Do Some Vegans Have Naturally High Cholesterol? | Dr. Neal Barnard Live Q&A - Exam Room Podcast

so you've changed your diet but your cholesterol is just like a statue it won't budge so what's going on and more importantly what can you do about it let's find out [Music] together welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the Physicians committee hi I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carol thank you so very much for watching and downloading in more than 15 countries around the world and making the exam room one of the most downloaded nutrition podcasts anywhere on the planet today and it is a fact that we have heard from so many exam rumors who say well wait a minute I'm doing everything right but my cholesterol still won't come down I'm not eating meat I'm not eating dairy there's no eggs not even the occasional piece of fish so what gives and their frustration literally jumps off the page at us so today what we're going to do is take a close closer look at cholesterol and what really might be going on there and whether some people are just genetically predisposed to having high cholesterol what else they may want to try treatments that could be available and then the best foods for lowering cholesterol that might not yet be on their plate and then some sneaky ones that could be keeping their numbers higher than desired and the gentleman who is going to help us understand everything today about cholesterol is the founder the president of the Physicians committee bestselling author renowned nutrition expert and our dear friend here on the show Dr Neil Barnard and if there's a question you would like to ask him go ahead pop it in the comments or in the chat we'll get to as many as we can when we open up the doctor's mailbag and with that let's welcome Dr barard to the show pleasure to see you as always my friend good to see you Chuck all right so when it comes to high cholesterol Dr Barnard correct me if I'm wrong but really there's some urgency here when it comes to this I want to share this from the CD DC right off of their website it says having high blood cholesterol raises the risk for heart disease which is the leading cause of death as well as the risk of stroke which is the fifth leading cause of death so really from a doctor's perspective here I'm guessing you're going to tell us high cholesterol is not something you want to play around with it's not something you want to play around with and it's something that that damages the body and that really starts at Birth um that these particles of cholesterol that are in the bloodstream can irritate the AR wall and just as you said Chuck it could be the arteries to your heart the arteries to the brain the arteries to the kidneys elsewhere in the body and they're doing damage every minute of the day and so we want to keep their levels low and so from time to time over the years we've heard from a number of viewers a number of listeners who say I just no matter what happens I can't seem to get my numbers under control I want to share one of the messages we Reed this is from an exam roomy by the name of Cindy Dr Barnard she writes I haven't eaten animal products for 4 years I don't eat vegan junk food and I'm not overweight and yet my cholesterol continues to go up it's now at 238 but I thought it would go down when I cut the animal products and she says it's the same with my brothers we're told it's just genetics and I'm resisting using statins but she's wondering Dr Barnard why is her body doing this is there anything that is just like this is 100% genetics like she's being told and you just kind of got to deal with it what what do you think could be happening here well first of all Cindy has done some really important things already um number one is that she's already gotten the animal products off her plate and the reason that is so important is that cholesterol is only found in animal products so if they're on your plate they're going to raise your blood cholesterol if they're not that's good and not only do animal products have cholesterol they have saturated fat that's the bad fat that's solid at room temperature beef fat dairy fat um that stimulates your body to make extra cholesterol so you've you've done the right thing you're getting those off your plate excellent step one now there are going to be people um just like like Cindy where wait a minute I've made that change but I'm still having a problem I'm still not getting to to my Target and so that's a time where we need to start looking at some other things that might be on your plate and number one is going to be the tropical oils you pick up um say some palm oil or some coconut oil these are the tropical oils or Palm kernel oil and if you were to look at the label on them it is mostly saturated fat so it's not butter it's not an animal product it's one of the very these are among the very few plant oils that that will raise your cholesterol because of the huge amount of saturated fat and it can be hidden let's say you bought organic peanut butter look at the label there's peanuts in there but sometimes they add either palm oil or they might add hydrogenated fat to it they do that to to give it this buttery mouth feel but that's going to raise your cholesterol just like butter so you need to be looking for these hidden these hidden fats that can act just like animal fats you know and I think that we also need to stress is before we continue this conversation that we don't have Cindy's medical chart so we're really just speaking in generalities here and that I believe it's important for the viewers the exam rooms to continue to work with their own doctors as they try to combat would you agree Dr Barnard oh well thanks for saying that and and yes absolutely and for another reason um and that's that the doctor can look into all kinds of other things that may influence the picture for example if a person has a high cholesterol but no prior history of any kind of heart issues the doctor might take that into account compared with the person who's got heart issues or if your parents had cardiovascular events early in life they're going to take that into account so yes it's obviously important to to talk with your your doctor but nonetheless we could still provide some general information that really might be of help and I mentioned the tropical oils that they're bad they're bad they're as bad as butter um and by the way that that's got to be emphasized because you'll hear people say but it's organic coconut oil or you know it's natural palm oil um it can cause an organic heart attack I mean these are things you don't want to have um but then look at other oils let's say it's olive oil now olive oil has much less saturated fat compared to COC oil and and less saturated fat compared to beef for chicken or or dairy products and here here are the numbers uh beef fat is about 50% saturated fat chicken fat is about 30% saturated fat and the other 70% is a mixture of other kinds of fats what about olive oil pull it off the shelf it says it's straight from Tuscany and it's organic but it's about 14% saturated fat wow so the other 86% won't raise your cholesterol but that 14% will so that's why you hear us talking about minimizing uh all the oils so that's uh that's another thing that you want to be looking at is it safe to say that the diet overall is probably going to be the number one influencing Factor when it comes to a person's cholesterol levels Far and Away absolutely yes and and what what are normal cholesterol levels I feel like we almost should have established that at the top of the show to be honest with you okay um cholesterol levels jump all over the place and and you said kind of at the beginning is the question of genetics genetics plays a huge role so so for for one person they're kind of healthiest cholesterol level will be a little bit different from somebody else based on genetic Tendencies but if you ask somebody at in the US government what's a good cholesterol level they'll say have your total cholesterol less than 200 and your bad cholesterol or LDL cholesterol um lowdensity lipoprotein cholesterol should be less than 100 um and uh th those are good numbers now uh most people will want to be lower than both of those um if you're at 200 for a total cholesterol but if you got yourself down to you know 170 160 150 uh your heart risk is continuing to drop but those those are pretty good numbers and then there's another number that's HDL um high density lipoprotein often called called good cholesterol and there doctors will be a little Cy they're going to say uh he HDL is something in the neighborhood of 60 or above however there's not a lot that you can do to influence the level and it's not clear that influencing the level of HDL really matters researchers have developed drugs to raise HDL and they don't affect your heart risk um in contrast lowering your LDL getting your bad cholesterol down that makes a difference and that's really job one if you can get your cholesterol down if you can get your LDL cholesterol down that's money in the bank I I have heard speaking of good cholesterol from a number of people who say well exercise actually could even modestly increase those numbers I know that you just said that there's not a whole heck of a lot that you can do but do we know whether or not there's a connection between being less sedentary and getting that HDL up yeah what you said is exactly right exercise will modestly raise HDL um we don't really know if that in turn uh reduces your risk of heart disease from the HDL alone apart from the benefit of the exercise itself but but yeah exercise will raise htl a little bit conversely if a person is largely sedentary though would that increase the the LDL the bad cholesterol number or is that exclusively dietarily driven um not so much um where where exercise versus being sedentary really plays a role is with HDL and also with triglycerides which we haven't really talked about triglycerides are your blood fats um they bounce around all over the place doctors want typ typically want them to be below about 150 exercise will will lower them um and and by the way here's a place where junk food is not your friend um sugar um refined white flour for example will tend to raise triglycerides and yet if you were having say low glycemic in index carbohydrates you're having root vegetables you're having beans fruits these tend to lower triglycerides and let me ask you something this just kind of popped into my head as you were talking about the the different kinds of fats and triglyceride bouncing around uh the body I'm kind of wondering what the connection is between uh high cholesterol and perhaps a person's risk of not heart disease or a stroke but something like Alzheimer's disease you talk about cholesterol getting in there and clogging up everything I'm wondering if that could also happen in the brain oh my good you I think you have touched on the absolute issue of our time because the the link between cholesterol levels and heart disease was established back what 60 years ago um but researchers at Kaiser Permanente did a mind-blowing study they brought in almost 10,000 people and they checked their cholesterol levels when they were around 40 years of age they're all sort of middle-aged people and then they tracked them over the next several decades and what they found was that the higher the cholesterol the higher the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and so we started to realize that what is good for the heart is good for the brain what is bad for the heart like high cholesterol is bad for the brain so that that argues for keeping a cholesterol level low not just for your heart but Chuck exactly what you said for brain health too now does that mean you should do it by statins here we're going to walk into a Minefield because the statin drugs they're very effective for lowering cholesterol levels they will lower a LDL and they do clearly have a role for many people of protecting the heart under certain circumstances however uh cases started to crop up of people where they they start a stat a month later their memory starts to have gaps in it they they're they're losing names they're losing uh all kinds of of things throughout the day and they think this is just not me they stop the stat and their memory returns to normal and if that had happened once or twice we would think it's just a fluke the FDA has hundreds of these cases and so we now know that that memory loss is for some people uh caused by Statin now before we say well Chuck the Statin in the waste B there is a pretty big um body of literature saying that maintaining a low cholesterol level including using statins if you need to can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease overall so for some people a big for some people they seem to be helpful for others they can really cause your memory to really go south and I guess yeah a lot of people do wrestle with that um do you think though that by and large statins are overprescribed and I'll tell you why I'm I'm asking this one because uh I have someone very close to me who was given a prescription for a Statin and when she consulted with another physician they were like I really don't see any purpose in you taking this and she told that doctor that really her other doctor had given it to her just as what they would call a preventative measure just in case how commonly prescribed are these things and are say in your estimation and and in the estimation of other experts a little bit overprescribed um they're a lot overprescribed I'm sorry to say uh some some doctors treat them like vitamin L you know take your lipor prescription because it's it's uh it's going to be a safe way to reduce your risk of of cardiovascular disease number one the vast majority of people with high cholesterol have it on the basis of food choices so they're eating Vita they're eating other cheeses they're eating meat they're not following a plant-based diet they're eating food foods that raise their cholesterol if they would stop eating those Foods you wouldn't be able to make a case for them having a sta in other words cases of high cholesterol are driven first and foremost by an animal-based diet number two statins are not benign back when they first came out they they seemed safe and overall their safety profile is good don't get me wrong but the problem started to become apparent the first ones were muscle pain and and liver uh issues for some people uh that can happen relatively common every doctor knows about it um as time went on it became clear that statins would also ramp up your appetite so that you would gain a little bit of of extra weight or have more trouble losing weight not good but we can live with that then we started to see higher risk of insulin resistance and diabetes and now we're starting to think this is really not something that I want to volunteer for if I can achieve the same result without the drug so that's where doctors are now I I think what we're seeing now now is this wave of of overuse of statins doctors are getting more cautious and saying let's say you're a person who does not have a cardiac history you've just got maybe a little bit of an elevated cholesterol level let's deal with this with diet and there are some doctors who go further and say I'm not using them kind of no matter what your cholesterol level is if there's no other cardiac uh risk factor this really calls for seeing your doctor talking with your doctor getting your own doctor's advice but that is exactly the controversy that we're now seeing in medicine are there any other alternatives to statins that somebody might be prescribed in addition to or even in a lot of cases unfortunately in lie of dietary and lifestyle changes um yes Al although although the um I should I should say that the the differentiation between Food and Drug is not exactly entirely entirely clear here there there are drugs fibrates for example kyom which um which will reduce cholesterol level they're considered really oldfashioned but they're still available and uh they're used in certain cases for a person who's got massively high triglycerides or or or or or you can't use a Statin or whatever niin is used as well it's a it's a B vitamin will it lower the risk of heart disease well that's another issue but you go to the store and you pick up a drug that's really masquerading as a food it looks like a margarine it's called vacol or it's called take control these are brands of uh of margarine that have plant sterols or stanols in them that for all intents and purposes are Pharmaceuticals but they're except that they're made by a plant and when a person consumes them their cholesterol level goes down so um our good friend David Jenkins at the University of Toronto did a cool thing he brought people into a research study who had high cholesterol levels and he put them for all of four weeks on vegan diet but he added soy products because it looks like soy products might reduce the production of cholesterol he added soluble fiber that means oats and beans because they can help cholesterol be eliminated from the body he added nuts because they might have a slight cholesterol lowering ability too and he added the stanol and stero Marrin and what he showed is that you could lower cholesterol level as well as as with a meore prescription you could do it with this portfolio diet that he developed so um my feeling is that for everybody that is really kind of the starting Place get the cholesterol out of your diet get the animal products out of your diet use the healthiest foods see how far you can go and I would also Imagine um I mean just clear as day I think if you go on any website and you're researching high cholesterol it warns against drinking and smoking as well those are two influences that we haven't really talked about uh yet but true or false they too can also Elevate cholesterol levels yeah they will um not hugely but they will um alcohol and um and smoking both Elevate um bad cholesterol LDL and if you needed one more reason to stop smoking you have found it and and the same is true with alcohol um you know we got to take off the party hats once in a while um and your cholesterol level will come down noticeably what about another type of vice and that is refined sugar and I found this on a a leading Medical website uh where they said specifically that there is a correlation between refined sugar and diet uh cholesterol levels in the blood and I'm wondering if it's the actual sugar or perhaps the package that that Sugar comes with maybe the oils the butter that's in the pastry that comes along with the sugar Dr Barnard yeah well it's a great question and and what you said is exactly right that the other things that go along with sugar will be part of the problem so if butter is mixed into your muffin and the the powdered sugar on top um they will go together but sugar alone can do some harm and specifically to triglycerides here's what I mean uh we did a study a number of years ago where we brought in people uh who wanted to lose weight and we gave them in this study two rules no animal products keep oils really low well as you can imagine people lost weight they did great their uh cholesterol levels fell their total and LDL cholesterol fell triglycerides for some not for others we did another study to follow it up now we have the same two rules uh no animal products keep oils low but we added a third Rule and the third rule was have healthful carbohydrates not a lot of sugar and not refined flowers have whole grain products um uh whole grain bread and and low glycemic index foods like rye bread or pumpernickle bread and what we showed is that not only did the LDL cholesterol drop and total cholesterol drop but triglycerides finally dropped too moral of the story refined carbohydrates like white flour uh white bread and also sugars can raise triglycerides when you take them out of the diet your triglycerides are going to drop safe to say uh plant-based or not these heavily processed foods probably something that you're going to want to avoid if you're struggling with your cholesterol levels oh sure yeah yeah exactly um that said you will see a whole lot of people who follow a plant-based diet and they don't do much more than that they just eliminate the animal products and they do really great so I don't want to diminish that the importance of that step getting the animal products off your plate goes a long long ways and then step two keep the oils really low step three make sure that the things you're eating are Health healthful choices and uh remind us really quickly before we open up the doctor's mailbag what are some of the best foods for lowering cholesterol like if somebody's like this is day one I'm going to the store I'm going to get these Foods because these are the ones that we know could help the most which one should they be putting in their shopping cart okay all right let me uh do a quick revise of what Dr Jenkins did then I'm gonna add to that um he was talking about soy products being helpful um he was talking also about soluble fiber so that's oats and beans um and he was also mentioning some benefit from nuts um and then these uh uh stanol stero Marrin but let me let me go in a slightly different direction if you're planning your diet and you're choosing from four groups think about the Bean Group the legume group why are we going to think about those high in protein very high in protein you're never going to think about needing meat or eggs if you got beans in your diet loads of protein zero cholesterol and the highest fiber food you're going to find Fiber is great in many ways and cholesterol lowering is part of it so don't forget the beans and they're their cousins the lentils and the peas um fruit are terrific also the fruit group why they're sweet they're delicious they're kind of sugary tasting but do they raise triglycerides for most people no um they're actually pretty low glycemic index they tend not to spike your blood sugar too much or for many people not at all then bring in the vegetables the whole range of vegetables um give special uh emphasis to the green leafy vegetables things like brocc ol spinach and so forth these foods are really beneficial in so many ways they're cancer Fighters but they are so high in fiber so low in calories they also bring your weight down that that notches your cholesterol down a little bit as well and finally the grain group the grain group is wide it's everything from corn to rice and breakfast cereals the least processed ones are the best so white rice okay brown rice much better white bread okay but whole grain bread much better and when you have the whole grains in there along with the beans the fruits the vegetables You've Really Got a terrific combination don't forget your vitamin B12 but You' got a supplement and you know I I almost hesitate to ask this question so I'll couch it with there may not even be an answer but let's say somebody is eating this what many would consider to be pristine diet the one that you were just prescribing so to speak and still their numbers high is that person do you think in any less danger of adverse cardiac events or health events in general because of the elevated cholesterol compared to somebody who is still eating that standard American high fat High meat High dairy diet you know that very question came up in one of Dr ornish's studies Dr Dean ornish medical genius uh 1990 published in the Lance at the lifestyle heart trial where he he used a diet a plant-based diet along with a healthy lifestyle modest exercise don't smoke handle stress and he showed remarkably cholesterol levels dropped like a stone people lost weight their arteries started opening up again there was one person in this study who despite following a really healthy diet and and and not smoking and everything could not get his cholesterol level down but even he had reversal of his heart disease in other words the arteries were opening up again in him just like others and that raised the question if I can't get my cholesterol down but my diet is really clean and my lifestyle is otherwise good maybe that alone is going to have a very protective effect now there are plenty of other doctors who would say I don't know I wouldn't I don't want to put my money all on that I would add a Statin as well and that that controversy continues to this day but there are more and more doctors who are saying I think that the the side effects of the statins are such that if you are a healthy person with a modestly elevated cholesterol but a really otherwise totally Clean Diet there are doctors who are hesitant to start a Staten only chasing the number all right let's go ahead and open up the doctor's mailbag I want to take a question from Sharon who's wondering how high does cholesterol need to be before a doctor should consider prescribing medication well a lot of doctors really start right at the numbers that we talked about ear they'll say you know if your LDL is above 100 um your risk starts to rise and they're going to start putting you on a on a Staten at that level um as as I mention been mentioning though I think there are more and more doctors who are hesitant to do that um really for two reasons they're not entirely sure that you're going to get any benefit from it and secondly they'd rather have you work on on Lifestyle Changes alone so there isn't a specific number be guided by your doctor um your doctor should sit down and say tell me about your family history tell me about your history tell me about the rest of of your lifestyle and they're going to take these things into account yeah and she's also wondering how often her cholesterol level should be checked uh when she's on the medication if she gets prescribed no okay um well if you were not on any medication you don't have to have a cholesterol level checked on any kind of frequent basis you don't have to have it done every six months or every year um in fact doctors would say check it every four five six years something like that however if you're on medications and the wants to know is the medication working um or you've had a change you've changed your diet um in those cases it makes sense to go ahead and get a a cholesterol test and and your cholesterol will be affected within a matter of just several weeks after either a change in medication or a change in diet we were talking about the connection between cholesterol and potentially Alzheimer's uh a little bit earlier in the show Sasha has a followup for us on that she says but yeah doesn't your brain need cholesterol in order to function prop properly Dr Barnard your whole body needs cholesterol um cholesterol is used for lots of things um in your muscles I mean you are not a potted plant okay you are not a bam bamboo sitting rising up you your body is very flexible the reason you can step out of that pot and go running around the room is because cholesterol in the membranes in the walls in your in your muscles in the membrane of each muscle cell makes that cell flexible a little bit rubbery so that you can move around and do things if you didn't have cholesterol you'd be stuck um cholesterol is used by your your body to make things for example vitamin D is made from cholesterol hormones in general are made from cholesterols it's got digestive juices are made from cholesterol it's an integral Mo molecule however your body especially your liver makes cholesterol it makes all that your body needs so if you're eating more cholesterol your body looks at you and says excuse me aren't I making all the cholesterol that you need why are you adding more to the system it's just going to gum up the works so your body makes all the cholesterol you need you don't need to add any and you shouldn't so um if a person says well I've got cholesterol in my brain should I add more cholesterol no it will not make you smarter it won't help your brain function better it will do the exact opposite it'll make you more likely to have a stroke we have a question from Mary who says well we know that eggs can raise cholesterol we've talked about that previously on the show she's wondering what you might recommend though as an egg substitute okay a great question um eggs do raise cholesterol levels and and the effect is quite variable uh for some people you see a dramatic effect for others less of an effect but but overall eggs do raise cholesterol the reason I emphasize that is is there has been a lot of controversy that the egg industry has generated trying to say no they're not so bad uh eggs do raise cholesterol so uh the probably the most popular replacement is scrambled tofu instead of scrambled eggs and to make it really work well you take your non-stick pan and crumble up some firm tofu into the pan and Spritz in a whole bunch of nutritional yeast now if you're been on a plant-based diet you know what I'm talking about if this is new to you you go to the health food store and the nutritional yeast is a product all the the cashiers all know where is say over in Isis n um because it adds this sort of cheesy type of flavor and so pour a generous amount in mix it in with a tofu put in maybe some soy sauce any herbs you'd like scrambled tofu is great uh there's another product a little bit newer much newer called just egg and just egg is um a product that scrambles up just like scrambled eggs and in fact I I never had this but I was giving a cardio biology Grand rounds in Florida and the hospital chef came by with two huge pans of eggs and he said everybody tasted and so after my lecture the cardiologists all got up and they tasting the scrambled eggs they were delicious and they were happy um and then he revealed he said did you notice I had two different pots one was just eggs and the other had eggs with um green peppers and stuff in them he said do you know which one of these is actual eggs and which is is a vegan product people were guessing maybe it was the with the green bits in it he said well I got to tell you the truth neither one of them was actually eggs they were both made with the just egg product and it is just like scrambled eggs and it fooled everybody um what are they made of they're made of mung beans actually they're made of mung beans and some canola oil and by some amazing Alchemy of nature it turns out to be scrambled eggs and they make another one called it's just egg but it's a frozen kind of a little square Patty that you put on an English muffin and you just zap it your microwave for a minute you've got this this uh uh this product so uh you don't have to have them they're totally optional but there are people out there trying to make life convenient for you if you're looking for a good egg substitute I'm muted there we go sorry about that that was uh you know I thought that was my hearing test CH no you passed with flying colors because I wasn't saying anything um here we go so uh the the Frozen uh just egg patties that you were talking about uh those things make phenomenal uh substitutes if you want to try to recreate an Egg McMuffin that you might be you know used to getting in the morning you're trying to eat a little bit healthier that's a great step in the right direction I know that's worked for a lot of people and uh even my wife she loves those things so I'm not giving just egg an endorsement one way or the other but um it is quite tasty I will I will give you that much it is dag on tasty um Let me let me tell let me jump in this chck a year ago I was at the American Medical Association media in Chicago and here a doctors talking about health all day long and then you look at the breakfast the next day and the breakfast bar is bacon sausage scrambled eggs and so forth so I worked with the kar I said come on let's let's do better so they bought some Morning Star sausage vegan tasty identical to the pork one but it doesn't have any cholesterol any animal fat nothing and they bought just egg and they did the two different kinds the scrambled egg ones and the ones you were just describing the frozen ones and we did a taste test and we had a whole meal catered everybody loved it I mean it worked out absolutely great so works fine uh here's here's a pro tip let's say you want to do what Chuck just said um and you want to make sort of your egg McMuffin um toast your English muffin and you can put on some Dijon mustard on it or have you had pickley Americans don't know about pick but this is kind of an English little bit of a yellow kind of mustardy pickle and look at specialty stores or go online and order it high there's a Hines pickley and you put that on there put your little just egg thing on you can put veggie bacon on top your family will thank you you can pack this lunch off with your kids they're every other kid is gonna want to take their sandwich away it's so delicious all right uh let's talk about another kind of food uh garlic this is an interesting question that comes to us from Terry who is wondering whether garlic is something that you should still be eating if you've had stints implanted I'm not sure of a connection there this is new to me yeah yeah um okay by and large garlic is fine by and large garlic is safe um whether all the reputed health benefits are real hard to say but but garlic is fine except here's the issue um regarding stents if you are put on warrin above blood thinner there is some evidence that garlic added to the warin warin will increase the risk of bleeding so that's really the question there um the good news is that there are newer drugs than warin now that are used for most people who need a blood thinner so so that means garlic is back and the warin is out and what about amla powder we have somebody else wondering about that um yeah this is a a gooseberry um you you can actually take the berry you can you can have it as powder you can have it as the berry and it does have some cholesterol lowering effect in whether do it as the as an extract or as the berry itself and let's see let's take another question this is something along the same lines a question from Jimmy who says look I'm not eating meat I'm not eating dairy but like you guys are talking about with cholesterol my blood pressure just doesn't want to come down what advice might you prescribe for somebody in Jimmy situation okay well first of all I'm really glad that you've raised the question because high blood pressure is no joke um if you can imagine just too much pressure building up in the arteries to your brain you can imagine that that your risk of stroke is higher and also it's doing more damage to the arteries that are going up to the brain and it's causing more and more damage day by day you don't want that to happen you want your blood pressure to come down same with your kidneys your kidneys are really fragile you need them to filter your blood and get rid of toxins and if you got high blood pressure that is one of the biggest reasons for blowing out the kidneys you you do not want high blood pressure so you want to do something about it um what can you do uh the first step that doctors tend to think about is lowering salt good plan but even when you follow that advice your blood pressure comes down some not usually hugely but but but it's it's it's a reasonable thing and and the the big salt sources are not so much the salt shaker on your table but it's salt added as the soup was being put into the can or whatever it's it's the soup used in the salt that's used in processing but after that then looking at the other aspects of your diet if your diet is vegan and low in fat something magical happens in your body which is your blood gets less viscous less thick if you're on a diet that has no animal products in it and you keep oils low your blood flows more like water less like Vaseline and when your blood flows more easily your heart doesn't have to push so hard um the the uh blood vessels don't have to be are not under so much pressure and so the combination of low sodium and especially a plant-based diet is a great way to bring blood pressure down and then you get this big payoff because that same diet causes you to lose unwanted weight and when your weight comes down Bit by Bit by Bit your blood pressure comes down that much more so if you're on blood pressure medicines let your doctor know that you're doing this and your doctor will keep an eye on your blood pressure and one day you'll be sitting at the table table and you'll stand up to your feet and you'll get all dizzy because your doctor hasn't yet backed you off the medicines and you're on a healthy diet and your blood pressure is now too low and so your doctor will then take away one of your medicines or or adjust the dose so that because you don't need those medicines anymore and a great many people as time goes on are able to reduce or even get off their blood pressure medications all right let's talk about coffee here and cholesterol interesting question from Barbara chase this one came in at 12 28 she's wondering whether coffee can in fact influence your cholesterol bring it up higher than you might want yeah especially if you uh go to Starbucks and you put heavy cream in your coffee and you eat it with a bacon covered doughnut your cholesterol is going to go through the roof the coffee itself not so much a problem okay gotcha it's all about what's in there uh here's a much more interesting and I think important question from uh Jean came in at 1219 is there any correlation between thyroid issues and high cholesterol oh wow you know I'm so glad you asked this um this is one of the the big neglected parts of of of Health you get up in the morning and you're just not yourself and you look at the mirror and you say oh my my hair doesn't look so healthy my skin doesn't look so healthy my energy is not so good and my weight's kind of coming up my doctor told me my cholesterol level was up a little bit now most doctors are able to say wait wait wait this pattern sounds familiar let me check your thyroid levels and they're down you are hypothyroid your thyroid it's base of your neck it's responsible for making for giving you energy your thyroid hormone gives energy to all parts of your body and if it is not working well your cholesterol level can go up along with all the other problems that we've just mentioned so yeah you could take a stat and to bring it down but wait wait wait we need to get your your thyroid functioning again how do we do that be guided by your doctor because there's two completely different issues that are going on number one is you need iodine in your diet seaweed iodized salt or even iodine supplements in some cases but your doctor can help you with that the other issue is that for some people uh they're developing antibodies to the thyroid gland um and those antibodies uh are causing their thyroid to not work very well and then they end up with what's called Hashimoto thyroiditis uh there is some evidence not yet conclusive in my view but but some evidence uh that a diet change may be helpful the reason we say that is vegans have much less hypothyroidism than mediators and especially Dairy enthusiasts um what we believe is going on is that animal proteins trigger an antibody attack on the thyroid gland so if you get the animal products out of your diet that's less likely to happen but doctors know how to diagnose these things they can find the antibodies and they can they can inst to do treatment if treatment is necessary all right we were talking about tropical oils which included coconut oil a little bit earlier Tina though at 12:09 is wondering not about coconut oil but about coconut milk and even coconut water do you think it's possible they could influence cholesterol levels yeah uh pop into the your nearest health food store and look at rice milk turn turn it around and look at the label look at how many fat grams and how many of those fat grams are saturated fat then look at oat milk then look at soy milk and once you've done all that take the coconut milk and turn it around and what you're going to discover is that it has plenty of fat and virtually every fat gram is saturated fat now look at this thing and then now look at the front of the carton and it's filled with all sorts of claims about how healthful and natural and organic it is and then leave it on the shelf and do not buy it because it's going to raise your cholesterol level and let's see here let's wrap up with this one uh one from Rhonda came in at 1224 we were talking about refined flowers and white bread and things like that that might influence cholesterol but she's wondering what about sourdough bread it's white in appearance but it's got the fermentation in there so is this something to avoid or something that we might want to add to the plate Dr Barnard uh fascinating question I don't know the answer to that one but let me just speculate with you for a second um fermentation in Foods there's a lot of fermented foods some of them are terrible like cheese um but others that aren't so terrible like kimchi or SAU and the fermentation process um is is not something that creates uh a hyper cholesterol liic foods that I've ever seen so I would have to guess that if we're talking about the fermentation that is related to sourdough I would my my hunch is that that that would have nothing to do with your cholesterol level but now that you mentioned that I'm G have to run back to my uh Library app and have a look and see what I can go it's always something to learn I mean I mean that's the that's the greatest part I mean we've been doing the show for what six seasons almost seven now and we're always learning something new I feel like with every episode by the way we're coming up on our 500th episode can you believe that how did that happen wow well that's a testim testimony to the important information that you have Chuck I mean it just well it's not my information all I'm doing is asking the questions you're providing the answers I mean really my friend I'm just the the man in the middle here that's that's all I am I would I would not be too modest chck you are the person who brings this this information out in a way that people can understand relate to and make it fit their life well you don't you have no idea how many lives you have saved I I don't but it is you know to even impact one life and to to know what a health transformation is to to experience it and to know that this show is having that impact on others to give them that positive experience greatest feeling in the world and I am not playing that up I'm just saying it is literally the coolest thing to be able to give somebody something that they never thought was possible the greatest gift ever doesn't even have to be the holiday season that's the best part it's so important but it's true there there are a lot of areas where science is is still moving on where we don't we don't know all the answers we know a lot but there's still a lot that that that we that remains to be sorted out like the thyroid question that we just mentioned earlier um I have been really intrigued by all the people who had hypothyroidism um and seem to get better with a vegan diet but to this day Chuck there has never been a randomized clinic trial where you bring in 50 people who have hypothyroidism put half of them on a lowfat vegan diet and see how many of them get better never been done um so should it be done absolutely but until then we're we're going with the best information that we have uh it the information is already more than enough to take action but it's not necessarily enough to satisfy the intellect for sure for sure I mean they always have that appetite for knowledge and I do hope that that study gets done at some point and um I'll tell you you know the first time it really dawned on me about you know how much of an influence thyroid issues have on a person's overall health and the impact that they have on their life was when I read uh your last book your body imbalance and those stories and then having some of the people you featured in the book on the show was like holy cow like this is a really big deal and to know that there's also an influence there now between that and cholesterol as well is even you know it's just astounding to me the beauty of it of course is that you don't have to necessarily have one diet for one thing and another diet for another thing but what we're finding out is that certain dietary changes can affect all of these things and the the whole point behind that book your body imbalance was to say that wait a minute we had no idea that Foods could actually affect our hormones the insulin hormone that's important in diabetes or estrogen and testosterone which are important for Reproductive Cancers and healthy reproductive function for that matter but also thyroid hormone and yes there it's a huge role for diet there as well all right and uh my final question for you is this is definitely it's a hard left pivot here but uh you remember the hottest new club in town Dr barard are you an exam room VIP yet the exam VIP is the most exciting new club in town I completely agree the line is out the door matter of fact the line is being blown down by somebody who's outside the window right now with a leaf blower trying to get in to this Club so here's the deal we have established the exam room VIP Club and this is for people who really want to take their health IQ to the next level and best of all it doesn't cost you anything and the perks are tremendous so we will give you early access to some of our exclusive top tier interviews including one that's available right now just for exam room VIP members with Dr Michael Gregor and advance of the release of his next book how not to age you can hear that interview today before it's released to the public next week just head over to pcrm.org exam room viip to sign up and so not only do you get access to that interview early you will also get other perks including our newsletters you get early access to tickets before they go on sale to the general public for when we do the big shows like we just did with the eselon and so much more to go and Dr barard I I can only guess that we're going to be doing a lot of exclusive exam room VIP events as well for your book that's going to be coming out in the spring can't wait for that either I am so excited about that I didn't want to tip my hand too early but but just what you said is exactly right we've got some really exciting information focusing not on what to avoid but the foods that have almost medicinal effects uh to help people really to to regain their health to trim away unwanted weight and to really feel great so that's that's the power Foods diet that's coming out next year and I look forward to banging the drum about those new Concepts with you Chuck can't wait to hear more about that my friend uh that's going to be an exciting new release and uh the last thing that I want to uh say today is two things actually one a huge thank you to our friends up at plant powered Metro New York for hosting me up uh last night for a conversation about food addiction and let me tell you Dr barard you talking about people who are really looking forward to your next book plant powerered Metro New York is all about this thing they cannot wait to get their hands on a copy in this well I got let me take my hat off for them in any case lyanna LaVine Ryner Rebecca Johnson uh spoke at our conference ICM uh about health issues and we so empowering and so generous with their time and and we've been delighted to work with them on so many issues and hope to continue to do so oh yeah they were they were there last night and Chef Rebecca just had a blast like taking pictures with my old pants and um I'm pretty sure we could have fit three of her in there to be honest with you but yeah just just such a great group so uh thank you guys so very much uh for me letting me have a little bit of fun in your neck of the woods last night and uh Dr Barnard of course every time you're on the show with us on the exam room live uh this episode is brought To Us by the Gregory J Ryder memorial fund which supports organizations just like the Physicians committee that carry on Greg's love for Animals by promoting plant-based health and working to end animal abuse while also emphasizing programs that promote systemic change and benefit people and you can visit them they do a lot so you got to read all about this visit their website right now Gregory riter fund.org that's Gregory riter REI T RF fund.org never ceases to amaze me all the Magnificent work Allison and the team at the writer fund are doing Dr Barnard absolutely Allison Mahoney has done such a wonderful job in carrying Greg Spirit forward in in in in a way and really showing compassion for animals and for human health such a beautiful away and Dr Barnard you have done such a wonderful job of explaining cholesterol to us today and helping us understand you know like if you're just in that jam and you feel like your numbers won't come down what else might you want to try so I feel like we've given people a lot of ideas things that they may want to talk about with their own Physicians the next time they go for a checkup thank you so very much for being with us today well thank You Chuck and to the crew behind the scenes thank you guys for making the magic happen and to you exam roomies thank you so very much for your questions and joining us from all around the world Chicago South Africa Hawaii Texas California Oregon we saw all of you guys in the chat today and so many other places thank you guys so very much for being here and raising your health IQs right alongside of us and for everyone at the Physicians committee I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carroll we will talk to you again very soon but until then keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

Views: 90,151

Keywords:

Id: PGIMRXzchEo

Length: 49min 55sec (2995 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2023