that are actually more nutrient dense.
And overall, I think the literature would show better
from metabolic health and devaluing things based on their
caloric density, wrapping it all around this calorie centric
mindset since calories are in the denominator.
So foods like macadamia nuts, which they like to tease me
about because I like macadamia nuts.
So that's become a a poking point for them get downgraded.
And yet, when you look at the literature, there actually is at
least one interventional trial where just adding macadamia nuts
to the diet cause weight loss. And their model, their model is
a tool, It's a toy, it's a heuristic.
And that's fine if you present it as such.
But what they try to do is pretend that it's solid science
when it's not. It's not validated.
It's not even sensible. Because when you accumulate all
these factors, some of which don't even really have real
science behind them, like a donic factor, then you weight
them arbitrarily, which they do. The intended is fully admitted.
The weighting is entirely arbitrary.
You end up with a scoring system where you're trying to quantify
different foods directly, compare them on a one to 100
scale, and the science behind it is completely shoddy, which is
why you always end up getting some ridiculous results.
And it's not even necessarily ridiculous results biased
against low carb all the time. They've also had scores like,
you know, protein Berry ice cream is better than salmon or
pizza is better than watermelon for weight loss.
And it's like, these things are ridiculous.
And then what inevitably happens is they'll just go toggle the
score because they can't, because it's arbitrary.
So they can just behind their, you know, curtain change the
algorithm and then have a new score that appeases people and
sell the product. And honestly, if it was just
that, it would be fine. It's just the arrogance of
claims like satiety per calorie explains all dietary phenomena
in the diet space, period, end of story, Which Ted has said,
And I'm like, man, this is a falsifiable statement.
For one. He's asked me to falsify it.
I've falsified it multiple times.
And it's just intellectually dishonest.
And I have quite honestly been, and I'll speak directly to them
if they're listening. Like I've just been profoundly
disappointed. And their lack of intellectual
rigor, for one, and the dishonesty with which they
market the product. I mean, like the whole thing
with me was I was engaged with them very early on and helping
them or, or I offered to help them.
They did not accept the help. It's kind of formulate this in a
way that I thought will be marketing it in an
intellectually honest manner because I thought it was an idea
that initially had legs, but they chose not to validate it.
They chose not to be transparent about their methodology or the
studies they were citing as a conglomerate.
They went on making these, you know, absurd grandiose claims,
cherry picking data and and then just honestly, like I tried to
disengage, they kept poking at me.
So what happened? That is this response video.
You can look it up in my channel if you want.
It is strongly worded something like satiety per calorie is a
scam. And I go through the flaws.
I systematically go through the flaws and also their marketing
playbook because I think it is a great case study of where you
actually had what was a potentially good idea that was
poorly executed for business purposes at the expense of
people. And quite honestly, since then,
they've just been, it's, it's been disappointing.
I, I don't put most of it on Ted.
I think he's just kind of following along.
But one thing they did, for example, recently, I didn't even
respond because it wasn't worth it.
It was so pathetic and desperate.
But they took a clip from me for a short about I was talking
about a randomized control trial on Super Lola Sweetener
conducted out of Yale. And they took it out of context
and misrepresented it and the literature really around it and
to try to make some extreme point.
And in fact, the tweet they put out was something about oatmeal.
I hadn't talked about oatmeal. They were just trying to go for
quick bait. And it was just like, I've
offered them many opportunities to talk to me.
I've debated Ted once. It was did not go well for him
and, and and they're at the point where like I've tried to
disengage now they're poking me and misinterpreting randomized
control trial literature either intentionally or because I just
generally don't understand the data.
It's become a little bit of a, a shoot show, to be honest.
And I don't really hold grudges. I just, I've just been really,
really disappointed in that marketing model.
OK, heuristic, terribly, terribly executed with really
weak scientific basis. And so I, I'm sad for the people
that feel betrayed because it's spun off of Diet Doctor, which a
lot of people went to as a go to source.
And a lot of people were hurt by the pivot to kind of, you know,
reach and pander to a new audience while giving up
scientific integrity. And so I think that's why a lot
of people flocked away. Probably why Brett Scherr left,
who I thought was like the heart and soul of Diet Doctor.
And ever since then, I think it's just been a down spiral of
virtue signaling and I've just been disappointed.
I'm trying to disengage because I honestly think it's killing
itself. But they have a, a tendency.
I don't know if you've noticed this on Twitter.
I don't know if you're on Twitter much, but they love to
tag me into things. I have them both muted, but like
they will tag me incessantly to a point that it just appears
desperate and kind of pitiful. So I don't know I.
I I'm sad. I'm sad for people.
Yeah, perfectly honest. It's it's unfortunate I haven't,
I've seen Dr. E speak. We were at a conference
together. I've had Ted on the podcast,
I've had Brett Shore on the podcast.
And you know, my experience with with Ted when I had him on was
it was, it was mostly this was all pre satiety per calories.
We're talking about his PE approach and I, you know,
appreciated the nuance he brought there.
But I feel like as a coach, I see people, I see clientele, I
see, you know, people that are wanting to just simply improve
their health. Not all of my clients are
competitors by any means. And people tend to flock to
absolutes and absolutes are very hard thing to convey a nutrition
for humans. And when you're scoring foods
with an absolute score and you have people justifying the
consumption of, you know, XY or Z because of its, you know, our
arbitrary score like that just never really tends to go over
well. And I think that's been the
model. I'm not sure of the marketing.
I don't have the, the app, I don't even know what the app is
called. But I, I see people gravitating
to that and then being LED astray.
And then I've got to help them pick up the pieces.
And that's my frustration. Yeah, it's, it is just, I think,
you know, Andres is a very astute businessman, maybe Ted to
some extent too. And So what I, what I saw in
their, their marketing, which plays very well in short form is
very characteristic business tax that sell well in short form.
Things like changing the burden of proof from you on to the
person who's taking the question even when it's in a very pseudo
scientific manner. So I go through I think 5 of
their playbook approaches in my video and people can look at it.
I think it is, you know, it generalizes beyond society per
calorie where it was just an example of like I see this
pattern again and again and media marketing around nutrition
where people use these tax for great engagement and probably
great business results. But it's used to stand up a
complete absence of science. And if they were serious, they
would be transparent, fully transparent about their
methodology, what literature, all of it, what they're citing,
how they're determining how to weigh things.
They would even go about trying to validate it or even just
simply write a perspectives piece on their approach, citing
literature, which they failed to do.
Even when I've offered that opportunity to them.
I don't think either of them has published any papers before, You
know, not to per SE knock on that.
But if you're going to claim, for example, as Ted has, that
he's the most unbiased scientific mind in the low carb
community who's read the studies, you probably should
have some degree of scientific background and not continuously
make claims that are directly falsifiable, which you're right,
people love absolutes. I don't know if Ted was on your,
when Ted was on your podcast, if he, you know, said anything
like, like I mentioned earlier, where the PE model or society
per calorie explains every phenomenon on the diet space.
But like when you say that when you're an MD and you say it with
confidence, people take you seriously.
It takes someone who's actually read the literature to be like,
that's false. Here are data that contradict
it. And he's done that several
times, including in, in like we had a debate where he'd said
something about the carbohydrate insulin model and said, well,
here's why it's wrong and these data don't exist.
And I'm like, you sure you want to double down on that?
And he said, yes, kind of like, well, here the data are, here's
a human randomized control trial that you just didn't look at,
you haven't read, you weren't aware of it.
So you can make absolutes and people will believe you, but
quite frankly, it's incorrect and dishonest.
So my hang up is, again, not with the heuristic in the
approach. It's about how it's being sold
and the absolutism around it and what I think are some dishonest
marketing tactics. But again, if people use the
tool and it works for them, great.
I, I just want people to be better.
So there there's the conflict between, you know, the, the
coach in me and then the, the academic and intellectual,
which, you know, in fairness to them, playing devil's advocate
best I can. Like, I don't think that they're
trying to be academics. And I don't think everybody
always wants an academic message.
So sometimes maybe confidence and absolutism, even when it
bucks the data, maybe it's functional for some people.
It's the best argument I can make for them.
But anyway I just. Think transparency is, you know,
first and foremost, So like whichever path they're taking,
as long as they're doing so with a transparent road map like that
needs to give people a level playing field.
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we can move on.
I'm I'm trying not to become hung up on that.
That's just something that's a sore point of disappointment.
It's just because I like I, it was one of these things, you
know, when you like, you really want to give something the
benefit of the doubt and then you really try to help and then
it just like completely goes leftwards.
And that's how things feel now. So I think it's something to, as
best I can cut my losses on. And you know, if I'm accurate in
my weed and their incessant poke, incessant poking at me at
this point in time is just a sign of desperation.
I think they're probably sinking themselves.
Just let the sinking ship sink. OK, man, I want to be respectful
of your time, but I do want to figure out what's going on with
these year supply of eggs, man, What, what, what?
Oh yeah, that was unexpected. So I done, I've done a lot of
Enacles ones and a recent one was I ate 720 eggs in a month,
which you probably could match, but it was on average 1 egg per
hour every hour for a month. And it was again, just lipid
energy model type stuff, but really was meant to be a hook
for some new data on how cholesterol metabolism is, is
regulated or how cholesterol is regulated in the body when you
can take more dietary cholesterol.
So there's a new hormone that was discovered.
You can see the video about that.
It's called colecin. But that aside, I basically
showed that eating a lot of eggs didn't increase my cholesterol.
And as a lean mass hyper responder, if I added carbs to
the mix while eating an absurd amount of cholesterol in the
form of something like, you know, 133,200 milligrams of
cholesterol in that month, my cholesterol option went down.
So it was a metabolic demonstration.
It had a pretty juicy hook for a YouTube video.
I had, like, all these eggs laid out on my queen bed.
So the queen bed was literally like hovered in egg cartoons
from Vital Farms. The video went off beautifully.
It's been less than a week. It has on YouTube well over
110,000 views. And then on Instagram, the Reel
has something like 2 million and Vital Farms, the company that
made the eggs, saw it and they're like, this is awesome.
And we're going to award you a year's free supply of eggs.
So that was unexpected. But yeah, now I am.
I'm going to get free eggs for years that probably amount to
something like 8000 free eggs from Vital Farms.
So people can say for the next year that I'm bought by the big
egg if they want. Although the video was created
without a conflict of interest because I totally did not expect
that. But somebody knocks on my door
and says I'm going to give you free eggs for a year, man, I'm
taking that. Heck yeah man, we we've got
chickens for that very reason. I routinely eat between a dozen
or two dozen eggs a day, so I am glad to hear that I'm not the
only one eating absurd amount of eggs.
I love it. I love it.
Well. What?
What's the next experiment you get at Cooking man?
What's on the pipeline for you? Well, I'd already replicated.
I've done a few experiments on that were similar to the egg
one. The one I have upcoming is 600
strips of bacon per day. I've already done it and quite
honestly, it's a social experiment.
I'll just be very transparent. I was very intrigued by how well
the egg video went off. And I, as someone that's new to
social media and kind of finagling with the YouTube
algorithm, I want to see what common factors, including with,
you know, thumbnail title hooks really play well.
So it's almost like a carbon copy.
I'm not a carbon copy, but like a very similar replica to the
egg video with some twists. And I just want to see as a
social experiment if the audience response is the same.
So that one will be coming out in due time And I, we'll see if
people have fun with it. But yeah, more of a social
experiment to me in in the in the I try to be transparent
about what I'm doing at any given time.
But like, you know, I'd love to communicate nuance and talk
about data breakdown cells, science, nature papers and
videos. But like that has a cap.
It's a very niche area. So how to, you know, expand the
audience to get people talking more about metabolic health?
You know, maybe n = 1 video might be part of the story.
So playing with that. In the meantime, we'll see how
audience audience replies. But yeah, hopefully I'll be
well, actually, I'll just leave it that and people can we can
wait and see. Love it man.
And if that goes viral and you score a year's supply of bacon,
then you're really set. Bacon and egg.
Then I just have figured it out, right?
I just get free with life. I just need to do N = 1
experiments with the right. So I just choose my favorite
foods, do N = 1 experiments, and I'm totally supplied and my
grocery budget goes to zero. I love it.
That is actually the total plan. Total plan for 2025.
Hey man, I can totally get behind that.
I do love how how you've been able to just rock this, the
content, man, like the YouTube content, the Instagram content,
like you're tapping into a whole new audience.
And it's, it's awesome stuff, man.
The, the level of detail you bring the table as a scientist,
as an academic, as a researcher is just unmatched.
So by all means, keep doing it. I appreciate it.
It's been it's been a fun thing and not a lot of thing medical
students get to do, but it definitely is growing quickly.
The YouTube's grown from like basically nil to 70,000 Subs in
nine months or something. So it's a fun thing to play
with. I have to be honest.
And it's, it's a good outlet to talk and learn and, and develop
myself as a communicator. So anyway, I appreciate your
time. Always nice to have a
discussion. Always, Manuel, if there's
everything I can do for you, Nick, you just let me know and
I'm there. Hope to see the conference here
soon. And where do you want to direct
people to to dive deeper into your world?
Yeah, sure. So look up Nick Norwitz,
NICKNORWITZ on any of your favorite social platforms.
My biggest right now are Twitter and YouTube.
I'm now on Instagram as well, Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn, and
you can go to nicknorwitz.com. Again, NICKNORWITZ is a kind of
a hub with links towards my papers and my various socials.
But the nice thing about having my name is I don't think there
are any other Nick Norwitz in the world.
So I'm super easy to find. You're the only one I know so
keep killing it man. I'm enjoying my conversation.
Pleasure to know you and I look forward to seeing you soon.
I appreciate it. See you brother.
Bye. Yeah.