Assisted living and why I entered it (00:01–00:25)

• Hal: My three Phoenix-area assisted-living homes aim to restore residents’ health and independence sufficiently for a return home on their own terms.
• Hal: I entered assisted living for real-estate cash flow, before learning about keto or carnivore; monthly fees at some facilities reach $25,000.
• Hal: Luxury buildings, food, and activities can deliver a cruise-ship experience without necessarily improving residents’ health.
• Hal: Placement decisions often follow a fall, hospitalization, rehabilitation, or exhausted home caregiving, leaving families 48–72 hours to choose while parents resist moving.
• Hal: The sandwich generation often has sleepless caregiving duties for both children and parents; compassionate overnight care matters beyond a satisfactory regulatory audit.
• Hal: Initial priorities were staffing, occupancy, medication compliance, inspections, and cash flow; one resident had 54 prescriptions, and some bedbound residents needed mechanical lifts.
• Hal: I purchased Blue Sky Manor in Mesa in 2015 while employed in Minnesota, then four more homes in 2016; the move to Arizona exposed vacancies and understaffing.

Finding a viable model (00:25–00:47)

• Hal: Resident placement commonly runs through hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and referral agents charging roughly one month of rent; vacant beds also cost money.
• Hal: Around $70,000 went to referrals in an early year; a paid marketer did not end the expense, so I cultivated direct relationships with referral sources and families.
• Hal: I maintain about 200 referral contacts; meeting touring families personally builds trust, and some families remain involved after a resident dies.
• Hal: Residents included a Vietnam POW, a Berlin Airlift pilot, and people with notable family histories, adding personal meaning to the work.
• Dave: AI-powered searches could help families evaluate care for the first time and find suitable homes without depending entirely on referral intermediaries.
• Hal: Small homes cannot easily compete on buildings or corporate marketing; health improvement can differentiate their care and attract families from farther away.

The first person to move home (00:47–00:59)

• Hal: In about 2018, a wheelchair-using Berlin Airlift veteran with heart problems sought to leave; our goal was his walking roughly 30 feet and entering his wife’s car.
• Hal: Before adopting low-carb nutrition, I cut his sweets, used vegetables and lean meats, and hired a trainer for resistance exercises, walking, and supported squats.
• Hal: He practiced independently and went home after about seven or eight months; the outcome motivated more efforts to restore other residents’ independence.
• Hal: A path home distinguishes the service, although many residents do not want the required changes and large chains often lack flexibility over food and routines.
• Hal: Assisted living allows control of meals, activity, and food access, resembling the controlled food provision of metabolic-ward studies.

Vegan, carnivore, protein, and keto (01:00–01:16)

• Hal: I hired two PhD-qualified vegan nutritionists on the trainer’s advice, but difficult sourcing, labor-intensive meals, food refusal, and weight loss in frail residents ended the experiment.
• Hal: The vegan menus ended after roughly a month; we resumed lean meat and vegetables while retaining exercise because caregiver duties already consumed their time.
• Hal: John Jaquish’s book connected variable-resistance bands, strength ranges, bone loading, and carnivore eating for me. [1]
• Hal: After two years of persistent diarrhea despite scans, doctors, and probiotics, I tried carnivore; normal bowel movements returned within two weeks.
• Dave: In my plant-based meal-planning exercise, adequate amino acids such as leucine were difficult without supplements, while a steak supplied the full amino-acid profile.
• Hal: Low intake of protein and age-related sarcopenia undermine muscle, mobility, and independence; falls and broken hips can have severe consequences.
• Hal: I chose ketogenic meals with meat, fish, eggs, and vegetables because families accepted them more readily than an all-meat menu.

Dementia, the Bredesen protocol, and practical cooking (01:17–01:39)

• Hal: Around 60% of residents have dementia; Bredesen’s book connected keto, exercise, lab assessments, nutrient correction, and other therapies to cognitive care. [2]
• Hal: Bredesen’s model identifies 36 contributors across insulin resistance and inflammation, deficiencies, and toxins; a single amyloid-focused drug cannot repair every hole in the leaky roof.
• Hal: Bredesen’s ketogenic regimen is plant-predominant and includes fish; I retained substantial meat for bioavailable protein and did not adopt his complete licensed regimen.
• Hal: One resident entered Bredesen’s testing protocol; ketogenic menus gradually spread more broadly despite family preferences for unrestricted sweets.
• Hal: After an interview with Shawn Baker, Maria Emmerich supplied cookbooks with usable keto versions of familiar lasagna, sauces, casseroles, and desserts.
• Hal: Hiring a health coach and cooks separated lunch and dinner preparation from caregiver duties and made ketogenic meal service more practical.
• Hal: The food program brought inquiries from across the U.S. and abroad, including a hospice resident transported by road from Florida for about 30 hours.
• Hal: My portfolio decreased from five homes to three after two sales; remote coaching aims to help people remain independent before institutional care is necessary.

Hyperbaric oxygen and cognitive cases (01:41–01:53)

• Hal: Diet has been the largest contributor in my experience; two residents and one person living at home improved enough for me to call their dementia reversed, with hyperbaric oxygen among the interventions in the strongest cases.
• Hal: Sessions use about one hour at 1.5–2 atmospheres with concentrated oxygen; increased oxygen in plasma supports cellular energy and healing and can promote capillary growth, including in the brain.
• Hal: I learned to dive young and later taught in Okinawa; diving experience illustrates gas absorption under pressure, nitrogen decompression sickness, oxygen toxicity, and dive computers.
• Hal: After roughly 16–17 sessions, one man remembered his phone and wallet and independently found their locker, unlike his earlier memory performance.
• Hal: MoCA scores rose from 15 to 26 in one woman and from 14 to 24 in another; one woman has continued living independently since about 2023. [3]
• Hal: The hyperbaric clinician requires food, exercise, and other interventions alongside the oxygen sessions, not hyperbaric oxygen alone.

What we serve and how residents adapt (01:53–02:11)

• Hal: Meals use eggs, bacon or sausage for breakfast and meat, fish, low-carb wraps, lasagna, and casseroles for later meals; occasional pancakes or waffles add variety.
• Hal: The menu target is under 50 g of total carbohydrates daily; staff screen ingredient lists for sugars and periodically measure ketones.
• Hal: Desserts are generally homemade and served once or twice a week; family sweets are consumed privately during visits, with leftovers removed.
• Hal: Locked food storage reduces nighttime snacking; the health coach audits meals and incorporates residents’ preferred dishes into a shared menu.
• Hal: I advise families against an overnight stay during a difficult admission; three days of separation often allows adaptation to the staff, food, and daily routine.
• Hal: Family cooperation supports adherence; about nine or ten residents have moved home, although one or two returned and some resumed old habits.
• Hal: Two residents who left after large cognitive gains maintained the eating pattern especially well; occasional lapses have not necessarily ended adherence.
• Hal: I use the analogy of not pocketing someone else’s $20 to make food abstinence a settled decision; good health outweighs a brief taste reward.
• Dave: Removing highly tempting foods reduces repeated food decisions; I find sugary foods easy to overconsume and steak or eggs much harder to overconsume.

Diabetes, medications, and long-term health (02:12–02:20)

• Hal: Blood glucose has improved enough to reduce diabetes medication in many residents; high initial insulin doses require physician-led adjustments when carbohydrates decrease.
• Hal: Over ten years, nearly all incoming residents with dementia have had very strong sugar habits, including eating sugar packets when sweets were absent.
• Hal: Diabetes and insulin resistance frequently coexist with chronic illness in my homes; dementia risk rises with diabetes, but family history does not make dementia inevitable.
• Dave: Joseph Kraft’s insulin-response tests detected abnormal metabolic patterns before standard glucose levels became abnormal. [4]
• Dave: The documentary includes Richard Bernstein’s type 1 diabetes care using glucose monitoring and carbohydrate restriction. [5]
• Dave: Bernstein used personal glucose measurements to reduce insulin, earned a medical degree to practice the method, and testified in child-custody disputes involving low-carb type 1 diabetes care.
• Dave: Carbohydrate restriction is one option for type 2 diabetes and can reduce insulin needs in type 1; I associate higher externally administered insulin exposure with mortality.

Larger outcomes and a planned evaluation (02:20–02:34)

• Hal: A 600-bed operator planned a voluntary low-carb group, while Heather Sandison created a smaller assisted-living program using a Bredesen-style dementia regimen.
• Hal: Roughly six residents lost over 70 lb, and two women have lost over 240 lb; a former nurse arrived weighing 460 lb, unable to leave bed, and later walked with training.
• Dave: Multiple causes contribute to insulin resistance; carbohydrate reduction can directly lower glucose exposure when blood-glucose regulation is already impaired.
• Hal: The former nurse’s intended flight home to New York by August was still a goal at the time of the interview.
• Hal: A Baszucki-funded team including Tro Kalayjian, Laura Buchanan, and Kelly Curtis plans to follow 15 new residents for roughly 12–18 months, including labs and repeated cognitive and health measurements.
• Hal: Toward Health will supply medical care and continue follow-up after any return home, covering dementia, diabetes, obesity, Parkinson’s, and other conditions.
• Hal: Some residents, especially those entering hospice, cannot move home; mobility, fewer medications, travel, and daily independence remain meaningful outcomes.
• Hal: No residents died of COVID in my homes, and one home went roughly two years without deaths of any cause; meals, training, and outdoor time continued.
• Hal: A woman admitted with diabetes in a wheelchair in 2016 is no longer diabetic, walks and gardens, but prefers to stay; a 98-year-old went on a ten-day family cruise six months before dying.

Cholesterol, medication burden, and prescribing barriers (02:33–02:42)

• Hal: Families rarely focus on higher cholesterol when functional health improves; the clinical team follows triglycerides and HDL more closely than total cholesterol or LDL.
• Hal: Many residents arrive on statins; I ask physicians to reassess prescriptions, including statins, to reduce total pill burden without applying a universal anti-statin rule.
• Hal: Stopping statins usually produced no visible difference, with one cognitive improvement; a separate person’s cognition improved after discontinuing dementia medication.
• Hal: Drugs often accumulate through hospital, rehabilitation, and care transitions, sometimes reaching 20–30 or 54 prescriptions, without regular comprehensive reassessment.
• Dave and Hal: Psychiatric medications can require very slow late-stage tapering, while liability and insurance constraints discourage medication reduction.
• Hal: One physician declined hormone therapy for a deficient woman because of an insurer’s rules tied to breast-cancer risk research; I sought another clinician.

Research, open data, and institutional incentives (02:42–03:05)

• Dave: Anonymized laboratory and diet data could help examine drug interactions and health patterns; NHANES provides an example of population data. [6]
• Dave: KETO-CTA began with an observational single-arm design, and a controlled follow-up is planned; decisions can use evidence short of a definitive randomized trial. [7]
• Dave and Hal: Investigators, journals, insurers, institutions, and AI companies have incentives; sound protocols allow results to contradict the researchers’ expectations.
• Dave: AI tools, including locally hosted models, could analyze anonymized data, while provider influence and privacy restrictions remain concerns; clinical communications still rely on fax.
• Dave: Casino-based server requirements illustrated misplaced security controls; engineers can often correct senior colleagues more openly than staff in medical or academic hierarchies.
• Hal: The Air Force cockpit time-out could be initiated at any rank and saved lives; healthcare needs similar openness, complete adverse-event data, and scrutiny of drug combinations.

Agency, dementia, and illness (03:05–03:19)

• Dave and Hal: People with diabetes need access to the low-carb option; assumptions that it cannot be sustained limit informed choice despite long-term adherents.
• Hal: Businesses exist to solve problems; growth in chronic illness and drug burden makes me question the effectiveness of the medical system at its central task.
• Hal: A dementia diagnosis calls for active efforts against decline rather than resignation; Bredesen’s randomized trial supports multicomponent lifestyle changes without relying on a simple pill. [8]
• Dave: Keto has long been used for epilepsy; an acquaintance experienced recurrent seizures after raising carbohydrates and then returned to stricter keto.
• Dave: David Unwin offers medication and lifestyle intervention as genuine choices; nearly all patients choose the lifestyle option, and serious symptoms can motivate change.
• Hal: I have experienced very infrequent illness since carnivore; Dave has experienced fewer colds and infections during his ketogenic years.
• Dave: Lipoproteins carry vitamin E and participate in host defense; higher LDL has been associated with lower infection burden, without proof that my own LDL explains my fewer illnesses.
• Hal: UTIs became less frequent after ketogenic menus were introduced, with occasional infections still occurring, including after hospital stays.

References

1. [01:06] Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want — https://www.jaquishbiomedical.com/products/weightlifting-is-a-waste-of-time-book
2. [01:20] The End of Alzheimer’s — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/551532/the-end-of-alzheimers-by-dale-e-bredesen-md/9780735216228/
3. [01:46] The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, MoCA: A Brief Screening Tool for Mild Cognitive Impairment — https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2005.53221.x
4. [02:16] Detection of Diabetes Mellitus In Situ (Occult Diabetes) — https://doi.org/10.1093/labmed/6.2.10
5. [02:16] The Cholesterol Code — https://cholesterolcodemovie.com/the-film/
6. [02:44] National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) — https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/
7. [02:45] RETRACTED: Longitudinal Data From the KETO-CTA Study: Plaque Predicts Plaque, ApoB Does Not — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacadv.2025.101686
8. [03:10] Precision Medicine Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease: Successful Randomized Controlled Trial — https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202512.2694.v3