37: Feasting on Wellness: How Your Diet Can Starve Cancer and Boost Immunity with Dr. William Li

Hello and welcome to the Keeping It Breast podcast with Dr. Jen. The show dedicated to empowering women through knowledge, tools and resources to take control of your breast health journey. I'm your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and I'm thrilled to have you join me on this insightful and inspiring journey. As a breast cancer surgeon turns functional medicine physician, I'm on a mission to empower women to live their breasts and need best lives. This podcast dives deep into all topics related to breast health, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and holistic approaches to support overall well being. You know what I say? Breast health is health. So no matter who you are, a breast cancer survivor, newly diagnosed in treatment, living with metastatic disease, or you're simply seeking to improve your breast health, this podcast is for you. Join us on this transformative path towards better breast health and a thriving life. And now, let's get to today's episode.

Hello and welcome to the Keeping Abreast podcast. I AM your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and with me today is Dr. William Lee. In case you don't know of him, although I can't imagine how you don't know of him if you don't know of him, he is an internationally renowned physician, scientist, author of the New York Times bestseller Eat to Beat Disease, the New Science of How the Body Can Heal Itself. He has a Ted Talk which I think was viewed by 11 million people or something along those lines. He's been on Good Morning America, cnn, cnbc, the Rachael Ray Show, Live with Kelly and Ryan, amongst many, many, many more publications. And he is a go to expert in the area of nutrition and science and medicine. And I am delighted to have him here with us today.

Thanks, Dr. Jen. Always a pleasure to be back and going to talk with you about the things that we both care a lot about, which is, you know, what is the evidence for how we can help people become more functional and more healthy.

Yeah, absolutely. So we have very similar backgrounds in that we started off in a very conventional medical path, but both changed our ways and the way that we think and the way that we approach people and medicine and how we think about things. So I would love to hear how you became such an out of the box thinker because you really are vastly different than how most internal medicine doctors. That. That is your background, right? Internal medicine. That's right. You think very differently than most people in internal medicine.

Yeah, no, it's a good question. You know, what I would say is that, you know, I grew up in the town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is a multi ethnic Town. And I was heavily influenced when it comes to food and culture with aren't.

They exposures some crazy sandwich that has like french fries on it or potato chips.

That is true. There is a famous sandwich shop called Primantis and you know, and if you're a fan of Pittsburgh, you go there. I would not say that I've had many of those sandwich as I've eaten them before, but they're certainly the opposite of what I would recommend.

My guess is they're not on the Dr. William Lee plan right now.

Yeah, but. But I will tell you, it was a wonderful place to grow up because I was exposed to so many different cultures and the foods at these food folk festivals that were out there. And you know, having grown up in an Asian family, I was always exposed to fresh, whole lots of plant based foods prepared in absolutely delicious ways. The smells coming out of my mother's kitchen, I remember to this day. And they bring me back to my roots, which I think is important for everyone to know is that, you know, we all come from someplace and we all associate comfort with some sort of food that we grew up with. And it's part of our humanity. But you know, when I was. Before I went to medical school, I took a gap year, which was also not too common back then. I studied biochemistry, so I was kind of a science jock. But my gap year had very little to do with biochemistry. I actually went to Italy and I went to Greece in order to be able to study an interest that I had been nurturing, which is the connections between culture, food and health. And this is back in the mid-1980s, long before people were talking about the blue zones or anything like that. And I embedded myself in the markets.

Where did that even come from though? Like, where did you get the inclination that there was a connection there? Because that is not common.

You know, I, I again, I think that very early on I was interested in foods from different places that were delicious and they weren't just, they were not foreign to me, they were in. It was interesting to me how the people with different cultural backgrounds had generations of tradition that they were really proud of. And every tradition, every traditional culture with food has some statement about how the food is healthy. So think about the chicken soup with the Jewish grandmother, right? I mean there's some, there's some truth to it and it's real.

Don't be any differently because my grandmother would roll over in her grave.

It is absolutely real. Turns out that chicken soup, there are bioactives in chicken soup. And this might Be interesting for your listeners that have been shown to slow down the activity of neutrophils, which are immune cells. They get called into action when you actually have viruses. And so if you have a cold, if you have the flu, if you have some other illness with a lot of runny nose and, and congestion, chicken soup actually has been shown to quell that inflammatory slash immune response and make you feel better. And so, you know, the thing is, I've always been interested in this sort of connection between, like the why. Why does this work? Is it true? What is it could be the reason for it. And I think I grew up with friends, very close family friends that were Italian. And, you know, I grew up eating all kinds of interesting foods. And. And so when I had the chance before getting on the treadmill, as I think you and I would both call it, you know, the hamster in the cage on the treadmill of medical school, I thought, you know, exactly. I would take a year off and I would do a gap year and I would just be in a very different place than I grew up and see how the Italians ate and see how the Greeks ate. In fact, not only did I go to local markets and watch local families cook, I also went to restaurants to see how the chefs interacted and how they thought about the menus and the seasonal foods. I also, even in Greece, I went to a monastic community, monasteries. And I embedded myself this place called Montathos, where I had the. I was called to action by a abbot of the monk because the chef of the. Of the monastery was sick with the flu. And they needed people to volunteer, visitors, pilgrims to volunteer to help cook Easter feast. So I literally went into these underground monastic kitchens with, you know, big fires and, and had canoe paddles to stir the beans with the oregano. It was, you know, in this dark, you know, stone walled thing that was a thousand years old. Anyway, the point is, I really became even more convinced, talking to people, that there was a real belief system in the value of the foods that they had. And again, a lot of what I learned from my gap year before medical school, before I had any training on drugs, pharmaceuticals, was that people really believed in the health of eating seasonally, locally, in getting fresh ingredients and following traditional recipes that involved, you know, preparing foods with healthy oils, herbs and spices, using, you know, nuts and seeds. You know, the stuff that we talk about now in functional medicine that seems new actually wasn't new. And so when I went to medical school, you know, Jen, this is like you and I would, we could we could. We could have a whole conversation, campfire conversation around this. You know, it's kind of like going to medical school, for those of you who are listening, is like being a torpedo loaded into a tube. All right? It takes a lot of lifting to take this heavy torpedo. And you get into that tube, they close the hatch, it feels like there's no going back. And they shoot you out into the ocean and you just keep on going underwater until, you know, something happens. Right? And that's something. Until you graduate as a doctor. And we're trained in disease, diet, disease, not health. We're treating it. We're treated in diagnosis, not prevention. Were treated in intervention and using pharmaceuticals of surgery. All of which are amazing, okay? All of which are life saving stuff, you know, and, you know, I think for people who haven't yet had a chance to go to medical school and you might be thinking about it, my experience was as I was learning about all this amazing stuff about the human body, what a privilege, you know, to learn how to deliver a baby, to take part in surgeries, to be able to watch life and death unfold as part of your education, and then to be given the privilege at the very end to be able to contribute to the world by helping to care for others. Right. I mean, this is. This is what you and I committed to doing.

Yeah.

But then what I realized is that what was missing was all the connections between the stuff I did my gap year on. Right? So, you know, my professors would say, okay, class, this is cancer and this is hepatoma over the liver, and this is actually the connection to alcohol, and this is how you diagnosis, and these are the treatments. And I would actually do this over and over again, and I would ask my professors, you know, I'm glad you're telling me about the C's, but I want to. I want you to just take a little time to tell me about health. You know, what is liver health as opposed to.

What does that meant?

You know, it was. Honestly, I would get these people, their eyebrows would go up and they're like, you know, what a silly question, you know, young skywalker, you know, they would say, they would actually say, you know, it should be obvious to you, health is just the absence of disease. Now let's go back to disease, all right? Like, don't be wasting your time on health. And that always stuck in my craw as something that we needed the answers to. Now, I'm a researcher, I'm a scientist, I'm a vascular biologist. I spent decades in the Lab designing experiments, figuring out how to turn those into scientific concepts, into real treatments that eventually wound up getting FDA approved. I've been around, I've been involved with 45 FDA approved treatments for cancer, diabetes and vision loss and cardiology. And so I know something about this whole process of applying science for disease treatment. And I think really how I got into food is medicine, let's call it that is because I felt treating the horse out of the barn when you had disease was missing the biggest opportunity of all for doctors, which is to prevent disease in the first place. Just because we had the toys to be able to the toolbox to be able to treat disease doesn't mean that we can step away from the opportunity to preserve and maintain health. So fast forward to yeah, do we.

Really have the toolbox to treat disease?

I think that there are many diseases that we're actually able to treat. More than most people, most in the medical community thinks we can even cure a number of diseases. And, you know, we can have a separate conversation about, you know, how do you define that? And you know, like, it's a medical conversation. But what I, what I think is that, you know, like, if you can prevent disease in the first place, what we have today is enormous scientific tools to allow us to apply what has been used by the pharmaceutical industry, develop drugs. If we crank the turret of those gun sites away from pharmaceuticals to foods and away from treatment to prevention, suddenly we now have the tools to understand the science of health. And that's exactly what I was looking for in medical school. That's the answer that my professors could not, would not give me. And so that's really why I really felt like this call to action, all right, like, I don't need to prove myself anymore. Developing new cancer treatments. Been there, done that. I'll still do it. Like, it's still a worthwhile cause. But what I'm really passionate about is, all right, we got to understand this thing called health, and we have to do it at more than a hand wavy perspective. Let's do the deep dive and understand it. Because if we knew truly understood food as medicine in the same way that we understood pharmaceuticals as medicine, we wouldn't have this kind of as big a gulf between the medical community versus the, the what, what consumers, what patients, what ordinary people want. We want health. We want to do it with things that are enjoyable. We don't want to have to wait for the health care system to do the work that we could easily do ourselves and enjoy our lives along the way.

So you did set out to prove that food is medicine, and you did study a number of foods and compared them head to head with medicines. And I'm sure you're not surprised by the outcome, But I think many people would be surprised by that outcome. So can you talk about that work?

Yeah, you know, that work was done, you know, almost 20 years ago. I was, as I mentioned, I have been involved with helping to develop cancer drugs. And so to do that, we actually had to invent new tools to be able to throw experimental, maybe drugs of the future into the systems to see you if they really could do what we hope they would do. In this case, cut off the blood supply feeding cancer called anti angiogenesis. I run the angiogenesis foundation, and we thought we could contribute something to this. So we were involved with helping to develop the test systems for drugs.

For those of you who don't understand that concept, can you just explain angiogenesis a little bit and what the relevance is in terms of cancer?

Yeah. Okay, well, look, I mean, I'm on your show, and your show is really focused on breast cancer, and it's the perfect place to talk about. About it. So angiogenesis, angio blood, blood vessel genesis, how they grow. Angiogenesis is very simply how our body grows blood vessels. And it's a process that happens when we're still in the womb to develop our entire circulation. Right. And our blood supply, Our circulation feeds every cell, every organ in the body, including the breast. And in fact, blood vessels are absolutely critical for developing the breast during puberty, during pregnancy, during lactation, and over the course of our lifetime, Maintaining breast health. And so blood vessels are actually good, and they're good until. And they also heal our wounds. We need to, like, you know, as a surgeon, Every surgeon knows our life source.

They deliver our life source. Right.

There are. They are our lifeline. They're the mouthpiece that's connected to the scuba tank, if you are actually a diver. That's what angiogenesis is. Our circulation, however, the, you know, just like anything else good can become bad in the wrong context. And in this particular case, we know that cancers can form, but they're generally harmless. They can't go anywhere. They can't grow larger than about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen. It's about 2 millimeters in diameter. Because they don't have a food source, they can't get an oxygen, they can't get a blood supply, and they're stuck. And in fact, we now know that people are forming these little Tiny, pimply, like cancers in our bodies all the time, throughout our entire lives. And we'll never be diagnosed with cancer for them because they can't get bigger. And then our immune system conducts surveillance, spots, those bad guys, and just wipes them out. So we won't even know about it. You know, it's kind of like a pimple. If you see it on your face and it gets big, all right, you're going to notice it. It's going to be a crisis. If a pimple's on your back and it never gets big and it doesn't burst or cause pain or get infected, you won't even know it, and your body will take care of it. Cancer is really a disease of just living. Our immune system wipes them out, wipes cancer cells out until they get the sneaky ability. A few cancer tumors gain, the sneaky ability to be able to hijack our blood supply so that they can grow the lifelines that they need to grow. So think about it like a tumor that's normally harmless, sitting in the economy section of an airplane, walking up into the cockpit and busting in to take over the circulation. And when cancers hijack the blood supply to feed themselves. And I worked in The Pioneer's Lab, Dr. Judah Folkman. What was amazing is that the research has discovered that a tumor that's harmless 2 millimeters, tip of the ballpoint pen, can't get any bigger. The moment a blood vessel touches that tumor to feed it, that tumor can grow 16,000 times in size in just two weeks. The same blood supply that feeds the cancer also allows cancer cells in this expanding tumor to escape into the circulation as metastases. This is very important, especially in breast cancer, when you think about it, because when we tell women to do their own self breast examination, you know, with their fingers in the shower, you know, remember I told you that the Small cancers are 2 millimeters. The ones you can feel are about a centimeter in diameter already. You have to be pretty big in order for you to be able to feel it with a. With the self exam. A tumor that's about centimeter is already about a billion cancer cells. And to support a billion cancer cells, the metabolism of a billion cancer cells, you need about 100 million blood vessel cells that are feeding it. So you can kind of see that we need better ways of doing early detection, whether it's imaging, whether it's blood tests or whatever it is. This is why, you know, all this preventative work that we talk about for women, for better diets, for making sure you manage all those lifestyle things that can actually help tame these little microscopic cancers and prevent them from hijacking the blood supply is absolutely critical for overall women's health. Okay? But what I'm saying is that we were. So we developed these test systems that look at new biotech medicines, and we had been doing this very successfully, time after time, drug after drug, and they were getting approved. And so one day, I decided to scratch the itch that I had since medical school about asking whether or not foods would actually have the same power as medicines, right? Except I'm a scientist, so I can't just hand wave about it. I got to know. And so literally, I ordered food extracts and I labeled them as if they were drug candidates, and I mixed them into a box of the test substances, each in their own little vial, and I sent them onto the lab to be tested. And so when the results came out, the people in the lab thought they were all drug candidates. And they're like, oh, there's some pretty good ones in there. And I. And I alone knew what the identity was. And so when I looked at it and I. And I unblinded, they say, then you know exactly what it is. I was like, OMG, okay. 50% of the food substances that I snuck in there were as or more potent than the drug candidates. And, you know, you're saying that I wasn't surprised my jaw hit the ground. All right? And the reason was because that was my first visible, like, I sought for myself. I did the experiment. I designed it. I looked at the data. This was not somebody else telling me. I did it myself. And I thought, this is what I've been looking for. The opportunity to be able to nail down the fact that the natural chemicals that mother nature put into our foods can have a biological effect that is the same way that we're testing drugs. This is actually the beginning of opening up a new gate and paving new roads for us to be able to study food as medicine. And so that's what I've been doing for the last 20 years, is really looking at similar ways to actually demonstrate what grows blood vessels, what foods grow blood vessels, what foods stop blood vessels, what foods stimulate regeneration stem cells. I've been involved with cell therapy for regeneration. What are the ones that actually can stimulate regeneration for healing after surgery or after some other internal injury? Oh, wait a minute. Are there foods that can kill cancer stem cells? Answer is yes. And so what I love being a scientist is that every day is an exciting day for me because I get to look forward to discovery. There's a lot of stuff around the world. You know, it's like super polarized world that, like, is not so exciting. But to me, I have said one of the best jobs in the world because I get to look forward to what's being discovered next.

So I would love to talk about some of those foods that you found to be the most effective against cancer cells, against cancer stem cells, so that people can. I would love to hear about some of what you've learned.

Sure. Well, first I'm going to describe some findings that have been done in humans as well as in a laboratory. And I want to actually preface that. Frame it out for people listening to say, the nature of research is that you never have the definitive answer. You keep on going to have a better understanding. So what I'm telling. What I'm about to say is really a snapshot of what we're excited about at this point in time. And everything is being built upon this. Okay, so I want to. Let's talk about breast and breast health and breast cancer, because I think this is something that is really important for women that are listening to this. I love the idea of having a objective, agnostic look about the benefits or harms of food because there's so much mythology out there. You know, food is that food and health is like a religion. You know, either you believe in this deity or you believe in that deity. And if you don't agree, then it's time to have a crusade. You know, like, I don't go there. I just look at the data. And so, you know, for years, people, women have been told to avoid soy and that, you know, soy is a phytoestrogen. And because some human breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, they should definitely stay away from soy. And it's a very dangerous thing to be eating. Well, you know, the thing that actually struck me as why that might not be true at the very beginning, this is like 20 years ago, is because in Asia, when women are diagnosed with breast cancer, they are not told to avoid soy. That's a staple food. In fact, they're told to eat more soy. And you don't see, like, sort of this massive wave of breast cancer deaths in Asia that eclipse anywhere else in the world that doesn't eat soy. So I thought, let's take a look at some in the lab. Let's take a look at the research on this. And so when you develop evidence to examine the connection between food and health, it's not a black and White answer. You have to look at different types of evidence. You have to look at what's been done in the lab. You got it. And is it in cells? This is in animals. Is there any human studies? And there's lots of different ways to study things in humans. Some are small studies, some are larger studies. And then I think the rubber really meets the road when you also combine that analysis with looking at population studies where tens or hundreds of thousands of people, or even millions of people are looked at for the same question. For breast cancer, here's what it found. There was a major study published in the Journal of the American Medical association that looked at whether eating soy foods actually what the impact was on mortality. And it was studied in women with the highest risk for breast cancer. And those are women who already have breast cancer. And what they found is that women who ate the most soy, this is studied in Asia because it's very common to eat soy. Women that eat the most amount of soy actually have the greatest reduction in mortality, up to 30% mortality by having the highest level of soy eating. Now, how do you get. What's the cut point to get to that 30% mortality? It's about 10 grams of soy protein a day. Now, what's 10 grams of soy protein? Is that a lot? Well, actually, when you do the calculations, that's the amount of soy protein you would actually get in about a tall glass of soy milk. Right. And there's many different ways of having soy. I'm going to come to the reason for this in a second. And if you. And if you. So it lowers mortality. And in women who had had surgery, who were in remission for breast cancer and wanted to actually not have it come back, it turns out that those women who ate the most soy also had the greatest reduction in the recurrence, the comeback of the soy, of the breast cancer itself over five years. These are wins. Okay? Studied in 5,000 people, published in a credible medical journal. And some people say, well, that's just one study. You can't trust one study. Well, after that, there were 13 other studies that found the same thing in every single case. The more soy that's ingested, the better the outcome. And in no case was there increase in death. All right, so now, now you got to know why. Right? It turns out that phytoestrogens, which are found in soy, like genocide equal diazine for people listening, don't worry about the chemical names. Leave that for people like me who actually do the heavy lifting. But we know the stuff that's in there, the phytoestrogens, like genocide. Okay. Actually, if you look at a drawing of what the chemical structure of plant estrogens look like and compare it to human estrogens, they don't look anything alike. In fact, what's been found is that the plant estrogens block human estrogen. It's like mother Nature's tamoxifen. Okay. And so this is probably one of the reasons that actual soy ingestion can be beneficial in women with breast cancer and help not hurt. Now, the other thing that we discovered in our research is that the soy bioactives, the natural chemicals in there, actually cut off the blood supply, feeding cancer. So again, anti androgenesis, taming those blood vessels, preventing the cancers from hijacking the cockpit, or they have to kind of cut off their food supply that actually is taming. And so we've looked at this in the lab at cells in animals, and this is also being found. When you do imaging of women with breast cancer and soy, you can see there's fewer the blood supply, blood flow decreases to the tumor. And so where we're at now with this thinking is that in fact, the, the urban legend that has really been universal is now being modified to say, you know, it doesn't look like soy is harmful. In fact, it might be really quite helpful, and we need to actually build on this kind of research to then say, number one, are there ways that actually, first of all, are there anyone for this is not true? But also, are there ways of improving on this, whether it's through foods and finding other foods that could do the same thing? And then what do you do long term? You know, is this something that you do long term? Do you combine foods with different ingredients? So, and then what about for, for other cancers as well? This is just one example of, I think, a loaded button issue that is viewed as controversy or, you know, but I'm telling you, it's an urban legend. The, the, the vast majority of evidence shows that soy is safe and beneficial.

So getting, getting to the, to the depths of that, I have heard from a number of people who are medical oncologists accustomed to treating women with breast cancer. And they have responded with things like, well, that's true in the Asian population, but not true across the board. Or they say they, they insist that this is still controversial. And I get, I still get questions every single day about whether or not soy is safe. So it's so unclear to me if the data is there. Why don't, why doesn't the medical system know that the data is there.

Yeah, well, you know, you're pointing out something really important, which is that the doctors, the establishment of oncologists today, have been trained in the same era that you and I were trained in, in which nutrition was not part of our curriculum. And in fact, we were told nutrition is not important. Leave it to the dietitians. You know, we. We as doctors are taught the important stuff, which is pharmaceuticals and surgery. And in point of fact, that's changing for the up and comers. The young doctors that are coming out, the young oncologists are actually really interested in it, and they're looking for the data. The old guys. I mean, you know, again, I know this is on a podcast for a general audience, but, you know, you and I are both doctors, so let's. Let's put our. Let's put the cards on the table. There's something called negative bias, confirmation bias, all right? Where you're looking, you're looking for reasons to disprove something that you're not sure about yourself, so you look better at it. And this is, I think, what a lot of oncologists are doing today. You know, I haven't seen the data, so it must not exist. You know, And. And I will tell you that every oncologist I've spoken to who looks at the data and it's, It's. There's too much data out there to look at. But look, podcasts like this, I'm. I'm hopeful that there's some breast oncologist or maybe a patient who's going to talk to the breast oncologist after hearing about this podcast that's going to look for that JAMA 2009 article, by the way. 2009. 15 effing years ago.

I know.

All right? So I just think that it takes time to change the medical community, all right? And we have to do our part to change it. And in the meantime, I think where we are living now, Dr. Chen, is we're living in a time where patients are waking up to learn and advocate for themselves. And so one of the things that I think is that food as medicine is something that is the kind of health care that women, women with breast cancer, but people in general, they do for themselves at home between visits to the doctor's office, whether it's an annual checkup, a gynecological checkup, or whether it's an infusion clinic visit. Health care is what we do for ourselves at home. Care is what actually happens in the clinic and in the hospital. And I think that when people start realizing that, you know, doctors are trained in sick care. All right, and what we're trying to do, what the you and I's of the world are trying to do, is to really kind of cross over the threshold to say, no, no, no. We also have a responsibility for health care. But in the meantime, the patients, the people and their family members and caregivers, they can actually do something for themselves.

Yeah. And I think that's so important because it's a misnomer. We don't have a health care system. Right. We have a sick care system. And as you and I know, health doesn't happen in a doctor's office or a hospital or chemotherapy suite or a radiation suite. Health happens at home. And only, only individuals can make their own health happen. So I agree with you. I think that the data is in for soy. I think that soy is beneficial in the area of breast cancer. I am careful about the kinds of soy that I talk about.

Sure.

Being non gmo, being organic, being as unprocessed as. Or minimally processed. Right. I'm not talking to people about eating soy protein isolate or any of those kind of highly, highly processed forms of soy because we still want our bodies to recognize it as food. And the further we get away from the, the actual food, the less our body can recognize it and utilize it as such. But I, I think that soy is nothing but beneficial.

Yeah, it's a good, It's a good. It's a good source of protein, which is very important for all people, but including women and especially cancer patients. And so, you know, look, I mean, look, the. You, you just brought up a really important point, Jen, which is that, you know, many foods, including soy, are used as fillers in ultra processed foods. And if there's one food that I believe the evidence is also absolutely compelling, that's not good for our health, not just for breast cancer, but for all kinds of chronic diseases, including all cancers, is really over in consumption of ultra processed foods. These are the things that we grew up with. These are the things that get marketed, that are very appealing. They're engineered to taste great. Great. I mean, look, I mean, we all grew up with this stuff. And I think that for me, when I. The more research I do, the more I realize that, you know, those people that I hung out with in Italy and Greece, you know, that these. No whole plant based, freshly prepared foods with minimal amounts of added ingredients, lower, low, low to no sugar added, none of this artificial preservatives or flavorings or coloring, that is the way to go, you know, And I think that it's not hard to do it. And you know, one of the things that I always tell people is that you can love your food to love your health. This is not about deprivation, this is about inclusion, not exclusion. And if you want to actually really enjoy food. So people always ask me, Dr. Lee, what's your diet? And I tell people, I don't have a diet. I don't believe in diets. In fact, I wrote my second book, eat to beat your Diet as a way of, as an anti diet book. And what I, what I mean to say by that is that mother nature has put into many of the tastiest foods the natural chemicals that our body responds to when we feed it these foods in ways that amplify and protect our health. And so to, to bring it down to practical things, I'm like, you know, I don't have a diet, but I have an approach to eating. I call it the Mediterranean approach to eating. When I go to a restaurant or I plan a meal or I'm at a buffet trying to think of what I'm going to put on my plate, I automatically think, what is in the genre of Mediterranean cuisine? What is in the genre of Asian cuisine? Two of the healthiest food cultures in the world traditionally. And I will usually put that on a plate or put that in my shopping cart. And by the way, who can't find something that they would love to eat if they sat down on a menu, you know, with Mediterranean offerings or Asian offerings, I think most people can find something. So this is not hard, this is easy. It's just that you have to actually be mindful that a lot of the habits that we grew up with, you know, they're habits, they're, they're who we are. And it's okay to snack on things every now and then, but there's a much better way to protect our over all health and especially breast health, especially, you know, for the issue of breast cancer, for long term survival, long term, you know, for healthy aging, all this stuff is really, really important. Food is medicine and it's something that we can all do for ourselves.

So I, while you're talking about Asian cuisine, because I'm very fortunate to have had a nanny for the last 20 years who is from Japan and there is not a lot in, in the context of how Americans consume, but there is fish in her diet. And I was wondering, and, and we, we as a result had a lot of fish in our diet. How do you feel about that these days now that we have so much mercury in our water?

Yeah, well, look, I mean, we've got heavy metals in our land too. So, yeah, you know, we're. I think that the wake up call for humanity is that we really do need to take care of our planet a lot better because we rely on our planet for what we're actually putting into our bodies. So it's never too late though. And what I would say for fish is that definitely try to cut down on the fish that actually are known to accumulate heavy metals and, and, and have more of it. And that's higher up in the food chain. So if you eat the swordfish and the tuna and all that other kind of stuff, big tuna, they tend to have more heavy metals, including mercury, any lower in the food chain. And so one of the things is like, why are they good? Well, marine fish and seafoods have omega 3 fatty acids and they come from plankton that the tiny little fishy. And these Omega 3s, by the way, really light up our health. They actually are good for our gut health, for our microbiome. They're good for our blood circulation. They help the lining of our blood vessels so that we have better blood flow. They can also help tame those blood vessels that might be feeding cancer. They can contribute to that. They protect our stem cells so that we can regenerate better from the inside out. I mean, look, there's in all the. They actually help immune system as well, help our immunity. So seafood is a staple for many of the cultures that have longevity. If you look at the blue zones, you know, Costa Rica, Ikaria in Greece, Sardinia in Italy, although, you know, some of those Sardinians live up in the mountains and don't eat a lot of fish. But again, seafood is fine. And I think that you want to be careful of where you source your seafood and eat lower on the food chain. A lot of people don't. And a lot of people who don't live near the coast or don't come from the culture are really not sure what to do with fish. All right? Oh, it's too fishy for me. And so what I tell people is, and it was too expensive for me, one thing that I tell people, or it won't keep very long, is that there's an easy way to look at fish that can be very, very tasty. And a lot of people don't know this, but in the cultures of the Mediterranean, there's a long hallowed tradition of pinning fish. Small fish, mackerel, anchovies sardines, squid, octopus. And what they do is they catch the fish fresh, they cook it right away, and then they put it into little tins with extra virgin olive oil with some herbs and spices. It's really tasty. They feel that baby up, okay. And this is, they're called conservas and it is the fastest, tastiest quick lunch that you could ever have. Just pop openness. It's been in your pantry for a long time and you'll always have some a source of protein, omega 3s and if you get it sort of mediterranean style, it'll have healthy extra virgin olive oil and some other herbs and stuff as well. So again, I like to cook and I like to, and I appreciate traditional eating. And so I always tell people it really. This isn't about just listing a series of ingredients you have to eat. And you eat your broccoli and eat your mushrooms, eat your onions. This is really about cuisine. It's about humanity. Food is part of who we are as people. Find the combination that works for you and integrate that into your life. That to me is the best way to be able to use food as medicine.

So, and I couldn't agree with you more. And we're all bio individual and what is going to be ideal for me is not going to be ideal for you and vice versa. So we all need to find ourselves in our diet. But I do think that there are still things like the things that you tested that are very important in terms of either preventing cancer, reversing cancer, preventing recurrence. So we talked about soy. Are there others?

Yeah, let's go through some of the foods and I won't do as deep a dive into them, but you know, it turns out that brassica vegetables, your broccoli, your bok choy, your cauliflower, your cabbages, they all contain sulforaphanes that actually have very, very profound anti cancer effects in the lab. And they're associated with lower risk of cancer in large studies involving half a million people, for example, and called the EPIC study in Europe. So that whole category of greens, okay, no matter what part of the world you're in, you can find a brassica vegetable and it doesn't have to be just salad. You can cook them and they're absolutely delicious. The other things that are really good, mushrooms, Mushrooms are great source of soluble fiber and they contain beta D glucan, which is another thing that is good for gut health, activates your immune system and is anti inflammatory, which is really important if you want to Actually lower your risk for cancer. Mushrooms are a wonderful way. And by the way, vitamin. It's one. Mushrooms are one of the few sources of vitamin D which is also fighting cancer. I don't know if you know this, Dr. Jen, but you know, mushrooms make their own vitamin D, just like human skin does with, you know, when we go out into the sun, our body will make, our tissue will make more vitamin D. If you get a white button mushroom, if you want to have it make more vitamin D in the flesh, buy it, slice it up and put it on a plate or a cutting board in front of the sun in front of your window for about three hours before you cook it. And it will make more vitamin D. All right. It'll. The sunshine. It's amazing. Was it.

I did not know that.

Yeah. Like give your mushroom a tan and it'll actually, it'll actually make more vitamin D. So mushrooms.

So that's interesting because we share a lot of DNA with mushrooms. So is that same process happening? Yeah, I, I learned that from Sky Chilton.

Okay. Did not know that.

He's the son of Jeff Chilton, who brought shiitake mushroom to the United States in. I might be getting it wrong, But I think 1979.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And he in, in conjunction with, and probably at the same time as Paul Stamets really entered medicinal mushrooms to the world. So he, he. I forget the percentage, but we share a large percentage of DNA with mushrooms, which makes sense because mushrooms are very intelligent life forms. Right. I mean, they are, they are taking decaying matter and transforming it into that fruiting body that we, that we consume. They are the connection. They are the network of the forest. It's how the forest communicates through that underground network of mycelium. So we actually share a lot of DNA with mushrooms. And I wonder, I wonder if that same process that's happening in us, because we're actually doing that as well, we convert vitamin D2 to vitamin D3 in our skin. So I wonder if that same process is happening in mushrooms. But I never knew about that before.

It's fascinating that you mentioned that. I'm going to look it up. But you know, this is, look, these are two. You're, I'm telling you something. You're reacting and responding back. This is how we create new research projects to actually try to figure out. I'll, I will look into this and I'll get back to you on it. But, but mushrooms are another one. Tea, green tea, it turns out black tea is also kind of benefit, is also Quite beneficial. And even fermented teas, there's a, there's a fermented. So green tea, by the way, is these teas are not just what you buy in a box in the grocery store, but they really represent a range of products. All most teas, like the traditional real tea, comes from a bush small tree. That's a tea plant, Camela sinuses. And a lot of people don't know how tea is actually done, but at least traditionally, it's a bunch of people that are trained to pick the leaves at different points in the season. And organic teas are the ones where you don't, they're not, they don't spray pesticides on the bush. Turns out that the polyphenols, the catechins, the good stuff. And tea is part of a wound healing response, a defense response that most plants have. When you grow a plant in a natural setting with just the usual summer bugs around, these bugs are nibbling on the stems and leaves and that's considered by the plant an injury. And so the plant responds to the injury by creating defensive molecules, polyphenols, catechins. And that's part of their healing. Now when we actually eat or drink the tea, we're also just think that plants defenses. Turns out those plants defenses actually are also our defenses. They actually help prop up and activate our own health defenses. So organic tea is always going to have more catechins than conventionally grown tea. And same by the way, with soy and all these other foods as well. So teas, green tea is good, by the way. There was a study that was done in Britain looking at a special kind of tea that I think people recognize called Matcha. Matcha tea is, you know, kind of the tea that you would get at a sushi bar. It's basically tea powder, bright green.

It's. It's really tea leaves that have been ground down right into a pow.

Into a powder. Right. And, and so here's what's interesting is that when you normally steep tea in a, in a bag or loose leaf tea, you're allowing the hot water to leach out some of the polyphenols into the brew. Okay. And then you drink and you get the polyphenols or the catechins. When you actually have matcha, you're taking the entire leaf that's been ground into a powder and you are also consuming the dietary fiber because you're having the whole plant. That's better for our gut health, which lowers inflammation, which improves our immune system. And there's something else Matcha has been studied in the lab and shown remarkably, to actually kill breast cancer stem cells. Matcha can kill breast cancer stem cells. When I saw that research study, when it's in a lab, I thought, this is really remarkable because there's no drug that's out there that actually can target breast cancer stem cells. And those are the stem cells that cause breast cancer to come back two years later, five years later, ten years later, the lady that's been in remission one year later, Right? So think about the possibilities of what we could do with greater knowledge of foods like Matcha that contain substances that research is showing can hit those really devious cancer stem cells. That's amazing to me.

It is. It is. I agree with you. I want to talk about the microbiome. I want to talk about the microbiome and its role in cancer prevention and its role in cancer development. What's happening there and why is it so important to build and maintain microbiome health?

Microbiome. Let's define it first, right? Because we hear this term all the time. The microbiome is really just a community of organisms that bugs bacteria, viruses, fungi, and, you know, other, other small critters that live everywhere. You know, I mean, your. Your sofa has a microbiome that's living there and all living together.

I have two teenagers. My sofa really has a microbiome.

But. And our skin has a microbiome, you know, and our gut has a microbiome. And when we talk about microbiome, we're usually talking about the gut. That's really what most people are talking about. So when people talk about gut health, they're really talking about a healthy microbiome, which really just means healthy gut bacteria. Now, when you and I are in medical school, Jen, we were always taught by our professors, memorize this list of bacteria and then memorize the antibiotics that will kill this bacteria. Must kill bacteria. Bacteria are bad, right? For sure. Microbiology, pharmacology, these are the two courses.

And we. All we were ever taught was to create a sterile atmosphere. Fear. Everything needed to be sterile. Everything needed to be sterilized, right? And. And here we are the result of.

Well, and then. And we were told that in health, our bodies are naturally sterile. Breast milk is sterile, urine is sterile. You know, semen is sterile. We all know that's completely not true now. And it's not true because we've begun developing the tools to do the research. So this isn't a whiplash. This is progress. This isn't sort of like, you know, Contradicting something from before because now we don't know what to believe. This is like building a brick wall. We are now at the point where we're realizing that, you know, we got bacteria, we're surrounded by bacteria all the time, and the bacteria are really important for our health. Yes, we occasionally encounter a bad bacteria, and yes, that bad bacteria can be really serious. It can actually cause terrible infection. It can even kill you. But by and large, most of the bacteria that we're going to encounter in our lives are actually healthy bacteria. And they're already inside us. They're packaged inside us. We probably got them when we were still in our mom's womb. Okay, now we are just beginning to understand what the gut bacteria do. First of all, microbiome. I've been doing really deep dive research on this. Do you know where the gut microbiome mostly lives? The gut bacteria? The 39 trillion bacteria in our gut. You know what part of the gut normal lives in the colon? Yeah. Do you know what part of the colon?

My guess is the. The left side descending sigmoid.

Ah, okay. So I learned this, I learned something new.

Maybe it's the right side because of Sibo.

Well, it's. You're right. And it's in the cecum, which is on the right side. And it's really this pouchy part of the colon that connects from the small intestines and it's where the appendix is. And in fact, we. That's where most of your gut bacteria is, in this little pouch called the cecum.

The appendix is probably like an air.

Traffic control immune or an immune organ. And in fact, we believe that it's an air traffic control for the microbiome. We don't understand how yet, but you know, we're now beginning to say, you know, maybe we don't want to remove the appendix whenever we can. And the other thing is that it probably is like a PEZ dispenser for our microbiome. So, you know, like the PEZ candy where you pop it open, there's always another one underneath it. We think the appendix is like a PEZ dispenser for healthy bacteria. It just keeps on popping healthy bacteria back into the sickle.

Interesting. Staying.

Is that amazing?

A reservoir.

So a reservoir, right?

A seed. Seed, right.

Yep, yep.

Wow, that's fascinating.

So, and by the way, when you do a colonoscopy and you do a clean out, and anyone who's listening, if you've had a colonoscopy, you'll know exactly what we're talking about you drink the stuff the night before you're cleaned out, and then they, you know, the butt pirates go in there and they take a picture of what's in there, making.

Sure there's no cancer all night.

Right, right. But, you know, but it's for a good cause, which is your health. Now the thing is, it's been studied that when you do the clean out, it does change your gut microbiome because you're flushing all, everything out. All right, but guess what? This has been studied too. Your healthy gut microbiome grows back within the first 24 hours after a clean out. After colonoscopy, it'll start to repopulate itself with whatever was there before 24 hours. By week, it's almost completely there back. All right, so our gut microbiome is a. Is this community that really, really heals itself really well. And, and here's what it does inside our gut. It lowers inflammation.

Question about that, is that, is that true of antibiotics? Do you repopulate the same way? And is it true of fasting?

Okay, two different questions. So for antibiotics, it depends on this. It depends on how sensitive some of the bacteria are to antibiotics and how powerful the antibiotics are. Now, you know, you get a Z pack for bronchitis or pneumonia, all right. Yeah. Or sinus infection. Guarantee you that's going to change your gut microbiome. You know what, it kills off some of the good bacteria. And if you keep on taking bacteria antibiotics over and over time. Yeah. You know, you're going to change the makeup of that healthy gut bacteria. When you change the makeup of that community of healthy gut bacteria, it's like changing the neighborhood. You know, you move some of the good neighbors out and maybe a drug dealer will sneak in and turn one of the houses into a crack house. All right? And that's basically how we wind up getting dysbiosis, which is that good gut bacteria wind up becoming replaced in some cases with bad bacteria. Lots of good guys now some bad guys. Oops, there goes the neighborhood. Right. And so, and then the bad bacteria start to attract other bad characters. And this is really how I want people to think about this. Like, we have a neighborhood and everybody intends to do well. And you want to keep that neighborhood really, really healthy. And, and our bacteria to keep them healthy is critically dependent on what we eat. We can eat colorful, eat from the rainbow. The produce, nuts and seeds, legumes. They feed our bioactives of polyphenols, and the dietary fiber feeds our gut bacteria. That's Their food. If you have a dog, as you said you just did, you do, and you're going to feed them people every day or twice a day, all right, or whatever. The bottom line is that you are mindfully feeding your pets. We are mind. We need to be mindful that three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we are feeding our gut microbiome. You feed your pets at home something good, whatever you can afford, because you have their best interests in mind. Same deal with our pet microbiome that keeps us healthy. We want to make sure what we're eating is going to protect them and nurture them and give them what they need. The reason is this. Healthy gut bacteria digest what we feed them. What they produce are these other substances called short chain fatty acids. They get into our bloodstream, and you know what they do? They lower inflammation. You want to lower your risk of cancer. Lower inflammation. You want to lower your risk of autoimmune disease or the complications or flares of autoimmune disease. Lower inflammation. They also boost our immune system. Gut bacteria in our colon actually talk to our immune system. When I. When you and I were in medical school, they never told us exactly where the immune system lived as adults. And it turns out 70% of our immune system lives inside the wall of the gut. So in our colon, our healthy gut bacteria are like college freshmen living in a dorm, okay, With a thin wall. You know, remember freshman year, you just can yell through the wall to ask the person, the person, the. The person in the room next door what kind of. What they want in their pizza for that night or whether they want to go out for pizza. Hey, what do you want to do? And that's what our gut bacteria does. They actually communicate to our immune system. Healthy gut, healthy immune system, Unhealthy gut lowers our immunity. And when our immune system goes down, not only are we more vulnerable to infections in general, but we're also more vulnerable for those tiny little microscopic cancers we talked about earlier to stick around and start to hijack the cockpit to grow a blood supply. So if you want to lower your risk for cancer, you want to make sure your gut bacteria is functioning, lowering inflammation, boosting your immune system. Then one additional thing that we do know for a fact is our gut bacteria is connected to our brain health. Recently, we've been seeing research showing gut bacteria text messages our brain through a big nerve. There's a big nerve that pops out of our brain, runs down around our neck, and then ramifies like a horse's tail called the vagus nerve. And it turns out that that's actually the SMS circuit that our brain sends to our gut bacteria and our gut bacteria sends back to our brain. They text message each other, not Snapchat because the signals stick around, all right, but they're talking to each other. And so good gut bacteria makes us feel better, better mental health, better brain health. And recently there's been some research that I found absolutely thought provoking, eye opening and amazing, which is that for the first time we're beginning to take a look at certain kinds of bacteria like Lactobacillus, kind of gut bacteria that seems to be able to calm and quell the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Clinical trial published in major journals. And to me it's sort of like, whoa, I'm not saying that you should just forget about the Parkinson's medicines, please. If you're dealing with this, follow your neurologist. We, you must work with the medical community. But the fact that there's something that we might be able to do for ourselves by maintaining good gut health and maybe taking a probiotic, you know, the research is still clicking on that to me is so profound. And so this is really one of the reasons why gut bacteria is important. I was having a conversation with a menopause expert a few days ago who told me that there looks like dysbiosis or problems of the neighborhood of the gut bacteria that look like it's tied to more severe menopausal and perimenopausal symptoms as well.

Well, because we know in the same way we have the estrobolome and our, our estrogen metabolism is completely tied to gut health. And so that doesn't surprise me. I want to ask about a couple of things in terms of their effect on the microbiome. So we all know how we feel after missing a night's sleep. I know recently I'm finishing my book, I've been burning a lot of the midnight oil. And we know from clinical studies that for people who have not had a good night's sleep, you will consume an average of 350, more calories the next day and you have cravings and you're tired and you're cranky and you feel awful, but for some reason, most of what you're feeling the next day is hunger and cravings. So what is happening there in terms of lack of sleep and effect on the microbiome?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think we have the full picture, but I can tell you how we're beginning to put the picture together. Now sleep is. We used to think of. I used to think of sleep as being a totally inactive time. I'm chilling out, I'm turning off the tv kind of in my life. Nothing could be further from the truth. When we are sleeping and not moving around and walking around or doing some stuff, our body, a whole part of our body's health defenses, snaps into action. When we're sleeping, our body's very active. Our metabolism turns on like, you know, like a. Like the gas, like. Like your gas range on your stove to be able to start burning body fat. Okay? Your metabolism turns on when you're turned off. It's amazing. We also know that your immune system rebuilds itself when we're sleeping. All right, so that's why, by the way, if you're. If you get multiple nights of not enough sleep, think about what was like when we were residents, you know, getting our asses kicked on. On call nights. I mean, you know, we. It was easier for us to get sick, you know, over. Over a long period of time where our immune system is not building us up and our gut microbiome reboots itself, refreshes itself in ways and goes to work when we're sleeping in ways that we're just starting to peel back the layers of the onion to understand. It's communicating with our brain and probably doing important things to help us our cognition the next day. When you don't reboot your gut microbiome, it changes the hormones that our gut secretes. It changes the way that our brain responds to appetite and desire and hunger hormones. And so, you know, we wind up actually derailing the way that we normally get energy by eating food and consuming food. And the way that our body grooms itself while we're resting, our health defenses. Our body's actually quite active. The other thing, by the way, is, and this is super important, I think that a lot of people don't know is that our brain, when we're sleeping, cleans itself. We have a sewer system in our brain called the glymphatic system. It's not lymphs, it's glyphs, okay? Glia is the. The brain cells. And so in the brain, it's a special system that drains toxins, drains fluid from our brain. It's kind of like the sewers of Paris. You don't see them when you're walking around looking at the Eiffel Tower, but they're. They're there, there, there. And at night, at night, these sewer systems open up big time. And it flushes all the toxins, those oxidative molecules, damaged cells, all the stuff that you don't want, it flushes it out and cleans your brain. Your brain is like the dishwasher at night. It cleans itself, you know, or the oven that cleans itself in the kitchen. And if you don't get good enough sleep, because you need to get good deep sleep for the sewer system to open up to flush your brain. One of the reasons we got brain fog and we're cranky the next day after pulling an all nighter or getting really little sleep is that we still have those toxins that are stuck in our brain. So again, this is the stuff that we're beginning to understand more better how we've been feeling for all these years and giving a better perspective on the whys and how this all happens.

I want to ask the same question with regard to fasting.

How.

What is fasting's impact on the microbiome and what is happening as a result?

Okay, fasting is a big topic now. It's, it's a, and it's clearly a trend, a health trend. There's a lot of data on fasting that is super exciting and super meaningful. And fasting is not just one thing. It's, there's a lot of different ways of practicing fasting, of course. How I want to talk about this. Let's start with intermittent fasting. You know, there, there's like a program you got to get into. It's 16 and 8 or whatever. And what I try to do is to have people reset their understanding if they get confused. And I'm like, look, intermittent fasting is the easiest thing to understand because fasting means that you're not eating, you're not eating when you're sleeping, right? So we're fasting when we're sleeping. And we're sleeping every day. So we're. But not all day, but every day in the evening for most of us. And so we're intermittently not eating while we're sleeping. And it means that we're intermittently fasting every single day. This is like from birth to death. It's no big deal. Our body naturally does it. Now what is actually happening during that sleeping time? We talked about this just a few moments ago. When we're sleeping and not eating, we're not loading calories into our, not loading fuel into our body. And our body, our body understands when it's kind of chilling out and when or physically resting and it's actually going to town in all those ways. We talked about earlier. One of the most important things is our metabolism shifts gears from storing energy in our fat to actually burning energy. So we're actually burning energy, burning down fat, burning calories. When we're actually sleeping, you're not working out, you're still burning calories. That's how our metabolism actually works. So number one, our metabolism is actually being fine tuned. Number two, our gut microbiome is connected to our metabolism. It helps us metabolize lipids. It actually, our gut health, gut microbiome is involved with glucose sensitivity, how efficiently our glucose in our bloodstream is utilized, which then is connected to how much insulin is in our body at any time, which is then connected to something called insulin, like growth factor igf, which, you know, if I could tell you one molecule that we need to understand better because it's, it's clearly tied to cancer and other chronic diseases, is the stuff that, the growth factor that creates insulin. It's not insulin itself, it's not a glucose spike itself that's bad. It's really the thing that keeps on. It's the machinery that creates insulin that actually, that has a lot of good properties but had really bad properties when it actually is on overdrive. And so when we're actually fasting, we are allowing our hard wiring, a metabolism, gut health, our endocrine system, hormonal health, to actually get back into a normal cleaning cycle, processing cycle. So we're actually able to be much more efficient. And this is, by the way, why, from a metabolism perspective, while intermittent fasting actually works, you get to lose weight, you get better metabolism, you burn down calories. Now, obviously it matters what kind of calories you've eaten during the day and when you've eaten, if you've eaten just before you go to bed, you're still got a gut load, you still got to digest it. So you're, and you're not going to be sleeping as well, which then interferes with everything else. And so I think we've talked about some pretty big concepts. Why should you get good sleep? Well, it interferes with a lot of things, both in the head and the gut, and also your hormones. Why should you? What about fasting? What's the role of fasting? Listen, fasting is what we do naturally every single day. Our bodies developed a system to take advantage of the fact we're not pounding calories, that we're not putting fuel into our bodies. We need to actually allow that to happen as much as possible. If you fast too long, so, you know, 12 hours of fasting. And 12 hours of eating is fine. Sixteen hours of fasting, eight hours of eating also works. Works a little bit better. But if you go for days without fasting, you go into ketosis. And then. And then if you go many days without eating, then you wind up being like Tom Hanks and castaway. You know, you're going to start losing weight because you're not eating anything, and eventually you will lose so much weight, you're going to be a skeleton and die. And so fasting, I think, is a continuum. It's a little bit. Is really, really good. When you do it in a structured way without going overboard, you're allowing your body to do its thing. And that thing is good for our brain, good for our gut, good for our immune system, good for our hormones, our endocrine system, and that's good. You can extend that to get a little bit more mileage out of it. But at a certain point, and this is why I sort of tell people who are really into biohacking, when it comes to our body's hardwired systems, more isn't always better. We want to let our body get to its own set point, and everyone's set point is going to be a little bit different.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great point. Before I let you go, when we started to talk, we talked about there are things that can block angiogenesis and things that actually promote angiogenesis. Can you talk about some of those things so people know the landmines to avoid?

Well, actually, it's a great question because, you know, when you think about it, our circulation is absolutely critical for our overall health of our organs. Cancers can hijack those blood vessels, and those blood vessels feed the cancer, cause a big problem when there's too many blood vessels. And there's other problems with blood vessels as well. If you have psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis, extra blood vessels grow and they cause itchiness and they can destroy your joints. If blood vessel, extra blood vessels grow in your eye, they can leak and bleed and cause blindness, like diabetic blindness or macular degeneration. Okay, so it's easy to assume that if you gave, if you ate food so that you cut off the blood supply to these diseases, maybe they'll also starve our healthy organs. And so we want to avoid that. Or maybe if you want to grow blood vessels, they might actually trigger cancer or some of these other problems. Well, not so. And this is actually something really important for people to understand. Angiogenesis is Our body's health is one of our body's health defenses. And I read about this in my book, Eat a Bit Disease. And our body knows how to create always the right amount of angiogenesis all day long, not too much, not too many, not too few, but just the right amount. I call it the Goldilocks zone. If you remember the, the Goldilocks and the three bears, they came into the house and they're looking for the chair not too hard, not too soft, just right. They're looking for the porridge, not too hot, not too cold. The bed not too hard, not too soft. They're looking for the perfect amount. It's a range, it's a zone. And the zone of health has just the right number of blood vessels at all times. And what's really great, Jen, is our body knows how to control the right number of blood vessels so that if you eat foods that actually cut off the blood supply to cancer or help preserve your vision, don't worry, your body's not going to let them overshoot. You'll always have enough for your healthy organs. Same way that if you want to eat foods that can promote healing by growing blood vessels like apples and pears and fruit peel, there's all kinds of foods that can actually promote angiogenesis. Some can stop too many blood vessels and grow blood vessels to the right amount, help you get that happy zone, the Goldilocks zone. Your body will always prune to make sure the garden of your circulation is perfect. Think about it. If you're, if you had a golf course and you got all this lawn, occasionally there's going to be some weeds that are sprouting just like your circulation. A few extra spouted weeds could be a problem. Well, your body is like the landscaper. They're going to drive a lawnmower right over those extra weeds and trim them down. But they're not going to get rid of the beautiful golf, the, the turf on the golf course. They're actually just going to go into the right height. And if you have a whole.

So you're saying our bodies are pretty smart.

Really smart. Really smart. So you don't have to worry about a food is kinder and gentler way of helping our bodies support this Goldilocks sound. Drugs, on the other hand, Dr. Jen, are basically like nukes. We can take a drug, we can develop a drug, throw it into the body, and it can actually easily overshoot that smart system of our body to maintain balance. That's why food is. Medicine is a kinder gentler way to achieve some of these goals compared to some of the drugs that are out there. But that said, always work with your doctor. I'm not giving, you know, we're not giving medical advice here. What we are trying to do is to tell people that you can eat to beat disease. It's actually something really important that we can all do for ourselves. And it starts all throughout our lives, but it's never too late to start to eat healthy food. And in my book, Eat to Beat Disease, I have recipes that come from my own kitchen, things that I eat myself. And I. I'm a foodie. I love tasty food. So this is not about deprivation. This is about leaning into your food, into the healthy foods that taste great and that allows you to live your life in an enjoyable and healthy way.

I couldn't agree more. I loved this book. Make sure everyone gets it. Eat to be disease, the new science of how your body can heal itself. Dr. Li, I can't thank you enough for being here with me today, for sharing all your brilliance, for the work that you do, for making the world a better place, and for continuing to go after what you believe in and what you know to be true. Because it's hard to get lost along the way. And there are a lot of naysayers, and I know it's not easy to say yes, but, yes, but right.

And you did it, and you did.

A brilliant job of it, and you've helped a lot of people, millions of people. And I'm just. I'm so grateful to. To know you, to have you here and to have you as a resource.

Well, thanks so much, Dr. Jen. It's always a pleasure to speak with you. And there's so much more to cover as well.

Yeah. So we're. We're going to have to do this again real soon, but for right now, I will say goodbye and thank you all for listening. If you liked this podcast, please share it with a friend so that more people can hear it. Because it's so important, as we go along this journey to help more and more people understand that you have the power to heal. Our bodies are brilliant machines. We just need to give it what it needs and spare it from what it doesn't. It's Dr. Jen, bye for now.

Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping abreast podcast with Dr. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember, rest. Health is health. So by staying informed and taking proactive steps, you have the power to optimize your well. Being my team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review. Your future feedback and support mean the world to us and help us to reach more people who can benefit from these conversations. Stay connected with me on social media where I share additional resources, advice, updates and announcements related to breast health. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Dr. Jennsimmons and remember, my Jen has two N's, so until next time, remember to stay proactive, inform, formed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.