Get Healthy, with Gary Brecka, Andrew Huberman, and Sean O'Mara

In the middle of a conversation about fermented foods and visceral fat, Dr. Sean O'Mara tells Megyn Kelly something that reframes the entire health discussion: "You do not have an autoimmune disease. You have a pathological infection." This is not a metaphor. O'Mara, a former criminal prosecutor turned physician and retired Army colonel, spent seven years researching visceral fat for the National Science Foundation. He argues that the single most dangerous—and most ignored—driver of chronic disease is not cholesterol, not LDL, not genetics, but a specific type of internal fat that most people do not know they have.

The disease you cannot see

O'Mara distinguishes sharply between two kinds of body fat. Superficial subcutaneous fat (SSAT) sits just under the skin and actually contains a protective molecule called adiponectin. This is the fat that gives people soft curves and, counterintuitively, is associated with longer life. His own grandmother was overweight and lived to 101. The dangerous fat is visceral fat—the white, inflammatory fat that wraps around the heart, liver, and other organs, and infiltrates muscle tissue. This fat is not visible from the outside. A thin person can be "TOFI" (thin outside, fat inside) and have higher mortality risk than a visibly heavier person with healthy superficial fat.