Helping 1 BILLION People Live Healthier Lives, with Ben Azadi!

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically hey everyone it's Dr Anthony Chaffey again with another episode of plant free MD today I have a very special guest Ben Azadi Ben thank you very much for joining us I really appreciate you taking the time doc thank you so much for having me on your show I love the work that you're doing so I'm excited to be here thank you well thanks man I appreciate it I really do like yours as well um for those who don't uh know you can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do yeah so I grew up in Miami Beach Florida where I currently live and I and I love it here and I followed a standard American diet like so many people and we know it's a processed diets with Franken foods and I didn't know any better growing up my parents immigrated here from Iran and I was left to my own devices growing up so of course I ate a lot of fast food and hung around the wrong crowd my mom actually worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken as a kid so she would bring me home Fried Chicken all the time cooked in good old seed oils and I ate that doing the best that I can do and my mom doing the best that she could do but I was a kid who had very low self-confidence and I was obese actually for most of my life I was overweight and obese I was bullied and picked on but not just physically OB beast but mentally obese I had a lot of mental issues and addictions to sugar and video games and drugs and I found myself as an adult now 24 years old back in 2008 hitting rock bottom being in a very dark place uh ex-girlfriend broke up with me never really studied health and nutrition my body was out of control my health was out of control I weighed 250 pounds at that point I had 34 body fat classified as actually being physically obese but I was actually suicidal Anthony I was on the internet looking for ways to end my life and I was just tired of hurting and crying every day and I thought that was the easiest way to just end the suffering and every time I explored suicide I kept thinking about my mother and man if I would have taken my life what would my mom have to deal with the devastation to her I didn't want to do that to her so it stopped me and I knew I had to figure things out but it was a vicious cycle because I was exploring suicide stopping myself back and forth back and forth for months until my best friend handed me a book and you know some people say you know one book can't change your life but I'm here to tell you one book did change my life it opened up the door for a second book and a fifth book and a 20th book so I started to read books from authors like Dr Wayne Dyer and Tony Robbins and Bob Proctor and Earl Nightingale and all these incredible people and it did a lot for me and opened up a whole new world I never knew existed but the most important thing the books did for me was actually helped me take ownership and responsibility for the first time ever I had the victim mindset uh like you've never seen before I was blaming my genetics my enabling family members my slow metabolism it's their fault this person's fault it's not my fault but the cool thing the amazing thing about taking responsibility is that all that goes away and the meaning of that word responsibility is your ability to respond to life and my ability to respond to life up until that point was very poor but when I decided to take ownership it improve approved and I immediately stopped being the victim of my history and I was determined to become the victor of my destiny and that's where I put my foot down took responsibility changed my nutrition moved my body and in nine months after declaring that responsibility I lost 80 pounds I went from 250 pounds to 170 pounds I went from 34 body fat to six percent body fat finally achieved this physical six-pack but the most important thing that I achieved was a mental six-pack and what it did for my mental health and it just got me curious uh because this was in 2008 and I transitioned from my nine to five job to becoming a personal trainer because I was just so fascinated with Fitness and Nutrition and I have just been a student of health and nutrition ever since then for 14 years exploring like the vegan diet exploring the carnivore diet a keto diet and kind of taking what worked and throwing away what didn't work and I just constantly am learning and studying and um I just I just love it so fast forward to today my company is called keto camp Camp with the K we are a global brand and we have platforms on social media podcasts are coming on mine soon and I have four books um so I just want to learn and then educate as many people as possible so the mission is to educate and to inspire a billion people and to wake them up and help them take ownership and responsibility like I did myself well that's awesome man I mean that's that's a really great Mission and uh you know it's great that when well you can just pass on that information in the first place and you know coming from a place that you did that you actually had to go through it yourself that gives it a lot of credibility as well you know because you've been there you know you've seen it you were in Desperate uh you know in a desperate situation and and you were able to get out of it and so you can you can actually help people get out of it as well and that's really great that you want to want to do that for other people so well done with that man that's great thank you so much yeah you're welcome um tell us about your your books you have four books now um what are those cover and what are you trying to get across with those the first book is called the perfect health booklet a simple book I actually got inspired to write it by uh because of Grant Cardone do you know who Grant Cardone is are you familiar with him I don't know yeah he's like he's an American entrepreneur um you know he has a the movement called 10x movement I actually yes no I have yeah yeah yeah so I've half read that book yeah so far it's a great book but yeah he has he wrote something called the um mine is called perfect health booklet his was called the millionaire booklet so it's a really he he wrote it to kind of break down health for like a teenager like a teenager could understand finances I wrote it to break down health so his was finances my own self so I got the idea of like just putting together the principles of Health in a small little booklet and that's where the perfect health booklet came about and I wrote that in 2008 after that I started to really get into intermittent fasting and different variations of fasting I'm sorry I wrote a book just answering the top 20 questions on fasting called the intermittent fasting cheat sheet and then I got really fascinated with sleep and all the amazing processes that take place during sleep so I wrote a book called The Power of sleep but then my latest book which is the book I'm most proud of is called titoflex and that book um took me a couple years to write it outlines like the four pillars that I teach my students and it has been endorsed by Dr Fung and Dr Ben bickman and Dr Mindy Pals and a lot of great leaders in our space and I'm very proud of it so that's that's the main book that I focus on now which is called ketoflex awesome and um and and so those four pillars what do you uh what are those like what is the the book Encompass as well so the book has those four pillars laid out before we even get to it in the book we I share my story about uh you know being unhealthy I also um lost my dad to the complications of type 2 diabetes in 2014 so I shared that story as well yeah and that that has been a big um driver for me too because up until losing my dad my I was kind of treating health and teaching Health like a hobby and then I lost my dad and then it became like a purpose and a real commitment to really shy and there was a blessing in that uh pain like they're always is in in pain so I talk about that in the book and and what went wrong with my dad and how um you know I followed conventional wisdom and how it led down a wrong path for me and my dad and we all suffered as a result in diabetes type twos you know you could definitely reverse it and there's things you can do so I talk about that and then I just get into like the main principles of health and as we understand it and then I'll get into uh ketosis so the first pillar in my four pillar approach is called adapt and that means getting fat adapted right as you know so that is the goal to be an efficient fat burner most Americans most people in the world are sugar burners they're stuck burning glucose and that is very inflammatory it's going to create a lot of free radicals it's going to Aid you faster so we want to get them fat adapted we want to get them into ketosis so I talk about how to do that I have principles to get people from burning sugar to burning fat in like 14 days and how to verify that by testing so that's the first um pillar the second pillar is called fast because then after the person is fat adapted then we introduce intermittent fasting and intermittent fasting strategy so it's not just one regular fasting schedule we do different schedules we do a little bit of omad alternate day fasting some days where we don't fast we just keep the body kind of adapting and guessing so that's the second pillar the third pillar you're going to love because it's called phase and we're phasing out all these plants right you're like talking all about these anti-nutrients so we're we're phasing out all these anti-nutrients these phytanks these lectins these oxalates so we can it really gets a deep healing Force the mitochondria to really use ketones and heal the gut the fourth pillar you might not like I don't know but it's called flex and at that point um the goal I believe is to teach people to become metabolic flexibility so we don't have to do keto long term we could strategically Flex out like women who have a menstrual cycle the week before their cycle is the best week to have healthy carbs and flex in and out so the goal is to teach them metabolic flexibility and that's that's what it the pillars are outlining so it takes them about three to four months to achieve that Flex pillar and those are the main four main pillars that I teach in there awesome and so with that that Flex pillar what do you find the advantages to coming in and out of of Keto especially um you know cyclically for for women's non menstruation yeah so what I've seen and I I work with um like 40 45 different practitioners and doctors so Dr Mindy Pals is in there Dr Pompa and a whole bunch of others and we've done a lot of case studies we we meet every Tuesday and we go over like lab work and case studies so what we've seen is that the week before the period is a very important week to build progesterone and of course it's hard to do that when we're doing a lot of fasting in keto but there's some carbohydrates that could actually be the building blocks for progesterone and then once that menstrual cycle comes the bleed week we could go right back to ketosis right back to fasting be more aggressive so we've seen that and then just anecdotally I've heard from a tons of um clients that are women who have a menstrual cycle but they get all these Cravings the week before their period when they're strict keto or strict carnivore and to me it's like kind of like the innate intelligence giving them clues that maybe you need to have some carbs to make those hormonal conversions so that is uh the main premise behind it to build progesterone for a healthy monthly cycle menstrual cycle hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnival bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right thanks okay all right cool and and you've done well yeah I guess I you've done some blood work have you done that with like people that are just like doing just keto or just Carnival without the fasting they're still getting a lot of food and probably making carbohydrates themselves you find that they need a little bit more I do but some people don't right so it's as you know it's so individualized so there's ways to do the flexing without having to have the carbohydrates it could just be a high caloric day or a high protein day so we use those tools as well and some people have sugar addiction carb addiction so we don't want them to say hey have more carbs that'll open up you know a door we don't want open so there's there's ways to get around it but in general for most women who don't have addictions we do have them have healthy carbs as long as they're metabolically flexible we have them do that first before we implement the flex days okay and for guys what what are the advantages that you've found there so for guys what I've seen in terms of like lab work is when not for everybody like I've seen guys be more aggressive and Thrive with long-term ketosis and carnivore so this is not for everybody but I've seen some guys have wonky thyroid numbers I've seen the TSH go up reverse T3 go up and I've seen their sex hormone bonding Goblin go up and naturally raise lowering their testosterone and by just having them do a one day per week where they just Flex out with healthy carbs I've seen that help those markers but again that's not for every guy but that's just to give you an example he said it's uh some of the flexibility you could just have a higher caloric intake day so it was just eating a lot more meat or whatever does that does that confer similar outcomes yeah that could definitely be doable right so just the high protein day like make it an M tour day or a caloric a high caloric diet no fasting the goal is to mix things up and keep the body guessing yeah okay cool um and when you originally lost all this weight was that through ketosis or what was your your strategy at that time so I did it the way that I wouldn't teach it to this day because it was more like excessive like calorie counting and exercising and lower fat so I lost the weight but I wasn't healthy right as you know being fit is not equal to being healthy so I was one of those fit sick people I had digestive issues so I still like was trying to explore what true cellular Health felt like because it wasn't that even though I was six percent seven percent body fat so I explored different diets uh one of them was the vegan diet right and this is back in 2012 where I remember reading watching some documentaries not really understanding how to interpret science and all that but watching some documentaries and then reading The China Study and The China Study duped me and convinced me that this is the way you know plants are the way to save humanity and save your health yeah so I went full in to a plant-based diet 100 and uh man a few months into it I just it felt so off I was doing CrossFit at that time I only owned a CrossFit gym at that time I was recovering taking me five days to recover from a workout energy levels were fluctuating I was gaining weight but I was so dogmatic that I stuck with it for 15 months until I said I got to do some lab work and then the lab work verified how I was feeling now this is 2013 then I said I got to make a change and that's actually when I discovered ketosis and fasting so I went from being a vegan to ketosis and fasting in 2013. oh very good and um and then how did you come across did you what are you doing at the current moment is that mostly keto do you do uh carnivore now or or what's your what's your dietary plan at this point for yourself personally I do really well with meat like like you I like I thrive when I eat meat um so I'll share my story about when I first did carnivore because I was I was really I was writing my book I was beginning of it and I had the four pillars but the face pillar that I mentioned is now carnivore wasn't carnivore before I wrote the book it was more just really low carb like 10 grams a day but it wasn't necessarily carnivore but then I started hearing all these amazing stories about carnivore helping with this autoimmune condition with brain fog with fat loss I mean you've seen it yourself so I thought okay this could be some there's something here let me do it first so my first experiment was three and a half years ago where I said I'm gonna do carnivore for 40 straight days but before I do I'm gonna do comprehensive lab work so I went to LabCorp on day one I did a full thyroid panel I did of course insulin A1C LDL particles a full lipid panel CBC everything and then I did 40 days of carnivore but going into carnivore I would get uh some autoimmune flare-ups maybe every week or so I have rain on so my Reynolds would flare up and it's gone it had been getting progressively better over the years as my health has been getting better but I still got flare-ups when I did carnivore those 40 days I only had two small rain of Raynaud's flare-ups the entire time which was like oh my gosh there's this like amazing because it's showing my body's in a healing State not only that I felt great my brain was just so mentally sharp and focused my skin complexion got better I lost some body fat but then it was like okay day 40 let's do the same lab work and I did the same exact lab work on day 40 before I broke it everything improved my C-reactive protein went from 1.1 on day zero day one to 0.5 I lost the point off my A1C My fasting insulin dropped my thyroid markers looked better my homocysteine improves just like it verified how I felt so that's where I was like there's something here with carnivore that's where I decided to put it in my book so I'm not 100 carnivore but I'm mostly animal based right now I'm doing strict carnivore for this month with my students we're doing it for the month of January but I would say 80 to 90 percent of the meat the meals I eat consist of meat because I feel good with it yeah awesome yeah and that's that's definitely something that you see uh with autoimmune especially like that's something that just responds so well to I mean you to carnivore but really just eliminating out all of these things that just they just trigger they can trigger inflammation they can trigger an autoimmune response and so especially if you're sensitive to that that sort of thing it's it's such a great Tool uh to to you know to beat your your issues and some of these treatments for autoimmune issues while they can be very helpful and when we didn't really you know know any better it was it sort of gave people a bit of their life back but they're they're quite heavy they're quite quite serious medications and you have like a big flare-up uh you know we have to take steroids and things like that like that's very hard on your system yeah and um you know being able to just control that just with just with the food you eat I think that's very liberating for people it's a blessing it's such a blessing and I'm sure you see it all the time with people with autoimmune and we know autoimmune is everywhere people have autoimmune they don't even know they have autoimmune it takes years for it to be diagnosed so the to be able to change the symptoms and and get those symptoms to go away essentially which is changing your nutrition without having to go through those Extreme Measures it's such a powerful tool yeah absolutely um so so you're doing that with your your uh students presumably for carnivore month um what are some of what are some of the benefits have people been talking about uh you know their results with that so far yeah we have some students who have rosacea and they've seen uh some improvements with their rosacea psoriasis as well we have people who say that their digestion just feels better when I do carnivore I get no gas like when I eat carbs I'll get gas sometimes but so we have some students who say the same thing and then we have some students who say you know they're a little constipated you know there's some troubleshooting there naturally so we have we haven't do some things but in general we have a whole thread in our Facebook group and we have people posting their meals every day giving us their progress support sharing their glucose and ketones and most people are are feeling really good with it so yeah it's been a huge success oh cool yeah usually I find when when people are getting constipated they just increase their fat they usually takes care of it yeah and um but that's that's such an easy thing to um to have to play around with as well because you know people are so used to eating like different amounts of fat you know they might and they said like well I'm eating so much more fat that must be enough and it's just like well actually you need to do more more yeah and it just it just blows their mind because like they you know we've been eating lean for our whole lives you know it's been just it's been 50 years that people have been saying don't eat fat don't eat fat and um and so it's really ingrained in there so I remember talking to um that guy I worked with it was trying it out and he's just like he's like oh I'm you know I'm constipated I was like well that means you need to eat more fat it's like no I'm definitely eating more enough fat and you take a look at what he's eating and I mean you know it's more than like say a normal portion but it was like it was barely anything I was like look if you're constipated like on Carnivore like by by definition you're not eating enough fat you know because your body's absorbing all of it you need to get a little bit excess to get that out um but yeah it's um oh it's cool cool that uh you're bringing that on for your students to Sue I mean you've got a huge platform so obviously you can you can reach a lot of people and I think this is very exciting that that this sort of information is is becoming more and more accessible and and popular because it really does help a lot of people um where do you think that uh you want to go from here so you just published your book uh keto Flex obviously that's going to make a big impact on people do you and now you you've come around to carnivore as well through that book um what is what is your game plan for for reaching your one billion people how do you want to how do you want to get out there and get this message out there well you know conversations like this Anthony that's why I'm grateful to be on your platform because I love you have a huge platform too you're doing great work and you're growing very fast and it's so well deserved so just more conversations like this yeah absolutely you're doing great things it's essentially people I've seen people just lack the belief that their body was built to heal itself um and I just want them to understand how incredible the human body is like I'm a strong believer in God but we could substitute that word for whatever words you feel comfortable with but you know I always say you are a masterpiece because you are a piece of the master like your body was built to thrive and there's essentially in the book I talk about three ways to heal the body and number one it is just to identify the interference number one number two remove the interference and number three allow your body to heal because we have this inner physician that is eager to go to work for us this innate intelligence that is the world's greatest physician or doctor a chiropractor there's no pill surgery shot or anything that could substitute the innate intelligence but we've blocked it so we've been brainwashed to believe and I know you know this that disease and symptoms are evil and we should hate them and we should mask them and and and use medication and whatever surgery but diseases and symptoms are actually a gift from the innate intelligence like thank God the human body has a check engine light if not we would just be so confused and we would just die but the fact that we have the ability to have a disease or a symptom is a beautiful thing because it's giving us clues that the body is out of homeostasis something is blocking the innate intelligence so we have to identify what that is and for a lot of people of course it's the food they're eating it's the anti-nutrients the seed oils it's the wheat it's the gluten but it's also the things we're putting in our in our mind the thoughts that we're thinking the 60 000 thoughts that we have per day and it's also the environment because that's everything is epigenetics it's an environmental stimulus that tells your DNA nucleus to perform a job if that environmental stimulus is a positive stimulus then the genetics the genes that are turned on are fantastic genes or you could Thrive but if it's a negative stimulus whether it's a negative thought an inflammatory food or an environmental toxin then the protein that is produced from the DNA is inflammatory so I just want to educate so many people to help them believe in the innate intelligence believe in the body and see symptoms and disease Jesus as a blessing and a gift not a curse so I just want to do more have more conversations like this and speak on more stages and just reach as many people as possible that's the goal awesome yeah and I totally agree with you uh we are meant to thrive you know we are we are very very robust and Powerful species and I remember when I was a kid looking around at different animals in the wild and thinking like why are we the only squishy animal on earth like all these animals in the wild they're rips you know they're just so they're muscular and massive and you know the answer you know to my my childish question was well they they exercise a lot they're always running around and doing things I was like okay you know I accepted at the time but then later you know I noticed that you know animals in the zoo were pretty ripped too and like they're not getting any exercise you know so that that didn't make any sense you know and I think it does come down down to the food that we eat you know but simply put you know if you talk to a zookeeper and you tell and then you feed them things that they don't eat them while they'll tell you they get human diseases and this is why you have signs at the zoo and signs that the park saying don't feed the animals it makes them sick and I've always thought that was funny even before I had my Epiphany with with human nutrition I just thought it was hilarious that people had these signs that said don't feed the animal the thing that you're eating right this is true yeah you're so right yeah I never even thought about that you're so right dude yeah but it was always always funny to me and um you know and then domesticated Pets the Vets will tell you that there's there's an increased prevalence in animals getting human diseases so you know it's not a human disease you know it's it's from the food obviously so if you eat the food then you get a human disease and that's exactly what we're doing we used to call that diseases of the West you know Western civilizations with agriculture would get those same diseases than than these other populations that we would see that were just eating you know like a you know Hunter really maybe hunter-gatherer sort of Lifestyle but but a lot of me you know they would just they would just get that uh they they wouldn't get those diseases and you know you and you'd have to thrive in those situations because of rough situations you know like the Messiah don't eat by you know like they fight lions with sticks and they win you know like you have to be you have to be thriving and very healthy to survive that you know through the ice ages you're not you're not just barely getting through an ice age you know you have to be either you have to be just killing it and thriving during an ice age or you're dead you know you and all your family and everyone are dead and so yeah I think that's that's a very good point that we are designed to thrive we are meant to be so much so healthy just on around you know we think that everyone is just just decaying and dying and breaking down it's just this miracles of modern medicine and pharmaceutical technology they're just just holding us together and we're just this shaky rattly machine that's just trying to fall apart we're not you know we're we're a Learjet we should be just flying the whole time and um yeah so I like that uh uh statement I think we are absolutely meant to thrive well said yeah 100 you know we the average man would not survive in the ice ages for like a a day right now we're just so easy to kill and that's not the goal well we don't want to be easy to kill it's it's just brainwashing there was this woman who who's uh working for the United States government who just came on 60 Minutes here in the United States last week and she's she was talking about obesity right and she was saying that it has nothing to do with sleep or nutrition it's about the genes you have it's like are you kidding me that's the message you're still giving people in the American in the world population it's so backwards it's it's criminal essentially and she damn well knows better I mean what an absurd thing to say I think I saw I didn't see your whole argument but I remember I think she said um you know that like it that it runs in families that obesity runs in families and like you know if you're if your family is obese and you have like 70 or 75 chance of being something like that and uh was just like well obviously you know because like you live with people you learn their habits and you learn and you're eating dinner with them you know like of course if your parents are eating things that are going to make them a certain way you're eating the same thing you know and that's why type 2 diabetes runs in families more so than type 1 diabetes um and um and but you know we but all you have to do is simply look at this if it was purely genetic then it would be consistent throughout time right because you know that that's how that works you know and uh you know it's just like you know blue eyes are genetic you know it's not like you know if you're eating you know Twinkies at seven your eyes are gonna change you know from blue to green or something like that not that I know of I've never heard of that and um you know and so you see like you know the the those genes throughout the population population genetics like they're consistent throughout time and uh the obesity rate is absolutely not consistent over time you know in America in the UK the obesity rate after World War II was six percent in 1980 and the UK was six percent and the US it was eight percent started started to creep up at that point and I was like 24 you know in a couple decades right so it's been very consistent before you know um before World War II it was you know roughly around six percent as well since we've been keeping track of these sorts of things so it's actually been very consistent before that and then we started changing the way we ate dramatically and people uh started getting getting obese and getting sick so that actually changed that can't be genetic if and and she must have studied population genetics and she's is she a doctor is um is that I think she is either way it's like either she's doesn't understand genetics or she does and she's blatantly lying for an agenda either way it's wrong to give that message to so many people and Harvard is predicting that by the year 2030 50 of the adult American population is going to be obese 50 it's insane yeah well if we don't do something about it certainly and and and uh type 2 diabetic right now is nine percent of Americans are type 2 diabetic and 40 are pre-diabetic right so very soon yeah that's going to be 50 and and the likelihood is is that that it is probably gonna go to that because you know I think I'm hoping that we can head them off at the path before they get to that point and get people to to change their life but it's um uh it's a it's a difficult situation you know she's an American doctor then she does know population genetics because like you have to take these sorts of classes and for your prerequisites you have to take genetics to get into medical school in America so you know it's um I'm I'm just yeah I'm you know I don't I it's not it's par for the course I mean there's so many there's so many things out there that especially you know the politicians and governments are saying that you know is is designed to mislead people and you know like I mean the food pyramid and all these different sorts of things like like these people are purported to be there to try to help you and guide you but they have their own they have their own uh Mission as well they have their own agenda and it may not be your health it may be you know that they're you know getting paid to say something that they have lobbyists and and different sorts of influences and it could be as simple as that it could be something else as well but uh either way I disagree with it you know I know you do too and it just doesn't make sense I mean it doesn't even pass a smell test because if it were purely genetic then the Obesity rates wouldn't have dramatically changed when we dramatically changed our our uh diets agreed yeah it's it's not purely genetics we know that I mean Dr Bruce Lipton who's a brilliant cell biologist he believes 99 of all disease and symptoms including obesity is epigenetics only one percent is genetics I don't know if it's that high but I know that it's I think I believe over 90 uh of it is epigenetics and that's great because we have control over epigenetics right we have control over the expression of these genes and we there's things we can do about it and that's not what the government or mainstream news is going to talk about because that's not going to help make a lot of money for a lot of people unfortunately so the best way to understand because there's a lot of different opinions and different diets and we have the government and Tufts University promoting this thing and then we have people talking about carnivore I always tell people the best way to know how to get healthy is to just follow close attention to the government guidelines and their my food plate or Tufts University recommendation pay attention to what they're doing and just do the exact opposite and yeah you're going to be healthier and you're going to be happier just do the opposite of what they're telling you to do yeah absolutely you know there was a I saw um that South Park clip recently as well they did something where they're like they're like yo what's the food you know bring up the pyramid and they brought up it's a food pyramid but we didn't know this doesn't work it didn't this and the other it's like and Cartman's just like it's upside down you know they flip it around there oh my God it's a perfect match sir you know and it's just like it was absolutely hilarious and uh but it was like it was like true you know it was funny that they that they did that um to that like that I would I would agree uh with Dr Lipton um who knows the exact number of but I think that the vast majority of the diseases that we treat uh have a direct relationship to the food that we eat and um and you know it was always sort of thought that you have something that can be that purely genetic right that if you get this Gene you're going to have it so it would be like penetrance of a gene and so you have this Gene and some things will have like a 99 100 penetrance or something there aren't really many things that have that but it's rare yeah very rare and then you'd have uh you know like 60 penetrates 40 penetrants where you know if you have the gene 40 of the time you'll get it or whatever so there's some environmental Factor that's kicking this off and so you have the genetic predisposition and then you have an environmental trigger and then other things that are purely environmental like like getting your arm chopped off like there's nothing in your jeans that that's gonna like predispose you to getting your arm chopped off unless you're like you know a dick or something like that and um you know but I thought I thought there's some things but I'm finding more and more that like a lot of these things that we thought were pretty strongly genetic actually or or have the have uh genetic predisposition and then it trigger like Huntington's disease I thought that was purely genetic like if you get Huntington's like you will get Huntington's disease if you have the Gene and um it turns out I'm talking to people anecdotally but it's very promising that even with Huntington's disease people are improving and uh and they're they're holding it off and they're actually you know sort of reversing their symptoms which is which is huge because that is just a devastating illness and if that's something that can be uh you know suppressed and even reversed or just never have in the first place that would be massive massive massive so I think there's more and more and more I'm finding that things are very strongly related to our our diet and lifestyle yeah that's amazing yeah they they just the it's a testament to the amazing human body we take so many hits and the body just keeps going so the body is built so magnificently yeah definitely so um so we go into some of the the details with with uh ketosis what are some of the benefits of being on a ketogenic diet and ketosis in general yeah I love ketosis I call it the great land of ketosis because I just feel so damn good when I'm in ketosis we know that all of our ancestors did a keto there's nothing new about keto it just might be nuanced or new to somebody but there's no fad diet about keto it is a fact not a fad our ancestors thank God for this ability for the liver to produce ketones because if they we didn't have this ability we probably wouldn't exist today right Anthony our ancestors would not have had a second energy source of ketones they would not be able to go hunt and kill and stay sharp they would have died so by necessity ketosis is was used in terms of like a survival state but there's a benefit to that because it's a stress to the mitochondria and it's a beneficial stress to the mitochondria which helps the mitochondria become more robust and create more mitochondria and more energy so when we just look at the electron transport chain which is the way we create energy from food and oxygen and nutrients that the electron transport chain when somebody's in ketosis you get about 400 percent more ATP molecules more energy being produced versus somebody in ketosis so 32 to 36 ATP molecules when you're burning sugar 132 plus when you're using ketones so you have this 400 increase in energy amazing that's part of the reason why you feel so good but we know the more energy you produce the more you increase your basal metabolic rate the more calories you burn all good things but at the same time you have this uncoupling process where now these extra free radicals that are being um used these reactive oxygen species they're being uncoupled and the the mitochondria are releasing them like release valves from a pressure cooker so you have lower inflammation more energy it's like that sounds like a win-win to me so ketosis is just so incredible because the mitochondria as you know Anthony it's very important to have healthy robust mitochondria most diseases out there are linked to mitochondria real dysfunction and ketosis is a great way along with fasting and carnivore to stress the mitochondria create healthier strong mitochondrial Fitness so you have more energy and less free radicals at the same time so I love it for those two reasons right there yeah and you and you know I would totally agree with you I mean we we are you know designed like this I mean we're out there eating meat and in the in the ice ages what else was there to eat except me you know and so we would have been in these states all the time and that you know people say it's like oh is it is it healthy to be in ketosis a long time it's like well you know it worked for our ancestors you know it worked for you know uh you know entire civilization still living today that really just exclusively eat meat and then all the people doing keto and Atkins and things like that for the last several decades you know there are people that you know in from from Western cultures and and backgrounds that have been doing keto or in ketosis for for literally decades now and then they're thriving you know just like you and I are so it's um yeah I think it's it's very important to know that and yeah you're right there's so many different biological Pathways I really I really argue that that being in ketosis that so-called fasting metabolism I think that's really is our our primary metabolism I think there's only reason we call like a Fed State our our primary you know fed State uh is because you know by the time we came around to being able to look at biochemistry by the molecular level everyone was eating carbohydrates and they're like oh when you eat it looks like this and when you don't eat it looks like true you know failing to recognize that if you eat anything at all except carbohydrates it also looks like your your so-called fasting and you know if I eat 5 000 calories in rib eye like I'm not fasting like that's not a that's just not a fasting state so it has to be something else you know I think that and I think that that's uh uh well it's really I just think it's our primary metabolic State and that's the the metabolic state of most animals in the wild you know like most animals are in that ketogenic State and and my dog is you know yep sorry your dog is yeah exactly yeah he's you know raw meat for breakfast raw meat for dinner and he's in ketosis in between right he's like that's the way animals are meant to do it yeah that's it that's exactly it so yeah it it really stands to reason that our body and our biochemistry are going to to work out on our cellular subcellular uh by a body is going to is going to work better when we're in the state that we're supposed to be in yeah or design we're designed to experience ketosis absolutely so there was that study that came out um University of North Carolina Chapel Hill 2018 that showed that 88 of American adults are unhealthy which probably got worse after covid so whenever I lecture on stage I'll show that study and then I'll rewrite it and say 88 of American adults are in a keto deficiency right if they just got them in ketosis like they would put a dent in that stat but we've been brainwashed to believe it's a fad diet and the standard American diet is the real diet but that's the real fad diet it's just a whole 180 approach just everything we've been taught it's the exact opposite it's funny it's funny that um you know this is a this is a fad diet when it's the way that humans have been eating literally forever and uh and that the the the real way to eat with the all these healthy options and all these different sorts of things those Foods didn't exist 100 years ago you know they just flat out didn't exist I mean Corn Flakes popped up about 100 years ago like before that that's it you know and and um you know so it it just it always uh makes me a lot you know sort of laugh when people say that you know we're supposed to be eating the standard American approach when those Foods didn't exist 100 years they have no argument no keto is not even a diet it's it's a metabolic process it's like right you have just forgotten to tap into we've lost the ability to tap into this metabolic process because babies are you know there's babies that are breastfed are in ketosis yeah there's glucose and sugar and breast milk but the baby is so efficient at using that if the baby is in ketosis and it helps the development of that baby's brain but what happens the average mom um you know will take the baby off of breast milk and then they're given high sugar formula and then they're eating every two to three hours and they're eating high carbs and now he took this natural fat burning baby and that's happened to me and now we teach them to become a sugar burner and then we forget about this amazing process called ketosis but it is really our natural fat burning burn Birthright to be in the state of ketosis yeah and even even like the vegetables that we're eating like those vegetables didn't exist either I mean we bioengineered those as well there was a study oh Christ I'm free I'm blanking on the name but anyway it was it was like back in like the early 1900s and they and they were looking at um nutrition and um and how this affected health and things like that was actually pretty pretty uh interesting study for its time and they looked at two African populations one was the one was the Maasai and the other was you know I can't remember the name but it was very it was a very close proximity to the Messiah and they were basically Whole Food Vegetarian based plant-based anyway and so this is exactly what you know the vegetarian and vegan people will say this is the optimal thing which is this whole food straight from the ground no pesticides anything like that no no processed food so perfect they're perfect ideal model and they and they looked at that compared to the Maasai or essentially just carnivore and they they eat dairy you know and and and uh you know the Warriors would drink blood and they would have meat sometimes as well um but it's all animal based and so they just looked at these two you know populations that are very much you know opposed to each other but the very interesting thing is that they were they were um related genetically because they they enter bread and they intermarried and so they were genetically they were quite similar and um but they had very different diets and what they found was that the health markers between the two were massive differences massive differences and that the the Messiah were far far far healthier lived longer or much more healthy weren't getting uh you know sick all the time and their their height was different like the Messiah were on average like six inches taller than the other tribe and they were they were like the same genetic population right and like so and you get like you know a tall Messiah would go over you know marry someone at you know in this other tribe and they'd have short kids and then like a short person of that tribe would come over to the Messiah and have kids and then for tall kids and so it was it was it was very very much like that epigenetic effect and and I'm sure there's there's further you know because the epigenetics can actually go down Generations like you can it can take generations to see the the ultimate effect there was a study I I like to talk about uh called uh pottinger's cats Sky Dr pottinger in the 30s and 40s he did this with cats and he found that that cooked meat and raw meat had very different effects on the cats and and they were much more healthy with raw meat and that generation down generation the raw meat ones were just thriving and then the cooked meat ones were just getting worse and worse and worse and smaller smaller brains smaller cheekbones smaller bodies bone mineral density was much lower got down like three percent so their bones were like cracking and breaking just by walking around was very sad and after three generations they couldn't breed they couldn't they couldn't have a fourth generation they weren't even interested in procreating most of them and the the some pregnancies that did um you know happen all ended in stillbirth and um so that was it you know this is this is like very clear like this isn't working and these epigenetic sort of effects um even more interestingly is that when they got that third generation of cats back on to raw meat they became much more healthy they were able to breed but their kids didn't just look like the raw raw food raw meat cat it took four generations to breed back to that so it has these epigenetic effects have have long lasting you know generational effects interesting yeah well that's fascinating uh it makes me wonder like what are we doing now it's like to our future generation and how long will it take to overcome the damage that has been done that's crazy yeah it's gonna it's gonna take a while you know I think that uh you know like like our kids are going to be much taller have much bigger brains and be much more healthy uh you know just congenitally than we are which is great and they're sort of gonna you know beat the pants off of every everybody in their generation you know so I sort of think like just like on a selfish side like I should probably start having kids soon just because like you know like by the time this if I have kids now like they're going to be at this like Supreme Advantage you know of everyone in there and uh you know eventually you know I'm trying to get this around the world so you know it's going to be just the norm so I'm like all right I should probably get this now well like uh well they still have this Advantage um but uh you know our kids are going to be taller and smarter with bigger brains and and more athletic which is great and their kids are going to be even more so as long as they they hold to that I think right and so and then the other and then average kid not our kids because we're healthy but the average person who does kids they're going to have like huge thumbs for their phones and like yeah yeah they're gonna lose the curve in their neck and they're going to be permanently like this crazy how things are gonna happen that's funny yeah um um I was I was going to ask as well um you talk about like uh specific sorts of uh benefits about ketosis just on our brains and uh and the benefits that that can happen what are some of what are some of the benefits of just being in ketosis or on a ketogenic diet just for our brains and our function thereof yeah um it goes back to the mitochondria right the mitochondria are so important that if you think about again I believe in God so you think about the human body and the way that the God built the human body the cells that are most required for survival because that's the number one priority for the human body and the innate intelligence is survival the cells that are most required for survival all the cells that have the most mitochondria so the brain cells have the highest concentration of mitochondria there are regions in the brain cells in the brain that have millions uh over two million mitochondria in a single cell in different regions in the brain then we have the eyes loaded with mitochondria we have the heart we have the ovaries reproduction system thousands to tens of thousands of mitochondria and other cells have a few hundred to a few thousand but the ones that are most important have the most mitochondria that's how important the mitochondria are so we already established what ketones can do to create this mitochondrial Fitness and Mito Genesis and that's going to help with the brain because the brain has the most mitochondria gives your brain a fuel source beta hydroxybutyrate which has a it's great at Crossing that blood brain barrier and giving your brain an energy source and the argument that people make it's very stupid they're going to say but the brain needs some glucose so the body needs glucose at all times and you know what they're right but what they don't get is that the body can manufacture that glucose from many different ways right gluconeogenesis backbone of fat um so ketones can be used primarily for fuel in in the brain and beta hydroxybutarate is one of those three Ketone bodies and the mitochondria are so dense up there that you feel great so somebody who has a brain fog somebody who has mental fatigue they are easily irritable or irritated and they just forget where they put their keys and they're just struggling with their brain getting into ketosis is a great way especially once they get keto adapted which takes a little bit longer from being fat adapted that's when the mitochondria are really efficient at using those ketones and that brain fog goes away you or it's it's one of the if you're an entrepreneur you got to use ketosis you got to use Ancient healing strategies because it does great things for your brain I feel amazing when I am in ketosis when I speak on stages I'm always fasted I'm going to get the bdnf I'm going to get the ketones up so to answer a question it does amazing things for brain function yeah yeah I've always noticed to um you know whether or not I was eating carnivore or you know or not just a standard diet I was always very meat heavy I never really had a bunch of processed food and junk but I always felt better when I was fasted like I didn't eat that day you know so I always like played rugby games or matches you know type wrestling or fighting or I would never ever eat the day of a competition and um and the one or two times I did I was like she completely regretted it I was just like oh my God that was such a bad idea I just never felt as good I just didn't have all the energy that I normally would and um you know you can definitely notice that mental as well and I know um you mentioned you know Dr Ben bickman you know that's something that he's shown a lot as well especially with to do with Alzheimer's and and how that can really really really um you know change people's experience with with Alzheimer's and just changing you know like Alzheimer's you know a lot of people are now calling it type 3 diabetes because it really is a metabolic issue like most other things as well and you get insulin resistance in the brain as well and so you're not getting glucose passing uh as as readily but you switch over to ketosis and all of a sudden just ketones are running it into your brain which you know despite what you know a lot of people try to say that is your brain's primary uh energy source I learned that biochemistry you have 24 years ago you know that like your brain always runs on ketones always always runs on ketones doesn't matter what bio biochemical State you're in it always runs on some ketones and then when you you get a certain threshold of ketones even if you have an abundance of glucose it actually switches over uh completely to ketones so I mean that to me shows a preference right there's more glucose than ketones but it's choosing the ketones that's a preference and so you know you switch over to running on ketones all of a sudden their brains just wake up because now their brains are actually getting energy now they've been atrophy the cells have been damaged so you know they're not going to work as well as they did before but they're going to work as well as they can whereas you know when they're running on glucose they're not they're not able to run as well as they can and um and you know you mentioned mitophagy so the increase in number of mitochondria which obviously makes a huge effect and also um or sorry um phytogenesis monogenesis yeah yeah but there's also mythology yeah which is like recycling these things so you get these mitochondria that um you know that that are just sort of falling apart and not really able to function properly and they recycle and then recycle them and and tune them up and make new ones and those run more efficiently as well so you're getting getting more of them and the ones that you have work better so there's there's this you know compounding effect there um that is is very interesting um and very powerful have you have you uh read Chris Palmer's book um brain energy yet no it's on my list I'm going to bring them on the show though have you ready it's yeah it's really good it's a great things it's a master class on mitochondria and how they work and I can't wait no it's fantastic it's really interesting especially because it talks about not just how the mitochondria make energy but how they actually like run around they're almost like he talks about them as like workers in a in a factory uh but it really does sound like it's like these like almost like little like creatures in our body that are like running this huge machine that is that is our our person and um because they actually move around the cell so it's not that you're just sitting there creating energy they move to this area create ATP so that this organelle can function and create like you know neurotransmitters and release neurotransmitters and they go here and they go here and they go here and they go here and they go here so and as you say you know there can be tens of thousands hundreds of thousands millions of these things in like a neuron or something like that I mean how complex is that you know that they're just buzzing around doing all these sorts of things so intricate and so and so um you know precise and then when that that breaks down a bit you know you have you know you know hundreds of thousands of mitochondria not quite working right in two trillion neurons that's a big effect you know it's a problem yeah yeah and so you know obviously uh Dr Palmer uh saw this in psychiatric issues you know he's he's reversing people's schizophrenia and OCD and major depression by putting them into ketosis you know and then making their mitochondria working better after about three months you really tune up your mitochondria yeah that's when they're about keto adapted at that point right yeah yeah and so and so there you go you know so that that fits you know very well with that and uh but yeah it's very interesting how he lays this out with the mitochondria they do they do a lot more than we would than we think and I just think it's really cool that they're actually bouncing around and like using these organelles and different parts of our cell like as machines and like to to to create different processes I think is fascinating so so fascinating you know we once thought like the mitochondria or these like Mindless energy factories and there's an intelligence to the mitochondria to your point and Chris Chris Palmer's Point like it's moving around there's also some research from Dr Robert navio that shows that there's also an intelligence in the mitochondria that um the mitochondria act as surveillance systems and when there's too many cellular threats too much stress the mitochondria in order to survive will actually lower energy production shut down energy production and it goes into the cell danger response the CDR and that's where chronic fatigue happens long coveted symptoms happen it's the mitochondria has seen there's too much stress and when I say stress it could be mental it could be mental stress chemical stress toxicity or physical stress and that could come from food it could come from other areas but when there's too much stress the mitochondria see that as a threat in order to survive it actually lowers or shuts down energy production that's the intelligence in the mitochondria and then it gets stuck sometimes and locked into the cell danger response so when somebody goes through like covid for two weeks and they get really sick their mitochondria I've seen a whole bunch of stress for two weeks and then it gets locked into the CDR response and then they have coveted symptoms for a year or two years so there is an intelligence there and we want to make sure the mitochondria feels safe and protected and allow it to do its thing and contains is a big part of that yeah definitely yeah and and so much more that we're we're not you know not fully understanding at this point as well yeah absolutely um so it just brings us around so you're in ketosis you're not getting your energy from carbs okay so where do you get get your carbs from well it doesn't doesn't saturated fat cause heart disease doesn't that that cause diabetes and kill you things like that yeah right it's like how how could that be if our cell membranes which are so important are made up of what you just said sacred fat cholesterol and protein you know I believe um Anthony the membrane is actually where the intelligence is and I've lectured on this and and I believe the membrane the Integrity of your membrane your cell membrane is what is going to determine if a gene is turned on or turned off and I believe that because of Dr Bruce lipton's work he's shown when those integral membrane proteins the receptor sites are inflamed or blunted the good things can't get in meaning nutrient nutrients oxygen thoughts Etc and then the bad things can't get out meaning free radicals and toxins so then it sends a signal to the DNA so the membrane is made up of protein saturated fat and cholesterol so if we're made of that how could it be bad for us our body loves it it's the building blocks for a healthy membrane and receptor sites and there's no carbs there the human body is what less than one percent maybe of total carbohydrates but it's protein and fat and water that's the name of the game yeah absolutely I remember seeing that when I was in eighth grade uh you know life sciences you know it's like a biology class and we looked at the this picture of of the cell you know it had like the mall molecules everything like that that made up you know the lipid bilayer of the membrane yeah it is cholesterol you know it's like so somewhere 76 is is yeah almost 80 yeah this is cholesterol I remember looking at that I was just like how is cholesterol bad for us yeah I was like we are cholesterol like how can how can it be bad for us it didn't make any sense to me but I remember just being a kid I was like well I'm a kid I don't know everything yet like you know I'm sure though I'm sure they'll tell me you know I'm sure we'll figure this out but I remember I remember just putting a mental pin in that and um and uh you know coming back to it I'm like God I'm glad I remember I remember thinking that yeah you were right your intuition was dead on right there my friend well you know that's the thing too sometimes you can you can see that clearly when you haven't been haven't had your mind corrupted through education you know that you haven't been you know that's what you know I never understood what the hell people were talking about about you know outside the inside the Box thinking outside the box thinking like think outside the box what the hell does that mean like never explain that uh well I get it now you know the box is your your sort of your um previous predisposed thoughts like you've been taught these are the limits of Your World you have to live within this box you know like this is this is this is how the Body Works fat is bad all these sorts of things and thinking outside the boxes assuming that that might not be true as having an open mind and saying okay well what if that that isn't true and then you go outside of that what happens then and then you find out a lot of other things you know like well what if you know well we're made out of cholesterol what if that's not actually a bad thing for you and things change a lot you know and um in Geometry it's euclidean geometry and he had certain postulates that he had couldn't couldn't prove mathematically you know that like you know the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 right and and he's just like this happens every time like I can't really prove it mathematically but you know I but I see it all the time and I'm just going to say like this is an assumption this we're going to base this stuff off of then you have non-euclidean geometry that thinks outside of that box and you say well what if a triangle angles don't add up to 180 what happens then right really crazy weird cool things happen and they actually describe deep space pretty well you know so like you know euclidean geometry is really good down here when you start looking at space it actually starts becoming different this is where the idea of space being curved comes in is this idea of these triangles because if you have this angle coming in like this but you have these three points it has to curve to get to each point right yeah and so they talk about this it was like you know you know social being curved is you know it comes into that so non-euclidean geometry actually is is helping people sort of describe the the observable universe so that's that's that outside of the box thinking and I think that when you're a kid you haven't even learned what the hell the box is you know so you're always thinking outside the box because you're trying to just figure out what the hell is going on with what you're seeing and you have an adult saying oh no no no no no because of all these things that they've had put into their head but a kid hasn't had that yet and that's why I think you know that the old phrase you know wisdom from the mouth of babes is because they haven't had their mind boxed in yet and closed in and so they can actually just think about things be like we're made out of cholesterol how the hell is cholesterol bad for us you know that's a thought that we should all have uh yeah a great explanation exactly it's like basic sense and not only that I mean there's zero saturated fat in an included artery like there's no saturated fat there it's it saturated fat is so important for the the Integrity of that lipid bilayer it's the building blocks for it but you're so right you know there's something to be said about my mentor Dr Pompa always tells me he goes you know your the benefit for for me being in the health space is that I never had to unlearn meaning like I never went to medical school I never had to like learn things that put me in this box or created this box and then get out of that box it was just directly like curiosity I'm always just curious asking questions so he's like that's a blessing you never had to go through that process of having to unlearn what they taught you for so many years in school so I think about that the way you explained it like I never had to create that box for myself so there was a benefit there for me not going through medical school yeah yeah and learning what the limits are you know like you wanna you wanna you don't want to look at the limits you don't want to look in you don't want to live in the Box you want to think about everything broadly and um yeah I think that's that's very beneficial I think one thing that I've always been just very open-minded I've always you know listen to what my teacher said but I also I've always just kept my own sort of counsel and I always like I remember looking back at my old notes from like you know high school and college and you know even medical school and I'd be I'd be writing something down I'd have a note to myself and I was just like well this sounds like [ __ ] and here's why I looked this up because I think this is crap you know something like that and um and I've just sort of seen that enough and I'm like okay well you know um opinion is also being mixed in with with fact here so I was like I was always sort of just just had everything took everything with a grain of salt and then thankfully we had uh one of our professors in medical school uh said sort of a paraphrase of something that was said at a commencement graduation at um Harvard back in like the 30s and 40s which they said to us which was everything that you learn here in medical school by the will be obsolete by the time you graduate and so you need to stay on top of it you know you need to you need to read the literature you need to stay informed because it will keep moving and if you just go by what you learn here in medical school you will already be out of date by the time you graduate so you always need to be learning and relearning and what does that mean that means that our guidelines now are wrong there are work in progress and we have to recognize that we have to understand that and some things we're going to get right some things uh we're going to get sort of right they're going to work for a time and then we're going to find something better so you know just having that open open-mindedness was was uh is very important and that was what uh the Harvard uh graduation address was uh they said that in 10 years time half of what you learn will be wrong no one's going to tell you what half you know so you have to you have to keep learning and so you know that that's the thing and so I had that sort of mindset you know and and that was um helped by those by those professors reiterating that saying hey you look you you don't trust everything you know these things are gonna come come back and and find out that you know their best effort at the time but they're not they're not right and um you know so it's very disappointing to me when I come across doctors that just get very angry a lot of vegan doctors and things like that and they're talking about the guidelines and this and that and the other night first of all if you're going by guidelines you are 10 years behind the even the evidence right because it takes it takes years and years and years to get the current evidence that's in the literature into the guidelines if they ever do get in the guidelines right and as a as a doctor said um a very Cutting Edge Doctrine um cystic fibrosis he was doing a lot of things that weren't even in the literature and uh it's in the book um better by um Dr Atul gawandi who's um like a professor of surgery at Harvard and um wrote really good books actually very interesting books first book complications like the first season of Gray's Anatomy all the medical stories are directly out of that book that's why it was such an yeah that's why it was so interesting you know because it was a really really good book so he wrote that and he wrote a couple other books as well and that were very interesting and in that one he was talking to this guy saying hey you're doing things that are that are just very different than what's in in the current literature but you're getting these amazing results and the guy just sort of laughed and just said if you follow evidence-based evidence-based medicine you will always be two years behind The Cutting Edge you know like you have to be out there doing something new knowing that guy knowing certainly knowing the guidelines but knowing the evidence and knowing what is is out there and then saying okay how can I make this better and then you put out new information and new new evidence and you're the one creating the literature you're the one creating the evidence that other people follow but it is someone creating it and someone's following it so you have to sort of decide you know are you brave enough to step out and and do something new and maybe uh show a better way yeah it's a fascinating I have so much respect for those who do step out and show another way because there's something to be said about research that's coming out looking at studies and all that's very important but something else that we want to consider is what happens when you actually are in the trenches and you apply it clinically do you see the same thing do you see something different and sometimes it's different what you see because that research could be have have changed now but that was two years old or whatever it is so being in the trenches is very important some people sit on their pedestal they're just like writing papers or referencing papers but they're not working with people and they're not in the trenches they're not looking at LAB Works they're not saying what's working what's not working so I love people who look at the research and actually apply it and then give feedback on the research and then let us know if that's the right approach it reminds me um what you just shared about a quote from Alvin Toffler he said um the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn unlearn and then relearn that's the new illiterate of the 21st century yeah well that's very good too yeah and um oh interesting yeah I hadn't heard that before that's good from the Future Shock it's a old book great quote though yeah no that is fantastic yeah um I'm conscious of your time but if you if you had a minute I wanted to just get your thoughts on um you talk about like mindset and responsibility and taking ownership for things and how important that is and I think that I think that that sort of ties everything together you know you're getting your physical health your mental health but then then what do you do with it you know how do you then then apply you know these things to uh having a better life and having uh you know a successful life yeah my mindset is very important I I believe that 95 of our success is going to be from mindset five percent strategy because we have it's estimated psychiatrists did some studies and they estimate that the average human being has 60 000 thoughts per day upwards of 60 000 thoughts per day and they also estimate that 90 of those thoughts are the same thoughts from yesterday and 85 percent of them are negative thoughts I call it uh stink and thinking I learned that from Zig Ziglar so I always say if you're thinking is thinking your dreams are shrinking right it's got to really Master those thoughts but what determines your thoughts is your environment so first you gotta you know do an audit on your environment I always teach my students this I always tell them to grab a piece of paper they're all lying down the middle a line at the top and then put people in your life into two different categories you're gonna write put the section called Chargers in a section called drainers and then you're gonna audit them 5 10 15 people that are in your life that are close to you and put them in a different category if they are charging you up meaning you have conversations with them and you feel energized they support you they root you on they're your biggest fan they are true friends and true supporters you put them on the Chargers side of that list but then you identify the drainers the drainers are gossiping they're telling you saturated Fat's bad for you keto is going to kill you fasting in Starvation mode carnivores crazy uh and you feel drained after you speak to them you put them on the list for drainer so once you're clear on that you do an audit then the first step is to spend more time with chargers less time with drainers and as you spend time with Charter Chargers naturally it's going to change the thoughts that you think for more positive loving abundant thoughts and it's going to be easier to change those thoughts versus that environment that's very toxic and you're trying to change your thoughts so change your environment then help work on your thoughts and um gratitude is a big part of that I call it vitamin G Anthony the strongest vitamin in the world I wear t-shirts that say vitamin G get your daily dose because it's so powerful and it's not blue anymore there's a lot of great research Dr Joe dispenza has done brain scans on individuals going through his courses and he had them looking at their brains through a MRI they're practicing gratitude he saw that there were 1200 chemical reactions that took place when they practiced gratitude he saw dopamine increase Gaba serotonin oxytocin all these amazing feel-good chemicals and hormones all because they were just in a state of gratitude so it's a very powerful vitamin vitamin G that if you think about universal law whatever you feed energy to expands so if you're feeding energy to what you're grateful for naturally you're going to have more things to feel grateful for but if you're paying attention to things that you hate and that you're angry about you feed energy to that you'll get more of that and there's a part of the brain called the reticular activating system which is this uh the size of your pinky it's in your brain stem as you know and it's the selective seeking mechanism of your brain and thank God for this because if we didn't have this Ras particular activating system the brain would short-circuit because there's so many stimulations there's millions of different stimulations from sounds and noises and uh well that's the same thing sounds and lights and different things going on and if the brain didn't have this mechanism the RIS to filter it all out we would short circuit so how this works is whatever you feed the RAS you see more of so if you wanted to buy a red car a red let's say Tesla and you bought a red Tesla and now you see red Teslas everywhere that's because you've activated the RAS to see them they were always there now you've activated it so how does this relate to gratitude well when you're in a state of gratitude and doing it consistently you're going to appreciate more things things that you used to be angry about and fearful about now you're grateful for because that's what the RS is signaled to see so uh gratitude is very important get your vitamin G every single day control your environment and then it's going to make keto carnivore fasting everything else much easier when your environment is under control because you do become your environment so mindset is fundamental just like sleep just like Movement we want to make sure we're inner sizing as well as exercising and it's a big part of what I teach that's a really good uh point and that's that's that's something that I think that people should really take note of um you know activating that that system you're going to see more of it that's that's going to benefit you in a lot of ways I think that's you know probably the benefits of you know people saying having having a positive mindset like thinking about things positively you're just going to just keep triggering that everything and like having gratitude and being grateful for things um you know a lot of religious teachings are like that you know they're just like hey look don't don't sh don't let that stuff in in you know that's just gonna bog you down that's just going to weigh you down just look at the positive things and you'll try to get you know uh look at this Silver Lining on the clouds and all that sort of stuff um that's I think that's a very very powerful Tool uh to have you know people as in a similar but that's why you see like people in a very similar situation and one is is just taking it so differently and they're they're really thriving and I was like it's okay it's not that big of a deal and they're able to uh you know be much more uh positive they're better able to respond you know to negative stimuli in their life because they're like them that's okay we'll figure this out we'll do this or that and they're just they're just much better able at navigating life and they're much more happier as a result of it um you know there are people that that you see and they have really really really challenging backgrounds and you know uh you know Dr Palmer you know he had a very very troubled childhood and you know he and his mom were actually homeless for a while and he worked his way through and and got become a professor at Harvard you know and so he really changed his life around uh other people as well that I've seen you know some people um it was funny I was I was at um I did that that show uh reverse we did like reversing yeah diseases with carnivore diet and um which is which we just filmed in uh Costa Rica which was awesome and we had um and we had uh a lot of the people there and that was that was really a great thing you know meeting people uh you know all in this space that they're just you know really interesting to talk to and hang out with and um you know having you know conversations like these that are just they're just great and you get to do it like all day and um uh Dr Robert kilch was there you know who's like the most positive guy ever you know and uh he had a really really rough upbringing you know he had he was in you know inner city areas he was you know basically homeless for for a while like his dad was in jail he was illiterate like he couldn't like read and write all these sorts of things and now he's he's become an extremely successful person um you know he he has a very a large chain of fertility clinics he's obviously very very uh um uh practiced Doctrine fertility Doctrine expert in that in that field uh and very successful and this guy had like we we were at this Airbnb and things like that and there wasn't like quite enough rooms or whatever he's like I'll just sleep on the floor it's not that big a deal this guy's rich dude he's rich and he's like you know he's got a private jet and a bunch of Porsches and he's just like yeah I'll just sleep on the floor no it's not that big a deal I got the biggest room in the house I got the living oh this is perfect you know he was so positive about it I love it yeah and like we were driving in and like we were getting picked up uh to go to the house we were filming at and uh there wasn't much room and they were like oh I can come back and pick some up he's like no it's okay I'll just hop in the trunk it's fine I'm small I'll fit and he literally just wedged himself like in the back with the luggage you know and he just he just you know he just hadn't it just didn't bother him it just didn't bother him it's not a big deal you know we didn't have this dignity it's like all right demand more of this I want luxury and I'm used to a certain lifestyle it's none of that none of that you know because he just looked at things pausing it's not a big deal who cares in the trunk whatever we'll get there you know and uh and I think that's a that's a clear demonstration of that mindset and then you have people that you know have so much but they're just so such a negative outlook and and then people were so little that have such a positive outlook and I think that's that's exactly uh from from doing doing what you're talking about as and feeding the proper uh Pathways and uh in your brain in the right way so that's great that's a great lesson for people to take away it's so it's so important I love Robert he's great I didn't know that story though that story is awesome what a great guy I can't I met him in New York City uh I was speaking of Keto Symposium we got to hang out and uh he's come to my podcast he's so great I love teams things like that but yeah and it's not woo-woo right there's there's science so people who think like your thoughts can't change your life and we're not just saying just to be a positive thinker because that's not what we're saying we're saying as you control your environment and change your environment it's going to make it easier to be more of a positive person and when you practice gratitude it becomes a lot easier and it's not going to happen over time I'm somebody who was stinking thinking every single day negative hating people depressed suicidal and I'm the complete opposite now I I feel like I'm unstoppable meaning you know I never want bad things to happen to me but if something happens to me it's really happening for me not to me and that's the difference people who have a strong mental six-pack they see everything as happening for them not to them that's what I want for people but the victim mentality is what we've been fed from our school system and mainstream media and that's not the way we want to live our lives we're not a victim we are the victor of Our Lives yeah absolutely I my dad put up a like a little printed out thing I I I'll I'll forget at this point it was like when I was like 10 so it was a long time ago but it was just pretty put it on the fridge in our house and said you know your thoughts become your words your words become your your Deeds your Deeds become your life your life becomes your destiny like you have it starts here with your thoughts and so you have huge huge control over that and um you know and that and and people do think oh it's just it is not you know it really makes a difference how you you know and it's not going to do everything you know you still have to put in the work and things like that but it's a lot easier to put in work when you have a positive outlook and you look at things like hey I I know what I can do here you know I'll just do this I'll do this I'll do this and things will get better and and you and you can easy much more easy to formulate a plan to get yourself out of a bad situation and when you don't have that when you have a negative outlook and you just look at everything what's the point you know nothing I do is going to make a difference anyway you know I'm stuck here you know you know whatever for whatever reason I'm not going to be able to get out of this so you never try like why would you you know and so you know you're just stuck into a prison camp and you're just you're like in um oh gosh I can't remember his name but Victor Frankel yes exactly yeah yeah we wrote uh you know talks about his his time in um in the concentration camps and you talk about the people that had like the negative mindset like wow this is this is really this is going to go and they couldn't really see Beauty in the world anymore those are the ones that died and the ones that survived were the ones that are like had him I was like we're gonna get out of this it's gonna be good and like you know one person like sat there for like hours he emaciated he was dying of starvation by this butterfly landed on his hand he was just just taken by the beauty of this butterfly and just you can still see Beauty in the world you know and there's one guy who um I don't know if this was in the book or another story but there's a guy who's a composer and he and he was composing you know symphonies in his head while he was in in the concentration camps and you know thankful he was able to get out of there and he wrote them down but he wrote like his masterpieces in his head um uh Alexander uh souls in ancient who wrote the gulag archipelago when he was in the prison Kansas the gulags and the prison slave labor camps in the USSR under Stalin um he wrote that whole book in his head while he was there 2700 Pages he wrote in his head and and he would he would recite it back to himself over and over and over again in the pros he want this is why such a brilliantly written book he won a Nobel Prize in literature uh for that and other works but it's it's it's beautifully written you know and um you know and it is really one of the great works of literature and the one one of the great works of of History this is one of the most important books that's ever been written um and he just recited it over to over and over to himself he had rosary beads like he was praying but actually he was like that was how many times he was he was reciting these passes to himself so that he could memorize this whole thing and then by the time he got out that's just that's what his work he was just writing all this stuff down writing this down writing 2700 pages and then getting that out um just amazing and so when you have that purpose in mind I mean these guys are in slave labor camps there's actually and he's seeing they're seeing people die and getting murdered by the guards all the time yeah you could absolutely be next if you have that defeated sort of mindset you know that's sort of it it was actually one one example of um that souls in each and Gabe when they were in this like Lumber camp like in Siberia you know and like it was just this crazy conditions uh and there's this guy and it was just like it was like negative 30 degrees and there's this guy who was out there he didn't have a shirt on just packing away and he was just like loving life and he was just like Cole didn't get him the lack of food didn't get him he's just like you know I love this sort of stuff you know if I wasn't in prison like I'd be doing this anyway like I'm happy like this is great and he and he thrived you know and he was doing great because he's just like yeah this is awesome I love doing this stuff it makes it makes such a huge difference it does those are some amazing Stories I didn't know about those last two stories that's so incredible it's it Les Brown calls it thermostats versus thermometers right a thermometer lets the outside temperature change their internal state but a thermostat sets their temperature and controls the environment right so we want to be more thermostats those guys you mentioned that guy's a thermostat those gentlemen on thermostats they're changing their environment with their internal State yeah absolutely and uh well I think that's great I think that's a great place to to leave that up very positive message that you can absolutely change your life you can do it yeah that you know people have like the the the means to change their life nutritionally and also mentally and I think those are those are basically 97 of of success in a happy life right there so thank you very much for that yeah Anthony it was a great conversation my friend thank you for uh having me and I can't wait to bring you on my show brother I'm very much looking forward to it um and thank you very much for taking the time I do really appreciate it I know we ran a little long and I appreciate you you staying around um Ben how can people get a hold of you how can they follow you how can they they find your work yeah my website uh has been azadi.com it has my podcast on there called the ketokam podcast that has all my social media there's a contact form too my book's there as well so the website's the best place benazadi.com perfect great we'll put that link up in the show notes as well and uh great well Ben thank you so much for coming on it's been an absolute pleasure thank you brother I had a blast cool all right man we'll see you later very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcasts and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you could share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys [Music] thank you