[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming: Did you know that most chronic diseases begin developing years or even decades before a doctor diagnoses them?

[00:00:07] Dr. Katie Deming: Today I sit down with Dr. Robert Lufkin. Author of Lies I Taught in Medical School, Dr. Lefkin is a physician and adjunct professor at University of Southern California who reversed his own chronic diseases through lifestyle changes after being told he'd need to take medications for the rest of his life.

[00:00:25] Dr. Katie Deming: He's here to share how our healthcare system often treats symptoms rather than addressing root causes and why the food industry and pharmaceutical companies have influenced medical recommendations in ways that don't always support our health. Stay until the end to learn what Dr. Lefkin considers the healthiest way to eat, why timing your meals matters as much as what you eat, and how to identify truly healthy fats.

[00:00:51] Dr. Katie Deming: Let's dive in. [00:01:00]

[00:01:01] Dr. Katie Deming: Hello, I'm Dr. Katie Deming, and this is the Born to Heal podcast, where we explore holistic practices for cancer prevention and healing. Let's welcome Dr. Robert Lovekin.

[00:01:14] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Hey, Katie. It's so great to be here. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

[00:01:19] Dr. Katie Deming: Me too. I'm excited to talk to you. So your book, titled Lies I Taught in Medical School, I'd love to start by, what is the biggest lie? That you taught.

[00:01:34] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Wow. That's, uh, I think on a, on a, uh, broad kind of a overview, the wake up call for me and a belief and a lie that people had taught, uh, that I had taught and many of my colleagues still taught was the, The idea that diseases start, especially when, and the diseases I'm talking about are the chronic diseases of the 21st [00:02:00] century, and that's all the way from obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, um, Alzheimer's disease and mental illness.

[00:02:08] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So the, the, the lie, the overarching lie that, uh, that is still being taught is that these diseases start when the doctor diagnoses them. In other words, I walked in my doctor's office and he goes, Oh, you know what? You've got diabetes, you know, or, Oh, you forgot your keys. You have Alzheimer's disease, you know, and I don't mean to make fun of them, but the idea that our Western medicine, uh, that, that diseases either turn on or off and that's, that's necessary for insurance and all sorts of reasons, but really the, the, the truth about that is that the chronic diseases I mentioned, they begin literally years to decades before the doctor diagnosis them.

[00:02:54] Dr. Robert Lufkin: And if I wait until the doctor tells me that I have, you know, Alzheimer's disease or I have [00:03:00] cancer or I have something else, I missed a tremendous opportunity for doing lifestyle, which is, which is the secret to improving our metabolic health that will lower the risk. And, and push back the, the time we get those diseases for most of those diseases.

[00:03:19] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So the, the message is, um, you know, let's not wait until the doctor says we have a particular disease to begin to make healthy choices about our lifestyle. And that was something I wasn't aware of and many of my colleagues still aren't.

[00:03:34] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Well, and I, I mean, I think it's such an important point and this is actually what one of the things that's been a challenge for me in my new practice once I left Western Medicine. Is I wanted to get ahead of cancer. Like I would love to help people understand how to prevent it because it falls into the bucket of all the [00:04:00] things that you talk about, you know, these chronic diseases are related to our lifestyle and they are absolutely modifiable, but.

[00:04:09] Dr. Katie Deming: People don't come to me until they have cancer right until they've gone to the doctor and they've been given this diagnosis and we just need to look at the statistics to see that we are in a crisis as a society and that the way that we're living is making us sick. And I, and I love that you bring that up.

[00:04:30] Dr. Katie Deming: It's like, you know, I, I talk about this analogy a lot, the story of the river, the parable of the river. where there's this village on the side of the river. And, you know, one day there's a body that, you know, someone drowning in the river. And so the villagers, you know, go out and rescue that person. And then the next day there are two and they, you know, send two people out to rescue that.

[00:04:53] Dr. Katie Deming: And then the next day there's four and eight and 16 and the villagers organize themselves and you know, get elaborate [00:05:00] rescue systems to. rescue these people off the river and the village elders are praising them for such a good job of pulling the people off the river. And I heard this parable for the first time in like 2018.

[00:05:12] Dr. Katie Deming: And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is Western medicine. We are literally pulling the people out of the river. But what the heck is happening upstream? We are getting sicker and sicker and I was seeing younger people coming into my office and you know, the rate of cancer among young people is increasing by 1 to 2 percent per year and you know, obesity is off the charts, all of these things.

[00:05:38] Dr. Katie Deming: You're absolutely right that this is our lifestyle and we don't want, I don't want you, please don't wait for the doctor to tell you to change your lifestyle because as a society, you may not have symptoms yet that you're sick, but you can feel it as a society, we don't feel well, people aren't, you know, living optimally in [00:06:00] their physical bodies.

[00:06:01] Dr. Katie Deming: So I love that message of, um, Don't wait for the doctor that this, you know, this has been going on for a long time and we need to change the way we're living.

[00:06:09] Dr. Robert Lufkin: And you and I are both trained, trained originally in Western allopathic medicine and I'm, I'm still, uh, I'm still in the system. Last time I checked, I still had my job. Um, but and the book, the book that my book is really critical of Western medicine, but I have to say, um, Western medicine, and perhaps you would agree for those of us who were alive in the 20th century, Western medicine transformed the lives of humanity based largely through public health measures, infectious disease, the pills and surgeries that were developed by allopathic medicine made the world truly a much better place.

[00:06:49] Dr. Robert Lufkin: And even today, if I get hit by a car out in front of my house, I'm going to want a splenectomy, I'm going to want a blood transfusion, I'm going to want my bones set. But the problem is, in the 21st [00:07:00] century, we're now facing the chronic diseases we just mentioned, literally a tsunami of these diseases in biblical proportions that have never been seen before.

[00:07:09] Dr. Robert Lufkin: You know, most people in the United States are now obese or overweight. Most people have hypertension, you know, cancer rates are soaring, Alzheimer's, all these rates are soaring. And the problem is, when Western medicine takes the same pills and surgeries that were so effective in the 20th century, for so many different things, and they say, well, let's apply them to these chronic diseases, they They work in many cases to control the symptoms and maybe prevent the patient from dying, you know, immediately, but the problem is in the majority of cases they don't address the root cause and the diseases continue to progress onward and that's that's the problem and that's what that's what this book is about about getting to the root cause of these chronic diseases and it's sadly, it's [00:08:00] It's not through, it's not through pills and surgery.

[00:08:03] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Uh, they, they don't really work on the, on the root causes.

[00:08:07] Dr. Katie Deming: Absolutely. Well, and I'm in agreement with you and my listeners know this is that. I believe that there's a place for Western medicine, absolutely, and with cancer as well, like, absolutely, there's a place, but, and the reason why I left was because I sensed that we were not really getting at the root cause, that we were Dealing with the symptoms, but why were people getting sick and how could I move out of the system to help people?

[00:08:37] Dr. Katie Deming: Address those things that are actually making them sick in the first place So I agree with you a hundred percent that there is a rule But it's not the all encompassing like this is the way to get well because if we look at We spent I I mean, how much money we spend, I feel like it was, I had these statistics just the other day when I [00:09:00] did, episode of how much we spend in the United States, but it's so much higher than any other country.

[00:09:07] Dr. Katie Deming: And yet our life expectancy is decreasing and health outcomes are some of the worst, you know, so it's like, it's not. The system, if the system was really the way to get well, we should be the healthiest society because we spend so much money on the system, but it's like, you know, the system has its place and these interventions, but it really comes down to.

[00:09:33] Dr. Katie Deming: You know, lifestyle and the way that you're living. And, you know, I, I follow you on LinkedIn and I, I, I don't follow you on other platforms, but the content that you put out is so compelling. I love it. And so if people, you know, at the end, we'll share your, um, links so that people can follow you on social media.

[00:09:51] Dr. Katie Deming: You have really great content of teaching what is happening and what are the problems that are, um, contributing to [00:10:00] us. Getting sicker. So I wonder if you want to speak to that. Like, what do you think is the underlying problem? Like, why are we getting sicker? And why are all these chronic diseases raising at epidemic proportions?

[00:10:12] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Wow. That, that, that is the key question because if we look back on these diseases, uh, they, all these chronic diseases, many of them started taking off in the eighties and nineties, like, and, and it's just like the, the curve goes like this and anybody who, who makes the argument, Oh, well, these are genetic, you know, it's, it's your genes, you know, pick your, pick your parents, right?

[00:10:37] Dr. Robert Lufkin: that's what drives these diseases. Well, the fact that they're increasing so dramatically, um, indicates that it's not due to genetics because our genetics don't really change. So something else is changing and that's something else is the environment. And so what happened in the environment in the eighties and nineties, and there, you know, there are a lot of, there are a lot of things that [00:11:00] happened then, ~uh, you know, uh, ~We're now on a, on the national, uh, political, uh, we have our national politicians talking about seed oils.

[00:11:09] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Well, you know, seed oils were dramatically increased. They've been around since the beginning of the 20th century, but, but famously, uh, in 1990, um, McDonald's and Burger King announced that they were going to no longer fry their products in healthy beef tallow or other types of saturated fat oils. And instead, they were switching to something which was believed to be much more heart healthy, which were seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, which are also much less expensive because they're subsidized by the Farm Bill.

[00:11:49] Dr. Robert Lufkin: The problem is these, as you've probably talked about with your audience at high temperatures, uh, they're, they're bad enough at room temperature, but when you heat them in a fryer, they, they, [00:12:00] uh, produce even more toxic compounds. And, Really, in 1990, across the world, essentially fryers everywhere switched from beef tallow to corn, to corn oil or canola or the seed oils, and today most frying is done in that.

[00:12:16] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So that's one thing that happened. Another thing that happened, uh, also subsidized by the Farm Bill was that Instead of cane sugar being used in sodas, in the 1980s, famously, Coca Cola and Pepsi switched to a new type of sugar that had been developed. The problem with cane sugar and other types of crystalline sugars is that, one, they're expensive, two, they don't last well in junk food because they crystallize, get crunchy, so a new type of sweetener was developed called high fructose corn syrup.

[00:12:49] Dr. Robert Lufkin: it's made from corn oil, uh, and it's, uh, It's artificially inexpensive because corn is subsidized by our tax dollars. So this corn oil that [00:13:00] Pepsi and Co. famously switched their products to, to high fructose corn syrup and junk food around the, around the world began using that. And today it's in practically everything.

[00:13:10] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So there, there, there's, and you could go on and on. It's not just the food ingredients there. There's some other things that happened. I mean, new diseases occurred in the 1980s. The number one cause of liver failure and liver transplantation today is something called non alcoholic fatty liver disease. It did not exist before 1980 and the first cases were reported then.

[00:13:35] Dr. Robert Lufkin: presumably linked to changes in, you know, in our diet. That's a whole conversation in itself. But there's so many things that are, that are happening, um, that, that are driving this. The problem is sorting out which ones they are. And that's what, you know, lifestyle is in a, fixing our lifestyle is an attempt to change our local environment.

[00:13:58] Dr. Robert Lufkin: The things that we, [00:14:00] that we eat, how we sleep, how we exercise, how we handle stress to, to, um, you know, do away with these toxic factors.

[00:14:09] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, well, and also, you know, the food pyramid was introduced in the eighties as well. Right?

[00:14:19] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Yeah, the whole, the whole, the notion that, um, that saturated fat was harmful is driven by heart disease and Ancel Keys and many, many people beginning in the 1960s. Literally, my mom was a dietician. ~So I was raised, ~Well, on the good side, I was raised, I was, the knowledge was instilled in me that somehow nutrition mattered as far as health.

[00:14:39] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Sadly, my mom followed the nutritional advice that is still given today. That is, you know, Avoid fats, replace your fats with carbohydrates and have a low fat, high carb diet, you know, replace butter with margarine, which is full of trans fats and seed oils and, you know, all this thing. So it was the wrong [00:15:00] advice, but that advice is still given to this day.

[00:15:03] Dr. Robert Lufkin: And the food pyramid is the embodiment of that. Uh, uh, Nina Teicholz, uh, Famously just published an article about the most recent food pyramid or food plate recommendations. It's essentially the same thing from the USDA, and she showed that 90 over 90 percent of the committee members on the USDA who wrote the food recommendations.

[00:15:26] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Had conflicts of interest with junk food manufacturers basically and you can you may say well, what does it matter? Those are just recommendations. Well, actually the food pyramid and and the food plate recommendations of the usda They drive what our kids get fed in school. They drive what our military is served what our veterans are served What are what our uh prisoners are served in jails, but also It serves as a template around the world for what is healthy eating when actually it's not.

[00:15:56] Dr. Robert Lufkin: It's, you know, if you look at the food pyramid, the bottom row, which [00:16:00] you're supposed to eat the most of is full of junk, junk foods. It's basically grains and cereals and stuff, which makes sense if 90 percent of the committee is paid for by junk food manufacturers.

[00:16:11] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Well, and I just actually recorded an episode. About RFK's appointment, I've really stayed away from talking about politics at all on the podcast, but after his address to the HHS on February 18th, I recorded an episode. And, you know, for me, what I said to my audience is I said, if you follow the money.

[00:16:37] Dr. Katie Deming: You'll start to see why we're so sick, you know, and for me, it's refreshing at least to have a government official who's saying these things out loud, you know, who's, you know, I think it gets so complicated and people get so triggered. Particularly talking about Trump. But with RFK, it's like, [00:17:00] I'm excited to see people talking about these things, you know, talking about seed oils, talking about glyphosate in our soil.

[00:17:09] Dr. Katie Deming: And, you know, it's like, I really encourage people to understand. I love that you're bringing about this, that the food pyramid. Is like really was designed by people who had a vested interest in selling those products not because they were healthy, but because it affected their bottom line. And if we just look at the health of the people, you know, particularly in the United States, our health has just deteriorated since that time.

[00:17:38] Dr. Katie Deming: And also the fact that we allow these things to happen, like the seed oils and the high fructose corn syrup and. Like you said, it creates the template for what we feed our children like this is in some ways, you know, not only just a terrible [00:18:00] thing that's happened to people's health, but it's like our responsibility and especially as doctors, like our job is to help people.

[00:18:07] Dr. Katie Deming: Keep well and stay safe and the system has just been designed in a way that, it prioritizes profits over people's health. So for me, it's been, um, it's refreshing to start to see some of this out in the open and people actually saying it out loud. And I'm kind of curious, I don't, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I also think this is what people want to know.

[00:18:29] Dr. Katie Deming: I'm wondering what you're thinking. Um, what are your thoughts are of what's happening? Um, is particularly with RFK and in some of the discussions that are happening now.

[00:18:38] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Yeah. I mean, it's an amazing time and this, this, I, I, you know, I firmly believe it's not a political issue. And, Don't get me wrong. I love my Republican friends. I love my Democrat friends, but just the fact that on the national stage We're talking about seed oils and we have a director of HHS Who's now saying that he wants to [00:19:00] prevent he wants to fight chronic disease, you know, and he wants to do away with Television ads for pharmaceutical companies to customers, and there are only two countries in the world that allow this because of the harm that it does, and that's the United States of New Zealand.

[00:19:15] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So, you know, let's and they've talked about doing that. And you mentioned examining glyphosate and all these things. You know, it's about time. How come no Republican or Democratic ~people You know, pol uh,~ people before this have ever done any of this stuff. You know, it's, it's, it's amazing, but it, it's not a political issue, you know, that hopefully we're gonna see the Democrats embrace it as much as the Republicans certainly are now.

[00:19:43] Dr. Robert Lufkin: But it's, I think we're gonna see some really interesting changes just for, you know, this, this, this political party in power is not afraid to shake things up. And sadly. Our healthcare system hasn't been shaken up for a [00:20:00] while, you know, and, and, um, you know, hopefully the, you know, the good will outweigh the harm that's being done.

[00:20:07] Dr. Robert Lufkin: But I, I think, you know, already there, you know, the, the things we've mentioned are things that are long, long overdue that are obvious things that should have been. To, to protect us. And so I think, I think we're going to see, uh, you know, major, major reforms and I'm, I'm, I'm optimistic about it without being political.

[00:20:27] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Yeah,

[00:20:37] Dr. Katie Deming: like things are really being shaken up. And I think within Western medicine in particular, and our health, we've been long overdue for this. And so, I think, you know, buckle up because I think there's, you know, it's in any time that you have a shakeup like that, it's going to be painful.

[00:20:59] Dr. Katie Deming: And I've [00:21:00] always said that too, when I left Western medicine, I'm like, I knew something was wrong. I knew that we weren't getting at the core issues, but I really took me leaving to see at least within cancer. what were we missing? It took me to like, you know, they say you can't see the label of a bottle from the inside.

[00:21:16] Dr. Katie Deming: Like I couldn't read the bottle when I was inside. It wasn't until I left that I could start to see. And I really think, you know, I was a radiation oncologist, but also was a healthcare leader and looked at end to end cancer care for large healthcare organization. And I think that the system works exactly as it was designed in order for it to truly create health.

[00:21:42] Dr. Katie Deming: It needs to be redesigned. You know, it is working exactly the way that it was meant to. And so now if we really want to get healthy, if we really want to change the paradigm and we want to make people healthy. We're going to have to shift things and that's not going to be [00:22:00] easy. There's going to be a lot of, you know, discomfort in that, in that change.

[00:22:04] Dr. Robert Lufkin: it is. It is truly a paradigm shift. I agree with you. I mean, even though I'm a doctor, I realized that. Going to a doctor doesn't make me healthy. A doctor can't make me healthy. Doctors are designed to make us less sick. They take care of diseases. They don't necessarily make us healthy. And if I want to be healthy as a patient, that's on me because my health is, in my opinion, driven through my lifestyle, and that's a choice I get to make every morning when I wake up.

[00:22:35] Dr. Robert Lufkin: I get to decide what I eat, when I eat. Sleep, exercise, all that stuff. And no doctor can do that for me. So, uh, it's a new era and hopefully we'll, you know, we'll see a lot more of that. But to your point, the pernicious financial incentives, you know, the drug companies that basically fund medical education, just like the junk food makers.

[00:22:59] Dr. Robert Lufkin: [00:23:00] Fun. My, my mom's dietitian education. You go to the dietitian conferences and that's McDonald's and Coca Cola are the sponsors. Well, it's even worse for doctors in the pharmaceutical companies. But those things, those things, you know, it, it needs to change. And, um, you know, uh, I, I, I'm optimistic, so we'll see what happens.

[00:23:21] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. You and me both, I think optimistic and just watching. I've got my popcorn, but I'm excited because you and I have both been saying these things, right? And so now it's kind of exciting to hear. people talking about it on a national stage in a way that potentially can make real change and, you know, shift the financial interests.

[00:23:44] Dr. Katie Deming: So let me ask you, how do you eat? How do you, how, how is a human supposed to get healthy? What is the lifestyle that we're supposed to be living? Like, can you talk us through generally the way that you think about, let's just start with [00:24:00] nutrition?

[00:24:01] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Sure. Yeah. And, um, you know, full disclosure, everybody's a little different and, you know, we, we, we individualize things like some people have allergies to dairy. Other people have, you know, other types of allergies. So we want to first isolate those and put those aside. Once you've done that. I think there, there are three.

[00:24:22] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Three core principles about what to eat that I follow that I think generally apply to a lot of people. Before I mention what to eat, I'm going to mention when to eat. And, uh, I, I'm super excited about your new project with fasting and the great work you're doing on oncology and fasting. I can't wait to have you again back on our podcast to talk about that.

[00:24:44] Dr. Robert Lufkin: But even. Even, uh, as part of a, uh, lifestyle wellness protocol, I, the first thing that, that I did for myself and full disclosure, I came down with four chronic diseases and that was the [00:25:00] impetus to, um, Uh, adopt lifestyle. I went to my doctors. They of course prescribed prescription for each one of the diseases and you know, I didn't know any better.

[00:25:08] Dr. Robert Lufkin: I said, Hey, um, you know, this is a drag taking these drugs all the time. Is there anything else I could do? You know? Hey, what about lifestyle? And they go, nah, it doesn't really work. You're going to be on these drugs for the rest of your life. So get used to it. And so at that point it forced me to you. Re examine my beliefs and really dive into the literature and I realized there's a lot of work that's been done You know peer reviewed controlled studies that document that that lifestyle factors can indeed Mitigate and reverse these chronic diseases in many many cases So I I made some relatively simple straightforward changes in my lifestyle and I was able to reverse The four chronic diseases and get off the medications.

[00:25:55] Dr. Robert Lufkin: And that was the impetus. I now I made it my mission to, [00:26:00] uh, help other people reclaim their health and hopefully not make the same mistakes that I did with lifestyle. So that's, that's. That's why I talk about lifestyle in, in, in the book. And so the first thing is just, uh, my mom, the dietician told me to eat all the time.

[00:26:17] Dr. Robert Lufkin: You know, basically eat three meals and then snack in between. And my kids, even today in elementary school, they get snacks halfway between lunch and breakfast. And, you know, there's this idea that you need to eat all the time and that's somehow healthy. Well. I don't think it is. I mean, eating in itself, no matter what you eat, drives inflammation.

[00:26:36] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Inflammation is the body's normal response to foreign matter entering it. So, just eating in itself increases inflammation. And chronic inflammation is a major driver for metabolic disease, you know, along with insulin resistance and oxidation. So, Just by narrowing the eating window and not eating all the time.

[00:26:54] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Just eating three meals and not ten meals a day is a help. And if [00:27:00] you want to go one step further, drop breakfast and, you know, even drop lunch sometimes. That's what I do and I, you know, my main meal is when my kids come home from school. It's one meal a day. So that's, that's what you can do without changing what you eat.

[00:27:13] Dr. Robert Lufkin: But the three things I do to change what I eat is, first of all, The three macronutrients, fat, protein, and carbs, the two essential ones, fat and protein, uh, I'll die if I don't eat them, but they have relatively little effect on insulin, which is, uh, has many effects, but it, it drives hyperfunction, drives inflammation and all sorts of things.

[00:27:37] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Carbohydrates specifically drive insulin. So first thing is low carbohydrate diet. And, um, Instead eat healthy fats and, and proteins. Second thing is make sure they're healthy fats. Don't do the seed oils. Seed oils are pro oxidative. So the canola oil, all those things. And it's a problem because they're in every single [00:28:00] salad dressing.

[00:28:01] Dr. Robert Lufkin: And they're in all our junk foods and today almost all food is fried in them. So it's an effort to get rid of seed oils, but that's, that's the second step. And the third step is, um, grains. Uh, I avoid grains. I don't have, I don't have gluten allergy. I don't have celiac disease, but I believe that. Most, many, a large percent of adults have low grade inflammatory reaction to, uh, proteins on, on grains and, and that drives inflammation.

[00:28:31] Dr. Robert Lufkin: If that's not enough, uh, to your point, grains in the U. S. are soaked in a weed killer called glyphosate, which is illegal in about 30 countries around the world because of its health damage. But it's, in the U. S. it's, it's Grains are soaked in it. Also, grains are high in carbohydrates. So that's back to reason one.

[00:28:50] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So those are the three things.

[00:28:52] Dr. Katie Deming: I love it. I love it. And can you talk about what are healthy fats in your mind? Because one of the things, and especially [00:29:00] within the cancer space, people are made to fear animal proteins and animal fats. And so I'm just wondering if you could describe for you, what is a healthy fat mean to you?

[00:29:11] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Yeah, I mean, it goes against everything my mom, the dietitian taught me. Um, and it, what we used to, when we eat meat, we would trim the fat off the meat. Uh, when we would have eggs, an omelet, we would have a. egg white only omelette because the yolk contains the cholesterol. And, and we now, now it's widely accepted that dietary cholesterol doesn't affect blood cholesterol.

[00:29:38] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So you can eat as many eggs as you want. And eggs are one of the healthiest, healthiest things you can eat. Um, whether or not. The degree to which blood cholesterol contributes to heart disease is another, another, uh, lie, or it's something that's exaggerated, but that's a whole nother conversation. But so, for fats, I believe that, I believe that [00:30:00] animal fats are healthy, I believe that ghee is healthy, uh, you know, butter derived ghee, and then I believe that, you know, the oils like olive oil, coconut oil, and, um, Um, coconut oil, olive oil and, um, avocado oil, uh, are, are healthy oils.

[00:30:19] Dr. Robert Lufkin: The seed oils are the, you know, as Kate Shanahan said, the hateful eight, you know. Corn oil, canola oil, rapeseed oil. There's, there's a list there, but they tend to be unstable and, um, you should avoid them, but this is, um, this is controversial. You know, like you say, some people, um. You know, some people talk about an association with saturated fat and diabetes, you know, I don't, I don't happen to agree with it, but there, you know, there's, there's a lot of difference of opinion about diet, you know, even the things that I've said, many people don't agree with and.

[00:30:58] Dr. Robert Lufkin: You know, at the end of the day, [00:31:00] reasonable people can agree to disagree, and these aren't my ideas. It's nothing I came up with. I'm just reading the literature and interpreting the studies the best I can, as is anybody else. And we may, you know, we may disagree on the interpretation, and perhaps some future, future studies will clarify it for, you know, either side.

[00:31:22] Dr. Robert Lufkin: It's a minefield out there. It's not easy following nutritional advice because it's, it's all over the place, even from trusted sources, you know, the American Heart Association, the leading, the leading trusted source for, for heart disease information in the United States and worldwide. on their website recommends a seed oil canola oil for heart disease.

[00:31:47] Dr. Robert Lufkin: They call it heart healthy. They sell labels. You can put on foods and if they have canola oil in them, they're heart healthy. And. True, canola oil does lower [00:32:00] LDL cholesterol, blood LDL cholesterol slightly, but in my opinion, it doesn't outweigh the fact that it's pro oxidative and harmful. And as you mentioned earlier, if you go back in the history of things and follow the money, in the middle of the 20th century, the American Heart Association was essentially funded by a donation from a company called Procter and Gamble.

[00:32:23] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Procter and Gamble was a company that early in the 20th century was working with a group that was developing machine lubricants for German U boats in World War I, and they came up with this, this, uh, lubricant because whale oil was getting, was getting rare. And there weren't, there weren't need to be other sources of lubricants.

[00:32:44] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So they came up with this white oil. And, uh, they also found out that people could eat it and, uh, it sort of, it sort of looked like grease, uh, and it was called Crisco and they began a marketing campaign and selling it and, [00:33:00] and Crisco was the original seed oil, which now is canola and all the other ones.

[00:33:05] Dr. Robert Lufkin: But the American Heart Association. Has a financial legacy around seed oils, which may explain, may explain their position today.

[00:33:15] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, well, and that's exactly, I mean, this is the thing is, and I think especially now as people's eyes are opening, it's like, just follow the money, you know, because like the American Cancer Society, a lot of people don't know that that was created by J. D. Rockefeller. You know, as a PR thing to show that he cared about cancer, but then there's this whole, you know, financial interest in allopathic medicine and giving petroleum based products for people who are sick.

[00:33:46] Dr. Katie Deming: So anyway, it's just, it's my, and the thing is, is that for me, when you're trained in it, You just don't know until you can zoom out and start to see the landscape and see the financial interest to [00:34:00] make sense of it. And then when you start to see it, then you're like, oh, okay, it makes sense. Like this, this makes sense why they're, they're recommending these things.

[00:34:06] Dr. Katie Deming: But then I think the thing for people is just because someone has this, you know, American Heart Association is like a. respected, you know, renowned organization that we trust. We cannot just put our trust in these names. We have to really be thinking for ourselves and also, you know, you bring up a good point and this is particularly problematic in the cancer space is that there's this, you know, vegan, you have to eat vegan, raw vegan, that's the only way to cure cancer.

[00:34:38] Dr. Katie Deming: And then there's this, you know, whole group that. Things more like you do that. No, we're not really not designed to eat that way. We're designed to eat healthy, humanely treated meats. And I think one of the things to also that needs to be teased out in all of this is that if you just take the standard American diet, which is very high in processed foods and, [00:35:00] um, seed oils and the, you know, corn syrup and all this stuff, if you take people off of that, they are just going to do better.

[00:35:09] Dr. Katie Deming: So they're gonna do better with plant based. They're gonna do better with these things. But it's like when you start to put them side to side, and I think that's what we haven't done really well is have studies that look at, okay, a well done, um, diet that's based low carbohydrate with healthy fats, avoiding grains, and then comparing that to a healthy plant based diet.

[00:35:33] Dr. Katie Deming: When you compare those side to side, what happens? And that's what I think we're missing. And that's what I'm hoping that as we start to have these conversations in a more real way and start looking at the science without these financial interests getting in the way. That we can start to seize this apart because I fight that every day.

[00:35:54] Dr. Katie Deming: I have people who come to me that are just terrified of eating meat. And when I explain to them, [00:36:00] you're designed to eat meat like humans are carnivores. We can eat some plants, but if you're eating nothing but plants, there's a lot of. Inflammation that can happen in cancer is, you know, like many other diseases related to chronic inflammation in the body.

[00:36:15] Dr. Katie Deming: And so I love how you describe it's like, you know, looking at the science and hopefully we can have better designed studies to really look at these questions. But the money that's been in nutrition has been in the processed foods and the packaged foods and in, you know, creating products, that's going to make some organization money.

[00:36:35] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I, I couldn't agree more and even, even the diets are, are, are politicized, you know, the, the, you know, uh, and I, you know, I love my vegan friends, I love my carnivore friends, and I wish they'd get along better, but, uh, and, but, but I, I think you can be healthy on either, either extreme and anything in the middle, but I agree with you, it's much more difficult on a [00:37:00] plant based diet to be healthy just because they're, you know, they're, they're micronutrients that aren't present.

[00:37:07] Dr. Robert Lufkin: There's a lot more plant based junk food. I mean, most junk food is plant based really. I mean, there is some meat junk food, but it's much, much less common. So it's, you know, it's, it's harder to be healthy as a vegan. You've really got to pay attention to things. Whereas as a carnivore, you don't even have to think about it.

[00:37:25] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, well I, we're on time, but I, you know, I could actually talk to you for a really long time and I think I'll probably have you back on the show, you know, and hopefully, you know what, I'm excited. Maybe we'll have some stuff to talk about as things come out, you know, that really shifts and give us better data.

[00:37:44] Dr. Katie Deming: Um, but can you tell my audience where to find you? Um, you know, your book already lies I taught in medical School is fantastic. People need to read that. I think it's an amazing. book that highlights some of the problems that we've discussed, but please tell us where they can find

[00:37:58] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Oh sure. [00:38:00] Yeah. My website is robert lufkin md.com and if you go to the website, you can download a free chapter of the book, and it's both in audio and PDF format. And I am, uh, I'm active on social media. My wife says, too active. But, uh, , please, please say hi when you see me, and I'd love to hear from you.

[00:38:22] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, and I have to say that I said this earlier in the episode. I learn a ton from following you on social media. So if people want to really understand this and what I like is that you highlight the facts and, you know, talk about some of these financial interests, but then also show the data that you are really a great source of Information that is well researched and founded in, um, the data.

[00:38:52] Dr. Katie Deming: So I want to thank you for that. And please apologize. Tell your wife that even though she thinks it's too much. There's some of us out there [00:39:00] that love what you're putting out and are super grateful for it. So I just want to say thank you

[00:39:03] Dr. Robert Lufkin: Oh, thank you. You're, you're very kind. And this has been a great, great interview. Thanks. Thanks for having me. And I, I'm super excited to, like I say, get you on our podcast. We have one, you've already been on one. We've one episode coming out and I'm looking forward to spending time with you where I can talk about you and what the great work you're doing there.

[00:39:23] Dr. Robert Lufkin: So that'll be fun.

[00:39:25] Dr. Katie Deming: Thank you so much. All right. Thanks so much. Next week. We'll see everyone next week.
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