AMA #21: Deep dive into olive oil, high-intensity exercise, book update, and more

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything, or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Ask Me Anything, episode 21 I'm once again joined by the one and only Bob the Cap Kaplan.
In today's episode, we do a super deep dive into all things olive oil, which starts from a very simple question. I think the question was something to the effect of, what's the best kind of olive oil to buy? Or how do you know how to source good olive oil? And then gets into sort of a tour de force explanation around what it means to be extra virgin. And basically we get into all types of oils and the differences between things that are high in saturated fat versus things that are not and the polyunsaturated components and all these other things. So if you've ever really had a question about vegetable oils, lard, tallow, certainly olive oil, it's probably going to be answered here. And we do of course really double down on the olive oil issues specifically. So how do you know you're not getting robbed? How do you check that you're buying the right stuff? What should you be looking for on the label? And of course, what should it taste like, smell like, et cetera?
We took so much time on that that we spent the small remainder of our time together doing a rapid fire Q&A from some quote unquote simple questions, questions about what's going on with my book. We talk about zone five training, which was a great thing to get into because we're normally talking so deep about zone two, but we get into zone five. We talk about massage guns and foam rollers and professional massage, standing desk versus sitting desk, lactate meters, and a little bit around electrolyte supplementation and ketosis.
So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 21

**Bob Kaplan** (2:28)
Hello, Peter.

**Peter Attia** (2:29)
Hey, Bob.

**Bob Kaplan** (2:31)
You ready for an exciting AMA?

**Peter Attia** (2:33)
I sure am, man.

**Bob Kaplan** (2:34)
Yeah, I think we have a couple of really good topics here to get going. We got a couple of really interesting questions around olive oil and nicotine.

**Peter Attia** (2:47)
Together?

**Bob Kaplan** (2:47)
Yeah. Well, no, not together.

**Peter Attia** (2:50)
Dipping your cigarettes in the olive oil?

**Bob Kaplan** (2:52)
After we talk about it, maybe we might do some infusions here.
On the olive oil front, I think we got a couple of questions just around. We always hear that olive oil is really healthy for us. It's heart protective. They wanted to know why is that? And is it true? Is it cardio protective?
So curious about your take on olive oil, Peter.

**Peter Attia** (3:14)
This is one of those topics, I think, like many others, where at the surface, it's pretty straightforward.
But as is generally the theme of our podcast, the further you get from shore, the deeper the water gets. And I think it's difficult to have a discussion like this in total isolation from the broader discussion of fatty acids, period. But to take your question, where does this perceived benefit of olive oil come from? And I say perceived, not because we're going to necessarily refute that, but I just, I don't want to take anything for granted, and I'd like to sort of march down the path. So it really stems primarily from first and foremost, the observational data of the Mediterranean diet. Now this goes back quite a ways. So I think for many folks listening to this, the name Ancel Keys will ring a bell, right? Ancel Keys became one of the first people to utilize and incorporate an assay for measuring serum blood cholesterol. So again, something we totally take for granted today is something that in the 1950s, the early 1950s, if my memory serves me correctly, it was sort of 51, 52, 53, Keys and his wife traveled abroad and began observing societies and asking a very simple question, which was, does the total serum cholesterol, which is the only thing that could be measured at that time. So that means you would take a tube of blood and you would spin it down, fractionate it such that at the time they didn't know that there were various lipoproteins, but you were sort of breaking all the lipoproteins open and you would have the total amount of cholesterol that was being carried by those lipoproteins. And that number, when people talk about my total cholesterol today is 200 milligrams per deciliter, that's what Keys was measuring in the early 50s. And he was asking a question, which was, does that number correlate with heart disease? And the answer was, yes, it did.