Transcription
If I was taking anti-immune drugs for asthma and I can show you that here was the fat surrounding my heart and you can see that it's a huge amount of fat and it's highly inflammatory, similar to visceral fat, and it gives a lot of increased risk for heart attacks. People are so focused on the coronary artery calcium scoring, and the calcium scoring is the long term, again, right? The end of the line when the plaque is calcified. But before you even have a plaque, you have inflammation and the fat surrounding your heart. So this was my heart, and this is my heart. You can see there is zero fat surrounding my heart. You want to do the strategies of food, the strategies of movement, the strategies of strength training, and stress hormesis. So you build health in your body by reversing visceral fat, gaining muscle. It's not about losing weight. Losing weight is a bonus. It's about losing disease and making your life with ease.
What if you could actually see what's going on inside of your body and it told a completely different story than what you thought? Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Anna Rosa, a medical doctor and radiologist who uses advanced imaging like MRIs to detect visceral fat and inflammation and the things we can't see on the outside. We're talking about what she's seeing in her patients right now and how diet, including low carb and carnivore, can impact what shows up on scans and why so many people who look healthy, might not actually be on the inside. This is a really eye-opening conversation you don't want to miss. So, grab a coffee, get comfy, and let's dive in. Dr. Rosa, thank you so much for joining me today. I got the pleasure of meeting you in person last weekend. It was so fun. We got to go to meet together. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It's an honor to be here with you. It was so good to hug you in person and to talk and to have fun. And now we're going to be sharing wisdom and sharing health with your people. My people now, too.
Yes, all of our people. I can't wait.
Let's get right into it. You talk a lot about visceral fat as a silent killer. Why is something so dangerous basically invisible to everybody?
So, definitely because in the world we live right now, as a radiologist, I see visceral fat 95-97% of all exams that I read every day. Either MRIs, which the visceral fat is this huge amount of white here inside the abdominal cavity, right? This sequence shows the visceral fat as white, the fat as white. But radiologists also see visceral fat in ultrasounds, CTs, even X-rays. So because fat has a different density from solid organs and bones. So I believe that it has been invisible because 95% of the people have it. So we are just considering it the normal, right? The normal for the population is to be sick. As the average labs, labs are calculated in sicker people as well, right? As everything has been accepted as normal for aging, right? And it's not. And that's why this silent killer that is producing inflammatory molecules, cytokines, 24/7, 24/7. This silent killer is definitely like damaging our health from head to toe with vascular dementia, with cataracts, with blindness because of diabetes or because of degeneration of the macula, with like um gastroesophageal reflux, heartburn, and problems with swallowing, with like asthma, with rosacea, with like fatty liver. Fatty liver progressing for inflammation or hepatitis and even fibrosis and cirrhosis and cancer, with pancreas replaced by fat, and then you have insulin resistance, diabetes, and high glucose and high cortisol. And at least 13 types of cancer are correlated with visceral fat already proven. And unfortunately, three of them are in women. So endometrial, breast, and ovarian cancers are definitely correlated with visceral fat, hormonal imbalance, and inflammation.
So you see scans every day. What is the scariest thing you've seen on imaging that made you realize, okay, we have a massive metabolic health issue?
I think the scariest things that I have seen in imaging. First is what we are not describing, and second, which is the visceral fat. And second is the fact that medical schools and us all, no matter like I did my training in Brazil, I did my training in America, I did my fellowship, I have a PhD. So I have a lot of knowledge in radiology and I have been to a million different uh conferences in radiology and in other departments as well, liver, uh brain, GI gastrointestinal. And we always discuss the diseases. We always discuss the end of the line, but we are not discussing the root cause, which is the visceral fat, the insulin resistance, the blood sugar high. So more than what makes me really afraid, concerned, uh upset, disturbed that I am seeing in imaging is what we are seeing and we are not describing. And the fact that we give so much value at the end of the line, which I believe we should, but we also should come back, come back, come back and start describing the, start doing what they call root cause analysis, right? And start describing more when the patient, the client, you and I, would have power and control to get better earlier and faster.
So, the scary thing to you is that we're just playing this off and not telling people, okay, you have a visceral fat issue. Here's what you should do. We need to find the root cause, right?
Yes. Like when Dr. Omera, my friend, my mentor. We worked together in Minnesota. When he came to my office as a radiologist and he was an ER doctor, and he asked me, "Hey, Dr. Rosa, could you describe visceral fat?" I looked at him like flabbergasted. I was described visceral fat. Everybody has visceral fat. What does he want with that? Right? But fortunately, he had enough patience with me and I was curious enough that we worked together and I learned about visceral fat and I learned about my own visceral fat because at that time I was weighing 226 pounds and this is me at that time, and you can see lots of inflammation and asthma and rosacea and not sleeping and everything. And fortunately, at that time, we came together and we worked together until now, and I hope I'm going to be working with him for life because he became family. And uh now in all my reports, and I see it coming more often, and I hope that it's going to be a revolution faster and faster, but in all my reports, I say in the end, constellation of findings which include fat in the liver, visceral fat, fat surrounding the heart, fat in the pancreas, fat in the muscles, you know, all these findings are correlated with metabolic syndrome. And all these findings could be reversible or could be like ameliorated with techniques such as sprinting or eliminating processed foods, carbs, alcohol, sugar, right? All this strength training, walking, all these kind of things. And I put this all in my report. And I am so happy to say that a friend of mine, a radiologist who works with me now, she's part of my group, my female uh group, which has men too, but way less than females. Uh and she's, and I saw a report that she dictated the other day, and she described that too. So we're like, "Yes, we are winning this one step at a time."
I love that. So back to uh what you just said, low carb carnivore. Are you seeing just an immense reversal of this visceral fat as soon as your patients adopt this low carb or carnivore lifestyle?
Yes. And I can see uh by walking the talk, right? I can see an a significant improve in me, right? Like I said, I was 226 pounds and I had extreme inflammation. Uh I barely could breathe. I was taking anti-immune uh drugs for asthma. And I can show you that here was the fat surrounding my heart, and you can see that it's a huge amount of fat, the mediastinal and epicardial adipose tissue, and it's highly inflammatory, similar to visceral fat, and it gives a lot of like increased risk for heart attacks. People are so focused on the coronary artery calcium scoring, and the calcium scoring is the long term, again, right? The the the end of the line when the plaque is calcified. But before you even have a plaque, you have inflammation and the fat surrounding your heart. So this was my heart, and this is my heart. Now you can see there is zero fat surrounding my heart. So yes, you can get results at like, for example, this was my MRI of my abdomen. Like I was an ocean. I had an ocean of visceral fat surrounding my my organs, surrounding my bowel, my aorta, my IVC. So all this was constant inflammation, inflammation. And you can see my muscles were very thin and very replaced by fat as well, which is the myosteatosis. And now look at me in menopause. I'm getting better. Look at how the visceral fat has decreased. Still have pockets of visceral fat. But hey, I get this all the time. I get I get this over this because it's progress, not perfection, right? And if you look at the muscles, menopause, in hormonal replacement therapy, menopause for nine years already, and I am building muscles. I am building bones because that's what you want. With the strategies, you want to do the strategies of food, the strategies of movement, the strategies of strength training, and stress hormesis. So you build health in your body by reversing visceral fat, gaining muscle, gaining bone because Shan says this, says this so well. It's not about losing weight. Losing weight is a bonus. It's about losing disease and making your life with ease. Right.
Before we keep going, I want to thank the sponsor of this video, Salter Electrolytes. You guys know I've been on my own health journey for a while, and finding products that are high quality and actually work is really hard. That's why I have been loving Salter electrolytes. Most big-name electrolytes use cheap table salt mineral forms that really mess up my stomach, corn-derived citric acid fillers, and ingredients I just personally don't tolerate well. But Salter uses super clean and mineral-rich Norwegian sea salt. They're mold and lead-free, and they test higher in trace minerals than other brands. My absolute favorite flavor is the tart lime. But you guys, they have a salted caramel coffee, which is amazing. Side note, I only ever buy mold-free coffee, and the fact that this is mold-free is amazing. If you want to try Salter for yourself, I'll leave a link in the description below so you can save 10%. Now, let's get back to this interview. I love that you say it's not losing about it's not about losing weight, it's about losing the disease. And you are one to talk because you walked the walk and you've done this so that you can show your patients, look, it actually works and I'm so much healthier now. And I think it's really important to find a doctor that truly believes in what they're telling their patients and is doing it as well because that's how you know that it's working. Let's go back to when you were talking about root cause and what do you think is the main root cause of all this inflammation? Do you think there's one main thing that people should be aware of?
I think everything walks together, unfortunately, and it's a vicious cycle. But I think everything gets completely out of control when you have insulin resistance. So the villain together with visceral fat is insulin. So your insulin is really high because you are eating uh and doing things that are not good for your body and they are damaging your body. Your pancreas and your liver mainly. And then your liver gets completely malfunctioning. The pancreas gets malfunctioning. The receptors in your cells are malfunctioning. So you have lots of blood sugar and lots of insulin, or may I say lots of insulin, lots of blood sugar. Who comes first, right? The egg or the chicken? But anyway, um, and then you have fat in the liver, and then you have increased triglycerides in your bloodstream. Then the visceral fat comes trying to get rid of the triglycerides, and then it produces cortisol, and then it produces interleukin 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 6, and two more, factor necrosis alpha. So what happens is one feeds the other, and it's a huge snowball effect, right? So it's a, what we call in medicine, a cascade of inflammation when you activate your immune cells, neutrophils, macrophages, all that are supposed to protect you, but it gets so disregulated that you are producing and overproducing inflammation in your body. So I would say be aware of your insulin fasting, be aware of your blood sugar, be aware of your ketones when you are doing the ketogenic diet, right? The ketogenic diet or the carnivore with ferments or the carnivore strict, and see them going down. If you want to do blood tests, which um doesn't advocate much for blood tests, but if you want to do blood tests because I like seeing my blood tests getting better too, you are also going to check for inflammatory markers, which are the protein C reactive, high sensitivity, the homocysteine, and the apolipoprotein B. The high sensitive CRP, which is the protein C reactive. You also want to check if you are low in vitamin D, magnesium, and vitamin B12. So mainly this, but there are more. But again, find a good metabolic doctor. But mostly um get your MRI. It doesn't have a code yet, but we are here together to build a coalition of people to ask and require for our representatives for this to be like approved a code for a metabolic health screening. The same way we have health screenings for colon cancer, gynecological cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, we should have a metabolic screening for visceral fat since it is in the root of all the other things. So the MRI would be your baseline, and it's the gold standard because it shows the quantity, but also shows the quality, right? And if you want to follow your path, if you are improving not only by decreasing the visceral fat and the fat in your body, but also by improving bone and muscle, then you could maybe do a follow-up with a DEXA or a follow-up with a bioimpedance. But again, never replacing the MRI by them because the data is completely different.
That's really interesting. And I know there were a lot of comments on my interview with Dr. Omara that an MRI is just too expensive and that's not something that they can pay for out of pocket, which I think is so important why we're doing this and sharing this and your studies and things that you're publishing hopefully get more more reach and that we're able to do that. So, if they can't get an MRI and they just wanted to start adopting this lifestyle, do you think do you think that's enough? Just getting tested with their blood like you said and to adopt a low carb carnivore, carnivore with ferment, sprinting, everything that you recommend, is that enough to become healthy and reverse their disease?
I am all for progress, not perfection. Whenever you start, no matter what you have of tools and resources of diagnosing, starting is better than doing nothing, right? So if you are not able to do an MRI, and there is a site called Radiology Assist, and you can get check clinics in your place that you could do an MRI like for maybe $400. If it is too expensive, while you are saving the money, do not forget that you have to do that it would be good for you to do an MRI. But while you are saving money, you will start with the strategies, right? You will start with eliminating processed foods, decreasing carbs or eliminating carbs and eliminating sugar, alcohol, smoke, drugs, um juices, milk, vegetable oils. You start by experimenting with fasting. We start by hydration and electrolytes. You start with walking, sprinting, strength training, sunshine, sauna, cold exposure, sleep, right? And there are some things that you could do that will help somehow. If a DEXA scan is cheaper, you could have a DEXA scan or you could have a bioimpedance.
Wait a second. So, you are saying that we don't need the MRI?
No, I'm saying that the MRI is the gold standard and the MRI gives you the real raw data, quality, quantity of fat. However, you could start with the DEX if you already have it because it will give you the percentage of fat in your body and the amount of visceral fat. But they are not, they they are they are not like real data because the percentage of fat in your body is in the breast, in the bone marrow, in the in the subcutaneous, in the visceral fat, in the organs. The estimated visceral fat by the DEXA is the machine calculating the visceral fat by subtracting what it thinks it's subcutaneous fat, uh, taking it out from the body, body total fat percentage. So again, it's just an estimation. So I wouldn't really fix my attention in those numbers. I would fix my attention in, am I getting better? Am I decreasing what the the machine is telling me is visceral fat and fat in the body? And am I increasing bone mass and muscle? I would forget this scale because like I showed you guys here, I am building muscle, right? So I would forget this scale because I wish for each one of you who are following the strategies that you are going to gain weight in your scale because that means you are increasing muscle and bones, right? But you could also check your waist to hip circumference. So the waist to hip circumference goes at the level of the belly button and at the level of your hips, your butt where it's bigger, right? More protuberant. When it's less, hip waist divided by hip, less than 0.5, it means you are probably metabolically healthy. Greater than that, you are probably going to the direction of being metabolically unhealthy. You could also lay down on the floor or look yourself in your mirror. If your belly is more like flattened, it seems that you probably have less visceral fat. If it's more protuberant, like a pregnant belly, it means it's more probable that it's visceral fat. But do not fool yourself because your belly is flattened doesn't mean you couldn't be the thin outside, fat inside, right? So that's why it's important to at some point, saving your money, have an MRI to make sure that you are healthy. And another thing that you could do is again your measurements, or you could do a bioimpedance either at your gym where you exercise or at home, and that would be the same uh kind of way of thinking from the DEX. I hope that helps.
Oh, absolutely. I love that. That was a great answer. Thank you. Now, let's go to uh focus on a separate part of the body, the brain. Uh something that I was curious about. Can you actually see signs of brain inflammation on the imaging scans and how common is it in people struggling with like brain fog, anxiety, depression, and things like that?
Radiologists definitely can see and these things we describe, but usually we describe that they could be not usual for aging if the person is younger than 50 or more likely correlating with the patient's age. So what happens is as we are aging, if we are not taking action and claiming the health that we deserve with by these strategies, as we are aging, what happens is we are losing bone mass, we are losing muscle mass, we are also losing brain, right? So the sulci here, it's becoming wider. All this white shouldn't be here because your brain should have normal volume that would get this this uh sulci, sulci very connected. You know, I'm going to make a a picture of a normal brain because I don't, I didn't, I didn't. But like this white should not be here. So you are having brain atrophic changes because of inflammation, because of the aging process of being oxidized and not taking action to decrease your inflammation, right? How could you reverse that? Doing all these strategies that we described, exercising, strength training, definitely improves BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and increases the volume of your brain again. Uh, and also vitamin B12 and a good complex of vitamin B. So carnivore, right? Because plants don't have vitamin B12, right? And here we have another complication that occurs because of inflammation. So, for example, diabetes type two leads to inflammation in the small arteries that goes to your eye, that go to your eyes, and gives you the diabetes retinopathy, that is the major cause of blindness in the whole world. Then you have problems in the small arteries of your heart that could give you a heart attack. That's the cause of my my grandma's death, a heart attack because of diabetes type two. Problems in your kidneys, right, with glomerulo, glomerulopathy from the diabetes. Problems in your nerves and vascularization of your nerves that gives the neuropathy with numbness and tingling. And people have wounds that never heal. And people have to amputate toes, amputate legs, right? My grandma had to amputate two toes from both feet. So these small vessels, they are in our body. When the inflammation goes to the small vessels in your brain, it causes microstrokes, which are these white blebs that should not be here. Everything should be great, dark like that, the normal areas, right? So these white blebs, they are microstrokes in your white matter. And why does this matter? Because um, this is small vessel ischemic disease. You, you, it's not proven that you could reverse, but it's proven that you could prevent progression if you take action and decrease inflammation. This is insulin resistance in your brain, and it was denominated at di as diabetes type three a few years ago by the Mayo Clinic. So that's where you need to take action because this is a cause of dementia called vascular dementia, and it gives you memory problems, uh, problems with your gait, with your speech, with your memory, and also in in uh holding your urine. So you're going to have urinary incontinence. It is different from another type of dementia that it's Alzheimer's, but it's also that it's also related with inflammation and insulin resistance, which is the abnormal deposit of tau protein and amyloid in your brain. So we have different kinds of dementia, right? One is Alzheimer's, the other one is vascular dementia, and these two are related to inflammation. And then we have frontotemporal dementia and other kinds. But yes, we can see that in the brain, and you are able to reverse or prevent progression.
Wow, that's amazing. I didn't know you were going to have a picture of a brain. That was really cool to see. Thank you for sharing.
Are you are you seeing signs of inflammation and visceral fat in younger people now more than you would have say 10 or 20 years ago?
Absolutely. So I have been a radiologist for 30 years already, and yes, I have been seeing way more inflammation. You know, like obesity is increasing, visceral fat is increasing, fatty liver in children, which is extremely sad. So then these children that are 10, 20, 10, 10 years old, in 20 years, which I have seen as well, because I've been a radiologist for 30 years, they are having atrial fibrillation, they have fats surrounding their heart, they have a heart attacks when they are in their 40s and 50s, and they could die, right? They have uh cancer in their liver because of metabolic associated liver disease, and it's, it's, it's really sad. It's increasing, it's completely damaging the body, and definitely we have to come together and keep speaking louder and louder about how to, how to take action and get the strategies for normal health, for being carnivore, low carb, ketogenic diet, because it's nowadays we have seen, I see almost everybody now have atrial fibrillation, right? You look around your friends, lots of people are having radiofrequency ablations for atrial fibrillation when in fact they should be closing their mouth, mouth, right? So then they would decrease the visceral fat, decrease the inflammation, and get better from the atrial fibrillation, right? They have fatty liver disease, and then it's not because of alcohol anymore. It's because of what they are eating, the carbs and the toxins. And it's just changing, changing the way you look at food. Changing the way you look at your body as the vessel of your soul that you should honor, right? Changing the way you look at, like I look at my grandma and my mom. My mom died from ovarian cancer. I look at my grandma and my mom and I say, I'm honoring my grandma and my mom by putting this generational curse of being sick because of sugar down, and I'm taking ownership, and I'm, I'm changing this story right here, right now.
I love that you have such a strong drive behind what you do because it means so much more and it matters so much more, and your patients feel that, you know, so that's much appreciated. Thank you.
Now I have one final question.
Yep.
If there's one thing that you wish people understood about inflammation, metabolic health, and the way we're living today, today, what would that be?
Inflammation, metabolic health, and the way we are living today has been taught by us because we are, we were taught to fill yourselves, fill ourselves with with carbs. We were taught to avoid our emotions and stuff ourselves with food or alcohol or anything else that is addictive. So I would say what I say in my program, you deserve an unhindered life. You deserve a life that you are free from everything that sabotages and holds you back. So you deserve a life that you recognize and you know, not here in your head, but here in your heart, who you are, whose you are. Connect to your faith. Connect to your soul. Connect to your heart. And every time there is a story, a belief, a thought that it's negative, that it's kind of holding you back, you are able to challenge and to ask, is this true? Does this love me back? What is going to be my next step in love to me? Small next step in love to me. Because when you do that, when you change your mindset, because you are anchored in your soul, who you are and whose you are, then you build a solid rock foundation for the triad, body, mind, spirit. And that's when you are going to do the nutrition, the movement, the strategies for the body, and you're going to have sustainable success.
Wow, that was so good. This is why I wanted to talk to you because you are such a powerful speaker and you make me want to get up and go exercise and eat healthy even though I am already eating healthy.
You do. Yes.
Yeah. You, you are so motivational and I love it so much. But Dr. Rosa, this was such a powerful conversation. I really hope that it reaches the people that could really use it and uh that's why we do this, right? To help others get healthy and to live their best lives. So, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much. Remember, you are loved. I love you. You are lovable. You are lovely. And I'm sending a hug from my heart to yours.
Thank you, friends. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. And as always, thanks again for watching. And I'll see you next time.