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- Welcome, my friends, to the Bob and Brad Podcast.
My name is Mike Kenitz
and I'm a physical therapist assistant.
Today, our guest is Dr. Eric Westman
and we are gonna be discussing different keto topics.
So Dr. Westman is the co-founder of Adapt Your Life
and Adapt Your Life Academy
and Associate Professor of Medicine
at Duke University Health System
and the director of Duke Keto Medicine Clinic
in Durham, North Carolina.
So without further ado, here is Dr. Westman.
So, are there any positive or negative long-term effects
of being in ketosis?
- Well, you know, we started researching the low-carb
and keto diet in terms of therapeutic effect.
So we started studying on the treatment
and reversal of obesity.
You know, check. That does that.
I mean, that's really kind of what it's known for
in the medical world for obesity treatment.
But it also reverses diabetes
and our clinical studies go way back
and there's some newer ones.
But in the clinic, I mean, I reverse diabetes and obesity,
and heartburn, and all of these other clinical issues.
And yes, you can reverse these things,
you doing all sorts of other diets
and other sorts of medicines and surgery,
But it really has a role to play,
for those who can't make use of those other services.
And if you just wanna do things by changing the food,
there's so many great things, we can reverse things.
So what's fascinating
is there really aren't a whole lot of studies
about preventing issues,
and this is one of the areas that's wide open for research.
If you wanted to do a study,
that would be fairly simple
and you just follow people on a low-carb diet
and see if they develop diabetes or other problems like that
because I'm confident it will,
but those studies haven't been done.
So the studies have been done
on reversing illness and disease
and you turn it around,
it doesn't mean it's gonna prevent it.
So if the kitty is up on the tree
and I have a ladder to get the kitty down,
it doesn't mean the kitty went up the ladder
to the tree, right?
So I could fix diabetes with a low-carb diet,
it doesn't mean carbs cause the diabetes,
although, I'm pretty confident it's true.
So I'm very optimistic and encouraged
about the prevention of illness
and, you know, now the time is to teach children,
teach parents to get into that preventive mode
where you have to be careful about sugar.
And I don't mean everyone has to be keto.
I have a new book that actually talks
about different levels of carbs,
but we're really pretty strict about staying away
from refined sugar and flour.
And that's a general theme
among all scientists and researchers today,
It's not just me at Duke saying that.
But the implementation is simple and easy,
and, you know what, it still, to this day,
I'm in the clinic and I teach people.
The look in someone's eyes when they come back
and they go, "This is so easy.
How come I didn't know about this before?"
(laughs) You know? That's really fun to see.
- All right, do you-
- Oh, you mentioned about the bad things.
- Yeah. - No, so...
The studies about true ketosis
and, you know, in mice,
and you can follow for the whole life span of a mouse.
They live longer if you put 'em in keto,
you know, if they follow a keto diet.
And so, that hasn't been done in humans,
although in primates...
And I guess there's a hint that the less you eat,
you know, the lower your insulin level and the blood
for a human, even, the longer you'll probably live.
It's very rare to see someone who has a problem
in burning fat.
And that's really what's going on
when you're on a keto diet, you're a fat burner.
In fact, some bizarre, rare diseases get better
when the body starts burning fat,
and that's always very interesting to see.
I'm an internist and I'm not a genetic expert
but there's a rare genetic disease
that basically gets better when you run the muscle on fat
and not on sugar.
So the long-term, no.
I think I don't know of any long-term effects that's bad
from eating regular food now.
And so, I'm saying that if you do
a real food-based kind of keto diet,
nobody knows what the long-term effects are
of adding, you know, oils to coffee
and apple cider vinegar everyday,
and, you know, the internet keto out there,
I can't vouch for,
but for a real food-based kind of program
where you're just keeping the carbs really low,
and you're not emphasizing being in ketosis all the time,
I know that's safe.
I mean, I've been following people now
for over 20 years doing this,
but the kind of weird versions of keto
that you'll find on the Internet,
sometimes I do have concern
that there might be long-term effects
of drinking these oils all day long.
So be careful again about who you get the information from,
And I think the best sources are doctors
who've been using it in the clinic,
you know, if you're trying to do it for a clinical problem,
because then they have the day-to-day nuance
and familiarity with how to manage
the different questions and different diseases.
But, you know, the keto diet that we've been using,
which is a real food-based kind of program,
I don't think there are any long-term complications.
- All right, yeah, there's really no long-term studies
on any diet unless it's your correlational.
- So, all right.
Where can people find more information about you at?
- My website is ericwestmanmd.com,
so that's E-R-I-C-W-E-S-T M-A-N-M-D.com,
and you can find the different resources we have there.
We have a page, we have a book,
we have a courses you can take on the internet.
The company I started Adapt Your Life,
and the Adapt Your Life Academy has resources,
free YouTube videos at Adapt Your Life YouTube channel,
and you can take courses that we open from time to time
at the Adapt Your Life Academy.
So we're trying to give our information
and teaching in many different ways,
and, of course, you can see me at Duke University
going through the clinical program there.
I have to warn you
that there's a bit of a weight to get in.
I'm sorry about that.
That's why one reason why we created this company
to get information to people
who can't make the trip to Durham.
- Right. You're just getting too popular, I guess.
- Well, or the approach
is getting popular, (Mike laughs)
which is great. - One of the two, huh?
Yeah.
- Yeah, you know, I've trained a number of doctors
who created practices like this around the country,
and that's exciting to see.
So we need to train many more people
in this way, really.
I use lifestyle, I use food predominantly.
Some people come to me, they can't exercise,
so when I say lifestyle, I really mean diet, the nutrition,
and I get to take away medicines.
I don't give medicines like most of my colleagues anymore.
- Right. Well, thank you for joining us today.
- My pleasure.
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