My girlfriend Tatiana and I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Udo Erasmus on the importance of healthy oils for optimal health & well-being. He is the author of the best-selling book, Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, and is the founder of the company, Udo’s Choice. Dr. Udo is recognized as a guru on digestive health, and is a pioneer in the use of fats and oils for optimal health.
I take Udo's Oil every day, and I've been doing so for the past 10 years. It’s a certified organic blend of fresh omega 3, 6, and 9 oils, from flax, sesame, and sunflower seeds, coconut, and evening primrose. This oil delivers all the ‘good’ fats we need in the ideal ratio of 2:1:1 in order to optimize health, beauty, and fitness, while receiving all the benefits that omega offers.
I am a big believer that your health is your wealth. If you want optimal health, you need to ensure that your diet contains all of the essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids that your body needs. In the words of Jim Rohn, “Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live.”
Watch the video below:
(Click here to watch on YouTube)
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Do you want to learn more about Dr. Udo's healthy oil and supplement products? CLICK HERE to visit his website!
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Do you want to learn which fats heal and which fats kill? CLICK HERE to purchase Dr. Udo's book!
I would like to share with you some of the dialogue from our interview with Dr. Udo Erasmus on the importance of healthy oils for optimal health & well-being:
Do you want to share with us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you got into this field?
In 1980, pesticides poisoned me. My marriage was dissolving, I was in a dark place, and I wanted to kill something, so I took a job as a pesticide sprayer. When I got poisoned I asked the doctor, “What do you have for pesticide poisoning”, and he said, “Nothing.” That was the day that I realized that my health was my responsibility, and if I didn’t care about my health, nobody would. Because they had nothing to help me, I was left to my own devices in order to try and figure it out.
My background is in the field of sciences, biosciences, and then I went into psychology, and eventually self-knowledge, because I needed to know how I work. I read the journals and figured out that the body is made up of food, air, water, and light. I realized that if the body is made out of food and something goes wrong, the first thing that you should do is fix your food and raise the standard of your food. Ninety-eight percent of the atoms in your body are removed and replaced every year. So, if you raise your standards for food in one year, 98% of your body will have been re-built to a higher standard. That is called healing.
We have to eat because we need new building blocks, because the old ones are being discarded. The biggest area that I discovered in my research is the area of fats. It turns out that with all the DNA and RNA proteins, you get more problems from fats in health than in any part of nutrition. Why? Because oils are our most sensitive nutrients, especially Omega 6’s and Omega 3’s, which are 5x more sensitive because they are damaged by light, heat, and oxygen. They should get the most care of any of our nutrients, and we give them the least care.
More health problems come from damaged oils than any other part of nutrition. I developed a method where, when oils are being made, pressed, filtered, and filled. Then they are protected from light, oxygen, and heat from the time that they are in the seed and closed to the time that they are in a bottle. That was the invention that started a new industry, making oils with health in mind. In 1981, it was established by researchers that Omega 3’s were essential. I thought that we could help so many people if we were able to prove this to be true, so I started making flaxseed oil, which is very high in Omega 3’s and low in Omega 6’s. We were broke, but we were on fire. In two years, flax oil became the 2nd highest selling oil in the health food industry. We started that movement.
What is in your product?
The blend consists of nine organic ingredients. Flaxseed oil for the Omega 3’s, sunflower seeds in order to balance the Omega 6’s, evening primrose oil for the antioxidants, and it also has coconut oil, rice/oat germ oil, GMO-free lecithin, and Vitamin E. When you are talking about something that has so much value to health, you have to keep it to a high standard.
Some people think that every fat is equal, and that there is no difference between mono-saturated or trans-fats. What is the good fat versus the bad fat?
If you want to tell the story of fats, you have to understand that, from fats and only from fats, there are two nutrients that you have to get, and that your body can’t make – Omega 6’s and 3’s. They are both essential, meaning that you can’t make it in your body, but you’ve got to have it in order to live and be healthy. It has to come from the outside. If you don’t get enough, your health goes down and you get deficiency systems that get worse with time.
As cruel as life is, if you don’t give it the building blocks needed in order to make the body work, it can’t do it. There are two essential fatty acids, 8-11 essential amino acids that come from protein, 13 essential vitamins, and 18 essential minerals. If you cut out any one of them, it will kill you, over time. The most important thing to understand is that you have to optimize those two, they have to be in the right balance, and they need to be made with health in mind.
What are the symptoms of someone that is deficient in Omega 3’s and 6’s?
Every cell needs Omega 3’s and 6’s. In the membranes there are channels that allow things in or take things out. The essential fatty acids improve the functions of those channels. They increase energy, especially the Omega 3’s. Studies in athletes show a 40-60% increase in stamina within 30 days of taking our blend. There is not a training program on this planet that gives you that kind of benefit. Again, I think a lot of it has to do with energy levels, oxygen, and metabolic rate. Everything that every cell does requires energy. If you give it more energy, it does a better job.
Does fat make you fat?
No, that has never been true. In 1979, The McGovern Report bamboozled us. They told us to eat less fat and eat more carbs. From 20 years of following that advice, obesity went from 25-65% of the population. When you eat carbs, they turn into sugar, and you absorb the sugar. If you absorb the sugar faster than your body burns it, you get high blood sugar, which is toxic. Carbs and sugars turn on the gene for fat production, called fatty acid synthesize, which turns a molecule of sugar into a molecule of fat.
Carbs turn on and off that gene for fat production. When it comes to oils, fats don’t turn on fat production. It’s illogical for the body to do that. However, Omega 3’s actively turn on fat burning and they actively turn off fat production. When it comes to stamina and endurance sports, fat is what you need, whereas when you are running short distances, carbs is what you need.
When you are talking about carbs, are you talking about processed carbs versus whole food carbs?
When I’m talking about carbs, I’m talking about foods high in carbs like grains, corn, potatoes, etc. There is a difference between whole food carbs and refined carbs, and there is a difference between starch in a whole grain and starch in white flour, and a difference between starch and sugar. If you eat more than you burn, you will get fat. There is research that shows that carb addiction is 8x stronger than cocaine addiction because when you eat carbs, your blood sugar goes up and it turns into fat. Insulin is very good at doing that. By the time insulin is done, you have low blood sugar and are hungry. You get cravings and then you gorge. It takes time to digest the carbs and by the time they have absorbed, you’ve eaten more than you need to. The cycle starts again and again.
Are there certain oils that are safe to cook with?
There are some oils that are less toxic, but none that are good to fry with. If you use hard fats, they are the most stable (butter, coconut oil, palm oil), which are saturated fats, so they are not sensitive to light, oxygen, and heat. The people who want to sell you oils tell you that these oils are good for cooking. It’s a marketing tool. Always cook with water. If you want to be healthy, eat as much raw food as you can, take probiotics, and if you are going to cook, leave the fats out of it.
In Western society, we don’t have issues with famine, yet a big part of the population suffers from malnutrition. How is it possible that we can have so much food, yet suffer from so much malnutrition?
The distinction is between essential nutrients that we are not getting enough of them. We are getting too much fuel and not enough nutrients. The fuel is what makes you fat. When you eat too much fat, it suppresses your appetite. Your liver has to process it, and when it is full, it lets you know. That is why we say to spread out your intake throughout the course of the day.
A lot of people suffer from high cholesterol and may not know the difference between LDL and HDL cholesterol. Can high saturated fats help these people?
Medicine is only about disease, not health. I made the choice to explore biological sciences, because that is where you study how health works, when it’s working. It wasn’t disease-based. Cholesterol is so important in the body. Your body makes it, because you need it in the cell membranes in order to regulate the fluidity of them. Steroid hormones, stress hormones, and vitamin D are also made from it. You need LDL because that’s the vehicle that transports cholesterol from your liver to the rest of your body, and you need HDL to bring it back.
If you go on a plant-based diet, your cholesterol will go down to below 150, and only under 150 is there complete freedom from cardiovascular disease. Even the current research that is being done is not making that clear. The best diet is a plant-based, whole food diet, but you need B12 with that, because we aren’t 100% plant-based creatures. What is not clear is how much damage animal products do, with regards to how they are mass-produced with hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, etc. Eating meat once every 3 months would be enough in order to keep us healthy.
One of the top recommendations for people that have high cholesterol is to decrease their fat intake. What is your opinion on that?
If your cholesterol is high, and you eat a lot of saturated fats, that might have an effect. If you eat carbs that turn into fat, that seems to have a correlation with cholesterol, because cholesterol fats are also made from the same building blocks. But cholesterol is NOT your enemy. Eat more herbs and spices, eat more plants, eat more whole foods, eat less animal-based foods, and leave the stress outside. Be more present in your life.
What is the difference between taking your product in oil form versus soft gel capsules?
When you take a soft gel, it's like a supplement. I take 2-4 tablespoons each day of the oil, which is 28-56 grams/day. I would have to take 56 capsules in order to achieve the same health benefits, which are 3x more expensive than the oil. It just doesn’t make sense. When people travel, it’s better to take capsules, but when you are home, use the oil and mix it in food. It enhances flavors and improves absorption. The oil is not a supplement. You can’t be healthy if you don’t live in alignment with nature.
Can you give us three tips of how best to age without disease?
The single most important issue in the planet is disconnection from the core of our own being. In that place is where our peace resides, and peace is amazing for health. When you have that, everything else comes easier. The most important thing you can do is to take the time to be alone and feel what it feels like to be alive. Do what you can to be more present.
Secondly, get comfortable living in a wild world, which is easy to do when you are fully present.
Thirdly, in terms of nutrition, make sure that your water is alkaline, that your oils are made with health in mind, and that you are taking Omega 3’s and 6’s in the right order, that they come in glass bottles, are refrigerated, and are never used for frying.
My mission in life is to find out how people can live in harmony. I sought to find out how, through science, bioscience, psychology, and self-knowledge. My first step was to make sense of fats, and my two other missions are to turn health into a systematically organized, teachable, consumer-friendly field, and to do the same thing with human nature. We are the only problem on the planet. We have to ask ourselves, “What is it about us that makes it such a problem?” When it comes down to it, it’s about disconnection.
My next book will be called, Total Sexy Health. Everything affects health. If you want to be fully healthy and present, give all parts of your nature its due. There are 8 billion people on this planet and the light is already within all of them, if they would only allow it to be seen. If we did, we would be taken care of by life, because life takes perfect care of us. We could then live in harmony, and if we lived in harmony, everybody’s basic needs could be taken care of without any sacrifice. It’s built into our nature to be able to do it, but we have to get present. It’s about time that we got smart and woke up.
I’m so grateful that Tatiana and I were able to interview Dr. Udo Erasmus on the importance of healthy oils for optimal health & well-being. Dr. Udo is a pioneer in the use of fats and oils for optimal health. His healthy oils have changed my life for the better. I highly recommend that you read his book and buy his products!
Do you want to learn more about Dr. Udo's healthy oil and supplement products? CLICK HERE to visit his website!
Do you want to learn which fats heal and which fats kill? CLICK HERE to purchase Dr. Udo's book!