Carnivore Success Story: Boosting Testosterone and reversing Diabetes with Joshua Rogalski!

[Music] hello this is dr anthony chafee i'm here with a special guest uh my buddy joshua who has a has a very good success story he's just recently come on to a carnivore diet yeah we've been in contact over social media for the last few months i've been helping him through some ups and downs and and getting his way closer and closer to a pure carnivore diet and even though he hasn't come all the way there he still has significant improvements and and benefits so we're just going to talk about that today joshua thank you so much for coming on oh thank you doc i appreciate you having me yeah not a problem um so why don't you want to tell us to begin with um you know how did you come across carnivore diet how did you start this up in the first place and when and you know what were you eating before and sort of what did you notice when you when you made the switch over well i first started carnivore i came across kind of like yourself sean baker's video with joe rogan about the carnivore diet but previously before him i had come across a doctor who is actually here in tampa usf his name is doctor dominic the agostino he's been on joe rogan's podcast many times sean baker who you interviewed today has interviewed him several times i i know i sent you video feeds i actually got to meet him i was introduced to the ketogenic diet because five years ago i was diagnosed as a diabetic and i had come across um dr jason fung on youtube i came across uh dr ken berry who i saw that you interviewed recently i came across as books and i just saw this movement of people who were pushing the ketogenic diet to help diabetes which i had type 2 when i was diagnosed nobody in my family is diabetic but i was 43 when i got diagnosed in september of 2017 and i had no idea what i was dealing with and yeah i got really emotional and crying in front of my wife like this nibbling little brat and it was found out during the pre-employment physical for the agency i work at now i'm in you know in law enforcement and uh i didn't think i was gonna get hired because i thought it would be your liability your a1c is too high your fast my fasting blood sugar was 229. so um but nobody said anything about medication they just said i needed to get a clearance letter from my doctor saying i was under care and i got hired and then it just went down from there but i started to do uh some research on the ketogenic diet i came across some books uh the art and science of low carbohydrate performance by jeff nola no no you know he's at ohio and then it was virta health maybe you've heard of it before um i don't think i've come across it myself and and dr jeff bullock wrote this book on the art and science of low carbohydrate living and they had this guy named jimmy moore who lost all this weight on the keto diet and so it just led into a string of other people and i just started watching all the videos and i started experimenting with it and you know getting some good success um but i i've noticed looking back now there was always some kind of treats where you could substitute ice cream with ketogenic ice cream or you could substitute keto cakes for the regular cakes and the sodas and and then you're really not doing anything you're just eating different food but having the same you know side effect that you told me about with regards to the sweets and the taste receptors and so anyway i went to the university of south florida and actually got to meet dominic the august you know twice and talk to him about the ketogenic diet and questions i never got a chance to i should have recorded it i kind of kicked myself for not doing it but uh he would he would remember me if he you know if you had a chance to talk to him because i i actually brought the x3 bar which i have which you know i got that other side story but i got that back in 2018 and brought it out to the college to show him my new toy and then the carnivore diet i started it uh in 2000 right before code would hit in 2019 okay beginning of 2019 i played around with it for a little while and i lost like 18 pounds in a month and a half and uh my a1c was kind of doing the roller coaster i went from like 9.8 to 7.2 and then back up to 9.3 i think because i fell off the wagon and then in december when i found you on instagram through a clip on cooking the steaks i i just went ahead and i think you've had some videos on your channel that i got to watch and that's when i reached out to you i said i had enough i turned 48 in december and uh you know just celebrated with the pizza and the ice cream and my blood sugar was literally almost it was 284 yeah literally got hit by a train and that that was that was like it i said no more for like three weeks yeah and that's been the struggle you interluded earlier about it's been a real battle it really has especially being diabetic not out of the woods yet but it's legitimate everything you said about being like meth and the addictions and the things i laugh at when i deal with some of these guys that are addicted to drugs and i see it firsthand and it's like yeah that's youtube just on different aspects yeah but it is yeah that's kind of how i found carnivore i bought his book i read it um but i don't i think some people need their hands held a little bit more than others when it comes to dealing with these things if that makes any sense yeah well i mean that yeah definitely i mean you know it's some people have like a clear purpose and drive when they get on this like when you know i started this it was fairly easy for me because i i stopped eating plants because i just i learned exactly how toxic plants were and i'm like there isn't a chance in hell that i'm gonna eat that now nasty stuff so i just stopped and then when i came back on this you know you know four or five years ago after seeing dr baker on joe rogan you know it just it just reaffirmed what i knew you know 15 years before that which was that plants are poisonous and they use toxins to defend themselves and we shouldn't eat them and so it was very easy for me to drop that again but you know obviously not everybody you know understands that to the depth that i that i did at the time and not everybody uh cares as much as i did you know because that that's the thing i i you know i would i really didn't want any of that in my body so it's very easy for me to get rid of it whereas you know if people don't realize how much of an effect it's having on their body or they don't necessarily care that much you know obviously they're not going to change anything it's like you're people who smoke and they enjoy smoking and they're like yeah i really should stop smoking but you know it's like if they don't have a hard reason to do it they're probably not going to do it because they enjoy it so it's the same for food and obviously people enjoy eating different things and they want to eat pizza they want to eat gelato they want to have cookies they're nice they taste good but you know um well there's a there's a back story to how i got to this too because like i mentioned before we got on an interview i didn't have anyone in my family who's diabetic but i used to play basketball since i was a little kid that was my sport and i was never a big guy i was just a basketball basketball uh my mom married my stepfather he was an officer in the air force we moved all over the united states i played basketball to youth centers we played full court basketball i played it i went in the military i played basketball i was a skinny guy i was i never lifted weights and then in 2000 when i was in the army reserves i blew my nail i got clipped and my knee went all the way to the right while i was cutting to the left yeah acl ruptured didn't have acl for 15 years didn't have it reconstructed couldn't afford it and then when i got into law enforcement down here someone got me into like you know i i ended up going from 180 pounds to 340 pounds in three years because i continued to eat the same amount of food that i was eating when i was playing full court basketball but i wasn't playing basketball anymore i was just sitting on a couch with a knee injury and next thing i know i'm 340 pounds at 29 and just looked horrible and someone told me about you know some guy was powerlifting at the state uh system that i was in at the time and gave me like a flex magazine and then he put me on a diet and he was a really bodybuilder and got me into weightlifting and then four years later i went from 340 down to 240 and then i started doing that six meals a day you know the carbs and the cheat meals and and then it just it just kind of steamrolled into where it ended me and at the age of 43 in 2017 i just kept kind of eating ridiculous amounts of food thinking i needed to do that to build muscle and i got worse yeah so i don't think there's any truth to that whole entire realm because i made myself sick by eating six meals a day and now i'm like who who does that in the world who really have time on a job to eat six meals every two hours yeah so that was that's kind of the back story but never had anyone in my family diabetic nobody me that's the thing and that that just sort of you know redirects the point that these things especially things like type 2 diabetes they they are from diet it's not it's not familial you know it's like you may you may have a familial disposition a predisposition to getting these sorts of things meaning you'd be more susceptible to that uh to getting it but you still have to eat the wrong things if you don't eat the wrong things you'll get it and generally why these things run in families is because families you know children often take on the eating habits of their parents and then they pass those on to their kids as well and so it's it's very typical for you to see these these things run in families and even when it has you know little to nothing to do with genetics you know like you know obesity running in families like is that is that genetics everyone have you know thyroid issues like you know maybe but but probably because my mom and brother they're they're skinny and lean and i'm i'm the exact opposite of them so and i didn't going back to what you said about vegetables i've never liked vegetables never i hated them since i was a kid but going back to when our kids were small you know trying to shovel vegetables in my kid's mouth and watching them vomit i think there's a lot of truth behind what you're talking about with it not being good for you because it doesn't taste good i've never i don't think there's a vest vlogger that i actually like i just never like hated them since i was a kid yeah well even you know yeah like even broccoli you know we're like that's probably oh that's the worst well brussels sprouts is the top one i i hate it i told my wife yeah i told my wife brussels sprouts tastes like little toes with athletes well that's the thing you know it's just like that's the classic one that kids hate the most is brussels sprouts and i'm going to eat soul sprouts because you're like no and yeah and they absolutely hate it but like you i even hated broccoli when i was a kid uh you know my parents had to put on like cheese sauce smell cheese on it and i would eat it for the cheese and sort of suck off the cheese and then eat as little of the of the broccoli as possible because even then i was just like i did not want this and you know brussels sprouts you know we cook them we roast them we put parmesan cheese and butter and salt and all these sorts of things just to make them palatable oh yeah no they're good like are they though you know because like you know it's the stuff that you've added on it that that make it palatable but the brussels sprouts itself don't taste great and and eating them raw is disgusting or even like yeah you know steaming them or boiling them and not not adding any you know animal fats or salt to it just the plant itself even when cooked tastes bad and so that doesn't make sense from a biological point of view you know kids should like what is naturally good for them right so i mean kids you know infants you know really love breast milk you know like you should they should they hate it should they just want to spit it up and and not consume it that doesn't make sense it's not compatible for life you're not going to survive um you know with if you're if you you hate the taste of something that's good for you you know and so it should taste good if it tastes bad that means there's something bad in it you know and there's there's outliers like you know like sugar uh is is long causes long-term harm to the body and short-term harm to metabolism but it also gives you a quick hit of energy and we recognize this as safe energy so you know because there's there's nothing that contains fructose that is acutely poisonous for humans it won't kill you that day so we recognize this as a safe temporary hit of energy then we can then go and get our normal our normal food but you know that that's that's a that's a an outlier you know what's funny is uh you know i watched your video about fructose but i was never really a fruit guy either i mean my wife she's got fruit in the kitchen and i'm trying to slowly drag her along with what i'm doing and she's seeing it she's seeing the results i mean the results speak for themselves she knows where i was at when i got diagnosed so she's starting to see this stuff now and especially with the situation i mentioned you about when her family and what you talked about with uh gbm with the guy that you had the interview with um about it stopping in its tracks and things like that but i said you know you're seeing skin issues heal up with me because a lot of diabetics uh they get venostasis in their legs from losing circulation which is was an indicator i didn't know that i was diabetic but that same year that i was told about the venostasis is when i found out about the diabetes but now my skin is almost back to normal on the lower extremities because the a1c is down the weight is the weight has been an interesting topic because i know a couple weeks ago when i had this physical i was like 260 and then when i went and got the results i was 279. so but i'm not but i'm down two pant sizes i'm down shirt sizes so you're lifting weights though as well right yes yeah and i'm not a small guy i mean i was 340 when i started but this 340 i've been 340 twice i was 345 years ago when i was 340 in 2002 and then i went down to 240 and then you know over the last well 18 years yeah i'm at 48 now uh you know it hasn't gone anywhere but when you told me about the muscle and losing the fat being in rapid fashion i literally could see changes by the day especially in my arms like the veins just coming out everywhere vascularity that i never had before you know leaning out in certain areas but the stomach is not it's not down to where i'd like it to be obviously i was told that's the last to go the face you know that that also goes last on a guy that's trying to lose weight so well um it just depends but you know obviously you know it's it takes time you know and so you know it just won't won't all happen at once but yeah what weight were you in december when you really started going after this more seriously as to i started that was uh 289 and okay and now and now you weigh how much and the endocrinologist when i went to see her had me at 274. 274. but that's sort of gone down and up a bit but you've also improved yeah i got the lowest i got to when i weighed myself i was uh in between the visit from then and a couple weeks ago because i had to see them two different times they had me at like 263. yeah so it's just kind of it's kind of gone up but it's not like terrible i know that different times of the day maybe depending on if i went there with a full stomach and um do you know have you was i was i know you're mostly carnivore but you're still doing like energy drinks and artificially you know and that's that's the thing that i mentioned that i would like to you know when this gets published it's a legitimate addiction i i really think addicted to bangs my favorite energy drink um you know any of the spike energy you know they used to sponsor the ufc 350 milligrams of caffeine because i mean being doing what we do we drink caffeine i don't like coffee i never really like coffee but energy drinks to come out with a new flavor i'm like it's like ben and jerry's ice cream oh i gotta try that one i haven't tried that one yet and with the bangs um i never i know you said it it's theorized that that it could raise and affect your insulin levels you said there's no there's there's plenty of studies showing that yeah yeah it's just and it doesn't register on a glucometer when i drink it you know i used to put a cgm in my arm i don't have it anymore i use the i think this i sent you the photo of the cgm and the glucometer being 60 points off that's huge that's like not even funny and the one i have is not one that you have to calibrate yeah so um but i think judy cho's book on the carnival cure there's a section in there where she talked about they will not disclose to you how they make the insert that goes into your arm it just says uh there's like a secret it was it was i highlighted it in the book but that was a concern yeah because when you're putting that fiber optic in your arm it sits there for 15 days so i don't i don't know but yeah the bangs uh a lot of stevia the they have a one called pure py ure you might have seen it over there where they're organic stevia um everything with stevia and uh uh the the bi energy drink it's not an energy drink but it's like bai they're like little teas that are in a bottle like clementine flavor or whatever but they all have zero sugar all of them say zero sugar and i have tried to get rid of it and i'm not lying to you about this but i've told you it before but it's been harder to get rid of than real carbohydrates and sugar i'm not even lying that's not an exaggeration i really think there's something in that stuff i don't know what it is but yeah well i mean i mean just the artificial sweeteners though i mean these these are chemicals and and they're giving you a chemical response and so you know just because they aren't sugar it doesn't mean that they are good for you or that they aren't bad for you you know and so you know things like st stevia you know say oh this is this is you know this is a sugar-free sweetener and people forget that that you know that that doesn't say much about it you know we have we have no actual like you know studies and long-term evidence to show what sort of health effects this is going to have on people and um and you just see in your own in your own experience that this is stalling your progression this is stalling your um your your performance and your weight loss and uh and it's also you you are finding it very difficult to stop and i think you were telling me as well that you were like when you stopped for a few days you were getting like really bad headaches and you just feel like you're really flu yeah so that that's withdrawals you know i mean that you're describing withdrawal symptoms and so you know that is a drug that is addictive and whatever else it's doing you know that is harmful and so it's something that you really need to get away from your body now it's there there is you know evidence to suggest that this will raise your insulin and this will cause in your issue with your metabolism you know just like sugar will but whether it does or it doesn't whatever it does in your body it's doing something bad just by simple virtue that it's it's causing an addiction withdrawal when you stop taking it you know that means it is having a serious you know chemical response in your body and so that is something that you you really do just need to get out of your system well i guess you could say the internal justification that i had to take it doesn't matter and i'm not lying to you i'm just telling the truth was there's a lot of friends that i know who've lost a lot of weight and have been successful using diet sodas and things like that to appease the craving and still lost the weight so in my mind i'm thinking well i've got people in my life that i know who lost it but i don't think they had diabetes i don't think any of them did it's just but i've met some guys who are really heavy that they switch from drinking regular soda to diet soda and and their weight fell off so i've been around some people like that in my life and i just think subconsciously i'm trying to justify it well but look you know but you you are losing weight right but you're not losing oh yeah it's not as rapid no no yeah um but i don't think i'm not sure like i've never been lower than 241 ever that's the lowest since i started lifting weights and got to uh the first time cutting down and i wasn't on carnival it was just do an hour of cardio lift weights do the cardio after you lift weights but it was like a like chasing your tail and then i you know when i got married in 2007 it just you know you know i stopped training and then i would eat go back to the gym for a couple months and then stop and then eat a ridiculous amount of food and it just started to eke up slowly close closer to like 300 pounds and then i always hovered around 295 and never really got any lower than that but i don't even know what my quote ideal body weight would be if i was to lose everything i don't even know if 205 is doable i i would hope i could get to that but i'm not sure i'm sure you probably can um so is so so what are you eating now is it really just just meat and water with some energy drinks every now and then or or what are you eating now yeah what i do is i go to costco or bj's and i buy uh rib eyes and me don't agree right now you had mentioned about i was having real bad episodes with the fat at work because i was eating at work but rib eyes is just a little bit too much fat for me i like them but i noticed my stomach wouldn't agree with it so i went down i will buy the whole new york strip loin and then i take that knife that big one that you have but i have one like that too and i just cut the stakes and put them in ziploc bags and put them in a deep freezer that we got in the kitchen um costco sells these burgers i think i shot you a picture of them where they're already pre-flame grilled and it's just beef there's a few things there's there's no artificial or junk in it but it's like those patties that you told me about or you can just throw them in the microwave and they're good and we live off them practically i don't eat bacon too much because it bothers my pork really kind of upsets my stomach but the fat thing that you told me about with if i have too much rap fashion is definitely so but i do like the steak and i have the grill but we also have the the airfryer the ninja foodie is a lifesaver i you just throw it in there and get ready for work and come back flip it over and then go back and finish what you're doing so when i don't want to grill outside i just throw it i normally throw it in there and make it that way but eggs i got to be in the mood for eggs i'm not really a big egg guy i don't know why i can eat them but um it's basically been steak water and yeah lots of energy earrings probably more energy drinks than water those bangs have 300 milligrams of caffeine and i'll have one before work i'll have one at midnight because i work 7 p.m to 7 a.m i've been on nights my whole career 20 years and then i'll have another one at midnight and then i'll have one like at three in the morning sometimes not all the time but that's like 900 milligrams of caffeine through 12-hour shifts yeah so i don't know i don't think that's helping not healthy yeah you know and you can just switch to caffeine pills as well you know and not not bring all the rest of the garbage uh to the table as well you know obviously you know the energy drinks are going to have just a just a buttload of other chemicals in there with the caffeine and it's going to have all the artificial sweeteners so if you're just taking caffeine pills which is also way cheaper because you get you know a bottle of you know 200 pills on amazon for the cost of one of those energy drinks you know so that's just uh you know that's a that's a you know money saver there as well but also it's just you get the caffeine you don't get all the rest of the garbage uh and then you can sort of you know get yourself off of the the caffeine pills eventually as well because i you know i just feel so much better without caffeine anyway you know my body just just works better my you know i have better energy and you know i'll have like a bit of a spike with the caffeine especially if i you know i work all night i'm on call all night and i don't get to sleep and i have to work the next day you know sometimes i would take a caffeine pill and i would really debate with myself but then i sometimes i would do it and so i'd be good for a few hours i feel great you know bouncing off the walls because caffeine really affects me much more now and then i would i would sort of have a crash i would just feel junky and gross the rest of the day and just the whole time i'd be like that wasn't worth it and um and so i just i've just just done away with that entirely but that's something to think about anyway um the other thing too so you know you know the weight is obviously that's improving you know um you know like you say there's there's still room to go but overall health-wise how are you feeling you know you're saying you had some health issues like diabetes you know what's what's uh the update on that how are you doing there so initial diagnosis was 9.8 in 2017. it fluctuated down to 9.3 i got as low as 7.2 it went back up and then when i had my blood work done last month which i have here uh is uh it's down to six point three right now but yeah i didn't hvac i took medication for like a week yeah a1c is 6.3 right now so yeah i think 5.9 is not diabetic under 5.9 is not diabetic number anymore yeah around there but you know you're you're in a really good range there yeah so um you know i think you'd be like where you are now is is actually considered like a pre-diabetic range yeah endocrinologist basically told me i don't need this here this is good my hdl my hdl is a i'm not familiar with the ranges because they don't have it next to here what it's supposed to be but they have me at 52 for what's right for hdl is that good yeah like above 40 is good yeah yeah okay and then they have my ldls uh 134 my total cholesterol is 211 and my triglycerides are 126. yeah and so yeah basically the only things that really matter there we're the really the only thing that matters there is your hdl if your hdl is above 40 you know that's that's the only thing that really has any uh data behind it to show that you know something's good or bad like if you're if you're above 40 you're in good shape um triglycerides are generally low if you're in a healthy state and not damaging your your cholesterol and damaging your ldl and and in a position to precipitate atherosclerosis but your triglycerides can be up for other reasons but generally if you're not eating carbs you're not drinking alcohol you're not eating sugar um your your triglycerides will be low and your and your ldl will be undamaged so whatever your ldl is uh it's physiological so i wouldn't worry about that yeah so uh mules ken berry says uh hdl is our good cholesterol and ldl is our other good cholesterol you know it's good it's good stuff it's the problem comes when we damage it and we damage it from alcohol uh carbohydrates and and sugar and that damages your ldl cholesterol so if your triglycerides are low your hdl is high then then you generally are in good shape and but you understand this uh risk ratio section under the lipids panel that's where she said i was at risk ratio 4.06 high for cardiac events yeah i mean that that's just that's just looking blood pressure my blood pressure was normal in the office so i mean when your blood pressure be elevated if you're going to have a cardiac event i mean i don't know no not necessarily no no like um the the cardiac event they're talking about would be like a myocardial infarction so like an occlusion of your of your blood vessel in your heart um so your blood pressure doesn't have to be high for that blood pressure blood pressure becomes high for you know a number of different reasons most commonly because your your arteries don't expand properly don't you know when they expand and shrink and contract you're going to change the pressure on that volume because the volume of blood in your body is is stable basically right so if you're if your vessels sort of grow out a bit that's going to reduce the pressure and if it pushes down you're going to be putting pressure on liquid which is not is not compressible right so that's going to increase the pressure in that system so that's that's uh outside of having a cardiac event but so the cardiac event that they're talking about would be like an atherosclerotic plaque where you know you you block this vessel and that's looking at your cholesterol ratio basically but it but it looks at like total cholesterol it looks at ldl those things are nonsense those are not applicable they don't have anything to do with it because cholesterol was never the problem cholesterol is not a causative factor in heart disease and so yeah well exactly and and so it's it's it's a larger disease process really and so it's much more complicated than just you know the amount of cholesterol you have in your system so it's um it's it's not a problem like all these parameters and guidelines that we have for cholesterol and heart disease are just bunk you know because they they were brought up on false it was a false premise so yeah you know it's uh it's just something we just need to throw out so the number that blew my mind the most on our discussion before you started the recording was the the testosterone 100 points went up 100 points and yeah that was pretty low i think they'd say under i don't know if it goes by state but someone said like under 300 is kind of low for a guy my age i'm not sure yeah well it depends on asian depends on the area so like different places have different guidelines yeah so what was your what was your testosterone before yeah yeah 343 before now it's uh 441 almost 100 points yeah so i mean that's that's jumped up yeah that's just jumped up you know like another 33 percent you know so that that's a massive jump one of the things that i asked the endocrinologist that she didn't have the answer for that's something i wanted to discuss with you was i asked her i said what what is it you're telling me to you obviously a low carbohydrate diet is working because i told her that's what i was doing and she said that you need to eat low fat and low carb and stay away from red meat and i asked her that question that i said to you about what is it about red meat that you're you're like zeroing in on why do you not want people to eat red meat because i'm eating red meat you said not to do this everybody's told me this for since i was a kid and it's and everything's going the opposite direction of everything that we were told to believe so sh she didn't have an explanation for it and that's when it's like well i don't have time to answer the questions because we have nutritionists deal with this and have other plants so basically get out and around about way but 100 points how does it go up 100 points isn't it supposed to decline the older you get that's what they told me they said my condition couldn't be reversed i i do know that they say that once you have it it's there but you know i can't go back out and eat popsicles and pizza and ice cream and chinese food like i used to i'm just not going to be able to do that you know i i don't think i would ever be able to do that and have a normal blood sugar because i've already had it i know they said diabetes can go in remission but i guess you can't ever lose it once you get it is that is that true i mean no one's ever really done this before and so you know no one's really ever reversed these things and that's what you know my mom's doctor said when when she dropped her hpa when she was from like 8.9 down to six in two months going on a carnivore diet and you know she just looked at her and at least at least my mom's doctor was a little uh you know more insightful and open-minded yeah because she didn't just go oh yeah you know and and dismiss it um she just looked at this and she just went how the hell did you do this what the hell did you do like you know diabetes is only a progressive disease it only gets worse it is not curable we can mitigate it and we can slow its progression down with medication and lifestyle and exercise but that's it this does not get better we do not reverse this how the hell did you do this so she was looking at this going like okay you know something's going on because you reverse this we didn't think this was reversible what did you do let's figure this out uh and let's you know reproduce this unfortunately your endocrinologist uh is a bit stuck you know within the within the lines of her profession and she doesn't want to learn anything new that's that's sort of inside the box thinking you know everything that they learned in medical school in their training that's the box that they live in and there's nothing outside the box and so you know it's funny you say that because at work uh we have a registered nurse practitioner that has to see people and they're always telling them to not eat this not eat that and so when she was done i just had to ask i said you know what i told you about my situation with diabetes why why do you keep saying the same things about stay low fat don't eat a lot of sodium blah blah blah and she says you know she goes honestly she goes i'm just putting band-aids on wounds she actually said that and i said yeah i mean because you know when i talked to her that she already knew that everything i told her she agreed with 100 she wasn't putting me on it's just that's her job is to tell them and they don't have food choices where i work at that's what they're they're very high high grain high starch high carbohydrate food and very little protein and then they end up having to go see the doctors because they're getting sick and diabetic they're having high blood pressure which was uh something else that was a discussion that i had with you before about this uh i see it on world carnivore tribe and on your carnivore fix but this thing about the electrolytes i know this thing's taken off and people are asking about it but you said something a while ago that i took really too noticeable about this wasn't around till recently like in the last year lmnt and redmond relay for two companies that i like but a lot of us are like drinking it by the gallon and and trying it the unflavored version is like being drowned in an ocean so they put stevia in those the the products but it it it's almost like just drinking a bang again yeah because i you can't get away from the artificial sweeteners and i don't know you had said that we once your body levels out you don't really need this am i going to go through the cramps is that going to continue for a while until i get better i mean because i do still get cramps from time to time in the calves and whatnot i'm not sure i mean it shouldn't you know what i'm saying i mean we didn't have elementy you know um you know even 20 years ago we certainly didn't have it 10 000 years gatorade in sugar yeah we didn't have these things historically when we were just eating meat so we got everything we needed from meat now could you be in a position when you're switching over and your body has had some readjustment issues sure that might happen most of the time i've noticed and i mentioned this to you it's it's more to do with dehydration rather than than a lack of electrolytes or salt and a lot of times people you know they they're like oh i'm having these problems with cramps and then they start adding salt to everything they're just dumping salt in there in their water and they're drinking it and doing all these sorts of things and and they're just getting more and more cramps and more more cramps and more cramps so they're adding more and more salt and they're getting more cramps it's like well maybe maybe that's sort of adding fuel to the fire you're making yourself a little more dehydrated and you're increasing your body's demand uh for for um water um you know we this is something that you know i just see in in you know the hospital we get patients with low uh sodium and with low potassium they don't get a bunch of cramps they're not just sitting there in bed you know just just with their bodies just cramping up to no end you know potassium low potassium gives you heart arrhythmias and you can die low sodium makes you very confused and delirious and you can die so these are very very serious things you don't just just casually get you know hyponatremic or hypokalemic and then you know it's just oh i'm getting some cramps or something like that no you're you're having a serious medical condition if your serum potassium or serum sodium is actually getting low so i don't i don't think that it makes physiological sense and [Music] and and and what i've seen more often than not is that this can be fixed with more hydration just just drinking more water now you know sometimes when people go to the tropics and they're sweating a lot more and they're sweating out a lot of you know salty sweat that you know might give people more cramps but again that could that can just be dehydration as well but you think that the water thing is individualistic based on each person because obviously they used to you know drink the gallon of water but that's that's insane i'm in the bathroom the entire night while i'm sleeping so it's like i find that on the job i don't get thirsty that much because i'm walking i'm busy i might take a swig here and there but i'm not pounding water like crazy when i'm at work because i don't want to be in the bathroom every two minutes but do you think that the water thing is individual based on your height your size your weight i mean you think it's different for everybody like yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah i mean you yeah i know everybody needs different amounts of water you know depending on their obviously their size and their activity level and you know the heat of the area that they're in if they're out in the sun you know actually working or exercising outside you know and they're sweating a lot or getting overheated you're going to need a lot more water but you know just just you know just from what you're saying there you know you work all night and you're not really drinking because you don't want to have to take a bunch of bathroom breaks because it's not feasible for your work and then you don't want to eat you don't want to drink a bunch of water when you get home because you're going to be waking up and peeing all night and that's going to get your sleep so realistically how much water are you drinking in an average day i'd probably drink two liters probably half a gallon like 64 ounces total i mean i don't drink a gallon i've never it's hard for me to get that much water down i mean you're doing the probably between the bangs i mean i drink i drink i i drink these uh fairies uh i might have some bottles i'll have this is um 16 ounces i might have three of those and maybe two the eevee on bottles the spring water drink is like 33 ounces i might have two of those uh and so maybe 80 ounces a day yeah but you're also drinking those you know massive amounts of caffeine and other stimulants which are diuretics because we're going to make you pee more so i'm getting cramps yeah well 100 percent like so like that's what i'm saying like oh i just answered my own question yeah but you know but but that's the thing you know and then and then you add in a bunch of electrolytes you add in a bunch of salt to everything that's good there's gonna be too much you know and now your body's gonna want more uh hydration to pee out these extra excess electrolytes that it doesn't want and so you know that that i think is is what the problem is i've never thought of it like that that's true so if you're drinking too much salt like when you eat the salts and potato chips that makes you thirsty right so wouldn't drinking sodium make you more thirsty 100 percent that's why that's why there's they say it's hydration that's the claim on the product but if you're hydrating but you're drinking salt that would make you more thirsty so it seems like you're just spinning your wheels it doesn't matter it's like it's like drinking seawater right like you're not going to hydrate drinking sea water you'll you'll die and so you know this is why they add salt to sodas you know like coca-cola and pepsi is because you know first of all you can add more sugar because sugar and salt the taste of sugar and salt offset each other and so you can add in more sugar and it's too sweet but you add in a bunch of salt and it doesn't taste as sweet but now you've added a bunch of salt and so now you're going to be more thirsty more thirsty and you're going to want to drink more you want to drink more but also you can add in more sugar or be like disgusting too sweet now it's just just the right amount of sweetness and sugar is addictive and so sugar is going to make you addictive the salt's going to make you thirsty and the caffeine is going to addict you as well so they you know they hit you three times and yeah as a result that's one of the things these things confirm that actually when i when i was really bad and diabetic i i would drink like martinelli's they make that sparkling apple cider oh yeah the bottom is great yeah but costco sells the six-pack yeah i i could literally drink all those bottles in like an hour because they're so good but what would happen would be i would literally be in the bathroom every 15 minutes because the body's just trying to flush out all that sugar yeah that you're talking about the sodium it's doing the same thing i didn't even think of it like that until you said it but uh but anytime i would have that martinelli's there's 33 grams of sugar per serving is like three and a half in a bottle so i would drink like five of those yeah in an hour because it was so good put it on ice and let it bubble up and drink it but i never thought of it like what you just said because the sodium is probably doing the same thing yeah yeah and i'm not opening the water maybe maybe it's actually the reason why i'm holding on to my weight because does it sodium cause the weight to stay uh doesn't it draw the water yeah i mean that's that's that's the thought is that it sort of retains water but you're going to retain water for a lot of different reasons as well as long as you're you know eating something besides you know meat and water you know and so those artificial sweeteners the the artificial crap in in those uh drinks that's you know i i can't i can't say for sure you know i can tell you exactly you know how carbohydrates and glycogen and uh and different sorts of you know plant toxins will help will make you retain water but uh artificial stuff i would just you know imagine that this is going to be along the same lines as that and but either way you know your body's not going to be working optimally you know you're screwing with your energy metabolism you're going to be you know screwing with your insulin and your body's ability to mobilize fat stores and and run properly and you're not hydrated and you're you're over over salted and you're getting these cramps and so you you know that your body's not working 100 so you know something's going on so you know you just have to adjust those little things to to get into that optimal zone and then your body will just start start working properly you know um you know but either way i mean you're doing better than 99 of people out there and you are getting good results you know and like you were telling me like you're back in the gym you're lifting weights you're obviously putting on muscle you know we can we try to put up we can try and put up some uh sort of before and after pictures uh as well but you know you sort of sent me different pictures and you like you you're definitely slimming up and you're awesome on the job it's like people are just saying what are you doing they're they're asking questions and i'm just like i said you eat any vegetables and i said i haven't eaten vegetables since i was a kid even when i'm working but one of the topics i know that i know that you're pressed for your time but maybe we could hook up later on today if you're not busy is uh i wanted to talk to you about that uh that sympathetic parasympathetic and the eating thing because a number of people that do eat one meal a day they're not intentionally fasting but they're busy yeah and i just uh i had some thoughts i wanted to ask you about that with the subject of what you were just mentioning too about um i just lost my train of thought on that because i'm up late yeah uh just the salt the sodium it's a question maybe you could think about but i've said where some people just follow that diet until their body gets better and then add the exercise to it maybe it's too much at once uh especially if you're just starting it i don't know what your thoughts are on that but i've heard some people say why don't you get your diet right and then add the exercise first i know i guess i guess it's all individual you know for me you know i i liked doing exercise and i felt so much better i i wanted to exercise and so you know that that wasn't a problem for me but you know it's if it's if it's overwhelming for someone yeah just focus on the diet first i mean that that's definitely the most important and after a few weeks you'll feel so much better than you you ever have before that you'll you'll want to start being active you'll you'll want to start being more physically active and and exercising or playing sports or just doing something physical just because you feel good and you want to go out and use your body um but yeah so because of this you know being at work i know we've spoken about this but like you know for me uh eating this way is really convenient because i don't have to eat all the time and i don't have to take breaks i don't have to eat lunches you work overnight as well you're sorting the same boat how's that been for you well i've been on nights since i was in the military in 1992 i've never been really a day shift guy but i find that in my profession i don't get hungry i'm not hungry when i wake up ever i'm never hungry i know i have to go to work i know situations could pop up same in your environment when you're a first responder you don't know what's going to happen and i like to be able to respond and not have everything in my stomach and that's where i started doing some reading about the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system and it just kind of dawned on me you you had mentioned in a lot of your videos this is just something that came up to me in like the last week i talked to my wife about the rest and digest is when i get home my my shift is backwards to the rest of the world so my dinner is actually when i get home and so i said why don't i just go to work and then i know i'm going to come home and crush have a great meal and i didn't think i could sleep good and i've been sleeping fantastic that's something that i've never i've been working 16 hours a day 12 hour days couldn't sleep because it's probably the bangs but uh even when i drink them now i i'll pass out when i get home it doesn't matter if i had caffeine right before i came home my my son just woke me up at 5 30 i had to be at work at 7. seven yesterday and i was like i was out for i didn't even wake up and go to the bathroom yeah it was weird it's never happened to me before you know when you get up and you know it hurts because you're like i gotta go but uh i've never slept more than six seven hours and now i'm getting that six seven it's never happened in my entire life my adult life since i've been on the house maybe four three or four hours a day yeah and uh the sleeping thing but i kind of was wondering about that parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system that's something i want to discuss with you because i know that you deal with that as a doctor that you have to be alert and when you're operating on someone you don't want to cut the wrong whatever yeah yeah no well i mean yeah yeah you're you're exactly right you know you know the sympathetic nervous system you know this has to do with like your fight-or-flight uh responses and parasympathetic just be rest and digestion we hear about this all the time those different different pathways that has a lot to do with um when you know timing of when we eat and you think about this you're in nature like you know if you're if you're hunting something and you're like say a lion and you're going you're going after you know a gazelle you need to be on your game you need to be at the height of your athletic ability and potential to be as explosive and um and you know deadly as possible and absolutely you're saying that word literally explosive there's when they give fights happen or on that you could be ready they might swing on you they're swinging on each other you got to get involved in that yeah that's something i was like you know i've been thankful not to have been in that situation before except for once in my career i threw up all the place but as i'm getting older i'm starting to see that everything at work is centered around food yeah first responders they've got snack bars people are going out to eat all the time they're doing the energy drinks they go i gotta i feel tired i gotta go eat something and i i've been in that game and i see it now looking outside through the lens of diabetes and the stuff that i've inflicted upon myself and i i don't want a part of it anymore and just uh yeah it's something i read her uh i wrote down some names here uh ori hoffmeckler wrote the word warrior diet book you may be familiar with that he's a one meal a day he was a israeli defense soldier um herschel walker yeah one day and uh another guy i wanted to mention to you that i didn't tell you was a general stanley mcchrystal is a four-star army general if you look him up on kitty he's been eating one meal a day since he was a lieutenant nice because he he would go out and run seven miles when he wakes up and eat right before he goes to bed he has a youtube video that's like two minutes long that you could watch about they asked him about his diet and he said i eat i eat at the end of the day when my energy wanes i i eat right before i go to bed yeah and i was like he's a four-star army general made it to the top eating one meal a day since he was a lieutenant yeah and in 37 years uh service took a long time to go once a day he runs seven miles right out of the bed yeah so i wanted to ask from a guy like you you said you like to play sports like that and train like that did you do your mixed martial arts and always train fasted yourself always yeah yeah no i never yeah if if um you know if it was like during the day you know i would be at school or whatever and you'd get lunch during school i would i would never sort of eat after that and so i would certainly never eat within within two hours of training but like i i that was all that was actually too close as well so i i liked it like five six hours between uh eating and training and then on game days i would never eat so i would always play hungry i would always play i didn't think about it as fasting i just knew that like i didn't play as well if i had eaten something and so even when i was i was playing like sevens tournaments where it's like an all-day event i i just would not eat the entire day and so you know we would make it you know we'd go all the way through you know playing the finals reference we were playing all day until you know that evening and i just wouldn't eat and they'll just be drinking water just be drinking water and and that was always how i felt the best and anytime i would eat something i always regretted it always regretted it you know i didn't feel on my game sort of you know sort of had a uneasy stomach might puke um you know puke up what i just ate or just felt more lethargic because like you said joseph's parasympathetic and sympathetic uh you know change you go down like when you're when you're going out and you're hunting you're like you're hungry and your brain is going like if you don't get get a kill you're gonna die you're not gonna make it you've gotta go so everything's being pumped in there to you being your athletic best and yet your physical height in order for you to get that kill because you have to get it and then when you get it and you start eating and you eat enough of it your brain just goes right we did it we did our thing now let's conserve because you know nature is nothing if it's not efficient and so you're not going to waste a single calorie more than you have to so if you're not using something that's going to is that that process is going to shut down this is why our muscles atrophy so our brain atrophies our different glands atrophy if we're not using them our body's not going to be putting in a lot of expensive energy that could cost us our life down the road by maintaining them and so if you're not stimulating them stimulating them stimulating they they're your body's just gonna you know shut them down um it's being very efficient so when you get that kill when you get that food and you eat that and you fill up your body goes right shut it down you don't need to burn a bunch of energy now you know we did what we needed to do calm down and so if you do that during the day or before workout or for you you're at work you're just going to be much more lethargic and lackadaisical because you're going to be now in that parasympathetic uh system and so that's why i've always naturally you know long before i ever did carnivore you know you know i just would never eat on a game day whenever i was going to compete and and that you know that was um something that sort of rolled into just only eating right before i went to bed as well because i was doing all these things during the day and i didn't want to eat your body used to repair the tissues and everything that you broke down like the muscles well that's that's it too yeah because last week last week i had something happen where i came home from work and i was i fell asleep i didn't even eat when i came home it was two days i i made myself eat when i got up but i was a mistake because i went to work and paid for it i didn't feel good at all but if you come home from work that's something i was gonna ask you and you're you're tired like i was tired just i went to bed and i woke up one day and i went to work without eating i i didn't eat anything i wasn't it's not that i couldn't have i just felt so good on that high that i wanted to go into work the same day and then the next day i ate at the wrong time and i paid for it but if you're tired when you get home from work and you don't want to eat have you ever just went to bed at night because you were so tired and you went like 40 hours or 30 hours or however long it wasn't no food you just went to bed and passed out and slept like a rock yeah absolutely yeah you know some sometimes you just have to you know and um yeah especially when it it's like you know when you've been working you know an ungodly amount of hours and you know and you only have six hours to sleep before you have to go and do it again you know do you want to do you want to spend it you know an hour or more cooking and eating or do you just want to get some damn sleep and figure the rest of it out tomorrow you know worst case scenario when i'm at work and i need to eat you know i just order you know 10 eggs and six pieces you know six large pieces of bacon from the restaurant you got me on that one because i could not eat but your job is obviously a lot different when i'm i'm dealing with more service yeah well that's the thing too is it like you know if i if i don't eat until i'm actually like fully full then then i find i don't get in that really shut down mode if i if i i'm still a bit hungry uh after i eat then then my body's still like going oh it's not enough it's not enough we've still got to go we've got to hunt something else that you know that animal was too small kill something bigger and so we still sort of get that and so if i eat during the day because sometimes i will i sometimes you know just eating once at night if i'm working out a lot my body is trying to stack on muscle it wants me to eat more than once a day and so if i you know do that then i i find that it's better if i sort of eat not quite as much as as i want to you know obviously i was gonna ask piggybacking off of that if you don't mind me asking real quick so with me trying to lose weight there's been times where i've had an incredible workout and thought i was going to be hungry when i got home and i wasn't so should i pay attention to that because i don't get hungry when i work out i actually get less hungry so does that mean my body's feeding off of itself it is yeah yeah i've read about protein recycling through the colon we don't need this one gram of per pound of protein per body weight like i heard this is all myth you know your body recycles well the thing is the thing is is that you know just just listen to your body if you're if you're eating what your body is designed to eat you know it whatever is happening in whatever ratios you know it's supposed to be happening that way so just just eat meat and just let your body take care of the rest don't worry about macros don't worry about how many grams of protein you have or whatever it really at the end of the day it really doesn't matter as long as you're eating the right thing and you're listening to your body so if you're really not feeling hungry uh then then don't eat but you know obviously hunger signals are very very different on a carnivore diet so you know just obviously you want to make sure that you're not hungry and so you just try eating meat and if meat doesn't taste good he's like no i really don't want to eat that that's that's just your body saying no we don't need this and you know i've certainly noticed that especially when i was when i had excess uh fat to to lose and so even when i was doing massive workouts i would do that but uh yeah so just listen to that but try eating something and see how it goes but yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't worry about how much protein you're getting in or or this that and the other as as a you know a percentage of your waste as long as you're eating meat until you're full and you're listening to your body that's really the only thing yeah because i've had that experience your tomahawk experience where you said you cooked it up and took two bites and you're like ah put it back in the fridge like four days and i've had that happen i cooked the incredible steak and i took a bite and i was like i'm not in the mood for this right now and put it in the fridge uh i i it's i i think it's that bodybuilding dogma we're so around food diet food all this stuff we're wondering worrying about how much we need to eat and like you said it maybe i didn't even know or think for years that um you know your body just tells you hey uh you're done yeah yeah cool um well joshua i um do have to run because i've got a another appointment um starting up but uh we should definitely do this again thank you for all right thank you for uh you know just just telling your story and uh and and seeing how you've been i think you're doing great um definitely we're going to be talking again and checking up on you and seeing when you actually get off the artificial sweeteners and drinks and then and then see see how you do continually down the road and just keep checking your results so thank you yeah i appreciate it i thank you for your videos and your sites i appreciate honor to me you don't have to but you do i appreciate that not a problem man all right buddy uh good talking to you and uh we'll see you another time all right thanks doc thanks man [Music]