Low Carb Denver: A Doctor's Perspective

I’ve been in practice for over 30 years and been to many medical conferences. But we’ve recently returned from the best conference I have ever been to – Low Carb Denver 2019. Nearly all the thought leaders and pioneers in the field were there; the “Rock Stars” in the keto world! Here’s a few we met and our impressions.

This towering Swede is Andreas Einfeldt the creator of DietDoctor.com. I look like a midget next to this guy! But he is extremely approachable and thoughtful. I was glad to tell him how much I appreciated DietDoctor and their commitment to evidenced based practice. They haven’t gotten “weird” and they’re not trying to sell stuff. DietDoctor is one of my main Go-To sites for all things low carb and I have complete confidence referring people there knowing that they are going to get real, honest, and practical information. You can catch Andreas’ presentation here: Presentation

Great using diet to reverse Type 2 Diabetes!

We bumped into Jason Fung author of Obesity Code, The Complete Book on Fasting and Diabetic Code near the elevators the first time. Jason was my “gateway” into low carb. When Janice asked me to read The Obesity Code I was highly skeptical (to say the least!) but when I read that he was taking patients off insulin I was astounded. All diet books can share stories of people losing weight; but coming off insulin? No way. “That is testable” I thought and now I have experienced the same. Last week I had a patient I’ve cared for > 15 years on over 100 units of insulin who is now off insulin after just 2 months! It was great to say, “Thank you Jason!”

Along with Fung, Gary Taubes was also highly influential on me. Taubes is an investigative journalist who has spent the past 15 years researching and interviewing nutritional and medical scientists around the world and his book Good Calories, BadCalories is a gold mine of historical information of how our current sad state of affairs came to be. His other books, especially Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It and The CaseAgainst Sugar are also great. There’s probably no one on the planet who has a better grasp of the “Big Picture” than Taubes.

Unless it’s Nina Teicholz. Nina is another investigative journalist who wrote the blockbuster The Big Fat Surprise which tells a similar story to Good Calories, Bad Calories but approaches it from a slightly different angle. Nina, like all the others we met, is extremely gracious and passionate about her work. So much so that she has founded the Nutrition Coalition which seeks to influence the USDA Dietary Guidelines to reflect the current science. You can learn more about the Nutritional Coalition here: Sign up!

Eric Westman I like to think of as one of my mentors in this field. Dr. Westman is at Duke University and has run a low carb clinic for over 15 years, treated thousands of patients, and published many articles. He is not only a leading researcher but has a lot of practical clinical wisdom which I greedily mined with my time with him and he was very encouraging and supportive.

Finally, the “grandfather” of the low carb world might be this man: Stephen Phinney. Steve has been doing research on low carb since the early 1980’s and really laid the scientific groundwork for the movement. He’s a Stanford trained MD who then got a PhD in nutritional biochemistry from MIT, and is Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of California-Davis. He is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Needless to say, when he speaks about the science of low carb, he knows what he is talking about. Steve’s books on The Art and Science of Low Carb Living and The Art and Science of LowCarb Performance (for athletes) are outstanding especially for those who have a science background and want to understand the underlying biochemistry – nerds like me!

I could go on and talk about the other “Rock Stars” at the meeting but you get the idea. All of them were extremely friendly and approachable. These guys take a lot of heat from the mainstream, so I think they probably enjoyed a little well deserved notoriety as we all took selfies with them!

Another thing that made this conference so special is that it is really a grass roots movement. There were not just doctors there but everyone from research scientists to industry executives to ordinary folks who have found low carb living life changing. It was great to network with them and we made some new friends!

If you want to experience this for yourself there are many conferences coming up and you can find them here on DietDoctor.