Stephen Phinney

Steve Phinney has spent 50 years studying diet, exercise, fatty acids, and inflammation. He has held academic positions at the Universities of Vermont, Minnesota, and California at Davis, where he achieved the rank of full professor. Subsequently he co-founded and was Chief Medical Officer at Virta Health. Dr. Phinney has published over 115 papers and 3 academic books, and he is a pioneer in the science of nutritional ketosis. He received his MD from Stanford University, PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry from MIT, and did post-doctoral training at the University of Vermont and at Harvard.

Awards

Elected into Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society 1982

Number of Publications

Peer reviewed papers 115, cited over 14,000 times. H-index 55.
Three books highly cited books, one New York Times best seller

Years of Clinical Experience & Estimated Number of Patients Treated

• Twenty-six years in academic internal medicine practice, including both inpatient and outpatient general medicine and clinical nutrition. Total of clinical care and research patients treated >10,000.
• Founder of and directed outpatient specialty ketogenic diet weight loss programs in 2 academic settings over 17 years treating 6000+ outpatients. Clinics supported >10 IRB-approved clinical studies.
• Co-developed and directed a pure-virtual diabetes reversal program (Virta Health). This program has provided over 1000 patients for prospective IRB-approved clinical trials, resulting in 25 peer-reviewed publications. Virta Health’s current total of over 150,000 patients enrolled in carbohydrate-restricted nutrition therapy provides a massive clinical data bank for ongoing research.