There’s a certain endearing quality to Dr. Rothman that I can’t quite put my finger on. I don’t agree with everything he says (I found myself responding instead of listening to some of his Fish Oil discussion…so I need to go back to that), but the premis of his talk seems right on target:
- Our food choices are responsible for many/most of our chronic diseases
- The medical establishment mostly treats the symptoms of these diseases without trying to resolve the cause of them
- Sugar, vegetable oils, and refined carbohydrates should be considered toxic and removed from diet
- Cholesterol is not the hobgoblin of ill health it has been made out to be
- Be weary of statins (and take CoQ10 if you’re on them)
Since he’s an MD, he made the standard disclaimer about not giving out medical advice…but one trying and disheartening moment came when a woman over 65 told him she was prescribed statins because her total cholesterol of 249 mg/dL. I wanted to find her doctor myself and ask him what he was doing. I was glad, however, that Rothman took the time to reviewed the literature about that, and stressed that higher cholesterol in people over 65 is associated with longer life expectancy.
At any rate, it’s a long and informative talk covering a lot of ground. It’s well worth watching, even if some parts might leave you scratching your head (he seems to take a very cautious approach to vitamin supplementation, for example) or shaking your head in frustration while you hurl invectives at the computer and pound the table with your fist (not that I did that, of course).
Enjoy!
My take on Dr. Rothman’s advise on supplementation is this: if you don’t eat the poison (omega 6’s and all the other stuff), supplementation is not necessary.
Thanks for sharing this video.
REally enjoyed this video. I actually found myself in agreement with most of what he says. He is also the first to mention the deleterious effects of microwaving food. As an ex researcher in molecular genetics I am very aware that microwaves modify molecules and in many cases render them toxic to the body. In teh lab we would find that the restriction map of naked nucleic acids was dramatically changed after microwaving. This was discovered by chance when someone who was probably in a hurry decided to defrost a small vial of standard DNA marker using the microwave. It became completely unusable for sizing DNA because all the reference markers were no longer of the right size. You may think this casual observation from sloppy practices in a lab may have no application in our every day life but now we know that microwaves can convert aminoacids are from the L-enantiomer form which our anzymes can process to the D form that we cannot process (bacteria can). The DNA inside fresh foods like meat and vegetables is also mutated (Like it happened in vial in the lab) and our digestive enzyme struggle to process the building blocks of these biomolecules damaged by excessive microwave energy. I read somewhere that they were advising not to warm up baby food in microwaves for this very reason. I NEVER use microwave ovens!
Thumbs up to Dr Rothman for standing up for what he thinks is right and for going even against the conventional medical training he has received. I really liked the concept of imbalance that needs to be put right and sympatethic/parasympathetic overload! Thanks for posting this. 🙂