Dr. Aaron Hartman explains how unhealthy fats drive heart disease, obesity, and neurological disorders, and why healthy fats can reverse the damage. He breaks down which fats make you sick and which ones heal.
Chapters
Literally, having A Low Omega 3 levels gives you a similar risk for heart disease as smoker with normal levels. So that's pretty profound to think about. It's a pretty easy thing to fix. Also, excessive amounts of omega 6s, processed fats, and especially seed oils, industrialized seed oils has been directly associated with obesity. So can unhealthy fats be associated with illness and disease? Can industrial seed oils, hydrogenated oils, trans fats, can these things be associated with illnesses and diseases? Because this is important. Because if so, then you probably should be removing them from your diet. The short answer is yes. I'm gonna go through a brief list of some of the different fats and some of the diseases they're associated with and give you the reasons why. So the first thing, trans fats, oxidized unsaturated fats, and hydrogenated orals. These are associated with coronary artery disease. So trans fats, these are typical industrialized fat that you get in your fast food. You get in anything that's been boiled or heated. Your hydrogenated orals are the orals and fats you tend to get in fat food products you buy in the store. The hydrogenation process makes them, gives them a long shelf life. So anything's wrapped around in a wrapper that has like canola oil in it or some other hydrogenate oil. And then oxidized PUFAs, oxidized polyunsaturated fatty acids, are just healthy fats that get heated up or lay around. So you can take something like omega 3, like flax oil, just leaving it open to the air, it will oxidize. You know, flax oil, for example, once you open it, within three to six days, starts to oxidizing. So if you have an old bottle of flax oral that's half a year old, even sitting out, that's gonna have a lot of oxidization. Or when these healthy sunflower world becomes processed, it can get oxidized and made unhealthy. Again, associated with heart disease. The oxidized proof is also associated with high blood pressure. And we know. You know, one of the things I will check for in patients is oxidized LDL that is associated with buildup of atherosclerosis or thickening of the walls of your arteries. That's something we can actually test for routinely. So if anybody actually had doubts about fat scalding disease, I mean, we actually do a Cleveland heart lab where we look for these things. Metabolic syndrome, which is all the rage right now, includes diabetes, obesity, pcos, hormonal issues, I mean a whole host of things. It's specifically associated with a high omega 6 intake from seed oils. So this is kind of tricky. Where most of the omegas that you see in an industrial food system are omega 6s and they become trans, trans omega 6s fats or oxidized through either expeller pressing them, heating them or the process of deodorizing them. So I mentioned canola oil. A lot used to be called actually drape seed oil. It's from Canada, rapeseed oil. It was actually used as a motor oil in the late 1800s. And when they, someone eventually realized hey we can take this and use it for cooking or eating with, but it tastes horrible. So they deodorized it with a solvent, with a hexane type solvent. So using a petroleum based solvent to deodorize it so it doesn't stink anymore. And no one likes the name rapeseed, right? Sounds kind of bad. So let's call it, it's from Canada, so we'll call it Canadian canola oil. Right? There we go. What's funny, you'll start to see now I'm starting to see labeling going back to rapeseed because people have realized canola oil is bad. But point being is that something that was used to be used as an engine lubricant is now in food products. Engine oils last for a really long time, right? And biologically active fats, the most biologically active fats are the least stable. So like your omega 3s from fish, omega 3 from nuts, omega 6s, these are the ones that need to be the freshest. And yet we make them last a really long time. And when they get in our cells they get stuck affecting biological processes. And the high omega 6s from these type are especially associated with metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, especially the industrial seed oils, trans fats and just excessive amounts of omega 6. That's something else to talk about. There's some controversy on the numbers. But typically our ancient ancestors ate like a 1 to 1 to 1 to 4 ratio of omega 3s to omega 6s in their diet. Because you need that balance of either equal inflammation or anti inflammatory or maybe a four to one of the sixes and threes. So and that just probably relates to we had more infections and more illnesses and injuries hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago. So it just needed more of the Omega 6s versus now. But either way 4 to 1 ratio, not a big deal. The current ratio for the Average American is a 16 to 1. We are 4 times more inflammatory 4 to 16 times depending on which number you use. More inflammatory than we should be. So just having excessive amounts of omega 6s which again can be easily tested with the blood level, looking at your omega check, looking at your balance, omega 3s to 6s, easy thing to do. Interesting factoid. If your omega 3 level is low, you have an equivalent risk for heart disease as a smoker who has normal omega 3 levels. So literally having a low omega 3 levels gives you a similar risk for heart disease as smoker with normal levels. So that's pretty profound to think about. It's a pretty easy thing to fix. Also, excessive amounts of omega 6s, processed fats, and especially seed oils, industrialized seed oils has been directly associated with obesity. Once you realize these, these orals are high in sixes, Higher Lake sunflower. What is that? That's high omega 6 sunflower oil. That's more inflammatory, it's going to affect weight. Non alcoholic liver disease, which is on the rise now called metabolic associated fatty liver disease instead of nafld. That is a direct correlation with that in consumption of these unhealthy fats. Good old fashioned. High cholesterol is associated with low quality fats, trans fats and excessive amounts of linoleic acid, which is the primary omega 6 fatty acid. So this is a whole host of issues associated with these. But there's more. There's also neurological issues from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, ADHD in kids. Interestingly enough, there's actually a prescription drug called Vierin which is just a DHH, just an omega 3 fatty acid that's used to treat ADHD. Well, we also see more ADHD with omega 3 deficiencies. So it's not a big jump to see the association with these fats in kids. Neurological development, depression, anxiety and even autism spectrum disorder, we're seeing with these abnormalities in fats. But there's more. Also inflammation in general autoimmune disease, which makes sense. I talked about how having right balance of omega 3s can be anti or pro inflammatory. I talked about how these partially plastic lipids affect your body's metabolism. So it just makes sense that inflammation and autoimmune diseases would be associated. And if you have too much Omega 6s which again we mentioned that's common in our diet, you'll see more rheumatoid arthritis, you'll see more Hashimoto's thyroiditis, the oxidized fats. You'll see more lupus, chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which is mold related illness, which is Something that we deal with a lot. You'll see people with a lot of phosphatidylcholine depletion. This is an interesting note. Phosphatidylcholine, which is associated with sir, as we mentioned, but also the mitochondrial issues. The primary source of that is organ meat and egg yolks. We removed organ meat from the American diets in the 50s. It used to be a third of all meat consumption in the United States was organ meat. Now no one eats it anymore. So just a change in our diets in the last 50 years may be a potential underlying cause. Calls for increasing some different illnesses related to need of these phosphatidal phospholipids. Note, when I deal with kids with neurological issues, pants pans, autism, one of the things we recommend is diets high in phospholipids to help replenish these things important for mitochondria, or energy production. Mast cell activation syndrome is associated with overexposure of oxidized, rancid, unsaturated fats and then psoriasis. So there's a whole host of things, including cancers, you know, prostate cancer, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, hormone abnormalities, low testosterone, infertility, asthma, copd, immunodeficiency, fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndromes, a whole host of things. So here's the question for you. If this is all true, what I just said, which it is, can you use fat in a smart way to heal your body? That's what I'm talking about next. I'll give you a hint. The answer is yes. It's called lipid membrane medicine, and we did it in our house to help heal the brains of our kids. And they use it in the clinic all the time. And that's what I'm talking about Next. How can you actually use healthy fats to be a force for good and a force for healing, to make your body resilient? We'll talk about that next.
