Episode 245: Dr. Laura Buchanan

Thank you for tuning in for another episode of Life's Best Medicine. Dr. Laura Buchanan is a double board-certified physician in family and obesity medicine with a passion for using lifestyle modification as the first-line standard of care. She is a certified metabolic health practitioner (MHP), and a Board and founding member of the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners. She is also a certified Menopause Society Certified Practitioner (MSCP).

Given the improvement she has seen in patient's mental health with low-carb diets, she also completed Dr. Georgia Ede's "Ketogenic Diets for Mental Health Clinician Training". She completed her family medicine residency at Wake Forest in 2022 and was a valedictorian of her class at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

In this episode, Drs. Brian and Laura talk about…

• (00:00) Intro
• (03:34) How Dr. Laura first became interested in metabolic health and her research work at Toward Health
• (06:11) Data and research on quality of life and mental health improvement for people on a keto diet
• (08:04) How Alzheimer's can improve on low-carb and ketogenic diets
• (09:19) The prevalence of food addiction among obese and diabetic people
• (10:43) Harm reduction versus abstinence strategies for dealing with food addiction
• (14:15) Some harmful ingredients found in many keto and low-carb replacement foods
• (17:10) Toward Health's upcoming study on the improvement of binge eating and food addiction symptoms on a low carb diet
• (20:55) Some strategies that can help people recover from binge eating and food addiction
• (23:30) Night-Eating Syndrome
• (26:37) The importance of community and engagement with people who can support you through your recovery and health journey
• (29:16) The incredible findings of Toward Health's employee wellness program study
• (33:38) The economic/medical pros and cons of GLP-1 medications
• (39:55) Sneaky sugars that most people are not aware of
• (46:42) The key take-aways from Toward Health's recent Employee Wellness study
• (57:24) Outro and plugs

For more information, please see the links below. Thank you for listening!

Links:

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• DR DAVID UNWIN'S SUGAR INFOGRAPHICS: https://phcuk.org/sugar/
• The Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners: https://thesmhp.org

Dr. Laura Buchanan::

• Toward Health App: https://toward.health/community/
• Toward Health Employee Wellness Study: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2025.1548609/full
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LauraBuchananMD
• Website: https://www.iheartvitae.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iheartvitae/?hl=en
• The Food Relationship Fix: https://toward.health/food-addiction-webinar/

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: 

• Arizona Metabolic Health: https://arizonametabolichealth.com/
• Low Carb MD Podcast: https://www.lowcarbmd.com/

HLTH Code:

• HLTH Code Promo Code: METHEALTH

• • HLTH Code Website: https://gethlth.com