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[Music]

hey guys I have another special guest

professor Noakes from South Africa South

African scientist professor of exercise

science and sports medicine author of

many books that I have I’m really

excited to talk to you today so welcome

from South Africa what time is it over

there right now just cause 2 o’clock in

the afternoon oh wow ok so in what day

is it

I’ll have to think it’s Thursday okay

got it ok great so um I want to first

talk about you you at one point promoted

the high carb diets for a while right

tell me a little bit about yeah tell me

a little bit about that and then I think

what changed your mind so I started

running in the late 1960s early 70s and

I started my physiology training in

medicine in 1970 and those that one of

the first years that the new theory

arose that muscle glycogen ie

carbohydrates in the muscle was the

single notice the single factor

determining athletic performance Wow and

that’s how it was projected to all of us

and said I’m a young student studying

physiology in medicine and I’m running

marathons and I discovered this and it

this is the most exciting piece of

information I I heard in the whole

medical training so I was started

promoting this high carbohydrate diet in

the 1980 1970s and I said then of course

adopted that diet and then I went to did

my medical training completed my medical

training I was surrounded by

cardiologists it was so telling us that

if you eat fat you’re gonna die so I was

gonna eat lots of carbohydrate and it

was gonna make me run better well in

fact it made me run worse and I got

fatter and progressively sicker and then

in 1970 1981 my father was diagnosed

with type 2 diabetes and he died 10

years later and eventually I discovered

that I also had type 2 diabetes and I

realized I’ve got 10 years to solve this

problem

or else I’m gonna die like he did and

that fortunately he forced me to look

very seriously into the what was going

on in the evidence and I came across a

book called the new Atkins for the new

for a new year written by doctors

Westman boney verlag and Finney and

within two hours of reading that book I

said oh my gosh I got it completely

wrong for 33 years Wow in two hours I’d

changed I started changing my diet and

with the results were spectacular

and I haven’t looked back for seven and

a half years so that’s how it all

started and then initially I was very

reluctant say anything about it because

I knew that their backlash and I knew

that I would be vilified that I didn’t

realize extent to which I’d be vilified

cautious initially but then eventually

it came out and then the problems arose

and then my fat mine my colleagues

attacked me and that’s been seven years

of attacks yeah I I saw that that was

ridiculous do you know do you find that

um these the more educated someone is

educated the harder it is for them to

learn new concepts new ideas that’s a

really good question what I discovered

was that the academics in hospital

practice are the ones who are most

ingrained because they’ve been bought by

the pharmaceutical industry and what

they say is controlled by industry

although they don’t understand it and so

they are the ones who are really really

tough the the guys aren’t in general

practice the academics and that the the

doctors in general practice are much

more open because they’ve gotta treat

patients and make them better but if you

work in a hospital it actually the page

you don’t have a sort of direct

relationship you see all these thousands

of people but you don’t have a direct

person-to-person relationship with the

individual patients but if you’re

running your own private practice you do

so so what’s going to happen is that the

change is going to occur in in the

private sector of medicine with where

doctors have to face up to their

patients but in the public sector

there’s still a long way to go

because there’s so much resistant to

change oh yeah I know I run into it all

the time I want to talk about your you

wrote this book on water log which is

faster than me because there’s this

whole I don’t know it’s like one of

those things that everyone knows that

you need to drink a lot of water or

drink or water keep drinking water where

did this come from is it just made up

that’s a great question because again

when I started running we used to run

marathons and you allowed one drink sort

of thing that was what you Wow I can and

and you had to provide your own own

drinks and in fact that was one of the

first things I also started activating

on so when I was running I was telling

the authorities now you must give us

more drinks for our races and within ten

years it changed dramatically and then

from getting a drink every like 15 or 20

kilometers that’s what Aborigine was it

came down to every mile every 1.6

kilometers that you were drinking

Wow and then then what happened was the

sports drink industry took off and they

made sure that they were gonna drive

this and so various companies one in

particular which we won’t name and shame

at this stage because it’s fall in the

book anyone can read it right but this

one particular company realized that

actually the marathon runners aren’t the

ones you’re going to drink all their

drinks it’s the person going to the gym

and you’ve got to be able to tell the

person going to the gym that if they do

one minute exercise they could die if

they don’t drink and that’s the message

they got out Wow and it it’s

unbelievable but they didn’t said that

dehydration is a disease and it’s not

it’s a biological response as you know

they said the iteration is a disease and

if you become dehydrated you can die and

it’s going to affect your performance

and so they Maynard managed to sell this

to millions and millions and millions of

people who working out in the gym for 10

minutes that they must drink a lot and

so on and so that’s what happened but

then when you transfer that to marathon

running and you tell people to drink

ahead of thirst and you provided so much

fluid during these races because

remember

there was nowhere else in the world

where you could get so much free fluid

for the four or five hours that you ran

a marathon you could drink and drink and

drink and of course people over drank

and and sundown and we predicted that it

would be an American female runner who

would die and that happened in 1993 it

was absolutely as we had predicted Wow

so so that was its again it was industry

industry brainwashed people to believe

and that’s again the problem we have

with on nutrition story industry

brainwashed us to believe certain things

just simply not true okay for those of

you are watching what we’re talking

about is when you drink too much water

you’re gonna dilute certain electrolytes

specially potassium and what’s gonna

happen is you need potassium for the

heart to work to balance fluids in the

brain so if you drink too much water

it’s called hyponatremia right and your

brain can swell it can really be

dangerous and it can die and there at

least 15 days in runners and triathletes

and and particularly in the military

which is really interesting because that

the biggest incidence has been in the

military and they finally finally find

it this year so that we describe the

condition in 1981 and now it’s 2018 the

first time in in history the US military

said if a patient comes in and you think

they’ve got a heat illness and they

confused you may not give them fluids

until you measure the blood sodium

concentration mother that in 1985 or 86

that’s how long it takes for change to

occur so just so you guys know doctor

Professor Noakes is the key the top

researcher on this data exercise

associated hyponatremia you’ve done us

some articles on this research a lot

right yeah we were the first to describe

that it occurred in a lady in the 1981

comrades marathon which is a 90

kilometer 56 mile race in South Africa

and she wrote to me after the race

because she’d been unconscious for four

days so here she starts this race

completely healthy and then she’s

unconscious and she wrote to me a week

later or so when she’d regained

she said what happened she said no

sodium went down and so then we knew the

hyponatremia that was the first case and

we connected a whole series of cases and

just by talking to the patient’s you

could see that they drank a lot and

there was clear evidence that one of

them for example was a lady with

anorexia nervosa who was very sensitive

about her weight and she said but you

know profile put on four kilograms

during this Ironman and I knew I had to

believe her because she would be you

know she would know what your weight

change was and another guy told me he’d

passed like about six liters of urine in

recoveries and so then we were getting

an idea then we did as we did an

investigation of we hospitalized eight

patients with the condition these people

near death in the comrades marathon and

we recovery study them during recovery

and we could show that they all passed

an excess of urine and that average of

the worst case was a guy who had

excreted six liters of extra fluid so

he’d increased his body weight by six

kilograms so then we knew and we

published that paper in the year in the

Journal of applied physiology and I

thought well that’s the end we proved

what causes it it’s gonna go away well

actually no because they were scientists

who were being encouraged to say that

this was nonsensical research and

dehydration is the real problem and if

you tell people that under drink they’ll

all die of dehydration now that was the

argument and industry was driving it and

then the American College of Sports

Medicine brought up the new guidelines

in 1996 and they said you must drink ale

assist essentially to drink as much as

tolerable that was the ruling there was

the advice and there’s there’s no

biology that that tells you that you

must drink to as much as tolerable right

so we have to drink more drink more

thirsty right that’s the common sense

type solution and that’s how all animals

drink and so wash it humans be different

but we because we got this brain and we

think we must do something with the

brain well they’re actually the body

will tell you what to do exactly since

we’re talking about fluids what about

long distance

running and electrolytes and cramping

but in some of your books can you

touch on that yeah well we did quite a

lot of studies to try and see if people

who have cramping were dehydrated or

lost more sodium or we’re at low

sodium’s and we never found it however

it’s remarkable that many people benefit

by taking salt and so so this is the

paradox that we can’t show that you have

a salt deficiency if you’re cramping and

certainly when you go on the high-fat

diet a lot of people complain bitterly

of cramping and we told him but the salt

won’t make any difference but it does

make a difference so so the things about

salt that we don’t understand and it’s

really it’s good because if you read

waterlogged you’ll see I give all the

evidence and there’s plenty of evidence

that you it’s impossible it comes out in

deficient today yet some people benefit

by taking salt so and some people run

better when they take more salt so there

are things that we don’t fully

understand God again it’s just like

we’re all an experiment of one and and

we just have to experiment and you know

follow the general rules and then so the

general rule is that most people that

need additional salt when they’re

running but some people got cramping

will may find it beneficial

how about magnesium and potassium I

think those go together with salt so

you’ve probably if you are problem

suffering from cramping I certainly

would advise you to try those three and

particularly if you’re on a high-fat

diet because there’s a lot of reports of

people really benefiting on a high-fat

diet and they clearly become salt

deficient but I bet if you tasted them

you wouldn’t find it but they that

benefit from salt and potassium and

magnesium but but it’s but a general

rule is you probably don’t need it but

some people will benefit from it yeah I

mean you also have the situation where

like most dissolve but most of the

potassium is inside the cell which is

sometimes it’s hard to test that because

you’re checking the blood you’re not

checking intracellular minerals so it’s

kind of um it might not show up in the

blood

or X exterior to the cell yeah sodium’s

anyone that really does show up in the

inner bloodstream yeah

so let’s touch on um this common thing

that people cut up like athletes that

keep asking me yes but if I lower my

carbs I’ll lower my performance when I’m

working out or I’m doing athletic

activities can you touch on that yeah

okay I think that we have to realize

that 99.9% of everyone of athletes or

recreational athletes and that’s the

point so when we talk about the point

one percent two competing Olympics at

short distances say up to two five or

ten kilometers yes I think there may

well be a role for for some

carbohydrates in them but for the

recreational athletes really if you run

a minute faster or a minute slow is not

that’s not important what’s important is

your long-term health and what worries

me is that there are a lot of athletes

like myself who eat a high carbohydrate

diet and then damage themselves for life

and that’s the issue so you if you can

tolerate carbohydrates and you’re not

insulin resistant and you’re not heading

towards diabetes like I was yes eat a

little bit more carbohydrate but you

only need 200 or 250 grams a day I mean

if you go back and read some of my early

books you’ll see we were telling people

to eat a kilogram Wow there was there

was in the Tour de France and I mean

that is that is murder you want to kill

people give them a kilogram wow that’s a

lot yes a lot so I think I think you’ll

find that today a high carbohydrate diet

for a Tour de France cyclists

he’s probably 300 grams or 350 grams and

that they are burning most of the energy

that they’re burning is coming from fats

that’s critically important to remember

most of the energy when you’re

exercising is coming from fat not from

carbohydrate Wow

so if you’re doing an ultra marathon for

example what should a person should eat

anything in that process that’s a great

question and answers if you carbohydrate

adapted you

have to eat carbohydrate and because

otherwise you’re gonna run into trouble

because you see what people don’t

understand is if your carbohydrate

adapted you’re metabolically crippled

and no one tells you that you see okay

sure you might be able to sprint a

little bit more up one or two hills but

when it comes to a long slog over four

or five hours you’ve got to burn fat and

the the well-trained elite athletes can

burn 1.6 1.8 grams of carbohydrate a

minute whereas if you are carbohydrate

adapted you burning 0.6 and that’s it a

third a third one when you gone a couple

of hours and you’re into you you’ve

reduced your carbohydrates and now

you’ve got to burn fat the guy who’s a

is carbohydrate adapted just hasn’t got

the energy and and I think actually the

most most ultra distance runners even as

they eating a higher carbohydrate that

are probably fed adapted because they do

a lot of training in a set typically at

a carbohydrate depleted state because if

they wouldn’t they couldn’t do what they

do right they don’t understand that they

are actually significantly fed adapted

even though that evening or they think

they’re eating a high carbohydrate diet

fascinating and so you tap out the

glycogen Reserve and then they hit this

sometimes I hit this wall call it the

bark or something correct and that’s

when you want to be burning fat and then

if you’ve fed adapted you can just carry

on all day so you to answer your first

question if you probably fell adapted do

you need to eat I’m just rewriting law

running and I’m going back to read all

the old stuff again and one of the great

runners was a check with Austin Newton

he really started the ultra distance

running he’s a father of ultra distance

running and I’m reading again what he

used to eat and they were all eating

lots of meat and a little carbohydrate

and in the race say down a big break was

a big English breakfast and he’d run and

halfway through the race he’d stop and

he’d have a meat based food that was

what they used to eat and but Betty and

then they they did take some

carbohydrate in butter sugar in the

sugary drinks but that was it they

didn’t stop and eat bananas and potatoes

and apples and things they did have

sugary drinks abuse et with added sugar

but this the main sustenance for them

was a high protein high fat meal before

and in fact during the races

then I’m as I and Bruce Fordyce and

Bernhard raise the three of us we were

the first to develop degrees in South

Africa Murray :

I remember Ward us raise an axe and say

we because here we were you know you

need all that carbohydrate and so and we

make people take all this carbohydrate

and and we were right in the sense that

if you carbohydrate a death did you need

it that if you fat adapted you have to

you don’t need it and the irony is all

three of us are insulin resistant all

three of us got fat all three of us now

eat a high fat dot and eschew the

carbohydrates oh my gosh I didn’t know

oh my gosh that is ironic and then the

other question I have there’s another

concept that if you eat too much fat

people are gonna say this will aren’t

gonna increase my cholesterol am I gonna

die of a heart attack can you touch on

that point

yeah well I’m glad to saw you also

question because I would encourage

everyone to go to the third to health VI

or ta health website and where the

health is just completed the first year

of a two or three year study in which

they feared high-fat diets to diabetics

now okay so diabetics are the sickest

people on earth they are given the worst

thought possible they told eat lots of

fat and lots of protein and cut the cost

that’s a a recipe for utter disaster

yes I guess for that you mean you just

you said no car you mean high carb I

don’t mean like oh sorry sorry

yeah I’m just using this so technically

according to all our knowledge they

trade they’re the most dangerous diet to

the unhealthiest people concurrent it

must be a disaster they must all dropped

it right well it was they done they

actually get better and

percent put their diabetes into

remission but more importantly they

measure 24 markers of cardiovascular

health 24 mask markers 23 improved more

in the high fat group than in the

conventional treated group eating a high

carbohydrate diet only different only

one was cholesterol the so called class

on cholesterol has no predictive value

in heart disease anyway you got a look

at the package so what they showed you

take the sickest people you give them

they’re supposed to the most toxic diet

you possibly can and 23 of 24 markers of

cardiovascular disease improve and the

only one that doesn’t improve is the one

that is emit is immaterial anyway so

that to me that’s the kind of the final

answer to this to this problem yes

indeed your cholesterol may go up but

that’s probably a good thing rather than

a bad thing because everything else is

going to improve so we don’t focus on

what’s not important focus on all the

other stuff which is important yeah

that’s right and just four people are

watching you have to realize that your

body makes cholesterol makes it 3,000

milligrams a day so it’s a necessary

part of our physiology we need that

cellular membranes hormones repair all

sorts of things it’s probably the most

important chemical in the body and some

it’s wanted to try and stop us making it

oh my great friends very hard come says

the liver makes cholesterol it doesn’t

want to try to kill you it’s trying to

keep you alive that’s why it’s making

cholesterol

Wow yeah yeah because I do a lot of

YouTube videos and I think one of where

I get a lot of my material as I go to

the mainstream push of whatever they’re

pushing and I go to the exact opposite

and you’re gonna find the truth because

everything they’re promoting is it turns

out to be completely utterly wrong so

they give me a lot of good material to

educate people in reverse and then the

talks on let’s talk about insulin

resistance I think this plays in with

what you just said yeah and you can just

touch on what it is and then what why

fat will actually benefit someone

there’s insulin resistance yeah so

instant resistance to me is the name

human condition for many populations you

know that I say that reservedly because

I don’t have the data to prove it but

but I think that if you have grown if a

population has grown up eating a

high-protein high-fat low-carbohydrate

diet

they’ll have to be instant resistant and

we know that mothers get more insulin

resistant during pregnancy and we knew

the babies are in some resistant the

fetuses insulin resistance when it’s

born so so it’s kind of in our genes and

what’s happened in the last 40 or 50

years is that we’ve taken mothers and

we’ve fed force-fed and carbohydrate

we’re during their pregnancy that makes

them more insulin resistant the fetus is

born more insulin resistant and then we

wean them onto high carbohydrate diets

and that makes the child even more

insulin resistance so the high

carbohydrate diets are pushing us to

become more and more and more insulin

resistance what that what is that you

can’t metabolize carbohydrates properly

so in my case if I take carbohydrates my

glucose shoots up my insulin shoots up

and the insulin doesn’t work properly it

can’t get the glucose into my tissues so

I’ve got less muscle glycogen which of

course is profoundly ironic because

yellow was telling all these fat runners

to eat lots of carbohydrate and they

would they couldn’t get rid of the

carbohydrate into the muscles they’ll

convert it to fats and it wasn’t helping

them anyway so you can’t metabolize the

carbohydrate and the instant doesn’t

work properly and it just gets worse

every time you take in carbohydrate you

over secrete insulin the insulin doesn’t

work and it makes the system just get

worse and worse and worse and the kid

and you never burn fat because you’re

always trying to get rid of all this

carbohydrate you’re eating and so any

fat that you ingest has to be stored

because you can’t burn it because

insulin prevents the burning of the fat

and then the incident turns out is toxic

on almost all body tissues so the body’s

trying to protect the overdose of

insulin and sugar by developing instant

resistance is trying to tell us hey stop

consuming so many carbohydrates yeah and

if that’s what it takes the carbohydrate

store the fat so initially it’s okay

because you just get

the subcutaneous tissues but then you

put a little bit of that fat in the

liver or in the pancreas and then you

become even more insulin resistant and

that’s when you tip over into diabetes

it’s just one of those obvious things

that sits like the elephant in the room

that if you lower your carbs increase

your fat fat has the least effect on

insulin you’re gonna actually help

insulin resistance and yeah so it’s

seven oh my gosh it’s crazy it makes no

sense that if you can’t tolerate

carbohydrate that you encourage the

carbohydrate so forth only we the

evidence is coming through that and in

fact the first the way people with type

one diabetes where you don’t secrete any

insulin they were treated on low

carbohydrate diets in the 1920s before

in soon was available and there was the

only way you could get people to live

any longer was not feeding either but we

kind of forgot that wow I didn’t know

that that’s it that’s interesting it’s

like wow it’s just as amazing um what

happened was an instant came along and

then the guys thought we’ve cured the

disease so you can eat what you like and

we’ll give you money and says then and

then other problems are that instant

drops of glucose so doctors the worst

thing they fear is that you drop your

insulin your glucose it’s a rule it’s

better to run at a higher glucose and

then there’s more there’s less danger

that you’ll get a hypoglycemic attack

and that’s the problem because the

hyperglycemia is caused by too much

insulin so they’re really their focus on

this hypoglycemia but they’re kinda

ignoring the hyperinsulinemia problem

which is just as damaging as the high

sugar it’s in fact it’s yeah and it’s

yeah Wow so what type of um interesting

activities research are you currently

doing right now in your lab or your

office

yeah I’m Sandra tired but we have a

foundation the Noakes Foundation and we

tried to fund research in and my

interest services and diabetes and we’re

just gearing up now for a study of

people who are reversing their diabetes

so over the years we developed a

laboratory where we could study pretty

much the old metallo

of the human body and we’ve just added

measurements of liver glucose production

because that’s what really goes wrong in

diabetes is you over produce glucose so

we can now essentially measure

everything we need to measure in

diabetic patients so we’re taking a

large sample of about 40 people with

diabetes and we’re measuring their

metabolism before we put on the invent

intervention which is a low carbohydrate

diet and then of that 40 we’re hoping

60% will reverse and then we’ll see what

has changed in that group so then we’ll

understand the biology of reversal which

no one has studied yet so we know that

you can reverse I use that word

carefully because you’re not really

healed you still can’t eat a high

carbohydrate diet so you’re in remission

in the sense so we’re trying to see what

happens with in remission and we think

that we will show that the liver glucose

metabolism is normalized which which

would be crucial and in that world sure

okay so that’s what’s the problem in

diabetes is that it’s the liver glucose

production gets goes wrong and these are

the reasons why that happens

so we’ve being intensive research on

that but the other thing that a lot of

people ask is well if there’s low

carbohydrate diets healthy and good but

it’s very expensive and that actually is

not true so that in South Africa as in

in the United States the people who got

the biggest diabetes problem or the

poorest because they have the worst food

choices and we’ve shown that in South

Africa you can you can live quite well

on three dollars a day you can eat well

on three dollars a day and we’ve

developed arts for three dollars a day

now we’re about to do a major

intervention of 200 people where we put

them on a three dollar a day diet Wow

see what happens and the these are

people who are sick they’ve got diabetes

high blood pressure and we know that

also we know we suspect that once you

take the sugar out because these people

are completely sugar addicted and

carbohydrate addicted because that’s all

they can afford to or they thought

that’s all they could afford and so

they’ve eaten those foods for four

decades and we’ve known and we’ve done

at least ten interventions already and

we show the blood pressure just comes

shooting down just like within three

weeks

their blood pressure starts to normalize

and they don’t need their medications

and they start to feel some in control

because these are the poorest of the

poor who have no control of their lives

and now we’ve shown them actually we can

control your medical issues and it’s

it’s absolutely eye-opening and it’s so

rewarding

so my foundation is funding a major

study like that and then the third thing

we do is we have set up a nutrition

Network just in since May we’re we’re

teaching doctors how to prescribe low

carbohydrate diets and then the biology

and the low carbohydrate diet and it’s

it’s amazing because we believe the

doctors are critical anyone in the

medical profession bit nervous physio

that whatever they all critical because

if we can eat every doctor we can

convert will convert ten thousand people

at least because he’ll have a big

patience and those patients will tell

others and just as soon as the doctor

says it’s okay then that makes a big

difference right what kind of are they

are they you seem to find that there’s

interest there as they kind of slow what

what we’ve had this great sign up I mean

we just completely we expected a hundred

people we got 400 people for the first

course so that’s been exciting and we’re

now going to really expand into a tier

two and then a Tier three which will it

be some sort of University diploma Wow

essence real excited it is and it’s been

very very well received and we had we’re

very appreciative how well people are

enjoying it Wow and guys just so you

know I’m gonna put some links down below

bye professor notes foundation some of

his books and you need to check this guy

out

one question I had about them when

people start to get on a ketogenic diet

they lower their carbs obviously you’re

gonna lower the insulin and if they’ve

been insulin resistance for a long time

occasionally the blood sugar is because

they’ve been held down by the insulin

tends to go up a little bit have you

have you seen that generally you know I

speak from a lot of experience if you if

you frankly diabetic your glucose

control improved dramatically so at the

extremes where people at glucose is

going up to 1518

20 in our units and I’m not quite sure

what the American units would be but

within days they can get the glucose

down to 280 which would be normal for

for the other values but we talk about

values of five and said the remote it’s

remarkable when you take a diabetic and

put them on the star but you’re quite

right there’s there can be a small

increase initially but generally that

will but will come let the glucose will

start dropping in time well this is

awesome I want to just thank you for

your time for doing this interview and I

think you should great insights into

what could be possible to improve health

and in the kind of contour intuitive

viewpoints that are kind of shattering

some of the myths out there the

mainstream so I want to thank you for

this interview and I hope to talk to you

soon with some more updates so thank you

very much Eric which was lovely chatting

to you thanks so much great