I Ate 100 SERVINGS Of AVOCADO In 10 Days: Here Is What Happened To My BLOOD

Hello Health Champions today we're going to  talk about when I ate 100 servings of avocado in 10 days and what happened to my blood work but  first a few fun facts that I looked up about one of my favorite foods the avocado one serving is  usually defined as 50 grams of the edible portion which is about one third of a medium to large avocado  another thing is that even though we usually talk talk about it as a vegetable it is actually both  a fruit and a berry and the origins of the avocado goes back a very very long time as far as 50 to  60 million years is how long avocado has existed and during that time it has been kept alive  the seeds have been spread by very very large prehistoric animals but since those animals became  extinct about 13,000 years ago it could no longer be spread by those animals and the survival of the  alado since then depended on humans so humans have cultivated and enjoyed avocado for over 10,000  years and the area where it was first cultivated was in South America and Central America and very  often we're told that we should eat more fruits and vegetables more fruits and vegetables but  I want to do a little comparison and show you what enormous differences there can be between  different fruits so the avocado is a fruit and if we look at a 150 gram amount of this fruit and  we look at the total carbs we look at the fiber we look at the net carbs we look at sugar and we look  at the amount of fats and when to compare it to an Apple so the avocado has about 13 G gr of total  carbohydrate whereas an apple a medium to large Apple has about 23 g so there is a significant  difference but they're s still sort of on the same scale but then what's really interesting  when we look at the amount of fiber the avocado has four times more fiber than an apple and so  often we hear that apples they're so full of fiber they're such a fantastic source of fiber if  you check various lists on the internet virtually all of them are going to have apple on there  but not necessarily every one of them are going to have avocado and one of the biggest problems  that we face today is insulin resistance and poor carbohydrate tolerance so when we eat carbohydrate  then we break down that food we absorb it and it turns into blood glucose which then triggers  insulin and if we do too much of that we become insulin resistant we become overweight and we  become metabolically unhealthy so what we need to understand is that it's not carbohydrate per  se it's the carbohydrate that we can absorb and we cannot absorb the fiber and this is why we want  to calculate net carbohydrates which means we take the total carbohydrates and we subtract the total  fiber and now when we compare avocado to Apple we see that there's an enormous difference that  there's virtually nothing in the avocado that can become blood sugar whereas almost everything  in the Apple becomes blood sugar in fact the Apple has seven times more net carbohydrates things that  can be absorbed into the bloodstream and become blood sugar and when we look at the sugar at the  sucrose the stuff that is glucose plus fructose the things we really want to try avoid when we  have metabolic problems and insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes now we see that there's this tiny  tiny little white sliver of sugar in the avocado versus almost all of the carbohydrate in the apple  is sugar meaning half of that is actually fructose and while fruit like an apple or an orange or a  pear is still infinitely better than added sugar like white sugar or high fructose corn syrup it  is still sugar it's still a challenge it's still a burden on the person that is insulin resistant and  when we compare the amount of sugar or fructose in these two there's 41 times more sugar and fructose  in an apple than there is in an avocado so why is that we have sayings like an apple a day keeps  the doctor away rather than an avocado a day and why is the Apple so much more popular on lists  of healthy foods and the answer is of course the fat because the avocado has 15% fat we have 23  grams of fat in a medium to large avocado whereas if you look at that tiny tiny little sliver it  almost doesn't register there's like 0. 2 grams of fat in an apple it's virtually fat-free and  this is why believe the apple is so much more popular with dietitians and with people trying to  lose weight because we have this idea that it's still about calories and fat and eating lowfat  and fat-free and so forth and indeed the avocado has 154 times more fat than the Apple but we have  to realize that all these metabolic problems that we're experiencing as a species have to do with  the sugar and the fructose which is half of this white bar and the net carbohydrates that become  blood sugar so let's look at the first part of the blood work which has to do with blood sugar  control how well the body manages blood sugar and carbohydrates and the first classic marker is  glucose and the optimal range is anywhere from 65 to 88 and I would say if you're fasting if you're  doing an extended fast at least 24 hours it could go down to 65 or if you're doing a ketogenic diet  it might be 65 if you're doing something a little more moderate and you're eating a couple of times  a day you probably want to be maybe like 72 or 75 to 88 but the standard range the lab range if  you go get your blood work done and you get the results back then there's a range called the lab  range and if you're outside that range you get a little flag and that's the only indication that  something is good or bad and the lab range for blood glucose is usually about 65 to 100 so how  do they come up with that well it is based on a statistical distribution it's called a bell  curve so if you take just about any variable and you test the population you're going to find  that the values fall on this distribution called Vel curve and then when it comes to lab results  what they do is they take the middle 95% and they call that normal so if you're above or below  what that means is you're basically in the 2 and a half% that is above or below that range so as  the PO population gets sicker or as we get more overweight or as more insulin resistant then this  curve is going to shift and it's also different in different states so that's why I believe it's not  such a great marker and therefore people who work with blood work and who study people and try to  figure out what's really healthy they have come up with what's called an optimal range so I believe  65 to 8 8 is about an optimal range and before I was at 86 and after I was at 85 so basically  no change but it is inside this optimal healthy range and glucose is a very useful marker and it's  simple to do but a much better marker is called hemoglobin A1c it is a much more useful marker at  determining trends at seeing what the average glue glucose is over a longer period of time because  glucose can shift very very quickly if you cut down your carbs or you fast for even a couple of  days there can be dramatic shifts in that glucose but the A1C works the way that glucose is going  to stick to the proteins in the red blood cells to the hemoglobin in the red blood cell and then  we can see how much of it is stuck and the normal range the optimal range is 4. 8 to 5.

3 and the  lab range again will go up to 5. 7 and above 5. 7 they call it pre-diabetic so my numbers were  5.

3 before and 5. 3 after so again in the optimal range and no change but then one more marker  we absolutely want to test is called insulin and it's a much better marker again then either  glucose or hemoglobin A1c in determining insulin resistance rather than just blood glucose levels  and the optimal range here is anywhere from two to five that's a very insulin sensitive person would  have a fasting insulin of about 2 to five and mine was 4. 2 before and 3.

9 after so in other words  eating 100 servings of avocado did not change my blood glucose control really in any way but  the thing to understand about lab ranges here is that the lab ranges are a little wider but  not dramatically different than the optimal when it comes to glucose and A1C they're within  a few points but when we look at insulin this is where this trend is really changing when people  are getting more and more insulin resistant and this curve shifts so if we look at these values  for the 95 percentile distribution then this would be an insulin value of about two and this  would be an insulin value of about 25 so now the optimal range is actually down here so this is  how few people are actually metabolically really healthy whereas the majority of the population are  slipping into insulin resistant and pre-diabetes and even type 2 diabetes so many people are going  to be by the time they hit 25 they're going to be type 2 diabetic but if we only measure glucose  which is the variable controlled and suppressed by the insulin we're going to completely miss that  Trend so in the end I actually ate 104 servings of avocado in those 10 days and this provided me  with 8,684 calories which was 31% of all the calories that I ate I didn't count every single  calorie but I was around 2800 calories per day so this also gave me 102 gram of protein 354 gram of  fiber only 96 gram of net carbs and only 15 gam of sugar so the vast majority of those calories came  from 800 101 grams of fat and again we have a fat phobia as a culture we've been told for so long  that fat is bad fat clogs up the heart fat makes you gain weight none of which is true and at the  same time we're being told that the Mediterranean diet is so healthy and those people actually eat  tons of olive oil which is mostly monounsaturated fat and it turns out the fat in avocado is  mostly monounsaturated it's pretty much almost the exact same percentage of monounsaturated  fatty acids in avocado as it is in olive oil so you could make a very good case for  avocado other than the fact that it didn't originate in the Mediterranean that avocado  is just as healthy as the Mediterranean diet and not only that but it tastes so good at least  to me that even after eating 104 servings in 10 days I still like avocado and I have had it since  but let me mention something called the fasting mimicking diet and how that relates to avocado  so the fasting mimicking diet is where you eat a certain way so that it mimics fasting that you get  virtually all the same benefits as a complete fast but you're still eating some things and the things  you have to restrict is calories sugar and protein primarily and there are companies that will sell  you a kit where you have all these little pouches and all these little powders you can mix them up  and you can make soups and they cost you a couple of hundred bucks and it's okay it doesn't taste  all that great but it gets you through and it's prepackaged or you can spend a significant amount of  time and do the research and find all the recipes online and cook your own food and in a way that  meets the parameters or you could simply eat three to four avocados per day and nothing else and  what that would give you would be approximately 868 calories per day which is almost exactly what  you get on average if you buy that kit you would get 10 grams of protein and this is also what the  diet the method recommends to meet the parameters of a very low protein intake would be about 10  grams a day it would give you plenty of fiber to keep your bowels moving and it would give you a  very small amount only about 10 grams of net carbs which is actually way less than you would get  with a kit so you would get even better results it would only have one 1. 5 gram of sugar and of  course it would have almost all the calories as fat 80 grams of fat but again this is the same  type of fat as in olive oil so 51 gram of the fat would be monounsaturated fatty acids OIC  acid just like in olive oil so with a fasting mimicking diet they usually recommend that you do  maybe two days a week and then you eat five days normally or you could just pick one day or three  days whatever you feel like but if you wanted to try this you could actually do this so simply so  inexpensively and just eat three to four avocados but I want to give you a little more detailed  breakdown on how much nutrients there are in these avocados so when I ate these 104 servings  in 10 days per day I got the following nutrients I got 35 gram of fiber which is 118% of what they  recommend that we get in a day and let me tell you that will give you some glorious bowel movements  avocados are rich in iron 3. 2 mgram will give you 40% of your daily iron magnesium 38% phosphorus  40% potassium 77% of the potassium you need you will get 32% of the zinc and you will get 98% of  the copper and also 34% of the manganese that you need in a day so these were the fiber and the  minerals now let's look at the vitamins you get 51% of your vitamin C you get 33% of your vitamin  B1 you get 57% of your vitamin B2 62% of B3 100 52% of B5 115% of B6 and 116% of B9 you get 68%  of vitamin E and you get 91% of vitamin K and now let's look at the next section of the blood  work so one of the benefits that they're talking about the reason they say that the Mediterranean  diet is so healthy is that people get less heart disease less chronic disease Etc and most of that  has to do with inflammation so let's look at some of these inflammatory markers and one of the most  popular ones is called HS CRP or high sensitivity C reactive protein and if you have an acute  infection this number could go through the roof it could go into double digits or or even higher  but when you don't have an acute infection then it's supposed to be Z 0 to one again the lab range  is 0 to3 and a lot of people with inflammation and metabolic disease are going to have five and  six and seven but you really want it to be as close to zero as possible and before mine was at  0.

83 and after it was at 0. 22 so this would fit the idea that a diet like the Mediterranean diet  which is very low in processed foods and very high in monounsaturated fats would lower inflammation  another important marker is called homocystine and we check that on every blood work in the  office because it's an inflammatory marker it's an independent risk factor for heart disease and  what it is it's an intermediary metabolite in the body so it is produced as a byproduct of certain  things the liver does but then we are supposed to convert the homocystine into something harmless  and eventually it becomes glutathione which is our body's most important antioxidant but if we  don't convert the homocysteine effectively if we're missing certain factors mostly B vitamins  or if we have a genetic predisposition if we have a defective or an alternative MTHFR Gene  then we don't convert it so well and the lab range again closer to zero is better the optimal  range is 0 to 7 the lab range is 0 to 15 but if you have 13 or 14 that is really way way too high  if you're at eight or nine then I would not maybe worry about it so much but anything higher than  that you want to look at some supplementation to start taking care of that now now mine was  at 10. 7 before and afterwards it was less than three which interestingly is the lowest value I  have ever recorded another interesting marker is fertin and it shows us two things two different  things on the one hand it is our best marker for iron reserves and menstrating women who are in  childbearing age and have heavy periods they are often very low low in fertin even if their red  blood cells and their hemoglobin is normal and if they're losing blood then the fertin is low  that means they are close to running out on the other hand very very high number of ferritin could  indicate iron overload it could indicate a disease called hemocromatosis if you get very very high  so the optimal range is typically 40 to about 250 and some people put it even a little bit lower  like 150 or 200 which could indicate if you're a little higher than 150 could indicate inflammation  but if you're way high if you're like 600 800 or over a thousand then it is probably iron overload  and that's something you want to watch you want to check fertin on every blood test because it's very  inexpensive and if you have extremely high numbers hemocromatosis is a very serious condition that  can cause severe liver stress and pancreas stress but the way fertin can also show us inflammation  is that inflammation causes cellular damage and fertin is supposed to be inside blood cells  that's where it stores the iron for the body so 60% of the iron in the body is red blood blood  cells 40% is in the fertin on average and then if the cell breaks now some of this fertin spills out  and we get elevated levels in the bloodstream so my numbers were 334 beforehand and 231 after so  these numbers don't tell us anything absolutely definite but they are all good indications and  that's the idea of blood work is that you look at multiple markers and you see where the trend  where the big picture is heading so now let's look at the traditional cholesterol panel where  they measure total cholesterol and they want that usually to be under 200 and in my opinion this  is an almost irrelevant marker and I believe that optimal values are between 170 and 270 and we're  going to talk about some other things that are much more related to actual risk so my number  was 239 before and 21 after then we look at LDL and again traditionally mainstream they want to  see that under 100 and I'd like to see it between 100 and 170 it wouldn't be a disaster if it went  down into 80 or 90 but again we'd have to look at the rest of the panel to try to figure out why Y  and my LDL went from 154 to 117 and then we have HDL or high density lipoproteins as opposed to low  density lipoproteins and traditionally they speak about LDL as bad and HDL is good but in reality  there's only appropriate LDL and appropriate HDL the body manufactures exactly what it needs based  on the circumstances in the body and typically we want to see HDL between 55 and 75 and if you have  cholesterol that's a lot higher like 270 to 300 and that could be normal for you then you probably  want to see HDL a little bit higher than 75 also my numbers were 69 before and 72 after and then we  have a marker called triglycerides and this is the fat in the blood and it's circulating so that  we can get energy to the cells and there is a particle called vldl very low density lipoprotein  that is just full of these triglycerides and then as these vldls circulate they drop off the  triglycerides as fuel and the vldl becomes an LDL so if the cell is metabolically healthy then it's  going to willingly absorb these triglycerides and they're not going to stay in the bloodstream for  a very long time but if the cells are resistant as in insulin resistant fuel resistant then they're  not going to accept these triglycerides and then that number goes up so in my book optimally I want  to see 50 to 90 MGR per deciliter the lab Rin goes up to 150 but again a lot of the people included  in that lab range are not metabolically healthy so I started at 72 and I went down to 68 so this is  the traditional cholesterol and lipid panel and in the vast majority of cases probably 90 95% this is  all they measure and then if you are over 200 for total or over 100 or 20 for LDL then they suggest  that you get a Statin medication but this is not where you get your true risk assessment instead  you want to look at the detailed cholesterol you want to look at the particle counts and the  size so here the first marker is ldlp or the LDL particle count and ideally we'd like to see 500 to  1,5 500 particles and here I went from 1232 down to 1,9 so there was a significant reduction in  the LDL particle count and why is that important because it's not the weight of the cholesterol it  is the number of particles as they bump up against the inside of the blood vessel wall the risk of  these particles getting through is going to be higher the more particles we have the higher  number of particles but the other factor that matters is the size so the smaller the particles  are the easier it is for them to slip through these gaps and cause problems so here there's not  really a range typically they say that you should have less than 500 and here they say that your  particles should be less than a thousand so they pretty much allow you have 50% of your particles  as being small but to me that's not a great sign because if you have 50% of the particles being  small that means a lot of them are small and a lot of them are damaged because it's inflammation and  glycation meaning that sugar sticks to them and oxidative stress so all the same things that are  associated with heart disease and with plaing they cause that because because they caus the particle  to shrink so I'd like to see that number as low as possible and ideally under 20% not under 50%  and my numbers went from 354 down to 194 and I'll give you the percentages in a second the other  thing is we want to measure the average size and of course all these are dependent on each other  but it's nice to get these numbers on paper so when they count the small particles the number of  small particles they count the particles that are less than 20.

5 nanometers but ideally you want to  see the average size being 21 and a half and up so typically you're not going to see a number over 23  but I've seen a lot of people with numbers in the 22 range and mine went from 21. 4 and up to 21. 6 so  again this matches what we saw we saw a decrease in total particles we saw a decrease in the number  of small particles and we saw an increase in size so this is very consistent and when we look at  the percentage of the LDL particles that were less than 20.