No Harm in Red Meat After All

Hi, this is Dr. Daniels, and welcome to Healing with Dr. Daniels. In today's episode, we're going to talk about red meat. The question is, is there harm in red meat after all? You decide. Today, I'm going to examine the latest information from the medical industrial complex concerning red meat.

But of course, first, we've got to take our turpentine, and we've got our white sugar and what has become my favorite dropper. These are just little plastic droppers, and they're available on Amazon in packages of 10 to 100. I think I got the 10-pack. There you go. There's a dropper. There's the turpentine. Scoop it up. A little bit more. I like to get to the neck of the dropper, which is a half teaspoon. As you can see, it's a little more than that. There you go, a full teaspoon, a full dropper.

Alrighty. There's our sugar. I use a heaping teaspoon of sugar. We're just going to squirt this on like this. As you can see, the sugar turns a little bit grayish in color. There we go. Most of it is soaked, but part of it is not. Does not taste great, but a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. I'm sure you've heard that before.

Next, we're going to get our Shilajit ready. You can use the end of a spoon. A little more than that. There we go. That's about 200 milligrams, more or less. Here's our water. I'm going to put it in there. Let it set while we chat.

Alrighty. So the medical industrial complex has taken a position, certainly as long as I've been in medical school or since I went in 1979. It's been a while. The position is that red meat is awful, awful, awful. So literally two, almost three generations of women have been eating filet salmon, pasta dishes, anything to avoid red meat. There have been a few men who have been very firm and said, "Hey, I'm eating my meat."

There has been an increased death rate and heart disease associated with meat consumption, but it's been kind of murky. But people have been convinced, many people have been convinced, to lower their cholesterol. So let's take a look and see. First, we're going to take a look at what we've been told. Then we're going to take a look at the latest study and kind of see how that all shakes out.

Now, this is from the Mercy for Animals site. I've got to say this because a lot of this data, information has been spun by people who have other goals besides your health. So the National Institute of Health—let's just use basic sources.

This is from 2012. Not far enough in history, maybe, but far enough back. It says a new study adds to the evidence that eating red meat on a regular basis may shorten your lifespan. Now, there's a lot of qualifiers here. And I think you really need to understand when you're reading a qualifier. So the word is "evidence." So we got evidence, but we're not sure. There might be evidence that you did something, but once all the evidence is in, we might realize, well, you didn't do it. So "evidence" is a qualifier.

And then it says "eating red meat on a regular basis." So what's "regular"? Is that every day, every week, every year? What's regular? So we have two qualifiers. One is "evidence," and then it's "regular." And then "may," well, we don't know. Might, might not. So we've got three qualifiers here. And then "shorten your lifespan by how much?" Five minutes? Ten minutes? A week? Six weeks? A year? Ten years? So we've got four serious qualifiers in this opening statement, which is supposed to inspire our confidence.

The findings "suggest"—is that like a guy suggesting he wants to marry you? Not a proposal; it's a suggestion. Okay, so now we're working on suggestions. This is getting us further and further away from any degree of certainty. Now, I'm older, I'm 62. But back when I was 22 and I entered medical school, I would read this stuff and say, "But, but, but, but, let's just jump on it. Let's go with it." There's this anxiety, eagerness that comes with youth. But at 62, having seen this show a few thousand times, I stay in my seat and say, "Yawn, yawn."

So "suggest." Now we're down to a suggestion. Meat eaters might help improve their health by substituting other healthy protein sources for some of the red meat they eat. Now, this is even weaker. So now they're not saying, "Stop eating red meat." They're suggesting to substitute other protein for the red meat. This suggestion, by the way, I totally disagree with on many levels, and we'll get to that. But the point here is you have an introducing paragraph that has literally reduced your level of certainty to below 10%. We've got "evidence" that only on a "regular" basis—whatever that is—"might" shorten your lifespan, but by how much, we don't know. And now we're down to a "suggestion."

Past research has tied red meat to increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers. This is very true. I read those studies back in the 90s, and I was vegan based on that. Like, "Oh no, I won't be getting diabetes. Not like dad, granddad, and granddad. Oh no, no, no." And my siblings, "I will not get diabetes." The good news is, of course, I did not get diabetes. But we'll see what level of discretion, what level of precaution I took was actually necessary. Most of these studies were done over limited periods of time. That means a short period of time. A lifetime is like 70, 80, 90 years. And the studies are generally over six weeks. One year, maybe five years. And they had design flaws. They were done in populations with diets other than that of the typical American.

So, a researcher set out to learn more about the association between red meat and mortality, studying over 37,000 men from health professionals beginning in '86 and 83,000 women with a nurse's health study in 1980. All the participants were free of heart disease and cancer at the start of the study, and they filled out food frequency questionnaires every four years.

24,000 participants died during the study, including about 5,900 from cardiovascular disease. That meets the national profile of death, so heart disease kills about 20 to 25% of Americans. So that works. 9,000 from cancer, and what about diabetes? They don't say.

Those who consumed the highest level of processed and unprocessed red meat had the highest risk of all-cause mortality, cancer mortality, and heart disease mortality. After adjusting for other risk factors, researchers calculated that one additional serving per day of unprocessed meat over the course of the study raised the risk of total death by 13%. And an extra serving of processed meat—that would be bacon, pork, hot dogs, sausages, and salami—raised the risk by 20%.

Now, this is a serving, an additional serving a day. A serving, for your information, is three ounces. That's important to know because I thought it was four. Three ounces is a serving of meat.

Our study adds more evidence to the health risks of eating high amounts of red meat. At type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancers in other studies. Now, we're going to go back over this and see if there are other causes of these diseases—meat-related or otherwise—that may have been innocent riders.

So, our study adds more evidence to the health risks of eating high amounts of red meat. Now, the question here is, what is a normal amount? What is a baseline amount of meat that's not associated with excess mortality or disease?

This is an observational study where people report their own food intake. It's possible that the associations seen may be due to other factors. When researchers accounted for known risk factors in red meat, like saturated fat, dietary cholesterol, and iron, they still couldn't account for all the risk associated with eating red meat. Bingo! So, in other words, the increased risk associated with eating red meat could not be accounted for by eating red meat alone.

Other mechanisms may be involved, or other unknown factors may affect the results. Further study will be needed to fully understand the connection between red meat consumption and health. And this is a really important thing to understand in all research studies. Read the same thing: new information, evidence, regular, may, shorten. This is so vague. I'm impressed it qualifies as research. But again, I went to medical school, and I was confronted with a blizzard, a barrage, a plethora of information just this vague.

Alright, that is the story on red meat. So, what's the answer? The answer is, eat your red meat. How much red meat? I personally recommend one serving a day as a top limit, and that's if you're eating meat that's free of hormones and pesticides. If you're not so lucky, if you're eating the dangerous stuff, then one serving a week would be the limit. But why one serving a week? I mean, why bother? Because there is a dietary need for cholesterol. Your body only makes 75% of what it needs. And when you cut cholesterol 100% out of your diet, you develop health issues such as low energy, Alzheimer's, and difficulty with your skin structures and your bones. So, cutting meat out 100% long-term is not a good answer. However, going vegan one day a week—good idea!

That brings us to our questions.

People can send questions to jadaaniels at gmail.com. Once a week, these questions are gathered together by my assistant, and I answer as many as I can on the podcast.

Alright, thank you very much. And please also visit our sponsor vitalitycapsules.com and get your Vitality Capsules today. Oh, let's finish our Shilajit.

Alright, that's it. I'll see you again next week. And as always, think happens.