Living A Full Life

The Power of Fats in Your Diet

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 14

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Uncover the truth about fats and transform your dietary habits with insights from Dr. Enrico Dolcecore. We're challenging the outdated beliefs that have demonized fats for decades, revealing their essential role in energy, cell function, and hormone production. Discover why the real dietary adversary might be sugar, not fats, and how incorporating the right kinds of fats can enhance your health and well-being. From understanding the differences between saturated, unsaturated, and trans fats to recognizing the harmful effects of processed oils, this episode is packed with essential knowledge to help you make informed dietary decisions.

Join us as we explore the profound impact of healthy fats on heart and brain health, weight management, and inflammation reduction. We'll guide you on how to choose the best oils for your culinary needs, whether it's butter for baking or coconut oil for high-heat cooking. With practical tips on reading food labels, avoiding hydrogenated oils, and adding omega-3-rich foods to your diet, this episode is your guide to fostering a healthier lifestyle. I'll also share how these dietary choices can alleviate inflammation and pain, reinforcing the connection between what you eat and how you feel. Tune in for a journey to a more informed and balanced approach to nutrition.

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Living a Full Life. I'm Dr Enrico Dolcecori and this week's topic is going to be all about fats. Why not? The last two weeks we talked about protein and then we talked about carbs. Well, we might as well finish it off with fats and talk about all the good, the bad and the essential that comes from fats.

Speaker 1:

It all started with the protein podcast. I was like you know what it's really important, that people understand the essentials of protein, what it does, why it's important and we led into the American diet of being very low in protein. People don't get enough protein per day, which leads to a lot of the major issues we see as we age and probably the underlying cause of aging. We talked about how protein plays a role in hormones and how that is maybe overshadowed and why there's so many hormone issues as well. So that was that. Then we got into carbs and we talked about how it's major fuel source for the body and this week, fats and you're going to see the overlap of fats and its essential roles in the body, including hormones. I want you to pay attention to that. I think that's where the American lifestyle diet perpetually fails us is, because we're wrecking havoc on our hormones at a very young age because of our diet. Right, it starts off in our young ages of life.

Speaker 1:

So fat, let's talk about all that, it's not bad. Fat's not bad. If you're older than 50, you remember the war on fat. Everything was low fat, low fat. This low fats are bad for you. Fat makes you fat and we ended up realizing well, no, it was sugar. Sugar is what causes all the problems and fat's actually really essential. What we ended up learning during the low-fat era in the 80s and 90s is that people were running into other problems and they're mainly hormonal. The risks of breast cancer were going through the roof and all this other stuff that was happening. So fats are macronutrients, just like carbs and proteins, that are essential for energy, cell function and hormone production. They're pretty much the architect of the hormone system, all hormones. So we'll get into that in a second.

Speaker 1:

They're compromised of fatty acid chains and they can be saturated, unsaturated or trans. This is just the way the the fats are made up in their molecular and cellular structure. Their molecular structure from chemistry, so unsaturated and saturated, and then trans fats. So natural sources of fat come from plants. They can be in plants. They can be in animals, dairy nuts, seeds, fish and even the oils that we use, especially oils. Oils are mainly fat. The process sources is the ones we want to talk about. It's the hydrogenated oils that they've changed and really oils have gone rancid, that they've heated up too high, that they've changed their molecular structure and they're put in fast food and packaged foods.

Speaker 1:

They were done on purpose by the food industry to preserve food longer. If you put olive oil into a packaged good and pack it up, it's not going to last very long. It should be eaten within a couple of days, otherwise that oil is going to ransom very quick. So they had to modify oils for our palate to make things taste good. Otherwise everything would have tasted like cardboard Everything. You can't package anything with oil in it. It will go bad very quickly. And then if you didn't put oil in it, it would be dry and brittle. Everything would not just taste good. So oil had to be conformed. We understand it, but it's because of the processed manufacturers and the food industry that we've done that. Otherwise hydrogenated oils are very hard to find in nature. They're usually just rancid oils. So that's what we're putting in our food. There we go.

Speaker 1:

But let's talk about the role of fat and why we need to look at the good fats and the essential fats, the energy storage. They're pretty much just fuel reserves for the body, so they are pure energy. One gram of fat is equal to nine calories of energy. So burning one gram of fat to nine calories of energy. So burning one gram of fat has nine calories of energy. Compared to protein and carbs, if you burn one gram of protein or carb you get about four calories per gram. So that's where the energy is packed in fat A lot of calorie, calorie dense, a lot of energy. It's oil, just like petroleum for our vehicles. It's just packed with energy. Once you ignite it it can create a lot of energy to run engines, trains, boats, cruise ships, everything it can be done through diesel fuel and petroleum. That's oil, right. So it just packs more energy, dense in it.

Speaker 1:

Every cell membrane in the body, so the membrane of every cell, whether we're talking about a skin cell, a red blood cell, a white blood cell, whatever it may be, every cell wall is made up of this fatty membrane, especially the brain. The brain is made up of tons of fatty membrane and fatty chains, and our nerves as well. So our entire spinal column and brain is covered in myelin, which is pretty much made of fatty acids plays a huge role in that and replenishing that and creating that type of tissue in the body. Most importantly, hormone production and vitamin absorption. So by having these fuel stores in the body at certain points in the epidermis, subcutaneous areas, where we keep this stuff, we can absorb vitamins the fat soluble ones, like vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K all the ones with a letter on it are fat soluble vitamins. And then that has a major role in survival as well.

Speaker 1:

Insulation and protection of organs. There's brown fat and white fat. We have very little brown fat in the body. It's typically found around all of our major organs kidneys, heart, liver and it's minimal. And that fat is there to protect the organs, like in this dense fluid package, so that it can jump around, go, go through the hurdles, win an Olympic gold medal in track and field all that good stuff. So that's the role of fat. It plays a role. It's there for a reason and we know that.

Speaker 1:

But we need to understand good fats versus bad fats If we're truly going to walk away and live a healthier life, it's distinguishing good and bad fats. It's easy to point out bad food Oreos versus good food fish, salmon, something like that. We know that. But the good fats can be found in monosaturated forms such as olive oil, avocado and nuts. Those are monosaturated. They're simple, all of chemistry chains of your body that can absorb easily and they love it. They're built of three and six omegas omega-3s, omega-6s which are the best and those are the ones that your body utilizes and they're the strongest chains. Then we have polyunsaturated fats, which is like all the omegas from fish, flaxseed, walnuts. Those are polyunsaturated, and then the benefits of having this in our diet is that they reduce inflammation. Contrary to most, belief is that fats can create inflammation. Good fats can actually reduce inflammation, so that's why omega-3 supplements are great. Fish oil supplements are great.

Speaker 1:

Flaxseeds. We use these for anti-inflammatory purposes in the body and they support heart and brain health and they even aid in weight management. We need good fat in order to maintain our weight, otherwise it can really skew. If we have too much fat coming into the body or no fat at all, the body will go into either a hyper storage phase or a hyper starvation phase, and those are both unhealthy systems to go by because they wreck havoc on our what? Hormone system? Now, bad fats where are they? What are they called?

Speaker 1:

Typically, trans fats are on the top of the list. They're found in, like what we talked about, processed foods, margarine, fried foods. The reason why, when we fry our food with oil any oil is that high temperature distorts the fatty acid chains in the oil. They become rancid, they become unprocessable, but boy does it taste good. Right, that's the problem with that. At that high temperature Excess saturated fat. So having too much of this can happen in processed meats and in fast foods.

Speaker 1:

Again, the processing of the oils and to preserve, let's say, things like deli meat or fast food, hamburgers can actually cause hyper inflammation in the body, can actually cause hyperinflammation in the body and then it raises LDL cholesterol and they can contribute to obesity and chronic diseases as well. From all inflammatory diseases, from heart disease, diabetes, cancers. We can start on a slippery slope with that with the consumption of this all the time. So the benefits of just being focused on good fats is that it supports cognitive function and mental clarity and keeps you satiated over longer periods of time, and it enhances cardiovascular health by lowering bad cholesterol. So eating good, healthy fats increase your good cholesterol, hdls, and by lowering bad cholesterol, your LDLs. They can improve skin and hair health and regulate blood sugar levels as well, because they play a vital role in satiating meals and keeping your caloric intake at a healthy level as well.

Speaker 1:

Cholesterol in the body. So that increases the risk of heart disease, strokes, diabetes. It can promote weight gain and metabolic disorders and it can contribute to chronic inflammation leading to joint pain and immune dysfunction. As a chiropractor, we see a lot of joint pain and cleaning up people's diets does most of the effect. It helps them the most. Yeah, getting adjusted, getting some therapy, getting some ice or heat on there or some cold therapy, or even class four laser whatever it is ultrasound, whatever it is, to help reduce inflammation. If our diet is filled with these bad fats, inflammation will return very quickly. So that's one of the reasons why we play diet plays such a big role in a vitality clinic like ours, because without cleaning up diet, inflammation will be there and if the inflammation is there, pain is always comes with inflammation, depending on where it is.

Speaker 1:

So fats should be determined on the. You pretty much determine good fats in the grocery store by what you buy, staying away from processed foods and buying good fats and knowing which ones can go rancid at what temperatures. So different fats for different reasons are one thing. You either put things in the oven. Those are considered lower temperature fats. Then you either cook stuff on the stovetop which are medium to high. So if you want to bake, I say butter is the best fat to use. It stays in its pure form up until about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn't turn into a rancid fat and it's perfect for baking. I think that's why most baking over history has always been used with butter. So that's one of the better ones to use for that. So butter is healthy From good source, clean source cows. Butter is a healthy fat.

Speaker 1:

Number two is probably olive oil for medium heat cooking. So anything on the stovetop cooking chicken over a long period of time, sauteing any type of that cooking, sauteing some vegetables. Olive oil plays the best role. Some vegetables. Olive oil plays the best role If we want to use a high temperature to quick sear or quick cook or even fry some things like potatoes on the stovetop. If we want to do that, you want to go into the coconut oils, the stronger oils that can withstand higher heats before they break down into trans fats. Right, that's the ones that you want to.

Speaker 1:

So in our home we have those three things. We have butter, olive oil and avocado oil. Like you, use those interchangeably for medium heat and coconut oil. We keep a thing of coconut oil in the pantry because it lasts long, it's antiviral, it's antibacterial, it's amazing. Coconut oil is fantastic, so it stores for a long time, it's just great. And we use it for higher temperature cooking Works great. So my practical tips that I use for my family and for my patients. What I tell them is read the food labels.

Speaker 1:

Avoid hydrogenated oils. If you can't pronounce the oil, it's probably hydrogenated. A lot of the seed oils are already rancid and considered trans fats, like sunflower. The seed oils are already rancid and considered trans fats, like sunflower, canola, sesame seed, if they're in the food, if they use them. These things have had to be hydrogenated in order to put them into the food and package it. Otherwise, like we talked about olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil in its pure form in a packaged food will go moldy very quick. So there's no way, there's no win here. You have to hydrogenate them to put them into the package. To last on the shelf Makes sense to feed millions and billions of people, I understand, but you get to choose what goes into your mouth, right?

Speaker 1:

You can let the white sheep do their thing and you can be the black sheep and do your thing. Cook with healthy oils all the time the ones that we talked about with temperature. Eat more whole foods and fewer processed ones. Pretty obvious one there, right? Try our best and include omega-3 rich foods in your diet. This comes from the seeds salmon, fish, krill, shrimp, all that. They all have good omega-3s in them. So having a little bit into your diet plays a good role. It's tough, though, if you think about the American diet, with salmon, fishes, shrimps, flax seeds, you're not going to get enough. A sprinkle a tablespoon of flax seed on top of your salad is a good start, but isn't going to be enough of omega-3 and what you need for the day. So having an omega-3 supplement is crucial, and if you listen to all my podcasts, you never see me telling you to take one particular supplement, because one size doesn't fit all. However, omega-3 for 99% of you listening right now is important. Even your kids is important.

Speaker 1:

On a daily basis, got to be taking your vitamin three your omega-3. And your vitamin D3, your vitamin D. Those are two. I take them both in liquid form Liquid capsule for omega, drinking the pure liquid. Even with those lemon ones, it's tough when you're drinking fish oil or cod liver oil. So I like the encapsulated ones that are enteric, coated so you're not burping them up. Pure encapsulations has a great one, douglas Labs has a few. There's about four or five that are great. Then vitamin d3 pretty much across the board. Any company that you use for vitamin d3 works well.

Speaker 1:

Uh, a side note for vitamin d3 I always get asked should it be with vitamin k? Should it be? I've, I've been, I'm getting old, I've seen everything. Uh, the whole k vitamin, vitamin D, calcium and magnesium triple threat. That's gone now you can't even find that anymore. Why? Because they debunked it Calcium and vitamin D3, magnesium and vitamin D3, the D3 and K.

Speaker 1:

They're both fat soluble. It makes sense. I get the K and D. Makes perfect sense. If you want to combine them and take them, probably great, that's a great supplement. But just it's the vitamin D. We need those two. We just don't get enough sunlight. We don't convert enough vitamin D through the right way. Go back to the vitamin D podcast we talked about and how it works. But those are the two. That's it. Other than that, I really don't give a blanket supplement to everyone. Those are the two that all humans need, based on the diet that we eat.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you were Japanese and we were in Japan, omega-3 might be consumed on a weekly basis in a satisfactory level. It might be good because they're heavy on seafood. They might be doing great on that. It depends where we're. At Sardinia, italy, yeah, they eat a lot of fish. Maybe there islands in Greece, they eat a lot of fish too. They're fish dense diets as well, so they might be okay. But for us in America, none of those places are America. You need your omega-3 fatty acids. That's great. We covered protein, we covered carbs, we covered fats. There you go, you're well-educated for now. It's amazing how we can always circle back. We covered fats. There you go, you're well-educated for now. It's amazing how we can always circle back. We could talk for hours these podcasts could be hours and could go into depth of how the fatty wall membrane on every cell is constructed, why it's important, why sodium-potassium channels work that way.

Speaker 1:

Through it. It's not anatomy class at university. You guys don't need this. This is just tidbits to walk away from. Take your vitamin D3, take your omega-3 supplement. Clean up the hydrogenated oils pretty much by eliminating processed foods, and bring in good oils for your cooking, like olive oil, coconut oil and butter, and I think you learned a lot this week. Have a great and healthy week, stay well, stay healthy. See you next week.

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host
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Dr. Crystal Corona

Co-host