Digesting Fat, Optimizing Your Health, and My Daily Supplements

Hey everybody, welcome to my weekly house call. Your chance to ask me your questions. And this week's question is about fat and if you can eat it without a gallbladder, how to make healthy, simple changes in your diet and what supplements should you take and what I recommend. So let's get to the first question. It's from Christina, so let's watch her video and hear what Christina has to say.

Hi Dr. Hyman, my name is Christina and I bought your book Eat Fat, Get Thin and I love it. I already eat a lot of healthy vegetables and meat and low carb, low sugar and I want to incorporate more fats like you recommend. However, I don't have a gallbladder and I know a lot of friends and family and co workers and I've just heard a lot of people getting their gallbladders removed and have a tough time digesting fats. So I'm wondering if you have any special instructions or if I need to modify my diet in a certain way to be able to digest these fats but better. So if you have any tips, I'd love to know. Thank you.

So Christina, you're not alone. There are many people have had their gallbladder out and often the real reason, the most common reason for gallbladders being taken out is because of pre diabetes or insulin resistance which comes from starch and sugar, believe it or not. So once you get your gallbladder out, it stores bile which helps you digest fat and all your food. When you don't have one, it's harder to do that. So sometimes you need to cut back on fat. But you can often use digestive enzymes and sometimes even hydrochloric acid to help your stomach. So the one I really recommend is an animal based enzyme with amylase, protease and lipase. Lipases digest fat so it has to have enough lipase and if you take those while you're eating or when you start to eat, you're going to find that this is going to be much improved. And also you can, you know, still eat in a very similar way. But you know, focus on protein, focus on the good fats, stay away from the bad fats and I think you'll be fine. Most people do really well when they just make the small adjustments in their diet and when they eat enough enzymes and even hydrochloric acid called betaine hydrochloride. So I use spectrazyme 9x by medagenics, commonly your metagest or beta hydrochloride by pure encapsulations those are the ones I tend to use. But there's a lot of good ones on the market. So I encourage you to find that and just give it a try and see how you do. So the next question is from Angela. Now, Angela, it is sometimes daunting to make a big change in your lifestyle, right? To eat better, to exercise, to sleep enough, to do all the things you need to do to stay healthy. But it's possible to start with little steps and build what you're doing. Or it's possible to make a whole scale change, which actually I prefer because it's sometimes harder to do it slowly. It's like if you're an alcoholic just trying to like cut back on drinking, often doesn't work. You gotta kind of go cold turkey. So that's why I created the 10 day detox. So you can do a reset and then change what you're doing. But you can just start with simple things. Cut out the processed food, have simple breakfast items like smoothies with all the good ingredients you can put in like nuts and seeds and frozen berries and you know, all kinds of coconut butter. And I have a 10 day detox recipe. It's great. You can upgrade your quality of your food. You know, eat more vegetables and good quality meats. Replace all this sort of starchy foods. You're eating grains and carbs with more vegetables. Get rid of the bad oils, put good oils in like olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil and you know, find simple snacks you can bring and take with you wherever you're going. So I really encourage you to realize that if you want to feel better, if you don't know what to do, you can actually make small changes to help you get better. And you can also, you know, work with a person. I always say, you know, everybody needs a buddy and in order to actually get healthy, we sometimes need support and encouragement. And doing it with a friend is awesome. So I encourage you to find a friend, do 10 day detox with them, maybe a couple of friends and see how it goes. Because I think if you just take these small steps and, and you doing small changes, you can actually do really, really great over time. But I also think, you know, the 10 day detox is designed to do a quick reset. It's like a, it's like your computer, you can kind of get it going and it sort of does better when you tweak it a little bit. But sometimes you need to do just reformat the hard drive and like start over again. And that's what it's sort of like when you, when you do the 10 day detox or eat fat, get thin. So good luck with that and let us know how you, how you do. So the next question is from Chad, and Chad asked a question about vitamins and supplements. So let's listen to what Chad has to say. So, great question, Chad. I think most of us are wondering, what should I take? There's so much contradictory information out there on the web. You know, vitamins are good for you. Vitamins are bad. They're going to heal you, they're going to kill you. Like it's just enough to make you crazy and give up, right? And your doctor's like, I don't know. Or they're bad for you or it's expensive urine. Well, let me tell you something about vitamins. Vitamins and minerals are called essential nutrients. That means if you don't have them, you die. Vitamin vital for life. So it's really critical that you understand the importance of what they do. They basically catalyze enzymes to turn one chemical to another chemical. So they're like helpers that help your biochemistry work. It helps you burn calories, it helps you run every system in your body. Your, your hormones, your brain chemistry, all of them are dependent on nutrients. Now the problem with our modern diet is that 90% of Americans is, according to the government, in large national studies, are deficient in one or more nutrients at the RDA level. That's the minimum amount you need not to get scurvy of vitamin C or the minimum amount not to get rickets. It's not the optimal amount of vitamin D. So you don't get the flu and so your muscles are strong and so your mood is good. So it's really important to take the right nutrients for you. And everybody's different too. I mean, one third of our DNA codes for enzymes and all those enzymes require helpers. And different enzymes require more or less. So you need folic acid. Some people need a lot more, I need a lot more because of my genetics. So you have to figure out a little bit what's going on there. But in general, I recommend that people have a basic foundational set of nutrients, whether you're 25 or 55. And it changes as you get older. But everybody needs a good quality multivitamin with the right nutrients, the right forms of the nutrients that are bioavailable, that are actually clean vitamins. They're tested for purity and potency so you know what you're getting. And not every company does that by the way you need fish oil, omega 3 fats. 99% of Americans are deficient omega 3 fats. And they're essential for long term health and vitality. Vitamin D, critical for your immune system, for your bone health, for muscle health, for depression, depression, for so many things. Those three are like foundational fish oil, multivitamin vitamin D. And then I do some add ons for different people. Sometimes people need magnesium, very common deficiency. They need probiotics for their gut. There are a lot of other specifics that people can take. But as people age, I also recommend more support for their mitochondria. That's the little factories that make energy in your body and those are really critical as you age to prevent aging. So things like CoQ10 lipoic acid, N acetylcysteine, this new one that's been developed at MIT called nicotinamide riboside. These are very, very powerful mitochondrial supports. And then of course there's lots of customization depending on your health issues and what's going on. But I recommend at least a multi fish oil, vitamin D. Some great companies out there. I use pure encapsulations designs for health metagenics and Zymogen. These are all great companies that help to actually produce quality products that are medical grade and therapeutic vitamins. So that's pretty much what I'd say for you, Chad, is just focus on the basics and then depending on what's going on with you, we can customize it. All right, well, that's all the time we have for today. If you like this video, be sure to share with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter. And if you have any questions, you can tweet them to me or send your video submissions to drhyman.com and maybe next week I'll make a house call to you. So thanks for watching.