The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #222 - Craig Emmerich

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Hi, friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. So previously on the show, I had Maria Emmerich on and that was a very popular episode. I just really adore her. She is amazing. She's doing so much in the low carb, the keto, the carnivore sphere. And in that episode, we dive deep into that whole approach to diet and fitness and health and her experience having a family and doing all of that. And it was just a really beautiful, wonderful episode. And interestingly, during the episode, there were quite a few questions where she literally said, “Oh, these are perfect questions for my husband, Craig. You should have him on.” So, it was on my to do list to have you on anyways. And then a while ago now, she reached out and said that, “You were doing podcast interviews.” So, I was like, “Of course, yes, this is perfect.” We were just talking before this for friends who listen to The Intermittent Fasting Podcast as well. Craig and Maria are friends with my cohost on that show, Vanessa Spina. So, it's all just a really a small, beautiful, wonderful world. We'll talk about it, I'm sure, in today's show. 

So, Craig actually graduated with a degree in electrical engineering and he researches nutrition and does all of the fabulous work with Maria. And he has his own journey with Lyme that I'm sure we will talk about. So, I just have so many questions. Craig, thank you so much for being here. 

Craig Emmerich: Well, thank you, Melanie, for having me on. I'm excited. 

Melanie Avalon: So, so many directions we could go with this. I want to ask you the super random questions that I asked with Maria, but I'll get to those. I also asked listeners for question about Lyme. But just to introduce you to the listeners for those who are not familiar and even for those who do know you, your personal story. So what came first, keto or the Lyme? What happened with all of that and led to what you're doing today? 

Craig Emmerich: It was an interesting journey. So, we started out with Maria coming down this path because of her health issues. She had PCOS, and acid reflux, and extra weight she was carrying around, and different health issues. She went down this path to figure out how to fix herself. She was able to do that. Myself, it took a little longer to come around to the diet side because I didn't have any health issues at the time. It was probably 30 pounds extra weight I could lose, but I [unintelligible 00:02:28] any health issues beyond that. And so it took me five years, six years after her to come around. I mainly did it because I just felt so much better when I ate this way. And so then that's, I don't know, 18 years now that I've been eating this way, and so I was doing great, lost that extra 30 pounds, thriving, and then suddenly started having this back pain about nine years ago.

I initially thought it was an old football injury that I had from high school, but it kept moving up my back and into my shoulders, and my neck, and more pain and reduced flexibility and all that. After a couple of years of trying to get this figured out, it's about six years ago now, finally got diagnosed properly as having Lyme disease. And so being that I had eaten so cleanly for so long before getting the Lyme, I think it was a little bit of a blessing and a curse, because we have so many clients that when they have Lyme disease, they come and they eat keto and they do so much better. Like, almost all their pain goes away and all this stuff. And so being that I was keto for that long, I think it enabled me to go way longer than I probably should have let it go before getting a proper diagnosis and treatment. 

So, I've got a little bit of chronic issues as a result from the chronic Lyme disease that has turned into chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which we can get into as well. And that triggered an autoimmune reaction within my body, which I now have ankylosing spondylitis. So that's kind of where I ended up here. [chuckles] 

Melanie Avalon: Wait, what was that last thing you said? 

Craig Emmerich: Ankylosing spondylitis. It's sort of like arthritis in the spine and hips, but the [00:04:17] be calcified and fused. Most of the vertebrae in my neck are fused together with calcium. It's like one bone, so I can't really turn my neck too much. But yeah, it's not a fun disease, that's for sure. [chuckles] 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Is that reversible at all? 

Craig Emmerich: No, you can manage it and hopefully slow progression, if you will. Right now, I'm going through some SIRS chronic inflammatory response protocols to try to at least get the symptoms and progression to stop. And that's where I'm at right now. Diet definitely still helps. What I did was about six years ago when I got officially diagnosed, I switched to more carnivore diet, and it did help with pain. My joint pain definitely improved when I eat just carnivore, no plants. When I do deviate from that and get too much plants in my diet, I will notice my pain flare up. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Okay. So many things. I personally am really interested in this. I received a Lyme diagnosis as well and it was a rabbit hole of confusion, especially with the way that they diagnose it and stuff. Do you know Stephen Buhner, his book, Healing Lyme? 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. 

Melanie Avalon: When I was in the throes of it, I recorded the audiobook for it for Audible. That was a very long book to record. [laughs] I was like, “Note to self, do not do this again.” 

Craig Emmerich: I did our keto book. I read our keto book. Oh, my gosh, it took so long to get-- 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, with all the recipes, I bet too. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. Well, in the repetition, different parts get it all.

Melanie Avalon: Okay, so many questions. Your diagnosis, was it a positive by conventional interpretations or by functional, but not conventional interpretations? 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. The thing was, that's why it took two years, three years for me to get properly diagnosed, because initially I'm in this space, I understand the body fairly well at that point already, and it sounded a lot like Lyme disease to me. But then I went into the doctor, I said, “Can I get a Lyme test?” They did the standard Western blot Lyme test, which I now know is like 70% false negatives. They say, “You don't have it when you really do.” And so at that point, I was like, “Okay. Well, what is it then?” I went off into this rabbit hole of Lyme possibility. I was lucky enough to have somebody we’re associated with who's been through terrible Lyme treatments and everything and they actually helped author the book Toxic, which is another by Neil Nathan. It's another good Lyme book. s

And so, I had a lot of insight into some of the latest protocols and this and that. So, they led me towards the IGeneX Lyme test or the Galaxy labs. Those two are much better Lyme tests that are able to diagnose Lyme and co-infections. When I got that done, it said, I do have Lyme. I think also babesia, which would explain I was anemic, had low red blood cell counts, even though I ate tons of red meats and all this stuff. Babesia can lower red blood cell counts. So, then I started on a long journey of trying to treat all that and treat Lyme. We could do a whole episode about Lyme disease for sure. Today, a lot of the top experts don't even talk about treating Lyme, trying to kill the Lyme. When you're in that chronic state where you've been years of symptoms and chronic Lyme, it's more about building up your immune system and helping your body to fight and just get rid of the obstacles to let your body fight versus all the traditional stuff, which I initially did when I was diagnosed. I did three months or sorry,-- nine months of three high powered antibiotics taken simultaneously for nine straight months. All these different Cowden protocols, all these protocols, none of it really did a lot for me at that point. 

Looking back, I think it's because it wasn't the Lyme. You said you were tested positive. I've seen some things where up to, I don’t know, 90% of people that test positive for Lyme don't even have symptoms, and so their immune system is taking care of it. So that's back to let the body or help the body to take care of itself. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Okay. I have some questions from there. Yeah, you've answered this because we had questions about treating it. Nancy said, “She was curious about how to best address the combo of Lyme.” I don't know what she's referring to. She said, “Of Lyme and that popular pharma intervention that much of the population participated in over the last few years.”

Craig Emmerich: Oh, I guessing they're meaning ivermectin. I think that's what's being alluded to there. 

Melanie Avalon: Did they use ivermectin for Lyme? 

Craig Emmerich: There's people that talk about it. I did it like five years ago before all the COVID and crap as part of my Lyme treatment. It was one of the anti-parasitics I did. I didn't really notice any difference myself. Here's the thing about Lyme disease and I think this is true across the board, what will work for one person will not work for another. You could have a protocol that just completely eradicates all symptoms for this person and you use it on the next Lyme patient and it does nothing. And so that's what I have gone through in the last six years of just treatment after treatment after treatment with no real change in symptoms. So that can be really frustrating for people with chronic Lyme. You got to keep fighting and looking for the right answer. There're so many things out there you can't imagine how many things people send us. But yeah, it's just finding what works for you. 

Melanie Avalon: Maria was asking, “How to address it?” and she said, “Her husband has had it on and off for years and it never seems to permanently go away.” Amy said, “She heard that it goes through cycles in your body.” Do you find that as well that it goes through cycles? 

Craig Emmerich: Most people with chronic Lyme will have a seasonality to it. In other words, in the winter I definitely flare up a lot. And that's one of the reasons we started going to Hawaii longer and longer is the winters are really rough on me. It's been a couple years since we've been here in the winter, but the last time that we stayed longer into the winter, like December, January, I would get to the point where I'd be on crutches because my hips would hurt so bad. In Hawaii, I do a lot better. It's something about the cold that just does not do well with my body. 

Melanie Avalon: Do you remember getting bit by a tick?

Craig Emmerich: It's interesting. If we go back, it was right around the time we built the house we're currently in. This house is in the middle of 40 acres of old oak trees and forest. Beautiful setting. I'd come out here a lot to initially plan out the house. And then as they're working on the house, I'm out here a lot talking to the workers and working with them. There'd be ticks on and off. When you're in an area like this and you like to be in the woods, ticks are just part of it. But what I know now is and what I would change back then is, first of all, IGeneX will do a Lyme tick test. So, you send them the tick and then they see if the tick had Lyme in it. And so that's a lot cheaper than the-- IGeneX full panel with co infections. Lyme test is not cheap. It's, I think, $2,000 or $1,800. So you don't want to be doing that all the time when you get a tick bite. But you can send a tick in and if a tick had it that was embedded in you, then you could go to the next step, say, “Okay, did I get it from the tick after a few weeks?” or whatever. In hindsight, yeah, around that time, I was getting ticks occasionally, and you just take care of them and never thought anything of it. But now, I definitely have a different view on it.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Do you know what percent of ticks carry Lyme by chance? 

Craig Emmerich: I don't. I don't know, if I've seen that data on and off here, but a lot of people get Lyme. The last data I saw on this, which is like the official data, mostly off of the Western blot Lyme test, which, again, we know a lot of false negatives, it was like 270,000 people a year in the United States, and that was like 10 years ago. So a lot of people are getting it and there's even been documented cases of other insects having Lyme and passing it on to someone. I know one lady that contacted us that said, a ladybug landed on her arm, felt it bite her, and she got the bullseye and everything and then tested positive. 

Melanie Avalon: A ladybug? 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. [chuckles] It's definitely something to be thinking about in general with insects and mosquitoes. Definitely, ticks, take it seriously. If you start having any symptoms-- You don't always have to get the bullseye. You can get it without having that. But if there's any concern around the bite area, get it checked out. 

Melanie Avalon: This is random, but what's that disease that--? I'm trying to remember what carries it. People were getting it and it was making them allergic to meat. 

Craig Emmerich: Alpha-gal. That's a tick-borne disease too. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, it is tick borne.

Craig Emmerich: Yup. It's called alpha-gal. It makes you basically allergic to red meat. I fear that more than anything in my life. [laughs] 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, man. 

Craig Emmerich: Because it's one of the only things I could eat that doesn't inflame me right now. One of the good things about that is it appears that people, after a while, it goes away. Reduces and goes away. So it's not like a lifelong thing with alpha-gal, anyway. 

Melanie Avalon: The thing that I found less than-- Well, the situation itself is not a good thing that the existence of that, but I've seen it posited in the vegan sphere as a reason that we shouldn't be eating meat, and I'm just like, “How is that relevant?” I don't know how [laughs] that even makes sense. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, that's completely random. 

Melanie Avalon: It does not correlate. Okay. Some questions here, because you talked about how when you went completely carnivore, it really helps your symptoms. Is that because of the diet's effect on your immune system's inflammatory response or is it actually doing anything to combat the actual Lyme infection? 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. So my theory on this is that, when I started, I don’t know, 12 years, 14 years ago in that range, I started doing this full time with Maria. Left my job in engineering and became more focused full time on biochemistry and health. I learned a lot over the years. And then when I got into this situation with Lyme and carnivore, I started researching more into carnivore, like, six years ago. I learned a lot. One of the things I think my theory, at least on this is that when you have Lyme disease, you've got this chronically depressed immune function. Your immune system is going crazy. It's constantly fighting because it can't seem to get rid of this infection, this problem, this inflammation. And that causes a lot of things to creep up in people with chronic Lyme. Things like heavy metals, and mold issues, and all of these things that can happen that normally your immune system deals with. But now, because your immune system is in this disarray, it's not fighting off these things. So heavy metals buildup and other issues can build up, and it becomes this onion of peel layers off to fix these problems as you're trying to get the body to work the way it should. 

The way I look at it with carnivore is all plants have anti-nutrients. There're oxalates, there're glucosinolates, there’re lectins, there's all these compounds that are in plants that your body doesn't need or want. That's why it's called anti-nutrient. It's not used by the body. The body has to detox it and get rid of it. They can actually cause issues—Like, oxalates, if you're getting a lot of high oxalate foods, it can cause more kidney stones as they're being detoxed and removed from the body and other issues. Plants aren't benign in that respect. They have compounds that the body has to deal with and detox. And for somebody with immune system like me, with all the load it already has, I think adding that extra load of these anti-nutrients just causes that extra level of inflammation that the body just can't handle. 

Melanie Avalon: Do you test inflammatory markers like CRP? There's a reason I'm asking this, by the way.

Craig Emmerich: Actually, just today, or at least today as we're recording this, I did a YouTube on our YouTube channel about my labs. So there's a bunch of stuff out there. But to go back to when this started, I got that initial Western blot Lyme test, said, “No, you don't have Lyme.” I'm like, “Okay.” And then started researching, looking at other things. And six months later, it just kept getting worse, and got to the point where I couldn't throw a football as far as my eight-year-old son. [unintelligible [00:18:04], he's got a good arm, but [laughs] I should be able to throw a football farther on him without pain. I just went to a functional doctor that we knew in town, a friend of ours, and I said, “Look, I'm going to give you a list of tests I want run. I know something about biochemistry. I'm going to give you this full list and I want all this run to try to figure out what is wrong with me.” Pretty much everything came back normal except two things. I was anemic, so low hemoglobin levels. And again, eating the way I eat that should not be happening. And then my CRP was 150 and C-reactive protein is an inflammation marker. And our clients, we try to get below 2, ideally below 1, and I was 150. So, I knew there was a problem. Obviously, that's around the time I got the IGeneX test and started going down the path of trying to treat Lyme. 

Melanie Avalon: The reason I'm asking is because I always intuitively feel like I'm inflamed. So I always expect my CRP to be high. It's literally a flatline at zero, like, literally for years. I thought that that was common, like, people could have flatlines. But I was posting about it on InsideTracker and one of the main guys at InsideTracker commented, he was like, “I've never seen this before.” And I was like, “Oh.” So I was talking with one of my functional medical doctors and she was saying, “Maybe I was--” Just because of all the anti-inflammatory stuff I was doing and low-dose naltrexone and just all the things, I literally have just turned off all my inflammatory responses. And she was saying that might not be the best thing that maybe I should try. I don't know if you've used low-dose naltrexone before.

Craig Emmerich: That's one of the few things that I haven't used that is definitely on the list of things to try. So I'd be going through phases, like, I try this protocol and go all the way through it. Then if that didn't work, try the next protocol, go all the way through that. That's where-- I am right now with the SIRS treatment, I'm doing the chronic inflammatory response shoemaker protocol. And low-dose naltrexone was another one that I was considering between the SIRS, but I definitely have SIRS based on my symptoms and tests. So I was treating that. But yeah, the body definitely should have a little inflammation going on at all times, like, even stress and sauna and exercise, those are all good stressors to the body, good inflammation. [chuckles] So yeah, I'd be surprised to see a flatline at zero. 

Melanie Avalon: It's super weird. But then I'm like, “Well, if it's not broke. [laughs] I don't know, don't fix it.” I'd be really curious if you do try LDN. So question about the iron, because a few questions there. That was actually one of the things when I was talking with Maria that she said I should ask you. I, as well, was severely anemic, and it didn't make sense because I eat tons of meat and a high iron diet. Out of curiosity, did you--? I know you said you posted about your blood work. When you test your iron levels, do you look at all the different factors like hemoglobin and ferritin and saturation, or what do you look at most? 

Craig Emmerich: Well, yeah, I had ferritin and hemoglobin and trans-ferritin. Right now, early on, when I was first diagnosed, it was pretty anemic. It's not as bad now. They're all borderline low. So that's one area that has gotten better for me. It's more still just battling the inflammation and pain and inflammation caused from it. The good thing is and I actually post this in my test, my symptoms, it's really hard when-- If I was doing all of this seven years ago, a year or two after I got the symptoms, maybe I would be in a completely different place. Maybe I would be treating and seeing the results that a lot of people see with certain treatments. I think because I'm so far down the path of this autoimmune disease with ankylosing spondylitis and everything, I live in varying levels of pain. And so if a treatment takes me from an 8 to a 5, that's a success. [chuckles] I'm still in pain every day in varying levels, but if I can get around and I can walk and I can do things, that's a win for me. And so I'm trying to just get to where that can be a daily thing on a day-to-day basis, be at a level where I don't have to rely on any painkillers or those kind of things, and just have a level of pain that I can manage without it and still do things. 

I was there last fall and then some things changed. I'm getting my way back to there, but with the SIRS protocol, I'm doing-- That in combination, I've started some biologicals as well, and I think those are definitely getting my inflammation down. It's showing on the markers, I'm down to, I think, it was 0.8 my CRP on the last test. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. That's as recently as 12 months to 18 months ago, it was still at like 50. So definitely some things are working. I still have a lot of pain, so I'm not like, “Oh, okay, it's all gone, and you go on with your life” kind of thing. But I'm definitely moving in the right direction and the inflammation is showing that. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Do you feel intuitively, like, you're on an upward spiral? Or, how do you feel about your future with this? 

Craig Emmerich: Well, again, as advanced as the ankylosing spondylitis is in me, again, most of my neck is fused, and it's not going to be one of those things where it's all going to go away if I do the right protocols and things. My hope is that I can get it to where it doesn't progress anymore. That's where I'm trying to get to is stop any progression and try to build strength and whatnot. I can't build flexibility. Certain things are fused. I have calcium in them, like, my hip. And so there are always going to be issues. But if I can get it to where it stops getting worse, that's a win for me. 

Melanie Avalon: Now I'm just thinking about the iron and everything as well, because when I was really anemic, it was so bad, I had to have blood transfusions. Do you know if Lyme can be transmitted through blood? I already had Lyme prior to that. But I remember I got that done and I was like, “Oh, I wonder if there's anything I can get from this person's blood.” 

Craig Emmerich: I'm not sure. I would assume they would do some tests on the blood, but yeah, I'm not sure. 

Melanie Avalon: Well, especially the testing is so convoluted, anyways. So the question that I had for Maria that she said I should ask you was-- I had Dr. Neal Barnard on the show, so he's really, really big in the vegan sphere. We talked about iron and he was saying that the problem with eating iron from animals because of the different-- so heme versus non heme, he was saying that heme iron from animals, the body doesn't have a good regulatory system for absorbing it properly, and basically it leads to iron overload issues compared to non-heme iron, which he was saying the body is good at getting the amount that it needs, like, creating the amount it needs from that. Do you have thoughts on heme versus non-heme? 

Craig Emmerich: I don't think that's reflected in humans. I know tons and tons and tons of carnivores, and none of them have iron issues. Myself, I was actually low. So yeah, I don't think that's reflected in reality. I look at it as the body is pretty good at regulating what it needs and what it doesn't. Yes, you can have toxicity levels on certain things like vitamin A, but I know the old saying like, polar bear liver is so incredibly high in vitamin A that if you ate it, you could get vitamin A toxicity. I think it's hard to overdo in reality, in real context, right? Nobody's eating polar bear liver all day. I even know people that have eaten beef liver, which is quite high in vitamin A as well. They eat 2 oz to 4 oz multiple times per week and love it. it never shown any labs or issues as a result. 

So I think, to me, the way I look at it is a lot of these things, if the body has more than it needs, it just passes it through you. It kind of like with vitamin C. You take a big dose of vitamin C because you got a cold or something, and you urinate out a lot of it because the body just takes what it needs and the rest goes out. And right now, the way I look at it with food is I want the most bioavailable forms of any vitamin or mineral or nutrient in my diet because then I know my body is going to be able to pull out what it needs. If I'm low, it'll be able to pull out as much as it needs from that food because it's in the most bioavailable form to absorb it. And that's how I look at vitamins and minerals. 

Melanie Avalon: Okay. So that was the most perfect segue ever because that was the other question she said I should ask you. So I am haunted by this question. Organ meats, I'm so perplexed, because like you said, they're very nutrient rich. And so if our bodies intuitively crave nutrients, it would seem to me that we would naturally crave organ meats. And yet, people seem to have an aversion to them. Even me, so when I was really anemic and I'm like paleo and I love all the meat and all the things-- I remember I had a moment where I was like, “Okay, I know I'm anemic.” I realized I hadn't ever had liver, outside of liverwurst or something like that. So I was like, “I'm sure liver is going to taste amazing to me because it's what my body needs right now,” and I could not stomach it. And so I'm curious. I have a theory about this, but do you think people's aversions to organ meats as not as a supplement, what do you think is behind that as a cultural or what do you think?

Craig Emmerich: I think there's a multitude of things there. I think a lot of it's in the head, not the body. You just have an aversion to that texture or whatnot. I'm not so much in on the whole intuitive aspect as well. There's a very big psychological component to that confounds things. Like, if I crave a donut, it's not because my body needs the donut. [chuckles] It's that there's a psychological aspect to it. I really like them and I get a dopamine hit when I eat them and those kind of things. So I think there're multiple components to it like that. 

We have had clients that will actually get cravings for liver. One of them was, while she was pregnant and she was having some low iron issues. We have seen it on occasion. She already liked the liver otherwise and she just started to crave it. Yeah, it's hard to say. There're so many psychological aspects that can interfere as well or cultural. I think if you look at it from our ancestors, if you go way back past any of the cultural stuff and early humans, they didn't waste anything. They ate everything. They drank the blood, they ate all the organs and all the meat of animal when they killed it. So yeah, I think it's a lot of psychological, a lot of cultural type aversions.

Melanie Avalon: To that point, actually, when I had Paul Saladino on the show, he talked about a study or maybe talks about in his book, which this one I just find it so fascinating. I think they basically looked at-- It was vegans or vegetarians who proclaimed or said they did not like meat or had an aversion to meat. And then they would show them meat. Even though they thought they didn't like meat, the part of their brain that signified desire or wanting, I can double check exactly what it was, but it lit up. [laughs] So they thought they didn't want it, but they did. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, it's psychological. Brain can really be powerful in how it controls you and digestion all of it. Myself, still to this day, if I get real nervous about something, I'll have GI issues. The brain really can control a lot of the body. 

Melanie Avalon: I think it is multifaceted. I do wonder if part of it has to do with vitamin toxicity and that maybe evolutionarily our bodies knew that. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, maybe don't make it taste like a doughnut because you'll eat too much [laughs] kind of thing. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. You just go town on the liver and then have the polar bear liver and wipe yourself out. 

Craig Emmerich: But I will know-- When you talk about this in humans, let's talk about other animals. And this can be where you can see maybe of our evolved state. You take the mind out of it, take the culture out of it, all of that. There's been stories of-- For example, up in Alaska, when the salmon are really plentiful, the bear will catch the salmon and just eat the brain and leave the rest of the meat because there's tons of them. There's a bunch of documented cases of orcas attacking great white sharks and just eating their livers. They've been washing up on shore and it's just their liver that was eaten. There're quite a few cases like that where just the most nutrient dense organs will get eaten when things are plentiful or in certain situations. So I think animals definitely have that intuitiveness for sure. 

Melanie Avalon: Do you have any thoughts? Speaking of this intuitiveness, I wonder how long it takes or how much exposure it takes to nonnatural foods to lose that intuition. With kids, how much processed food do they have to eat before--?

Craig Emmerich: That's a huge part of it too is like-- For example, I think in America today, we start kids way too early on sweets and so it shifts their palate. We see this all the time. You start introducing candy and ice cream and all this when they're like an infant, six months old, you're shifting their palate to that sweet taste. The more sweet you get, the more you need to get that taste that hit, you got to get more and more. Our kids, we've never started them on any of that. We just fed them what we ate. One of Kai's first foods was bone marrow, solid foods. And to this day, he doesn't really have a sweet tooth. He'll have some berries every once a while and that kind of stuff. But you give him a baked keto good, like, a cake or a cookie or something, he doesn't want it. He's got more of a savory palate. I think that's a huge part of it. You shift the palate by introducing all these things that you're not going to naturally get in nature and it's going to shift the palate towards those things. 

Melanie Avalon: I will say, regarding the bone marrow, that was one of the ones-- I remember the first time I had bone marrow, and it was something I thought I was going to have an aversion to and I was like, “Oh, wow, this is the most delicious thing known to mankind.” What is this? 

Craig Emmerich: No, it's a great first food for kids. Lots of fat for their growing brains. And yeah, it's soft. So it's a good first food. 

Melanie Avalon: It is delicious. Question about that. How do you feel about people on--? Okay, well, first of all, stepping back. Your approach to carnivore and low carb and all the things, how do you feel about--? Because I know Maria has a lot of work with the PSMF stuff as well, which is the low-fat side of doing a carnivore-type approach. How do you feel about people existing on the fat spectrum? Is there a potential issue with going too high fat and low carb or too high fat carnivore? 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, there definitely is. We get people, especially women, all the time coming to us who they decided to do the high fat carnivore where they’re really high fat, and they're gaining weight, and they're not feeling their best and they're having issues. We see it all the time because there're two main problems with that. Number one, if you're doing it for weight loss, adding really high fat to the diet when you're trying to burn the fat off the body is just counterintuitive. From a biochemistry standpoint, it doesn't make sense. The vast majority of the fat you put in your mouth ends up in your fat cells. If you're trying to shrink your fat cells, lose body fat, adding a bunch of fat to the diet is going to add to the fat cells, so it's pretty counterproductive. It's like having a bucket with a hole in the bottom of the bucket with water and you try to make the water run out faster by adding water to the top of the bucket. It's not going to empty quicker if you add water to the top. So that's how I look at it on the fat side.

The other side of that, especially with women who’re already across the board, regardless of diet, typically undereat protein, and you add a really high fat carnivore where they're getting full and they're not eating enough protein, now you could be losing muscle as well. And so the combination of those two things is really bad for body composition if you have insulin resistance. We've got multiple videos I've done on our channel about shrinking [unintelligible 00:36:08] the root cause of insulin resistance is overstuffed fat cells, which become inflamed and insulin resistant at the fat cell. That's how insulin resistance is primarily started. We can get into that if you like. It's a whole interesting topic. But when you are trying to reverse insulin resistance, you want to do two things. Maintain or grow your muscle, which gives more places for glucose to go and then you want to shrink your fat cells. Make them smaller. So smaller fat cells are happier fat cells and they're not insulin resistant, they're not inflamed. 

And so if you think about that, I need the same or more protein on my body and less fat on my body, would it not make sense to have more protein in the diet and less fat in the diet to move your body in that direction? And that's how we look at it. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, I could not agree more. I'm all about the protein, as is Vanessa, obviously. Honestly, I think one of the biggest epiphanies I had in my journey-- I don't do a keto diet now, but I did historically. I think the biggest epiphany I had was that, especially when I first got into it, because I got in through the Atkins route. It was a different type of world. There was all this focus on, “Oh, you can eat all the fat because fat doesn't release insulin. So unlimited fat.” And then I had the realization one day that the reason fat doesn't “release a lot of insulin or require a lot of insulin” is because it doesn't require a lot of insulin. Basically, it's stored very easily. So people took literally the exact opposite interpretation. They took the no insulin to mean like, “Oh, you can eat all the fat,” when really it's like no insulin because it's so easily stored. 

Craig Emmerich: Well, actually, if you look at the data and some of the more recent studies and information on this, fat does affect insulin. It's just in a slightly different way. The early studies on this, they give you a dose of protein, dose of carbohydrate, dose of fat, and just look at the insulin after that. And so you're just getting a certain number of grams of fat and nothing else, and a certain number of grams of carbohydrates and nothing else. It's more complex than that. Even in those studies, there was a little bit of insulin that increased when eating just fat less than protein and definitely less than carbohydrates but there was some. But then when you start looking at it deeper and some of the studies on this now have shown that fat acts like an amplifier for pancreas insulin output. So what that means is--

There's been studies on this, they gave the exact same protein and carbohydrate meals, so exact same protein and carbs. They just changed the amount of fat in the meal from 10 g to 60 g. So then if you look at insulin and this was done in type 1 diabetics, so you know exactly how much insulin is being required by the body, because it's all external. You can measure it. And so between those two meals, just the fat changed, it went up. What happens is you get this kind of long tail on your glucose when you have added fat, because there's an overall increased load on insulin because of the increased amount of fat. And so the blood glucose on these people would stay high longer. To get things back in line, it took 42% more insulin over the course of the day to get blood sugars in line for the extra 50 g of fat with the equal protein and carbs. 

So this shows, number one, fat is not a free food. It does affect insulin, but also fat can act as an amplifier and it has to in the body. So this was type 1, so they don't produce insulin. In the human body, how the body deals with this with a properly functioning pancreas is when there's lipids in the bloodstream, so you've eaten more fat in the meal. The pancreas for the same protein and/or carbohydrate eaten, it amplifies pancreas’ output. There's been studies that have shown this as well. It increases how much insulin is produced for the same protein or carbohydrate. So in other words, you eat the protein with no fat, you get a certain amount of insulin. If you eat the protein with extra fat, the insulin curve will be bigger as a result of that protein, so it amplifies the output and that's, again, to deal with the overall increased need for insulin with the added fat. So it's not a free food, it will affect insulin. The end of the day, as you pointed out, it doesn't really matter because it all ends up in your fat cell anyway. 

Melanie Avalon: I am so excited to talk about that. Okay. Because people will say all the time, like, “If you're having carbs, you need to add fat to it to slow the glucose response.” I've always thought, it just doesn't make sense to me. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, it blunts the peak, but it makes a longer tail. You know what I mean? I wish were on camera here. I could show you what I’m saying. If you eat some carbohydrates, even put it to the extreme, some sugar, it's going to have a quick spike and then quick back down. The fat will make it not spike as high, but it'll create a really long tail before it comes back down. So it just amplifies the overall-- That's part of it too is people looked too much at insulin with meals and they ignore the fasting insulin that is there all day. I'm in the viewpoint of fasting insulin is a way bigger problem than the insulin from meals.

There's another study, again on type 1s, because again it's done on type 1s because you know exactly how much insulin is required by the body because it's external. So, type 1s that were eating low carbohydrate, so these are people eating keto or very low carbohydrate, they looked at how much insulin was required for their basal or their background insulin versus meals. It was about 20 units on average for people eating low carb, for the background insulin, for that's the insulin all day long, just not eating food, just when you're fasted what your insulin is, the insulin your pancreas is putting out. And then with meals, it was like 2 units. So about 90% of the insulin required by the body when eating low carb was for background basal insulin, fasting insulin, insulin for when you're not eating. The reason is because everybody talks about insulin being a storage hormone, and that's one of its jobs. But it's also I look at it more as like a thermostat for your body. It tightly controls how much fuel is in your blood at any given time. 

So when you're not eating, it's just holding back the floodgates of all the fuel on your body. This is why a lot of times fasting insulin goes up when you get more obese is because it's got more fat to hold back. And so all day long, when you're fasted, it's got all these fat cells with all this fat in it that it has to hold that fat back from coming into the bloodstream and not having that tight control on the fuels in your blood. And at rest, right now, we're both sitting here talking, you have about 80 calories of fuel in your entire blood volume. That's all the free fatty acids, that's all the glucose, that's all the ketones, about 80 calories. And so there's a lot of energy to hold back and keep that tight control on the bloodstream with fuels. And insulin is the kind of the net that holds back the fuel in storage. 

Melanie Avalon: That's a crazy paradigm shift to think that that we exist in that state of holding back the fuel rather than putting in the fuel, necessarily. It's actually similar to something that blew my mind was when I learned that the majority of blood sugar-- Essentially, it's not directly from our meal, it's from the liver producing it. Even in diabetes, it's the output from the liver primarily that's creating that. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. What happens in insulin resistance is what happens in the blood. The blood is going to have higher glucose, it's also going to have higher triglycerides. You look at the people that are insulin resistant, they have very high triglycerides. That means there's too much fat in the blood too. And so it's really a breakdown of the pancreas. It's struggling to keep the fuels out of the blood and keep them locked away where they're supposed to be in the liver or the fat cells. The reason that primarily happens is because everybody-- There's something called the personal fat threshold. This is where your body-- When we're toddlers, our body makes new fat cells, makes more fat cells. So you accumulate more and more fat cells and you get to a certain age, you just don't create more fat cells anymore, and you just fill up or empty the ones you have. That's just genetics and that's why somebody can be 110 pounds and be type 2 diabetic, because they have very few fat cells, and they get stuffed really quickly. And then somebody could be 100 pounds overweight and have no signs of insulin resistance because they have a lot of fat cells and they haven't been stuffed yet. 

This goes back to what I talked earlier about having smaller, happy fat cells, because the fat cells you do have, once they get overstuffed and inflamed, it's kind of like a balloon. You can only put so much fat into the fat cell and it's going to burst. So it gets to a point and it rejects insulin, says, “I don't want to store any more fat in here. I'm stuffed.” And so you get too many of these fat cells rejecting—store more fat coming in. And now the pancreas is like, “Why is nobody taking up this fat? I'm increasing insulin. I'm increasing insulin. Nobody's taking the fat out of the blood.” And so triglycerides go up in the blood, and then fat starts to accumulate in other places where you don't want it, like the liver, the pancreas, around the organs, because the fat cells are stuffed. They're not taking fat in anymore. That is insulin resistant. It starts at the fat cells because they start rejecting insulin, become insulin resistant because they can't store any more fat inside of them. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, I think that is so huge because I think we so commonly associate obesity as the primary driver or visible indicator of metabolic syndrome and all these things. But there's a big danger in people who are not overweight and not obese and are existing in this issue where they just don't have the fat cells to actually safely store that excess energy. And so it's building up and causing the issues. 

Craig Emmerich: It's interesting to me because it's the exact opposite of where we would be as humans 50,000 years ago. The people that couldn't store extra body fat that had very few fat cells, they would have died off. 

Melanie Avalon: They'd be wiped out. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, because they couldn't make it through the winter and store enough body fat. But now it's looked at as, “Oh, look at them. They're so lucky. They can eat whatever they want and never gain any body fat.” Well, a lot of them end up being diabetic down the road, and we get those clients. One of them was under 110 pounds, and she was type 2 diabetic, and she had let it go for so long because she didn't get that response in the mirror. She didn't see herself gaining weight. She let the high blood sugars and the issues go for so long. he burned out her beta cells and now she's type 1.5. She can't produce insulin and she's insulin resistant. So it's definitely a danger, even at 110 pounds, if you don't take care of it. 

Melanie Avalon: I know that's really common. The Asian population tends to have this issue genetically. I wonder why the body doesn't adapt for people who just don't form new fat cells. 

Craig Emmerich: Well, that's the thing. Well, first of all, the vast majority of people don't produce significantly new amounts of fat cells after their toddler. That's why insulin resistance is so common. Depending how many fat cells you have, it might take you-- you get to 100 pounds and then your insulin resistance or 50 or 200 even, depends on how many fat cells you have. But pretty much everyone-- pretty small percentages of people that don't have that situation going on in their body. There are a few. I actually did a case study with one of our clients because he clearly is one of the few people who can create new fat cells after a certain age. So he's like this genetic anomaly that can help prove-- A lot of times what they'll do in mice is if they think a gene is causing X, Y, and Z, they'll knock the gene out in the mice.

Melanie Avalon: Turn it off.

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. And then see if, “Okay, X, Y, and Z went nuts. Obviously, this gene was influencing those things.” Well, same thing here. If you find a variant where personal fat threshold works for all these cases, if you find the one situation where somebody makes new fat cells. In theory, if personal fat threshold is the root cause of insulin resistance, that person should show impeccable blood markers with weight. Well, he was 645 pounds and I had him do some blood tests. He was super nice guy, went to school with Maria. We've been helping him pro bono because we just really want to help him get healthy. He's lost 100 and some pounds already. When he's 645 pounds, he did these blood tests. His fasting insulin was 3, his fasting glucose was 90, his A1c was 5.6, his triglycerides were 77, his HDL was like 54 at 645 pounds. That's because he kept making new fat cells and he kept them small and happy. It's just shocking. 

Again, this is not healthy at any size. At this size, he's going to have serious health issues and will not live a long life if he doesn't get it turned around. But from a blood standpoint, from an insulin resistance standpoint, he doesn't have insulin resistance and he likely never would. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. So actually, just to probe further, so you're saying that not to say that this is healthy, so where would the issues arise if he is not presenting with? 

Craig Emmerich: Well, you carry around 645 pounds, you're going to have-- I mean, your joints--

Melanie Avalon: The mechanical stress.

Craig Emmerich: Well, joints, the pressure on the heart, the extra weight, there's just a lot of problems that can occur just from obesity in general. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. Wow, that is fascinating. What are your thoughts on the idea that insulin resistance actually starts at the muscle? 

Craig Emmerich: So, for me, the vast majority of it starts in the fat cells. It's this cascade of events that happens once the fat cells get too stuffed and they're like, “I don't want to take on any more fat.” And so think about that case again. Insulin is going to go, “Okay, well, I'll go up to get this fat out of the bloodstream.” Insulin's role is to keep the bloodstream from killing you. Too much glucose, you die. Too much alcohol, you die. Too much fat, triglycerides of 5,000, that's not healthy. You're going to die eventually. All of these things. Too much fuel in the blood, pancreas is trying to tightly control it. When the fat cells are rejecting and now fuels are creeping up in the blood and insulin is going up and up and up, but it's still not going in because the fat cells aren't taking it. That's why it ends up accumulating in the liver and pancreas and everything. 

As a result, you're going to have glucose go higher too, because insulin is fighting so hard to keep fuels down that the control on the liver will reduce as well and more glucose will come out of there too. So it's in an energy crisis, and pancreas is-- He had an insulin of 3. Commonly with clients that we have, we see insulin of 2 or 3 in that range. People are out there right now with fasting insulins of 20, 30, 40 all day long, and it's because the pancreas just cannot get the fuel out of the blood. 

Melanie Avalon: Say, he did a water only fast. Do you think he could go for like months? 

Craig Emmerich: I would assume. There's that old Minnesota starvation study. I don't know if you're familiar with it, where the guy-- It was almost a year, he ate nothing. Just water. He lost like 100 and some pounds and generally okay afterwards. I'm sure he lost a decent amount of muscle too. But yeah, he could go a very long time. Who knows how long. It's pretty remarkable how much energy certain humans with certain genetics can store on their body. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, the Minnesota starvation study, it’s weird. If you actually look at what they ate, especially compared to diets that people follow today, I don't think we would look at it as starvation. I'm guessing some people didn't eat at all. 

Craig Emmerich: I think I misquoted. It wasn't the Minnesota starvation. There was a man, it was old long time ago, where he ate nothing for almost a year. 

Melanie Avalon: I know who you're talking about. Yeah.

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, there's this one man. It wasn't really even a study, I don't think. It was just a one person did this thing under supervision. 

Melanie Avalon: So speaking of the liver, so these are some of the questions that have haunted me for years in the just low carb keto world, protein, all the things. So gluconeogenesis, so we're focusing on protein. We're having more protein. The conversion of protein into glucose, do you think it is demand or substrate driven and how much glucose do we create from protein in any given situation?

Craig Emmerich: My current understanding of it and some of this comes from-- I just had an interview on our YouTube channel with Dr. Donald Layman, who's probably the primary researcher on protein out there over 100 papers written over the years. He commented that they've shown that there's an underlying conversion of protein into glucose that is like a certain percentage, I don't know, 10% or something. I think that might be true, as well as the demand driven side of things. So there's a baseline of a certain amount that will get turned into glucose. But then if there's demand, i.e., you're depleted of glucose in your liver, your body does not want to run out of glucose, and all the glucose in the muscle is locked away, you can't get it back out. It's going to start increasing the amount of protein that it turns into glucose. For me, it's like a little bit of glucose is always going to be converted, and then on top of that, it can increase how much it converts as well, if there's a demand for it, if your glucose is getting too low in your body. I think this has been shown as well in some of the studies on this. 

Bullock and Finney had a study on athletes a while back that they had some athletes that did a carb load after completely-- They actually did muscle biopsy to show that they've completely depleted their glycogen through real intense, like, three-hour workouts. And then they biopsied them 24 hours later. One group did a carb load afterwards and the other one didn't. They had the same glycogen in their muscle afterwards, pretty much the same. So there was definitely increased demand there to create glucose. And so I'm sure gluconeogenesis just ramped up and increased the amount of glucose made from protein. And of course, that protein could be dietary protein or protein off your body. 

The way I look at it in general is gluconeogenesis is what allows you to be keto in the first place. It allows a carnivore diet to exist, because there're certain parts of the body that have to run on glucose. Your red blood cells have no mitochondria, so they have to burn glucose. There're certain brain neurons and heart tissues that run on glucose. And so if you're eating no carbohydrates or very low carbohydrates, gluconeogenesis is what allows you to be keto or carnivore because it makes up the glucose that you need for those other body parts. So I don't look at it as a problem. I look at it as enabling this kind of lifestyle to begin with. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. And do you think it's a “stressful process” for the body at all to engage in? That's what people in the forums will say. They'll be like, “It's stressful for you.” 

Craig Emmerich: I would say the baseline stuff we talked about, no, because it's always happening whether you're eating low carb or not, and you're always getting some conversion there. That's the baseline. I would say, if you're getting to the point-- This is where you could bring up. With rabbit starvation, there's one thing to be clear about, and that is that rabbit starvation is not when you just eat protein in the diet for anybody. It's when you just eat protein, no carbs or very little carbs or fat in the diet, and there're very little carbs or fat on the body, okay? So if you're a lean person and you eat nothing but lean protein, this can be a problem because now you're relying on gluconeogenesis to create all of the fuel for the body. That's a very energy intensive process. It takes a lot of energy to do it and you're burning so much energy to create fuel for the body that body comes into an energy starvation situation. 

Melanie Avalon: I went through like a time when I was really obsessed with the concept of gluconeogenesis, and I would just read all the forums. It's just funny. It's a really interesting world to exist in. I'm super curious-- So your newest book, The Carnivore Cookbook, that's the newest book, correct? 

Craig Emmerich: Actually, I got to think about it. 

Melanie Avalon: Or, is there a new one since then? 

Craig Emmerich: The Protein-Sparing Modified Fast Method cookbook is one that we put out recently, I think about a year and a half ago. There's a Sugar-Free Kids also, I think since then.

Melanie Avalon: I read your PSMF cookbook and The Carnivore Cookbook. Very cool about the kids one.

Craig Emmerich: Our latest book in general is an eBook that we produced called Carnivore for Weight Loss. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, that's the one. That's the one. Okay. That I just read. Okay, I was getting confused. Cool. I'm curious for that one. So Carnivore for Weight Loss. When you came up with the different levels, because there are four different levels that you have for people that they can follow. So level one is basically all beef. Why do people respond differently to different animal proteins? Like, why is beef this magical thing? 

Craig Emmerich: Beef is the perfect food for humans in my view, because it's got everything we need. It's got all the vitamins and minerals in their most bioavailable form. It's got the amino acids. It's got the fats. In general, it's typically the least. If somebody's sensitive to some food or allergic to some food, beef is from a true, not just aversion or I don't like it, beef is one of the lowest foods there is as far as any sensitivity or anything like that, unless you've got, again, the alpha-gal thing that throws a wrench, if you've got a disease or a parasite like that. So that's why we started there is because it creates a situation. First thing we say in the book is, what's your why? Why are you doing carnivore? Because if it's for autoimmune disease, if it's for bipolar or certain conditions, then you want to do it as an ultimate elimination diet. You want to go right to beef and salt, then add in different foods to see your body's sensitivity to them. 

Chronic Lyme disease is another reason to try it is, find foods that will make you flare up and do it one at a time and use it as an elimination protocol. That's why we wrote it that way. If you're just doing it for general health, you can do any level you want. [chuckles] You don't really have to go to level one as beef and salt if you don't have any health issues. 

Melanie Avalon: I was curious for eggs, why you don't separate the protein and the yolk. Do you find some people react to one aspect of that, not the other ever? 

Craig Emmerich: That's interesting. Yeah, because what we always tell people with kids is if they're young, under two years old, just do the egg yolks, not the whites. But yeah, I'm not sure what the reason is behind that. I haven't really looked into that too much. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. I'm just so interested about people responding to different things. So do you primarily exist in level one in the beef? 

Craig Emmerich: Over the years, I've found the things that don't bother my body. [chuckles] So most animal proteins are fine. I haven't really found any animal protein that I can't eat. There are certain other things I can eat, like, mushrooms, which are a cusp species anyway, because they're not really a plant, not really animal. Those seem to be fine. A little bit of maybe onion or tomato here and there is okay. But I've found what works for me, and I just stick with that. 

Melanie Avalon: Do you test your lipid profile levels and ApoB and things like that? 

Craig Emmerich: I have. That was in my thing. I think my total cholesterol is like 204, triglycerides--. I have to look at it again. I can't remember what the exact numbers were, but all in good ranges. Actually, I think it was below 200 the last time. So definitely, even by traditional standards, good numbers. 

Melanie Avalon: I'm haunted now by the cholesterol panel questions. Have you tested ApoB? 

Craig Emmerich: I have, but I can't remember what the number was. I think it was a little just on the high side. 

Melanie Avalon: Okay, gotcha. Yeah. The reason I'm fascinated is multifaceted. I listen a lot to Peter Attia, and he's big in the camp that basically-- He literally said on the last podcast I listened to that, “If you want to assure not getting cardiovascular disease, you're probably going to have to be on pharmaceuticals at some point.” Yeah, so I'm just haunted by this question of like statins and cholesterol. Especially with a keto and a carnivore diet, a lot of people will see really high LDL, but they'll say that they have high HDL, so it's protective. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah. I think Dave Feldman is definitely doing some interesting work here. He's got some studies that he's doing, looking at, what he calls, lean mass hyper responders. So these are people that have very high LDL like 250 LDL and 300 LDL, but they have really good HDL, really low triglycerides. Every other health marker is fine. He's doing calcium scores on them. So they're scanning their arteries and they're doing it over the course of a couple of years to see if there's any progression of-- The theory would be, if you got LDL of 300, you should be developing plaque. That's the theory. By using calcium scores and [unintelligible 01:04:54] CIMTs to measure how much arterial thickness and stuff there is, they are looking at that exact question. I think that will bring some light into the situation. Maybe there's an alternate factor that if X, Y, and Z are all great, but just LDL is off or one of these cholesterol markers are off and everything else is fine, maybe that's an edge case where you don't have to worry about it as much. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. I want to know-- My panel, I'm super low in everything. My LDL is like 49. 

Craig Emmerich: Oh, wow. 

Melanie Avalon: My total cholesterol is like 100. My HDL though is also low. It's 40 right now or last time I checked. But I'm like, “Does it matter if everything else is really low too?” So yeah, I'm just haunted by this. 

Craig Emmerich: There's interesting data. First of all, the people that have heart attacks, half of them have, what are considered, normal cholesterol levels. So it's 50-50, whether you have a heart attack, you could have normal and [unintelligible 01:05:57] whether you have high and have a heart attack, so it's like 50-50. And then there's also data that shows that really low cholesterol. People that have again, not to scare you or anything, definitely it's not necessarily your case. But in general, people that have cancer have lower cholesterol. I think part of that is because cholesterol is your body's firefighter. It puts out inflammation. If you have a lot of inflammation, it's working hard, and so your levels are going to be depleted because it's working on fighting all that inflammation. That might be why my cholesterol is on the lower side compared to others that eat this way is because I have so much inflammation in my body. 

Melanie Avalon: I'm just so fascinated by it. Not I feel like we should know more, but I almost feel like, I don't know, it's just so inconclusive and there're so many debates. So I'll be really curious about the future of all of it. Yeah. I went down the rabbit hole. I interviewed Dr. Joel Kahn. He's a big vegan cardiologist. His book is about Lp(a), which I didn't even know about. So I learned all about that. And so I don't know, I'm haunted by it. I guess, the high LDL presentation tends to happen more in the carnivore keto sphere. So I'm very interested in it. 

Craig Emmerich: I am too. I definitely want to see what happens with Dave's outcome with his studies because I contributed to it, because I think it's all being crowdfunded, basically, to do these studies. So I think it's important to get the data out there. 

Melanie Avalon: When did you say that started or the study?

Craig Emmerich: At Low Carb Denver, which is earlier this year, he announced the second phase of the study where they're actually going to move forward looking at this group and randomized controlled trial of randomizing a standard group of non-keto carnivore people, non-lean [unintelligible 01:07:48] hyper responders, as well as the group with 100 people in each, and they're going to look at their calcium scores over time and compare. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Well, it's similar analogy to-- As far as talking about normal blood lipid levels, but then having heart attacks, it's like on the brain front like the plaque or not plaque and the Alzheimer's and the dementia. So that's a whole another rabbit hole. But in any case, yeah, this has been absolutely amazing. So right now, are you working on another book at the moment or what are you doing? 

Craig Emmerich: Myself, I'm not really working on any book. Maria is putting together a holiday book. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, that's fun. 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, holiday recipes for different holidays and stuff. So that'll be kind of fun. 

Melanie Avalon: I love the idea. That's so fun. With your kids, I see them on Instagram and I see all the content and I hear you guys talk about them. Do you encounter really any obstacles raising them in this lifestyle? 

Craig Emmerich: Yeah, we homeschool, so that helps a lot. But in general, I think with kids, I think the most important thing is that you give them the tools and education to make better choices. Being strict and like, “Don't eat that,” and not explaining it to them, it's just going to seem restrictive to them. If you explain to them that, “This is what this is going to do in your body.” If they do have some of that food, talk to them after about how they feel, and maybe they don't feel so good, and connecting the food with how they feel, and just educating them on it, I think that's the key. 

Melanie Avalon: I love that. I love that so much. Well, thank you so much. And so for listeners, because you guys have so many books and resources, listeners can go to melaniaavalon.com/ketoadapted and you can use the coupon code, MELANIEAVALON, and that will get you 10% off sitewide. So thank you so much for that. So the last question I ask every single guest on this show, and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So what is something that you're grateful for? 

Craig Emmerich: Family. I don't know, this disease I have, this problem I have, it's made me appreciate what I do have, what I am still able to do, and hopefully be able to continue to do in the future. And so spending time with the family, doing things with the family, I think is one of the things I'm going to be focusing on more in the future, for sure. 

Melanie Avalon: Well, I love that so much. Thank you so much for what you're doing, especially going through that journey and using it to, not only heal yourself, but share really empowering information with others. You guys just create so many incredible resources and are changing so many lives. So I really can't thank you enough for your time and everything that you're doing. 

Craig Emmerich: Well, thank you so much, Melanie, for having me on. 

Melanie Avalon: All right, Craig, have a good rest of your day and I'll talk to you later. 

Craig Emmerich: Thank you. Bye.

Melanie Avalon: Bye. 

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