How The Human Body Is Designed To Heal Itself | with Aleksander Omtvedt

[Music] The body's pretty amazing. You can you can actually recover from a lot of damage and it can take time. But I mean I you know I have I have patients you know 60 you know 60 something year old women uh who reverse osteoporosis you know in in a year or less by eating just a strict carnivore diet and uh exercising lifting weights and and things. So you know that's uh that's a dramatic improvement. So, you know, they, you know, it can take time, though, you know, and that's that's the thing that people need to understand. You know, there's no shortcuts. You you walk 10 miles into the woods, you're walking 10 miles out, you know. So, it's not like you just go, "Oh, I'm carnivore now, so everything's perfect." Well, no. You know, you have high blood pressure, you have diabetes, you have other chronic conditions. It will it will take time to undo the damage of of 60 years of eating the wrong thing and damaging your body. And uh but you know the good thing is it doesn't take 60 years to to get that healing. Now there is such a thing as as damage done and some of that damage can be permanent and but the body can heal from so much. It's um it's it's actually quite remarkable. I mean I I've seen neurological recoveries you know decades after a stroke. You know there's a guy named Dave Mack who I've um had on my podcast. He's been on mine and uh and he he's been doing carnivore and he has over 850 interviews. he just interviews. So all these people have had these amazing stories and he had a stroke uh 30 years ago and had you know severe right-sided weakness where he was limping and and had a really bad limp and was he or yeah very very very weak on on you know you know the arm and leg on the right side and um he you know had done ketogenic diets and Atkins and different sorts of things, but he's a very stable neurology on his right side and, you know, couldn't really go up and down stairs very well. Would fall uh very very easily, trip and lose his balance. And then he went carnivore and two months into it, his wife mentioned to him, he's like, "Hey, you're not limping anymore. What's going on?" He's like, "Wait, are you serious? Like, no, videotape me." He's videotaping. He's just walking normally and now he can run up and down stairs. was before he was just clinging onto the rail with his left hand to just desperately try to not fall and he's made this massive neurological recovery 30 years later which is just really what you know any textbook would tell you that's impossible of course yet happened you know and and you have a video he has videotapes of himself you know walking with his daughter and he's got this pronounced limp and multiple videos of this is just that's how he does and then all of a sudden, you know, now he's walking normal. He doesn't have a limp. So, I've seen massive recoveries and he's not he's not 100%. You know, his his right side is still weaker than the left, but it improved enough that it's it doesn't it doesn't slow him down anymore. He's not falling. Yeah. Not But it still sticks with you. Say again. It still sticks with you. Like, okay. like you still have some like related problems but like you can fix maybe 90% or something like Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. For example. Yeah. You still have some residual weakness. 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 Carnivore 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 meatonly products, the more meatonly 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 guys. And and some people will have that and some people, you know, a type 1 diabetic who's who's damaged their beta eyelet cells 20 years ago, probably not going to be able to make insulin again. But there are people in the honeymoon period where they first get diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and then they go on it and they can actually, you know, before those cells are fully dead yet, they can actually pull back from the brink. And I actually have a patient that has just done that. She was um she went to the hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis um uh two months ago and you know was very sick. When she got released from the hospital, her husband who was a patient of mine brought her in and wanted to get like a whole battery of tests done and and go into this and you know think about doing carnivore and and I was I was like look I think it was a good idea. you know, we were already seeing, you know, reports of people that are able to reverse their type 1 diabetes if they catch it early enough and you're, you know, you're a week out from it. So, you know, let's let's just get on this. And so, she did. And she went fully ketogenic, mostly carnivore. Sometimes you had a bit of a slip here, had some, you know, nuts or something like that. And and it would actually just completely mess up her her um blood sugar. And it had a, you know, was linked to a monitor on both of their phones. And so all of a sudden he'd be at work and sees her blood sugar spikes up to 17. He's just like, "Hey, what are you eating? What are you doing?" You know, getting on her. And so, you know, she she did this and she started feeling a lot better. I mean, at first her her blood sugar was all over the place. She was using all sorts of different uh doses of of uh insulin and then she had to go and she would go too low and then she'd have to eat a bunch of sugar and drink sodas to get it back up and then more insulin and it was just playing that stupid game. and um you know and then she just went on a ketogenic carnivore diet and that just leveled right off. And so she would just take a very predictable amount of insulin and then um it was getting more and more controlled. She didn't need as much insulin anymore to use um to to get the same result. And so she well how do we how do we check if this is working? Like okay well we check your ceptide which is you know molecule. So insulin comes together with ceptide and when it gets released it breaks off. So you have insulin and ceptide. But if you just inject insulin, if you just inject insulin, you're only getting the insulin. So you won't get ceptide. So you test the insulin, but you also test the ceptide. So she had normal levels of insulin, but she also had a bit of of ceptide. Okay. So her body is making insulin still. It's at the lower edge of normal, but it was still there. And so we just kept going. And then I saw her a month later. Now she's off all insulin and she has perfect blood sugar control and her uh insulin is actually perfect and she has ceptide and she has more ceptide now. Now she's up in the middle of the range instead of the bottom end of the range. So she's making insulin again. Her body has recovered and um you know as long as she keeps eating the way that she's eating it it she will probably be fine and uh be able to to to live normally. Um and uh so you know certain things you can catch early enough. You know if somebody has uh a developmental issue like autism and you catch it while they're a child and adolescent while the brain is still growing and developing. you can actually you can actually catch up on a lot of things and it may not be exactly as it were if you were eating you know exactly the way that you you know should be biologically and didn't have any sort of insults or injuries or anything like that that um or or chemical exposures that may have pred you know precipitated this. But it can help and it can it can help the the brain sort of develop more um appropriately and uh you know the younger you get somebody with autism or another developmental issue the better you're going to get. Like if you have crooked teeth and a small jaw or something like that and you get them eating properly like your your facial bone structure will start actually growing in a more normal fashion. Yeah. And I felt that myself. Yeah. And um yeah, if you're an adult, you know, these these things are solid. Now, you're going to change your physical appearance because you're going to get cutaneous uh inflammation and uh and fat and things like that alpha there. So, your face is going to trim up and you're going to get more sort of a chiseled sort of appearance. But when you're developing your your bone structure will start to change and improve. So, you know, and then if you're, you know, you have an adult who has autism or a developmental issue, they're going to get improvements, but it may it may not be that they can undo all of that. And if someone has a severe uh learning disability, I I know I have patients that have uh children with severe learning disabilities and like dyslexia or um no like like like um autism or um or maybe like a brain injury like a traumatic brain injury um you know from like an accident or something like that as a child and um you know like a car accident or something like that. and um uh or you know uh some a brain injury of some other other description. And you know they will they will be the way they've been for a long time and then all of a sudden they changed their diet and and there's you it's not going to all of a sudden undo all of that damage. But you know you get these very positive improvements sometimes things calm down a bit more settled. They they they understand things a bit a bit better. um they're able to communicate a little better. Um you know, one one patient's daughter was completely non-verbal, hadn't spoken in years since since the accident. And all of a sudden, she's sort of making, you know, sort of grunting noises and trying sort of you see like she's appearing to try to speak and try to communicate even though it's not really u you fully formed, there's still that attempt and there hasn't been an attempt in years, you know. So, you know, things like that, you know, you can see you can you can still see improvements even though they they you know, it may not be as much as you would want. So, there's definitely, you know, things there's definitely a thing called damage done and um you can only undo a certain amount, but some people can can undo a lot and and sometimes that that healing can be very significant. And so it's just it's just a matter of um you know seeing seeing what happens and uh how you do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good answer. Yeah. But you know it can improve everybody. I mean there's never there's never a bad time to stop eating poison, right? You know, I had um I had a friend of mine. She's a she's a doctor here in Western Australia. She's a general practitioner and um she worked with geriatric populations and she had this gentleman who was 86 years old and he just really couldn't care for himself anymore at home and and his family couldn't care for him and so he had to check himself into a nursing home and he basically you know his mind he was going there to to wait for death basically which is a pretty grim sort of reality and um then he he came across a carnivore diet and you know just just sort of a lastditch effort to improve his life and to get some independence back. He went on it and within 3 months he was back living at home independently. Wow. Was working out three days a week, swimming twice a week and he was off all medications. Really massive improvement. Massive improvement. And and that was at 86, you know. So now this guy has has a completely new lease on life and and and many many many more happy healthy years of of independence left to him. So you know and hopefully decades but you know it's uh just just getting him home and getting him improved is is just amazing. you know, a friend of mine, Hal Cranmer, has nursing homes in Arizona, and he is is putting these same approaches um in with his his nursing home patients and he's getting a lot of improvements for them as well. He's actually been getting uh several of them home also. So, it's just like, yeah, she's healthy. We don't need to no need to keep mom in in the home. We can take, you know, in the nursing home, we can take her back with us, which is great. You know, that's exactly what you want. So, yeah. No, it it can help anybody at any stage. Okay. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I was going to ask you also about this about traveling because it's not so easy when you're traveling and it's like also like the social aspect about the carnivore. It's like Yeah. When you're out to the bar at the social event is like every day is not no problem because then you just buy the beef and then you just eat it and the eggs. Mhm. Yeah. It's not so easy, I think, with um normal life and you meet well normal people here. Yeah. Hey everyone, really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show for everybody down in Australia, Stockman Steaks, who are delivering high quality grass-fed and finished pasture-raised beef and other meats flash frozen and vacuum sealed to your door. Something I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well. They also have a great range of specialty items such as highfat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver, kidneys, and beef art as well. So, use code chaffy today for a free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at stockmanstakess.com.au and I'll see you over there. Thanks, guys. Yeah. Well, you know, you get used to it, you know, and you know, I I never drank during the rugby season. Well, I stopped drinking during the rugby season, you know, when I was 21. And I, you know, I just felt so much better doing that. I I played so much better that, you know, I was just like, yeah, I just can't do this. And so I just didn't didn't drink during the rugby season. And just everyone got used to it. I'd still go to the bar, still hang out. I was just drinking water. I was still, you know, after after the initial awkwardness of it. Um, I I got used to it and actually preferred being out sober because I could actually think. I could actually have and remember conversations. I could drive home. I wasn't spending hundreds of dollars, you know, boozing and doing all that sort of stuff, which you know, was a bit of a waste of money anyway. And um, you know, even if I didn't drink for months or even years, I would still have a very high tolerance. It would still take 15 to 20 drinks just to get me, you know, drunk. And um, don't you lose the tolerance or Sorry. Don't you lose the tolerance if you never drink? Like then you need like less dosages to get high or get you should. Yeah, it'd be nice if I did, but no, it didn't. It wasn't that I had a tolerance because I, you know, built it up from drinking so much. It's just my body just burns this stuff up really quickly and so it just doesn't affect me very much. And so, you know, I would um I would have to drink a lot and and and I hated that, too, because it just like was just I knew it was causing so much damage to my body. the other people would have like four or five drinks and just having a great time. Like I I'd need 14, you know, to get to that same level. And you're big, I think. So, yeah, just poisoning myself and yeah, I'm just a big guy and my a good liver, I guess, you know, and so it would uh it would it would take a lot. It would cost a lot. I knew it was damaging my body and that bugged the hell out of me and um you know so yeah it it it was actually nice when I stopped drinking during the rugby season and could go out and when I got used to it yeah it was weird at first you know but after a few times going out I actually preferred it and uh yeah it was great and I I still had the same amount of fun you know I did the main thing about getting drunk is that you just you get disinhibited and you just sort of let loose and cool out and have a good time and say stupid things and make dumb jokes and and just enjoy yourself. And then all of a sudden being in that environment around other people in that spirit, I could do it too. You know, I was just I was just there having fun and there wasn't there wasn't a problem. Um traveling, you know, there's always there's unless you go to a vegan restaurant, there's always meat on the menu. You can always get something. You you can even just go McDonald's and get the burger patties. Um they do it in a panini press. They don't use seed oils or anything like that. Burger King, they flame grill it. Um, and um, you know, so, you know, you could you could do that in a pinch. You know, it's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. And, um, you know, just order like a regular plate and just eat the meat and maybe that's it. That's exactly it, you know. So, there's always something, you know, and so you order the fish, you order the chicken, you order the beef, you order whatever, and you just eat that and you just just forget the side. So, I mean, I I travel a lot and um, you know, I I don't I don't really have a problem. It's really about, you know, if you're if you're determined to do this um because this is just how you feel the best and you don't you don't want any of that stuff in your body, you know, you work around it. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like anything else, like if you if you have a good reason why not to do something, you know, it's you'll figure out, you know, how to do. But how you see in Game of Thrones? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know what Cersei says when she blows up that building with all the like preachers and the priests? Oh, yeah. What's that? A lion doesn't care himself with the opinion of a sheep. A lion doesn't um say he doesn't care himself with the opinion of a sheep. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That was kind of Yeah. Cool expression. Yeah. I was I was thinking about that when she said that. That was kind of a cool thing to say. Yeah. Like the Lannister used always used to say that like they have like different post during the series about this and they used to say it because everybody hated him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty hard line. Uh yeah, that's the thing, you know, you just if you have a good reason why you're doing something, you know, and you have, you know, then then you'll just do it. It's not that big a deal. And you know I I you know if I'm on a plane and you know sometimes I'm on these planes for 15 hours 16 hours and and that's just in the plane in the air but you know they won't have any meals that I really want. I mean maybe I could pick out a couple pieces of meat but it almost just doesn't seem worth it because I've got this just tray in front of me and I'm not eating any of it. It's just sort of a waste and it's just like I'm just not going to eat it. I'd rather I would rather not eat anything than eat garbage that's bad for me. Yeah. And fasting is not bad anyway, sir. No, it's not. And you we're we're of course we're used to doing it. We don't, you know, we don't have to eat multiple times a day. We go days without eating and do just fine. And you know, eventually it'll it'll be too much. But, you know, if you if you don't have anything good to eat, don't eat. You know, if you're if you're actually in a famine and you're starving and, you know, you don't have access to, you know, good quality meat, fine. you know, any port in a storm uh for survival. But, you know, if you're just on a plane somewhere, you're just like, "Okay, well, I don't have anything to eat today." Fine, you're not starving. You know, just get something tomorrow. Okay, you're going to be here for two days. You know, you can find a McDonald's. You can get something here or there and, you know, go to Safeway and just just eat a raw steak as long as it's not contaminated. You know, it's like I've done that. You know, that's something that I've done. It's just like, you know, or or get a ham, you know, like a like a like a saltcured ham and uh and just eat that, you know. I went camping. I just bought a big ass ham and a chunk of butter and that's what I ate. I had a big slice of butter with a big chunk of ham and I would just just eat these, you know, these ham and butter, you know, hand. The ham is like a pork, isn't it? It is. Yeah. It's like a pork leg and it has fat on it. It's otherwise pretty lean. But isn't like ham like a worse piece of meat than the rest or Yeah. Well, you know, it's um it's it's it depends. You know, if you have autoimmune issue, you probably avoid pork and things like that, but it depends on what it's fed. You know, if it's fed a bunch of like corn and soy, you know, that's that's not ideal. But um it's not you know it it's still meat you know it's better than eating spinach you know and so you know so the thing is is like you know even if you don't have your perfect ideal meal you know you have options you know so like I was out in the middle of the bush in Australia camping and and I had a whole bunch of meat in a cooler and I' I'd cut up steaks and then I'd put them on a skewer and just roast them over the over the fire like marshmallows. It was amazing. It was amazing. Yeah. And yeah, you know, then I ran out of that. And so I was like, you know, going to the store and they didn't really have um you know, uh the sort of the beef that I wanted, but they had these big ham legs. I'm like, done. Grab a big ham, a chunk of butter and um you know, cut off big chunks of this stuff. And that's what I ate for, you know, few days and it's fine. You know, you you figure it out. But doesn't it get heavy like if you're hiking for like 5 days because you have to carry all the meat or No, it's uh Well, you know, it's very nutrientdense. I mean, obviously you're getting like a bunch of rice that you add water to. You know, that that's pretty easy, but you know, if you're getting like um you know, I wasn't I wasn't just backpacking. I was uh I was out with my car and so I was camping. Yeah. Yeah. So, I could leave I could leave um that stuff in the cooler and and then I would I would go out and I'd do different hikes and all that sort of stuff and then go out in nature. But, you know, if you're going to if you're going to um go backpacking, what you want want to make is pemkin because pemkin is what the the Native Americans ate and they would dry uh meat from, you know, the buffalo, the American buffalo bison, and they dry it out and they crush it up with big stones and powder it. And then they'd render all the fat because they actually do have a lot of fat on the on the outside, the subcutaneous fat, and they have intramdominal fat. It's just they don't have intramuscular fat because they're actually healthy animals. Intramuscular fat is unhealthy. That's myostattosis, and it's a pathological sign of of metabolic ill health. And so you don't want that, right, as a as an animal. So these wild animals actually do have a lot of fat. It's just a subcutaneous fat and intraabdominal fat. And so you take all that fat, you render it down, and you take that rendered fat like that tallow, and you mix it in with the ground up uh dried uh beef or buffalo or whatever, and at a 50/50 mix, you know, weight of tallow and dried meat. And that lasts for years. You know, they found they found as long as you store it right, it it can last for years without preservatives or refrigeration. They found caches of these things um from the Revolutionary War in America that were from 50 years earlier and they were all fine. And um so the the Native Americans would they would make pemkin out of this entire buffalo herd that would fall off that would get scared off of a cliff and that's what they'd eat for the rest of the year until the herds came back and they had another big hunt and and did it again. And so you can take this stuff out. It's actually extremely nutritious. It's perfect nutrition. It's 2 g of fat to 1 gram of protein. So, it's very rich in fat. It's a very good fat content and fat ratio. And it has um for 3/4 of a pound, if I remember when I calculated this out correctly, 3/4 of a pound are um is about 2,000 calories of perfect nutrition. Right? So, let's pretend that you need 2,000 calories a day, which, you know, some people do, some people don't. Um, if you're if you're out camping or backpacking, 10 pounds of pack weight is 14 days of perfect nutrition. Yeah. 2,000 calories a day. So, it's actually it's actually pretty great. So, you know, if you're Yeah, that's that's the definitely the biggest bang for your buck. It's going to be the best nutrition that you'll ever be able to get. Best energy, best nutrition. You know, fat is much more um energy dense. It's way more energy dense than carbohydrates. So, you're having bags of honey, carbs, and all that sort of stuff. You still get way more calorie per gram of fat than you do per gram of of carbohydrates. Yeah. Because what's really cool about Norway, we have like this tourist association. I'm from the country. So then we have like six I think it's um that's 600 cabins that go like all the way all around Norway and then you can just travel from cabin to cabin to cabin and you don't need to have like almost like a drinking bottle etc. You just like drink the drink the water from the waterfalls. So you just have to meet you don't have anything you don't have like anything you can just go from high cabin to cabin. So you just travel for weeks really. Yeah. Cool. That's really cool. Yeah. But it's like Yeah. It's like um what can you say? Like it's smart to have a tent, but I don't think you really need it. But at least if you're traveling in the summer. So yeah. So is it is it are these cabins like just available for anybody to stay at or do you have to book them and reserve them or how does that work? Um like yes and no. Like you can book them like like the cabins outside the capital for example is like almost full but if you travel like inside the country you just travel from place to place. That's really really cool. Like um we have like 6,000 hikes in Norway like different trails. You can just follow the trails and then you can go to the cabin to cabin to cabin. Then you meet a lot of other travelers travelers who are doing the same. You just meet them and you hike during the day and then at the evening you just sit and relax and meet some people and that's kind of what you do in the summer. Yeah. Cool. No, that's awesome. So yeah, especially when you have like all all these waterfalls and stuff like you don't like water is not problem for you and like the temperature is good. It's like in the summer it's like 15 degrees. So yeah, you can travel as long as your health or your body cooperates I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that'd be great. I'd love to do that to do, you know, hike over over Norway. That'd be amazing. That's such a gorgeous country. Yeah. Yeah. I think you recommended to do it. Like we have like a lot of tourism coming here. So like in Stonger it's like 700,000 tourists coming here and we're like 150,000 people. So imagine like all these tourists coming here to see the FJS and everything. Yeah. So yeah, that's what kind of the the cool people do like they travel just from Kevin to cabin just travel for weeks. Yeah. And then you just meet some people and you have like a really cool conversations and like you don't use phone or something. You just like maybe have like a compass and map and maybe some Yeah. Then you just follow the trailer. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Well, Alexander, I I really appreciate you taking the time. It was a real pleasure talking to you and u honor for me. Yeah. I really appreciate it and it's great to hear your story and you know from that perspective you know this carnivore diet doesn't just help uh you know people that are sick or or you know in athletics or whatever it just it just helps people live their life and whatever they want to do in their academic and professional endeavors. So thank you very much for sharing your story. I really appreciate it. Especially for yeah playing chess and like for brain performance like for exams or something or if you just want to like push your brain for like three weeks or something. I think it's just for the study energy. Yeah. Yeah. Studying, you know, people, you know, you know, people studying for exams and studying for the MCATs and, you know, board exams. This just helps your brain work and and helps you buckle down and stay focused and uh and be able to get your work done and and in a way that's not uh depressing and horrible and burn and burns you out. So, it's really good. I had some friends that were really into hunting and uh you know I wanted to go out with them but I just haven't sort of made it out. Everything's just a bit busy. I don't know the rules of hunting in Australia. I think you have to you know you know somebody who has a farm and be able to go out there and you can sort of hunt on the land. Yeah. And um so I think you can hunt kangaroo and and things like that. And I know people who on kangaroo,