260: Why You Can’t Trust What The Media’s Telling You About Your Diet with Kamal Patel

Today’s Guest

Kamal Patel

In this episode of the Legendary Life Podcast, Ted interviews Kamal Patel, the director of Examine.com, where they do independent analyses on supplements and nutrition. Kamal was also on episode 78 talking about nutrition hacks to optimize health and hormones. If you haven’t yet, click and check that episode out here.

In terms of nutrition and supplements, it seems like there is always conflicting information and that everybody is trying to sell you something. It’s hard to know who to trust. One free resource to help you sort through all that information is Examine.com.

In this episode, Kamal talks about some of the cutting edge research about nutrition, and some of the hot topics. He also covers why you can’t always believe what you read or hear in the media about the results or implications of a study and how he uses self-experimentation to tweak and get better results.

You’ll Learn

• Why Examine.com takes the conservative and cautious approach to information and advice (3.49)
• A prime example of how what gets reported in the media about new studies is often misinformation (5.37)
• Correlation v. causation and why it matters (9.53)
• Why authoritative-sounding names don’t equate to authority (12.00)
• The difference between the operational and the mechanistic when it comes to data and study results (13.29)
• The mechanistic reason (NEU5GC coating on the cells) why you might want to rethink your consumption of red meat if you have certain risk factors (15.49)
• The reason why there isn’t information transparency in health care (18.05)
• Why comorbidities matter and how that impacts health studies and health advice (21.02)
• Kamal’s advice about colonics and extreme diets (22.22)
• The confusing recommendations about protein intake and what you need to know (24.01)
• What we know about markers of aging, the contributing factors towards aging and the biggest contributors to actually dying (28.06)
• How calorie restriction, happiness and longevity can interact (31.19)
• The shift in dietary focus from our ancestors just trying to get enough calories to today where we are dieting (33.25)
• The importance of variety in our diet, but also of smooth transitions when we make changes(36.00)
• The latest on the ketogenic diet (39.45)
• The advantages of the ketogenic diet (43.13)
• The reason Kamal frequently does self-experiments (45.31)
• What you need to focus on for personalized nutrition (49.25)
• General guidelines to follow for self-experimentation (55.01)
• Why tracking one habit or behavior change at a time is more important than tracking micronutrients (59.15)
• Kamal’s recommendations for behavior change (1.01.25)

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Connect with Kamal Patel:

• Check out Examine at www.examine.com It’s one of the first places Ted goes for supplement and nutrition information.
• Facebook
• Twitter

Related Episodes:

• 11 Nutrition Hacks to Optimize Your Health And Hormones

Ted’s Takeaway:

This episode makes it clear how complicated nutrition can by, why so many people say so many different things and why we still don’t have all the answers. Ted’s takeaway for this episode is exactly that: nutrition is complicated. If you’ve read contradictory things and are confused, don’t feel bad. Even people who have PhDs in this stuff, they’re still trying to figure it out. Keep that in mind when someone is trying to sell you something! Be open minded, but also be skeptical. And remember you can do your own search on Examine.com if you want to look up the ingredients or the supplements or the nutritional research.