#1037 - Chris Kresser

Chris Kresser (0:00)

Move over a little bit, I see em, all right.

Joe Rogan (0:04)

Three, two, one.

Yes, all right, welcome back, Chris. How's things?

Chris Kresser (0:11)

Happy to be here. Things are good.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

Happy to have you.

Chris Kresser (0:13)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

What's the latest and the greatest with you?

Chris Kresser (0:16)

New book came out yesterday. It's always a big one.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

What's it called?

Chris Kresser (0:20)

Unconventional Medicine.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

And give us the, what are those sheets? The back sheet, what's that called?

Chris Kresser (0:27)

The, yeah, the back sheet that works.

The biggest challenge we face today is chronic disease and conventional medicine has failed to address it, so we need a new system. That's the nutshell.

Joe Rogan (0:40)

And you're essentially based, is doing nutrition-based advice for this.

Chris Kresser (0:46)

Three components. Ancestral diet and lifestyle, which we've talked about, functional medicine, and a collaborative practice model that incorporates health coaches, nutritionists, and other allied providers to offer more support to patients.

Joe Rogan (1:00)

What does that mean when you say functional medicine?

Chris Kresser (1:03)

So, the easiest way to understand it is it's an approach that is geared towards addressing the underlying cause of a problem instead of just suppressing the symptoms. So, you go into the doctor, you've got high cholesterol, you're usually given a drug to lower it.

Joe Rogan (1:18)

Statins.

Chris Kresser (1:19)

Yep, you got high blood pressure.

Joe Rogan (1:21)

And those are devastating to your health, right? Statins are...

Chris Kresser (1:24)

Well, you know, for some people they can be. I wouldn't say they're devastating for everybody and they do save lives in certain situations. But the idea that they're the first thing we would do in that situation, that's what's off.

Joe Rogan (1:38)

Right, that you wouldn't suggest like altering the diet.

Chris Kresser (1:41)

Exactly. Let's look at why the cholesterol is high in the first place. Same thing with like high blood pressure. You go into the doctor, high blood pressure, you get a drug to lower it. There's rarely any investigation into why the blood pressure is high.

Joe Rogan (1:53)

And what are the main factors with high cholesterol? Because I know that a big part of it is hereditary.

Chris Kresser (1:58)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:59)

Genetics play a huge role.

Chris Kresser (2:00)

Yeah, so that genetics is one for sure, but then you have things like poor thyroid function can actually lead to a high cholesterol or LDL particle number. You've got infections can do that, like H pylori, which is the bacteria that causes ulcer.

You've got leaky gut and intestinal permeability has been shown to do that.

Joe Rogan (2:19)

That's interesting that you, did you talk about this before? A lot of people are not aware of that, that there's actually gut bacteria that causes ulcers.

Chris Kresser (2:27)

Yeah, yeah, it's a cool story, actually. So, you know, 20, 30 years ago, the dominant idea was ulcers were caused by stress and things like eating spicy foods.

And a couple Australian physicians presented at a conference, this notion that no, actually they're caused by this bacterium called Helicobacter pylori. And they were literally laughed off the stage. Nobody took them seriously. They were ridiculed.

And they kept going, you know, kept doing this research, kept trying to present this idea, and nobody would take them seriously. Finally, one of them swallowed a vial of solution that had the bacterium in it, developed an ulcer as a result, and then treated himself with antibiotics and got rid of the ulcer. Whoa. To prove this is how committed this guy was to this idea and proving this. And finally, at that point, people started to pay attention, but it still was another 10 years before that theory was widely accepted, and then they eventually won the Nobel Prize in Medicine as a result of that discovery. So to me, that's a great example of how groupthink is such a problem in medicine. We have a tendency to just get stuck on the status quo, even though core principle of science is uncertainty.

We come up with a hypothesis. We have to be willing to challenge our most cherished views all the time, because if we look at the history of science, it was the history of most people being wrong about most things most of the time.

Joe Rogan (3:57)

Yeah, and it's amazing how many people are still operating under information that has been updated many times over the past couple of decades.

Chris Kresser (4:06)

Absolutely.

Joe Rogan (4:06)

Talk to the average person about what you should eat. I mean, they're looking at like the food pyramid from the Dr. Seuss books, you know.