About Shawn Baker. Several things going on at the same time. First thing though is that his numbers were already off before he went all-meat. In itself, that's not special, everybody's numbers are off before they go all-meat, in fact that's why they go all-meat to try to fix those numbers, well not the numbers themselves but the underlying conditions that drive those numbers.

Some alternative hypotheses.

We got the Belgian Blue cow that explains the large muscular mass yet low testosterone. Those cows don't grow large muscle mass with high testosterone, they grow it with low myostatin. Myostatin is an enzyme that inhibits muscle growth. Follistatin inhibits myostatin, to in turn allow muscle growth to occur. These two enzymes form the base regulation signals for muscle growth. Hormones that cause muscle growth act on these enzymes. If all is well, increasing these hormones will act on the enzymes to cause muscle growth. But if something's off at the enzymes, muscle growth is affected directly without first going through the hormones - we get the Belgian Blue. Maybe something similar is going on with Shawn Baker too. I'm not saying he's a genetic freak or he's injecting follistatin, I'm just illustrating a plausible mechanism that allows an otherwise freaky picture.

Shawn has a very large thoracic volume. Ima say his lungs are also very large. I mean, larger than most humans I've met. I'm talking size compared to other humans of the same total mass. So, large lung capacity, must have correspondingly high number of red blood cells to carry all that oxygen. RBC's require glucose, can't use any other fuel substrate. Therefore, high demand for glucose leads to high supply of glucose - high blood glucose. And that would be normal for this guy regardless of what he eats. Incidentally, it would also explain the high HbA1c, cuz there's just more glucose and there's just more RBC's, the two things needed to make HbA1c.

If this lung/glucose/RBC thing is true, then we have no clue how much damage is being done by presumed excess glucose to other cells. However, we can reasonably assume that the bulk of this excess glucose is used up by RBC's before any of it hits any other cell, therefore we can reasonably conclude whatever damage is being done must be on the low side of things. Thing is the presumption of damage from excess glucose is not from a pool of subjects like Shawn, but of subjects like the rest of us. It's a bit like the BMI thing that just tells the wrong story when the guy is totally lean with very high muscle mass, ya?

Then there's insulin. Well, it's low - 2.6 (on a normal range of 2.0-19.6 uIU/ml according to the lab sheet). Don't know his blood ketones, didn't look very hard, somebody tell me. Anyways, blood ketones should be very high just based on the insulin. I'm not talking 0.5-1.5. No, I'm talking 5.0-10.0. Way beyond what most of us report on this forum. Just based on the insulin number, and on the assumption of high blood ketones derived from this, Ima say his liver is working pretty much better than most people. This guy has zero problem of fuel regulation. Then based on that, he has basically no gut problem I can think of (diet, gut bugs, ya?), cuz it all starts in the gut. And then ketones loop back to the HbA1c problem, where ketones stimulate CMA, which handles glycation. At first glance this should mean HbA1c should be lower, right? In fact, it's a rate problem, not an absolute level problem. The high rate of glycation is well handled by the high rate of ketones output from the liver, in spite of the higher HbA1c level.

Then there's the absence of dietary carbs. This is a primary driver of glycation, and also a primary disruptor of all metabolism everywhere, all cells, all organs, everything. With an all-meat diet, it just ain't there - zero disruption. Glycation which comes from dietary carbs is excess glycation. With an all-meat diet, it just ain't there - zero excess. The only glucose problem we have here is endogenous, and this is an absolute level problem - it's as low as it can be. In spite of what we see in the blood, everywhere else it's as low as it can be.

All that said, if we still wanna fix those two lab numbers (high HbA1c and low testosterone), we gotta make a choice. Either we dig deep and fix them at the expense of everything else, or just say this guy doesn't need those things fixed. To illustrate the biggest problem, to cut down HbA1c, we gotta cut down dietary carbs, which he did - down to zero, in fact - which very apparently doesn't work for him. Any other ideas, people? Cuz I'm out. Cut down protein? Maybe. We're not talking about a 125-150lbs guy, like me (though now I'm fat so it's more like 180-190lbs, but you get the point). We're talking 220-240lbs, lean. Cut down total food intake? Doubtful. That's semi-starvation, comes with all kinds of nasties, though maybe not as severe for Shawn cuz it would be going from 6lbs/meat/day down to 3lbs/meat/day or something. Thing is we're trying to fix a single lab number at the expense of everything else, ya? How, reasonably, is any of this a valid method? You'll see, like me, there's no reasonably how.

The only thing that really concerns me is his low testosterone. Testosterone is involved in so much more than just muscles. On the other hand, it looks like he suffers no outward sign of low testosterone, so it doesn't concern me that much. Though this is much simpler to fix. There is a very simple and easy treatment. Triptorelin, tiny single dose, restarts the HTPA axis over a few months. And then there's HRT, but then if a single dose of triptorelin works, no need for life-long HRT. Point is, I'm not concerned that much and it's a simple fix anyway, assuming of course everything else related works as it should and it appears to be the case.

To put all this into perspective. I remember, though vaguely, a woman for whom everything went south shortly after starting an all-meat diet, and everybody on the forum was dismissing her personal experience in some way. Well, is that what we're talking about here with Shawn Baker? Did everything go south for that guy too? Hardly. It's just a couple lab numbers. Also, the things we're trying to blame an all-meat diet for were already wrong to begin with.