You Were Lied To About Seed Oils! The Truth About Butter, Tallow & Olive Oil

For decades, Americans were told to replace butter with seed oils. Then the internet swung the other direction and declared seed oils a “mitochondrial toxin.” But what if both sides are missing the real problem? In this episode, Dr. Josh Axe breaks down the seed oil debate using the studies on both sides — including data showing higher linoleic acid intake was associated with 15% lower cardiovascular deaths and 21% lower heart disease, while other trials suggest replacing saturated fat with omega-6-rich oils may increase cardiovascular risk. Uncover what’s really going on in your body with advanced biomarker testing for hormones, thyroid, and metabolism— plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor! → http://mybloodwork.com Thank you to our sponsors! Sunlighten Sauna: https://get.sunlighten.com/axepodcast Manukora Manuka Honey: https://manukora.com/axe Caraway Home: carawayhome.com/drjoshaxe (Use code DRJOSHAXE) for an exclusive discount Watch The Dr. Josh Axe Show every Monday & Thursday on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drjoshaxe?sub_confirmation=1 🎧 Early Access! Our listeners enjoy every episode before anyone else! Tune in below and join our exclusive group of listeners → Spotify: https://bit.ly/DrJoshAxeSpotify Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3JDvWcS Pre-order my NEW BOOK, Heal Your Cells → https://bit.ly/3QJBcQ5 Watch my free training on how to naturally balance your blood sugar and reverse your symptoms → http://DrAxeDiabetesClass.com Discover practical steps you can take today to start healing your thyroid naturally → http://DrAxeThyroidClass.com If you’re ready to start feeling like yourself again and balance your hormones, take my free class → http://DrAxeHormoneClass.com CONNECT WITH DR. JOSH AXE Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/drjoshaxe/ Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/DrJoshAxe/ TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@thedrjoshaxeshow/ X → https://x.com/drjoshaxe/ LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshaxe Website → http://thehealthinstitute.com Sign up for my newsletter → https://bit.ly/4oE9Jf3 Ask Dr. Axe → http://speakpipe.com/drjoshaxe 00:00 — The Seed Oil Debate Is More Complicated Than You Think 02:16 — Why Every Cell In Your Body Is Made From Fat 04:00 — How Industrial Seed Oils Are Actually Made 05:10 — The Case For Seed Oils: Heart Disease & Mortality Data 06:15 — The Case Against Seed Oils: Omega-6, Safflower Oil & Cardiovascular Risk 08:46 — Are Seed Oil Studies Misleading? Olive Oil, Bias & Confounders 10:20 — Lane Norton vs Paul Saladino: Two Sides Of The Seed Oil War 12:00 — Healthy User Bias: Why Nutrition Studies Are So Hard To Trust 14:00 — Dr. Axe’s Honest Take: The Molecule Isn’t The Villain 15:10 — Chinese Medicine View: Butter, Tallow, Dampness & Inflammation 17:20 — The Top 10 Healthiest Oils Ranked 18:00 — #10–#7: Macadamia Oil, Cocoa Butter, Duck Fat & Beef Tallow 20:00 — #6–#4: Grass-Fed Butter, Sesame Oil & Ghee 22:20 — #3 Coconut Oil: Stable Fat, MCTs & LDL Concerns 24:40 — #2 Avocado Oil: High-Heat Cooking & The Adulteration Problem 26:10 — #1 Extra Virgin Olive Oil: The Most Defensible Longevity Oil 28:20 — Can You Cook With Olive Oil? Smoke Point vs Polyphenols 29:30 — The Seed Oils That Are Actually Healthy 30:45 — The Final Rule: Stop Fighting About Oils & Eat Real Food 31:30 — Heal Your Cells: Longevity, Nutrition & Reversing Chronic Disease DISCLAIMER This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Josh Axe and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Axe nor the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Josh Axe?

  Today I'm settling one of the loudest food fights on the internet, seed oils, and I'm going to be doing it the way almost nobody does, with the actual studies on both sides and the truth about what to cook with instead. Now through the 70s, 80s and 90s, you were sold that seed oils were heart healthy. In fact, I can remember when my mom tried to get my dad to change over to using the, you know, better than butter, things like margarine, using more of the seed oils. And of course, my dad absolutely refused and said, I'm going to keep eating butter. And we were told that these are the healthiest oils out there. And here's the reality, seed oils are in your salad dressings, they're in your chips, they're in your restaurant fryer, even in your organic protein bars.

• 0:45Josh Axe?

  And we haven't just cooked with seed oils, we rebuilt our entire food supply and system on seed oils for the last 100 years. Have you ever felt inflamed and couldn't figure out why? Eaten clean and still felt tired, puffy and foggy? Here's the honest part, the science is messier than either side admits. So today, we're going to follow the data wherever it actually leads. And if you're a person who's felt inflamed, maybe issues with brain fog, or just overall, you're feeling like you're aging too quickly, seed oils could be a culprit, but they also might not be as bad as you think. And I'll be settling the debate today. So over the next 30 to 40 minutes, I'm going to walk you through the science

• 1:30Josh Axe?

  in terms of why these fats are so important to even your cell membrane in anti-aging and reversing disease. I'll cover both sides, everyone from Paul Saladino on the carnivore side to Lane Norton and other scientists over on this other side. I'll talk about the cooking science, okay, smoke points, do they even matter? And then I'll do the countdown to the top 10 oils you should be using in ranking order to heal and promote longevity. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Ak Show.

• 2:15Josh Axe?

  So here's what most people have never learned. Every cell in your body is wrapped in a cell membrane of fat. That's right. The primary thing that your cells are made up of is fat, followed by protein. But your cell membrane is built primarily of fat and secondarily of protein. And if you eat stable fats, you build resilient cells. If you eat fragile fats, you build fragile cells that oxidize more easily. And this is really important. So what happens with a lot of these fatty acids today is they can be somewhat resilient and become more fragile over time. We can break them down and process them. And so, for example, here's how this works. Here is how industrial seed oils are actually made, okay?

• 2:59Josh Axe?

  Number one, solvent extraction, okay? Seeds are crushed and washed in a chemical called hexane. It's a petroleum solvent. And they do this to squeeze every drop of oil we can out of whatever seed we're trying to extract from. The next thing we do is we degum and bleach and deodorize. And this is why when you smell these oils today, they don't smell like the food. Soybean oil doesn't smell like soybeans, right? So you have this crude oil that's highly refined, it's stripped with harsh chemicals. And then we do high heat to, again, deodorize it to remove any sort of smell that's left. This also can give it a longer shelf life. And then we put it in restaurants. So this is how it works.

• 3:44Josh Axe?

  And so it is highly processed when we're talking about these industrialized seed oils. Now, the real question is this: are seed oils healthy or not healthy? Well, let me say this: generally, they're not the healthiest. We know that as a fact. They're definitely not the healthiest oils you can be using. What the conversation is, though, today, when you see somebody that is in line with "Make America Healthy Again," or the carnivore diet, or paleo, or traditional diets, they would tend to promote doing a lot of beef talus. And butter and saying, hey, these things are totally fine. Okay. And they're healthy. They're healthy. Eat as much as you want. That's what we hear from one side. And then you have this other side that's more mainstream conventional medicine.

• 4:29Josh Axe?

  And they will say that, uh, no, seed oils are fine. They're generally healthy. They promote heart health. And they have really pushed back saying, no, these seed oils are healthier than a lot of these animal fats. So let's dive into what the science says. Okay. So the first here is here is the case for seed oils. Okay. Saying maybe they're not so bad. Okay. In large cohort studies, and these are very large studies. When you look at the highest intake versus lowest intake of what we call LA linoleic acid, which is the main oil found in seed oils today. Okay. Those who had more seed oils had 15% lower risk of cardiovascular deaths and 21% lower heart disease. Okay. So overall, they had lower deaths.

• 5:14Josh Axe?

  And so overall, when they were looking at, hey, did people eat more or less seed oils? The seed oils group, the people that were eating more of these had lower heart disease. Okay. So that's the case for seed oils. And listen, a lot of times things are processed and they don't lose all of their benefits. And so what's happening here is you've got a soybean, which of course isn't a seed, but we put it in that category. But you have, uh, soybean oil and you have cottonseed oil and canola oil and safflower and sunflower. Well, you have all these, uh, oils. They're high in omega six fats and you probably know this, but your omega six and omega three want to be balanced, right? So it's very, very high omega six. And so then they take that oil, they process it and refine it down. And then that's what we're getting in these seed oils that you get in fast food restaurants

• 5:59Josh Axe?

  or we're cooking with at home oftentimes. Okay. So, so, so, but there is a case for seed oils that it isn't as bad as we thought. Now here's the case against seed oils. Okay. There is data, really, really large heart studies out of the British Medical Journal in 2013. Found that swapping saturated fats and doing safflower oil instead raised all cause cardiovascular d- disease and deaths. So, so there are some studies, large scale studies showing, no, this is It's worse for you if you get rid of your saturated fats and start doing safflower oil instead. And saturated fats could be somebody getting rid of, you know, their butter primarily is probably using the study secondarily, maybe even something like beef tallow. And then we

• 6:43Josh Axe?

  have another case against seed oils, and that is omega-6 specific meta-analysis studies. When you separate pure omega-6 trials from mixed omega-3,6 trials, the pure omega-6 trends towards harm. And so here's what the studies show. By the way, there really aren't many studies showing like grass-fed beef tallow or extra virgin olive oil comparison. The comparison is this: butter versus seed oil. So primarily, it's the largest example would be butter versus soybean oil. What they found is, is when people consumed more seed oil and less butter, lower rates of mortality, lower rates of dementia, and lower rates of cardiovascular

• 7:27Josh Axe?

  disease. Now, I do want to point out, this is not necessarily grass-fed butter, raw butter, the highest quality butter you can get. This is just conventional butter versus conventional seed oils. Seed oils win, according to the data. Now, the thing I want to call out here is this does not mean that seed oils are healthy. This just means that seed oils might be healthier for the average person than conventional butter.

• 7:57Josh Axe?

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• 8:46Josh Axe?

  You know, one of the other big issues that I have is in some of these large scale studies, and sometimes this is hidden, that when they're talking about seed oils, oftentimes they're lumping a lot of plant oils in together, or they add olive oil to the seed oil group. Okay. And that is an honest issue that people should really consider because of course olive oil is going to skew things in the wrong direction. But overall, even from a Chinese medicine standpoint, I'll get into this in just a minute, it does make sense that for some people, seed oils might be healthier than butter because butter is more dampening, it slows down the system more than something like soybean oil, even though it's highly refined and processed. You know, and right now in this

• 9:29Josh Axe?

  whole debate, we have two people that are pretty smart people. Lane Norton, who's a PhD, who, by the way, is very good at breaking down large scale studies. He tends to migrate towards the largest scale studies with the largest data points, especially in most recent years, which is a generally, you know, one of the best ways to look at data. And they have Paul Saladino, who is really one of the pioneers of this carnivore diet, who kind of breaks down things in isolation and looks at them that way. But also, at the same time, is trying to use more traditional methods and common sense for coming to the truth. And so, and here's their take on things. So Lane Norton says that seed oils are not

• 10:10Josh Axe?

  uniquely harmful. He argues that when you are doing the right amount of calories, all right, in controlled conditions, seed oils don't outperform other fats in causing harm. He said, in fact, they may lower LDL and cardiovascular risk. And so what he's saying from a scientific evidence standpoint of looking at a large body of data, I think he's right. And by the way, he is really brilliant at breaking down studies. He's one of the best people I've ever seen at actually looking at data and explaining why the data says what it does. Okay. But the thing that I do think that I always try and do, and I wish more people in the conventional scientific community would do as well, is don't just look at the scientific evidence.

• 10:54Josh Axe?

  You want to look at it. Okay, listen, that's very important, the whole body of evidence. But in addition, use some common sense in questions. For instance, okay, is olive oil in the study? Is that skewing things? Or here's a big one. Did the food system, did the agricultural system, did a lot of our, is some of our scientific data, is it biased in some way? We know with pharmaceuticals, this is the occasion, a great amount of time. But I think in the food industry, there's a level of that as well. But I do think, to his point, that seed oils aren't as bad as some people say. But they are bad. That's the thing. And you wouldn't want to focus on those. And Paul Saladino, he's a medical doctor, who I believe lives in Costa Rica.

• 11:37Josh Axe?

  He's been on the show once before. And he argues that seed oils are a mitochondrial toxin. He argues that high linoleic acid seed oils drive lipid peroxidation and metabolic dysfunction. And he said the pro studies are riddled with co-founders and healthy user bias. I'll give you an example. He's saying in these studies, a lot of people are very health conscious. So they're exercising, they're trying to do seed oils, they may be more active. And so there's some other things throwing off some of the data. And so here's some facts I want everyone to think about when it comes to this seed oil debate in terms of steel manning both sides. Here's number one thing to know.

• 12:15Josh Axe?

  Healthy user bias, okay? Until recently, people using seed oils also smoked less, exercised more, and ate more vegetables. Okay, that's hard to adjust away. Okay, they ate more fruits and vegetables, they smoked less, they exercised more. The same people that also used seed oils. So that can, that is going to throw the data off greatly. Okay? Also, it's observational, it's not proof. Cohorts show correlation. They cannot establish that the oil caused the outcome. And the other thing I'll say is you have two sides where sometimes the studies don't agree. In the Minnesota coronary and the Sydney Diet Heart Studies, and these are actual randomized trials. They showed no benefit.

• 13:00Josh Axe?

  And signs of harm swapping saturated fat for linoleic acid. So there are lots of flaws potentially in the studies. Okay, now let me come on with the pros on both sides. Now, on the other side for seed oils, here's the truth. There are huge, long and repeated studies, hundreds of thousands of people over 30 years, replicated across multiple countries, okay, showing that seed oils might be better than butter. Okay, now for the more recent studies, here's the thing, the bias may run the other way. Today, people that eat a lot of seed oils probably tend to also eat more junk food. Okay, so, so, so let me just say this. I think there are really good arguments on both sides, but here's my honest read. The studies aren't fraudulent, okay?

• 13:44Josh Axe?

  But they mostly compared plant oils to butter and margarine and not grass-fed beef tallow and not ghee and definitely not extra virgin olive oil. Okay, so they can't see the differences between fresh oil and reheated fryer oil. Also, they lump every plant oil together, which muddies the water even more. So here's my honest take as a doctor of functional medicine. So here's my honest take as a functional medicine doctor, okay? The molecule isn't the villain, the food matrix is, okay? Listen, if you're eating mostly at home avocado, pasture-raised eggs, walnuts, you're getting a good amount of fat in your diet and it's a mixed variety of real foods. You're always going to be healthier.

• 14:27Josh Axe?

  It's the food matrix versus if you're eating fast foods with hydrogenated oils, the seed oils and refined carbohydrates and additives and sugar and all of those things, you're going to be sick. Here's the other big thing. You do want to focus on getting more omega-3 fats, not just cutting the omega-6 fats. Okay, generally omega-6 fats can be very healthy if you're getting enough omega-3s from wild-caught fish oil, flax and chia, walnuts, seaweed. And then the last thing is this, listen. Don't focus on the bad stuff, just focus on the good things. Rather than saying, okay, should I eat a lot of saturated fat? Or should I go and try and do more seed oils? The answer is neither.

• 15:12Josh Axe?

  I'm going to go through my top 10 oil list that you should be using and focus on the top five oils on that list. Specifically, the top three are what you want to gravitate towards and use almost always. They're the most stable ones. They have the best overall results long-term. Now, I want to give the Chinese medicine perspective on seed oils versus butter and animal fats. Okay? And here it is. For some people, doing animal fats and butter may actually be more harmful to their body than processed seed oils because these oils tend to be processed more slowly by your body. Okay? They cause more what we call dampness in Chinese medicine.

• 15:56Josh Axe?

  So they can cause more sluggishness of the liver and the digestive system. So if your body can't move through things pretty quickly, it's going to cause an issue. Now, seed oils do cause dampness, okay, in Chinese medicine. And dampness in Western medicine would be you're more likely to accumulate dampness, phlegm, like mucus and candida, overgrowth of bad microbes, okay? With too many bad oils. And also, they tend to be more heating. They'll cause more inflammation in doing the induced-lived seed oils. To where animal fats cause your system to move more slowly. Seed oils tend to be more inflammatory, according to Chinese medicine.

• 16:39Josh Axe?

  Hey, guys, I'm here with my good friend, Dr. Dave Jockers. In fact, we've been friends for more than 20 years. He runs the podcast, The Dr. Dave Jockers Functional Nutrition Podcast. Dr. Dave, tell us a little bit about what your podcast is about.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. We dive deep on functional nutrition, really how to personalize your nutrition plan for better energy, mental clarity, better hormone balance. And we talk a lot about cellular health, mitochondrial function, cell membrane. We do a deep dive on every major nutrition topic and natural health topic. So everything you need, right there at your fingertips. Dr. Jockers Functional Nutrition Podcast.

• 17:15Josh Axe?

  I want to encourage you, run out and listen to the Dr. Jockers Show. Again, I'm a big fan of it. I think you will be as well.

• 17:23Josh Axe?

  So now I want to walk you through the top 10 oils you should consider using and really focus at the very top of this list, though. Before I do that, though, do me a favor, subscribe. It's the number one thing you do to support the show here, allowing me to bring on higher profile guests and put out more great content. So thank you so much for subscribing. All right, so let's start this countdown with the top 10 oils in ranking order. Number 10, we're going to start with macadamia nut oil. Okay, so this is a sleeper pick. Macadamia oil is almost all mono and saturated fat, very similar to almond oil, and the same stable oleic acid that makes olive oil great, with very little fragile linoleic acid. It's buttery, it's mild, it tastes great.

• 18:07Josh Axe?

  You want to treat it as more of a finishing oil and really not use it much for cooking, though it does have a 410 heat threshold, so tends to be more stable. Number nine is cacao butter. Now, this one surprises people, all right? Cocoa butter is mostly saturated fat and mono and saturated fat combined, so it is incredibly stable. You can use it for cooking and baking as a good option. Number eight is duck fat. Okay, duck fat is the chef's secret. It's rich in mono and saturated fat, it's heat stable, and it makes the best for roasted potatoes, okay, you've ever had. Now, I do want to say these oils, though, I wouldn't use them a lot, right? Duck fat, it is a saturated fat, it can slow your body down, but using it on occasion

• 18:50Josh Axe?

  is probably okay. Number seven, grass-fed beef tallow. Tallow's back, and for higher heat searing, it's one of the best out there. It's nearly half saturated fat, half mono and saturated fat, it's very stable. You know, one of the things that can be important with cooking oils is that it doesn't oxidize too much, and we'll get into that more in a minute with olive oil. Number six, grass-fed butter. Again, this is grass-fed. Studies show grass-fed butter is higher in vitamin A, vitamin D, K2, butyrate, conjugated linoleic acid, some omega-3. So there are benefits of grass-fed butter versus conventional. When we talk about these conventional studies, it is all conventional butter.

• 19:34Josh Axe?

  Number five, sesame oil that's cold-pressed or toasted. This is a true medicinal oil. Sesame carries unique antioxidants, sesame oil and sesame oil, that give it real oxidative stability and a revered place in Chinese medicine in Ayurveda, where it's been known to nourish your adrenals in your blood. The catch, it's a finishing and low-medium heat oil. You want to drizzle it at the end. You don't want to deep fry with it. You can saute with it, which is just fine, but sesame oil or toasted sesame oil. Number four, my number four favorite fat to use is ghee. All right. Ghee is clarified butter with the milk solids removed, which raises its smoke point to 485 and makes it more stable than butter.

• 20:18Josh Axe?

  From a functional medicine view, it beats out tallow. It's rich in butyrate. It's one of the best food sources of vitamin K2, which is roughly 15 times more than tallow, which helps direct calcium to your bones instead of your arteries. And this is even good for those people that are lactose intolerant typically. And ghee was used in medicine or meals as medicine back in Ayurveda. For instance, turmeric golden milk, where they would combine turmeric and ginger and warming spices like black pepper. And then ghee and the butter and the warming spices improve the absorption of those nutrients like curcumin found in turmeric. Now here's what I want to say. These last oils are my top three. Okay? And these are the ones that I personally use every day.

• 21:03Josh Axe?

  Now, I might use ghee, I don't know, once a month on occasion. I'm trying to think the last time we used ghee. We made mashed potatoes. We took steamed cauliflower and added in ghee and a bunch of sea salt. And so rather than mashed potatoes, we did our mashed cauliflower. And that's probably the last time I used ghee. But I don't use it that often. I really use these top three on a regular basis nearly every day. Number three is coconut oil. Coconut oil is about 90% saturated fat. So it barely oxidizes and it's one of the most heat-stable fats on earth. And it contains predominantly a lot of different types of fatty acids like medium-chain fatty acids and lauric acid, which even have antimicrobial properties.

• 21:47Josh Axe?

  Now, yes, it can raise LDL some, but when you compare coconut oil to every other type of saturated fat, from tallow and duck fat and butter and all of these other saturated fat, coconut oil raises LDL the least in studies. The other thing is it's got a lot of benefits for improving health of the gut microbiome, getting rid of candida. If somebody's trying to get into ketosis on a ketogenic diet, it is the best oil for that. It's probably the least likely fat, along with olive oil, for your body to store as body fat, because your body loves to burn a lot of the type of fats, the medium-chain triglycerides as fuel.

• 22:28Josh Axe?

  So it can be good for baking and high-heat cooking. Also, in Chinese medicine, it's known to be generally anti-inflammatory. So coconut oil, one of my favorite oils. Now, I will say this, if you have heart disease or plaque in your arteries, you want to be careful with coconut oil and just do it a little bit here and there. And you really want to focus on these top two oils, really number one predominantly. But coconut oil, generally if you're pretty healthy, coconut oil is in my top three favorite oils. By the way, I want to mention something unique here. My top three favorite oils, they're not animal-based oils and they're not seed oils. All three of them are fruit oils.

• 23:08Josh Axe?

  Coconut considered a fruit, avocado considered a fruit, olives considered a fruit. Now, none of us consider those a fruit, but they're kind of the same category of fruits that are high in healthy fats. And the next here is avocado oil. Now, this is my number two, because it does well with high heat. It's mostly monounsaturated fats like olive oil. And has one of the highest smoke points of any of these and it's great for searing, great for stir fry. But here's a catch. You want to buy a trusted third-party tested brand because studies have found many cheap avocado oils are oxidized and secretly laced with seed oils. And the same goes for olive oil, by the way. Okay, so avocado oil is a good option as well. It's probably the oil I use third most. I do a lot of coconut

• 23:53Josh Axe?

  oil when I bake and make certain things. And by far, the number one oil used in the Axe household that I prescribe and recommend to every patient I have, for the most part, is extra virgin olive oil. This was an oil that was prized by Roman culture. It is the foundation of the Mediterranean diet. It's at the foundation of a biblical diet like the Biblio diet. It has been prized throughout the Middle East and Europe for thousands of years. And if you compare any oil out there against olive oil, it will lose. It is the most studied. It's the most defensible and has the greatest health benefits

• 24:36Josh Axe?

  out there. It's mostly monounsaturated oleic acid plus polyphenols, which makes it really unique. And if you get a really good olive oil, you're going to smell those polyphenols. It smells green. It smells herbaceous. It smells spicy. That's what it should smell like. And not only is it the backbone of the healthiest historic diets, it's also backed by thousands of studies that have been done for decades, showing it improves longevity, decreases mortality, improves heart health, improves brain health, reduces inflammation, supports metabolic health, has anti-cancer properties. It is the one oil that you want

• 25:17Josh Axe?

  to be using predominantly all the time. Drizzle it, yes, and you can even cook with it. You know, there were old studies talking about smoke point years ago. And here's what we found, is that olive oil, even when you heat it or cook with it, it does smoke some, but there's so many polyphenols that it remains stable, because it's the most powerful antioxidant oil by far of all of these other oils. So the question is, can I cook with olive oil? The answer is yes.

• 25:47Josh Axe?

  Now, one more thing I want to mention about seed oils here, and that was really my list for cooking, because I could have put probably pumpkin seed oil on there, or flaxseed oil, and it's going to have more benefits for your health than probably, it'd probably rank number two, and three behind extra virgin olive oil, if we're talking about flaxseed oil and pumpkin oil, but they are more delicate and you don't want to heat them, but you can use them raw on salads and other recipes as well, which I'll mention here. So again, there is a difference between industrially processed seed oils, like soybean oil, which again, it's a bean, but soybean oil, corn oil, which is a grain oil, canola

• 26:27Josh Axe?

  oil, cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, even grape seed oil and rice bran oil. These oils are hexane extracted, they're bleached, they're deodorized, they are very high in these omega-6 fats, which if they're not in balance with omega-3 fats, can cause inflammation. And these are what are used and reheated over and over again in fast food restaurants in the deep fryer, okay? But then we also have other seed oils. We have flaxseed oil, we have sesame oil, we have pumpkin seed oil. These are mechanically pressed, so just like olive oil is pressed, these are pressed, no solvents are used, the antioxidants are

• 27:06Josh Axe?

  intact, flax or chia or hemp oil are great sources of omega-3 fats like ALA, but they are very heat fragile. So you can use these in smoothies, in drizzles, salad dressings, you know, sesame oil, you can, if it's, you can cook that to low to medium heat. And one more oil that is a seed oil, that's maybe the most powerful of them all, is black seed oil or black cumin oil. Black seed was used throughout the Middle East and even areas of India, and the old adage is, you know, black seed can even raise the dead. Well, of course, that's not true, but... It is an incredibly powerful oil.

• 27:48Josh Axe?

  It is as anti-inflammatory in many cases as flax oil or even some fish oil. So when you look at black seed oil, it is incredibly healing and beneficial. So listen, when we're talking about these oils, these seed oils, the vernacular terminology aren't exactly correct there because not all of them are actually seeds. All right. And then other seed oils tend to be really, really healthy. And so if you want to reduce inflammation and fight cancer and infections, black seed oil is one you'd want to add in. If you want to reduce inflammation, you'd want to use flaxseed oil. If you want to support testosterone levels and block DHT in the body.

• 28:28Josh Axe?

  So for men, pumpkin seed oil or doing a pumpkin seed nut butter tremendously beneficial also for prostate health. In fact, one of the ways people will shrink a prostate is doing pumpkin seed oil as a supplement. So you do want to add in some of these healthier seed oils that are not processed. So here's the big idea. Seed oils aren't always as bad as we think they are, especially if you're choosing between those and conventional butter. However, that doesn't make them healthy. And I would say for people on both sides of the debate debating about is butter better? Is, is our animal fats better or processed seed oils? I would say this, just focus on the healthiest oils. Listen, I would hardly use either of those.

• 29:12Josh Axe?

  I would really put my focus on fruit oils and extra virgin olive oil, avocado and coconut oil. And then after that, ghee. Those are the healthiest oils and fats you should be getting on a regular basis. And also you don't want to go overboard with oils either. You want to get most of your fat from actual food. Walnuts, eating wild caught salmon, pastured eggs. This is really where you want to put your focus. And so if you're deciding what you're going to do right now, run out and get extra virgin olive oil because it's the healthiest oil you could ever consume. And remember this, your body is rebuilding itself every single day. Every single cell in your body is made up of fat. So when we say you are what you eat.

• 29:58Josh Axe?

  That is true of fat and protein more than anything because your body is primarily made of protein and fat. And every cell in your body has a lipid bilayer in every cell, the membrane is made of fat. And that allows things to get in your cell, out of your cell. It's incredibly important for function, for healing, for longevity. Remember this, food is medicine. Every meal is medicine. So every meal, think about, are my cells getting healthier, or are they getting sicker? And if you want to do that, here's the key, just stay out of the seed oil debate versus the animal fat debate and go extra virgin olive oil all the way, because it's going to help you heal. By the way, if you want

• 30:39Josh Axe?

  to dig deeper into understanding longevity and how the body heals, I want to encourage you, check out my new book. It's coming out here very soon. It's called Heal Your Cells. You can go to amazon.com and look up Heal Your Cells, Dr. Axe. This is a book I co-authored with Dr. Will Cole, and I believe it's going to be the authority book on longevity medicine, on nutrition-based medicine. But it really dives deep into how do you heal yourselves? How do you reverse the irreversible? How do you heal your body deep down? How do you reverse hypothyroidism? How do you reverse and improve and fight cancer? How do you heal your body naturally? And how do you live as long as you possibly can? For those of you that are interested in longevity and advanced nutrition, I really think it's

• 31:23Josh Axe?

  the most powerful book out there. You can run over to amazon.com and check out the book Heal Your Cells, to dive deep into natural medicine, longevity medicine, and how to reverse chronic illness. And do me a favor before we go, subscribe. It's the number one thing you could do here to support the show. I'm so grateful for all of you for subscribing. A lot of you guys have gone on and left five-star reviews. By the way, the podcast has been sitting here in the top five on Apple. I want to say the top 25 on Spotify. I believe probably a top five health podcast on YouTube as well. So thanks so much for the support. If you're not subscribed, subscribe, because if not, this won't show up in your feed. And it's the number one thing you can do to be on mission with me and support us. Also, thank you all of you guys for sharing this information.

• 32:07Josh Axe?

  I'm so grateful. And I can't wait to see you on the next episode.