Realfoodology - Ozempic, Seed Oils + "You Are What You Eat" | Mike Mutzel

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

EP. 184: Mike Mutzel, aka Metabolic Mike joins me to discuss several topics such as Ozempic/GLP-1 Agonists, importance of weight training at any age, the Netflix Documentary, "You Are What You Eat," industrial seed oils and how to instill healthy habits in children. Mike is the author of "The Belly Fat Effect." Topics Covered: 0:07:47 - Healthcare Disconnect and Lifestyle Interventions 0:10:00 - Ozempic 0:16:30 - The Importance of Hormones in Metabolism 0:26:32 - Problem With Vegan Diets and Impact 0:36:41 - Biased Funding and the Plant-Based Narrative 0:40:07 - Exercise and Diet for Optimal Health 0:45:45 - Sleep, Sunlight, and Weight Training Importance 0:55:54 - Instilling Healthy Habits in Children 1:02:22 - Canola Oil Booked Mentioned: Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret Check Out Mike: Instagram YouTube Website Podcast Sponsored By: Natural Cycles https://www.naturalcycles.com/  15% off with code REALFOODOLOGY LMNT Get 8 FREE packs with any order at drinkLMNT.com/realfoodology BiOptimizers MagBreakthrough Get 10% off at bioptimizers.com/realfoodology with code REALFOODOLOGY Needed Go to thisisneeded.com and use code REALFOODOLOGY for 20% off your first month Check Out Courtney: Check Out My new FREE Grocery Guide! @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Produced By: Drake Peterson Edited & Mixed By: Mike Frey

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. The reason why I'm not a fan of these oils is they are an offshoot of industry. They're basically industrial waste products that are being repurposed as foods. Without the use of industrialized purification and refining systems, no human or animal would ever eat these things. Hello friends, this is The Real Foodology Podcast with your host Courtney Swan. In today's episode, I sit down with Mike Mutzel, otherwise known as Metabolic Mike on Instagram. This was such an informative podcast episode. I am so excited for you guys to hear this. We talked

about so many things. We addressed Ozempic. We also addressed diet and lifestyle changes that you can do that actually mimic what is happening with Ozempic. We talk about the new documentary, You Are What You Eat, and a bit of the faulty science that was happening there. We talk about training, the importance of muscle mass. And Mike is so incredible because he comes with such a depth of knowledge with the studies that are coming out around all of this. So he drops a lot of science on us, a lot of studies on us. We also talk about canola oil and really truly why these industrial waste products is really what they are, why these industrial seed oils are not good for our health. We covered so much ground in this amazing,

informative, jam-packed episode, and I'm very excited for you guys to hear it. So with that, let's go into the episode. If you could take a moment to rate and review the podcast, it really doesn't take any time. It helps the show so much. And I just want to say, I really appreciate your support. Thanks guys. I hope you love the episode. 2024 is the year of fertility for me. I'm just naming that right now. While I am not actively trying to get pregnant, this is not an announcement for that. I do know that it can take a couple years

to get your body ready and fertile for pregnancy. And I do know that I very much desire to have kids. And I also know that pregnancy and postpartum are some of the most nutritionally demanding times in a woman's life and a mom and her baby's health now and for years to come is influenced by her nutrient status also a woman's fertility is also influenced by her nutrient status so I am really taking this year to focus on all the things that I can do in order to set up my fertility for hopefully the best outcome that I can have.

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Act fast because this is a limited-time offer. So again, go to buyoptimizers.com slash realfoodology. Mike, I'm so excited that we're finally doing this. We've been talking about this for a while and now the time has come. Let's, well, first and foremost, before I start asking questions, if you want to give the listener just a little bit of your background, if they are unaware of you and what you do. Sure. Yeah. The quick elevator pitch here is I've been interested in health my entire life.

I've kind of that weird kid that wanted to do pushups and put on muscle. And I was a huge fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger when I was young and Jean-Claude Van Damme and things like that. And then went to school, played sports in high school and stuff. And then in college, I got an undergrad in biology, had aspirations to go to medical school, took the MCAT, things like that. Had a very serendipitous encounter

with then the chief medical officer of Merck at a bar actually in Boston. And he was like, healthcare is changing. Insurance is really dictating the practice of medicine. You can do so many things in health without having to go through all the medical school residency and all that. And I would encourage you, and he was an MD himself, to explore that route. So I actually got a job in sales and then pursued a master's degree in nutrition. So I got into this whole functional

medicine field in 2006 and had a mentor back then, Harry Idnear, who encouraged and taught me a lot about blood work. He did a study at Michigan State University where they ran subjective feelings and had people submit surveys about their mood and their affect and their energy levels in this and concurrently ran their blood work and found certain patterns that would emerge out of blood lipid profiles and metabolic metabolism, you know, liver enzymes, insulin, glucose, and so forth. And yeah, it was very serendipitous encounter that he was my mentor early on. So I got really into blood work in the early 2000s, started working with a medical doctor, Gerard Guillory in Colorado and seeing people knee to knee in a nutrition

type setting and realize, you know, so many people have all of these health ailments from depression to diabetes to fatty liver disease, from just their diet and lifestyle, you know. And so yeah, just have been started creating videos online in 2013, interviewing doctors, and then, you know, all sorts of different people wrote a book called belly fat effect in 2014. So here we are today just talking about, you know, back to the basics, whole foods, sleep, circadian rhythm, health, metabolic health, and much more. And everything you just mentioned are things that I want to dive into today. I didn't realize that you and I have a similar background, which I really love and respect. And something that I really, really admire about you and what I love about your work is that you're

really good at breaking down the science and making it really simple and digestible and more put into like layman's terms for people. Because you, like many of us in this world, are recognizing that so many people are sick. You know, when we look at our population, only about 12% of our population is sick, or is is well, the rest of them are sick. And we need to do something about it. And clearly, the traditional medical model, which you learned very early on, is not helping people. So when I say that you're really good at diving into the science, you're actually finding the truth, versus if someone's just going to go into their allopathic general doctor, they're not going to get the information that they're getting from you. And actually, you're really good at talking about this.

So if you want to just take a moment to speak to this, like what is happening right now when we're looking at the general allopathic medical model versus what you're practicing, which is the more integrative approach. Why is there such a disconnect happening there right now in health? Yeah, this is a great question, Courtney. And I'm not really sure if it's, I think it's multifaceted. I think part of it is just the training. And then also the amount of time that patients or doctors have with their patients. But going back to the training, you know, the tool bag that most mainstream medical doctors, and we're talking from specialists to internal medicine doctors, to family medicine doctors, in their training, they're largely taught how to use either interventions, surgical procedures, things like that, or referrals to specialists, or utilizing

pharmaceutical medications. And so it just the lifestyle, diet, nutrition element of this, it's just not baked into the training. Secondarily, you know, and I think this is even actually a bigger issue is most doctors are really taught about, you know, sort of traumatic experiences, you know, most of the residency, you know, programs and so forth, they are in teaching hospitals and people are coming in with, you know, liver failure, acetaminophen toxicity, alcoholism, all of these things. And so, you know, they're really trained in the practice of acute care, whereas most people, as you mentioned, are chronically sick due to lifestyle induced and nutrition induced diseases. And so there's a big disconnect with the training and what people are actually suffering from.

And so I think that's part of it. The other part of it is just, you know, the practice of medicine is really dictated by insurance companies now and Medicare, and they are just not paying enough. The practitioners are not being compensated for their time to educate patients on the things that we'll talk about today, like sleep and stress management, having meaning and purpose and meaningful relationships, whole food, nutrition, exercise, all these things really account for majority of the health ailments that people face. And so we're running into the situation where people have faced a lifetime of poor health choices and they're manifesting or

expressing these diseases, diabetes, dementia, heart failure, congestive heart failure, autoimmunity, obesity. And just giving these people prescriptions once the disease has already set root and manifested, really that might manage symptoms, ameliorate some pain or disease, but we really need to course correct with the foundation nutrition exercise lifestyle. So I think that's a big part of it. The other part of it, I think, is just the mindset of the patients. Most patients just don't want to do the work. They don't want to change their nutrition. They can have full-blown type 2 diabetes and you work with anyone in healthcare, a nurse, a medical doctor, occupational therapist, physical therapist, people just don't want to do the work.

So it's not just the practitioners. I think it's the mindset in America. We have been indoctrinated from pharmaceutical advertisements, just these quick fixes with Amazon Prime and Uber Eats. We're just, you know, expect this instant gratification. And we sort of assume that our health can be just updated very quickly with a prescription or an app or a surgical procedure. I mean, if you look at the popularity of the recent drug known as semiglutide or Ozempac,

a lot of people have gained a lot of weight throughout the COVID pandemic. And look at this quick fix as the solution, the sine qua non to their lifelong obesity problem. But of course, there's all these really serious side effects from gastroparesis and paralysis of the stomach and chronic constipation. I mean, the list goes on and on. And people are willing to roll the dice and suffer those long-term side effects

just to lose a few pounds. And so I think we can't just blame the doctors or the system, it's also the patients as well. And so the good thing is, and I say this not tongue in cheek, but most people, they go through these cycles and they go to the doctor and they have to experience enough suffering

to the point where they realize that it is the bread, the cookies, the crackers, the soda, the alcohol that is the reason why they have all these problems. And once they realize that and are willing to change their lifestyle, that's when they start to experience the benefits. And it's like a snowball rolling downhill. You know, it's hard at first to experience, you know, some initial weight loss or some progress, but I encourage people to just make the private public, you know, once you start going to the gym, post some pictures on Instagram and, and, uh, or Facebook or healthy meals, or have an accountability partner, hire a nutritionist like

yourself or, or me to help you. And I think that's really where you start to see, um, the, the meaningful changes. Um, and then tracking that with objective biomarkers like blood work to notice that, Hey, look, you know, once I start sleeping better or cutting out the alcohol or not going to Chick-fil-A for lunch, you know, my blood work improves. And so once you see these objective biomarkers and changes in your body composition, it becomes easier to make this a lifestyle habit, not just a quick, quick fix diet change. Yeah. And that was an amazing answer. And I will say, so I'm giving a presentation next week and I was looking at a chart that showed Americans with chronic diseases from 1965 and it's projected all the

way up to 2030. And around where we are right now, if I remember correctly, we're around 46% of our population has chronic disease and they're projecting by 2030, we're going to be at 49 point, like basically half of our population is going to have chronic diseases. And to what you were saying now, I don't want to spend any more time on this, but just so the listeners can hear that that's a lot of the issue right now is that our doctors, like you said, are trained for acute care. No one is being trained how to deal with all these chronic diseases that have really only risen in the last 50, 60 years. So that's an issue. And then as well, I think there's a massive education gap here where people not wanting to take the accountability,

I think it's more, so it is that, but that is a symptom of the fact that they are not being taught the true importance of these diet and lifestyle interventions that we're gonna get into because many of them don't think that they work. They think, I just saw a video this morning that you might have already seen of this British doctor saying that she's throwing out all these wild percentages saying that even if someone loses weight the

percentage of them gaining it back and them maybe seeing a dip in their diabetes and their blood sugar insulin but then it's going to go back up there's all these people that think that just because they've tried you know the the weight loss, what's the word, like the yo-yo dieting and everything that's failed them. And so this is where your science really comes in. It's really helpful for people. And I want to start diving into that because I want to give people things that they can actually implement in their life that actually work.

So you mentioned Ozempic, and I heard you actually on another podcast, talk a little bit about Ozempic. And we, we talked a little bit about the side effects, but you had mentioned that there's a similar thing that happens and correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I understood. When you're eating high protein diets that mimics the same thing that's happening with Ozempic. Can we talk about that? Yeah, this is an excellent point, Courtney. And I think it's important to just kind of scale back and talk about how Ozempic works and not really drill too down into the weeds. But I think it is important to recognize that this is actually not a new drug.

These so-called GLP-1 agonists. And so these are hormones and they're categorized into the bucket known as incretin hormones. And these incretin hormones are released from our stomach and small intestine. And these hormones really help with the post-meal processing. And so if we think about the metabolic hormones, people are familiar with things like insulin and glucagon. But there are hormones that are actually released

prior to insulin being released in the post-meal window that help insulin function and help the body realize that food is coming in because we all have to eat, but eating is actually a metabolic stressor. You're having glucose increasing, you're having blood lipids increase. And so the body is always trying to maintain balance or homeostasis. And so these so-called increasing hormones really just help the body process meals in the post-meal window. But what happens is when people are mindlessly eating, eating hyperpalatable,

ultra processed foods, cookies, crackers, treats, ice cream, pizza, all of that stuff, a lot of energy that's easily absorbed and digestible. And then it creates this insulin resistance if consumed over time in excess. Well, these hormones become muted or desensitized. And it turns out that one of the main mechanisms that is linked with the success of bariatric surgery from just if we look at it from a mechanism of action standpoint, I'm not promoting bariatric surgery,

but a lot of people think, well, the reason why individuals lose weight if they're morbidly obese when they get gastric bypass or bariatric surgery is because the stomach is smaller. That thinking is actually wrong. It's because when you manipulate surgically the small intestine, you amplify the release of these so-called incretin hormones. And Ozempek or GLP-1 is just a synthetic analog

of one of these hormones that's naturally increased. In healthy people, when you or I eat, we're going to have natural GLP-1 increase. And most people that are insulin sensitive who eat real food and exercise, they have no problem with these so-called incretin hormones. But again, when you've become into the state where you're overweight, you're obese, you're morbidly obese, these hormones have become desensitized. So in the post-meal window, there's not efficient processing of the energy that comes on board.

And glucose is through the roof and insulin is through the roof and then you get fat gain and you're chronically hungry and all that. So a natural way to sort of mimic what these synthetic analogs of our natural hormone GLP-1 would do is just exercising. So going for a walk after you eat or even, and this is one of the reasons why oftentimes we're not hungry after we exercise, you know, we're naturally like, okay, I went for a a run i went to the gym you know two hours later you might be a little bit hungry but the reason why we're not super hungry afterwards is because these increasing hormones are increased from exercise you might notice if you have a really a meal with friends or family or your lover your partner your children and you're talking and you're like enjoying the food and you were part of the cooking process. Oftentimes we don't tend to overeat in

those scenarios. We overeat when we're mindlessly eating on our phones by ourself. And so it turns out that when you slowly enjoy your food and you have the aromas of food, there's this whole pre-meal insulin release. And during that, the smelling of food, you're touching the food and all that, that really helps the digestive process and stimulate that. And then in those contexts, you don't generally overeat. So again, just mindful eating, not eating on your phone, chewing your food thoroughly and putting the fork down. And again, we naturally do this, like when we eat in groups, like we talk, we share plates, and we're part of the cooking process. And so unfortunately, just how our culture is designed to be highly productive and fast-paced and go, go, go,

people are not doing that. And then we suffer the consequences in the form of obesity or diabetes. So exercise, mindful eating is important. And then the macronutrients of the food that we eat are obviously very important as well. And you hit on protein and also healthy fats are natural ways to stimulate these increasing hormones. that we eat are obviously very important as well and you hit on protein and also healthy fats are natural ways to stimulate these increasing hormones i know polyphenols and vegetables

are controversial if people are doing a carnivorous diet but some of the polyphenolic compounds and blueberries and raspberries for example and even turmeric have been shown to increase these gut hormones and this is actually why metformin and berberine actually work. Part of it is they're really poorly absorbed, these effective sort of natural compounds, if you will. Metformin is, of course, a prescription drug, but it's derived from a plant known as the French lilac. And then berberine is derived from berberis.

It's been used in traditional Chinese medicine for 3,000 years. Both of these compounds affect blood sugar and metabolic health by actually increasing these hormones. And that's why when people take them, for example, berberine, you can buy it over the counter on Amazon, whatever. It's a natural appetite suppressant. People notice that they don't have these food cravings or alcohol cravings when they're taking 500 or 750 milligrams of berberine. So yeah, a lot of natural ways to affect this. But again, if people suffer from overeating and feeling like they're never full, having a small

amount of food and then going for a walk is a great way to naturally increase these hormones. And like you said, protein, I think is really important, but it's the most controversial macronutrient right now. People are scared of protein. They want to have plant-based protein and they're scared of eggs or meat or whatever because cholesterol. So we know that meat is very filling and satiating and part of that mechanistically or physiologically could be attributed to increasing these gut hormones. Did you know that women can only get pregnant around a six-day window? I grew up thinking that women could get pregnant any day of the month and I know so many women that got on the pill because they thought that they could

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If you would like to try Natural Cycles, go to naturalcycles.com, use code realfoodology and you're going to get 15% off an annual subscription plus a free thermometer. Again, that's naturalcycles.com, code realfoodology. This is an ad, and Natural Cycles is for 18 plus and does not protect against STIs. Do you drink filtered water? Hopefully you do, and hopefully by now you know that tap water is loaded with all sorts of pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides, heavy metals, fluoride, chlorine, etc. But what I'm here to talk to you about today is if you are filtering your water, you've got to make sure that you're replenishing the electrolytes and the minerals back in your water. One of the ways that I love to do this is with Element. It's spelled L-M-N-T.

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of our fluid and electrolyte balance. We actually need sodium. It's imperative to have it in certain levels. And the majority of Americans are getting most of their salt from processed packaged foods and fast foods and from eating out. So if you are not eating out a lot, which hopefully you're not, but that's a discussion for another day, most likely you're probably actually not getting enough salt. So this is one thing that I love about Element is it has a really high sodium level and then it also has potassium and magnesium in there. So it's replenishing your electrolytes. Also, I love the saltiness of it. There's a couple different flavors that I love the most.

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sample pack after you make a purchase. So you get one packet of every flavor so you can try all the different flavors and then see which one you like the best. So again, that is drink element.com slash real foodology element is spelled LMNT. Well, let's talk about protein for a second, because like you said, it's becoming pretty controversial. And there was that documentary that just came out, you are what you eat. And you actually did a podcast episode about this, diving into the science. If you want to talk a minute about that, because I think people are being very misled in the public right now.

Everyone is hearing, oh my God, I need to go plant-based, not only for my health, but for the environment, which I talk about that all the time. So we don't need to talk about that. But from a regenerative standpoint, regenerative farming standpoint, going plant-based would be the worst thing for our environment. But what about from a standpoint when you're looking at blood sugar levels, so blood insulin and satiety and how it affects our health and also how it affects the obesity rates,

why is going plant-based maybe not the best thing and why does protein quality matter so much? Yeah, this is a great question. Well, we can dive into that study shortly, but just to back up, I mean, I think both you and I have probably, I know I've tried vegan. I did raw vegan in 2004 for about a year. I mean, and this is anecdotal.

And I grow vegetables. I have like 400 square feet in my backyard of gardening beds and all that. Like I'm not anti-vegetable, anti-plant by any means. But, you know, the problem with when most people who don't really intentionally read into going on a vegan or plant-based diet is they end up just consuming more ultra processed junk food. And it might be free of animal products,

but it's highly refined. A lot of canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, rice, and sugar, basically. So that's kind of the problem is we swap out these so-called animal foods for processed foods from vegetables. And you go in plants. You go to the grocery store, and now you see plant-based Reese's peanut butter cups, plant-based Oreos. I mean, it's literally like lost.

And the food companies, they did this with keto too. I mean, the food companies bastardized keto. I mean, there's keto Reese's peanut butter cups, all the junk, right? And so food companies are really good at finding what people are gluten-free or plant-based or low-carb and creating, you know, using these buzzwords to advertise their products that are really hyper-palatable, ultra-processed and unhealthy. So that's part of the problem, number one.

Numerous studies find that when people go on a vegan diet, whole foods is not emphasized. I have no problem with people eating, sprouting their lentils and their beans and soaking their rice beforehand and being very intentional. No problem with people undergoing that way of going on a plant-based diet, but that's an ultra small minority of people that actually do that. And people that eat that way actually look pretty good and healthy. And I think that's one way to go about it for sure. So that's, I think, part of the problem.

The other part of the problem is a recently published study randomized people over the age of 65 to either eat omnivorous meals or plant-based meals. And in the 12-hour post-meal window, they looked and they exercised beforehand, by the way, and looked at rates of muscle protein synthesis and found that an omnivorous meal increases muscle protein synthesis 47% greater. And they did body weight matched doses of protein. So people are eating bolus meals of protein or a protein that would corroborate with how much lean body mass they had.

So me, I'm like 190 pounds. I would probably eat more than someone that had 110 pounds of lean body mass. And what they found is again, the vegan meals do not initiate or stimulate muscle protein synthesis to the same degree. Now, that's problematic because we know that sarcopenia, which is muscle loss, and even sarcopenic obesity, and this is this co-occurrence of weight gain and muscle loss that occurs simultaneously. This is actually quite common as people get older

and then they actually start to lose bone as well. And so we really don't want to get into a scenario where we're gaining weight, losing muscle and losing bone. So we want to prioritize the health of our muscle. It's where most of our glucose is deposited into muscle. We need that strength to live independently as we get older, to just do activities of daily living from walking to get food to wiping your rear end. I mean, all these things. If you don't have muscle, you need 24 hour caregiving services, which is not good, right?

So that's, I think, really important for people to recognize. You're just not going to support the health of your muscle if you're only eating beans and rice and kale and things like that. So that's big point number one. Big point number two, you know, you saw, again, that Netflix documentary. Chris Gardner is an investigator over at Stanford University, and he's heavily influenced by food companies. And I think, is it Beyond Meat or the Impossible Burger? I can't remember which one. Yeah, he got funding from Beyond Meat. And for anyone questioning this, it is stated in the study that he got funding.

Exactly. I mean, it's in the conflicts of interest on page seven, I think it is in the New England Journal of Medicine study. But, you know, it's important, you know, anytime you read studies and, you know, Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman have been talking and helping people better understand, you know, when you see a study,

let's first do a few different things. Number one, you want to see what the investigators are trying to ascertain from the study. And in this particular study, what they were trying to figure out is they randomized twins to either eat an omnivorous diet or a vegan diet over the course of eight weeks. During the first four weeks of the study, people received pre-made meals. They didn't have to do any of the meal prep and all that. And they just had a food company make vegan meals versus omnivorous meals. And there was some sausage and processed meat and some of that. And then after four weeks, then they encouraged people,

these different twins to then cook on their own, either eat an omnivorous diet or a vegan diet. And they wanted to see specifically, and again, this is right in the materials and methods and the objective of the article, is the investigators wanted to see if eating an omnivorous diet versus a plant-based diet impacted LDL cholesterol, the so-called bad cholesterol. That was it.

It wasn't looking at body composition, waist circumference, all that. It was just trying to see and ascertain which eating methodology would impact LDL cholesterol. And it turned out that at the end of eight weeks, LDL cholesterol decreased more significantly on the vegan diet compared to the omnivorous diet. Now, LDL cholesterol is just one of many proxies or biomarkers that could indicate potential cardiovascular risk. And it's, you know, I would just say it's not the best biomarker there. First of all, LDL cholesterol is just estimated. When you go and get your LDL cholesterol, people can Google this.

It's called the Friedwald equation. It's not even a direct measurement. The Friedwald equation is actually enumerating how much cholesterol is in the so-called low-density lipoprotein. It's not actually looking at the lipoprotein itself. And that's important because in your vessels, particularly the coronary arteries that are very small, they tend to get narrowed or occluded when you get atherosclerotic plaque. And that's what we want to avoid. We want to avoid the narrowing of the arteries. It's not the cholesterol content in the particle that's

interacting with the vessel wall. It's the particle itself. And so we actually, if we're serious about ascertaining what diet strategy or what fasting pattern or what exercise pattern increases or decreases cardiovascular risk, we really want to look at the particle itself, not how much cholesterol the particle is containing. And so I think that's the thing that we all, number one, that was the big kind of red flag for me of just looking at this. Who really cares if LDL goes down?

Because what happened in this study is triglycerides increased more significantly in the vegan arm of the study and not the omnivorous arm. And people might say, well, what are triglycerides and why should I care? Well, triglycerides are an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. It's actually one of the first biomarkers that will increase when people start to gain weight or have insulin resistance occurring. This happens from fat spillover. When your fat cells start to get overfilled, lipids start to spill over, they go to the liver. The liver's like, oh my gosh,

what are we going to do with this? Let's turn it into triglycerides. And it just creates this vicious cycle of insulin resistance and weight gain and metabolic disease. And so that was kind of interesting is that wasn't really talked about as a potential challenge here as well. Why are we seeing triglycerides increase over the course of the study? I thought what was really interesting as well, and Chris Gardner and I have actually had some email exchanges because he was part of what's known as the diet fit study that Stanford put out several years ago, comparing a-carb ketogenic diet compared to a low-fat, high-carb plant-based diet. And they looked at anthropometrics like body composition, visceral fat, waist circumference at the start of the study,

but didn't look at that after the fact. And I thought, that's so crazy. Chris, you're doing this big diet fit study. Stanford's paying for this. Why aren't we looking at waist circumference? I mean, this is a non-invasive thing that any nurse or medical assistant could do. And he wrote back some, and I shared this on Instagram

and we kind of got into a little thing over it. But again, you know, several years later, fast forward, you know, I think it was five years later, same thing with this study. We have initial waist circumference and body fat percentage, I believe, is a baseline characteristics of the twin study. But then after the eight weeks, we don't know if the body

composition changed. They just highlighted weight loss. And weight loss is really, you don't know where the weight loss is coming from. And as I mentioned earlier, the recently published study from the folks in Netherlands, I believe it was, comparing the omnivorous diet to the vegan diet in terms of muscle protein synthesis differences. It'd be nice to know if the weight loss was coming from muscle, was it visceral fat, whatever. We don't really know. It was just weight loss. There was, I think, two pounds difference in weight loss over the course of eight weeks in the twins who ate the vegan diet versus the omnivorous diet. But again, I'm more interested in was this visceral fat? Is it coming from the belly? Is it coming from muscle? Like we should understand these things. And if we're going to do a study in 2024,

well, it was, I think 2023 is when it was published. We should understand where the weight is coming from. So again, these are details that the media coverage of this, if you go to NPR or CNN or Washington Post, I mean, they're just going to highlight, I see plant-based diet is superior, but the study was designed to look at changes in LDL cholesterol. And I will add, there's an $11 test known as APOB, your apolipoprotein B to APOA1 ratio,

is much more sensitive and specific to changes in LDL cholesterol because it turns out that every LDL cholesterol particle has one and only one apolipoprotein B on it. And it's really that apolipoprotein that interacts with your vessel wall that might contribute to the atherosclerotic plaque. So it could have for an additional $500, you know, this study could have like had much more granular data that would give us better insights into really in twins, which I think are interesting to study, which diet is more favorable from a long term cardiovascular'm just wondering like why they wouldn't have tested that. I don't know, said, if you were to get the same amount of protein in, I forgot the exact measurement, but like a four ounce piece of fish, you would have to eat almost two cups of lentils to get the same amount. And that would be 130 calories for the fish versus I think it was like over 400 calories for the lentils to get that same amount of protein.

And then you add on top of that, the fact that you're not getting as a wide array of amino acids. And so that's probably what's contributing to the study that you talked about where people are not synthesizing enough muscle on a vegan vegetarian diet. And then to wrap this all back around, I think, okay, so when you're eating a vegetarian diet,

my experience was I was carb loading like crazy and not getting enough good high quality protein because the proteins I was getting were still more carbohydrate heavy than if I was eating animal based protein. And so when we look at the fact that obesity has tripled since the 1980s, and now all of a sudden we are pushing this plant based diet. And then we have this study that just came out now in this documentary where they claimed that it was weight loss, but then the triglycerides go up. I think, okay, they probably gained more fat and then just lost muscle is what I think when I hear that. It's interesting. I mean, I haven't yet

watched the documentary, just like a snippet of it, but I did, you know, read the study, of course, and all that. And yeah, it's, it's interesting to me. But I think we just need more objective. Here's, I think that the thing that you and I are both, let's say the quiet part out loud. And I think many of these investigators have a bias towards pushing the narrative that plant-based nutrition is better. And, and, you know, some of these people, their labs or themselves might be funded directly or indirectly by companies because there's a lot of biotech companies and a lot of investment and a lot of money to be had in new technologies to make plant-based cheese, plant-based eggs, plant-based butter, all that.

There's a lot of money to be made and clearly there's a demand for it because people are being inundated with this over and over and over again that it's better for the environment and so forth. And so, yeah, I think that's kind of what is happening here and we saw this bias throughout COVID, right? I mean, this is the thing that I think sort of took the hood off, and people kind of get it. And so we're now starting to see the same thing go on with

nutrition. And it's not really new. That's been going on for quite some time. So I just think we need to be a little bit more cautious with the interpretation of this, especially considering the fact that the study, the investigator has received money from a company that has a vested interest in having people eat less meat and more meat alternatives. And so that's kind of the problem. So I mean, if this study was flipped around, and let's say the lead investigator was Dr. Sean Baker, and he was funded by the American Beef Institute or whatever, you know, people would be up in arms saying, well, see, don't you see the conflict of interest here? But, you know, when it's beyond meat funding, the lead investigator, no one says anything about it.

So I think that's the thing, we need to be a little bit more unbiased here. And yeah, I like to just look at what is working for people, you know, people that have improved their health and lost weight and they're thriving in their 50s and 60s, what are they doing? And for the most part, you know, there are some outliers and things like that, people eating beyond meat burgers and whatever. But most people are eating more of an omnivorous whole foods paleo style diet and seemingly thriving. They've reversed their autoimmune disease, their gastrointestinal challenges, they've lost the weight.

And so humans and ancient humans have been eating meat and fish for about 2.6 million years. So it's hard to argue that these foods are inherently problematic. If you look at ancestral, you know, modern day hunter-gatherer communities, they're not eating, you know, meat alternatives, right? They're eating the real thing, raw milk, you know, foraging for tubers and berries

and things like that and having animal flesh periodically or fish. So I think we just need to look historically. And where we've gone wrong with nutrition is when we introduce these industrial foods. If you look at the history of cottonseed oil, how that became a staple in the American diet and the ensuing problems with trans fats. And it was really from Procter & Gamble making cottonseed oil.

And then you look at canola oil. I mean, this stuff is really a machine lubricant that got repurposed as food. And now this is in every packaged you know, packaged food almost. So I think that's the problem is industrial novel foods are the issue. And so we're recreating that using the same foods that cause the problem in these meat alternatives, thinking they're somehow going to be healthier for us. And I don't think that's a good way to look at it.

Yeah, I mean, convenience is killing us, you know, that's just the fact of the matter. And when you were talking about these tribes and just how we've eaten for millions of years, I was thinking, we've now made plant based to be really convenient. But if you were not living in a city, where you had access to a grocery store, and all these convenient foods and the plant based foods, and you know, all the different vegetables and stuff, it would be virtually impossible to be plant-based. And I always think about that or at least to like be healthy and do it because you wouldn't have access to all of these foods and the supplements. And I think about like third world countries, they absolutely have to have meat to survive because they need the nutrients. So you had mentioned that there are a lot of things that people are doing

that are allowing them to thrive in their, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s. What are some of these things that you have found that the science backs that are really good for us so that we can avoid obesity so we can keep, you know, a healthy weight, maintain good blood glucose levels, maintain good muscle mass? Yeah, great question, Courtney. Well, you know, it sounds kind of boring, but exercise is one of the biggest things. And I know we've heard this over and over again, that exercise is important and all that. But numerous studies now find that strength really is protective from preventing all-cause mortality or death from all causes and cardiovascular-specific mortality.

So the probability of someone leaving this earth unplanned before they really want to is largely from two conditions. It's going to be from heart disease and cancer. And it turns out that having strength and muscle mass is protective for those two different conditions. If you look at individuals who are diagnosed with metastatic or stage four breast cancer, various studies find in women that they have lower muscle mass, lower strength compared to women, age match women who don't have breast cancer. There was a recently published study tracking people for five years after they went to the hospital having some chest pain. And it turned out that in this particular study, I think they looked at about a thousand people again,

tracking them. They went to the hospital, had some chest pain, maybe symptoms of early heart disease or having a mild heart attack. And in this study they randomized, they tested people based upon their strength, their leg strength, doing isometric leg extension, which is just a gross approximation of overall strength. And what they found is that over the course of four and a half years, the people that had low strength were more likely to die in that five-year period compared to people who were stronger. So just improving your strength by doing resistance training exercises,

HIIT training, some of that high-intensity stuff, paired with some walking and Zone 2-type training on the weekends, maybe hiking or biking or just getting out in nature. I think that's some of the – I mean, if you look at Tom Cruise, you know, Top Gun came out, was it 2023, 2022? I can't remember, a couple of years ago. And just looking at how he has aged over time compared to his peers in the same space, it's pretty incredible. And if you look at the story of, and I'm not, I don't know about his politics or his religious stuff.

I'm just more concerned about his lifestyle. He's an avid exerciser. And so people who really move their bodies and prioritize exercise, it turns out that they naturally eat better foods. I mean, a study in college, kids actually randomized them to either exercise or not and then just looked at their diets using camera records of what the meals that they eat. People that started a new exercise program ate better foods and snacked less on hyperpalatable junk food.

So I think that's the biggest thing is embarking on some sort of full body resistance training program several days per week and then doing some walking. Numerous studies now find that walking between 8,000 and 12,000 steps per day can reduce the prevalence of all these different conditions. This was a UK biobank study that just tracked people and their pedometers and step counts and then looked at their medical records. And people who walk more have less chronic disease. It's very simple. And so just moving your body more is going to be a better thing.

And so instead of having all these recurring expenses with Netflix and Amazon Prime, invest in a gym membership or some home equipment. I think that's really important. We've talked a lot about sleep and I know you do on your podcast sleep and sunlight i think they're two sides of the same coin so making sure you're getting exposure to the sun in the morning even if you live in the northern part of the like i live in seattle washington we get like at most eight hours of sun or daylight this time of year just get out in the morning walk your dogs and that really helps with that night's sleep and so forth. Turning off the Wi-Fi at night, keeping phones out of the bedroom are very simple things that can improve sleep quality, sleep duration. So just some of the

basic things and then really just cutting out refined carbs. I think that's the thing. There's all the controversy over, well, plant-based or plant-derived foods have antinutrients and oxalates and phytates and all this. Well, that's part of it, but I think just cutting back on the refined sugar and refined carbs and prioritizing protein and making your food from scratch are some of the easiest ways to really optimize health. Yeah, that's so helpful. And talking about exercise, I know you've done a lot of episodes on this

about weight training and the importance of it. And I would love to talk a little bit about this because I will admit personally that it's one that I have started doing trepidatiously because one, as a woman, it is a little intimidating and it's not something I've ever focused on too much. Just to give a little bit of my background, I's not something I've ever focused on too much. I mean, I just to give a little bit of my background, I started running when I was like in high school, and outside of college, and then I got really burnt out and then started doing, you know, like soul cycle. And I was doing these really intense cardio workouts, and then stopped doing that. And then

just really focused on walking. And I will say for the first time in my life, what I saw that the most drastic change in my body and my health and my energy was when I traded out those really intense cardio workouts just for simply walking. I mean, I lost like 10 pounds and I stopped year, and I'm hearing a lot of information, a lot of science around how important it is to build good, healthy muscles, especially as you age, because not only does it become harder, but also I know in older ages, that's like one of the leading causes of death. And it's something simply is like falling down the stairs because they don't have enough muscle mass.

So can we talk a little bit about weight training and the science behind the importance of building that muscle mass? Yeah, excellent, Courtney. I think this is really important. And like you said, especially for women, because women have been lied to by the fitness industry for a very long time. And, you know, there's been a big push on basically doing cardio with weights, which isn't really helpful for supporting muscle mass. So, you know, women should train to failure, do resistance training and hypert. So, you know, women should train to failure, do resistance training and hypertrophy based, you know, sets and reps. And what that might look like from a standpoint is in terms of sets and reps and so forth, aiming between eight and 12 repetitions

for any given exercise and making sure that those last several reps are pretty challenging. And so in the fitness community, people talk about relative perceived exertion or pretty challenging. And so in the fitness community, people talk about relative perceived exertion or RPE. And that's just a way to help people understand how intense a particular lift would be, for example. So, you know, people might be watching, if I'm doing a bicep curl, let's just say an RPE of eight. So it's like I could do two or three more reps

on any given set, but I want to be struggling around that eighth rep. And so you don't always want to be going to failure, but it needs to be intense enough so that you can barely do one or two more repetitions in those rep ranges that I mentioned, the 8 to 12. And so I think that's the problem where I was just at the gym last night and saw these women get on the hip thruster. And when I hip thrust, it's 400 or 500 pounds I work up to.

And they're putting five pounds on the hip thrust. And your glutes are your biggest muscle or they should be in your body. And so it was just a lot of high repetition, 25, 30 reps. That is good to so-called burn out the muscle as an accessory at the end of your resistance training session. So I think, and I did create an e-course called the Glute Masterclass with Erica Grisanti, who's in Los Angeles and is really sought after for her lower body development courses. And she trains people at West LA Athletics and things like that.

Great coach. But helping people to reframe. So when they go to the gym, they should have a primary lift. So that day, for example, it could be hip press, and you want to spend a lot of time working up in the weight to stimulate that muscle appropriately so that you get the so called adaptations, which are hypertrophy and redevelopment of the muscle tissue and the neuromuscular connection and all these things. And just really prioritize that main exercise or lift. And so if you're training shoulders,

that main lift might be shoulder presses with dumbbells or a barbell. If you're training your back, it might be pull-ups or rows. If you're training your lower body, it could be deadlifts, it could be squats, it could be lunges, it could be hip thrusts, just varying that, but really focusing on putting a lot of effort into warming up and properly performing an exercise and spending five or six sets and gradually working down to heavier rep ranges of six to eight repetitions, trying to go almost to failure,

but not, and then periodizing your workouts. You're not doing the same thing all the time, I think are really important. And so working with a coach who understands this, you know, one sort of certification to look for is a CSCS, a certified strength and conditioning specialist. So I was a personal trainer early on in my 20s. And I did the so called ACE and there's NASM, there's all these things. But a CSCS is someone who really understands exercise program design. And of course, there's great coaches that don't have these credentials. But right, if you're just trying to Google someone who understands, like, okay, how can we get Courtney to her optimal muscle strength for her age and goals and stuff to think forward to how your life might look in 30 or 40 years down the line. And I think Peter Attia has done a lot of helping people reframe this with his centenarian decathlon and all this.

And so I just think muscle is really important. And in terms of, you mentioned living independently, I think that's great, but also preventing cardiovascular disease and cancer and all these different conditions are really important. So if people get cancer, they get cachexic, they start to lose muscle mass. And sarcopenia is one of the consequences of cancer. Same with heart disease, even diabetes. People that have insulin resistance lose more muscle mass and have less muscle strength is one of the consequences of cancer same with heart disease even diabetes you know people that have insulin resistance uh lose more muscle mass and have less muscle strength compared to people who don't so we're really fighting against this in all different

levels by supporting muscle health and prioritizing strength and so folks to you know read more up on andy galpin has um i think it's like three by three by three, he says, you know, go to the gym, pick three different exercises, do three to five reps, or sorry, three to five sets of three to five repetitions right after warm up. So that's just one simple way, you know, to sort of think about this. And if you do that three to five days per week, you're getting, you know, about 10 to 15 sets per muscle group, you know, spread this out upper body. I've been encouraging clients just parse out your exercises into push pull, you know, so you have your upper body pushing. And so that would be shoulders, chest, triceps, then you could do a

lower body pushing. And so that would be maybe squats that could be deadlifting. Next, maybe this could be Monday and Tuesday, you know, upper body pushing, lower body pushing. Then you could do a rest day on Wednesday, maybe a long walk, something like that. Thursday could be upper body pulling. So what is pulling? That's working your back, your rhomboids, your traps, your biceps. And then lower body pulling would be more glute hamstring focus. So lunges, you know, Romanian deadlifts, you know, things like that, hip thrusts even could incorporate the glutes. And so if you just think about the anatomy from the frontal plane, the posterior plane, and just parse out your exercises in that way, kind of a bro split,

if you will, just to get started, that's a very simple way to just conceptualize how you should approach fitness. Yeah, that was really helpful. Another thing that was helpful for me is my boyfriend. I feel like a lot of women have this story that if you date someone who is accustomed to going to the gym and kind of knows the general workouts, he's helped me out a lot. You know, he's obviously not a trainer, but he's been doing this for a long time. And he knows the basics of stuff. And he's been really helping me kind of get over that initial intimidation and just kind of that dumbfounded, like what, what exercises do I do? And that's been really helpful.

And then another thing for me is challenging myself to do a little bit of a heavier weight each time, even if it's a difference of like a couple pounds, just feeling like I'm making an upwards, you know, difference in like the amount of weight that I'm doing really does help a lot. That's awesome. Yeah. And then that's a great activity for you to do as a couple, right? You go to the gym, you work out together, you get your quality time, you know, you're vulnerable, learn something. I think that's amazing. Yeah, that's really great. I want to talk about kids for a second. I'm always really inspired because you are always posting online, going on these really long hikes with your kids. You're showing them going to the gym,

doing really basic, simple exercises. And it's so cool. I love that you're not only instilling these practices in your children at a young age, but I also love that you're sharing it with people because it inspires me for when I have kids and is kind of setting that framework. Because I think so many people have this mentality. I'm actually, it's funny, I'm seeing it both ends the spectrum. So I'm seeing from like young ages, I think people are scared to, I don't know what it is, like put their kids into a challenging situation. And then I'm seeing headlines that people shouldn't be doing pull-ups and sit-ups and push-ups when they're like in their 50s, which is just crazy. And we're coddling these two different groups of people where I almost believe it's the most important because when you're little, you're setting that foundation.

And when you're older, you're helping to maintain your health, hopefully, and your longevity and your lifespan. would be some, let's say for our listeners that have kids and would like to maybe have a little bit of help instilling healthy practices from a diet standpoint and also from an exercise standpoint. Do you have any tips for them? Yeah, that's a great question, Courtney. I think, you know, with children, just getting them involved in the cooking process and with exercise is really important. You know, I think, you know, a lot of parents have this mindset. Well, when I was a kid, we ate hot dogs and, you know, Capri Sun and Twinkies. So my kid can have that too. But, you know, the problem is you're setting your child up for a lifetime of ill health. You know, why have them suffer from Crohn's, colitis and autoimmunity and asthma if they don't need to, right? So I think it's really

important to instill these habits because these kids are not going to spontaneously unlearn their bad eating habits when they become an adult. So you need to instill that now and make them part of the process. You know, when my daughter goes to the store with me, she's not on an iPad or an iPhone, we're picking stuff out together. Here's what an avocado should feel like. Can you grab two, please? What about bananas? Can you go pick them out? Like know what to look for. Here's mushrooms. Like, can you help me? All those little things I think are small, but just training her over and over again. You know, this is, these are the foods that we eat. Here's how we do them. Here's how we prepare them and all that I think is really important. And then same

thing when it comes to fitness or whatever, we have a big meal. Hey, we're going to go for a walk in about half an hour, get your shoes ready kind of thing. And then just like you said, not coddling them. So thanks to COVID, you know, school was canceled and all that. So my daughter and I spent a ton of time in the mountains. But just bringing her along and challenging her, you know, I think with this whole safetyism culture and coddling, you know, mentality that's coming from schools, and everyone gets a trophy for just participating and showing up. Yeah, that's not something that, you know, I espouse to as a parent and trying to create challenges. There's not something that, you know, I espouse to as a parent

and trying to create challenges. There's been many times, you know, with my daughter where she's cried on hikes. I don't want to do this. Why are we, why do we do it? Can we just stay home and play Minecraft? It's like, no, we're, this is what we're doing. This is what we do. And then the war, the reward is the journey, you know, just having fun conversations, getting out there, not bringing screens and just having her realize and self-actualizing. I think this is the most important thing. I started bringing her on these more intense hikes when she was almost four, like towards

the end of, I think she's like three and a half or something. And adults would say, wow, you're doing this and you're just a kid. And then she started to identify as the person who does these things. I think that's the most important thing. And it doesn't have to be just hiking. It could be going to the gym. You know, we now go to this actually on Wednesday. So later on tonight, we're going to go to this HIIT class. And at first she was the only kid in there. And now two adults who would just train themselves are bringing their wife and the kid to work out. And we inspired them to do that. And they're excited about that. So their child is making progress and they're making progress as a family, right? This is an activity

they do together instead of watching a Netflix documentary, they're actually exercising together. And I think that's important. So yeah, just having them start young, you know, and when they're young, they can do air squats, they can do pull-ups, they can do pushups, they can do all these basic things. And then we're not ramping up her weight. She's not squatting, trying to squat heavy loads or anything like that. And also just making it fun, you know, finding an exercise or activity that they really enjoy. It could be biking, it could be going to the playground and doing the monkey bars or pull-ups.

I think that's just really important. But again, reminding her that this is just something that we do to be healthy and involving her in the process, I think is key. That's so cool. I love, I love that you're doing that. It's really cool. And, you know, I mean, I learned in school, in one of my basic nutrition classes that children, the way that you feed them, what you feed them growing up and the certain habits that you instill in them really do follow them for life. You know, they're, it's a really basic foundational thing. So before we go, I really want to talk about this

for a second, because I know you're, you're very passionate about this, just like I am canola oil, or more specifically, let's talk about industrial seed oils. I actually, I want to say this really fast because I watched a video the other day with someone who I really respect. And I liked the way that they kind of reframed this because they made a really good point. They're like, there's so many different seed oils and there are certain things like, for example, flax seed oil, that is actually really good for you. It has some health benefits. So I'm starting to try to call them now industrial oils or industrial seed oils, for example, something like canola oil. Why is this so bad for us? Yeah, Courtney, great question. You know, it's interesting. This has

been, it's very controversial, you know, on the internet, people are like, well, why would you pick on canola oil? Like, you know, studies show that it reduces your LDL cholesterol on this. And what I like to do, and I don't think enough people have done their research into the history of their origins of, say, how cottonseed oil became Crisco and how Crisco was used by basically six and ten Americans at one point. And same with canola oil. And so the reason why I'm not a fan of these oils is without the use of industrialized purification and refining systems, no human or animal would ever eat these things. They are an offshoot of industry. They're basically industrial waste products that are being repurposed as foods. And we've seen problems when we have a novel food or a industry create something. And let's just talk about cottonseed oil and then we'll talk about

canola. So cottonseeds have a toxin in them known as gysipol. And Gysipol can actually cause liver failure and all these things. And cotton seeds are just a byproduct of the cotton gin processing, right? So the cotton mills for clothing and textures and all this stuff would just throw away these seeds and leave them in a big pile and there's nothing that anyone could do with them. And even animals would come in, wild hogs and so forth in Louisiana and Mississippi would come and eat the cotton seeds and forth in louisiana and mississippi would come and eat the cotton seeds and they would actually die horses would die because this toxin known as gizopal well it turned out that um you know protcher and gamble being you know

they were in the wax making uh industry and they thought well gosh this waste product it has oil in it what if we could somehow refine the oil and use that for like candle making or waxing and and they figured out how to remove the toxin known as Gysipol from the cotton seed and, and, uh, compete with Crisco and butter. I'm sorry, compete with butter and lard, uh, for cooking. So shortening, you know, when you take, um, wheat flour and you put in lard or raccoon fat, a lot of people used to actually make pastries out of raccoon fat and like the 1800s. I didn't know that. Because it was like really good, better than lard. But you know, butter's expensive, lard's expensive.

And we have this waste product that no one's doing anything with. What if we could just mill out the oil and then hydrogenate it and sell it as something that's superior and cheaper than butter and lard. And so that was the story of cottonseed. And so the marketing was heavily favored towards women saying like, oh, you know, if you're a pure homemaker, you don't use butter, right? You use

Crisco is made in this purified lab and all that. And so they really, you know, captured a lot of the market and sort of tainted the perception of whole animal fats like butter and lard. And then we come to find out in the 1990s, well, hydrogenation is actually really problematic for cardiovascular disease, for dementia and all this. And people have been consuming these hydrogenated cottonseed oils for years. And so once you understand the marketing behind how Procter & Gamble really hired a big marketing team to really shift the zeitgeist in America in the early 1900s, then you start to say, well, what about canola oil, right? Like, what is canola oil? What is it? It comes from rapeseed,

and this was used actually in, like, candles and things like that early on, but it was also used heavily by the country of Canada to help support the steam engines in World War II and earlier wars as well. It turns out that the uricic acid element of canola oil has a unique property property and when there's water in the steam engines, it doesn't stick and it's a good lubricant, better than other

petrochemicals and things like that. So it was heavily utilized during the steam engines and automotive industry in the 1950s, 1960s. And then once the war was over, World War II specifically, rapeseeds and Canada was growing a ton of canola and rape seed, but they couldn't do anything with it now because the demand was low. So then scientists in Manitoba figured out how to extract the highly toxic uricic acid. So again, the element that makes canola oil good as a machine lubricant is also inherently toxic for humans. That's why no animal would ever,

and again, the animals, just to reiterate, that ate the cotton seeds unrefined died. Any animal that would eat rapeseeds or canola would die because of uricic acid. So the scientists figured out a way to remove the uricic acid. And the reason why we call rapeseed oil canola oil is because can for Canada, it was sort of invented, if you will, in Canada. And I'm pretty sure that it was... Actually, do you know that it's... Sorry to interrupt you, but do you know that it's actually Canada low acid oil?

That's why it's canola oil. I didn't know that low acid. Yeah. Fascinating, right? Well, the low acid is referring to the uricic acid part of it. Exactly. Right? Yeah.

Which is toxic. And so, yeah, there's probably still traces amounts of uricic acid. I don't know how problematic it is unless you guzzle the stuff. But yeah, I think the point is, you know, anytime we create a novel food and we adulterate it in a lab or something, there are problems. And we've seen this with sugar and high fructose corn syrup. We've seen this over and over again.

And so I think to me, that's just the problem therein seen this with sugar and high fructose corn syrup. We've seen this over and over again. And so I think to me, that's just the problem therein is the propensity specifically of canola oil to become oxidized. And we talked about the vegan versus omnivorous diet study, the you are what you eat from Stanford. Part of the problem with the so-called LDL cholesterol and the reason why it might cause atherosclerosis or narrowing of the arteries is because the LDL particles, the low-density lipoprotein or bad cholesterol become oxidized or modified, then they become atherosclerotic. And so that's the problem is if you're consuming high amounts of this canola oil, it's high in linoleic acid, it's highly prone to oxidation. And so I think that's the problem.

If you have a small amount here and there, probably not a big deal. But the problem, most people are having this in pastries, cookies, crackers, treats, it's in salad dressings, it's in Beyond Burger, Impossible Burger, right? It's everywhere if you're eating processed food and I think over time this is also problematic especially for people trying to conceive children because it turns out that linoleic acid prevents the healthy conversion of alpha-linolenic acid into EPA and DHA. So there's a lot of words going around. Essentially,

your protective long-chain fatty acids known as EPA and DHA can be derived in part from, like you mentioned, flaxseed oil is rich in ALA, alpha-linolenic acid. And linoleic acid from the canola can block that conversion. So that's a problem. There's a recent study looking at fatty acid profiles in omnivores versus vegans, finding that people who had been on a plant-based diet for an extended period of time had almost no levels of these so-called pro-resolving mediators that are helpful in the blood. And so this was, I think this was a huge study that no one even really paid attention to. So, you know, if you're having these diets enriching all these seed oils, they're really preventing the conversion

into helpful long chain omega-3 fats that have anti-inflammatory properties. So I think that's probably compounded with the fact that they're highly prone to oxidation. They're hydrogenated in most cases, at least cottonseed. And then they decrease the conversion into the helpful DHA and EPA. I think that's problematic for people trying to conceive children, trying to optimize brain health, breastfeeding. Those I think are the biggest challenges. Yeah, and what I keep thinking is when are we going to learn our lesson?

And you sort of mentioned this, but I think about, you know, when we swapped out real butter for margarine, saying that it was heart healthy and then heart attacks went through the roof and then we've done the same thing with corn syrup. At what point as humans are we going to learn that when we mess with these foods and their genetic composition, that we're just creating more problems for ourselves? And I like to remind the listener that one of the only rules that I have about food is look to the foods that have stood the test of time. What are the foods that we've been eating forever? Butter, eggs, meat, vegetables. And that's really my guiding line when I think about any of this

kind of stuff that comes out you know I'm like okay but what how much has it been manipulated with because we've learned our lesson time and time again but clearly we haven't in the mainstream but yeah it's so frustrating I actually have one more question for you about hydrogenated oil specifically and I don't know if you know this answer now we know that partially hydrogenated oil specifically? And I don't know if you know this answer. Now we know that partially hydrogenated oils create trans fats and they were phased out of our food system within the last, I don't remember the exact, it was like five years or so. What about fully hydrogenated oils? So it's not a trans fat, but I still avoid them because it's incredibly concerning. I feel it's just what I was talking about. It's a lab made oil. Do you know much about the difference between the two? Yeah, Courtney, great question. I don't know

on that, but I just think the trans fats in general, so I don't know if partially hydrogenated or fully hydrogenated, if there's any health differences. I just think, and there are some naturally at low levels trans fats like in the food supply and things like that. But when we're talking about how they can be chemically adulterated to... And essentially the trans fat, the difference is the orientation of the hydrogen atoms in relation to the carbon atoms and the fatty acid, blah, blah, blah.

It helps increase shelf life, right? So this is from a food manufacturing standpoint, you want that, you want things to sit on the shelf because they don't sell or whatever and you don't lose money on that. But I think just because they're so low in the naturally occurring in the food supply, when we have these in excess in pastries and candy and treats and all that, that's when it becomes problematic. And I think it does lead to atherosclerosis and heart disease due to the...

We become what we eat, right? These lipids that we're eating in our diet can either increase the pliability of our vessels and our cells or make them more stiff and rigid. And in the case of having trans fats, you get more stiff and rigid cells and you might have then an arrhythmia or heart attack or a blood clot or what have you. So I think that's kind of the big problem. And so people can test for this now.

You can do your omega-3 index. It's a $49 test. The company Omega Quant offers it in South Dakota. And people can look at this and see, you know, hey, am I getting trans fats in my diet? What is the pliability of my cell membranes and blood vessel? And look, you can enumerate your omega-3 index. Most Americans are at like 4.5%. You want to be closer to 8%.

Like folks in Okinawa, they eat fish and so forth. Their omega-3 index is much higher. And having a low omega-3 index is linked with higher chances of having a sudden cardiac event and dying from that, which is problematic. Yeah. Well, Mike, this has been fascinating. I have so many other questions I wanted to ask you, but in the essence of time, I might have to bring you back on. Is there anything that we haven't covered today that you think is really important for people to hear? Did you want to touch on any other subjects before

we left? Yeah. I mean, there's so much to talk about, but I think maybe we'll do another one. Uh, Courtney has been awesome to connect with you and, uh, yeah, so many amazing insights keep emerging, you know, in the literature and, and looking at the history of how these novel foods were introduced and the problems there. And I think is incredibly fascinating and, and something for people to keep their eye on going forward as we're seeing all these, um, you know, meat alternatives hop on the market and, and having a wary eye in terms of knowing the history of how when industry creates foods, it usually creates more health problems

and that's something we want to avoid. Yes, yes. Okay, so I want to ask you a personal question that I ask all my guests before we go. What are your health non-negotiables? These are things that no matter how busy you are, you make sure that you prioritize for your health. Yeah. Courtney, great question. So exercise and walking, I think are things that I, you know, non-negotiables about, you know, a weekend Airbnb, I'm not going to work out or

things like that, you know, try to live my life, but really try to exercise or lift weights at minimum four days per week and try to at least get 8,000 steps per day. I think these are non-negotiables. Recently, I have quit alcohol. So that's another thing that I think a lot of people struggle with consuming excess alcohol. That's something that I really don't participate in. And then fried foods. And I generally never have fried foods. I mean, I know those sweet potato French fries are tempting and all that, but they're just

garbage, usually fried in canola or cottonseed oil and stuff. And it's just not something that I do. So those are sort of the four or five non-negotiables that I have when it comes to nutrition and lifestyle. Those are great. Well, please let everyone know where they can find you. Just plug anything that you want to plug before we go. Sure.

Courtney, again, thank you so much. My website is highintensityhealth.com. I have a blood work cheat sheet that people can download for free right there if they're interested in getting their labs and learning a little bit more about objective ways to quantify and track their health. So that's cool.

And then I have a bunch of videos over on YouTube at highintensityhealth.com. I mean, over on YouTube, the channel is High Intensity Health. Amazing. He's such a wealth of knowledge, guys. Please go follow him on youtube the channel is high intensity health amazing he's such a wealth of knowledge guys please go follow him on instagram go check out his youtube i'm so inspired by the work that you're doing and i just want to say thank you so much for your time and for coming

on today this was a great episode heck yeah courtney thank you thank you as well i really appreciate the opportunity it's fun to chat thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the real foodology podcast if you liked episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much.

See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.