Nutrition scientist & physio. Host of The Proof (50M+ listens). Author, The Proof is in the Plants. The evidence on living longer – minus the dogma.
Australia
Joined October 2019
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I found plaque in my coronary arteries at 38, after a decade of eating well. Here's what I've done since.
New labs as I track my response to lipid lowering therapy.
Turns out Repatha (pcsk9 inhibitor) can keep lowering lipids between months 2-3.
My month 3 ldl-c was measured by @function at 35 mg/dl
That’s with nutrition + monotherapy
Most lifters who stall assume they have hit their genetic limit, but the science suggests that is rarely the case.
In this episode, sports scientist and WNBF pro natural bodybuilder Dr Eric Helms unpacks diminishing returns, what progress is realistic after the beginner years, and how to train smarter when time and joints are limited.
For the full show notes head to: theproof.com/how-much-muscle…
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Interesting study.
A study that compared low-carb (30% calories) plant-rich diet versus a healthy Nordic diet (50-55% calories from carbs) vs usual care in patients with pre-diabetes and TD2.
Outcomes of interest: Liver fat, body weight and other cardio-metabolic risk factors.
Ad lib study, and patients bought and prepared their own food so we get good generalisability. Important to underscore it wasn't a calorie restriction weight-loss study.
Diet surveys and blood biomarker data to verify dietary intake.
Length: 12 months
Liver fat reduced comparably on the low-carb and nordic diets (about a fifth of liver fat was lost in both dietS)
Nordic diet did significantly better than the usual care diet for a host of other outcomes and better than the low carb diet for glycemic control.
Authors concluded:
"Thus, the healthy nordic diet was overall the most effective diet for the treatment of T2D and prediabetes, including improving multiple metabolic disorder seen in NAFLD."
"Notably, our descriptive analysis showed that more than half (~ 54%) of the randomized patients to the healthy nordic diet had a remission of NAFLD, compared with only ~17% after the other two diets, and the
healthy nordic diet group also had the highest rate of remission of prediabetes"
Note: Not directly comparable to the more recent Sam Klein/Max Peterson trial as that was energy restricted, food provided and a ketogenic diet. The low carb diet in this intervention was higher carb (relatively), focussed on plant fats and ad-lib.
Cc @ApoDudz @reallyoptimized @mpetersenmdphd
nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
This weeks episode with Dr Eric Helms
Have You Really Hit Your Muscle Limit? A Scientist Explains | Eric Helms
youtu.be/vMcAEudvjIc
How Do You Prevent a Heart Attack Before It Happens? 8 Heart Health Essentials | Dayspring & Soffer
youtu.be/ZXfcEEsuWxg
Nutrition can be a confusing space.
One week a food is bad for you, the next week it's good for you, and it's hard to know who to trust.
So I've started writing on Substack. I go through the evidence, tell you what I make of it, and share what I'd actually do.
Next up, I'm looking at whole grains, then food preservatives and blood pressure. I'll also share my full-body MRI results and whether I think they're worth getting.
It's free to subscribe if you'd like these in your inbox.
Link below.
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One in ten American adults now reports using a GLP-1 medication, and the loudest voices on both sides are people who have never had to get one approved for a patient.
My guest this week does that work every day, and she says writing the prescription is the easiest part of it. Elizabeth Kazarian is double board-certified in Family Medicine and Obesity Medicine, and we get into what good care around these drugs looks like, what happens when people stop taking them, and why the biggest barrier her patients face has nothing to do with the science.
For the full show notes head to: theproof.com/treating-obesit…
What do you think is the STRONGEST evidence that older adults can benefit from more than the protein RDA of 0.8 g per kg per day?
I ask this question a lot and usually get a wide variety of responses.
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Interesting perspective inspired by @SimonBiohacker
Vitamin K2 seems to reduce calcification. Some including myself have said this may not actually be a good thing as calcification appears to improve plaque stability. At least folks on statins who experience more calcification have lower risk of events.
Question comes back to events.
If you drive ApoB down with statin/zetia or some form of LLT and get plaque regression, are outcomes better or worse when pairing that with Vitamin K2?
I’d like to see a trial that does:
Statin + k2
Vs Statin alone
Looking at cardiovascular events.
Am I asking too much?
Dr Elizabeth Kazarian on treating obesity in 2026
How to Lose Weight, Protect Muscle & Quiet Food Noise With Ozempic & GLP... youtu.be/_maTYN7o0Aw?si=50bG… via @YouTube
Walk down any supermarket aisle and you will find the word probiotic on jars of sauerkraut, bottles of kombucha, and dozens of supplements. According to one of the world's leading food microbiologists, most of those labels do not mean what you think they mean.
In this episode Dr Maria Marco, Professor at UC Davis and President of the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics, explains the difference between a live microbe and a probiotic, why gut health is so hard to define, and what the evidence genuinely supports.
For the full show notes head to: theproof.com/most-probiotic-…
Lot of folks asking me what this new data from FLOWPROMOTE means for primary prevention of CVD in people with low plaque burden without symptoms.
It's important to be clear this data is not from patients with sub-clinical atherosclerosis. In FLOWPROMOTE subjects had stable chest pain (i.e they had symptoms) and moderate coronary disease. But it's more evidence that "lower for longer is better".
It's also looking at plaque not outcomes - although given the totality of evidence we would expect if tracked for long enough and adequately powered this would result in less MACE.
Conservative folks would say even if you have a low amount of plaque and no symptoms there's no downside to combination therapy and getting LDL-C down lower. Less conservative would say - we don't have evidence and do you really want to be taking multiple medications for life that lower LDL-C. Maybe you want to wait and reassess in 5-10 years time.
I'm more conservative given I have a strong family history of CVD with first and second degree relatives having heart attacks in their 40's - and I see little downside to having an ApoB 30-50 mg/dl.
