Defiant Health Radio with Dr. William Davis
Defiant Health Radio with Dr. William Davis
What Lessons Can We Learn From the 50-Year Low-Fat Dietary Mistake?
Why has the 50-year-old recommendation to reduce dietary fat failed to make a dent in heart disease, death, or heart procedures? Could it be that the entire premise of this advice is based on flawed evidence and misleading conclusions about LDL cholesterol? In this eye-opening episode, we uncover the shocking truth about the ineffectiveness of cutting dietary fat and how it's time for a new approach to managing cardiovascular risk.
We dive into the science behind carbohydrates and sugars, and how they create small LDL particles - a direct cause of coronary disease. These particles are different from LDL cholesterol and can persist in our bloodstream for five to seven days, giving them ample time to create atherosclerotic plaque in our coronary arteries. We debunk myths about measuring small LDL particles and emphasize the need for individuals to take control of their own health by understanding how to manage it effectively.
Don't miss out on the strategies that could help reduce or even eliminate your cardiovascular risk, such as the Wheat Belly books, Super Gut books, or joining the DrDavisInfiniteHealth.com website. It's time to join the movement for self-empowered health and take control of your well-being today! So tune in, get informed, and make the change that could save your life.
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Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, and low-carb snack bars here. *
They are currently also offering a 12% discount that continues for life for their Wild Pastures grass-fed, grass-finished beef and pastured chicken and pork! Go here for more information.
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For Cutting Edge Cultures starting cultures and probiotics, go here.
A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code DEFIANT (case-insensitive) at checkout.*
*Dr. Davis and his organization are financially
_________________________________________________________________________________
For BiotiQuest probiotics, go here.
A 15% discount id available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
*Dr. Davis and his organization are financially compensated for supporting these products.
Books:
Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight
Ask most mainstream doctors What sort of diet should I follow to reduce risk for heart disease, meaning coronary heart disease that leads to heart attacks, procedures such as stent implantation and bypass surgery and sudden cardiac death? The majority will answer that you should reduce your intake of total and saturated fat and increase consumption of vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Some of the better informed would say that a Mediterranean diet or the DASH diet would be better. Regardless, these are all variations on reducing intake of total and saturated fat, while emphasizing vegetables, fruit and whole grains. The evidence held up in favor of cutting dietary fat emerged from studies conducted in the 1950s and 1960 that, if examined today in light of what we know about the construction of human clinical studies, will be tossed out as useless. Yet cutting total and saturated fat and replacing them with polyunsaturated fats such as corn oil and soybean oil remain the prevailing belief many years later. Has it worked? Has the more than 50 years ever since people like Dr Ansel Keys, an oceanographer and physiologist, and Dr Jeremiah Stamler, a cardiologist, championed low-fat diets to combat cardiovascular disease? Has this resulted in a reduction in cardiovascular events? It has not. There are now also more than 80 million Americans taking statin cholesterol drugs to reduce LDL cholesterol, with no meaningful impact on reducing the incidence of heart disease. The campaign to reduce cigarette smoking has reduced cardiovascular events, but it stops there. The diet advice to cut dietary fat and the popularity of statin cholesterol drugs to reduce LDL cholesterol has had no meaningful impact on the incidence of heart disease, death from heart disease or the delivery of heart procedures. In this episode of Defiant Health, let's discuss why this collection of falsehoods persist, why LDL cholesterol that underlies much dietary advice is a deeply flawed value and yields misleading conclusions, and all the lessons that we can learn from this 50-year dietary blunder. Later in the podcast, let's talk about Defiant Health's sponsors that include Paleo Valley, who provide fermented grass-fed beef sticks, bone broth, protein rich in collagen, organic supergreens and low-carb superfood bars, and now 100% grass-fed and finished pastured meats. Cutting Edge Cultures, a source for excellent starter cultures to create your own naturally fermented vegetables, yogurts and cafes in the convenience of your own kitchen. And our newest sponsor, biodicuest, who provides unique probiotics such as sugar shift to support healthy blood sugars and simple slumber to assist in obtaining healthy sleep, probiotics crafted with the unique property of combining synergistic microbes.
William Davis, MD:Back in the 1960s, two doctors, Dr Ansel Keys and Dr Jeremiah Stamler lobbied, or essentially bullied, the newly formed American Heart Association to advocate for what they called a prudent diet, one that was low in total fat, low in saturated fat, a belief that was based more on faith or opinion, not on evidence. The evidence at that time supporting this contention that cutting dietary fat would reduce cardiovascular risk was virtually non-existent. The studies that had been performed revealed no relationship of saturated fat or total fat intake and cardiovascular disease incidents. There were many opponents of this contention that dietary fat caused heart disease, people such as Dr Pete Ahrens of the Rockefeller Institute, Dr John Yudkin in the UK. One notable vocal critic of this idea was Dr George Mann of Vanderbilt, who studied the Maasai indigenous populations in Kenya, who ate large quantities of saturated fat through eating animal flesh, drinking whole milk and drinking blood from their livestock. They had virtually no coronary disease and had very low cholesterol values. Nonetheless, these two very strong personalities who are very persuasive, dr Keys and Dr Miller, continue to argue that cutting saturated and total fat would reduce cardiovascular risk, and they essentially bullied and made fun of anybody who argued against their ideas.
William Davis, MD:Keys did perform an epidemiologic study called the Seven Countries study, in which he tabulated the saturated and total fat intake in various countries and reported that the seven countries that had the highest incidence of cardiovascular disease had the greatest saturated fat intake in. The country with the lowest incidence of cardiovascular disease had the least intake of saturated fat. This really changed the tide and convinced many other people that intake of total and saturated fat was indeed the cause behind cardiovascular disease, until it was found out that Keys had manipulated his data. He selectively reported the countries that supported his arguments and neglected many countries that did not agree with his contention. If he had reported the entire data set, it would have shown that there was no relationship of total and saturated fat intake with cardiovascular disease. Nonetheless, media found this argument very persuasive that getting more fat in the diet caused fat to accumulate in the coronary arteries and cause heart attack.
William Davis, MD:But because it remained controversial, a number of studies were performed over the years, such as the Framingham-Hart study, the Anti-Carnary Club trial, the Los Angeles Veterans trial, the Finnish Mental Hospital study, the Oslo study, the huge Mr Fit study of 12,000 men who had total cholesterol values of 290 mg per deciliter or greater. The biggest and best funded study of all was the Women's Health Initiative that enrolled 49,000 women, the conduct of the trial was successful, but the females who reduced total and saturated fat experienced no reduction in cardiovascular events. In other words, study after study showed that reducing total or saturated fat in the diet did not reduce cardiovascular events like heart attacks. They did show, however, most of the studies showed that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat increased death, especially from cancer. Keys and Stamler nonetheless managed to persuade people at the American Heart Association to embrace products like Crisco and Margerin as a means of reducing cardiovascular events and saturated fat, even though there was no basis for this argument.
William Davis, MD:Another phenomenon that emerged from these clinical trials demonstrating no association of fat intake and cardiovascular disease was that it became clear that total cholesterol was virtually useless as a predictor of cardiovascular events and the so-called bad or LDL cholesterol was at best a weak predictor, at best a poor predictor and, in many cases, not a predictor at all of cardiovascular events. Despite all this, we still have a world, including many health care practitioners such as primary care doctors, cardiologists and others, who still cling to the idea that fat is bad, that they make you fat, that they raise cholesterol values, that they cause heart disease, even though the evidence demonstrates that none of this is true, but this 50-year failed experiment in cutting total and saturated fat and managing cholesterol values has taught us a number of lessons, because when you cut total and saturated fat, a number of bad things happen to people's health, and among those lessons we've learned by this failed dietary experiment include an explosion in overweight and obesity. Now, people who cut fat eat more healthy whole grains and all that are now overweight or obese. 72% of all American adults are now overweight or obese, a several-fold increase over the prevalence of obesity and overweight several decades earlier. Many people who offer dietary advice say that the people who have gained weight do so because they're lazy or they're slothful, or they're indulgent and overeat and don't move enough, and so tell these people to move more, eat less. Those kinds of messages, not recognizing that it was their original vice that got people in this situation in the first place, before misguided dietary guidelines got in the way and fouled things up. Another phenomenon, of course, is that there has been an explosion, an epidemic, of type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes The number of type 2 diabetics and pre-diabetics in the US is now approaching 100 million and the process that underlies the development of these conditions pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, that is, insulin resistance, now affects two-thirds of the US population, including teenagers and children, and the idea, the advice to cut total and saturated fat has been a major contributor to that phenomenon. Fatty liver is yet another phenomenon that's exploded because of this advice to cut total and saturated fat and increase consumption of healthy whole grains, of course made worse by predatory or exploitative practices of the food industry, so that 30 to 50% of all Americans now have fatty liver.
William Davis, MD:Fatty liver is not benign. It can lead in a substantial proportion to cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is a devastating condition in which you are crippled essentially by your metabolic distortions. You can develop something called ascites, in which your abdomen becomes distended with accumulating fluid and it has to be drained periodically. Some people have a drain that redirects that fluid in your abdomen to one of the veins in your neck and you promptly die within a short period after developing cirrhosis or develop complete liver failure and put a liver transplant list.
William Davis, MD:My colleagues often tell their patients if you have fatty liver because your AST, alt blood levels are high, those are liver markers, or they did an ultrasound or CT scan or MRI and that shows fatty deposition, accumulation of fat in your liver. They'll just watch you because there's nothing they can do about it. Maybe just lose a few pounds about the best advice they have. But let me translate what they're saying. What they're saying is if you have fatty liver and on your way to cirrhosis and liver failure, we don't have any pharmaceutical agents nor procedures. What they don't tell you is that there are tritonal and lifestyle modifications that are extremely effective in reversing fatty liver. I've done it many times. I've had many hundreds of people do it. It's easy to do and it can be accomplished within a few weeks.
William Davis, MD:Another lesson we had to learn the hard way is that fats and oils are satiating. They make food taste better and they make you feel satisfied. When you take fats and oils out of the diet, you're always hungry, and sesame hunger is the rule. Now combine that, of course, with glide and derived opioid peptides that come from wheat and grains that are appetite stimulants. So the lack of fat, the satiating effect of fats and oils, coupled with glide and derived opioid peptides, makes you hungry all the time, even if you just ate.
William Davis, MD:Another lesson learned from the low fat era was that LDL cholesterol is a flawed marker. We know that total cholesterol is virtually useless, but LDL cholesterol is a deeply flawed mark for a variety of reasons. One, it's not a real value. Whenever you get your cholesterol panel, you'll notice that LDL cholesterol is accompanied by something in parentheses calculated. So LDL cholesterol is typically not measured, it's calculated. Well, the calculation is quite easy, except that the assumptions built into that equation are deeply flawed. There are assumptions such as that we all eat the same diet, none of us have diabetes, all of us have fabled triglyceride levels which, of course, is not true for many people and that when you change the diet, the equation is invalid and it generates wildly inaccurate numbers. Any change in diet, whether it's cutting your fat or cutting carbohydrates, invalidates this equation. It's called the Frito-Well calculation. It invalidates it and makes it wildly inaccurate, so much so as to be absolutely useless. You can have high risk for heart disease at a low LDL cholesterol. You can have low or no risk for cardiovascular events with a high LDL cholesterol, because it is a fictitious number that is virtually useless, despite being the sole focus of most of my colleagues' efforts to reduce cardiovascular risk and treating it with such things as statin cholesterol drugs.
William Davis, MD:Another lesson we had to learn from the low-fat 50-year blunder is that cutting saturated fat causes us to avoid foods that would have provided us with collagen and hyaluronic acid. These are major factors that determine your body shape and composition. So a diet lacking collagen, because you're not eating organs liver, tongue, heart, brain, skin Yeah, you're avoiding saturated fat, but you're also depleting your body of collagen and hyaluronic acid. These two, especially when put together, are major influences over body composition. When you get collagen and hyaluronic acid from organs, you reduce abdominal visceral fat and you increase lean muscle mass. Look around you You see people with big bellies, lots of fat and often lack of muscle. So lack of collagen and hyaluronic acid exaggerates that phenomenon And the majority of people avoid taking in sources of collagen and hyaluronic acid because they're fearful of the saturated fat content of organ meats. And lastly, a lesson learned long ago in the 1950s, 1960s and it has been corroborated over and over again in more modern clinical trials is that when you replace saturated fat with polyunsaturates such as corn oil, vegetable oils, soybean oils, you increase the death rate, especially from cancer. So the cut your total fat, cut your saturated fat has been a very destructive message, but it yielded many new lessons that we likely would not have learned had we not made this 50-year-long low-fat blunder.
William Davis, MD:Let's take a short break and let me tell you about the sponsors for the Defiant Health Podcast. When we come back, let's talk about the solutions to this misguided 50-year blunder of low-fat dieting. The Defiant Health Podcast is sponsored by Paleo Valley makers of delicious grass-fed beef sticks, healthy snack bars and other products. We are very picky around here and insist that any product we consider has no junk ingredients like maltodextrin, carrageenan, carboxymethylcellulose, superlose and, of course, no-edged sugars. And all Paleo Valley products contain no gluten nor grains. In fact, i find Paleo Valley products among the cleanest of any in their category, and they're truly delicious.
William Davis, MD:One of the habits I urge everyone to get into is to include a fermented food product at least once, if not several times, per day in their lifestyles. Unlike nearly all other beef sticks available, the Paleo Valley grass-fed beef sticks are all naturally fermented, meaning they contain probiotic bacterial species. And now Paleo Valley is expanding their Wild Pastures program that provides 100% grass-fed, grass-finished, pastured beef and pastured chicken and pork raised without herbicides or pesticides and raised in the USA. And they've just added wild-caught seafood caught from the waters of Bristol Bay, alaska. They're now offering a 20% lifetime discount in every order for a limited time, i'll post the web address in the Defiant Health Show notes. Shipping for Paleo Valley products is free for orders of $75 or more. To order, just go to paleovalleycom backward slash Defiant Health. No coupon code required. The 15% discount will be automatically applied. The web address is also listed in the Defiant Health Show notes that accompany this podcast. And be sure to take a look at their other products, such as their organic super greens rich with phytonutrients, and their super food bars that come in dark chocolate chip, apple cinnamon and lemon meringue. They're low carb, of course, with 8 grams net carbs per bar.
William Davis, MD:The folks at Paleo Valley have lately been busy recently adding some interesting new products, including pasture raised, fermented pork sticks, chocolate flavored grass-fed bone broth protein, grass-fed organ complex in capsule form, pumpkin spice, super food bars with grass-fed bone broth protein and new essential electrolytes in powder form to add to the potassium and magnesium intake of your lifestyle, available in orange, lemon and melon flavors. Go to paleovalleycom backward slash Defiant Health to receive your 15% discount. No discount code is required.
William Davis, MD:I'd like to also introduce you to Defiant Health's newest sponsor, cutting Edge Cultures, which provides a variety of high quality starter cultures for your fermenting projects, including several servings of fermented foods in your daily routine is among the most important practices you can adopt to maintain or restore the health of your gastrointestinal microbiome. Cutting Edge Cultures makes it easy with starter cultures for culturing vegetables with their culture veggies starter, yogurt with the yogurt plus starter, and kefir with easy kefir starter. They've also added LR superfood starter to cultivate one of my favorite microbes, lactobacillus rotari, and L-gasseri superfood starter to grow lactobacillus gasseri, both extremely important gut microbes lost by modern people. They also have a convenient prebiotic powder called prebioplus that makes it easy to add important prebiotic fibers to coffee, yogurt or other foods. And you've got to try their kefir soda starter that makes an effervescent soda-like drink filled with healthy probiotic species. Go to Cutting Edge Cultures website to enter the discount code Defiant not case sensitive for a 15% discount for Defiant Health listeners. Web address and show notes. Using Cutting Edge Cultures not only allows you to pick and choose some of the microbes you ferment, but also saves time by cutting back on the amount of time required to ferment your foods. And I'd also like to welcome Defiant Health's newest sponsor, BiotiQuest. I've had numerous conversations with BiotiQuest founders Martha Carlin, and academic microbiologist, Dr Raul Cano. They have formulated unique synergistic probiotic products that incorporate what are called collaborative or guild effects, that is, groups of microbes that collaborate with each other via specific metabolites, potentially providing synergistic benefits. They have designed their sugar shift probiotic to support healthy blood sugars. Simply slumber, to support sleep. Ideal immunity to support a healthy immune response. Heart-centered that supports several aspects of heart health. And antibiotic antidote designed to support recovery of your gastrointestinal microbiome after a course of antibiotics. Biodquest probiotics are, i believe, among the most effective among all probiotic choices for specific health effects. Enter the discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) for a 15% discount for Defiant Health listeners.
William Davis, MD:Now let's get back to our discussion. So let's now take a more enlightened approach to reducing cardiovascular risk. Let's accept that we spent the last 50 or more years enduring outcomes like increased heart attack, stroke, diabetes, amputations, kidney failure, blindness and all the other adverse outcomes that develop when you cut fat, cut saturated fat and weigh your diet more heavily in favor of carbohydrates such as those from grains. All that indigenous human populations such as the Masai, studied by Dr George Manna number of years ago, have virtually no coronary disease, no stroke, no type 2 diabetes, no hemorrhoids, no ulcerative colitis, no Crohn's disease, no rosation, no psoriasis. In other words, they don't have the same kinds of diseases we have. They have problems, of course, but they're mostly from injury and infection and infestation, such as worms, but they don't have the kinds of modern diseases that we have. I think there's an important lesson in that, including they make no effort, of course, to avoid saturated fat or total fat, and they in fact often have abundant intakes of fat yet have no coronary or other forms of atherosclerotic disease.
William Davis, MD:Now, one of the great tragedies of this being waylaid by focusing on cholesterol and LDL cholesterol is that the real tools, the real strategies to reduce or even eradicate cardiovascular risk have been available for decades. But one of the great impediments to broadcasting this message is that the things that you, the strategy you can follow to reduce or eliminate cardiovascular risk, cost almost nothing. So there's no pot of gold for a doctor, a hospital or a pharmaceutical company to tell you these things, but you can gain control, dramatic, magnificent control over cardiovascular risk at little cost, and it involves absolutely no pharmaceutical agents nor procedures, only natural methods that are readily available to you. For instance, we know that small LDL particles not LDL cholesterol LDL cholesterol was meant to be an indirect gauge of total LDL particles We've been able to measure directly LDL particles and count them and characterize them for decades. But that method does not generate need for drugs. It's ignored in favor of LDL cholesterol broadcast as a need, an indication for statin cholesterol drugs and other drugs. Small LDL particles are unique.
William Davis, MD:Now, bear with me, this is a little bit complicated. The whole process starts with consumption of carbohydrates and sugars Carbohydrates such as the amylopectin A of wheat and grains. Or sugars, including fructose, high fructose corn syrup sucrose. So the liver is very good at converting those carbs and sugars to triglycerides. This process is called de novo lipogenesis, the creation of fats, lipogenesis from carbohydrates. Now the liver makes these triglycerides. Triglycerides cannot float in the bloodstream freely because they're fats and they would plug up capillaries and you have damage to organs. So the liver releases these triglycerides packaged as very low density lipoproteins, vldl. They're low density because they're full of fat and fat is less dense than water or other aqueous liquids and so it's a very low density particle. So VLDL particles are packaged by the liver, created from carbohydrates. Via this process of liver de novo lipogenesis, vldl particles are themselves a direct cause of coronary disease, coronary atherosclerosis at least the heart attacks and other events. But VLDL also interacts with LDL particles, not LDL cholesterol. We got to forget about this silly notion of LDL cholesterol and indirect and crude marker VLDL particles interact with LDL particles, so VLDL particles rich in triglycerides transfer some of the triglycerides to LDL particles And these LDL particles go through a series of reactions that make them very small.
William Davis, MD:When they're small, they're more readily able to penetrate into the walls of arteries, contributing to atherosclerosis. They're more adherent to the structural tissues within arteries and they're more likely to trigger an inflammatory reaction in the artery. Small LDL particles also persist in the bloodstream for five to seven days, not the 24 hours of normal large LDL particles. And that's because when the LDL particle is small, the recognition protein that's on the surface of these particles it's called APL protein B is partially concealed by the change in surface conformation of the small size particle, and the liver has a hard time recognizing this small particle and does not clear it from the bloodstream. So you have a bagel or a sandwich or a bowl of pasta On Monday. You still have small LDL particles circulating, thereby giving it an opportunity to create atherosclerotic plaque in your coronary arteries by the weekend. So small LDL particles are perfectly crafted to lead to coronary disease. They're caused by consumption of carbohydrates and sugars.
William Davis, MD:Now, to measure small LDL particles, you can't just do a cholesterol panel, a lipid panel. You have to do a lipoprotein panel. That is a test that measures the actual fat carrying particles in the bloodstream An indirect marker like cholesterol, but the actual particles themselves. The method I've relied on for many years is called NMR Lipoprotein Analysis Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Lipoprotein Testing. You can get these from a variety of laboratories. You can even get them on your own without participation of the doctor. Unfortunately, if you ask most of my colleagues, can I get an NMR Lipoprotein Panel? They'll say stupid things like oh, insurance doesn't cover it or oh, that's not accepted or it's unproven. None of this is true, by the way. There have been 55 human clinical trials that have studied the value of measuring small LDL particles as a predictor of cardiovascular disease and over and over again, they have proven to be dramatically superior to crude measures like LDL cholesterol.
William Davis, MD:Let me translate what the doctor is saying. The doctor is saying when they tell you it's not covered by insurance or it's unproven. What they're saying is I don't care enough about your health to invest the time and effort to educate myself on how to interpret lipoprotein testing, because I rely on the drug representatives to teach me how to interpret cholesterol panels to prescribe statin drugs. And that's the extent of my interest. That is the full extent of my interest. This is wrong, this is unethical. It's denying you the opportunity to gain extra insight, deep insight, and to your risk for cardiovascular disease. But that's not the doctor's job. The doctor's job, as they see it, is to dispense pharmaceuticals and procedures. It's not your health. So when it comes to understanding how to manage health, it's up to you.
William Davis, MD:So if you want to see what your small LDL and VLDL particles look like, you need to get a lipoprotein analysis. The most accessible and, i think, the most reliable method is the NMR Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Lipoprotein Analysis. Now, one of the great conveniences we have is you've likely had cholesterol panels and there's, of course, four values on a cholesterol panel. We ignore total cholesterol because it's useless. We ignore LDL cholesterol because it's not a real number. But the other two values, the HDL cholesterol and the triglycerides, actually have some value, especially the triglyceride value, and the reason for that is those VLDL particles I mentioned that the liver produces and releases into the bloodstream parallel perfectly with the triglyceride level in a cholesterol panel. So while you can do the NMR lipoproteins for your small LDL value, you can actually rely on a standard cholesterol panel, ignoring those cholesterol values but looking at the triglycerides, because the triglycerides track perfectly with VLDL particles And what we do with triglycerides is we aim to keep it at 60 milligrams per deciliter or less, and you never need medications to do this.
William Davis, MD:You do not need those prescription fish oil, fibrate drugs or statin drugs or any other agent to reduce triglycerides, because you have astounding impressive complete control over your triglycerides using these methods that involve elimination of the foods that trigger de novo lipogenesis right Wheat, grains and sugars. We add nutrients that address insulin resistance, especially omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, and addressing the microbiome. All the strategies I provided, my programs, minimize triglycerides, thereby VLDL, and they're no longer available to cause coronary disease directly, nor to interact with LDL particles to yield small LDL particles. We also want to shut down insulin resistance and inflammation. How do we do that? Well, the diet gives you a huge head start on that. Elimination of wheat and grains, for instance, means you're not raising blood sugar, you're not raising insulin, you're not generating insulin resistance.
William Davis, MD:We adjust common nutrient deficiencies omega-3 fatty acids that I mentioned vitamin D, magnesium and iodine. They seem unconnected, right, but when you restore those nutrients that are lacking, largely lacking in modern life for instance, we drink filtered water. You have to. You can't drink from a stream or river. That is water running over rocks and minerals. That carries magnesium. You have to filter your water or your city has to filter your water to remove pesticide, herbicide residues, sewage and other contaminants, and it removes all magnesium. So we replace those nutrients that are lacking in modern life. The great thing is the diet with those four nutrients lacking in your life synergize to reverse insulin resistance and inflammation.
William Davis, MD:And then, lastly, we take steps to cultivate a healthier gastrointestinal microbiome. That's a whole conversation of its own. I invite you to listen to my other Defiant Health podcast episodes or my blog, the drdavisinfanthealth. com blog. I show you how to assess your microbiome and take steps to restore something close to a healthy microbiome. But it starts with consumption, frequent consumption, of fermented foods like kefir's, kombucha, kimchi, vegetables you ferment on your kitchen counter. We work to maintain an intake of prebiotic fibers and related compounds from such things as legumes like white beans, black beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, hummus, root vegetables, dandelion greens, leeks, onions, garlic, shallots, because these are the factors that cause a bloom in healthy microbial species in your gastrointestinal tract Health healthy species such as Akkermansia and Faecalibacterium that produce, butyrate and generate numerous beneficial effects on your body, such as a reduction in insulin resistance, reduced blood pressure, reduced blood sugar, better in sleep, vivid dreams, better mood and other beneficial effects.
William Davis, MD:If you were to track all the measures that are genuinely relevant to cardiovascular risk, not cholesterol values. If you were to track, for instance, nmr lipoproteins and when the first time you do this, make sure you include lipoprotein A. It's a genetic marker. Assess your thyroid status at the start, before you start iodine, so get a TSH, a free T3, a free T4, thyroid antibodies and reverse T3. Get measures relevant to blood sugar, hemoglobin A1C, fasting glucose, fasting insulin and get the measure of your vitamin D status, a 25-hydroxy vitamin D, and get at least one measure of your inflammatory status, such as C-reactive protein.
William Davis, MD:If you were to obtain all these measures at the start not cholesterol testing, but these measures that actually reflect your metabolic health and you embark on this program of no wheat, no grains, no sugars in your diet, not restricting fat, eating a diet that favors whole foods and not fake foods, industrial foods, commercial foods and add those nutrients that are lacking vitamin D, iodine, omega-3 fatty acids and magnesium and then take steps to cultivate a healthier gastrointestinal microbiome, you will see dramatic transformation. You will see small LDL dropping from a high value let's say 1800 nanomoles per liter, part of account, per volume to something like zero or other very low number. You'll see triglycerides dropping, say, from 150 milligrams per deciliter that guarantees you have VLDL particles in small LDL to something like 47 milligrams. You'll see HDL rise, even if it's really low, like, say, 27 or 28 milligrams, to something really high like 98 or 102. You're going to see hemoglobin A1C fasting, glucose fasting, insulin dropping dramatically. You're going to see your 25-hydroxy vitamin D rise to a truly healthy level. We aim for 60 to 70 nanorhunt per milliliter and about 20% of people who add iodine and do these other things will see normalization of the thyroid panel. Some people do need to pursue the thyroid question further, because thyroid dysfunction is an epidemic now also. About 35% of the US population now has thyroid disease for a variety of reasons, some of which is due to consumption of the modern forms of wheat and thereby the glydein protein that initiates the autoimmune attack on your thyroid Hashimoto's disease as well as exposure to industrial and commercial compounds such as perfluoroacnolic acid and other PFOS chemicals.
William Davis, MD:Now, if you want to know more about the history of how we got here, how so much information and disinformation got propagated and continues to dominate the thinking of my colleagues and the public, unfortunately, there are two excellent books. They're a number of years old, but the history remains just as accurate as it was when these books were released. The two books that chronicle these events one is The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz, and Good Calories Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. Both are excellent, they're interesting reads, but it lays bare All the mistakes made, all the misinterpretations, misrepresentations, biases and bullying that went on to create this awful, blundering low-fat, low-saturated fat, statin cholesterol, ldl cholesterol message.
William Davis, MD:If you want deeper information and the specific strategies we follow to reduce or eliminate cardiovascular risk, then I invite you to get some of my books the Wheat Belly books, Undoctored, Super Gut books or join my community, drdavisinfinitehealth. com website, where we have a very busy discussion forum with several hundred thousand discussion topics and my blog, which has over 2,000 articles, our extensive video library that covers numerous topics and, of course, our weekly live Zoom meetings, where we talk together and we discuss new ideas, new discoveries, ways to navigate the program and all sorts of other things, all relevant to your health. Now, if you learned something new from this episode of the Defiant Health Podcast, i invite you to subscribe to your favorite podcast directory. Post review tell your friends we are trying to build a movement of self-empowerment and health, a movement that builds with your understanding and participation. It's not coming from the doctorate nor the health care system. Thanks for listening.
