 So, that's really the focus of the book then, is how can we achieve this benefit of ketosis without going into ketosis? And so, where do we start? Well, you're well aware of this literature, and I've talked about it before. As you know, the ketogenic diet, the actual term, ketogenic diet was coined at the Mayo Clinic in 1930 for the treatment of seizures in children before, you know, any of the Dylantin or Phenobarbs were available, and it was remarkably effective. Fast forward when these drugs became available, it's really hard to stop a kid from eating carbohydrates, as any of us with children or grandchildren know. In fact, it's really hard to have humans stop eating carbohydrates, as any of us know. The ketogenic diet for kids fell out of favor, but in the 1990s, it actually had a resurgence where it was found that if you gave kids MCT oil, medium chain triglycerides, that they would produce ketones, as most of us know, and you could give them a lot more carbohydrates and a lot more protein. And when I wrote the plant paradox and my ketogenic version had a lot of MCT oil and a lot of carbohydrates, and it worked really well because of that information. So number one, we know that one of the brilliance of MCT oil is that it is absorbed directly from the gut, unlike any other fat, and it goes directly through the portal vein into the liver, and there it's converted into ketone bodies. So the beauty of MCT oil is, as I joke, you could have a fresh fruit salad, which don't get me started with that, and have some MCT oil, and you would still produce ketones and be in ketosis, even though you weren't on a ketogenic diet. So that's a good starting point, and let me just segue the names of medium chain triglycerides all carry the Latin word for goat, capra. So there's capric acid, caprylic acid, and so on, and you go, that's funny, why are they named after goats? And lo and behold, when you look at the fat in goat milk and sheep milk, 30% is medium chain triglycerides. So then, continuing down this rabbit hole, son of a gun, I could get the benefits of getting MCTs in very yummy forms like goat yogurt or sheep yogurt or goat cheese or sheep cheese, and that sounds like an appetizing way to get the benefits of MCTs in my diet, or I can mix MCT oil with a olive oil. So once you understand that ketones are signaling molecules that uncouple mitochondria and that uncoupling mitochondria is probably a good idea, so good an idea that Dr. Brand to defend himself wrote another paper and said, guess what, I've looked at super old people, people 105 years old who are thriving, and they have the most uncoupled mitochondria. And then you go, really? So it sounds like uncoupling mitochondria might be a really great way to live well for a very long time. And then you start saying, okay, what other substances uncouple mitochondria, and that's where we take the reader. And I think that's on page 50, I think you have a whole list of all the usual suspects that we didn't look at. I'll turn to that in a moment, but that we didn't, you know, the turmeric and quercetin and all the great things that we know have such health benefits, and now we're looking at them through the lens of their ability to uncouple mitochondria. There's an interesting section in the book, you're at a lecture getting ready to give a talk and somebody begins the lecture by saying, if there's anybody here who believes that polyphenols are antioxidants, you can leave now, right? Yeah, that was, yeah, go ahead. Because you developed the notion that the benefit of polyphenols is they act as uncoupling agents to protect mitochondria, having evolved from protecting the chloroplasts, the mitochondrial equivalent in a plant, to protect them as well. So when we eat these colorful plants, we get these polyphenols that then act as uncoupling agents in us. Yeah, it's, you know, it's amazing that, you know, plants have mitochondria, they're called chloroplasts that do exactly the opposite of our mitochondria. They take CO2 in sunlight, photons, and convert that into oxygen and glucose. And sugar. Sunlight, yeah, sugar. And sunlight is very damaging to mitochondria, just like oxygen is extremely damaging to our mitochondria. So, plants produce polyphenols in their leaves, in their fruits, to uncouple their chloroplasts to avoid sunlight damage. And the fascinating thing is that when we eat those plant polyphenols, we don't do a good job of absorbing them, but luckily our gut bacteria love to eat them. They're a great prebiotic food in their own right. And then they are converted into absorbable compounds that, lo and behold, uncouple our mitochondria. So these are postbiotics, then, because they're... Yeah, these are postbiotic products of these, of the bacteria. So that's the, that's the microbiome connection, and that's, you know, the real weakness in the notion of completely or doing almost completely eliminating carbs because you're going to eliminate fiber. And I think what you're saying is you've got to do everything if you're going to be able to harvest the benefits of polyphenols and other plant-based components. You got to nurture your gut bacteria because it's signaling your bacteria, which then in turn signal your mitochondria, your physiology, and even your genome. Yeah. I give an example, which, as you know, I usually do blood work on patients every three months. And I like my patients to experiment. I like them to explore. And a number of patients say, you know, I'm going to do a hardcore ketogenic diet, or I'm going to do a hardcore ketogenic carnivore diet, and, you know, I'll see you in a few months and let's see what I did. And I, you know, I'll go great. These guys will come back, and I'm thinking of three individuals specifically, they come back and they say, we feel great. I've never felt better in my life. And I said, well, let's look at the blood work. So these guys all, all of these people have markers of increased inflammation on the surface of their blood vessels, increased stickiness on the surface of their blood vessels. And normally we should have incredible flexibility in our blood vessels. And these guys have markers of stiffness in their blood vessels. And so when they see this, and besides the fact that their cholesterol numbers are crazy, but that's totally beside the point, when I see this, I go, oh my gosh, you know, you're like that swimmer in Jaws at the start of the movie, happily swimming on the top of the ocean. And she doesn't realize there's a great white shark right beneath her about to eat her. And I said, look, you know, you may feel good right now, but I got news for you. There's a great white shark in you. And here's the evidence. And they go, but why? And I said, because you just starved, you're got microbiome. They're not, they have nothing to eat. They have no ability to modify any polyphenols that somehow arrived in your diet. And here's the consequences. And, you know, I've published data on the ability of polyphenols to change vascular flexibility of change vascular stickiness. And so this isn't, you know, this isn't conjecture. This is real. And now we have a reason why this is happening. Well, it's so interesting because, you know, again, this is a brand new way of understanding how all of this seems to come together. And, you know, as, as we look at things like quercetin, which you call out as a and turmeric as well as being an uncoupling Asian, but so many other aspects, you know, whether it's nrf2 pathway activation or AMP kinase stimulation. There's so many other things that are going on here. And this is an important, a really important new side light in terms of understanding why we need to be eating more plants. And I have to say, every time I say that, I know I'm going to get criticized. Oh, I've gone up. The vegans have had their influence on Dr. Perlmutter and I'll get, you know, called out for it. And I'm not a vegan and I do eat animal products. I do eat eggs and fish. But nonetheless, you know, most my my statement for all to hear as your author of the plant paradox for crying out loud is that we need to eat more plants. We need to have more dietary fiber in your case. You know, you raise our awareness of lectins and the potential risk that that poses. But by and large, I think this move away from plants is not going to help anybody. And I think it's done with the notion of plants being carbohydrates. And therefore, why in the world do we want to do that? Yeah, you know, there's, in my opinion, there's really good plants that give us a lot of benefits and a lot of them are in either the fiber, the soluble fiber they contain or the polyphenol content that they contain. On the other hand, I think you and I would agree that there are certain plants or plant seeds that are not exactly the best things for us. And there are ways to detoxify most of the mischievous parts of plants that generations have done to pass down from, you know, grandmother to mother, et cetera, that unfortunately we've lost in our modern diet. But yeah, I'm not anti-plant. You know, I'm a I'm a veg aquarium. I tend to eat mostly vegetables, plant matter. And then on the weekends, my wife and I usually have, you know, wild shellfish or fish, and that's I think pretty good diet. Will I have a grass-fed, grass-finished steak? Yeah, about every three months. I'll have one. So if somebody walks by me, one of my favorite restaurants in Montecito, California and see me steak, that's me. You know, yeah, I'm having it last one was three months ago. So lay off. Well, they're not seeing you eat the tiramisu. So that's right. They're not they're not going to see me. That's something we're going to have to do at home. If you found this video helpful, I think you're going to love this one. There's high protein keto. There's muscle sparing keto. There's protein sparing keto. How does anybody know what keto is anymore? Well, the traditional keto diet was actually developed as a treatment for epileptic children.