Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Appearances
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Absolutely. I mean, it's estimated between 200 million and 1 billion people are prescribed this drug. So it's a big deal. And especially for me as a cardiologist whose primary purpose is to help my patients and also with my special interest to really understand the root cause of heart disease and how we can reverse it in the population. We hadn't done that. That's how my journey started.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I was somebody that believed in statins. I was one of the biggest prescribers. I was giving it in the ER to a patient coming with a heart attack and telling the nurse to give it in them in the ER before they've even gone to the cardiac catheter lab for them to have a stent.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
100%. So understanding that there's a barrier to the truth, which is essentially a financial barrier because there's so much at stake, as you say, not just with statins alone, but the cholesterol lowering industry, the low fat food movement, the fear of cholesterol is the trillion dollar industry, right? So I think people need to understand that.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So how have we got here and what is the truth or what is the greater truth? Okay. And the reason I say, what is the greater truth? This is another myth that we need to bust for people listening to kind of try and get cut through the confusion. The first thing is we have to understand the public needs to know, doctors even need to know this. Medicine is not an exact science. It's not even close.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
It's an applied science. It's a science of human beings. It's a social science. It's constantly evolving. We were also taught at medical school by the founding father of the evidence-based medicine movement. Half of what you learn will turn out to be either outdated or dead wrong within five years of your graduation. We can't tell you which half.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
You can't tell you which half, so you have to learn to learn on your own. But how many doctors have got the time or the skill to try and cut through all the stuff that they're getting through medical journals, looking at independent evidence, and then being able to try and get to something that, a level of information that they can utilize for really benefiting and helping their patients.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So it comes down to informed consent. And for me, one thing that, I think it was Mark Twain that said that truth often lies in simplicity. And the most elegant analytical framework we have for teaching and practicing medicine is called the evidence-based medicine triad, right? Published in the BMJ in 1996. I love this. It's beautiful. I put it up in my talks. It's one of the first slides.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And I say, listen, this is the most important side of my talk. If you get this, you can probably not only understand why our health is going the wrong direction. But you can probably explain most problems in the world as well, right? So what does that mean? Okay, in the middle of the triad, our role as healthcare practitioners, as doctors, is to improve patient outcomes.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Manage risks, treat illness, relieve suffering. How do we do that? There are three inputs. Our clinical experience, our knowledge, our intuition as doctors over many, many years. The best available evidence on a drug, on a lifestyle, on a surgical intervention, on ordering a test.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And last but not least, David Sackett said, taking it into consideration individual patient preferences and values, right? That's where the informed consent comes in. So what's the problem? What are the limitations? Why have we not really advanced evidence?
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
100%.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So then you pick up, so then the next stage is, okay, so if you accept this as a pretty solid framework for improving patient outcomes, It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if there's anything wrong with one or all of these, at best, you're going to get suboptimal outcomes, and at worst, you're going to do harm. So in terms of these inputs, right?
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So if we just take the best available evidence, and I've just said already, John, I need this. Okay, most published research finding their faults, etc. You know, you've got Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, in 2015, writing an editorial saying that... Possibly half the published literature is simply untrue. It's not just John Ineeder saying this.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So what happens ultimately is doctors invariably are making clinical decisions for patients on biased, not saying completely false, biased and corrupted information, which invariably will exaggerate the benefit and safety of those drugs because that's in the interest of the drug industry who want to get as many people taking them because their only interest is profit.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
They're not here to give you the best treatment. So once you acknowledge all of that, then it's for me and as a cardiologist and as an expert who has spent a decade really- But I would challenge you.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Because they're in this sort of... You know, really good point, Mark. And actually, you know, the way I would just summarize that is medical knowledge is under commercial control. But most doctors don't know that. Right. That's right. And that's what we're trying to sort of get them to think outside the box. Because again, I 100% agree with you.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Most healthcare professionals, most doctors genuinely want to help their patients and are well-intentioned. And actually, you know, I'm very proud of being a doctor because I think of all the professions...
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
know things are changing and we have to protect our profession I think we are people that actually have some of the strongest ethical principles right when it comes to how we you know it would do our jobs and we have to and we held in that esteem because of that reason so for me
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Trying to break out of that conventional paradigm happened because I came to realize that the information that I believed as being gospel truth as a medical student, as a junior doctor, it's published in a medical journal, it's science, right? Didn't question it. I then came to realize that, hold on a minute, there's a lot more to this.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And I used, of course, the heart disease paradigm to understand why we hadn't curbed heart disease, even though it was predicted by Nobel Prize winners Brown and Goldstein, I think, in the late 90s, who discovered the LDL receptor was involved in coronary artery disease. They predicted the end. the eradication of heart disease may completely end by the early 2000s. Didn't happen.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
It's still the number one killer on the planet. Exactly, despite a mass prescription of statins.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Three reasons I can tell you, big low-hanging fruit, why have we got less death rates from heart disease? If you were a smoker, your mortality rate increased 50%. Smoking reductions played a big role.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
emergency treatment in specifically in the acute setting of an acute heart attack stenting or thrombolytics which we used to use blood clot busters but the third one which the Bernard Lowne pioneering cardiologist got the Nobel Prize for was the defibrillator
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So what used to happen is patients would be admitted to hospital with a heart attack, and the first 24 to 48 hours after having a heart attack, you're most vulnerable to having a cardiac arrhythmia that causes you to have a cardiac arrest, and patients would die. They could develop cardiac anus. So we're better at saving people after they've had a problem.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Well, so the next question is people think, oh, it must be statins as well. Well, a paper in the BMJ a few years ago looked at millions more people taking statins in Europe over a 10-year period to see was there any reduction in cardiovascular mortality in Europe because millions more people were taking statins. And they found there was none, none, zero, no change.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
how you can actually explain that mark because one way of looking at the statistics looking at industry sponsored trials which we've already alluded to should be taken with a grain of salt because they are best case scenario they're curated information or a tab of butter maybe well yeah actually absolutely butter would be better remind me to come back about a butter story and me being hauled into a medical director's office to talk about butter by the way um when i busted the myth of saturated fat and heart disease you know when you look at the data
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
from industry-sponsored trials, and you look at the statistics that looks at the average or median increase in life expectancy over five years, right, in the highest risk groups where there is a greater benefit, the median increase in life expectancy over a five-year period in the person that's had a heart attack, right, and say in their 50s,
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
If you look at the median increase in life expectancy in that group, another way that we use in medicine when we talk about informed consent or I call it ethical, very controversial topic, ethical evidence-based medical practice. Which means true informed consent, which means telling patients the numbers needed to treat are their absolute individual benefit.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And you look at the totality of evidence. I know there are lots of studies we can talk about, but for me, it's about what does the totality of evidence tell us, right? And there's a great website, which is independently evaluated by doctors, and it goes through peer review in one of the... family physician journals in the US called the NNT.com. Numbers Needed to Treat. People can look it up.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
It's great. It's a free website.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah. Or you take paracetamol for a headache, it's like one in two. So it's like two. Right. Two people, one will get their headache completely resolved with paracetamol.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah, so it's actually, so I know this stuff inside out. So if you've had a heart attack already, let's take the high-risk group, you have to treat 83 people over five years for one to have their life saved or life prolonged, right, okay? And for preventing a further heart attack, one in 39. Now, most people around the world, Mark, who are prescribed statins are not in that group.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
They are in the either low risk... 75%, right? Yeah, exactly. Low risk or what we call high risk primary prevention. Now, the benefits of a statin over a five-year period in that group, at best, is 1% in preventing a non-fatal heart attack, a non-disabling stroke, okay? But without prolonging...
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah. So this again comes back to, now, this is just my opinion. It's like, oh, is the CMH just cherry picking statistics here? 2009, Gerd Gigerenzer, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Health Literacy in Berlin. This is the same institution that Einstein taught and trained in. Brilliant guy.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
He wrote in a WHO bulletin in 2009, it is an ethical imperative for every doctor to understand the difference between absolute risk reduction, numbers need to be treated, and relative risk reduction. And he said to protect patients from unnecessary anxiety and manipulation. So in other words, I paraphrase this.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
If you have that information, and again, most doctors are not trained this way, Mark, this is a problem. You should use it and tell patients, this is what I do. And a patient comes in, it's like, should I take a statin or not? I say, well, let me empower you with the information. Tell me what you think. Most patients with the 1% thing think, hold on a minute. I don't think that's that great, doc.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah, it's so nice to see you again, Mark. I think, yeah, we did, it's been about, what, six years since I last podcast? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we got a lot of interest. So I think, yeah, let's smash this one too.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And then they'll say, well, is there anything else I can do? And of course, you and I are empowered with an understanding lifestyle, right? So this is how we should be practicing medicine. But Mark, one quick thing is that I didn't just talk about this. I wrote about it.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And I even got this in front of every Royal College president in the UK saying that the British Medical Journal were doing this campaign against too much medicine. They're talking about informed consent by use of NNTs.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
we need to launch a campaign because over prescription is a big problem we know there's a big problem with side effects we know that one estimate suggests that prescribed medications is the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer globally because of side effects it didn't take long for me to convince the royal college president i was an ambassador for the overall academy of royal colleges at the time
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
and to say that we should have a joint campaign with the BMJ. So I then wrote a paper, I was lead author, I had the chairman of the general medical council, the chairman of the medical colleges on that co-author paper to say, okay, this is a campaign we can get and change medical education, change postgraduate medical ed training, And we got that it's in the media.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
It was a big news story, BBC, all of the news, front page of British newspapers. Campaigns obviously need to be sustained. But what happened is, of course, if you engage in true informed consent with patients, most patients will choose less treatments. Now, who's going to suffer from that? The drug industry. In my view, it's very clear. It's not a conspiracy. This is clearly how they do business.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And this is what they want to do is they want to They engage in a tactic called opposition fragmentation. Anyone that threatens their bottom line, they will do smearing. They will do all these things behind the scenes. There's a whole documented history of this.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
It is. Well, no. So actually, in a way it is, although you've got to grow a thick skin, right? Because, you know, one of the lessons in public health advocacy done by, written a great paper, written by Simon Chapman, who took on big tobacco in Australia and talks about his 38-year career and taking on big tobacco. He says, as soon as your work threatens an industry,
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
or an ideological cabal, because also about this about mind, it's not just about money, it's about indoctrination in the brain, right? As soon as your work threatens an industry or an ideological cabal, you will be attacked, sometimes unrelentingly and viciously. So you have to grow a rhinoceros hide. Yeah.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So for me, what happened after that is there was I kept pushing this this message, but they then Behind the scenes, Royal College of Physicians, I think, funded by pharma, some scientists funded by pharma, started making complaints to the Academy of Medical Colleges, where I was one of their ambassadors for seven years, right? To say, this guy's got his own agenda.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
He's exploiting people for his own agenda. He's trying to make money off all nonsense. And that was so relentless. that they then, in 2018, I got an email from the new chair of the Royal Colleges saying that the campaign that I had started or was, that they had took on and instigated, that I was no longer part of that because of stuff that I apparently said publicly on statins.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Even though everything in the newspapers that was written about statins for me was coming from medical journals and I was a very strong advocate for informed consent.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Well, exactly. Exactly.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So this is what they do. And of course, it does have its personal toll. And then it culminated, coming back to where we started, is that because we were having an effect, Mark, and of course, you're absolutely doing the same thing. One of my inspirations, right? Revolutionaries, Mahatma Gandhi. And one of his quotes, which I love, is, you know, and he took on the system.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I mean, he got British colonialists out of India. I mean, almost single-handedly. And he says, first, they ignore you. I think Britain was bigger than the pharma companies, you know? Oh, it was. Absolutely. I mean, America was founded on anti-corporate sentiment, taking on the British East India Company, right? It was a big corporate tyrannical system.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And now we've come back to the same problem right now. But what he said was, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. So when you're getting attacked, you're over the target and you're getting closer to winning. But you have to, it's tough.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah, absolutely. So my interest in this came from really looking at initially the obesity epidemic. So 2004, WHO announced it as an epidemic. By 2010, I was then nine years qualified as a doctor. I was specialist registrar in my cardiology training. I was seeing more people viscerally. I'm very sensitive to
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
how to put it, suffering around me, if you like, but also seeing my colleagues under more stress in the system. And I was like, hold on a minute. If we carry on down this trajectory, the whole healthcare system is going to collapse. We want to even manage people acutely if they are ill, right? I never thought that would happen.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And ultimately, two of my parents basically died because of failures in the system because the system's under so much stress, right? Never predicted that would happen. But that's where I started from.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And when I looked into the issue of obesity, you know, I concluded that one of the root causes, Mark, if not the main root cause, was this flawed hypothesis that we should have low-fat diets to prevent heart disease. Food industry exploited that, increasing sugar intake, increasing refined carbohydrate intake.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
It became quite clear, there was a clear correlation between that change in guidance in the late 70s in the U.S. and early 80s in the U.K., when the obesity epidemic started to then take its trajectory down the wrong way.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
the glp-1 agonist and you know just appetite and semi-glutide or zempic and majora it's kind of crazy right yeah just kind of flipped it upside down oh absolutely so so when i looked at that and started looking at the data and spending years and and months and years looking at it and looking at different bits of data i was able to put it all together and i wrote a piece in the bmj in 2013 called saturated fat is not the major issue right i read it that's how i first came across yeah and that got a lot of attention right it was international news and british news and cnn international and whatever
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
You know, because obviously suddenly you've got a cardiologist busting this myth that we think butter has been bad for our cholesterol. But when I did that, okay, so I looked at the data and it was very clear there was no clear association with saturated fat consumption and heart disease. So if that's true... then, and we know saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
That means LDL cholesterol can't be that important. So, and if LDL cholesterol or total cholesterol isn't that important as a risk factor, how does statins work? But I knew statins had a separate effect to low in cholesterol, which is their anti-inflammatory and their anti-clotting. And I knew this even, it's well-known within cardiology circles.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
You know, I trained as an interventional cardiologist and that means keel heart surgery stents, for example. Patient comes in, we didn't even check their cholesterol. Maybe some of the thinking was the lower the better, which we'll come on to as well. So it doesn't matter what their cholesterol is starting from. The lower your cholesterol, the better.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
In fact, 2011, our cardiologist, one of the editors, I think, of the American Journal of Cardiology wrote an article, which I mentioned in my book, A Stat and Free Life, which was entitled, It's the Cholesterol Stupid, right? And what did he say in that? He said, you can be an obese diabetic smoker that doesn't exercise. Sounds crazy.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
But as long as your cholesterol is low enough, you're not going to get heart disease. That's crazy. Like, really? So, okay, I had to unpick that. And what I also then did moving forward from 2003, so that's how I got down this track, realizing that our obsession with LDL lowering has been a problem.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Both observational data and randomized controlled trials. No benefit, like in lowering it, no association, nothing.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Right. And when you look at all the data, so that was the first sort of bit that I was, okay. And some might even been protective, like some of the dairy fat. Well, we know now, yes, there is, there is some suggestion that dairy fat could be protective. Absolutely. So there's all that. And then coming back to the LDL.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So Mark, this is what's interesting. That article I wrote, because it creates such a lot of headlines and backlash or whatever else, that's when people like Darius started looking at this again. So it was all really from the back of that BMJ piece. It all came together.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So then everybody's like, you know, and at the time I was writing just a commentary, which was peer reviewed, but I could have got it wrong. I could have. But I was like, you know what? There's enough here for me to provoke the thoughts.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And then it all got proven that what I'd written had validity, right? Which is good. But the other aspect to this, if we go back and you mentioned cholesterol. So is high cholesterol a risk factor for heart disease? And is LDL cholesterol a risk factor for heart disease? So you have to go back to square one, right? So these are the framing of studies that...
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
started in Massachusetts in 1948 and went over decades looking at thousands of people where a lot of risk factors emerged for heart disease, whether it's diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking, for example. And cholesterol. And high cholesterol, right? So you go and look back at the Framingham studies,
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And just to summarize it without complicating the situation too much, William Castelli is a cardiologist and he published, he was a co-director of Framingham. And in 1996, he published in one of the cardiology, major cardiology journals, a summary of Framingham, specifically looking at LDL cholesterol. Let's just look at LDL because that is the so-called bad cholesterol.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And he said from Framingham, Unless your LDL was above 7.8 millimoles, which by the way, I think in your units is probably 250 or 300. 250 probably, I think. Maybe we can look it up and calculate. But let's just say for argument's sake, around 250, which is very, very high, by the way. It absolutely had no, it was useless as a predictor for coronary artery disease. LDL. LDL. Now, why is that?
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
When you correct for triglycerides and HDL, which by the way is a more important predictor of heart disease, LDL loses its significance completely. So then if that's true, and I'm saying that means LDL isn't really a risk factor for heart disease, and I believe with everything I know now that to be the case, okay, let's unpick every part of it. Does lowering LDL cholesterol...
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
From diet or drugs, but more specifically drugs because they're the most potent ways of lowering LDL cholesterol, whether it's PCK9 inhibitors, whether it's statins, whatever. Is there a clear correlation? Is this dogma true that the lower the better?
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So myself and two cardiologists did a systematic review of the totality of drug industry sponsored trials, by the way, and some diet trials, but many drug industry sponsored trials, all of the randomized control trials. on cholesterol-lowering drugs, statins, PCK9, blah, blah, blah. Was there a clear relationship as you lowered LDL in low-risk and high-risk patients, Mark? Okay. Over 30 studies.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah. Was there a relationship with lowering LDL and preventing cardiovascular events? No, even in high risk patients, even in high risk, it's nonsense. It's nonsense. So the question then is, so does that mean stat? But then I said, well, of course statins have a role.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
They do have a benefit from the, from the RCT data, which is small because I knew already they're anti-inflammatory and anti-clotting. So it's nothing in my view, listen, I could be proven wrong here, but the evidence at the moment looks very clear that there is no consistent relationship, right? It's definitely not a clear relationship.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So even if it's a weak relationship, Mark, let's just argument say, let's say there is a weak benefit in lowering LDL. What else is going on? And what else are you ignoring, right? What else does statins do? They cause insulin resistance. Say one in a hundred people get type two diabetes because of statins. One in two. One in a hundred. One in a hundred. Yeah, one in a hundred.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So about one to 2%, but one in a hundred. Some studies say one in 50, right? We'll get type two diabetes because of the statin. Probably reversible still, but not ideal, right? If you're on a statin drug. The second thing is, look at the whole patient coming in. We have the illusion of protection. We have patients I used to see coming in and they thought, my cholesterol is low.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I can go and eat at McDonald's. It's fine. And they're getting more and more overweight, more inter-resistant. They're increasing their cardiovascular risk. They're not told the statin is going to give them a 1% benefit, i.e. more likely than not, they're not going to benefit.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So you could imagine that concept that the overall net effect of the way that statins are prescribed and the dogma around them, in my view, has been negative and has actually been one of the main reasons why we have got this pandemic of chronic disease.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Well, something else to throw into the picture, right? So you could make the argument, okay, Dr. Malhotra, you're saying there's no consistent relationship. There may be a benefit. Why not just lower your LDL? Okay, so 2016. And the reason we did this, me and a number of international scientists looked at, we decided to do a systematic review of observational data looking at people over 60.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Was there a relationship with LDL cholesterol and heart disease? And the reason we did this, by the way, is another thing that was interesting from framing, which wasn't well publicized, is that when, after people hit 50 years old, as their cholesterol dropped, their mortality increased.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So we thought, okay, is there something, you know, because for it to be a risk factor for heart disease, it should be consistent really across all age groups and both sexes, right? For mortality. For mortality, yeah. But even for heart disease as well, right? That's a good point.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So we looked at, was there first of all any association, if you're over 60, with LDL cholesterol and heart disease, right? We found none. Okay, interesting. But what was surprising was there was an inverse association with LDL cholesterol and all-cause mortality. In other ways, statistically, if you're over 60, the higher LDL, the less likely you are to die. So what's the reasoning for that?
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Well, something that's been forgotten or missed or not discussed. Cholesterol has a very vital role in many functions in the body, including the brain, hormone production, but also the immune system. Mm-hmm. And it's likely that that's where the protective benefit comes because older people are more vulnerable to dying from infections.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And we also know there is an association, I'll use this word, an association, right? I can't say it's definitely causal, between low cholesterol and cancer. Again, it's probably related to the immune system.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So let me push back on that. So we counted for that. And we found actually, no, when you count time lag, you go back 5 or 10 years. No, it's not. That does happen. But no, independently, it does seem to be an issue.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
100%.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
It's a chronic inflammatory process exacerbated by metabolic risk factors or insulin resistance. Metabolic risk factors, by that you mean
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And actually we published an editorial with two cardiologists. I did a British-owned sports medicine in 2017, which was a very long title, but it got a lot of publicity and more than a million downloads, which was saturated fat does not clog the arteries. Coronary artery disease is a chronic inflammatory condition which can be effectively managed with lifestyle changes.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
That was the title of this thing. But it's all there. It's free access. People can look it up and read it. But we've overdone the thing. And it wasn't just Dr. Malhotra, his opinion being controversial. My two co-authors were both editors of medical journals and cardiologists. Lerita Redberg, editor of General Medical Medicine, and Pascal Meyer, editor of BMJ Open Heart.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Okay, so let's go to the root cause of the problem, even in society today. What's the big issue in health? We have commercial distortions of the scientific evidence. Who is behind that and who has more power and control over medical education, medical training, the media than ever before? Big corporations, in this case, big pharma.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And the level of this control and power, Mark, has got to a level where it can be very easily and rationally, not in an inflammatory way or overplaying it as being tyrannical. What also happens with these big corporations and the way they exert their power is that they want to avoid conflict, right? They want to avoid the truth coming out.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So there's a debate and discussion because ultimately people... Like myself, like you, who are obsessed with the truth, who want to get it out to help patients. When we speak and act from a place of integrity and truth, it has a very powerful resonance with people. And it can very quickly destroy all these other dogmas that people have created because of that power that the truth has.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
They want that conflict to remain latent, to remain hidden. So that, you know, Noam Chomsky says the general public doesn't know what's happening and they don't even know that they don't know. That's right. Right.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So a lot of these doctors, and I agree, are well-intentioned, but they don't, they're living, you know, in many ways they're living, they're climbing up the wrong wall to success when it comes to helping patients. Because it's the drug companies that are really calling the shots. So we are under a situation of tyranny. And the reason I call it tyrannical is
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
It's because there are doctors that know this, Mark. There are a few doctors that kind of know this, but then they're afraid to speak out. And only a minority of the doctors that know what's going on will then speak out.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Absolutely. And then, of course, there's a psychological side of it as well, because as human beings, you know, they say changing one's mind is one of the most, you know, emotionally traumatic things a human being can go through, right? And that's where you need humility, right?
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
John Kenneth Calbraith, the Canadian-American economist, said, faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no reason to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof. Yeah. So for the medical profession, we need to have also more humility.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I mean, one of the interesting, like there's a, there's a great, um, there's a great YouTube, uh, channel called after school, which I watch a few times. It's brilliant. It goes through like ancient wisdom and philosophy and psychology. And it says, uh, one of their titles, you should look this up, Mark. You'll love it. Why do intelligent people believe stupid things?
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And the answer is, and well, because, um, our intelligence evolved, not for seeking objective truth, but more about belonging to a tribe, you know, for personal gain, whatever else. So what is, what do we need to break out of that? There are two characteristics in the human being that are most important for you to think outside the box and be willing to change your mind and not being afraid of it.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
One is humility. And the other one is curiosity. So ultimately it comes down to character, right? And we've got a system over the years that has become more and more corporatized, right? You have in America, sadly, you know, and I consider this my, honestly, I'm, you know, I consider America my second home.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So I have a lot of love for America and the American people because I have relatives here and I've been here a lot. But you have now the highest healthcare expenditure in the developed world over $4 trillion with the worst health outcomes. Oops. Right. So, so, so what's happened is, you know, because of all of this situation around corporate capture.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So, you know, the counter, of course, from a philosophical point of view is that living a life in darkness is, has no meaning. And we need to get people out of this darkness to understand the root of the problem. And then we can then start making solutions.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
No, fascinating. And it makes sense. But also interesting is something else that I came across in the last few years, which you'll find fascinating, Mark. And I don't know if you know this. David Diamond, who's a cholesterol researcher, published a paper I can't remember which journal it was in, very recently.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And they looked at the primary prevention randomized control trials done by, obviously by the drug companies, and secondary prevention trials. And subgroup analysis found, so these are people with statins who either were high risk of a heart attack or had a heart attack. In the patients in the trials that had normal triglycerides and HDL, no benefit at all from statins. Think about that.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So if you're triglycerides, urination, we're good. Even people who've had a heart attack, there was no benefit from the statin at all, which fits with what you just said.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
You do. And of course, we haven't even talked about side effects, and that's another issue, right? So if you look at, to try and explain why there's no reduction in cardiovascular mortality, even if we accept the four-day increase over five years in high-risk patients. One of my explanations is this.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
In the real world, at least 50% of patients prescribed statins, even in high-risk groups, will stop taking it within a couple of years. And when you do surveys, most of them say they felt they got side effects. Muscle fatigue, muscle pain, brain fog, erectile dysfunction, and how prevalent... That's a big one. Well, how prevalent is that?
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And you look at the data and it's mixed, but anything from, in my experience, anything from 20 to 50% of patients, at some point, I've had patients who took statins for 20 years and didn't get side effects for 20 years, and then they got side effects and it gets better when you stop the statin. So they're very prevalent.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I wouldn't say they were serious or life-threatening, but the question I ask the patient always is, Does this interfere with your quality of life, right? And it's very simple. You know that as a person. It's a very subjective answer, yes or no. If it does, we need to do something about it. Because listen, we're all going to die at some point.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
What we want to live our lives in the best health we can for as long as possible, right? In many ways, that's probably more important than our longevity, right? It's having good quality of life. So that is something that I address with patients as well. So you're going to sort of...
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I think the arguments to be made on interpretations of the evidence, trust in the evidence, and different bits of evidence. So all I can say, Mark, for me is that we all have our biases. And you could argue that I have a bias because I have an obsession with lifestyle and I'm a foodie and I started cooking when I was 16. I was taught by my dad.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And, you know, one of the reasons I got annoyed or pissed off in the hospital and got into this whole, my campaigning started about hospital and, you know, why are we giving junk food to patients? Because I also, as a doctor, was like frustrated. I can't get any healthy food anywhere. That could be my bias. Fine. But, and I accept that.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
One of the things I do myself, and I think the reason I've been through a process where I've had to change my mind several times on saturated fat, on sugar, on low-fat diets, on statin prescriptions, on cholesterol, on something more recent and more controversial, which we're not talking about, is you have to have an element of humility.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
But when I do that, my analysis myself, I try and counter my own arguments and then try and find a way of a nuance. I can't really see a strong counter-argument. And I'm not saying this from a place of hubris. Because, okay, let me give you one argument. So if, and this is a hypothetical.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
If statins didn't have side effects or they were almost non-existent, I could actually say put them in the water supply. Because even if, you know, there is a concept in medicine, you've got to treat the many to benefit a few. So let's just say that they save lives in, I don't know, on average, say one in 300 people are going to live longer because of statins, right? It's a public health.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah, for public health. So, you know, put it in the water supply. You know, um, give to 3 billion people. We're going to, are going to have, you know, you're going to save one in 300 of those 3 billion, you know, whatever that is. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's, it's, it's tens of millions of people, at least not hundreds of millions.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So, um, you could make that case, but that isn't true though. That's just simply not true. Yeah. If there were no side effects. So, so, so I am very for, you know, and that, and that is an argument that has been put forward and the issue about. There's marginal benefits. Yeah, but I'm saying that it's a public health intervention that doesn't have any downside.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
But if it doesn't have any downside, that's fine. Then go for it. Put it in the water supply. But unfortunately, it does. And that's simply just not true. So therefore, you then have to then talk about, you know, and some of the doctors come from a mindset, Mark, where they don't even, and this is a different school of thought, but I don't agree with it. It's not about agreement.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I mean, okay, maybe it's my opinion, is that they think that there should be an old school paternalistic practice of medicine. Doctor knows best, patient do what I say.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I'm about shared decision-making. I'm about explaining to patients in a way that empowers them, that it's a more equal relationship. And that's fine. Maybe it's a philosophical disagreement, but that's the stance I'm going to take. And I'm prepared to die on that hill.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So how do you sort of handle those cases? So I deal with those actually quite regularly. So interestingly about the saturated fat, I think you're right, Mark. There are definitely a subgroup of people who have very high saturated fat intake. Actually, it does affect their interresistance or make their triglycerides go up. And in fact, there was a paper done by...
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I think his name's Ronald Kraft, if I'm not wrong. Ron Kraus. Ron Kraus, sorry, Kraus, you're right. And he showed there was an abnormal effect on lipids if your saturated fat consumption in obviously certain groups of people was more than 18% of your total calories, right? Which is still very, very high. But again, you're absolutely right. That might happen with a certain subgroup of people.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I've seen, for example, a patient on a carnivore diet who actually had something like that, and when they reduced their saturated fat intake, their lipid profile got better. That's all they changed. So I agree with you. There are going to be a subset of people. What do you do with FH, the people with the familial hyperlipidemia? So let's just lay it out for people, right?
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
There are, but you talk about ApoB and lipoprotein little a, which are all these other extra markers of risk that are added in. Basic teaching in medical school, certainly what I teach medical students and junior doctors, right? Don't organize a test unless it's going to change your management plan, right? Because what's the point? So you create unnecessary anxiety, for example, for some people.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Now, I get it. People may want to know, and if that's what they want to know, that's fine. And we'll come on to management as well. if you're not going to add in a statin or whatever else, then okay, maybe those people need to be more extreme in the lifestyle.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Maybe that's a reason to do it, saying you need to be like, instead of meditating for 30 minutes a day, I want you to meditate for an hour, right? No, fine. I mean, maybe that's the best we're going to offer them, right? To keep the risk down. So we've got to just be a little bit careful about how we...
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
about ordering these tests and then, but thinking a little bit more about, okay, is it going to change anything? And am I just going to give this patient unnecessary extra anxiety? And I'm, listen, I'm a doctor. Doctors are the worst patients. I probably have partly because my dad was the same. I have moments of being a hypochondriac.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And I know on the receiving end, like, you know, tests that are done that didn't need to be done. And now I'm like, okay, what does this mean? And you're going down a rabbit hole. So you've got to think about that as well, right? In terms of if you haven't got a clear solution, then don't order the test. I'm not saying don't do the test, but I just want us to think about that a little bit.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So 100%, I agree. There are definitely certain... Yeah, so I think there's a nuance there again. There are certain things where we know, okay, there's a very likely benefit here of you getting your insulin down, etc. I think some of the other biomarkers, it's still in a certain area. But again, Mark, you said that, okay, you're a guy...
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
First of all, to clarify, Mark, the reason I did not decide, I mean, it was something I thought about to sue the mail on Sunday. I think I was... At the time, there was a lot going on. My mum had just died. For me, as an activist and a campaigner, I made the decision that I'm going to keep talking about this issue and carry on and just take it on the chin.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And this is, if I was having a conversation with you and this is your preference of values, you want the data, that's your preference of values. I want to know more and more and more. And that's fine, Mark. I'm going to help you and let's do all these tests for you. Somebody else comes in, you know, and then suddenly they come back.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And the thing is, I see this, this is what happens with the whole cholesterol hypothesis, right? I've got patients coming to me for second opinion as a cardiologist. I do, you know, international consults and virtual and whatever else all around the world. And they, and I'd talk to them and I just start to tell me what's been going on.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And they, they've been living in absolute fear of death for months. And some of them break down in tears when I just say to them, listen, I've just done a cardiovascular risk here. Your LDL cholesterol is so-called high, but it's not an issue and you're fine. And your risk is only 2%. And you can just see a sigh of relief and say, doctor, thank God I've been going on thinking that I'm
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Then that's, again, misuse, not good use of maybe numbers or statistics. I've been going around thinking that I've got, in the next five years, there's an 80% chance I'm going to die of a heart attack. I'm like, no, it's 2% in 10 years, right? So there's also that as well. So I do think we need to think a little bit carefully on it.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
But coming back to FH, FH affects familial hyperlipidemia, genetically very high cholesterol, okay? 50% of men and 70% of women, right, with FH, untreated, big numbers, will not develop premature heart disease. But 30% of women will, and 50%, which is a lot, will get, even before maybe 50 or 60, will get heart disease.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So I did actually a review paper with a number of international scientists as well, and we published it in BMDA Evidence-Based Medicine. And we thought, okay, That's interesting. 50% of men with FH, familial hyperlipidemia, very high LDL, don't get heart disease and 50% do. Is there anything we can find that's different between them that highlights the subgroup?
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Like what is the difference between them? First thing, was it the LDL? Is the LDL higher in those ones that get heart disease versus the ones that don't? No difference at all. Ah, that's interesting. It can't be the LDL then. What is it? Well, we found, and Mark, you're going to like this, one of the lipoprotein little a was higher than the one that developed the heart disease.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So FH, you should look at lipoprotein little a, definitely. That gives them a high risk. But what's most promising and interesting is when you correct for insulin resistance...
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Right? Their level of risk of heart disease for FH patients almost comes back to someone who's completely healthy. It's only slightly higher. So what were the two markers? Normal waist circumference and low insulin. Yeah. Now, how do you get there? Diet, right? Cutting out the sugar, processed foods, refined carbs. That's right. And it rapidly... So this is amazing.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So what I do with those patients is I go through that with them. Now, if I think they're actually the high lipoprotein little a... And they're probably at high risk. I say, listen, the statin benefit is there. It's small. But why don't we do a halfway house? High dose statins are more likely to give you side effects. Let's do a low dose statin. Let's do the lifestyle.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
The lifestyle is most important for you. And I go really hard on that with them, including the diet, the exercise, and actually the one that I think isn't discussed enough. And, you know, it comes out in my documentary film. Which is called? First Do No Farm. P-H-A-R-M, not F-A-R-M. And how do you find that? It's released online at the moment and you can download it for $10.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I've been in this situation before, which we'll talk about later. So I decided that I wasn't going to sue them, but I'm so pleased and happy for Zoe and Malcolm because these sorts of things, they do have an impact on you. I...
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And the website is nofarmfilm.com. And the reviews have been pretty extraordinary. Nofarm? Nofarmfilm.com. P-H-A-R-M. P-H-A-R-M. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nofarmfilm.com. We screened it in the Leicester Square Odeon in London, which is the most famous cinema in the world. 790 people came. It was invite only, but celebrities. Really good feedback.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Screened it to doctors at Integrative Mental Health Conference in Washington, D.C. Really amazing feedback there. And so far, you know, we're getting reviews that are giving it sort of 9.7 out of 10, which is great. I'm proud of that. But most importantly, Mark, it is, in my view, this film uncovers
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
literally how we have got this pandemic of chronic disease, both with Big Pharma and Big Food, capturing, we've got, you know, medical knowledge. We've got very credible experts, former editor of the BMJ. We go into some dark stuff in there, just how many people have been killed by research fraud. But we also give people hope with the lifestyle stuff.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And one of the most interesting things I discovered in the film or in my own research is that for me, pushing the boundaries on heart disease is also the next phase is can you reverse the blockages of coronary artery disease? And the only, there's not a lot of research out there.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
We know, of course, Dean Ornish did his trial many years ago, but the reversal was very, very, you know, listen, at least very recent stabilized coronary disease, but it was like one or 2% in terms of blockages. Cardios in India for 20 years has been reversing heart disease to the level where, you know, one of his papers that he published showed a 20% reduction within two years.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
70% became 50, 50 became 30. So he did it through this healthy lifestyle program. There were devout Hindus, hundreds of patients, right? High fiber vegetarian diet, because they were devout Hindus, fine. Two 30-minute brisk walks a day, okay? And then something called Raja Yoga meditation.
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Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And when he did a deep dive analysis into what caused the reversal, the only independent factor for reversal of heart disease was 40 minutes of Raj Yoga meditation a day. So I went to India and I thought, let me just, is this true? Is this real? Let me look at the angiograms on myself. I trained in this stuff. I know this stuff inside out. It was unbelievable what I was seeing.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I was seeing those patients. I was seeing the angiogram reports. There was clear reversal. In some patients, there was a complete 100% occlusion that then opened up. Wow. Right? So I think it's because you've turned down the chronic inflammation by getting on top of the stress. But it wasn't just about breathwork and meditation.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
before i tell you that what happened in the case specifically because of that newspaper article um about a month later because my hospital was named in the article and obviously they got a bit panicky i was told that my services were no longer required so i lost my nhs job i and by the way i have an impeccable track record in terms of my clinical care getting with my colleagues you know i'm probably an unusual doctor and probably lucky as well because i throughout my whole career
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
This comes into something that we are dealing with right now in society, which is a crisis of morality. Okay. It was a spiritual transformation. These people changed their mindset. They became less materialistic. They became more spiritual. They thought how to reduce their anger.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
They were, you know, he got them into the ashram with their wives, for example, the men and vice versa to talk about why were they getting more angry? Like, how is your relationship? What's going on with your work? It was a real spiritual transformation that reduced probably the stress.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And I think that probably has a scientific basis because we know chronic stress increases chronic low grade information. We've talked about heart disease being a chronic inflammatory process. You turn down the inflammation and the body can heal. The body has a capacity to heal itself.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Just know are they right for you? Are you being told the absolute benefit is? And then what do you think? Like, you know, do you want to take it or not?
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
1%.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So when they do the randomized trials where you're trying to compare two groups which are the same and you're trying to show a benefit of an intervention, what's reported in the results often underestimates, massively underreports the side effects because what the drug companies do, who control how the trials are designed and how they're conducted. Think about that.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
They're only interested in profit, not looking after you. So they will try and design the trials to maximize ultimately the sales of the drugs. They have what we call a pre-randomization run-in phase where they get these volunteers who are interested in being in the trial.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And for six weeks, for example, one of the trials, the heart protection study, a third of the patients, thousands of patients were removed before the trial began. because of so-called noncompliance. In other words, they got side effects.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So imagine they take the people out with side effects at the beginning, and then they only start the trial once they've taken the people out with side effects to get them early on, and then report on them. So that's probably one of the reasons they're massively underreported, the side effects. I'm sorry, Mark, you know, It's fraud. I'm sorry. It's fraud.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And let me be definitive about how I describe that. What's the definition of fraud? Deliberate deception in order to make money. I'm sorry. That's the way I interpret it. This is fraud, right? The system is fraudulent.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah. Um, Well, the independent studies that have been done have shown very little benefit. But I agree that I think there is a small benefit. But the question then is you also look at the side effects issue. And the independent studies have never been able to get hold of the raw data as well on statins.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
The totality of evidence around statins, the raw data has never been independently evaluated for side effects. So we still don't know the true side effect profile.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
They hold it. And then you think the regulators are going to be able to ask for it and look for it. They rarely do that.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Well, what they often give the FDA, Mark, is curated information from tens of thousands of pages of clinical study reports on patients in the trial. So the FDA normally doesn't go and then reanalyze it. They just trust what the drug industry, the summary results. And then the other issue is, of course, the financial conflicts of interest. 65% of the funding of the FDA in the U.S.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
comes from Big Pharma. 86% of the funding in the U.K. of the MHRA comes from Big Pharma. They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. So there's a huge conflict.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
23-year career as a doctor, I've never had a single patient complain, which is unusual. Because that can happen for any reason. It doesn't mean the doctor's done something wrong. So with all of that background, that's what happened. And then I wasn't able to get a job back in the NHS. I applied and got... You got blacklisted. Basically, yeah.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I think it's a combination of factors. But yes, I think the root of it is flawed science, dogma and money. And then even if people know there's an issue, they're afraid to speak out because they're worried about their jobs. But if we're all doing this collectively, it's going to be a complete, pardon my language, a shit show for health care. And that's why we are where we are in America right now.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So it's time to, you know, I think I love this phrase. I know this is not a political podcast and it shouldn't be. But, you know, a good friend of mine and good friend of yours is Robert Kennedy Jr. And I love the fact that he's come out with this make America healthy again. I think we should all get behind that. Yeah, it's been co-opted, unfortunately.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
But you can't make America healthy again until you remove commercial distortions of the scientific evidence. And that, unless that is addressed head on, we're not going anywhere. Okay, I want to say that again.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
How can we, how can we trust that they're being independent with their information? Come on. I mean, it's, people need to just, you know, wake up, wake up.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
But let's very quickly on that. I love the fact you brought up commercial determinants of health. There's a definition in public health because I talk about this as well. So just so people understand what that means. Strategies and approaches adopted by the private sector to promote products and choices that are detrimental to health. That's the definition of commercial determinants of health.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I have evolved that, and in fact, referencing the Lancet, because Richard Horton, the editor, came to one of my lectures, and I've said that the way that drug companies, big corporations, conduct business, not individuals, I'm not pointing at individuals who work for them, as legal entities, the way they conduct their business actually fulfills the criteria for psychopaths. Oh, wow.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
No, but this comes from Robert Hare. They're amoral, not immoral, right? Yeah, forensic psychologist Robert Hare, behind the original DSM criteria of psychopathy, defined them in the book Corporation. He said, so what does that mean? Callous and concerned for the safety of others, incapacity to experience guilt, repeated lying and conning others for profit. So there's another one to throw in there.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And it doesn't mean that all cardiologists were kind of against me, but the situation arises in hospitals, teaching hospitals. And I know a lot of cardiologists in London because I trained in some of these hospitals and had good relationships with cardiologists there. who respect my opinion.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Psychopathic determinants of health is my new term. right so this is what the root of the problem right and of course downstream effects we know what's going on yeah so yeah people can um i've got a website drassim.com i think to be honest if they want to get an overview of this it's a one hour 50 minutes it's an educational tool um please go and download first do no farm from nofarmfilm.com
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And if you want to read about statins in particular, but we cover this in the film a little bit, the whole drama of statins, which is quite interesting. My third book is called A Statin-Free Life. And I think that really breaks down all the cholesterol stuff and the statin stuff and the lifestyle stuff as well.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I'm pro-ethical evidence-based medical practice. There you go.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
100%.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And it would be the case where, say, in a cardiology department of eight people, if seven of us said, it'd be great, let's have a see him here to do clinics and work here for a bit, just one of them would object. No chance, you can't get in.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
100%. And Mark, another point before we finish is that, which you've just raised, is that these pills for chronic disease rarely improve your quality of life. They may affect a blood marker. They may reduce your risk to some degree in the long term. But lifestyle changes come without side effects, by and large, and they improve your quality of life.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And it was always, it came back to, when I asked the reason, it was, you know, there are antibodies that have been developed against you because of your statins, essentially, right? People are allergic to you because of your opinion on statins. Exactly. So, but also that, so what happened in the case is that, you know, this was a front page news story.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
What made the news story, and this is the really interesting bit around the evidence of what happened during the case that I submitted because I was asked to,
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
is that the front page linked article said essentially got the Secretary of State for Health at the time called Matt Hancock, you may have heard of him, to say that there is no place in the NHS for these sites of doctors who are spreading misinformation on statins.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Now, interestingly, and of course, one of the most extraordinary bits in the actual newspaper, the editorial from the health editor headline was, there is a special place in hell for doctors who say statins don't work. Hmm. Okay. And then imagine a picture of me, Zoe Arkham, and Harkam, right?
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Exactly, right? I mean, I find it funny, to be honest. I mean, of course, a lot of other people were more upset than I was. In fact, the former Queen of England's doctor and the past president of the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Richard Thompson, who I'm friends with, I mean, he called me up and he was so upset. He's like, this is unbelievable.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
How can they say, this is not what you say, blah, blah, blah.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And I was calming him down and saying, Richard, we take this as a backhanded compliment. You're over the target. You get one of the most powerful, influential newspapers in the world to go for you like this. And I'm someone that- Well, that's a fair point.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
But I think ultimately what came out in the case as well, Mark, and there's also, again, I'll mention this crucial bit of evidence, which is extraordinary and helped, I think, shift the case and win it, is that the people who were fueling the health editor to write the article and the people who are commenting on it were all connected or part of something called the CTT, the Cholesterol Trialist Collaboration in Oxford.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
These are the most powerful statin promoters and some of the most powerful doctors in the world in medical research. But again, which wasn't declared, is that their institution has received hundreds of millions of dollars from drug companies that manufacture statins or new cholesterol-lowering drugs. Okay.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Yeah, absolutely right, Mark. And that reminds me actually of somebody who I cite quite regularly, Professor John Ioannidis. In Stanford, I refer to him as a Stephen Hawking in medicine. He's the most cited medical researcher in the world. He is a professor of medicine and epidemiology and statistics at Stanford. He's a mathematical genius.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And he published a paper in 2006 that we've talked about before, I think, which is called Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. And one of the risk factors for false research is this. the greater the financial and other prejudices in a given field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Think about that. That's right.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So when you start with statins, you're talking about one of the most lucrative drugs in the history of medicine. It's a trillion-dollar industry. It's the number one selling drug in the world. So start from that kind of overview to try and help explain what's going on and why this confusion is happening and why the battle is happening. And then you can make your own decision who...
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
You trust more, but also the most important thing is to try and give people information in a way that you can understand. We'll get there in a second. So what happened in the case? So we have this kind of defamatory attack on us. But what made the story was the secretary of state for health getting involved.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Now, interestingly, one week earlier, just before this new story broke, I was speaking in parliament about type two diabetes reversal and the benefits of, for example, of a low carbohydrate, you know, real food diet for that purpose. Matt Hancock had agreed to meet me. He had, um, was aware of my work because of another politician who had lost 94 pounds from following my diet plan.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
This is the one who said you need to have a special place in hell or No, that was the editor of the, of the, of the actual, of the, um, of the newspaper. So Hancock, all Hancock was involved in the story because he had basically said he'd been contacted by the mail on Sunday and said, there were these doctors saying this, do you have a, can you give us a comment?
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And he gave a generic comment saying there's no place for this misinformation. Right. And that it looked as if he knew who we were and we were. So I met Matt Hancock a week before I gave him a copy of my book. He was very respectful, very appreciative of what I'm doing and lifestyle.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
and gave my lecture in parliament, which got a lot of attention, by the way, as well, which may have been the reason why they decided to suddenly do this. You know, the new story is like, okay, we're getting something that's challenging our views on cholesterol, on low-fat diets or whatever.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So that was probably the peg because that was getting a lot of attention to then come back and have a go at me and two other people. I think that's probably what happened. That's why it happened at that particular time. So I texted Matt through Twitter, DMed him. I was like, Matt, Really? And he replied, Asim, I had no idea they were referring to you or Zoe Harkam.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And I was like, okay, this is very interesting. So I kept that, obviously. When the case then evolved and went to court, the lawyers for Zoe and Malcolm contacted me. And I gave them that evidence.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
And apparently during the case, and Malcolm fed this back to me, Malcolm Kendrick, he said, this turned the judge because they put Barney Kalman, who was the health editor on the stand, and essentially made him admit that, you know, that in a way that they had misled Matt Hancock because they hadn't told him. Because if Matt knew, because I'm a, you know, for all intents and purposes.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
So probably, so this is what really changed the case. And I think that that is, yeah, that, well, it is what it is.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
What were they coming after? So this is basically based upon probably both Malcolm and Zoe and my public advocacy on the over-prescription of statins, the lack of informed consent, the lack of access to the raw data, which is still an ongoing problem, going over a decade or so. So I think because this story and the statin saga had been getting more and more of an airing and
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Mark, I've been publishing in medical journals on informed consent and I've been publishing a lot about the prescription of statins and the conflicts of interest and not knowing the true benefits and harms, right? Because as you've said already, a lot of the data that we get from drug industry sponsored trials, if not most of it, is never independently evaluated.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Ditch the Statins: How to Naturally Lower Cholesterol With Lifestyle Changes | Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Most people don't know this, right?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah, so I think this is something I'm seeing with lots of patients. There's more and more reports coming out. And I think what really needs to happen, Megan, now, there needs to be a moratorium on this COVID vaccine globally. Certainly I know, and I'm sure you've read this, that people who are in prominent positions certainly within the new Trump administration.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I know they've already expressed concerns historically about the COVID vaccines. We don't need to name them. We all know who they are. But I think the one thing that still needs to happen, and I've got to be honest, I think President Trump is a remarkable man in the way that he has come back. He's so resilient. He's exactly the disruptor we need right now to really change the system for the good.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And he's made some really important comments about making sure big pharma companies are accountable. I don't think yet he's on the same page and probably because he doesn't have the full information around the COVID vaccine.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
One of the things that keeps getting perpetuated in the media is this, and I'll explain why this is completely false, that the COVID vaccine has saved tens of millions or millions of lives. And the data on which that, that information is based, Megan, it's the lowest level quality of evidence.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
It's not even considered in the hierarchy of evidence-based medicine to the extent where one of the leading figures in the world in evidence-based medicine, a guy called Carl Hennigan at the Center of Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford, wrote an article saying that this claim is implausible. Not just him. In the United States, you have the most cited medical researcher in the world.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
His name is Professor John Ioannidis from Stanford. I call him the Stephen Hawking of medicine.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
A couple of years ago, he wrote an article in one of the peer-reviewed journals saying that non-randomized studies, so studies which aren't the one which I described earlier with a 1 in 800 figure of harm, he says that claims of them being so beneficial or preventing deaths from COVID, et cetera, et cetera, may be spurious, in other words, fake. So, you know, we need to really put this to bed.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And I think if anybody, you know, we have this conversation so that President Trump, and I think he's up for turning because I think he was deceived. He was misled by these drug companies. We need to get a situation where he comes out and says, listen, you know what? We did this with the best of intentions. And it's true, we may have saved some lives, certainly in the high-risk people.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
But overall now, the fact that it was given to so many other people at low risk, it's very clear, Megan, for me, it's very, very clear with the evidence that we've done more harm than good here and it needs to stop.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Well, listen, I think we have to confront an uncomfortable truth, Megan. Let's be honest, first and foremost. But one of the things why we need to get this stopped and pulled and we need the president involved is because it's going to give us more information of what we need to do to sort this out. Identify who's at risk so people don't worry unnecessarily.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Identify who may be at risk of a further problem. And then we can use the best minds of science and medicine to actually identify you know, allow research to take place to find the solution, Megan. That's another issue. It's not just like, oh, you know, people said to me, Dr. Mohotra, listen, it's happened. People don't know about it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I said, no, this is going to be an ongoing issue and we need to talk about it right now so that we can stop problems in the future. One of the things I do, for example, is I, you know, I see many patients who are vaccine injured and
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
One of the definite things they can do, certainly which will help, which is exactly what Make America Healthy Again is about, is optimize their health when it comes to diet, when it comes to exercise, when it comes to reducing stress, because all these things are additional factors that make you more likely to suffer from these vaccine injuries.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
One of the other issues that's emerged as well, unfortunately, is that And it's interesting, you said it's not unusual that you got COVID about a month after having the booster or the second dose, because we now know, and it sounds crazy to say it, and it's not just me. I had an email exchange with one of the world's top immunologists. His name is Robert Clancy in Australia.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And he just thinks it's mind-boggling for him that it's still being used. It causes immunosuppression. We have one of the world's top oncologists, Angus Dalgleish, in the UK, who is actually behind identifying the CD4 cells being involved in AIDS and HIV. He's a very eminent guy.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
He's an oncologist and an immunologist, and he's saying that it causes immunosuppression, and especially people who've had boosters and more vulnerable to getting cancer. I've had people who I know, friends of my friends, younger brothers, etc., you know, developing cancer. And it's just, and as a doctor, you know, intuitively something isn't right.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And we have the data suggesting that the COVID vaccine has a mechanism where it can do this. Now, I'm not saying this is for everybody. And I think it's still going to be in a minority, but, you know, The problem is we're now in a situation, and I am also equally anxious, having thought I was probably okay.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And as you know, my father died as a result of the COVID vaccine, almost certainly had a sudden cardiac death six months after having two doses of Pfizer, is that we're now in this uncertain phase where is, you know... Can problems develop in three or four or five years times at the moment where we're basically ticking bombs?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I don't like to use these words lightly, but I don't want to exaggerate the fear, but we need to really have this conversation, not be afraid to say we are concerned.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Not at all.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah, no, of course. And actually their model, in fact, is probably, and this is how business is done, make money from both sides, is that they are now going to, you know, they've invested heavily in cancer drugs for turbo cancers, which are also one of the potential adverse effects of this COVID vaccine.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
So, you know, and that's why I, you know, the definition, and this is important for people to understand, We have these big corporations who've got more power than ever. They've become the dominant force in our society, more economic power than many governments, almost tyrannical to a large degree.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
The way to describe them as legal entities and the way they make money has been defined by the preeminent expert Robert Hare, psychologist, as actually fulfilling the criteria for psychopath, psychopathy. Callous, unconcerned for the safety of others, incapacity to experience guilt, repeated lying and conning others for profit.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And this is something that I've seen and been very much aware of pre-pandemic. Of course, I had a blind spot on the COVID vaccine, as I had for all vaccines, Megan, because I took two doses myself. But with all the other drugs in the system, I knew that this is exactly how it worked. And of course, you see this confluence of interest with big food.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
People talk about big food essentially drive the chronic disease, and then big pharma give us drugs, which by the way, in general, are pretty useless. That was another conversation that needs to be had
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
When we talk about making America healthy again, and this is absolute fact, most drugs, a large proportion for most of the health expenditure in the US comes from prescription drugs for chronic disease management. Chronic disease management are things like heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, for example, so-called high cholesterol we talked about already.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Most people taking those drugs are not going to get any benefit Because this is another shift in the paradigm, in the conversations that happens between doctors and patients. We talked about statins, for example, that the benefit at best from taking a statin and preventing a heart attack, people who have not already had a heart attack, which is most people taking statins, is 1%, 1 in 100.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Patients are not told that. They're not given an informed choice. But they're all then exposed to side effects. But the good news is, Megan, once this information becomes freely available and these conversations start happening, we can very quickly improve the system. We can get a more efficient healthcare system. We can reduce costs and improve quality as well at the same time.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah, I know I get that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And to be fair to Casey as well, I mean, I'm in a very unique position when it comes to the cholesterol discussion because I probably, I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, as an independent doctor, as a cardiologist that doesn't have any link to industry, I've probably done more research and publications and deep dive and understanding of this cholesterol and statin issue than anyone in the world.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And the reality is that once you correct for what we call triglycerides and HDL, you know, parts of the cholesterol profile essentially links to excess body fat and insulin resistance, you know, driven by ultra processed food. There is no relationship with LDL cholesterol and development of heart disease.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
That data was actually already available years ago, you know, at the end of the late nineties, the co-director of the Framingham study, which is where cholesterol emerges, a so-called risk factor for heart disease said that if your LDL cholesterol essentially, you know, was below
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
as an independent risk factor did not become apparent as a risk factor for heart disease unless it was at least above 250 or 300. And most, 99% of people, Megan, don't have LDL cholesterol that high. And then we did further research in this group of people that have got a very high LDL genetically called familial hyperlipidemia that affects one in 250 people. Let's just look at those.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And this is published in BMJ evidence-based medicine period. People can look this up, mean number of scientists. And we found that in people with very, very high levels of LDL cholesterol above 300, for example, there was no difference in the ones that develop heart disease and their LDL levels and the ones that did develop heart disease.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And therefore, that is another nail in the coffin to this LDL theory hypothesis that it causes heart disease. It's basically, I would say, a trillion dollar industry. It's a trillion dollar scam. The statin benefit that I mentioned, 1%, is there from the trials.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Having said that, another caveat, again, Megan, which is what we need to do and change the system with Maha, is that these drug trials have never been independently evaluated. So we have to trust drug companies. But let's just say it is true that it's 1% benefit. That's because statins have an independent effect where they are slightly anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And heart disease is an inflammatory condition linked to abnormal clotting and insulin resistance. When you look at all the other drugs that lower cholesterol or diet, just lowering LDL cholesterol, again, I was involved in this research published in BMDA, evidence-based medicine. We looked at this and we found no relationship.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
So lowering cholesterol per se does not prevent heart attacks or stroke. This is an absolute- What does? Okay. All right. So the main driver of heart disease, the number one sort of risk factor is insulin resistance, which basically is linked to five markers. And that's why I set up this program called Metabolic Health, which is very easy to measure, very simple.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Most doctors aren't having these conversations with patients, which is basically looking at two markers of your cholesterol profile, triglycerides and HDL, so-called good cholesterol, your waist circumference, Megan, whether you have a high blood pressure or what we call pre-high blood pressure, pre-hypertension, or whether you're pre-diabetic or type 2 diabetic.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Now, one in three adult Americans are type 2 diabetic, and 93% of American adults now have suboptimal metabolic health. OK, the good news, Megan, is this. You can optimize this within weeks of just changing diet, cutting out the ultra processed food, minimizing the sugar and the starches from your diet and basically reset. That's what we call a metabolic reset. You can do that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Absolutely. There is no relationship with a consumption of red meat. The most extensive studies have been done, looked in their totality, red meat and heart disease. Red meat, I'm not saying it's protective, but it's a very nutritious food. I tell my cardiac patients, these are cardiac patients of heart attacks. I tell them, listen, cut the ultra-processed foods,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Follow the best components of Mediterranean diet, extra virgin olive oil, oily fish, whole fruit and vegetables. But I'm not worried about how many steaks you eat a week. I'll tell you something interesting. Only yesterday, I had a consultation with a patient. This is a great story, Megan. I'm glad I'm going to share this with you for the first time. This is a guy that saw me almost 10 years ago.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
He comes for a follow-up. At the age of 62, he was diagnosed with severe blockages in all of his heart arteries. He was recommended to have a coronary artery bypass surgery. And essentially told that unless he had it, he's probably going to die within a very short space of time, within a few years. Now he came to me and he said, listen, doctor, I don't want to go under the knife.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I want to try alternatives. This is my personal preference. I really don't want to have surgery. Luckily, at that point, his symptoms were quite mild, but he had those blockages diagnosed. And he said, is there anything else I can do? I've read your work. Can I go on a diet plan? Can I do a lifestyle change? And I gave him that plan. Exactly that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I told him, you know, I went through his diet and he was, you know, he was a CEO of a company, if I remember correctly. He was spending eight hours of the day in a car. He was sedentary. He was eating snack foods and sweets all the time. You know, so there's lots of room for improvement. He completely changed his diet. I also found that he was very stressed.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
So, you know, I advised him to do breath work meditation. He also was, you know, thinking about coming towards retirement early because of his, you know, his heart issue. And he was wealthy enough to be able to do that. So he contacts me only yesterday. I had a consultation with him and I presumed when he got back in touch with me that he'd done this for a while, but ultimately needed a bypass.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And he was going to come to me and say, listen, I had the bypass and I just want to check in with you and see how things are going, et cetera, et cetera, and anything else I can do. Megan, he didn't have the bypass. He now grows his own vegetables. He cooks, completely transformed his life. He swims three times a week. He walks his dog five miles a day. He's got no symptoms.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And this is nine years after being told essentially he could probably die if he didn't have a bypass operation. That is the power of lifestyle change. And by the way, sorry, the other thing to say, this was without statin. He got side effects from the statin and stopped his statin. That was the other part of the discussion. He's not taking a statin and hasn't taken a statin for nine years.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Okay, the calcium score is a really good, useful, validated test that is simple to do. A little bit of radiation through CT scan. Takes five minutes, non-invasive. And what it does is it tells you the buildup of what we call coronary calcium. Nothing to do with diet, by the way. Nothing to do with blood calcium.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
The calcium is basically deposited where there is inflammation and where blockages tend to occur. And you can get a score, anything from zero, which is completely normal to well over a thousand, which indicates there is a lot of furring of the arteries. But what's useful about the calcium score, Megan, as well, is it actually gives you a very accurate prediction, more than cholesterol.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Well, cholesterol we know is essentially useless, but more than other factors, it gives you a prediction of your risk of a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years. So I use it quite often in patients that have come, have been scared by their doctor saying, you're going to die because your cholesterol is high unless you take a statin. We do the calcium score on them, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And of course, a lot of cholesterol, you know, that the so-called LDL is, you know, 80% of it essentially is genetic. Okay. You're born with it. So if they come to me in their middle age, if their LDL cholesterol has been a problem for them, they're going to have significant heart disease, do the calcium score zero.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
So I can reassure them that they don't need to worry about their cholesterol essentially.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Well, listen, I think everybody can look this up because I was, you know, there's a brilliant executive order from the president, obviously, I think with Robert Kennedy Jr. 's input on the Maha plan. And Megan, it's absolutely extraordinary. It's so comprehensive. They've covered essentially everything. So they're going to look at
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
you know, all of the existing data when it comes to nutrition, when it comes to environmental influences on health, you know, they set up a commission. This was what heartened me the most, to look at how different sectors of our lives, whether it's housing, education, you know, income, how that impacts on your health, and why that's really important, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
This is a conversation that needs to be had in America and across the world. You know, we need to go back to square one to understand what are the building blocks of a healthy society? What does it mean to be healthy? And one of the things that hasn't been discussed enough or ignored, if you like, is that if you look at... I'll give you some figures here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
In the United States, and even in the UK, it's not dissimilar. The gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest is about 10 years on average. It's huge. Healthy life expectancy difference is about 20 years. When you look at the data, about 80% of that difference can be explained by what we call the social determinants of health or the wider determinants of what means to be healthy.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And this basically means having an income that allows you to lead a healthy life, good quality housing. A lot of people are suffering in the United States because they may be certainly through the winter, they don't have adequate heating, access to education.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
If you are in a job, Megan, that is high demand, low control, low pay, you're on the minimum wage, which I understand in the US, certainly pre-pandemic, was about $7.25, then that can be more damaging to health. The stress associated with being in those sorts of conditions, Megan, can be more damaging to health than being unemployed. And what's the mechanism?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
The underlying mechanism is severe chronic stress. So if you have chronic stress over your lifespan, if you're, for example, brought up in a family, if you're a child that is in a deprived family or you're a victim of severe psychological abuse or emotional abuse, that starts to already have an effect on the disease process that will cut your life short later down the line.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
These are the conversations we need to start having. So that's why what's really fascinating is, you know, it's about health through all sectors. So we need to look at the Department of Education, housing, et cetera, and say they, those departments, those, you know, agencies, if you like, they need to be having health at the forefront, you know.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
There's something I was reading really interestingly recently is that Thomas Jefferson in 1809 in an address to Republicans in Washington said, the care of health and human happiness and not its destruction is the first and most important object of good government. That's Thomas Jefferson, right? For me, it's not about big government or small government.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
It's about good government, because ultimately, the politicians have the control over laws to ensure that we create conditions so that everybody, Megan, who's going to disagree with that, has the best opportunity to lead the best life they can in terms of their health. And this isn't just about people who are not well off. During the pandemic, Megan,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And Boris Johnson, our prime minister, I mean, I commented on this. He got hospitalized with COVID. And I said it's because of, it's likely because of his weight. I said it in a compassionate way. He was after he came out. I didn't say when he was in hospital. And, you know, that became a big story because he was, and he admitted it, obese. And this is a guy who's got agency. He's got wealth.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Right. And this tells us that all of us really are in this because we're affected by this ultra processed food environment. We've been misled about information about cholesterol, about what's a healthy diet. So I think all of this is going to be uncovered under Trump's administration, under the leadership, certainly on health of Robert Kennedy Jr.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Megan, I think you've hit the nail on the head and that's the elephant in the room. I think everything that underpins what's really driving the root of the problem is the chronic stress. And it comes down to how we live, how we interact with each other as well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
We know that one of the biggest predictors, I know you're talking to Brian Johnson later, but one of the predictors of longevity and happiness, actually the quality of our relationships, having someone to love and someone that loves you. It sounds very basic, but it's so important. And that mitigates also from the external stresses of life, which are inevitable.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
So all these conversations need to be had. And of course, it also applies to a child being nurtured by their mother. I think I always tell people the most important relationship you're going to have in your life, I think, is the one between mother and child. How you're brought up and being allowed to create the conditions so that moms can be there
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
for their children so they can have a nurturing upbringing rather than being a single mom, for example, working two jobs, trying to make two ends meet in an unjust system where they're not getting paid enough, where big corporations exploit their workers, where you've got a pay differential between the CEO of a company and the production worker of 326 times, which I think is the figure now, which is extraordinary.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
So we have to have a conversation as a society saying, is this actually fair and just? And then you add in, Megan, on top of that, I'm all for meritocracy when people are earning their money doing the right thing, but a lot of these big corporations have made their money through mass deception.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
You look at Big Pharma, for example, and then they don't pay their taxes, and then the government have less money to spend on public services, which are being degraded and undermined. So we have to link it all together.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah, I think two things to mention there, Megan. Absolutely, I don't think a single American voted for President Trump the second term because of Operation Warp Speed and the COVID vaccine. I'm pretty sure that didn't happen, right? And the second thing is, you know, he's got a great sense of humor and he's a very shrewd man.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And if you look at the reaction there, I think that was almost reinforcing what he probably already deep down knows. This COVID vaccine is a mess.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah. So, so a couple of things, Megan, first of all, I know Ryan very well, and he's a brilliant, he's a pathologist. He's a brilliant scientist. He has high integrity. We've spoken at conferences together, solid, solid guy. Uh, one of the top vascular surgeons in the world is a friend of mine in an Island called professor Sheriff Salter. And I talked to him about this as well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I mean, these, these sort of long fibrous cuts have been known before prior, but he also feels that they seem to have increased and he's seen more problems. Certainly he feels that there's been a massive issue. with the COVID-19 vaccine, he feels it should be suspended as well. And he's one of the top vascular surgeons in the world. So there's a lot more doctors speaking out about it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
In terms of what people can do, I think with these particular fibrous clots, Megan, as far as I've seen in terms of data and my own clinical experience, they tend to be stuff that develops relatively early on. So these are the kind of things that you see when people have either had a booster within a few weeks, maybe a month or so after, but usually within a short timeframe.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
There was a separate study which looked at people that died within, I think, two or three weeks of having the COVID vaccine. And I think they found from autopsy studies, 74% was a figure roughly. They could actually directly say was caused by the COVID vaccine. But yes, what can we do? Again, it comes back to metabolic health. A lot of these problems are cardiovascular.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I talked about insulin resistance earlier. And interestingly, it isn't just about heart disease. After smoking, it's the second biggest driver of cancer. So if we have this mechanism in place to educate people and introduce environmental policies, let's put it that way, to create a healthier food environment, a food environment, food that's affordable,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
then you very quickly will see people optimize their metabolic health and improve it across the United States. And we will see, I think one of the aims of the new administration and Bobby in particular is to show demonstrable data of improvement within two years. That is absolutely doable.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Thanks, Megan. Yeah, so I mean, very quickly on that, yes, you're right about dementia. Some people describe that Alzheimer's is type 3 diabetes, so same process. So 100%, this is the way forward. I have a lot of hope. I think we've got the right people in place. We've got brilliant men like Jay Bhattacharya, who's almost certainly going to be, I think, the next director of the NIH.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
We've got, you know, Mahdi Makkari. We've got Mehmet Oz. We've got Bobby in there. Anything I can do to help to facilitate it. And I think President Trump will listen.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Thank you, Begum.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Likewise, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah, Megan, it's such a symptom of a system failure, really, these commercial distortions of health and healthcare. We had something similar in the UK last year. Jonathan Van Tam, who was a deputy chief medical officer, left his government position to get a lucrative job with Moderna. So it's almost things are happening in parallel.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And, you know, it's a real issue because we know that the interests of these big corporations, these drug companies, is not putting people first. It's about profit. It's profit through manipulation, profit through mass deception.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
We've seen the worst of the, you know, the sort of the greatest failings of the system played out through the COVID pandemic, certainly with the rollout of the COVID vaccine. And it really just continues. This sort of behavior, to be honest, and these sorts of actions just will undermine trust in our institutions and the medical establishment.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah, so it's interesting because also people need to understand why or how this happens. One of the problems we have with the approval of drugs or vaccines is that the so-called regulatory agencies that people believe to be independent are not. The FDA gets 65% of its funding from big pharma. So what that means is as well for the people- Can you just say that again?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah, the FDA and other regulators in the UK, the MHRA, get most of their funding from pharma. So the FDA gets 65% of its funding from big pharma. So it's in the interest, in a way you can understand, so the people working the FDA who are approving the drugs, they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. But also, if they are friendly to industry,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
they potentially know that down the line, they're going to get offered lucrative jobs with big pharma. You know, government jobs don't pay as well as these big corporations do. So it's a huge bias in the system and it's damaging. It's very, very damaging. And you use the right word. Disgusting is the right word, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Yeah, well, that's a really good question. So I think things really started to... I mean, this is part of the economic system we're in, Megan. So up until sort of the 80s, maybe early 90s, most of the funding of these regulatory agencies came from government.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
But because of the economic change, something called neoliberalism that was the brainchild of a Chicago economist who was very close to Ronald Reagan, his name was Milton Friedman. He basically wanted to reduce regulations, if you like, and allow companies to basically have open season when it came to drug development, less regulation, etc.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And government obviously thought it was better for them to reduce spending not knowing what the consequences would be. I don't think this was deliberate. And over time, what would happen is the drug companies then took over funding the very industries that are supposed to regulate them because it suits their interests, doesn't it, of course, because then they get more drugs approved more quickly.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And we're now in a situation where we're having to deal with a massive shortage overmedicated population around the world in the United States. You know, it's estimated globally, I've said this before, but people need to hear it again, that the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer globally is prescribed medications.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
This is not even to do with the COVID vaccine or the vaccine. This is pre-pandemic figures. And this is just one symptom of why we've got here really, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Well, it's interesting, Megan, because I didn't know that. And that, for me, suggests that she had a big role to play in the approval of the COVID vaccine, which we know has been an absolute horror, right? If you look at the evidence now, if you allow me to elaborate a little bit on that, I mean, things keep accumulating over time.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
You know, when the COVID vaccine was approved, let's say Pfizer and Moderna, which was the most prominent COVID vaccines used in the United States, We were under this impression, and it was obviously fueled by all sorts of media, especially the legacy media, that it was going to be very protective, maybe 95% to 100% protective against infection, et cetera, et cetera.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And of course, that all ultimately proved to be false. But when the original trials were reanalyzed by independent scientists, and this was then published in the peer-reviewed journal Vaccine, which is the highest impact medical journal for vaccines, what they found is from the very beginning,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Megan, you were more likely to suffer serious harm from the COVID vaccine, mRNA vaccines, than you were to be hospitalized with COVID. And that serious harm rate in the trial was only a short-term harm, because I want to come on to long-term harms in a second. And that was a rate of about 1 in 800.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And that's on the most rigorous data, that's their own original trials where everything is supposed to be equal in terms of the participants who are in the placebo group, who don't get the vaccine, the ones who get the vaccine, same background, same age, etc. But when these trials are designed, and they were designed by the drug companies, so this is another problem.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
You know, they design the trials, they control the data, they then give summary results to the regulator, the regulator then approves them. But of course, it's in the interest of the regulator to approve them if they're getting funding from Big Pharma. So it's a complete mess. That's just short term harms.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And then there was an interesting survey done in the United States, which was published in one of the major medical journals. I must say, though, later retracted, not because of error, but because of pressure, because of the media frenzy that happened as a result of it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
They did a survey in the United States that revealed, according to 57% of people surveyed, felt that they knew somebody, either they'd been severely injured or they knew someone that had died or been severely injured from the vaccine. They extrapolated from that and estimated there may have been in the first year of the COVID vaccine in the United States alone, Megan, 280,000 deaths.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
and 1 million serious adverse events. Now, given the other data we know from around the world, there was a publication in the BMJ by Dutch researchers which suggested the COVID vaccines have contributed to 2 million excess deaths globally. This is pretty horrific stuff. And only last week, you may be aware, Yale researchers published
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
new research that showed a long-term effect problem from the vaccine, which is that people who had what we call post-vaccine syndrome or long COVID symptoms like fatigue and brain fog, for example, two years after having the vaccine, Megan, they found in this particular group, they didn't look at other groups, that there was still circulating spike protein in the body, which essentially can be causing damage to the tissues or causing an autoimmune reaction.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I personally, Megan, and I was pretty okay after the initial vaccine. About a year and a half after the vaccine, I developed psoriasis, an autoimmune condition linked to that depression. And I wasn't sure what was going on. And there's a brilliant doctor in Malibu, a very well-known established gastroenterologist called Sabine Hazan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
And she did some published research, which is pretty extraordinary and a bit scary, but we need to talk about it, is that she found that Three years after taking the COVID vaccine, a very important bacteria in the gut called Bifida bacteria, it's a very important part of the gut microbiome, it's a good bacteria, after three years went down to zero.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Now, why that's important is that bacteria is very important for health, It's important for producing neurotransmitters like serotonin. A lot of people might be suffering from anxiety and depression because of a vaccine they had two or three years ago. She called me up and said, Asim, you have the exact signature of someone who's vaccine injured because your bifida is zero.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
I've had this resistant problem for now, coming up to a year and a half. I've still got depression. It's mild, but it's still debilitating at times. And I see other doctors I speak to are saying they're seeing an explosion of autoimmune conditions.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Megan, if you don't mind me asking, I remember you mentioned the fact that you had some issue that you think was vaccine related that caused an autoimmune issue with you as well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shocking Revolving Door at FDA and Pfizer, and How to Live Forever, with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Bryan Johnson | Ep. 1014
Right, okay. And in your mind, do you feel it may have been linked with everything you know about your health?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
But Hugh, the horror West Palm.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Hi, Megan. Lovely to be here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
One of the medications that Tony was on that he believed caused him quite significant side effects, such as muscle fatigue, erectile dysfunction, brain fog, really limited his quality of life for many, many months, was a statin drug.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah, Megan, so really interesting you started with that because, you know, my journey as a practicing cardiologist, as a qualified doctor for well over 20 years, actually started towards the end of sort of 2009, 2010, when I really started to investigate why heart disease hadn't really come down in the way it was predicted to come down.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
You know, by the end of the 20th century, it was predicted that heart disease would essentially be eradicated because of statins that come on the scene. And a lot of what happened around changes in guidelines on diet was based upon this, what we now know is a very flawed hypothesis about lowering cholesterol. So that's where I begun my journey because I was seeing my patients come in
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
You know, more stress on the system, the National Health Service, more people are suffering from chronic disease. But patients also reporting a lot of side effects from statins, which where there was a discrepancy between what I was observing in terms of the frequency of these side effects and diagnosing it and what was in the published literature.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
So when I went on that journey, Megan, basically I came to the conclusion that this fear around cholesterol is grossly exaggerated to the extent where one could argue, and there's published evidence for this, that high cholesterol, so-called LDL, bad cholesterol, isn't really a significant risk factor for heart disease.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
But of course, that's where statins came in, because the thinking was if we lower LDL cholesterol, so-called bad cholesterol with these statin drugs, which are, by the way, prescribed, estimated to be prescribed, Megan, to one billion people globally, certainly at least 200 million. And we think at least 30 million Americans are taking statins. it doesn't really have that much of an effect.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
So when you start looking at the actual data on statins, and there's a huge caveat here, by the way, because almost all of the data on statins comes from industry-sponsored drug trials that have never really been independently evaluated.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And that's something, of course, that comes out in the film where myself and John Abramson from Harvard are trying to get access to the raw data so it gets investigated. Even if you look at that data from the drug companies and break it down,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
the actual benefit of a statin for an individual over a five-year period, but low risk of heart disease, or certainly if someone who hasn't had a heart attack is about 1%, one in a hundred chance of it preventing a non-fatal heart attack and non-disabling stroke without prolonging one's life.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Now, Tony's case is really interesting and he was quite unusual patient because as you already alluded to, you know, he was, um, somebody that had a heart attack. He was a Virgin Atlantic airline pilot. He was fit and active. He was following the dietary guidelines, low fat guidelines, thought he was doing everything, you know, healthy in a healthy way.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And his early fifties basically suffered a heart attack, couldn't fly anymore, went back to his previous job, which was a maths and physics teacher. So he's very good with numbers. And then he started to get debilitating side effects, you know, about a year after, you know, taking all these medications as described, or he suddenly felt unwell anyway, initially.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
started looking at the drugs and the details and the benefits, et cetera, thought there were side effects from the drugs, stopped his statin, felt a lot better, and at the same time changed his lifestyle. And, you know, Tony now is in a situation, this is quite unusual for a heart patient who's had a heart stent and a heart attack,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
He's now training for World Ironman, and he's 60 plus now, and he's off all his pills, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
So I'm not saying this is for everybody, but it's a great example of what can be achieved in healthcare if we actually give patients the right information, if we empower them on the benefits and harms of drugs in a way that is not through coercion, not through manipulation of drug industry who are there to basically make money.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And the reality is this, most people in the world, Megan, taking statins, are going to get no benefit whatsoever and they don't even know it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah, great question. Before I answer that specifically, I said something interesting that I found myself and a number of international scientists in 2016 and BMJ. We actually looked at whether LDL cholesterol had a risk for heart disease in over 60s, partly because the original studies where cholesterol was exposed as a potential risk factor or as a major risk factor for heart disease.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
What wasn't publicized, Megan, in those original studies from Framingham, Massachusetts, that started in 1948 and went on for decades, is that once people hit 50, as their cholesterol dropped, their death rates increased. And we thought, this is a bit unusual. Why is no one really talking about this? So we went back and looked at up-to-date data.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And what we found, one, was there was no association with LDL cholesterol in heart disease in over 60s. But the most interesting finding was the higher one's LDL in older populations, of death statistically, right? So the question is, how is that possible?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Well, one of the things that's been forgotten because of all this focus on heart disease and this forward hypothesis is that cholesterol has a really important role in the immune system. Older people are more vulnerable to dying from infections.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And there's also an association, I must express, and we don't know if it's causal, but there is an association with low cholesterol and cancer, which again is likely related to the immune system. So that just to muddy the waters a bit further, that just lowering cholesterol for the sake of it may actually be harmful. It's not that it has no
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
detrimental effect now what is the risk factor major risk factor for heart disease it's a process in the body called insulin resistance so it's essentially over time your body becoming resistant to the hormone insulin and that is driven essentially by food you know diets that are high in starch and sugar ultra processed foods being sedentary and also to some degree chronic stress
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And insulin itself, when it's, you know, raised chronically for a long period of time, or if you're eating a lot of junk food, it directly is toxic to the inner lining of the heart artery. So that's how it causes heart disease. And that's accepted in the literature. Why is it not well known or publicized?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Because not never been really an effective drug to tackle insulin resistance has then been proven in a trials to prevent heart attacks. And of course, you know, there is no market for a healthy lifestyle, really, for just eating real food, you know, not being sedentary. No one gets rich off that. Absolutely. So that's really the missing link.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And when I institute this plan with my patients, Megan, you know, the lifestyle plan based upon the best evidence. And I don't say to my patients, don't take statins. I say, listen, this is the absolute benefit, you know, without even talking about harms.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I mean, harms come in as well in terms of quality of life limiting side effects in particular, like muscle fatigue, like what's only role experience. Most patients, when given that 1% figure, Megan, don't want to take the pill. And I actually write my letter back to their general practitioner and say, listen, the patient has decided they don't want to take the statin.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I've given them the information and their decision should be supported in keeping with the principles of ethical evidence-based medical practice. So actually what the statin issue highlights is that if we were practicing true ethical evidence-based medicine in healthcare, Megan, we'd sort out the health crisis very, very quickly.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah, so on the red meat issue, first of all, just for full disclosure here, Megan, in 2013, I caused global controversy when I wrote in the BMJ, but formerly the British Medical Journal, that the saturated fat does not cause heart disease. And the evidence for that is now pretty much conclusive. So that means that eating foods like red meat does not contribute to heart disease at all.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
In fact, I tell my patients, I'm not worried about how much red meat you consume, as long as you're following the principles of what I call a low refined carbohydrate Mediterranean diet. So that is definitely not something that I recommend patients to not do, right? Eating red meat is not an issue when it comes to heart disease.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And, you know, even on the issues of, say, colon cancer, the evidence is only really there for processed meat, not really for red meat, for real food.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And the dietary guidelines, unfortunately, in the US and in the UK have really put at the base to tell people to eat, you know, six to 11 servings, I think, in the US guidelines of starchy foods, which is the complete opposite of the foods that you want to eat. Oh, it is absolutely insane because these are the foods that are going to drive all these conditions. It's not just about heart disease.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
It's high blood pressure, which is the single biggest risk factor for death globally. It's type 2 diabetes. They all contribute to also, you know, it's not about longevity. It's about quality of life as well. If you've got type 2 diabetes, you're massively increased risk of depression, chronic pain, for example.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And then, of course, then you've got the pills to take, which aren't that effective, by the way, but give you side effects. So a whole management really of people's health in health care is upside down. What I do tell patients to do, though, is to adhere to a healthy lifestyle. I use calcium scores sometimes in patients because they're a very good way. It's an imaging.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
For people that don't know this, it's a form of imaging which looks at coronary calcium, nothing to do with diet. which is a marker of inflammation and buildup of plaque or fatty deposits, if you like, within the arteries. And it correlates also, it gives a very accurate representation, Megan, of your risk of a heart attack or stroke in the next decade.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
But what's interesting is, and certainly with my patients and what the literature tells us, if you look at it properly, is that this is potentially reversible. And of course, in the film, First Uno Farm, without giving too much away,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
You know, we end up going to India to meet a cardiologist who for well over 20 years and has published on this has been actually reversing the blockages within the arteries, which most doctors and I can tell you almost every cardiologist will not even think is possible. So he's done that for a combination of lifestyle. But the most important factor from his research that actually doesn't.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
cause the reduction in the blockages which i think is fascinating is actually through meditation and and this can be explained and this is it's really interesting so chronic stress is established as a risk factor for heart disease the same as being a smoker or having high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes okay but most of us are not really dealing with it properly and the process involved is a
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
If you look from an evolutionary perspective, acute stress obviously can be life-saving. But from an evolutionary perspective, if we were in a jungle and we're running away from a tiger, for example, when you're under a state of acute stress, the body releases clotting factors and inflammatory factors.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
So that if we were attacked by that tiger, we are not going to bleed to death or it's going to reduce our risk of bleeding to death. Let's put it that way. Now, this is chronically going on in the body at a low grade when people are stressed, you know, chronically stressed. And that's how it damages the heart arteries.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And heart disease itself, again, for many years was thought to be a fixed issue. You develop a blockage and like a clog pipe, it gradually gets worse over time. And at some point, you're going to have a heart attack. But this is not true. We know now that it's a dynamic process. So it can be reversed, Megan.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And I think that's really one of the most interesting, fascinating aspects of the new paradigm in actually reversing, not just preventing people having heart attacks, but actually reversing the blockages. And that's where we need to do more research and invest more of our resources.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah. So it's on a website. Um, the, the website's no farm film.com. So that's no N O P H A R M film.com. So they can download it for about $10. I mean, it was independently funded, very low budget. Um, you know, and, uh, yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah. So, um, so, so the, I think the If we understand heart disease to be a chronically inflammatory process, which is exacerbated by insulin resistance, then the solution to prevention and managing heart disease is to deal with the chronic inflammation and the insulin resistance. So there are certain components of the Mediterranean diet that have been shown in studies.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
You know, there's not a lot of, unfortunately, nutrition science is quite flawed. But, you know, the studies have shown that they are There are certain components of the Mediterranean diet that are anti-inflammatory. So these anti-inflammatory components come from extra virgin olive oil, oily fish, nuts and seeds, whole fruit and vegetables.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
So as long as the base of the diet is really composed of those foods and you eliminate the sugars and too much of the refined carbs, that means not too much bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, for example, then you are basically following the best possible diet when it comes to heart disease.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I call it a low-carb Mediterranean diet is the way to describe it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
No, Megan, actually, that's a great part of the, there's a lot of hope here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
The, you know, there's evidence that, good evidence that shows, and I've seen this with my patients, that you can actually start to reverse the risk factors for heart disease and many other, insulin resistance, by the way, isn't just about heart disease, Megan, it's probably after smoking the most important risk for cancer as well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And certainly linked to Alzheimer's as a, you know, as a prominent risk factor. So if you sort the insulin resistance out, you're probably going to solve a lot of the chronic disease problems in the whole of America. And this is the good news. Within three weeks, there's 21 days, 28 days, you can actually start to reverse those risk factors.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I've had patients that sent their type 2 diabetes that they've had for 15 years into remission just by cutting out the carbs.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Listen, it takes more to reverse disease than it does to prevent it. So it depends from patient to patient. But unless you try it, you won't see. But there'll definitely be an improvement. Now, to what degree, we don't know until you try doing this. But certainly with my patients, I say, listen, do this for three to six weeks. Certainly, I think the maximum improvement you will see in terms of
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
blood markers, you know, linked to high blood pressure or type two diabetes, for example, will happen, you know, about three months, but it can it can go on for longer than that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Well, I've actually written three books myself. And the first book I wrote has a lot of recipes and it's called The P.O.P. Diet, P-I-O-P-P-I, which is based upon the original village, which was behind the Mediterranean diet. But my more recent book, which probably is more up to date and more concise and relevant to our conversation today, is called A Statin-Free Life.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And in that book, there are recipes and a diet plan and everything else. And it explains the whole cholesterol issue and heart disease reversing as well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
BMJ.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah, absolutely, Megan. So medical knowledge is under commercial control, but most doctors don't know that. And just to give you how bad the situation is, 20 to 50% of all healthcare activity in the United States, and you spend almost more than $4 trillion in healthcare, actually brings no benefit to the patient is wasteful or harmful.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And the reason for this is that most doctors and policymakers are unaware of the poor quality research that drives overuse in terms of overmedicated people, underuse of simpler, safer lifestyle options, avoidable adverse events, waste, and missed opportunities to give the right patient the right treatment at the right time. So that's really the major issue here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And the way to overcome this or to solve this problem is to make sure that drug trials are independently evaluated or take things further. I mean, if you look at the history of the drug industry over the last few decades, most drugs they produce are copies of old ones.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
They take an old generic drug, they change the molecules here and there, they patent it, make lots of money, which is, of course, a huge waste. The American taxpayer, American public are paying lots of money for something that could be a lot cheaper with an old generic drug.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And then, of course, there's the harm issue, because what they do is the results of their trials that they design, they control, they analyze, they publish in medical journals, who, by the way, take a lot of money from industry as well, which comes out in the film, will grossly exaggerate the safety and benefits of those drugs. So no informed consent is truly happening.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if a doctor is making clinical decisions on corrupted and biased information making. At best, it's going to lead to suboptimal outcomes for patients, and at worst, it's going to do harm. And even pre-pandemic, the third most common cause of death, and this is still, when I talk about this at lectures, people gasp, even doctors.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
The third most common cause of death globally after heart disease and cancer is prescribed medications, according to one, you know, analysis. So it's really a massive problem. It's a major public health issue. And what the main focus, and of course, you know, part of this Maha movement and what Robert Kennedy Jr.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
and like, so Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary want to do is one of the most important things is to get the American population, you know, reducing the medications they're taking and then trying to empower them and create environments so they can flourish from a health perspective through lifestyle.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
What I would say first and foremost is that when it comes to medical journal articles, you know, remember, there's industry sponsored trials. So if it comes from the drug industry, just don't believe any of it. And that is my view. That's the view of Catherine De Angelis, one of the earliest editors of JAMA.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
With Ozempic, one of the issues with Ozempic is it basically stops you, it controls, you know, it reduces appetite massively. But the issue with the Zempik, which is a great concern, is that when you lose weight, you want to lose body fat. You don't lose muscle. And you basically end up losing 50% muscle, 50% body fat.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
There are all these other side effects that, again, are underreported in the trials that we're now seeing in the real world, including stomach paralysis, nausea, vomiting. I think it probably has a role, Megan, in a very, very small minority of people who have tried everything and are morbidly obese and are really struggling. But I think 99% of people who are taking Ozempic shouldn't be on it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I think it's going to do more harm than good. I think it has to be through a lifestyle change.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Well, it's just basically, this means that the stomach stops working. The peristalsis, usually what passes food through our body basically just becomes, just stops essentially, and then probably hardens up. Yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think, well, those people get admitted to the hospital and probably get put on drips and everything else and, you know, they wait till things start to improve. So, you know, it won't necessarily kill you, but it's not very good. It's not ideal.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah, it's extraordinary. I think, you know, what this highlights again, Megan, and, you know, when we had a screening in London, the Alessa Square Odeon, there were a lot of doctors that came and they were absolutely shocked with what they heard.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Because Fiona Godley, the former editor of the BMJ, who's been a giant medical publishing, she basically says, you know, that medical journals are essentially businesses.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Now, as a doctor that, you know, has been conventionally trained, you know, we were taught that if it's published in the medical journal, the Lancet or, you know, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, Megan, that it was like gospel truth, gospel scientific truth.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And nothing could be further from the truth, partly because there's a lack of acknowledgement and realization that one medicine isn't an exact science and it's an applied science, which means it's constantly evolving, but it also means it can be manipulated. And the other side of it is, of course, the medical journals.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And again, most doctors don't know this are reliant on funding from Big Pharma, and often can get millions of dollars for publishing one article on a particular drug. And the way that works is the drug companies will, you know, you know, do a drug trial, publish it in a medical journal,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And then it's not just about advertising, they pay the medical journal for reprints of the article that then gets used as marketing material where they can take it to doctors or give it to them at conferences. And one of the most, I think, horrific examples of how this happens or how this works in terms of that whole system was what happened with Vioxx.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
You know, John Abramson talks about this in the film from Harvard. And this was a blockbuster drug in the late 90s that was initially marketed under being better than ibuprofen as an anti-inflammatory drug because it gave less stomach side effects. The drug company was Merck. The original trials were published in New England Medicine.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And ultimately, it was found that Merck had withheld data showing, even from the beginning, that it increased the risk of cardiovascular events, heart attack, stroke, death, by at least two to fourfold. and ultimately probably killed at least 60,000 Americans. Merck refined almost a billion dollars in 2011.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
But when John Abramson was involved in the litigation process, what he found was that, you know, not only did Merck obviously know about this through internal emails, their chief scientist basically saying, it's unfortunate that these cardiovascular effects are there, but the drug will do well and we will do well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
But when the FDA wrote to Merck to say, and they realized there was a problem, these heart attacks, for example, and said, you need to put a black box warning on the packaging of Vioxx. What did Merck do? They doubled down on their marketing. And they gave, you know, they paid the New England Journal of Medicine
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
know hundreds of thousands of dollars more to get more of those reprints so they could market it to doctors it's just absolutely shocking now horrifying what's the diagnosis here though you see i'm a root cause analysis person i don't want to say this to be inflammatory megan it's actually accurate you know in the book the corporation and the documentary from well over 20 years ago there's a new one called the new corporation um made by law professor joel buchan
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
The preeminent expert in forensic psychology behind psychopathy, Robert Hare, actually diagnoses the corporation as an entity, not individuals, but the entity, the corporation as being psychopathic in its pursuit for profit. So callous and concerned for the safety of others, incapacity to experience guilt, repeat applying, conning others for profit.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And that hasn't changed and that hasn't been challenged or rebutted. So this is the big problem we have is that we've created, we almost as a society in a way, we've allowed the creation of these big corporations to almost through legal means be psychopathic in the way they make money and the rest of society suffers. So until we sort that out at the root, this problem is only going to continue.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And what they also do in the way that they exist. Yeah.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Purdue Pharma.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
It's a massive spaceship for the listening audience from Independence Day.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah, 100%, Megan. I mean, I've known Robert Kennedy Jr. for a few years. We've spoken at events together. We've spoken a lot with each other. I'm very, very impressed with him in terms of his deep knowledge of the issues, his integrity, his ability to communicate. He is very unique, and he is absolutely the right person, in my view, to be leading HHS to sort these problems out.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yes, it's a really good question, Megan. Hard one to answer. That's why we need to transform the system. But I think at least what they should do is keep an open mind. And I think what's been really powerful in the last few years has been the growth of the alternative media so we can have these conversations. People are realizing that there's a discrepancy between
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
you know, what they're being told, like safe and effective, you know, on the COVID vaccines, for example, CNN, the BBC, Marty Macri said publicly that one of the biggest purveyors of misinformation during the pandemic was the US government. But really, they, in my view, they are just puppets of these big corporations.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
So I think, you know, people just have to just think outside the box a little bit, look at alternative media, make up their own mind. But Ideally, in the long term, Megan, we need to restore trust in these institutions because society can't function cohesively unless you have a strong government that's ethical and medical institutions that are ethical.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And, you know, there will be a bit of disruption going on before we get to that stage. But, you know, we're in this mess with health care because we've allowed these corporate psychopathic entities to have so much power that they become tyrannical. And, you know, and that level of tyranny is so strong is that the way they exert their powers, even, you know, people like RFK Jr.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
or myself or others who have been speaking out, you know, they will dedicate resources and even use the media to smear us because that's how they, you know, keep their keep spreading their misinformation to people. So it's going to take time.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I mean, one of the I tell you, just, you know, if there's one website people can go to, which is an independently, you know, an independent of commercial influence website done by very rigorous scientists who want to, you know, people to be fully informed about drugs. It's called the NNT.com website. So the NNT, yes, numbers needed to treat, nnt.com. And actually, there's a really good website.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And a lot of their, whatever's published on the website actually is published in one of the American family physician journals. And what they do is they break down the data. For example, statins, they will say, if you've had a heart attack, your benefits say one in 40 over five years.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
preventing another heart attack etc and they give a traffic light system about whether overall the drug is beneficial or overall the drug is harmful it talks about things like heart stents which again are massively overused in the united states and other parts of the world that's what i trained in doing so that's quite a useful resource for people for sure they're not sure about the drug they're taking and it goes through many many medications as well and looking at all the evidence combined
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Yeah, Megan. So, you know, I've thought about this in a lot of depth because, you know, I'm somebody that's been a very outspoken advocate of evidence-based medicine. I mean, I've published extensively. I've worked in advisory government roles over the years. And everything I usually advocate for comes through medical journal articles that I've published that have been peer reviewed.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Usually nothing to do with the drug industry in terms of those articles. They're usually analysis, independent analyses. And just to give people, you know, people can get confused here, but essentially when you look at the evidence right now in terms of the COVID vaccine, specifically I, you know, emphasize and look to mRNA vaccines, so Pfizer, Moderna. People know that the serious harm is there.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
The question is, how frequent is it? And the data comes from what we call randomized controlled trial, reanalysis of Pfizer and Moderna's trials, pharmacovigilance data, what people are reporting on the yellow card system, autopsy data we know now, certainly more than 70% of people that died within a couple of weeks of having the vaccine or were certainly caused by the vaccine, that's been proven.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
You've got observational data and, of course, my own clinical experience. So the serious adverse event rate on the best evidence we have, and this has not been rebutted, to be honest, in any, you know, serious platform, Megan, comes from reanalysis of Pfizer and Moderna's trials by independent scientists. Joseph Freeman is a lead scientist who works very closely with Jay Bhattacharya, by the way.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
You've got Peter Doshi, associate editor of the BMJ. And what they found was that the serious adverse event rate was at least one in 800 at two months. And that means disability, life-changing rate, hospitalization.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And from the original trials that got approved around the world, Megan, you're more likely to suffer serious harm from the vaccine than you were to be hospitalized with COVID, which suggests from the beginning it was going to do more harm than good.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
But actually, where we are now, and this is, I think the UK government's probably the only government in the world that's published this, been transparent in publishing this information.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And I think they're publishing it, although it's not been well publicised, but I'm going to publicise it for you now, because there are a lot of good scientists and good people out there whose conscience would not be clear unless they got that information out in some way, shape or form. If you're in the highest risk group in 2024 of COVID, which is basically people over 90, Megan,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
you have to vaccinate 7,000 people over 90 to prevent one of them being hospitalized with severe COVID versus a serious adverse event rate, harm rate of at least 1 in 800, because it's only at two months that they found that figure. And we know there are long-term effects.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
So that suggests that right now, it's at least eight times more harmful to have the COVID vaccine in the highest risk group than to have benefit. I mean, this is absolutely extraordinary. So the question is, why is that not getting fully acknowledged? I honestly genuinely believe most people are well-intentioned.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Of course, we're talking about all these commercial determinants of health that began for a long time that captured institutions. But the main barrier to the truth, Megan, and I see a lot of very bright scientists out there, people who have a track record of doing things for the genuine good who completely have a blind spot on this issue, it's psychological.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And the two psychological barriers I've written about are ones of fear and willful blindness. So fear essentially, which happened, you know, from the early on in the pandemic, we had this exaggerated risk of COVID, but also there's probably fear of maybe stepping outside the echo chamber that they're in as well. Fear inhibits your ability to engage in critical thinking.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
But I think the more important psychological barrier that a lot of people can relate to is something called willful blindness. And that's when human beings, and we're all vulnerable to this all the time in some ways, right? It's when human beings turn a blind eye to the truth in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety, or to protect pristine and fragile egos.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Now, in personal lives, this can happen, for example, when a spouse turns a blind eye to the affair of their partner. But institutional examples of willful blindness historically, Megan, that you will know about are situations like, for example, Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein or the Catholic Church and child molestation. These are examples of institutional willful blindness.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I think we're seeing exactly the same thing here because it's faced between the choice of accepting an uncomfortable truth Um, most people will, you know, choose to bury their heads in the sand, but the reality is we have to face it head on because it's not going away. And it's not that everyone's been vaccinated now and it's done.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Unfortunately, there is good evidence emerging suggesting that, and I've seen this as well, that, um, it can certainly accelerate heart disease, which means many people who had the vaccine even two or three years ago are suddenly going to prematurely have heart attacks or sudden cardiac death. And we're still seeing that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
We've got one of the world's top oncologists in this area who's also been involved in vaccine development called Professor Angus Dalglish in London. And we've got Robert Clancy, one of the world's eminent immunologists, 83 years old now, Emirates Professor of Immunology, top immunologist of Australia, used to work, by the way, many years ago with Anthony Fauci.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
They're both massively concerned with this COVID mRNA vaccine increasing cancer through several mechanisms of immunosuppression. So it's unfortunately not something that's going away.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
Listen, I'm in the same boat. Again, I've had two doses. I've had some issues as well. The first and foremost, the best thing people could do here during this is absolutely optimize their metabolic health. So really optimize your lifestyle as much as you can, because this is a chronic inflammatory problem with the vaccine.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And if you can, you can probably mitigate it to a large degree through that process. and really everything you can do to make sure your immune system's enhanced, whether that's taking high doses of vitamin C, you know, concentrating on your stress levels, eating real food, all these things are really important. But again, we need an acknowledgement by the establishment.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
And to be honest, I'm hopeful, Megan, because I think the new administration that comes in are going to want to tackle this head on. So we're not that far off that.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Mysterious "Drones" Spread, Media Malpractice, and How Medical Journals Became Captured, with Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Aseem Malhotra | Ep. 964
I'd be delighted, Megan. Hopefully next time actually in studio as well so I can actually meet you properly.