 My five favorite oils in order. Okay, my absolute favorite, it's gotta be extra virgin olive oil, first cold pressed and organic. It's the most nutrient dense food that you can possibly put in your body. It's loaded with antioxidants and polyphenols. In fact, it's so good for you. I tell my patients that the only purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth. And the benefits of olive oil keep getting discovered year after year. Recently, a study in mild cognitive impairment, having people use extra virgin olive oil, showed improved memory and improved cognition compared to a placebo oil. The hits keep coming and coming on the benefit of getting olive oil. Now, there's creative ways to get olive oil into your diet. Just check out my video on my podcast YouTube channel titled, How to Add More Olive Oil in Your Diet. Next up, perilla oil. Now, most of you probably never heard of this. Perilla is the favorite oil of Korea and parts of China. Perilla comes from the perilla plant. Many of you have seen perilla growing in your garden or in your house, it's a coleus plant. So the seeds of perilla oil is where perilla comes from. What's so interesting about perilla? First of all, it has a rich content of rosemaryic acid. Now, rosemaryic acid is one of those compounds that supports brain health. And in fact, in studies of the Achearoleans, who are the oldest living people south of Naples, Italy, they chew rosemary all day long. They chew sprigs of rosemary. And they're looking for the rosemaryic acid that supports brain health. Perilla oil is a great easy way to get rosemaryic acid into you. But perhaps more importantly, perilla oil is very high in a short chain omega-3 fat called alpha-linolenic acid, A-L-A. And the cool thing about A-L-A is that, as I've written about in the energy paradox in earlier books, it's tremendous for heart health. The famous Leon Hart diet study compared people who were put on a Mediterranean diet with added A-L-A into their diet versus the American Heart Association low-fat diet. These are people who had heart attacks. The study was designed to go five years. It was stopped after three years because the group that had the A-L-A in their diet had so fewer heart attacks than the American Heart Association low-fat diet that it was unethical to continue. And when they broke down all the components of the diet that made a difference, the only thing they found different was the level of alpha-linolenic acid in the participants' bloodstream. You can mix it half and half with olive oil and your salad dressings, like I do. You can cook with it. This one is actually from Dr. Adorable. I have no relationship. What a cute name. Dr. Adorable, you can find it on Amazon. Next up, sesame oil. Now, my first oil that I love is olive oil, but the second and third are really close together. Perilla, maybe, nicks out. Sesame oil, but sesame oil is not to be forgotten. Now, most people know sesame oil as toasted sesame oil, and it's great for adding as a flavor, but the real benefit is in plain, untoasted sesame oil, and just so happened to import this from Morocco from the same people, the same farmers, who provide us with our olive oil at Gendry MD. Next up, macadamia nut oil. Now, macadamia nuts are one of my prized nuts, but the reason macadamia nut oil is so unique is that anywhere from 11 to 27% of the fats in macadamia nut oil are palmettoleic acid, which is omega-7. Now, studies in rats have shown that omega-7 fatty acids induce a feeling of satiation and enhance the release of satiety hormones. And one of the only ways to get omega-7 is macadamia nut oil or sea buckthorn oil, but this is delicious and easy to find. Again, try it out in your salad dressings. In fact, have fun. Mix multiple ones of these oils together. Drizzle it on your foods. It's got a wonderful kind of buttery flavor that I absolutely love. It's easy to find. Finally, MCT oil. Now, MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides, which the cool thing about MCTs is that unlike any other fat and like any of these other oils, MCT oil is absorbed directly through the wall of your gut into your bloodstream that goes directly into your liver. All these other fats curate this root. In the liver, MCT oil is converted into ketones. And ketones are what stimulate mitochondrial and coupling, the subject of my last book, Unlocking the Keto Code. Now in a landmark 2008 study, researchers at Columbia University compared two groups of overweight people eating a diet with the same number of daily calories with one critical difference. One group ate olive oil. The other group consumed MCT oil. Fascinatingly, the individuals who ate MCT oil generated more heat, burned more oxygen and lost more weight than those who consumed olive oil. So olive oil is great and there's very good studies showing olive oil promotes weight loss. But if getting into ketosis and uncoupling your mitochondria is what you want and believe me, you want that, MCT oil is the way to go. Now, for my women viewers, you gotta be careful with MCT oil. If you start too quickly, many women get feelings of nausea, get loose bowel movements, even diarrhea. So work your way up. I like people to try to get three tablespoons a day in divided doses. It's a good place to start. Now we've also found that many of my women patients do better with powdered MCT oil and it just so happens that I make an MCT oil creamer that is powdered MCT. And it's also got many additional ingredients to support gut health, mushroom, ashwagandha. Powdered is the way to go for women if you're at all worried and it makes your coffee taste delicious. When you're buying MCT oil, buy or beware. You want to look for C8 or 10. Don't look for the mixed MCT oils. A lot of them are pretty worthless in generating ketones. C8 is the best at generating ketones. C10 is right behind. So the good news is, this is now becoming readily available. It's a Costco. And if it's a Costco, you know it's readily available. All right, those are my five favorite oils. Olive, perilla, sesame, macadamia nut oil, and MCT oil. Enjoy yourself, mix and match. They're all great for you. They all have distinct benefits. So get them all in your diet. Well, you've heard me say the purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth. And you've probably seen me take shots of olive oil right here on my YouTube channel or my Instagram. And you might know, I even swish my teeth with olive oil for good health. So why am I so obsessed with olive oil? Well, the truth is, olive oil is one of the absolute best things for your health. And I wanna share the word with as many people as possible. So today, I'm doing a little refresher course on all things olive oil and how you should be using it. Okay, let's get started. So what makes olive oil so great is that it's incredibly high in polyphenols. And polyphenols include hydroxy tyrosol, which is a super polyphenol that I call the fat fighter. So polyphenols, as you probably learned from my bestseller, Unlocking the Keto Code, are one of the keys for promoting mitochondrial health. And mitochondria are those energy producing organelles in almost all of our cells. And polyphenols are actually a way that plants protect their mitochondria, which are called chloroplasts. And polyphenols, for those of you that don't know, are those bright colored leaves that you're seeing now in the fall that are actually there all along that you don't see in the summer because of the green chlorophyll. But those polyphenols, when we eat them from polyphenol containing foods like olives or olive leaves are what deliver these mitochondrial protective substances to us. We also know now that polyphenols are some of the favorite food for our gut buddies, our microbiome. And so polyphenols not only protect us, but also they are prebiotics for our gut microbiome. Now I've talked about this a lot, but I'm gonna say it again. There's a very famous trial called the Predomet trial that was done in Spain. The Predomet trial randomized 65 year old people with known coronary artery disease. These are people who had a heart attack or had a stent or had a bypass surgery. And they were randomized to three groups. One group had to use a liter of olive oil per week. That's about 10 to 12 tablespoons a day. The second group had the equivalent calories in walnuts. And the third group had a low fat diet. And they were followed for four to five years. What they found was that there was a dramatic reduction in the group using olive oil in terms of new coronary artery disease events. New heart attack, new stroke, new stent or bypass. Olive oil and the walnuts were very similar, but olive oil won that one. But what was fascinating was in terms of memory, both the olive oil and the walnut group had improved memory after four to five years, whereas the low fat diet group actually had decreased memory. So olive oil wins in multiple areas of health. And that's just one great example. It's no surprise that the Mediterranean, which has some of the longest living people in the world, multiple areas in the Mediterranean use a liter of olive oil per week. And it's because of this polyphenol content that gets the benefit. Now, one of the oldest living nutritionists, Ansel Keys, who is vilified by most of the high fat community, actually loved olive oil. In fact, he was a nutritionist from the University of Minnesota, who actually devised our modern health pyramid. But oddly enough, Ansel Keys retired to southern Italy, south of Naples, and lived just above the village of Aciaroli that I've visited, home of the longest living people in the world. And he loved olive oil. So the original anti-fat guy actually loved olive oil, a mono-insaturated fat, and he lived to 102. Not bad, if you ask me. Now, some people say that's ridiculous if you actually consumed a liter of olive oil per week, would never work. You'd gain so much weight that it's ridiculous. Well, you gotta remember that fat does not make you fat. And the polyphenols in olive oil, among other things, uncouple your mitochondria and allow you to lose weight. In fact, there are multiple studies showing that adding olive oil to the diet, in fact, makes you lose weight rather than gain weight. So once again, fat does not make you fat. Okay, so how do you use olive oil? Well, that's kind of the fun stuff. First of all, let's dispel one of the biggest myths there is, that olive oil clearly can't be cooked with because all that smoke when you heat olive oil means that the olive oil is oxidizing. In fact, that's not true at all. Olive oil actually has the least oxidizable properties of any oil. In fact, it oxidizes less than coconut oil. Yes, olive oil oxidizes less than coconut oil. But where does that smoke come from? Well, olive oil has a very low smoke point. That means as it heats, smoke comes up, but that smoke has nothing to do with oxidation. In fact, if olive oil was bad for you to cook with, it's been used for over 5,000 years as the primary cooking ingredient in Europe to cook food. And you would have thought that all these blue zones in Europe would have killed themselves long ago with the oxidized olive oil that they cook in. So that's one of the biggest myths there is. The second thing that I've learned spending so much time in Italy and France, Southern France and Greece, is that olive oil is supposed to be brought to the table. That olive oil should be poured on anything that you're going to eat. So it's important to realize you don't just cook with it. You bring it fresh and pour it on the things you're going to eat. That way you get a double dose of olive oil with everything you eat. So put it on your vegetables. Obviously use it in a salad dressing or drink a shot of it straight every day like I do. Now I have tons of recipes for olive oil right here on my YouTube page, including olive oil cake. And it's really one of my favorite. In fact, when we celebrate my birthday here at Gundry MD, we have my famous olive oil cake to celebrate. You can have your cake and eat it too. Particularly if it's made with olive oil. Now, before you head to the grocery store, there's something you need to know. Most olive oil on the shelves today might actually do more harm than good for your body. Many olive oil products are actually fake and they're laced with seed oils that could spell big trouble for your health. I'm not saying that they're all fake, but results from investigations from 60 Minutes have shown that many of the olive oils that you trust in in fact are not so much olive oil at all. Now there's things you should look for. In general, the darker the color, the greener the color, the more golden the color, that's undoubtedly a higher quality just based on color. That color is actually from the polyphenols. Now, in general, more bitter is more better. Really strong olive oil should almost make you cough when you eat it and drink it. And that's a sign of those polyphenols. All right, so you passed the taste test. What about the color of the bottle? Well, olive oil oxidizes very easily in sunlight. So a good quality olive oil should always be in a dark colored bottle. And please don't put the olive oil on the kitchen counter where it can be exposed to sunlight. Keep it in a cabinet where sunlight can't get to it. Now, are there other keys? Well, first of all, you wanna look for first cold press. And usually if you see the words by only mechanical means, that means that they used a olive pressing stone or other mechanical devices to crush and press the olives. First cold press, believe it or not, once they get that runoff from the first pressing, they then run it through again and again. And finally, they can actually crush the olive seed that produces an oil called pumice. Now, there's no requirement, they tell you which of these pressings is going into your olive oil. So look for the words first cold press. Hopefully you'll see by mechanical means only. The second thing to look for is extra virgin. Now this has nothing to do with the marital status or sexual status of the olives. It actually has to do with the amount of acid that's detected. Now that's not an assurance of quality, but it is an assurance that there is a standard of acid level that determines whether something is extra virgin or not. I'd much rather you see first cold press than extra virgin. Third thing is, don't look for a cell by date. Look for the pressing date. Now it may have two years because many olives, particularly in the Mediterranean, are harvested in the late fall and maybe even in early January. So you may see harvest date 2022 slash 2023. On the other hand, if you see a single date, that's even better. Now, how long is it good for? In Italy, most olive oil is considered safe to use within a year of pressing. Maximum two years, but here's the deal. Once you open that bottle of olive oil, it's now exposed to oxygen and it will begin to go bad more rapidly. That's why, for instance, here at Gundry MD, our high polyphenol olive oil is packed in small bottles. That way, I know you're probably going to use it up quickly before it goes rancid. That's why don't go to a big box store and buy the two gallon plastic sized organic olive oil. Number one, it shouldn't be in plastic. Number two, it shouldn't be clear. And number three, it'll go bad long before you use it up. So buy the smaller bottles and use it up. Beware of a cell by date. Now, unlike wine, olive oil does not get better with age. It's really only going to last a couple of months once you open it up. Okay, so do I love my polyphenol rich olive oil? Absolutely. It contains 30 times more polyphenols than most conventional olive oils as tested in labs. Now, two tablespoons of my olive oil yields the same benefit as one liter of conventional olive oil. So a little goes a long way. Now, if you want to have more, be my guest. You can never overdo the polyphenols in olive oil. But even if you don't use mine, you can find quality oils in any grocery store if you carefully read the labels like I've talked about today. You can even find them in Trader Joe's and Costco. Look for the dark colored bottles. Look for the smaller bottles, not the giant jugs. And look for a pressing date. And that will keep you safe. And don't be afraid to try different olive oils and seek out the ones that have that really rich, bitter, sometimes buttery taste and use them wherever you eat. I carry my olive oil to restaurants because a lot of restaurants, I don't know where they got their olive oil. And we always have a good time joking but it goes right onto the table and no one's ever stopping. What the heck is MCT oil? Well, let's take a step back and talk about the various types of fats that are chains of carbon atoms that are all strung together. And believe it or not, there are short chain fatty acids. There are medium chain fatty acids that we generally categorize as medium chain triglycerides, but they are medium length chain fatty acids. There are long chain fatty acids. And as I've written about in Unlocking the Keto Code, there are extra long or ultra long chain fatty acids that we won't go into today. Okay, short chain fatty acids you may know about because these are these remarkable compounds like butyrate, like acetate, like propionate that are really some of the most important signaling molecules in your body. Next up in the line are medium chain fatty acids, medium chain triglycerides. Now these in general have anywhere from six carbon atoms to 12 carbon atoms in a chain. And that makes them a medium length chain. Medium chain triglycerides are named after the Latin word for goat, capra. And so you have capric acid, caprylic acid, caprolic acid and so forth. Why were they named after goats? Well, fun fact, goat and sheep milks, about 30% of all the fats in goat and sheep milk are medium chain triglycerides, hence the name. Now, you're not gonna see C6 very often. Why? Because C6, quite frankly, smells goaty. And if you've ever been around goats, like I have, they have a goaty smell that most people don't find very pleasant. So what you're normally going to find is C8. A lot of times you'll see C10. You won't see C12 very much. Now why? Coconut oil has all of these medium chain fatty acids. But the vast majority of coconut oil is C12, loric acid. Unfortunately, as we'll talk about in a minute, loric acid has no ketogenic effect. In fact, for ketogenic effect, the best is C6, but you're not gonna drink that. C8 is next in line, which has the best ketogenic effect of the medium chain triglycerides. C10 will not be as good, and C12 will, quite frankly, have no ketogenic effect. So from the start, try to look for C8 or C8 and C10 medium chain triglycerides. Coconut oil is not ketogenic, so please don't bother to say I'm on a ketogenic diet and all I use is coconut oil. It's not gonna do the trick. Now what happens with MCT oil? So most of the time, when you eat any fat, these fats are broken down into these fatty acids, and they're absorbed not directly through the wall of your gut, but most fats have to actually be put into moving vans that are called chylomicrons, and I promise there won't be a test. Chylomicrons literally float through the wall of the gut, and they don't go into the bloodstream. Instead, they go into the lymph system, and they travel through lymph vessels along the back of your spine, and eventually coalesce into this big lymph vessel that drops all this fat you ate into basically your superior vena cava, the big vein that enters your heart from the top of your head and your chest. So totally different than all the other fats that are absorbed and go direct to your liver. Now what's unique about that is that MCTs go direct to your liver. They don't go on chylomicrons. They don't go in your lymphatic system, and they go direct through the wall of your gut into your liver. So what? Well, their medium chain triglycerides are converted almost 100% in your liver to ketone bodies or the infamous ketones. Well, so what? Ketones have gotten a lot of hype, a lot of press, that they are incredibly important fuel sources for your muscles, for your brain, for your body, and I spent a good part of unlocking the keto code, hopefully debunking that myth. Ketones are a lousy fuel source. So why in the world would you want to make ketones? Well, two reasons. Number one, when you're on a ketogenic diet or a low carbohydrate diet or you're starving, you don't make enough glucose to keep your brain happy and the brain loves glucose. On the other hand, you make plenty of what are called free fatty acids and your muscles are delighted to burn free fatty acids for fuel. They think it's great. Your heart, by the way, loves and prefers free fatty acids as a fuel, better than glucose. But unfortunately, free fatty acids are too big to get through the blood-brain barrier into your brain. Your brain would be happy to use them but they just can't get through. Ketones, on the other hand, are smaller molecules of fat that just happen to be able to get through the wall, the blood-brain barrier, and into your brain where neurons can use them as an emergency fuel. And they can keep your brain alive during these time periods. But when we started realizing that ketones aren't the miracle fuel that everybody thought they were, we started looking, well, if they're not a miracle fuel but they're really good for you, what do they do? And ketones actually are signaling molecules that tell your mitochondria, the little energy-producing organelles in all of your cells that produce ATP, that they need to protect themselves and to protect their energy-making ability by this mechanism called mitochondrial uncoupling. And I've written books about this, I've talked about this, and that's not the purpose of today's podcast. It's the fact that ketones made directly from ingesting MCT are uncoupling devices to make your mitochondria better, less damage, and to actually tell mitochondria to make more of themselves, a concept called mitogenesis. So how does ketones work in the brain? Well, the ketogenic diet was actually developed to treat children with epilepsy back in the 1930s, almost 100 years ago now. And it's very effective. In fact, there was a paper this week just published looking at the effectiveness of a ketogenic diet in drug-resistant epilepsy in children. And lo and behold, even to this day, the ketogenic diet in kids held up extremely well in these kids versus multi-dose pharmaceutical drugs. Why does it work? We think now that it improves the mitochondrial function of the neurons by uncoupling mitochondria in the brain. And so that's the benefit of getting ketones. Now, we will make ketones if we starve ourselves to death, if we exercise incredibly vigorously to exhaustion, or if we dramatically limit carbohydrates and proteins, and instead just eat a lot of fat. In fact, the original ketogenic diet was an 80% fat diet. And that, for multiple reasons, is not good for you. And I, again, spent a book explaining why that's not a good idea. But generating ketones without the suffering is a really good idea for the reasons we just went through. So the cool thing about medium chain triglycerides are that when you swallow them, they will be absorbed, go directly to your liver. And regardless of what else you're eating will generate ketones that will signal your mitochondria to uncouple. And as a consequence, waste fuel. You literally will do a caloric bypass. Now, is MCT oil good for people not on a ketogenic diet? Well, quite frankly, if repairing your mitochondria, making your mitochondria healthier and building more mitochondria seems like a good idea. And I can assure you it's a really good idea. Then MCT oil is worth our interest. There are really good studies looking, comparing MCT oil versus olive oil for weight loss. A Columbia University study did exactly that. And people were divided into the oil they got. They either got olive oil or MCT oil. And olive oil is actually good for weight loss in its own. But the people who got MCT oil had a much greater weight loss during the study period than the folks getting olive oil. So MCT oil does work by literally doing a caloric bypass. Now, can it work alongside of a ketogenic diet? Well, sure. Anytime you can generate more ketones, the better up to a point. And I won't belabor that point. Now, mitochondrial coupling is what you're trying to achieve by ingesting medium chain triglyceride because you want to generate ketones. And I joke that you could actually eat a big fruit smoothie and ingest a tablespoon of MCT oil and you will generate ketones even though you ate just a giant load of carbohydrates. And that's one of the real, I think, beauties of adding MCTs to a regimen for particularly long-term health and weight loss. The more stimulation from ketones, the more you tell your mitochondria to protect themselves, repair themselves. And the more you tell them to make more of themselves to literally carry the workload. Now, I got interested in coconut by studying the katavans, which you've heard me talk a lot about. They're a ancient tribe in Papua New Guinea who subsist on eating a lot of coconuts. They eat tubers. They don't drink coconut oil, but they have incredible longevity despite the fact or because they are heavy, heavy smokers. And interestingly enough, there's never been a katavan found with coronary artery disease or a stroke or get this cancer even though they're heavy smokers. So they're getting their MCTs by eating the coconuts that are profuse on that island. So how do you use MCT oil? Well, first of all, a few provisos. In general, women are far more sensitive to the side effects of MCT oil than men. A number of women get an upset stomach, get a queasy stomach, get nauseated, get loose bowel movements, even with small amounts of MCT oil. So the first word to the wise is start slow. Try a teaspoon of MCT oil a day and see how you do. It's flavorless, it's odorless. You can mix it in your salad dressing. You can pour it on your vegetables. You can put it in your coffee like a bulletproof coffee. Just start there. If that's too much, I found with my female patients that the MCT powders have less of an adverse effect. There are a number of MCT powders on the market. There are MCT creamers that I happen to make at Gundry MD. So this is another, particularly if you're a female, another way of trying out MCTs. Preferably, I'd like to get you up to about a tablespoon three times a day. Now, some of you will never make that much. But in those cases where you can, MCT oil, again, is easy to get into your diet, particularly in salad dressings or on vegetables or in a cup of coffee. So that's the way to work up to it. Is there a preferred time for fat loss? No, remember, anytime you start generating ketones, you will actually do a caloric bypass on your mitochondria. So if you're into intermittent fasting, then you probably don't need that extra boost of ketones in the morning because you'd be making ketones anyhow. But if you're new to intermittent fasting, as you've read or heard me talk about, you won't make ketones for multiple days and you will fall flat on your face trying intermittent fasting, meal skipping, skipping breakfast. And there, a tablespoon of MCT oil may be just what you need to get you through that period until you start making your own ketones. So it's a great way to supplement. How do you find high quality MCT oil? Read the label. Look for C8. At worst, look for a combo of C8 and C10. Don't just buy something that says MCT oil because for the most part, you're gonna get coconut oil with C12 and it has no ketogenic effect and it's just bad calories. Now, speaking of coconut oil, as you know, I treat a lot of patients with the apoE4 gene. And for those of you who need reminding, the apoE4 mutation affects up to 30% of Americans. It's sometimes called the Alzheimer's gene. So saturated fats in general and coconut oil specifically, I ban from my apoE4 patients. But MCT oil, even though a lot of it is derived from coconut oil, has none of the downside of coconut oil because these are much shorter chain fats and they're absorbed in an entirely different mechanism and they make ketones. And my good friend, Dale Bredesen, who wrote the end of Alzheimer's, will tell you that ketones are one of the most important protective agents in your brain if you carry the apoE4 gene. So by all means, I tell my apoE4 patients to please add MCT oil to their program. A lot of people say, but Dr. G, I thought the purpose of food was to get more olive oil in your mouth, not MCTs. Well, that's true. Olive oil has a huge amount of polyphenols that directly benefit your health in different ways than MCT oil. And the benefit of polyphenols, as you now know, is also to help uncouple your mitochondria. So why not get a one-two punch? Mix some MCT oil in with your olive oil. But again, the proviso, please start slow with MCT oil. Do not overdo it. I have seen so many people, particularly my female patients, dive in wholeheartedly only to suffer the consequences. And then they're scared of ever introducing MCT oil. Please, believe me, start slow, start with an MCT powder, and usually you can build up a tolerance. Thanks for watching, but don't go anywhere. The next episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast is waiting for you now. Just because beyond meat or beyond beef looks like a whole food, looks like a burger. In fact, it's as ultra-processed as anything else.