132. The Role of Fatty Acids in Medical Conditions, Revisiting Seed Oils & Buying The Right Oil | Udo Erasmus, PhD

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Medicine Redefined. Today our guest is Udo Erasmus, and he was also our guest on episode 131, and I highly recommend that before listening to this episode, if you haven't gotten the chance, go ahead and listen to episode 131, just so you can get the fundamental information that he starts talking about fatty acid. In the previous episode, Dr. Rasmus does a wonderful job setting up the stage to understanding the biochemistry and the roles that fatty acid can play in our overall health. But in today's episode, we are going to talk about fatty acids when it relates to medical conditions, specifically cardiovascular disease, mental health, pregnancy, and even something called disused atrophy or critical illness, myopathy. We'll also begin this episode by revisiting seed oils. Of course, there's so much controversy, so we felt that it was extra uber important to talk about it again, so that way we can all see Dr. Rasmus' approach when it comes to why the industry is demonizing seed oils, and actually how the processing is making it really a damaged product. And then at the end of this episode, Dr. Rasmus tells us how to actually buy good oil. If you're like me, you'll hear in this episode, I see the $7 bottle, I don't see much difference from it being $15, but I think I know it's better than the $3, so I go for it. But he actually breaks down what to look for when you buy any type of oil and actually how to store it as well. So let's get to this episode, there's a lot to learn. Udo, welcome back to the show. Well, thank you for having me. It's always fun. Yeah, the pleasure was all ours. Unfortunately, as we were talking offline, I didn't have the privilege of being here for the first conversation, but I did get a chance to listen to it. And for the listeners, I'd recommend certainly start there, so you have a deeper understanding of why we are and why we're having the conversation that we're going to have today, which is going to be more clinically focused, not from a diagnostic treatment perspective, but more about what the science and update evidence shows with respect to some of the common pathologies and how we can use that and to manipulate the states of disease, we'll say. But I want to actually start with something that you guys did discuss, and that's this discussion of seed oils. There's a mass hysteria going on social media. I've gotten a couple of close friends who reached out to me and said, hey, I would love it if you could discuss this on the podcast. And so I know you guys talked about omega six fats at length, and you know, you guys looked at it from the angle of the processing seems to be the most problematic aspect when it comes with an emphasis, the omega six fats are not unhealthy, right? They're in fact, are necessary. I'd love to ask you, if we can elaborate a little bit more on that, just so people can be a piece of mine and we can put a bone, it is, you know, when I look at the overarching amount of literature with this special fatty acids, omega three and six is, and you guys talked about the ratio, the meta analysis, the clinical studies, they will show time and time again that polyinsaturative fats, even omega six fatty acids when consumed, they result in positive outcomes. Because again, the comparison is so poor, we're talking against saturated fats. So I'll stop there and see kind of what your thoughts are, you being the fat expert. I'm sure have heard this from multiple people as a Udo seed oils. What do we do, right? And they're just freaking out. So how do you address that? There's what's true to nature and there's what has agendas and both get equal space in the marketplace. And you can't always tell who's doing what. But if you think about it, the seed oil industry, the major seed oil industry began in the late 1800s, early 1900s, that's when it became big, big and big and big. And one of the interesting things that isn't mentioned by the people who disseid oils is that over the years from 1900 to 19, well, just till only a few years ago, longevity increased at the same rate as the oil, oil use increased. And now over the last few years, it's actually longevity is decreased. But you have to somehow accept if these things were all really poisonous, then the bigger the industry became, the more people would have gotten killed by it. But that's is not, I mean, it's not even true, it's not true. There is issues, there are issues that come from the processing. And actually to me, that's where we started, where I started, why I ended up focusing on oils for 40 years is because I literally read a study that said omega six is essential. And so is omega three and so are 18 minerals, 13 vitamins and 90 central amino acids. They're essential by a very clear definition. Number one, you have to have it to live in be healthy. You can't make it from anything else in your body. You therefore have to bring it in from outside. And there is at least one biochemical reaction that requires that nutrient. And without it, without that nutrient, that biochemical reaction cannot be completed. So this is a very tight definition. And omega and oh yeah, so that's the first part. The second part is if you don't get enough, you'll deteriorate. You'll get deficiency symptoms. They're degenerative in their nature, which just means your body's falling apart. They get worse with time. And if you don't get enough long enough, you die. This is all like being this comes from studies, first on animals, then on humans. And then the third part is that if you're deteriorating because you're not getting enough of an essential nutrient. But before you die, because test by definition is not reversible, but before you die, you're bringing enough of it back into the diet that's too low in it. And all of the deficiency symptoms are reversed. Because life knows what to do with these essential building blocks, provided we make sure here at our mouth that they end up in our body so life can do its job to make a body that works. That's the definition of essential in science, in research. In the marketplace, people like to call things essential. Just because if they call them essential, then you say, oh, well, then I better, if you don't know better, then you say, oh, well, I better buy this because it's essential. Right? So they cheat on the word, they misuse the word in order to maximize sales. So you have to understand that distinction. But this definition of essential is why omega sixes are essential. They fit that definition. Every cell requires them. They every cell requires omega three's as well. They were omega sixes have been known to be essential since 1929. And were confirmed essential when we started doing intervenous nutrition, which was in 1968. Omega three's were thought possibly to be essential, but there was some confusion around that. And they were confirmed to be essential in 1981. I got poisoned by pesticides in 1980. So I was already looking at, I'm trying to figure out, you know, on the one hand omega six is essential. And the next study I read said omega six gives you cancer and kills you, right? There you go, right? It's like two completely opposite views on the very same molecule. Well, they can't have something that is essential for health, giving you cancer and killing you, right? That's a complete contradiction. When I ran across that contradiction, one study in the second study, my head exploded. They said, you know, there's something, there's, there's got to be something else going on. What am I missing here? And that made me look deeper. And then I began to realize that when the oils are made, they're treated with sodium hydroxide, very corrosive base, very corrosive acid, phosphoric acid, then they're bleached. They make some rancid, then they smell bad. So they have to be deodorized. That's why that's, it's called deodorization. I call it destincarization, right? Because they stink. So then you have to get rid of that. And to do that, you have to heat them to frying temperature to blow off the rancid molecules. In that process, you damage a half to one of the percent of the molecules. And what is blamed on seed oil should be blamed on the damage done by processing, as well as the further damage done in our frying pans when we use these oils for cooking our food, for frying our foods. But the people who tell you, you know, and then if somebody does research on oils, they usually use these oils that have been treated that are 1% damaged. And when they come up with negative results from the studies, they blame it on the oil. And I'm saying, no, that should be blamed on the 1% molecules that are damaged because in a tablespoon of an oil that is 1% damaged, you get 60 quintillion damaged molecules, which is like more than a million damaged molecules for every one of your body's 60 trillion cells. Well, yeah, that's going to change gene expression. That's going to, you know, they go in your body, they occupy space in your body where there should be an essential fatty acid doing a job. And the damaged ones can't do the job and block that job from getting done in your body. And when you have a million per cell, you know, a million type 60 trillion of those molecules in one tablespoon, and most people use two to four a day, and they do it every day. And you do it for 30 years. And these damaged molecules didn't exist in nature. So life has a hard time getting rid of them. You can't get rid of them, but slowly. So they're going to pile up in your body and the more they pile up, the closer you get to symptoms and the closer you get to degenerative diseases that come from toxicity is not deficiency. We're not deficient in omega sixes. Most people are deficient in omega threes, 99% of the population doesn't get enough for optimum health. We are not deficient in omega sixes. And then the ratio between it to is also wrong, which is another thing that needs to be paid attention to that the people who disoils in omega sixes, you know, they've done half the job, you know, they've heard that there are some issues with oils, but they haven't looked deep enough to get it clear to you that when you get your omega sixes and your omega threes made with health in mind, not damaged by processing. For more organically grown seeds, you don't have pesticides in them. In glass, not in plastic, because plastic leeches into oils. You know, when you make oils with health in mind, you're telling a completely different story. They're absolutely useful for health, useful for health. And they're the highest energy molecule and they give you more energy than anything else you eat in your diet. So that would be the appropriate story to tell. But then you have to look deeper than most people will look. And there's been like, I started in 1980, right? I started working with oils in 1980. There has been every year, there's been somebody, some crazy people. And they're crazy people who said, I must be working for a big industry because they, you know, there's one guy who's crazy enough to say, if you take enough B vitamins, you don't need essential fatty acids. Like, they're not even essential. This is like, you know, but there's like, when he said that, there were like 30,000 studies that said, you're wrong, man, because they did these studies on animals. And the animals die when they don't get enough essential fatty acids long enough. I boast omega three and omega say, I love that, man. And I think thank, I want to thank you, first of all, for providing that nuance, right? I think that's, that's the challenge, right? Anytime you demonize a specific food or a food group, it's always deeper than kind of people are even willing to sit down and try to understand kind of how you've elucidated the nuance in what's actually, quote, unquote, damaging. And I know the last time you talked about, hey, look, ideally you want to get the cleanest type of oil, we're trying to eliminate that processing, those 60 quintillion, you know, what's it, is a damaging molecules? Is it part of the case? But, you know, as we've had these conversations with previous multiple guests talking about improving our healthcare practices, I think Darshan, I've started applying this concept of good, better, best, right? Yeah. And what I mean by that is, right, there is the ideal way to do something, right? Understanding that in the context of different people's lives, that might not be sustainable, right? So ideally, kind of what you guys talked about, about the healthiest form of oils that you can get at some of those you are directly responsible for creating and distributing. And, and, you know, other sources like that, what you've discussed already. But then the average Joe that we might see in clinic, who maybe isn't willing to invest in that, maybe it's just quote, unquote, too busy, or it has limited time, but then gets this bites as information from social media or, you know, and he was headlines and there freaks out and all they have is kind of the oil and other types of omega six fatty acids just wants to trash everything. I suppose that's the person that I want to talk to for a second, right, is if that person, like if you had a general message for that person when they're going to the grocery store, should they be overhauling their entire pantry with the oils that they have, can they rest easy? No. Okay, and I'll tell you why, because I haven't, let me finish, so let me say it again, of all of our essential nutrients, the two that are most sensitive to damage and need the most care, therefore, and should never be used for frying, therefore, our omega six and omega three. Omega six is used for frying all the time, so that does like another three to six times more damage than is done by the industry. Okay, more health problems come from damaged oil than any other part of nutrition. And more health benefits come from giving your body the oil change that it needs from damaged oil, you know, we know it with the car, right, damage oil out, clean oil in, and then your motor hums, right? So of all the things that people who live a flaky lifestyle, let's put it that way, right? Not 100% focused on health, but they're just like, you know, what can I get away with? I call that the Russian roulette question, you know, you, you, you, you got five, you know, five empty chambers and one full chamber, Russian roulette is completely safe until you hit the chamber with a bullet in it. And then it's lethal, right? But what we do to ourselves because, you know, when I ask people, how much, how much damage do you think is in oils that you get that you buy on the shelf? And I get them to, yes, how many damaged oil oils, oil molecules are in a tablespoon of oil? Or a hundred, a thousand, a million? They always estimate by underestimate, by a billion times the amount of damage they're getting from those oils. So I think, so I think the thing isn't like, what can I get away with? But what is the truth of what's going on with your oils? So most people underestimate by at least a billion times the amount of damage that they're doing to themselves. And if you point that out to them, they might just be a little more inclined to make the oil change that their body needs if they want to be healthy. And the more pain they have and the more problems they have, the more likely they're going to be to be motivated to make that change. Right? And omega, omega-3s, the ones that are most neglected and most sensitive because they're so so so much more sensitive than omega-6s, five times more. Omega-3s, the research says, if you summarize the research, if you increase omega-3s in your diet and provided they're not toxic and not damaged, you can improve virtually every major degenerative condition of our time. That's what the research says. And why is that? Because 99% of the population doesn't get enough and they're essential. Right? So of course, the reason why I got excited when it came to oils, because oils is not by nature, kind of like boring, boring topic, why I got excited is like, oh my god, we could help so many people. If we could help them help bring the missing omega-3s back into their diet and switch out the damaged omega-6s for omega-6s made with health in mind. And develop the method for doing that, which has to be really tight, so no light, no oxygen, and low temperature is all that ever get is in touch with that oil. From the time it's in the seed protected by nature, to the time it's in the brown glass bottle in the box, in the fridge, nitrogen flushed, you know, organic, in the fridge, in the factory. If refrigerated in the factory, they refrigerate in the stores, you refrigerate them at home, and you never use them for frying, you add them to foods once they come off the heat source. Yeah, and if it's true what I'm saying, that damaged oils cause more health problems, more physical health problems than any other part of the nutrition, then that's the one that should get the most attention, and you should get the most push to change if you're in the healing profession, or if you just want to behold yourself. I mean, that's just true for you guys, but it's also true for, you know, people who aren't paying attention. Right, right. And so Udo kind of sounds like you almost have this on the spectrum where the elimination of bad oils is great, right, in terms of really producing all those terrible molecules that might be going in your body, but then the addition of healthy oils, the way they're beautifully processed, just like what you said, the research shows can be very powerful. So with that, I would love to transition into some of the medical conditions that the research has shown where these essential fatty acids omega 3s and 6s have proven to at least help prevent help treat and help make a powerful impact as far as reversing and treating. And so the first one I want to start with is cardiovascular disease, and more specifically CAD, so coronary artery disease, can you kind of just break down either biochemically and then just talking about what the research might show about the role of these essential fatty acids in that process? Yeah, omega 3s, and this is mostly omega 3s, not omega 6 is not so much because most people get enough omega 6s but they get toxicity with them, but omega 3s lower all of the major cardiovascular risk factors. CRP, because omega 3s turn into very powerful anti-inflammatories in the body. So CRP, platelet stickiness, they make platelets less sticky, saturated fats make them more sticky, but omega 3s make them less sticky. Insulin resistance, they make you more insulin sensitive, omega 3s make you more insulin sensitive. High blood pressure, they relax arterial muscle tone, so that helps you with high blood pressure. High cholesterol, they lower LDL cholesterol. I'm not even sure that that's a risk factor, but that's a whole other rabbit hole that we won't go into. What else? Platelets, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and there's one more, I can't remember which one it is, but literally all of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. They are anti-inflammatory, every disease that has an inflammatory origin that includes diabetes and Alzheimer's and cancer and just about inflammation is the big deal, right? They turn into very powerful anti-inflammatories, they're called protectants, they're called, sorry, they're called resolvents because they resolve inflammation. Omega 3s, and the body makes those from the, you know, many, the essential fatty acids omega 3 and 6 are converted into dozens of different oil molecule derivatives that can be made in the body, provided you get both essential fatty acids, not damaged, not toxic, and in the right ratio. So we, so you have to deal with all of that because they, the omega 3s, if you get too many omega 3s, they'll crowd out omega 6s, if you get too much omega 6s, they'll crowd out to omega 3s. And so you have to have the ratio right so that both of them actually get, get there, get to be converted and to unfold their health benefits. You know, the other interesting thing when we look at the cardiovascular system, I think there was a study published, almost maybe two years ago, and I believe this was in JAMA, which showed that omega 3 fatty acid had increased the incidence of atrial fibrillation. And for those who don't know, that is a pretty serious arrhythmia that you said, you said omega 3 did? Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Are you familiar with that? I think it was, it was all over the if omega 3s increases atrial fibrillation, then you're dealing with damage, damaged omega 3s. Omega 3s actually decrease atrial fibrillation according to the research. But the thing is that, you know, the fish oils on which are often used to do these studies, they're five times more sensitive than the omega 3 essential fatty acid. So they're five times more sensitive. So they're, they're damaged super fast. The moment, because they're, and they don't give them the care. You know, you put them in the fridge, you open the bottle and within days, you can smell how rancid the oil is. Because it's five, five times more sensitive than alpha linoleic acid, which is five times more sensitive than linoleic acid, the omega 6, which is five times more sensitive than oleic acid, omega 9, which is not essential, which is another two and a half times more sensitive than the saturated fats. So you're talking about super sensitive molecules. You have to treat good oils like perishable vegetables. So you keep them cool and you use them cool and you know that when you when you boil a vegetable, you know, you boil your lettuce, you know what happens? It just flaps out. Right? You wreck the oils. They'll wreck you. I say the oils are vindictive. They'll treat you like you treat them. You treat them with care. They'll take care of your health. You damaged them. They'll damage your health. Fried oils, fry health, fried foods, fry health. From a health perspective, it is the dumbest thing that we've ever invented to do with foods, fry. And the essential fatty acids are the molecules in our nutrition that are most damaged by heat, by oxygen, by light. So anyway, so yeah, so atrial fibrillation is another one, omega 3's benefit, but also some bio flavonoids benefit. And by the way, when I say the benefit every degenerative condition of our time, I'm talking about the improve. I'm not saying they cure because you can also get high blood pressure from magnesium deficiency. And magnesium will lower high blood pressure because it too relaxes arterial muscle tone. So omega 3's can only reverse what is caused by omega 3 deficiency. It will not, it will not reverse something that's caused by zinc deficiency or magnesium deficiency or vitamin B3 deficiency. So it's very specific. Omega 3's can only do certain things in the body, but they're required in every cell and they do a lot of good things. But if you want total health, you need to optimize your intake of 42 essential nutrients, not just omega 3's and not just omega 3's and omega 6's. Gotcha. Yeah, I'm actually quickly just pulled up a letter to the editor here where they talked about the four randomized control trials. I think one is called reduce it and then the other was strength that I was looking at. I'll send this to you. Yeah. So we can talk a little bit more about it. What's interesting to note about these is the comparison oils were mineral oil, corn oil. And then again, the editor talked about really had really high doses for grams per day, which actually begs a question. I know you're not a clinician, but what's my understanding is anywhere from two to three grams is kind of the recommended dose when we're kind of about all those inflammatory conditions with cardiovascular diseases. That's for, well, that's if you're using fish oils. Right. Yeah. And if you use fish oils, if you get higher than 5.1 grams, there's research that says that they increase inflammation. Well, that's because of the damage of the fish rights, because they're actually EPA and DHR both anti inflammatory. So how do you get more inflammation from something that's anti inflammatory? Again, you have to look at, okay, there must be something else going on. What is that? They're the most damaged nutrients in our in our because they're so sensitive. They're like five times more damaged than they then they, you know, 25 times more damaged than the cooking oils that are one percent damaged. Can I ask you do our ultimate? Do we know in the research, I haven't kind of a chance to look at it? Are they measuring essential fatty acids or doing an omega-3 index prior to the intervention or now? Is that something of like maybe even newer thing? Well, the omega-3 index is a fairly new intent. Yeah. Yeah. And it comes just like what? It's like 10 years old, 20 years old, right? But the thing is that what's what's done wrong in all of the studies is you're talking, you're you're bringing in people for these studies, 70% of whom die of cancer, cardio and diabetes at some point. And so they call them apparently healthy subjects, right? So if we wanted to really do it properly, we would actually optimize the diet and we'd put people on an optimized diet for maybe a year, two years, five years because your body turns over maybe eight and maybe 90%, maybe 98% a year, right? So you the turnovers pretty fast. So you put them on a really high high level diet and then you take something away or you add something to it and then you want to see how that affects optimum health. But the studies have never been done that way. We start with people who are really eating garbage, right? And we assume that eating garbage for as long as they have has had no effect on them, right? Now that's okay. So that's like stupid, right? If I mean if you're really looking for truth, that's stupid. And people are not that stupid. So there maybe isn't a agenda behind it. I'm not sure depends on who it is. But then the other thing is that people also cheat on the studies. And one of the biggest areas is in omega-3. So what they do is they say, okay, we want to know conversion in the body. That's the big thing because the people who have self-facial say the body can't convert. And but the research doesn't agree with the visual guys. And there's been studies done on conversion and they go from anywhere from 21% of the alpha-linolemic acid is converted into EPA and DHA, 21%. That's huge, right? And they have some where they say less than 1% or no conversion at all. You know how you get no conversion at all? You get somebody who eats lots of sugar, lots of white starch, lots of saturated fats, lots of monounsaturated fats, lots of omega-6s. Oh, if you can, some trans fatty acids too because they slow down conversion. And you get people who are deficient in magnesium, that's 80% of the population, B6, that's 80% of the population, B3, that's a third of the population, C is about 40% of the population. And zinc is about 50 to 60% of the population. Those minerals and vitamins are required for conversion. So if you're deficient, you're going to slow down conversion, right? And another thing is you want them to be people who are eating salmon every day because they'll have enough EPA and DHA in their body that they'll stop converting it because they don't need more. Right? So you can literally design studies to come up with what every results you want to come up with. And for the fish oil industry, they want to come up with results from studies that say your body can't convert because if the body can convert, why would you eat rancid, burpy fish oils when you can get oils that actually do as good a job and aren't burpy and aren't damaged? Right? So science is not what it used to be. You know, it was like searching for truth without agenda. Then it works, you know, in in Ayurvedic medicine, the the practitioners had to be had to be meditators because if you can't get quiet inside your own being, then it's really hard to figure out when you see symptoms, whether they're from the patient or their own stuff. Right? So you need to be in a very quiet place to observe objectively, but in Western medicine, that kind of calmness is not required. Yeah. And so and so diagnosis is all over the place too. I don't get to diagnose, but if you listen to, you know, so if you don't like the diagnosis, go to a different doctor. You know, if you don't like his diagnosis, go to another one. And you can literally get people who get 12 different diagnoses from 12 different doctors, because none of those doctors are calm and quiet and literally can can read what's coming from the patient. Yeah, to your point, I mean, that's kind of the current state of research right now, right? And it's it's complicated and it's tough to really seek out that evidence-based medicine when now with even AI, when you're talking about 12 different diagnoses, a lot of people using chat GPT. And now seeing some articles about, you know, chat GPT actually diagnosed my child when I've gone through all these different doctors and these 12 symptoms. You can you can now get you can now get off off Google off the internet through AI. You can get, you know, and you say, here's my problem and it will give you the average, you know, it'll give you an answer that is the average or everything that's ever been set on the internet about that condition. Right. Doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't have a it doesn't have a way to tell truth from assumption or opinion or right or rejection. So it doesn't have that. So it doesn't pick out only what's true. It just averages what's there. Well, that's not diagnosis either. Yeah, not exactly precision medicine. Yeah, yeah, that's imprecision medicine. You know, that's mediocrity medicine. That's not that's not high standard. That's like because because you're basically making everything mediocre. Sure. Right. It's like the it's like the popular vote. You know, you get mediocrity from the popular vote because leaders don't get voted and they go and do something. Anyway, that's again, there's a lot of rabbit holes we could go down. Let's transition now over to one of the newer conditions that have come out in the research that I recently heard on other podcasts, which is critical illness myopathy or disuse atrophy. And so just to give context to the listeners, you know, this is something all-twashing I have seen in our residency many, many times, right. Something that we diagnose as critical illness myopathy. So a lot of patients who have prolonged hospitalizations due to whatever brought them in can experience, you know, almost 10% muscle loss weekly. And so you could imagine you're losing that much muscle and strength. It's hard to get back that function. And so, you know, we're always looking for things outside of just strength training to really bring in that antibiotic response. And so there was a recent paper going over different theories as to how omega-3s and 6s might actually be able to do this. And so I think the biochemistry is something that's very interesting here. But Udo, I would love to just hear your experience, you know, in regards to maybe the endabolic properties of essential fatty acids and kind of what the research might talk about it. Well, we did a couple studies with the oil blend that we developed made with health in mind. And we did one in Denmark and then we did in multinational study. And what we did was we used a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day mixed in food and intake spread out over the course of the day for athletes. So they most of them would have taken between two and four tablespoons of this seed oil made with health in mind with the right ratio of omega-3 and 6. And within 30 days, if they did their sport to exhaustion, their performance increased 40 to 60 percent on average. So 40 to 60 percent, that's that's better than any training program. But so it helps you build muscle faster. And you hang onto it longer when you stop doing exercise. It's what the is what, especially the weight lifters told us. Okay. So I don't know if that's the same as as my myopathy and and atrophy muscular atrophy. I don't know because my understanding is muscles grow with use. So if you're not using your muscles, they will atrophy. So will your bones. You know, when they when the astronauts go in outer space where there's zero gravity, they lose like they come back after a month, they come back with or after six months, whatever it is, they come back with a substantial loss of bone. And the way then they build it up is they build their their bones back up by doing weight bearing exercises. Well, if you're lying in bed and you're not moving, you're not doing weight bearing exercise. And you would expect it to be normal to be losing muscle muscle and bone in that situation. So omega-3s make exercise work more effectively to build muscle and bone. But you have to do the exercise too. So I would be I would be I would not want to say to people, yeah, you can just stay lying in bed and do nothing. And your muscles will just grow. I don't think they will. Right. And that's that's that's how the machine that's how the machine called the body, how it grows is by use. And depending on what muscles you use and what you use them for and how much weight they they have to bear, that will determine which muscles grow and how well they grow. And the bones that they're there that are part of the structure, how they how those will grow. Right. You could actually just build a huge bicep by just only, you know, only exercising one muscle in your body, right. And then it would look kind of weird, but but it's it's just at the point I'm making is it's by use that you build strength. Yeah, yeah, there's absolutely no doubt about that. You know, I mean, that's something we're always trying to prescribe, even when it just comes from a functional perspective, right. I mean, you can take supplements and take things to build a muscle, but that is different than actually having the function to use that muscle in the right way, in the right way that you want to. Yeah, you need, yeah, you know, both the body is made for activity. If there's nothing to do, you don't need a body. So then you can read just this disembodied spirit that's floating about. Right. Right. But if there's nothing to do. So there needs to be something to do. And lying in bed is not something to do. For sure. From that perspective, right. Yeah. I mean, I'm almost thinking about this in regards to even if they're laying in bed, even as throughout their hospitalization, they're able to now get some sort of therapies is it worth going ahead and giving them some sort of a social fatty acid in the form of fish oil or omega-3s so that it could be used in conjunction with the therapies that they're trying to do. And obviously we're at a point where it's probably not evidence-based right now. But just looking at the preliminary research, having that hope, and you know, I'm really excited to see kind of what the trials and things show down the road. But any thoughts on that? So my question would be if a person is bedridden, which muscle groups could they exercise? Because they must be still. You can still wiggle your fingers. You know, you might just move your nose around, right. You can, you can your jaw, right, your neck muscles, right. So whatever muscles they can use to give them a little bit of stress, to give them a little bit of chatnut stress, but challenge, to give them a little bit of challenge and build up what you can, right. But we don't build our hospital beds like like there were a gymnasium, but maybe we should. You know, certainly in certain conditions, wouldn't be that hard to put a structure on the bed where they can push and pull, right. Especially especially for the limbs, you know, especially for the limbs, right. Yeah, I mean, there's ways we get creative, right. So they had bedrails, so we'll tell them to kind of hold on to the headrails behind them, maybe try to pull themselves up or even use bands that you can tie to the bedrails. But yeah, you're right. I mean, the distal extremities, right. So to the listeners, the further away it is from the trunk is kind of the muscles they have intact, right. So they're losing a lot of the shoulder muscles, a lot of the quadriceps, gluteal muscles. And that's exactly what we're trying to work on through that. So no, I definitely appreciate your insight on that. Ultimately, any questions you had about the kind of atrophy in regards to tie acids? No, I think, well, I think we did a good job being pretty comprehensive. And so I'd love to kind of shift forward, right. So we've talked about what's happening inside inside the engine, so to speak. We're looking at health from the outside, right. The exoskeleton structure. And now I want to go up to the noggin, right. Something that we all struggle with is paying attention, right. We're all a little bit distracted. But there are specific pathologies, such as ADHD, which are far, you know, maybe diagnosed a bit more than they used to be for different reasons that we don't have to get into. And so one of the things that I've had patients tell me, my wife's a pediatrician and she talks about this as well as some parents who might not be on board with stimulant medications, which is kind of like the standard of treatment when it comes to true ADHD, especially inattentive type. And, you know, they've talked about krill oil as a, you know, meditating with that from supplementation and other types of official. And so that got me curious. And actually, somewhat recently, I was doing a little bit of a literature search on that. And, you know, there are more studies than I would have anticipated, particularly in adolescents about this. And so I would love to kind of get your thoughts, right. And, you know, I might understanding from the DHA, the requirements from the brain cognitive health, but I'm sure you can kind of dive a little bit deeper and elucidate why this is happening and potentially how it's helpful. And, you know, the magnitude of effect from your opinion would be also interesting for me to know. There's research that shows that when you get essential fatty acids, right. And this was not done specifically with oils made with health and mind, but when you get your oils right omega three and omega six in some ratio that is appropriate, you can increase IQ by three to nine points. There's research on that. In terms of attention deficit, attention deficit is really an interesting diagnosis. And I'll tell you a little story about it. I have a friend who said his son was super attention deficit. And we were driving the car mom and dad in the front and I'm sitting in the front and he's in the back seat. And so he told me all this, of course, the kid hears, you know, my dad says I'm super attention deficit, right. But of course, he heard all that very clearly. So his attention deficit wasn't that that deficient, right. So I turned I turned in the back seat and I said, so listen, what do you like? What do you really like doing? Oh, he says I love playing video games. Pretty common, right. And I said, so do you have a problem focusing when you're playing video games? No. And I said to you, so I turned to his dad and I said this kid is not doesn't have attention deficit. He's really bright and he's completely bored. And more times, I think then actual attention deficit is boredom because their learning environments are not enriched and the brightest kids get bored the quickest. Now, so there is also an attention deficit that comes from essential fatty acid deficiency. And there's research on that. And I have another story that was like a woman called me and said, my kid, you know, my kid used to get As in school and now she can't focus for longer than five minutes. And her her grades are sliding. And so I said, so how how old is the kid? 13? What is she weigh 130 pounds? And I said to her, I said to her, you know, I don't know what'll happen, but what we recommend for health is a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day. So why don't you give her three tablespoons a day, mix it in food, spread it out over the course of the day and see what happens. And she called me back about four months later and she's crying on the phone and said, what's happening? She said, I just, I'm just so grateful we did what you said. And, you know, now she's she's in front of her computer 45 minutes, her grades are back. So there is an attention deficit that comes from essential fatty acid deficiency. But there's a lot of crossover between those between boredom and ADHD. Because, you know, we live in a society where people just they just want to medicate them into submission or medicate them you know, fitting into whatever. And if an old person is a teacher and he or she has like 30 kids and all those kids are full of activity, everybody wants to do something which is supposed to be what use is like. You know, then medicating them all to so they're like so they're like like drowsy, right? It's the easiest way for a person to manage them. And so I think we use drugs to manage the kids in a way that really is not appropriate. It's not appropriate for for developing a fully functioning, competent, confident, caring, responsible adult. Right? So there's a lot a lot of issues in my view. But I can tell you when I started taking oils, I learned, you know, and I wasn't stupid to begin with. But I found my processing was better. I was my processing was more effective and I could do it quicker. So that's my own experience. And then the other thing about pregnancy is probably one of the most important areas. And it goes like this, the brain, if you take the water out of the brain and measure what's left, it's over 60 percent fat. And and a substantial amount of that is omega three and omega six derivatives. So the brain, so we're fat heads. If somebody calls you a fat head, they mean it as an insult, but it's actually a compliment because we are fat heads by nature, right? So what happens when a woman gets pregnant, she has to maintain her own brain and she has to build a brain in her womb. And they both need fats. If she doesn't have enough fats in her diet or essential fatty acid in her diet, and 99% of the women don't have enough omega three in their diet, less than 10% of the population takes fish off, right? They don't have enough. So what happens is they've measured in studies. Each child gets less than the previous child. Each child depletes the mother further. And that's, they think that's why the oldest children on average have the highest IQ and IQ goes down with birth order. And they think it's why women get two to 15 times more often. Depression, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, collagen, inflammatory, and audit immune disease than men. Two to 15 times more. And they think it's the depletion of essential fatty acids during pregnancy that sets them up for these conditions in a way that men are not set up. And so what they say is women need to make sure they get a reliable source of both essential fatty acids in their diet, both for their own health and for the health of their children. Very, very important area. If you think of it in terms of brain development and and then certain kinds of certain parts of brain development, once they're done, you can't fix them later. Although there are also things in the brain that you can't fix later. So when should people start taking essential fatty acids? The research says two years before pregnancy. Because if you become deficient, that will last two years, even after you take it, even if you optimize it. And so that will affect the children. And when should you take, if you didn't start two years ago? Isn't that the deal about when should you plant a tree last year? And and if you didn't plant one last year, then plant one now. So people need to so when people hear that, they need to make sure this is an important thing for for the kids. It's a big deal. Okay, so I sort of snuck that in there. No, I love that. So thank you for adding that, right? So I really want to tie this all together going back to the grocery store. So we talked about conditions that many of our listeners may have, right? We're talking about cardiovascular disease, ADHD, maybe they have loved ones who want to talk about striking anabolic and then you add it on pregnancy as well. And so taking the previous episode part one where we also talk about other conditions such as the gut and skin and adding it to this, we might have some listeners who are completely bought in at this point, right? And they really want to get the good oils in them. So they go to the grocery store and I'll use myself as an example. You know, I see bottles ranging from $3 all the way to let's say $15 to $20. And then I see a $7 bottle. And in my head, I look at a $7 bottle and I say, okay, it's glass. It's, you know, dark. It says organic on it. Why not buy that compared to the $15 bottle? And so I think there might still be some confusion for a lot of people when they go to the grocery store, they listen to social media. And hopefully they listen to this podcast. What is it that they should be looking at specifically when buying an oil and making sure that they're not getting scammed, you know, by the three or $7 bottle, but also on the other side of the spectrum where, you know, they're unnecessarily buying a $15, $20 bottle of olive oil. How should they go about buying it? Yeah. Okay, just like in terms of making it easy. Number one, don't buy oils in plastic. Why? Because oil swell plastic and plastic leaches into oil quicker than it leaches into water. And this research that shows that when you put a plastic film on food, the plastic will drift into the food in direct proportion to the amount of fat or oil in the food. Okay, so you don't want that because that doesn't belong in your body and when it gets in your body, it interferes. And we're, we're hearing more now about plastics in the food supply and getting into the body and causing inflammation as usual, shit, that doesn't be, sorry, that doesn't belong in your body causes inflammation, right? So don't buy oil in plastic. And most of the oils are in plastic. Don't buy oil in transparent bottles. So the oil should be in glass, the glass should be dark. Green is not as good as brown. The oil should be organic because if it's not organic, one of the reasons why they deodorize the oil at frying temperature before it goes in the bottle is to get rid of half of the pesticides. The other half of the pesticides stay in the oil. Pesticides were made for only one purpose to kill living things. And they do it either by messing up your brain or your nervous system or by messing up energy production. And if it kills a plant or kills an insect, we have brain and energy production in common. So most of the pesticides that are bad for other creatures are also bad for human beings. And more than 60% of them last time I looked were carcinogenic. I got into health because I got poisoned by pesticides. So that's an important thing. And then if they're rich in omega-3, they should be refrigerated. But hardly anybody does that. And if they're not refrigerated, the omega-3s will get damaged especially after you open it, they'll get damaged very quickly. If their plant-based is better than fish oil because fish oil is even more damaged because it's more sensitive to damage. So I don't recommend fish oils. If you want to get krill, krill is made by a different process. And you need less and it's in a form that is better absorbed and less burnt for energy. It's made out of phospholipids, 40% of it is phospholipids. The body doesn't burn phospholipids for energy. So they're conserved. Whereas in the fish oils, 80% of the oil is actually just burnt for energy. And then you have to make a distinction between food oil foundation, which is what I work with, which is the plant-based omega-3, omega-6 alpha linoleic acid, linoleic acid. In the right ratio, tablespoon per 50, that's the food oil foundation. And supplement, krill is a supplement, fish oil is a supplement. Between the supplements, I would pick krill or algae made, DHA, which we can also get unrefined. So it's not damaged. And you want the oils to be unrefined, which means they might have a sediment in the bottom of the bottle, or they'll have the flavor of the oils. Because most of the oils in plastic bottles are colorless, odorless, tasteless, because they've taken out all the antioxidants, all of the anti-inflammatories, all of the taste molecules, all of the color molecules. And it's kind of like white sugar, it's like white sugar, white flour, and white oils. I call those white oils. White because they've, and those are, they give you energy because they have their high energy molecules, but you don't get any spark protection. The anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatories are spark protection. And that's one of the reasons why those oils and white starches and white sugars give you inflammation. Because you're building a fire that throws sparks, those are called free radicals. And you've taken out what in the natural plant had to spark control, that neutralized the free radicals that come from burning them. So let's see what else. What about shelf life? You talked about refrigerated versus unrefrigerated people keep oil for months. What do you have any guidelines that you go by? Yeah, of course. Yeah, we built all of that. Way backward, like 1987-88, right? So shelf life, if you freeze the oil in the glass bottle, you won't break the bottle because oil shrinks when it freezes. If it was water in the bottle, you'd break the bottle. But oil shrinks when it freezes. So you can freeze the bottles. And what I do is I buy it by the case, and I stick it in my freezer and it's frozen solid. And when it's frozen solid, the molecules don't move. So they don't meet. So they don't react. So you get a long shelf life. Three years, we say two years, for sure. But you probably five years. If it's frozen the whole time, you have a shelf life. You have a serious shelf life. And then if you keep it refrigerated, it'll be liquid. It's about a year. You might get two years out of it. Once you open it, we say use it up within eight weeks. Because once you open it, air gets in and then the air slowly begins to make the oil oxidize the oil and keep it rancid. And always keep it in the fridge. And the cooler the temperature, the slower the reactions will be. Love it. Well, Udo, before we come to a close here, I want to thank you so much for, enlightening us, honestly, between these two discussions that we've had, the first one that I was in part of, but certainly got to listen to as I mentioned. We've talked about history, we've talked about science, we've talked about theories, we've talked about some misconceptions. And maybe most importantly, at the very end here, we've given people some actionable tips, which they can employ into their daily lives to hopefully make it a little bit better. And so, you know, you mentioned this briefly last time, but I'd love to point people to some of the good work that you're doing. So what are some places that they can connect with you and find what you're up to? Okay, first of all, if you want to just find out about me, you go on Google and you punch in UDO. That's my first name. I'll be on the first page because there are not a lot of Udo's on this planet. Okay, but if you go to UdoArasmus.com slash products, then you can see I work with oils, I work with digestion, which is the second most neglected area. I work with enzymes, probiotics, fiber and bitters, not arena. And that's so that's probably the best way you can go and then you press the products button and you'll see you'll see the products. Yeah, but I'm on Facebook and I'm on Instagram and I got a YouTube channel under UdoArasmus if you know if you can know how to spell that. Yeah, no worries. We're going to link that in the show notes, but I think people can figure it out. As you mentioned, if you can't figure that out, then perhaps you have no business being a social media and looking at some of the nonsense. But again, thank you so much for everything. I know that there's so many hours that we can spend talking about some of the things that we're all passionate about. So in maybe a few sentences or less, when you think about this question or this statement, adding the health back to health care, what comes to mind for you? Oh, health was invented by life in nature. And this is true for every creature in nature. So health was invented by life in nature. And the way it works is you want to be healthy. You need to live aligned with both nature and your nature. And that's what health. That's what health is. And hardly anybody's doing that. And certainly the system we call the health care system is not a health care system. It's a disease management symptom. They're good at symptom suppression crisis intervention. Life support and monitoring your journey to the graveyard. But they're not teaching you health and they're not making you healthier and longer lived because most of what they practice is out of line with nature. And you just you can't you know, you can't you cannot be healthy for a log if you're out of line with nature and your nature. Love it. Udo, thank you again. Really appreciate. Thank you so much. Thank you. Alright, thank you. There you have it folks. We really hope that these last two episodes have given you a pretty decent framework when it comes to thinking about fatty acids, omega-3s and 6s, the ever complex topic of seed oils, but also some practical tips about how to actually buy your oils and how to store them. If you find this episode beneficial or you know others who would as well, please go ahead and share the last two episodes with them and have a great discussion about it. Go ahead and provide some value for other people. And if you could go ahead and rate and review this podcast on your preferred platform, it would do a huge justice for us to get this out to as many listeners as possible. And as always, if there are any guests that you want us to bring onto the show and any topics you want us to cover, go ahead on medicine redefine.com, drop us an email or go ahead and leave your detailed response in your review. As always, everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the price of medicine and we are not providing medical advice. No physician, patient, place, ship, is formed and anything discussed in this podcast is not representative use of our employers. We recommend that you seek the guidance and repersonal physician regarding any specific, health related issues. And last but not least, thank you to our team, Ethan Jew and Herita Yepori for the production of this podcast. We'll see you next week.