Eating to Save Your Life: High-Risk Heart Disease | Dr. Neal Barnard Live Q&A

let's start with some statistics today that every 33 seconds someone in the United States will unfortunately die of cardiovascular disease that's every 33 seconds 109 people per hour more than 2 600 per day 18 300 per week and more than 955 000 every single year but that does not have to be you no matter how high your risk because today we are talking about eating to live welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the Physicians committee hi I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carroll thank you so very much for raising your health IQ with us in more than 150 countries around the world and making the exam room one of the most consumed nutrition podcasts anywhere on the planet today and the leading cause of death this is great news may have met its match as evidenced by the new meta-analysis of nearly 2 000 people that we're going to be talking about here today many of these people at very high risk for cardiovascular disease some of them already having it and researchers say that they have found what they found moves definitively that what you eat matters and the diet that you choose can be profound medicine and perhaps the best medicine of all would be a vegetarian including a vegan diet so we are going to be delving in to these results this groundbreaking research which is just being touted up one side and down the other because it's so profound and includes a lot of the research that we have done right here at the Physicians committee we're going to be discussing that with Dr Neil Barnard and if there's a question that you have for Dr Barnard go ahead post it in the comments or in the chat we're going to get to as many as we can here on the program today with the doctor's mailbag and with that let's go ahead and welcome Dr Barnard to the exam room great to see you great to see you Chuck this is a big show that we have on top here today we've got this big meta-analysis with these groundbreaking results and then also today we're going to be talking about another interesting heart related study and that one has to do with hypertension high blood pressure and alcohol all that I'm sure a lot of people are going to sit up and pay attention to as well so a lot of ground to cover let's start though with this big meta analysis on cardiovascular disease and really pointing to some positive findings for people who are at high risk who already may have cardiovascular disease and a significant difference when they began to eat a vegan or a vegetarian diet what does this analysis show this is really such an important analysis it appeared in Jama Network open which is a huge Journal that that all the doctors and scientists read and it to kind of give you the long Arc of this it was back in the late 1940s when researchers decided maybe heart attacks don't have to happen let's see if we can understand the risk factors and they discovered that if you lose weight if your blood pressure comes down if you have high cholesterol and it can come down all of these things can affect your risk and in a really big way but so then ever after in all the decades that followed the question was well how do you do that do you take a drug to lose weight or to get your cholesterol down or do you follow a low carb diet or you try to starve the way to offer or what should you actually do and so what came in just now is looking at plant-based diets and they looked at vegetarian diets but especially vegan diets vegan low-fat diets and they found if you zero in on three big targets one is how much you weigh the other is how high is your cholesterol and the third is what about diabetes and blood glucose control if you want to to tackle all those this is the diet that hits every one of those points simultaneously so plant-based diet brings down your weight brings down your cholesterol brings down your blood sugar into a healthier range so that anyway that's the that's the headline and uh it's true but by the way you mentioned Chuck that a lot of the work was done here out of the 20 studies they thought were the most important to zero in on our team had done eight of them so um kudos to the to the research team here and Dr caliova in particular and when you you extrapolate all of that data from all of the studies uh eight hour eight plus the other 12. we're looking at data from close to 2 000 people um from all across the U.S Asia Europe New Zealand but then also spanning three decades so three decades worth of research um I would think that with that large of a sample size the findings here are going to be pretty hard to poke holes in yeah um it's it's really quite definitive I mean that's why that's why the American Medical Association wants to put its name on this journal and say this is something that everybody needs really needs to know about now I should say this though um the differences that you're going to get say in body weight or cholesterol they're going to depend in part on where you're starting so let's say somebody is already really quite thin and they adopt a plant-based diet they are not going to lose a huge amount of weight they may lose nothing at all because they're already where they need to be but if you have somebody who's got a lot of weight to lose then that's the person where you're going to see a really big change and the reason that matters is that in meta-analyzes like this they will try to Crunch the numbers and come into sort of an average weight loss that you can expect if you make a diet change but you've got to interpret it based on where you are now that's also true with if you had a high cholesterol it's going to fall if you've already got a great cholesterol fair enough it doesn't need to change uh same thing with your blood glucose values um the researchers here talked a lot about this being um for the first time you know looking at this data and they talk specifically about observational studies versus the findings that we have with this compilation of 20 studies all together so walk us through what's the difference between an observational study and what we have here and why that makes such a profound difference right an observational study is where you have people who are making their own diet choices and as the years go by you might notice that people who are eating more vegetables and fruits people who eat more beans and Grains people with more fiber in their diets they're going to tend to have a lower body weight compared to other people people who pick a vegan diet are going to tend to be Slimmer than people who are eating meat and fish and that kind of stuff um but that sort of generates a hypothesis uh it looks like this vegan diet is good but let's put it to the test and that's what happens here is you bring in people who are not yet doing a healthy diet and you randomly assign them to exactly the diet you want to test versus no change and then you're starting at at uh right right it's the square zero so to speak and then you're looking at the effects as the weeks roll out and that's really the basically the the gold standard for research and that's what they've shown so you can bring in people who need to lose weight you put them on a plant-based diet a vegan diet and then you see these results that are just crystal clear and the same thing for cholesterol same thing for glucose all right now let's talk about the different kinds of of diets that they looked at here the headline in the study is vegetarian but that you know there's many different kinds of vegetarian diets I know that perhaps researchers looked uh primarily here I believe it lacto-ovo vegetarian lacto-vegetarian and of course vegan diets is it important here that there were such a wide variety of vegetarian diets included in this study I think this has been a useful thing to look at because going back to the Adventist Health study they noticed something really important that vegetarians whatever the idea you're not eating meat vegetarians tended to be thinner and they had lower risk of diabetes but what if you take the vegetarian group and you split them into OVO lacto vegetarians people are having milk and having eggs and those who don't have those at all people following a totally vegan diet you see a huge difference the vegans are much more likely to be at a healthy body weight and then when you look at diabetes risk same story a vegetarian diet is a great step away from a meaty diet but when you go to from vegetarian to vegan meaning the cheese comes off your plate um and the eggs come off your plate then you see this huge difference where the vegans are at much lower risk of diabetes so you can bring that into the lab as we do bring in people and use what is for all intents and purposes as close to a perfect diet as you can get no animal products keeping oils low that seems to really be the Silver Bullet for for cutting down these risk factors for heart disease now when we're talking about cutting down risk factors for any kind of disease today heart disease or looking to see any kind of health and Improvement it's always a question for a lot of people how quick can this happen for me and when we're talking about this meta-analysis in particular you look at these studies you look at it shows that the mean duration of the dietary intervention was about 25 weeks so that's about six months half of the year um how quickly do you think people can expect to see some improvement because I always Dr Barnard love to answer that question so they don't get deflated if they step on the scale on day two and they haven't seen 50 pounds come off you you know well the reason you want to do a longer study is you want to see what the effects are going to be as as time goes on and see you know how far can we go but where the effects start um back in 19 around 1990 or thereabouts or maybe even the late 80s I was talking with Dr Dean ornish's patients as you know Dean did a marvelous study where he brought in people who had narrowed arteries and he put them on plant-based diet along with no smoking and and mild exercise and stress reduction and he tracked them over a long period of time tractor for five years however I talked with all the participants in the study I interviewed all of them and their chest pain was gone within the first month or thereabouts I mean so I mean the results were very very strong these are people who had serious heart disease and within a matter of weeks they felt much better but if you then go back earlier and you say well when when did your your weight start coming down you can see weight coming down within the very first week sometimes within the very first couple of days and with regard to blood sugar results we actually just recently began a new diabetes study when patients come in to our studies with diabetes and we're going to tackle their blood sugar you have to let them know that they may see results tomorrow in their blood sugar results and the reason is the reason you have to warn them is they may be taking insulin or some other drug that is pushing their blood sugar down and if the diet is so powerful that it can push their blood sugar down to that combination can be too strong my point is that the results are really fast they began they began really on day one and you're talking about Dr ornish's research I'm curious how how have we been able to progress his findings that were so Landmark some time ago how have meta-analysis such as the ones we're talking about today really pushed forward everything that he found or solidified his research in your opinion yes well I think several things have happened one is first of all as you're touching on the the evidence base has become just super strong I mean we we clearly know that a plant-based diet is the diet of choice for all these heart disease risk factors not just for prevention but for turning it around the arteries start opening up when you look at them on an angiogram you see these narrowed arteries starting to get wider which is remarkable because because it's not just in the heart it's in the arteries of the brain the rest of the body too and so that's erectile dysfunction going away getting better or sexual function returning blood supply to the brain returning blood supply to the heart returning that's why the chest pain goes away but your whole body rejuvenates so the first thing just to say is that the evidence is now very very strong in these effects are are really predictable but the second thing is that the diet has sort of evolved when Dr Warner started doing later studies and he was looking at say men with prostate cancer he started to the initial studies would allow a little bit of dairy and then with the prostate cancer study and others it's really let's just leave the dairy out because when you do that then there's no animal fat left everything you eat is plant derived and it's got fiber in the healthy nutrients in it so so the the diet now really is is a plant-based diet that we're pretty much all talking about all right if there's a question that you have for Dr Barnard go ahead post that in the comments or in the chat we're going to open up the doctor's mail bag in just a little bit but um you know we're talking about just this enormous volume of research that's out there and it reminds me of a conversation I was having recently an interview actually uh with the cancer survivor who was talking about when he was first diagnosed with prostate cancer that he was given this big Manual of you know the do's and the don'ts but the doctor his doctor told him flat out you don't even have to bother reading the chapter on nutrition and diet because it doesn't matter and I'm just curious why that opinion still can be so pervasive in the medical community despite the fact that on a daily basis we are being bombarded with all of this new research that does in fact show that a diet matters and it matters to an extreme extent I think doctors stating that kind of opinion could have been forgiven 15 or 20 years ago something like that because the the data for some conditions really were more modest um and in fact when people made diet changes they would switch from red meat to white meat it would take the skin off their chicken and then it would discover Jesus I didn't lose any weight I'm eating skinless chicken breast and it's not helping or my cholesterol is not dropping or I'm not really losing weight whatever what has happened is that from this dismal scenario that these diets don't work people started trying better diets and so when you take the red meat and the chicken I put them both in the trash can and you're eating grains and beans and vegetables and fruits in a natural form suddenly you're giving the body the nutrients it needs to to really flourish and so people do dramatically eat better now the the reason to perhaps be a little bit less charitable to doctors who give that kind of advice today is the fact of the matter is the evidence is now overwhelming the diet matters it matters probably more than any other uh part of your your demographics and when people put that power to work the results are huge doctors have not gotten a message in their medical training it's not really part of medical school and not enough of continuing medical education as you know we're working to change that but for now a lot of doctors are kind of out of the loop on the things that really matter the most all right and the cool thing also about the age that we live in is that it's not just doctors any longer that have access to these studies literally everybody can access it at their fingertips at any time and that brings us to a question from Dab's kitchen at 12 14 which is just such a great one how can the common person tell which studies hold more credibility and which ones are just a fluke wow what a what a great question and I I got to tell you I feel your pain because sometimes it's really hard to know you'll see some new new study you know peanut brittle will cause weight loss or something like that you know funded by the peanut brittle manufacturers Association um so it's it's really hard to know but some of the clues are you know the the better the journal um a journal you've heard of that's often better than one where it's a small or kind of fly-by-night Journal um the reason I say that is there has been a huge proliferation of really low budget journals nowadays that are not in it for the science they're in it for the money they they they they charge a fee to the authors to publish their their their studies and you really can't depend on on them very well um so that's the first thing um the second thing is is look who were the researchers where they had a credible place and doing good work but beyond that you also have to just pass the sniff test um is it likely that something like this really could be true we've all seen studies where people have tried to say that you can eat a lot of fatty foods and lose weight and and over over time those claims sort of fall away because they don't really hold up to subsequent research all right a question from Joe ordinary 1222 going back to the kinds of vegetarian diets that were included in this meta-analysis some of which still did include eggs and dairy so Joe is wondering because he counts so heavily on milk and eggs for protein what are some good plant-based healthier options that someone might look at oh what a wonderful question I'm glad you erased it because our our question about protein has really shifted the old idea was are you getting enough protein well the answer is you are if you're if you're eating vegetables fruits grains beans and the products that that they're made into you're getting easily an adequate amount of protein as long as you're having a normal variety of these these healthy foods so you're going to be fine um but if you're replacing milk if you replace it with any of these Foods the beans the grains the vegetables the fruits you're going to be getting the Protein that's in those Foods if you want a little extra soy milk is a really good substitute for cow's milk the protein content is about the same and soy is associated with reduced risk of breast cancer reduced risk of prostate cancer so that's a that's a good switch if you want to make that all right um let's take a question here from mintery at 12 23 wondering about nuts and cholesterol we were talking about cholesterol here a little bit ago I'm vegan and I eat about two ounces of nuts every day but my overall cholesterol just does not want to go below 190. could the nuts perhaps be to blame Dr Barnard well first of all if your total cholesterol is 190 that's not a terrible figure the average cholesterol in America is much higher than that um and so what I would zero in so first of all that's not terrible um the second thing is zero in on your LDL cholesterol that's the bad cholesterol and that's the one you want to keep at kind of south of a hundred um the lower you can bring that the better that's the number to really zero in on so have a look there nuts are not going to raise your LDL cholesterol um but they but nuts can sometimes slow down body weight loss for people who are trying to lose weight nuts are really one of the few plant-based Foods it's got a fair number of calories packed into all that fat that's in there so you might want to set them aside if that is an issue but nuts are not going to raise your cholesterol in fact they were part of the portfolio diet do you remember this uh David Jenkins years ago brought people into a study put them on a vegan diet but he focused on soluble fiber like oats soy products like tofu nuts like almonds and he could knock down their cholesterol by about 30 percent in four weeks time so the nuts were part of that and they're not going to get in your way with regard to cholesterol and let's talk a little bit more about this you know from time to time we do hear from people who are eating a pretty clean diet but for whatever reason their cholesterol their cholesterol is just stubborn and I think back to one of the things that really stood out to me when we first started doing the exam room and like every episode was like I'm learning 10 different new things every time and one of which was the body produces its own cholesterol and you explained to me at that point that some people actually produce more cholesterol than others how will a person know whether their body is just a big time cholesterol Factory more than it should be is there a test that somebody can take for that okay great question no there's no test that you can take um and there's no blood test that you can do but it's true that your body makes cholesterol he also absorbed cholesterol from the eggs or meat or cheese that you're eating but your body makes a lot of cholesterol and so the the way to discover all right do I have a genetically determined problem or or is this something I can really tackle is take about two months eight weeks be on as perfect a diet as you can and if at the eight weeks eight week Point your cholesterol has not dropped then your problem is genes um but now what is a perfect diet a perfect diet is not just vegan vegan means there's no animal products that's good that means there's no cholesterol in your diet and there's not much animal fat swell but look around for tropical oils palm oil coconut oil I don't care how natural they are marketed as being they are loaded with saturated fat and they're going to drive your cholesterol up so they can be added to peanut butter yeah I'm not kidding check the label and it's peanuts with palm oil added is and coconut oil is added to lots of things and it's called natural and organic and everything else but it's loaded with saturated fat that'll get in the way so take eight weeks no animal products no coconut oil not coconut milk get that out same with palm oil then see how you do um and there are a few hidden other hidden sources of saturated fat I'm going to break your heart uh chocolate for example a lot of saturated fat when you're trying to really drive it down to see is this genetic or not set those things aside eight weeks is enough time to see uh you're just talking about peanut butter and that brings up a question from George Dr Barnard at 1217 wondering whether a small amount of organic no salt added peanut butter is okay as part of a healthy Whole Food plant-based diet sure let me take peanuts you grind them up you get peanut butter fair enough uh and peanuts really have very little saturated fat in them now that's the good part the negative part as as I was mentioning earlier that if you didn't make it the factory made it they may have well have added a whole bunch of stuff they will add sugar if it's the low fat varieties and they'll add palm oil if they want to make it sort of extra creamy so those are going to get in your way and you don't want to buy those at all the other thing is that nuts are really fatty so as I mentioned earlier they're going to get in the way if you're trying to lose weight and they might interfere a little bit with hormonal issues you've heard me talk about how getting away from fatty foods is really important for young women dealing with menstrual pain or women dealing with menopausal symptoms cutting down on fat is part of the solution there too same for diabetes getting away from fat helps bring our blood sugar control it's a better to a better range and we had another exam room wondering about powdered peanut butter pb2 and whether that kind of may fall under the same guys of everything it was you were just talking about no pb2 is fine uh and by the way you may not see it in the peanut butter aisle it might be over in the baking aisle that what they've done is they've taken peanuts extracted the fat and it's a powder and you can reconstitute it with a little water in it you can spread it on bread or you can use it in the muffins you're making or whatever so no pb2 is and there's a couple of competing Brands perfectly fine I have never tried that I might try that now the PBS that's a cool thing yeah pv2 and there's a couple other brands too uh look over in the baking aisle you'll see the sequel to peanut butter pb2 uh all right uh talking about peanut butter which I loved and now let's talk about Taco Bell which I really loved back in the day but this question is for you again dab at 12 12. full of questions today what are Dr Barnard's thoughts on plant-based Taco Bell is it okay to have a fast food bean burrito every day and I'm gonna underscore every day there doc okay all right well first of all there are quite a number of things over at Taco Bell and at every other taco place that you never want to touch and you know exactly what I'm talking about before they put meat in there they put cheese in there they put all these things in there that are just calorie bombs and cholesterol bombs you want to get away from them okay so you're already with me on that so let's say you take the bean burrito hold the cheese what is it it's a tortilla with some beans inside and you can have lettuce and tomatoes and all those things are fine so I wouldn't worry about those things the only kind of negative is when the beans are made it's not just beans they very often add some oils to it and that's going to get in the way a little bit so the bean burrito by far the best choice than anything else but to the extent the oils are added that's going to reduce the advantage that you're going to have and and with almost all of the taco places they have a bean burrito that you can treat in that way best thing on the menu but not quite as good as making your own at home all right uh I I there's another study I want to ask you about here in just a second about high blood pressure and alcohol that's breaking it kind of ties right into what it is we've been talking about today here for heart health but before we do I'm going to go back to coconuts we were talking about coconut oil and wanting to avoid that over the course of recent shows may have even come up a little bit earlier today but me Q at 12 16 has a question about coconut milk Dr Barnard wondering whether coconut milk extracted from coconut meat also should be avoided entirely is that the same in your opinion as coconut oil yeah I would I would avoid it um go into what used to be called the dairy Isle where they have not just dairy milk but they'll have soy milk rice milk oat milk almond milk and coconut milk turn the cartons around and look at the total fat content and then look at here's your magic number look at how much of that total fat is saturated fat saturated fat is the bad fat that's the one that raises your cholesterol that's the one linked to alzheimer's disease and what you'll see is that in the soy milk or the oat milk or the almond milk there are traces of fat very little saturated fat the coconut oil is virtually all saturated fat so coconut oil great for uh you know shining your shoes waxing your hair I wouldn't eat it at all so the coconut oil is bad but the coconut milk has the coconut oil in it and that's the problem it does I mean it really does work well for shining your shoes not only will they have that high shine they will never smell better I'm telling you they have that tropical Vibe um let's oh boy that's just funny um let's uh move on here and talk about this other study uh one that looked at close to 20 000 people and the effect that alcohol has on hypertension and now you might think that having a drink at the end of the day to unwind alleviate a lot of that stress would actually lower your blood pressure but what this study found Dr Barnard was quite the opposite and that alcohol is almost a Surefire way to get your blood pressure raised up a little bit this is a really good study it was published by the American Heart Association in its Journal hypertension and what they did is they looked at a variety of populations Asian populations North American populations that demand they looked at women they looked at people who had no alcohol in their diet people who would have you know a drink every couple days a drink every day two three four and they're all right on up and what they found was very clear very predictable really linear meaning that if you the more alcohol you have the more your blood pressure is going to rise over time now so the bad news is that if you like to unwind with a drink it's going to raise your blood pressure over time the good news is that it didn't uh well I don't know if this is good it affected different populations differently so if you're a woman from North America the effect for you was a little bit less than a man from North America if you're in an Asian country for some reason the risk was a little higher there are some genetic differences in how the alcohol byproducts are processed in people of Asian Heritage compared to people of uh European Heritage for folks from Asia they often have a little bit more difficulty getting rid of the alcohol breakdown products so bottom line the effect wasn't huge but the effect was clearly predictable that you could see the person who's having alcohol is part of their routine you look at them down the road and they've got maybe an extra five six seven points on their blood pressure compared to somebody else yeah I I want to take a closer look at the study and I'm wondering like if it's all forms of alcohol had kind of the equal effect um you know whether it was beer Spirits wine whatever the case may be I wonder if that had an equal impact I don't know if the researchers were able to look that closely at it do you know off the top of your head yeah great great question um it really is just the alcohol content so beer is more dilute compared to Spirits um wine is kind of between the two um so it has to do with the absolute amount of alcohol you're taking the more the more you take in the frankly the worse it is for your blood pressure but you know there's another piece of this Chuck in that and that's that we've all haven't we all kind of gotten mixed messages about alcohol alcohol might be good for the heart might reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease some evidence supports both of those statements but if it's beyond even a modest use then all those problems become much much higher and then the one that's gotten on all of our Radars in the past couple years is cancer risk which goes up starting with one drink a day breast cancer colon cancer pancreatic cancer and lots of others so so our party hats are are kind of coming off rather rapidly then that's certainly one way to put it and you're right it is majorly confusing it's enough to make your head spin with all of this conflicting information out there especially you know for years we were told a little bit of red wine great for the heart and that does not appear to be the case as evidence by this study um I want to take a second to give a shout out to flash Hawk who's watching right now on YouTube posted this at 12 17. this is great since I've been uh eating a vegan plant-based diet lost 30 pounds my blood pressure is down and my ldls are down as well that's awesome and that just you know it just goes to point to exactly everything we've been talking about here today it gotta make you feel good as a physician to know that what it is we're talking about on these shows Dr Barnard really is helping people out changing and as we said in the title of the show people are eating to save their life that's Big Time stuff it's it's yeah it's terrific to hear and thank you by the way for sharing that comment it's wonderful to hear and it's wonderful in one more way if you had achieved those results by taking some new set of medications that your doctor gave you fair enough um that can be helpful for some people but if you do it with a diet and lifestyle change the beauty of that is that something you can share you can share that with the rest of your family you can share with your kids if they grow up learning those things from the get-go they may never stumble into these problems in the first place you can't share with them your Lipitor prescription but you can share your new vegan casserole and your new vegan breakfast and those kinds of things so you can become a lifesaver too absolutely and Jen right now is trying to save her life and she is confused about all of this conflicting information that we've been talking about um she says she said this to me on Instagram at Chuck Carroll wlc she wrote in said I'm trying to lose 50 pounds and I know that a plant-based diet is the best way to do it I have a weight loss coach but she is not plant-based and she is very pro-protein she's big on egg she's big on chicken she's really big on turkey and my question Dr Barnard is how can I feel satiated like unfortunately I do feel after eating these higher protein foods while not eating more than the 1700 calories per day that my weight loss coach is recommending so say tiredy and plant-based diets how can Jen go about that and achieve her weight loss goals well you might want to start looking around for a new coach there are plenty of people out there who are experts in plant-based diets um our food for Life instructors and if you go to find a doctor on our or find a doctor website you'll see lots and lots of people who are eager to help you to do this the right way but let me share a couple numbers with you uh we we bring in people who might have a weight problem they want to lose a bunch of weight and we will put them on a diet that is totally plant-based with no calorie limit we're not going to say cut it down to 16 1700 we're not going to give them a number at all but the rules we're going to use and this is the key no animal products zero so no eggs no meat no checking nothing but also keep oily Foods really low that's important because all fats even plant fats have nine calories per gram you know that number um so when when that's gone when the animal products are gone and the oils are really really low we then measure how much people are eating they'll sit down to a meal they'll say wow I'm really full and then they'll have lunch and they'll have dinner and you you track until you track all of their calories in the course of the day they think they're eating the same amount but when you add it up it's two or three hundred calories a day less than before why is that because first of all everything you're eating is vegan everything you're eating is a plant that means it's got fiber fiber has almost no calories it fills you up really soon it fills you up before you've overdone it on calories number two you're eating starchy Foods hopefully don't don't be afraid of starchy Foods you know your bananas and baked potatoes and these kinds of things because when they fill you up they have very few calories starch has four calories in every gram less than half in fat that you find in fat so when you're eating high fiber naturally starchy foods without a lot of junk added to them what you discover is the weight loss becomes automatic you're going to hit your goal just let it happen and and don't push it you don't worry about how many calories you're consuming just low fat no animal products see what happens yeah and this is this is pretty interesting because we're talking about feeling full and Jen even just said that when she ate a lot of those foods that she did feel full those high protein foods that that meat I've seen that in advertisements recently I've had that in conversations in my personal life recently people saying that protein is what makes you feel full and they're neglecting fiber I'm curious have there been any like head-to-head studies that test satiety first uh for high fiber foods versus the high protein meat low fiber foods yeah great question all of these things will cause satiety I mean a stick of butter will cause satiety all of these things do I mean they do fats cause satiety so do protein soda carbohydrates the question is when you hit your satiety Point stop how many calories did it take you to get there so if you're gonna If You're Gonna Fill yourself up with high fat foods that's I mean that's the worst because they've gotten as I said nine calories in every gram by the time you're full you have had a lot of calories um with protein and now it's hard to tease out the protein from the fat because that egg has the yolk in it or the the cheese has some protein but a lot of fat so they're often mixtures but by the time you filled yourself up you've gotten a lot too many calories that's why the that's why people who follow vegan diets are the slimmest of any diet uh uh basically any population group um compared with Fish Eaters semi-vegetarians omnivores whatever the people who never have animal products and keep oils low that's really the way that they get there because they're getting filled up on things that don't have a lot of calories um starchy foods and especially the high fiber foods all right let's grab a couple of more here and then we've got some exciting announcements to talk about um number one Tanya wants to know she sent this to me on Instagram how can I raise my good cholesterol and actually let me jump in there and kind of Steal This one and ask you how would a person know if they need to increase their good cholesterol at all okay I'm gonna break your heart I'm going to say don't bother um and it's okay let's go back a couple of decades researchers discovered a while ago that out of your total cholesterol the LDL cholesterol is bad the higher that is the higher your risk of a heart attack the HDL cholesterol high density lipoprotein HDL cholesterol was the good cholesterol because people who had higher HDL were less likely to have heart disease swell so we all started thinking well what's the difference and it turned out to be partly genetic that some people just had a high cholesterol and then the drug companies came in and said let's come up with something that'll raise your HDL and they did they found ways to raise HDL and you know what happened nothing if you take a drug to lower your bad cholesterol it's going to reduce your risk of a heart attack great but if you take a drug to raise your HDL nothing happens it does not help you with regard to cutting your long-term risk of heart disease so you if you get a blood test that shows your HDL is one number or another if it's naturally High that's good it does it turns out that it is largely androgenetic control and some people have a lot of good cholesterol and they tend to do well but boosting that level does not help people at all that high HDL level is just associated with other factors that do seem to protect the heart so uh there's nothing there's no real reason to raise the raise HDL and it's not going to help if you want to try High foods high in vitamin C will have a little bit of an effect exercise will have a little bit of an effect not very huge but bottom line focus on your LDL keep that down that's where the money's at and Jessica rice gets the honor of having the last question at 12 26. this sounds like a conversation probably a lot of people watching and listening right now have also had Jessica wants to know is there anyone who should not go on a whole food plant-based diet because she says I have a friend who said they couldn't due to a health condition but wouldn't say what it was really not um for all practical purposes every everybody at every stage of Life can do this so the baby who is breastfeeding when you start introducing solid foods those foods should be plant based vegan vegan foods that child never needs spam let me tell you they don't need animal products they don't need eggs that don't need eggs or any of these things for growing children they do their very best on a plant-based diet these are the ones who grow normally and grow healthfully without so much risk of gaining weight or having a high cholesterol high blood sugar high blood pressure that we're starting to see in teens nowadays in older age we see that the people on the plant-based diets are the most likely to live longer and to be free of the chronic diseases that haunt them during pregnancy and during breastfeeding these are all times where a plant-based diet is great and there's really no common health condition at all that is in any way a contradiction or a contraindication for this kind of diet so have at it and you know I feel like we've learned a lot today raised our health IQs a ton but there's so much more that we could still learn and that's why I'm really excited for the International Conference on nutrition and medicine that begins August 10th in Washington D.C uh what else are we going to learn at the conference that can really continue our conversation today oh I have to say it's going to be our best conference ever uh we're going to start out on on Thursday uh August the 10th and we're going to focus on protein uh the whole new view of protein which is not just are you getting enough because you are but it's could animal protein actually have a Toxic effect that increases mortality so you're going to hear about all of that um and then in the afternoon we're going to look at Foods in the brain this is Thursday afternoon August 10th we'll look at Foods in the brain Dr Dean ornish will be with us and other great researchers who have been leading the way there then on Friday we're looking at the new data on Diabetes we're going to talk about how to integrate nutrition into clinical practice we're having a huge panel on breast cancer prevention run by Dr Christie Funk with new information people have never heard about new ways to reduce breast cancer risk so there's a whole lot more the whole thing's being kicked off by Senator Corey Booker thank you Senator Booker and also the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine Eric Rubin is also giving the welcoming remark so this is going to be a big thing and we're really excited for it to begin no it's going to be such a great Conference of course you just mentioned uh Senator Booker but you know bookending that closing out the conference Dr Michael Greger also speaking will be Dr Dean ornish Dr Andrew Freeman who is a recent guest here on the show going to be talking about all kinds of research that we've learned just this year alone the year in plant-based diets for 2023 and mind you we are only in August as we do this show so Andrew Friedman is just a phenomenal physician who does a bang-up job with the presentations Dr Gemma Newman also going to be there Dr David Katz who's going to be on the next episode of the exam room he's going to be speaking as well Brenda Davis up from Canada I mean just it really is a who's who in the nutrition world and I get so excited for this conference every single year and um and if the speakers list isn't enough to draw you in Dr Barnard let's talk about the food because man every year I say there's no way it can get any better and yet somehow we managed to do it including this year because I've seen a sneak peek at the menu and OMG my friend well you know it's always terrific it's always the best food at any conference but but this year uh we're having it's going to be a little bit special because not only are we featuring Universal meals and Dustin Harter is there he's been overseeing what the chefs are making and it's just really really cool um we have a whole room you can taste at all these different food stations but the experts from the New York City Health and Hospital program this is the one that's been just an incredible breakthrough program uh under the leadership of Mayor Eric Adams and it's just been changing things everywhere their executive chef is coming down the leaders of that program are coming down they're talking about how they have just revolutionized hospital food and once they're done talking we start eating uh the executive chef has been there working with the chefs there to make sure that they are going to feature the foods that you can then bring home with you and and put into your own Hospital your own School your own business or your own kitchen oh right so pcrm.org icnm to reserve your seat today and then also uh not too terribly long after the conference closes the very next month uh you and your band carbon Works gonna be at a big event at the narrow Cinema in my hometown of Norfolk Virginia on September 20th what can people expect that night yeah this is going to really be fun it's kind of a hybrid of things we're going to get started around seven o'clock and the narrow Cinema is this age it's almost a century old right down there on Colley Avenue in middle of Norfolk uh big place we're going to start out talking about health we'll talk about the very same issues that we're talking about now and I'll be answering your questions I'll be there and it's going to be a blast and then we're going to turn down the lights and now we're going to focus on touching the heart with some music and the latest permanent Works videos uh we have lots of food lots of drinks and then after that we're going to have a live performance by the Harper quartet Allegra Havens and Jeff Phelps and everybody are going to be playing live so that's all to narrow and people can learn more about it at pcrm.org events look at you doing the plug right there with the website okay okay memorize that one Chuck I love it yeah pcrm.org events and yes uh the narrow is actually right across the street from my old Middle School Blair middle school and I remember taking field trips there as a student you know some 20 almost 30 wow I'm old 30 some odd years ago now and um it really is it's an iconic place and it's a fun place for a show like this so I really do hope that everybody in the Hampton Roads Thai border area can turn out for that one because it really will be just a phenomenal phenomenal night and then our colleague Ryan Merkley has been busy right now now up on the campus of Wayne State so let's go to him right now for an important message if we can today at Wayne State University in Detroit with other pcrm staff and supporters and we're here because over the last 30 years hundreds of dogs have suffered and died in Cruel useless heart failure experiments and we are here to deliver 100 000 petitions to the new University president and urge her to once and for all end these experiments but we need your help a generous donor has stepped forward and given a ten thousand dollar one day matching gift that means if you donate today your donation will be doubled even if you can't be here with us you can still support this important work please go to pcrm.org forward slash match or click the link in the video thank you so much pcrm.org slash match a hundred thousand signatures that is a lot a lot of support we have there Dr Barnard it it is we've been working hard on this campaign and they're really two good things that are going to come from this one is we're going to stop the cruel experiments on the dogs there that's great when that happens those dogs can breathe easy for a chain the other thing is that we're moving science toward ethical research you know here at the Physicians committee we do ethical research studies with people who want to to allow us to study them as they get as they regain their health that's the kind of research that we really need to invest in and I think that you know it's it's work like that that has really piqued the interest of so many of our supporters including the Gregory J Ryder memorial fund which is powering this episode of the exam room podcast because they do they support organizations just like the Physicians committee that carry on the love that Greg had for animals and they do it by promoting plant-based health and working to end animal abuse while also emphasizing programs that promote systemic change and also benefit everyone all people and you can visit them online right now the Gregory J rydermemorial fund online at gregoryriderfund.org that's Gregory writer spelled r-e-i-t-e-r-fund.org I encourage you to do that and check out all of the amazing work that Allison Mahoney and the crew over there are doing it really does go hand in hand with everything that we're doing right now at Wayne State with the exam room and all of our Ventures Dr Barnard all of these things are going in the same direction I have to say Greg had such a heart for animals Allison has carried that forward in a beautiful way and by supporting this kind of work what are we doing we're helping people to regain their health uh directly we're helping helping to support research that's done the right way we're providing the dietary changes that help the planet to breathe a little bit easier and all the animals that we share it with too we have covered so much ground here today so thank you Allison and the writer fund for helping to make that possible and Dr Barnard thank you for being here breaking down that big meta-analysis with the exciting results here for vegan vegetarian diets and the risk of heart disease again for people who are at very high risk of having it or who already have it that to me is the big takeaway today is that it's never too late you absolutely can take charge of your health wouldn't you say that's exactly right that's something that we learned from Dean ornish's research has been confirmed ever since time is not a not a Criterion here whatever age you are Now's the Time to start age is no barrier to progress there it is let's end it right there Dr Bronner I appreciate your time my friend thank you Chuck all right and thank you to the crew behind the scenes for making the magic happen and to the exam roomies thank you for all of your wonderful questions and raising your health IQs with us here today and if you liked the video you do feel like you raise your health IQ by a point or two be sure to like it and subscribe right here on YouTube and on Facebook and for everybody 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: 23,338

Keywords:

Id: rW7CAJpaH80

Length: 48min 51sec (2931 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023