The Real Cholesterol Story with Cardiologist Dr. Willam Davis - SUMMER REBOOT - Episode 284

My special guest today is Dr. William Davis.  He is a cardiologist and New York Times #1 bestselling author of the Wheat Belly book series. He is Medical Director and founder of the Undoctored program including the Undoctored Inner Circle. He is Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Realize Therapeutics Corp. that is developing innovative solutions for the disrupted human microbiome and author of the book Super Gut.

Get ready to have your understanding of cholesterol and heart disease challenged. Cardiologist Dr. William Davis, bestselling author of the Wheat Belly series, joins us to expose the fundamental flaws in how modern medicine approaches heart health.

Dr. Davis reveals why the conventional focus on total cholesterol and LDL is dangerously outdated. These measurements are crude approximations developed in the 1960s that fail to identify the real culprits behind heart disease. Instead, he explains why small dense LDL particles and triglyceride levels are far more meaningful indicators, and why coronary calcium scores provide the most direct evidence of actual heart disease risk.

What's truly eye-opening is learning what causes these dangerous small LDL particles. Contrary to popular belief, it's not fatty foods like eggs or butter, but rather grains and sugars. The amylopectin A carbohydrate in wheat (even "healthy" whole grains) triggers small LDL formation more effectively than table sugar. This revelation explains why so many people following conventional "heart-healthy" low-fat, high-grain diets continue developing heart disease.

Beyond diet, Dr. Davis delves into how nutrient deficiencies common in modern life—particularly vitamin D, magnesium, iodine, and omega-3 fatty acids—contribute significantly to heart disease risk. He also explores the critical role of gut health, explaining how Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) affects approximately half the North American population and drives inflammation, insulin resistance, and heart disease.

Perhaps most importantly, Dr. Davis empowers listeners with actionable knowledge about how to genuinely protect heart health without relying on statins, which he demonstrates provide minimal benefit while increasing diabetes risk. 

If you're concerned about heart health or have been told y

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Cholesterol Controversy
• 9:10 Meet Dr. William Davis, Cardiologist
• 13:40 Dr. Davis's Personal Health Journey
• 22:10 Understanding Coronary Calcium Scores
• 34:00 Cholesterol Explained: History and Misconceptions
• 43:30 The Truth About Triglycerides
• 53:50 Grain Consumption and Heart Disease
• 1:05:30 Statin Risks and Microbiome Disruption
• 1:11:30 Addressing Root Causes Not Symptoms
• 1:18:50 SIBO and Gut Health Solutions

Transcript

Sandy Kruse: 0:02

Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy Kruse of Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. For years now, I've been bringing to you conversations about wellness from incredible guests from all over the world. Discover a fresh take on healthy living for midlife and beyond, one that embraces balance and reason, without letting only science dictate every aspect of our wellness. Join me and my guests as we explore ways that we can age gracefully, with in-depth conversations about the thyroid, about hormones and other alternative wellness options for you and your family. True Wellness nurtures a healthy body, mind, spirit and soul, and we cover all of these essential aspects to help you live a balanced, joyful life. Be sure to follow my show, rate it, review it and share it. Always remember my friends balanced living works. Remember my friends balanced living works. Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy Kay Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. I have really taken a little bit of time off. I hope you're all enjoying my summer reboot series.

Sandy Kruse: 1:48

Here I am bringing back Dr William Davis. He is a cardiologist. He's also the author of all of the Wheat Belly series. You can find his links. He's doing some pretty cool stuff nowadays and this topic is all about cholesterol. Now I'm going to tell you cholesterol. Now I'm going to tell you this is a really controversial topic and I'm going to say it gets so complicated because the ball is constantly moving. This causes heart disease, this doesn't you need a statin, you don't. It's really complicated. So the most important thing I'm going to say here, before you listen to this episode, is you must have a conversation, a two-way conversation, with whomever your practitioner is that knows you well. The reason I'm going to say this is because, yes, there are some guidelines as to who would do best with a statin.

Sandy Kruse: 2:59

Most of you know, who have been listening to me for so long, you know I am not anti-pharmaceutical. What I am against is a one size fits all approach. I feel we are all unique and just because is elevated does not mean that you have that particular tiny part of the cholesterol that has been linked to heart disease. There are a few things that you can look into. Number one and, by the way, this is not medical advice. None of this is.

Sandy Kruse: 3:46

Remember, my purpose here is just to give you the breadcrumbs, for you to go and see what's right for you, what makes sense for you, and the only way to know that is to not listen to all these influencers, these podcasters, listen to all these influencers, these podcasters, these people who are in the wellness space, but to actually have a two-way conversation with a practitioner who knows you, who is trained in what you need help with. So, just so that you're aware, just because your total cholesterol is high, that does not mean you're at risk for heart disease. Remember, without cholesterol, we cannot make our sex hormones yeah, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, among others. So let's just say you were to take away all your cholesterol, not that anyone takes away all of it, but let's just say, hypothetically, you would not be able to make those hormones. So, and there's some pretty interesting research out there, even about dementia, about how these individuals who have dementia have very low cholesterol. Like, we need cholesterol. Cholesterol is not bad, it's just one of those components of cholesterol. So an easy way. So I'm going to ask you to go and look up what the fried walled formula is. Okay, that's F-R-I-E-D-E-W-A-L-D.

Sandy Kruse: 5:37

And the reason I say that is because here in Canada we basically just take total cholesterol, hdl, ldl and triglycerides, and the doctors primarily ignore triglycerides, which is a pretty important part of your cholesterol. To understand what's going on, triglycerides, when they're elevated, are not great and that can often mean that there are more of these very dense particles in your LDL. The small dense particles are the ones that have been shown to embed in the arterial wall and cause plaque buildup. So if you have high triglycerides, that right, there is something for you to investigate. So the Friedwald equation is LDL equals total cholesterol minus HDL, minus triglycerides, divided by five. Have this conversation with your doctor. If they do not test further, that means they're not going to do further blood work to see what exactly is this LDL comprised of. So that's kind of all I'm going to say here, because, like I said, this cholesterol question is pretty complicated and to know whether or not you are at risk and whether or not you should go on a statin or shouldn't, you know, you really need to dig a little bit deeper and understand what cholesterol is, and that's all I'm going to say about that. So I hope this helps you and, again, this conversation is simply meant to give you those breadcrumbs so that you can make an informed decision on what's right for you personally and informed decision on what's right for you personally.

Sandy Kruse: 8:07

Now I'm going to ask you to share this podcast with a friend. Most of you know I'm kind of a one woman show. Here I do. This is I'm going into my fifth season. In February I hit five years. I change seasons every September. I do a summer reboot every year because I have some incredible guests and topics, not to give you health advice, but simply just to help you live your best life and to age better. So share this episode with a friend. Follow me on Instagram I am most active there Rate and review my podcast wherever you are listening, if you are able to do so, and that's that. Have an amazing rest of your summer. I might come back with another little preamble, I might not. So have a great week. Thanks, hi, everyone. Welcome to Sandy Kay Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen.

Sandy Kruse: 9:15

Today with me I have Dr William Davis. He is a cardiologist and New York Times number one bestselling author of the Wheat Belly book series. He is medical director and founder of the Undoctored program, including the Undoctored Inner Circle. He is chief medical officer and co-founder of Realize Therapeutics Corporation that is developing innovative solutions for the disrupted human microbiome, and the author of the book Supergut.

Sandy Kruse: 9:52

After 25 years of practicing cardiology, it became clear that he was in the business of dispensing prescription drugs and procedures, not health, once he rejected conventional notions of delivering health through drugs and procedures, not health. Once he rejected conventional notions of delivering health through drugs and procedures and instead began to seek out ways to restore health naturally, logically, inexpensively, so many answers became apparent. Delivering these ideas to people has resulted in reversing hundreds of common health conditions effortless weight loss, day-to-day functioning at higher levels, as well as many age-reversing effects and you all know how much I love the entire field of health span versus lifespan, and we all know the difference between those two. And one of the big conversations I have never had in three years on this podcast is a conversation about cholesterol, and this is a massive topic whereby so many people are told that they are at risk for heart disease and all sorts of other things because of high cholesterol. So now we're going to have this discussion with an expert. So with that, welcome, dr Davis. Thank you so much for coming today.

Dr. William Davis: 11:21

Thanks, Andy. Thanks for the invitation.

Sandy Kruse: 11:23

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you because, as I was saying to you earlier, I mean I have one of your original books, wheat Belly, from a long time ago, and I read it cover to cover a long time ago and you've done so much more work since, so I guess let's start with you know a little background on your work.

Dr. William Davis: 11:46

Well, I got here sending that through a series of revelations, but a series of blunders, mistakes, and so many years ago I became a vegetarian and was actually in my 30s late 30s. I was jogging, biking, playing tennis and being a vegetarian on a low-fat diet. I became a type 2 diabetic with disastrous metabolic markers like triglycerides of 390, HDL cholesterol of 27,. Oodles of small LDL particles the real cause for heart disease blood sugars in the 160 range, high blood pressure, et cetera. It was a vivid illustration of the power of diet, including the wrong diet, the completely awful wrong diet called low-fat vegetarian diets, as advocated by many people, of course, like Dr Dean Ornish and other people like that. Well, I went off that program, became a non-diabetic. Well, I went off that program, became a non-diabetic, but it got me started on this idea that if the low-fat diet is the wrong diet, what's the right diet?

Dr. William Davis: 12:51

Well, it took a number of years and then my mom died of sudden cardiac death in New Jersey, where I grew up, about four months after her successful two-vessel coronary angioplasty. Now I had just moved to Milwaukee. They brought me into this city to set up the new technologies. So this goes back now 30 years, but it was just the start of all the new methods in angioplasty, like atherectomy devices to open arteries, stents, all that stuff, and my mom dies of the disease that I managed Not my own mom's disease, of course, but in the state. But it was an illustration also of just how pointless, how inadequate it was to try to manage a disease like coronary disease in a cath lab, because people like my mom don't make it to the cath lab, they die at home en route, which is very common even today. So back then I asked this question what could have helped my mom a year, two years, five years, before trouble started?

Dr. William Davis: 13:59

The world says cholesterol testing, which is a ridiculous idea. If you have a total cholesterol of 230, do you have heart disease now? Will you have heart disease in 10 years, Next Tuesday? You can't tell from this ridiculous, crude indirect marker called cholesterol in all its forms. So back then, this remains true today the only true measure of the disease itself not risk for disease, but the disease itself is a coronary calcium score, based on this simple principle, developed by my friend Dr John Rumberger while he was at Mayo Clinic, that when you have atherosclerotic plaque, stuff that gums up your arteries, 20% of the volume is occupied by calcium that we can see and quantify. So if you have two cubic millimeters of calcium, you've have two cubic millimeters of calcium. You've got 10 cubic millimeters of coronary atherosclerotic plaque Very easy. The more plaque you have, the more prone you are.

Dr. William Davis: 14:52

People think that coronary disease is driven by blockages that get worse and worse and worse. That's not true. For the most part, coronary disease is driven by the sudden and abrupt rupture of a plaque that releases its internal contents that cause a blood clot formation. So you don't have to have a 99% blockage to have a heart attack. You can have a 25% blockage to cause a heart attack. So the more plaque you have, the more along the length of all three arteries you have, the more likely you have opportunity for rupture, plaque rupture.

Dr. William Davis: 15:24

So we're scanning people left and right this is where I lived in Milwaukee and lo and behold, sandy heart disease, hidden, silent heart disease and people like you and me and the listeners riding their bikes, going for walks, going about their business, going to work. Hidden heart disease is everywhere. It's ubiquitous and you see people's scores of 100 or 500 or 1,000, normal is zero. What do you do about that? What do you do to put a stop to it? Of course, my colleagues then and still today, 30 years later, still say take a baby aspirin, a high dose of a statin cholesterol drug to reduce cholesterol, a low-fat, low-saturated fat diet and exercise program. Well, if you do nothing, the score goes up 25% per year. It's horrifying how fast heart disease grows when you do nothing. What happens if you go on aspirin, statin drug, low-fat diet how fast does it go up 25% per year? Sammy has no impact.

Dr. William Davis: 16:25

We helped publish those data. It's been corroborated numerous times. It has virtually zero impact. And so what do you do? Though, at a practical level, people are freaking out on me, right, I got thousands of people saying what do we do? Of course my colleagues say we'll do the real test, the hard catheterization, see if you need a preventive stent or bypass surgery. By the way, it's malpractice because there's no benefit to a person who's going about their business without symptoms. It's not people in an emergency room having a chest pain. This is everyday people like you and me, and putting you through a procedure just because you have some plaque is malpractice, but it's done all the time.

Sandy Kruse: 17:04

Wow.

Dr. William Davis: 17:07

Because it pays too damn well. And so I have people going through unnecessary procedures by my unscrupulous colleagues, which is very sad to say. It sounds cynical, but it's very true. And so what do you do to stop it? Well, it led me down some paths that were unexpected, for instance when when I added vitamin D we're both in a very northern climate. Vitamin D deficiency is ubiquitous and severe. You add vitamin D it was the first time I saw carinocalcium scores do that. A score of 700 would drop to 380 or something like that. Wow, you reject common ideas. If reducing cholesterol does nothing for you, what can we do? Well, the test beyond cholesterol cholesterol is an outdated technology. It should have been abandoned decades ago. You can actually measure the lipoproteins, the fat-carrying proteins in the bloodstream that cholesterol is meant to approximate. But you can actually measure the lipoproteins and you'll see right away the dominant cause for coronary disease, and this has been proven now in 55 clinical trials. The dominant cause are small LDL particles.

Sandy Kruse: 18:15

Right.

Dr. William Davis: 18:16

LDL cholesterol, but small LDL particles. So I asked myself okay, we're seeing all these people with coronary disease, right, high coronary calcium scores, and let's do their lipoprotein tests and they would have 1,800 or 2,400 tons of small LDL particles, metamols per liter, particle count per volume. Well, this science was also available 25 years ago. What foods cause small LDL particles Five years ago? What foods cause small LDL particles? Not fat, not bacon, not beef, not olive oil. Grains and sugars period. Yeah, grains, because there's a carbohydrate in grains called amylopectin A that's worse than table sugar and it's affecting causal provocation of the formation of small LDL particles. So I have all my patients hey, listen, conventional solutions don't work. They're nonsense. Let's try some different things. Let's try grain sugar elimination. And people did that and their small LDL particles would drop, typically from like 1950 to zero or some other low value.

Dr. William Davis: 19:23

But that's when I also started to see all these other things happen. That I did not expect, sandy. People said well, you didn't tell me I would lose 73 pounds. You didn't tell me that my type 2 diabetes would get so much better. I had to stop the insulin and the metformin. I had to stop three blood pressure medicines because I was getting too lightheaded. My rosacea got so much better, my rheumatoid arthritis started to go away. In other words, it became clear For the purposes of reducing small health particles for cardiovascular risk. I stumbled. Well, I asked myself back then this is many years ago how can this be? How can removing the food advocated by all dietary, the people who offer dietary advice, dieticians, physicians, usda, all those people? They all agree you must cut your fat, eat more healthy whole grains. And when we do the opposite, dramatic transformations in the health of her.

Sandy Kruse: 20:23

Wow, and you know what. And then just to add to that, the big thing is to cut your animal protein, stop eating so much meat. It's like this big general consensus among general physicians mostly, and I mean I've never seen a cardiologist, I've never had to but I've also been told and I hear this from many, many people they only just like what you said they check total cholesterol, they check HDL, they check LDL and then they check triglycerides and if the LDL is at a certain level they suggest you go on statins. When you ask to get further investigation on that particle size of the LDL, they say unless you go on a statin and unless we are treating you, we will not check further. This is Canada.

Dr. William Davis: 21:22

It's not much different here. Let me translate what my colleagues are saying, whether it's north of the border or south of the border. I don't understand lipoproteins. I really don't understand how heart disease is caused, so I'm just going to tell you take a cholesterol statin drug. I can't be bothered truly understanding how heart disease is caused. That's what they're really saying. They don't want to be educated. It's too easy to listen to the nice sales representative in a miniskirt promising dinner.

Sandy Kruse: 21:48

That's how the world works.

Dr. William Davis: 21:51

That's how the world works. So the real tragedy Sandy of cholesterol is that it took everybody's attention off the real causes of heart disease, of which there's about a dozen, and they're easily managed, and for none of them do you need drugs to manage them. When you start looking at the genuine causes of coronary disease, you start to recognize that they're easily addressable with changes in diet, addressing some common nutrient deficiencies that afflict modern people, and issues like the microbiome, the gastrointestinal microbiome, In other words. These are things you can do in your own kitchen or living room or home. You don't need drugs and you certainly do not need the astounding ignorance of my colleagues who refuse to look at the real causes.

Sandy Kruse: 22:38

So, dr Davis, can you just explain to us briefly what exactly is cholesterol, so that everybody understands what it is?

Dr. William Davis: 22:49

So there are particles in the bloodstream, lipoproteins, fat-carrying proteins, because fat can't occur by itself in the blood because, like salad dressing, would float to the top, would separate and that would cause embolism, would block arteries. So you can't have free-floating fats in the blood, so fats have to be bound to an aqueous component, proteins, and so there are a variety of different kinds of lipoproteins. Well, in 1958, 1960, researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, maryland, said how do we quantify, how do we characterize these things? This is 70 years ago. So two scientists, drs William Friedewald and William Fredrickson, would take the plasma of blood, that is, the clear part of plasma, the clear part of blood, with the red blood cells removed, and that clear part has all those lipoproteins in it. If you spin it down at a rapid rate in a centrifuge it layers out the highest density heaviest goes to the bottom, the lowest density stays on top and you have some intermediate levels like low density in the middle. Well, they wanted to estimate how many particles are in each. How do you do that? In 1960? So they said ah, we'll measure. One thing we know all these particles share a protein called apoprotein B, many of them have apoprotein C. They have triglycerides and they have cholesterol. Let's measure the cholesterol and use it to guesstimate how many particles are in each layer. So they did it for the lowest layer, the high density lipoproteins. They did it for the least dense layer, the very low density, and it was hardest doing that mid-layer. So what they did was they measured the cholesterol in an entire fraction and then subtracted those two other fractions to guesstimate how much is in that mid fraction, that's ldl cholesterol.

Dr. William Davis: 24:45

So cholesterol got its origin as a crude, indirect way to quantify the lipoproteins in the plasma samples and that were centrifuged. And they developed a very crude equation. They knew this, they're not stupid, they were. They knew this. They developed a very crude equation to very crudely approximate the amount of cholesterol in that mid-level fraction. And they also said well, if we can use this really crude equation, we're not going to measure it, we're going to only calculate it. We're assuming everybody eats the same diet, nobody's diabetic, everybody has a good triglyceride. All these assumptions and that was the origin of the so-called free-to-all calculation to count the LDL cholesterol that is used today. That is a fictitious number that's not even based on genuine measurement and it has nothing to do with lipoprotein. So those lipoprotein layers are not one thing. There's a whole variety. And that middle layer, the LDL fraction. There's a whole variety of things in there.

Dr. William Davis: 25:47

And just to say, there's only one thing in there is completely false, and so LDL cholesterol is a wildly inaccurate and extremely poor predictor. Yet the reason why it's still around is it makes billions of dollars every year for the pharmaceutical industry and has the appearance because of excessive year for the pharmaceutical industry, and has the appearance, because of excessive marketing by the pharmaceutical industry of being the answer to coronary disease. You know, in the US alone, 80 million Americans more than 80 million Americans take a statin cholesterol drug, but there has been no meaningful reduction in heart disease, the occurrence of heart disease. That's. That's why hospitals add $80 million, $100 billion new cardiovascular women, because heart disease remains the number one moneymaker. And so you got to think about why would we turn off the biggest moneymaker for hospitals and healthcare with something that actually works? So they continue to halt this stuff reducing cholesterol with statin cholesterol drugs and other drugs that do not work and yet allow you and me to have our heart impacts and need for procedures.

Sandy Kruse: 26:53

Okay, so statistically, I know I read something, and I'm sure you'll know it better than I would that taking a statin, just like what you said, does not prevent heart attacks. Right?

Dr. William Davis: 27:11

So best case scenario. One of the problems we have with the statin literature is the vast majority of it was paid for by the statin manufacturers. So a good example was a recent big study looking at the drug Repetha. That's that new class of drugs that's injectable, that's supposed to be an add-on to statins to reduce cholesterol even further. So they reduced LDL cholesterol, calculated from a mean of 92 on statin drugs, down to 30. So they've pushed the cholesterol paradigm as far as they can, reducing LDL cholesterol down to 30, and it's super duper low. Was there a reduction in events? Hardly at all, and there was an increase in death. In other words, they pushed the paradigm to the extreme. And finding out the whole thing backfires.

Dr. William Davis: 28:03

And, by the way, the people who performed the study all paid by the drug manufacturer, all of them. And so if a car manufacturer says our car is superior to all of the brands and you say how do you know that we perform a study? We compared our cars to Toyota and Ford and GM, would you believe it? Because they? No, of course. It's marketing right. You paid for the study. Of course you got the results you wanted. And this is, by the way, this is established, fact it and this is, by the way, this is, this is established fact. If a manufacturer paid for the conduct of a study, it almost always comes out in favor of the manufacturer. Yeah, so if the vast majority of science on statins was paid for by the statin manufacturers, how much weight can you put on that nonsense? Right, and so it's become that's. That's why it's hard to, because some might kind of hold up that advice.

Dr. William Davis: 28:57

But even if we took it at face value, you'll see that the benefits are very small. So, for instance, in that most recent study using Brapatha, the investigators reported a 15% reduction in cardiovascular events. That's not true. That's called relative risk. The actual reduction was 1.5 percent, if we even believe it in this drug company sponsored trial 1.5 percent, but they called it 15 percent. The reason they do that is they play a statistical trick on you to make their data look like it's much better than it is. It's called relative risk. So imagine you and I invent a drug and let's say it does work. In our placebo group, two people out of a hundred have a heart attack. In the drug group, one person out of a hundred has a heart attack. That's reported as a 50 percent reduction, so we hear something different, of course yes wow, right, and so that's how they play games with you.

Dr. William Davis: 30:03

So the statin drug franchise is kind of a chronicle of nonsense, bad science, misinterpretation excessive marketing and the quote me.

Sandy Kruse: 30:13

This isn't quote, but I read something about. The only people that really should consider a statin are people that have already had, the people who so-called secondary prevention people who've had a cardiovascular disease. Right.

Dr. William Davis: 30:39

But here's something I would pose to you. Okay, if we're going to think conventionally, we're going to put you on a diet that causes coronary disease. That is the conventional idea of a heart-healthy diet causes heart disease or makes heart disease risk worse because it causes insulin resistance, provocation of small LDL, something called VLDL, has a lot of problems. They want to come to your rescue with a statin cholesterol drug and it may reduce event risk a little bit, like about 1% over five years. They'll say, oh no, 36 to 55%, that's that relative risk nonsense. No, it's not, it's about 1% at best. And so, yeah, there may be some modest benefits in people who have had events. But the whole paradigm is wrong. We're giving people diets that cause heart disease, we're not addressing the numerous factors, like vitamin D, that contribute to heart disease risk, and then we come to your rescue with a drug that may may have some minimal effect.

Sandy Kruse: 31:48

Dr Davis, what are your thoughts on this? Because you know I do a lot of research on nutraceuticals and you mentioned vitamin D and then you mentioned calcium. So really the real, I guess, factor in heart disease are these nutraceuticals that are imbalanced, like, I guess if we have too much calcium, you're saying that that can build up in the arteries. Is that what the actual plaque is comprised of? I just want to make sure I understand.

Dr. William Davis: 32:21

No, no. So the calcium is just a component of atherosclerotic plaque and its deposition is encouraged by vitamin D deficiency. Okay, it's an accompaniment, it's not a cause.

Sandy Kruse: 32:33

Okay.

Dr. William Davis: 32:34

Yeah.

Sandy Kruse: 32:35

So then, what is the cause? Is it okay, you mentioned also grains, but we used to eat grains back. You know, I look at my parents. You know they were farmers and my dad's now going to be 86, and you know they would eat certain grains that they grew themselves. Why, why is grains a problem now?

Dr. William Davis: 32:56

They've always been a problem. Okay, the problem was magnified by the efforts of agribusiness and genetics research that came about in the 1960s and 1970s. So there was an effort in those years to increase yield per acre to help feed the starving world. It was a noble effort. It was not a bunch of people trying to screw with us, and they did manage, in the way of wheat for instance, as well as corn and soy, to develop high yield variants With wheat.

Dr. William Davis: 33:26

It's the high yield, semi-dwarf strain of wheat. It's an 18 inch tall, thick stalk. It looks very different. If you look for fields of wheat, you're not going to see what you thought you were looking for, that is, four and a half, five foot tall, big fields of grain. You won't see that. You're going to see short, stocky, 18 inch tall, thick stalk, large seed, large seed head. Well, dramatic changes were introduced into the plant, so wheat and grains have always been a problem. Let's ask this question, sadie. Okay, what happened to the first humans? So Homo sapiens has walked this planet for about 3 million years, but about 12,000 years ago, 10,000, 12,000 years ago, humans, out of desperation, discovered that they could eat wild wheat, einkorn wheat, a 14-chromosome ancestor of modern wheat Modern wheat, by the way is 42 chromosomes. Okay, completely different.

Sandy Kruse: 34:21

Okay.

Dr. William Davis: 34:22

So 14-chromosome einkorn wheat? They found it was growing wild in the Middle East. They discovered they could take the seed, isolate it from the husk, dry it in the sun, pulverize it with a stone and then heat it with water and you could get porridge and you could eat it. What happened to those first humans? Because the record's quite clear Prior to the consumption of grains, danny, remarkably, there was almost no tooth decay. So only 1% to 3% of all teeth recovered prior to the consumption of grains showed tooth decay, abscess, misalignment, and what's remarkable about that, of course, is there was no fluoridated toothpaste, no toothbrushes, no dentists, no dental hygienists Right, but there was almost no tooth decay.

Dr. William Davis: 35:11

When grains were added, there was an explosion in tooth decay 16% to 49% of all teeth recovered showed cavities, abscess formation, misalignment, shrinkage of the mandible and maxillary bones, as well as a doubling of knee arthritis and the appearance of evidence for multiple nutrient deficiencies, especially of iron. So, in other words, when humans first added even the ancestral form of wheat, there was a major downturn in health, and that's why dental hygiene has been a struggle. It wasn't uncommon until recently. People didn't have teeth. They reached 25 years old and have only a few teeth remaining so. Modern dental hygiene has saved us from a lot of that, but it still occurs, and that's because the amylopectin A digestion begins in the mouth and it encourages the proliferation of DTA, causing microbial species like streptococcus mutans, and so eating grains. So if you were to take a piece of bread, it doesn't matter whether it's white or whole, it's non-sensitive. That's a ridiculous distinction.

Sandy Kruse: 36:14

What about sourdough? What about sourdough? What about sourdough? Same thing, same problem, same.

Dr. William Davis: 36:18

Okay. In other words, you can't put a filter on a cigarette and call it healthy, right, right, gotcha, take that piece of bread, chew it, don't swallow it. Check your finger stick glucose. It's already gone way up, really. Digestion begins in the mouth. When it comes to the amylopectin A, that's because there's an enzyme called amylase in saliva. That begins digestion. But when that happens, when you get digestion of sugars in the mouth, you release tons of sugar into the oral cavity. That's how you generate proliferation of species.

Sandy Kruse: 36:56

That cause cavities.

Dr. William Davis: 36:57

Wow. Brain consumption has always been a problem for humans, okay, but then agribusiness got into the act 50 years ago and amplified all those problems, including changing the structure of the gliadin protein, that's gliadin within gluten, and that's why there's been a fourfold increase in celiac disease.

Sandy Kruse: 37:13

Yes and why and allergies, all like allergies, right.

Dr. William Davis: 37:20

Yeah, and the change in the structure of the gliadin protein made it a more potent appetite stimulant. So gliadin, upon partial digestion, you know, when you and me and your listeners eat a protein, let's say eggs, you break that protein down into single amino acids. When you eat the gliding protein of wheat and related proteins in other grains, like the cyclone of rye or the horde of barley, you break them down not into single amino acids but into four or five amino acid-long peptide fragments. Because we don't have humans were never equipped to eat the seeds of grasses, grains, okay. So these four or five amino acid long peptides cross into the brain and act as opioids, but they don't make you high, they stimulate appetite dramatically. Wow, that's if, once people understand that, they start to say oh, that's why I can't go for more than a few hours without getting really shaky and nervous because I haven't had anything made of grains.

Dr. William Davis: 38:23

Or the people with bulimia and binge eating disorder. These are the people who sit in front of a refrigerator at 3 o'clock in the morning binging and then go to the bathroom puking. These people are miserable, right, and they go wheat and grain free and thereby blind and derive opioid peptide free. And they say for the first time in 30 years I am freed of food obsessions, or people who say I just ate this huge big bowl of pasta. I'm filled to bursting, so much it hurts. I'm still Very unnatural. Phenomena come from this gliding drive opioid peptide phenomena, and the efforts of agribusiness amplified that effect by changing the structure of the gliding protein.

Sandy Kruse: 39:03

So, then, what you're saying is that this is a big driving force to raising the small particle size of LDL, which is? Isn't that the only part of cholesterol that was actually tested to have any contribution to heart disease? Am I wrong? What about triglycerides?

Dr. William Davis: 39:30

Triglycerides. You're saying excellent points. Triglycerides are miserably neglected and extremely important.

Dr. William Davis: 39:37

Oh okay, heart disease, okay. Now triglycerides, like cholesterol, can occur by itself in the bloodstream. It's a fat, triglycerides are fat, fats are triglycerides. So if you have a bottle of olive oil, that's a bottle of triglycerides, right. But it can't occur like that in your bloodstream. It has to be on a lipoprotein to make it aqueous soluble. So triglycerides are primarily so. When those guys spun that blood down, triglycerides are most concentrated in the top layer, the very low density. So when you have salad dressing, what goes to the top? The oil goes to the top, right, it's the lowest density. So in that centrifuge plasma sample it's the very low density at the top. Those are VLDL particles, very rich in triglycerides.

Dr. William Davis: 40:25

Vldl are potent causes of coronary disease. They directly cause coronary disease and I call VLDL particles the lipoprotein life of the party, because vldl particles interact with other particles and make them triglyceride rich. So it takes an ldl particle, for instance, not ldl cholesterol. You gotta get rid of that idiocy of ldl cholesterol. So the vldL particle bumps into an LDL particle, adds a whole bunch of triglycerides to the LDL particle. That LDL particle goes through a series of reactions enzymatic reactions. That makes it small. So having a lot of VLDL, two things. It's a direct cause of coronary disease itself and it's interacting with LDL particles to make them small. So VLDL extremely important. Now, one of the good things about VLDL is you don't even have to measure it, because that triglyceride value on your cholesterol panel, while it's largely ignored by my colleagues, who makes them do stupid things like prescribe prescription fish oil, which is ridiculous that triglyceride level is a very accurate way to track VLDL. So now what I do is we want VLDL to be minimized and we don't want to interact with LDL particles and make them small. Where does that happen when triglycerides on your cholesterol panel are 60 milligrams or less? So that's about 0.7, 0.8 millimolar. You do not want the LDL particles to be doing these things, so you keep them at a very low level.

Dr. William Davis: 42:09

Now people say, well, if triglycerides are fats, doesn't fat consumption raise triglycerides? It does, but only transiently. There's a second process in the body called de novo lipogenesis, and all that means is I eat a mixed meal. It's got some fats, it's got olive oil, it's got some butter, it's got some carbs in, it's got some mashed potatoes, a mixed group of things, right? So I'm tracked at triglyceride level in my bloodstream. Well, there's an initial rise from fat absorption and then there's a secondary, much larger rise, and that delay is because the liver needed some time to convert the carbs like the amylopectinase of Right To VLDL particles, and so that secondary rise is much larger than the first rise. This was only discovered a number of years ago because it means you have to trap particles in the bloodstream for an extended period to see that double hump.

Dr. William Davis: 43:07

But it's become clear that VLDL particles are a major contributor to heart disease, despite being ignored on cholesterol panels as triglycerides, and that you don't need any drugs at all to subdue them. You do not need. They say, oh, you need statin drug and a fibrate drug and vasepa. That's the prescription, epa, fish oil and all the nonsense they come up with. It is incredibly easy to control. And all the nonsense they come up with. It is incredibly easy to control. Even triglycerides are a thousand or terrible like that. With diet, with addressing nutrients that are lacking and some other factors, very easy.

Sandy Kruse: 43:44

Okay, okay. So for the listeners, just to review, when you are looking at your cholesterol panel, dr Davis is saying and we're not giving you medical advice, we are here just to educate, because you know, obviously that's what we do. We're not giving you personalized medical advice here, but what we will say is the triglycerides is important to look at in your panel. That's a very important facet to it, right?

Dr. William Davis: 44:15

It's the most important number of all. Okay, and almost never talked about.

Sandy Kruse: 44:20

No, it's not. And you know there are, and I'm not going to say their names, but they're big private organizations in Canada. So anybody who's listening although 71%, I think, or more, of my listeners are American but we have these organizations where executives go and pay big money and they get their full physical in one day, and often the triglycerides and I know this because personal experience they're not even mentioned, not even talked about, and you're paying thousands of dollars to have this physical done in one day. It's shocking actually.

Dr. William Davis: 45:06

So, as I mentioned before the real tragedy of cholesterol and statins. That took everybody's attention away from the real causes of heart disease. And right in front of them, sandy, it's right there Triglycerides, a major contributor to coronary disease. Now they all say stupid things like this oh, as long as it's below 150. That is a complete fiction that was made up. There's no basis in science to say 150 is okay. In other words, your guy in the executive physical has a triglyceride level 132. They say, oh, it's good, it's below 150. Is that true? No, if we were to look at the lipoproteins and the contribution of triglycerides as VLDL, you would see that at 132 milligrams you have oodles of VLDL and small LDL particles and some other abnormalities like insulin resistance and inflammation.

Sandy Kruse: 45:58

So what is a healthy triglyceride level?

Dr. William Davis: 46:02

60 milligrams per deciliter or less, which is about 0.7,. I believe millimolar. Okay, that's where it stops interacting with your arterial wall and stops interacting with LDL particles to make them small.

Sandy Kruse: 46:17

And you said something else that was really interesting, because this seems to be a big fallacy and I want to clear this up that you know we eat an egg and you know my training says that an egg is nature's perfect multivitamin. By the way, that's just my opinion, because we kind of get everything we need from that. By the way, that's just my opinion, because we kind of get everything we need from that beautiful little perfect protein. That's my opinion. But so many people won't eat the yolk or won't eat the full egg because they say it raises their cholesterol. What are your thoughts on this? And what about this? What is it? Hyperchloromedema I don't even know what the word is where people have this genetic predisposition to having higher cholesterol? I would love to hear what you think about these things and what are the facts actually.

Dr. William Davis: 47:08

So if we base our decisions on this flawed house of cards called cholesterol, it's going to lead us down many misleading paths. One of them is eating eggs raises cholesterol. Who cares? Cholesterol is not a meaningful measure of heart disease. It is a fabrication of outdated science. If you were to look at stuff so I had four eggs this morning, I'll do it again tomorrow but if you look at lipoproteins and other blood measures after eating eggs, you would see this idea of raising cholesterol is not true. You would actually see what happens if I eat four eggs, including the yolks HDL the good goes up, Triglycerides go down, VLDL goes down, Small LDL goes down. Oh, but that calculated, crude, outdated, free-to-world calculated LDL cholesterol went up. Who cares? Right, but if you base everything on that deeply flawed, outdated measure, it leads you down the wrong path.

Sandy Kruse: 48:16

Okay, what about this genetic predisposition? And I can't remember what the name is hypocolesterolemia. I don't even know what it's called, but some people have this predisposition for a higher LDL. How do we know what that is Like? Is it the small, very dense or not Like? We don't know, Because I know there's components of the LDL that are important.

Dr. William Davis: 48:45

So it's not that I say they have all the answers, but I'll tell you this the conventional answer is flat wrong. So what they're doing to people with familial hypercholesterolemia or APOE4, those are the two most common reasons to have sky-high total and LDL cholesterol they tell them oh, you must cut diet, low fat, increased grain consumption that increases expression of VLDL, triglycerides, small LDL, insulin resistance, inflammation. They put you on a diet and you have those conditions. That makes heart disease risk worse. Then they come to your rescue with drugs Once again. When you start that flawed house of cards called cholesterol, it leads you down the wrong path. I would say if you have familial hypercholesterolemia or APOE4, don't cut your fat, don't eat healthy whole grains, take steps to minimize the expression of VLDL, slash triglycerides, small LDL and insulin resistance and inflammation and you don't need the drugs and in my experience you don't get heart disease when you do that. You cause the problem when you go down the wrong path once again based on this flawed house of cards called cholesterol.

Sandy Kruse: 50:15

I don't know if you can answer this question or not, but why do women around menopause always experience this raise in cholesterol?

Dr. William Davis: 50:28

It has to do with hormonal shifts that I'm not real smart about, but there's a lot of things a woman can do to stall or put off a lot of the problems associated with menopause. Now we're getting into some really unusual things that are largely microbiome issues and insulin resistance yes, yes, insulin resistance is big.

Dr. William Davis: 50:49

And then, of course, the only way that my colleagues address insulin resistance is through drugs. They'll use things like metformin, when the reality is you can get rid of insulin resistance within weeks with no drugs Right here, right here, dr Davis.

Dr. William Davis: 51:07

It's very easy. All you do and this is what I do in my basic programs eliminate the foods that raise insulin and thereby insulin resistance. Wheat, grains and sugars, not fat, address common nutrient deficiencies because of the uh problems of modern life. So, for instance, your wheat, you and I can't drink from a river or stream. It's contaminated, it's got farm runoff and sewage. So the city or we filter our water. Well, water filtration removes all magnesium.

Dr. William Davis: 51:35

So we have to add magnesium, vitamin D. We live in northern climates, we wear clothes that cover most body surface area, we work indoors and we lose the capacity to activate vitamin D in the skin after age, about age 40. So we supplement vitamin D. Iodine, omega-3 fatty acids are others that are lacking. Omega-3 fatty acids are lacking because one we don't eat brain anymore. Oh yeah, it's a major source of omega-3s. And of course, we can't eat all the fish we want because it's got mercury. We can't eat all the shellfish we want because it's got cadmium, so we have to take fish, loci, oxals. But you put those four nutrients omega-3 fatty acids, magnesium, vitamin D and iodine together and you get this synergistic effect and when combined in the diet, you get a dramatic downturn in insulin resistance. Now to go even further, another thing we do is address the gastrointestinal microbiome, because the composition and the location of your gastrointestinal microbiome, because the composition and the location of your gastrointestinal microbiome is a major factor in insulin resistance. So this has been suspected for a long time but finally validated by a European group in 2007 to show that microbes living in the GI tract so microbes living in the GI tract only live for a few hours. So trillions of microbes turning over very rapidly. When they die they shed a lot of their byproducts and some of them, like something called endotoxin, enters the bloodstream. That's called endotoxemia.

Dr. William Davis: 53:04

Now there's an added complexity to all this and that is, I believe, that 50% of people in North America have not only screwed up their gastrointestinal microbiome and lost hundreds of beneficial species. When you lose those beneficial species they were suppressing unhealthy microbes like fecal species like E coli and Klebsiella and Proteus and Pseudomonas you lose those healthy species. Unhealthy fecal species proliferate and remarkably, I think, if 50% of the North American population they ascend into the 24 feet of small intestine. Now, the small intestine is not equipped to deal with that. It has a single layer of mucus barrier to protect the intestinal wall, unlike the colon. Colon is well equipped for fecal microbes, right, right, it's just got no problem, right. Two-layer nucleus barrier. So when fecal microbes get into the small intestine and live and die, the endotoxin much more readily enters the bloodstream. That's called endotoxinia.

Dr. William Davis: 54:03

But, cindy, now we have the explanation for how microbes in the GI tract can be experienced as depression or cognitive impairment in the brain, or as rosacea or psoriasis in the skin, or as joint and muscle pain of fibromyalgia or as coronary disease or metabolic conditions like insulin resistance and inflammation. So it's become clear the gastrointestinal microbiome is a major player and so if you really want to have impact on cardiovascular risk, forget the cholesterol, forget the statin. You can see how cholesterol and statin drug is a dramatic oversimplification of how heart disease really is caused.

Sandy Kruse: 54:54

That is actually fascinating and I will say you know, I get this question all the time and people just say, well, you know, I'm just going to take a probiotic. I'm like, okay, probiotics not going to solve all your issues. You have to do the work and you have to change the diet as well. Now here's a question for you Is any amount of gluten or grains safe to eat, or do you have to cut it all out completely forever and ever? Amen.

Dr. William Davis: 55:29

A whole bunch of issues in there. So me personally, if I have anything that even has a speck breadcrumb, I'll be sick for quite a while. So there are a lot of us like that. The longer you've been wheat and grain free, the sicker you get when you are re-exposed. It kind of illustrates just how toxic this stuff is. So several things to know.

Dr. William Davis: 55:49

The gliding-derived opioid peptide effect I call it the I-ate-one-cookie-and-gain-30-pounds effect. That is somebody will say you know what I've been so good. I'm going to go to the office park. They're serving hors d'oeuvres. Oh, how much can one or two order? Right, right, and it reignites appetite and what I've seen is people can't stop. They regain 20, 30 pounds that month alone. They can't stop that incessant hunger. So that's one potential risk.

Dr. William Davis: 56:15

Another risk is the amylopectin A, that carbohydrate of wheat and grains. When you provoke formation of small LDL particles, your liver does not recognize small LDL particles. The reason for that is a large LDL particle. Its recognition protein is exposed. It's called apoprotein B. When it becomes small, the apoprotein B becomes concealed. So it changes the surface conformation of the small LDL particle and your liver doesn't see it. So it goes around and around and around in your circulation for about a week. So if you have a slice of pizza or a donut or a bag or whatever, even once a week, you have increased cardiovascular risk from small LDL particles 52 weeks a year.

Dr. William Davis: 56:58

So another illustration of just how bad it can be. And you fuel the process of de-melval glycogenesis in the liver, that is, the liver's conversion of carbohydrates to triglycerides, and that's why people who consume grains have higher triglycerides, vldl and fatty liver and there's lots of other issues in there. There's glyphosate exposure from wheat. There's phytate exposure, so phytates bind minerals. So the phytates of wheat are very good at binding positively charged minerals like calcium and magnesium, manganese, iron and zinc and you poop it out. So a lot of, for instance, iron deficiency anemia is from consuming wheat. So a lot of reasons to avoid wheat and grains, but it's different for different people.

Sandy Kruse: 57:48

Okay, that was a good explanation. So really it's your choice, but you heard it here from Dr Davis, so you know. Here's a question I'm going to circle back to about statins. What are the risks associated with taking a statin?

Dr. William Davis: 58:14

risks associated with taking a statin. There's a number, but the two that really stand out is one people feel awful taking them. 30 years ago I first took my first dose of Lipitor. I'm pretty tough. I couldn't get out of bed for two days. I was so sick. Now most people don't have that kind of a dramatic response. What they say is you know, it's hard to get out of the car. Now it's getting to. Standing up from sitting in a chair is really hard. I kind of ache everywhere. I feel weak. So there's a muscle effect. Now the drug industry will say oh, no, no, no, no, no. Less than 1% of people have serious muscle problems. What they're talking about is something called rhabdomyolysis, where muscle actually dies and you can go into kidney failure from it. You start to pee brown because your muscle is breaking down and then you go into kidney failure.

Dr. William Davis: 59:01

They're right, that's less than 1%. We're not talking about that. We're talking about everyday people who take a statin drug and say you know what I ache all the time I'm weak, that's one Two. Hey, you know what I ache all the time I'm weak, that's one Two the dramatic increase in type 2 diabetes. So if you take let's say we take a slender, healthy person with high cholesterol and we put them on a statin drug, their gastrointestinal microbiome now starts to look like an obese diabetic.

Sandy Kruse: 59:29

Really how.

Dr. William Davis: 59:31

That blows my mind. It's probably some kind of direct effect of the statin drug. One of the problems we have, sandy, in the whole pharmaceutical world, is there was no FDA requirement. In other words, if you have a new drug and you make your application to the FDA, they don't say well, what's the impact in the microbiome? There's no requirement, so we have thousands of drugs that likely have devastating effects on gastrointestinal microbiome. There's no requiring it, so we have thousands of drugs that likely have devastating effects on gastrointestinal microbiome, yet very little data. We know that stomach acid blocking drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs like naproxen and ibuprofen, statin cholesterol drugs and birth control pills. We know that there's a handful of drugs for which there are data telling us they are massively disruptive on the gastrointestinal microbiome, but it's not quite clear how, because we just don't have sufficient evidence. But in the case of statins, it takes the microbiome gastrointestinal microbiome of a healthy, slender person, makes it look like an obese type 2 diabetic and it pushes you towards becoming an obese type 2 diabetic Now pushes you towards becoming an obese type 2 diabetic.

Dr. William Davis: 1:00:34

Now my colleagues are famous for saying well, but it reduces cardiovascular risk so much. On balance, you're still better off because they're looking at that, 36 to 55 percent nonsense, relative risk, not the one percent best case scenario over five years. So would you risk a 30 50 percent increase in potential for type 2 diabetes. For what best case scenario for five years? So would you risk a 30 to 50% increase in potential for type two diabetes. For what best case scenario? 1% reduction could have asked the risk. So I think that's a lousy trade-off. The whole paradigm is wrong. Right, we're going to put you on the wrong diet that causes heart disease. We're going to ignore the nutrients that contribute to insulin resistance and inflammation. We ignore your microbiome. So, but addressing these simple manual factors, sandy, I can tell you, we stop or reverse coronary atherosclerotic plaque all the time.

Sandy Kruse: 1:01:21

Yeah, no, I completely believe it. And the other thing, too, that we didn't really talk about, and I know that women's hormones. That's not your specialty, but I mean, when you go on a statin and you take away a lot of the cholesterol, don't you also take away your ability to make sex hormones right? Because isn't like, aren't most of our sex hormones made from cholesterol?

Dr. William Davis: 1:01:50

Aren't most of our sex hormones made from cholesterol. Yeah, yeah, that evidence is kind of spotty, but it stands to reason. Yeah, that there's no logical reason to reduce this ubiquitous component, the necessary component. You can't live without cholesterol. You would be a pile of ash if you didn't have cholesterol. Right, Cholesterol is just a necessary component of life. So, yes, including for hormones.

Sandy Kruse: 1:02:12

Yeah, because I mean, I forget what it is Like. Isn't 60% of our brain made from cholesterol and fat Cholesterol?

Dr. William Davis: 1:02:20

and fat Right and, by the way, collagen and hyaluronic acid.

Dr. William Davis: 1:02:25

There you go so yet another couple of casualties from the misguided low-fat movement. People stopped eating brain, which is rich in hyaluronic acid and DHA, the omega-3 fatty acid. We stopped eating heart and tongue and intestine and stomach and pancreas. All these are very rich in nutrients like collagen and hyaluronic acid. Of course, ladies do these things like hyaluronic acid serums that wash off when you wash your face at night, rather than take it this way. That's how we should be getting it. So when you lack collagen and hyaluronic acid, I'm getting a lot of topic here, but weird stuff happens Acceleration of skin aging, acceleration of cognitive impairment, high blood pressure, deterioration of joint health. So I tell your listeners all this, because when we go back and we start to restore these things EPA, dha, collagen, hyaluronic acid, vitamin D you get a youth-preserving, age-reversing effect out of it. Awesome, we're seeing this play out now. We're seeing people who change the way they look, their facial appearance, their visceral fat, their waist circumference, biomarkers of health. We're seeing people turn the clock back. So real exciting stuff.

Dr. William Davis: 1:03:51

We did our first human clinical trial for one of my formulations and this was this was for skin, because one of the things that ladies ask is one of the things I do is restore.

Dr. William Davis: 1:04:01

We restore a microbe called lactobacillus rhodori and combine with some other factors like collagen hydrolysis and hyaluronic acid, and ladies love it because they start to lose their wrinkles. But in our first human clinical trial there was also a dramatic shift in body composition. So we're going to explore that in clinical trials now. I think we have found a way to specifically target loss of abdominal visceral fat while preserving muscle. You know, when you lose weight by cutting calories, cutting calories is a completely awful way to lose weight because it guarantees that you gain it back, because you turn your metabolic rate down, because you lose muscle when you cut calories. So if you lose 50 pounds, up to 20 pounds with muscle, losing 20 pounds of muscle is a major problem. So I think we have a way to specifically target abdominal visceral fat loss while preserving or even increasing lean muscle mass so you don't regain the weight.

Sandy Kruse: 1:04:55

That's beautiful. That's a beautiful thing. We certainly, at midlife, do not want to lose our muscle, that's for sure. So there's another question that I didn't get to and I can't let you go without asking this, because we didn't really get into detail what about the APOA1 and APOB and that ratio? Does that matter?

Dr. William Davis: 1:05:23

You can make it matter by doing ratios and other manipulations, but you don't have to do that, okay? So APOA1 and APOB are indifferent to size, in other words. So if we take it so, let's get rid of this elder cholesterol, just forget that, all that stuff, you've been okay. Okay, unless you get ldl particles instead. Well, ldl particles, as we mentioned, is a whole bunch of different things. Yes, one thing they vary in size, surface conformation, right, right, some other factors, and so, if you get it. So, apo protein B, there's one APO protein B in each LDL particle, regardless of size, charge, surface conformation, other qualities.

Dr. William Davis: 1:06:02

So APO B is a very crude indirect way to count LDL particles, but it gives you no additional insight. What you really want is insight into size. There's more to size than this part, but size is a defining feature. So we want size. Well, protein B doesn't tell you whether it's small, medium, large, et cetera. So it's better than cholesterol, but it's far from the best measure there is. And why should we compromise? Because you can get the best measure, it's not expensive. I've been doing it for 25, 30 years. But the doctor says, oh, there's no evidence for that. That's not true. 55 clinical trials have shown that small LDL particles are a superior measure over this ridiculous, almost useless LDL cholesterol value. But it also means additional education and also potential rejecting the reduced cholesterol, statin cholesterol idea. Because once you see small LDL particles, because when you see small LDL particles, you know they came from wheat, grains and sugars and you don't need a drug, you just wheat grains and sugars.

Sandy Kruse: 1:07:12

you just get rid of wheat, grains and sugars right, okay, so really what you're saying is we just need to like it's called vldl, is that the one? But really, if your doctor won't do that, just look at your triglycerides. Right?

Sandy Kruse: 1:07:25

so exactly, if you're going to take, extremely well yeah, so if you're going to take anything away from this conversation, meaning like just to understand, like, oh, they give me HDL and LDL and ratios and this and that just look at your triglycerides, and there are ways that you can do this yourself. Now you mentioned fish oil. So not all fish oil is created equal, right? Like we have to be careful about the oxidized and then, oh, we didn't talk about oxidized LDL. Jeez, I have so many questions for you, so now I just threw a bunch at you. You have to pick which one you're going to answer.

Dr. William Davis: 1:08:09

Well, here's a different way of looking at things. This is confusing, okay, really struggle with this. I. I urge people to get away from the idea of treating things okay treating cholesterol, treating high blood pressure, treating fibromyalgia, treating so. Let's do something different. Let's instead do this. Let's address the common factors that allowed conditions to emerge in the first place, whether it's labeled type 2 diabetes, hypertriglyceridemia, fatty liver, ulcerative colitis, crohn's disease, rosacea, psoriasis, migraine, headaches, high cholesterol. In other words, let's ignore all those labels. Let's instead address the factors that allow those diseases to emerge. What are those?

Dr. William Davis: 1:09:04

Consumption of wheat, grains and sugars, those common nutrients deficient in modern life, not because of that diet, because of modern life vitamin D, iodine, omega-3, fatty acids, magnesium. And then let's address this disrupted microbiome and you'll see that if you had type 2 diabetes, you likely won't anymore. If you had high blood pressure, you likely won't have it anymore. If you had fatty liver, you won't have it. If you had rheumatoid arthritis, it's going to recede or go away. So, in other words, that's why this idea of treat, treat, treat, treat leads you down these pharmaceutical-like paths. Oh, how about take berberine to reduce your blood sugar, all those kinds of things, or take a drug for it. Let's instead address the factors that allow this is really hard to get their arms around, but once you get it, you start to realize that, oh, I won't have heart disease, diabetes, dementia, etc. All these things go away.

Sandy Kruse: 1:10:01

The risk for these things go away. All right, everyone has heard this. I can't also stop the conversation with asking for clarity on this calcium artery score. This is a test that? How is that one? You said that that was a very important test in comparison to all the other stuff that cardiologists do.

Dr. William Davis: 1:10:26

Yeah, it's been around for over 30 years. So I brought a device to Milwaukee nearly 30 years ago. It was one of the first in the Midwest, one of the first in the country, and we scanned people. It continues to today.

Dr. William Davis: 1:10:40

It's called a CT heart scan to generate a coronary calcium score and it's just an index of how much atherosclerotic plaque you have. It's also abused a lot because my colleagues don't care about your coronary calcium score. They want revenue generating procedures. So it's really important if anybody has a CT heart scan to be educated so that the cardiologist in particular, because they're going to say things like this you're a walking time bomb. I can't be responsible for your safety. Your score is 500.

Dr. William Davis: 1:11:12

Or you need the real test, the heart capitalization, or you need a ct coronary angiogram, where they do an angiogram on the ct device which is a very high radiation exposure. They do that in the hopes that you see something that scares the hell out of you, even if you don't need a procedure. So the whole world is pushing you into procedures because that they make so much money that you know if you're on a prevention program, what use are you to the cardiologist? If you're on, you know you're. You've cut wheat and grains, you're taking vitamin d, you've addressed your thyroid, you're addressing your microbiome. You're not making any money for the hospital or the cardiologist, so they find ways to push you into the hospital. This sounds terribly cynical, but sadly it happens all the time. It's the rules, not the exception.

Sandy Kruse: 1:12:05

Yeah, you can say it's cynical, but there's just so much evidence out there that this is the way it is right.

Dr. William Davis: 1:12:13

The one thing I will emphasize we haven't had a chance to go dive deep into it is the role of the microbiome is huge, including in cardiovascular risk. That was a big missing piece. So this idea that, by my estimation, 50% of the North American population has this issue where fecal microbes have ascended into the small bowel, Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, yes, we say sebo yeah.

Dr. William Davis: 1:12:39

Well, it's not the easiest thing to identify, by the way, your readers should know about this the air device. So you blow into it, it talks to your smartphone. Zero to ten registers hydrogen gas in your breath because microbes produce hydrogen gas, but you can't. So if you're now, you can use this as a mapping device and you can tell if you've got this thing, if you have microbes in your upper GI tract. There's a very specific way to do this. So let's put the AIR device A-I-R-E, and that's why I've been talking about this device and having thousands of people do this.

Dr. William Davis: 1:13:16

And what surprised me is how many people test positive. It took me by surprise. I thought SIBO was this unusual thing. No, it's everywhere. But if you understand it and then correct it, you have magnificent control over blood sugar, mood inflammation, insulin resistance, heart disease risk, on and on and on. You have huge controls. In other words, we really have to re-examine all we thought we knew about health in light of the contribution of SIBO and endotoxemia. And I'll add this so if you go to the doctor and say, hey, doc, I think I have SIBO, he says, oh, don't waste my time. Or oh, did you consult Dr Google again? Yeah, or all the stupid things they say to make fun of you If that doctor is unusual and actually knows something about this because there are thousands of research studies they just haven't trickled down to John through primary care and gastroenterologists If he does know something he'll say okay, here's a prescription for rifaximin or zyfaxin, an antibiotic $1,200, lots of side effects, 50 to 60% efficacy. They typically don't tell you how to increase efficacy, how to prevent the prominent recurrences.

Dr. William Davis: 1:14:32

So I did something different. I asked what happens, as you point out, what happens if you have this problem 30 feet of microbes, right fecal microbes and you just take a probiotic? Will it go away? No, you might have a little reduction of bloating or diarrhea, but it won't go away. So what if we ask different questions? What if we took probiotic species that colonize the upper GI tract that's where SIBO occurs and produce what are called bacteriocins, natural antibiotics effective against fecal microbes? So I chose three a strain of lactobacillus gasseri and a strain of lactobacillus roteri, because those two colonize the upper GI tract and between them produce up to 11 different bacteria, 11 different antibiotics. I threw in bacillus coagulans.

Dr. William Davis: 1:15:26

We ferment them for extended periods 36 hours. It looks like yogurt. It's not yogurt. Of course it's completely different. We ferment it for extended periods 36 hours. It looks like yogurt. It's not yogurt, of course, completely different.

Dr. William Davis: 1:15:32

Okay, ferment it for 36 hours, because a microbe like Roteri you know, microbes don't have sex, right? There's no male, female microbes Okay, asexual reproduction one becomes two, two becomes four. So Roteri, for instance, doubles every three hours. So if we did like in a factory where they make yogurt, where they ferment for four to six hours, you've got nothing. We're going to ferment for 36 hours, allow the microbes to double 12 times. We count the microbes using something called flow cytometry and we get 300 billion. So we increased microbial counts doing this a thousand fold. We consume half a cup a day with some blueberries and chia seeds and squirt of stevia, whatever. And so far, of 40 people who've done this, 90% have converted to hydrogen gas negative by the air device. No, I think we've stumbled on a very soft, yogurt-like way to deal with SIBO. We'll do a formal clinical trial down the road, but so far it's working far better than I ever expected.

Sandy Kruse: 1:16:35

Dr Davis, that's amazing. You know what? Because you know a lot of the probiotics that we take. We get in the store. They they will populate the gut only for so long, but they don't necessarily proliferate. It's like it's keeping you above water, right, like as opposed to you completely drowning. So I'm not saying probiotics aren't helpful at all, that's not what I was saying but for you to have these species that actually proliferate in the gut, that's amazing.

Dr. William Davis: 1:17:08

So you're saying essentially that like it takes over the bacteria that you don't want in there, but you do hit on a major problem, a fundamentally unanswered question in the world of probiotics and gastrointestinal microbes, and that is ideally. We take a microbe that we need, like lactobacillus gasseri or lactobacillus roteri, and take it once and it would populate and proliferate. But it does not. It takes up residence for a few weeks and then it's gone, right. Why would that be? If your mom gave it to you at birth, you'd likely have it for a lifetime, unless you're going to expose the antibiotics and other things.

Dr. William Davis: 1:17:46

So the difference is probably in what are called bacterial guild or consortia. That is bacteria just like humans. You know we don't live in isolation. We have a partner and families and co-workers and neighbors and communities. Microbes are the same, and so the probiotic of the future won't just be a bunch of haphazard species like they are now. It'll be a consortium of microbes that we know collaborate and support each other, so that you take the probiotic and never have to take it again. That hasn't happened yet though.

Sandy Kruse: 1:18:20

Yeah, that's why I always say you got to eat prebiotic fiber, right, in order to feed those good guys. So, okay, this has been just such a great conversation. I want to welcome you, to tell everybody where they can find you. You know what's your website? Maybe your Facebook, anything like that.

Dr. William Davis: 1:18:45

So I put everything under the umbrella online of drdavisinfinitehealthcom, and in that website there's a my several thousand blog posts. There are a huge video library, there's a very busy discussion forum with several hundred thousand strings in it. There's also a two-way zoom like this. We do that typically for two hours once a week. Um, this is, of course, a super gut book, uh, um, and I post a lot of these things out there, for instance, the recipe for the very popular lactobacillus roteri yogurt. You know we use a roterized part of the what I call sebo yogurt. That's that yogurt of gasseri roteri and bacillus coagulans, but we also make lactobacillus roteri yogurt that has uh-restoring effects.

Dr. William Davis: 1:19:34

Ladies love it because they start to lose their wrinkles within a few weeks. I want that there's an increase in moisture. Ladies say I don't use skin cream anymore or hand cream because I have normal moisture back. Guys love it because it restores youthful muscle and strength, it preserves bone density, it increases libido, it boosts testosterone in males, it restores vaginal moisture in female and elderly females in their 60s and 70s. It um deepens sleep, extends the duration of rem and we're seeing this play out. That that's it microbe. So in those sites my blog and my Supergut book is the recipe, for instance, for that, for Lactobacillus Roteri yogurt, the SIBO yogurt and all these other things you can do. Because my mission I feel the same as yours is to empower people in health, because the message you're getting from the doctors is just flat wrong and is not giving them health.

Sandy Kruse: 1:20:33

Yeah yeah, it's sick care, not healthcare, right? Thank you so much, dr Davis. It was just a sheer pleasure chatting with you and you're just so full of knowledge. I really appreciate you.

Dr. William Davis: 1:20:47

Thank you, sandy, thanks for what you're doing you.

Sandy Kruse: 1:20:56

Thank you, sandy. Thanks for what you're doing. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit, and always remember when you rate, review, subscribe. You help to support my content and help me to keep going and bringing these conversations to you each and every week. Join me next week for a new topic, new guest, new exciting conversations to help you live your best life.