Podcast Interview: "The Destructive Power of Vegetable Seed Oils", dLife.in Podcast with Shashikant Iyengar

 So this was a first, and quite interesting. 

dLife.in is an Indian low-carb diabetes group, founded by Anup Singh—an engineer, natch—who was recently recognized as an "Icon of India" for his work with this group.

Icons Of India Award From Outlook Group

"dLife.in came into existence on the 21st Of August, 2014, as a forum. This was, and always will be, dedicated to promoting “Low Carb High Fat (LCHF)” diet for managing metabolic syndrome disorders like Type 2 Diabetes, Obesity, PCOS, Insulin Resistance, Hypertension, etc. In short, we called it “of, by and for Indians” as the animal protein-centric western low-carb diet was not easy to follow, given the low per-capita animal protein consumption in the subcontinent."

(That video is here, but he discussion is in Hindi...

Best quote: “Engineering is an exact science and engineers are inherently trained to be problem solvers.”

Probably why engineers keep discovering how to treat diabetes while physicians remain clueless.)

Being asked to discuss the issue of seed oils by an Indian group was really an honor, and a bit of a challenge, as seed oils are a long-standing part of Indian culture and diet. Diabetes was first described and diagnosed in India:

"Around the 5th century BC, the famous Indian surgeon Sushruta, in his work Samhita, identified diabetes, by using the term madhumeha (honey-like urine) and pointed out not only the sweet taste of the urine but also its sticky feeling to the touch and its ability to attract the ants (!). Sushruta further mention that diabetes affects primarily the rich castes and is related to the excessive food consumption as the rice, cereals and sweets[6]." (Karamanou et al, 2016)

The consumption of seed oils has been linked to disease in India for some time, prior to the current recognition that the consumption of saturated fat is probably not to blame, and that dairy fat is protective (Mozaffarian et al, 2014):

"Our data, however, do not support this association of high fat intake with the liability to develop ischemic heart disease, because while in the north the consumption of fats, most of which are animal fats, is 19 times more than in the south (Indian Council of Medical Research, 1964), the disease is 7 times less in the north than in the south. Moreover, while the milk fats eaten in the north have a preponderance of saturated fatty acids, the seed oils used in the south are mainly composed of unsaturated fatty acids (Indian Council of Medical Rsearch [sic], 1963)." (Malhotra, 1967)

Shashi sent me an excellent list of questions, and we made good progress in getting through the topic during the Zoom session. 

• Please tell us about yourself. Your background
• How come you gained so much knowledge on Seed oils?
• Please tell us about your personal journey. What were all the ailments you were suffering & how come you identified it and took action
• Please tell us how these seed oils are harmful / What’s issue with the usage of these seed oils
• How does these seed oils affect the mitochondria / Electron chain transport?
• What happens when these oils are heated at high temperature?
• What are all the ailments caused by excess Linoleic acid
• Does excess LA cause IR independently
• What’s the optimal level of Omega3:Omega 6? How has this changed?
• What’s the issue with the refining process that’s carried out with these seed oils
• How does excess linoleic acid cause damages to our DNA
• Can these excess oils which we take be burnt as energy?
• Does it accumulate in our body? If so how do we eliminate these?
• How long does it take to clean up our system of the excess LA stores
• These oils reduce LDL. So how is it bad?
• How deep has these seed oils penetrated our food supplies
• How much has the % of Linoleic increased in human consumption in the last decade or 2
• What are the safest oils / cooking fats we can use?
• India has some oils as traditional oils- Groundnut or also called as Peanut oil, Sesame oil or mustard oils. How are these if we use cold pressed oils?
• About S L Malhotra Indian Railway study & the learning from this study.
• Your view about india and its status as the diabetes capital or on its way from No2 to No1 in times to come
• Your message to India

We discussed some of the findings about how a change in the use of dietary fats could benefit India specifically, where other interventions are not practical, due to the long-standing traditions of the country.

"In conclusion, the results of this 6-month randomized intervention trial provide evidence that use of olive and canola oils (rich in MUFAs and having a balanced n-6/n-3 PUFAs ratio) as a cooking medium resulted in a significant reduction in fatty liver severity and liver span in NAFLD. Improvement of fatty liver was accompanied by amelioration in insulin resistance and dyslipidemia. All together, these beneficial changes may also decrease the risk for developing type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease in Asian Indians predisposed to develop these diseases." (Nigam et al, 2014)

There was a Q&A at the end, which was a first for me, as was waking up at 3:30 AM MDT for a 5:00AM interview!

Thank you very much to all involved for such a productive discussion!

Some links to studies discussed, below.

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Das, S. (2001). Susruta, the pioneer urologist of antiquity. The Journal of Urology, 165(5), 1405–1408.

Ghosh, S., Qi, D., An, D., Pulinilkunnil, T., Abrahani, A., Kuo, K.-H., Wambolt, R. B., Allard, M., Innis, S. M., & Rodrigues, B. (2004). Brief episode of STZ-induced hyperglycemia produces cardiac abnormalities in rats fed a diet rich in n-6 PUFA. American Journal of Physiology. Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 287(6), H2518-2527. https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpheart.00480.2004

Henderson, G. (2016). The Minnesota Coronary Experiment re-analysis by Ramsden et al is a wake-call to re-evaluate the use of polyunsaturated oils and spreads in modern clinical diets? BMJ, i1246.

Karamanou, M., Protogerou, A., Tsoucalas, G., Androutsos, G., & Poulakou-Rebelakou, E. (2016). Milestones in the history of diabetes mellitus: The main contributors. World Journal of Diabetes, 7(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4239/wjd.v7.i1.1

Malhotra, S. L. (1967). Epidemiology of ischaemic heart disease in India with special reference to causation. British Heart Journal, 29(6), 895–905.

Mozaffarian, D., Cao, H., & Hotamisligil, G. S. (2014). Use of trans-palmitoleate in identifying and treating metabolic disease (United States Patent No. US8889739B2). https://patents.google.com/patent/US8889739B2/en

Nigam, P., Bhatt, S., Misra, A., Chadha, D. S., Vaidya, M., Dasgupta, J., & Pasha, Q. M. A. (2014). Effect of a 6-Month Intervention with Cooking Oils Containing a High Concentration of Monounsaturated Fatty Acids (Olive and Canola Oils) Compared with Control Oil in Male Asian Indians with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics, 16(4), 255–261. https://doi.org/10.1089/dia.2013.0178

Ramsden, C. E., Zamora, D., Faurot, K., Majchrzak, S., & Hibbeln, J. (2013). The Sydney Diet Heart Study: A randomised controlled trial of linoleic acid for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death. The FASEB Journal, 27(S1), 127.4-127.4. https://doi.org/10.1096/fasebj.27.1_supplement.127.4

Ramsden, C. E., Zamora, D., Majchrzak-Hong, S., Faurot, K. R., Broste, S. K., Frantz, R. P., Davis, J. M., Ringel, A., Suchindran, C. M., & Hibbeln, J. R. (2016). Re-evaluation of the traditional diet-heart hypothesis: Analysis of recovered data from Minnesota Coronary Experiment (1968-73). BMJ, 353. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i1246