EAT THESE FOODS To Heal Your Body & PREVENT DISEASE | Dr. Steven Gundry

Beans are so lethal that five raw kidney beans will kill a human being in five minutes by coagulating their blood. What.

You lived in a blue zone, is that right?

Yeah, Loma Linda is a blue zone. That's correct. But when I was living in that blue zone, I was eating a low fat vegetarian diet. I was running 30 miles a week. I was one of these Clydesdale runners. I weighed 70 pounds more than I do now. Really? Yeah, I was a Clyde.

There's a lot of unhealthy people in blue zones, too.

Oh, yeah, they have the vegans that.

Just are overweight and you're like, how are you weight?

Yeah, well, it actually is because you're giving your bacteria the wrong stuff. And that's really part of the plant paradox. The plant paradox is that there's certain plants that absolutely, positively do not want us to eat them at all, at all, under any circumstances, or chop them.

Or slice them or skin them. Doesn't matter.

They were here first and they had a really great. Before animals arrived because nobody wanted to eat them. And my, you know, my, my research at Yale was in human evolutionary biology. So plants have the same evolutionary drive as animals. They want to grow and they want to have babies, seeds.

They want to protect themselves.

And they want to protect themselves.

They don't want to die.

Exactly. So when animals arrived, they had a problem because animals can run, they can hide, they can fight. The plants are stuck. But plants are chemists of incredible ability. So they can turn sunlight into matter, like around your wall here. Wow. And so what they use is chemical warfare to actually defend themselves. Defend themselves and even make animals do their bidding. Because, for instance, just throw an example. Most plants want you to eat their fruits because the fruit contains seed to go reseed them. Yeah. So you'll eat their fruit. The seeds in the fruits are inedible, and you'll either spit them out or if you swallow them, they'll survive going through your intestines and you'll poop them out someplace else, fertilized and with fertilizer. It's perfect. Yeah. And they're away from mom and dad. So, for instance, if an apple, know, falls underneath the apple tree, that poor kid doesn't have much of a chance because mom or dad is going to shade them the next year. But if it gets carried off, you know, even 100ft away, and then it gets dropped, the plant does this on purpose. And in fact, you and I love fruit because you and I were designed to eat fruit once a year in the summer to gain weight for the winter. So it was a really good trade off between, for instance, great apes and plants. But the fascinating thing is manufacturers, food chemists know this, and we are drawn with color vision. And only animals that are fruit predators actually have color vision. Because you want to know when the fruit is ripe, when it has the highest sugar content. Right. And the plant wants you to know when it's ripe because that's when the seed finally has an impenetrable shell. And it doesn't want you to eat it before that time. So it tells you, okay, now's the time.

Shiniest object. It's time to eat it.

Yeah, yeah. You know. So what colors does it use in general? It uses reds and oranges and yellows to denote ripeness. So the next time you're going down the snack aisles looking for all the great munchy stuff, you'll be shocked that most of the companies use oranges, reds, yellows to get your attention, because it goes direct into the deep center of your brain and says, oh, that color means I should eat it. I'm going to get a lot of calories, and I'm going to be the big winner for the winter. Wow.

If you're doing that every day for.

Many years in a row. Yes.

You're always storing fat for the winter.

That's exactly right. And that's part of the plant paradox, is that once upon a time, we only had fruit in a very limited time period.

Now we have it accessible all the time.

There were no 747s bringing blueberries to Costco in February. They just weren't. So one of the weird things about our computer program is, like, Tony Robbins is always fun to say, we. We were on version 1.0 of our operating system. We've never had an upgrade. And the same goes to the foods and the plants and the fruit we eat. So we were supposed to eat fruit once a year. And when we were eating fruit, our brain says, oh, my gosh, it's summer. Winter is right around the corner. You know, we should eat this stuff because winter's a tough time, whether it's dry season, a rainy season, a cold season, and we better store up fat just like a bear. Bear is eating all those blueberries and huckleberries, and they're storing fat for the winter. So if you're eating blueberries at Costco in February that came from Chile, your operating system doesn't know it's February. It says, heck, it's August, and winter's right around the corner, so I better eat Some more of this stuff. And this is one of the things that's happening to us in particularly American society. But now most of the Western countries.

Yeah.

We're eating things that we have no business eating 365 days a year. And most of us are just getting ready for the winter that never comes.

Especially live in la.

Yeah.

It's never getting cold.

Yeah. Never comes.

You don't need to store that fat.

You really don't. Yeah, but that's, you know, that's part of the problem. Wow. So, huh.

What are the main plants that we should never be eating then?

Okay, real quick. Up until 10,000 years ago, we lived primarily on the leaves of trees and we ate tubers that grew in the ground, like a sweet potato for a yam.

Love those.

Yeah, they're actually. They're pretty darn good for you. Now you were actually designed to eat them. And 12,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, we switched over to things that we had never eaten before, and those were the grains of grasses and beans. Now, the reason we'd never eaten them before is, number one, we didn't need to. There's never been a documentation of an ape eating grass or grains. Beans are so lethal that five raw kidney beans will kill a human being in five minutes by coagulating their blood. What, five raw kidney beans?

Raw kidney beans.

In fact, you know, most people have heard of the poison ricin, the white powder you send to your elected official. Yeah, lots on the way to Washington. But that's another subject to ricin is the lectin of the castor bean. And we'll talk about lectins next. Lectin is the plant defense system. These are proteins that are designed to basically kill us in one way or another. And so ricin so powerful that about four molecules of ricin will kill a human being instantaneously. There's a great study that was written up in one of the journals about a few years ago. They decided to have a healthy eating day in Boston. Yeah. And they serve the kids beans. And because it's so healthy. Part of the blue zone. Yes. And they had 30 or 40 admissions to the hospital with severe diarrhea, hypotension. And it turns out that it was all the fact that the beans were undercooked. And beans are a plant baby, and we're not supposed to eat those. And so no beans, no beans, zero beans. Unless you use a fresh pinto black.

None of it. We shouldn't be eating it.

Shouldn't be. You weren't designed to Eat it. You have no defense. No matter how it's cooked, if you pressure oiled pressure cook it, it's fine.

Pressure cook it? What does that even mean?

Put it in a pressure cooker. The modern pressure cooker is as easy as a rice cooker. Got it. It's one touch. It's not your grandmother's pressure cooker that blew up in the kitchen.

So then it's okay to eat.

Yeah. So you can pressure cook beans. Now, the other thing we weren't designed to eat grains.

Just a quick question before you start there. How much of it can we eat? Does it matter once it's pressure cooked? Obviously everything in moderation, but I mean.

Yeah. Well, like I was presenting 20 beans.

Are gonna kill me or what?

No, if you pressure cook them, they're fine.

It's all good.

Okay. And we talk about how to do this in the plant paradox, but my personal feeling is the only purpose of eating a bean is to get olive oil into my mouth. And we can talk about that as we go along. Okay, so grains, for instance, everybody heard about gluten. Yes. All right, so gluten is a lectin. And again, a lectin is a plant's defense system. It's a protein that actually is designed to act like incoming guided missile attacks on the inside wall of our gut. And these things actually pry open the lining of our gut and actually break through the border.

Really?

Yeah, they really do.

And that's what causes eczema and Bingo. Breakouts.

Yeah, exactly. Acne, brain fog, irritable bowel. This is actually all part of that process. Wow. And so it's fascinating to see people who either have come to see me or have even read the book and then write on Amazon, oh, my gosh. You know, I had this horrible eczema, and now a month later, it's all gone. And all I did was, you know, take grains and beans and nightshades away from my diet, and everything got better. So that brings us to the second kind of group of things we shouldn't eat. All of us are not from the United States, America. We're actually from Europe, Asia, or Africa. Every one of us. So. And even our native Americans are actually not native Americans. They're from Asia. You know, get over it. Right. So none of us were exposed to an American plant until 500 years ago, when Columbus started trade. So getting to know a new plant, a new lectin in 500 years is speed dating in evolution. I just don't think it'd be done. For instance, The Italians refused to eat tomatoes for 200 years after their native son Columbus brought them back because they knew how dangerous they were. They were part of the deadly nightshade family. And they, when they started eating them, they always peeled and de seeded their tomatoes because the peels and the seeds actually have the vast majority of the lectins. And it's interesting, years ago I was. Did my fellowship in children's heart surgery in London, England, and I had a house officer from Italy, and he invited me up for pasta and tomato sauce. So I brought, you know, it'd be nice if I bought a couple cans of canned tomatoes, you know, help out.

Sure.

And he looks at, he says, why did you bring me this? We can't use this. So I said, what do you mean canned tomatoes? He says, it's got peels and seeds. You can't make sauce with peels and seeds. He says, oh, mamma mia, what am I going to do with you? He says, you can't use peels and seeds. I said, why? He says, they're deadly. And I said, really? And he says, yeah, everybody knows that. And then I thought back as a child, my mother, my grandmother was French and she taught my mother that you always peel and de seed tomatoes before you slice them and serve them. So until I went to Yale, I had never had a slice of a tomato with a peel and a seed. Wow. And this was, you know, this has come from cultures. For instance, peppers. Peppers are the same way. They're part of the nightshade family. You'll never open a glass jar of Italian bell peppers and see peels and seeds because they're gone. And the most striking thing is the Southwest American Indians always peel and de seed their peppers before they eat them. The hatch chili roast will be happening in another month. And what do they do? They roast their chilies, peel the scarred off part, de seed them, and then they eat them. Or they make them into chili powder. Right. And you know, you can prove this in your grocery store. Buy a can of green chilies, chopped green chilies. Open it up, you won't see any peels and seeds because they're gone.

So tomatoes and.

Peppers, eggplant, potatoes and potatoes. You know, the.

If you peel them and seed these things, you're safer.

Correct. But you can pressure cook them and they're fine and they're okay. Yeah, got it. Now there's two American beans that everyone should stay away from. Peanuts are not a nut. They're being 94 of human beings carry a preformed antibody against the peanut lectin. We can take rhesus monkeys, our cousins, give them peanut oil and they will develop atherosclerosis, heart disease, really. If we take the lectin out of the peanut oil and then give them the peanut oil, they will not develop heart disease.

So if you get lectin free peanut butter.

There is no such thing yet. Okay, so get almond butter. And yes, it's much peanut butter. Now stay away from.

You should eliminate 100% from your.

Absolutely. We can take. And this has been done. Men, Feed them peanuts, take their bowel movements, feed them to rats, and you will grow cancerous cells in the rat colon because they've been exposed to the peanut lectin. Yeah.

Love peanut butter.

Oh, you know, so I can have.

As much all as I want.

And I went to medical school in Georgia. You know, Jimmy Carter, you know, man, peanuts are everything. Sandwiches. Yeah. Nope. Sorry.

Eliminate it.

Gone, gone. Say goodbye.

This will help me live longer, have a happier, healthier body, and then I.

Won'T have to operate on you, you know, when you have coronary dis. We now know that the oral microbiome, the bugs that live in our mouth, can predict who's going to develop or who has pancreatic cancer. Really? Really.

At what age?

Any age. Or is choose your age. There is a distinctive set of bugs that has now been found in pancreatic cancer in humans. That predicts. And so there's exciting new thing that you could take a swab of your tongue and sequence which bugs are in there, and you can go, oh, crap, you know, you've got a pancreatic cancer microbiome. Now, the good news about that is, is that you can alter that microbiome. But a paper just this morning, they literally stuck needles into the pancreas of people that were looking for pancreatic cancer, and they were looking for pancreatic cancer cells. But they're looking under the microscope and they go, wait a minute, there's a bunch of bacteria sitting here inside this pancreas. What the heck are those doing in there? So then in 105 people, they sequence those bacteria, and they were all exactly the same sorts of bacteria, and they actually all came from the mouth. Wow. Yeah.

Doesn't most? I heard this from a oral, I guess, hygienist or dentist or doctor who said a lot of the disease we. We capture is through the mouth.

Yeah, correct. Dale Bredesen, who wrote the end of Alzheimer's, who's become a good friend of mine. He and I are fascinated with the Effect of the oral microbiome on dementia. And for instance, in the. In the plant paradox I wrote about, there's kind of a fun study in rats where you can take LPSs, lipopolysaccharides, which are the outside wall of bacteria. They're not living bacteria, they're just the dead bacteria. And in my book, you know, I don't swear, but I call them little pieces of shit, because that's what they are. LPS is they literally are dead bacteria. And so these, you can take rats and you can swab one of their noses with LPSs. They're not living bacteria, they're pieces of dead bacteria. And the other side of the nostril, you can just put a cotton swab with nothing on. Right? And you do that every day. The rats who get the swab up one side of the nose, their other side of their body gets Parkinson's disease. No way. Yeah, it's Parkinson's disease. The other side, you know, the opposite side doesn't. And you go, what the heck is going on? Well, if you think about it, your nose and your mouth are gateways to your brain. I mean, literally the back of your mouth and the top of your nose is your brain. Your brain's just sitting there. And so this is a direct shot into your brain. And as I talk about, I talked about in the plant paradox, but I really go into this in the longevity paradox, that to prevent Alzheimer's and to prevent Parkinson's and dementia, one of the things you got to do is the care and feeding of your microbiome, and that includes your oral microbiome. Because this is a direct shot and you gotta. You gotta take care of it.

So how do you take care of that?

So there are, believe it or not, certain bacteria, one's called P. Gingivitis, that is now been isolated from the brains of Alzheimer's patients. And how did it get there? Well, it got there through your mouth through bad dental hygiene, through gingivitis. That's how the name.

So you can get Alzheimer's through. Through your mouth, not taking care of your teeth.

Exactly. Really? Yeah. And in fact, years, years ago, you know, I'm such an incredible nerd. There's a very famous marker of inflammation called the C reactive protein, crp. Almost everybody listening has probably had a crp. There's a more specific one called highly sensitive crp. Years ago, I noticed that a lot of my patients with heart disease had elevated CRPs. And I said, you know, my wife flosses twice A day. Literally. I mean, she's a nut.

That's good, right?

Yeah, it's great. I hate to floss. So I designed an experiment with like 500 people, and I asked them to floss every other day, okay. And we'd measure their CRPs, and then we measured their CRPs every three months for a year. And the people who I could get to floss every other day, and that included myself, their crps came down to normal, and they were elevated. And the people who flossed more than every other day, they had even lower. And so I wrote this paper for the American Art association that says that since CRP is very highly associated with developing coronary artery disease, that coronary artery disease, in fact, partially comes from the mouth. And if you want to prevent coronary artery disease, you ought to floss. I got honored by the American Institute of Oral Biology for my research. Everybody began. But these dentists are right. You've got to. This is. There's a barrier between the bugs that live in your mouth and you, and it's at your gum tooth interface. And you've got to preserve that barrier. The same thing happens in the barrier in the wall of our intestines. So here's the deal. Your. Your intestines are your skin turned inside out. That's all it is. That surface area of the intestines is the same surface area as a tennis court. That's big. Yeah, that's big. Everybody's kind of looking down like, there's no 10.

How's it fit in there?

Yeah. How'd they do that? Well, and we can do this because it's kind of fun. I'm fascinated with plants as, you know, the plant paradox. And, you know, plants are actually very intelligent human beings. They actually see. New book has proven that plants see. Anyhow, so plants have a root system in the soil that they get their nourishment. And those roots are surrounded by a microbiome of the soil. And there's fungi and bacteria, and it's actually that microbiome that gets the food into the plant, gets all the nutrients into the plant. So we actually have roots and this surface area. Those of you who remember high school biology, we have all these little projections called microvilli, and think of it kind of as a shag carpet. And so we have roots that go into our intestines, and everything we eat is actually the soil.

So our intestines are like the roots?

Yeah, our intestines. Out of our intestines are these roots, and the soil is what we eat, but the main component of the soil is the microbiome. So you've got four to five pounds.

Of bugs in my gut.

In your gut. And they're there. We used to think they were just a bunch of crap, but we actually need it. We not only need it, they control everything that's going to happen to you.

Do I want 10 pounds of bugs or do I just want four or five?

Well actually the more diverse set of bugs you have, the more kind of mixing pot, United nations of bugs, the better off you're going to be. In fact.

Why is that?

Turns out if you take you look at what's called microbial diversity, in other words, you know how many that we now know that there are at least 10,000 different species of bacteria that live in your gut. In fact, a few weeks ago another thousand was found that nobody realized. So your gut is basically a tropical rainforest and you've got, you know, all these creatures and things happening and one creature depends on another and you know, you tip the balance off. It's like introducing wolves back into Yellowstone Park. Right. Whoops. We needed wolves. Who knew? Yeah. Right. So there's this intense kind of communication dependence and the more diverse your microbiome is, the longer you live and the longer you live. Well, so why is that? Turns out that this root system is dependent on the nourishment it gets from all of these bugs. Got it.

So be like if you're trying to grow a plant or a tree in a desert, it'd be challenging because there's not enough soil.

Yeah.

And it would only thrive for as long as it can or.

Yeah. In fact, you know, oak tree in.

A desert, I guess, or whatever needs more nourishment than it's receiving there.

Right. And you can actually, there's really cool experiments where you can have two identical plants planted right next to each other and depending on the microbiome in that soil, one plant will thrive and the other won't. Right. But we can go down a rabbit hole. Turns out in a forest, if trees sense that one of their neighbors is not doing too well, they will actually send roots and supports over to that tree.

That's pretty interesting.

Again, we won't go down.

Yeah, we go down everywhere. Okay, so all this, so what I'm hearing you say is that the gut, the microbiome and these bugs have a lot to do with how you can live well now and also for extending life. Is that what I'm hear?

Yeah. So you take 105 year old people around the world. And you look at their, and these, these are thriving people.

Not like about to die, but they can move around. They can, yeah.

It's like, it's like Edith Murray, who starts the book. That lady was 105 and a half when this picture was taken. Wow. And so she was in 2 inch wedgies. She walks her little Pomeranian and she's smart as a whip. And she was one of the women who changed my life. Her name's Edith Murray, she's Michelle in all my books. So anyhow, so you take these people and you look at their gut microbiome. They have the gut microbiome, the diversity of a 30 year old individual. And if you look normally at people as they age, their gut microbiome becomes less and less diverse. You ultimately have only a few species. So it's this number one, it's this huge diversity that makes a big difference. Number two, we now know that there are certain bugs that really make the difference. And the longevity paradox is actually teaching people how to nurture the bugs that are very interested in keeping you alive. Another way of looking at this, you're, you're basically a condominium for these bugs, for bacteria.

So how do we attract all these diverse good bugs?

I'm so glad you asked. So we know that good bugs like to eat certain foods.

Okay.

And a lot of this was actually based on. There's this fascinating creature called the naked mole rat. And naked mole rats make sure everybody who's listening or watching Google's naked mole rats. And here will be my first controversial statement.

Okay.

Naked mole rats have sometimes been described as a penis with buck teeth.

Okay.

Okay. So Google it. There you go, you'll see it. So these are probably one of the ugliest creatures in the world. They naked mole rats live in the Sahara Desert and they live in colonies very much like termites or bees. And they live in subterranean tunnels. And naked mole rats appear to have no end mortality. In other words, naked mole rats live at least 10 to 20 times longer than any other rat. Rats live about two years. Naked mole rats have lived 20, 30 years. In fact, no one has actually known that you could actually have an end life of a naked mole rat. So they've been the darling of longevity researchers for a very long time. And in fact, hilariously, when I was professor at Loma Linda, which is a blue zone, I had behind my desk this giant iridescent naked mole rat picture for the San Diego Zoo. And everybody goes, what's the deal? You're a famous heart surgeon. What the deal, you got this mankin mole rat behind your desk and his bright pink and purple. And I've been fascinated with naked mole rats because they're the longest, you know, living creatures. So naked mole rats have the same diverse microbiome as 105 year old people. Really? Really. And what, what the heck is going on? Well, it turns out naked mole rats, unlike any other rat, eats roots, eats tubers, and each fungi that are growing in the subterranean area. So if you think I would like you to eat some roots and tubers and mushrooms, you're absolutely right, because the evidence is rather striking that the bugs that like these things are what keeps the naked mole rat living so long, unlike any of the its other rat cousins who eat grains. And we can be sure to be talking about that soon. So this is the only rat that eats tubers and mushrooms and roots. And they have the microbiome of 105 year old people who are thriving. In fact, a study published last week out of Singapore showed that humans who eat two cups of mushrooms per week do not get Alzheimer's disease. And it's because two cups of any type of mushroom, any type you want.

Just go to the grocery store. Mushrooms.

Turns out button mushrooms are second best of all mushrooms in terms of a compound that we now know is the secret of mushrooms. Porcini mushrooms, which of course is the prized mushroom of Italians, is number one for these compounds. Now these compounds are polyphenol. They're actually cousins of polyphenols that are in green tea. And what happens with these compounds is that they're actually eaten by bacteria. Bacteria love to eat polyphenols. And the bacteria then, for lack of a better word, poop out these compounds that have been changed a little bit. And it's those compounds that end enter our circulation. And a particular compound in mushrooms that's been manipulated by bacteria protects the brain from damage from Alzheimer's or Alzheimer's. Wow. So mushrooms, mushrooms. Eat your mushroom every week? Every week.

What if there's a diverse of mushrooms? Or if you eat the same mushroom all the time, does it matter?

It really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. And again, the plain old humble button mushroom will do it for you. Just have a couple cups a week. What I do is, you know, I take a bunch of different mushroom blends and mix it up. Yeah, mix it up.

United nations of mushrooms.

Yeah. And I take mushroom capsules and I take, I have a product that's actually lots of different mushrooms. You just squeeze in your coffee or whatever There you go.

Okay, I have a question now. So 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 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 acciarolis. 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 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, most 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 vess if you have olive oil in your system. So, you know, drink the dumb stuff.

Do you drink it?

Yeah, I do. Wow. I take a shot at it.

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

What I would urge people to do is. So you can cook in 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, meaning gets damaged.

Damaged.

Damaged. 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. 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.

How can we boost and protect our immune system in time of pandemic crisis, stress and overwhelm? What are the things we can do right now?

So the first thing you do is you absolutely, positively stay away from simple carbohydrates. And I can tell you that if it's in a package, it is probably a simple carbohydrate, Even what would appear to be healthy. So plantain chips?

No, I can't eat those.

Come on, read the label and it will scare you to death. Will I eat plantain chips? Sure, I will. But I will use them as a dipping chip to get guacamole in my mouth. Or olive oil. Or olive oil. Yeah. So stay away from simple carbohydrates. And what's really scary in times of pandemics is the grocery store shelves are empty of bread and bagels and pasta and tomato sauce that's good for you. And milk and ice cream and orange juice. There's five to six teaspoons of sugar in a cup of orange juice.

So it's actually good when the shelves are cleared of all the bad things.

That's right. Believe it or not, right now, most of everything in the grocery store is actually good for you because it's all been cleared out of all the bad stuff. But what worries me is all that bad stuff is being consumed. The best way to suppress your immune system is sugar. Sugar absolutely suppresses white blood cell function. So please don't eat like that. But luckily, the stores are. And the other thing I remind all my listeners is that we are the only creature that needs or uses toilet paper. Right? And if you follow my program, you won't need it. You will not need toilet paper.

I have many friends that say they don't need a wipe yeah. Maybe you take one little piece just to make sure this insurance, but you never know.

Yeah. And so, you know, I know when, you know, I've got some issue that, you know more than one piece of toilet paper. Yeah. So if you're. If you need toilet paper, I got news for you. You got a leaky gut, you're eating the wrong things. You're eating the wrong stuff.

So no simple carbs. Essentially, if it's in a package, it's probably not good. No sugar. It suppresses the immune system. What else? Either hurts the immune system. And what boosts the immune system?

Yeah. So what boosts the immune system? It turns out that olive oil, the polyphenols in olive oil actually really boost the immune system. So do components of mushrooms. And, you know, I make one and we'll get you some called M. Vitality, which is a mushroom extract. But mushrooms in general, even the humble button mushroom, will actually boost your immune system. And it does that actually by having the sort of combination complex sugars that your gut bacteria really, really wants and needs. Exactly. And so it's more of an indirect effect. You give your gut bacteria what they want and need, they in turn will tell the immune system, hey, we got this. And, you know, relax and enjoy yourself. The other thing, every human being that I see initially with leaky gut or autoimmune disease has a low vitamin D level. I had Mark Hyman on my podcast recently, and Mark has never seen vitamin D toxicity. I have been measuring vitamin D levels for over 20 years now. I have never seen vitamin D toxicity.

You can't have too much necessarily.

Yeah. I have yet to see it. Could it exist if you have a.

Whole bottle a day? Maybe it's not good.

Well, and actually, Dr. Hollock from Boston University, who's really the world expert on vitamin D, has seen it only once, and that was in a physician who by accident was taking a million international units of vitamin D3 a day for six months. That's a lot.

Now, what is that, a whole cup full?

Well, he had been getting it from a compounding pharmacist, and it had been mislabeled, so he wasn't doing it on purpose. But, for instance, I run my vitamin D level greater than 120 nanograms per milliliter, and I have for 18 years to prove I'm not dead. So many of the labs now are coming around to saying 120 is absolutely normal and it's not vitamin detox. I have patients. I may have told you this story. It's a great story. Years ago, I had two people in their late 70s, first time. And we get vitamin D levels. Back in those days, we could actually quantify the vitamin D level. And the Vitamin D was 270, both of them. And you know, I'm looking at them and I was young and naive and I'm thinking, why aren't these guys dead? And I said, you guys take a lot of vitamin D, don't you? They said, oh, yeah, yeah, it's an anti aging vitamin. It actually is. But I said, well, how long you been doing that? And I said, oh, all of our lives. And I'm going, you know, you look pretty healthy to me. And in theory, vitamin D can give you kidney stones, toxic vitamin D levels, never seen it. But in theory, any kidney stones? No. Why? And the other theory is it makes your fingers and toes numb. And I said, any fingers, toes? No, no. Why? And I'm going, huh? So that's when I actually started researching vitamin D. And for instance, the University of California, San Diego says that the average American should take 9,600 international units a day to have a safe level of vitamin D. The other thing that's fascinating is most people with cancer have low levels of vitamin D. And there's some very interesting trials of boosting vitamin D in people who have cancer to prevent recurrences. So right now I think everybody should be taking 5,000 international units. But right now, a day. A day. Right now, we're probably wise to boost it to 10,000 a day. Wow. I'll give you an example. Last week when this started, and I still see patients every day. I took 100,000 units on Monday, I took 50,000 units on Tuesday, and I took 25,000 units on Wednesday and then hit 10,000 units. If I feel I'm coming down with something, I will take 150,000 units three days in a row. 50,000 three times a day for three days. That's nearly a half a million international units of vitamin D in three days. Wow. And I'm not dead. I have my patients do the same thing. None of them have died, none of them have gotten vitamin D toxicity. But I can tell you it always cuts. Whatever. It's one of the most effective antiviral service. The second thing we need to do is we need to get, if you can, time to release vitamin C. Linus Pauling was right. Vitamin C is incredibly antiviral. But what he didn't know is we can't absorb enough vitamin C and keep it in our bloodstream. Because it comes out very, very quickly. So get yourself some time. Release vitamin C. The stores are empty. Amazon's empty. But barring them in the future, barring that, go to. It's still there. I go to health food stores every day and just kind of check and see what's there and what isn't. Get yourself just the chewable tablets or get the capsules and take it four times a day. Take 500 to 1,004 times a day.

Yeah. It's still better than nothing.

It's still better than nothing. Zinc is a great idea. Get about 30 milligrams of zinc. I'm a big fan of quercetin, sometimes pronounced quercetin. It's a compound that's present in the white pith of citrus. It's in apples and it's in onions. And it actually may be the compound that the old wives tale, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. So quercetin is also very antiviral. And there's an exciting new paper that was just published yesterday that astaxanthin seems to prevent the inflammatory response to the coronavirus. Astaxanthin, it is a compound that actually makes salmon red and salmon eat algae and plankton that have. That produced astaxanthin. It's. Yeah, it's. It's a really cool compound.

Wow.

Yeah.

Do you think it's possible that we could defend and arm our bodies and our immune system could be so strong that if any virus like the coronavirus came in our mouth and was in us, that we could reject it and not attach to our bodies?

Correct. That's the whole idea.

Impossible to do that.

You are designed to defend it, to block the law. Yeah. Really? Yeah.

And it's like a fullback running through, just blocking everyone so you can score.

Yeah. You are designed to do that.

I mean, the immune system is strong. Then you. You don't get sick.

You don't get sick.

And it doesn't matter how strong the virus is, you should be able to defend against it. It's when it's weak, when you start to get sick.

That's exactly right. And, you know, I mean, you have different parts of your immune system lined up on all your mucous membranes ready for, you know, what's coming. And what's unfortunate is in a lot of our patients with leaky gut and with autoimmune diseases, we can actually measure that they're very deficient in the immune system. That makes, for instance, iga, which lines are walls of our gut, and igm, which is the second line of defense. And we can see that when we get their gut sealed that, wow, their immune system is back, all their numbers are back up to normal. But that's what's happening. So again, the reason people with chronic diseases are susceptible to the virus is not because they have a chronic disease. It's because that is a sign that of a leaky gut in your immune system is impaired.

Fix the leaky gut, you won't get sick.

You won't get sick. That's what you know people. My patients go, this is so weird. You know, I used to get a cold two times a year and now I don't get cold and all my friends do. I just yesterday, two days ago, I was talking with one of my patients who's a psychologist and I won't tell you where she lives. She was at a gathering two weeks ago and three, three of her family members got coronavirus including her mother and five other people. And she didn't get it. And you know, she says it's, she's. I'm convinced it's because of the way I eat. Really? Yeah.

We are a society of weak immune systems.

It seems like. Oh yeah, we're just, I mean we're just set. We're just set up. And it all kind of goes back to how we eat and the types of foods we eat and the amount of antibiotics we take. We didn't know that the broad spectrum antibiotics that all of us took, for every little sniffle, for every little cough that hurts us, we're killing off our microbiome. It was like putting napalm on this tropical rainforest.

How important is probiotics right now?

That's a great question. So we are unfortunately, just because of our lifestyle, very deficient in probiotics.

So should we be taking them?

We should be taking them. But most probiotics are pretty worthless because they're not protected from acid in the stomach or bile in the first part of the duodenum, which will kill them. Most probiotics never make it to the gut. So you gotta look for a probiotic that is actually encapsulated. That's either a spore forming probiotic or that's encapsulated so it resists gastric and bile digestion. For instance, Gundry MD makes a 24 strain probiotic that is in a capsule that prevents digestion. All of our probiotics in like Vital Reds, in like bio complete 3 are spore forming probiotics that cannot be killed by gastric acid. So it doesn't Matter if you see, oh, this has got 100 billion probiotics. If it doesn't have a system for getting it into, into your gut, it won't get into your gut. But what's more important than probiotics, and we need them. What's more important is prebiotics. So that's the food that the probiotics have to eat. And that gets back to the crazy 9 cups of vegetables every day.

So you need the prebiotics, the vegetables in your gut for the probiotics to feed off of.

Exactly. So you got to give them what they eat. So like I tell my patients in Palm Springs, if I, if I sold them grass seed and say, go plant some grass seed. And they come back a month later and say, hey, you sold me bad grass seed. It didn't grow. And I go, well, what'd you do? And they said, well, I put it out on the sand and I said, well, did you water it? No, you didn't tell me to. What, did you fertilize it? No, you didn't tell me to. I said, well, of course it's not going to grow. So you could swallow all the probiotics in the world, but if you don't give them what they need to eat, and that's soluble fiber, they're not going to grow. And that's the sad thing we've learned is we don't feed these bugs what they need. And that's why, for instance, I make pre bio thrive, which is a bunch of different prebiotics, which is feeds the bugs, right?

Because if you're not eating your veggies, you gotta take that.

Exactly. Support you. What's happened to us is that for the most part, our lines of defense against bad things, like a peanut lectin are gone. Our gut is leaky so that our cops are always on hyper alert. So a little benign little peanut lectin comes in. Now it breaks through and the cops go, oh my gosh, you know, kill it, kill it. And that's why we got EpiPens with all of our little kids. Now the same thing happens. Most of us, number one, don't have a great microbiome that is able to fend off viruses, fend off bacteria like they should. After all, they are defending their home, right? But more importantly, probably because most of us have leaky gut, most of our immune system that should be up in our nose, in our mouth, protecting us against a virus is down in our gut attacking whatever is coming through the wall of our gut. And it's Completely distracted. Now, where I'm going with this is you hear on the news that people with chronic medical conditions are the people who are most susceptible to viruses in general, to the flu, to the coronavirus, to whatever. And, well, why is that? Why. Why would having high blood pressure make you susceptible, more susceptible to dying from a virus that actually doesn't make any sense. But if having high blood pressure is actually a sign that you have a leaky gut and that most of your immune system is actually down in your gut rather than patrolling the periphery like it should, and your immune system is. I mean, all the troops are down, distracted, then it makes completely sense that you would be susceptible to this. And let me give you a great story. Years ago, I was at the. I present a lot of papers at the Microbiota meeting in Paris every year, and there was a fascinating paper that there are smelling neurons, olfactory neurons, you know, that live in our nose, that live in our kidneys and live in our heart. And you go, why would I need. Why would my kidneys need to smell anything? Why would my heart need to smell anything? And it. It actually intrigued me until I realized in writing my next book, which is called the Energy Paradox, that these smelling organs in our kidneys and our heart smell bacterial farts, the fermentation products of bacteria. And they can smell good farts, and they can smell bad farts. And if they smell bad bacteria farts, they actually activate the blood pressure system to make your blood vessels more rigid and give you high blood pressure. And what was striking to me, and I didn't know the reason way back when, is when I had people with high blood pressure and we put them on my program. One of the first things, the first calls I would get is, what are you giving me? What supplement are you taking? That's making me lightheaded and dizzy. And, you know, I look at my nurse and I look at me, I'm going, there isn't a supplement that does that. You know, come on into the office. Let's see. Of course, their blood pressure is really low. And we go, okay, you know, let's cut that high blood pressure pill in half. And then they call back a couple weeks later and say, I'm dizzy again. And we bring them back in. Sure enough, their blood pressure is low. Okay, let's get rid of that blood pressure. What we were doing is we were changing the bacterial signals in their gut, and they were now getting, if you will, good farts that they were smelling in their kidneys and their blood vessels were Reacting. And we eventually developed tests that we could prove that in fact that happens and publish that data as well. So this is not. It's not science fiction. It's not conjecture. And so we now know that there's this incredible symbiotic organism that is us. And the more we learn about the really important part of us, the more it all makes sense on how we work. And returning to Dr. David Kessler, the head of the FDA, he said, you know, when you and I, Steve, were going through medical school, we were taught that the intestines was just a hollow tube, and all they were there for was to absorb protein, fat, and carbohydrates. End of story. That's all we were taught. And he says, who. Who could have guessed that, you know, living down there were 100,005,5, pounds of bugs that were essential for the functioning of everything? You know, it's like Dr. Amen says, you know, who would have guessed that mental illness is coming from the gut?

Wow. The connected. The brain and the gut.

Yeah, the gut brain connection. He said, who would have guessed? Because all of us thought, that's just a tube. And, yeah, there's a few bacteria down there and they're really bad, and we poop them out and, you know, it's just waste.

Right.

Now we know more than that. They are us. Wow.

Now, there's so many things you've covered here that I want to close the loop on a couple of these. I'm trying to figure out the solution to my peanut butter problem. What's the nut butter that I can eat that's actually okay? So is there one?

Yeah. So interestingly enough, we have a number of people with rheumatoid arthritis who react to the peel of an almond. There is a lectin in the peel of almonds. You take the peel off, you take the peel off.

Skinned almonds are okay.

Yeah. So like Marcona almonds. And there are actually a couple of companies that now make peeled almond butter and you can find them. Really? Yeah.

It shouldn't be an issue then.

It shouldn't be an issue. Yeah. So if you're going to choose.

That's interesting.

Yeah. So walnuts are a great choice. Pistachios are a great choice.

Every time I eat a walnut, I sneeze.

So there are some tannins in walnuts that certain people react to. So stay with. Stay with pistachios. Macadamia nuts. I love macadamia nuts. They're really good.

Mac nuts are okay.

Yeah. So. But yeah, so get yourself Some peeled almonds.

I'm going to do that now.

Try it.

Okay. You said American milk is something that we should not have in order to fix leaky gut. Is there such thing as non American milk that is okay to drink?

Yeah. So most people can have sheep milk, can have goat milk. Interestingly enough, goat milk traditionally was called mother's milk because the components in goat milk are very different than cow milk. They're far more similar to human milk. And so I actually tell mothers, if they're going to, you know, give their child some animal milk, please make it goat milk rather than cow's milk.

Okay. Is there any other foods that we should not eat to heal our leaky gut?

So the more you and I need.

To talk about this in plant paradox as well.

Yeah. The more you. There are a few people that actually react to either the white or the yolk of eggs. Most people don't. Okay. But we test for those. And here's just something to throw out. I don't want to cause widespread panic. Yes. There is a.

Enough of that in the water.

That's right. Yeah. We have plenty. There is a lectin in spinach that I was unaware of. But thanks to a company called Vibrant America, they discovered that there are a class of lectins called aquaporins. And they're present in tobacco, they're present in spinach, they're present in corn, they're present in soybeans, they're present in green peppers, and I think that's it. Anyhow, they actually can cause leaky gut and they can cause leaky brain. And I stumbled upon this because I have a few people with really bad IBS and really bad autoimmune disease who are saints. They follow my program. They never cheat. Why would they?

Why do they still have.

And they. Why do they still have issues? And so when we had these new tests, lo and behold, almost every one of these people reacted to spinach.

No way.

And they ate a lot of spinach. And knock on wood so far, when we took the spinach away from them, that was the key. Now, don't everybody go home and throw out your spinach. But if you're following my program, and my program does have spinach in it, and we're still having problems, consider giving up spinach. There's no human need for spinach.

Now, you said. What was her name? Is she a doctor? Dr. Terry. Is that her name?

Terry Walls. Dr. Terry Walls.

You said she was doing like, 10 or 12 cups of veggies a day.

For nine cups of vegetables.

The snake looking back at you now, what should those. Now why is it important to have nine cups of vegetables? And what does that do for your microbiome, your gut every day?

This is so Getting back to Dr. David Kessler, head of the FDA, we thought that carbohydrates were carbohydrates. And you know, and complex carbohydrates, starches were fine because they're complex carbohydrates. Everybody's wrong. Food manufacturers have figured out how to make a complex carbohydrate, a simple carbohydrate and make you think it's a complex carbohydrate. So when you read a label, number one, if you have to read a label, you're probably, you should put the package back because there shouldn't be a label on a head of lettuce. Give you an example. But you have to take. And if anybody, if the take home point from this is we're will save so many people's lives, read total carbohydrates on the label, then take away the dietary fiber, that'll be the next thing under it. So that will tell you the amount of grams of sugar per serving in that package. Do not look at where it says sugar. Do not look at added sugar. It is a lie.

So it says zero sugar. Zero added sugar.

Yeah. So let me give you an example that he used on my podcast, which was a great example. He said, let me. What would you find in a store? The label says it's 300 calories, it has 0 fat, it has 0 grams of sugar, and it has 4 grams of protein and it has 35 grams of carbohydrates.

Is that broccoli?

I don't know.

What is that?

It's a bagel.

A bagel?

A bagel.

300 calories.

300 calories. Wow. Zero sugar.

How does that have zero sugar? I thought the.

That's just it. The label law lies to you. It's got 35 grams of carbohydrates. Now to make that turn into sugar, which is sugar, it is pure sugar. In fact, it is better than sugar the way it has been manufactured. So you take to figure out how much that is. There's four grams of sugar per teaspoon. So let's take his 35 grams of sugar, divide by four. Let's make it easy. Make, make it 36 grams. That's nine teaspoons of raw sugar in that bagel. So that's number one. All of a sudden you have how.

Many grams of Sugar would that be?

That's. Well, so a Coke, a 12 ounce Coke is about 12 grams of sugar. So you're basically chugging a Coke when you eat a bagel. And it'll actually get into your bloodstream faster than if you chugged a Coke.

No way. How is it going faster when, because.

It'S been broken down, you actually have to digest the sugar molecule in the Coke. You don't have to digest the sugar molecule in a bagel. Really? Yeah. Main lines. So that's number one. Number two, what nobody knew was the bacteria that most of your bacteria live down in your colon and your lower part of your small intestine. And they're waiting for the complex carbohydrates that you do not digest normally. They're waiting for their meal that always used to come, and that meal never comes anymore because everything's been so finely processed that we don't get those complex carbohydrates down to them. So they starve to death. Now, what's really cool is that those guys take that meal and they make all these really cool compounds that, number one, keep the wall of the gut intact, allow the wall of the gut to heal itself. They make compounds that actually are text messages to the mitochondria in all of our cells and particularly in our brain. That guys down in the engine room are working under full power, and we've got, you know, scotty, beam me up sort of thing. You know, give me Warp Drive 5. And we've got the power. And, you know, it's okay to go into hyperspace if they don't make those compounds. Your mitochondria go, jeez, I'm not. I got nothing to work with here. And we got no backup system. I'm going to sputter down to a crawl. And people wonder why they're fatigued, even though they're eating more than ever, and they're eating all these sports drinks and they're having 27 cups of coffee and going, where's my energy? And it's because we no longer have this beautifully designed symbiotic relationship and we starve the most important part of us. And that's why Jack o' lan said, if it tastes good, spit it out.

So why 9 cups of vegetables then?

Because that is actually giving those guys what they want to eat. Now, Terri didn't know this back then, but her first book was Minding My Mitochondria or Feeding My Mitochondria. But now we know it's actually, we gotta find. Feed those guys. We have to eat for them. Mitochondria, we got to eat for the bacteria. They live in our gut, so not the mitochondria. Yeah. So in the longevity paradox, here's the really scary thing. Mitochondria are actually engulfed ancient bacteria. Billions of years ago, cells invited bacteria to live inside them in exchange for a nice place to live. The cells said, we'll give you what you want to eat in exchange for you making ATP energy for us. And obviously it was a good deal. And because that's continued now. So within us, all of our cells have engulfed ancient bacteria that produce energy for us. And what's so really fun is the bacteria in your gut are the sisters of the mitochondria, which are bacteria in our cells. And they actually talk to each other. And here's what's really cool. You and I inherited our mitochondria from our mother. Dad did not give us any mitochondria. So all mitochondria are female. And if everything went okay, you and I inherited our gut microbiome from our mother, who literally took a crap on us as we exited the birth canal. And, you know, most everybody kind of knows that mom took a crap on me. Yeah. Ladies, if you hate your mother, no, she didn't take a crap on you. But your mother gives you your initial dose of bacteria. And that's actually why cesarean section babies who don't get that dose take up to six months to get a normal immune system compared to a vaginal delivery, because they don't have the proper set of bacteria that educate the immune system.

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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 could store as fat to make it through the winter when times were rough. And we're the only fat storing 8. 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. 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. And 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. 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 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 colleges, 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.

Interesting.

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. Yeah. 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.

Okay.

But in the meantime, the average person should take like a thousand milligrams of timed release vitamin C twice a day.

Okay.

To cover their ass. Wow. Okay.

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

It's okay, no worries.

The first thing I heard is olive oil.

Oh. And olive oil is actually one of the tricks, tricks to activate the ghost gene, a 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, vitamin D, have lots of vitamin D3 D3 D3. And then what's next to go 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. So if you want to call me a fathead, you know I will tag at you.

Yeah.

And I can just see now the Internet lighting up. Andrea is a fat ad. 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 in 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. Most of the people I see with high mercury levels are sushi eaters or dentists, so. And particularly sashimi grade tuna. Just wanna, just kind of want to stay away from it.

Oh, sugar fish is amazing though.

Yeah. Tono.

And it's got the grains too.

It's Got the grains, you know, so.

So no sushi.

Yeah.

So once in a while.

Yeah, once in a while.

Okay.

Absolutely. 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. And all my patients, and we're talking thousands and thousands of patients over the last 20 years. You want to get about 1,000 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. 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, okay, there's 250 milligrams of DHA in this capsule. So I need to take four. Wow.

Four a day?

Yeah. Thousand a day.

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

So you got to have polyphenols in your diet. So what the heck is a polyphenol? How do you remember polyphenol? Think about polywanophenol. Okay. Phenols are plant compounds. Polyphenols are plant compounds that plants use. 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.

Because they need more to protect themselves.

Exactly. It's basically suntan. You know, 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. So, for instance, black raspberry leaves have far more polyphenols than black raspberries. And I take black raspberry capsules. Oh, by the way, and it's in the book. So olives, for instance, are loaded with polyphenols. And olives that are stressed produce are even better. Olive leaves have more polyphenols than olives. So olive leaf Extract is an easy way of getting the huge amount of benefits without drinking a liter of olive oil.

So what about like, you know, leafy greens? Do you want stressed out looking, leafy, 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 mask 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 gut 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 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 really good organic eaters, most human beings only eat maybe 20 different plant species.

I probably eat like three.

Yeah, yeah.

Most people do like five maybe, you.

Know, and you know, ketchup is not a vegetable, it's a tomato. And we can't do that. So our ancestors and even looking at modern hunter gatherers like the Hanza 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 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?

Right.

There is no 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. 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 exactly. And we use fruit to gain weight for the winter. And that's a whole nother 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 know, meat. So beautiful work that's been done. A lot of it done by now. My friend Valter Longo from USC from the Longevity Center.

Is that the mimicking fasting diet?

The fasting, mimicking, Diet.

I'd taken that a couple times and I.

And that 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 in the Plant Paradox, actually, before he made prolong. But I write about it again and he. And I. And he's even giving 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 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. Who's pulling their weight? Who is really, you know, contributing to this effort? And who's a slacker, who looks a little weird, who's not, you know, not doing. And it actually instructs cells to commit suicide. And it's called autophagy. And it tells cells, sorry, you know, you're not. 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 get sick and everything. Exactly. So you got to 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? 5 days in a row? 5 days in a row. You follow a vegan diet of about 900 calories. And I got some great recipes. It's easy to do. And you do it five days in a row. Yeah, it's as if you did calorie restrictions 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 already there you just have to call them into action.

So when someone does that, when they pull it out of you, they're essentially just killing off the dead cells and then putting the good ones back in.

No, they're actually, you know, they're centrifuging out the stem cells. Stem cells are in fat. They're everywhere actually. So you. But you got to activate the great crazy thing. So you activate them by this modified fast, or you do intermittent fasting or time restricted fasting. For instance, for the last 12 years, during the winter, from January through June, Monday through Friday, I don't eat breakfast, I don't eat lunch and I eat all my calories in a two hour window from 6 to 8 o' clock at night. So 22, 24 hours, I'm fasting.

For how long?

For six months.

Six months. You do that?

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Now I do that because way back.

When, just drinking olive oil and on vitamin D all day.

No, during the night. During that evening. Two hours.

Yeah, just drinking it. Okay.

Wow.

Yeah, but that's why you look so young.

I don't know.

That's why you look.

Actually, if you look at pictures of me from 1995, which was about 25 years ago now, I look much older then than I do do now.

Seed oils. Seed oils are bad. Second thing is industrially raised meat. It's f full of xenoestrogens. These are estrogens that make animals fat on one third less calories than normal. It's also full of antibiotics and it's destroying the soil of the planet. Right now it also is depleting farmland.