Defiant Health Radio with Dr. William Davis
Defiant Health Radio with Dr. William Davis
Why I take no prescription medications
Personally, I take no prescription medications. I do not take a statin drug to reduce cholesterol, nor baby aspirin. I take nothing for high blood pressure, acid reflux, or irritable bowel syndrome. I take nothing for headaches, pain, or sleep—not a single prescription medication.
Yet my blood pressure is typically around 108/72. My triglycerides are 40 mg/dl, HDL cholesterol is 94 mg/dl, and I have zero small LDL particles. My fasting glucoses are in the 80s mg/dl, last HbA1c was 4.8%, my liver markers are all at the low normal range with no fatty liver suggested. In other words, I have perfect metabolic health without reliance on any medication.
The majority of the followers of my programs likewise enjoy perfect metabolic health without reliance on any prescription medications. Of course, there are people who adopt the strategies of my program after incurring some form of irreversible damage such as permanent loss of pancreatic beta cells that result in type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis that results in impaired ability to produce thyroid hormones, or loss of stomach parietal cells that results in absence of stomach acid, hypochlorhydria. So key is to adopt these strategies before such permanent damage is done. People who have incurred such damage will therefore need to take insulin, thyroid hormones, or engage in efforts to acidify the stomach. But barring the development of such irreversible changes, the majority of us on my programs have no need for pharmaceutical medications.
So, in this episode of Defiant Health let’s discuss how and why, by adopting just a handful of strategies, how you can enjoy perfect metabolic health with no reliance on prescription medications.
This episode isn't just a narrative; it's an invitation to a revolution in health care, where the focus shifts from treating symptoms to nurturing the root causes of our ailments, empowering you to become the curator of your own health destiny.
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A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
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Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.*
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*Dr. Davis and his staff are financially compensated for promoting BiotiQuest and Paleovalley products.
Books:
Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight
Personally, I take no prescription medications. I don't take statin drug to reduce cholesterol, nor baby aspirin. I take nothing for high blood pressure, acid reflux or irritable bowel syndrome. I take nothing for headaches, pain or sleep Not a single prescription medication. Yet my blood pressure is typically around 108 over 72. My triglycerides are 40 mg per deciliter, hdl cholesterol is 94 mg per deciliter and I have zero small LDL particles. My fasting glucose is in the 80s. My last hemoglobin A1c was 4.8%. My liver markers are all at the low normal range, with no fatty liver suggested. In other words, I have perfect metabolic health without reliance on any medication.
Speaker 1:The majority of the followers of my programs likewise enjoy perfect metabolic health without reliance on any prescription medications. Of course, there are people who adopt the strategies of my program after incurring some form of irreversible damage, such as permanent loss of pancreatic beta cells that results in type 1 diabetes, hashimoto's thyroiditis that results in impaired ability to produce thyroid hormones, or loss of stomach parietal cells that results in the absence of stomach acid, or hypocluridria or achlorhydria. So key is to adopt these strategies before such permanent damage is done. People who have incurred such damage will therefore need to take insulin, thyroid hormones or engage in efforts to acidify the stomach, but, barring the development of such irreversible changes, the majority of us on my programs have no need for pharmaceutical medications. So in this episode of Defiant Health, let's discuss how and why, by adopting just a handful of health strategies, you can enjoy perfect metabolic health without reliance on prescription medications. Choosing high quality products to support your health journey is also important. This is why Paleo Valley is a supporter of my Defiant Health podcast. Their grass-fed, pasture-raised beef sticks, for instance, are fermented, unlike nearly all other beef sticks. If you haven't tried their pasture-raised pork sticks, you're in for a real treat, as they are irresistibly delicious. I'll also tell you about Biodquest, providers of unique probiotic products that, in my experience and the experience of the followers of my program, are unlike all other probiotics as they are crafted using the scientific insights of academic microbiologist Dr Raul Cano, an innovator in the concept of collaborative effects among microbes. As I mentioned in the introductory comments, I have perfect metabolic health and I rely on no pharmaceutical medications to maintain that.
Speaker 1:Now, it wasn't always this way. In fact, many years ago this is over 30 years ago I was a metabolic disaster. It all started because I heard a lecture by a colleague who reported that when he took his patients onto a program that involved an extreme reduction in dietary fat, saturated fat, essentially avoiding all animal products, so a vegetarian diet very low in fat, he reported that all sorts of positive effects developed. So I decided to give this a try myself and many of my patients. It was an absolute disaster. I gained a lot of weight around my waist. My HDL good cholesterol dropped to a dangerous 27 mg per deciliter. My triglycerides increased to a very high 390 mg per deciliter. I developed an abundance of small LDL particles the real cause of heart disease, not LDL cholesterol and my small LDL particles numbered 1800 Nmol per liter, that's a particle count per volume, which is very high. I became a type 2 diabetic, with fasting glucose values in 160 mg per deciliter range. I developed hypertension and it felt awful.
Speaker 1:Now this all happened on that vegetarian, low fat diet, despite the fact that I was jogging 3 to 5 miles several times per week, riding my bike, playing tennis. In other words, I was very active. Yet I became an absolute metabolic disaster, a type 2 diabetic with all sorts of other distortions, and thereby on my way to a future of heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and other problems from this metabolic disaster. So I stopped following that program and all those measures improved over time. I became a non-diabetic, my triglycerides and all those other measures improved dramatically.
Speaker 1:But there was another series of lessons I learned after my mom, after my mother died of sudden cardiac death after her successful two-vessel carner angioplasm. This is many years ago, and so I recognized that what I did in a cath lab, that is, as an interventional cardiologist putting in stents and dilating of ballooning arteries and all those sorts of procedures to abort heart attacks and open arteries that this was a very unsatisfactory way to deal with a dangerous disease, because many people died on route to the hospital or died at home. And so I asked is there a way to identify risks, like my mom had Months or even years ahead of time? Well, people use cholesterol values, but those are useless. If I told you your total cholesterol is 240 mg per deciliter, will you have a heart attack next week, next month, in three years? You can tell. Cholesterol values are an extremely poor predictor of future cardiovascular events. So I was not happy with that answer. Well, at the time. This is now over 30 years ago, but it remains true even today.
Speaker 1:The best predictor, by a long stretch is a coronary calcium score obtained through a CT heart scan. All that means is we scan the heart using devices that are very rapid, because the heart is in motion, it has multiple phases of motion. There's breathing motion from the lungs, there's human motion, just because people are fidgety but a very rapid acquisition of images so that we can quantify sub-millimeter quantities of calcium. And that's helpful because my friend Dr John Rumberger, while he was at Mayo Clinic, demonstrated that of atherosclerotic plaque that's the material that accumulates in your arteries, in your coronary artery, your heart's arteries, that leads to heart attacks and similar episodes that of that plaque, 20% of the volume is occupied by calcium. So if we had two cubic millimeters of calcium, we have 10 cubic millimeters of atherosclerotic plaque and that is a very powerful predictor of future cardiovascular events.
Speaker 1:A normal coronary calcium score is zero and any value above zero signifies increasing risk. So that people who have a score of 1,000 or greater have approximately a 12% to 15% chance of dying or having a heart attack or developing symptoms that require some sort of action like implanting stents or bypass surgery every year. So 12% to 15% per year risk of those events at a score as high as 1,000 or more. It also became clear and we helped publish these evidence that if you do nothing a score will increase approximately 25% per year. So a score, say, of 400, 500 a year later, 625 another year later and as with each leap in scoring you're closer and closer to heart attack, death and other sudden and dangerous cardiovascular events. So what can we do to stop it? So if it goes up 25% per year, what if we put you on a high-dose statin cholesterol drug like Lipitor, 40 milligrams a baby aspirin, a low-fat diet and an exercise program, how much will that slow the progression increase in growth of carnetary atherosclerotic plaque? It has no effect whatsoever on that measure. So 400 will become 500 and so on. And so that date that has been corroborated numerous times. That's what my colleagues continue to call, even to this day, optimal medical therapy, even though it is an outright failure.
Speaker 1:So I set out to find out better ways to control this rise, this otherwise relentless rise in growth of carnetary atherosclerotic plaque. By the way, the so-called experts were asked what should we do? If we can't put a stop to the growth of atherosclerotic plaque by tracking carnet calcium measures, what should we do? And they actually said this. Don't repeat the scan for another score. Just let people have their heart attack or develop an angin and manage it. Then, as you know, this is ridiculous. It means that people are being resigned to dying at home, dying on route in the ambulance or other bad outcomes. So I was unsatisfied with that awful, awful answer.
Speaker 1:So I set about trying to find ways that really did put a stop to the rise in carnetary calcium scores and the progression of carnet atherosclerotic plaque, and it led to a number of unique observations. One of the lessons you learn is that if you reject cholesterol testing, this crude, outdated thing we should have rejected 40 or 50 years ago and instead did a more thorough, more precise method called lipoprotein analysis, and the method I use most of the law was nuclear magnetic resonance, nmr. So an NMR lipoprotein analysis. These are easily available. Every major lab does it. It's covered by health insurers and Medicare, even though many of my colleagues will claim that it's not. That's what they're really saying is I can't be bothered understand this more advanced form of testing and so I'm going to tell you it's unavailable, it's non scientific, there's no evidence that it works or that insurance doesn't cover it. None of that is true.
Speaker 1:So when we took people's blood and subjected to NMR lipoprotein analysis became clear that it's not LDL cholesterol that drives growth of plaque, it's an abundance of small LDL particles. There's a number of reasons for that. Small LDL particles are smaller, they're better able to penetrate into the arterial wall to create atherosclerotic plaque. Small LDL is much more prone to oxidation and glycation, that is, glucose modification of the proteins in that particle. And when they are glycated and oxidized or glycoxidized, that particle, that small LDL particle, is much more dangerous, much more likely to gain entry into the arterial wall and incite an inflammatory response. Small LDL particles are also unusually persistent in the bloodstream. That's because when the particle is small, when the LDL particle is small, the recognition protein on its surface, called apoprotein B, its configuration is changed and it's partially concealed. So the liver has a hard time recognizing that small LDL particle and the concealed apoprotein B. As a result, while large LDL particles that the liver does recognize are cleared promptly within 24 hours of their creation, small LDL particles require five to seven days to be cleared by the liver. That means once you form small LDL particles they're persistent for about a week, going round and around your circulation and giving plenty of opportunity to cause or grow carnal atherosclerotic plaque.
Speaker 1:So the question I asked is what foods in the diet cause the formation of small LDL particles? Simple Wheat, grains and sugar? There is more than ample evidence to tell us that's the amylopectin A of wheat and grains and sugars such as sucrose and fructose that trigger the formation of small LDL particles by the liver. And, by the way, there are now 55 human clinical trials to tell us that quantifying small LDL particles by advanced lipoprotein testing is a superior, dramatically superior predictor of the future cardiovascular events. Likewise, carnal calcium scores a superior predictor. You can pretty much time somebody's heart attack or need for procedures or related events by knowing their carnal calcium score and see whether it's progressive or not. So another question comes up is there a way to reduce that score? Slow down the 25% per year rate of increase, slow it down or even decrease the score?
Speaker 1:Well, the diet alone was extremely powerful and eradicating the expression of small LDL particles. But I went further and we added back nutrients that are lacking in modern life, lacking or at low levels, such as vitamin D, magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids and iodine, and that also amplified the benefits of the diet by reducing insulin resistance and inflammation, the two driving factors that grows coronary disease. Then I took it even further by addressing bowel flora, by trying to restore lost microbes such as lactobacillus rhodorii and lactobacillus gastri, by using prolonged fermentation to make our yogurts. They're not yogurt, of course, but something that looks and smells like yogurt. We also incorporate lots of fermented foods and prebiotic fibers. Put this all together.
Speaker 1:It became clear that when all these strategies were put together, people achieved extraordinary metabolic health. It started all uncommon for people in my programs to have HDL cholesterol of 70 milligrams or greater, triglyceride levels of 40 to 50, even though your neighbors have levels of 180, 300,. We enjoy levels of 40 to 50 milligrams. Small LDL is typically zero, not just reduced, but zero. Blood pressures are typically in the 110, over 80 or similar range. C-reactive protein and measure inflammation is near zero. So not only do we achieve extraordinary metabolic health, but we avoid the need for pharmaceutical medications to try to correct these factors, and that we thereby save money. We're not exposed to side effects, but we enjoy side Benefits such as reduction of abdominal visceral fat, improved testosterone status, improved cognition and other benefits. But you all begin to recognize just how unnecessary the majority of pharmaceuticals are, though you'd never believe it if you watch TV commercials.
Speaker 1:The Divinate Health podcast is sponsored by Paleo Valley makers of delicious grass-fed beef sticks, healthy snack bars and other products. We're very picky around here and insist that any product we consider has no junk ingredients like carrageenan, carboxymethylcellulose, sucralose and, of course, no added sugars. All Paleo Valley products contain no gluten nor grains. In fact, I find Paleo Valley products among the cleanest in their category. One of the habits I urge everyone to get into is to include at least one, if not several, servings of fermented foods per day in their lifestyles. Unlike nearly all other beef sticks available, paleo Valley grass-fed beef sticks are all naturally fermented, meaning they contain probiotic bacterial species. And now Paleo Valley is expanding their Wild Pastures program that provides 100% grass-fed, grass-finished pastured beef and pastured chicken and pork raised without herbicides or pesticides. And they just added wild-cut seafood caught from the waters of Bristol Bay, alaska. Among their other new products are pasture-raised fermented pork sticks, chocolate-flavored grass-fed bone broth, protein and grass-fed organ complex and capsule form, and new essentially electrolytes in powder form to add to potassium and magnesium intake, available in orange, lemon and melon flavors. And for the fall and winter season they've brought back pumpkin spice superfood bars. Listeners to the Defiant Health podcast receive a 15% discount by going to paleovalicom back-word slash Defiant Health.
Speaker 1:And I'd like to welcome Defiant Health's newest sponsor, biodicuest. I've had numerous conversations with Biodicuest founders Martha Carlin, an academic microbiologist, dr Raul Cano. They have formulated unique synergistic probiotic products that incorporate what are called collaborative or guild effects, that is, groups of microbes that collaborate with each other via specific metabolites, potentially providing synergistic benefits. They have designed their sugar shift probiotic to support healthy blood sugars. Simple slumber to support sleep. Ideal immunity to support a healthy immune response. Heart-centered that supports several aspects of heart health. And antibiotic antidote designed to support recovery of the gastrointestinal microbiome after a course of antibiotics. The Biodicuest probiotics are, I believe, among the most effective of all probiotic choices for specific health effects. Enter the discount code UNDOC15 for a 15% discount for Defiant Health listeners.
Speaker 1:One of the peculiar things that happens when those of us who enjoy perfect metabolic health experience is that when you go to a healthcare clinic or hospital, they ask you what medications, what prescription medications, do you take, and you say none. They look at you confused. Inevitably they are very confused. The peculiar thing is that they don't recognize perfect metabolic health. It's not uncommon for them to insist that you begin several drugs even though you enjoy perfect metabolic health. They'll tell you that you need a statin drug, for instance, or a baby asthma or some other drug to somehow improve your health, which of course they do not. Or they advocate conventional ideas such as follow dietary guidelines or eat more healthy whole grains, or here's a prescription for this or that health problem all the mantras that cause unhealthy metabolic health and many diseases.
Speaker 1:One of the key concepts to get your arms around in understanding these ideas is that we avoid the idea of treating conditions. In other words, if you have a high blood sugar, let's resist the impulse to treat that high blood sugar and force it down. If you have a high blood pressure, let's avoid the idea of treating that high blood pressure with some drug to force your blood pressure down. Instead, we adopt strategies that correct these factors that allow such conditions to emerge in the first place. So we're going to address the mistakes we all made in diet. We're going to address the factors the nutritional factors absent or lacking in modern life that affect insulin resistance and inflammation. We're going to address this disrupted microbiome and the endotoxemia that accompanies a disrupted microbiome.
Speaker 1:And, as I mentioned again in the introductory comments. We ideally begin these strategies before there's irreversible damage done, such as irreversible damage to the brain and spinal cord in some with multiple sclerosis, or damage to the brain from a stroke, or damage to the heart muscle from a heart attack or the implantation of prosthetic hypra-knee. These, of course, are things we cannot reverse. So the key is to adopt these programs, adopt these strategies before these sorts of irreversible changes occur. And are most of these conditions avoidable? Absolutely. Now we can't protect you from accidents, from injury, from most infections or infestations.
Speaker 1:You know indigenous hunter-gatherer populations, such as people who live in the jungles of South America or New Guinea or the east coast of southern Africa or the savannas of Tanzania. These are people who, unexposed to antibiotics, don't eat modern diets but just live outdoors and hunt and gather their food. They have no type 2 diabetes, no coronary disease, no autoimmune diseases, no constipation, no ulcerative colitis, no Crohn's disease, no colon cancer, on and on and on. These people are spared all the diseases of civilization that we have Now. They have other problems, of course, right, they have infections, infestations and injuries, but they do not have most of the common chronic disease that plague modern people.
Speaker 1:I think there's an important lesson in that and they also, of course, enjoy normal blood pressures, normal blood sugars, no small LDL particles and other aspects of health, without relying on prescription medications to do so. So is it possible to enjoy perfect metabolic health without statin drugs, without blood pressure medications, without all the other things that conventional healthcare tries to load on you? It absolutely is, and in fact, most of us enjoy biomarkers of health superior to the people who rely on pharmaceuticals to correct or treat various aspects of health. Now, if you learned something from this episode of Defiant Health Podcast, I invite you to subscribe to your favorite podcast directory. Post a review. Post a comment. Help us build this movement of self empowerment in health. Thanks for listening.
