Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 30 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition together for quite a while, and he also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is part two of our two part series discussing cholesterol. And if you haven't listened to part one of this series, I highly recommend you do that. So you're all caught up for today's episode. Today we'll be talking about various other aspects of cholesterol. We'll be talking about what actually causes plaque buildup and heart disease and why cholesterol is not the culprit there. We'll be talking about why the Omega sixes and omega threes are not actually the heart healthy fats. We'll be discussing how you can lower your cholesterol levels in a healthy way, and why this does not include recommendations like eating lots of whole grains, nuts and seeds, vegetable oils and fatty fish, which, of course, are often recommendations for lowering cholesterol and improving heart health. And then we'll also discuss the importance of our gut and thyroid health for lowering cholesterol. As a disclaimer for this episode and the previous episodes as well, none of this is medical advice, so make sure you talk with your medical professional before making any dietary changes or otherwise. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll be linking to a ton of these studies surrounding cholesterol and heart health. There are a ton of them, and we definitely cannot get through all of them in these episodes. So if you want to take a look at those, look at those, you can head over to the show notes. And if you are trying to lower your cholesterol levels, if you are trying to increase your metabolism, reduce stress, improve your gut health, lose some weight, get rid of constant cravings and hunger, improve your energy or balance out your hormones. Head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I will walk you through the main things to do as far as nutrition and lifestyle are concerned, in order to do exactly that, in order to get rid of all those low energy symptoms and maximize your cellular energy. And I'll also discuss why this is so important when it comes to all sorts of chronic health conditions, whether that is heart disease or diabetes or autoimmune issues or any other sorts of chronic health conditions or symptoms. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, let's get started.Mike 3:03 So essentially, with plaque buildup in arteries, and we talked about the the main areas are in high pressure areas of of the vasculature, and that's specifically within the aorta and the coronary arteries and places around the heart like that, you generally don't see any real plaque formation in the veins, the venous system is mostly in the arterial system, which is much higher pressure. And essentially what you see in plaques is a build up of foam cells, which are macrophages or immune cells that have eaten cholesterol, but the specifically oxidized cholesterol. So they've eaten damaged cholesterol. And the theoretical reason for this is because oxidized cholesterol would it, which is, it's just cholesterol has been damaged. Is that the cholesterol molecule has been broken and by different mechanisms, different chemical pathways, and that's the basics of it. And so basically, the the immune cells eat these this damaged cholesterol to protect the endothelial cells, which are those cells that line the interior of your arteries and function in gas exchange of oxygen and and CO two and things like that, and nutrient exchange with red blood cells and whatnot. And the blood itself. It protects them from the oxidized cholesterol, because at certain levels or concentrations of oxidized cholesterol, the endothelial cells begin to get damaged or impaired. So what happens is these immune cells, these macrophages, eat up the damaged cholesterol, and then they pull it into the middle layer of the artery. I think it's the intima and basically they just, they sequester it, or they they store it there. They detain it in the middle layer of the artery. So the the endothelial cells, the small inner lining of the arteries, or the thin inner lining of the arteries, are protected from the damage. So it's actually an immune function for damaged cholesterol. It's. And the other thing they specifically find there is high amounts of linoleic acid and and things like that. And this is this becomes important, because the dietary recommendation in these situations is to lower saturated fat intake and increase polyunsaturated fat intake. And one of the main polyunsaturated fatty acids is linoleic acid, which is an Omega six fatty acid. And the reason that these fatty acids are often found there, or the theoretical the theorized reason is because the polyunsaturated fatty acid structure has double bonds in it, and we've talked about this previously. And the double bonds make the the fatty acid, the polyunsaturated fatty acid, more susceptible to oxidative damage. They're more easily damaged by multiple different chemical reactions within the body, and when they become damaged, they start to damage the cholesterol. And the polyunsaturated fatty acids are are found within the lipoprotein carriers. All other fatty acids are found within the lipoprotein carriers. This is LDL and HDL. And so when they're when you have a high amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids in the diet, and then you're taking and it's being transported through the blood in the LDL carriers, and cholesterol is also bound in there with it. Then they basically the PUFA, or polyunsaturated fatty acids can oxidize, and then they can also cause the cholesterol to oxidize, and then when this happens, the macrophages, the immune cells, go in and eat up the damaged cholesterol and damaged polyunsaturated fatty acids, and move into the inner layer of the artery to protect the endothelial cells that are in that are lining the artery from damage. So what you find out is not just saturated fatty acids because there's because they're so thick, they just clog up the arteries. That's not actually the case. You don't find plaques on the inside or the endothelial layer of the artery. You find them inside the wall of the artery itself, and pulled in there, theoretically, by the macrophages. So what you're seeing is a high amount of unsaturated fatty acids within the diet, particularly, at least from the research that I've seen Omega sixes, which is linoleic acid. And with that said, when you start to look at the trends in heart disease and the change in dietary consumption patterns over the course of the 20th century, you start to see that we have in massive increases in polyunsaturated fatty acid intake, particularly the Omega sixes, and then massive increases in heart disease and cancer. And cancer is most that's a different topic for a different time in relation to polyunsaturated fatty acids. And so they sort of trend together. And it doesn't necessarily trend with sugar, IT trends with polyunsaturated fatty acid consumption, and so that's really important to look at there, especially when the dietary recommendations for heart disease are to increase your PUFA intake.Jay Feldman 7:50 Yeah. So what we what we basically have here is damage to the lining of our blood vessels, first, as a product of inflammation, a lack of energy production, which there are various reasons for that. I mean, we've talked about thyroid health. We've talked about infection, the polyunsaturated fats themselves, which can already be in that lining, and, you know, inside those cells and be very susceptible to damage. They basically have dysfunction and inflammation and damage. And in these lot in this lining, and then you you have the cholesterol being deposited there from these LDL protein carriers, along with often fatty acids, which in this case are often the polyunsaturated ones, which is sometimes already damaged as it's been carried around. If not, it's pretty likely to be damaged in that area. But the point is that these are kind of coming as firemen to the fire to try to put the fire out, to try to stop the inflammation, stop the the damage, and restore proper energy production, restore proper function. And if that were to happen, which is constantly happening all the time, and you didn't have this underlying dysfunction, then you'd be fine, that the damage would be healed, regenerated, everything would be okay. But instead, you have this underlying dysfunction that results from all sorts of things, a lack of nutrients, the presence of various metabolic toxins and on and on, that stops these processes from working properly. So then you have this deposition of the cholesterol and fatty acids, which, instead of fixing the problem, are unable to because there's such dysfunction. And this continues, and the cholesterol and fatty acids continue to be deposited, along with, as you had mentioned, some of these white blood cells. These white blood cells, which are also part of the immune system. They're there because of the inflammation and all together, these basically this, this line of dysfunction leads to a build up of the these white blood cells, the PLA the cholesterol, the fatty acids which make up this plaque. And end up blocking things up.Mike 10:01 So the white blood cells actually die from the accumulation of these fatty acids. And then within the plaques, you get centers of necrotic tissue, which is just dead blood cells. White blood cells generally macrophages and just fat oxidized fatty acid particlesJay Feldman 10:19 Thsoe are normally the polyunsaturated fatty acid, which so, so we're told that not only does cholesterol block up our arteries with soda saturated fat, but when they actually look at the composition of the plaque, it's not saturated fat, it's it's the polyunsaturated fats, and it's damaged polyunsaturated fats, to be exactly.Mike 10:37 Exactly. And I think there's so.Jay Feldman 10:39 And just to clarify also about these fats, the polyunsaturated fats are the ones that we're told are healthy. They have the heart healthy sticker. These are the vegetable oils. They're in nuts and seeds. They're in fatty fish like salmon. These are the ones that we're told are supposed to help us if we have heart disease, yet, these are the ones that are found in the plaques and contribute to the inflammation and dysfunction that is leading to plaque buildup, rather than the saturated ones, which are the ones that are found in animal products. You know, butter, whatever it depends on the type of animal product. But dairy, all that, all the which are very stable and not susceptible to that damage. And so those are not the problem.Mike 11:17 And have been used for centuries prior to the introduction of seed of heavy amounts of seed oils, right? Where we didn't have heart disease in the centuries that or we didn't have such high amounts of heart disease and chronic disease in the century that those were used, which is something important to point out. The other thing that's important to point out is the polyunsaturated fatty acids were discussed as there are recommended as being used because they lower cholesterol in the blood. But the mechanism by which they do this is by damaging cellular production in the liver of cholesterol, right? So they have like multiple damaging effects, where they lower cholesterol in the blood by damaging the liver to some extent, and then they also damage the vasculature and decrease the amount of protective cholesterol in general. So it's like a two fold negative effect. And then the other thing is, they have a negative effect on metabolism in general. And I think that's a topic for another episode well.Jay Feldman 12:17 And we've talked about it, except, yeah, previous episodes, so I'll link to that. Mike 12:20 But yeah, and something interesting to add to that, a bit anecdotal, but when we were doing so over the course of time, we you and I have both donated blood relatively regularly. And when we were doing high fat, low carb, I have my cholesterol blood results from then. And I was about, and this is what I was thinking, maybe 20 and 20 years old, and at this point I had about 198 milligrams per deciliter total cholesterol at 20 years old. Over time, I switched up my diets. It at for a little while was in the 150s and then I started using thyroid. And at one point I was using maybe a little bit too much thyroid, and my cholesterol is down to 8880 total cholesterol of 88 milligrams per deciliter. And you can see the trend on where I donated blood. Of it dropping. And that sort of corresponds to me increasing my carbohydrate intake in my diet, from being zero carb to moving towards, I guess I did intermittent fasting for a little while, and then moving into like a more paleo, and then getting to peat, and then sort of finding my own way from there. And you can see my cholesterol level sort of drop as I increase carbohydrates, basically, and track my diet over time. So I think just an interesting example, because at 20 they would consider 198 cholesterols high. And right now I'd be marvelously low by medical standards.Jay Feldman 13:47 Right, which is not a level that we're suggesting. No, no, a mistake. Yeah.Mike 13:53 Yeah, too much. Too much thyroid use.Jay Feldman 13:55 But so and for mine, I mean, my I had a similar but more exaggerated fluctuation in cholesterol, where, when I was on the low carb, high fat, my total cholesterol is about 275 which is way beyond high from from normal standards. And for sure, doctors would have had me on statins. And I was about the same age at that point. And then after introducing, you know, after when I actually first started introducing a lot of starchy carbs because of some gut issues, my cholesterol remained pretty high up in 250s and, you know, we both experienced symptoms at that point as well. But then fixing the gut issues, refining my diet further, and increasing carbs considerably, my cholesterol was, you know, into the one between 150 and 200 you know, 161 7180, depending on on the time, but dropped over 100 points in maybe six months to a year. And yeah. And so I do want to clarify also that what we're not saying here is that because, you know, the high fat itself was what caused the high level. Of cholesterol, but rather the lack of carbohydrates, which was depressing our metabolism, yeah, yeah, and thyroid function, which led to the low cholesterol. So right now, we still eat relatively high fat, and high saturated fat within that fat, very low polyunsaturated fats, and our cholesterol is in a good range, yeah, yeah.Mike 15:18 So, and this is to put this in perspective, both of us are eating, or at least from what I remember, we're eating decent amounts of saturated fat, and we don't have highly elevated cholesterol or anything like that, and that's on a consistent basis, eating decent amount with very, very little polyunsaturated fatty acids in the diet, right? That's probably the only thing that I even look at now for my dietary intake is to make sure I'm not don't eat too much, and it's rarely that I check it at this point, because I've gone into my own rhythm. But the high amounts, and this is directly opposed to the traditional mainstream model, which is decent. We're eating decent amounts of animal proteins, decent amounts of saturated fatty acids, a large amount of carbohydrates as particularly in the form of sugars from fruit and things like that. And I mean, I have a decent amount of fiber in my diet, but that's just from the fruit, right? Which is directly opposed to the low fat, low sugar, low animal protein, low salt diet that is recommended by every heart doctor for your for your issues, or almost every heart doctor.Jay Feldman 16:25 And this is again shown in in more recent research, research that has gone far beyond the Seven Countries Study looking at saturated fat and heart disease, but the more recent research looking at the types of fats that we're eating and cardiovascular disease risk, have found virtually no association between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease, and instead, as you had mentioned, a correlation between polyunsaturated fats, specifically the Omega sixes, and cardiovascular disease. Yeah.Mike 16:57 With all this said, I think it's important to point out that this doesn't mean that omega threes get a free pass for heart disease, and that taking tons of fish oils is a good idea the mega threes, even though there's a lot of the recent research is focusing on particularly the Omega sixes and linoleic acid. The Omega threes are and specifically, the fish oils are more easily susceptible to oxidation. And so there's the research is still going through this, because the mega three craze just recently started, I think what in the in the late 1990s early 2000s is when the fish oil and Omega three thing became a huge deal. Um, but there's now they're moving into, well, it's not omega sixes, it's omega threes and ratios and things like that. So I don't think it. I still don't think there's a free pass for mega three just looking at the chemistry of the omega three fatty acids and their ability to oxidize it being ridiculously higher than monounsaturated, saturated and even Omega six fatty acids. So, and that'sJay Feldman 17:59 Quite a bit of research there looking at omega threes and showing that it does not reduce heart disease risk and and is implicated in it as well.Mike 18:06 And it does cause oxidative stress within the body and depletes things like vitamin E and stuff like that, which is important to look at.Jay Feldman 18:13 Yeah, and another evident piece of evidence to consider. I know you were talking about just dietary changes in dietary intake of the polyunsaturated fats and saturated fats in the culture over time. You know, where for the longer, much longer period of time, we were eating more saturated fats, butter, dairy, meat, and then everything shifted towards the oils. And we see all these issues with Heart, heart health. But we, you know, we can also look at various tribal cultures that are still eating high amounts of saturated fats and have virtually no heart disease. So, yeah, there's cultures in Africa doing that and elsewhere as well. I don't remember what. Maybe it's in one of the tropical countries where a lot of their fats are from coconut which there's Catawba, yeah, yeah. Mike 18:59 And Catawba and like to COA LAO or something like that, which is the their Pacific island nations that rely mostly on pork fed coconuts and coconut fat itself. And they have, like, 20% of the diet of is saturated fatty acids, which is like heinous in modern medical standards, but they have and they smoke religiously, but they don't have any heart disease, or they have very, very minimal heart disease.Jay Feldman 19:25 Also, just to clarify, I think you mean coconut fed pork. So pigs that are fed coconut, not CoA, he said pork fed coconut, switch, or pork fed coconut, which I know what you meant, but it was just a little unclear, pigs, pigs fed coconut, when the reason why that's important is because in modern day, in like America, in most Western countries, pigs are fed all sorts of unsaturated fats, grains and seed oils, and because of that, their fats have much higher amounts of the polyunsaturated fats the what we would say are the less healthy ones or unhealthy ones. So. And the so the reason why you clarified that these pigs are fed coconut is because coconut is more saturated. So instead of getting polyunsaturated fats from pork fat, which you would get, if you got it in a western COA society, their their pork would have been mostly saturated. And then, as you said, yeah, they eat a lot of coconut themselves too. Yeah.Mike 20:19 There's also, like some interesting studies on areas in India, and I think there's some areas in Sri Lanka and then the Philippines, not recent, but a little bit further past, where they were looking at their consumption of fatty acids, and basically showing that these areas had really high consumptions of saturated fatty acids and low amounts of disease. And Kerala, India is, like, known for eating high amounts of coconut oil and things like that. And a lot of people are gonna, or some people who look at the research, they Oh, well, because they're medium chain fatty acids. Um, I mean, there's, there's still saturated fatty acids. Coconut oil does have some palmitic acid in it, which is a longer chain saturated fatty acid. So it's, I mean, you're basically seeing the trend in some in these different areas. And then you also can look at previous like, the basically way people are looking at it now is previous consumption of saturated fatty acids in different areas, looking at like, what old cookbooks used to be and things like that, and showing high amounts of butter intake, and specifically beef tallow used to be a huge one in the United States. And having, like, really low amounts of heart disease relative to, relative to what we have going on now, and cancer as well, much a lot of, I don't think people realize that a lot of diseases that we're seeing now, like autoimmunity and cancer and heart disease, were relatively rare, like, very rare, depending on which time period you're looking at, back in the day, and even in the early 1900s you're seeing very rare or low amounts of heart disease and cancer and things like that, and autoimmunity. Wasn't even that was, I don't even know if that was even coined at that point yet.Jay Feldman 21:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's been basically epidemic proportions of of all those diseases recently, yeah,Mike 22:07 and Western its own pandemic, almost pandemic, because it's in in almost all the Western nations are seeing mass upticks and things like, especially if they're following the American model, which is high amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids and refined grains and high amounts of refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup and low nutrient diets and things like that. Because the traditional American diet isn't salad and nuts and and salmon and and I don't know what else olive oil. That's the Mediterranean diet. The traditional American diet that least they look at in studies, is like muffins and whatever else, right? So it's important to point that out.Jay Feldman 22:48 yeah, yeah. Also, just talking about countries that are good examples of of the problems with with all this research, or with the idea the cholesterol hypothesis, Japan is another one, one of the, the main ones that I think, started the some of the questions as far as cholesterol levels and mortality and heart disease risk, yeah. So, I mean, obviously, so at this point, we've explained that blood levels of cholesterol are not the problem. Dietary cholesterol is not the problem. Dietary saturated fat is not the problem. So let's say, you know, we do have somebody with elevated cholesterol levels. We've mentioned some things that could be related here, as far as thyroid function goes some sort of immune function or activity due to an infection, and on from there. So if somebody does have much higher levels of cholesterol, that is, you know, in a way that might be concerning as a symptom based on their age, which we kind of alluded to earlier, that as you age, having those higher levels of cholesterol in the two hundreds is appears to be much safer. And so assuming that somebody is concerned that they have high cholesterol, and they're concerned that they're at a high risk of heart disease, or maybe they do already have heart disease, but you know, they're on all these medications to reduce their cholesterol, and not from there. Let's talk through what the ideal approach would be to a improve those symptoms, but not do it just by improving the symptoms instead fixing the root issues, as far as what might be going on and how, what adjustments to make to fix those things?Mike 24:22 Well, I guess the most important one to start would be to take traditional guidelines and sort of ignore them for a little bit. I know shouldn't technically say that, but I would lessen the intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids as much as possible, and I would increase intake of saturated fatty acids coming from things like beef and dairy, if you tolerate dairy Well, if not, even if you're using butter, if you don't tolerate dairy proteins, well, coconut oil, what else? Macadamia nut oil is a good source. Chocolate, cocoa butter, all those things are great fast to use. Just, I wouldn't cook with macadamia nut oil if I was going to do my cooking, I would stick with either coconut oil or COA butter or beef towel or something like that, or butter or butter. And then I would focus on, if you're having like diabetes or anything like that. I would focus, and even with heart disease, focus on the gut, specifically by removing a lot of refined starch and starchy food intake, and move towards higher fruit intake with and higher specific vegetables like carrots or cooked leafy greens or something like that, and have a decent amount of protein intake from animal proteins. And some people might benefit from the use of collagen hydrolysate to help rebuild arteries and things like that. And then the other thing, and all these things should support thyroid function. But maybe, if you want to go through maybe some supplemental things, but maybe using some type of supplemental thyroid would be helpful, especially depending on how far in the hole you are with all that type of stuff. Jay Feldman 25:55 Yeah, so let's slow that down a little bit and explain it step by step. So as far as, so, as you were saying first, the fats is a huge component here. And we, I'll, again, I'll link to that PUFA versus saturated fat episode, but reducing our consumption of the polyunsaturated fats, which are in vegetable oils. So anything that's fried is going to be high in those vegetable oils, which I guess is one thing we can agree on with convention. You know, most people in the conventional medical field, or they'll say not to eat fried food. So fried food, that's food. And yeah, most processed foods are going to be high in polyunsaturated fats. And this is one of those areas That's so frustrating when it does come to the the modern guidelines, or what a doctor will say is so often that they're just saying, avoid any the any meat, anything high in cholesterol and saturated fat outside of that eat whatever. And so how many people go to all the grain based products, and, you know, breads and pasta and cookies and whatever that are just low in fat, as if those are better, but in reality, they're causing major problems. For one of those major ones is the polyunsaturated fats disgusting. Mike 27:00 The other one could be Gut Diet dysbiosis and gut issues as well.Jay Feldman 27:04 Yeah. So, so we'll get there in a second. But so as far as these, the fats go, avoiding the polyunsaturated fats that would be in fried foods and packaged foods, the things that you're looking for, any of those vegetable oils, canola oils, any of the seed oils, those are all going to be higher in the polyunsaturated fats other places that, or other foods that are high in the polyunsaturated fats would be the would be fatty fish like salmon and various sea bass and things that that are very high in fat, and those are high in those omega threes that we're told are healthy, but in reality, are contributing to all these issues. Additionally, nuts and seeds are another ones that are, are other ones that are really high in these fats that, again, we're told are, are unhealthy, but in reality, are really susceptible to damage or part of this wholeMike 27:50 especially roasted, especially roasted nuts and seeds, because you may already at that point have a ton of oxidized fats in them, because most nuts and seeds would be are Omega sixes, and with the exception of, I think, like flax seed, which is still in Omega three, walnut, walnut. Yeah, so it's important. And then what was I gonna say, if you're having a lot of metabolic issues, I would just say, try your best to eliminate packaged foods like as much like shelf stable packaged food as much as possible, and rely more on homemade foods and fresh fruit or dried if you're going to do packaged foods like dried fruit or something like that, or things along those lines, and less chips and crackers and cookies and cakes. And there are companies that may have good ingredients in some of those things. But if you're really that far down in the metabolic hole where you're having heart disease already, heart disease issues already, or you have a decent amount of obesity or diabetes or something like that, it's best to sort of make a pretty decent change, to start and get more stabilized before you can start moving into those other directions. But at the minimum, if you're like, I still want to eat my cakes and cookies. There are some companies like Tate to make good cookies or things like that that don't have so such problematic ingredients.Jay Feldman 29:05 Right. And so in that case, as far as the fats go, you'd be looking for things like butter, coconut oil, olive oils, okay, as well, COA butter, avocado oil, yeah, yeah. So those would be all much better than the typical canola or other vegetable oils,Mike 29:22 so still not ideal, especially if you're really in in the hole metabolically.Jay Feldman 29:26 Right, right. And palm oil is another one that's generally pretty good, just to add that to the list. So, yeah. So that's some of the main things, as far as far as avoiding the polyunsaturated fats, another, another important area would be fatty chicken and fatty pork have high amounts of the polyunsaturated fats, because they're typically fed high amounts of the poly unsaturated fats. But if they're fed more saturated fats, if they're pasture raised eating a more natural diet, then they'll have less of those polyunsaturated fats. So you would really have to know the source there. But in general, most. Fatty chicken and fatty pork will be very high in PUFA, whereas other ruminant animals, which would be beef and goat and lamb, those ones are, even if they're fed a lot of PUFA, their fats are going to be mostly saturated. So it's not as much of a concern there. And the same would go from dairy, which is from those animals, which is mostly saturated as well. So again, not you know, the fats from those foods, dairy are typically much better, much more stable. Yeah,Mike 30:26 and also for protein, not fat, low low polyunsaturated fatty acid, low Mercury varieties of seafood, which includes shellfish and certain fish like cod, CoA, flounder, for some people, if you prepare sardines the right way, they're not going to kill you. Once in a while, they have a decent amount of nutrients and things like that. Mussels, oysters, clams, shrimp, squid. I think lobster is pretty good, just on a lot because it has a decent amount of mercury in it, which is something else to watch out for. So those things would all be helpful, and they also have a lot of nutrients. For some people, like an egg or two a day shouldn't really cause that much issue. If you're really having a lot of metabolic issues, to start, maybe stay away from them for a little bit. Or if you're having autoimmune things or whatever, and then introduce them at another point in time. But for most people have some eggs for breakfast. Should be okay,Jay Feldman 31:25 yeah? From a digestive standpoint or an immuno reactivity standpoint, some people don't do well with them, but if you, like, don't have a negative response to them. I mean, nutrient wise, I think they're, they're really great eggs, yeah, especially if you're having liver issues, yeah, yeah, the fat soluble vitamins that are in there, and other nutrients as well, are all really, really helpful from the heart disease standpoint, from diabetes standpoint, any, any sort of issues metabolically. So I would say those are really good. And as far as fish goes, to just add a couple other leaner fish, Mahi, Mahi, grouper, trout, halibut, are all, I mean, I know grouper, I think there's some mercury concerns, but tuna would be another one that's lean, but Mercury concerns. So skip Jack. IMike 32:07 think skip Jack tuna like light. Skip Jack Tuna has very little amount of fat and has a very a lower amount of mercury, at least. So and grew I know grouper, and I think Mahi have a decent amount. So these are things to not consume, like every single day, but not fat, mercury, Mercury. Oh, because they're larger fish. Grouper and Mahi are larger, right? And then trout, I mean, you could that depends on fresh water or salt water, or whatever you're doing there. So, yeah, I guess the next one was to any type of gut issue.Jay Feldman 32:42 Well, there's still some other things, nutrition wise, dietary wise, I mean, so we talked about the fats, which is a big component. But as we talked about earlier, when you're on a low carb diet, which is in a lot of the alternative sphere, a lot of the sphere that is acknowledged, the problems within the lipid hypothesis and the cholesterol hypothesis. As far as heart disease goes, they are very much fans of low carb, high fat diets, which oftentimes lead to high cholesterol. It's, you know, a lot of the prominent figures in those spheres talk about how they have high cholesterol, and they just say that it's not a problem, and there's good evidence that it's not a problem. In that case, however, it is a symptom of low thyroid function and low metabolism, which we whichMike 33:26 is a problem in that case, true. Yes, low metabolism is a problem. In that case, the high cholesterol may not be the problem, right? It's not having the low metabolism chronically in that case, and chronically elevating cortisol and things like that will be an issue over the long term. Yeah.Jay Feldman 33:45 yeah. And so because of that, having enough carbohydrates is vital to metabolic health, and therefore heart health as well. And we will discuss the gut issues. But because the gut is such a major problem here, we want to make sure that we're getting enough carbohydrates and we're getting enough from easily digestible sources and ones that have a lot of nutrients. So we'll discuss the digestible side. But just in general, fruits are really great option here, oftentimes root vegetables, and, you know, like potato, sweet potatoes and and some some of like the fruit vegetables, like squashes, pumpkin, zucchini, are all good options too. Yeah.Mike 34:26 fruit juice, dried fruit is all good, right? And some people do well, tubers, yeah, yeah, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, so, right, yeah.Jay Feldman 34:36 so, so I think that those are the most I mean. And then getting enough protein is always important as well. And we discussed getting the getting protein from the low PUFA sources. You know, the ruminant animals, beef, lamb, goat, lean chicken or pork is fine as well. Dairy is another good source. And then lean seafood, which is very nutrient dense, and eggs too. So those are all good protein sources. And then. Yeah, let's touch on the gut issues a little bit. We've talked about endotoxin, but maybe we can make some clarifications there, and what that means as far as what we should eat depending on our symptoms.Mike 35:08 Yeah. So I think for the gut issues, it's just important. We talked about endotoxin being a huge player, making sure you don't have any dysbiosis or overgrowth in the small bowel and things like that. And a lot of times that's actually caused by diet and low low thyroid function and low metabolism and things like that. So making sure you're having enough carbohydrate, in general, if you do already have the situation present, like a gut dysbiosis present, then focusing on juices, specifically that and things that are really easily digested, and then maybe using some herbal antimicrobials and things like that, and making sure you have some some decent sources of fiber, like fruit and vegetable fiber and things like that, to help help move things forward and move things along. And then adjust the microbiome, or the flora, the type of species within the colon. A lot of this is adjusted by diet. And so a parallel to what you see with I think what goes on with a lot of people is, if you feed animals, particularly ruminant animals, like horses or cows, a lot of grain, a lot of refined grain, or anything like that, whether it's a lot of corn or a lot of oats or a lot of wheat or things like that, they tend to get very bloated and dysbiotic bellies. And that you can see a lot of people walking around with the big, bloated beer bellies, things like that, um, and essentially that they they can die from that, from an overload of endotoxin. So it, and I think there's a lot of parallels there with humans, even though we don't have the same type of digestive tract as these other animals do, but making sure that you're eating the right things for the digestive tract, which would be fruit and specific vegetables and things like that, to encourage to this, to encourage the right or to encourage the right species of bacteria, I guess you would say, or limit bacterial growth, and specifically limit bacterial growth in the small intestine, and then allow for the the to avoid the wrong bacterial species from growing in the colon and things like that, because it's going to be in you're going to have bacteria in the colon no matter what you do. And the other thing that's helpful for this and clearing the small intestine, besides like an herbal antimicrobial and making sure eating decent amount of relatively or decent amount of specific fibers is making sure you're taking in a decent amount of monounsaturated and saturated fatty acids, which can stimulate bile production in the small intestine, which is dependent upon cholesterol production. Bile is made from cholesterol, and then the bile will help to clear out the small intestine. It has an anti microbial effect. And then there's other more specific strategies that you can get into if you really having a lot of gut issues, and in certain situations with like obesity or diabetes and things like that, that there can be a lot of gut things going on, so it can take some time to adjust what's going on there. But in general, having a solid diet that we talked about with a decent amount of fruits and specific vegetables, which have high amounts of protective plant compounds that have an encouraging effect on some species and inhibit other species, eating a decent amount of the right fatty acids and making sure you have a decent amount of protein so your liver and everything is functioning well, can help turn the table back in a positive direction for gut health and things like that. And then there's other again, there's other stuff that you can do if you're really having issues, but the solid diet that we've mentioned in most boulder podcasts and that we just discussed previously is one of the most important steps for maintaining good gut health and avoiding a lot of really irritating foods or foods that can cause dysbiosis.Jay Feldman 38:45 Yeah and thyroid health too, which, which we'll discuss. So, so I don't want to dig too much into the digestion thing, but just to kind of give more of a brief overview, we want to make sure that we're digesting our food well, and that the bacteria and fungus that naturally inhabitate, inhabit our that naturally inhabit our gut are the healthy types that are not producing damaging inflammatory compounds. And so we've discussed this extensively in previous episodes, and I'll link to those gut episodes. But the the the bacterial issue is a huge issue that we've discussed as far as endotoxin goes, which is implicated in weight gain and obesity, diabetes and also heart disease, plaque formation, atherosclerosis, all of these processes. And so eating in a way that will not lead to that will lead to a healthy gut microbiome, meaning healthy bacterial populations and fungus and everything and will not lead to the production of these metabolic toxins is a huge component when it comes to heart health and metabolism overall. So you had mentioned fruit being fruit, and the right types of vegetables being important. Just to add some clarifications, there ripe good. Quality fruit makes a huge difference for supporting gut health cooked vegetables, rather than ROS very important, especially making sure that any root vegetables you're having are well cooked. Those are really important components. And as you say, getting enough fat and actually having enough cholesterol is vital as well for producing enough bile to keep the bacteria out of our small intestine are, they're definitely going to be causing problems. So those are all important to consider. From the gut health side, it is a pretty complex topic, so I'll link to some of those other other podcasts where we discuss gutted digestion in more depth, if that is something that you know somebody wants to dig into a little further. And then, as I alluded to as well, thyroid health is a huge component here, and so eating enough carbohydrates is massively important for supporting thyroid health, supporting our metabolism. We've talked through these this relationship in in detail previously, and I'll link to some articles about it as well. But when our metabolism is healthy and working well. It's got enough fuel to produce enough energy to work properly. It also leads to higher thyroid function, and this helps to keep our gut clear, our small intestine clear, by increasing cholesterol and bio production, increasing movement of food throughout the intestines, and the ability to produce more digestive enzymes and everything from there. So doing these things in general, which includes reducing the poly and fats, polyunsaturated fats, eating easily digestible carbohydrates, and enough of them, getting enough protein, eating enough food overall, which most people who are dieting all the time, especially people who are concerned about heart health, are probably naturally going to be eating very little or eating much less when they're trying to avoid all animal products and not from there, especially saturated fats and things. Not Eating Enough is going to lead to depressed thyroid activity, depressed metabolism, which is also going to contribute to all these issues, including the gut problems and further metabolic problems. So making sure eating enough to support your metabolism and thyroid health is also going to be a pretty huge component for as far as heart disease is concerned.Mike 42:06 I agree. I don't really have much to add to that one. Yeah, yeah.Jay Feldman 42:10 I don't think I have much that either. I think that we didn't talk about exercise as much either. But being, you know, relatively active is a good thing. I would mention also that the idea that we just want to exercise more and more for heart health is is not always the case. There is, right? There is actually a correlation between excessive amounts of exercise and having heart issues, heart attacks, so.Mike 42:32 Specifically, long term endurance exercise, right? But even in general, over training, or even with training with weights, training way too much, or things like that, will, number one, increase cortisol levels, which has a effect of raising triglycerides and cholesterol and blood sugar and things like that, and lowering protective steroid hormones. And then it also has an effect to lower thyroid function. So it's important not to over train. It's important and to especially stay away from long distance running and things like that, is which is proven not to be good for any anyone. There's not really any benefit to running five ks and things like that, besides whatever sort of goal, mental goal you have for yourself, but there's been shown to have direct negative effects on that, and including damaging the gut and causing leakiness in the gut and losses in immune function and things like that directly after races, so and then negative effects on the liver. So it's important to stay away from that type of stuff and and have do more we talked about this before, like enjoyable activities, you know, picking up a new sport, or if you like lifting weights, lifting weights, or going to the beach, paddle boarding, martial arts, dancing, whatever it is, things like that. And the other thing, I think it's important. A lot of doctors talk about lowering your weight to lower heart health. A lot of times, the weight is more of a dietary thing, and not so much as the not exercising enough, not getting enough activity as an issue. But it's not necessarily that you need to exercise if you're going for a walk with your dog, or you're going to the beach or you're, I don't know you're playing tennis with your friends. I mean, it can be an enjoyable thing. It doesn't have to be an actual exercise. Um, so that's important to to know that most of the weight issues, at least in my experience, would be related more towards diet, and not so much as not exercising, not running X number of minutes on a treadmill or anything like that. And then activity is important, and then just other basic ones. Not smoking is important. Lowering stress in general is important. Getting enough sleep is important. And we've watched on all of these before. We have podcasts and all of these topics, or, I don't know if we talked about smoking, but I feel like that's beating multiple dead horses at this point. I mean, how many ads do you have to see on TV about it? And I'm sure if there's an ad, that means it's true, right? Yeah. I'm sure everyone's Doctors told them about the negative effects of smoking.Jay Feldman 44:57 Well, I guess, yeah. I mean, I'm kind of joking, but obviously I do. This is one area where we do agree that that inhaling extremely hot smoke is actually damaging and not helpful. Mike 45:08 Yeah, smoking is not a good idea, so, but yeah, and then the weight issue, I think, is mostly more of a dietary issue, so, and it's not in terms of eating too much calories or anything like that, but having like, the food that you're eating is causing some types of gut issues or metabolic issues by damaging cells and things like that, for example, like eating too much PUFA or eating too much refined grain products that have a whole bunch of other fillers and whatnot in them. So things like that, just like the some of the basic advice that you get from your doctors are right, and we're talking this is very specific, onto the areas that we don't agree with, and the different hypotheses that are opposite of what's been said and why, but those other areas still apply.Jay Feldman 45:53 Right. And just just to clarify the weight loss and exercise, of course, activity can play a role there, especially when you're coming from being sedentary to at least having some amount of activity. We talked about that relationship extensively, and just weight loss in general and other episodes. So I'll link to those. And yeah, as far as the long distance cardio and things you're, you know, you're mentioning the problems there. And I do think, you know, there's a big difference between running a mile or two versus five or 10 or 15 or going for a marathon, which those are? I think that really the longer distance side is the point where more damaging, yeah, yeah, just excessive amounts of stress that even if you're recovering from it afterwards, or it's a lot tougher to recover from, it's a pretty major stressor. Whereas if you're just running a couple miles and you enjoy it, and it's something that you recover from well, and you're eating enough, especially enough carbs, then that's much less of a concern. So it's it's a matter of dialing that in based on your needs, based on so many of these other factors that you mentioned, how much we're eating, sleep, stress on from there. So I'll link to those other episodes where we talked about that a little bit further. All right. All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I did want to add in a little bit about the relationship between thyroid and cholesterol that we did discuss a little bit throughout the episode, but I just wanted to make sure to emphasize how important this relationship is, and this this connection between thyroid activity and cholesterol levels has been known for over 100 years at this point, and thyroid hormone as a medication or supplement was basically used for a pretty long time to lower cholesterol levels prior to a lot of the drugs that are used today, and the drugs prior to those so it is a pretty reliable way to decrease cholesterol, and that doesn't mean that You have to take thyroid hormone to increase thyroid activity. Much of what we talked about today, as far as diet and lifestyle goes, does improve thyroid health and metabolism, which will have that same effect. But again, using thyroid medications or hormones can also be helpful for lowering cholesterol, and is a much better way to do so by really, by really improving things at the root of the issue. Of course, that same medical disclaimer, discuss any of this with your doctor prior to making any changes. But just wanted to highlight how important that connection is between thyroid and cholesterol. And I know that Mike and I talked about this at least a little bit in terms of our own experiences, where when we did things to improve our thyroid health and improve our metabolism, we saw our cholesterol levels drop considerably, so I definitely think that that's worth mentioning. If you did enjoy this series in today's episode, please leave us a like, a comment, a review, a five star rating on iTunes, all of those things really do a ton to help support the podcast to check out the show notes for today's episode, including all the studies that we talked about and as well as the ones that we didn't. Head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast and if you are looking to improve your metabolism, increase your thyroid activity and thyroid health in order to drop in order to lower cholesterol levels, or if you're looking to improve your gut health for the same reason or lower stress, or if you're just looking to improve various other low energy symptoms, whether that's weight gain or joint pain or chronic cravings and hunger or a lack of energy or hormonal imbalances, low libido, infertility, all of those things Come down to what's going on in that energetic level. And if you are looking for some help there, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for free energy balance mini course, where I'll walk you through some of the more important things to focus on, as far as diet and lifestyle are concerned, in order to maximize your cellular energy and resolve all of those symptoms, as well as other chronic health conditions like diabetes and heart disease and autoimmune issues and all sorts of other chronic health conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, I will see you in the next episode.