Transcript:

Episode 31: Eat Fat to Lose Weight

Dr. Pompa:

We’ve got a really fat show for you today. As a matter of fact, on today’s show, you’re going to get the skinny on fat literally. It’s just me today, Dr. Pompa. No Warren Phillips today. He did not want to discuss fat with us today. I’m not going to comment why, but he had a good reason.

I really thought we needed a show on this because I get so many questions. We’ve done shows on fat and why fat doesn’t make you fat. As a matter of fact, fat actually helps us become more efficient fat burners. Fat is the key to losing weight today. In this episode I’ll want to talk about some of the pitfalls with fat.

Some people say you’re wrong because when I eat fat, let me tell you what happens to me. We’re going to talk about some of those problems because fat may not be working for everybody, but it is a small percentage of people. I’m going to give you some tips in this show about that as well. We’ll make sure we hit that.

Let’s review a little bit because I’ve done a lot of shows on this. When we look at today, weight loss is becoming a big problem. So much so that I termed something called weight loss resistance, meaning that you cannot lose weight despite what you eat and how much you exercise. We’ve done a lot of shows on exercise.

We’ve done a lot of shows on some of these weight loss topics, hormones, and even how toxins interfere with weight loss. It interferes with your hormones. As a matter of fact, I coined a term there called toxin-induced weight loss resistance. Toxins attach themselves to the fatty membranes in our cells and block your hormones from communicating with your cells. As a matter of fact, have another term; toxic-induced hormone resistance because that’s exactly what it does. Toxins play a big role in this subject.

Those of you who may have trouble losing weight, trouble even breaking fat down, that can be because your livers are fatty and your gallbladder is not releasing bile, and that’s what you need to digest fat. We will talk about some of those things. Toxins do play a role.

When we look at this epidemic of why people can’t lose weight, I’ll even put that right into the category of hormone problems. The real reason why people don’t feel well despite doing a lot of amazing things and why they can’t lose weight, fat is a really important part of this puzzle. Our cell membranes are made of fat. I’m going to remind you of that because we’re going to talk about some specific fats that will affect your hormone receptors.

Hormones are the big reason why people are struggling not to feel well and why they can’t lose weight. We can’t have the discussion of hormones without discussing fat. I’m just kind of telling you why this show is so darn important because everybody today has hormone problems.

You know what’s in vogue right now? Taking bioidentical hormones or just plain old hormones whether it’s estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, growth hormone. How about the hCG hormone, chorionic growth hormone, all of it; I can keep going down the list, thyroid hormone. Everyone’s taking hormones. Some people it’s necessary. If you have your parts taken out, as an example, taking hormones is going to make you feel a little bit better.

I had dinner two weeks ago, and it was with a scientist who is actually doing studies on hormones, progesterone and estrogen. She basically said wait until this gets released because what we’re finding is even progesterone is leading to cancer. We knew taking estrogen can lead to cancer and other problems, but now progesterone as well? Holy cow. Basically what it tells me is playing the hormone game is a dangerous game.

There’s a hormone test that I love to do called a 24-hour urine hormone where we look at things like estrogen and testosterones are broken down. Oftentimes you can be taking hormones, feeling a little bit better, but developing cancer. These 24-hour hormone tests will show things like estrogen metabolites, which when they build up, there’s toxic ones like 4-hydroxyestrone.

I know that’s a big word, but when that particular one and others build up and your body’s not getting rid of it, that actually can lead to cancer like breast cancer and other hormones problems. Taking hormones, you may say I feel better. I recommend you get a 24-hour hormone test and be with a doc who understands how to read it because you could be feeling better developing cancer.

Men, my doc measured my testosterone, and I’m at 800. That’s awesome! You feel really good about yourself, but you do a 24-hour hormone test and all of a sudden you realize you have toxic testosterone because it’s moving right into the toxic stuff. You can lose hair, that can cause prostate cancer, and it can cause other problems.

Men, maybe your testosterone looks okay on blood, maybe it doesn’t. It could be aromatizing, another big word. That just means it’s going into estrogen. You could get some man boobs or just crying all the time; not really. It’s kind of the joke that we use, but it could be transitioning into estrogen. By the way, that would make weight loss, staying lean, and holding muscle much more difficult for a man.

Ladies, when you’re taking progesterone, oftentimes we see on this test progesterone steal. What that means is you’re taking the progesterone and you could even be driving up cortisol and cortisone, which drives inflammation, anxiety. A lot of bad things can happen. It even looks at your adrenal function by looking at cortisol levels and cortisone levels, DHEA levels.

It’s a really good test and the reason I even bring it up, when we look at this whole hormone cascade and we see all these hormones, I always remind my clients that at the very top of that hormone chain is good old LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol. Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe higher levels are actually healthier. We’ve done some shows on that too because I believe it’s true.

I believe that higher levels actually are healthier, but you definitely need to assess the particle numbers of those LDL cholesterol and the size of them. That matters more than the total number. My point isn’t that. My point is that at the top of the hormone chain is a fat that has been demonized, and it is cholesterol.

You make these hormones from cholesterol. Fat plays an incredible role in hormones. As I just pointed out, it’s oftentimes the fats that we don’t expect that are critical. I tipped my hand on cholesterol, but let me tell you about another one.

If I asked you a couple fats that you feel were the bad fats, cholesterol absolutely would be one of them. It’s probably been my favorite because it makes your brain work and your hormone receptors. You need it for making all the hormones that I just talked about. When we get back after this break, I’m going to tip my hand here to the other fat that you probably think is a really bad fat, but actually is so important for this hormone challenge and weight loss. We’re getting there next segment when we come back.

If I asked you what other fat besides cholesterol would be a really bad fat that you would stay away from, I bet you 95% of you would say saturated fats. We’ve been taught that. I’m not going to go into the history of why we think that, but I can tell you, get one bad junk study and a guy named [Alan Keyes] who drove that – as a matter of fact, they’re putting his picture on Time magazine. That didn’t help.

He did a study that was really bad. He looked at 21 countries and handpicked 7 of them when he did his epidemiological study. When he handpicked them, saturated fat looked really bad. When you put all the countries that they looked at in the study, it was actually the opposite. Saturated fat actually was the hero. Ironically enough we have it all wrong.

I know I’m going to talk about the fats that we need to fix this hormone problem; therefore, the weight loss problem or the weight loss resistance problem. If we don’t fix the cell, we are not going to get well. Specifically, when we look at the cell and weight loss, there’s a couple areas that I think we need to pay attention to; the outer cell membrane, which is where these hormone receptors are. Then there’s an inner membrane, the mitochondria membrane. That’s where you burn fat or sugar for energy.

I’m going to say this; that’s your choice of an energy source in your cells, sugar or fat. Here’s the problem, America; most of us are stuck as sugar burners with the inability – I’m going to say it this way – the hormonal inability to utilize fat as energy. I’m going to keep building this out for you because this is the problem. We have a hormonal ability to use fat as an energy source.

When you’re not eating, your body could actually be eating its muscle or it will simply just give you a craving for the bread, the sugar, whatever it is that you can’t resist hormonally, and you break every fast and you wonder why am I so bad? I just sabotaged my diet. It’s not your fault. It’s your hormones. More specifically, it’s your cells. Fat could be the answer here.

Your mitochondria has that choice of using sugar or fat. When you’re not eating, it should darn well be using your fat stores as its energy source. That’s a hormone problem when it doesn’t, and you get stuck as a sugar burner. It either gives you a craving for sugar because that’s all it can use for energy or it’ll just break your muscle down in a process called gluconeogenesis and use that as sugar.

That doesn’t sound good because when you lose muscle, you lower your metabolism. Everything goes south. Not good. Not pretty. I don’t care who you are, guy or girl.

We don’t want that, so we’re talking about what we need to do about it. I’m telling you that fat is the answer here for the mitochondrial problem where we’re making energy and the outer cell membrane. Let’s start with the outer cell membrane here because I said that saturated fat most of you would say is a really bad fat. On the outer membrane of a cell, we have these hormone receptors.

If you can visualize this with me, I’m going to take you through thyroid hormone. It can be insulin because insulin is a fat storing hormone, but thyroid is one as well. You need thyroid to be a fat burner, so your mitochondria uses fat. Let’s just look at that hormone and look at some of these pitfalls.

Here’s one; you need to take stored thyroid hormone called T4, and you have to convert it – it’s an inactive form – to an active form called T3. By the way, most of the doctors that will give you T4 hormone, if they see your blood work is off, which is the inactive form that needs to be made into or converted into T3, T3 attaches to the cell membrane on a receptor. Think of little antennas on every one of our cells. It’ll attach to that antenna and brings its message in the cell. It tells your mitochondria to use your fat, make energy, all that wonderful stuff happens, and you feel good.

No brain fog. No anxiety. No weight loss problems. It works very well. Again, there’s other hormones here, testosterone, estrogen, insulin. I could talk about all of these that involve weight loss. This is a hormone problem.

The hormone thyroid will convert. Problem number one, many of you may have trouble converting T4 to T3, which happens in the liver. If you’re not an efficient fat burner, your liver can actually back up with fat. It’s called fatty liver. We’re seeing it in teenagers today, so that’s a problem.

Toxins can interfere with the conversion of T4 to T3. That’s a problem. By the way, you know why this is a problem? Your blood work can actually look normal. They go it looks okay, but you’re not converting.

Your doctor gives you T4, that inactive form, and if you don’t convert it, you don’t feel better, but your blood work looks normal. He starts to think you’re just nuts and complaining all the time, hair falling out, dry skin, can’t lose weight. Your blood work looks normal because I’m giving you the hormone. Yeah, but it’s not converting to the active form; big problem.

Let’s say it does convert and now you’re making normal levels of T3, blood work looks good, but it’s not attaching to the hormone receptor on the cell membrane. Why? Your cell membrane doesn’t have the right fats, doesn’t have the good, stable hormone receptor for it to connect to. By the way, toxins can interfere with that too.

True cellular detox, that’s one of the things I preach and teach, and that’s why all detox has to be at the cell, not down at the colon or the liver. Those things are fine, but we have to detox the cell. Another story for another day. Right now we’re talking about fat and why it’s the key to losing weight.

That hormone receptor rides on something called a lipid raft. All receptors to all hormones ride on these lipid rafts. What is a lipid? That means it’s a little dock or a raft made of fat. Guess what two fats stabilize that lipid raft and, therefore, your hormone receptor? Cholesterol and saturated fat, really important.

Therefore, if you’re not getting enough of these fats that probably most of you are avoiding, you’re eating a lot of processed food that doesn’t have these good fats – if you’re eating margarine, they took the saturated fat and cholesterol out of that stuff. It’s synthetic, which disrupts this lipid raft or this hormone receptor in your cell membrane, so not a good idea. By the way, vegetable oils, canola oil, it’s everywhere, even in Whole Foods. It’s in everything.

I was there with my son last night. I was showing him going through the chips going bad, bad. Organic, but bad. Non GMO, but bad. Natural, but bad because it was sunflower oil. These are fats that denature very easily, so vegetable oils, canola oil, bad. Even most of the seed oils are bad because they go rancid.

Guess what? Those fats destabilize these hormone receptors in the membrane. As America, we are eating all of the wrong fats and avoiding the fats that we need. When we get back, I’m going to tell you about yet another fat that’s critical to fix this problem. We’re going to talk about it when we return.

If I asked you to name the top three bad fats, I think most of you would have got the first two. Cholesterol, you just found out, is not bad at all. You need it to make hormones. It’s the top of the hormone chain. You need it to make good old progesterone and all the feel good hormones.

You found out that it’s needed in this lipid raft, which stabilizes your hormone receptor. You learned that if your hormones don’t attach to these receptors, I don’t care what your hormone levels are. I don’t care what your blood work looks like. You’re not going to feel good. You’re not going to lose weight.

We learned that cholesterol and saturated fat play a role in this receptor on every cell for the hormones. You learned that weight loss resistance and even feeling good, even sleeping deep is actually a hormone issue. These hormones are determined by the fat in these receptors, on our membranes. You learned a lot, but there’s one more fat.

This one 50% of you, I think, would get if I asked you the top three bad fats that actually are bad. It’s omega-6. I think right now we have the fish oil boom occurring. I don’t know.

Maybe 80% of you are taking fish oil. I hope not because I’m not a fan. That’s the omega-3, the DHA. I’m not going to give you a whole lecture on this because some of you would not appreciate it. Some of you would.

I’ve done it on my Cellular Healing TV, my website, DrPompa.com. I’ve done two shows on the dangers of fish oil. I will push you in that direction for the gory details. I interviewed a gentleman, Professor Brian Peskin. He’s out of MIT.

There’s about 15,000 studies on fish oil, some of which are good, some of which are bad. He analyzed them. He and his team went through these studies and the results aren’t what you think. We’ll put it that way.

As a matter of fact, when we look at this fish oil topic, we know that it’s actually leading to certain cancers. It’s actually making diabetes worse because it affects the hormone receptors for insulin and the cell membranes. There was no help with Alzheimer’s. It’s even worsening it. Do your homework. Skin cancer, they found it’s leading to that now, these fish oils we’re taking.

Like the vegetable oil, it’s a polyunsaturated fat, simply put. It goes rancid really easy. As a matter of fact, most of it is rancid even before it hits your mouth. Even if it wasn’t, the moment you put it in your body, most of it goes rancid and doesn’t even make its way to where we need it anyway.

By the way, I know the fish oil, we need it for our brains, they say. About 4%, 5%, 7% max milligrams used in a day is about it. When we are taking 100, 200, 400, 500 milligrams, 1,000, 2,000 milligrams – if you total the amount needed in the whole body, maybe 14, 15 grams. We’re mega dosing this stuff. Most of it is rancid.

We’re taking massive doses. They’re causing a problem in our body and guess where? You got it, the membranes, the receptors, these lipid rafts. It’s dislodging the good fats that we need.

I said that omega-6 is really the more important fat in the cell membrane and these hormone receptors, and it is. I know all the focus is on omega-3. Don’t get me wrong, we need some omega-3. As a matter of fact, if we look at the essential fats, there’s one called linoleic acid, which is omega-6, which is really the important – this is how we fix these hormone problems around the country.

We have doctors trained in utilizing these unadulterated, meaning really good omega-6 that stabilize the membrane. Then there’s the ALA, which is the alpha linoleic acid, which is the omega-3. Again, it’s essential. It’s important, but what new studies are finding out is we need far less than we ever thought. By the way, when you need that DHA fat, the fish oil, that makes or has the DHA fat, your body will actually make a derivative of DHA from the ALA. The DHA, the fish oil is not essential. The ALA is.

Let’s put our focus on what I said. I said that everyone is bastardizing the omega-6. I think there’s a good reason here because omega-6 is causing some mischief. I talked about vegetable oil, canola oil, and bad fats like these man-made fats.

Guess what? What’s happening here is all of the omega-6 in our diet or most is adulterated, meaning rancid, gone bad omega-6, which also makes its way into these membranes, effects the hormone receptors, destabilizes even the mitochondrial membrane. As a matter of fact, there’s an omega-6 fat in the mitochondria. Remember, that’s where we either burn sugar or fat. We want to be fat burners when we’re not eating.

It’s called cardiolipin, and it’s very important to how we make energy, burn fat instead of sugar. This rancid, adulterated omega-6 that we’re eating in vegetable oil, canola oil, seed oils, everything in our diet oils, everything in every grocery story is making its way and displacing that cardiolipin. By the way, so is the fish oil.

There’s a study on my desktop here that shows that fish oil, that omega-3 DHA can go into the mitochondrial membrane and displace this cardiolipin omega-6; therefore, it affects our ATP production. That’s going to affect our energy, our brain, how it works, etc. We need the good fats. We need unadulterated omega-6. That’s really the key in how we fix these membranes and the key of how we can stabilize these hormones that we’re talking about and these hormone receptors.

Our diet is loaded with the wrong omega-6, which is the key to fixing the membranes. We’re not getting the good omega-6, and we’re loading up on fish oil, which is not as important in these membranes. It can also cause omega-3 dominance and kick out these good omega-6 that we need, and it’s destabilizing the membranes and the hormone receptors.

Do you see the problem? America, we are taking in adulterated omega-6 that we need desperately to make our hormones function normal. We’re avoiding cholesterol. We’re avoiding saturated fat, which we need to stabilize the cell membrane and these hormone receptors. We’re taking in the wrong omega-6.

It’s adulterated, tortured through processing in all the chips, grains, you name it, and we’re not getting the good omega-6, the unadulterated, which we’re going to talk about. We’re not getting the cholesterol, the saturated fat, and we’re taking fish oil. Too much! A little bit, no problem.

You know how I get my fish oil? I get it from fish. We don’t need that much. Again, if you want to know more of the science on that, please go watch two episodes. I wrote a great article on it, and it is ”The Dangers of Fish Oil, Part 1 and Part 2” at DrPompa.com.

You will find those Cellular Healing episodes. I should have memorized the episode numbers for you, but if you just put in the search “Dangers of Fish Oil,” they will come up. You can get more of the skinny on that fat there.

When we look at this hormone epidemic that we’re under, no doubt, toxins are playing a role here. By the way, the membranes, the outer membrane of every cell that has all your hormone receptors, toxins attach to those receptors and cause that interference, blunting the receptors so the hormones can’t get their message in the cell, and you don’t feel good. It can happen in the mitochondrial membrane. The toxins interfere with that, and then you don’t make or burn fat for energy.

When we get back, let’s talk about the fats you have to have. Let’s talk about these omega-6. Where do you get them? It’s so darn important to fix this problem. Where do you get them? Let’s talk about some solutions when we get back.

I hope this show is a show of solutions and not just problems, but I did raise a lot of problems, didn’t I? There is a solution. I always like to save the last segment for giving you some really good ideas and some things you can take home and do today. If you’re going to the grocery story, make a list. Pull out your pens right now because we just said a lot of things.

You need saturated fat. You need cholesterol. You need these omega-6 fats that are adulterated, gone bad, and are messing up our cell membranes and our hormone receptors. Let’s talk about some great sources.

First of all, I could probably do a whole show on grain-fed meat, the dangers of. When many people go vegan, vegetarian because it’s so easy to look at the problems that meat causes, but let me be clear. It is the commercial meat, the conventional meat, if you will, that is raised mostly on grain, which is loaded with omega-6 and not the right ratio of omega-6, omega-3, which is a whole other topic for another day.

Here’s the point; cows, what are they meant to eat? Grass. As a matter of fact, when they eat grain, you mess up the fat. A place that we get a lot of the bad fats in the wrong ratios is meat, absolutely.

Here’s the problem; your person at the grocery store that helps you, you’ll say is this grass fed? They will say yup. It’s because it eats grass sometimes. Sometimes it eats grass when it doesn’t have grain sitting in front of it. It’ll munch on grass, so we call that grass fed, and we’re legal.

The problem is that it’s mostly grain fed. Then here’s one that advertises grass fed, but then when you push a little harder, you realize they eat grass most of their life, but the last couple months we force-feed it grain. Why do we do that? It makes it taste better. It makes it all fatty and juicy the way America loves their steaks, so that’s why they do it.

They pull it from the grass, and they make it eat grain. The key question you need to ask at your grocery store is is it grass finished? That’s the key. Now we have to look for 100% grass fed and grass finished. Can you believe that?

It is a huge thing, by the way. In grass-fed meat, we’re getting good cholesterol. We’re getting good saturated fat, and we’re getting omega-6 and omega-3 in the right ratio. It’s a really great source of all these fats we need, yet people are avoiding it. You should avoid commercial, regular old meat because it is poison.

The fact is, they load it up with antibiotics, steroids, hormones, and other chemicals too. What’s more important, Dr. Pompa? Should we get the organic or the 100% grass fed and grass finished? You should get the 100% grass fed, grass finished. Why? They’re not going to spray the grass. They don’t care about the weeds.

As a matter of fact, the weeds are actually really healthy for the cows. The fact is they may not be certified organic because it costs more money. If it’s 100% grass fed, grass finished and it doesn’t say organic but they can’t be certified organic, don’t worry about it. However, the opposite is true. You can have organic meat that they’re feeding grain.

Yes, it’s more important to get the 100% grass fed, grass finished as opposed to organic. There you have it. Don’t pay extra for the organic. Get the grass fed, grass finished. Pay extra for that. That’s how you can get all the good fats.

By the way, what about dairy? Isn’t everyone in America dairy intolerant right now? Not everybody, but many people think they are. It’s because it’s conventional dairy loaded with toxins, loaded with chemicals, hormones, you name it. I wouldn’t eat it either. America, stay away from it.

However, every healthy culture on the planet, this is Health Hunters Radio, eats dairy. They’re not eating the dairy that we’re raising in this country because dairy is loaded with good fats; cholesterol; saturated; even one called conjugated linoleic acid – it’s a fat you need to burn fat as energy; good omega-6, good omega-3 in the right ratios. Dairy, absolutely one of the healthiest. It even carries good bacterias. It carries a few vitamin hormones like vitamin D, vitamin K2 that you need to absorb calcium.

It’s far more important than calcium and most people are deficient. Why are people deficient in K2? We grass fed nothing, and it comes from grass fed. The cows eat the grass, which contains K1, which we humans can’t utilize. Then it munches it down and makes K2 that we get in the nice dairy product, really important.

We get vitamin D, and we get vitamin K2, huge deficiencies in both of those today. Eat grass fed everything. Dairy is a great source if it’s 100% grass fed, grass finished, which you can buy in health food stores today, absolutely a positive.

Cheese, perfect, love it. Get the raw when possible because they don’t heat it up, mess up all the good fats. By the way, I’ve got to talk about that too, what fats do we cook with? For the sake of time I’m just going to throw them out there.

Cook with almond oil, cheap and easy. It takes the heat. You can make a good fat bad, even olive oil. It can take some heat, but it will go rancid. It will denature a lot of the good things, the polyphenols in it, so we don’t want to heat it that much. I wouldn’t even go above 200 on that, so not a good thing to cook high heat with.

Almond oil, avocado oil, grape seed oil, better fats to cook high. If it’s sunflower or safflower oil, it has to say oleic, which is going to be expeller pressed, which is higher than in [34:19], so I wouldn’t get things that just say sunflower and safflower oil because they’re probably rancid unless they are this expeller pressed, which has higher mono and saturated, which is more stable in heat. Even your chips you buy, get the expeller pressed, if it has those oils. Good old coconut oil is pretty good. It takes heat well.

There’s some good oils that we need to cook with because we can make good fats bad. Pay attention there. By the way, coconut oil is loaded with saturated and short-chain fatty acids, a very good source of fats and different fats. We use those fats for energy very quickly, so they’re very good. Medium-chain triglycerides are in those fats, and they’re burned up as energy very quickly, very good healthy fats there.

The omega-6 that I said is so critical, where do we get them? There’s a couple products that we had to source these stable [35:22]. One is called Pure Form. You’ll see more about that in one of the shows I did on the dangers of fish oil.

Another one’s called Vista that you can get from my website. That’s one with some herbs that target the cell membranes and helps target the mitochondrial membrane to help fix these membranes. Vista is a product. I rarely mention product on the show but when I talk about the cell membrane, there’s Vista 1 and Vista 2. They come together in the same product, so there’s two products.

One targets those inner membranes, mitochondrial membranes being one of them. Vista 2 targets the outer membrane where those hormone receptors are. Vista 1 and 2 and Pure Form, great products here to get stable omega-6 in the right ratio with omega-3 that’s also stable because we don’t want rancid omega-6 or 3 to fix these membranes. Those are two products I do love. I’m sure we’ll get that question.

If you get a safflower/sunflower oil, which is loaded with omega-6, we want one that’s stable. They’re hard to find. I’ll give you a good website. It’s called AndreasSeedOils.com. Tell them we sent you here, Dr. Pompa, because he has some amazing stable – he has a patented process on how they cold pressed these without grinding to stabilize these fragile omega-6.

That one you just sprinkle on your salad. It tastes amazing. There’s a few of them. I would just get the five-seed oil. It’s a combination. It’s in a 4:1 ratio, which I love for the membrane. There’s a good source.

When you’re shopping in the grocery story, if a product has the sunflower/safflower oil, make sure it’s oleic. That way at least you know it’s not going to be rancid. What about olive oil? Love it. It’s not great for the membrane, but it’s not damaging to the membrane.

It also offers amazing things live flavonoids and polyphenols, which do help with inflammation of the membrane. It helps at least in that way. It’s stable, but you have to find a good one. They’re saying that the stuff coming in from Italy and Spain is cut with vegetable oil. Pay attention to what olive oil you get. I think we have a healthy list on the website in some of those articles.

I have to throw out one more source, ghee. There’s a great source of ghee in your health food stores. I love ghee. It’s clarified butter. It has all the good fats. There’s another good source.

The show went so fast. I hope I gave you enough resources. Check our website. You can get more there. Thanks for joining us on Health Hunters Radio.