 Egg whites are crazy these days. If you ask me, this craze is one of the silliest health trends out there. In fact, I actually recommend you do the opposite. Eat primarily the yolks and give the whites to your dog. The dog will love it. So egg whites are just protein and your dog will think it's a great idea, but you're actually not looking for the protein in egg whites. You're looking for a couple of cool compounds in egg yolks. So egg yolks have two great compounds in abundance. One is called choline and the other is arachidonic acid, the so-called evil long chain omega-6 fat. Now choline is actually a major component of the brain neuro transmitter system. We actually have to have choline to make neurons talk to each other in the brain. And in fact, choline is how nerves communicate within the brain. So it's a critical substance to have in your brain and it just so happens we acquire it from our diet and egg yolks are one of the richest sources of choline. Now our brain additionally is about 70% fat and half of the fat in your brain is the long chain omega-3 DHA. The other half is the long chain omega-6 fat arachidonic acid. Now arachidonic acid and omega-6 fats get a really bad wrap as the inflammatory fat. And yet, wait a minute, half of our brain is composed of this evil bad inflammatory fat. So what's up with that? Well, to answer this problem, a few years ago, experiments were done on athletes at the University of Texas. Half the group were given arachidonic acid capsules to swallow and the other half didn't. And they looked at their inflammatory markers during exercise. And lo and behold to their shock, the people who got the arachidonic acid, that inflammatory omega-6 fat, their inflammation markers actually went down. And their exercise tolerance actually went up. So what's the deal with that? Well, we have a elaborate system of enzymes that convert short chain omega-3 fats and short chain omega-6 fats to join them together to make long chain omega-3 fats and omega-6 fats. And there's very strong evidence that short chain omega-6 fats are very inflammatory, primarily because the short chain omega-6 fats, many of them convert into aldehydes and I've talked about the dangers of aldehydes before. And these are primarily in a lot of seed-based oils like corn oil, like cottonseed oil. And these are definitely a no-no. On the other hand, once you make this long chain omega-6 fat, that's not the problem. If it was, our brain wouldn't be 50% arachidonic acid. Is there other evidence of this? In fact, studies out of Japan that I cite in the longevity paradox show that people who have the most arachidonic acid in their brains have the best memory and are big brain compared to people who have not as much arachidonic acid. And where is a great source of arachidonic acid? Egg yolks. So there's two really good reasons to make egg yolks part of your diet and throw the whites away. But wait a minute, Dr. Gendry, don't egg yolks increase my cholesterol. They're loaded with cholesterol. First things first, we manufacture most of our cholesterol in our liver. And eating cholesterol does not raise your cholesterol much if any. Multiple studies show that eating of eggs does not increase your cholesterol. But even if it did, who cares? That's not what causes heart disease. In fact, just recently at the annual meeting of the American cardiology, there was a stunning paper that suggested in humans that lowering LDL with statin drugs, the so-called bad cholesterol, that so-called egg yolks raise, is not what is important in heart disease. It's the amount of inflammation in the blood vessels that was actually correlated to heart disease. And this study looked at HSCRP, C-reactive protein. And I think that's exciting news to those of us who have been following the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease personally for over 30 years and trying to poo-poo it. Now, I personally feel and talk about in my books that it's the inflammation that's set up by the foods we eat and by leaky gut and by certain animal proteins in beef, lamb, and pork that causes an inflammatory autoimmune reaction on our blood vessels that causes heart disease and that cholesterol is merely an innocent bystander. No inflammation, no reason for cholesterol to stick to your blood vessels. You know, I talk all about this with Johnny Bowden on episode 173 of the Dr. Gunbury podcast. Okay, back to eggs. Now, it's worth repeating that the less animal protein you can eat, the better. Now, why is that? Study after study after study shows that insulin-like growth factor 1 or IGF 1 correlates strongly with not only lifespan, but also health span. Now, there's three factors to lower insulin-like growth factor. One is less sugar or things that turn into sugar. The second is less animal protein, including egg protein and egg protein is in the whites. The third is more time restricted eating, compressing our eating window. And quite frankly, that's the most powerful of the three I've seen in my practice for lowering IGF 1. But why is animal protein part of that issue? Well, IGF 1, we think is a very good marker for whether mTOR, the energy sensing thing we have in ourselves, that tells how much energy is available. And it's actually looking for certain amino acids. The amino acids that mTOR is looking for are more prevalent in animal protein than in plant proteins. So animal protein amino acids activate mTOR. mTOR thinks there's more energy available and that you should grow. And growth factor is elaborated to make you grow. As most of us know, as we get older, there is nothing in us that we want to grow. And that's why super old people, late 90s, early 100s, as a general rule have very low insulin-like growth factors, IGF 1. So I want to empower you to make sure your IGF 1 is low. And so lessening animal protein from egg white, to me, makes sense. Now, I recommend eggs, but as a way of getting olive oil into your mouth is one of my favorite things. Believe it or not, two and a half eggs per day will meet your entire protein requirements for 24 hours. So if this is how you want to get your protein, fine. But just make sure those eggs are pasture raised or omega-3 eggs. Omega-3 eggs, the chickens are fed flax seeds or a seaweed or both. And they actually do have much more of that friendly, fat omega-3 in their eggs. The other important thing to realize is, even with eggs, you are what you eat and you are what the thing your animal ate. So always know what that chicken was eating. So know your farmer, go to the farmer's market. The word organic really doesn't help because they could be fed organic soybeans and organic corn, which is detrimental to you. So look for true pasture raised chickens and their eggs. Cage-free doesn't mean anything. If they're cage-free, they're still in a warehouse and can be fed anything. So just look for pastured. All right, eat your egg yolks. Make sure they're from a properly fed bird and pour olive oil on it and you'll be fine. I think you're going to love this one. Two of the longest living blue zones use a liter of olive oil per week in their diet. And that's sardinia and crete.