What If You Start Eating OATS Every Day For 30 Days?

hello heal Champions today we're going to talk  about what would happen if you start eating  

oatmeal every day and I came across this video  that made some pretty strong claims they said that  

if you start eating oatmeal every day you will  get better-looking skin they said you will get  

much needed protein for your muscles that you will  be full of energy that you will lose weight you  

will decrease your cholesterol levels you will get  rid of digestive problems and you will reduce your  

risk of heart disease and again this video falls  into the Trap of thinking in a way that you want  

to take something for something and now people  start expecting oatmeal to have some magical  

ingredient and some miraculous properties that  will do all these things so I don't think oatmeal  

is a bad food for some people so that's what we're  going to talk about and we want to understand it  

in the bigger picture and in the context of how  it relates to other Foods so the real question  

is what did you eat before if you start eating  oatmeal every day then what is it replacing is  

it going to be better or worse than what you were  eating before so if you were eating toast and jam  

and margarine and orange juice every day then You'  be vastly better off to switch to some version of  

oatmeal even the instant oats would probably be  better than than that and if you had pancakes  

and corn syrup if you had coffeee and donuts if  you usually eat from a fast food restaurant and  

you get a biscuit and tater tots then all of these  Foods you would do really well to stop eating them  

and then oatmeal would be vastly better than any  of those and typically oatmeal is something people  

have for breakfast but is breakfast something  that we have to have or even something that we  

should have so in this video course they repeated  the standard opinion that breakfast is the most  

important meal of the day but I think that we are  learning enough about intermittent fasting and  

the tremendous benefits of intermittent fasting  in terms of reverse ing disease prolonging life  

feeling better in so many different ways so  intermittent fasting is when you restrict the  

time window during the day that you're eating and  most people engaging in intermittent fasting will  

skip breakfast so they might have a meal at noon  and one at 6 for example and then they would have  

a six-hour feeding window and they wouldn't eat  breakfast at all so breakfast is not something  

you have to have but let's talk about it anyway  if breakfast is something that you want or if  

you want to eat oatmeal at another time of day  the first claim they had was that you will get  

better-looking skin and they said that oatmeal  is ideal for treating inflammatory conditions  

like eczema dermatitis and skin rashes and it  wasn't clear from the video if you were supposed  

to ingest the oatmeal or rub it on your face  for these skin conditions but I'm assuming that  

you're supposed to eat it and then if we say that  something's good for an inflammatory condition  

then it's basically because it's replacing you're  eating something less inflammatory than something  

else that you're currently eating because this  is not like an anti-inflammatory medication or  

anything that's going to magically reverse  inflammatory conditions and then they said  

that it promotes healthy skin overall because it  contains certain important minerals like zinc iron  

manganese and magnesium and this is true these  are super important minerals and oat meal is a  

good source of these minerals not necessarily the  best but it's a good source it's much better than  

most other grains for sure but the question  now is are we deficient because if you have  

skin conditions but the cause is something else  than these minerals then supplying more of these  

minerals isn't going to do anything so taking  more of something you already have is not going  

to do anything if the problem is of another  nature so again we can't just say that you  

will get better-looking skin and we also want to  understand that yes oatmeal is a good source but  

there may be other good sources as well that have  other benefits claim number two is that you will  

get much needed protein for your muscles so they  say one serving which is typically a half a cup  

of dry oats meaning about 45 grams or an ounce and  a half of dry oats Cooks out to be about a cup of  

oatmeal they say that provides 15% and that is the  same as seven grams per serving so this serving of  

oatmeal has seven grams of protein and if that's  15% then they're basically recommending that we  

get 47 grams of protein per day now I think that's  quite a bit on the low side that it may be enough  

to avoid deficiency diseases but if we're talking  about Optimal Health then I think that we probably  

want to double that amount I think we'd be better  off plus protein is filling so foods that contain  

protein and fat are generally more satisfying  and stabilize blood sugars much better so the  

protein content in oats is still much better than  the vast majority of other grains if you're going  

to do a grain then oats would definitely be  a good one but we also want to keep in mind  

that vegetable sources of protein are utilized  I at a lesser percentage they they don't have  

the biological value of incorporating into our  bodies into our tissues that animal protein does  

so meat fish chicken and eggs are utilized at a  much higher percentage next they say that if you  

eat oatmeal every day you will be full of energy  because oatmeal has carboh hydrates and they say  

that is where energy comes from they say that oats  will make you full longer but here I want to ask  

better than what it Fuller longer than what  so what are we comparing to are we comparing  

to other carbs like sugar or pancakes or white  flour or are we comparing to other real foods  

that has maybe some fat in it because the two  sources of energy for the body are primarily fat  

and carbohydrates atates and fat is the primary  source it's the better fuel it is more efficient  

and it runs much more stable for much longer  so in general I'm not a fan of grains because  

I think they create a lot of problems for human  health but oats I would say is one of the best  

so if you feel like you have to have grains if  it's a staple that you depend on then oats would  

definitely be one of the better ones it is an  ancient grain meaning that the DNA of the grain  

dates back thousands of years and humans haven't  really changed it much it is a gluten-free grain  

meaning in the grain itself it doesn't naturally  contain gluten however I put the asterisk there  

because if you are super sensitive like you have  celiacs and can't tolerate gluten at all then the  

normal oatmeal in the store is typically going to  be contaminated with gluten because it's processed  

on the same equipment and then you want to make  sure that you get something that says glutenfree  

on the package oats are also one of the least  allergenic most people are sensitive to wheat most  

people are not sensitive to oats your chances are  a whole lot better with oats and it overall has a  

much better nutrient profile it has some good  fats in it has more protein has more fiber Etc  

which is what they usually emphasize when they  when they promote oat and of course it is very  

very inexpensive you can have a meal for pennies  basically and like I said I don't think it should  

be a worldwide staple but I think it can be okay  for some people and I'm going to talk about the  

criteria there claim number four is that you will  lose weight and if you hadn't figured it out yet  

I put all their claims in yellow so that would  clarify things a little bit here but they said  

that it's because the slow carbohydrates in oats  will curb your appetite and then they said that  

this will stabilize blood sugar because they're  absorbed slowly well then I want to ask compared  

to what to jelly beans absolutely they're much  much better than jelly beans they're better than  

glucose they're better than kid cereals but if  we start talking about other types of food Not  

Just Grains and cereals then they are not all that  good at stabilizing blood sugar and then they said  

that oats contain nutrients to boost metabolism  but they didn't say what those were or what the  

mechanism would be so that's just kind of a loose  claim thrown out there and also they said that it  

will prevent the accumulation of fat and toxins  and again they didn't specify anything there  

so the main thing that that accumulates fat and  toxin is something called insulin and Insulin goes  

together with something called insulin resistance  and this is something we really need to understand  

because this is such a huge misconception that if  we try to find just one way of describing insulin  

resistance we would say that it is a carbohydrate  intolerance and I don't mean that like an allergy  

like you have an allergy to peanuts or shrimp but  it's an intolerance in that your body doesn't know  

what to do with it it doesn't have the Machinery  in place to take care of it anymore and the way  

that we can tell that is if we look at your  blood sugar then blood sugar is supposed to  

be controlled and maintained inside a very narrow  range so a good blood sugar would be around 80 to  

990 when you're fasting 70 to 90 let's say and  after you eat so that would be in inside this  

range after you eat it shouldn't change very much  so if we start off at 80 and we eat something then  

it might rise to 120 and then in a couple hours  it should come back down into that range that's  

when you are metabolically healthy when you're  insulin sensitive when insulin is working the  

way it's supposed to however if you are insulin  resistant if you are not metabolically healthy  

then you probably start off a little bit higher  to start with but the big difference here is  

going to be that your blood sugar goes much much  higher and it stays high for much longer so if  

we eat something and we have this kind of profile  then we are carbohydrate intolerant insulin isn't  

working properly because we have abused we have  broken the machine that processes carbohydrates  

and then we need to understand that between  this line and this line is a whole range that  

I usually call a metabolic Spectrum it's a range  where people can fall on any place in that range  

and on the one hand we have insulin sensitivity  metabolically healthy and that would be where the  

blood sugar just Rises a tiny a little bit and on  the other side we have type 2 diabetes which is  

nothing more than an advanced stage of insulin  resistance that's all it is so if we have some  

other examples if we have an A1C which is your  average blood sugar for about 3 to four months  

if that number comes in at 5.2 or less that would  be a really good number you know you're insulin  

sensitive and if you're kind of in between if  you're bordering you just jumped into pre-diabetic  

you'd be at 5.8 and if you're over 6.5 then you  are at the type 2 diabetes and they once they  

get into that type two diabetes very often that  number can go up to eight or 10 or 12 or 14 as  

well so where we are here makes all the difference  on how much carbohydrate we can handle and oats  

like we talked about about it's by far not the  worst carbohydrate but it's still a carbohydrate  

something else I suggest you measure is insulin  because that gives you a really good idea of your  

insulin sensitivity level if it's between three  and five then that's a really good number if it  

starts slipping up like 10 now you're becoming  more metabolically resistant insulin resistant and  

if you're type two diabetic it's typically going  to be over 20 sometimes often as high as 30 or 40  

as well and if we measure one more thing which is  triglycerides that's the fat in your bloodstream  

so your body has two types of fuel one is glucose  and the other is fat as in triglycerides and if we  

have a number of 60 milligrams per deciliter that  would be a really good number that means that the  

fat gets into into the bloodstream and very  quickly the cells accept it they get into the  

cell to be used for energy very quickly but if the  body is starting to resist now the triglycerides  

the fat kind of get stuck in the bloodstream  and the numbers go up and the excess glucose  

also becomes turned into fat to push that number  up even further and type two diabetics could have  

a whole lot higher than that as well so these are  just examples it doesn't mean that the patterns  

are going to look exactly like this but this would  be fairly typical so what we need to understand  

is that when your insulin levels go up you're  becoming more insulin resistant then insulin is  

a storage hormone the higher your insulin the more  your tendency will be to store calories as fat to  

store energy to not not burn through it so if we  want to lose weight the number one thing that we  

need to do is to bring down the level of insulin  resistance to become more metabolically healthy  

more metabolically flexible so that we can start  using the fat for energy and the number one way  

to do that is to cut down on carbohydrates so as  it relates to oats or oat meals being good I would  

say that if you tolerate it well then for this  type of person oatmeal could be a good food and  

if you're in the middle here I think it's possible  to reverse insulin resistance even if you eat some  

oats now and then if most of the foods you're  eating are really good if you're on a mostly  

low carb diet then I think you can have some oats  and still move toward Health if you're kind of in  

the middle here but but if your system is kind of  broken down if you are type 2 diabetic if you are  

carbohydrate intolerant then I would say that oats  is not a good food for you so let's look at some  

examples here and try to understand how oatmeal  relates and what we can do with it so if we just  

have the oats themselves and typically like I said  a serving is referred to as half a cup of dry oats  

and that's about 45 gr or an ounce and a half that  comes out to about 160 calories and by itself 177%  

of the calories come from fat so that's kind of  high for a grain which would be good if you are  

insulin resistant if you're trying to reverse that  protein is also really good at 19% of the calories  

that's excellent for a grain even though like I  said the vegetable proteins are not utilized as  

well as the animal prot proteins 64% of calories  come from carbohydrates and then if you notice we  

have 4 and a half grams of fiber so on this side  of the scale it's percentage of macronutrients and  

on the other side it is grams of fiber so we can  compare that as well now most people are not going  

to just cook up some oats with water and just  eat that plain they're going to have something  

with it so if we add in some skim milk which is  usually recommended and we add in some syrup or  

sugar because most people need some flavor they  probably put some cinnamon and then they want  

some sweetener and often times they also drink  orange juice which was also recommended in this  

video that I referred to that would put you at  369 calories and now because we added a bunch  

of carbohydrates the fat level fat percentage came  down to 9% the protein dropped down to 14% And the  

carbohydrates went up to 77% and of course the  fiber didn't change because these other things  

we added doesn't really have any fiber but here's  what I would suggest if you like oats if you're  

metabolically healthy if you'd like it as part  of your lifestyle for variety I think that's okay  

but I would use steel cut cut oats instead about  the same amount because steel cut oats are less  

processed they have less surface area so they  get absorbed much slower so in terms of blood  

sugar you're not going to get as sharp a spike  here you're going to have less fluctuations which  

makes it much easier for your body to manage but  then we add whole milk instead of the skin milk  

now we get a little bit of fat to keep us Fuller  but also to slow down that blood sugar absorption  

a little bit then I would suggest you put in  some seeds or nuts it could pick anything that  

you like really but one example here is with Chia  seeds and then maybe throw in some pumpkin seeds  

as well so if you have half a cup of milk you  have one tablespoon of Chia seeds and you have  

two tablespoons of pumpkin seeds now we get 390  calories but check this out how different we went  

from 9 to 47% of fat and that's a good thing  because these are good fats then our protein  

jumps a bit because the nuts and seeds also have  protein and our carbohydrates drop to 33 so before  

we had almost 10 times more carbohydrate than fat  and we just change a few things around and now we  

have more fat than carbohydrates which is going to  dramatically smooth out this blood sugar curve and  

not only that but the fiber has more than doubled  to 9 and a half and we're going to go into some  

little more detail on that too so if you want to  eat oatmeal then I think you should definitely do  

it this way that would be my strong recommendation  and I think that's fine if you want some variety  

if you also want some other options that are quite  different let's just look at that and compare and  

we're going to take this middle part which is how  oatmeal is typically consumed or recommended to be  

consumed so we'll bring this up to here and we'll  compare to something different and this would be  

one thing that I sometimes eat not for breakfast  necessarily but sometimes as one of the two meals  

and it's my own homemade yogurt so I ferment it  and I use half and half which is 11 and a half%  

fat so it doesn't need straining it's super thick  and creamy to start with and then I add some chia  

seeds I grind chia seeds and keep them in the  freezer that way they keep for months I add some  

pumpkin seeds and a little bit of raspberries  sometimes so this would be about a 3/4 cup of  

yogurt it would be a tablespoon or tablespoon and  a half of chia 2 tablespoons of pumpkin seed and  

about 10 raspberries 40 gram or so now we at 470  calories but 80% of that is fat and they're good  

healthy solid fats that are going to burn clean  and stable and give you solid energy much better  

than carbohydrates and the protein is 15 and a  half which is a good level carbohydrates drop  

all the way down to 4 and a half and I need to  explain that a little bit because milk products  

usually have milk sugar lactose and and if you buy  yogurt in the store they've only fermented that  

for a few hours and usually on the label they'll  give you the same number of grams of sugar and  

carbohydrate that you find in milk but if you run  the fermentation as long as you can which is 36 to  

40 hours maybe even longer the longer you keep it  running the more lactose is going to be consumed  

because the bacteria eat the lactose turn it into  lactic acid that's why the yogurt gets sour so if  

you find a bland yogurt in the store it's not  going to have much bacteria and it's going to  

have most of the sugar still in there but the more  sour you can make it and sweeten with stevia if  

you have to the more sour you can make it the less  sugar is left and if you've kept it running till  

it's really sour it basically has zero or just  Trace am amounts of sugar left in it so that's  

where these carbohydrates fall so low even though  there was some sugar in the milk originally and  

here in this version we actually get 12 G of fiber  I'm we going to talk about how that's even better  

than it looks and if you want more options here's  something else you can do here's something I've  

been doing lately so I scramble a couple of eggs  then I make a stir fry of different vegetables I  

take onion and bell pepper eggplant tomato I stir  that up with some extra virgin olive oil and then  

I serve it with avocado afterwards so this is  like an ounce or maybe two of the different  

vegetables it's a tablespoon of extra virgin  olive oil and half an avocado with two eggs  

so you can increase those sizes of course if  you're a bigger person but I try to keep the  

calories down for my examples so this would be a  little over 400 calories and it's going to have  

75% of calories from fat 15 from protein 10 from  carbohydrates and you get 8.4 grams of fiber so  

again we get drastically better ratios for for  blood sugar between fat and sugar but we also  

double or triple the fiber and that's fiber is  often promoted as something miraculous in the  

oats so claim number five and claim number six is  that oats will lower your cholesterol and it will  

eliminate it will rid of your digestive problems  and the number one reason that they give for this  

is soluble fiber and indeed soluble fiber will  absorb it will prevent the reabsorption into the  

the body of some cholesterol so some people who  reabsorb excess amounts tend to have higher levels  

that's not necessarily a bad thing but it could be  if it's too much so soluble fiber can help bring  

this down a little bit but the question then is  is this something unique or miraculous about oats  

and the answer is not really so oats are a good  source especially for a grain and again we use  

the same serving size the total fiber in a serving  in in a half a cup of oats is 4 and a half grams  

better than the vast majority of grains and about  a third of that is soluble fiber and that's the  

one that we we really care about because that's  that acts as a food for your probiotics for your  

bacteria and it also is the kind that will will  prevent the reabsorption so soluble is the key  

so this gives us 1.6 gram which is okay but again  it's not really all that impressive to tell you  

the truth because if we compare to something like  Chia that I sprinkle on the yogurt one tablespoon  

rounded tablespoon 15 grams of chia has 6 gram  of total fiber but 90% of that is soluble fiber  

that's why chia seeds become gelatinous they kind  of swell up and become all slippery that's the  

soluble fiber doing that so you have 5.4 you have  more than three times as much soluble fiber in one  

tablespoon of Chia than you have in a serving of  oats and this is the strongest claim they have for  

making oatmeal a miracle food that it helps with  cholesterol and all these different things and  

I'm not putting oatmeal down but I'm just trying  to say that it's not unique it's not miraculous  

go ahead and eat it if you like it if you can  tolerate it and you're metabolically healthy but  

also realize that there are many many different  options another great example is avocado and if  

you eat a whole avocado it's about 150 gram that  has 10 G of fiber and 30% of that is soluble so now we  

get 3 grams so roughly twice as much in an avocado as  in a serving oatmeal but we have to look a little  

bit more at number six here that when they claim  that it can reduce digestive problems because  

increasing soluble fiber can improve digestive  problems but oats can also make it worse there's  

all sorts of different foods that can make it  worse if you don't tolerate it well so for sure  

for most people oats are a whole lot better than  wheat because the majority of people don't really  

tolerate wheat that well they just don't know  it and the extreme version of wheat intolerance  

is called celiacs so here's another Spectrum  if we talk about grain sensitivity so now on  

the one end on the far end here we have celiacs  disease which is about 1% of people get extreme  

reactions to gluten but we also have to realize  that there's different types of gluten epitopes  

there's different points on the gluten molecule  that can irritate the gut and have antibodies and  

celiac disease is just one of those markers so  there are a lot of people who have sensitivities  

and even antibodies to gluten and to other grains  that don't have celiacs and and oats like we said  

before are naturally glutenfree so someone with  celiacs if they get a certified gluten-free  

version a lot of those people can eat oats but  we also have to understand that it gets a little  

more complicated that there is something called  cross reactivity that we have these different  

markers and these different antibodies and  they can crossreact so once we've developed  

the sensitiv to something now we can have a cross  reaction to other things such as corn and rice and  

even oats and this is not nearly as common as  the wheat sensitivity that I talk a lot about  

but I would estimate the people coming through my  clinic they're probably somewhere between two and  

5% of people who are sensitive to oats and if  you are sensitive to oats then it's not going  

to improve your digestive problem it's going  to worsen it same thing if you have sibo small  

intestin bacterial overgrowth then feeding any  sort of fermentable carbohydrate can make things  

worse claim number seven they said that you will  have a reduced risk of heart disease and they said  

the reason is that oats are rich in good fats so  I think it's a little bit of an overstatement to  

say that it is rich in fats but it certainly has  more and better fats than than most grains so in  

one servings like we talked about there's  2.9 grams of fat and the ones that they're  

claiming to be primarily the good one is the mono  unsaturated which we have 0.9 gram so it's like  

yeah it's better than most grains but it's not  all that super impressive and then when we look  

at polyunsaturated fat we have about 1 gram of  those so if you're eating oatmeal instead of white  

toast with Jam then yes you'll be much better off  but what are the other Alternatives what could we  

eat instead so let's look at an avocado if you  eat one avocado 150 gram edible portion has 23  

gram of good healthy fats out of those 16.3 are  mono unsaturated O Lake acid same as in olive oil  

and that's 18 times more of these supposedly heart  saving fats than we have in oats so again I'm not  

opposed to oats but we can't keep talking about  these things as treating disease or having some  

miracle properties and then avocado also has  three grams of polyunsaturated fatty acids and  

that's something else that we hear a lot about  the polyunsaturated fatty acids they're trying  

to promote these vegetable oils like canola and  soybean and safflower because they're supposedly  

high in polyunsaturated fats and is that a good  thing well it is good if it occurs in small to  

moderate amounts in Natural Foods in avocados in  nuts and seeds then it's protected by the food and  

when we eat it we can process it quickly before  it oxidizes and go rancid but if 10 grams are  

good it doesn't mean 20 or 30 is better because  that's not the type of fat that we need to burn  

for fuel we want to eat some of it because it  it balances out the Omega sixes and some of it  

like fish oil helps us with very specific things  like hormones and cell membranes but that's not  

the type of fat that we are supposed to burn  for fuel So when you buy the soall vegetable  

oils in the store and they claim that they're  good because they're high in polyunsaturated  

fatty acids that's not true because these oils  are destroyed they're highly highly processed  

a completely devoid of nutrients and those you  do not want anything to do with but a little bit  

inside food that occurs naturally is just fine  if you enjoyed this video you're going to love  

that one and if you truly want to master Health by  understanding how the body really works make sure  

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