0 (1s):
Coming up on the get lean, eat clean podcast.
1 (4s):
I don't measure my portions. I do not count calories I eat until I am comfortably stuffed until, until the point where I get another piece of meat on my fork and go, Oh, I'm done. I can't, because I think that's the way we always did it. Right. Right. And if you're eating a proper human diet that contains foods that humans ancestrally ate, I think that your hunger hormones and your other satiety signals will tell you that's it you're done no more. Right. But if you're eating highly processed, ultra processed high carb, low fat foods, you never get that signal. And so you can definitely overeat even on a paleo diet that was, you know, full of a spaghetti squash and keenwah and sweet potatoes.
1 (49s):
I could overeat all day long.
0 (53s):
Hello, and welcome to the get lean, eat clean podcast. I'm Brian grin. And I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was in five, 10, even 15 years ago, each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed Dr. Ken Berry. He's a family physician in Camden, Tennessee. He's also the author of the best-selling book lies. My doctor told me which exposes miss and misleading health advice from well-meaning doctors. So in this interview, we discussed Dr. Ken's own health journey has problems with my plate, government guidelines, misconceptions around cholesterol, also keto carnivore with kids.
0 (1m 39s):
And should we eat dairy? We also discussed his morning routine has fasting and eating ritual, how to raise testosterone naturally, and is one tip to get your body back to what it once was. So I really enjoy this interview with Dr. Barry. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy. All right. Welcome to the, get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin, and I have a great guest today, Dr. Ken Berry, welcome to the show.
1 (2m 8s):
Hey, thanks for having me.
0 (2m 9s):
Yeah, thanks for coming on. I got a lot we can talk about today, but before I get into that, perhaps maybe just give the guests a little background on how you got into health and wellness. And, and I know you're a board certified family physician, and, but you take sort of a different angle on some things. So I'd love to hear that.
1 (2m 31s):
Yeah. So I'm a family physician, a board certified and have been practicing for over 20 years in the emergency department, obstetrics and the majority of my practice in my clinic. And I've seen a lot of patients. And during the early years of my practice, I started to gain weight and just got really fat and sick to sum it up at my worst. I was 297 pounds and had an hemoglobin A1C of 6.2. So I was very, pre-diabetic very obese, very inflamed had multiple medical issues that I just couldn't seem to get a handle on.
1 (3m 18s):
And so in my journey to fix myself, because I really did not want to be that, that fat sick doctor that proceeded to walk into patient's exam rooms and then lecture them on how to become healthy. When I myself was not the picture of bill, that was very uncomfortable for me. So I started looking and all the resources I found for my medical school nutrition education and from the American diabetes association, the American heart association and the, my plate, a food pyramid guidelines were unhelpful, completely unhelpful. So I thought, well, I've got to do something I can't, you know, I'm going to be 300 pounds soon.
1 (4m 1s):
And so I just started looking outside the box and found a lot of resources while not consensus science while not, you know, enshrined by the powers that be, they worked for me and they were easy. They were sustainable. All of my laboratory values got better eating this way. And so I started to share that with my most morbidly obese patients, people who were scheduled for bariatric surgery, because they also had failed all the diets many, many times. And I started to share what I learned because they could obviously, when I walked in, they're like, Whoa, doc, what happened to you?
1 (4m 41s):
You look great. And I said, well, if you're interested, I'll tell you. And so I started to share it with my most metabolically ill morbidly obese patients. And they started to implement these strategies and they started to lose weight. Many of them canceling their bariatric surgery in favor of eating a diet that was based on our ancestry, based on nature was a very clean diet. And so then I thought, well, gosh, why would I not share this with all my patients?
0 (5m 15s):
And what year was this when you hit, when you weighed 297 pounds,
1 (5m 20s):
Probably 2005 or six, somewhere in there. And, you know, w when I got on the scales, that was a wake-up call. But then when I got my hemoglobin A1C back and I was moving full speed ahead towards type two diabetes, that was the last straw. I was like, you know, this is dumb. I cannot be a fat diabetic doctor for the rest of my career for the rest of my life. I can't do that. And so I thought, well, I'll just, I'll really, I must not be listening to the advice that I give my own patients. I must be walking the walk. So I went back and reviewed the MyPlate and the ADA, and just really got serious about that and started jogging two or three times a week.
1 (6m 9s):
And after three months of that, my A1C, it actually went up and I had gained a few more pounds. And it was that, that was the epiphany for me that this is never going to work for me because I really tightened up. And I did exactly what I was supposed to do, and I got sicker not better. And so at that point, I said, yeah, there's gotta be another way.
0 (6m 32s):
Yeah. You talk about government guidelines in like the, my plate. And I was looking on your website because you have some stuff regarding that. W what is, what, what would you say is wrong with that? I mean, we both know, but why don't we touch on things that are wrong with that? And then, and then what you did to sort of, you know, make it right.
1 (6m 53s):
Yeah. So the, my plate guidelines over the food pyramid, they are, it is recommended it's in black and white in their guidelines that this is for healthy adults, only that's that's who that guideline is for. But when you start looking at the numbers of metabolic illness in the United States, only 12% of us don't have at least one marker for metabolic syndrome. So right off the bat, the MyPlate guidelines are only for the 12% of Americans, adult Americans who have no markers of metabolic syndrome. And that, and so what about the ADA percent? What are they supposed to do? Did the federal guidelines create that 88%?
1 (7m 36s):
Because if you, if you go back and look at the numbers before the guidelines before 1977, obesity was a rare thing, people in their mid forties to seventies, if you asked them in your first grade class, how many fat kids were there, the answer is invariably, either one or none, right? And now if you go and you look at the average, first grade class, the obesity prevalence is 20, 30, 40%. So you can't, you can't say this is a genetic thing to say that this obesity and type two to in any way as genetic is, that's just foolishness, right?
1 (8m 20s):
You can't even hang your hat on that nail. So it has to be something in our environment. It has to be something that's different now than it was before 1977. And I think there are a number of those things. And I think correct, all of those things, your body returns to its natural state, because I believe for, for the human species, just like every other species of mammal, when you feed it a species appropriate diet, its default is vigorous good health. Right, right. That's, that's the baseline. That's not the goal or that's not the thing you're working for.
1 (9m 1s):
That's just what it is. You're just naturally healthy and vibrant and vigorous and strong and fast and smart. That is the baseline state of all mammals. So why are 88% of adults in the United States? Why are they not at that baseline of good health? There's got to be specific, actionable reasons.
0 (9m 25s):
Yeah. And you know, I, I'm a fan of also Dr. Jason Fung, cause I'm, I'm a big, I'm big into fasting. I know you are too. And he talks about in his books, you know, back in the 50 sixties, no one had six meals a day. They had those three square meals. Granted, maybe they maybe even weren't even the healthiest meals, but they, they didn't snack. And they didn't have all these small little meals. And that's another trend that has changed, right. Where essentially people are eating, thinking, they have to eat all day long to sort of feed their brain and stay and stay and stay and have energy. I was in that camp. I remember I used to get a little inkling of hunger and the grab for like a kind bar or something to sort of keep me satiated throughout the day now, obviously to one to two meals a day and I have more energy than I ever had.
0 (10m 16s):
So yeah. It's amazing how the information that's being fed out through the government. It probably through a lot of deep pockets, it's just wrong. What would you say? The main thing about that as wrong as it, is it the recommendation of grains?
1 (10m 32s):
Well, I think it's all of that. I think Dr. Fung is exactly right. That humans are not built to, to graze. We are not re ruminants. We're not herbivores that should graze constantly for 16 or 18 hours a day. I think that's a big part of this. Right? Any, any time you start talking about federal government guidelines, you have to start talking about legislators. You have to start talking about lobbyists and you have to start talking about billion dollar corporations because that's, that's how it works at top, right? No, I don't think anyone can argue with that. And so Nina Thai Choates in her book, the big fat surprise, Gary Taubes in his book, good calories, bad calories.
1 (11m 16s):
And then also in my book lies, my doctor told me, we kind of break down, where are the guidelines? How, how did they, how were they actually formed? And you know, the average person who trusts everyone at, at levels of influence would think, well, I'm sure they got a bunch of scientists in the room and they pulled all the research and they looked at the way human beings have eaten for thousands or tens of thousands of years and that's, and then they put all that together. The very absolute, best thinking, the best science. And that's where the guidelines came from. I mean, what rational adult wouldn't think that because that's how it should be done. I think we all agree on that, but that's not how it was done.
1 (11m 56s):
What happened was, is they came up with a kind of a skeleton framework of what they thought the guidelines should be. Then they promptly turned it over to a billion dollar agricultural firms and billion dollar food corporations and said, what do you think about these guidelines? These two special interest groups. There's no other way to put that. Right? They put their own tweaks, they changed some things drastically. And then they sent it back to the federal government committee. Now you would think in the rational world that the committee would say, obviously they're trying to make money. Obviously they're trying to sell wheat or they're trying to sell, you know, skim milk or whatever. And we're just throwing that joke in the garbage and said, no, we're going to publish this based on the science.
1 (12m 40s):
Well, that's not what happened. And this has been documented very clearly how it actually happened. And so the, all the recommendations from, and I'm not talking about the average farmer who has, you know, 20 cows and 20 acres, I'm talking about multimillion acre farms that are owned by corporations. They kept their, their recommendations in the guidelines. And so that, that literally that bastard child of a hybridized science versus basically an industry wishlist, that's where the, my plate and the food pyramid guidelines came from. So right off the bat, they're highly suspect to any rational person, but they really didn't take into account at all.
1 (13m 25s):
How have human being, being eaten over the last thousand years, how they, you know, over the last 10,000 hundred thousand years, because all of that information is knowable and is actually known. We were pretty clear on what made up the diet of our very successful Hunter gatherer ancestors. That's not really up for debate. When you start digging into paleoanthropology, it's fairly clear. We ate lots of fatty meat, lots of bone marrow, lots of brain, lots of Oregon meat. And we would eat vegetables, plants, grass, you know, dirt, if we were starving to death. But our preference was always for fatty animal products.
1 (14m 5s):
And you can't really dispute that at all. If you, if you really give the paleo anthropological evidence, it's do. And, but they didn't look at any of that. They just looked at what do we think right now, currently? What is the biggest, most popular fad diet? And that was low fat. And then they handed it over to big industry and they put their tweaks on it. And Wala, we have a food pyramid.
0 (14m 32s):
Yeah. Which hopefully people are starting to realize they shouldn't follow because of people like yourself. I think there's a lot more information being sent out to the world regarding, you know, that fat is saturated. Fat is good for you. I know in your book, you talk about cholesterol. Why don't we talk a little bit about cholesterol? W w w what are some of the misconceptions around it and around different fats and how can people go about doing it the right way? Yeah.
1 (15m 2s):
Well, so there are several misconceptions. One is that if you eat cholesterol, that that meaningfully raises your blood cholesterol. Second, if you eat lots of saturated fat that will meaningfully raise your cholesterol and meaningfully increase your risk of heart attack and stroke. And this became very popular in the sixties, and this is a hypothesis it's never come close to, to being promoted to a theory. It is a hypothesis that has yet to be proven. And it's actually been disproven many, many times. The, the misconception that plant fat is much healthier than animal fat, right?
1 (15m 46s):
And so there actually been three controlled trials done in human beings that show that if you replace the animal fat from, from fat and from butter, and you replaced that with linelaic acid, you actually have worse outcomes. And, and these three studies don't get talked about a lot. I've got a YouTube video just about that, about hidden science, I think is how it's titled. But we know there, if you go back and look at the totality of the meaningful evidence, there is no doubt that human beings, we cut our teeth on animal fats as a species we evolved with, with animals and animal fat in our diets.
1 (16m 30s):
There's no way you can even begin to reasonably argue that, but in the sixties, it became very fashionable to say, you should avoid all animal fats, avoid cholesterol, avoid saturated fat, and eat a plant-based diet. That's right. About the time that the obesity epidemic got kicked off is when all this advice trickled down. And when I say trickle down to the citizens of the United States, always remember that it trickled down through the sea of, of big food manufacturers and big Agra, right? And, and I hope people know I'm not talking about the average farmer that they know who lives down the road.
1 (17m 11s):
I'm talking about farming corporations like ConAgra and ADM that's that's who got put there. That's that is the filter that all this was filtered through and made its way to the American people. And so people are now left with diets, like, Oh, you have to eat three meals a day, and you need snacks in between to keep your energy up, to keep your mental clarity up. You see things like young children, you know, they they're, they're out for a two hour trip and they break out the, the bananas and the cuties at about one hour in because don't want them to, I'm not sure what we're afraid is going to happen there.
1 (17m 53s):
They're going to become hypoglycemic, or they're going to pass out from lack of energy or they're. I don't, I don't understand why we do that, but that's just become the habit. And it's a very popular head. It's a very socially accepted habit that children just need constant access to snacks. And I can remember when I was, you know, I'm, I'm getting up there in age. I can remember when we'd go on a little field trip, there was no food brought on a field trip ever. You would actually get in trouble. If you tried to sneak a candy bar on the trip or something, there was, that just didn't happen. If it was an old day trip, we would break for lunch. That was a real food lunch, but there was no snacks.
1 (18m 35s):
If we were just going to a museum or to a park for two or three hours, the food was not even thought of.
0 (18m 42s):
Yeah. And you know, you bring up kids and I know you incorporate your kids with the way you eat. So do they, they pretty much eat. Like I know you're big into keto carnivores. Is that pretty much how you, how your kids eat as well?
1 (18m 55s):
I've got a, my youngest is 15 months old and then all my other children are grown. My, my youngest daughter, she turns 18 in just a few days. And so I don't really have control over the grown kid. Right. Becky and I do. And, and I think this is a very valid mess message for all parents out there. A lot of parents hear this message and they feel attacked, or they feel shamed like, Oh, how dare you feed your kids? That that's not the message here. The message here is 100% about hope and change and, and hope for the future. And so, yeah, I, my first kids, I fed them crap.
1 (19m 37s):
Just terrible crap. I didn't know better. Right. Even the, even when I would try to feed them healthy food, looking back now, it turns out that's pretty much crap, too, that none of that stuff was human food. And so I, I feel bad about that, but I can't go back and change it. And so I don't want any parents to hear shame or, or guilt. That's not the message here. The message is now. Okay. Yeah. We might, we who hasn't made mistakes in the past, you know, throw the first stone because it ain't me. But now with the knowledge that we have, we can affect the present in the future. So your kids may be grown, but you got grandkids, right? You've gotten, got nieces and nephews. You've got the neighbor children.
1 (20m 18s):
You can have an effect on the nutrition and on the development of other kids. And you can also have a conversation with your adult kids who you perhaps fed you inappropriately. Like I did say, Hey, I hope you do. I hope you didn't learn any of those nutrition lessons, you know, too deeply in your heart, because none of those are right. And so let me help you. And indeed, several of my adult children are like, yeah, I've been watching your videos, which always cracks me up. I'm like, really? That's weird. But they, they are slowly but surely coming around because they see, they remember their old fat irritable, angry father.
1 (20m 58s):
They remember me back then, and now they know the current me. Who's not any of those things. And they're like, that's a huge difference. Maybe he's right about this diet thing. And so wherever you are as a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, yeah. We all make mistakes in the past. Let that go. What you can do right now is start to change the future for the better, by making better decisions first and foremost for yourself and then your immediate family. But then also you can start to reach out and have loving, gentle, respectful influence on your extended family and even your friends.
0 (21m 34s):
Yeah. So your eight to 18 month old, right? So there he is a boy. So he's eating, he's eating pretty much, you know, keto, carnivores, am I, is that correct?
1 (21m 46s):
Oh, he's eaten a hundred percent keto carnivore. He was exclusively breastfed until about five months of age when he started cutting his two little bottom teeth that were super cute. And by about that time, he started reaching and grabbing things and putting them in his mouth. And if you just think about how, how mammals behave, if he's got a, a few teeth and he's putting things in his mouth, that means he's ready for solid food. And so he's still breastfed at 15 months, she's weighting him down slowly and gently. But the very first food that he ever put in his mouth was not goldfish crackers. It was not strained peaches.
1 (22m 26s):
It was not fruit, squeezy. He was not a squeezy. It was not, you know, Go-Gurt, it was not rice cereal. It was a beef rib. I had, we were eating ribs and he wanted the rib and I'd clean 90% of the meat off. And I just handed it to him and his, his grandmother had a little bit of a freak out because that's not something you see every day. Right. That's an unusual, it doesn't mean it's a natural just means you don't see that every day. And I said, just give him a minute, see what he does. And so he, he, he knowed around on it and you could see his face light up, like, Hey, this is good. I like this. And he chewed on the rib, got all the, all the meat off, got all the connective tissue chewed on the cartilage a little bit.
1 (23m 9s):
And when he was done, he threw it down in the floor and he had cleaned the bone so thoroughly that the dogs didn't even want it. They're like it's garbage. Right? And so that was his very first food that was ever put in his mouth by his parents. And since then, he's eating all kinds of media, loves chicken liver. He loves, he loves full fat, real fermented cheese. He loves all that stuff. And we have given him some pickle. We've given him some avocado. We've given him stuff like that. And for his first birthday, we made him a, a carnivore cake, which yes, that's completely doable. And we put a few blueberries and raspberries on top.
1 (23m 49s):
We thought he's a year old. He can try. You know? And so he puts the Berry in his mouth. He looks at us like, Ooh. And he spits it out and then proceeds to eat the, the, a little bit of the cake. And then he wound up eating. We all, we love ribs. And so he wound up eating the pork griot. That's what he had for his birthday celebration. And now he does, he will eat berries, but he loves meat. He loves eggs. He loves chicken liver. And I think an important thing because most parents think in order for their child to get full nutrition, they have to eat the rainbow. They have to eat bananas from Columbia, South America. They have to eat blueberries from Canada. They have starfruit from wherever they have to eat this route from Australia.
1 (24m 34s):
And this Berry from the Himalayan mountains in order to get complete nutrition, all your baby needs to eat is meat and liver. Literally there will be no vitamin deficiency, no mineral deficiency, no amino acid deficiency and no fatty acid deficiency. And your child will have to take no supplements. Now, one of the criteria for what I call a proper human diet is that you should not have to take a handful of either prescription medication every day. If you're eating that diet or a handful of supplements every day, if you're eating that diet, now there has been some modern degradation of the soil and therefore the vegetables and animals that come from that soil.
1 (25m 20s):
But on the whole, if you, if you feed your child a fatty meat diet with liver two or three times a week, and, and a little bit of edge here and there, there will be no nutritional deficiencies whatsoever because that is a proper human diet for adults, for teenagers, for adolescents, for children, for toddlers. And indeed when a baby first cuts their first tooth, that is the proper human diet for them.
0 (25m 46s):
Yeah. And I love that because I'm actually expecting a boy in end of June. So I'm selfishly asking you that question.
1 (25m 55s):
Two, two immediate tips for you is, do not let your wife be diluted into thinking that eating, eating liver is dangerous for pregnant women. That's right. Ignorance do not let her be diluted into thinking she should avoid seafood. That's complete foolishness. Those are proper human diet foods and are, and actually if there's multiple archeological evidence where the liver was saved for the pregnant women, because they need that nutrition more than someone who's not pregnant. So I hope that you're you're already.
0 (26m 28s):
Yes. And we have, because I, I I'm into organ meats. And actually we just made a beef heart for the first time. And it was good. I mean, it was like a, like a Tenderloin, almost like a beef Tenderloin. And, and she liked it. So she's open to that, which is great. So yeah, I know. Cause there's, there's some rhetoric out there that, Oh, you shouldn't have a liver because the high vitamin a, I believe it was. And I, and I, when she read it, I'm like, that's just not right.
1 (26m 58s):
That's not right. And in fact, there has never been a documented case of hyper vitamin a or vitamin a toxicity from eating liver, from domesticated animals. Never now don't she can't have any polar bear liver and she can't have any puffer fish liver. So he doesn't need those, but it's the liver of a cow, a goat sheep pig that there's never been a single documented case of vitamin a overdose. And so I hope other women are going really. I didn't know that. Yeah. So you need the nutrition in that liver and people have to understand it's very easy for society to make something unfashionable and to make something weird or to make something gross.
1 (27m 46s):
Right. But just because that's the current societal fad does not mean it's the truth. And so I'm sure many of your listeners are like, I just can't eat liver. I just can't eat heart. That's just too gross. That that's social training. That's all that is. If, if, if that same person's, great-grandfather a hundred generations removed were offered delivered, they would've gobbled it up like a delicacy. This is learned behavior that society teaches us and who's in charge of societal messages. Will it be the people who are spending millions of dollars a year on advertising, on television, on the internet and magazines that's who kind of leads and guides the thinking what's what's what color pants should I wear this year?
1 (28m 32s):
What, you know, what kind of, what's the latest diet out there? That's ran by marketing companies. That's not ran by our genetics or what's actually nutritionally good for us or complete for us.
0 (28m 46s):
Completely agree. My other question I have for you is this gets brought up and it was brought up in your book a bit is fiber, you know, I guess there's a lot of mixed messages out there with fiber. What, what is your thought on that?
1 (29m 0s):
Well, I have, I have three chests for any question like that. First of all, what is the meaningful evidence that's important? What is the paleo anthropological evidence? Right. And then what's just common sense. And so I try to use those three tools to gauge any question or to gauge any new proclamation from the, the Harvard school of public health or anywhere else. Right. And so when you look at, when you look for meaningful research that proves that eating a high fiber diet decreases your risk of cancer or decreases your risk of constipation or decreases your risk of, of, of polyps or diverticuli, it's not there it's, non-existent, there's no meaningful evidence proving that in any way, the evidence that they harp on is observational or epidemiological research that basically asks people, they give them multiple guests questions.
1 (29m 60s):
And they'll say, how many cups of ribs have you eaten in the last three months? And don't laugh because that's, that's almost verbatim. One of the questions like who measures ribs and cups. And secondly, hell I don't remember what I yesterday, but, but they will. They'll ask people to go back for, for months or even a year, and they'll give these food frequency questionnaires, and then they use that as meaningful data. And you can't even pretend to irrational person that that's meaningful data that can then be crunched by researchers who have a bias, right? And this research is not controlled. It's not blinded. So all the researchers doing this research believe in a plant-based high fiber, low saturated fat diet.
1 (30m 43s):
And they're asking these questionnaires that nobody can answer truthfully. And indeed there's research showing that people often fudge on these and they'll add a serving of veggies when they didn't really eat that because they don't want the researchers to judge them. And then they crunch all that data. And here's this new research study in the AMA or, or new England journal or Lancet and people, you know, if something makes it to be published in the landset, that should be meaningful science, but very often it is not. And when, when you know, MDs and PhD start really digging into these studies, they often come away with what the moment like that's, that's it that's really all you got.
1 (31m 26s):
And so I, multiple calls, cultures of humanity have lived for thousands of years on virtually all meat diets or all animal based diets. And there's no fiber in any animal unless you eat their stomach contents, which most cultures and people do not, and did not do. There's no fiber in that animal. And so there are repetitive multiple examples of, of human cultures to live very healthy for hundreds of years. And they didn't need any fiber whatsoever. So you, you, and so then the common sense becomes, well, what is going on here? If, if majority of human beings in the past never ate fiber in any meaningful amount, of course there was a piece of grass stuck to the meat.
1 (32m 13s):
They were eating and they ate the grass, but that wasn't the majority of their diet. They weren't pushing fiber. They weren't going out of their way to get more fiber it's it's. And so it just becomes foolishness, but, and then you're left with this group of researchers like me and you and others who know this, but then you're left with the majority of the population who, the only science and nutrition and medicine they know is what they see on CNN and Fox news and a Newsweek and time, or see on the internet. And so when you say to someone like that, you don't need any fiber at all. That's dumb. It sounds revolutionary. And it sounds, you know, just like all this guy, he he's so iconic classic.
1 (32m 53s):
I don't even know if I should listen to him, but it's because they just haven't taken the time and it's indeed not their job to look into the research, but the research is atrocious on fiber and many other things.
0 (33m 6s):
Yeah. What about, what about dairy? That's a common question I get,
1 (33m 11s):
And it's an excellent question. And it's a question that I think some people, even in the low-carb community get wrong dairy is, is 100% of the time produced by a female mammal for her species specific babies that I don't think, I don't think that can be argued, right. That's exactly what milk is. And so milk is definitely full of nutrition. There's no doubt about that. And some components of, of dairy I think are completely fine for human beings to eat, but drinking milk after the, a certain age.
1 (33m 51s):
And that age varies based on your DNA and your gut microbiome. But the average, you know, if we look back in again, paleoanthropology, we're weaning our babies to two to four years, right? And so the, the, the enzyme that breaks down lactose starts to degrade after that time, because at no point in human history before about four or 5,000 years ago, did human beings ever drink the milk of another man? It just didn't happen. And, and so, and then another great mammalogy way to think about this. Yes, animals are very smart. If there's nutrition to be had, they're going to figure out a way evolutionarily to get that nutrition, right?
1 (34m 36s):
We've got birds that lay their eggs in other bird's nests and have them raise their animals. I mean, animals are very smart, right? But there's not a single weasel. There's not a single rat rodent that sneaks into other animals camps at night and, and such milk from, from a, you know, a lactating bison, or a lactating, any, any metal that that's never been documented. And so I think that that means something. And then I think the fact that human beings never drank the milk of other mammals before about 5,000 years ago. I think that means something for the average person 5,000 years.
1 (35m 17s):
That sounds like an incredibly long time, but when you start really studying, paleoanthropology, that's, that's the blink of an eye and in that kind of time, right? And so you could safely say that for 99.9, nine, 9% of our existence on this planet, we never drank milk except our mother's milk from to four years. And then we were waned and that was the end of it. You never had a dairy product again. So when I hear vegans or people or paleo people saying no dairy is healthy for humans, or it's inappropriate, or it's improper, or it's, it it's inflammatory. I cannot have a big argument with them because I mean, you know, looking at the full time spectrum of human existence, that's a pretty rational argument, right?
1 (36m 6s):
And so what my personal, the way I deal with this is, is I never drink milk. And this is coming from a milk lover. I grew up being a football player and a basketball player. I would drink a gallon of milk a day because I was taught and thought that was magic. That's how you're going to be fast and strong and build muscle and build bone well that's food. All it gave me was acne and dandruff. That's, that's what I had from drinking all the milk, right. And heartburn as I got older, but over two thirds of the population of the entire planet are lactose intolerant to some degree. So if two thirds of the humans on the planet can not drink milk. I think also that says something, we should listen to that, right?
1 (36m 49s):
And it turns out that the only macronutrient in dairy that's completely problem-free is the fats. And so I definitely avoid all milk sugar, 100% of the time every now and then I'll have a little milk protein. So, and the two predominant ones are casing and weight, but many, many people who I've interacted with have found out that it's not the lactose in the milk that causes their inflammation or causes their reaction. It's the casein or the way that for some people it's very inflammatory and it can manifest itself as eczema or psoriasis as joint pain, arthritis as gut problems, IBS.
1 (37m 30s):
But, but we all, we're not taught this. We're taught that skim milk is a health food, and skim milk is devoid of the one macronutrient. That's probably not problematic, which is the fat and it's full of the milk, sugar, and it's full of the potentially inflammatory dairy proteins. And so after the age of four or five or six, I don't advocate any human being drinking milk. And that probably a lot of people, the wrong way, cottage cheese, same thing. Right? Yeah. And so I think that cottage cheese, I think that sour cream, I think that yogurt are less problematic because for the reason that we've allowed a microbe to go into the dairy and eat up most of the sugar, if not all the sugar, number one, and number two, the byproducts and the waste products of the micro actually bent the protein molecules.
1 (38m 24s):
Didn't it, that's why liquid milk turns into a semi-solid yogurt is because they've actually changed the protein structure. And I think in many cases that makes it less bad, but milk. I was just about to get to that because that's the other big question. So D a a hundred thousand years ago, did our ancestors say, well, I would never drink pasteurized homogenized milk, but I'll drink raw milk. Ooh, I didn't drink any milk. And so if a weasel or eroded, snuck into the barn and stole milk from a lactating cow, that would be raw milk, wouldn't it?
1 (39m 4s):
Yeah. But they don't do that. And so I think that raw milk again is less bad than homogenized pasteurized milk. But as I talk about in the book being less bad does not equate to being good.
0 (39m 18s):
Gotcha. Okay. What about your ritual? I'm a big morning, morning ritual guy. Actually, I just, before we went on, I did a little cold plunge. What, what do you like to do to start your mornings? And then what is your sort of eating schedule like in your fasting schedule? Like I'm curious.
1 (39m 36s):
Yeah. So I get up, I wake up whenever I wake up, I don't have an alarm clock and I think that's the way we've always done it. I think I don't, I'm not, I don't know if that's better somehow health-wise, but why not mimic in every way we can, what our ancestors did then I I'll get up. I'll have a little cup of coffee. Sometimes I'll put some butter in it. Sometimes I want, I, I have a big fan of, of making sure you get your minerals. Cause I think a lot of the foods that we are given as food or ma devoid of many of the minerals, and there's a lot of mineral deficiency going on. So I use daily minerals and I'll put a squirt of that in my coffee.
1 (40m 19s):
And then I always try to get morning sun or at least morning sky, if there's no sun to be had, I'll take Beckett. And even, you know, it's a January here in Tennessee right now and it's quite cold, but every morning he, and I'll go out on the porch barefooted and we'll sit out there and, you know, anywhere from one minute to 10 minutes, depending on how damn cold it is, but I let him walk on the ground barefooted and I'll let him be exposed to the sunlight every morning or at least the skylight, if there's no sun. And we do that every day and he's not had a single illness, but I think, I think that's very good for him.
1 (40m 60s):
And I think it's probably good for him in ways we haven't even discovered yet. And so then I started doing, I started researching, I am a that's all I do basically drives my wife crazy, but I'm always looking into this topic or that topic. You're going, wait a minute. Why did I say that? Is that really true? And then I'll, I'll make a video or to do an interview or two, I'm working on a second book now. And then I usually break my fast about 2:00 PM somewhere between 1:00 PM and 3:00 PM, depending on what the doing. If we've got family visiting, where we're at in the world, and it's usually with fatty red meat often I'll add some eggs.
1 (41m 44s):
Often I'll add some, either Cod liver or chicken liver or beef liver. If I can, if my father-in-law's had a successful hunt, I'll add some venison, heart and liver. But this last year he hasn't been very successful. So we haven't had a lot of that. And that's the, and then I might eat a second time a day. And so let me talk about that meal because it's important for people to hear don't measure my portions. I do not count calories I eat until I am comfortably stuffed until, until the point where I get another piece of meat on my fork and go, Oh, I'm done. I can't, because I think that's the way we always did it. Right. Right. And if you're eating a proper human diet that contains foods that humans ancestrally ate, I think that your hunger hormones and your other satiety signals will tell you that's it you're done no more.
1 (42m 37s):
Right. But if you're eating highly processed, ultra processed high carb, low fat foods, you never get that signal. And so you can definitely overeat even on a paleo diet that was, you know, full of spaghetti squash and keenwah and sweet potatoes. I could overeat all day long, but on a, on a carnivore or key divor, which is a very meat, heavy Quito I, when I'm done, I'm done. Right? And so I made a second time that day, depending on if I'm hungry or what the family's doing, or I may not eat a second time, I let my hunger be the guide. And that's another thing when you're eating the standard American diet, you think you're always hungry.
1 (43m 18s):
You cannot hear or feel your true physiological hunger signals. They're hidden from you. But when you're eating a proper human diet, you can actually hear those signals. And, and the average person walking the street has never been truly hungry their entire life. They don't even know what it feels like, right. They've never been truly thirsty unless they were an athlete. And they don't know what that feels like because they're told you need to drink a gallon of water a day. You need to eat every two hours. And so they just live their entire life in this, in this mashed up mixed up soup of, of hormones that are improperly balanced.
1 (44m 1s):
And they never know what it feels like to be truly hungry or truly thirsty. And I think that's sad because those, those feelings are so such a part of our, our genetic being, our ancestral, being that I think you need to experience those things, to know what they feel like.
0 (44m 15s):
Yeah. I mean, I talk about that a lot is that's the one thing that so powerful with fasting is just abstaining from food, how much you can learn about what really true hunger is. And, you know, it takes time to get there. I'm curious. I mean, you, at one point were about 300 pounds. How much do you now?
1 (44m 32s):
So I'm almost back to my current weight, which is two 30. I misbehaved over the holidays and I, lots of keto treats and lots of almond flour cookies and coconut flour, pancakes, and gained about five pounds and probably four and a half pounds of that were just fluid and inflammation. And I'm now back to this morning, I was two 31. I've been back on the straight and narrow. And I think over this year, I'm probably going to try to drop another five and get down to about two 25, which is still that's heavy for me. When I graduated high school, I weighed 185 pounds. My wife has advised me that there may be legal ramifications.
1 (45m 13s):
If I try to get back to one 85 as the end, she may divorce me because I'll be too skinny. And so I do carry a lot more muscle now naturally. And I, and, and I don't, I'm not a big workout fanatic at all. A lot of people don't believe that, but it's really true. I don't work out on any set schedule or anything like that, but I just tend to carry a lot more natural muscle and a lot less fat naturally by eating this way.
0 (45m 39s):
Yeah. One of the things I noticed in one of your blogs was we'll touch on it briefly, but you know, you talked about seven natural ways to raise testosterone. I thought that'd be sort of a cool topic to talk about, especially with the audience for this, for this episode. So why don't we touch on that? What is your seven ways?
1 (45m 59s):
Yeah, so I probably don't remember all seven, but I really,
0 (46m 3s):
I wrote them down. So I got you.
1 (46m 6s):
Yeah. So basically eating a meat, heavy diet is going to raise your, your testosterone to eating fat precursor. Molecule of testosterone is cholesterol. In fact, all of the sex hormones come from cholesterol. That's how the body makes them. And so not taking a cholesterol lowering medication, that's going to raise your testosterone, eating a fatty meat, heavy diet is going to raise it, working out really hard. And so I said earlier, I don't follow any schedule, but when I get done, I've got a, I've got a hex bar out in the garage that I've got 235 pounds on and I'm going to go out there and I'm going to, I'm going to do one set of as many deadlifts as I can.
1 (46m 53s):
And that's literally going to be my workout for today.
0 (46m 55s):
Yeah. And these micro workouts, you keep hearing about them, but you know, like Brad Kearns and guys that I talked to, you know, this is sort of the new thing, just increasing the volume. You can do them do more than once a day if you want. But like a 10 minute workout could be, you know, can make a difference.
1 (47m 15s):
Yeah. And so some days I'll, I'll get my shoes on. You know, we've got three acres here in Nashville and I'll go to the back and I'll sprint to the front and I might do that two or three times I do until I get bored with it, then I stopped doing it. Right. Right. And, and I may not do that again for a week. And so I truly don't follow any kind of bodybuilding or workout regimen. Those things bore me incredibly. I have terrible add. And if you said, Hey, you need to go jog on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I'd probably shoot myself.
0 (47m 48s):
Yeah. Well, you know the thing about these micro workouts that I love and I've been doing them as well as there's no really excuse because you don't have to go to the gym for an hour and a half. It doesn't take that much time. And like you said, you're doing them around your house. So it sort of takes the excuses out, which is nice. Yeah.
1 (48m 6s):
And it also, it's fun. I mean, after I do a couple of, it's probably 250 yards, I do two, 250 yards flat out saber tooth tigers, trying to catch me Prince. I don't warm up. I don't warm down. I just go out there because I don't think we've really warmed up. Right. A hundred thousand years ago, if you saw a saber tooth, you ran. Right. Right. Then you didn't warm up and do some jumping jacks. And so I'll do a couple of those and I, and the entire day looks and feels different after I do that or after I go out there and do 15 or 20 deadlifts till I just can't do another one that literally can change the trajectory trajectory, including the mental trajectory of your entire day.
1 (48m 52s):
And I think it's probably best done in the morning. Don't know if that's true, but I, I feel like it is for me at least, but doing that once a day or every other day, it can change your mental health.
0 (49m 6s):
Yeah. And as far as boosting testosterone, I also wrote down decrease in simple carbs. Yeah. Decrease in stress obviously.
1 (49m 15s):
Yeah.
0 (49m 19s):
Vitamin D is a big
1 (49m 20s):
One. Yeah. So the, in the cholesterol molecule uses vitamin D in order to make hundreds of different compounds in your body. And most of the hormones and the majority of adults in the United States and indeed the bottom world are deficient in vitamin D. And we keep hearing about this in relation to certain viral infections and other things, and absolutely vitamin vitamin D is vital for every function. Pretty much of the human body optimal function. That is
0 (49m 53s):
Yeah. And then gut health wrote in there as well.
1 (49m 59s):
Yeah. And I think, I think gut health is something we don't understand at all the microbiome. We don't understand it all. And so currently let me just give everybody a piece of advice. If you see an ad or you hear a podcast and somebody says, Hey, send me a sample of your poop or your DNA. And I will tell you every food you should eat and every food you should avoid, that's a waste of money. We currently do not have. We're not anywhere close to having the information we need about either the gut microbiome or your DNA, to be able to predict what foods you should eat or what foods you should avoid, what diseases you're more likely to get, because it completely ignores the epigenetic that kind of the second and probably much more important part of the genetic equation.
1 (50m 48s):
And then the gut microbiome dude, we're literally caved me and stumbling around in the dark. We're like the, the blind man feeling the elephant when it comes to the microbiome. Do I think it's exquisitely important? Yes. It's huge. It's gonna, it's going to be game changing for probably many areas of medicine and nutrition and science. But as currently, we don't know what the hell we're talking about when it comes to the microbiome.
0 (51m 17s):
Yeah. It's, it's such a, it's a complicated area, but vitally important. And I think that, you know, like the elimination diet, which you would think of something like a carnivore diet, you know, if, if you're having gut issues that that might be something to turn to because, you know, then you'll sort of figure out, well, what foods are causing this and what are it? And you know, if you can do some type of elimination diet, like you're talking about,
1 (51m 41s):
We had hundreds, if not thousands of people reach out to us after doing a 90 day carnival challenge and say, my, my irritable bowel is gone, whether it was constipation, predominant or diarrhea, it's just, it's 99% better. My Chrome's is in remission. My, I haven't had a single diverticulosis lot of flare up. I haven't had any problems with my gut whatsoever since I did the 90 day cardboard challenge. Because most people, if they have a serious gut issue and a diet makes it go away, they tend to stick to that diet because the gut issues can be pretty darn severe. And so, yeah, if anybody's got any kind of gut issue, I had, I had severe daily heartburn when I was even on paleo, but got 80% better with keto.
1 (52m 29s):
And now on carnivores, that's why I'm still at carnivores because I have zero heartburn. I have taken nothing for heartburn and over 18 months, and for anybody out there who suffers from severe reflux, they know just how much that sucks. And so I would, I would prefer to eat meat the rest of my life than to ever have heartburn again for one day.
0 (52m 50s):
Yeah. That makes sense. And one of the questions that I ask a lot of my guests towards the end is what, what one tip would you give someone like a middle-aged individual that maybe they're in their forties and fifties and you know, they've lost it a little bit, right? They want to get their body back to what it once was maybe 10, 15 years ago. W what one tip would you give to them?
1 (53m 12s):
Yeah, the, the one thing I would say to them is that I was in your shoes. Hundreds of thousands of people were in your shoes and they now no longer live like that. And with those complications, there is hope there. And, and the hope does not lie in a handful of prescription medications or a handful of supplements, either the hope lies in eating a proper human diet. When I first started recommending Quito years ago to my patients, it was as a temporary weight loss hack. I didn't, I didn't think it was helpful for anything else. I didn't think it would maybe not even safe for long-term.
1 (53m 53s):
But now through, through the years of study, I have come to the conclusion that a very low carbohydrate diet full of fatty meat. And I think there's a spectrum. It can be low carb. It can be Quito key Devora carnivore. It can be strict carnivore or, or, you know, lazy carnival, whatever that spectrum is, the proper human diet for all human beings on this planet of any age with any medical condition whatsoever. There is, there is. And I think it's quickly becoming inarguable, but there's hope for you. You don't have to be morbidly obese the rest of your life. You don't have to have this list of chronic medical problems that keep getting worse.
1 (54m 38s):
You don't have to keep taking more and more and more prescription medication. There is hope, and the hope is in your hands. There's no gatekeeper. That's the other beautiful thing I love about this is you don't even have to go to a doctor to, to tap into this super power, full, super ancient healing technology. It's your body's already got it built in. Now, all you've got to do is just feed it. The proper food and things will start to go back to normal. Inflammation will start to decrease arthritis that you thought you were crippled with for the rest of your life will start to almost magically get less severe bowel complaints, skin complaints, mental health.
1 (55m 22s):
We've had so many thousand people say, as long as I eat keto or carnivore, my OCD is it literally doesn't bother me, my depression, my anxiety, my add just so much better when I eat what Dr. Barry calls a proper human diet. And so the question then becomes are all these diseases, these epidemics of chronic diseases? Are they just the, are they the, are they the inheritance of modern humans? Is that's just what we're stuck with or are they being induced and produced by the diet we're being told to eat?
0 (56m 3s):
Yeah, no, I, that's a great, great way to finish things up. And a lot of that's also, I got your book right here. I'll give it a little, there we go. Cool. When when's your next one coming out,
1 (56m 15s):
Eh, anywhere within the next six months to six years,
0 (56m 22s):
It's being worked, it's
1 (56m 24s):
Tentatively titled the proper human diet. And that's a, that's a big bite to take. I know, but I'm going to see what I can do with that subject.
0 (56m 34s):
Well, I love it. And well, I'll have to get you back on when that book hopefully comes out before six years and, you know, I love your message because the fact that you're just a, you know, you're a board first board certified physician that probably all this stuff you didn't get trained on. Right? You learned this all yourself. I think that would be the biggest hope. Right. I talked to Dr. Gary Schleifer, who is also a family physician out of the West coast. And that would be the biggest goal is to have our doctors being trained in this, in this, you know, way of teaching. And I think it would go a long way. Yeah.
1 (57m 14s):
And they actually are being trained, but they're being trained in a very unusual model. Currently. They're not being trained by their professors and by the, the organizations they're being trained by their patients one at a time, and it's, it's pretty intriguing and interesting and hopeful to see that that doctors like me and others can see changes in our patients and go, dude, how'd you do that? And then learn from that. And that's currently how doctors are being trained in nutrition in the United States.
0 (57m 43s):
Yeah. Well, this was great. We could probably talk for hours, but thank you so much for coming on Dr. Barry and I look forward to speaking to down the road. Yeah. It's a pleasure. I'll see you next time. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the get lean clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member. That's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
