HOW and WHY I Started This Low Carb Health Doctor | LCHD Platform?

Welcome to my Low Carb Health Doctor | LCHD website!

This website may be accessed through the following Uniform Resource Locators (URLs):

• www.LowCarbHealthMD.com

• www.LowCarbNeurologist.com

I started this website and all the platforms associated with it as part of my advocacy to educate patients as well as medical colleagues and the public in general, towards gaining more knowledge about the reality and benefits of a Low Carbohydrate Healthy Fats (LCHF) Diet, especially in relation to what we physicians have referred to as the "Metabolic Syndrome (MetS)", otherwise known as "Insulin Resistance" or "Syndrome X".

You can find all my platforms in the following portals (you may CLICK on the LINKS to access/get a redirect):

• Social Media: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

• Podcasts: Spotify, Anchor, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Audible, Overcast and Radio Public

I am sharing with you here my very own personal experiences in dealing with the Metabolic Syndrome, and my ever-evolving quest for healthier life options using strategies that incorporate a diet low in carbohydrates, and filled with healthy fats and proteins. We will also get ourselves involved with this health strategy called time-restricted feeding or TRF, which is otherwise called Intermittent Fasting or IF. I will get you exposed to curated evidence that I have gathered through time for the purpose of advancing to the optimum my own health, that of my patients, as well as all of you tuning in to this channel. And as much as I can, I do my best to avoid bias.

The one question I almost always never forget to ask each and every one of my patients is this: Why do you consult your doctor? Through all those years that I have asked that question, I suppose there is only one answer that is most common to all. Patients visit and consult their doctors perhaps because they want to recover from an illness. But more commonly, it is because they all want to live a longer life. And hopefully, not just a longer life, but a healthier one as well. What difference would it make if you’ve indeed managed to add thirty long years to your life, but most if not all of those years are spent either wheelchair-bound or bedridden, and unable to enjoy life to its fullest?

Bottom-line is, most if not all of us would like to have longevity. At the very core of our existence is this quest for physical survival and longevity. Hence, ultimately, we would all want our bodies to be healthy.

Some people want to be healthy, but are either ill-advised of what to do, or actually believes that what they are doing is for their good health, yet have been unwittingly deceived by erroneous strategies through the years. On the other hand, there are also those who want to be healthy but unfortunately, even though what they believe in seems to be the right thing, they just lack the discipline to do what needs to be done. Thus, they still end up being unhealthy.

And what better way to attain that health than to keep ourselves fit inside and out! Our body is a machine with intricate parts and components that work together to function in an optimal way. And that’s where the importance of a proper diet and regular exercise sets in. Imagine putting the wrong kind of fuel into the engine of your machine, what’s gonna happen? Of course, it will malfunction. Medicines that we doctors prescribe are chemical substances which may give you some kind of cure. But for most individuals, advocating for preventive medicine and health by being consciously aware of the right kinds of nutrients to fuel your body is of paramount importance.

Many of us would willingly move heaven and earth to attain great health and well-being. That’s why the market for health supplements is very much alive – many people really are indeed willing to shell out their hard-earned money to buy whatever supplement they believe will help them attain that goal. Reliable estimates placed the value of the health supplements industry worldwide at a whopping $61.20 billion last 2020 alone! But much greater than that was the total global value of the pharmaceutical market which was pegged at around $1.27 trillion last 2020.

And with all the data on health and nutrition out there, it could be quite confusing to thresh out which is true, honest and legitimate, and which is not. And in the midst of it all, as much as we hate to accept this blatant truth, money does talk. With this background, it is very disconcerting to know that many facts about what constitutes a healthy diet is at best unclear and questionable, and perhaps even purposely deceiving because of what we might call "false propaganda" that has mislead many of us, even myself and my fellow physicians, for the past decades.

Deception does happen in this world, and as much as we hate to accept the fact that there are times that we do become victims to such deceptions and worse, are even held inadvertently privy to it (like how I did as a physician before), still it is ultimately for our own good that we have to unlearn some things that we have falsely learned in the past, and to adopt new and better paradigms that work, based on scientific knowledge.

Many people worldwide are now overweight or obese in a very unhealthy way. In fact, there is already what is called an obesity pandemic. That holds true not just for the first world, but even in developing countries across the world, like here in the Philippines where I am based.

With regards to this, Metabolic Syndrome and Insulin Resistance has been playing a big role in the development of obesity and its associated morbid conditions for the past few decades. According to WHO estimates, the prevalence of obesity worldwide has nearly tripled in value since 1975. In 2016, as much as 39% of adults over age 18 (and that is about 1.9 billion) were overweight and of these, over 650 million (~13%) were considered obese. Even children aren’t spared - over 340 million of those between ages 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016. Reality is most of the population in the world live in countries where obesity is very prevalent – and where being overweight or obese has a higher mortality than being underweight.

A year or two ago, without me knowing, I was well on my way towards that general direction of Metabolic Syndrome. Good heavens! But I was lucky enough to have realized that I was going along the wrong path. And it was good that I was able to seek and find a better way.

Metabolic Syndrome has been noted to be much more prevalent today the whole world over as compared to past data, being present using conservative estimates in as much as 20-25% of the adult population of the world. In this research published last 2017, as of 2012, more than a third of adults in the US qualified for the criteria of metabolic syndrome. Even among children, metabolic syndrome is noted in as much as 19.2%.