Shawn Baker: How to Build Generational Health in 2025 | DSH #1533

Summary

Digital Social Hour — Episode Summary

Episode: Shawn Baker: How to Build Generational Health in 2025 | DSH #1533
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Dr. Shawn Baker
Release Date: September 14, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Shawn Baker, orthopedic surgeon and leading advocate for the carnivore diet, in a candid, wide-ranging conversation about nutrition, the state of healthcare, and building generational health. Dr. Baker shares his perspective on the pitfalls of modern dietary advice, his experience reversing disease through nutrition, and his vision for creating lasting health in families and society. The discussion spans the science behind the carnivore and ketogenic diets, critiques of industrial food and healthcare systems, and actionable advice for reclaiming health outside mainstream paradigms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Carnivore Diet: Roots, Spread, and Controversy

• Dr. Baker’s Role: Pioneer in popularizing the carnivore diet, authoring "The Carnivore Diet" (2019).
• Evolution of the Movement:
  • Early ridicule has shifted to growing acceptance.

    “When I first started, probably 99.99999999% of the people thought I was absolutely nuts. Now it’s only about 99%.” — Dr. Baker [02:27]

• Therapeutic Approach:
  • Promotes carnivore not as dogma but as a powerful, sometimes temporary, therapeutic intervention, particularly for autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and metabolic dysfunction.
  • Carnivore diet needs a clear definition; animal-based diets may vary in strictness and food inclusion.
• Notable Moment:
  • Joe Rogan Influence:

    “You can just tell he thought I was nuts... Second time I went on, he’s like, ‘Dude, you gotta keep talking about this. All my friends are doing better.’” — Dr. Baker [02:50]

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2. Diet, Disease, and Healthcare: Dr. Baker’s Experience

• Impact of Diet:

  • "All this healing’s happening just from a diet change. I feel like most people can’t even fathom that." — Sean Kelly [05:47]
  • Dr. Baker sees daily reversal of chronic disease through dietary intervention ("patients are literally throwing their pills away" [34:06]).

• Modern Medicine Critique:

  • Conventional healthcare is "sick care", focused on management and medication, with little real healing.

    “All we’re doing is medicating symptoms. We’re doing disease management. We’re not healing people, and that’s a shame.” — Dr. Baker [05:37]

• Quality of Life Emphasis:

  • Quality of life surpasses chasing biomarkers.

    “I look at things like: how fast can I run, how far can I jump, how well do I sleep, how do I feel, how do I function..." [11:02]

  • “I don't know if my diet’s going to make me live longer or shorter... I think I can take a sick person and make them healthier.” — Dr. Baker [12:36, 13:32]

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3. Historical & Scientific Foundations for an Animal-Based Diet

• Human Evolution & Meat:

  • Prehistoric evidence points to a highly carnivorous lineage.

    “All this data pointed to a highly carnivorous past for Homo sapiens and the hominids that predated us... If you can take down a large animal... you’ve got food for months.” — Dr. Baker [08:00]

  • Ability to “eat a more omnivorous or plant-based diet” is modern—made possible by food processing, not evolutionary adaptation.

• Nutrition, Height, and Population Health:

  • Animal-sourced nutrition is tied to increased height, brain development, and athleticism across populations.
  • Example: Dutch and Central Europeans’ average male height compared to more plant-based populations like India.

    “India has about 28% strict vegetarians... they have tremendous problems with stunting…” — Dr. Baker [47:18]

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4. Practicalities and Myths of Carnivore & Modern Diets

• Affordability:

  • Carnivore diet can be budget-friendly (“five, six bucks a day”), especially with ground beef and eggs. [20:09]
  • Labels like "organic," "grass-finished," and “natural” are often misleading and can be more marketing than substance.

    “Grass finish label in a grocery store means the cow could have some grass. He might spend his whole life indoor eating… and they can still call it grass finish.” [16:03]

• Variety, Supplements, and Fiber:

  • Organ meats are not required, contrary to some claims:

    “[Harvard study] found… if you like them, it's good. But to say everybody needs to do this doesn’t lend itself to reality.” [13:54]

  • No major health difference seen between grass-finished/grocery store beef if overall dietary quality is maintained.
  • Fiber: Not necessary for regularity or health on strict carnivore; constipation is rare if dairy is limited. [21:04]
  • Supplements: Dr. Baker has been largely supplement-free for ~10–15 years; exceptions like creatine may help some, but "supplements are mostly garbage.” [53:03]

• Cooking Preferences:

  • Medium-rare preferred for taste and nutrient retention; raw not preferred besides culinary situations. [18:25, 19:07]

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5. Food Industry & National Health—Systems at Odds

• Ranching & Food Consolidation:

  • Dramatic decline in independent ranchers (from 1.3 million to ~600,000 since 1970s) [23:00].
  • 85% of U.S. beef industry controlled by four companies (JBS, National Beef, Tyson, Cargill) [24:32].
  • Centralization increases vulnerability and undermines health sovereignty.

    “This is a national security issue... If you’ve got no one producing [beef] anymore, what are you going to do?” [23:39]

• Plant-Based & Lab-Grown Meats:

  • Driven by profit, not genuine health or sustainability.

    “Those plant-based meats, those lab-grown meats are arguably worse for the environment, worse for the health of the planet and probably worse for our health.” [26:30]

• Labels and Health Claims Skepticism:

  • Distrust of organic/marketing claims and health fads (alkaline water, methylene blue, etc.) [51:40]

    “I’ve yet to meet somebody that’s put their disease in remission by drinking alkaline water.” [51:41]

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6. Healthcare Reformation: Empowerment & Systemic Change

• Resistance Within Medicine:

  • Mainstream healthcare often blocks dietary/lifestyle interventions due to financial incentives.

    “I was told… we don’t want you to do [lifestyle medicine with patients].” [32:30]

• Empowering the Individual:

  • “Don’t rely on the government... don’t rely on your doctor either” for your health. [35:37]
  • Doctors rarely taught about real cures—system is built for chronic management, not resolution.

    "There's no pharmaceutical company that really wants to cure disease... recurring profit." [36:56]

• Lifestyle Factors:

  • Comprehensive lifestyle changes (sleep, activity, stress, light, nutrition) are critical, not just diet.
  • Most on TRT, statins, or GLP-1 drugs (like Ozempic) could instead regain health through lifestyle overhaul:

    “A lot of guys that are on TRT... go carnivore and they’re able to come off it because they don’t like injecting drugs.” [41:21]

• Baker’s Company (Rivero):

  • Directs patients to healing via ketogenic, carnivore, and other customized lifestyle protocols using data and, increasingly, AI. [54:00]
  • New book on “generational health” forthcoming—vision on health as the "real legacy" over wealth. [31:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On modern food industrialization and health:

  “Your generation is probably the first to live shorter than your parents.” — Dr. Baker [10:25]

• On the real purpose of medicine:

  “All we’re doing is medicating symptoms... it’s a shame.” — Dr. Baker [05:37]

• On meat vs. chicken consumption:

  “Back in the '70s, the average American was eating about 92 pounds [of beef] a year. We're now down to about 50 pounds... during that time, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in autoimmune disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity.” — Dr. Baker [28:27]

• On empowering patients:

  “When you empower patients... you have a good shot at not only improving your situation but literally curing your disease. We don’t talk about cures anymore.” — Dr. Baker [35:40]

• On longevity promise salesmen:

  “People will buy into that and maybe spend money on this and they’re like, is there a money-back guarantee if I die?” — Dr. Baker [12:36]

• On the standardized American diet:

  “We’ve got such acidic stomachs because early humans were scavengers… evolutionary pressure drove this.” — Dr. Baker [50:12]

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Segment Timestamps for Key Topics

• Introduction and Carnivore Movement Origins: [01:00–03:00]
• Therapeutic Role & Popularization via Rogan: [03:05–03:50]
• Disease Reversal & Fulfillment in Practice: [04:32–05:53]
• Diet, Lifestyle, and Health Metrics: [06:47–13:34]
• Organ Meats, Cost, and Grocery Marketing Myths: [13:54–17:10]
• Addiction, Satiety, and Cooking Approaches: [17:17–19:07]
• Food Industry Consolidation & Ranching: [23:00–26:43]
• Lab-Grown Meat & Plant-Based Industry Critique: [26:56]
• Meat vs. Chicken Consumption Trends: [28:24–29:22]
• Systemic Healthcare Issues & Rivero’s Mission: [31:08–35:15]
• Healthcare Reform, Empowerment, and Drugs: [35:40–37:43]
• GLP-1 Drugs (Ozempic) Side Effects Explained: [38:15–40:12]
• TRT, Failures, and Customization with AI: [41:16–42:49]
• Evolution, Population Health, Lactose, and Stunting: [45:00–47:59]
• Stomach Acid as Evolutionary Adaptation: [50:06–51:32]
• Skepticism about Water, Fads, and Supplements: [51:40–53:07]

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Conclusion

Dr. Shawn Baker offers an authoritative, pragmatic, and often provocative perspective on building long-term, generational health through animal-based nutrition, lifestyle change, and individual empowerment. Challenging both food industry marketing and health care orthodoxy, he advocates for reclaiming agency over diet and health—grounded in ancestral patterns, evolving science, and daily lived results. For those questioning mainstream advice or seeking robust health foundations for their families, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways, myth-busting, and timely warnings.

Transcript

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Martha listens to her favorite band all the time. In the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live. She saved so much, she got her seat close enough to actually see and hear them sort of. You were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you more Expedia made to travel savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are atoll protected. Disrupt it and you know, say we're going to make this other form of meat and try to convince people that meat is bad for you, bad for the planet. It's unethical. And the reality is they just want to make money because this is like, you know, they're going to try to do this and it's, it's, it's really none of those things. And those plant based meats, those lab grown meats are arguably worse for the environment.

[Podcast Host]

Okay guys, Dr. Sean Baker out here in Las Vegas got him before he's gonna speak at bitcoin conference. That's a different conference from what you normally speak up.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, it's interesting, you know this. I've been advocating for this crazy nutritional approach for, for many years and for the longest time I only spoke kind of to like minded people at low carb conferences. But now it's grown to such an extent that I get asked to speak at political events, you know, strength training events, bitcoin conferences. Cattle industry likes me to talk to them. Believe it or not.

[Podcast Host]

It feels like help. Being healthy is like the new wealth though.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, it's, it's becoming the counter cultural revolution is to, to ditch all the, you know, the, the fake stuff and kind of get back, to get back to our roots, I suppose. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Like when I come across healthy people that's like, it's like a turn on for me. Right. It shows that they actually take care of themselves.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, I think that is something, you know, you, you can't buy that. You gotta, you gotta do it. And I think it's, you know, it's, it's emblematic of a lot of things about a person.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. And you were really early to this carnivore space. I mean, you created it, right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Well, I wrote the book. Yeah. I was the first one to publicly sort of in a big way call it a carnivore diet. I mean, you know, there have been, there have been people that have been doing carnivore diets, even physicians going back hundreds of years. I mean he's got James Rollo, Scottish surgeon, 1790s wrote about treating diabetes with all meat diets. So this is not new since we live in a, you know, as, you know, a social media time where, you know, an idea can be spread like, like wildfire in a period of time. Now again, I've been talking about this nearly, nearly 10 years now, and it's finally reached a point where a large people, large number of people have heard of it. Now when I first started, probably 99.99999999 of the people thought I was absolutely nuts. Now it's only about 99%. So making progress with that.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, Rogan will help you do that, right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah. You know, first time, the first time I went on Rogan, I remember I was talking to him and you can just tell he thought I was nuts. You just tell it, you know, the second time I went on, he was like, dude, you got to keep talking about this. All my friends are doing, are doing better. So it clearly works for people, you know.

[Podcast Host]

So you got him on it, right? He's still on that diet.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

He does it from, you know, he does it from time to time. He mostly does it. And, and the honest truth is most people that do a carnivore diet, you know, and again, as a physician, I promote it as a therapeutic tool that you'll do for a period of time, three months, six months, a year perhaps, and then you go, you know, and then if you want to tattoo yourself and call yourself carnivore Carl, you know, that's up to you at that point. But I mean, what happens to most people is they'll do it for a period of time, very strictly, they'll cure a disease, maybe an autoimmune disease or diabetes or something like that, and then they will sort of find where they can sort of have a little bit more relaxation in that. And I think that's totally fine. I'm not, I'm not dogmatic about this. I'm one of the least dogmatic guys. I'm dogmatic about we should have a strict definition. So when somebody says I'm on a carnivore diet, you know, what we're talking about. It's not like I'm eating, you know, three times a week, you know, a salad and, you know, honey and all this stuff. Because there's obviously there's these animal based diets which are, you know, they share some similar similarities. But from the unique aspect that I see, a very strict carnivore diet is uniquely beneficial in certain situations. So we need to have that, that clearly defined. And after that, like I said, you know, I have a digital health company and we, we treat some people with carnivore diet, some people we treat with a ketogenic diet, some people we treat with more of a just paleo cell diet, depending on what disease I have.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

And it's, it's interesting to see, see the reversals of disease that you see. It's, it's. I mean, I'm still amazed almost 10 years into this, the stuff I heard about, I mean, it's at the Bitcoin conference. I probably had two or 300 people come up to me and say, hey, look, you've changed my life. Wow. I've lost a hundred pounds. I no longer take medications. And so this is, I mean, it's fun for me as a physician. You know, I spent, you know, 20 years practicing as an orthopedic surgeon. And, you know, I mean, you help people. I mean, that's not to say you can't help people to some degree, but it is an order of magnitude more impactful, what I'm doing these days, and it's, it's much more, you know, fulfilling.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I bet.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Because now you can just make a video impact hundreds of thousands of people in one video.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, yeah. Depending on, well, depending on how the algorithm picks it up. But I mean, the one thing that's interesting because we have, you know, a whole bunch of physicians that work for our company, Rivero, and the one thing they always tell me is I'm so much happier doing this than I was the, the sort of standard kind of allopathic medicine, which is, you know, it's sick care, it's not healthcare.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

You've probably been around long enough to realize that all we're doing is sort of medicating symptoms. We're doing a disease management. We're not healing people.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

And that's a real shame.

[Podcast Host]

It's so crazy that all this healing's happening just from a diet change. I feel like most people can't even fathom that.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, it, it, it shocked me. And the only reason I'm such an advocate for this is that I see it every day and it's, it's undeniable for me. And, you know, good thing is we're getting studies out there now because a lot of people are skeptical, because there's no studies. The studies are coming out little by little. I mean, they're expensive. I mean, it's, it's not easy to do a, you know, big randomized Control trial cost millions and millions of dollars and you know, there's a lot of people that are lining up to pay for these things but, but we're getting those things done. It's not, you know, and I should be clear, I mean I don't think it's just diet. I think it's a whole life. It's a comprehensive lifestyle intervention. And you know, as you probably had some of your other guests talking about the importance of sleep, the importance of, of not being sedentary, the importance of managing stress, the importance of our, our light environments. And then of course nutrition is, is a huge one. And then I like, I, I'm a guy that really likes, you know, exercise and I think it has a unique benefit as well.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, and we were talking out there, you really know the history of this stuff, which is impressive to me. Like you were talking about how we used to eat all the big animals. Those went extinct, now we eat the lean cuts.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, yeah. I mean there's a, there's a really good paper. It's, it's, it's I, I'm paraphrasing the title. It's something like the, the Trophic level of man or Prehistoric Man. It was written by a guy named Mickey Bendor, Rafi Sertola and another guy, Reina Barca. They're both out of Tel Aviv. And Rafi I think is in, I think he's in Paris or he might have been in Lisbon. And they go through like 25 converging lines of scientific evidence. Everything from fossil records to radioisotopic data, genetic analysis to bioenergetics.

[Podcast Host]

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[Dr. Sean Baker]

Conclusion that all this data pointed to a highly carnivorous past for, for Homo sapien species and, and the hominids or humans that predated those. You know it would be Homo habilis, Homo erectus, you know, the Neanderthals, all those which you know, kind of intermixed and, and we had this sort of interesting melange of species to finally develop Homo sapiens. And up until about 80, 000 years ago, our primary food would have been these large animals. Just because, you know, you think about where are you going to get energy from? And it, you know, there's a lot of talk about optimal foraging strategies or hunting strategies. If you can take down a large animal and I'll say an elephant, you've got food for maybe a couple months, literally, depending how many people you have in your group. Whereas if you have to hunt smaller animals, fish or birds, and all you have is spear, it's gonna take you a long time to get enough food. And if you're gathering plants, also tremendous energy output for, for a relatively small return. Now today, modern food, we've solved a lot of those problems because now I can turn, you know, all this plant material into powder, you know, sugar flowers, tremendously increase the, the, the energy value of that sort of stuff. I can now obtain adequate energy so that I can eat a more omnivorous balance or even a plant, you know, completely plant based diet. But prior to that this would not have been possible.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, plant based protein powder, right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah. I mean, I will, like I said, I, I should, you know, be transparent here. I mean, I'm very much a proponent of a carnivorous diet for, for certain individuals, depending on their health issues. But you know, there are some plant based protein powders where they've been able to engineer them to where they have enough leucine. You know, this is one of these critical amino acids and some of these other things where they can get, you know, approaching what animal products do. Again, some people would argue, hey, it's not really food or eating these, you know, synthesized lab made products is that good for this species? I mean, there's, there's, there's a debate that, you know, the industrialization of our food has directly led to a dramatic decrease in our overall, you know, population health, decreases in life expectancy, which are happening now. I mean, your generation is probably the first generation to live shorter than your parents.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

So it's kind of crazy.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Average male now is 71 in the U.S. right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I think something like 71, 72. Yeah, I think it's down a couple years. I mean, I think the Overall number is 77, 76. It was, I think as high as 78.79. And so we're seeing a downward trend for the first time.

[Podcast Host]

That's a pretty big jump within one lifetime.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

It's significant. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully we can, hopefully we turn it around.

[Podcast Host]

That's nuts. Now you're pushing 60 when you get blood work done. Because I know you said earlier you're on no supplements, right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

Any deficiencies? Anything red?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

No. I mean, you know, this. I, you know, and I, I look at, look, I tend to look at health in a very sort of basic way. You know, I know there's thousands of tests you can get, you can, you can study your telomere length, you can look at your DNA methylation, you can look, look at your mitochondria. There's always thought on this is what's leading to aging. But I mean, the reality is those things, I mean, I've never seen one of my own mitochondria. I know they're there. I've never seen one and it's unlikely that I ever will unless I have some scanning electron microscope or something like that or access to powerful stuff. So I can't really impact that and know what's going on day to day. But I can look at things like how fast can I run, how far can I jump, how high can I jump, how well do I sleep, how do I feel, how do I function? You know, those things to me are reflective of what I think are meaningful health metrics. And so I tend to tend to emphasize those things. So like, as you mentioned, I'm going to be turning 60 soon. I'm like, dunk a basketball. That's not something many 60 year olds have ever done. There's only a handful that have ever done it and most of those guys are ex NBA guys. Jordan did it, Dr. J did it. I think Dominique Wilkins did it. But these guys are like six foot eight and you know, we're phenomenal guys that could jump and you know, so that's just one thing. It's not, it's not the only thing that's important. But I mean it really. I think we sort of have gotten to where with all the sort of the biohacking stuff and all the data we're getting, we're sort of losing the forest for the trees a little bit, you know, because we're like, oh, I gotta worry about what my, you know, my mitochondria are doing. And it's like, well, what about the big picture? Yeah, and, and that's where my, my emphasis tends to be.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I think it's getting extreme. I see guys giving 20 vials of blood and it's like, holy crap, that's a lot.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you know, I mean, again, I, I am, I will say that, you know, when it. And There's a lot of people that are their longevity gurus and whatnot. I have no idea. I will tell you, I don't know if my diet's gonna make me live longer, shorter. I don't think it's possible to know that realistically. I just think it's not possible to do those studies. So I really look at quality of life, you know, what is, what is the quality of life at 50, 60, 70, 30, 40 in some cases. And that's to me, what, what I think I know I can impact positively and that's pretty easy to measure. You know, like if I were like saying, you know, like you had a guest on here, Brian Johnson, saying he's going to live forever, he's not going to die, and you know, people will buy into that and maybe they'll, you know, spend money on this and they're like, is there a money back guarantee if I, if I die? You know, that's not going to happen. And so I'm very reluctant to sort of make any of those claims. I just said, look, I think I can take a sick person and make them healthier. I see it all the time. And I think that's, to me, that's, that's, that's quite a bit.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah. Brian Johnson's a very interesting person. I mean, he has all the studies, but he just appearance wise, it just.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Doesn'T look, I don't know, I've never, I've never been. I mean, a lot of people say he looks maybe not as good for somebody's going to live forever, but I don't know.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, we'll see what happens. Do you eat the, the organs too or just the meat?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I generally don't eat the organs. I just don't like them, you know, and I've had it from time to time. I mean, this is, this is another thing. When Harvard University did their study on a Carnivore diet in 2021, I specifically spoke to the primary researcher because I helped kind of get that get off the ground. And I said, hey, make sure you ask about organ meats, because this is something that a lot of people are claiming is necessary. And my observation, and you know, from people that were doing it long before, there's, there's groups of people have been doing this for decades before I ever even started this. And they were all saying, hey, look, they're not really necessary, you can even if you want. That's what the Harvard study found. When I did my data collection on 12,000 people, I found the Same thing. It was like, if you like them, it's good. Now again, some people will say, I feel better when I eat these things. And I, and I don't discount that. I said, sure, if it helps you find. But to say that, you know, everybody needs to do this doesn't, doesn't sort of lend itself to what, what the reality is. Same thing with whether you eat grass finished beef or grain finished beef. It doesn't seem to matter that much. I know that upsets a lot of people, but I mean, that's, I mean, I just, I'm not going to sit there and lie to people. I'm going to say, look, if you can only afford to go to Walmart and get the cheapest ground beef there is, it's likely going to still be very beneficial to you. And I just see people like that all the time.

[Podcast Host]

So you haven't noticed a major difference with, let's say Walmart meat versus the highest quality meats?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

No, I mean, other than what it costs and how it tastes. I mean, you know, some of the, some. I had some really high end. God, it was ridiculous. It was a $250 filet, you know, a 5 wagyu from Japan. You know, it comes with a certificate out of the.

[Podcast Host]

I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Thank you.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

And it was like eating like meat, butter almost. It was so rich I could barely finish the thing.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

But you know, I, I don't think it makes any more health difference than going to the grocery store and getting, you know, ten dollar steak or something.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah. A lot of marketing when you go to the grocery stores, all these labels and especially with the eggs, you never know which type of eggs to buy. You're gonna spend 20 on eggs or five.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah. You know, the problem with like even like this is another thing. I think we talked about this outside. You know, the labeling is so deceptive. You know, you get it, natural bile, you know, organic, you know, fresh, wholesome, you know, all these little ingredients, they put little cute little natural things in there, like plants on there. It's just very, very deceptive. I mean, it's like, you know, like I said, grass finish label in a grocery store means the cow. If he chose to go outside, nibble on some grass, he could have some grass, but he might spend his whole life, you know, indoor eating, you know, you know, tmr, total mixed ration. And they can still call it grass Finish. So it's kind of like I don't really get too worried about that.

[Podcast Host]

I'm losing faith in the organic label the more I look into that one.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, there's been a lot of, a lot of evidence that shows it doesn't really make much of a difference.

[Podcast Host]

Which is crazy because people spend double, triple the price for that.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, yeah. I can remember buying, you know, years ago, buying all these organic fruits and vegetables and it seems like they always went bad a lot quicker. So not only would you pay more, you end up throwing half the stuff out.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

And it's just, it's just not very efficient.

[Podcast Host]

So strawberries go bad quick these days.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, I think there's some tricks. Yeah, I, I don't, you know, like I said, I don't do the plant based stuff much anymore at all. But I mean, I think there's some tricks. You can like spray them and like, like a vinegar water or lemon water or something, you can make them live longer.

[Podcast Host]

But you don't ever crave something sweet like a dessert or fruit.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

You know, I, like I said, I'm not dogmatic about this every once in a while and like I said, like, I've got, you know, four kids, they'll have a birthday party, I might have a piece of cake or something like that. But I, I don't really like crave it, particularly if I make sure I just consume enough food. And this is one of the problem. A lot of people will come to this diet and they're like, oh, I'm gonna lose 50 pounds right away. So they'll restrict themselves unnecessarily, like, oh, I better not eat. And then what happens is they develop these pretty significant cravings and you know, I mean, no diet will be successful if you're hungry all the time or you don't like the food. I mean, if you don't like it, you're not going to do it. So. So I mean, fortunately, I personally like eating steak. I like red meat. I, you know, eat eggs, I eat fish from time to time and I enjoy that. And so if I, as long as I eat enough of that, I don't really get too bothered about the other stuff. Now occasionally, like if I'm unable to eat normally and you know, like there's no other food available, I might get hungry and you know, you know, may go off the diet occasionally, but, but I'd say 98 of the time, I'm pretty, pretty tight with things.

[Podcast Host]

How do you get your meat cooked? Because there's some conflicting Info on that. Right. The more you cook it, the more nutrients are cooked out of it.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, I think to a point. I mean, I like my meat medium rare. I mean, I think that's a nice. I mean, you know, French, I call it a point. You know, you all, you know, al punto in Spanish. I mean, it means that's where it tastes the best. I think there's a lot of truth to that. And again, it depends on the kind. If you're talking about a steak medium rare, because what it does is it, you know, it sears the surface, so you would kill any, any bacteria that might be there. And then the inside is still, you know, fairly raw. Fairly rare, I would say raw. The rare to where you're going to get most of the nutrients. I think overdone. Well cooked meat is. Doesn't taste good. And I think you're losing some. You're not losing it. You're not losing like all of it, but you're, you're seeing a. Somewhat of a decrease.

[Podcast Host]

I can see that. Do you ever, do you ever eat fully raw?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I've tried that, you know, and I'll have like, at a restaurant, I'll have like carpaccio, obviously, sushi or sashimi, rather. I try to do a raw version of carnivore diet because, because people were talking about this maybe five, six years ago. I just didn't enjoy it. I just, you know, sitting down to a cold bowl of ground beef or cold steak was just, I mean, I think I could lose more weight doing that because I just didn't like the food. I was like, you know, so I, I generally like it. I don't know.

[Podcast Host]

Liver king, man, he really made that one popular.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I. Well, yeah, you. But, you know, I don't know, what if he, what he was really doing. Obviously a lot of deception. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Do you eat any pork?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

From time to time, yeah, from time. Mostly it's in the form of bacon occasionally. But, you know, it's kind of funny. I mean, you know, a lot of people, oh, bacon, so good. But I rarely ever eat. I really don't want it that much. But yeah, I mean, once in a while, pork, pork belly, once in a while. But it's. It's probably on the order of a couple times a year. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

I think people are, are surprised that the diet's kind of affordable. I was talking to steak and butter girl about this and she said when she was a vegan, she was spending way more.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, I mean, you know, the. Because, you know, I'm on Instagram and I'm eating rib eye steaks all the time. And, and you know, if you do that all the time, it's going to be more expensive for the average person. But most people, you know, you can do ground beef and I eat a lot of ground beef. You know, I mean, it's just not as exciting to put a picture up there. Although every time I show a picture of me with a, a little hamburger patty with an egg and a little bacon, a piece of cheese on there, people go nuts because it tastes good. But yeah, you can do this diet, you know, I mean, even today, you know, five, six bucks a day, that's not bad. It's not bad. I mean, I, you know, I'm, I funnily, I did a little YouTube video we haven't released yet. It's like $1 all the way up to 250 meals, carnivore meals that you can do. And so eggs, you know, eggs will get you there. You go to Costco, go to the, you know, go to the business center, buy in bulk, you get, I think you can get like five dozen eggs for 12 bucks still. So it's pretty, pretty.

[Podcast Host]

You ever struggle with constipation, not getting fiber?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah. So it's an interesting point. I don't consume really any fiber at all significantly. And no, I mean, I really don't. I mean, I guess the only exception to that, if I eat a lot of like dairy product, particularly cheese, then you'll see that. A lot of people see that. And I think it's one, it's probably the calcium content and two, it's probably the kind of the opioid type effects. You know, there's a case of morphones that are, that are found in, in cheese and you know, narcotics, you know, typically anybody that's been on like opioids will know they get constipated pretty easily. So I think there is some of that effect going on. But if I don't eat a lot of cheese and I don't have any problem.

[Podcast Host]

Do you pay much attention to the raw dairy versus dairy stuff?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I know it's there. I mean, not really. I, you know, I understand that there's people that believe that raw dairy is superior. Again, when I look at people that consume it versus don't consume it and consume standard pasteurized air, I don't see any major huge health outcome differences. You know, from my observation, again, you have the individuals that will say, hey, I feel better with raw dairy and help fix my gut. I don't, I Don't discount that. I, you know, I'll have a raw dairy from time to time. You know, it depends what state you live in, of course.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I don't know what Nevada's.

[Podcast Host]

It's banned here.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Is it banned? Yeah, Washington state. I can get it. So there's a little co op in my little town that I live in that has raw dairy and I've got it from time to time. So, I mean, I think it's fine. I mean, the reality is there are people that get sick more often on rare raw dairy than pasteurized there. And we're talking about bacterial infections, but those numbers annually are like lightning strike rare. I mean, it's like, you know, 10 people a year, which is, you know, in the U.S. it's minuscule.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, that's nothing compared to probably millions of people taking it. Right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Podcast Host]

Where do you buy all you meat? Is it local butchers or online from Amish?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I get, I get a bunch of different stuff, you know, because I become this meat influencer. I get a lot of ranchers to send me their stuff. So I get a lot of free meat, man. So I'm, wow, sure as hell gonna eat it.

[Podcast Host]

What a life.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

That's good. That's not bad. I get. There was. I, I got some. I had a side of me from a local rancher guy. Sometimes I'll just go to the store depending, you know, like if I, if I don't have something and I feel like something, I'll do that. But. But I get a lot of. From. And I, I really like supporting ranchers. I mean, I think they are critical. They're. They're really. This is a national security issue. You know, I don't know if you know this, but back in the 1970s, we had 1.3 million independent ranchers in the United States. Right now that number is down around 600,000. So we've lost getting close to a million ranchers over the last 50 years. And every year something like 10 to 20,000 of them just go out.

[Podcast Host]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

The average age of a Rancher is like 62 years of age. And so this is very disturbing to me because this is something that I see as a very critical tool for healing people. And then all of a sudden you got no one producing it anymore. Then you're like, well, what are you going to do that? I guess everybody goes on the drugs and stays medicated for the rest of their life. So no, it's a real, it's a, it's a real call to action to support your local ranchers or at least buy direct from a rancher. And there's a lot of guys that are now getting into the direct to consumer deal because about 85% of our beef in this country is falling under four companies that are, that are kind of centralized. And there's some real concern about those guys centralizing the food even farther because you know, as the food becomes more and more centralized, we have less control and less option over it. And so if they decide, hey, look, we make all the food and we're gonna do what's best for our bottom line, profit, profit wise, then, you know, it may cut a lot of people out of school.

[Podcast Host]

Why do you think we're losing so many ranchers?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Well, the government has made it increasingly difficult for them to ranch. It's more expensive for them to do so. You know, the, some of the prices are going up. I mean, the shift from profit, you know, it used to be, I don't know, 50 years ago, a rancher might get three times as much for every dollar they put in as they do now. So most of that has been shifted to the retail side and the packing side. So these four companies, JBS and National Beef, which are Brazilian companies, and then Tyson and Cargill, control about 85% of the US beef supply right now.

[Podcast Host]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

And yeah, so it's really concentrated. Back in the 1920s, there was a, there was a, there was legislation passed called the Stockyard and Packers Act. And it was supposed to break up the monopoly. And they put it in the legislation and back then it was like they controlled 75% of the beef supply. Yeah, that law was passed and now they control 85. So it didn't happen. They don't enforce it. They don't enforce the law.

[Podcast Host]

And that's scary. It's only going higher. So it could be 90, 95 in our lifetime.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Geez.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

They want to, you know, and you see the alternative, you know, you see all this stuff about all the plant based meats and now the lab grown meats. So that is, you know, I think a lot of that's losing a little bit of wind out of its sales because there's a lot of venture capital money like Silicon Valley invested, you know, billions of dollars into these startups for, you know, alternative meats because they see it as, I mean, the meat industry worldwide is a 1.5 trillion dollar market. And so they're like, well let's, let's do Meatless Monday. So what, that's, what's 20% of 1.5 trillion. So that's, you know, a couple hundred billion dollars, huge market. So there's all this advertising that goes into that and then they're trying to just disrupt it and you know, say we're going to make this other form of meat and try to convince people that meat is bad for you, bad for the planet. It's unethical. And the reality is they just want to make money. They're just, this is like, you know, they're going to try to do this and it's, it's really none of those things. And those plant based meats, those lab grown meats are arguably worse for the environment, worse for, for the health of the planet and probably worse for our health.

[Podcast Host]

Chief, did you see they brought the mammoth back and they're trying to make mammoth jerky and stuff.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I don't know if they're. Are they? I know they're, I don't know. Have they got it successfully all the way?

[Podcast Host]

I don't know if it's successful but they're trying to clone the baby mammoth.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Into an elephant I think.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, an elephant.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I think they're going to do that. Yeah, they're. And they're doing a similar. Do you know what an orc is?

[Podcast Host]

No.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

So an orc was a, the predecessor of the modern cow. So these were huge animals. They stood like six, seven foot tall at the shoulder. They were like three, four thousand pounds. And they were, they're mean. They're mean and are hard to domesticate. So we domesticated cats so we kind of bred them kind of like wolves to dogs. We kind of turn those things into these smaller versions which are now the domestic cow. But they're back breeding those things. So they're going back and they're finding, you know, two animals have a little bit of DNA and then they back breed and they keep making these wow ones. And so I think if not now, within the next year or two they should have some of those fully, fully bred. I think, I think in Europe they're doing it so it might be, I think Romania, Poland, something like that. Interesting.

[Podcast Host]

Would you ever try some Oric meat?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

If it's available? It'd be interesting to try. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

What's the most exotic meat you've tried? I've had kangaroo in Australia.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I was, I went to Iceland a few years back and I had some, I had some whale. I had some, I had some fermented shark. Whoa. Which smells awful and tastes slightly less awful. I had ram testicles. God, what is, I mean this guy Ivor, he took me around. He wanted to show me all this stuff. And it was like all these sort of interesting, like, sheep's face, you know, you have the whole face and eyeball looking at. You have a big brain, you know, honestly. But none of them are really that good. I was like, I just. Give me a steak, you know, it tastes better. It's hard to be steak. It is.

[Podcast Host]

Steak and chicken, I feel like, are the goats.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, it's. It's, you know, it's interesting. It's. Chicken has dominated the US food market. I mean, it's grown 6, 7, 800% over the last 30, 40 years, whereas beef consumption. This is interesting. Over. A lot of people don't know that. Again, back in the 70s, the average American was eating about 92 pounds a year. We're now down to about 50 pounds a year. So 30, 40% decrease in our beef consumption. And during that time, we've seen a dramatic increase in, you know, autoimmune disease, cancer, well, certainly diabetes, obesity. And so it's like, why are we blaming beef when we're eating a lot less of it? And this is what we. We continue to see.

[Podcast Host]

That is interesting. So our grandparents were eating double the amount of beef.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

We were just about. Yeah, something like that.

[Podcast Host]

And the chicken rate went up, you said.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Sure, chicken went up phenomenally. Chicken went up from. I can't remember what the low number was, maybe 30, 40 pounds a year to where we eat, like 150 pounds. Damn. Just chicken a year.

[Podcast Host]

I wonder if that's a price thing. Or maybe there's way more of them.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

It's. Yeah, it's a price thing. It's easier. I mean, when you talk about, like. And this is the thing people talk about factory farming, chicken, you know, broiler chickens or meat chickens. I mean, they're born five weeks slaughtered. You know, they live. They live in a less confined area. And so we produce a hell of a lot of chicken in this country. And I personally don't know. That's been a good, you know, a good trend, quite honestly. In fact, we eat. You know, when it comes to the rest of the world, we eat a little bit more meat than most of the world. But when it comes to this beef, compared to, like, you know, Europe, you know, Eastern Europe, parts of Asia, we eat actually less beef and red meat, but we eat more chicken. That is interesting. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

When I go to Costco and I see their rotisseries, they're so plump these days, it's like, what are. What are they injecting those with.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Well, they probably. I'm sure they put a little, like, saline solution to plump them up. I mean, essentially, as you might know, that's a loss leader for Costco. I know. Yeah, yeah, they just. They just undercharged. Get people in the door. My memberships, I mean, people.

[Podcast Host]

Wait in line for.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Or your money back. Save up to 40% your first [e-mail] podcast terms apply.

[Podcast Host]

Those chickens is crazy to me.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

They're a big seller for them. And they're $50 hot dog.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, I think it's the same thing.

[Podcast Host]

All beef.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Is it? I've never had one. So What? I've never had it.

[Podcast Host]

Wow. That's like a staple in America. A Costco hot dog. That's funny, man. Well, what are you working on next? Any books coming up? Any?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, I'm. Right. Well, I am writing other books. I wrote the Carnivore Diet came out 2019. It's been. It sold really well. A lot of people have used it kind of as a. Kind of the. Kind of the authoritative guide on Carnivore, but I'm writing another book on just health in general. And it's. It's. It's, you know, provisionally titled Generational Health. You know, we talk about generational wealth, talking about how to set up, you know, a health sort of system for your whole family so you can pass it on to your generations. And I think that's, you know, honestly, you know, you talk about what's. What's the best thing you can give to your kids, you know, just give them a healthy life. Yeah, that's what the focus this next book's going to be on. Obviously, also just put a plug for our company, Rivero. I mean, we. We are literally, you know, you know, here's one other thing I'll go back to when I was practicing orthopedics. So this is, you know, back 2012, 2013. I'm on this low carb ketogenic diet. We have a lot of obese patients, right. And they need knee research, they need knee replacements, and that's a big operation. And obese patients just unfortunately have higher Complication rates. They're more likely to get infections, more likely to have blood clots, or more likely just not to heal as well. And so the community came together and said, hey, we need to get these people to lose weight before we operate on them. And they didn't, like, tell you, like, how to do it. It was just like, figure out how to get these people to lose weight. So I was putting people on ketogenic diets at the time. And, you know, not everybody would do it. Of course, some would do it, some wouldn't. But the people that would do it very often, they come back to me a couple weeks later and said, you know what, doc? My knee doesn't hurt anymore. I know we're on a schedule for whatever two months from now, but I don't have any pain. And I was like, well, if you don't have any pain, there's no reason for me to do the surgery as long as you can stay on the diet. That was really interesting to me because at that point, I had done thousands of operations. You know, it's like another day at the office, just operation, operation, operation. And that's how, you know, surgery should be. It should be boring, no excitement, routine. Yeah, same thing over and over again. But that was really exciting to me. And I remember talking to the hospital administration, I said, hey, guys, I would like to spend maybe a half a day a week just kind of talking about diet and lifestyle, nutrition with my patients. And they basically told me, no, we don't want you to do that. And I was like, what the f. You know, what the hell is going on with this? So that clued me into what the real focus was on healthcare. It's not necessarily doing what's best for the patient. You know, I mean, it's like, we need to make money, and if patients get a little better, that's a nice side effect, but the primary focus isn't there. And so, you know, as a physician, you know, as a quote unquote healer, there are a lot of things that go into healing people. It's not just what pill you can prescribe and what procedure you can do on them. It's, you know, are they sleeping well? Is. Are they managing their stress? Are they eating well? Are they. Are they exercising? Are they sedentary? And we don't get any sort of real training on that. I mean, it's all. It's all, like, lip service. We. We're not experts in that, and we really need to be. And. And there's no support for that. You know, I remember all I could do, and I was seeing, like, 50 patients a day. As an orthopedic surgeon, you're ridiculously busy. It's like every five, six minutes, you got a new patient. And so it's like, if you want to have a lengthy discussion about lifestyle, that ain't happening. So I would hand out flyers, hey, go watch this. Go watch this video. Go read this book. And so it was, you know, that was not only not incentivized to. To do the right thing with diet and lifestyle, but it was actively disincentivized, and that got me really frustrated. So now the company we have now, it's all about lifestyle, and it's all about those things we just talked about. And the difference is just remarkable. I mean, the patients are literally throwing their pills away. I mean, I don't need this stuff anymore, which is. Which is cool. That's how. That's how medicine should be practiced. You know, we're talking about this Make America Healthy Again, and we'll see how it plays out. You know, I mean, obviously there's a lot of people, there's a lot of interest in this, but, you know, there's a lot of financial interest in keeping the status quo. Yeah, there's a lot of money made in health care and in the crappy food that they put out there. So, you know, you're going to see what gets tied up in the courts. What are the resistance? What are the compromises are going to be made. And I think ultimately, make America Healthy Again is going to come down to Americans wanting to be healthy. And it's just like, you know, you probably heard your other guests say this. Stop patronizing these companies that are poisoning you from the food side, and then you won't need the medications. And, you know, you can actually, I think we collectively change. Change how things go.

[Podcast Host]

Agreed. Yeah. I think just as an individual, don't rely on the government to change your health. Right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Absolutely. Of course not. Yeah. And don't rely on your doctor either. This is the other thing that's interesting. Let's say, you know, you go to the doctor tomorrow and you come up with some. Some chronic autoimmune disease, right? Say they say you've got lupus, right? And you're like, what the hell is lupus? I'm going to read about it. The doctor. You're gonna go to the doctor, say, doc, why do I have lupus? And he's gonna say, probably. He's gonna say, I don't know, maybe genetics, bad luck. We don't really know. And then you're going to say, what can I do about it? I'll say, well, you're going to take these medicines for the rest of your life and all we're going to do is manage it. So that is, it's depressing, but it's really disempowering, you know, because now you're dependent upon this other dude to give you medicines every whatever. Yeah, three months, six months or whatever it might be. And there's, and you're told there's nothing else you can do on your own diet. Doesn't make a difference. You know, there's none of this stuff. Just take the medicines and, and just kind of follow along. And that's really unfortunate because really what we're finding is when you empower patients, you say, hey, look, there's something you can actually do. This is something within your control. If you just fix the right things, you have a good shot of not only improving your situation, but literally curing your disease. We don't talk about cures anymore. When you ask doctors why, the answers are almost always we don't know, or genetic or some kind of BS answer.

[Podcast Host]

They're not trained to talk about cures.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

It's a shame. It should be. We should be. I mean, you hear about it, you know, you think about all the drugs that have come out on the market in the last years, you know, the GLP1 drugs, which I'm sure you're familiar with, the Ozempics and whatnot. What does that, what does that drug do? Does it cure obesity? No, it chronically managed it for, you know, shot for the rest of your life. I mean, these drugs are designed for you to take for the rest of your life. Why is that? Because it's recurring profit. Yeah, right. I mean, Goldman Sachs did a, a, a study a few years back and they asked, does it make sense, financial sense, to cure disease? And they came back with a resounding no, it does not. Wow. So there's no pharmaceutical company really wants to cure disease. All this stuff about curing cancer, it's all kind of a smokescreen for just, you know, more treatment. More treatment. More treatment. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

It's scary.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

It is, it is. It's a little frustrating. You know, it's a little disappointing that I, you know, I spent, you know, almost 15 years of my life, medical school, college, surgical training, to, to enter this profession, and then you get there, and then after a few years you realize that it ain't about what you thought it was. About.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Your whole life was a lie.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

That must have been a wild revelation for you.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

It was, it was depressing for a long time, but fortunately, like I said, turning it around. And I think we. I. Yeah, I think, I think a lot of people are discovering that, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

There'S some scary side effects with those. Epic. I know someone paralyzed from it right now.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Really?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Gastroparesis or little, like stomach. Yeah, that's pretty common. Yeah, you think about. And this is an interesting thing because I'll go back to the carnivore diet here. Beef. So how. GLP1 is what's called an incretin hormone. Right. So it's secreted in somewhere called the ilium, which is part of your small intestine. So you've got your, you know, your, your mouth, your esophagus, your stomach, your duodenum, your jejunum and then your ilium. And there's this concept called the ileal break. So what happens when nutrition winds its way through the intestines? It gets to the end. There's still a lot of nutrition that hasn't been absorbed yet. It stimulates these L cells which secrete GLP1. And GLP1 tells the stomach to slow down. To slow down. We got too much food coming in, we can't absorb it. Beef does it really nicely. So when the beef gets there, it says, oh, I'm full, I'm stuffed, I don't want to, you know, slow everything down. GLP1s do it like times a thousand. It's like, it's like it sits around in your system and naturally it's, it's in your system for just a couple of minutes. This thing will sit in your system for weeks and weeks and weeks. So that stomach gets that, that signal to stop moving. This is why you get the side effects of paralysis. So if you go to the hospital and you need elective surgery and you've been on one of these drugs, they're going to make you wake, wait three or four weeks for the further effect to wear off.

[Podcast Host]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

So that, so that's, that could be.

[Podcast Host]

A life or death time period.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I mean, it could be depending on.

[Podcast Host]

The surgery, I guess.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, I mean, if it's an emergency, they'll do it. But I mean, you know, like I said, you know, the reason they don't, they want to do that because if you have a belly full of food, when you go to sleep under anesthesia, there's a good chance that'll go up into your lungs. You'll get aspiration pneumonia, potentially die. Wow.

[Podcast Host]

So food's in your stomach that long when you're on zempic, it could be.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

In there for days. Yeah, normally food is in your stomach like two, three, four hours. Typically that's a typical gastric emptying time. And you put on these drugs, might have food sitting in there for three or four days. Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Anything concerning with trt, There's a lot of guys your age on that one.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, I mean I don't, you know, I don't take trt. I mean I don't let people accuse me of that stuff. Big strong guy. Yeah. I've never, never done, I never had an interest. I don't feel like I need to. But I think that, and again, TRT is a about a 4 or 5 billion dollar industry right now. I think it's over prescribed. I know there are a lot of people that will swear that they've seen benefit, but I mean I think the majority of the people that would often, you know, go into the doctor say I feel like garbage, my testosterone is a little low, get put on it, put on this medication and some of them will get a benefit from that. But the majority of them, if they just took a real solid, you know, period of time and really, you know, did the appropriate lifestyle things, not drinking all the, the beer and crap and then alcohol and getting good sleep and not, you know, you know, looking at their phone until 2 o' clock in the morning and actually exercising and eating, you know, in a reasonably good fashion. Not necessarily carnivore for everybody, but for some, a lot of people would not need to go on it. And I get a lot of guys that are on TRT that they go carnivore and they're able to come off it because they don't, they don't like injecting drugs. Yeah, I think makes sense.

[Podcast Host]

Have you ever come across a patient you couldn't fix their health issues?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. There's people that, you know, like, I mean, depending on what it is, there are people that are so irrevocably broken that a diet is not going to be enough. Now it's not that we can't sometimes improve them, but to say we're going to cure every patient of every disease would be, would be obviously not at all reality. I mean there are patients that will do a carnivore diet and it makes them worse. Wow. I mean that, that occasionally happens.

[Podcast Host]

I wonder why that happens.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

You know, I mean, it's hard to say. I mean this is one thing, you know, like I said, we're collecting data with our company. We're using AI to help us to analyze the differences between different patients. So we can see, hey, this person is really going to respond really well to this particular type of diet. This person is going to respond a little better with a little bit of this. And you know, like, like I said, I try not to be dogmatic about it. I mean, I've been sort of, I don't say pigeonhole, but I've been sort of cast as a carnivore guy. But I mean, I, I, and I believe that it's a good diet for a lot of people. But I'm not the guy here telling you that all humans need to be doing this and it's the only thing we are. And humans are car. You know, in my book I wrote we're omnivores. I mean, clearly I will, you know, if cavemen would have come across Twinkies 50, 000 years and it damn sure would have eaten. Tastes good, right? So eat that stuff. So, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, like sometimes it's like diet is part of the puzzle. I think it's a crucial piece. I mean, I don't think you're going to cure disease unless you address the nutrition. You might have to address several other things as well, but for sure, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Have you seen the human jawline is getting weaker?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, that's, that's, you know, thought to be, you know, this goes back from the work of Weston A. Price. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He was, he was a dentist in the 19, I think the 1920s or so. And he went around the world looking at, you know, dental health. And he would look at like these primitive or indigenous tribes. They had strong, healthy jaws, they had good solid teeth. And he compared it to the modern, you know, people, and they saw your tooth decay, underdeveloped jaws. I mean, people, you know, wisdom teeth that are impacted because the mandible doesn't grow, grow enough. And so what happens is when we start off, we go on a really soft food nowadays, you know, rice cereal and stuff like that. Instead of what. There's a really interesting paper. It's, it's, it's, it's about the comparative anatomy or, or it's, it's comparative mammalian weight weaning time. So all mammals breastfeed. Right. That's why they're mammals. Right. And what they do is they look at the brain size and they compare it to when they stopped weaning. And so what they can do is they can predict what the diet is based on their brain size. Wow. And so when they look at like for instance, other primates, like for instance, an orangutan breastfeeds the longest, they breastfeed for about eight years.

[Podcast Host]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

A human, like a wild human will breastfeed about two years. Now our brain size is 1200 to 1500 cc's. An orangutan is about a 300cc brain. And the difference is, is the post weaning diet that they go on. Orangutan is going to be eating twigs and leaves. Not much energy, not much fat, small brain. So they're primarily breast milk. Now humans, because they breastfeed for such a short period of time and they have this enormous, you know, brain compelled relatively, the only way it's possible they could do it is because they had plenty of animal fat. And you know, now these days, because we can turn carbohydrates into really highly dense energy, we're talking sugars and powders and things like that, we change the absorption characteristics. We can sort of, you know, circumvent that requirement. But back in the day, it's pretty obvious that early human beings, in order to grow their brain, needed access to high quality animal fat in copious amounts.

[Podcast Host]

Do you think our bodies are evolving because of all the new sugar and processed foods? Like our kids are going to be able to process that better than us?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Well, I mean over, over period of many, many thousands of years. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's, you know, there are like regional differences depending on like where your ancestors come from. Like, like people that, you know, lactose intolerance is a perfect example. Right. Two thirds of the planet is lactose. And taught northern Europeans tend to have that. They were probably exposed to earlier domestication of the cow versus some of these other, other regions, things like certain plant based foods in particular, you know, like, like grains. In the Middle east, you know, this is the sort of the, the, the agricultural belt. You know, first at Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates is where the Fertile Crescent was where they thought agriculture originally originated. So some of those people tend to have a greater ability to tolerate these things. You know, I would posit that all of us, you know, healthy, I mean sick people lose these ability. All of us have this residual ability to do well with meat. You know, and it can change over years as you get sicker and sicker. And then you could say even farther back, you can make the argument, well we were monkeys in the trees eating fruit. So there may be some, some context that that was also a reasonable source of, source of energy. Now again, modern times, we have fruit. You can, you know, we're in, we're in Vegas. I mean, I don't know that. I don't know what grows not much fruit here. I mean it's the desert. Right. So I mean, I guess you could. But I mean like you in northern Canada you can get strawberries in January. Now that's not, that's not realistic for, for most of humanity.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. You start looking at cultures and ones that rely on like a vegan diet and you look at their, their average height and their weight and there must be a relation, right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, absolutely. There, there is a clear relationship between population height and nutritional adequacy. So if you look at like a lot of the shortest populations and well, there's a great example in Africa there was a, I can't remember. I think it's the, the Hottentots. They're very, very small and I believe they have a plant based diet. There's another tribe and I can't remember their name and they were very much meat based. We could look at like the Maasai for instance. They're very tall. And so it's just, it just shows the difference between what you have access to. Like India has a. India is one of the most plant based countries on the planet.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

You know they've got about 28 of the population is strict vegetarian, but the remaining 70%, they eat a tiny amount of meat. They eat about 10, 15 pounds a year total, which is a small, small amount. They have tremendous problems with stunting. I mean they, you know, for. On the world athletic stage. For a country with now the most populous country in the world, 1.4 billion, their Olympic medal totals are ridiculously low. I mean compared to China, similar size and back in the 80s their, their, their economies are very similar and China dominated, you know, the Olympic medal counts compared compared to India. So it has to do with food. Definitely impacts the populations.

[Podcast Host]

Chinese people are short though, right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Well, it's changing. I mean it's, it's, you know, and I guess it depends on regions and stuff like that. But as they get greater and greater access to, to more and more high quality nutrition meat in particular, you're going to see their height going up quite a bit. Yeah, there was a, so this, there's, there's a prehistoric population called the Gravettian. So right now the tallest populations in the world are like the Dutch, I think some, like in Croatia or some of the central European places, they have these really tall population. The average Height is around 6 foot 1 is, you know, average American height is about 5, 9 to 5, 10, right. For male. So that's pretty tall. You know, if you go. If you. Have you ever been to like, Holland or, you know, northern Europe? Northern Europe, there's a lot of real tall people walking around like you're. You and I are both tall guys. And I walk around there, I feel like a normal dude here. I feel like a tall guy. But back around 30, 40,000 years ago, there was this population called the Gravettians, and they were basically specialized mammoth hunters. They were all over like Central Europe, Croatia and places like that and Romania. And they were thought to be averaging close to like 6 foot 3 back 30, 000 years ago when the average human size was something like 4 foot 10 or something like that. So these were giants. These were like ginormous people because all they was meat, basically. Interesting. Yeah. That is.

[Podcast Host]

They're good to know. When I have kids though, you know, I'm gonna get them.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah. I mean, if you have kids, you know, milk is tremendously good for growing. That's that, you know, there's strong correlations between milk consumption and. And, you know, heights. Same thing with meat consumption.

[Podcast Host]

Really? I thought that was a myth. The milk one is good for your bones.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

No, it's true. It's true. Yeah, it shows up. It shows up pretty well. Okay, countries. Wow.

[Podcast Host]

I never know what to believe on social media, man. That's the tricky part.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

You can go, you can look at the source literature. It shows, I think, I think it's. I mean, it's not like huge, like a centimeter and a half difference, but I mean, on a population level, that's significant. You know, I mean, that may be the difference between like your son being. Well, you're tall guy. So if you have a son, you know, he's probably going to be at least six, three, maybe your height, something like that.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. I did want to ask you about the stomach acid, because out there you were saying we have the most acidic stomachs out of any animal, right?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah. Well, we have among the top, our stomach acid, our gastric ph resting with no food in is about 1.5. So the ph scale goes from 0 to 14 or 1 to 14 rather. And 1 is the most acidic you can have. That's like battery acid. Right. So ours about 1 5. A lion is like 22 and a half a cow is like 5, you know. And so why do we have such acidic stomach acid? Well, it's thought that early humans were scavenging animals. And so as a scavenger you would come across a, you know, a carcass that has already been kind of gnawed on by like a lion. And you get some meat that's been sitting out for a while. So it's going to be covered in a lot of bacteria. So if you eat it, if you don't have strong stomach acid, you're going to get sick and you may not survive. And so this was the evolutionary pressure that drove this. And there's, you know, again, there's another great paper talking about evolutionary justification for stomach acid. I mean I can't remember the exact title, but something you can find, it's something along those lines. And they compare like every single, There's a study that compares the ga, the gastric acid of every species or every major species on planet Earth. And humans are among like vultures, not coyote. Yeah, coyotes. I think, you know, some of these scavenger, scavenger animals are the ones that have similar to us.

[Podcast Host]

Wow, that's interesting.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

Now when you hear about the alkaline water then to offset the pH, is that just BS or what is that about?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I think it's largely a waste of money, man.

[Podcast Host]

Really? They charge a lot for those water bottles.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

I think there's a lot. You know, again, I, I will tell you, I think there's a lot of stuff out there where people are just, you know, there's, there's this theory and there may be some mechanistic data, but what is a clinical outcome? I mean, I, I've yet to met somebody that's like put their disease in remission by drinking alkaline water. I just, I just haven't seen that happen. So maybe I'm wrong. You know, I, I, I, I, I tend to be very skeptical about most things. I mean I know there's like some of this stuff like, and I'll probably piss off some people like Methylene blue. That's the lady.

[Podcast Host]

That's a hot one. Or not.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, but I, I just, my prediction, and I may be totally wrong on this, but, but three, four years, nobody's gonna be talking about it anymore. It's gonna be like it's gonna be a fad, it's coming, gone. You know, it might have helped a few people in some situations, but you know, I'm, like I said, I'm really, really skeptical.

[Podcast Host]

Mostly I'm sure you've seen a lot of fads come and go in your day.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I, you know, like I said, you know, with the supplement stuff, I mean, I, you know, when I was a kid, you know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s and you know, bodybuilding stuff, want to lift weights. You had all these magic supplements the guys taking all the steroids would pose for and you think, oh, I gotta try that. You know, they never made any difference. You know, it was just, you know, like, like I said, eat a good diet, get good sleep, train, you know, manage your stress.

[Podcast Host]

How long have you been on zero supplements?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Well, 10, 15 years, something like that somewhere.

[Podcast Host]

Impressive, man. Yeah, I'm on creatine right now. I don't know how I feel about that one yet.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Well, creatine, I mean, I mean, you know, like I said, I think most supplements are garbage. Creatine has some good research behind it. It's been tested many, many times. It's, you know, for many, many years. It was just an aerogenic athletic supplement. Right. It would help you to be a little stronger, might have a little bit more for like high intense sprinting. You know, you think if you think about our energy system, so when we're doing a different type of work, like we're doing like a sprint or a quick lift, it's all the phosphocreatine system. So, so creatine actually benefits that. So a couple, you know, stronger lifts, short sprints. That's why a lot of people on a meat based diet will see improvement with that because you're eating a lot of creatine. And you know, I remember when it came out like in the, I think it was the late 80s, early 90s that were, that it started to come out. I remember taking it for back in those days and I remember I was bench pressing 225. I was hitting like maybe 18 reps, you know, not, not bad. But I, I, with creatine I was able to hit 24 reps. That was, yeah, this is back in the day when I used to bench press.

[Podcast Host]

Still a big jump though. Six additional.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

It was a big, it was a big increase. So I know it did work. Now, you know, as you probably hear, a lot of people are taking creatine for both brain health and cardiac health. And so, you know, I think, you know, there was a study that came out recently talking about Alzheimer's patients and dementia patients, and adding creatine seemed to help with some of their cognitive issues, some of their memory deficits. And they're going really big doses, like 20 grams at a time, which is a huge dose. And normally like the creating loading dose was like five grams. And you take, you know, one, two grams a day or something like that. And I think what you're seeing with that in that population is most of these older folks, if you look at what they eat, they, they stop eating meat, they start eating like garbage. They start eating, you know, they eat soft food because their teeth have all rotted out. They're eating a high sugar diet. They're probably overall body creatine stores are minimized and so loading it with creatine actually helps. And so this is why I again, there are a number of substances I think have some decent research behind them. Creatine, carnitine, carnosine. But they all come from meat. So I'm like, I'll just eat the meat from there.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, it's been fun, man. Where can people find your company and keep up with you?

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Rivera.com if you have an autoimmune disease, you have a menopause, colic disease, obesity, diabetes, go to rivera.com or in all 50 states. I am on social media, Instagram, Sean Baker 1967. I'm on X S Baker MD and then Sean Baker, MD. On YouTube and whatever else you want.

[Podcast Host]

To see him dunk, guys, give him a follow. There you go.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Thanks. Go.

[Podcast Host]

See you guys.

[Dr. Sean Baker]

Peace. Appreciate it.