Physicist Turns To Carnivore Diet And This Happens... | Ally Houston

as a physicist you just tell people the information if it's true information and you know you can show the studies of course they'll just do it no so now I'm trained as a health coach and I understand that people are coming at it from all different angles all different directions in the last uh in the last few years that's been a huge part of it for me is building a practice which recognizes that you have to kind of Meet the meet the human where they at hey everyone this uh Dr Anthony chaffy here with another episode of plant-free MD podcast and today I have a special guest out Houston who's joining us over from uh I think Scotland is that right that is absolutely right I'm in Glasgow Scotland oh lovely so um yeah can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background and what you do yes um just want to say thanks very much for getting me on really appreciate it I've been following what you've been doing with the plant for MD and I think uh it's brilliant to see someone who's you know a careful advocate of um good science who doesn't overstate things who uh holds up good evidence you know I think they're not necessarily over represented in in any camp or area so I appreciate you well not a problem thank you very much I appreciate that yeah so um I'm a health coach metabolic mental health coach to give it the full Sunday title but I started out as a physicist and engineer and I've had really nasty health problems for most of my life you know from when I was a kid I had autoimmune diseases I needed surgery a couple of times for one of them where my esophagus closed up it's called easia of the cardia it's very rare in children I was part of a a study to look at this internationally in children and had a couple of balloon dilations because like much of modern medicine it was really about instead of understanding a root cause uh kind of having a surgical or or medical um solution that patches over and you know seasonal Depression was there throughout my life chronic anxiety which was really really bad I got an ADHD diagnosis as an adult and uh was put on rlin for that and um yeah the the other autoimmune disease I had was called sarcoidosis where I had these kind of Target shaped rashes on my my skin and also uh as a part of a followup that I would get for testicular cancer that I had when I was a teenager uh I had shadow on the lung which they had to investigate and turned out to be more sarcoidosis so I was not a well person and throughout my 20s I gradually had problems with my weight as well and i' started a PhD in physics uh round about 10 years ago now and I was unable to function at the level that I knew I could mentally you know I'd I'd struggled with my health even when I was doing my undergraduate degree really I was falling asleep in the afternoons and I was unable to work then but I still managed to get a good degree and uh worked in industry for a few years and decided that PhD would be the thing so I started this PhD in gravitational wave physics was really underperforming and um my weight was fluctuating in a way that I didn't like plus I still had all the problems of chronic anxiety seasonal depression and so on and I was quite fortunate uh in a sense that one of my supervisors a physics Professor who's just recently retired early called uh Ken strain he had healed his chronic fatigue syndrome Me by changing how he ate so he was told in his early 40s that he probably couldn't work again you know he was more or less bedridden R terrible brain fog couldn't walk more than about um 50 yards without collapsing and he did what he does best which is research came across Gary TOS good calories bad calories and changed to a low carb diet and within six months he was running 10ks again so he over the next years developed this side line as well as being a kind of eminent physics professor in nutrition and so he'd already gone down these rabbit holes when I came along as a a sort of promising student who was clearly underperforming couldn't think clearly uh couldn't articulate my thoughts very well all the time and wanted to do well but was kind of hitting this bottleneck and Ken said you know there might be a couple of things going on here there might be a deficiency there might be um given my history of autoimmune you know it could be pernicious anemia or something around B12 and he would he wouldn't evangelize about it that's not his style at all but he would say these strange things that got me curious like wheat isn't food or nobody should be eating margarine or I only eat once a day and most of it is fatty meat and you know if it wasn't a physics Professor who was saying these things I think I would have struggled to take them seriously which kind of shows me up as the intellectual snob that I probably am a little bit but at the same time I thought well this this is someone who's coming from a field where you have have to be super sure of what you're saying and the science has to be uh really nailed down before you publish and he's saying these things so I started asking him where I could read more so he was he was uh telling me about hyper lipid the uh the amazing blog that Peter Dober milsky has been been doing for 20 years or so and I read that a couple of times back to front um I found out about Tucker goodrich's blog uh into 2016 and read that back back to front as well you know all the stuff that he'd got on to with seed doils originally from Stefan gu and uh right into the sort of corners of the carnivore world like zero carbs in and these communities which existed back then and other people and particularly around mental health like Georgia Eid who had diagnosis diet at the time and that was very helpful full of you know simple articles that stated the science as she saw it and I very quickly decided Well I'm going to try this but I didn't really think at the time that it would affect my mental health the way it did I thought I'd be thinner and maybe supplementing a bit could help with the brain fog but what happened was I switched to a kind of paleo keto diet ultimately paleo initially keto where I did have butter and cream uh and then within weeks the issues that I had cleared up so my anxiety dropped down to almost zero um the ADHD symptoms more or less went away you know I didn't have that brain fog anymore it felt like had access to my my brain again and my mood lifted and when I I did that in March 2016 when it came around to winter again I kind of feared the Jugger not coming you know this seasonal depression which had affected me my whole life and it just didn't come it it didn't appear at all and I was thin and I was able to control my weight properly and so and I didn't feel hungry you know it was all all these amazing things that you hear from uh people in in this community and I kind of post facto try to understand the science uh more deeply by reading things like hyper lipid and getting into the the papers on Pub Med you know the the sort of search engine for for medical literature and moved away from the physics and began to think well how how can I how can I help people to do what I did and uh fast forward what is it now seven years and I'm doing what was the most profound and cherished change for me in my mental health I'm I metabolic mental health coach helping people to do the same thing for theirs so it's been a bit of a journey you know I've I've I've had some uh I made food for people uh initially I made meals and sent them around and and and did popup restaurants and tried to get the word out there I did I did a cookbook with the forward by Dr David Unwin um I I basically just decided I've had my damine moment I need to go out there and um tell the world about it and I'm sure a lot of people feel like that but for me that was the thing it was the it was the mental health it was having my brain back which was which was so powerful yeah well it's amazing man like and that's um well it's just great that you were able to find something that that got your health back and got you doing something that you're very passionate about so you've been coaching for seven years now so informally really from the GetGo anyone who wanted information or um kind of advice I would I would happily give it and part of my kind of transformation if you like I sometimes call myself a recovering physicist has been to realize that people don't necessarily want unsolicited advice in fact they hate it so as a physicist you know you can think of like a a typical physicist maybe like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory or something you know like uh someone open a window it's about to get smug in here there's like a a kind of mode of thinking that is very often attached to physicists which is completely understandable because they have such a they tend to have the top ones tend to have such a powerful grasp of logic that if the if the world can't be described in that way if a particular thing can't be described in that way then they're likely to just discount it as non-information or bad information silly woo woo all of these words and actually I think you kind of throw the baby out with the bath water it's not either or it's both and and so I formalized my transformation into a coach with a diploma level coaching uh certificate from Precure which is a really cool company out in New Zealand run by Grant and Louis scoffield Public Health professors and I was stunned when I started my training because they are Advocates of low carb eating for uh metabolic health I was stunned that they said almost you mustn't give advice unless people ask and so this this uh kind of um bolted on this set of skills which I thought I didn't need you know as a physicist you just tell people the information if it's true information and you know you can show the studies of course they'll just do it no and so now I'm trained as a health coach and I understand that people are coming at it from all different angles all different directions and in the last uh in the last few years that's been a huge part of it for me is building a practice which recognizes that you have to kind of Meet the meet the human where they're at like take an example for my own life I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes it helped I think with kind of regulating my emotional landscape and um my attention when these things were a problem and it got really bad I lived in China for a year teaching English and I was smoking 40 a day it's like a it's like a it's almost like a uh uh a a sort of national service over there uh everyone one does it I saw a doctor smoking in in a hospital Corridor um but yeah I I didn't quit smoking in 2014 before I changed my diet because I knew it would probably kill me of course I knew it would probably kill me I had the information I quit because I read a scientific article which said that when smokers are smoking 80% of their dopamine comes from the nicotine and it Disturbed me to find out that I was regulating my attention and my emotional landscape externally and so I quit but nobody could know that about me unless they asked and similarly you know if you are speaking to an ill vegan or even just an ill person who eats in whatever way they eat you got absolutely no idea why they eat what they eat you know there's so many things things that can that can be in that like their family culture when they were growing up things that their parents would say to them around food their actual personal preferences around food which are so individual and unique and I think that typifies the the kind of important work of coaches and what we used to get called bedside manner doctors it's like a gearing it's like a conversion from this the hard scientific facts to the human being and I think you need that in order to make a proper connection yeah so what sort of um people are you helping these days is it is it just anybody looking to try to you know just just get onto a ketogenic diet specific you know I know you mentioned that you um when we were talking online that you work with uh you know Dr Rachel Brown who who's been a guest of this podcast as well and obviously she's a she's a consultant psychiatrist in in Scotland um so what what sort of client what sort of people do you do you help coach and and what is your work with Dr Brown yeah so um s starting with the the latter question um Rachel Brown's a brilliant psychiatrist Works in Emer Mercy Care Psychiatry which is a really hard Cal phase to work at people coming in with you know florid delusions and psychoses and suicidal ideation and um it's I think it's it's interesting to know that she's an advocate for metabolic mental health coming from that background um and in fact she's she's just treated a patient and um who she recommended a ketogenic diet to who has improved massively and um that may be the first ever metabolically mentally mental health treated patient in the in the NHS a kind of monumental moment I think for for Rachel yeah and uh you know it coincides with the study going on at Edinburgh University with Dr Ian Campbell on ketogenic diets for bipolar um so hopefully hopefully Scotland and the UK can become quite a Pioneer in this but um Rachel and I have seen a need for uh an interface for doctors and individuals who you know have a problem with their their mental health to get the support that they need so that's what we provide we've got a website called mets.com MEPS Y and ultimately it'll be an app too and it's to coach people to better mental health using the principles of metabolic Psychiatry so this idea that Georgia Eid you know stealing her joke which I do all the time Studies have shown conclusively that the head is part of the body and you know the your your brain's metabolism is is very very similar to the rest of the body's metabolism so if you get that dialed in then you're going to be doing well and at least if you've got things like trauma or um psychological issues that you need to work through having a solid platform metabolically is I think where you want to start anyway so Rachel and I provide this coaching service for people whether they've got a diagnosed mental disorder or not whether they just want to tune up mentally and some support about what this information is and maybe a bit of accountability to help them away from addiction food addiction and that kind of thing all the way through to clinicians who want to offer this as a kind of signpost to their patients you know maybe they've got treatment resistant uh mental disorders that they they they just can't provide a service to their patients for so we've already um started onboarding um doctor practices who want to run small group sessions with us and I coach one to one and that's not something Rachel does but I coach one to one uh worldwide and um we're we're currently got a waiting list for small group sessions and in the longer term we're uh launching the mental power course which is going to be a kind of off the-shelf course so that people can get all this information all that good phys physics kind of not physics information but all that sort of Left Brain scientific knowledge that they need that's translated for the lay person through accessible videos that Rachel and I are doing with each other and with experts and areas such as addiction and um you know carnivore and paleo and that kind of thing um and some live Q&A time so they'll be they they're all the options and uh yeah uh I forget what you what you asked before my wife yeah yeah you some of it were people with psychiatric issues but not not necessarily everyone exactly yeah that was it who's it for so um I think the only kind of exclusions would be if someone's going through a mental health crisis whatever that means for them or they have acute Suicidal Thoughts then coaching's probably not the best road um I think it's important to state that it doesn't seem from the work that other clinicians have done so far that the ketogenic diet helps everyone and so it's important that people work with their prescriber if they've got a diagnosed mental disorder that they are prescribed medication for then fortunately for the people who it does work a ketogenic diet they often need to taper quite rapidly away from these uh these drugs and um that can be on a you know a few days time scale so you know we've noticed with people been coaching that they they they need to sort of rapidly deprescribe sometimes which is great um but I wouldn't necessarily recommend just doing it yourself and not telling your prescriber you know so there's these kind of guard rails but that leaves quite a broad range of people that that that we think we can help which is great yeah absolutely and so so what are some of the the psychiatric illnesses that have that you and and Rachel has seen uh you know be able to help you know you know properly with a ketogenic diet and getting people off medications what are some of the some of the success stories you've had yeah so um besides mine around you know chronic anxiety which we know multiple mechanisms for why a ketogenic that can help with anxiety you know just dampens right down the um all sorts of responses to different types of food but you know even people who don't go keto they maybe just go paleo or Whole Foods they they notice that when they when they cut out the refined sugar then the anxiety tends to dampen down loads um you know treatment resistant depression is an interesting one because and and bipolar you know where you've got the the sort of hypomania Mania and uh and deep depressions because you know these depressive states are often described by the people who suffer from them as feeling like they're drowning like they're underwater and um Ian Campbell's work is fantastic on this you know uh Ian um spoke at the public health collaboration meeting that Rachel and I were at in Edinburgh recently and he presented some of his findings from the pilot study that he's been doing and there's actually biomarkers that he's identified now as um you know metabolic signs that depression is there in a in a a bipolar patient and so he's starting to really pin down the cause and effect thing going on here with uh you know improving your mental health through metabolism so depression is a very exciting area there there um and obviously anxiety and depression are two of the the sort of biggest mental disorders that we have we have in the world um I mean Amber her's been on my podcast a couple of times and and and she's kind of a an anecdote that I uh I go back to over and over again thinking about the kind of clinical experience of people like Georg Eid and Chris pmer who kind of say that a third of people he genic it seems to almost send everything into remission it's like a kind of Miracle almost uh give people their lives back third of people it seems to help somewhat but it's not quite like that and then a third of people it doesn't seem to help at all in their experience but of course there's so many different configurations of a ketogenic diet and um that kind of description doesn't say on which time scales it's working and you know there's a few variables hidden in in that and of course we're still just talking about a fairly small um clinical data set you know it's not it's not massive trials yet so thinking about amber' herin and how she was on a ketogenic diet for a number of years without Improvement to her bipolar and then um it was carnivore that pushed her into remission so um certainly anxiety depression bipolar there's some fascinating stuff in the literature prior to uh you know us working with people around schizophrenia and psychosis but Rachel's patient that I referred to who she treated recently had psychoses and they seem to have gone away so metabolic mental health can affect psychosis um it's not it's not clear what the mech Mech ISM might be for that one um there's probably multiple things going on but there's some really interesting interv small Interventional studies on uh on gluten and uh schizophrenia where people with schizophrenia came away from gluten stopped eating it at all and their psychoses dampened right down or went away and even though that happened some of them started eating again it's a hard thing to give up and The psychosis came back so um I think there's a lot to be said for those types of mental disorders you know um some of the some of the aggravation in autism spectrum disorder and certainly uh psychosis where gluten and sometimes casine from dairy can be heavily implicated especially with cas where there's already damage in the gut from gluten so how are we doing we've got anxiety depression bipolar schizophrenia autism spectrum disorder um it's broad spectrum how how it helps people because the gut and the metabolism are just so fundamental this is something that appealed to me from the very start as someone who studied physics and and had to apply it in industry and then um when I was you know trying to do my PhD work in the lab is that you're always trying to be as lazy as you possibly can and get away with it you're trying to find the most Upstream thing you can what is the the root cause here because if I can get that then I'll have an easy life and and the gut and how you fuel your uh mitochondria that is about as Upstream as you can get you know you've got between your mouth and your small intestine but okay and everything else in the body is Downstream of that M yeah true um that was interesting I hadn't heard that about that connection with casan and autism spectrum story can you can you talk a little more about that yeah so the the literature is is not as welldeveloped as I would like to see it my kind of touch point for that was um the work of a Norwegian Doctor Who I think has passed away now called CI reichelt and he looked at the um the level of peptides [Music] in I want to say I want to say the urine but he may have looked at the blood too um over time after exposure to certain foods and so he found that um you know so autism spectrum disorder is a developmental Disorder so it's a neurodevelopment neurodevelopmental disorder so when someone has it they have it I don't think he or or anyone responsible would say that you can um you can get you know meaningful total remission from it it's just it's it's something that happened during the development of the child and then um you know you know had brings with it certain symptoms but what you found was that if uh gluten and casine free diet was very strictly adhered to that the symptoms associated with the autism spectrum disorder would be um greatly alleviated if not totally alleviated and it made the lives of the of the kids and the and the parents a lot easier because socialization was easier and um the the the kids just didn't feel as uh isolated uncomfortable uh in pain etc etc etc and he he he was able to measure the the level of uh gluten and casine peptides over the course of weeks and months and he found that even a single meal containing some normal amounts of casine and gluten could produce a signature in the urine I believe over weeks and his hypothesis was that they were circulating in the body for that time causing assault whether that was in the gut or in the brain or both and that um it aggravated the symptoms so there if you look for reichelt on uh on Pub Med you'll find some of his Publications and then obviously you know you can then go down the rabbit hole of who's that who was that cited by and who did he site and and all the rest of it and make up your own mind but to me uh there's a there's a very clear sharp signal around Dairy which unfortunately doesn't get picked up too much in in the keto or carniv War community that the it can cause real problems for people especially if they're already kind of hey everyone if you need a little extra help getting started on a carnivore diet and my online resources that I have for free aren't enough for you you can go to www.how carnivore docomond carnivore challenge where you'll have online Resources Group support weekly Zoom meetings as well as the ability to chat live with myself Simon Lewis and the others in the challenge who can help you and support you and give you extra advice and help you along the way so if that sounds like something that would be beneficial to you then please go to how carnivore docomo immune issues um like I don't I don't really have a problem with dairy myself but I do notice that that people with autoimmune issues seem to have seem to struggle with dairy and and like you like you mentioned it often is worse when their guts damage so when they come early on to a carnivore diet they seem to really not be able to tolerate Dairy really all then 6 months down the road when ostensibly you know the guts had time to heal they seem to see they seem to tolerated a bit more and so by simple you know Act of observation you know i' I've come to recommend that saying Hey try to be as strict as you can for the first of six months or so and then maybe if you if you need to if you feel the need to you can sort of introduce those things back in and see how they they uh they go but um yeah that's interesting I hadn't heard that with with autism before that's very interesting um I had um you when you're talking about um Amro Hearn I didn't know that about her how how she was struggling with her her mental health um and keto wasn't really helping but then she found resolution on Carnivore I noticed a similar thing just with myself I you know I get you know periodic issues with depression just runs my family and uh you know normally it's it's manageable but sometimes it gets worse than others uh haven't had an issue with that uh when I'm been on Carnivore but I did notice that when I was just coming back into carnivore sort of five six years ago I was um I guess I was basically doing keto you know because I was just eating veggies and eating meat but I wasn't eating anything else it wasn't like I was I was you know doing keto consciously I just wasn't eating carbs and sugar and alcohol and things like that and you know I didn't feel great I didn't feel wonderful and then I dropped the the greens I felt amazing my mental health and mental Clarity really really changed dramatically and then I noticed sort of a few months into it my parents wanted to try it and so I was helping them with that and so my mom uh really loves cooking and so she was cooking this big lamb roast and she just C and that her workaround was to just cover this thing in every single herb and seasoning that she find it was it was literally a green log like that's what it was it wasn't even like you know just had it it was green it was a green lump of lamb and I was like mom you know like the old point is not supposed to have plants like plants have things that aren't that aren't good for you it's like oh no no no we're not we're not having any plants it's just it's just the meat it's just the meat I was just like yeah it counts if it's on the meat you know like you can tip a bag of cocaine in your coffee oh no it's just coffee but like you know there's something and so so we ended up having that I remember like being really sort of you know resistant to it and I was thinking I was like maybe I should just try to scrape this stuff off I really don't want this stuff but I I was still you know a bit more self-conscious back then and I didn't want to be rude and I didn't want to sort of it was you know stuck on there just been cooked onto it and so I thought well you know maybe you just eat it and not make a make a fuss and and then just see and I'll see you know what what that does to me I was so upset and so depressed for the rest of the day just just from those little greens that were on this thing um to the point that I I was just I couldn't I couldn't deal with the dinner table conversation I was getting so aggravated and so upset by very normal things looking back that you know my family were saying I was just getting so bent out of shape U very unreasonably and and I recognized this unreasonably but I was getting so upset and I remember I remember actually just being down in my room and being so angry and so depressed and so upset that I became suicidal and I was I was actually contemp not even contemplating I was planning my demise I was saying this is how I'm going to do it I have I have a gun in a safe I'm going to do this and then I remember I remember thinking like well I don't want to like you know because I I was helping my parents out with some health issues so I was staying in their house and like my room was right below them like well I don't want this to go off and then have a bullet go through and hit my parents or or have scare the hell out of them with some big loud noise so I'm actually thinking this and all of a sudden it just like came to my senses I'm like why the hell am I thinking this like I you know I I I don't you know nothing happened that was so bad that I should be wanting to die but that is how I feel and that is what that is what I want and so I I recognized at that point that this was this was pathological that there was that there was something going on with my brain chemistry that was that was causing me to feel this way I was like okay I don't know what the hell's going on here but I'm just going to sleep on this and and if I feel the same way and I want to kill myself in the morning then I'll do it then you know and I'll just do that and I woke up in the morning and I was just emotionally numb I did not feel like doing that anymore and thankfully and I remember just just waking up the first thing I thought was what the hell was that about and I I thought back to the conversation I thought back to uh to everything that went on I was like there's nothing there was nothing that should have set me off like that there's nothing that should have made me feel that way and I remember thinking I was like did I just completely overreact what was going on or was there something in those stupid herbs so I was like what you know one way to find out and so I just went I went and had a couple more pieces of the lamb and I was absolutely depressed the rest of the day and so but but I understood why at that point and so even was upset and I was out of been out of shape I was just like okay this is what's going on and I and I can focus my eye or where where it belongs these damn plants and so I was just like right well I'm never touching these stupid things again and um and that and that's the funny thing you know people say like well how do you how are you so how are you so disciplined you know it takes a lot of willpower and discipline to like just eat EXA just just meat and water I'm like it takes no discipline at all I have so much aversion to these things because I've seen the other side and I've seen what I'm like without it and I'm like I want absolutely nothing to do with that now I was never getting that depressed prev viously so what I attribute that to is that I was away from this stuff for a long time previously I built up a tolerance I built up a an immunity to this stuff and so it was just this was just normal background noise and i' learned how to cope with it but then being away from it for a while and having very good mental health coming back to it it hit me much harder and um and I wasn't used to it and my defenses had gone down my tolerance had gone down and I've noticed that since then I was traveling in in Vietnam and um and I went out with someone who was hosting me there which is like an Airbnb but they were like like oh we'll show you around and things like that and got some some meat stuff but it was like mixed in with some greens I was like U I don't want to be rude I'll just have a few pieces and um and so I did and I was I was very upset and very depressed you know but I but I understood why now that I know that you know I can I can deal with a lot better I just I just feel sad and I feel upset and it's not it's not fun but you know I don't get you know I don't I don't think about doing anything like that but I I have definitely noticed that with myself and and so you know I there I I really am curious about what what the hell is going on that is doing that and so you know I'm uh you know hopeful that you know people like yourself you know working with you know Dr Brown and and Georgia Eid and Dr Palmer and things like that can figure this out what in God's name is is going on with these different chemicals to mess up people's psyche like this yeah well I mean what remarkable stories and thanks for sharing them and you know I'm sorry that you you went through depression before and also that you you felt that at your parents I mean what an awful time and um you know to some extent I felt that kind of clean sharp signal from foods that I've eaten I think the the goal old standard for understanding how Foods affect us is an Elimination Diet you know there are studies that people can do on populations but the average uh respondent to a a survey it is not the individual sitting with you you know so everyone has to find out for themselves and um when I was kind of semi- grieving the knowledge that Dairy was not right for me as an autoimmune sufferer I did a food test where I was having a burger and I put blue cheese on it and then within a couple of hours I was ironically very blue and I found out that that was one of my triggers and I felt Dreadful I was I was honestly I've had suicidal ideation as well and I was not far off that I was I was just so down about the world and anything I could think of and didn't see the point um when I started this whole journey I did an Elimination Diet that Peter do rilski had had talked about on um on hyper lipid where he said you could you could support your your body entirely with ghee and egg yolks and in terms of the nutrition there and the the calories so I thought I'll try that and it turned out to be a very clean experiment for me you know uh ghee eliminates most of the uh the the milk protein and you have so much nutrition in eggs so I was having like between eight eight and a dozen eggs M most of them would just be the yolks would keep some of the whites in there um and then as much ghee as I felt like eating and I did that for a month never felt better in my life and I could use that as a clean Baseline to then test foods and I found out that at the time I had problems with foods containing histamine um so even some of the best keto foods are quite high in histamine you know like your salamis and your smoked fish and that kind of thing I don't seem to have as much of a problem now but at the time it gave me brain fog I had that sort of lack of clarity I couldn't access my brain power when I had foods high histamine so I stuck to Fresh Meat and um even too much meat you know I had to make sure that there was enough fat and this is kind of an interesting debate going on right now around satiety per calorie that diet doctors trying to bring in and all that um some people feel some people just feel better mentally when they have lots and lots of fat and the particular type of fat that works for them um but yeah the the kind of uh extreme mood changes involved with food that I felt in 2016 led me to say things to friends like I just wonder if when people are in a bad mood it really is about not getting a parking space or getting cut up uh in their car or you know something's happened in their life or it's about something they ate earlier and the amount that that can contribute because I found myself far more mentally resilient you know bad things have happened to me in the last seven years and I've just felt able to cope and respond to it emotionally in an appropriate way it's not like my emotions are gone it's like they're working properly and you know it can be such a roller coaster for folk um you know I've worked with people with all of the the the mental conditions that I mentioned earlier and it's it people's lives are and changing your metabolism can make their lives good it's such a wonderful thing to see and um and I'm glad you came out the other end wow what a what a moment yeah well it was it was I'm thankful that I you know had that sort of realization you know because it just sort of just something clicked I was like okay this this isn't right you know and and that's when I realized okay there was something else going on and that I needed to just just take a step back you know I mean how many people did not have that you know Epiphany and and realized that and and did something that they couldn't Undo You know it's very it's very sad thankfully I wasn't I wasn't um you know I wasn't wasn't one of those thankfully I was able to figure that out but yeah it's um I remember you you're talking about you know was something to eat earlier and I think that's I I do think that I mean for me I I've seen that directly and I've seen that in different patients I remember one kid I I saw in the emergency department right when I first came down to Australia and he was he was um I mean came with for something else he was majorly depressed and and very seriously depressed and uh and we got to talking and we started talking about about diet nutrition I told him my my experience with that and it turns out that he was he was actually um a big fan of Jordan Peterson and Jordan Peterson actually came and M Michaela Peterson his daughter actually had similar experiences with their depression anxiety and they they found that getting rid of the green actually made made the biggest difference and you know Jordan Peterson went strong keto just you know fatty steaks and salads and that was it and but he was still having crippling anxiety and depression they found that you know and Michaela you know came to him and just said hey just try it for a month see how it goes this has really helped me and so we said all right well you can do anything for a month and I think I remember him actually saying is like well you can hang by your by your fingertips from a window sill for a month I mean that's nothing you know you can mean the grand scheme of things is going to affect the rest of your life you know you can do anything and um and so he did it and after about three weeks his his anxiety was was seriously improved and he could he could get out of bed in the morning he could do his work and he could he could actually function and he was like salads do salad was doing this to me and I was like yeah it's filthy stuff and so you know telling him that and he he was able to to help himself as well um but I also remember a um a study that was done in psychology ology that was you have so many influences that that can affect you unconsciously there was one that was interesting um that someone was you know someone was in a park basically they had people coming by and someone need to tie their shoe hey excuse me sir can you hold my coffee or my drink or something like that while I tie my shoe and so I'm okay yeah sure and so they would do that tie their shoe and go off and then they would have them five minutes later in the same park interact with someone else right and it would be it would be you know same formulaic scripted sort of interaction and then they sort of would talk to people and say Hey you know can you describe that interaction the they they set it up by the cup would either have warm liquid in it or like cold liquid in it and it was something like 80% of the people that had the warm liquid found that there was a positive experience in the second time around same script and then the cold people was something like 80% you know thought about it negative they were very rude they were very abrupt and you know they said these things and it was very funny it was just like that one little that one little difference seemed to affect people much more than you would you would want to believe you know just something a little like that just having some cold in your hand just a bit uncomfortable and you know and then you go off and you feel something your hand still kind of cold and you're like who is this yeah and it's very this totally speaks to this recovering physicist in terms of going from smug about knowing factoids to understanding what it is that actually attracts people human beings you know we're complicated funny annoyed human beings who have Back stories and that needs to be acknowledged and one of my favorite thinkers in this area is Dr Ian mcgilchrist who's a psychiatrist who used to be an English literature scholar at Oxford and he found that he wrote this book in his 20s called against criticis ISM I think where he realized that when you uh get into the weeds you know dissecting a poem or a book then you know the sort of patient dies on the operating table if you like there's something there's something about the the wholeness of something that you can appreciate uh that you shouldn't try to dissect or else the meaning disappears so this is the sort of Left Right hemisphere uh specializations in the brain we often talk about sort of hindbrain forbrain don't we like the sort of chimp brain and then the sort of uh ability that humans have to plan in the prefrontal cortex well there's this Left Right specialization which he wrote his magnumopus book on after years and years of being a very eminent psychiatrist so I think wisdom and intuition and the Gestalt the holistic approach is really something which we need to think about both in terms of how we talk to people about their own health but also how we attract people over to our own side if you want to call it that you know versus maybe a a vegan approach or a um a sort of lowfat approach or a whatever approach um because you know there's this advertising Guru who went on Miguel Christ's uh YouTube channel talking about his analysis of what actually attracts people to products on ad on on ad vers and it's all of this right hemisphere stuff it's it's it's humans interacting uh you know with an emotionally an emotional dynamism it's it's smiling faces it's crying faces it's it's it's this sort of humanness whereas what kind of doesn't work in advertising is factoids so you know just sort of dry telling people what the truth of the matter is you actually need to meet people as human beings I think that's absolutely fascinating that just a warm cup meant that they thought they were warm people yeah yeah ter yeah so uh Dr mcil Chris when was he at Oxford by the way you know so he was a fellow of All Souls I think doing English um just after he graduated as undergraduate so that would probably have been the 70s and into the 80s and then he's trained as a psychiatrist and he worked the modley hospital down there I think um in L maybe that's London um as a psychiatrist where he was in charge and he and I think he did some stuff at John's Hopkins as well you know really really eminent in terms of like uh Neuro Imaging um and then this whole time he was thinking you know what's going on here I think he was influenced by people like Oliver saaks you know the brilliant um uh was he a neuroscientist or aist I can't remember but he wrote he wrote a series of brilliant books including the the man who Mook his wife for a hat and you know talking about the the differences that you can glean about the specialization of right and left hemisphere from what happens when people have a stroke in one side versus another side so you know if someone has a stroke in the left hemisphere then they might lose their ability to speak because that's where that's controlled whereas if they have a a a a stroke on the right hemisphere then sometimes because it's associated with the left side of the body it controls the left side of the body they they kind of um they feel like maybe they're their left hand isn't theirs or that everything on the left hand side is is made of cogs or uh like wood or something you know they suddenly lose that sense of humanness and become a purely a machine so there's this sort of different type of attention we have um in the world different type of information and I think we have to we have to use both in order to be attractive to to uh people in terms of our ideas and and who we are as people but Miguel Christ is uh is is great yeah I I'll have to look him up he's um he would have been after like I I was asking because my my grandfather was actually um a road scholar at Oxford and did his PhD there in English lit and so he um but he was he was well earlier there so he was he did his started his Road scholarship in 39 and was in Germany when World War II broke out and then like had to like flee across Europe to like get away and and the path they took was through Poland ball places and like he was like the he and his sister uh you know they crossed like the you know into into Poland sort of like an hour before they Clos the checkpoint and just raced across Poland um and then got through the other side sort of again like an hour before they closed that border got uh made their way through to the the coast in France and got the last boat to Dober from France and um then they send them back to you know they sent all the road Scholars back home after that because they're like hey look this isn't safe for anyone here and so he ended up doing a masters at Harvard taught there for a while met my grandmother while at Harvard and then uh was actually in the war and was a working counter Espionage during World War II because he spoke Lou in French and so they put him in in and occupied France as a as a counter spy so he pretended to be a Frenchman and and um worked there and he was the first uh American spy to turn and work an enemy agent against an enemy and WR wrot a I think was called operation Drago man it's kind of pretty pretty dramatic title but that was it and it was it was used in uh teaching like CIA and things like that because he was in OSS obviously and uh before the CIA came around and um and I was used in in training and um and he was like the first American like that got trained by like MI5 and MI6 and because they liked was you know Oxford old boys club you know I'm sure didn't didn't hurt anything and um and then he made his way back to Oxford and was there for like I think and then that that point he did his PhD uh there so he was there for like another six years after the war so he would have been just into the 50s is when he would have left Oxford and uh but in English lit and so U but he was a um he was an expert on Milton and I I suppose he would be have been the the expert on on Milton until he died but he wrote his his 40-year work was was all on milon and uh but yeah so I don't suppose they would have crossed paths but that that would have been cool if they did wow what a story what a story I mean this is the thing I I studied English literature for a year and uh because I love I love books and I love poems and I I hated the experience I felt assaulted by it because of this criticism you know some people some people love it and I realize and looking back it it's like a technical uh exercise you know you're you're sort of learning how to be technical around approaching literary criticism but I just thought you know you you you you snuff out the magic um but I think it sounds like your grandfather had this uh incredible ability to influence people and to attract people because you would have to be able to do that Behind Enemy Lines to turn an enemy agent and so on like these stories are are wonderful and um I think I'm thinking about some of the physicists that I know um maybe people that are in my class or the professors and I think if you put them Behind Enemy Lines then they would be toast because they would struggle with anything that wasn't literal you know it sounds like your grandfather had that ability to use metaphor and simile and uh you almost like enact it you know be a he he almost was a a metaphor a figment of of meaning you know he wasn't himself he was someone who didn't exist um and and you know there was this hilarious moment when I was at University where there was this university-wide edict where every Department had to teach soft skills so that you could be more employable so you had you know the professor who took uh who took that class for us very nice man and he was a really bright physicist but you couldn't make eye contact with people and so you know you have these uh people who end up super specialized with their the type of brain that they have and um I think someone who's an English literature scholar is far more likely to uh to understand that intuitively 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 your 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 guys yeah it could be and you know thinking back you know I always remember him as this very you know austere very you know he was he was literally a Tweed suited Professor you know and uh and so that that's that was always my memory of him as very severe sort of character um and then when I sort of got got a little older he was very very nice he was he was very good um good person in in general and very kind and U but when I was very young he this very Stern sort of figure and um so it's always funny to think about but you know thinking back he he he was very charismatic and um and he was you know very personable and and uh you know he was in sort of all those literary societies and and his name was Edward Weiss Miller he's actually he was a poet first and foremost and he um he got published by Yale young poets um he got the Y young poets uh award when he was like 15 and so was like the ever recipient of the young poets award and he was also awarded again when he was like 85 for another book of poems and so he was at the same time the youngest and oldest ever recipient of Y Yong poets award and the only one who's ever received it twice and um and so he uh yeah so he he yeah he he was um friends with Dylan Thomas when he was in Oxford as well because because Thomas lived just outside of Oxford and so he was introduced to him apparently they were like drinking buddies and they would they would just hang out and he said it was just a delight all you want to do is just listen to him talk he was just such a delight to listen to and so I just sit there just listen to him tell his stories and talk about whatever and um and uh yeah how he got the job with the OSS he got it was it was straight out of a movie you know he got this call in the middle of the night um it was like four in the morning and he had actually tried to join uh the Marines because he wanted to you know fight in the war when when America join the war because that's just that's just what people were doing and he was quite nearsighted and he had flat feet because he had rickets as a kid and so he was you know he was dismissed as you know medically unfit and he was really bummed by that you know he wanted to he wanted to you know go and and and help the allies and he got this call and just literally in the middle of the night and said you know a said wi like yes it is he like do you still want to serve your country he's like yes I do like all right be at this address in in Baltimore uh at this at you know tomorrow night 6 pm and so he just shows up could be anything and these guys go and they say they're from the OSS so we're recruiting for the OSS we're recruiting for spies and so we need you to go and collect information that if an enemy were to you know be in America that this would this would benefit them and um you know something that you know that you could find out clandestinely and which is which is a bit interesting you don't even know this could be this could be this could be the enemy you know just like putting you up to something and they're like you know you get caught you know you'll get tried for you know treason and and Espionage and and we're not we're gonna disown you we're not going to we're not going to stick up for you and all these sorts of things so you know this is this is on you and so he thought about it and and they literally they had like a day or two figure something out and so they had no directions they had no you know like this is what we want you to do go figure it out it's like you just go figure something out you go find something that would help an enemy and so we went down to buo Railroad uh yard and uh and he just was was talking to them and said hey you know I wanted I'm I'm I'm from the Press I'm from you know whatever Washington examiner or whatever the hell he said and uh you know I just want to make you know I just want to you know do something on the war effort how great you guys are and how you wonderful it is you're shipping things around and all that sort of stuff uh obviously for you know food and supplies and things like that for the domestic uh even domestic um uh operations uh not military operations that no one knew about that obviously those was very festine but he had a feeling that they were obviously moving Munitions and Military uh material around and so they're okay do you have your press pass like you know what I was just you know I was having my coffee this morning I still it on my pants I just trained my pants it was actually in there I'm so sorry I just don't have it on me I mean I can go get back and get it but you know well they're like oh you know it's okay so he's able to charm these guys and to letting him go through and and they were walking around the railroad J oh yeah and this is what we do and this is how we're shipping out this food to here we're getting milk over here we're doing this over here and all these other sort of things and he noticed that as they're going and just becoming friends we there for like two hours in the train yard and he noticed that there was just this there's just this little patch this little area this corner of the of the large rail yard that they just were avoiding and when he would sort of steer them sort of close to that they would just sort of steer them away and so we finally had sort of Charmed them enough goes what's this over here though like you know what what's going on over here like you know this this little area here and and he's like all right well well this is what we're doing and and actually went it's like this is where all the tanks are this is where all the Munitions are we're moving this so these bases and this is over here we're going to you know set up because you know if you know if they get into the Eastern Seaboard we need to be set up in these areas here we're shipping these out to this area so go and my gosh he could have been anyone anyone anyone and and and the guys who who said they were from the OSS could have been anyone and that's the craziest thing and so he got all this information back and he goes back to him at night and and the guy that the you know the whoever it was that was recruiting him just reading this it's like how the hell did you find this out is supposed to know this is totally class this is such top secret stuff I mean it was everything it was like everything they moving all the all the the the you know TR movements and material movements that's exactly what you know uh the would want and so obviously he got the he got the job and um and amazing yeah but just think about I think I think you're right you know you know he must have been a very very car I always like and he's always my grandfather you know so he was always just a very nice kind person to me um and um and I always saw him be very personable and favorable but you know my mom you know he was a very Stern and and and and strict parent and so that's the stories you get but thinking about it like he also must have been very very charismatic in his way as well and um yeah so I think that that that sort of fits uh with with everything yeah well I'm thinking about um a podcast I heard you on is with a Rancher I think and um you know you were talking about your 100% conversion rate for vegans who actually engage with you yeah so I think there's I think there's some of the Edward Weiss meller uh living on there for sure I mean maybe you good may it maybe it be good to talk about how you how you how you do that how you chat to to vegans you know so that they don't get put up because I think you see so much wasted energy don't you online and um with sort of sales patter for trying to get people to do something whereas I think the beauty of coaching and what i t to do with clients is be curious but I'm curious to know how you go about talking to people who maybe are um ill informed yeah well you know I mean it's like you say everyone's coming from a different place and you just sort have to figure out where that place is you know generally there's three reasons people go vegan and and that's the thing you know I don't discount people's um you know motivations you know and so that's the thing you know it's not it's not an us them sort of thing it's that we're not I don't need to be on the attack you know like I think that that our motivations are probably almost exactly the same you know either you know you want to fix your health you want to be as health as you can um environmental impact and you know you know ethical concerns you know I think all of those things are very important to think about and to consider and um and I think they can all be explained and and helped best you know through you know a meat heavy diet if not a meat exclusion diet but you know when when you do talk about these things someone just purely wanted to be like well whatever I generally start was like okay well let's just talk about you know the nutrition side of thing now and of course this this this is only people that actually engage even if they engage aggressively and they really want to show me up that's fine as long as they're willing to be have a back and forth if it's just a you know F you you're wrong I don't want then there's nothing you can do you know because you don't they don't have that engagement but of the people that engage then you can get them and and you just you just slow and calm and you you just talk about the facts you know usually they'll say why well but you know cholesterol causes this and okay well let's talk about that and you go into that they'll usually pick the topics and and uh and you can just start talking to you just start knocking them back one by one by one by one I so well why are you doing that well you know biologically I think all the evidence shows that you know humans are carnivores I think that's that's what we're you know best designed to eat they're defense chemicals and plants we're not they're not really bioavailable nutrients it's hard for us to digest it we can't get you know anything out of fiber all these sorts of things so you sort of lay down the groundwork that fundamentally we are carnivores biologically and they said well what about you know cholesterol what about fiber what about constipation what about and he like okay and you have that and you have all those answers they make sense they're straightforward they're they're not something that you need a lot of scientific knowhow to to to parse out you know it's a straightforward LDL was a lie that that's something that's been you know categorically proven it's just a matter of record you know like the sugar companies paid people off to to vilify cholesterol and to exonerate fat one of those guys was named head of the USDA he was the one who pushed this whole 1977 study it's it's published you know those things are published in the Journal of American Medical Association so that's the end of story there and you can go on from there and then you know and then they'll say okay well what about the environmental impact and you say okay well you know yes I agreed that's that's very important we need to talk about that but you know right now we're just talking about nutrition we're just talking about what's best for us to eat they're like okay okay so you keep them on track you know because it's the red herring they want to they want to just divert off and you know go out down different lanes because they're like okay I'm losing I'm losing this and so let's go somewhere else and so you keep down you keep them down on the the nutrition side of things until you they go through all of the different concerns that well what about this and what they're all the same I mean that's why it's so easy because you know I've went I've gone through Michael Gregor's side I've gone through Dean ornish's stuff I've gone through all of these guys and because I wanted to know I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything you know and so I was like okay this looks pretty solid to me what's the other side of the argument you know I didn't want to be missing something and you know all of their stuff was either based on this misinformation flat out lies um or or misunderstanding biology and Physiology or or they just make stuff up I mean there's a lot of that you know you see some things where they just they just flat out make it up it's demonstrable you say well that's not true here you go and so so I know all the arguments they're always the same and so you know it's not it's not hard to you know once you get those answers down you can just repeat them pretty fluently and you just bang them down one after the other and finally they'll just go okay well nutritionally sure you know I get yeah I understand that yeah this is the best way to do it you really can't get equivalent uh nutrition from a vegan diet you know even if with heavy supplementation and yes there these defense chemicals that can cause from okay so I agree with that but you know environmentally you know we can't we couldn't possibly do that it's not sustainable great okay let's talk about that you know and you actually talk about how animals are actually what what makes the environment they are the environment it's plants and animals we've co-evolved together and without animals and herbivores eating down the vegetation you don't make room for new vegetation to come up you're not recycling nutrients into the soil you're not keeping the soil uh you know fresh and vital and we don't have an environment and things go to deserts and we have people reversing deserts by actually moving animals in there and moving in herds of animals bunched to moving like a migrating herd and and um there was there's a group in Panama that took uh 20,000 head of sheep I think through Patagonia and um yeah yeah I think it's Patagonia and um so not Panama a what the hell of P Paton is so it took like 20 20,000 head of sheet down through there and in one year they increased the the vegetation by 50% right and so that's a major that's a major difference so that's actually really helping um and it's you know monocrop agriculture that destroys the the ground you're dripping nutrients out of the soil to go into the plant even broccoli now there was something I read the other day that broccoli now is um onethird has onethird the nutritional content that it did 70 years ago and that's just that's just soil degradation right you know we lose 27.5 billion tons of top soil a year just from the farming techniques that's that's an area the size of Kentucky every single year or you know 150 you know Ireland and a half you know every single year and and that's not that's a that's a very limited resource I mean people think that fossil fuels are limited pop soil is limited about 1 cimeter takes 500 years to develop and we are losing an area the size of Kentucky every year that's that is going to run out and so you know when you talk about that and you talk about how you know during the dust bow in America we almost turned the middle of America one of the most one of the most uh you know verdant and fcked uh pieces of soil on Earth you know we we almost turned that into another Sahara Desert because of the farming techniques and then we figured that out we were able to reverse it but that's where the Sahara Desert comes from because that did not used to be a desert you know there was a there was a study back in the 1990s in Egypt and they took soil samples underneath the the pyramid and the Spinx and they and they were like oh there's always deserts you know we have like know movies about Moses and things like that it's always desert and all that stuff because that's what that's what it is now well it was then they found that the soil samples were like actually no this was these were built in jungles these were jungle pyramids these were jungle people and now it's turned into a desert you know you read the the Epic Gilgamesh you know it's it's in it's talking about these you know these Lush grasslands and um you know verdant fields and um and Cedar Forest they're like old growth no I've never seen an axe all these sorts of things uh that's in modern day Iraq you know and so you know that that changed and so what changed well this is where agriculture was born and then Egypt was the Bread Basket of the ancient world and you know they say that the reason that it was so successful was because the Nile River would flood every year and replenish all the nutrients in the Farmland every year but what does that mean that means you're stripping out all the nutrients every year and you need to replenish them every year so places that don't have a Nile the flood they're going to turn into a desert and that's what happened and so if you there's been um satellite using sort of infrared looks at the Sahara Desert and they found there was actually cities like all over it you know so it's like all these different you know uh uh you know cities and developments all over what is now this Herod desert so there been just all wiped out by this desertification and that comes directly from Agriculture and uh I believe and I think that's that's quite evident especially with you know the Dust Bowl and things like that and you have people like Alan Savory who's still sort of of the opinion because he was he traditionally taught um um you know environmental scientist that you know was the hurting animals that that destroyed you know that made the cause the big deserts of the world right that's what he says but then at the same time in the same breath he says but we need big herds of animals to reverse all the deserts in the world so I think you know he's he's still looking at it from lens because he was traditionally taught he thought this traditional way hey animals are destroying the land animals are destroying the land we need to get animals out of this land they found out oh my gosh that's making the deserts worse so I think that that is not from the animals I don't think it was from hurting I think it was absolutely well it could be a combination you over over over grazing but um I think that that it's almost well I think that the major portion of it is going to be from the agriculture as well because you're just losing so much top soil you know we were getting dust storms and these massive dust storms are take know days and weeks to go over his Locust swarms all these sorts of things during the dust bow era and and it sounded like a Bible story something you know something out of Exodus you know the plagues that God rained down on pharaoh and and that's what people thought they thought this was the wrath of God for you know uh you know sloly behavior and things like that and so you know then they figured it out no this is from farming well you know apparently Pharaoh didn't figure it out and and that's a sign that you're losing all this top soil it's blowing up the wind is washing away with the rain that's causing the the the soil and the ground to be right conditions for these locusts to just come you know charging through and destroying you know crops and everything like that so I think that that's what that's from and so you point all these things out and uh and people just they're just like damn it and and and so you go through and they're like well but it's you know but it's not it's really not nice to to kill animals it's horrible and they treat them so horribly like yes I agree you know we have a social contract with animal anal you know we need to take care of them that is that is of Paramount importance but we're talking about the environment right now you know so just environmentally you know this and they okay right I agree you know livestock you know animals are better for the land you know than than crops but you know ethically like great I'm glad you asked and then you go into that out that you have to kill 25 times the amount of sentient animals to grow one pound of of plant-based protein versus animal-based protein and they're like damn it and you go there's like you know more and more arguments from there so you keep them on track you go through just the nutrition side of things then you move on to whatever the next distraction is usually environment and then you get on to ethics as well and um and you just just I mean the answers are there you know and as long as you're able to calmly engage and not call the other person names even if they're calling you names then then they usually come around I've had people even aggressively try to argue me I I remember before I was with uh my girlfriend now um there was um a girl that I was that I was that I knew um uh she was a nurse and we and we were you know chatting and getting familiar and and talked about going on a date or something like that and then she decided she she couldn't date me because uh and she I remember the text she said you know well because you know I'm a vegan and uh I just don't think this this would work you know eally I'm vegan and all these sorts of things about vegan vegan vegan I was just like okay well you know that's fine but you know it's you know it's actually nicer to you know do it this way she's like well what you know and we started going into it and just over a series of texts she's like damn it all right and um you know so even even though people can call you names and be rote to you if you just call them and you just answer the question you're like okay well why is that why do you think that what makes you think that that's a better way of doing it and they're like well it's it's obviously because no one really challenges these beliefs because right now it's the invogue uh you know it's fashion right absolutely and the the the the the obviously word is so interesting people say well obviously this or like you said around the plague of locusts in the US it seems like a Biblical curse you know there's this um you know simple straightforward seemingly correct explanations for things that human beings latch on to even if they're flat wrong you know and I think that comes back in some sense to what melchris talks about with the Left Right hemisphere differences where you get this left hemisphere capture of ideas you know um we want to have a shortcut uh to answer complicated things in our lives I think sometimes deferring expertise is vital you know we can't all be experts at every area we all want iPhones but nobody should be expected to know how to build one except the people who are that's their job um and even chines CH special um well you know I've got a Sam song So mine's from South Korea but we're splitting yours me too it's fine yeah so we're we're more we're more yeah um you know like all Zeno's Paradox with the arrow where you know this ancient philosopher who said uh something like this uh an arrow was flying through the air and therefore it's either where it's going to be or where it is now but if it's where it's going to be then it's not where it is now therefore an arrow can't fly therefore nothing can move yeah and part of our brains kind of like yeah that makes sense but and then the other parts well obviously it doesn't make sense I'm moving right now everything moves we've seen an arrow hit the target is ridiculous so we are susceptible aren't we to um thinking certain things about the world so that we can just get on with our lives and I think the same is true of ourselves you know when I talk to clients about what their core beliefs are about themselves then quite often you can tease out through curiosity that the people aren't really being kind to themselves um they might say something about them themselves and I say well you know if if your best friend or a family member had the same problem that you have um would you say would you give that advice would you say that to them and they're horrified of course they are I think um very often we can end up in an angry position around whether it's diet or the state of the world and think about uh some disaster coming up and it's almost a projection of how we feel about ourselves and it I don't know how you've found this but people who seem to get better metabolically and maybe mentally they they tend to have a a Cammer world view and uh can engage with the world in a way that's more pleasant not just to them living their own lives but to people that they talk to whether they've got the the charm skills of an Edward weissmiller or not yeah um yeah I I always love those um logical paradoxical puzzles there was I think there's one um that he did as well that was with uh toris and achilles right soill is a famous you know the hero of Troy and he's famous Sprinter he supposed to be just fast as hell and so they said it's like if you had if you had a turtle with any sort of Head Start he'd win any race against even Achilles right and the argument was that you know yes the turtle moving at a certain pace and achilles is moving faster but it takes time x to go to the halfway point between where he started and where the turtle is now but at that that point the turtle's moved just a little bit so now that's moved things now so now he has to go halfway between where he is where he is now where the turtle is now and during that time the turtles moved and so the turtles moved the turtles mooved the turtles moved so the way that they logically constructed this or or verbally constructed this is is that um you you could never pass the halfway point because there will always be a new halfway point because the turtle's always moving and obviously you know that's what we will pass that but it just it just ties your your brain and knots is things like okay well how the hell can I describe how that's stupid because I know it's stupid but it's like but like but it's it's it's makes logical sense at the same time so I always love those uh those are a lot of fun yeah there's like a an integration of Common Sense wisdom intuition into the world which takes place on one side of our brains and uh forms these kind of human connections and I think um you know Miguel Chris talks about how a river isn't a isn't the water and it isn't the land it's the betweenness of the two things and I think that's the kind of It kind of sums up the magic that happens during coaching of any kind that's done well but you know particularly Health coaching when I'm thinking about uh the transformation that takes place in health coaching clients when they become what they want to be and they feel like they're human beings within new lease of life you know that is not the same as describing an hba1c improvement or um a mood score Improvement that is uh you know that's the the The Wonder of being alive and I think it couldn't happen when they're just living in isolation and I couldn't make it happen living in isolation it's the betweenness of the coach client connection and um I think it resolves a lot of these types of paradoxes and um yeah the the zenos arrow one and the ailles in the hair that's brilliant it it kind of flues you for a minute uh yeah I think people are people are are complicated and they want to be heard and that's what coaching allows them to do is is be be messy but complete Som yeah well that's great well you know it's it's been an absolute pleasure uh to have you on today uh thank you so much for coming on it was a great conversation um how do people get in touch with you and how do they they find you if they want to to speak to you about coaching or or learn more about what you're doing yeah so anyone who who feels like they could do with a mental tuneup or even someone who's been diagnosed with a mental disorder and wants coaching to support them metabolically or clinicians who want to work with us and signpost their patients to small groups can go to mets.com me psy.com uh I myself tend to lur around on Twitter more than any of the other social media platforms and I'm at Ali transforms which is all y transforms so hopefully uh you know people who are listening get in touch and we can talk about you know getting involved it's uh it's exciting I think um there's a need for it sadly but we have really enjoyed the work we've done with people so far yeah well great um yeah well thank you very much for coming on um if everyone who who's enjoyed this please send this on to someone that you think May benefit from is someone who may be suffering from mental health issues that doesn't know about these sorts of options that are available to them I think it was Dr Palmer from Harvard who said that um only about 10% of people actually respond to psychiatric medication the rest maybe have you know some you know results but but others don't really have any results just a ketogenic diet shows it's actually and can give Improvement for these people when they don't uh have other options and and medications aren't working for them as well so this is something that that can be a very very powerful Tool uh in in the Arsenal to get people better so hopefully um anyone who is listen listen in we'll we'll take that on board and and pass this on to anyone uh who they think could use it um thank you every everyone for watching if you like that please hit the the like And subscribe leave a comment and do share this with anyone that you think you would find it useful and you can find uh me at on Instagram Anthony chaffy MD um or Twitter Anthony chaffy and then if someone wants to join our uh patreon community and get more online support and um and community help that is just Anthony CH bmd as well thank you much every very much everyone we'll see you next time optimal diets you know maybe some people you know can be uh less damaged have more defenses towards some of these plant poisons plant toxins but that does not mean it's it's optimal for them that doesn't mean that it's the best thing that they can have so there is an optimal diet okay it is something all right so I think all the best evidence shows that that that's a carnivore diet and so regardless of your age regardless of your issue and your disease that is the best thing for you to eat and it will change your life dramatically