#365: Kendale Ritchey, DPM - A Podiatrist’s Own 30-Year Mystery Illness Solved with Plants — and the Devastating Effects of Diabetes on Your Feet
Learn more about Dr. Kendale Ritchey
Dr. Kendale Ritchey is a podiatrist in Knoxville, Tennessee, a former University of Tennessee swimmer, and a self-described “recovered barbecue-aholic.”
For nearly three decades, Kendale lived with recurring episodes of intense abdominal, chest, and joint pain, along with fevers and debilitating inflammation.
Then, after watching Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead and Forks Over Knives with his wife Connie, Kendale decided to try a whole food, plant-based lifestyle.
Within weeks, he noticed something extraordinary: the episodes were milder. Then they stopped.
In this conversation, Rip and Kendale talk about his years of unexplained pain, his eventual discovery of Familial Mediterranean Fever through genetic testing, and why a plant-based lifestyle became the turning point in his health.
They also discuss Kendale’s work as a podiatrist and the devastating toll of type 2 diabetes on the feet, including neuropathy, poor circulation, infections, and preventable amputations.
You’ll hear:
Kendale’s background as a swimmer at the University of Tennessee
The construction accident that may have triggered decades of inflammatory episodes
What Familial Mediterranean Fever is and how he eventually discovered the diagnosis
The documentaries that changed everything for Kendale and his wife Connie
How whole food, plant-based eating helped calm his symptoms
His 60-pound weight loss and renewed energy
What he eats now and how he makes the lifestyle work
Why type 2 diabetes is so devastating for the feet
The connection between blood sugar, circulation, nerves, immunity, and amputations
Why Kendale now plants seeds with his own patients about food and lifestyle
Episode Resources
Watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/pmsjP92_xH8
Dr. Ritchey’s Podiatry Practice: https://heelexpodiatry.com/
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Episode Transcript via AI Transcription Service
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the Plant Strong Podcast.
[0:05] Hello, my Plant Strong cousins. Today, we'll be talking with Dr. Kendale Ritchey. He's a podiatrist out of Knoxville, Tennessee. He's also a former University of Tennessee swimmer.
[0:19] We have that in common, that is swimming, and a self-described recovered barbecue-aholic. Lots of those in Austin, Texas. For nearly 30 years, Kendale suffered through mysterious episodes of severe abdominal chest and joint pain, along with fevers and debilitating inflammation. And no one could give him a clear answer. Then he and his wife watched a couple of documentaries, including Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, and of course, one of our favorite, Forks Over Knives, and then decided to try a whole food plant-based lifestyle. Within weeks, his symptoms improved and then they actually disappeared. This conversation is part personal healing story, part wake-up call from a doctor, who sees the devastating effects of type 2 diabetes on the feet of his patients every single week. Dr. Ritchey's message is simple. Don't wait until lifestyle disease becomes painful, the time to change is now. We're going to have this powerful story right after these words from Plant Strong.
Vital Signs Invitation
[1:38] Dr. Ritchey's story is a powerful reminder that healthcare providers can change lives when they understand how to talk about food with clarity, confidence, and hope. And this is why we created Vital Signs, real food, real medicine, real change. It's going to be this October, the 18th to the 20th, and we're going to be bringing in physicians, nurses, dieticians, health coaches, and other healthcare professionals together at Case Western Reserve University in good old Cleveland, Ohio, my hometown, for a CME-focused conference on food as medicine. There's going to be an all-star cast, including Dr. Michael Greger. But I want you to know that Vital Signs, it's not about asking providers to become nutrition experts overnight. It's about giving them the evidence, the practical tools, and then the real world language that they need to help patients take meaningful action before chronic disease becomes a crisis. Because every provider reaches hundreds, sometimes thousands of patients.
[2:48] Every single conversation about food has the potential to influence countless meals, families, and futures. So I want to invite you to join us in Cleveland, or you can attend via live stream. Visit plantstrongevents.com slash vital signs to learn more and to register.
[3:08] And before we jump in, let me tell you about my go-to breakfast, the Rips Big Bowl. I first created this combination of four different cereals decades ago when I was racing as a professional triathlete and looking for the best possible way to fuel my endurance and my mornings. And I still eat it every single morning. And Plant Strong, we make it so easy for you to enjoy it at home as well. And to keep things interesting, I love changing up the fruit and the milk. But right Right now, my favorite combination is grapefruit segments, kiwi, sliced grapes, and mango with our Plant Strong almond milk. Ah, so good. But this breakfast, it's made with whole grains, real fruit, simple ingredients, and utilizing our super strong standards. And it has powered me for decades. You can find Ritz Big Bowl and more convenient and delicious meal solutions inspired by the foods that we eat at my house at PlantStrong.com.
Knoxville and UT Roots
[4:23] Kendale Ritchey, I want to welcome you to the Plant Strong podcast. Thank you, sir. I'm happy to be here. Yeah. Well, I'm happy you're here as well. Where am I talking to you today? So right now I'm sitting in my office in Knoxville, Tennessee, most beautiful place on earth. You should leave it. Uh-huh. What? So... I think I'm in one of the most beautiful places on earth. So what makes Knoxville such a great place?
[4:55] It's God's country. We got mountains and beautiful rivers and lakes and animals. And the hiking here is spectacular. Anything outdoors that you ever wanted to do, we got it right here. And is Knoxville a crowded city? It is overcrowded. Yes. We're suffering from the same type of influx of people from all over the country that I'm pretty sure Texas is as well. Yeah. Well, and so are your roots in Knoxville? Tell me why you're in Knoxville. Well so i'm i was actually born and bred in findley ohio, which is northwestern ohio and i was recruited to swim down here at the university of tennessee and i just absolutely fell in love with the place and uh never wanted to look back but wow, what who was the coach at university of tennessee when you were there so i swam, for three years under Coach Ray Buzzard. Yeah. And then my fourth year, I swam under someone I believe you probably know, JT, John Tremblay. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. JT was my high school coach for two years. Up at Mercersburg? Up at Mercersburg Academy.
[6:19] I adored and loved JT as a coach. He was a very special man. Absolutely. Very special man.
[6:29] I don't know if you ever got to meet Joanne, but she's fantastic as well. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
The Pain Begins
[6:37] So let's let's move on with with your story. Yeah. When did you start to experience, I mean, from doing my research on you, it looks like you experienced three decades of this kind of obnoxious migratory, abdominal thoracic and joint pain that just you couldn't get an answer to. Right, right. Well, so if you don't mind, let me just take a second. Yeah. When this started. So the transition between Buzzard and Trembley era, I was not 100 percent sure I was going to come back and swim my senior year under JT. So I had taken a little bit of time off and I was working construction. My aunt had a business in Philadelphia. And so I was working construction up there and I had a pretty bad accident. It was a construction accident. I ended up falling through a papered-over skylight opening about 38 feet.
[7:44] And so it wasn't a complete free fall. I fell through multiple floors, ended up in the basement. And the reason that I'm bringing that into this is because that's very, very shortly after that when this began. So my accident was 8, 8, 88. And then the first episode that I had was probably about 10 days after that. And so, of course, I guess that would have been late 1988 or August 88. And I had gotten back to school. And so I had a fractured clavicle, scapula, humerus, four ribs, and pelvis.
[8:33] And so I'd gotten back to school and was still on crutches. And one night I went to bed and all of a sudden I started developing this unbelievable amount of pain in my chest.
[8:47] I thought, well, maybe I rolled over and one of those broken ribs poked into my lungs or something. I mean, it was it was really intense. And then I began shivering and shaking. Realized I had a fever and I thought, what in the world? And so, as any good college guy does, he just pulled the covers over and just shuck it out. And about four hours later, the fever broke and I started feeling better. And I guess I didn't think much about it. And I didn't have another incident for probably three or four months. And it happened again. And so, if that gives you an indication. So, one of the things about this familial Mediterranean fever is it usually starts in youth. Um, probably 90% of people will have their first incident after or before the age of 18. Um, however, um, some type of a stressor such as a physical stressor or mental stressor, it can trigger it even later in life. And so I'm pretty certain that that accident was the trigger that got this whole thing started. Wow. Interesting. Just to go back for a sec what was your specialty as a swimmer sprint so sprint freestyle sprint butterfly didn't do back to it to save my life right right even worse at rest stroke um.
Podiatry by Accident
[10:12] All right so when did you decide that you were going to go into podiatry, Well, it was always kind of on my radar. My mom had a friend who was a podiatrist when I was growing up, and I had spent a little bit of time with him. Actually, my dream was to become an entomologist. So my undergraduate degree is zoology, and I just loved all things insects and plants.
[10:46] And, well, I was, I think I was a senior at Tennessee. We had switched from the quarters to the semester system, and I had to see my advisor before I could graduate. And he looked at me and said, well, what are you going to do with a degree in entomology? All they're going to do is kill bugs. And I said, well, how do you do that? He said, why don't you take the MCAT, see how you do. You got all the prerequisites. So I went ahead and took it and scored well. And that was kind of just led me down a completely different path with one sentence. So, yeah. And do you love the, you know, feet, everything about feet? It's very, very, it's much more complex than most people would anticipate. You know, I do. I love I love my patients and I love treating their their painful conditions. I'm not so big on insurances and HIPAA compliance and all the stuff that comes with it anymore. It's become quite mired in bureaucracy, but I love treating patients. So it's it's much more diverse than you might think. I mean, we get to deal with dermatological problems, orthopedic problems, neurological problems, vascular problems. And so you can imagine there's quite a bit that can go wrong.
[12:08] I can't even imagine. I mean, feet are an important part of our bodies, hugely so. Yeah. Wow. Wow. It's the platform. You know, there are 28 bones from the tip of the toe to the ankle. And you can just imagine all the multiple small hundreds of layers of little muscles and tendons and nerves and arteries and veins. Yeah, it all has to work in perfect fashion. Yeah, yeah. Are you a fan of yoga to kind of help with the feet? I'm a fan of stretching.
[12:46] I don't have a whole lot of knowledge about yoga, to be honest with you. But if it incorporates stretching and mindful thought process and yeah, I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things I've done a fair amount of yoga in my time and I have I it's one of the reasons that I attribute my feet for not being, you know, like this, but instead being like this. Right. And for those people that are that are just listening to this, my toes have just a little gap in between them. Right. And so it's, they're not, they're not, you know, on top of one another.
[13:23] Yeah. Yeah. Well, shoe gear helps with that too. You know, if you spent, if you spent years wearing snug, snug shoes across the forefoot, it can, it can foster that as well. Yeah.
Searching for Answers
[13:36] Let's, let's, let's jump back in and talk about your, I think you called it the Mediterranean, the familiar, familial hyper, familial Mediterranean fever, right? Right. So you had that first episode on eight, eight, 88, uh, about 10 days, I think you said after you fell through the skylights and you were, you were a bit of a mess. And then at what point, at what point, um, did you realize that you had something going on that needed the attention of maybe, uh, some doctors? Yeah. So, um, of course that was, uh, the beginning of my senior year. And by the time I had started podiatry school –.
[14:18] The anxiety, stress of that school was ramping up. And I was noticing that these, we called them a spell at the time, but these episodes were becoming more and more frequent. And, you know, I've always been a very tolerant person. I can handle any kind of pain if I know there's going to be an end to it. And so I was just tolerating it. And but I think probably my first or second year of podiatric school was when I just said, hey, this is not stopping. This is ramping up. I need to I need to seek some help here. And so, you know, Philadelphia is a is a city just full of medical schools and hospitals and hospitals. I went to University of Penn.
[15:10] I went to see a pulmonologist there, and he couldn't find anything, so he sent me to a GI guy, and they did scopes and et cetera, and they couldn't find anything. And it pretty much finally just came down to, well, we just think you have, some type of an irritable bowel syndrome with pain that's just being referred up into your chest. And so we're, uh, you know, here's some medicine and we'll see you later. And so nothing they ever gave me had any relief. The only thing that really gave me much relief at all was a high dose of fluoro bioprofen, which is a prescription strength ibuprofen.
[15:53] Right. And so they didn't have any, any thoughts regarding the, I mean, I understand you've got the, you know, you got the abdominal and the thoracic and the joint pain, but what about the fevers? Because that seems like that's a whole nother thing that, that they were probably, I would imagine we're a little perplexed about. Yeah. I mean, they just said that everybody acts differently. Okay. What's the answer that I got? You know, everybody just reacts differently. And quite frankly, in the United States, back in the late 80s, familiar Mediterranean fever was pretty rare. You either were a descendant of mostly Askenazi Jew or you had migrated here from somewhere in the middle in the Mediterranean. And so, I mean, I'm whitey white boy, right? I mean, I had no idea I had any Mediterranean background in me whatsoever. And so I in fact, if you went and asked your physician about it, I would be surprised if he said, oh, yeah, I know all about that. Um, most of the reactions I get nowadays are, you know, I think I remember reading about that back in medical school at some point.
[17:15] My, my physician, my personal physician didn't know the first thing about it. Yeah. And so this is something that you were then, you put up with this for three decades almost. Uh, almost. Well, yeah, it was three decades. Yeah. 2018. 18. So three decades, you're during this time, you're, um, you're raising your family, you're, you started a thriving podiatry, uh, practice. Um, how obnoxious was it to be having to deal with this on top of everything else? Well, uh, you, you, you said you're getting over the flu. I would say just imagine having that about every week or two. You can push yourself through, but you just get so tired of it.
[18:08] And interestingly, the way my, I guess, rhythm went is it would start –, In the morning, I would wake up and I would feel the beginnings of it, which means I had four to eight hours until it was really going to be manifesting at its worst. And so I'd go to work. And by the time work was over, I was just miserable. I'd drive home. I'd draw a big, huge bath of hot water and just climb in and just. Bob around until the feeder would break.
Living With Flare-Ups
[18:46] I've had a lot of pain in my life. I had a lot of physical pain just from all the athletic stuff. I had a pain from that fall, but this was pretty intense. I would put it up there with just about anything I had, and it just kept happening over and over. But I learned to tolerate it. I learned to hide it. How would you describe the pain When you say you've got joint pain, you've got thoracic abdominal pain, is it a throbbing? Is it a dull pain or is it a shooting, stabbing pain?
[19:20] So have you ever heard of ascites? You heard the word ascites or an acute abdomen? Yes. Maybe. Yes. So that, to me, that would be as close as I could describe it. It was not a throbbing. It was just a constant, unrelenting, pain. It would start in one small location in the abdomen, and it would gradually spread across. By the time it was at its most intense, it was a feeling as if I had done about 400 sit-ups or crunches. It was just that intense. And there was a visible bloating that would occur as well. Yeah. Most of the time it was in my abdomen. Occasionally I would get it in my thoracic cavity. And every once in a while I even get a little cardiac rub where I could feel the pericardium of my heart.
[20:19] How many children do you have? I have two. We have twin boys. They're 26. Wow. And it sounds like... This kind of, you know, obviously stuck around for a while. Was your wife incredibly patient throughout this whole period of time? My wife's amazing. Yeah, absolutely. She, in fact, she knew when I was going to have an episode before I did. So there's a type of a prodrome that starts before it. and, people get irritable and then anxious and even depressed because they know what's coming and so yeah she'd look at me and she'd go, You're getting ready to have a spell, aren't you? I mean, she knew it before I did. And she would, you know, for those four or eight hours that I was struggling, she'd ramp up and, you know, take care of the things that I couldn't do. And we did a good job of keeping, you know, the boys knew about it, but they didn't know how bad it was. They were just young. Are they swimmers? One of them was a swimmer. The other one was a soccer player. So.
[21:42] You know, being twins, the competition was just constant. And I think that helped them decide that I'm going to do this and you can do that. And that way we don't have to compete in everything that we do. So let me take a step back for a sec. You're experiencing this kind of inflammation, this pain all over your body. Did you ever experiment with your diet or your nutrition or did any physicians say hey you know have you thought about what you're putting into your mouth was that ever, brought up to you um i did i i i experimented around a little bit i i kept a journal uh for a while to see if i could find any, types of triggers like certain foods that i was eating that might have triggered it um.
[22:37] But it never even crossed my mind. I'd never even heard at that time of a whole food plant-based lifestyle. It never even occurred to me. I mean, even in a dietary school, the only nutrition we got was this is how you write an order for a 1500 calorie ADA diet. I mean, let the dietitians take care of it. We got nothing. And so, you know, I tried, you know, steering clear of the high fatty foods and eating more lean meats and not eating as much cheese for a while. I mean, there wasn't anything I ever did that made a difference when it came to dietary changes. And it didn't, every time I would have a spell, it did not seem to have anything to do with food products. It had to do with some type of an environmental stressor for me.
[23:34] Bad day at work, difficult surgery, or whatever. I got back into swimming in the early 2010s thinking that I just wasn't exercising enough. And sometimes those practices would be intense enough that it would actually stimulate the problem. So I did that for three or four years, and I enjoyed it. But yeah.
Documentary Turning Point
[23:59] All right. Uh, so what happened? What allowed you to turn the corner? Well, um, uh, my wife and I don't like to watch TV separate. We like to watch the same thing. And so she, I wasn't home one evening and she decided she was going to watch something that I had no interest in. And so she watched the documentary. It wasn't for it. So when I was, I know you thought that's where I was leading, but it wasn't it. Um, it was, um, uh, fat, sick and Nearly Dead. Yeah. And she said, you know what, when you watch something on Netflix or whatever, this is, oh, this is the next thing you might be interested in. And she said, hey, watch this documentary with me. And so we watched that Sick and Nearly Dead, and then Forks Over Knives basically came up next. And I'm like, okay, we punched on that one. And I mean, probably halfway through, the movie, I was thinking to myself, hmm, you know, so much of this is about, the inflammation caused by the standard American diet. Maybe that would be something that I could do. Because honestly, I mean, I told people all along, this is not a GI issue. I feel massively inflamed. I know my body enough to know that this is, I mean, I never had stool problems. I never had diarrhea or vomiting or anything. It was always.
[25:21] Severe inflammation that I could feel. And so I thought, well, maybe there's something to this. And my wife looked at me. She goes, I don't like meat that much anyway. So she said, let's try it. And that was it. Right. So at that time, I did not know what my diagnosis was. I was treating symptoms. Got it. Yeah. So there's something about the documentary that resonated with you where you're like, huh, I mean, if these heart disease patients are getting help through this anti-inflammatory diet, then perhaps there's something that will help me there. And how about your wife? Well, how was her health? Like what was motivating her to also make the chain? Or was it just you? I think she was mostly doing it for me. She's always been extremely healthy. So she grew up on a cattle farm, a big cattle farm in Middle Tennessee. My dad was a third-generation dairy farmer. So we ate I mean I tell people all the time I'm a recovered barbecuaholic yeah, and it makes me sick to think about now but.
[26:45] So she really didn't have any health problems maybe a little I don't think she'll mind me saying maybe her cholesterol was a little bit high and that's the only thing that I can think of that she's ever had health wise, and other than the FMF or other than the familial Mediterranean fever. That's the only health problem I've ever had, really. Both of us also love the idea of losing a little bit weight. You know, that was always nice too.
[27:14] How did you begin to dive in? I mean, you watch the documentary, great. Right, right. But then how do you actually get the tools and the resources and the know-how to actually start implementing this, you know, on a daily and a weekly and monthly basis? Well, basically, we started out using recipes from the app, the Fortnite's app. And, of course, we were picking up the magazine every quarter when it came out. So that was nice to browse through. My wife is a fantastic cook, always has been. She's an amazing cook. And so she would modify a lot of recipes, original recipes that she had from, her family and her mom and just things that we had always done. I will say we didn't jump 100% in a day. What we did was follow the diet Monday through Friday. And then on a Saturday, we'd go out with our friends or we'd do something and we'd slide pretty bad. We basically just said, we're doing this five days a week. We're going to do two weeks and then do what we want.
[28:30] And so it wasn't too awfully long when I was like, I don't want anymore. I want to stick to this full time. In fact, I remember a friend looked at me and she said, you don't miss it anymore, do you? And I was like, no. In fact, I can't hardly look at it. So yeah yeah well tell me just just so i can hear it from your lips when you, when your friend said you don't miss it anymore and you said no i can hardly look at it what are you referring to what is it that you can hardly look at anymore, I can't look at a commercial where someone is biting into a burger.
Losing Meat's Appeal
[29:16] Or I don't want to say I can't look at it because I can. I mean, I'm a podiatrist. I can look at blood and guts and stuff. But there's something about it that just kind of turns my nose now. I should say it that way. Well, it's probably the same thing with cheese and bacon and fish. And I can tell you when I go into the grocery store and I've got to walk past that department, it I can't stand the sights, the smells, the anything. I mean, I find it to be it turns my stomach. It truly does. Yeah, it it it does. There is no doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I thought giving up meat would be hard and it wasn't fish, nothing to it. But cheese was a little bit harder for me. Coming from a Derek family, we had a ton of cheese growing up. And that was probably my nemesis for a little while, giving up cheese. Yeah. Give me an idea. When did you look at your wife? What's your wife's first name? Her name's Connie. All right. When did you go Connie? I think there's something to this whole food plant-based diet because I'm feeling like a million bucks.
[30:37] So three weeks after we started the diet, we took a trip with friends to Disney. And on that trip, I started to have an episode. I could feel it coming. And so I braced for it. And it was so mild. And my symptoms were so little. And I didn't have to take any ibuprofen. And I thought, well, I've never had a spell like that that was so insignificant. That was really weird. I woke up the next morning, it was gone. And that was the last time it ever happened. And so probably a month or two after that, I just was like, Connie, I'm not having any of these symptoms. I just feel really, really good. And I don't know that there was one aha moment, but I know several months afterwards, I was like, okay, this is weird. I haven't had a spell in a long time now. There's definitely something to this. And for almost 30 years, you've been having spells. How frequently? It can happen twice a week. Or I might go... The longest, probably two months about it happening. So it still blows my mind. Yeah, yeah. Well.
[32:04] You said you went to Disneyland or Disney World. Disney World. Disney World. Can you remember.
[32:12] How did you eat when you were in Disney World?
[32:19] I'm trying to remember. We rented a VRBO off-site. So one thing is we did have some access to food that wasn't at Disney. But I remember at the time, you know, eating a lot of salads. I was not very well-versed at what to do when you're out and about. And so it was difficult that time. I'm like, can I have the chicken salad with no chicken and no cheese and eating vinegar for dressing? And, you know, it was difficult at the time. Yeah. It's not hard for us anymore. Yeah. Yeah.
[33:00] Do you have a primary care physician that sees you? I don't go very often, to be honest with you. I have a physical once a year and that's it, but I don't get sick. So yeah. Well, what I was wondering is, I'm just wondering if you have a physician that you were seeing because of the.
[33:27] Uh, Mediterranean fever and the familial Mediterranean fever. And if, if he, if you made him or her aware that, Hey, you know what? I think that I've actually licked this thing through, uh, anti-inflammatory, you know, whole plant diet. Right.
23andMe Reveals FMF
[33:48] You know, I have, um, I've tried to talk to them about it. Um, I tried to talk to them about it, um, shortly after I found out what it was. And by the way, I found out about it by 23andMe genetic testing.
[34:05] So there was, there was no, nobody had ever helped me find this diagnosis. It was completely by accident. It was well after we had gone to our race. We did the 23andMe and they sent me a little message and I said, hey, by the way, you tested positive for, you know, this genetic variation on this mutated gene called the MEFV gene. And it leads to a training fever. You might want to check your kids or, you know, and I was like, what? And so I read the symptoms and I went to Connie and I said, my word, this is every single symptom that I have. I'm like a classic example. And so I did try to talk to my doctor about it and, you know, he's busy and he, I don't think he really knew what it was. And I don't know that I ever really spent enough time with him trying to.
[35:09] By the time he was my doctor, I had already given up, basically. This is what I want to live the rest of my life.
Weight Loss and Fasting
[35:16] Well, you also, along the way, and tell me how long it took, but you've lost 60 pounds. How long did that take to kind of find that place of homeostasis with your weight? Right, right. So I would say I probably initially lost about 20 pounds. Which made me feel better I mean I hadn't been down I hadn't been down to 210 Or 215 In a long long time, And, um, so I began incorporating some fasting with it and that also helped to, to bring it way, way down. So my wife just called me the incredible shrinking man. Um, so probably within, uh, probably within six to eight months, I'd lost all that weight. Now I've gained, I've gained some weight back because I've gotten back into the gym and I've really packed on some muscle. So I've gained probably 10 or 15 pounds back.
[36:18] Yeah. So what's your weight at right now? This morning I was 186. And can you remember what weight you swam at when you were at University of Tennessee? 172. Yeah. And I did get that low. I mean, I got down to 168 initially. Yeah. Initially, but, I just felt when I decreased so much fasting and when I started working out a lot, I started just, I mean, just put on much more muscle, which I like. Oh, yeah. That's got to feel really good. What do your twin sons think of the lifestyle? They love it. Are they also eating this way, living this way? I would say one of them, the one who lives here in Knoxville, he's probably a little bit closer than his brother. I would say he's probably 90, 95% plant-based, and his brother's high 80s. I mean, they really see the difference. They understand it. Great. And I see a time when they will probably be plant-based. I really do. Yeah.
[37:33] What did you have for breakfast this morning? Yeah.
[37:37] I don't eat breakfast. You're not a breakfast guy. I'm not a breakfast guy. So I still do not eat breakfast. I eat lunch on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and I don't eat lunch on Monday through Thursday. Package it all in on the evenings. Wow. Yeah, various reasons, but some of it is time. I've learned I can be a lot more productive. If I'm not hungry, why eat? And so during the day, I spend my lunches, you know, catching up on charts and that kind of stuff. That's I find it to be really fascinating. So you find that for the most part, one dinner suffices. Are you doing any kind of snacking or fruit or. Yeah. Well, so if if I happen to be hungry at lunchtime, I'll have a little snack. It'll be fruit or a handful of nuts or acai bowl or something like that. But really, it's been so long, I don't even think about it anymore. It doesn't comfort my mind. So I have learned that I enjoy the feeling of being slightly hungry way more than I enjoy that feeling of being, oh, I'm so full, I can't hold my head up.
[38:57] That feeling of slightly hungry for me is not unpleasant. No, no. Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing as uncomfortable as that feeling of, Yeah, eating too much, which the good thing to me about eating this way is that doesn't happen that much, right? When you're eating whole food plant-based. Yeah, you have to really work at it. Yeah, yeah. Give me an idea. Like tonight, you're going to go home. Who makes dinner? You or your wife? You guys do it together? How does that work? So usually when I get home, she's got most of dinner done throughout the week. I'm a really good sous chef and gopher, but she's an amazing cook. So.
[39:48] I think tonight is spaghetti, actually. So she makes her own spaghetti sauce. We're both avid gardeners, and so we grow a lot of our own produce. This time of year, man, we're going crazy in the garden.
Feet, Diabetes, and Amputations
[40:05] So she'll make enough spaghetti sauce to to get us through the winter and i think this is might be our last jar before the springtime starts how many how many how many patients would you say you have in your business, Uh, golly. I mean, it's thousands, thousands, thousands of patients. Do you ever talk to any of your patients about changing up their lifestyle? Constantly. And, and are they receptive to it? Very not. No. I mean, I have a, I can think of probably five or six patients, uh, over the last years who have actually, uh.
[40:44] Basically I, I dropped a seed, you know, I've had patients that have been my patients for 20 years and, um, you know, they'll look at me and go, man, you're still keeping it off, man, you look great. You're, you know, you look like you're feeling good. And I'll say, yeah, it's this, it's this plant-based, uh, uh, and then they'll say, what's that? And I'll say, well, basically I ate the food your food eats kind of a thing. You know, I make a little joke of it and then but I'll plant the seed and every once in a while someone will come back and go, OK, so I looked a little bit on Google and, you know, tell me a little bit more about this. And so I've had some patients that have, you know, stuck with it. But for the most part in Knoxville, Tennessee, if you say the word vegetable, and don't say barbecue or don't, you know, they run the other direction. It's, you know, and as a podiatrist, I see, I mean, probably 50% of my clients are diabetics. And how much, how is that affecting their feet? Well, so...
[41:55] We call it the unholy triad of diabetes. So having elevated blood sugar over an extended period of time affects three main systems in the lower extremity. So it's the circulation, the nervous system, and then the immune system. We call it angiopathy, neuropathy, and immunopathy. So the high blood sugar, you know what it does to the vessels of the heart.
[42:21] That's been documented over and over. Well, it does the same thing to your lower extremities. It basically causes peripheral vascular disease, and tissues just can't thrive, especially feet. You know, they're farther away from the trunk where the vessels are much smaller anyway. Then you add into the high blood sugar, causes this cascade of events to endomatically damage the peripheral nerves. And so that's called peripheral neuropathy or diabetic peripheral neuropathy. So it starts out with a little tingling, buzzing, stinging, pins and needles, numbness, and eventually just leads to complete numbness. And then you add on top of that the immune system part. So having high blood sugar decreases your body's immune system's ability to see a pathogen, a bacteria. Or if they notice the bacteria, they're just lazy. They don't want to mount, a real aggressive attack against it. So it's a recipe for disaster. So you take somebody who has no circulation, no feeling, immune system's not working down there. And a small ingrown toenail or a splinter can lead to a massive infection very rapidly, get into the bone. And next thing you know, you're amputating the toe or half of a foot.
[43:41] It can be quite devastating. Now, are you actually doing any of those amputations or is that not in your wheelhouse? Oh, yeah. I do it all the time. Reel in. And so when you say all the time, give me an idea, because that doesn't sound like that should be an everyday event. So I have a partner in practice, and he's a fantastic limb salvage guy. And I do a lot more of the reconstructive stuff. That being said, I would almost guess that there is not, a week go by that we haven't determined that this one of our patients needs at least a toe amputation. I mean, it's very common. And how much of that is because, or I should say related to diabetes, 100%? I would, 99.99. Yeah, almost 100%. If it's not 100%, I'd be surprised. And how and what percent, of those amputations are because of type two diabetes and which ones are type one, would you say? Well, I see a much, much higher amount of type 2 diabetics.
[45:03] Yes, lifestyle. Oh, 100%. It is 100% lifestyle. So the sad thing there to me is that the vast majority of those could have been prevented. Absolutely. It's, I have this theory that, you know, when people have painful arthritis, they go to the doctor. When any type of a painful condition, they go to the doctor. Diabetes is not painful until it's too late. And so because of that, their doctor might say, well, you're borderline diabetic. Well, it's not hurting. It doesn't hurt me. It's just borderline. I just try to not eat as much sugar or try to not eat as much candy or cakes over the holidays or something. And so I think if it were a painful condition straight away, they would stand up and take more notice and not wait so long. Because once you have that peripheral vascular disease, once you have that peripheral neuropathy, it's very, very difficult to get a reversal. I'm not saying you can't. Especially early on. I've seen a lot of people be able to improve early on, but the later it gets into the, into the situation, you know, taking a blood vessel. That's a, that is a literal.
[46:31] Heart as a rock and completely closed, you know? Yeah. What's the average age of your patient?
[46:39] I'm going to say the average age probably starts around early 40s and goes into the 70s. Are you seeing any young adults, like 25 or younger with a type 2 diabetes? I am. Yeah. I'll occasionally see them. And those are the ones that I really start, you know.
[47:03] I'll say things like, you know, you need to push those veg, you know, carrots don't call onions and stuff like that. You know, just try to I try to drop those seeds.
[47:13] But I have gotten some pushback. I mean, I've had a – I was telling Connie the other day, I think it was yesterday, I was telling her about a family doctor who called me and said, you know, hey, this patient has been mentioning that you think that you might, be able to improve his neuropathy and circulation with his diet and, get him off some of his medications. And you're a podiatrist, dude. You need to stay in your wheelhouse, you know. So I've had a little even pushback from a family doctor once or twice, which is mind-blowing to me why you would call somebody and say, you know, don't tell them they might be able to get off of their medicine. How did you react to that phone call? It was basically, you know, well, thank you for the referral. I'll talk to you later. I mean, I'm a non-confrontational type of person, and.
[48:10] It's not worth the –.
[48:14] To me, it's not worth possibly damaging a relationship with him where we might have to work again in the future. As opposed to, hey, buddy, look at the science. Yeah, so I'm getting more and more bold about that now. You know, I'm getting close to the end of the career. It's almost to the point where like, I don't care anymore. I'm going to start pushing this. Yeah. Wow. Well, as far as I know, we don't have any type of a lifestyle practice here in Knoxville, you know, that it, um, There might be, but there's not one that I know of for me to even, you know, get involved with. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I may have an idea or two for you. All right.
Final Thoughts and Contacts
[49:07] Kendale, this has been fascinating. Truly. Like, wow. Wow. Really, really cool. I'm glad that I discovered you. And I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story.
[49:23] Well, you enjoy that spaghetti tonight. Thank you. It's going to be good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, give me an idea. You got the homemade sauce made from all the vegetables in the garden. Do you guys put anything else on there, like nooch or I don't know, something else? I like to put red pepper flakes, chopped up peppers. I like it spicy. So sometimes I'll use a little chili crisp or something like that, sprinkle a little nooch on it. Sometimes lately I've been putting, I've been sprinkling flax seeds on everything. I mean, so mega threes. Yes. There is, there is, I would dare you to find some type of vegetable seed or nut or grain that I don't like. I mean, it just doesn't exist. I eat everything, including eggplant. So. Wow.
[50:18] Well, you'll have to tell me your secret to eggplant. Everybody knows I've got issues with eggplant. Well, it's baba ghanoush. That's the secret. Uh-huh. Yeah. Turn it into a hummus. All right, my swimming friend. This has been wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. Well, do me a favor. Keep it playing strong. And we'll see you next time, all right? All right, brother. Boom. Hey, wait, wait. Tell me. How can people, if somebody wants to, you know, see you about their feet, what's the best way for them to see you? The best way to see me, obviously, call the office. Yeah, but you got a website? What's good? Yeah, it's heelixpodiatry.com. How do you spell that? H-E-E-L-E-X podiatry. P-O-D-I-A-T-R-Y.com. Got it. Perfect. I'd love to see anybody. All right. Ciao. See you, brother.
[51:26] I want to thank Kendalef or sharing his story with so much honesty and humility. I mean, after nearly 30 years of pain, fevers, and inflammation, he didn't find relief in some complicated protocol. He found it by going back to the basics. And the fact that every week he sees what happens when lifestyle disease goes unchecked, especially with type 2 diabetes, is very profound. The circulation, the nerves, the immune system, the feet, it all matters. And Kendale's story, it's not about fear, it's about hope. It's about planting the seed, trying the recipes, making the sauce, sprinkling on the flax seed, and realizing that plants aren't punishment, they're freedom and they're celebration. So don't wait for the crisis. Don't wait for the pain. Let's start now and remember to always, always keep it plant strong.