Digital Social Hour - Visceral Fat: The Silent Killer Inside Your Body Revealed! | Dr. Sean O'Mara DSH #661

Starting point is 00:00:00 He's very cut. He's very shredded. He works out and this guy's in great shape, but he had a significant amount of visceral fat inside of him. You can actually look good from the outside and be bad on the inside. And we call those people tophies, thin outside and fat inside. All right, guys, you got Dr. Sean O'Mara here today, and we're going to talk about visceral fat today, aren't we? Yes, we are. We're going to talk about visceral fat and other forms of damaging, inflammatory, even deadly fat inside the body. And hopefully we will explore inside your body, Sean, and see what's going on. You had me do a scan last night, so we'll see the results. So big thanks.

Starting point is 00:00:48 I really appreciate, first, the opportunity to come and share this information and your willingness to do it. You've got a great show, a great channel, what you're doing. And the fact that you're willing to share this kind of information with other people means authentically you care about your followers. So I'm excited about hearing the changes that have taken place already in your life. And having the scan last night, I think are going to give you some really interesting insights about what you've done and where you're going to be going. So a big advantage to you. And I sincerely appreciate the effort that you went to to go scan scanning it, you know, almost 10 o'clock at night to make that happen the night before we do the show. So just super impressed with you. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:01:34 Thanks for coming on. Let's dive into this. All right. So what we're going to do is we, you know, for the sake of your audience and your followers, we did a scan on your adjuvant last night. So it's an MRI scan. There was no contrast. We put you into a MRI machine and then we obtained a slice, several slices through your abdomen, what's called the transverse plane. So this is depicted in this image here and it creates an image at the bottom here in white and black and shades of it

Starting point is 00:02:05 so kind of gray white and black and the first thing to know when it comes to an MRI scan when you're looking at a scan is fat is white and then muscle bone and organs such as your colon your intestine they're all black so in this particular here, which is the actual first scan of a researcher who's now a friend of mine, Dr. Tseng, who was the first one who told me about this dangerous fat inside the human body called visceral fat, which if you're listening for the first time, you may not know anything about visceral fat. And it's okay because your doctor doesn't know anything about it. I'm an MD, and it's not taught to us in medical school, but if you jump on Google and you jump on ChatGPT and you start looking at the research,

Starting point is 00:02:56 you'll wonder why it's not taught. So we'll get into this, and we're going to show an example, a bad example of an abdomen that's filled with visceral fat. So in this image, Sean, before we open up yours, I thought it'd be useful for the sake of your followers to understand, you know, what is an example of a bad amount of visceral fat. There's no good amount of visceral fat. If it's present, it's not good. I suppose the good amount would be zero, and you want to work towards eliminating the

Starting point is 00:03:27 complotity. So in this case, this guy has a huge amount of visceral fat inside of him, and his muscles on the side, those black objects on the side of his abdomen or his oblique muscles, and those white streaks in the middle of those oblique muscles are, in fact, fat that's invading and beginning to replace his muscles. And then the muscles at the bottom of that image, as you go through a scanner like you did last night, you laid on your back, your belly button was pointing towards the ceiling. And the muscles you're laying on your back are called the erectospinal muscles. And you can see from that image that there's a bunch of white already invading those important back muscles. So this guy's in a lot of trouble.

Starting point is 00:04:18 He's got an elevated amount of fat in his muscle. He's got an elevated amount of fat in his abdomen, visceral fat. And then his love handles, which are those large area of white in the corners, reflect that he's got an excessive amount of subcutaneous fat. And not all fat is the same, especially deep subcutaneous fat. There's two different compartments to subcutaneous fat. One is protective and keeps you from getting disease, actually prevents heart attacks and strokes and cancer, and believe it or not, prevents obesity. So there's a type of fat that prevents you from having obesity, and that's called superficial subcutaneous fat.

Starting point is 00:04:59 As a B2B marketer, you know how noisy the ad space can be. If your message isn't targeted to the right audience, it just disappears into the noise. With LinkedIn ads, you could precisely reach the professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant with LinkedIn targeting capabilities. You can reach them by job title, industry, company, and more. Stand out with LinkedIn ads and start converting your B2B audience

Starting point is 00:05:18 into high quality leads today. LinkedIn ads allows you to build the right relationships, drive results, and reach your customers in a respectful environment. You'll have direct access to and build relationships with decision makers. A billion members are on their platform, 180 million senior level executives and 10 million C-level executives. You'll be able to drive results with targeting and measurement tools built specifically for B2B in technology. LinkedIn generated two to five X higher return on ad spend than any other social media platform. And you'll work with a partner who respects the B2B world you operate in.

Starting point is 00:05:49 79% of B2B content marketers said LinkedIn produces the best results for paid media. LinkedIn has been a great platform for me to also find interesting podcast guests. If you're interested, start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. We'll give you $100 credit on your next campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash social to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash social terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be. From a molecule.

Starting point is 00:06:14 And if you're listening today, you should write this down. A-D-I-P-O-N-E-C-T-I-N. Adiponectin. Now, the pharmaceutical industry, big insurance, the healthcare industry, and anybody that profits from the fact that you start falling apart with disease does not want you to know about either visceral fat or adiponectin. So visceral fat is bad, adiponectin is good, and adiponectin comes So visceral fat is bad, adiponectin is good, and adiponectin comes from superficial

Starting point is 00:06:46 subcutaneous fat. So a little bit of fat on the superficial layer just underneath that, before that black membrane called scarpa fascia. And this large area here is deep subcutaneous fat, and we'll look at yours, Sean, in just a little bit. But let's look at a couple examples to compare and contrast, okay? So this image on the bottom, you see mostly white. So when it comes to an abdominal MR scan, you want to be mostly dark and not mostly white. So if you got a lot of white on the inside, you got a lot of that inflammatory fat. And the problem with this fat, Sean, is it causes inflammatory molecules to be released 24 hours a day, trickling through your beautiful body, causing it to fall apart.

Starting point is 00:07:37 And so it's very inflammatory. Now, this guy in the image at the top is mostly dark, but he's still got a significant amount of white in the middle of his abdomen. It's oval-shaped, and all that white surrounding his organs is visceral fat. But the surprising thing is that he had that visceral fat inside when he has a body like this. So he's very cut. He's very shredded. He works out. He's very shredded. He works out.

Starting point is 00:08:06 He's a friend of mine in the Army National Guard named Gabe. And this guy's in great shape, but he had a significant amount of visceral fat inside of him. So you can actually look good from the outside and be bad on the inside. And we call those people TOFIs, thin outside and fat inside. So here's another example before we open up your scans of somebody else who's in great shape. They're mostly dark. They have almost no visceral fat. In fact, after seeing hundreds of thousands of abdominal MRI scans and CT scans, abdominal CT scans, This person, this female has the lowest amount of visceral fat I've ever seen in a woman, in a female.

Starting point is 00:08:50 So she's almost all entirely dark. But let's look at her photograph. So you can follow this individual on Instagram. Her name is Carolyn Labouchere. And Carolyn's in Dubai. And she's a model. And for a reason. She's an attractive, very healthy woman.

Starting point is 00:09:07 She's got attractive, healthy legs. She's got a very fit figure, her torso. Her arms are very shapely and elegant. She has a very attractive face. She does modeling. She does a lot of modeling. Lots of people follow her all over the world. And really thick, gorgeous hair. Now, the interesting thing is Carolyn is 59 years old. So, very surprising how attractive she looks. And here's a take-home lesson from a researcher

Starting point is 00:09:41 that has been committed to studying the elimination of chronic disease throughout the remainder of my life carolyn looks this good because not not because she doesn't have visceral fat inside of her it's because she never had visceral fat inside of her carolyn ate a very low carbohydrate diet and maintained a good lifestyle so she is to cut to to the chase she is that pretty girl that has always been in the class that has always been pretty and now she's the pretty 59 year old because she has kept away from processed foods and carbohydrates and and has never had a period of obesity or weight gain. She has just been metabolically healthy. So this MRI scan really represents what you want to see inside of you, mostly black and almost no white.

Starting point is 00:10:39 So a couple last examples before we open up yours, Sean. This image in the top is a very bad abdominal scan, lots of white, lots of white inside their abdomen, lots of white inside their muscles, and very large love handles. And so if you can't afford an MRI, kind of a poor person's MRI scan is revealed by your love handles. If you've got love handles, the chances are that you may have a substantial amount of visceral fat. So the love handle can give you kind of a proxy for visceral fat if you can't get to

Starting point is 00:11:19 an MRI scanner either because where you're at or you simply cannot afford anywhere from $250 to sometimes a very expensive one would be about $1,000 to get these MRI scans. But the individual on the bottom is the best MRI scan I've ever seen, and this is a male. And they just have a teeny bit of visceral fat. And look at their enormous at their enormous dark pure kind of tenderloin looking muscles there sean just very very dark and very big this is their vertebral body and these two circles here that look kind of like i say jokingly say look like birch trees were uh surgically transplanted inside of his abdomen. Those are his core. And he's an Olympic sprinter.

Starting point is 00:12:08 So if you look at his legs, they're very lean. They have hardly any fat in them whatsoever, just like his musculature and his abdomen. But in the individual above, with the huge amount of visceral fat, look at all the infiltrating fat in their legs so um i regret i'm very sorry that i wasn't able to get your legs scanned last night but maybe we can do uh a repeat scan on your legs and see see how your legs look but for the sake of the audience at least piqued their interest to to wonder what uh sean michael kelly's uh legs would look like

Starting point is 00:12:44 were they to be scanned. And they really correspond to the amount of visceral fat that you have inside of you. So when it comes to fat inside your muscle, you don't want to look like a marbleized steak, and that's what happens to humans as well as happens to steak. And it happens to these cows when they're fed carbohydrates and grains and corn and soy and now they're even feeding uh cattle uh in their grain and their feed uh skittles skittles was was found in a truck that overturned on a highway uh filled yeah in in the middle of the grain and the feed were human candy so i want you to think about that they're feeding human candy. So I want you to think about that. They're feeding human candy to cows

Starting point is 00:13:27 to get them to have muscle like this. Does that give you a moment's pause about this candy and the sugar and the carbohydrates you're eating? It really should. So, because if you keep having muscles that fall apart, you're not going to be able to stand up straight. Your muscles are going to shrivel up.

Starting point is 00:13:47 You're going to lose your beneficial, protective, superficial subcutaneous fat. You'll become skin and bones. And this is the appearance of an aged person. But this is really the appearance of a diseased person. When you age, you should look better. You should actually live better. You should be making more informed choices, and you can improve your appearance. So, one last example. Here's an individual here, big belly, individual now three months later, flat. And that was just three months,

Starting point is 00:14:21 you know, working to eliminate their visceral fat. But I'll show you an example of what happens on the inside in that three months. This is their baseline, which is similar to a scan that we're going to get into very soon now with yours. They're filled with visceral fat on their initial scan. And then this scan here is their heart. So they've got a big chunk of fat, highly inflammatory fat around their heart in the middle of their lungs. And in just a month and a half, substantial reduction in both their visceral fats and their heart fat, and then substantial reduction even more in their visceral fat and heart fat over those three months. So, the interesting thing is when you utilize an MRI in this manner to optimize your health,

Starting point is 00:15:12 you actually improve your health. Instead of just looking at, do I need surgery? Do I need to have a knee replacement? Do I need to have an ACL tear? Use an MRI to see how awesome am I living my life? Am I kicking the can down the road where I have disease that is continuing to accumulate inside my body? So let's take a look at your scans, okay? So here you are, Sean, and this is your scan last night. And I was very surprised when I saw inside of you. I thought you would have visceral fat, but I'll look in your eye and say, Sean, you got more visceral fat than what I thought you really would have. So all that white inside of your abdomen is visceral fat and you're you're only 27 and so it's causing your your

Starting point is 00:16:07 sagittal abdominal diameter to be enhanced so there you're there you are laying down and you have a kind of a mountain effect your your your visceral fat is displacing your abdomen up and worried to take your shirt off you'd have a little bit of a bold starting and we're going to turn it around for you because i know you're a motivated guy um so that would that would get corrected but you do not want to be the 35 year old or the 30 year old with a dad bot and we're going to turn there around and if you got a dad bot let me just cut to the chase your butt is getting flat you get a dad bod you might think it's cute you might think you look like some some kind of a tough guy with your belly sticking out

Starting point is 00:16:52 i want you to turn around and get a picture of your backside your butt it's flat and it looks like grandpa that's what's happening to you so DAPOD is nothing more than visceral fat destroying through inflammation your beautiful musculature. So there you are, Sean, with that elevated amount of visceral fat. Now, I'm comparing you to my assistant, John. John is 25, so he's a couple years younger than you. But John is mostly dark inside. He does not have as much visceral fat as you. And we talked a little bit

Starting point is 00:17:25 about your carbohydrates that you have been eating for, you know, 20 years or so. And it's fairly common in the American diet. But as you cut out those carbohydrates, we saw in 6,000 people that we scanned and followed for the National Science Foundation and our research, the elimination of this dangerous visceral fat by eliminating carbohydrates. So the other thing to point out, Sean, is that scarpus fascia, that you have that black line dividing your subcutaneous fat into deep subcutaneous fat and superficial. The superficial is good. So yeah, man, high five to you. You've got some nice superficial subcutaneous fat. What does that mean?

Starting point is 00:18:07 Is you got the benefit of protective adiponectin going for you. And so that will help you, believe it or not, in having a heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and even obesity. But that other area, however, is counterproductive. So it's the yin-yang. This is the bad one, and it's very much like your visceral fat, and they always go together. So I call visceral fat and muscle fat, these white streaks going on in your muscles already,

Starting point is 00:18:40 in your rectospinal muscles, the three black-hatted horsemen. They got black hats, they're bad guys, but the mere presence of them, just that fat inside of you, is not the harm. I could open up my abdomen, dump all your visceral fat inside, and I'd still look the same. But eventually, over a period of time, those inflammatory molecules start getting secreted, and then they'll cause my body to fall apart. And so it's not the presence of these horsemen in your life.

Starting point is 00:19:15 It's their guns, okay? So they got these guns, and they're shooting micro doses of these inflammatory molecules that's allowed to accumulate over a period of decades this is 20 years of sean michael kelly eating carbohydrates and uh maybe stress yes stress and and uh the accumulation of visceral fat overold John, let's look at your scan now compared to my scan. So this is now 60, I'm 61, this is me 60, 60-year-old Dr. Sean O'Mara. So I'm mostly dark and my muscles are free of fat. And I have a little bit of visceral fat, but not nearly as much as 27-year-old John Michael Kelly.

Starting point is 00:20:11 But listen, we can kind of laugh and joke about this a little bit because you know why? I know after talking to your assistant Bridger that you're basically a badass. You're going to turn yourself around. I am. You're seeing this and it's engaging you viscerally. It's drawing up something inside of your willpower and your conviction that this

Starting point is 00:20:36 may be me, but it's not me in the future because this is going to change. And that's what you have to happen. You have to get that kind of insight and so your reaction is the reaction of many people you know the many people that we scan um they end up seeing themselves and uh uh and they get very motivated so the last scan we did of you was a scan of your heart okay so this is your your right lung and your left lung. And in the middle of your lung, in the middle of your chest, Sean, is your heart. So surrounding your heart is this thick area of inflammatory ectopic cardio heart fat that's buttressing up against all your beautiful coronary arteries that supply blood to your heart and contribute to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and any future heart disease, coronary arterial disease that you

Starting point is 00:21:35 might have down the road because of that fat forming around your heart that's allowed to accumulate that nobody tells you about. Now, you learned about the age of 27 well in advance of you hopefully having any heart attacks, but here is your ideal, okay? Above is six-year-old Sean, you know, Dr. Sean O'Meara, and look at my heart. I got no fat around my heart, but, you know, I better not because this is my life passion. This is what I do. I specialize in getting rid of fat around the heart and fat within the abdomen and fat within the muscle. But I like to show off my example, not to show off, but to hold it out and let people know that you can be a guy in your 60s and 70s and even 80s and not have visceral fat around the heart.

Starting point is 00:22:27 In fact, one of the lowest amount of visceral fat I've ever seen in my clients was one of my clients who was 84. And he was reversing all his chronic disease. He had no visceral fat anymore. He would come over to my house and sprint with me at the age of 84. And now I tell my clients, you're not going to die from chronic disease. You're likely to die from an accident. And that's what killed this poor guy, a car accident, 84.

Starting point is 00:22:55 Can you imagine? So, yeah. So, you know, be careful. You get rid of your visceral fat. You're not going to die from disease. You know know your body sean is your most important physical asset so getting these insights nothing else not your bank account not your investment portfolio uh not your not your i have one guy i asked him

Starting point is 00:23:17 what's your most important asset and he said it was my laptop and i thought oh my god and he was serious so you know your body is your most important physical asset because nothing else is going to influence how much you're going to enjoy or suffer right the circumstance you face in the future so those are those are kind of examples of of uh of uh of heart fat and your scans and your visceral fat. And the last picture I'll show is just my facial photographs, how much I have changed over the past approximately 14 years since I got rid of my own visceral fat.

Starting point is 00:23:58 So my image on the left is me with a big inflamed face with a lot of, and actually when we scan people sean now we're scanning down from the brain uh through people's faces we can see fat depots these areas of fat in the face and it's inflammatory wow and so your face i'm going to call it you you watch everybody who's following uh sean his face is going to change, and he'll put his photographs up as he optimizes himself and optimizes his body. His face will change just like mine did over this period of time. In fact, yours will change faster because you're younger,

Starting point is 00:24:38 and I also think you're really motivated. I was just kind of fooling around here. But now, you know, after seven, eight years, I got super, you know, insightful about these changes and what was really happening. So now this is my passion and I absolutely live to help solve the world's biggest problem, which is chronic disease. Nothing costs us more money. Nothing do we spend more money on. Nothing reduces human productivity more, you know, degrading the performance of athletes or employees and companies. And nothing impairs the quality of lives of people more than chronic

Starting point is 00:25:21 disease. And nothing kills more human beings than chronic disease. And I want you to hang on that if you're listening. Why isn't anybody talking about it? And my answer is because people don't have solutions. The system doesn't have an answer to how to get rid of chronic disease. But it, in fact, exists. It's like making better choices about what you eat, better choices in how you exercise, and how you're really living that you can eliminate chronic disease. So I'm excited to follow you and see what you're going to do with this.

Starting point is 00:26:03 And we'll repeat your scans and your followers, I think, are going to find it very fascinating how much you're going to change. Yeah, it'll be interesting because my followers, I mean, just appearance-wise, probably think I'm super healthy with how I look. I'm not overweight. I don't drink alcohol. I don't do drugs. So to see these results is really eye-opening for me, honestly. Yeah. And it's all from diet and probably stress and sleep. Well, kudos for you, you know, that you got interested in this subject for yourself on a personal level. And now you're doing something about it. You know, the fact that you reached out to me and wanted me to come on your show.

Starting point is 00:26:41 And we came up with this idea about scanning you. And so now you have these valuable metrics to follow. And you're going to separate yourself from all your friends and your contemporaries. You're just going to take off. You're going to start improving ways faster than other people that aren't going to do the same thing. And by the time you're my age, you're going to look like a freak. I mean, you're going to be this super awesome human being at the age of 61. And I really think our ancestors in the past really were super humans. You know, probably 20,000 years ago,

Starting point is 00:27:17 the appearance of a homo sapien was extraordinarily different than they are today because of chronic disease. And so, yeah, it'll be very interesting to see what you do with this. And I think it's important because we were talking about the average age of your clients, and it was in the 50s, right? Right. So I think people should be aware of this earlier. I agree. And your audience is a lot younger. So it's important to, I think, to make that point. In fact, I'll just turn back to

Starting point is 00:27:47 this one photograph here. So this is a photograph. These are guys in their 20s, okay? I've given talks all over the world, and I'm 61, and I go and give this talk to this group of students down at Texas A&M. They're in their 20s. It's called One Army. Very interesting student group down there. Shout out to them. And so when I'm invited to give this talk on biological optimization, getting really healthy, my son was there and he's a little nervous. He's in the group.

Starting point is 00:28:21 He's about his dad coming to talk with all his buds around, right? And so I give this talk, and it's basically the same talk that I've given throughout, you know, many different venues. But I made a couple points, and one was I said to these young men, I said, look, people are telling you in college to get educated and to make money and, you know, prepare yourself to be successful in your career. And many people do that. Quite a few never get that. They work hard and they get into their retirement age and they can't even support themselves and they're depending on Social Security. But what you want to do, and I said to these guys, is you want to make enough money.

Starting point is 00:29:02 And as a biological optimizing physician, I called honey. You have got to have skill set, Sean, how to hunt and bring home the meat for your family. You got to be able to supply that. So I gave that message to those young men. You got to be successful. You got to learn how to go out and make an earning. And lots of people will tell you that.

Starting point is 00:29:24 But the other thing they're not telling you is that you got to optimize your health make an earning. And lots of people will tell you that. But the other thing they're not telling you is that you got to optimize your health along the way. Because most people, Sean, make it to their 60s and they've lost their health. So maybe they've made it and they're multimillionaires. Maybe they're even a billionaire. But at that point, they've lost their health in most cases. And so what you want to do all along, if you're following, you know, Sean, you're part of his followers, is you want to be optimizing your wealth and you want to be optimizing your health all along. So by the time you reach, you know, that age of retirement, you've amassed financial independence, but you've also secured your

Starting point is 00:30:05 house so you can enjoy that lifestyle instead of maybe dropping dead of a heart attack and somebody else gets to spend your money or you get cancer or you just get chronically infirmed and you're in a wheelchair or you're using a walker. So really think about that if you're in your 20s, you want to be investing in optimizing your wealth along the way and optimizing your health. And these guys, when I finished that talk, stood up and gave me the loudest standing ovation I've ever had or ever really seen. And I really think it came down to the fact that I shared that extra insight. So I wanted to make that point to your

Starting point is 00:30:45 followers because your followers are basically in the same kind of demographics, even though they're young and they got bright eyes ahead of them. They still haven't heard that one point you want to be optimizing your health. Healthspan versus lifespan, right? Exactly. You want to align those numbers. Exactly. Because you see a lot of people retire in their 60s and they're shot. I mean, they're done. They are. It's super, super sad. And I see them. They come into, before I got into being a health and performance

Starting point is 00:31:13 optimizing physician, I was an ER physician. So we'd see guys in their 40s, 50s, 60s coming in with deteriorating health. And by the time they're in their 70s and 80s uh really bad shape and i'll i'll just cut to the chase you know uh what's so different about you think you're not going to be like the rest of these 70 80 year olds they come into the er and they'd be laying if I could just have a bowel movement. They literally have fallen apart in their health that they can't even defecate anymore because their body is so depleted.

Starting point is 00:31:59 So you do not want that to happen. You want your muscles to be highly functional and free of infiltrating fat and free of chronic disease so you're 90 years old you're 100 years old you're taking care of your bodily function um you're you're you're not needing a cane you're not needing a walker and you definitely don't need a wheelchair. And you get up and out of a chair without any assistance. And so it's a super sad situation when people, you know, just follow the tide. The masses of people are being just dragged out into the ocean of chronic disease. And they don't even really notice it because the tide just carries them out with the masses of people.

Starting point is 00:32:50 But there's a remnant, and you just join the remnant. We're swimming out of that riptide, okay? We're going to swim parallel to the beach. And on the beach, I'd like to say it is this fantastic luau. We're having this great cookout. There's a nice campfire, and there's a remnant up there that's enjoying life, optimizing and preserving our health. So do not follow the masses of people that are eating tasty food and pleasurable food

Starting point is 00:33:19 that are lazy. They're not exercising correctly, they're not living correctly, and they're just allowing themselves to fall apart. Yeah. Okay, so doctor, you've seen over 10,000 scans, MRI scans. What percentage of them had visceral fat at high levels? Well, that's a great question. So first of all, every scan I've seen always has at least a small amount of visceral fat.

Starting point is 00:33:45 And to some people, another way to address that question is, some people say, well, how much visceral fat do you want to have? You want to have none. But I would say the majority of people, when I say the majority of people, I would say around 80% have elevated amounts, 80% to 90% will have elevated amounts of visceral fat. In fact, by one chief of radiology who's now reading visceral fat, she estimates in her hospital from her scans, 90% to 95% of the scans she sees

Starting point is 00:34:20 on a daily basis have elevated amounts of visceral fat. So it's a huge problem. People are not aware of, and scans might be done for a variety of reasons. And unfortunately, because visceral fat is not taught in medical schools, nor is it taught in radiology, or I should say graduate residency programs, which are the postgraduate training programs for physicians once they finish medical school. They start specializing in a particular area,

Starting point is 00:34:56 like radiologists will specialize in MRIs and CT scan interpretation. Those residency programs, just like medical school, are silent when it comes to visceral fat, muscle fat, deep subcutaneous fat, and heart fat. It's the saddest thing. In fact, there was an extraordinary conversation I had with a cardiothoracic heart surgeon who would carve through tens of thousands of hearts, you know, cutting through the fat around the heart and to transplant, you know, coronary arteries. And I asked him, well, didn't you notice the amount of fat corresponded to the amount of disease in those arteries? And there was this very long pause. And he said, Sean, I actually never paid attention.

Starting point is 00:35:48 So that, I know. Wow. That is the enormity of this problem, that we are not taught about it so we don't pay attention to it. And that has got to change, Sean. Yeah. We have got to start training doctors in medical schools. And if you're listening today, go and have that conversation. Look at your doctor and say, what can I do to get rid of visceral fat? And watch

Starting point is 00:36:12 the awkward expression come over their face because they won't even know. In fact, you could go and you could pull up a scan like this and you could say, hey, this is a Donald scan. Can you show me where visceral fat is in here? They won't be able to show. It's the largest part of that abdomen, and they won't be able to show it because it's just not taught. I'm serious as can be. It's not taught in medical school.

Starting point is 00:36:38 So that's what we had to do. We got to start training doctors about what really matters. And what doesn't matter is cholesterol. You know, I'll just come out and say, I think cholesterol is a huge distractor in the face of what really matters, which is this inflammatory and fat that's killing people

Starting point is 00:37:00 in a direct proportional amount to how much they have. But if big pharma can teach physicians to be distracted, to talk about and dominate conversations with patients in the office about cholesterol, just so that they never hear about visceral fat, that's exactly what's going on. So you dominate the conversation. Let me tell you something. You're a patient. That doctor works for you.

Starting point is 00:37:30 You're their boss, and you need to go to them and say, help me become more healthy. I don't want to be taking medicine. I want you, doctor, to tell me how to get healthy. That's how the dialogue works, and that's tell me how to get healthy. That's how the dialogue works. And that's how we need to change things. And right now we have pedantic, arrogant physicians that are self-confident,

Starting point is 00:37:55 that are basically chasing disease and profiting from disease instead of allowing people to get better. And so ask yourself, your parents, your grandparents, how are they doing going to those doctors? Well, I'll tell you, more medicine, more disease. They're falling apart. Now, you teach them about visceral fat

Starting point is 00:38:17 and you start eliminating it, then those medicines will go away. Their disease will go away, but it has to get into medical schools. And it's time we change the educational system in the United States and around the world because the United States medical system, their curriculum in medical schools is modeled all over the world and they simply follow what's taught in American medical schools. I didn't know that.

Starting point is 00:38:45 It is. And if you look at. Wow, I didn't know that. It is. And if you look at that curriculum, it's a black box. If you're a congressman and you're listening today or you know the congressman, you need to say to that congressman or representative, I want you to figure out why this isn't being taught in medical school and who's teaching our physicians? How is that curriculum set? And then say, why isn't this really dangerous fat and disease process being taught to physicians so that we can change our country and get our species back to being healthy?

Starting point is 00:39:22 And here's the answer. I think it's because it's the largest part of our economy. Follow the money. Nothing we spend more money on. Jeff Bezos, boring commerce, retail. Yeah, you started a big company. Do you know how much bigger healthcare is than your little Amazon? Yeah. It's the biggest part of our economy. Now, if you know somebody, you can get to Elon Musk. Elon Musk finds out about visceral fat. Elon Musk sees what's inside of his abdomen.

Starting point is 00:40:03 He learns about this. He starts going to chat GPT, and he says, oh, I'm not as smart as I thought. This is way bigger than anybody's ever explained to me. Then you watch the world and the country change. You get a disruptive-minded person like Elon Musk to disrupt the largest part of our economy, then we're going to see real change instead of just brick-and-mortar commerce like Jeff Bezos did. But I'm bullish that there's a man and woman out there that wants to disrupt the largest part of our economy and change how our species is living. And we're going to save – think about all the money we could save, Sean, what we could do, better spend money on, instead of pissing it down the toilet for preventable chronic disease. Absolutely. Can't wait to see it. Yeah, so if you get to Elon Musk

Starting point is 00:41:07 or the other person in these years is Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan, he's going to go crazy if he gets an abdominal scan and sees all the fat inside of his abdomen and fat in his muscles and fat around his heart. So anyway, that's the dialogue. We got to get more people aware of these dangerous disease processes inside, that's the dialogue. We got to get more people aware of these dangerous

Starting point is 00:41:26 disease processes inside, just like you did. And you're an early adopter. You're one of the first to do this. In fact, I'll just say this. You are the very first host of a podcast to have done this. They've had me on, but nobody else went and got the scan. So right on. There we go, baby. You did that. Let's dive into some interesting topics. So you said running is bad for you.

Starting point is 00:41:51 Indeed. So what we found in looking for visceral fat and what got rid of it was we were having a hard time getting rid of visceral fat using these strategies if somebody was a runner. And so, as it turns out, distance running or distance cycling, anything you do excessively probably has something to do with reactive oxygen species that get created when we exercise. And then through chronic exercise or durational exercise, the body tends to want to hold on to fat. And so visceral fat becomes refractory to elimination. And a good example of that is let's take a look at a marathoner who came in and was running 8 to 10 marathons a year, so substantial amount of distance running. And this is their scan.

Starting point is 00:42:51 So they have this large amount of visceral fat inside them, very small amount of fat on the outside. And that's from running 10 marathons a year, and they were only 34. And they were a vice president of a national company and so they saw their scan and then we we showed them the large amount of fat that they around around their heart too and uh they got extremely motivated once they saw that they said you know i am going to be your most motivated you. And they got rid of their visceral fat,

Starting point is 00:43:27 49% elimination of visceral fat within three months. So distance running, distance cycling, anything like of a durational nature. Swimming probably too. Swimming, if you do distance swimming. So what you want to do is like sprinting. You want to do bursts of maximum intensity exercise to really challenge yourself. And we found this basically in studying for the National Science Foundation.

Starting point is 00:43:59 We noticed that animals in the wild had almost no levels of chronic disease. And so we said, well, let's take a look at what they eat and how they exercise. And they don't go to gyms for like 30 minutes at a time or, you know, an hour at a time or an hour and a half. Now you have these bodybuilders that, you know, are going and seeing, you know, working for two or three, four hours a day in a gym. And so it just doesn't exist in nature. So distance running is a problem.

Starting point is 00:44:33 Distance durational exercise is a problem. If you want to eliminate chronic disease and you want to get rid of that visceral fat. Absolutely. I saw on your YouTube also you're not a fan of probiotics. No, I'm not. So interesting, yeah. So I find that probiotics, they're supplements, and they're intended to have this beneficial change through the microbiome,

Starting point is 00:45:00 which we could do 10 shows on the microbiome. But what's interesting is one of the best sequencing companies out there taking a look at the different sequences, species of microbes inside your gastrointestinal tract. So if you want to get a sequence, see the type of microbes you have grown within your microbiome, after you have a bowel movement, you just swab your feces a little bit, just from used toilet paper, and they can speciate the microbes inside of you.

Starting point is 00:45:33 Well, they did this interesting study where it's basically been duplicated multiple times. Every client that they get sequenced and scanned, they've asked them, what type of probiotics do you take? What species of probiotics? And do you know, they specifically look for those species in their microbiome,

Starting point is 00:45:55 and they're never there. They're not there. So these probiotics really don't work. Now, what does work, interesting, is fermented food. So if you eat Now, what does work, interesting, is fermented food. So if you eat, like Asia has, and many older cultures and traditional societies

Starting point is 00:46:14 have a practice or a tradition of eating fermented foods. And when you eat those fermented foods, we see the persistent and legacy of these microbes persisting within the gastrointestinal tract, include the distal tract in your rectum and when you have a bowel movement. So, I have all my clients now eating fermented foods to be able to add positively to the species of microbes. So, Sean, if you want to get rid of that visceral fat faster, make sure you're availing yourself of eating fermented foods. And you need to eat it more in line with how it's done in Asia. So, in South Korea, they put a piece of meat in their mouth

Starting point is 00:47:01 and they chew it with fermented foods together. You chew them. So, with the kimchi, they chew the meat mass comasticate it so you're taking the microbes from the kimchi and putting them into the meat your whole life sean you've put pizza and spaghetti and meat and different things in your mouth and then you swallowed it and you've had bad microbes around your gums, and you started off with a poor contribution into your microbiome. Today, you've learned now to start eating your meat and healthy foods with these fermented foods that have microbes in them, and now you're going to start eliminating your visceral fat that much better

Starting point is 00:47:43 and go to new levels of health by really optimizing your microbiome, which is, you know, I talk a lot about the visceral fat, but the thing that I'm most excited about actually is the microbiome. That is interesting. How do you feel about milk and dairy? So I think milk and dairy is super interesting, but I recommend that people not consume, adults not consume milk or dairy unless it's fermented. So fermentation, aging cheese, that's fine.

Starting point is 00:48:15 So I do eat cheese and I encourage my clients to eat cheese. But what I recommend, and this applies to all fermented foods to eat them like a garnish so don't eat fermented foods like it's a food so what i what i like to say now is i you know there are a lot of carnivore physicians out there dr sean baker uh dr anthony chafee awesome dudes um and there there's a lot of uh vegan physicians out there that just eat plants and fruit. And so Dr. Joel Kahn and Dr. John McDougall, lots of vegan physicians out there. Now, I'm in the middle. I eat meat and I eat vegetables, but only vegetables that are fermented

Starting point is 00:49:00 and only fruit that's been fermented to get rid of the carbohydrates. And I recommend that you eat them like a garnish. So don't eat them like foods. You eat them for their microbial benefits. So I like to say now I advocate meat and microbes. So eating good, healthy meat, like our ancestors would go out and hunt. We were hunter gatherers

Starting point is 00:49:24 and we'd hunt the healthiest animals and then add in very beneficial microbes from these fermented foods in small quantities. So when it comes to dairy, I don't recommend drinking milk or having any dairy unless it's fermented. The only exception to that is our infants and toddlers who are able to do that. And why are they able to do it? Because their microbiomes are different. They're little fermentation factories. So they can drink that milk and ferment it in a very favorable way

Starting point is 00:49:56 without having the harmful effect that we sometimes see. It's interesting if there's been some connection to the consumption of dairy with MS. And I think eating, consumption of milk with a high lactose and the carbohydrates probably have a contribution to it. And there's a lot of confounders involved

Starting point is 00:50:21 and I think we have to look at many more studies and conduct better design studies to actually elucidate that but i think carbohydrates and and the sugars are changing our microbiome and probably that changing microbiome is responsible for the sad state that our species have gotten to, Homo sapiens today, have the highest amount of chronic disease

Starting point is 00:50:49 that we've ever had in our existence. Wow. And so there's never been the degree of disease that we currently have. And I'll just say COVID, I'll stay away from that, I'll just say COVID, I'll just say this, that is a joke compared to a real pathogenic epidemic that could come out and wipe people out. And your best chance for surviving something like

Starting point is 00:51:18 a Spanish flu that ran through the world around, is to have the healthiest body possible. Like I said earlier, your most important physical asset is your body. And so you really want to make sure that your body is in the best condition possible to fight off disease. And your microbiome is a great way to view those different species of microbes that live inside of you as your allies to help promote your health. Any other biohacking things you do to help with your health? I know we were talking about sunlight yesterday.

Starting point is 00:51:55 Yeah. So, sunshine is really important. So, sunshine, again, through the microbiome, a lot of people just think of the microbiome being inside of your gut, but your microbiome, a lot of people just think of the microbiome being inside of your gut, but your microbiome is on your skin. And so these microbes are on your skin and they literally dictate and influence the amount of vitamin D that your body will biosynthesize based on the species of microbes on your skin. Now, if you're washing always with soap and you're using chlorinated water,

Starting point is 00:52:27 you're going to dramatically impact those microbes on your skin. And so many important substances like vitamin D and testosterone come through the influence of sunshine. And so I recommend a biohack is is getting uh is sunbathing i'm really sunning yourself in in the nude allowing sunshine to get onto your perineum onto your scrotum if you're a guy uh to maintain healthy levels of testosterone so uh sunshine is awesome and uh the the influencers are out there are having us terrified about eating meat, natural meat. They have us terrified about sunshine that predated the existence of Homo sapiens by probably a billion years, so way, way longer than we've been around and uh and then water so here's i i get kind of controversial but i predict they're

Starting point is 00:53:28 gonna they're gonna come out and say the next thing besides meat you know you got to eat this lab lab laboratory made meat they're gonna tell us is uh you know we can't eat meat anymore uh they're gonna come out and say you you can't drink this stuff called water uh it's you know what you want to do is like make this laboratory liquid uh substance we've created this new beverage so get back to nature uh sunshine a water wholesome clean water good healthy meat uh good healthy vegetables and fruits that have been fermented to to eliminate the carbohydrates and some of the anti-nutrients and microtoxins that oxalates and lectins that are present in these.

Starting point is 00:54:09 I think fruits and vegetables play a role for their medicinal value. They do have some nutritional value, but I have cut way back on the consumption of them to just in fermented food as a garnish. But the biohack of sunshine is really important. Asana is really important. In fact, I have a little list of little strategies that I recommend people to take, and I'll put it up there so that you can follow that and take a screenshot of it.

Starting point is 00:54:46 But you want to also, I believe, in stress hermetic. So chaperone proteins are created when you go into a sauna and you can significantly reduce in a dose-dependent manner how much atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease uh you'll have and you're at risk for if you use asana uh four to seven times a week and as opposed to just doing it one to two times a week and uh the same uh those shock proteins those chaperone proteins also get created when you go into cold water. So I was just recently saw that one of your guests, Lane Norton, was talking about, and Lane's a bright guy. Shout out to Lane.

Starting point is 00:55:34 Lane, you know, mad respect for you. You're very intelligent. But here's what I'd recommend. Get an MRI. Listen, I'll look at you and everybody else. I don't really care what's going on in 7.9 billion people. And if you're listening to me today, whoever you are, the only person, the only study you need is a study of one inside you. It doesn't matter if the rest of the human race is doing something different. You may be different. So get an MRI and see what's going

Starting point is 00:56:04 on with your muscle and see if it's shrinking, going away when you're going into a cold plunge, or if it's actually increasing. Now, there may be other things responsible like stress, alcohol, poor sleep, eating processed foods, a variety of other things. But the point that I like to make to everybody when it comes to utilizing MRIs and biohacks is follow your own study. Be the end of one like Sean did. Sean was a biological badass.

Starting point is 00:56:33 He went and got an MRI. Now he sees where he's at baseline and then he can make some informed choices. And that's what if you're listening today to the podcast, that's what you should be doing. Make an informed choice to see what's going on inside of your body and get that scan. Absolutely. Dr. Sean, it's been really enlightening. I can't wait to take this journey with you. Where can people consult with you and get scans from you and everything? Yeah. So just on this sheet here, I have all my contacts for social media. I'm on Instagram. I'm on X. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on YouTube. And so you can follow me. And you can also go to my website, just my name,

Starting point is 00:57:17 Dr. Sean O'Mara, D-R-S-E-A-N-O-M-A-R-A. And I also have a book. You know, I do shout out a little electronic book that you can get if you want to read. It's a good read, short read. It's an easy read to help you move ahead and find out. So that's a quick investment. But, yeah, if you're very motivated and you're interested, I have coaches and specialists that work in my practice to help you. And we're always looking for people that want to eradicate disease like yourself and to share these interesting insights. Amazing. Thanks so much for coming on, man. That was fun. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for having me, Sean. Appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:57:57 Thanks for watching, guys. Get an MRI. See you guys tomorrow.

Digital Social Hour - Visceral Fat: The Silent Killer Inside Your Body Revealed! | Dr. Sean O'Mara DSH #661

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.