DO THIS To Prevent & Treat AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE! | Dr.Steven Gundry

Heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease, the big killers are by sugar.

Our brain is like a muscle. There are things that we can do to make us stronger and more resilient.

If you really wanted to live well for a very long time.

For people.

That want to live longer, and be healthy while they live longer, not having to get surgeries all the time.

Right.

If you had three to five minutes max to talk to someone who said, I just want to live longer. I want to know the secrets to living longer. I got to figure out the keys and you've got three minutes with them. What would you say in three minutes are the things they must do every day or as often as they can for the rest of their life to extend their life?

The first thing they must do is realize that the only purpose of food is to get olive oil olive oil into your mouth. The only purpose of food. And preferably it'll be mushrooms that you pour the olive oil on. That's number one. The evidence that the polyphenols in olive oil, if you really, you know, wanted to live well for a very long time, olive oil is the key. Two of the blue zones, actually three if you count the Acheirolis, use a liter of olive oil per week. Now that's a lot of olive oil. It's like 10 to 12 tablespoons a day. So there's a beautiful study out of Spain that I talk about where you took 65 year old people, and we'll dumb it down real quick. Two groups. One group had to use a liter of olive oil per week for five years. Then they changed their olive oil once a week at the clinic. The other group had to eat a low-fat Mediterranean diet, both Mediterranean diets of Spain. At the end of five years, the olive oil group had better memory, had improved memory than when they started. The low-fat group lost memory. The women in the olive oil group had a 67% less incidence of breast cancer than the low-fat group. People in both groups who had coronary artery disease, the group that got the olive oil had a 30% less incidence of new events versus the group that had the low fat diet. And so if, you know, three blue zones, and this study doesn't convince you that you better get olive oil into you, olive oil grows brain cells. And it's not the oil, per se, it's actually the polyphenols in olive oil. Olive oil, the polyphenols literally make your blood vessels slippery. And I've actually published data on this, that your blood vessels, you cannot stick cholesterol to blood vessels if you have olive oil in your system.

Huh.

So, you know, drink the dumb stuff.

Do you drink it?

Yeah, I do.

Wow.

I take a shot of it.

Craig's always talking about how he can drink as much as possible.

But what I would urge people to do is, so you can cook on olive oil. This myth that olive oil oxidizes when you cook it is one of the worst internet myths there is.

Really?

It turns out that olive oil is the least oxidizable oil. It's even better than avocado oil or coconut oil. It does not oxidize.

Oxidize, meaning like evaporate.

No, I oxidize.

Gets damaged.

Damaged.

Got it. Okay. It turns out everybody sees olive oil smoking and they figure that's damaged.

It's not.

So you can burn it as much as you want. You know, cultures have been using olive oil to cook with for 5,000 years. And, you know, there's not a lot of dead Italians from cooking an olive oil. Okay, so you gotta get olive oil. So that's number one.

Number one.

Number two, you gotta take vitamin D3.

You've got to.

Vitamin D3, not D. Yeah, well, there's D2, there's D1. What's vitamin D3 and why is it important? So D3, is the active form of vitamin D that we use. You will be shocked that people who have the highest levels of vitamin D in their bloodstream live the longest and live well compared to people with the lowest levels of vitamin D3. It turns out that you have to have vitamin D3 to activate stem cells. activation.

And we can.

Vitamin D is also through the Sun.

Is that correct?

But it's nearly impossible to get enough vitamin D through the Sun. Really? Nearly impossible. 80 of Southern Californians are vitamin D deficient because we're slathering sunscreen on us and we're wearing long sleeve shirts. We're inside a lot. You know, I live in Palm Springs. It's pretty hot in the summer. Really hot. We tend not to go out a lot in the summer, so we don't have enough vitamin D. and so you have to swallow vitamin D. The University of California San Diego published a study that the average human being to have an adequate level of vitamin D3 should be taking 9,600 international units a day. So basically 10,000 international units. They found no one who had vitamin D toxicity at 40,000 international units a day.

Overdose on vitamin D?

I have yet to see vitamin D toxicity. And I've been measuring vitamin D levels for 20 years in patients every three months. I personally run my vitamin D level greater than 120 nanograms per milliliter for the last 12 years to prove I'm not dead. And so far, so good. And here's, just to tell you how crazy this is, if I feel I'm getting something, if I'm coming down with a scratchy throat or something, I'll take 150,000 international units of vitamin D3.

How many capsules?

Three days. Well, so you can get 5,000s, right? So that's 10 capsules three times a day for three days. So I'm basically taking half a million international units of vitamin D to ward off a virus.

Everyone always says you should take vitamin C when you start to feel like a scratchy throat.

It really doesn't work. Vitamin D is probably one of the best antivirals that's ever been discovered.

So vitamin C really doesn't help that much or?

Really doesn't help that much. We can get into vitamin C and I think everybody should take a time release vitamin C twice a day and it's actually for a different purpose.

What's the purpose?

All right.

Quick version.

All right, quick version. So you and I are one of the few animals that don't manufacture our own vitamin C. Us monkeys and guinea pigs. And we have actually all the genes to manufacture vitamin C. There's actually five of them. the last gene is turned off. It's called a ghost gene. Why do we do that? Well, we manufacture vitamin C from sugar, from glucose, and it's actually very expensive to manufacture vitamin C. So the theory is, and I like the theory, is we grew up in Africa with lots of vitamin C containing plants in our diet. And so it was unnecessary for us to manufacture vitamin C. And the theory goes we'd have some extra glucose left over that we we could store as fat to make it through the winter when times were rough. And we're the only fat storing ape. So the problem is vitamin C is essential to repair collagen and everybody, collagen, okay? The reason smokers get wrinkles is collagen is broken because you actually repair cracks in collagen with vitamin C. And smokers use up all their vitamin C with what's called oxidative stress, so they don't have any vitamin C. In fact, here's another controversial statement. If I've got a smoker with heart disease, I'm willing to trade him his smoking with him taking large amounts of vitamin C while I get the rest of his diet squared away rather than tell him to stop smoking. Now the reason I say that is, and I talk about this in the book, there's this fascinating island people called the Kitavans in New Guinea who smoke like fiends. They eat 60% of their diet is taro root, the other part of their diet is coconut oil, and they live into their mid-90s with no medical care but they've been studied extensively. There has never been a case of a heart attack, heart disease or a stroke in these smokers. What they do do is they eat a lot of vitamin C containing fruits and vegetables as part of their diet. Olive oil as well? They don't have any olive oil. They have coconut oil. That's their coconut. They don't have any olives down there.

So you can do without olive oil and still live a long life.

Yeah.

But you think olive oil will... Yeah.

Since olive oil is so readily available.

You might as well.

Might as well. Might as well. Okay, so anyhow, back to vitamin C. Yeah. You have to have vitamin C to repair the cracks in blood vessels. People remember scurvy, where people would die, they'd bleed to death on long ocean voyages. Actually, 50% mortality on those old ocean voyages, just dying from scurvy. And the British Navy, the reason they're called limeys is because the surgeon in the British Navy realized that if he gave them limes, take on the voyage, that they wouldn't die of scurvy. that's why the British Navy is still called Limeys. So vitamin C repairs the cracks in collagen and our blood vessels are flexing all the time. And so these cracks have to be repaired and if they're not repaired you basically bleed to death. We have a system of repairing those cracks and it's called cholesterol and cholesterol will patch those cracks. So if you have plenty of vitamin C throughout the day, you won't, you'll be able to repair those cracks. And there's a wild study, I mean, head down a rabbit hole. You can genetically engineer rats to lack that final gene to make vitamin C, and they will live half as long as a normal rat. If you then put vitamin C in their water, they will live as long as a normal rat who can manufacture their vitamin C, but they're drinking the water throughout the day. So, vitamin C unfortunately... We have to manufacture. We have to manufacture it and we've got some interesting tricks to do that coming up. But in the meantime, the average person should take like 1000 milligrams of timed-release vitamin C twice a day to cover their ass.

Wow. Okay. So, the first thing I heard you say, this three minutes is turning into 20 minutes.

That's okay.

No worries. The first thing I heard is olive oil.

Oh, and olive oil is actually one of the tricks to activate the dose gene. polyphenol and olive oil.

Okay.

You will actually make vitamin C. Okay, there you go.

So there you go.

Another good reason.

So have olive oil and vitamin D. Have lots of vitamin D. Three. D3.

D3.

And then what's next to live a long life?

Next is you got to get some form of long chain omega-3 fat better known as fish oil. And vegans have no excuse anymore. There is algae based DHA and EPA. But here's the deal. Your brain is about 70% fat. fat. So if you want to call me a fat head, you know, I will attack you.

Yeah.

And I can just see now the internet lighting up. Fat head. So half of the fat in your brain is actually an omega-3 fat called DHA. So half, basically half of your brain is fish oil. And as I talk about in the Longevity Paradox, you look at people. what are called the Omega-3 Index, which basically looks at how much DHA you have in you over the past two months. People with the highest Omega-3 Index have the largest brains and the largest areas of memory, the hippocampus. People with the lowest levels of DHA have the most shrunken brains and the smallest memory areas, hippocampus. So mom was right when she said fish is brain food. you know, she was absolutely, she didn't know why it was, but we now know it's DHA is really what makes your brain.

So sushi is good.

Sushi is actually not a good idea.

Oh, wow.

Most of the people I see with high mercury levels are sushi eaters or dentists, so. And particularly sashimi grade tuna.

God, that's so good.

You just wanna, just kind of want to stay away from it.

Ah, sugarfish is amazing, though.

Yeah.

And it's got.

It'S got the grains, too.

Yeah, it's got the grains, you know, so.

So no sushi.

Yeah.

So once in a while.

Yeah.

Once in a while.

Okay.

Absolutely. Yeah. But, yeah. So fish oil is incredibly important.

Yeah.

And what I try to get people to do, and again, I measure this every three months in all my patients, and we're talking, you know, thousands and thousands of patients over the last 20 years, you want to get about a thousand milligrams of DHA per day. Now how do you do that? Well, you get fish oil, I mean you can go to Costco, I don't know. And you look on the back and you find serving size and make sure it says one serving size. They love to fool you. They may say two or three and then you look down below and you see DHA and you look to see how much DHA is in a capsule and you add it up and say, oh okay there's 250 milligrams of DHA in this capsule so I need to take four.

Wow. Four a day. Yeah.

1000 a day. Okay. DHA.

We got olive oil. We've got vitamin D3. We have fish oils. What else do we need to live longer?

So you gotta have polyphenols in your diet. So, what the heck is a polyphenol? How do you remember polyphenol? Think about polywanna phenol.

Okay.

Phenols are plant compounds. Polyphenols are plant compounds that plants use primarily to protect themselves against stress and sunlight. Just interesting fact. We know that red wine is beneficial for you because of actually two polyphenols. The most famous is resveratrol. The other one is quercetin or quercetin. The higher the grapes are grown, the higher in altitude the grapes are grown, the more polyphenols they make, 'cause they.

Need more to protect themselves.

Exactly, it's basically suntan. They've actually protected themselves against sunburn.

Interesting.

Also, the more the plant is stressed, the more polyphenols it makes to protect itself.

Right.

Okay. So polyphenols are traditionally in dark colored berries. So for instance, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. Interesting fun fact, the leaves of these trees or vines have more polyphenols than the actual fruit does. For instance, black raspberry leaves have far more polyphenols than black raspberries. And I take black raspberry capsules, by the way, and it's in the book.

There you go.

So olives, for instance, are loaded with polyphenols. And olives that are stressed produce better. They're even better. Olive leaves have more polyphenols than olives. So olive leaf extract is an easy way of getting the huge amount of benefits drinking a liter of olive oil.

So what about leafy greens? Do you want stressed out looking leafy greens or do you want healthy, thriving looking?

Excellent question. It turns out that the reason organic vegetables in general are better for you besides the fact that they haven't been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides and probably Roundup, and we can get into that, is the fact that these Creatures, these plants, actually have to work harder and they have to produce more polyphenols to protect themselves against insect predation. And so that's actually the reason you want to eat organic. So when you're going to the farmer's market and the poor little organic vegetables have got potholes of insects, they're dying and they don't look very good, you go, I want that guy. That guy is struggling. He is going to just be so loaded with polyphenols.

Really?

And correlation with that is the more bitter, the better, because polyphenols in general are very bitter. For instance, when we were developing, you know, my signature product, Vital Reds, it's pure polyphenols primarily, and they're bitter. So we did lots of taste testing to figure out how the heck we're going to mass these really bitter compounds. So more bitter, more better. In fact, as I talk about in the book, I had the pleasure of knowing Jack Lalanne, who you would know is really the godfather of fitness and nutrition in the United States. And I knew him in his later years. And Jack used to have a saying, is that if it tastes good, spit it out.

Interesting.

Now, what he really meant by that is, bitter things, nasty tasting things is actually what is going to give the bugs that are actually going to keep you alive what they want to eat. And don't, you know, more bitter, more better. So, you know, the more polyphenols, the more bitter greens I can get into you, the better.

But you can get that through capsules and other things too.

Yeah, you can. And in fact, that's one of the reasons I'm a nut about taking a bunch of supplements because we, if you look at even, you know, really good organic eaters, most human beings only eat maybe 20 different plant species.

I probably, like, three.

Yeah. Yeah.

Most people do, like, five, maybe.

Yeah.

You know, and, you know, ketchup is not a vegetable. It's a tomato. And we can't, we can't do that. So our ancestors, and even looking at modern hunter-gatherers like the Hunza tribe, they go through, they eat 250 different plant species on a rotating basis. And you think about it, all those plants are grown organically. They're in six feet of loam soil. They got their cool microbiome. So they're just replete with all these nutrients and polyphenols. And so, you know, if people think that they can actually do a great job eating healthy without supplementation. I got oceanfront property in Palm Springs. I'm happy to sell them.

Right, exactly. Okay, so I want to get one more thing. I've heard that in order to extend your life, you need to, I can't remember the name, extend something at the.

End of your... Telomeres.

Telomeres. What is that?

Telomeres.

So how do we, is that true? You have to extend this.

So that is one theory. of longevity. And it is a, it's a good theory. I like the theory. It's controversial. Vitamin D. Turns out that people with the highest levels of vitamin D have the longest telomeres.

There you go.

So why wouldn't you do that?

Right.

If you like that theory.

There you go.

So that's vitamin D is, it's, if anybody is If anybody takes away, it's.

Vitamin D. So you've given four things so far. Let's give me one final thing that can extend our life and the quality of our life as well. Great.

So the last thing we want to do is we want to turn off as much as we can the sensor called mTOR. Originally called the mammalian target of rapamycin. It's subsequently been discovered in all organisms besides mammals. And so now it's called the mechanistic target of rapamycin. And so mTOR is an energy sensor and it's in all of our cells. And basically we come from a circadian rhythm system of plentiful food at one time of the year and very little food at another time of year.

Right.

Fruit sometimes, not those.

Exactly.

And we use fruit to gain weight for the winter. And that's a whole another subject. So mTOR senses energy availability and it senses sugar molecules and it also senses amino acids protein. Now it turns out that it's very sensitive to particular amino acids rather than all amino acids. The ones it's most sensitive to are amino acids contained in animal protein and animals include fish, animal protein includes eggs, it includes cheeses and besides you meat. So beautiful work that's been done, a lot of it done by now my friend, Walter Longo from USC, from the Longevity Center. Is that the mimicking, fasting, mimicking diet?

Yeah, I've taken that a couple of times.

He got a patent for Prolong.

Yeah, Prolong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Got a patent for it. So Prolong, yeah. So Prolong is a vegan, low amino acid, diet that you do for five days.

Yeah, it's tough the first time.

It is.

For me, it was.

Now, in the book, I wrote about it in the Plant Paradox, actually before he made promo, but I write about it again and he and I, and he's even given me a nice shout out on the back. If you, the idea is you want to reduce mTOR as much as you can and the longer, the more you suppress it, the longer you live. And here's the reason. if times are rough and you sense that times are rough, your body, your immune system, actually goes around and looks at all the cells in your body and says, who's pulling their weight? Who is really contributing to this effort? And who's a slacker? Who looks a little weird? Who's not doing... and it actually instructs cells to commit suicide. And it's called autophagy. and it tells cells, sorry, you're not dying, you're out of here, you die. And so it gets the fittest of the fittest to survive, makes you stronger. And you have to have these periods of time, you have to call the herd, as we say. So unless you do that, you have all of these cells that just kind of build up the debris, they're called senescent cells, some people call them zombie cells, and it's the amount of these zombie cells that is actually going to make you deteriorate long before you should.

It gets sick and it hurts.

Exactly. So you gotta call the hurt. So how you do that? Five days in a row, once a month.

Once a month you do this?

Once a month, five days in a row. Five days in a row. You follow a vegan diet of about 900 calories and I got some great recipes. It's easy to do. You do it five days in a row.

Yeah.

It's as if you did calorie restriction every day. And what this does is not only call the herd, but it activates stem cells. Now everybody says, oh stem cells, you know, it's the future. You've got oodles of stem cells in you already. Where do you think we get the stem cells? We, you know, take a liposuction and suck out your fat and then we spin it around, we get your stem cells and inject you right back in. They're already there. You just have to call them into action.

What do we categorize as sick?

That's a great question.

So what's obese, what's sick, what's...

So at the top level we have to understand that over the last 40 years a tsunami has come that we weren't aware was coming. that we weren't prepared for and still haven't grappled with. And that tsunami is chronic disease and food related illness.

-In 40 years. -In 40 years.

Did we have chronic disease prior to this? -We did, of course we did, but not the magnitude. We used to have like 5% obesity.

Rates in this country in the early 60s.

It's 40% now in most states. -I thought it was like 30 like a few years ago. -No, no, no, it's like 40%. -Many states are 40% and many are pushing 40. So it's 35 to 40 depending on where you look at it. Like California is probably less, Colorado is less, but Mississippi and Alabama are you know 40 plus. So we have six out of every 10 Americans who's got a chronic illness, four out of 10 who have more than one. By 10 years from now we're gonna have 83 million with three or more chronic diseases, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, dementia, you name it. We are having 11 million people. And this is, I think, a conservative estimate. 11 million people around the world die every year from bad food, from ultra processed food and not enough good food. Now, I think it's more like 50 million when you look at all the related conditions and so forth. It's a staggering number that beats out smoking, war, violence, accidents, you name it. Nothing else comes close. Not malaria, TB, AIDS, all that is a fraction, a third of the deaths that are caused by chronic illness. And they're mostly preventable and they're mostly caused by food and they're mostly caused by the ultra processed food that our food system produces en masse. It's the biggest industry on the planet. It's $15 trillion, about 17% of the world's global product and it is controlled by a few dozen CEOs that are in monopolies around seed production, agrochemicals, fertilizer, processed food companies. It's staggering how the system has sort of just over the last 40 years completely transformed. And, you know, I remember like I was in some store or cafe and I saw this picture of Woodstock and I'm looking at the all the sea of people and- 60s, right? 69. There wasn't one overweight person. I watched this movie, I think it was called Amazing Grace about Aretha Franklin, African-American church. Now, African-Americans, 80% of African-American women are overweight.

It is, you know, 80% today.

80%.

Why is that?

Well, because they're targeted by the food industry, because they're in a vicious cycle of economic stress, of social stress, of unfair targeting and manipulation by by the food industry. This is well documented by, for example, studies from Yale where they look at the amount of advertising and targeting to poor and African-American and Hispanic communities, it's staggering. And there was not one overweight person in this sea of African-Americans in 1970. And so it literally just happened. I was 11 years old in 1970. And in my lifetime, you see this change. So we had this staggering problem of chronic illness, which people people suffer from this bankrupting people, this bankrupting our country. I mean, think about the amount of economic stress. We talked about insurance, too.

I mean, so much insurance money that's involved in this, too. People are having to go to the doctor so much more probably now because of these issues, right?

Absolutely. People, and then many people are not adequately covered. So there's a lot of co-pays I mean, you know, people can have 10, 20, 000 in co-pays. I had a patient the other day who, you know, had diabetes and I fixed his diabetes through food. And he says, I saved $10,000 a year on co-pays for my insulin and my- Just the drugs. Yeah, and when you look at the amount on diabetes spent in this country, which is basically one out of every two Americans has pre-diabetes or type two diabetes, one-third of Medicare spending is on diabetes. One-third of Medicare is on diabetes. Yes, Medicare, if it was a company, would be the biggest company in the world, a trillion dollar budget a year. Shut up. Yes, one third of our total federal tax revenue expected to grow to 100% of our mandatory spending by 2048. And in six years, Louis, six years, the Medicare Trust Fund, which is sort of the bank account that we use to make sure we cover Medicare. It's a little complicated how it works, but the Medicare Trust Fund is going to be out of money. So that means that we're going to have to get a trillion dollars a year out of our tax revenue. We're not covering. Oh my gosh. Is this a threat to our economy? It's a threat to our political stability. It's a threat even to national security, those because seven out of ten kids who apply for the military get rejected.

Can't get in.

Because they're too fat or unfat. Yes, there's 700 admirals and generals that published a report called Unhealthy and Unprepared about the threat in our military and national security. And not only that, soldiers are overweight. So we're feeding them crap. They go in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number one reason for medical evacuations was not war injury, was obesity related problems.

Yes, 100% obesity related problems. What does that mean?

Like they're injuries.

Like a heart problem.

Injuries from being overweight. And you can read about this. I didn't make this shit up. In that report, unhealthy and unprepared. Just Google it. You can read it yourself.

Wow.

It's staggering. So we have a $22 trillion debt, We have this threat of chronic disease exploding. It's getting worse and worse. Medicare for all is kind of a silly idea and so is repealing Obamacare. Now they're going to help the problem unless we figure out how to stop people from going into the system in the first place. Into the system of getting unhealthy. Yeah, if they don't need medical care, it's cheap.

So let's go back to diabetes for a second. Tell me again the stat on diabetes. How many people have it or are pre-diabetic? what? I'm undereducated on this. So how many different types of diabetes are there? Okay, how is it caused?

Okay, okay. So type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Pancreas fails. It's called, we used to be called juvenile diabetes. And you need insulin.

It's just, you need it.

You need insulin. If you have type 1 diabetes, you need insulin. You need insulin. To do your pancreas dies. Because your pancreas makes insulin and helps.

Your blood sugar get balanced. Keeps, that's the blood. It's out of the gatekeeper.

What'S the glucose into your cells? Okay. So it's really important.

So how does that die? What does it die from that? I mean, how does the pancreas die? Oh, well, how does it get to that point?

It's an autoimmune, like an autoimmune, like you get multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis. It's basically your body attacks your pancreas. Is that from eating a lot of bad foods? Well, there's been links to dairy and actually as a driver of type 1 diabetes. Gluten, 29% of people who have type 1 diabetes have celiac that are so celiac is a big cause of autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes. So that's a very small number of people.

Okay.

Very few.

One out of two Americans have what we call type 2 diabetes. We used to call it adult onset except now kids as young as three are getting type 2 diabetes from drinking soda from the crip. Oh my gosh. I was working in when I was a resident in an urgent care center and this woman comes in for back pain. She got her baby in a carriage and I I see her feeding this baby this brown liquid in a bottle who's seven months old. And I'm like, what is it? Soda? I'm like, what is that? That's Coca-Cola.

No.

I said, why are you feeding your baby Coke? She said, well, he likes it. Oh my gosh. Oh my God, listen, my wife showed me this video on social media the other day. It was of a baby, looked like it was maybe eight or nine months old baby, having ice cream for the first time.

Oh.

Having sugar for the first time. And you watch the baby Eat the ice cream. I'll light it up. And then the baby, like, I want more. I want more. And then it's like, it's like, oh my God, it was just so crazy. And it's highly addictive. So, yeah. So now we're seeing one in two Americans suffer from either pre-diabetes.

Or type 2.

Or type 2 diabetes. And that is when you eat too much sugar and starch, and every time you do that, it raises your insulin. Your body becomes resistant to the insulin, so it doesn't work as well. So you need more insulin. and insulin does what? Insulin makes you hungry, it makes you store belly fat, it locks the fat in the fat cells, and it slows your metabolism. It's like a quadruple threat for your body to gain weight. So it's why we're seeing, you know, and that goes back to what we're growing, right? So why are we eating all this food? That it's because that's the food we produce, right? And so that's the other part of the problem. We have the chronic disease, we have the economic impact, and then we're like, well, why do we have this food? So as a functional medicine doctor, I'm always asking why? Well, why are my patients sick?

Because it makes money, right?

Well, no, yeah, but I'm going even further. Why I got interested in this? Because as a, why would a doctor care about agriculture and soil and all this crap? Because as I was thinking about my patients diseases, most of them were caused by food and can be cured by food. Some people How many are most of them?

Is this like 50%?

70%.

80% of anyone that comes in to the hospital or your patients.

Yeah.

Who has some type of disease or some type of sickness.

I mean, unless it's like an environmental thing like mercury or lime or mold, you know, most of the things. Cancer. Cancer is caused by food.

Really?

70%.

70% of cancer is caused by food.

And sugar is the number one culprit. Heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's. Heart disease, the big killers.

Are by sugar and food.

Yes.

So if you change your diet, you should be able to prevent those.

Or cure sometimes.

Sometimes cure. Depends how far along things are, I guess. You can prevent heart disease, Alzheimer's.

Yes, 100%. I mean the studies are there. Even people already have Alzheimer's, when they improve their diet, they can get more functionality back. So you've got me thinking, okay well if the patients diseases are caused by food. What's causing the food? It's the food system. And I'm like, well, what's causing the food system? It's our food policies. I'm like, what's causing our food policies? It's the food industry that's lobbying Congress. It's got money. It's the biggest lobby group in Congress is agriculture and food. By far, like by twice as much as the next lobby group.

By gas and oil or whatever.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

And it's like, what? So then I began thinking, well, if I'm gonna help my patients, I can't do it in my office. It's like I'm in the boat bailing the boat with a hole instead of plugging the hole.

You're not going to the source.

Right.

So then I'm thinking, okay, well, what do I need to do as a functional medicine doctor? I need to go to the root cause, right? The root cause and why. And then it became clear to me.

That it's our agricultural system that's driving so much of the problem. It's like I'm the first one to raise my hand when I say, like, I love sugar and it's my biggest vice, right? Everybody loves cookies and candies and cakes and brownies and anything you can think of, I love it, right?

We programmed all of that.

I don't know why I don't have diabetes. I have so much sugar I've had.

In my whole life.

You can't be having that much, 'cause you look pretty good. Well, I train hard too. I go through waves. But as a kid, I would drink like 9, 10 Dr. Pepper a day, I remember.

What?

Like some days in the summer, you're just sipping around.

I'm not the president, is that what it was? Exactly. I would just, I mean, I would run around and work out and play.

Sports, but then I would just drink.

Yeah, because I thought that's like you.

Were 16-18, you're like, and I was like 910, right?

So I was like, but it was, you'd see it on commercials like your NBA superstar drinking Dr. Pepper or Sprite or whatever after on the basketball court. And I don't know if it was just like subconscious or just it tasted.

Good and you didn't think about it. I mean, this is where the food industry is so, I mean, I talk about in my book, Food Fix, but the food industry is so strategic. about how it advances its mission and goals. And it does it through multiple channels. And I'm just going to go through them because it's just, people just don't know. The celebrity endorsements, right? Yeah. First, you know, obviously, you know, celebrity endorsements, which is the obvious one, they co-op social groups. So they, they fund groups like the NAACP and Hispanic Federation. The, you know, African-American and Latino communities are the most affected by diabetes and obesity, and co-opt them by funding them. I want to show the movie Fed Up at the King Center in Atlanta. And Bernice King, Martin's daughter, was all about it and she was excited. But once we got a schedule a few days later, I got a call that we couldn't show it. I'm like, why? She's because Coca-Cola funds the King Center.

No.

Yeah.

I went to Spelman College, you know, which is African-American women's college in Atlanta. And the dean said to me half of the 18-year-olds coming into college have a chronic illness. Obesity, hypertension, diabetes. 18-year-old women. And I'm like, why is there soda machines all over the campus? Why? It's just because Coke funds... -No. -One of the people on the board of trustees is one of the highest executives at Coca-Cola. -Oh, man. -An African-American woman. It's like... So, they co-op social groups. And that's why they, for example, impose soda taxes. Because they're in the in the funding of these big soda companies. And then of course they fund research. So they fund 12 times as much research, $12 billion worth of research a year, to study nutrition. What would be the first steps that.

Someone could take to help? Well, I think it seems like such a big problem.

It is. It is a little bit. So let's talk about some of the solutions. So we know food is causing chronic disease. It's destroying our economy. It's crippling our economy. It's destroying our environment and killing all the pollinators and biodiversity and it's causing social injustice because it targets poor minorities who suffer from problems. It prevents kids from learning in school because they're eating all this crap. It threatens our national security, creates political instability. So we know all these things. But the good news is that by fixing the food system, we can solve these. And how do we do it? Well, it's going to need citizen action, it's going to need business innovation, and it's going to need policy change. And of course, other philanthropists and governments to help get on board.

Forward.

And I think that's what's really exciting to me because there's so much hope. So, for example, on a personal level, you can shift what you eat and what you do to drive change in the marketplace. Why are companies like Nestle and Unilever and Danone creating regenerative ag programs within their supply chain? Why are they trying to up the quality of their food and take out chemicals? Because consumers are demanding it.

Well, they're buying companies like Primal Kitchen.

That have like health- Right, bought Primal Kitchen, which is basically a, you know, Whole Foods, you know, really high quality nutritious product with no junk in it.

I'm curious, you said something about nut milk and about dairy. Yeah. Has dairy been declining?

Yeah, dairy in the last five years. Yes, dairy consumption has been declining dramatically. Do you know the percentages or the- It's like, yeah, I think, you know, over the last few years, like it's gone down about 25% Borden which is a big meal producer, has been around since 18, I think 87, has gone bankrupt.

What?

Yeah. And a lot of these milk producers, now people are still eating cheese, they're eating yogurt, they're eating cheese, but actual milk consumption has gone down and then milk has gone up. Why is that?

Is that because of education?

Is that because of the cheese? I think probably a lot of reasons. I mean 75% of the population is lactose intolerant.

Yeah.

So they don't feel good.

I used to drink so much milk every day.

And how did you feel? Fine?

I always had like a stuffy nose.

Right.

I was always tired in workouts and practices. I was always blowing my nose.

Actually, milk is nature's perfect food, but only if you're a cat. I mean, we're the only species that consumes milk after weaning. There are very few populations that seem to thrive on milk, the Masai and some of the Northern Europeans. the other problem with the dairy we're eating today is not the dairy we ate.

Right?

So there are heirloom cows. I mean, you travel around the world, you travel, I travel, and you go see these really weird looking cows in other countries. I'm like, what is that? And it's a cow. But these are, you know, complex breeds that have different types of protein in the milk, different types of casing, and the, the Holstein, the sort of the homogenized. homogenized milk, I don't mean homogenized milk, but they're all the same. Not the same. They're fertilized by like this three bulls, I think. They get the sperm of the bull. And it's like they're all the same. And they have bred out the beneficial or the safe casing, which is A2 casing, and then A1 casing, which causes more inflammation, more congestion, more irritable bowel, more autoimmunity, more skin issues. So people are getting that milk isn't always the best. and I think then people are eating nut milks. Now, they're not completely-- Are those good for you though?

Because a lot of people have still skin problems. Yeah, well nut milks are problematic.

So one, almond milk is great, but almonds are-- you- can't have too much of it.

I started to get a rash after I switched from milk years ago. And I started to get like, eggs, like a little egg right here and there. And then when I stopped drinking it, it would go away. And I was like, huh, maybe I'm.

Drinking so much almond butter, almond milk. Well, everything had karyogenin in it, which causes leaky gut. You get leaky gut, you get eczema. So it's a thickener they put in into these milks. They put a lot of sugar in these milks. They put a lot of gums in these milks. So you have to be very careful.

About which one you're having.

Just 'cause it's healthier doesn't mean it's healthier. Yeah, and I don't want to be like again drinking tons of soy milk. It could be GMO soy, it could be folic acid. If not, it could be, you know, getting huge amounts of these phytoestrogens, which where bodies aren't really meant to get.

Yeah.

Eating traditional foods and traditional amounts are fine. Tofu, miso, tempeh, those are fine. Really? Those are how people have consumed soy over millennia. But not 10 pounds a day and not three lots of gallons. No, I had a stepdaughter once, she loved soy milk. She was drinking it all day and she started like at nine years old getting little breasts. And I'm like, well, that's not good. You know? Yeah. And so yeah, we have to be smart about it. And I think, you know, if you're using a little here and there, but I don't recommend People drink it as a drink. Really? You know, if you want to put a little coffee. Almond milk or soy milk. There's almond milk, coconut milk. Don't drink it.

No, I mean, I think have it sometimes. You have a glass once a week.

Maybe it's okay, but not like drinking glasses every day. Yeah, probably not. But you could add it to things. Sure. Yeah, put in a smoothie, you know, you can mix them up, you know, it's macadamia milk, you know, cashew milk. There's hazelnut milk, there's all kinds of milks now.

So, I like macadamia nut.

Macadamia nut is so good. It's like sweet tasting. Yeah, you can make your own nut milks. I have cookbooks. My food, what the heck should I cook and others.

Teach you how to actually make your own nut milks at home.

You soak the nuts, you put them.

In a blender with some water, there's.

No additives, ingredients, sugar. It's great. But not too much of it, is what you're saying. Yeah, that's the challenge. It's like anything.

Except for water.

Drink a lot of water. That's yeah, I mean, listen, anything It can kill you, right? Water can kill you. You know, marathon runners who overhydrate, their body is diluted, their blood is diluted with too much water, and they get what we call low sodium or hyponatremia, and that causes seizures and death. So yeah, you can die from drinking too much water. So it's all about like eating stuff in complex amounts and in a complex variety of foods.

So a variety of food is good.

Huge. We used to eat 800 species of plants.

That's good. Not having the same like three things every day.

Well, listen, most of our diet is corn, soy, and corn, soy, and wheat. Most of our diet. You know, and in other countries, rice in there. And those are, you know, all mostly turned into processed food. I think we used to have, you know, like I said, 800 species of plants. We ate now there's 12. We've lost 90% of all our edible plant species, half of all our livestock species. We've lost them. Gone extinct.

What do you mean? Those plants are gone?

Gone? I mean, we can't make, we can't.

Create, there's no seeds anymore.

There are seed banks that are there. There are seed vaults. Oh, those are valuable. Yeah, the USDA has a lot of seeds. Actually, a friend of mine was trying to develop different varieties of plants. I was trying to get some old seeds and got to the USDA and by accident he got a packet which was numbered like 43216 whatever and he was like, called him and said, what is this? Like, because he was working with an agricultural guy to grow healthy food and go, these are these Himalayan buckwheat, Himalayan buckwheat, which is kind of a rare buckwheat from the Himalayas. It grows in really rough conditions and it's one of the most nutrient phytochemically rich, dense foods, high protein, low starch, full of phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals on the planet.

And it's almost extinct.

Pretty much.

Maybe there's a few villages in Himalayas that grow it. So, you know, how do we bring that back? And how do we start to create different sort of more beneficial grains? There's Kurunza wheat, which has been developed by Russ Jackson out in West Jackson out in the Midwest. which is a perennial wheat that grows roots that go, you know, tens of feet into the ground, breaks up the soil, creates organic matter, and creates incredibly delicious wheat that's heirloom wheat. It's actually a new form, but it's actually doesn't have all the gluten in it. It's less inflammatory, less sugar.

Oh, man.

So we need to kind of bring back some of these different kinds of foods in these complex farms that actually restore soil, restore human health.

I'm in.

So, you know, I spent 30 years doing functional medicine and just seeing the power of food to actually heal people. And, you know, people often don't understand how close they are to feeling good or how bad they feel.

It could be like one or two days switch.

Yeah, what you said, Dr. Hyman, I didn't know how bad I was feeling until I started feeling good. I was joking. I see people have FLC syndrome, which is when you feel like crap.

Right. And it's just like the information, the pain, the Tightness, the tightness.

You said you had congestion, nose. Your digestion's not right. You have a little headache. Tired all the time. Sluggish. You have brain fog. You're tired, you're achy, you know, sleep well, you have skin problems. Blurry eyes. Yeah, all that stuff. And people go, oh, this is normal. This is just normal. I have a very normal bowel. I have sinus issues. I'm like, my joints are a little sore. Oh, it's your food. It's what you're eating. And so for in 10 days, you do a 10-day reset. It literally, like, it's like when your computer's not working, you hit the reset.

And it reboots everything.

It's like a reboot. And then you get to see within 10 days how powerfully food impacts you. Yes. And then you go, Now I can choose. Now I can feel like crap or I can feel great.

But now I know.

Yeah. And then the serious form of what we call Feel Like Crap, which is FLC syndrome, called FLS.

Right.

Exactly.

And then you go to the doctor.

And the first time I ever created anything because I really want people to have the experience called this company called Pharmacy and you go to getpharmacy.com with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y and you get the 10-day reset. It's a whole program that's really integrated and it's powerful and it involves lifestyle change and diet change and the right.

Nutrients and supplements and shakes and it's just awesome.

Wow.

10 days. 10 days. Reset it. I mean, I didn't do it, you know, like I came back from the holidays, you know, and I tried to do well. I cooked Christmas dinner, I'm Jewish, my wife's family and I made it all healthy, but you know, when it was her mom's house, we were here, it's like, oh, a little ice cream, a little this, I didn't go too far, but you know I didn't feel great and I came back and I just did the whole 10-day reset. It's like, I feel amazing. I mean, you don't crave bad stuff.

Your energy's up, your sleep's better, your joints don't hurt, your digestion's good. I gotta get it. I gotta get it for me and the team.

Make sure we reset it.

Amazing. So, getpharmacy.com, yes.

FoodFixBook.com and your podcast, Dr. Pharmacy. Dr. Pharmacy. Yeah, we need everybody on the team here to fix this food system. because it's an existential threat. If we don't do it, we're screwed. I mean, we're just, you know, we know the decline of the Roman Empire was because of some bad stuff that was going on there. Well, our food is the decline of our empire.

Really? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, for all sick and dead, we can't do anything. I mean, yeah, I mean, the amount of disability and suffering. A lot of pain. Mental illness, mental illness connected to food. Depression, depression, obesity, Chronic disease, it limits our productivity, our ability to engage in life. We all want to feel good, we want to have energy, we want to be able to love the people we love in our life, to do the work we want, have the mission we want, to be energetic and engaged. And I just want to sit around all day and binge on Netflix, right?

Yeah.

I mean, watching Netflix is fine, but not in a way that avoids life because you feel so bad. And I think what's frustrating for me is that I see so much needless suffering. You know, some things we can't change. You know, we can't change, you know, natural disasters. You know, I can't, I can't end war. But this is a solvable problem.

Yeah, it is.

And, yeah, it's totally fixable.

Love it. When you've learned, you know, the more you've studied brain foods and the functionality of optimizing your brain and you know, living longer and having the function of your brain use, what would you shy away from? What would you say? You know what? That's probably the worst thing for your brain to have functionality and to function longer and live longer with your brain health. What are the main foods you would absolutely never touch? You never give your family or your kids because you just feel like it's very harmful.

Processed foods.

And.

Any processed foods?

Any processed foods.

No, we don't eat, I don't eat processed foods. I really try to stick to whole foods.

Does that include like, that's a cooking, pastries?

Yeah, I was just thinking, oh my goodness, this is maybe not true. I do eat crackers occasionally, but.

I.

Really don't eat a lot of processed foods and they're mostly minimally processed. My daughter really loves this. peanut butter called banana bites. So I buy those, but I wouldn't call it a processed food. I mean, it's not fresh from the plant, but it's certainly not burgers or hot dogs or popcorn. It's just frozen pizza. I don't eat that.

I just never.

So what is processed foods do to brain health?

There is a lot of research showing that the standard American diet or the SAD Diet is really, really, yeah, it's really, really bad news for your brain. And we have seen this many times using brain scans. We published this time and time again then. This may sound biased, but we were using a Mediterranean style pattern as an example of a healthy diet, which is what scientists would tell you. Most scientists really endorse a Mediterranean style diet as a healthy, as a brain healthy diet. and we, we were comparing the brain scans of people on the Mediterranean diet to those of people of the same exact age, educational level on a Western diet or in a standard American diet. You could see the difference just by looking at the brains. So if you are, what do the.

Brains look like on the Mediterranean diet.

Versus I wish I could show you.

The sad, the, the sad American processed diet. What is it just like a light up? It's lit up more. It's more rich looking. It's just Fuller. What is the difference?

Yeah.

So the difference is that the brains of people on the Western diet look older. Just picture that in your mind if you can. And the brain of a 50 year old person on a Mediterranean style diet looks very fall. Like there's very. The brain is, is, is, is composed of three different parts. But mostly just two parts. There's brain and then there's fluid inside your head. And you want to have as much brain as you can and as little fluid as you can. I mean, you want to have some fluid because it's protective, but not too much. You have more fluid and less brain. It means your brain is shrinking. Like you're losing neuron and fluid is taking over the space.

Oh my gosh.

If you compare the brain scans, you can tell that people on Western diets show brain shrinkage already in midlife. And that continues over time. Worse than that, and we have published this, the Western diet is associated with the emergence of Alzheimer's plaques already in midlife. So, people on Mediterranean diets are basically zero plaques, at least in our hands.

What do you mean by plaques? What does that mean?

Alzheimer's plaques. So, Alzheimer's disease, which is the most common form of dementia, in the population is characterized by presence of these plaques inside the brain.

So there's plaque on your teeth that'd be plaque in your brain.

Yeah, there are lesions inside the brain that are considered the hallmark or the signature of Alzheimer's diseases. For a really, really long time, scientists, everybody thought that Alzheimer's was a disease of old age. And that's because the symptoms become evident when people are in their 70s.

But now people are getting them in their 50s, the plaque buildup.

That's right. So Alzheimer's disease starts with negative changes in the brain decades prior to anyone forgetting keys or forgetting names. That happens in midlife. And the very first signs that we can detect using brain scans are these plaques, these lesions that you can see building up inside your brain. And there's a very clear difference in the timeline for people in Western diet who developed the plaques earlier than people who follow healthier diets.

Wow.

So that's a really, that's a big flag.

Is there a way when, if you notice someone's brain scan is shrinking their brain, they're building some of these early stage plaques around their brain, they've got more fluid, less brain matter? Is there a way to reverse that so your brain can actually grow and expand and become healthier and reverse Alzheimer's plaque? Is that possible?

So, well, that's the hope with the vaccinations that we're working on. So, scientists have been working on developing vaccines for Alzheimer's disease for a really, really long time. The idea is that if you remove the plaque, your brain once will stop deteriorating. But so far, all the clinical trials failed, which is...

In removing the plaques?

No, they've removed the plaques, but they do not reverse dementia or cognitive impairment or the atrophy. So that's disappointing in so many ways, I can't even begin to tell you. But that's another reason why the entire scientific community is now moving towards prevention. People say we're starting too late. We should start treating this when people are younger.

Right.

Not when they need it. But it's like when you're.

It's preventative. You know, we want to. We want people not to get those plaques. I think that would be the idea.

So when you get. When you start to build up these plaques. What I'm hearing you say is you can remove the plaque potentially, but you still cannot reverse dementia or Alzheimer. Are you able to reverse Alzheimer's in some way? Is that possible?

It depends on what you mean by reversing Alzheimer. So, there's Alzheimer's disease, which is the actual pathology, the lesions and plaques and tangles and a bunch of other things. And then there's dementia. which is the clinical syndrome with the symptoms. We can reverse Alzheimer's by removing the plaques, but the problem is that the symptoms don't go away.

Really?

So we were unable to reverse the symptoms of dementia currently, is that right? Certainly. No one's had dementia and then reversed it.

Not in clinical trials.

In real life, has someone done this that you're aware of?

I don't think so.

So is there a way to slow it down?

I think it would know about it.

Is there a way to slow this process down so it doesn't get worse? And it's kind of like a manageable symptoms where it's like, okay, I'm, you know, I'm forgetting or I'm losing memory, but it's not worse and worse and worse every day. Have we seen that?

Yeah. So there are some medicines that we have, there are Alzheimer's drugs that slow down progression like donepezil or rasagiline, like the most common, well we only have four medications approved for Alzheimer's disease. We have acetylcholinesterase inhibitors which are the most common. We have memantine for some cases. They do slow down progression but they do not fix the problem.

Where is Alzheimer's the most prevalent in the world? Is it in the USA? Is it in Europe? Is it in what countries or regions of the world?

Yeah, the United States are quite on top. And then there are other countries as well, in Europe, some places in Asia. I think industrialized countries in general.

Experience.

Higher rates of dementia. And one thing that I would like to point out that is, again, it's my work. So Alzheimer's disease affects women more than men or affects more women than men, to say more correctly.

Why is that?

One thing that people don't realize is that almost two-thirds of all Alzheimer's patients are women. So for every man suffering from Alzheimer's, there are two women. And that's one of the reasons that I started Looking into Alzheimer's disease is that I have a family history of Alzheimer's disease that really affects the women in my family. So if you can't believe it, my grandmother was one of four siblings, three sisters and one brother. All three sisters developed Alzheimer's disease and died of it, whereas the brother was spared. So for me, that was terrifying for my mom as well. I started asking questions. It was like, why? Does it matter? Is it just my family, number one, my screw?

Is it a gene that your parents have that then you're gonna have no matter what? I think that's a fear for a lot of people, like, oh, my grandfather had it, my dad's gonna, you know.

Yes. For a really long time, most people understood Alzheimer's disease as some kind of inevitable consequence of aging or bad genes in your DNA. But we now understand that no more than 2% of all Alzheimer's cases are genetically inherited. 2% at most have.

So you could have five people in your family have it and you are still have a 2% chance of getting it from them, the gene, is that right?

Well, this is in the whole population. I think if five people in your family have Alzheimer's disease, you want to get tested for genetic condition.

Now, is it because of the diets they've been eating? That's the reason why they're getting or is it because they're going to get it no matter what?

Well, so for 2% of the population is genetically determined, for 98% of the population is multifactorial. So there are a number of factors that really matter, including your genetic background, not in a causative way, but more there are genes that give you blue eyes and genes that give you brown eyes, and there are some genes that negatively impact brain health, and genes that are protective. So it's a combination of things. But then medical history is supremely important. Lifestyle is huge and environment, they really all matter. And what we have found is that hormonal aging, your hormones, are also incredibly important, especially for women. So it's what I was telling you. So for a really long time, people would say to me, Women live longer than men, and Alzheimer's disease is a disease of old age. So obviously more women than men have Alzheimer's disease. But what we have shown is that, yes, women live a little bit longer than men, four and a half years on average.

Four and a half years.

But we tend to develop Alzheimer's disease at a younger age, the men. And this is- why is that? Is you think that's more- It's menopause. Well, one of the reasons, at least the reasons that we are looking into much all the time at this point is menopause. And it's literally that during menopause we lose the superpowers of estrogen and the brain goes through quite a transition. You can see how brain energy levels literally change in women's brains, connectivity changes, the white matter volume changes, blood flow changes, everything kind of changes. And for some women, it's just. It's just a phase. It's just a transition. The brain adjusts. There's a new Baseline. There's a new Normal. We move on.

It's a.

What a.

Some women would.

How long does that transition take? Is it months? Is it years?

I know it's years. It's years.

So you might feel this brain fogginess for a couple of years, and then it should. Balance out?

Yes. For some women, however, the symptoms of menopause don't go away. It may turn into something more serious, including a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease. So basically we start developing these Alzheimer's plaques. Not all women, it's not universal, but some women, women with a predisposition to Alzheimer's disease, start developing these red plaques for Alzheimer's disease. in their 40s and 50s. So much earlier than we had thought before. And then of course, think about it. So you're going through menopause and your brain is changing and it really needs support and you're eating poorly, you're not exercising, you're not sleeping, you have a ton of stress. Those factors all really work together against you in a way. So I think it's really important for men and for women. I would say women really need to start thinking about that in midlife. that our brain is like a muscle. There are things that we can do to make us stronger and more resilient. We can exercise it properly, we can feed it properly, we can take care of it properly, and your brain will perform so much better for you at any age. And men and women need to do slightly different things.

What are the two?

But not so slightly. So for example, for some women, we have a lot of patients who come to us, they learn so much more about their brains and the risk factors, And then some women will start taking hormones, hormonal replacement therapy. Is that in the head or in the end? It's per, it's really case by case. Some women swear by it, some women swear at it. They really hate it. It does not work. It helps, doesn't help at all. For some women is a godsend. And I think it's really important to have a conversation. with a doctor, not just your menopause specialist, but I think also brain doctor. And we're not there yet. We're not there yet. I now work at the intersection between neurology, neuroscience and women's health, which is a very unusual space, a very interesting space, but it's also a very challenging space. And I think my hope for the future is that we'll start looking at women as organisms, as a person, right? Not like you go to the endocrinologist to look at your thyroid, you know, you go to the OB GYN to look at your ovaries, then you have to go to a brain person to look at your brain. I believe in integrative medicine. I think that we're moving in that direction.

It's all connected. It's, yeah.

Yeah.

Might be a problem here, but it's affecting something else. You know, it's all connected.

Yeah.

Yes. So I think that is really, really important. However, hormone replacement therapy really doesn't work for all women and there is no recommendation to use it for Alzheimer's prevention. Yet we're working on it. We're hoping that we'll find a good way to help integrate these therapies in a safe way. But, yeah, sorry, I just made this point. I would say that the point of hormone replacement therapy is that you want to give women the estrogens that the body is no longer making. But where are these estrogens coming from? Because plants make estrogens. So estrogen is the most ancient of hormones. And that means that it can go across species. So plants make estrogens, animals make estrogens, women make estrogens, and estrogens from a plant, phytoestrogens, enter a woman's body. And if you consume these plant-based foods often enough, that's effectively a very gentle hormonal replacement therapy over time, which is one of the reasons that people think that a Mediterranean style diet that is more plant centered is beneficial for women's health, because women on this kind of diet have a much lower risk of a number of things, from cardiovascular disease and stroke to depression, to Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and also they have huge heart flashes that they don't suffer from menopause the way that so many American women do.

Now, I've heard from different scientists and nutritionists about meat being a complete protein and having like these nutrients, nutrient dense within the meat.

Yeah.

How but I'm hearing you say that plant-based has just as many nutrients and proteins and antioxidants and all these other things. What are the benefits or the cons against eating quality meat, let's say, for brain function and brain health? Are there things we should look out for if we do have a lot of meat or some meat in our diet?

It's a really interesting point. I think so many people right now are eating a lot of meat. There are, there are a lot of diets out there that really support and encourage eating good quality meat, but quite a lot of meat. I, I would say the research points to plant-based diets as being healthier overall and more protective for the bird. I Yes, for the brain, but I think also in general, there aren't that many diet recommendations that include a lot of meat. I think every person is different, but to your point, there's no need to eat meat to obtain complete protein. It's an easy way. It's definitely convenient for you if you're not an animal. It's a good way to obtain complete protein just in one small amount, in a small portion of food. To obtain the same amount of protein from plant-based foods, you need to eat more of those. But there are some plant-based foods that are actually quite rich in protein, which are interesting, like hemp seeds, complete protein, tempeh, complete protein, nutritional yeast, complete protein, and also a good source of vitamin B12. so I think it's a fish is a good source of complete protein that's actually been linked time and time again with a lower risk of dementia by almost 70%.

If you could only eat five foods every single day for the rest of your life.

Oh my gosh.

To optimize brain health, brain functionality, longevity, support memory, all those things.

Yes.

What would those five foods be on a daily basis?

I would say, well, you don't like berries, but I would definitely go for berries because they're rich in fiber, they're low in sugars, and they provide really an enormous amount of antioxidants for a small serving size. And just evidence that consuming two to three servings of berries per week really slows down cognitive decline in both men and women, and especially in women. So you might want to try some.

I gotta start. Which berries? Which two or three are the best?

Blackberries actually have more antioxidants than even blueberries. That's an interesting type of berry. They're not as easy to find as blueberries, but you can get them frozen and they're still quiet. intense.

Now, is it. If it's. If it's a modified Blackberry where it's frozen, it's put in a smoothie and blended, it's in, you know, liquid form. Does that all still matter, or do you need it? No, I didn't think in raw form or is it. Doesn't matter.

No.

Cooking. So cooking destroys vitamin C. Vitamin C. All the antioxidants are really easily damaged by heat. so freezing shouldn't reduce the entire antioxidant capacity by too much. Obviously, I don't want them to be frozen for 10 years. I mean, you know, sure.

So we got blackberries, blueberries.

Blackberries are great. Goji berries.

Goji berries.

One of the most concentrated sources of vitamin C. There's a kind of plum that I. I haven't been able to find. It's a kakadu plum, which seems to be this. The most powerful concentrated. vitality in C on the planet. I know they have been in Australia and Pacific Islands. I've never seen it here, but I would like to try it.

Okay, so we got berries number one. What would be the second?

Mulberries are really good.

Mulberries.

Sorry, I'm still.

I'd actually like. I actually had mulberry tree in my backyard in Ohio growing up, and I would eat some mulberries every now and then.

So maybe I'll get back into mulberries. That could be nice.

You can also find them dry. Okay, I'll dry dried mulberries work too.

Yeah, they're very good.

They're very tasty. You still the nutrients when they're dried?

Yes, yes, a little bit less than the fresh ones, but they're sweeter when they're dry.

Okay.

I grow them in the garden.

Yeah.

And those are high in antioxidants. Those are high in antioxidants? Yeah, they're high in antioxidants.

Okay, great.

Awesome. Okay, so we got berries is what you get.

I get the berries and I would go for dark leafy green because they're really important. They contain a ton of phytonutrients, which are really good. You know, they have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties and a lot of fiber. And fiber is really important for a number of reasons. The most obvious being that it supports gut health, obviously, and 70% of the immune system is in the gut. So eating fiber also supports immunity, which especially now is a huge concern for everyone. But also fiber has a really important modulatory function on sex hormone binding globulin, which is what regulates flow of hormones inside the body. And so it really helps support hormonal health as well. So I would say two reasons to eat fiber and go for your leafy greens. And there's a ton of greens and we don't have to eat kale all the time. There is so many other varieties that.

Are just spinach and arugula, all those.

Yeah.

All the lattices, all the different microgreens, their color greens, if you like them. But also cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower. Now is the season. So cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, Romanesco. They're yummy. I'm sure you eat veggies.

I eat those.

I eat a lot of veggies.

Yeah.

There you go. Okay, so we got. Those are the first two. Well, I I would throw some polyunsaturated fatty acids there, that the omega-3. Omega-3 is whether from fish. Do you fish?

Yeah.

Right.

So in that case, for those who do eat fish, then the smashed fish. So salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, herring, smash.

Smash fish.

Yeah.

All right.

So there's a really good source, very concentrated sources of DHA.

And if you didn't get that from fish, what would be the substitute you.

Would do plant-based well, for me, plant-based so Omega-3 is from hemp seeds for sure. Flax seeds and flax oil, walnuts, almonds, chia seeds and also seaweed. I don't know if you like seaweed.

I actually love seaweed. I eat those little...

The nori sheets.

Yeah, the little sheets. I can eat those for days.

I know. So good. Yeah.

That's good for you then, huh?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Ayurveda, they're a good source of many nutrients, many minerals.

What are the main causes of cancer? As it seems like you hear about it more and more recently that so many people are getting cancer or the early stages of cancer, what are the main causes of cancer?

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's something that we've always been trying to deal with. And sometimes some people say, well, we don't know what that's sort of a cop out because we actually do know a lot about what causes cancer and these are things that cause cancer are called carcinogens and the World Health Organization maintains a huge list of these carcinogens. But if you want to break it down into what causes cancer in most people, you can look at the sort of a couple of studies have looked at the sort of percentage contribution of these carcinogens to cancer. And the biggest one, of course, is tobacco. smoke. So that's sort of by far in a way the biggest contributor to cancer at around 35% and these estimates were from 2015. So it was higher before when more people are smoking but as a contributor to a cancer it's the biggest. Interestingly, the second biggest and almost as big is actually our diet. So it's a huge huge part of what contributes to cancer in general and far outstrips of those two are way above any other causes of cancer. So when you worry about things such as radiation or, you know, chemicals, sunscreens and pesticides and stuff like that, they do cause cancer, but the contribution in a whole population is very small. so what's interesting about diet is that we know this from our studies, but what part of the diet actually contributes to cancer? And that's where things sort of bogged down a lot. So initially in the 70s, people talked about fiber. So people thought about, oh, hey, well, you know, maybe if you eat a lot of fiber, what you're going to do is have a lot of big bowel movements and that's going to clean out your bowel and you're not going to get cancer. Turns out that wasn't true. Then the next thought was, hey, maybe it's diet. dietary fat. So if you remember the 80s and 90s, there's this huge movement against fat that all fat is bad for you, it caused heart disease and all this sort of stuff, much of which has been overturned at this point. But there's this thought maybe it causes cancer too. Turns out that wasn't true either. Then people talked about vitamins. So maybe cancer is like a vitamin deficiency. So we did many, many studies, millions of dollars, decades of research, where we would randomize people to say one group that took a certain vitamin and one group that didn't and see if there's any difference in cancer. So we tested vitamin A, didn't work. Vitamin D, B didn't work. Folic acid didn't work. Vitamin C didn't work. Vitamin D didn't work. Vitamin E didn't work. Selenium didn't work. Omega-3 fatty acids didn't work. So all of those supplements didn't actually make any difference to the incidence of cancer. And so we're sort of stuck at that point in the mid-2000s saying, oh, no, it's the diet, but what part of the diet? And that's when it became sort of more and more clear that this cancer is actually an obesity-related disease. So what happened, of course, is that in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, people didn't really think about it, but then we had this obesity epidemic, so it became a bigger and bigger problem. So obesity in 2003 when they started to look at the studies, that was the first really definitive studies that said, hey, obesity is actually a huge risk factor, as well as type 2 diabetes. And both of those conditions will actually increase your risk of certain types of cancer a lot. So, it really depends on what type of cancer you're talking. If you're talking lung cancer, obesity plays almost no role in it, right? That's smoking. Or if you have asbestos, which causes mesothelioma, which is a cancer of the lining of the lung. Again, obesity plays no role, but things like breast cancer and colorectal cancer, which are sort of really important cancers, they actually are obesity-related cancers. So that was the sort of big link. And to this, you know, at this point, the World Health Organization considers 13 different types of cancer as obesity-related cancer, which is huge because from 2003, we didn't even know, like when I went to medical school, nobody thought obesity caused cancer.

Really?

It's almost as big as smoking. It's a huge, huge thing. So therefore, if you know that, that's super powerful because if you can maintain a normal weight, you're going to reduce, just like stopping smoking, right? You're going to reduce your risk of these types of cancer.

But aren't there a lot of Healthy people out there or non-obese people that also get cancer?

Absolutely, because there's a lot of different things that go on. And that's what I spend the first half of the book talking about is how the sort of cancers develop. So it's not just about obesity, just like you can smoke forever and not get lung cancer, but it raises your risk.

So same as- what are the other factors? If you're, say you're, there's people out there that are super healthy, they're working out, they're eating well, but then they get cancer. They're under 15% body fat, 12% body fat. What are those other factors of people getting cancer?

Mainly, yeah, the rest of it we actually know very little about. So we need to know more about those because certain things, so smoking and diets are probably your biggest factors. And then there's a whole, there's like a hundred different other risk factors. for cancer. These are the other carcinogens that we talk about. But also things such as, you know, background radiation and sun exposure, you know, like if you get too much sun, for example. So there's all sorts of other things and genetics plays a role. But one of the big mistakes I think we made is that we focus so much on the genetics part of it, thinking that, well, this is sort of a random mutation that causes cancer, not sort of which puts the puts the onus on sort of this random luck sort of of idea that it's just bad luck.

My parents had this, my grandparents had this gene, so I have this, I'm going to get cancer.

Yeah, exactly. And some people think that that's sort of a death sentence. Like if you take BRCA, which is a certain type of gene, for example. So this is the gene that Angelina Jolie, for example, got diagnosed with. Her mom had cancer, I think, or an aunt had cancer. So she got tested and she had the gene. and people think, well, for sure you're going to get cancer. But it turns out that if you look at the incidence of cancer, if you have BRCA, if you have that gene, in the 30s and 40s and 50s, that risk of breast cancer was like 30% compared to sort of like 80% in modern-day America. So what's the difference? Even though you have the same genes, what's the difference between those two situations? And it comes down to the lifestyle. So the point about cancer is that cancer is like a seed. So if you have the genetics, you have the propensity to develop cancer. And this seed of cancer actually exists in all of our cells, and actually not just all our cells, but in all multicellular animals have that sort of seed of cancer. So what's important then is you can't do anything about the seed, but what you can do something about is the soil. which is that if you provide a fertile sort of soil for that seed to germinate, then you are going to increase your risk of developing this cancer. And cancer is not a rare disease. I mean, it affects like one in 10 of us, one in eight of us, something like that. So it's something that we really have to think about as we live longer because it is one of these really important things.

And it sounds like, you know, in the next 30 to 60 years, if we don't figure out how to reverse this or solve this or I guess create bad soil for the seed of cancer by creating healthy habits in other ways. It seems like this is going to accelerate where it was 30%, I guess, 20, 30 years ago or 50 years ago now and now it's 80%, I guess, it's going to be even more in 20 to 30 years, right?

Oh, absolutely. And the trend is very clear because if you look at the, you the biggest killers of Americans. It's always been heart disease and cancer. So if you go back sort of to the 70s, so 50 years ago, you look at heart disease, number one killer of Americans. That's heart attacks, strokes, that kind of thing. Cancer was a fairly distant second. But the rate of death from heart disease has been improving very, very quickly. And the rate of improvement for cancer has been improving very, very very simple.

Why is that?

It's because cancer is a very complex disease and the way we think about cancer, we just don't know what it is. So for such a common disease, it's a total mystery why we get this cancer. Because if you think about it, it doesn't make any sense for cancer to develop because it's actually part of us. That is, if you develop breast cancer or colon cancer, for example, that cancer cell was initially derived from our own natural cells. So why would it want to do this? That is, if you get cancer, then the cancer grows and then it kills you and it kills itself.

It kills itself.

Yeah.

Why would this sort of thing ever develop? It doesn't make any sense from a sort of looking at it that way.

But most diseases want to spread, but they want to stay alive.

Exactly, exactly.

Like the coronavirus doesn't want to kill you necessarily. It wants to be able to spread to infect other people.

Exactly, and if you sort of by standard it just kills you along the way, but that's not its primary purpose. So the point about cancer is that we have never sort of understood what this is as a disease. That is, if you look at heart disease, Heart disease is caused by blockages in arteries. So we develop all kinds of things. So we develop drugs, we develop blood thinners, we develop, you know, you go in and you use a balloon to open up the artery, you develop new technologies such as imaging technologies, you develop ways to monitor patients. So because you know what causes it. Because if you don't know what causes something, it's really hard to fix. Like if you have a car and all you hear is a random clank and you don't know what the clanking is from, it's really hard to fix it. Same thing with diseases. If you have a disease like COVID, for example, and you know it's a virus, well now at least you have somewhere that you can start. That is, okay, it's a virus, let's develop vaccine or let's develop some antiviral drug. But if you have no idea what this disease actually is, then you have nowhere to go. So that's what I talk about is how we think about cancer, the paradigm of cancer as a disease, what causes it. You have to first understand what it is, is. And that's been the real mystery, the medical mystery is what is cancer? And the way we look at cancer has changed significantly over the last 10 years. And most people don't even understand that. So it's a very interesting story from that standpoint.

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned, you know, the heart disease. I saw Dr. Steven Gundry endorsed the Back of youf Cancer Code book and he's been on my show a few times and he's a guy who 10,000 heart surgeries and realized that the things that he was doing on the surface level to create temporary relief, people were coming back in because they weren't solving the root problem, which was a lot of it around diet and lifestyle. And, that's what I'm hearing you say is that diet is a massive contributor to cultivating the seed of cancer to grow and flourish with the wrong types of diet. Is it possible in your mind to reverse cancer by the right diet and by fasting, which is something you talk about a lot? Oh, yeah.

Because the thing is that if you, like once you have the cancer, it's really hard because that's sort of like, you know, if you, if you don't change the oil in your car, then your car breaks down, then you say, oh, I'm gonna start changing the oil. I'm like, well, yeah, that's good, but you need, you know, a lot more than that. It's the same thing. Once you actually develop the cancer, then it's really hard to fix from a diet standpoint. You really need the drugs that we've spent millions and billions of dollars developing over these last 30 years. But in terms of preventing cancer, there's actually no reason why you couldn't because you can look at people who live in a traditional society, for example. So you can take a look at, say, the Inuit or the American Indians before they became westernized. Or you can look at the African people before they were assimilated into a Western culture. And interestingly, those peoples were actually considered, some of them were considered immune to cancer. There was so little cancer that they thought that the Inuit, for example, or what used to be called the Eskimos, actually could not get cancer. So the university, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, they used to send an expedition up to the Arctic Circle every year to study why these Inuit couldn't get cancer. of course, as they became westernized and started eating sugar and white flour, then they started getting all the same cancers that we did. In Africa, for example, this fellow by the name of Denis Burkitt, who is a sort of missionary and doctor, when he got down there, he's like, wow. He was like, look at the difference. The people who live traditionally in Africa get no cancer, no colon cancer, but the minute they transition to Western style civilization with their foods, with the whole thing, they actually start to get cancer. You don't find cancer when that. So it was called actually a disease of civilization. So all of these diseases, obesity, diabetes, and cancer, were not found in people living traditionally. So the point is not that, one is that they didn't live as long, but the point is that if you you can find and understand what makes it, you know, protective from them. Why this soil sort of soil, like we all have to see that the soil was different. What it is about that, if we can understand that, then you can, you can, you can reduce your risk substantially to the point where your, you know, your risk is very low. Again, as an example, if you take a Japanese or Chinese woman from Japan or from Shanghai, and you move them to San Francisco, within a couple of generations, the risk of breast cancer approximately triple.

Crazy.

So it's crazy, exactly. But that's great hope because if you.

Know the root of it, then you can go back to a different way of living.

Exactly. Because if you can, and remember Shanghai and Japan and so on, they're, they're, you know, modern so if you can understand what it is about the diet, about the lifestyle that's so important, you could actually take that woman in San Francisco and reduce her risk of breast cancer by a third. So that's very, very powerful knowledge.

So what would you say are the five foods we must eliminate to support us in preventing cancer? What are those five key things that you're like, oh, and if you can get rid of as much of this as possible, it's going really support your chances?

Yeah, I think that's a good question. And it's sort of sugar is probably one of the very, very important things that we really need to lower because that really supports it. And it gets to how cancer develops. A lot of the refined foods and people talk and the most that we eat, like the one thing we eat more than anything else tends to be refined carbohydrates. So, you know, white bread and that kind of thing. That's probably the most important thing is the sugar and refined grains. Refined anything is probably bad for you. So, you know, even if you're not talking about carbohydrates, but refined, say, oils, you should eat natural oils. Like eat, eat foods that are sort of in the natural state and refined meats, like, you know, eating bologna, for example. People talk about meat all the time. It's like, there's a big difference between bologna and grass finished beef sort of thing. There's a huge difference because one is jam-packed full of chemicals and other crap and one is just beef, right? And people have been eating beef for thousands of years. So, those refined foods are refined carb but also refined fats and refined proteins. Probably those play a decent role, although the evidence is lower. And then the other thing that is really important. The fifth thing that's probably very important is likely the frequency that we eat. That is, eating all the time provides that sort of fertile soil. So to understand why this is, you have to get back to sort of how cancer develops. So you have to understand that cancer almost develops, evolves, almost as a separate species from us. So when you have breast cancer cell, for example. It originated from a normal breast cell, but after it evolves, it grows or it doesn't grow depending on growth factors. And it's almost a separate species from us. That is, it will grow and it won't. The normal breast cell or a normal lung cell, they will do everything to play on the team, right? So they're always supporting the body, your partner, a team player. Those cancer cells are not team players. Basically, they're out for themselves.

It's the enemy.

It's the enemy coming to attack you.

That's right. It's like the guy who's just trying to pad his stats, you know?

Right.

It's like you should have passed. It's like, yeah, yeah. But that's the point that this cancer cell now is only interested in its own survival. That is, it will grow and it will grow at the expense of its neighbor. So it will keep growing and it will destroy everything around it. So it will move around, for example, so a breast cancer cell will move around the body. And that's not for the good of the whole body, right? It's for the good of itself. It's trying to spread itself around. So you got to realize that the cancer cell responds as a foreign organism. And it sounds very strange to say, okay, we have this foreign organism almost like an infection in us, but that's actually how our body sees that cancer. That is, our immune system actually detects, it's a very powerful, you know, it kills stuff, but it's very powerful. So it has to be reined in because you don't want it destroying, you know, normal parts of the body. So it recognizes certain cells as foreign and certain cells as self, and cancers are actually innately seen as foreign cells. So it that is a foreign invader almost that has evolved from us. But during the development of this cancer, it will grow or not grow depending on growth signals. So our body has certain nutrient sensors. So nutrient sensors tells our body when food is available. So when you eat, certain hormones like insulin and mTOR will go up. That tells our body that food is available. We should grow, right? Because you don't want your cells to grow when there's no food, right? It's just natural. If there's no food, you've got to get rid of some of those extraneous cells. So, if you have, if you're eating all the time and you're always activating these nutrient sensors, you're actually telling your body, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. So, if you eat six, eight times a day, you're telling your body, your cells in your body, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. if you eat fewer times, like three times a day or you do intermittent fasting, if you don't eat at all, what you're going to do is shut down those growth signals and this cancer will have a more difficult time to grow. So if you grow breast cancer cells in the lab, for example, you can't do it without insulin. It will actually wither up and die. So therefore, if you know that, then you can say, well, if I, and that's one of the secret things.

Dr. Dr. Insulin Insulin comes from eating any food or is this only sugar?

Firstly, it's carbohydrates and protein. But the nutrient sensors come from different foods. So different foods will activate different nutrient sensors. But the point is that if you don't eat, like fasting for example, one is you're going to lower your insulin levels, which will lower the overall growth signaling in our body. which is a good thing for adults. And adults' growth is not good. Generally, you'd stay the same size. You don't want to be growing too much because the high growth environment, of course, lets the cancer sort of grow out of control. And that was the secret to why vitamins, for example, was not a good thing because it's basically growth. It's a poison. supports growth of cells. And what they found in a lot of studies was when they gave people these vitamin supplements, they actually got more cancer. They didn't get less cancer. They got more cancer. So in fact, it's just like if you spray spread fertilizer on an empty field, you want the grass to grow, but what grows are a bunch of weeds because you've put down all this growth signaling stuff. So therefore all you get is the weeds.

Same with the Are supplements and vitamins bad for us then?

There's no evidence that it's really bad for you. When you give high doses in these studies, you do get certain ones, so folic acid for example, and beta-carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A. And those two studies, there is actually a suggestion that you actually get more cancer from them. Because in our current situation in North America, most of us are not vitamin vitamin deficient. Most of us actually have too much. You actually want to slow down the growth.

Really?

And, this is why obesity and type 2 diabetes are so intimately linked with cancer is because both conditions are conditions where we have too much insulin in our body.

So, we want to lower insulin overall because insulin is one of the main causes of the fertilizer for cancer to potentially grow.

Exactly. And there's several ways to do that. One is to change either the foods that you eat, and that is the sugar, for example, the refined carbohydrates that make up the bulk of our diet. And the other thing is to change the frequency with which you eat because you can affect both things. So just like if you're, for example, to pay $10 and you pay it every day, it adds up quickly, right? If you have a coffee every day and it's like five or seven bucks, Starbucks, at Starbucks, every day, every day, every day, it adds up. So just like that, it's not just the amount that you're paying, which is not much, but it's the frequency, right? Same thing with the foods. It's not just the amount that you eat or what it is that you eat, it's how often you eat it. So if you're eating now six, eight times a day, well, that's a lot worse if you ate once a day, right? That's just basic math. Like, you can't get around that. And the problem is, of course, that if you look at how people people eat today compared to sort of 1970 is very different. So in 1970, people ate three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. No snacks. Nobody ate snacks back then. Out of snack culture, like snacking all day.

Exactly.

And people say it's good for you. People say, oh, you should eat multiple times in the day, six times a day, it's good for you. But nobody in the history of humanity has done that before because we had work to do, right? It's not like your great grandparents, you know, working in the factory, they're taking off every to make themselves a little ham sandwich or something, right? It was like, there's work to do. You eat when you have time. So, in the 70s, it's funny because I always say you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and that was it. If you wanted an after-school snack, your mom said, no, you're going to ruin your dinner. And if you wanted a bedtime snack, she would have said, no, you should have ate more at dinner, right?

You should have finished your meal.

Exactly. And that was the point. they ate not a lot of desserts and all that. Nowadays, of course, when you look at the studies, people are eating five, six times a day. You even look at schools, it's like, oh, they're going to have breakfast, then they're going to have a mid-morning snack, then they're going to have lunch, then they're going to have an after-school snack, then they're going to eat dinner, and then if they play soccer in between the halves of soccer, parents think that you need to feed them cookies. It's like, hey, well, I played soccer growing up and nobody chased me around with a bunch of cookies. We had a great time. We didn't need it, right? But that's six times a day, every single day, and it's ingrained into us. A few years ago when my son was going on a trip or something, the school said, well, you should pack them two snacks. I'm like, why? Why would you want to give them a bunch of snacks? They're not good for you.

Before we continue this make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. You say that disease is an illusion. Why is that?

The reason I think disease is an illusion is basically the way we think about disease.

Right?

And, you know, whether we're talking about type 2 diabetes, whether we're talking about depression or, you know, whatever chronic disease you want to talk about, I think there's a perception in society that it's a thing. You know, once you, you know, once you cross that threshold, once you've met the criteria for the diagnosis, you've now got this thing, you've got this this label, right? And I didn't realize till a few years ago actually that, you know, let's take depression for example, right? Depression is the name that we give to a collection of symptoms, right? There's no blood test that says, oh, you now have depression, you don't, right? I'm not trivializing this. This is a serious problem, right? In the UK, right? One in four people are going to get a mental health problem in any given year. Think about for a minute, 25% of the population, you know.

Why? Why is it so...

This is the point of all my work, right? Is that collectively the way that we are living our modern lifestyles is having a negative impact on the way that many of us are feeling. For me it's that simple, right? It's not about blame, it's not about saying you are doing this to yourself. It's about this whole mismatch between the way that modern Western society is set up now compared to our genetic and our evolutionary heritage.

Being in nature.

Being in nature.

Yeah, it's healing and therapeutic and you disconnect, you know, I just went to Hawaii for four and a half days and left my phone in LA and my computer here and had zero connection to a device. It's amazing how the body heals so quickly from any stress or tightness or tension or overwhelm or depression feeling or whatever it may be, you start to heal naturally.

Yeah, absolutely.

If we literally just said one day a week we're not going to be on our phone or one night a week we're not going to be on our phone, we're going to be in nature, I think our health would drastically improve.

One of the chapters in my book is literally called that, the Screen Clean Free Sabbath embrace one day a week. One day a week, try and go off your screens completely. But then I'm also a realist and I say, Hey, look if one day sounds too scary, do an evening. Do an evening. Start with one hour.

Don't have it on during lunch or dinner. Don't take your phone out when you're eating.

That's a rule in my family. In my house, there's no phones or electronics around the table when we're eating. It winds me up. And it's, you know, you say that in February of this year, I had just been traveling around the country doing a lot of speaking gigs. I've been promoting my book in the UK, right? And I was feeling burnt out. And I remember phoning my wife and I said, Babe, I need a holiday, right? I don't care where we go. I just want to, I want heat, I want relaxation. And we booked a last-minute holiday to Dubai. And I went with my two young kids and my wife and I got to the hotel, right? And nowhere to fly my laptop and my phone went in the hotel safe. And it stayed there all week.

That's great.

And it's a different experience, you know, I was connecting, you know, I don't think we realize that the noise that this creates in our mind in every single day.

Yeah.

You know, just how many many times we look at them, just, there's studies now showing that if we were communicating now and we had our smartphones on the table there, we would have a less meaningful conversation. Just from having it that, even if it wasn't being aware of it, just being aware, you know, what's going on there? Am I missing an email?

Is something coming?

Are you going to buzz or a light at a flash? Yeah, but can I say, Louis, you know, just a patient story that I talk about in my book, but I think, can I share it with you? This is a few years back, right? This is before I'd had the kind of personal experiences with my own family and my son that forced me to confront some realities about my medical training. And I was in a busy Monday afternoon, what we call a surgery, right? I had three or four patients waiting outside.

You were doing surgeries or?

So when we call surgery, so I'm currently, I used to be trained as a specialist, I was doing kidney medicine, but I was getting very frustrated about how specialized we're becoming in medicine and I kind of feel sometimes we miss the big picture.

So I holistic approach, as opposed to just treating the symptom, you gotta treat the whole, right?

You gotta treat the whole and we.

Are missing that in medicine. If you just treat one area, it's still gonna come back.

It's still gonna come back.

Yeah.

And that's kind of what my whole approach is about is looking at this 360 degree approach to health, right? But some of this is intuitive, right? So I was, it was in this clinic, let's call it a clinic, right? It was busy Monday afternoon clinic. I'm already running behind and this 16 year old boy called Devon walks in through the door with his mother. And I see the letter that Sarah on the file and basically On the Saturday, this guy had tried to harm himself, tried to cut his wrists and he ended up in the ER. And he was evaluated there and, you know, basically they had discharged him. They thought he was safe to discharge but there was a letter to say, you know, come and see Dr. Chachati and can I please start an antidepressant for him. So he was there to pick up his prescription.

Now, you were supposed to give him to him.

I'm supposed to give it to him. him, right? That would have been the easiest thing in the world to do, right? I would have taken a few minutes, right? I would have been running on time, I'd get back to my next patient and I could keep going on the kind of treadmill of my day, right? But I thought, wait a minute, you know, I know this family, they seem pretty well, well balanced, you know, I've never picked anything up before that there's an issue here. Why would a 16 year old boy from a seemingly well-rounded, well balanced family end up in ER? I gotta know more, right? So I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what was going on. I couldn't quite get to the bottom of it. I said, Hey guys, look, would you like coming back tomorrow at the end of my morning clinic? And I spend a bit longer with you? I said, okay, so they came back.

The next day, right?

It was a Tuesday morning, end of the clinic. And we spent about 15-20 minutes chatting and I thought, I think your use of social media in my head might be negatively impacting your mental health, right? Did I have a study to prove it? No, but I thought, I said to him, I said, Devin, look, I think the way you're using social media might be contributing. I didn't say it was the cause, I said it might be a factor. Are you interested in reducing that? He goes, well, do you want to think it's going to help? I said, Devin, look, I can commit to you that I'm going to try and help you, but shall we give it a try? So I said to him, we come up with this deal, deal. And for one hour in the morning, he gets up and he doesn't go on his phone.

Right.

He comes about seven days later and say, hey, Devin, how you doing now? He said, hey, don't. You know, I don't know.

I'm.

I'm still not great, but I feel less up and down in the day. I'm sleeping better. But don't get me wrong, right? He wasn't suddenly cured, right? I'm not saying that. But he was starting to show a sign of improvement. I said, Devin. Can we extend that out a little bit? It goes alright, so we move it up over the next few weeks to two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening before bed where he doesn't go on his smartphone, right? And he keeps coming back and he's consistently starting to improve bit by bit. I think okay, this is interesting. Again, I didn't have any training for this, right? I was just trying to figure it out, you know, I was trying to figure out how to kind of help this guy. I was also then doing a bit of reading Right? I was reading about how our diets can impact our mental health. So he comes in and I say, Hey Devin, what are you eating? Yeah, typical... Candy, McDonald's... Typical teenager, right? 16 year old processed junk food. And I drew him a little picture where I said, Hey Devin, did you know that actually when your blood sugar is going up and down throughout the day because of what you're eating, that's not just the blood sugar problem. That's not just an energy problem. When your blood sugar is falling rapidly, like two hours after you've eaten, let's say a bagel, that's an alarm sign or it can be an alarm sign to your body and your stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline can also go up and that can impact your mood. It's like, really? Like yeah, so I drew it out for him. So he got it. He said, well what can I do? I said, hey well then look, why don't I help you understand how you can can stabilize your blood sugar throughout the day with a bit more sort of protein and healthy fats so he would take with him things like nuts with him to snack on. Right, and bit by bit he came back and said, I'm starting to feel better. Then I didn't see him for ages and I come into my surgery one day in my clinic, right, and there's a letter waiting for me and it's his mother and he said, Dear Dr. Strategy, I just want to thank you. Devon is like a different boy. He is happy at school. He's engaging with his friends. He's. He's joining clubs at the weekends. I just want to thank you. And, you know, I. In that moment then, I just thought, you know, I know the science now of what went on there, but I didn't need to know it back then. I just thought, this is a 16 year old boy, right? Who could have been labeled with depression, right? At 16.

Right. Who could have given medication.

Put on an antidepressant and you know, that was five years ago at least, right? He would have still, he could have easily have been on that medication still today, five years say, I know he's still doing well, right? And I'm not saying that works in every single case, right? But what I am trying to say is that when, you know, back to the original question was, why do I say disease is an illusion? We could have said, you have depression. Right, that is just something you have got.

Yeah.

And here's your treatment for it. And I'm saying for him, right, his lifestyle choices that he often didn't realize he was making, he didn't realize the impact, he's made some quick changes in his lifestyle, right, and he's transformed his health. So he, you know, arguably no longer has depression.

Right, right.

Doesn'T mean he can't slip back again in the future. This is what I mean by disease as an illusion. You know, he doesn't, I think for me, you know, I feel that's my job as a doctor, you know, I'm privileged to be able to tap into what's going on and that boy, there's a fork in the road, right? He could have gone down one path. Yeah. What does that do to your psyche if you know, oh hey, I've got depression. That's why I'm like this. You know, there's nothing I can do, right?

And again, I'm just being a victim of this.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm not, you know, Louis, I'd like to be a respectful and compassionate guy. You know, I'm not saying there aren't people out there who don't benefit from this stuff or from medication. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it's too easy to say you've got something and give a pill. And I think 80% of the time, you know, we don't need to do that. And on my show, I managed to make, you know, something like a condition like type 2 diabetes in inverted commas disappear after 30 days, right? I helped a lady with fibromyalgia pains who'd been under doctors for 10 years, be pain free after six weeks, right? A 30-year history of back pain gone and an opiates and a sleeping pill addiction or certainly a dependency.

Pain reliever, yeah, yeah.

Gone when we actually identify what what's the root cause of this?

And what's usually the root cause for most people? Is it an emotional attachment that they're holding on to? Is it what they're eating and their lifestyle choices? Is it trauma that they face that they're holding on to? What is it usually? Or do you see a pattern?

It's a combination of things, right? I certainly would say that I think there is an emotional pattern in pretty much every case. Again, yeah, I really do.

This is any case of disease essentially.

No, sorry, I'm not saying in any case of disease, I'm saying in the sort of look, you could have something which, you know, I think I need to really be clear. I'm talking about chronic disease as opposed to acute disease, right? So an acute problem like a pneumonia, right? You've got a pneumonia, right?

You've got to clear it up.

So, you've got, very simply, you've got the overgrowth of a bug in your lung, right? We identify that bug, we give you a treatment, an antibiotic, that kills that bug, and then you don't have that disease anymore.

Yeah.

Okay, I get that. That's an acute problem.

So, you still prescribe medication to things like that? Absolutely, right?

But a chronic disease, so let's take type 2 diabetes, is so common and widespread. Let's just think about that for a minute. That happens when you pass an arbitrary point on a scale, right? So here in the US, your HbA1c, which your average marker of, it's a blood test which shows your average blood sugar for the last three months. If you're 6.5 or above, we say you've got type 2 diabetes. If you're 6 to 6.5, you have something called pre-diabetes. No, sorry, here it's 5.7, right? But the point is, if it's just below that at 5.6, we say you don't have anything.

You're fine.

You're fine, but you're not fine. This is a continuous. Very close, right? And so what I'm just trying to get the point across is that something doesn't magically change when you go up point one and you're now in, you.

Know, pre-diabetes or whatever.

Yeah, this has been building up for 10 years. and I want us to be picking this up one year in saying, Hey, look, you don't have pre-diabetes yet, but you're going to get it within a few years. And my approach really, Louis, is about four key areas of health. I find that what I do with most people comes down to what I call the four pillars of health. That's what I outline. That's what I did on the show. That's why I outline in my book. Because I think when we can simplify health down down, people get it.

Right.

Right.

And I cover connection and I cover emotional health, but I do it under the umbrella of relax.

Right.

Relax.

Yeah.

Okay. So just to back up my four pillars of health.

First pillar, relax.

Yeah.

And there's a reason I started with relax.

Because when we are tight and stressed, that's when we cause disease.

Right.

Absolutely.

The more tight we are for the longer amount of years, we build something. up in the body that has symptoms, negative symptoms, right?

Yeah, and can dictate our choices. You know, if you're feeling stressed, you're not having any time to yourself, right? You will find it harder to make healthy food choices. You will find it harder to have the motivation to work out and get your body moving.

When the brain is a roller coaster, you're causing disease, dysfunction in your body, right?

Absolutely, and you know, it's interesting, the publisher first said, you know, we should start with food and I said no, no, no. I want to look, everyone will expect me to start with food.

Yeah, right.

We undervalue relaxation.

Peace of mind.

Yeah, we undervalue relaxation and in society, you know, we prioritize, you know, when we talk about health, everyone's talking about food and movement, right? Don't get me wrong, they're important, but I give equal priority to food movement, sleep and relaxation. I think that's what makes my approach a little bit different is that I say, look, you don't need the perfect diet. You don't need the perfect workout regime, right? You need to do enough in each pillar. And I think that's what leads to the changes that not only work in two weeks, they're still gonna be working in two months, in six months, in 12 months, in two years. You know, we can all go on a crash 10-day diet.

Yeah.

Feel better. All of us can do that. I could do that.

Right.

But will that change my behavior? I'm not so sure.

Yeah.

And as a athlete, you know, we always talk about being in the zone, being in the flow. And the only way to get in the flow is to be relaxed. Because if you're playing basketball or football and you're running tight like this intense, you're not gonna be able to flow at any moment and move and be agile. So you must be able to be relaxed. in order to achieve peak results in your sport.

Yeah, so I totally agree. It actually reminds me of a story that I talk about in the fourth chapter in Relax, it's, I say we all need a daily practice of stillness and I define what that is, right? And in that chapter I talk about flow state and I talk about athletes and I talk about Tiger Woods actually. And I always remember as a kid growing up, I would just idolize that guy and think, God, he's just amazing what he's doing and he's getting all kinds of people interested in the sport just for his brilliance at the time. And I remember a lot of people used to criticize him and I remember an interview he said once, On a Sunday on the back nine, I can't hear the crowds. I don't know all that emotional commotion that's going on. I'm in the zone. his own. He's in flow state, right? He is literally just in the moment and zoned in. But you know who else is in flow state? My five-year-old daughter or my seven-year-old son when they're coloring a book. Right.

Right.

Or playing building Lego blocks. They're in flow state. I could talk to them and they're not being rude and ignoring me. They're just completely immersed in the moment. and we can learn from those kids. And that's the thing about technology, right? It takes us out. We start to get distracted. I love tech, right? You know, I love tech. But, you know, the whole relaxed pillar, you know, a big feature of that is how do we use technology in a way that it empowers us and it helps us rather than enslaves us?

Yeah.

And I think for many of us, unfortunately, technology is like.

It's just... We're slaves. We're slaves to it. And it was a year and a half ago when I realized, I thought to myself, has there ever been a day in the last 15 years since I have my cell phone? I got my cell phone when I was 17 and I was like, have I ever had a day where I didn't have my cell phone on me? And I couldn't think of a moment, one day where I didn't have it on me. And I was like, that's kind of a crime. I feel like that's a really... bad sign that I'm addicted to something if I do it every single day for 15 years. And it's, you know, I started sleeping with it right next to my head, on my, you know, next to my, at my desk or whatever, to my bed. And I was just like, and I was always checking it. And I was like, something's got to change. And that's when I took my first trip without it, and I left it here. And it was so relaxing and relieving to, to not be chained to a technology. And then I did It was again recently and it was again another reminder.

Like I want to do this at.

Least once a year for a week.

Yeah.

And do these sabbaths like you talk about one day a week. Even just going out to dinner, you know, with the family. Without it. Without it and leaving at home. You know, like going to the movie and not taking it with you. Like whenever you go out one night a week, two nights a week, just leave it at home and I feel.

Like it's so freeing. It's like a fully connect. It's like a holiday. It's like you feel, you feel like you've had a holiday. three hours without your phone. Your brain just, it all comes down. And I think what's crazy for me, Louis, is that in 2018, you know, we have to talk to people. I feel as a medical doctor, I need to write 25% of my entire book on relaxation. Because I think if you go back 20 years, right? And again, maybe it's a romantic viewpoint of the world before, but But let's say your standard family, right? People come home from work.

You have dinner together.

You have dinner together, right? And then after dinner, if you've got kids, you might put them to bed, right? If you don't, I think people would maybe go sit on the sofa and put the TV on, right? And have to, there wouldn't be the option of, can I keep working on my business? Can I catch up my work emails so my day is easier tomorrow? you didn't even have that opportunity. So I think relaxation almost, we would just, it would be there. It would naturally be, it would be there in the evenings. I think because we've got this amazing technology where we can literally talk to someone with a video 5,000 miles away, which is incredible, right? But it also means that if we're not careful, it's going to take over us. And I actually think we're the generation now we're gonna, you know, technology, social media is pretty new. I don't know how old is Facebook?

12?

12 years.

12 years, right?

I think.

Okay, think about something which, what, over 1 billion people in the planet have.

Or I can't remember the latest figure.

2 billion. 2 billion. 2 billion people, right? It's just incredible. Did not exist 12 years ago.

Yeah.

And so I think we actually need almost like, you know, we talk about something, you know, good sleep hygiene. We're also to help you sleep? I think we need good technology rules. You know, what are some good practices around technology that are gonna help us? You know, no one's getting rid of tech, nor should we get rid of tech. You know, it's here to stay.

Create boundaries for yourself, yeah.

Yeah, and in the sleep portion of the book, one of my recommendations is what I call a no tech 90 before bed. You know, the whole idea, can you Switch off all modern tech 90 minutes before bed.

You mean TV or you mean?

No, I don't include TV in that. And I explain why. You relax. Yeah, and also I think, you know, there's two factors with the technology. One is the blue light that we get from it. So, you know, one of our sleep hormones is called melatonin. We get that when it gets dark. Right, blue light we only see in nature in the morning or maybe in the early afternoon. We don't see it in the evenings. But when you've got that phone next to your face, that is blue light, that is telling your body it's daytime, that's the sun time to wake up, right? But, you know, the TV is typically a lot further away from you than your phone. You know, our phones are like here, right? Aren't they?

Yeah.

And so I think TV is okay. But again, if you're gonna watch a violent thriller before you go to bed.

You know, watch out.

Watch out. You might have some bad dreams and some bad sleep.

Yeah.

So one factor is the blue light, but the other factor is that emotional-.

What'S consuming, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and I had a patient recently, right? He's like a 42-year-old busy executive, right? He has had three and a half years sleep a night for about 25 years, right? He's tried everything, like literally everything. He's been to the sleep clinic, he's been investigated, he doesn't have a, what we call a primary sleep disorder. Here's the thing about sleep that I think a lot of the public and maybe a lot of my profession don't realize is that in my 17 years of experience of seeing patients, people who struggle with their sleep, the majority of them are doing something in their daily lifestyle that they don't realize is affecting their ability to sleep at night. So it's not about giving them something to take. It's about identifying what's going on in their lifestyle. And this guy, three and a half hours sleep a night, I'm not kidding you, within five weeks he was sleeping seven hours a night.

Wow.

Because food impacts your sleep.

Absolutely. Sugar, sugar impacts your sleep.

But he was like a complete workaholic. He would literally after dinner, he'd be back on the computer. He felt he had to be on call till 10:30, 11 o'clock.

It's hard to slow down in that way.

It's hard to slow down and he couldn't do a nootropics 90.

So you know what?

We started off with a nootropics 20.

Yeah.

Right?

And he started to feel the benefits and then he wanted to make the changes. So this is the whole point about my approach with like Devon, that 16 year old boy, you know, I want to set the bar so low with people, right, that they feel that they can do it.

Right?

Then when you do that, you feel good, you feel motivated. Yeah, yeah, I can do that. A prime example would be, I've got this thing called a five minute kitchen workout in my movement pillar. Probably one of my favorite suggestions is the five minute kitchen workout. And where did this come from? This comes from this whole idea that a few years ago I kind of realized that strength training, now I know you're an athlete, but strength training is very much undervalued. Again, it's society. And once we hit 30, we start losing muscle mass each year. And our muscle mass is one of the biggest predictors of how well we're gonna be as we age.

Really?

Yeah, absolutely. And some people call it the number one predictor of how well you're gonna be is your muscle mass.

So it's important to build muscle mass.

Yeah, particularly after the age of 30. So arguably, we associate working out with teenagers and 20s, something is trying to look buff and good in the gym, right? And look good when they go out. Arguably it's more important as you get older is to train your strength.

We look at the root causes of disease and there are many, right? There's environment, there's lifestyle, there's genetics, all affect these systems in your body, right? But by far the biggest cause is food. By far. And it affects, I mean, what's amazing is it's not just like a little bit.