Everything I Learned In Med School Was WRONG | Paul Saladino

Hi and welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Cody Sanchez and this is for those of you who don't want to just be rich, but free and are willing to do what it takes to get there. This episode today is for you. If you have ever wondered, why am I fat? Or why is it harder to get fit? Or what is going on in the industrial food complex? Or is American cheese real cheese? Spoiler. That one is a real doozy. I have Dr. Paul Saladino on the podcast today. Today, this man is basically my go to list for what should I buy from the grocery store. He talks about all of the things that are happening in the world around us that are creating toxicity. We talk about how to work around infertility. In some ways, we talk about what's going on with microplastics. So if you've ever felt like there's too much happening in health, you can't actually figure it out. You want to sound really smart. You want to listen to a doctor break it down live. You want to hear about more studies than you can imagine for the decisions you make on what you put on your skin and what you put inside of your body. This podcast is for you. Spoiler. Wait for the part about does he wear deodorant or not? And did I sniff him or not? Do you think today's processed foods are like cigarettes in the 1980s?

You mean the thing that we don't quite know is killing us, but is actually killing us? Yeah, absolutely. I think RFK Jr said it really well and this is timely, that we are. We're clearly being poisoned. I mean, anyone who looks at Westernized Americans from a zoomed out perspective over the last 50 years can see that something has gone horribly wrong with us. Obesity rates, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, everything is going the wrong direction. And yet we are being. We are being counseled by our government to eat healthy. And more people will respond to surveys saying they're eating healthy. More people will respond to surveys saying they're exercising less people are smoking, but everything is going in the wrong direction. We're fatter, sicker, less healthy, more depressed. So what's going on here? There's something happening. Yeah.

And what do you say to people who say we're just eating more calories because food is better tasting and cheaper and more available? So it's just calories. It's not the GMOs, it's not the processed foods at all. What do you think?

I think they're wrong. I think that if you look at data. We are not really eating more calories. And if we're eating more calories, it's small and it doesn't account for the increase in all of these chronic illnesses that are just really doubling over the span of 20 or 30 years. I mean, that's not just 100 extra calories a day. And then you have to look at it from a holistic perspective and ask, why are we eating more calories? Food is not more available today than it was in the 1970s. There's. You can still go to the grocery store. There were no shortages in the 1970s. Humans could eat the exact same amount of food. So some studies suggest that we're not eating more calories. Some studies suggest that we're eating slightly more calories. But if we are eating more calories, and I think in general, a lot of people have the issue and it's with satiety. And I think that that is another insidious problem with ultra processed food is that it makes us more hungry. And that hunger cue is very, very hard for us to ignore. If not impossible, nearly impossible. You can be super disciplined and lose weight eating Twinkies, but eventually that hunger is just going to catch up with you. You can lose weight with a caloric deficit of bagels or potatoes or any junk food. It's not that you can't lose weight eating processed food. It's just going to be much more difficult. And when we look at studies, when we put humans in controlled environments, and there's now two studies on this, Kevin hall did a study, and there was recently a researcher in Japan that did kind of the same thing. They can put humans in a feeding ward where they control all of their intakes. And they present people with very similar sets of meals. One of them is ultra processed food. One of them is essentially unprocessed food. They try and match the foods for presented calories, presented fat, protein, carbohydrates, presented salt, sugar, all those things. And people are allowed to eat as much as they want. And the ultra processed foods group invariably eat more. They come back for seconds and thirds. So there's probably something in these foods that are also sabotaging satiety. And that is kind of the beginning of the problem.

Interesting. What if the counter argument was that they just taste better than the healthy foods and so we want more of that? Could that be an argument or.

No, Taste better is such a. That's a subjective thing. Right? Tastes better is happening in your brain. Right? So tastes better is not something that we can Objectively measure.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. It gets confusing sometimes as a consumer. Like, you know, I have a lot of people on the podcast and I am not a nutritionist, I am not a doctor. I try to stay fit. But it's confusing because there seems to be a war going on between multiple sides of the coin, you know, and I think the war is interesting in a few ways. Like even I was watching a video where you said canola oil, canola oil is toxic sludge and got flagged as misinformation on Instagram. Like, what is canola oil? That was fascinating, your video. And like, why do you think that gets tagged as misinformation?

Right. So it's kind of like who writes the history books? Who determines what is truth in 2024? If I'm saying it on Instagram, meta determines what is truth, right? If I'm saying it on X Community notes determines what is truth. And that's a little bit better situation. Thanks, Elon. Not perfect, but a group of community members can have a more sort of democratic process than Meta. You know, Mark Zuckerberg and his CEO of Instagram get to say, well, we've decided that we're going to look at this one meta analysis, which is a study of studies on seed oils. And this researcher, usually they reference a meta analysis from a researcher at Tufts. His name is Darius Mozaffarian. The same guy who gifted us with the food compass guidelines that told us that Fruit Loops and Cheerios were healthier than ground beef and eggs.

That's not great.

The same individual, clearly very omniscient when it comes to nutrition, very wise nutritional researcher wrote a meta analysis looking at some of the randomized controlled trials with seed oils and he determined that no seed oils are not bad for human health. So if I contradict him without actually getting to debate him or directly criticize his meta analysis, which is kind of cherry picked, then meta can just say, nope, we're fact checking you. So there is no objective truth in 2024. It just depends on the platform in which you are saying something. So they can say whatever they want, you know, and you see this now post election, you see this now. People are just. It's a war of fact checking. Right? And who fact checks the fact checkers? There's no one. I don't have the ability on meta to come back on the back end and say, actually, here's why I think you're wrong. Here's why I actually think canola oil is problematic. So in answer to Your question? Canola oil is made from rapeseeds, which are not actually a food for humans. It's different, perhaps, if we're talking about corn oil, because we eat corn and we can talk about corn oil. Right? I'm not a fan of corn oil either. And to get the equivalent of maybe five tablespoons of corn oil, you'd have to eat 70 ears of corn, which is a whole separate conversation. But rapeseeds have never been eaten by humans and really cannot be eaten by humans if you just take rapeseed oil. There is a large amount of this monounsaturated fat called erucic acid in rapeseed oil, and that is linked to cardiomyopathy, heart issues in animal studies. And so it's actually banned. You cannot sell rapeseed oil. You also can't sell mustard seed oil. For similar reasons. Researchers, I think, in the 1980s or 1990s, genetically modified rapeseed oil to a low erucic acid variant, but still containing this fatty acid. And that was what was called canola oil. So canola is an acronym for Canadian Oil low acid. There is no such thing as canola. Right? This is the rapeseed or the Canola Producers association of Canada thinking, hey, we have fields and fields of canola oil. We have fields and fields of this rapeseed. Like, let's do something with it. This is often how seed oils got into our food supply. They were used originally for other things originally. In the early 1900s, they were used as engine lubricants and on ships in World War I and World War II, because they stay slippery when they are wet, they still maintain lubrication. So they were industrial byproducts, and now they've been used in our food supply. So that's the first thing that kind of make us should make us question, like, is this something we want to eat? So canola oil, not really a food for humans, contains small amounts of erucic acid, but like all of the seed oils. And this is why I think we can really draw a swath across the seed oils, whether it's canola, corn, sunflower, safflower, soybean. Those are the big ones, sometimes peanut. They're all refined, bleached, and deodorized. So there's a great video on YouTube of how to make canola oil. And you see these little seeds that are in this extruding press, and they're kind of like waxy substances getting pressed out. Then you get this murky oil, which then has to be heated and then refined and bleached and deodorized and extracted with hexane, which can be contaminated with benzene. So you get these neurotoxic components that are even used to make the oil. Then it has to be deodorized again multiple times, heated to very high temperatures, as high as 500 degrees Fahrenheit. So you have a polyunsaturated oil, which is a fragile oil, which can become rancid, quote, unquote, quickly being heated to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. The boiling temperature of water is 212, right? So that's like basically a very, very, very hot stove. It's insanely high temperature for an oil like that. And you quickly break the oil, you degrade the oil very quickly. So then you take all of that and you package it into a plastic bottle which leaches cadmium, lead and antimony into the oil and it sits on the shelf of a grocery store, getting exposed to artificial light for months at a time and oxidizing further. And we are told by the American Heart association that that is a heart healthy option because it lowers ldl.

That is just such a mind fuck.

And it's completely myopic because the only metric that we're using to say that it's healthy is LDL lowering, which is a whole nother ball of wax.

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So there's two different categories of high blood pressure, right? There's like, primary hypertension and secondary hypertension. The majority of people who go to their doctor and get diagnosed with high blood pressure have primary hypertension, which is just related to diet and lifestyle. And most people, even in the mainstream medical community, would agree with that. Secondary hypertension is very rare. It can be caused by tumors that secrete things that change the blood volume. We're not talking about secondary hypertension. That's a diagnosable medical condition that requires a more sophisticated workup. Primary hypertension is the majority of what we see. My father had hypertension, right? And it is essentially an indication of vascular dysregulation. So the inside of our blood vessels, these are veins on my arm, but inside our arteries. When you're measuring blood pressure, you're really looking at the arterial pressure, not the venous pressure. So they put a stethoscope on your arm, and they measure the arterial pressure in an artery that runs here in my arm. And so that is caused by dysregulation of the cells that line those arteries and don't allow them to expand and contract in a healthy manner. This is arterial dysfunction. Vascular dysfunction is what causes high blood pressure most of the time, related to systemic inflammation in the body and linked to insulin resistance, also known as metabolic dysfunction. Insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction almost entirely fixable. With primarily diet, intentional dietary choices, and a moderate amount of exercise, you don't have to be a marathon runner. And in fact, you probably don't want to be a marathon runner because you can go too far with exercise.

So.

So, yes, this is a condition that is completely fixable. But as physicians, we are not taught to talk to patients that way. We are given this sort of subtle propaganda in medical school that your patients won't make dietary change. It's too hard for them. Don't even bother asking. Or if you do spend 30 seconds and say, hey, do you want to. Why don't you come back the next visit, increase the quality of your diet, like, eat some healthier foods. I'll see you in a month if it gets better. That's all I'm gonna say to them. Eat healthier foods. What is a patient going to do with that? You know, go for a walk around your neighborhood, eat healthier foods. I'll see you in a month. Not surprisingly, in a month, their blood pressure is the same or worse. Right? So we're never given any reasonable tools in medical school. And before I went to medical school, I worked as a physician assistant in cardiology. So I've dealt with a lot of people with high blood pressure even before my residency, after medical school. And it's always the same story, right? It's just, it's much easier to say, here's an ACE inhibitor, here's a calcium channel blocker, here's a beta blocker, here's a medication. I know that's going to lower your blood pressure. And my really only job as a physician is to fix the thing that I am charged with, which is your blood pressure. I don't have any responsibility for really downstream side effects that might occur from this if they're dealing with your endocrine system. Or then I'm going to refer you to someone else and say, well, I did the right thing. Right thing, right quote, unquote. I did what my governing bodies in medicine have told me to do. I checked the box, he got a side effect. Not my problem.

So you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text, but which you do you listen to, is it, we could buy a house in Tulum, get optioning those options, we could lose everything. Or let's do a little research, get your head in the trade and make the investment decision that's right for you. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart A massage chair might.

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Yeah. And do you think that, should one expect side effects from having high blood pressure only taking pills? It seems like maybe that might be a reason why you're having other illnesses and disease pop up. But actually we don't talk about that. It's like, well, if I manage the Symptom, then like whatever else happens is totally unrelated to said issue.

No, it's physiologic. Whack a mole, right? You can't, like if you have an imbalance in the human body, and this sounds woo woo, but it's really not like if you have an imbalance in the human body, you simply cannot whack this mole without three more popping up. It's very difficult to give someone a medication for any condition and not have something else happen because of it. You give someone a proton pump inhibitor because they have gastroesophageal reflux, right? Well, then you have an increased rate of pneumonia because of side effects. Then you have malabsorption of multiple nutrients, including B12 and other things that are dependent on the acidity of your stomach. So you have all of these downstream side effects because the problem really wasn't that they had a deficiency of a proton pump inhibitor. This isn't a pharmaceutical medication deficiency. This is an imbalance. It's a signal to us as physicians or as patients, quote unquote, that there's an imbalance in your body. In the case of gastroesophageal reflux, it usually has to do with dysbiosis in the gut at some level, whether it's the small intestine or some part of this that's leading to a reflux and dysfunction of the esophageal sphincter. If you can get at the root of that and correct that with dietary change, lifestyle change, you probably don't need a proton pump inhibitor. And this is, it's just the story being played out over and over and over in Western medicine. It's so sad and it really forsakes so many people.

Yeah, it's really sad. And I think what's interesting about what you do is that you'll look at these randomized controlled studies and say, let me show you not only why this isn't true, but how to look at studies. And so like you had one where you were looking at seed oils in humans. Maybe it was the same guy. But you were saying, here's all the reasons why this study, that everything is referencing turtles all the way down to this study is actually problematic. And I think that would be interesting for people to hear, like, how do you determine. No, no, my doctor says this study. And why is it that doctors don't take the next step, which is go, hey, this study isn't actually well executed.

It's a lot of time. You know, as physicians, we can talk about that with seed oils, because that's a really important point. But as physicians, most of us work in an insurance model which doesn't pay us for outcomes, it pays us for time. And so if we are not seeing four to five to six patients an hour, it's very difficult to even pay your malpractice insurance or make a profit and support, you know, so there's a real financial constraint on physicians. Very quickly. You know that in medical school, the specialties that pay more are more prestigious and they're more competitive. If you want to be a dermatologist, if you want to be an orthopedic surgeon, if you want to be a plastic surgeon, those are the people who do the best in medical school because they make the most money, right? The people that make the least money in medicine, those are the least competitive specialties. So medicine is completely based on a financial model. And the motivations in medical school are to do as good as I can so I can make as much money. And look, everyone that goes to medical school is super smart and worked really hard to get there. But there's, even within medical school, there is a ranking of specialties. And so I have tons and tons of respect for people that work in internal medicine and family practice, but those specialties don't pay a ton of money and they're doing really good work that people need to receive. And, and it's very difficult for a doctor to look at the methods and the history of any study that they're basing their decisions on. It's so much easier as a physician to just say, this is what I learned in medical school, this is what everyone else does. I am protected from malpractice liability. If I do this thing, which is what are the guidelines, I'm going to do that thing. So in the case of the seed oil study, or multiple of the randomized controlled trials looking at seed oils, these are nutrition studies, essentially, and there are some single blind, some double blind, randomized controlled trials done with seed oils. Most of them were done, in fact, all of them were done really between the late 1950s and the early 1970s. So they're all 50 to 70 years old. We haven't had a randomized controlled trial with seed oils in 50 to 70 years. No one has done these studies. So we are looking at methods, we are looking at nutritional knowledge that is 50 to 70 years old when these studies were designed. Why? Because there's no funding. What pharmaceutical company stands to benefit from doing a trial comparing saturated fats and soybean oil? Today, none. So much of what we see in the medical literature, so much of what we're taught in medical school is pharma funded research. That's all that's done today. That's the majority, right? It's not all, but it's the vast majority. And there's a zeitgeist, there is an accepted sort of network saying you can't even ask this question now. Your grant, you know, your proposal will just be laughed at. Everyone knows Cody, quote unquote that saturated fat is bad for humans. You can't even propose a study that's using saturated fat in one of the arms of the study today without getting a lot of pushback. Maybe you could get it through an irb, but there's become so much groupthink and I think that's gonna change with this administration and maybe overhaul at the level of the nih. But there are certainly questions that have been omerte, that have been unable to be asked in the last 15 to 20 years of research. It's very hard to do any research today that questions the lipid hypothesis, which is again something we can talk about regarding LDL cholesterol and direct connections of heart disease. That idea is so entrenched that if you propose a study to question that, it's going to be pretty hard to get this approved. So if you wanted to do a randomized controlled trial with seed oils in humans, that's not observational. You're looking at five to seven years with three to 500 patients, maybe to start a thousand would be better. You're looking at 20 to $50 million to fund that study. Who's gonna push that bill? Like nobody. No, like the Butter association isn't. And if the butter. There's no butter association. Right. But like if the National Tallow association funds it, there's gonna be so many cries. It's corrupt. Right. So you know, agriculture can't fund it. A seed oil company wouldn't. Why would they fund it? Right. Why would Kraft or Proctor and Gamble or Bungee, which is a company that makes seed oils? Why would they fund that study if it could potentially make seed oils look bad? And a study like that, if it were done, that would erode the foundation of so many of the foods that we are given in the grocery store so profoundly that it would probably cause a collapse of our food system for a short amount of time. If RFK Jr is able to actually get meaningful legislation or meaningful scientific decision making done on seed oils. Think about how many foods in the grocery store are going to have to be labeled differently. That is a multi billion dollar, potentially hundreds of billions of dollars are on the line here. There's a lot on the line with this, with seed oil. So there's a lot to be protected there in terms of the conceptualization by the public that Doritos, as long as I don't eat too many, maybe it's not the biggest problem. When the flip side of that coin is, look, we live in a free society. You can do what you want, you're sovereign. But that's frickin poison. And if you like eating Doritos, you need to understand that's poisonous for you. We're allowed to do things that are poisonous for us. We're allowed to drink alcohol, we're allowed to do a lot of things that are poisonous, to take risks, to smoke cigarettes. But hopefully we can get some real honest conversation and maybe even some studies that need to be done to help people understand that, like that is poison. Do what you want, but don't give it to your kids thinking that it's okay. So it's a really tricky. It's like a Gordian knot. It's really difficult to untie all of this.

Yeah, well. And what's crazy, I think is like for instance, and we'll blur this out because this is a buddy's company and we like the buddy. But I had no idea until I saw another video that you did about aluminum cans. I was like, I'm doing so good. I don't drink plastic. Of course I don't, because that would be bad. And people say micro plastics are not good. So I have my nice little aluminum can. But talk to me about what is inside here because it turns out maybe this isn't such a good idea.

It's not, it's not. It's not ideal. Right. So you're still drinking out of a plastic bottle, Drinking out of an aluminum can. There's really clear videos that have been done where they take acid, a sulfuric acid, and you can dissolve the aluminum. And what you end up with is a plastic bag. It looks like a condom.

Yeah, you can kind of twist the plastic inside of it.

You can twist the plastic or you can completely dissolve it. There's a plastic bag in your aluminum can. Invariably, you cannot put any liquid in an aluminum can like that because the aluminum will leach into the fluid. And we know that you probably shouldn't be drinking aluminum. You know, you shouldn't be wrapping your food in aluminum foil for the same reason we don't Want the aluminum touching food. There's potentially problems with excess aluminum in our diet. So what do we do? Right. Everything has to be in glass. It's not really tenable in terms of weight and economies of scale. But I just think it's important for people to understand that, like, knowledge is power. Know better, do better. And for those people that are suffering, which is really, this is the ethos of all of the content that I make now. And it's been an evolution. It's like, look, if you're thriving, don't change anything. But if you're not, I want people to know that there are a lot of these inputs that they're doing in their life that could be potentially contributing in a cumulative manner. I did a video recently about these printer receipts. People got super triggered. But look, there's solid evidence that touching these receipts can lead to absorption of endocrine disrupting chemicals through your skin. So, like, don't hate me. Like, this is thermal paper. This is a big deal. I mean, Shanna Swan's been on Huberman's podcast talking about this. This is not pseudoscience. Now, is one receipt gonna kill you? No. And I said that in the video. But people just get so triggered because they can't wrap their head around the number of things that are toxic in our environment. And I get it. We live in a pretty scary place. And so it's not about being perfect. It's just about doing better. And what I'm about is kind of hope for people. I've met so many people over the years in medical school, in my training, working as a pa, working as a physician who end up at a place of despair because they're sick. And no doctor they see gives them any idea that there's a way out. All you can do is take this medication, which we know has side effects. So that's incredible to me. If you don't have a way out, what are you supposed to do? You might as well just. You're going to live the rest of your life with a lower quality of life than you could possibly have. That's wild. That's horrible. But I want people to know that there are so many ways out that they may not have heard about. That's what I just want to put it out there. Tools for people. When you're ready. Are you doing great? Drink out of cans. Who cares? Touch your receipts. Okay, fine. But if you have hormonal dysfunction, infertility, low libido, obesity, depression, like, some of these inputs, they matter in a cumulative way. And being intentional with little steps can make a big difference over time.

So true. I mean, for instance, I have a lot of girlfriends now, I'm a little bit older who are struggling with infertility. And you know, it always bothered me that the story about reproductive rights was always one sided. It was like reproductive rights are, you know, abortion rights. And I, you know, I think you should believe whatever you want to believe about that. But I want the other side of the coin too. Reproductive rights are also. Why is it harder for women to get pregnant seemingly? And why is nobody talking about that? So maybe along that same vein, I hear Paul Saladino will not date a woman who wears lotion, perfume or Lululemon. Is this true?

It's pretty true.

It's pretty true.

Or if she's amazing, I'm going to try and convince her not to do those things.

Okay, so let's talk about it. So what, what's the deal with lotion, perfume, lululemon and women?

So let's do lotion and perfume first. These are cosmetics, but all cosmetics. Anything that we're putting on our skin, whether we're a man or a woman, is being absorbed. Skin is an, it's not a lipid, you know, impermeable, impermeable barrier. It's not a water impermeable barrier. A lot of things you put on your skin can be absorbed. We know this and this is the problem that we, we are porous, right? We have pores. This is how we sweat and pheromones come out and we regulate fluids in our body. We are full of holes, we just can't see them. So anything you put on your skin is going into your body and being absorbed into the cells at your dermis and epidermis. So there have been interesting studies looking at women, specifically in the study and cosmetics and personal care products, whether it's deodorant or lotions, and women who make a change and remove the personal care products that have parabens and phalates and other endocrine disruptors. A lot of the stuff around forever chemicals is not noted on labels. So it's subtle. But women who make an intentional change to remove those things, we see noticeable, marked, statistically significant decreases in levels of these compounds in their body within a few days.

Wow.

And we're talking like the levels can go down by 50%. So there's a massive input. And these are not things that occur naturally in our bodies. Right. These are BPs, BPA, parabens, phthalates, which have many iterations and incarnations.

And why are those bad? Why don't we want them in us?

Because they disrupt. They look like our hormones, right? They're imposters. And so they mimic, a lot of them, mimic estrogen specifically. So they can mimic estrogen at the receptor and block its action. They can stimulate excess estrogen action. They're disrupting our hormones. We are delicate, right. And we're resilient, but we're also delicate, right? So like humans have never been in contact with these chemicals. There are things in nature that affect us in certain ways, but these are just new things for us. Maybe in another million years, I don't know if Homo sapiens will last that long or 300,000 years. Our bodies will adapt to these compounds, but they're not very adapted. Now. These compounds have only been in our sphere of existence for the last 50, 30, 20, 10, five years. That's way too quickly for our bodies to adjust. Who knows if we ever will. So now they're just this new piece of information that our bodies are unaware of. And it really can cause problems for humans in terms of, like you said, fertility, all sorts of hormonal things in women and men.

Yeah. You know what's interesting too is have you seen the new trend with young girls where they young girls are starting to put on cosmetics and skin care products younger than ever. And so if you look at actually the growth in the cosmetic industry, in female cosmetic products, the number one growth is sub 16 years old. So we are having facial like, we are having salicylic acid and eye cream for 12 and 11 year old girls who do not need it by the way whatsoever of course, and so fast with such high margins that they also are creating these little, they're like refrigerators for little girls. And I swear to God you can look it up and see if there's a video here for you. But there's these little refrigerators that they put on top of the girls countertops that you put all of your face products in. And this is a new trend for them. And they're starting to be these side effects for young women where. Not young women, young girls where salicylic acid on like a face that doesn't have acne. You're not really getting ACNE when you're 8, 9, 10, 11. And so it's interesting to see. I can't even imagine what's gonna happen to the next generation because I didn't start all that until I was in my 20s probably.

Wow. You know, it's scary.

Yeah.

And you look at young girls hitting puberty earlier and earlier, you know, they're just. There are all of these compounds in our environment that are affecting us negatively. You also asked about Lululemon. Yeah, it's the same thing. I mean, I. You know, I just saw an article a couple weeks ago about whether it's a sports bra or leggings. When you sweat in these, it increases the absorption of chemicals in these pieces of clothing significantly. If you're wearing leggings and they're dry, it doesn't look like we absorb much from it. Right. Women don't absorb much from the leggings, but women, most of the time, this is athleisure. They're like, going to the gym after.

Some, you know, or me in the sauna. Right.

You're in the sauna or you're running. So a lot of times, women, especially men, don't wear as many of these, like, tight products on our bodies. We can sometimes times men in jiu jitsu wear these rash guards. Right. Which are kind of the same thing as, like, a sports bra in some ways. Right. It's a. It's a polyester piece of clothing that adheres to our body, and we get super sweaty in it. So men are not immune from this. But generally, we're thinking of women wearing leggings and sports bras, sweating in them. There is, like, documented research evidence that that increases the absorption of endocrine disrupting chemicals. Again, bps, bpa, which is a whole bisphenol series, parabens and phalates into the body. And then what does it do? We're just now beginning to understand this.

Wow. Yeah. Plus, have you seen women's leggings lately? They are everywhere. They are very tight. There's collective Taylor's gonna laugh. Like, there's these new leggings that you just see. I'm like, I'm a chick and I'm looking. I'm sorry. Like, they are up in everything. So what do you do? You throw your expensive leggings away. You buy only cotton ones. What's the answer here?

I mean, it's again, it's just like, knowledge is power. Know better, do better. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If you're thriving, maybe that's not the biggest input. Right. Maybe that's not the biggest lever to pull.

I.

If I'm in that situation, I'm thinking, okay, somebody needs to start developing leggings and sports bras in better fabrics. This is a business opportunity for a whole growing segment of men and women. If it's men, if it's rash guards, Right? I mean, for me, like, I'm a surfer. There are zero companies that make board shorts out of anything but polyester. And believe me, I've tried to surf in cotton shorts. It doesn't work very well. It's horrible, right?

Yeah.

There was a company, Kelly Slater's company, used to make wool board shorts, and they discontinued them. So hopefully, by education, there can be an increased awareness and demand for these products in the market. And it's a new space. I've seen women starting to wear leggings that are cotton. Or look, if It's. If it's 5% spandex, but mostly cotton, that's way, way better than 100% polyester. Way better. Also, underwear is for women. You know, what is your underwear made out of?

Now, I did the whole organic cotton switch.

It's probably important. Like, these tissues that are covered by sports bras and underwear are very absorptive. They're mucosal tissues. So it's a big deal.

Okay, really important comment. The thing is, I haven't met that many super hippie women that age super well. You know, it's like a lot of wrinkles. Oh, maybe that's why, you know, my husband's really funny. He'll be like, you don't need Botox. I'm like, you never see me without it. Like, you have no idea. You don't know what I look like if I never get Botox because I've had it before. Don't tell me it's bad for me. I don't even want to know.

We can talk about it. It's a separate conversation.

Okay, okay. Okay, fine. But, like, what do you think about this, you know, aesthetic we have today? At least for women, it looks a certain way, and it's really hard to get products that are healthy on your face.

So, again, this is just my perspective as a man.

You're not doing Botox.

I don't do Botox. I've never done Botox. I've never really done anything cosmetic for my face. And people will be like, yeah, that's because your face. That's why you look old. You know, whatever.

Great. Internet's rude.

Thank you. Whatever. People will use that as an opportunity I'm sure to hate. But, like, I don't want to put chemicals on my face. I refuse to do it. And in terms of the Botox, I'll just say this, like, as a man, I have trouble dating women whose foreheads don't move.

Look at this. Because I'm perplexed. I'm upset. I can't even. I can't lift an eyebrow. Is it working? I mean, you want it, you want to see it, you want to see the wrinkles.

There are 200 plus people can fact check me on this. Maybe I'm off a little bit. There are many, many muscles in the human face. And I think that we've evolved this very delicate communication between men and women, but also between women and their children and men and their children, whereby our expressions like this is. This is so much communication in the way that I move my face beyond the intonation of my words.

That's true.

So I can be on a date with a woman and think like, there's nothing coming back at me, right? Like I have no idea what's going on here. How are we going to form a partnership? And I actually have concerns and there's some. There is a hypothesis that women with too much Botox could potentially impair pair bonding with their children because the infant is not seeing the woman's face move. Remember during COVID when everyone was wearing the masks and so many kids were sort of delayed in terms of their social skills. Botox is kind of the same thing, but with the top half of the face or, you know, with the forehead and with around the eyes.

I don't do the eyes, but now they have these new silicon strips. This is really, I'm sure important to you that you could put on here instead. That's supposed to help with the lines, but yeah, you can be pretty vain watching yourself on TV all the time as a woman. Also, I think, you know, we did a series that like opened up my eyes. I mean, if you think about my generation, I'm 38. And we went through. Let's see, what did we go through? We went through heroin chic. Remember that? Like Kate Moss. So like as skinny as humanly possible.

I didn't know what it was called.

Okay, now you do. Add that to your repertoire. You tell me about crazy, like multi syllable words in medicine. I'll teach you about heroin chic.

Okay, Heroin chic. Let's go.

Yeah. Okay, so we got heroin chic. Back in the day, that was where we were told be a scene. Skinny as humanly possible. That's sexy, right? And then we went from that to actually expanded bodies. So like the big, you know, Kim Kardashian butts, the puffer fit, lish, the silicon, you know, chest. Then we've most recently gone to, you know, releasing all of those. So now we want to release the fillers. We want to have a more natural look. And so in my lifespan, which is like 20 years of being cognizant of these things, we've had three materially different body types as a woman. And so imagine that, you know, these young women these days are thinking that they actually have to change their body composition in order to fit a beauty norm. How scary.

It's so hard. I have a younger sister, so I'm a little bit aware of this because I always felt for her having to go through these beauty norms and I think that she's navigated it very well and very gracefully. But I think it, in many ways, I think that it's got to be very, very difficult as a woman to navigate that today, whether it's dating or marriage. And especially a woman who is in the public eye. Right. I mean, I'm a man, I'm a 47 year old man and I still get self conscious about being in the public eye and I've just kind of released it and been like, look, this is what I'm, this is what I'm about. Like I'm trying to do the best I can and be authentic about the way I look as a 47 year old man. I take care of myself. But it's hard, right? And I think it comes back even more on women because there are such different, I would say impossible beauty standards.

Yeah, well, and also there's like financial reasons for why women care about it. Like we have, quote, unquote, pretty privileged. And I should check my validity of my studies. But there's quite a few studies that show that women who wear makeup have a double digit. We won't get that specific about the numbers, but somewhere between 15 and 30% increase in pay just from wearing makeup versus not all things else being relatively equal.

That's crazy.

So you can kind of see why you might start paying more attention to the way that you look and dress.

Well, which makes a lot of sense.

You have to keep up.

It's like I'm reminded of Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. If everyone is doing steroids, if everyone is doing epo, erythropoietin, if everyone is doing drugs in your sport. Yeah, you have, you know, you have to do that to even be seen as like competitive. And so in the marketplace or it's a hard thing for women because if men on the, on the other end, and I always wonder how much of these beauty standards are women doing it for other women versus probably the most versus women doing it for men. Yeah, but if men are seeing this, our perspective on this is being warped, you know, or other women, you know, who want to date women. Like, right. So, like, whatever perspective partner, you want their perspective of what someone attractive is. Is being warped again by social media and these crazy norms that are happening. AI is not helping that.

Yeah, I agree with that. Truth. You don't use deodorant, toothpaste, no lotion, no cologne, and you use beef fat as sunscreen.

Mostly. Truth. Yeah, I use. So I don't use deodorant. Generally speaking, if I'm going somewhere and have to be super professional. And I don't, you know, want to have any scent. I might use apple cider vinegar or rubbing alcohol, but I don't use any traditional.

You just rub it underneath?

Yeah, you just spray to rub it underneath.

Are you smelly?

I don't think so, but I smell like a human.

You smell like a human?

Yeah.

He smells lovely.

Could I. Potentially.

Okay, ready?

Let's go.

No, you actually smell totally normal. No deodorant.

No deodorant.

And you're sweating.

I'm sweating?

I'm sweating?

Yeah. Yeah.

Wow.

I give it a lot of.

Cody. Approved.

Okay. Wow, that was a tense moment there.

You're, like, gone sideways.

And I don't use toothpaste again. This is one of the things that I get a lot of flack for.

No toothpaste.

Toothpaste is silly. Like, look, I don't. First of all, I'm not a fan of fluoride, and there's a lot of fluoride in toothpaste, and there's a lot of fluoride in drinking water, et cetera, et cetera. So please filter your water with a filter that actually fluoride out. You don't need fluoride in your toothpaste. When I was a kid, I had these fluoride trays that they used to put in my mouth at the dentist. I shudder to think about this. Anyway, you don't need fluoride in your toothpaste. And there are natural toothpastes that don't use fluoride, but then they have things like sds, sodium dodecyl sulfate, or diatomaceous earth. Things that could even be SDS could be disruptive to the gut flora. Sometimes diatomaceous earth or other ingredients are too abrasive for the enamel of our teeth.

Isn't that, like, what murders little insects you put in plants and stuff?

Yeah, and maybe. Maybe diatomaceous earth isn't in toothpaste anymore. But they use. Sometimes they use things that are abrasive. People used to brush their teeth with baking soda. This is not a good idea. Right. It's way too abrasive for the enamel. So our mouth is like a reflection of our gut flora. Right. And if you have bad breath, it's not that you're not brushing your teeth with toothpaste, it's that you have dysbiosis in your gut. Right. So it all comes back to quality of food. I used to. I remember this time when I was in PA school, so my late 20s, I was going out on a date with a woman and I had just. I used to love Listerine. I was like, this is the greatest stuff ever. And I left the house and my dad was like. He just said, I can smell it. It's too much. And I was like, no, it's good, it's good. I used to just crush the mouthwash. But now we know that mouthwash, it kills all of the flora in your mouth which are essential for the production of nitric oxide. There are studies in people who are working out in the gym that when they use mouthwash, it actually attenuates how much muscle they can gain. It affects the quality and the improvement in your physiology when you do workouts by using mouthwash. So you don't want to carpet bomb your microbiome in your mouth, in your gut. We need these bacteria, and we cannot sterilize ourselves. We cannot. Look, if you go to the bathroom, wash your hands, fine. But understand that there are endocrine disruptors, potentially microbiota, disrupting chemicals in many of the soaps we use. And so I don't see the point to using soap on my skin. I'm not, like, I'm not literally swimming in mud all day. I'm okay, you know?

So no washing hands with soap after. In the bathroom.

Well, what's in the soap? Right, yeah. Is it fragrance? Is it paraben? Is it phalate? Is a triclosan, which is, I think, pretty problematic for the human gut microbiota. So if you want to use, like a natural soap after you go to the bathroom. Okay. But know what's in it. Right? And so many of these fragrances and parabens and phthalates are problematic.

So just water.

Water most of the time. Yeah. And I.

What about, like, tallow body soap?

Tallow body soap would be much better.

Better.

Much better. Yeah. And again, like, I think that as humans, we are worried about what other people will think. We Want it. We don't want to smell. We don't want to smell a certain way. We don't want our breath to be bad. And so much of this comes back to the quality of just the way we live our lives. Right? What is the quality of the food you're eating? That's when you get bad breath if you're not eating that well. So that's the issue here. And I think that there are ways to make healthier toothpaste. But again, it's kind of based on this fear around if I don't brush my teeth, my breath will be bad. And that's not really what happens. Like, humans have a natural smell, which probably is attractive to people. I mean, the other question is, do you want to. We probably cannot cover our pheromones, but we probably don't want to cover our pheromones for our partners, for potential partners. More than, like, at all. Like, we want people to smell us as humans. That's a connection that we have with other people. And this is all completely against the societal norm. And so it's very controversial. But I want people I'm on a date with to be able to smell my pheromones. As a human, we can talk about birth control, too. There's so many rabbits.

Smelled your pheromones.

What's that?

So I said, now I've smelled your pheromones.

You smell my pheromones.

We're on the same page.

You kind of. You can and you know, like, if you're on a date with someone or you're dating someone, you want to know if there is genetic compatibility there, and this and that is affected by our pheromones and these signals. And though there hasn't been much research into human pheromones, it's. The evidence is so overwhelming that they're there. Just anecdotally or observationally, we have. Humans have pheromones. All other mammals produce pheromones. Why would humans not produce pheromones? Have you seen the studies on birth control? This is relevant. So women who take birth control select different partners when they're presented with sweaty T shirts. So they've actually. Speaking of who funds these studies, look, maybe there's hope for seed oil studies because somebody funded a study where women on birth control were given sweaty T shirts from men, and they knew sort of the immunologic signature of the men in the T shirts. And women on the birth control selected different mates in terms of compatibility with their genetics than women off birth Control. So what happens is that women on birth control select men who have more similar genetics. Women off birth control select men with different genetics, mostly at this MHC antigen locus in the immune system. In nature, mates are generally chosen based on genetic diversity. You want someone with different genetics than you, so you have the most robust offspring in terms of mate pairing. Right. And you can see in populations that have a lot of inbreeding that people generally have more diseases and become less, less robust quickly. This happens in a lot of populations. You get these rare diseases that are amplified, that shouldn't happen. We want diversity in terms of human mating and combinations of genetics. And so women on birth control are kind of choosing the wrong partners.

So scary.

And it begs the question of women on birth control choosing a partner, getting off birth control, getting pregnant, and then how many relationships does that end or cause problems with when you're actually not that compatible with your partner now and you've had a child with them or you're pregnant with them? That's wild. So in terms of choosing a partner, pretty important to know these things and sample these things. There's another study that I'll mention which is really wild on the same topic. They looked at strippers, and there are strippers on birth control and strippers off birth control. And when the stripper's off birth control are performing, they earn the most tips right around their ovulation. They have a huge peak in the month when they ovulate. And the rest of the month is like less tips. Right. Women on birth control earned the same amount of tips all month and it was much lower. So if there are any strippers listening to the podcast, big audience, and you want to make more money, you got to get off birth control. But clearly men know, right? And men are paying women more when they're ovulating. There's something going on here. They're communicating. And being on birth control abolishes that. So, like making mate pairing more difficult. Birth control, pheromones smelling. That's how we got on this topic. From like soaps and perfumes and all these things.

Fascinating. So let's say that you buy into it and you're like, okay, I want to decrease a bunch of these endocrine disrupting extra things that we do. What do you do so that you can still sort of manage through society? Do you. Is it tallow soap? Is it shaving your armpits? If you're a man, is it eating certain types of food? How do we not be smelly and also be healthier?

So again, the option, it's pretty simple, right? There's like rubbing alcohol, apple cider vinegar. There are more natural deodorants now that have no parabens and phthalates. There are more natural toothpaste if you absolutely want the minty fresh feel in your mouth, which whatever do you do. You, you know, like, there's options. And I think that it's avoiding the lesser options, avoiding the ones that are gonna be problematic in a cumulative fashion. Because there's a lot of things that we're putting on our body and in our mouths that are not even food. We haven't even talked about food yet. Right. So, yeah, there's so many better options today. Again, there's probably a niche for clothing companies to make better quality clothing, but you don't have to be completely living in the jungle in Costa Rica like me.

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Well, you also, you told me about. What is it? Is it seed oil tracker or seed oil scout?

Seed oil scout.

Seed oil scout, which is cool. So you can go to restaurants and try to find restaurants that don't use seed oils.

Yes. The guy that did that app is coming to the film premiere tonight.

Oh, amazing.

Yep. So Hard and Soil is doing a premiere of a mini documentary that I did with them. It's called Fetalai, and it's about seed oils. And that's tonight. And he's coming to that.

So you can meet him.

Yeah, it's awesome. So when you go to restaurants again, it's the overarching framework that I keep coming back to is that convenience is the enemy of health. If we just do what everyone else does, we get what everyone else gets. And most of the people in our sphere, unfortunately, are Going to have health issues or chronic disease or infertility issues. And if we want to live a life that is different than that, we have to be intentional and swim upstream. And that means inconveniences. Whether it's inconvenience of cooking your food ahead of time or the inconvenience of going to a restaurant and being that guy or that girl that asks the waiter, what is this cooked in? Or looking at the menu beforehand and thinking, do they have something that is unlikely to be cooked in? Seed oils, sauces. These things are almost invariably full of vegetable oils. Seed oils.

Yeah. I mean, because of you. Actually, I listened to a podcast you did with somebody else, and you laid out this framework. And then I thought, well, this will be fun. I just want to go for a week and ask all of the different restaurants that I go to, nice restaurants, expensive restaurants, what sort of oil they cook in. And it just said, I say I have some allergies. Which is true. I have allergies to some things. Doesn't happen to be those. But then I feel like they might have to tell me. And I can only find two restaurants here that do not use. That only use olive oil, Dai due and the. Well.

Really? Yeah. And we talked a little bit about seed oils earlier. I think seed oils are problematic for humans when they're sitting on the shelf. What happens to a seed oil when you heat it? So now you're heating it again, it becomes even more highly rancid and oxidized in process when you heat it. So one of the worst things is French fries, right? That is a fryer. You're boiling the oil for days at a time. I went to a KFC and an In N Out recently to do content. And I asked them, how often do you change the fryer oil, which is peanut and soybean oil? They say once a week. Once a week you have a seed oil to start with, which is highly rancid and oxidized. And then you're boiling it for 12 to 16 hours a day, and you're changing it once a week. Are you kidding me?

So we're gonna have to save the new administration because did you see the new picture of them with RFK held hostage on the plane with McDonald's?

I was so disappointed.

I mean, I have to just. They're the ultimate trolls. It's like the best entertainment of all time.

Do you think they were trolling?

I think RFK probably was like, yeah, you know, what are we gonna do? But I think that they are brilliant at It. But I, you know, I thought it was interesting because I looked at one of your other posts about the number of ingredients that just McDonald's pickles have in that. Do you remember that?

Yeah, it's like, what is it like 19, 19, 19. In french fries, I think pickles had five to seven ingredients.

Yeah, I think it was 10.

Yeah.

Which is like, how is that even possible with the pickle? You would think a pickle was just vinegar and salt and a pickle.

Right. And a cucumber.

Yeah, right. Is that how they make those? Right. Cucumber.

So this is, I'm super excited for RFK Jr. Super disappointed he was in the photo with the McDonald's, but super excited for his overhaul of the FDA to the food and Drug Administration. This has to do with this generally recognized itself or the grass designation on foods. I think in the United States we don't even know how many chemicals are in our food supply now. People estimate 5 to 10,000 chemicals that are part of this GRAS system. So these are chemicals that are supposed to have been tested for humans safety and are generally not because there is a process of grandfathering these chemicals in over the last 20 to 30 years where companies can just say, oh yeah, we tested it, we're just going to say it's safe and the FDA is allowing this to happen. And one of the really interesting juxtapositions that's been highlighted recently by a number of awesome people in the health space is the difference in European foods versus American foods. In Europe there are maybe 4 to 500 of these chemicals. In the United States there are 5 to 10,000. We don't even know how many there are. And these have all come in in maybe the last 15 to 20 years. So how many chemicals are in our food supply that are problematic for us long term that we don't even know about? And these are not vitamins and minerals. These are additives. Sodium pyrophosphate, sodium benzoate preservatives, tbhq. Who knows? Like dimethyl polysiloxane, which is an ingredient in Silly Putty, which is in McDonald's french fries. These are dyes. Red 40, yellow 6, yellow 5, blue 5. Right. We don't know what these do humans long term, there have been some studies, but it's wild to think about. I think this is a huge part of the problem for humans is that when you eat an ultra processed food, whether it's Flamin Hot Cheetos or Takis or this other Franken foods that I See, at the grocery store, there are tons of these things in there and they're just, they're accepted as safe. Kellogg's is saying the Red 40 is safe. I mean, a bunch of people marched to Kellogg's headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan and Kellogg's didn't even let them in the door. Kellogg's said no. The FDA says our food is safe when there are multiple studies in kids showing that these food dyes can potentially be linked to either allergic conditions or behavioral problems. And the same could be true of so many ingredients that we're not even thinking about in your ultra processed food of choice. We don't know what these things do to us as humans.

Well, and also I think humans are incredible at self rationalization. So like those people that are in Kellogg's and in Pfizer, you know, they don't actually, they're not evil demons trying to take over the world most likely, but you know, could be. But I think most people were great self rationalizers. And so if we explain that, hey, urban populations have food deserts, hey, this is a core constituency for most people who are of sub economic level, thus without us they can't actually eat, then we will explain our way into really bad practices as humans. And I think that's what we have to watch out for.

I mean, have you heard Kali Means talk about this when he worked at Coca Cola and these other, you know, these other businesses that if there was any suggestion of regulation that they would use a race card or a, you know, financial hardship card and they would not allow the regulation like it is a, you know, that's racist to say that these junk foods which are more affordable are unhealthy. How are lower income populations going to be able to afford their food? This is, there is so much sort of, you know, maneuvering on the back end to protect these ultra processed foods which have huge margins and are easy to make and continue to support their availability for us as Americans. And look, I, it's a Pandora's box. They're already created. I think humans should have the ability to choose to eat those foods. I just think we need honest, candid conversations about what these things can be doing to us as humans. And you know, a cigarette package has a warning label on it. And in other parts of the world the warning labels are much more graphic than they are in the United States. I've seen cigarettes in New Zealand and other places when I've traveled. And they have pictures of people with tracheostrach tubes who can't breathe or on ventilators. They have pictures of people on dialysis or with plastic surgery need in their face because they've had so much cancer in their nose and mouth from chewing tobacco. In the United States, we have a little warning in words. They don't have any pictures, but why don't we have warning labels on lay's, potato chips and Doritos? And there's no question at this point that those foods are harming humans. Yeah, in many ways. And in kind, with cigarettes, like, every time I make any sort of comparison to cigarettes, the nutrition mob comes after me and says, Paul Saladino is claiming that Doritos are worse than cigarettes. Like, this is crazy, right? Get over yourself, guys. I'm not saying that, but Doritos are not health food. And cigarettes are an interesting juxtaposition. Cigarettes have a warning label. Why don't Doritos.

Yeah, I agree. Well, and, you know, the other thing that's interesting is, like, my father is a perfect example. You know, it's hard for other generations to get on board with this. You know, I'll talk to them often about, like, hey, you know, let's. You know, I saw your. Your post on shredded cheese, American cheese, you know, and trying to explain this to a different generation is very hard. So I think the work's really important because we need to push back. With some graphic illustrations, like that canola oil video of the sludge getting made, you're like, I don't know much. Not healthy. I can just tell. Not a good idea. That's it.

We have an intuition, right?

Yeah. Which is true. But as we kill our microbiome, the intuition becomes harder. So I think it's very, very true.

Yeah. And as, I mean, this is mirroring the conversation around beauty standards in humans. As the conversation gets diluted and confused, which I think is the main tactic that a lot of these manufacturers are trying to do. What is healthy and unhealthy becomes more blurred and unhealthy. Food becomes more normalized, and we lose our intuition. A blue potato chip. Right. Unless it's blue corn, which, you know, corn is a separate conversation. But like a blue potato chip with food dyes, this is probably. I think our grandparents will be able to look at that and think, that's a Frankenfood. You know, we're only a few generations removed from that level of intuition. But at a very simple level, when it comes to food, if your grandmother didn't recognize this food, why are you eating it?

That's such a good.

You just don't need to eat it. And if your grandmother's mother didn't like that a few generations back, we were so much better. Even without any conversations around, more nuanced of like meat versus plants, like just what are the foods that were in our food supply a hundred years ago? They're not like what we eat today.

Let's talk really quick about what you eat because you have a unique method for eating that includes like a more limited food supply. Will you talk about the foods you will put in your body?

Yeah. Yeah. So I have a history of autoimmune illness. I had pretty bad eczema and asthma as a kid. Both of my parents are in the medical system. My dad is a doctor, my mom is a nurse practitioner. So I got over medicated as a kid. They did the best they could. They didn't know my dad wasn't trained either when he went to medical school at Georgetown University. About foods.

So you think that you got those because of over medication when you were younger?

No, I just know that I had those for whatever reason, a genetic predisposition in the setting, in the context of eating standard American diet, manifests those things. And I was over medicated as a kid. So I grew up with a lot of medications that didn't affect me positively either. Giving your kid lots of antibiotics can affect their gut flora, right? Giving your kid lots of stimulants to treat their asthma because we used to give children theophylline called Theodore. I got this in my applesauce when I was a kid. That makes kids anxious and hyperactive. So that doesn't help with elementary school performance or learning. So these things negatively affected my life and it was this sort of domino effect. So at some point in my life, generally when I was out of college, I began to think about my food and started thinking about what I was doing with my food that was giving me this autoimmune condition, this series of autoimmune conditions. Really. It's a triad. It's called an atopic condition. Right. It's basically eczema, asthma and allergies. And it got to the point that it was bothersome to me and I had numerous flares of my eczema that were very severe, requiring more systemic steroids, which are not great for anything. And at one, at times in medical school, the eczema would get infected and I would impetigo. So like from being on the mats for Jiu jitsu. So really impairing my quality of life spurred me to think more specifically and intentionally about the Foods that I was eating. Now that has been a personal journey that I've written about and talked about on my social media. It began originally with a vegan diet. Many years ago, a raw vegan diet, which didn't do much for my autoimmune conditions. But I did lose 20 plus pounds of lean muscle to the point that I got super, super skinny. I'm about 165 pounds now. I was less than 145 at that time. And that was not intentional. I was eating as much as I possibly could, but without animal protein, the muscle goes away in my case and in many others as well. So that was a raw vegan diet. Then I sort of did paleo and a paleo diet of meat and vegetables and nuts and seeds didn't fix the eczema. And I got to the point where I was thinking in my residency at the University of Washington after medical school, I have really bad eczema right now and I'm eating 85 to 90% organic foods that are colloquially considered to be healthy, no processed food. What is going on? There's something in my diet that is still triggering my immune system. That was when I did a carnivore diet, so strictly meat. And that was interesting because it fixes the eczema. Then fast forward a year and a half later I end up with some issues regarding electrolyte balance due to long term ketogenic diet. And so I started to add foods back in, which is the ultimate goal I think for a lot of people if they do elimination diets like a carnivore diet. And first I added in honey, then I added in fruit. And I found a pretty interesting middle ground kind of carnivore 2.0, which I've called animal based. Just as, as a framework for people in hopes that it's healthy. I don't think everyone needs to eat this way, but I think it's a good starting point for people. And so an animal based diet is basically meat and fruit. But a lot of foods we think of as fruit, a lot of foods we think of as vegetables are actually fruit things like avocado or cucumber or squash. So the reason I make the distinction between fruit and vegetables is that one of the interesting things about thinking about food that we eat from a carnivore lands was that there actually are defense chemicals in vegetables. And some, some of these can be detoxified when we cook them or when we ferment them, but not all of them. And a lot of people with autoimmune conditions do feel better when they eliminate some or all vegetables. Not everyone needs to. Again, if you're thriving, don't change anything about your diet. But I like this idea of putting tools into the world for people that they can access if and when they need them. So for me, I know from adding foods back that a lot of the vegetables actually do trigger my eczema. Whether it's chocolate tomatoes, which is technically a fruit, but it's a nightshade fruit, that whole family seems to trigger my eczema. White potatoes don't really agree with me. So some foods that we think of as healthy are problematic. Spinach is a good model to illustrate this because we think of that as like Popeye, and it's this super healthy food. It's green, but spinach has a lot of a compound called oxalates or oxalic acid. Oxalates are a major component of the main kidney stone that humans get. 75 to 80% of kidney stones are calcium oxalate kidney stones and dietary oxalate can be a major contributor to that. Probably the biggest contributor to our oxalate levels in our body. Oxalates are naturally produced in our body in small amounts from breakdown of certain amino acids. But spinach and other foods, almonds, navy beans, rhubarb, turmeric powder, are some of the big ones. These are huge sources of oxalates. So if you have kidney stones or you have a family history of kidney stones and you don't want kidney stones, it might be well to avoid those things. We know that there are poisonous plants in the environment. I mean, I grew up in the Northeast, and at Christmas we would have these poinsettia plants. Have you seen those? Super toxic, right? So little kids should not eat the red leaves of the poinsettia. So not all plants are benign for us. And there is this spectrum of plant toxins. So that's an interesting distinction for me to think about. Again, you can detoxify some of these plant defense chemicals with cooking or fermentation, but not all of them.

The problem is that you have so much good content and so many things that I want to talk about because, you know, I think a lot of the people listen to this podcast. We're interested in money, we're interested in building businesses, we're interested in, you know, maybe ethics and morals and what it means to be an American. But, man, you can't really have a strong bank account without a strong body. Or if you do, what does it really matter?

What's the point?

Yeah, what's the point? And so I think this is really interesting for anybody who wants to live a better life. I mean, also, just if you want to have better brain function and cognition.

That's what I was going to say.

You got to be healthy.

It's going to pay dividends. Right? Having better mental clarity means everything in your life is amplified. Romantic relationships, family relationships, business. Make more money. You want to express your highest potential.

You know what's interesting is you have an organ food supplement line. What's it called again?

Heart and soil supplements.

Yeah, you have heart and soil supplements. And I actually forgot to tell you this, but my husband Chris is a big user of them. Oh, cool.

I brought you guys some.

Oh, he's gonna love that. He gets all my gifts, actually. But he actually got me on them because I found that organ meat was really helpful for my face. Like, just, like, collagen, like, I found for a while. I was traveling a lot. I don't eat enough protein, typically, and I don't do fillers or anything like that. And I kind of have these, like, bags under my eyes. And anyway, one of my doctors, like, you know, are you getting enough collagen? And so I started taking some collagen. Protein kind of messed with my stomach. I didn't really like it.

It can.

And. And then I started eating some organ meat. But this is TMI for the Internet. I felt like I smelled different. Is that a thing? Do people who eat a lot of Morgan meat smell different?

Was it better? What did your husband say? Is it better or worse?

Oh, like the smell. But he's weirdo. Like you. He's like. He's like, I love the smell of you. I'm like, I. Like, I don't know.

It's completely possible that you could smell different. Now, the context is, is there a human that's kind of turned on to this or in the same space and, like, you know, they're into it?

Yeah, he's a creep. He loves the workout stuff. The Internet's like, not this. We're gonna have so many weird YouTube comments. But what I will say is that the supplements that you have, I don't have that. Okay. Yeah. And so that was actually really helpful for me. But talk to me about. I think if the average person would hear, you know what I should do? I should eat more heart and kidneys and organ meat. That sounds gross. Plus, there was a really big, huge guy that did it, and there was a bunch of crazy stuff that came out about him.

I know.

And so why Would I do anything crazy like that? Why would I eat organ meats?

So if you look at meat, so you go to the grocery store, you see ground beef, you might see chicken, you see fish, you see steaks. That's all muscle meat. Muscle meat is super nutritionally rich for humans, very bioavailable protein, but it doesn't really have a full complement of vitamins and minerals. And organ meats, especially liver, if you start with liver, are this beautiful sort of completion of a nutritional profile. If you look at what's in a steak and what's in liver, there are very few vitamins and minerals that are not represented there. Vitamin C. So raw liver and raw steak do actually have vitamin C. But people could argue, rightly so, that you're going to get more vitamin C from orange juice. But other than vitamin C, there's not much in looking at a whole suite of vitamins and minerals that are not present in animal muscle and liver. People would say fiber, that's a separate conversation. So we get it. But if you just look at muscle meat, high in B12, high in zinc, high in iron, not a lot of copper, not a lot of folate, not a lot of biotin. Liver has all that stuff. Libre has copper, which balances zinc. So historically, humans have always eaten the organs. We waste nothing, right? Whether it's for calories or necessity or some sort of historical intrinsic knowledge that these organs are beneficial for fertility and vitality, we waste nothing. I went to Tanzania. I spent time with the Hadza, some of the last hunter gatherers left on the planet. And when they had the liver of an animal, we hunted a few animals together. They treated it like gold. Two hands placed gently on a rock, cut into small pieces, distributed evenly among the tribe. This is raw. This is a treasure. No, they cooked it, okay? This is a treasure. In their world, the treasure, all of the organ meats are a treasure. The hunter who killed the animal gets to eat the brain. And that's something that's queasy for us. But there are pieces of the organs. There are parts of the animal, the organs that are a reward to hunters. Historically, the heart was gifted to also the hunter who killed the animals. Some sort of spiritual sort of recompense. So there's a lot of history of humans eating organs. And when you look at the science, it's fascinating around the nutrient profiles. But one of the coolest things for me is that building this company hardened soil that does these organ capsules for people that I do think make it easier to get organs, they're freeze dried, which preserves as many of the nutrients as we can in a gelatin capsule is that the team over there is amazing and they did some really fascinating research about sort of nutritional benefits of organs that go far beyond the vitamins and minerals. And to do this we had to go to libraries in Germany, like Heidelberg Library, and find the original volumes because the historical research has been done since the late 1800s to like the 1950s and 1960s, but most of it has been in Europe and it's in German originally. So just because it's in German doesn't mean that it's interesting, compelling research, but it does mean that most of us in the western English speaking world have never seen it. And so we actually had to find the original volumes and translate the research from German to English. And what you see is there's a lot of evidence that organs do support the corresponding organ in humans, which really breaks the mind of a traditionally trained doctor like myself. So when you give we can take an embryo for instance, and you put a little bit of liver on the embryo and that liver concentrates in the liver of the embryo, you can do this with radioisotope labeling, you can do it with other types of labeling. And you can see not visually, but in terms of measured research analysis that the organ goes to the corresponding organ. So what is going on there? It's fascinating and there are many, many stories. Now it's anecdote, but this is a summed amount of lived human experience that I think is really important not to ignore of humans eating organs or eating the desiccated organs like we make and having benefits in the corresponding organs. We make a supplement at Heart and Soil called her package, which has uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, kidney and liver. And so many women who have struggled with infertility or PCOS have found benefits from taking this. Again, this is just anecdote, but it's a fascinating sort of question to be asking, are these organs?

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Beyond the nutrients in the organs, the dose of the organs is 3 grams a day or less. And there's interesting research that when you look at the organs, it's a fraction of the organ called the microsomal fraction that contains things like microrna. And the hypothesis now that we come to looking at this historical research, which is fascinating, is that there are probably signals in the organs that are preserved in the freeze drying process, but potentially denatured when we cook the organs that can signal and actually affect the genetics or the gene transcription and translation in the corresponding organ. So there's actually information and signals that could support an organ beyond the amount of hormones, because it's minuscule amounts of hormones in 3 grams of desiccated ovaries. Right. We have another one for men which has testicle in it called whole package. Similar results for men in terms of male vitality. The amount of testosterone in whole package is minuscule. It's in there, we've tested it, but there's not a lot of androgens. And this was an original criticism of the organs that you would have to eat 500 pounds of testicle to get a biologically active dose of testosterone. Maybe that's slightly off, but even a 3 gram dose appears to be beneficial. And there was actually a guy, there's been some published research in, I think it's 1889 in the Lancet, which is a historically, obviously very long standing journal. I believe it was Brown Sicard, who has a neurologic syndrome named after him, he taught at Harvard elite universities in Paris, who injected himself with a testicle extract and reported that he had increased vitality at 72 years old. So this is fascinating, right guys, doing interesting things. Over 100 years ago, most of this research on organs has been lost, but we're just helping to revitalize it and get people back into thinking about like, oh, let me eat the whole animal. And if you can eat some of the animal, some of these organs raw, which obviously has potential risks that people should be aware of, or desiccated, that is freeze dried. It's pretty interesting what's happening here. I think it's going to be a real sea change when people start to understand. And maybe we get some new contemporary research on this in a lab.

Did you know, for instance, silencer versus raw milk, which is more illegal in more states?

I bet raw milk.

Raw milk isn't that crazy.

Wow.

Yeah, like in Texas, you have to have permit numbers on raw milk here locally in order to get it. And you can't get all different types. But there are more states where raw milk is illegal than silencers, which I thought was interesting. Okay, next one. Homeschooling with no curriculum versus fentanyl, you said.

I mean, I guess that's crazy.

Homeschooling. Homeschooling with no curriculum. That's important. Caveat versus fentanyl. It turns out that homeschooling is more illegal. How fucking crazy is that?

They want your kids. They want your kids propagandized. They want your kids hypnotized.

Oh my God. It's a real problem. But I want to play some other games with you really quickly. Rapid fire. And this is perfect. We can start with raw milk. I just did a. Is this a bad idea or not? You can tell me. I just did a raw milk goat milk cleanse with like herbs for potential parasites. I did it for like 14 days, 8 days only raw milk. At first it was awful. I think because of the herbs, like it didn't feel very nice. It's not enjoyable. Also, I'm like marginally lactose intolerant. So it's really fun for everybody. But afterwards maybe. But it's placebo. Maybe I feel better. Was that a bad idea or no?

You know, I don't know anything about.

The raw milk cleanses.

Yeah, raw milk cleanses. I think raw milk is amazing. I drink it all the time. I drank it before I came over here. I've got raw milk in my backpack right there.

Of course you do.

Yeah. In a stainless steel water bottle with some glyphosate free honey.

That tracks. Because you've also been known to take what to an airport? That's really weird.

Coconuts.

Yes. Although I knew that trick.

You did?

Yeah, but the straw.

Yeah. You knew the straw trick. Yeah.

That's an important trick.

I take all kinds of weird things through airports. They're always like looking at my stuff. I'm like, yo, guys, it's just hamburgers in a glass container. There's some squash there. And I brought some persimmons. On the airplane today I had some air dried steak. And that's about it.

It actually is amazing.

Okay.

So we're into raw milk. Shredded cheese.

Can I just talk about raw milk for a minute? Yes. Okay, let's do it. So raw milk, any raw food, has a risk of contamination. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people sickened every year by eating salad. Right. Sushi, all kinds of things that we are exposed to. Beef tartare. Raw foods have a risk. And the quality of the raw milk determines everything about how good the raw milk is gonna be on the back end. If there's no difference between raw and pasteurized, nutritionally, why drink raw? Why not just do pasteurized? But there's a lot of interesting science about raw milk positively affecting the immune systems of kids who drink it when they grow up on or off farms. So there are specific studies looking at lower rates of asthma, eczema, and allergies. The things I suffered from but didn't drink raw milk growing up in. Kids who drink raw milk, whether they grow up on a farm or off a farm, that's interesting stuff. That raw milk could potentially program our immune system in certain ways. So we're kind of back to the organs thing, right? We're back to animal foods benefiting other animals across species. That's fascinating to me. So I would argue there are unique benefits to raw milk, and we should help support producers producing it safely and cleanly.

Why did we stop doing raw milk versus pasteurized?

Good question. So up until the early 1900s, all milk was raw. In the early 1900s, people were moving off of farms into cities, and people wanted milk. A lot of people were sickened by raw milk because they were milking cows in subsanitary conditions. Mixing feces or urine with the milk doesn't sound very appetizing. And they were feeding cows swill, which is the spent grains of alcohol. Fermentation. That's where the term swill comes from. And so they were feeding cows garbage foods. They were milking them in subsanitary conditions, and people get sick. And then the milk was heated and pasteurized, and that helps with the public health issue. And we never sort of got back to the idea that we can now, with more technology, make milk raw in clean conditions and potentially expose this to people who can benefit from it.

Goat milk or cow milk?

Raw. I like both. I prefer goat milk, but that's just what I have access to easily. In Costa Rica, there's a goat farm near me. I can go and milk the goats and see them.

Stop it.

No, I've done it all the time.

I just pictured Val Saladino as like A coconut in one hand, a goat.

In the other, like an udder in one hand.

And yeah, that's pretty incredible actually. This is a big movement. I feel like trad wives everywhere are into your lifestyle. You probably have them knocking down your DMs right now.

I wish it doesn't happen. No, I wish.

Okay. Calling all single women.

I need a trad girlfriend. Yeah, you do.

I feel like they'd be into this.

The thing about cow milk is the casein variant. So there's a one versus A two, casein and cow milk. And some people find they tolerate A two better. So all Jersey and Guernsey cows are a two. And sometimes you'll see this terminology on cow's milk. Now it'll say a two, A two. If I'm going to drink cow's milk, I prefer an A2. Cow's milk, all goat milk, bison milk, camel milk, horse milk, whatever. Everything else is all a two. So if people are sensitive, think about a one, a two if you're drinking cow's milk or if you want A two and you can get goat, that's easier. Goat has about 11% less lactose, so still a significant amount of lactose for people that may be lactose intolerant. Despite anecdote, it looks like people can still get lactose intolerance from raw milk. If you start slow, maybe you can change it. I used to be pretty lactose intolerant and now I drink probably a liter plus of raw milk per day and don't have any lactose intolerant symptoms. But it doesn't happen immediately. And if you are lactose intolerant and you want to do milk, you can do kefir, which is fermented milk or yogurt or cheese. There are a number of raw cheeses that are fermented for more than 60 days that have essentially no lactose.

That's fascinating. You know what I found really interesting is when I did the goat milk cleanse, I was satiated. I was not hungry all day.

Right. Going back to our earlier conversation about satiety, 100%.

So people like, are you hungry? I'm like, I'm actually not. Not at all. I really like, do I want that cheeseburger? Yeah, that sounds nice, but do I actually feel like I physically need it? No, I don't. So it's really interesting. I want to hit on. This one's for Stanley Sanchez, my father. Let's talk about American cheese and shredded cheese cheese really quickly because he's a big fan of both. And your Videos, they mess me up a little bit.

Yeah. So the thing is, shredded cheese, a lot of shredded cheese has cellulose on it to prevent caking. And when you. I've done this in the videos, put shredded cheese in water, you can see that the water turns cloudy. It's just full of cellulose, which is wood pulp. And it's hard to know what type of cellulose the manufacturer uses. Some types of cellulose, some cellulose derivatives are probably pretty harmful for the gut. But if you don't want wood pulp on your cheese, you might just have to deal with shredded cheese that clumps a little bit. A lot of shredded cheeses also have natamycin added, which is an antifungal agent. You don't want your cheese to be moldy. But again, do we really have confidence that we know what long term exposure to an antifungal like natamycin is doing to human guts? Long term? We have all sorts of species in our gut. Some are bacteria, some are viruses, some are fungi. We want them to coexist healthily and happily. And more additives in your food with shredded cheese. American cheese is not actually cheese. It's only a cheese product. It cannot legally be called cheese because of the actual ingredients in it. And if you look at it under a microscope, it's full of all sorts of garbage. Right. It's packaged in plastic. So certainly there are endocrine disrupting chemicals from that plastic leaching into this sort of plastic cheese. It's full of microplastics. It's just not a good thing to be feeding our families.

So what type of cheese do you eat?

I like any sort of raw cheese. So there's raw cheeses traditionally, like Parmigiano Reggiano in Italy, that is a raw cheese. By definition. You cannot have a Parmigiano Reggiano certified cheese that is not raw. An equivalent in sheep's cheese is pecorino Gruyere is often raw. I like all of the raw cheeses.

Okay, that's good to know. All right. If somebody's listening to this today and they're like, where do I start? Like, what are, like, the three easy things today that I could start to do if I want to detoxify either the things I put on my body or the things I put in my mouth, what are you leaving them with?

Start with your food, right? Because you're taking it into your body. This is becoming the cells of your body. So I think that there's very little that we do in our lives that has a bigger impact than the food that we eat. And I think that don't let perfect be the enemy of good when it comes to your food. If you have health issues, think simple. Start maybe with meat and fruit and then see if the health issues get better over time and then add things back gradually again. That's just, I think a good starting point for people. People as a framework, as a blueprint doesn't have to be that exactly. More broadly, just get rid of processed foods, eat things that your great grandmother would have recognized and you'll be in a really good space with regard to food in terms of clothing and everything else, just gradually start reading labels and you'll be sort of wide eyed and surprised and think about what you're putting on your body, what you're putting on your skin and improve that as you can.

I love it. I've been lately ending with this question of, you know, what's one either maybe in your case it's a study, maybe it's a book, maybe it's a short story that you keep going back to again and again. Like is there a source of inspiration for you written that you go back.

To Inspiration or a study that I am interested in in terms of the research.

Could be anything. Could be your favorite. Maybe you're really into fantasy books. That looks like you. I don't know what it is, but you tell me, what do you go back to or is top of mind for you? When I go to something that Paul keeps going back to to learn from.

Do you know who Khalil Gibran is? Yeah, he wrote a book called the Prophet, that's one of my favorites. So in terms of not science related, just life lessons, I always go back to the Prophet.

Why?

I just find it beautiful. I find the words beautiful on marriage, on children, on relationships, on love, on work. You know, it's just. It's a very interesting set of poetry that I think holds a lot of resonance for me.

I love that.

Yeah.

Paul Saladino, thanks so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

Sa.