Diet Doctor Podcast

There's more than one way to lose weight. How does the director of a weight loss clinic decide the best path for each patient? Dr. Sandra Palavecino encounters this decision every day. And although she can choose from medications, surgery, and calorie restriction, she frequently chooses low-carb diets as her first approach. Her personal, professional, and scientific experience has shown her that the benefits of low-carb are unmatched by other modalities. Here is her story, and a glimpse behind the scenes at her clinic.

Dr. Casey Means is on a mission to help us understand more about our metabolic health and how our food choices impact it. She's at the forefront of promoting the use of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), to help us see how different foods affect blood sugar, and more importantly, show us what we can do about it. Dr. Means' interest in blood sugar doesn't stop with food. In this interview, we also discuss how sleep, stress, and other factors can affect a patient's blood sugar response. If you're curious about how a CGM might help you learn about your metabolic health and help you take action to improve it, this is the episode for you.

It took him more than 30 years, but Dr. Jeremiah Eisenschenk was able to transform his lifestyle to lose weight an improve his health. Now he's helping his patients do the same and is spreading the message throughout his community. As an obesity medicine and family medicine specialist in rural Minnesota, Dr. Eisenschenk has personal experiences that help him connect with his patients and guide them on their path to health. He practices what he preaches, intensifying his passion and efficacy when helping others. Despite Dr. Eisenschenk's medical school training, he needed to be proactive and educate himself to complete his own health journey. He's now poised as one of the leaders promoting the importance of metabolic health and how to achieve it.

As a physician, Dr. Ian Lake broke free of dietary guidelines to treat his own type 1 diabetes and prove he could do better than standard care with a low-carb approach. Lake believes that we don't need carbs for energy and that fasting is not the same as starvation. To prove it, he organized and completed the Zero Five 100 project. Zero calories. Five days. 100 miles. Will it be enough to change the paradigm of blood sugar management? That remains to be seen. But it's an amazing start!

Dr. Ethan Weiss is a preventive cardiologist who supports a low-carb and keto way of eating. That is remarkable in itself. But my admiration for him goes well beyond that simple fact. As a researcher and clinician, he is uniquely positioned to understand how science, specifically nutritional science, informs decisions doctors can and should make with patients. He believes we need to separate emotion and science, and has been vocal about what he calls low-carb tribalism. Much of this centers around the controversy about the role LDL plays in heart disease. Could it be different for those following low-carb? Yes he says. But the bigger question is what do we do about it until we know for sure? I hope you appreciate his thought process and his approach to this question as much as I do. Above it all, however, Ethan is a human playing his part to try to make the world a better place. Whether it is volunteering to fly across the country to work in a COVID ICU, or his honesty and vulnerability surrounding his daughter with albinism, Ethan sets an example how we should behave as human beings.

Can low-carb nutrition prevent severe COVID related illnesses? We don't have data on it, but according to ICU physician Dr. Kyeremanteng, it is certainly worth discussing. He believes one silver lining that may come from the COVID pandemic is the renewed focus on the risks of metabolic disease and associated obesity. Dr. K sees nutrition as a powerful tool to prevent the most serious diseases that he regularly sees in the ICU. He brings his energy and passion to prevention, even while caring for critically ill patients. He also has great tips for how low-carb patients in the hospital can communicate their nutrition preferences with their doctors. Lastly, we discuss Dr. K's battle with racism and how he sees race impacting healthcare. His voice and his message show the critical importance of addressing racial disparities and helping everyone achieve better health.

Dr. Sanghani spent years training as a physician in endocrinology and diabetology. She knows everything about the expensive medications used to treat type 2 diabetes. Now, Dr. Sanghani has made it her mission to get her patients off those medications, and instead use lifestyle therapies, including low-carb diets, to help them transform their health. It's easy to cheer for her and wish her success on her journey with her patients.

Black Americans are disproportionately affected by diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic metabolic diseases. Dr. Tony Hampton has made it his mission to change that. With his comprehensive lifestyle approach, he is making a profound impact in the underserved community where he works. Not only does he educate others, but he leads by example as well. We all could use a caring and talented doctor like Dr. Hampton. With his voice and his advocacy, we hope to see his sweeping impact on the lives of the patients in his care who struggle with chronic diseases.

We hear the question all too often. Would the world be better off without meat? Whether it's our health, the environment, or ethical concerns, many are committed to eliminating meat production. But in truth, these arguments don't hold up under scrutiny. As Diana Rodgers points out, there's a better way to think about it. We need animals. We need meat. But we can do it better. What if there was a way to raise livestock that reduced greenhouse gases? Or a system that improved soil quality and decreased outside inputs? It turns out, there is. Enter "regenerative agriculture." Diana and her co-author, Robb Wolf, just released their book, Sacred Cow. She will release a documentary under the same title soon. In both the book and the film, she describes how regenerative agriculture is the key to sustainable farming, how it is ethical, and how it can save our health as well. It's an important message we all need to hear.

What is the true impact of livestock on climate change, and will eating less meat significantly impact global warming? That is a topic of hot debate charged with emotion and ideology on both sides of the discussion. The end result is confusion as we try to answer the question, "What can I do to minimize my contributions to climate change?" What we eat matters. And how and where we grow our food matters, too. Our discussion with Professor Mitloehner helps clarify these complex issues.