One of the problems with weight loss goals is saying you need to cut calories in order to get there.
Now, I'm not saying calories don't matter.
They are relevant, but not the most relevant.
And I'm going to talk about evidence to support that.
If someone is listening at home now and they have the goal of losing some weight, they want to be in a better physique, be more healthy is this conversation going to help them accomplish those goals?
I'll make sure that they get what they need.
Dr. Benjamin Bickman is one of the world's leading metabolic and fat cell scientists.
And now he's returned to expose some of the myths surrounding weight loss.
And the surprising impact that one particular hormone has on our weight, brain, and mental health.
As a metabolic scientist, I wouldn't want someone to think there is only one way to lose weight.
However, I think this is the most practical and simplest strategy.
A ketogenic diet.
The huge reason is that when you cut carbs, insulin comes down.
And insulin as a hormone is the one metabolic hormone to rule them all.
Insulin will tell every single cell of the body what it needs to do with energy.
And insulin is so determined to store energy that it is directing calories to be stored in tissues like fat or in the liver.
To make you fat.
Yeah, but there's more.
Ketones are the brain's preferred fuel.
It can control anxiety, improve depression.
It can help with attention.
In fact, the benefits of ketones are so extensive that companies are finding ways so you can drink ketones.
And I have a bunch of different exogenous ketone products here at a variety of different brands and a bunch of other things here on the table.
So what the hell is this?
If someone is interested in a good, smart way of losing weight, try that.
This is definitely a prop.
It tastes like bleach.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Oh my God.
So for 2026 to be the year where I finally get a grip of my health, and I asked you to make the perfect plan.
What would you prescribe?
So first of all... Just give me 30 seconds of your time.
Two things I wanted to say.
The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week.
It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24 of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app.
Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.
I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.
We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to.
And we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show.
Dr. Benjamin Bickman.
At this time of year.
The audience that are listening right now are thinking a lot about health and dietary changes that they can make to make 2026 the best year of their life to finally be able to kick that habit.
And one of the things that's front of mind, I think, for all of my listeners, is their relationship with sugar, with carbs.
Right and I guess the second order, things that some people might know something about, like insulin resistance and all these kinds of subjects.
At this particular moment in the year, if you had the ear of millions of people as they're coming into 2026, what is the most important thing that you would say to them?
Yeah, that's a great question.
What a way to get things started.
In fact, I appreciate you even framing the conversation as if I had the ear, because you've given me the ear of millions of people, so I'm going to take it seriously.
The way you frame the question is really relevant because within North America –
You see a pattern, a rhythm to both weight gain and even insulin resistance, as it is quantified throughout the year, where in the winter months people gain more weight and are more insulin resistant.
Almost like the hibernating bear, which becomes demonstrably more insulin resistant as it gets into hibernation.
We non-hibernating mammals actually see an echo of the same thing, albeit more subtly.
So it matters now where physiologically, we're more inclined to suffer from the consequences of bad dietary decisions.
And, of course, with all the holidays, we're more likely to be making those bad dietary decisions.
So my advice would be to structure your indulgences as smartly as you can.
You know that you're going to be faced with foods that are delicious and dare I say addictive.
Don't rely on your own intuition to guide you through eating.
Know that your temptation to indulge is going to be, in some instances, perhaps greater than you can control.
So structure your indulgences.
Give yourself a distinct period of time where you know you're going to imbib in these refined starches and sugars.
And then if necessary, recruit help.
Have a family member, have a loved one, join you in your plan and you tell them I don't want to gain the same weight I gained last year.
I don't want to amplify the consequences of insulin resistance like I did last year.
Can you please be my watchman and help me keep track where today's my day of indulgence or two days?
And then on that Monday, remind me, please be my helper. to get back on track.
Among the many problems with the modern diet is the constant carbohydrate consumption.
It is the one macronutrient that we have the hardest time controlling and I would say it's the one macronutrient that has the most disastrous consequences in the form in which we consume it now.
Of course, carbohydrates is a broad class of food.
Some are just fine and some are not.
Of course, we more focus on the ones that are not fine.
So my advice would be structure your indulgences.
Be mindful of what you're doing in that you are not doing yourselves any favor.
And then recruit outside help, because you will not be able to rely on your own intuition to pull you out of what might become this sort of carb-induced coma.
I did ask thousands of the listeners what dietary changes they had planned for 2026 and what they cared about most.
Funnily, keto came up number one.
Then cutting sugar, then weight loss, then fasting more protein, whole foods, low carb and calorie control.
So this is going to be a bit of a roadmap for me.
In fact, I am thrilled.
To hear that order, like when you put out the histogram and you're looking at the most common responses.
The fact that calorie number was at the bottom actually kind of thrills me, because this reflects that the tide is turning, that over the past decades, 60 plus years, the singular piece of advice when it came to weight loss and metabolic health was eat less, exercise more, which is a purely thermodynamic or a calorie-centric paradigm.
Just stating.
Nothing else matters other than the energy you're putting in and the energy you're putting out.
We can't possibly account for all of the energy in the complexity of the human body.
You can have humans eat two meals that are identical in calorie number, so purely isocaloric.
And there is something called the thermic effect of food.
So when we eat, right now you and I haven't eaten.
We're in a fasted state.
Our metabolic rate is, say, humming along here.
If we were to go get lunch and eat something in the hours following just the very act of digesting we have turned up the metabolic engine and metabolic rate would go up a little bit.
Metabolic rate meaning?
Meaning the total amount of energy the body is expending.
In fact, metabolism –
I'll come back to this thought in just a second.
As a metabolic scientist, people don't even understand the word metabolism.
Metabolism is underwhelmingly perhaps nothing more but nothing less than the sum of every chemical reaction happening in our bodies.
It's just everything that is keeping us alive, that is keeping our neurons firing my muscles moving as I'm animating my hands.
Everything we're doing is metabolism.
And so after we eat, metabolism goes up a little bit.
Again, that's called the thermic effect of food.
And if you give people two... isocaloric meals, so exact same number of calories.
That's what isocaloric means.
Same amount of protein, and yet they differ in their composition of macronutrients, with fats and carbs.
So the meal that is lower carb and higher fat, Those individuals will have a much higher metabolic rate for hours afterwards than the group that is eating the high-carb, low-fat version of that same caloric meal.
And that's because insulin.
Insulin as a hormone is the one metabolic hormone to rule them all.
It will determine what the body does with energy.
At every single cell, this is a principle even many very educated clinicians don't understand.
They think that insulin only controls blood glucose.
That's just the most obvious thing that it does, because we can prick a finger and measure it, or slap something on our arm and measure the glucose.
Insulin will tell every single cell of the body, from brain cells to bone cells, liver cells to lung cells and everyone in between, what it needs to do with energy.
And insulin is so determined to store energy that it will slow the metabolic engine of the body down in order to store more.
And so all of this is my long-winded way of saying how thrilled I am that this is an audience that is shrugging off the old ideas of a calorie-centric model of obesity.
Because all of these people, everyone's interested in losing weight or maintaining weight, which I admire.
That's a good goal.
The size of our fat cells matters tremendously.
So that's a good goal to wanna shrink our fat cells and be healthier.
The fact that they didn't put controlling calories as number one and indeed put it at the end, suggests that the word is getting around that more – I would say better more sound metabolic science is starting to seep through society, where they're more interested in controlling their macronutrients.
In other words, their carbs and their fats than they are controlling their calories.
My brother called you, didn't he?
He did.
My older brother.
Yeah.
What did he say?
Yeah, he's darling.
Well, we had some wonderful conversations.
He was interested as a dad, a middle-aged dad in fact indeed checking a lot of the boxes you just mentioned, which is I want to be a healthy dad.
I want to live a long, healthy life.
One of the problems with weight loss goals is they look at the weight where they want to get to.
They're looking down the road and saying, this is where I want to get.
And so I need to cut calories in order to get there.
So there are two variables that come into play when it comes to losing weight.
And I've already said this, and I'll state it again just to be clear.
It's a matter of shrinking fat cells.
That's what happens when someone's losing fat mass.
It's not that you're losing fat cells.
Indeed, you don't want to.
That's a topic for another time.
But liposuction is a perfect example where you are losing fat mass and yet no health marker gets better.
None.
Even though you've lost.
You could go in and suck out fat cells and you'd say I lost 20 pounds of pure fat.
I'm now going to go to my doctor and get my blood test and I'm going to be so much healthier.
And yet nothing is different.
If they were diabetic, they're just as diabetic.
So if someone's looking at their New Year's goals and when I spoke with your brother it was an echo of this conversation in a way
I said, all right, you need to shrink your fat cells.
Most people only look at the calorie control.
The problem with calorie control is that we've seen what it looks like when you only focus on calorie deprivation.
And that is, in a word, hunger.
And there was this – within the US, there's been this game show over the years called The Greatest Loser.
These people, one, lose a fantastic amount of weight.
And yet you never see them again because they gain it all back.
So if your weight loss strategy is based on cutting calories without addressing insulin, which is the other of the two variables, then you're going to be hungry.
Dr David Ludwig at Harvard, a friend and colleague and collaborator.
He published a report looking at the same kind of dynamic that I outlined a moment ago to isocaloric or equal calorie meals.
And he found that when they ate the meal that spiked insulin what he called – I think he called it total energy availability.
So they measured every calorie molecule in the blood.
So ketones, BHB, they measured lactate.
They measured fats.
They measured glucose.
And they found that with the insulin spiking meal, the total energy availability went down.
What does that mean?
Yeah, so in other words, with the increase in insulin.
As I noted a moment ago, insulin is so determined to store energy that it is directing calories to go from the blood to be stored in tissues like fat or in the liver.
To make you fat.
Yeah, indeed it would.
But the problem is the brain doesn't have that storage capacity.
You could have big fat cells with lots of energy.
You could have a liver with tons of fat and glycogen, which is a stored form of glucose, ready to go.
But the brain doesn't have a big storage reservoir, and yet it has a high metabolic rate.
And so the brain is constantly relying on the energy in the blood that it can use, especially glucose and ketones, the two primary fuels for the brain.
And so when you spike insulin, you lower your glucose, and you stop your liver from making ketones.
So the two main brain fuels have gone down.
Which is why you get brain fog.
It'd certainly lead to some mild cognitive impairment, but it would also drive hunger.
And so another group found that if you ate an isocaloric breakfast one low-carb, one high-carb the group that was on the high-carb breakfast was much hungrier, much sooner.
And so this... Okay, so let me just... Yeah, yeah.
The way I understand that is Because I've had a meal that's high in sugar, let's say, or carbs.
Yep.
Insulin has come out.
It's grabbed all of the energy from my blood.
Yep, that you just ate.
That I just ate.
It's stored it all away.
And because my brain is getting its energy from the blood as well, my brain is being energy deprived in some way.
And so my brain is going within an hour or two, you are hungry.
Yes, yes.
Even though your fat cells might be bigger than they've ever been.
So that's the sort of disconnect that you end up having when you're spiking insulin so frequently.
You may have hundreds of thousands or even millions of calories stored on your body, in your fat cells primarily.
And yet the brain is saying, I'm hungry.
We shouldn't be hungry.
We have so much energy that we can use, but only if we can access it.
And this is where ketones come in.
I hate to change the topic, but if a person has fat and they can burn that fat, then they're making ketones.
And ketones are the brain's preferred fuel.
Let's just state that with an exclamation mark.
And so if the brain is getting ketones, or even if it has access to plenty of glucose, it senses hey, there's no energy deprivation.
We're fine.
We don't need to eat.
And that's what these studies find.
And so back to the conversation with your brother.
Rather than focusing on calorie number, focus on the other variable, which is insulin.
Because if you decide that you're gonna start your fat cell shrinking journey, so with the first step, you could say well, my first step's going to be cutting calories.
But if you haven't addressed your high insulin, which you have to have if you've gained weight, it is impossible.
In fact, this is worth a tangent for just a moment because I can state this so emphatically.
You could have all the hormones in the human body and tens of thousands of calories coming in every day.
And if you simply remove one single hormone, it is impossible for that person to get fat.
Totally and completely impossible.
Now, I am a scientist enough that I like to avoid hyperbolic language.
I don't want to state anything in the extreme.
And yet, in this case, I actually can.
I can revel in all of the the power of this declaration, which is you simply wipe out a person's insulin.
It is completely impossible for them to get fat.
In fact, this phenomenon is so real and so learned, if not already known, that you have people with type 1 diabetes.
Imagine the temptation.
Let's say you're a young woman who faces more pressure than her young men counterparts.
She just gets diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and she has become used to eating whatever she wants and being very, very skinny.
That is one of the cardinal signs of type 1 diabetes.
The person is just losing weight.
In fact the early – the ancients thought that, as they were making so much urine, because another feature of type 1 diabetes in an untreated state is they urinate a lot,
That's what the word diabetes means.
It means polyuria or a lot of urine formation.
They thought that their flesh, their fat, their substance was turning into liquid and excreting from their bodies.
And so imagine this young woman.
She's, say, 13 years old.
She is super, super skinny, which she likes because there's such a pressure to be skinny.
And she can also at the same time eat whatever she wants.
And then – but of course she feels miserable and indeed it will kill her.
So she gets diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and she's put on insulin therapy and two things happen.
She starts eating less and getting fat.
In fact they gain – people will gain so much weight that if they're in the hospital for a few days, they can't leave the hospital with the same clothes they came in.
That's not to say they're leaving and they're obese, but they can have easily gained 10 pounds, 15 pounds of fat.
So this phenomenon is known and you have people with type 1 diabetes who abuse that fact and will deliberately underdose their insulin.
So they can eat whatever they want.
They could go to a Thanksgiving or a Christmas dinner and indulge in all the sweets and just simply underdose their insulin and be as skinny as they want to be.
Now, there's disastrous metabolic consequences, but it's just a testament to the power of insulin.
So, to finally answer the question, my advice when I was speaking with your brother and anyone listening –
Don't have your first step on your fat cell shrinking journey be low calorie, because you will find that, in short order, hunger will win.
And so you'll be right back where you started.
Let your first step be I'm going to lower my insulin because, as I lower my insulin, I don't have to worry about hunger.
First of all, because if you're just focusing on lowering insulin, you can tell the person – and indeed I am –
Eat as much protein and fat as you want because they have little to no effect on your insulin.
So anytime you're hungry, eat something with protein and fat.
And then if you're not hungry, don't eat.
But anytime you're hungry, you don't have to – it's not deprivation.
It's not hunger.
But the low-calorie approach is hunger.
You're going to be hungry.
So lower your insulin by controlling your carbohydrates.
And basically whole fruits and vegetables, enjoy them.
And this is part of the conversation I had with your brother.
And he called you and told you that he had had positive results following watching this conversation and following your advice.
I think he said he'd effortlessly lost 15 or so pounds just without even really worrying about it, because you're not having that gnawing hunger.
Yeah, he didn't tell me he was reaching out to you.
So I actually only found out that he had spoken to you when he messaged me one day on WhatsApp and was like I've been chatting to Dr Benjamin Bickman.
I was like, how did you get his email?
How did you get his phone number?
So he must have reached out to you.
He knows people.
Okay, right.
Okay.
He found a way.
Yeah, he knows people.
No, but he looks radically different.
I have to say he's dropped a ton of weight. and looks fantastic.
Well, he was already handsome, so I can only imagine what he looks like now.
That's the genetic component.
But when I look back at the conversation we had...
The top comment on our previous conversation is someone saying, I was morbidly obese 68 days ago.
I was 280 pounds and pre-diabetic.
In these 68 days, I cut out sugar and flour entirely.
And I reduced my calories to about 1800 a day.
And I'm pleased to know that my high protein, high fat, low carb diet is the right path.
And my blood sugar is now normal.
Yeah, remarkable.
I don't mean to ever come across as saying that there's only one way to lose weight and that anyone listening who is interested in weight loss would say well gosh, it looks like I have to eat a lot of meat and eggs.
And yet you don't as much as I am a defender of that view.
I wouldn't want someone to think there is only one way to lose weight, because we could both think of people who adopted a purely plant-based diet and lost weight.
Now I have some significant concerns with that diet long term, but even still, they could say well, I'm eating 100 carbohydrates essentially, and I've lost weight.
I'm not saying calories don't matter.
They do, but it also makes it a hard long-term strategy.
And so if someone can lower their insulin?
I alluded to a metabolic advantage, and I'll just revisit that briefly.
I'd mentioned already one of these things, which is when insulin is down, the metabolic rate goes up.
And my lab published a report finding that part of that is through the production of ketones, that when ketones move through the bloodstream and come to our fat cells they will increase our metabolic rate in our fat tissue by three times.
And we did this in humans.
We studied fat cells in a petri dish.
We studied fat tissue from animal models.
And then we studied fat tissue from humans, where we actually were pulling biopsies of belly fat from people that were in ketosis or not.
And when they were in ketosis, their metabolic rate in their fat tissue was three times higher than when they weren't than the group that was not in ketosis.
So this suggests that there's an advantage here that comes from lowering insulin.
So as insulin comes down, the person will find that they're just burning weight more easily.
And then one other part of that is when you're making ketones.
Every ketone has a caloric value roughly similar to that of glucose.
And so what happens now?
In ketosis, or when ketones are up, you start wasting those ketones from your body.
That you're breathing ketones out or you're urinating ketones out.
And those are calories that are just coming from your body, that would have had to be burned through exercise or stored in fat tissue.
And yet in a low insulin state –
That is so antithetical to fat storage that the body just starts literally wasting energy.
So every breath they're taking out, when they're breathing out ketones, those are calories just coming out of their body.
So let's start then, with ketones, because on the list of things that my audience said they planned to change for the new year, keto and ketones was top of that list.
For someone that's never heard the term before, please give me context on what exactly it is, but also how it relates to living a healthy, happy 2026.
Right, right.
Well, I am...
I'm a great defender of ketones.
I think that they have been one of the more misunderstood molecules in the body for decades, and it is thrilling for me to see an explosion of research in this realm looking at the effects of ketones in the body.
So a ketone is a molecule that the body will make.
Many tissues can make it, but if you're measuring it in your blood, it's coming from the liver.
And ketones are a product of fat burning.
So when insulin is low, which it must be for the body to make ketones.
That's why it's ketogenesis, or the genesis, or the creation of ketones.
To be in a ketogenic state, you must have low insulin.
That's required.
When insulin goes down, you have two important things happening first, starting at the fat cell, then going to the liver.
When insulin is down, the fat cell is breaking apart its triglycerides, which is the molecule that the fat cell stores as fat.
So that's called lipolysis.
Lipid breaking or fat breaking.
So you have in a low insulin state, the fat cell is breaking down its fats.
Now those fats are coming to the liver.
So in a low insulin state, you mean if I was fasting?
Fasting or low carb.
Okay.
Yep.
So the minute I'm low carb or fasting, then I start producing these things called ketones.
Yeah, within about 16 hours.
So if you and I went to lunch and we ate a typical kind of high carb type lunch, a typical lunch with all kinds of macronutrients in it, our insulin would go up.
And then if we stopped eating then, about 16 or so hours later, we would start making ketones.
That's a long enough period of time for fat burning to kind of take over.
And so the fat cell is breaking down its fat.
That fat is going to the liver right here.
In fact, so here, we don't have a lot of subcutaneous fat on this guy here, unfortunately.
So on the outside, in the front of the body or around the middle, we have this fat that we can pinch and jiggle.
That's the subcutaneous fat.
So it would be surrounding.
In this model for those watching, it'd be surrounding the organs on the outside.
That is fat that the body burns very readily.
That fat is running to the liver in very short order.
So it goes to the liver.
And now the liver has some options.
The liver is the, I say that the liver's the soccer mom of nutrient metabolism.
It knows what to do with everything.
Whether it's lactate or glucose, or fats or ketones, the liver can handle all of them.
So the liver's getting a lot of fat from fat cells And it has some options.
It would say, well, I can store this fat or I can burn it.
And how does the liver decide?
Insulin tells it what to do.
And if insulin is down, the liver cannot store fat.
It has to burn it.
So if—
I'm fasting.
If I've been fasting say, for two days, for example, or I've not been eating carbs for two days, the liver won't store the fat.
In fact the liver.
It is so antithetical to fat storage in the liver that you have human studies where people have significant fatty liver disease confirmed through ultrasound measurements.
And they can just go on a ketogenic or a low-carb diet for just a week.
And if I recall the study correctly, I think it reduced the liver fat by like 60, which was significantly more than the high-carb version.
And so even if it was the same calories, once again, just further evidence that calorie number –
As much as I don't – calories matter, but just they're not number one.
They are relevant, but not the most relevant.
So the liver cannot hold on to its fat as insulin comes down.
It must burn it.
And the liver begins – within each liver cell, the liver is burning so much fat that it's –
And it's basically if you'll allow me to speak a little silly the liver begins to say I'm burning more energy than I need.
I wonder how the brain's doing.
And the brain won't burn fat.
The brain will burn ketones.
And so the liver starts creating ketones as its way of sharing the energy with the brain.
So a ketone is, to put it very succinctly, a product of the liver burning a lot of fat.
Anytime you're burning a lot of fat, you're going to be making ketones.
People have heard of the keto diet.
When you talk about the keto diet, there's lots of rebuttals.
Some people say it's not sustainable.
You can't do it for a long period of time.
How do you respond to arguments against keto?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I appreciate the concerns.
The stated concern that they would say it's not feasible.
You can say that about any diet.
You really can.
And I don't mean to push aside people's concerns, but you could say the same thing about someone going on a low-fat, low-calorie diet.
That's not sustainable, and it never is.
They always get off it.
And so anytime a person is making a dietary change to improve their metabolic health—
Every diet works until you stop doing it.
That might be a maxim that people can leave with.
A ketogenic diet, because it's not based on hunger, I think has the potential to work.
But we know there are people who have done it their whole lives, right?
There are people who, from childhood, adopt a ketogenic diet in order to control their seizures or their epilepsy, or people will do it to control their migraines.
Because if there's one tissue in the body that thrives in the midst of ketones, it's the brain.
You can almost throw a dart at a board that lists all of these chronic brain disorders, whether it's schizophrenia, whether it's bipolar, whether it's depression, whether it is dementia like Alzheimer's disease.
Every one of those instances there's evidence to show even things like multiple sclerosis.
There's evidence to show improvements in humans with a ketogenic diet.
The brain, and to say that in a different way, the central nervous system loves ketones.
I'm just looking at some of the people who watched our last conversation and who have left comments on that conversation.
And there's this one chap here who I'll throw up on the screen called Shanti.
He says 35 days of keto for the first time ever started on the 2nd of January 2025.
It's now the 8th of February and eight kilograms or 17.5 pounds gone.
So easy and loving my food choices.
I'm having no more than 20 grams of carbs per day.
I am amazed.
Not felt this good since I was a teenager.
Yeah. another 15 kilograms to go, and I know I'll get there.
That's roughly 37 pounds to go.
So that's remarkable.
It really, really works.
Well, it does work, but I don't mean to ever.
Neither you nor I are gonna tell anyone.
Everyone listening.
This is the only way to lose weight.
But I think it is the most practical and simplest.
Because the problem with so many weight loss strategies is that it puts you against your own hunger.
And hunger always wins.
You have to have a weight loss journey that doesn't have hunger being a constant feature.
Because if you're imagining this long walk to shrinking my fat cells to what this guy wanted of almost 35 total pounds, I think is what he's going for.
If you're carrying hunger, it's like a bag.
It's like luggage that you're dragging along on this journey, the chains that you're dragging that are going to make it almost impossible for you to get there.
This sounds almost counterintuitive, because when people hear that you're not going to have sugar, they assume that you're therefore going to have loads of cravings for it.
But the remarkable thing I discovered the first time I went on a low carb slash keto diet is I was walking through this mall in Cape Town where I live sometimes.
And I saw this concession stand for like cinnamon rolls.
Yeah.
And I thought to myself, like I've not had sugar, for you know, I've not had a high sugar diet now for a couple of weeks
I'll just go look at it and see how I feel.
And I walked over and looked down at it.
That's a food I would absolutely love in my mouth with water just thinking about it.
I looked down at it and I had the emotional urge to buy one was completely gone.
And it's hard to explain.
It's hard to explain.
You were able to just look at it and shrug your shoulders.
I felt nothing.
Yeah, yeah.
And I found that really fascinating, that I had no urge, no craving, no desire to buy the cinnamon roll.
And it had vanished.
Well, this is one of the things where I think the future of.
As ketone research in humans continues to evolve, there is already evidence showing profound you can use a ketogenic diet to help people with eating disorders.
There are published case studies on this.
And I think a part of it is when the brain is so nourished and consistently nourished by ketones, the brain reaches this new level of indifference to what it knows might be harmful.
And that's – in the midst of that answer I have – that's kind of loaded where, if you're on a ketogenic diet, the beauty is, fuel is stable.
Ketones are stable.
Even glucose is stable.
You're avoiding the massive volatility of glucose.
And as much as so much of the glucose-centric view is only worried about the high glucose.
High glucose is harmful that it can induce the glycation of molecules throughout the body, where the glucose is literally binding things and disrupting their function proteins, fats.
So glucose is harmful, but so too is the volatility of the glucose where it's really high, then it's really low, and then it's really high again.
That is a roller coaster of energy for the brain.
Where it's?
You're force feeding the brain all this glucose and now you're depriving it.
It's like a form of abuse on the brain.
But when it's a ketogenic diet, it is stable, consistent energy.
And so it's not surprising to me that people find they're able to resist cravings better because the brain is able to say to the rest of the body no, we don't need that.
We're doing fine.
We got energy.
What about the heart?
Oh, my gosh.
That's a brilliant question.
So I would say the brain is number one tissue that thrives on ketones, and I'd actually put the heart as number two.
There is a lot of great research.
I would refer people to Gary Lopachuk's work and others that I just don't know personally, but I know him.
He's at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and he has found—and others, so I'm going to synthesize their work collectively— that when a person's experiencing heart failure, it's a combination of variables where the heart may not be able to contract well enough to eject the blood.
It has to work a lot harder for every pump.
In that case, they have found that the heart will shift its fuel to start relying on ketones to improve its function.
But there was a paper just published this year looking at a different form of beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is the main ketone.
Whenever I've been saying ketone, I've been thinking of the molecule beta-hydroxybutyrate.
When the liver makes BHB or beta-hydroxybutyrate, it actually comes in two forms that are mirror opposites of each other in structure.
So the way they're built, it's referred to as D-BHB or L-BHB.
So in heart failure, the heart muscle itself, like the brain, starts relying a lot on D-BHB as its fuel.
Then you would say that begs the question, well, what about the L?
This paper that was just found used a pig heart model, which is actually shockingly close to human anatomy.
So it's a pretty good corollary.
Here they found that with LBHB infused into the cardiovascular system of the pigs, Which is ketones.
Which is a different form of the ketone that the liver makes.
Yeah, so the liver's making two types of BHB, DBHB and LBHB.
And when they perfused the cardiovascular system with LBHB, they found that the what's called ejection fraction so the amount of blood coming out of the left ventricle, which is the part of the heart that's beating blood everywhere
So with LBHB, they found that the heart was able to eject 40% more blood for every beat.
But now you would say, well, it's just because you're making the heart work harder.
No, it was not at all an effect of the heart itself.
It was because all of the great arteries, like the aorta, right out of the left ventricle will come the aorta, which is the main avenue for moving blood everywhere.
The aorta expanded and all of the great vessels enlarged so much that the heart was now able to beat out 40 more blood with every single beat.
So, when it comes to someone with heart failure, I think they are among the most – they should be among the most interested in testing out the effects of ketones.
Even as a personal note –
I am – I tend to be kind of high anxiety, high performance, sort of I'm always thinking of something.
No surprise that I tend – and I don't sleep particularly great.
And so no surprise that I sometimes have higher blood pressure.
I one time measured my blood pressure on a random – I went into my dentist and the dentist has now started measuring blood pressure.
It was 139 over 90-something and I had never been that high.
I couldn't believe it.
I'm such a healthy bloke.
How on earth is my blood pressure this high?
And I thought, well, I'm kind of sleep deprived.
I've had maybe a little too much caffeine that morning or whatever.
But it was a concern.
And over the next few days, my blood pressure continued to be higher than it had ever been.
And, of course, I'm getting old enough that I think these things start to matter.
I took a shot of – as an experiment, seeing this paper that had just been published in 2025.
I took a few grams worth of LBHB.
I drank it.
And within about an hour, my blood pressure was like 110 over 70.
So it had this – now, that's anecdotal.
It's an N of 1.
Maybe I just calmed down enough.
But I saw an almost immediate reduction in my blood pressure.
And it could be because of what they found, which is that all of the vessels that the heart is beating into –
They expanded.
And so with every beat of the heart, the heart was able to eject more blood.
And the wider a blood vessel gets, of course, the lower the pressure is.
And so that could be the mechanism that explained, in my case, why my blood pressure got fixed so quickly.
How did you drink that?
Yeah, yeah.
So there are a few different ways.
As much as we've been focusing on endogenous ketones.
So I'm pointing to my liver, but here's the liver.
So when a person is in a ketogenic state, they're making their own ketones.
We would use the word endogenous ketogenesis, or they're making ketones in their own body.
But it's no surprise that the benefits of ketones are getting so extensive. that now there are companies that are enterprising individuals that are finding ways to get into ketosis without having the rigor of a ketogenic diet.
And so you can drink ketones.
And that comes in a few different forms, of course.
The form I'm talking about is just straight BHB in its two versions.
You can get it in either version, DBHB or LBHB.
So that's just you consuming it in the way your liver makes it.
If you looked in my kitchen cupboard over there, you'd probably see frankly, about 100 different ketone products.
Obviously, some of them are the same, but there's like 100 different units of ketone products.
And here is my ketone reader, which is where I prick my finger frequently.
In fact, you'll be delighted once you get one.
Nowadays, they make them...
Really?
Yeah, so ketones are so easy to measure, not unlike glucose, that just like people have continuous glucose monitors, now in Europe you can get continuous ketone monitors.
From where?
Next time you're in the UK, get them.
You can't get them here yet.
They're not FDA approved, but there was a company out of Germany that sent me one called Sibio S-I-B-I-O.
You can just strap it on and look at your phone and it's giving you continuous readings.
Damn.
Yeah, it's very, very interesting.
That is incredible.
I'm literally going to buy that ASAP.
But before I get that, I've been using this little ketone reader here, which I have no affiliation to at all, and pricking my finger every single day to see my ketone levels when I'm in a ketogenic state.
You talked about exogenous ketones there.
I have a bunch of different exogenous ketone products here.
I know some people use ketone salts.
I have two different ketone brands here.
Yes.
Yes.
So there are different forms.
You have two different forms here, and you mentioned one that ought to be described, because that actually is the type of ketone I was just talking about.
So ketone IQ is a ketone precursor, where it's a molecule called 13-butanediol that will come to the liver.
Then the liver will metabolize it to a large degree into BHB, the main ketone that we're talking about.
And that is the ketone that people want.
Then the other one, this is an ester.
An ester bond is a molecule that has a chemical bond that is broken when you eat it through enzymes.
So you digest that where it's one part BHB, the straight real ketone, and then it's one part 13-butanediol, which is the same precursor, the ketone precursor in ketone IQ.
And so those are two of the three forms – well, maybe four forms –
And then the other two are straight BHB, where it's either a BHB salt, where the BHB molecule is bound to a sodium or a calcium or a potassium.
And you can buy those in the D or the L form.
Or nowadays it's the straight acid, what's called a BHB acid, where it doesn't have any of the electrolytes in it.
That's what I was referring to a moment ago.
When I lowered my blood pressure, I took a straight shot of L-BHB, and you can get that in D and L forms as well.
Okay, so I've just taken a shot of Ketone IQ.
Yeah, so that's 1,3-butanediol, and you taste it, right?
It has a particular kind of kick because it's an alcohol molecule that, you know, you feel it.
It's sort of like taking a little shot.
But your liver will take that in and then over the next couple hours it will start converting it, to varying degrees, into BHB.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to quickly do my blood ketone levels now.
And we will see if in 10 minutes time let's do 10, 20 minutes time there are ketones flowing in my blood.
So I've pricked my finger.
I put a little bit of blood on this little ketone sensor here.
And it says that my blood ketone levels are currently 0.3.
So can you describe for me, now that I've just had a shot of Ketone IQ which, by the way, I am affiliated with?
I'm an investor in the company.
Yeah.
But that's why I brought a variety of different brands.
Can you tell me what's going on inside my body now that I've just had one shot of that?
Yes.
Yes.
So now your body is taking in that main molecule of ketone IQ, which is called 1,3-butanediol.
And it's going to get absorbed from your guts into your blood.
And then from your guts, it's going to go to your liver.
And then the liver will pull in that molecule and rearrange it into BHB and then release that into the blood.
Which is ketones.
Which is ketones.
Turn it into BHB, the ketone, yep.
And now again, there are different forms that you can take, whether it's the straight 13-butanediol or whether it's an ester.
And what's happening from there?
So it's now in my blood.
What's happening then?
Yeah, so now, once the BHB's in the blood, it Anytime BHB's in the blood.
It is both fuel and a signaling molecule.
And that last part is often overlooked.
We've been, over the course of this discussion, talking a lot about, or I've been referring to, the fact that it's a fuel for any cell with mitochondria, which is everything but red blood cells.
Red blood cells are the only cells with no mitochondria.
But every other cell of the body will take in BHB, the main ketone, and use it for fuel.
Every single cell of the body.
And do so gladly.
And it's important to compare the BHB, the ketone, against glucose.
In many of the biggest tissues of the body, like the muscle or the fat or even the heart, glucose can't just come in.
It needs an escort, if you will, or it needs permission, and that's insulin.
So there's this regulating step.
There's this checkpoint where insulin can say all right, you can come in or not, because I'm insulin resistant or there's not enough insulin or whatever.
Ketones have no such regulation.
They just come in.
If the cell has mitochondria, the ketone is going in.
So that's one effect where the ketone is metabolized as a fuel, giving the cell literal energy.
Number two is the fact that the BHB can bind to the cell and there are receptors on cells that will sense the BHB.
Then the BHB will tell it to do something.
The ketone.
Yeah yeah, which is really, really unique, where you have something that is both a calorie source, an energy source and it acts like a hormone, where it tells cells.
That's the signaling effect where it tells cells to do something.
Like a moment ago I'd mentioned how LBHB is capable of expanding the great blood vessels in the body.
Well, in that regard, it's acting as a signaling molecule and increasing the production of nitric oxide, which is a great visodilator.
All these guys that are taking nitric oxide drugs like Cialis, for whether it's erectile function or nowadays guys are taking it to have better blood flow and perform in the gym and have a better workout.
Well, LBHB might be kind of the way forward where, if you can signal something else but get the same effect without the consequences or the side effects that you get from Cialis, then that might be one of the strategies and use of LBHB in the future.
So that's been about five or ten minutes and my blood ketone levels are now at 05 and they're continuing to climb just from one shot of ketone IQ.
Some people ask me about sex differences in the ketogenic diet or a low-carb diet generally.
Some people are concerned that...
Low carb diets or ketogenic diets are especially useful for men, but might have a different set of complications for women.
And we did have a female expert debate on the show where I asked about the ketogenic diet for women.
And the sort of consensus was that it should be treated differently for women.
Yeah, yeah.
I remember I tuned into that and I respect it tremendously.
I really appreciate the view that a lot of these gals have advocated for, which is that women are not just small men.
The differences between male and female, of course, are enormous.
That doesn't mean there are differences in everything.
So women are very unique when it comes to hormones.
Women experience a rhythm of hormones that there is no equivalent in men, because of the reproductive burden, if you will, or responsibility, that a woman has, where she will see changes in hormones that can reach thousands of times.
Differences like progesterone levels can change by a thousand times over the course of the ovarian cycle.
Estrogen levels will change by multiples.
Men just don't have that kind of volatility.
Those female sex hormones do influence metabolism, but then it matters tremendously which phase she is in of her ovarian cycle.
So if she is in the first follicular phase, which is a low progesterone, higher estrogen state.
What's the first follicular phase?
Yeah, so if you look at the female fertility phase, it is like a 200-piece orchestra.
It is so dynamic, whereas men's fertility is like a barbershop quartet.
It sounds nice, but it's very simple.
So in the first phase leading up, so she's just had her menstruation end.
Now she's starting the beginning of a new cycle.
That first phase is called the follicular phase, which is when her ovaries are having some follicles or a future, a little egg getting bigger.
One will end up becoming the dominant one, but that is creeping in higher, higher levels of estrogen.
And then she will ovulate.
With the ovulation that, what was a follicle in her ovary now becomes what's called a yellow body or a corpus luteum.
And so it's called the luteal phase.
And that is defined by very high progesterone.
And progesterone changes things.
So where I think the conversation in women is very relevant and fascinating is that in the first phase, in her follicular phase, she is a fat-burning machine.
You can measure she will get into ketosis faster than her male counterpart and she's burning more fat than her male counterpart.
In fact, this is one of the few clinical values where there's a male version and a female version.
This isn't very common.
Many of the typical metabolic type markers, whether it's glucose or insulin triglycerides LDL, cholesterol.
They're the same across the sexes, with the exception of free fatty acids.
So earlier I had mentioned that when insulin is low, the fat cell is breaking down fat.
It's breaking down that fat as free fatty acids.
And so the free fatty acids in a woman are about 40 or 50% higher than in a man.
During that first phase.
Yes, especially during the first phase.
And that's because she's burning more fat and that helps her get into ketosis faster.
So this has been shown in studies, take male and female, have them start a fast.
She will get into ketosis faster than him now during during just during that phase or especially during the phase.
Yeah, i don't know that they compared and controlled for the luteal phase, but it's worth noting where i think um, fasting and ketogenic diets start to change, so it'll keep going up.
Yeah, so just another reading 08.
Yep, is ketosis considered what?
05.
Technically, but frankly, I actually call it ketosis at 0.3.
The moment you can detect it on one of those blood meters, I'd say you're in ketosis.
And I think 0.3 is the lower limit.
So 0.5 is a little bit of an arbitrary cutoff, but that is the classic view.
So in that luteal phase with high progesterone, progesterone is a hunger hormone.
And so if she's trying to do a fasting protocol during – and her cravings are going to be higher and her – she's going to be hungrier.
And so that's where I think the conversation is very important is that during her luteal phase after she has ovulated – it's going to be harder to stick to a ketogenic diet.
And that's where I think it might be prudent for her to be a little generous with herself, where it might get a little more difficult.
Now, however, some of the concern with women and ketogenic diets is misplaced.
And I would be remiss if I didn't mention a study that answered this question very well with regards to cortisol.
In fact, I'll state this now.
I already chatted with the team.
I would love to see you bring on a scientist in the UK named Dr Isabella Cooper.
She has published a series of studies in women that are fascinating because of the intervention that she's done.
She's taken women who had been adhering to a ketogenic diet as part of their normal life.
Then for 21 days they have to adopt the typical high carb diet of the standard UK guidelines, similar to the US about 55 carbohydrate decidedly not ketogenic for 21 days.
So more than long enough to detect changes.
And then they go back to their diet for 21 days and they have blood tests again.
And so these are healthy women who go from a ketogenic diet to a high carb diet, back to a ketogenic diet.
And when they looked at cortisol, when Isabella and her group measured cortisol levels, no statistically significant change at any point.
There was just noise and no trend.
Some gals had their cortisol go down.
Some had them go up.
But as a group, it was just a big, messy, flat line.
And what does that mean?
That takes a lot of wind out of the sails.
Of people who say that a ketogenic diet is a unique stress on women because people want to invoke and they'll say well, cortisol goes through the roof and that's a sign of a significant stress.
And yet Isabella's own data show that cortisol levels aren't different, that there is no unique cortisol-related stress state of a ketogenic diet.
So I think it's relevant because it just brings a little nuance to the conversation.
Not to say men and women are not different.
They absolutely are.
But I do believe.
The view that a ketogenic diet is uniquely stressful in women but not men, I think, is overblown.
And again, I'm relying on Isabella's own data to support that.
So coming into 2026, and I want 2026 to be the year where I finally get a grip of my health, where I finally become the person that I know, deep down, I could be, and I desperately do want to be.
And I asked you, Dr. Ben, to make me a plan.
The perfect plan.
The perfect diet.
I know everyone's different, so you're going to have to play with me here a little bit.
But the perfect plan for 2026 is...
What would you prescribe as a diet, lifestyle choices?
Okay.
And I'm going to write it down.
Yeah, yeah.
So I would, at the risk of sounding too self-absorbed, I'll kind of describe my own approach as a metabolic scientist.
But please, everyone listening, appreciate that I'm inserting my own constraints because…
My approach is kind of that of a guy who knows a lot, but is also constrained by my demands in life.
But I think a lot of people fit into that category.
So, Stephen, if you want to look like a freckled, bald, wrinkled man, this is what you can do.
All right.
So, first of all, little to no carbs for breakfast and lunch.
Okay.
Little to no carbs for breakfast and lunch.
Yes.
Carbs for breakfast and lunch.
You wake up in the morning – anyone who's wearing a continuous glucose monitor will find that their glucose levels naturally rise in the morning, and that coincides with a mild state of insulin resistance every morning because of changes in cortisol and other hormones.
So my view is don't doubly load to the glucose that's already happening by eating in the morning with starchy, sugary stuff.
So be very strict with all of your meals up until dinner.
So just on point one.
So I'm clear, you're saying no carbs, but is there anything that I should be having?
Yeah, so if a person wants to, as much protein and fat as they'd like.
And I would say, especially for lunch, let lunch be your biggest meal.
Okay, so let's go through those three points.
Why as much protein as I can?
Yeah, protein and fat.
Okay, why?
Yeah, because they won't have an insulin effect.
And that's the key.
Like my approach to staying lean at 50 years old and having my wife like what she sees is keeping my insulin low and still not being hungry all the time.
And so protein and fat are the two macronutrients with carbohydrates being the third.
But protein and fat have little to no effect on insulin.
Fat has none and protein may have a modest effect depending on some other variables.
So you want to keep insulin low.
So what would that breakfast look like?
So for me, I actually don't eat breakfast.
And again, this plays into, I'm extremely mindful of my family.
So that's gonna come back again when we get to dinner, because we've left that meal untouched for now.
In the morning, I make breakfast for my kids every morning.
And it's something I remember from my childhood being raised by my dad.
And every morning it was just structured.
And I think all of my siblings and I have thrived in life in part because of the structure we had at the beginning of every day where we would all eat breakfast together.
We would read scriptures very briefly.
We would have a family prayer very briefly and just review the day.
And I think that was my dad's way of kind of surviving with so many kids, just to sort of check in with everyone.
You had nine siblings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's nine of us.
Yeah.
And so we have I'm very big on that.
So breakfast is dad's domain.
And my wife cheers me on.
So I make breakfast for the kids and I am sipping on a cup of yerba mate the whole time.
Why?
Yeah.
In part because I like the taste.
There's a good GLP-1 effect.
So it helps me feel a little more satiated.
And it's just a habit.
It's a little bit of a perk, a little pick-me-up.
I don't drink coffee.
I drink yerba mate instead.
What is yerba mate?
The brand that I get is called Yuna Mate, and it's a leaf.
It's a South American tea, basically.
And you can get it in any number of ways.
This is just a really convenient and good way to get it.
So I'm sipping on a cup of – it would be someone drinking coffee or tea.
I'm taking yerba mate tea.
So I don't eat for breakfast.
I find that I'm not generally hungry for breakfast anyway.
And so I may as well keep my fasted state going a little longer.
So that's what works for me.
And then I would encourage people to have a big hearty lunch.
Because if you have a big hearty lunch mostly protein and fat it makes it easier to taper off later in the day, especially in the evening.
If people are noticing that they have significant cravings, especially for carbs, because that's the only thing anyone craves in the evening, have a bigger lunch.
See if that helps.
Okay.
And then sometime around either before or after, have a good resistance workout.
I have my resistance workout in the, in fact, Steven, I even have to go a little earlier.
So my first thing in the morning is I go on a ruck.
At 5 am I have my weighted vest and these 15-pound kettlebells and I hike one mile up a hill and one mile back.
Every morning at 5 a.m.
And then I get a little work done and just some personal kind of reflection and meditation time, if you will.
Then the family wakes up.
I'm making breakfast.
The family chaos begins.
I'm sipping on my yerba mate.
Then I go to work.
About 10, 30 or 11 is the good time for me.
I go down to the gym on campus and I do my very brief, very effective, I would say, resistance training.
And then I go into the sauna for 12 to 15 minutes.
But in the morning, I've done a little ice bath too.
I didn't mention that.
I have an ice bath on my back patio.
I'm a Roseka Forge and I love it.
It is spectacular.
So then I do sauna session after my workout.
Then I go eat my big lunch.
Why are you doing the ice bath in this one?
Yeah, so I do an ice bath in the morning because it helps me sleep better in the evening.
I'm a terrible sleeper.
And especially in the northern hemisphere.
In the winter the sun isn't coming up till 9 o'clock, or so 9 am.
And by shocking my body, I get this...
And I think it just helps get my clock ticking.
And so by the time evening rolls around, I'm tired and I'm ready for bed.
Okay.
I'm just doing my ketone test to see where it is.
We're probably about 30 minutes off me taking that ketone shot.
We'll continue with your day in just two secs.
And I'm now at 0.9.
It'll keep going.
Yep yep, so you're at 08 09.
Next one will be one, but it looks like it's starting to curve a little bit, which isn't surprising.
You went up pretty quick, and then it's gonna curve for a bit.
And what's going on in my body right now that I have 0.9?
Yeah.
So that is a unit of measurement called the millimoles.
And so it's looking at the number of molecules basically in a given amount of your blood.
And so you took in that ketone precursor.
The liver converted it.
It's just continuing to convert it into BHB.
BHB being ketones?
BHB being the main ketone.
Yep.
Okay.
Okay.
And that's making me... Well, it's going to make you sharp.
So your brain is now using those ketones.
Your heart would be using the ketones.
And your reliance on glucose as a fuel for your brain and your heart would be going down.
Would my hunger be going down?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm going to be less.
But also the benefits of BHB in the brain are myriad where it's been shown to be an anxiolytic.
So it can control anxiety.
It can control it can improve depression.
It can help with attention.
Memory.
Memory.
Oh, certainly with cognition.
I read about the studies on dementia patients.
Yes, that is – it is incredibly – we're entering a kind of dawning of an era of ketone research, where the number of NIH and NSF-funded ketone-related projects is wonderful.
It's thrilling to see where it's going to be a wonderful decade of a lot of great biomedical research on the metabolism of ketones.
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So let's go back to the perfect day, the perfect time, the perfect lifestyle for 2026.
So then do my resistance training at some point after I've had my breakfast.
Well, yeah, so whatever.
For me, I do bodyweight-based exercises, so I don't like having a big belly of food.
And so being in a fasted state, my view on exercising, even that's a debate.
Do you exercise fasted or do you exercise with fuel?
Like you take a bunch of carbs and stuff.
My view is it's dependent on what your goal is.
As a middle-aged guy, my goal is not performance.
It's not going out and sprinting and showing power.
It's to live a long, healthy life.
And so it's a more metabolic focus.
If your interest is metabolic, then I think exercising in a fasted state is very smart.
If your goal of the exercise is performance, like you're a collegiate athlete or you are you know you're an elite rugby player or something okay, then don't exercise fasted.
Take some fuel before you go work out.
So for me, I've done my early morning ruck, My personal kind of reflection time ice bath, yerba mate, and then my mid-morning workout.
Just on that point of exercising fasted, why is that better if your goals are longevity and health?
Right, because it's just going to help you continue to burn fat and improve, maintain your insulin sensitivity.
Okay, fine.
So I have my mid-morning workout.
Then I have a nice big lunch.
Then I have my afternoon productivity.
And then I get to dinner.
And dinner is the main social meal within my home.
And so I have dinner with my family.
And that is carte blanche.
Whatever the family's eating, I'm eating.
I have daughters and as a college professor I've seen enough young women struggle with eating disorders that I always worried would my incessant talking about diet somehow stimulate eating disorders?
And I've never wanted to become obsessive about it.
And so I have dinner with my family.
Whatever it is.
If it's pizza, I'm having pizza.
If it's pasta, I'm having pasta.
Now, my wife happens to see things kind of the way I do.
So it's usually meat and vegetables in some mix.
And that's my dinner.
And then ideally, I'm done.
What time are you having that dinner?
Yeah, that's about 5 or 6 o'clock.
And you avoid eating late.
Oh, yes.
In fact I would submit Stephen, if we were to look at any one thing someone could do, I would say anyone who says Ben, what is the one thing?
If I'm putting a question in your mouth, I'd say stop snacking in the evening.
Anything you can do to not overeat and go to bed hyperglycemic or spike your blood glucose levels, do it.
Why?
That's when people are at their weakest.
People.
You and I could be hanging out all day walking past a plate of cookies and not be tempted at all until 7 or 8 pm.
It's just human nature.
And yet that is one of the worst times to eat it.
Because when you go to bed hyperglycemic, it activates a part of the nervous system, an aspect of the nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system.
That's also known as the fight or flight.
So when someone, we hear a car crash.
Or we hear a gunshot, then immediately our heart starts beating faster and harder, our body temperature climbs and we're stimulated.
Hyperglycemia will have that effect, and that is terrible timing.
Because when you're going to bed, you're wanting to rely on what's called your parasympathetic nervous system, the part of your – the aspect of your nervous system that is calming.
It's lowering your heart rate.
It's slowing your heart.
It's lowering your blood pressure.
It's helping you calm down to sleep better.
Hyperglycemia throws that into opposite.
So then you're going to bed.
You're lying there wondering why your heart is beating so hard, why you are so hot and uncomfortable, and it's because you just spiked your blood glucose with a bunch of sugar.
Is there anything else –
For people that are focused on that 2026 goal of finally becoming the person that they know they can become.
Is there anything else you would say to them?
Is there any tools they need to buy?
Is there any other tricks or tactics or hacks?
Yeah, yeah.
I do think that they could if they were adopting this diet.
It's definitely going to put them into ketosis.
That can take a little time to adjust.
So very relevant to our earlier conversation.
I do think exogenous ketones can help a person transition into relying on a ketogenic diet more readily.
And anytime a person's losing weight, they run the risk of losing some lean mass at the same time.
And my lab just published a paper about two weeks ago at the time we're filming this finding that in humans in a weight loss protocol, if they were drinking BHB or exogenous ketones, they were able to retain more muscle mass, more lean mass, in the midst of the weight loss.
So there could be some strategies like that.
But I would also add that there are some non Physical ones as well.
If someone's trying to say I'm going to be the best version of myself, then start reading more too.
Read more books.
You'll be the best.
You'll be an even better version.
As you're losing weight and your brain is firing on more cylinders than ever before, as it's fueled with ketones.
Challenge your brain.
You had mentioned dementia earlier.
Ketones are a therapy for dementia, but so too is exercise challenging your brain in the form of um making it learn new things.
So read a good book.
This woman contacted me on the on november the 11th.
When you do a podcast, you get lots of feedback.
You get like tens of thousands of people sometimes per episode, and i can imagine you looking through every one, Finding the gems.
I actually, funnily enough, I do look at the comment section because it's a place where I really trust the feedback.
So people that comment on these videos like I really do trust them because they are typically listeners.
They've kind of been with me on this whole journey.
So, when they have feedback, when they have, you know, good or bad feedback, or constructive feedback, we pay attention.
Well, Stephen, I'm pleased that something brought me back.
So the comments can't have been too negative.
No, they're really, I mean, they were unbelievably positive.
But I got this one from on LinkedIn from a lady called, I'll keep her anonymous.
Let's just call her Mrs. L. Okay.
And Mrs L said Hi Stephen, thank you for the great work you do and the information insights, inspiration you provide on keto.
My husband lasted eight hours on a keto diet and was unconscious.
It turned out he had a neurodoctrine cancer called insulimunia.
Oh, yeah, a neuroendocrine cancer called insulinoma.
I said that's exactly what I said.
Yeah, yeah.
Did I hear a niner in there?
And if the paramedics hadn't intercepted with glucose, going keto would have killed him.
Yes.
He's amazing.
We have three children and he volunteers for 50 more every weekend.
We don't want to lose him.
No, no.
Sorry to share this sad story, but it's not the first time I've seen one of your posts or one of your guests talk about ketosis and what's worked well.
And in this case, it was fatal for me him.
Yes, I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to share this with love, respect and kindness, to hopefully give food for thought no pun intended of how you decide to use your platform and to provide further context and nuance.
Yeah yeah, what works for you and thousands of others might not work for everyone.
I believe it's super important that we share this information and inspiration carefully and in a way that exemplifies a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset.
It's, for example, not a fixed one diet or one way of working for everybody.
If you read this above all else, Please know I'm sending this with the utmost respect and kindness and hope.
Best.
Love it.
Yeah, what a thoughtful message.
Yeah, it is very thoughtful.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate any kind of communication, by the way, because on social media it is so easy just to become the worst version of yourself without fear of any consequence.
So she happened to describe a person who would probably be the worst individual.
So an insulinoma –
She describes a neuroendocrine cancer.
An insulinoma is an insulin-secreting tumor.
So usually it's the pancreas, which for those watching is here again.
Imagine that a part of the pancreas is expanding with a tumor, but it's filled with cells that make insulin.
So it's a bunch of beta cells, which are the cells that make insulin.
And this is a guy who can't stop making insulin.
Suffice to say, if you now cut your carbohydrate consumption and you're continuing to make tons of insulin, which is not normal.
So this is a very much a disease state.
And I appreciate her stating it as such.
It's a cancer.
It's a tumor of the pancreas.
So what would have happened in him, he cuts his carbohydrates, but he can't stop making insulin.
So now it's actually back to that diet that you and I – that I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, where the people were eating a high-carb version or a low-carb version of a diet.
When you spike insulin, you lower both glucose and ketones.
And that's what happened to him.
He would have become hypoglycemic and he would almost never make any ketones because he always has high insulin.
And so he would have been depriving his brain of its two fuels lowering the glucose by pushing it into muscle and fat, and blocking the liver from making ketones.
So he's the worst person.
Anyone with an insulinoma – of course, neither you nor I are giving any medical advice.
But if a person has an insulinoma, that's like the worst person. person to adopt a low-carb diet.
They have to eat carbs because they're always making insulin.
They can't stop.
What's interesting is it appears from what she's written that her husband found out that he had this.
Oh, because of adopting the diet.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
That's remarkable.
Yeah.
So a person could test this early, though, Stephen.
So just what you've been doing now over the past period of time by pricking your finger if a person worried that they had an insulinoma, they could just on a random morning or fast for 12 hours or so and measure your glucose.
If you have a continuous glucose monitor, even easier, look at your glucose.
Because in you and I, if we fast for 24 hours, our glucose levels stay normal.
They just run along like nothing's happened.
In a person with an insulinoma.
They're getting lower and lower and lower and lower constantly, because they can't stop making insulin.
And it's always driving their blood glucose levels lower.
So a person could determine that on their own.
This would have been a guy who anytime he fasted at all, he would have started to feel miserable.
Because she says in the message, my husband lasted eight hours on a keto diet and was unconscious.
It turned out, which suggests that they found out.
And we hope the husband's doing well.
Yes.
Boy, an insulinoma is a big deal.
My hope is that they would be able to identify the location of the tumor.
Um, and you can.
What's cool about cancer is that cancer is such a sugar eater.
It eats so much glucose that you can inject glucose into someone that has a little bit of radiation to it, not harmful, but then you can do an x-ray and see where does all the glucose go?
And it would be going to this little lump on the, on the, on the pancreas, and so hopefully they can cut it out.
What does that say about cancer and sugar?
Oh my – yeah, so you – I know you've had the authority on this.
So everything I'm about to say is me quoting Dr Thomas Seyfried, who is – he needs all the attention in the world as he has resurrected an almost 100-year-old view of cancer being a disease of glucose and sugar metabolism.
The Warburg effect it's called.
But Dr Thomas Seyfried has been a champion of bringing this view into the modern era by finding that cancer cells rely on glucose as their fuel primarily.
He also identifies glutamine.
But if you can deprive the cancer cell of its fuel normal interventions, even like chemotherapies, which have terrible rates of success, they become suddenly much more effective.
In fact, part of my motivation in adhering to a ketogenic diet is cancer-related.
My mom passed away from cancer as a boy and it's been one of those diseases that's always scared me a little bit.
And I think all right.
My statistical likelihood of getting a cancer in life is going to be higher than average because of a first-degree relative dying from cancer.
So one of the reasons – and I've already outlived my saintly mom now –
One of the reasons I adhere to a ketogenic diet is I want to do what I can to try to kill any little budding cancer cells by starving them of their glucose that they want.
I remember when we had him on the show.
I remember the BBC weren't very happy that I had him on and said that it was misinformation.
Oh, my gosh.
Isn't that unfortunate?
So he is the leading authority, I would say, in the world on cancer metabolism.
And it's such a shame that his finding—he might have explained this already, but I just want to explain to everyone, as a scientist, how thrilled I was to see what he'd done and how disruptive it was to the convention.
And let's admit, what we think we know about cancer isn't working.
Cancer rates continue to climb.
Cancer mortality continues to climb.
Clearly, the old views aren't working.
He took tumor cells—
And then so cancer cells and then moved over the nucleus.
Because the traditional view is that it's a disease of mutations and all of these genes are in the nucleus, the kind of brain of the cell.
He took the nucleus from a cancer cell, put it into a healthy cell and then you would think, if it's a disease of the nucleus and all of those genes mutations, this cell should have cancer now.
And yet it didn't.
It was a totally normal cell.
It didn't matter at all that it now had the nucleus of a cancer cell.
However, when he took the mitochondria From the energy factory of the cell that's so disrupted in cancer, he took the mitochondria from the cancer cell, put that into a normal cell.
Now it was a cancer cell.
What a disruptive view.
It proves that it's a mitochondrial problem more than a nucleus problem.
And then it suggests – it adds evidence to his view and others of us as well that cancer is a metabolic problem.
So when publications like the BBC attack my guest for saying such a thing or for me having them on the show and suggest that it's misinformation or dangerous information,
How do you interpret that?
Oh, it's so discouraging.
I interpret it as – we've seen echoes and shadows of this in the past five or six years with the pandemic and everything related to it, where science can be very inconvenient to –.
Various entities and institutions.
And we see scientists who will compromise themselves to try to receive the funding and the adoration of those institutions and entities.
But it is anti – it is an attack.
Science is the pursuit of truth.
I was blessed to do my dissertation work, my PhD studies with a wonderful man named Linus Dohm.
I will love him forever.
One of the things he taught me, I'd come to him with discouraging results.
The hypothesis that I'd had with regards to fat and insulin resistance, it was not supporting.
The data were terrible in this particular line of experiments.
And he wasn't – he was unflappable.
He wasn't upset.
He wasn't angry.
He said, Ben, don't be upset.
That's truth.
We are seekers of truth.
That's what scientists are.
What a glorious thing to get paid to seek truth.
It doesn't pay that well, but it's a glorious job nonetheless.
That is what Dr. Thomas Seyfried is doing.
And when I think you have a big entity like the BBC telling a scientist who's simply stating his own findings that have been peer-reviewed by other experts in the field, it should be beyond – it should be – he should have every platform in the world to talk about this.
Every scientist ought to, and it ought to be scrutinized.
Scientists should never think they know the truth.
Even the declarations in the past few years of Believe the Science –
No, that is anti-scientific.
A scientist must be so humble that he or she is constantly prepared to dump their hypotheses if they've been shown to be wrong.
And I guess it's important for those ideas to be out there, for one to even be able to scrutinize them and challenge them.
Especially in something like cancer, where clearly what we're doing isn't working.
And so let's welcome new ideas.
And his evidence is incredibly compelling.
It's so discouraging to hear.
But it is also, Stephen, perhaps a manifestation of a broader opposition to anything low-carb.
You just utter the word ketone to a dogmatic and conventionally trained dietitian.
Oh my gosh.
You are tempting their wrath.
They will – it's like the more educated a person gets, the more rigid they become from time to time in their ideas.
Yeah.
You should never see that in a scientist.
A scientist through our training.
We should be humble enough to admit that we don't know everything.
I remember when they contacted me the journalist at the BBC and said we're going to write this story about the misinformation spread by these guests.
And I looked at what they had said, and they made this little documentary and did this article.
And They had found that 0001 of our total recorded hours of conversation and transcripts contained things that they thought could be disputed.
Oh, my gosh.
And they felt with 0.001%, they would write this big breaking news story in this article.
And I remember thinking, oh, that was the day that I felt I understood everything.
That was the day that I felt I understood how the system works.
You peeked behind the curtain.
I got to see behind the curtain.
Yes.
And I was like oh, I thought, you know, I thought that – because it's like a big brand and I've grown up looking at it.
I thought like they are so concerned about rigor and the most important thing and balance.
And I said to the journalist I said of what you found 0001 – because they said you've got a right to reply.
So that was my reply.
And of course, they wouldn't have published that response.
They took it out.
They took my response out.
Yeah, it's too damning.
Because it was too like, you know.
And then obviously, the other thing they pointed at another guest that I'd had on and said you know, you also had this person on.
And so I just typed his name in and the word BBC.
And they'd had him on too.
Oh, my gosh.
And in fact, when he came on this particular doctor and he had said his points of views, the journalist at the BBC had just basically said nothing.
And that was the end of the segment.
When he said it to me… Then all of a sudden it's a problem.
No, I read out the rebuttal from the British Heart Foundation.
I read out all of the rebuttals to what he just said.
But of course, the BBC published this article saying that I'd had him on.
They'd had him on too.
They'd never rebuttaled him.
I did.
And so this was the moment that I thought.
You're becoming disruptive.
To be honest, I suspect a part of it is you are the embodiment of a new media.
I think even beyond the science – so if this had been in the US, I would have speculated that a part of their concern would have been that you're sharing – you're platforming someone who is bad for their bottom line, because so much of the income that media outlets get in the US is from drug company ads.
In the UK, you don't have that.
Drug companies don't – I don't think they're allowed to air ads on normal channels.
In the UK –
I think is to a degree happening everywhere.
Your platform is probably bigger than many of theirs and they might feel that's threatening.
It's interesting because I try and remain as objective as I can.
So in those moments, one of my strategies is to try and understand what the signal is versus the noise and to take all of this noise and figure out exactly what really, really matters, as it relates to my genuine mission, which is for the audience that decide to tune in every single week and day and month and to get really great information to improve their lives.
And to be able to strive at the things that they care about striving for, whether that's business or entrepreneurship, or whether it's their health goals or fitness or finance or whatever.
And the thing I actually took away from it is that there is a lot of information when you're pursuing science.
And so one of the best things we can do because we know we're going to continue to have lots of different voices on the show is to continue to provide more context on what's being said.
So one of the things we introduced this year, which I really love, is on the screen during these conversations.
As you're talking about different complicated words, or you're talking about different studies, or whatever it might be, those studies will be appearing on the screen for the audience to see.
Yeah.
And I think this is a first in podcasting.
I don't think anyone else, any of the major podcasters have done this kind of thing.
But that is something I actually took away from it.
I thought you know what we can give our audience even more context so that they have a fuller picture.
That's brilliant.
So, you know, every cloud.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's certainly an opportunity to iterate and say, all right, how can we do it better?
Not everyone's going to take that approach, though always and you know like it always comes the question I always ask myself is like what are we here to do and what is our mission and what would further the success of our mission?
And that's one such thing.
So for people, I had a lady contact me the other day.
She said I listen on Spotify.
I didn't realize that you were doing these like pop-up things on screen, but um, But they're there.
Yeah, I mean, it definitely is a reason to watch.
Yeah, and in the description as well, there'll be a link to context as well that you can check out.
But getting back to it.
So 2026, you've given me this sort of daily protocol to follow.
Is there anything else that we've missed?
Because I really want to make sure that people listening achieve their 2026 health goals.
And you know what those goals are because people message you.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's almost always weight loss in some way, shape or form.
No, I think that protocol is smart.
I mean we didn't talk – I mentioned a little bit about the role of exogenous ketones, which I am an advocate of.
And I would say if a person is able to –
Maybe just sort of look at what other supplements they might be interested in, like omega-3.
If they are looking to gain muscle and they're working out and doing some resistance protocols, definitely.
I would say.
If you're not eating omega-3 rich sources of foods like fish, then get a good omega-3 supplement.
Omega-3 helps with muscle building in a very meaningful way.
It's not just one of those.
It's not just something you take for heart health.
We were talking before we started recording about vitamins.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
So I was joking with you about how I was listening to this conversation.
So everything I'm about to explain, people know that I am.
I'm not an expert as much as I'm a metabolism expert.
That allows me to talk about this somewhat intelligently.
So let me lay the groundwork here.
So I was listening to a discussion of a rancher, a person who's growing livestock.
And, of course, just to help the business.
You want these animals to get as big and even fat as possible and then get them off to just make your money.
They found that I'm going to mess up these numbers a little bit, but I'm going to be closer than someone might think.
I'll put them on the screen.
So they found that for roughly every six pounds of feed, they would give an animal.
So for every six pounds of food you could expect one pound of growth in just normal feed, just a mix of the soy, the corn, whatever they're eating in pigs or cattle.
And then if you start adding B vitamin complexes, like a bunch of B vitamins—
And then the higher that gets.
You can go from three pounds of feed is enough to get one pound, all up to the point where they could find that they could give the animals.
For every two pounds of food they would eat, they would gain one pound.
So they had effectively tripled the efficiency with which the animals were able to get fat off of a given amount of food.
So one of my concerns as a scientist is the degree to which Part of our obesity epidemic might be the degree to which we are consuming too much vitamins, especially B vitamins.
And the irony there is that people take B vitamins because they want their metabolism to be more efficient.
You'll hear that term.
And yet when it comes to weight loss, you actually don't want efficiency.
You want inefficiency.
Let me invoke the analogy of an engine.
So let's imagine that we're sitting in a car and we are in drive.
We're in gear.
We press the accelerator and we see the RPMs going up.
That means we're burning fuel.
The engine's revving.
And because we're in drive, we're moving.
So we're actually driving.
So we're getting work done.
That's what we would say is efficient.
And an inefficient metabolism is actually more conducive to weight loss than Because now you're revving your engine but you're in neutral.
And so you're not going anywhere.
You don't have to get any work done.
So that's maybe a little step too far with the metaphor.
But B vitamins are essentially making potentially the mitochondria and the cell be so efficient that it's storing more energy better, rather than burning it and wasting it.
Storing more fat.
Yeah.
Storing more fat.
You see hints of this in human studies, where when they take high doses of niacin in various clinical trials,
What's niacin?
It's one of the B vitamins.
There are many of the B vitamins.
But do you see substance in humans that supports this view, where high doses of some of these vitamins do result in weight gain?
Now, they're not really well-controlled studies but nevertheless, combined with the animal data, it does suggest that there's something about maybe people taking too many of these B vitamins and they're getting fatter for every calorie consumed because the body is just storing it too easily.
And you're talking about taking too much.
You're not talking about taking too much.
I'm not talking about like reaching the daily minimum, but people are going like two or three or four times beyond that nowadays because everything is fortified.
You'd mentioned one of the people in the comments mentioned that they cut out flour.
Flour is heavily, heavily fortified with B vitamins.
And so every time we're eating it, we're getting B vitamins from everything.
And usually it's coming with processed carbohydrates.
So one more reason because you're not going to get an overload of B vitamins from just steak and eggs.
It's going to be something that's been packaged because it's been fortified with these B vitamins.
So that might be one of the reasons why people are getting fatter than ever.
I've got this pen in front of me.
Do you know what this is?
That's a GLP-1 medication.
Ozempic.
Ozempic, yeah.
I've got an Ozempic pen right here.
Now, you've told me lots of different ways that I can lose my body fat in 2026.
But couldn't I just jab myself with this and my hunger will evaporate and I'll lose fat?
So that works until it doesn't.
By that, I mean, we have really, really good data now.
So briefly on GLP-1, although I know your audience is probably very familiar with this by now.
GLP-1 is primarily a satiety hormone.
It'll tell the brain that we're done eating And it will slow down the intestines significantly.
So you'll eat food.
If you and I were to go eat lunch again I've used that a couple times our food would be in our stomach for four to six hours maybe.
If we injected ourselves with a GLP-1 drug which puts an artificial amount of GLP-1 in our body boom, we shoot it in.
We'd grab a piece of fat and jab it in.
Then it slows down people's intestines so much that they'll have food sitting in there for 24 hours.
So one of the things people talk about is what's called ozempic burps, where they just have this kind of belching bubbling gas because the food is sitting in the stomach for way longer than it's supposed to.
So no surprise that people are less interested in food.
GLP-1 tells the brain they don't need to eat as much and slows down the intestines.
Now, however, I said it works until it doesn't.
The main thing it helps people do is eat less carbohydrates.
It controls cravings, particularly.
But there was a human paper that found when they followed people for two years.
It was a beautiful figure.
At about six months they found that sweet cravings dropped significantly a huge reduction in their cravings for chocolate and sweets.
At 12 months, it creeped up a little bit, but it was still noticeably below where it started.
At two years, it was right back to normal.
So at two years on the drug, the effects of having them not be interested in that plate of cookies increased.
Now it's gone.
What's going on now?
So, yeah, it's diminishing returns to invoke a principle of economics.
Doing the same thing again and again and again starts to work less and less and less.
We see this manifested in innumerable different ways of medications.
So why do our clinicians, why does the doctor tell us to make sure we take our full dose of antibiotic?
Because if we don't, we give it just enough for the bacteria to become resistant to it.
And now, next time, we would need two times the amount of antibiotic we had.
So it's natural for the human body to become less responsive to a stimulus.
And that is so much GLP-1 activation that it's no surprise that the body starts to say hey, you're screaming at me too much and I'm going to become deaf to your signal.
So it starts to work less.
And in the UK and in the US about 70 of people get off the drug of their own volition at two years.
They get tired of being on the drug.
Because it's basically like a constant state of nausea.
That's kind of how you'd say it works.
That if you're feeling always a little nauseous, you just don't really want to snack on something.
And people get tired of feeling nauseous.
But another two-year study two years appears to be kind of a magic timeline found that of every pound they lost, 40 of it was from lean – from fat-free mass.
What does that mean?
So that means 60% was coming from fat.
40% was coming from not fat.
Okay.
Including muscle and bone.
It would be water as well, but muscle and bone.
And that matters because imagine if we have an older woman.
Let's imagine a 60-year-old woman who wants to lose weight and goes on a drug.
If she's lost weight now and then two years later wants to get off the drug like 70 of people do, her fat mass will come right back.
But her lean mass may never come back.
That muscle and bone may be gone for good.
Who is it for?
Who would you recommend?
Definitely does it, uses it and for how long?
With what other supplementation?
Yeah, my recommendation of the drug is to not...
Currently it's being used for weight loss, where people just say here, jab yourself with this and you're going to lose weight.
And it works.
They will absolutely lose weight.
But again, the concern being that you're going to lose a lot of lean mass at the same time.
So my best use of that drug would be using it with two distinct purposes, two ways, but for one purpose, which is this is a drug that's going to help you learn to control carbohydrates, because that's the one macronutrient that people are addicted to.
They're addicted to carbs.
We eat too many carbs.
We're a carb-crazed culture.
So my view is use these drugs to help people cure their cravings for carbohydrates.
But then when they stop taking it, isn't it going to come back?
Well, so that's it then.
So then you use it in two different ways.
One, you use a much lower dose than is currently used, what we could call a microdose, if you will.
So use a lower dose and you cycle it on and off.
So what I think people should be doing and I'm going to talk about evidence to support this in just a second go 90 days on the drug at a low dose, while receiving coaching or counseling on how to use a low-carb diet, because they will find it easier than ever to control their carb consumption.
Then at the end of 90 days, wean them off the drug and say, let's see if these habits have stuck.
Very often they have.
I know many, many people, and again, we're going to be publishing a report on this.
I'll touch on that in just a second who.
They've done one 90-day cycle of a low-dose GLP-1, coupled with coaching on how to do a low-carb diet, and they find that their cravings are gone and they don't need to be on the drug anymore.
Some people will find that it lasts for a while and the cravings start to come back.
All right, well, let's cycle you back on and try again.
Let's find out what didn't work this time.
So we're about to publish a report.
Anyone who wants to see a little more about this, I just encourage them to go to my site, InsulinIQcom.
I'll link it below.
Great.
But we have done a collaborative work with a group in Idaho, a clinic in Idaho where they have done just this.
They have people getting low-carb counseling with a cycled low dose of GLP-1, and the results vastly outperform those who just rely on the drug.
Better fat loss and better retention of muscle mass.
And when you say low-carb counseling, that's just…
It's just people like me, you know, me saying, Stephen, I'd like to go on a low carb diet.
You saying, okay, great.
Let's talk about how you can do it best.
Kind of a little bit like what we've been doing, but basically just like a diet coach.
Okay.
But the results have been fantastic.
Literally outperforming just the drug trials alone.
Over what period of time?
Yeah.
So it's now been, we have people who've been two to three years.
Yeah.
We'll publish that soon.
It's not submitted yet.
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You know, every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as a game changer.
And I would say for about 35 to 40 of my team, they would currently describe this product that I have in front of me called Ketone IQ, which you can get at ketonecom, as a game changer.
But the reason I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now are a sponsor of this podcast is because one day, when I came to work, there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk.
I had no idea what it was.
Lily and my team says that this company have been in touch.
So I went upstairs, tried it, and quite frankly, the rest is history.
In terms of my focus, my energy levels, how I feel, how I work, how productive I am, game changer.
So if you want to give it a try, visit ketone.com slash Stephen for 30% off.
You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment.
And now you can find Ketone IQ at Target stores across the United States, where your first shot is completely free of charge.
I have a bunch of other things here on the table that my team have got to me.
And they didn't tell me why they've got me these, which I think is useful.
I know why.
Because this means that I can ask questions that the viewer might have.
What the hell is this?
Yeah, yeah.
So allulose is... For anyone that can't see, it's a white powder.
So you could lick it, lick your finger.
You could put it in and it's going to taste a little bit like a kind of diluted sugar.
It's just a sweetener.
Okay.
It's not quite as sweet as sugar if it is actually allulose.
Maybe.
I'm so...
Maybe it's not out.
It's definitely... Oh, I'm so sorry.
This is definitely a prop.
It tastes like bleach.
It's not bleach, is it?
No, it tastes awful, though.
It tastes like... Oh, my gosh.
I'm sorry.
They labelled it allulose, but it tastes like the thing that you use to clean your clothes.
Oh, it's baking powder.
Okay, so at least it's not going to kill you.
Oh, my gosh.
If it were bleach, you need to go rinse your mouth.
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, Ben Bickman kills Steve Bartlett.
Okay, I didn't know that.
I'm so sorry.
Allulose.
Allulose is a sugar replacement.
It's what's called a rare sugar.
By that, I mean it exists in nature.
It is a sugar-like molecule.
It tastes sweet, and yet it is non-metabolizable.
It doesn't get taken into the body, and it's not calories you need to worry about.
But what it does in the context of this discussion is that it will go further in the intestines and elicit a significant increase in GLP-1 production.
So this would be one of the ways that someone listening who may be even on a GLP-1 drug and thinking I need an exit.
I want to get off this drug.
I can't afford it or I feel miserable.
I'm tired of the nausea.
Using allulose either as a sweetener in a coffee or a tea or your baking or whatever is a way to increase your GLP-1 naturally.
So is yerba mate that I'm drinking now that I start every morning with.
That has been shown.
We've published a couple reports on that.
That works as well.
And what foods have allulose in them?
Yeah, allulose is not something that you're going to get naturally.
It has to be added.
Yeah, it's added.
But there are some, like there are some yogurts now that have it.
There are a few supplements that will use it as its sweetener.
And I encourage that development.
It's a good sweetener to use.
Okay, this other chemical that my team have got here, which is, again, it's a white powder.
I'm not going to try it this time just in case it's something awful.
It has a label on it that says collagen peptide.
Yeah.
Why have they got this?
Yeah, so collagen peptides are another way to increase GLP-1.
So that would be another signal here that if someone is interested in a good, smart way of losing weight I am a fan of collagen.
There was in fact just a paper – just published this week, finding that a mix of collagen and various amino acids was very effective at enhancing skin integrity and the collagen in the skin.
So I'm a fan of collagen peptides.
Are there any supplements that we haven't mentioned that you're a big fan of in terms of weight loss?
Yeah, I already mentioned a GoBHB, an exogenous ketone source.
I do take collagen as well.
It's called Iron Feather.
I love it.
But also omega-3.
In addition to other habits, like the yerba mate, which I love, and other things like that.
I don't call it a supplement as much as just a habit.
What about creatine?
Oh, yes.
Yes.
I can't believe I didn't mention that.
I'm very much an advocate of creatine.
In fact, we have a study going on right now on it, which I'll come back to in a second.
Yeah, creatine has been – it's kind of the new thing where its traditional use had been in muscle.
And then now all of the hot evidence is coming out in the brain.
So in the muscle evidence, there's two things to note.
In fact, the first one is generic, where creatine?
Not that you're asking this, but people may wonder how it works.
Creatine will be taken into a cell and it creates this pool of potential energy called creatine phosphate.
Now, earlier I'd mentioned ATP, and I'm holding up three fingers because of the three phosphates on that ATP, the triphosphate molecule.
When we, say, contract a muscle or a nerve is sending a signal, you're breaking ATP apart.
You're splitting off one of those phosphates.
Now you're left with a diphosphate, ADP.
In order to recycle or regenerate the ATP, you need another phosphate molecule, and this is where creatine comes in.
Because creatine has a phosphate now that it can come and give to the ATP, rapidly recycling ATP.
Which means…
So you're able to restore the energy in the cell sooner.
Which means for me, on a daily basis.
On a daily basis, it'd be two things in the two tissues of interest.
One, you can get more work out of your muscle in a given unit of time.
Yeah.
So if you wanted to have a very effective 30-minute workout, your rests could be much shorter because of your ability to regenerate ATP or recover.
But then the newest area of research is what's happening in the brain, where creatine has been shown to increase brain energy.
And there are some incredible human studies finding that you take people with cognitive decline or some form of early dementia, give them creatine supplementation and over the next few weeks their cognition will improve.
So, as much as you have the gym bros who are taking it for muscle, which I'm sympathetic to I want big, healthy muscles too.
More than anything, you and I, we're not getting paid because of our muscles.
We're getting paid because of our brains.
So you and I are taking creatine to have bigger, better brains.
But in order for the creatine to saturate the brain, you need more.
And that's been some of the newest focus.
Where you can get away if you're just taking it for muscle purposes, five grams is enough of creatine monohydrate.
And if you want to get it to work for the brain, you need 10 or 15 grams.
So quite a bit more.
I heard this from another guest I had on the show and I was really shocked because I didn't think about creatine as being something that could really elevate my cognitive performance.
And from the studies that I've read and the research ahead of this conversation, I read that creatine helps your brain stay sharp, especially when you're in a low sleep mode or when you've been working very, very hard.
So that's a study.
There's a human study that sleep-deprived people deliberately had them take creatine versus a placebo and then do a series of cognitive tests.
No surprise, the sleep-deprived people on placebo did very poorly.
They're so tired.
They're lethargic.
The creatine treatment group performed much better.
I heard this and I thought, wow.
So when I'm like jet lagged or I'm underslept, I should be taking my creatine.
Yeah.
And so as an underslept dad, you'll get there soon enough.
I take creatine every morning.
It is literally the first thing I drink.
It's hard, for I've noticed just in my friendship group when I've talked about creatine, it's sometimes hard to convince women to take creatine because there's a sort of prevailing stereotype that it makes you large.
Yeah, yeah, I wish, because then I'd be jacked.
No, no, it doesn't.
In fact, I think you could make the case that a woman, relevant to the cognitive aspects of it, should be focused on it more than men.
So there are a few chronic diseases that women suffer from more than men, and Alzheimer's disease is one of them.
So this is a disease that will affect women almost double or even triple the rate of it affecting men.
Insofar as the latest evidence shows that, at higher doses, creatine helps with cognition, I think every woman, middle-aged and beyond, should be taking creatine daily.
And indeed, on the higher end of that dose because that's the dose you need to help your brain.
I read from one particular study I think you talked about this on your YouTube channel that creatine increases strength by up to 10 and power output by up to 15 and reduces muscle damage by 20 to 40 after intense exercise.
Creatine both acts as an energetic source and it changes gene transcription.
So there's evidence to show that creatine in muscle stimulates what's called myogenic genes.
Myogenic genes are those genes that promote muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth.
So creatine both energizes the muscle and promotes growth of the muscle.
Now, a woman may say, well, I don't want to get big.
You can't get big.
A female body does not have the right mix of sex hormones to get big muscles.
All that will happen is she'll have wonderful, healthy, strong muscles.
No woman ever needs to be worried about getting too big in muscles.
It doesn't happen.
Why do vegetarians and vegans need to pay more attention to creatine?
Right.
Yeah, so creatine is one of the many things if you'll pardon me for saying it that a vegan would need to pay attention to.
So creatine is a molecule that you can eat.
So if someone's getting a lot of red meat, you could make the case that they don't need to supplement, that they're getting more than enough.
But if you're not eating red meat, you may not be getting enough.
And I'd say you probably aren't.
And there's reason to get it to supplement.
Does creatine have an impact on blood sugar levels?
No.
Blood sugar spikes at all?
No.
I would say if someone ever notices, if they're taking a scoop of creatine and they see, then it's probably because you have some maltodextrin in your creatine powder.
Do you know?
I had my blood levels done a couple of weeks ago and the doctor said to me that I should be careful because they're seeing high levels of creatine in my kidney.
OK, yes.
So what they would have said is they would have seen high levels of creatinine.
That was it.
Yeah.
But that's important for people to know because that's one of the longstanding attacks against creatine has been a high level of creatinine.
Right.
So creatinine is the metabolite of creatine.
So when creatine has lived its life and served its purpose, it gets converted into a molecule called creatinine, which is actively secreted from the kidneys.
Now it's a waste product, and the kidneys happily dump it out.
Now in an average person, if someone has – if you came in and you did a urine test and we found your creatinine levels were really, really high, we would worry.
Hey, is this a sign of kidney damage?
Are your kidneys allowing too much to get filtered?
And it might be a sign of that.
However, if a person's taking creatine, it is absolutely guaranteed that they're going to have more creatinine coming out.
And that's just because they're metabolizing more of the creatine.
There's no reason to be worried about it.
You talked about a five-year study that found zero kidney changes in athletes taking up to 20 grams of creatine a day.
Which is significant.
There's no evidence.
I'm unaware of any study that has shown kidney damage on creatine supplementation.
It is what we call in science an artifact, where you see a little hint of a problem and assume it's actually causing a problem, when it's actually just a manifestation of just what you're doing.
Ben, I'm going to ask you to close your eyes.
I'm ready.
Okay.
And I'm going to ask you to embody what I'm about to say.
Okay.
So suddenly now you are a, let's say, 35-year-old man and your name is Dave, right?
And you have one kid.
You have a little bit of extra fat around your midsection that you're trying to lose.
You've been listening to this podcast for a while.
You've heard lots of things.
You haven't managed to make a huge amount of progress.
Sometimes you try and then you bounce right back.
And you're kind of at your wits end.
You really, really want 2026 to be the year that you finally prove to yourself, your family, for the sake of your kids and inspiring them to live a happy, healthier future that you can make a change and you can become the strong healthy, sexy dad that your family wants you to be and that you want to be.
You want to finally prove it to yourself after all these years of struggling, trying, failing.
What is it that that guy or that woman needs to hear to close out this conversation today, Ben?
Yeah.
I appreciate you mentioning the kid.
I think you need to have a reason.
Because making change is hard.
You have to have a reason that is motivating you to do it.
That goes beyond yourself.
I should add that.
That you'd mentioned a handful of internal motivations.
You want to feel better.
You want to look better.
Those are all valid.
But sometimes it's not enough.
Have an external reason.
And when you're a parent, you have a reason.
You have a child.
You're living for your child.
So have a reason for doing what you're doing that goes beyond your own motivations and that touches someone else's life.
And then two, you need to find a way to control your cravings.
I think the more I look at the debates around obesity and weight loss, which is so central to looking and feeling better, the more I think you have to learn to control what you're addicted to.
And so I would say start with the simplest habit and change it.
So if this is – if Dave, the 35-year-old dad of one, if he finds that he is starting to drink alcohol in the And then he's doing other things too that he doesn't like.
Stop doing that.
And recruit outside help.
So start with one habit you know you should change and change it.
And then that can.
When it comes to changing diet, which is among the hardest things to do for many people, I would say eat a big lunch.
Some people don't want to make small changes because they don't feel consequential enough.
It doesn't feel like it matters.
You know and this is one of the things again, I've learned from interviewing so many people is that all of these habits are like, at some level interconnected.
And actually when you change one, you influence another.
I totally agree.
And actually a huge change in life starts with small steps.
And so cutting out the alcohol, for example, that's going to have knock-on effects in other areas of life, right.
Even like sleep.
He will sleep much better.
Yes, multiple studies show that people have a mistaken view of alcohol when it comes to sleep, where they fall asleep faster, but then they sleep worse throughout the rest of the night.
Which then means what?
Yeah, so then you wake up the next morning and you're lethargic.
You're tired.
Your cortisol will be higher.
You will be more insulin resistant, so higher insulin levels throughout the day.
Which means you're going to have cravings?
Which means you'll have cravings and every calorie you consume, you're going to be more likely to store it.
So then your body is more efficient at getting fat on any given amount of calories.
So even something as simple as alcohol, which you and I haven't discussed at all –
And maybe Dave isn't an alcohol drinker, but many people are.
That is – it has this patina of helping a person sleep and yet it absolutely does not.
And sleep is a massively relevant variable when it comes to metabolic health and weight loss and just feeling well.
What about stress?
That's the protagonist in the story that we haven't talked about, but I know it dovetails into ketones.
Oh, it sure is.
Weight loss.
So, in fact, it's a perfect segue, because sleep deprivation, I believe, is the leading cause of stress.
And stress is one of the three cardinal causes of what I call fast insulin resistance.
When the body becomes insulin resistant in like hours, Stress is one of them.
And poor sleep is the main cause.
And so in this case, a person could look, let's say Dave is not sleeping well.
There are actually, the problem with stress is that it's hard to define.
That they're going to bed and they're not feeling very great and they're worried about stuff.
And if I were to tell him, Dave, reduce your stress.
Well, now he's even more stressed because he doesn't know how to do it.
This is where I think another opportunity for some smart supplementation can come in, where there are these adaptogen-like molecules in nature, like ashwagandha.
So I just tried an ashwagandha source in the form of a little gummy, a goli gummy, and it had enough – like a full kind of therapeutic dose of ashwagandha.
And it's in the form of a delicious little gummy.
So you don't have to take this bitter tasting powder from an ashwagandha root.
You can take a gummy and then you sleep a little better, because it's been shown in humans to improve sleep latency, improve sleep architecture.
And it could be one of the mechanisms is that it's just suppressing your cortisol response.
So if Dave or anyone is feeling that that would just be one more strategy to address your metabolic health, that you would –
Sort of, take the small steps you can, the little wins, and maybe he's saying, all right, I need to sleep a little better.
I'm going to cut my alcohol.
I'm going to take a couple of these ashwagandha gummies before I go to bed and not eat before I go to bed, so I don't go to bed hyperglycemic.
You'll start to sleep a little better.
You'll wake up the next day ready to kind of win the day.
Is there a relationship with ketones and stress?
Yeah, there is in that ketones help.
So ketones are more and more called an anxiolytic.
That's a technical term for reducing anxiety.
It has been shown to be a direct effect.
So BHB, the main ketone, acts as a signaling molecule and will come to the brain and reduce the stress hormone signaling.
What is the most important thing we didn't talk about that we should have talked about, Ben?
As it relates to that person who's looking to make a change once and for all.
One thing I would add.
If we go back to the middle-aged guy who's just trying to be the best version of himself, part of it might be his testosterone levels.
And that is worth getting checked.
So as much as we focus – you've had in the past very good conversations about women's health, including menopause.
Men have their own version of it, albeit more modest.
But we could more technically call it andropause, the male version of it.
But there is a steady reduction in testosterone levels.
And if he finds that he is tired and he's gaining weight, get your testosterone checked.
If it's actually low, lose a little weight and the testosterone will boost.
But if you need help, there are supplements that can even help with testosterone production that you could use before full-on testosterone replacement therapy.
But ice bath, an ice bath.
I know guys who've doubled their testosterone levels by doing ice immersion, cold plunge and then a workout after their cold plunge.
That's a wicked, awesome combination.
So there are a couple of tests that we've mentioned today.
So I just want to summarize some of those tests.
Can people check their insulin levels at home?
No.
No.
Not really.
There are some tests that have been marketed for at-home use, but they're quite cumbersome and I would say they're not really ready for mainstream yet.
Okay.
So they have to go to a doctor and get that test?
You do.
And then the testosterone, you can't check that at home either?
No.
I guess you could, could you get sent something in the post?
You can.
Yeah.
So there's companies in the US, Blokes and Joy, for example.
There's other services you can use, where you go online, sign up and they send you either a phlebotomist or a little thing nowadays that you just snap onto your arm, press a little button and it'll fill the tube with blood and you just ship it back.
Are there any tests that you recommend my audience get done?
Yeah, yeah, I would say I am an enormous advocate of measuring insulin.
If I could change any policy within the United States and worldwide, it would be that as much as every blood test you and I will go into a blood test every time they'll measure our glucose and our lipids, like cholesterol and triglycerides.
They'll never measure insulin.
If I could have one change in the US and the UK and everywhere else, I'd say add insulin to that panel.
Because once we get insulin we can measure the fasted level, And a person wants to see it at around seven microunits per mil or less.
That's a really, really good sign.
So you look at your insulin alone, but then with insulin and glucose you can do something called the HOMA H-O-M-A H-O-M-A, the HOMA score.
And that's a really good score of where you fall on the insulin resistance spectrum.
And do you recommend that people try and wear a continuous glucose monitor, which is a device that costs 20, 30?
You can get it everywhere online.
That stays on your arm for 14 days, and it monitors your glucose levels, your blood sugar levels.
Do you recommend people do that?
I do.
I think that a CGM is one of the best ways for a person to make their own changes.
So if you put a CGM on your body, you're able to look at your phone and see what's happening in your blood.
A CGM being a continuous glucose monitor.
A continuous glucose monitor.
So you're getting a continuous measurement of your glucose levels.
I have seen more people make changes of their own volition when they just are wearing a CGM.
And they don't need someone to be nagging them.
You have that internal motivation because you see what's happening in your own body.
For anyone that's never tried it, I highly recommend it.
I'll link a CGM below in the comment section.
I don't have an affiliation to any CGMs, but when you eat something within minutes, usually you can see on your phone your blood sugar levels rising.
And for me, it was a really important and informative 14 days with the CGM on my arm.
Yes.
Because I got to try things that I have every single day and understand my blood sugar relationship with those things.
So I got to try tomato ketchup and then i got to try a coke zero and then i know cheese and bananas and fruit and i got to see within minutes how much blood glucose was in my blood and and that informed going forward for the next couple of years the decisions that i made in my life.
Yeah, and people who.
The nice thing about it is you can stack it with other technologies.
Like, let's say, you're wearing a whoop yeah, hashtag ad.
One of the cool things with the CGM is the ability to stack it with other wearables.
Well, let's say that a person notices that they with wearing a whoop, that their HRV is suggesting that they're stressed.
And then you look at that at the same time as your CGM.
You may find that what's causing you to feel stressed could be your hyperglycemic spike.
And you wouldn't have known that if it weren't for the CGM.
So I think there's a lot of utility in stacking some of these wearables.
Someday they're all going to be in one.
Yeah.
And they'll crack the code of doing that.
But I think it really does lend insight.
I made one of the biggest changes to my sleep by wearing a CGM where I would sleep terribly.
I'd be monitoring my stress and find that wow, every time I sleep really poorly, my blood glucose I'd spike my blood glucose in the evening.
I'm going to try cutting that out.
And sure enough, it was the single greatest change of my sleep habits.
Ben, we have a closing tradition on this podcast that the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.
The question left for you is if you could have anything in the world for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
And you can't say your family.
Okay.
I was going to ask for that clarification.
Okay.
If I could have any one thing, an item that's not a person, I would choose to have my scriptures.
These holy scriptures that I read every day.
I believe a lot of my happiness in life has come from my religious conviction and my belief in a higher power and my faith in God.
As a scientist, it seems like too many people want to describe faith as a negative thing, but everything we do is based on faith.
Every action we take is a faith and a hope that the consequence will be one we want.
And so, for me, it would be my scriptures, just my way of meditating and pondering my position in the greater universe and my connection with what I believe to be a God, a loving Heavenly Father who cares about me and that I can go to when I feel like I need help.
That goes beyond what I can do with my own hands.
What do you think this is all about, this life?
What do you think the point of all of this is?
Oh, that's a big question.
I believe it is to show our Heavenly Father that we are capable of more.
I have very much a very clear worldview that we have a loving Heavenly Father, that we existed in a premortal state and that our bodies.
This mortal experience is an experience for us.
We've been given this much power.
These bodies give us some power.
We have power over life.
We have power over death.
And all the temptations that can come from addictions and habits that are unique to this mortal tabernacle.
I think we've been given a period of time to show that we can wield power and control ourselves.
Just assuming – my religious view is very much that.
Just like as a father, my great hope is that my children will grow up to be wonderful mothers and fathers, that I want them to be able to pattern their lives after what they see in my wife and me.
I believe that we have a heavenly father and a heavenly mother, actually that we have these divine parents who want nothing more than for their children to grow up and be like them.
And I think this is just like my children will have to leave the home.
If I coddled them and protected them and only let them stay in my home, they'd never learn anything.
They'd never grow up because mom and dad are doing everything.
This, I think, mortal life is our divine parents' opportunity to show, to help us grow up.
And then the time will come for us to pass on and we will come back to them, hopefully showing that we are ready to continue to learn and progress and be more like them.
To what end?
For what reason?
To mimic what our heavenly parents have been able to do, where they have been able to create a world and populate it with their spirit children.
I want to do that too.
You and I, before we started recording, I joked about how much I miss babies.
I desperately – and I do.
It is an ache in my soul that my children are not little cuddly babies anymore.
Now, they're darling children nevertheless.
But I miss babies.
And to me, heaven is my wife and I, whom I love, having a family that never ends and that we're able to – give life to this countless number of future children um, that someday will be born on a world just like us.
That's a pretty cosmic, grand view, but to me, the purpose of life is to show heavenly father that we are worthy of more and not just end into a nihilistic blackness when we die.
Thank you, we're done my pleasure.
If there's anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we're living in today.
And that is exactly why we created these conversation cards, because on this show, when I sit here with my guests and have those deep, intimate conversations, this remarkable thing happens time and time again.
We feel deeply connected to each other.
At the end of every episode, the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've turned them into these conversation cards.
And we've added these twist cards to make your conversations even more interesting.
And there are so many more twists along the way with the conversation cards.
This is the brand new edition.
And for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this gold card, which is an exclusive question from me.
But I'm only putting the gold cards in the first run of conversation cards.
So get yours now before the limited edition gold cards are all gone.
Head to the link in the description below.
