Season 1 Episode 6 of Quiet the Diet Podcast with Michelle Shapiro, RD
The Healthy Fats Episode: High Cholesterol and Omega-3’s with J. Gulinello, MS, CNSc, FNTP
In this episode, Michelle explains how high cholesterol can sometimes be a healthy measure and what lab markers are even more important for a healthy heart. She sits down with J Gulinello, nutritional therapist and researchers, to settle the controversy of cholesterol, saturated fat, and omega-6/seed oils. They get deep into the history of the cholesterol-heart myth and all players involved. You’ll learn why serum cholesterol (measured in bloodwork) is not necessarily correlated with health and disease, and which factors are a better indicator of risk. They discuss:
- History of the cholesterol-heart disease theory and why it’s perpetuated in the medical community
- Blood cholesterol levels: Why they may not be the key marker of disease risk (and what to look at instead)
- Reasons we should not fear red meat and saturated fat from animal sources
- Mitochondrial dysfunction
- All about seed oils and omega-6 fats: What they are and why we should minimize them in the diet
- Tips for how to choose healthy fats in your diet
I know I don’t have to tell you this but this post is only for educational purposes. It is not nutrition or personalized medical advice. We want you to get the most from the episode but to keep that in mind as well and we really hope you enjoy it.
High Cholesterol and Omega-6 Fats with J. Gulinello, MS, CNSc, FNTP
Michelle Shapiro
Today’s episode of quiet the diet is going to debunk a lot of the myths we see around cholesterol around seed oils and health. And really this is the fats episode, I am bringing in a very special guest, Jay Gulinello, who has a master’s degree in clinical human nutrition. And as a functional nutrition therapy practitioner. I originally started following Jay on Instagram (@perpetualhealthco) and was totally enamored with his approach to research and his presentation of research. And I know you will get so much out of this episode. Jay has a not only a master’s degree in clinical human nutrition, but is really the master of presenting the cholesterol hypothesis. Does cholesterol really influence health and heart disease? Do we need to be consuming less of it? Do we need to consume more omega three fats or omega six fats and seed oils and vegetable oils actually bad for us. And he will present what research he believes and can prove is the correct answer in this discussion. So enjoy the episode and really looking forward to you listening.
Michelle Shapiro
Hi, Jay, I’m so happy you’re here.
J. Gulinello
Michelle, thank you so much for inviting me, we’re gonna have some fun. I’m
Michelle Shapiro
very, very excited. So I filmed a little introduction for you before, but I’m going to also open the floor for you to introduce yourself after I just say, I’m a huge fan of your work. I’m just a fan girl of your Instagram. And every time you post something, I’m like cheering and so truly honored and excited to have you here.
J. Gulinello
Well, I mean, that’s exactly why I do this not not to, you know, create a fan base but to, to to inspire people, you know, and I so I really, really appreciate that it’s a it’s a labor of love. I did it started a few years ago, at the advice of a co worker, she literally gave me one piece of advice, which was just post every day. And I was like, Yeah, I could do that. So that I can do Yeah, and so I actually did it to coincide with my entry to grad school. So I started it just a few months before I got into grad school. And I thought the idea would be really fun to take people along a journey of what it’s like to study nutrition on a graduate level, and what it’s like to study biochemistry and you know, and it’s sort of expanded into other areas. You know, it’s almost impossible, I’m sure as you know, to study nutrition without studying food, politics, and conflicts of interest and all kinds of fun things that have put us where we are today. So so it’s really just, you know, it’s been so much fun. So I originally started at the nutritional therapy Association, loved that stuff, developed a passion for it. And then I again, as I said, I went on to grad school to finish a master’s degree in clinical human nutrition. And then we’ll see what the future holds. But for right now it’s going to be some educating some touring and doing some speaking I’ll be speaking at Kido con this April. That’s awesome. So yeah, so lots of fun there and hosting retreats for people to come spend a weekend and actually have some immersion therapy so they’ll do classes, but they will also get some experience living the lifestyle of you know, maybe something that’s a little bit different for them and so that’s the whole idea. So I’m really happy that you enjoy it I hope a lot of other people enjoy it as well and again that’s that’s exactly why I do it. And just
Michelle Shapiro
for people who are new to you, which no one should be everyone has to follow Jay on Instagram, perpetual health co. I’m gonna put your link in the show notes, of course. But if I were to say what your brand is, you’re really good at debunking information you’re really good at interpreting heavy research and putting it together to make tangible solutions for people, I think you’re really, really, you really excel at that. And I think it’s a huge advantage to people because we’re getting research information from so many different areas. So for you who’s just so enjoying it also as like a hobby, you’re like, I can feel your energy between it behind every post. And then also, you’re really pulling it together for people in a digestible way. And I think that’s what’s so exciting about what you’re doing, and what I think our listeners will get the most value from to?
J. Gulinello
Well, again, I appreciate that that’s sort of the, you should see what I do on Friday nights. I mean, these are some of the things that I these are the things that I read, for fun, you know, I thought when I left school, that school was going to be left behind. And the truth is, it’s just sort of been a continuation because, you know, my background in undergrad was in the arts. So I never thought that I wouldn’t end up here, I always kind of joke that I was actually a very poor chemistry student in high school, because I wanted to be I wanted to be a rock star. So I didn’t really care about biochemistry and I. So I actually, I always make this joke because now I can that I actually, I got a D in chemistry in high school. And, and, and I cheated. I cheated was
Michelle Shapiro
the wrong kid, you cheat off the wrong person.
J. Gulinello
I know, apparently. But then you know, then it just goes to show you that no matter where you are in life later on some other path appears and I genuinely have a passion for this. I don’t know where it came from. Nobody in my family does this. It just happened. And I’m happy it did.
High dietary cholesterol intake is not the determining factor of serum (blood) levels
Michelle Shapiro
We’re also both huge rock and roll fans you much more than I because you’re also a talented musician. And I said that your approach to nutrition feels very rock and roll to me because it feels but there’s so much hard on it. But there’s also a layer of rebelliousness, which is going to bring us to our big topic today. It’s so funny that we’re sitting here talking about healthy cholesterol and Omega six fats and all these things that for you. And I feel pretty concrete. But in society, it feels like there’s huge debates about cholesterol and a lot of modern medicine doctors offices, people are still getting, you know, told from their doctors, hey, you need to lower your cholesterol to be healthy. This is a really important, you know, part of your health that getting put on statin medications. Can we talk about the status of cholesterol, where it’s been? What you think what you’ve researched? And we’re going to, on this very high level tell me where are we at with cholesterol right now in the scientific community.
J. Gulinello
So where we’re at right now, I do see a paradigm shifting, although, admittedly, as we all do, we all exist in our own little sphere. So the people I talk to are all aware of the fact that there’s a lot of conflicting research. And you know, the sir, I love the concept of the Black Swan, right that there can be a million pieces of evidence that support your hypothesis. But that one nagging little piece of evidence to the contrary is really all you need to disprove a hypothesis. If you’re being genuine, you’re being honest. So the Dietary Guidelines Committee in 2015 actually removed cholesterol as a nutrient of concern for health, which I don’t think people realize, they said, You don’t have to worry about consuming it, because they realize that dietary cholesterol doesn’t really make up a bulk of the serum cholesterol. It’s like an 8020 split between what the liver produces and what you actually intake dietarily. Now there are some people who do hyper respond to dietary cholesterol, I actually happen to be one of them. So when I alter my diet, I can change my lipids quite dramatically, which is actually one of the things that set me off on this course, this happened while I was under the care of a standard primary care physician who had years of labs on me. And one day I came in, and he said, It looks like I’m looking at the labs of an entirely different person, just from switching macronutrients around. And then he accused me of being on drugs, and I had to fire him. And so it was, it was a mess. But it’s a true story. But that actually gave me a passion for maybe that’s where the passion comes from. It’s sort of, I’m gonna say I’m going to prove him wrong. Now this guy knows way more than I do. I haven’t studied anything. But I’m going to start to dig into this. And that’s where I really started independent research, which led me to all the formal research, but in terms of cholesterol, you know, the history of cholesterol. I don’t know how much you want to get into that. But that’s fascinating the story behind it and how we ever even ended up in the place where we thought cholesterol and fat made us unhealthy in the first place. I do
The Diet-Heart Myth: A soap opera of high cholesterol and heart health
Michelle Shapiro
want to get into that story. And this is what I do on my podcast is I’m gonna always walk back what you say to make sure that it hit home for people. So this idea of cholesterol used to be and we’re going to talk about how it started being mad is that that’s very archaic view. You eat cholesterol, cholesterol go up and serum. Correct. And so we used to think all right, eat less cholesterol, cholesterol not go up in the body without taking into consideration that 80% of the cholesterol numbers that you see are actually a result of what your liver is doing and how your body is producing cholesterol. So that’s where that 8020 came in that Jay said so what the healthy functional nutrition approach to cholesterol should always have been is why is the liver doing that? Not? How do we lower cholesterol and also do even want to lower cholesterol to be healthy? That’s the other question. So it has been the hottest thing I’d say probably since like the 1970s. And you’re gonna give me a better timeline that high cholesterol equals heart disease is bad. Where did this come from?
J. Gulinello
So I really thought about how to encapsulate this story into digestible pieces, because it’s really it’s like a soap opera, it really, really create a soap opera around this, I mean, really, you know, egos, and backstabbing and all kinds of, you know, back deal route, you know, deals, you know, in back rooms with the American Heart Association and Procter and Gamble. And it’s amazing. People don’t realize, you know, how this kind of stuff penetrates mainstream media and how we end up with these ideas. But, but the bottom line is that in the early 1900s, heart disease was virtually unheard of unknown. In fact, the first recorded EMI in the medical literature was 1912. So this was extremely rare. And when that paper was published, other peers thought that this doctor was crazy. They said that this doesn’t happen, right? And you think about today, heart disease is the number one killer. There’s a quite quite a dramatic shift and only 100 years. So then you fast forward to the 1950s. And we have one of the most famous heart attacks of all time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States. Now, I’ve also put a little side note that his cholesterol level total cholesterol was 165, when he had this heart attack, which by all standards would be considered perfectly, perfectly healthy. Fantastic. So then we move on to a gentleman named Ancel Keys, who I think a lot of people know. He gets demonized, rightly so but he also actually did some really amazing work he just had, from what I’ve read, he had an ego and he wanted to be the Savior. And it also happens that Paul Dudley White, who was Eisenhower’s personal physician, was a fan of Ancel Keys work. That’s how he got dragged into this,
Michelle Shapiro
the popularity contest of the cholesterol heart hypothesis,
J. Gulinello
see what I mean about the soap opera? Exactly. So in 1953, keys presented this paper at Mount Sinai in New York, where he talked about the six countries and how the more fat they ate, the more heart disease they had. Now, this is not the famous seven Country Study. So I want to clarify this because this is where people get it wrong. And I think if we’re going to criticize we should accurately criticize, sure. So so he presented this paper, the other people at the conference kind of didn’t pay it much mine. And in fact, two other doctors, I can’t remember their names. Healbot was one of them. I can’t remember the other ones name. But they did a rebuttal paper saying that keys cherry pick data, because there was actually data available from 22 countries, not just the six that he presented. And when the 22 countries were inserted, the association became much weaker. Now, there still was an association. And we can talk about that later, if you want, you know, correlation causation, very important to differentiate. So there was an association, which cannot tell cannot inform us of what’s the cause. But the association became significantly weaker when all the data was available. But unfortunately, it took several years for this, this rebuttal to be published. In the meantime, Eisenhower had the heart attack, Paul Dudley White said, we need to figure this out. Ancel Keys said, I’m your man. So he started what was called the Seven Countries Study. Now people accuse him of manipulating the data and the Seven Countries Study which he did not do. But he had the foreknowledge of all of the data sets from the old 20 to 22 countries study, right. So he knew which of the seven countries to choose that would fit his hypothesis. So that is scientific chicanery, it is not good science. So you can fairly criticize him on that is not honest work, he wanted to prove his own hypothesis. And in science, ultimately, you’re trying to disprove your hypothesis if you’re being honest. So that’s what happened. And then, of course, the Seven Countries Study hit, you know, the mainstream media and we got the dietary guidelines after that, and it was, you know, fat and increases cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease aka unhealthy. It’s called the Diet Heart hypothesis. And another one little side note to finish the story off, which is super, super cool. And actually, I’m gonna pull up the quote, I won’t be able to probably share in the screen, but it’s I want to get the quote, right, because he actually said Ancel Keys said in his own words, in a book published years after called the seven countries book in 1980. He said, the fact that the incidence of coronary heart disease was significantly correlated with the average percentage of calories from sucrose sugar in the diet is explained by the inter correlation of sucrose with saturated fat. So to break that down for people, what he’s actually saying is, yes, yes, sugar is also associated with an increased risk of heart disease, but that’s only because sugar is also correlated with saturated fat. So essentially, he chose fat to be the demon over sugar. He could have easily have chosen sugar because either way the association cannot prove causation. But isn’t that amazing? He in His own words, he said, Oh, yeah, well, of course sugar also correlates with heart disease, but it’s the saturated fat trust me it was a trust me science it was and that’s where all of our dietary dogma comes from, from one man who was very powerful. knew the right people who said, trust me. And you know, we’ve been trying to untangle this mess, in my opinion ever since.
Michelle Shapiro
Yeah. And this is now. So we’re talking about 70 years of this. And how is it possible, Jay, that doctors are still recommending this information? Based off of what this man who trusts the science das, was recommending? Can you give me your best guess of how that’s possible?
Serum cholesterol levels are not necessarily correlated with a healthy heart
J. Gulinello
I think it’s multifactorial, like anything is I think there’s a famous paper called crossing the quality chasm which, which is a paper that basically says there’s about a 17 year research gap between randomized controlled trials in general practice, even when new research is is is figured out and a new mechanism is established, the application of this new knowledge is very uneven. So it’s not like in 17 years, all of a sudden, everybody goes, Oh, well, we figured it out. Now. It’s really not like that, you know, people’s and this is where the second half of that equation comes in. I think people I know people build careers on a certain way of doing things. They were taught this way in school, and you probably know this, right? I would love to. Yeah, by the end of this, by the end of this interview, I would love to turn the question around on you and ask you, you know, how, how you’re trained, and why you broke away from that training, because I think people should understand that just because you go into a room with a doctor or dietitian, doesn’t mean they’re going to be giving you cutting edge care. In fact, I had a job at a New York City hospital where my job was to, to actually educate the doctors and nurses on nutrition, not not the patients. And I was blown away by how little biochemistry knowledge the doctors had. And if they ever had it, it was long, long ago, and they don’t remember it, because all they really had to do is figure out symptoms, pick a drug, pick a milligram dosage, and send people on their way. And look, doctors are amazing people, they are incredibly intelligent, but they are not chosen for their ability to think for themselves or to critically think they have an immense ability to to cram information into their heads, and they’re able to, you know, so. So I know cardiologists who, despite lowering their cholesterol to pathologically low levels, and I use that term, specifically because of how important cholesterol is to the body. And they’ve had was one cardiologist has had four stents and his LDL levels were considered healthy, his low density lipoprotein is considered bad cholesterol is about as low as you can get. It’s almost immeasurable. And he’s had four heart issues. So you know, we have to break away from this, but these people are, you know, in some cases, willing to even sacrifice their own health for the cholesterol dogma. Now, that is a dangerous place. In my opinion,
Michelle Shapiro
that’s really important. And I guess an answer to the question to, which is that doctors themselves or practitioners themselves, are willing to sacrifice their own health to support this dogma of this random dude from the 1950s. But, but I think we can both say that at this point, I feel comfortable in no longer making dietary cholesterol specific recommendations to people in ways of healthy consumption. Again, there are a small portion, I believe it’s about 12% of the population who are genetic hyper responders, that’s the most updated number that I’ve seen. And for those people, we still don’t know if consuming cholesterol and your cholesterol being high is associated with an unhealthy risk of heart disease. So that’s the confusing part, I will tell you my interest in cholesterol started because I was on a vegan diet for 10 years, do not recommend this. And I have actually have chronically low cholesterol because of my liver output. So I have like the opposite of you. And we came to the same conclusion, which is very cool. Which is I mean, my LDL has been as low as like 10. And my triglycerides have been like 15. And I was not doing anything intentionally to lower cholesterol. And even after I consume meat, it’s hard for me to get my cholesterol higher, I have to do liver specific work to do that. But I just want people to understand that there is a consensus when you apply critical thinking and research and the consensus is that lowering cholesterol for the sake of lowering cholesterol is not necessarily correlated with lower heart disease and high cholesterol. Jay, you can you can speak more to this is not necessarily correlated with heart disease. Can you speak to the research on that?
J. Gulinello
Sure. One of my favorite papers that completely destroys this theory is 2009, the American Heart Journal, they published the Get With The Guidelines database, which was analyzed for all coronary heart disease hospitalizations from the year 2000 to 2006, all with documented lipid levels in the last 24 hours. So it was over 136,000 patients. And I’ll actually send you the graph because I think to put this on the screen would be so advantageous for people to see when I look at it, I see absolutely no correlation. There are heart events all over the map.
In fact, the highest level of heart events were people that had an LDL level which is in we can get into this, that’s again, I don’t use the term good and bad (healthy and unhealthy) cholesterol because there is only one cholesterol molecule. Right. But just to use the terms that people may may be familiar with the LDL, the low density lipoprotein, we just consider the bad, unhealthy, cholesterol, the highest heart events were at a level of 90, which would be considered perfectly fine. They wanted under 100, there were people having heart events with LDL is at 20 3040. So it didn’t matter. And there were people also that had LDL levels up upwards of 220. But guess what their heart attack incidents are not any greater than the people. In fact, in some cases, were had less incidents than people that had LDL levels of 30. So what that says to me is, it’s just non predictive. Sure, LDL and total cholesterol are non predictive. And that study is an amazing study, because it’s the American Heart Journal, it’s their own dataset. And of course, the conclusion they came to which is, which is always makes me laugh is that we’re just not lowering it enough.
Michelle Shapiro
You gotta you gotta hit it harder.
J. Gulinello
20 is not enough,
Can too-low cholesterol levels be unhealthy?
Michelle Shapiro
you need no cholesterol, this is even more important. Because, you know, in functional nutrition, the goal is always balanced. The goal is not to just go as low as possible, or as high as possible. So tell us what would be a disadvantage, like, like, in my case, let’s say of my having low cholesterol, what’s a disadvantage of not having this vital, you know, structure and our body? What do we need cholesterol for in a healthy body?
J. Gulinello
So let’s talk about this because I found a paper that I had never seen before. It was one of the best papers in laying out just sort of the role of cholesterol in a very dispassionate way. Because cholesterol tends to get people going. He did. Yeah, it’s funny. It’s it’s one of the things that I post about on social media that gets the most pushback. And ironically enough that people that which I’m all I’m totally fine with, if you want to present a paper, I will always take a look at it. But what I find funny is that most of the time, I’ll put five papers in my story, I’ll put two lectures by a cardiologist in a in a neuroscientist, and I’ll cite all this literature. And then someone will say, that’s not true.
Michelle Shapiro
Like, what else do you want from me? Right? Let me give it all
J. Gulinello
Yeah. And they don’t give me anything to rebutted it’s just again, it’s it’s their opinion. But so this paper, I’m just gonna read you a little list of some of the things because I think this is so great, right? People never hear. If I say cholesterol to nine out of 10 people on the street, they’re gonna say, Oh, bad, right, immediately unhealthy cholesterol comes to mind. It’s bad. Very, very rarely do we hear about what it actually does. So in 1834, it was it was discovered, and it was actually called the principal element of the nervous system. 25% of the total cholesterol in the body is present in the brain, mostly in the myelin sheath, which helps nerve conduction. So the brain is the most cholesterol rich organ in the body has a very long half life, actually, the brain makes its own cholesterol. That’s how important cholesterol is to the body, the brain doesn’t trust the liver. Apparently, they had a falling out at some point. And the brain makes its own cholesterol. So that’s pretty cool. It makes up 30% of cell membranes, extremely important. bile acids. So if you want to absorb vitamins at E and K, you need bile acid. Cholesterol is a precursor to bile acid as the backbone of all steroid hormones and vitamin D analogues. And here Here are two of my favorite lipoproteins. So again, these are the packages that cholesterol moves around the body. And they bind and neutralize a vast number of envelope and non envelope DNA and RNA viruses. Boy, that would have been nice to know huh. And they also participate in host immune system by stopping bacterial proliferation. So they do something they interfere with something called quorum sensing. When a bacteria is looking to invade a tissue in the body, it releases a protein in an effort to decide whether the area is ripe for invasion. And so the LDL molecule is able to actually eat up that protein to prevent quorum sensing and prevent bacterial infections. In fact, we see in people over 65, that people with higher levels of cholesterol are healthier, die less of infectious disease and have cancer. Isn’t that amazing? So cholesterol is a part of the innate healthy immune system. So when people say why, why do I want cholesterol? I just hand him that sheet and say this is why you need cholesterol to be healthy,
Michelle Shapiro
and it’s also like, again, the steroid hormone, like we can just do an entire episode on cholesterol and steroid hormones like and we think about any sort of men’s or women’s health hormone, sex hormones, and all these things, cholesterol is essential and all that. So if I’m looking at someone also, who is having any sort of downstream hormonal issues, starting with testosterone, I’m making sure that they have enough cholesterol to be healthy, right. That’s, that’s really important for me, and the work I do as a functional nutritionist, too. So I look at cholesterol and I’m like, I wonder if it’s too low more than I even wonder if it’s too high. I
J. Gulinello
Markers that are better correlated with health than high cholesterol
totally agree. I find the environment that the cluster I was in is far more important. I think that’s where you’re going next.
Michelle Shapiro
Exactly, right. Yes. And there are this group of people who are genetic hyper responders to cholesterol. Do you think there are times I need scenarios where we would be looking at like a bow, lipo protein bay or something. And we would get information about heart disease. Is there any use of cholesterol and learning about heart disease, you know, in the small chance you’re a genetic hyper responder,
J. Gulinello
I will say yes and no. So not in the sense that either high or low would be bad, but again, in the environment that it exists, so in most lean mass hyper responders, and that’s what I am, that’s a term coined by Dave Feldman, who’s an engineer who’s really dissected a lot of this stuff, which he was one of the first people I found when I was sort of going through my crisis in 2015, when I fired my doctor, and all of a sudden, I find myself all alone in my apartment with high cholesterol. I’m alone and I have high cholesterol, what do we do? So his work is pretty amazing. And what you find many times and what’s also a far more predictive of heart disease incidence is the triglyceride to HDL ratio, which is the thing that I use most now. So that’s to say that LDL could be high or low in those people. So it’s really again, it’s sort of non predictive. I hate to say this, because it’s almost like LDL has become the villain. It’s so easy to do. So when a subset of population where they have generally people with low triglycerides will have high HDL if they have high HDL, they will have low triglycerides, those tend to be and that’s a sign of the sign of metabolic health. To have that triglyceride to HDL ratio below one, a one to one ratio is good, below one is fantastic. And so when my cholesterol personally total and LDL shot up, I was comforted by the fact that I had actually brought my triglycerides down, and my HDL way up. So I actually had a sub one ratio and no blood sugar issues, my HPA one C, hemoglobin a one C, which is the measure of glycated sugars on to the hemoglobin molecule that was extremely low, no inflammatory markers, you know, I was I had lost weight, I had gotten probably to a super, you know, very lean body mass, I was just thinking, maybe, maybe this one marker is is incorrect in terms of its predictive value, if everything else in my metabolic health environment have improved. And so that is the caveat, I would say that I couldn’t say that high cholesterol is inherently healthy, or low cholesterol is inherently healthy, or high cholesterol is inherently unhealthy or low cholesterol is inherently unhealthy, I need to know, Khan environment in which it exists. And David diamond did this amazing talk. And he had this awesome analogy that I think your listeners will always remember now, because I still remember it. He said, you can think of LDL and cholesterol as like a teenager, it depends on the environment, they can either grow up to be you know, you know, bad or they can grow up to be good. It depends on who their friends are. Depends on. And in this scenario, the metabolic environment is the environment we’re talking about. So that’s, that’s where I sit on that. I don’t I don’t, I wouldn’t look at someone who says I have high cholesterol and think about automatically because that would technically be me. And I don’t think I have any health issues. Absolutely. I mean, I know that I don’t have any health issues, I don’t know about my, my heart disease risk, because that’s sort of an unknowable thing. But I, I have been now healthier than I ever have been when I since I changed my diet. And ironically enough, my doctor never cared and my triglycerides were over 125. And my HDL was very low in the 50s. So I had a I think that ratio, I don’t I don’t know the math, because I’m bad at math. But I think it was, I think it was over two and now it’s some Yeah, now it’s sub one. So, you know, it’s interesting to me that he never said a word about any of that prior. But once that total cholesterol number showed up, you’ll get doctors to get very, very afraid very, very quickly.
Michelle Shapiro
And I would care if someone’s cholesterol shot up out of nowhere, because of the context of the rest of their health. Any deviation and numbers is important to me. But like you said, there’s no inherent value of this number in isolation, being bad or good. It’s always about context. So I think that it’s really interesting that we’re sitting with a healthy person again, who has, you know, a tendency towards quote unquote, higher cholesterol and a healthy person who has a tendency towards lower cholesterol, and how each of those give us insight into what’s going on with our bodies, but not just on their own, I have to know the context of the person. So I would tell someone, if your numbers change rapidly, it’s worth noting because any rapid change in your body is showing you what’s going on underneath, but only utilizing cholesterol numbers in the bigger picture.
J. Gulinello
I think it’s great point it’s a huge mistake to use any marker in isolation because the body does not work in in a vacuum. You know, I mean, a spike in cholesterol could could come from I’ve seen this in people who’ve had surgery because cholesterol is used in repair. So I’ve seen it in people and that could also mean infection you know cholesterol could go up and then it could actually drop because it’s being utilized so much for Host Defense. So you know, they want you to believe that cholesterol so can’t be you know, they say I think I remember when I was younger they said well, you know you should come back in six months and get it tested. Lipid numbers change drum Matic dramatically, you know, again, Dave Feldman has done experiments where he’s been able to manipulate his cholesterol within, you know, a few days. So, you know, it’s some, it’s something we need to learn. And there’s one more amazing study that I think is that’s really worth talking about when it comes to cholesterol, because I know that we have a few other things that we want to talk about. But this is, this was a great study, because it sort of did the thing, they created a class of drug that did what every cardiologists would universally agree is the best thing, increase HDL, and lower LDL. So again, in those good bad numbers, you’re increasing your good, your healthy cholesterol, and you’re decreasing your bad cholesterol. So this was a 2017 paper in the England Journal of Medicine, these drugs are called CETP inhibitors. It’s a very unknown class of drugs because they failed, which is why they’re not like statins, which are HMG co reductase inhibitors, those inhibit an enzyme and cholesterol synthesis. This works by a different mechanism. But so let me just read you some of the statistics, because I think this is profound. And to me, between the lack of correlation of LDL, and the fact that we can now have this drug that dramatically increases HDL and lowers LDL and still see no benefit, we have to revisit the hypothesis. So so this was 12,000 patients in a a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled phase three trial, three months, there was a 31% decrease in mean LDL cholesterol, versus the placebo group which had a 6% increase. So it’s doing a great job lowering LDL 133% increase in HDL levels were seen in the intervention group versus a 1.6 increase with placebo, so virtually nothing? Sure. So you’d think Well, I mean, we have a blockbuster drug here, it’s doing all the things it’s supposed to do? Well, the safety monitoring board got involved and recommended that that actually the trial be terminated. Because at a mean, mean of 26 months, primary endpoint, which is either death or MI or stroke, occurred more in the intervention group than it did in the placebo. Now by a very small margin, but still, that’s a huge deal. So one of the authors even said, this is puzzling. We’ve done everything right, we’ve created the perfect drug, and it’s failing. And they cannot say, we’re wrong, we have to go back and revisit whether LDL matters at all, when it comes to heart disease. And so I thought that that trial was amazing, because it’s a class of drug that nobody even knows about. Because it catastrophically fail, despite it being probably one of the most robust, having one of the most robust effects on cholesterol levels
Red meat, saturated fat, and high cholesterol: Are they healthy?
Michelle Shapiro
ever again, and walking it back, we created a perfect thing that did the exact thing we tried to do, which was lower the LDL, increase the HDL, and it did not positively impact heart disease. So even if you did everything, quote, unquote, right, that doctors or nutritionists are telling you regarding lowering your cholesterol to be healthy, it’s still from what the research shows would not positively impact your risk for heart disease. So you can do all these things. And I think, you know, we always think that heart disease and any chronically like chronic illness or lifestyle driven disease, is the onus is on us, the consumer, the person eating, we are amazing at actually doing recommendations and taking the advice of our dietary guidelines and taking the advice of doctors. And even if you did everything perfectly, it would not create the result that you’re looking for. And that’s what’s so important for people to understand the onus is actually not on the consumer or the patients, the onus is on the recommendations. So what also happened with the dietary guidelines regarding meats and heart disease, and I’m speaking specifically to the recommendation for us to limit the amount of red meat we’re consuming, and increase more lean meats. Can you speak on that a little bit?
J. Gulinello
So I mean, that ties mostly into the saturated fat argument because I do this great presentation on the mitochondria. And when I get to the end of it, I people always ask, Well, what you know, what are what are nutrients I can use to support mitochondria, and I go through the nutrients. And then at the very last slide, I sort of show and you know where all these nutrients are available red meat. So if mitochondrial disease and that’s our most evidence based theory of aging and disease, you’re telling me that a food that literally has all of the nutrients available for mitochondrial function in its most bioavailable form that the body can use without having to do conversions. Somehow that food is bad it and it just goes to show you that it’s this. It’s this still lingering dietary dogma about saturated fat. So I’m convinced that that’s really what it is. And now it’s morphed into an environmental thing and an ethical thing, which I will not gonna argue with anybody about ethics, because that’s a personal thing. I will argue about the environmental impact, because that’s not true. And it’s completely overstated. And I will argue about the health effects because that’s also only been ever shown in associational data. And so maybe this is where we get into that association and the correlation and causation, which are two totally different things. And so in most of those studies, in all of those studies, actually, because there has never been an interventional trial, where meat eaters were shown to die younger because they ate meat. In fact, in the world today, this is great in the world today, the longest live population in on this planet are the people of Hong Kong, who also happen to have the highest per capita meat consumption on the planet. So that’s one of those black swans again, it doesn’t mean that meat intake will make you live longer. Although I think that it could help because it will increase lean muscle mass, it’s giving you bioavailable nutrients. So we can argue that, but you can’t prove it based on just that correlation. But what it does tell us the negative correlation does tell us that well, clearly red meat is not making people live less, because the people who are now living the longest are eating the most meat. So it’s incredibly important that we understand that nuance. And I, you know, I know that brings us down that sort of saturated fat rabbit hole, which, you know, there’s so much evidence pouring out today about how saturated fat is really not a problem. And there is weak to know Association. And I have papers upon papers that are all from the last five years telling us that so I think red meat is being unfairly demonized. Certainly, I like quality red meat. I mean, I would certainly opt for grass fed if I could. But But that’s also one of the things where if you can’t afford it, I would rather have you eating conventional beef than,
Michelle Shapiro
you know, cornflakes, no beef at all. Exactly. Right. Yeah,
J. Gulinello
because eggs and beef are going to be some of the most nutrient dense foods you could possibly consume and you can subsist on so yeah, I think it goes back to the mostly it’s the saturated fat issue, because you can’t sort of disentangle the two, it’s it when you say red meat, people think saturated fat. So that’s where the guidelines came in. Again, not not science based. Zoe harcombe does a lot of great work on this, you know, there’s just there’s just no, there’s no evidence, there’s no evidence to have us go on low fat diets. And there’s really no evidence to have us produce red meat despite the fact that it’s actually considered a carcinogen in the same class as glyphosate, which is laughable by the World Health Organization. That’s a little Another fun fact for you that at least processed red meat. But even that, it’s just associational data,
Michelle Shapiro
it’s always based on relative risk to versus the actual risk, which is, again, if you were comparing it to the increase versus baseline, it’s not doing it compared to your overall risk, which is always really confusing about those studies for people too.
J. Gulinello
That’s another one of those things where they do with statin drugs, which are designed to lower cholesterol, they present the relative health risk when it comes to the benefits because that number is going to be larger, it’s going to look like a larger effect. And they can represent the harms or the side effects and absolute risk, which is a much lower number. So there’s a ton of statistical manipulation. And it took me forever to understand statistics, and I still don’t do it very well. That was one of my worst classes. And in grad school, it’s just so complicated. So for the lay public, I just feel for them because there’s no way they can disentangle this, or even just reading a research paper is incredibly challenging, because I’m convinced that science uses big words to keep people out. I’m convinced they’re gatekeepers, major
Michelle Shapiro
gatekeeping. I know this is a huge thing I say on every Instagram post is like, I’m not going to gatekeeper if I figure something out. And I’m concrete on it, which I do feel about cholesterol, which is that a healthy body requires it from an external sources, our body needs to create it from endogenous sources, and balance not in ways of numbers that balance in ways of your body, creating the amount that it needs and being able to utilize it. And as a representation of what’s going on with your organ health is important. I think everything else around healthy consumption of dietary cholesterol consumption of saturated fat is subjective. But the one thing that I do not feel as subjective is that consuming red meat, especially really high quality versions of it is unhealthy. I’m solid on that I feel really, really comfortable and confident recommending that to my clients. And again, it really depends on the person because also it might be hard for someone to digest meat because they have hypochlorhydria might be hard for someone because their liver has been taxed. Great. We can work on those things. But at the end goal, my recommendation is is to eat as many nutrient dense foods as possible. And I know I really avoid Nutritionism, which is that like one food can cause all hell fails or there’s one actually I’m going to take that back in the next section by the point being that we’ve we’ve tried to pin everything on red meat or we’ve tried to pin everything on high cholesterol foods, and it really matters so much more what nutrients you’re getting from foods and the context of your overall health than it matters one specific nutrient you intake besides what we’re going to talk about next potentially
J. Gulinello
that’s a great point and you know, you have millions of years of human history on your side and again what I said in the earlier in the Odd cast that heart disease is a relatively new thing. And so if you had a if you had a species on Earth that had some new disease introduced into their species, and you are tasked with figuring out what the problem was, with the first thing you say, be, Oh, it must be a genetic thing, or their body must be producing something randomly, too much that it shouldn’t be producing, or would you say something has changed in their environment. And so we’ve eaten red meat for ever. And heart disease was on heard of 99% of our added fats were of animal origin prior to 1911, when Crisco and those types of foods when the chemists invented hydrogenation, and they were able to turn polyunsaturated fats into saturated fats. And the story goes on from there. And I think that’s a nice segue into probably what you’re about to talk about next, if I, if I’m guessing correctly,
How industrial seed oils and omega-6 fats are less healthy choices
Michelle Shapiro
you are guessing correctly. All right. I’m gonna lay this gently because I know that cholesterol is hot and hotly debated, but I actually think we’ve made more progress in the world of understanding, you know, cholesterol and healthversus what we’re going to talk about next, which is still hotly contested. I joke with Jay, because it’s almost like the things that we’re talking about are so obvious in practice and research, that they’re so not Hot Topic sauce anymore. And they’re so it’s so concrete for us. But I am aware that with anything we’re talking about, there is huge amounts of societal backlash and division and dichotomy. So what we’re about to talk about may seem super controversial, but I can promise you, for both of us, we feel pretty comfortable, you know, after our years of clinical research and my experience as a practitioner, giving these this information to you. So incorporate this information, without bias or understanding that we’re coming from place of bias, and we’re just giving you the research, but it’s I know it’s hot. So we’re going to talk about seed oil, we are going to talk about seed oils and Omega six fats, I’m nervous just to even open it up.
J. Gulinello
You know, I’ll tell you something, though, I do have a bias. And I always tell people, you know, but my bias is very general, it is the general bias. And this is to the point you just made manmade foods are guilty until proven innocent. Nature had it figured out for a very, very long time. And I think my bias is actually very healthy, because it goes along with the precautionary principle of medicine, of everything we do in health, right, first, do no harm, we want to make sure that these foods are healthy before we introduce them into the food supply. So that is my bias. So and I own that because I actually firmly believe that it will result in better health because what’s the worst that happens is that I’m late to a trend. Oh, wow. I don’t care about being first I care about being correct for people. So that is my bias.
Michelle Shapiro
Absolutely. I would say that my bias is also I’m pretty much willing to explore any avenue with a client. So if something works for someone, I’m open and willing to hear it. So my bias is too much openness, where I don’t close things. But again, I feel I feel I feel really strongly about this from a feeling perspective, but more from a research perspective. And what I’ve seen in my client experience. So first of all, what when we say seed oils, we say vegetable oils, you say omega six fats give us context of what actual foods we’re talking about. And if you want to give us a little history timeline, I know you started with 1911. Tell us about that, too.
J. Gulinello
Sure. So the term vegetable oil is one of the greatest marketing terms ever, I think, because let me just tell you that there’s no vegetable to be found anywhere in these oils. So that’s the first thing Nola
Michelle Shapiro
vegetable you’re not familiar
J. Gulinello
with, right? So this is the thing you know, I think that somewhere and you know, some very intelligent PR person said, well, the term they are industrial seed oils, because they have to be produced in an industrial process. And they are extracted from seeds. And so there’s several problems with this. One is that you’re you’re creating unnatural absolute quantities of these. In other words, you could never eat enough seeds to get this much oil in any kind of natural way. That’s an undeniable fact. You could never eat as many sunflower seeds. You know, you couldn’t eat as much sunflower seeds as you would need to to get the amount of sunflower oil that you get in all of the foods that you know, well, not in, not in my pantry, not in yours. But in anybody who has packaged foods nine times out of 10 sunflower oil and soybean oil are going to be the two big ones canola oils and other ones safflower oil. So these are the oils that we’re talking about. They are high in Omega six, I’m sure people are familiar with Omega six and Omega three, you know, Omega six are generally considered generally considered pro inflammatory, but they the pathways are complex and they do lead to some anti inflammatory resolve. And so you know, but but the general term is omega three is anti inflammatory. Omega six is inflammatory. That’s the general pathway
Michelle Shapiro
for people to understand in the nutrition world because I’ll bring it back to the societal context. There’s a huge divide between dieticians right now who are more focused on people saying hey, there’s no RC He’s saying that omega six randomized controlled trial, saying that omega six fats are pro inflammatory. And then, you know, functional dietitians are like, of course, they’re pro inflammatory. It’s so obvious, again, from the research, people are interpreting research differently. But I, what I will tell you is being trained as a clinical dietitian, that when you’re doing the enteral, nutrition formulas, you can’t put too many Omega six fats into it. And the ratio has to be right, because it is so dangerous on an immediate timeline, I guess like it’s, there’s so much urgency to not do that, because it can cause such dangerous bodily episodes, if you include them. So for me, again, although I know what you’re saying, because it has the like, still, if you look at the pathways, they’re super complex, and it could be like proliferative and an anti inflammatory way, but it’s hard. It’s hard and not true on an overall context
J. Gulinello
very much. And I only say that, because because the seed oil lovers will come out and say it’s not all inflammatory. But you know, so that’s very interesting. So in other words, you’re seeing the Omega six to three ratio in a temporal way, in a real time way. So you see, I’ve never had that experience, that’s really valuable for me to hear that. So that’s something that’s conscious that they consciously are worried about that ratio, oh, no, yeah,
Michelle Shapiro
it could be deadly. If you give too high of an Omega six Omega three ratio in a clinical setting. It’s something we learned in dietitian school. So that’s when I hear dietitian saying that, like, I’m like, hey, what about our en classes, that was like, super important to make sure that that ratio was right, because it can be so dangerous for people. So again, that would be such a high dosage, because it’s going also directly, you know, right there, it’s it’s being directly absorbed, obviously. So that’s why it’s so risky. But for me, all of this comes down to also like looking at context. So it’s not like, we’re not going to find one study that shows sunflower oil equals inflammation. If you look at how the body breaks things down, and the pathways that it goes through, you will be able to understand if you understand the biochemistry, what is going to happen to your body in the long term. And then you can also look at epidemiological evidence, which I know you look at a bunch too. So I’m giving the floor back to but I needed to hammer that in,
J. Gulinello
this is an excellent conversation, because I think that I may be able to shine a little bit of light on why there’s conflicting research in terms of whether it shows that it’s inflammatory. And not to belabor the point. But I’ll say even if it doesn’t manifest in, say, a high C reactive protein, right, which would be a measure of systemic inflammation. So if that’s what you’re using as a marker, then I agree with you, there’s plenty of literature that shows Omega six intake does not increase the reactive protein. However, that does not absolve a diet high in oxidized linoleic acid from having detrimental benefits to the mitochondria that I believe is universal. So you can whistle past the graveyard by saying I don’t have any inflammatory burden. But if you’re experiencing mitochondrial dysfunction, which you may not necessarily feel right away, God, I would love for them to have a like a simple blood spot test for mitochondrial dysfunction. That’s like on my wish list. Oh,
Michelle Shapiro
I know. That would be really amazing. I know it would be Yeah, I mean, I could do so
J. Gulinello
much with that. But so this is one of the reasons and I found a paper that talked about this where there is actually a genetic component as to whether linoleic acid will be pro inflammatory proinflammatory, in terms of measuring the markers, because it involves the genes, F EDS, one and f a d s two, which are, you know, this is really going to be super nerdy without being able to look at this, but these are the elongation pathways of omega sixes and omega threes. And what’s interesting about those pathways is that they compete for the same enzymes. So it’s a two fold problem. If you have a really high omega six intake, you could be causing inflammation just by virtue of sucking up all those enzymes away from the Omega threes, which need them to turn into anti inflammatory molecules,
Michelle Shapiro
which we do know like you feel confident that omega threes are generally pro anti inflammatory. Yes,
J. Gulinello
yes. But there’s also a danger of consuming too many Omega three so people that mega dose fish oil unless it’s for like an acute say like a TBI, I do know that they can be used therapeutically. But in general, if you were to take an obscene amount of fish oil every single day, because you thought, well, it’s anti inflammatory. So if a little is good, a lot is better. Well, you do need Omega six, because the inflammatory response is part of the healing process. We did a few case studies in school where we had people who had chronic illness and it turns out that when we did blood testing on them, they had Omega six deficiency, which is incredibly unusual, but that would explain why they couldn’t they couldn’t heal because you need the inflammation. So just keep that’s why that balance and that ratio is so important because they’re competing for the same enzymes. And then this genetic snip if you have an overactive the enzymes are delta five and delta 60 saturates. They turn linoleic acid into arachidonic acid which then creates that inflammatory cascade. If you have an overactive enzyme, you are more more likely to create those pro inflammatory states. So this genetic component may be why in some studies because they never test for this genetic snip in the cohorts in these studies, so you have random people. And if you’ve got people who have an underactive enzyme, you know, a gene that’s encoded for an underactive enzyme, well, you may not have an inflammatory response. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not competing Omega three. And that also doesn’t mean like I said before, that you’re not creating the mitochondrial damage. And specifically, this damages. This is another super nerdy thing. The mitochondria, the inner mitochondrial membrane seems to be where the damage from linoleic acid oxidize linoleic acid is focused. To give a quick summary, the mitochondria is what produce energy in the cell. And how it does this is by it’s essentially a battery, it separates positive charges from negative charges, and the membrane in the middle separates them. So that membrane potential has to be really strong in order to keep those charges separated. So what linoleic acid can do is it can incorporate into that membrane. And it can cause leakage, essentially, those positive protons, they can leak through the membrane without going through the source that they’re supposed to go through, which is to generate energy. And that leakage could cause the cell to produce less energy. So therefore, if the cell becomes dysfunctional, then the organ can become dysfunctional, the tissue, the organ system, and then eventually up to the organism becomes dysfunctional. So you can see how, from a sub cellular level, too much damage to omega six in the diet, which, by virtue of these oils, all are damaged, because the process that even gets them into the bottle is horrific. They have to be heated, they have to be extracted using chemical solvents, they have to be deodorized, because they’re rancid. So there’s just a lot of problems with these fats. And I kind of chuckle when people say there’s no biochemistry to back this up. I mean, there’s a ton of biochemistry to back this up,
Michelle Shapiro
it’s looking at the wrong biochemistry, it’s looking only your CRP, oh, that’s fine. You’re good to go. What if you were to say the one thing that is potentially driving chronic illness from a food perspective that has changed the most in our food supply? Would you say it’s the higher consumption of seed oils? Would you say that’s what’s pushed our shift from a food perspective?
J. Gulinello
Well, that’s certainly the greatest increase in human history in such a short period of time. So that’s the number one, but I’ll tell you that in the same period, we had in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we also had the refining of sugar and the the roller mill technology which created you know, flour, you know, refined carbohydrates. So I would say, and it’s that Trifecta because refined sugar, refined carbohydrates and refined fats make up processed foods.
Michelle Shapiro
Exactly right. How confident do you feel in the research that refined sugar and the addition of the seed oils to our food supply has influenced the rates of chronic illness in this country?
J. Gulinello
I mean, I’m confident from a biochemical perspective. And I’m also confident from the perspective of hyper palatability. You know, I think we’ve hijacked our dopamine reward system. And I think, and I know, there’s a great field of research called psychophysics. Howard Moskowitz was sort of a pioneer in this and he developed the term bliss point, which is essentially to create a food. Again, what I just say, create a food create a food that has the perfect amount of fat, sugar, salt, right. And nature does not package generally speaking, does not package carbohydrates and fats together. And that’s something you know, something interesting called the Randle cycle, which is really, really controversial, too. Yeah. So that’s really fun to talk about. Basically, it’s you know, it’s, the more you combine fats and carbohydrates, the more difficulty your body may have in metabolizing, one or the other, because one or the other may lock the other out in terms of fuel sources, because they’re both fuel sources, was really interesting. And I think that and I think it also tells us something that nature doesn’t package carbohydrates and fats together, it really doesn’t do it will put proteins with carbohydrates, and it’ll put proteins with fats, but it generally does not ever put fat and carbohydrate together. So maybe nature is telling us how to eat. And then again, I go back to my bias, I’m always going to listen to nature first, before I listen to a scientist, a chemist, a nutritionist a doctor, I start there. That’s the basis of my practice. And that’s my philosophy. And then I and then I work from there through the through the literature to see what I think is is realistic for people.
Michelle Shapiro
And on a tangibility level, recommendations wise, you would say avoiding more of the seed oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, canola oil, and consuming more animal based fats, meat, butter, eggs, things like that. Is that your overall recommendation for people? Yes. Yeah. And
J. Gulinello
the thing is, those oils, you can’t just be like a weekend warrior with those things. You can’t just I only have them on the weekends because there are several papers that show the half life of those is about two years. So it could take up to four years because remember, I just said these are incorporating into cell membranes, so they become fat. are very interesting in that way that they become dietary fat intake is highly correlated with adipose tissue cell membrane composition. So we see that, you know, in hunter gatherer days, we had much lower Omega six to three ratios, but we also had a much lower linoleic acid content of adipose tissue. So that tells me that we’re headed towards bad things. And this is This may be why not just chronic disease, but autoimmune disease, you know, again, if we have dysfunctional cells, we don’t necessarily know how that’s going to manifest. So I would say, Yeah, well, it’s been kind enough to ruthlessly eliminate these from the diet because because they are everywhere. So you have to be even if you don’t cook with them, you have to look at your packaging when you go to dinner. I know this is going to really make signup sad. This is why I barely ever eat out anymore. If I do I ask them if they will cook in butter, butter. Yes, people will have butter or they’ll have you know, make sure they don’t use margarine and butter. No, you know, like real butter, real olive oil, one of those things, those are pretty, you know, or coconut oil that’s that’s, you know, made a comeback. So yeah, those are the fats, the natural fats to tropical oils, which is basically coconut oil, lard, butter tallow, ghee, those are the only things I ever used ever. I’ve experienced so much less. You know, it’s amazing to hear people’s aches and pains go away and things that they never attributed to their diet. And it may not even have been the food. But it may have been what that food mean, you can go into a health food store, and you can buy a beautiful wild caught salmon Patty, and then it’s full of canola oil.
Michelle Shapiro
I know by the way home, specifically shout out whole foods come on. I’m like, all of their food is cooked in canola oil. And it’s frustrating because I want to recommend easy stuff for my clients. You know, I have a New York clientele a lot of my clients like work a lot, they need to have grabbable options. Our modern lifestyle is not congruent for health, of course, but they’re not hunter gatherers. They’re executives, they need to grab stuff. And it’s hard when places like that do have those oils, and I do see tangible effects of like my clients will eat out. And we always wonder why does dining out make us feel so sick? I think a big component of is not only the sneaky gluten or things if my clients are intolerant, but the oils they’re using and cooking are really really hard for the body to tolerate. And I noticed people feel like almost hung over after dining out sometimes. And it’s not even the amount of food. It’s like they say I just feel so much better when I eat at home. And I do believe just correlative not causative. From what I’ve seen that the oils and cooking are a huge problem for people when they’re eating out.
J. Gulinello
Well, look, you cannot discount anecdotal evidence that is no again, anecdotes are the basis of the scientific method because you form a hypothesis from an experience. And then you test that hypothesis with some kind of interventional, controlled trial that is the base of, of science. So people who discount anecdotal evidence are fools, because that is, again, it’s the base of the pyramid for the scientific method.
Michelle Shapiro
You know, I have a unique experience in that I’ve worked with about 25 of my clients for over 100 sessions. So if you think I don’t know what impacts their body in which way like you wouldn’t know it was going on in our sessions, and you wouldn’t believe what was going on in our sessions. When we listen to the signs that our body’s giving us, we can learn such amazing wisdom. And the funniest part about all this Jay is what we’re recommending, from this podcast, is just to go back to what is the most basic knowledge of all time, which is eat food that is like at its most food form, you know, I will tell you that I know that this information can be really triggering for people and hard to incorporate, especially around the seed oils in the food that they’re eating out. I would say that for people who do feel triggered, incorporate what you can, no one meal is ever going to harm you permanently. Although I will say we’re giving you this information because we do believe that it is really really important and would not want to be intentionally controversial. It’s not for our health or our fun. It’s truly for you the listeners health. So it is super important whenever possible to remove these oils from your diet. And like you said it has to be it has to be drastic for some people.
J. Gulinello
Yeah. And if you’re if you’re experiencing robust health, if you are, you know, firing on all eight cylinders, and there is you wake up with energy, you have good sex drive, you have good cognitive ability, you have all these things that are just then you’re fine. Exactly. But what I would say is that, you know, sometimes when you get diagnosed with a disease, I work with a lot of type two diabetics, they think that one day they wake up type two diabetic, and that’s not the way it works. You know, it’s decades
Michelle Shapiro
I hope non spontaneous disease making there’s no spontaneous disease making unless you like had a physical I’m not gonna have what accident or something that would cause spawned that spontaneous injury can happen spontaneous disease making? No it could be 20 years in the making, by the time you actually see those symptoms,
J. Gulinello
right. And no, and so I just, you know, I think when I when I look at out of control, Alzheimer’s rates, and I look at all these things, I just I keep thinking about all the conversations we’ve had and the pathologically lowering of the cholesterol and the inclusion of bad So we’re eliminating the good fats, which are the saturated fats and the animal fats. And we’re, we’re consuming the bad fats, which are the highly susceptible to being oxidized fats, essentially. And we’re lowering cholesterol. And we’re Dino, we’ve been told to eat all these manufactured foods, and we’re doing everything opposite of nature, and we’re experiencing terrible results. So from an epidemiological perspective, even from the bigger picture, we’re doing something wrong. So, you know, at some point, you may want to have that conversation with yourself. And so, you know, let me let me try it. And if you are experiencing some kind of issue, and you’re not functioning on all eight cylinders, then you should definitely look at these things, because they may seem like a huge burden at first, but I’m telling you, it just becomes a way of life. And it’s not challenging. I can’t tell you how many people say, Oh, I mean, once I just started doing it, it really wasn’t a big deal. It’s just the way I do things. And people may look at you funny. But that’s okay. Because you’ll be very healthy.
Michelle Shapiro
And then you’ll be very happy, because it’ll be very healthy. We’re making guarantees on this podcast, not
J. Gulinello
the brain. Exactly.
Michelle Shapiro
But I think I think that, you know, a huge issue in the nutrition world. Now, this episode is a little bit different than other ones I’ve done because I am usually issuing trigger warning for nutrition information, I am saying everything is super subjective. But there’s also we have reached a nutritional consensus, I think amongst people who have been up to date on research, we’re pretty solid on this stuff. So what I don’t want people to do is take the information and say, Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I’m eating this. This is harming me, don’t feel that way at all. Just think future forecasting is there any tiny way can switch to more even more delicious and yummy and nutrient dense foods, not worrying about oh my gosh, I can never go out to eat again, just focus on those little tiny switches you can make. And yes, I’m very aware that the information on this podcast seems wildly controversial and against the recommendations we’ve been hearing. But it just might be that the recommendations themselves are legitimately wrong. And they are unfortunately, they are legitimately wrong. And it’s very hard for me to explain this to clients, you know, in every session, because I’m going against what every doctor has told them, I’m going against what every dietitian told them. But it just is wrong. The proof is in the research, the proof is in the epidemiology, it’s there, we have it now we’re good, I feel solid on this, we’re good.
J. Gulinello
One of my favorite things to say is progress never comes from consensus. So it’s okay to be an outlier. I have accepted that fate. And I also accept the fact that I will be wrong about certain things. And I am totally okay with that. Because when I’ve been proven wrong about something, it means that I don’t have to think about that anymore. And I have a new knowledge base to work from. So try to remove the emotion try to remove the ego we have I mean, I grew up, you know, I played in the band, and I ate McDonald’s at one o’clock in the morning after a gig. So don’t think I was born, you know, with this knowledge and that I always knew what to do absolutely not is never too late, literally never too late never to start this journey. And if you start doing it, and you start feeling better than Congratulations, you’ve done something that most people won’t have the courage to do. So if you’ve taken any of this information and applied it to your life, I give you a ton of credit
Ancestral Retreats and more about J. Gulinello
Michelle Shapiro
me to Jay, I cannot thank you enough for coming on today. I’m so glad that now also if I have clients or I followers who say what’s the freaking cholesterol deal? I can just be like, listen to the J episode, we’ve got it, we’ve got the consensus enough of the consensus. Where can people find you? Also, is there anything you want to add that we didn’t cover any parting pieces of wisdom, you’ve given us so much already, but tell us where we can find you and anything else you want to add in? Sure.
J. Gulinello
I mean, as far as the information, this is probably information overload for a lot of people. And I will try to provide you with some a few key slides, maybe some visuals, because that’s how I learned I’m really good hearing it, but also seeing it. Instagram right now is my most active place, although I am trying to expand out because I feel like concentration of knowledge is a bad thing. So I want to try to hit some other platforms, but it’s perpetual health, see, oh, I’m gonna put the link in the show notes. Yeah, in the link tree. And my Instagram has all the other social media accounts, my website. So I’m writing on substack. Now, which is more long form and a little bit less, shall we say, encumbered by some of the sensors. So I’m able to talk a little bit more freely about certain things, which is great. And then you know, I’m hosting yearly, at this point, their yearly retreats, which is really cool. So we’re having people sign up and we cap it at like 15 to 20 because we want to keep it intimate. And we really want the whole group to get to know each other. But basically, last year, we took people on to the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Oh my gosh, really fun. We did cold exposure we did. We had a we had a chef who cooked nose to tail all weekend. Oh, that’s awesome. We had a bone broth bar 24 hours a day and running. We it was just it was amazing. People tried food they’d never tried before they gain knowledge they had never been exposed to. We had different practitioners there will have different practitioners this year. This year. It’s going to be in Vermont, so it’s going to be in the mountains of Vermont. What’s the dates? Actually, we just got the date. So it’s going to be make sure I get this right Jay September 21, through the 24th,
Michelle Shapiro
I think I’m coming I like needs to come, it’s gonna be amazing. It is
J. Gulinello
it is amazing we have, we have yoga teachers, we have just a whole bunch of things. And then you know, in this particular place, we’re on a farm where there’s trails, so people can go off hiking, and it’s really just an immersion experience. So I take care of the educational, like the formal educational part of it. So there’s like one or two classes a day, but they’re like half an hour long. And then the rest of the day is spent doing things and eating and enjoying life and learning how to reconnect, the last couple of years have been all virtual, we’re really trying to, you know, buck that trend and get people back together into like, human connection. So it’s just really exciting. And that’s, that’s, that’s my, my path going forward. I’m going hopefully, this year be buying a place like that I want to buy a place up in New Hampshire, I want to leave New York and, and be more in the in the sort of nature environment and and do this for people on a regular basis. So that’s my ultimate goal. And I would highly encourage you to check out all my stuff. As soon as we have the sign up for the retreat, you’ll see it on Instagram, it’ll be on the website, it’ll be everywhere. But right now, the dates are September 21, through the 24th in Vermont, and it’s gonna be a blast.
Michelle Shapiro
I think it would also be such a shell shock for people in the most positive way of what you really feel as a path forward, which is the path back to just hard selves or connections. What we’ve as humans always known to do for survival and and I think that really, if you’re listening to this, I really encourage you to check it out. And I think I’m gonna be there so I was gonna say so if anyone wants to hang we’re gonna be there will be singing Queen at any point.
J. Gulinello
There may or may not be, you know, an evening of music. You know, actually, the rest of the band of my band couldn’t go last year but they may be able to go this year so oh my god really? You literally never know what you’re gonna get. We’re really going to we oh, we also have sauna I mean, I literally can’t remember all the things that are going to be there it it is an experience and a half. And this is only the second one we ever done. So we’re hoping it’s going to be just that much more fun. And if Michelle is there, I don’t know maybe I’ll have to actually have her teach a class.
Michelle Shapiro
Oh my gosh, so totally free. And Jay, I’m so excited everyone follow Jay check out the retreat. And I’m certain you’ll be back for another episode and we can do an even deeper dive. I’m very proud of us for keeping this short because we thought we were going to be four hours we did amazing. We did great Have a wonderful day think. Thank you so much for tuning in to the quiet the diet podcast. If you found any of this information relevant or you related to it. Please feel free to share the podcast it would mean the world to us. Also remember to subscribe so you don’t miss any episodes. And you can follow us on Instagram at quiet the diet pod. We’ll put the link in the show notes after each episode. Thank you again for listening and I can’t wait to see you in the next episode.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Links
Studies referenced:
American Heart Journal 2009 (doi: 10.1016/j.ahj.2008.08.010)
CETP Inhibitors 2017 NEJM (doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1609581)
Blog: The Truth About Cholesterol
Blog: 5 Ways to Lower Cholesterol Naturally (when necessary)
J’s resources and more:
perpetualhealth.co
Follow J on IG
Follow J on Substack (articles)
Ancestral Wellness Retreat
Work with Michelle and her free resources:
Quiet the Diet
Podcast Page
Work 1-on-1 with a functional Registered Dietitian at Michelle Shapiro Nutrition LLC
Learn more about the practice
Follow the pod on IG
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