Diet: The Art of Balance in a Polarised World with Dan Sipple (EP#94)

Mason: (00:00)

Good day, everybody. I'm here with Dan Sipple again. How are you, man?

 

Dan Sipple: (00:03)

I'm doing good, buddy. How are you?

 

Mason: (00:05)

Yeah. I'm wonderful. Thank you.

 

Dan Sipple: (00:06)

Good to hear.

 

Mason: (00:07)

Yeah, just had a beautiful time just to quantum up lift, as I was telling you in my little bio charger session with the Tesla coil and my super oxygenation and red light and limp training. So I'm good.

 

Dan Sipple: (00:20)

Beautiful.

 

Mason: (00:20)

Brovember, seems like only yesterday, last year, when we were talking about optimization of men's hormones, anyone that hasn't listened to that podcast, it's a cracker. You go back and listen to that. I think it was men's hormones, type in that. But this year, this Brovember, Dan and I are going to be jumping into men's health from the perspective of diet. Of course, it's not just going to like all things. I mean, discussed most things when it comes to men can kind of become quite general.

 

Mason: (00:47)

I think that's why we've got such... Of course, we can go really specific with men's health, but we talk about men's health a lot in the sense of like throughout the year but it relates on a general level to the whole population. Whereas a lot of the women's topics are really refined to women's anatomy. But yeah, let's... Just to kind of make that clear. This is going to be appropriate for anybody, no matter whether you're a bro or not. But since we're going to be going into optimization conversation, especially around what's going to help us have best output, mitochondria output, hormonal output, so on and so forth. We're not going to be going into those specifics, but we want to make sure long-term, we've got a diet that's going to allow for us to experience the greatest health within our male bodies.

 

Mason: (01:37)

One thing I really wanted to get Dan on to talk about because we've talked about gut health and microbiome so much, is what diet is really rising up. And it has some really good parts to it, but then what's the extreme diet around the men's circles that's really kicking off and it's kind of being Keto and Keto is still kind of really cranking along there and doing its good thing short-term and doing its bit of damage, which we've talked about when you got long-term extremist. But carnivore diets are really, really charging ahead, are they? Are you finding a lot of people going on carnivores with kind of all diets for therapeutic purposes in clinic?

 

Dan Sipple: (02:18)

Yeah, I mean the conversation is coming up a lot with not only men, but a lot of female patients that I see too. And it's a really, really taken the lead on socials as well, which I'm sure you guys have noticed. So yeah, it's the big thing at the moment. And I guess it's just a good to have the conversation about the many benefits that we can kind of get from it? What angle that comes in on in terms of its therapeutic actions and put it up against certain other diets that we do have probably a little bit more robust data on and make some comparisons. Because there's a lot of claims being made as there is with a lot of diets that do sort of come and go.

 

Dan Sipple: (03:02)

So yeah, it's always good to have a chat about and dissect them, answer any questions and just get more information out there. This one is particularly intriguing because it's the first diet, I think, where they're placing such a really a big spotlight on the importance of eating organ meats, which I really am down with and I've always recommended. So that's the first thing that kind of caught my attention. And I was like, "Oh, lets kind of look into this." And I guess I've been kind of loosely following it through the works with Paul Saladin, [inaudible 00:03:33] and Sean Baker and those sorts of characters. But I've always had a bit of... A kind of question around the long-term impact of it on the microbiome. I'll get into that today. That's the major part of it for me, where I sort of questioned its long-term sustainability. But no doubt in terms of just broadly like the metabolic benefits, the mitochondria benefits, the hormonal benefits, I can totally see how they come into play when they're contrast that against other diets that the other people might be promoting.

 

Dan Sipple: (04:07)

And that purely, I think, comes down to the nutrient profile that you get when you consume a carnivorous type diet compared those.

 

Mason: (04:13)

Pretty fascinating rollout. I mean probably the last couple of decades really dominated by the extremism of veganism and vegetarianism. I think they're quite... Based on where the health information was that in seventies and eighties, that was a very... It was an easy transition towards to clean like all plants, animal fats and proteins and salts are going to be contributing to high cholesterol, blah, blah, blah. That whole kind of like conversations. So everyone's just gone down that route and you can, we just saw such an adoption and it just seems so logically correct to go to cut meats out or pretty much have them being nonexistent in that extreme side of things. And you can just... If I remember it was five years ago when I was told that eating carnivore was going to be like the next big thing by someone.

 

Dan Sipple: (05:00)

Yeah, right.

 

Mason: (05:02)

And I was like, "I just don't..." I was like, "I didn't see that happening." I think it'll kind of leave you kicking along in the sidelight. And then as the keto just stopped it became like a religion basically. And like bulletproof it became like a religion. You couldn't question the sanctity of saturated fats for a time there because they had the whole ritual... They had the whole... I guess they had the good book there to retort everything. I was like, hang on, maybe it's going to happen. Then when Jordan Peterson dropped it. That he was kind of all in that kind of [inaudible 00:05:35]. I think Joe Rogan. [inaudible 00:05:38].

 

Dan Sipple: (05:34)

That's right. Yeah.

 

Mason: (05:38)

Yeah. That's when I was like, "Gosh, shit. This is going to... This is going to happen." I don't think it's as severe because I feel like what a lot of people have already done. A lot of people will have their initiation to help by going vegetarian or vegan for quite some time. So they have their taste of real extremism and of course we've got the young people who are early adopting health for the first time going into keto and meat, kind of mixed based diet that they are going on. They'll touch the edges of extremism here in these diets, but it's almost like these carnivore diets come up as like a cathartic experience of people post vegetarian and vegan and plant-based eras having something that's going to just start to balance out, a lot of the psyche, a lot of the stories that they've told themselves or what we've told themselves about what's healthy and what's not healthy.

 

Mason: (06:33)

And I don't know, I kind of enjoy... I'm enjoying what gene that happened in that real balancing act to happen. I'm not enjoying the real contrast I see of like slinging shit at plants from the carnivore world and yeah, it's... I'm interested to go down the route of it because I definitely think it's a good thing as this has come up in popularity, but we might as well, and then everyone is just going, is it good or bad? And it's such a boring, bland question. Is it good or bad? Not that it's wrong to ask it. Because I definitely ask stupid questions all the time, but let's just go in and get a little bit of clarity so we can start. I mean, let's start at the... It's confusing out there everybody.

 

Mason: (07:22)

I follow two gastroenterologists that are... Seem to be well-regarded, one's a vegan plant-based Bible lover. Who's a professional clinical gastroenterologist. I follow another gastroenterologist clinical. He is pretty much carnivore and so it can get confusing. And so I like... I like following both of them and then looking into the middle there. So let's kick off. I want to start looking at what some of the big claims are in or maybe lets... You want... Should we jump into say our little short term, what we're going to start, seeing, being benefited to someone that goes into a carnivore diet probably let's start with [inaudible 00:00:08:00].

 

Dan Sipple: (08:01)

Yeah. Yes, for sure. And that's what we do typically notice is that we see a short term benefit because of the drastic reduction in possibly any implant compounds for people who for example, who have a complex autoimmune condition or trying to heal a leaky gut. They strip away all these complex plant sort of nutrient rich kind of phytochemical profiles. And it allows the immune system to calm down. That's what we see initially. So what I mean by that is the lectins, the oxalates, the goitrogens. Those types of things that an entry nutrients as well, which are in plant compounds once they get stripped away, but basically they are left with highly assimilable amino acids, a great array of vitamins and nutrients, B12, iron, retinoic acid, vitamin A, and that type of thing. And essentially what we're then doing is nourishing that gut wall completely, and we're stripping out any of these potentially irritating fibres and phytonutrients. Which is kind of where the carnivore crowd comes in and basically says that plant compounds like these made by the plant to defend themselves because the plants can't physically defend themselves and they don't want to be eaten. So they make these plant toxins. And that's something that I guess had a little bit of an issue with kind of telling an audience that plants are suddenly toxic. It starts to really brand plants in that way that they're full of toxins. And that can kind of create a bit of a mental relationship there with... Like someone naive that's listening and going, "Oh, shit plants are now toxic, okay." And that kind of makes sense too, right? They're like, all right, the plants are making these toxins. They're going to do the same thing on my body.

 

Mason: (09:53)

Oh, I remember talking to you about when I first heard Jordan Peterson talking about it and he'd basically gone hook line sinker. So he's talking on this potent intellectual level about psychology and development-

 

Dan Sipple: (10:08)

Which he is friggen good at, by the way.

 

Mason: (10:10)

Incredible at. Especially back when he was pumping fresh on carnivore and then he switched over to extremist. I'm just going to repeat the narrative mode of my diet. And it was kind of, it was cool. Because it was just... He was, Oh, he's just a [inaudible 00:10:28]. He was like, I'm not an expert in this, but he's all of a sudden all my inflammatory conditions went down, my autoimmune condition went down, my daughter's autoimmune condition was... Basically all her symptoms disappeared in the space of three months of getting on a carnivore diet. And whenever there was any like broccoli, goitrogen, gliadin, anything like that, any plant matter whatsoever, all of a sudden the flare would come up. And so it'd be like so logically, plants are bad.

 

Dan Sipple: (10:54)

Yeah. That's right. That's right. And what we're seeing there is that immune system, just for the first time, start to calm down and therefore the permeability of the gut wall that exists in all those autoimmune sufferers, people that have allergies, asthma, autoimmune, all that type of thing. Their immune system calms down. We see reduction in symptoms. So straight away, we correlate that with other kinds of the carnivore diets healing me. What's really happening, I think is just that it's an elimination diet, which isn't really new. And when you look at it, we've known about an elimination diets for this purpose for a long time, they just purely allow the inflammatory reactivity of the immune system to calm down. So we see a drastic reduction in symptoms. So that's one of the first things.... The positive things I think we notice. In addition to that, the metabolic, the metabolic parameters seem to also have a really positive shift.

 

Dan Sipple: (11:45)

So for instance, insulin resistance, fasting blood glucose, cholesterol markers, and that type of thing often do balance out from what I've seen so far. So again, that is kind of supportive of that initial honeymoon period with this type of diet that we're getting a lot of metabolic kind of benefit there. And then again, coming back to the nutrients which you get from this sort of diet, which I'm a massive fan of and I'll put that out there, vitamin A, retinoic acid, which we know is extremely, extremely gut healing and immuno regulating. And you can't get that from the plant kingdom.

 

Dan Sipple: (12:18)

It's something the body's got to make from beta carotene, which a lot of vegans say is vitamin A from plant foods like, "Hey, I'll get my vitamin A. I'll eat lots of sweet potato and carrots." It's like, no, no, no, your body's got to then convert that across to retinoic acid at the expense of your zinc. But when you eat something like liver or any kind of organ or animal meat, you get that in it's preformed, a bio-available form that the body can readily use and absorb. Then you've got other amino acids like creatine, L-carnitine, zinc-carnitine, growth factors, peptides, and all those types of things too, which coming in on today's kind of topic for men is extremely potent and extremely beneficial for hormonal and mitochondrial reasons.

 

Mason: (13:05)

Well, so that's where I'm really quite grateful for the clinical application of these carnivore diets coming in and as well, I see it's really nice to see people who have been plant-based for so long, all of a sudden make this switch over to a diet like this and then have such success that had success in the beginning of something... A vegan or something or plant based but they've been extreme, and then they come over to carnivore kind of keto diet. And they're getting all these. Getting the peptides and growth factors and B12 and retinol acids and animal based vitamin D and all that, like you were saying, and all of a sudden they get flooded with these nutrients and all of a sudden... I think that's where I've seen, like a lot of like guys I know who had like love handles, they'd been highly estrogenic, low testosterone, really bloaty. The other thing about, I think about this like having.

 

Mason: (14:03)

... Really bloated. The other thing about it, think about having, especially if you kind of not just searing everything. If you're boiling your meats and making stews and there's broth and that kind of thing, which always seems the way that my body has done a job at best.

 

Dan Sipple: (14:16)

Right.

 

Mason: (14:16)

It's just so easy to absorb. If you've got really terrible digestion, from what I can see in the short term. All of a sudden this uptake of nutrient density, it's intense especially if you're taking these organ meats. So it's been nice to see weight shifting, hormone panels have been apparently shifting really quick energy levels exploding, mitochondrial production, ATP going through the roof. So, you feel like a powerhouse and athletically you feel like you're really pumping, especially.

 

Mason: (14:48)

I've heard of wound healing with all these growth factors and peptides, all of a sudden, protein loading is that anyway, whatever it is, all these benefits. I suppose the benefits come out of that, but like anything then you fall hostage to the thing that has healed you. And most of the time, if you've been extreme Western or extreme kind of plant based oestrogen-rich non-yang diet, basically with an excessive amount of plants.

 

Mason: (15:18)

That balancing act in the beginning, however, long it takes to bring some harmony you'll experience that sweet spot of harmony, right? And what the risk then we run is the mind's taking over and labelling this as good and our saviour. Therefore, we ignore. What I can see as inevitably coming up is going to be coming up. This is where I see the need in Carnivore Diets for the propaganda of defence around fibre.

 

Mason: (15:49)

You've mentioned you wanted to talk about hormesis and these kinds of things, all of a sudden you watch a diet or someone who's branded themselves around a particular diet. You watch them get on the deep end, once you ... it's really interesting. You watch them go on the back foot, they'll be excited and this and that, and then they'll have their spiel ready, for when they get these particular questions and quite often not that's bad that they're doing that sometimes being on the defensive's necessary or being on the back foot's necessary.

 

Mason: (16:19)

But generally, if you poke there, that's where you'll find a lacking of evidence or that they're just covering up something that subconsciously they don't really want to acknowledge. That's so. If you don't mind, let's just dive into that. What do we ... where is it from a clinical perspective? Where do you see it being quite gray? I didn't listen to that carnivore MD recently, I think he's been doing the rounds and he was on frozen as well.

 

Mason: (16:48)

apparently it was quite cherry picked, but you know, some people said it was really good and so on and so forth, but in that kind of situation, let's go into some of the discussions where if you dig a little bit data, maybe the data isn't as solid as we're led to believe.

 

Dan Sipple: (17:01)

Yeah. Look, I want to be super clear too. In that Paul Saladino, the carnivore MD, I actually ... is quite a likeable dude, super, super well researched comes across really well, super intelligent. And he's done a really, really good job of bringing this to the forefront. I believe he's got a book as well. I'm yet to read that yet, but I'll get to it. And just does a really good kind of narrative of summarising the therapeutic nature of this kind of diet. Because to be fair, there is plenty of good parts to it. But as I said earlier, the issue I kind of have with it is when it is compared to the diet of traditional Hunter gatherer societies. This picture is painted where we as Hunter gatherers is solely kind of either solely ate organ meats and meats and yeah, that's right.

 

Dan Sipple: (17:56)

Just kind of collected plant foods altogether, or kind of put plants on the back burner just said that they're fallback foods and they're like last ditch effort foods, and that we will use them to survive, but they're not really our preference. Even if that was true, the reality is that our evolution and our ancestry has seen us eat a combination of, yeah. All the animal foods and knows the tail organs again, which I promote coupled with root tubers, berries, nuts seeds, and those types of things. That's-

 

Mason: (18:26)

I'm going to say anyone that has an argument, I hate going to logic, but anyone using that argument that around the world, the preference has been made has never come across a bush of wild berries. Right. If I have to, if a bloody have to fine, right? There's no liver around. We show there's no liver anymore. Anyway, now we're at a little bit, all right. Bloody hell. All right, I'll leave it there.

 

Dan Sipple: (18:49)

That's right. Yeah. Yep. So coming back to Paul Saladino, so he talks a lot about hormesis. Hormesis is basically healthy stress on a cellular level, either from toxins in, as he calls them in plant compounds or environmental hormesis. I guess to summarise his kind of argument from the Carnivore perspective is that you should be able to stimulate the body's cellular hormesis from environmental factors, such as cold thermogenesis, intermittent fasting, oxygen restriction, that type of thing, exercise, yada yada.

 

Dan Sipple: (19:26)

Whereas there's plenty of evidence, medical evidence, medical literature, strongly supporting the hormetic effects that we get from plant compounds, such as Curcumin, EGCG from green tea , Resveratrol, and those sorts of things for delivering I guess, a weak stressor to the cell and that cell then becoming stronger as a result of it pumping up our own Glutathione production, NRF2 activation and things like that.

 

Dan Sipple: (19:53)

So look, admittedly, I haven't sort of gone down that Rabbit Hole in its entirety to really, really suss that out. Again, common sense tells me that a combination of both those things is probably the best thing ever, and that we shouldn't try to get in this kind of one side. That's the only way argument. So that's the whole, the hormesis kind of aspect to it. Then you've got things like pH balance.

 

Dan Sipple: (20:17)

Such a high protein diet, which it inevitably is long-term, does that kind of then create pH issues which I wonder about? The Carnivore kind of argument to that is that, if you're eating the compounds such as those found in connective tissue and organs and that type of thing they are full of plenty of alkalizing minerals, which shouldn't negate that. But I'm not really convinced on that one, if I'm honest. Then you've got just the fact that there really is only a handful of people really strongly in this camp promoting it.

 

Dan Sipple: (20:53)

We just don't have robust long-term evidence or sites on the long-term effects of this. And again, as I alluded to earlier, the biggest concern for me is really the microbiome. You've heard me bang on this, about it in previous podcasts about butyrate production and how important that is for healthy gut lining and immune modulation and what not. Just to summarise that butyrate is this compound, is short-chain fatty acids that our healthy bacteria make when they're fed plant polyphenols and soluble fibre.

 

Dan Sipple: (21:21)

So, we've got bacteria in things like accamensium and Faecalibacterium, which in decent amounts have been correlated at least in research with really healthy outcomes, gut protective immuno modulating, etc. But they require the soluble fibre and plant material to feed them, to nourish them so that they make more short-chain fatty acids like butyrate acetate and propionate.

 

Dan Sipple: (21:43)

Paul hormesis, his argument is that if you're in a state of ketosis, you're making these ketone bodies. One of them called beta-hydroxybutyrate, I believe. And his argument is that, that compound can then act as a fuel to these good species of bacteria in the gut. So they'll still continue to produce butyrate. That's something that kind of my ears prick up to

 

Dan Sipple: (22:08)

But again, I want to see that supported by more robust evidence and kind of see just more than kind of an equal stand people. So it's something we'll have to just watch over time and really allow the science to catch up with.

 

Mason: (22:24)

From what you're looking at, what is the main attachment to the sticking to Carnivore rather than introducing a plant whatsoever. Because, it's been interesting. Because, I've allowed myself kind of consciously, just not that I would want to go towards a kind of carnivore diet at this point unless as you're saying, he's talking about the therapeutic effects and it been used as a therapy. I really rate these diet therapies so much, I think it's really good.

 

Mason: (22:52)

... that this one's come about, but I've allowed myself to kind of sink into that community mind, think a little bit and come into touch of with the plant phobia a little bit. I've found that quite toxic. Not projecting this onto everyone else, but for myself, when I came out the other end of it, I've found that quite toxic in itself. Just feeling that aversion and mistrust of the plant kingdom completely. It really rubbed me up the wrong way.

 

Mason: (23:25)

And I think all it really took for me, it was really useful because it did point me towards going. I was all right. Well, then what's a useful way then for me to approach plants again and bridge myself out of that little experiment. It all came down to food preparation, selection. I don't like following ratios, but we have talked about ratios on our gut bacteria podcast, which always then comes down to where food settles in your kitchen, in the flow of your kitchen where it's settles into. Whether it's a staple aside food or sometimes food so on and so forth.

 

Mason: (24:03)

So, that kind of plays out for the mental rationale, the ratio for the more romantic you're thinking about. The richness that's something bringing all the saltiness or the fibre. But it's something that's going to be bringing to the diet. And you kind of ... I like having wherever you're arriving to you, we've talked about, I've talked about that MD, the gastroenterologist, the vegan all fibre, basically and then the Carnivore dude. It's amazing that a field of medicine can have such extreme for that. But-

 

Dan Sipple: (24:33)

No it is from, especially from a gastroenterologist perspective. People that are doing surgery and stuff like that to have such polarising views. I find that pretty. That's kind of blew me away when we had that conversation a couple of weeks ago.

 

Dan Sipple: (24:51)

We both know who these characters are and they've got these kind of extreme opposite angles yet they're both kind of head of their field doing really well, really successful, really popular. There's not much middle ground and that's kind of concerning. The thing I come back to is that kind of balance in modern pop culture is kind of boring and we know that-

 

Mason: (25:13)

Yes, it's so boring.

 

Dan Sipple: (25:13)

For them for a brand. But you know, if that's the reality, that's the reality. If someone said to me, Dan, you can no longer take herbal medicine or everything you've learned in the last 10 to 15 years is out the window because you're wrong basically, and don't trust 5,000 years worth of TCM based on tried and tested herbal compounds. By the way, you can't eat sweet potato or berries or nuts and seeds anymore. That part of it doesn't sit well for me.

 

Dan Sipple: (25:46)

But on the flip side, I can definitely, definitely get behind the concept of eating more organ meats and promoting to my patients and look forward to seeing the benefits of that when people start to take on that. Because I feel like that is more in line with how we ancestrally ate. You know we got to kind of time, I guess, in human history where we went, Oh, hang on food. So plentiful, now we don't have to worry about those less ideal tasting organ meats. We can just have the flesh, the muscle meat.

 

Mason: (26:15)

That's interesting. You point to something really, I think quite important. I think I've been talking about this too much, but I've been really thinking about how a diet in the modern world forms and we need a completely different way of looking at it since it's so convenient where choosing with the ultimate convenience. There I've got bone marrow capsules at home. That Tahnee bought, I'm just, sometimes I look at it and I feel so disconnected from what the original intent is.

 

Mason: (26:43)

Although I'm really grateful for it, it sure is a valid thing to bring about in my lifestyle. But where we're crafting and creating these lifestyles, we're choosing to do a Hunter gatherer kind of style. Some people are actually returning completely to that. But it's within compliance with society in some level. Most of the time it's choice and convenience and often new weapons and so on and so forth.

 

Mason: (27:10)

Then likewise on the vegan style everywhere, where we're just choosing and crafting. It's this beautiful and harrowing time and therefore it's going to be confusing. And especially when someone wants to sit within one external brand or identity. We talk about this a lot. But I've been really thinking about just how many of the external worlds and groups with different group things, like for me, Carnivore has never really had that appeal, but it fits into that ancestral model.

 

Mason: (27:40)

They maybe, but you know, just I've travelled into that world and I can feel in the ancestral think, there's all these quiet for me. I can feel these heavy rules and judgments towards the modern living and towards other kind of incomplete opposition to other things that I've valued. So, I've gone in and gone deep into that Chinese medic.

 

Mason: (28:03)

So I've gone in and gone deep into that Chinese medical, like Taoist way of eating, which is really with the seasons taking advantage of agrarian farming culture. And then for me, like I said, I consider all these little pillars that I've journeyed into. And a lot of the time I've gotten lost in those and then developed morality. And then haven't been able to come back to myself and allow them to interrelate and amalgamate. So having another one talking to you around the bringing biodiversity to the microbiome, all of a sudden that's brought up the relevance of say these lectin containing plants, which are in complete opposition to certain might think that I've had from the ancestral perspective. I'm not having, not using lentils and beans because I just didn't have that affinity towards them.

 

Mason: (28:53)

Likewise, I'm not really using them in a Taoist kind of perspective, but nonetheless, I've felt myself being drawn there. And despite there being this opposition, right? So there's opposition there. I've been really thinking about how my diet culture is going to rise up. I think it's relevant for all guys to really consider this. So you can journey into a world, then if you can journey back to yourself and think that you're going to have many different footings and principles that are going to lay the foundation for you to create your own diet upon, and there's going to be many opposing views. And really good example is all this carnivore world in opposition with say more of a plant-based eating for lots of fibre, lots of plant polyphenols so that we can nourish the microbiome and so on and so forth.

 

Mason: (29:47)

But if you can stand back and allow them, all these different principles that start interrelating with each other, all these areas that have inspired you and start them, not laying them on top of each other, you've got to respect all those different worlds and the fact that they are either therapies or Taoism now being a complete system. You don't necessarily want to chop and change too much. You can feel those principles and values that you've really nourished you from there and then keep on going on your journey. You feel all of a sudden they start mixing in and creating a really beautiful culture there. I mean, we talked about in that gut podcast and all of a sudden, I felt the naughtiness of having a meal that's excessive in meat, right? Because that's going to feed a particular bacteria and families that are going to create a reducing the tightness of the junctures of the gut's wall lining. But that falls in complete opposition of my value of Argentinian cooking, right?

 

Dan Sipple: (30:49)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Mason: (30:49)

And so if I've stepped back and I allow those two to interplay, and I think about how it's going to work over years and decades of how they will interact with each other, all of a sudden I can feel both values been satiated and nourished. And eventually I'm kind of getting to the point where I'm hitting... I don't really have much else that I want to explore at the moment dietarily. I'm really happy to give it years to allow them to form into one another. And I think that's a good one for guys. And of course, everyone else who's listening, but for guys to remember when you find yourself in these extreme throws of diet with all these beautiful, beautiful benefits coming about, carnivore and vegan, all of that, you get the beautiful weight loss and blood sugar control and athletic output.

 

Mason: (31:36)

But remembering that at some point, it's going to be good to move beyond that identity. The big warning I think... there's a big warning around branding yourself, whether you're branding yourself in your group of friends, in your own mind or on Instagram, it's the one thing I... I saw like Jordan Peterson's daughter then create some diet that's like a lion diet or something like that. So it was just full carnivore diet. And then last time I checked, maybe she had this all along, I'm not saying it didn't work or anything, but it was interesting to see then she was starting to have that conversation from what I could tell about bridging people towards starting to integrate plants. But that is something hard when you've created such an aversion in the [crosstalk 00:32:25].

 

Dan Sipple: (32:24)

That's right, yeah.

 

Mason: (32:26)

You needed to be there very solid and reverence been delivered full of harmony and you going forth and finding something that's not going to get you ejected from society. Because if you're eating all meat, it's hard to go to friend's houses. It's hard to be social and it's hard to be integrated. And that is possibly an even bigger nutrient than the food you're eating. What do you think about all that?

 

Dan Sipple: (32:46)

So it's so true, man. Yeah. And this is a thing which I, I guess have another kind of slight issue with, I guess, is that when this really came to the forefront a year ago, like you were saying, and it was heavy on socials and Jordan Peterson was suddenly the topic of conversation and everything, and it was carnivore carnivore carnivore, the name of the diet in itself kind of ensures that yeah, you're eating meat and you're eating organ meats and it is very, animal-based. Fast forward a year later, a lot of these characters are now going, "Oh, hang on. No, we worked out that hunter gatherers ate a lot of honey, so I'm eating honey now." And yeah, these couple of fruits are suddenly on the agenda. So I mean watching that evolve over the past 12 to 18 months, I'm just kind of going, no shit, of course. Why do we have to call it a carnivore diet? Why can't it just be the ancestral diet, which already existed pre this kind of quote unquote carnivore diet kind of took the spotlight? Because an ancestral diet, take like a Weston A. Price type approach, is just that. It's the cultured dairy, minimum processed whole foods, organic. There is some plant compounds, there is beneficial fibre. There's not too much of it, but it does have a focus on organ meats as well for the skeletal health and dental health and all that type of thing too.

 

Dan Sipple: (34:13)

So I see it kind of evolving and working its way through that type of thing. And I don't know if it will then be rebranded, I'm sure it's still going to be called the carnivore diet. But that again for me was just a bit of a kind of red flag with it where I was like, okay, so it's actually evolved within 12 months or so. And I dare say, will continue to in another 12 months.

 

Mason: (34:37)

Yeah. It's reminiscent of when it went from fruitarian to 80 10 10, where it was just, all right, well first of all, we're [inaudible 00:34:49] Fruitarians and we're on 40 bananas a day. And then actually let's make it 80% sugar and then maybe 10% plant-based protein, 10% plant-based fats. Actually now we're making it raw till four. And so after four o'clock you can have your cooked foods, and so it goes. I think it's a beautiful skill for men to pick up as we're navigating diet, because I think there's a lot of image issues within the community of men. And that's why there is such an appeal toward... The main appeal towards ketogenesis back in the day was getting [crosstalk 00:35:33].

 

Dan Sipple: (35:33)

Getting lean, yeah.

 

Mason: (35:37)

I really wanted to understand the carnivore stuff. That's why when I allowed myself to get drawn in, it was that. It was just like, oh my gosh, the such sudden muscle mass growth. And oh my gosh, I've lost that weight around the wherever. It was some guys' handles, some guys it's like the man boob side of things. And you can feel, it's like an advertisement. It's no different to an infomercial at the core of its energy. I think it's great for guys to look at these things and see that there's something within a carnivore diet or any diet that's going to be coming forth, but it's got appeal. And so therefore there's a value there for them and maybe it's hormonal so on and so forth. But if you can retain that skill to go into it, say understanding that you're going into something therapeutically, really unsure, go with [inaudible 00:36:34] or something like that. Or you facilitate people going through these dietary journeys.

 

Mason: (36:40)

But remember that you will come out the other side and at any time that your mind starts attaching and finding a rightness to what you're doing and a wrongness to what you were doing and to what other people are doing, just start to get a bit more slippery in your mind and slither out of it a little bit. Because what I think what-

 

Dan Sipple: (37:00)

Yeah [crosstalk 00:37:01].

 

Mason: (37:02)

Yeah. But for men, of course there's weight. Weight loss might be something to go in with, but that's going to sit there and become a little bit of an eating disorder at some point, which is what ultimately extreme diets are going to become. I feel like it's important for guys to just remember that you're going to go in and do your work, and then you're going to come out the other side of any label diet and just start to draw those principles. And if you can find it in yourself to not brand yourself in any way, just practise. Don't have any label for your diet, if you can. If it works for your profession. It's not a bad idea to have a couple of words to kind of [inaudible 00:37:48], but if you can feel that none of them can actually explain what your diet is, we're in such a discovery stage of how are we going to be eating long-term. So give yourself that freedom. I think it'll really, it'll ease up a little bit of mental stress.

 

Mason: (38:05)

And I think for a lot of guys who are adverse, they're a bit worried about going into any kind of deep dive into health as well because they feel it is going to take away a lot of what's possible for them to do that they enjoy, just remember that's a principle in itself. That's celebratory. In fact, maybe it's eating foods that are nostalgic to you or from your childhood or connects you to your mates, that can be its own big pillar or principle that needs to long-term be integrated into all these other areas that are important to you, microbiome, ancestral eating, for me, Taoist seasonal eating, so on and so forth.

 

Mason: (38:43)

They can mingle just, it just might be appropriate to just put it to the side for a time while you therapeutically dive in so you can get greater context around how and why you're approaching those foods that are for lack of a better word, bad for you or unhealthy, which I don't think they're words that I really value too much. But yeah. I mean, it's a wild world out there. And it's been great to see this drawing so many more men. It's been great, keto and carnivore have really engaged a lot of blokes. It's been really great to see, right?

 

Dan Sipple: (39:18)

Totally. That's also what I do want to highlight. At the end of the day, if people, men particularly are being more conscious about their food, understanding what inflammation is, the role of it in the body, what foods cause your health, what ones boost health and whatnot on a general level and coming off that kind of sad diet, at the end of the day, that's what we want. Everyone's going to go on a process of discovery once they're down that rabbit hole at some stage and nourish their knowledge and work out what works for them. Because there's always going to be that metabolic and kind of... that flexibility. Like blood type, even blood types, I'm sure that the blood type Os are to be the ones that thrive more so on this sort of diet than your As and your Bs. So we're always going to see a bit of flexibility and diversity with who it works with and who it doesn't.

 

Dan Sipple: (40:14)

But yeah, as I said, as long as people are becoming more switched on and connecting to their foods and their diet and where their food's coming from too, that's a huge one. So yeah. And I guess coming back to the carnivore ins and outs and rules and that type of thing, the other concern I had about it with a lot of people was that they hear all of a sudden that, oh no, you get a reduction in this inflammatory condition if you eat this way and why not? Oh, cool. And just the amount of folks that are then going to go out and just start eating more muscle meat and probably poorly raised muscle meat. That's that's for me an epic fail. And I'm sure that has the tendency to happen.

 

Dan Sipple: (40:52)

Again, just coming back to the fact that folks in our kind of era haven't been raised really by and large eating oval and organ meats. And so even if they try them for the first time, a lot of people are going to freak out and be like, there's no way I can shelve that three times a day. I'd rather just have a ribeye. And that is going to be super, super problematic compared to your carnivore person who's super across it and is sourcing liver and heart and kidney and whatever and combining it with the muscle meats and being as diverse as possible and eating a wide variety of animals too. It comes back to the plant thing, right? You don't just want to eat the same plants, you want a diversity of plants. So I'd hope that people are trying to source the venison and the kangaroo and the beef and the chicken and the duck and making it mimic what we would have done more so ancestrally. That fits for me more. Yeah. I'm not sure where I was going with that one. Kind of a bit off track there.

 

Mason: (41:52)

But I'll pick it up there because that was something I wanted to bring up, is it's been beautiful around this movement that there has been a balancing through the say-

 

Mason: (42:04)

And I'm not referring to level-headed people who, for lack of a better word, are eating more of the vegan lifestyle. I'm talking about extremists whenever I bring it up.

 

Dan Sipple: (42:14)

Right

 

Mason: (42:16)

There was just such a stigma around meat and the vegan propaganda for going vegan for fun. Which for all intents and purposes is a great thing to explore. But then, you see with this carnivore diet, is you raising awareness around quality of meats and farming practises. That again, you just see a hopefully two balancing, harmonising elements that could and should be coming together. And of course, when you get two opposing forces, they're going to point out where the other one needs to actually look. But it's been great to see this carnivore diet coming up and of course the Keto and that kind of side of things. The level of importance being put onto regenerative farming has been really huge, heirloom breeds has been huge, of course the obvious one is going from grain-fed to grass-fed.

 

Dan Sipple: (43:10)

Yes.

 

Mason: (43:12)

And then as well, the push towards the medicines, eating invasive species. I've got a mate, I think I've mentioned on the podcast before, it's hard to get rabbit and that going, because there's so many [inaudible 00:43:27] getting traps out, but even the Asian Minor birds, like, why aren't we eating these birds? They get them checked and get them processed. In a professional way by of which about these animals that are invasive. They're more [inaudible 00:43:44] maybe. The medicines that we want one for us to get access to here on the East coast.

 

Mason: (43:51)

And that's a good way to kind of go about it as well. Coming back to it was why I really respect old mate Pete [phonetic 00:43:59] where he doesn't eat any industrial foods anymore. Which is something when I drop into my ancestral or kind of pillar, that if I really embody that, if I go too far into it, my right and wrongness pointed at myself for eating any domesticated animal becomes really intense. But someone who's really gone down that route. It's like the there's quite a few people. But Pete, for everything that he does and rags on about, he's only eating animals that are native. Right. I don't know what he's actually eating, but when I think about it, I used to get the native meats delivered before the guys in the Adelaide market there. I can't remember the name, but it was magpie goose and crocodile then getting into the camel then boar and that kind of thing to help [crosstalk 00:00:44:54].

 

Dan Sipple: (44:55)

Did you get buffalo at one stage, do I recall? Was that you?

 

Mason: (44:56)

Yeah. Well buffalo. We can get Ocean Shores Butcher. [crosstalk 00:45:00].

 

Dan Sipple: (45:00)

Yeah I need to try that.

 

Mason: (45:03)

Yeah, beautiful meat. Coming from places where the Buffalo hooves are just absolutely destroying the ecology, similar to what's going on with the brumbies in, in Mount Kosciuszko. It's really hard for people, especially coming out of veganism, to wrap your head around. But there's a lot of animals that are absolutely decimating the ecology there about.

 

Mason: (45:25)

Just remembering that, for me, it's important because I didn't grow up eating organ meats, I'm still taking capsules and that. And Tahn's and I kind of shave little bits in here and there, because absolute bliss when it comes to it. Just remembering even when you're kind of patting yourself on the back of the going grass-fed and regenerative farming, I'm not trying to guilt anyone out. And just to remember, you're still tapped completely into a pharmaceutical model. Every one of those cows is vaccinated. Its the most cutting edge practises.

 

Mason: (46:01)

And Andrew from Byron Bay, from Grass Fed meat, great place, everyone should go and support him. They'd be supporting really good farmers. I've only been able to get chickens that aren't vaccinated, right. And they're the best chickens ever, like $45 a bird. Well otherwise, so all the cows and all the pig and the lamb and all that, and even though they're regenerating farming, they're not going to risk losing a herd by not vaccinating. So you're still tapped into a model. They're not to bring any guilt, but just get over yourself a little bit, remember that you're still sitting there as we are remembering those kinds of things, but nonetheless [crosstalk 00:04:44]

 

Dan Sipple: (46:43)

Well if anything then hopefully it encourages people to do a bit more hunting and gathering, as lame as that might sound, but to actually get into hunting. The amount of folks that I've seen. And I know a few that have gone all the way from, let's call it a sad diet to veganism, to hardcore dogma vegan for years and years, experience all the health issues that might come with that after a certain amount of time and then come back to a Paleo Esc type diet and now picking up hunting practises. That's pretty cool. I think that's ideally what we want to do, right?

 

Mason: (47:17)

Yep. It's a natural progression. It is definitely a natural progression. It's definitely where I've been. I just been getting a little bit more into fishing, bringing it a little bit more protein in. In that way, but it's an inevitable big venture for me to start getting into that. I've just been looking at getting those skills, kind of like rocking for the first time, but what a way to connect to the lamb it's good.

 

Dan Sipple: (47:45)

For sure.

 

Mason: (47:45)

Yeah. And the hunting and likewise as you said gathering, start being able to go out and people start getting herb's from you in bottles, or getting mushrooms from me. And then eventually they are out there in the shrub looking at their own mushrooms. Right. Start harvesting and if they want [inaudible 00:06:04]. I think we're having Jake Cassar next week on the podcast so you going to do some witchcraft with old Jake as well. Anything else you wanted to just drop in there around diet and just especially if we just focus on the guys men's health in general, when it comes to diet any other little tidbits or advice?

 

Dan Sipple: (48:28)

Look, I think just to kind of leave it with the fact that we really not trying to demonise meat at all in this podcast, if anything, we're promoting ethical source, as we said, if you're going to do it go more nose to tail really, really make an emphasis on trying to bring in those organ meats. The nutrient profile on that stuff is, in my opinion, nature's superfood and trumps anything. So it really to emphasise that. And there's no question that if you are kind of struggling with libido and performance and cognition and that type of thing, this is something that you may want to experiment with and do short term, I'd encourage that.

 

Dan Sipple: (49:06)

The long term I'm talking years down, the track is where I have my concerns, but definitely in the short term to get away from a more sad diet, way of eating to then incorporating more organs, more nose to tail type foods and ways of cooking and preparation and that type of thing, go for it. Don't hold back at the same time, be accountable, be respectful and call yourself out if there is issues that, that arise out of it. And don't get too dogmatic. This is the biggest one, right?

 

Mason: (49:39)

Yeah. It's the biggest one, 100%. Yeah. It's so good to kind of experiment with [inaudible 00:49:43] help break like some of the rules you had in mind. I still sometimes have big hunk of protein for breakfast and I still kind of pat myself, looking sideways at myself.

 

Dan Sipple: (49:55)

Yeah.

 

Mason: (49:55)

"What are you doing mate?" But yeah. Ultimately I agree with you, it's something worth potentially exploring and then letting it just settle into the diet for me. Yeah. It's still kind of at the point where meat sits in there as a bit of a side dish from the Taoist perspective, Tahnee [phonetic 00:00:50:21] and I are still doing quite a bit of blood building, after all these years of being vegetarian. So it's another kind of place where it can be slowly integrated and being cooked well. The stews, boiling them up is still something where I find a lot of meat coming in and then, yeah. But otherwise it's sitting and trying to just remember that having that there as a kind of a little bit of a side dish almost in the meals. It must still settle into place for me. I don't know how your [inaudible 00:50:51] with the gut bacteria.

 

Dan Sipple: (50:52)

Yeah, look I'm the same I have to say. I still catch myself sometimes going, I've definitely out done my protein quota for today. And you can probably feel that turn and down in the gut. As you know, I kind of keep close tabs on the microbiome and test every kind of three or four months and just see where it's at. And look, I've definitely seen times when I have gone too protein heavy, a spike in the bacteria that ferment them and it' be not so good. And that's me, who's super, super, super tuned in to everything microbiome.

 

Dan Sipple: (51:22)

So, it is a delicate balance and that's why I keep saying it, but I come back to that kind of impact of just eating too much protein and too much fat without the context of the fibre there to buffer it. That's the longterm concern. So in a nutshell guys, those of you listening, do it, experiment with it, but get your pathology done alongside it, get your bloods. And if you keen to go that far into it, get the stool test done as well and check it all out.

 

Mason: (51:49)

Do the microbiomes, that's what you're saying?

 

Dan Sipple: (51:53)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Mason: (51:53)

The microbiome tests. I hope you're not following too many rules. I've got my wedding coming up. It's a couple of Argentinian boys cooking, a lot of meat and vegetables over the fire.

 

Dan Sipple: (52:01)

Awesome, pumped.

 

Mason: (52:03)

Leave all your dogma at the door. Sipple. But man, I appreciate it so much. Thanks for your non-dogma approach and helping us talking clinical and helping us bridge that into what that looks like. Long-term in a diet as well from your perspective. It's really helpful. I know the guys who are really appreciating it.

 

Dan Sipple: (52:24)

Anytime, bro, it's been fun job.

 

Mason: (52:27)

Go and work with Dan. I mean, you're pretty busy at the moment, but like [crosstalk 00:52:32] hit up Functional Naturopath. The Functional Naturopath, .com or .au?

 

Dan Sipple: (52:38)

Yeah, just .com and The.Functional.Naturopath on Insta.

 

Mason: (52:41)

That's beautiful. Catch you bro.

 

Dan Sipple: (52:43)

Okay, later brother.