How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age: The Longevity Paradox & The 7 Deadly Myths Of Aging

I think one of the reasons that these periods of fasting are in almost all great religions, and they usually last for a month or six weeks. I think it was this braking system that everybody recognized from antiquity that we should throw on the brakes for a period of time.

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet, from sealfit, kokoro, Spartan Ogoji, and the world's toughest mutter to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, freediving, bodybuilding, and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, hormones, brain beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Oh, hello. I almost didn't see you there. That joke never gets old. This is Ben Greenfield. Of course. Why wouldn't it be? This is my podcast. Hey, before we jump into today's show, I had a lot of questions about that whole vitamin E podcast that I did. A lot of you were wondering if you should throw out your multivitamin if it doesn't have what are called tocotrienols in it and instead has tocopherols. If you missed that podcast episode, it's over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tan that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tan because I interviewed Dr. Barry Tan. He made a lot of really good points, and I'm certainly a fan of the tocotrienol form of vitamin E that he talked about. But I also, because I got inundated with so many questions from my listeners, kind of dug into this quite a bit more. And there's definitely evidence that tocotrienols can have a lot of the benefits that we talked about in that episode. But you don't necessarily need to rush out and throw out your multivitamin if it has tocopherols in it, because what it turns out is the case is that the literature around tocopherols is a little bit clouded because there is what's called a synthetic, synthetic or also what's known as a, in chemistry, a racemic configuration of tocopherol. And that's what's used in most supplements and in many of these studies, it's inexpensive and it's a poor form of vitamin E. If you were to use the natural form of vitamin E, the alpha tocopherol that is the natural form, then you would skirt a lot of these issues. See synthetic vitamin E, particularly that derived from petroleum products. It's manufactured as what's called all racemic alpha tocopherol acetate with a mixture of eight different, what are called stereoisomers. And only one of the alpha tocopherol molecules in this is in the form of what's called RRR alpha tocopherol. But when you find alpha tocopherol in nature, it's always completely the RRR alpha form. And in that form, it doesn't appear that a lot of the issues are created that Barry and I talked about in the episode on vitamin E. And as a matter of fact, for people who are using a vitamin E supplement, what you should look for are mixed tocopherols or else a natural non al racemic form of alpha tocopherol. In many cases, naturally sourced, what's called D alpha tocopherol can be extracted and purified from seed oils, or gamma tocopherol can be extracted and purified and what's called methylated to create D alpha tocopherol. And the issue is that a lot of supplements don't do this. So I would recommend you look for mixed tocopherols or the form of vitamin E that we talked about in that podcast episode, tocotrienols. I've mentioned before that, for example, I use the Thorne multivitamin. After investigating that one, I'm perfectly comfortable with that as a natural form of alpha tocopherol, meaning the RRR alpha form. It's also known as the DDD alpha form and that would be a safe form. And sometimes it does take a little bit of digging. You may even need to call up the company from which you're using a multivitamin and find out what the source of that vitamin E is. And in an ideal scenario, if you could get a multivitamin that's got like tocotrienols in it along with alpha tocopherol and mixed tocopherols, that would be a pretty. So anyways, it just comes down to whether it's synthetic versus natural. I know this is just like a whole can of worms and a whole bunch of chemistry, but ultimately you don't need to rush out and throw out your multivitamin because not all forms of vitamin E are created equal. My guest on today's show is. He's a brilliant guy. He's a physician He's a cum laude graduate of Yale University with special honors in human, biological and social evolution. He's completed residencies in general surgery and thoracic surgery at University of Michigan, Michigan. If I can talk. He served as a clinical associate at the nih. He has invented devices that reverse the cell death that you would see in an acute heart attack and has actually developed the world's most widely used device of its kind to protect the heart from damage during open surgery. He's actually done a fellowship himself in congenital heart surgery and really pioneered infant and pediatric heart transplantation. He also pioneered the field of xenotransplantation, which is the study of how the genes of one species react to the transplanted heart of a foreign species. So he's investigated the immune system at a very deep level, even with respect to heart transplants. He's also one of the fathers of robotic surgeries. If that weren't enough, and is a consultant to Intuitive Surgical. He's received early FDA approval to use robotic assisted minimally invasive surgery for coronary artery bypass and mitral valve operations. And he is also a real wizard in the realm of nutrition. And he has written a book you've probably heard of because he's been a guest on my podcast before. He wrote the book called the Plant the Truth About Lectins and appeared on my podcast last year to discuss that book and the idea of mitigating some of the built in natural defense mechanisms of plants. But he now has a new book called the Longevity how to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age. I just finished the book a couple of days ago. It's dog eared. I got a bunch of pages folded over. I have plenty that I want to talk to him about. His name, in case you hadn't guessed already, is Dr. Stephen Gundry. Dr. Stephen Gundry. And as we talk on today's show, if you're interested in getting his book, if you're interested in other notes, research articles we mentioned, anything like that, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com LongevityParadox that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com longevityparadox and you can delve into all the goodies over there. So Dr. Gundry, welcome back to the show, man.

Hey, thanks, Ben. Glad to be back.

Yeah, yeah. Your book, this new book is amazing. I would imagine that amongst this growing movement of folks who are interested in eating animals and the carnivore diet and protein consumption and the general fitness audience that tunes in that we may generate a little bit of controversy with this show, and I'm sure we'll get a chance to delve into some of that stuff because you talk about some of that in your book. But ultimately, man, there's so much in here. And if you're game, I thought the most interesting part of the book was where you talk about the seven deadly myths of aging. Would you be game to get into those?

Sure. I think that's a fun area to start.

Oh, yeah. That area especially had me thinking a lot and some smoke coming out my ears. So these seven deadly myths of aging, can. Can you go through them with us?

Sure. Well, let's start with number one. Number one is the Mediterranean diet promotes longevity. Now, that ought to stir some controversy.

Yes, indeed.

So, you know, when you look at the blue zones, and the blue zones was a term coined by the journalist Dan Butner, who I have a great deal of respect for and at that time, and subsequently, he's written about five communities around the world that have had pretty interesting extreme longevity. And I might add that as far as I know, I'm the only nutritionist who has actually spent most of his career living in one of the blue zones, and that was Loma Linda, California, where I was a professor. So I love to talk to people about blue zones because having lived there, I guess I know at least one of them of which I can speak a great deal on. So these blue zones were the island of Sardinia, Okinawa, Japan, Loma Linda, California, the Nicoya peninsula of Costa Rica, and the Greek island of Icaria. And these folks, the argument is, since two of these places are in the Mediterranean, that all we have to do is follow the Mediterranean diet and we'll be fine. And I do not disagree with that at all. In fact, anyone who looks at my programs will see a lot of the Mediterranean diet or parts of the Mediterranean diet in all of my writings and all of my advice.

I think that was the Mediterranean Diet Institute calling you just now, by the way.

Yeah, I think it was the Olive.

Oil foundation of America.

I don't know why they're calling me, but I'm going to try not to have them going.

Apparently in demand, man.

Well, I'm in a hotel room, unfortunately, so.

Well, I appreciate you making this happen from your hotel room.

Okay. So maybe they won't bother me. Okay. So. So speaking of olive oil, as you've probably heard me say, one of my favorite sayings is the only purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth. And I firmly believe that. And in fact, if anybody wants to follow my teachings to the letter. I want you to be a gorilla who lives in Italy. And by that I mean the more leaves you eat and pour olive oil on them, probably the better you'll do. But getting back to the Mediterranean diet and particularly the blue zones, one of the implications that's made, not only implications, but teachings and urgings is that the Mediterranean diet is healthy because it contains whole grains and beans and that the key to the Mediterranean diet is eating whole grains and beans. And quite honestly, I reference a number of papers that show that I believe and others believe is incorrect. I was probably most influenced by a gentleman, Neil reckon by the name of Stefan Lindeberg, who was a physician. He since passed away. But one of the most impressive books I've ever read, I think, covering the subject of nutrition is his book Food and Western Disease. And in it he makes, among other things, a very strong case that cereal grains are a negative aspect of the Mediterranean diet that are compensated for by the more positive aspects of the Mediterranean diet. And those include the polyphenol rich foods in olive oil, in fruits and vegetables, in red wine, and also actually in the coffee that the Mediterranean diet uses. And that these are positive factors that in a way compensate cover up for the negative factor that cereal grains have. And as you know, I think, and he actually thought that lectins are a major bad component that these things are compensating for. Interestingly, I add two other blue zones and there are actually plenty more that we could add. One that I've enjoyed Studying thanks to Dr. Lindeberg is the Kitavans or Kitivans of Pape, New Guinea. And the other one that Dan Bruckner did know about is the little hamlet south of Naples that I visited last year of Acciaroli, Italy.

Rosemary country.

Rosemary country. And interestingly enough, those folks do not eat pasta or bread. They actually believe it's far too expensive. So they are one of the few Italians that owe any cereal grains. And we'll get into this later, but they do like lentils. And I think that's actually an important point to make as we go on.

Interesting. And by the way, to interrupt you real quick, because you do make a good point in your book. There are a very small number of grains, although I guess technically it's a grass that would actually not have these high levels of lectins. And you mentioned in your book, I think we'd be remiss not to name it, and that would be millet. You get into millet in the book and how it can actually work wonders for your gut and your microbiome. And it's one of those few grains that would have almost no inflammatory potential at all based on the limited number of plant defense mechanisms in it.

Right? Yeah. Millet and sorghum and another very tiny grain called teff don't have a hall. And it's actually the hall is where most of the defense mechanisms of the plant are located. So these three grains or grasses actually have no lectins. And if anybody wants to Google it, you'll find, in fact, there are no lectins on these particular grasses.

Now, one other question, not to derail you too much from what you're getting into on the Mediterranean myth, but. But what about whole, like, unprocessed barley? It's my understanding that that was pretty heavily consumed traditionally in a Mediterranean profile for a long time. Are you saying that that would fall into one of the categories of something, that one of those things they're eating and living a long time despite that inclusion in their diet, not because of it?

Yeah. You know, barley also has gluten, interestingly enough, and we can really do a crazy deep dive. Rye was actually a, for lack of a better word, weed that resembled wheat very closely. And it would spring up in wheat fields and get picked. And as people moved to northern climates where wheat did not do well, the rye seed came along with the wheat and the rye flourished and the wheat died off. And so rye, because of its similarity to wheat, got a ride on wheat seeds to northern climates where it took over. It's again, you look at how plants think, and rye hid among wheat to take over northern climates. But that's a nice aside, but yeah. So one of the things I think we tend to forget about traditional cultures is that there were no storage systems for any food. And so much of the time, grains were fermented either by accident or rapidly on purpose because fermentation, among other things, will dramatically decrease the amount of lectins. The bacteria actually enjoy eating lectins. So we tend to forget that about traditional cultures.

Now, what about this idea? Because I know that you make a point in the book that many of these blue zones do not eat significant amounts of animal protein and instead have a diet that's rich in polyphenols and some of these kind of slower release carbohydrates, such as lentils, for example. But, you know, I know that the Mediterranean diet, for example, they are eating, you know, eggs and poultry and fish and things along those lines. How much of an aspect, though, of The Mediterranean diet, do you think is influenced by kind of the Greek Orthodox Christian practice of fasting? And the reason I ask is because my dad is a member of the Orthodox Church. And, for example, during Lent that begins throughout Lent and then ends on Orthodox Easter, there's no animal consumption whatsoever. No meat, no poultry, no dairy, no eggs, no animal fats. And I think there's fish allowed on, like, two specific days. And so, you know, do you think that part of it is the. Is kind of like the press pulse cycling that anabolic catabolic cycle that that those populations would be getting if they were following the. The traditional religious aspect of that diet?

Yeah, I think that's a huge factor in a lot of these diets, is these usually religious or cultural aspects of fasting. And I get into that a lot in the book. But there's something I think that's fascinating about the Mediterranean diet that's missing in the discussion, and that is a few years ago, the Cleveland Clinic invented a test that looks for a compound that gut bacteria manufacture primarily from animal protein, called tmao. And TMAO is actually a pretty nasty compound in terms of damaging the surface of blood vessels. And they even did some experiments showing that vegans who forced themselves to eat animal protein would not produce this compound because they had a different set of bacteria. But then, to their credit, they said, now, wait a minute, the Mediterranean has very low incidence of coronary artery disease. And yet, like you point out, they eat chickens, they eat fish, they eat, you know, sausages, they eat meat. What, is there something in the Mediterranean diet that's protecting them? So they went looking again, and they. They found a compound that's called 3,31 dimethylbutanol that is present in most olive oils, balsamic vinegar, and red wine. And this compound, so it's an analog of choline that prevents bacteria. It paralyzes the enzyme system, so it paralyzes the bacteria from making TMAO out of choline and carnitine. And so these substances, which are ubiquitous in the Mediterranean diet, turn off production of tmao, which can damage blood vessels. And they wrote about it to their credit. And I think when. So when we look at. Here's another factor in the Mediterranean diet that may mitigate the consumption of meat, animal proteins.

Now, is all TMAO created equal? Because I saw a study that came out, it was in the past year, that showed that that elevated TMAO that was associated with fish and seafood and vegetable consumption could actually reduce heart disease symptoms, and that certain Species of fish would increase serum tmao. And yet fish are associated with like this reduced cardiovascular risk. So does the mechanism via which the TMAO is elevated matter here?

Yeah, I think that's true. And I actually argued fairly vehemently with the Cleveland Clinic folks about this point because TMAO is present in almost all seafood, particularly shellfish. And yet if you look, you know, epidemiologically, people who are fish eaters as a general rule have much less cardiovascular disease and better health than, quote, meat eaters. And my argument was, well, if TMAO is so bad for you, you then obviously TMAO is not TMAO if it comes in different places. And this paper last year, I think correctly pointed out that maybe all TMAO is not created equal.

Yeah, it's interesting. So would you say that with the Mediterranean diet, if one were going to follow that for longevity, it wouldn't be like an Olive Garden restaurant breadstick appetizer and pasta Mediterranean diet, but it would be rich in polyphenol and rich in olive oil and red wine and have not be meat absent, but richer in fish and eggs and then also include some type of fasting component if for example, red meats and more anabolic compounds or higher amounts of protein were included in that diet.

Yeah. And you know, I think as you go along into the longevity paradox, you'll see that. But I agree with Valter Longo from USC that I think you can mitigate a bad diet with a five day period of a fasting mimicking diet or a modified vegan fast carried out five days in a row. And you can actually act as if you were on a calorie restricted diet that entire month.

But you would need to do that from what I understand, on a quarterly basis.

Yeah, you got to do it pretty religiously. He would like you to do it every month. I wouldn't mind if you did it every month. But certainly a quarterly basis is a reasonable thing.

Yeah, it's interesting because I had this discussion with Dr. Paul Saladino when we talked about the carnivore diet approach. Not only the important importance of restricting excess methionine consumption by consuming bone broths and liver and heart and marrow and a lot of these so called awful compounds that would introduce more glycine into the diet.

Glycine, yeah.

But to also prioritize the inclusion of hormetic stressors that would induce cellular autophagy like heat and cold and fasting and exercise. And so even on a diet like that, I, I think that One needs to be cognizant of the fact that when we look at a longevity inducing diet, like a Mediterranean diet, for example, you have to include these periods of cellular autophagy or of catabolism.

Yeah, I realize the carnivore diet is the end thing this week, but that's just a renaming of the traditional Atkins diet and the carnivore diet, high protein diet. We works really good for weight loss because, you know, breaking down protein is really expensive energy wise. You lose 30% of the calories and protein just in breaking it down. And so the other thing that people tend to forget is that most of these diets are actually lectin limited diets. And one of the reasons I say they work is that almost all of these low carb diets, whichever one you care to name, one of the main things they do is eliminate lectins.

Yeah, yeah. And by the way, for people listening in, you know, we probably won't spend a great deal of time on plant defense mechanisms just because Stephen and I talked about that for a good hour in our last episode. So I'll link to that. It's called the Truth about Lectins and the Plant Paradox. For you to listen to, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com longevity paradox because I really want to to focus on some unique aspects of this book that go beyond plant paradox. In this same section where you talk about the myths of the Mediterranean diet, you also mention a couple populations. One of them you already named the Kitavan population and also the Okinawans. And you talk about a type of carbohydrate that they consume quite frequently that appears to provide a protective effect against things like blood sugar spikes and inflammation. Can you get into what that carbohydrate is?

Yeah. So you know, the Okinawans, the actual only definitive look at the Okinawan diet. The traditional Okinawan diet was done by the US military in the late 1940s as an occupying force. And it's available, I reference it in the book. But fascinatingly, the traditional okinawan diet had 85% of their diet was a blue or purple sweet potato. And really only about 5 to 6% of their diet was white rice. They did not eat brown rice, ate white rice. And the other 5 to 6% of their diet was soy based products, but it was primarily miso and natto. They really did not eat much tofu and the rest was a little bit of fat and was pig fat. It was lard. So the Kitavans eat about 60% of their diet is taro root. And another 30% of their diet is coconut and coconut oil. So taro root and sweet potatoes have our resistant starches. And these starches are fairly unique in that, and I reference this extensively in the book, they really do mitigate blood sugar spikes. And I think the other thing that we tend to forget that I spend a lot of time in the Longevity Paradox talking about is these are the sort of starches, the soluble fibers that gut bugs our microbiome really, really, really enjoy eating. And the more I think the message from the book is the more we eat for our gut microbiome, the more that our gut microbiome is going to take care of us. And the longer I've been at this, the more impressed I am with the influence of a diverse, healthy gut microbiome on our longevity. And we can dive into that as well.

One of the things that I really like about that is when, and I think you actually even get into this in the book about how the Kitavans, not only do they have this, I believe they have the APOE4.4 genetic SNP that would predispose them to heart disease under normal conditions. And not only do even under those conditions, they eat a lot of coconut oil, but this high consumption of taro root seems to nourish and protect the gut. And they have low cholesterol levels and a near absence of heart disease. And I think a big part of it is due to this purple potato or taro root consumption. And it's kind of funny because one of my favorite things to do, I do this a lot when I'm in Hawaii, is I'll go buy the taro root. And you can also get, I mean, you can get fresh taro root on Amazon, for example, and I make it into a purple mash and I cook that up with coconut oil, and then I sprinkle it with a little bit of raw honey and some crumbled macadamia nuts, and it's a warm, wonderful, wonderful feast. But, you know, you mix those saturated fats up with the purple potato and it's like a match made in heaven.

Yeah. You know, another good example of mitigating the APOE4 gene is Nigerians actually carry the highest concentration of the APOE4 gene of any people. And their diet consists, their starch is millet, which we mentioned earlier. And they're pretty interesting evidence. So despite having this huge percentage of Apoe 4 carriers, they don't get Alzheimer's disease. And it's actually something that Michael Greger and I actually agree on that. Probably the more millet you eat, the better you're off in protecting against Alzheimer's.

Yeah, that's fascinating. And I know we've only covered one of the seven myths that you get into in the diet, but before we move on to the next myth, one thing that I think a lot of people wonder about, if you start to eat, let's say, like a plant rich Mediterranean diet, is this whole issue with roughage and fiber. And many people, including myself, have kind of become disillusioned with the giant kale smoothie and the big ass salad made of raw vegetables at lunch. I'm no longer doing that. And I'm actually experiencing some very improved gut function, not to mention I'm crapping out big brown snakes every morning instead of seeing pieces of vegetable in my stool. And you mentioned this in the book about roughage and fiber. What are your feelings on roughage and fiber intake?

Well, the whole fiber thing got started years ago by an English colon surgeon by the name of Dennis Burkitt. And many people know him from Burkitt's lymphoma. But his story, I think, is illustrative. He was a colon surgeon from England, and he went on a mission to Africa, and he really went to operate on hemorrhoids and colon cancer. And when he got among the tribes, he unfortunately found that nobody had colon cancer and nobody had hemorrhoids. And so he was rather disappointed. But since he was there, he started to look at these people stools, and these guys would go out into the countryside and crap. And he noticed that they were these huge, you know, snakes. And he became obsessed with these snakes. And he looked at the food they were eating, and they were eating a huge amount of tubers, yams, and they were also eating things like millet. And so he said, oh, my gosh, you know, it's. It's all this fibrous stuff that they're eating now. He didn't know that there was a difference between soluble fiber in these compounds and insoluble fiber, which is the in general, on the outside of whole grains. So he went back to England, and again, he didn't know the difference. And England did not have. They didn't actually have yams and sweet potatoes at the time, but they had plenty of grains. So he said, we got to eat whole grains. And he's really one of the proponents of the whole grain goodness. And that's actually where the idea that you had to have fiber in your diet. Now, what's rather sad and humorous is that he actually died of colon cancer. And there is some pretty interesting evidence that I talk about in my first book that the, the non soluble fiber, the insoluble fiber actually acts like razor blades on the inside of your intestines. And I give some examples where actually can induce colon cancer. So I think, unfortunately there is a huge difference between soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. So back to tubers. I, I talk a lot about the naked mole rat and I'm just obsessed with the naked mole rat.

Very, very attractive young creature.

Yes, please have your listeners google it. Some people describe it as a penis with buck teeth. It's actually a pretty good description. So the naked mole rat lives in sub Saharan Africa in tunnels, and they actually have a colony very much like bee colonies and ant colonies. And before we leave today, I do want to talk about the importance of social aspects of longevity. Don't let us forget.

Yeah, certainly. And by the way, I have a whole podcast I did last month on the growing epidemic of loneliness and the importance of social life and relationships and respect to longevity. So I did cover that pretty recently.

Perfect. Got. So the naked mole rat lives 20, 30 times longer than a normal rat. Normal rat lives about two years. Naked mole rat can live 20 to 30 years. In fact, there's some who think that there is actually no upper limit to its mortality. So the mannequin mole rat, if you, if you look at the gut microbiome of the naked mole rat, it has literally the identical microbiome of healthy 105-year-old humans. And moreover, the naked mole rat, unlike any other rat, which are primarily grain eaters, grain predators, the naked mole rat eats tubers, roots and fungi that are growing on these roots in these subterranean tunnels. And if you look at things that promote a diverse gut microbiome and certain really cool gut buddies, you really ought to be eating tubers and roots and mushrooms. So I think we ought to be, you know, naked mole rats. Yeah.

Yeah. That's very interesting. I mean, I know they have some pretty robust protein chaperone mechanisms that seem to provide some amount of DNA repair from a genetic standpoint. That's something I've addressed in previous talks I've given on anti aging and some of the ways that human beings might be able to enhance some of their own protein repair mechanisms, but it's kind of yet another advantage to tubers. And I know a lot of people might still be trying to wrap their head around this, but it's so easy. I mean, I even have a whole Pantry full of just BPA free canned pumpkin. And it's so convenient because it's pureed. It's easy to digest. I can mix it with a little yogurt or have it next to some fish, and it just works fantastically. You can get the same thing with sweet potato. And as you mentioned in the book, especially with people who suffer from leaky gut or irritable bowel syndrome, if you can mush or use a pressure cooker or do something to take your vegetables and even your tubers and just render them almost like baby food, you feel fantastic and they digest amazingly.

Yeah, I'll tell you, you brought up kale, and I'll tell you a funny personal story. We tend to forget that particularly bitter leaves have a lot of lectins in them. The bitterness is to warn you that if you eat me, you're going to be sorry. And I'm profoundly tolerant of leaves over 20 years. But a few years ago, my wife Penny bought a nutribullet and decided to go on a kale smoothie kick. And she made a pure kale smoothie. I'll never forget the first day. And I drank it down because, you know, I eat kale. Not a lot, but eat kale. But I eat a lot of greens. And sure enough, about two hours later, I had just intense cramping and then luckily got rid of my kale smoothie in the bathroom. And I'm going, what the heck? You know? And I realized that the emulsification process had really released every last lectin for me to get attacked with. So I learned very early with my autoimmune patients, and about half of my. My patient population is autoimmune and leaky gut. And you cannot tolerate even these lectins, and you gotta. You really have to destroy them. And I really ask my IBS folks and leaky gut folks just to stay away from these guys until late in the course of healing the gut.

Yeah, it's a good tip. And I think a lot of people get on this kale smoothie bandwagon and just shoot their. Shoot their gut, specifically in the foot. Now, how about myth number two, this idea about animal protein? Can you get into that?

Yeah. You know, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where meat is king. And we, of course, have to realize that the Department of Agriculture is in control of our food pyramid. And the Department of Agriculture is in the business of selling agricultural products. And it's kind of like the fox guarding the hen house. So, so much of our advice has come from people who are interested in you and me consuming animal protein. I spent as you know, much of my career at Loma Linda and I got to know Dr. Gary Frazier who was and still is in charge of studying the Seventh Day Adventists and their longevity and he's published I think now, oh gosh, six, maybe seven studies and he just published another study a couple weeks ago looking at the effect of animal protein consumption on the longevity of the very long lived Seventh Day Adventist in Loma Linda. And sadly he's shown that the vegans live the longest. The ovo vegetarians live next. Vegetarians live next. I can tell you that a number of the Adventists cheat and some of them are pescatarians and some of them have chicken. And he's shown that the more animals protein that's added to the diet, the less longevity. He's recently published that you can actually track coronary artery disease rates and stroke rates and show that any animal protein is a risk factor. I wish that wasn't true but, but Gary is a superb epidemiologist and he's been tracking these numbers for a very long time. So now does that mean that you can't have it? Well, I think Valter Longo and I would argue that you can have your meat and eat it too as long as you take some steps such as periods of fasting or periods of, you know, five days of a modified vegan fast. And as, as you've noticed in the book, I think the unifying factor of all the blue zones is not grains and beans because certainly blue zones don't eat grains and beans, but it's the fact that all of these blue zones, animal protein is a very limited part of their diet.

Now what about though the idea of the methionine glycine ratios? Because it's my understanding of. But the real issue here is that high amounts of methionine that we get from chicken breast and a cut of rib eye steak that's kind of the primary amino acid that is increasing levels of IGF1 and may contribute to a shorter lifespan. But I know that studies have looked into glycine and found that it actually has an IGF reducing effect. Not to kick this one but it kind of returns to if you're going to eat animals you need to eat nose to tail and you know, include as you've mentioned, some amount of caloric restriction, fasting, other hormetic stressors. But I think a big, big part of this is absence of glycine.

No, I think that's true. And there's a beautiful pig study. I may have referenced it in the Plant Paradox. But you can take pigs and we know that pigs put on a methionine restricted diet will have about a 50% increased lifespan. But you can duplicate that methionine restricted diet by giving figs their regular diet and supplementing them with glycine. And you're right, glycine is probably one of the secrets to all this. And I take a couple of grams of glycine twice a day and you'll notice it on my supplement list. So I think there is something to be said that glycine is the balancing factor. But when you look at particularly Gary's data and you look at the blue zones, you actually, you can't, you can't find a super long live people who are, you know, primarily carnivorous, sadly.

Hmm. That's even, even when you look at. Because I know like, you know, Stefan Lindenberg who already mentioned, I know he looked at, you know, like the Kitavans who were, you know, consuming a lot of wild animals and would have fish in their diet or you know, like the Maasai eating milk and meat and blood. I mean like, can't we name some populations that did indeed eat some of these animals in pretty hefty doses?

Yeah, but you know, even the Maasai don't have, you know, extreme longevity. And I think, you know, we're trying to, you know, we're trying to die young at a ripe old age. And I'm just trying to tease out, okay, how are, you know, how are we going to do this? And I think one of the things we can learn from the blue zones and I think probably the only thing we can learn from them is that animal protein may. Less animal protein not, not absent, but less animal protein may be the one thing that ties them all together.

Yeah, it's kind of a matter of striking that sweet spot. Right. Like I know many of our listeners are in the fitness world and they want to maintain muscle and they want to go out and do a Spartan race or an ironman or compete in CrossFit. And so, you know, there are some populations I think who are, who are in need of higher protein. But yeah, I mean if you're engaged in low level physical activity all day long, living a more ancestral lifestyle, spending time in the sun, outdoors, barefoot, not beating up your body with eccentric exercise every day, I certainly think that animal protein needs diminish. And again, if you are consuming them, you need to include your bone broth and your liver and your gelatin and your marrow and a lot of these other things that seem to offer some kind of protective effect. And, and I guess related to this is this issue of growth hormone because a lot of these folks, you know, especially, you know, athletes, for example, they're kind of going after, you know, amplifying GH to a certain extent to increase their vitality. And you talk about that. I believe that's actually myth number three that you get into. So touch on your thoughts here on growth hormone.

Well, one of the things that Dr. Longo has taught me is there's this very interesting group of people in Ecuador called the Laurons, named after ZV Laurent who first discovered them. They have absent growth hormone receptors. And these people are very short, as you can imagine, but they actually don't have any cancer or diabetes. Now unfortunately, since they found the western the world, they do have a high rate of alcoholism as many primitive people do. But they're also similar to a group in Brazil that carry the same syndrome. And interestingly enough, when you block the IGF1 receptor in mice, they live 40% longer than normal mice. And if you restrict the calories the, that these mice consume, they live even longer. But if you give them growth hormone, it actually abolishes the longevity effect of the calorie restriction. So at least in humans, there's pretty good evidence that growth hormone, particularly as we get older, is pretty mischievous. And in mice probably it's not a great idea. The other thing that you look at, and I measure IGF1 everybody every three months and if you look at my super old people, I call them 95 and above, who are, who are doing well. These people tend to run insulin growth factors in the 70s and 80s. Now when we're young, we run very high insulin like growth factors, but it tails off as we get older. But, but for instance, if you look at 50 year olds who still are running insulin like growth factors in the 200s, 225s and going forward, they have a much higher incidence of cancer than people who run low insulin like growth factors. In fact, all of my cancer patients, when I get them, they almost always have elevated insulin like growth factors. And one of my jobs is to drastically reduce this. And knock on wood, we do a pretty good job of it. I'll give you a re, I'll give you one recent example. I saw a gentleman in his early 60s who has a pretty impressive lymphocytic lymphoma and he takes both testosterone and human growth hormone and his doctors who sent them to me have been trying to convince him that this is really stupid. And he keeps saying, well yeah, this is making me strong and youthful. And they're going, are you crazy? You're feeding the dumb stuff. So I was the first person and he had an insulin like growth factor in the high two hundreds. And I was the first person to show him this data and thank God he stopped. So let's see what happens.

I think the sweet spot for igf, you know, kind of kind of tapers off once you exceed about 150 or so. And I was looking into this recently because there's a lot of people now using growth hormone inducing peptides and things like Tessamorelin and Ipamorelin to enhance sleep or as some kind of a muscle growth mechanism. So I looked into this and it turns out that of course the growth of a variety of malignant cells are related to this excess insulin like growth factor or igf. But a big, big part of it is the absence of the binding proteins that can enhance apoptosis in a lot of these cancer cells. And these binding proteins, it turns out, are increased with the consumption of all things quercetin, which you'd find in onions and grapes and green vegetables, etc. They have these anti proliferative effects. So I think if anything, if you're using any of these, you know, it looks like quercetin supplementation might be able to at least allow you to maintain slightly higher IGF1 levels with some type of protective effects. Facetin from wild strawberries seem to have kind of a similar effect. So I think that the inclusion of those, if folks are listening in and they are trying to amp up igf, you know, I, I think it's a no brainer to include like carcetin and facetin supplementation.

I absolutely agree. I, I take it both every day.

Yeah, you have a long, if we, if we get a chance and, and I don't know that we will. But you, you have a list at the end of the book of, of all the supplements that you take every day. I think most of the people in the longevity and anti aging sector who I talk to, you know, to kind of fight this uphill battle against airline travel and living in a post industrial era and nutrient strip foods, you know, they're popping, you know, 80 to 100 different capsules a day. Your list at the end of the book. And maybe I'll just, I'll use that as a teaser to tell people to go out and buy the book if they Want to read your full list? But it's, you know, I was laying in bed reading, and actually I turned to my wife and I said, you think I take a lot of supplements? Check. Check out what, this dude.

Check out this guy.

Yeah, yeah. So how about. How about myth number four? What's myth number four?

It's important to get plenty of iron as you age. You know, iron is one of the most deadly substances that we have. And everybody says, oh, gosh, you know, you need iron to make lots of red blood cells. And the more red blood cells, the more hemoglobin, and the more hemoglobin, the more oxygen you carry. And so that's a really good thing. And in fact, you know, common wisdom, particularly from the 1950s and 60s, there was a very famous tonic, Geritol, which Lawrence Welt pushed, among other things. And Geriatol was for iron, poor blood. But the evidence is pretty overwhelming, both in human studies and certainly in animal studies, that iron, iron is actually really dangerous for mitochondrial function. And one of the fun studies that I. That I reference in the book is the German. Sorry. Denmark and Swedish researchers were worried that people who gave a lot of blood, donated blood fairly religiously would get iron deficient. So they tracked people in terms of frequency of blood donation through their lives, and they found that people who actually donated the most frequently had the longest lifespan versus people who donated less frequently. So these were all blood donors, but these. And they were all matched for lifestyle, everything else. And that's been confirmed in other studies. One of the theories of why women live longer than men is that women, for half of their lives donate blood every every month, and men no longer wrestle saber tooth tigers. And so we don't, nor do most.

Men engage in heavy amounts of endurance exercise, which. Which I think creates its other host of issues. But. But that's another way to decrease iron is to just go, you know, pound the pavement every day.

Yeah, that's true. And you know, the other thing I think we tend to forget is that probably up until 100 years ago, most of us had iron leaching parasites, parasites in our guts. And we avidly absorb iron, probably for this reason, and those parasites really no longer exist. Now, that does not mean your listeners should go out and get some worms and tapeworms, although you can.

I do have an article about that, about pig whipworm and rat tapeworm consumption.

That's true. In fact, years ago, when I was first getting into this, a gentleman approached me that we should have a weight loss product that would have tapeworms and then we know how to kill tapeworms. And so you just, you know, when you got to your final weight, you just kill off the tapeworms. But we actually researched and the FDA wouldn't let us, so.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the only reason that I did it for a stint was to experiment with the effects on immune system modulation, particularly during travel.

And.

And you know, I actually am not doing that right now. And primarily it's based on the expense of the stuff. It's just super expensive to order. Like good, good non opportunistic parasites that you could consume that aren't going to populate your gut. It's just, it's.

That's right.

Yeah. It's not something that I'm. That I'm currently doing. But I do think that you make an excellent point in the book. And I think anybody who's getting regular blood tests, I mean, look, ferritin and GGT are, in my opinion, must on a blood test to be able to track your potential for this kind of internal rust. Since, you know, GGT is a liver enzyme that helps to metabolize glutathione and is highly interactive with iron, you can use it to track levels of excess free iron or unbound iron in your blood. And then ferritin as an iron storage protein is another. But I think. So even a lot of doctors just don't pay attention to those values. And you make such a good point in the book. You know, it's like iron has kind of been put on a pedestal as this magic compound that increases your ability to be able to climb mountains, but it's certainly not so.

No, it's. In fact, let me add a little thing about ferritin. I found with my work that ferritin, particularly in women, is not a great marker for iron, but it is a really good marker for inflammation and an elevated ferritin level in a woman if she has a normal iron level. And most women will, unless they're huge spinach eaters. Elevated ferritin level in a woman is a really good marker of inflammation and ought to make you go look for an autoimmune disease if you weren't looking before.

Wow. Yeah. That's an important one. There's another myth that you talk about regarding metabolic rates. Metabolic rate. Everybody's going out and getting their metabolism tested and trying to keep their RMR elevated. Can you get into metabolic rate and the myth about that?

Well, you know, again, I'm going back to my old friends, the naked mole rat. One of the Things that's interesting about naked mole rats is they actually have a very low metabolic rate. And I wrote about this years ago in my first book because I in my super old people, they almost run on the edge of hypothyroidism. They run low basal body temperatures, they're sitting around 96, sometimes 97 degrees. And they're an efficient, what I call Toyota Prius rather than a 12 cylinder Hummer. And when you look at one of the old theories around the turn of the last century is of the rate of aging equals the rate of energy utilization, I think there's something to be said about this. Efficient use of energy, I think is going to win the race. And the more you can actually turbocharge cells to have more mitochondria to encourage mitochondrial division so that you become more efficient at calorie burning, I think is going to win the race in the long run. The other thing that I mentioned is that carnivores tend to run much higher body temperatures than herbivores simply because breakdown of protein actually generates a lot of heat. And carnivores, as we all know, spend most of their time sleeping for I think very good reasons to try and lower their metabolic rate.

Yeah, incidentally, it's really interesting because I, you know, I go to a lot of these fitness conventions and you, you see like the bodybuilders or the, the Ironman triathletes from a distance and they look like an Adonis or like an aerobic engine in spandex. And you get up close and you see a significant amount of skin oxidation, you know, which of course reflect collagen degradation farther down to the core. And you know, these folks are highly inflamed, yet super fit. And the fact is that, yeah, I mean, I think it's probably not a news flash to people anymore that fitness or performance is not synonymous with longevity. But this idea of keeping your metabolism constantly elevated with high intensity exercise and weightlifting I think is a real mistake versus the low level physical activity throughout the day. Lifting heavy stuff and sprinting every once in a while, but being cognizant of the fact that if you want to live a long time, you simply cannot be exhausting that battery every single day. But one thing I wanted to ask is I don't think you mentioned in the book though is how do you strike the sweet spot between fitness and maintenance of cardiovascular health, for example, and having a low metabolism?

Well, I'm going to throw out something from my original book, Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution. Actually one of the best examples of dropping metabolic rate is hibernating animals and hibernating animals. If you look at their non hibernating counterparts, hibernating animals can live two to three times longer than their non hibernating counterpart. And that's because for part of the year they dramatically reduce their metabolic rate. And I think we should learn from that. And I talk about this in the book. There are periods where we should have energy expenditure and, and we have to have periods of less energy expenditure. And I think that occurred probably naturally when there were actual seasons. But we now live in 365 days of endless summer almost regardless of where we live in the world. And one of the things I urge is this cyclical change in activity, cycle change in eating. I think one of the reasons that these periods of fasting are in almost all great religions and they usually last for a month or six weeks. I think it was this, you know, breaking system that everybody recognized from antiquity that we should throw on the brakes for a period of time.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. And again it returns to kind of this idea of press pulse cycling.

Right.

Like period periods of anabolism and periods of catabolism. But you make a very good point in the book. You know, low body temperature, lazing around quite a bit, you know, kind of this low level physical activity versus intense exercise. There seem to be some pretty profound longevity benefits. Of course, I'm not one to argue that you want to live life cold and libido less and it kind of without anyany muscle. You know, who wants to live 150 years if you're just laying on the couch all day? But at the same time you do make a very good point with that one. Another myth. And there's two other myths I want to cover in the time that we have is what you talk about regarding saturated fat. Can you get into the myth about saturated fat?

Yeah, you know, saturated fat is in again and, and you know, I follow Dr. Ancel Keys writings ever since I got into this. Probably everyone in the paleo community mentioned Ancel Keys and he's immediately vilified as, you know, the guy who set everything off in the wrong direction by saying fat is bad. He was a nutritionist from the University of Minnesota. For your listeners who don't know, but they probably do, who invented the K ration in World War II that actually saved our troops? And when Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack in the mid-50s, very robust, thin male, who would they call out basically of retirement than Ancel Keys to say, hey, come and figure out why this happened. Well, Ancel Keys had actually been working on starvation experiments. And so he went around literally the world looking at actually over 20 countries looking at foods and their relationship to coronary artery disease. And he eventually published the seven countries study, which in the reading, basically the more saturated fat people ate, the more heart disease they had, the less saturated fat they ate, less heart disease. Now he's been wildly criticized because he cherry picked his data, but you can go online and see the whole data and there's still definitely a trend towards saturated fat. But what I think Nectar Keys did not say is that plant fats he did not actually say were bad for you. That was implied from his work. But he retained, retired to a village south of actually just above Acciaroli, south of Naples. And last year I had the opportunity to interview his housekeeper. He died just shy of 102 years of age. So he's actually the oldest living nutritionist. Nutritionists do very badly in terms of longevity, as I joke about in the book. And people are just waiting for me to and I'll kick off and prove myself wrong. So anyhow, so Ancel Keys actually ate huge amounts of olive oil living in Italy. And I think we've missed that in vilifying Ancel Keys. And I've looked at all his work over and over and over again and I don't think he made the connection that in general animal fat is accompanied by animal, animal protein. And again, I hate to beat a dead horse or eat a dead horse, but I think where there's smoke, there's fire. And what he may have been seeing is the influence of animal protein. That being said, I think there's so much evidence of the health benefit of olive oil, particularly on brain function, on perhaps mitigating the effect of TMAO production from our microbiome that we shouldn't vilify monounsaturated fats.

But having said, you're talking to a guy who's a member of an olive oil club. I get fresh olive oil delivered to my house quarterly from all over the world and we have tastings with the kids to feel or to get the sense and the nose and the fragrance and the tasting notes. But how much of this do you think is also related to the APOE gene? Because I mean it affects the size of our chylomicrons and it changes how we metabolize fats throughout our body. And I personally used to do, I used to do like a full on Ketogenic diet. And of course the pantry was full of coconut cream and coconut milk and you know, the refrigerator full of lard and ghee and all these compounds that are chock full of saturated fats. And then upon finding out I have a version of the APOE gene called the 3, 4 genotype, I shifted my diet dramatically. Only about 10% of my total fat intake are from these saturates. And I think part of it, I think could be related to the fact that some people may not actually manifest issues with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in response to saturated fats, while others do. I think it's tough to paint with a broad brush, isn't it?

Right, yeah. You know, 30% of people carry the APOE 4 allele, either the 3, 4, which is the most common, or a 4 4. And through the years I've developed a huge practice in APOE 34s and 4 who referred to me. And one of the things I noticed fairly early on is that saturated fats, particularly in coconut oil, but also in animal fats, particularly cheeses, really increase small dense LDLs and oxidized LDLs in these people. You and I try my best to really limit for the floors consumption of these saturated fats. The other thing I think we have to realize about desaturated fats is they are carried across our intestinal wall in chylomicrons, a transport vehicle. And chylomicrons are the way that lipopolysaccharides, LPSs, or as I call them little pieces of shit, actually hop, hop through our intestinal wall. So if this is the way, absent a leaky gut, that lipopolysaccharides get into us, I would like to limit the amount of lipopolysaccharides getting into me. So I'll tell you a funny story. You actually could relate to this. I have a gentleman who father has Alzheimer's disease. He, he got it early in his 60s, he's in his 40s, he carries the 3 4. And for years he loves cheese. And for years I've been asking him to really, really back off on cheese. And every time I see him, every three months, he carries a lot of these small dense LDLs, he oxidizes his LDL despite lots of polyphenols. And I say, look, after about three years of this, I said, humor me. Give up cheese for two weeks before the test and let's see what happens. He says, okay, I'll do that for you. So we get his new tests and his small dense LDLs are now normal. He doesn't oxidize his LDL. And I said, look at this. He says, it's the cheese. And I said, yeah. He says, oh, you know, this is great news. I said, oh, thank you. You're finally getting it. He says, yeah, this is great news. I can stop eating cheese for two weeks before the test and you'll never know it.

Well, you know what else you should have told them to do because you talk about in the book is fermented green tea, Pu erh tea, because of the. You talk about how Akkermansia bacteria is protective, you know, in terms of increasing mucus production in the gut and helping with this lipopolysaccharide and the consumption of these fermented teas. And we already touched on how some of the purple potatoes and the taro root can help with the akkermansia proliferation. But pu erh tea is another one you talk about in the book. Yeah.

Pu Erh tea is this fascinating fermented green tea from China. And make sure you know your source and make sure it's organic because there's some pretty nasty stuff out there. But pu erh tea actually increases this particular gut bug that literally increases your mucus production on the surface of your intestines. And mucus, let me tell you, is the key, one of the real keys to having gut integrity as you get older. Mucus protects you against lectins. Mucus actually absorbs lectins. That's one of the reasons it's there. And Ekkermansia, the more of this guy you make, the better. So puerhre tea does it. And the chicory family of vegetables may be one of the best foods for Akkermansia. So radicchio, Belgian endive, chicory, frise, Jerusalem artichokes have huge amounts of Indian artichokes.

Yeah, you gotta be careful with those things.

Yeah, well, your gut bugs are telling you. Thank you so much for dinner.

Yeah, it's funny because I literally just returned from Salt Lake City, Utah, where I was attending a fitness conference convention called fitcon and there was this whole corner there called the keto corner with keto donuts and keto cookies and keto chocolates. And they all use enormous amounts of erythritol and maltitol, and that's a less favorable way to increase the amount of bloating and gas production in your gut, which I learned the wrong way after having about three guilt free, unquote keto donuts for dessert. So careful with your form of fermentation, folks, especially those of you following the keto kick. Now, you touched on dairy, and that's actually the final myth that you talk about in the book. The final myth is about how milk may not in fact do the body good. Can you explain?

Yeah, two reasons. First, most of the milk in the United states is casein A1 milk comes from Holstein cows. There is increasing evidence that casein A1 makes a nasty compound, beta casein morphine, which can produce type 1 diabetes and cause an attack on the pancreas. Number two, it makes an opioid. So it's maybe, maybe addictive to you. That's why so many people like milk. But I think the big reason is milk. Cow milk is designed to make baby cows grow quickly because herbivores in general have to grow very quickly so they can run away from predators or stand up to a predator. On the other hand, human milk has, so they make a lot of insulin, like growth factor, IGF1. On the other hand, human milk, humans are designed to grow very slowly and we actually have very low amounts of IGF1. So the idea that we should be pouring, you know, IGF milk into our kids is really scary to me. Our kids are growing much too fast. I show in the book that adolescents who grow quickly have an 80% increased risk of cancer. Ten years later, we're seeing tremendous amounts of cancer in kids that we never saw in the past. And I think part of the reason is this obsession that kids have to have milk. We are the only animal that drinks somebody else's milk. And.

I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing because we're also the only animal that flies enormous metal tubes across the sky to get from point A to point B. But this may be bad.

It is.

But my kids, they drink goat milk, which is A two form of protein and dairy from goat milk. For a while I was even sponsored by the Camel milk company, which was wonderful milk. My kids were, were loving that stuff. Another form of A two milk and sheep and water buffalo, I know, are another couple, but there's, there's. Do you know about this website, a2milk.com where you can actually go find sources of a2 dairy?

Yeah, I've actually, and I've actually met with the company. A2 Milk is actually Australian based and they're, they're trying to get a toehold in America. But every time they kind of make progress, our friends at the American Dairy association tend to undercut their prices. And it's an interesting struggle to talk to them on the other hand. So mother's goat milk used to be called mother's milk because it's incredibly similar to human milk. Cow's milk has really no relationship to human milk, even the A2 variety. So goat's milk, sheep milk, far better choices.

Yeah.

And if you can find chamomile, use it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I always go for like the hard European artisanal cheeses, these forms of a 2 milk. But I treat dairy for the reasons that you've named about insulin growth factor. I treat it like a condiment. Right. Like I use a little dollop of yogurt on top of my pumpkin puree like I was talking about. Or I'll use a sprinkling of a really good high quality cheese cheese on top of something I might have for dinner, like fish or a roasted vegetable. But yeah, I think that, well, let me put it this way. I coach some people like high school football players who will hire me to help them put on muscle or people like hard gainer men who want to get big. And dairy is the best way to turn a small mammal into a big old fat mammal. But yeah, you need to be careful with, with it.

Yeah.

There is so many other things you talk about in the book. You know, the link between the gut and the gut bacteria and rheumatoid arthritis and how you manage coronary artery diseases and immune system disease and you know, youryour list of supplements that we talked about and even about how omega 6 fatty acids are unfairly vilified. Like there's a lot in here that I think will really almost shock people in terms of newspaper flashes when it comes to nutrition. So I would highly recommend that those of you listening in check this book out. It's called the Longevity Paradox. And not only will I link to that in the show notes, but also my original Plant Paradox interview with Dr. Gundry and his book the Plant Paradox. I'll link to everything else that we talked about too, from the podcast on loneliness that I briefly mentioned to my article on tapeworms and whipworms to organic fermented pu erh tea you can get on Amazon. I'll put links to everything, so just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com longevityparadox and also add the Longevity Paradox by Dr. Gundry to your list of books to read. And Dr. Gundry, thanks so much for ignoring the hotel staff who so desperately wanted to get a hold of you early in this interview and devoting your time to us today.

They probably found out. My credit card doesn't work. I fooled them again.

Yeah, the cops are coming to your door right now. Well, awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Hey, thanks for having me again. You were one of the first people to give me a shout out when the plant paradox came out. And you were one of the defenders of me when my critics showed up. I like critics. They make us constantly re examine our work. But thanks for sticking in there.

Well, thanks, man. I appreciate it. And best of luck to you and also to your podcast. Even as a podcast was you listening in over you can find over at itunes or wherever fine, fine podcasts are.

Found and yeah, and I think we're trying to get you on one of these days.

Yeah, yeah, we'll make it happen. We'll make it happen. So. So Again, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com longevity paradox. I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Steven Gundry signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben then recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every, every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing.