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Transcript
- 07:49 Cholesterol Clarity
- 10:57 Causes of high cholesterol
- 15:04 Healthy range of cholesterol
- 17:00 Foods that contribute to high cholesterol
- 21:52 Low Cholesterol is deadly
- 26:28 Accuracy of today’s cholesterol test
- 28:58 Why is everyone on statins?
- 31:12 Side effects of statins
- 37:40 Are statins ever appropriate?
- 41:05 About Cholesterol Clarity
- 46:42 The most compelling health issue in the world today: Fear of dietary fat
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 podcast. My name is Wendy Myers and we are broadcasting live worldwide from Malibu, California.
Today, I will be interviewing Jimmy Moore of Livinlavidalowcarb.com. He is the author of the important new book, Cholesterol Clarity. And we’re going to be giving you the latest up to date info on the true causes of high cholesterol, why your cholesterol is not as high as you think – just because it’s over 200 does not mean that you have high cholesterol, and how to lower your cholesterol with the Paleo Diet and why you should not be taking statins and how they destroy your health.
Additionally, we’re also going to be talking about why your doctor may not know this information. So, if you’re on statins or your doctor is urging you to begin statins, you must listen to this show. So everyone, allow me to introduce my new co-host, Cate Beehan. How are you Cate?
Cate Beehan: Hi, Wendy. How are you?
Wendy Myers: Well Cate, do you mind doing our super annoying disclaimer that we have to do so the American Medical Association and crabby listeners won’t sue us?
Cate Beehan: Sure. Please keep in mind that the Live to 110 podcast is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease or health condition. This podcast is solely informational in nature. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before attempting any treatment you hear on the show. How’s your book coming along?
Wendy Myers: Well it’s actually really good. As you guys may know, I announced last week that I’m working on my first book called When Diet and Exercise Are Not Enough: Road Blocks To Weight Loss. And right now, I’m working on the detoxification chapter about why you need to detox your body. You know it’s really one of the major missing pieces that many people need to lose weight.
For instance, it could be one of the reasons why you can’t lose that last 10 pounds because toxins, especially mercury, disrupt your thyroid function. And it’s impossible to lose weight if your thyroid isn’t working and then I go into all of the different types of detox methods that work and the ones that don’t. And all about Mineral Power (formerly called Nutritional Balancing) with hair mineral analysis that I’m certified in. Basically, it’s the king mother of all detox protocols. So that’s my life these days, obsessing over toxins and detoxing.
Cate Beehan: That’s amazing. Yeah. I don’t know.
Wendy Myers: All right, Cate. I think you’re tired that you taught 3 spin classes today.
Cate Beehan: I know I have. They call it Soulbrain or something.
Wendy Myers: So, there’s a word for it?
Cate Beehan: It’s called stupid, that’s what it is. It’s called Soulstupid.
Wendy Myers: I can’t even imagine taking 3 spinning classes in one day. I mean, are you spinning the whole time when you’re teaching?
Cate Beehan: Yeah. Yes.
Wendy Myers: It’s not like aerobics instructors where they can stop and kind of relax while everyone’s dying.
Cate Beehan: No.
Wendy Myers: You just have to keep spinning away.
Cate Beehan: Yes.
Wendy Myers: Oh God, I would die just doing one spin class.
Cate Beehan: No, you wouldn’t. You’d be fine.
Wendy Myers: Because I don’t do cardio anymore because I’m on this detox program and you’re not supposed to work out that much because if you spend too much energy exercising, then that’s energy you don’t have to detox so, I’m not doing cardio. I haven’t done any cardio for about a year and a half and it shows.
Cate Beehan: No. I have a lot of friends that are fit and people that aren’t fit that are friends and they’re all just like, “I have to work out to be able to come to your class.” Just come to my class and then you’ll get stronger. You don’t have to do everything I’m doing. The good news is that there’s 3 rows and you can be all the way in the back and doing what you can and going at your own pace.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I’m going to be in the back. I’m planning to come next Monday.
Cate Beehan: Okay, good. Yes.
Wendy Myers: So, I’m planning to come. I’ve been a really bad friend. You’ve been teaching Pilates classes and spin classes and I just haven’t come to any of them. So seriously, I’m going to come next week.
Cate Beehan: Okay, good.
Wendy Myers: But it’s okay, since you’re new to the show, I wanted to establish a few ground rules for our future co-hosting relationship.
Cate Beehan: Okay.
Wendy Myers: So based on our first show together last week, the one on the Smarter Science of Slim with Jonathan Bailor. There were couple of things that could use some improvement and I totally understand. I had problems with these ground rules when I first started doing the show so if you will, please repeat after me.
Cate Beehan: Okay.
Wendy Myers: I promise not to use the word “like” in every other sentence.
Cate Beehan: I promise not to use the word “like” in every other sentence.
Wendy Myers: I promise to at least attempt not to sound like a valley girl.
Cate Beehan: I promise to at least attempt not to sound like a valley girl.
Wendy Myers: I promise to be the best sidekick I can be.
Cate Beehan: I promise to be the best sidekick I can be.
Wendy Myers: I promise to the best of my ability to deliver health and fitness advice in an intelligent non-ditsy manner – but without the stutter.
Cate Beehan: Okay. I promise to the best of my ability to deliver health and fitness advice in an intelligent non-ditsy manner.
Wendy Myers: And I promise not to curse like a sailor on the Live to 110 podcast.
Cate Beehan: I promise not to curse like a sailor on the Live to 110 podcast.
Wendy Myers: Well thank you, Cate. I now feel comfortable moving forward in our podcasting journey and with today’s show.
Cate Beehan: Are we cool now?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, just stick to the program, all right?
Cate Beehan: Okay.
Wendy Myers: So anyways, how are things in Toned Buns Land?
Cate Beehan: It’s good. Yeah, like today, I taught 3 classes and still teaching Pilates a lot and having a lot of fun.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, Toned Buns Land is not a place I visit very often. Though I’d love to visit, I haven’t been there for at least 4 years since my daughter was born. So, I’m coming to visit you in Toned Buns Land next Monday, I promise.
Cate Beehan: Okay, good.
Wendy Myers: So anyways, let’s get on today with the show. Jimmy Moore is going to be talking with us about his just released book Cholesterol Clarity. Jimmy Moore came on to the health scene in 2004 after he famously dropped a phenomenal 180 pounds.
It’s so amazing! I’m just trying to lose 20, he lost 180. And as a result of this, he came off of prescription drugs for high cholesterol, high blood pressure and respiratory problems. In 2006, he began his top rated podcast, the Livin’ La Vida Low Carb show where he’s interviewed over 700 of the world’s top experts. He’s amazing! There are so many podcasts you can listen to on every possible subject and you can find his Livin’ La Vida Low Carb blog on his website appropriately called Livinlavidalowcarb.com.
Hello, Jimmy. Thank you for being on the show.
Jimmy Moore: Hey, Wendy. Thanks for having me today.
Wendy Myers: Well first, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and why you decided to write Cholesterol Clarity.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, so as you shared in my bio there, I used to play 410 pounds. I was a mess. I was a walking indication of what the S.A.D. diet will do to you if you allow it to go unabated and without doing anything differently from what you’ve always done. Unfortunately Wendy, that’s the kind of state we are in America today. Most people just keep doing what they’re doing not realizing the unintended consequences of those decisions.
But in 2004, I decided to take back control of my health. I went on the Atkins diet, a high fat, low carb diet, and it totally revolutionized my way of looking at food, weight and nourish my body. I never even thought about nourishing my body before then. All of these wonderful health changes happened and of course the 180 pounds of weight that I lost and it got me really keenly interested in looking at health markers. And I remember I’m going to my doctor, Wendy, right after losing all that weight.
I went and got my cholesterol checked as part of a check up of how I was doing and I got back the results. And that time, I was still kind of learning all this stuff. But I knew HDL was one of the markers you wanted to have higher. And so mine came in at 72. I believe before the diet, I was like in the low 20s. And then, I checked the triglycerides and they were 43. Again, pre-diet, I didn’t have those runs so I don’t know what those were, but I believe they probably were in a couple of hundreds at least. And so, I was really excited. I thought, “Okay, here I’ve done lost 180 pounds. I’ve got all my cholesterol markers back. It seemed that the ones that are important, they seemed to look good. My doctors are going to be thrilled.”
So, I go in and the doctor’s got a somber look on his face and I’m going, “What’s the matter?” He said, “Your cholesterol numbers are horrible.” And I said, “What? What about the HDL? Isn’t that really good, 72?”
“Yeah, that’s really good. But dude, you got to be on a statin drug.” And I said, “What about the triglycerides, 43 is a really good number for triglycerides, right?” He said, “Yeah that’s probably the lowest I’ve ever seen of any of my patients but you still have to take statin drugs.”
So Wendy, it all came down to two numbers, total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol – my total cholesterol was 285. My LDL cholesterol was around 185. And so, even in paying attention to the other heart health markers, it was all about LDL and total cholesterol. And that was nearly a decade ago now. And it was kind of the beginning in my mind of writing Cholesterol Clarity because quite frankly, people have been bamboozled into thinking that those two numbers mean everything regarding their heart health when in actuality they’re probably the least interesting thing on your whole cholesterol panel.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. My question is what exactly causes high cholesterol? I think so many people have been, like you said, bamboozled for decades about what actually causes it – they’re being told wrong information by their doctors. I’m constantly telling people don’t listen to your doctor about health and nutrition or diet and nutrition because they just are misinformed. So what actually causes high cholesterol?
Jimmy Moore: You know there’s a lot of things. We have Chapter 14 of Cholesterol Clarity, nine reasons why cholesterol levels can go up. I mean, it’s everything from active weight loss to thyroid issues to hormonal imbalances to even one that’s affected me personally, periodontal disease. If you have anything going on in your teeth, most people don’t even think about this. And definitely, I’ve never heard of a doctor talk about this, Wendy. But, if you have infections deep in your teeth, that could raise your cholesterol. And that stands to reason when you realize that cholesterol is a healing agent in the body, it goes to where inflammation is. So, if you’ve got deep inflammation going on in periodontal health, it stands to reason, your cholesterol is going to go up to try to help heal that.
So for me personally, I’ve actually had high cholesterol most of my life and most of my 20s and up. And so ever since then, I have always wanted to do something about those issues in my teeth. I finally got those done just couple of months ago and had the mercury amalgams removed as well and replaced with much better materials so I’m anxious to see if that helps move the scale on my cholesterol levels.
But also, active weight loss is a biggie. Don’t test your cholesterol while you’re losing weight because almost invariably, it’s going to be higher in the blood when you’re actively losing weight. Last year, I was losing some weight and I decided right in the middle of the weight loss that I would get my cholesterol tested in December last year. And it came back, hold on to your hats, Wendy, the total cholesterol was 419.
Wendy Myers: Whoa.
Jimmy Moore: So, that tells you how much it can really fluctuate. It went really high but I had it done two months ago after I had been weight stable for a few months. You want to know how far it dropped? It got down to 306.
Wendy Myers: Whoa. Still, doctors would be freaking out over that.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. And I still think the periodontal health has a lot to do with that 306 number still being kind of high. I was tested just for Cholesterol Clarity, I’ve always been told and I always looked on the test results and it said “Patient may be exhibiting signs of familial hypercholesterolemia.” which is the genetic predisposition for high cholesterol. That’s another reason why your cholesterol might be up and we talked about all these things in the book. But, I got tested and the results came back, less than 5% chance that I would have what they call FH, familial hypercholesterolemia.
So, some people just tend to have higher levels of cholesterol and that’s okay. That’s the message we’re trying to communicate is cholesterol in and of itself – high cholesterol is not a disease. It might indicate that there’s other things going on in the body. But it, in it of itself, it is not a disease.
What you want to be looking for are actual signs of atherosclerosis, of heart disease, of calcified plaque going on in the artery. So there’s all kinds of tests that you can have run to see if that’s actually happening, one that we talked about in the book is the heart calcium score – it’s a CT scan of your chest and they will see if there’s any calcified plaque going on. My result came back, a big fat zero. Thank you very much. So, I have none and so, it begs the question, “Does that 306 total cholesterol really mean anything within the context of no measurable actual disease taking place?”
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And that drives me nuts. Is that, the doctors say, “You’re over 200, it’s time to go on statins.” And it’s just, everyone is completely different. I mean, it just makes so much more sense to me to talk about ranges you know like for instance, what is a healthy range of cholesterol that someone’s goal should be to be in that range?
Jimmy Moore: Well, one of the experts, and we have 29 experts that I featured in the book, plus my co-author, Dr. Eric Westman, because I’m not an expert. I just know all the experts. And so, I went to them, so one of them was Dr. Chris Masterjohn. And he said, in traditional cultures that are free from heart disease, the average level of total cholesterol for the women was 250 and the average in the men was 220. So both of those if they were in America right now would be heavily pushed statin medications because they have a two in front of their total cholesterol. And yet here we have traditional cultures free from heart disease exhibiting very high levels according to our standards of total cholesterol. In fact, Dr. Masterjohn said that as the women got older, their cholesterol levels actually pushed upward towards 300. So, that just goes to show you it’s not the cholesterol that is the enemy.
Why is that cholesterol going up? There’s hormonal changes especially in women as they age. There’s all sorts of things that happen as you get older that make that cholesterol more and more essential in the body and removing it artificially through a statin drug or through some of these dietary manipulations with low fat diets and things like that. You’re only doing a lot more harm than good because you’re taking away the very substance in your body that could be protecting you and keeping you healthy and making you live longer.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s strange that people think that they can control their cholesterol with diet as much as we’ve been told. And isn’t it true that you really can’t control your cholesterol with diet by not eating eggs and red meat. What kind of foods can contribute to high cholesterol?
Jimmy Moore: Right. So those are all really good questions. And the popular one is, don’t eat eggs because of all the cholesterol that’s in the egg that’s going to raise your blood level of cholesterol. But, I attended a conference earlier this year. I’m one of those geeky people that goes to these medical conferences. And I’m like the only non-MD there.
Anyway, one of the lectures that I heard was this guy named, Dr. Peter Attia, he’s a medical doctor. And he did a whole lecture on cholesterol. So needless to say, I was in the midst of writing my book, I want to list down what this guy has to say. And one of the key facts – and we point out this out in the book that he brought out, 85% of the cholesterol you consume in your diet is excreted. So only 15% actually gets absorbed by the body and that doesn’t always translate into an increase in your cholesterol in your blood.
But that just goes to show you this whole nonsense about low cholesterol and cholesterol-free foods that you see plastered across all these items in the supermarket. It’s just nonsense because that does not translate to higher blood cholesterol levels. So what does raise cholesterol? That was your question.
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Jimmy Moore: So, before we get into what raises cholesterol, I think we need to make a distinction between what cholesterol you want to be raised and then what cholesterol you don’t want to be raised. So, the one you want to be raise is your HDL. The very best way you can raise HDL cholesterol – and Dean Ornish is going to have a fit when he hears me say this, he’s a famous low fat diet guy. You have to eat more fat, especially saturated fat. So foods like butter, coconut oil, lard, full-fat meats and cheeses. Those kinds of things are going to have an incredible effect not only on your HDL cholesterol, it’s also going to help bring down your triglycerides which you don’t really hear a lot about from most mainstream health circles.
And then also, and we’re going to be a little bit icky here so stick with me. The small LDL particles switch over to the large fluffy kind. So LDL is not just one number, it’s two major numbers. Your particles are either the large fluffy kind – what they call pattern A or the small dense kind which they call pattern B LDL. And so, what eating fat – there are all those saturated fat sources I just mentioned. What eating fat does is it switches you over from the small dense kind, which are very dangerous, those are the kind that penetrate the arterial wall to more the large fluffy kind, which are less atherogenic and pretty much harmless in the context of heart disease. So that’s what you get from eating saturated fat. You raise your good cholesterol, you lower triglycerides and you make more of the large fluffy kind of LDL.
Wendy Myers: Aren’t grains and sugar problematic? Don’t those contribute to…
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. I’m getting there.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: I’m getting there. You’re winded me up so..
Wendy Myers: I want to get to the meat. I want to get to the meat.
Jimmy Moore: So, at the literal meat. So yeah, so this is what you don’t want to have happen. You don’t want triglycerides to go up. You don’t want HDL to go down and you definitely don’t want those small dense LDL particles to go up. Well guess what, if you are consuming refined carbohydrates which is mostly the flours and grain based foods that are out there, which is basically almost all the food supply these days except for real food as well as sugars. And Wendy, when some people start just even fall into that category, not everybody, but a lot of people and definitely myself having weighed over 400 pounds at one time in my life. All of those are going to cause major metabolic disturbances in addition to making higher triglycerides, lower HDL and more dominance of small LDL particles – you’re going to raise your blood sugar, which is going to spike your insulin. That’s another key marker people should be paying attention to, that they’re not, unless they’re diabetic.
And yes, the vegetable oils are incredibly inflammatory. They are, yes lowering your LDL so you might say, “Well my LDL goes down when I consume this.” That’s true, but does that mean you’re healthier? No, because what it’s doing is it’s removing all the large fluffy kind leaving behind an oxidized version of LDL which is mostly those small dense LDL. You’re actually putting your heart health at more risk by consuming these vegetable oils in conjunction with the high carb diet. It’s a double whammy to make you very unhealthy.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And one thing I also wanted to address is the fact that even if your cholesterol is too low, that’s going to be problematic also.
Jimmy Moore: Absolutely. And we put a very famous example in the book of this, his name is Tim Russert. He was the host of Meet the Press on NBC and 1 month before he died of his very first heart attack, he was preparing for his show on a Sunday morning and he collapsed and died because he had a heart attack. One month before, he was at the doctor’s and the doctor said, “You are the picture of heart health.” You want to know why the doctor thought he was the picture of heart health, Wendy? His total cholesterol – 105.
So 105, almost any doctor, cardiologist really, anybody that’s in the mainstream of health would look at that and say, “Wow, you are awesome. This is a great indication of incredible heart health.” And yet, he died of his very first heart attack. Why did that happen?
Because his inflammation was off the chart’s high. His heart calcium score was over 500, that one I told you I had 0 a while ago. His’ was over 500. So, despite his very low cholesterol, he still had a heart attack and he died of his very first heart attack. Why did he die of it? Because the very substance that might have saved his life was taken out of his body. He was eating a low fat, high carb diet, taking a statin drug, riding a stationary bike every day, doing all the things that mainstream medicine said, “This is what you do to protect your heart,” and yet it was the exact opposite thing that he needed to do and in the end ended up killing him.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I know one time, at one point on my life I was vegetarian for just a couple of years and I wasn’t feeling well. I went to the doctor. I’m like, “Figure out what’s wrong with me.” Little did I know it was my diet, but my cholesterol was 173. And I know now that that is just way too low. That’s not a healthy cholesterol level.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, definitely. Over 150 is better than under 150 but yeah, it’s good that you recognize that your cholesterol needs to be a little bit higher. And it tends to be when you eat the way that I’m talking about, it tends to be the HDL cholesterol that really dominates. I got an e-mail last week from somebody that was really worried about their cholesterol because their doctor wants to put them on a statin drug. So, she sent me her numbers and her total cholesterol was only 225. So not real high and yet the doctor was heavily pushing statins. But you want to know when her HDL cholesterol was of that 225, it was 105 of it.
So, almost 40% of her total cholesterol was this one you want very high. So, I often tell people and I put this in the book as well – knowing your total cholesterol is like knowing the end of a baseball game is 25. You don’t know if that’s a 24 to 1 blowout. You don’t know if that barn burner game was 13 to 12. You just don’t know what that comprises. And so, you have to know the breakdown of that total cholesterol and know that one of those numbers on the panel is something you want higher. So why are we putting a drug in people’s mouths to artificially lower cholesterol when that may not be the issue?
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s just insane. And I mean you want to know your particle size too, right?
Jimmy Moore: Right. So, there’s a test you can have run. It’s called the NMR Lipoprofile test. Literally, any doctor in America can have this run. It’s only available in the United States because it is out of a lab in Raleigh, North Carolina. They can’t do international. The blood has to get to him quick. So, if you’re in the United States and maybe Canada can do it, I’m not sure about that. But you can have this run. And it breaks down the particle number for you so you get to see the exact number of LDL particles in your blood and also they differentiate the small dense LDL particles, which is the number you want to have as low as possible.
So you get that number and beyond the shadow of a doubt you know how you’re doing in your LDL. And like I said, if you’re eating more of those healthy fats we were talking about and less of the carbohydrates and the vegetable oils, your small dense LDL particle should be rocking and rolling. Ideally under 20% of your total LDL particles should be the small dense kind.
Wendy Myers: And I was reading in your book about the accuracy of today’s cholesterol test. I mean, I know some people can go into the doctors and get, say their cholesterol is 210 or something. Isn’t it true that the tests aren’t totally accurate and you want to be careful about that?
Jimmy Moore: Well, the basic test has major problems because one of the numbers that is predicated on getting lower and lower and lower is your LDLC number. So your LDLC numbers, a lot of people don’t realize this but that LDLC is actually a calculated number, it’s not an exactly measured number. They calculated it simply based on what your DLDL which is your triglycerides divided by 5 and then your HDL cholesterol and whatever’s left, they just assumed that’s your LDL. That’s the Friedewald equation. They estimate and calculate what they think that number is, which kind of makes it funny that they want that number below 100 and yet, it’s just a calculated number.
And the really funky thing is for people that eat a high fat, low carb diet for example, that LDL estimation with the Friedewald equation is way off base. It’s not even close to being accurate. And yet, all these poor people go to their doctors and the doctor freaks out because there’s a two in front of the total cholesterol or there’s a one or higher in front of the LDL and they’re pushing statins, statins, statins. And that’s just not a reliable number. That’s why this NMR Lipoprofile with the particle size breakdown is going to get you so much more valuable information about what you should do in your current state of heart health.
Wendy Myers: It just makes me really sad that almost every client that comes to me is on statins or their doctor is pushing them because their cholesterol numbers aren’t looking so hot.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: And it makes me really sad because I saw my own father’s health decline. He was on statins for at least 10 years. And the statins are kind of like a gateway drug because, over time, over this decade, his health just declined more and more and more. I saw his memory go. He was depressed and the doctor put him on anti-depressant and then, it just was this cascade of effects because clearly, the statins, if you remove this protective cholesterol from your body that’s in every cell of your body, you can’t help but have a decline in health. And so why is everyone on statins?
Jimmy Moore: And the statins are so insidious because most of the people that go on them tend to be getting a little bit older so 50, 60, 70s. And so, they go on these statin drugs and they start having these cognitive declines. And they started having these aches and pains in their joints and in their muscles. And guess what Wendy, they don’t chalk it up to the statin. They chalk it up to, “I’m just getting older and that’s how I’m supposed to feel.” So, it’s really horrible when you stop and think about how bamboozled people are being led to believe that these are great heart health things to be putting in their body and they just write off all the symptoms from taking it to old age.
Now, I took both Lipitor and Crestor before I started my low carb diet. In fact, I went on Lipitor and I remember I was having joint pain and muscle aches. But I thought, I didn’t think it was the drug. I was just like, “Okay this is interesting. I guess I’m getting older.” – even in my late 20s when I first started taking those. And so, I go and play basketball at my church. And I go up for a rebound, grab the ball and my thumb, my right thumb just goes straight backwards and I had never seen that happen before. And I go to emergency room and ER doctor says, “Do you take cholesterol lowering medication?” I said, “Yeah. Actually I’m on Lipitor.” He said, “You need to talk to your doctor about that because I believe that may have contributed to this injury.” And I was like, “Whoa!”
So, I talked to my doctor about it. And I said I think I need to come off this medication. “Oh, no problem.” It’s not a disease. It has no bearing on anything regarding your state of health. It may show an interesting marker of something else going on in the body. But it in it of itself it is not the disease and yet, doctors are treating it, day after day after day. They call it this real fancy schmancy name of hypercholesterolemia so people that aren’t aware of what that means, it just means high cholesterol. You know they get scared by that big long H word and they’re, “I guess that means medication to make this hypercholesterolemia go away.”
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And it makes me sad to think of what side effects that my father experienced. He got to the point where his muscles became so weak from the statins that he couldn’t even walk to the bathroom. So, we had to put him on a nursing home so he could get 24-hour care. And people don’t realize this is not common but it is a side effect of statins that a lot of people experience. A doctor took months to figure out what the problem was.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. And the neurodegenerative effects – one of my experts in the book is Dr. Duane Graveline. He was a medical doctor that works for NASA and he had “high cholesterol”, I think it was something like 240 back when he believed in the cholesterol hypothesis. And he took Lipitor, 1 month later, he got this very rare disease called global transient amnesia where his memory basically only took him back to his childhood and he blacked out for a few days. And when he woke up, he had no idea what was going on and the doctors didn’t want to believe it was the statin. And long story short, it was the statin. He experienced it again when he went back on the drug again.
And so, he’s kind of been a champion of trying to expose all these dangers of statin medications. And in fact for this book, I wanted to interview him, but his hearing had gotten so bad and he’s debilitated to the point that he’s almost going to be in a wheelchair really soon. And it’s just a really sad story, but we tell his story in Chapter 5 of Cholesterol Clarity because people need to know there are unintended consequences to these drugs.
And it goes even beyond that. You know we said that statin-induced diabetes. It’s becoming a real concern. Statin-induced cancer is also becoming a concern. They’re just really bad news. And most people that are being prescribed statins probably don’t need them. The only people that have been found to have positive effects from taking statins are men who have already had some kind of a cardiovascular event. And even then, it’s kind of sketchy what the actual benefits are to those people.
Wendy Myers: You know I like how you said that statins can lead to diabetes and cancer because that’s exactly what happened to both of my parents. My mom took statins for 8 years and she started to be pre-diabetic and I told her, get off the statins right now. And my father, I didn’t have the knowledge at the time but like I said, statins, I think it’s a gateway drug. He eventually got diabetes, medications for that, insulin and then, all that leads to cancer and he died of esophageal cancer. And the statins are the gateway drug to all these declines in health.
And it saddens me how people are taking statins to protect their health, to protect their heart, protect their cardiovascular system but it in fact damages their cardiovascular system because they no longer have this protective cholesterol to repair the damage.
Jimmy Moore: That’s right. Yeah. You know who I think should be on this message that I talked about in Cholesterol Clarity are insurance companies. I mean think about all the procedures and all, everything that they have covered as insurance providers that was totally preventable if these people were just given the right information and opted off the medication that leads to more disease down the road.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s just frightening how, I mean, how many people are in statins? How much money are the pharmaceutical companies making from this drug?
Jimmy Moore: 29 billion dollars a year is all they’re making from statins, just from statin medications. I mean, think about these big conglomerate pharmaceutical companies, they have all these drugs but just one classification of drug, statins, makes 29 billion dollars annually and rising.
Wendy Myers: Wow. Yeah. And it’s not surprising why the doctors – I don’t want to blame the doctors, I think they’re just doing what they are taught in medical school but I think a lot of them do push them because they’re paid on the back end to a certain extent.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, one of my experts for the book is Dr. William Davis. You might know him, he wrote Wheat Belly. And he told me some of the kind of behind the scenes details of how the statin drug companies, they really do flash a lot of resort, lush vacations for their families. And here, “Come give a talk at this conference we’re putting on. We’ll pay you tens of thousands of dollars to do a speech on our behalf.” You know it’s really insidious. And then, you think about all the advertising that they do on television. So, you see that as a patient, you see an ad. I just saw one yesterday for Crestor, “Go lower, ask your doctor about going lower with Crestor.”And so you immediately go to your doctor. And of course your doctor also heard from the pharmaceutical reps that are really well-dressed and beautiful people and this is a cure for heart disease and it’s going to really help people, it’s going to help your patients.
So they’ve been heavily marketed. The patients’ been heavily marketed. The patient goes in and dutifully asks their doctor about this drug who dutifully says, “Oh it just so happens. I have some free samples for you.” So, the pharmaceutical company says, “We didn’t have anything to do with that. Those two people talked to each other and they had a relationship.” So, it’s really horrible the way these things have so become part of our culture that we think they’re necessary to attain optimal heart health when just the opposite is happening.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And that’s what I try to tell my clients and other people too that you don’t want to get your health information from CNN or other major news outlets because the pharmaceutical companies own them. They run their ads. And newscasters, the people telling you all about the news, are not going to be giving new stories that are negative about Crestor, Lipitor or other medications because that’s not going to be favorable to their funder – their advertisers.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, and then shows like the Dr. Oz are so heavily, heavily influenced by grain companies. So companies that sell these products that are really horrible for people’s health and yet they sell it as health food.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And so, clearly statins do save some lives. I mean, you mentioned that men that have had a heart attack are really the candidates that should be taking them. Are there any other people where maybe it’s an appropriate situation?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. One of my experts in the book is a guy in Denver who is a medical doctor, Jeffry Gerber is his name. And Dr. Gerber said he has to routinely, with any of his patients who just refuse to make any changes in their diet – so they’re not about to get rid of their carbs, they’re not about to get rid of the vegetable oils in their diet. They’re too much in love with their S.A.D. diet. He says, “You know what? In those cases, pretty much the only thing I can do to medicate the damage that might be done from that bad diet is give him a statin drug.”
And it’s not necessarily the cholesterol lowering effects from the statin drug. It’s the anti-inflammatory effects that are being looked at from the statin. So, it’s sad when you stop and think about it that way. When the people would rather get heart disease and rather take a medication that could induce cancer or diabetes that just do the right thing and eat real food, get healthy the right way. It’s just very sad indeed.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know. Our culture is just so all about pill popping. You’re not going to be able to pop a pill and enjoy optimum health. It’s just not going to happen. You’ve got to change your lifestyle and diet. But I realize there are some people that won’t change their diet and lifestyle. It’s hard to do. It takes a long time.
Jimmy Moore: But you know what, I was there at one time. I mean 410 pounds Jimmy Moore was that, “I don’t care, I just want to eat my two boxes of little Debbie snack cakes and my 16 cans of Coca Cola a day.” That was my life. And I didn’t think twice about it. It didn’t really register on my radar screen. It took a series of events in my life to wake me up and then of course finding the diet that was right for me was key as well. And once I had all those pieces of the puzzle put together, then I became educated.
Now, I’m passionate about helping other people that were in the same situation that I was in that are still living out there and they need to know the truth. But it’s not going to be rammed right down their throat. You really have to kind of be elegant about the way you communicate the message to them, which is why I’ve done over 700 shows on my podcast and continue to be so enthusiastic about this message as it’s too important to give up on.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And even for me, I never would have imagined 5 or 10 years ago that I’d be eating the way that I am today and I love my food. And I was doing the same, I ate Dominos and McDonald’s and all kinds of fast food and I drank a Coke with every single meal. And I didn’t think I could live without that or live without sugar. And you can, you can do it. But you just take one small incremental step at a time and you can change your diet and lifestyle and get healthy.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. And I think this issue of cholesterol is kind of a big entry point for people when you show them, this is what’s happening to your panel, with triglycerides and explain why triglycerides are bad and this is what’s happening to your good cholesterol, and this is the small dense LDL particles. You start kind of showing them in easy to understand language, “Hey, this is what’s going on when you eat these foods.” I think it might click for a few people and that’s certainly what we hope with Cholesterol Clarity – that people read that and go, “Wow, I had no idea.”
Wendy Myers: Well tell us a little bit about the book. Like, what can people expect? And you had a lot of world renowned experts quoting certain stats in the book. Tell us a little bit about it.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. So, when I set out to write this book, I had already read several other books out there on cholesterol and most of them, Wendy ,were, “Well don’t worry about your cholesterol, cholesterol is not the enemy in heart disease.” Okay, that’s all well and good and I believe that is true but people still worry about the cholesterol. I was getting so many e-mails week after week and I still do, week after week after week from all these people that say, “My cholesterol is too high and it’s 220 you know. My doctor wants to put me on a statin drug, what do you think about my results?” And I said, “Nobody has ever kind of written the book in layman’s terms that kind of kept the information at a basic level.”
I just talked to my dad yesterday and I sent him a copy of my book. And I said, “What do you think?” He said, “Well i read the first few pages and this is going to be too complicated for me.” I said, “No, you haven’t read the first few pages because I kept it really basic.” I assumed the reader pretty much knows nothing about this subject because unfortunately, most people have been brainwashed about what they’ve heard about cholesterol. So, I try to tell the story of this is why cholesterol is important and why you need it. And it’s not really about cholesterol, it’s about inflammation.
And I know you’ve heard all this information about cholesterol from all these major heart groups like the American Heart Association and other organizations regarding health. And here are some doctors that say, “Hey, this is why we don’t believe in this message.” And we just kind of methodically walk people through this process of this information because it’s a lot to take in, Wendy. In fact, at the beginning of each chapter after I just told them all this new information, I said, “Okay, I know that’s a lot to take in so stop, absorb it.” You know I really try to, for people that haven’t heard any of this stuff before make it so accessible to them that they didn’t get overwhelmed or intimidated by it.
I really hope my dad does read my whole book and come away and go, “Wow, I had no idea.” So the experts, they were all in the book is that did a little moment of clarity quote. So my skill set is interviewing people. So, I interviewed all 29 of these experts for the book, brand new interviews. I transcribed the interviews. And then, I got it okay-ed from them that this is what they wanted to say. So, everywhere throughout the book, I threw in this clarity quote so after you read what I read, they provide a little more advanced information that we try to avoid. I let them kind of pull all that advanced information and I kind of put it all together to reinforce a lot of what I was writing in the main part of the book.
And then my co-author Dr. Eric Westman, he chimed in with some doctors’ notes from time to time with his experience about whatever it was we were talking about in that chapter. So, hopefully people walk away from this going, “Wow I learned a whole lot and it wasn’t intimidating.” The last thing we wanted to have happen was this to be an intimidating book and hopefully Cholesterol Clarity and especially the subtitle, What the HDL Is Wrong with My Numbers? Hopefully, people get the whimsical tone just from looking at the title.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And I’m really looking forward to it. I purchased it and put it on my iPad but I need to finish reading it, I read about half the book part of our interview. But it’s something that’s so important because I need to give this book to any of my friends and family that have high cholesterol. There are doctors who want to put them on statins, I need to give it to my clients that are potential clients that are potentially going to be going on statins. And it’s just so important to get this message out there – that people need to stop and think before they go on a drug.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, you said it. You hit the nail on the head earlier. We are a pill popping society. You know people will take these medications for a critically high cholesterol and all these other medications without thinking about, why is that medication necessary? Do I truly have a statin deficiency? No, you don’t. You have a nutrition deficiency and most of the time that nutritional deficiency is fat when you start thinking about it. People are getting way too many carbohydrates in their diet, not in a fatter diet because they’ve been told; fat is the enemy because fat, especially saturated fat, raises cholesterol which clogs arteries. We unravel that whole tale in Cholesterol Clarity.
Wendy Myers: I know it’s funny that people try to avoid foods that have cholesterol because I actually actively try to eat food that have high cholesterol.
Jimmy Moore: Me too.
Wendy Myers: I eat lots of caviar. Caviar is one of the food’s highest in cholesterol. I’m going to go with sushi, meat and lots of fish eggs. And I’m trying to eat it; I eat red meat a couple times a week. I’m actively trying to get this healthy substance in my body.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. And I eat pastured eggs pretty much every day. In fact, I just had 4 this morning. I cooked them in grass-fed butter and then I put some Morello cheese on top of that and then put some sauerkraut on top of that for a little bit of probiotics and then some sour cream. Booyah! That’s an awesome meal.
Wendy Myers: Stop it. You’re making me hungry. I’m starving right now.
Jimmy Moore: I know right? And I won’t be hungry again for a very long time because I fed myself that way. It’s pretty cool.
Wendy Myers: I have one more question for you that I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most compelling health issue that we’re facing in the world today?
Jimmy Moore: The misinformation about diet. I think the fear of fat has totally ruined our health as a society and as long as people continue to fear dietary fat, and when I say fat, I mean the right kinds of fat, all these fats we talked about earlier and mostly saturated fat sources from real foods. I think that’s the missing element why so many people are diseased today, Wendy. And you know the sooner people realize that it’s not the fat that’s the enemy. It’s the sugars, it’s the grains, it’s even the starches that a lot of people that are super duper sensitive to carbohydrates, get those under control. Eat more fat and I’ll be danged if our health crisis isn’t turned around.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I agree with you. I 100% agree with you. So, can you tell the listeners a little bit about where they can find you and what you’re up to these days?
Jimmy Moore. Sure. So, I have a whole bunch of projects out there and we kind of put them all in one hub, Livinlavidalowcarb.com. I do a blog; I do 3 podcasts that air 5 days a week. I do a forum, Youtube videos, Twitter and Facebook. And when you have found it, you got to be in all of those places because there are some people that only follow me on my Facebook page and they don’t know about anything I’ve said to them on the blog. And then, there are some people that are big fans of my podcast show that won’t read my blog.
And so, you kind of have to be in all those places. So, I try to do that. I’m also in the process of about to write my next book that’ll be coming out in 2014, Ketone Clarity, which will talk about all the benefits of eating a high fat, low carb, ketogenic style diet. Lots of information on that one and again I’m going to collaborate with my co-author, Dr. Eric Westman on that one. And it will be similar to Cholesterol Clarity. I’m going to interview 29 experts on this subject. And like I said, that should come in June of 2014.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I’m looking forward to that one because I actually heard you on another podcast talking about how you’ve got to check your ketones and your blood sugar levels and exactly how foods affect you and I bought myself a blood sugar monitor and started monitoring my blood sugar based on that podcast so I’m really looking forward to that book.
Jimmy Moore: Awesome.
Wendy Myers: So, Jimmy thank you so much for being on the show. Your book, it’s really going to help so many people get their fat, sugar and cholesterol straight because there is just so much confusion about this issue. And most doctors, they’re just confusing their patients even more actually.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, yeah.
Wendy Myers: I’ve been relaying this message in your book for years. And no one will listen to me and in fact I’ve lost clients when I try to tell them the exact opposite of what their doctor tells them about how to address their high cholesterol. So, thank you for clearly dedicating your life to giving people accurate health information and contributing this really important, timely book.
Jimmy Moore: Thank you and people can find out more information about the book and including a free chapter we put it up on our official website, cholesterolclarity.com.
Wendy Myers: All right, great. Well, thank you so much Jimmy.
Jimmy Moore: Thank you, Wendy.
Cate Beehan: Please give the Live to 110 podcast a nice review and rating in iTunes. Your review will increase our visibility on iTunes by helping it show up in searches and help us spread our gospel on health. We would really appreciate it. Thank you to all the listeners out there for tuning in to the Live to 110 podcast. You can find Wendy on liveto110.com and me, Cate Beehan at fitness-broad.com. See you next week.
Wendy Myers: Thank you everybody. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye. Goodbye.
