In this episode, we continue our discussion on all things keto, this time with Dr Eric Westman.

Dr Westman is an Internal Medicine Doctor & Obesity Specialist who has been researching and treating patients in his clinic with the ketogenic diet for over 20 years. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University and the Director of the Duke Keto Medicine Clinic in North Carolina.

Having conducted dozens of clinical trials and using the keto diet on his patients for over 20 years, not only has Dr Westman demonstrated that the ketogenic diet is safe, but also an effective therapeutic tool to treat a range of chronic diseases as well as to promote general health and wellbeing.

In our discussion, Dr Westman reflects on the many successes he has had treating his patients for heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other chronic diseases without medicine, using diet alone.

You’d be excused for thinking that keto was just another popular fad that will soon give way to the next wave of popular diets promising rapid weight loss and impressive health benefits. 

So, for some, it might come as a surprise to discover that the ketogenic diet first became popular in the 1920s and 30s as a therapy for epilepsy. And while this form of therapy eventually gave way to drug therapies the ketogenic diet has always had a presence.

Over the last 30 years, there has been a surge in research on the therapeutic and metabolic benefits of the ketogenic diet.

We now have a growing body of evidence demonstrating that the ketogenic diet is not only effective for losing weight but also has therapeutic value for a host of different conditions.

To explore this topic we invited Dr Dominic D’Agostino onto the show. 

Dr D’Agostino is a researcher and professor with a diverse background in neuroscience, molecular pharmacology, nutrition and physiology, and is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida. The main focus of his lab over the last 10 years has been understanding how ketosis and a ketogenic diet can be therapeutic for a wide variety of pathologies linked to metabolic dysregulation.