It’s almost hard for me to believe that I have 9 installments on this little biologic experiment I have been guinea pigging on since February of this year.
If you are just joining me in this series, and especially if you are entertaining going on a ketogenic diet you most definitively want to check out the other parts of this blog form the beginning.
Somehow 9 is not an even number although it is a good luck number for me and one of my favorites, you can expect a part 10 and maybe an 11 or 12 too.
A little background first, just in case you are too lazy or to time stressed (you should fix that!) to read any of the prior installments.
This all started in May of 2013 while speaking and attending David Wolfe’s Longevity Now conference in Costa Mesa California.
While I was there I met and spoke at length to an amazing cancer research doc who specialized in metabolism. We spent probably 6 hours discussing things; which is a lot for a 3 day conference where I was manning the Dr. Dave’s Best booth fielding questions etc.
Anyway my interest in cancer metabolism was peaked and I started doing what I always do when I realize there is a hole in my knowledge- I read!
Several months later I came across and read the book “Cancer as a Metabolic Disease”. I followed the recommendations in the book as far as diet mainly out of curiosity. I wanted to know if it was even feasible to put someone with cancer on this diet. I found it was indeed doable and in the process rapidly lost 10 pounds and learned a ton about my own body and metabolism.
Soon after I was on the phone with the author Dr. Tom Seyfreid and was lucky to speak to Tom at length. I realized I have to put this info in my upcoming book on aging and I must personally thank all of my readers for their feedback and interest!
The positives and a few negatives of this experience have been detailed at length in the other installments as well as “how to” if you want to join me in this route.
I cannot say enough about how cool it is to be in my mid 50’s and leaner and more muscular than I have been in a long, long time. The last time I looked this good was back in 2006 when I completed my own pilot study on my revolutionary fat burning compound Ultra Strength Fat Furnace.
I’ll be shooting a pic or two for you to see once I am one place long enough to do so.
If you happen to be following my travels and escapades I will simply tell you that I feel great after getting 1.5 billion of my on NK cells which were expanded and transfused a few days ago at the ReHealth clinic I work at in Guadalajara Mexico. If you are interested in staying young, I mean really, really interested then no doubt I will see you there soon!
That is a different story though so back to this one. One of the biggest things that was on my mind for the past 8 months as I ate free range nitrate free bacon, drank heavy cream and added salt to my diet was, ” What if this is really bad for me!?”
You see, like you, and probably even more than you I believed the stuff I was taught. Taught in med school, taught in post doc stages, taught in lectures and taught to my patients: fat was bad, avoid fat like the plague!
Now I SAW the results of eating a high fat ketogenic diet low in carbs. I saw them fast and I saw them slow- I continued to lose body fat even after 25 pounds of weight loss. I never thought of myself as fat but now I see that I let some extra blubber accumulate surreptitiously over the years especially since I stopped taking the USFF.
I will tell you that even though my weight has leveled off I am still dropping body fat. Right now I run about 9% which is about half of what insurance actuarial tables say is “normal”.
I wondered if what I was seeing before my very eyes could be bad- after all I was doing exactly the opposite of what I had been taught by cardiologists, endocrinologists, masters of Internal Medicine and the like. Basically I was flaunting their recommendations and pretending I knew better!
I had more than one nightmare of stern Cardiologists in white coats hoisting their catheters over my head and with pitiless voices saying, “This is Your Fault Doc!”
How could I possibly know better, and how could I possibly not be taking statin drugs etc. etc.
Then there were all those people who told me they swear by the “China Study” and I should avoid all animal products like the plague since they cause heart disease, cancer and all other forms of maladies on this earth!
So the big question of can you lose weight and eat all the “wrong things” and still lose more fat/weight by staying on the wrong food diet was easily answered: ABSOLUTELY!
The next and even bigger question was: Can I lose this much weight and fat and yet still somehow drive my bad cholesterol thru the roof and drop my good cholesterol (HDL) into the basement?
While this didn’t make sense I needed proof. So right before I got my NK cell infusion (second healthy person on the planet to do so as far as I can document) I got my cholesterol and other markers done. Not all of them are back yet but I thought you would be interested in hearing the results that are so far.
My blood sugar fasting was normal at 82, my cholesterol total was 160, my HDL good cholesterol was 66 and the LDL cholesterol was 84, triglycerides at 50. For those of you who are saying “wait a minute that does not add up to 160″, remember the VLDL cholesterol is calculated from the triglycerides and not included in this result but it would be about 10-14.
Now I do take and have always taken my fish oil and of course I did not stop taking [eafl id=”2390″ name=”TA-65″ text=”TA-65″].
I did have a cholesterol test taken back in the fall of 2013 not realizing I would be going on this diet at the time and my cholesterol was 170 total and HDL 53 AND I was exercising regularly at the time. For the past 4 weeks I have not done much of anything because of some elective surgery- I had a lipoma taken off my back and could not chance tearing open the rather large scar. So the beneficial effects of exercise on my cholesterol are missing at this moment and it’s still better than before.
Now there are plenty of people who can brag about better numbers who are either on drugs or just naturally run better numbers, but these are good enough for ANYONE!
When the rest of the labs come in in a few days and I can exercise for a few weeks I will repeat this part of the experiment and update you with another installment.
Let me repeat what I have been saying over the years.
I think the healthiest diet for most of us in our middle age (and before and beyond) is one that
- Reduces calories close to what sustains an ideal body weight
- Reduces bolus eating and that means no more huge meals!
- Reduces insulin secretion because no one wants to admit just how inflammatory high insulin levels are!
- Cuts our body fat to well below what is considered “normal”.
The net result is a lean muscular individual with low insulin levels, low inflammation and a real shot at a healthier aging. Throw in the telomere adjustment and a high Omega 3 level and you are doing a ton more than most to manifest this as a reality.
I don’t care how you get there and I am not championing any specific diet for you. Just get there!!!
And for heaven’s sake don’t believe all the negative nonsense about Omega 3’s! Take your fish oil every day!
Doc