Stephen Phinney is the former Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder of Virta Health, the first clinically-proven treatment to safely and sustainably reverse type 2 diabetes without medications or surgery.
As a physician-scientist with 40 years of experience divided between academic internal medicine and industry, Dr. Phinney has studied nutritional biochemistry with a long-term focus on low carbohydrate research and its benefits for physical performance and insulin sensitivity. His career has emphasized the interaction between diet and exercise and their effects on obesity, body composition, physical performance, and cellular membrane structure.
A Professor of Medicine Emeritus at University of California, Davis, Dr. Phinney is an internationally recognized expert on obesity, carbohydrate-restricted and ketogenic diets, diet and performance, and essential fatty acid metabolism. He has held clinical faculty appointments at MIT and the Universities of Vermont, Minnesota, and California at Davis as well as leadership positions at Monsanto, Galileo Laboratories, and Efficas.
Dr. Phinney's clinical experience includes inpatient and outpatient clinical nutrition, directing multidisciplinary weight management programs in three locations, and he has designed, completed, and published data from more than 20 clinical protocols involving diets, exercise, oxidative stress, and inflammation. His extensive experience in the design of clinical nutrition trials in both academic and industrial settings has led to more than 87 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on clinical nutrition and biochemistry. He is the author of four books, including The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living and The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance, two foundational books on low carb nutrition science and nutritional ketosis that he co-authored with Jeff Volek, Ph.D, RD. Dr. Phinney also previously served on the editorial board of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Dr. Phinney received his medical degree from Stanford University, holds a Doctorate in nutritional biochemistry and metabolism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed post-doctoral research at Harvard University.
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23 responses to “Dr. Steve Phinney – ‘Inflammation: Its Role in Chronic Disease and Reversal by Nutritional Ketosis’”
Merry Christmas from Australia. Thankful for some great content on Christmas day.
Merry Christmas from Perth! 🎄🎄
@Doris Day
And your video just popped up while I’m coping with my very painful inflammation and metabolic disfunction. I have had to work very hard to get my doctors to understand that my slide into ” pre diabetes ” is a metabolic dysfunction that led to gross body inflammation.I am your study of one, I will contact you ! I can and do maintain. 5 ketosis and higher , I can currently bring on excruciating inflammatory arthritis within hours by drinking 32 ounces of fresh goat milk. My doctors think my pain is in my head.
Doctors in this country don’t know anything
@Bluesky Thanks, I have been studying on my own. Aquired a ketone kit and have been experimenting on myself. I have a top of the line health insurance and I have to PULL TEETH to get tests run. Docs dont know what the tests mean. I’m trying to learn but clearly the tests may not be telling us what we want to know. I’m a statistician by trade. So I am very skeptical regarding any research. I am convinced by own rapid development of breast cancer while in high inflammation that cancer is propelled by inflammation. I contacted Dr. Thomas Seyfried and he believes exactly these things. I had radiation “therapy” and my inflammation skyrocketed so I balked and refuse chemotherapy or hormone blockers. Using ketosis I have reversed other tumors that sprang up during the gross inflammation.
@Bluesky true. And they will never understand anything. It goes against the economic interest
I am still so very emotional about Sarah’s passing, thanks for memorializing her.
OMG I misswd that point, I assumed she recovered. Well she paid the price (death) for listening to mainstream death cult medicine in cancer “treatment”, while doing everything the opposite to mainstream in diabetes and metabolic disease.
❤ Merry Christmas, Dr. Phinney! It’s SO good to see you again! You have done so much to help us all out here reverse metabolic disease. Thank you for your tribute to Dr. Sarah Hallberg. She was literally the first doctor I found when I used Keto to reverse a recent T2D diagnosis with an HbA1c of 9.1. She changed my life. God Bless you all!
Thanks for this! ❤
Was CAC measured before and after? How about NMR, sd-LDL?
TG to HDL ratio is enough
Thanks Steve. I heard you the first time on YouTube 4 years ago, and since going keto, my health has totally transformed.
Thank you for your kind words about Sarah Hallberg. She is a woman I never had the privilege of meeting but her TedTalk was my introduction to the low carb concepts. Although I am neither diabetic nor obese I found this fascinating. I cried the day I learned of her passing. She was, indeed, truly loved. She may have died but her work and effect in the world live on. In January 2022 my neighbor told me he had been diagnosed with diabetes. I was able to recommend Sarah’s TedTalk. With that and a number of other YouTube resources, my neighbor has successfully reversed his diabetes. Thank you Sarah Hallberg, RIP.
Dr. Phinney has changed my life! And I’ve never met him! All the hours of research and passion he has put into his work is much appreciated by me and countless others!
This is all so complex. Seems GPs should pay more attention to WBC. My WBC is always around 10 or higher. Reference range for normal goes to 11. And CRP >2 is elevated? When mine was 2.2, GP said it’s “relatively low”. Yes, compared to top of reference range of 4.9. If >2 is elevated, why is reference range so wide?
My LDL went up after 1 year of low carb. I’m 65 F and my CAC is 0 and heart function is good. All other blood numbers have improved amazingly. My moderate fatty liver is now mild. But because of the high LDL cardiologist (who is Head of Cardiology at a large hospital) recommended low dose statin. My low carb doctor feels sure, as I do, that I have large fluffy LDL, but we decided to get an LDL sub fractions blood test done. My numbers are almost the same as a recent video that Dr Paul Mason did where he explains how you can assess whether the LDLs are large or small. I gave the specialist the link to the video and he said that he will watch it. Assuming that the blood test proves what we think it will I am going to forward my blood test results to the cardiologist.
I told the specialist that even if my CAC had not been zero, that I would not take a statin. I have told him that I have done my own research about this.
I am very thankful for the information that is made available to us so we can make informed decisions.
Sarah was such a caring physician. It is heartbreaking that we lost her too soon!
Sir- much respect.
I would love to hear your opinion on Ketogenic diets for people that are elderly and need to gain weight. Loss of weight is one of the major predictors of morbidity; Loss of muscle mass in particular. So say you have a prediabetic that is already too low in muscle tone- how do you handle that?
I’m fascinated with the white blood cell count linked with coronary risk.
I’m am a regular blood donor and I just switched over to donating double red cells. Are the giving me back things that are harmful to me or is the risk in the underlying physiological of having a white cell blood count on the high side of normal. Maybe I’ll go back to donating whole blood.
This is tremendous enlightening information about what ketogenic diets do. The betahydroxybutyrate keeps coming up. Not only affects in the gut but in the brain and the Heart.
What happens to people with osteoarthritis in the study?