STEM-Talk: Nick Norwitz on a keotogenic diet as metabolic medicine

It may have been a given that Nick Norwitz would become a doctor – he is the child of physicians.

“It was in some ways the default path,” Norwitz says. “Everything I’ve done in science and medicine has just been an absolute pleasure.”

In the latest episode of STEM-Talk, available now where you listen to podcasts, Norwitz shares how what may have seemed to be an inevitable journey has evolved — and how it led him into research aimed at unlocking the potential of a ketogenic diet to improve metabolic health, mental health, and more.

It is a search that he began in part when his own injuries from running led him ultimately to more serious consideration of metabolic health.

Norwitz is an Oxford Ph.D., and a Harvard Medical School student who has drawn a following in part from his work with “lean mass hyper responders,” people who have high LDL cholesterol levels while on a ketogenic diet who are otherwise metabolically healthy.

The conversation includes:

• The impact that his own medical journey as a young man had on his path and on his belief that we must incorporate metabolic health in our healthcare system.
• Nick’s “Oreos vs. Statins” study which showed that for Lean Mass Hyper Responders, the introduction of a carb — in this case Oreo cookies — reduced LDL cholesterol far more effectively than statin therapy. His point was not to advocate Oreo cookies to manage cholesterol but rather to draw attention to the heterogeneity in responses.
• Nick’s paper on the Lipid Energy Model, which proposes a mechanistic explanation for the lean mass hyper responder phenotype.

And much more.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry, and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.