The Great Cholesterol Myth with Dr. Jonny Bowden: Rational Wellness Podcast 369
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Dr. Jonny Bowden discusses The Great Cholesterol Myth with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
8:32 Dr. Bowden was working as a personal trainer at Equinox and he became a believer in the low fat diet. He would order egg white omelets and he was convinced that if he ate any yellow of the egg, he would have a heart attack. But he started seeing a lot of people coming to the gym who were following the low fat diet and were counting calories and they were doing hours of joyless aerobic exercise and they were not losing much weight. Then some of his clients started following the Atkins’s low carb, high fat diet and some were losing a lot of bodyfat and their health was improving. Their blood glucose and triglycerides and their blood pressure were all dropping, all signs of improving metabolic health.
12:35 Dr. Bowden started to question the low fat diet, since clients following the high fat Atkins diet were losing weight and getting healthier.
Dr. Jonny Bowden has a PhD in holistic nutrition and he is an extremely prolific author, having written The Great Cholesterol Myth, The Metabolic Factor, The Most Effective natural Cures on Earth, The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer, Living Low Carb, Smart Fat, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, and The 150 Most Effective Ways to Boost Your Energy, as well as 6 cookbooks. Jonny continues to consult with clients and his website is JonnyBowden.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates. And to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me. And let’s jump into the podcast. Hello, Rational Wellness Podcasters.
Today, we’ll be having a discussion on the Great Cholesterol Myth with Johnny Bowden, PhD. Johnny Bowden went to school, trained as a jazz musician. Eventually he became a personal trainer and eventually got a PhD in holistic nutrition. He’s an extremely prolific author, having written The Great Cholesterol Myth, The Metabolic Factor, The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth, The Most Effective Ways to [00:01:00] Live Longer, Living Low Carb, Smart Fat, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, and the 150 Most Effective Ways to Boost Your Energy, as well as six different cookbooks. That’s amazing, Johnny. How did you have time to do all that?
Dr. Bowden: Over 15 years. It wasn’t that hard. 20 years of writing.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Bowden: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Weitz: So, uh, maybe tell us a little more about your background and how you became to become an expert in holistic nutrition.
Dr. Bowden: Well, I, first of all, we, we, I really hate the term holistic nutrition. It’s, uh, it was valuable back when I was getting a degree in it. It’s, it’s now turned into like the, when you think of holistic nutrition, you think of somebody on. Dennis Beach doing crystals. And it’s not that at all. I, what I would call it today is functional medicine nutrition, uh, integrative nutrition. Nutrition is part [00:02:00] of an entire bunch of things that we use with clients to really make their lives better. It’s, it is not just looking at food diaries. It’s not just looking at nutrient amounts. It’s what is, what is this person in front of me? You know, they used to say. The difference between Eastern and Western medicine is that in Western medicine, the Western doctor says, Okay, what are the symptoms? And in Eastern medicine, they say, Who is this person in front of me who has the symptoms? So, it’s that kind of orientation to nutrition.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great, it was perfect because my podcast is really devoted to all things functional medicine.
Dr. Bowden: Right, I sensed that, so I just wanted to bring it in alignment with what you guys know as functional medicine. We used to call it Holistic medicine. It’s, it’s, it’s bad term. Um, I was a, as you mentioned, I was a professional musician. Uh, I grew up in the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and I was addicted to everything in the, I [00:03:00] always tell my podcast, um, um, Host everything in the PDR, but audiences don’t know what the PDR but is. It’s a book about this thick of over a thousand pages called the Physician’s Desk Reference, and it has every drug that ever came out. So I jokingly say I was addicted to everything in it but you know, I lived exactly what you would think of if you thought of the life of a, you know, partying, sex, drugs, and rock and roll musician in the 19, early 1970s. That was me. And, um, I, I did a lot of traveling, and I, I always maintained, as unhealthy as I was, I always maintained an interest in health. It was like aspirational, you know, I’d go, I’d walk by the health food stores, we didn’t have a Whole Foods then, we didn’t have an internet then, this long, 70s, um, and there were these little stores, you know, that they called health food stores, and the people who patronized them, the people at large used to call, oh, those health nuts, they go to those stores, right? So we were health nuts. Absolutely. I was, I [00:04:00] aspired to that, even, you know, during the heroin days and during the alcohol days. I always thought, you know, that, and when I, I began to get sober in the early 80s, I, I put all that behind me, uh, and, um, I was doing a lot of traveling, a lot of national tours or what we used to call bus and truck tours. Those are Broadway shows that, you know, travel by bus and truck, they’re a little bit lower than the national ones. The national ones fly to big cities like Washington and Chicago, and the bus and trucks go to all the other cities, and I do a lot of those, and we’d be stuck like in a house for a week because we would set up and then we would do the show eight times a week at night and matinees, and the rest of the time we were free, and I started hanging out with the actors, and the actor’s job is to look great.
That is one of their many jobs, but that is a part of their job, so they all knew how to work out. Some of them carried weights with them, you know, on the bus. They really did. And here I am, I’m bored, and I feel like, okay, I’m finally, like, not taking drugs and not drinking anymore. Maybe I should, like, ask [00:05:00] one of them what the heck’s going on. And I actually said to one of them, can you show me some of these exercises you do every day? And that was, that was just like, uh, that, that just turned me on. When, when I started doing that, and seeing how I felt differently, and learning how I could change my own body and energy and everything else that goes with it. It was, it was just a red letter day. It was like a revelation. And I, I was a decent musician. I was not a great musician. I could make a living at it. But this was something I really could be great at. And I started looking on the upper, I was a middle class Jewish kid from New York City. All we care about is academics and degrees, you know, that’s what our parents cared about. So the first thing I thought about was like, I wonder if I can get a degree in this stuff, this, this weight stuff, you know, within a fairly short time, within a couple of years, I knew every [00:06:00] gym in all the cities that we went to, we’d check into Dallas, I would leave my bags, go to Doug’s Gym, this hole in the wall, and I knew where they all were, and I was really making a big change in my, in my lifestyle, and it was really working, and so I wondered to myself, I wonder if I can get some of my credentials in this, you know, that’ll, and so I did. I found out that they had courses to certify personal trainers. So I took one and I got it. I got the certification and I got excited and I said, Oh, this one isn’t, I want another one. I want one that’s even more prestigious. And then I went to get a third one. And I wound up ultimately in that first year, maybe with six or seven, including the CSCS, Conditioning Strength and Specialists, the NASM, National Academy of Sports Medicine, the ACSM, the ACAP, they were, I got them all.
And I’d never worked with a, I’d never worked with a client, I just knew how to do it, and I knew what to do, and I’m a, really, I was always a good teacher and a communicator, so I’m waiting for a client to, to [00:07:00] try this on, and one day, I was home in New York City, and I was walking down Amsterdam Avenue, and I see this big sign, uh, New Gym opening, and it looks really special, it’s called Equinox, and I think, that looks really good, and they got a sign up there that says, Now Hiring, so I walk in. And they’ve got the space there. It was their first gym in Manhattan. They had had one in Scarsdale, the family, then they opened this. First one in Manhattan, and of course everybody who’s listening to you knows what Equinox is, it’s one of the biggest, and most successful, and luxurious, and good, you know, national gyms in the, in the country, but at the time there was one of them, and um, I went in, and I, for the, the luck of the universe, or whatever, I clicked with those owners like that, I don’t know why, I was older than the average person coming in there to be a trainer in my 40s, most of them were 22 year old surfer boys and I clicked with Lavinia [00:08:00] Errico, she’s still around to this day, she’s a great motivational speaker, she was one of the brothers and sisters who owned Equinox and we just instantly got along and they hired me. And I started my career in health and fitness on the floor at Equinox in Manhattan on the very first day they opened September. in 1991. And I stayed there seven years. I ultimately became the dean of the Equinox Fitness Training Institute, which is a model for how everybody trains trainers these days. I mean, it was the best and it was the first and it was wonderful.
And during that time, Ben, I was a complete convert to the low fat orthodoxy of the time. I believed in calorie counting. I believed that if our heavy clients were not losing weight, it’s because they were cheating on, they, we never, ever, ever thought our advice was wrong. We figured if they’re not getting the results, they’re cheating. Um, and this was the zeitgeist at the time. I was one of the guys that would order an egg white omelet. The dumbest invention that ever came. I’d order the egg white omelet. It would come out with a little bit of runny yellow. I’d send it back because I just knew what was going to happen if I consumed any of that heated yellow fat. I was going to get a heart attack because of all the cholesterol and I was going to die. So I was a true believer. And until I started seeing clients come in where what I was seeing with my eyes was conflicting with what I had been taught. So all these people on low fat diets, all these people are counting calories, all these people are doing hours of joyless exercise on a stair master, just hating their existence doing it, and they’re not really losing weight.
Now I grant you that there are people out there who lost weight on the low fat [00:10:00] diet. To say otherwise is just ridiculous. But there were not as many as you might think, and it was not as successful as you might have thought. And in fact, people who really were able to keep weight off on a low fat diet do well and maintain it, were very, very, few. And right around this time, 1992, Atkins published this third edition of his book. His first edition came out in 72. There was one in the middle, and then 92, the New New Diet Revolution, the new revised Atkins, and people were trying it. And they were trying it against our advice. We trainers, like, people would come in and say, You know, I’ve tried all this stuff, it’s just not working. I got a friend who lost 40 pounds on Atkins. I’m gonna try that Atkins diet. And we would go, No! You cannot do this! Yes, they lose a few pounds. They lose pounds on cocaine too. This is a dangerous diet. This guy should lose his license. He’s talking about bacon being, you know, forget it. And guess what, Ben? They didn’t listen to us. So I, what would happen is I’d get these clients–I remember one in particular coming. And to say transformed isn’t really, it wasn’t just that he lost so much weight. His eyes were clearer, you know, you and I, we see, we work in fitness and health and we get really intuitive about knowing if somebody’s, I don’t believe in medical intuitives, but I do believe that, like, we have a lot of clinical experience, you can read if a person’s really healthy and fit. There’s an energy, there’s something in their eyes, there’s something about how they carry themselves and you can kind of feel that or you kind of feel something’s off, they’re, they’re not doing well. And I’m seeing this guy and he’s doing, and I’m, my intuition is saying, holy, you know what, this guy’s really transformed, big belly and now it’s not such a big belly, his eyes are clearer, he’s telling me, his doctor says his blood pressure is down and his [00:12:00] triglycerides have dropped, what is going on? And we, I had what psychologists call cognitive dissonance, two thoughts that cannot both be true. And if you believe both, you have a psychological upset. And you have to resolve them somehow, and that’s what cognitive dissonance is. And, uh, here I am being taught by the American Dietetic Association that a high fat diet will kill you, that cholesterol, all the cholesterol in that food is gonna give you a heart attack, and if you go on something like Atkins, which is absolutely insane, then you will probably die.
And here I got this guy standing in front of me who is not dying at all, not even close. So something’s gotta be wrong. And I tend to believe my eyes, so when I see a very healthy person standing in front of me whose triglycerides have dropped and whose blood glucose is down and whose blood pressure is down and his waist is down, [00:13:00] I’m thinking what I was told might not be true. So I began to question some of the orthodoxy. And an interesting thing, just from social and political kind of, for those who are interested in this, I didn’t have any credentials when I was teaching people at the Equinox Fitness Training Institute. I just, I had the certification as a trainer. I had a master’s in psychology. I did get a master’s in psychology before any of this happened, but that’s not why they were letting me teach nutrition and anatomy and kinesiology and all the rest. But I was preaching the accepted narrative. I was preaching low fat diets, calorie counting, exercise,… the willpower. Long as I bought the narrative, nobody questioned my credentials. See if this brings it up and perhaps,
Dr. Weitz: No, I mean, I did this same thing. In fact, I remember competing as a bodybuilder and getting my body fat down to 3 percent with a low fat diet and exercising twice a day. And just eating very Spartan, you know, Tuna fish, broccoli.
Dr. Bowden: People did it. You know, I know I was, I was there, but I was going to say, perhaps you can think of a parallel in the past three years during the pandemic, so I was quoting the narrative and everybody loved me as a teacher. And then I said, wait a minute, something that I asked a question, could we have possibly demonized saturated fat a little? Maybe it’s not as bad as they told us. I’m seeing. Well, you want to talk about, we didn’t have cancel back then, but there might as well have been cancels. And this was like, who is this guy? A, he’s not an MD, B, he’s not even a nutritionist, he’s just a personal trainer, and what does he know that all these doctors are [00:15:00] saying the difference, and he’s questioning that? I mean, you know, I was taught in, in psychology school, in graduate school, I had a year of statistics and research design, I’m not a great, you know, You know, researcher, but I know the basic thing is you ask questions. You try to disprove your own hypothesis. You look literally for what else could be going on.
You don’t just accept the first thing that comes to mind. You ask those questions as part of science. But when you ask questions, of a narrative that is very strictly enforced, you get canceled, or de monetized, or de platformed. And we saw that very, very clearly, and I’m not taking any sides. I’m saying, open your eyes and see what we did the last three years to anybody who had any question whatsoever about the policies we were following.
Okay, I’m not going to go there. But the point is, it happened to me. And they were like, well, we’re not letting him teach. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. So I went back to school and that’s when I went and got my PhD in nutrition. So now I had a [00:16:00] master’s in psychology. I knew my research and design. I could read a study as well as anybody else in the world. And now I had a PhD in nutrition and I said, now I’m going to ask the questions and I’m going to tell you, you’re full of, you know, what, and I’ve been doing that for 20 years. So how did this book, The Great Cholesterol Myth come about? So here I am with the clients.
And the clients are going on Atkins, and they’re not dying, and they’re getting healthier, and they’re doing better. So, I ask myself, very logically, why have we been told to avoid saturated fat? Why, what was the big, if these people are eating it, and they’re eating animal products, And they’re doing really really well. Why did they tell us that? And the answer was always the same. Because the saturated fat will raise your cholesterol, and your cholesterol will cause heart disease. What if that weren’t true? [00:17:00] Everything about the dietary recommendations, which you and I now know, work. Absolute bogus BS, 11 servings of grains a day, things that people would go, What? They recommended, what? All of that was for one reason, because they didn’t want your cholesterol to go high. And they didn’t want your cholesterol to go high because they knew, quote unquote, that cholesterol caused heart attack. If this were something you could question, if it wasn’t true, what happens to your dietary guidelines? What happens to them? They’re built on sand. They’re built on a fear of cholesterol. And what if cholesterol isn’t everything that they told you it was? Then what happens to those recommendations? I mean, we’ve been avoiding a perfectly good food, and we’ve been avoiding meat and things that we’ve eaten for, you know, a couple hundred thousand years. We’re avoiding all of that because it’s going to raise your cholesterol? And we already knew [00:18:00] half of that story was bullshit, and I’ll tell you why. Because even at the beginning, everybody knew that dietary cholesterol had no effect on anything. If they were telling us, don’t even eat it, because it’ll raise your body cholesterol, and that just is not true, except for less than 1 percent of the population that has a condition called familial hypercholesterolemia.
It’s genetic, it’s very rare, and those are the only people who have to worry about eating cholesterol. Everybody else doesn’t. So, we knew that wasn’t true. And then I started thinking about whether the rest of it was, and that is how I got from a generalist to really taking on this particular issue, and then we wrote in 2012, the cardiologist Steven Sinatra and I wrote the great cholesterol myth. And it kind of put us on the map. And then eight years later, we did the revised edition with all the new information we had gained since then. And, um, I’ve been talking about it very frequently. It’s not the only thing I talk about, but that’s how I got on the great cholesterol myth and [00:19:00] questioning conventional wisdom in general.
Dr. Weitz: I saw where you made an appearance on the Dr. Oz show and, and your quote is trying to reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering your LDL cholesterol is like trying to reduce the calories on your whopper by taking off the lettuce. It was good.
Dr. Bowden: I forgot about that. Thanks. That was very good. That was a good quote. I’m proud of that one. So ask me, why does everybody think that? It’s this way. And I said, Dr. Oz, in the, I don’t know when, what century it was, but there was a time where the greatest minds and scientists of the country thought that the earth was flat. I mean, the fact that everybody thinks this does not make it true.
Dr. Weitz: Right. And by the way, they continue to think this. In fact, I wanted to point out that, um, uh, last year I heard [00:20:00] Dr. Peter Attia, who I know we both respect, say that Primary prevention for cardiovascular disease should involve treating patients starting in their 30s and we should make sure that their ApoB is below 30 or 40 by whatever means necessary, eating less saturated fat, taking statins, taking PCSK9 inhibitors. If we do that, we will eliminate heart disease.
Dr. Bowden: Let me just say that I have huge respect for Peter Attia. I do too. I have learned more from him than probably any other doctor, except maybe Howard Elkin. Um, I have, um, read his stuff. I learned a great deal about cholesterol from his nine part course on it, online. Um, he is very, very strict about blood lipids. I would never, with my background [00:21:00] not being a fraction of his medical background, I’m not going to argue with his findings, but I think that he’s a little You know, he did, he does the same thing with his book on aging, which is I think the best book on anti aging I’ve ever read. He looks at, you know, he’s a mathematician. He gets these Excel spreadsheets and he looks at, okay, I want to be a kick ass hundred year old. I’m going to lose this much muscle every. Decade. If I don’t do something about it, I’m going to lose this much balance, this much stability. So I have to, in my 30s, do this, and in my 40s, do this, all to counteract the effects of nature. And then when I’m 100, I’m going to be a kick ass 100 year old. So he is very methodical. about the stuff he does and very, very precise and extreme and blood lipids. I’m not going to say he’s wrong. I’m going to say that I think that there is a bigger picture and a lot of what he says I totally agree with. He thinks that the basic good and bad cholesterol test is nonsense and of course so do [00:22:00] I. He’s the one who said in the quote, I use it on podcast all the time, It’s such a great quote. Your total cholesterol has as much to do with your heart attack risk as your hair color. That’s Peter Attia. So he’s not a bad guy, okay?
Dr. Weitz: No, no, he’s brilliant, you know, and I have a huge amount of respect for him.
Dr. Bowden: He’s pretty medicine heavy. And, and this, he’s pretty much like kind of, I don’t know why I keep coming up with COVID analogies, but like if, if your value was we are going to protect this world from this virus and the only way to do it is lock everybody down and vaccinate everybody, well, if that’s your goal, yes, that’s probably the best way, There’s a lot of collateral damage to that policy. There are a lot of people who would disagree with that policy, and I think in the same way, yeah, you can get your blood lipids down low, but I’m interested in also talking to people about the stuff that has nothing to do with their blood lipids, like their relationships and their involvement with their community and their involvement [00:23:00] with their family. I’ll tell you something really quickly that I think your audience needs to hear, because you and I probably get clients, individual clients, from the same demographic, and I’ll bet if I asked you, are they confused about nutrition, you would be nodding your head. You’re damn right they’re confused. Well, everybody’s confused about nutrition, and you know. Right. So what I like to tell those clients, is about, I’m going to tell you the story. Sardinian researchers have looked at what Peter Attia is doing and going, this is a noble goal. He wants to get people healthy at a hundred and not living in assisted living and doing really, you know, active things.
And there are centenarians in the world who do that. But instead of like all this stuff that We hear about what the biohackers, like the cold plungers and all, you know, the wind huff breath training and climbing up the mountains without a shirt and all that. I’m sure that’s all great, but it’s also very intimidating to the average person because most of us aren’t going to do that stuff. So this research is really [00:24:00] interesting to all of you who do not want to follow that kind of rigorous, extreme way of living in order to be really healthy at 100. These researchers said, that’s a noble goal, but I want to reverse engineer it. Let’s go meet some kick ass hundred year olds and see what they’re already doing. What are the people who are doing what we want to get to? What’s their secret? And they came away with three secrets. First of all, they went to Sardinia. Yeah, you’re talking about the blue zones. Yeah, so Sardinia is one of the five blue zones. And it happens to be the one that has the highest proportion of fully functioning, active hundred year old men.
That’s a place you want to study. So they spend some time in Sardinia and they come away and it’s tongue in cheek, but boy is there a truth in this. You want to know the three lessons? Sure. To live to be a hundred? Number one, live where there are a lot of stairs. Have you ever seen pictures of Sardinia? You can’t walk out of your house [00:25:00] walking 10,000 steps in the grove. It’s all stairs and hills. Right. So the take home there is walk all day. Just walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Number two. Many of these hundred year olds are shepherds. They spend all their day in the mountains with sheep. Sheep are the most docile, sweet, non aggressive animals in the world.
Lesson number two was, spend as much time as you can with sweet, docile animals. Well, think about it. What is, what information is your brain absorbing when you’re in that circumstances, as opposed to say a cop who goes to work and sees the worst of humanity and what people do to each other and the cruelty and the meanness. And this is a person who is watching sheep in nature. What do you think their mind is like? What do you think their physiology is like? They’re in parasympathetic nervous system mode all day long. That’s where the [00:26:00] healing takes place. Bars Bathing All Day Long. Right? And number three, and number three was so far above the other two, that it was like in real estate they say there’s three most important things to know about real estate. Location, location, location. This was the location, location, location for living to be a hundred. You ready? Yeah. Make your family and friends your number one priority. End of story.
So I mentioned this. Because we can go crazy about lowering blood lipids, and I, believe me, I, I worry about my own. I go to Dr. Elkin, we figure out how to bring the particle number down. It’s important, I’m not saying ignore it. You and I wouldn’t have careers if there was nothing to do about the metrics. But I try to get people to look at this bigger picture. They come to me sometimes and they are so confused about their cholesterol, and their total cholesterol is high, and their doctor wants to put them on a stent, and they don’t want to do this. First of all, we already talked about total [00:27:00] cholesterol means nothing, ladies and gentlemen.
Zero. But that said, they’re worried about these granular particulars, and they are important. But what I always leave every client who sees me, with is the sense of what they’re already doing to make deposits in their health bank. They’re playing with their kids. They’re petting their dog. They’re making love.
They’re walking out in the sun. They’re kind of sunbathing from time to time, as you would say, forest bathing, and they are making major deposits, and I don’t know that those deposits are don’t wind up being more important than a particular lab value. And I get that Peter wants to bring them all down as low as possible.
I’m not a medical doctor. I don’t know how to do that. It worries me how much medicine is involved in doing that. I’m wondering if there aren’t other things we can do in addition that might be even more important, such as Loving each other, spending time around friends, and it appears from these [00:28:00] studies that’s the number one thing. Nobody said in that study, here’s the three lessons, keep your cholesterol low. It wasn’t even mentioned. By the way, did you happen to see the paper in British Medical Journal a couple of months ago? Which one? It was, it’s called, Is LDL cholesterol associated with long term mortality among primary prevention adults?
A retrospective cohort study from a large health care system. What did they find? The conclusion of this study was that Those who had an LDL cholesterol under 79 had increased mortality. Oh, that’s old. I mean, I didn’t see that study, but I can tell you that from, that’s 20 years old. The lowest mortality was those with LDL between 100 and 189. Those over 190 also had increased risk. Yeah, so let me give you a little context for [00:29:00] that, that has been shown since I was first a student in the late 90s. Um, we know that the higher, it’s not a curve that looks like this. The low cholesterol you’re doing great and the high cholesterol you’re doing bad. It’s much more like a different shaped curve. Yeah, what we call a T shaped curve. You know what goes up in risk? Heart attacks. I’m sorry. Okay. Suicides and accidents. Why is that? Oh! Maybe because cholesterol is needed for the brain? Could that have something to do with it? So these doctors who are like the lower the better, the lower the better.
They’re screwing with your brain and they want to put 13 year olds on statins to get it even lower and the brain isn’t even developed until you’re 25? Are you kidding me? Not to mention you need cholesterol to make, uh, testosterone. I always tell that to men, they always, wait, wait, wait, I’m taking the, wait, wait, what did you say?
Yeah, your sex hormones come from that. And I had a wonderful doctor, I won’t quote him because [00:30:00] they always, when I quote them, if I don’t get them right, they get very upset, but this, this very smart doctor said, Bernie. I have never seen a case of ED that wasn’t also a case of ED. What did he mean? A rectal dysfunction and endothelial dysfunction, which is the heart of heart disease. These are very related. Is it an accident that we see all these men coming into psychiatry’s office and psychologists and counselors office talking about impotence and they don’t have, they can’t get it up anymore and all of that, and half the male population is on statins? Really? No connection to that, huh?
Nobody wants to put that little thing together? By the way, I wanted to credit you. Your book, 12 years ago, talked about endothelial dysfunction. Yeah, we didn’t invent that. I mean, we just popularized it. No, I understand, but hardly anybody was talking about it. Now, everybody in cardiovascular medicine, or many people, are talking about the importance of endothelial dysfunction and that being a core factor [00:31:00] in cardiovascular disease. Coronary artery disease. Absolutely. The wonderful, wonderful doctor friend of mine, Dr. Mark Houston. Uh, from Nashville, who’s also a master’s in nutrition.
Dr. Weitz: Had him on the podcast many times.
Dr. Bowden: Yeah. Oh, no kidding. So Mark, who I’ve known for a hundred years, and also is one of the few doctors in America who also has a master’s in nutrition, and he teaches doctors all over the place. He taught me about endothelial dysfunction 20 years ago, so he’s been talking about that a long time. Another thing we both believe in that you mentioned a little bit is the importance of having an advanced lipid profile and not just having a standard lipid panel consisting of total cholesterol, estimated LDL, HDL, triglycerides. That is just inadequate. It’s not adequate at all. It’s 1950s nutrition. It’s, it’s, [00:32:00] it’s working with a flip phone when you have the Galaxy 9 and the iPhone 15. It’s just, it’s just plain silly. We now know that there are subdivisions of HDL and LDL. I think there’s about 13 of them, there’s HDL2, 2A, there’s dysfunctional HDL, there’s LDL, oxidized LDL, there’s Lp, little a, there’s small LDL particles, big LDL particles, it’s, it, it, this good and bad is like giving a medical diagnosis based on if you’re short or tall, I mean it’s just such elementary nonsensical, you know, Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: So what you’re saying for the listeners, maybe if you’re not quite following is the standard lipid profile that you’ll get with your annual physical. And in fact, it’s pretty much all that’s done by most doctors, including cardi, conventional cardiologists is just not adequate. There’s so much research showing the importance of not [00:33:00] LDL, but knowing LDL particle number, particle size, we know small dense LDL is much more atherogenic than large LDL. Yes, they’re not all the same, I’m telling you. Yes, and there’s a whole series of other factors that you’ve talked about, which is that For the LDL to potentially create a problem, it’s, it’s got to be oxidized and inflamed markers. We need to look at oxidized LDL. We need to look at HSCRP, homocysteine. There’s a bunch of stuff you really got to look at if you really want to assess your true cardiovascular risk.
Dr. Bowden: I couldn’t agree with you more, you’re preaching to the choir. And another thing that you mentioned in that book that hardly anybody was talking about now, um, was you mentioned uric acid. Oh, I didn’t mention it. The great David Perlmutter taught us about that. I just read [00:34:00] his book and said, hey guys, why are you not reading this and understanding that uric acid is a major metabolic marker. You know, I’m a popularizer, I don’t take any credit for these guys, intellects like David Perlmutter who do this research and understand the neurology of it and all.
You know, they’re my heroes, all I do is I am very good at explaining this science to average people. That’s my only, that’s my talent. Speaking and writing and talking to the people who might be at my family table. They’re smart people. They just don’t know this stuff and they get very confused by it. Right. And my talent, such as it is, is to go to those conferences, learn what those people say, and then come back and say, Look, you know how this happens? And that’s basically uric acid for years. And most doctors, if you ask them today, they think it’s just a measure of gout. Something that we do when we treat gout, but it turns out to be a major metabolic marker that’s very intricately related to [00:35:00] fructose metabolism.
We now know fructose metabolism is It’s central for so many things. Fructose makes us fat, so there’s a connection there that nobody’s looking at. And the reason why fructose is so important is because one of the most common sugars added to processed foods, like sodas, is high fructose corn syrup. 100%. So, I, you probably also saw where recently the, um, uh, the folks who make the U.
- Dietary Guidelines. Yeah. The U. S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Group came out with a report saying that ultra processed foods do not cause obesity. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. This is where, lady, I’ll let the audience in on a little, uh, this is where it becomes very difficult for people like Ben and me and people who are engaged in this kind of dialogue with patients and with the [00:36:00] public on YouTube and to not talk about politics.
It is very, very hard to understand why these insane recommendations keep coming out, like 11 grams, you know, 11 servings of grain. And then, oh yeah, this, uh, what was the last one? Oh, all through processed food? Nah, you can have, you know, it’s perfectly fine to have. And you, and American Diabetes Association, oh yeah, you can have chocolate cake, just make sure you take your insulin.
You don’t, you don’t understand. No one really understands how deeply. The pharmaceutical and the big food industries have their tentacles on, have their hands on the throats of legislatures, politicians, 75 percent of senators or people in Congress, that’s the House and the Senate, represent an area in a state in which Uh, Big Food, or Big Pharma, or Big Hospital is the number one employer.
Cable TV, I [00:37:00] think now, Big Pharma is responsible for, in primetime, 75 percent of the ads. Yeah, it’s amazing how many ads for drugs are on TV. You can’t imagine the vectors of influence and how this stuff happens backstage. On media, on reporting, on television, on newspapers. In government policy, you’ve got the, you’ve got the fox regulating the hen house.
It is like putting tobacco executives in charge of smoking public service messages. Yeah, we’re actually one in a few countries that actually allows One of two. Two in the world. drug companies to advertise drugs to patients. New Zealand and us. Yeah, that’s it. All the other companies, they, they can put ads in, uh, pharmaceutical, in, in the journals to inform doctors about it, but they don’t market directly to patients.
That [00:38:00] might be something to ask of our presidential candidates, which one is committed to getting that crap off the air. Might be a question that would be interesting to people. Yeah, absolutely, um, and what do you think about, um, this came up when we were talking about what topics we were going to talk about, all the people who are losing weight these days by taking, uh, Ozembic and these GLP 1 agonist, uh, medications.
Well, I’m actually talking about this tomorrow when I’m giving a lecture at the, uh, I’m on the faculty of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy and I’m going to be talking about it. Oh, okay. Um, so Ozempic and, and the GLP 1, uh, agonists, the semi glutide, that class of drugs, is very problematic for us because, This is going to be a hard drug to take a hard line black or white position on. The truth is, there are some [00:39:00] amazingly promising things about that drug. There are also some amazingly scary red flags about that drug, but it’s not an either or. That drug stops addictive behavior. You, rats love alcohol. If you give rats alcohol, they’re going to, they roll around in their little cages and, and the happiest can be when they’re drunk.
When you give rats. GLP 1 agonist, or ozempic, and the alcohol, stop drinking it, they’re not interested. It’s right there for them to take as much as they want, they don’t even really do it. These are important things, let’s not deny that. Now, the list of problems is considerable. And I think that there are some cases where you go, but wait, it increases the risk of thyroid cancer by 50%, but it does this, and it does this, and there’s a chance of this, and the metabolic reset, and the ozempic rate, And then you have [00:40:00] to balance that against the very real documented problems with being 200 pounds overweight or 100 pounds overweight.
You’re going to die early. You have a, if you have diabetes, which you have a hugely greater chance of getting if you’re obese, you’ve got a 70 percent greater chance of dying from some other disease. You have to weigh that against the Negatives. My issue with it is, for one thing, Beverly Hills housewives have taken it to lose 20 pounds, which is absolutely insane. But if you’re talking about, you know, this is a way out for people who are morbidly obese, um, a case can be made. I, I get that. The problem, a couple of the problems that I see, apart from some of those scary side effects, is that I’ve seen a number of people who lost a bunch of weight and once they stopped taking it, they just gained weight.
Right back. Let’s say [00:41:00] this right now about that. That is exactly what happens. This is a drug you had, and this is one of the things people need to consider. You need to be on this for life. If you think you’re going to take it a couple of weeks and drop the weight and then go back, it ain’t going to happen. So when you sign up for this, be aware that this is a lifetime commitment. Right. Now, another problem is, is that it’s documented that people tend to lose muscle when they lose weight on this drug. So on another And they’re actually trying, they’re actually right now testing out, um, uh, CIRMs or some other sort of drug that might promote an anabolic effect that you now stack with Ozembic.
Yeah, we have that already, by the way. Would you like to know what it’s called? It’s called weight training and protein. I mean, how much are we going to go down this, you know, one [00:42:00] author who studied the Ozembic said, it’s a false solution to a false problem. Ultra processed food has made us fatter than ever.
in a way that we have never been as, as Homo sapiens have ever been in history. Made by the food that we’re eating. And now this drug comes along, and those, those ultra processed foods do one thing, which is very clear and very documented in the research. They make you want to eat more of them. When that potato chip commercial came out years ago, Ben, Bet You Can’t Eat Just One, they weren’t, they weren’t kidding.
They design these foods to have just what they call the bliss point, the exact proportion of fat, salt, and, and carbohydrate and sugar, so that people can’t stop eating them. So they create this appetite, which can’t be satisfied because the foods don’t have any nutrition in them, so you just keep eating more, trying to get the protein that you need.
And then they solve this [00:43:00] problem by coming up with a drug that will make you feel full on that crap. Right. You, I think when people really understand this, if they understand it, that the people on Mozempik will come to people like us even more because they will see that metabolic health and healthy weight are not the same thing. They’re not the same thing. Underneath the stuff that causes heart attacks and diabetes and Alzheimer’s and insulin resistance, all of that doesn’t have symptoms. You don’t see that happening. So if you get your weight by a drug to be perfect, you can keep eating the crap you’re eating. That’s going to be metabolic disaster for people.
Absolutely. So another problem, take the drug, come to us and let us help you navigate the food environment so that you don’t Collapse metabolically underneath that healthy weight. Yeah. Um, so another aspect of this drug is essentially my understanding is the way [00:44:00] it blunts your hunger is that your GI motility slows down.
So essentially the food stays in your stomach longer and your whole, um, movement of your GI tract is slowed. GI motility. Which is not great because, you know, we have a lot of patients and I work with a lot of patients with a whole series of GI issues like IBS and reflux and these things are directly related with altered motility of their GI tract and now we’re taking medications that are slowing the motility of the GI tract.
100 percent and I’ll, uh, I’ll top you one that’s even more alarming. I’m sure your listeners have heard you talk a lot about the microbiome. Yes. And you’re a functional medicine doctor, you know what the first saying in functional medicine is, first treat the gut. Yeah. I’m talking about the, what do you think these [00:45:00] drugs do to the microbiome? I’m sure they have to. I mean, that’s in the, that’s in the very new exploratory research. They screw it up badly. And that is connected to everything from schizophrenia to depression to weight loss. Right. Your microbiome.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I, I, I did hear somebody who was on Mark Hyman’s podcast. She uses, um, compounded versions of semi glutite and She claims that you can use a much lower dosage and in combination with a full functional medicine approach that incorporates weight training and exercise and etc, um, that perhaps these drugs can be used more safely.
Dr. Bowden: That I, I think that we all have to get behind that because they’re [00:46:00] going to be used whether we like it or not. They are, they are the experts. that I’m reading now are predicting probably higher than 40 percent of Americans will be on some form of these drugs in 10 years. They won’t be injectable, they’ll be by pills, the price will have come down, insurance will cover them, and we’re looking at something as, as, as significant as Prozac or the pill. And that’s going to change everything. And if people continue to think that weight and metabolic health are the same thing, we’re going to be a very sick nation, even worse than we are now. But if people use wisely, use that drug under supervision with, with coaching about how much, how to get the right, the right amount of protein, even though you’re not as hungry as you used to be and how to, you know, get the benefits of intermittent fasting, you cannot, this is not a free pass to eat Pringles. And if you use it as that, yeah, you’ll stay skinny, but you won’t like the results in 20 [00:47:00] years, man. Trust me. Right. Yeah, you’ve got to have good metabolic health and simply losing weight by eating the wrong foods and not exercising is not the way to do it. Correct. So, just like with many drugs that are, can be beneficial, there’s a right way to use it.
Absolutely. You know, it’s very funny about what people will do to, to, to not have to change anything in their lives. Human growth hormone used to be a very popular thing that people would do. Um, and I don’t know if you know this, most people don’t, but, um, I was a consultant to Kent Asynogenics Medical Institute for a while, and they are, you know, the largest anti aging practice in the country, 18 places around the country.
And, um, one thing that we learned is that HGH doesn’t work for you very well if you’re on a high carb diet. In fact, if you take HGH and you eat the standard, you eat the way [00:48:00] we’re eating now with stuff like that, you’re more likely to develop diabetes. So when people go, wait, I can’t just take this and all of a sudden I’m going to have all these bad, well, no, if you, you, you can sabotage even that expensive drug if you continue to eat this crap.
Right. Right. You know, as an ex alcoholic, I know technically you’re not ever supposed to say that, but I say it anyway, I’m an ex alcoholic, I don’t identify as that, that’s not my, but I can tell you that it really requires a change in your headset. I, my wife drinks, we have alcohol in the house, I serve it to friends, I go to bars, I socialize where there’s alcohol. It’s not an option for me. And at this point, it doesn’t even go like, wow, wouldn’t that be nice? No, it’s not even possible [00:49:00] for me. And I think that, hard as it may be, some people are going to have to do that at some point with the most egregious offenders in our diet. It’s hard to say don’t eat sugar, but man, to the extent that you could do that, your life will change. Your health will change. Absolutely. We, it takes. It can’t be that you’re just like, I’m gonna take this pill, and I’m gonna, you know, I mean, there’s a pill like that for alcohol. It’s called Antabuse. It makes you sick if you take alcohol, but it doesn’t have a great track record. You gotta change your mindset. And it, you know, as someone, I think that’s a pretty significant thing to go from like, I want that drug, I want that thing, to like, not for me, it’s not for me. Allowed, that’s a big change, but man, you can’t just, whether it’s human growth hormone or whether it’s semi glutide, the drug alone is maybe going to make something easier, but you’ve got to do the [00:50:00] work. You’ve got to do some work. Right.
Dr. Weitz: Just out of curiosity, how has your thinking about cholesterol and heart disease changed since you first wrote this book?
Dr. Bowden: Well, when we first wrote this book, one of the chapters was called the Statin Scam. Okay. We changed it on the, the, the, uh, on the updated edition. I actually would have to look to see, but it was more like the statin misunderstanding. Okay. We, we did not want to be in this polarized environment we all live in. We did not want to be the anti statin guys. Right. Steve Sinatra, my partner in the writing of this, the cardiologist, he’s no longer with us, but he would prescribe statins very infrequently, but in certain cases. We didn’t want to have this religious position. Right. I’m not, again, it’s like [00:51:00] what Joe Rogan said about vaccines, I’m not anti vaccine, I’m anti propaganda. That’s what he said, I love that. Right. I’m not anti statin, I’m anti propaganda. I’m anti this brand extension of this drug that does do some good in a very small population of middle aged men with previous heart disease.
There was some use for it, but then they did the brand extension. Well, let’s see. Can we do it in flavors? Let’s see. Can we get the 70 year old women to take it? How about 13 year old boys? And that’s what’s crazy. And they prescribe it based on total cholesterol, which as we said and all agreed on, is as relevant as your hair color. So that’s what we’re against. If someone like, um, you know Howard Elkin, correct? Yeah, of course. He’s a very close friend of mine. Mine too. If Howard Elkin looks at my charts, and does the smart vascular, and the Cleveland heart panel, and a [00:52:00] nuclear stress test, and a calcium scan, and he, with his functional medicine approach, and as a nutritionist, looks at it, and he goes, Maybe we should add 5mg of Crestor. I say, give me the prescription. I’m not a fanatic. I want those prescriptions to come from doctors who know what the hell they’re doing. who are using the proper tests, who are looking at your particle number and your particle size, and looking at those risk factors, not your good and bad cholesterol. Right. And if that holistic approach results in perhaps adding a small dose statin to the mix, I personally would take it. But not if it comes from Dr. Jones and Kaiser who says, Oh, 236, you’re going on the statin. No, I’m out the door. And unfortunately, that’s most of the people who come to me. That’s how they got their statin prescriptions. Yeah, unfortunately, that’s the healthcare system. That’s the way it’s designed to work right now in America. It’s [00:53:00] not working, folks, just so you know. It’s not working to make people healthier. Uh, Robert Lustig, a person I’m sure you know who wrote the, he has that incredible YouTube video that has over 5 million views on, uh, on Sugar, The Bitter Truth, Lustig said the American medical system is like this.
Picture a hill, a mountain, right, with a top, and then a big cliff, right? And you’re up there at the cliff, and we got tons of ambulances waiting at the bottom of the cliff to take you to the hospital. That, is the American medical system. What we’re trying to do is put some freaking guardrails on the cliff. I know, it’s unbelievable. I had a patient came to see me for his, his back pain. And we, I looked at his [00:54:00] questionnaire as part of the intake. And I said, I noticed that, um, you have, uh, elevated blood glucose. And he said, well, I’m pre diabetic. I said, Oh, okay. What did your doctor say? Oh, he said to wait till it gets worse. And then they’ll put me on medication.
You realize that that is exactly what we were told. That’s the clip you’re talking about. Exactly. It’s also exactly what we were told at the beginning of the COVID epidemic, before we had a vaccine, stay home until you’re sick enough to go to the hospital. We’ll put you on a ventilator. That was the advice. Right? Let’s just, just say it. Yeah, all these chronic diseases, there’s a long curve. You know, nobody goes from having normal, healthy blood sugar, fasting glucose of 80, to suddenly having 140. It’s slowly going up over time, and we [00:55:00] got to start helping people to get healthier, to get their metabolic health better, to control these chronic conditions before they get to the top and fall off the cliff.
Dr. Weitz: Exactly what the medical system is not set up to do. The medical system, Big Food and Big Pharma make their money and stay in business. by having good ambulances. Unfortunately, it’s going to bankrupt society because our health care system’s spending so much money, you know, little results. Exactly. With so little results. So we’ve got to start doing prevention. We’ve got to start incorporating ways of getting people healthier before they get really sick. Couldn’t agree more, man. Okay, Johnny, uh, final thoughts?
Dr. Bowden: No, I’d love to tell people how to reach me if they want to do, I’m doing private coaching. I do a different kind of private coaching than most people do. I do one session. [00:56:00] So you don’t have to sign up with me for, you know, um, I do kind of sessions where we really talk about not just nutrition and cholesterol but the person’s whole life and we see if we can kind of do a course correction, correct some misinformation, find out what’s going on, maybe reassure them a little about some of the things that they think are so bad that they’re doing when in fact they’re often doing some very good things. Um, so I love doing that. That’s on my website and of course I love if people would Reading, buy the book, the good, oh, isn’t it chilling? Well so much for that. The Great Cholesterol Myth. Thank you so much for having me on. That’s the old edition, but you get the new one. It’s got a lot more stuff on it. So what’s your website? Johnnyboden. com and there is no H in Johnny, J O N N Y. B O W D E N.
Dr. Weitz: Excellent. Thank you so much, Johnny.
Dr. Bowden: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you, man.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy Listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five star ratings and review. If you would like to work with me personally to help you improve your health, I do accept a limited number of new patients per month for a functional medicine consultation. Some of the areas I specialize in include helping patients with specific health issues like gut problems. neurodegenerative conditions, autoimmune diseases, cardiometabolic conditions, or for an executive health screen and to help you promote longevity and take a deeper dive into some of those factors that can lead to chronic diseases along the way. Please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition Office at 310-395-3111. And we’ll set you up for a new consultation for functional medicine. And I look forward to speaking to everybody next week.
