Change Your Brain Every Day - What Insulin Resistance Means to Your Body, with Dr. Jonny Bowden

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen are once again joined by the “Nutrition Myth Buster” Dr. Jonny Bowden. In this episode, the discussion is on insulin resistance, and why this marker is a major predictor for major potential health problems. Dr. Bowden and the Amens also reveal which tests should be considered in place of the traditional cholesterol test to give you more important information. For more info on Dr. Jonny Bowden, visit https://jonnybowden.com/  

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back, everyone. We are here with Dr. Johnny Bowden, our friend and author of the great cholesterol myth revised and expanded. We hope this is really

helping you. And Johnny, so what are the cholesterol numbers people should know? The tests that I think people should get are not the LDL HDL test. If you want to look at blood lipids, which is what that basically is, you need to ask for some version of the particle test. And if your doctor like Tannis did balks at that, then ask for ApoB. ApoB is a magnificent surrogate for the particle test. As we talked about in a previous episode, particles are the bolts, cholesterol is the cargo. We don't care that much about the cargo. We want to know about the bolts. Those are the ones that get damaged. Those are the ones that get stuck in the endothelial wall and cause all the mischief and the inflammation

and the oxidation and eventually the beginning of plaque. But it's the bolts that get caught in those parking spaces. Not the – the cholesterol doesn't get dumped until the bolt gets injured. So we need to be counting those particles. We need to be looking at the size and condition of those bolts, those particles. And those tests are available now. But the thing that we found in redoing this book and really doing a deep dive into research going back to 1970 is that there is a predictor, not only for heart disease, but for the entire portfolio of

cardiometabolic problems, starting with pre-diabetes and metabolic syndrome, progressing to diabetes, progressing to what we call pre-heart disease, and then on to heart disease and obesity. All of them have one underlying similarity. And that particular thing that we can test for shows up a decade before your doctor says, oh, Mrs. Jones, you got some high cholesterol there. Maybe we should, but before they even see your A1C for diabetes, before any of that, this shows up. And I don't know if your audience will know the term. It's not a sexy term, but I'd be happy to explain it in really simple terms. It's called insulin resistance. And when you see insulin, I'll give you a perfect example of one of the seminal studies in this 1970, this guy invents the insulin assay, which is a test for insulin

resistance. And it's a very, very rigorous test. You have the patient has to be in the doctor's office for a number of hours. They have two different tubes. One's measuring blood, one's keeping blood sugar constant, the other's measuring insulin. It's not a test everybody would have, but he developed this perfect, wonderful test. And he put like four or 5,000 patients, he had gone through that. And he put them into groups in terms of insulin resistance. And insulin resistance is just a short, a technical term for you, you don't metabolize carbohydrates in an ideal way. So your blood sugar goes up too high and then insulin comes along and tries to bring it down. And after a while, if you keep overdoing it with carbohydrates, the system stops working. The cells stop listening to insulin and you're on your way to prediabetes.

That's basically what it is. You can measure this. So he would put these people in categories of how well their insulin system worked. They eat carbohydrates. In comes insulin. Removes the sugar from the bloodstream. Those are insulin-sensitive people. He put them in five groups.

The people who are really insulin-sensitive, their carbohydrate metabolism right on. They eat. It goes down. Perfect. Second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth worst, with the fifth worst being the most insulin-resistant. Their system didn't work. second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth worst, with the fifth worst being the most insulin resistant. Their system didn't work. And then he watched them for 10 years to see who died.

So when he combined things like heart disease, heart attacks, death, strokes, all that stuff, it turns out that they were all in the high groups, four and five. You know how many people in the insulin-sensitive group died over the next 10 years? Zero. So this was the first clue that, wait a minute, we're able to see this stuff, these deaths from heart disease are showing up 10 years ago.

It starts with insulin resistance even before the other stuff starts moving. In the 80s, a researcher, probably your audience may even be familiar with Gerald Weaven from Stanford University, invented quote-unquote syndrome X, which then became metabolic syndrome. He did the same thing. He measured insulin resistance. He kind of put it on the map. He came up with this syndrome of five things where you have abdominal obesity and you have high triglycerides and bad HDL, and it's called metabolic, high blood pressure, it's metabolic syndrome.

And he kept finding that this insulin resistance tracked with all these cardiometabolic diseases. And at the end of his career, he said, I wonder if they track with anything else. It's not the best predictor we have for diabetes and 80% of diabetics die of heart disease. But he wondered, could it be related to other stuff? So he does the same study that Kelly did in 1970. And he literally tracks it. And guess what? It predicts cancer. It predicts fatty liver disease. It predicts some lung disease. It is a magnificent predictor of bad things to come. And as you know, and as your audience probably knows, they're even calling Alzheimer's type three diabetes because it all has this same root. And we think that if you catch insulin resistance

early and you can treat it, reverse it, or prevent it with diet, you can wipe out about 40% of the heart attacks. So, because I was, thank God you said that. Cause I thought, okay, you just freaked out most of our audience. But, and including me. So I have a tendency to be naturally genetically insulin resistant. And so my grandmother had diabetes. She died of heart disease. She went legally blind. I mean, all of that stuff. I by nature am insulin resistant and which is why I went on my odyssey to totally get it.

Many people are, it is is some people are just really good at metabolizing carbs. And some people you give them a Brussels sprouts and the blood sugar. So so I can do greens, but I can't do a lot of fruit. But and so that's what I wanted to point out to people. So I when I was at my leanest, I was actually doing a vegan diet. That's why I don't think one diet works for everybody. Okay, I was doing a vegan diet, which is a lot of carbohydrates for the most part,

plant-based, mostly carbohydrates. And I would fill it in because I'm an athlete with rice and stuff like that. Never had worse numbers. Now, when I go to a keto type diet, sort of modified, but,

but more keto, more fat, my numbers are, could not be better. And this is why I think it's not perfect for everyone. And if you keep those numbers in the right zone, you're not, you just, because you have it genetically doesn't mean you have to, you're loading that gun. It doesn't mean you need to pull that trigger. I have a question because I'm still, my brain gets stuck on things.

So if you're going to have one test, you said the ApoB test, and I'm assuming ApoB cholesterol is with LDL, you have A particles and B particles. A, the big fluffy particles, not toxic. B, the demon one. The demon one. Trouble. So if you have high ApoB, so the test is ApoB cholesterol, correct? The test is ApoB, which is a protein that attaches itself to lipoproteins. So ApoA attaches itself to HDLs and ApoB attaches itself to all LDLs, including the fluffy ones and the

others. But there's one ApoB protein per particle. So if your doctor won't do the particle test and he does the ApoB test, it's basically the same thing. There's maybe 1% difference between the ApoB number and the total particle number. There's a slight little difference, but it's so close to being 100% accurate that that's a test your doctor should never say no to. It costs four bucks and it's in the recommendations. It's no longer this esoteric thing that they never heard of. They're just being lazy. If it's high, it's trouble. Yes. And it's more likely to be trouble.

And is that also associated with insulin resistance? Well, I think that there are, I think one is the number that has to do with your particles. The other is a number that gives you a sense of the direction your metabolism is headed. So I think they're over like, like inflammation. I mean, these are all signs that things aren't going well. None of them by themselves is necessarily definitive. I imagine, I mean, I have a very high particle number. I am one of those people for whom the classic cholesterol test misses a treatment opportunity. I think many times the classic cholesterol test, people get put on statins and they don't need to be. There are people who might benefit from them. And it's also obscured

by LDL and LDL because LDL, HDL doesn't tell you particles. I have a high number of particles and I'm working very hard to bring it down, but I would never have known that. I would have thought, oh, everything's fine if I just stuck with the old fashioned. And how do you bring it down? Good question. I'm working with a couple of cardiologists and some functional medicine doctors and we're trying things. One of which is to up my fat and lower my carbs even more. The first thing Dr. Douglas Triffon, who's the head libidologist at the Scripps Clinic and who gave a presentation that was so packed. The last time I went down there with all these

cardiologists sitting there taking notes, I said, this guy, and he's a nutritionist to boot. I want to go to him. I went to him. him first thing he said i hope you're eating a high fat diet so i said yeah but i still have high particles he says maybe we need to go higher in fat and lower in carbs so that's one possibility you know people we know from the weight loss field that there are some people who can't eat any carbs and some can manage pretty well with like 100 grams a day so so i so i actually keep my carbs under like well i had them under 25 but then i was having certain symptoms so now i'm more like 50 i had to modify it and you know between 50 yeah 50 to 60 uh but but i don't count fiber in that so i don't know you know anyways fiber doesn't count

fiber doesn't count so one thing that i want for our listeners is I want to, because I know I'm going to get questions people write in to me all the time. What about things like the red rice yeast, red yeast rice, and niacin? Red rice yeast. Well, I am actually trying with rice yeast. You asked how to bring it down. That was one of the, I'd always been like, that's just a natural version of a statin.

Why do I want to take that? But Dr. Triflin, for example, said, you know, that's a thing. There were a couple of other things as well that he wanted to try it in a kind of cocktail of nutritional supplements. So I haven't been retested since I started that, but that is certainly something that could help. And I think there's a lot less side effects than there are with statin drugs. Okay. And niacin? I hate the flush. And I'm not so sure. The non-flush I heard actually could be not as good for your liver,

though. Is that true? Yes. It's not as good. And it's also not as effective at lowering cholesterol. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk more about cholesterol and how to optimize it so it serves your health rather than steals your health. Stay with us. What did you learn? Write it down. Post it on any of your social media sites. Hashtag Brain Warriors Way podcast. Also go to BrainWarriorsWayPodcast. Also go to BrainWarriorsWayPodcast.com, leave us a comment, question, or review, and we'll enter you into a drawing to get one of the books.

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