Q&A with Dr. Greger 16

Hello everyone. This is Dr. Michael Greger coming to you live from my stationary treadmill so as not to make anybody seasick to answer any questions you may have as I do every month. Those who unfamiliar with my work every year I read through every issue of every english language nutrition journal in the world. So busy folks like you don’t have to. I then compile the most interesting, most groundbreaking, most practical finds and new videos and articles uploaded every day or almost every day to my nonprofit site, nutritionfacts.org. Everything on the website is free. There’s no ads, no corporate sponsorship, strictly non-commercial, not selling anything. Just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love, as a tribute to my grandmother whose own life was saved with evidence-based nutrition. Two quick things before I jump into questions. Preorder how not to die 10th anniversary edition can you believe it’s been 10 years? A 10-year anniversary of how not to die, updated and revised edition is coming out this december. You can pre-order it now at nutritionfacts.org/book.

Upcoming ldl cholesterol webinar announcement and then also I have a webinar coming up on the 10th on october 10th but can’t wait till the last minute. I forget how long the registration is open but it’s open now. In fact, if you are signed up to the nutrition facts newsletter, which of course is free like everything else, you should have got an email today announcing both the pre-orders for the the 10th anniversary how not to die and for registration for the webinar. And it’s how to get your ldl cholesterol as low as possible with diet and supplements. And that is going to be on october 10th. It’s going to be basically a review of going through my new book on the subject which will be out soon on lowering cholesterol with diet. That’s going and that’s at nutritionfacts.org/webinars. To register for that, that should be really exciting. That should be a lot of fun. I share all sorts of things you can add to your diet to pull actively pull cholesterol from your body. All right, so let us stop those and jump right on to questions.

Okay, question number one. How fast do you get vitamin and c deficiency if you went on a full carnivore diet? Yeah, so vitamin c, vitamin c is actually found in raw meat, but if you cook meat, you’re going to destroy the vitamin c. Which I mean, you don’t want to eat raw meat for food safety reasons. How long there was I forget the the scurvy studies I do in one of my book I talk about the scurvy studies it’s just a matter of weeks when you start to get decreased wound healing which is important collagen production requires vitamin c and so and they actually this is before ethics committees but they actually took people and they sliced them open study subjects volunteered maybe not volunteered probably got paid to they sliced them to give the exact same amount, the exact same wound. And then they they put them on vitamin c deficient diets to find out how much vitamin c you needed. And you didn’t need a lot. I forget what it was like, you know, 10 or 25 milligrams a day. That’s not the optimal amount, but it was enough to to to to to help with wound healing. Or was it or did you more than that? Maybe you need 90 milligrams for optimal wound healing. I forget it. Check out if you type in scurvy nutritionfacts.org. You can see that that’s one of that’s one of the the nutrient deficiencies that one may be worried about with the carnivore diet. But of course, the important thing with the carnivore diet is not I mean I I’m not I don’t think people are going to be like losing their teeth from scurvy. I’m sure they’re going to eat some some fruit and vegetables along the way somehow. But it’s it’s you know they’re they’re you know the n ber one killer of men and women is heart disease, right? So we got to decrease their saturated fat diet cholesterol intake. So the last thing we need is more meat in our diet.

Okay, next up, how’s it going?
Someone says, “hello, big daddy. Big daddy, how’s it going?” It’s going well.

Alberto asks, “can I take green tea as a powder supplement in my in a your daily pouch or is it needed or do you need to brew it? I don’t like the taste of green tea.” Okay, that’s a great question. So it’s actually healthier to have green tea as a powder rather than brewing it because when you brew it, you get the water soluble nutrients, then you throw out the rest. It’s like if you boiled some collard greens and then you threw out the greens and you just drank the water. Now, that’s pot liquor. That’s I mean, there’s lots of nutrients that leeched out of those leaves and so it’s healthy, but you just threw away all the fiber and all the other good stuff. And so if you eat matcha, which is powdered green tea leaves, then you get all the tea compounds found in brood tea, plus everything else that you would normally throw away with the tea leaves. So, you can, if you don’t like the so, matcha actually tastes different than brewed green tea. So, maybe you wouldn’t mind the taste. You can put it in a smoothie or something, kind of hide the taste. Or, yeah, you could do it in little pouches or capsules or whatever if you’d like. My only reservation is if you’re going to actually eat your tea, whether you’re opening up a tea bag and d ping the leaves in your smoothie or taking matcha tea, is to use japanese sourced as opposed to chinese source, just because , china was kind of late to the get rid of leted gasoline game. And so a lot of the tea, the soil in tea plantations has a lot of lead in it. Which is not a problem with brood tea because the lead does not leech from the leaves into the water. But if you are actually eating the leaves, then yes, you’ll actually get that lead. And so japanese lead, excuse me, japanese green tea has significantly lower blood levels. This is particularly important for young kids and pregnant women and people that eat a lot of it. So yeah, so get some japanese matcha. Try it out. See if you don’t mind the taste. And if you do, add it to your pouch or your smoothie or, you know, go crazy. All right, what else we got?

Okay, happy hog says, “should green beans considered a green or a bean?” , Actually neither. That’s funny. So they’re they’re in my daily dozen they’re considered other vegetable category. So they’re considered just like vegetables. So like you know zucchini even though it’s green is not a green. It doesn’t have the same compounds like you know nitrates and some of the other wonderful things that you’d find. No, but vegetables are healthy. So green beans are healthy but but don’t have the nutritional properties either of leg es, actual dried beans and don’t have the nutrients of dark green leafy vegetables. But yeah, eat some green beans. I just don’t you know dip them in butter or whatever.

Okay. Are there any negatives? Okay. This is from barb. Are there any negatives to storing whole flax p pkin seeds, sunflower seeds, walnuts in the freezer? Some of them are okay room temperature, but the freezer seems optimal to me. No, no negatives whatsoever. Yeah, store them in your freezer. Store them in your fridge. Yeah, whole flax seeds can literally last months in their tight container on the kitchen counter at room temperature without oxidizing. But something like walnuts I think are a little more susceptible. So yeah, I mean I store all what do I store? , I think I store all my nuts and seeds in the fridge or freezer. So yeah, go for it. Sounds good. Thanks, barb. Okay, what else we got? Melissa , loves my info. Wonderful. Steve

Stevie 1313 says, “fustrusting to see all us doctors, different opinions, talking past each other. Please invite these other people to debate on protein guidelines for longevity.” Well, there’s only one literature. So, I that’s that’s why you shouldn’t listen to me or any other doctors tell you. We weren’t born with this information. You have to demand the sources. Like so when someone makes a statement as life and death important as what to feed yourself and your family you can’t just you trust that where they I mean you know where do they did they read about in some check it out magazine do they read it on some blog somewhere or they actually go to the peer-reviewed medical literature and see what the best available balance of evidence is and if you do that you know let’s go like institute of medicine most prestigious medical institution in the country 08 grams per health kilogram body weight that’s like half what you know these high protein people are recommending people eat. But I mean that’s the recommended amount. You go to all the leaders of the all the longevity institutes the the the you know walter longo or the you know you know luigi fontana you know they’ll tell you the literature is very clear on on you know you know restricting one’s protein intake down to recommended levels for health and longevity. But I totally understand how it’ be frustrating to hear so many conflicting messages and my answer is stick to the science. And so that’s why you look at my videos. It’s not me saying it. I’m just here’s the papers. Here’s all the links to the papers. Download them. Download the pdfs yourself. Make sure I didn’t take anything out of context. And like here’s the science. Here’s the graphs. Here’s the I mean this is this is where this is the information I was able to glean. And if somebody else has some other information, let’s see what their sources are. Show me your work. Yeah, I’m not interested in people’s opinions, which is actually the lowest rang ring of of of ev in the evidence-based medicine hierarchy. The lowest the least credible evidence is where what’s called expert opinion. Right? Just because I’m doctor no matter who they are says something you know is not considered very reput credible you actually have to back it up with science.

Melanie says is there anything wrong anything wrong with low cholesterol? We need to get ldl cholesterol as low as possible at least down to a mill mole which is about 28 milligrams per deciliter. So there there were theoretical concerns that boy if we dropped our cholesterol really low then we would you know not be able to make like steroid hormones which are made out of cholesterol and and some other problems and but then we had these new classes of drugs like pcsk9 inhibitors that can drop people’s cholesterol down into the single digits and what happened no none of those adverse effect those theoretical adverse effects arose and so there does not appear to be negative effects. In fact, the lower the better for longer is the recommendation. We try to get our ldl cholesterol as low as possible at least down to around we have evidence of benefit at least down to about you know 25 which actually is like the what’s normal ldl for our species unfortunately because of people’s diets these days the average is about 120. No wonder heart disease leading cause of death. And n ber two is actually dementia. And you know, having a total cholesterol 225 or more, you multiply your odds 25 times of ending up with amyloid plaques in your brain 10 to 15 years later. What’s good for your heart is good for your head. Clear out the plaque from the arteries in your brain and your heart by eating healthier. Cutting down the trans fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol, eating lots of fiber rich foods, etc., Etc. Oh, speaking of which, let’s go to my webinar coming up october 10th. How to get your ldl cholesterol as low as possible. This was made for you. So go to nutritionfax.orginars to register. I forget how long the registration window is open, but I know it’s open now. And but if you miss the webinar, well, if you register for it, you’ll get, you know, it’s sent to you, so you can watch it later. Or you can get the book. There’s audiobook, ebook, and then a soft cover coming out later this month on lowering ldl cholesterol. You can also pre-order my 10th anniversary, how not to die, coming out this december if you’re interested. Let’s go to the next question on down the list.

Hazel hazmat exports. Who okay, who would want to export hazardous materials? But, , am I familiar with purple kale? I grow it in my garden. Are there any benefits with purple versus green kale? You are so lucky to have purple kale. I think it’s also known as red kale, which has kind of a purplish tint to it. But absolutely, if I could get purple kale, if I can get red kale, I absolutely would do it. Unfortunately, all the garden critters eat all my kale, so I can’t really grow kale. But I have a very fat groundhog that loves all my kale but gets to it before I do. But yeah, I’d buy it if I could. So, , invite me over and we’ll do dinner. That sounds delicious. And so, what are those? So, those those are anthsy and pigments that turn that kale red and purple. Those are the same kind of berry pigments that associate with improved cognition and all sorts of wonderful things. So, it’s like you’re eating berries with your grains, two of the healthiest foods when you do it together. So, yeah, go for it. Fantastic. Grow some more, plant some more. Oh, all righty. Okay, so lifestyle is key. Already pre-ordered. That’s nice. Please translate kto. Oh, kto. I’ve never heard kto. Is that a type of german? I don’t know. They I don’t know which languages the new books will be in. I apologize. Although these days, pres ably there should be all sorts of translating tools where you should probably be able to click a button and all of a sudden translate any book you want. Wouldn’t that be nice? All right, robert says, “oh, someone else has responded to somebody else.” What else we got? April says, “any updates on any updates on treating primary raynaud’s syndrome? Treating?” Oh, reods. It’s not something that I have looked at into yet, but it’s on my list.

Okay. Tiffany says, “hope blame bates feeling great. Fantastic. Can’t get their omnivorous husband who eats tons of meat, dairy, and processed foods, including coca-cola. Can’t get them what is there more to this?” , Can’t they can’t get she can’t get her husband pres ably to eat healthier. Well, you know, it’s his body, his choice, right? If he wants to go, you know, I mean, obviously if he’s a husband, if he’s a father, then there’s other people involved in his orbit that his decisions are going to impact, but you know, if he wants to smoke cigarettes and go bungee j ping and I mean, you know, it’s it’s his life and there’s only so much we can do. I I think it’s important to the how we come at it though rather than being all preachy and w you know wagging our finger at them you know make sure they understand this coming out of place of love right the reason you want them to eat healthier is because you love them you want them to be around for a long time right if they didn’t love you you tell them to go eat more bacon or something no you you want them to eat healthy because you care about them and that it’s really coming from a feeling of love as opposed to a feeling of like blame or shame or you know or you know some kind of judgment. And maybe that’ll be enough. And other other than that all we can do is role model healthy behaviors and you know god forbid something happens later on maybe that’ll kick him into high gear and some kind of health scare will get them on track. But you know we are only responsible for the predictable consequences of our own actions. So, you know, what can we do? What can we do? All right, michael, good name. Oh, , registered for the ldl webinar. Didn’t receive a link yet. Hopefully you will get one. If you don’t, , please you go to nutritionfacts.org and there’s a little, , you can you can there’s a little contact us link and make sure that you get that. There may just be a delay. I think we just opened up registrations today.

All right, mick says, “no, carbs aren’t bad, but what if your body is carb sensitive?” So, I mean, there’s some it’s it’s what are the sources of carbs? Can’t say carbs are good or bad, right? Carbs are lentils or lollipops, right? Kidney beans or jelly beans, just like is protein good or bad? Well, it depends where you’re getting. If you’re getting your protein from, you know, from pork rind, then protein is bad in that form. And same thing with fat. Where are you getting your fat from? Is it from cris gale? Partially hydrogenated oil. Well, that is not good for you. But if the fat if you’re saying, you know, walnuts or walnuts good for you? Oh my god, walnuts are good for you. All right, that’s high fat food. So I mean, if you’re carb sensitive, meaning pres ably that you have, you know, exaggerated blood sugar spikes, eating too many carbohydrates, well, then you need to eat healthy carbohydrate sources. And so, you know, eating your eating your leg es, , and, you know, skipping the donuts and the refined flour products and the, you know, refined sugar products. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, you want to eat something sweet, eat some fruit, eat a sweet potato as opposed to, you know, a candy bar would be my recommendation.

Okay. Unknown person asks, “what are my thoughts about honey and maple syrup? Are they healthy in moderation?” Well, there I mean there’s sugar. So, is sugar healthy in moderation? Well, it depends what you defines moderation. It’s funny. There was a study I don’t know if I I’ve got to do a whole video on moderation just surrounding the study. It’s amazing study. Which shows why the food industry loves the term moderation. And that is they asked people what they thought moderation meant. Like when it comes to like how what is like eating chocolate in moderation sound like? , And you know what the answer was? No matter how much chocolate people ate, they replied that what they were eating is moderate, right? That that they consider whatever they’re eating to be moderation. So if they’re eating like chocolate five times a day, that’s moderation, right? They could be eating it 10 times a day, right? So everyone defines moderation as what they’re doing, right? And that’s why the food industry loves it because you can be like, “oh yeah, you know, eat yeah, eat meat but in moderation.” Knowing that that’ll translate in people’s minds to eat however much meat they want to eat. That’s amazing. Anyway, so moderation, what does actually moderation mean? Okay. Well, you know, sugar excess sugar cons ption is not just empty calories and displacing healthier foods, but we now know actually has negative effects particularly at higher levels. And so like you know increase even at low levels increase the risk of dental cavities for example. So yeah so there are I would encourage people to not add to to use whole food sources of sugar like yeah you know fruit, dried fruit you know healthy vegetables like sweet potatoes. So in terms of the best sweetener to use, it would be a whole food sweetener like date sugar, which is just ground pulverized dates. So it’s a whole food just ground into powder. And so there’s like a granular variety that you use for cooking. And then there’s actually a powdered variety, date powder, which you can use in drinks. You can use in coffee or tea. Actually stirs up well and doesn’t it doesn’t have any kind of gritty aftertaste or whatever. So that’s what I would so whatever you do with honey and maple syrup, try doing it with with whole foods instead. But you know, again, it doesn’t matter what you’re eating, your birthdays, holiday, special occasions. This is the day-to-day stuff that adds up. We have a remarkable capacity to bounce back from injury. So you know, you go crazy on your your favorite holiday. Shinatova, by the way, happy new year, everybody. All right, matt says, “oh, more.” Okay, we we we’re back to same question. Great minds think alike. Okay, tom says,

“Has there been any studies relating the posing cause of fava bean to oh, how cool is that?” You can get fava bean tofu. You can get p pkin seed tofu. There’s all sorts of ways. Evidently, there’s proteins in different plant foods that all have that curdling quality that creates a tofu like food besides soybeans. How cool is that? So, is father bean tofu? There haven’t been any studies as far as I know. But just looking at the nutritional profile, I pres e it would be very similar. Of course, eating fava beans and soybeans be better. The whole foods since you remove a lot of the fiber, you know, when you and some of the minerals and things when you when you in the production of tofu, but way healthier than many things you would eat instead. I’d have to look at the nutrition profile of favbean versus soy tofu. You’d be missing out on those phytonutrients in in soy foods, but you’d also be missing out on whatever is in fava beans that’s unique to fava beans. But there haven’t been a lot of studies on the benefits of fab beans. There have been a lot of studies on the benefits of soy.

Okay, silly head. Not one, not two, but five says, “when recommending citrus peels, oh, do you mean just the zest? What about the bitter white pith? And what about the seeds? Okay, so this is oh, I don’t know where this is probably how not to die where I talk about the benefits of some of the citrus phytonutrients. So, I encourage people to zest and noting that there’s one citrus fruit whose peel is so thin that you can actually eat the whole fruit whole, right? And so, anybody know what that little citrus fruit is? You can you can my grandma used to have one a whole tree growing. They’re a little tart. Now you want to you know wash your mouth out with water after eating any kind of citrus food or any other sour fruit beverage. But but but beyond that then it’s just zesting as far as I’m concerned. So there’s not much in the pith. It’s in that it’s in the it’s in the the zesty part. So yeah so so yeah so unless you have a really thin peel that then yeah you’re not don’t worry about the pith. What about the seeds? Citrus seeds I don’t I don’t know much about citrus seed content. I do recommend you know watermelon seeds and seeds of most fruit are healthier and sometimes contain a lot of nutrients. Other there’s some seeds you want to avoid like apple seeds peach pits but I don’t know much about citrus seeds. I don’t think I’ve run across any studies on citrus seeds. So take it or leave it. So, it’s fine if you want to pick them out. Okay, where are we? Julian. Julian just says, “I have no I don’t know what that means.” , ,

Tiffany oh, tiffany is back. What are my thoughts about oh, selelexin, which is a a lavender oil supplement and nustl for ocd and anxiety. I do have studies on lavender for anxiety, , but I don’t think anything on ocd is, but it’s not something I’ve looked into. So there may be stuff out there, but I would encourage people to do the whole food form. You can actually eat lavender flowers. You can make lavender tea. And then you can make preparations with lavender essential oil. As opposed to some kind of supplemental extract. That’s ass ing that the supplement company knows what to extract. And you know, do we really know what the so-called active ingredients are? All right. Sebastian says, “o ve for some reason.”

And angela says, “hi, do you have any particular worries about flu? I always worry about the flu. Flu is one of the leading causes of death.” , , For older individuals. Should my family get the flu shot? Yes, you should get the flu shot. It’s more important for older individuals because, , , the because the cardiovascular impacts of getting the flu. So the the flu vaccine actually saves more lives and people die from the flu. And how is that possible? It’s because it also because you’re you there’s the dramatic increase in cardiovascular disease risk after the flu. Your blood gets more coagulable more easily clotted and so you’re at a much higher likelihood of getting a heart attack or stroke after the flu. And so by preventing the flu you prevent that increased cardiovascular risk which actually may kill more people than actual flu virus itself. Ironically. So, that’s why flu vaccines particularly for older individuals has such a dramatic benefit for younger individuals. Check out my I talk about I have a section on flu vaccine and how not to age all the adult vaccines. And I go the pros and cons to each one, the shingles vaccine, pne onia vaccine, flu vaccine, and talk about the pros and cons and you can make up your own mind. But yes, I I mean look, if you’re if you’re a hermit and you don’t come in contact with h an beings, then you don’t need a flu shot because you’re not going to get the flu by definition, but if you’re around a lot of people then certainly I would encourage you to get the flu shot. It’s not perfect, but it typically decreases your risk of getting flu by about 30 30% and that can make a big difference.

Okay. What are my thoughts on dr. Essen’s papers? Noting quote also included cholesterol lowering medications unquote and there’s also being other studies showing regression with statins alone. Oh, okay. So, so noting that essen uses cholesterol-lowering medications when he thinks it’s it’s useful and absolutely agree. So in my new book on ldl lowering, I have a whole section on statins. , In fact, I think I have a blog today. What day is it today? Yeah, I think my blog today happens to be on statins. , So I talk about the pros and cons and who should be on them, who shouldn’t be on them, and, , it’s your body, your choice. You need to make up your mind based on your 10-year cardio risk of cardiovascular event. How do you determine that? I give you I talk about all the risk calculators, the pros and cons of each. I I have one that I particularly like out of europe. It’s free. You can find out what your risk is and then what your risk would be if you added a statin or not or if you walked more or if you ate healthier or you whatever and you can tweak it around and be like, “yeah, I’m okay with this risk, but I’m not okay with this risk.” And you can do whatever you need to do to get the risk down to what you would like. Now, there are recommendations in terms of what risk they think the benefits outweigh the risks of statin drugs. Why isn’t everybody put on statin drugs? Well, because there’s downsides. So you have to have sufficiently high cardiovascular risk for the benefits to outweigh the risks. But you know like increased risk of diabetes or something but you know you can make the decision yourself and there’s all sorts of ways to lower your cholesterol. In addition to taking statins or not whether or not you’re on statins you can still make dietary change to bring your cholesterol even lower. And unfortunately we are running out of time but let me just mention the two things I mentioned before. How not to die 10th preorder how not to die 10th anniversary edition anniversary edition is coming out. You can pre-order your copy now. Be out this december and even sooner october 10th upcoming ldl cholesterol webinar announcement on the getting ldl, you’re the primary driver of our primary killer as low as possible with diet and supplements. If you go to nutritionfacts.org/webinars, /webinars. You can register and and then I’ve got a new book coming out later this month on that very topic. But here’s the sneak preview during that I forget how many hour webinar it is. But anyway, thank you so much everybody. Have a wonderful month and hopefully I will see some of you on october 10th at the webinar.