Transcript
Pg6jV2uHTBs • Shocking Truth About Cholesterol & Heart Disease Nobody Talks About | Dr. William Li
/home/itcorpmy/itcorp.my.id/harry/yt_channel/out/DrWilliamLi/.shards/text-0001.zst#text/0260_Pg6jV2uHTBs.txt
Kind: captions Language: en today I'm going to reveal the truth about cholesterol and heart disease two topics that you might think you know a lot about but I'm actually going to give you a perspective as a scientist and a doctor about dimensions on these topics you might not actually fully understand or know enough about and then I'm going to actually give you five foods that you're going to want to consider adding to your diet to help better manage your cholesterol are you ready let's dive in all right first food that can actually help with colle olol high cholesterol oats you know oats like in oatmeals but before I tell you more about oats I got to tell you a little bit more about cholesterol so the first thing and this might surprise you is that cholesterol is not the villain that it's made out to be in fact your body absolutely needs cholesterol in order to be healthy cholesterol is essential for producing hormones like estrogen testosterone uh it actually helps your gener body generate vitamin D when sun light hits your skin it actually helps to make the bile acids uh by your liver that gets stored in your gallbladder so you can digest the food that you eat um it also it makes up a lot of your brain as well your brain is packed with healthy cholesterol that you need in order to be able to have good mental health and brain function good cognition in fact without cholesterol many of your body's basic processes that you associate with with health just wouldn't function properly okay in fact cholesterol is so important that uh your liver produces about 75% of all the cholesterol in your body regardless of what you eat let me repeat that regardless of what you eat your body's going to make cholesterol if you don't get enough of it um by eliminating from your diet your body's just going to make enough in order to get what it actually needs okay so let me just say now that you know cholesterol is important for health how does cholesterol get its bad reputation well here's the thing the confusion is not about cholesterol as a whole it's about how cholesterol moves around your body there different types of cholesterol that there uh actually exist and when I say moveing cholesterol around your body I'm talking about moving around your blood vessels and uh how it actually uh sticks or doesn't stick to some of the uh lining of your blood vessels so here's how it works basically cholesterol is carried around your blood in tiny little particles called lipoproteins all right these are tiny little proteins they're um they've got some fat attached to them and the types of particles these T tiny lipo particle proteins there's two names for them one of them is called LDL you probably have seen the words LDL before that stands for low density lipoprotein all right and and the second type of protein is called HDL H has in high high density lipoprotein HDL all right now LDL is known as the bad cholesterol because it can build up in your arteries if there's too much of it and so LDL in excess is actually a problem for arteries and actually can set you up for heart disease all right so here's I want you to think about it imagine LDL is a delivery truck that brings cholesterol to your cells whenever they need it all right and in the amount that they need but just like trucks on the road if there's too many trucks carry this cholesterol and they're not managed properly the traffic flow isn't managed properly guess what they get stuck in a traffic jam right so this is like the highway on a holiday weekend all all these trucks carrying coloral get jammed up they're not moving all right and in your body when there's an LDL traffic jam it leads up to cholesterol getting dumped out into your arteries and that's actually where the blockages come from and those blockages are called plaques these are narrowing these plaques can narrow up your arteries so you're getting enough blood flow the plaqu are building up in the walls of the blood vessels and this is actually you set up for a heart attack or a stroke and other types of cardiovascular diseases including peripheral lisia uh p a Peripheral arterial disease where you have narrowing in the blood vessels of your legs and now your legs aren't even getting enough blood flow and that actually can prevent you from actually walking the normal distance that you would walk before you get a terrible cramp okay this is why you don't want too much elevated levels of LDL you want some you just don't want too much and this idea of balance some but not too much the right amount but not too much is really really important to understand when it comes to your cholesterol levels and when you get at a blood test in your doctor's office okay one of the things they're going to be doing is running a lipid panel and with this lipid panel they're going to test for all kinds of cholesterol your total cholesterol and they're going to ask how much LDL is actually present in your blood and this is the reason why they want to see if there's too much that would be causing a traffic jam that would be dumping off that cholesterol in your arteries okay so that's one thing you need to know about how cholesterol is been carried around now there's another kind of particle lipoprotein that's called HDL we talked about this earlier HDL it's high density Lio protein this is actually known as a good cholesterol so ldls the bad cholesterol you don't want to have jammed up in a part in a traffic jam because it's dumping cholesterol into your arteries HDL is the good cholesterol because it's the cleanup crew all right so HDL is like the road maintenance crew that sweeps up the excess cholesterol and brings it back to your liver where it's broken down and gotten rid of okay LDL is normally transporting cholesterol there's too much LDL cholesterol gets dumped off the truck into the arteries not good HDL is the good cholesterol you also want to have good cholesterol around all the time but you want to have enough of the cleanup crew so what your doctor looks for in a lipid test a blood test looking for your lipid panel is to make sure your LDL is is not too high it's it's low within normal range and your HDL has to be high enough to be able to do the cleanup crew it's a balance you're Trucking along the cholesterol you want to keep that moving you don't want too much of it or traffic jam will start and the HDL is a cleanup crew you always want some of the cleanup crew because in case there's any cholesterol gets stubbed off you want that clean of crew to get rid of it okay so LDL is a problem when you have too much of it HDL you always want enough of it you want the higher the levels the better because it is protective to help clear off extra cholesterol so it doesn't accumulate in your arteries all right so again when you go to the doctor and they do the physical exam and everything checks you out in every other way and then they send you to get a blood test right so the FL Aus comes in puts a a cuff or a rubber constrictor around your arm and then draws the blood from your vein and sends it off to the lab one of the things that your doctor should be looking for is the lipid panel and when you get the results back right you should want you should want to know are my a LDL levels the trucks delivering cholesterol are they within normal level do I have enough and hopefully I don't have too much and you want to check the HDL levels check out yourself all right ask the doctors for the test results you should look at it yourself so you know what's actually going on do you have enough HDL are your HDL levels High you want that low LDL High ELO and that's what's going to be protective for you all right but so the key thing is that this is all about balance you want to have just the right amount not too much and you want to have some protection as well so that's why one of the things I want to clear up is that cholesterol isn't just about good guys and bad guys there's a level of maintenance that you need for that cholesterol to be good for you and you need that Cleanup Crew the higher amount the better all right not simply good and evil LDL cholesterol by itself isn't harmful it's only dangerous when it is um elevated and there's one more thing LDL cholesterol is more dangerous when it's oxidized all right so let me tell you what oxidized means oxidation is what happens when you actually uh take some Nails right some iron nails and you stick them outside on your por right it's humid the rains what happens what do you think happens after a couple of days you go back out to check on those nails and guess what they are Rusty they have become oxidized and oxidation can also happen to your LDL cholesterol so when your LDL cholesterol gets oxidized think about it as rusting guess what those particles are more likely to stick to the walls of your arteries you ever pick up a rusty nail that's been oxidized and run your finger along it pretty it it actually is sticky a little bit because it's rough the oxidation roughs up the surface of what what used to be a smooth nail so think about LDL that's oxidized in the same way these sticky oxidized LDL particles those are the Dangerous Ones because those are going to stick more more likely to stick to the side of the artery they're more likely to narrow the artery as a plaque that builds up and that restricts blood flow uh and even worse by the way is that when those plaques build up they little cracks can fall in them right cuz these are not normal buildups right it's kind of like I don't know if you ever did Clay in your uh High School class You Know You're Building clay you want to pile up Clay on top of each other if it shouldn't be if the clay shouldn't be stacked on top of each other and you're just pointing layer after layer you try to move it around guess what it'll crack in the middle right and that's what can happen to these plaques they're not supposed to be in your artery they're pretty fragile and eventually they can crack and when you actually have a crack in the plaque all right and think about these arteries as they get narrow and think about the plaque that cracks all right so here I've got a plaque here sitting here it's narrowing narrowing narrowing now if that plaque cracks guess what happens boom and now it cracks down closes it off it's kind of like a the part of the cave ceiling caving in and now you're actually blocking off all the blood flow and now little blood cells will start to clot in there there you can completely jam and block off blood flow alt alog together all right that's a heart attack and that's what you want to avoid that could be a stroke that's what you want to avoid as well so the question is how does LDL get oxidized because it oxidized LDL is a dangerous stuff right a lot of things can oxidize LDL in your blood and these are these relate to the things that we talk about as doctors and as people who are thinking about Wellness that you want to avoid so here are some of the things that can start to oxidize contribute to oxidizing your LDL cholesterol making them sticky to your blood vessel wall stress all right now Al oxidized oxidative stress uh can happen uh uh naturally like even emotional stress will cause Ox oxid oxidative stress in your bloodstream but so can chemicals that you can breathe um smoking can cause oxidized stress in your blood that then causes your LDL to be oxid oiz so don't smoke or vape or smoke a cigarette or a cigar or a pipe all those things can actually oxidize your LDL guess what lack of exercise also makes it easier for your LDL to oxidize exercise you know has an antioxidant effect a protective effect on your LDL remember you want some of it you just don't want a lot of it and when you have it which is healthy you don't want it to oxidize or it will tend to stick to the side of the wall exercise actually makes it a little bit slippery less likely uh to stick to the wall less oxidation environmental pollution now I don't have to tell you that our environment is getting more and more contaminated and dirty right and here's an example of a situation that you probably have all encountered you are filling your car with gasoline or petrol deping know where you are and um I always ask people are you standing upwind or downwind from the pump and people look at me like Dr Lee what are you talking about I don't know I don't think about that what I say is that if you are if you can smell the fuel the diesel or the gasoline all right if you can smell the fuel you're standing downwind and what that means is the wind's blowing those solvents into your lungs guess what that causes oxidative stress guess what that sets you up for it sets you up for your LDL getting oxidized that's why you really want to be in a clear environment as possible all right but lots of things that actually smell good in fact uh can cause this kind of oxidative stress in your blood new car you know that new car smell that we all love man this car smells great that is actually solvents coming off new carpet all right um same deals new furniture you know people get excited when there's new furniture moving to their house that smells you know like the like their showroom shop that is off gassing all those things cause oxid oxidative stress so it's better when you get a new carpet a new rug to open your window all right and if you have an air purifier take out some of those solvents because they when they when you breathe them get into your lungs and they can cause oxidative stress all right um ultraviolet radiation something that's actually quite good for us until you're out in it too long what I'm talking about I'm talking about going up to the beach and getting sunburned or frankly even going outside on a really bright summer day uh if it's a summertime I would be a good example but you could be in a place that has sunny all year long that's why you want to wear sunscreen and and uh eat an antioxidant Foods you want to protect uh your body from getting that oxidative stress those um small oxidative stress situation inside your blood that can actually oxidize your LDL all right those that those are the reasons you you want to actually do take those lifestyle tips to protect yourself from oxidative stress all right let's put this whole picture together right so imagine your arteries are smooth right like a well-maintained highway an LDL which carries cholesterol it's one of the particles low density lipoprotein moving along these highways delivering cholesterol to your cell supposed to do that remember I told you cholesterol is important for your hormones important for your brains important actually for all of your cellular functions as long as that traffic is moving smoothly because you're that don't have too much LDL you're going to be fine all right and when everything is working well you also want to have enough HDL or high density lipoprotein around right this is the cleanup crew keeps your eye that keeps their eye out for any spills any cholesterol spills any extra HDL that spills cholesterol uh from the truck it's going to actually take care of mop it up and get rid of that extra cholesterol it's the road crew all right um so LDL is the regular traffic it's got to keep moving or you're going to have a traffic jam and HD is a road crew all right hey there have you heard of intermittent fasting I'm sure sure you have it's not what you eat but it's about when you eat and I've got a simple guide to help you get started with intermittent fasting if you're looking for an easy way to boost your energy and improve your health and maybe shut a few pounds along the way this could be the perfect solution for you in my guide I'm going to show you how fasting helps your body burn fat and also repair itself it's an easy thing that you can do effortlessly every single day plus I'll give you tips on how to succeed with intermittent fasting and I'll tell you the science behind why this works just click the link below to grab your free copy or scan the QR code on the screen right now now let's get back to the video so now here's the other thing that can actually happen if you have inflammation in your body all right and there's a lot of things that cause inflammation all the things that I said cause oxidative stress also cause inflammation they're pro-inflammatory smoking is proinflammatory not exercising is pro-inflammatory breathing solvents is pro pro-inflammatory eating fried food Foods is pro-inflammatory eating Ultra processed foods UPS the inflammation your body as well guess what happens when you actually have inflammation whole body inflammation all right the inflammation is also in your blood vessels guess what those blood vessels which I told you are like the highways in your body that inflammation creates potholes like little divots in the road that's supposed to be running smoothly oops now you got potholes and those weak spots are they're in the weak spots of the walls of your arteries that's the highway now picture this the LDL trucks that are dting cholesterol start hitting those potholes got a lot of inflammation you got a lot of potholes it can be impossible not to hit those potholes right so instead of actually uh moving slowly those potholes boom shake the LD dump some cholesterols and now the cholesterol can actually stick in the pothole that's sticking to the artery wall all right and if it's oxidized LDL you know from oxidative stress guess what it really gets stuck into those potholes those potholes are in the walls lining your blood vessels and that's when those plaques really really form so over time the more and more LDL particles you have and the more and more oxidative stress you have um uh the LDL becomes oxidized really sticky and now you add some inflammation to it now you've created those potholes you got this sticky truck delivering cholesterol you got a lot of it and now it's hitting the potholes it's dumping the cholesterol and it's now sticking into the walls you get the picture this is what we're understanding of of of why cholesterol isn't simply a good guy or a bad guy you need that LDL but you want to make sure you don't get oxidized LDL and you want to make sure you have low inflammation in your body we're beginning to understand the things that we thought we we knew years ago okay now we're getting a better picture of exactly how this works because you don't want to actually grow plaques on the highway all right because the plaques on the highway the LDL and the cholesterol landing on that Highway building up a big lump all right what that does is it causes more traffic jams it can block blood flow in your arteries make it harder and harder for your heart to pump blood to the rest of your body all right now speaking of inflammation chronic inflammation is the real nasty force uh that sets you up for developing these plaques that can ultimately lead to cardiovascular disease by the way the other thing about these plaques and the plaques are building up on the walls of your artery right you've got 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels in your body that's a huge number of blood vessels in fact they so expensive if you were to pull out all the blood vessels in your body and line them up from end to end you'd form a thread that would wrap around the earth twice okay that's a lot of blood vessels all right you want to keep those blood vessels clear and so blood can actually and oxygen and nutrients can all be delivered smoothly through them but when they actually start to narrow and narrow with plaque guess what the arteries also start to get stiffer and stiffer right normal blood vessels can they can open up they can stretch they can shrink down when you got plaque on them they become hard hardened blood vessels hardening of the blood vessels which is probably what you may have heard your parents talk about at one point or a doctor tell you about them watch out for those hardening of the arteries guess what that set you up for high blood pressure because hard blood hardened blood vessels can't relax as easily when you're relaxing blood vessels your blood vessel comes down when you've got hard blood vessels it's harder for the pump heart to pump it out so your blood pressure actually goes up all right and high blood pressure what we call hypertension is a setup for heart disease heart failure uh stroke it's a silent killer hypertension and this is another reason why you want to keep your LDL cholesterols on uh on the low side and you want good protective Cleanup Crew cholesterol HDL to be around to be able to clean up that mess all right but this is also why it's so important to reduce inflammation going to come back to this in this video but this is when you hear about you know oh anti-inflammatory this anti-inflammatory that I wanted to give you kind of like the load down when it comes to heart health when it comes to cholesterol why it's also important to lower inflammation now doctors us should just give statens to patients and say go ahead and take this and let's measure you you know in a couple of months what I think is important to do is to realize that part of that control over uh LDL levels and and you might need a Statin but um if you exercise uh your LDL is going to come down and your HDL is going to go up and if you avoid anti-inflammatory foods it's actually going to be safer for you so that you're not causing oxidative stress you're also not causing those plaques to build up as much in fact you can actually with good lifestyle management you can actually reverse plaques that have built up that's a very important thing my colleague Dr Dean ornish worked on many years ago and it's to it's held out to be true all right so you can reverse atherosclerotic or narrowing of the arteries by diet and lifestyle changes you got to be pretty intensive about it but it actually works which just shows you that even if you are starting to think about your heart for or heart health even if you have blockages never too late to try to kind of move the plaques backwards so move the clock backwards uh and unblock the uh the the arteries okay now that you understand this now it's the time to talk about some foods right okay so I told you I was going to tell about five foods I told you Oats already so you already know the first one but I want to explain things a little bit more to you guess what now that you understand how this LDL the truck that that contains cholesterol brings cholesterol to your cells and how HDL Works guess what oats can lower LDL cholesterol all right prevent the traffic jam and oats can increase the HDL cholesterol the cleanup crew so eating oats like oatmeal actually can um help you balance rebalance your blood lipids the way you want them to actually go and there's an added benefit you know what that is oats U contain bioactives natural chemicals that are found in plants because oats are plant-based um grain guess what oats contain something called avenanthramide don't worry about memorizing the complicated Latin words just know that people like me know what they are avenanthramide a and beta de glucan these two bioactives found in oats you know what they do they lower inflammation so oats tackles all these problems that we talked about if your LDL is high it can help to lower LDL if your hdl's low it can help to raise it if your blood liers are fine oats can actually help you keep uh things moving in the right direction so you can actually maintain your lipid Health all right um and if you got inflammation guess what eating oats can lower inflammation remember inflammation causes those potholes on a highway so you can actually protect yourself against getting those potholes in a highway now the beta glue can by the way is uh is which is anti-inflammatory I've done research on this myself all right it's actually good for wound healing as well so oats are a kind of a healing food it's quite remarkable how it actually works and beta glucan you know what it does when you swallow it and goes through your digestive system right your mouth your esophagus your stomach your small intestines your large intestines as it's going all the way down there the baited de glucan which is a soluble fiber acts like a sponge and this sponge soaks up extra cholesterol before it gets absorbed into your bloodstream so it actually helps to absorb cholesterol that's inside the tube of your digestive system and that can actually help to lower cholesterol levels in fact clinical Studies have shown uh that it can lower bad LDL cholesterol by about 10% by eating oats on a regular basis so beta de glucan pulls out cholesterol out of your bloodstream uh and it just flushes it right down your your guts all right so lowers total cholesterol in your blood which also lowers LDL cholesterol like a sponge now the other thing that uh beta de glucan does is it is powerfully anti-inflammatory and so uh it actually lowers inflammation inside your gut but it does another thing for your gut beta glucan as a soluble fiber feeds your gut gut microbiome this is the healthy bacteria you probably heard everyone talking about healthy gut microbiome your gut microbiome is 39 trillion bacteria that are naturally found inside our body these are healthy bacteria and you know where they live they live in a lower gut so let's walk through the gut you got your mouth is where it starts then your esophagus all right it's food going down into your stomach the third part of your gut the fourth part of your gut is your small intestines the fifth part of your gut is your large intestines or the colon and there's a part of the colon and the large intestine is called the seeum c c m it's like a bag around your colon it's at the sort of the the the lower part of your colon before it starts going up um which then makes a loop around like a like an upside down u in the seeum where most of your gut bacteria are found are found and guess what when the beta glucan gets down there it feeds your gut B bacteria your gut bacteria eats feeds on beta glucan soluble fiber like that and a wellfed gut bacteria with fiber is actually a healthy colony of gut bacteria a healthy ecosystem when your ecosystem is wellfed and happy guess what they do they make metabolites and these are basically your gut bacteria digesting the beta glucans their food and they're spitting out their own metabolites all right and there's three of them they're called short chain fatty acids or scaas SC short chain fatty acids fa scaas there's proprionate there's berate um there's acetate these U from your made by your bacteria from the food they're eating from the beta glucan and the soluble fiber it it dissipates in your bloodstream gives back into your bloodstream and you know what these short chain fatty acids do as an extra bonus because your gut bacteria wellfed and happy from the soluble fiber coming from oats these short chain fatty acids lower inflammation protects you against those potholes even more all right so the beta glucan itself is anti-inflammatory but the G the gut bacteria they feed then release more anti-inflammatory uh substances to be able to even further lower inflammation in your body so if you ever needed an excuse to actually uh oatmeal or if you actually were wondering what you should be eating uh uh for breakfast for example i' strongly consider you uh eat oatmeal whether or not you have blood lier problems or not all right and by the way people who are really minding uh foods that actually lower blood cholesterol sometimes that can come off their statins if they've been on it already now how do we know that uh beta glucan uh from oats can actually lower uh inflammation well because uh we can measure this In The Blood using a test for C reactive protein C is in Charlie reactive protein this is actually a circulating marker for inflammation and it turns out that beta glucan uh when you consume it actually lowers C reactive protein it should be normally really really low if you got inflammation and most of us are walking around inflamed because life is very inflammatory these days um and we you know most of us grew up eating Ultra processed foods and doing exposed to all these environments listen oats with beted glucan actually lowers that inflammation and it lowers C reactive protein so think about that the next time you're trying to decide what to have have for breakfast in fact I had breakfast this morning uh with oats I actually you know get sort of um whole oats nothing but oats just plain oats I don't do anything with it all right um and and I actually cook them so I want to actually tell you a little bit about what I do with my own oats now one little thing you want to buy a whole oats nothing but the oats all right and the reason you want to do this and not by the kind that's already prepackaged with sugars and flavorings and little bits of fruit in there all those prepackaged um uh convenient instant oats they contain a lot of additives just go ahead and look at the ingredient label look at all those chemicals that you can't pronounce all right so those would actually cause inflammation they don't they wouldn't the O might try to fight inflammation but they're causing inflammation so stay away from all those additives all right any of these pre flavored packets I grew up listen I grew up eating that kind of stuff my parents would say oh eat some oatmeal in the morning and they would buy those convenient packs and and we'd pour hot water in it and man you get those little bits of apples or fruits not good for you all right full of chemical additives in fact those some of those additives can even damage your gut microbiome so really you know having pre-made oatmeal like the ultra processed kind the oats one step forward in the right direction all those other things added sugar Ultra additives preservatives two steps back all right and you're going to also increase inflammation in your body which is just not what you want to do you don't want more potholes in your um arteries all right so if you want oats with something sweet in it what I suggest is you take some seasonal ripe fruit all right if it's a summer get some organic strawberries and wash them and cut them up uh if you can't find fresh organic strawberries or they're too pricey you know what go for the frozen ones Frozen ones you thaw them up they're flash frozen they're actually going to be fine as well uh blueberries the same deal frozen blueberries if for when they're out of season fresh blueberries when you can actually get them uh that's really great just top your oatmeal with that uh if you want to actually crush up some nuts um tree nuts uh pistachios or almonds or something like that another little nice topping and the fruit isn't sweet enough for you okay and you want to really get a little hit of sweetness be careful not to add sugar all right like plain sugar but I would suggest maybe adding a little drizzle of Honey like they do in the Mediterranean for yogurt or you could actually add a little bit of maple syrup all right a little bit a little just a little splash of it in order to give it sweetness keep it simple and keep it natural all right so remember I told you to get um whole oats no steel cut oats can take a little longer to cook but sometimes they're already rolled and pre- steamed so they can cook pretty quickly so I just tell you what a recipe is if you get just a container of steel cut oats all right um get one cup of the steel cut oats and get a stainless steel uh uh pot all right add add about three cups of water or if you want to put some almond milk that's fine uh I like no salt but some people like to put a pinch of salt in there and first boil the water if you a little salt in know the water will boil quicker and then put the oats in there take a spoon and stir it up once it's boiling you only need to cook it for maybe five or seven minutes if it's been pre- steamed so that it's not instant instant but it's pretty quick cook it up you'll see it thicken really really quickly turn off the heat and let it sit for another minute so you're talking about less than 10 minutes to whip up a really healthy oats breakfast all right and then before all the water gets absorbed and still kind of liquidy poured into a bowl all right and that's where I take the fruit cut it up just put it right on top uh and it is an absolutely delicious way the fresh berries what I actually had the other day had strawberries you can add strawberries or blueberries again the other benefit of these fresh seasonal ripe fruit like berries blueberries contain anthos sinin a natural bioactive that's guess what anti-inflammatory strawberries contain what a natural bioactive called elic acid guess what that is anti-inflammatory and uh strawberries and blueberries but especially strawberries they also add a little extra dietary fiber good for the gut microbiome so you see by building a breakfast like this which takes less than 10 minutes all right uh takes advantage of fresh seasonal Foods Whole Foods uh gets some sweetness to oats which is also plant-based all right and now you've got yourself a plant-based breakfast that lowers your cholesterol lowers inflammation protects your blood vessels um lowers um the harmful LDL so you don't wind up getting too many trucks piling up for that traffic jam spill out the cholesterol and it also raises your beneficial HDL that's why I wanted to tell you the story of how all this works together because now you understand why oatmeal with fruit actually is so beneficial all right now here's a little Pro tip for you if you're a busy person like me all right I don't really have a lot of time to cook breakfast in the morning you can make a big batch of oatmeal all right uh several days worth keep it in the fridge all right and in the morning you just take Ladle spoon it out add a little more water add a little more almond milk heat it up and now you're ready to rock and roll all right so that's a quick way is like take the time to prepare it but honestly I just told you you can do basically in less than 10 minutes every single day so you can just re reheating it if you want or just do it Scrat from scratch all right ready for food number two for um helping your lipid control guess what another breakfast food avocados I like avocados you're probably already eating them avocados um have been in recent years pretty trendy but I want to talk about what's in an avocado because that's really important first avocados have a healthy fat these are called Mono unsaturated fatty acids or mufas mufas mufas they're they heart healthy all right and one of the heart healthy mufas is called oleic acid same thing that's found in extra virgin olive oil OIC acid all right and guess what oleic acid can do it's a mua found in avocados oleic acid can lower harmful LDL cholesterol all right good takes down that harmful thing keeps the traffic flowing so you don't spill off cholesterol to build up in the walls of the artery but guess what oleic acid also does something really beneficial it raises your your good HDL cholesterol again moving things in the right direction less LDL more HDL avocado can do that it's got mono unsaturated fatty acids OIC acid being one of them all right now there was a myth floating around at one point that avocados are not good to eat not healthy to eat because of its fat content I hope I've cleared that up for you it's got good healthy fat just the opposite this kind of fat the uh the muas of like OIC acid actually is beneficial in fact Studies have shown in people who regularly consume avocados that they can actually reduce their LDL cholesterol by up to 22% and they can raise their beneficial HDL cholesterol by about 11% all right everything moving in the same direction this is not a stattin this is an avocado all right and in fact if you actually change your diet your lifestyle in the right direction because exercise can also do this I'm going to talk about that in a little bit um in other words exercise can lower harmful LTL cholesterol increased beneficial HDL cholesterol you might be able to come off your statins so for those people who are really worried you know I got to take this from my whole life you know what if you actually add the right diet and the right lifestyle you might be able to come down or come off of your stattin particularly if you're somebody who's had side effects from having statins as well like muscle cramps and other things that we as doctors worry about all right um now here are some easy ways and I like to use avocado um you can slice an avocado in half take out the seed and you can just spread that green light green avocado um on a piece of toasted sourdough bread and add a tiny pinch of sea salt not too much all right remember adding salt to food uh is a step towards developing high blood pressure but a little bit of salt actually tastes great all right a little salt on spread avocado is a good thing all right and then if you want to really kind of like Jack up the FL the the the impact all right add a little bit of crushed Chili Pepper if you like spicy food little Zing for breakfast actually is good you know why I'm telling you about red chili peppers because red chili peppers also help you burn off excess body fat what's in a chili pepper it's got something called capsacin and on our tongue we've got these little receptors radar dishes uh for capsacin all right they're receptors for the capsacin and when you activate those receptors they're called trip V1 receptors trpv1 when eat a chili pepper activate that receptor it's like pushing an elevator button it sends a signal and that signal goes from your tongue right to your brain and it tells your brain to release neurotransmitters all right like noradrenaline and those neurotransmitters go down the side of your neck and they activate your good fat your health healthy Brown fat that then undergos thermogenesis and that process uh starts to draw down on your excess body fat and burns it right down so in other words I don't want to go into the fat too much right now but I can tell you add a little Chili Pepper to your avocado toast and your spread toast all right if you like The Zing it'll actually send a message to your brain that sends a signal down to help you metabolically get healthier and helps to burn away extra body fat as well all right that's all from an Avocado which by itself all right contains healthy fats monounsaturated fatty acids like oleic acid and remember lowers LDL harmful cholesterol raises good protective cholesterol HDL so total cholesterol is important but it's the ratio of LDL to HDL that's actually what's really really important all right um now I occasionally do this I don't do it very often but you can add avocado into a smoothie you want to get the Smoothie a little bit of a creamier texture um no more need to add add Dairy all right um by the way you can also substitute if you're making a sandwich or a wrap you can use avocado the fatty avocado uh spread instead of butter right some people like to add butter I use avocado instead you can get that some kind of a creamy texture slightly fatty tissue but it's good healthy fat not saturated fat all right now obviously uh you can also you going to get a little bit more involved you can make guacamole uh just look online for a recipe on how to do it watch a video someone can show you how to do it um if you've ever got to one of these like uh traditional restaurants where like Mexican restaurant they will make the guacamole table side they get a wooden Bowl they take the avocados they take out the seed and they just start cutting it up and mixing it all together right in front of your eyes with lime and cilantro and um some Tomatoes all that kind of stuff so um you can do that yourself now you've got a little dip you can actually use a healthy dip that you can actually use as well all right now here's another benefit of avocado while I'm bringing this up um avocado looks smooth and creamy right it is smooth and creamy but it's a great source of dietary fiber soluble fibers packed with fiber in fact all right so avocado is great for gut health even though you're not tasting any stringy fibers and that fiber remember when you eat that fiber it helps your gut microbiome the healthy bacteria in your gut remember I told you it's in the colon and the seeum in your large intestines and that when you actually feed that gut microbiome with the dietary fiber it produces those short chain fatty acids that lower inflammation less potholes in your Highway and guess what your gut microbiome also does it lowers your blood lipids all by itself so in addition to the mufas the OIC acid doing that your gut microbiome is going to actually help your gut micro biome work even harder to get your blood lipids your LDL and HDL in the right direction so you're going to wind up actually eating something that's very very heart healthy whenever you have avocado all right so and by the way uh good gut health also improves your metabolism it burns down harmful extra body fat uh you'll have more energy it burns it can even help you lose weight as well so helps you stay away by the way from metabolic syndrome which is a setup for type 2 diabetes all these benefits um once you understand some of the foods that can actually help your lipids lower inflammation in your body and also help your metab overall metabolism ready for food number three food number three are fatty fish now it's been well researched that oily fish containing healthy omega-3 fatty acids from the sea all right they come from Plankton all right the small fish eat them the big fish eat the smaller fish the bigger fish eat the those smaller fish and the really big fish eat that fish all right so those fish like salmon and mackerel and anchovies sardines that goes from small to large um their their flesh is rich in omega-3 fatty acids um the again those Omega-3s originally came from Plankton that's originally the plant-based food from the sea it's the fish that ate them they accumulated in their flesh and we used to think it was only the super oily fish like the macro or the salmon or tuna tuna might have mercury so you got to be careful about that but salmon is a good choice all right but guess what other fish also have healthy Omega-3s the ones that are not so oily Cod for example it's a nice mild white fish flaky fight fish halet another white mild fish hake another mild white fish Mediterranean Sea Bass look if you don't like salmon you probably going to like Mediterranean Sea it's it's part of Mediterranean Cuisine absolutely delicious also a good source of omega-3 fatty acids so it's not just the oily fish that we normally think about it's also some of these white mild delicious tasting fish that you can find in the healthy Mediterranean diet as well all of them packed with omega-3 fatty acids and Omega-3s guess what they lower blood lipids they also lower your uh LDL improve your healthful HDL they also improve the health of your uh uh blood vessels by protecting the lining they actually help the condition the lining of your blood vessels it's called the endothelial lining that's where the potholes can occur helps to protect them uh so that they don't actually form clots and Omega-3s can prevent plaques from forming as well and another benefit Omega-3s from seafood can lower inflammation lower inflammation lower potholes uh lower oxidative stress all those good things that that correlate back to the cholesterol uh and heart health right um oh by the way the other thing Omega-3s can do is they can reduce triglycerides as well and ccer triglycerides are another lipid in your body so net net taken all together all right Seafood with omega-3 fatty acids can improve the function of your blood vessles protect your heart against uh cardiovascular disease and it's overall really really um a delicious way to actually eat heart healthy now I mentioned triglycerides and I want to talk a little bit more about triglycerides because if you take a look at your uh your portal your doctor's your medical portal um at the blood lipids you'll actually see LDL you'll see total cholesterol that's how much is floating around your blood remember I told you though the total cholesterol is less important that number uh than how much LDL is there and how much HDL all right remember you want more HDL and less LDL and you'll see the normal ranges in the in the test results but there's one more uh number that comes out of your blood lipid panel and that's triglycerides and I mentioned triglycerides because remember I told you that Omega-3s and seafood can lower your triglyceride levels so what's a triglyceride well triglycerides are a kind of fat that can build up uh on the walls of your blood vessels in fact that they actually contribute to clogged blood vessels and they increase your risk for heart attack and stroke o Omega-3s that are found in fish help to reduce triglyceride levels and keep your blood vessels from clogging all right in fact The Landmark study study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at more than 11,000 people and looked at those who were eating fatty fish with Omega-3s at least twice a week and they found that they had a significantly lower risk of heart attack and stroke for the reasons I just mentioned all right so if you like seafood you're in luck the Omega-3s do a lot of heavy lifting for your blood lipids for your vascular Health healthier your blood vessels lowering inflammation in your whole body which actually lowers your risk for cancer as well uh so that's all beneficial and if you read my book Eat to beat your uh diet by the way which is right here eat to beat your diet you'll know that I um write a lot there's a whole chapter in here I think it's chapter eight about all kinds of delicious Seafoods that you can actually eat with healthy Omega-3s I give you the dose of the Seafoods as well good for metabolism helps you burn down harmful body fat and in fact Studies have shown that people who eat two to three servings of seafood over the course of their life those people tend to live long so longevity Studies have actually found that people who eat regularly eat seafood a few times a week actually do live longer all right now um if you haven't read my book e to be uh your diet I'll link link to it in the description uh below this video and you can check out this so you can figure out how much Seafood you should actually eat but I'm going to tell you anyway do check out my book uh because there's lots of tables and charts of all these kinds of things you can find uh uh for Seafood both Frozen as well as in the fresh seafood market but here's the deal how much fish should you eat in general most of the clinical studies show that eating fish twice a week twice a week can actually be helpful heart healthy for you now how much should you eat because I'm big onto defining the dose of foods well each time you eat fish you should eat uh about uh the SI a piece of fish about the size of a deck of playing cards about yay thick about yay big not very big at all all right you don't need to eat a lot to get a lot of benefit that's how you get to a healthier State all right hey there are you ready to use food to improve your health I Do cover a lot in my YouTube videos but there's only so much time to dive deep into how to use food as medicine that's why I created my eat to beat disease course in my course I walk you through how to use everyday foods that you can find in your grocery store to boost your body's Health def fenes this is all based on my research and everything is rooted in science and I've made it super easy to follow with practical everyday tips whether you're trying to prevent disease or just want to optimize your health for longevity my eat to beat disease course gives you all the tools to make it real and to help you get lasting changes that will help you live longer and live better to learn more click the link below or scan the QR code code on the screen I can't wait to get started together in my course now back to the video now some people will say you know what I can't find seafood all right um I don't have fresh seafood I live too Inland uh my grocery store doesn't carry fresh seafood that's okay if your grocery store has a frozen section I'm willing to bet you they will actually have frozen fish as well Frozen seafood and guess what a lot of people don't know this but Frozen Seafood also contains a healthy Omega-3s and in fact in some cases is a little fresher than the fresh seafood um that you see on Ice in the seafood cabinet you know why because Frozen Seafood is caught in the boat it's thrown into a freezer and flash frozen it's caught pretty much Frozen right off after it gets out of the sea doesn't get any fresher than that and it locks in those Omega-3s all right that's what you need to know about it if you don't live on the coast that's okay look for the frozen section and look for the hbits or the hakes or the cods you'll find it um anybody who has access to a grocery store in the frozen section you can find it I like to eat seafood super simply all right and it goes without saying don't fry your Seafood it tastes good all right I got to admit crispy Seafood tastes really good like who doesn't like fish and chips a little bit of vinegar you know fried cod or uh whatever uh you can actually find but I'll tell you it's not good and the reason is frying the seafood actually causes acry amides to form these are polymers that are carcinogens they cancer causing um and they also cause inflammation so that's not what you want for heart health all right so even though the the fish inside might actually be heart contain heart healthy Omega-3s once you fry it you've actually taken two steps back from that one step forward so you don't want to do that all right um okay so what's a good way to have seafood I like to do it really simple all right if you're having s salmon all right um here's the thing that you want to know about salmon a lot of people don't like to eat the skin of salmon all right I don't blame you like a a slimy liquidy thin skin of salmon not good however you got to realize this a lot of Omega-3 in a salmon is found in the skin so what you do is you crisp up the skin make it crispy and delicious take a pan add extra virgin olive oil heat it up all right put the salmon skin down and let it sit there all right uh until the skin crisps up and form a layer Skin's pretty fatty with good omega-3 fats so you let that crisp up then turn it once all right then cook the other side now you're going to actually get more out those Omega-3s because you're eating the skin as well all right so in my book Eat to beat your diet there's a lot of other fish and eat and shellfish as well that contain Omega-3s and I tell you about all of them all right Mediterranean Sea Bass I mentioned this is the staple for people who live in the Mediterranean and it is delicious a lot of different ways to cook sea bass it's a mild white flaky fish whatever you do consider you doing a Mediterranean style which is actually cooking it with healthy omega-3 fatty acids a much better choice than vegetable oils or seed oils all right and a good healthy way to cook it is to pan sear it um all right with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil add some oregano on it squeeze uh some lemon on it the oregano has Rose marinic acid guess what anti-inflammatory all right prevents those Pooles from forming and the and if you squeeze some lemon on it you what get um the citric acid CIT citric acid is um vitamin C it's anti-inflammatory and by the way it makes a meditran SE bets tastes amazing you can Grill it as well I I prefer not to grill although it tastes grills grilled fish tastes great you you know like just um having the smoke adds some carcinogens to it so that's not a way that I suggest that you regularly eat Mediterranean seab baths or any kind of fish all right once in a while it's fine not on a regular basis all right so uh if you're going to have fish make sure it's got omega-3 fatty acids uh and you can find that in my book find out which fish but also prepare it in a healthy way um don't fry it you can uh uh sear it uh you pan sear it you can bake it uh you can Grill it but just be careful you don't do that regular uh that's really the best way to actually eat those healthy omega-3 fatty acids and you know what some people are uncomfortable with seafood they're like You Know What I Hear You Dr Lee I would like to try it I just don't know what I would do with fish I've never cooked fish before guess what you want to find a recipe go to Google type in the kind of fish that you're cooking whether it's salmon or Mediterranean Sea Bass or halit because you actually cook them all in slightly different ways um you want to steam a fish type in steaming and type in halib it then type in recipe and then hit video and watch somebody teach you who really knows what they're doing how to do it in a super simple way and and then you can just uh repeat that you can just mimic that in your own kitchen that's actually what I uh wanted to be to share with you food number four that's heart healthy are nuts tree nuts almonds walnuts pistachios pecans macadamias tree nuts also have mufas mono and saturated fatty acids all right um uh very very healthy like avocado all right and guess what uh tree nuts also have dietary fiber all right the dietary Fiers is good for your gut microbiome for all those reasons we talked about already anti-inflammatory helps your metabolism supports heart health and Tre nuts lower harmful LDL cholesterol so if you got too much of it it'll kind of take it down and Tre nuts are also loaded with vitamin e e as an ed word and guess what vitamin E is it's a potent antioxidant protects you and your LDL against oxidative stress another reason to actually have TR nuts remember when you oxidize LDL makes it sticky likely to clog you want to actually lower that oxidative stress Vitamin E is a good way tree nuts contain good vitamin E all right by the way how much do you need to eat back to the dose there's a clinical study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that just showed that eating a handful of nuts five times a week reduce the risk of heart disease by about 14% all right super delicious easy way to have a Snick and protect your heart at the same time all right what do nuts do they lower the bad LDL cholesterol so you don't have a traffic jam and spill the cholesterol uh on the highway all right and they raise your good cholesterol the cleanup crew to take away anything that might spill protects your heart um uh and uh tree nuts are also anti-inflammatory also good for gut health which is also anti-inflammatory all this protects you against cardiovascular disease now if you're going to eat nuts here's a key thing I'm going to tell you this be very careful you don't buy those prepackaged uh pre-seasoned uh nuts even though they look really good you get the you know the ranch flavored nuts or the barbecued flavored uh tree nuts I know if you've been to an airport and you walk by the new stand and you take a look at all those snacks in a wall a lot of them are flavored and they look so tempting to get but before you do that and I've made a video about this before on in Instagram please check that ingredient label to make sure you are actually comfortable with all those additives and chemicals artificial coloring artificial flavoring artificial preservatives you don't you probably don't won't want to eat all of those as a snack instead buy plain tree nuts and in fact if you're going to travel listen next time at the grocery store just buy some bulk nuts and you can actually make them make your own trail makes uh at home all right that's actually easy to do by the way you can add nuts you can crush them up tree nuts to a salad or to your oatmeal uh or one of my favorites is to add them to Yogurt along with some fresh seasonal fruit all that super heart healthy for the reasons that we talked about now if you're going to make your own trail mix you know um some people like to Salt it you know you just take your you take the tree nuts you put a little bit of olive oil if you want onto a cast iron skillet is a great way to do it or or no oil and you just heat it up all right and until and then move the the pan around so the nuts are getting toasted all right or you can put them in a toaster oven except that I like to actually move make sure the nuts are moving around and turning a little bit so they're evenly toasted um and you want to put a little salt on it just be careful about the amount of salt you use all right so again tree nuts get them for yourself you in bulk you can make your own uh trail mix tree nuts also reduce calories you know why because uh nuts when you eat tree nuts you're sating they actually lower your appetite so on the next meal that you're eating you're going to feel a little bit more full and you're going to eat a little bit less all right less food eaten equals fewer calories fewer calories better for your metabolism lowers inflammation as well all right less chance of De developing type two diabetes and also is protective against heart disease in fact people who eat nuts regularly generally have a lower body weight less risk of obesity and diabetes all right so try adding nuts into your dietary plan for heart health uh and by the way they're packed with micro and macronutrients that we talked about all right last food extra virgin olive oil now you've probably seen me with some videos I've done on social media uh with olive oil I don't say just regular olive oil I say extra virgin olive oil sometimes we call it evoo or EVO like liquid gold to your heart is what I call it Evo extrav virgin olive oil is one of the major components of the healthy Mediterranean diet it's been that way for centuries uh it's the heart healthiness has been proven by extensive clinical studies all right and anybody who says olive oil is unhealthy I've seen a few uh people on Instagram talk about oh olive oil is dangerous blah blah BL totally not true take it from me Dr Lee I'm a scientist and a physician and I've studied olive oil it is is beneficial for your health those other guys have it wrong like any fat you don't want to have too much of it too much of Fat's not good for you but in reasonable moderate amounts for cooking um like you do in the Mediterranean it is indeed healthy for you here are some of the major benefits olive oil contains monounsaturated fatty acids like like OIC acid we talked about mufas already like avocado all right and they've been shown to reduce harmful LDL cholesterol all right um they increase SP beneficial HDL cholesterol olive oils are packed with polyphenols which ones hydroxy thyrosol oool again don't worry about memorizing these things just trust me people like me who do research we got to memorize it you don't all you have to do is actually know extra virgin olive oil is good for you all right these polyphenols in extra virgin olive oil they actually give the olive oil the little bit of a pepperiness that you taste it's the good flavor the good stuff guess what these polyphenols are are anti-inflammatory they lower the risk of creating those potholes in your blood vessels they protect your blood vessels as well all right and extrav virgin olive oil helps you become metabolically healthier by burning down harmful excess body fat all right incorporating extra virgin olive oil Evo in your diet every day is super easy um I do it every single day you can use it as your primary form of cooking oil for example you're making scrabbled eggs or an omelette just use a little bit of extra virgin olive ol oil better choice than butter or vegetable oil or seed oil use extra virgin olive oil actually it's going to make your food taste a little bit better because the polyphenols from the oil get into your food so if you're cooking an egg which is healthy good quality egg is very healthy for you it's you're good for your eyesight all right it's got bioactives in it you add you cook you scramble some eggs with with olive oil now you get even more polyphenols from the oil into the scrambled eggs all right or another way to use olive oils how the people in the Mediterranean do it like in Italy pour some high quality extra virgin olive oil into a small dish and mop it up with some probiotic sourdough bread absolutely tasty great way to actually get that flavor of olive oil in some bread all right obviously you got to be eating some carbs and don't eat too many carbs not good for your metabolism all right but um in moderation a perfectly good way to actually consume some extra virgin olive oil oil all right now um one of the things that you want to do when you get extra virgin olive oil you want to buy monovarietal olive oil that's oils made with one variety of Olives you know why that you should do that because then the olive oil manufacturer can't cheat you if they're mixing olive oils together they can mix really cheap olive oil together and you might wind up actually getting a high quality product in fact you get a lowquality product the other thing is sometimes manufacturers will actually uh make makx other cheaper oils into more expensive extra virgin olive oil still called extra virgin that's what they put in the label but it's been cut diluted with cheap other oils maybe even seed oils you don't want that at all and if they're trying to Hoodwink you they won't even they won't even announce that but if you get monovarietal olives you can actually know that they're they're only made from one variety of Olives those types of things you should also look for the date the olive was picked all right that's important as well well it's like wine you know it's got the Vintage date on it that and where was bottled that's important now there's another reason to get mono varietals if you want to get the highest levels of polyphenols there are three olives three varieties of Olives that have the highest levels of polyphenol you might have heard me talk about this before but let's talk about this in the context of heart healthy foods that have these mufas uh and heart healthy polyphenols that lower your LDL and raise your beneficial h steal the three mon varidol from Spain pql p i l from Greece cororo Nei KO r o n i k i and from Italy Mor iolo m o r a i o l o from ombria these three pel coron Niki marolo they have the highest levels of polyphenol so if you're looking for the best from a polyphenol perspective and that best also means that they're going to be tastiest all right you can get the Spanish Greek or Italian olive oil look for the fact that whether they're made with pel coroni or marolo olives all right they pack the strongest Health punch all right every olive oil has their own distinct flavors so try different ones and see which ones actually fit with you your own taste buds and if you're going to buy extra virgin olive oils please store it in a cool dark place do not put it in the fridge all right and don't put it in near Hot Spot uh in in a window all right one last myth that I want to bust in this video is that a lot of people think that you should not cook with extra virgin olive oil because it's got a low smoke point okay that's a little bit of a myth because a smoke point of olive oil is anywhere from 375° F to about 400° Fahrenheit that's about the same smoke point as duck fat which is 375 degrees Fahrenheit all right and in France guess what they fry french fries in duck fat so I'm not telling you to make french fries with extra virgin olive oil I'm just telling you that it's okay to cook especially sautéing or pan searing Foods totally fine now obviously I'm not encouraging you to fry your foods but um uh but just know that when you cook with extra virin olive olive oil you're actually going to impart some of those beneficial polyphenols from the olive oil into the food that you're ultimately going to eat all right okay we talked about a lot of stuff in this video hope you learned something new thanks very much for watching and I will see you on the next video hi there if you enjoyed watching this video I know you'll love the next one stay here and check it out and I'll see you there