The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 82. Dr. Paul Saladino: The Big Lie and The Real Reason You Can't Lose Weight

Starting point is 00:00:00 I believe strongly that there is a ton of evidence that not all calories are created equally. Look at the data in the United States. We eat the highest consumption of processed foods and we're the most obese. So they came out recently and said that there is not enough evidence to say that ultra processed foods contribute to obesity in humans. What calories in calories out means for weight loss. And I thought, okay, this is really interesting. There are studies looking at markers of metabolic syndrome. And the studies would suggest that 88 to 93% of the US population have at least one marker of metabolic dysfunctions. Calories are king.

Starting point is 00:00:35 You know, calories are what make you fat or make you lean. Yes and no. I want people to know it's not that complicated. If we just understand that negative effects of ultra-processed foods are amplified and the positive effects of unprocessed foods are amplified in our physiology. And if we just simply... Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:05 I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And a very, very close friend of mine, who's usually in Costa Rica, hit me up last week and was like, hey, I'm gonna be in Miami. And I was like, well, you definitely gotta come by the house.

Starting point is 00:01:24 We'll do breakfast together. You know, we'll do some videos, you know, we'll pick a couple of topics and we'll put them out on social media and we'll do some educational things. And we, as always, just started eating each other's face. And we're doing a bunch of bio hacking today. We did sauna and red light and cold plunging and a little bit of a light workout, some breath work and had a big raw food breakfast this morning. And we were out on the balcony and we were talking about seed oils and then we started having this really interesting conversation about calories. Are all calories the same? Are all calories equal? Is a calorie a calorie a calorie, whether it comes from fat or carbohydrate or proteins. Does calories in and calories out matter as the only measure of what's going to improve your metabolism or cause you to

Starting point is 00:02:10 lose weight? I mean, there's an oversimplification, in his opinion, that the data might indicate otherwise. And so I said, look, this is something the world needs to know about. I've got a podcast room in the other room. So let's just go in there and run a 20 minute, you know, short podcast. And let's talk about calories in calories out. Why a calorie is a calorie is a calorie may not actually be the case when it comes to human physiology.

Starting point is 00:02:36 So I want you to welcome my good friend and well-known podcaster, author, speaker, extraordinaire, and biohacker to the extreme dr paul saladino thanks for having me on again dude i'm i'm pumped that you're here like every time i see you we just eat each other's face i know um so many good conversations and so many and so much information to share you bring great gifts dude honey uh coconuts cherries yeah what was the name of the

Starting point is 00:03:01 honey that you brought me today it's mariola honey so it's mariola bee it's honey from stingless bees called mariola bees dude i am telling you guys um if you're a honey fanatic even if you're not this was like liquid beautiful gold i mean it was so good um i've had i've had three bowls of it so far just since since you got here it's good stuff but you know um i challenge you to transform your life in just three days. Join my three-day cold plunge challenge and experience the incredible benefits of cold water therapy.

Starting point is 00:03:32 For three minutes each day, immerse yourself in cold water and feel the difference. Cold plunging can boost your energy, improve your mental clarity, and enhance your mood. It's easy to join. So head over to theultimatehuman.com, download the Plunge app, track your progress, and connect with our community. It's easy to join. So head over to theultimatehuman.com,

Starting point is 00:03:45 download the Plunge app, track your progress, and connect with our community. Let's do this together. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. So many things that we could talk about. We were having a great debate about seed oils earlier out on the balcony. And then we started this conversation about calories in, calories out, and how there's an oversimplification, in my opinion, in the market about calories in general. So talk to me a little bit about the research that you've been digging into lately on calories. So I was mentioning to you that on Twitter,

Starting point is 00:04:15 Kevin Hall, whose study we'll mention in a second, posted something from the U.S. Governmental Dietary Guidelines Committee. Well, there's an entity I really trust. I know, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's super trustful. Already I'm suspect, but go ahead.

Starting point is 00:04:28 But the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Committee, these are the people who made the 2020 to 2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines. They shape food lunches. They shape food stamps. They shape a lot of things in our country, you know? Not everyone is accepting what they say is canon, but it affects policy in the United States.

Starting point is 00:04:45 And then they're about to make the 2025 to 2030 guidelines for our country's health foods. And these are the people who brought you the infamous super healthy food pyramid, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Lucky charms. Exactly. Well, yeah. So they came out recently and said that there is not enough evidence to say that ultra-processed foods contribute to obesity in humans. We need more research, guys. We don't know. And I thought,

Starting point is 00:05:10 okay, this is really interesting. And Elon Musk commented on this tweet. He said, calories cause obesity, calories are king. And I thought, okay, this is an interesting jumping off point. Two things I want to mention about this. The first is I hope that this isn't the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Committee sort of giving themselves license to include more ultra-processed foods in the dietary guidelines. Because I think this is very confusing and this is insidious for us as Americans because I think it's really important that we understand what calories in, calories out means for weight loss. And I believe strongly that there's a ton of evidence that not all calories are created equally. And what I mean by this is if you really look at the data, and Kevin Hall, who retweeted this,

Starting point is 00:05:55 has actually done a great study on this in a metabolic ward, a completely controlled study looking at humans who are fed certain foods certain foods and they were, they were completely controlled. Everything they were fed was controlled. They were in the hospital. And what they did in Kevin Hall's study was they gave people the same amount of calories for every meal.

Starting point is 00:06:15 They presented the same amount of calories and one group of people got ultra processed foods and one group of people got unprocessed foods. People got ultra processed foods and they presented the same calories. They matched for fat, carbohydrate, protein, salt. They matched for as many things as they could, but one group of people got ultra processed calories and one group of people got unprocessed calories. So one group of people is getting like salad and fish or chicken, maybe some beef, maybe some grains that are unprocessed. And the other group is getting more processed versions of all these things. A McChicken sandwich, a fish filet sandwich from McDonald's, you know, chips. And what they found, and this was an ad-lib study. So they let people eat as

Starting point is 00:06:53 much as they want. So they gave them a certain amount of food and then they looked to see how hungry people were. And the study was two weeks long, I believe. And over those two weeks, not surprisingly, the people in the ultra-processed food diet ate an average of 500 calories more per day. I think I heard Dr. Hyman talking about this. It was the lack of satiety and the hunger response was significantly more intense. And they not only ate more food, more calories, and gained more weight, but they also reported being hungry or faster. Yes. I didn't read it to the depth that you did, but I did gloss over it. And I think this is opening up a really interesting conversation because I've long since held the position that some of the worst research we do on human beings is when we study things in isolation, right? So we say, okay, let's deprive this person of calories,

Starting point is 00:07:44 put them in a caloric deficit and they lost weight. So the way to lose weight is to go into a caloric deficit, which I which I agree with. And then this myth, in my opinion, emerged that a calorie is a calorie is calorie. So you could eat a thousand thousand calories of donuts or you could eat a thousand calories of grass fed meat or you can eat 1,000 calories of soda water or soda. And it doesn't matter because those are just calories. And see, here's the proof, because we gave these people that drank nothing but soda and ate donuts, but only ate 1,500 calories a day,

Starting point is 00:08:19 they lost weight. Sure. So see, they lost weight, and they're eating ultra-processed, high-carbohydrate, sugary foods. But we're not looking then at downstream consequences. What are the consequences on inflammation? What are the consequences on hormones?

Starting point is 00:08:31 What are the consequences on hunger, satiety, all of these things? So I'd love to hear your comments on that. Yeah, this is exactly it. And it's the idea that not all calories are created equally, right? A thousand calories of donuts are not going to have the same physiologic responses in my body as a thousand calories of ribeye. And we know this to be true. There are plenty of studies that show us this. A thousand calories of donuts, we know that's going to make me hungrier sooner, which in

Starting point is 00:08:59 real life, not in a study where they're limiting people and they're only giving them a certain amount of food, in real life makes me hungry and it makes me crave food or it makes me just, it can have other physiologic effects. You mentioned hormones. It can potentially affect endothelial function at the level of our blood vessels. Mood. Mood. Emotion.

Starting point is 00:09:16 Yeah, emotion, whether we sleep, whether we're on a computer or doing things that are going to affect us in terms of circadian rhythms. And so what was interesting was that, you know, Elon Musk responds to this comment from Kevin Hall saying the Dietary Guidelines Committee says ultra-processed foods, we're not sure they really cause obesity, kind of opening the door for Coca-Cola and these ultra-processed food companies, which, by the way, spend millions of dollars a year lobbying Congress, right, to have some sort of get-out-of-jail jail free card in the health space or from the government

Starting point is 00:09:46 to be included in like food stamps projects. You know, you can buy ultra processed food with food stamps. That's insane. It's crazy, right? And so this is how it all kind of works that the dietary guidelines committee can say, well, we're not completely sure that the calories from ultra processed food are uniquely obesogenic. And then you have studies like Kevin Hall saying, well, they're definitely making people hungrier and they're definitely not full of the same nutrients that a steak is. And they're definitely full of more pesticides,

Starting point is 00:10:11 more oxidized oils, more gut disrupting compounds. Preservatives and sexicides. Preservatives, yeah. So how can you not? It's just, it's crazy to me that we don't understand this. And I wanted to just, I wanted to respond to like Elon's tweet and say, because Elon said, calories are king. Calories are what make you fat or make you lean. Yes and no.

Starting point is 00:10:31 So we go round and round. We chase our tails about this calories in, calories out. And yes, you're right. And this is what the proponents of calories in, calories out model say. You can lose weight eating junk food. You can absolutely lose weight eating junk food. But will you keep that weight off long-term? Will you be satiated? Will you be hungry? What will your mood be? What will your hormones do? What will your blood vessels look like? How inflamed will you be overall long-term? And those are not the same. And the reason I want to think it's so important to talk about is because I want people to know it's not that complicated. It's really pretty simple. If we just understand that ultra-processed foods are going to have a reverberating effect

Starting point is 00:11:08 in our physiology, they're going to be... The negative effects of ultra-processed foods are amplified, and the positive effects of unprocessed foods are amplified in our physiology. And if we just simply kind of discard all the tribalism around which foods are best, and we focus on unprocessed animal and plant foods at the exclusion of ultra-processed foods, realizing I probably shouldn't eat 500 calories of Doritos today because that's going to have an amplified negative effect

Starting point is 00:11:32 bigger than those 500 calories in my physiology. If I exclude as many ultra-processed foods as possible and I just eat unprocessed meat and plant foods, you're going to lose weight. You're going to feel better. You're going to get healthier. That's what the message should be. And the fact that the U S dietary guidelines committee can't take that stand and that, that, that even Elon is a little confused or doesn't understand this. And that there are a lot of people in the health space

Starting point is 00:11:55 who want to amplify the message that you can lose weight eating donuts. It just drives me crazy. And I'll mention one more study also. So I talked about the study from Kevin Hall, but there's another study and this is a pilot study. So it's a small study of eight people, but they gave people an oleic acid-rich meal. Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fat prominent in tallow or olive oil. And they gave people a linoleic acid-rich meal. That's an 18-carbon polyunsaturated fat prominent in seed oils. So linoleic acid- This is another whole argument that people are like, seed oils aren't bad for you. Processed, industrial processed seed oils are not bad for you. They're not causing inflammation. There's no signs that these have negative consequences. I see that all over social media.

Starting point is 00:12:39 Yeah, it's frustrating. So they gave people these two meals, right? And what they found, they actually looked at two hormones, ghrelin, which is kind of a hunger hormone. It's frustrating. So they gave people these two meals, right? And what they found, they actually looked at two hormones, ghrelin, which is kind of a hunger hormone. It's anti-satiety and resistant. And we know that as levels of resistant rise in the human body, we get more insulin resistance. And so the levels of ghrelin and the levels of resistant were higher when they gave people a linoleic acid-rich meal.

Starting point is 00:13:03 So this is a small study. A CTO. Yes, it's a small study, but yes, it's a small study, but it is a study in humans. It is a controlled trial in humans. And we need bigger trials showing that linoleic acid rich meals may make us hungrier and more insulin resistant. And this is just to emphasize this concept that not all calories are created equally. These are equal caloric meals. One of them has 18-carbon monounsaturated fat, oleic acid. One of them has 18-carbon polyunsaturated fat, linoleic acid. They're supposed to both be 9 calories per gram.

Starting point is 00:13:35 But this linoleic acid-rich meal, again, linoleic acid-rich is usually found in seed oils, things like corn, canola, sunflower, safflower, soybean, is making people hungrier. It's changing the hormonal profile. And it's also causing damage to the endothelial lining, which is the genesis of the cardiovascular disease that we blame on cholesterol, right? Cholesterol is at the scene of the crime, not pulling the trigger, but very often it's there because it's trying to repair damage. So I think with that, it's like, you know, we used to think that Alzheimer's disease was the presence of amyloid plaques and these neurofibrillary tangles.

Starting point is 00:14:10 And we're realizing now that the amyloid plaques are the byproduct of the inflammatory process. So that the culprit is not the amyloid plaque. Right. The culprit is the inflammatory process. Right. culprit is the inflammatory process right and so i think you're getting to the root of another issue which is um are we really getting athalosclerosis arteriosclerosis because of cholesterol or are we getting it because of damage to the endothelial lining of which there's strong evidence to indicate that insulin resistance causes this inflammatory process and that cholesterol is

Starting point is 00:14:43 just being called there it's like somebody gave me the analogy the other day that every time there's a fire, firemen show up. Yeah. And, you know, to put it out. And so we're not blaming the firemen for the fire, are we? Because they're actually there to try to put the fire out. And it's kind of like what happens to, you know, when there's damage to the endothelial wall,

Starting point is 00:15:01 to the lining of the artery, you know, the firemen show up, the cholesterol shows up. And we're like, we need to keep the cholesterol down, right? Yeah. And so like we need to suppress the firemen and fires will stop happening. Yeah. It's interesting. And if people are confused about seed oils, because there's a lot of conflicting data.

Starting point is 00:15:21 Yes. I would say look at the data regarding seed oil consumption and oxidized LDL. So LDL is low-density lipoprotein. It's this quote-unquote bad cholesterol. Obviously, that's an oversimplification, but it's pretty darn clear from multiple randomized controlled trials in humans that when you feed humans seed oils versus olive oil versus butter, we get more oxidation of LDL. That is very, very difficult to argue that point. So I do not know how individuals in the health space can argue. And tell my listeners, what does oxidized LDL mean? Why is that so bad? Yeah. LDL is low density lipoprotein it's like a balloon

Starting point is 00:16:05 or a bus that floats around our bodies and moves moves cholesterol and triglycerides so it's it's a ball and it's a transporter it's a transporter it's a ball it's it has a membrane and the membrane is full of phospholipids and the membrane is full of cholesterol and the membrane is full of proteins and when ldl becomes oxidized it means that the phospholipids in the membrane have become oxidized. And oxidation is akin to rust, right? Okay. You can think about rust as oxidation.

Starting point is 00:16:30 Technically, oxidation is loss of electrons. When a molecule loses an electron, it begins a free radical type cascade. In the case of lipids, we call this lipid peroxidation. And these are lipid peroxides that get formed in the membranes of our cells or in the membrane of an LDL particle, a low-density lipoprotein particle. So now I've taken an LDL particle, I've oxidized it, so I've damaged its phospholipid bilayer. Right. And now what is that damage causing just because the phospholipid bilayer is rusted? Now what's the next consequence of that? So when electrons are stolen from the phospholipids in the membrane, there's a chain reaction.

Starting point is 00:17:07 And eventually that free radical cascade, that lipid peroxidation reaction, damages the proteins on the surface of the LDL. And when the proteins of the surface of the LDL are oxidized, they look differently. And then we know pretty clearly from medical studies that that makes the LDL particles look like foreign invaders. And your macrophages, the immune cells that live in your body, but also live in your arterial walls, are more likely to take up that LDL molecule and form the beginning of an atherosclerotic plaque, which is called a foam cell or a fatty streak. So macrophage is more likely to ingest LDL particles when the LDL is oxidized. That's how atherosclerosis begins. So oxidized LDL is probably, you know, potentially making this LDL more atherogenic.

Starting point is 00:17:53 Or I would say atherogenic de novo from the beginning, because as you say, I also don't believe that the case that LDL is atherogenic in and of itself is shot yet. I don't think it's very clear. I think that LDL, low densityogenic in and of itself is shot yet. I don't think it's very clear. I think that LDL, low-density lipoprotein, is moving cholesterol and triglycerides around the body, and it is at the scene of an atherosclerotic plaque,

Starting point is 00:18:14 like you say, like firemen, but that doesn't mean that it causes it. Right. And the ones that are at the scene are these usually the oxidized versions of LDL? Very often within the plaque, right? Because what you're getting to is that not all LDL is created equally.

Starting point is 00:18:28 Maybe it's all created equally, but not all LDL is the same. Not all LDL is the same. And you can change your LDL based on what you eat. You can change the size. You can change the membrane composition. You can make your LDL more likely to oxidize when you eat seed oils.

Starting point is 00:18:43 And then once it oxidizes, it's more likely to be the culprit of plaquing. Now, why is that? Does it increase how sticky it is? Is it more likely to clump and stick together and group and narrow the artery? I don't think we fully know. It could be that. So this is all sort of not fully fleshed out within the lipid space. It could be that there's a lot of changes

Starting point is 00:19:05 that can happen to LDL that damage LDL. You can get desolated LDL, you can get oxidized LDL, you can get all sorts of changes. But basically, I would say high level, it looks like LDL is this particle that moves around your body, carrying substrate, carrying building blocks. And it probably moves in and out of your arterial wall on its own naturally because it has to deliver things but if your ldl is more

Starting point is 00:19:30 likely to oxidize then it's possible and again this is all sort of hypothesis we don't fully have this worked out within lipidology that the ldl that's more likely to oxidize gets stuck in your vessel wall and when it gets stuck in your vessel wall on a proteoglycan matrix inside of your arterial wall then it's oxidized and then the macrophages come and clean it gets stuck in your vessel wall on a proteoglycan matrix inside of your arterial wall then it's oxidized and then the macrophages come and clean it up because it's a it's a foreign looking particle and that's how you get atherosclerotic plaque forming so native ldl ldl that's not oxidized it's it's not an easy case to make that that is actually atherogenic or injurious to the endothelium right but oxidize the LVL. Without endothelial damage,

Starting point is 00:20:05 I don't know that you have atherosclerosis. I would say that you don't. Yeah, because if we look at where atherosclerosis starts, it starts in and around the heart usually. And why would it concentrate there? Well, it concentrates there because there's more turbulence and more damage to the endothelium. But we can get atherosclerosis other places.

Starting point is 00:20:26 Sometimes people get it in the bifurcations of the femoral arteries. But we do get atherosclerosis in places where there tends to be more turbulent stress denuding the endothelium. And I think that individuals who are insulin resistant, metabolically unhealthy, they don't repair those wounds as well.

Starting point is 00:20:42 I think you and I, all of humans, are getting endothelial damage. That's just part of being a human. You have this delicate layer of endothelium lining your arteries, and you have pressure in your arteries. It's very high. 120 millimeters of mercury is a lot of pressure every time your heart pumps, right? And so you're going to strip that endothelium even in a healthy individual. And I think that my theory, I think the hypothesis here would be that in a healthy individual, you can repair that just like you scratch your knee, you know, you repair it. But in a diabetic, somebody that's metabolically unwell, the repair of the endothelium

Starting point is 00:21:13 is delayed or it's impaired. We know that wound healing is impaired in diabetics. And so this is why I believe diabetics have more of a predilection to atherosclerosis because they skin their knee and sometimes you have to amputate the leg. I mean, diabetics, when I was working in the hospital, you would see diabetics come in and you would do foot inspections on diabetics because sometimes they don't even see they have a little cut on their foot.

Starting point is 00:21:35 So a diabetic can like stub their toe and they might lose their whole foot because the infection becomes so rampant, they don't know it's there. And the wound healing is so impaired. So when we become insulin resistant, also known as metabolic dysfunction, I think that we're probably just not repairing the endothelium. We're all skinning our knees. We're all getting some denuding of the endothelium, but we're not repairing it as well in diabetics. So we come back to square one.

Starting point is 00:21:58 How do you prevent atherosclerosis? Don't be diabetic. Don't be metabolically unhealthy. Let your body repair it. And so I think that what's happening probably is that diabetics, people with metabolic dysfunction, which is a spectrum of metabolic dysfunction, you're getting some damage to the endothelial wall. And this could be from cigarette smoke, secondhand smoke, could be from diesel exhaust, probably alcohol could do it. Lipopolysaccharide might be involved. Endotoxin. Processed food, seed oils. Yes, lots of things can damage the endothelium. And it's all about how well you repair it. And if you're not repairing it well, then yes,

Starting point is 00:22:33 it's possible that LDL could get involved and become connected to that proteoglycan layer in the arterial wall. It's more likely to get oxidized if you're eating a bunch of seed oils. Macrophages come, pick it up, make a foam cell, make a fatty streak, and atherosclerosis, there it goes. There you go.

Starting point is 00:22:48 So I'll give you this one thing, and then I'll pause. I think about LDL like wood, and wood is valuable, but wood doesn't make a fire on its own, right? Wood is valuable because you can build a house out of it. And we know that LDL has valuable roles in the human body. It has immune roles. LDL participates in the immune response. It moves precursors for hormones around our body. Yeah, it's a precursor for cholecalciferol. Exactly. And it actually can bind up LPS in the human body and decrease it along with other lipoproteins. So it protects us from injury.

Starting point is 00:23:18 Wood is valuable. And if you live in a place where you don't have a lot of sparks coming out of your oven and you're not like hammering metal and doing things with lots of fires, having a bunch of wood in your woodshed is great. It's valuable for you. But if you're in a house, like if you're in a forge and you're making iron and you're flying sparks everywhere, having a bunch of wood sitting around, it's going to give you more atherosclerosis. It's going to give you more fires, you know?

Starting point is 00:23:40 More LDL in the setting of sparks, which is, I'm drawing a metaphor with inflammation or metabolic dysfunction, could look like it's causing more fires, but it's just a substrate. It's involved. It's in the causal cascade, but it's not causing the issue. You need sparks to make a fire. Wood doesn't spontaneously combust. Right. Yeah. No, very, very true. So just to round this out and get back to our calories in, calories out. Where do you stand on the calories in, calories out theory? So you can lose weight eating anything. It's been proven. You can lose weight eating Twinkies. And I think that's the detriment. I think that's where the pundits get us and they go, yeah, if you ate two donuts a day, you'd lose weight. You can lose weight. But we know from

Starting point is 00:24:21 studies, there's so many studies that show this, that caloric restriction more than 85, 90% of the time fails long-term because you get adaptive thermogenesis, your thyroid turns down your metabolism. I mean, look at the biggest loser. TSH drops, yeah. Right. Look at the biggest loser. They all gain the weight back plus more. So calories in, calories out works in the short-term and fails in the long-term. And I think that really the only strategy that I've seen that's successful for people to lose weight long term is to improve food quality because that's how you get satiety, right? You improve food quality. You need less ultra-processed foods. And the Dietary Guidelines Committee needs to just check

Starting point is 00:25:01 themselves because they're absolutely crazy to say that, that we don't know that obesity has caused by ultra-processed foods. You can't leave that door open because then- Look at the data in the United States. We eat the highest consumption of processed foods and we're the most obese. And I know that you can't just say- It's just correlation, Gary.

Starting point is 00:25:14 It's just correlation. Yeah. It's like we also do the highest number of randomized clinical trials in healthcare. We did 150,000 of them since 2008. And so you see the byproduct of taking randomized clinical trials and just applying that narrow science

Starting point is 00:25:30 to an entire populace. Yeah. Right? And it's crazy. And so I think that, yes, you can lose weight if you want to restrict calories, but I think that

Starting point is 00:25:38 if you want to get healthier, that will be nearly impossible to achieve unless you improve food quality. So I think we should not be thinking about calories in, calories out. We should be thinking about how good, how high quality can I make my food? And if that sounds like a nebulous concept to people,

Starting point is 00:25:54 just think unprocessed meat, beef, chicken, fish, lamb, pork, eggs, cheese, milk, preferably raw, like unprocessed animal foods and unprocessed plant foods. Shop around the outside of the grocery store. Just don't do ultra processed foods. And then that's the key to success. Because I think that if you think calories, then you're just gonna say,

Starting point is 00:26:20 I can eat this pizza today and I'm gonna eat less calories tomorrow. But I want people to understand like my, the problem I have with that is it's very difficult for us to quantify or qualify how the negative effects of that ultra processed food reverberate throughout our physiology. And that's where calories in calories out fails. The qualities of calories in can affect calories out. It can affect your metabolism. It can affect your satiety.

Starting point is 00:26:42 The downstream consequences. We used to see this in the mortality space, pushing LDL cholesterol down because it was linked to cardiovascular disease, but not realizing that it's also, for lack of better words, a construction material that's used to build cell walls, cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D3. So now if you remove construction material

Starting point is 00:26:59 from the job site, it doesn't matter how good your contractor is. They're not gonna assemble anything without the construction material and the body is no different. You know, it has to make cell walls. It has to make cell membranes. It has to make hormones.

Starting point is 00:27:09 It makes vitamin D3 from sunlight and cholesterol. And if you deprive it of those resources, you get other downstream consequences. And if the study didn't look at those things, then, you know, you would just draw the conclusion that, well, it's bad because people with higher cholesterol have these higher rates of cardiovascular disease. But maybe it's because people with higher cholesterol are having the endothelial damaging things like the oxidation and what have you that actually leads to the damage that is calling the cholesterol there.

Starting point is 00:27:47 I agree. There are studies looking at markers of metabolic syndrome. There's one from a few years ago and one more recently. And the studies would suggest that 88% to 93% of the U.S. population have at least one marker of metabolic dysfunction. So if we have a population in the United States where 85% plus of people have at least, they're on the spectrum of insulin resistance, it's not surprising that LDL might look like it,

Starting point is 00:28:17 quote, causes atherosclerosis. But there are so many studies now that generally get ignored by people in the ApoB causes atherosclerosis camp that show a discordance between ApoB levels and atherosclerosis. So I think that it's, but, and again, like it's causal until it's not. Exactly. It's causal. It's causal unless you're healthy, you know, and maybe some of the behaviors you do that are healthy might actually raise your ApoB like eating grass fed meat and eating less seed oils. That healthy might actually raise your ApoB, like eating grass-fed meat and eating less seed oils.

Starting point is 00:28:47 That's going to raise your ApoB. And so this is where I really run into problems here with the ideologies. I think that unless we really help people and we're very precise about the way we describe cholesterol and cardiovascular disease risk in terms of a context, people are just going to be confused. I can't tell you how often I get DMs saying, I'm eating an animal-based diet. I'm eating meat and I'm eating organs and I'm eating fruit and I feel great and I've lost weight and my diabetes is better.

Starting point is 00:29:11 But I went to my doctor and they said my LDL is high and I need a statin. And it's just like there's no context here. And you don't have to look much further than the side effects of statins to understand the benefits in terms you know, in terms of the signal for potentially increased dementia, potentially increased diabetes. I mean, I can tell you, cause I worked as a PA. So before I was a doctor, I was a physician assistant in cardiology and I worked in cardiology. The idea that 3%, like Pfizer says, if people get side effects from statins is bunk. It's more like 30% from what I've seen in my clinical practice.

Starting point is 00:29:45 And I saw hundreds of patients and a lot of them get side effects from statins. So it's the whole eight, the cholesterol piece is probably one of the single greatest hurdles for people getting healthy because we have not described it properly because I think the paradigm is wrong because most, at least if people are listening to what I'm saying or listening to what you're saying, people are going to eat more meat and they're going to eat less seed oils. And in 40 to 60% of people that might raise ApoB. And so there's just, there's so many roadblocks people are putting up for people actually getting healthier and becoming, you know, more vibrant individuals because we're not thinking about calories properly. We're not thinking about calories properly.

Starting point is 00:30:25 We're not thinking about ApoB properly. And these are nuanced, complicated discussions. So hopefully that helps people understand the context of it. Yeah, I think it does. I think it does, man. And I really appreciate you coming on. We ran a little bit over the time, but I mean— I just talk a lot.

Starting point is 00:30:36 No, no, no. And I'm so interested. I actually am—I've got 50 other questions that I want to ask, and the audience is probably really interested. So you will come back on, right? Of course. Okay. So next time you're in Miami, we're definitely going to run another full podcast.

Starting point is 00:30:55 But for those folks that don't know you and would like to find out more about you or your books or your supplement line, how can they find you? I'm at paulsaladinomd on every platform. Okay. Paul Saladino, MD on every platform. Okay. Paul Saladino, MD on every platform. He has an unbelievable line of products, organ meats and dissected dried organ meats that are in a capsule form if you don't like to eat raw liver. That's Heart and Soil. Heart and Soil. And Lineage is our newest company, and we make grass-fed beef sticks with organs, and we just release an all-in-one protein powder. He's got one out of testicle called the Whole Package. That's Heart and Soil. Yeah, we don'tfed beef sticks with organs and we just release an all-in-one protein powder out of testicle called the whole package that's a hardened soil yeah we don't make beef sticks

Starting point is 00:31:27 which actually really help you know it's interesting you would think testicle capsules would be gross you can't taste it and the reviews on that one are amazing we can do a whole other podcast on organs next time in my kitchen amazing yeah like the um the benefits of organs for humans are incredible and that's a whole separate podcast, probably related to like micro RNAs or something, but they seem uniquely beneficial for humans. And that's why we built Hardened Soil, just to make them easy to get.

Starting point is 00:31:51 Yeah, and you've been sending me some great research, which I've been digging into lately on, I want the cat out of the bag, but target specific or organ supplementation for target specific organ results. And it's very interesting. I'm not ready to comment on it yet, but I've been, been reading a lot of what you sent me. It's very, very eyeopening. So guys, um, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Follow, um,

Starting point is 00:32:12 Paul Saladino, check him out. Um, look, look for his supplements, heart and soil. And as always, that's just science.

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 82. Dr. Paul Saladino: The Big Lie and The Real Reason You Can't Lose Weight

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