The Sevan Podcast - #40 - Doctor Tro

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

The Sevan Podcast EP 40 - Doctor Tro @sevanmatossian @doctortro The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Can you hear me? Yes. Dr. Tro Kalijan.

Kalijan. Come on. Kalijan. Come on. Seriously? You're Armenian, right? I see the beard and the nose. You're Armenian, right?

I was trying to show off. I was like the guy trying to run up the stairs and trip. Damn it. Yeah, the frame is kind of small, but let's see if that works. Here. You look crisp. You might have the best connection of any guest we've ever had.

Yeah, we've been doing this, man. We've been doing this. I just did two podcasts this morning, so we're doing it, man. You're doing great work. Thank you. Dr. Tro Collegian, host of the Low Carb MD podcast.

There you go. Yeah, it's right over here. We have a few things in common. We both are acquaintances with the carnivore MD, Paul Saladino. Oh, Paul, yeah. Good friend of mine. Great guy, right? Yeah, he's on to something. How old are you, Dr. Tro?

I think I'm 38. Do you go by Dr. Tro? I think I'm 38. Do you go by Dr. Tro? Tro is fine. Tro is fine if you want to do Tro. Tro. Yeah. Ayo. Yeah.

But Tro is fine. And do you go by Dr. Tro because you think collegian is too difficult for people to say and remember? I think that Dr. Tro is like Dr. Phil. Oh, I like that. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's kind of like, you know, even when I was a resident, I, you know, I told people to just call me my first name. And it's funny.

The way it came about is a funny story. my first name. And it's funny, the way to come about is a funny story. I don't know if we're recording or not, but, um, you know,

uh, you'd be in the hospital and I talked to the nurses. A lot of them are, you know, some of them are, uh, immigrants or multinational. And I guess there's a different way of showing respect in those countries. Cause I say,

no, just call me Tro. Like, that's fine. They'd be like, okay, Dr. Tro. No, it's like, like, you know it's like like you know just no just tro okay dr tro we'll call you dr tro i got it you know like it's just uh that's maybe where this started as an intern

you know are you first generation in this country yeah where are your parents from Yeah. Where are your parents from? Both in Syria, and then I guess if you want to take it a step further back, Kilis for my dad, and then Urfa for my mom. Are those in Turkey? Yeah. And so your grandparents escaped during the genocide to Syria, and then made the leap to the United States?

Yeah, my great-great-grandfather basically hid under dead bodies to escape and then mirac parents were born in Syria and then they moved here in the 70s and had me and my three brothers my two brothers yeah wow the 70s and why Syria how did they end up in Syria

I'm always interested in that because my family was in Musadah in Turkey. And I can't remember if it was French ships or English ships. But took them to Lebanon where the French then built them a village of 10 by 10 concrete huts. And that's where my dad was raised. How did you – do you know why – how you guys – Yeah, I mean we're so – Urfa and Kilis are just right over the Syrian border. So it's not really like a – they weren't really – yeah.

It was close. It was close and out of the slaughter zone. You got it. I one time drove from Beirutut through syria to turkey to musada well i didn't actually drive believe it or not i took a taxi it was a hell of a it was a hell of a drive when was that oh man are you are you born here i'm born here yeah yeah and my and my dad's born in anjar beirut and my my mom is first generation on her side. Her family came from, escaped from Malatya, Turkey. I think, I'm pretty sure that they came through Ellis Island.

Cool. Well, thanks for coming on. It's always interesting to find doctors like yourself that believe in empowering people through diet to heal themselves as opposed to – which usually involves taking things out of their diet as opposed to the other way, which is to get prescriptions and surgeries. And you've spoken – you've been really, really outspoken on your Instagram about that. And you've also alluded to the fact that you get pushback from your peers, from your colleagues. Yeah, yeah, they're a bunch of idiots. The bottom line, most doctors are just ingrained in the system. First of all, they accept money from insurance companies and they contract with them to get paid about $28 per visit. And so what they do is they try to make you do a whole bunch of stuff you don't need.

Like, well, we've got to do another EKG. We've got to do another EKG we got to do another breathing test and they try to get you to spend about seven minutes because they've agreed to accept such a low payment right from these insurance companies so what they're doing is basically making themselves be terrible doctors right and the ones who actually spend time and try to listen and hear you know they they wouldn't be able to survive right if you spent half an hour with a patient you know our first visit with our patients there's an hour and a half right an hour and a half and that's not

even including the half an hour my staff spent to tell you how our practice runs, right? And it's like literally a video call explaining what we do, how we do it, who's part of our team, our health coaches, our trainers, you know, what it is we do. And then, and that's not including the half an hour of time we spend getting your medical records. So before you even come in to see me, we've spent probably an hour's worth of time. And then when you do come and see me, after the first visit, it's been two and a half to three hours of time interacting with our practice. That's our first visit. Do your patients know what they're getting themselves into?

All of them. All of them. Okay. So they don't come there and they're like, oh, this sucks. He didn't give me Metaformin. He actually told me to stop eating Twinkies. You don't get that? Yeah.

So here's the next part. So people coming to us, so we've published in the medical literature that what we do can actually decrease binge eating symptoms. We've published in the medical literature that we improve diabetes outcomes, taking people off insulin. We've published this. We've published that we're able to lower triglycerides from over a thousand to under 200, right? These are the blood fats in your body. So we've published this. So people read what we do, and then they're like, holy crap, that's what I want.

I don't want to be on meds, right? Or they listen to the podcast. You know, our podcast is always top 10 in iTunes for medicine. So we're, you know, people hear the podcast. We've reached four or five, six million people, something like that. And they know. They've been educated. We have hundreds of hours. We have over 170 interviews with patients, with other doctors, with scientists. So they've gotten a whole education. scientists. So they've gotten a whole education. So they know that more is out there. The people who don't know are these just terrible medical organizations that are, you know, even the ADA, the American Diabetic Association says they recognize that, you know, you can lower your sugar and process carbs and improve diabetes, right right but the reason why they say there's no diabetic diet and eat more

grains and more fruits in the same breath right the reason why they say that is because their biggest sponsors are big food and insulin companies right so so the problem is is that the problem is, is your doctors and insurance companies don't care about you. Right. That's the truth. They just don't care about you. Right. And their doctors, they may generally care, but they're the system they've agreed to accept lets them spend about seven minutes with you on average. So they don't really know your problems and can hear your problems. to accept lets them spend about seven minutes with you on average. So they don't really know your problems and can hear your problems. They can't, they don't know anything.

They don't know what you, they don't even know what you eat. And even if they knew what you ate, because all the medical organizations say, eat more grains, eat more fruits, have, you know, more bread and pasta, right? And rice, because all the medical organizations the they've taught doctors to think that that is proper eating when we know it's not and your continued education is is primarily sponsored by pharma right yeah so most of continue a lot of continuing education a lot of the education most doctors get are just from the reps that come. In our practice, we don't even allow reps to step in our office. Literally, a rep tried to step into our office yesterday.

My office manager went out and said, what are you doing here? You know, there's a sign on our door that says no solicitation because I don't want to be influenced by them. If I'm going to use a drug, which sometimes we use drugs, right? We use drugs. It's going to be because I studied the medicine, I studied the research, right? And I think it's appropriate. Not because some guy's in here giving me pens and dinners and lunches, right? And notepads, right?

Which is literally what pharmaceutical companies have done for the last 50 years. They've gone to the point where they've literally hired strippers and taken doctors out on massive getaways to get them to prescribe their drugs. It is my profession is a disaster. When I was working for CrossFit, the founder had started doing continued education for doctors and he tried to get it. I don't know if this is the right word certified. And as I recall at first they certified it and, and it was fantastic, right? It was all people like you coming and speaking. That's what the continued education was about. I've seen those lectures. David Diamond, Gary Fedke, Jason Fung, Tim Noakes did a big series for CrossFit Health.

Yep. And then they pulled away whatever the accreditation was because they said we were a for-profit company. And I thought, what about Pharma? They're for-profit company. And I thought, but what about Pharma? They're for-profit. And at that point, I think Greg changed the name to the Derelict Doctors Club. Like basically like, okay, we'll embrace that. We'll fund it and we'll do it without getting the necessary accreditation to our doctors. When you became a doctor, was this your plan? Why did you go to med school? When did you have this awakening? I was 13. I was 13 before I had a stint with, you know, anorexia, actually, believe it or not. I was 13 years old. My entire family is obese,

probably, you know, for a number of reasons. One, Armenians know how to eat too. You know, there's, there's certainly adverse childhood events are associated with obesity, but, you know, I thought it was genetic. You know, I looked at my dad, looked at mom, look at my brother, my older brother's overweight, my younger brother's overweight, everybody, I was overweight. And I was like, I'm gonna, I gotta looked at mom, looked at my brother. My older brother's overweight. My younger brother's overweight. Everybody, I was overweight. And I was like, I've got to go into medicine. I've got to fix this. Right?

I've got to fix this. So I remember being 13 knowing that there's got to be a way out. And I've got to find it. Right? So, yeah, I've known at a very young age. Um, so yeah, I've known at a very young age and then, you know, I've gone through many iterations of being interested in health from being vegan and anorexic and to running to becoming a personal trainer. But I was bottom line. I had a bit reprieve, a whole childhood of obesity, massively obese as a kid. I had a small reprieve by doing what they told me,

which was eat a bunch of plants and count your calories and go exercise. So I had a small reprieve and then it just was me and my hunger that was insatiable. And of course, what's going to happen is you're going to gain all that weight back, right? The minute high school gym class is over, weight back, right? The minute high school gym class is over, right? It's game over, right? If you don't know how to manage your appetite, which no doctor knows how to teach, right? What do you do when you're constantly hungry? How do you diet? How do you lose weight if you're starving, right? So the problem is, you know, I regained the weight instantly, you know, instantly. And then, you know, fast forward. I still have this vision. I still want to do it. I'm in med school now. I'm 350 pound med school student. How tall are you?

5'11". Wow. 5'11 Armenian. That's that's. Yeah. 5'11 Armenian. Impressive. Throw a few inches my way please yeah and uh from where listen um so so um i'm i'm in med school and you know i loved exercise remember i was a person running and all that stuff i did it all i loved. So I have a picture of me in my cap and gown. I set up my school's gym. I literally set up the gym at my medical school.

Right? They had a budget. They renovated it. I said, this is what I'm interested in. This is what I'm inspired to do. I set up the gym. Right? And I have a picture of me in my cap and gown

working out. I was 350 pounds. Then I go through, finished medical school, went to residency, finished residency in internal medicine. I'm board certified in internal medicine. This is eight years ago. My wife was also Armenian. She knows how to play me. She's like, you can figure this out. You scored on the 90th percentile on your board exam. You diagnosed my father with, you know, a major issue and you saved his life. You know, why can't you become an expert on obesity? So that year I went to the books and I was like, let me figure this out. I read over 2000 papers. I've since read 400 diet books. That year I probably read 200 books on diet, three textbooks on obesity. And it's all right there. This is the worst part. It's all there. And they've lied to all of us. You should

not eat multiple small meals a day. If you're not hungry, don't eat. Right? You should not avoid meat. You should not avoid eggs. Okay? You should avoid sugar, processed sugar, processed grains, and foods and food combinations that make you eat more. Right? I'm with you 100%.

I try to post at least one time a day, stop eating sugar and stop eating refined carbohydrates. Like just stop. Yeah, this is the problem. They lied. If you look at the head-to-head studies, I was… I want to take you back one second. So if it's all there, who's doing the lying? If it's all – you're saying it's all there, but they're lying. So it's all there in the medical literature, but then who's lying? Yeah. So it's, it's very clear. So if you go to, so we have a study that was just accepted, right? I'm going to give you a perfect example. We took three patients. If you look at the ADA, the American Diabetic Association, they say, right, they say you need to lose weight to improve your diabetes and you need to control your energy, count your calories and portions. This is literally in their guidelines

for medical nutrition for diabetes. We took people in our practice and said, don't count your calories, don't care about your portions, just don't have carbohydrates. And we showed, we took people on insulin with an A1C of 12, which is like the worst diabetes you can have. And in four months, sorry, we lowered their A1C by six and took them off insulin, bringing them to pre-diabetic levels. We reversed their severe diabetes with ignoring, with literally telling them, ignore what these people have said. And just lower your carbohydrates. And if you're not hungry, don't eat. Which is basically the concept of intermittent fasting.

And so we just got this accepted. It'll be published soon. The National Lipid Association says if you have severe hypertriglyceridemia, if you have triglycerides, blood fat over 500, do not even consider a low carbohydrate diet. They say it's contraindicated. Okay. Well, wouldn't you want to become an expert fat burner if you have excess fat in your blood, right? And what's the best way to do that? Lowering your carbohydrate. So we took people with a thousand. We literally tracked their triglycerides every week and showed that from a thousand and 800, we brought it down to under 200, doing exactly what they said not to do. There's no drug that can do that. There is not one drug out there that can lower your triglycerides a thousand.

Right? So they lied. They've lied. Well, I don't want to say they lied. Maybe lied is the wrong way of putting it. They have not said that, you know, maybe there's room for our error. They've misdirected at least. They've misdirected at least.

Yeah, yeah. Do you think that it comes from the fact that they're trying to – it seems like they're trying to figure out a way to get you to live with the disease, and it's an ass-backwards way of thinking. And you're like saying, no, you don't need it's a, it's a ass backwards way of thinking. And you're like saying, no, you don't need to live with this disease. You can get rid of it. I don't, I don't, I gotta be honest. I've tried to think about how did we get here? Right. I think how we got here was discovering energy and calories and discovering cholesterol and then slowly, you know, just focusing on these things over time. Right. And not focusing on things that, you know, not focusing on anything that that, you know, was not related to these. you know, was not related to these, you know, the, there's been a ton of money and, you know, poured into energetics, right. From Gatorade, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, right. All these companies

have really poured a lot of money to have the academics focus on energy, which is at the same time, it's not a, it's not a falsity, right falsity right it's it's a true it's a partial truth it's like focusing on the partial truth it would be like saying you know you know like genocide deniers what do they do Armenian genocide deniers they say well there was a war you know it's like focusing on a partial truth instead of admitting the reality of what needs to be done. Right. So, yeah, maybe it's just about calories. Maybe it's just about calories. And we don't want your cholesterol to go too high. Right.

They're both partial truths, but like the main like they're just these small pieces of a big puzzle and they're ignoring the big puzzle right so so it's sorry go ahead no no you go ahead so as soon as you got into medicine you knew right it began there wasn't there wasn't a transition for you you weren't um uh dr tro your your your your physician who's towing the line, and then there was a shift. It was like you got your paperwork, you were officially a doctor, and you were off to the races right away to not take the same path as other physicians of the medical establishment. No, no, no, not at all. Okay. So I, I was highly inspired at a young age, but then I, you know, I did a complete, you know, I, when I was in medicine and learning about medicine, I was like, I'm going to learn it better than everybody else. I'm going to learn the most, I'm going to read the evidence. I'm

going to know the evidence. I'm going to know every guideline. I'm going to know it better than everybody else. I'm going to be the best at medicine. And I'm practiced for one year, you know, like a typical doctor. So I got my board certification. I'm learning about obesity. I'm now practicing in, you know, one of the biggest hospital systems in the New York area. Right? And if you came to me with diabetes, I would say, go see the dietician. You know, here's your medications. Good luck. Okay. And if you came to me with diabetes, I would say, go see the dietician.

Here's your medications. Good luck. So you'd follow the protocol, the procedure that's in place. I followed the protocol, and I knew the protocol better than 90%. If you can use my board exams as a judge, I was better than 90% of them. So I knew it better than 90% of them. But I was 350 pounds. And the minute I was tasked with, the minute my wife played me, you know, she knew what to say. You know, she's like, you know, and the minute you think about it, stop and think. Right. Then then it starts unraveling. Right. And if you have a critical questioning mindset, that's all it takes.

Some time, a critical questioning mindset is all it takes to escape. But most doctors are not, you know, look, I'm Armenian, you know, I was taught to question authority from, you know, question the like, you know, question everything right at a young age, you know, maybe through generational trauma, who knows. But the idea here is, is, you know, I had an acquisitive curious mind. That's it. That's the pretext of what's needed to escape being a lemming. If you're a doctor, you're an expert at learning and memorizing. You're an expert at being a lemming.

You're the most expert lemming. There's no task to think creatively or question anything. It's just learn, learn, learn. So once you get out and start working professionally, when they, when they train you to see patients in seven minutes, right? It's, I have the knowledge. This is what you're going to do. You know, see you next time. Come back to me in a month. a month did that make medical school difficult for you where you because i imagine i've heard i've spoken with people who are like two years into into medical school and then they find something like crossfit and they start getting into health and they're like oh shit this next two years is going to be brutal because i know the stuff

they're teaching me isn't correct. Did you suspect that, did you, did you have any of the inklings of that while you were, where you were steeped in the studies? It's not incorrect. So I'm just going to caution you. It's a, it's, it's a series of partial truths, right? I haven't seen outright lies, you know, except from like vegan propagandists who will like say eggs cause diabetes, and those are rare, right? Those people are rare. So, but in the medical organizations and the medical evidence, they're just partial truths, right? Eat more fruits. Like, well, yeah, there's a mild association of eating more fruits and just being generally healthy. You know, that doesn't

mean if you have diabetes or prediabetes, obesity, or you're overweight that you're – that you should just pound on as much watermelon as you can. Let me rephrase the question. Let me say, did you suspect that, hey, this isn't the ideal cure, what they're proposing? There is no – I don't think I had the mental bandwidth even. It was just like learn it all. Okay. And my –

Good for you because you wouldn't have made it to the other side i don't think if you started right it would be like if i had my life bingo if i had my mentality now i don't i would be like no screw this you know i'll open a gym in fact my entire life i was like i'll open a gym even now i kid you not we're gonna open a gym right next door oh i know you believe you. So because – For yourself. I know why you're doing it. You're doing it for yourself so you can just walk over there and work out.

Well, not only that. You're so right. But not only that but also – but I had this vision of like why isn't there a freaking treadmill in every single waiting room everywhere in the country? Why isn't there a bike, a salt bike in every single waiting room in everywhere in the country why isn't there a bike a mountain you know assault bike in every single waiting room why is why are you sitting an hour watching a tv so that this is like a 20 year old passion of mine god i really love the assault bike i live on the assault bike yeah it's good i got one. It's a, we both have three kids and it is a, no matter how bad my eyes are burning at nine o'clock when everyone's asleep or I've been up all, you know, the whole day. I'll go out there and huff and puff on that thing for 10 minutes.

Tell him, you know, convince myself, hey, I only need 10 minutes on the assault bike. But by then I'm a sweaty mess. And I'm like, all right, time to do something else because I'm ready to go. And I have zero issues sleeping after that too. Some people get all fired up, but I just love then a nice shower and straight to bed. It's not ideal, but, man, if you have an assault bike at your house and you're disciplined, it's really hard not to be healthy. You know, it's enjoying movement too. I'll tell you, at 350 pounds, when they tell you, you know, you got to move more, right?

That's insanity, right? It's insanity. My body didn't even feel good. In fact, the only movement I really did, I just learned about appetite and, you know, I just learned about how can you eat less without trying, right? I wanted to just hack it. You know, I'm like like a i'm a tinkerer i'm a hacker i want to i want to figure it out like what like what does it take to not be hungry you know um i binged watched walking dead on a treadmill for a year and a half you know walking i couldn truck. I couldn't watch that show.

It stressed me out. I watched like three episodes. When the bad guys outnumber the good guys by that much, it's just too much. It's just, for me, I don't know how you did it. It was just like on edge an hour at a time. I'm like, all right, this can't be good for my nervous system. Whatever, the housewives of Beverly Hills.

Whatever you wanted to watch. You're flexible. You're flexible. You're flexible. My body didn't feel good. My body didn't feel good. Why would I like – I was like maybe I got this all wrong. Maybe I got this all wrong. My body didn't feel good and I was hungry all the time.

I was hungry all the time. So then – but fast forward. Now I'm like a beast. I do 5Ks. I do –Ks. Actually, I love martial arts. I love exercise. I love CrossFit.

You discovered your body. You discovered your body. Bingo. That happened to me at 34. I got into a little bit of CrossFit, and they had us run 400 meters on the track as fast as we can. And I had this thought while I was running, I can't remember the last time I've ever run as fast as I can. Wow, what a mistake that is to be alive and not play around with your body like that. Exercise is expression of movement in time and space. It is not a punishment for what you ate.

Well said. It's interesting. I was, as a kid, I had some similar things. I wasn't morbidly obese, but I was the kid that like, I was chubby. I was the kid that wore my t-shirt when I went to swim parties. When we had to swim in PE, I just remember just dreading it, having to take my shirt off and coming home and just doing just thousands of sit-ups, just as many sit-ups as I can to no effect. And then I was – and by that, I mean like probably my ideal weight would be like 150 and now. I was probably just like 20 pounds over, 20 or 30 pounds over, but enough, more than my friends. And with me, it came in the other direction. I started CrossFit at 34, and I was an executive in the company.

And since I was always around Greg Glassman, he was always pounding the no sugar, no sugar. And he would always say, hey, you can't exercise away a bad diet. And hey, if you could only choose diet or activity, you should always choose diet. He goes, I wish it wasn't true since I'm the fitness guy, but man, you can, you can, it's all diet. And, but for me, moving came first. And then the fact that I wanted to move better motivated me to change my diet. But for someone who's 350 pounds, who should be under 200 pounds, it's the other way around, I'm guessing, from listening to you speak. Yeah, look, I know I have a huge desire to move.

You know, always loved martial arts, always loved running, always loved exercising. so that was there and some people never had that you know so they don't even know right i mean they just see movement as pain yeah they move into uh i mean they see i mean the disaster jillian michaels did for obesity you know wrecking people's metabolisms and telling them to eat nothing and then just exercise. Some people have never felt pain-free. I have to tell you, it's tough for people to understand. When you're dealing with obesity, start one step at a time.

Start with diet. Once your body feels good, go and move. Go and move, and it should feel good. It should be a reward, not a punishment. You know it, man. You're in this field. You know it. I see the exercise you're doing with your kids, making them run, what was it, 100 miles in 100 days?

Yeah, it was his idea. He came up with this plan. Hey, if I run a mile every day for 100 days, will you buy me a go-kart? So I immediately called my mom and got him a sponsor. Hey, mom, you want to buy him a go-kart if he runs 100 miles in 100 days? And like a good meds mighty, she's like, of course, I'll do that. Perfect. I'm going to do something similar.

It's funny. My kids love – they see me do all sorts of exercise. I mean, it affects them. Biking. Oh, for sure. Hiking, walking. I mean, you know, I have a four-year-old that can bike. Yeah, that's awesome.

You know what I mean? I mean, I don't think I knew how to bike until I was eight. Me too. You know? So it's a big deal to give them that freedom. You can set your expectations. I believe it's disrespectful not to set your expectations for your kid very, very, very, very high. And by that, I mean you don't punish them if they don't meet them, but you really, really – they're capable of so much more than people expect from them.

And they will just live up to your expectations. So if you set the bar low, they won't live up to it. A perfect example of that is when I'm cooking, I don't want them anywhere near me because of my OCD and I don't want to spend the time teaching them to cook. So I've set the bar so low for them. And so they don't, but my wife lets them do everything, the stove, crack the eggs, like she'll deal with all that. And man, and, and, you know, a week they can make a whole, you know, four-year-olds can learn to make a complete breakfast, bacon, eggs, oatmeal. And I'm like, nah like nah nah you can wait till you're 15 you know and and and you see it i said i set the bar too low for them so you you're you're in as a physician your your your wife um uh gives you that she she your words plays you i that. That's what a good wife should be.

Another way to say it, she's your muse and she gets you on the right path. And you, what did you find? What did you find in all of these books? And quickly, what was your favorite book? If people who are listening, what's the book to read? If you're like, hey, what's the first book I should read that will really pull the wool open my eyes big fat surprise by nina teicholz obesity code from jason fung i would say those are like two must reads to just start peeling it back but i read everybody i read all the vegans you know khan gregor you know i read them all i read all the you know poncer and you know dna and all these you know diehard academic

energetics people i read you know always hungry by ludwig Lustig's work, Hacking America. So the bottom line is I read them all because I was like, I don't trust any of these guys. And I treated it like a drug. I went to the medical literature. I was like, okay, if this was pneumonia, I'd want to know which antibiotic is going to save more lives. So I went to the medical literature and I said, okay, which antibiotic is going to save more lives, right? So I went to the medical literature and I said, okay, which diets are going to lose more weight? And every time you look, low carb does better.

Okay, which, you know, diets do better for diabetes? And every time you look, you know, diabetes does better. Now, it's not by much, right? Because it's the average American getting the constant messaging of eat McDonald's and donuts, right? So you have to figure that even if you put people into diets, that at some point, they're all going to regress to the same, back to the same crap, right? But if you look, the biggest differences and the most improvements are low carb in diabetes

and blood pressure and for weight loss. So I was like, okay, that's easy. I'll just start there. It was just like what drug should I give if somebody has an infection in their lungs? So it was very – I had no dogma. I was just like give me the best evidence. You have dogma. I was just like, give me the best evidence. You have to imagine. I'm like, I want to know the evidence I'm studying. You know, I'm going to be the best doctor I can possibly be. I'm going to be the best. So I didn't want

to like buck the trend. I wasn't trying to like, you know, figure out if the ADA was lying. There was none of that. It was like, how am I going to do the best right now? I want to know what's the best, what's the best thing to do? What's the evidence-based approach. And that's the problem. The minute you go to the evidence, it's not what they're saying. And I understand how we got there. You know, the ADA asks 100,000 people on surveys what they eat. And the ones that say, oh, yeah, of course I eat whole grains. No, no, no way. I don't eat processed meat. The ones who check those boxes are the ones more likely to go to doctors and be wealthier and be, you know, they're just healthier people because that's the stuff they've been saying, right? They're more likely to do what they're told, right? So the thing is, I know how we got

to the point where whole grains is healthy, quote unquote, and fruit is healthy, quote unquote, you know, and these things are healthy and processed meat is evil. I know how we got there. Right. So it's not like a bunch of lies. It's just a bunch of half truths and people don't get the whole picture. Right. And they don't know, they don't know, like, where are the chinks in the armor. In every single interventional trial ever done that looks at whether you control for calories or not, low-carb does better. Low-carb does better for diabetes. And yet the president of the ADA, when I called him out, said there's no diabetes diet. You know, there's no diabetes diet, and I know he's not wrong.

He's just not right. He's just not right. So you were your first patient. You experimented on yourself. You're like, okay, this guy weighs 350 pounds, and I need to figure out the best way to get him to lose weight. And you started on that journey. Tell me about the first steps of that. Yeah, to get them to lose weight. And you started on that journey. Tell me, tell me about your, the first steps of that. Yeah. I just started lowering after the research. Yeah. Great. I was like, okay, you know, I'll eat some more eggs. I'll have some more chicken. I'll have some more cold cuts. Eat some more, you know, chicken and fish. I mean, I was never like, I was an ex-vegan. I was anorexic and vegan, you know, to try to escape when I was an ex-vegan. I was anorexic and vegan to try to escape when I was younger. I never had steak. I never cooked a ribeye. So I didn't eat sausage. So I had to learn how to cook my brain that I had to eat two eggs. Like what's this two eggs?

Right? Like we eat two slices of pizza, no problem. It's 800 calories if you care about calories. That's 10 eggs. And what happens? Two hours after eating that two slices of pizza, you're eating the cold pizza and it tastes better. Why does that happen? Yeah, why is that? Yeah, why does it happen that three hours after Chinese food, you're eating cold?

I love cold. Yeah. I used to love cold pizza. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, why did you love cold pizza? Let me tell you. I'll tell you why. And this is the problem is most doctors can't explain this.

Why do you go back to cold Chinese food, the leftovers? You're like, wow, how do these leftovers taste better? Right. Super simple. Okay. You eat a bunch of carbohydrates and pizza is a combination of carbs and fat. So is Chinese food, carbs and fat, but because it tastes so good, that carbon fat combination, right? You, you eat a lot. Your blood sugar goes through the roof and then that blood sugar comes tanking down. Your blood sugar goes through the roof.

And then that blood sugar comes tanking down. And then when that blood sugar comes tanking down, right, what happens? Your brain is activated to eat again. Right? Your brain is saying, get me more. Just like, have you ever met a person who has like low blood sugar? They say, my blood sugar is low. Maybe they have diabetes.

Right? What do they say next? They're hungry. They say, I'm hungry. Right? And what do they say? Get me. Yeah. What do they say? Get me're hungry. They say, I'm hungry, right? And what do they say? Get me. Yeah. What do they say?

I'll take a Coke. Get me a Coke. Juice. Ice cream, cookies, crackers, chocolate, candy. Did anybody ever say, get me the paleo, you know, broccoli? No one ever says, get me, bring me an avocado. And they start eating it with a spoon. They don't say that, right?

So the thing is, is the brain, when that blood sugar is shifting down, is getting activated saying, get me more. So it's that blood sugar excursion and particularly the downturn, right? Which happens in the setting of high insulin, okay? It's kind of like there's insulin resistance and there's prediabetes and there's diabetes. And as that blood sugar excursion, you know, goes from that really high number to that low number, the brain is triggered to eat again. That's why if you take pizza, you do two slices, two hours later, the cold pizza tastes great. Now, let's say calorie for calorie. If you ate 10 eggs,

have you ever gone back to 10 eggs later that were cold and said, wow, I want more of this? Never happened, right? This is why – I eat my kids' cold eggs every morning, and I always taste it when my wife is making the warm ones for them. I'm like, these are the best eggs I ever had, and then I eat the cold ones. I'm like, this is garbage. I'm eating rubber. I still eat it. The point of'm like, this is garbage. I'm eating rubber. I still eat it.

The point of all this is this is why energetic fails. If you look at two slices of pizza and calories, right, that's 10 eggs, right? What is the fullness you get from 10 eggs? Hours and hours and hours. And what is the postprandial hunger you get from that pizza? You're going to be hungry two to three hours later. And not only are you going to be hungry, the cold pizza tastes better. If you went to a pizzeria and they gave you cold pizza, what would you say?

I don't want this old pizza. I don't want this. If you went to a Chinese food restaurant and they gave you cold egg rolls and cold food, what would you say to them? Same thing. But three hours later, you you're like this shit is awesome yeah especially in the morning like i can you know obviously you can remember being in college and you order a large pizza and you put half in the fridge and tinfoil and in the morning you pour yourself the biggest glass of milk and eat five pieces five pieces of the old pepperoni cold

pizza and it's better than when you went to bed. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, the next day when you wake up, and there's a lot of reasons that happens. But that's an hour-long discussion, you know. But let's just put it this way. So low-carb eating gives something unique, right? It provides ketones. So does intermittent fasting, actually, right? It provides ketones. And to some extent, lower carb diets in combination with intermittent fasting, so even like a paleo diet could give you ketones. And what happens with ketones is they work on the brain. They tell you, you're not hungry, right? They give you a fuel source, right? A constant fuel

source that's not beholden to carbohydrate. So these ketones actually act on the brain and they inhibit seizures. They're in their medical literature. They inhibit migraines even, right? But they also inhibit appetite, right? So if you take somebody and you give them high carb foods, right? And they're an adult, right? Their liver is going to pack in all those carbohydrates and fat, and it's going to take a long time. Adult livers are huge. So it's going to take like 16 to 18 hours to clear that liver out and force them back to making ketones, right? But for kids, an overnight fast is all it takes. Their livers are tiny. So have you ever struggled to feed your

kids in the morning? Notice like they're not hungry sometimes. Has that ever happened? You know, where you're like, why aren't they eating? Why aren't they hungry? You know? Yeah. I mean, they, they really just want to wake up and play, right? They want to wake up and play and you kind of have to force them. Now you got to eat breakfast, right? Yeah. Time for breakfast. Yeah. Same with all the, yeah. They are making ketones overnight. Kids make ketones in like eight hours. Wow, that's fascinating. And adults take like 16, 18 hours, right? So what happens is, you know, now the problem, so the thing is, is these ketones inhibit appetite just to some extent.

It's like a mild, like I don't really need to eat. Of course, ketones will take away, like if you're staring at pizza, you're still going to want that pizza. Right. Or if you're stress eating, it's not going to take that away, but it gives you like this, I don't really need to eat right now. Right? It gives you that feeling. So kids get it overnight. So now as you progress to college, right, your liver is basically peaking out in its size. you progress to college, right, your liver is basically peaking out in its size. And if you have dinner, like a bunch of pizza, your ketones are dropping. And if you're waking up from eight hours of sleeping, which probably it's not enough to clear the liver out, you're going to wake up

hungry. You don't have that ketones. And in fact, people tell me, well, why are you such a low carb proponent? I'm not. You know, there were civilizations that lived off of carbohydrates, like Asians and sub-Asians, but they were intermittent fasting. They weren't eating. You know, they woke up, they tended the fields, okay, and then they had a, you know, starch for lunch, not sugar starch, right? And then they had, like, cooled starch for dinner. They had a resistant starch for dinner, the cooled leftovers.

And then they went to sleep because there was no light. They were eating in a narrow window, but they were still making ketones because they're eating in this tiny bit of time. They're still clearing out their livers and they're back to this appetite suppression. They weren't constantly eating. There was no refrigerators and diners and McDonald's and snack packs. Right. So intermittent fasting is very powerful.

So is low carb eating. And so is exercise. All of them. If you listen to Atkins old lectures, there was three ways to Valhalla. Fasting, exercise, low carb or some combination. And if you're lean, you don't need much of any of those. But if you're overweight, you damn need a lot of all of them. So that's the problem. Young kids, like your kids, they're making ketones overnight.

They're burning fat overnight. I've never heard the distinction between kids' livers, ketone production, and adults. That's fascinating. They don't teach this, that's the problem so in in the 15 years that i was i was working at crossfit it was always like tinkering with my diet and always reduced because greg was always preaching no sugar no sugar no sugar and then finally what happened is i came across paul saladino about a year ago and i wasn't interested't interested in necessarily doing the carnivore diet, but I made this harebrained plan that I would do the carnivore diet, my version of it, and I would let myself eat as much meat as I wanted for a month. But that's basically all I would eat, just meat and avocados and some macadamia nuts.

month, but that's basically all I would eat, just meat and avocados and some macadamia nuts. And somewhere around the, and then I, and then I fast for the last 55 weeks, I fast for about 36 hours a week. I stopped eating Saturday night and I don't start again until Monday morning. And about two weeks into his diet, the, the sort of the carnivore diet, I must've switched over into, I guess what they call ketosis because all of a sudden I realized that I was forgetting to eat and I wasn't eating and I wasn't getting hungry. And it was such a trip. And I stopped, I stopped spending my days. I didn't realize I spent my days chasing glucose. I didn't realize I spent my days really chasing food. I had no awareness of that. And then at night, my cravings were always for like heavy cream or avocados or nuts. I became insatiable around fat.

And I'm like, wow, this used to be sugar that I wanted at night. I used to want crackers or something like that. And I thought it was a miracle. I thought, holy shit, something has shifted. And I assume it's because all of a sudden now my fuel was ketones. And so that's why I was craving them. I'd switch fuels. Is that a proper understanding?

Yeah, yeah. Probably somewhere between the appetite suppression that we've seen probably occurs around three to six weeks depending on how fit somebody is. And our marker is your ability to skip meals, right? In fact, we have a little trick. We tell people to come to our, even though we're licensed in 40 states and we do a lot of work remotely, like completely remotely. When people are local, we say, come into our office like three or four weeks in and we schedule them at like three o'clock. And we say, you have to be fasted because we're going to take some blood work here. Right. And it's like a complete, like, yeah, we may need labs, but it's a test. If they come in saying, wow, so easy to go to three o'clock, we're now, okay, these people

are fat adapted. They're, you know, their appetite suppressed. We can push fasting now effortlessly. Right. If they come in saying, wow, this is terrible, you know, I was hungry, blah, blah, blah, right? Then we wouldn't necessarily push fasting or even push weight loss. We'd wait a little bit longer, figure out what's driving the hunger. So yeah, absolutely. We use this as a clinical indicator when that appetite suppresses, the ability to fast goes up, like skipping meals effortlessly, right? That's a sign of fat adaption in our context, right? There's other biomarkers that help us figure that out. But yes, that's exactly what we look for. Now, what you'll find is that can switch. So even though the sugar reward and the

carb reward will never be the same as the fat reward, you're noticing that your taste for fat has increased, right? You're like craving heavy cream, craving macadamia nuts, craving avocados. So that now for somebody who's active and doesn't need to lose weight, that's usually not a problem, right? But for somebody who's food addicted, obese and has to lose weight, But for somebody who's food addicted, obese and has to lose weight, usually we'll just kind of remind them that, hey, look, you know, you can still kind of drive yourself to eat with some of these foods and not be full. You know, I've never met somebody who ate three macadamia nuts and was like, you know what, I'm done. You know, right. Right.

Or if they didn't salt it, you know, that's the other thing. Like you wouldn't eat that food. Maybe you're even craving salt. That's the thing, right? And we really believe in salt. And I was craving salt. I started craving water and salt like crazy when I did this diet, and I still do. I crave salt and water. Yeah.

But this is a common – what you're able to go longer without food. It's liberating. It freed up my days. I feel like it made me twice as productive in my day. It was truly liberating. I wish I would have done it. I eat on average between six to ten meals a week, depending on my hunger. I mean, that's what I eat. I'm not hungry.

I mean, that doesn't mean like if my wife has a low-carb baking mix company, if she makes low-carb cake and puts it in front of me and it's made out of almond flour and sweetener. I'm not going to want it. Of course I'm going to want it. She makes this awesome low carb pizza, right? It's basically almond flour, right? And very low in net carbohydrate, but still it tastes amazing. Like, and I just see the pizza. I know what it is. I know what it tastes like. I'm hungry, right? So no diet's going to take away that cephalic response to food. When you put food in front of any animal, their organs start working involuntarily. Your mouth is churning saliva. Your insulin is getting released out of the pancreas as that pancreas. So there's certain hungers or perceptions of hunger that you'll never be able to get rid of.

No diet is going to get rid of that. But what ketosis provides for you is like this low level non-hunger I could probably go without food you know you know if Mizuma comes and you know has you know that favorite pachlava you know like you're of course you know like you can't erase that social cue to to drive eating No diet's going to erase that. But ketosis gives you something unique. What's the name of the almond flour that your wife produces? So my wife, she's supported me for the last seven years in this.

And she knows I'm a chocolate binger. I'm a pizza eater. And not that like, I'm a chocolate binger. I'm a, you know, pizza eater. I'm a, and not that I eat a lot of those things now. I don't eat a lot of those things now. I'm mainly like probably Paul and you eat, you know, just mostly meat, fish, chicken, eggs, Greek yogurt, maybe some green leafy vegetables, right. Every now and then. But when I crave like, every now and then. But when I crave like, you know, something savory, I mean, or sweet, right, I need a way out. And for the last, like for the first three years, this is like five years ago, six years ago, she was just making all these things, low carb pizza, low carb cookies, low carb cake. And rather than me having a problem, you know, at midnight in the hospital doctor's lounge, staring at the cookies they have out there, she's like, here, take these with you. Rather than flour-based mixes where you can just make like a pizza in your home. You just buy the mix.

It gives you a little recipe, and it tells you what to do. You buy – let's say it's your birthday, and you know you're going to have cake. Why should it be the crap ingredients, the soybean oil and flour that they want you to have? So this is an almond flour and you put your own, you know, avocado oil or butter that you want. And it's a basic, like, it's a low carb, you know, not Angema, low carb, Duncan Hines, you know, or low carb, you know, Betty Cro Crocker it's a substitute for flour right that's what it is it's called rosettes mix you know rosette is my wife she's also Armenian by the way and it's rosettes mix and she you know she is

she's she's amazing she you know can we get that in California yeah you can buy it anywhere you want you can buy anywhere there's a couple of stores out in San Diego Los Angeles Pasadena that have that stock it anywhere you want. You can buy it anywhere. There's a couple of stores out in San Diego, Los Angeles, Pasadena that have – that stock it, and you can just buy it online, rosettesmix.com. Yeah, I can't wait to tell my wife about it. Where do you live? We're in – I live in New York. My practice is in New York, just outside of New York City. But like I said, we're licensed in 40 states.

We have a license in California that's pending, which means we expect to get a final approval in like maybe a month. Are you taking more clients, more patients? Yeah, we're taking more patients. We're accepting patients. But soon we're going to – like there's a lot of new stuff that's coming on for our practice, but we're basically going nationwide. My kids have never had juice. They've never had soda. They have no idea what syrup is.

Mine too. I have this huge issue with drinking sugar. My issues with sugar are pretty high, but then when I think of kids drinking sugar. Like, like, like my issue with sugar are pretty high, but then when I think of kids drinking sugar, I, I, I mean, just, just from a logical point of view, I'm like, man, this can't be good. This, this is, I mean, eating it is bad. Drinking it would be next bad. And then injecting it directly into your bloodstream, you know, via an injection would be the worst. But tell me about why it's so bad. And people are like, really?

Your kids have never had juice? I'm like, yeah, it's no big deal. They're like, what do they drink? I said water. They're like, what? People look at me like I'm crazy. Look, let me tell you that by the guidelines, American Academy of Pediatrics says no juice before two.

Okay, no juice before two. Okay. No juice before two. And why is that? Juice provides nothing. It literally provides next to nothing. Oh, Dr. Tro, vitamin C in that orange juice. What are you talking about? There's more vitamin C in a pepper than there is per calorie than there is in an orange. Like a bell pepper. Yeah, bell pepper, right? A green pepper. My kids take peppers and just eat them.

Yeah. You know, and there's more potassium. You really are Armenian. You've taught them well. You really are Armenian. My kids, right? So there's more potassium in an avocado or zucchini than there is a banana. If you want vitamin C or potassium, you don't need 50 grams of sugar to get it, right? You know, one banana is like 34 grams of carbohydrates.

One orange is like 25 or so. You just don't need that. Now, the question is, is who would tolerate it the best? Kids would tolerate it the best. I don't restrict fruit in my kids. They have fruit all the time. There's no fruit juice. They've never tasted soda. They've never tasted any of these things. In fact, actually, my son who's nine tastes some soda and he spit it out.

He's like, what the fuck is this shit? People drink this? That's what he literally looked at me like. People drink this? Someone gave my four- literally looked at me like people drink this. You know, someone gave my four year old gut. My kids had gum for the first time. I have two four year olds and a six year olds. And last week someone gave them gum. They never had gum before. And they all looked into like, do we get to swallow this? And I'm like, or I think my wife was there. It wasn't me. And she said no. And they spit it out. That's like, well, what's the point?

They all threw it out. And I asked one of my fouryear-olds did you like it he goes no it's weird i was like yeah it is weird yeah i mean look uh we force a lot of crap on them you know uh people want to make them happy the school wants to make them happy get the munchkins for everything cupcakes for everything you know so look if there's anybody who could tolerate it it's them but. But they don't really need to. There's no need to put this insult on them. There's no need to put this – I mean let them just eat real food. If they want fruit, let them have fruit. If they want vegetables, let them eat vegetables.

If they want nuts, like we have in our house, we have a bunch of nuts. They can freely grab them. They have a bunch of fruit. They can freely grab them. Vegetables – And your nuts don't have any of those funky oils on them they're not soaked in canola oil or sunflower oil we try to stick with regular nuts exactly salted nuts um and it's a good point you bring up like the there's a reason why they use these crappy oils they make people eat more and they're ridiculously cheap you know nobody cares about the effects of these crappy oils that you're talking about, soybean, cottonseed, rapeseed, all these things, right? But the process – look, bottom line is if McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, and Keebler, and Nabisco, and Kraft is using a product, you probably should be avoiding it.

Wow. Right? be avoiding it. Right. And they all use soybean oil because it's ridiculously cheap, has shelf stable. And the worst thing is, is it makes those blood sugar excursions worse. There's evidence that it makes insulin resistance worse. Right. So there's a reason why they use them. They don't care about you. Right. They don't care about your health. They care about recurrent customers. That's it. And look, I mean, my kids do eat like popcorn here and there. We have chips in the house. Like, you know, there's Quest chips. They don't even like them. They don't even eat them. They're like, you know, they have one and they put it down. We do popcorn. We don't

do chips, but we do popcorn on Friday and Saturdays. Yeah. You know, we use Quest chips and but like they don't even they're not there's no there's no draw, right? Without that carbohydrate and the crap oils, there's no draw, right? And so we just try to keep them healthy. That's it. Just like you do, man, with your kids. I see it on your feed. Yeah. We just try to keep them healthy.

That's it. Yeah, the nighttime snack, if you want to eat something in bed when you go to bed, it's a cucumber. It's a little Persian cucumber. That's it. That's all you're allowed to eat in your bed. We do cheese. I just don't do cheese because I don't want to deal with brushing their teeth again with cheese in their mouth. Cucumber is easy to brush around.

Yeah. They start brushing their teeth soon. You're coming up to the age where they start wiping their own ass. No. Is that really going to happen? Yeah, it's going to happen soon, man. It's happen it's gonna be awesome it's gonna be real great you know when they start wiping their own butts like that's the first sign of freedom i from from from day one from day one um when the when this so-called um pandemic came from day one, everyone at CrossFit knew that this was a chronic disease epidemic.

Greg Glassman was very clear in saying that this is a day of reckoning for people who are 30 years complicit in their demise. And I've seen that you've been very outspoken about that too. It's a, it's a, it's a damn, I spend probably an hour every day looking for someone healthy who has died from sars cov2 that turned into covid i'm yet i've maybe found one or

two people they're questionable they're questionable because the fact they can't get enough information on them they look healthy but everyone else you know cnn the famous article from cnn is they said a healthy 16 year old dies and the poor kid was kid was so obese that he can't sleep at night on his back and his ears are gone because his head is so big. And I'm reading this book Range now by David Epstein. I don't know if you know – familiar with the book. But in chapter 10, he was saying something along the lines of that basically you get these really really smart people who are experts in their field and my word's not his they can't see the forest because there's you know they're staring at the tree and and then a couple days ago i i interviewed uh dr eberhard from he's a psychiatrist at in stockholm and uh i saw him do a ted talk and so i had him on the

show and basically my new formula on it also is is that the doctors and the scientists who made the guidelines or the protocols and the procedures to get us out of this mess for one they have no ed and game and two they never thought of the trade-off the cost because they're just a hammer hitting nails right that's all they see and and in my opinion the covid response is significantly significantly more damage than the disease itself and and i've seen you've been pretty outspoken about that too and so is paul do you get how is that being in a job where like 99 of your peers don't see it your way that they're and maybe i'm wrong maybe it's 90 maybe i'm wrong i mean feel free to to push back on anything i said is it hard do other doctors think you're a quack do

they think i mean what do they say to you when you're like, hey, don't worry about this. Just change your diet and you'll be safe. You'll be safe from SARS. Stop eating sugar-refined carbohydrates. You're good to go. Okay, so let's – this is like a loaded – like how much time do we have? Because I can go into this for an hour because I can explain to you where – We have 26 minutes.

26 minutes. Got it. Okay. Perfect. I want to empower people. My goal is that I want people to know that they don't have to – in 21 days, you can reverse your shit. Like you can make yourself bomb-proof or like you were saying, in three to six weeks going into ketosis. And people need to hear it from doctors because the famous line on the internet is well someone you're not a doctor i'm like my god okay so let's be very very clear if you want to reverse so what are the risk factors

of dying from covet okay diabetes high blood sugar in and of itself is an independent risk factor low testosterone low vitamin d high triglycerides, metabolic syndrome, hypertension. Okay, I just listed seven things that you can affect right now. In three days, you can lower your triglycerides. In three days, you can lower your blood sugar, right? And in fact, instantly, if you lower your carbohydrates, processed carbs, eat real food, right, these things can all resolve. Now, the problem is obesity is another risk factor, okay? So those are seven things you can change right away. Take vitamin D, okay?

Start fixing your metabolic health, improve your blood sugars, right? You can fix these right now. Is obesity really a factor or is it just a correlate? Obesity is definitely a factor. Definitely. Really? It's not just a correlate? It's probably an independent factor because obesity... Like age. Well, age is a correlate, right? But that's also a correlate for poor metabolic health and more obesity, right? Okay. So, but obesity in and of itself is like a constant inflammation, like true obesity. I'm talking about to the point where the body's inflamed.

Okay. Right. So I'm 10 pounds of fat, body fat, right? If you're talking about like 40 pounds of body fat or 50 pounds of body fat, I'm not talking about that. You hit the point where like your triglycerides are high, your HDL is low, and you know, your body is inflamed. Your inflammatory markers are up. So this is an independent, this problem takes a long time to fix, right? Obesity cannot be fixed overnight. So there are risk factors you can improve right now fix what you eat fix your blood sugar fix your triglycerides right that you can fix right now okay and within weeks you can see appreciable results okay in fact days okay if you call our office and you get a continuous glucose monitor you can see it in in a day you can literally see it happen so you don't have to believe me. We'll give you the tools

to not have to trust me. I'll monitor your blood sugar. We'll send you for lab works. You can get as many lipid panels as you need to understand that eggs don't increase cholesterol. Okay. So we'll say we don't care. We'll give you whatever tool you need to figure this out, right? To give you that intellectual support. Because why would you trust the crazy bald guy? out, right? To give you that intellectual support, because why would you trust the crazy bald guy? Just like you said, right? My colleagues may think I'm crazy, right? Except we've published in the medical literature and peer-reviewed journals that we're not crazy. But okay, so some risk factors you can immediately change, some take longer. So you will always have a risk of dying of COVID, right? And there are some things you can't even see, right?

I have a guy with a six pack who comes in and his triglycerides are 300 and he wants help from me, right? You don't know his triglycerides are 300. I know it, right? The guy's got a six pack, kid you not. When he first came in here, I'm like, this place says medical weight loss

and direct primary care. Like, what are you, like, what are you, are you sure you're in the right place? Like, no, I have a binge eating problem. I'm always hungry. I have fatty liver and my triglyceride, I can't, I can't out-exercise it anymore. So, so the internal health doesn't always match up with the physical health and the physical health doesn't always match up with the right. So these things don't match up. So obesity is a risk factor that's hard, that takes a long time to change. So you, there are things you could do to improve right now,

but you still may live with that risk, right? That's a culmination of all these choices and things and, you know, that have happened. So there's always some risk, right? There's always some risk, but yes, you can do something about it, right? The masks are really great because- Dr. Justin Marchegiani Something significant, right? Dr. David Jockers They prevent eating. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Wow, that's the first good thing. That's

the first nice thing I've ever heard about a mask. So not only can you do something, I just want to clarify, you can do something significant. You're not talking about just like a 3% better chance of survival. You saying if you even if you are obese but you follow these these these dietary protocols it's more than a three percent it's a 50 60 70 percent like like you're coming out of the red in terms of risk factor reduction they're huge fixing your blood sugar fixing your fatty liver fixing your triglycerides fixing your blood sugar which could take six days as little as six days you can reduce fatty liver, fixing your triglycerides, fixing your blood sugar, which could take six days, as little as six days, you can reduce fatty liver. Immediately, you could fix blood sugar. These things have an immense impact on your overall health. You could start supplementing with vitamin D right now, get outside, get some sun. Going outside and getting some sun

takes an instant. The thing is, these things will help. Nobody's ever done the trial of let's take people and, you know, compare Tro's diet plan to, you know, counting calories and eating vegan and see what happens to COVID. Nobody did that. But theoretically, it makes sense. Mechanistically, it makes sense. And you're going to fix these things that we know cause worsened responses to COVID. are going to fix these things that we know cause worsened responses to COVID. Now, then the problem is, is you have all these other people who say this, and then they turn around and say, buy my supplement, right? Buy my, you know, special formulation. So there's been this predatory health thing, like buy my special double mask, buy my special vitamin blend, right? Buy my special supplement that also doesn't do anything. So you have the wrong messaging, which has been wear masks, hide in your home, don't go outside, you know, and then you have, you know, these risk factors that are clear, but nobody's given anybody something to do. Lower your carbohydrates, wait for your appetite to suppress, eat a bunch of meat, fish, chicken, eggs, Greek yogurt until you can not eat effortlessly and then don't eat effortlessly. Nobody gave somebody that.

They just said, yeah, diabetes is not good for this. Right. And then you have this predatory industry of kooks and crazies who want to make a buck. So this confluence of things has left people like, you know, I'm just going to wear my mask, take my vaccine and, you know, do what I'm told. And do the two week quarantine every time I come in and out of my country. Yeah. So it's it's it's not. Look, this covid thing has been a disaster. It's not, look, this COVID thing has been a disaster. But, you know, and here's the thing, the public health people, they don't care about people. They don't care about you. You know, when they're vaccinating six-year-olds, right, do you think they care about the six-year-old's life? No. The public health people who are saying we should vaccinate everybody without evidence to support their decision, like will we benefit society? Will we save lives?

To answer that question requires thousands of people and time. And they have not wanted to do that. They've just wanted to get surrogate markers that imply that that would happen. Right. So they want you to think that two months worth of data is enough to make this decision. I don't think that's enough data for my own kids. Right. To give them a vaccine. And now we know that these clots are happening and maybe about one in 100,000, one in 100 hundred thousand young kids are getting this, you know, myocarditis, right? Why do we have to discover this through

the Vaccineiverse Events database? Because we didn't force the pharmaceutical companies to do the right trials to begin with. And the trials that they did, they allowed crossover of people from the placebo arm to get the vaccine. So we'll have no way of actually getting the data that we need in any quick way because of an emergency. Just so happens pharmaceutical companies happen to make a ton of money. Now, here's the flip side. It's a freaking miracle what they've done. The technology is a miracle. It has the potential to help a lot of people. But show me the data. Just like a drug,

if I was going to take it, I'd want to see the data. Does my six-year-old live longer by taking this? And if you cannot answer that question to me, don't give it to me and don't ask me to make a decision. Right? So now juxtapose that to my parents. Parents are, you know, around the seventh decade. Parents have diabetes and remission. Parents have heart disease treated. I told them, look, and they travel.

They're in Armenia right now. What do you think I told them? I was like, look, you guys are at much higher risk. You really need to think about this, even though it's experimental. We know that it works to prevent severe complications. Now, the question is, if you get it, will you die? Right? And for them, it's about 10%. For my son, it's less than 1 in 10,000. Yeah. Right? And so the risk of a vaccine maybe, you know, that's not properly tested, right, is higher in my son and maybe not higher in my parents. And you can look at the kids who died.

You can start Googling around and seeing the pictures of the kids who died and I think it becomes a pet more and more apparent you know when you see their birth defects or their weight I mean the two we actually we actually know it okay some people are coming in with like kovats the hospital and they say they look perfectly healthy and we check and their triglycerides are 400 right I mean they so like again we don't know even look, like, you can tell a metabolic syndrome, right? But even if they look, we don't know what's on the inside. But the problem is, is, like, we also can't be holding to, like, association, right?

Like, that's my bias, too, right? That I think that this is largely driven by metabolic health. But we can't, you know, when we're looking at, like, a huge emergency like this, we have to take a step back and say, just make our – do our best not to let our – even though I 100% agree with you, right? We have to get out of that mindset of what we think is what's actually happening, right? For all of my frustration, it comes from the fact that the loudest voice in the room doesn't have an end game. It's not what's – it's short-sighted. It's a missed opportunity to tell the entire world. Like wouldn't it have been great if when President Trump got COVID, if he would have said, hey, guys, I'm go on this diet you know and i'm going to take care of my health wouldn't have been great if um whatever biden's

done would have been more to emphasize hey in this 16 trillion dollars we've that this entire covid response is going to cost us instead i'm gonna one of the things we're going to do is we're going to build a 10 million dollar community fitness center in every single county in the united states that's the part that like that's the part that gets let me that's the part that right yeah i'll never be that okay i care about people you care about people okay public health organizations care about cases, right? Their objective is to decrease cases, right? It's a difference than, you know, so the public health, the CDC says vaccinate everybody, right? Pharmaceuticals say vaccinate everybody.

Politicians say vaccinate everybody. They've co-opted celebrities to say vaccinate everybody, which, look, I'm not saying don't let go talk to your doctor is what i would say right talk to your doctor and your doctor will tell you hey look maybe the risk reward is absolutely in your favor right like i said to my parents and maybe they'll say like hey let's talk about this you know here's what we're seeing these adverse events that we didn't understand so the problem is they don't care about people they care about populations not individuals and that's the problem they'll never be able to do what you're asking of them right because you care

about people and their health right and you see a vision of caring for people's health. They care about populations, so you'll never see eye to eye. And there seems to be a little more – we can help the people. The people can't help themselves. It's like what we were talking about in the very beginning. They don't set the bar very high or have high expectations for the populace they don't believe in the people and and it seems short-sighted in uh in duration like they're looking for and like hey there's a fire at all costs even if we have to pump the ocean out to put the fire out let's do it well we need the ocean they care about cases not health right okay they care about and that's not bad i mean you i mean it's not always bad right it's just bad if you're an individual right right it's just bad if you're an individual it's not bad for a bunch of people who just want some guidance you know um it's just

bad otherwise you know i don't know if that makes sense no it does it does. It does. I'm just not, yeah, it does. You know, I mean, look, let me tell you. You're just having trouble getting past my bias. No, no, no, no. I'm so biased that I don't even want to hear what you're saying about that. I'm so frustrated.

I know you agree. You know, I actually agree with your sentiment. You know, right? I 100% agree with your sentiment you know right i 100 agree with the sentiment like beyond 100 i know the sentiment is truth but you're asking a body like whose values are like crossfit can do that right we can get doctors we are doing this right here i'm opening up a gym we've gone nationwide nationwide. We're going to send everybody CGMs, right? We're going to give you guys meetings and communities in our practice, which we already have, right? We're going to give you a health coach. We're going to make people healthy. But you and I, our vision will never be able to be done by governments or other organizations

because I want to align with the individual. I don't care about anybody else. Right. And I don't expect those other people to ever have my vision, right, and my values. I guess they're in the way, though, is what I'm saying, Dr. Cho. They're definitely in the way. They're in the way. I'm not only expecting that.

I'll agree with you. Yeah, we can't ever expect them to do that. But they're in the way. It's kind of like Coca--cola like i don't care sell coca-cola free markets capitalism but don't get in the way and they start getting in the way when they start when they start perverting the health sciences and changing the studies and i'm like man you guys like stay in your fucking lane look if i was coca-c, I would probably – like my job – Put a gun in your mouth? I'm a doctor, right? I want to reach more people.

I want to sell – I want people to understand my value proposition. Coca-Cola, they want people to understand their value proposition. Right. Right? And I don't ever expect them to do the right thing by people or by society. They're always going to be driven by, you know, their interests. They certainly probably don't want to harm people, but they don't necessarily want to help people.

My interest from day one, ever since I was 13, was I want to help people, right? I want to help people. And so much that I've gotten hurt, like it's hurt me personally, financially. I left a cushy job and I took out a $250,000 loan. So I can do what I'm doing. I have not signed a contract with any insurance company. So I can do what I'm doing. Yeah, that's amazing.

That's really impressive, by the way. Right? I have spent $25,000 to get nationwide licensing so I can do what I'm doing. I've been hurt personally. Right. And I'm hoping that in the end, like, well, the reality is, is this is what we found. If you invest time with people that they they'll appreciate that they won't they don't want to leave when people join my practice. Right.

When they see what we're doing. Right. When people join my practice, when they see what we're doing, and after their health is – they're empowered to go after their health, and they can see their blood sugars and blood markers and blood labs improve, why would they go back to a system that failed them? So I'm happy the system is failing because they will be forced to come to me. In all fairness to doctors, I think a lot of doctors would envy your position, that it took a lot of courage what you did. Did your wife ever get like – I mean when you have three kids, it's a different game. Were you ever like, oh shit, I'm going out on my own. I'm going to be the guy with the tinfoil hat.

I know it's the right thing to do, but shit, I'm going to, I need to start saving for my kid's college. I mean, was it a hard decision to make, to make this leap? Incredible, incredibly hard, right? Incredibly hard. I mean, and let me be honest, people are like, well, your wife is a food company now, you know, I mean, yeah, my wife wants to sell mixes, but it's been two, three years. She's done what she's done. She hasn't taken a penny. She donated low carb cookies to the entire hospital. Right.

During this pandemic, because it was breaking our hearts to see what the fuck Oreos and McFlurries and pizza places were doing. She made an entire hospital low carb cookies, gave them a whole bunch of stuff. So she's donated. I mean, she's a believer, you know, and she hasn't taken out a penny yet from her company. I've been doing this for four years. I just started paying myself a salary. Wow.

Five years now. But, you know, and I'm, you know, so it's, it's, I mean, I live this, I live it. Luckily, you know, I have great support and we've created a system where I can thrive, but it took, it took, it's been brutal. It has been brutal, but you know what? It's like, you see the value right away. I see the value proposition. I'm not worried. I'm not worried. How good is life telling the truth? How good is life that you tell the truth every day? Isn't that like, you wake up thinking like, Oh my God. Cause now I wake up and I'm like every day, I'm like, wow, this is an incredible life. I just have to tell the truth. Look, the bottom line is this, is the value that we're bringing people is immeasurable. The money we're saving people off of medications, you know,

supplement, whatever, you know, is, is, and it's an amazing thing. We've made the roadster, right? Now we're perfecting the model 3. We're going to redesign the site. We're going to read it. We have a whole back end that we're creating where it's going to be a nationwide platform, right? We're hiring other doctors, hiring other MPs and PAs. That's every single person that we hire has been inspired by this. My health coach, Amy Iges, she lost 230 pounds, lifetime obesity.

My other health coach, Brian Wiley, has kept 100 pounds off for 12 years. Right? Every single person. We got somebody with celiac in this, you know, who had undiagnosed celiac in this office, who improved their health. Okay? Who's coming to me right now saying I'm ridiculously late for my patient. Okay, one question. Let me wrap up with one question.

Every single hire we have here is like a believer, and we will not hire anybody else. That's the way it used to be at CrossFit too before the investors got it. It was crazy working in a place where everyone's a believer. Okay, last question. Ready? I'm going to make – you said you make organ stew, organ meat stew. And I've been avoiding organ meat and I've been taking all the heart and soil supplements and ancestral supplements because I'm just like – I just can't do organ meat. But if you tell me really quickly a simple organ meat stew, I will – as soon as we get off the phone here in five minutes, i'm going to go to the store i'm going to buy the oregon meat and i'm going to take heart take heart put it in the slow cooker with a little bit of like tomato what heart cow heart yeah i take cow heart put it in the slow cooker and then once it gets really soft cut it up into

really small pieces you know like pulled pulled meat And what did you say to add? Tomato paste and what? Yeah, like a little bit of tomato paste and a ton of salt. And like a little bit of fat. You know, if you want a little bit of butter or something like that, just put it in. My dad puts tomato paste in everything. Yeah, a little bit of like the red pepper paste. You know the Lebanese red pepper paste? You'll be better off with that one, actually.

Listen, I got to go, though. I'm really sorry, Simon. No, you da man. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, man. This has been a pleasure. Maybe we could just chat another time. I'll text you my cell phone, and then we can just chat.

I'd love to find out more what you did with CrossFit. I'd love to hear about it. Maybe we'll get you on my podcast, you know? Fantastic. No, I'm not smart enough for your podcast. Let's just do we'll just i keep you on mind all right all right i'll give you a call bye give your patient a big hug for me tell them i'm sorry we'll do all right so i'm going