Is Your Diet Killing You? - Dr. Benjamin Bikman on Jordan Peterson

Feb 10, 2025 The Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
Jordan Peterson sits down with bestselling author and bioenergetics Ph.D., Dr. Benjamin Bikman. They discuss the epidemic of insulin resistance in America and its profound effects on health, the sugar addiction crisis, how dopamine hijacks your brain, how to navigate the American diet, and the potential to fix it invitationally from the top down over the next four years.

Benjamin Bikman earned a Ph.D. in bioenergetics at East Carolina University with a focus on the adaptations to metabolic surgeries in obesity. He continued to explore metabolic disorders, with a particular focus on insulin resistance, as a postdoctoral fellow at the Duke-National University of Singapore. As a professor at Brigham Young University and the director of its Diabetes Research Lab, Dr. Bikman has continued to study insulin, including its role as a regulator of human metabolism, as well as insulin’s relevance in chronic disease. In addition to his research and teaching, Dr. Bikman actively serves as a research mentor to undergraduate and graduate students. He and his students frequently present and publish their findings.

This episode was filmed on January 27th, 2025.

| Chapters |

(0:00) Coming up
(0:43) Intro
(4:12) MAHA, tradeoffs, and the cardio metabolic crisis
(8:21) The relationship between insulin resistance and obesity
(12:39) Why is fat stored rather than excreted?
(17:11) We’re evolved for lean times but live in an age of abundance
(20:17) Our government vilified the foods that make use the healthiest
(24:28) What creates resistant? How we altered foods which in turn altered us
(26:10) How insulin resistance contributes to disease
(28:37) The diabetic cutoff: they can’t sell you a drug to reduce insulin - but they can drug glucose
(32:07) The woeful mistake in diabetes treatment post-insulin - they knew the whole time
(38:39) How insulin resistance leads to infertility and erectile dysfunction
(44:52) “We’re eating for winter all of the time”
(50:21) What fuels your brain: glucose and ketones
(51:15) The Keto diet is proven to help with Alzheimer's disease
(55:49) Deep ketosis stops cancer growth in it’s tracks
(58:05) Dr. Bikman does not recommend chemotherapy: “you maybe will live another week and bankrupt your family”
(59:37) Different pills does not mean different problems
(1:01:16) Metabolic problems: the food you eat is the culprit and the cure
(1:03:41) Lifestyle modification: false counseling and the food pyramid lie
(1:06:05) If you want to reduce the size of your brain, become a vegan
(1:07:08) God’s first commandment (it’s not what you think)
(1:08:16) There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate - so why do “experts” push them the most?
(1:13:44) One of the authors of the food pyramid had an ideological disdain for meat
(1:15:50) Americans are fed up with our diet - it’s time for change

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh5wT4r2EYA