Transcription
Ah, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I have what I think is going to be a quite pleasurable conversation in store for you today. As you know, I don't like to sugarcoat things and my special guest today also is no fan of the sugarcoating. I have with me today Bart Kay, who is a walking encyclopedia of all things physiology, molecular biology, and biochemistry. And he has been educating the masses on YouTube about these subjects for years now. Doing a great job. He is somewhat controversial and is known to let his mouth run wild at times and I don't fault him for that. I actually enjoy that. So, if you're interested in learning about physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, I know those sound really exciting, right? But hearing it from two people who tend to be pretty good at breaking this stuff down so that you can understand it, whether you are a have a PhD, MD, or no initials at all behind your name. So, let me bring Bart Kay to the stage. Professor Kay, welcome. Glad to have you with us. Dr. Kim Berry, thank you very, very much for having me. I'm very, very excited for the opportunity. It's been a long time coming. We last spoke publicly together about I think it was 3 and 1/2 years ago now, Kim. Yes. Yes. Yes. And we we've tried several times to get this conversation to happen. Either I or Bart had something going on we couldn't do it. So, finally here we are.
Now, if you haven't already done so, there's a little share button down there in the corner. You can share this to your favorite social media because there are people out there in the world including doctors, especially doctors, who do not understand the things that we're going to talk about today, even though they're fairly simple concepts. They don't understand it or they don't believe it or they don't think that this is something that's even discussed in polite company. And so, Professor Kay and I are going to try to change their minds today, but you can help us do that by clicking the share button and sharing this on your favorite social media right now. And if you accidentally bump into the thumbs up button, that's okay. That'd be fine, too. No worries.
So, Bart Kay, let's start off with something that's not at all controversial. That's very bland and boring. Let's talk about a vegan diet. Uh is there is there a such thing as a vegan diet? Why has there never been a large society that ate a vegan diet? A successful population. And what what problems is there with a vegan diet? You have the floor, honorable sir.
Well, thank you very much. Yeah, look, the situation is quite clear on this. It's quite unequivocal in my mind. Having studied a number of topics for well over a quarter of a century as a senior academic including human nutrition, I can tell you without fear of contradiction by anyone who actually knows what they are talking about that there is absolutely no such animal as a healthy vegan diet. The thing does not exist. The reasons I say that are because a diet based entirely on plant so-called foods is demonstrably, unequivocally, and absolutely destitute of nutrition for human beings, for the requirements of human beings. Humans have consumed a diet based almost entirely on the muscle meats and associated fat of large ruminant animals mostly for in our current speciation it is thought to be around about 350,000 years. And prior to that in very similar species for about 4 and 1/2 million years at least. Yes. And you know, a lot of the the vegan community, which I I have great respect for them because at least they're thinking about their diet, which is better than most people. So, even though they're incorrect, at least they're thoughtful and they're trying to figure this out. And I've told people before I think that becoming a vegan is the first step towards adopting a proper human diet. Ultimately, be that keto, keto-carnivore. I think the vegan diet for many people is the first step. And then when they start not feeling so great, that then they really start to buckle down and do the research and they figure out, oh okay, this is not really sustainable at all. So, there's so many ways you could go with this. We could talk about protein quality. We could talk about vitamins and minerals. We could talk about well, the handful of supplements that you have to take. And then this comes directly from the mouth of some of the major vegan influencers including Michael Greger. You have you have to take these supplements. And and they always talk about a vegan diet you have to you have to do it properly. It has to be a well-thought-out diet. And so, immediately the question that comes to my mind is, why are we the only if the vegan diet is a proper human diet, why are we the only species on the planet who has to think about and plan our diet and take a handful of supplements when every other species on the planet, when they get hungry, they just stuff their face hole with their proper species-specific diet until they're full, then they stop eating and go take a nap. What What What say you?
Well, first of all, since Michael's not here to defend himself, I'll I'll give the masses a message from Michael. I invited him, but I haven't seen him in the comments. Right. Well, I'll I'll I'll pass his message on for everybody. Look, if you don't eat your fruits and vegetables, you might die. Okay? So, there's that taken care of. It's nonsense, of course. Human beings are not designed by natural selection pressures to eat fruits or vegetables or plants of any kind whatsoever. And we absolutely do have an instinct at the time of our birth as to what good food is and we'll go straight for it. That's mother's milk, of course. And then when we're weaned from mother's milk, you try and feed a baby vegetables or fruit and you have to really train that child to take that food from you. That child knows inherently that that is not food. You put meat, appropriately small amounts of possibly even pre-chewed meat in front of a baby, and it will yam it down every time. Yes. And I've actually seen this from personal experience. The first bite of solid food that Beckett Berry, my he's about to be 3 years old, when he was 4 and 1/2 months old, he had two little teeth and he could reach and grab stuff and put it in his mouth. And I was eating some beef ribs and he wanted it and I handed it to him and he proceeded to clean the beef ribs so thoroughly with his gums and his tongue and his two little teeth that when he eventually dropped it on the floor, our family dog didn't even want the bone because it was literally that clean. And I've seen this again and again with with Beckett and my other kids, if they've got a choice between some tasty meat and and some well-cooked veg that's seasoned appropriately, that you have to force them or cajole them or trick them into eating the veg. But I've yet to have any problem with any child I've had interaction with having to trick them or promise them a toy to get them to eat their meat. They seem to be just naturally inclined to do that.
Sarah Moore says, "Doesn't red meat cause cancer?" I mean, the World Health Organization says this, Professor Kay. Well, where did they get it wrong? This This idea is based around a thing called nutritional epidemiology, which I usually just colloquially refer to as epidilly-dilly-middilly-muddilly-monology. This is an associative, ill-disciplined, anti-scientist. It's not even pseudo-science. It's anti-science. This is a band of pseudo-scientists who are collecting associative data on things. This is associated with that. And then they're reporting something completely different from what they even observed anyway and telling us that this causes that on the basis of an observation I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about with association just so that people can understand this really clearly. If I do a survey on the first aid tent at a beachfront resort somewhere tropical during the height of summer, and I look for the incidence of sunburn sunburn cases reported to that first aid tent on that beachfront, and then I go and ask the ice cream salesperson there at the ice cream cart the number of ice creams sold that day, I am going to find across the summer that there is a strong positive and repeatable relationship between the sale of ice creams and the incidence of sunburn. In which case, in order to prevent sunburn, what we need to do is shut down the ice cream salesman. Yes. And Obviously, that's completely ridiculous. Of course.
I've covered this several times on different videos, but I think the average person, when they see an article in a news magazine, in Newsweek, or on CNN, or Fox News, or some new in in they they tend to look at them as a as an authority figure. And they tend to trust that news. Like, oh well, I mean, it was on the news. It was in the Wall Street Journal. But yet these two guys on YouTube are telling me that it doesn't prove what they said it proved. And I love when you call it epidilly-dilly-ology because that's I mean, we can do meaningful epidemiological research and indeed that it has been done in the past. But any researcher worth their salt or worth their meat will tell you quickly that it does not show causation. It cannot prove a causative role between either of the two things. And the way I explain it is it shows us it shows a possible association because just because sun sunburns and ice cream sales, just because they go up together on those very hot summer days, that really doesn't mean they're associated at all. It shows a possible association. In which case, you would say, "Looks like there might be an association between ice cream sales and sunburns. We need to do a controlled study here. We need to give 100 people ice cream cones and go to the beach and then 100 people not and send them to the beach. And then we can actually say with some degree of authority, yes, ice cream causes sunburns or no, actually that was just a false association that the epidemiological research showed that really doesn't mean a damn thing." Mhm.
Of course, the problem then becomes to do a controlled study on cancer and red meat, what we have to do is take sets of genetically identical twins separated at birth, locked in separate labs at birth, treated exactly the same way in every respect except for the intake of red meat for their entire lives and see whether there's a higher incidence of cancer in the people who get the red meat as opposed to the ones that don't. The problems here are ethics. People don't You can't do experiments on human beings. Two, how do you get people to agree to spend their entire life locked in a lab? Uh and how do you get a large enough numbers of genetically identical twins to do that in order to do such a study? Um where do you get the money to do that from? And who's going to look after that study for the lifespan of This is just never ever going to happen. And I'll tell you I'll tell you guys a hint. Uh the ice cream manufacturers association, they would love to sponsor that study if they could uh design the study. And and and all the researchers be the either their employees or own stock in ice cream companies. And they would have access to the research when it was done and decide whether it would be published or not. They'd love to, but that'd be the only way you'd ever get funding for that study. And and indeed, that study would cost millions if not tens of millions of dollars and take years to do. And so, when you hear a news report saying, "Oh, meat causes cancer. Processed meat causes cancer." Uh any of this foolishness, you can rest assured there is no research proving that. And it it it really bark it it's like if you if they came out with a news article and said, "Oh, breathing air is bad for you. You really need to cut back on that." Or drinking water is bad for you. You really should cut back on the water intake. Both of those things make just as much sense as telling human beings, Homo sapiens sapiens, to eat less meat, which is we have been eating as a species for literally just as long as we've been breathing air and drinking water.
Now, Michael Pruitt is a type 1 diabetic and he wants to know, "What are the best fruits to eat for a type 1 diabetic?" And let me rephrase his question. If Michael Pruitt never eats another piece of fruit for the rest of his life, what vitamin or mineral or other nutrient deficiencies will Michael Pruitt develop? None at all. The exact dietary requirement for fruit in human beings is not one piece ever. Not one single bite of fruit is required. Um further to the non-requirement for fruit, it seems to be quite contraindicated in fact. Um means don't, by the way, for those that think that's a big word. Um the reason is because fruit contains a lot of fructose and fructose is about the worst carbohydrate that you can possibly consume because of its effect on liver function, um blood triglycerides, inflammation, etc. So, I would I would be staying away from the fruit. Um just also while I'm thinking about it, Ken, just a quick shout out to my good friend Rick Rodriguez, um otherwise known as Charger Mo Power here on YouTube, who is with us in the chat. Rick went carnivore 39 years ago. And I interviewed him this week about that. And he did not die of scurvy 38 and 1/2 years ago, neither does he have bowel cancer or any problem passing his feces. And so, what vitamin and mineral deficiencies has he developed in his 39 years as a carnivore? Because if we're to believe mainstream media, then he must be either taking a handful of supplements every day or he has may perhaps scurvy, uh perhaps some B vitamin deficiencies. What deficiencies has he developed in 39 years?
Well, Rick is tall, lean, strong, muscular, flexible, 55 years of age, not a single gray hair on his head or in his beard or anywhere visible whatsoever. And he doesn't diet. Um he sleeps like a baby, wakes up without an alarm, works a hard physical job every day of his life still at 55 years of age. Um has excellent bowel function every single day of his life, no problems. Um if you want to see the story, it's on my channel. And I've got your I've got your channel linked linked in the show notes as well as your And the other place the other place as well, Ken, that you can see Rick doing another interview as well as by a young man um who is 18 years of of age and has got a channel that in the last 30 days has gone from under 1,000 subscribers to over 10,000 subscribers. This is a young man with an incredible intellect, basically. And his name is Joey Schwartz. And his channel is called uh it's called Carnivore Camaraderie. So, go and check him out as well. He's a stunning young man. You really need to see that as well. And I also promised him um Dr. Berry that I would give give the good word uh about him to you so that you might consider interviewing him and encouraging the youth, the next generation through.
Uh yeah, send me send me his information in a back channel, Bart, and I'll definitely reach out to him. So, as a as a medical doctor, I I received 1/2 of one semester uh one hour a week training in human nutrition. And the vast majority of that nutrition training was if someone has been in a house fire and has third-degree burns over 60% of their body or they fell off a roof and smashed their face in and they have a trache and and we're breathing for them, how to feed them intravenously. That was 80% of what we learned. And that's good information to have if somebody smashes their face in. But what we didn't learn was about the the the feeding of a normal human in our normal environment. And my nutrition professor was actually a New New Zealander who was a type 1 diabetic. And I I remember very clearly the way he used to say he cuz he he said that he managed his type 1 diabetes by eating lots of fruit and whole wheat pasta. And that's that's how he said it. And then I remember that very well just because I like to, you know, make fun of people. But just the lunacy of this guy teaching a room of 175 future doctors that the way you control type 1 diabetes is by eating lots of fruits and vegetables and eating lots of whole wheat pasta. But you know what I didn't receive a single day of education in was archaeology or anthropology or paleoanthropology. And over about the last 3 years, I've really been diving deeply into all three of those. Uh just now reading a book called Famine Foods, which is written by one of the one of the most prominent ethnobiologists in the world, about what people eat when they're starving. And so, I would disagree with your previous comment about fructose, if we're talking about a starvation diet, where you're on at risk of starving to death and dying and being dead and not living anymore, you should eat all the fructose you can get your hands on cuz it'll help you store fat both on your body and in your liver and in your pancreas and other places. And you should eat all the plants, all the veg. And indeed, in every single case that I've read in his book, the the famine foods, that's exactly what we did when we ran out of food that we wanted, we wound up eating plants. And and so, we would eat all of the kind of uh domesticated plants. And when they were all gone, we'd start eating weeds and grass. This this is a standard procedure in modern humans. But I would opine that this is the procedure in in humans from the beginning of our species. We eat the fatty meat. If there is no fatty meat, then we eat veg. And when the fruits are ripe, of course we eat that because we want to we want to gain some fat because back then having some stored fat was a very good thing. Keep you from dying during the winter. But now, we only want just the the healthy amount of stored fat. And I'm afraid that our buddy who's a type 1 diabetic is going to have too much stored fat if he thinks that fruit is a health food. And so, if you eat too much fructose, it's going to increase your chances of developing something called insulin resistance. Now, I know this is one of your favorite phrases in in human health and nutrition. And I want you to educate all 1,400 people watching. Insulin resistance, what is that?
Well, um Ken's being a little bit facetious there cuz he knows what I'm going to say. And I'm going to say this. What is insulin resistance? It is a concept. It is a construct. It is an idea. It is not a physiological response. It is not something you can measure with some piece of kit or equipment from some company that has designed and manufactured an insulin resistance meter. You I mean do the do the research yourself if you like in the background people. See if you can find a company that makes an insulin resistance meter that is on sale that you can buy and test your insulin resistance with. You won't find one because it does not exist. To get at this concept, this idea of insulin resistance, what you have to do is take serial readings on someone's blood glucose and blood insulin following a food challenge. You give them a certain bolus of food and you track them for X number of hours after that food in the post-absorptive and postprandial states. You basically draw the the line of the insulin and and uh glucose responses over time and you integrate the area under those curves and then you use those two figures as an input into some other things that you put into a spreadsheet put together by someone awfully clever that says your HOMA-IR, which is a an an idea of insulin resistance, your your number comes out at X Y or Z and you'll go, "Oh, look at that, you're insulin resistant." Um no. No.
And just for everybody watching, the HOMA-IR is a calculated number. That's not a measured number. That's a calculation. Just as any if you see any insulin resistance um score on a lab result sheet, that's a calculated number that they use other variables to calculate. There is no such thing as an insulin resistance test.
How would how would you prefer people discuss the cuz I think the concept of insulin resistance is a valid concept that we can use. It's a construct. Yes. But how could we more literally talk about the problem that we're looking at in the human physiology?
Okay. I have yet to see a single peer-reviewed study that convinces me in any way that having elevated insulin in your blood is problematic or is pathological. When your body senses that the level of glucose in your blood is going up or the level of the gluconeogenic amino acids can do the same thing to a lesser degree, absolutely, then your body responds by releasing insulin into your blood. Okay, that's fine. By the way, as as an aside, just just for fun, I was also involved in a research study when I used to work at the University of Auckland about a decade ago where what was done was that a sweet-tasting substance was placed into the mouth of a cycling athlete and they swirled around and spat out. There was no carbohydrate of any kind in that solution. It was a fake sweetener if you like. The message Oh, sweet taste went to these people's brains and they released they released insulin on the expectation of the so-called incoming glucose. Yes. Call the cephalic phase insulin response. And there's some research that shows that even just watching a television commercial or smelling of a a succulent smelling dish will your insulin will literally elevate even though you haven't put anything in your mouth.
And I actually read your study in that you just referenced and I did a YouTube video about that a few years back that it was saccharin that they used in the experiment. There was no sugar, no carbs, no calories, but the the athlete's insulin level elevated in anticipation that carbs were coming because you just think about a human in the wild, if they taste something sweet in their mouth, they've either found some honey or some berries or something sweet. And so we need to start to elevate that insulin and I think that that kind of gives you a look, Bart, at how important the human body physiology thinks having elevated blood sugar is that before it even hits your system, your body's raising your insulin level to deal with that carbohydrate. Mhm. Yep, absolutely. So, we release insulin because insulin is required as a uh a lock and key mechanism if you like. And what insulin does is it tells the cell to translocate the GLUT4 transporter to the cell membrane and it activates it so that the GLUT4 transporter can get the um the glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cells where it's required to do what it does in the cells. Except in the case where the cell, any given cell let's say that cell has sufficient energy already in the cell fluid. It's already there. Here's the problem with a high concentration of glucose within a cell. It destroys lipid rafts. It destroys cell organelles. It binds to DNA and causes mutations to DNA. And at a high enough concentration glucose will kill a cell outright. It is toxic. It is a poison. It is required for life at a physiologic level. And as such, the human body is capable of producing all the glucose it needs to have the blood glucose at a level that it is required to be at. It's called gluconeogenesis. The exact dietary requirement for carbohydrates in human beings is not 1 g ever. Not one. Zero. And when you start pouring exogenous, meaning from the outside of your body, if you when you start pouring carbohydrates down your silly neck, basically um what will happen is you will absorb that carbohydrate quite rapidly into your bloodstream. And the concentration of glucose in your blood will go up. And your body will release insulin because you need insulin to get the glucose out of your blood and into your cells. Normally uh post-absorptively in between meals it should be around about a teaspoon of sugar in your entire bloodstream. After a meal that's rich in carbohydrates, there's vastly more than that there. Your cells simply do not need that glucose at that time. They will quickly fill up with glucose. And then what happens is a thing called the Randle cycle kicks in and I know that we're going to talk about that soon. I've got some diagrams and things to share with you and and that'll make it a lot clearer. But the take-home message is this. Too much glucose inside your important cells, your muscle cells, your heart cells your liver cells, etc., too much glucose will kill those cells. Too much glucose in your bloodstream is also bad because it will damage your red blood cells. The glycation damage to red blood cells is measured by a thing called A1C or your HbA1c It tells us how damaged your red cells are with glucose. Also glucose will damage the epithelial cells of your vascular tree. Hello atherosclerosis. Hello chronic systemic inflammation. Hello type 2 diabetes trending towards type 1 in fact. Hello autoimmune dysfunction. Hello all those sequelae right there, too much sugar in your bloodstream purely because we're not evolved for that. However if the body has a choice between damaging your red cells and your epithelial cells, which can both be replaced quite quickly and damaging your muscle cells, your liver cells, your heart cells, it's going to protect those more important cells and it does. That is what the Randle cycle is. Here's an analogy for anyone over about 40 years of age. Anyone under that, I'm sure you'll probably get it anyway. But remember those old locks that had those forged keys? They're about that long and they had particular shape on one end and then they had the ring on the other end and it had a shaft and you had to put it in the lock and and and do that. And there was a keyhole on both sides of the lock. What the Randle cycle does when a cell is full of energy and doesn't need any more sugar is it puts a key on the inside of that lock and turns it halfway so that nobody can stick the key in the outside of the lock and unlock the door to let more sugar through. It's it's an internal disqualification. It turns off the GLUT4 transporter. It disallows more glucose entering that cell and damaging that cell. At the expense of the sacrificial lambs, the red cells, the white cells, the epithelial cells, that kind of stuff.
So, type 1 and type 2 diabetes and type 1.5 diabetes and type 3 diabetes, all things that are kind of new these days. While the underpinning cause is slightly different depending on whether you've got insulin-dependent diabetes or non-insulin-dependent diabetes or Alzheimer's or whatever it is, the disease itself is characterized the same way. It has the same actual pathological phenomenon. And it is diagnosed the same way. And that is elevated blood glucose. Not insulin. Right.
And I I feel like that serum fasting insulin levels and also the C-peptide level, which is an excellent proxy marker one-to-one molecularly for insulin production, they're excellent proxy markers for hyperglycemia. And so a lot of people And so here's why I think they're important. You tell me if you disagree. A lot of people are eating too many carbohydrates for their personal physiology, right? Yeah. But their their pancreas, the beta cells, producing the insulin is able to keep the blood sugar under control. But only by having chronically high levels of insulin in order to keep the blood sugar pushed into the cells, whether sacrificial or not. And so that a lot of times I feel like you can diagnose type 2 diabetes years before their A1C even elevates if you check the fasting insulin or a C-peptide, either one. By And by doing that, you get a kind of a a preemptive look. Like, oh yeah, you're still controlling your blood sugar. Your A1C is still technically normal. But look, you're having to double or treble your insulin production in order to keep that A1C normal. And this is one of the things that I would I alluded to earlier that doctors don't have a clue. Bart, I can't tell you how many hundreds of patrons on my Patreon and people on YouTube videos have said, I asked my doctor for a fasting insulin or C-peptide, and they said not only would they not order it, they don't even know what it is. And they wouldn't even know how to interpret the results. Now, you know, for that for a person who's woke in this space, that's a that is a revealing admission. That you you literally don't know what the how the hell the beta cells and the the glut You don't understand any of that, do you? You literally are just a prescription writer. That's what you are. And but that's happened thousands of times just in my followers alone. They've been told, I don't even know what that is. Your insurance probably won't pay for it. I'm not going to order that. But that's one of the ways that a person, if they've watched a few of my videos and a few of their your videos, they're like, no, doc, that's really important because I could catch my type 2 diabetes 10 years before my A1C elevates if you would just check those labs. Bart, what the hell's wrong with the average doctor who would say something like that to a patient?
Okay. Most doctors, uh and that's it's an unfortunate word, but it's the correct word. Most doctors are indoctrinated. They are I don't want to be insulting, but most of them are trained monkeys. Grindy grindy grindy, if then when a patient presents with this, then order that test, write a prescription for this dangerous contra indicated um chemical uh storm of nonsense. Um when someone says this, you say that, and woe betide any medical doctor that steps outside of the outside of the line at all because you'll be struck off. Basically. Um thinking is the last thing that doctors are encouraged to do. You are You are encouraged to by your training to react in a in a predictable fashion. Now, I say that because as the final part of my career in academia before I decided that I didn't want to be a part of that anymore, I was involved in training doctors. So I know exactly how they're trained, and I know exactly how we are instructed to instruct them. And yeah, I can promise you that they are not being encouraged to think about what they're presented with. And and I like the way you've presented that information with the with the uh insulin in there. In that insulin, an elevation in the normal insulin, is a means by which we can gauge the likelihood that someone is trending towards a problem down the track. That's the thing that should really be referred to as a prediabetes diagnosis. Yeah. And But currently, at least in the United States, you have to have an A1C above 5.7 before you qualify for prediabetes. But in my opinion, and I think probably in 5 or 10 years this will actually be in practice. If you have hyperinsulinemia or an elevated C-peptide, in the absence of an insulinoma or some other pathology, you have prediabetes. You just haven't bumped up your A1C yet. Yeah.
And and Bart Kay is exactly right. Doctors, the average doctor, let's be very clear, the average doctor is a is an algorithm follower. And the American Diabetes Association and other organizations like that, they're happy to print up these algorithms. If this, then do that. If this, then do this. And so doctors need to wake up and and listen carefully. If any healthcare providers are listening to this, you understand that that can be done by artificial intelligence, by machine learning. That you literally are going to put yourself out of a job if you don't rebecome a student and start actually thinking about things. You are replaceable by a machine at some point in the very near future. Any machine can run an algorithm more reliably than you can, my friend. You better wake up, and you better start thinking about this stuff, or you'll be just like the average pharmacist is now in the United States. You will be an hourly employee that nobody wants your opinion. They don't care what you've read. They don't care what you you think. You follow the algorithm, or we'll fire your ass. That's what it's coming to if you don't step up and reclaim your position as a learned thinker and health partner and stop being an algorithmic following monkey. Yeah. You're right.
Let's see. We've got a super chat here, Bart. Lewis says, "Today makes exactly 1 month on the carnivore diet from my labs to my mood to a total body wellness and almost complete reduction in inflammation." Now, everybody knows, Bart Kay, that that red meat is very inflammatory. This is This is known. I I saw an article on CNN, and there was one in Time magazine, and then the World Health Organization, I think, also spoke to this. What what's How is Lewis deluded into thinking that his chronic inappropriate inflammation actually improved on an all-meat diet? How is that possible, Bart Kay?
Well, the the information that meat is pro-inflammatory or highly inflammatory is based on a mechanistic speculation of a reductionist nature. And a lot of this work is being done by bloke called Sinclair, by the way, on a pathway called mTOR and and a few others as well. Um Sinclair is also a sympathist to the high church of anorexia vegana, by the way, or or apparently, you know, whether he is one himself or not, he's certainly a sympathist. And um to give you an idea of what this reductionism is, I'll give you another analogy cuz analogies are good, aren't they? Here it is. Let's say I am digging around in a junkyard somewhere in a pile of cogs from gearboxes out of various different makes and models of of motor car, and I find this cog, and I pull it up, and I say, "Look, here's a cog. Um it has a diameter of X, Y, or Z. The center hole is another diameter. It has X number of cogs, and therefore I'm going to tell you all about the motor car from which this cog is derived, having never seen a motor car in my life or studied motor cars at all. I am an absolute expert in cogs from gearboxes. That's what they're doing there. Basically, you look at While epidemiology is no way to get at cause and effect, it's a good way of dismissing cause and effect. And here it is. If there were a meaningful relationship between the consumption of meat and a high level of inflammation in human beings, we could do a study on people who eat a lot of meat in the absence of a lot of carbohydrates while we're at it, which is important. These have to be purely carnivore people for this to be valid. And we should find a high level of inflammation in these carnivores. We could do such a study, and you'll find no such thing. Ergo, a causal effect that meat causes inflammation is dismissed. Yes. Yes.
And that would be a fairly easy study to do, wouldn't it, Bart? Yeah. Yeah, I think that that would get approved by the ethics board, and it probably wouldn't cost very much money. If we could get a group of carnivores uh who've been carnivore for, you know, some arbitrary time period, 12 months, 24 months, and just check their markers of inflammation, that would quickly stuff a sock in a lot of very vocal mouths, wouldn't it? Yep. Hm, interesting, interesting.
Uh another very controversial topic. I know Bart, he tries to avoid controversy and I understand that, but I'm going to try to put him on the spot here. Are are bugs and worms part of a proper human diet? Now, I like I said earlier, I've been studying archaeology and anthropology just as an amateur for the last three or four years. Yeah. And what do you say from just not not from the ick factor, not from the you don't tell me what to eat factor, but just physiologically Mhm. is there any problem if if if the powers that be want to mandate that hey, you need to eat bug cakes and and worm gruel and that's that's healthy for you and that's part of a proper human diet. What do you think about that? Any problem?
Yeah, there are some potential problems. Um without as you say without going to the ick factor, I you still do need to go to a book by saying, "Well, actually, we all have pretty good instincts." Yeah. Again, when when you present a child with fruit and vegetables, you have to force that child. Present them with meat, they'll eat it. Present someone with bugs, say, "You will eat the bugs and you will be happy." We don't want to eat the bugs and there's a reason for it. Um chitin, which is what insect um skeleton um exoskeletons are made out of. Bug fiber. Yeah, it it it turns out that that contains um quite a few pores and those pores seem to be very very highly infected by some pretty nasty pathogens and problematic things that survive almost any kind of processing, etc. And as such, insects are not a good healthy diet for humans. In terms of worms and things like that, um most of a worm is the space in the middle of the worm, which is full of dirt from the ground that that worm has been eating. Yeah. And all of that kind of stuff, there's a very small amount of protein wrapping that dirt up. Maybe you just go down the back section with a spoon and just eat the dirt. And the protein that it contains is Yeah, and for those of you who didn't grow up in the country, worms eat dirt and That's that's what they eat. And uh yeah, literally, that's what they eat and so, you know, I have a few problems. I I definitely, if I were starving, Bart, I would eat the bugs and worms, no doubt about that. And I think anyone, I would recommend eat the bugs, eat the eat the worms, eat the fruit if you're starving, but if you're what you're trying to do is optimize your health, become the healthiest human you can be, I don't think that those foods play an active role. Mhm. No.
Joe says if you if you soak the worms in water, you can flush the out. I don't know, Joe. I I don't know about what percentage you'd have with that flesh. Go and get yourself a ribeye or something, for goodness sake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just eat the thing. What the way an animal behaves over thousands and thousands and thousands of generations informs the design of that animal by positive and negative selection pressures. We have eaten a diet as a species that and and species very similar to human pre-existing the actual final human form. We've been eating basically the same diet for it looks like about 4 and 1/2 million years. And that diet was 80% plus the muscle meat and fats of large ruminant animals with a 20% makeup plus or minus of largely fibrous tubers containing almost no carbohydrate or starch. Completely unlike the fiber the fibrous tubers that we have now, which we have selectively bred to be containing more energy, less fiber, more starch, to be more robust and edible and and all that kind of stuff. Um And by the way, when you break down fiber in your gut, the result is fatty acid and not carbohydrates. So, uh in effect, our intake for 4 and 1/2 million years has been protein and fat. Yes. I totally So, that's what we should eat. I totally agree. And many people in the vegan state space will phrase it as, "Well, our nearest living ans- our relatives, the gorilla and the bonobo and the chimpanzee, but we separated from them about 6 and 1/2 million years ago." So, the way I like to refer to them is our our least distant relatives. And I think that's a much more accurate way to put it. And during the process of that 6 and 1/2 million years when we diverged from that branch, our evolution took a much different path than theirs did. They stayed in the trees, they continued to be plantivores and frugivores, where that wouldn't work for us. Down on the ground, on the savanna, we could not ever have evolved this huge, beautiful brain that we have, or at least that Bart has. He's got a beautiful brain. We couldn't have evolved those things if we had continued to try to fuel ourselves solely on fructose and other carbohydrates.
Um here's a great question. I'd love to get your take on this. There's actually two super chats about seed oils. Yeah. Uh there there is a large contingency of people out there who still believe in a proper human diet consisting mainly of fatty meat, but they're convinced that it's the seed oils, the oxidized seed oils, the vegetable oils that are contributing to the concept of insulin resistance and to the metabolic illness that we see epidemic in the human population today. What's your take on the seed oil argument?
Yeah, seed oils, polyunsaturated fatty acids derived from seeds, basically, um refined in a factory, bleached, put through a chemical storm, put in bottles, and sold to you with a heart foundation tick on them as being healthy. Absolutely utterly contraindicated. You should not add a single drop of that stuff to your diet under any circumstances. All the polyunsaturates you should take in you will find in the fat associated to the muscle meat of large ruminant animals in about the right makeup. The difference is being that the polyunsaturates found in the meat products are not subjected to heat, pressure, chemical storm in a factory. They're just put there by the animal. And their deuterium status is correct. Whereas the plant-based seed oils is totally incorrect. Um yes, they they absolutely are um looking at the mechanistic speculation, looking at that one cog out of the gearbox. Well, there are several cogs, actually. There are several different pro-inflammatory pathways that are definitely upregulated by polyunsaturated fatty acids and indeed mono as well. So, oil, no, thank you, not for me. Yeah, I agree with um Charger Mopar, "I wish seed oils were given to me instead of throwing out. My truck loves them." I actually I actually used canola oil as a the the lubricant for my chainsaw, Bart, when I'm out cutting down trees. It works great for lubrication, but I would never ingest this or give this to anybody I cared about. So,
Okay, are you ready, Bart? Well, I think that's an adequate warm-up. I think now it's time to dive into the Randle cycle, which has been around as a concept for decades. Randle and colleagues published their first paper about it back in '63. Yep. In the Lancet. And then in 2009, there's another great article by Hue and Taegtmeyer, where they kind of revisited in an updated version. Uh the Randle cycle, the more I study it, the more I'm convinced it's very very important. I don't know if it's as important as you think it is, but I'm happy to be convinced happy to have my mind changed. Bart Kay has a way with language. He can break things down so that anybody can understand it. And he's about to tell you, first of all, what is the Randle cycle, why it's important, and how you can optimize your Randle cycle for your best health. Go.
All right, there's a diagram down there Uh yes, I'll pull it up. to make available for viewing pleasure. There it is. Okay. Is it this one or the other one? No, that's it. That's it, okay. Oh, sorry. No, the other one. We want to start with the other one. Okay, okay, hang on. Uh how to Oh, here it is. Here we go. That one. Right, good. So, what I'm about to provide you with is a vegan argument. This is this is the argument that vegans have been quite vocal about on many um charlatan channels where they're pushing disinformation and trying to fleece people of their money, etc. Um one perhaps channel involving um a couple of very interesting individuals that I think it's called Mastering Hyperglycemia or something like that, Kin, from memory. Um and I and I think I think one of the blokes is called Cyrus and the other one's called Robbie or something like that. Anyway, here's the argument as they present it. All right, what we're looking at here at the top of the screen, the segment that is light blue in color, where it says glucose and LCFA, right at the very top of the screen. Um we What that blue area there is is that's the extracellular fluids, the fluid outside of the cell, um the blood, if you like. Sure, there's few steps between blood and cell, but let's just keep it simple. In the tan-colored section in the middle, where most of the action on this page is, that is the intracellular fluids, the fluids inside the cell, but outside of the mitochondria. And the green area is what happens in the fluids inside the mitochondria. So, you've basically got two membranes
That things need to cross in order to get to the point where they become oxidized for energy to produce ATP for cellular work. All right.
So, in the case where you consume a diet which is rich in fatty acids, what happens is you ingest the fatty acids, your stomach acids breaks them down into free fatty acids, long-chain fatty acids. They are taken into your bloodstream and delivered in the long-chain fatty acid format, LCFA, to a protein transporter on the cell membrane called CD36, which you will see at the top right hand of the screen there in the orange color with the white writing, CD36. That's a protein that moves long-chain fatty acid from outside the cell and brings it into the cell.
Once it's inside the cell, it gets bound together with another fascinating molecule called coenzyme A, or acyl coenzyme A in this case. And what you get is long-chain fatty acid coenzyme A. That's what is happening in the cell. Then there's another transporter on the mitochondrial membrane, which brings that fatty acid into the inside of the mitochondria. As you can see there, it's now on the other side of that membrane, inside the mitochondria. And then the long-chain fatty acids undergo a process called beta oxidation, which you'll see in a dark green oval at the bottom of the screen there, beta oxidation, or beta beta ox, it says there. And those long-chain fatty acyl coenzyme A's are broken down into a substance that you'll see right in the middle of the screen at the bottom there called acetyl coenzyme A. That is the first intermediary of the TCA or Krebs cycle. Um and the whole Krebs cycle is just shown diagrammatically here as a little short arrow, which then leads to the production of carbon dioxide and water, plus ATP, as it turns out, the most important thing.
Okay. If there is more acetyl coenzyme A in the mitochondria than it can use at that time, because, let's say the rate of the TCA cycle is maximized, it has throttles, like anything, then acetyl coenzyme A will start to pull in the mitochondria, because it's not being used at the rate that it's being produced or or brought in, if you like, I should say. That has two effects. The first effect is over here on the left-hand side, there is another green oval that says PDH. That stands for the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex of enzymes. What that does is it breaks pyruvate into acetyl coenzyme A. It's an alternate route to bring acetyl coenzyme A into the Krebs cycle. Pyruvate comes from sugar, the left-hand side of the chart here, where all the red ovals are, which we'll get to in a minute. So, if acetyl coenzyme A is building up in the cell, because it's not being used, then that acetyl coenzyme A will, by Le Chatelier's principle, will inhibit the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex from breaking pyruvate down into more acetyl coenzyme A, thus to prevent the problem from becoming still worse.
Further to that, acetyl coenzyme A is then metabolically the first step in the TCA cycle is citrate. So, citrate's going to start to pull in the cell in the mitochondrial area of the cell as well. That will diffuse out back into the cell fluids, where it says citrate up there in the tan section. And then citrate, building up inside the cell fluid, allosterically binds to the phosphofructokinase one and two enzymes and prevents them from producing fructose 1,6-bisphosphate, which then prevents the production of still yet more pyruvate. So, it's a negative feedback, it's locking down the system on the left-hand side. It's inhibiting the use of sugar for oxidative process to make ATP, because there is enough energy coming in in the form of fat.
And finally, and most importantly, in fact, at the end of all of this, citrate also allosterically binds to GLUT4. That's that key going in the back of the lock that I was speaking about earlier in the livestream. That means it doesn't matter how much insulin you throw at that cell, and how much external glucose is in the blue section above the tan section there, that GLUT4 will not work. The door is locked. That cell is now protected from an overplus of glucose entering that cell that would otherwise destroy it. That is what the Randle cycle is for, that is what it does.
And here's what the vegans say, "If you eat fat, that locks out your sugar, and that's bad, okay?" Now, that's not a very intelligent thing to say, vegans, is it? The cell's doing exactly what it is supposed to do. This whole system here exists precisely because of at least 4 and 1/2 million years of positive and negative selection pressures. It does exactly what it's supposed to do. It protects the cell from the damage that that cell would experience were glucose allowed to enter that cell according to its concentration gradient under the influence of the insulin that will be in the blood because of that. It's It's It's Okay, fine. Somebody's knocking on the door on the outside, they've got a key, but I've got my key on the inside of the lock, and you can't open it. We're protected here, we're safe in here. You red blood cells, that's your problem. You deal with it.
And I love your concept that some of the cells in our in our body that are very easy to reproduce, erythrocytes, red blood cells, and then the intestinal epithelial cells, which are replaced every week or two, they're very quickly replaced. Your body would Your body would much rather overload them with sugar and sacrifice them than more important, harder to reproduce cells, like neurons and myocytes and other things. And I think that's an excellent way to think about that, because Mother Nature is a She's She does not care. She is not nice. And so, if it comes to I need to protect the entire organism by sacrificing a certain percentage of these erythrocytes, Mother Nature will do that without batting an eye. That's That's That's how nature pretty much works. If something has to die, so something else can live, and you typically you want the most important part of you to live, and then something that's easy to replace to be sacrificed. Yep. Exactly that. So, that's the main working of the Randle cycle, that's the reason it exists in my mind. That's my interpretation of this whole system of events and why they exist, and it makes perfect sense to me. If anyone wants to point to anything that I've I've got wrong there in any way, uh please do make a video about it, so I can respond, because most people don't want to actually talk to me face to face and deal with this by way of a debate. Dr. Berry, most people are not remotely interested in actually fronting up, because I think they know what happens when they do. Yeah. Um yes. Ted gets cross, that's what happens. And then the the the second slide, do you you want to go through that? yeah, let's do that now.
Okay, so, the other thing about the vegan argument is it's half a story. Of course, vegans will give you the information that suits them and leave out the other half. The first slide I showed you a few minutes ago is what happens when the energy entering the cell is in the form which is predominantly fat-based. The weight of the fat pouring into that cell fills up that acetyl coenzyme pool and blocks off the sugar side in the manner in the manner that I just described. However, simultaneously, what is now on the screen is also true. This is not an either/or situation so much. This is a sliding scale situation. This is a fader, up, down, left, right, whatever. This is not an on/off switch, this or that. So, I hope that's clear.
When you have a lot of sugar that is actually pouring into the cell at the GLUT4 transporter. That goes through the glucose 6-phosphate and fructose 6-phosphate pathways, so that you get fructose 1,6-bisphosphate, which then is broken down into pyruvate, then pyruvate enters the the mitochondria, where it goes through that pyruvate dehydrogenase complex I spoke about earlier, and that starts to produce all the all the acetyl-CoA that's required, and it starts to pull, having been pouring in from the left-hand side on this on this example. When that happens, citrate starts to pull in the mitochondria in exactly the same fashion it did when there was too much fat pouring in. The same citrate. That same citrate goes out into the cell cytosol in exactly the same fashion. It then encounters an enzyme called ACL, where it's converted back to acetyl-CoA. Then that encounters another enzyme called ACC, which then produces a substance called malonyl-CoA, which is an allosteric inhibitor of FAS and CPT1, as you can see there on the right-hand side, thus blockading fat from entering the mitochondria and instead forcing that fat to go into the buildup of free fatty acids, triglycerides, instead. Simultaneously true.
So, we've got a balance at all times in all cells between where the energy is coming from, either fats or carbohydrates. In the case where fats predominate, then sugar is locked out, and rightly so. That protects the cell from damage. In the case where sugar is pouring through and being used, then fats are locked out from oxidation, but instead go through a buildup process in the cell to triglycerides. So, that's fine, too. Except the problem is, if you consume a balanced diet which has a significant proportion of both fats and carbohydrates in it, that means your Randle cycle will be constantly highly activated. Meaning that what will actually occur is that will there will be a buildup in the cell fluid of a thing called inorganic phosphate. Inorganic phosphate binds to all your pro-inflammatory cytokines, and thus initiates chronic systemic inflammation. Hello, heart disease. Hello, type 2 diabetes trending towards type 1. Hello, cancer. Hello, dementia. Hello, early death.
So, the sensible thing to do is this. Consume a diet which is rich in one of carbohydrates or fats and very poor in the other one. Now, all you need to decide which of those diets you're going to select for your long-term health is you subject those two diets to an analysis of which one is vastly, grossly, hugely destitute of nutrition for human beings, which one will require a fistful of supplements just to survive, and which does not. Jobs a good 'un. We're done. Thank you, Ken Berry, for having me. We win, you lose, vegans. This debate is over. End of discussion. I love it.
We've got a question for you in a super chat. Can you elaborate on the surplus of both fats and carbs, and the lowering of the redox potential of the mitochondria, and the diffusion diffusion of pile leading to overactivation if immune system in of of I think he meant immune system in mast cells. Yes.
Okay, so what we get in the situation where you've got too much energy trying to push its way through the TCA cycle, is you have a TCA cycle that's running at maximum open throttle. It cannot run any faster. And then what happens is you start getting a buildup of reactive oxygen species in the mitochondria. And while there are mechanisms that can counteract that to some degree, they're not 100% efficient at so doing. And as such, there's a loss of energy even though the TCA cycle is running at full speed. And I'm talking about things like H2O2 dismutase. I'm talking about uncoupling proteins in the mitochondria for those that are happy with the terminologies. What those things basically do is allow those energy reducing equivalents to escape the mitochondria, and instead of energy being produced in the form of ATP in that situation, it's just a a release of insensible heat. It's an energy loss. So, as such, the actual rate of ATP production drops because the uncoupling protein uncouples the ATP production to some degree. When the ATP production rate drops, then what we have is a higher concentration of the results of ATP use in the cell, which are ADP plus inorganic phosphate, the very thing that binds to the pro-inflammatory cytokines and sets them off. So, Joe, that's the explanation for that.
Also, um for those that don't know, Joe has a very good channel himself. He specializes in helping the um indigenous American populations with their quite clear health challenges by way of making sure they get a voice advocating for them and telling them the correct information about human nutrition. So, um Joe himself is First Nation, and he's very very active in that area, so I would check out his channel as well. I've lost your um audio, Ken, suddenly. I can't hear you anymore. Oh, it's me. It's not you. Oh, good.
You alluded to something that I think is very important for people to understand. Vegans are very earnest. They're very fervent. They believe what they're saying, okay? They And so, in order for for the cognitive dissonance necessary, they have to focus very tightly, and so they'll pick one little part of the Randle cycle or one little part. Uh Michael Greger the other day, he tweeted that saturated fat is toxic to the beta cells in the pancreas. Uh and so, therefore, you should eat a fat-free diet. And of course, a fatty pancreas is a real thing. I made a YouTube video about it 3 years ago. It's absolutely real, but you don't get fatty pancreas from eating saturated fat. That's not how it works. You get fatty pancreas the same way you get fatty liver from eating too many carbohydrates, too much fructose. That's how you get fatty liver and fatty pancreas. But so so if just a the regular vegan says, "Ooh, saturated fat is toxic to beta cells." Dr. Greger said that, and he he put a study. And yes, saturated fat stored in the pancreas because of inappropriate carbohydrate consumption is indeed toxic to the beta cells of the pancreas, and will impair their ability to monitor and control your metabolism. That is true. But but he left it out, and I retweeted him. I said, "I'm afraid you've misled and misunderstood if you think that dietary saturated fat is cuz that's that's what the implication was. That's not what he was actually saying because he knows that's Yeah. And so, this is a very classic tactic of vegans. They love to focus down on some narrow little thing and ignore the big picture. But when you pull off the blinders and you look at the the totality of human physiology, it becomes ridiculous at some point to pretend that that in any way animal fat or any other component of animal nutrition is bad for the human organism. Yeah.
Oh, yes, not Dr. Greger. My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, Ken, my understanding is that Dr. Greger not only never finished a residency, he never started one, either. Really? Now, I my My impression was that he never practiced medicine in his life. He either finished his intern year or he finished his residency, but he's never practiced medicine, I don't think. Yeah. But either way either way either way, he obviously has an axe to grind, and I you know, I applaud him for he he has a large YouTube channel. He's making a good income, but I'm afraid that he's misleading a lot of people. The only thing I respect him for is that he does recommend a handful of supplements if you are going to pursue a vegan diet, which some vegan gurus say you don't need any supplements, and that is a recipe for disaster. You should give it a sec to me, baby. Right. Right. I've I've even seen some vegans say that the if if women have a menstrual cycle monthly, that is a sign of toxin buildup, and you should eat a raw vegan diet for long enough that you no longer have periods, and that that's how you know you've got all the toxins out of your body. I'm not kidding. That that used to be very popular in the vegan community. It's kind of become um tangential at this point, but there are still vegans out there who believe that.
So, back to the Randle cycle, what's the take-home just the crude take-home message for a guy who's just a truck mechanic, and he didn't understand a effing thing you just said, Bart? Right. What's the take-home message for Chuck, the truck mechanic? What does he need to do, in your opinion, to have optimal health with regards to his diet? Right. Eat muscle meats of large ruminant animals and the associated fat. Salt, butter, dairy if you like and you do well on it, otherwise not. Rinse and repeat. Drink when thirsty. Yep. That I love that drink when thirsty. So So eat a proper human diet consisting mainly of fatty red meat. Uh if you want some eggs, throw some eggs in there. If you want some chicken or pork within reason, it's probably fine. Drink water if you're thirsty. If you're not thirsty, don't drink because there's no magical benefit to drinking unnecessary amounts of water. Working on a YouTube video about that right now.
Any final words, Bart, that you want to leave these people with? Uh Mrs. Berry says it's 6:00 and she needs to pee. Yes, I know. I know. I've got the I've got the hand signal. I won't repeat it. No, look. Okay. Um thanks very much for having me, Dr. Berry. I appreciate it so much. Thank you for the opportunity. It's been well too long between drinks for you and I. We need to do this more often. Um do check out Joey Schwartz, aka a Carnivore Comraderie. His channel is just exploding and and you will not believe the intellect on this 18-year-old kid. I should stop calling him that. He's a man. He's 18 years old. Yeah, this young man. This young man. Thank you. Yes. Thank you so much for the information, Bart. This will be available if if anybody is coming in late, you can watch the entire thing on my YouTube channel. And don't all of Bart's links are down in the show notes. If if if you are compelled by his genteel and and soft nature, then you can click on his links and you can learn a a ton of information about human physiology from this gentleman. Thank you so much, Bart.
Just to be clear, one caveat. For those that do that have not seen my stuff before and do go and follow me on my channel, you will learn a lot about physiology and science, but you will also learn a lot about cursing. Yes, I absolutely true. Absolutely true. Some people are offended. I personally am not. Thank you so much for doing this, Bart. We'll have to do it again soon. Please. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. See you next time.