This blog is part of a series on the GAPS diet and No Plant GAPS. I had the pleasure of spending time with Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, learning directly from her expertise. The information shared in these blogs comes from our private conversations, public interviews, and exclusive content from a special interview included in the No Plant GAPS training session.
Monika Holland asked Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride “Why shouldn’t we be worried about high animal fat and why shouldn’t we be worried about cholesterol?”
Well, in 1952, a dishonest person has created a dishonest hypothesis that fat and cholesterol cause heart disease. And he based it on a lie. He S created this little study, which was basically, a manipulation, and the whole world somehow grabbed it and ran with it because there was no other option around.
There were no other ideas around. Since then, literally thousands of scientific studies have been conducted all over the world, in every country of the world, to prove that hypothesis. Because a hypothesis is not the truth until it’ s proven. Hypothesis is only an idea. You have to prove a hypothesis. And the rules of the scientific research state that if there is at least one study that proves the hypothesis wrong, then the hypothesis needs to be discarded. But it So, isn’ t a sports event where two teams are fighting each other, and the one that wins, you know, gets its way. It’ s not like that at all. So, and we have literally hundreds and hundreds of scientific studies proving that that hypothesis is a complete mistake.
That animal fats and cholesterol have nothing to do with heart disease. In fact, they prevent it and reverse it. The more butter you eat, the more eggs you eat, the more fat on animals you eat, the less likely you will develop heart disease, or diabetes, or obesity, or Alzheimer’ s disease, or cancer. The trimmer you will be, the healthier, the brighter you will be, the better your eyesight will be, the better your brain will function, you know, the better everything will function in your body. Because animal fats and cholesterol are not only good for us, they’ re essential for us. They both are structural, because if you take water out of a human body, about 70% by weight is water, in your body by molecular count, about 90% of you is water.
But what’ s left, the dry weight of a human body, is about half and half protein and fat. And when we analyze the fat content of the human, the human body, it’ s almost identical in its biochemical structure to the fats we find in lamb, beef, pork, goose, duck, butter, ghee, animal fats. They are the most appropriate for our human physiology. And fat is structural. Half of your dry weight is fat. Half of you is fat. Every membrane in every cell of your body is fat. Every membrane of every organelle inside your cell is fat, basically. And cholesterol is a very important building material. A large percent of your nervous system is built out of cholesterol. A large percent of your endocrine system is built out of cholesterol.
Your bone marrow is very rich in cholesterol. That’ s where all your blood cells are born, your immune cells are born. And all your steroid hormones in the body are made out of cholesterol. It is such an important molecule for the human body. Absolutely vital. Your immune system cannot function. It cannot function without cholesterol because its structure, large percentage of immune structure, the anatomy of the immune system is made out of cholesterol. And the immune system is an army that fights an enemy in the body, and a lot of soldiers die. So new soldiers need to be born and given. So lots of cholesterol is required every time you have an infection, every time you run a temperature, every time you go to cold, or every time you got some kind of toxic situation when you were poisoned with something.
And we have chronic toxicity going on in the Western world. So, you need lots and lots of cholesterol for all of those functions, for the body to deal with all of that situation. Stress consumes enormous amounts of cholesterol because all the stress hormones are made out of cholesterol. If you cannot produce stress hormones, you cannot cope with stress. You’ ll have a nervous breakdown. You’ ll just collapse or you will have another drastic situation if you cannot produce stress hormones. We have a world with all sorts of, all sorts of abnormalities in hormones, sex hormones in particular, in people. All sex hormones are made out of cholesterol. Cholesterol is such an important molecule that the human body has solid mechanisms for producing it. And the major factory for manufacturing cholesterol in the body is in your liver.
So every time you need cholesterol in your body, the liver switches on that factory and starts producing cholesterol. And then it packages it, puts it in the blood, and the blood delivers it to wherever place requires cholesterol. And cholesterol and fats, of course, are fat-soluble. They’ re not water-soluble. Your blood is water-based. So they have to be properly packaged in these lipoproteins to be traveling in the water-based blood. Low-density lipoproteins, high-density and so on. You know, that our science gave us all this kind of superfluous information, which we don’ t really need. So just accept, that cholesterol and fat is something that your body is made of to a large degree, and your body uses every minute of your existence for many, many different functions.
Many, many different jobs. So food that we eat, cholesterol in your food or fats in your food, they don’ t really go directly into your blood, into all those functions. They’ re manufactured in your body, these molecules. But eating these things gives your body a great hand, an ability to work a bit less, to work a little bit less intensively. On top of that, to manufacture molecules of cholesterol in your liver, for example, it’ s a biochemical chain, many, many steps in that chain. And in every step, there are vitamins that are required, enzymes that are required, proteins and various other nutrients, and various toxins can block those steps in the chain. So if you’ re not eating those nutrients, you Re: not providing them, or you are intoxicating yourself with something from the environment, maybe, or maybe you are abusing alcohol, or abusing tobacco, or drugs, or anything else, you are blocking that chain.
You may not be able to produce cholesterol. And that is when you’ re in dire straits. That’ s when everything falls apart in your body. Your brain starts melting, because about 40% of your brain weight is cholesterol. It’ s a structural element in your brain and the rest of your nervous system. That’ s dry weight, of course, not the water after the water is removed. And your immune system collapses. You cannot deal with infections. Your hormonal system collapses. You cannot deal with stress. And hormones are the basis of our metabolism. They rule everything. They’ re the rulers of our metabolism in the body. Everything goes wrong in the body when that factory in your liver is broken and cannot manufacture cholesterol. And many, many people in the Western world are in that situation.
This was first discovered by a wonderful American researcher who worked with violent offenders in American prisons in the 70s and 80s. But what he’ s discovered that people who committed violent crimes, more than 80% of them had that little factory in their liver broken. They could not produce cholesterol. That is why they committed those crimes. Because when we think about it, we don’ t have enough cholesterol. We become angry. We become irrational. We fly off the handle. We become aggressive. We just behave in a violent way and we cannot control our behavior. We cannot control our thoughts and our emotions and our behavior. That is why those people committed violent crimes. That is why they finished up in prison. And we have a large number of people in the world who are not in prison.
Who are working on the streets and are in the offices and working who have that situation. Because they’ re not eating properly. Because they have abnormal gut flora which produces a river of toxicity and that goes into the liver and blocks that factory. Because they’ re abusing drugs, abusing alcohol, tobacco, drinking too much coffee or doing all sorts of other modern things that everybody is doing. And that causes a lot of discontent and a lot of problems in the society. And in families. And in behavior. And the emotions. And all sorts of things. So the last thing you want to do for those kind of people eating eggs and bacon for breakfast drenched in fat is essential. Essential to even survive. To even function in the first place. And the same for lunch.
And the same for dinner. And fatty snacks in between. Absolutely essential for these people to provide cholesterol because your liver is not producing it. And your body cannot function without cholesterol. It has been proven conclusively that cholesterol and fat do not cause heart disease. What causes heart disease is described in my red book. And that is processed carbohydrates, sugar, and vegetable oils, and soy. All those things that everybody is recommended to eat on a daily basis. So with your bowl of cereal in the morning you’ re starting the process of causing yourself a heart disease. That’ s what breakfast cereals do. They cause heart disease. Your bread, your sandwiches, your cakes, your chocolate bars, your snacks, your sugar, your coffee, your tobacco. That’ s what causes heart disease. Not eggs and bacon. Not butter. Not cream. Not lamb chops. Not fat on the pork. None of that. Those things reverse it and prevent it. So that’ s the upshot of the whole issue. That’ s a summary. But if you want to understand it in detail, please read my red book. And it’ s fully referenced for those scientifically minded. Yeah, I highly recommend it because even if you look at the very back, I think you’ ve got several hundred links to the scientific does this part. This is all scientific references. So, I have to do honest science. We do. And it’ s usually produced outside the Western world.
The protocol for the No Plant GAPS diet is outlined comprehensively in the book “Gut and Physiology Syndrome” by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, the creator of this approach. Further information on the protocol can also be found here.