Dhru Purohit Show - How to Hack Your Coffee to Lower Your LDL

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Pendulum and InsiderTracker. There’s a compound in coffee that can disrupt our metabolic health that most people aren’t aware of: cafestol. Cafestol is responsible for the oil in roasted coffee beans and is linked to high LDL cholesterol levels. Studies show that cafestol increases LDL cholesterol by suppressing LDL receptor activity and reducing the breakdown of LDL cholesterol. It has also been linked to higher total cholesterol and triglycerides, with little effect on HDL cholesterol. If you’re someone who drinks a lot of French press coffee and you have unexplained high LDL levels, this topic might be worth paying attention to. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru shares a super-simple hack to cut down on the cafestol in your cup that he learned from a recent conversation he had with our dear friend Max Lugavere in honor of the launch of his latest cookbook, Genius Kitchen. Also mentioned in this episode: -Try This: How to Hack Your Coffee to Lower Your LDL -Try This: Why You Need a Coffee Break and How to Do It -Top Food Hacks to Supercharge Your Health with Max Lugavere For more on Dhru Purohit, follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, and YouTube @dhrupurohit. Text Dhru at 302-200-5643 or click here.  Interested in joining Dhru’s Facebook community? Submit your request to join here. For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at [phone] or click here https://my.community.com/dhrupurohit. This episode is brought to you by Pendulum and InsiderTracker. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Akkermansia in a probiotic capsule. To receive 20% off your first purchase of Pendulum’s Akkermansia probiotic supplement, go to Pendulumlife.com and use code DHRU20. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Brode here. Today we're talking about a simple hack for coffee drinkers. Do you drink coffee? If you do, and especially if you drink French press coffee, today's hack is for you. It's a hack that will help you lower your LDL levels. And shout out to my friend Max Ligivir in his new book, Genius Kitchen, because Max is the one that originally taught me about this hack in a recent interview that we had with him. Link in the show notes.

So there's a compound in coffee that can disrupt our metabolic health that most people aren't aware of. And that compound is called kaffostol. Kaffestal is responsible for the oil in roasted coffee beans, and it's linked to high LDL cholesterol levels. Now, studies show that kaffestol increases LDL levels by suppressing LDL receptor activity and reducing the breakdown of LDL cholesterol. It's also been linked to higher total cholesterol and triglycerides, but it's had very little effect on HDL cholesterol in those studies. Now, in the past on the podcast, we've had experts talk about why high LDL cholesterol is not,

is not the best marker of heart disease, and why our ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol is a much better indicator. We've done a bunch of newsletters on this topic, too. If you're interested and you want to see our, breakdown in written form go to drew proet.com dh r u p u r o hit dot com and click on the articles tab now back to ldl but if you are someone who drinks a lot of coffee from french press and you have unexplained high ldl levels this topic might be worth paying attention to and the best part about it is it doesn't require cutting out coffee. So let's get into it. Now that we know that cathostol contributes to

high LDL cholesterol, how can we control it in our coffee? Well, it turns out that some of the methods of filtration significantly reduced the amount of cathostol in your cup. A population-based study looked at the relationship between cathostol and cholesterol in select coffee shops and found that the lowest amounts of cathostol were found in filtered coffee, while the highest amounts of cathostol were found in unfiltered coffee. Now in the study, filtered coffee used either a mesh filter or a paper filter. By the way, we're going to talk about paper filters because most of them that are out there are like super toxic. So you want to be careful. So again, in the study, filtered coffee used either a mesh filter or a paper filter. The unfiltered coffee,

the unfiltered version, was either boiled or brewed using a French press. That last idea, that last thing that I just mentioned was the most shocking to me that French press is actually a form of unfiltered coffee. I know it makes sense and you guys probably all know it because you're smart, but I didn't immediately think of that. Now, the study results showed that drinking properly filtered coffee was not associated with high LDL cholesterol levels. And there's more evidence to back this up too. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials reported that those who drank boiled or unfiltered coffee had higher lipid, levels than those who drank filtered coffee. I'll read that again.

A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials reported that those who drank boiled or unfiltered coffee had higher lipid levels than those who drank filtered coffee. So that's great news for all you coffee lovers out there. It seems that the right kind of coffee filter is a cost-effective way to remove the kaffistol from your cup and potentially avoid elevated LDL levels. Here's something else to consider. The longer your coffee grind sits in the water, the grinds of the coffee, the longer they sit in the water, example is French press or in some cases boiled coffee.

My grandmother used to make boiled coffee. It was her favorite way of making it. The more time the kaffistol has to make its way into your drink. As far as espresso is concerned, well, we'll get to espresso in just a second, but a quick word from today's sponsor. I want to talk to you about a groundbreaking flagship bacterial strain. that's been linked in thousands of scientific publications from everything from weight loss and better blood sugar control to lowering overall levels of inflammation. So what's this strain called?

It's called Acrimancia and it's made by the company Pendulum. So why the heck do we want Accomancy and what does it do for our overall gut health and microbiome? So Acrimansia feeds on our intestinal mucosal layer and modulates its thickness. That's a good thing. In exchange for providing Acrimandia with the house, and food, it pays us back by producing short chain fatty acids like propionate and enabling other strains to produce puterate, which is super important for healing a leaky gut, supporting the

immune system, and maintaining overall health. I first heard about acrimancia for my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman, when he got really sick a few years ago and his gut help took a turn for the worse. He said that building up his acrimancia was critical for helping him heal and support his overall gut restoration and getting his health back on track. Because Acrimancia can only survive in an oxygen-free environment like your gut, it has been difficult for scientists to formulate it into a probiotic until now. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Acromancea in a probiotic capsule, which is why I've been taking the probiotic daily ever since I got introduced to the company. Right now, if you're

interested in Acrimansia, this flagship bacterial strain, Pendulum is offering my community 20% off your first purchase of their Pendulum Acrimancia probiotic supplement. All you have to do is go their website, pendulumlife.com. That's pendulum, P-E-U-L-U-M-L-U-M-L-I-F-E-E- dot com, and use the code Drew 20, spelled D-H-R-U, 20 for 20% off your first purchase. As far as espresso is concerned, because it's technically still unfiltered, it does contain cafe stall, a higher amount than filtered coffee. It's estimated about one milligram per cup, but just keep this in mind around espresso.

Because the volume is less in general, it contains less cafe stall than a cup of French press coffee. So French press coffee, the estimates are, linked to the studies in the show notes, 7.2 milligrams per cup. And French press is really the one that we're trying to be more mindful of because it has so much cafe stall in there. So espresso would have one milligram per cup. And then filtered coffee would have 0.2 milligrams per cup. If you use a French press like I used to, and honestly I got this metal French press. I even wrote about it in my newsletters. I have it sitting in front of me.

I have tea brewing in it right now. But if you use French press like I did for a while, and I'll switch on and off between espresso, it might be time to think about switching it up and changing how you make your coffee and using something like an unbleached paper filter. So here are some recommendations that I have for anyone on filtration. If you use a traditional coffee maker,

you're all good. Just ensure you're using non-toxic, unbleached paper filters. You can find those easily on Amazon or at your local health food store. Now, one consideration I'm always tossing in. I'm not trying to complicate matters, but this is just something that I do. I have moved away from a traditional coffee maker and my main hedge against it. And I'm not crazy about it. This isn't something that I worry about all the time.

But in general, over the course of my life, I'm trying to minimize, you know, where I can, my exposure to plastics specifically when plastics are interacting with a hot beverage. If plastics are going to interact with something hot, there's going to be degradation. And we're going to absorb some of those plastics. We don't know the long-term consequences of many of those, but we do know that some of those plastics can operate as endocrine disruptors inside of the body. So I tend to minimize, you know, but if I'm at a friend's house or whatever, they're using it. I'm not crazy about it, right? It's just for everyday usage that's there.

So some people, some of my friends who are trying to avoid plastics and don't want to do French press, they might use one of those simpler glass bottles. What are they called? Like Chamex or something like that? Yeah, I'm Googling it right now. It says Chimex. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. C-H-E-M-E-X, six-cup pour-over glass coffee maker. And you can throw a filter inside of that. So you can follow the instructions, put a little filter, and that's just an easy way to not have that regular exposure to plastic parts, which pretty much every single coffee maker that I've seen out there

has plastic parts that are interacting with the hot beverage that's there. So again, don't freak out. This isn't something that, you know, anybody has to go crazy over. It's just if you want to hedge your bets over the course of time, try to go for anything in general where a liquid that you're just about to put in your mouth is not interacting with plastics, especially really cheap plastics. Here's another tip. If you get your coffee out and about, ditch the plastic lid. Plastic lids are super cheap plastics. and they do not hold up very well under a hot beverage.

So use a reusable cup or mug and or just pour a little bit out and be super careful when you're drinking your coffee or your drink or whatever it is and just ditch the plastic lid. Again, I'm not trying to have anybody go crazy over this. I don't go crazy, but it's just some considerations that we're looking for over the long term. Now, going back to my list, if you do use a French press, just consider pouring it through an unbleached paper filter before drinking it. That's one thing that you could do. I haven't seen any data on that, but it would make sense that that would absorb some of the oils

that we're trying to minimize here if we're considering unexplained higher LDL levels and you're doing all other recommendations that we've talked about in previous episodes. Lastly, if you're an espresso drinker, the good news is that espresso has significantly less cafe stall, calf stall, calf stall, then French press coffee, if you're still worried, you can switch to a filtered coffee that's there. Now, let's talk about what we don't know. Even though the majority of research points towards filtered coffee for being health-promoting beverage, there's still a lot that we don't know. Like, for example, does using a paper filter, paper coffee filter remove the good stuff? Does it remove the polyphenols, the phytonutrients, the antioxidants, along with the bad

stuff, is using a filter to remove calf stall to lower your LDL a beneficial practice for everyone? Or is it just for those who have high LDL? Drink a lot of coffee and are also at risk for heart disease. My guess is that really this is only something that people might want to consider. They have unexplained higher LDL levels. But a lot of it, just let me take a step back. texting with my friends a little bit about this. And some of my friends are experts on metabolic health, doctors, physicians, researchers.

And in general, unless you're drinking French press every day and you have higher explained LDL levels, you probably are okay. You're probably okay. And you don't need to implement this hack into your life. And if you have high LDL levels, you happen to be drinking a lot of French press, but you've never implemented a balanced blood sugar diet, like Dr. Mike Kriman's Pagan diet or something else that's out there. Definitely, I would say start with diet first.

And sure, you can include this hack as well, but it's not that coffee is the one thing that's throwing everything else off in your life. So back to our considerations of what we don't know. And finally, some research shows that cast off, has anti-inflammatory, insulin-sensitizing benefits. So do the cons outweigh the pros? It's hard to know for sure, and it depends on the person

in their individual cholesterol situation. If your LDL is the light fluffy, very low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and your triglycerides are low, driving your LDL numbers down might not be a huge deal. But if your LDL is the small, dense, problem-causing cholesterol, and you drink a lot of coffee from a fresh, French press, it might be worth taking that extra step and pouring your coffee through a filter or switching over to espresso.

Now, in a minute, I'm going to talk about high LDL and why it's not the perfect biomarker for cardiovascular disease. But before I do, a quick word from our sponsor, Inside Tracker, who is here to help you with this. I've experimented with every eating approach in the book. I'm talking about raw foodist, vegan, vegetarian, meat eater. You name it, I've tried it. And the truth is, at first, I felt pretty good on all of them until I didn't.

The common denominator for all these diets is the fact that they're all made up of mostly whole foods and free from processed foods, which will do anybody good. But after some time has passed, I still didn't feel like I was thriving. I was dealing with some lingering gut issues, endotoxemia, and acne breakouts. Through a bunch of trial and error, I found that following one specific, eating style wasn't the answer for me. And maybe it hasn't been the answer for you either. In my personal opinion, I think technology can be a critical part of the solution in helping us figure out what foods are best suited for our own unique genetic makeup. That's why I was

super excited when I heard about Inside Tracker. Inside Tracker helps take the guesswork out of living optimally and creates a nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle plan that's personalized. That's the key word personalized for you based on your blood work, DNA, and personal preferences. InsideTracker's cutting-edge technology gives you science-backed recommendations for positive changes to your daily habits. With their app, you can track your progress every day, and they even have an amazing support team to help you with all your questions. InsideTracker looks at everything from metabolic and inflammatory markers to nutrients and hormones. It even tests your cortisol levels to help you better manage stress, and you have the option to see how

your inner age compares to your chronological age. InsideTracker makes their results easy to understand and provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. And now you can even connect Inside Tracker to your Apple Watch to unlock deeper, more personalized insights into your health. With real-time exercise, resting heart rate, and even sleep data synced with your inside tracker plan, you can truly wear your health right on your sleep. Right now, InsideTrackers offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to InsideTracker.com. slash dhr u that's true inside tracker.com slash dhr u to get your 20% discount code and try it for yourself that's inside tracker.com backslash dhr you for 20% off we know that high ldl is no silver bullet for heart disease

however it can be a sign of metabolic dysfunction it's crucial to look at our ldl cholesterol numbers in the context of all our other metabolic markers and biomarkers to know if LDL is actually an issue, which, by the way, this podcast is just for educational purposes only. I'm empowering you with good talking points that hopefully you can talk about with your healthcare practitioner. If you don't have a good healthcare practitioner, go on the hunt to find one. At least somebody's open-minded who can work with you and say, hey, here's the test that I want to run. Hey, I may want to get an NMR profile. Hey, I need to know what my fasting insulin is. Hey, I need to know what these other metabolic markers are. It seems that a lot of people are talking about them. Would you be willing to

run these tests? Even if you don't know the size of your LDL cholesterol, there doesn't seem to be any harm in making small changes like filtering your coffee to bring down your cholesterol number. Going back to my friend Max, who originally told me about the sack, he sent me a text a few days ago when we were chatting about the impact of calf stall on cholesterol. And the text read, no joke, my LDL went down 22% after filtering my coffee, minimizing butter. And in our podcast episode, if you haven't seen it, link in the show notes, he talks about why he's not super hot on a lot of butter and ghee, but how he is a big fan of certain types of dairies. And he also said that he cut out Brazil nuts every day. So super happy for Max, and I'm in the process of trying things now myself, because again,

I used to drink a lot of French press coffee. So I'll report back to you on what I find. Now, a couple of concluding thoughts. In my case, even though I've dramatically improved my diet over the years, my LDL is still on the higher side. And it does run into family, so I'm not too worried about that. So when I heard about this hack, it was a no-brainer. By the way, I mentioned to you that I'm taking a little bit of a coffee break right now.

I'm allowing myself to have some espresso on the weekend. And I regularly do this in my life. I'll go, I'll do like, I'll do like four weeks on coffee, and then I'll take like two weeks off. And I find that it's very helpful for me. I know for some people that sounds just like crazy. But if it is crazy for you, it could be an indication that you might need a coffee break.

And why a coffee break is so important is that so many people, are dependent on caffeine to start their day. And that buzz that you get from caffeine, which is the number one drug that's consumed in the world, can often mask other issues that we're dealing with. Stress, burnout, anxiety. And it could even in some cases, for people that are more prone to these things,

it could be contributing to them. So I always like to return to baseline. Every so often, like every four weeks of having some coffee, I'll take even a few days off coffee. just to see what comes up for me. I wrote a whole newsletter on this topic. It's called Try This, Why You Need a Coffee Break and How to Do It. And I walk you through my exact method of taking a break from coffee

and why I actually think it's good to do it every so often, to give a little bit of a pause and to see how is the baseline of your sleep? How's the baseline of your energy? One of my mentors said back in the day, He's like, you know, coffee is great. Just like shopping is great. You know, well, some people don't like shopping. But take whatever you're really into.

Shopping can be an interesting thing. If you're into cars, if you're into clothes, whatever it might be. Shopping can be great. But if you need to shop to feel good, that's called a shopping addiction. And actually a lot of people have it out there. Coffee's great. And if you need coffee to feel good in the day, I don't know. That's kind of a little bit.

bit of a borderline addiction and a lot of people have that addiction. So swapping your coffee for something like Yerba Mata every so often doesn't mean that if you give up caffeine completely, you can move to a more gentler version of caffeine found in green tea and Yerba Mante and other stuff. It's a really beautiful thing to do every so often and I always end up getting a little surge of energy through that process. And especially if I've abused coffee, if I have a abused coffee, I'm in a really crazy deadline of some sort, building a new company, working on something, helping my business partner with this book. I tend to overdue coffee during those times.

And it's a nice way to take a step back and reset a little bit and readjust your coffee intake. Now, there's going to be times where people just cannot do this, and that's totally fine. This isn't a judgment situation. This is more a recommendation. So I have a whole coffee swap protocol that I've put to, which includes switching over to organic Yeromate slowly by winding down your coffee and going over to Yerbaute and then including things like B12 and magnesium, which are super key in this process and allowing yourself to then wean down completely to no coffee at all. If you want to see

that, I wasn't planning on covering that in today's episode. You can find the link in the show notes. It's called drew proet.com slash coffee. dash break and it'll walk you through that whole newsletter that I have, which maybe I might turn into a podcast. Crazy the story, by the way. Do you know a little bit about the history of coffee? Coffee was originally discovered in the Ethiopian rainforest centuries ago. And its psychoactive properties have influenced.

There's an entire book written about this called Uncommon Grounds. but coffee is believed by many historians to have influence massive economic gains and led to a whole renaissance in society and upheavals of society around the globe. Interestingly enough, coffee replaced alcohol. Coffee replaced alcohol, the safest alternative to drinking water at the time. People were drinking alcohol on a regular basis. in the past. And in Britain, it was the breakfast drink of choice in the late 1600s. People would drink alcohol. Why? Because they thought that the water was contaminated, which it was. People were living in

cities. We didn't have proper sewage systems. So our extrament was ending up in the drinking water. People would drink it and you'd have this mass outbreak of disease. Back then, they didn't fully understand that this was a problem or that how easily water could be contaminated. They didn't know about bacteria in that way. So they would give alcohol to babies. It was actually pretty effed up. They would give alcohol to people would be drinking all the time. And could this possibly have been one of the reasons why people died so early back then? You know, you hear stories of, man, we used to only live till our like mid 30s or 40s and maybe some people lived to their 50s. Well, a couple things.

Infant mortality played a huge impact on life expectancy. Back then in the 1600s, you know, infant mortality was quite, quite high. So if one person lives to 80 and another person lives to, you know, dies at childbirth, unfortunately, then your average lifespan is going to be 40 if you're averaging it that way. But I think another reason that people were so messed up and they had wooden teeth and all those other things that were there that we know about our founding fathers in America is probably because they were drinking a lot of alcohol on a regular basis. Just imagine you're buzzed all the time. It's a fascinating story. And again, the book Uncommon Grounds is a great read for that.

Yeah, that was a little side note. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. gave you a little hack of how to reduce your LDL if you're worried about elevated LDL and you drink a lot of French press. Told you a little bit about my coffee swap protocol, which I won't go into today, but I've linked to if you want to read about it, it's in the show notes, as well as gave you a little history of coffee that some of you may not know. How'd you like today's podcast? Let me know. Shoot me an email by going over to my website, drewpro.com and filling out the contact form and come and say hi.