What Foods Lower Blood Pressure Naturally? | Dr. Neal Barnard Live Q&A

welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the physicians committee hello i am the weight loss champion chuck carroll thank you so very much for raising your health iq with us in more than 130 countries around the world making the exam room one of the most downloaded podcasts anywhere today so thank you so very much for making the world a healthier place with us we are starting today with a look at blood pressure and the foods that can help to lower it naturally which foods are they we're going to find out in just a moment when we are joined by dr neil barnard he is here but before we get to that there are a couple of points that i want to make about hypertension and number one is that it affects nearly a uh nearly half of all adults in the u in the u.s i mean because of that because it is so prevalent and so common is it kind of going overlooked is it is it not getting the treatment that it deserves because it's kind of the norm well consider this high blood pressure was a factor in at least a half a million deaths in 2019 and the price tag that comes with it is something that would give anybody sticker shock costing the us 131 billion dollars 131 billion dollars every year according to the cdc so we will be talking about high blood pressure getting some help for that momentarily but it is wednesday it is the live show and that also means we're opening up the doctor's mailbag to answer your questions so whatever is on your mind related to health and nutrition we would love to help get you an answer go ahead and drop your question in the comment or in the chat you can also send it to me on twitter or instagram i am at chuck carroll wlc i promise you we will get to as many as we possibly can on the show today but let's go ahead and kick things off right now by welcoming dr neil barnard back to the exam room live my friend so good to see you again good to see you chuck high blood pressure when i was looking it up for today's show i was stunned to hear that nearly half of all adults in the u.s have it what is the current criteria the clinical criteria for high blood pressure yeah but by the way back to where you were starting about why this is such a terrible thing so that's why it's so uh so expensive it's not really that people have to go and buy blood pressure pills that's a big part of it they are pricey and often you're on two pills or three um but the the thing about it is it affects your heart and it affects your kidneys it affects other parts of your health so all the health costs that you need to treat all those things those are all adding up into that astronomical figure it's not just the blood pressure itself but the criteria that we want to aim for is 120 over 80. that's a good one and it's been around for a long time and there have been mild adjustments here and there to it but that's still a good number and what that number means is that the doctor nurse medical technician or yourself you put the cuff around your arm and the blood pressure will go up to 120 and down to 80 with each heartbeat when your heart is contracting goes up to 120 when it's relaxing goes down to 80. that's systolic diastolic systolic diastolic 120 down to 80. if you are higher than that with either one of those measurements we're going to say that's higher and we higher than it should be and we want to bring it down um a lot of people say well gee you know i changed my diet i'm way below that i'm now 100 over over 65 or something like that is that dangerous um the answer is if you're a healthy person no blood lower blood pressure is a good thing is good place to be all right well let's go ahead and see if we can't bring that blood pressure down our first question comes to us from tessie who was wondering what are the best foods to lower high blood pressure ah great question so what can we do about it there there are really a couple of different strategies that we're aiming for when we're picking foods um the first one you already know about we want to get away from high sodium foods and get toward high potassium foods sodium brings blood pressure up potassium brings it down we also want to get away from high fat foods and go toward low fat foods fat brings blood pressure up too because it makes the blood thicker more viscous harder to move and that raises blood pressure and the final thing third thing is foods that help you lose weight so low fat vegan high fiber foods those all help so what specifically are we thinking about all right i want to have a food that doesn't have a lot of fat doesn't have a lot of sodium has a lot of potassium vegetables fruits whole range they're going to be your very best friends along with them are the bean group and the whole grain group what are the worst okay the the three worst foods are cheese cheese and cheese the reason i'm saying that is that the cheese it's really high in saturated fat it's got sodium too yeah hold on to your blood pressure um if i have potato chips two ounces of potato chips 330 milligrams of sodium in that back if i have some cheddar it's got more sodium yes it has more sodium than potato chips uh 350 if it's velveeta it's 800 milligrams of sodium in two ounces so get away from the cheese get away from the meats in general so vegetables fruits whole grains beans get away from the animal products uh oh by the way one other thing coconut oil palm oil have been marketed a lot throw them out shine your shoes with them don't eat them you know you mentioned potato chips uh just a minute ago i'm glad that you did because we have a question from sabrina potato chips absolutely a vegan food and if you spend any time in the grocery store recently you've noticed that there are more and more vegan options on store shelves but sabrina is wondering can those processed vegan foods like the ones you find in the frozen food aisle also raise blood pressure they can if you did one of the things that we were talking about added a whole bunch of sodium or added a lot of bad fats those are the two ways to ruin it now processing itself gets a bad name but it's not such a terrible thing if you take a grain of wheat grind it up into flour and you make spaghetti out of it that's fine um as long as you're not putting something bad bad on top of your spaghetti that's a perfectly fine food even though it's processed where we run into trouble is when people start adding a lot of sodium and a lot of fatty foods especially the coconut and palm oil that's when you really run into trouble let's take a question from andre this is a really good one and i think it's something that a lot of people do immediately when they're told that they have blood high blood pressure it's the first thing that they do andre is wondering is cutting out table salt enough to lower blood pressure um it's a good idea uh as a general rule but but the amount that you if you added up the salt that ends up in you the amount that came from your salt shaker is almost insignificant the the big driver is the salt that was in the food first so this is where cheese is a real baddie um as for the reasons that i mentioned it's it's integral to the production of cheese products but then it's the cheese that was added at the factory as it was being as the product was being processed for example green beans very low in sodium when they're grown and that's true of almost all plant foods very low sodium but when they put them in the can the manufacturers realize you'll buy it and you'll like it more if i throw in a whole bunch of salt it's not in the green beans naturally they they just added it so that's really the issue and that's more important than the sodium you add at the table so what does this mean a lot of restaurants that are trying to have healthier foods or people who are doing this at home have come to the conclusion that when you're at the recipe stage keep the sodium really low and then allow a person to have a salt shaker so they can put a little bit of salt right like on the surface of the food and so they're adding a bit their tastes think it's okay but the amount that was actually kind of baked in so to speak is really quite small all right let's pivot right now we're going to come back to blood pressure in just a moment but let's pivot and take an important question from oliver this is top of mind with a lot of people right now oliver wrote in wondering will a healthy diet help reduce the dangers of the omicron variant ah a hugely important thing obviously um quick caveat we're all learning from this virus we already know that it's transmissible it's moving frankly from day to day we are watching the movement of this virus and to say a couple obvious things it's here it's showing as we've always been talking about since the beginning of the pandemic that viruses are working to find new hosts omicron like every other coronavirus cannot exist outside of an animal's body so that's why when it's sneezed out from somebody it's going to somebody else and it's got to get there to survive and when it goes to a new person it's got a new immune system to try to negotiate with and that's where the the virus mutates um so as viruses transmit from one person to another they change so omicron is really different delta was different from the uh coronaviruses we were dealing with at the beginning of of 2020 2021 delta was different but not hugely different meaning the spike proteins on the surface of the virus which is the target of the vaccine uh or the vaccine primes your immune system to target that that wasn't really hugely different so the delta variant um can be reduced by the vaccine just like the um uh just like the the variants that preceded it so what about omicron with omicron it looks who knows uh we're gonna a lot more in about six weeks than we don't know um but it looks like there is some potential for changing those proteins if that's the case that could cause the vaccines to work less effectively and we've learned that foods do indeed make a difference for uh the coronaviruses up into omicron so now the question and i think this is what you're getting at oliver um could food still work against um against the omicron and the the tentative answer is i think they will here's what we know uh there was a big study called the covid symptoms study you've probably heard me talk about this as soon as the pandemic began uh more than 500 000 people voluntarily tracked their symptoms and of these about thirty thousand developed covid and so then people looked at foods that helped them foods that that that made uh infections worse and that's where some of the data came in showing if were on a more or less plant-based diet your risk of severe covet was cut by a good 40 so okay great chalk one up for plant-based diet and then there was another similar study looking at six different countries showing same thing plant-based diets really reduce the risk especially of severe covet um so and forgive me for this long answer chuck um somebody comes in they got omicron they change their they've been on a plant-based diet are they going to be less likely to have severe illness you're i i don't believe that changes in the spike proteins are going to have any i don't think that's going to be a problem with regard to the efficacy of the diet because what's the diet do the diet facilitates your immune strength you're creating antibodies to a virus whether you've been vaccinated or not if you've been vaccinated you're primed if you've if if you haven't yet been exposed to it then you can't produce antibodies until you get the initial exposure you also have white blood cells that are there to engulf invaders it looks like people on plant-based diets have stronger antibody responses and stronger white blood cell responses and that will probably hold true regardless of the variant that does not mean that you are bulletproof if you are vegan nor does it mean that you should not get vaccinated or anything like that doesn't mean anything like that what it means is that when the virus comes calling if you've been on a healthy plant-based diet particularly if it has helped you to keep a low body weight low cholesterol and low blood pressure you have a strong measure of added protection against viruses based on the best data we have that includes the variants up until now and will very likely include omicron yeah and let's not forget the study that was recently conducted by our colleague dr hanakali over i believe you were involved in this as well at sibley hospital in washington dc that tracked the benefits of a plant-based diet among hospital workers throughout the pandemic and that showed some very positive results in terms of their health despite the fact that there is this pandemic that was raging around them at times it's good that you mentioned that chuck because one of the things that we see is during the pandemic everybody was under stress and the question was is stress gonna affect your immune system and you'd have to think it would um and if there's anybody under maximal stress during the pandemic it's the hospital workers and yes dr caliova her team and i was pleased to be part of this brought to sibley memorial hospital here in dc to the hospital workers themselves a healthy plant-based diet and just just once a week support and following it and exactly what you would hope happened happened which is people lost weight their cholesterols came down but physically they were healthier but then we looked at just quality of life how could you have any quality of life during a pandemic when you're a hospital worker the answer is their quality of life improved and they were able to give better care to their patients and dr kaliova will be joining us here on the program in the very near future she and i are going to be getting in depth about the study which was just absolutely fascinating um i can't wait to share those particular results with everybody i think that it's going to be great um and i also want to take a second dr barnard to say hi to everybody who's joining us today the exam roomies in the chat room they're active as always mommy vegan knew me that's a that's a fun name uh salad strong soprano i'm assuming that you are a singer mike jones is here tofu tuesday as always joining us on a wednesday riri eats what i don't know what riri eats but i am glad that they are here and our friend richard hubbard also in the chat room at 1208 today richard has a question wondering uh going back to blood pressure that we were talking about at the top of the show richard is wondering when is the best time of day to check your blood pressure does that matter um uh the time of day doesn't matter so much as what you were doing immediately before here's the scenario that'll happen you go to the doctor's office you're struggling to get there on time you're racing through traffic you have to find a parking spot you run up the stairs you go in they ask you for an insurance card you couldn't find it you're frustrated and annoyed then they want to take your blood pressure and of course it's like way much higher than it would would have been um had you had a chance to relax so in our research studies we have a rule uh the patient comes in sit them down let them sit for at least five minutes in a room that's quiet don't read anything don't read the stock market don't tell jokes don't laugh don't do it just chill out and what you will see is if you take their blood pressure every say minute or two minutes it goes down down down down down and the blood pressure reading that matters is the one that is is at the bottom where your blood pressure has stabled out and the stresses of the day are gone so whether it's daytime middle of the day uh nighttime what really matters is that you have been quiet beforehand so with that in mind a lot of people do it before they get out of bed in the morning that's fine uh but the key is just be quiet for 5-10 minutes before you before you take it let's take a question from rahm at 12 12 can high blood pressure be reversed or do you have it for good once you have it can definitely be improved um absolutely if you have high blood pressure do see your doctor you do want to take it seriously and if diet and lifestyle don't change it you need to think about medicines because high blood pressure can kill you that said even if you're on medicines you want to do the diet steps we've talked about eliminate animal products keep high sodium foods low and high fat foods low because as i said before the fat increases the thickness the viscosity of the blood you get that out of there your blood is thinner it can flow more easily you don't need so much blood pressure and what you'll see is two things if you make these changes now it's wednesday your blood pressure will start to descend over within the next couple of weeks your blood pressure is going to come down the dash study showed us that you could see a decisive drop in blood pressure within 14 days however let's say you're losing weight and you lose a little bit of weight this week next week the next week and maybe over the next six eight 12 months you're continuing to lose weight because of your healthy vegan diet that weight loss adds to the blood pressure lowering effect over the long run so absolutely blood pressure changes there are some people where it's a little more resistant to change than others but the vast majority of people will benefit from it we have a couple of people right now dr barnard in the chat room who are wondering whether a change in their diet can result in having blood pressure that is then too low and what could be done about that have you heard of something like that happening um well it depends on who's interpreting too low um if the person taking your blood pressure says gee my blood pressure's never been that low um if that person were to follow a healthy vegan diet their blood pressure would come down too um no the short answer is if you got there through diet it's not going to be a problem uh you mentioned getting coconut oil out of the diet eleanor 1212 is wondering what about coconut milk look at the fat content um on the back of the carton and compared to the almond milk and the rice milk and the others but you'll typically and focus especially on saturated fat if that number is zero that's my favorite number so you'll have have a look and you'll see uh mommy vegan nummy okay there it is the fun name uh 12 12. boy they're chatty at 12 12 today uh wondering whether alcohol can raise blood pressure yeah it can um modest alcohol consumption modest you know a drink every couple days no big deal uh when people make it a big part of their life it can be a problem yes and sirius 125 is it a good idea to cook without any salt to avoid hypertension so again we talked about getting it off of the table but what about the cooking altogether yeah i think it's a good idea i would not add it in cooking if you're going to add it add it to the table by the way for extra credit if you add salt at the table which i think is okay um simply because the amount that goes in you know it's on the surface of the food it really becomes very very it's very very small um if you're adding salt i'm going to say a totally unfashionable thing instead of sea salt himalayan salt kosher salt just get some iodized salt now you can get iodized himalayan salt but that iodine is good for your thyroid and salt happens to be one of the very few sources that people kind of reliably access so that i assume then that would take you know like the himalayan pink sea salt off of the table like that wouldn't be a good option because odds are that one has not been iodized it's not iodized unless it says so on the label but but they're wisely up to this because they they they're reading the same things that you and i are reading they realize that a lot of folks are are starting to not get the iodine they need because ordinary salt has been replaced by these non-iodized sources so it's good to have iodized salt let's hop back to uh talking about giving the immune system a boost that came up while you were talking about omicron a moment ago again mommy vegan nummy uh 12 15 this time wondering whether there are fruits or vegetables that will make our immune system smart so are there any that perhaps are more beneficial than others researchers have been checking the effects of various foods uh probably the the two biggies that were have been in the headlines a lot are vitamin c rich foods you know which ones they are the famous are the citrus fruits the ones that are more modest and don't want to brag are things like broccoli and other vegetables that do have vitamin c too but it tends not to be used so much in their marketing and may not be quite as vigorous as in some let's say the citrus fruits does vitamin c help against viruses probably um the data are all over the place but for ever since linus pauling won his two nobel prizes people have taken vitamin c really seriously it does seem to help regarding coronaviruses i don't think we've got the data to show that it's applicable there but generally speaking it does seem to be useful the other big area is garlic and garlic has been shown to have some what appears to be an anti-viral effect what what i mean is you bring in volunteers half of them get placebo half of them get a garlic extract and you show that the people getting the garlic have a lot fewer viral colds for example i mean measurably more i do think that we have to take this with a grain of salt too and that's because some of these studies are are funded by the people who are making garlic extracts but the data does seem to favor that too anecdotal here but worth mentioning nonetheless from randy carroll no relation uh randy writes in the chat i caught covid wow with my daughter and son-in-law she says i'm totally plant-based while my daughter is mostly but my son-in-law is not she says i fared much better than both and i'm 30 years older so that kind of goes back to what it was we were talking about with the sibley study and everything you were talking about as far as how a diet can help with those comorbidities that lowers the risk of having one of those severe covet infections you know chuck i'm really glad that you shared that comment because so many people have the idea that we'll never be as healthy as our our children um you've got let's say you're 50 and you've got kids who are 20 25 and so forth and they're strong and vigorous and so forth but what you discover is that the idea that 50s and 60s were that meant you were old a lot of that really just meant that you had been kind of beaten up by your diet and lifestyle more than somebody younger had been and so when people are on a healthy plant-based diet you're not going to live forever but you should be vigorous and strong in your 50s and your 60s and beyond this is not the end of life and if you're feeling sluggish if you gain some unwanted weight and so forth it's not the calendar that did that it's the foods and when you change to a healthier diet uh yes you can you can be as healthy and vigorous as your kids would you believe that a couple of weeks ago when i was in vancouver speaking at the planted expo a woman came up to me she said uh and she was by the way in her late 70s early 80s she said i went vegan after seeing a video dr barnard that you and i had done one of these q and a's and she said she has never felt better in her life she feels like she regained her health and she was just gushing and i was just blown away that here is somebody's grandmother who is literally out running her grandchildren at this point and feeling fit as a fiddle so it goes to show just as you said it is never too late to improve your health exactly right yeah uh let's go ahead now and switch gears i want to take a follow-up question to a conversation that i was having with dr vinita rahman last week uh the title of that show is what happens when we stuff ourselves silly uh so smart is so sparkling here brodin wanting to know how does stuffing yourself silly affect the heart we're talking about heart attacks does it overtax other organs like the pancreas or the liver so what are the dangers of gorging yes it sounds like last week must have been thanksgiving doesn't it and it was uh yes gorging yourself don't do this at home don't do this anywhere um if you're wondering if it's bad for you yes it certainly is the obvious thing is that we see it on the scale of course you're gorging means you're eating more than your body really wanted and so you're forcing it in and you will gain weight and this is the time of year when people do it the days are getting shorter it's darker it's colder so our inner squirrel comes out and says winter's coming i better bury a bunch of nuts and stuff my cheeks and eat as much as i can to get ready for winter and and uh we do and it's not just the parties we seek out food this time of year and your average american gains a pound or two this time of year don't do that but it's not just your weight when when those maladjusted people who gavage ducks and geese to make foie gras foie gras means fatty liver and it means it's a diseased liver and what they're doing is they're over feeding birds intentionally now don't ask me what kind of sadistic person would do such a thing or who would order it on the menu but it does cause liver disease it causes fatty liver because you've got way too many calories then you can expend your liver gets fatty it doesn't stop with the litter with the liver you'll see a fat building up around the heart you're onto other organs and it will do your damage so um eating the amount that you need leaving it at that that's that's what your body's really hoping that you'll do uh follow-up question to the fats that we were talking about in the diet terry at 12 22 saying when you say fats dr barnard does that include things like avocado and nuts well avocados nuts these are natural foods and they they are very different from the other plant foods in that they are naturally pretty high in fat um and so the question is it a problem the type of fat in avocados and most nuts is is certainly better than chicken fat than beef fat better because it's lower in the saturated fat part that will raise cholesterol and is probably linked to alzheimer's disease however keep in mind what nature did nature made nuts and did not put them in little plastic packs and put them on the rack at the 7-eleven for you to tear open and binge on nature actually packed each nut individually in a shell that takes a lot of time to open up and so given what nature had in mind you're really not going to eat huge numbers of them so where we run into trouble is having these be sort of a whole food group when when that really wasn't something that nature intended where i really think it matters if a person wants to lose weight getting away from nuts and guacamole is a really good idea we've talked about improving diabetes the key to diabetes is getting the fat out of your cells that means getting it out of the diet too for women with hormonal issues menstrual pain menopausal symptoms their getting away from fat seems to help for reasons that are not entirely clear so yeah i would be cautious about these fatty foods and let's take a question here from nicole you mentioned viscosity and as long as we're talking about nuts nicole is wondering for trivia bonus points can nuts increase blood viscosity yeah they can um your your um your blood is is based in water and your blood cells your red blood cells and white blood cells and platelets and things are all in this watery mix and so what if i have a really fatty food some of that fat ends up in your bloodstream and it ends up there pretty fast and so imagine if you're sort of uh whisking grease into a soup or something that's that's based on water will it get thicker yeah sure well yeah so any fatty food will do that uh let's take a boy we got a lot still on uh high blood pressure today uh emily at 12 23 can high blood pressure be a genetic trait along with high cholesterol yes they can um there are people who have high blood pressure they get they inherited it um in the past it was sort of dismissed as being 100 genetic and nothing you could do will change it you don't really know that until you try so take two three months be totally vegan during this time no animal products if you do that you'll be avoiding the fat that's in the animal products and whatever sodium they contributed keep oils low and then check how your blood pressure is doing if it has absolutely not budged then you can blame the genes but for most people it will start coming down i want to take a very important question here from comma at 12 23 writes that they've lost 35 pounds and saw a significant blood pressure drop after adopting a whole food plant-based diet but dr barnard comma also says that uh they're trying to wean off of medication because they're getting dizzy spills how quickly can they wean off of that medication oh my goodness thanks i'm so glad that you raised that question here's what'll happen you're on a vegan diet and you think this is a good thing and you you've been vegan for six weeks and you're sitting at the table reading a vegan cookbook you found the best recipes you link to your feet to go to the store to get the ingredients and just as you leap out of your chair the bill the room starts going dark because your blood pressure is dropping really fast here's what happened you're taking medicines for your blood pressure you're still on those medicines for your blood pressure they're really powerful and the diet that you're on is as strong as a medicine too so the combination has lowered your blood pressure too much and now you're getting woozy so the answer is a let your doctor know that you're making a diet change the doctor will start backing you off your medications and be if this happened to you now absolutely call your doctor don't throw your medicines away on your own but talk with your doctor and what your doctor is going to do is to reduce the doses or even just eliminate those medicines and so many people who are on two or three medicines for their blood pressure can either reduce them or get off them completely with a diet change um let's talk more about weight loss here we have a few people in the chat room who are concerned that maybe they're a little bit underweight right now they don't want to return to eating those high fat heavily processed foods that we were talking about avoiding a little bit earlier dr barnard so what advice could you give to somebody who feels like maybe they've lost too much weight they need to put just a few pounds back on but they want to do it in a healthy way okay great question first of all let's let's think is your weight a healthy weight or not um because today in 2021 um other people might say you're kind of thin but that's in comparison to the overall population of whom 60 are overweight so just because you're thin doesn't mean you're not healthy you might be the healthiest one around and it may just be by comparison but here's a way to tell go online and look up a bmi calculator that's body mass index you'll see them on the web bmi calculator plug in your weight plug in your height and if it's above 18 and a half that means you are not underweight if it's below 25 that means you're not overweight so you want to be between 18 and a half and 25. um where do those numbers come from um that's the range where you don't see body weight contributing to health issues overall now the truth i think is that the healthiest people are in kind of the lower end of that window uh 19 20 21 22 when your weight is getting above that towards 24 25 you start seeing the health problems maybe starting to think about coming in so if you're above 18 and a half you're not underweight i wouldn't worry about it if you want to increase your weight you can do it the healthiest way to do it is to simply make sure you're eating enough eating plenty of healthy foods secondly make sure you're exercising exercise preserves your muscle mass builds your muscle mass it puts the weight where you want it to be and the third strategy is that people have discovered that if they eat more oily foods they gain weight which we've been trying to avoid be careful if that's the strategy you use because what will often happen is that you will gain weight from eating fatty foods but it'll be all around your waistline and not in some place where you might want it is there a target amount of fat we should be getting in our diet every day what is the rda we have a few people wondering that right now yeah um the the the true physiological need for fat is tiny uh just a couple of percentage of your calories is really all the fat that your body physiologically requires the rest is there just for entertainment so if you are avoiding animal fats completely animal products and if you're cooking beans and grains and vegetables and fruits in unlimited quantities but you're not adding fat to them the fat percentage that you're going to end up with is going to be oh maybe around eight or ten percent fat as a percentage of your calories that's way below where americans are because fat is added to um the vegan pizza that you got at the store um foods and that kind of stuff in restaurant foods um so your average american is more than 30 of their calories are from fat getting that down to around 10 is fine but you don't need to count you just eat healthy plant-based foods and use non-oil cooking methods be careful about the nuts and seeds and guac and nature will take care of itself uh quick one tofu tuesday says uh she just took her blood pressure 105 over 60 gives the old thumbs up emoji great uh that's a good blood pressure you could probably sell that on ebay no doubt no doubt about it uh two more quick ones first one from maria can a lack of sleep increase blood pressure uh if you if just the lack of sleep alone no but what does the lack of sleep do if you wake up and you had a really groggy night first of all your stress level is going to be high in the course of the day and you know exactly what i'm talking about you're not yourself that that will raise your blood pressure a little bit and if it leads you to dietary indiscretions i gotta i need anything just to get through the day because i slept terrible yesterday then that in turn will affect your blood pressure too all right and the final question ricardo has been wondering this one for a couple of weeks this is a holdover so when i say that if we don't get to your question we'll do our best to get you an answer on an upcoming show i mean it this is from last week uh ricardo wondering uh how how much flax or chia seeds do i have to have uh to eat i should say in order to replace an omega-3 supplement oh wow okay this is for extra credit um first of all flax and the omega-3 supplement might be two different things a little bit flax oil or flax seeds and flax oil they have ala alpha linolenic acid that um if you want the technical explanation that's a molecule that has 18 carbons and ala alpha analytic acid it's in flax it's in chia it's in a lot of plant foods but it's concentrated in those but if i go to the store and i get an omega-3 supplement it is more likely going to be the 20 carbon and 22 carbon than the longer ones so what they'll say on the label is epa and dha and that's what they want to sell you so the amount that you're going to see in a typical epa dha supplement might be about a half of a gram something like that if you take say a tablespoon of flaxseed it'll be a good gram and a half of of ala but it's a slightly different form that your body then has to elongate so flax is okay it none of this really solves the big controversy though which is does adding uh adding omega-3s really work and we really don't know the answer to it the things that people are factoring in if people have really low levels of omega-3s in their blood it looks like they might be at a higher risk for getting alzheimer's disease however when people supplement with either things like flax or supplements we don't yet have any evidence that that really helps prevent alzheimer's disease although we'll change your blood tests pretty quickly you can see your omega-3 levels go up but the other issue is that studies started to show that men who supplement with omega-3s are people who run high levels omega-3 they got a substantially higher risk of prostate cancer and when this first came up we had no idea what to make of it we still don't and we thought it was a mistake but it came up in study after study after study so now we believe it and it has made us cautious about recommending pushing omega-3 too hard for men and if it can increase the risk of prostate cancer in men could it do something for women answer is we don't know we're going to be smarter in a couple years but that's where we are right now so what it means is have healthy plant-based foods in your diet we don't know if it's a good or a bad idea to be a recommending omega-3 supplementation yet if you do it go easy and i would suggest before jumping into a heavy supplementation program you can get tested companies like omega quant will send a little card you put a little drop of blood on it send it in they'll tell you if you're low and then if you supplement you'll see that it'll change but um be careful dr barnard we have covered a lot of ground today and the thing that i love about this show is that it does introduce people to the idea of eating a healthier diet perhaps for the very first time and that can seem like a daunting task like i'm never going to be able to eat the foods that i've been enjoying my entire life ever again and i'll only be able to eat salads but that is not the case as you well know dr barnard because as has been accurately pointed out in the chat room right now there is a recipe for a black bean brownie that will blow you away on our website pcrm.org recipes go there if you got a sweet tooth and you wear you're never going to be able to indulge in a treat again if you adopt a whole food plant-based diet not so pcrm.org recipes go there try the brownie let's talk about that next week and how good that brownie actually is have you tried that one dr barnard it is mind-numbingly good it is every bit as good as advertised absolutely absolutely this show hopefully also as good as advertised so if you feel like you raised your health iq by a point or two be sure to like this video and subscribe to our channel on youtube so that we can raise even more health iqs around the world and dr barnard also before we go today my friend i also want to say a huge thank you to the gregory j ryder memorial fund because their support of the exam room live and the physicians committee is making today's episode possible and the gregory j ryder memorial fund supports organizations just like ours that carry on greg's love for animals by promoting plant-based health and working to end animal abuse very very important so if you would like to learn more about the great work that they're doing check out their website right now it's gregoryriderfund.org that's gregoryrider r-e-i-t-e-r-fund.org while you're there you can sign up for their newsletter check out everything that they're currently working on and again we cannot thank them enough for their continued support of the exam room and the exam room live allison mahoney you are truly a saint thank you so very much for everything and dr barnard i know how much he means not just to this show but to the physicians committee as a whole exactly and to the to the cause that we're sharing we're trying to make this world healthier more compassionate more thoughtful allison has been at the forefront of that and and in greg's memory it's just wonderful to see so thank you so much for that can't think of a better way to wrap up the show than on that note so dr barnard want to say thank you to you one more time my friend and to the crew behind the scenes making the magic happen as always thank you all and to the exam roomies who are so inquisitive had so many great questions in the chat today thank you so very much for stuffing the doctor's mailbag and we will do it again next week for everyone here at the physicians committee i am the weight loss champion chuck carroll thanks so much for watching and remember as always keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

Views: 514,907

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Id: PNF-n4J1Rlw

Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021