Reverse Chronic Disease Through Lifestyle Change

Confronting the silent epidemic of chronic disease, I found liberation not in the latest pharmaceuticals, but in the transformative potential of lifestyle changes. My personal pilgrimage through the gauntlet of ailments such as gout and hypertension revealed a truth that traditional medicine often overlooks: wellness is often rooted in our daily habits. Join me as we unravel the deceptive web spun by common misconceptions surrounding diet and chronic illness. As we unfold the pages of our upcoming book, "Lies I Taught in Medical School," prepare to embark on an enlightening voyage that questions the cornerstones of medical education and equips you with a blueprint for reclaiming your health through practical lifestyle interventions.

This episode is not just a mere exchange of ideas; it's a call to action for those ready to break away from the clutches of medication dependency. We underscore the importance of professional medical counsel, yet we also inspire you to take charge of your health with the knowledge shared. Your feedback and engagement are the life force of our community, fueling our commitment to challenge the healthcare status quo and to continue providing empowering insights. Tune in, transform your approach to well-being, and join us in anticipation for the revelations that await in our next episode.

Thanks to Joe Warner at Unfiltered for letting us rebroadcast this interview.

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

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 HealthLogWC secret show, and I'm your host, dr Robert Lufkin. This episode is a rebroadcast of a recent unfiltered episode that offers a deep dive into how lifestyle interventions can turn the tide against the chronic diseases that are plaguing our society. We navigate the complexities of inflammation, insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. We challenge the healthcare status quo and illuminate the path to well-being through practical lifestyle modifications. We share insights from our upcoming book Lies. I Taught in Medical School. Prepare to have your misconceptions and preconceptions about diet and chronic illness upturned as we dissect the myths and facts surrounding nutrition, from the perils of seed oils and grains to the balance of omega fatty acids. This conversation is a veritable tour de force of dietary enlightenment. We confront the modern epidemic of obesity and diabetes with candid discussions on the inflammatory nature of our food choices. This is an empowering blueprint for anyone ready to take control of their health through informed lifestyle choices. I'm not suggesting that people just throw away their pills. What I'm saying is there is an alternative to a lifetime of medications.

Speaker 2: 1:58

Dr Lufkin, I wanted to start with talking about your book Now. No, it's not out yet, but could you tell me a little bit about your motivations for wanting to write the book in the first place? Tell us the title. Just a little bit about it.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Thanks, joe. The title is Lies. I Taught in Medical School. It's sort of a provocative title, but I wanted to get the message across. The reason I wrote it was because I'm a medical school professor. I've spent essentially my entire career at medical schools and I still am at medical schools teaching.

Speaker 1: 2:33

About 10 years ago I came down with four chronic diseases that were fairly common, but they were diseases that when I went to the healthcare system I was prescribed drugs for them prescription medicines, and I started those drugs and all what I realized, those diseases that I came down with were the same diseases my father came down with, but he was 90 years old when he got them and he eventually died of them. I wasn't 90 years old, I still had two daughters who were just in elementary school and I realized, wow, something. I didn't want to be a casualty there. I began looking at the science behind this and I realized there's a growing body of research that looks at chronic disease a little bit different way than I'd been taught and the way that I was teaching in medical school. That was that these chronic diseases I had gout, which is a type of arthritis. I had pre-diabetes, which is a glucose metabolism abnormality. I had dyslipidemia, which is abnormal blood lipids. Basically, there were several diseases like that and they were treated by the healthcare system as separate diseases. I went in and that's the way they were handled.

Speaker 1: 3:57

But the new research is showing that there's actually a common basis to them. In other words, there are things like inflammation, insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction that affects a large percentage of your population. That actually drives these diseases. The problem is and the fourth one I forgot to mention was hypertension, elevated blood pressure. So, despite the fact that these seem like very different things you know, joint pain and hypertension or glucose abnormalities they're actually all driven by these common factors, these inflammatory factors. And what I realized is that what conventional medicine was doing was just treating the symptoms. So I got a blood pressure medicine. It lowered my blood pressure, but it didn't change anything about the blood vessels that were causing the problem. The same thing with glucose I lowered my glucose but didn't change the underlying pre-diabetes.

Speaker 1: 4:56

So what I began to find out as I studied more and more? There's growing evidence showing that you can reverse these metabolic factors, this insulin resistance and inflammation that I mentioned. But the interesting thing about it, there's not really a pill that works for those, and what works, though, is something even stronger, and that's lifestyle. So what I did was I went on a program of changing my lifestyle and doing certain things, and, over time, basically, my blood pressure dropped. Everything went back to normal. My doctors couldn't believe it, they were shocked, and they eventually stopped my prescriptions because I didn't need them anymore.

Speaker 1: 5:42

And now that's where I am now, but there's a fundamental misunderstanding in medicine today still that a lot of the approach is still just to treat the symptoms of the disease rather than the root cause and the basic metabolic abnormality. I mean even a heart attack. If someone goes in for a heart attack which is caused by not enough blood getting to the muscle of the heart, they will then either have an operation for a revascularization or a stent will be put in which just opens up the blood vessel, and everyone thinks, wow, they took care of my heart attack, which they did, in a sense, acutely, but it doesn't change anything of the underlying mechanism of disease. That's still going on. In other words, the rest of your blood vessels are still getting worse, and you haven't really corrected the root cause, which, for that, is also inflammation and insulin resistance as well.

Speaker 2: 6:36

I want to get into some of the lifestyle interventions you deployed to reverse some of the conditions you were suffering. But first I want to look a little bit deeper into the book. Can you tell us about some of the lies that we can expect to read? What were the big whoppers that you told?

Speaker 1: 6:48

Sure.

Speaker 2: 6:49

And what were the implications of that being the accepted knowledge or information at the time?

Speaker 1: 6:54

Yeah, a lot of it hinges around the way our metabolism works, and that's one of the first chapters of the book is looking at metabolism. When I went to medical school, metabolism was just sort of the way we handle food. It was sort of a boring subject and nobody paid much attention to it. But it's actually fundamental to our health and really, metabolism glucose metabolism drives inflammation and drives the root cause for those four diseases I have, that I have, but also for other major diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, such as cancer, such as heart attack, such as stroke. In fact, those are the main diseases that you and I and most people will eventually die of and they are driven to a large extent by these same metabolic factors.

Speaker 2: 7:46

Looking at when you were facing those diagnoses. What lifestyle interventions did you deploy and how did you get to the position in which you felt comfortable that that was the right course of action? Because I think a lot of people face that decision do I need to make some lifestyle changes or do I go down the medical route and just take medicine for the rest of my life? But then there can be a lot of uncertainty and how to know which is the right approach. How did you kind of navigate that maze?

Speaker 1: 8:10

It's not easy and I'm a professional medical person. That's what I do for a living and it was confusing to me. It was difficult. So let me say at first, I didn't stop taking the medications until the lifestyle works. So if someone has a heart attack, you need to go to a hospital. Someone has cancer, you need to have cancer treatment. If you have Alzheimer's disease, well, there is no treatment. But the point is I didn't give up modern medicine because if your blood pressure is elevated, you need a blood pressure medicine. If your glucose is elevated in diabetes, you need a medicine. So I'm not suggesting that people just throw away their pills. What I'm saying is there is an alternative to a lifetime of medications, not for everyone, but for many of these chronic diseases these lifestyle changes can make a difference.

Speaker 2: 9:03

So and where did you start? Because I think most people think of lifestyle changes. I think, well, I need to maybe do a bit of exercise and change the way I eat, and that's kind of that's the starting point. Was it the same for you?

Speaker 1: 9:12

Yeah, I mean, that's the problem with lifestyle recommendations. You know, everyone should say eat healthy and exercise more. And that's what I was told by my doctor. By my doctor when I was diagnosed with hypertension, you know. I said what can I do about this? And he said we'll take these pills. And I said is there anything else?

Speaker 1: 9:32

He said well, maybe you should exercise more and eat better and eat healthy and I go okay, everybody wants to eat healthy, but there's not even a consensus on what eating healthy is, and that you know, it's very difficult to navigate that. So I began reading the scientific literature as best I could. I interpreted it the best I could, and then I made decisions based on what I read, what I thought was the truth. I applied it to myself, but then, when I started seeing results, I continued on with whether it was dietary, whether it was exercise, whether it was sleep, whether it was stress. Those are the four main areas that I looked at as far as lifestyle, and I think for me those were the four fundamental areas that allowed me to get off these medicines and stay off these. Have these diseases treated With the nutrition.

Speaker 2: 10:26

I want to get into nutrition, obviously in integrate detail. But for you, what was the starting point? What nutritional changes did you make and how quickly did you begin to see, or feel, I guess, the benefits?

Speaker 1: 10:35

Yeah, and nutrition. Let me just say at the beginning I'm the Switzerland of diets Basically. In the past I was a vegan for 10 years. I've tried the carnivore diet, so I'm not here to sell either a vegan or carnivore diet. In fact, I believe you can be healthy in either one If you watch. Make sure you get your macronutrients and micronutrients in place.

Speaker 1: 11:00

What I found most useful and kind of the common theme that worked for me was to get rid of junk food, and junk food is sort of like saying don't eat junk food. It's like saying eat healthy. So the trick is how you define junk food and what you consider to be junk food. And for me, what I found to be junk food and what was giving me these diseases in my diet, so that when I gave it up the diseases went away, were the way I recognized junk food. I counsel the patients I work with is that well, first of all, most stores that we have most food in stores are junk food, and if it's like a 7-11 we have here in the United States or similar type fast food or convenient stores, almost all the food there is junk food. So junk food I recognize is if it comes in a box and if it's brightly colored that's a sign, if it has a long ingredient list.

Speaker 1: 11:58

But in particular, there are three things I look for in junk food to avoid. One is sugar and refined carbohydrates. That refined carbohydrates is like bread starch, rice flour, all those things it drives inflammation, drives insulin resistance. So sugar and carbs. Second is oils and seed oils. Basically, healthy fats are very important. I mean, I grew up believing that saturated fat and butter were clogging my arteries and many of my colleagues still believe this. But what I've come to realize, and more and more people are realizing that it's actually the carbohydrates all along that were causing the problems. So carbohydrates, then seed oils. We mentioned things like canola oil, vegetable industrial oils, things that the American Heart Association lists as heart healthy, and that's a whole story.

Speaker 2: 12:58

We'll get to that in a few course, I'm sure.

Speaker 1: 13:00

But, yeah, seed oils. And then basically the last thing is grains. For me, grains are problematic cereals and grains because they, in the United States at least, glyphosate is a herbicide that's sprayed on a lot of grains and it's problematic. But secondly, gluten is a protein in certain types of grains, but not only gluten. Other proteins that are present in grains. In a large percentage of people drive antibody reactions or inflammation to these things. So even if you don't have Frank's celiac disease, which is gluten intolerance, many of us still have inflammation that's driven by grains and cereals. So for me, I cut them out of my whole diet, even whole grains.

Speaker 2: 13:50

You've mentioned seed oils there, and I've seen from your work before you list that, above sugar as one of the leading cause of obesity, diabetes, a lot of other health issues as well. What is it specifically about seed oils that are so bad in your view?

Speaker 1: 14:03

Yeah, the seed oil evidence, I think, is very strong. It may not be as strong as the carbohydrate, but it's still enough to convince me to stay away from them. There's a balance between Omega 3 and Omega 6 oils. Omega 6 oils are pro-inflammatory. They're present in the seed oils. The seed oils were recently developed, in the 20th century.

Speaker 1: 14:25

They weren't around 150 years ago, and somebody made the observation that most of the food we eat wasn't around 150 years ago, but most of the chronic diseases we die of weren't present in the numbers today that they were 150 years ago. So the fact that it's a new, a new manufactured type of food is problematic, but then their scientific evidence shows that it's pro-inflammatory and actually drives inflammation, and inflammation drives insulin resistance and all those chronic diseases that I mentioned. 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 3: 15:32

Can I start? It's already recording.

Speaker 3: 15:34

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 healthcare, or diagnosis or treatment or the creation of a physician, patient or clinical relationship. The use of this information is at their own user's 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 would like to see on this channel. Thanks for watching and we hope to see you next time.

Speaker 1: 16:20

You should say that no, that's good it's for you to say I think that's very good. If you like it, you want to do it one more time. Or say good, I think that was good. Yes, all right.

Speaker 3: 16:32

You need to say the recording.

Speaker 2: 16:34

Very good.