I've been spending a lot of time with a doctor friend (great guy, very intelligent, in general very curious) because we were on a vacation with a group of friends.
I'm carnivore, and while I don't talk to everyone I meet about it, still, if I'm spending over a week with someone, it's going to come up.
I don't advocate carnivore per se, but I did talk quite a bit about my path towards carnivore, which basically started with reading the book The Big Fat Surprise (my post on this book here This book is blowing my mind - The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholtz)
And the book is NOT specifically advocating carnivore at all. It's more about these facts:
- the hypothesis that saturated fats cause heart disease is very flawed, and came about mostly via funding from the sugar industry and the vegetable oil industry
- any evidence against the hypothesis was covered up
- any scientists that were vocal against the "saturated fat causes heart disease" hypothesis were aggressively cancelled
And it surprised me that this friend - in general alert, intelligent, a little bit skeptical about things (doesn't believe in the covid vaxx for most people) - was COMPLETELY uninterested in any of this. Any mention I made of studies that indicate that the accepted state of medicine was wrong in regards to saturated fat causing heart disease, was flatly rejected. The response was along the lines of "you can get studies that say anything".
And no further curiosity.
I think the reason for this is the famous Upton Sinclair quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
And his salary doesn't even depend on it anymore, he's retired. But he still identifies very much with the profession. And in regards to Covid, he doesn't blame the medical industry at all, just the pharma industry.
I'm getting ready to have my blood work done to see where I am at. Been a couple years since I did it. What are some good resources on this topic. I'm no expert but the idea that red meat is the big source of health problems has seemed off to me. To simple. More likely that it would be all the stuff used in, on, and around meat. The new things. Chemical experiments.
Don't just get the standard labs that a standard doctor will do for you. They'll skip essential things that you need. They basically ignore metabolic health until you're in full-fledged diabetes. But there's a lot of things that happen before diabetes, and you're far better off addressing it early.
You might want to take a look at a book by Dr. Ken Berry (formerly keto, now big advocate of carnivore, has a lot of youtube videos)
The title is Common Sense Labs: A Practical Guide to Decoding Your Blood Work and Taking Control of Your Health.
Personally I did the blood tests that the company Revero (founded by Dr. Shawn Baker, famous carnivore doctor, also has lots of videos) does.
Everything, according to them, was outstanding EXCEPT my cholesterol, which was high, as it is with most carnivores. But since I don't believe that high cholesterol is bad, I'm fine with that.
Revero is in a funny place with the whole high cholesterol thing. They basically will not tell you to take a statin, but they also don't tell you high cholesterol is fine. They'd probably get hauled up for medical malpractice if they told you that.
But based on the reading I've done, high cholesterol (especially if all your other blood markers are great) is not a problem.
Thanks. I'm familiar with Dr. Ken Berry.
Thanks for the zap!
FYI this are the lab tests that were ordered for me by Revero at LabCorp. If you want to do it yourself, there's the Own Your Labs company (https://ownyourlabs.com/, where you can order just what you want.
Ordered Items: CBC With Differential/Platelet; Comp. Metabolic Panel (14); Lipid Panel; Hemoglobin A1c; TSH; Vitamin D,
25-Hydroxy; C-Reactive Protein, Cardiac; Insulin; Venipuncture
Not expecting you to know this but it comes up when I talk about this stuff with my wife. She and many say that lunch / deli meat is not something we should be eating very often or really any processed meat. I wonder if all deli meat is not created equal. I wonder if it depends is a better perspective. Or maybe all of it is really harmful to your health. Do you have info about that?
My impression was that this wasn’t even particularly controversial anymore.
That's why his stance surprised me a little. I think for people who are more diligent and open-minded in research, more skeptical in general, and younger - it's easier for them to accept this.
But for someone who's achieved a lot in the field of medicine, who was trained decades ago, who prides themselves on being a doctor and doesn't accept that the medical industry has a very mixed history - this kind of info doesn't even make a dent in their worldview.
Still, honestly, I think it's still fairly controversial. Most people still believe that you should strictly limit beef, and if you eat meat at all you should eat low-fat.
Also just about everybody that's over 40, when I mention that I'm carnivore, says something like "how's your cholesterol?"
I don't keep up with this but your story does not at all surprise me.
bro reads one book and thinks he knows more than his doctor friend
You should ask him, "Why are you so convinced that saturated fats caused heart disease?" Ask him for the direct line of evidence that he thinks he believes in. If he knows, then you get educated. (Even if he's wrong, at least you know why he believes what he believes.) If he doesn't know, which is also quite likely, then (hopefully) he realizes that his belief is entirely grounded on what others have told him, and not on any direct evidence that he's seen himself.
I did try to go in that direction. But his was basically an argument from authority ("this is what the AMA says, this is what the studies right now say") and I didn't really try to wrangle him down.
I’ve noticed that doctors tend to be more like skilled craftsmen than scientists in their mentality.
They feel they’ve mastered their craft and aren’t very open minded to revisions but they love new technical developments.
yeh, not surprising.
at some point you just have to accept that you can't change peoples' minds
Its a hard truth to accept but its the way to avoid a lot of pain. I have found that for some people no matter how I present something they won't accept it from me.
I know this because I have seen it. I've seen them accept things from others presented with weaker evidence and effort that I had tried to sell them on. And others that respect me are open to me.
Age is often a factor but also perception. It can be impossible to change a perception of yourself that someone has. Often it's not at all your fault and they might be completely blind to how they discount what you say.
I'm pretty sure I also do this to others. Even though I try not to.
The other side is that some people need different methods of inquiry than what works for me. What works for me doesn't for them.
And most of all. If someone isn't open to changing their mind in my experience they will subconsciously do everything they can to NOT change their mind.
I was probably the same about a low-carb/keto diet, years ago. I don't remember much about when/where I heard about it, but I do remember thinking that avoiding those whole grains was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard.
Then as I got into Bitcoin, and realized that Carnivore was a big thing in the bitcoin world, I became more open.
docs rarely have time to review new literature and what they learn in med school is engraved into their brains. PLus Ancel Keys did a hell of a job pushing his ideas.
I think also when a layperson starts telling docs about some hypothesis they read a book on, most docs will immidatly shutdown, i mean, this doc would have been giving the same advice for decades, and cognitively, i doubt they would want to think they were wrong all those years.
I've spent countless hours down this rabbit hole myself and read many books on it. i think mainstream med literature is now catching up to the idea that the lipid hypothesis was flawed and wrong all along.
From what i have read, the most dangerous cholesterol subparticle is lp(a) and statins apparantly dont touch it
We view doctors as scientists when we should view them as mechanics. They aren't looking to disprove things they are taught. No offense to mechanics .
I love that approach in general, because then you can't know shit and should be very humble about every odd thing, including the very thing you're aggressively trying to debunk. Also, what's your source of knowledge/wisdom/basic standing ground if all studies are intrinisically wacky/crap/unbelievable
Humans are social animals with an intrinsic and deep evolutionary understanding that their survival is strongly connected to their alignment with the group they associate with.
Thus they 'believe' whatever the group believes and strongly resist anything to the contrary.
Libertarians included.
just change friends.
Doctors are kind of set in their ways. They're the experts with credentials and that's final.
Your friend is right.
If you're carnivore (aside due to some medical condition) you lack basic reading comprehension about literature and you're judgement about nutrition can safely be ignored.
Logic and critical thinking:
trumps reading comprehension