Brian (0s):
This week I interviewed Dr. Ravi Kumar. Dr. Kumar is a board certified neurosurgeon and assistant professor at UNC Chapel Hill, who also hosts the Dr. Kumar Discovery podcast. His personal model is to question everything. We discussed Ravi's Health journey with statins, along with how to live a metabolically healthy life, the problem with seed oils, the importance of vitamin D and his one tip to get your body back to what it once was. Really enjoyed my interview with Robbie. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the Get Leany Clean podcast. My name's Brian Grin, and I have Dr. Robbie Kumar. Welcome to the show.
Ravi (40s):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian.
Brian (42s):
Thanks for coming on, Ravi. I appreciate it. Coming from North Carolina.
Ravi (48s):
Yep.
Brian (48s):
And board certified neurosurgeon. Also a professor at UNC Chapel Hill. And what made you go down this route? What got you into sort of this practice and, and sort of this like health and wellness sort of venture that you've been on?
Ravi (1m 8s):
Yeah. Well, you know, thanks for having me first, Brian. Yeah. And you know, I, I went to medical school and then I did my residency in neurosurgery, and that was a lot of training, you know, and at the end of it, you know, I have, I'm married, I have four kids. With all that training, I still felt like I didn't know how to optimally take care of my health and my family's health. I mean, that, that's crazy, right? Because, you know, I had gone through literally 11 years of training after undergrad, and I still felt not adequately prepared. So, you know, what do you do? You, you go to your doctor, even as a doctor, you go to your doctor.
Ravi (1m 48s):
And my doctors didn't have the answers that I needed to, you know, to the, to the questions I was asking about how to, to optimize our health. So I was like, you know, I gotta do this myself. I have to go beyond my training and, and find the answers to these questions. So I just started doing deep dives on, on so many topics to educate myself and help me take care of my family and, and also my own health. And, and that led to all these answers and all these things that we never learned in medical school. In fact, we never even scratched the surface of this. And also, I, I discovered a lot of things that were just flat out wrong, that learned in my medical training, either wrong or misconstrued, you know?
Ravi (2m 34s):
And that oftentimes is the case. And so, you know, as I was doing this for years, I finally, you know, thought, well, hey, why don't I do this for everyone else too? You know, put, put this out there in a easily to understand like clear, unbiased, non-dogmatic format that people can hopefully benefit from, the benefit from the same investigations that I'm doing. You know, I call 'em discoveries. That's why my podcast is called the Dr. Kumar Discovery. And just put it out there and let people have the information because, you know, I felt like, you know, this knowledge had really empowered me, and why not give it to everyone else? They let them do the same.
Brian (3m 14s):
Yeah. I feel like Western medicine is really good with like, acute care, but when it comes to like preventative, it's, it's missing the boat there, huh?
Ravi (3m 24s):
Yeah. Big time. I mean, that's allopathic medicine. It's the treatment of disease, you know? So we treat disease, we wait for the disease to happen, and then we treat it. That's what I do in my practice, right? As a neurosurgeon, you know, I treat people once they have a brain tumor or once they have spinal cord compression or a nerve compression, I don't, I don't help them prevent it. And that's, and that's just outside the wheelhouse of my trained profession. So that's why I kind of come outside the box for my own health and wellness. And, and I do give this information to my patients. Many of them are not interested in that. You know, they're like, Hey, no, I don't wanna stop smoking, or I don't wanna, I improve my metabolic health, you know, or I don't want to do this or that.
Ravi (4m 4s):
And, and that's fine. And because, you know, not everyone wants that. But I find with my podcast, I can reach a, a lot more, I can reach millions, right? And, and sure. Those are the millions that, or the people who actually are interested in taking this information and, and doing something with it. And so that's why I do that on the side.
Brian (4m 26s):
Yeah, I love that. I mean, I've been interviewing people for the last, gosh, over five years now. And, and I run into this quite a bit, where you have, you know, like a health professional who realized that what they learned in training isn't something that is, well, I think it's not something that's like preventative or like, that can help people maybe not get to the point where they have to get surgery. And so it's up to the individual to sort of go out there and find it out themselves. And whether it's through a podcast, through a podcast, or maybe just a naturopathic position, or someone like yourself or myself, what are, what are some of the biggest things that you've learned on your own health journey or your family's health journey that you try to apply for, you know, yourself and then potential, you know, patients?
Brian (5m 12s):
Yeah.
Ravi (5m 13s):
Yeah. So, I mean, I've, I've been all over the place, you know, from, you know, for me, cardiovascular health, I, I have high cholesterol. Naturally, my whole family does it, honestly. So it's a familial trait. And there's no one in our family that's ever had a heart attack, you know. But I'll tell you the first thing, you know, when I actually, it was during my medical school, I went to see my primary care doctor, and he's like, God, you gotta go on a statin. If you don't, you're probably gonna have a heart attack early in life. Hmm. And I had just, we had just done our cardiovascular section in, in, in pathology and, and physiology. And, and so I was like, and they talked about how important statins were for preventing cardiovascular disease and all this.
Ravi (5m 55s):
So I was like, okay, well, you know, my doctor's telling me, I just learned about it in medical school. I should probably go on a statin. Hmm. I went on a statin. And Brian, I have never felt worse in my life. I mean, they talk about muscle aches, you know, when you, when you take statins, but I mean, there's something deeper. And for some people, at least for me, there was, I mean, we're talking about brain fog, depression, just like feeling like the inside of your body is just falling apart. Not just muscular musculoskeletal, but like the whole, like the workings of your body are falling apart. And I couldn't figure out what was going on, you know? And so, you know, my wife at the, and my wife was like, Hey, Ravi, you just started that new medication, that, that's probably it.
Ravi (6m 40s):
And I said, no, you know, I just learned about this in medical school. This is essential for preventing cardiovascular disease. There's no way that it would destroy someone, like, like, what's happening to me right now? So that's not it. And so I carried on taking the statin for, you know, we, we days actually almost a week. And, and finally my wife's like, just listen, stop the statin and see what happens if you, if you don't get better, you can go back on it. So I stopped it, and within a couple days I was back to normal. It was crazy. And I, I, I actually tried a statin again, a few, a few years later when I was in my residency, because my doctor, again saw my cholesterol levels and was like, Hey, Ravi, you need to probably go on a statin.
Ravi (7m 24s):
And so I was like, I didn't do well with a statin. And I tried it, you know, I had tried Simvastatin the first time. He says, well, just try it again. So we tried a atorvastatin and the exact same thing happened. I just fell apart, you know? And, and I stopped it and got better. So that was my experience with statins. But that also sparked a huge question in me. Listen, I have high, but no one in my family's ever had a, a heart attack is, do I need to, do I need to lower my cholesterol with a statin? You know, do, is that need to happen? I mean, 'cause it makes me feel like I'm gonna die.
Ravi (8m 4s):
And so I went down this whole rabbit hole of investigating this, and it turns out one that statins are, are incredibly deleterious to the body. You know, I mean, 10% of people who take 'em get myopathy. They, the brain makes all its own cholesterol. It doesn't get it from dietary sources or from the cholesterol ma made in your liver. The brain makes all its own. And if it can't make it, it falls apart. And 25% of all your cholesterol in your body is in the brain. So you can imagine you take a statin that crosses the blood brain barrier, like simvastatin and atorvastatin, they go in and they prevent your brain from making the essential nutrient or the essential building block of its structure.
Ravi (8m 48s):
And can, you can imagine, I felt brain fog and told, like, I couldn't put two ends together, you know, when I was on a statin. Well, that's because I was preventing my brain from maintaining its structure, you know? So you know that you get myopathy, cardiomyopathy, dementia, diabetes, liver injury, I mean, the list goes on and on. Okay? And so these are just the risks of statins and all drugs have risks. So that's, that's fine. Right? Well, what are the benefits? If the benefits are spectacular, then maybe they, it outweighs the risks. Well, the benefits of statins in anyone who hasn't had a cardiovascular disease event are, don't exist. I mean, it's, it's all out there in the data.
Ravi (9m 28s):
I mean, the, the, you can, they, they've done large meta-analysis of many trials, and they don't, if you haven't had a cardiovascular event, there is no survival benefit from taking a statin period. It just, it's, it's the, the raw data. You don't hear that though. When you hear, go to your doctor, you hear, Hey, there, if you take the statin, it'll reduce your risk by 40 of a cardiovascular event by 44%, you know? Mm. That's for Crestor. They'll say that. And you're like, whoa, 44%. That's incredible. I mean, that's what my doctor told me, you know? And so I was like, how did, where did they get that number from?
Ravi (10m 9s):
So if you look at that trial, it's in people who are at high risk cardio for cardio, they've had a heart attack, they're at high risk, they have inflammation 'cause their CRP is elevated and they're just doing poorly from a cardiovascular standpoint 'cause of other life choices that we can talk about later. And so when they put 'em on, on Crestor, which is Rosuvastatin, their risk of a cardiovascular event falls by 44 4% over two years. But that's a relative risk reduction. And no one tells you that. And so 44% sounds amazing. Right?
Ravi (10m 49s):
But if you look at what does that mean? Well, that means that if if someone's risk is 1.2% per year of a cardiovascular rent event, then their, that risk falls by 44%. So it ends up that your actual risk reduction in that study was about 0.6% per year reduction. Right. But you're, you hear 44% and you hear, and you hear nothing about the risks, you know?
Brian (11m 23s):
Yeah. I, I've had this, I mean, my dad I remember got on one briefly and he experienced the same thing, and then he got off it. I mean, he, he, you know, yeah, mainly like muscle aches was a big one for him.
Ravi (11m 35s):
I mean, that's a big one. And see, this is the thing. They, they, if you look at the statin clinical trials, they don't say much about muscle aches. They say, you know, it's, it's one or 2% or two or 3%, something very low. Right? Or even fractions of a percent. But what they do is these clinical trial for statins, they take patients and they do this run-in period where they put a bunch of patients on statins and they see if anyone doesn't do well with them. If they don't do well of them with it, they take 'em out of the trial before it even starts. Interesting. So they self-select the best candidates for this drug before they even start, and that it's a call, a washout period and or a run in period.
Ravi (12m 15s):
And it, it totally skews the, the results. 'cause these companies want a positive result for their trial, right? If they don't, they've wasted tons of money in r and d and cl running these clinical trials, which cost billions sometimes, you know, and, or, or hundreds of millions. And so they, they, if they, they're incentivized to have a positive result, even if it's not truly a positive result.
Brian (12m 41s):
I was just looking up, as we were talking, the, the market share of statin, the stat market in 2020 fours, 16.85 billion, and it's expected to reach 24 over 24 billion by 2032.
Ravi (12m 56s):
Yeah. So, you know, you've got statins, right? That that's been, you know, a, a guy in the, in the seventies and eighties named Maro Endo, a Japanese researcher, found these, the benefits of statins or the biological effects of statins because they're fungal toxins and fungus would essentially poison anything that was trying to eat its resources with statins, you know, it, it statins, what they do is they prevent cholesterol synthesis synthesis in the body. And cholesterol, you know, we always think about cholesterol is bad, cholesterol is vital. You can't survive without cholesterol. It is a integral part of every cell membrane in your whole body. It helps you form hormones.
Ravi (13m 37s):
It's the precursor to vitamin D, it steroid is, or sorry, cholesterol is essential to life. And fungus knew that. So they created these toxins that inhibited our ability to make cholesterol. So the statin was developed then, and you know, this, there was this whole idea that high cholesterol caused cardiovascular disease. So if we lower it, you, you'll get, you won't have cardiovascular disease. And they haven't really slowed down obviously cardiovascular disease or mortality over the years. But they've moved on from statins now into these PSK nine inhibitors. Have you heard of those?
Brian (14m 14s):
A little bit.
Ravi (14m 15s):
Yeah. So PSK nine is this protein in your cells that essentially binds to LDL receptors. So LDL receptors are the, these grappling hooks that sit on the surface of the cell and they grab LDL molecules, they pull 'em in to the cells, so they remove 'em from circulation. Okay? So the more LDL receptors you have sitting on your cell surface, the less LDL you have in your circulation. 'cause there's more getting pulled into the cell. And the, this PSK nine is this protein that grabs onto an LDL receptor tags it for destruction. Okay? So the more PSK nine you have inside your cells, especially in the liver, the more of these LDL receptors get internalized and destroyed and the, the more LDL you end up having circulating in your, in your body, right?
Ravi (15m 6s):
'cause you're not, you're not pulling the LDL back in 'cause there's less receptors on the cell surface. Hmm. And PSK nine inhibitors is an antibody that you have to inject usually twice a month. And it goes in and it binds these ps this PSK nine protein, and it prevents it from tagging these LDL receptors for destruction. So what you end up having is way more LDL receptors on your cell service and it drops your cholesterol so low. These people on P PSK nine inhibitors are dropping their LDL to 30 mm. Literally, I mean, you know, they're, you know, the, the AHA recommends getting your LDL below a hundred, or if you're at high risk below 70, which I think is even too low.
Ravi (15m 51s):
Yeah. But tsk nine inhibitors drop to 30 and there's no biological like circumstance where a, a human being would live at A LDL of 30. Just, it's just completely abnormal. Right? So they, so they're, you know, they, they're so focused. The medical community's been so focused on dropping LDL that they've gone to these drugs that are just decimating our LDL levels, which are, remember essential for everything in our body, all our cell membranes and our body rely on it. And now you've got these trials that are showing, oh, maybe they do reduce cardiovascular disease. But if you look at the one one trial in particular on PSK nine inhi on HI inhibitors, more people died in the wing that got the PSK nine inhibitor than didn't.
Ravi (16m 42s):
But when they grouped to hey, cardiovascular events, they had like angina, cardiovascular, re, you know, revascularization or mis, they said there was a slight increase in people who were not getting PSK nine inhibitor. And so they called it a win. And they said, now everyone should be taking this if they're high risk, you know, but they didn't, they didn't say that, Hey, listen, in the group that got the PSK nine inhibitor, more people were dying. And so it, it's this, it's this game that they're playing with statistics around cardiovascular disease. And if you don't do this deep dive, you don't go into that paper and you find it. Right. No one tells you about it. Most
Brian (17m 21s):
People aren't doing that.
Ravi (17m 22s):
Yeah. I wasn't doing it as a doctor until I went and I'm like, I had to go digging. You know? And so that's the kind of situation we face when trying to interpret these, answer these questions about cardiovascular disease and every other health topic is like, what is actually in the data? Because you're only telling us what you want us to know. Right. And if it's motivated by product sales, we're talking billions, like what you're talking about PSK nine inhibitors are making billions as well, then you, they're only gonna tell us what, what
Brian (17m 52s):
They want us to hear.
Ravi (17m 53s):
Yeah. Is motivating a potential stock price increase and all this stuff, you know, and that's fine that money motivates medicine, but still we, you know, we gotta be careful. We gotta walk carefully through this landscape.
Brian (18m 6s):
And so obviously you mentioned you went on a stat and got off. What were sort of some of the lifestyle changes that you decided to make? Or if any, I mean, you know, people live with high cholesterol all the time. It, it's, yeah. Know. Yeah. So what type of sort of lifestyle changes did you make? Yeah, yeah.
Ravi (18m 23s):
So, you know, obviously, so I think what it, it's the root of what's at the root of all disease, including cardiovascular disease. But, you know, you, you look at, you know, osteoarthritis, dementia, diabetes, it's all, it's all inflammation. Inflammation is at the RO overzealous inflammation in your body. So what, what we do, I do, and what I do with for my family is we focus on living a, essentially a metabolically healthy life with lower systemic inflammation. Sure. And this is how we do that. So first of all, I would say that inflammation is not bad. Inflammation is necessary for life.
Ravi (19m 4s):
You can't, you're constantly creating micro injuries throughout your body just from living. And you have to heal that with inflammation. That's how we heal is through inflammation. But you have to, it has to be in a, in some kind of homeostasis where it, it's not too much and it's not too little. It's right, it the right level and it turns off when it's supposed to turn off. And we, in modern society, many, I would say most people at least I see in my practice are just, their inflammation is just wrecking their body. They have, you know, runaway inflammation and the things that cause inflammation. The general things that I think cause inflammation are metabolic syndrome number one.
Ravi (19m 45s):
And this is, you know, where you have inappropriate use of energy in your body because of something called insulin resistance. So, you know, you, let's say you eat, you start eating very high carbo, refined carbohydrate diet right now you've got those carbohydrates are metabolized in the glucose. Glucose, you have more glucose than you need. Okay? 'cause your muscles use glucose, your brain uses glucose, your body uses glucose as its main energy source to make a TP. But when you got too much of it, your body's like, Hey, too much what? Put it away for, put it away for a little bit and we'll use it later. So it puts the glucose away first in glycogen. And then when the glycogen warehouses are full, then it starts putting it into fat.
Ravi (20m 30s):
And so what fat does is fat is not inert. It starts releasing hormones and bioactive molecules that make the rest of our cells say, oh, let's not pull in so much glucose. 'cause we're in an energy storage phase right now, the fat's telling you. And so the fat makes you essentially releases molecules that make you insulin resistant. Okay? And, and, and that leads into a vicious cycle of, you know, your, your hormone, your testosterone gets aromatized to estrogen, your muscles become less responsive to, to insulin. And you, and it leads to higher glucose levels. And glucose does something when it's sitting in the bloodstream.
Ravi (21m 13s):
It attaches to proteins. It's called glycation. And that's why you'll often hear this term advanced glycation in products it well. So that is a, a marker that glucose is attaching the proteins and wrecking them.
Brian (21m 31s):
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Brian (22m 14s):
So there you have it. I'll leave a link in the show notes for my stepladder system book now back to the podcast.
Ravi (22m 21s):
And when your immune system says, sees this glucose attached to proteins, it, it wants to get rid of it, destroy it. So it starts an inflammatory response and starts destroying those, those, those things that are glycated and that leads to systemic inflammation. The one marker that you'll sometimes your doctor will check is called hemoglobin, hemoglobin A1C. That's a marker of glycated hemoglobin. And the higher that is, is the higher it tells you how high your glucose has been over the last 90 days, essentially. And so that's, that's one thing that causes inflammation. The others are like smoking uncontrolled hypertension where you're constantly causing endovascular injury and, and constantly hefting having heal it.
Ravi (23m 10s):
And then another is a high eating diet, high inflammatory oils, fats, because those lead to, they're, they're highly susceptible to oxidation and they also push through, you know, metabolic pathways so that we have push inflammation rather than shut it down. And the, and the, and the other one that's I think is very important is the, the paucity of Omega-3 fatty acids in our diet, which are, are a off switch for inflammation in our body. And we just don't get enough of 'em anymore.
Brian (23m 43s):
Yeah. You mentioned seed oils. Seed oils are something that's become rampant. I know there's some people that are, have sort of a mixed feeling on them. I always say like, does it pass like the eye test? Like if you watch how they make seed oils, you're just like, wow, does that something that we should be consuming? Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's been something that is cheap to make and easy to use in foods and you don't even know what's in there. So it's sort of got a neutral taste profile and, but if you go out to eat, you know, they're cooking in, in these seed oils and Yeah. It, you know, we used to back, I think, you know, back in the day like McDonald's actually even used to cook with like beef tallow Yeah.
Brian (24m 27s):
And things like that, right? Yep. But, but that changed after, gosh, probably once like industrial revolution started and it's become ramp is, is that something that you try to take outta your diet? Yeah,
Ravi (24m 40s):
We, I mean we don't, so like seed oil, just so everyone knows is oil from a seed that normally wouldn't be oily in most cases. Sometimes there's seeds like sunflowers that have a lot of oil in that, that's also a seed oil. But it's seed from an oil that you, or oil from a seed that you wouldn't expect to be oily. So corn, soybeans, cotton seed, these things that are like, well there's oil in there and, and enough to fill a whole bottle. And there is, because of the sheer amount of, of it that we produce of these seeds. So like say corn, let's take corn or soybeans for example. We make a massive amount of corn and soybeans for animal feed, corn, you know, seed meals, all these things that, and carbohydrate, you know, rich staples that we put out there.
Ravi (25m 32s):
And when you can't leave the oil in them, there's a tiny amount of oil in the embryo of the seed, a tiny amount. This, the embryo is called the germ in a seed. And this oil, if you leave it in there, will make the flour go rancid once you grind it. So we, we, they take this process where they take a petroleum distillate called hexane. So you know, gasoline is octane, mostly octane. It's like a, there's different levels of octane in it. That's why you can pay more at the pump for certain amounts. Right? Right. But octane is, is volatile. It's fast burning. It's, and it's gives you that sweet smell of, that you smell from gasoline, you know, that sells very toxic.
Ravi (26m 14s):
Well one another smell in there is hexane. 'cause hexane is another hydrocarbon in gasoline in petroleum that, that evaporates at room temperature and you can smell it. So the, the reason they use hexane to get these oils out is because these hydrocarbons like octane and hexane, they are fat soluble. So if you grind up a bunch of soybeans and you got this big meal of soybeans and it, and then you mix it with hexane, all the oil will dissolve into the hexane. Okay. So now what you do is you, you wash the liquid component off, which is the hexane with the oil in it.
Ravi (26m 57s):
You wash it off into another compartment and then you le let that soybean meal Eva let the hexane evaporate out. 'cause it'll evaporate out at low pressure and even room temperature. And so now you've got this, this soybean meal that, or corn meal that they're gonna put in a bag and sell in the grocery store shelf to you that's been washed in hexane. Yeah. So they sell that and then the next thing they have is the other component with the hexane. And they evaporate that off, recollect it, they recon condense it and collect it somewhere else. And what's left that didn't evaporate, that was dissolved in that hexane is the oil. And that's a seed oil. So that's how majority of your seed oils even sunflower oil are, are, are obtained is through this hexane distillation.
Ravi (27m 43s):
And hexane is a known neurotoxin, you know, and it, it, there's no doubt about it. I mean it, I if I, you know, these food chemists and all these guys who decide, develop these processes, if I took hexane and poured it in their oatmeal and I said, okay, let it evaporate and then eat it or give it to your kid, they would say, hell no. But they design these industrial processes to create, you know, the extract these seed oils and then say, go ahead and sell it to the com to the public, you know, and that, so that's where seed oils come from. And the vast majority of 'em are, are distilled by hexane wash. So, and and to be fair, majority of the hexane is, is outta the food when they sell it to you.
Ravi (28m 29s):
Sure. It's not like they're leaving a bunch of hexane in there. There's trace amount is what they say. So trace amount of hexane left and is likely not overtly toxic to you, but no one wants that in their body, you know? Yeah. So, so that's, that's the the first thing. The second thing about seed oils is that we have never ate this much in the history of human evolution. Never had access to this much seed oil. You know, we might've eaten grains that had a small amount of seed oil in them, but you would get minuscule amounts in a, in a whole food diet, minuscule. But now all of a sudden we have access to jugs of it, literally jugs of it that we can just bathe our food and fry it in or, or mix it into our brownie mixes or whatever.
Ravi (29m 15s):
You know, I mean, it, it's a massive amount. And what's in this seed oil is something called linoleic acid, which is a omega six fatty acid. So to give us some context here, omega six fatty acids are essential fatty acids. We've got two essential fatty acids. Omega six and Omega-3, okay. And these are essential, meaning our body can't make them. We have to obtain 'em from our diet. And what they do is, omega six is a inflammation promoter necessary for healing. We need omega six to heal our body to turn on inflammation, heal our body, and then we need Omega-3 to turn that inflammation down when the healing is done.
Ravi (29m 59s):
And if we have omega, we don't have enough omega six and we have too much Omega-3, we can't turn on inflammation. If we have too much omega six and not enough Omega-3, we can't turn inflammation off. And so you, that's what happens here is you get this, this where you're putting a half a cup of, you know, vegetable wessin, ve vegetable oil into your brownie mix and giving it to your kids. And now your kids are systemically inflamed because they're not getting any fish oil. I mean, they might be getting a little bit, but they're not getting a quarter cup of it. You know? And, and, and most likely they're not getting much because our diet's so devoid in Omega-3 fatty acids and they're getting a ton of omega six fatty acid through seed oil through this industrial process that it provides 'em for us.
Ravi (30m 47s):
And they end up being in systemically inflamed. That leads to metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease later in life, degenerative arthritis, you know, neuro de neurodegenerative diseases, maybe even neurodevelopmental diseases like autism and A DHD. I mean, so it, it just, it sets up, it sets the stage for robust, uncontrolled inflammation in the human body.
Brian (31m 12s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean we, you know, we could probably talk hours about it. I mean, canola oil is one that's probably most used I think in a lot of restaurants. You know, like you mentioned, heating these oils, they're unstable. And I was just looking into it a little bit. Like they, when they're heated, they lead to formation of aldehydes and trans fats. Yeah. And it, you know, so I always, I've always have a real, like, I don't eat fried foods like at all. Like, that's like a no go for me. Yeah. And I don't miss them one bit.
Ravi (31m 45s):
So one thing you, you mentioned about heating these fats. So I think a real, like, important point to point out here is that there's something is is what the fats are called and why they're called it. So saturated fat is a, is a string of carbons and hydrogens and there's no double bonds in it. So a saturated fat is a single strand of carbons with no double bonds. And double bonds are very susceptible to oxidation. And now oxidation is what creates the aldehydes and can cause the trans confirmation of the fatty acid and all this stuff. And so when you eat saturated fat, like, you know, something high in saturated fat like butter lard, tallow, whatever it is, coconut oil, you are filling your body with a fat that doesn't oxidize, essentially doesn't oxidize.
Ravi (32m 39s):
So you are an oxidation stimulates inflammation for sure. You know, it's, it is a very potent inflammation stimulator. 'cause it damages your, your tissues damages, your cell membranes, your mitochondria, everything. Omega six fatty acids are highly polyunsaturated. That's why they're, when you buy a bottle of vegetable oil, they call it polyunsaturated oil because that means they have multiple double bonds throughout the carbon chain. And that keeps the carbon chains from fitting together neatly. 'cause they're, the double bond creates abandoned that in the carbon chain. And so they, they're liquid at room temperature. And that's a good way to, to note what's, what's polyunsaturated and what's saturated.
Ravi (33m 22s):
If it's solid like coconut oil or tallow, it's probably saturated. If it's liquid like vegetable oil, it's probably polyunsaturated. And so these polyunsaturated fats are very prone oxidation and damage in the body. And when you heat them, they oxidize very readily. Or if UV hits it, what, you know, there's a bunch of different things that can cause it, it, it can even oxidize a body temperature. So when you fill your body with polyunsaturated fats, like seed oils, those go into your LDL molecules because your LDL molecules are just these transporters through your blood for, for lipids and cholesterol. And if they're full of, if they're full of seed oils, they're gonna oxidize, there's oxygen in your blood, there's oxygen, oxygen in your tissue.
Ravi (34m 7s):
The LDL usually goes to areas of damage where there's high oxidative stress because you know all the metabolic activity to fix that damage. And so if you send a, a truckload of oxidizable fats into a damaged area, what do you think is gonna happen? Cardiovascular disease atherosclerosis. Right now, if your saturated, if your LDL molecules are full saturated fat, which doesn't oxidize the LDL moves into that area, damage does its repair work, donates its its molecules and moves on. And cardiovascular disease is not initiated. 'cause you have to have an oxidation vent. An so you got two situations you could possibly be in one, the LD L's full of seed oil, which is omega six fatty acid, which is highly oxidizable.
Ravi (35m 2s):
Right. Or it's full of saturated fat because you're eating tallow and and butter and things like that.
Brian (35m 8s):
Now just to interrupt, I was just gonna say LLDL is the, is being blamed and they really shouldn't be, right?
Ravi (35m 13s):
Yeah, exactly. L-D-L-L-D-L you can't live without L-D-L-L-D-L is the, the transporter protein that bundles up cholesterol and lipids and transports it throughout your body for, you know, for cell repair, lipid membrane repair, hormone synthesis, all these important functions that your cells can't live without. LDL is the delivery truck. And so what do you put in your delivery truck? Are you gonna put a omega six fatty acids, which are pro-inflammatory highly oxidizable to move into an area of damage that's already, there's, there's a high under high oxidative stress 'cause of the metabolic repair that's going on there.
Ravi (35m 56s):
Right? Well, if you do that, you're gonna, those omega sixes are just gonna oxidize and the l DL is gonna get stuck there. It's gonna form a phone cell and initiate atherosclerosis. But if your LDLs are full of saturated fat, which we have villainized for the last 60 years, that LDL is gonna move into the area damage, it's gonna donate the essential components that the cells need for repair and then it's gonna move on. And atherosclerosis is not gonna initiate that is just, it, it, the science is very clear on this. You have to have an oxidation event of the LDL molecule for atherosclerosis to initiate. If you don't get that, you can't form an atherosclerotic p plaque.
Ravi (36m 39s):
So there's a really like cool vignette here. There's a group of Pacific Islanders called in, in, in the South Pacific called the Toko Islands, and their 70% of their calories come from saturated fat from coconut. Hmm. Okay. So like you can imagine the A A HA recommends that we take less than 10% of our diet or less with saturated fat. The Toko islands are eating 70% of their calories from saturated fat. Hmm. And they smoke like chimneys, literally. They are, they trade coconut, they grow coconut, they dry it and it's called Cobra when they do it. And they trade it to these boats for cigarettes, not for money.
Ravi (37m 20s):
And, and they have no incidence of cardiovascular disease at all, even though they're under tons of oxidative stress from their smoking. Hmm. But what what's happening in here is their LDLs are not full of oxidizable fats. They're full of saturated fat from coconut oil, from co eating coconut that doesn't oxidize. So they don't develop cardiovascular disease. As soon as these to allowance move to New Zealand and adopt a western diet and lifestyle with full seed oils, they start developing cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome and diabetes and all these things that are just unheard of when they're living in, in the islands where they eat mostly coconut.
Ravi (38m 1s):
I I thought that was a cool Yeah, yeah. That illustrates that, that topic. And it's,
Brian (38m 6s):
This is the to allowances, is that
Ravi (38m 7s):
The Toko Allens Yeah. They've also demonstrated this in India with the railway workers. They noticed that the North Indians smoked a ton and ate mostly saturated fat from ghee and animal products. And the South Indians were eating mostly seed oils like peanut oil and sesame oil and didn't smoke much at all. The South Indians hardly smoked. And the North Indians a cardiovascular disease during the study period was like a curiosity. They had like, never even heard of it. This was back in the, in the seventies, sixties and seventies. And the South Indians were having an epidemic of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks.
Ravi (38m 50s):
Hmm. So one group was eating tons of saturated fat smoking like chimneys and eating tons of sugar also, by the way. Yeah. Right. And the other, and having no heart attacks or cardiovascular events. And the other group was eating mostly polyunsaturated fats from seed oils, not smoking, and had very little sugar intake and they had just rampant cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. And so, you know, the, that's interesting. Yeah. Very interesting.
Brian (39m 19s):
So for the typical individual and you know, it's, it's just about sort of making that trans, I don't know, the transition out of, you know, these seed oils that are rampant. Which, you know, part of the big thing is like not eating out as much would be, I think a good first step. I know it's nice every once in a while and sometimes you can't avoid it and I think that's fine. But if you do eat out, you could, you know, what I do sometimes is I'll ask, like, if I get eggs, I'll just ask them to cook 'em in butter.
Ravi (39m 48s):
Yeah.
Brian (39m 48s):
Things like that. Is that, those are the steps that you, you've been taking?
Ravi (39m 52s):
Yeah. I mean I always tell everyone the first step is find that clear bottle of vegetable oil in your pantry. Yeah. Which I would say a majority of the households in the US have that in there.
Brian (40m 3s):
Right.
Ravi (40m 4s):
Port and import in your compost pile, you know,
Brian (40m 6s):
Or, or your, or you port in your, your gasoline thing. No kidding.
Ravi (40m 10s):
Yeah. Yeah. Make some biodiesel out of it, you know, so, but no, yeah, I would say just pour it out, get rid of it. Right. And don't ever buy it again. Definitely don't feed it to your kids. And you can replace that with coconut oil butter. You gotta be careful with avocado oils, but they can be decent. The chosen brand has been shown to not be very oxidized. Olive oil is okay too. Olive oil and avocado oil are monounsaturated, meaning they only have one double bond. So they're not very susceptible to oxidation, but, and if you buy good quality oils, they should be pretty good for you. And healthy populations around the world use these, use olive oil.
Ravi (40m 50s):
So yeah,
Brian (40m 51s):
That was sort of, that was gonna be my next thought. Yeah. Question was like your thoughts on olive oil and avocado oil. Yeah.
Ravi (40m 57s):
Yeah. So this is my thoughts on that and we'll get, and then we'll get back to the what the steps to do to, okay. So olive oil and avocado oil are monounsaturated, so they have one double bond. So they still have a little bit of susceptibility to oxidation, but nowhere compared to the polyunsaturated fats. Okay. So, and it's because of the way the fat forms to the shape of the fat. So olive
Brian (41m 23s):
Oil and, and they, and they also have lower linoleic acid as well, right?
Ravi (41m 26s):
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So like, you know, olive oil and avocado oil have about 10% of the fat is linoleic acid and about 70% is monounsaturated fatty acid in the form of oleic acid. So they, they, olive oil has a lot of polyphenols and antioxidants in it from the fruit. Okay. That, that kind of help it resist oxidation and also have anti-inflammatory effects in your body. Okay. Avocado oil has that too, but to much lesser extent. And the quality of avocado oils varies widely.
Ravi (42m 9s):
So I, and and when you eat it, it, avocado oil just doesn't taste great. It, it has a more of a bland flavor and it, you know, whereas olive oil, you take a spoonful of olive oil and you're like, yeah, that's buttery, that's spicy, that's, you know, delicious. You know, so you, you, your body's kind of telling you, Hey, this is good, this is not great. So avocado oil is fine, we have it in our house and the chosen brand, you can find it like Costco and target that, that's pretty safe and, and low oxidation
Brian (42m 38s):
Chosen brand. Yeah. 'cause I know that some of these olive oils and avocado oils, you know, are diluted with cheap vegetable. Yeah. So Yeah.
Ravi (42m 46s):
Yeah, yeah. And you have to be very careful that, you know, for olive oils, I say get a, a single origin olive oil in a dark bottle with a very nice flavor if it's, if it, if it doesn't, if you don't taste it and it's got, it's not grassy and spicy and delicious, it's probably not good olive oil, you know? So Yeah. So I would say use that, use your, your taste buds to, to tell you a little bit, but you can also do some research and there's studies out there that show which olive oils are pure and which are not. So that, so I, I, I'm a fan of olive oil. I love olive oil. It's tasty. You know, we, but we eat a lot of butter and tallow in our house, so, and, and we use coconut oil too.
Ravi (43m 32s):
So coconut oil is great if you, it's solid at room temperature, but if you liquefy it, you can use from through heat, you can use it for most if your cooking needs and it's highly set, it's, it's mostly saturated fat, like more than even like tallow and butter. So and so, and it has like antifungal properties in your gut and it, it has all sorts of nice, there's a lot of nice things about coconut oil. So I, I'm a big fan of coconut oil.
Brian (43m 58s):
Are you, have you, do you know who Brad Marshall is? Okay. I'll introduce you to Brad. Yeah. I, I, I've had him on the podcast a long time ago, but he's, he talks about all this, but anyways, go ahead.
Ravi (44m 9s):
Yeah, yeah. No, coconut oil is cool. I mean it's got, but you know, I mean I, I think that you should look at ancestral patterns, you know, what did your ancestors, your, if you look at your great-great grandparents and what were they eating? And they weren't eating seed oils and they were likely eating, you know, depending on your ancestry. Mine were eating tons of GH and coconut oil. Yours were probably eating tons of butter tallow and, you know, large probably, you know, and, and, and, and they were, they were doing fine. The cardiovascular epidemic didn't start until like the thirties and forties, you know. Right. And before that it was like ev people were getting TB and stuff. That was their main concern.
Ravi (44m 50s):
It wasn't dying from heart attacks, you know, so if you look at ancestral traditions and even further back, you can kind of define what was keeping our, our people healthy and vital and, and if we're doing something different, then it's something to look at critically, I think. So back to your question about what to do, I say first get rid of the vegetable oil in your house. Just don't have it in there. Use monounsaturated and saturated fats mainly. And when you go out, this is, this is a trap that we have to be careful about, Brian, is be try becoming monks, you know, and so dogmatic about our food choices that we get rid of the happiness in our life.
Ravi (45m 30s):
'cause that can happen, you know? Yeah. All of a sudden you're not gonna have a piece of that birthday cake or you're not gonna, you know, share a little plate of fries with your friends or you're not gonna have, you know, drink a beer every once in a while, whatever it is. You know, I mean, things that you know, that are not great for you, but they're, they're food and drink. We create social connections over. Right. And all of a sudden, when you're the one person who can't eat this, you can't eat that. You can't, it, it, and it's fine. You feel like you're doing the right thing, but in the end you're like sapping some of your happiness and reducing your ability to connect socially. And I think that's a real thing to look at. So I tell people, listen, when you're out, don't be a monk.
Ravi (46m 11s):
You know, you can't avoid seed oils when you're e eating out at restaurants. It's just impossible. Right. There's, unless it's a restaurant that says they don't use seed oils, which those are like one in a a million, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So I, I would say, don't, you know, don't glorify g gluttony. Don't just go hog wild and do, I'm not gonna care about it just one night. I'm not gonna, but don't be like a completely pious and and unable to enjoy food. So, you know, moderate and, and don't do it often, you know? Right. And, and that, and that I think is a good middle ground because 'cause seed oils are just unavoidable, unfortunately. And you have to have social connection and you have to enjoy your life.
Ravi (46m 53s):
What I say is, listen, if you know you're gonna have a seed oil input, like a, you know, omega six input take, you know, double up on your Omega-3 fatty acid supplement that day because Omega-3 is the yin to omega six's ying. And, and so if you are gonna have an increased amount of omega six that day, increase your Omega-3 fatty acid intake and that'll bring that inflammation imbalance, hopefully, you know? Yeah. And, and, and 1, 1, 1 meal is not gonna kill you either. You gotta remember that.
Brian (47m 24s):
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, you know, social isolation will kill you.
Ravi (47m 28s):
Yeah. For sure. Right. Yeah. I mean, orthorexia is a disease where it's a defined disease where you're so obsessed with your food choices that you can't enjoy food anymore. Hmm. You know, and that happens all the time. I mean, like a lot of, some of the big like health influencers out there are orthorexic or they're, they have some supplemental mania, you know, where they just, they, they think they have to take a hundred capsules a day to stay healthy, you know? Yeah. Whereas the human body didn't evolve to take any capsules, you know?
Brian (47m 60s):
No, I know. I mean, I, I go back and forth on supplements. I mean, I, I've actually feel like since I've done the podcast, I've probably scaled back even though like, you know, I do have these companies that like send, which are I'm sure a lot of great supplements out there, but I think you can, you know, go a little bit crazy with all that. Yeah. I
Ravi (48m 21s):
Try to Yeah, for sure.
Brian (48m 22s):
You can choose the ones that I decide to take.
Ravi (48m 27s):
I'm not antis supplement, by the way. Yeah. So, but I, I do think that, you know, if you can get it from food, get it from food,
Brian (48m 33s):
Right. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's some great, like buddy of mine, Brad Kerns has a great whey protein out there, and he's out in California and I use it from time to time, but a lot of times I'll just eat after I work out. Like Yeah. You know, it's like simple. Yeah. Usually, usually you can get 90% of the things you need from the foods, you know, hopefully, obviously with certain foods, like the way our our soil's been depleted over the years, you know, there could be some debate about that, you know, is, are we getting exactly what we want from those foods? But that's a whole nother
Ravi (49m 8s):
Yeah. That's a whole nother no micro micronutrient de deficiency and supplementation is something i I definitely focus on. 'cause I'm I'm in that camp with you is that I think that, you know, what we could get before ancestral is just ancestrally is just not readily a available to us anymore, unless we work really hard to, you know, get these foods. But, but that can be difficult and stressful too. Whereas just taking 15 milligrams of zinc glycinate a day, you know, and you're, and you're fine, you know?
Brian (49m 34s):
Yeah. And then one more thing we'll talk is like vitamin D, you know, now we're getting into the, well, it's still beautiful here in Chicago, but we're getting into the winter months and I think people that live in the Midwest, a lot of 'em do lack that, that they become deficient in vitamin D Thoughts around that?
Ravi (49m 52s):
Yeah, I mean, well first of all, I would say vitamin D is used by every cell in your body, every single cell in your body. It's a master regulator for your whole metabolism, your biochemistry, everything. It is. And, and it is 50% of the world, Brian is vitamin D deficiency. In the US it's more around 25%. But if you look at the world as a whole, it's around 50%. In, in UK it's above 50%. So it is a epidemic of, and and, and these, and when you're vitamin D deficiency, you are, your, your life is wrecked. You're not ticking, your body's not ticking at all. You know, your flat affect, your immunosuppressed, your bone and muscle strength decreases.
Ravi (50m 37s):
I mean, it, it is just, it, it, it'll drop you and you won't even know it. You just, you know, people just see you and be like, oh, they're so flat. What's going on with them? You know? Or maybe they're depressed and they are depressed, but it's all reversible 'cause it's vitamin D deficiency and it's very easy to happen. I used to live in Hawaii and I was vitamin D deficient in Hawaii, you know, and, and, and it was because of inflammation, you know, and my liver wasn't converting the one form of vitamin D into the more active form. So, but, but that, that being said, everyone should know their vitamin D status. Everyone should know.
Ravi (51m 17s):
And what the doctors generally say is, oh, above, you should keep it above 30 nanograms per milliliter of vi 25 hydroxy vitamin D. That's what they'll measure. 25 hydroxy vitamin D. And I looked at the ancestral studies across, you know, all these populations, a hundred gatherers and you know, people who are living outside of the modern world and, you know, they don't te take supplements, they get it from food. They're living like, you know, vitally and they're generally around 45 nanograms per milliliter. So that's what I shoot for in me and my, for myself and for my children and my wife. So, you know, 30 I think is fine, but you're right on the border of low, why, who wants to be there, you know?
Ravi (51m 57s):
Right, right. And the, the upper limit normal is a hundred, but y that there's no recorded toxicity at that level either. So I would say shoot for higher, you know, and it's really, really, really hard to overdose on vitamin DI mean, you can do it, but you gotta take like hundreds of thousands of IU per day, you know, for a long period of time. So what I do, what, and, and it works for me and everyone's biology is a little different. So you definitely should titrate this to your vitamin D level, but I take about 2000 IU per day with vitamin K two, which is essential m the MK seven variant. I take 2000 IU a day in the summer, and in the winter I take 5,000 IU per day.
Ravi (52m 40s):
Hmm. And I try to get sunshine whenever I can.
Brian (52m 45s):
Yeah. Get, getting out is a big part, but yeah, like in the winter supplementation could, could really be of benefit. And with the vitamin D, with K two, is that
Ravi (52m 55s):
Right? I, yeah, so I take a, so I take about 250 micrograms of vitamin K two, MK seven variant per day. So what that does is that vitamin K stimulates the, or activates these vitamin K dependent proteins and they essentially prevent calcium from crystallizing your soft tissues like your arteries and push it into crystallization and, and protein scaffolds in your bones. So they harden your bones and, and, and soften your arteries essentially. And these have been shown with clinical trials. In fact, there's even one that came out in 2025 that shows re reduction in calcification of the arteries with vitamin K two supplementation.
Ravi (53m 35s):
And you know, traditionally Japanese and traditional people have eaten either lots of leafy greens or lots of fermented foods which provide K one or K two, which can K one can be converted into K two. So they kind of always had the right amount of K two in their body and we hardly get any, I mean, it is like, if you're not supplementing with K two and you're not eating a bunch of fermented food, I mean, our modern life has pretty much like washed K two out of our diet. So that's why I think that's, this is one of them where you have to, you have to supplement with them unless you're really good at fermenting your nato, NATO every day and eating it.
Ravi (54m 16s):
So, which I did for a period of time and I just couldn't keep up with it. So.
Brian (54m 21s):
Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a ton of fermented foods I I every once in a while, but you're seeing more and more of them on the market, which is good. Yeah. The, yeah.
Ravi (54m 32s):
Yeah, I mean, I did a whole podcast done Vitamin K two, if people wanna check it out, it's on my website or on my podcast, but the, the main thing that I would leave people with is listen for bone marrow density and for soft tissue, you know, calcification prevention, you should take at least probably around a hundred, 200 or more micrograms of vitamin K two, the MK seven variant, because you can buy the MK four variant, which is the form we use in our body, but you can't absorb it through supplemental form. So that, so you have to take MK seven for absorption, then it gets converted to MK four in your body.
Brian (55m 8s):
Yeah, that makes sense. And where's the best place for people to find you, Ravi?
Ravi (55m 14s):
Yeah, so you can go to my website, dr kumar discovery.com. It's D-R-K-U-M-A-R discovery.com. I have a ipu, I publish a bunch of articles on there, and also all my podcasts can be found there. Or you can just go to any major podcast platform and search the Dr. Kumar discovery and you'll, you'll find me. I'm also on all the social media platforms, so yeah, I, I, I post quite a bit and people can feel free to reach out to me, send me emails, and I can suggest topics or ask me questions. You know, as long as I can't give medical advice, but I can, I can definitely like guide people.
Brian (55m 50s):
Yeah. Well I feel like we, we just touched the surface, but I think we hit on, I think we hit on, I think we hit on some, some good topics, seed oils, you know, some vitamin D talk and yeah, I think people will get a lot of value from that. So maybe we'll, we'll, we'll run it back again down the road. Cool.
Ravi (56m 7s):
Yeah, sounds good to me.
Brian (56m 8s):
All right, Robbie, well I'll definitely put links in the show notes so people can find you and I feel like yeah, they, they got plenty from today, so I appreciate you coming on and, and sharing everything.
Ravi (56m 18s):
Yeah, it's my pleasure Brian. Thanks for having me.
Brian (56m 21s):
Thanks for listening to the show. I know there's thousands of podcasts out there and you chose to listen to mine. I will put a link in the show notes if you want to connect with my guest. And if you are looking for one-on-one consulting with me, I will put a free 15 minute link so you can set up a call to see if you're fit for my six month health breakthrough program. So thanks again. Feel free to rate and subscribe. I would love that to help support the podcast. And till next time, have a great rest of the day and I will see you on my next podcast. Thanks so much.
