It’s not the fat in the meat that’s the problem
Robert Lustig, mindbodygreen
Dec 22, 2023 Robert Lustig, M.D.: “The fat in the organs, the fat in the liver, the fat in the muscles that you can’t measure by standing on a scale—it’s the fat you can’t see that makes all the difference.” Lustig, a pediatric neuroendocrinologist and New York Times bestselling author, joins mbg co-CEO, Jason Wachob, to discuss how to actually know if you’re metabolically healthy, plus: – What you need to know about nutrition labels – Why obesity is a red herring when it comes to metabolic health – The truth about alternative flours – Why treating chronic diseases is not “draggable” but “foodable” – Why you should always protect the liver & feed the gut Note: this episode was recorded in May 2021
Transcript
0:00we have now learned that if you don’t feed your intestinal microbiome your intestinal microbiome feeds on you and
0:06so what do you have to feed the gut fiber is the primary food for the
0:11intestinal bacteria people think salt is the reason for high blood pressure wrong
0:17sugar is it’s not the fat in the meat that’s the problem it’s the french fries
0:23that you eat along with the steak that’s the
0:28problem hey everyone before diving into the episode I want to take a moment to invite you into our mindbody green
0:35ecosystem where you can explore the infinite possibilities of health and well-being all you have to do is click
0:41the Subscribe button to hear more thought-provoking interviews with leaders in the health space I am so
0:46grateful for all of you who have tuned in over the years and let me tell you it’s only going to get better so great
0:53to have you here uh the title of your book is metabolical I loved it it’s an important book we need a book like this
0:59given what what’s going on in the world right now um so excited to to dive in with you today and there’s so many
1:06interesting tidbits in here um and I’m going to start with the nutrition facts
1:12label and you say the label tells us what’s in the food but what we really
1:19need to know is what’s been done to the food and No Label tells us that so let’s
1:24start there well that’s exactly right um so the nutrition facts label was was
1:30divised you know back in 1990 with an update just recently to tell us what’s
1:37in the food and what’s important to know what’s in the food well I’ll be honest with you you’re assuming that there’s
1:43something in the food that’s not if you have to have that nutrition facts label my contention and the whole point of the
1:51book is that all food is inherently good it’s what we do to the food that’s not
1:56and what we do to the food is add stuff and it’s the stuff we add whether it’s
2:02labeled or Not That Matters and stuff that’s been taken out and that’s not
2:08listed anywhere on the food so really what we should be talking about is
2:13what’s been put in versus what’s been taken out and if we knew that then first
2:21of all 75% of what’s in the store no one would buy if you actually knew that and
2:27number two you would have some guesstimate then about the degree of
2:32processing and you could make decisions on what you would consume based on that
2:37rather than what you know some USDA scientist decided was good for you which
2:44to be honest with you basically discounts all real food and the reason
2:49is because real food doesn’t have a label there is no label on a radish
2:55there is no label on a on an apple and there doesn’t need to be uh the only
3:02things that have labels are things that have been processed is there an example of a healthy food that should be healthy
3:12and really is terrible you know that does have a label
3:18like is there an egregious example that sticks out let’s give an easy one let’s do fruit juice uh an orange is fine and
3:26orange juice is not fine now people say What’s the difference well the
3:32difference is what would got thrown in the garbage because that’s the real nutrient was the fiber now people say
3:40how can fiber be a nutrient you don’t even absorb fiber that’s exactly the point yes you don’t absorb it which is
3:47why the FDA does not consider it a nutrient is because you don’t absorb it
3:52because that fiber is not food for you it’s food for your bacteria it’s food
3:57for your intestinal microbiome we have now learned that if you don’t feed your intestinal microbiome your intestinal
4:04microbiome feeds on you and if it decides that it’s not getting what it
4:10needs it’s going to actually chew the mucin layer right off your intestinal epithelial cells thus exposing those
4:16cells to bacteria to cyto kindes promoting leaky gut and
4:23ultimately leading to inflammatory bowel disease irritable well syndrome possibly
4:29Le gut uh insulin resistance chronic metabolic disease and death all the
4:34things you don’t want because you drank the orange juice instead of eating the orange so where I’m going to go next you
4:42know it sounds like we should avoid processed food and eat real food and then I will you know I go to my I I I go
4:48to I go to my playbook and my playbook goes to the the famous Michael poen quote we all love to reference eat food
4:54not too much mostly plants which you reference in the book and you say Michael’s a friend but hold on I I think you got it wrong you like to say protect
5:02the liver feed the gut so can you elaborate on protect the liver feed the gut sure so the first of thing is he
5:10said eat food not too much mostly plants in his famous New York Times magazine
5:16article and you know that sounds good and it sounds right but actually it’s not right so first of all eat food
5:22what’s food so my question is are uh Oreos food that’s number one question
5:30number two not too much well how do you do that when your leptin is being
5:36interfered with and so your brain can’t see the signal that tells you to stop eating how you’re supposed to eat not
5:43too much and then finally mostly plants going back to the Oreo you know Coke and
5:49Doritos and Oreos are all vegan they’re mostly plants in fact they’re all plants
5:54uh and you know I don’t think you can eat uh too much worse than that
6:00so those three Clauses in Michael’s uh motto I think are all
6:07problematic so after you know you have to look at the science you have to understand what’s going on what I’ve
6:13tried to do in this book is distill the real message into two Clauses six words
6:19instead of seven protect the liver feed the gut so protect the liver well
6:25protect the liver from what well bunch of things most sugar because it turns
6:31out that your liver has an innate capacity to metabolize sugar and it’s
6:37got an upper threshold it’s got a ceiling same as alcohol so if you
6:44consume a beer chances are you will not have exceeded your alcohol threshold if
6:50you consume two beers you might depends on whether you’re a woman or a man if you consume three there’s a good chance
6:57you will have exceeded your alcohol threshold and you’ll start to feel it if you consume four you’ve got a big
7:03problem and if you consume five you’re a fraking alcoholic right so it’s a dose issue so
7:11you have to protect the liver and if you keep drinking that alcohol you’re going to get
7:16curosis so there is an innate capacity of your liver to metabolize alcohol but
7:23it is easily exceed same for sugar turns out we can metabolize on the order of
7:30about 25 to 375 grams of added sugar per
7:35day Max and that’s even pushing it and being you know a little shall we say
7:41liberal with that number it’s probably closer to 25 and that’s actually very
7:47similar to what we can do with alcohol and the reason I make this analogy between sugar and alcohol is because the
7:53liver the liver mitochondria in particular basically don’t care they
7:59metabolize sugar and alcohol exactly the same and it shouldn’t be surprising that they do because after all where do you
8:04get alcohol from fermentation of sugar it’s called wine we do it in map and Sonoma every day the big difference
8:10between the two is that for alcohol the yeast does the first step of metabolism called glycolysis for sugar we do our
8:17own First Step but after that they’re virtually identical and so they cause
8:23the same diseases so we should not be surprised that children today get the
8:28diseases of alcohol without alcohol type 2 diabetes fatty liver disease are
8:33diseases never seen before in children until 1980 and now
8:3925% of children have fatty liver disease and one out of every three new cases of
8:45diabetes are type two so clearly something is going wrong with the liver
8:52now it’s not just sugar you got to protect it from heavy metals you got to protect it from glyphosate you got to
8:58protect it from from a host of other things Branch chain amino acids which can overwhelm the liver’s capacity to
9:05metabolize it and turn into liver fat as well so protect the liver the second is
9:11feed the gut and so what do you have to feed the gut well fiber is the primary
9:18uh uh food for the intestinal bacteria and the problem is we’ve taken fiber out
9:24of the food very specifically for shelf life so as an example all right you uh
9:31have a whole grain okay the whole grain has a husk on it on the
9:37outside the starch is on the inside you swallow the whole grain the intestine
9:43the enzymes the intestine have to Shear off all of that um fiber before you can
9:49actually get to the starch which means that the uh absorption of that starch will be very delayed and that’s a good
9:55thing because that means that your glucose level doesn’t go up so fast fast which means your insulin level stays low
10:02this is the concept of glycemic load but in addition that fiber is actually
10:07allowing for the uh gut to be fed and so those bacteria in your gut will be happy
10:15and we always now talk about you know the microbiome being dysfunctional or you know the bad bacteria and the good
10:21bacteria well the easiest way to grow your good bacteria is to give them what they need which is fiber so protect the
10:29liver feed the gut so you’re touching on Diabetes I have to go to obesity next
10:35because it a huge epidemic and you say obesity is a red herring so can you
10:41elaborate here’s what you need to know uh 30% of Americans are obese BMI over
10:4830 agreed obesity is a problem I don’t disagree that it’s a problem but really
10:54what it is is some marker for the problem and here’s how we know that that
11:00yes 30% of Americans are obese 80% of the 30% are metabolically ill so 80% of
11:1030% that’s a lot of people 57 million people are metabolically ill and they’re
11:15obese but that means that 20% of that 30% are not they are
11:22metabolically healthy we have a name for them MHO metabolically healthy obese
11:28they will live a completely normal life di at a completely normal age not cost the taxpayer a dime they’re just
11:34fat they even have normal length tiir the ends of the chromosomes that
11:40determine how fast your cells die and therefore how fast you die these people
11:46are not the problem the 20% or 30% conversely 40% of the normal weight
11:54population the BMI under 30 have the exact same disease
11:59as do the obese normal way people get type two diabetes hypertension lipid problems cardiovascular disease cancer
12:05dementia fat fatty liver disease polycystic ovarian disease too okay but they get it at normal
12:13weight now when you do the math 40% of 70% is actually greater than 80% of 30%
12:21there are 67 million thin sick people compared to 57 million fat sick people
12:29they’re more thin sick people than fat sick people but the thin sick people are calling the fat sick people the problem
12:34and when you do the math that’s more than half the US population which is
12:39what makes this a public health crisis and if normal weight people get it too
12:46how can it be about Behavior this looks more like exposure this looks like
12:51chalera or tuberculosis or influenza or even covid-19 for that matter where you
12:56can have somebody in the same house is somebody else and somebody has it you know the virus and somebody else doesn’t
13:04all right you know so the bottom line is it’s not the Obesity it’s not the fat
13:11you can see it’s not the fat that you measure when you stand on the scale it’s
13:17the fat in the organs it’s the fat in the liver it’s the fat in the muscles
13:22and that you can’t measure by standing on a scale so it’s the fat you can’t
13:29that makes all the difference so if I’m listening right now I’m thinking oh great so I’m pretty I’m pretty healthy
13:37you sure about that well I am because I you know do the ridiculous amount of blood testing where
13:43I get you know my 28 vials of blood and all that good stuff with our with our friend Dr Frank liit I’m pretty good I’m
13:48pretty good I’m not perfect but you know I’m 46 I’m pretty good uh but with with
13:54that said I’m sure a lot of people are saying oh wow like H how do I know if I am doing well so what are the labs what
14:03are the tests that people should pay attention to when they go to their practitioner wherever they live in the
14:09world and demand and say Hey I want X Y and Z the question you’re asking is how
14:15do you know what your metabolic status is that’s what you’re asking and I that’s a very very good question there
14:22are a couple of things that you can know just from looking so vital signs are
14:29valuable okay blood pressure is valuable uh your waist
14:35circumference is the most valuable your belt size if you’re a male and you have
14:40a belt size of 40 or greater chances are you’ve got visceral and probably liver
14:46fat and you’ve got a problem for females it’s 35 inches so that’s something that
14:52costs nothing and you can find that out very easily this has nothing to do with
14:57standing on the scale this has to do with your belt size now in terms of lab
15:03tests there are a lot of different lab tests out there and the question is which ones do you want to know the very
15:09first thing you have to know is do not take the word normal for an answer your
15:16doctor will look at the lab slip you know at the at your chem panel and say oh all your labs are normal screw that
15:24okay get the fraking numbers write them down okay because just because they say
15:31normal that just means that the number is in with within the reference range
15:37well that reference range is garbage it’s useless it is BS okay and I’ve got
15:44worse words to say about it right do you know why that H and the L the high and
15:49the low are there in the third column on the uh thing because that’s 10 bucks
15:55right that’s they get to charge for that that’s an interpretation a right it’s junk okay they have to have a reference
16:02range in order to be able to put the H or the L that’s not what you want to know let me give you an example of a
16:08test that is very useful very valuable and if your doctor doesn’t understand
16:14what he’s looking he or she is looking at it’s you know you’re going to waste it it’s called an
16:20Al alanine aminot transferase um this is a test of liver
16:27fat now it is sensitive but not specific so when it’s high it means something when it’s low it doesn’t all right but
16:34it is a very valuable test and it’s easy to get and it comes on a standard chem
16:39panel now if you look at an ALT if you look at the normal range the reference
16:44range it will tell you that a normal alt is up to 40 40 units per liter this is
16:54garbage total complete trash when I entered medical school in
16:591976 the upper limit on alt was 25 today it’s 40 same test how come it
17:08was 25 then and it’s 40 now answer sir the entire curve has
17:13shifted to the right because now 45% of the population has fatty liver disease
17:19and they don’t know it so they’re quote healthy unquote because they don’t know
17:24that they’ve got fatty liver so they go in they get their blood drawn doctor says you know how are you I’m normal and
17:31then they do the um gaussian Distribution on that and sure enough two
17:37standard deviations above the mean which is where you draw the line that’s at 40 yeah now it is but it used to be at 25
17:43and the reason is because now everyone’s got fatty liver disease so really 25 is the upper limit of
17:51normal and if you’re doctor doesn’t know that then you’re going to miss it you’re
17:57not going to know that you’ve got a problem that’s one example second
18:02example fasting insulin I think fasting insulin is the single best test of your
18:08metabolic status and your doctor has to order it it’s not part of a standard chem panel now the problem is the
18:15American Diabetes Association says do not draw fasting insulins do not says
18:21right on their website fasting insulin is useless garbage total complete trash also now
18:30why do they say that they say it for two reasons both of which are wrong the first reason they say it is
18:36because fasting insulin the assay is not standardized across Laboratories that is
18:43true that is true so what here’s the problem there is a pro hormone okay of
18:52insulin called proinsulin it is a bigger molecule the C peptide is a fragment
18:59that has to be cleaved out of that proinsulin molecule to actually make insulin when your pancreas is working
19:05super hard and as Ultra stressed as it is when you’re met when you’re metabolically ill your pancreas wants to
19:12put out whatever it can as fast as it can to try to deal with the high blood glucose and so it will release
19:20proinsulin instead of cleaving out the C peptide and releasing insulin and some
19:27of the an bodies in the some of the assays especially the cheap assays around the country will measure
19:34proinsulin as insulin we won’t distinguish between the two so that is
19:39true and that’s why the American Diabetes Association says don’t draw it
19:46if it’s high that’s a warning sign that there’s a problem whether you’re measuring insulin or proinsulin so that
19:53really doesn’t fly that they’re they’re uh they’re you know uh uh
19:58concern the second reason they say don’t draw it is fasting insulin levels do not
20:05correlate with obesity that is also true so what because it’s not about obesity
20:12as I’ve already told you obesity is a red herring it’s about metabolic Health it’s about the fat you can’t see and
20:18fasting insulin correlates with that that ectopic fat the fat in the organs
20:25very well so it’s an extremely valuable piece of information and you know you’re
20:32told not to get it so that’s why I wrote this book is you know to give people the
20:38information that their doctors aren’t learning so where do you want the fasting ins in ideally what level so
20:46anything over 15 micro units per mil is going to be an issue so you really want
20:51it to be below 10 I mean as low as possible I mean you know two is really
20:56good I I I and the lower it is the longer you’re going to live for sure um
21:02but you know if you’re if you’re at 15 or greater you know there’s you’ve got an issue so alt fasting insulin anything
21:09else come to mind sure uh several others I mean lipid profile people know about that but everyone looks at the lipid
21:16profile and the thing they’re really interested in is the LDL turns out the LDL is not nearly as important as the
21:22serum triglyceride the serum triglyceride is really telling you what your liver is doing the LDL is telling you about other
21:29parts of your body but you really want to know what your liver is doing because triglyceride comes from the liver and so
21:35that’s you know telling you what your liver is doing with the sugar it’s being presented with and a fourth one that’s
21:43really important is uric acid uric acid is a byproduct of purine
21:49metabolism in the liver you know it goes up with uh high protein diets but it also goes up with high sugar diets and
21:56so we use uric acid at a proxy for sugar consumption and uric acid is
22:02particularly egregious because it interferes with mitochondrial function in the cell and outside the cell it
22:09interferes with the enzyme in your blood vessels called endothelial nitric oxide synthes or Enos which is your endogenous
22:17blood pressure lower nitric oxide is so if you’re not making nitric oxide your blood pressure goes up so people think
22:24salt is the reason for high blood pressure wrong sugar because of this effect so uric acid is
22:31important too so just for clarity for triglycerides and uric acid uh what
22:37levels do you like to see so for triglyceride under 100 would be good for
22:42uric acid below 5.5 for an adult below 5.0 for a kid got it well that you know
22:50something to look at got it so in terms of
22:55food how should we be eating you know you say in the book quote fiber and Foods perhap perhaps the most important
23:02nutrient for health end quote so you’re a big fan of fiber so so what’s how
23:07should we be eating before before we start recording recording we talked about how polarized our world is in
23:13terms of nutrition philosophy but if you had to generalize how should we be eating well two words real food the
23:20whole book is basically an Ode to real food explaining how processed food is
23:25not food processed food is something else and basically what I said is if you know you determine whether a food is healthy
23:31whether it satisfies those two criteria does it protect the liver does it feed the gut if it does both the food is
23:39healthy if it does neither it’s poison if it does one or the other but knos and
23:44somewhere in the middle like fruit juice the fiber in food makes the
23:50carbohydrate essentially unremarkable people are always talking about the glycemic index how high does
23:57your blood glucose go glycemic Excursion you got people running around with continuous glucose monitors on them you
24:03know biohackers I’ve done I’ve done that I’ve done that yeah yeah yeah I got it I got and I’m not against it I’m not
24:09against it I ultimately think that that’s only about 10% of the equation ultimately the insulin is more important
24:16and the triglycerides are more important for the reasons I’ve just discussed and we don’t have it real time measures of
24:23those yet people are working on them I’m actually helping some companies with that but we’re not there yet but
24:29nonetheless continuous glucose monitoring is here now and it is valuable and I’m not you know saying
24:35don’t do it I’m just saying it’s not the you know the be all and end all yet you know we’re not there yet it’s in process
24:42so that fiber okay is keeping that
24:47carbohydrate the refined carbohydrate within the food itself from getting into
24:53the portal vein and going straight to the liver so you are protecting your liver and you’re preventing that
24:58glycemic Excursion and therefore you’re keeping your insulin nice and level but
25:03only real food has both soluble and insoluble fiber processed food the fiber
25:09has been removed for shelf life as I talked about so that’s where the action
25:14is and that’s why real Food Works processed food doesn’t so in terms of
25:20sources of fiber what are some of your favorite foods that are generally great
25:25for everyone looking to get insoluble and fiber truly anything that doesn’t
25:31have a label if it had a label chances are it’s been you know the fiber has been removed that’s why it has
25:37a label is because the fiber has been removed so fruits and vegetables you know I mean the stuff in the produce
25:44section of the store absolutely you know no problem but they don’t have food
25:50labels I there’s no nutrition effects label on any of those things and the reason is because nothing’s been done to
25:55them there’s only a label if something’s been done to it so any any
26:01produce and then we get to the meat and you know and the and the various proteins the bottom line is that there
26:09are things that have been done to the meat that are not so good everything
26:14from raising them with Branch chain amino acid U because they’ve been
26:19cornfed beef chicken and fish which is not as good because those branch chain amino acids end up increasing liver fat
26:27and insulin resistance also this is the work of Christopher nard at Duke uh in
26:33addition there are a lot of they’ve been loaded with antibiotics because you know they have
26:39to live on the kfo the concentrated animal feeding operation and they will get sick because the manure is not
26:45cleared away they live in their own manure and so the only way to keep them from dying is by pumping them full of
26:52antibiotics well the problem is that we’re then consuming those antibiotics and it’s changing our intestinal
26:59microbiome so you know uh you have to be you know sort of a little careful about
27:04where you get your meat from notice I don’t have any specific problem with red
27:09meat although processed red meat seems to be a little bit of a problem and
27:15increases risk for diabetes possibly because of the nitrates possibly because of some of the um other preservatives
27:22that have been uh put into processed meat something that you know is not listed anywhere is gly glyphosate you
27:30know so I mean there’s GMO n GMO people are very concerned about what by glyphosate might do we don’t yet know uh
27:40we’re still working on that uh but it looks like glyphosate takes the place of
27:45glycine in some of our own proteins in our body and can cause them to be dysfunctional but that’s you know still
27:53work in progress bottom line is if you ate real food you wouldn’t have to worry
27:58about any of this stuff it’s the processed food that’s the problem and in the book I go through all the things
28:04that processed food have had has had done to it and why they are a problem
28:10food adulterations food subtractions food additions and food
28:16addictions because of the addition of sugar so in terms of meat seafood and
28:21poultry assuming you know we’re buying grass-fed we’re buying wild we’re buying
28:27organic but we’re checking all the appropriate boxes in terms of sourcing to make sure none of the crap isn’t
28:32there then the next big question for so many people well how much is is enough
28:38how much is too much do I need you know if I eat too much red meat am I going to
28:44run into cardiovascular issues how much Seafood do I do I need uh you’re a big
28:49fan of Omega-3s so like let’s talk about you know meat seafood and poultry and
28:54what do we need if any okay so you don’t don’t need any so there are vegans who
29:01are not getting any meat seafood or poultry and I am not against veganism contrary to popular belief but you’re
29:08against fake Burgers I know that well I’m not sure if I’m against fake Burgers
29:13yet uh there are the leg hemoglobin that is used to flavor the uh fake meat you
29:22know the uh the artificial meat the U the you know beyond meat and impossible Burger it has not been tested it has not
29:28been tested it’s been tested for acute toxicity by the FDA but it has not been
29:33tested for chronic toxicity and there are other things in that um impossible burger that are potential problems as
29:40well so I am I have yet to see any data on whether people who switch to
29:47Impossible Burgers from regular meat are any more healthy than they were before
29:52it does have a label though it does have a label because it’s been processed indeed so in general meat that is
30:01marbled which of course is the tender meat if you will you know the the US
30:06Prime Choice you know cut it with a butter knife you know really flavorful okay why are they marbled why is that
30:14meat marbled if you look at Italian beef or Argentinian beef and I’ve got a
30:19picture in the book it’s one of the figures in the I think it’s figure 181
30:24um I actually show in a picture I took in a Rome Restaurant window of Italian Steak Argentinian
30:33steak and US steak and the Italian and the Argentinian homogeneous throughout
30:38nice and pink a little harder to cut but absolutely delicious our steti marbled
30:44well what is that marbling that’s intramyocellular lipid that’s fat in the
30:50muscle that’s metabolic syndrome that animal has metabolic syndrome that
30:56animal went from birth to slaughter in six months the Argentinian and the uh uh
31:02Italian uh cow steer I should say went from birth to slaughter in 18 months three times
31:10faster to get from birth to slaughter because they are putting fat everywhere
31:16they are hyperinsulinemic one of the reasons is because they’re eating corn because that Branch chain those branch
31:22chain amino acids are being turned into fat in the liver which is driving their hyperin anemia which is driving their
31:29growth that animal has metabolic syndrome we just kill it before it gets
31:34sick but what what if it’s a grass-fed so if we’re doing if it’s grass-fed yeah right so if you look at grass-fed beef
31:40it is way more homogeneous you don’t see that marbling for exactly that reason so
31:47that’s one of the issues so knowing that is very important and the same thing is
31:52true of poultry in addition a lot of you know chicken breasts are dipped in Salt
31:58Solutions to increase the salt so that it will swell them so that they can sell it for more you know there’s a lot of
32:04extra uh liquid that’s been uh added to it very specifically to increase the
32:10price and then you said and then there’s seafood and the big issue in Seafood is
32:15you know what’s the omega-3 content and you know Real Seafood is wild caught
32:22Seafood well so the question is what if farmed fish eat that wild fish don’t
32:29answer corn farmed fish eat corn so they are repete with Omega
32:36sixes which are pro-inflammatory as opposed to Wildfish which eat
32:42algae so they are replete with Omega-3s and Omega-3s will save your life they
32:48help neuronal membrane stability they help neural transmission they are anti-inflammatory
32:56and prevent cardiovascular disease so Omega-3s are the single best thing you can put in your body but if you’re
33:02eating Farm fish you’re not getting any in terms of wild fish in terms of grass-fed meat it sounds like No No
33:10Limit yeah no no you got carnivores out there you know I’m I’m for them too on a
33:17personal level I am curious with regards as people as people get older myself included with cardiovascular markers uh
33:25they can they can go on the wrong direction for people if they start consuming too much meat well so so the
33:31issue is what’s your insulin so if you’re let’s say you’re on a ketogenic
33:36diet and you’re eating like all meat is that bad that’s the question it will
33:42definitely raise your LDL I don’t argue that dietary fat will raise your LDL
33:48being on a straight meat diet will raise your LDL the question is is it the bad
33:54LDL turns out there’s not one LDL there’s two one’s called large buoyant
34:00which is cardiovascularly neutral and the other one’s called small dense which
34:06is cardiovascularly problematic and the reason is because it’s dense it sinks so
34:11it falls out of the laminer flow through the capillaries and it’s small so it gets under the surface of the
34:17endothelial cells to start the foam cell the plaque formation process so without
34:23question small dense LDL is the bad guy well
34:28meat um high protein High saturated fat raises your LDL but it’s the large
34:35buoyant not the small dense and it turns out it’s not the saturated fat that’s
34:40the problem it’s the saturated fatty acids that are the problem so saturated
34:45fat are triglycerides they’re triog glycerols they’re packaged they’re palmitate and sterate and what have you
34:53they are packaged into an Esther with a glycerol molecule the carboxylic acid the co which is the
35:01reactive part of the fatty acid it’s it’s aerified it’s not
35:07available saturated fatty acids where that carboxilic acid is available those
35:13are the bad guys so nonesterified fatty acids neas or free fatty acids that’s
35:20where the problem is the question is is that what you’re eating no that’s not
35:25what you’re eating you’re eating the globules you’re eating the tri triglycerides you’re not eating the free
35:32fatty acids so where are the free fatty acids well they’re coming from lipolysis of peripheral adapost tissue due to
35:38insulin resistance and they’re coming in the liver when the liver turns sugar into
35:44fat because that’s they have to make free fatty acids first before they can
35:49be aerified so the bottom line is in both cases it’s due to insulin
35:54resistance and due to carbohydrate in particular particularly sugar so it’s not it’s not the fat in the meat that’s
36:02the problem it’s the insulin that you it’s the french fries that you eat along
36:07with the steak that’s the problem definitely interesting and you know you
36:13mentioned keto and I think of the keto community and low carb community and the gluten-free community and there are so
36:19many great options for people out there and one thing that St stood out to me in
36:24the book was cassava CU I see it all the time and you say no good cassava flour
36:30no good so can we I think there are lots of people listening right now are going to say whoa so let’s talk about that
36:38well cassava flour is just refined carbohydrate like any other refined carbohydrate it could be potato flour it
36:44can be wheat flour it’s yeah cassava flour it doesn’t um uh have gluten okay
36:50that’s fine so gluten-free people you know are on to cassava flour I understand that but ultimately cassava
36:57has very little fiber in it that’s um you know one of the reasons why you know
37:02cassava flowers easily harvested very little fiber the point is that if you
37:08overwhelm yourself with refined carbohydrate without fiber you are going to generate a glycemic uh Excursion
37:16you’re going to basically overpower your liver’s capacity you’re going to generate an insulin response and you’re
37:22going to generate weight gain and insulin resistance in the process you’re going to cont rute to Chronic metabolic
37:27disease and it’s not it’s not specific to cassaba flower it’s you know true for any of our refined carbohydrates for any
37:34of those flowers or alternative flowers are there some that are better than our others is it almond flour is it whole
37:40wheed but you know if you’re going to have a a wrap if you’re going to have a sandwich if you’re if you’re GNA H have
37:46some sort of flour if you will are some choices better than others yeah well the ones that are lower in carbohydrate so
37:54for instance almond flour has a lot more fat in it and also has a little bit of fiber you know because almonds have
38:00quite a bit of fiber in them so you know that’s prob and they also it’s still gluten-free so that’s still probably a
38:06better choice in most cases okay the ones that are you know lowest in fiber
38:12are going to be your worst choices and casabo is you know definitely in that in that category got it so something else
38:19you talk about in the book I love this quote you say that in in chronic disease
38:25there are many they are not drugable they are in fact foodable so not
38:30drugable foodable so can we can we unpack that sure this a this is a
38:35complicated you know concept but let me let me try to do that type two diabetes hypertension lipid problems
38:40cardiovascular disease cancer dementia these are not diseases these are
38:47manifestations of diseases the real disease is what’s going on inside the
38:53cell the subcellular pathologies now we don’t have icd1 codes for those
39:01we don’t have names for those we do have names the do the scientists know them but we don’t teach them to the doctors
39:07so the patients don’t know them so I’m going to name the eight chronic
39:12subcellular pathologies that are going on underneath all of these various
39:18chronic diseases that we are dealing with today and here they are in order
39:23glycation oxidative stress andrial dysfunction insulin resistance membrane
39:29instability inflammation methylation and
39:35autophagy these are the eight subcellular processes that beely all of
39:41The Chronic metabolic diseases we currently know about when you look at the molecular
39:49mechanisms of each of these pathologies which I have they’re not druggable what
39:56is druggable are the symptoms so yes you can lower LDL but
40:01LDL is not the problem LDL is a manifestation of the problem yes you can lower blood glucose but blood glucose is
40:07not the problem it’s a manifestation of the insulin resistance in the mitochondrial disfunction yes you can
40:14lower the blood pressure with anti hypertensives but the blood pressure is a manifestation of the altered Enos or
40:20the uh you know the endothelial dysfunction that’s going on inside the cells etc etc Etc so treating a symptom
40:28of a disease does not treat the disease it’s like giving an Aspirin to a patient
40:34with a brain tumor because they have a headache sure it’ll take away the
40:39headache ain’t going to do a damn thing for the brain tumor you’re still going to die and that’s what we’re seeing so
40:47we’re not seeing any Improvement in longevity or any Improvement in health
40:54span because of the use of all of these very expensive medicines in fact
40:59lifespans going down in America four years in a row despite the fact that we have all of
41:06these drugs to treat them and the reason is because we’re not treating the disease we’re treating the symptom or
41:12the manifestation of the disease but what does treat it real food and when
41:17you look at the pathways you can see where the real food actually works so
41:22each of these eight pathologies that I just mentioned they’re not drugable but
41:28they are foodable so very briefly this one’s specific to me so methylation so
41:34our listeners are numb to this number so I’ll share it again but I had I have the
41:41MTHFR Gene and CT and I have the double c677t so I discovered a couple years ago
41:48my homosysteine was 63 oh my everyone has the same reaction now it’s now it’s
41:54between 12 and 15 seven I’m working on it I’m working on it I’m also a little bit of a genetic freak and the way I
42:01look at all the the data and the numbers it’s like hey sometimes it is what it is everything else looks good I’m trying so
42:09with that said I saw that decrease through through a cocktail of B vitamins Bane you know I work with Lipman Frank
42:16liman on it uh I’m curious with methylation specific because I’m also convinced that more people have
42:23methylation issues and don’t know about it correct methylation specific can you talk a little bit about how food can
42:31help there so meth methyl groups are not supposed to be on your DNA okay when
42:38they are they can stop transcription or and translation so you know the goal is
42:44to keep your DNA clean as it were now there are other things hanging off DNA too it’s not just methyl groups I mean
42:51it can be Sumo groups Etc there there’s a lot of different epigenetic called epigenetic marks on different uh uh
43:00genes throughout the entire genome um but the goal is to try to keep those to
43:06a minimum and the the problem is that there are certain disease States and
43:13certain genes variants that like you have of uh genes that are supposed to
43:19protect your DNA that aren’t working so great and the famous one the one that you’ve just described is called MTH HR
43:26or methyl tetrahydrofolate reductase so when your MTHFR is not working right you’re going to methylate a lot of genes
43:33and that’s not necessarily good because it means you’re going to have various uh cellular dysfunctions one of the things
43:41that builds up in the CA in that case is this intermediate amino acid called
43:47homosysteine homoy should go to cyanine and go into
43:53the uh amino acid metabolism uh p pathway and be gotten rid of but when
43:59you have an MTHFR mutation or deficiency or something where it’s not working right you’re going to end up having a
44:05buildup in homoy which has been shown to contribute to cardiovascular disease can you force it and the answer
44:14is apparently to some extent depending on how bad the gene defect is to some extent you can and so folate is the you
44:23know driver but other B vitamins help as well and other B vitamins are important in trying to prevent methylation so a
44:31lot of people that’s one of the reasons why B complexes are you know out there and you know obviously you know B12 is a
44:37big issue as well and that’s very important in terms of epigenetics as well and lots of people now have p12
44:43deficiency because they’re on proton pump inhibitors for their heartburn and they’re not absorbing the p12 and so
44:50there are a whole bunch of different things in terms of how micronutrients ultimately impact on amino acid
44:59metabolism and on your DNA that are important in trying to keep you healthy so in closing uh you know I’ll timestamp
45:07this it’s April 8th the world’s changing pretty fast but it’s April 8th we’re talking uh what what what science or
45:14research are you following you think is interesting that has potential we may be talking about a year or so from now
45:20where do you think the conversation is going well I just read an article just this morning that I am very excited
45:27about so we all know that mitochondria are in the
45:34crosshairs mitochondria all of these diseases all these chronic metabolic diseases are mitochondrial diseases
45:41they’re all defects in energy utilization and the goal is to make your mitochondria run cleanly and efficiently
45:48and get rid of the old ones because the old ones make make oxidative stress so
45:55having the best mitochondria you can have is the goal uh that’s one of the reasons why people exercise is because
46:02exercise induces uh pgc1 alpha pgc1 alpha is the precursor to good
46:09mitochondrial biogenesis adrenergic activation of muscle all good turns out
46:16there is a protein in cells and it is called Parkin one p a r k i n and turns
46:23out Parkin one is the first cellular signal that your mitochondria are under
46:28stress and they go to try to stabilize the mitochondria and now Parkin one has been associated with Parkinson’s disease
46:36and diabetes and a few other chronic diseases basically again demonstrating
46:42to us that it’s the mitochondria that matter these are all mitochondrial
46:47diseases and we are basically killing our mitochondria but do you know what
46:52kills our mitochondria fastest worst and is so ubiquitous that your grandmother
46:59is killing your mitochondria sugar because
47:05fructose decreases mitochondrial beta oxidation so that’s where we need to you
47:13know that’s that’s what we need to fix we need to get our mitochondria up and running fascinating well Rob thank you
47:20so much love the book metabolical everyone pick it up metabolical the lore
47:25and the lies of processed food nutrition and modern medicine and I meant that
47:31modern medicine part you know No Holds Barred here okay I name names okay I I
47:37would I would say that this book was a kiss and tell but since it’s really about diabetes it’s more like a pissing
47:44tail
