0 (1s):
Coming up on the get lean, eat clean podcast. I think, you know,
1 (4s):
In certain cases, high cholesterol is a problem. And I think, and I think it's probably a problem for the vast Amera, vast amount of people that eat the standard junk food diet. I mean, you, you, you sort of, again, this is, I think it is a conditionally dependent variable to the sense that if you have high cholesterol in the setting of vascular inflammation, hypertension, you know, hyper hyperglycemia hyperinsulinemia then, and particularly maybe the cholesterol is oxidized or glycated, then you're probably at increased risk for cardiovascular disease. In fact, there's just massive amounts of literature that would support that. However, if you don't have any of those things going on and say, you're very low inflammation, you have no visceral fat or very little visceral fat.
1 (46s):
Your blood pressure is normal. Your triglycerides are low, your HDL is high. We don't have a lot, a lot of evidence that would support that higher cholesterol in that situation is necessarily right.
0 (58s):
Hello and welcome to the get clean, 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 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. Shawn Baker, he's an orthopedic surgeon world record holder, author of the carnivore diet and CEO of meat, rx.com. We discuss his own health journey, how he prepares meat and how much protein is ideal to build muscle. We also touch on his eating fasting workout routine.
0 (1m 39s):
What really causes gout? Should we worry about cholesterol, protein and mTOR stimulation, and is one tip to get your body back to what it once was. So I really enjoyed my interview with Dr. Sean. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the interview. All right. Welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin and I have Dr. Sean Baker on welcome to the show. Hey, Brian. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Yeah. I wanted to touch on a bunch of different things first, before I get into that, perhaps for the people that don't know, maybe give them a little background of your, you know, your history and how you got into, you know, carnivores and everything else.
1 (2m 24s):
Yeah. So let's see a 54 year old lifelong athlete. I'm an orthopedic surgeon by training. I, you know, been sort of looking at nutrition now for, you know, pretty significantly for about a decade. I, you know, through my own health issues, I suppose, as I got into my forties, noted, noted that despite training extremely hard being a competitive athlete and still putting in the work, my health was, was starting to sort of go in a direction. I didn't want it to go. And so I started, you know, really investigating nutrition pretty significantly, you know, and, and as a physician, you don't really get in the way of nutrition knowledge, you know, you get, you get trained pretty good at doing procedures and prescribing drugs and whatnot, but as a physician, that's not part of your normal repertoire of things you have for most of us.
1 (3m 10s):
And so, you know, I went on a, I went on my own journey and started out with this low fat, you know, you know, sort of high vegetable, you know, a little bit of lean chicken diet for, for awhile, which is what many people would recommend. And I, and I was able to lose weight and get leaner doing that, but it was just clearly not sustainable. It's something I didn't enjoy. I was not, you know, it was, it was sort of, you know, irritable because I wasn't eating enough and that type of stuff. And so, yeah, that led me through kind of a journey of different dietary sort of attempts. And, you know, I went to a paleo diet and then a low carb diet, a ketogenic diet, and finally back about just not quite five years ago, four and a half years ago, I ended up on this fully meat-based diet and kind of more or less been doing that ever since I did a 30 day trial felt really, really good.
1 (4m 1s):
Went back to a, you know, kind of more, more, more mixed and diverse diet for a day. And immediately I started starting to feel that, you know, the back started aching, you know, aches and pains sleep wasn't as good. So I went back to the meat place one and, you know, basically been on that more or less ever since. So that's kind of the, you know, kind of,
0 (4m 22s):
Yeah. So you did your own exploration. W w what kind of health issues did you, did you have that brought you on this journey?
1 (4m 35s):
Yeah, I was, you know, I was 285 pounds, you know, probably, you know, even though that just won a world championship and Highland games, I was, you know, very strong, but I wasn't as lean as I needed to be. I was developing sleep apnea. Hypertension probably had metabolic syndrome prediabetes that wasn't officially confirmed at the time, you know, numerous aches and pains, you know, as an athlete, I'd been, you know, I competed as an athlete. My whole life I'd won several world championships in set world records in a number of different sports. And, you know, once you, it sort of takes its toll on your body with aches and pains. And so those are the things I was dealing with, you know, when I, when I first started looking at it. Yeah.
0 (5m 12s):
Yeah. And was there someone that influenced you to, to, to look into carnivores and going meat based?
1 (5m 19s):
Yeah, I mean, there was a, there's a whole community of people that was online called the zeroing in, in zeroing, in on a health Facebook community. And I just, I don't know exactly how I ended up seeing them. I can't remember the exact intro, but I ended up sort of vicariously watching and see what was going on for about a year before I decided to, you know, take the plan, so to speak and do that. And so there's a whole group of these folks, a girl named Kelly Hogan, Charles Washington, Amber O'Hearn among others that, that, that showed Joe and Charlene Anderson. They'd been doing it for a decade. You know, some been doing it for 20 years successfully without any, apparently any evidence of any sort of problems. And so I thought that was intriguing enough just to give it a try.
1 (6m 0s):
And so that's where I got started in that.
0 (6m 4s):
And, you know, I know you want me to say carnivore diet that could maybe mean a bunch of different things. What is, what is like a typical carnivore diet? I know there's carnival Irish and things like that, but w what would you say are, is top of the line on the food list there?
1 (6m 21s):
Well, meat and particularly red meat tends to be the, you know, the, the major staple for, I'd say the vast majority of people. And then, you know, some people to that they'll add, you know, different types of meat, whether it's pork or chicken, or, you know, I'd see food in there. Many people will use eggs. Dairy is one of those things where some people do okay with it. Some don't, you know, some people will include some spices. Some people are, you know, just salt or even no spices. And then, you know, there's some people that, you know, like you said, carnivorous fish, or they'll throw some piece of avocado or a little bit of fruit in there from time to time. I think all that's fine. Quite honestly, I don't really get too much into the dogmatic part. My, you know, my, my thought around this as let's do it, get you healthy. And, and that's been the focus.
1 (7m 1s):
It's not, it's not reverse veganism. It's not, you know, not some ideology. It's like, Hey, what do you, what do you gotta do to get healthy? And if it means eating nothing but red meat, that's fine. If it means you can eat red meat, plus some fruit and a little bit of vegetables and bull ice cream here. And again, and that's also fine. I mean, I think it's, there's no reason to sort of, you know, say there's only one way because there's not, and I've seen that over and over again.
0 (7m 24s):
Yeah. Cause there's all these different camps on, on, on, you know, and I agree. I don't think you need to be on one camp per se. I was, I used to be, I used to have a decent amount of plants and more of like a pescatarian, I would say. And I've shifted actually during the whole quarantine, I shifted, I was, I'm pretty active and lift a lot and got more into red meat and, you know, buying it from sustainable places and grass fed grass finished. Good quality meat. What would you say a typical day for you? Like as far as eating and then I'm, I'm big into fasting as well.
0 (8m 4s):
What's your fast, do you have any type of like meal timing as well?
1 (8m 8s):
Well, I mean, I can tell you what I'm doing right now, currently, and this has changed over the years. So, you know, like I said, I've been doing this for years now, so it's currently right now I eat two meals a day, an early morning meal. Like I just had one, so it's eight o'clock I had, I just, I just ate just under three pounds of, of, of ribeye steak for breakfast. I'll probably have another pound and a half sometime around Oh, 11, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock and that'll be it for the day. So I'll, I'll, I'll come in around four, four and a half pounds of meat and that's it. And so then there'll be about an 18 hour period before my next, you know, before breakfast the next day. So that's, that's, what's been working well for me, I'm, I'm playing with some things, looking at blood glucose, blood glucose numbers. And like I woke up this morning, my blood glucose was 50 58 fasting blood glucose, which is very low, but I feel great with that.
1 (8m 52s):
So it's not hypoglycemic by definition because I'm not symptomatic, you know, there's some people that would argue that point, but I'm pretty confident in the fact that it's fine for my particular situation. And so, yeah, that's, that's what I'm doing now. So, you know, that's, and that's kind of keeps me at baseline. That's kind of a weight maintenance. I sit there, you know, a big guy I'm about 246 to 250 pounds, depending on the day, depending on what time of day, I guess I weighed in the morning lighter in the end of the day, I've gained a couple pounds from the food, but yeah, that, that, that's a, that's a pretty, you know, pretty decent spot.
0 (9m 28s):
So two meals a day. And so you do more of like an early time restricted eating where you'll have something around eight and then do eight, eight, eight noon. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, you don't see that too often. Right? Like a lot of times you'll see like noon and the other way around noon and eight or noon and six, what got you into doing it earlier. And, and cause I I've always switched around and try to find what works best. When do you fit your workout into so,
1 (9m 60s):
You know, again, so I, I will say that I, so I find two things. One is I do activities. So I'm like, you see, I'm standing right now. I don't, I generally don't even sit down at all during the day time. I'm up all day long. I do all my computer work interviews while I'm standing. I do about, I don't know, two to three hours of walking. I do a lot of work while I'm walking, whether it's walking around the neighborhood with the dogs or walking on a treadmill, I don't really consider that exercise. So it's just activity my exercise, you know, when I'm lifting heavy weights or sprinting or stuff like that, that's going to happen after that second meal typically. So, you know, just around lunchtime, I usually go in there and crank out for half hour to 45 minutes of pretty intense stuff.
1 (10m 43s):
And that's that that's, that is working for me. You know, like I said, I've played around in the metric, I'm looking at his blood glucose and seeing what, what provides the best, you know, morning fasting, blood glucose, which I think, you know, that's a metric. It may not be the best metric, but a lot of people think there's some utility in that. So that's what I've been tailoring that based on. And so that's been given me some pretty good, you know, like I think the average fasting glucose for this week has been 64. I been my average for the seven day period, which many people would say is, you know, certainly low.
0 (11m 15s):
Yeah. Yeah. I did. I used to CGM for a while and I liked it and I occasionally I'll, I'll check my, a fasting blood glucose as well. What about preparing the meat? Cause this is something that I've run into, you know, I, you know, I tend to grill a decent amount, but try not to just, you know, cause I don't want to overdo it with grilling. What, what is your opinion around preparing the meat?
1 (11m 41s):
Well, I mean, I think you should enjoy it. I mean, I think that's the first, yeah. Don't, don't cook something that you're not going to like, I mean, that's, nothing's going to be sustainable. So I do, you know, I've got a number of different ways, you know, like, like for instance, this morning, what I'll typically do is I'll get up, I'll throw a couple of stakes in the Suvi device. I've got a couple different ways to Sue each steaks. If they're frozen and in, in vacuum pack, I'll throw them in a water bath. If they're not, there's a little special grill, I have that, that you can just basically serve it within a grill and I'll do that. And then when I get back from my walk, I'll sear it, you know, to sear it either in a pan or I've got a really hot grill or hot, hot grill that I'll do that. So that's, that's generally how I do it, you know? And it works pretty well. And I said, you just, you know, there's a little bit of, you know, you gotta, you gotta be thoughtful enough to, you know, put it in the Suvi.
1 (12m 27s):
But I mean, you know, like it's just automatic for me, it just takes, you know, five seconds or 10, I mean about a minute. And then you pick the dogs for their nice 30, 45 minute walk, you come back and it's ready to go. So that works pretty well.
2 (12m 41s):
Yeah. Have you ever tried an air fryer? I do. Yeah. I have an air fryer. I,
1 (12m 45s):
I think it's convenient. It's clean, you know, I mean, as far as not making a mess, it's, you know, it's a good way to, to not mess up the kitchen. I don't,
2 (12m 52s):
I don't think it does a very
1 (12m 53s):
Good job. It's searing. That's the only problem with the air fryers admitted, you know, they, they taste pretty good. I mean, it's, you know, in a pinch I'll use that. I've got, like I said, I've got just about every state cooking of a device. You can imagine this point. In fact, I'm in a dry, I've got a big dry aging device. So I'm looking forward to that. I've got my, I've got a, I think I've got about 12 days left on this big robot. So prime, well, it's going to be ready to come out. It'll be the first one I did a, I did a tender the other day, which was, you know, a lot quicker cause they're smaller. But so anyway, that's another thing that you know,
2 (13m 24s):
What about, what about Oregon meats? Is that something that you've gotten into? You don't need them? I don't eat them. I,
1 (13m 29s):
I don't particularly enjoy them. I mean, I've tried them many, many times. I've had, you know, high-end, grass-finished organ meats cooked by, you know, professional chefs in many different ways. I just don't find them very appealing. I mean, I've tried and I've tried, literally I've tried liver and kidney and brains and testicles and diamonds and pancreas. I've done it all. And I just don't find it particularly palatable to me, you know? And there, you know, in my view, they're not required. I mean, I've been doing this stuff for years. I've I've surveyed, you know, I did a survey on 10,000 people, 12,000 people actually looking at this and I asked him about organ meat consumption only about 15% actually ate it on a regular basis. And the outcomes, you know, on regular basis was more than once a week or once a week or more everybody else either ate it very infrequently or never.
1 (14m 17s):
And the differences in outcomes were, were no different at all. And inter suddenly Harvard university is about to publish a study on this, you know, with 2000 people and same results. No, cause I asked cause I, you know, I made sure they asked that question cause I want to know cause I there's a controversy, my ex my experience and personally, and the experience that I've seen within the community is they don't really make a difference in general. There's some people that, you know, certainly say they feel better with it and that's fine. And I think you should experiment and see what works. But I don't think the recommendation that everybody needs it is is, is valid based on, you know, actual results that we're. Hmm.
0 (14m 52s):
Okay. Yeah. I have not done a ton with it. I did have heart the other day. Yeah,
1 (14m 59s):
Fine. I mean, you know, some people like heart, you know, it's, you know, it's like I said, if you like it, eat it. If you don't like it, you'd probably don't need to eat it.
0 (15m 6s):
Yeah. And what about, this is a question that I get quite a bit, how much protein would you say? I pride obviously depends on the individual and perhaps their activity level and things like that, but what, what, what is a metric that you shoot for?
1 (15m 21s):
Well, I mean, you know, I'm eating plenty of protein. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm 400 grams a day or something like that for me, you know, if I eat four pounds of meat, that's pretty close to that. I think for the average person and you know, again, I'm training pretty intensely and you know, one of the goals is maintain as much muscle mass as I can really realistically do. I think, you know, I think guys like Don, you know, Stu Phillips who's whose recommendations are pretty decent. I think they'd say 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram is probably for most people, pretty good. Some people, they might go up to 2.2 as far as to build muscle, you know, and that's, you know, beyond that, you may not be providing any more muscle building events.
1 (16m 4s):
It doesn't mean eating more protein than that it's necessarily bad for you, but you know, you kind of tap out your muscle protein synthesis capability at about, you know, about a gram per pound. You know, it's what 2.2 per kilo is that I think that's a pretty reasonable start for people that are interested in, you know, muscle building. And there's some people that will do better with a little bit lower depending on what they're dealing with. But I think protein is, is the RDA for protein is generally too low.
0 (16m 30s):
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that. And what about regarding, I've gotten this question, gout gout and over consumption of meat. And I know there's, that's just sort of like a theory there's there's w what is your thought on that?
1 (16m 45s):
Yeah, well, certainly meat can precipitate a gout flare up. So, but you have to realize that gout is dependent upon a number of different things. And it's, you know, generally what we see is people that have some sort of metabolic disease often are at risk for gout. And so what we're seeing is this chronic underlying inflammation, we're seeing probably some immune immune aspects that go along with gout. We see that, you know, like hyperinsulinemia, or dysglycemia all predispose people for gout. And so when you throw pure rings into that mix, pure rings are then metabolized into uric acid. And so high levels of uric acid can in, in the right situation, precipitate a gout attack.
1 (17m 27s):
Now, there are many people that have high levels of uric acid aren't even on a carnivore diet that don't have gout. And so it's, it's, you know, it's part of the equation, fructose and alcohol are also things that certainly probably even more readily lead to gout attacks. So what I would say is, if you are predisposed to gout and you already have gal going on a meat-based diet, may initially, if you're metabolically sick lead to a gout flare, and you have to take your medications and get past it, but as your metabolic health improves, you know, as you become less hyperglycemic, as your inflammation goes down, generally the gout resolves. And so it's kind of one of those things that's kind of, you know, in the beginning sometimes, but long-term most people see gout resolve and go away.
0 (18m 10s):
Right? Yeah. And usually gout for the most part it's caused by, like you said, it could be fructose alcohol even processed carbs.
1 (18m 20s):
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Those are all things like I said were just, you just got to think of gout is not just uric acid. It's a whole host of things going on that causes uric acid crystals to precipitate.
0 (18m 31s):
And what about people who worry about cholesterol? I know this is something that's been debunked many times, but cholesterol and red meat in that home.
1 (18m 40s):
Well, I mean, I don't think you should not necessarily consider cholesterol. I think, you know, in, in certain cases, high cholesterol is a problem. And I think, and I think it's probably a problem for the vast Amera vast amount of people that eat a standard junk food diet. I mean, you, you, you sort of, again, this is, I think it is a conditionally dependent variable to the sense that if you have high cholesterol in the setting of vascular inflammation, hypertension, you know, hyper hyperglycemia hyperinsulinemia then, and particularly maybe the cholesterol is oxidized or glycated, then you're probably at increased risk for cardiovascular disease. In fact, there's just massive amounts of literature that would support that. However, if you don't have any of those things going on and say, you're very low inflammation, you have no visceral fat or very little visceral fat, your blood pressure is normal.
1 (19m 28s):
Your triglycerides are low, your HDL is high. We don't have a lot, a lot of evidence that would support that higher cholesterol in that situation is necessarily a bad thing that now that doesn't mean that it might not be, but we just don't have evidence to say, you know, cholesterol is bad in this situation and I suspect it's not, and we're seeing more and more evidence to support that. But so when I say, if you have high cholesterol and you go on a carnivore diet and some people do some people don't, some people do, I would say behooves you to find out that other information it's important to probably look at the actual vessels themselves to see, you know, I mean, it's more important to know what's going on with the vessels and looking at this one particular risk factor.
0 (20m 7s):
Right. Do you, do you do blood work like every six months or do you keep, you know, are there certain metrics that you like to keep an eye on just to
1 (20m 15s):
No. I mean, honestly I think that blood work has its utility, but it has to be taken in context. And so I think one of the things we have to realize is, you know what you're trying to figure out when you do blood work. And a lot of people don't understand how to interpret that. And you know, certain like my blood glucose of 58 this morning, if you talk to an average physician, they say, Oh my God, get you some sugar right away. But in context, I mean, I'm sitting here having a conversation. I exercise and walk my dogs. I'm just completely fine that, so we have to put the blood work in context into what's going on, but I think more importantly, measuring actual disease is more important.
1 (20m 58s):
So what does disease to me? Well, if you've got, if you're, if you're obese your disease, you know, I mean, that's clear you have a lot of visceral fat, your disease. If you cannot perform athletically and you've got, you know, limitations and pain and that's indicative of disease in my view. So those metrics actually what affect me day-to-day and what I really care about now, I've done a coronary artery calcium scan to look at my heart vessels. Zero, no evidence of plaque whatsoever was seen in there after many years of eating all meat and a ketogenic diet prior to that. So I mean, those things remind my blood. Pressure's always low, you know, it's one 15 over 70 typically, you know, I, you know, I wake up with an erection every morning, which is a 54 yoga.
1 (21m 41s):
That's a good measure of cardio.
0 (21m 42s):
You're like, you're like 15 years old,
1 (21m 45s):
Seriously. I mean, that's important. I mean, I know it's come, people like, laugh about that. Isn't that is, that is an indicator of your, your vascular health. And so, you know, I mean, I occasionally I'll get some labs. I mean, the last time I checked my kidney function was perfect. My liver function was perfect. You know, I mean, you know, cholesterol was a little bit high again. I cannot put that into Cabot. My inflammatory markers were eventually essentially close to zero. So, you know, I I'm, I'm pretty pleased with where I'm at health wise.
0 (22m 15s):
Yeah. And so at this point now you don't have any carbs. Right. They don't play any role.
1 (22m 23s):
Yeah. Right now, I mean, no, I mean, like I said, I, and this is, I think an inch pretty important sort of cabinet this, I don't necessarily think carbohydrate per se. Isn't bad for us. I don't think glucose per se is bad for us. If it was our liver, wouldn't make it. I mean, our liver makes glucose. I don't eat any, but my liver makes it, you know, I still have glucose and the lows, my glucose is it never goes to zero. And when I'm exercising really hard, it's going to go up a little bit because my, my liver says, Hey, your muscles are using more glucose. We're going to make more and deliver as has the capacity to kind of increase your liver output by about 1500%, you know, while you're exercising intensely. I think that, and so if I eat dairy, I'm going to get some carbohydrates. If I eat some eggs, there's going to be a small amount of carbohydrates.
1 (23m 6s):
Meat. Generally doesn't have carbohydrates. You know, maybe liver might have a little bit, but so I'm not really concerned about that. Right now, there are foods that contain carbohydrates, mostly plant foods, and also have compounds that are maybe irritating to people. You know, some people don't do what we liked and some people don't do well with oxalate. Some people don't do well with, you know, glyco, you know, goitrogens and so on and so forth. And so I think those are the problems for many people in that w you know, most people, they don't acutely bother them. But I think in the chronic setting over time, over time, over time, we see maybe, maybe this insidious development of chronic disease and maybe, you know, due to the, some sort of these vegetables we think are healthy.
1 (23m 46s):
And maybe for some people, certain vegetables just don't do it. And we don't, you know, we don't want to recognize that or believe that that's a possibility, but I see it every single day over and over again, people, you know, eating a clean diet of meat and a little bit of that schools and they do better when they cut the vegetables out. So, you know, why is that? I mean, I can't explain any other reason other than the, perhaps irritating for certain people with certain conditions.
0 (24m 11s):
And where do you get most of your meat from? Do you get it from one place or,
1 (24m 14s):
You know, I get it, you know, I've become kind of this meat guy, right. So I'm in social media. So I honestly, I get a lot of this ranchers to send me stuff. So I get probably 70% of my stuff I get from different ranchers that want me to try their meat. And I'm happy to promote these guys and say, Hey man, buy, buy from a local rancher. So, right. That's where most of it sometimes I'll get it from the store. I mean, you know, it's, it just depends. But, but yeah, I got up, got meat from all over all over the U S and sometimes Canada, sometimes it's from overseas, but yeah.
0 (24m 45s):
Okay. And what about M tour? I was just listening to Dave Asprey, speak a little bit about, you know, I mean, he's, he talked about meat and how maybe overstimulation of M Tor for individuals, what would he, what would you say regarding that?
1 (25m 3s):
Yeah, so I think, I think that's a nuanced topic. And so if you listen to guys like Keith Barr, who is a researcher, does this stuff, and, and some of the other folks that protein research I've talked to protein can stimulate him tour. We know that exercise stimulates him tour by the way, calories stimulate him or insulin stimulates him to are probably, and in fact, cowers and some probably have the biggest impact on inventory. So if you want to not stimulate M tour, don't eat a bunch of cowers and don't email a bunch of insulin genic foods. I eat carbohydrates, M Tor is differentially expressed in different tissues. So, you know, stimulation of MTR in the liver is different than simulation of inventory in the, in the, in the, in the muscle and the brain and the fat tissue.
1 (25m 47s):
And so it's, again, it's, it's kind of context dependent. So if you are eating protein and th that's the concern with me is this protein, particularly leucine, you know, you should be doing some exercise. You know, I mean, the idea we want him toward a stimulate to grow muscle. I mean, that's a good thing. No one would argue with that. You can't do it without ameture. If you give animals rapamycin, for instance, which inhibits, you know, M tour, they become kikexia in sarcopenia, so you can't blanket stop stimulating mTOR. So it's a differential thing. So it's more nuanced than that. And so if you were just going to pound the protein and just sit on your butt all day. Yeah. I mean, that's probably a problem with it, but again, that's the same thing with eating too many calories.
1 (26m 29s):
If you get fat, I would just say, don't get fat, stay lean, stay muscular. And you're good, you know? And so, I mean, if eating a bunch of steaks makes you fat and you're doing the own thing, but like, but that's unlikely to happen. But if you're sitting around eating donuts and ice cream all day and getting fat, you got a problem. You're still stimulating him to her. And you're probably going to get cancer and die young and all that type of stuff.
0 (26m 54s):
Yeah. I would agree. I mean, I think that it's good to have a balance. Like if, if you're doing some fasting, like you do, you, you know, you have periods of time where you're catabolic per se, and then, and then, you know, you, maybe you work out and then have, you know, your steak or whatever, and then, you know, you want growth then. So, you know, at that point, you know, yeah. If you're active and lifting and especially like, I would say resistance training, then, you know, it's a perfect time to stimulate them tour.
1 (27m 19s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a good thing. I mean, it's just like, you know, all these things, it's glucose is not inherently bad. Insulin is not inherently bad. You know, inventory is not inherently bad, but you know, if it's stimulated in, in, in, in the way or in, in unusual concentrations, then it can be bad, but it's not that it's not this all or none. It's, there's a sort of a sort of a level that's, that's helpful.
0 (27m 44s):
Yeah. And, and you're creating a whole community of carnivores success stories. I see. Maybe touch on, meet our ex I was checking it out and you have a whole community of not only individuals doing it, but also coaches.
1 (28m 0s):
Yeah, we have. So yeah, we came up, well, I started collecting success stories a few years back because I just, I thought it was really cool. And I think it inspires people and we've got literally hundreds upon hundreds and hundreds of six success stories categorized by every single condition you can think of generally within there. So we have success stories, you know, on video, you know, written down, we have a home community, you know, we have like 40 meetings a week of different times. People get together and they support each other. I'm on there every single day. In fact, after this, I'll be going strictly my meter X community meeting for the day. And then we have a whole host of coaches that helped people to support them.
1 (28m 42s):
You know, because as easy as this diet is to tell people, Hey, just eat a bunch of steak and don't worry about it. People still have questions. They still need, they have struggled with motivation. A lot of them have carb addiction issues. A lot of them have a specific, you know, what if I don't have a gallbladder, how much do I eat? How much fat do I eat? You know, it's on and on and on. And, you know, so we just kind of support those folks. And then the interesting thing is that as we progress, you know, we've been doing this for about a year. Now we have about 5,000 members. And like I said, about 120 coaches and growing every day, you know, we're trying to figure out what's unique about people as far as you know, okay, you've gotten off all this stuff with a meat-based diet, you're kind of on a strict diet.
1 (29m 25s):
Now, what can you put back into your diet and still stay healthy? And that's just, that's the thing that we're going to be pursuing, you know, in, in the very near future and figuring how to do that. We've got some really cool stuff coming up with that. So
0 (29m 39s):
Yeah, no, it's, it's, you know, it's always good to have a community whenever you're doing anything, whether it's working out fasting or eating meat. Right. If you can see other people's success stories, what, what about, I was just gonna say, what about the coaches? So you have over, so these coaches pretty much are they, do they get assigned individuals pretty much and then help them and help guide them and into it?
1 (30m 6s):
Yeah. So I mean, all the coaches, you know, I put together a course, you know, they all, they, they, they, you know, it's something like 20 videos I have to watch and there's quizzes on each of the video. Then they take a, you know, pretty lengthy, you know, in depth tests that they have to pass. Then they have to do a mock interview. And before we certify them, they all have to have six months of experience with the diet before they're allowed to apply as a coach. And so, and then what we do is, you know, that, you know, our website helps, you know, kind of helps promote them. And we kind of helped schedule and do all this stuff to kind of make it easy for them. And so people just kind of can sign up with a coach and they can continue on with them. And then we also just started to develop. And so they can schedule it like a half hour session with a coach. We also started this instant coaching thing where you can just, if you, if you have a question right now, there's, there's always a coach waiting, standing by like an Uber driver.
1 (30m 52s):
You just kinda hit your button, you know, connects you immediately with a coach and they can kind of give you direct feedback right then and there. So that's, that's how the coaching is working right now.
0 (31m 0s):
Oh, that's nice. And I also noticed you have, GoFund me, you have carnival clinical trial that you're raising money for what, perhaps tell us a little bit about that.
1 (31m 14s):
Yeah. So we are, you know, in the midst of raising quite a bit of money to do a large intervention trial, you know, we've currently got just around a quarter of a million dollars in funding that we've raised so far. We're trying to get that probably closer to the 750,000 a million dollar range, which I think we'll do in the near future. Hopefully we'll get some independent funding in addition to the GoFund stuff, you know, we're going to get any way we can. And so we want to do a large scale intervention trial to, you know, further to solidify what we're doing. You know, like I said, I mentioned there's, I'm aware of three studies that are already ongoing re waiting for publication. That'll come out this year, but this will be the largest sort of scale intervention trial that will be done.
1 (31m 57s):
I will directly be doing the research. I'm not a researcher, but just kind of help helping set up what we want to look at and the direction I want to go. And then we'll, we'll hand it over to professional researchers to actually do the study, but that's, that's the goal for the, hopefully the fairly near future.
0 (32m 13s):
Sure. Yeah. That's great. And I just glanced over one question was, what's your opinion regarding fiber because you see this, I see a lot of mixed messages regarding fiber. What are your thoughts regarding that? Yeah,
1 (32m 28s):
I think, again, this is a conditionally beneficial substance. I think, you know, for the average person eating a kind of a junk food diet fiber can be beneficial. I don't think it's, I clearly know it's not essential. I mean, I've literally not eaten fiber in almost five years and I'm completely fine, completely normal bowel habits, no problems at all. I mean, I've seen that over and over and over again, so it's not essential. I think, you know, the, the benefits of fiber that, that have been talked about are that, you know, it tends to sort of mitigate blood sugar spikes. So if you eat fiber with a glycine high-glycemic load food, you know, you're going to see less of a blood sugar excursion. So that's clearly okay, but that's not an issue for me because I'm not eating the glycaemic foods.
1 (33m 13s):
You know, fiber has not really much of it. Some of the studies looking at blood pressure doesn't really make a significant difference. It might lower your blood pressure, two points it's insignificant. It may lower your cholesterol. Now the question is, is that even helpful or not? And again, it's again, that's, I think that's conditional and, and the people you're looking at fiber can have a role of satiety. You know, you fill yourself up with a bunch of fiber and you're, you're, you're, you're, you know, you're kind of full from the receptors. The problem is for many people that leads to discomfort, bloating pain. So there's some downsides to it. I mean, some people talk about the fact that fiber causes the gut microbiome to pursue, or sorry, produce these things called short chain, fatty acids.
1 (33m 55s):
And particularly they talk about butyrate as being helpful for the colonic mucosa. And that's, you know, that's likely true. I don't discount that. However, there's a lot of ways to get a healthy gut without having to be right from, from far when you can eat it directly, you can eat things like butter and you get butyrate directly, a beta hydroxybutyrate, which is the principle ketone body and the blood easily converts to butyrate. Or it could be that the Buder is converting to beta hydroxybutyrate and that's the beneficial effect. And so we see people that are in low carb diets, ketogenic diets, carnivores nudge, having circulating ketones, which likely also protect the colonocytes. We also know that pro a protein can be converted to short chain fatty acids.
1 (34m 35s):
So, so you think you get things like propionate and acetate, methyl, butyrate, so on and so forth. So there's likely evidence that those things probably also help that gut mucosa. So, you know, and there's evidence out there that shows that fiber can potentially be problematic. There's a study that Ann period in the journal of gastroenterology a few years back looking at colonoscopies, 2000 people eating, you know, and she, she stratified them by fiber core to also people that ate the most fiber and versus the people at the least, apart from the people like the most fiber had the highest incidence of colonic disease, particularly diverticulosis, and those that had little or no fiber had no, no evidence of disease. So there's some studies out there that show that maybe fiber is not as beneficial as we think it is.
1 (35m 18s):
And again, I think it's very conditional if you're going to eat a standard American diet with lots of sugary stuff and glycaemic stuff that probably probably the fiber's going to have a benefit to you, if you're eating a carnivore diet, probably no benefit and probably, and perhaps detrimental.
0 (35m 32s):
Hmm. Yeah. So it's all context related. Depends if you're metabolically healthy, you definitely probably get away with a lot more than if you're not. And then I know you touched on it briefly because I don't, I'm not a big fruit eater. I know some people are consumption of fruit and certain which fruits would you say, like the berries best off as opposed to like, you know, like melons and things like that regarding, you know, glycaemic index and things like that.
1 (35m 60s):
W well, I mean, there's clearly, I mean, I mean, that's, you can just look that up. I mean, there's, there's certainly a, you know, with the glycemic index or probably more importantly, glycemic load are things that would favor things like berries, if that's your issue, you know, if you're diabetic pre-diabetic or diabetic pathophysiology then, or hyperinsulinemia, and those things may be problematic for you. I, again, I don't necessarily think that fruit is bad for everybody or even most people, but I mean, there are people where they need to avoid it. I mean, I, I don't consume fruit. I mean, you know, like I said, kind of these crazy guys, it just eats basically meat, but do you have a cheat food? Yeah. It's kinda like dairy or eggs would be my cheat food. It's kind of funny.
1 (36m 40s):
I mean, it's and you know, I don't, I mean, well, honestly I cheat every day. My meals are, my, my drive-by steaks are or cheat meal. I mean, every day is a cheat meal for me, you know?
0 (36m 51s):
Yeah. You're having a five-star meal for right in the morning. Right. When you get up or not. Right when you get out probably. But absolutely. Yeah. W what, speaking of morning, I'm a big morning ritual guy. What kind of things do you do in the morning to start your day? I know you mentioned. Yeah.
1 (37m 6s):
Yeah. Well, I mean, I get, I usually get up around before the sun comes up. I start to, I wake up spontaneous and I haven't used an alarm clock in years. And so I popped by my eyes kind of pop open somewhere between five and 6:00 AM. I get up, I got two dogs, so they go for a walk with me. And usually, like I said, I'm throwing some stakes in the SUV and, you know, 30, 45 minutes, sometimes an hour long walk, depending on, you know, what the weather's like and how the dogs are, look, look like they need to do. And I will usually then I'll eat. And then I'll usually, again, usually directly after meals. I also try to do a little bit activity. I think that that's a nice way to blunt that insulin and glucose response is to go for a walk again, go for another, to go for another walk.
1 (37m 50s):
And then, and then I've got, you know, that I've usually got some sort of a meeting I've got to do, like, like these interviews and stuff like that. And then, and then I'll have another meal and then I'll exercise and I'll for cork the rest of day. But yeah, like I said, I've really found that, you know, trying to avoid, you know, being sedentary is extremely important. So I will spend, I literally won't sit down till six or 7:00 PM is when I finally, for the first time I'll sit down during the day, I might sit down and, you know, and, you know, just relax for a little bit, most of the time I'm up.
0 (38m 25s):
Yeah. I'm, I'm the same way I do not like to sit. I'm actually kneeling right now. Wow. Ouch. You know, I got a good pad here and I move around, but yeah, I'm the same way I don't like to sit. So I'll either standard kneel and I have two dogs like you. So I, I get up and it really is a great way to start the day, whether you have dogs or not, but, you know, just to get moving right off the bat, I always teach people. And after meals, I try to sort of time my walks after a meal, because, you know, like you said, it's a good way to bun blood sugar and just get, get going, help with digestion as well.
1 (38m 60s):
Yeah. I mean, if you look at like, you know, you go to Europe and you see the people, I mean, they always go for a stroll after meals, you know, it's, it's, it's just a tradition. I think it's something that's, it's, that's helpful. And I mean, unfortunately I live in a warm climate where I can kind of walk you around, you know, where are you? W where are you? I mean, I'm in Southern Califor.
0 (39m 17s):
Okay. Is it you guys getting a cold front there? And how's it going?
1 (39m 22s):
I mean, cold front means 50 degrees, you know, it's not really, you know, that's not really too bad. It was, it was actually 90 here a couple of weeks ago in January, which I thought was pretty, pretty, pretty impressive, but I'm actually going to be, I likely will be leaving and moving to a colder place in summer. So it'll be, we'll see if I can, I'm sure. I'll keep it up. I don't mind. I used to live in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which was extremely cold and windy. So
0 (39m 49s):
Do you do any cold punching or, or,
1 (39m 52s):
Yeah, I've done that. I've done. I haven't done as much recently, but I do a lot of cold showers. I used to do ice mass. I find you, I find it to be beneficial quite honestly. I mean, it was kind of interesting. I would get where the ice best, especially I would do not as much as a 30 minute ice bath, which is quite a long time. And I got not just completely euphoric. I mean, you're shivering, but you're just laughing because it's, it's, it's got it's mood enhancing, you know, quality to it.
0 (40m 19s):
Yeah. Yeah. I've gotten into cold plunging. I don't know if you know, Brad Kearns. He's sort of
1 (40m 23s):
Getting the Brisbane over to my house. Oh
0 (40m 26s):
Yeah. I know. Yeah. He's, he's great. He's helped me out and I've gotten into it. I love it. I don't go for 30 minutes. I'm in there for five minutes, maybe six minutes, but just for recovery, you know?
1 (40m 40s):
Yeah. I think, you know, and I think the one thing that, you know, some of the research is suggesting that, you know, you should distance that away from, you know, strength, training activities, or muscle building activities. And so I would do that, you know, as his own special event, I wouldn't tie it to exercise. I would kind of do it. And then maybe I would exercise, not even that day or do it later in the day or something like that. So it didn't interfere with some of the, you know, inflammation that is actually beneficial when we exercise.
0 (41m 9s):
Right. Yeah. Normally, yeah. I don't like to do it around my work, if anything, I'll, you know, I'll work out in a few hours later, maybe I'll yeah. I'll do a little plunge. Well, this is a question I ask all my guests, what's one tip. You'd give like a middle-aged individual looking to get their body back to what it once was. I'm sure we've touched on stuff already, but what would be one tip? You'd give that individual
1 (41m 35s):
A wow. There's a lot of tips I can give that individual. You know, I think that, you know, you, well, you you've, you've gotta be able to find something that you can do. I mean, that's that's and you gotta be consistent about it. I mean, that's, I mean, that's, that's, what's going to ultimately work. I mean, I know there's a friend of mine, Stan efforting says compliance is a science. And so you've got to find something that you can do and you can stick with. And, you know, if it's eaten steaks every day, I mean, I find that pretty easy and pretty helpful. And then, you know, throw the exercise on top of that. I think, you know, I think you've got a couple, both diet and exercise and then sleep all, all three of those things or, you know, it was all things, those are all sort of three critical linchpins and, you know, having,
0 (42m 16s):
Yeah, I agree. I mean, you know, doing something for a little bit is, can be beneficial, but being consistent over a long period of time is really most important to get, you know, to get lifestyle, you know, to get lifelong results. Well, that was, that was great. So where's the best place to find you? Is it meet our x.com or I know you're big on Twitter.
1 (42m 38s):
Yeah. So meet x.com. You can enter you, like I said, in fact in 15 minutes, I'll be there and there'll be a group of 70 to a hundred people. And I just answer questions directly. We have a nice chat and we encourage each other and we talk about it and whatever, whatever people want to talk about. So that's where you can actually interact with me directly if you want. I'm on social media. I mean, some people, I, sometimes I piss a lot of people off right now. I got an angry hoard of women are mad at me cause I said, bloating is not normal and they're all upset. And they think it's misogynistic that you would say that bloating is not normal, not normal. So I kind of like in trouble. Yeah. So I got, I got to, you know, I got, I, I guess I pissed off some influencer. I called out for normalizing bloating.
1 (43m 20s):
I said, that's not, you know, that's not normal. So anyway, but Sean Baker, 1967, S H a w N B a K E R 1967. That's my Instagram, Twitter is as a Baker am D and YouTube. I put up a YouTube video most days just showing Baker.
0 (43m 38s):
Yeah. Okay. I'll put some links in for you on the show notes. So well, Dr. Sean, thanks so much for coming on. Well, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Brian. This is our second take and we got it. So we got it. We got it. All right, man. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the get lean eat 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.
