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Dr. Joel Rosen: Hello, everyone and welcome back to another edition of your adrenal fix Podcast, where my mission is to help exhausted and burnt out adults to teach them the truth about adrenal fatigue so that they can get their energy back quickly. And I’m really excited to have Mr. Mojo himself, Dorian green. Now for our second interview. We are interviewing Dorian because it’s so essential in today’s day and age for the person who’s exhausted and burnt out to have a finger on the pulse literally and physically and metaphorically on what’s going on with their blood sugar levels. So without further ado, Dorian, thank you so much for being on the podcast again today.
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Yeah, thank you for having me back. I’m really, really honored to be here and sharing with the audience.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, well, thank you again, I know you’re busy guy, you know, 26 years ago now because our interview was two years ago, 26 years ago from the UK, arriving in America with $750 in your pocket. Why don’t you get the viewers updated with that and kind of how you got to where you are now.
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Wow, as a relatively newly minted American, I would say that the American Dream is alive and well. Yeah, I did come here with $750 and nobody’s handed me a big check. I started as a busboy, barback maitre D direct for Hospitality in New York City working for a catering company came up to be the Director of Operations there, and then came over to the Napa Valley where I became the director of hospitality for a winery. And you know, I’d been in the food wine industry for most of my adult life in the United States. My brother’s a chef, my sister’s a chef, you know, where we all live in food. But in America, I started getting bigger. Why? Why is this I was eating great food, you know, well-made foods, and yet still, that then I find myself in 2015? I was 207 pounds are all my biomarkers, were there for metabolic syndrome.
I was on antidepressants. I was failing at my job. And I was like, What is going on here? And then a good friend of mine, to the white of dry farm wines. He said to me, You got a cost out those white devils cost those white devil’s audio laugh, do a terrible Southern accent. So I apologize to everybody for ruining that. And I’m like, dude, I don’t do fad diet. I do not do fad diets. I’ve seen my wife do a cabbage soup diet. No, it’s not in my lexicon. But I started reading up on ketogenic lifestyle and no, Taubes. lasting you take a look at Volek and Phinney, Dr. Nisha winters, and I started looking at every single YouTube that I could find on these people and more. And you know, the more you delve into the science and in my book collection started to get massive, the more you look into it, it makes absolute sense for an individual going back in history. So I started on a well regulated ketogenic diet. I was using a competitor’s meter at that time, and over a period of about five months, most of my waist came off in the first like three to four months, I went from 207 pounds down to 165. Just doing keto and yoga. And that was it. And I did what I call lazy clean keto, was, I tracked my macros baby for the first 30 days just so I could understand foods. A lot of people that don’t think understand carb quantities, I don’t think they understand or read understand nutrition labels. And I think you’ve got to kind of give yourself a little bit of a learning curve there.
So that’s what I started doing it. So I could track what I was doing and understand what that change was in my body. And then I was testing with an Abbott meter at that time. And you know, the cool thing was, I could see when I was first starting, how my ketone levels started to come up, you know, you get 0.1 0.2 0.3 and you’re like, wow, I’m almost at that. 0.5 and you enter ketopia. And you’re like,
you also feel you know, the difference in your, in your mind when, when the, you know, when you’re off-field on ketones rather being fueled on glucose, and that fog seems to lift. And for me, I got back that Jawad Aviv that I felt when I was 24. Do you know that that that spa was like where had that gone? You know, where had that been? I’d been in the cop fog was for so long. And so this was a fundamental change. And because of that, you know, I was looking at these test strips, and back in 2015, they were four to five bucks. And I was like, why is this test trip so expensive. So I dropped a list of hundred different manufacturers across the globe.
I cross match that with the federal regulations. And we launched keto Mojo and single-handedly my wife and I, you know, I went to gems and I said, Hey, Gemma, do you think I could borrow some of the home equity lines of credit because I’ve got this business idea. And we’re gonna go up against fortune 500 companies, and we’re gonna change the world with it. I mean, like, you know, you guessed fortune 500 companies that you crazy that she went along with, right, and here we are. And now the number one selling ketone and glucose meter in America. But to get there was very, very hard. And we managed to single-handedly change the price by over 75% on ketone testing. And my meter back then was like $60. And then at the beginning of October, we’ve kind of like done it, again, we reintroduced a brand new meter into the market, price of the meat has gone from $60, down to leg 45. So that’s almost another between 15 to 20% discount that is right there. And again, we’ve changed the price of the strips by a further 20% on the ketone strips, and we’ve managed to add a huge number of benefits in the new meter. So we’re super proud. But you know, I come back to fundamentally I think you can you want to have data-driven outcomes. You know, there’s a phrase test don’t guess, you know, I so often I hear people see people on social media, I ate this last night, I had a carrot. Is that going to kick me out of ketosis? I don’t know. Because your bio-individuality is completely different from mine. And this is what so many people forget. You know, trying to live your life by the lowest common denominator. I mean, Dr. Eric Westman says 20 grams total. Well, what if you can have 30 or 40? Or 50? What if you’re an athlete and can do 65 grams of carbs? Because you’re working out really well? What if you don’t have the genetic snips that are meaning that it ketogenic keto is right for you? There are some people that keto is not right. It’s not right for and it’s not this, this panacea, but it can certainly do a lot of different things. And so the bio-individuality is the most important piece that needs to come into play here. And for people to learn their bodies are what is right for them.
Am I advocating for somebody to prick their finger for the rest of their lives? No, I’m going to be probably the only person in the biotech world that is going to try to do an anti sale right now. We are training wheels for life. We help you train and learn your body. So that when the time is right, you can cast off those training wheels. And because you’ve learned what is right for you, and you’ve learned how to do it, and it’s a lifestyle, not a diet. And but the cool thing is there are times we need to bring it back if you want to do a reboot. My wife Gemma is a certified sommelier with a watercourse scholarship. We love wine. So now, you know, I laugh when I say I look, I saved my carbs for wine. And we like to test and do different things from around the world. Because we’re trying to see what what what can we get away with what Can’t we get away with. And as your body changes after being on this lifestyle, your metabolic flexibility changes. And that then can add different things. So it’s, it’s a long journey, and the journey for me is still continuing. You know, we’ve introduced therapeutic fasts, you know, we built up our fasting muscle, so we can do a five day one now. And that has fundamentally changed my ketone levels as well. My baseline has changed. For me when I was on antidepressants, it was pretty bad. But what I found personally for myself, I was between 1.1 and 1.7. This was my personal zone. Those, you know, those, you know, those feelings of inadequacy, that the despairs that you have the massive amounts of fits of anger that could come on in, no, those were leveled out, have they have I said they’re gone? No, you still have to manage that, you know, it’s just not going to know, but it helps protect the brain and get you into a better stage. So you know, that was one of the reasons I was doing. So I think when people talk about ketogenic lifestyles, you’ve also got to realize is why is that individual doing it? Like, are they doing keto for weight loss? Are they doing it for type two diabetes? Is it because they’ve maybe had a cancer diagnosis? And they’ve heard that you know, because of the Warburg effect, that they can assist with that? Is it because they have a polycystic ovarian syndrome? And they’re looking to conceive? Is it for epilepsy? Do they find a frequency of seizures because epilepsy comes down when they’re in a certain zone? is for the epileptic, higher, better, or lower?
No, it’s bio-individuality is for weight loss higher, better, or lower? No, it’s not. What if you’re doing as an athlete? Are you looking for endurance? What is your metabolic rate? You know, we measure what’s in the tank. We don’t measure how well you are on the cellular level, you’re ready to receive those ketones or how well your Liver can produce them. So there are lots of variabilities. And there’s lots of room there that you need a good interpreter or a coach like yourself, who can come along and help people along the way. We are just one data set amongst many that can help map you and guide your journey.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Awesome, awesome information. And I think the real take-home on that Dorian is the domino effect of, Okay, I got to release the white devil from my food from the original dry wine suggestion to go on a controlled carb ketogenic based diet, and then the impact that had on so many downstream effects that you may not have even considered like getting off medications and anti-depression and brain clarity and energy and focus. And, and now really, what I want to commend keto Mojo about is, like you just mentioned is we’re not really a selling company online.
We’re an information company online. So what I want to talk to you about, which I think is really key is talking about the glucose ketone index, cuz I think to track as you said, is to know, but you will see some people and this changed for me personally, where they may be a little sluggish in the morning, or they have that dawn phenomenon. And their glucose levels are a little bit on the higher side, when we say higher, maybe they’re in the middle of the 90s, or even in the hundreds, but they also have ketones that are being produced. And when you look at that in relation to the glucose ketone index, it gives you some more clarity on your quote-unquote, metabolic flexibility. So why don’t you tell the listener who may be thinking about the fact that they’re looking to lose weight, or they’re looking to have more clarity or get off medications? Why the glucose ketone index number is so important what to do with that information?
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Absolutely. Let’s start a little bit on the genesis of the glucose ketone index. This is from Professor Thomas Seyfried of Boston College. And he was looking at cancer as being a metabolic disease. So Otto Warburg originally was the guy he posited that showed that some cancers feed on glucose in an anaerobic environment. And so when looking at that, if you could starve the body of glucose, could you potentially starve out cancer, weaken it, so modern oncology methods can have a fight for more success. And so this is the way that it first came out. And Professor Siegfried saw a complete relationship between glucose and ketones. So now in a maybe in a more advanced form of oncology is, what you’re looking for is to get really kind of like high tea ketones, and really low glucose. Now, when you take a look at those two numbers together, and essentially what we’re doing is taking your glucose measurement, which in America is in milligrams per deciliter. And converting that into metric. So to be for the European style, which is millimoles. So you do that by dividing it by 18. And then what you do is then divide that number by your ketone measurement. And that will give you a ratio between generally zero super hard to get all the way up to about nine and beyond. But really nine is at the threshold of Gk I ketosis. Now I’m saying Gk ketosis is quite succinctly because you can have somebody who’s at 0.4 0.5 on their ketones, who, according to Vala, confini, that is nutritional ketosis at 0.5. But because their glucose is higher, their ratio then is popped out. So the object of Gk is to kind of like get far more stability. Now, you can find that glucose can bounce around a lot during the day. And if glucose moves really, really fast, ketones have a tendency to drift off and drift down during the day. When you take the combination of both of those numbers, you start to get a much more stable line when tracking it over time. And you know that stability of like either moving up and moving down based upon glucose and ketones then becomes far more important when you’re looking at it as a therapy. So normally, you know my blood glucose I’m going to be rounded I’m I kind of like hover in a sort of like the mid threes, which for some people is actually a therapeutic glucose ketone index, but I’ve been doing keto for a long time. I generally do one meal a day. I’ve pretty much fasted most of that time. So you know, when I’m testing myself, I have a good number of ketones that are going on in there, and you know, my blood glucose is stable, and one day I can get into the 90s because I do Have adorn phenomenal effects. So I’ve got that 90. So generally I like to test in the morning because that’s my baseline about an hour after waking. And that kind of lets me know what’s going on with me. And your ketones are highest just before your evening meal. So my baseline is the Gk I that I like to hold on to, personally, myself.
I think sometimes doing the Gk before and after meals, that it gets a little bit muddied in the waters that is there. Because you’re definitely even with a low carb meal, you can get a 30 milligrams per deciliter rise, and I know I look at myself if I keep my pop on my meal less than 30 I’m absolutely fine. Remember, do you need to test out for every meal? The answer is no. You test to learn what is right for you. We’re all creatures of habits. You know, you kind of like wake up and quite often you might have the same breakfast is, you know, once you don’t want to your test and learn at breakfast, do you have to test again, if you’ve known what your body does to it? No. So the frequency of testing a lot, to begin with, starts a lot, and then it Peters out over time. But I think the Gk I, we were the first meter on our app to actually do the calculation in-app for you our meter in Europe, you can actually the meter itself will do the Gk AI, unfortunately, the FDA and support it, so we couldn’t put the Gk AI on the meter. That’s why you’ll see it’s Gk plus because the FDA put the earth across in it and said no, you can’t do Gk AI. So we changed that piece to make sure that we can’t do in meter calculation. But we are allowed to do AP calculation. So that’s the kind of like when people go that well. Why is that one in Europe, Gk and in America, it’s Gk plus, every country has its own Regulatory Affairs. And it took us nearly two years to pass the FDA regulation, I think this is really an important piece.
There are many ketone meters out there. And on some of them sold in America are not device does not carry on what’s known as a 510 k registration. Because ketones are not considered too much of a risk. But measuring glucose is a risk because anybody who is adjusting their insulin based upon a glucose measurement, here is where hyperglycemia could come on in. And that’s where it becomes more important. So I always would say, if you’re going to choose Amina, first of all ask that company does it have a 510 K. And I can tell you, there’s only about three in America that actually truly have a 510 K. And if you’re measuring just ketones, you’re only seeing half the picture. You’ve got to have glucose and ketones. And the moment you bring the glucose in on the subject, you know that that person has to have had a 510 K. And you know, that’s really hard to get the clinical trials, the studies that have to be done, the strictness that you get from the FDA that comes into play is is pretty big.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, well, coming from the other side, Dorian, I work with clients that are exhausted and burnt out. And I get a lot of DMS and they say, Well, I know my blood sugar is related. You know, I’m hypoglycemic. And I asked them, Well, have you ever tested? And well, yeah, I test when I do my 12 hours fast, I go to the doctor, and my glucose is 102. And for the doctor to tell me that it’s high, it has to be above 123. I’ve even seen some of the lab ranges be 132. Meaning if you’re 133, you’re labeled as high. If you’re 132, you’re normal, and the diagnosis for diabetes is 126. So what they’re saying is, it’s normal to be diabetic. But anyway, that’s a whole other point.
Mr. Dorian Greenow: What I found is normal in America to be diabetic, which is, which is sad. I mean, if I had a 130, I’d be really concerned that that’s me, right? Because I know my I’m going for the 83 at the most perfect you can get, but you got to realize a home kit. Like people focus on these home kits and they go like I had a 10 point difference or a 15 or 15 point difference. Wait a minute, you know, this is a $45 hunk kit. If you want to get within 2% of absolute you got to buy a $20,000 analyzer y si. So there’s always going to be a little bit of variety to it. And so I kind of like have an analogy, it’s like archery, you know the strip is your arrow, the meter is you bow the control range is the target that you’re trying to hit there.
And obviously, there is the archer and there is a skill to testing and there is I always recommend with somebody sophisticated limited use the glucose strips to test because they’re a lot cheaper and that can help you practice there’s an art of you know, warming your hand, washing it out like that getting the bead putting the strip in the timing of all of that, you know, there’s an order, and then how looking down and there is an art to that. And what we’ve tried to do with our new meter is to try and design out most of the challenges there provide the videos and the how-tos and the customer support to get people happy and testing and using it and understanding that skill set. So yeah,
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, but I but I think it’s important to talk about the Gk I again, because back to that person who doesn’t measure their glucose and thinks that they’re hypoglycemic when effect, they’re actually hyperglycaemic when they should be more controlled. I asked them, Well, have you tested your glucose real-time? You know, using a meter? No, I’m not diabetic. So why do I need to? So then they start to measure their glucose. And then I say to them, well, what’s your ketones and, and then they say, Well, I don’t measure my ketones, I just do my glucose. So that’s where I brought that question up to you why I think it’s essential to have a meter like a keto Mojo, that’s gonna measure both because then you can start to, like you said, to track and to know. But once you may see that that number is maybe a little bit on the higher side, but you’re not measuring your ketones, and then you measure your ketones, and you see that you’re producing ketones, and your Gk is less than nine, it gives that person some more context of how they’re moving the needle or what they should be doing. So I think I think that’s invaluable and honestly doing and I think that in today’s day and age, anyone who’s dealing with a chronic health problem, that needs to be one of the main tools that they’re using. So So what question I have to you, as you said, your user is typically going to be a finite time, right in terms of as they start to learn themselves, and they start to do the same meals, and they start to know what’s happening. But can you give us sort of a concept in terms of what you see as being baseline strategies, as opposed to say, ad hoc strategies, meaning certain times of the day that they may be experiencing this or that, so maybe you can give the user who’s new to this and really thinks, hey, this is something I got to do. What would they be doing baseline wise first,
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Okay, great. The word baseline is what I love to hear because you’ve got to learn what your body is, to begin with. So that baseline measurement an hour after waking is the important piece this is like you haven’t eaten yet, this is your stable fasted, we’re doing an hour after waking because of the dawn phenomenon. With that cortisol spike that will push up your glucose in the morning, it usually goes off about an hour for some people can be a little bit longer. So that’s, that’s the baseline, that’s, that’s tool number one, in your arsenal. And because some people might be more insulin resistant, you know, their pancreas might be a little bit tired, they might not be secreting as much as you know. And that’s what we’re looking to, to change that over a while. And if you do that regularly enough, you can almost have an N A one c equivalent, if you kind of like start looking at the averages over three months, you can certainly help you guide that way along. So that’s tool number one. tool number two is what I do the test before or after a meal. So before the meal, I take a baseline, and then I’m going to may wait for about an hour after a meal. And I’ll test again, and I’m looking at that low carb meal not to have more than a 30 point spike in my glucose from under that I’m pretty happy with that one. So that’s one little piece of information that I can tell from that utilizing the glucose. Now, by doing that same test, I can also use it to sluice out of what I call trigger foods. Somebody wrote to me just recently that had had a keto pizza. And he did not say the glucose go up, but his ketones came down by two points. And now it’s the question What’s going on here? Well, you might not have had a glycemic response, which is glucose. What if you actually did have an insulin response, which caused as a signal to say to live, you don’t need to produce ketones anymore, and now your ketones came down. So this is sort of like an inference of an insulin response. It’s an inference. It’s not him but it’s an inference. So now you can sleuth out if particular sugar alcohol or product is actually giving you an insulin response.
I know I have a problem with sugar alcohols personally. xylitol, mannitol, sorbitol, all of those tools take their toll on me. And so I choose not to have them because I have seen my ketones go down. Now I’m trying to target my ketones in a personal zone for me, for my well being, you know, rather than having to take a medication, I want to be between 1.1 and 1.7. So I don’t want my ketones to come down. If they did come down in the old one, and it’s not an issue for that person, can that person then have that sugar alcohol, that’s their buying regrets, their choice that they get to make from a data-driven outcome? Can I do that? resveratrol? Yeah, that’s not bad for me. And so I can do monk fruit in those things. So if I am going to have
I sort of like, it’s sort of like, a placebo, if I need to have a placebo, you know, you find after being here for a long time, that you don’t really want to have a dessert, and you don’t really need to have a cookie. And you don’t really need to have a snack because you got satiety. But if I do fancy to try a little treat, then it’s not a problem, because I know so. So that’s the sleuth out method, then, you know, if you’re doing the before and after a meal, then you can take it to the next level, if you really want and like test about three hours after so what you’re looking to see is, hey, did I have this glucose rise or not? Yes, I did. How quickly did I then get back down to my baseline is a little bit is what’s telling me is how well my pancreas is doing? Am I increasing that? Am I coming down to the baseline that I need to do? And then as you talk going back to that baseline over time, are we seeing all fasting glucose? Especially if you’re somebody who’s pre-diabetic, as you mentioned before getting above that one in those 130s? Are we seeing that come down? Are we reversing the effects? Now I use that word reversing very carefully. Because virta house in San Francisco have shown it with a well regulated ketogenic diet, and they use the terms and they got some big lawyers that you can reverse the effects of type two diabetes, they found that 67% of people either managed to come off of all or half of their medications. That means what are we going to do is prescription strength, why there’s better how to use our meter. I think it’s very important is the keto diet works. So well, for type two diabetes, their prime worry is deeper scribing medications, that it works so quickly, and so well, they don’t want anybody to have hyperglycemia. That’s why they want them to test their glucose. Think about that just changing a way of eating, their biggest concern is getting people off drugs, so they don’t have a problem in a timely fashion and being able to do that remotely. And it’s amazing.
Now, you know, Vernon has been working on this for a long time, and so have you, but you can do this remotely with people. And what’s also cool is testing gives accountability. And it also gives control to the individual. Now I remember when my wife got her cancer diagnosis, and all of a sudden, you know, it’s dealing with the oncologist and the radiologist and a primary care physician, you feel that you’ve given over everything you have nothing that you have control of. Well, you actually do. You bring back control and what you are eating, you bring back control of knowing that you are doing what you need to do. I mean, as I mentioned, when you see yourself, see ketones rising up and getting into ketosis and maintaining that stability. Because in the first few weeks months of being on a keto diet, you are not metabolically flexible. Volek wrote in the art and science of low carbohydrate living, that it can take an athlete 12 weeks to get fat adapted. What does that mean? That means on a cellular level, we have to have our mitochondria change, to able to accept those medium-chain triglycerides to be able to accept those ketones. And so it is a metabolic journey, as well on a cellular level, we change ourselves. And I think I think this is actually quite cool. When you really think about we can change by what we eat on a cellular level. That’s quite fantastic. And yeah, when we look at that ketones, ketones can freely cross the blood-brain barrier.
Glucose needs a transporter, it needs a ship to take us over the blood-brain barrier. If you don’t have that. It means your brain is devoid of the energy that it needs. So if we can easily get ketones over the blood-brain barrier, do you think that is potentially the default state for humans rather than glucose burning? If we go out into Mother Nature, and I say to somebody, go, go get me some carbohydrates, please. We’re going to get a carbohydrate in the woods. Well, first of all, they might go like, hey, let me go find that business. And there are 300,000 bees there and I’m gonna fight my way through because I want to get some honey. That’s pretty difficult. It might be Alright, let’s go for some blueberries because blueberries are in season are only in season for one month, and you’ve got to go and fight off the bear the raccoons and whoever else is eating it in that? Or do you go in to say, Hey, I can either get a handful of berries, but I don’t have any refrigeration? Or do I take down that bear that elk or that bison and feed my family for six months? That was our default state for 2.1 million years, we get perfect protein, which is designed that allowed our brains to get so huge we became this because we did live a kind of lifestyle. Now, am I saying that you can’t be vegetarian and keto? No, you can do it, it takes a little bit more skill, as most vegetarians know, they have to be careful of getting the right balance of vitamins, minerals, and so that they can do it. So if you believe because of that, you know, of animals and you don’t want to close up totally cool, go vegan keto, it’s a little bit harder.
I personally believe that for optimal health, we know we are omnivores. And you know, when you look at it, what is a well regulated ketogenic diet, because we can get fixated on numbers. But in the simple sentence, it is adequate fat, a moderate amount of protein, lots of above-ground leafy vegetables. It’s a very simple thing. But those words have been chosen carefully what I mean by adequate fat. Well, if somebody is obese, they’ve got plenty of fat on their body. If you’re in the state of ketosis, and your liver has now been changed to max metabolize your body fat, then you can pull off the fat leader, you don’t need to be stuffing your face with fat on a ketogenic diet. If you go look, you want to have a slight caloric deficit that comes with moderate protein. Why do I say moderate? Well, some people too much protein can reduce down their ketones, not kick them out, I say reduce down, then it’s why is the person doing the ketogenic diet? Is it to weight loss? Or is it for epilepsy? For them, certainly, for epilepsy, not having too much protein might be right for them, for their awesome carnivores in the world, like the Danny Vegas, you know, I’m born stacked, you know, like, and they can eat an entire cow, great for them. But for others, it’s not. And then I say a lot above-ground leafy vegetables because that’s pretty simple when you put it on and that way.
And you know, people think that I know I’m just eating half a cow. I’m not it’s moderate. It’s basic meat about I can do one chicken thigh and I’m pretty good with that. Because it’s a chicken thigh with the skin on with fat onto the source that’s going on there. Maybe I fried up some mushrooms and I’ve added a little bit of butter or ghee into that just to bring a little bit more fat on to the world. So I’ve got that nice ratio of 70 to 80% fat, you know, 20% protein and maybe 5% carbs and that’s kind of like what I’m shooting for. And then two nice fists of veggies to go on to the side. Obviously, the mushroom is the big I use that to pick up the fat because mushrooms bring it up and then a bit of broccoli, La La broccoli Ron with olive oil and red peppers flakes.
Isn’t that delish?
I’m getting hungry, even just kind of like thinking about it, you know, and it’s sort of like we’re getting almost four in the afternoon. And I still fast, but that to me is what a well regulated ketogenic diet should be.
Dr. Joel Rosen: That’s awesome, awesome information. I’m still thinking about the prescriptive grade dietary changes that require type two diabetics to actually be monitored to come off their insulin because it’s so effective. I think people may miss that point. Because what’s actually happening there is that the insulin is driving the already controlled very quickly lowered blood glucose from dietary changes so quickly and so, so high that they risk having such a drop in blood sugar levels. I think that’s a great point. And I love your description of the new diet in terms of what it means to be in ketogenic or favorable. Let’s talk about that, Dorian. What does it mean to you to be metabolically flexible? Because some people may not understand what that term means. And I have an idea of what I think it means when I work with stressed-out clients, what would you define or explain what it means to be metabolically flexible?
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Yeah. for me, it’s like not sweating, the little things. I mean, in no way like, you know, like, not going like Willy kick me out of ketosis. I know what will and will not kick you out of ketosis. So, being metabolically flexible, I’m going to do it in two ways. First of all, for the athlete, somebody who wants to be an athlete, if you are just eating carbohydrates, or carbo-loading, or just generally not in the State of Good neutral because you’re only burning one field. So now what if it’s never Or your race car and you came to the actual race and you only had one field. And then up next year came this jewel field monster of a beast. It’s got ketones for absolute endurance. And then when he wants to overtake bomb, it’s going to hammer onto the glucose and go like that. Who do you think about going to have the advantage? We go back into history, and especially history, who do you think had the advantage when they became jewel field? This is what metabolic flexibility gives you. metabolic flexibility for me as an individual is knowing I am, if I do have maybe a nice was salad and the chef went and put potatoes into it, is that going to make me bothered, maybe not. If it’s like one or two, I’m going to be absolutely fine. If that’s a little bit of a sweet potato with sour cream, I’m not going to sweat it. And if I did have any worry, I will come back home I would test and if I felt my ketones were going in the wrong direction. You know what I just would fast in the morning, I’ll just skip one meal and I’m back into my zone. So that metabolic flexible means that I don’t live my life as I’d like I said before the low common denominator of 20 grams, I live the life that is right for me. And nearly because I’ve learned what I can and cannot get out and get away with. And I also like to push the edge. You know, I love wine and conversation with our friends. And I want to sit down with them and enjoy that and not feel that I’m some kind of like a seven-headed Hydra because I live a ketogenic lifestyle. I look at them eating the carbs, knowing what the damage it can do. You know, you think, you know, I used to smoke when I was a young lad. I first started smoking when I was 16. And I gave up when I met my wife when I was 2026. So let’s think about that one cigarette not going to kill you. Is it? One Piece of cake not gonna kill it, is it? But that cake will add up over a period of time. And then what do we see people get type two diabetes diagnosis, and suddenly they have 15 years left of life expectancy. Pass, they have what I call the long Goodbye, which is their quality of life. And later a lady is not there, they’re not having health span, you might have a bit of lifespan, but that’s because they’re being artificially kept alive. Losing a kidney is not good. Losing your leg is not good. And that’s what One Piece of cake can do over a period of time at a time. And as the roller coaster ride that is it. Don’t you think it’s sad that here in the United States of America, our children now have less of a life expectancy? And we did then the parents did with all the advances in medicine with all that we spend? It’s now less. Why is that? Now people go like, well, there’s not enough science in in keto. And you’re like, well, it’s about 175 peer review papers. But don’t you think that that experiment? Went back to Anzel keys? And people? Haven’t we’ve sown enough of a data set to say we have a massive obesity problem in America.
Mr. Dorian Greenow: And we also have a lot of massive health problems. I think that data to me is pretty conclusive. And people go well, how is keto going to feed the world? How are you going to change the paradigm? I think we are watching America and food we don’t have a food problem. What we have is a transportation and distribution problem for those who are the haves and the have nots. But I think it’s really, really possible to feed the world. And that’s, that’s one of my ultimate goals is you know, I think I last time I touched upon this and I said, I want to change the farming power paradigm globally. So how do we do that? How would we change the farming paradigm? Well, first of all, it’s a bottom-up approach. If people start changing their habits and changing their shopping the outer aisle so to speak, even that carbage that morgue that is in the middle, you now have a market forcing function that will change it people are having healthy fats, good quality pasture-raised meats, fantastic above-ground vegetables grown by local family farmers. Now you change the farming paradigm and those farmers will start to switch and say Hold on. We can now already get zoodles We can now already get cauliflower thins we can now already get cauliflower rice that is in the stores that we could never get when we started in 2015. Already commerce is taking note. Now, the United States Department of Agriculture is the fox guarding the henhouse. They do the USDA guidelines. And the USDA is also the ones who are responsible for subsidizing corn, soy, wheat, and cheap carbs in America. That subsidy is killing people. In America, and is causing the obesity epidemic, which is making your medical costs go through the roof. Now, what if that subsidy changed? healthy vegetables? Why are they so expensive? Really? That is that is that is terrible. It shouldn’t be like that. Because the vegetable growers got to compete against the subsidies of corn and soy and wheat and those guys have been pushing out bushels and bushels and bushels and yields going up and they’re still getting subsidies in big ag. We need to be supporting the family farmers, we need to change the Farm Bill, it is the most boring piece of legislation. Nobody ever takes a look at it. But what if we did start subsidizing healthy foods, healthy fats, the work that Nina Ty Schultz is doing with a nutrition coalition, I think is amazing. And you know that to us is important. So these things is for what Gemini is what makes it different. So we started the ketogenic foundation. It’s now a 501 c three public charity. And if you go to a website and you read an article about food and you click on the link, instead of us making money from it, it goes to the ketogenic Foundation, we have raised over $520,000 for the foundation so far, which we’re really pleased about.
The goal of the foundation is fun clinical trials and studies and education on ketogenic therapies for the benefit of humankind. Because we need a feedback loop to go back to the scientists because every scientist and clinician that I meet, what I hear from them as they don’t have the money to do the studies. So if we can help fund pilot studies that can showcase the effectiveness on it, then they can go and get the big NIH grants these two and four and $5 million grants to expand it out into bigger cohorts that can fundamentally change. We’ve tried to help the work of Doug and Pam divine of low carb USA, they have a metabolic Society of health practitioners that we’re working with Dr. Robert cibus. So the foundation has helped them with a grant to get them set up just like you have the American College of bariatric surgeons, we should have the same thing where the doctors are making the decisions. And the doctors are putting together the standard of care and the doctors are changing and educating themselves. And that’s what we’re looking for the kids unit foundation to do. I’m looking hopefully within the next two months, we will have the mind Mojo marketplace on our website, we will introduce our friends in the ketogenic world. And every single penny of that will go to the foundation. And the goal is if we can build up an endowment, that in perpetuity, we will be able to fund science.
That is data-driven healthcare and outcomes that Gemini is really looking forward to doing because we don’t have children. What is the legacy that I made a buck? Or made a difference? And I think I want to leave this world saying, you know what, we made a little bit of a difference. And we did well because I think that’s the right way to move forward.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, that’s awesome. You know, all from 2017 understanding that they’re charging an arm and a leg for dollars for a strip and I got to come up with a way to beat that. Had you ever anticipated the domino effect or how far downstream you’ve come in terms of your tour bigger mission at all?
Mr. Dorian Greenow: I would have never in my if I put this down at the business plan I would have been laughed out with every single banker anywhere and never in my wildest dream. But you know, it just felt right. And you know, when when you bring is fueled on ketones, you’re there is a real difference. And I’m not just kind of like doing as marketing. I mean, Dr. Robert cybers, he’s just had an eye, a new baby boy. I don’t feel boy, boy, I could be wrong there. Any baby. Let me just be clear. And you know, for him, he stood up at low carb USA, if brain development is the most important thing for a young child. And we know that ketones protect the brain and actually enhance the brain through the work that has been done in epilepsy is feeding that child glucose. Actually, child abuse was a very adopted set. It’s not me. So I’m not going to get into the whole piece but is it and he asked that question. And his wife was ketogenic throughout the pregnancy to have a beautiful child as doing extremely well. But I hear is I asked the fundamental question is like is if our brain development is like this so important, what is the human potential instead of me just trying to fix my metabolic damage? And you know, when I’m 45 what would have been my potential as a human being? If I was fueled on this, and I want to have any more Einsteins? We could potentially have had You think about when Einstein was living, he was in the era, the same era as my grandmother, who was keeping Lord in the refrigerator. If you think about that, you know, the rise of cheap carbohydrates only came in the late and the last 10,000 years. And it’s mainly from the 1800s. But when it really started ramping up, was in you know, is in that early, early period in the 70s 80s. They started in the 60s, but then it really took hold. And that’s when, when people realized, especially in the food business, that what effectively could happen is they could, you know, hijack a person’s tastebuds by adding carbohydrates, bringing carbohydrate and fat together is like a recipe for carbohydrate addiction. And we need to break the addiction cycle. And it’s hard for somebody who’s been through it. And that is difficult because it’s a physiological and a psychological game. And this is where I think I’ll meet to help with the psychology of it. I’ll give you an example. When I do fasting, when it first started doing the 16, eight, and then getting into 22, and the 24 hours, and then finally getting to 36, you know, I would test myself I’m feeling cooler, or I’m feeling a little bit jittery a little bit hyperglycemic while God well am I.
So I test my glucose was kinda like 83. So then test my ketones, and I see my ketones are coming up a bit bit more than I know, now they’re in the twos and the threes, and I wasn’t used to being at this level. So that jittery was because my body wasn’t used to such a higher ketone level. But what was interesting is it almost doubled my energy level at that time. You know, and when you sometimes have Pavlov’s dog ring that bell at noon, or when you come home after five or six o’clock at work, and you want to have a cocktail, after that, it’s gonna ring the bell, and you’re conditioned for that. And although I’ve got this little hunger Pang, then I would test and if my ketones were twice as much, I had twice as much energy in my body, so it was really hungry or was in mind, and then you can train the mind. And this is how you build your fighting muscles up for longer periods. And why would I do a longer period of fasting? For me, it’s all about autophagy and apoptosis. It’s like half like on a monthly basis, what if I could remodel my kitchen, so to speak, and when you remodel your kitchen, you don’t come and bring more than you can, then you’re going to get rid of the old counters first. That’s what fasting does, it sets you up to say we got to get rid of the organelles and stuff that we don’t need it, we’re gonna clear that load out bomb that’s out. But then what it does next, it gives you an image on a day like two or three, you get a 1200 percent increase in your human growth hormone. This is as you’re putting the new counters on him. You know, you break your fast, you might even do a nice workout beforehand, you broke your fast now you’ve got like that you’ve got huge amounts of human growth hormone into it. This is how the folks like keto gains and these guys Get Swole on keto, add muscle mass. No, I’m not looking to be a Muscle Band person as you can see, but I am looking for healthspan. I want to live a long vital life and know how I have that very short goodbye drop-down dead. That’s my ultimate goal. My grandmother got to 96 on my genetically disposed to do that. How can I fix the damage when I was a young lad and I smoke? can I fix the damage of what I did metabolically? I don’t know. But I wonder if the next generation could choose a different path? And what is our human potential from it?
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, that’s awesome information. And I will just follow up on not only the mixing of the carbs with the fats and the hydrogenated oils but also the glutamates to create that addiction as well. And then all of that together, is a very stimulating em tour thing, which is going to drive up insulin, drive up glucose drive up major challenges, and therefore that’s why it’s so important, as you mentioned Dorian to be metabolically flexible, but also to measure and to test and to know and to overcome. As you’ve mentioned, Pavlov’s dog. And I talked about it to like a difference between a psychological craving and physiological hunger. You need to be able to understand what the difference is. Just as a side thing, I just wanted to ask you as far as the coffees with the MC T’s and the GI. What’s your take on that? I’m just kind of curious about my own personal self break.
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Yeah, I do two takes on this. First of all, a friend of mine of my wife so when she was working at the winery came on in with like, Hey, I know I look I’m trying to bulletproof coffee and is great because I want to lose weight. And this person was like, a cycling instructor yet was still eating carbohydrate. fatal mistake and that’s a classic piece of markers. Seeing where people are not when people don’t understand the full story of what you really need, you know if you’re in a state of nutritional ketosis, you know, will a keto coffee be a problem for you? Probably not. But the reason is, we came back to adequate fat. Should you just be getting your fats from a coffee and having an I would think that I would prefer to have the satiety, I would get from maybe an egg with a large selection of vitamins and minerals, and a whole food it’s coming on into play as an item instead of a fatty coffee and pounding that down. So you’re getting it from just I am a jurf subscriber, just eat real foods. Yes, I believe that, that you can have treats and those other things that can come on in, I look for simple ingredients on the labels, if I’ve got three or four simple ingredients, and I go like, yeah, this sounds like a food for me. If I have 17 ingredients that I’m beginning to get, like, are we getting into the Franken keto food, let’s make a buck craze. And that that is something that also comes concerns me. So So yeah, there is a balance here. And then it is why you’re doing it. If you’re and if you’re at a set point, like you’ve been doing it for a long time, like me, and you then know that you’ve kind of like reached down there, you know, when you first started, you still don’t need its adequate fat, you can drop off those fats or you can lose the weight, then you’ve got to get to that kind of like setpoint, where you’re balancing the amount of fat to your caloric needs. So you know, when we talk about macros in that first 30 days, people lose weight. I do think it’s important to understand your macros and adjust them down over time as your metabolic rate changes. And people don’t do that. They go like, well, I should be eating this amount of calories a day.
And now I’m going to track them with my chronometer, but they need to adjust over time. So, yes, I think there’s a place in time if you want to use a keto coffee as a crutch. You can do a fat fast if some people want to do that. If it’s if it is the thing. Do I love my English PG tips tea with heavy cream in it? Yes, I do. It makes me feel fine during the day cake. It’s, it is what I do with my Pavlov’s dog that works well for me. But it might not work well for everybody. That’s why I’m saying don’t live your life by the lowest common denominator, know what your body is, and you know, test, assess, and address those items. If you test, you know what’s going, you know what your trend is, you assess what the problems are. And it was commanding the externalities. Stress, cortisol. Dude, when I started this company three years ago, you know, I was like, I had like me, I had a photograph taken of me coming out of the beach. It was my James Bond, obituary shot. But then three years of work trying to build a company up, the stress levels will get you my cortisol comes on up because of that. And I know I have put on weight and I’m the keto guy. So I now back to Hey, I got to get better with this. And so I even reboot after having been done. So like because it’s going to happen to people you get into your work, you get into the stress, you feed off that you don’t realize you’re having that your glucose is going up. You’re getting your incident response because of that. And yeah, you can still have carbs and wine will take its toll. So because we’re all fallible creatures, and I’m probably one of the worst. Is that addictive part of your personality, you know that, that that little a little Gremlin that hides there that you have to manage in life? Right?
Dr. Joel Rosen: Well, so Okay, so but I agree with you though, on the track is to know and that’s where the testing comes in. So but as far as what you’re doing, so when you do like, a fast and you’re having one meal a day, you’re not counting the coffee with the cream that’s not considered bringing me.
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Not in my book, but remember, I’m Mr. Lazy, lazy, clean keto. I know there are some people that like if we take a look at the font of like, single real fasting is it’s going to be like yeah, we’re just gonna be on water there where you might be able to do black coffee and a little bit of black tea and no stimulants that are there. So when I’m doing a therapeutic fosse that’s a different game for what I’m doing. When I’m doing my one meal a day. This is pretty much kind of like my way of doing I mean, I used to have like a triple cream fat yogurt in the morning with a sprinkling of blueberries and some pecans that were on there, you know and that’s what I might start my day out. Usually, I would skip or maybe have a light snack for lunch and then just do the main meal. Now I’ve readjusted it up and I’m going like you know I skipped my breakfast and lunch. I’ll just have tea during the day and Maybe mid-afternoon I’ll have a snack of maybe some saucy sauce or something like that, you know, it’s kind of like or one of my favorite things is a cauliflower sin, provolone cheese, bang in a microwave, one-minute thing cheese’s melted, throw some color on that. and away you go. One or two of those is a simple one handful of walnuts is great as well.
Those are the simple parts of it. People think you know, keto must be difficult. Yes, I know. It’s when it’s real food, it can be broken down. And even for maybe a busy mother, who’s you know, a single mom managing family. Doing one meal a day is a lot easier than trying to cook three times a day. Right? Yeah, when Gemma goes away, and I’m at home, and I go great on that fast because I don’t have to do shopping, I don’t have to do the cooking and I don’t have to do any washing up. Just look up to the dogs and cats. And Jen was happy. Brilliant. Bingo.
Productivity goes up. All is good.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right? No, absolutely. But I do find like, unfortunately, with the demographic that I work with, that you mentioned and touched upon managing a business, releasing massive amounts of cortisol and really creating that. That whole resistance and, and the neural transmitters and the need for food. It’s one of those things where control, put the burning, building at ease, put the fires out, work on that, and slowly become metabolically flexible. You can’t jump into the deep end without learning how to swim, obviously, for sure,
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Anyone knows where a data set? And there’s a whole bunch of other data sets that you’re going to do into your life? How are you doing with your sleep? How are you managing your stress? Do you have community and faith and gratitude within your life? Are you controlling the externalities, or perhaps toxins in the home or outside of the home that you’re dealing with, and that way that comes on in there is the entire terrain about the individual. And you’ve got to kind of like go and take a look at the terrain around you to really, to really make a difference. It’s just especially true in oncology and the way that we’re now looking at people trying to change those externalities. Because, you know, it’s, it’s not that one thing is going to make that the huge difference, you might get 1% here, 2% in there, 1% here, 2% there. But slowly, all of those will add up to the tipping point. And that’s where the game really gets happened is looking at around all of those areas. And this is where data-driven health care, I think is on the verge of changing many things, you know, you take a look at the software systems like biomechanics or software systems like heads up health, where people are pulling all the data aggregators. So, you know, as a businessman, I check my balance sheet every month, I check my p&l every month. When do we do that for our bodies? Think about that, you know that once a year checkup that we might get from the doctor when we get all the bloodwork done. We don’t even do it on a businessman does it every month to check to make sure they’re doing everything right. And to adjust against the numbers that they see. Why don’t we do it for our health care? We now have these great wearables that can bring a huge amount of data set in with your sleep with your Fitbit. With your obviously with your keto Mojo with pulse oximeters. And we have wearable EKGs and heart rate monitors and hrvs. You know, if you really want to take command of yourself, this can get it and you when you’re going and getting your biomarkers from your doctor. Now you’re adding this better picture, this picture of like how am I doing? That becomes data-driven outcomes. It’s amazing that we’re working with a lot of EHR systems because we built a secure HIPAA, HIPAA compliant encrypted health cloud on two continents. Is your new app really been talking about it much yet, because we’re getting it all dialed in? But your new app cool connects a heads up house with chronometer with biomechanics, and we’re adding another nine companies right now. And so we what we’ll find is EHR systems just to snapshots, they say, Okay, this is what this person is at this moment. But we can have real-time telemetry. Think about that. Imagine an oncology patient who’s using a well regulated ketogenic diet for cancer treatment. And that morning that they test, and then the oncology knows it. The radiologist knows it. The primary care physician knows that because all that data is now there. Imagine the health practitioner like yourself saying, I want to see all of my people today who have blood glucose over 130. I’m concerned about them. And I want to send a message to every single one of those people in email. Mail. And I’ve asked them to click on to say some like chronometer, and you’ve been asking them to track their foods. And we brought that all together into an API. And it goes like, dear Joe, hey, we noticed this morning that your blood glucose is over 130. And this has us concerned, we noticed in the last 24 hour period, that you ate this, some of these foods or some of these flags, things, we really need you to focus in on those psychologists know that it’s not come back and see me in eight weeks, he’s come back and see me next week, we’ll come back and see me tomorrow, they have to work one to one to change the habits, we, if we want to affect outcomes, have to change the person’s habits. And that’s what testing does because it works on two levels. One, it gives you the practitioner the data, you need to help that individual. But two, it gives you the accountability to the person who’s actually testing it, they go like I got this, or I don’t have this, if they know they don’t have it at that moment, they have a decision to say, do I change my way going forward? Or do I dwell in the past, because there is only the moment of now and the future, and you adjust yourself
verta house had better attendance rates than somebody taking a pill? Think about that for a second. in somebody’s home changing their food, they did better than somebody taking medication because people still don’t even take their medications, because they had a team of coaches and doctors who are trying to change somebody’s habits. And I mentioned to you that we use your meter for maybe the first 60 190 days or something like that. The goal is to change a person’s habits. And once you’ve changed it, you cast off those training wheels. You don’t need them anymore, because we’re in health outcomes. And that to me is one by one we can change the house of people globally, I think is a really kind of like exciting future for humankind.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Absolutely awesome, awesome information. And you know, it’s having that real-time data gets rid of why do I feel so crappy even though all my blood tests are the normal type of thing. So I want to thank you for your time I have a new ending question that I asked my guest story. And is this, and I don’t know what yours will be. But if you knew now, what you will if you could have known then what you know now, what would you tell the young Dorian?
Mr. Dorian Greenow: Oh, wow. That’s, you know, my brother once told me about me spending too much money on my credit card, and he goes, you live to regret it. And when you’re a young person, yeah, I can do this, it catches up with you. And it’s then with the hindsight, you know, prevention is so much easier than trying to fix the damage. You know, if you put a nail into a fence, and every time you make a mistake, or every time you do it, you put another nail in the fence, and you keep doing that, and then you go, Okay, I’m going to take those nails out. Now, when you take these nails out, that fence will always be marked by every single one, you can’t undo that in any way, shape, or form. We changed our website from being a sales website to giving away free information, how-to, we licensed every single low carb, USA video 146 hours of videos, and giving it away for free. Because we believe that prevention is the most important goal, you know if you can change that. I mean, like maybe I could have been an Einstein. You know, I mean, I got kicked out of school when I was 1718. And what would have happened with mind-brain development, if like that, what could I have gone on to being an engineer? Could I have gone on to you know, I love science. I love engineering. But you know what, I never applied myself. I always add I would always get out of it. What was seeing Dr. Chris Palmer, working with nutrient psychology and using food to change things. What could I have been? So to my earlier self, you know, I would definitely kind of like said that, that path there could have been far more exciting. And yet here in later life. Maybe I got that excitement back. Maybe I can bring it around. And it is not too late. It is not too late. Because nothing is as good as healthy fails.
Dr. Joel Rosen:
That’s awesome. But perhaps you wouldn’t have gotten on to the same path if you had had that development because you needed to go through those building blocks to get there.
Mr. Dorian Greenow:
Yeah. Is it showing his cat on this one here? I don’t know. Yeah, you know I’m in the now I’m in the moment and I’m really pleased that Gemini has been able to do what we’ve done. And to me make a difference in people’s lives. That gives you value and it gives you It gives you worth as you move forward.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Awesome, awesome stuff during I’ll have to do Part Three in less than two years because it was two years too long since we last talk. But I enjoyed this I learned a lot of information. I know our viewers are going to learn a lot of information. I’m going to post links to the content to our past video to be able to get the educational videos and to definitely start to test and data track and be able to become metabolically flexible and have as much energy the president and CEO and Mr. Mojo himself. So thank you so much, Dorian, for being here. And I enjoyed this and I want you to have the rest of the year to be fulfilling, rewarding and continue on the same path that you’re on. Thank you.