Challenging the Status Quo: A Conversation with Dr. Gary Fetke

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unscripted Pharmacist. I'm Kyle, your host and I have with me today Gary Fetke and I'm coming to you from Headwaters which is a paddleboarding as well as a kayak shop here in Rancho Cordova Sacramento and I have Gary Fetke. Now Gary doesn't know but I've

[00:00:29] put him somewhat on a pedestal because he's a great example and he's one of the pioneers to me since I've been on this journey since 2013. So many of his old videos as well as an amazing book and

[00:00:43] version have been on the focus, the same focus that I have been on which is discovering conflicts of interest and Gary's been on this for quite some time and I would have to say you know it's

[00:00:56] people like you and I would have to have to call out you know Sarah Hallberg who said you know ignore the guidelines as a diabetes educator it's you know it's it's not always insulin with an A1c of nine

[00:01:08] it's not always about using medications to treat diagnosis. So here I've been a pharmacist for so long and it was always like matching the diagnosis with the drugs and it was about memorization, memorizing charts but no one ever told me root cause and Gary's been on that trek

[00:01:28] for quite some time he has his own personal health story as a cancer survivor as well as an orthopedic surgeon dealing with the hospital and dealing with the problems that come from being bold and speaking out against the dogma the clinical dogma of the day which is just

[00:01:50] shall I shall I use your favorite word maybe rubbish? Okay Gary I want to quote you. I have a lot of favorite words. Oh yes okay so here's a quote here's a quote from you you ready for this one who are the

[00:02:09] okay so science evolves by being challenged not by being followed and this hits home once you see the health benefits of LCHF you can never unsee them. Okay that's one of mine. How long does that mean to you from a personal perspective and professional perspective?

[00:02:29] Well first of all you should get a real life and take me off the pedestal okay hopefully after our discussion you'll realize that I'm just like go blow maybe not in the orthopedic world because I'm bold and courageous. No no I'm a bold and courageous person is a

[00:02:47] superhero. I just think that I've been trying to do the right thing and I'm not it's not quite humble about all this we're actually it's a bit like you say once you see it you can't

[00:03:00] unsee it and that's like a lot of things in life but in this particular forum when we're surrounded by a society with metabolic health problems and you've got an opportunity to empower the patient to make them lifestyle changes and they can turn around their health

[00:03:23] problems without drugs well I've just broken about four rules of the current sickness model that we're actually been working under. A do not give the patient information, B do not empower the patient because most people are disempowered you know they live in fear of the doctor or you

[00:03:42] know or I often talk about it like me in a pinball machine you know like once you caught up in the system it's just bouncing from one medical appointment or one test to the next and you're so dependent on

[00:03:57] what is coming your anxiety levels go up all sorts of other stress hormones kick in. We do put doctors up on pedestals when I actually I one of the things that over the

[00:04:11] last 20 years I've lost a lot of respect for my colleagues and I don't mean that in a bad way it's actually in a professional way if you don't follow scientific rigor and you don't

[00:04:25] do what's the right thing by your patient then you're screwing up so you know one of the great things I've come to recognise is I've said I'm sorry I got it wrong and it's a basic parenting skill have you got kids? Yeah I have grandkids just like you.

[00:04:47] So therefore one of the things with raising children is you're sort of saddened actually no you've done the wrong thing that's a mistake admit you've done the wrong thing learn from it and move on that's called basic parenting one of the problems in medicine is that

[00:05:04] the vast majority of doctors really struggle to say I'm sorry I got it wrong no matter how they got wrong they've got it wrong and then move on so the last time the medical profession actually ever said sorry was over thalidomide and we're going back 50 60 years when

[00:05:24] look I'm sorry yeah people were pregnant when we were prescribed thalidomide and birth defects followed on from that probably only about 10 to 15,000 according to the literature of children were affected or now adults which is nothing in comparison to the tsunami of modern

[00:05:40] diseases out there that we're actually causing harm so I come back to that basic premise that you know you've quoted me on like science evolves by being challenged not by being followed that is my take on a on something really simple which is called evolution

[00:06:00] it whether or not it's it's called the scientific method like we have evolved by constantly challenging what we've done before learn from that tweaked it moved on and that's called evolution right in science that is like science theoretically is stands there to be

[00:06:21] disproven no science is ever solved and the moment you've actually believed that that's the end game we've solved the problem we haven't we haven't you've got to stand there and defend your hypothesis I remember having a dinner on that it's completely gone but so if it's gone

[00:06:43] no you've got to work out why it's gone so this is so the whole concept of low carb healthy fat in a harder if you're going harder core it's keto in a harder core form it's carnivore

[00:06:59] but as a dietary like a lifestyle but realistically all we're talking about is going back to eating whole food and unprocessed food or minimally processed food so you know one of my other quotes

[00:07:16] well I've rewritten the dietary guidelines for the world I don't know if you've seen that quote because we complicate everything and I actually I got into trouble with the medical board because I've been up for making things too simple so people could understand I'm not making that up

[00:07:31] I literally got reprimanded but that's your job I know but what I'm sort of saying is the medical board your job the doctor is to teach yes thank you for knowing that most doctors have no idea what

[00:07:44] the Latin mean is to teach the sorry is to actually to teach you get a doctor we're not there to care for people we're not there to heal them we're not there to make money we're not there

[00:07:56] to operate or medicate or you know pharmacize they're we're there to teach them that that's the basic so um oh we've run out of on a tangent the um uh yeah so I can remember having this dinner

[00:08:14] in New York with it I won't mention their names because I don't want to get good good friends but essentially I actually took to them and said well actually the scientific method is now so flawed

[00:08:26] we've abandoned it that I now think the null hypothesis is null and void and it went they took the bait on that and it got quite a heated discussion for about 10 minutes and then Belinda who was sitting beside me said to the guys he's from Australia he's just

[00:08:42] baiting you and you've taken the bait everyone's settled down but to be fair I'll still take the argument I actually do think we've thrown the scientific method out the window so that's

[00:08:54] really interesting because I call it there's a talk of mine on YouTube and I gave a similar presentation to a few hundred medical students a couple of weeks ago and I had open minds which

[00:09:07] I was delighted to see but essentially it's the failure of our medical education so if we've completely abandoned holistic health and we've complete and I'll say almost completely we talk about oh you know lifestyle and all that sort of thing but realistically we've abandoned that

[00:09:28] I've come to a lot of our works made to try and work out why we've abandoned it and how we abandoned it and that's where you come back to vested interests and when you find out that I

[00:09:39] call it generational education the problem is for you and myself is that we believe our teachers and they believe their teachers and they believe their teachers before them so that most of it you

[00:09:52] know the ailments in our sickness industry actually date back to temperance movement ideals in the mid 19th century so the whole the start of our downfall goes all the way back to that time

[00:10:06] front and so therefore you can sort of see once you understand history would a you don't repeat it which is what society does all the time but the history of our medical education in fact so

[00:10:22] 1910 you heard of the flex and report oh yeah yeah I'm totally with you on the seven day Venice involvement in food pyramid this is I you know what though I don't think that too many

[00:10:36] people really know this and that's kind of why we're here because I don't think people realize that we've been following the Garden of Eden no blood shall be shed diet since the beginning and had

[00:10:47] we've had no clue so this is animals in the wild don't have Belinda's wheelhouse oh yeah well the animals in the wild don't have dietary guidelines you know they and they don't you don't find fat

[00:11:00] animals they know what to eat they know what to eat and they they've rarely gorge themselves until they start rating human rubbish bins yeah they're not fat well they do get fat you know in

[00:11:14] for winter hibernation they've got a process in there but not like us no because they do hibernate afterwards so they don't have access to food for a few months right but I mean in nature that's

[00:11:27] a really wonderful thing to look at because what is it that drives behavior to actually create that eating behavior and um um Rick Johnson who's a nephrologist has done a lot of work around

[00:11:41] at his book called a B-City Code good book Nate and nature wants us fat yeah and that's his latest book but I can remember him giving me a copy of the B-City Code years ago but essentially in nature

[00:11:56] we're driven so in hibernation we actually get once we start running burning off our fat and just when we start to burn protein that's enough of a stimulus with rising cortisol levels to wake us out

[00:12:11] of hibernation we then go on a frenzy to try and start foraging for food and then as you head towards the light that going into hibernation that's the time when our fruits get on the trees

[00:12:22] the end of winter beginning of autumn sorry the end of summer beginning of autumn the fruit ripens the sugar in that particularly the fructose component of it then drives behavior to gorge ourselves to go into winter hibernation and that happens in society 365 days of the year

[00:12:46] so we've got totally stressed out lives where our cortisol levels are out and so that gives us erratic behavior wakes us up keeps us alert and becomes stressful itself and high cortisol levels have got their own side effects but then we're actually got this exposure to ultra processed

[00:13:05] food which is primarily it has significant amounts of sugar and particularly fructose in it and fructose just in itself will drive a whole lot of eating behaviors right down the pathway to making

[00:13:18] us a piece um my brain is functioning i could remember the other thing the other i've written the dietary guidelines for the world which it all comes back to this you don't stop me okay i've got

[00:13:33] whilst whilst the memory's working um oh i've got so much stuff yeah um because if we're looking for a simple answer the simple answer is this it's called eat fresh local seasonal whole food based on your culture and environment avoiding added sugar and processed food that is the

[00:13:57] evolutionary diet as ken bergels that's the proper human diet it's actually when you break that down i've described lchf i've described the ketogenic diet i've started carnival diet i have not described standard american diet australian diet that might that food pyramid diet and i don't know if you've

[00:14:20] heard me say you know if you eat by the food pyramid you're going to die by the food pyramid and along the way you're going to look like the food pyramid yeah and uh yeah and you're gonna

[00:14:31] keep grazing oh well animals graze on grains you know that's on paddocks and whatever um which path you want to go down i mean the trouble is that damn food pyramid and that which is

[00:14:48] the basis of even though they've changed it to the food plate in the us and they've changed it to the dietary guidelines here healthy eating guidelines it's still based around a significant amount if not the majority actually based upon cereals and grains and highly processed food and

[00:15:05] of an avoidance of fresh local seasonal whichever plate looking at whichever guideline i've actually said in the australian one i've actually said you need to send out a search and rescue party

[00:15:16] to find the meat on it on the australian guidelines one i guess it's so hard to find it nothing food desert is literally shotgun across the whole lot um absolutely so if you know and i talk about that analogy that will look like the food pyramid

[00:15:38] and died by the food pyramid the trouble is since we've introduced those dietary guidelines and our predominantly leaning towards this food pyramid which was completely manipulated the information behind it we have gotten fatter and sicker as a society

[00:15:57] and you know one of the things that the system you know the dietitians associations whether it's the us and australia canada um south africa england have all said oh it's because people aren't following the guidelines well i've got great data out of the us comparing our food intake

[00:16:20] in the 70s and in the 20 and the the teens in the 2019 i think was the last data right and we have over that period of time followed the dietary guidelines we have decreased our intake of red meat

[00:16:36] we've significantly we've decreased we've increased our intake of fruit and vegetables and cereals and grains and nuts and plant foods and it's just gross data you know those have gone up and those

[00:16:53] have gone down right and so we have as a society or particularly in the us that's where the best data comes from all this followed dietary guidelines and yet what an abject failure fatter sicker metabolically unwell polypharmacy multiple drugs multiple complications take one

[00:17:12] drug gets side effects take another drug to prevent the side effects of the other one and you'd be you'd be well aware you know the whole origins of the pharmaceutical industry not just flex the karnigie rocker fella in 1910 but they develop these drugs find out that

[00:17:29] they've got complications and as a result of the complications market those complications to become the pharmaceutical drug of choice for that condition that needs that complication it's yeah i think you and i have done some significant damage to the pharmaceutical industry

[00:17:47] how many i wonder how many surgeries you've prevented how many prescriptions are not filled i mean i hope that you and i can someday put a dent in in this profit that they've continued to share

[00:18:02] with it's hard to put a figure on i'd like to think think of tens of billions but i i i i know at least of millions so the this is standing the australian breakfast cereal manufacturers forum

[00:18:21] used to meet every three months at concord golf club and sit down and discuss us industry tactics so here in australia that included kellox nestlay sanitarium freedom and the head of the food and grocery council and they'd sit down and discuss so

[00:18:46] yeah everyone says all the meat industry is powerful and that's literally just like herding cats look so many different bodies they are not organized yet we've got the breakfast cereal industry literally sitting down with their CEOs and their chief legal officers and having lunch

[00:19:04] every three months to work out what's happening with the market in some of those documents which we're not hackers but they literally fell out out of the internet um really where the minutes there saying in australia and new zealand breakfast cereal sales

[00:19:24] are down because of the concepts of low carb paleo keto and gary fecky and we are therefore should target these seven people of which i'm the only australian doctor on that list so part of me is

[00:19:45] very proud to be on that list the other part of me is sh it scared to be on that list yeah i'm gonna talk about it change your career well i mean this has been a huge silver lining for you

[00:20:02] it um philosophically yes you know i i think we've been able to and our conversations like this with a social media youtube means that i actually reach more people every day through social media than i do in a lifetime of surgery and i went to a retirement

[00:20:26] due for one of um our team our plaster technician it was and um no i went to that last night and he said do you miss surgery and i went yes but i think we're doing great

[00:20:42] are good by and he said he said preventing he was very kind he said look you were i was a great surgeon which is very kind because it's when you're a surgeon you're just trying to get do your job

[00:20:54] the great thing i've taken out of surgery is is arrogance because you've got to be arrogant to be a surgeon you could you gotta back yourself and the thing i and i don't mean that badly because it is a lifetime of actually backing

[00:21:08] yourself that you've got the surgical skill to do something with your brain and your hands to actually because you're isolated in an operating theater you gotta back yourself it's one of the great things about all this low-carb stuff is i kept coming back to the biochemistry

[00:21:22] i was right you can't argue with biochemistry and so i was arrogant slash naive enough to keep going i'm not i'm not stupid but i'm clearly naive i thought all of this was going to be over in months when i worked out the fructose metabolism path

[00:21:40] i'm so probably i am stupid you know it's literally this is so as you come back to it once you see it you can't unsee it and i can't couldn't work out why my colleagues kept operating you know like if we actually reduce sugar and carbs

[00:21:56] most osteoarthritis symptoms particularly of the knee get better so i'd get my patients to go low carb keto i'd say okay i'll see you in eight weeks and the majority of them had such a symptomatic improvement that before they lost weight that they didn't need the operation

[00:22:14] they still ultimately needed it in a year or two or three or four and but they were in much better metabolic health by that time than if i'd operated it but then a whole there's a whole

[00:22:27] lot of patients who couldn't put up with me and i understand that and they'd go along and see my colleagues and they'd have their operations at you know 250 pounds and it and it's and struggle

[00:22:42] your criteria was very different your criteria is very different for who you would do surgeries on and so this is a concept that i think that i think this is coined by you is and that is that people

[00:22:55] are training for their knee replacement right where yeah i'd say what does that mean to you joint replacements big surgery and and it's fabulous in the 20th century was deemed the the hip replacement was deemed the most beneficial operation of all medicine

[00:23:23] for taking people and i've had my hips replaced you know i i i i finally couldn't had mine done despite good metabolic health when i could not walk across the waiting room and i had to

[00:23:34] walk our daughter down the aisle three months later i literally i could not walk 10 meters i rang up one of my colleagues said okay let's let's do it he said okay well

[00:23:43] one of the good things with orthopedic surgeons and mates is you can bring up and they can shift things around and you get things done it is that is helpful nice um

[00:23:54] but i and so a lot of people said i'd make my patients suffer to get across the lot you know and i said but when you get there you are going to need the operation you're going to want

[00:24:05] the operation and you're going to be metabolically well and you're going to fly through it and as a result i ended up with a low complication rate but you know some patients said i made them

[00:24:15] you know what look i play golf which i find is a fascinating game um you might meditate out on the wakeboard but i'm actually meditating on the golf course i don't know how because it's

[00:24:28] got to be so frustrating no no it's actually spiritually cleansing when you hit the ball probably um but i regularly see people out on the golf course who tell me oh i'm going to have

[00:24:41] my knee replacement next week and i said what the hell are you doing out here and i said if you can you know it's i'm getting into trouble with my colleagues i said if you can get around and

[00:24:53] play 18 holes of golf walking even in a cart cancel your operation just cancel it you're not bad enough i know it's really sore it's not bad enough and part of that is coming all the way back

[00:25:08] to obesity diabetes complications of surgery for many years i had the practice of cleaning up all the deep infections and complications and over my right shot right there you can see there's a golden toilet brush yes and i very proudly have that in my life because my registrars

[00:25:31] called residents of the US they gave it to me because i got to clean up all the you know of my colleagues yeah and i so i think you know after 30 years of surgery the registrars the trainees

[00:25:48] would send patients that they didn't know what to do to my clinic i don't know if i heard my clinic some was called fetkis fdap fructose free fungating foot poly fridays

[00:26:01] i never quite worked out what fdap meant um i'll help you but the so i would regularly get patients with complications so like i'd say to people if you had a knee replacement and you've got diabetes

[00:26:18] and your abyss and your diabetes out of control are you willing i know you booked in for a knee replacement are you willing to have your leg amputated and i said stop being dramatic i

[00:26:28] said no i'm the guy that regularly amputates legs for the complications of deep infection and joint replacement if a joint replacement goes wrong it and asked and you there will be someone

[00:26:42] who out there who knows someone who's had an joint infection go wrong it really kills them it just makes their life a complete none of misery they they become dependent on the system multiple washouts multiple deep operations antibiotics forever the complications of

[00:26:57] antibiotics drugs hospitalization it is a misery so i felt quite strongly about saying okay let's optimize the patient before so it's interesting i gave a talk to a few hundred knee surgeons a few years ago um where i i essentially said if you do if you

[00:27:22] operate on obese patients and mean and you haven't optimized their clinical situation before surgery you are negligent i nearly got shot i then got asked to give that same talk about four years later of which half the audience got it if you operate on someone with significant

[00:27:43] obesity body mass index more than 35 to 40 with current morbidities in particular particularly diabetes then that person has a higher rate of complications of deep infection longer operations bigger transfusions longer hospitalizations failure of the joint replacement

[00:27:59] that is the same higher risk as operating on a patient without antibiotics without a sterile theater and not washing the skin beforehand and not operating in a clean theater so if i went and operated and didn't wash my hands didn't give you perioperative antibiotics and didn't actually

[00:28:24] wash the leg down properly with antiseptic and then didn't give you anti clotting medication i would be sued yet the complications of operating on someone with obesity is greater than all of that

[00:28:46] combined so it's just a numerical argument you would sue me if i did the former but you're not going to sue me and you're going to tell me that i'm politically incorrect and i'm fat shaming

[00:28:59] if i say no that person's got super obesity and i want to actually treat that person's obesity before joint replacement and that's all i did oh here's a tangent for you fat shaming you're allowed to fat shame uh no no we don't we don't do fat shaming here

[00:29:21] no but why not i didn't even i didn't even fat shaming uh openly fat shaming um no we don't do that here in the us yeah you will get a whole lot of crap for doing that yeah why not

[00:29:39] um it's a body positivity thing it's it's we let's all accept again i'm on health unhealthiness as the norm if you come to our stores you will see large size models it is and i

[00:29:54] will ask people like hey do you recognize i mean this is this is the new norm here how did we transition to this without really actually realizing imagine like okay so i don't know if you watch

[00:30:07] leave it to beaver but i'm old enough to know about leave it to beaver mr mistress mr mrs cleaver imagine them like who like they always wore the same waist they always had the same waist size all

[00:30:18] throughout their shows they never gained a pound uh imagine if they could look at us now what would they think of us now they would be like are you guys still the same species like how

[00:30:32] did you get so big like you know about the movie walley we have slowly incrementally just unnoticeably small tiny little increases in our weight in our sickness and we're completely oblivious to it going around around us 24 7 right like but the reason why i think fat shaming is wrong

[00:30:59] is that they are not to blame nobody is to blame you know what i know it not their fault they just didn't know and neither did their doctor right it's essentially huge doesn't know what you know

[00:31:14] it's a huge topic but so i used to get really cranky and obese people but you know as i've been on my journey i now realize it's a system problem you know it's our educational problem it's

[00:31:27] our guideline problem and it's where we educate our children we've got disney movies showing you know showing cows not you know you know um you know animals you can't eat animals it's all

[00:31:42] of that veganism whatever however i'm fat because i was giving a lecture again this is the arrogance i gave a talk on how to manage diabetes to 40 to 50 endocrinologists you know like tell them how

[00:31:58] to suck eggs wow you know it was a huge impact that's and it and it was it was that evening was the shit storm it turned out to be well linda watched it on zoom and she said i was incredibly well behaved

[00:32:14] as it was fairly heated from the floor um but nonetheless that was almost an impetus for us to actually change the dietary guidelines for diabetes here in australia and now that the

[00:32:29] endocrinologists think low carb it's their idea and it's and but now all that was happening is i was presenting the data which i'm part of the society of metabolic health practitioners in the us

[00:32:42] that an australian arm is that is developed here with a del height and pretty well as instrumental in writing the diet guidelines for diabetes of which we have lots of co-authors but a del it's unfortunately passed away but her legacy is such a powerful document but she um

[00:33:04] we've got that into the into the whole guidelines but i'm going to keep coming so but i was accused in that talk of fat shaming and i went i've never fat shamed i've had people tell me patients

[00:33:16] tell me that when i've spoken to them about their weight that that was the nicest way they've ever been told the fat so i'm actually respectful of people and understanding that in a disempowered system that if you can empower them that's not fat shaming that's empowering people

[00:33:37] anyway fat shaming i'll finish that was there that's their perception right that's their perception i find that if if you say the word obesity or overweight they internalize it immediately and take offense to it and the reality is this is the condition this is what we're calling it

[00:33:57] it's not somebody's fault it's it's not your fault if you don't know i think ignorance is on unfortunately on the part of the physician that has been told and shown this is root cause

[00:34:12] if you if you are going to ignore what i'm saying that's complete ignorance and and it's your arrogance is getting us to where we are today so an opportunity to talk to a lot of endocrinologists is

[00:34:24] that's that's that's pretty nice but i was accused of fat shaming go gary but the important thing about fat shaming is if you actually because i went on a fat shamer you know i'm actually trying to help people so low and behold obesity is a lifestyle related condition

[00:34:43] and it requires a lifestyle related solution ultimately you know with the right information support accountability motivation you can turn a lot of around as it turns out the literature about fat shaming and stigmatization of obesity

[00:35:03] if you go back for the last 10 years has been largely funded by a little company called nova nordisk a nova nordisk produce a drugs drugs called azempic and wegovi and they have if you can turn a lifestyle condition requiring a lifestyle solution into a medical problem which

[00:35:30] you don't blame anyone for and it requires a medical treatment at tens of thousand dollars per annum an incredible cash cow then you will become a very wealthy company nova nordisk is now europe's

[00:35:50] most valuable company on the and they can't it gets hard to get azempic in europe it's mostly sold off label around the west of the world and they're in the u.s so what i'm sort of saying

[00:36:05] is that whole fat shaming because it's literally a term i'm again i'm old enough to go we've had obesity around forever you know in some respect fat shaming yes i might have seen in

[00:36:19] subconsciously fat shame people in the past before i knew all this stuff but i've never gone out of my way to fat shame a patient but now i'm gonna fat shame nova nordisk yes let's do that

[00:36:34] fantastic good job once but once you realize that this is disinformation which has become part of our culture and and i wasn't setting up for it because fat shaming's bad i agree but the concept of it yes and the materialization and the medicalization of it and the pharmaceuticalization

[00:36:58] which is not a word i like it though comes down to a pharmaceutical company that's selling a drug off label for a and i think it's i think azempic's a terrible drug in diabetes management whatever's doubling down once you start using an obesity because every single medication in

[00:37:19] diabetes is there because of the carbohydrate you eat it's either about reducing the glucose that comes into your body peeing it out pooing it out or shifting it around if you don't eat it you don't if you don't eat carbs of which there's no biochemical requirement for it

[00:37:39] on based on science yep then you don't need the medication and every single person who goes low carb with their type 2 diabetes and predominantly type 1 in a supervised fashion has a reduction in their medication use and if you don't do it if it doesn't work for you

[00:38:00] then you're not doing it eric and that's one of eric westman's comments i mean if low carb is not working for you you're not doing it i'm a bit kinder than eric you're not

[00:38:10] doing it right right well if you're try glycerides don't drop like a rock then you're not doing it that's kind of my my rule as well and if you don't if you're not in ketosis you're

[00:38:20] not doing it either i think if you're not losing weight i want to get back to novo noradisk oh no they finished with them because they're just a little okay so oh oh come on how did they

[00:38:33] ended up on our 60 minutes here the puppet oh can i say this it's a little money certain person yeah she said it was genetics but how did you get on 60 minutes and and 60 minutes didn't do

[00:38:46] their do their homework and know that this particular obesity doctor was going to say this that it's genetic and she just took significant amount of money from novo noradisk and she got

[00:38:59] on 60 minutes and and she's telling the world that you know if your parents are fat or obese you will be obese too there's nothing you can do about it because you've got the you know for

[00:39:09] a couple of generations now we've been eating breakfast cereal yeah and so it's a generational eating habit it's not a generational i recognize there are epigenetics and whatever but that's just

[00:39:19] a cop out clause because even if you've got bad epigenetics you can even if you've got bad genetics a bad family history you have the ability to put the right fuel in your body to minimize the

[00:39:36] effect of that genetic genetic predisposition to whatever and i'm not saying you cure every single genetic disease but the ones that are related to metabolic health or have implications in metabolic health genetic epigenetic are going to benefit by having good metabolic

[00:39:58] better metabolic health and putting the right fuel in the body most people put more attention and i would love to say movement movement is medicine right gary can i say that or am i

[00:40:11] you can you can't have to okay well you've got you've got to declare your conflict of interest if you're going to say that oh okay all right okay so i'm a great believer millions of dollars from

[00:40:23] coca cola to say that yes you know that you know the origin of exercises medicine uh exercises medicine curious because i say it myself the formation of the american society of sports medicine had their initial funding from coca cola which is you know

[00:40:44] back to the olympics and you know health washing their message once again and they um and they had their seed funding and patented coca cola patented term exercises medicine ah makes you sick um um hey how about also coca cola's involvement with i lsi international life science institute

[00:41:07] this non-profit institute that basically challenged and had this sugar um sweetened beverage tax repealed in mexico and i lsi is basically just coca cola's non-profit or illsie illsie was started by coca cola a significant funding yes and they're right across the world so whenever the

[00:41:32] food industry and the pharmaceutical industries scientific arm pops up and that's not just coca cola i mean like the big pharmaceutical industries are in there that all the big food players are

[00:41:45] in in in illsie and it's their science washing of the messages you know it's like the fat shaming oh i haven't looked off the cuff i haven't tracked nova nilidisk illsie fat shaming but they're

[00:42:00] the same players using the same tactics over and over and over yeah and and it's the same thing not we blame the tobacco industry for all of their their nastiness and and suppression of the

[00:42:13] information about tobacco you know who taught them that coca cola you know so if we go back to the the perils of sugar cocaine and coca cola were noted back in the 19 early early early 1900s

[00:42:30] and belinda off the top of her head will give you the name of the person who was trying to drag that through congress and ultimately he was smashed so much by the system and the money and

[00:42:44] the and the paybacks that he actually resigned from congress and started writing articles for women's magazines about the perils because he realized he was not going to get it through the government so started writing articles about the perils of sugar in women's

[00:43:00] magazines because again without being sexist they were the ones that the what who are reading about what food to put on the table so again you got to work these back so the concepts of

[00:43:11] social media even back then have meant that we've actually been over to gain traction so the concepts of low carb and keto and therapeutic carbohydrate reduction and low carb are now in the mainstream not because the government pushed it not because of the food industry pushed it

[00:43:31] the food industry have come along on the right with all this crap foods and processed foods which are low carb bars protein bars and keto bars don't have them you know yeah but nonetheless right it's

[00:43:47] it's still ultra processed food and you should measure and you should know what your blood sugar is doing by wearing a continuous glucose monitor what do you think of the new g dga for 2025

[00:44:00] you've seen the list so i think it'd be really this is just just me but i think it'd be really hilarious to sit down with you and valinda at dinner and we were talking about what did you

[00:44:12] find today honey well you know what i found i discovered this i discovered how did you like you guys probably have these almost dirty little secrets about what you discovered about the pharmaceutical or the food industry on a regular basis so for the common listener because where do

[00:44:34] where should they go to dig up conflicts of interest similar to what you guys do because i think everyone should take some responsibility and go a cool blender i mean i've just dropped her in

[00:44:49] there but every like in the speakers around the world if you're going to enter into a debate i say call belinda to find out who you're debating against before so you find out their

[00:45:04] conflict of interest a lot of people actually don't even realize what hat they wear what their conflict of interest is so if you have an opinion and i'll take on the vegan if you're a vegan

[00:45:21] and you have an opinion about being a vegan i get it that you've got an opinion and i respect the fact that you're trying to make a difference to yourself and society and the environment

[00:45:32] but do you realize that you have become a foot soldier or the propaganda put forward by the seventh day of the church because every single vegan argument can be debunked you know there's

[00:45:45] actually more harm done to our environment by our food production of cereals and grains and cropping than there is by animal agriculture just the biggest you know the biggest agricultural export of the world what's the biggest export of the world i don't know is it california

[00:46:05] because we're we're close i know you but it's we grow a lot of rice here yeah but the biggest agricultural export of the world is topsoil oh topsoil oh yeah and it's just it's just exported via the wind and and the rivers and it's just thrown out in

[00:46:25] the ocean you can look down to the south of the us in that and look at hey satellite we have we have a similar problem here in california as you do where you are and that is out of control

[00:46:39] for us fires it's almost like now we have a fire season which is an incredibly unhealthy season in the heat of summer and the soil there's no topsoil and it can't hang on to any moisture so we've

[00:46:52] got fires out of control because we don't have enough of the right animal right in the field sequestering the carbon as well as the the water we have no topsoil we have fires out of control

[00:47:07] i want people to realize that it is incredibly unusual i i want their perspective to change as you drive down the central part of california and you see all these crops this is about

[00:47:19] as foreign and as about as artificial as the windmills you see spinning right we need to bring back what would actually save the environment which really would be the cow and in a way that you are

[00:47:32] rotating your fields but we wouldn't have the full on the most unhealthiest like you've waited all year for summer and then we are plagued with one fire after another and i think you're experiencing something similar is that correct well absolutely um but on a proactive steps the australian

[00:47:52] meat industry has tried to and has offered to run their cattle through the forests not not over grazing but to run the cattle through to actually keep the dry grasses down create divots

[00:48:12] in the ground where they're from their hoof prints which actually become pools of water this is just the start of regenerative agriculture but actually run so well managed forests with animal agriculture reduces the fire risk improves the quality of the soil improves the the absorvability

[00:48:33] it is a complete no brainer when you start looking at it we've got plenty of food on the planet the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet after china and us is

[00:48:48] food waste of the vast majority of its plant based i mean it it's us about all of that like he came back to best in interest how do you find out if you've got one of the good

[00:49:02] things about the us is you've got to think called the sunshine act and the sunshine act says that if someone publishes something they have to put their conflict of interest down the bottom so a

[00:49:13] lot of the australian people that we've been able to track down it's because they've published papers in the us and we've been able to find out okay oh you've got a conflict of interest with that

[00:49:24] now that conflict of interest generally is financial it's very rarely that they write down their ideological ones now we've been doing a lot of calling out at that no one of the american heart foundation groups published a particle about the benefits of plant based

[00:49:41] but in there in the conflict of interest and it's a rarity they actually wrote down i i'm a full-time vegan i'm part-time vegan i'm 99% vegan it's the very first time ever ideological evidence has been the submission papers for the us diet dietary guidelines the australian ones

[00:50:01] on the benefits of vegetarianism and we're going back some decades they failed all of the authors there failed to declare what their ideological conflicts of interest they didn't have any major

[00:50:16] financial but if you went down the list on the us one and took a bit of tracking every one of them but so it was one person from the processed food industry everyone else was a vegetarian

[00:50:30] of which eight out of the ten seven out of the ten were seventh day adventists so when you realize that the seventh day that's what we're looking at for the 2025 guidelines i know but you've got you know and we've again you can actually look at the guidelines committees

[00:50:51] and the people who are on these committees are either working for the food industry have had significant funding from the food industry will say the seventh day in interest is a corporate

[00:51:01] church food industry and right and so and with and so and here in australia the same thing we've got a review of our guidelines coming i that that i've told you i wrote the guidelines in one sentence

[00:51:14] before that was submitted to our national health and medical research council we don't i said look you're going to spend 10 million dollars on this for two million dollars i'll do it here it is

[00:51:25] in one sentence but they didn't take me up on it no i'm done with the two million but if we every person who's on the australian committee by our one has got funding conflicts that go back for decades to this whole sickness industry model that we've

[00:51:48] already got the same thing goes with the u.s diet you gotta like so nutrition coalition nita tisholtz and her crew they just all you can do is just keep pointing this out the guidelines are flipped yes here's one good thing about dietary guidelines is they are irrelevant

[00:52:08] because dietary guidelines are for healthy people that's what they said it's a pretty good excuse 90 of the population they want to make it more complex too it's 92.7 of the u.s population of metabolically own well so the guidelines are only applicable at barely 7 percent

[00:52:30] if so a lot of the and trouble is dietary guidelines determine what what what people are educated with what food served in the schools the hospitals and nursing homes the defense

[00:52:45] forces and the prisons and you know the u.s defense forces are struggling the same as much as the australian ones as you know they've got increased weight problems obesity metabolic health and so i've taken the different tactics okay let's embrace the dietary guidelines and dismiss them

[00:53:09] because they're not relevant so if we then end up with a specific dietary guideline for diabetes for instance then that's good because we've already now we've got a dietary guideline for two-thirds of the population have either got diabetes or pre diabetes so it's surreptitiously introduced

[00:53:28] a dietary guideline which is actually condition specific but guess what the dietary guideline for mental health it's exactly the same local completely opposite no no no it's exactly the same but what we do is we literally just change up we change the heading this is a dietary guideline

[00:53:46] for mental health disorders but and change the references this is a dietary guideline for chronic renal disease but change the references it's the same free inflammatory about right autoimmune everything yeah and literally that's what the society of metabolic health is doing

[00:54:02] you made progress though Australia's making progress i'm impressed i didn't think it was going to come from a regulatory agency i would have i mean if you were to look into the your

[00:54:15] crystal ball the future what do you see is this going to be like consumer driven and consumer demand that's going to say hey we want more low carbohydrate we we need more animal based foods

[00:54:28] because i don't see it happening any other way but you might have more experience in this field because you've been trying to influence policy we've been supporting grassroots influencing policy and i was surprised but policy literally fell over and and i'll

[00:54:56] covered was good in a strange way because certain meetings were occurring and there were people that we were working with that were inside those meetings and you could inside of a meeting you could they could turn off their microphone turn off their camera

[00:55:11] and give me a call or give Belinda a call and say you wouldn't believe what so and so has just said and then we've been able to give them the background information or call them out on this

[00:55:22] all them out on that so they turn their microphone back on turn the camera back on blah blah blah and you go yes okay let's screw you because you're going to mount out so look it's been a lot of hard work

[00:55:42] a lot of frustration a bit of fear like you actually saw Belinda and i actually you know have that conversation well before 2017 i can give him a bit of crossfit giving a talk

[00:55:56] on the vested interests greg glasman asked me to come and speak he asked tim notes as well and that was the very first time we called out religion in this whole i called it was a talk called the central role of nutrition and everything which is talking about

[00:56:09] food environment politics health education communication and it's once you actually realize that nutrition has been completely manipulated by vested interests for 100 years and then you can see how i mean i'll argue that you know that that environmental disaster

[00:56:35] of our loss of our agricultural soil actually comes down to you know bad guidelines there's a great book called dirt the failure of civilization by montgomery what's his first name colon no well but montgomery dirt the failure of civilization great book where it actually tracks down

[00:56:56] the failures of multiple civilizations over a period of time with related to their agricultural practice jaren diamond does that and a lot of his literature as well and i've been reading that stuff

[00:57:09] for decades but it's just quite fascinating to see it all coming together yeah that it's playing a role in politics and whatever but i think our modern era of mis-management of our soil

[00:57:22] you know the health of the soil the health of the people is determined by the health of the food the health of the food is determined by the health of the soil it's just an extrapolation of a

[00:57:32] ten-ruizable quite and it's and that's why we're always so hungry and hungry for more because we're not getting the nutrients we can't stop the hunger because it's we're not feeding our fertilizing practice particularly past potassium going going to the soil

[00:57:54] binds to magnesium so our the grass is our animals eat the food that we eat that comes out of the soil is deficient in magnesium so that's one supplement which people might need to be taking

[00:58:07] more of yeah um yeah we're quite deficient most of your patients in the hospital i'm sure you tune them up a little bit before surgery by giving them potassium magnesium that they're typically we're not we're not taking enough of it i look the amount of improvement

[00:58:26] it and i'll take look more diabetic foot complications because that's really the end stage and i would you know i've gotten trouble i would prescribe two two eggs and cheese on the medication chart because they couldn't get protein in hospital

[00:58:44] and i'd say if you actually i'd say here's the breakfast menu show me the protein yeah there's oh there's some in milk i would tell i would tell the diabetic yeah i would tell

[00:58:57] the diabetics patients ask for extra protein make sure you get no no no i'll give you a hot tip i've just seen the dietary advice for the australian's olympic swimming team

[00:59:12] have protein in the form of plant-based garbage i mean you just got there's one slice of ham in the in the document i'm sorry i can think of a small child in my family that really um didn't do well

[00:59:25] on p protein infant formula i ended up with a liver biopsy not good yeah it's it's it's it's now plants just will always be deficient we just have to get that into our head it's

[00:59:41] going to be devoid of all the nutrients that we need well it's really simple like in nutrition you need a complete you know what's the definition of a healthy diet simple you need to have a

[00:59:52] complete set of essential protein proteins you need to have a complete set of nutrients you need to have a complete set of micronutrients vitamins and minerals you do not need a single carbohydrate there is no biochemical pathway in the body that is

[01:00:11] dependent on ingested glucose or fructose fiber is a myth um by way of example right gary two or three years ago there was a press release by the assistant minister of health here in australia

[01:00:31] federal thing talking about the benefit the benefits of fiber and that we needed to have more fiber in our diet and it was a big press release but at the bottom of the press release it was written written by kelox

[01:00:49] yeah so we've got our federal minister sprouting on about fiber but it's been written by the breakfast cereal industry we've got the breakfast cereal industry we've got them on sugar we've got them on carbs their last bastion of defences fiber i have a personal belief i can't believe

[01:01:05] that this is a non scientific statement that the whole a lot of research and volume of volume of information and volume of noise and media around the gut microbiome i suspect comes from the cereal industry promoting fiber i'm not saying that gut microbiome is not important

[01:01:29] but it is a byproduct of what we eat and what we ingest in the and what chemicals come into our body and a healthy gut microbiome will be healthier if you don't put crap in it

[01:01:40] and so yeah also i can say about that microbiome is prove it good luck you're never gonna it's going to be almost impossible you have no idea what how many organisms are doing what's the right ratio

[01:01:53] like if fiber was so essential carnivores would never survive people that are on a ketogenic low fiber i'm on a zero fiber diet now and i've never had better bow anything until recently until i got

[01:02:10] rid of the fiber i had no idea but you're right it's just this this is healthy this is healthy and it's it it doesn't add up and if you don't believe it just experiment with it yourself

[01:02:26] i i was um i look like i lost you for a second it just for a second i actually i um blend is your audience and everyone on the planet will be very thankful that belinda has banned me

[01:02:38] from taking a photograph of what's in the toilet bowl each day and putting it up on instagram so this is a low fiber diet this is a low fiber diet this is a low fiber diet

[01:02:51] so don't you don't you do it yeah i have all right i could say is soft and gelatinous what is soft and gelatinous i did give a lecture but it's a good word i did give a lecture to a

[01:03:04] political party here many years ago on the way down to hobart just talking about how we can go forward but by way of example i was talking about effectively the number of microorganisms in

[01:03:17] the soil and the number of microorganisms in poo and you realize there's more as there's many living creatures in a tablespoon of poo as there is in a tablespoon of dirt and that's about seven billion and so therefore that's as many this is one of the arguments that

[01:03:39] there is many living creatures in a tablespoon of dirt as there are human beings on the planet so when you till the soil you destroy the living habits of billions of creatures

[01:03:49] don't tell me it's a cause of that animal but to prove that i stopped on the way down to hobart in a paddock in an offense and climbed a paddock fence and got a fresh big cow

[01:04:06] turd yeah blinder's really in the like like in a plastic bag and then inside another plastic bag and then we had to drive down to the lab in the car and blenders gone she's told me i've lost

[01:04:20] the plot yeah but i used it as a prop in the in the in the lecture my only person advice if anybody goes to the royal hobart yacht club which is where i gave the talk don't have soup because i used

[01:04:34] one of their soup spoons as the prop to actually oh ladle the fresh cow poo scoop it up oh my gosh hey so hey we gotta wrap it up i feel bad because i've run over an hour and and and i want to talk

[01:04:50] to you some more but this is this has been a lot of fun thank you gary for coming on this program this is this has been incredibly enlightening i think anyone that spends their livelihood

[01:05:03] exposing conflicts of interest and then really making a difference where the rubber hits the road and helping educate as many as many people as many physicians dietitians whatever to try to understand that there really there is a way out there is a way back to better health and

[01:05:25] follow gary where where can we find you gary i've just lost you there instagram oh where where can we find your work um thank you for your kind words i don't know if um

[01:05:43] they're warranted we were just doing what we thought was right yeah and i was raised with that and ronald reagan once said that he wasn't smart enough to lie great quote so if you just tell

[01:06:00] the truth and you stick by it it's very hard to remember lies i mean that's all we've done complicated otherwise just just tell the truth stick to it and so we have we we think we've

[01:06:13] done the right thing and we think we think we're more right than wrong um most of our uh look i'm on twitter um sort of understand twitter um we've got a little bit of exposure on facebook um instagram

[01:06:29] we're not doing nearly as much as we were before most of the stuff um my talks blenders talks mostly on youtube um a lot of stuff we do now is have a chat to you

[01:06:41] because you're going to have a different audience oh i love it to to we're trying to get outside of the whirlpool outside of the bubble um interestingly i do some talks with the crypto people because that they can think outside of the box and that's again with your

[01:07:02] it's anybody who's as i often say you know i don't i don't know everything but i do have an opinion about it you know so it's i'll live by that philosophy if you're silly enough to ask

[01:07:16] me to come on here kyle and it's your problem okay oh no no this has been fun but and sometimes i get accused of polarizing people i go okay but once you actually polarize

[01:07:29] the topic you can actually start working out where you stand on it right and so um you don't have to follow us you just educate yourself you know that's what people i say to people go forward right whilst you can and whilst the internet is still relatively free

[01:07:45] there is a breadth of information out there but watch for the conflicts of interest if someone saying something which doesn't make sense doesn't resonate with you are they wrong are they misguided do they know that they're misguided and i think um and but most important keep challenging yourself

[01:08:09] and keep coming back you know you've got challenge everything science evolves by being challenged absolutely life evolves by being challenged your right you evolved by challenging yourself that that's right and that book of my right now the final comment i suppose is only

[01:08:27] dead fish swim with the current i like that i like that because i feel like i'm paddling upstream half the time thank you thank you so much gary this has been super helpful all right it will