Can Food Reactivate Your Stem Cells?

When you and I were growing up, right in grade school, we learned from our teachers that starfish can regenerate, salamanders can regenerate, but people can't regenerate, right? You can't grow a new arm. Yeah, well, it's true, you can't grow a new arm, but we do regenerate.

We regenerate every day. Hi, I'm Kaya Perowich, one of the producers of the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. We are constantly learning new things about the way food and nutrients impact the body. In this mini episode of the podcast, Dr. Hyman speaks with world-renowned physician, scientist.

And author, Dr. William Lee, about activating.

The body's stem cells with food to enhance its regenerative abilities?

I don't think something that most people are aware of, that you can activate your own stem cells. That there's things you do in your life that you can screw up your stem cells. And what are stem cells anyway? What do they do? And how do we understand how to stop hurting them and start helping them?

Yeah, well, stem cells are really simple. We're made of stem cells. So when our moms and dads got together and created, you know, us in the womb, We started out as stem cells. They actually made every single one of them. And, and then the sperm got together and they basically decided they would become a stem cell factory. And then pretty much we formed out of our own stem cells. And after we were born, a few of those stem cells stuck around, about 700,000 of them. They stick around and they're mostly in our bone marrow and they're in lining of our intestines. They hide out in our body and they help us regenerate. We know that we regenerate because our hair falls out and grows back. Our gut lining grows back. Our livers can grow back. If you actually remove part of your liver, it'll grow back. Our skin grows back. So our bodies possess the ability to regenerate through stem cells. Now, what can injure stem cells? High doses of alcohol can damage and blunt your stem cells.

So, I'm okay with the one tequila I had last night?

Having a tequila every now and then is not bad. Having a glass of wine, but you know, The thing is on balance, what you want to do is people who drink a lot have damaged stem cells. Diabetes is another state, a metabolic state that it really impairs, it cripples our stem cells.

Sugar.

High blood sugar cripples our stem cells. So the excess of anything can be harmful, including to our stem cells. So what are the things that we can do to help boost our stem cells? This is where it's really become interesting. Before I talk about that though, let me just turn. Does stress affect our stem cells? Stress can definitely affect our stem cells. High stress will blunt the activity of our stem cells. You know, it's just like stunning them. So they're like, wait a minute, what do I do now? You know, maybe I'm not gonna be so enthusiastic in rebuilding our organs. We gotta rebuild our blood vessels. We gotta rebuild our hearts. You know, our hearts turn around. Like we actually have stem cells in our hearts and our brains and we grow our nerves. Every single day, something in our body is regenerating. Actually, a lot of things are regenerating. but more exciting to me is the ability for every single person listening to this podcast to be able to actually enhance their own stem cells. And here's the research. So, the Mediterranean diet, it's been studied by Spain, looked at elderly people on the Mediterranean diet, and those who were on a Mediterranean diet compared to not on a Mediterranean diet had five times the number of stem cells in their circulation, in their bloodstream. So again, it's not one magic food, it's the pattern of food that you're actually eating. Now, when you can actually do the research on specific things as well. So for example, tea, green tea will increase your stem cells. But guess what? So can black tea, right? So here's what the scientists say.

Japanese live forever? Well, longevity. All the green tea?

You know, people in Asia drink a lot of tea. People in Britain drink a lot of tea as well. We used to say green tea is good, black tea is fermented, so it's not gonna be that good for you. We're changing our minds. We have to keep our minds open. Black tea can also double the number of stem cells. And then here's another kind of surprise and delight is that there was a study by UCSF in San Francisco where researchers took people with known cardiovascular disease, so they had kind of crappy blood flow, and they gave them hot chocolate.

Yeah, I was gonna say the chocolate stem cell story.

I wanna hear about that. It's amazing, right? So the darker the chocolate, the higher the flavonols. These are the bioactives that are naturally present in cacao.

And there was a study done. This is the food is medicine. This is the food is medicine. There are literally these chemicals in food.

Called phytochemicals or phytonutrients that actually have these medicinal properties. They are made by Mother Nature, they're packed in the food, growing on the plant, and every plant-based food will actually have some type of bioactive. So, in cacao, which is a bean, which then you process to you actually get the cocoa powder, If you take the really dark chocolate, like 73% cacao, the really dark chocolate, and you make it into a high flavanol hot chocolate drink, and you have it twice a day, this was the clinical study they found in people who wound up actually having drinking the hot chocolate twice a day over the course of a month, they doubled the number of stem cells compared to the people who didn't drink hot chocolate, right? And so, okay, so the question is, is that important? Well, when they measured their blood flow, what they did is they put a blood pressure cuff on them and which, you know, kind of like lowers the circulation of the blood, they let it go. They found that the blood flow was much vastly improved. Wow. So here's the functional results that actually means it makes a difference. So who's going to complain about chocolate? Who's going to complain about tea? Who's going to complain about a Mediterranean diet? I mean, you go out to eat.

These are the things we love. Yeah, getting people to think about food as not just calories, but information, food is not just energy, but actually instructions that regulate your stem cells and your DNA and your microbiome and your immune system and your angiogenesis. I mean, these are things that are not thinkable.

It's the new science of nutrition, right? So beyond proteins and calories and sugar and all that kind of stuff, we're now combining food science with life science.

Stem cells are considered unspecialized, meaning that they have the potential to develop into various kinds of specialized cells. They can self-renew and can also sense damaged cells and tissues sending signals that promote self-healing. Science continues to illustrate how food has the power to prevent and reverse disease. And the more we know about it, the more power we have to curate a targeted diet to help us reach our health goals. The catch is that we have to choose the right foods, the ones that elevate us, and simultaneously ditch the poor quality ones that harm us. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Thanks for tuning in. Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make.

Changes, especially when it comes to your health.

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