The Dr. Josh Axe Show - Is Most Published Research Actually WRONG?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe show. I am your host, Dr. Axe. And each and every week on this show, we explore the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. On today's episode, I'm going to be diving into why most studies are actually false. According to a recent survey, 51.3% of studies are wrong, not accurate, and can't be trusted. which is really shocking to think about. So think about this. More than half of the studies you read are inaccurate. Here's why this happens. I'm going to go into the six points that this amazing PhD really gets into. But studies must be partnered with common sense and with ethics. And if studies are not partnered with common sense and with ethics, they end up being false.

Starting point is 00:00:54 You know, the problem isn't necessarily, by the way, I want to mention that these studies are poorly designed, even though, some of them are. The bigger problem is that each headline gives an incomplete glimpse of how science actually works. You know, one lab produces a result one day, another lab, another day trying to replicate the results. And oftentimes, they're showing two different things. I'm going to show you a chart here or walk you through a chart that shows you. There are numerous studies showing red meat will kill you. And numerous showing red meat is one of the greatest foods for healing heart disease and promoting longevity. I'll show you studies that demonstrate that resveratrol, this super antioxidant found in red

Starting point is 00:01:37 wine, could be great for you and others showing that it actually has no benefits whatsoever. How is it possible that you're seeing studies saying something like beef is bad for you and another one saying it's absolutely deadly for you? How is that possible? This is why there are so many false results in studies is you're not getting the full picture in most cases. Now, eventually, someone needs to do what we call a meta review of the totality of the evidence on the question to reach a conclusion. So what's more accurate than a single study is to do a meta-analysis on, let's call it the 50 studies done on beef, that then dives into the

Starting point is 00:02:18 details saying something like this. Okay, beef or red meat, when it's grass-fed, organic, has this benefit as a percentage based on food. 50 studies. And this other type of beef actually causes heart disease if it's grain fed because of omega-6 fatty acids, here's the nutrients, and then give conclusions there. The problem is most studies today, and then, of course, documentaries run with this, and then the media runs with these headlines saying things like red meat will kill you, and this is promoting, or it promotes climate change or, you know, whatever it might be. If you really want to know the truth, really looking at meta reviews rather than one study is a great way or multiple studies together.

Starting point is 00:03:02 And really looking what the study actually says because the headlines often lie and don't show the same picture or don't give you the full picture. I want to give you another example of this. Oftentimes we're seeing today these headlines about OZempic and Wagovi, these weight loss drugs, saying, hey, it helps you lose weight. A person might lose an average of 10 pounds in a month. okay but what are they losing they're losing pounds pounds of what oh they're losing way more muscle mass not fat they're losing more muscle well the study isn't showing that or this so the study is leaving out critical information or it's not showing well i hope you lose study now but in five years you actually put it all back on plus some and so we're seeing this as a major problem now i want to

Starting point is 00:03:49 talk about this paper that came out though this study it was out of a very prestigious medical journal called PLOS 1. And this analysis paper found that only 48.7% of 156 studies reported by newspapers were confirmed by a subsequent meta review. So the percentage dropped, by the way, to only 34% when the researchers focused on initial studies only. So listen, when you're looking at headlines today, if you're looking at just the first study done on a topic, typically it's accurate only 34% of the time long term. So when we see headlines like a breakthrough weight loss drug or a breakthrough medication or a breakthrough, maybe even supplement or lifestyle practice,

Starting point is 00:04:41 only 34% of the time long term does it actually say, okay, this is definitely the case long term. Oftentimes there are subtle changes or major changes later on that we discover. So, and by the way, I want to mention this to even meta-analysses, meta-reviews, they aren't always perfect. Even those can be manipulated. Let's say if you have an entire industry like the pharmaceutical industry that wants to show that this drug or vaccine or this thing is safe, well, they can put, they can hire the people they want to hire. They can manipulate the data they want to manipulate it in order to show you what they want to show you. And maybe there is a relationship between the pharmaceutical,

Starting point is 00:05:22 companies and the media companies, and there's a co-owner of two of those companies. And so even what they're publishing isn't correct or the way that they're running the headlines. So this really matters because you don't want to be lied to. You want to know the truth. If you're reading medical studies or reading about those in an article you read or a post on social media, you want to make sure it's honest and truthful. However, over 50% of the time, what you're reading, those headlines about a topic on social media, most of the time, they aren't true. Now, the lead researcher on this study about the falseness in many studies, Lonitis, lists six factors that can influence the reliability of published research studies.

Starting point is 00:06:06 Here's what they found. Research findings in a scientific field are less likely to be true if there's six factors. Number one, if this study is small. Okay, if the study only has five people or 20 people, it's less likely to be true. Number two, the smaller, the affected group. And so let's say they do a study and it's done on a thousand people, but the group that's affected in the study is only 200 people. Again, that's going to affect its truth. Number three, cherry picking.

Starting point is 00:06:37 By the way, this is one of the biggest sins of the medical professions and of the media today. Cherry picking, selecting only the data wanting to be seen and hiding the rest. Here's an example, again I mentioned with a drug like OZempic. Okay, we're going to show you that people lost 10 pounds in one month. Yeah, but they lost, a big part of what they lost was muscle mass, which is now going to cause them to age more quickly. Also, it's now showing that it could cause nutrient density and something called a medical condition called gastroporesis and all these other issues. Okay, well, we're only going to show you cherry pick this one thing about this study, but not show you all of the netheria. negatives here below. This happens constantly with pharmaceutical drugs. They'll talk about, okay,

Starting point is 00:07:27 a statin drug. Hey, this decreases your risk of this one type of heart disease. However, what they're not telling you is it increases your risk of a stroke. It's increasing your risk. It's depleting your body of Coenzyme Q10. It's increasing your risk of all the of nerve degeneration and liver failure and causing your cells to age more quickly. So what happens today, and I believe this is maybe the biggest one here, but they're cherry-picking data is why when you're reading headlines, most studies are false. Number four, excess flexibility and definitions, designs, and outcomes, you know, really, you know, rather than saying, okay, we're drawing a hard line on what we're trying to find in this study or the definition of something, of it being a success, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:12 so for instance, they could say, okay, this study and the findings about this drug or a success, or this supplement or whatever it might be. But really, again, it's maybe done in a very, very short period of time and versus a long-term study. Again, like excess flexibility. This happened with when you look at vaccines. Look at how fast the COVID vaccine was pushed through. Look at how fast.

Starting point is 00:08:37 Talk about flexibility. I mean, I thought there was supposed to be years and years of data and research and testing in order to be able to push something new through that versus now the flexibility. pushing it through very quickly. Again, I think that's an example of something of sort of this medical, the lack of ethics in the medical field. So access flexibility, design these outcomes as well. Number five is the greater the financial interests and prejudiced influences studies.

Starting point is 00:09:08 So if you have a pharmaceutical company or a nutrition company and it's their product that's being studied, what they'll tend to do is hire the people that, the people that will, researchers they want to hire. And those researchers are scared they know, well, gosh, if I don't have the outcome that they want me to have, I'll probably get fired, lose my job, and not be able to provide for my family. Right. So the greater the financial and other interests and prejudices, the greater the risk, right? So somebody might be very pro-medicine or very pro this one's vitamin. And because of that, they are going to try and do everything they can to stack the odds in the favor of showing the outcome they want. But again,

Starting point is 00:09:47 this is why the way that our pharmaceutical company and the research in the schools, the way that they're set up, our entire medical system is so unethical and so unjust. This is that they are directly tied financially to these outcomes. And so what they're doing is they're manipulating and creating studies to make trillions of dollars in this industry. And so that is the biggest factor, along with the charity. picking today that is causing studies to be false. In number six, the hotter the scientific field with the more scientific teams involved, the greater the inaccuracy. This happened with Resveratrol

Starting point is 00:10:29 where we heard. It's a miracle. If you just do Resveritraud to add years to your life, well, they were doing those studies on like roundworms, okay, on worms, okay, saying, well, let them increase your lifespan this much. It wasn't a human study. So that's another thing, by the way, that we see, you know, if you do a study on a petri dish versus a worm, versus an antips, versus an animal, animal versus a human. Of course, the more that you get closer to human, the greater the results are in terms of being dependable. This is why human studies are more predictable, of course, than studies done on petri dishes or even animals. And so it's important to also consider all of those things when it comes to determining the truth about if a study is true or not. Now, the lead researcher in this study also did a meta epidemiological study and found that only one in 20, interventions tested and the Cochrane reviews have benefits that are supported by high quality evidence. I mean, this is showing that there are so many studies that you just can't rely on. Here's an example. Let me give you an example. If you give me 100 people with liver and gallbladder

Starting point is 00:11:34 disease and I put them on a keto diet, most of them will end up ill. Did you hear what I told you? So it depends on who you're studying. Let me give you another example. If you give me a hundred people a study that have epilepsy, MS, and obesity, and you put them on a keto diet. You're going to see a great improvement in probably 99 out of 100 of those people. However, if you do a study on the keto diet on, and most of those people have liver disease or have had their gallbladder removed, you're going to end up having many of them get worse, right? So the people that are actually in the studies that you decide to do to study on, that's also critically important. So somebody might say, the keto diet's the greatest diet ever. Well, that might be true if somebody has epileptic seizures, but it's not true for somebody

Starting point is 00:12:28 with liver cirrhosis. And so that's another thing that matters that they discovered in this study. Now, I want to show you something here in this graphic, if you're watching on YouTube right now, will blow your mind. Another major error is not distinguishing the quality of the ingredient or the thing being tested. instance, I mentioned this earlier, conventional beef versus organic 100% grass-fed beef that's regeneratively raised. You know how different those foods are in nutrients and hormone levels and all kinds of things? So now you can see here in this graphic, look at the studies showing that wine protects against cancer versus it causes cancer. There's a lot of studies showing it prevents cancer.

Starting point is 00:13:11 There's actually a lot of study. There's several studies, though, showing that it causes. cancer. Tomatoes. Okay, most of them show it fights cancer. But there are two studies showing that eating tomatoes could actually cause cancer. Same with herbal tea. How about milk? I mean, you know, there are studies showing milk fights cancer. There's other showing it. It actually causes it. We see this with eggs. We see this with corn. We see this with coffee is split down the middle. Butter, you know, more than not. And then beef. And so we're seeing here study. And so you can see now why it's almost 50-50 in terms of can you believe a study? It's about 50-50. Okay. And the reason is, is you're not distinguishing. Here's what would happen. I'll share with you right now as I go

Starting point is 00:13:56 down this list of foods that are in this study and this graphic. Are you talking about certified organic dry-farmed wine? Are you talking about conventional wine where they're using pesticides and they're using added sulfites and sugars? Okay, are you talking about organic tomatoes or from somebody's own backyard? Are you talking about conventional tomatoes that are like sacks of water that have also been sprayed with herbicides? Same thing, are you talking about tea?

Starting point is 00:14:25 Are you talking about what type of tea? Are you talking about mach ceremonial macha green tea harvested from Japan? Are you talking about the, you know, the tea, the black tea that, or Lipton tea, right? Whatever tea there is that has also been sprayed with pesticides and is harvested to too early so the nutrients aren't optimized. Okay, for dairy, are you talking about raw,

Starting point is 00:14:50 organic, non-pasteurized, non-homogenized from a goat or sheep from A2 milk? Or are you talking about conventional dairy that's 2% milk that's been homogenized where the cows have been given growth hormone and antibiotics and fed genetically modified corn? What are you talking about? Listen, I could keep doing this exercise all day long. You know, this is where people, I remember seeing this documentary, Forks Over Nives, where everyone should be vegan. Well, and they had all of these quotes,

Starting point is 00:15:25 the entire documentary about how beef is bad for you and red meat is bad for you. What were they talking about in that study? Well, they were talking about conventional beef. They're not talking about humanely raised, regenerative raised, grass-fed animals. And so this is why today we see, see so many studies are false and why you really need to look more deeply into the truth or

Starting point is 00:15:47 follow somebody who is willing to do the research for you. There's a lot of people that I think do a great job of this. I think generally speaking, Andrew Huberman does a better job of this than most people. I think that, again, a lot of the people in the natural space that I'm friends with do a better job of this, but you really need to look at multiple studies and exactly define, part of it is a definition. What exactly are you looking at? I want to go into beef here is just an example. And then I want to go into a few points. I want to go through how you can tell yourself if a study is true based on five criteria. Before I do that, though, here is a study showing that eating beef red meat promotes longevity. A study published in the International Journal of

Starting point is 00:16:30 General Medicine examined the global impact of meat consumption on life expectancy across 170 countries. So this is a large study, 170 countries. The research found that the higher meat consumption was the more positively correlated with increased life expectancy and longevity. So the more meat you eat, the longer you live, according to this study done on 170 countries. This relationship held even after accounting for factors such as caloric intake, economic affluence, urbanization, and obesity. So basically they took out and said, okay, well, maybe that's true for people in Africa, but not in the United States.

Starting point is 00:17:11 They said, no, it's true for everybody in all these countries. here's another study done on beef and red meat consumption saying it decreases longevity. Conversely, a study from the Harvard-T-H-Chann School of Public Health found that increasing the consumption of red meat, particularly processed red meat, okay, well, they finally define it here. But why do they just say red meat? Why don't they just say in the study, processed conventional red meat? They, you know, so they say is associated with a higher risk of premature death. The study utilized data from the nurse's health study and the health professionals follow-up study, which included over 81,000 participants. It showed that increasing red meat consumption over an eight-year period was linked with a higher risk of mortality in the subsequent eight years.

Starting point is 00:17:59 The study attributed to the increased risk of factors such as high saturated fat, cholesterol, heem iron, preservatives, and carcinogenic compounds when cooked at high temperatures. So it says reducing red meat intake and replacing it with healthier proteins such as fish, poultry, nuts, and legumes was associated with lower mortality. Now, in this study, I do want to give them credit for saying that particularly processed red meat. But it would be better if they highlight and said this isn't necessarily true for grass-fed meat or pasture regenerative meat. It's not saying that. But you can see here in this. But here's the problem. newspapers and social media outlets will take this study right here and say red meat takes years off your life

Starting point is 00:18:47 says a Harvard study and you'll read that and say wow okay i shouldn't eat red meat so that's essentially what this is showing is that that's what's happening today newspaper outlets influencers are taking one sentence they like from the study that's going to serve their ideology and agenda in using that and then you just read that the headline and you fully believe, and that's the problem today. By the way, I want to give a comparison here of the differences between when we're looking at grain fed versus grass-fed animals. I mean, there are two studies I want to reference.

Starting point is 00:19:21 One here is, I mean, you know, grain-fed is given antibiotics, hormones, grass-fed isn't. Omega-3 fatty acids, the ratio, I mean, you could have 10 times the amount of omega-3 fats in grass-fed beef 10 times. And one-third of the omega-6s. And so there's a major difference there. You can have seven times the amount of conjugated linoleic acid, which fights cancer and promotes weight loss. You have double the amount of beta-carotene,

Starting point is 00:19:52 four to five times the amount of vitamin E, which fights cancer and promotes cellular health and longevity. Five times the amount of vitamin A. So there's a big difference here. And again, here's another medical study showing the vast, vast difference between grain-fed beef and grass-fed beef. And that's not even to mention following kosher slaughter methods, you know, a number of other things that can influence the animals.

Starting point is 00:20:18 The amount of saturated fat versus other fat, you'll see that grass-fed beef tends to be leaner and higher in protein. We mentioned all these nutrients here as well. No antibiotic residue in grass-fed versus much higher in grain-fed. And here's another example on resveratrol studies done in petri dishes showed increased in cellular lifespan. However, now in 2023, most of this thinking has been debunked. This doesn't mean that, you know, resveratrol doesn't have any benefits. But here's the thing to know, David Sinclair, who is a very famous medical doctor,

Starting point is 00:20:55 he's the person who initiated the study, also co-founded a pharmaceutical company called Certris, which was purchased by Glasgow Smith and Klein for $72 million. So he made $72 million off this deal in his research on, you know, this study on resveratrol. Now, what you're going to find with most of these studies on resveratrol, by the way, is eating it in the food form if you're just eating grape skins or eating the grapes. Well, then it's beneficial. Or having a very small, it didn't take much at all, quarter glass of red wine probably.

Starting point is 00:21:32 I mean, that's going to get you the benefit. But taking it as an extract where it doesn't have all the other nutrients along with it won't be as beneficial for you. And so, again, we need to look at these studies holistically. So in a nutshell, I want to go over the five things that you need to do in order to be able to be able to better tell if a study is likely true or not. Here's what Linaitis says to PhD from this paper. He says, number one, asks the question, is this something that has been? just once or seen in multiple studies? Has it been seen just once or in multiple studies? Number two, is it a small or large-scale study? Number three, is this a randomized experiment

Starting point is 00:22:19 where we've removed a lot of the biases there? Number four, and by the way, number three is also like, are you, part of this is also looking at asking the question, are they giving details here? When they say beef, is it grass fed or grain fed? Okay. Number four, who funded the study? Who funded it? Is it funded by Pfizer? Okay. Well, and this is going to make Pfizer billions of dollars? Okay, let's question that. And number five, are the researchers transparent? Again, this goes back. I'm going to hit on this thing again. Are they giving definitions? Have they told me the whole truth. Again, OZempec. Here's an example. Did they tell you in the study that people are losing 15% more muscle mass than if somebody was losing weight in a more natural way?

Starting point is 00:23:07 Are they being transparent with all of these things? That will give you a better indication of whether the study can be trusted or not. And I'm here to bring the truth to you on this show every single week. I want to bring you the truth on how to heal in body, mind, spirit. I want to bring in the truth in nutritional research, medical research, so you know, because again, it's so easy with these headlines to just believe it rather than knowing if it's actually true or not. What I want to be able to help you do on this show is be able to grow in your wisdom for you to be able to tell and be able to call out those frauds and those liars and be able to discern the truth for yourself so you can be, again, be healthier yourself, build a healthier family.

Starting point is 00:23:47 And also, I want you to be your own doctor, a lot of cases. I want you to be the educator and going out and teaching other people how to use food as much, medicine, if we can do this together, we can truly change the word. If we expose the lies, bring the truth, the world will be a better place. I want to just say thanks you to all of you who are on mission with me, who have shared this show, who have liked and commented on it, who've given it a great review here on places like iTunes and Apple. Also, thank you to all of you that are subscribing. By the way, when you subscribe, I'm better able to bring on more high-profile guests.

Starting point is 00:24:20 And so if you want to see more, you know, really wise people, Andrew Huberman's Peter Atia, Jordan Peterson's, those sort of people coming on the show. Make sure to subscribe to the show, and it'll help us do that. So thanks all of you who are sharing this. By the way, go to Instagram, and if you see, do me a favor, if you're on, you know, Andrew Huberman's page or Pediator, Jordan Peterson, or those sort of people, maybe mentioned, hey, you should listen to Dr. Axe's episode on this. Feel free to share this information with them as well so they can benefit from it in the same way

Starting point is 00:24:52 that I know I have and that I hope you have. Thanks so much for tuning in here to my show, the Dr. Josh Hack Show. Remember, every week we're diving deep into how to heal and take your health and life to the next level in body, mind, and spirit. I'll see you on the next episode.

The Dr. Josh Axe Show - Is Most Published Research Actually WRONG?

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