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Dr Anthony Jay On The Importance Of Biochemistry In Health · Common Sense Health

• Stephen with Anthony: Hi there and welcome to another interview. Today I've got the fabulous Doctor Anthony J with me and I'm really looking forward to this. So Anthony, if you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself for people watching. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah, sure. So I went to Boston University Medical School, ended up getting a PhD in biochemistry. thought about going through and doing the whole medical practice thing, but my dad's a doctor, my brother's a medical doctor, but ended up just doing research. And I did five years of heart disease research, three years of Alzheimer's research. three years of stem cell research, a lot of diverse interests and a lot of diverse background, but yeah, the heart disease is my main focus, especially right now because I just published a book on heart disease. Stephen with Anthony: Okay, well let's get to the nub then because it's the question I get asked most in the carnivore space and also in the keto and low carb space. So but I'm gonna frame it a little bit different. I mean, we know we're gonna be talking about LDL, which isn't even cholesterol in the first place. We're talking about the particle, but do you think that we've now lowered the definition of high in inverted commas cholesterol to the point where healthy people are now being labelled as patients? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: for sure. they've manipulated the the narrative on this so many times. In nineteen eighty seven, statins were first invented. And in nineteen eighty-eight, they literally lowered the definition of high cholesterol. It used to be above 300, they dropped it to 240, and then they dropped it to 200. And actually they're still dropping it to this day, but now they switched to LDL. So they used to just focus on total cholesterol. But then they sh shifted over to focusing just on dropping LDL because they've gotten the total so low on these normal ranges. And by the way, the American Heart Association was involved in that process in 1988. And they get 70 million dollars per year from big pharma and medical device companies. So they're not they're they're definitely biased. They literally sent me an email last week complaining about me complaining about them. So I'm gonna really complain about them now because If they're going to try and shut me down, I want more people to know about this. they did a 12 year study on the American Heart Association and found they averaged $64.1 million per year from biotech and pharma companies. Obviously, you're gonna have bias if you do that. And again, why am I bringing up the AHA, the American Heart Association? Because they were involved in that lowering process and lowering the range for total cholesterol. And they've not only lowered the range for total cholesterol for the general general population, Stephen, they've lowered it for hypercholesteremia. So they used to define familial hypercholestrolemia. That's a genetic condition where you where you have extremely high cholesterol. Brown and Goldstein won Nobel Prizes for that condition for understanding and you know, scientifically studying and elucidating the mechanism for hypercholestrolemia in the 1970s. In their own research papers, they defined it as 740 milligrams per deciliter, which is 19 millimoles per liter. That's how they defined hypercholesterlemia. Today, the it just dropped and dropped and dropped. And again, it's shifted to LDL. So it's a little more complicated. So they're not looking at total cholesterol anymore, but they've dropped the definition and they've included it used to be one gene, and then it became like thousands of different SNPs along that gene and now it's like six thousand different genetic variants can technically be defined as familial hyperclosedomy. So they've broadened the net. Why? Because they want to prescribe more people drugs. Stephen with Anthony: That's I mean that's another my question. It just seems to be more and more healthy people are labelled as unhealthy, which is which is frightening. And like you say, it seems to be driven by money and profit. so this is a little bit of a nuanced question 'cause we talk about this broadly. So what's their justification? What is their medical justification for lowering the the limits? How do they get away with it basically? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah, well a lot of it's propaganda, unfortunately. They just convince the whole medical community that LDL is bad. The lower that you can get it, the better. I was watching a video yesterday from Dr. Mohammed Alo and my gosh, he was just saying LDL is the worst thing ever, the lower the better. You know, it was really funny to hear. He's basically saying And he I think he does a good job representing what mainstream medical preaches and what they believe. So I watch his stuff sometimes. it's a nightmare, it's a disaster, but it's interesting from an academic perspective. He re he literally believes LDL is bad. He says that it's just straight up, which is insane because your body makes LDL. It's necessary for life. You die without it. So it's insane to say that's bad. But he thinks that it's like cannonballs. just bouncing off your artery walls. That's how he describes it. And that's literally how they teach it in medical school. and that's kind of absurd, you know, sugar is a much if you're gonna think of cannonballs damaging your arteries, I think sugar would be a much more a better analogy, you know, because you have a glycocalyx. We all have this sugar lining. We literally have sugar coating our arteries. It's called glycocalyx and most people are Getting are they becoming familiar with that word finally? But if you have sugar, sugar sticks to sugar. Just like water, if you pour water in more water, it mixes. Sugar mixes with sugar. Fats don't mix with water. Lipoproteins like LDL, they they they're they don't stick to that sugar lining hardly at all. I mean, it's it's so ridiculous to to think that it's you know, like like cannonballs or something. That analogy is so bad. But that's how they're trained. It's just the training throughout the medical system that teaches these doctors that, LDL is bad. And they don't think about it much beyond that. And they think, you know, again, like the statin studies, it's it's kind of a disaster. You know, like there's so many statin studies that they do where they lower people's cholesterol and there's no difference. But they don't like to point that out. They like to find they like to cherry pick a couple of the statin studies where they they show a relative difference. So this is very important for people. And I know a lot of your audience know this already, but when you're looking at scientific studies, there's a huge difference between relative difference and absolute difference. They did this with the COVID vaccine. They're doing it with the they've been doing it with the statin studies and all the cholesterol studies. Whenever they want to sell drugs, they they go to the relative difference. So for example, if you've got like a million people in a study, or let's say two million people. So you have two groups. You have one million person in one group and one million people in the other group. And you get two deaths, two people die in one of the groups, and one person dies in the other group, right? That's a hundred percent difference, like a massive difference. But if you actually do the math on the absolute difference, not the relative difference, but the absolute difference, it's 0.00001% difference between those two groups. It's basically meaningless, right? But the drug companies aren't gonna tell you that. They're gonna say, look at this. It's a 30. They like to argue that statins. Decrease heart disease 34%. And that's only one study, and it's a absolute, it's a relative difference, not an absolute difference. And there's a whole bunch of other studies that show the opposite. Sometimes statins are worse for heart disease. Sometimes they don't do anything, and sometimes they're a little bit better. Because yeah, every population study is going to have a million different variables, right? Those are super messy studies, these human studies where people are smoking, some people are binge drinking, some people are getting poor sleep. Some people are eating tons of trans fats, especially back in the day. you get high iron, which is influencing your LDL cholesterol. You get dehydration, which influences your LDL cholesterol. So you can have all kinds of variables and confounding factors and you can pretty much get whatever you want with these population studies. If you do enough of them, you're gonna get the results you're looking for. Stephen with Anthony: Yeah, and I think just talking on the studies, what surprises me is there's plenty of studies that also show higher LDL leads to longer mortality, like the Korean study. I think it's twelve point eight million people, Norwegian, the BMJ twenty sixteen. I think just bringing it back to basics, and it's one of the one of the things I like to do because I I see a lot of people and get a lot of success stories, the thing that gets me is the most common thing I hear is Well, I don't understand. I've just been to my doctors. My body composition is better. I've lowered my blood pressure and I'm off my meds and I'm off my diabetic meds and it's the best I've ever felt. And my triglycerides are low and everything's pointing to me being better. I look better. All my friends are saying I look healthier. but my doctor's just nearly had a heart attack himself because of my LDL. And to me, the common sense has been thrown out of the window as well. Surely, if you keep seeing this, you think, Well, is it actually a villain. I mean, w what do you say to people that have got this pushback from say their doctor or nurse or you know, professional, healthcare professional? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah. Well, first of all, plaque in the arteries is made up of fats, including LDL. So this is one of the reasons it gets blamed is people look at it. They do autopsies. I used to do autopsies. I used to go to the morgue every Thursday and remove plaque out of people's arteries. And look at that. There's fats in there. look at that. There's cholesterol in there. cholesterol must therefore be bad. It goes back to that firefighter analogy, meaning like if there's firefighters, are they causing the fire? No, of course not, but they're always there. at the scene of the fire. And LDL is always there when you have plaques. that doesn't mean it's bad, right? But but and I I s I got sidetracked thinking about this firefighter analogy, completely forgot the question tri trajectory. Stephen with Anthony: Which is which is w what you know, it when you have ten markers and nine of them improve, why would this Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: mm-hmm. Stephen with Anthony: one thing say well there's something r up here when the clinical presentation of the person doesn't show that either? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah, exactly. Sorry about that. Well, I was gonna say, I want cholesterol to be high. I actually like it when people's LDL is high in certain contexts, and I want to talk about that context. So let's imagine, and again, this is true, that plaque in the arteries is made up of fats. It's made up of lipids. In our metabolism, we burn two energy sources predominantly. It's either sugar or fats. Now, if you're gonna burn plaque out of the arteries. You want to be burning fats. If you're gonna burn fats, you gotta burn fats, right? It's kind of common sense, but people don't think of it on like super basic level like this because they get cholesterol gets so heavily demonized. So if LDL is high because you're smoking, that doesn't mean LDL is bad, it means smoking is bad. If LDL is high because you're binge drinking or getting poor sleep, that doesn't mean LDL is bad. It means you're binge drinking and you're getting poor sleep. There's again, there's a lot of lifestyle factors that can be bad. That are bad that raise LDL. If your LDL is high because you're burning fats for energy, LDL is amazing. That's good news. Why is it high? Because you're burning fats? Because LDL is a fat transporter. That's the main function of LDL. It moves fats through your bloodstream. It's a taxi for fats. and again, doctors aren't even trained to know this. A lot of them don't know what the basic function of LDL is in your body, they just think it's bad, they think it just repairs damage to the arteries. That's not what it's for. LDL's main function is fat transport. It's not repair. It can do some repair, but that's not the main function of it. And so the real focus for heart disease for people should be don't damage your arteries. Stop damaging them. Then you don't have to repair anything. It doesn't matter if cholesterol is there or not super high or super low. It doesn't matter if you don't damage your arteries. And that includes LP little A, which we can talk about. Doesn't matter if that's super high or super low. If you're not damaging your arteries, you're not damaging your arteries. There's no need to prep anything. so number one, don't damage your arteries. But number two, if you do have plaque in your arteries, ironically, the only way to get it out is to have high fat burning capacity, high LDL, and reverse that insulin resistance that caused the plaque, because insulin resistance is the biggest trigger for plaque in the arteries. Stephen with Anthony: Yeah, and you see the word artery keeps coming up. Now this is one of the things that frustrates me as well. Cholesterol is a molecule which is the same in HDL and LDL and IDL and V LDL. And we only have problems in the arteries. If these little cannonballs were so dangerous, why are they not damaging the veins? Why is it only the arteries? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah, well, blood pressure is a component. I mean, what they did a study with 28,000 people, and it was one of the keystone studies for my book. and it it basically was looking at what's the highest risk of actual heart attacks, not high cholesterol. A lot of these studies have shifted from looking at heart attacks to just looking at people's cholesterol, and it's total nonsense. Like they'll say, what's the best diet? And then they'll just look at cholesterol, and whatever diet lowers cholesterol, they just like all the Mediterranean diet lowers cholesterol. Ansel Keys was the one that came up with the the Mediterranean diet. He he coined that term. He made it famous in the 1970s. The CDC popularized it. They literally wrote a piece about Ancel Keys being the best thing since sliced bread. And they they talked about the Mediterranean diet. The CDC, the American Center for Disease Control, promoted Ansel Keys' book, all this nonsense. But the point is, why did they do that? Because the Mediterranean diet lowers LDL. So therefore it must be good, right? That's kind of how this whole process of has worked. They're not even looking at heart disease. But there is a study, 28,000 people they looked at heart disease. What do they find? The biggest risk, the number one risk is insulin resistance. It was a six point four fold higher risk. They call it a hazard ratio. The second highest risk was blood pressure, it was hypertension. It was only a 2.3 fold higher risk, but it was on the list. It was pretty high. I mean Huge gap between insulin resistance at 6.4 to hypertension, but hypertension was the second highest. The third highest was triglycerides. And by the way, triglycerides track very strongly with insulin resistance. And by the way, LDL was the absolute lowest on the risk. It was the lowest risk factor. It was 1.38 hazard ratio, which is tiny when you're looking at these studies. Now you could argue, my gosh, that's a 38% difference. Yeah, but not compared to a six hundred and forty percent difference, which is insulin resistance, right? And that's what they do is they pick out that one marker, LDL, and they say, look, it's a thirty-four percent difference. Yeah, that's very minor when you're looking at a population study with tons of diversity in the human pop in in our diets and our exercise and our stress and all those other things. Stephen with Anthony: Mm. And I think you snuck in there about LP a little A. I will return to that. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Is this? Stephen with Anthony: but I just want to go down the route of the other things you mentioned earlier, which of course is statins. So Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Mm-hmm. Stephen with Anthony: yeah, very profitable. And I think they also seem to ignore the downsides, for instance, the increase in diabetes risk. I just wondered if you could s speak to that as well, because I think we've nailed the fact that high LDL is possibly looking at the wrong culprit. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Mm-hmm. Stephen with Anthony: But if we stick with there f w they think it's right, so therefore their solution is statins. what do you think of that standard of care and that solution? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah, it's it's surprisingly bad. I mean, statins aren't even good. They're they're straight up bad. it's just the narrative has been so overwhelming and so powerful and coming from so many medical doctors. Why? Because they train them all the same. They go to med school, they get a stamp of approval if they say the right things, and so they all are trained to say the right things. What's the right thing? Promote big pharma. These doctors are basically becoming big pharma salesmen. They're They don't care about your iron. They don't care about your ferritin most of the time, unless there's some extreme problem with your thyroid. They don't care. Why? Because there's no drugs for your iron. There's no drugs for your ferritin. There's no drugs for your thyroid. If there's no drugs, you'd be surprised how little they care about things. but if there are drugs, you'd be surprised how the opposite is true and how they obsess over things. they're trained as big pharma salesmen, whether they know it or not. And a lot of them are recognizing it now, and most importantly, A lot of you are recognizing a lot of the a lot of the public is starting to be aware of this. And it's it's interesting to watch and it's a super good thing because, you know, again, you can't just have a bunch of bad habits and take take statins and assume that's gonna somehow fix all the bad habits that you have. You you can't. You have to fix the the bad diet, you have to fix the bad lifestyle, and the bad sleep, which again, lifestyle, right? And the again, like with the diabetes example, you know, you talked before about veins versus or you know blood vessels versus arteries or veins they all get damaged with diabetes i mean you see glaucoma you see eye damage you see t fingertips and toes you see amputations of legs and feet you see all kinds of damage with that and of course you see plaque in the arteries too but but yeah the statins I just did a YouTube video people should watch it it's real interesting on statins increasing Hard plaque in the arteries, CAC. And of course, they increase diabetes. Like you said, they increase diabetes 46% over 5.9 years. 46% increase in diabetes. That's insane. Why does it do that? It's because if you're shutting off your LDL, which statins do, they shut off your cholesterol, you can't transport fats as efficiently, and you have to burn sugar. You get more addicted to burning sugar in your metabolism. That's a bad thing. That's again, there's no justification for that. I know these drugs have made over a trillion dollars historically. They make about 20 billion per year in revenue for these pharma companies. Statins make 20 billion per year. so again, you're not gonna hear a lot of negativity coming from CNN and all these news organizations that are sponsored by big pharma companies. But I'm telling you, at the grassroots level, people that actually study this independently. They recognize right away this is a disaster. These things aren't good for you. Again, they're increasing diabetes. They're transforming your metabolic preference from burning fats to burning sugar. Sugar burning is not a healthy metabolism. At the very least, you want metabolic flexibility, right? You want to be able to burn some sugar for sure. There's no problem. But you got to be able to burn fats. You cannot just constantly be burning sugar. You will develop insulin resistance. You will develop plaque in your arteries from that. And the other thing about statins is they'd increase hard plaque. And it's bad. It's not like a little bit. It's it's about 10% per year. They increase your hard plaque. I mean, there's studies, there's long-term studies. One of them is called severe coronary artery artery calcification with statin users. Something like that. I know the word severe is in the title of the study. And it was like a 10-year study. And I think it was like 350% increase in hard plaque over 10 years. It was a disaster. And even The big pharma companies and the the conventional doctors and cardiologists, they know this. So what they've done, Steven, and I'm sure you're aware of this, they've tried to basically change the narrative to say hard plaque is good for you, which is completely silly and absurd. And we've known since forever that hard plaque is terrible for you. I have a study. I could probably pull it up and screen share it, but I have a study from 2016 Matthew Boudoff was the medical doctor leading the study. It's called coronary artery calcification report from a multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis. I'll show you the graph here. hopefully there we go. This is, by the way, this isn't just high cholesterol versus low cholesterol, again, which is kind of a meaningless metric. This is major coronary events, right? And I know your screen is probably a little small, but people watching this later will be able to see this. Heart attacks and death from coronary artery disease. This isn't minor events, right? And you can see figure A here, they're looking at major coronary events. If you have a zero on your CAC score, virtually Stephen with Anthony: Mm-hmm. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: no risk of major events, super low risk. And this is years. This is a five-year study. You see, it goes out to five years. Now, if you have a one to 100 on your CAC, probably more people are closer to 100 here, but you can see how there's a lot more heart attacks, right? Major coronary events. And if you get in the hundred to three hundred range, once again, very dose dependent, a lot more heart attacks. You get up above 300, a lot more heart attacks. You see that? So, in other words, Stephen with Anthony: Mm. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: right? this is hard plaque, they're just doing a CAC, they're not measuring soft plaque here, and it's very dose responsive. Now, the problem with a CAC is there's a certain amount of noise within the machine. So if sometimes people get like a five or a 10 or a 20, it's not a big deal because that's effectively a zero. Sometimes Doctors use these CAC scores to try and scare people into taking drugs, which is also something people have to be aware of. So for Stephen with Anthony: Yeah. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: example, I just talked to somebody yesterday who had a CAC score of seven. Cause I do these genetic consults. So I see a lot of blood work. I see a lot of this. Seven. That's basically a zero, right? But and by the way, because then no them there, like if you did a CAC on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you might get a seven, you might get a five, you might get a zero, you might get a ten. Every day is gonna be a little different. That's because there's a little bit of noise in the machine. No big deal. But this happens all the time. You'd be shocked by how much this happens. You probably know already, but the doctors Stephen with Anthony: Yeah. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: try and scare people into thinking that's bad. So they take statins. So they say, my gosh, you got plaque in your arteries. We got to get you on some stats. Well, that's basically a zero. Like, and by the way, the CAC, it's on a scale from zero to five thousand approximately. It's basically a massive scale. And why do they put it on this huge scale? Because if it was zero to a hundred, you'd get like a 0.05, and people would be like, I'm a 0.05. That's basically nothing. But because it's on a scale from zero to 5,000, it's got this huge range. If you get like a five or a 10 or a 20 or something, you you automatically just intuitively think that means you have 20% blockage in your arteries, right? Stephen with Anthony: Mm. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: And that scares people. So then they're like, well, maybe the statin thing is a really good idea after all, because every cardiologist says that. And yeah, the cardiologists don't read actual scientific studies, just like they never read the COVID vaccine studies. They just don't read the studies, period. so you know, unfortunately, there's like this massive wave of confirmation bias in the cardiology world that you have to overcome mentally. You have to get past that hurdle. And again, the whole system is just set up to just Try and scare people. All these particle numbers and all this stuff. It's all nonsense. I mean, they've manipulated the normal range with particle numbers. So people do these particle number tests, it's the same thing. They get like a 2000 on their LDL particle number. And they're like, my gosh, 2000. That's insane. Well, they changed the units. You know, that instead of using the at least in America, they used the milligrams per deciliter. They changed it to nanomoles. They literally sh like pulled the rug out from under people, or they they just completely pulled the units and changed them. To nanomals. And so instead of getting a 20, you get a 2000 on the particle number test. So it scares people because they think particle numbers suddenly super important. Because of course the LDL thing is complete nonsense. And people are onto this. Like the studies are very clear. There's not not only studies on LDL increasing your lifespan, if it's high, it doesn't just increase your lifespan, like you talked about that Korean study with 12.8 million people. It also decreases high LDL. There's multiple studies, there's two of them that I know of. LDL, higher LDL is associated with less heart disease. Less. The complete opposite. So, in other words, you know, again, yeah, these population studies are messy, but there's indicators that high LDL is good for you. Now, again, it's nuanced because high LDL is bad if it's involved in smoking or binge drinking or bad sleep. LDL is good if it's involved in a keto high fat diet. That's the difference. Stephen with Anthony: Mm. Yeah, because it's about fat transport and it makes total sense. And that's the that's the thing that's lacking is the sense. Dave Feldman did an interview and he summed it up to me. He said, Why why would the liver make something that ruins the heart? Why would it do that? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah. Stephen with Anthony: Doesn't make any sense. you did talk about LP little A, because again that's another nuclear on the block, exactly like you say, the Apo B particle numbers. It's it's just basically the same thing, rehashed, I think. What's your views on LP Little A? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah, it's exactly the same thing rehashed. The reason they're shifting the focus to LP little a is because they have a bunch of new drugs that are almost approved. And they're doing the whole LDL playbook with LP little A. Now, a lot of people don't realize this. It's not that complicated. LP little A is literally LDL. It's the same thing except for a little tail piece that sticks out of it. But other than that, it's exactly the same as LDL. It has an APOB, just like LDL. And by the way, oftentimes these studies, when they're measuring APO B, they're literally just measuring your LDL and your LP little A, right? That's a combination of those two things. So when they're complaining about your APO B, they're just complaining about your LP little A and your LDL because that's what they're measuring. And so if you if you're kind of paying attention and you recognize the whole LDL thing is nonsense, why bother checking your APO B? It's a complete nonsense blood test because It's better just to check your LDL and your LP little A. Right. And yeah, you can get some sense of how many particles and this and that, but you can do separate tests for that. And by the way, a lot of these normal people at home, you don't need to be checking all these particles and all these little tiny nuances with cholesterol. Leave that for professional researchers. Most of that stuff is just corruption and bias. And they've manipulated the normal ranges on almost all of those blood tests to try and scare people. So you get red ink, red ink, red ink. You get flag, flag, flag on your blood test. So they People look at it and they go, my gosh, I got tons of flags on my blood test. Therefore, maybe I do need drugs. That's why they do it. It's not because they're so interested in your particle numbers and your particle sizes and your fluffies and your whatever. So all that, all that nonsense is just a mini manipulating narratives. And but the LP little A. So LP little A has has a function. Just like LDL has a function. It's not bad for you, it's good for you. LP little A is a fat transporter, just like LDL, of course, because it has fats. But also that little tail on it is a street sweeper. It's literally a it binds to oxidized byproducts. So if you have a lot of oxidized crap in your blood, it helps to sweep that crap out. It connects to it, it binds to it, helps to flush it out through your liver. It's good. It's good for you. Your body makes it on purpose. It's not an accident. Now, some people have a genetically higher baseline than other people. But that doesn't really matter because again, it doesn't damage your arteries if you don't have a bunch of excess oxidation and a bunch of damage to the artery walls to begin with. That's super important. I was watching a masterclass with with one of these professional lipidologists that Peter Atiya is a huge fan of and all this nonsense. And his name is Thomas Dayspring. I'm sure a lot of people have heard of him. Literally on his masterclass, people can look this up. I'm paraphrasing a little bit because I'm not 100% sure on the exact quote, but I'm pretty close and I might be 100% on this. He says, this is the first line on his LP little A masterclass with Simon Hill. He says, LPA, LP little A is a genetic disorder. That's how he defines LP little A. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. In other words, that's kind of like skin saying your skin is a genetic disorder. That's like saying your eyeballs are a genetic disorder, right? That's like the dumbest. It's like saying your teeth are a genetic disorder. Something your body is making for a very intentional and very purposeful reason is a genetic, somehow becoming a genetic disorder. That's narrative manipulation. Why are they doing that? Because there's drugs coming out. And by the way, Peter Atia, it pisses me off. He gets almost half of he gets like $400,000 for speaking events. He gets paid. You can Google it. That's what they do did with Hillary Clinton back when she was running for president. These banks and things were giving her like hundreds of thousands of dollars for like a one-hour speaking event. Why do companies do that? Because it's like under the table manipulation, it's narrative manipulation. They they're controlling these people to get them to say whatever they want by just giving them massive sums of money as long as they stay in line, as long as they say the the proper things, because these drug companies make billions, 20 billion dollars per year on statins. It's no big deal for them to throw away four hundred thousand dollars. So if I go and give a talk for like five thousand dollars, people will complain. It's kind of funny. But Peter Atea goes out and gives a talk for $400,000 and nobody in the medical industry says anything, it's just total corruption, right? And so it's it's like a night and day difference, but you get this big online, probably a lot of bots and things complaining about like minor little things. And it's not that often I get paid $5,000 to give a talk because I don't go I don't like to travel that much. So I don't like to give talks that often. But when I do, occasionally people will complain about something like that. And it's so absurd, right? And they don't even realize on the other end of that coin, there's there's this other group of conventional cardiologists that are getting paid insane money to kind of propagate this narrative amongst all the other professionals that already kind of believe it because their training has disposed them to believe that. Stephen with Anthony: Yeah, it's a crazy echo chamber, but it's all about profit, absolutely. so we were talking about plaque there, when we talk about CAC scores. I've been lucky enough to interview a few people who've reversed the numbers. I mean, what do Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Mm-hmm. Stephen with Anthony: you think is the best course of action if people want to meaningfully reverse their plaque score or just slow it down or buck the system and not have it progress as much as other people in the same age group? So what would you do? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Exactly. I've had a bunch of people also that I do consulting for reverse plaque in their arteries. Sometimes dramatically. Sometimes at the point I had one guy, he had like a CAC of six hundred or something and he got it down to zero. His cardiologist yeah, his cardiologist Stephen with Anthony: Wow. Wow. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: thought it was he thought the machine was broken and he had him do another CAC like the next week or something, which you're not really supposed to do because of the radiation, but the Stephen with Anthony: Yeah, y yeah. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: the doctor thought the machine was broken. which is amazing. And a lot of it's just discipline. You know, this guy was super disciplined. He really like he he really followed through. A lot of people say they're gonna eat carnivore, low carb, or whatever the thing is, and it's just hard. It it's eleven o'clock at night, you know, they w they have a couple whiskeys and then they're they break their willpower breaks down and they're eating ice cream. It's like, why do you have the ice cream in your house? If you got it in your house, you're gonna eat it, so get it out of your house. but every time you see plaque reversals, it's because people have gotten on a fat Burning metabolism. They've changed their metabolism from burning sugar to burning fats. It's the only way to do it. I mean, yeah, you got to stop smoking if you're smoking and all these other inflammatory amplifiers. I call them amplifiers. I personally used to think, Stephen, that inflammation was the major cause of artery disease. I've actually changed my mind over the years. I think it's mostly insulin resistance. I think it's mostly your metabolism. And there's amplifiers. So in other words, If you have enough of these amplifiers like smoking or binge drinking or stress, you know, by the way, why is stress so bad? Because it raises cortisol, which causes insulin resistance. So why is smoking bad? Well, smoking also amplifies insulin resistance. So a lot of these things just point back to insulin resistance, but there are oxidizers like homocysteine and things, and there's heart disease from that. So I don't think those are the major cause. I think those are minor causes, and some people have those. But I think The number one cause of plaque in people's arteries is insulin resistance. And I've done a ton of research on that. And I think if you really think about it when you're reading the studies, you'll start to see that picture come up over and over again. And so, how do you get rid of the plaque? You teach your body to burn fats, which at the same time gets rid of the insulin resistance, right? And the reason insulin resistance is so bad, I'll explain it very simply. I like to use this analogy of the starving heart, and meaning your heart is made. To burn fats. This is not true of every cell in your body, but your heart prefers to burn fats. Even Google would admit that. You know, what's funny about your heart is if you put most organs and most most cells in your body, if you put sugar and fats, they'll actually burn the sugar first because sugar is like super fast acting energy. It's kind of like throwing gas on a fire. You're gonna burn the gasoline if you throw gasoline on a fire. You're not gonna, but but fats are preferred by the heart, which again is very unusual. And the when you're a baby, when you're super young, ninety-five percent of the fuel that your heart is burning is fatty acids. It's fats. Your heart prefers it, it burns it. But what happens over the people's lifetimes is they bec they start eating carbs five times a day or even three times a day, where they always have sugar in their system because they're eating carbs constantly. Your body stores sugar, it's called glycogen. And then while they're sleeping, it's releasing sugar. Their body just becomes super addicted to burning sugar all the time. And then, you know, usually as you get a little bit older, because your metabolism slows down with age, and people know this, you can tell. When you're as old as me, you kind of know, like, yeah, my metabolism slowed down when I was like 25 years old. And once again, at like age 40 or whatever, you kind of notice these like little jumps in your metabolism slowing down. but the point is your metabolism slows down and your body becomes more insulin resistant. You know, this is very well studied. There's one study that Ben Azadi likes to talk about. It shows 93% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction. 93%. That's horrible. And I I believe that. I agree with that. But there's another study they did more recently, and they found using conventional metrics, which again are kind of loosey-goosey, but they found over 40% of Americans have insulin resistance, medically defined insulin resistance. So even if you're going with the conventional metrics, it's over 40%. I think it's closer to 90%. But the point is everybody is getting insulin resistant as they age, except for people that are doing like real, real clean carnivore diets, keto, real clean, you know, whatever. But the point is basically everybody's getting insulin resistant. And then your heart starts to starve because it gets addicted to sugar. It's not supposed to burn sugar, it's supposed to burn fats, but people transition their heart into burning fats, excuse me, into burning sugar. They get addicted to it, they're doing it all the time, their heart changes. You can you can look at the studies where they shift, you know, like you can shift the fuel source for your heart. And by the way, humans have two major energy sources. I think I mentioned this earlier, but it's either sugar or fats. Your body usually either burns sugar or it burns fat. I mean, you can burn a little bit of creatine and you can do these other things if you're super insulin resistant. Yeah, creatine helps a little bit because you're so insulin resistant you can't burn sugar anymore. And you're you you've never taught your body how to burn fats. let's throw some creatine on the on the picture. Yeah, that helps some people with really desperate metabolic disorders and Alzheimer's and whatever. But honestly, you don't have to worry about that if you're just eating healthy. And of course, meat has a lot of creatine anyway, so you're all ready set to go with that. But the point is, right? Normally, sugar fats, those are your two energy sources. Your heart becomes addicted to burning sugar and then you get insulin resistant. Now you've got a situation where your heart is literally starving. It Don't know how to burn fats. It takes months to teach your body to burn fats. It doesn't take days. It takes months. And so you've got a starving heart that doesn't know how to burn fats. It's becoming resistant to the sugar that it's been burning for the last 30 years. And then it starts desperately trying to absorb fats, right, in the coronary arteries. And because your heart's got to keep going. And it starts to Plug up the the arteries and you see it in the linings of the arteries and in the actual heart itself. You get fatty hearts, you know, it's actual organ fat all around your heart. and then people blame the fats and they blame the LDL. And it's like it started with the insulin resistant. It started by starving your heart and not knowing how to burn fats. Now here's the good news. You can reverse that. People don't. Because they just listen to the doctor and the doctor tells them to eat whole grains, which is just a bunch of carbs, right? Doctors tell them to eat 10 servings of fruit every day, bunch of sugar. Doctors tell them to eat a bunch of veggies. Photosynthesis is literally about making sugar. That's the whole point of photosynthesis. It's not making fats, it's making sugar. All these plants are just a bunch of carbs. So then people go with the doctor's advice and eat more carbs, and they wonder, like, why does the why can't you reverse placine your arteries? It's never been shown in a study. Well, blah, blah. Well, it's because everybody's insulin resistant and then and the doctors are. Telling people to eat more of that, and then they're shocked that they can't reverse it. And it's like, well, if you gotta re if you want to reverse it, you gotta do the opposite of what most cardiologists tell you, which is literally eat a bunch of fatty meat, get rid of all that carb nonsense, do a bunch of intermittent fasting because fasting really helps it reverse insulin resistance, it helps burn plaque out of your arteries. Sure, there's a couple of supplements that have minor improvements on plaque reversal, like berberine was shown to like reverse plaque 3% or something, but it's minor. Why? Because people aren't changing their diet. They're just taking berberine. And yeah, berberine helps lower your blood sugar, but you know what helps even more? Change your diet. That's way more effective than taking pills. So that's how you Stephen with Anthony: Mm. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: gotta do it, right? That's how people need to think about it. And that's what my book is all about. If you want to reverse plaque, teach your body to burn fats. And there's more, there's more blood work you can do. And I show a ton of the blood work and the optimal ranges in my book because that's a lot of nuance and detail. But because you can track this stuff. You don't have to guess. You don't have to just be like, I hope everything's fine. You can you can do a C A C. I like it when people have measurements and data on this so they can actually track and keep an eye and how how ex how extreme do you want to go? Some people don't need to go that extreme because they don't have any plaque in their arteries and they're 60 years old and it's fine. Like I had a 70-year-old person last week that had zero plaque in their arteries, and it's like like you don't have to do major modifications. Your body's doing great, you know? Stephen with Anthony: Yeah, it's brilliant. so only three questions now. I think a coup th they'd be quite short, but do you have any views on the thrombotic theory of plaque formation, basically the advocates of people like Malcolm Kendrick and Vladimir Sabutin? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah, I think it's part of it. I think again, there's there's amplifiers, there's oxidation, it definitely plays a role. I don't think it's like the major cause of heart disease for most people. I think that's w so first of all, in terms of the thrombotic theory, there are people that have zero plaque in their arteries and they suddenly get a heart attack. That does happen. Plus, there's genetic disorders. And again, I analyze DNA through my consulting company, so I see this all the time. Like factor five, for example, there's a genetic disorder called factor five ligin. people have thicker blood, they have more clotting factors, they do have higher, it's like a fourfold higher risk of heart heart attacks. so it definitely plays a role in the heart attack. But so does narrowing your arteries. So does plaque. If you have a lot more restriction in your arteries and then you get a tiny little clot, you're much more. I mean, that's a heart attack too. Whereas if you have zero plaque in your arteries and tiny little clot, no big deal. You're flushing those out all the time. So it's no big deal. So I think it can be a problem, especially in extreme cases when you have a lot of clotting. And I think that's a much better argument and a much more interesting theory compared to LDL, which is completely nonsense and been debunked a million times if you read the research deep enough and you cut through all the pharmaceutical nonsense and noise. But so I'm I'm interested in that, but I don't think it's the major cause. Again, I think the major cause of Heart disease is the actual plaque physically because that tracks so well with heart disease deaths. It's not so much the clotting with empty arteries, it's the plaque narrowing and narrowing and narrowing. And then maybe the trigger is the clot at the end stage, but it's again, it's a lot better to start out with wide open arteries that are super flexible and super stretchy and not full of calcium. And then e you're gonna if you get little micro clots, no big cause you're not exercising for a week or whatever, no big deal. Like these truck drivers, you know, it's surprising how much. micro clots people are getting just from sitting in all day long and one day, you Stephen with Anthony: Mm. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: know, like sometimes if you're not active just for a single day, you're getting a lot of little micro clots. And no big deal. Your body flushes those out all the time. But if you've got restricted arteries, that's more dangerous. Stephen with Anthony: Brilliant. Okay. yeah, just two to go then. So at the beginning you you mentioned dementia and Alzheimer's. Could you just just speak to those two subjects really? Because I there seems to be I hate this word, an epidemic of of of these mental health issues. I mean, what do you think's driving that and what can we do to to mitigate those problems? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Yeah, it's metabolic once again. I'm working on a book on Alzheimer's also. and my last book took me ten years to do. You know, I wrote the the original book I wrote was Estrogeneration about plastics and microplastics before anybody was talking about that stuff. That was what my book was about ten years ago. And then I finally got this heart disease book. But now that my kids are a little bigger, you know, I have more time to write and I'm not, you know, like I'm not waking up at three in the morning every night dealing with little tiny kids and stuff. So hopefully I can get this book out, you know, next year or sometime very recent because it's a kind of a long story with Alzheimer's. Because, first of all, back when cancer was first being researched, they just lumped it all together. They didn't care if it was breast cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, whatever. It was just called cancer. And that's kind of absurd. Like you have to look individually at the specific tissues because every organ is a little. I mean, we talked about the heart being very unique. It burns fats, right? Different organs are kind of unique. And when you have cancer in different organs, you have to pay attention in different ways and treat them differently. and for the record, I like the antibody treatments when it comes to cancer. I like that like the FDA in America has been approving a lot of these antibody treatments that are very precise. They're very good at picking off cancers without a ton of side effects because they're so much more precise than just nonsense radiation and nonsense chemo. It just kills anything that's fast growing, which is completely absurd. not to mention cancer is metabolic too, right? With the Warburg effect and all this. But but the point is, there's a lot of different types of Alzheimer's. Just like there's a lot of different types of cancer, and nobody's thinking about it that way right now. And we have to. And one of the one of the kind of advan advantages that I have is number one, I talk to like four or five people every day, you know, but they're genetic. So I look at people's DNA. And just with twenty-three in me or ancestry or my heritage or whatever, I'm looking at people's genetics, but those those data sets are very valuable. Like my heritage, which is a DNA testing company, they measure seven hundred thousand SNPs. And I had to write my own software to analyze that because all the stuff on the market is garbage, right? They're all just telling people to go vegan and stuff, which is complete nonsense. So it's hard to cut even the AI, right? Like when you you put your DNA into AI and it just tells you to go vegan or whatever. These AIs are just as bad as everything else, right? Because They're getting the same inputs that the medical doctors are getting, the textbooks, they're getting all these nonsense. But the point is, when I look at genetics, I've realized there's a bunch of different categories that Alzheimer's falls into. And it's different for different people. It's not the same disorder. Just like there's different types of cancer, I think there's different types of Alzheimer's. And I think the DNA gives you the best insight into that. So I want to write a book where we consider different classifications of Alzheimer's. Like, for example, some people, it's just heavy metals. They have really bad heavy metal clearance genes in their brain. They build up a bunch of copper or aluminum or lead or chromium or cadmium or whatever, and they get Alzheimer's. But then some people, it's metabolic. It's like strictly their brain handles carbs poorly. And those are super high risk genes for Alzheimer's. And when people have those genes, well, now we got to focus on the blood sugar and making sure that's super, and of course, the insulin, most importantly, like forget about the blood sugar. Check the insulin. That's even more important. I mean, I would check both, but. I'm just saying, like people are so obsessed with blood sugar. Insulin is way more important. And so if you have that genetic tendency, it doesn't mean you have a genetic disorder. It means you have a tendency, you got to be extra strict on carbs, right? If you have the heavy metals tendency, you got to be extra strict on testing heavy metals. Good news. Our modern culture doesn't have too many heavy metals. So most people aren't too exposed to that. But you can do hair testing and look for heavy metals. You know, there's a lot of testing you can do instead of just hoping you don't get Alzheimer's. So my goal in my next book is going to be to classify. very clearly what these different categories are for Alzheimer's and and explain really bluntly, you know, all the corruption in that industry and all the shenanigans with the amyloid and all this nonsense, because a lot of that's Stephen with Anthony: Mm. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: just a response to problems. It's not the problem. It's just like LDL. LDL is not the problem. It's a response to problems sometimes with smoking or binge drinking or lack of sleep. It's but that's not the problem. You know, the problem is the smoking, the binge drinking or the lack of sleep sometimes, Stephen with Anthony: Yes. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: right? Stephen with Anthony: Hmm. Yeah. I mean that's an area again, brain health and amyloid and lots of data fraud there and incredible. and so finally, just a bit broader, actually, just on blood pressure, but I'm I'm going full circle now 'cause I asked an initial question about the LDL guidelines continually dropping. W what's your views on the fact that they do this with blood pressure as well? They just continually review the numbers. And again it doesn't seem to be led by any medical literature. It just seems to be arbitrary. You mean and what what what do you feel about that? Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Well, I was doing some YouTube videos on the thyroid recently, and I'll don't let me fall off track and I'll circle back here to the blood pressure. But but Stephen with Anthony: Okay. Okay. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: it's related. But I was looking at the reference range for TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. And the reference range is like zero point four to four point zero. It's a tenfold range. Why Stephen with Anthony: Tenfold. Yeah. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: don't they care about your thyroid? Because there's no drugs, right? But what they did to develop that reference range, Steven. Was they took 95% of the population and considered that the normal range? And then the little two and a half percent on this side and two point five percent on that side were considered outliers that you're either too low or too high if you're in the 2.5%. That's how they develop these normal ranges. That's absurd, right? I mean, so another and look around like do you think 95% of the people are healthy in a in our culture? You know what I mean? Like it's so obvious, right? And especially in Amer America's worse than the UK. and the UK's trying to catch up really quick, but they're still still better than America in terms of overall health, but it's definitely not ninety-five percent of people. You know, it's funny in America, Stephen with Anthony: Mm. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: if a lot of these these people that are super, super unhealthy, they don't go outside. So you never see them. So you get a skewed perception. But if you go out on the fourth of July in America when they do shoot fireworks and stuff, that's that brings them out. You see them. Like you go out and you're like, my gosh, this is a real problem. Like Half of our country is ex severely obese and just severely sick. And but the point is they do the same thing with blood pressure, where they they change the range because as our population gets sicker and sicker and sicker, sometimes you have to incorporate more of these people. and they also, most importantly, with blood pressure, they just want to sell drugs, right? So, and because there's that's blood pressure drugs are usually in the top five for sellers. The cholesterol drugs are usually in the top five in terms of like what's the Biggest selling drugs in the year 2026 or in the year 2025 or in the year 2024 or whatever. sometimes the thyroid drugs are in the top five. And by the way, those aren't even patented. That just shows you how bad people's thyroids are. Is they they don't even have patents on those drugs and people are so desperate for them. They oftentimes are in the top five sellers. But it's always the cholesterol drugs and the blood pressure drugs. So they're always most. you know, interested in manipulating those narratives. And I'll tell you a secret, and you probably know this already. The most people's blood pressure comes from insulin resistant. It comes from sugar. If you have a lot of insulin resistance, you get a lot more kidney retention of sodium. And then sodium gets blamed for the insulin resistance and the sugar that's causing it. And not to mention sugar just straight up thickens your blood. If you have like maple syrup and you stick your hand in some maple syrup, that's super thick. It's super sticky. Stephen with Anthony: Mm. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: The same exact thing happens if you've got more sugar in your blood, it's thicker, it's stickier. It takes more pressure to push that blood around your system. And so that's a dysfunctional, you know, indicator. And that you won't you don't blame that on the blood pressure. The doctors would blame the blood pressure and they would medicate that. So then you have less pressure to push that around and you get less nutrients, and then your feet are falling off and they're amputating them, right? That doesn't really solve the problem. But what solves the problem is you get rid of the insulin resistance, you get. you have less sodium retention in your kidneys. So you're peeing out the sodium properly. So then you can have as much sodium as you want and you're pissing out. It's no big deal. Right. And, you know, your blood is thinner. It's not as thick and syrupy. So win win, right? You get rid of that sugar. It goes back to sugar once again. Stephen with Anthony: Yeah, brilliant. Thank you for that. And just for people watching, I will put a link to your book in the description to the video. And I look forward to people reading that and dropping some comments as well. So Doctor Anthony J, thank you so much for your time. It's been absolutely brilliant. Thank you. Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.