EP 68: Statin Dangers: Why You Need Cholesterol with Dr. Peter Osborne

Traditional heart disease protocols, with their emphasis on lowering cholesterol, have been a disaster from the start. Science has shown that cholesterol levels are a poor predictor of heart disease and that standard prescriptions for lowering it, such as ineffective low-fat, high-carb diets, and serious side-effect causing statin medications, obscure the real causes of heart disease. Even doctors at leading institutions have been misled for years, based on creative reporting of research results from pharmaceutical companies intent on supporting the billion-dollar-a-year cholesterol-lowering drug industry.

Now they have a new target market: children. Yes, you read that correctly, children. I have been seeing this egregious trend for quite some time now. Which is why this episode is so important, and I encourage sharing it far and wide. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• Are statin medications worth the risk?
• Why you need cholesterol
• Should cholesterol be lowered?
• How and why it is your responsibility to be your own wellness advocate
• The seven fundamentals for improving your health

Listen to the podcast here:

Within the below transcript, the bolded text is Samantha Gilbert, and the regular text is Dr. Peter Osborne.

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What is the most common side effect of statins?

In adults, statin medications can lead to Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and cause liver damage and sexual dysfunction, especially low testosterone in men. They also create the conditions for heart disease and cancer because they poison a crucial enzyme that regulates cholesterol to begin with. 

If statin medications can do this much damage in adults, how do you think they impact children? Children put on statin medications results in severe issues with sexual development and maturation, as well as neurological problems and learning disabilities. Statin medications significantly deplete CoQ10, glutathione (one of our body’s master antioxidants), vitamin E, and zinc. 

Today I brought Dr. Peter Osborne back on the show to discuss the importance of cholesterol, how the medical industry skews lab ranges to push statins, and the underlying causes of heart disease.

Dr. Peter Osborne is the Clinical Director of Origins Health Care in Sugar Land, Texas. He is a doctor of chiropractic, a doctor of pastoral science, and a board-certified clinical nutritionist. Often referred to as the gluten-free warrior, Dr. Osborn is one of the world’s most sought-after alternative health and nutrition experts. 

His practice is centered on helping those with painful, chronic, degenerative and autoimmune diseases using natural methods. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on gluten sensitivity and lectures nationally on this and many other nutritionally related topics. Dr. Osborn is the author of the best-selling book No Grain No Pain and is the founder of The Gluten-Free Society. 

Additionally, he is the author of the Gluten-Free Health Solution and The Glutenology Health Matrix, a series of videos and ebooks designed to help educate the world about gluten. Thanks for being with us today. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Osborne. 

Welcome back to the show Dr. Osborne, it’s great to see you.

Good to see you too. Thanks for having me on.

Last time you were on, we talked about the problem with grains and their connection to autoimmune disease, especially so-called gluten-free grains. And this is important because we know grains and processed foods that contain seed oils and refined sugar create a lot of inflammation in the body and are a major factor in heart disease. Even though the powers that be want us to believe it’s meat and animal fats that are to blame. 

Should I avoid statins?

So to set the stage, I’m excited to talk about the underlying causes of heart disease and all the propaganda surrounding cholesterol to this day. I also want to talk about testing because, as you know, this is another form of trickery that Big Pharma uses to support the use of statin medications and why they should be avoided. 

Dr. Osborn, let’s start with the basics. We need cholesterol to thrive because cholesterol is an essential molecule of life from which we make hormones. For example, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and vitamin D are all made from cholesterol. It’s also essential to repair damaged tissue and buffer stress. What are some other ways that cholesterol supports and protects us? And why is it critical to our health?

Can you live without cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a vital molecule, and it’s a precursor to all of our sex steroids. Suppose we’re looking at a man who’s maybe having their cholesterol lowered artificially through medication. One of the trends we’ve seen since the early 1980s when statins were introduced as a drug of choice, is the prevalence of low testosterone centers. 

I don’t say this to offend anyone who is gay or has an alternative sexual preference because I believe that what goes on in your sexual life is your business and no one else’s. But when you mass drug a society to artificially lower testosterone, you’ll get less manly men. 

In my humble opinion, this theme of masculine toxicity is nonsense. We need men just like we need women. There’s a balance, yin and yang, or a balancing flow; we need both energies to thrive. And the masculinization of men has occurred through these types of medications, aside from the fact that lowering cholesterol suppresses the ability of the body to produce testosterone properly. 

When men are low in testosterone, there’s an increased risk for cancers and heart disease, loss of muscle mass sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle loss. We’re left with the prevalence of a disease we are trying to treat. When lowering the ability for the body to produce something that can actually protect us from heart disease in the name of regulating the risk for heart disease, you’re losing. 

That’s just one example. You also mentioned Vitamin D, which is cardiovascular protective as a pre-hormone for many pathways of the body. It regulates insulin production, blood sugar, hormone production, and immune system function. 

When your white blood cells are born, they have to be taken through a filter so that you have white blood cells that respond appropriately. 

If you don’t have adequate Vitamin D, you get aggressive white blood cells that can lead to autoimmune problems or underactive white blood cells that can lead to cancers. 

All in the name of lowering cholesterol, which many people don’t understand. Cholesterol won a Nobel Prize in 1998 because somebody discovered that you could not form neural synapses without cholesterol. There’s a process biochemically in neurons called synaptogenesis, and it’s how nerve cells communicate through a synapse; you need cholesterol to form those synapses. 

One of the trends that we’ve seen with lowering cholesterol is an increased risk for dementia. Some people argue with me and say that correlation is not causation. I don’t disagree. Correlation is not causation, but we have to start looking at this because to demonize that molecule that the body prizes and needs to do so many different functions is a very short-sighted approach to long-term health. 

If we look empirically at the data, doctors will often come and argue using research studies as a valid point for their argument. My first question is, was the research study funded by a drug company through a CRO? A CRO is a research organization. It’s like a shell organization, where money is filtered through universities into research organizations, and they are basically paid firms that do pharmaceutical research. 

The PhDs and doctors who do this type of research know that if they don’t publish the result their funders want, they will lose their funding. These organizations have produced much of the research on cholesterol and the beneficial aspects of lowering cholesterol.  

Over the last 25 years, we’ve had, I can’t remember, eight or nine journal editors for major medical journals, New England Journal and JAMA, come out and say, the system’s rigged. We cannot do good science when we do not have the ability to control the commercial influence over the research.

This is not just my anecdote and my brash opinion on pharmaceuticals; drugs have a place and a purpose. Lowering cholesterol has never been all that great of an idea or going away from the published literature to the empirical data. 

Empirical data is what is the actual outcome when we lower cholesterol. Not who paid for the research that lasted six months or a year, but what’s the actual outcome? If we look at the vast majority of cholesterol-lowering that’s going on in the industrialized world has not led to less stroke, has not led to less heart disease. 

One vital thing to understand about cholesterol is its anti-inflammatory. We make cholesterol to fight inflammation and infection.

Suppose we’re trying to use these drugs to reduce the risk of developing these conditions, and therefore the risk of the side effects of the drug outweigh, or rather, the benefit of the drug outweighs the risk of the side effects of the drugs. In that case, I think we’re wrong because we don’t see a change empirically. 

The United States spent 4.2 trillion last year in medical expenses. In the list of 17 major industrial countries, the United States is ranked 17th. Like the school system, you can not throw more money at it and expect a better outcome. We can not throw drugs at people and hope that passive modalities will magically atone for their self-destruction of oneself. 

When we look at heart disease and stroke risk, these are diseases of choice. There are choices in how you exercise, how you eat, how you sleep, how you handle your stress, the quality of your food, the quality of your air, the quality of your water consumption, of your relationships, of your spiritual grounding, like these, are the things that we know lead to chronic inflammatory disease, not this molecule that we are all designed to make. It’s just such a short-sighted tragedy on behalf of medicine to throw a drug at this and think that we’re going to fix this problem.

Exactly.

Are statins more harmful than good?

Thank you so much for starting us off that way with so many pearls of wisdom. If we could go back to the low testosterone because that’s something I see a lot as well, with statin meditation being a huge component. When women are on statin medications, their reproductive cycle is dysregulated, among other things. I see cognitive challenges, mood dysregulation, and so forth. 

You touched on Alzheimer’s, which is a big concern because we know actual honest data show the correlation. My concern, Dr. Osborne, is that I’m seeing more and more children prescribed these medications. Do you see that as well?

I don’t deal as much with pediatrics as with adults in my practice. But I know what the positions are of the American Pediatric Association; I mean, they want to drug kids as young as eight. Their thought is if your parents have diabetes or heart disease, and if statin medications are so safe, we should go ahead and put you on it when you’re a kid. And then, of course, that’s a nightmare of a mistake. As you know, growth hormone steroids suppress sexual development in youngsters as a result of this fear-mongering around cholesterol. 

At the end of the day, if you’re a parent watching this, take this line of questioning into any doctor who says that they want to put your kid on a cholesterol-lowering drug. There’s no medical situation where that’s ever going to be a good idea, not even in cases like hyper familial cholesterolemia, where there’s a genetic component to the high cholesterol. It’s above and beyond what lifestyle and diet choices could adjust for.

I appreciate you sharing your insights there, and I don’t want to derail from where I was with the low testosterone.  

What’s happening in our culture, especially here in the United States, not just the pharmaceutical industry, but our environment, food supply, etc. It impacts everyone’s hormones, especially children, and they try to normalize that. 

Telling children they need to have certain surgeries or take synthetic hormones because it is normal to have these challenges at a very young age is very concerning for me. I work with many young people, those with autism, mental health, and so forth, and I think there’s a direct correlation, specifically with this, and I appreciate you walking us through that. 

Let’s talk about testing. Initially, if your total cholesterol was under 300, you were considered healthy, but somewhere along the way, this changed to below 200, which is ridiculous. As we’ve been discussing, it’s evident that this is a play by Big Pharma to push more statin medications. 

I’m just curious, why is total cholesterol maybe outdated? Can you explain the difference between HDL, LDL, and triglycerides? These are very confusing for many people.

The Difference between HDL, LDL, and Triglycerides

You see the canned responses that HDL is a type of cholesterol and LDL is a type of cholesterol. HDL is considered good, LDL is considered bad, but LDL is who won the Nobel Prize. It was bad cholesterol that was found it was necessary to form synapses in the brain, not good cholesterol. I don’t think there’s anything such as good or bad cholesterol, and we should throw all that out and quit demonizing a substance that our body makes. Could it be too high? In certain rare cases, yes. But the real trigger, if we want to break it down, is not HDL, LDL, total cholesterol, or even triglycerides. All the triglycerides can be a problem. Triglycerides are, for those of you that don’t know are, fat, and they’re fat in the bloodstream. 

Generally, most people have high triglycerides; in my experience, they’re eating such a carbohydrate-rich diet their 60-plus percent total caloric intake is carbohydrate. The body is so fantastic at conserving energy, so if you have enough calories to get through your day but you’re overconsuming, and those calories are coming in as carbohydrates, your body has this uncanny ability to convert those carbs into triglycerides and store them as fat. 

When you start doing that aggressively from childhood, the average American diet is 70% carbohydrate; it’s a low-protein, low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. We’ve seen the result of that diet, and there is an increase in every chronic degenerative disease known to man. 

Again, causation and correlation aren’t the same things. We’re now seeing the research play this out, and the research shows ketogenic diets are reversing seizure disorders, reversing diabetes, and reversing heart disease, which is a high-fat diet. A diet we’ve been told about for many years is that high fat is bad and causes heart disease. 

Culturally speaking, if you look at Alaskan Inuit people, the Eskimos, they have a 90 to 95% animal fat diet, and they had no heart disease until we went in and took over their lifestyles, put them on welfare, and started shifting processed garbage, carbohydrate foods to them. We saw some of the most significant increases in heart disease and cardiovascular risk in the fastest way we could see. 

We saw the same thing in the Pima Indian culture when we shifted them away from an animal fat-based meat-based diet. 

We have propaganda that has told us that high fat, bad carbohydrates, and grains are good, and cholesterol has been part of the vehicle for that message. So again, you’ve got total cholesterol, HDL plus LDL. According to most doctors, HDL is good cholesterol, and LDL is bad cholesterol, and I’m afraid I have to disagree with this. 

And then, you have triglycerides, a manifestation of excessive carbs for most people, and the body will convert those carbs into triglycerides. 

So what happens in that scenario? When you have high triglycerides over 150 over time, it can lead to fatty deposition in your liver tissue, and it will cause your liver to dysfunction over time. You’ll become a less efficient detoxifier. 

In a world where we have 3000 chemicals in our food that are recognized, allowed, and told they are safe, you will have a problem. There are other cholesterol subtypes; we could get into lipoproteins and the like. But those don’t have much merit either. When you have cholesterol, the most considerable risk is that if the cholesterol is oxidized, oxygen breaks it down and creates free radicals that can damage your tissue. 

Cholesterol is oxidized for most people because they’re eating an inflammatory diet. They are eating poorly; their food choices are poor, and they’re malnourished. 

Fat is oxidizable, and cholesterol is, in part, fat plus protein. It is called a lipoprotein. If you have a poor diet, low in antioxidants and other antioxidant-type nutrients, the cholesterol molecule has a higher tendency to become oxidized. When it becomes oxidized, it can create vascular damage that does increase your risk. We can’t blame cholesterol; we must blame the oxidation process. And so, if you have a low oxidation diet, the cholesterol risk becomes a moot point, and we do not have a risk associated with elevated cholesterol.

I’m glad you touched on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. I’m thinking of a young lady who came to me a couple of years ago and was living on vast amounts of ultra-processed vegan foods. There is a lot of propaganda that says, animal protein is bad, saturated fats are bad, and just eating a lot of these high ultra-processed foods. And here she was in her 20s with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. It was shocking and alarming to see someone so young, and in people a little older, but of course, we’re starting to see that more and more now in young people with a lot of these diets that are promoted as being so-called “healthy.” Unfortunately, it’s the exact opposite. 

That’s why I love having conversations with people like yourself that understand how the body works and are not afraid to share the truth with the public. Let’s get into inflammation and high oxidative stress, which you shared as the underlying culprits in heart disease and dysregulated lipids. 

Can you walk us through some of the cascading effects of diets high in these processed foods, containing a lot of gluten, sugar, industrialized seed oils, and so forth?

While there are many issues, the biggest one is in ultra-processed foods. Most ultra-processed foods lack their additional nutrients due to how we do modern farming, and these foods become empty calories. Even if processed foods are fortified, they are not fortified very aggressively. If these foods are fortified, it is with synthetic nutrients like folic acid, which are not suitable for humans, or iron, which you may or may not need. 

In 1943, the government passed a law stating that unfortified processed grains could not be sold because they were responsible for malnutrition and were causing about 8000 deaths a year in people from malnourishment. 

The cereal manufacturers got smart and said, “Well, we’re going to twist the language, and instead of saying, don’t eat cereal, it kills you. They said, eat more of it now because it’s fortified and even better for you.”

We now have fortification laws. When you look at a box of processed crackers, cereal, or bread, you’ll always see fortified with terms like folic acid, thiamine, niacin, and iron. Without fortification, these foods can not be sold because they would make you malnourished and potentially kill you.

Fortification of food was a play by the government to prevent mass malnutrition while trying to feed people a bunch of processed foods, and when we talk about ultra-processed food, that’s just one of the problems.

Statin medications can lead to Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and cause liver damage and sexual dysfunction, especially low testosterone in men.

You mentioned seed oils; seed oils are one of the biggest problems there is because most seed oils are unsaturated. The difference between saturated and unsaturated fat is unsaturated fats are less stable, are more reactive when exposed to light and oxygen, and more prone to breaking down and turning rancid. 

When consuming seed oils and processed food, ultimately, you end up eating rancid fats that create free radical damage inside the body. The other problem with seed oils is they’re very high in Omega-6 Fatty Acids. In today’s modern diet culture, the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fats for most people is around 16:1. Omega-6 to one Omega-3, when that ratio is that skewed, it’s prone to creating an inflammatory response because Omega-6s are pro-inflammatory, and Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. Omega-3s also resolving of inflammation, meaning their job in the body is to help resolve inflammation. 

Remember, inflammation is not all bad. We use inflammation as a tool to break down old cells so that we can replace them with new cells. It’s part of how the body does maintenance. When you have such a skewed ratio because of a high seed oil diet, your body’s trying to do maintenance, but it does not have enough Omega-3 to stop the inflammation appropriately. 

Instead of tearing down a few cells, you tear down a lot of them and create more mass inflammation than necessary for maintaining the body, which accelerates aging because of oxidation. 

It’s a form of aging, and when your DNA becomes oxidized due to this type of diet, they shorten your lifespan. Scientists today are measuring telomeres; these little end caps on our DNA and oxidized oils shorten our telomeres over time can lead to excessive or aggressive aging. 

Much like a cigarette smoker will look older. It’s because all the garbage in that smoke is oxidative. If we’re keeping that term oxidation/oxidative, the more of that you’re exposed to, the more your body has to use its own nutritional resources to protect you from what’s damaging you. 

People run out because if your diet is poor, how do we replenish antioxidants through a good diet? If your diet is poor and you are eating oxidative foods, you’re not replenishing your body with any oxidants. 

You will age faster, which means you’ll develop chronic inflammatory conditions like heart disease and diabetes. People are going to become more obese, and they’re going to develop systemic inflammation that leads to chronic aches and pains, visual disturbances, visual loss, and skin disorders, you name it. It goes to the whole gamut, because it impacts every tissue in the body.

I always want to remind people that you can’t out-supplement a poor diet, it’s just not possible. That’s why we want to ensure that we’re using nutrient therapy appropriately along with dietary therapy. You so eloquently walked us through what’s happening with high glycemic levels, a very high carbohydrate diet, and all these processed foods. 

Homocysteine is another one that is often very sky-high due to inflammation, and it doesn’t have to be. I always find that interesting. The relationship with the liver as you walked us through and how that impacts the thyroid. 

I’m glad you said that not all inflammation is bad regarding how the body works, which is important for our listeners to hear.

Dr. Osborne, can you walk us through the relationship between the thyroid, liver, and cholesterol? Because we often see these go hand in hand with one another. It’s all in line with what you’ve shared thus far. It is important for our listeners to understand these relationships because Hashimotos and thyroid disorders are so incredibly high.

The thyroid hormone regulates human metabolism to oversimplify it. Human metabolism is the rate at which we generate chemical responses in the body. There are two types of chemical responses, anabolic reactions, and catabolic reactions. Anabolic is growth, and catabolic is the breakdown. 

Think of it as a teeter-totter, like two kids on the playground. If they both weigh the same, you have this nice interchange. If the catabolic steroid is the fat kid, then you have this little kid dangling his toes in the air, wondering whether he’s going to fall. 

Often what happens with poor thyroid function; we end up in a state of hyper-catabolic or hyper-breakdown. The thyroid sets the basic premise for how our metabolisms can run properly. It can go either way. Some people with low thyroid gain weight, and some with low thyroid can’t put weight on.

Part of that is because of these two different dichotomies, you’ve got reactions that build things, reactions that break things down into some people with thyroid disease, low thyroid, break things down too quickly, and some people build that too easily. It can go either way. Not everyone with Hashimotos or a hypothyroid problem gains or loses weight; it’s mixed. The thyroid hormone also regulates and helps the liver by sending messages to the cells in the liver. 

What is the purpose of cholesterol in the body?

The liver is responsible for about 75% of cholesterol production. So if we’re tying this back to cholesterol, many people or doctors think, well, what you eat doesn’t affect your cholesterol because cholesterol synthesis happens in the liver. The problem with that line of thought is that what you eat affects your liver and may not directly affect your cholesterol. 

Eating foods that have cholesterol, about 25% of your total cholesterol comes from your diet directly from the cholesterol you eat. 

So if you eat six eggs this morning, it will have some minor impact on your total cholesterol numbers. What will have more of an effect is the food you eat and how it may or may not damage your liver’s ability to properly metabolize fats, including cholesterol. 

The liver is responsible for packaging all these things up. If you’re eating highly inflammatory foods, one vital thing to understand about cholesterol is its anti-inflammatory.

We make cholesterol to fight inflammation and infection. That’s one thing everyone should know if you’re going to the doctor because you don’t feel well, have a cold or the flu, and are getting your cholesterol measured; that measurement should be thrown out, and you shouldn’t be relying on that particular measurement. 

Number two, when you’re going to the doctor, not because you feel bad, maybe it’s not because you have a cold or flu, but because you eat terribly. Your body sends messages to make a change that can also drive your cholesterol up. We know processed foods and inflammatory foods drive up cholesterol. Still, the thing is, it’s not a bad thing that your body is making more cholesterol when that’s happening because that cholesterol is protective. 

We would not want to lower it if that makes sense because it protects you from you. 

One of the reasons people on a grain-free or whole foods diet see their cholesterol drop is not because cholesterol was ever really the problem; it’s because their body’s saying we don’t need to make as much to protect you from your choices. The body can then scale down to production. Again, cholesterol is the wrong enemy; whether it’s going up or down is as more to do with your body trying to protect you than it has to do with your risk of heart disease. 

Diabetic medications block CoQ10, folate, and vitamin B12. The deficiency of those nutrients will elevate your homocysteine leading to vascular inflammation, which causes heart disease.

If you understand it in that simplified way, when you go to the doctor and are told to take a statin medication because you have a 220 cholesterol, you can make a better decision for yourself. 

Remember, your doctor is a paid advisor, not a dictator. Unless you let them be, they’ll try to be right, try to be the dictator; take this, or you’ll die. A lot of doctors use fear. I’ve recently been involved in many situations with other family members, some of whom are paying the price for their choices, but I’m advocating with them. 

I go to their appointments and advocate for them because of the fear base used by many practitioners. I recently advocated for a family member in a scenario where they were demanding to do a CAT scan with no premise for it. A CAT scan in a hospital-type setting is about $25,000 – $30,000 as opposed to a CAT scan in a local imaging setting is about $800. 

I kept asking why we needed a CAT scan because that’s not why we were here, and they could not answer me. They sent four different people into the room to push it. The first one was an attack. The second one was a nurse practitioner. The following two were both doctors.

I just looked at the doctor; I said, “You haven’t even examined the patient yet, you haven’t even done an exam, and now you want to run high levels of radiation without an exam, and that’s not even why we’re here.” 

He proceeded to do an exam, and with my background, I watched him do his exam. He did it wrong; he was doing a neurological examination half-assedly and rushed through it, not doing it right. 

I thought, “You got to be kidding me, this is a joke.” I was glad I was there to advocate because we just got the hell out of there. There was nothing they were going to do to help that person. But they were using plenty of fear. 

I’ve seen this, too, with a lot of people when it comes to heart disease. Patients are told, “You need to go on a blood thinner, blood pressure, cholesterol drugs, and you need to go on the diabetic drugs, and if you don’t, you’re going to die, no arguments don’t question me, and if you don’t want to do these things, I can’t help you.” 

Wait a second. 

If you read the actual guidelines for caring for things like heart disease and diabetes, the first line of care is always diet and nutrition. These guys are not qualified to talk about it. Most people think they’re qualified to talk about it because they’re doctors, but how many doctors go through nutrition classes? How many doctors go through exercise physiology classes? How many of them actually are in physical conditioning and know and understand how to exercise? What kind of exercise is right for what kind of person? 

They don’t, and they give you the general gist of what you need: diet and exercise, and that’s important. Or suggest eating low fat, eating low cholesterol, go jogging. So the opposite kind of exercise, the opposite kind of diet, would be beneficial. 

Suppose you look at the American Diabetic Association and the American Heart Association dietary guidelines. They’re horrific. 

If you look at who funds those organizations, mostly, it’s like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, and only a few companies have the most to gain by not being put under scrutiny. 

Look, I’m not opposed to a person drinking a soda; if you want to drink a soda and you want to eat processed junk food, it’s your choice. We live in a great place where we can make that choice. But if you make that choice, you must be prepared for that consequence. You don’t need to take my tax dollars to treat your consequences in a manner inconsistent with an effective outcome. 

They’re different classes in each grouping, but these three medicines largely used cause severe malnutrition that increases the risk for heart disease. 

What that means is now you’re robbing me to pay for your bad choices, and the treatment you’re getting for your bad choices won’t fix your bad choices and won’t make you live longer, or won’t have a better outcome, and in many cases, the outcomes are far worse. We’re now seeing it play out with people on polypharmacy, where they’re on the trifecta of blood pressure drugs, cholesterol drugs, blood sugar drugs, and these three medicines. 

Blood pressure medications block vitamin B1. Vitamin B1 deficiency is called Beriberi, and it causes congestive heart failure and high blood pressure. Again, that’s heart disease. 

A lot of these drugs cause CoQ10 deficiency. CoQ10 deficiency causes cardiomyopathy, which is heart disease; CoQ10 deficiency also causes high blood pressure and heart disease. 

Diabetic medications block CoQ10, folic acid, folate, and Vitamin B12. The deficiency of those nutrients will elevate your homocysteine leading to vascular inflammation, which causes heart disease. 

You end up in this tail-chasing game where you are given a drug to appease your symptoms without being told your symptoms are your fault. Take ownership of your body; don’t outsource your health to a doctor with no vested interest in you. 

How often have you been to a doctor where you got five minutes, and they didn’t hear you? They didn’t listen to you. They didn’t read the 10-page form they asked you to fill out, and it’s a short visit with a prescription pad that came at the end. 

That’s not health care, folks.

Ever heard the term armchair quarterbacking? I’m telling you what to do, but I’m not going to live your life or be responsible for the quality of your life once this drug starts to destroy it. 

But it’s like, own it. You can’t eat ice cream every night with a glass of wine to rinse it back and not exercise and go to a job that is sedentary for eight hours a day and expect that you’re not going to become overweight and have an increased risk for different diseases, you have to own those choices. 

And sometimes that means being more strict about them, scaling things back, and doing things more reasonably that, for some people, is hard to do. But at the end of the day, it has to come down to self-accountability.

I’m so glad you said that. 

Dr. Osborne, because we live in a society, especially here in the United States, where certain things are normalized that aren’t normal. I’m going to say it’s a very narcissistic way of looking at yourself and the world. It’s like, I’m going to normalize this, and you have to acquiesce to my view of the world. Rather than, as you said, take accountability and think, “Okay, I realize Big Pharma, the medical complex, doesn’t have my best interest at heart. I realize these medications don’t work and are making the problem worse. And I’m going to choose another path, I’m going to find a practitioner like yourself or someone like me, and I’m going to change my diet, and I’m going to understand what deficiencies I have and be able to move forward from there.”

I appreciate you sharing that story with your family member because this is something that I see a lot, too, and I think, and my opinion correct me if I’m wrong if you’re seeing this too, but we’re seeing this become more aggressive. 

We’re seeing more of a push with fear and propaganda. I had a client who was told if she didn’t take an SSRI, she would live a life of depression and anxiety and be miserable for the rest of her life. What does that do to someone to hear that from a medical professional? I mean, come on. It’s gotten so out of control. 

I love your rant because it’s essential. 

I remember one of your patients, Ginger, who you talked about the last time you were on my show, and I believe she was given methotrexate when she had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I see metformin given to eight-year-olds. So it’s a different class, but we’re talking about the same concept of what we’re seeing with Big Pharma and how much more aggressive they’re getting. 

Correct me if I’m wrong, Dr. Osborne, but Ancel Keys’ study triggered this whole thing back in the 1950s. My understanding is that the sugar industry funded that because they wanted to take the microscope off of them and on to something else.

In part, they also only published some of their data. So, part of it is, you know, truths and half-truths. If I tell you something true and frame it so that it’s universally true no matter what, I know that that’s false. And I’m withholding the data that proves that it’s false, that I’m lying to you, even though I’m not lying to you. It boils down to that in Ancel Keys’ research, much of that data was withheld because many countries were thriving on higher fat diets during the study. 

They self-selected the countries with a more Mediterranean, lower fat diet style and self-selected those studies to prove the point they were trying to prove, which is bias. That’s the thing about research. Research is supposed not to be biased, and it’s always seeking to push for truth, even if that means proving your hypothesis wrong.

With grain, I’m not opposed. If somebody comes down the road and proves everything I’ve ever taught about gluten is wrong, I welcome that because it would be a truth, and it’d be an advancement.

HDL is considered good, LDL is considered bad, but LDL is who won the Nobel Prize. It was bad cholesterol that was found it was necessary to form synapses in the brain, not good cholesterol.

Many people have said “it’s not gluten, Dr. Osborn; it’s the glyphosate.” Come and prove me wrong because gluten has been around for a long time. Glyphosate has only been around in farming majorly since the 1980s. Though we have had celiac and autoimmune disease long before the 1980s, we know that gluten plays a role in that. 

It can’t just be glyphosate. We seek the truth to seek a path that’s the right path. Ultimately, that’s what it should be about, and even if that truth affects my or somebody else’s career and our bottom line, could a different truth affect my business? Of course, it could. But I can also evolve into that different truth, and I can adjust my model and be an ethical person that delivers what we know to be true, so that people can have better health and be better served by it. 

When you’re a scientist, you must consider what you are doing. Are you pursuing the truth to serve humanity? We’re not seeking pseudo-truth in a pursuit to serve ourselves and to damage humanity. And that’s what this industry has become as we have pharmacy directly involved with medical schools and curricula. They influence the vast majority of textbooks and curriculum and the vast majority of medical research post-graduation. As we’ve seen numerous times these companies, look at Pfizer, look at others, like Bayer, how many times have they been fined for criminal offenses against humanity?

It’s not a small amount. It’s a regular track record. 

I always say it’s like, you wouldn’t invite a crook, somebody who has stolen from people and murdered people, into your house for dinner and walk them around and then go to bed and leave them there. You would be slightly more cautious about your approach with somebody with that background record. 

So why are people allowing doctors to push these products that people with a known criminal track record are producing? It doesn’t make sense, but a big reason why is we don’t have media in our country anymore that reports truths. Remember when tobacco ads ran all the time? What happened there was a point when the government was going after tobacco because it was no longer acceptable to smoke. They had to have a private meeting with the media corporations because they were like, “No, we’re not going to quit taking money from tobacco because they’re our number one source of revenue.” So, at that private meeting, they agreed at that point to shift to direct-to-consumer drug commercial ads as a replacement for big tobacco. 

Drug companies are now the number one source of revenue for all major news media outlets. When you have a pandemic, and you’re pushing a non-tested, non-safe vaccine on the masses, you have to ask, is this a truth being pushed because these media companies are scared of losing their bottom dollar? Their revenue? You can’t have that kind of influence. If you will, the media is supposed to be the fifth column or the truth-sayers that calls out falsities on both sides, on all sides, if they exist. 

They’re supposed to be non-biased, swear to be non-biased, and report the truth, but we don’t have that anymore. When we don’t have the watchdogs or the watchdogs are paid by the people who stand the most to gain and benefit from it, and doctors are benefiting in much the same way, you end up with corruption. That’s where we’re at. We have a super corrupt system. We spend 4 trillion a year and have the worst care in the world.

I was talking to a friend who went down to Cancun because he was looking at dual citizenship. He came back and told me just how wonderful the hospital system was. He said it’s first-class compared to an emergency room somewhere in America. It’s become like a third-world country where you wait six hours. The rooms are dirty; it’s filthy, and doctors don’t know much. They’re not kind. They don’t have empathy. He says, but in Cancun, it was a night and day difference. Here we are, America, supposedly the greatest country in the world with the greatest medical care; we’re now being taken over and surpassed by countries like Mexico because of corruption and corporate interest. 

I’m glad you’re sharing this because people need to hear it. Adding to what you said about the drug commercials in this country, the ads are ridiculous when I’m working out in the morning at the gym. Every other commercial is some drug ad, and it’s ridiculous. 

I want to let people know along those lines that compartmentalization happens. I don’t know if you see this, Dr. Osborne, but somehow the jabs are safe, but some of these other meds made by the same people are not, like Vioxx, where they got caught. Why do you think they will want to help humanity in one area versus a medication? It’s very illogical thinking. 

Dr. Osborne, one thing I wanted to touch on before you go, I loved it when you said about the diet and moving into more of a grain-free whole foods diet, where you’re getting lots of antioxidant-rich foods, you’re getting good quality animal proteins, and fats, and so forth. 

Sometimes cholesterol can go up when that happens, and I always tell people this is not bad. This is your body adjusting. You’ve been eating a lot of processed foods for a long time and your liver needs time to heal, and those detoxification processes that occur take time to work themselves out. If you go to your doctor while working with someone helping you with a whole foods diet, you notice that your lipids actually increase; again, that’s not a bad thing. Do you have anything to add to that?

I’m probably radical. On one side, I don’t even measure cholesterol and think it’s a waste of money and blood.

I agree. 

Unless you have a familial problem, it’s not worth spending a lot of resource monitoring. The reality is that this was a major non-funded (by the industry) study published in 2010. In 66,000 women, they found that when you lowered their LDL, they had worse outcomes, which to me, says it all. 

Can you live without cholesterol?

You should not look at cholesterol as a measurement to say I am getting healthier or I’m not getting healthier. Research studies, major studies, and major meta-analyses of the data show that people with the highest LDL live longer. Maybe your diet changes manipulate your LDL up because there’s a benefit. There are lots of benefits, and we’ve talked about some of them; they make your sex steroids and form your nerve synapses to help you create vitamin D, and CoQ10 is a benefit to those processes. 

It could be going up because your body’s doing more, using it more, and working with it more to help you heal and repair yourself more consistently. Instead of looking at cholesterol as something you need to monitor because it’s dangerous, if it goes up, think about it as if you have a higher LDL, you may live longer. Suppose you want to monitor in that regard. “Hey, more power to you, but focus on something other than that marker.” 

Looking at it historically, it’s a theory called the Cholesterol Theory of Disease that has never been proven, and the reason it’s never been proven is that there’s a good chunk of doctors and scientists that have data that show that it’s wrong, we can’t just ignore that part. You don’t just get to sweep that under the rug and ignore it without consequence. Don’t be the experiment of your dogmatic doctor’s religious-like belief that cholesterol is the enemy. Take your health into your own hands, and if you exercise, eat well, and lose weight, you will feel better. 

Don’t be the experiment of your dogmatic doctor’s religious-like belief that cholesterol is the enemy. Take your health into your own hands, and if you exercise, eat well, and lose weight, you will feel better. 

Why would you worry about your cholesterol? If it does go up, but you feel better and you’ve lost 25 pounds is that cholesterol going up worse than you maintaining 25 pounds of fat? Is that worse than not exercising? I would argue that you can’t look at it as one simplistic risk factor, you have to look at the body as a complex and diverse variable. 

As things are, you have to look at it in that framework. And so, as a general rule of thumb, don’t let one test create such fear in your life that fear creates oxidative damage to your existing cholesterol and puts you into a place of heart disease sooner.

I’m glad you mentioned the fear piece, you know, that was threaded throughout as well. And how that impacts the body and how the trauma from fear can create disease in the body. That’s another show, of course, but I want to touch on that. 

You also mentioned exercise and developing a practice with whom you choose to interact with, and mentioned your spiritual practice. Prayer and my relationship with God are very important to me, and I do that daily to ground myself. Are you on your phone all the time? Are you on social media all the time? Who do you surround yourself with? 

Think about these things and make a little note of how you feel when you’re exposed to these things because this is another aspect of heart disease, as we’ve been discussing. 

Thank you so much for your wisdom, knowledge, and time. Dr. Osborne, I always love talking with you.  Do you have any last words before we end our time today?

If your health is failing you, the first thing you should do is look in the mirror. Don’t blame medicine for your problems. Don’t blame your doctor; look in the mirror and think long and hard about what you’ve been doing. If you genuinely don’t have an answer, like if you think you’ve been doing it right and your health is failing, then work with somebody versed in functional care. 

It doesn’t have to be a do-it-yourself project. Like if you are doing everything you know to be correct, but if not, you need to make those changes first.

The Seven Fundamentals are super easy. 

1. Eat real food 

2. Get plenty of quality sleep

3. Exercise and move your body regularly

4. Get outside and get sunshine

5. Breathe clean air

6. Drink clean water

7. Mitigate and manage your stress. 

If you do those seven things consistently, you’re putting all the odds in your favor because those seven factors drive the disease for most people. If you’re doing those things and your health is failing you, that’s when you work with somebody who can help you tease out where you’re failing. If you’re not doing those things start there. They’re free. Every one of the things on that list costs you $0, but they have life-impacting change.

Well said. Thank you so much. Again, I really appreciate your time.

You’re very welcome. Thanks for having me.

I trust my conversation with Dr. Osborne was eye-opening. Please share it with your loved ones. As you’re been reading, cholesterol isn’t the demon Big Pharma makes it out to be because they can capitalize on inefficient lab values, industry-funded studies, and fear-based marketing. The medical cartel complex has gotten away with scaring people into submission. If you are on a statin medication and your doctor is gaslighting you, I encourage you to rethink the science he or she is using to justify this choice. You can do many things to reduce your risk of heart disease, beginning with diet and exercise and managing the stress in your life.

Important Links:

• Dr. Peter Osborne
• Gluten-Free Society
• EP 37: The Truth About Gluten-Diets Part 1: Grainflammation with Dr. Peter Osborne
• Ancel Keys Study
• Downsizing Obesity: Ancel Keys, the Origins of BMI
• Konrad Bloch – Nobel Prize for research on cholesterol
• Skeptical of medical science reports?
• How Ancel Keys Brainwashed the Masses Into Fearing Meat