Dr. Paul Saladino is a physician and board-certified nutrition specialist. He’s a leading expert in the science and practice of the carnivore diet, a food regimen to which Saladino credits numerous health benefits seen in the patients under his care.
uhhhh
He’s a psychiatrist. If he wants to use his title of Doctor to flaunt his mastery of nutrition (with protocols which fly in the face of medical recommendations across the board) he should get a PhD
Imagine if this was the other way around, and Saladino was a PhD in nutrition trying to tell psychiatrists that they’re managing schizophrenics incorrectly. He would be laughed off the face of the internet.
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He can’t be more than one thing?
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Which board certified him as a nutritionist?
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IDK email him. It is from his website.
“Dr. Saladino is board certified in psychiatry and as a physician nutrition specialist and completed residency at the University of Washington. He also is a certified functional medicine practitioner through the Institute for Functional Medicine. He attended medical school at the University of Arizona focusing on integrative medicine and nutritional biochemistry. He lives in Austin, TX.”
Yes I read his website.
Neither the American Clinical Board of Nutrition or the American Nutrition Association have certified him, and the American Federation of State Medical Boards has only registered him as a psychiatrist.
A quick look on the Institute for Functional Medicine’s “find a practitioner tool” has shown that he is not registered with IFM in any state mentioned in his biopic.
I’m amazed the man hasn’t had a court case against him already
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He’s done SIGNIFICANTLY more research and practice in nutrition than 99% of doctors. What makes you an expert, true knowledge or formal credentials?
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Sure, but as a doctor it is not his responsibility to make drastic nutritional recommendations and especially to verify and quality-control nutritional research. Saladino is practicing firmly out of his scope.
Both. Anyone can do research, but Saladino’s findings are yet to withstand peer-review from other true experts in the field, such as nutrition/physiology PhD’s and medical doctors.
I can read study after study after study on partical physics, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be hired to work at CERN. I could read and digest a whole library of anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and pathology textbooks, but that wouldn’t qualify me to prescribe medicine to someone.
If credentials didn’t matter, then Saladino wouldn’t try and validate his beliefs with a medical degree and a nutritional board certification that no-one can verify 
For the record, I’m not blatantly against the carnivore diet. I am, however, very much disgruntled by the way Saladino uses his qualifications to validate his claims, when his qualifications are in fact invalid and/or unverifiable.
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He’s not practicing medicine so it’s not out of scope. He’s disseminating information based on his beliefs.
Should he not use his medical credentials? He doesn’t try to deceive anyone with them. He talks about his experience as a PA and in cardiology. People should never assume that a “doctor” is credible because it’s in their name. They could be a Ph.D. in something completely unrelated.
I don’t think that any formal training that would give him whatever someone may deem “legitimate” credibility would change his beliefs whatsoever.
I’ve always wondered why this is supposed to mean anything.
I know a couple of doctors that can put someone down, take out multiple organs, put new ones in, and get a patient back up and running, and have done so on a regular basis.
But they don’t know much about nutrition, so people are like "Yeah, doctors don’t know shit, but this guy that says to only eat meat is brilliant! ". 
It’s honestly one of the most laughable attitudes toward a profession that I’ve ever seen.
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The problem is that he uses his medical education to verify that he can interpret research effectively.
He’s board-certified in psychiatry, gives information about nutrition and backs it up with his experience in cardiology. Yet, his recommendations fly in the face of both actual cardiologists and actual PhD’s in nutrition.
Yes, but you can’t just say it’s the people’s fault for being mislead by Saladino’s misleading marketing.
“He’s got an MD, so he must know what he’s talking about”
Well, not necessarily, and Saladino simply saying he’s “done lots of research” should not by any means qualify him to be an authority on this topic.
Sure, his intent might not be to mislead with the MD, yet it is still misleading marketing. People inately trust MDs a bit too much, with a bit too many things, and I think Saladino has been able to capitalise on that as a result of that qualification.
I don’t have a problem with his beliefs. Paul can believe whatever he wants to believe. My problem is that he sells his beliefs, falsely pretending that he is an authority, which he is not.
Again, imagine if Paul had a PhD in nutrition and was telling doctors what medicine to give their patients. He would he sued for malpractice, yet, because he’s an MD and has “done the research” he’s somehow qualified to give nutritional advice in direct opposition to those of people who are actually credible.
Or let’s put it another way: do you think Saladino would have enjoyed any of his current success without an MD? Absolutely not, because he would have been dismissed as crazy, yet, to the general population, an MD qualifies him to disseminate nutritional information which it absolutely does not. Again, you can’t blame the people for being mislead. Instead, Paul should be held accountable for misleading hundreds of thousands of people
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Also it is absolutely out of scope for a psychiatrist to make drastic nutritional recommendations
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Yeah. When a friend of mine switched from anesthesiology to sports medicine the first thing he had to do was turn down an avalanche of scheisters who wanted him to sign on to their products as “Dr. Recommended!”. Products varied from diet books, various supplements, electronic gizmos, mechanical gizmos, etc.
The idea just didn’t sit well with him, and realistically, there was no need. He had plenty of real work to do.
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Ever heard of Shawn Baker?
Who do you follow as a nutrition authority?
He’s another carnivore guy right? What about him?
Layne Norton and Ben House are my main sources. I also listen to Mike Israetel, John Berardi, Mike Nelson and Andy Galpin every now and then
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Actually this is pretty much how it works.
PhD’s do the hard science.
MD’s learn about the practical implications of the research that PhD’s have done and apply in ways that have been proven to be efficacious in treating what ever disease. Essentially.
PhD’s do the hard science. Not that an MD is not a difficult endeavour. The two are just very different. Most MD’s do not have a very detailed understanding of the hard science underpinning their therapies. they are not dummies they are just not usually equivalent to PhD’s in that regard. But their clinical skills are obviously going to be better.
I do think you are making a lot of assumptions about him. And I don’t think he is actually doing anything illegal.
You might question his approach and what he is doing ethically. But he also might really know what he is doing.
What does the MD qualify him to do then? Just curious?
Perhaps whoever is questioning Saladino’s credentials should take it up with some of the folks he has interviewed, e.g. Dr Ben Bikman, Nadir Ali, Rob Wolf, etc, etc, all of whom have been intellectually matched in the interviews I’ve listened to.
Saladino is one of the smartest guys around. Incidentally, he is not a dogmatic carnivore either, i.e. he eat carbs! 
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You’re skipping a step there brother. Sure, people conduct research and disseminate findings to MDs, but:
- Research findings must be made through properly-conducted methodologies
- Findings are subject to peer-review
- Findings shouldn’t be disseminated to the mass population (via MDs) unless there is high-level, peer-reviewed evidence demonstrating efficacy of an intervention. That doesn’t exist for carnivore dieting (yet?)
Exactly! Hence Saladino’s MD does not qualify to make these claims, no matter how much research he has done. Especially considering he’s making recommendations against medical guidelines
Illegal? No. Misleading and ethically questionable, yes.
He might, but my qualm is that he is not correctly qualified to make the claims and recommendations he does.
That depends on the federal and state medical boards, but generally:
- Diagnose and treat illness and pathology within one’s field (in this case, psychiatry)
- Promote public health, based on expert consensus
- Understand when to refer out
I would strongly argue that an MD should not make detailed nutritional/dietary recommendations without consulting an accredited dietician/nutritionist, especially when:
- making recommendations that fall outside clinical practice guidelines
- making prescriptions to special populations (young, elderly, diseases)
@EyeDentist care to weigh in?
None of these guys specialise in nutritional science. Saladino has been challenged to debate Layne Norton multiple times but has turned Dr Norton down.
A cardiologist, a biochemist and an epidemiologist are not equipped to discuss nutritional science.
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