How to Optimize Your Health Using Nutrition

Embark on a transformative exploration of health with Dr. Robert Lufkin, who, through his own battle with health challenges, advocates the profound benefits of lifestyle changes over medications in treating chronic diseases. Our conversation dismantles the deeply-rooted misunderstandings around obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and heart disease. It's not just about what you eat, but the types of macronutrients that shape your well-being. Discover how diet and fasting can do more than just manage type 2 diabetes—they can potentially reverse it. We're not just talking theory; we're sharing a blueprint for a healthier life that prioritizes longevity and clarity over quick pharmaceutical fixes.

In this discussion, we also unravel the complex web of factors influencing our health decisions, including addiction, habits, and the often misleading information fed to us over the years. From the rise and fall of the low-fat diet to the current low-carb wave, we examine the impacts of these trends on public health and policy. We'll also take a hard look at the pharmaceutical industry and its incentives, questioning the quick prescription of pills over the promotion of beneficial lifestyle changes. Muscle over mere cardio, the carnivore diet, and other promising non-pharmaceutical approaches take center stage, challenging the status quo.

The episode wraps up with a critical evaluation of cholesterol's link to heart disease and the real-world effects of statins, as well as actionable lifestyle modifications for combating high blood pressure. Plus, we dissect the power of intermittent fasting and the surprising non-essentials in our diets, particularly sugar. By the end of our chat, you'll rethink the necessity of breakfast and gain insight into fostering healthy eating habits in children. As we close, remember this is more than an information session—it's an invitation to take control of your health, backed by expertise and experience from Dr. Lufkin and myself.

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsor (20% off with this link):
https://prolonlife.com/Lufkin

ReverseAgingRevolution Summit June 20-22, 2024 https://robertlufkinmdcom.ontralink.com/t?orid=49&opid=2

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome back to the Health Longevity Secret Show, and I'm your host, dr Robert Lufkin. Today, prepare to define your approach to chronic diseases as we rebroadcast a very recent AMA with Elaine Scarpelli from her fascinating podcast, we discussed the powerful influence of lifestyle choices over medications in managing diseases like obesity and diabetes. We navigate the murky waters of the health care system, examining the tug of war between drug profitability on one hand and the true benefits to health. We uncover the surprising efficacy of diet in not just managing but potentially even reversing type 2 diabetes, and brace yourself for a candid discussion on dietary fats and the contentious opinions of the cholesterol wars and statins. We conclude our discussion as we delve into the myths and revelations of sugar consumption and intermittent fasting. Here first-hand accounts of the transformative effects of fasting, including increased energy and mental clarity. We challenge entrenched beliefs around meal timing and stress the importance of honoring our body's natural hunger signals.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Tune in for an episode that not only educates but also empowers you to take control of your health with informed decisions. This week's episode is brought to you by El Nutra, maker of the prolonged fasting mimicking diet. I just started using their five-day fasting plan and it's really pretty wild. If you want to try it? Use the link in the show notes for 20% off. Please support this podcast by checking out their website and taking a look at their other innovative products. And now please enjoy this week's episode.

Speaker 3: 2:00

Well, welcome to another edition of Fuel Life Focus. We hope everyone is enjoying the summit so far. Today we have Dr Robert Lufkin, medical doctor and author of Lies I Taught in Medical School. Very provocative title of your book. You generously allowed me to address you as Rob, so thank you for that.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Oh thanks. Yeah, thanks, elaine. I'm so excited to be on your program. I'm a fan and it's great to be here in person.

Speaker 3: 2:34

We appreciate that very much. Just really quick before I get started, if you want to give us a little, really the clip-nose version of your bio, how you got here.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Yeah, I'm basically a physician. My specialty is radiology or medical imaging. I've spent my whole career in medical schools, basically at UCLA or USC, where I'm a professor at both of them at various times, and that experience was really foundational for me because it allowed me in that role I got to practice medicine and actually treat patients and hopefully help them Also do research, and in a very narrow area that I was working in at least, I was able to set up a laboratory and write hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and get grants and do the usual medical establishment type things there. And then finally, and perhaps most satisfying, I was able to work with students and doctors in training. It's one of the goals of the medical school is to help teach people and also learning from them as well. But I was able to do all three of those things.

Speaker 1: 3:56

And then, about gosh, about 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with four medical conditions that were completely sort of unexpected and I went to my doctors and I was prescribed medications for them to take care of them.

Speaker 1: 4:13

But they were conditions that my father had died of, but he was almost 90 years old, but I still had kids in elementary school and I said, wow, this isn't going to end well. So, kind of out of self-interest, I began reading about these things and I realized there's been a tremendous revolution in information recently about diseases and our understanding of these things, and so, basically, long story short, I began implementing some of the new suggestions and changes in my lifestyle and other things. And, long story short, I went back to see the doctors and they said I can't believe it, what's going on? And I was off medications for all these diseases and I no longer have them. And that has changed my focus now to health and longevity, and I'm trying to share this information with other people so that they don't go down the same path I did, and that's the basis of this book and all.

Speaker 3: 5:21

Thank you, yeah, and that really is a lot of what this health and wellness summit is all about is getting people educated and making sure that they're getting the right resources before they make decisions, before they take medications or treatments that may or may not be right for them. So, first off, what are some of the most common misconceptions about the causes of chronic diseases?

Speaker 1: 5:47

Yeah, that's a great question. Okay, thank you. All right, these misconceptions are something that I had as well, and that is that simple things that are still being taught today that we get fat because we eat too much and don't exercise enough and that's the basis for the recommendations that's still given today is, if you have a problem with obesity, exercise more and eat less. Now, that doesn't really work, as we all know, because exercise creates an appetite and it's not as simple as eating less. There are other factors, such as the type of macronutrients we eat, that are much more important, but that's not emphasized to people.

Speaker 1: 6:38

Other misconceptions about the origins of chronic diseases are that, well, alzheimer's disease the idea is that it's beta amyloid plaques in the brain, these kind of plaques that research has been directed at over decades with essentially unlimited funds, with the results that there are no medications, effective pharmaceutical medications for Alzheimer's disease. So I think that the that chronic disease Alzheimer's the basis for it is a misconception that that it's caused by beta amyloid plaques and, as I go in detail in the book, there are many other causes that are effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease that can either slow it or reverse it or prevent it from happening, but you can go down the list with chronic diseases like cancer, same thing there, chronic diseases like heart disease and stroke, which is the number one killer that all of us, statistically, are most likely to die of. Other things like diabetes as well. There are misconceptions about all of those and the kind of the aha moment for me that was an epiphany that, from my understanding, that I wasn't aware of and many of my colleagues are still not aware of is that all these chronic diseases that I just mentioned, which are, it's important to remember, these chronic diseases, are the diseases that determine our longevity. In other words, statistically, most of us, all of us, everyone we know are going to die of likely five or six diseases you know, probably most likely, and those diseases are these chronic diseases that I just mentioned. And the fascinating thing is that, at a basic level, they're all linked to common factors, things like inflammation, things like insulin resistance and and other factors in our body.

Speaker 1: 8:43

And the point is that modern medicine treats these chronic diseases with prescriptions and various therapies, but in many cases, they're only treating the symptoms of these chronic diseases and they're overlooking the basic cause, which are the metabolic factors that drive inflammation and drive insulin resistance. And the problem is, if you don't correct those basic metabolic factors, you can take the treatment for the chronic disease like a stent for a heart attack. You put a stent in the coronary artery that opens up the artery. It's a little tube and everyone that's.

Speaker 1: 9:25

The accepted treatment for a heart attack is to put a stent in to open up the vessel and that helps the vessel acutely. The problem is it doesn't do anything to the underlying cause. In other words, the stent will eventually clock, clog down again and narrow and the other blood vessels will narrow as well, and the stent itself just treats the symptom of the disease and doesn't do anything with the underlying factors. So the key thing is the epiphany was that these common factors that underlying all these chronic diseases can be addressed with lifestyle changes that we get to choose every day, choices about nutrition, sleep, exercise and stress, and that's what can significantly affect these chronic diseases.

Speaker 3: 10:16

And what would you say are the biggest challenges to get people to commit to these lifestyle changes that can help reverse chronic diseases?

Speaker 1: 10:28

Probably arguably one of the most important factors in lifestyle is nutrition right. And we live in a world full of junk food and I should know I'm a recovering junk food addict. I struggle with it all the time and when I first began doing this work I thought it's just a matter of educating people. You know that. You know, if you're a type 2 diabetic and you eat this sugar donut, you'll make your diabetes worse and you'll eventually get your foot chopped off, you'll go blind, your kidneys will fail and you're in dialysis. Diabetes is the number one cause of all those things I just mentioned. And if you just explain it to someone with evidence-based research where you know you've got the evidence to show that you're not just making it up, if you present that to people, then they will change their life.

Speaker 1: 11:30

But in my experience it's not that simple. It's because we're complex, we have addictions, we have habits. Even our lifestyle choices we make are driven by many, many factors in our you know childhood trauma and you know our experiences in life and our mental health. And it's not just a matter of saying you know sugar's bad for you or seed oils are bad for you, don't eat it. We all fall back into that pattern. So sometimes to make these changes it's necessary to have coaches and work on a plan over time. Just like any addiction that you deal with. You know it's. You know people who smoke cigarettes know that they're at risk for heart attack and lung cancer, and nobody doesn't know that today, but they still. They still do it. So the big thing was the challenge about actually getting people to make these changes. It's not enough just to educate them and make them aware of it, but sometimes it takes a lot more.

Speaker 3: 12:42

No, and I think also the fact that there was so much misinformation over the years, like I remember when I, you know, was much younger, it was low fat, low fat, low fat, and no one told me that I had to watch my sugar intake.

Speaker 3: 12:54

And then it became the whole oh, let's just, you know, cut out all the carbs, all of them, every single one of them, and and then, I think, over time, you know, we're getting different, different bits and pieces of information, and I think right now, like for me personally, right now, I'm focusing my workouts more on building muscle, whereas before I was just running on that treadmill thinking that, you know, I was going to run myself into good health and, you know, now, realizing that there's, there's some better ways. So I think it's a matter of really getting all the information, finding out what's best for you, you know, because I mean, I think exercise is a little bit individual, but yeah, I mean. My next question would be then what role do you think the medical and or the pharmaceutical industries have played in some of this misconception?

Speaker 1: 13:46

A big role. A big role and not saying it was necessarily intentional, although there are examples of, you know, misconduct where people knowingly drove things with financial incentives a certain direction, but a lot of it was just, you know, people try to under. I mean, hopefully people tried to understand that, people tried to understand things as best they could and make the best decisions at the time. The problem was, you know, as you pointed out, there were national public policy decisions made about the type of nutrition to have specifically the low fat diet in the food pyramid, which has driven people to a high carb diet which is very, you know, very toxic for many people, driving diabetes and inflammation and heart disease as well. So, you know, the pharmaceutical industry is, you know, very, very much to blame and the healthcare industry is to blame as well.

Speaker 1: 14:58

The pharmaceutical industry has, you know, has a profit motive for certain drugs and you know they have an obligation to their shareholders to make money. And if you have two drugs, that one is more profitable but slightly less healthy and the other is less profitable but slightly more healthy, which one do you think, which one do you think they will take? So it's complicated. You know our system is designed for our health care system is designed for the delivery of pills and surgery largely, and our visits are very short so that a pill can be given. People would rather take a pill than go out and exercise or change their diet. You know, they'd rather take ozempic than do other things to lose weight. Ozempic is one of the new weight loss drugs that's very expensive, it's very effective, but it has some downstream side effects that we're just beginning to appreciate. But so it's complex. But all of those, all of those institutions are implicated in this. I think.

Speaker 3: 16:15

Absolutely. What would you say? Some of the most promising new approaches to either reversing chronic diseases or really, most importantly, preventing them? All together, what are you know, or even some things that you would recommend?

Speaker 1: 16:34

Yeah, I mean, I think I think we've undergone a revolution in our understanding of the drivers of these chronic diseases and I think now, for the first time we can, there's, there's overwhelming evidence that these things are effective, that we can do every day in our lives, and these can be more effective than you know taking an Alzheimer's drug, you know, which doesn't work, or you know some of the other drugs for the, for the diabetes. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying stop taking your drugs and just, you know, do lifestyle things. Drugs have a role in saving lives and the acute management of these diseases. If I find a type two diabetic and I'm taking insulin and that form, and I'm not saying stop those things and just cut your carbs, that has to be managed very carefully. But there's very strong evidence from studies from companies like Verta and other companies that have shown pretty much compellingly that type two diabetes can be reversed with dietary restrictions, with a low carb diet.

Speaker 1: 17:51

You know, people talk about the carnivore diet, which is sort of the extreme, the opposite extreme from the vegan diet, where you vegan diets you only eat plants. Carnivore diet you only eat meat. But the thing with meat there's no, there's really no carbohydrates in the meat, and carbohydrates are the drivers for type two diabetes. So people who go on a carnivore diet essentially reverse their type two diabetes. It's, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing when that happens.

Speaker 3: 18:21

Yeah, that is amazing. I'm reading a lot lately, especially online, about the carnivore diet, so you know it really is interesting and it you know kind of you know goes against a lot of what we were taught about. I remember years ago, remember it was no eggs, his eggs had cholesterol and that was bad for your heart, and now it's really more on I'm reading more about the types of oils, like you had mentioned, seed oils being bad for us. Vegetable oil, seed oils, I think most or not most, or some pure forms of olive oil, coconut oils, with those be oils you recommend. If you had you know, if you had to recommend what we cook with.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Yeah, yeah, I mean, if we're going to get rid of canola oil and vegetable oil, we need to be able to replace it with something effective and so, or something you know, equally good but that it's healthy. So the oils that I use to replace the seed oils with our things like olive oil, coconut oil and these, these kinds of things as well, so there are substitutes for them that don't have the high amounts of linoleic acid. The seed oils are, first of all, they're industrial oils. They were originally developed as lubricants for German submarines and World War one. That was the Crisco oil. But then they found out that people could eat these.

Speaker 1: 19:50

But there there's a lot of evidence, and growing evidence, that they're very pro inflammatory and the inflammation is, you know, as we said, one of the main drivers of chronic disease. So even though the American Heart Association, on their website, recommends canola oil as a heart healthy oil, I disagree. I don't think the evidence is there, and part of it is that institution is funded or receives funding from the vegetable oil manufacturers. So it's it's complicated, but personally I void vegetable oils. I substitute, you know, avocado oil, coconut oil or olive oil for those. I also avoid. I avoid carbohydrates to a large extent, especially refined carbohydrates, in my diet I, and I also avoid grains, not just gluten, but any kind of grains, including whole grains. There's a number of issues there.

Speaker 3: 21:01

So even what about? How do you feel about oatmeal, or does it depend on what kind of oats it is?

Speaker 1: 21:07

Everybody's different, but for many people, or most people, oatmeal will spike your glucose after an oatmeal meal, and that sort of spiking is something that we want to avoid to avoid damage to our blood vessels. And the HA one C marker is a diagnostic test for diabetes is actually a measure of glucose damage to red blood cells. So oatmeal is something I would. I would avoid.

Speaker 3: 21:41

And I know you had made it clear that you are not telling anyone to get off medication, at least not completely, that you know these are just ways to help improve your life, help to avoid getting these chronic diseases. What would you tell someone, however, that is, was diagnosed with high cholesterol, and have you feel about statins, the yeah, good, good question.

Speaker 1: 22:07

Statins are, you know, a very controversial hot button issue today. But let me unpack what you said a little bit. If someone's diagnosed with high cholesterol, that's assuming that high cholesterol is a disease or something to be diagnosed with. There's some evidence that elevated cholesterol I mean the, the, the messages that high cholesterol somehow contributes to heart disease, and that's that goes back to your eggs, you know, from 50 years ago and the urging to eat a low fat diet, avoid cholesterol, avoid egg yolks, that kind of thing. So the question is, does elevated cholesterol, does that drive heart attacks? And there's growing evidence that shows that the effect may be much, much less than we thought. Certainly, there's no question.

Speaker 1: 23:04

Now Everybody pretty much agrees that dietary cholesterol, in other words, what we consume in our diet from, from eggs and things, doesn't have an effect, really a significant effect, on our blood cholesterol. So what we're talking about, high cholesterol, is high blood cholesterol and you you don't have to worry about your diet for the cholesterol there. But in the blood cholesterol, things like LDL cholesterol is one of the markers, that's that's elevated in in heart disease. And the question is, what causes heart disease, while there's famous studies to refute it, that you know half the patients who come in with a acute heart attack have normal cholesterol. You know they don't have elevated cholesterol. If you look at the risk factors, though, elevated cholesterol you know is a risk factor for heart disease, you know for a hazard ratio for heart, heart disease and heart attack, but it's very, it's relatively small when you compare it to things like smoking, or metabolic disease driven by carbohydrates and sugars, or type two diabetes, certainly. So then the question, then the question be go ahead.

Speaker 1: 24:18

No then the question becomes the statins, or drugs, as we know, that lower our blood cholesterol. They lower the lipids in our blood cholesterol. Well, the question is, are statins associated with improvement, decrease risk of heart attacks? Well, actually they are. So then why not take them? Well, you have to examine the risk benefit ratio. The benefits from statins are usually exaggerated in the advertisements by showing a relative risk versus absolute risk. The absolute risk is about 1%, which is, which is actually very small risk improvement in in heart.

Speaker 1: 24:57

You know, in heart attacks that's one out of 100, but heart attacks are the number one killer. So why wouldn't I take a statin, right? Well, they're actually problems with statins to as far as side effects. A lot of people have muscle problems, people have memory problems with statin. So there you know some people that just don't want to take stats because the side effects. So, in general, you know, you have to make the decision with your doctor and but I would, you know, I would urge people to look very closely at them if you have a zero calcium score and no family history of heart disease, even the American Heart Association recommends, or the American American cardiology Association recommends, canceling or discontinuing statins.

Speaker 3: 25:46

Oh, really. Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1: 25:48

Yeah, so if you're on statins and you don't want to be and get a coronary calcium score costs about $100 and it looks for corner calcium in your coronary arteries and and then you can you can stop the statins. Your doctor will will agree with that.

Speaker 3: 26:06

Great. No, I never heard of that, but that's very interesting. Yeah, I just curious as to how you feel about. I mean, we always talked about cholesterol and how you know. There's, you know, some disagreements, so to say on is that really the cause of a heart attack? What about something like high blood pressure and the effect of high blood pressure on heart attack, and what can people do to get their blood pressure under control?

Speaker 1: 26:37

Yeah, high blood pressure is or hypertension as it's called is a huge health issue. You know, up to half of adults or 40% of adults have hypertension and the majority and they're called essential hypertension because we really don't know what it is. You know it used to be oh, it's salt in your diet and don't do that. But a number of things drive hypertension that things like smoking and other types of things. We're just beginning to understand. But the amazing thing is with hypertension, like the other chronic diseases, there's an interesting phenomenon when you change your lifestyle and change your diet and and stress, the blood pressure actually goes down. So if you go to your doctor, you'll be given medicines, prescriptions, for high blood pressure and you certainly should take those at first. Any, any prescription drug. You should either start or discontinue only with the supervision of a physician. But it's been my experience that many, many people can stop their prescription medicines with a physician's help for hypertension by changing their lifestyle and obviously that can change their diet and changing weight. That works for a lot of people. But even changing their diet, going to a low carb, ketogenic diet, doing some intermittent fasting these can have dramatic effects on on blood pressure. So we didn't know we're associated with blood pressure before or until a few years ago.

Speaker 1: 28:10

Nitric oxide, which is made in the mouth, actually relaxes the blood vessels. That's the basis for Viagra, or see Alice, you know, for men with erectile dysfunction. But that works with all the blood vessels in the body, but that that nitric oxide is made in the mouth. So when people take antibacterial mouth washes they kill all the bacteria in the mouth or they they alter the bacteria in the mouth that create the nitric oxide to. There's actually good evidence in studies that show that people who use mouthwash actually have higher blood pressure than people who don't.

Speaker 1: 28:50

For that reason I stopped using using mouthwash for that a number number of other reasons. But things like fructose fructose is can, is a component of sugar. It's half of you know it's half of table sugars, glucose and fructose. Fructose, when it the body is converted to something called your eight or your acid, which causes gout, and that's converted into something that it interferes with nitric oxide in the blood vessels. So fructose can actually contribute to hypertension through this mechanism. So there's so many dietary factors and lifestyle factors that are driving high hypertension that were really weren't aware of until very recently.

Speaker 3: 29:39

Yeah, I mean that's very interesting and actually I did bring up high blood pressure because is personal for me. But 22 years ago my father passed away have a massive heart attack at 63. He had high blood pressure and he was supposed to be on medication and he decided that he didn't like the side effects and that he didn't need it. Now it would have been nice if he changed some lifestyle, is diet, or reduced his stress or some of those other things. But you know he thought he knew everything and didn't need to do any of those things and unfortunately, you know the rest is history.

Speaker 3: 30:15

Now, on top, some years later, my children's other grandfather passed away of a heart attack, suddenly at 62. So now I have my children with a heart history on both sides one grandfather at 63, one at 62. And I feel like they can't mess around. They really have to be watching their heart. I mean, they're 16 and 18 right now, but you're never too young to start a healthy lifestyle and I wanna make sure that I'm giving them every other tools that they need ahead of time. So I don't know if you had any suggestions. As far as you mentioned intermittent fasting and what you think of a little baby lover a little more on the benefits of that or really anything else, that, any type of advice that you would give for someone that has that history.

Speaker 1: 31:09

Yeah, well, I can certainly relate to it. I've got a 12 year old and a 14 year old daughters, and so they go to the school and the school serves them orange juice and which is like a candy bar and basically sugar cereals and then chocolate, milk and all these sugar laden things in their diet and they're constantly exposed to sugar. But the dietary things that we talk about, like intermittent fasting, is very, very powerful. I would just say that anything I'm recommending is pretty much for adults, and with children we really don't know what's going on. It's some of the more extreme stuff like fasting for kids it's. You just need to be careful of it and coordinate it with your pediatrician. Certainly, avoiding sugar with your kids is okay, because sugar is the micronutrients fat, protein and carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, of which sugar is a type, is the only macronutrient that's non-essential. In other words, you can be perfectly healthy without eating any carbohydrates or any sugar, so kids can avoid that. But the other stuff fasting is a very, very powerful tool in my experience. And if you don't wanna change your diet, you say, hey, I like my orange juice, I like my oatmeal or whatever, but I wanna be healthy. Is there anything else I can do and actually, yeah, there is. It's just an answer. That is, stop eating all the time.

Speaker 1: 32:46

In our modern times. We get up in the morning, we have breakfast, and then we have a snack the midday, and then we have lunch, and then we have another snack, and then we have dinner and then we have another snack and the drill. Certainly, that was my life at least. But there are a number of reasons in our biology that it's beneficial to just not eat and not have food in our gut, and one of the mechanisms is a protein called mTOR. It turns mTOR into a favorable state that promotes things like autophagy and healing of our bodies and prevents accelerated growth that can drive cancers or heart disease or Alzheimer's disease, all these other things.

Speaker 1: 33:34

So intermittent fasting, even in a day. Just start with cutting out snacks. Just eat once in a while. I've gone to the point where I started that way and then I dropped breakfast and then I dropped lunch and now I basically just eat one meal a day.

Speaker 1: 33:50

When my kids come home from school and I have a great meal, I can eat as much as I want because it's only one meal a day. It's like you don't have to count calories or anything like that. But it's very powerful and by fasting the rest of the day for me and for many people I find I have more energy, less brain fog, and when you fast, your body goes into a state called ketosis, where you're burning ketones instead of glucose or sugars, and when you're burning ketones it naturally suppresses your appetite. So people say like, oh, how can you go all day without eating? You know, you get up in the morning, you exercise, you haven't eaten since six o'clock the night before. How does that work? Well, it works great and for me, I think it's a healthier way of being and I've been doing it for a few years now.

Speaker 3: 34:50

Yeah, I'm reading a lot of really great things about intermittent fasting Done the right way. It was funny because years ago, I mean when I was a kid I was told don't leave the house until you eat breakfast. Whether you're hungry or not, go eat breakfast. And I think now it's so important to realize, like, listen to your body, if you're not hungry then you don't need to be eating right now.

Speaker 1: 35:12

And I try to yeah, I try to Go ahead. No, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: 35:18

No, I just got to say I try now, try not to eat until at least noon, have something at lunchtime, drinking lots of water, and I am finding myself I'm a lot more alert, less brain fog, whereas I think there was some misconception before and we were told oh, you must have an eating disorder if you skipped one meal. And that's not the case, obviously.

Speaker 1: 35:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whenever. When I first started skipping breakfast, a little message would play in my head. It said breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and my mom was a dietitian and she used to tell us that too. And then, as reading a little bit about it, it turns out that's actually not medical advice or even healthy advice. It's a sales pitch from one of the creators of the very. One of the very first junk foods was created by a guy named John Kellogg who worked with the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and they were making cereals as an alternative for meat at breakfast, because they felt meat was bad. It created carnal desires in people and the cereal would help suppress this sort of thing. So Kellogg's Corn Flakes was marketed with the slogan that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And it's worked. Kellogg still sells a lot of cereal, and that message is in all our heads playing all the time.

Speaker 3: 36:52

You definitely have to untie ourselves some of the false information that we grew up on. I mean, you mentioned orange juice and yeah, when I was a kid growing up, I mean that was the first thing I had was that cup of sugar and orange juice and we thought it was OK because there was no added sugar to it. But sometimes that doesn't matter, it could be just as bad. I don't think I've bought orange juice in about two decades. So I successfully cut that habit.

Speaker 3: 37:22

And my kids were never really they didn't really grow up with orange juice. So even when they were little I used to water down their juice just to try to cut out their sugar. And now with my son, I have another reason to cut out his sugar because he has cavities he's got. Every time we go to the dentist we have another issue. So it's not just for his gut health and his blood health and all of those other things, but, you know, for his teeth as well. So I've got plenty of reasons to make sure I educate my kids with all the best knowledge, all the best tools to give them to make some better decisions as they enter adulthood.

Speaker 1: 38:04

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3: 38:06

And that's definitely what I'm trying to do. But I think we got a lot of really great information in this talk and I think that everybody watching has learned a lot and would probably, like I know I am wanting more. So I know that you've offered a free excerpt of your book, so, if you want, we'll have a link to that in our website as well. And, yeah, if you want to tell them a little bit more about your book and I'm sure they can get the whole thing, if they want to purchase that as well, which is a great read, yeah the book.

Speaker 1: 38:48

This is a preprint. It's Lies I Taught in Medical School a very provocative clickbait title, I admit. Anyway, it just goes through and for each of 15 chapters there's a lie that we talk about, and it covers basically a lot of the stuff we talked about today, but it's coming out in the spring. But if you're interested in it and would like to read a free sample chapter, we have the first chapter online at my website. You're welcome to download it and take a look at it and see what you think.

Speaker 3: 39:23

And I recommend that everybody do that, because I got a chance to preview it and very interesting and definitely I was wanting more. So I hope everybody goes to your website. We'll have the link provided and I'm sure everybody was very happy to hear everything that you had to say for us today. So thank you so much, rob. We really appreciate you taking your time out of your busy day, your schedule, to come join our summit. So thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 39:53

Yeah, thanks for having me on the program, elaine, and I can't wait to hear the other speakers on this program. If you are enjoying this program, please hit that Subscribe button or, even better, leave a review. Your support makes it possible for us to create the quality programming that we're continually striving for. Also, let us know if there is a certain topic that you would like to see covered or a particular guest that you would like to hear from.

Speaker 2: 40:24

Can I start? Is it recording?

Speaker 1: 40:25

It's already recording.

Speaker 2: 40:26

Oh sorry. This is for general information and educational purposes only, and it's not intended to constitute or substitute for medical advice or counseling, the practice of medicine or the provision of health care, diagnosis or treatment, or the creation of a physician, patient or clinical relationship. The use of this information is at their own users' risk. If you find this to be on the value, please hit that Like button to subscribe to support the work that we do on this channel, and we take your suggestions and advice very seriously, so please let us know what you'd like to see on this channel. Thanks for watching and we hope to see you next time.

Speaker 1: 41:13

You should see it, that's good news. We just saw that you did a good job. You like it. You want to do it one more time Is that good.

Speaker 2: 41:22

I think that was good. You need to save the recording. Very good, thank you.