LowCarbUSA Podcast

Vyvyane Loh is a board certified internal medicine nd obesity doctor who started out in obesity practice and found herself taking patients off medications which was very different from what she had been taught in her training. She feels she was very lucky to get exposed to it early. Down the road she measured her own A1c levels and found them to be high, around 6.4. Her doctor looked at her and seeing that she was not overweight, told her she could not explain it and told her not to worry about it.

That really bugged her so she started digging into it more. Then her friend encouraged her to start the Atkins diet with her and she decided to try it. Literally 2 days after she started all her symptoms she had previously attributed to irritable bowl syndrome disappeared. She was flabbergasted and could not understand how she had not known about this and why she and her colleagues were not telling their patients about it.

She has reversed her own diabetes trend and is now committed to taking this to her patients and also in helping to reach the more impoverished communities who aren't exposed to this information as easily.

We have partnered with Restore Health to launch a comprehensive mentoring Program for embracing a low carb lifestyle. This program is available to everyone, but we are finding that it has become a very powerful tool for practitioners. Once they are able to get their patients to understand that they need to change their lifestyle in order to address their metabolic health issues, this proves to be a very helpful tool to help those patients to actually implement the changes. The program addresses not only the concept of reducing carbs in their diet, but it shows them how to achieve huge metabolic benefits by doing Dr. Ben's SMaRT™ exercise program which only requires 15 minutes twice a week, literally. They also teach strategies to improve sleep and reduce stress.

In the end, most people providing feedback on the program have told us that they found the access to a live coach was the best part of all. Having someone they can turn to with questions and to hold them accountable seems to be a huge plus!

You can learn more here.

We caught up with our friend Andrew Berger again after almost a year. Andrew suffers with Type 1 Diabetes and found himself with terrible blood glucose control, the onset of diabetic retinopathy and was about 75 lbs overweight. We met him for the first time at the LowCarbUSA®- San Diego 2019 event. At that point he had been on a keto diet for about 7 months and was down about 40 lbs and his blood sugar control was way better. He met Dr. Ben Bocchicchio at the event and learned about the metabolic benefits of his '15 minutes - Twice a Week' workout philosophy. So he started with that the next day and around about the same time started dabbling with the carnivore diet. We saw him again about 6 weeks later and he had lost another 5 inches on his waist and he looked great. We did a podcast interview with him at that stage (go check out Episode 15) and talked about all his successes. Well, since then he has taken it to the next level. He as introduced intermittent fasting, and even some extended fasts and the results have been spectacular. He is looking amazing, his blood glucose control is the best it has ever been. His glucose runs in the 80s to 90s most of the time and his A1c has come down to and astounding 4.9. He is now off his insulin pump and is back to injecting himself with insulin. He is down from about 100 units a day to numbers in the teens (and even down to just 3 units during his extended fasts). He is experimenting with less powerful, slower acting (and cheaper) insulin options to try to get his life to a point where he is stable 24/7. We are so excited to follow him on this journey.

We caught up with Prof. Tim Noakes again recently and after asking him to describe briefly again how he got started with LCHF and a little about his successful defence against the malicious charges brought against him by the HPSCA, the conversation turned to the subject of Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFAs). I had recently heard a fascinating talk at the the Low Carb Denver conference by Dr. Chris Knobbe about PUFAs. He presented a compelling case that PUFAs were at the root of all metabolic disease. While I agree that they definitely seem to have a profound effect on our metabolic health, I do not agree that it is all about PUFAs and that carbohydrates do not have an influence at all. So I put this question to Prof. and a very interesting discussion ensued.

It's always such a pleasure and an enlightening experience to spend time in conversation with Prof. Noakes and we look forward with great anticipation to his presentation at our upcoming LowCarbUSA® - San Diego 2020 event at the end of August which is now going to be totally virtual.

We sat down to talk to Janae Cywes, wife of Dr, Robert Cywes, about her pregnancy and the fact that she has been, and plans to remain, on a strict ketogenic diet throughout. In fact Janae and Rob are basically carnivore now. They had been trying for the longest time to get pregnant and then about a year and a half ago they went carnivore and, out the blue she suddenly fell pregnant, totally unexpectedly.

She says that for a short while in the early stages of the pregnancy, even the sight of red meat turned her stomach but she was still able to eat poultry and pork and fish so she ate a lot of that and did and the odd salad. She mentioned that they plan to raise a keto baby as well and our conversation went on to talk a lot about ADHD, Autism and Keto for Kids which is the title of a interview I did with her husband Dr. Cywes, which is on our YouTube channel as well. We discussed what our childhoods were like, what emotional management strategies our parents equipped us with and how we felt it affected who we are today.

We plan to revisit with Janae after the baby is born to hear how raising it as a keto baby is going.

Nadia Pateguana is a Naturopathic Doctor focusing on PCOS at 'The Fasting Method' with Jason Fung and Megan Ramos. She has an amazing story of how she came to the realisation that diet and lifestyle could, and should, be the answer to PCOS and other metabolic conditions. Some of her more profound statements were: "Women with PCOS are not infertile, they are anovulatory, i.e. they are not ovulating. You can address this with drugs but if you don't address the underlying Insulin Resistance then they are at risk for all these other pregnancy complications like preeclamsia, eclamsia, pregnancy related hypertension, gestational diabetes, miscarriages, and more. And then the babies are susceptible much higher risk of neonatal morbidity and mortality."

You can reach Nadia through the TheFastingMethod.com website and her book, 'The PCOS Plan' can be found on Kindle and Audible.

After being vegetarian for over eight years, Dr. Tony Hampton started doing some research and started to see more and more data showing that the Low Carb diet had better outcomes for diabetes, obesity and many other chronic diseases than the diet he had been following. He says he learned more on YouTube than he did during his medical training. He started trying it out himself and one of the first things he noticed was a distinct improvement in his mental clarity.

What is nice about his message is that it is not just about the nutrition but all the other lifestyle factors like sleep and stress and relationship issues, that contribute greatly to overall health. What is exciting for me is that he is the first person of colour that I have come across in this space who passionate about getting this message out to his community. I see great things in our future as we collaborate to reach other communities who we have not currently been able to reach.

I love his quote that he tries to tell everyone who will listen that there is an opportunity to heal, and it doesn't come from medicine, it comes from nutrition and lifestyle. Check out his book, 'Fix Your Diet, Fix Your Diabetes: Your Dietary Solution to Reversing Diabetes'. You can also reach him here.

Eric Reynolds was a cop with the Boynton Beach Police Department near West Palm and he got shot in the foot by an armed bank robber they were chasing and he ended up killing the suspect in the process. The whole incident left him in a pretty bad way and he started to display many signs of PTSD. He discovered the keto diet and, not only did his health improve drastically and all the excess weight melt away, but he found peace and tranquillity begin to return to his life and his symptoms of PTSD start to fade.

He has since retired from the force and now is committed to helping other police officers to get their health back and to help them to deal with similar problems to his. He has established an organisation called Keto-Five-0 and you can find the group on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ketofiveo/ and you can reach him via email at: ketofiveo@gmail.com

Here, also, is the dash cam video of his chase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vRpbnq1DKQ

Dr Kristin Baier is a family medicine physician who recently became board certified in obesity medicine as well. Back about ten years ago she was diagnosed with Lupus and was experiencing all the usual symptoms. She started focusing on a nutritional solution since she did not want to remain on medications and steroids for the rest of her life. The first book she read suggested going vegan to solve auto immune problems and she decided to give it a try. Needless to say, after five years her symptoms had not improved and she picked up more issues along the way, including anxiety, depression, an iron deficiency and a B12 deficiency.

At that point she heard of Robb Wolf and ended up transitioning to the Paleo diet which helped a lot. Her symptoms of depression and anxiety etc. all improved but she still felt things could be better and she noticed her migraines seemed to be occurring more frequently. Finally she came across the ketogenic diet and after adopting a strict version of it (less than 20g of carbs per day) her migraines ceased and all her autoimmune issues disappeared.

Now she is offering this nutritional intervention to her patients and is in the process of moving to San Diego to start a new direct primary care practice with Dr. Brian Lenzkes. The website is still under construction but people can go to lowcarbmdsandiego.com and submit a patient application. There will also be a way on the site shortly to schedule an online consultation. Kristin can be found at: @doctoringketo on Instagram and Twitter.

When Adrianna Stephenson's son was just nineteen months old he was diagnosed with a golf ball-sized brain tumour in and around the hypothalamus. He immediately underwent a subtotal resection but about 3 months post-op the tumour had grown back to almost it's original size already. Adrianna and her husband, as well as the surgeon, did not want him to undergo another operation and so chemo was their only course of action. At the age of two, he started on a trio of chemotherapy drugs for what was scheduled to be an eighteen month protocol. Doing a bunch of research, Adrianna learned about the possible benefits of a ketogenic diet in conjunction with the chemo. About 3 and a half months into the treatment she started him on a very strict ketogenic diet and the next MRI showed that the tumour had shrunk by 30%. and about 10 months after starting on the diet we was declared NED (No Evidence of Disease). He is now five years old and remains NED.

Adrianna is now committed to paying it forward and works tirelessly with the Max Love Foundation and in other ways to teach parents how to do this with their children. I found it particularly interesting to hear how she teaches parents to get their kids to do this and I fully agree with her idea that all kids should be eating this way to prevent them from getting sick in the first place.