DR. KARL M. GOLDKAMP
Naturopathic Doctor, Dipl. Oriental Medicine, Environmental medicine

Karl Goldkamp is a Naturopathic Doctor, Acupuncturist, certified in Chinese Herbal Medicine and Environmental Medicine. In the world of acronyms of credentials that’s: ND., L.AC., Dipl Oriental Medicine, Certified in Environmental Medicine. He was the first graduation speaker at Bastyr University to graduate with two degrees, Doctorate of Naturopathy, and MS in Acupuncture.

My story
Short version:
Part I: Medical Practice
I have 16 years of clinical experience as a Naturopathic doctor working with diet and lifestyle changes. Some of the conditions I treated directly or in a support (adjunctive) capacity include: cancer, GI disorders, auto immune, endocrine, autism, gyn disorders, Diabetes, PCOS, infertility, Environmental toxicities and formal “detoxing” programs that were designed and implemented after assessment of one’s toxic burden via kind and quantity of toxin, diagnosing and treating genetic polymorphisms to the degree they were associated with one’s nutrient deficiencies that could be addressed through supplementation, etc.

Part II: Personal Experience
A severe health crisis forced me to discover and experience first hand the life saving potential of two therapies, FT (fecal transplants) and the ketogenic diet. If someone were to ask ‘what makes me qualified to talk about the ketogenic diet’, I would say it was my clinical experience and having it be one of the two therapies that saved my life. The third reason would be I work with one’s genetic background in terms of identifying and addressing specific common genetic mutation (as extracted from the 23 and me’s raw data) to help a person understand why their result with Keto may not be what they expected and what they can do about it.

Long version … warts and all
In a word, if my world hadn’t been totally upended by a series of deaths and grave illnesses in the lives of those close to me and my own near certain death, I would not be starting this journey. In part, I’m also concerned by the false and misleading information online about on the ketogenic diet. There are so many incredibly great developments in terms of honest valid research globally, however much of this information is misrepresented, exaggerated, or over-hyped for commercial gain that it’s basic relevance is lost.

Background
Within a period of two years, I lost my mother and my only brother. He died after a 9 1/2 year fight with Multiple Myeloma. I was with him every step of the way, kept spreadsheet on his blood work, and his meds. I still keep his notebook of all his lab results from the beginning to his last moment. He was the chairman of the criminal justice dept. at Temple University, a department he started some 30 years previous. He was a friend as well as my big brother, my only life-long friend.

Concurrent to my brother decline my wife developed a brain tumor, meningioma, that had been misdiagnosed for 4 years over which period of time she lost the vision in her right eye. She was required to have a 10 hours high risk brain surgery to removed it with no certainty of either surviving the surgery or of it being effective to any degree. Due to it’s location, at the optic chasm and pineal gland, it was a total gamble as to if she would survive the surgery and if there’d be any improvement or decrease of progression of the tumor’s growth. In the end she irrevocably lost the vision in her right eye. For the 4 previous years we had her examined by ‘the top’ retinologist in the area. He consistently missed the diagnosis until we pushed for a referral and MRI.

Meanwhile, our clinic, medical practice, had to file for bankruptcy. What had been a thriving practice just couldn’t recover from the 2008 financial collapse. Our patients never knew of our financial struggle behind the scenes and were completely surprised when we had to close the practice. Soon after we shut the doors to the practice, and the passing my brother, my gut stopped functioning completely with bouts of searing pain that would make me break out in body sweats until it passed. Colonoscopy revealed major patches of inflammation in both my large and small bowel. I was diagnosed with the worst ulcerate colitis and crohn’s disease this regional hospital has ever seen, I was told. Worse, I had an intestinal bleed that wouldn’t stop and couldn’t be controlled. Courses of steroids and HUMIRA had little to no effect except to make me fat, but the blood loss slowly continue dropping my volume daily.

Within a couple of months, I had lost two thirds of my blood (my hematocrit fell to nearly 15 from a normal of 45). Consequently my heart rate was always racing even at rest, 140-150 beats per minute while laying flat. My chest always felt it was burning. I was dying and consciousness was fading. We couldn’t believe the reality we were experiencing. That was the bottom: a lingering, languishing imminent death that I couldn’t really understand…. Nor apparently prevent either.

My thoughts were only breath to breath. My wife (so she tells me now) knew I would be dead by December of that year (2012) and probably not be alive for her scheduled day-long brain surgery. Short flashes of me giving the graduation speech for my medical school class would come to me. I’d feel the hubris of that moment and laughed in between my breaths lying on the bed, thinking, ‘O.K., smart guy, get yourself out of this one’.

That was in 2012.

To get to now it has been work and research unlike any I have ever done…. There was a life on the line: mine. I wish I knew what I know now when I was 22…… because that is what my health has returned to for the most part. Having to rebuild my life, one breath at a time as it were, has changed my perspective on what it takes to be ‘healthy’ and maintain one’s health, the medical system in this country, and dealing with people in general. There are lessons learned in dying, if you are open to it, that can change you irrevocably. It’s not the same as nearly getting hit by a car or almost falling off a cliff. By having lived in a ‘dying state’ for months is to live in a place few people ever come back from let alone talk about. Hamlet’s soliloquy kept coming to me in the haze of my thoughts.

“The undiscovered country, from whose born no traveler returns ….  makes us rather bear those ills we have. Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all…”

I wanted to return from this undiscovered country…. I wasn’t supposed to be dying…. certainly not like this, and not now.

Four things saved my life:

1. Believing no one’s an expert that is above being questioned further about their ‘expertise’. Think for yourself, verify, ask for clarification.
2. Steering clear of over-promoters and strong egos — especially in medicine: the most knowledgeable are not the ones publicly claiming to be experts, but rather are deep into their work and usually happy to share what they know and appreciate a thoughtful inquiry.
3. FT (fecal transplants) and following a ketogenic diet;
4. Learning effective exercise via HIIT and HIT to build muscle mass and an a sufficient cardio-vascular capability…. and for many other reasons as well.

I’ll skip my experience with FT even though we collectively know now that one’s microbiome does change on a ketogenic diet (KD). In regards to FT I’ll mention it was my wife that inevitably saved my life.

My ketogenic diet journey began in March 2014 out of sheer crisis. I had begun to re-exam all I thought I knew about diet and question my own assumptions. Consequently it had turned me in to a passionate advocate and an analysis junky in terms of data….. come to think of it….maybe that part hasn’t changed.

As you may know, Naturopathic medicine looks for alternatives to pharmaceutical drugs to treat illness. (First Do No Harm) and I began searching for ways to heal myself without the use of drugs. January 2014, I “stumbled” upon some YouTube videos advocating the ketogenic Diet and soon after found Jeff Volick’s book the Art & Science of Low Carb living. So began our journey into land of low carb high fat.

I’ve now been off all medications used to treat my Crohn’s and UC since June 2015 and I have had perfect colonoscopies since then. My body muscle is approaching moderately sculpted, and if I cared to, I see that I could become a body builder. Who’d of thought.. Doctor to body builder. We also used to fast on a regular basis. The longest fast I’ve done is 7 days. Now we implement Precision PSMF into our weekly routine.

Not only have I returned from …. “that undiscovered country” but have overshot it a little. I find myself back in my twenties…. but with way better mental clarity and focus.

That’s the point for starting this . Who knows what will develop out of this. For the short term it is ‘paying it forward’: pure and Simple. I’ve attended many medical conferences on Keto and its’ remarkable applications as well as our own data and transformations. I have had the chance to talk with the leaders, reachers, and physicians, in this evolving field and feel it’s a beginning most of us can start and should start.

Learning the Keto basics is important, but there are additional dietary additions that I believe need to be included that can result in a ‘multiplier effect’ on one’s health. We’re now in the era of becoming our own doctor, in part out of necessity and that the technology is available to us, but also due the wonderful feeling of seeing others health improve just ‘paying it forward’.

We offer our results and encouragement to others while we dig deeper into the What, Why and How of the Ketogenic diet. It is a very, very old diet, and yet the world of research is just busting open with new revelations that echo what has been pondered and experimented with over the last 150 years.

Your kitchen will become the source and center of your new life…. Absolutely, positively guarantee it. Meet you there.

Accolades

• Graduation speaker for our graduating naturopathic class 1998 at Bastyr University. The medical school graduating class collectively picks one of their colleagues that they feel most embodies the qualities of their profession to create and deliver the graduation speech for their class.
• First graduation speaker to graduate with two degrees, a doctorate in Naturopathic medicine, and Masters of science in Acupuncture and oriental medicine
• Member of the International Medical Hydrology and Climatology Association
• Co-managed the Gaia Herbal Symposium from 1992 – 2007 in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
• Apprenticeship in wildcrafting medicinal herbs of Puget Sound Washington with Ryan Drum, 1995.