How's it going? Everybody? Welcome to another episode of The Genius life. I'm your host Max Lou Guevara filmmaker health and science journals. And the author of The New York Times best-selling book genius Foods on this episode of the show. I'm super excited to Welcome to the genius life. Dr. William Davis a board-certified cardiologist in the author of The internationally renowned Wheat Belly series of books first published in 2011 Wheat Belly created major waves waking the world up to the potential dangers of modern wheat and gluten changing the conversation around health and
and weight loss forever nearly a decade later. Dr. Davis's provocative claims about the dominant Staple in our diets continues to inspire countless people around the world to lose the weed. So I'm excited to have this conversation with dr. Davis. He's a really really smart guy and we go deep into the mechanism the potential mechanisms of heart disease and thyroid dysfunction and the burgeoning Obesity epidemic and so much more is a really fascinating chat and probably one of my favorites that I've had on the genius life to date so
Buckle up and get ready to rock. But before we get to that guy's please support the genius life. I have a new book coming out on March 17th, and it would mean the world to me. If you went over to genius life book.com or Amazon or Barnes and Noble wherever you like to get your books from and pre-ordered my book unlike a lot of people in the health and wellness space. I don't have courses to sell. I don't sell supplements and I rely on the sales of my books to stay afloat and to make a living if you
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ITunes I notice all of the ratings and I read all of the reviews like this one from weightlifter Danny. She wrote Max is a skilled speaker with high energy and inflection in this speaking skill translates to his interviews to guests give him great answers because they're matching is energetic friendly nature not to mention. He asks the questions you're dying to hear. It has its own personality speaks to The Listener like a friend in his interviews are so good. They hold my attention as someone with a short attention span. That means a lot interview style podcasts tend to be boring. This one is in I recommend it.
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And I promise you that it's going to be worth it for you with all of the knowledge that you are going to glean from my new book. Alright. Well without further Ado here we go here is dr. William Davis author of the Wheat Belly series of books in a deep dive on all things cardiovascular health. Let's rock. Dr. William Davis. Thank you so much for being with me on the genius life. I'm excited to have this conversation with you because you and I have known each other for quite a while. We've ran into each other at a bunch of academic conferences in the past, but this is the first time
Getting you on on the genius life. So thanks for taking the time.
Oh, I'm glad to be back
max. Well, so I mean for listeners who might not be familiar with your work and I'm imagining that's going to be a minority because you're the author of the Wheat Belly series of books, which is an international phenomenon. I guess you could call. I mean it's a massive book and it really set it was it was a groundbreaking book? I think in many ways because you kind of shifted the focus from you know dietary fat saturated fat cholesterol.
Esther all and things like that, which have been I think the focus of much of the conversation surrounding cardiovascular health for a very long time and you were the first person to stand up and say hey guys, it actually might not be in the fat necessarily but it might be it might be the bagel not the egg on the bagel. And so I really appreciate your work, but for those who haven't heard of you, why don't we start with your with your background?
Oh sure Max. Yeah, I practiced conventional Cardiology a witch called Interventional Cardiology for about 25 years.
That's where you put in stents and do angioplasty and stop heart attacks that sort of thing. My mom died of sudden cardiac death about four months after her successful to vessel coronary angioplasty. So my mom died of a disease, I took care of every day. I knew this but it was a vivid and personal illustration to me just how ineffective conventional Cardiac Care heart disease care was where you try to manage this disease in the hospital.
In a cath lab in a procedure lab, so I sort of look for better ways to screen people in other words. If you were not going to have a heart attack in 5 or 10 years. How do we predict that cholesterol? Of course a ridiculous notion. It doesn't do anything of the sort of does not predict heart attacks with any kind of certainty. So what how can you do the only device that does did this 25 years ago and this remains true today. Even RCT heart scans very rapid heart scans to generate what's called a calcium.
Or using calcium as an independent as an indirect surrogate for the amount of atherosclerosis. You have your arteries. So we started scanning people left and right in Wisconsin where I am, there's one of the first devices in the Midwest and lo and behold we're finding it everywhere max heart diseases everywhere, but what do you do about it? Well back then somebody have a heart scan score say 500 which is a high score zero is normal and I'd say, okay take aspirin Lipitor.
Low, fat diet exercise Etc it come back a year later score be 625. We're 650 about 25 percent increase. So we helped publish the data. If you do nothing for the amount of plaque in your hearts arteries, it grows at a rate of 25 percent per year. If you take what's called optimal medical therapy the best there is in modern Healthcare aspirin beta-blocker a statin drugs like Lipitor low fat diet exercise.
Parts can store in Greece has 25% per year. It has no impact at all on the progression of coronary black. So people are freaking out. I've got thousands of people free on me the sad what do we do now? Well, the experts said let them they actually said this Max let them have their heart attacks for their other cardiovascular events and then worry about it and accepting that there's a 50% death rate when you have a heart attack which of course is an
Answer I didn't accept that. I started look for better answers and started doing other sorts of testing looking at Vitamin D blood levels looking at Advanced lipoprotein analyses, the trying to pinpoint better causes than this ridiculous notion of cholesterol and low-fat diets. That's what led all to all this and we successfully began reducing people's hearts can score slowing it from 25% per year increase down to zero or dramatic regression reversal of these scores.
so that those data are published didn't get much attention though, because sadly we had the situation health care that the things that get attention typically other things that make a lot of money and now we're talking about turning off heart disease a process that would actually / profits and income revenue for hospitals and my
colleagues
Wow, you know, I don't believe in conspiracies, but what you're talking about reminds me of an article. I recently read I believe it was in stata news. It was about the cabal that's been surrounding Alzheimer's research for the past few decades that the focus has really been placed on this amyloid hypothesis. I mean, this is a little off topic but it's basically stunted progress in terms of other in terms of other avenues for why the disease originates and progresses and
Really? It's probably the fact that you know medical doctors have I would say very limited training when it comes to nutrition. And so the idea that dietary cholesterol or dietary fat could lead to these fatty deposits in the arteries or these cholesterol, you know based deposits in the arteries. It makes logical sense, but it just doesn't add up when talking about the biochemistry and the complexity with which our bodies
operate I agree. You know, I agree. I don't think there's a bunch of
key decision-makers sitting in a room having coffee and and planning to do away with natural methods in order of to maintain Revenue flow. I think what it is though is willful ignorance is my colleagues choose to focus on the things that pay the best and choose to essentially ignore or poopoo the things like nutrition vitamin D manipulation of the microbiome Etc that Dolly generate thousands of dollars of
But it in there of course is the things that you and I mind for astoundingly powerful strategies for
health. Yeah couldn't agree more. So what are we currently then know about the cause of heart
disease? Well, as you already know the whole notion that total fat and saturated fat causes heart disease, of course is based on very poor science from the 1950s and 1960s.
S as well as we're called observational data more recently observational data is about as good as no data at all. That's the kind of ridiculous kind of garbage science that led to such things as Premarin horse estrogens being the number one most widely prescribed drug for about a decade to women and of course, it was based on the observation that women who took Premarin had less endometrial cancer less breast cancer last cardiovascular disease when the real clinical trials were performed.
That is I say ma'am. I'm going to give you a pill. I don't know what it is. I'm not going to tell you what it is. We'll know in five years and we'll see how you do. Those kinds of blinded randomized studies were performed. Like they're hers trial and the Women's Health Initiative will performed the exact opposite was found Premarin increased cardiovascular death increased breast cancer increased endometrial cancer and accelerated Dementia, by the way. Well, so in other words observational data
Te is just almost useless eight times out of ten observational evidence is disproven in real clinical trials yet. That is the basis for the low-fat diet yet. The American Heart Association that is the association that receives generous donations from Merck Pfizer GlaxoSmithKline, Medtronic companies like that. They continue to reiterate the need to Cuts fat and saturated fat, even though the evidence was poor at best for the last 40 50 years and
Evidence from lipoproteins metabolic studies is now overwhelming cholesterol does not cause heart disease dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease blood levels of cholesterol are very poor predictors of heart disease. Well, I think my colleagues accept that because they had this thing called the Statin drug franchise that they purport erases all the effects of cholesterol. The reality is there are so many better Tech methods to identify risk for heart disease and eradicating.
I've done this now thousands of times you can take amount of an amount of coronary disease and you can readily and easily and very inexpensively stop its progression or even reverse it reduce. It may be that the zero but you can reduce it sufficient to not have heart attacks not have chest pains not required Bypass or stent implantation.
That's so fascinating. I just I want to take a step back. Can you describe why it is why nutrition research is so
Colt to do I mean you did you talked about observational research and the difference between observational research and experimental data clinical trials, but from a from a from a research standpoint, I mean, it does seem that, you know, there are studies that are showing that you know meat consumption fat consumption is correlated. Now, there's no causal link that's been established but correlated to worse cardiovascular health. Could that be because you know for the past few decades meet was something that was
Demonized saturated fat is demonized. And so when you see people at the population level who consume lots of, you know, saturated fat dietary cholesterol, they have other unhealthy aspects of their Lifestyles, perhaps maybe their, you know, their diets in general are not good independent of how much meat they're eating. I mean, what else do you kind of see when you're doing these sorts of observations?
Yeah, the observational evidence Max as you know is responsible for so many are
Of misinformation in health nurses health study the Physicians health study those big studies generate a ton of garbage data that are is very misleading at best observational studies can be used to generate hypotheses. Not as you point out not cause effect rarely can they generate cause-effect associations? But they are also very useful for generating titillating headlines. And that's why the media jumps all over this and confuse the public because one week,
They'll say eggs. Cause heart disease four weeks later eggs. Don't cause heart disease red meat causes colon cancer red meat doesn't cause colon cancer because they're reporting garbage data as you point out. It's very difficult. The reason why there's so much Reliance on observational data is the real data if I say, mr. Goldberg, I want you to be on a specific diet. We're going to instruct you in this diet. You can do this for five years. It's very difficult to get living humans Free Living humans to follow a program like that adhere to
It has been done. And by the way, when those Studies have been done at least a tried to get done. They've suggested that there is no association of fat or saturated fat intake with cardiovascular disease nor with Cancers. So whenever the real studies are done, they're not very common, but they have been done. They have not shown any associations yet. The people are confused including my colleagues because they cite all the observational garbage evidence that suggests there could be an
Association that makes total sense so you were just about to talk about more accurate measures of heart disease risk and you touched on LDL cholesterol, which is I think when many people go to the doctor the way that their doctors describe LDL, it's the bad cholesterol and you see HDL which has this Halo on it as being the good the good cholesterol. So can you kind of walk my listeners through the difference between HDL and LDL? Why?
Is are so well, I mean you kind of touched on already because statins can easily easily modulate LDL. And so, you know, that's it's a big it's a big business there, but maybe why doctors sort of you know, hung their hat on that as a marker for heart disease risk for so long and what are the what you know new research is suggesting are better indicators.
So I call LDL cholesterol fictitious LDL cholesterol, and that's because if you look at your cholesterol panel, you'll see in parentheses see ALC
See LDL cholesterol parentheses see ALC calculated it's not even measured and the calculation comes from a very old equation called The Free World calculation the 1950s 1960s as a crude method of guesstimating the number of LDL particles in a fraction of blood if you look at real measure, there are superior measures of these particles. If you look at real measures such as out NMR lipoprotein analysis, which is widely available by the weapon.
For over 20 years and you compare it to this fictitious LDL, you'll see there's almost no correlation at all LDL cholesterol as provided by cholesterol panels is a virtually useless. What imagine your speedometer in your car says 25 miles an hour, but you're really doing 70 or vice versa you doing 70 in your speedometer says you doing 25 you would say this speedometer is completely useless. That's how good LDL cholesterol is yet. It is the source of a multi-billion.
And Dollar business for big Pharma be based on studies that show that there's virtually no of almost no effect at all on reducing cardiovascular events. There is a small effect in select populations, but it's teensy-weensy. It's not the 36 to 55% reduction at the Statin drug companies some of my colleagues claim and that part of that is statistical manipulation. So if Max and eyes conduct a trial and we do a placebo versus drug and on the placebo, let's say over five years.
Is
there's two heart attacks for every 100 people and in the drug group, there's one heart attack for every 100 people. We call that a 50% reduction heart attack. What might what doctors here with the public hears is for every 100 heart attacks 50 will be prevented. That's not true one will be prevented. Even if we accept that the great majority of the data suggesting that was paid for by the drug industry.
So it's like magic I say meant I'm trying to sell Maxwell Guevara car as hey Max best car in America is made by Ford and you saw how do you know that and I said, well, there's a study comparing Ford Toyota past Lund and GM you said well who paid for stay I say for did I'm not picking out for it, but you get the point that if that were true you'd say well that's ridiculous. That's called marketing. That's not real science. That's not real clinical data, but that is the basis for much of the Statin.
Franchise and because of the ridiculous manipulation of data of evidence, like the 50% reduction heart attack. My colleagues have swallowed that Hook Line and Sinker and dispense statin drugs like candy now, but the real tragedy Max of the Statin drug franchise is not the ridiculous overprescribing of statin drugs and the focus on cholesterol. It's the failure to focus on the real cause of heart disease that are very easy to identify and verify
Very easy to correct.
Oh, man. Well, I want to get into that and before we do so, I mean, I think we were starting to talk about was like the the nnt the number needed to treat and I don't know what the nnt for statins are off the top of my head, but what you're basically saying is so crucial. It's that you know, you've got to give a Statin to a hundred people essentially to prevent one additional heart attack and if statins didn't have any side effects that wouldn't necessarily be a big deal right like
Has to wear a seatbelt to prevent. I don't know how many deaths from car accidents every year but that's not a big deal because seat belts have no side effects but a Statin statins do have side effects and they can cause you know, myopathy and things like that the research on how stands affect the brain is equivocal but I mean, I would not trust my brain in the hands of a Statin just speaking personally. And so that's that's a crucial point that you that you brought up
a good point smacks, so
So once again the observational evidence suggested some years back that statins prevented cognitive impairment and dementia, then the real trials were performed. They had no beneficial effect whatsoever on the program and why would it why would statins have any effect anyway now that so I as I point out that the tragedy here is that the real cause of heart disease are easy to identify, but you can't do it from a standard cholesterol pedal though. You can tell something from
Triglyceride level that is the there's four values in any standard cholesterol paddle. The LDL cholesterol is ridiculous. Total cholesterol is completely useless number but actually the HDL and the triglycerides the two numbers most commonly ignored our can be helpful because triglycerides tell us the status of your diet and how much inflammation and insulin resistance you have and so that's helpful but a real much better Insight is doing is to obtain a test called lipoproteins, but the
Preferred method I use was NMR nuclear magnetic resonance sounds fancy. It's very easy. It's like $80. It's only a few dollars more than cholesterol testing. But the one truly helpful number it gives you is the number of small LDL particles and what percentage they are of total LDL Park. So it's typical person with coronary disease somebody who had two stents or survived a heart attack or has a heart scan score of a thousand typical lipoprotein panel would show total LDL particle number of say
2400 nanomoles per liter particle count per volume of that 2419 hundred or something like that will be small LDL. That's so common 99% of the time some with coronary disease will have that pattern. Well, how do you get small LDL particles? There's only two ways to Foods grains and sugars. Not bad. It's not bacon not red meat only grains and sugars. So
that's why years ago. I asked patients to move all grains and sugars and small LDL would drop from 1900 to 0 or something close to that LDL particle number would drop from 2,400 to say 700 which is an LDL cholesterol equivalent of about 70. In other words, you have profound reductions in these measures and you have dramatic control over growth of canary plaque and then we added other issues but assessing vitamin D blood levels 25 hydroxy vitamin
Assessing thyroid we have this silent epidemic Max of thyroid dysfunction part of its iodine deficiency part of its exposure to disruptive chemicals, like triclosan and hand sanitizer and perfluorooctanoic acid residues that are persistent from Teflon and a whole bunch of others. These are all disrupting thyroid and that we have a third of the US population now has thyroid disease thyroid dysfunction some for many don't know it by the way, and that's a flagrant risk for coronary disease.
We correct magnesium and track RBC magnesium blood levels. We tracked the stays of the microbiome and correct disruptions. And of course supplement omega-3 fatty acids fish oil and just that little menu of things lipoprotein assessment with result die to manage it vitamin D restoration magnesium EPA DHA from fish oil and efforts to cultivate healthy microbiome, and the
Two people can stop their hearts can score from present even obtain reversal people who've had stents or bypass surgery their disease comes to a halt. I used to have Hospital administrators. Come to me. They say hey where you take your patients nowadays I say here they said no no, no very funny. We take your patients now because you know how you know how to splice hardly anybody I said, I prevent heart disease people don't have Anja they don't have heart attacks. They don't have heart failure. They don't have need for by they said they
they laugh they thought I was joking. I said, I'm not joking. I'm serious. They refuse to believe that this was happening why I went from six seven eight nine ten procedures add a 2-0 procedures a day in high-risk populations people who've had bypassed survive sudden cardiac death had four stents Etc heart disease comes to a grinding halt but heart disease is the number one Money Maker for hospitals 50 percent of all Hospital Revenue comes from cardiovascular disease.
And of course my colleagues do well also when you talk about turning off the faucet of revenues, no one wants to hear it, but that's what we're doing. And it's Max it just it's stupid easy to
do. Yeah. I mean it makes total sense. How what is the what is the mechanism by which grains and sugar can cause the influx of these small dense particles
that there's a number of ways, but the the primary driver is there's a carbohydrate in grains called em alone.
Pectin a and amylopectin a is absorbed and digested by the liver and converted to triglycerides. This is a process only recently described called de novo lipogenesis and all that means is the livers conversion of carbohydrates to triglycerides triglycerides are fats. Now some of those triglycerides make their way onto the bloodstream. That's why people heart disease and metabolic distortions, like diabetes often have higher truglide by high triglycerides. I mean anything above 60 milligrams per deciliter.
950 often quite as ridiculous. It's 60 or higher and idealist 60 or less. So some of those triglycerides liver creates make makes it out into the bloodstream some stay by the way in the liver for unclear reasons and plug up the liver. That's fatty liver. So fatty livers not caused by Fats caused by carbohydrates such as the amylopectin a of grains now the amylopectin a of grains that does this when those triglycerides get out into the bloodstream. They actually occur in the bloodstream.
Something called V LDL particles very low density lipoprotein particles. So if you're doing lipoprotein analysis, not just cholesterol testing you'd see an explosion of vldl particles as well as the higher triglycerides above 60 and what VI call vldl the lipoprotein Life of the Party. The reason for that is it loves to interact with LDL, but not only does vldl particles themselves cause heart disease accumulation of coronary atherosclerosis vldl.
Interaction the bloodstream with LDL particles and converts them via somewhat complex mechanism to small LDL particles in small eldo Parker very unique. They're much more adherent to the arterial wall. Once they gain entry they're much more prone to cause oxidative changes and inflammatory changes. They last five to seven days in the bloodstream rather than the 24 hours of large LDL particles caused by fat consumption. So in other words the small LDL
L particle is perfectly crafted to cause heart disease but only two kinds of foods, cause it grains and sugars. So when you cut fat and tell somebody eat more healthy whole grains, you've put them on a heart disease causing diet that will result in an explosion small LDL particles arise and triglycerides arise in vldl particles a rise in blood sugar increase in fat eel. In other words the standard conventional answer to heart disease.
Prevention causes an entire menu of had destructive health effects. And as you know, all you and I have to do is look around us to see what conventional dietary advice worsen, of course by predatory practices of big food and the ignorance of my colleagues as resultant. All this advice is not resulted in a reduction in heart disease. If anything has caused a sustained presence of heart disease, maybe even increase in heart disease.
Wow, so what's the difference in between?
I like postprandial hypertriglyceridemia, which basically and correct me if my if my vernacular wrong is wrong. I'm not a medical doctor. But you know, if you eat fat you'll see an increase in triglycerides in your blood right after eating that eating the fat and then it goes down but grains and sugar basically causes this elevation of your Baseline triglycerides. It causes an elevation of your fasting triglycerides, which is essentially what we want to avoid. Is that is that an accurate statement?
Yeah, I'm very impressed you you're concerned about that issue. But let's let's say we eat a meal of mixed composition fat and carbohydrates and proteins. Of course in the first few hours triglycerides go up due to fat absorption. That's primarily because of a rise in something called chylomicrons, which are nothing more than the body's way of packaging fats in the bloodstream. So there's an early rise in triglycerides and color microns and they can cause heart disease what
wasn't appreciated until last several years is that if you wait longer for 6-8 hours, there's a second spike in triglycerides in vldl particles in the delay is because it takes the liver that long to convert the carbohydrates to vldl particles. So there's kind of a double hump, but the second hump from triglycerides from carbohydrates in the majority of people is much larger than the initial hump from fat absorption. And so
That was not appreciated because in order to see that you have to actually monitor someone's blood for many hours up to 8 to 12 hours after they eat a meal but that is by far the dominant effect the rise in vldl particles and triglycerides many hours after consumption of carbohydrates, and it's so if you cut fat triglycerides fasting triglycerides go up if you cut carbohydrates fasting triglyceride.
Ed's plummet, you know personally my highest triglyceride level was about 25 years ago. I didn't know any better. I was on a super low fat vegetarian diet. My triglycerides are 390 now, they're 40 for Nothing by the way, so nothing except things like fish oil and vitamin D Etc. I've done this now thousands of times you can reduce triglycerides dramatically, even from the thousands by doing this not by cutting fat.
So cutting fat has a small effect in reducing fasting triglycerides or it makes it go up cutting carbohydrates causes triglyceride levels to plummet.
Wow. Now when it comes to the different types of fats, it's my understanding. That's the way that saturated fat can raise levels of lipo proteins in the blood is that saturated fat can actually reduce the livers capacity to recycle these lipoproteins. So like vldl gets shipped out from the liver over.
Time it starts to shrink. Right and it becomes like the LDL particle and we want to avoid is that small dense LDL particle? And so it's my it's my understanding that saturated fat basically reduces the amount of LDL receptors on the liver that will basically suck in those LDL particles to recycle them before they get too small and dense essentially. So what's your take on the fat composition of one's diet as it relates to having healthy, you know lipids
when you
Hunter lipoproteins not cholesterol values, you'll see something that it's carbohydrate that initiate the formation of small LDL but saturated fat can exaggerate that effect. So let's say somebody ate some carbohydrates and cause their liver to create Lexus pretend 1800 nanomoles per liter particle count per volume small LDL particles, if we throw saturated fat the mix that number can go up to say 2400, but if we take the carbohydrates out
The saturated fat no longer provokes a rise in the small LDL particle and you can have zero small LDL particle while indulging in plenty of saturated fat. So it's a nice way to think about it is carbohydrates initiate saturated fats exaggerated, but if there's no initiation the first place you won't have small LDL particles to exaggerate and I've done this now countless times you can get dramatically reduced real measures like LDL particle number is sounds like LDL cholesterol, which is a very very different.
But you'll see you know, when you when you do testing like NMR, by the way, your listeners can get this very readily they can't even get it in Most states. Not New York sadly without the doctor's order you get it on your own and just a few dollars and you'll see readily that these abnormalities and not caused by a lack of a Statin drug or fat consumption is caused by grains and sugars is astounding the amount Now put on top of that basic efforts to reverse.
Verse insulin resistance, you know, we have a world where probably three quarters of the population has insulin resistance in some form. It may be 90% soon. It could be expressed as type 2 diabetes. It could be expressed pre-diabetes could be expressed as visceral fat or a higher splodge non-diabetic but these are all forms and degrees of insulin resistance. So if you take steps to reverse insulin resistance the diets of big big big start, but also vitamin,
E in fish oil and magnesium and efforts to cultivate barfleur you further ratchet back insulin resistance. And that's where you have even more profound control over such things as small LDL particles fatty liver coronary disease type 2 diabetes Etc profound control comes from just as simple menu of strategies.
Wow, when you were talking about the how saturated fat could potentially exacerbate you
The small dense LDL particles or the distal epidemia really? It just got me thinking about how what a ticking Time Bomb the standard American diet is for people which is high in both refined carbs and sugar and lots of saturated fat. So it really is like the worst diet in terms of cardiovascular
health, you know Max in a way. I'm grateful that the USDA the American Heart Association Academy nutrition dietetics that story got it so colossally wrong
Wish they didn't get it wrong. But you know what in some ways I'm grateful because it showed us how awful the results were when you did what they said to do, which I did personally and had patients doing for years years ago, but it's horrifying to see what happens. I personally became a type 2 on a very altruistic low-fat vegetarian diet jogging three to five miles a day. I personally became a type 2 diabetic with triglycerides a 398
HDL cholesterol 27 about 1,800 animals player of small LDL particles high blood pressure Etc eyes went off that silly diet and everything reversed but it was a vivid illustration and me and many other people and borne out by clinical evidence that the conventional effort to cut fat cut saturated fat is a deplorable horrible miserable failure
couldn't agree more you talked about cultivating.
Flora which I think is so important and it got me thinking about I've been sort of interested lately in the role of fiber in terms of helping to I guess normalize lipids in the blood and specifically the research that I've seen on psyllium husk. Do you ever use that in your practice psyllium husk to help, you know, if you see well if is there ever an instance where you'll see LDL level so high that you feel the need to
Because if you know we were talking about the the lack of a relationship or a concrete relationship. So what point do you feel the need to intervene? And if you do intervene do you ever use psyllium husk because it's because of its ability to trap these bile acids, which I think is a really cool mechanism and I always like to bring it up whenever whenever I have the opportunity.
Yeah, I think psyllium is useful as our other Prebiotic fibers that is fibers that are consumed by bacteria. So one of the mechanisms that bacteria
Is they produce an enzyme called bile salt hydrolase and all that does is it causes reduction in cholesterol dietary cholesterol absorption and it drops LDL Cliff, you're tracking LDL cholesterol. It drops LDL cholesterol total cholesterol and LDL particle number the real value. I will tell you my Growing Experience in manipulate. The microbiome is yielding astounding effects. We are seeing all kinds of things that I never expect to see it.
I was skeptical, you know, I'm a cardiologist. I'm not a gastroenterology. I'm not a microbiologist, but we're seeing a stab one of the most exciting things. We're seeing Beyond giving people lots of Prebiotic fibers as you point out there all these metabolic benefits of doing so by way of such things as butyrate when you feed your bacteria Prebiotic fibers, whether it's psyllium seed or a green unripe banana or a row white potato or inulin powder or root.
those you feed the bacteria these Prebiotic fibers which in turn to invert them such things as butyrate that in turn yields astounding very impressive health benefits, like reductions in insulin resistance reductions in triglycerides reversal of fatty liver changes in your dream content ranges changes extension of REM sleep makes you happier all these wonderful likes one of the most exciting projects we've been working on though is the cultivation of lactobacillus reuteri are
Bu T erri, so there are two strains of lactobacillus reuteri that most modern people have lost probably from chlorinated water and antibiotics and herbicide pesticide residues in food, etcetera. So most people had it 60 70 years ago. We've lost it most people lost it now. This is response this back these bacterial strains are responsible for causing your hypothalamus to release the hormone oxytocin.
You consume this ordinance, which we do by the way by making it yogurt. We make a yogurt as a bacterial fermentation bacterial count amplifying system. It's not about yogurts about amplifying bacterial counts of this specific species and strain you consume. This is a half cup of yogurt which by the way is Rich and delicious and ladies start to lose their wrinkles within four weeks dermal collagen explodes healing is dramatically accelerated boned.
Density is preserved. We regain lost muscle mass and strength that we lose as we age. There's an increase in libido. There's a deepening of sleep. There's our extension of REM sleep. There's deep any further deepening of sleep and because ra boosting oxytocin hormone of love and connectedness people say, you know, I better understand my spouse now or my children I go up to strangers and I talk to them. I want to I want to meet them I talk there's a there's a
An
explosion empathy and desire for connectedness. So Matt has made me wonder, you know, you we all live in a time where there's an explosion social isolation record suicide rates other. So unhealthy social phenomena worrisome social phenomena is at least part of that due to the loss of lactobacillus rotor eye and thereby lower oxytocin levels because we're seeing a lot of this reverse now, by the way, the holidays just passed and people have to tell me
How what how wonderful their holidays were when they said their families lactobacillus reuteri yogurt. So it's but it's an example of the profound influence of the microbiome. This is just one example of the profound influence would have both individually as well as socially by restoring the microbiome.
It's so fascinating that is this whole new world of psycho biotics. In fact because of already Aries influence on oxytocin. I feel like I
Definitely wrote about it in genius foods and do some clinical trials. Now that are using the strain as a means of reducing symptoms in autism spectrum disorder.
Yes, that's right included as well as intranasal oxytocin and also in marriage counseling and apparently helps some Partners see the the other side little better and this is just one example, though. We're using it as yogurt only because yogurt is a nice easy way for people to
Have their own boot yourself at home bacterial amplification system and doesn't happy Derry. By the way, you can use non-dairy also and but we can do we can do such things as amplify counts of lactobacillus gas. Try being are 17, by the way, we're very attentive to strain specificity because you must pay attention to strains even though most commercial probiotics going to specify strains, but you must pay attention strains because strains can vary. For example, I have E coli in my gut you have e-collar your
There's heavy coli but what if you ate lettuce taint with E, coli from cow manure you could die of kidney failure and sepsis same species different strains strains specificity can be literally life and death different. So we pay attention to strain. So the reuter eye effect only comes that we are aware of from two strains DSM one seven nine three eight and a TCC PJ 6-4 7-5. No one has to remember that. It's in my wheat belly blog guy had a step-by-step guide to making a word or a yogurt tells you how to work it.
These strains how to make it. So you must be 10 of the strain. So we're making lactobacillus Gasser. I yogurt being are 17 and you lose about an inch off your waistline for people who need to in about three months. In other words. It has a dramatic effect on insulin resistance and waist circumference. That's just in three months. Of course, we're on the cusp of having these astoundingly powerful tools in the microbiome Akram and she is going to be coming out sometime soon and that's going to
That's that's a bacteria and unusual one by the way that reduces blood sugar and Insulin On a par or better than the majority of diabetes drugs commercial diabetes drugs. So I love this we're being afforded these astoundingly powerful tools in the world of microbiome that make Pharmaceuticals look like Child's Play
That's amazing. I mean there was that study a couple of years ago where and I can
I don't think I can recall the details of it. But I know that they gave people with different microbiomes the same food. I thought it was either like a banana or some white bread or something like that. And even though it was the same bolus of carbohydrate the same glycemic index. They saw radically different glycemic effects in the patients, and it was solely a function of the fact that they had different microbiomes. I believe I think that that was the that was the conclusion of the study but very very interesting.
Can treat all kinds of things through the through the through the lens of the
gun.
Yeah, there's still plenty to more to learn and we really just scratch the surface, but it we're starting to get hold of some very very powerful strategies like the reuter. I yogurt like the gas. Alright Etc this I think it's coming out at a Breakneck Pace every day every week every month goes by there's some astounding new impressive discovery that empowers you and me and it's stuff that has nothing to do with Pharmaceuticals nor the doctor.
Health
Care System, you can do these things on
your own. I love it. So empowering. So just going back to saturated fat. I mean we have the recommendation avoid avoid grains avoid sugar but when it comes to just you know specificity over the recommendation of you know, how much saturated fat we should we should be having in our diets. What kind of recommendations do you make I mean, should we be are you you know, like when you see people putting coconut oil in their smoothies and butter in their coffee and all kinds of things like that. Is that sort of a
you know, is that something that you would determine on a case-by-case basis looking at Gene's for example, or what's your what's your stance on saturated fat?
You know Max will write what I see in the context of grain and sugar elimination. And by the way despite that we just had the holidays I had pumpkin pie. I had cranberry sauce. I had biscuits and gravy I had gravy on my turkey in other words. This is not eat cardboard and lettuce it's have its
It's have wonderful delicious rich foods. We recreate something like say pumpkin pie where I can use sugar where I can use wheat flour in the crust or cornstarch to thicken it. We're going to use pumpkin. Of course, we'll use a benign non-caloric sweetener like Stevia or red Bianna. Oralia Lowe's or monk fruit. We won't use wheat flour. We use ground pecans or ground walnuts or ground almonds and you can make Delicious Pies for instance or grave is a sir. So this is not a life of deprivation.
Ation, but in the context of grain sugar elimination and those modest efforts to normalize enzyme resistance. You see that saturated fat and total fat intake has nothing to do with metabolic distortions. It will if you continue to eat grains and sugars and that situation fats are amplifiers of the distortions initiated by carbohydrates and sugars, but if you take the carbohydrates and sugar the initiating factors, you'll find that nothing bad.
Happens with consumption of total fat and saturated in the majority of people as you know, there are genetic variants where there are exaggerated effects, like apoe4 and some other factors, but the majority of people have no so I tell people when you buy pork chops by the kind with fat on it and don't trim it off eat it if you have a steak by a ribeye or other fatty cut eat the fat if you buy ground meat never buy Lean by full fat and butter add coconut oil never restrict fat, never count. Never count.
Calories that's become eminently clear people who count calories now when you are miserable and angry they also get gallstones that's become very clear. They've been now several studies where people were tracked either on low calorie calorie restrictions or low-fat diets at day 0 30 days 60 days 90 days by serial ultrasounds of the gallbladder and people who start with no gallstones develop gallstones by cutting calories cutting fat and
Downing proportion Max as many as 65 percent of people doing this will develop gallstones because what they're doing when you cut calories and or fat is you've left your gallbladder inactive and it's not spitting out its bile in the Bible begins to stagnate and crystallized. That's how you form stones. And so cutting calories cutting fat is not only a metabolic disaster. It's also a gallstone disaster and the majority is people end up with gallbladder surgery, which
Which I think pretty good evidence. That cutting fat cutting calories is a loser's game. Don't do it. It's
horrible you I mean you can be on a reduced calorie diet and still have it be a high-fat diet. Can you not I mean for people that are that are overweight isn't part of the the equation for weight loss that you've got to you know be burning more calories in your then you're in taking every day.
No, you know, I've encouraged people to eat more fat because of the staging the Paradox of fat intake is the more fat you eat.
As food you eat because of its satiating effect. And so I've never and we know that people who cut calories. It's not quite clear if you cut calories but maintain fat intake it's not quite clear what that has what Association there is with gallstones and that situation but I suspect there still is some propensity towards gallstone formation, but no one's looked at that so we don't really know but as a practical matter, I've never had anybody restrict calories now that all set
Ed when you remove brains, in fact things you do is you remove What's called the Glide and protein that you may remember this there's a protein called Glide in and wheat and related proteins and other grains sequel in and Rye hoarding and barley Evan and oats ZN and corn these proteins are very poorly digested by humans because grains are all seeds of grasses humans just don't have the digestive enzymes to constitute to digest grasses.
Or any component of them. So when we consume seeds of grasses grains, one of the proteins is glidin and it's related proteins and you can't break it down into single amino acids, like other proteins. If you wait a pork Chopper or eggs you break it down into single amino acids when you eat the Glide and protein of wheat, you break it down to at best for five amino acids long peptides, but these peptides very unique. There's small enough to penetrate into the human brain and buying the opiate receptors where they have a variety of peculiar effects.
But among which is appetite stimulation. So most people are prompted to consume about an average 400 800 more calories per day when they when grains are part of their diet and people will tell you this they say things like, you know, I had a whole plate of pasta. I was filled to bursting, you know, still hungry. I don't know why I'm still hungry or I ate a bowl of pasta at 6 p.m. I was hungry at eight pm. Had to have a stack. This is relentless.
But take the develops in the gliding derive opioid peptides remove that even though nobody's telling people to cut calories. You'll see that calorie intake drops on average about 400 to 800 calories per day. Sometimes as much as 1500 calories per day, even though we're not saying cut calories and natural ratcheting down at hunger by the way, hunger also feels very different. It's a soft reminder to eat. So many of us will eat for instance breakfast say it's 7:00 a.m. Let's say just say three eggs and some sausage, whatever.
And you'll find it through its three or four pm before you even think about food again. I forgot how many times mask I forgot to eat dinner. Just forgot. I was working. I forgot to eat dinner. So the whole and by the way the reuter I yogurt so Grand illumination there by the gliding derived opioid peptides profound reduction appetite you can even take it further the soul called anorexia genic effect of Roy in oxytocin and you're
Absolutely profound control over appetite. It doesn't mean that food can still taste wonderful it does but you have no temptation whatsoever. This is the kind of control you have you can walk right past the all-you-can-eat food buffet. You can broke walk right past all the pies and cakes at at work. You can pull past the bakery window and not give it a second thought have no interest whatsoever. That's the kind of profound control people are capable of
having. I love that. I've seen that play out of my own life.
If I mean when I have, you know at points in my life when I was eating bread, if the when the breadbasket were to arrive I would have that first bite I wouldn't be able to I wouldn't be able to pump the brakes. I would just go through the entire bread basket. And so I really appreciate what you're saying. It's not necessarily the calories don't matter but it's like you want to set your life up in a way where you don't have to be, you know beholden to this calorie ball and chain, you know, which is I think you've got to be conscious of if you're if you're building your diet on Ultra.
Just foods that are calorie-dense to the point. We were body doesn't know what you're eating, you know, and it's just short circuiting your brain's reward centers and tapping into all those you know, or short circuiting all those satiety, you know checkpoints in your brain. But if your when you avoid these Foods these hyper palatable, you know, grain foods, you don't have to think about calories and who wants to think about
calories at the end of the day. Yeah, its misery, you know, we also have the evidence that came from of all things The Biggest Loser TV show so your listeners may remember this show
put these poor people through Misery by restricting calories 1,200 to 1,400 calories per day despite this extreme vigorous exercise routine many hours a day. So these people are starving all day and being put Through Torture but it worked they lost 30 50 70 a hundred thirty pounds. They left the show the majority of people maintain their caloric restriction and at least a moderate exercise program and regained all that weight. So their metabolic rates were measured formally.
And their metabolic rate had dropped 25% So in other words when you cut calories as they did maintain long-term caloric restriction your metabolic rate compensates because your body thinks you're starving and then you regain all the weight to extreme obese levels, even though you're cut you've cut calories and maintain an exercise program. So cutting calories not only reduces metabolic rate and thereby ensures long term weight regain. It also needs to gallstone formation. So, you know,
No, it's taking all these year drought just how awful some of these dietary restrictions are.
Yeah, that's very unfortunate. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the cholesterol that we get in our food. So I mean dietary cholesterol has largely been exonerated. It's no longer a nutrient of concern according to the FDA which is great. And I you know, love my eggs. I called him a genius food what I mean? Are there are there?
Some people still that need to be concerned about dietary cholesterol. I think you've referred to them as hyper absorbers,
you know, there's there's some uncertainties here. There are some genetic variants like people with a belief or it's a fairly cuz you know, very Hot Topic in the world of dementia, but it also causes hyper absorption of fat and it's not quite clear what these people should do. They're often told by the way to cut their fat which is is horrible advice because when
With a Polly for cuts their fat they are just as prone to type 2 diabetes and other metabolic distortions. Once you do enable e4p when you cut your fat is you cause an explosion in small LDL particles and other metabolic disasters. So cutting fat a play Forza is a disastrous situation, but it's not quite clear what apoe4 people really should do that yields real Improvement. I think that bredesen is argument, you know, the end of Alzheimer's dock in California. He's of course.
Published very good data to show us that it will be for is in effect a huge magnifier of the inflammasome of all the many many hundreds of inflammatory mediators in the body. That's the essence of a pathway for so I think concentrating on dietary fat Etc and they believe force is really kind of a red herring it's focusing the wrong thing. It's really the inflammatory the inflammasome that really requires attention a belief or so, but it's not quite clear. What we should do in April we
or diet-wise but one thing is clear if they should not cut their fat so I don't have a complete answer for you likewise hyper cholesterol India people familial hypercholesterolemia people. It's not quite clear what the ideal situation there is no I would say once again cutting fat once again when you cut When anybody Cuts fact whether it's a regular person or persons lipoprotein a a person with apoe4 person with familial hypercholesterolemia, regardless whenever somebody cuts fat you convert large LDL particles, too.
LDL part and make the situation worse. And as you point out you exaggerate postprandial hyperlipidemias after eating a vldl distortions. You raise insulin resistance. You raise blood sugar. You raise hemoglobin A1c your drop HDL you raise blood pressure in other words, even if you're able we for have those other patterns, you're still just as prone to all these horrible Distortion when you cut fat so one thing is cleared. Nobody should be cutting fat, but it's not entirely clear how
How much advantage of gained by some other kind of dietary manipulation in those genetic
variance, right? Thank you for talking about the apoe4 allele. As you know, that's a big, you know interest area for me. I've written about it extensively and I think it's crucially important and you know, preventing dementia is my one of my primary passions. So thanks for touching on that. You mentioned blood pressure and we don't have that much time left, but I do want to talk about you know, healthy ways of maintaining.
Or natural ways of maintaining a healthy blood pressure because I think something that the research is showing more and more by the day is how important healthy blood pressure is for our brain health. I'm sure you've seen the results of the recent Sprint mind trial where they found that lowering older adult patients blood pressure below what the usual Target would be of a systolic blood pressure of 140 millimeters of mercury.
Ritu and even lower a hundred and twenty systolic blood pressure they found that that was significantly able to prevent mild cognitive impairment or MCI which is which is amazing. So, you know, I think a lot of people are on blood pressure medication and things like that, but what are some ways that we can in our in our in our normal lives like, you know maintain a healthier blood
pressure, you know Max I can tell you that in my world where we illuminate wheat and Grains and
Hers and we take fish oil at a therapeutic dose 3,000 milligrams or more EPA and DHA. We take magnesium perfect perfectly. By the way is something called magnesium water recipes are in all my books on my weekly blog on doctored blog normal normalized vitamin D blood levels 260 270 nanograms per milliliter optimized thyroid status. That's a whole conversation and then take basic efforts to cultivate healthy bowel Flora -
high blood pressure within that setting Max's is not non-existent, but it's damn close. Well almost nobody has high blood pressure doing these it might take if you're 293 pounds and you should be a hundred sixty pounds. It may take a year to reduce blood pressure but these and by the way, these supplements are all addressing intrinsic human need. This is not like taking ashwagandha, which has no basic human need for our sweet. There's no ashwagandha defeat. I'm not picking ashwagandha just an example.
Ben head that we have no intrinsic need for we need magnesium but we drink filtered water. Thereby get no magnesium. We live indoors and cities where clothes getting older. We don't activate D in the skin anymore. So we have to take vitamin D. So we're addressing the intrinsic needs built into human genetic code. When you do that, that's when blood pressure the vast majority of people on two three four blood pressure medicines. They say I had to stop them because my blood pressure was 90. I was getting lightheaded.
And so it's very uncommon I can count on one hand the number of people who had persistent high blood pressure on this program those basic efforts. There's an occasional complicates somebody that's kidney dysfunction or somebody who has some genetic variation that can happen. But those very uncommon to have persistent high blood pressure in the context of these basic efforts.
I feel like many people with high blood pressure go to the go to see their cardiologist in the end the first and probably only recommendation recommendation that they get is to cut the salt.
And
soul. So as you know, what happens when you cut salt you worsen insulin resistance, you actually make the situation worse. I'm I'm shocked that the American Heart Association has stuck to its advice to restrict sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams per day, even though it's been constantly shown that that increases cardiovascular death. That's because there's a hormonal compensation when you cut so to that degree that includes a risin adrenaline rise in court.
Gasol and other effects and you actually harm people there are very rare instances with certain types of disease where people must restrict sodium but the vast majority of us do not benefit by cutting salt. In fact, I encourage people to use salt like sea salt and it actually improves insulin resistance now, I should point this out when we when people go wheat and grain and sugar free in the first week. We have to I learned this lesson many years ago.
Have to encourage people to drink more water and salt their food because people sometimes even pass out from low blood pressure because you lose the sodium retention of high levels of insulin and of the Glide and protein of wheat, so I learned long ago got to tell people make sure you drink lots of water and salt your food and even salt your water just a quick dash of salt not so it's salty just a little bit and you won't be passing out. So we actually have to supplement sodium on this lifestyle because we lost the abnormal soon.
Tension and then pay people tell me their leg edema is much better their blood pressures better. They had to stop their their diuretic and their beta blocker or something like
that. Wow. So interesting, I also think salt is just amazing for making Bland healthy food palatable. I mean, you know, absolutely I've always been perplexed when people tell me that they don't enjoy vegetables because they don't taste good and I'm like, you're just really your you'd probably just grew up in a house where your parents weren't supposed seasoning them properly.
Right throw some some butter or in salt and garlic on those, you know brussels sprouts here in for like a whole new
universe. Yeah. Absolutely.
It's amazing. Well, we're just about out of time. Dr. Davis. I feel like I could talk to you all day. You're just a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared on this episode. My pleasure. Yeah, before we get to the last question that gives us to everybody where can listeners connect with you over the internet.
A good starting place is the Facebook page is a wheat belly. Facebook page is a nun doctors Facebook page as a very very busy week belly blog and an undoctored blog people who want to really dive deep and want to talk about lipoproteins and lipoprotein apoe4 and bowel flora and right away. Oh Kurt, we do in a place called the undoctored Inner Circle, which is a paid membership site, but a good starting place is the Wheat Belly
blog. That's awesome. And we belly revised and expanded just came out.
It's super great. People should pick it up. It was a it was a groundbreaking book and it continues to be so yeah, definitely check that out. Alright, dr. Davis will the last question take it wherever you'd like. It's more of a philosophical question, but can't wait to hear what you have to say. What does it mean to you to live a genius life?
You know it means so if we're talking about this notion of preserving cognitive ability, you know, we can talk about phosphatidyl serine we could talk about the antifungal strategies, but you know, I it's amazing. It's amazes me how much power there is in just getting the basics right the basics alone, you know, if you and I accept that this is that is true that dementia and cognitive impairment is really just
Three diabetes that is insulin resistance this this approach cut out wheat grains and sugars normalize the nutrients your body needs that affect insulin sensitivity just these basic efforts along because as you know, you can be very daunting. When you embark on a program of maintaining cognitive Health, but 90% of the benefits come from just getting the basics right get those Basics right get rid of visceral fat normalize your blood vitamin D get your omega-3 fatty acid levels up high, you know.
Grains have no small LDL particles normalized postprandial lipoproteins and then talk about things like, you know, all the supplements. You might want to talk about our apoe4 or the inflammasome basic still count.
Oh, yeah. We're ashwagandha, you really love your ashwagandha? Okay, cool. Thank you for all that. That was amazing to all you guys out there in podcast land. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure to share this episode of the show highlight your favorite quote from dr.
Before I tag us each we very much appreciate that spread the word about what we're doing here the genius life and I will catch you on the next episode Peace guys.
