YouTube Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOXERt9NYbBlsav5ebb48DN3P-QYw1V3y

Selected YouTube Channels

• Dr. Eric Berg
• Dr. Steve Ekberg
• Dr. Mark Hyman
• Dr. Stephen Gundry
• Dr. Nadir Ali

Some useful links on fish oil

http://www.4hourlife.com/2012/01/22/costco-vs-the-world-round-1-fish-oil-and-the-search-for-the-ultimate-omega/
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/oxidized-fish-oil/
http://crossfitimpulse.com/why-fish-oil

What oil to use for cooking?

in order he recommends:

• ghee – 250 smoke point
• butter – 150 smoke point
• coconut oil – 177 smoke point
• olive oil – 160 smoke point

olive oil e.g., for omlette – if food you use cools it, then its ok. smoke point is 160 celsius. can’t use it for high heat cooking.
coconut oil – 177 celsius smoke point
butter – smoke point is 150. can’t use it for stir frys
ghee – 250 smoke point. use for stir frying or high heat cooking.

By definition, frying is cooking by immersion in hot fat (as with fried chicken or french fries), whereas sautéing is cooking via the direct heat of the pan, in just a small amount of fat or oil—or a mix of both. (Pro tip: A combination of butter and oil is magic when sautéing vegetables.)

In frying, the (hot) fat is the cooking medium —it’s the oil’s heat that’s browning the food. In sautéing, the fat is there both to keep the food from sticking to the pan and to add flavor, but it’s the hot pan that actually cooks the food.

https://www.eatingwell.com/article/69450/why-you-shouldnt-always-cook-with-olive-oil/
When you’re making salad dressing or sautéing vegetables over medium heat, olive oil is an excellent choice. Since it has a distinct flavor, use it in dishes where you want to taste it—drizzled over steamed vegetables, soup or bread, for example. Olive oil has more monounsaturated fat than other oils, making it a great choice for heart-healthy cooking.

Olive oil’s smoke point is between 365° and 420°F. When you heat olive oil to its smoke point, the beneficial compounds in oil start to degrade, and potentially form health-harming compounds.

On Sugar Alcohols

According to Dr. Sten Ekberg, erythritol is clearly the best amongst them and safe to use in proper amounts. It has zero metabolic effect on the liver and 90% of it is absorbed and excreted by the kidneys leaving 10% as fermentable (and is the cause of gas)

Dr. Eric Berg writes that Erythritol gets absorbed in the small intestine, it gets in the blood, but it gets excreted by the kidney unchanged. The microbes don’t like to eat it. There aren’t many negative side effects of erythritol. It has zero impact on insulin—it doesn’t affect the blood sugars. 

Summary – top 10 things to follow

Its more about what you should NOT eat than what you should eat

Sinclair recommends abstaining from four foods — sugar, bread, meat, and dairy — along with alcohol, to optimize his body’s function. He says the best predictor of your longevity is your blood sugar.

1. Step 1 eliminate refined sugar from diet. This eliminates cakes, pastries, donuts, candies, sweets, sweetened drinks and juices, soda
2. Step 2 eliminate carbs from processed and refined foods. This eliminates bread, bagels, cereal, pasta, grains, flour esp. wheat flour
3. Step 3 eliminate starches. This eliminates rice, potatoes
4. Step 4 eliminate ultra-processed foods. This eliminates anything that comes in a packet. biscuits, chips, crackers etc.
5. There is little left that you can eat now. 99% of food is eliminated. Basically you are confined to eating whole foods (vegetables, fruits and nuts). this is food you pick up in the grocery section (vegetables and fruits) that has not undergone any processing and you have to cook it to eat it.
6. On top of this, they advise not to do snacking and not eat more than 3 times a day. 2 or less is ideal according to them because it allows digestive system to rest and goes a long way in preventing insulin resistance.
7. Do not consume seed oils (canola etc.). These are very harmful and have undergone ultra-processing in high heat and in presence of harmful chemicals like hexane. Stick with cold pressed and minimally processed oils such as olive and coconut oil. Or use ghee if you can tolerate the smell. Olive oil cannot be used for high-heat cooking.
8. Erythritol ok according to Dr. Ekberg. According to webmd, Erythritol has no effect on your glucose or insulin levels.
9. When it comes to nuts – macademia, walnuts, pecans are the best
10. Dr. Gundry advises strongly against peanuts. the lectins in peanuts are pro-inflammatory. see this. He is also anti-cashews and chia seeds. [1]

The goal behind all this is to prevent insulin resistance and inflammation in the body. Those are the causes of cardiovascular and other diseases.

Role of insulin: purpose of insulin is to curb glucose spikes in the body. IR = body stops reacting to insulin. to avoid IR avoid glucose spikes in the body. what causes glucose spikes? easily digestible foods i.e., refined carbs and refined sugar. So avoid foods that cause glucose spikes.

Large buoyant LDL is cardiovascularly neutral – it is not bad. It is the small high-density LDL that is bad. The lipid panel does not distinguish between the two. 80% of the LDL measured by the lipid panel is the large buoyant LDL which is not dangerous. Statins reduce this large buoyant LDL which is not even a problem to begin with. They (statins) don’t do anything to reduce the small dense LDL. Plus they (statins) have bad side-effects [1].

For Vitamin D supplements to be useful you have to first reduce the inflammation in the body. refer [1]. He also says that glycemic index is useless. Glycemic load is a better metric.

Understand difference between subcutaneous fat vs. visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat is not dangerous.

Although milk has calcium, it cannot be effectively absorbed into the bone [1]. Same applies for calcium pills. Although they have calcium, it does not get absorbed into the bone. That is why they are useless against preventing osteoporosis. Dr. Mark Hyman (as well as Dr. Gundry and David Sinclair) is anti-milk [2] [3][4] not because its inherently bad but because cow’s milk from conventionally raised cattle contains dozens of reproductive hormones, allergenic proteins, antibiotics, chemicals, inflammatory compounds, and growth factors, some of which are known to promote cancer. While humans are the only species that continue to drink milk after weaning, we have no biological requirement for this food. Moreover, the milk we drink today is not what our grandparents drank. If you must have it, have A2 milk [4][5] or sheep or goat milk [6]. Even better is non-dairy milk: hemp milk, macadamia milk, flax milk, coconut milk (make sure you are buying unsweetened).

Soy protein isolate is bad according to Dr. Berg [1,2,3]. Its not because soy is bad but because what has been done to it. Its an ultra processed food. On the plus side, it has lectins removed from it [4].

Some more punchlines worth remembering:

• Protect the liver, feed the gut
• If it has a label, consider it a warning label. Because real food doesn’t need a label.
• Diabetes = Processed Food Disease
• Its not about what is inside the food but what has been done to it
• Not all calories are equal. There are good calories (the ones you get by consuming whole foods) and there are bad calories (the ones you get from Coke and other junk food etc.). The source of the calorie matters.