Dare to challenge conventional nutrition advice? Prepare to be captivated as we sit down with the pioneering John Jaquish, Ph.D. founder of Jaquish Biomedical and Primal Medical. Dr. Jaquish challenges the mainstream push for vegan nutrition by the American Medical Association and the CDC. He sheds light on the silent crisis of suppressed testosterone levels due to western nutrition habits, igniting a conversation on the need for physicians knowledgeable in both nutrition and physical medicine.
We then unravel the controversial web of government involvement in the food industry, exposing the potential dangers of a high-carbohydrate diet. Ever considered the truth you'd rather not confront when it comes to your food choices? Dr. Jaquish helps us question the comfort lies we’ve been fed by the food industry, as we explore the benefits of a carnivore-based diet in reducing triglyceride spiking and the potential risk of stroke or cardiac incidents. But, can discipline be cultivated to stick to such a diet amidst the temptation of carb-heavy foods?
Dr. Jaquish brings to light how his unique approach with Primal results in lower costs and better health outcomes while sharing about his innovative businesses, Primal Medical, Jaquish Biomedical, and Osteostrong. An episode that promises a deep-dive into the complexities and potential solutions for a more comprehensive healthcare system, you won't want to miss it.
The Real Clear Podcast with Dr Lucas Klein is the in-depth analysis and commentary on current political events through a psychological lens. The Real Clear podcast covers a wide range of topics, from the latest election results to policy debates, to exploring the impact of current events on the political landscape.
Transcript
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:0:29
Okay, I'm here again with Dr John J Quish. He is the founder one of the founders of J Quish Biomedical, and he is also the new founder of a medical group called Primal Medical, which we're going to talk about today. Dr Jay, thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks for having me, my pleasure. So tell us a little bit about Primal Medical and let's get into discussing what this is about.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:0:57
So the objective behind Primal was really like a lot of just customer questions, like people would say hey, I got my hormones checked and it turns out I have super low testosterone, which almost every male does, because of the shitty food that people are eating. So you know, western nutrition is awful and it suppresses our testosterone, encourages estrogen production, and so people they want to go to endocrinologists to look into testosterone replacement therapy. So general practitioners and endocrinologists who are saying sometimes opposing things and they're usually saying things that are opposing to what I'm telling people as well, which is really running into nutrition. And so when I tell users of X3, you should primarily be eating animal protein. That's what we're meant to eat and that can be demonstrated in the literature. It's demonstrated in my latest book. You know, once I show the examples from the literature or they read the book, they go oh, okay, this makes perfect sense. But then their physician is arguing with them, telling them to go vegan, and it's like veganism is the recipe for malnutrition, like that doesn't work, and you know, the physician just doesn't want to hear it. Never mind the fact that the physician has no education in nutrition at all. They certainly have strong opinions for something they're like. They're not just non-informed, they're kind of ill-informed, because the American Medical Association is also pushing for vegan nutrition, the CDC is pushing for vegan nutrition, and this is all sort of based on nothing, or I could say it's based on nutrition research that was paid for by snack food companies, which you know when they want someone to go vegan. It's not because, like they know, vegans don't eat vegetables. They eat vegan cookies and vegan cake and all kinds of junk food. And because it's not, these people are so easily fooled, mostly because they're being told what they want to hear you can eat candy all day long, just as long as you don't eat meat, you're going to be super healthy. That's an absolute, outright lie. And so, between physicians not agreeing with each other off-home nutrition recommendations, the objective with starting primal was you're going to have a set of physicians that actually understand the current nutrition literature, also actually understand some of the latest physical medicine literature. When it comes to exercise and exercise adaptation, that's another thing. You go and ask your physician about exercise. They don't know the first thing about it, almost like they've never heard of it. So having and then so primary care is what we really do, but we'll also do endocrinology, so you don't ever have the situation where you have two doctors we have an endocrinologist and a general practitioner who are arguing with each other or who are giving you know, posing recommendations, which that happens all the time. So now you have one physician that actually knows what the hell he or she is talking.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:4:42
So this makes a lot of sense and my understanding of you so far as a person. I've met you twice now, including today, but I'm a quick economizer of people's personalities. You are an efficiency hawk and you like to go into systems and figure out where there's a broken link and do something to bypass a traffic jam, and I think that's what X3 did Like for the average adult. For a professional like myself and yourself, I cannot go to the gym, waste three hours total preparing, packing, traveling, showering, packing again, you know, etc, etc. Just to get an average workout. So X3 is like bam right there, about 15 minutes. It takes me maybe 20 if I'm resting longer and I get a crazy workout. So okay.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:5:30
I can do that every day.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:5:33
Instead of, I have a gym membership and maybe I go twice a week, but the other days I give myself a pass because I'm too busy, right? That's what X3 does, and I think that's what you wanted to design it to do. Amongst other things, I'll tell you a story of mine that I think I'm wondering if this loads into why you founded Primal. I belong to a fairly high paying insurance group. For my general medical practice and my overall medical insurance, I went to schedule for an intake with my assigned GP two months ago.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:6:06
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:6:07
I couldn't get in until December of this year. They said, and I said you have to have someone else who could see me before December. Like, this is medical care. This is my assigned GP. And they said, no, there's actually nobody else in the medical group who could even take you right now.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:6:26
Right yeah, there's a serious lack of general practitioners, so the prospect of becoming a physician has become a lot less attractive. The money is going down.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:6:45
Like jobs are a beat down.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:6:47
Yeah, and well, on top of that and then we all saw what happened in the pandemic spread the government written dishonesty, which is just politics or you lose your license to practice medicine. I know at least 50 physicians that were basically threatened. They didn't endorse the direction that the government was telling everybody to take their medical care. They would lose their license to practice medicine. They'd lose their job. You're a political pawn. You're lying to people. You're not making any money. It doesn't seem very attractive. Then also, let's keep in mind, whenever you look at a list of the highest mortality rate instances, whether it's heart disease or cancer. Those are the top two, but you know what the third leading cause of death is? By the way, cnn deletes this from the list every time they show it. You know what it is? No, it's medical error.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:8:02
Right, yes, it's right. Statistically, the third leading cause of death in America is medical error Right?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:8:11
They're not allowed to talk about that on the news. In fact, all pharmaceutical companies pretty much sponsor all large mainstream news outlets to keep their name out of the news if there's any negative stuff.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:8:28
We've got a system of medical care and I'm tying this into the broader social system. Right now I think most Americans experience foundations of medicine and other social institutions to be rather breaking down Just overall. There's a sense of demoralization going across society. I wonder if you're like with X3, where you were trying to revolutionize the way people engage with physical activity and health. Maybe you're trying to do something here to fill in the gaps for a system that is in decay.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:9:03
That's exactly what Primal is.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:9:05
Yeah, it's all telemedicine.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:9:10
So if you want an appointment with your doctor, you send a request and probably within half an hour you're on a FaceTime call with your doctor.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:9:20
Yeah, I joined and had a good intake with my doctor. I'm on a text basis actually for small things that I need like if I need a lab, submitted or something. I think two days ago I said I need an updated lab because the last one was a couple of weeks ago and I haven't used it. Within about two minutes I got an email with my new lab order. So it's like for someone who has some sort of a compass on their physical health and they need a medical doctor to be an ally in pursuit of maybe optimized health. Primal seems like it's heading in the right direction. General practice in America, as we've been just saying, is nowhere near that. I mean, I got a CMP maybe a year and a half ago. When I was last able to get in, my doctor sent me, under my regular medical group, an email on my portal in that group that says, yeah, everything looks pretty good. It looks like your cholesterol is a little high, I don't know, maybe more fiber. That was it.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:10:25
Yeah, we have about 15 years of research that shows fiber does not help you digest anything. In fact, it's a hindrance and often triggers colitis and diverticulitis. No kidding, yeah, we don't need fiber. In fact it hurts us. But think about it. The logic of fiber is to keep things moving. You need heavy particulate matter to clean the pipes, or whatever analogy that physicians have thrown at us. Well, that's like, if you have a clogged toilet, what do you do? Throw a couple of bath towels in the toilet and flush it 15 times, because that's what fiber is Like. You think that? Hell? Isn't one of the first things they tell you? No, it doesn't One of the first things they tell you when you go to the hospital for surgery is to not go on fiber right when you go when you're admitted to the hospital don't they say get off fiber.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:11:27
And what's the reason for that?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:11:30
So your intestines are actually? There's nothing lingering in them.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:11:35
But then when you get out, you're discharged with instructions to get back on fiber. Yeah, that makes no sense.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:11:43
Well, remember, like most of the fiber that people eat is in snack foods, like most people don't get their fiber from broccoli, they get it from like trisks or Cheetos or Kyrios that's another breakfast cereal. They're loaded with fiber, hey.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:12:05
Cheerios are heart healthy. Dr J, Don't you know that? That's right?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:12:08
Yeah, it says that on the box, but it can fuck off because it's such bullshit. Yeah, I mean, they created an argument based on a false premise. The false premise is fiber is going to lower your blood pressure. No, it's going to help with digestion? No, it doesn't. It makes it worse. And all this literature exists. What does blow my mind is there are so many people who, I guess, love the way that they eat because, let's face it, they're eating candy 24, seven, I mean, I put, like you know, cheerios and breakfast cereal and that's all in the candy kind. They don't want to hear something that doesn't support what they're doing. And, even more ironically, one of the most Google terms in nutrition, or most Google phrases, is how to lose body fat without changing my diet. Now, if you're overweight, it's your diet that got you fat, so how would you expect to change if you don't change that? But it's what people want to hear. I think one thing with news organizations since the Clinton administration is we've seen that people want to watch the news. Whatever news program supports their existing beliefs. They would rather hear a comforting lie, even lie to themselves, surround themselves with what they know is false, just so they can feel better about their existing position. You know, like when I hear about you know, people are like oh, I did some research on you know X topic and I'm like oh, oh, so you Googled like why Donald Trump is Hitler? Is that your research term that you searched for? Because you know if you do that you're gonna get the answer you're looking for. But it's also gonna be just a crime.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:14:27
Well, don't you know? The top 10 results on the first page of Google are empirically valid responses to your queries. That's how it works. So basically has the new research method.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:14:39
Yeah, man. So people, when it comes to nutrition, it's okay because I'm running into somebody that's just upset and they don't believe in. Yeah, they wanna reject all research that doesn't support how they want to eat.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:15:04
Now with respect to if I may interject here, it's something important. I think there are a fair amount of people who also hear about a meat-based diet and it terrifies them. You know and I have a couple of questions about the technical aspects of that as well you know a carnivore diet or a paleo diet and they think to themselves they have a history of indoctrination from the, I don't know the carb mafia we might call it. And it makes a lot of sense, because to feed a society you have to have the smallest cost food item per capita, and that's what carbohydrates are. So it makes sense from a broad social and mass administrative level to push carbohydrates on the masses. It's the best way to feed and fill the gut. But it's just that we are like 69%.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:15:57
69% of America is basically fed directly by the government. Like so, whether it's social security or welfare, I realize there's a few very different things. People always get soft set when I use the two in the same sentence, but basically, if you're on social security, your government's managing your person's budget just like somebody on welfare. So in that regard they're very similar 69% on some sort of government assistance or on social security, which means that if all of a sudden the news comes out that you have to eat nothing but meat, well it's like how can people afford that? Well, that means the government's gonna need to spend $20 per day, as opposed to a dollar per day for Twinkies and cereal. They gotta spend $20 per day for ground beef and eggs.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:16:59
You're right, it's much more expensive.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:17:01
And a lot of people are anxious about eating meat too.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:17:04
They think to themselves. I've heard my whole life that eating animal proteins is a sure way to cardiovascular disease. Can you say a bit to the listeners what type of lifestyle not just the consumption of meat, but what else needs to co-occur with the consumption of animal products so as to actually live a healthy life? Great question. You can't just eat all the crap you're eating and eat meat, right? That's an accelerated disaster.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:17:36
Yeah, there actually is a guy who's promoting that and yeah, I mean I've, we're no longer good friends, but we work for a bunch. Yeah. Yeah, he's promoting eating 200 grams of fructose and sucrose per day, all while eating carnivore nutrition. So I'll go in order of what you brought up. The heart disease thing is absolute BS. In fact, there's a study that came out recently. It's titled, and basically the study is pointing out that for years and years and years, if you published a scientific paper and it said meat is bad for you, they would just publish it. They wouldn't even really check it for errors or anything, because it fit the narrative. I mean, in a way it was like, just like this COVID bullshit we had to deal with. So governments liked it, all the medical institutions liked it, the pharmaceutical companies liked it because it keeps you hooked on carbohydrates, which will ensure you will have heart problems. It'll ensure you'll have problems with metabolic syndrome and diabetes and it'll probably contribute to having more cancer, having faster growing cancers. So all three of those require life problems of medications. So it's very good for business to keep you fat and slow If you're a pharmaceutical company. Now that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but there's enough evidence and enough discussions that have been made public recently that, yeah, I mean, when it came to COVID, being more fit meant you were more resistant to it. Yet I think you were given like for every like. If you went and got like your double vaccination, they gave you like a week of free donuts at Krispy Kreme or something like that, and the news was promoting this. Like what the hell are you guys doing? Like, let's get fatter and sicker and allow people to be more susceptible to death based on their metabolic lack of health, and we're gonna encourage it by giving people donuts probably the worst food on earth, like unreal. So, yeah, I mean, health was basically rejected for favor of giving people candy and some medicine that actually has a risk of death associated.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:20:27
Doesn't metabolic syndrome account for something like 60% of all health related maladies in the United States?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:20:37
Yes, but that's spread out with heart disease, cancer and diabetic relic.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:20:44
That's all the above. What kind of lifestyle would be a bad choice, were you to try to shift to an animal protein based diet?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:20:57
Just continuing to eat carbohydrates, like your body should not be eating carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, do you the favor when they're found in nature, and typically they're rare in nature. Edible carbohydrates, like you'll see vegans that are like food is everywhere. No, it's fucking not. Walk through Yosemite Valley. Point at all the vegetables. There's none Like. If you look at indigenous vegetation, there's nothing edible. We've engineered all this stuff and in fact the basis of carbohydrate nutrition was feeding the poor because they couldn't like, especially when cities became a thing, when centuries ago, when kings would have to put the blacksmith and the soldiers behind the palace walls, they couldn't get enough meat into the castle to feed these people before it would split and they certainly weren't going to wall off the area that they were grazing the catter because that was outside the castle. So the kings and all men, they said to some of the people who were running agriculture for them just come up with some plant that we can feed people and we'll tell them itself. Like that's the beginning of carbohydrate nutrition. It really has to do with the book Guns, germs and Steel. It's by Jared Diamond, one of the best history books ever written, and it talks about how we sort of discovered how to give ourselves metabolic syndrome by eating carbohydrate based diet. And funny the kings and all men, they continued to eat meat.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:22:49
So here's a concern of mine, I think related to your story here. You eat close to no carbohydrates is what I understand right and you basically eat a meat based diet or just a pure carnivore diet. It's even more, you could say, dedicated or restrictive than even Paleo or some of these other diets that are low carbohydrate. Now my concern is you have the dedication and control to do that, right To leverage a carnivore based diet. I wonder whether the average person is going to be able to discipline themselves enough to do that, and if they try to make the shift that they may be eating the donut now and again, they're not reducing carbs sufficiently.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:23:45
What they're doing is increasing triglycerides. High LDLs and high triglycerides is recipe for stroke or cardiac incident.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:23:55
So how do people make sure that they reduce triglyceride spiking and keep themselves out of that red zone of strokes and heart attacks while going into more of an animal-based diet?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:24:11
So well. I mean the way that it's been successful is telling them what we're talking about right now. It's one of those situations where people for decades believe that carbohydrates were good for them and that animal protein, animal fats, were bad for them. It's really the opposite.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:24:36
Is there a threshold? Of carbohydrates that people can kind of have, or is it you have to eliminate them completely?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:24:45
It's interesting. I spent two years trying to figure out a way where you could still have a decent amount of carbohydrates 50 grams in a day and get the benefits of carnivore nutrition. The problem is sugar. All carbohydrates are just sugar. Some digest faster than others. The faster digesting, the more damaging. Ultimately it's the same. The worst part about them is they keep you wanting. It's like an addiction cycle. It's not like alcoholics are like. Well, I can only have four drinks a day because if I have a fifth one I'm going to find a dead prostitute in my trunk. It's like when you quit substances, you quit With all these. I spent two years running experiments trying to help people find that threshold. Now there is a threshold, by the way, nobby. Zero carbohydrates. There's carbohydrates in banks. There's 0.4 grams of carbohydrate in one. There's glycogen in muscle meat, even though when you read the label it says zero carbohydrates, there's some carbohydrates If you stay under 10 grams, like your phenomena. There is a meta-analysis that was written. One of the authors was a friend of mine, professor Mental Handsome. He doesn't like carnivore nutrition, but he limits himself to about 15 grams of carbohydrates per day.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:26:49
What is he eating for nutrition? Carnivore.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:26:51
But you're going to be carnivore. Is he?
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:26:55
eating, mostly animal products.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:26:57
Yeah, it's just like, as far as I can tell. Yeah, it's funny because in a way, it's contradictory. I think he doesn't like the idea of not being able to replenish muscle glycogen, but there's also a lot of research that shows that once you start using muscle glycogen and you have a constant glucose monitor, your glucose jumps way up, even if you had no carbohydrates, and that's because of glucose.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:27:28
Isn't that how the brain functions under a carnivore diet. That's my next question. The brain runs exclusively on glucose. As far as I understand, it burns fat for energy. When I'm in or close to ketosis, I'm much sharper. If I go through periods of having carbohydrates, I really feel awful and sluggish and slow. Let me transition here in a little bit of a related direction. I've got a few minutes left here. You're a very controlled guy, disciplined and so forth, targeted how do you have fun? A lot of people are listening to this, saying you're cutting out all my fun.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:28:08
I've had to change some attitudes. I just did a post recently on social media. Being 80% carnivore is 20 times as hard as being 100% or close to 100%.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:28:24
You have to go all the way. It has to be a complete shift, is what you're saying.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:28:30
Every once in a while I see somebody that's like, well, if you get 70% of your nutrition from me, then you can do whatever else you want. It's like, okay, this is a person who's never done full carnivore for three weeks straight, because when you do, you don't want anything with carbohydrates. It's repulsive to think about eating, in fact, sweet tasting things, like if you have a supplement that's got some artificial sweetener in it, you're just like, ah, this is horrible.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:29:08
I've noticed that when I have a certain amount of carbohydrates, then I want more. It reminds me that I want that You're saying. Don't even dip your toe.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:29:22
Usually when you do that. This is why I tell people alcoholics don't get a cheat meal for a reason or a cheat day or whatever. You're only cheating yourself. What happens is you reset your biochemistry so that you want carbohydrates and it's going to take you a couple of weeks to get that out of your system. When you eat something that tastes sweet whatever your favorite cheat thing is pizza or Twinkies or all the other you got to see it as like a loser. It's not fuel. It's for people who are looking to get that 10 seconds of pleasure out of eating something, but then you're dealing with it as body fat for years. Is that a good trade-off? I don't think so. I just stopped seeing eating as a clean.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:30:22
It's a shift you were able to make. Now can you have a glass of wine with steak, or is that death?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:30:30
You can probably have one or two glass of wine. Like I said, you're keeping under a few grams of car.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:30:37
Okay, we're here. I was just asking can you have a glass of wine with steak, or is that a pathway to death?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:30:49
You can. I would say, you know, white wine is certainly better than red, which is less sugaring. You know, you got to look at like, let's say, you're trying to stay under the lower number you picked, the better off you're going to be. So if you say, like you know you're staying under 30 grams, you're going to be great. If you stay under 20 grams, you're going to be even better. Now what's a glass of white wine? Like salvinium blonic has lower carbohydrates than, say, chardonnay. So you have two or three glasses of salvinium blonic. They're probably like four grams of carbohydrates apiece. You know that's what you want for your carbohydrates in a day. You can do that. Now let's keep in mind that alcohol is not a performance enhancing drug. It's a performance robbing. So you know, I mean it's not. I almost feel like it's not worth drinking alcohol, because if you drink enough alcohol in a second, then you're having to, and then your sleep is off. So you know, like is one glass of wine really fine, it's like hardly like, right.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:32:05
And then you have yeah.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:32:07
Like you have some, you get a little bit of a bad sleep. You didn't really catch the fine, but you're okay with the wine.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:32:14
So, yeah, it's like most nights, and then you don't sleep very well, and then so on goes the cycle, and so primal medical involves, I imagine, some sort of nutrition plan that's in development right now, nutrition planning as added on to the general practice.
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:32:35
Usually people who go to primal are already. Yeah, it's just like, out of like a thousand patients, I think there's like one or two that were like on the fence and everybody else was already. It's got kind of a following in that sense already, but is there a nutritional guidance as part of primal yeah, yeah, and we do tell people like the close you are to 100%, like you'll do so much, I see.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:33:05
Okay. So when people Because you're just breaking the addiction so when people want to sign up for primal, they can go to primalmedicalnet, and so if people want to go to primalmedicalnet they can review the website and learn more about the membership options. And is primal still in the spearhead membership phase or are you guys expanding?
John Jaquish, Ph.D.:33:28
Oh, we're expanding, yeah, we're past that. It's still like primal is designed to be very affordable. In fact, one of the things that people have been complaining about early on is there's streamlined panels. So we're going to look at testosterone free testosterone we're going to look at. We're going to look at once the the question. And what about lipids? What about triglycerides? Well, those tests are regarded Like if I know what you think, what anyone sees. More information is on your biochemistry and what you're putting in your body, things like glycerides and what's coming. If I know your total cholesterol, HCl and LDL, I know more than your lipid pylate. So we have streamlined testing so that we're not just ridiculously overcharging the patients, because the reason we have all these tests they overlap each other. But the reason we have all these tests is so physicians can charge them more. I mean, the insurance company paid more. Have you paid more? So we designed this so that people are paying less and getting the same or you do a better bench. So that's one thing, to be more.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.:35:00
Okay, so this is a pretty streamlined process. It's up and running and people can check it out if they'd like. And thank you so much, dr John J Quish, founder of Primal Medical, as well as J Quish Biomedical and also Osteostrong, which partners with Tony Robbins. It's been a pleasure, always a blast, having you on and feel free to come on anytime you'd like you bet Again. I will help you out.
