In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek and Dr. Robert Lufkin discuss metabolic health, chronic disease, and the importance of lifestyle in preventing these diseases and living fuller, longer lives.
A self-described member of “the medical school academic establishment,” Dr. Lufkin has published hundreds of scientific papers and received millions of dollars in government funding. He is also the author of “Lies I Taught in Medical School: And the Truths That Can Save Your Life.”
Jan Jekielek: Please tell us about yourself.
Dr. Robert Lufkin: I’ve spent my career at two large medical schools with the academic rank of full professor. I’ve published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers. My laboratory has received millions of dollars from the federal government and NIH, as well as from drug companies and equipment manufacturers. I am really speaking from inside of the medical school academic establishment.
Mr. Jekielek: But you had an experience that changed you?
Dr. Lufkin: My mom was a dietician, so growing up, we followed the food pyramid. We avoided saturated fat and ate low-fat foods, grains, and junk foods which we thought were healthy at the time.
Everything went along fine until about 10 years ago. I was diagnosed with four chronic diseases that completely took me by surprise. I went to specialists to educate myself about these diseases, and they prescribed prescription medicines for each one. Although they did recommend lifestyle changes, they also said, “You’re going to be on these drugs the rest of your life. Lifestyle doesn’t work for these things.”
I began talking to other experts and doing research about these diseases. I looked closely at some of the breakthroughs made in the last few years and realized that a lot of what I had been teaching, and sadly, what many of my colleagues are still teaching about these diseases and metabolic health, was incorrect.
When I implemented a program with lifestyle changes, I changed some things radically, like diet, sleep, exercise, and stress reduction. When I went back to my doctors, they couldn’t believe it. They thought the labs were broken. They wanted me to retest the labs.
Long story short, the diseases were reversed and I was off prescription medicines, and that’s where I’ve been ever since then.
Mr. Jekielek: What were the diseases?
Dr. Lufkin: One was a type of arthritis called gout, which is due to urate crystal deposition. There was hypertension, and I was in good company because half of adult Americans have hypertension. The third was pre-Type 2 diabetes, because my blood sugars were abnormally high. The fourth one was dyslipidemia, which was an abnormality of blood fats.
I came to understand that these diseases are all fundamentally driven by the same basic mechanisms. Unfortunately, there aren’t prescription medicines for these mechanisms. What works for reversing these diseases is lifestyle changes.
The good news is that lifestyle is in our control. We get to make choices every single day: what we’re going to eat, how we’re going to exercise, how we’re going to live our lives.
I began doing things like intermittent fasting and aggressive dietary changes, and I’ve never felt better. Being in ketosis, my brain is clearer than ever. I don’t want to eat carbohydrates anymore in the middle of the day or snack all the time.
I’m not recommending that people stop their medications without their doctor’s approval, because that could be dangerous. I’m not saying to just stop everything and try lifestyle. I’m saying begin lifestyle.
If we improve our metabolic health, not only do we lower our risk of getting these chronic diseases, but we improve our longevity. We’ll live a lot longer.
Mr. Jekielek: You’ve said the food pyramid is inverted. Please explain that.
Dr. Lufkin: One of the drivers of the epidemic of these chronic diseases that we’re facing in the 2020s had its origin in the 1960s and ‘70s, when United States public health got into making policy for nutritional decisions. Basically, it was around the mistaken idea that cholesterol and saturated fat drive heart disease.
The United States created a food pyramid plan which emphasized a low-fat diet and a high-carbohydrate diet, with carbohydrates and sugars at the bottom and things like fats at the top of the pyramid where you eat less of them.
These changes have now swept through society to where we’re consuming large amounts of junk food, which means carbohydrates and refined carbohydrate sugars, and a large amount of seed oils. They’re unhealthy, and in my opinion, they drive insulin resistance and inflammation.
Mr. Jekielek: The corollary is that you have to be responsible.
Dr. Lufkin: A lot of medicine over the 20th century developed a paternalistic attitude. You let the doctor take care of everything, you turn over all responsibility to the doctor. The problem is, the doctor doesn’t control your lifestyle. You control your lifestyle. We need to learn that we’re in charge of our health, not the doctor.
Science is all about questioning the existing narrative and throwing out the stuff that’s incorrect and learning the new stuff, and that’s the theme for my book, “Lies I Taught in Medical School.” Hopefully, it can help people avoid the mistakes which nearly cost me my health.
Many people disagree with me. The National Nutrition Council continues the narrative that cereals, grains, and carbohydrates should be a significant portion of our diet, with a smaller amount of protein and avoiding saturated fats. The narrative today is such that if anyone handed a 12-year-old a lit cigarette, everyone would be aghast. But hand a 12-year-old a bowl of sugar cereal and pour chocolate milk on it, and nobody thinks anything of it.
We need to change that narrative so that people can instinctively realize that lifestyle can have a dramatic effect. It’s a choice we get to make every day to take control of our health and longevity.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity
