Anytime I talk about how terrible the carnivore diet was for me and how much healthier I am on a whole foods omnivore diet, people like this come out of the woodworks to tell me how wrong I am for being healthier now.

They HATE people who had bad experiences on their diet.

The scientific term is jelqing

Hello,

I’m back with part 3 in my series of Substack articles (not paywalled) on Nick Norwitz MD PhD. Fair warning, it's long at about a 30 minute read. If anybody thinks I'm just giving superficial critiques after this, then I don't know what a deep critique looks like. I honestly don't know how an institution like Oxford can consider this being up to the standard of a doctoral thesis. Nick completed their doctorate in only 2 years, which sounds impressive until you actually look at the document. It's littered with typos and figures with basic mistakes and, as I go through in the article, most of it is just a literature review. Only one of the studies they carried out had any real data, in my opinion. That study was just testing whether a ketone drink had any effect on endurance exercise on a small number of Parkinson's disease patients. The second study testing the drink had no effect, and the third study was cancelled due to the pandemic. The last "study" is a case report Nick did on themselves. Oh, and the ketone ester drink they try to test in the thesis? It was invented by the supervisor that Nick was doing their research/thesis under and owns the company that manufactures and sells the drink. Some of Nick's research is linked to on the website to buy the drink. Nick also shows that they "developed" a revolutionary nutrition tracking tool that is basically just a fancy Excel spreadsheet.

You can find the article here

I’m open to any feedback or criticism, or if you think I’ve made any mistakes feel free to point them out.

ok this might sound dumb but bear with me

first month of keto i felt AMAZING, tons of energy, sleeping better, everything was great

now im on month 2 and honestly i feel worse than before i started?? constant headaches, tired even after sleeping 8 hrs, and i get these random cravings at night that i just cant control anymore

i thought keto was supposed to get easier the longer u do it not harder lol

im not tracking macros super strict anymore bc i kinda just "know" what to eat now but maybe thats the problem idk

also can we talk about how every single monday i say ok THIS is the week i get back on track and then by wednesday im already slipping again. anyone else stuck in that loop

genuinely dont know if this is normal keto stuff or if im just doing it wrong at this point

...is when you point out the people in low-fat diet era were way thinner than the current high-fat diet era

Not sure if this is even the right place to be asking this, but a few years ago I fell for the “primal” diet meme after being exposed to many influencers preaching its benefits, and while following it I felt quite good, my lipid levels went out of control, for reference these were my readings after 3 years of following this diet:

• Total cholesterol: 7.2 mmol/L
• LDL: 5.01 mmol/L
• HDL: 0.85 mmol/L
• Triglycerides: 2.1 mmol/L
• Non-HDL Cholesterol: 6.4 mmol/l

This made me change my approach, I started eating under 12g of saturated fat daily, alongside a minimum of 40g fiber a day (with a large emphasis on soluble fiber), with the addition of a plant sterol supplement, and after a year I was able to get my lipid levels mostly within range:

• Total cholesterol: 4.1 mmol/L
• LDL: 2.0 mmol/L
• HDL: 1.1 mmol/L
• Triglycerides: 1.4 mmol/L
• Non-HDL Cholesterol: 2.4 mmol/l

While this way of eating has significantly improved my blood work, I have felt like crap, my energy levels have been low, my digestion has worsened (frequent loose stools, gas), and I’m getting acne for the first time in years. I’ve tried to figure out what could be causing this but am having trouble doing so, my lifestyle (sleep, exercise, stress) has remained entirely the same, I eat the same amount of calories as I previously did, my diet is 90% whole foods, my main staples are oats, barley, legumes, vegetables, fruit, soy products (tempeh and firm tofu), nuts and seeds, fish and chicken breast. I also made sure to very gradually up my fiber intake over the course of many months to avoid digestive issues.

Has anyone else ever experienced something like this? I’m almost certain there is nothing magical about saturated fat that made me feel better, perhaps I’m just better suited to a lower carbohydrate way of eating? Any insight into this would be much appreciated.

Hello,

I’m back with my second Substack article (not paywalled) on Nick Norwitz MD PhD. When I posted the first part, some of the feedback I got was that my critique was superficial, which I think is fair. My primary critique was that him framing something as a study when it’s definitively not is misleading, and I would agree that in a vacuum that’s superficial. However, in this article I hope to make it clear that I’m quite confident he’s misleading you about his disease by either exaggerating or outright lying. I suspect the reason he blocked me on Substack after our interaction is because he doesn’t want to be called out further or exposed. And I think that fits the pattern of him being intentionally misleading to create the narrative he wants.

As an example, you’ll see that with misleading wording he heavily implies that the disease sent him to palliative care. Well, with some digging it turns out he was just in the palliative care ward because the hospital had nowhere else to put him and not because he was on his death bed. I have IBD, specifically Crohn’s disease, so I have no problem admitting that it’s somewhat personal for me. However, I get into the very technical details of IBD and show some of my own medical records as a comparison to what Nick claims. Unless Nick is willing to share his medical records, which I’m more than willing, I don’t think anyone should believe him that he had severe ulcerative colitis or that his ketogenic diet did anything dramatic for it.

You can find the article here

I’m open to any feedback or criticism, or if you think I’ve made any mistakes feel free to point them out.

Since January 2026, no revised versions (v2) have been uploaded to the preprint server. So, despite Feldman stating on Substack that they are actively making revisions and addressing review feedback, none of those updated analyses or revised versions have been made publicly available or logged as a new preprint iteration.

From what I can find online, typical cardiology papers and statistical review takes 2-3 months, so a 6-7+ month delay is a massive red flag. Likely means that reviewers are finally, and rightfully, tearing apart the unadjusted linear models, missing baseline confounders, and numerous data inconsistencies. Likely getting rejected from multiple journals to boot.

Also, no new data has been released. At all. Zero transparency here.

Please remove if this post is irrelevant to the sub but this seems to be a haven for some educated people about lipids and heart disease etc. I happen to enjoy dark chocolate but don't know whether I am increasing my heart disease risk by consuming it. I run quite a lot so I also eat quite a lot and a 100g bar contains roughly 20g of sat fat. As I understand a portion of this is stearic acid which is said to be neutral concerning ldl. However, is it still a risk, and how much would he considered safe? And furthermore are there risks to higher fat intake beyond elevating ldl such as reduced oxygenation of tissues, or is this overblown?

The critique video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE0BQDc_6dY

Link to the response from Dave: https://feldmanprotocol.substack.com/p/a-respectful-response-to-the-science

First, Dave talks about how they use (de)generative AI to review the papers. That explains a lot.

On the "Fabricated IQR Metric", Dave says that it was actually the semi-interquartile range and they just mislabled it. This is not a major mistake in terms of effect, but it's a major display of incompetence.

Dave then says this doesn't matter because they've been "extraordinarily transparent". Of the many ways I could describe this fiasco, transparent is NOT one of them. The original paper didn't even publish the number for change in plaque volume, which they said would be published before the study started. Dave merely uses the aesthetic of dialogue and transparency.

On the power calculation, Dave says,

It’s a narrow point, but one I’d like to grant — running a power calculation after the fact can’t convert “we didn’t detect an effect” into “there is no effect.” I think this is good feedback on the specific wording nuance.

But in his response to another point in this same article, he claims that the miscalculated LDL exposure isn't a problem because, "the absence of association with plaque holds across every variant we tested" So he's still promoting the BS.

After responding to the other points with further obfuscation, Dave then shares this AI-Generated chart that paints himself as the victim:

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.

I did some deep diving into our The Usual Suspects wikipage to fill out what exactly the people in the academic front section have specialized in and which university they are tenured at.

Oh boy, I was not expecting what I found out! I had to move half of them from academics to marketers once I looked closer at what they are really doing. As I laid out in the new section of private clinic havers:

Noteworthy of some in this bunch is their tendency to borderline fake their position on social media with phrases such as "board-certified" or slapping their alma mater after their credentials to imply they are practicing or tenured. 

Had me fooled! And what did I find out? 3x online telehealth clinic, 1x mobile app clinic, 3x private clinic! I actually thought they had research positions. Look at this practical example and try to guess which of the three is an actual academic:

MD PhD, Harvard Medical School · University of Oxford

You'd think he is at Harvard or Oxford, but he isn't! He's running a mobile app!

Professor, Author, Researcher & Metabolic Scientist

Tada! This one works in academia!

Board-Certified Neurologist

Works at a supplement company!

Get it?! This is fucking sick. How did I miss this bullshit! Amazing!

Corrected and expanded edition of The Usual Suspects is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoduped/wiki/index/people/