The headline is broadly defensible, but the qualifications matter. Effect sizes vary by population, the strongest claims rest on shorter trials, and credible voices push back on how it's typically framed.
people on low carb diets are not going to resolve the underlying fire of metabolic dysfunction without lowering linoleic acid in their diet and they won't be able to reincorporate carbs without having carbon tolerance you got to fix the underlying metabolic dysfunction first how do you do that i think you do that by reducing linoleic acid
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carbohydrates don't make you fat you guys linoleic acid makes you fat this is what we're missing polyunsaturated fats are the problem not carbohydrates
i actually don't believe that removing carbs fixes metabolic dysfunction um i think it's a band-aid if if so let's go back to the sort of analogy of the wood-burning stove and in this case a wood-burning stove is a bad thing you're you're in a house it's already way too hot and the fire in the wood burning stove is is making you just very uncomfortable this is metabolic dysfunction linoleic acid is opening the door stearic acid is closing the door carbohydrates are wood going into the wood burning stove okay now in this case um if you stop the the problem is the fire in the stove right and the problem is that the stove is lit now the analogy breaks down a little bit because if you stop throwing wood in there eventually the fire will burn out but this is a wood burning stove that keeps burning as long as the door is open right there's like a pilot light there's always going to be some flame in there so stopping to put the wood on the fire isn't going to fix metabolic dysfunction in this case which is where the analogy breaks down a little bit what can i say guys i just made it up on the spot i'm just doing this extemporaneously right i'll come up with a better one but you get the idea i think that biochemically it doesn't fix the underlying problem because it didn't cause the problem if you're going to fix a problem you can only fix the problem by correcting what caused it not by correcting something that is downstream right so you can't fix one of these downstream sequela and say i've fixed the problem so removing carbohydrates in the setting of metabolic dysfunction doesn't fix the metabolic dysfunction because in a lot of people if you add the carbohydrates back in they become metabolically broken again in order for that model to work you have to assume or you have to accept that carbohydrates cause it in the first place which they don't they don't cause de novo metabolic dysfunction in people who are otherwise metabolically healthy i'm going to have ben beekman on the podcast we'll have a friendly debate about this unless you are literally mainlining sugar 24 hours a day you're not really going to get i think functional levels of insulin induced insulin resistance to the point that you become metabolically broken from hyperinsulinemia i think the hyperinsulinemia is often caused by something else and it's caused by this linoleic acid driven over distension of adipocytes so what is the root cause it's the door the door is what's the problem you don't want to keep the door open to the stove you want to shut the stove so that you can still have carbohydrates and they won't fuel the fire so removing carbs will result in clinical improvement in my opinion but it did not cause the problem if you have that wood burning stove open and there's no fire burning in there and you throw wood in it nothing happens okay nothing happens if you have the door open and you throw carbs in there's no fire nothing happens so or if the door is you know you guys get the idea like you have to have a spark and i think that there's a real important distinction here what does this look like clinically for people it means that in those people who are medical metabolically broken if you have an elevated fasting insulin if you've worn a cgm and you've seen some postprandial uh insulin resistance that looks like postprandial glucose that will not lower and i'm going to show you guys some cgm's in a moment then you can pretty much say like you are you have metabolic dysfunction lowering carbohydrates will be great in the short term but as as you know karen is saying it doesn't work long term because it's not the root of the problem and you will run into problems women invariably will run into problems i can't say invariably there are women out there who claim that they're doing fine but the majority of women that i have seen and worked with will run into problems eventually with this um personally i had palpitations i had muscle cramps doing low carb long term doesn't work for humans there is a way to do it i definitely think we should be in ketosis