Recovering From Major Depression | Brett Lloyd

Hey everybody, it's uh Dr. Anthony Chaffee here. I'm here with uh special guest Brett Lloyd, who is a long-time carnivore and carnivore coach. He's now over 1,300 days carnivore and has a very interesting story to tell about his own personal progress with health and the carnivore diet. Brett, thank you so much for coming on. Well, doctor, it's a privilege to speak with you. I I love what you're doing out there in the community and uh it's great to be a part of spreading the word about this wonderful way of living and eating with you. Well, thank you very much. Um so, Brett, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? What what uh brought you onto the carnivore diet? What was going on before that? And uh what sort of changes did you see? Uh well, I was quote-unquote fortunate to grow up in a home that was a standard American diet by the book kind of a household. My mom and dad had an enormous vegetable garden. We had fresh vegetables year-round. We also had plenty of meat. Uh but it looked like the food pyramid, you know? Got your grains, got your cereals, you got all this other stuff. And out of the four of us, uh my dad passed away last year Mhm. I'm sorry. after suffering for Thank you. Suffering from uh type 2 diabetes for over 20 years of his life. His last 5 years were a nightmare because dementia got a hold of him. And this was all before I learned what I know about type 2 diabetes being completely reversible, etc. Yeah. Uh my sister, my little baby 6-ft tall sister, suffers from IBS, ulcerative colitis, uh still to this day. And my uh my mother's had a number of of if you can call them minor skin autoimmune issues and other ailments throughout the years. Uh and I suffered from severe chronic depression, anxiety, and insomnia for over 40 years of my life. And that's from following the standard American diet. I think I would have gotten sick sooner than age 15 if I hadn't been an athlete and was able to exercise my way just a little bit ahead of things, but I started experiencing sleep problems and mood issues around the age of 15. Uh during that era in schools, at least here in America, there were no professionals roaming the halls looking for those kinds of things. So, I was just labeled an angry kid and dealt with accordingly. Um I was the class grouch. You know, people asked you, "What's depression like for you was it like for you?" And I was a very angry depressed person. Mhm. I I was extremely dissatisfied with everything in my life. Nothing was good enough. I wasn't good enough. This could always be better. Why isn't this better? Why why did why wasn't it it's best to start with? And then it got delusional as time went on, you know? You know, Dr. Chaffee, if my family just helped me get this cup, everything in my life would be so much better. Yeah. And at great expense and aggravation, they get the cup and I would have it for 10 minutes and find 100 things that were wrong with it and why it was a piece of crap and so was I. Mhm. That's what depression was like for me. I also describe as it if you will, imagine what it's like to have a 50-lb anvil on your head every moment of the day. You wake up with it. It's weighing you down. It makes everything more difficult. You can't hear things correctly because you've got this thing on your head that never lets up. And you go to bed that night knowing it's going to be there waiting on you in the morning. Yeah. That's a lot what depression was like for me. Um I had a promising career in psychology in my early 20s, which I self-sabotaged. That was something else I found interesting. Here I was working with all these PhD-level credentialed folks, psychiatrists, you know, authors, and going to staff meetings, etc., and nobody noticed that there was something wrong with me. And I just still to this day find that rather interesting. Uh but I sabotaged that career thanks to mental illness. I still have to bear the responsibility for those things. Uh I was I my life became unmanageable by the time just before I turned 30 or just after I turned 30. And I uh checked myself into River Park Psychiatric Hospital in Huntington, West Virginia, where I was formally diagnosed with major depression. Yeah. And spent 16 days in there. Came out, they gave me a Prozac prescription and a whole bunch of samples. Prozac was very expensive. This is like 1990. Very expensive back then and I didn't have insurance that was going to cover it. Uh I took it for a few weeks, never really felt much better or different. Made some behavioral adjustments that improved my quality of life a little bit, made me a little more socially appropriate. Um But then fast forward to a few years after that, I'm living in Newport, Tennessee, and the doctor tells me, "Listen, if you don't go on medication soon, your life's going to become very uncomfortable." Because I started having panic attacks. My mood was starting to crater inexplicably. Um Got wrecked a marriage, got got divorced, met my current and final wife. Um Life got better for a couple of years, but still I was taking the Prozac. But inexplicably at times, my mood would get worse and that just started happening with greater and greater frequency. Um In 2007, I had a textbook nervous breakdown uh due to a familial event I don't get specific about. Uh I went for 2 months only sleeping an hour or two a night. And when you do that, bad things start to happen. Yeah. Uh my diagnosis got changed to major depression with psychotic features because when you hear children playing in the yard and you're the only one at home, that's not good. Uh my anxiety just got exponentially worse. Uh I insomnia was a horrible problem that we just couldn't shake. Finally, they put me on a drug, Remeron. I'll never forget this. I got to sleep for 2 weeks. It was great. And I gained 25 lbs or more in that 2 weeks because Remeron is such a notorious weight-gaining drug and my diet then was pure, you know, garbage. Yeah. Lots of carbs. I had always had meat, lots of carbs, lots of cakes, lots of ice cream, you you know, cuz I was told, "Hey, you're going to eat what we serve growing up. When you're out on your own, you can eat whatever you want." So, that's what I did when I grew up. I ate whatever I wanted and boy, did I pay a heavy price for that. Mhm. Um They got me to sleep for 2 weeks and then I went on another 6-week run of only an hour or two sleep. And then they finally put me on this combination medicine of uh of an antipsychotic with Prozac called Symbyax. And that stopped the freefall, but it came with its own problems because I would sleep 10 or 12 hours a night on that stuff. And then need to take one or two 2-hour naps during the day. So, it wasn't much of a life. It was just mainly an existence. Yeah. Um the uh the December of 2008, I'm like, "I've had enough of this. I've got to make Okay, I've got to start thinking differently. I can't fix what happened with the familial thing and life has to go on." So, I kind of talked to myself that I was going to be better. And was able to get off the Symbyax and just do the Prozac. I was on Ativan by this time. I took Ativan for 8 and 1/2 years as prescribed. And they put me on Trazodone. Trazodone did help me sleep, Mhm. but I woke up with a drug hangover every single morning from it. Uh so, that was life for a while. And I I gained a bunch of weight throughout this process and I was complaining to my wife and she said, "Well, you ought to check out this Atkins diet. I'm reading and hearing a lot of good things about it." And being mentally ill, I I kind of read every other sentence and I gathered, you know, "Okay, give up uh potatoes and and bread and eat a lot of meat. You can still have fruit. You can still have other things we should never have had, cereal, whatnot." And I lost like 35 lbs. And my mood did get better, but at no time did me, my wife, or my doctor equate the improvement in mood to the change in eating. Yeah. I thought it was cuz I'd made some mental adjustments and and life was going on much better. I uh wrote a wrote a faith-based album, wrote a wrote a couple of secular albums. I got to I'm a musician. Um I got to go to my 30-year high school class reunion, had a wonderful time. Uh although when I see those pictures now, I see how how big my belly was. That that's not real appealing to me these days. Um and and life was better, but I was still not well. I was nowhere near optimal. I mean, you know, I I I still had far too many bad days. Um fast forward to uh May of 2010, I decided, Dr. Taffy, that I wanted I missed ice cream and I missed coconut cake and I missed coconut cream pie. I I missed all that very much and I decided I could eat that and if I gained a bunch of weight back, why just go back on Atkins? What could go wrong? You know, what could go wrong? So, in July of 2010, I'm at mass. I'm a thankful Catholic convert. Mass is very important to me. And we're on our knees praying on a Sunday evening and I get hit with this overwhelming notion. No idea where it came from. But it was if you don't get out of here right now, something really bad is going to happen. And it was just overwhelming and I did something very atypical. I literally ran out of that church. 15 minutes later, I'm home, curled up on the couch, bawling like a baby and don't have a clue why. And from then to January of 2015 was just an absolute horror show. They started throwing meds at me left and right. Um seizure meds, uh Lamictal, you know, you take this, we'll see what happens. Uh you know, every combination of other antidepressants that wouldn't kill you with Prozac. And the same thing would happen. I would feel a little maybe a little better or at least not worse for a few days, a couple of weeks and then then it would just all go to hell again. Um My wife got My wife's job got transfer got moved to Florida. I had to come find a doc We didn't know anybody here. We didn't have any family. We knew nothing. So, I had to go fishing for doctors, which was a ton of fun. And uh you know, one doctor almost killed me with thyroid meds. Um Then then I found a nurse practitioner and she understood me. I I At this point in time, I was having extreme difficulties accurately perceiving my environment. My wife would say, "It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day, Dr. Taffy." But what I heard with my ears was filtered and twisted by my illness to where it would came to me as "You know, it looks like it's going to be another beautiful day. Great." "I love my wife." I would hear that. And it "Honey, what's wrong?" And she would look at me like the crazy guy I was and say, "Well, what do you mean what's wrong? I just told you it looks like it's going to be a beautiful day." My environment was always altered and never in my favor. So, what I was seeing and hearing was not very real most of the time. Too much of the time, let's say. Uh fast forward to January of 2015, I weigh I'm only 6 ft tall and I weigh 289 lb. I was on six or seven different meds at that time. Um my psychiatrist, the last one I'll ever have not named Georgia Eder Chris Palmer, said, "You should seriously consider electroshock therapy and or a long-term hospitalization." And I had seen ECT patients 30 minutes after they'd had the procedure and no, I you're not turning me into a an animated corpse. That was not going to happen. And I was very much afraid if I tried the long-term hospitalization, I might go in and never come out. Yeah. In comes a friend. I I I'm I I write songs. I I release very very seldom heard albums. I was working on a blues project with a lady, a really talented singer. Her name's Kimmy Wade and she gets mentioned in every talk I do because without her, you and I aren't speaking. None of this happens. She's watching me disintegrate. And she finally says one day, "Have you ever thought of medical marijuana?" I was like, "Well, as a musician, it was always around, but I had a bad experience with it when I was young." "And beer was legal. What do I need that for?" That was kind of my attitude. You know, I was the guy at band practice or at breaks at the gigs, you know, I'm just not No, thank you. I don't need that. But so, I did a little anecdotal research or did a little research and found anecdotal evidence that, you know, that's when certain states in America were legalizing medical marijuana programs and things like that. And there was anecdotal evidence similar to what we see in the carnivore community on in many ways that people were experiencing symptom relief. And my wife and I were like, "At this point, what do we have to lose?" Because I took my meds as prescribed. I didn't want to be one of those chronic people who kept coming back to the hospital because they wouldn't take their meds. I knew the titration schedules. I knew the side effect. I knew I I looked in I was a active participating patient. I did not want to be crazy. So, we secured 4 g of flour. My wife made canna butter and she made these little cookies, Dr. Taffy, and I the I broke the first one in half cuz they they scared me to death. I ate it. 10 minutes after I took it, I felt like a thousand suns had lifted off of me. I wasn't high. Just for the first time in God knows how long, I didn't feel like crap anymore. And then the high kicked in about 45 minutes later and I discovered, much to my surprise, that cannabis treated my symptoms beautifully. Many orders of magnitude better than any psychiatric medication I ever did. My anxiety came way down. My mood came way up and not in a euphoric way. I could sleep at night. I'm so much better. My wife comes home the first day and I have a smile and a giggle on my you know, I'm I feel good. I haven't felt good in years. And she comes in going, "Who are you?" So, that became a thing. I I I had medical marijuana literally made all this possible. Uh two days after that, I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, Dr. Taffy, put my shoes on and I realized my belly's in the way. Hm. And I have a moment of clarity and I go and see myself in the mirror accurately for the first time in God knows when. And I look like something from The Walking Dead. Pasty gray. A a a heart attack or a stroke looked imminent. I mean, it just I looked horrible. And I told my wife that night, I said, "Back on Atkins." No you know, got to. There's no option. It has to happen. And so, we I went back on Atkins imperfectly. We didn't know you weren't supposed supposed to pour the fat off the meat or I might have gotten better a lot sooner. But over the next 3 years, I started walking and I took my time cuz I knew I was at great risk for injury. Figured out, you know, walking the dog half a block here, a block there, and then into two blocks, four blocks. Well, how how far am I actually walking? And then I figured out how far it was a half mile from my house. So, then I could do a mile walk really easy. And that went into two mile walks and into four mile walks. And over the next 3 years, I walked off 94 lb. By the end of 2015, I was off the antipsychotics and antidepressants. In the 2016, I was off the Ativan. That was troublesome. The day after I took my last eighth of a milligram, I woke up with vertigo, which I had to deal with for 3 months. You know, thanks, benzodiazepine withdrawal. And by the end of 2017, I was off the trazodone and sleeping drug-free. Since 2017, I've not had any pharmaceuticals of any kind except for one run of antibiotics when I had an upper respiratory infection in the fall of 2019. I have been completely pharmaceutical free at 861 since then. But I'm still, you know, medical marijuana made life better, but it didn't heal or fix anything. Right. Uh then this same friend who suggested I look into the cannabis messages messages me in May of 2018 going, "You got to see every video by this guy named Dr. Jordan B. Peterson." Mhm. I'm like, "Okay." And I become an instant fan, you know, back then when you first did a search for him, you got the Jordan Peterson destroys collection. Yeah. Yeah. Where he just renders people mute with logic and common sense. I could watch that thing he did with that lady in in the UK over and over again and never stop laughing. I mean, it's just a It was brilliant. And I loved what he had to say about personal responsibility and telling the truth or at least not lying. Mhm. I believe him to be somebody of great integrity. And part of my 420 regimen was eat a cookie and go watch Jordan Peterson video. And I came across a 30-minute cutout of him on Rogan, Joe Rogan. Yeah. And he starts talking about how his daughter figured out that she only ate beef, salt, and water that her chronic arthritis and depression symptoms would go into remission. Now, if this is anybody but Jordan Peterson telling me this, that's crazy. I would have changed the channel in a heartbeat. That's nuts. Me just me Are you No, some doctor would have said something to me. Some medical professional over these last 40 years would have surely told me about this. But it was Jordan Peterson. And he's a man of great integrity. He is. Who I owe so much to. I Sorry, I can't even I I got to meet him Sunday and I'm still processing all of that. It's a very emotional thing. That's amazing. And so I had my wife watch the video with me to make sure I was really hearing what I was hearing. Oh yeah, he's really saying that. So, I start investigating. My next The next video I come across is Shawn Baker on Joe Rogan. And I watched to watch the dietary component of that interview 50 times cuz now I'm thinking there's got to be a flaw in the logic here cuz I did not want to get psyched up about something that was invalid. Yeah. But I couldn't find any flaws in anything. There was no logical errors there whatsoever. And then I heard a talk by from Amber O'Hearn that she gave at Keto Fest in 2017. It's still up. I looked for it the other day. Uh where she explained in a way this guitar player could understand how as a species we literally came down out of the trees eating meat. How we grew these energy demanding brains. How our skeletal structure for developed into what it we see it today. And I was like, "I can't I can't not try this." Yeah. I did a little more research in how to do it successfully, which I found at the Zeroing in on Health Facebook group with That's where Kelly Hogan and Charles Washington and all those 10-year plus carnivores hang out. And I learned only eat when you're hungry. When you're hungry, only eat meat until you're not another bite full. Only eat the meat you crave and can afford. And under no circumstance do you put a sweet taste in your mouth. I could follow those directions in my sleep all day, every day. It's not It's going to keep me from being crazy. That's easy. Cuz I looked at keto and I my my head just started spinning. You got to measure this, get macro that. Oh yeah. No, that was not No, I couldn't process that. So, July 16th, 2018 was day one eating meat and drinking water. And today is my 1,355th day eating meat and drinking water and I haven't missed a day in that time. Zero cheat days. None. On the 10th day, I woke up without joint pain for the first time as an adult. Now, I was never diagnosed as arthritic, but you know, I'd fallen down and gone boom boom a few times over the first 57 years of my life and you know, things kind of you know, I was ambulatory, but I had places that hurt a lot. My shoulders, my knees. I woke up without joint pain. I felt like a little boy again. I'm My morning walk, I'm skipping and giggling for half of it cuz it feels good and it doesn't hurt. Wow, who knew that was going to happen? And then on the 24th day, and I always get emotional about this. I can't not do it. I'm taking a walk. It's not even light out yet. And it's like somebody flipped the switch, Dr. Taffy. And all that rage and all that anger and frustration, shadowy darkness, what All the things that kept me from becoming the human I always wanted to be, it all just went away. Gone. And it was replaced by a waterfall of joy that has not left me not for one stinking moment since. And that's why I do these talks because people need to know you're not broken. Mom and Dad didn't make a mistake. You're not a genetic error or an outlier. You were just like the rest of us taught to eat things we never should have eaten. We should have never put those things into our mouth under the false premise it's healthy. It's healthy to eat all that fiber. Let's push fiber through at all costs. People need to know you don't have to suffer from chronic illness forever. You don't have to be a a prisoner to medication for the rest of your life. And that's why I do these and I thank you very much for the chance to share that my experience. Well, thank you. And And thank you for sharing that. That's You know, it's you know, people when we talk about these sorts of things, they don't they don't you know, they don't understand just just how huge of an impact it can have on people's lives or maybe they just don't don't think it's possible to like you said, you thought you made some you know, positive inroads and and and you know, mental changes on how you're approaching things, which is all very very healthy and very very good. And so, people say, "Well, that's probably what it was. Well, maybe you know, something else happened. How could it possibly affect their lives that much?" But you know, it's it is true and we see so many people and you know, that you know, your story there is you know, such a dramatic case of of serious depression. And And you know, there are a lot of people that suffer with depression and unfortunately, that number's growing. But major depression is is its own thing entirely. Um my mother was was very depressed during my early childhood. She got postpartum depression after she had me and was you know, basically just checked out and uh for you my entire childhood, it was uh you know, we would it was you know, dealing with that and she was she was very upset. She sort of let let a couple hints you know, you know, past the radar that you know, something was wrong, but you know, she really kept it to herself and and and since then she's you basically say she she was actually put on Prozac in the late '80s and she said if Prozac hadn't come out when it did, she probably, you know, would have taken her own life. It You know, she said it literally saved her life. And so, thankfully, she did get some benefit from that. Um but it's you know, it's it's a devastating uh illness. And you know, to be able to get rid of it like that and actually you know, rediscover your happiness, you know, it's absolutely fantastic. And I thank you very much uh for sharing that. And I'm really happy that that that happened for you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's been an incredible experience and it hasn't stopped getting better. Every day is better than the day before and I can't explain that in any It's something that has to be experienced. I It's something I can't put words to in a way that does it justice. And I I I experience every day I what I call effortless daily happiness every day. I wake up in a fabulous mood. I'm excited about what the day holds for me. I know I'm going to get to play my guitar for 5 or 6 hours. I know I'm going to get to take a walk in the Florida sunshine. And And suck in I I'm now a sunshine junkie. I I can't get enough of it. Yeah. Uh cuz I feel so good while I'm in the sun. Um I've learned about grounding through this way of eating and then that's another thing that I want people to know about. It's a natural inexpensive way to reduce inflammation. Go take a walk in the grass or sit in a chair with your feet in the dirt for 30 minutes every day and you're done. Yeah. And inflammation will come down. I'm sleeping so much better since I doing that. Mhm. I go to bed at night and I wake up in the same position in the morning I lay down in where I used to wrestle all night. I could get wrapped up in the bottom sheet, drove my wife nuts. Speaking of my wife, if there was ever somebody who's earned their place in heaven, it's her because she had to put up with me when I was very hard to live with. And I'm always grateful and I always mention that because I even told Dr. Peterson that. She's earned her spot in heaven cuz she put up with me. He said, "Well, I can imagine." It It's just transformed our lives. My wife is a month behind me in carnivore. I joke about she waited 30 days to see if it was going to kill me or not. Sent you in first. Yeah. Canary in the coal mine. Kind of like when you Kind of like when the male deer sends the the female across the road to see if she makes it. And but she noticed the wrinkles in my face were starting to smooth out. And then suddenly I she wasn't the skinniest one in the house anymore. And she had osteoarthritis in both her shoulders and in both her hands and in 30 days it was gone. Yeah. Just gone. And what it's done for us, our marriage, I mean, good grief, it's it's at times it's like we live in a in a fairy tale now. Yeah. It's cuz everything is so good. She's 63, I'm 61. When you only eat meat and drink water, you come into hormonal balance and all of your plumbing works as designed. Yeah. So it's like we feel like we're 20 without the stupidity and ignorance of being 20. And our private life is just beyond words wonderful. Great. It's just I I haven't experienced a moment of downside living this way, Dr. Chaffee, not one moment. Fantastic. So you wouldn't you wouldn't be in that in that camp, that recent conversion that says that if you're carnivore for too long, you don't eat carbs or honey for too long that you'll eventually get detrimental health reverberations and die. Oh, yeah. I yeah. I I cretinism and low testosterone. I I I get so frustrated. I I I coach for Revero Health, formerly MeatRx. I've been doing that and I facilitate two mental health meetings here every week. Um and I have had too many clients come to me saying, "But so-and-so said, 'Honey, you know, what do you think about honey?'" and this "When do we get to eat honey?" and I'm just like, "Ugh." Because people need to understand, you know, in my experience and as I understand things from getting to study from people like Georgia Ede and Amy Berger, yourself and others, Dr. Baker, uh so many more, it's about inflammation in your brain. And sugar's inflammatory. It's never not inflammatory. What What kind of game are you playing with yourself? People like me, if I if a spoonful of honey, I'd be in the psych ward before the sun went down. It's like rat poison to me. Yeah. I can't risk that. There's no taste, no texture, no social setting worth me risking my sanity for. Period. Why would you tell people why I think I know why that person is saying these things because they have a sugar addiction and they like making money and they found out they can make more money and enjoy their sugar addiction by saying these things. Now, I could be wrong. I don't know that to a certainty, but that's my feeling. Eat meat, drink water, heal. And once you heal, yeah, you might be able to add things back. Excuse me, but if it was inflammatory yesterday, it's going to be inflammatory today and you might be able to tolerate for a while tolerate it for a while tomorrow, but eventually you're going to be right back where you just crawled out of. Yeah. And the thing is too is that, you know, the the argument is is that not not that you can have some sugar or or honey or fruit sometimes, but that you should. And that you you can't possibly thrive or survive without it, that this is this is a detriment to your health and that you have to have, you know, a certain amount of carbohydrates every single day and so and you know, the best way of getting that is through honey or fruit somehow. But, you know, I mean you're living proof, I'm living proof, Dr. Baker is living proof, certainly Charles Washington and Kelly Hogan who've been doing this stuff way longer than than any of us have. And certainly certainly these other proponents of carnivore-ish way of eating, you know, they they haven't had these problems. You know, they simply haven't. And so when you when you look at that and you look at the huge abundance of populations both now and historically that don't eat any plants, don't eat any sugar, don't eat any honey, like the Masai, but you know, more specifically like the Inuits. They don't have any honey to begin with, they don't have any fruit to begin with. And all our ancestors throughout the ice ages, you know, where was their honey and fruit? You know, they didn't have it. And so if if you couldn't survive if if you couldn't, you know, thrive, you know, without and your hormonal health would have been damaged, your testosterone would have been down, your thyroid would have been down. You don't survive on low thyroid generationally. You can't. It's not it's not possible. You know, your children will get cretinism. Even if you survive, your kids your kids will be severely damaged by this and they won't be able to procreate. So yeah, I I don't know what's going on there, but I'm glad that you know, that that you're not uh dying of hormonal of hormonal damage. And you know, and in your in your coaching experience, you know, have you have you seen this? Have you seen people be long-term carnivore and then all of a sudden start getting hormonal issues and and damaging themselves? No, I haven't seen that out of anybody. I mean, I'm sure there's probably, you know, 1% or half of 1% of folks who try this way of eating and get so far along and then they discover some underlying thing. Uh I mean, cuz anything's possible. Mhm. Well, I I've learned, you know, there are no total absolutes in any of this and it's always specific to the individual. So it is possible. I just haven't seen it. I haven't heard about it. I've not, you know, run into anyone, you know, "Oh, I was 6 years carnivore and then and then my kidneys started to crap out." I have already I you know, Yeah. I've heard all the warnings, "Oh, your kidneys kidneys is going to give out on you. That's going to be what takes you down, man." No. Yeah, and yet Here I am. Yeah. How do you That's the thing that always gets me, whether it's it's plant-based people, dieticians protecting the revenue stream, whoever. You can't destroy yourself while feeling this good. How do you make that work? Yeah. I feel amazing. I don't I don't supplement. I don't take anything. I got an L5 that's pushed out a little far. It's not quite bulging. It's just an annoyance once in a while. And every now and then, you know, I'm a musician. I I I carry a chunk of wood around my neck for 4 hours a night and having fun playing, but my lower back starts complaining after about the third hour. You know, I might have to take a Motrin once in a while. But that's it. Yeah. There's nothing diet-related that is harming me at all and my quality of life is insanely good. I mean, it's through the roof. Yeah. And and I'm harming myself? Come on. Laughable. Well, you know, and and that's the thing, you know, we have I think, you know, Dr. Baker said once, you know, the uh you know, the plural of anecdote is data. And so we say, you know, people just say, "Oh well, yeah, you do that, but that that's your anecdotal uh you know, that's just an anecdotal reference." I I I don't really care, you know, like I The only thing I'm honestly, the only thing I'm worried about is my anecdotal experience. That's it. I really don't I don't really don't give a crap, you know, how many studies say what if I do that and that makes me feel like garbage and I do this and it makes me, you know, healthy and strong and and, you know, virile. That's what I'm going to do. They're like, "Oh, but it's anecdotal. You better better look at that study." I'm like, "Get out." You know? Like even you know, even Einstein, you know, he said that, you know, everyone tries to just prove things, you know, and they're just like, "Oh well, I have this proof. I have this proof. Look at this study and this proves this." And it's like, "Well, it doesn't prove a damn thing, actually." And even Einstein when he would prove something mathematically and then go out in the real world and look at it anecdotally and see like, "Oh, does this work?" No, it doesn't. Throw it out. You know? And because, you know, he was actually smart enough to realize, like, you know, Richard Feynman said one of his colleagues in the Manhattan Project was, "It doesn't matter how brilliant your theory is and it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." And so they proved all sorts of nonsense and yet it's wrong. So, you know, um that's that's the only thing I worry about. And the fact of the matter is is that, you know, you're healthy, you're thriving, you're feeling better than you ever have. So, you know, who cares what they have to say really, you know? Like they can they can, you know, poo-poo your your anecdotal experience, but your anecdotal experience is your life. And so, I think that actually trumps whatever little, nutritional epidemiology study that they put out there. You know, um that's one of the things I I think with the dieticians, I think a lot of them I think some of them are simply just trying to justify, you know, wasting, you know, years of their life studying things that are just just wrong. And so, they just they really don't want to have to admit that to themselves. And then, you know, they they just go, "No, no, no, it has to be true." And they and they really push the line. Um but, you know, I have I've had dieticians that I've, you know, debated with and gotten to the end of it. I was a a friend of mine, she was actually finishing her PhD in in nutritional sciences. And, you know, she's a PhD candidate. And so, she's been doing this for a very long time. And she was a, you know, whole food vegan, really pushed that angle for years and years and years. Eventually, we just went point for point, study for study. And at the at the end of it, I finally sort of, you know, got through to her. And she just just sort of sat there in like stunned silence and went, "My entire education was a lie." I was like, "I know it was a lie. Like you you've proven it's a lie. Like, you know, like this can't be true. This can't be what it is. You have you you you've proven it, you know? And and you know, you showed me the studies. Like I've seen them. Like this is it's wrong. It's just wrong. And like they they had a you know, a real real dilemma on their hands because they were about to go into, you know, practice as a as a hospital dietician. And they're like, I you know, but you you as a dietician, you have to push what's in the textbook. And she's like, "I know the textbook's wrong. Like I I can't then say that it's right, you know, because this is this is going to hurt people." So, you know, she she had that, you know, introspection. And you know, I think when you scary though because when you come to that realization, you know, you really only have one honest choice, which is to just get out of the whole field. And or at least, you know, try to try to revamp it and show people what what's going on. Like, you know, like like people are, you know, like there's you know, Nutrition with Judy. You know, she's she's a nutritionist and she absolutely, you know, is a proponent of a carnivore diet. Which is great. But, you know, it's going to be very difficult to get, you know, industry job or job in the hospital as a nutritionist when you when you don't push what the hospital wants you to because they have they have nutritional guidelines, they have nutritional practices that are just horrendous. And like I've written letters to the hospital services. I mean, guess how many of those I've gotten returned. How many, you know? Like I just no one's ever like I've had someone say, "Oh, yes, we'll happily you know, send this on and we'll get back to you." Haven't heard a word from these people, you know? But, you know, I see all the time in the hospital these people having, you know, trays put up in front of them. They it's just it's just sugary carbs. Like that's it. And I was looking at that. I'm like like that they're feeding you what you know, brought you in here in the first place. Exactly. That it's a false logic. And they sell you the garbage, they get you addicted to it through marketing and scientific research. I mean, people need to look up what a bliss point is with regards to uh carbs and whatnot, you know, in these products that are being made. You know, the almond milk and all that garbage. It's all designed to hit your bliss point in your brain to keep you addicted and keep you addicted. Yeah. And when I realized that, I mean, all sorts of dominoes started falling in my head seeing just this is not an accident. They are this is deliberate, willful misinformation and false it is. a false testimony that this is healthy for you when the exact opposite is actually the case. Yeah. And one of the wonderful things about this I'm a musician. I I'm not a scientist. I don't talk science. I only speak for my experience, but I can read and I can learn and I can do a little math. This way of eating gives you the clarity of thought to be able to see through the BS in a way that you never could before. And I think that's something else that baffles those who can't understand why we won't capitulate to their wisdom because they're credential. You know, I've got 65 initials after my name now from all these hard Look at all these PhDs and these master theses and these books, etc. Pay attention to me. I know what I'm talking about. But yeah, you can't explain me away. None of them can explain me. I challenge every one of those people. If what you're saying is true, why am I thriving? Why am I not dead yet? Why am I not having, you know, I was warned, "You're going to Hope you like going to the emergency room to unclog your arteries." It's Get real. My lipids my lab work, it gets better every time I have somebody pay for it. I get new lab work every couple years and it it My lipids are better than when I was a kid. Yeah. I mean, and you're telling me that I'm destroying myself? Yeah. The cognitive dissonance here is just it's it's frightening. It really is because we're bombarded constantly with the marketing, you know. How many drug commercials do you see? Do you ever see a drug commercial that talks about eliminating your symptoms and healing you? No. You never will. Yeah. Cuz we got to manage your symptoms so that we can keep making money every day, every month from you. And then your family. And then we'll sell you the food products, which are more garbage, under the notion that it'll help fix what the original garbage we sold you did to you. And it's just crazy. And all we need to do is learn separate ourselves from that. Take control of our health, eating meat, drinking water, or at least following a ketogenic lifestyle, which you can do with keto without being just meat and water like I am. And take control of your health and separate yourself from the disease management system. We don't have to participate in it if we're taking care of ourselves. Now, if you have an injury, you know, I I I have an accident and break a leg or something. Well, yeah, I need medical care then to set the leg and then I'll heal. Yeah. But outside of that, I don't need to be a part of the that system anymore. And you don't have to do so. You don't have to see a doctor three times a year. Yeah. How are you feeling? That's how I judge my health is how I feel. What do I need to donate a fee every year just to find out, "Oh, Brett, you're doing great." Well, I knew that. I know that now. Yeah. This is so disordered when you stop and look at it. Yeah. How do we get How we got here is just amazing to me. Yeah. Well, that's the thing, you know, we used to just you know, treat, you know, major accidents, uh you know, infectious disease. And that was that was the main part of the world was you was just dealing with with infections and plagues and and and then injuries, wars, birth, childhood, you know, diseases. Yeah, you know, pregnancy and childbirth, that was a major major danger as well. And then, you know, poisonings, you know, you get you get bitten by something or you get you you eat some some plant that would was harmful or you get stuck by something that was poisonous and you're dealing with that. And now it's all chronic disease. And you know, the history of humanity, we've not had these chronic diseases in the numbers that we have them now. Not not even close. Nothing nothing resembling what we have now. And we're coming up with new ones all the time. Like, "Oh, wow, look at this crazy thing that we've just never seen before." You know, doctors would make their name by discovering a new disease or a new, you know, anatomical variant or, you know, doing you know, uh dissections on cadavers and and finding out something different, something new, something we haven't seen before. That's how you made your name. And and in fact, that's how you immortalize your name because a lot of these things are named after those doctors. And you know, you know, we have a Colles' fracture. It's a certain way of falling and breaking your wrist in in a certain in a certain way and you and you fix it in a certain way and you you treat it in a certain way. That was named after a guy in the 1800s who came up with this, you know? And now his name is there forever. So, people really wanted to do this. And people still want to do this. And and they are finding things. And you know, we're you know, we we deal with this uh the hubris of you know, the current generation that says, "Oh, we just probably wouldn't didn't notice it before." Um but that's I mean, of course they of course we would have. You know, and and some of these people or even with some of it's that, you know, people that just just think that, you know, anyone who's who's, you know, over 25 is an idiot. And you know, well, you you weren't born with an iPhone in your hand. Okay. I just like, "Okay, well, they they actually invented iPhones. So, what have you done for the world?" You know, you know how to use an iPhone. Great. That's awesome. I'm happy for you. You can you can access all the information in the world, but you didn't create any of it. You didn't discover any of it. And the people that came before us did. And so, you know, it's funny too because some of these people some of these these people saying, "Oh, we probably just didn't notice it." are like the researchers and the doctors who lived through this? They were like, you you you're saying that you just noticed this now? You just started paying attention? Really? You know? So, yeah, it's um it's a bit shocking. And um you know, Chris Rock, I think you know, called it out in the '90s about what you were saying with uh you know, the the the different companies just trying to manage diseases as opposed to curing diseases. Uh and he said that uh you know, that's not what they want to do. They just want to, you know, manage your symptoms. They just Well, they want your disease to keep going, but they don't want to cure it. They said that you know, the the drug companies are still pissed they cured polio. You know, that could have been a you know, money maker forever just treating polio. So, they want to treat diseases, not cure diseases. Whereas, you know, obviously the the point is to cure diseases and to and to just prevent them from even happening. You know, our our genetics did not change in such a way that these diseases, you know, came up came about that way. And this is just this is just something we can do about it. Something happened in our environment. You know, these these so-called diseases you know, tripled, quadrupled, quintupled, or more in a span of of 20 years. That doesn't happen uh except in except for environmental exposure. And so, this is an exposure. This is a poisoning. This is something that, you know, if if it can if it can expose you to this and cause these problems, you can take it away take away that exposure, and those problems will go away. Now, maybe there's damage done. That can happen. But at least it will stop the ongoing torment on your body. I I tell all my coaching clients, and I say this in every mental health meeting that I facilitate, the objective here is to not get better, but to become well. For you for all of us to be able to live our life optimally, for it to have our brains Most Most people My brain never functioned optimally until I was 57 years old. Mhm. And it's improved everyday since that day my lost my depression symptoms. And you know, 5 minutes later I lost the anxiety, and 10 months later I lost the insomnia. And and it's never come back. Mhm. None of it has ever come back. So, this is in my mind, and you know, my wife's symptoms have never come back. No. And we're just eating. We're not We're not taking any medicines. We're not you know, no need to supplement. We're not doing some kind of weird voodoo dance at at 3:00 in 3:00 a.m. every night around a campfire. We're just doing what ancestral man did. What did our ancestors 100,000 years ago go do? They ate meat. Yeah. That was it. There was no seasonal vegetables. I mean, seriously, you know, people don't understand all these these vegetables that we have today, they've been genetically modified to be what they are. And so that they're more easily marketed, and they more sweetness in them. So, hey, we can hook you that way. Yeah. It's just so crazy to think of 100,000 years ago we slept on the ground, we ate on the ground, we were always grounded. We were always in touch. And then synthetic footwear came out, and everybody got insulated. And then if you stop and look, I think you'll find some correlation between when the disease started to pick up. The further and further we move away from these ancestral truths, the worse off we become. It's just so much has been repressed, Dr. Chaffee. We need to keep getting the word out because as uh Dr. Baker always says, we're going to win this war from the ground up. Yeah. Not from the top down. No. Not going to happen that way. No. No, the top the top's too comfortable being at the top. Yeah. with too much power. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, if they were they were smart, they'd start, you know, looking around and saying, "Well, how can we you know, how can we you know, change the you know, the the the the health care model to facilitate this and actually help people, but all actually turn a profit?" I mean, that that would be great. You know, Dr. Baker is is looking at at you know, uh expanding Rivero, which I think is fantastic because, you know, it's it's a it's a it's a model that that people are going to get behind because once they find out that that you can actually get well, and you don't need to suffer with with chronic diseases and just take medications and get surgeries for the rest of your life, of course people are going to want to do that. You know, and so maybe it's not the same profit model as all these interventions and all these horrifically expensive drugs, but you're also not putting in $2 billion on R&D either. You know, and you can you can put those big brains to use doing something useful and doing something that's actually going to benefit society and benefit humanity and and make money on it. And I'm all for that. I you know, I'm I'm all for the you know, the the incentive model of of you earning something. But you know, do it the right way. You know, do it do it doing something that that's profitable that's profitable for people as opposed to just snake oil. You know, you don't have to sell a con in order to get rich. You know, look at Rockefeller. I know Some people have problems with Rockefeller, but look at how he got he made money. He, you know, became vastly wealthy by making kerosene cheaper. You know, he said he wanted to get the price of kerosene down so low by all these different tricks in manufacturing and refining that everyone in America, every household in America could afford kerosene. That was very important to him. And he was able to do it. And because he was able to do that, every household in America was buying kerosene from him. So, he became fabulously wealthy. And he did it the right way. The people that have been, you know, the wealthiest have provided the most benefit for people. You know, and and then maybe they just go crazy at the end of it, you know, like like uh you know, Bill Gates trying to you know, black out the sun with you know, with with uh you know, like Jesus. Like, what are you doing? Like that's that's literally how every every extinction episode in the history of the Earth happened. You know, some volcano or or asteroid hits the Earth and just pops up a cloud of dust and shuts off the energy from the sun. It just everything dies off. Like, why would you want to replicate that? Bill Gates is so disturbingly disordered it it it's just beyond words. Like, and and then, you know, what rational person is going to look at him and think, "I need to take dietary advice from this man." Yeah. And and you know, the thing is, too, is that you know, for all the all the talk about fake meat and and everything like that, I have been I have been grow up uh near where Bill Gates lives. And I actually know for a fact he goes to Ruth's Chris Steak House in Bellevue all the time. All the time. Okay? He's not eating that synthetic meat, is he? know he's not eating that nonsense, you know? He's like, "That's for you." Like, he's he's keeping the steaks for him. You know? Yeah, I mean, you know, he's the largest, you know, owner of farmland in America now. So, you know, single person. So, you know, I'm sure he'll have a ranch for his own cattle. Oh, no doubt. He's probably got three or four already. Yeah. And it it's so ridiculous. And the scary thing to me, Dr. Chaffee, is how easily Mhm. and how much younger people are swayed to believe these things because they are so inflamed all the time. And I don't know about how it is for you, but I have a harder time talking to people with what I call sugar brain. Mhm. Because they they're not They're not always very logical. Yeah. And and you've got to really listen closely to figure out what what they mean when they say things that you're like on the surface like, "Well, that's kind of nuts." Yeah. And at first I thought it was just my hubris at play. But no, it's really not that, you know? And it kind of My wife and I figured out all those years before cell phones. Why would people sit at a green light and not step on the gas? We figured it out. It's brain fog. Yeah. People are in a fog. How would they know? I I mean, I was guilty of it. And this is before cell phones, you know? Now everybody wants to blame everything except on what is really going on. Cuz jeez, we then we'd have to hold people responsible. Uh It it it's it's it's and it has gotten so much worse. And you know, earlier, mental illness used to be so rare Mhm. that if somebody came down with something, you know, schizophrenic might show up in a village somewhere, they were treated as if they were holy. Mhm. Because it was so rare and special, and they were considered to be touched. Mhm. And and and and in a lot of societies. It it It's And now, you know, who do we know that hasn't had a bout of mental illness? Or doesn't have three or four or five relatives who dealing with mental illness every day? Yeah. It used to be All this Alzheimer's used to be rare cuz who could afford to eat all that sugar? Uh you know? Yeah. So, so so now you're saying you're just meat and water. Is that right? Absolu- Absolutely. I only consumed meat and water for 1,355 straight days and I have had no inclination to ever deviate from that. Any any particular cuts or or animals that you that you prefer? I started out eating a variety of meats, but I always had bacon because when I was researching this, I discovered the biggest number one complaint for people who failed at the beginning is I got tired of just eating meat. And bacon had never been my favorite meat, but I realized there was never a meal with that bacon was on the plate that I didn't enjoy. So, I made sure I would always have two meats and one of them would always be bacon. Bacon goes great with everything. With shrimp, with fish, with short pork pork shoulder roast. Uh I had My wife would get these big chunks of London broil and cut those up into steaks in the beginning. Uh I gave up eggs after the second week because they stopped being satisfying. I haven't had eggs since July of 2018. I also haven't had a headache since July of 2018. Oh, nice. That's pretty crazy. Uh but in December of 2018, I discovered I let my intuition lead me, which is something else I encourage people to do. Spend less time up here. Trust your gut. It will never mislead you. And I discovered these rolls of 20 or excuse me, 90/10 ground beef and they just jumped out at me. Pick me up. Look at me. And I did and I told my wife, I said, I need to take one of these home and eat it. Yeah. And I knew after the second bite, this is what I've been looking for all along. It was satisfying. I am not just full. I don't just eat to satiation. I am satisfied. Every meal is very satisfying. I'm I'm full. I'm contented. And then that's when my healing really would kind of went into turbo mode after that. Nice. Because my body was finally getting what it had been looking for all along. And that's what I encourage people to do. You know, you're not sure what kind of meat you crave or what your body is really wanting, go to the biggest meat department in your area and look around, turn your intellect off, and listen to your body and see what jumps out at you. And inevitably when people do that, they end up finding a type of meat, whether it's pork, fish, whatever. I don't care. We know red meat tends to heal people more, but people have gotten better on fish. People have gotten better on pork, you know, whatever works for you, whatever you can afford. It's all like Dr. Baker says, it's always going to be better to eat pork or fish or whatever than to eat ice cream. Yeah. Well, that's you know, that's what I tell people, you know, like they were what what sort of meat and what is it? I'm like, well, I like beef. I prefer beef. That's what makes me feel the best. That's what gives me the best energy. And you know, I you know, like yourself, you know, I've been sort of on the sharp end of this for for a number of years where I can I can tell the difference between different meats. And you know, I feel better on beef than I do on, you know, eggs and bacon. I just do. And or lamb even and chicken certainly chicken. And but like um you know, but but then you know, I talked to people and they say like, well, you know, what should I eat and what should I do? I was like, look, you know, any any of these meats are good. You just do like you know, Baker says, you know, the the meat that you enjoy, makes you feel the best and you can afford because you know, whatever meat you're eating that is going to be good for you. And and all plants, every plant is bad for you. All meat is good for you. So, it really doesn't matter. So, as long as you don't eat don't eat plants and and you avoid that. So, that's why I put the the impetus on what not to eat as opposed to what to eat. And you know, if people want to eat, you know, little things here and there. I know Charles Washington, you know, says that you want to put some seasonings or or or sauces or whatever, if that can keep you eating meat and and keep you interested, then go for it. I I don't have a problem with that. Um I talk about things in in respect to what I believe is optimal and what I believe is is the is the you know, the best way of of healing your body and and living. And then if you want to do something outside of that, then do it. I I really don't care. It's just, you know, this this is what I've found to be the best way you can do it. And if that's something that you like, if you like being optimal, then then go for it. And I mean, that's how I like to live, you know, so you know, so you know, um you know, it it's to do with the like the the fruit and honey. If you want to eat fruit and honey, like go for it. I just caution people because, you know, fruit and honey have sugar and and you know, fructose is addictive. It is a drug and it will be addictive to you. And a little bit of honey fruit and honey can turn into a lot of fruit and honey real quick. And then all of a sudden you just do you're carb craving and you you start eating other things and you and you slip off the wagon. I've I've spoken to so many people um about this. You know, the last time I was on with with Dr. Baker, um it must have been a year or more ago. And we were talking about that and you know, he sort of asked me he's like, you know, is there anything anything going on that you want to talk about? I'm like, yes, actually. There's there's a lot of people talking about, you know, how you should start eating, you know, you know, fruit and honey. And I think I think that's wild, you know, and and we just went into it. You know, all the reasons why and it's you know, just all the the the hard data behind it. Like we have we have very strong evidence. It's it's probably one of the stronger pieces of our bodies of evidence that we have in in the nutritional sciences, but it's but it's actual biochemistry. You know, we have we have actual biochemical evidence behind this. And you know, and then you know, you know, human models, human studies with you know, controlled humans tri- studies that that actually meet the criteria for causation between fructose and metabolic syndrome. Okay? So, you know, and and maybe you say, well, well, the the fructose from fruit and honey, well, well, that's good for you though. Like like based on what? Like, you know, what hard evidence do you have to say that? You know, that's that's you know, Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite writers and thinkers of just all time. I think he's just most brilliant brilliant and well-developed thinker that America has ever produced, certainly. And and that's one of the you know, he has three sort of questions, you know, to to like check something against. And one of those is, what hard evidence do you have? You know, and then compared to what? And at what cost? You want to do this? Okay, what's it going to cost you? Well, you know, if if it just saves one life, then it's worth it. Well, no, actually, because you've actually killed 500,000 other people by saving that one life from this thing that you're you're worried about, but you don't look at those costs. And you're comparing things to you're comparing apples to oranges and you have no hard evidence. So, you know, you have to ask these things. You have to test these ideas. When someone puts something towards you, even if you even if you want to agree with it, you have to test these things. You have to ask these things. You have to try to disprove them. That's what science really is. People don't get that. Well, trust the science. No, that's that's a nonsense. You know, you don't trust the science. You try to disprove your theory. That is science. And you try to you try to create studies and trials in order to disprove your idea because if you can't disprove it, well, well, then you know, you're in pretty good footing, you know? But they don't try to do that. They try to they they try to cherry-pick and and lie and hide the truth so that whatever they're pushing can look good. But what you have to do is you have to try to disprove it. And so, there is no trusting this. I don't trust [ __ ] You know, I absolutely I was listening to that you talk about that stuff and I you know, real science questions everything endlessly. It never stops questioning. Yeah. And this you know, that's why that this follow the science except this is you know, uh the science the science is certain. No, it's never certain. There's only few things that are certain like 1 + 1 is always going to equal two. Yeah. That's a certainty. That's a rare thing. Well, unless unless you're a Harvard Harvard professor of mathematics and somehow they And then the other thing is Ken Berry put out this thing a few years ago that just always just kills me when I think about it. It's a picture of a fructose molecule next to a sucrose molecule. And he said, point out the difference. Show me which one is healthy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're identical. They're identical. Yeah. They did you know, and you're going to say that fruc- fructose is better for you? Are you serious? There's no way you can make that argument. I'm not a medical anything and I can see the the disordered thinking in that. Yeah. Well, I think that was it it was like here's the the fructose molecule from fruit or honey and here's the one from high fructose corn syrup and it's like, which one of these is good for you? It's like, hmm. Yeah. Well, that's it. Yeah. Well, that and that and that's it, you know, you say uh that well, well, maybe in in you know, in honey it's good for you then. Okay, well, maybe, but like you actually you actually have to prove that, you know, or or at least provide some semblance of of of evidence for it. And you know, the body of evidence right now shows that it's not good for you. And that that chemical is harmful, you know, there's you know, cyanide is bad for you. Well, maybe the cyanide in almonds is good for you. Well, you don't know. Like I'm yeah, maybe, you know, but like you're going to have to you're going to have to actually do some work and actually show that before, you know, you you you get me to eat a lethal dose of cyanide from those stupid almonds. You know, or or or cassava melon, you know, well, maybe, you know, people oh, so many people eat cassava melon. Yeah, and they do it very carefully and if they don't, they die. Okay? So, well, but maybe yeah, yeah, maybe, but you know, prove it, buddy, you know, it's on you. Um you know, a lot of people say it's like oh, it's very restrictive and I you know, I get I get you people saying uh well, people who watch my videos by and large actually you know, you know, it seem seem you know, quite positive in in my approach, which is like you know, just just give it a try. You will actually feel so much better when you just get the last bits out of your system. And so, a lot of people have been encouraged to try that and then they all report back to me like wow, actually I I didn't realize it, but it's actually made a huge difference and I I you know, I'm really happy when people can do that. Not everybody can. That's fine, you know, but it's it's nice when people can and they can see how much benefit that is. And then some people sort of see a bit of bit of stuff or on someone else's show and they just go oh, I don't like that. It's too restrictive. He's just going to push people away from it. I'm like well, first of all, I've never said that you have to do this or nothing. I never said that, you know, it's it's my you know, it's it's all or all or nothing and like you you have to everything strict strict strict or you know, you're you're not allowed to eat any meat at all. You have to be a you know, a whole food vegetarian vegan. You know, I don't say that. I just tell people what I think is is a good way of doing it and and they can they can do whatever they want. But a lot of people talk about how restrictive it is. Um and you know, I think that um you know, that it I you know, I think that it it actually allows you to I think it makes it so much simpler. It it just allows you to just be in this moment. You're just eating meat. You're not like oh, maybe I can have and maybe I can do this when you're just you have these soft edges that that you can push and you can change and they're malleable. Uh I remember you um you know, saying something on Facebook. You made a I believe it was a video and you you you put it up talking about restriction and calling it a restricted diet. Can you you tell us a bit about that because I thought that was brilliant. this way of this way of eating is not restrictive. Depression is restrictive. Yeah. And something else that's really restrictive. Anxiety is restrictive. Arthritis is restrictive. Type 2 diabetes is restrictive. Insomnia is restrictive. Bipolar disorder is restrictive. I mean, we can just go down the list of those are restrictive illnesses. Yeah. You can't do this. You can't do that. You can't do this. You can't do that. You can't go out in the sun. You can't you know, don't go out in the rain. Don't do this. Don't do that. With all of those things, they're extremely restrictive. The carnivore way of eating is the most liberating thing in the world. Because you're free of all of that. Yeah. There's nothing I cannot do if I have the desire to attempt it. Why not? I I mean, I'm I get to perform live music again. I had to take 15 years off from playing because I was too nobody would work with me. I was too difficult to get along with. And now I'm a professional. I actually the people pay me money to do what I love the most. And I'm able to do it at a much higher level than I ever could before. This is not restriction, kids. This is liberation. This is experiencing what you've always wanted to experience. Yeah. And it's So, that's that's what I think about restriction. It's just a bunch of hooey. I I think that's I think that's a great great way of looking at it too. And it's just you know, it's how you how you approach it. And you're looking at that and you're like you know, it's it's it's a the pessimistic sort of attitude. You're looking at all the things that you can't do and how horrible it is instead of looking at at all the benefits that you just said, you know? And and I think that's just it. It's just you're looking at things right way right way around. And you know, what I think is restrictive is you know, is is eating you know, five times a day and still being hungry throughout the whole time and having to go to the bathroom 13 times. I think that's restrictive. You know, running out of toilet paper during a pandemic, that's restrictive, you know? So, yeah, I don't I don't I don't find this restrictive at all. I I I agree. I find it very liberating. I eat once a day. I have hours of my day that are back to me that I'm not thinking about preparing or eating food. I just do things, you know? I'm not restricted to only my only social events or only revolving around food and drink. I actually go and do things, you know? And Same. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I I enjoy that. I enjoy interpersonal you know, connections and I enjoy doing things with people. I enjoy being active. I enjoy you know, reading. I enjoy the work that I do. And it's good that I enjoy the work that I do because that's basically all that I do. And so, you know, it's it provides me the energy and the ability and the time to actually focus on on what's important in my life and it sounds like you're doing the same. Thank you, Dr. Chaffee. I I I really enjoyed this conversation immensely. I have a feeling you and I could wax eloquent for hours and hours and hours Probably. on all of this. It's been a real pleasure and uh I hope that you keep doing what you're doing because you're you're you're we need your young healthy strong force in the carnivore community preaching the gospel of meat as it were. Yeah. And we need more of that. We need more professionals like yourself out there talking about how you can eliminate metabolic dis dysfunction just with a lifestyle change and you don't have to spend gazillions of dollars on medicines every month and Yeah, that's that's freeing. Yes, that you can't talk about liberating. Wow. I've enjoyed this immensely and but I need to go here in a second because I need to talk to my mother. It's my it's my morning to talk to mom. Very good. Well, I uh I think that's um yeah, I think it's probably good good um place to stop as any. Uh Brett, I really enjoyed speaking with you. I'm glad that we finally were able to do it. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you very much for for sharing your story. I hope that that people find that that helpful and inspiring so that they too can can deal with their their issues and and and get well again. So, thank you. you so much, Dr. Chaffee, for this chance to share my story and and people have any questions, they they I answer all my private messages on Instagram. You can find me at thankful.carnivore. And if you have questions, want to know how to start this way of eating, uh have concerns, don't hesitate to reach out cuz that's why I do this. I want people to know what is possible and you can be as liberated as you've ever been in your life by eating meat and drinking water. Good. And and so, yeah, what and what's the best place to way to get a hold of you? Is it that website or what are all your Yeah, thankful.carnivore on Instagram is the best place to get me. You can also find me under my full name Brett Lloyd on on Facebook. I do answer messages there as well. Um it's just I I seem to have a better access via Instagram than I do with the other uh platforms. And seriously, don't hesitate to reach out because one of the most heart-warming messages I ever got after I started doing this was a young man sent me a voice message thanking me for an interview I did with Scott Myslinski on the Carnivore Cast that after he heard what I had to say, he no longer wanted to kill himself. Oh, jeez. Yeah. Wow. So, after you get a message like that, this becomes this becomes a permanent vocation. You can't give that up. Yeah. All right. Well, I'll put those in the description as well so people can can find you. And and and as far as coaching is concerned, do they get you through Rivera Health or do they contact you through Instagram? Yeah, Rivera Health. Go to Rivera Health and just look up Brett Lloyd in the coaches list. I will come up. I am the only Brett there, I think. Yeah. Be happy to help you succeed at this wonderful way of eating. All right. Great. Brett Lloyd, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, sir.