Introduction to Dr. Tony Hampton
Hi, I’m Dr Eric Westman, and this is the Keto Made Simple podcast.
Hi everyone. Dr. Eric Westman here and welcome to my channel, where I usually debunk and review nutritional misinformation online. But I like to also interview movers and shakers in the keto, low carb nutritional medical space, and today it’s my great pleasure to have Dr. Tony Hampton. How are you doing, Tony?
Mission & Metabolic Health
Dr. Tony Hampton: I’m great Eric, so happy that you invited me. Grateful we have voices like yours and mine now sharing the message of metabolic health, and I see it every day. I had some success stories in clinic today, and it becomes normal. We’ve normalized healing, and in my previous life, that was not the story. So I’m just grateful that we’ve discovered it. My mission though is to make sure others discover it, so that other doctors can not only help people, but also help themselves, because I think they came to this profession to heal people. But if you don’t understand metabolic health and the root cause of disease, then you can’t do it.
Dr. Eric Westman: I already know.
Dr. Tony Hampton: You do it, exactly.
Dr. Eric Westman: Well, so I have a YouTube channel and followers, please take a moment and explain your story, who you are, where you’re from, where you practice. And of course, ending with the American Diabetes Society work, and the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners work. But who are you to my patient?
Background, Clinic & Wife’s Diabetes Journey
Dr. Tony Hampton: Yeah, well, in this place where I sit now, this is actually where I have my obesity clinic. So I’m a family doctor, and if you look on the wall, that’s my American Board of Obesity Medicine certification. And if you look down, you’ll see my InBody. So in this room is where I do my obesity clinic, and I started my journey. I’m in Chicago, on the south side. Besides this training here, I did get a master’s in nutrition and functional medicine. In Functional Medicine because it talks about the root cause. And if you go to the low carb, keto, even carnivore community, we’re all about, why did you get sick, and how do we deal with that but when I started my journey, it was really about trying to help my wife, she had been diagnosed as an adult with type one diabetes, and in that moment you realize what you don’t know, because you want to help your wife, and although I can’t reverse her type one diabetes, I was doing anything I could to help her. So we kind of leaned into the plant-based methodology initially, because that’s what everybody tells you to do. That’s what everybody tells my patients to do, and generally in the world. And then I went down that rabbit hole. Did that for a while, and yes, things got better because we were eating whole foods and we weren’t really eating processed foods.
So for those who do that, that can work, but it’s very challenging for a person with type one diabetes to control their blood sugars if they’re only eating carbs, and so we were always chasing her spikes with more insulin. And so I decided to write a book about diabetes called Fix Your Diet, Fix Your Diabetes. And when I wrote that book, what I learned, when I started to be a doctor, a scientist, that the trials were not really supporting low fat over low carb. In fact, it was the opposite. And so I said to myself, you know, what? If we’re going to honor the science, I need to shift this book a little bit. But we did the experiment with my wife, myself and my family, where we just shifted from low fat to low carb, and all of a sudden her symptoms, her ability to control her blood sugars. We got off the roller coaster. And we can sit down for breakfast and have quinoa, or we can sit down and have an egg omelet. And the difference was striking in terms of her ability to control her sugar. Then I also noticed that I had an irritable bowel history. And with my irritable bowel, I noticed that I did get better with the plant-based diet, but it was still leading to bloating, gas, and it was just not where I wanted to be. So I did kind of a plant-based diet plus probiotics, which really were better, but it never made me feel as good as I feel now.
So then I said, “You know what? This low carb diet all of a sudden made me feel less bloated.” And then I started to listen to others like yourself, and others who were kind of talking about keto and, of course, carnivore. And the more I moved from low carb and removed more plants, going to keto and removed even more plants, going to carnivore, all of a sudden, the belly started to feel normal again. And I’m too busy, I can see as many as 30 patients in a day in this clinic. Not necessarily, my obesity clinic is a little bit more spread out, but for the regular family doc stuff, and I don’t have time to be running to the bathroom. I don’t have time to be feeling bloated or gassy. And it’s so refreshing to have a dietary pattern that can support me. So in this model, I’m able to not only do this for myself, my family and my patients, but also as a doctor who helps to lead programs in our health system that focus on nutrition and wellness, I’ve been able to do all of that, and it’s been great.
Of course, the YouTube channel, like you, allows me to reach more people and the podcast, same story. So I’m really grateful that I have those tools to help inspire people and also give them the right information.
Dr. Eric Westman: So I wonder, think back to your education. Did you get much nutrition education and doctor training?
Gaps in Nutrition Education
Dr. Tony Hampton: Not really. I mean, I definitely got the kind of training that would allow me to understand how to treat the sickest of the sick. And that education was really about parenteral nutrition. I did learn what vitamin A was. I learned what vitamin C was. I learned that certain foods may be better for you. However, I never learned about the fact that plants have anti nutrients in them and that you only absorb maybe 2% of the iron in spinach. Nobody ever told me that. I love spinach in a way because it’s low carb. But if I’m focused on iron and I’m anemic, I need to eat a ribeye if I don’t want to be anemic. I also didn’t learn practical things, which is what I do in this clinic. If a person comes to me and they want to change their diet, nobody in medical school ever taught me what to say to them, other than to refer them to the nutrition professional.
Dr. Eric Westman: I wonder if that was the split, that somehow the medical education folks thought, well, we’ll just let dietitians take over. Of course, they were marching the low fat fixes everything, but the idea that what you put in your mouth doesn’t matter to a medical doctor who’s in charge of this body? Well, are we in charge? It is kind of ridiculous. I don’t know the right word.
GI Specialists & Nutrition Blind Spots
Dr. Tony Hampton: It’s beyond ridiculous. It is also ridiculous that I have gastroenterologists that I know and who work in my health system, who know less about the GI system as it relates to nutrition than I do.
And don’t get me wrong, they will recommend high fiber and they will speak about it superficially, but what they may not do well is when a person leaves their office, because they may not go to that nutrition referral. So what can you put in their hands? What can you say to them to help them understand how this dietary pattern is going to help their GI concern, and I just think that we live in a world where that’s not true, and we should not live in a world where people like Dr. Mark Cucazzella has to leave his health system because he’s talking about nutrition, or Dr. Georgia Ede, who’s talking about diseases of the mind, has to leave her health system because of this inability for her, and in Dr. Mark’s case for him to talk about nutrition. On what planet does it make sense to tell doctors that you’re not allowed to talk about nutrition? And I don’t know what that planet is, but apparently it’s planet Earth.
Dr. Eric Westman: Well, one way patients told me – “Well, you can expect them to just talk about medicines. He’s got an MD.” And I said, “Well, what do you mean is a doctor of medication?” He said, “Oh, that’s pretty sticky.” So I think the GI doctors, like most internal medicine doctors, and you have to go through internal medicine to become a GI doctor. We taught about medications, even you have the Protonix now, because H2 blockers got in trouble after years. That’s the other reason why I want to stay away from medicines. Over time they’re found to do sometimes bad things. But I joke sometimes that I really should be a GI doctor, because the next non-scale victory, or the highest thing that changes after obesity and diabetes is heartburn – heartburn and GERD, where it’s almost 100% gone, and then irritable bowel syndrome, like, you were mentioning, can get better on a non-American standard diet, but really does improve when you cut all the carbs out. But staying in the GI space, inflammatory bowel disease, these really strong medications, the injections have come out. I’m in a practice where I see all sorts of different diseases, mainly diabetes, obesity, but occasionally Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, and those diseases really put into symptom remission by these drugs. So even those patients have very little need, or it’s hard to get them to change the food because they don’t have any symptoms, right?
But the long-term complications of a shot for ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s are not so great. I wish a GI doctor would at least give an option toward food, or maybe there’s only one or two GI doctors I’ve met through the years who embrace keto or low carb. It’d be great if a GI clinic started studying or of course, started just one case at a time, 1, 2, 5, 10, and I bet there would be great research funding. Well, okay, maybe not. At least the success would be so high for these diseases that are again, MDs use medications. Is that your experience too?
Functional Medicine Training & Low-Carb for Gut
Dr. Tony Hampton: Yeah, absolutely. Again, I am sympathetic to my colleagues, because I had to go into an entirely different world, which is a master’s in nutrition and functional medicine. I did it at the University of Western states. In fact, I want to do a “shout out” to you, because when I did my capstone paper, I quoted a lot of the research you had done, and it was the low carb versus low fat paper, which I got 100% on, by the way. And my professor was a plant-based professor, and I was almost shocked by the fact that I pulled that off, but also the same school that Dr. Mark Hyman went to. So I would expect Dr. Mark Hyman to be a little bit more astute, and he is. I would expect myself, because I’ve had this training, but my GI colleagues have not had that training, and I learned from personal experience, and from what I learned is that, if I was in nutrition school, they talk about a FODMAPs diet, and that’s okay, but essentially, when you eat less fermentable fiber, you’ll have less gas, and you’ll just feel better and I think low carb diet is better than a FODMAPs diet when it comes to these types of conditions, also.
Dr. Eric Westman: FODMAP, just to explain the simple sugars, FODMAP is the acronym—fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. Keto is low-FODMAP and a carnivore diet is a FODMAP-free diet. Another GI issue is celiac. In fact, I think I had a comment and then a follow up with someone who eventually came to my office who fixed her own celiac without knowing it, by doing a carnivore diet. She’d actually gone for five or six years with severe iron deficiency, nobody could figure out why. I mean, you know, she had good doctors and went to tertiary care places in her state. But it’s not easy to make a diagnosis of celiac, and I remember in training that sometimes you need to do a really special biopsy, beyond where people normally look when they do an upper endoscopy. And so she had this anemia. No one could figure it out. She got iron infusions as a result of this. So she couldn’t absorb iron at all. So on her own, she finds carnivore, and she’s better symptomatically in a few weeks, like she’s starting to make iron, the red blood cells and having oxygen carried around. And so there are all these undiagnosed things that can improve on a carnivore or keto diet, because it eliminates the offending thing there. So, when I talk on my channel, I say always consider the source, and highest on my list of people to listen to are people who are in the clinic today. So I wonder, share one of your stories that you were just mentioning that you’ve seen in your clinic. I mean, don’t say who it was or even when it was, but recently, can you give me a case? So then people will realize it’s not just me talking it back.
Powerful Diabetes Reversal Case
Dr. Tony Hampton: Yeah, it’s definitely not just me. In this clinic the number of success stories I’ve seen. In fact, I saw one today, and this is a gentleman who, ironically, has a spouse who is in a healthcare profession, just happens to be a nurse, and she was doing her best to help him. He was on the verge of getting an amputation to his feet. He survived that. He came in with an A1C of about 12 or so, and with very aggressive dietary changes in this particular case, keto, within literally three or four months it seems like his A1C plummeted to 6. But the issue is that his spouse, who’s a nurse, her information was leading him in the wrong direction, and the standard advice that they were getting was still leading to foods that were high in sugar. So what we said is, let’s do this. Let’s do this continuous glucose meter, and stop eating the stuff that spikes your sugar. I’m going to give you my list. I know you have your list. Your Page 4, but at the end of the day, I’m gonna ask you to eat animal protein, non-starchy vegetables. Avoid fruit for the most part, maybe a periodic berry, or any kind of berry. And let’s see what happens. And because she was so helpful to kind of coach him, because I think we all need coaching, they were able to get those carbs. In my particular case, I tell people total carbs less than 20 to 30 range, avoid the things that will trigger you. For me, it would be things like peanuts and then let’s see where we go from there. And then avoid the stuff that spiked your sugar, based on that continuous glucose meter. And not only did he drop his A1C but it seemed his healing from his lower extremity poor circulation process was much better. And what I tell patients, and what I told them, is that it’s all about reducing inflammation. It’s 100% sure. It’s true that a clean plant-based diet will probably reduce inflammation. But the impact of a low carb diet is a little bit more dramatic, because you literally get rid of the offending agent. And the offending agent is the high sugar. And he even, in his particular case, has some issues with his gut as well. And I said, “Well, a high insulin level will make your body react, maybe lower your sugar, that’s going to stress your body, and you may even have motility issues in your gut.” Not to mention the negative effects on the nervous system of your gut.” And you think about diabetic gastroparesis and one of the most – a person with diabetic gastroparesis – where your gut is simply not working because the nerves are damaged, etc., is a disaster. Imagine you eat something, and you get sick from eating, but you’ve got to eat. And it’s one of the most challenging conditions that I’ve had to deal with. And unfortunately, some of the patients who end up with these conditions are the most challenging to get to move towards lifestyle, which is why I think coaching, and what I want for our health system is to provide coaching at a cost that is affordable or free, because if you don’t have that support, it’s got to be free, right? And if it’s not being done and sponsored. And I’m hoping that even with the new administration, these are the types of things they would support, then you can really move the needle, because now you can even help those more challenging patients, not that motivated accountant who’s going to do it anyway. I want to motivate that 70-year-old mother, grandmother who’s like taking care of the grandkids. Got a lot on their plate, limited resources, just to have somebody to give them a few tips, a little encouragement and empathy, and that’ll help move the needle. And I think that’s what we have to do in healthcare better.
Dr. Eric Westman: Some years ago, Dr. Unwin in the UK had a challenge. He did a Twitter challenge of what’s the highest A1C you’ve seen, and brought it down, like that. And just to translate, this is someone who had blood sugars in the 200s, 300s, A1C 12-ish, and then came down to blood sugar around 100 mg/dl with A1C coming down to 6 or so. And did you use medication at all? Was it just the diet?
Medications vs Food & Insulin Resistance
Dr. Tony Hampton: In this particular case, it was someone who had already been on medication.
Dr. Eric Westman: A1C of 12, already on medications.
Dr. Tony Hampton: Yeah, already on medication. Well, again, that’s the whole point. The medication, and a little bit of that was insulin. It wasn’t a high dose of insulin, but you have a person who’s insulin resistant, and we’re going to give them more insulin to fix the problem. And it doesn’t really make sense. It’s better, instead of giving more alcohol to an alcoholic, it’s better to just take the alcohol away. And that’s a model.
Dr. Eric Westman: So that gets to the basic understanding and definition of what diabetes is. And I’ll every now and then ask, well, what is diabetes? And if they’ve been listening, they’ll say, Well, my pancreas isn’t making…” You know, they didn’t measure your pancreas. What do they measure? Well, I guess they measured my blood sugar, yeah, ding, ding, ding. For type two diabetes, yeah, the insulin is already high, but getting more insulin makes no sense. That would be like you have a tumor secreting thyroid hormone, and so you just give more thyroid, you go in and take away the tumor. Well so the reversal of diabetes, it’s so commonplace. We see it in our clinic, and there’s even the Virta Health study that documents really well, published peer reviewed journal, 70% of people off insulin at a year, something like that. I took someone off 90 units of insulin in one day because the blood sugars were flying pretty low to the ground. So on 90 units of insulin, they were at about 120 mg/dl, US units. So I knew that if I took away the food, I had to cut back on the insulin. Food raises the blood sugar, so it’s as if we’re treating the food and drink with insulin. And now teaching this to patients, and I’m trying to figure out how to teach it to other doctors.
Insulin, Root Causes & NES Framework
Dr. Tony Hampton: Let me pause you for a second. I do the same thing, but what I message to them is the following. I say, okay, so it sounds like it’s not just the sugar. It’s like your ability or metabolism. Your diabetes is a fundamental disease of how you manage energy, and when you have that higher sugar, your insulin level has to go higher. But unfortunately, it’s broken. It’s not working well. And then I say, but you’re not going to just solve the diabetes problem, because high insulin is not just about diabetes. It’s about how that high insulin leads to insulin resistance, and how that insulin resistance leads to constriction of your arteries and inflammation of your arteries and holding on to more salt than you should. And so all of a sudden, your arteries are in trouble. So when you fix diabetes, you’re going to fix all the diseases that affect all the arteries in your body. Oh, by the way, you got arteries in your brain, so now your risk for stroke is lower. Oh, by the way, you got an issue with “type three diabetes,” which is dementia. So if you fix that, hopefully you won’t get type three diabetes. The arteries around your eyes, number one cause of blindness. Diabetes, number one cause of kidney failure. The arteries in the kidneys, in your feet, just like my patient, amputation is the number one cause. So all of it’s the same disease, and so as a person with an MBA, I’m all about return on investment. So what’s the best return on investment for anybody that’s watching us today? If you fix one thing, you move one little lever, you can then prevent all of these so-called chronic medical conditions by simply reducing the insulin burden. And you don’t reduce the insulin burden with more insulin. You reduce the insulin burden by removing the things out of your life that can cause you to raise your insulin. We start with the fork, but then we think about, like I came up with the NEST acronym, and that NEST acronym was really grounded in my functional medicine training. I was trying to pass a test. That’s all I was trying to do. And to pass the test, I needed to understand the functional medicine tree roots so that. Nutrition, exercise, less stress, more sleep, recovering from trauma. How we think about having healthy relationships, because there’s a rope, avoiding organisms and pollutants that harm you, and making sure our emotions are safe and that we have life experience in that service. Those are the roots of the functional medicine tree. I’m just trying to pass a test. Then I realized, while I was trying to pass the test, oh, if I bring this to my audience, as I dive into this YouTube space and podcast space, maybe people will realize it’s not just the food. Maybe they’ll realize that maybe it’s the poor relationship that needs a therapist to help us out with that. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m only getting four hours of sleep. Maybe it’s the fact that my supervisor is stressing me out every day. Maybe it’s the fact that I never exercise.
Dr. Eric Westman: Yeah, well, but the most important thing to start with is nutrition, right?
Carbs First, Seed Oils Later
Dr. Tony Hampton: That’s why I made sure the NEST was the end, was number one, because absolutely I make sure that they know that, because if they don’t know that, they’ll not pull the… It’s almost like I heard you talk to another guest about seed oils, right? And there are people who will lose their mind over seed oils. I don’t even talk about it. Would I prefer you to eat butter, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, or animal fat? Absolutely. But what’s going to move the needle? For my patients, it’s the carbs. And then we can talk about the seed oils, once we optimize the carbs, if we need to talk about it all.
Dr. Eric Westman: Well, although I’ve been in that debate a little bit, the reality is that if you get away from most of the foods in the middle of the grocery store, your seed oil consumption will go down even though you don’t mention it. So we might be benefiting from a reduction without mentioning it. So we benefit from fixing gluten enteropathy and celiac disease, same thing without even mentioning it.
So looking back, you’ve been involved in the health system. Have you tried to teach other doctors? Because we’re part of organizations that actually have non doctors, because we think a doctor might even be over-trained. You don’t have to know how to do an appendectomy to tell someone to just reduce carbs and monitor those things. But have you had any interesting things you can talk about trying to change the system from within.
Changing the System from Inside
Dr. Tony Hampton: Yeah, I tell patients, and I’ll say to anyone watching today, you first have to model. So we have what we call the advocate operating system that was part of our health system before we start merging with Atrium in the south and Aurora in Wisconsin, and within that system, I was the medical director and under that leadership, I was asked what’s the best way to help patients heal? And I said, we have to teach them about lifestyle and nutrition. So in that role, I was able to create the Healthy Living Program, and we would then invite our colleagues, including non-doctors, nutrition, exercise, just different professionals that dealt with lifestyle, so we can get in front of patients to teach them how to do that.
So the first thing we did is we modeled what the better approach we felt was, and we partnered with the Chicago Food Depository to provide food. We still continue that food pharmacy model, and we also have a smart farm where we actually, yes, this carnivore. I’m a carnivore. I still support the growing of vegetables in our health system but my job is to make sure they’re non-starchy. So we started. You are familiar with the Diabetes Prevention Program, so we model for our doctors a diabetes prevention program. We just kind of learned it like if we don’t follow their exact program, we just make it low carb. Diabetes Prevention Program, and we also have COPD programs, etc. So, that’s what we’ve kind of done historically moving forward, particularly since we have a more favorable administration when it comes to metabolic health, we’re hoping to partner with the administration, and I’m talking about the United States government to value these types of programs, and then if we create within our health system, programs where doctors literally at the click of a button could refer to metabolic programs that help support patients with coaching, and also incorporate within that models of coaching for the doctors too, where they then learn, and maybe they learn from not just doctors like me, but maybe we are able to engage the Nutrition Network, which is a great resource for teaching doctors this methodology. So some of this stuff is novel, but what I love about my health system is that they allow doctors like myself, who are kind of outliers, to function in a health system in a way that’s slightly different than the conventional model. They honor that and they allow me to kind of do my thing, and because I’ve been in leadership roles within the organization, I’m able to message this. But it is tough to move the needle, because if my health system asked me to do a commercial for them, they may ask me to frame the discussion in a way that’s not as we know in this community, so I have to reframe it and then make sure that they’re okay with that, and what I find is that they’re always okay with it. So I think I’m blessed to be in the health system that’s nimble, and it’s unlike what we hear when you talk to our colleagues in this type of setting when they’re being interviewed, many say they have to leave their health system. What we don’t want to do is throw out the baby with the bath water. We can’t just have doctors like me and you only on YouTube or on a podcast or at a metabolic symposium conference and not within the organizations, like, we need to be at the organizations, not the ones we’ve created – the American Diabetes Society. We need to be at the American Medical Association. We need to be at the American Board of Medical Specialties and American College of Physicians and we need to be speaking at those organizations.
Dr. Eric Westman: Tony, you give me such hope. You’re young, and you’re still battling but I think the noise has to get greater and all, but yeah, the organizational embracement of this still is battling pharma, though. In the obesity medicine world I’ve seen now the pharma, the mightiest touch of pharma, has come to our meetings where the money comes in. They’re the two-storey booths in the vendor area and there were a couple of us lifestyle guys kind of looking like we’re left out, but it’s all good. Back to your practice, if I may for a minute. So if someone comes in, you’re their family doctor: what’s the best messaging you’ve learned and someone might come in and think they don’t really want to talk about nutrition, because unless they probably haven’t selected you out for that I suppose. I still see people who have no idea what I do. That’s right, they’ll know why they’re in the office. That’s kind of refreshing. What are the best things you can say to someone who might not be seeking out obesity or diabetes care?
How He Talks to Everyday Patients
Dr. Tony Hampton: Yeah, well, this computer is a mobile, we call it a cow computer on wheels, right? So I can literally turn it around and face my patient. And what I do is I share information that is very compelling. One of the things I share with them is the graph that shows the protein, fat and carb graph. So they’ve been told their whole life that fat’s a problem. So I’ll just show them. You can see from this graph that fat is the only macronutrient that doesn’t raise your sugar. On this same computer, I can show them. I know you had a guest previously with the Public Health Collaborative, and shout out to them and the work they’re doing. So I can show them that in the history of randomized trials, based on what data they shared for a significantly greater weight loss, there’s never been a low fat diet that was better for weight loss than compared to low carb. That’s compelling, especially when you’re talking to a plant-based person. For a person who comes in who’s scared of it, I literally just ask them, “What are you afraid of?” And they’ll say, “Well, I’m afraid of saturated fat.” I’ll say, “Well, in 2020 did you not know that the Journal of the American College of Cardiology put out a position statement saying that saturated fat is not leading to heart disease or early mortality.” Oh, by the way, it reduces your risk for stroke.
Dr. Eric Westman: First author Arne Astrup. I use that all the time, yeah.
Dr. Tony Hampton: You have to, because what people need is data, if they’re data people, but more importantly, what they need is hope. What I say to them is that, have you ever been told by any doctor that this worsening kidney disease, and you mentioned Dr. Unwin in the UK? Did you not know that there was a doctor in the UK who did a study that showed that your kidney function gets better with this? Did you not know that? Did you not know that we did a keto versus DASH diet study that showed that keto was twice as effective for your blood pressure weight loss and three times more effective for diabetes? So what I do is I put information in front of them, but more importantly, I’m a doctor who’s saying you don’t have to be on insulin forever. The patients actually are just like, “Oh my God, you’re the first person to ever say that.” And I’m asking them to ask a simple question. Are you going to listen to the nephrologist who says you can’t get better? Are you going to listen to the neighborhood family doc who’s saying you can? You know, Trump himself said, “What do you have to lose?” So let’s go for the model that gives you hope versus the model that doesn’t. And if I can get them to use a continuous glucose meter, they see the results immediately, and we have to do it safely. I’m so grateful that we have guidelines for therapeutic carb restriction for those doctors who haven’t had this practice or this experience. So it’s fairly easy. I think it’s partly, you have to build – it’s almost like motivational interviewing. You have to build empathy. You have to build some, they have to trust you. And if you talk to people, this is the thing about carnivore, and I’m not just blaming carnivore, but literally, we’re recording this, it’s almost four o’clock in Chicago, but I’ve been here since six in the morning, but I feel like a million bucks. I’m not tired. I bring the same energy to the last patient that I bring to the first patient, and I’m so grateful for that. And what happens is they can feel that enthusiasm. I can also share personal stories. I don’t have irritable bowel anymore. My wife has A1C that’s in a more normal range. So when you have those stories to tell and you personalize it, people are easy to inspire. I think people need to hear anecdotal stories of success, and then you have credentials. Like you said, credentials should matter, doesn’t always matter, but knowing that the doctor in front of them has taken the time to learn this information. But more importantly, if you’re in a practice where – or in a health system, or in a country where you have certain doctors de-prescribing and everybody else prescribing, it would be logical to at least hear what the de-prescribers are doing. And so I just say, give me a chance to walk with you. I’ll support you. I’ll give you resources to help guide you so we can do this safely, and I won’t demonize you when you struggle, because that’s one of the worst things. That’s one of my blind spots. I wanted to grab everybody and shake them and say, don’t you understand, you don’t have to be on dialysis. And I realized that there are barriers, which is why the NEST and ROPE help, because it says, oh, their issue is their relationship. So let’s address the relationship before we focus on the low carb. We’re going to still try to do both, but we need to get this relationship in check. And that’s the type of approach I take.
Dr. Eric Westman: And is that in the book that you wrote?
Books, NEST & R-O-P-E Story Approach
Dr. Tony Hampton: Yeah, well, actually not exactly. My NEST and ROPE came afterwards because I actually hadn’t gotten my master’s. Now, ironically, the book I’m writing now for obesity will be a little different in that that book wasn’t didactic. I did tell stories, but this next book is going to be like, literally a story. I’m going to have six characters, and I’m going to walk with them through the struggles, because we want to be careful how we use the language of struggle nowadays. You can’t always say some of the trigger words that trigger people. Ultimately, if you say a person is struggling, the question is, how do we support them? So the characters. Each chapter deals with the acronym, the nutrition number one, at the end there’ll be takeaways. Then you go to the exercise, we hear the stories, we hear the struggles, we hear how they overcame them, takeaways. So I think, for me, because I try to reach people, I want to reach people at the fifth grade level. I want them to understand these concepts. I don’t need to talk about the mitochondria and things like that because I think you’ll reach more people, because the smart people understand simple things, and the people who don’t have the PhDs understand the simple things. So why not reach everybody-
Dr. Eric Westman: Well, and then having a method that works is going to persuade people.
Dr. Tony Hampton: So that’s all that matters.
Dr. Eric Westman: So let’s spend the last part of our time together talking about the American Diabetes Society, American Diabetes Association, well, because I met with the scientific director of the American Diabetes Association on several occasions, and my frustration, and it’s yours and others’, it led us to actually be part of a new organization, the American Diabetes Society. And the idea for me is not necessarily carnivore or keto – any tactic would be okay for the food. The message that I wanted to help get out is that type 2 diabetes is reversible, and I don’t hear that from the American Diabetes Association at all. And when you look at it, they’re funded by the drug companies, so they’re going to be like, the MD is a doctor of medication. I’ll never forget that, one of my brilliant patients. So what does the American Diabetes Society mean to you?
American Diabetes Society & Carnivore Bread
Dr. Tony Hampton: Well, first of all, Eric, I took the carnivore bread recipe from their website. And I tried it out yesterday, and it turned out okay. So I plan to make a cheese toast with it tomorrow morning, and I’m gonna make sure I feed my wife that, who has type one diabetes, because it’s one carb per slice. I think it uses something like cream cheese, butter, eggs and pork skins, or pork panko. So I’m really excited about that, but let’s talk about this organization. I’m very proud.
Dr. Eric Westman: So, you got this from an organizational website, a recipe?
Dr. Tony Hampton: Right. And guess what doctor tells someone to eat pork skins. Let me just say that. But you know why we say that? Because it doesn’t raise your blood sugar.
Dr. Eric Westman: Well, let me just translate, so pork skins could be meat skins. It could be pork rinds. It could be chicharrones, pork belly. Just to give the whole flavor, I didn’t grow up with pork rinds in Madison, Wisconsin. I don’t know that. Do many people, probably in the Hispanic, Latino grocery stores, but carnivore bread from the organization, it’s awesome.
Dr. Tony Hampton: I love it, and I’m gonna tell you it’s just nice. Why do I bother to make any carnivore bread from the website? Because even carnivores need a little variety sometimes. I could eat ribeye every day, but you know what? I like a little variety. So when we make that cheese toast tomorrow morning with that bread, it won’t spike my wife’s sugar, because that’s what I’m trying to do, to keep her around. Now, having said that, I actually went to the American Diabetes Association website today—not the Society. And I don’t know why we did it, but patients said, I was comparing the two sides, because I showed this stuff in clinic, and the first recipe that came up on the American Diabetes Association—and I don’t want to demonize them, because we have hard working people who are trying to do their best—but the first recipe was a pasta dish, and I just couldn’t for the life of me.
Dr. Eric Westman: No, it’s okay to demonize them. That’s okay.
Dr. Tony Hampton: Okay, well, if you give me permission, what we do differently is that we want to empower individuals, since the world has not caught up yet. Individuals, communities, doctors who need a little support to tell people that you can prevent if you’re borderline, and reverse type two diabetes if you have it. And if you’re like my wife, you can have type one and achieve a A1C of 5.6—in the normal range. Now what we plan to do is have unbiased information, evidence-based resources and tools that will help our community learn from these great resources. And it’s primarily grounded, as you can imagine, in carb restriction. So if we tell people, let’s remove the thing that raised your blood sugar in the first place, let’s attempt to use real food. I would argue that pork panko, cream cheese, butter and eggs were real food. So now I’m making a bread from real food, as opposed to a highly processed grain, and we also will encourage people to do things like lifestyle changes. So that’s the bottom line. Now the key is, what do I need to eat, doc? Now we have pages where we say, Eat this, don’t eat that, but some people need more than “don’t eat this, don’t eat that”. Some people need more than animal protein plus non-starchy vegetables. So now we have a website where there are low carb friendly and even carnivore-friendly meal plans and recipes, which is where I got the bread recipe from. And of course, we’re going to hopefully sponsor other events, like we’ve had webinars. We’re hoping to be guests. So when I go and speak somewhere, I may then say I’m representing the American Diabetes Society. So when you think about Dr. Ken Berry, Dr. Ben Bikman, yourself, Dr. Westman, Dr. Mariela Glandt, of course, the wonderful Michelle Hurn, who is a nutrition professional, we’re all trying to work together. The most important thing I can say is we teach that reversal is possible. That’s not a mainstream message. And if we can tell people in the world that, guess what, these are not chronic health conditions that you can’t put into remission, there are conditions that require you removing the thing that caused it, because there is no need to have type two diabetes in most cases. Type one is different, and maybe autoimmune, well, that’s another topic. But pretty much most people who have type 2, if you do a C-peptide or antibody for beta cell, and there’s still potential for that thing to work, you can put it into remission, and then your life changes.
Now, all of a sudden, I’m not taking Metformin. I may not be taking insulin. And if I remove this, this is how I practice, doc, if I remove the diabetes, and you have an A1C in normal range, and the health systems tell you to take a statin I’m saying, you know what? Now you have a zero calcium score, which would be even better. But now you have a reason to not take a statin, because you are not having the inflammation from diabetes, because you’ve put yourself into remission. So now you’ve taken away shots and medicines. I’m not sticking, I’m not a human pin cushion anymore. You get your life back. And what’s wonderful about that is that there’s so many beautiful things to enjoy. And if you were a fly on the wall in my house, you would be jealous of what you saw on our plate, because it wouldn’t even look like it was… lasagna, which my wife will make tomorrow. But the lasagna, we use deli sliced chicken breast. I got that from Maria Emmerich. Instead of using pasta, you just change one thing, and you go from 40g carbs to 4g carbs. Does the average person know that? And the answer is no, and if they don’t know that, they can’t reverse diabetes. I know I’m yelling right now. We have to yell from the rooftops, because I get so fired up about this. It’s so frustrating to know that beautiful people, people who need to be here for their families, will leave here early because they never heard this message. And I’m just so frustrated with that, and that’s why this will be my life mission until my last breath.
Dr. Eric Westman: Well, you’ve already helped so many people, Tony. It’s fantastic. And I just wanted to… I’m just curious. Let’s go on this pork rind thing a little bit. I have a wall chart of the information on the wall. It was a med student project, actually. So I don’t have the eye chart like in your office anymore. It’s the foods. And so I’ll kind of wait for the right moment, and then if they’re from North Carolina or South Carolina, Virginia, I’ll wait and say, and you can have all the pork rinds you want, and they’ll go, “I’m in!” And yet, I’m from the north, in Wisconsin. I just didn’t grow up [with pork rinds]. So now I’m actually pushing a particular company, not because they’re from Wisconsin—that’s Pork King Good—it’s because they have some way of making the flavoring on pork rinds. I swear, they don’t seem like pork rinds. Not far up the road from you, Cudahy, Wisconsin, that’s where the pork rinds come from. Porkkinggood.com and they sent the pumpkin pie pork rinds. It’s a new flavor. It’s amazing. And I’ve been doing this 20, 25 years, and keto-carnivore for the most part. Not every day—I don’t have the metabolism of that, of needing that—but I’m not a big pork rind fan, but when these came out, oh my goodness. So you might check out porkkinggood.com. I wish there was some kind of an affiliate program with them. I’m going to be sure to put the link to the American Diabetes Society—not the American Diabetes Association—in the program notes below. So check it out. And it’s fantastic to have phenomenal, enthusiastic doctors like you involved, and it’s been my pleasure to work with you, and I look forward to that. How do people find you, where you are online and the books, and even in your clinic, if someone can seek you out?
How to Find Him & Message to Clinicians
Dr. Tony Hampton: Absolutely. The clinic is definitely a challenge because of the demand. Unfortunately, when you become a YouTuber, people find you. So I’m not sure that it’s that easy; it may take a while to get an appointment. It’s not a closed panel, but it’s definitely taken a year because we had to really lighten it up, but I think that YouTube is the best place to find me, because I’ve tried my best to go crazy and make a video nearly every day, which is insanity. But of course, you have to leverage people to help you do that. I just try to get in front of the camera and then let somebody else do that work. I do have a podcast, that’s a weekly podcast, the video shorts, which are five to 10 minutes. And I think those are the main things. I also have a link tree. I’ll share that, which is https://linktr.ee/drtonyhamptonaffliatelinks, that has additional resources there, so I’ll link that as well. And I do want to say this for anybody who’s watching us as a clinician, maybe, you know, give yourself personally a 30-day trial of low carb, if you’ve never tried it, and if you find that it does help things—and you can even measure things like your A1C, your waistline, your triglycerides—if you see those things getting better, just try that. And yeah, that’s because most of us did that. And then maybe you can do a trial with willing patients who are interested in being supported in this dietary pattern. And then if you find success, don’t hide on the south side of Chicago like I was doing. Get out here and tell the world, even if it’s just your local colleagues, I’m having success. I’ve never taken people off medicine. Now I’m doing that. My patients, they literally will worship you. Not being too dramatic here, but because nobody else has ever given them hope. So if you want to be a doctor or a clinician of any type who restores hope, who shows patients how to heal, you may have the answer right in front of you. So, the church would say, “Don’t let the blessing pass you by.” If somebody is coming to you on the water and you’ve been waiting for God to come save you, and then every time they come by, you say, now I’m waiting for God. And God sent those people, this may be your moment.
Dr. Eric Westman: Yeah. And we’ve seen so many doctors who have been kind of just in despair, depressed, come alive because now they have a tool that really… like you led with our discussion, that most doctors do want to help. We’re not given the tools. And nutrition is so powerful. It’s our mission at the American Diabetes Society to fix people, but also other doctors, their knowledge gap there. Thank you so much for taking time today to talk. All the best. Can’t wait to see you again.
Dr. Tony Hampton: Oh yeah, no doubt, enjoy your day.
Dr. Eric Westman: All right. Bye now.
Watch the full video here.
Speaker Bios
Eric Westman, MD, MHS, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University, the Medical Director of Adapt Your Life Academy and the founder of the Duke Keto Medicine Clinic in Durham, North Carolina. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Obesity Medicine and has a master’s degree in clinical research. As a past President of the Obesity Medicine Association and a Fellow of the Obesity Society, Dr. Westman was named “Bariatrician of the Year” for his work in advancing the field of obesity medicine. He is a best-selling author of several books relating to ketogenic diets as well as co-author on over 100 peer-reviewed publications related to ketogenic diets, type 2 diabetes, obesity, smoking cessation, and more. He is an internationally recognized expert on the therapeutic use of dietary carbohydrate restriction and has helped thousands of people in his clinic and far beyond, by way of his famous “Page 4” food list.
Dr. Tony Hampton is board-certified in Family Medicine and Obesity Medicine, and holds a master’s degree in Nutrition and Functional Medicine. He is a founding board member of the American Diabetes Society and is Chairman of the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners Outreach Committee. He also serves on the Nutrition Network’s Curriculum Committee. Diabetes has had a profound impact on Dr. Hampton’s life, both personally and professionally, inspiring him to write his first book, Fix Your Diet, Fix Your Diabetes, released in 2016.
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