Can Smoking Cigarettes Make You Live Longer, Are The Blue Zones A Myth, Which Meat You Should Think Twice About Eating & More With Dr. Steven Gundry

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, these guys are eating, you know, goat and sheep yogurt and sheep cheeses and sausages, and they have the highest life expectancy of any country. And that certainly goes against the party line.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life show. Are you Ready to hack your life? Let's do this.

Well, folks, a long time ago, I interviewed a doctor and he made a lot of waves on my podcast because we talked all about these compounds that you find a lot of foods called lectins. He actually wrote an entire book about this called "Plant Paradox." It kind of turned a lot of heads in the health industry because we're often told to eat our vegetables and potatoes and tomatoes and whatnot. And, this went into how there could be some issues with that. And, I'll link to that podcast if you go to the shownotes for today's podcast at BenGreenfieldLife.com/GutCheck. But, that same doctor, Dr. Steven Gundry, who hosts the top-rated health show, The Gundry Podcast still, sees multiple patients per day. We were talking before the episode, he's still a hardworking physician. He's the founder and director of the International Heart and Lung Institute Center for Restorative Medicine. He's the founder of Gundry MD, which is a line of wellness products and supplements. And, most relevant to today's discussion, I'm going to hold this up for those of you watching the video version even though it's probably the ugly pre-release that I'm not supposed to be holding up regardless. Ben Greenfield: There's the real one. Let me see. You've got the real one. Hold on. I want to see. Okay, yeah. The real one looks way better. I'll have to get my hands on that eventually. It's called "Gut Check." Gut Check. And, it is not just all about how you need to go jump off a cliff if you eat a legume. It's instead all about the mitochondria, the microbiome, some very interesting things about the Blue Zones, which I thought was super interesting. And all sorts of new information that I think sometimes defies the status quo in the nutrition industry, but I think it is important stuff to talk about. So, Steven, I'm pretty happy to have you back on, man.

Ben, thanks for having me. It's great to see you again. And yeah, I'm real excited about this book.

Yeah, yeah. And you know what? You can see here in the video, I got all sorts of pages turned over, but the part that I thought honestly was most interesting. The whole book is great, but you poke some holes in the Blue Zones. I want to hear your take on the Blue Zones because it's super interesting. And, I just got back from a conference in Vegas where Dan Buettner was the headliner and there's, of course, the new show on Netflix. So, tell me what you think about the Blue Zones.

Well, it's interesting. I do have a whole chapter about it. And, like I say in the chapter, Paul Simon once sung that a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. And, certainly, in my years of research, people actually look for things that confirm their bias and disregard things that don't confirm their bias. And, I've spoken with Dan. He's a great guy and very dedicated, but the Blue Zones actually came about, most people don't know, at a meeting in Montpellier, France, in the south of France a number of years ago that Dan attended. And, in that meeting, it was on longevity. A researcher took a blue felt-tip pen, Magic Marker, and had a map of the world and circled 5 areas that he thought had exceptional longevity. Now, again, the word is he thought, number one.

Was he going off— obviously, he wasn't just blindfolded and throwing a random pin on the tail of a donkey. Did he have any reason for circling the areas that he did?

Yeah, there were actually pretty good reasons. But, what those reasons are, I think, are quite frankly subject to debate and my take is that if you're looking for things that support your worldview or nutritional view of veganism or vegetarianism, then these 5 Blue Zones at the surface look like pretty good places to plant your flag. Having been the only nutritionist who's actually spent much of my career in the only Blue Zone in the United States, Loma Linda, California, I guess I have a right to say something about that interpretation. So, one of the things that is touted in Blue Zones is that the Blue Zones all in general don't eat a lot of meat. And that, in fact, I completely agree with. But, it's what they eat that maybe is more important that's missing. So, The Blue Zones supposedly eat a lot of grains and beans and the eating of grains and beans is what make them so healthy. But, interestingly enough, Okinawa is one of the Blue Zones. And actually, the only description of the traditional Okinawan diet was done by the US military right after we took over that island after World War II. And, we actually recorded their diet. And, the diet consisted of 85% purple or blue sweet potato. And, they don't eat rice because they can't grow rice on Okinawa. It is—

That's surprising. I think a lot of people just synonymize Japan with rice, but they don't even eat it in Okinawa?

Nope, not at all.

Wow.

And, they don't eat soy. They eat miso, fermented soy, but they don't eat tofu. And, they're actually notorious or famous for eating lots of spicy greens and vegetables. In fact, throughout Japan, they're called the spice eaters.

Now, could I derail you for just a second, Steven? You made an important differentiation there that I don't want to necessarily skim over. You said they eat fermented soy, not soy. Why is that important?

Well, traditionally, cultures have always detoxified the plant toxins by fermentation. And, they, like other cultures, fermented the toxins in soy and used it as miso or natto. And, that's what they eat. And, I think that's really important and I talk about it throughout the book. And, fermentation changing plant compounds or for that matter changing animal compounds with fermentation is really one of the highlights the key points of Gut Check. So, yeah. So, they ferment soy.

And, what happens when you ferment soy? What's in soy that you'd want to get rid of? When you say you ferment the toxins, what exactly is going on?

Well, soy is a legume and a bean, and beans have a lot of proteins that are plant defense compound called lectins. And, As I've talked about plants, a lot of plants don't want us to eat them and they don't want us to eat their babies except under circumstances where they can control the action. And, these lectins are proteins that interestingly enough bacteria enjoy eating. Give you an example. We know that There are oxalates in foods that are another defense system of plants, but normally, we would have a gut microbiome that eats oxalates, thinks they're delicious. Most people who are sensitive to oxalates or think they're sensitive to oxalate don't have those bacteria in their gut anymore for reasons that I talk about in Gut Check. Believe it or not, there are bacteria that enjoy eating gluten, which is also a lectin. Most of us don't have those bacteria anymore. So, fermentation was a way for people to detoxify lectins. For instance, the Incas, uh, certainly used quinoa as a food, but The Incas always fermented their quinoa. They let it rot.

See, I always thought you just rinse it. And, this is what I do also. If I'm going to have quinoa, I'll soak it overnight and rinse it a few times to try and remove the, what I understand is a soap-like irritant called a saponin from it. But, I'm guessing that in addition to the saponins, the only way to remove the lectins from quinoa would be fermentation.

Fermentation or pressure cooking.

Oh, yeah.

Okay. And, the other thing I think somebody just for fun, people traditionally beans have always been soaked for soaking "leaches lectins" out of beans and saponins. Yeah. But, if anybody has actually soaked beans for any length of time, they'll notice that a large scum occurs on the top of the water and it's kind of bubbly. And, believe it or not, there are bacteria on the skin of beans that ferment the beans. And, we to our peril didn't understand that traditional cultures soaked their beans, not just the soaking but the soaking actually started the fermentation process. And so, Even traditionally prepared beans were fermented by traditional cultures, and that's how they actually detoxified them.

Do you think that, because my wife does this, that sprouting quinoa would result in a similar deactivation or removal of the lectins similar to fermentation of something like that?

Actually, the exact opposite happens. Oh, really? And I referenced that in "The Plant Paradox." When the lectin content of a plant actually increases at the moment of germination because now the baby is at its most sensitive to predation. And so, plants actually increase lectin content at sprouting. Now, once it starts growing, the lectin content decreases.

So, does that mean you'd want— if you had a sprout, you'd want to eat it far into the sprouting process?

Correct.

Correct. Okay, okay, which is what we do anyways. We harvest when the tail is pretty long and it's been several days, but you're saying eating baby sprouts or sprouts you've just started would actually do a worse job for your gut than just eating, say, the bean unsprouted.

Yeah, that's actually true. And, I reference that, the references are in "The Plant Paradox." Okay.

Alright, so back to Japan. They're eating fermented soy and then when I interrupted you, you were talking about some kind of a hot spicy thing that they eat.

Yeah, actually, they eat a lot of spicy vegetables. They're literally called the spice eaters. So, the point of all that is that one of the Blue Zones don't eat what is proposed is keeping everybody so healthy. But, I think probably the most remarkable example of the Blue Zones is Sardinia. And so Sardinia is an island of Italy. Sardinia is essentially two populations on Sardinia. There are people who live down by the water and they're mostly fishermen. And then there are people who live in the mountainous regions that are sheep and goat herders. And what's interesting is only the people who live up in the mountains have longevity, number one. The folks who live down by the water don't have remarkable longevity. The other thing that's striking is that it's actually the men who bring the age up, and it's the men in the mountains that actually live as long as the women. Now, most people know that men in general live 6 to 7 years less long as women.

I know. It's annoying.

Yeah, I know. And, we can debate why that is, but these men actually live as long as women. And so, that pulls their age up. Now, what's interesting is about 95% of the men smoke and only about 25% of the women smoke.

Wait, 95% of the men including these long-lived mountain men in Sardinia?

Believe it or not, it's the smoking that promotes their longevity. And, that's what makes them, number one, live as long as women. The other thing—

Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean the smoking promotes their longevity, smoking cigarettes?

Oh, yeah. How? Well, nicotine is one of the greatest mitochondrial uncouplers that anybody has ever discovered. And, uncoupling your mitochondria as I've written about in my last two books is probably the smartest way to live a long time. And, smoking, unfortunately, nicotine is a great way to do that. Now, there are side effects of smoking as all of us know. And, as a heart surgeon and cardiologist, don't smoke folks. But, we should learn the effects of smoking from the Blue Zones. Let me just digress for a second. Stephen Lindeberg, who spent his lifetime researching the Kitavans in Papua New Guinea, who are a long-lived group of individuals who smoke like fiends, and yet, they have never been found to have a case of coronary heart disease, never had a stroke, and never had a case of cancer.

And I'm assuming, by the way, that they're smoking the same kind of cigarette somebody might be smoking in America because I have some friends who will light up, I think there's a brand called American something and it's a natural tobacco with supposedly fewer carcinogens than the average cigarette. But, these aren't special cigarettes or something like that? No.

Okay. But, the point smoking, Smoking is really bad for producing oxidative stress. And, I've written a lot about the negative effects of smoking that are countered by vitamin C-containing foods. And, interestingly enough, the reason we don't see the negative effects of smoking in these populations, and Sardinia and Kitava are not the exceptions, believe it or not, On the island of Ikaria in Greece, another blue zone, the men, 99% of the men smoke and only about 25% of the women smoke. In Acciaroli, south of Naples, the largest population of over the age of 100, it's a community of about 1,000 that I've visited, 30% of the people are over the age of 100. And, There, the same thing is true. The men are smokers and the women are not smokers. And, it's the men smokers who pull up their average lifespan.

And, can I ask you a quick question about the smoking also? Because, for example, Andrew Huberman has talked a lot about alcohol and the potential for alcohol to decrease lifespan, but many of the studies that I think he cites don't differentiate between, say, a serving of alcohol a day with dinner and having all 7 of those 7 drinks a week at once on a Saturday evening. And, this makes me think a little bit about the smoking. Are we talking about chain smoking throughout the day or are we talking about microdosing, I suppose, maybe a cigarette in the morning or the evening or something like that?

No, these guys are pretty heavy smokers. And so, the question is, how do they get away with it? Well, Again, smoking actually uses up almost all of your vitamin C. And, as you and I know, we are one of the few animals that don't make our own vitamin C. Yeah. And, vitamin C is essential among other things for repairing the cracks that occur in collagen. And, collagen is basically our rebar. And, collagen is actually the rebar in blood vessels. And, We knew in smokers that blood vessels flex in coronary arteries and the collagen breaks. And normally, that collagen is reknit together by vitamin C. In smokers, their vitamin C is used up in handling the oxidative stress. And so, smokers have and had a classic pattern of blockages in coronary arteries that where the flexion of vessels occur. But their coronary arteries were gorgeous beyond where these discrete blockages were. And as a heart surgeon, it was in a way a piece of cake to do bypass surgery on smokers because number 1, they were skinny, and number 2, they were discrete blockages and the rest of their blood vessels were gorgeous. So, what is proposed in these long-lived people who smoke is that they're getting the benefit of nicotine, but they're blocking the effects of oxidative stress by having a very high antioxidant-rich diet. For instance, olive oil actually increases our own native vitamin C production, doubles the production of vitamin C that we do make. So, that's how they "get away with it" but also get the benefit of nicotine.

Interesting. You're making me feel really good about that annual cigar I'm going to smoke on New Year's morning. We do an annual New Year's Day polar plunge down at the river and then me and my friend smoke a cigar in the hot tub. It's interesting though this idea about nicotine. I've been aware of its benefits for some time. I'm actually wearing, you might not be able to see it in the video because it might be too far down, but I wear this little nicotine patch. It's about a 14-milligram nicotine patch. And, that's because of the effects of nicotine on mitochondrial uncoupling in addition to focus and energy. And, I do that because some of the delivery mechanisms for nicotine can be fraught with artificial sweeteners or in the case of a cigarette, carcinogens, oxidative stressors, et cetera. And then, I also have a hefty use of mitochondrial uncoupling strategies that I incorporate throughout the day. I have bitter melon extract before dinner. I do a cold plunge. In the pepper grinder, I've got grains of paradise instead of black pepper, which is a mitochondrial uncoupling agent. And so, I'm aware of this and weave it in throughout the day, but do you think that the blue zones where people are smoking that these people would live even longer if they, for example, were still taking in these high doses of antioxidants and mitochondrial uncoupling agents but weren't smoking?

Well, I think that's a good question, but mitochondrial uncoupling, at least, in the research that's been done is truly one of the keys to longevity as you and I both know. And, I assume that's why you're wearing your nicotine patch. It's also a really good way to stay thin.

That's right, coffee and cigarettes, the oldest school cheap fat loss hack ever.

That's exactly true. But, I think we've given— Now, again, smoking is really dumb. It's really dumb, particularly since most smokers, Western smokers, do not have the benefit of all of these other plant compounds that they're eating that's protective to them. I think the other thing that I point out in the book, which is remarkable, is that almost all of these societies are— first of all, they all live in hilly communities. Loma Linda means beautiful hill, and Loma Linda is a hilly community. I didn't know that. Yeah. So, they all live in hilly communities. But, number 2, almost all of these areas, Sardinia, Ikaria, Costa Rica, The Nicoyan Peninsula in Costa Rica, the other Blue Zone, all are sheep and goat herders. Now, what's so interesting about that is that goat and sheep milk, 30% of the fats in goat and sheep milk are medium-chain triglycerides. And, as you and I know, medium-chain triglycerides are absorbed in a totally different way as a fat and go directly to our liver. And generate ketones. And, as I wrote about in "Unlocking the Keto Code," my last book, ketones are a signaling agent that tell mitochondria to uncouple and promote mitogenesis. And, that's my humble opinion of why they work so well. So, these guys are consuming large amounts of sheep and goat yogurts and sheep and goat cheeses. And so, they have another uncoupling agent as part of their diet. And, it's fascinating that all of these communities are sheep and goat herders. In fact, as I talk about in the book, the country in the world with the longest lifespan, the longest recorded normal lifespan, average lifespan, is a small country between France and Spain called Andorra.

Andorra. Now, people don't bring that up as much when they talk about the blue zones, do they? Because I haven't heard that one discussed very much.

Well, because they happen to be sheep herders and the diet of Andorra is sheep yogurt, sheep cheeses, and get this, sausages. And, that story certainly does not resonate if you're trying to make a case that beans Beans and grains are the keys to longevity.

I don't see Dan Buettner eating a lot of sausages.

No. No. Now, you go, "Well, wait a minute, how are these guys getting away with eating sausages?" Well, as I point out in the book, people, ancestors did not have any storage system for the animals that they ate.

When you say storage system, you don't mean endogenously, you mean a place to actually store the meat to keep it from spoiling.

Yeah, I mean, meat spoils. There weren't any refrigeration, there was nothing. So, people, and particularly, you're not going to waste any part of an animal and you eat nose to tail. So, most of these people have figured out how to ferment their meat. And, that fermentation process, the bacteria actually eat a really nasty compound in beef, lamb, and pork, and milk called Neu5Gc, but that's another subject. And, they completely make this food not only not bad for you but actually good for you. The other thing that happens with fermentation is that you produce polyamines like spermidine. And, Spermidine is another spectacular compound for mitochondrial uncoupling. So, these guys are eating goat and sheep yogurt and sheep cheeses and sausages and they have the highest life expectancy of any country. And, that certainly goes against the party line.

Yeah. Well, that makes me want to visit Andorra as well. It sounds like a fantastic breakfast. I think you just mentioned something really important though, this new 5GC. Because of course, especially with the audience that we're talking to, Stephen, people are kind of aware that they shouldn't eat ultra-processed foods and some of them are being very careful with grains and some of the hefty doses of lectins and seed oils and the like. But of course, I think that beef and pork And, well, what was the other meat that's high in the Neu5Gc besides beef and pork? Lamb. And lamb. These are popular. And then, even if people are choosing grass-fed, grass-finished, it's my understanding they still do contain Neu5Gc. Can you explain what that is and why it's an issue?

Yeah. And, I talked about it in "The Plant Paradox" and I got interested in Neu5Gc as a xeno heart transplant surgeon and researcher. And, xenotransplantation means one species to another. And, people who've been watching the news know that there have been a couple now of pig-to-human heart transplants done by a friend of mine, Bartley Griffith, at the University of Maryland. And, when we were researching this in the lab, If you put a pig heart in a baboon, that pig heart would last about, oh, 3 or 4 hours before all the blood would clot in its blood vessels. And, I became famous for having an unmodified pig to baboon heart transplant for about a month rather than 3 or 4 hours. But, one of the things that vexed us was this sugar molecule called Neu5Gc. Now, we carry a sugar molecule on the lining of our blood vessels that's virtually identical called Neu5Ac.

Neu5Ac. And, the lining of the blood vessels, by the way, correct me if I'm wrong, but I just did a podcast with the folks who have a supplement company called Calroy and I started taking something they have that's called Arterosil, which supports my glycocalyx. And, when you're talking about the interior of the blood vessel and how it has these Nu-5— I don't even think you talk about this yet, but I think it's Nu-5Ac that Nu-5Gc somehow displaces. This is the glycocalyx you're referring to, yeah?

That's exactly right.

Okay.

Yeah. So, the glycocalyx is this little lining that line our blood vessels of primarily sugar molecules. And, those sugar molecules in us are made up of Nu5Ac. They differ from Nu5Gc by one molecule of oxygen. That's the only difference. Wow. Now, in the past, we thought Well, we didn't think. So, if you and I eat a Neu5Gc-containing food, have a glass of milk, we will absorb that Neu5Gc readily in our small intestine and we will make antibodies to it as a foreign compound. And, we can document this in humans. Humans have been nice enough to do this and we can watch the antibodies rise. The more Neu5Gc-containing foods, the more anti-Neu5Gc antibodies we make. So far, so bad. Now, it was thought that because these two compounds are very similar that we, with those antibodies, could, by molecular mimicry, attack our Neu5Ac sugar molecules in our glycocalyx. They're also in the glycocalyx that forms the blood-brain barrier and they're also in the linings of our joint surfaces. Now, why is that interesting? Because I'm the first to admit that association does not mean causation, but there is strong association between meat eating and milk drinking and arthritis, dementia, coronary artery disease, vascular disease, and cancer. Strong. Now, doesn't mean causation, but the new research, I think, shows causation. Now, why? It turns out that Neu5Gc can displace Neu5Ac in these various glycocalyx, and it is an antigenic molecule. And, we make antibodies to it. So, we attack Neu5Gc that's been substituted for Neu5Ac. Now, the good news is, and I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, I have no dog in this fight. In fact, I ought to have a dog in the fight the other way around.

You ought to be having a porterhouse every night coming from there.

Exactly. In fact, Funny, I see Omaha Steaks International advertise on TV every night and my parents were best friends with the owners of Omaha Steaks International. So, yeah, I should have a dog in this fight. And, quite frankly, I love a good grass-fed, grass-finished piece of meat. But, the good news is the less Neu5Gc food you eat, And, the more Nu-5Ac food you eat, which are fish, shellfish, and chicken, proper chicken, and we can talk about that too, then you displace Nu-5Gc off of these structures, which is great news. Now, the other way how we got to this point is fermentation. Bacteria eat Nu-5Gc. So, the fermentation process got rid of Neu5Gc. And, the fermentation process of milk gets rid of the Neu5Gc in milk. That's why all these long-lived guys were having sheep yogurt and goat yogurt and they were having sausages. In fact, believe it or not, prosciutto is a fermented food. And, prosciutto is loaded with polyamines.

Yeah.

Well, first of all, all the milk that I have is fermented ever since I interviewed Dr. William Davis. I have access to goat's milk from our Nigerian dwarf goats in the backyard. One of my friends gets raw cow's milk and I do a 36-hour fermentation with 3 different strains of probiotics that Dr. William Davis introduced me to. And, my gut feels fantastic. It's wonderful. You get a steep rise in Oxytocin, the feel-good hormone, you consume this stuff as well. El rubio. But, the meat, I don't do a lot of fermentation of my meat. So, I do have a few questions for you about this. Does dry aging and/or wet aging count as fermentation, do you think?

I believe it does. I've got a friend who's a James Beard Award-winning chef who is hot on the trail of this. And, he's shown that this sort of fermentation dramatically reduces Neu5Gc. And, I think it's interesting because growing up in Omaha, any legitimate steakhouse dry-aged their beef, which is fascinating. And then, these things were crusted with molds and scum.

I know. I've got a steak locker out in my garage, by the way. I haven't used it as much as I probably should be using it based on what I'm discovering from you and in your book. But, when I have, there's a lining, a moldy lining on the outside. It freaks a lot of people out. You scrape it off. You make sure there's no little streaks of that going into the meat, in which case you got to cut off that little piece. But, that's basically what dry aging is. I set it out of humidity, at a temperature. I dry age. One of my friends on YouTube on the Guga Foods channel, he recently did a video about wet aging and it results in a similar bacterial buildup on the outside of the meat. So, of course, it must be fermenting if the bacteria are building up there.

Yeah. And again, you look at these ancient cultures and of course, this was the only way they had of preserving meat, but it turns out It made a potentially bad source of food into actually a superb source of food. And, I think we tend to forget that.

Ben Greenfield: Now, my second question for you regarding this is there must be something besides fermentation, I would imagine, that might offer some kind of protective effect when it comes to Neu5Gc. I know, for example, that some of these glycocalyx-supporting compounds, they're based on sulfur-based products. I think that the Calroy one is even based on a seaweed-based product. Yeah, seaweed.

Yeah.

And, and I was also kind of thinking about polyphenols, you know, a lot of these red powders and polyphenol-rich compounds and the dark reds and purples of the plant kingdom. Do you think there's any type of protective effect from anything you can imagine or you found in your research when it comes to Nu5GC for people who aren't able to eat only fermented meat when they have lamb or pork or beef?

Well, I think number one, the new evidence is actually very encouraging that you can displace Neu5Gc off of your glycocalyces by predominantly eating Neu5Ac foods, fish, shellfish, wild fish please, wild shellfish. And properly raised chicken. So, that's number 1. Number 2, you're right. I've written a bunch of papers early in my nutritional career looking at people. We can measure the flexibility of blood vessels and we can actually measure the integrity of the glycocalyx. Basically how sticky your glycocalyx is. And, I found that I could give people, patients, grape seed extract, which is a polyphenol, and a polyphenol called pycnogenol, French maritime tree bark, along with fish oil and show that the flexibility of blood vessels which had been stiff was then flexible and show that the stickiness of the glycocalyx was removed and it became non-sticky. And then, we showed that if we stopped those supplements, they would return to inflexible and they would return to sticky. And, if we restarted those supplements, the process would reverse. And, that's one of the early reasons I became so passionate about polyphenols. And, I still have the same passionate about polyphenols. So, yeah, there are clearly compounds that can help mitigate.

Yeah. You talk about polyphenols and how many of the Blue Zones consume a wide variety of them. And, I'm completely convinced that they're one of the best things you can do for your microbiome. And, I I suspect that they're probably going to help a lot with this new 5G-C issue as well based on the mechanism of action that you've just described. And, I actually have even since reading your book been a little bit more cognizant about throwing a little bit of the, whatever, I have the Organifi Red Powder and I've been putting that in my smoothie and keeping the freezer stocked with a few extra frozen organic blueberries and kind of gone from the occasional— I've been having a Croatian palenkovac liquor for a cocktail in the evening. I've kind of shifted back to just organic biodynamic red wine just because I do have not only beef and pork and lamb, but I actually do organ meats and bone broth as well, which I learned from your book are even more concentrated in Neu5Gc. So, this is good information for people. Eat your polyphenols and work in fish, really good poultry, et cetera. Preferably more than the lamb and the beef and the pork. But, I did want to ask you something, Steven, that's not, I suppose, probably related to nutrition but is related to the Blue Zones. I have heard some skeptics talk about inaccurate birth records or inaccurate or small sample sizes. Do you have any thoughts on any of the statistical issues with the Blue Zones?

Well, and I talk about this in Gut Check. I think maybe the most glaring example is Okinawa. All birth records were destroyed in the bombing, and so it was actually up to the U.S. military to record a date of birth. And what's remarkable about the Okinawan data is that there were a remarkable number of people who seemed to have the same birth year. And, that statistically shouldn't happen, but if you are guessing or don't understand a language very well, you could certainly come up with that. There's also— most of the blue zones are actually very poor communities. And, particularly in Europe, the pension that's available to most European countries, including Italy and Greece, is based on someone who's actually alive, and the reporting of deaths would lose a pension. And so, as I speculate and others have speculated, there's a lot of underreporting of deaths in these communities.

So Okay. Okay. So, would you say— what's the island again? You said Andorra. Would you say—

Andorra is a little country.

Okay. Okay, it's a country. But would you say that that is an example, a more accurate example of what a blue zone would be?

Yeah. I mean, I think we have to be very careful. Another good friend of mine is Valter Longo who heads up the Longevity Center at USC. And, Valter is very, very pro-plant foods. He's from Italy. And, Valter has a bestselling book in Italy about eating, why Italians live so long. And, it's a humorous book to read and I like the book, but Valter would refuse to eat the foods in the towns that actually had longevity that didn't coincide with his belief system. And, he doesn't like the fact that the second-longest life expectancy in the world is in Monte Carlo. And, he makes an argument in his book that, "Well, they eat a horrible—" That's a horrible not plant-based diet, but they live so long because they have fabulous medical care. Well, if that argument is what you would use, then Americans ought to have the longest lifespan in the world because we clearly have at least the most expensive medical care and we have some of the worst longevity in the world. So, I don't buy that argument at at all. Have you been to Monte Carlo? Oh, many times. I've actually operated in Monte Carlo many times.

What do they eat there?

It's a Mediterranean diet. Monte Carlo long ago was, as was Nice, was part of Italy. And so, it's a very Mediterranean diet, but I mean, they eat a lot of fish. They don't eat a lot of beans. They do eat a lot of pasta. Incidentally, the Acciarolis, these very long-lived people south of Naples, they don't eat any grain products. They don't eat any pasta. They don't eat any bread. It's thought long ago that they couldn't afford it. They do eat lentils that have been soaked, but what's interesting about them is they eat a lot of small fish, anchovies, number one. And, number 2, they eat a ton of rosemary. And, one of the things that's interesting about these people, particularly the older men, is they're apparently very horny.

I think I've heard about these guys.

Yeah. And, you go, "Well, wait a minute, why are these old guys so horny?" Well, it turns out that there are several compounds in rosemary that among other things are good mitochondrial couplers, but they also have aphrodisiac properties. And, I just kind of did a little podcast on this recently. So, guys, if you want to get everybody horny, you just keep chewing your rosemary.

Yeah. Or feed your goats and your deer and your cows rosemary because those polyphenols concentrate in the meat, don't they?

Exactly.

And, in the milk. Or the rosmarinic acid, that's what it's called.

Yeah, rosmarinic acid and ursolic acid are two of the biggies. In fact, interestingly enough, all these sheep herders and goat herders actively feed their animals these spices and these plants because you're right, you are what you eat, but you are what the thing you're eating ate. And, we tend to forget that. Yeah.

Rosemary sprigs are also fantastic in a cup of coffee. Have coffee and kind of stir it up with a rosemary sprig to cool it off, you actually get rosmarinic acid in the coffee and it's a little bit of a cognitive pick-me-up too. I was recently in Portugal and did that every morning. I get my coffee over by the spa. I go outside, walk out to the garden, get a sprig of rosemary, and sip my rosemary coffee out there. It was fantastic.

Ben Greenfield: The other thing is sage. Sage was called salvia by the Romans. And sage and the basil family, the mint family, also has some really cool polyphenols. And, I was exposed actually in Seattle a number of years ago to a sage coffee where ground sage was put in the process. And, try it out, it'll knock your socks off.

Yeah, that's fantastic because you technically could take it dried or even a whole herb and put it in a coffee grinder and just grind it up with the beans and use that in a French press, I would imagine. Correct. Never thought about doing that. It's a good idea. You mentioned chicken and I did notice on one page of the book, you were talking about sardines and small fish and shellfish and their benefits. Then, you talked about chicken but you didn't say chicken meat, you said chicken gristle and chicken skin. It's kind of funny when we make our whole chickens at the Greenfield house, I'm the guy who takes all the gristle, all the skin, the knuckles on the end of the bones and the rest of the family gets the meat because I just like to eat the weird bits of the chicken. But, why is it that you specifically focus on those components of the chicken and what should we be thinking about when it comes to chicken?

So, a couple things. Like I talk about in the book at the end of this part about Neu5Gc, they're saying, "Oh, well, Dr. Gundry, then all you want us to do is eat chicken." Well, not so fast. Again, growing up in Nebraska, chickens were farm animals. And, chickens were actually taken out to the pastures where the cows were grazing and chickens were released into the pastures and they would go over to the cow pies, the manure, and they would dig with their claws through manure looking for the bugs. And, they would spread the manure. They were after the bugs. And then, they'd come back to the hen house and lay eggs. And, The only time you ever ate a chicken was when the old hen couldn't lay anymore and she became a stewing hen. And, she was so grisly that you'd have to literally stew her overnight or all day. And, that's where you got all this great collagen from. But, the chicken was basically an insectivore. Now, unfortunately, most of our chickens, particularly our organic chickens, are fed organic corn and soybeans. And so, a chicken is no longer a chicken. A chicken is basically an ear of corn with feathers. As I talk about in the book, a normal commercial chicken— let me back up. Normally, if you're a foraging animal, you have a ratio of omega-6 fats to omega-3 fats in your flesh of anywhere from 3 to 5 times omega-6 to 1 part omega-3. And, that's a normal grazing ratio. If you look at an organic chicken right now, that ratio is 25 parts omega-6 to 1 part omega-3. So, what you're eating is a giant ball of inflammatory mischief. Now, I have a farmer in Texas who I'm a huge fan of. I have no relationship. Farmer Dan, I've had him on my podcast, lectinlightchicken.com. And, Lectin Light Chicken, in fact, I had his turkey for Thanksgiving. He feeds— they're pasture-raised, but he feeds his chickens grain-free, lectin-free feed. And, he now has a bunch of other farmers that are doing it. Now, he has his ratio down to 5 parts omega-6 to 1 part omega-3. And, we're actually twiddling, fiddling with his feed. We're going to put some more flaxseeds in it. But, the point of all this is a chicken is not a chicken anymore. And, you got to be careful where you get your chickens. The skin is loaded with spermidines. No kidding. Chicken skin is one of the highest sources of spermidine.

And, it's way cheaper than a spermidine supplement. That's true.

It's expensive. And, a lot better tasting. Yeah.

What was the other thing you said a while back is rich in spermidine?

Now, I'm forgetting. Mushrooms are rich in spermidine.

I think it was the fermented cheese, was it?

Yeah, fermented cheese are rich in spermidine. Yeah.

Why is spermidine so important?

What's it actually doing? Well, it's a polyamine and these compounds are actually really good mitochondrial uncouplers. And, to me, uncoupling mitochondria to a point does two things. Number one, it stops, it prevents the damage to mitochondria. And, you and I know We're only as good as our mitochondrial function is. And, number 2, it actually promotes mitogenesis, making of new mitochondria.

And, just for the nerds amongst us, just give me an overview of what mitochondrial uncoupling is. How do you describe that to somebody on an elevator?

Yeah, that's the hardest part. Normally, in the electron transport chain in mitochondria, The job is to energize protons and electrons and try to get a proton to couple with an oxygen molecule to then produce ATP. That process of coupling oxygen with protons produces a lot of damage, free radical damage. There's a built-in system where there are essentially emergency exits in mitochondria where protons can escape without coupling with oxygen. And, believe it or not, you and I sitting here, about 30% of all of our protons entering the electron transport chain are uncoupled on a daily basis and that generates heat. What we found is this was work by Martin Brand that was published first in the year 2000. And, it's a cute little paper. It's called "Uncoupling to Survive." And, long story short, the more up to a point you uncouple your mitochondria, the more protected your mitochondria is from damage. And, the more you stimulate more mitochondria to grow to carry the workload. So, uncoupled mitochondria are good. And, he's gone on to show that the longest-living people have the most uncoupled mitochondria of any of us. So, it sounds like that's a really good idea. The best example I can give, you know, there are many theories of aging and one of the theories of aging that is has been around forever is the cost of living hypothesis. And, the cost of living says, "Hey, in general, a little animal is going to have a very high metabolic rate and they're not going to live very long. And, a big animal like Ben Greenfield is going to have a slow metabolic rate and he's going to live a lot longer." And, that's the cost of living hypothesis. The only problem with hypothesis is birds. Birds have an incredibly high metabolic rate, and yet parrots can live 85 to 100 years. A hummingbird in captivity with a heart rate of 1,100 beats per minute can live 10 to 12 years in captivity. Wow. It turns out that birds have the most uncoupled mitochondria of any species, which explains their incredible longevity. Now, where do they get their mitochondria uncoupled? It turns out from their food. Particularly hummingbirds, retinoic acid is a great mitochondrial coupler and hummingbirds live on retinoic acid in the nectar that they drink. Wow.

Besides food, are there things that you could do to uncouple the mitochondria? Sauna, cold, any of these lifestyle practices?

Yeah, exactly. When I was a heart surgeon, we were researching what was called heat shock protein. And heat shock protein, we found that if we cut off the flow of blood in a coronary artery for 5 minutes and then reestablished it, we would activate heat shock proteins that turns out were really good at protecting myocardial cells from damage. And, we could cut off the flow of oxygen for an hour after doing this and show that nothing happened. So, I got, among other people, got really interested in heat shock proteins. And, lo and behold, heat shock proteins work by uncoupling mitochondria. And so, you're right, sauna is a method of uncoupling mitochondria. Cold plunges uncouple mitochondria. That's how they work. That's how they're protective. Red light uncouples mitochondria. Oh, yeah. Forgot about that one. Yeah. Yeah. So, all of these different divergent therapies actually converge in the same spot and that is the more you uncouple your mitochondria, up to a point, the better you're going to do.

So, smoke a cigarette, get in the sauna, do a cold plunge, and get some red lights, a Gundry morning routine protocol.

Well, stay away from the cigarettes, get your nicotine in a safer way. How's that?

And, what do you think about booze? Do you drink alcohol at all? You have a take on that? You're right.

I drink biodynamic red wine. One of the things, again, I spend quite a bit of time in Italy and France going to these small villages and figuring out, What do these guys do? And, one of the things that we make the mistake is wine is a beverage that's eaten with, that's enjoyed with a meal. There's no cocktail hour in these places. Nobody's having 2 stiff ones before they head to dinner. Wine is a beverage that's a part of the meal. And, wine is a great, particularly red wine, is a great polyphenol delivery device. But, you're right, what we make the mistake is if we have a lot of alcohol all at once, it's really good at causing leaky gut and intestinal permeability. So, you got to dose it correctly. And, for instance, the Sardinians have a Cannonau grape that many people think is a Grenache grape, but it's grown at high altitude. And, Sardinian wines, biodynamic Sardinian wines may be a piece of this puzzle on why they live so long. Yeah.

And, you talk about in the book how polyamines can help to protect the gut lining. You also mentioned glycine. So, arguably, polyphenol-rich diet and perhaps some glycine intake before or after or during alcohol drinking could help a little bit. As well with the gut lining aspect.

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, there's a lot to like about glycine in many ways, but I think one of the tricks of making glutathione is the combination of N-acetylcysteine, NAC, and glycine is still one of the best ways to generate glutathione. In fact, I take a bunch of glycine and NAC every night before I go to bed.

Oh, yeah. And then, the cool thing is even though it's a little bit higher dose, I think I get up to 4 to 5 grams glycine will actually shift the body's core temperature a little bit downwards. Oh, yeah.

Drops your temperature. It's a great sleep inducer. Yeah.

If you've got the meat sweats, if you've been eating too much lamb and pork and beef before bed, have some glycine. So, there you go. That's true. Well, Stephen, as usual, I mean every time I get one of your new books, I learn a ton. And, this new one is fantastic. It's a Gut Check. And, for those of you listening, you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/GutCheck to check it out. It should be out brand new. It should be out by the time this podcast is released. And, in the meantime, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/GutCheck, you could leave questions or comments or feedback for Steven and I. If you don't understand the whole lectin piece or the Plant Paradox piece, don't worry, I'll link to my first podcast with Stephen where we take a deep dive into that stuff as well. So, Stephen, thanks so much, man. It's always a pleasure talking to you. I learned so much.

Ben, it's always good to see you. You look well and fit and that liver isn't killing you yet, so that's great to hear. Not yet.

Alright, my friend. Happy holidays. Alright, you too.

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