Let me perhaps provide a personal

example first for folks because some of

this will be familiar to people who have

listened for a long time, maybe to other

episodes of the two of us, but a lot of

it's going to be new, but I want to

establish some priors just so people are

aware of what this might look like in

practice. So, I have experimented with

the ketogenic diet, also extended

fasting. you can arrive at some similar

places, but like you said, there can be

some pretty heavy taxes to pay with

extended fasting. The ketogenic diet

I've experimented with all the way back

to the '9s. Some of you weren't even

born probably who are listening, but

some of you will remember the '90s. And

I was using it specifically for mood

stabilizing. This was towards the end of

college, but also to lean out while

building muscle on something called the

cyclical ketogenic diet.

>> So, we're going to get to that later in

the conversation, but it was

effectively, let's call it, 6 days of

focusing on a ketogenic diet with one

day or a half to 3/4 of a day of

glycogen depletion and then loading with

more carbohydrates, lower fat, etc. The

reason that the ketogenic diet became

doubly interesting to me is that when I

had Lyme disease the second time, which

came with all sorts of co- infections

like besiosis and so on. And this isn't

chronic fatigue or depression searching

for a diagnosis that is external. I I

feel like sometimes the cottage industry

of diagnosing and treating people for

quote unquote Lyme disease can be shady

at best. But in this case, I'm coming

from Long Island. Everybody in my family

has had tickborn disease. Wow.

>> And was credibly diagnosed. So the

second time I had lime,

>> I got to a point because I I did not see

the bullseye rash. Assumed I did not

have it, which is a mistake because

sometimes you don't see the

dermatological response and you

nonetheless have contracted something

like Lyme disease. I ended up weeks

later slurring my speech. took me

minutes to get out of bed because my

joints hurt so much. Forgetting friends

names and my assistant said, "Tim, you

really need to see someone. This isn't

fatigue. I've seen you sick. I've seen

you tired. This is something else." And

suffice to say, that turned into several

months even post antibiotic treatment,

which I do think is important, of we

could call it pseudo dementia. I mean I

I really felt like I was operating at

10% cognitive capacity and basically at

my wit's end I said well what can I

control because a lot has not done the

job and I went into

strict ketosis. What does that mean?

That means that I'm consuming moderate

protein, probably getting at least 50%

of my calories from fat and keeping my

my carbohydrates to less than 20 gram a

day probably at that point. And within 3

or 4 days, I'd probably say around day 3

or four because I wasn't very fat

adapted at the time. My body wasn't well

trained to use fat because I wasn't

doing intermittent fasting, which we'll

come back to. And within 3 or 4 days,

effectively, all of my cognitive

symptoms disappeared. And I stayed in

that state through nutritional ketosis

for a few weeks, had complete remission

of any of the cognitive symptoms plus

the joint pain symptoms, and those never

came back. And I recommended that and

this is not a randomized control trial.

But over the years due to various

factors we've had ticks growing in

population also expanding to the coasts

and on the west coast that is and

elsewhere. Had three friends replicate

this with ketosis after suffering

various symptoms from tickborn disease.

And

you know, we were texting, maybe even

talking about this, but I never had a

great explanation for why it worked. I

said, I don't know the exact mechanism.

Maybe I have faulty glucose metabolism

that was somehow maybe something was

impaired by the ticks and therefore I'm

giving my brain this alternate fuel that

it really likes, ketones. But it didn't

explain necessarily the durability of

the changes. Right. In brief, do you

have a theory or an explanation for why

that would work?

>> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up

because quickly dozens if not hundreds

of people with tick born diseases,

including Lyme disease and all the tick

born diseases have communicated with me

and one of the patients is actually

Deanna Toadon who was diagnosed with ALS

in prior to 2010 and has basically been

stabilized

given three years to live. So, I

realized that it's underdiagnosed. The

the tests to do that are kind of

controversial, you know, with the CDC

testing, the two-tier testing and

hygienics. So, I know I'm going off

track a little bit here, but I think

it's important to say that the spyroet

borellia that spyroet is essentially

100% glycolytic.

>> And when you limit glucose availability

and glycolysis, you are targeting the

energy systems of that microbe. So,

that's one thing to think about. And

it's well established now. It wasn't 3

years ago, but a ketogenic diet, in

particular, beta hydroxybutyrate

elevated in the blood, stimulates the

adaptive immune response. And that's

essentially your body's ability to

target foreign invaders and neutralize

them. And that has become a rapidly

growing area of interest. University of

Pennsylvania, you know, they're doing

CARTT therapy and and checkpoint

inhibitors because of the ketogenic

enhancement of the adaptive immune

response. So, and I think that plays a

role and situationally I have observed

that you go into ketosis if you have an

inflammatory process and Lyme disease is

is inflammatory. But people who have

shingles and herpes simplex and things

like that, I have an inbox full of

people that do that and I would like to

experimentally go down that direction to

understand why. But I think there's two

reasons. You're targeting the energy

systems and you're augmenting the immune

response to keep the spyroet in a

dormant stage or maybe eradicating it in

in some context.

>> It's really incredible on a whole lot of

levels and I'm just lucky that I had the

prior experience with the ketogenic diet

to even have it occur to me as a last

ditch effort. And for people, if it

wasn't clear, I mean, you explained it

clearly, but glycolytic, I'm simplifying

here, but it means that something needs

to eat sugar or metabolize, you know,

carbohydrates to survive, right?