Health: DDC Lectures

The Game Changers is a popular 2018 documentary that touts the health and fitness benefits of plant-based eating. Here, David Diamond addresses the film’s evolutionary argument about vegetarianism and corrects its false assertions about cholesterol and heart disease.

Zoë Harcombe, Ph.D., concedes The Game Changers tells "a good story," but that's as far as the 2019 documentary's accolades should go, she suggests. In this presentation from Dec. 15, 2019, Harcombe offers an incisive — and often humorous — critique of the arguments the film makes in favor of a plant-based diet.

“Blood-vessel disease was common (among the ancient Egyptians), contrary to assumptions that it arises from urban stress and a modern high-fat diet,” Dr. Michael Eades, MD, reads aloud to the audience at the CrossFit Health Conference on Aug. 1, 2018. After reading this quote in a book, Eades began to research the dietary factors that may have contributed to the high incidence of heart disease among the ancient Egyptians. In this presentation, Eades shares some of the outcomes of that research, taking his audience “on a journey through the anthropological literature and what that means in terms of ‘off the carbs.’”

“What scientists do and what journalists do are similar in that we’re both supposed to be establishing reliable knowledge about the universe,” Gary Taubes told the audience at the annual CrossFit Health Conference on July 31, 2019. Taubes, an award-winning investigative journalist, has spent the last several decades turning a critical eye toward places where received wisdom in the fields of science and medicine has diverged from reliable knowledge. In this presentation, he evaluates what the experts say about why we get fat and explains why has become a critic of the consensus.

Dr. David Diamond, a Ph.D. in biology and neuroscientist with 40 years of experience, speaks about cholesterol science and the various forms of deception apparent in research on cholesterol-lowering statins. Diamond developed an interest in cholesterol and statins in 1999 after being diagnosed with familial hypertriglyceridemia, a genetic anomaly that causes triglyceride levels in the blood to become elevated, leading to additional health complications such as obesity. After realizing that the dietary and pharmaceutical recommendations he was given were all wrong, Diamond began to investigate the sources of the misinformation. In this presentation, he shares how his discoveries conflict with received wisdom about cholesterol and statins and explains how and why we have been deceived by companies that seek to profit from our ignorance.

Thomas Seyfried, Ph.D., is a biochemical geneticist, professor of biology at Boston College, and author of the groundbreaking book Cancer as a Metabolic Disease. As part of a lecture delivered on July 31, 2018, at the annual CrossFit Health Conference, Seyfried presented a report card on our current approaches to treating cancer in the United States. Death rates from cancer are on the rise, he explained, because of “a fundamental misunderstanding of what the nature of this disease is.” Here, he explains the evidence that supports understanding cancer as a metabolic rather than a genetic disease. He also explains why he believes calorie restriction and therapeutic ketosis are more effective for treating cancer than traditional standard of care.

Dr. Jason Fung, MD, is a nephrologist and expert in the use of intermittent fasting and low-carbohydrate diets for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes. In this presentation, delivered on Aug. 2, 2018, at the 2018 CrossFit Health Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, Fung shares his first-hand experiences navigating a broken healthcare system and discusses how he shifted his research and medical practices as a result. He explains why long-term weight loss is so difficult, introduces the concept of therapeutic fasting, and dispels common myths associated with the fasting process.

Gary Taubes is an award-winning journalist and author of five books, the most recent of which, The Case Against Sugar, argues obesity is a hormonal disorder triggered by sugar. In this interview from June 2018, Taubes sits down with Dr. Barry Sears, a revolutionary biochemist who studies how to use diet to manipulate metabolism and fight chronic disease, and the New York Times best-selling author of The Zone: A Dietary Road Map and several other books. The two discuss a range of topics, such as the mechanisms that lead to insulin resistance and control inflammation, and the science behind the Zone, Atkins, and ketogenic diets.

In this talk, delivered at CrossFit HQ during a CrossFit Health event on Dec. 15, 2018, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, a long-time skeptic of the medical status quo, explains why “it’s just not possible to believe much of the clinical research that’s published.” He explains how and why data get distorted and focuses in particular on the strategic use of relative and absolute risk factors in data from the famous JUPITER trial.

Dr. Sarah Hallberg made several career pivots—all fueled by her anger at unscientific and harmful practices perpetuated by the medical community—before becoming Medical Director at Virta Health. In this talk, delivered on Dec. 15, 2018, at a CrossFit Health event at CrossFit Headquarters, Hallberg speaks about some of those unscientific and harmful practices, specifically those pertaining to the management of obesity and Type 2 diabetes (T2D). She outlines the physiological problems inherent in treating T2D with insulin, the benefits of treating the disease with a carb-restrictive diet, and the data from a recent Virta Health study that demonstrates the positive effects of carb restriction.