Boundless Body Radio
Boundless Body Radio explores the wide range of health and fitness! We will be speaking with our amazing guests about the lifestyle factors that keep them at the top- low carbohydrate, ketogenic, and carnivore nutrition, movement, stress management, and so much more! Please rate and review us, and subscribe to get all the latest content! Let us show you how to create your BOUNDLESS life!
Boundless Body Radio
Pioneering the Low-Carb Movement: A Chat with Doug Reynolds from Low Carb USA! 532
Experience the captivating journey of Doug Reynolds, the pioneering founder of Low Carb USA, as he takes us through his unwavering mission of promoting the benefits of a low-carb lifestyle. A man who has been steadfastly advocating for the power of reducing carbohydrates and integrating healthy fats into our diets, Doug's insights are not to be missed.
As we progress, we journey into a captivating talk about the science behind the ketogenic diet and the metabolic process of ketogenesis. Doug's insights on how endurance athletes can switch to metabolizing fat for energy and how the reduction of carbohydrates can clear brain fog and boost energy levels are truly fascinating. Hear how Low Carb USA has rallied community support for research and clinical practice.
Finally, we contemplate the unique benefits that attending in-person Low Carb USA conferences offer - the opportunities for networking, the enhanced learning experiences, and the creation of lasting friendships. Doug reveals how he has harnessed Low Carb USA as a platform to enlighten people on the advantages of a low-carb diet and the heartening community support it has garnered.
Listen to Doug's formation of the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners, aimed at establishing a standard of care around carbohydrate reduction as a therapeutic intervention. This episode is a testament to the power of a low-carb lifestyle and Doug's relentless dedication towards this cause.
Find Doug at-
https://www.lowcarbusa.org/
https://thesmhp.org/
IG- @lowcarbusa
TW- @lowcarbusa
Admiral William H. McRaven's Commencement Address at the University of Texas in 2014!
Find Boundless Body at-
Hello and welcome to another episode of Boundless Body Radio. I'm your host, casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce you. Now, doug Reynolds is the founder and CEO of Low Carb USA. The original organization was founded in the beginning of 2016, with the initial intention of providing a platform, through annual conferences, for internationally renowned scientists and medical practitioners to present the ever-increasing body of evidence on the benefits of reducing carbohydrates in the diet and adding in healthy fats.
Speaker 1:Doug felt the education about the power of the low carbohydrate or ketogenic diet for the individual, who may not get the information from the medical team, or for mainstream nutritional advice, and for practitioners, who may be then able to prescribe it in their practice, was absolutely critical. However, his mission quickly evolved when he realized how important this was to the medical professional community. Doug realized that valuable tools were needed not only to provide hope to their patients to reverse and prevent disease, but also to restore hope for that very practitioner, because it is the reason why they went to medical school and got professional training to help people heal and not just to prescribe medications without addressing the root cause of the problem. You can find Doug at LowCarbUSAorg. Doug Reynolds, with an absolute honor is to welcome you to Balanced Body Radio.
Speaker 2:Doug Casey thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:It's such an honor to host you. I had such a great time in San Diego at the Symposium for Metabolic Health. It was absolutely wonderful. One of my favorite parts I can't say it was my favorite part because I had lots and lots of favorite parts, but one of my favorite parts was how great a job you did and attempted to do at keeping people to limit their questions when it was time for the Q&A. Sessions Could definitely tell this is not your first rodeo. You've done this before and know the tendency of people to just ramble on, especially with like personal stories, rather than just getting to your question. That was my favorite part. You did a great job.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. It's the part I hate the most, because I hate being the bad guy, but I just feel strongly that it's so important. I have so many people like you that come to me and say thank you for doing this because they've been to other meetings and it's just anarchy. I hate it. By the end of the four days I'm done with that. That's actually the one thing where I feel like I'm so glad this is over now. It's that people always say I'm so I'm sure you're so glad that it's over and everything. I'm pretty sad that we still can't go on for another two weeks with all the amazing information we get out and amazing people that we get to meet and talk to and everything. The atmosphere there is always amazing, but trying to keep the Q&A under control is a nightmare, but I keep doing it because people like you say thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you. I understand why you would hate it. I would absolutely despise doing that, but you explain it so well every time. It's like you've got a room full of people like myself who flew in on their own dime on a weekend when I could have been at the beach. I never even saw the beach in San Diego. I'm in this room and, yeah, this is my one chance to ask all of these wonderful people a question or two and you get the person who just inevitably wants to tell their personal story and rattle off their own cholesterol numbers and want medical advice. It's like this is just not the time and place for that.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah, I mean there is so much time. I mean you were there, you see how it works. I mean there's time at lunchtime and in the evening during the wine tasting and then the dinners, and there's plenty of time to try. And what's also amazing is how accessible the speakers are. Anybody can walk up to them and they're more than happy to spend time with you, answer questions, have a chat with you or whatever. That's the place to have an in-depth conversation with them, but not at the mic in the talk itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, I really appreciate that. I thought the format of the conference was wonderful. Having the speakers talk for 45 minutes and then immediately getting 30 minutes after that to ask them questions and think about things I thought was really fantastic. Yeah, like I said, not your first rodeo. I believe you said this was your 19th time. Yeah, you've done a really great job. I was really impressed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You're very welcome. I understand you guys used to live there. You just moved to Texas Corpus Christi. You're enjoying that.
Speaker 2:I am absolutely loving it here, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just a very different lifestyle affordable housing. I think I was telling you off air. That's a small town, I think it's 250,000 is the population. We've got six gates at our airport. We almost always come through Houston to get to Corpus Christi. You get to Houston Airport and there's five or six terminals with some of them over 100 gates. Then you fly into Corpus and it's like six gates very laid back Beautiful, that's amazing. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I came here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. You mentioned the housing costs. I was taking an Uber from the hotel over to the conference in San Diego and my Uber driver was saying like, yeah, if you want a house like around here, you have to go way into the hills of San Diego. You might be able to find something like small for like 800, 900,000. I was like, wow, that's pretty steep. At least that's like new construction. He just started cracking up. He's like absolutely not. Maybe like a 70-year-old home or something.
Speaker 2:At best, most of the time you get something to that price, you're going to need to spend a bunch of money on it to get it, sometimes even properly livable. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, you or somebody I have followed in this space for a very long time, your introduction was very, very much abbreviated. I've known about all the stuff you've been involved with, obviously, with your podcast, with SMHP I believe I said that, right, you've got so much going on but even just deep diving further into your content to do this interview today, it's just absolutely astounding everything that you've been able to do. I heard about this kind of stuff in my career as a trainer, as a nutrition coach. I got really fired up about it. I started this podcast and I look at what you've done and I just realized, wow, I'm vastly underperforming what can be done in this space. You are doing such amazing work in getting this word out to so many people. You should be very proud of the work you've done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate that I am, but then again, I have similar responses as you do sometimes when I look at people like Brian Lanske. Dr Brian Lanske he came into an event in 2017, I think it was. He had been secretly doing keto himself because he had been getting fat and sick, like his patients. On the advice that he was giving his patients, he had heard about this and he did it on the down low, started seeing some big improvements, but still wouldn't talk to anybody about it or tell anybody about it, especially not his patients. Then he came to our event and it was like whoa, this is legit. There's all these scientists and other doctors in there talking about it. He had no idea. He just got so committed to try to do something about it as well, which so many of us do. That's why I'm doing this now. I was just amazed that I had all these benefits and improvements in my health that I didn't even know about. What can I do to help other people like me know about it? He was like that.
Speaker 2:He started he did a six-week thing in his church. In fact, he did it twice. It was Sunday morning Then for the people that didn't want to miss church. Then he repeated it again on Monday night. He had 200 people at each session for six weeks and they all came back each week. On the last day I just sat at the back. I often tell people like I was like a proud father sitting at the back watching what he was doing. On the last day we had a few of us sitting on the stage and just having general questions and stuff that we answered. Then we ended that and said, okay, well, we need to give up this whole now. The people all came down off the stairs down to the stage.
Speaker 2:I was just sitting on the edge of the stage and people gathered around and I can't tell you how many people had just started doing it after the first week that Brian had done this thing. Now they come in six weeks later. They've lost a bunch of weight and the A1Cs come down and their blood sugar at least come down. A1c maybe not in six weeks so much, but even more than that was people coming like somebody and saying thank you so much for making my husband a better person. Just the difference in their character almost not a character, but they're no longer like irritable and grouchy and all those things that you don't even think about when you try to reverse your type 2 diabetes or something. There's so many other benefits that you don't even dream about.
Speaker 2:That was the first time that I realized, because we didn't hear it so often from our attendees. But when I saw this in this group of 200 people, how much of an influence Brian had had on all of these people made me realize what maybe was going on with those people that attended our events. Then Brian got all of you. He tracked down Jason Fung and Troll Collation and they started Love Cart MD podcast. I mean, they had a million downloads in their first year and it's like 11 million or something now. It's just insane. I often have the same reaction as you.
Speaker 1:It's like feeling okay, well, I thought I was doing quite well, until you hear about these stories.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, I grew up religious and so I don't really do the church thing well anymore. But that's a church I would belong to. I would get baptized into that church, for sure I'll be in Brian's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, granite hills or something Amazing.
Speaker 1:That's great, yeah, and it's so apparent too. You travel to these conferences and people are just so nice and friendly. And go out to lunch one day with Olivia Quadra and Dr Anthony Chafee and Dr Rod Taylor all of them previous guests on this podcast and they're just nice, they're just kind fun, amazing people they're just great people and it's like universal.
Speaker 1:You don't see many people that aren't willing to stop and chat or don't have amazing stories like you're saying. Yeah, it's very cool and we just appreciate all of you, everybody who's pushing this message forward. It's really great. So let's go back and tell your story. You have a very interesting story. With all of this, I believe you had your logo flipped the opposite direction. You have the food pyramid. That is.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you guys have video, but yeah it's, I don't know. I was so amazed at what a difference it made for me At that stage. I was maybe 35 pounds over what I should have been weighing at the time. That was the main thing, I mean. I was, my knees were getting really sore with a runner and I thought I was just putting on this weight every year because I was lazy and I wasn't running anymore.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't that I was lazy, I was just struggling and I was injuries and I saw knees and everything, but I was just. I was hating life. Someone sent me a thing about ketones being an alternative fuel source to glucose and I had no idea. I'd never even heard of a ketone. This was back in 2015, around July, and I started doing a bunch of research and I was like this explains like all the issues that I'm having now. And it even explained the issues of when I was like in my 30s and I was running these 50 mile races where I would get really, really fit and on the day of the race, I would follow Tim Noakes' cargo loading regimen for three days beforehand and on the day of the race, I would be standing on the corner thinking man, I can't even run to the corner down there. It's like ridiculous. And so I decided to do this and I took Pam shopping, which horrified her, and then I had a list, which she was even more horrified. But yeah, we went around as most people doing this have learned, you basically go around the outside of the store because pretty much all the stuff down the aisles is all cob crap and bought some baribas steaks and full cream, yogurt and heavy cream, which you really struggle to find in a little corner in this huge fridge full of yogurt, in that that's packed with sugar and everything. Anyway, it started from there and over five months we struggled a lot because back in those days there wasn't really a whole lot of stuff online about it, so you kind of had to learn by trial and error and five months later I was down to my weight of 160 pounds again and my knees had cleared up. I was enjoying it again and I just did a Pam like how is it possible that we didn't know about this? We need to. And I knew there was a couple of little conferences and that there was like a hundred people that maybe go there and I sit here like we need to put a thousand people in the room and you know, san Diego is a good destination in some way Like maybe people will come, and we literally built it in six months Like from having no website, no social media presence, nothing. The organization didn't even exist until February of 2016. And we put the event on in July and I didn't get a thousand people in the room, I got 350. But that was. I was really disappointed and people had to point out to me that in that environment and that space at the time, 350 was three times what any other conference had done. You know similar ones and so you know be proud of that. And I think what made me Become aware of how important it was was how many people were coming to me and saying when's next year, and other people that would come to me and say you need to do one.
Speaker 2:On the East Coast, and you know one of our, one of our volunteer helpers. They were just friends of our. They weren't even keto at that time and they walked into town that the evening we were having our early registration and they went to go and get something to eat and she and they came back and said you can't believe it. It's like there's people running around in the streets jumping up and down. They so excited.
Speaker 2:They heard them talking about it like just nurturing, about how excited they are, that that this conference is on and they're going to get the opportunity to see a lot of these people, or that the speakers were Like YouTube, famous, you know, type people, so they'd seen them on YouTube and now suddenly they were going to get to see them in person and they couldn't stop talking about it and these, in fact, I think that excitement was what got these friends of ours kind of interested in even taking a look at At this idea and eventually get on board with it. You know, yeah, so, yeah. So we put the first one on, we got convinced that we had to do one in Florida. So we went, we started planning it and put one on in Florida in January and sold a bunch of tickets to the attendees that were there like half price to come back the next year. And I said, like I don't even know who the speakers are going to be, but it'll be something like this, you know.
Speaker 2:But you can buy tickets half price if you sign up now, the next week, and that helped me pay for the event. I mean, we were in such financial difficulty after the first one that we didn't know how we were going to get out of the hotel, and people have very little idea of how much it actually costs to put stuff on like that.
Speaker 1:Can't imagine.
Speaker 2:This helped us, you know, because we were planning on a thousand people. I thought I thought we put it on and a thousand people will come right, but it didn't work out like that. So, yeah, we, you know, we were really struggling and we learned a lot of lessons there. So we went to a hotel the next time. That is the same one that we're still in now, but where they didn't rape us. Basically, you know that they understood that we were pretty much a nonprofit organization and that they needed to work with us and they found ways to save money and not charge as much and, yeah, I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars less that we ended up paying at the next conference.
Speaker 2:That, you know, and slowly over the years, we've been trying to climb out of that hole. That's amazing. We were talking like 19 conferences now. We've done mainly San Diego and Florida, but we've done one in San Francisco, one in Seattle, We've done one day one in West Virginia and then we did one in where I took some speakers over to Jakarta and Indonesia and that was a that's a whole separate podcast just to talk about that experience. It was just incredible, Amazing, Wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, that's awesome. You can tell the impact you've made, in particular in San Diego, because the local restaurants, anything around the hotel, they all had special menus. They knew what was coming. It's people are going to be making weird orders, and I really appreciate that, because living this kind of lifestyle, it is a little bit weird.
Speaker 1:Like I've been carnivore for four and a half years and I don't like I love the way it makes me feel, but I don't love what it does to me socially in like ordering food when I go out to lunch with my dad once a month. It's just it's. It's a little bit weird. And and so you know you're talking about bringing together all of these people who feel like they're in a silo and kind of trapped up against something that's making them feel amazing, but also something that everybody thinks is going to give them a heart attack, and so you understand that all these people get together and, yes, I get to see on stage somebody that I follow, somebody who changed my life and the life of my family. It's absolutely wonderful and so so awesome to get that support and know that there is community. There are other people out there who are suffering through the same things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, that's a. I think that's the thing that kind of keeps us going. You know, when we see that and we think, ok, it is worthwhile, it is worth all the stress in the drama and we really are making a difference. And I think everybody in this world feels like they would like to make a difference and when you can really do that, it's very rewarding, pretty special, yeah, absolutely OK.
Speaker 1:So we do have one thing in common from your story, which is at some point, learning that you can shift the metabolism from carbohydrate based to fat based.
Speaker 1:When I was using metabolic carts and measuring how people are utilizing carbohydrates and fats for many, many years, didn't know there was much of a difference. I just understood, as a cyclist, if I didn't eat the oatmeal and banana before I left, I didn't have the goose and the gels and the shop blocks and the cytomax and all the other sponsors that we can lose from this episode With me on my ride. I would bonk. And hearing in 2012 was the first time I heard the message that you can manipulate the diet and shift the body over to burning fat as a fuel source versus burning carbohydrates as a fuel source. It was mind bending. I couldn't even like comprehend it. It's such a weird story. So, before we go on and continue talking about your confidence, can you tell us a little bit about that? Can you go into the science of how how the body shifts from burning carbohydrates to fat and why that's so beneficial?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know basically what happens when you start reducing the amount of carbohydrates down below a certain threshold. For some people, a lot of people, it's around 50 grams a day. Some people need a lot more to get to actually get it to change. But what happens is that now your body doesn't have this glucose to to turn into ATP, which you need, which yourselves do, to create this energy that you do to live and move around and whatever, and so it starts trying to come up with an alternative, and what it does is it starts to process ketones in the liver, or fat cells. That releases fat into the bloodstream, which then get processed in the liver to to become ketones and this was the thing that I've never even heard of before, you know. And so the ketones can then basically get metabolized in your mitochondria and your cells and create energy as well, and especially for your brain as well.
Speaker 2:And what? What turns? What it turns out to be is that it's actually a much preferred energy source to glucose for your body, and that's why so many people report the fact that when they go on this diet and they start and they reduce the carbohydrates and they start becoming ketogenic, their brain fog clears up and and I found that like I can get up, I get up like really early, get up at 430 in the morning, and I literally walk in here and sit down and start working. I don't even have a cup of coffee and my brain's on fire, you know. And so that whole shift from your metabolism basically shifts from predominantly burning glucose to Burning very, very little glucose. There's a tiny little bit of glucose that your body requires for certain metabolic functions, but it's literally a teaspoon full in your entire bloodstream.
Speaker 2:That's, that's the quantity right, and the rest of it can function completely on ketones and what I've also learned fairly recently is that, especially if you're an endurance athlete and stuff like that, your body actually becomes adapted at metabolizing fat itself in the mitochondria to produce energy.
Speaker 2:So it's not only turning some of a lot of the fat into ketones, but it's then metabolizing the fat itself to produce energy. And glucose is out of the picture completely. It's a tiny little bit that's there to keep some of the metabolic processes going, but it is not there to provide fuel, and that's what we still struggling to convince so many people about. Right, because, no, we've been brought up and brainwashed to believe that you have to have carbohydrates and all that rubbish, to the extent that most of the doctors still advocate that and are insistent on it, and I still find that hard to believe, when they, confronted with all the evidence that actually exists now, that they still refuse to acknowledge that this is at least something that they should Consider offering to some of their patients at least, if not everybody has an option.
Speaker 1:Have a think about it. Like sit down and think like as we evolved, like go walk outside. Go walk anywhere around outside it's the end of summer here, like you could do it even here. There's plants growing everywhere and there's nothing to eat. You can't live on those foods. Maybe if you find a fruit tree you can have some. But how are we going to survive as a species unless we had a way to use a longer term or sustainable type of fuel, which is fat?
Speaker 1:And you described how the body reduces its need for carbohydrates. And we've known this for 40 years, 50 years. The George Cahill studies where he fasted people for 40 days and it shows how the necessity of carbohydrates reduces so much in the course of a fast. Really, it's like 20% of your brain red blood cells, part of the kidney, that's about it. The rest of the body can burn fat, can burn ketones. It does so quite happily and everything gets better. And I often lament that. That one study if that was in my nutrition coaching certification, that would tell you more about metabolism than almost the whole rest of the book. Yet they only have one sense that even mentions ketones and ketogenesis. Like it's crazy that it's not brought up.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm actually speechless. That's actually the that is. I'm so often can't understand how people just and there's no evidence for any of this said diet high carb crap no evidence. And yet there's an enormous amount now, more and more people doing studies to show that this is a beneficial to I'm even prepared to say, most people to some extent.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it's just not.
Speaker 2:It's not happening.
Speaker 1:It's really sad, but again, what your work is doing is exposing that to more people, getting people together. The content that we're getting from these conferences is top notch, world class that eventually gets released onto more public platforms are just fantastic. As you reflect on these 19 conferences that you've been able to put on, I'm going to put you on the spot and just ask do you have like two or three, maybe like favorite stories or moments that came from those conferences that really really stand out? In fact, I would love to hear even if it's an entire podcast just a little bit about the one in Indonesia. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we should talk about that sometime. It is pretty amazing. I'm trying to think Well, I don't know One super cool thing that just happened at this last one. I don't know if you were there for the last day, but one of the attendees that was there she's actually a doctor and she's I think she'll be okay with me saying that but she's pretty large and she's just recently come across this concept of the ketogenic diet and she started to do it herself and so she's just started her journey. And she came up to me and she asked to do like a selfie picture and she said I'm going to come back next year and do another one. And she asked me if there was any chance that she could get up on the stage at any time. And I found a couple of minutes on Sunday to get her up there and she basically said look at me and I just found this. I'm a doctor and obviously most of my patients were finding it hard to believe that I could talk to them about nutrition and what was healthy and stuff. But she and her friend are. They've started a YouTube channel, which I don't, unfortunately, know the name of right now, but they are documenting their journey over the next year and they want to come back and basically get on the stage again. We're going to put up a picture of that, picture she took with me at the back of the room on that first morning and it gives me a lump in my throat and every person that we that's just one person, and I know there's so many that we get to affect.
Speaker 2:One of the things I often use in my opening speeches opening talks is a lady from the Czech Republic called Pavla, and she came to our first event in 2016. And around the time we were about to have the next one, a year later, she wrote something on our Facebook page saying like I just want to tell my story, and that she had heard about this ketogenic way of life. She tried it for herself and found it very beneficial and, like the rest of us, she wanted to teach other people, but there was like nothing about it and Czech Republic, and she just didn't know what to do. And then she heard about our event, that there was an event going to be in San Diego in a few months later, and so she decided, even though it was 10,000 miles away, it was really important for her to be there.
Speaker 2:And she came and she said she was so inspired that she went back and she immediately just started a Facebook group. And she said we only had a few members. But she said I'm proud to say that now, the way that the signups are going, based on that rate, this coming Sunday we will hit 10,000 followers. And she said one follower for one mile to San Diego. And now, a couple of years ago I think it was 2020, when we did the virtual one, we contacted her to find out how things were going. She was up to 250,000 followers.
Speaker 1:Incredible.
Speaker 2:And we tried, but we didn't manage to get all of her before this event because I wanted an updated number, but I reckon it's not going to be long if she hasn't already hit it, but she'll have a million followers. There's a million people in Czechoslovakia that are being exposed to this now because of one person that came to our event, and stories like that that just inspire me.
Speaker 1:I've got chills. Yeah, that's incredible, the ripple effect of that one life changing all these other lives. And then one of my favorite things to hear about is yeah, I maybe helped the wife with something, but then I learned a few months later that the husband started doing it, and so did the kids, and they all feel better too. Like wow, I didn't even work with them. It's incredible to see how that ripples out. That's absolutely amazing. I'll connect with you offline and let's get the name of the woman and her YouTube channel. I'd be more than happy to tag that in the show notes.
Speaker 2:To tag it in. Yeah, my name is Dr. She calls it. I don't even remember, I don't think I've ever got to know her real name, but she calls herself Dr Cammie. Dr Cammie, and if you look it up you'll probably find it. But I will definitely go and look it up and send it to you. So, yeah, we can give her a plug for that as well.
Speaker 1:That would be awesome, absolutely yeah, so for the listener, that will be in the show notes so you can go and check that out. That sounds wonderful. I can't believe I miss that, as you and I know that Sunday there was.
Speaker 2:Hurricane Hillary. There was a hurricane coming, you got it.
Speaker 1:It was a mild rainstorm. The storm had diverted so it wasn't that big of a deal, but travel plans were kind of changing and mine were changing. I had to bail a little bit early and I ended up missing that moment. So that's too bad, but what an amazing thing to experience and to take again so much pride in that you were able to yeah, and the other thing is that thinking of that is that you have access to the videos.
Speaker 2:So if you go actually no, we got it, I actually got, she asked for it we actually got the IT guys to cut out their little talk from the stage, which has been cut out of the individual videos now, so you wouldn't see it if you didn't see the whole live stream, but I can send that to you. Oh, wonderful. And there she talks about their little journey, that they plan to go on this next journey.
Speaker 1:Wonderful Good for her for being so vulnerable about something it's brand new to her and she's just learning. That must be incredibly intimidating, especially as a medical professional, to be learning that what you've done up to that point. You're looked at as the most educated person on the planet and you're unaware of this stuff. To be humble enough to be able to learn about this stuff, show up to these types of conferences and then provide the content. Go onto YouTube and talk about your journey. That's wonderful. I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the one other thing maybe memorable for me was 2021 in San Diego, when it was our first event back, because they made an announcement that things were opening up again in May of 2021 in San Diego Maybe most of the country, but definitely in San Diego and because we have a contract with the hotel for many hundreds of thousands of dollars to put the event on. We can't bail out of that because we then owe them that money. So in COVID hit because that's considered forced azure, right. So then everything got rolled over to the next year. But now they have announced in May that they're opening up again and our event is now kind of middle of August, a couple of months away. Now we start scrambling to try to organize an event and we started to actually get. So I told everybody that had tickets that they could be rolled over, but most of them still didn't want to travel. But then we actually got from people that did want to travel. We got quite a climb in our sign up rates. It was quite impressive.
Speaker 2:And then Delta hit and we literally did not sell one more ticket until the event and we arrived with our truck and everything and unloaded into the meeting plan room the couple of days before the event and I remember looking around and thinking shit like I wonder if anybody's even going to come, and yeah, I things. There was a lot kind of winderong that the morning of the event and all the registration was going on outside and I was sitting at the back of the room at my table, literally buried in my computer, trying to sort some issues out and some of the things I was having. We were having problems with the AV and everything. The AV guy has a little timer on my desk so that I can see when the end of a talk is coming, when the Q&A is going to finish, when the next talk is coming up, and it was set to come down to the beginning of the very first talk and I looked up and it was like five minutes and I looked up from the desk and I could see the room in front of me and every one was full, everyone was there.
Speaker 2:And that was another lump in the throat moment. You know, like I got up on the stage and I struggled to talk. It's like I can't believe you guys came and again. I think it's all you're asked for. Three things, and I think all of them go back to the attendees and how important, how apparent it is that it's so important for so many of them, and the fact that they, even in spite of the Delta variant that was up and everybody was wearing masks and all of that stuff, but we still did it and people came. The people came. That meant so much to me that they came.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, wow. I think this community is so awesome like that. They're just so supportive. You look at people like Dave Feldman, who you know he's presenting at your conference, and you can hear a pin drop in that room Like everybody is just hanging on his every word, and to know that a lot of his research is funded by the community. No pharmaceutical company is going to fund the types of studies that he's doing in regards to cholesterol and it's being funded by the community because they do realize it's so important to support it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:Dave, and maybe, if you'll allow me a fourth one then, because that's one thing, that's not about the attendees and that was two years ago when Dave I told the story when I introduced him you probably heard that right. So two years ago, when he had himself found the funding to be able to do this research that he's doing and was all a big secret, and he literally announced it from the stage and that day and even put it out there that hey, you guys can be the first to apply to be in the cohort if you fit their lean mass hyper responder parameters. And you were talking about Q&A and like I'm always having to change people away from the mic because they talk too long and all of that kind of stuff. But I think the first I think he ran up to the mic, was the first person to come to the mic was Steve Finney and he literally like was gushing over Dave about how impressed he was with what he was doing. And then Eric Western came up and kind of at the same time and said something and Steve kind of didn't go back to city, just stayed there. And then they pointed out about the Agaston is very famous for the CAC school and Agaston's. It's actually called the Agaston school. He was one of our speakers there that year as well. So they called him up and the three of them stood around the mic that's standing in one of the aisles for people to picture it right and no one else came up to the mic to try to ask a question or something and the three of them stood around there and basically talked to most themselves.
Speaker 2:A lot of the time Dave was just standing on the stage and then they would turn around and ask him something and they just between the four of them and they had this conversation that went on for about an hour. It was. I told people when they came in the next morning and everyone said I said who enjoyed that session yesterday with Dave? And obviously everyone put their hand up and I said you guys have no idea how privileged you were to be there for that conversation.
Speaker 2:And the night it happened we all had dinner outside on the patio and we were going back in again and I happened to end up sharing the elevator with Steve Finney and he said that was epic. He literally used those words. He said that was epic to me. He said that's the best day I've had at a conference ever and I told the story when I introduced Dave. Now, now, two years later, when he's now talking about his results and that they're coming out from this trial right, and he said he even put a lump in his throat that somebody what's the right word that well thought of in our community thought that of him Meant to like. To him, too, that day was a special moment as well.
Speaker 1:That's special. If you know nothing about Dave Feldman, that alone will tell you everything you need to know about him. You're talking about the OGs in the low carbohydrate space that have been doing research and science and clinical practice for years and years and years and years, coming to the microphone to ask questions and chat with a data engineer. Somebody who came on to the low carbohydrate scene a few years ago does not have a medical background. That's how important his work is, and I believe you were at Low Carb Denver this year as well 2023. When he presented the preliminary data, the final data, just preliminary day one, starting with the data. The gasp in that room of all of those Low Carb people as he showed the first slide of the data that he was collecting was incredible. I could not believe it.
Speaker 2:No, he's doing some fantastic work. I mean, the story starts really in 2016, when we did our first event and he was just starting to do this himself and he was just at that time he had done a bunch of tests on himself and I mean since, for a while before that, he's taken a picture of every single thing he's put in his mouth, every single thing he's put in his mouth since back in 2014 or something, literally even to this day, like you see everything, if you, before you eat a drink, something you take a picture of. And then he was. So that day or that weekend, he was running around with this laptop in his arm with these graphs showing how he could basically totally manipulate his LDL levels just by changing what he ate Like huge swings in his LDL just by changing what he ate.
Speaker 2:And like how can people have created this with being some kind of marker for some kind of disease, when literally on a daily basis and probably on a sub daily basis, that you can change it drastically? So what is an LDL reading me? And it was like you see this, showing me the graphs, and it was my very first event, my head was spinning and I was trying to keep everything on the rails. And it was like Dave, like seriously, we can talk later or something, I go, it's just kept chasing him away and he's no, no, no, look at this, look at this beer, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:And how far he's come since then. I mean man, like his talks just amazing and so, and like you say, I mean he's an engineer. But I think it's the engineers like I've had comments as another one the guys that are really looking at the research and seeing guys, this is wrong. This is why it's wrong. This proves that it's wrong. It's the engineers that are the ones that are questioning it and doing a lot of the research to try to find what is the right way and I don't know that we definitively have the right way for everything right now, in fact, I'm sure we don't but at least the people are going out and actually trying to do research to prove what we believe, like Dave, so that then there will be actual evidence, scientific evidence, of what it is that we kind of believe is happening because of how people respond to changing what they eat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's at least starting the conversation right, like even at low carb Denver, when they would have panel discussions people would not agree with each other, like there could be cardiologists that would not agree with each other, but we're having the talks, like we're having the discussion. That's what science is Absolutely yeah. So grateful for those engineers who know how to see things a little bit differently and aren't so entrenched. That's yeah, that's really wonderful. Okay, so tell us a little bit about the nonprofit that you're involved with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the Society of Metabonic Health Practitioners how much time have we got? I mean, it's a long story about how that came about, but Adele Hype I have to get that bit in is Adele Hype? Without her, we wouldn't exist, and she very sadly died last year of cancer. But she was the one that was introduced to me to mediate a talk or a discussion at our meeting in 2018 about what doctors and practitioners were the experiences they were having trying to implement us in there, the ones that were doing it like what were their experiences? Gary Taubes is there. It was a subject of his next book and so he was on the stage as well and it helped him. Basically, it was like research for him for the book that he was writing.
Speaker 2:But she had written to me and said her vision was about eventually one day establishing standard of care around co-viral reduction as a therapeutic intervention, and one of the things that she wanted to do was create some clinical guidelines for doctors for implementing this as an intervention with their patients, because she felt if there was something legitimate that people could refer to that they would maybe not be so scared to do it because they were afraid that they were going to end up in court about it or something. And so she talked about standard of care being not something that they learn in college and not something that they get from organizations that they get it from. It's a consensus amongst the doctors with similar training and a similar environment, what they do in the provision of care. That's how the legal definition of the standard of care is worded. And so she said we don't want to fight with everyone else and we don't want to tell them that they're wrong and we're right and all of that, but what we want to say is that there's an alternative standard of care and that if you don't eat excessive chronically, eat excessive carbohydrates, your metabolism is going to be different. We talked about that at the beginning. Your metabolism literally changes. It utilizes a different fuel source and everything changes, and so in that case, the standard of care that exists at the moment for the sad diet isn't appropriate, and so we have to find one that everybody all the doctors in our community will are putting their names behind, that will give us that consensus amongst people that do this, that don't eat excessive carbohydrates. And she I mean I put 15 very high profile people on a panel that she then wrote the document and bounced it off them until everybody was in agreement that it was really to publish. And we published it on Low Carb USA at the time because that was a little bit existed and a lot of people saw it, but it wasn't the ideal place for it and eventually it kind of became apparent that we needed to have an organization.
Speaker 2:Trocolagian, who's part of the Low Carb MD podcast, the other half of it he was talking to Pam in Boca in January 2020 and saying, like we need to have this organization, dgn. I didn't know about this conversation at the time, but DGN needs to start something like this, you know. But I saw him tweeting about it on Twitter like I don't know, a month later or something, and I wrote to him and I said, like you know, what are you talking about? We're trying to do this with Low Carb USA and he said, well, yeah, but you know, what we really need is a non-profit organization, like for these doctors and that to belong to, they need like a home, you know, and like there's an AMA and the ADA and these things. We need to have an organization that we all can belong to and be a part of and that supports us in what we do, and so you know. Then COVID hit, basically, and so while I was at home, I learned how to create a non-profit, which was also even more difficult now because nobody was in the government offices and there were like a skeleton staff working from home. So wait times and stuff like that were insane.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we built it, we defined a bunch of. So we called Eric Westman was on our board of directors and heit was his idea to call it the Society of Metabotic Health Practitioners. So we didn't want to call it something of our keto or whatever. We didn't want to pigeonhole ourselves like that and basically anything that people can show with scientific evidence that contributes to improve metabolic health. Welcome to the conversation. You know People talking about light and stress and sleep and all of these things.
Speaker 2:It's a whole lot more than just the diet.
Speaker 2:The diets are a very huge part of it, but it's not all of it, and so we defined a set of different pathways that practitioners could become accredited with our organization.
Speaker 2:Most of it was quite a lot of training, but some, if they'd been doing it like Steve Finney, for instance, if he wanted to be part of our be accredited with us. We're not going to ask him to go through a bunch of training, right. But people like that, that's a clinical experience pathway and they can just write an essay that describes their practice and what they do and how they do it and asks for a few really successful cases and a few very difficult cases that they've dealt with and stuff, yeah, and then they have to do the ethics course and everybody has to accumulate. You know some what we call CMHEs as Continuing Metabolic Health Education Credits, but really translate from most CMEs that come from at least from these metabolic conferences. We'll count towards that. And then they become accredited and they can use MHP behind their names for Metabolic Health Practitioner and we have. It was one of those things like, oh yeah, and so we migrated the clinical guidelines over there as well.
Speaker 2:Now they had a real home and we launched this thing in December. And it's one of those things like I've done so many businesses in my through my life and big projects in that that I thought were brilliant ideas, and then you spend so much time trying to do it and when you come to it, nobody shows up right, and we were. I was really nervous that this was going to be the same thing, that we thought it was a brilliant idea, but did everybody else, and we put it out there in December 2020. And I think by the end of January, we had over 300 members and over a thousand, because people can go and register there in the provider list. We have a provider list as well, so you can put your name in there and what you do and everything.
Speaker 2:And there's a whole really fancy search engine that people can search for people in their area, specialties and all that kind of stuff. But so there was Anybody can put their name in there. But when, in order to become a member, there was a fee, and then we had things like we do grand rounds, like we get one of these great people to do a talk that's only available to the members we do that once a month and those are available to be able to accumulate CMEs as well, and so you need to be a member to be a part of that and you need to be a member in order to apply for and become accredited, and we had, by that January, we had about 300 members already. We now, just recently, pan I think you're going to do an interview with- as well, of course, the whole year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she is literally the last person that got accredited and so we got 71 people now accredited. We have tons more in the process somewhere along the line, like getting through all the training that they need to do or accumulating their CMEs or whatever. And I was like, wow, okay, for once I've done something where I thought it was a good idea and everybody else thought it was a good idea to you. So, yeah, that's been amazing. And again, more and more and more, we see how many people.
Speaker 2:In fact, one of the stories Pam often tells is one of the doctors sent a new application to be accredited and we go out and through everything. We made sure that she had everything was in order. And I, the review committee, looked at it and I wrote back to her and said congratulations, your accreditation application has been accepted. Here's this super orange badge that you can use on your website and on your communications and stuff like that, and you can use MHP as a credential now as well. And she wrote back and she said you know, this means way more to me than when I became an MD. Amazing, she said, because I finally feel like I can help people now.
Speaker 2:And yeah, you know. So, wow, okay, it wasn't just me thinking it was a good idea that actually other people are seeing value in it. And you know, we've got international people that have become accredited from Australia and a few other countries around the world. In fact, in two weeks time we've flown to Australia, we've been invited to go and speak at the Low Carb Down Under conference down there, but specifically talk about the SMHP and try to help, you know, get our membership numbers up, Because most of them probably have never even heard of it. But this will be a really cool way to get the word out to them that there's an organization that's got their back. You know, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. Such cool work. I wish more people knew that that. Yes, this is a great diet for endurance sport. This is a great diet to lose a few pounds. It's a great diet to help with the niggling like aches and pains you talked about. But we're also talking about therapeutic carbohydrate restriction. This is a big deal. This is a therapy for people and it's not being used, or if it is being used, it's only being talked about or used after medications, Sometimes several medications. This could be a frontline treatment for so many different things. It's so critical.
Speaker 2:It should be. It should be a frontline treatment. It's not even a could be. It should be so much suffering needlessly because people don't know about this. Agreed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the doctors are doing it. They can't talk about it. They're going to get in trouble like our mutual friend Dr Timothy Noakes. The trouble that he went through it's ridiculous, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Gary Fetty is the great friend of ours in front of Tasmania. Same thing Three years of being struck off, basically because he wasn't actually struck off yet but he was having it, was all going through all of this court case and stuff and so basically his patient numbers dropped off completely because nobody's going to go to a doctor, that's in the middle of a court case or whatever, even though they really believed in him.
Speaker 1:But it was amazing, he said, when he eventually got exonerated.
Speaker 2:Like literally the next day his card was full again and everybody came back.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean it's just. But those guys have a pioneers. I mean they've paved the way for others. And in fact, gary spends half his time now actually helping other people defend themselves against accusations, whether it be legal or otherwise, if they run into trouble where they're being challenged by their local organization or by the government or whatever, for advocating this for their patients. Like he knows how it all works now and so, free of charge, like he spends half his time helping other people to navigate the legal dramas that they're coming up against Amazing. But that one thing I kind of feel good about is that he's getting less and less work. Like it's, he's said, a precedent, and more and the more of these people in their cases, the more they set the precedent. And so these organizations are, even if they still well, they still all do disagree with it. But it's like they're going to spend all this money on lawyers and everything and they're going to lose at the end of it. So then they just stop challenging people and that's that's awesome.
Speaker 1:So grateful for those people who really led the way for us and that they're continuing to help others out there. So wonderful. I love that work that you're doing. I want you to talk to the listener who maybe is on the fence about going to a conference to attend one of these things in person. The listener is so sick of me talking about it pretty much every single episode. I'm talking these things up for somebody that's thinking like, well, I don't know, I don't have the time, I don't have the money, not going to be able to make it. What would you want that person to know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, we didn't. In the beginning we had a live stream, but we used to talk about it like a couple of days before, because we wanted as many people as possible to sign up for the real thing. But then, after COVID, we did have the live stream. Well, it was completely virtual, but, like after that, we realized how many people would still be able to attend these conferences if we made the live stream available. And so it's been a thing. And if there isn't a way that you can get to a conference, this is the next best thing. But if there is any way that you can scrape the money together, beg and plead for the time of and because it's not just the travel, it's the hotel as well, unless you're living locally in that city find a way to get there. Because we talked about it I talked about it a little bit at the beginning about all these people running around in the streets, all so excited about the fact that they were here at this conference and it was about to start tomorrow.
Speaker 2:It's that atmosphere that you don't and can't get from the live stream. It's the discussions and the conversations and the foyer, and we have dry farm wines at our events. We have dry farm wines, who providing this sugar-free, low carb wine, basically that we have wine tasting for with the expo, where people can go and look around the expo and the poster presentations, try a bit of wine, and it's just like this arm of discussion going on through the whole hall and everywhere. And then at our events we all put on like a special low carb dinner as well, which each night that we're there, and then you can people sitting around the table of eight to nine people and the conversations that go on at these tables, and many of the times you're actually sitting at a table with one of the speaker because they have to eat too, and so and that's where people always come to me afterwards and say I can't believe how nice he was and how easy he or she was to speak to us and give us input and stuff. Like in the end you're just like cooking their brains and they love it too in a way. So there's I don't know how many people have come to me over the years and said introduce me like this is like my best friend. Now we met at last year's conference and now they're like inseparable. They don't even live in the same state, but they see each other a number of times in the year and they always meet. They come to both conferences and suddenly, mainly so that they can hang out with each other again People you meet people in my connections and get the cell number of one of the doctors that's one of the speakers because you're asking about it and they give you their cell number and say call me back next week about it to something and we can talk more and the inspiration that comes from it and I actually you should go and listen to my closing talk as well.
Speaker 2:But if you haven't ever listened to any of my others, at least in the last couple of years, because I kind of use the same theme of Admiral McRaven and maybe see all who did a commencement speech for the University of Texas and he talks about changing the world. I think it's in Texas. One of their slogans is like what starts here changes the world, and he talks about his experiences as a Navy SEAL and how those things can translate to everyday life and he talks about and I tell I always tell a couple of stories he has his 10 lessons about if you wanna change the world, then you need to do this or that or whatever. And just before I start talking about this I tell them people like I put this thing on and I take the roadblocks out of the way for all of these speakers to come up, these amazing people to give you the information. But now you've got this information and I know I can tell from the bum and I can tell that people have had a good time and they've been inspired.
Speaker 2:And I'm saying the main thing for me doing this is to inspire you, because I can't change the world I have, but all of us together can do it. And so as you go home to your practices and to your families, take that inspiration with you. We can all do better and we can all do more, but it's up to you guys to go and be inspired enough to do that, to find better ways to work more efficiently, to get more done, and to go back, like I do after every conference. Go back and see what I can do next time for it to run better than it ran this time. And I think when we don't believe you've got any more to learn or we don't believe there's anything more we can do to make things better than it's time to check out.
Speaker 1:Well, that is a wonderful way to end this conversation. I think that would be true of everybody, but it's questionable if it's true for you. If there's any more that you could possibly be doing, is questionable. You're already doing so much and we're just so grateful for all the work that you've done and for putting on these conferences, and we know how much time and effort we take that back. We do not know the time and effort, the expense that it takes to put it on, but I think what you just said about being there in person is so true you're just buzzing for months after these conferences. So, Doug Reynolds, this has been an amazing conversation. Where would you like people to go to find you and connect with you in your work?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much. So, low Carb USA. Pretty much, if you just search one word Low Carb USA, you'll find Instagram and Twitter and our website and all of that the smhporg Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners. If you search for that, you'll probably find it as well, but the URL is the smhporg and it's lowcarbusaorg as well. Both areorg For the smhp. We've gotcom as well, but it actually just points to theorg thing. Yeah, and just start there. I mean, there's a whole Low Carb USA. There's tons of free videos and amazing inspirational stuff on there as well, and there are ways to get access to the videos and the talks from all of our different conferences as well. It's. I mean, if you haven't been there, go and check it out and find ways to get inspired, and that's what I love for now, and it gives me more pleasure to see people inspired to go home and do good work than anything else. It's amazing, yeah that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, doug Reynolds, thank you again so very much for everything you do, and thank you for taking the time to be on our show today. We really, really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Okay, thanks.
Speaker 1:And this has been another episode of Boundless Body Radio. As always, thank you so very much for listening to Boundless Body Radio. I know I say this all the time, but I really do mean it. It has been such a joy to make and produce this podcast and to watch it grow. Our business started in the pandemic in July of 2020 and we started the podcast in October of 2020. So it has been three years now and to see that we have generated over 400,000 downloads worldwide is just simply unbelievable to me, this year in particular has been such a blast to travel to different health conferences and not only meet some of our amazing guests, but also to meet many of you, our listeners and supporters. We really just can't thank you enough. As always, feel free to book a complimentary 30-minute session on our website, which is myboundlessbodycom. On our homepage, there is a book now button where you can find a time to speak with us about health, fitness, nutrition, whatever you like.
Speaker 1:We've loved chatting with people all over the world and many of you out there to bounce ideas off each other or to try to come up with plans to achieve specific goals, or even if it's just to reach out to introduce yourselves. We would just love to meet you and connect with you there. Also, be sure to check out our YouTube channel if you would like to watch these full interviews and also the shorter interviews on more specific topics that are taken from these full interviews. We've gotten really good feedback over there. It's also a really fun way to interact with people who comment.
Speaker 1:We read and reply to every single YouTube comment we get, so head on over there if you want to start a conversation and watch these videos, as always. If you haven't already, please leave us a five star rating and review on Apple. It really is the best way to make sure this podcast gets out there to more listeners. We've been able to keep Boundless Body Radio ad-free for three years and really want to continue to do so, and so your five star ratings and reviews are the best way to support us at Boundless Body and support the podcast Cheers. Thank you again. So very much for listening to Boundless Body Radio.