Health Doctors Share The SUPERFOODS YOU NEED To Eat To AGE IN REVERSE | Lewis Howes

There are things we can't change as individuals. We can change what we eat because we do it all the time.

That's actually the reason you want to eat organic.

If you ate those four things every day multiple times a day, if that's what you can only eat, you feel like it would set you up for good amount of success. I do.

I do.

Our health and longevity is highly determined.

By the foods we eat.

And in this video, highly respected doctors break down the science of the superfoods you need to eat to reverse aging.

So our environment and our climate are being driven by the food we eat. And then of course there's the social issues. People don't understand that the quality of the food we eat, the processed food, the refined oils, the sugars, the chemicals, the additives affect behavior. We know for example, Louis, that in prisons if you give people a healthy diet in prisons, They will reduce violent crime in the prison by 56%. If you add a vitamin supplement, it goes down by 80% because they're all nutritionally depleted. I mean, I had a patient, not a patient. He was a, I don't know, he was a guy who was in jail, he was a murderer. He wrote me a handwritten letter years ago. He said, I followed your program in jail. I realized I was a murderer. My behavior was so violent my whole life. And when I changed my diet, I became a completely different person. I realized it was what I was eating. and now I'm so thankful for having my life back. So you think our diet also determines our behavior?

Absolutely.

There's clear evidence about that. I was just reading a study the other day that showed that people who eat a lot of carbohydrates and sugars and starches have much more violent behavior. We know that people eat refined oils, which we now have 10% of these as our calories from soybean oil. It's in everything. It's not just what we put in our food, it's in every packaged processed food. That has led to increase in homicides and violence and suicides. around the world. And we've gotten higher on these refined Omega-6s and low on Omega-3s. So the evidence of how it affects behavior, mood, poverty, it keeps poor communities down. And then the food industry targets these communities disproportionately. So you have all these things happening at the same time. And then kids, kids can't learn in school because they're eating Doritos and Coke and they can't actually focus and learn and their behavior is all erratic and they're on these chemicals which alter their behavior. That's why, you know, one out of six kids has some neurodevelopmental problem. which is enormous, right? ADD now affects one out of 10 kids. I think 14% of kids have ADD, and about one in 10 kids are on medication. You think ADD can be moved if.

We have a better diet?

Or is that something that's not in the brain? No, it's not a brain problem. It's a body problem, and the body problem is caused by our diet and by environmental toxins. I've had hundreds of ADD patients who've transformed their lives. We were talking about the Broken Brain documentary series I did. I had a guy, I was in a New York Russian bathhouse the other day. I come in, I saw your series. I've been on ADD medication my whole life and it helped me get off my medication. We see this. So you've got health, you've got the economy, you've got social justice and poverty issues, you've got climate, you've got environment, you've got education. It's all connected. Issue is that most people don't connect the dots, number one, and most people don't realize that we're in this situation because of money in the food system that's driving our policies.

Right, you were mentioning how you were mentioning how, you know, there's some press.

Hits that you do.

I won't mention who, but that was say you can't talk about certain things because of a sponsor that's funding the program.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

So you can't talk negative about one brand or one product or.

No.

Because of that, yeah.

That's right, I was told, well, you can't cover this subject because we get our funding from this sponsor. I can tell you a story from the past, 'cause the show's not on the air anymore. Sure. It was the Martha Stewart Show. And I was on the show, and we were working with the producer, and we were talking about getting healthy and working out and detoxing, and Martha had her trainer there. And the producer says, well, we're gonna have to do a bit as part of the segment on dairy, and how dairy is such a great sports recovery drink.

No way.

Yes.

And so I was like, you know, I'm just sorry to tell you, but there's all this evidence that that's not true. So I downloaded all the scientific papers documenting the science behind the fact that dairy isn't a sports drink. And he's like, I know, but we kind of have to, 'cause this spot is sponsored by the Dairy Council.

Oh my gosh.

And then if you're ever on television, you know that the experts don't get notes. They don't get cue cards. They don't get teleprompters. They have to know their stuff. Well, this woman, who was the trainer, had all these cue cards that was being held up about dairy with all the bullet points of why dairy is such a great food and sports drink. It's insidious. So we think we're getting news, we're.

Thinking getting authentic information. From experts too.

From doctors or specialists or experts and we are influenced by these experts. Huge. I mean, the evidence is so clear that, you know, industry is heavily funding science. and they're funding corrupt science. So if you look at the data, for example, artificial sweeteners, 99% of the studies done by the food industry show that they are safe. 99% of the studies on artificial sweeteners done by independent scientists find that they're not safe. You know, if an industry funds a study, they're 8 to 50 times more likely to find a positive benefit for their product. Right, of course.

Right?

Whereas you look at, and then you look at the American Heart Association, the American Diabetic Association, the American Nutrition, I mean the American Nutrition Dietetic Association, these are all funded by the food industry. I mean if you look, it's Coca-Cola, it's Pepsi, it's Cargill, it's frightening to see how much money is. You have Trix cereal for kids as a heart-healthy cereal, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms. I mean, Trix has seven teaspoons of sugar, red dye, blue dye, yellow dye, you dye, you know? It's all in there and it's a heart-healthy food. Why? Because they get $300,000 for every time they put that check on a box.

No way.

Yes, way. And this is happening globally. Globally, I mean, there's a huge battle going on in Malaysia now because Nestle has promoted this drink called Milo, which I never heard about, but it's a big drink in the developing world and in Asia and South America. And it's basically Ovaltine. It's basically a malted beverage with sugar that has the same glycemic index as Coca-Cola. And they have athletes on there and sports characters and how it's a great drink for health. And they had this commercial, which I saw, which was a Filipino rock star singing this great rap song about how everybody who's a kid has an energy gap. Four out of five kids have this thing called an energy gap. I was at a medical conference. What's an energy gap mean? I was at a medical conference of 1,500 doctors. I says, Anybody here heard of an energy gap that four out of five kids have?

No.

They completely made this up. And they say these kids need Milo for the energy gap.

Yeah.

And this guy, who lives over in Malaysia called them out on this and they came out with this huge propaganda campaign against him to discredit him and manipulating the facts and lying. I was just watching this whole thing, it's unbelievable. It's not an accident that we're in this situation.

Wow, the manipulation. Do you think that all inflammation, chronic pain and disease can be eliminated from.

The foods we eat or is caused by foods?

I think besides having like a car accident or something. Yeah.

You know, I'm a functional medicine doctor, you know, run the Center for Functional Medicine at Cleveland Clinic. And so 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? So we always say there's five causes of all disease based on how they influence your genetics and combine with your lifestyle. Toxins, so environmental toxins, that's not your fault. That's just the fact we put 80,000 chemicals in the environment without testing them. We have 3,000 food additives we eat every year. As Americans, about three to five pounds of it, which is frightening. And, you know, there are heavy metals and pesticides everywhere. So we're exposed to a lot of toxins. They make people sick. Infections, which we can get, whether it's viral infections and bacterial infections, Lyme disease, tick infections, allergens, which are increasingly common, or food sensitivities, things where your body is creating an immune response, gluten or dairy, those are big. And then poor diet and stress, all of those are contributing to disease. But by far the biggest cause is food.

Really?

By far. And it affects, I mean, what's amazing is it's not just like a little bit. It's like people say, oh, my migraines or my arthritis or my irritable bowel. People don't connect the dots between how they feel and the food they're eating. And then when you switch, people have transformations very quickly.

Yeah.

They notice it quickly. Quickly, yeah. The brain goes away, the weight goes off, all these things. Yeah, I always say food is medicine. It's not just like a medicine. It works faster, better, and cheaper than almost any drug. I mean, we have people who are off insulin, who are type 2 diabetics, within a week. Wow. And get off all their medications. I mean, there was a huge study just published on a ketogenic diet intervention for type 2 diabetics. And I don't think ketogenic diets are right for everybody, but in an extreme situation where your metabolism is so broken, it can help reset things, basically reducing carbs to 30 grams a day, 70% fat, and in the context of a healthy plant-rich diet. And they were able to get 100% of the people in the year over diabetics off of the main diabetes medication and 94% off insulin or dramatically lower with an average weight loss of 30 pounds, about 12% of body weight. And this is unprecedented in the research. Because food, if you know how to apply it in the right way, at the right dose for the right person, it's the most powerful drug.

Yeah. Here's the thing. You talked about in the book that you've been studying food for 35 years.

40 now. I can't... 40 years. I was like, oh, I did the math. It's 2018. I was started in 1978 in college. And I'm like that old.

Here's the thing. You've got 11 New York Times best-selling books. You've probably done how many books total?

14.

14 books. 11 New York Times including this one food with what they actually eat. And for 40 years, you've been studying food and you say even the experts are confused by the science.

-They are.

They are.

So, how come... -How can I figure out that you know all the answers? -I don't think after 40 years. -I don't think I know all the answers but I don't have a bone to pick. In other words, I haven't spent my life dedicated to the low-fat diet. I haven't been dedicated my life to veganism. I mean, I'm looking at like what works and the other thing I know is that I'm not an academic. I do research. But that's not how I started. I'm a practicing doctor. So what's happened over the years is the latest thing comes in, I try it, see what happens, see what happens to the patient. So seeing tens of thousands of patients, doing thousands and thousands of lab tests over the years, seeing what happens when people change their diet and how their biology responds, that's the best laboratory you'll ever see. I even noticed it myself. I was a vegetarian for 10 years, and I see pictures of myself when I was 28, and I am so scrawny, even though I ate really healthy, ran five miles a day, I did yoga all the time, and I look at myself now doing far less exercise and I'm far more muscular and have more muscle mass than I did when I was 28 because I learned how to change my diet. And we know that the right kind of high fat diet and adequate protein actually increases muscle mass.

Wow.

Yeah.

I literally just got off the phone with a friend who says, you know, I went on a vegan diet and three days into it, I can't lift anymore.

But then you see some athletes that are all vegan who have gained muscle mass and gained strength in your life.

What is the-- maybe they're taking steroids.

I don't know. Who knows? So you think living a vegetarian or vegan, fully vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, that.

It'S hard to gain muscle mass? I think it's hard. It's hard. It's not impossible. I mean, if you really work at it and really work out, and there are great vegan athletes out there, But there's never been a historically voluntary vegan society ever. And when you look at, yes. And we look at blue zones or, no, they were never exclusively vegan, right? They always had some animal food, right?

Fish or something.

Yeah, and you know, as hunter-gatherers, we ate 800 species of plants. So we had a very plant-rich diet. But we also included wild animals when we could catch them.

Right, exactly.

And so it's part of our evolutionary history. and our bodies are well adapted. And the protein in vegetables is different. So for example, there's something called leucine, which is an amino acid that is the rate limiting amino acid for muscle synthesis. In other words, in order to build muscle, you need this amino acid. And it's very low in plant proteins.

Very high in animal proteins. Right. So why not just live a plant-based.

Diet and then have the supplements? You could. You could. And I, you know, I patients are vegans, monks. I mean, I'm not gonna force people not to eat it, it's much harder to do and you have to know what you're doing. And I see people over time, initially when they switch from a processed American diet to a whole foods vegan diet, they're gonna get so much better. Of course, yeah. But the real issue is compared to what?

Right.

Right?

What we really need to do is, and they've looked at over time these big studies looking at animal and plant proteins and stuff over time, looking at what people do. There's a vegan, vegetarian omnivore study, which was 245,000 people. It was an observational study. they didn't find any difference in outcomes. Another study, 42 country study looking at food pattern consumption over long periods of time showed actually the people had animal fat and protein did far better than people who focus on cereal grains in their diet, less heart disease. Another study, the PURE study just came out recently, 135,000 people, it was five continents, I think 18 countries, 10 years, and there was actually an improvement when people had more saturated fat and more good fats and less cereal grains and more animal protein.

More animal protein or?

More animal protein, yeah. It was not a risk factor. Now, these are difficult studies to interpret sometimes because they're observational, but you look at interventional studies where you intervene by giving people high fat protein diets with lots of plant foods, people do better metabolically.

Really?

Yeah, it's very hard to eat a low glycemic diet if you're a vegan. You can, but it's very hard. I have a friend who's a keto vegan and she's a type 1 diabetic and she's rocking it.

But you have to know what you're doing.

And so disciplined. It's super disciplined, super smart about it. That's challenging. Yeah. So I think, I think, you know, and the data on meat, honestly, which.

I go into the book in great detail, is confusing for people. Because it all depends on the factors of the meat.

Yeah. Where you get it, the environment it's in, how it's fed, how it's raised, the stress of it.

Right.

Exactly.

Processed, everything, right?

Totally, right. So, you know, people go, we shouldn't be eating meat because it's bad for the animals, it's bad for the environment. Yes, we should not be eating factory-farmed meat. This is really bad. It's bad for the animals, it's bad for the planet, it's bad for us because the quality of the meat is very poor. But let's say a wild elk or a grass-fed bison or even cow, very different. And it turns out that these animals actually have higher levels of omega-3 fats and higher levels of antioxidants and minerals and nutrients and beneficial fats and actually are a great source of protein and don't have the harm that we think they do. When you look at the studies that showed there was harm, the reason they show that is because when you do a study, observational study, you give people a questionnaire every year. So you take 10,000 people, 100,000 people, and every year you give them a questionnaire, what'd you eat? What did you eat last week?

If you can remember.

And people answer according to what they think they should answer a lot of times, right? So if meat is bad, they're gonna underestimate the amount of meat they're eating. So during the time of these studies, meat was considered bad. So people who ate meat didn't really care about their health. And the data show it. When you look at the factors of these people, their characteristics, which you can read in the studies, which I read, they were overweight, they smoked, they drank, they didn't eat fruits and vegetables, they didn't exercise, they didn't take vitamins, they ate more processed food, more sugar, Of course they were sicker.

Wow.

Yeah.

Now, what are the three basic food rules that you live by?

Me?

Yeah.

Well, you know, I always joke, 'cause I used to teach a lot of churches and I go, ask yourself one question when you're shopping. Did God make this or did man make this, right? Did God make a Twinkie?

No.

Did God make an avocado?

Yeah.

Pretty simple rule. And you can even take that to its logical extreme. Did God make a feedlot cow? No, did God make a grass-fed cow? Yes, right?

Sure.

So you can kind of go down the line on all that. That's the first principle. Second principle is which we eating mostly plant-based diet?

We call it plant rich.

I call it plant rich. You got 80-20, right? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, 80%, 70% of your foods on your plate should be lots of vegetables, nuts and seeds, fruit, whole foods. And the third principle is we need a lot of good fats. avocados, olive oil. I think there's controversies about certain things. Nuts and seeds are good, but then there's the whole saturated fat debate, which we can get into where refined oils. But essentially we need a lot of good fats, low starch and sugar, plant-rich.

Diet, and, you know, stay away from processed food.

Yeah.

Now, should that be true for everyone, or does it depend on your, your.

Body type, your blood type, your genetics? So I jokingly call this the Pegan diet.

Right.

Because I was sitting on a panel with friends of mine, one was paleo, one was vegan. They were fighting and I'm like, listen guys, you're paleo, you're vegan, I must be a Pegan. And I was joking. And then it occurred to me that there was more in common than there was different. And we could come up with these general nutritional principles that nobody's going to disagree with, right? Nobody thinks we should be eating a lot of starch and sugar. Everybody thinks we should be eating more plants. Everybody thinks if we eat animal protein that we should eat only sustainably raised or harvested or grass finished protein. That we should eat fish but it should only be fish that's low in mercury and toxins, that doesn't overfish the oceans, that if it's farm raised it should be sustainable. We should eat lots of good fats. I mean, there are a few outliers who still are holding on to low fat dogma, but the train has left the station on that one. And so there's these simple, that nobody thinks we should be consuming pesticides and herbicides and GMO, that we should be having three pounds of food additives per person every year. I mean, nobody thinks we should be eating those things. Like nobody's gonna say, okay, I think you should have more butylated hydroxytoluene with your salad.

Right.

Red dye number 40, right? These are things that are sort of inserted into our diet. So those are principles that I sort of outlined and it's adaptable. What about grains and beans? Well, you know, some people do well on them, some people don't and it really is individual. But I talk about if you are going to, here's the things to know about, here's the grains to eat, here's what you should or shouldn't do. Gluten, why is it a problem? Who is it a problem for? Is our current wheat, the wheat we used to eat? No, it's not. So that has an impact. What should we focus on? Could you have rye, which is a has gluten in it, but it's probably, if you're not gluten sensitive, a much better food. So it goes through every single chapter. I go through meat, poultry, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, beans, grains. I talk about the controversies. What are the people fighting about? What does the science say? What do we know? What do we not know? There's still stuff we are learning, right?

You're still discovering every day.

So it's really kind of a foundational principle book.

It's not extreme. It's sort of middle of the road.

This is kind of the Bible for you then. Kind of. All the things you've learned. Pretty much 40 plus years now.

14 books. Yes, it is.

It's actually different than other books I've written because the other books are more topic specific. They're on the brain or on metabolism or diabetes or sugar. This is really, if you're an eater and there's about 9 billion of us, it's probably something that'll help. And I also talk about how do you eat, not just for your own health, right? But what is the overall footprint of the food you eat? What's the health footprint, the economic footprint, the carbon footprint, the environmental footprint? the educational footprint, the national security footprint, and even poverty and social justice footprint of what you eat. Because there are things we can't change as individuals. We can't end nuclear war. We can't, you know, single-handedly, you know, end climate change. But we can change what we eat because we do it all the time.

Hey, it's Lewis here, and I would love to connect directly with you. Text me the word YouTube to my number 614-350-3960. to receive weekly inspirational messages from me. What are the top three to five tea foods? I'm trying to simplify for myself these foods that can really develop that.

Yeah, what are the different-- so the thing is different foods have different types and different types feed different types of bacteria. So if you want, you don't like for example, some people want to hear, oh, well I can supplement with inulin. I can get an inulin powder. Inulin is a type of fermentable fiber. You can find it in a variety of plants, I think onions, for example. But if you only eat inulin, then you're going to be basically feeding certain types of bacteria that use inulin or that ferment.

The variety is what you're looking for.

That helps with the diversity because these bacteria are playing different roles. so, you know, there's.

I have been under the assumption that eating the same thing every day is good. It's like eating clean, like a little bit of chicken, lots of veggies, and eating it pretty much every meal is the right way to go in terms of, like, my health, nutrients, in terms of, like, body composition, how I want to look and feel. Is that something that I should be going away from and diversifying what I eat every day?

Well, it sounds like you just said, you said vegetables. That's like a, that's a lot in vegetable. There's a lot of types of vegetables, right? So it's kind of nice. Look, I'm just as guilty, like, for convenience, I'm busy. Like, I know my, my husband gets tired of it, but I'm like the same. It's so much easier to have the same thing every day. Same thing every day. Because I find the thing that's healthiest and easiest to make. And, you know, there's days where, let's say, you know, I'm not. I'm not working all day, then I can be more creative and I have more time. But generally speaking, it's easier to kind of stick to the same thing.

If you were going to, let's say you came up with a new company, a product that was a meal that you had to have the same meal every day for lunch and dinner and snack. And this would be the thing that you could sell to people. What would be included in that meal that you were like, you know what? If you don't have all the variety and time to make these foods all day, but if you could do this three times a day, you're setting yourself up for a really good immune system and good gut bacteria.

Dr. The same meal three times a day or different meals?

Yeah, same meal.

So, I would say basically, I would get salmon. I would get wild Alaskan salmon. And that's because salmon is one of the best sources of the marine omega-3 fatty acids. EPA and DHA, which are extremely important for health, particularly brain health, but even cardiovascular health. I mean, just there's just been so much emerging evidence showing that the omega-3 fatty acids are really important for brain health and for cardiovascular health.

Piece of watermelon.

That would be my protein. And it's also lowest in mercury. There's like four micrograms of mercury, sorry, two micrograms of mercury per four ounces cooked. so that's really low in mercury.

And cooked or raw fish?

Well, actually cooking it even lowers the mercury bioavailability even more. So definitely, and raw, you don't want to like, I think there's too much concern with parasites and all that. Yeah, I would say cooking.

Cooking meat. Okay, number two.

Number two, I would say I have to, and in fact, I always feel like I'm depriving myself and I'm kind of quoting my mentor here a little bit. if I don't have dark leafy greens with a meal, literally like every meal, I like to have dark leafy greens.

And.

I would say kale because I would also like to have my sulforaphane. And sulforaphane, it plays an important role in so many, there's just so many, so much evidence that sulforaphane, I think, may be important for longevity. But, so that would be my greens.

Kale.

And yeah, like maybe sauteed. Sauteed would be good. Because it's just, you can't really eat raw kale unless you put it in a smoothie.

So hard.

Exactly. Exactly.

Which I actually do. I drink my smoothie. I have blueberries. So maybe I would add the avocado. I'd have an avocado and some blueberries, a little cup of blueberries.

And that's it for your meal.

Yeah, that would be my, that would be my.

You'd have wild Alaskan salmon. dark leafy greens, sauteed kale, you'd have blueberries and avocado.

And avocado.

If you ate those four things every day, multiple times a day, if that's what you could only eat, you feel like it would set you up for good amount of success.

I do. I do.

Yes. Well, there's a lot of, so in kale, kale is probably one of the best sources of lutein and zeaxanthin, which are what are called carotenoids. And carotenoids, you're probably familiar with, and people listening or watching this are probably familiar with beta carotene. that's probably the most famous, that's like the poster child for carotenoids. Beta-carotene is a carotenoid, it has antioxidant activity itself, but it also can be converted into vitamin A. Lutein and zeaxanthine are really interesting because they accumulate in two regions, in the rods and cones in the eye, and they've been shown to play an important role in preventing age-related macular degeneration. But they've also really been shown to play an important role in the brain. And there's this accumulating evidence that this stuff is accumulating in the brain. And it really hasn't been known why. And the reason I say that is because lutein and zeaxanthin, because of their molecular structure, they're really good at basically sequestering singlet oxygen. And that plays a role in damaging the eyes, like when you're out in and the sun expose the sun and, you know, cataracts and things like that. So that that plays a role. And you're basically eye aging, quote unquote, right? But in the brain, there's no light. So why is this stuff accumulating in the brain? And there's just been quite a few studies over the past five years or so, maybe last seven years, correlating it with cognitive function and improved cognitive function and delayed brain aging.

So I end up.

And there's, like, studies, you know, correlating plasma levels of Ludine and Zeaxanthin with improved cognitive function. There's been randomized controlled trials supplementing with Ludine and Zeaxanthin improving cognitive function in elderly adults. It's always nice to have a randomized controlled trial because that really helps establish causation when you have these studies looking at associations. At the end of the day, it's an association and you never know it could be some other factor, right? Playing a role. Sure. So the lutein and zeaxanthin in kale, you've got some fiber, a little bit of fermentable fiber, you've got the sulforaphane, which has been shown to increase, it's been shown in human studies to increase glutathione in plasma and also in the brain, which is amazing. Glutathione is one of the major antioxidant systems in the body, and particularly in the brain. And I know we were kind of chatting before we got started, about your former life as a, what I didn't realize even existed was this arena football you called it. And it sounds like that TBI could be a big thing in arena football.

A lot of hits in the head, that's for sure. Right.

Well, glutathione is one of the major antioxidants in the brain and plays a very important role, particularly with any injury in the brain. So, sulforaphane increases glutathione. It increases the enzymes that make glutathione and use it and subsequently increases glutathione levels.

I saw some, maybe it was another doctor, I'm trying to figure out who said this, that there was some research actually potentially saying that kale was not good for you, that it had some negative side effects as well. I don't know if you've seen that.

Research or if that's just something. There's no research I've seen on that. I've heard it.

Okay.

But it, it, it's just, it's one of those things where people like to talk about potential antinutrients and One of the, what they're calling an anti-nutrient is actually sulforaphane because it can compete with iodine for transport into the thyroid. But there's been studies, so for human studies where they've loaded up with sulforaphane and there's been no effect on thyroid function, those were short-term, like a week-long studies. There have been long-term studies on animals that actually have hypothyroidism, they were given sulforaphane and believe it or not, actually they were given broccoli sprouts extract, which is one of the best things. I hear those are amazing.

Yes.

So broccoli sprouts have like 100 times more sulforaphane than mature broccoli. Well, anyway, so should we throw some.

Broccoli sprouts on top of the kale or the avocado?

The broccoli sprouts actually would, if I could add more, I would absolutely put the broccoli sprouts in there. Yes. But my point was that the animals that had hypothyroidism, it didn't make their hypothyroidism any worse at all. In fact, it helped the antioxidant status of their thyroid and improved some functions. So, I think that doesn't mean people with hypothyroidism shouldn't be weary or concerned about consuming too much sulforaphane, particularly if they're not getting iodine. Most people aren't iodine deficient. It's like in salt, you know, most people are eating foods that already have salt in them. Now, you know, iodine deficiency is not a big thing, particularly in the United States. But so I would say that.

Those.

Statements by some people that are kind of more into the camp of don't eat any plants aren't really- Not enough.

Research on it, yeah.

There's not. There may be, you might find one study with one case report with a female who had some crazy, small disease or something, and she was juicing, like, you know, un, just ungodly amounts of kale every day where it's like, I mean, okay, like, maybe there, maybe you can create a situation.

Sure, sure. Where, you know, there's not enough research backing it, though. Yeah, but, yeah. So I'm curious about this. You have some great points here. I love your five foods that we should be eating for every meal. Now, as a, I'm a 37 year old man, but I've got the I like to think curiosity and imagination of a seven-year-old. But I also have the palette of a seven-year-old. And I don't like blueberries. I don't like avocado. I'm the pickiest eater. I'm probably a pickier eater than your child. And I want to ask you for the picky eaters of the world who don't eat berries and don't like avocado or aren't creative enough to go that far. And they're limited in their creative thinking in terms of foods. Is it better to just have the supplementation, the vitamins and supplements that are the exact same nutrients and just take the supplements and vitamins as opposed to the actual food itself? Or is the organic, fresh caught food always better than the fish oil or the blueberry vitamin? What do you think about that?

Yeah, so I think that there's huge differences when you're talking about eating a food versus taking a supplement. I do think, for example, a multivitamin supplement is, I take it every day and I think it's great insurance to make sure because there are 40 essential micronutrients, which are vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids and amino acids we have to get from our diet. And they're important for not only helping us not die, for example, scurvy, but also for long-term function, for the way we age. preventing insidious damage. But there's also a variety of these compounds we don't know about. There's the fermentable fibers that are feeding the gut microbiome, which are making all these chemicals like little drug factories in our gut that are regulating the immune system. We've got polyphenols like blueberries have been shown in multiple clinical studies. It's been shown to increase blood flow to the brain and improve cognitive function and memory in both young adolescents, and older adults. And this was thought to be due to the anthocyanins and blueberries. And so there's, food has so many components, probably so many things we haven't even discovered yet. So many compounds that were just, there's this new compound that was discovered in dark leafy greens called sulforaphane or something, which has now been shown to have a specific purpose of feeding the gut microbiome, kind of like the fermentable fiber. So it's one of those things where you know, food has so much to it and there's so many parts to the story. It's not just about getting the vitamin, right? It's not just about getting that one mineral. So, and I will say that when I was a postdoc with Dr. Bruce Ames at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, there was a variety of clinical studies that I was a part of where my colleagues had designed this nutrient dense bar that had a variety of vitamins and minerals. It also had DHA, which is one of the marine omega-3 fatty acids found in fish. And it also had fiber, a fiber matrix. And there was a variety of studies that we were doing in obese and lean individuals.

So it was like the ultimate food bar. It was like everything you need in this bar.

It was like the micronutrient bar where you were giving the micronutrients, but you were delivering them with a food matrix, like fiber, right?

Yes.

And so there's all these benefits that were found from this bar that were particularly benefits found in people that were overweight or obese, that we didn't ask them to change their diet, they were eating their same diet, but you give them this bar on top of that and you would have improvements. You have improvements. And inflammation and HDL cholesterol, which is a good type of cholesterol. So you'd have all these improvements. But if you took away the food matrix, if you took away that food matrix and just had the bar without the fiber and just the micronutrients, some of those benefits would go away. But if you gave the fiber by itself, the benefits would go away. It was the whole package. It was everything together that was important. you know, with that said, I do think there is a place for supplementation. And, you know, particularly with fish oil, I think fish oil is, is one of those supplements that I, every day I take it, and I think that there's just mounting evidence that it's beneficial. I mean, high dose, it has to be in the right dose for some people. And it's, I mean, it's been shown to really lower triglycerides, for example. But again, there's conflicting studies. And a lot of times when you look at these clinical trials, it all has to do with dose, it has to do with were they taking a statin, for example, which can sort of mask some of the benefits. You know, there's all sorts of things that are complicated.

It complicates everything.

And then you get all this data and you're like, wait a minute, but yesterday it was not good for you.

Today it is. They know, right? How are you supposed to know? And there's so much information out there about medical news, about health news, nutrition news, supplement news. How do you know what to trust when there's just so much news out there about what's working and what's not working?

I mean, it's hard to know. It's hard for me to kind of sort through it. You know, then you add this layer of genetics that's also complicating, particularly with the randomized controlled trials. Like there's genes that people have where they actually need a higher dose of fish oil to have benefits, which is super interesting. There's also genes where people that get omega-3 from the plant source, because there's a plant form, alpha-linolenic acid, ALA, that from chia seeds or flax seeds or walnuts, they don't convert that ALA into the EPA and DHA very well. And those EPA and DHA are ultimately what are regulating everything that's important for health. So again, you have the genetics that comes into it. And this is also the case for studies on saturated fat. Genetics plays a role in that as well. So there's all sorts of-- there's so many factors. When designing a clinical trial, and I think the burden is on the researchers. The researchers have to come to a consensus and realize.

But then a decade later, they may come to a new consensus with new research where it's like we thought, I don't know, leafy greens were healthy, but now it's actually killing you, right? It's like, not that it's going to happen, but I'm just saying it seems like over decades, what scientists and researchers think sometimes is accurate, we find later evidence that it may not be 100% true.

That is true. That is true. But I think when you have overwhelming evidence in multiple fields and multiple areas, so you have the epidemiological evidence, you have the associative studies, you have the randomized control trials, where you start and you give someone something and then you measure an endpoint.

The double-blind placebo testing. Right.

And then you have the mechanistic studies where you start to look at how it's happening and you do these animal studies, you know, that together combined the whole, the whole, you know, comprehensive literature, I would say, is, is what really strengthens.

Yeah.

The matrix of studies. Right.

When everything starts to come and point to that direction.

Whether you want to be an endurance athlete or have endurance in your life or you want to on mass or you want to get lean or whatever it may be. You have a specific lifestyle that I've always been excited about. When you came in here, you were talking about how I have the same stand-up desk as you and I was like, Yes, if I'm doing something that Mark is doing, I feel like I'm doing it right. So I just want to dive into what this philosophy is and how you actually live.

Right.

So my main goal is to live awesome. That's the tagline. That's the motto of our company. Primal Blueprint, live awesome. And what does that mean? It means extracting the greatest amount of pleasure, enjoyment, contentment, fulfillment that's possible out of every possible moment. Now, there are going to be bad times, of course, but to live in the moment, to appreciate the now, to appreciate the relationships, to have fun when you're working out, to enjoy every single bite of food you ever eat and not choke something down just because it's healthy. So it really revolves around orchestrating a life way of pleasure, of hedonistic experiences in the context of this modern world that we have here, understanding that we sit here with hunter-gatherer genes that have certain proclivities and expectations of us that we can meet either through natural means or through artificial means. And sometimes there's not a right answer, but it's about choices. So how do I make choices that serve me in the short term that give me pleasure, that don't harm me in the long term. So it's sort of an overview of what we're up against here. But as you drill down, as you boil it down and distill it down to what does it look like, it looks like what are the types of foods that we choose to eat that turn on genes, that build muscle or burn fat? What are the types of, how much sun exposure do we get that allows us to make vitamin D and get tan, but not too much so we get burned? How much sleep do we get? that, and by the way, sleep is a very pleasurable thing if you are willing to acknowledge that. How much sleep do we get in a way that reinvigorates us and allows us to be creative on a daily basis and not brag about how well we do on so little sleep? So all these, how do we use our brain on a regular basis beyond just the rote stuff of checking the PDAs, but how do we do puzzles? Do we play games? Are we creative? Do we play musical instruments? Do we learn a language? How do we use our brain? All these things make the totality of the human experience. And I love to look at all the ways in which we can choose these behaviors that manifest themselves as pleasurable, enjoyable, providing contentment and fulfillment and build us toward a better human being.

When did you start to take this on? Because you were a was a triathlete.

Yeah, I was a marathoner in the, in the 70s. Wow. And actually the late 60s and early 70s.

Wow.

And, and from there went to Triathlon. I was always trying to, you know, improve my performance, optimize performance. Yes. Using the tools of the day, which are pretty rudimentary. It's like, all right, run a lot of miles and eat lots of carbohydrates, and you'll be, you'll be where you need to be. Well, you know, that's what that's what we knew, that's all we knew, and it wasn't exactly appropriate. So over the years, I got injured, I got sick from the over-training, from the diet, which was very highly inflammatory and caused pastas and breads or what?

All that stuff that they said you had to eat. I had so many pasta meals, pizza meals, lasagna meals the night before every game. And I remember just being so exhausted in every game. High school, college, pro, it was just like exhaustion.

Right.

Yawning.

I would yawn so much.

That's a classic symptom.

Why am I yawning?

Right.

I'm supposed to be excited about the game.

I wanted to take a nap.

I wanted to take a nap, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so we have these sort of old conventional wisdom technologies that we were using to improve performance, theoretically, and they weren't. So I basically ended my career early, prematurely. I was too injured to continue running. My health had suffered. I had arthritis and tendonitis and irritable bowel syndrome and I got sick a lot and I had heartburn and hemorrhoids and I was like a real wreck. I mean, here's theoretically the picture of health because of the training I was doing, but I was falling apart on the inside. So I sort of rededicated my life to figuring out how I could be fit and strong and lean and happy and healthy at the same time without being overly, without too much struggle and sacrifice and suffering. Is there an easy way, an easier way to be all those things I wanted to be that allowed me to have more pleasure in the moment and didn't sacrifice my long-term health? So that was the big shift in me. And it's been going on for 35 years and it continues to go on. So as soon as I made that shift, I started doing the research. I mean, I wrote my first book in '82 on how to train for triathlons. And even then, I was calling upon evolution as the main basis for how we train. And I was looking at the previous few years of triathletes, because in '82 there hadn't even been a decade of triathlon training. But I already recognized that we were doing it wrong. We were training too hard. we were... Too many miles, too many... Too many miles, too much redlining the heart and the body, and there was a better way and an easier way to do it. So I started recognizing that back in '82, and then even up until three years ago, when I started researching the Primal Endurance book, I started thinking, well, you know, all of the science continues to show us that the old choice was probably a wrong choice. That reliance on carbohydrates and that intent of managing our glycogen stores in our muscles was kind of the wrong approach. And maybe we ought to come at it from the exact opposite end of the spectrum, which is how do we become really good at burning fat and in so doing spare glycogen and in so doing unburden ourselves of having to take in so much carbohydrate in the form of pasta and breads and cereals and rice and crackers and cookies and.

All the other stuff. Sure, sure. And you're 62, right?

Yeah.

Right. And you're like leaner than anyone I know. So how, what's the most effective way to burn fat?

So still be strong? Yeah, of course. You know, as we said initially in the Primal Blueprint, and I've said it decades before I wrote the Primal Blueprint, 80% of your body composition is determined by how you eat. So if you, there's a certain way in which you can eat where you can literally reprogram your genes to derive most of your energy from your stored body fat.

Really?

Yes. So, as opposed to waking up, being hungry, having breakfast, being hungry at the 10:30 break, being hungry for lunch, having a snack in the afternoon, having a dinner, and having a snack before you go to bed, which is the sort of standard American approach, like even the old bodybuilders would say, Don't go more than three hours without eating, or you will cannibalize your muscle tissue. That was all based on an assumption that we had to burn carbohydrate and had to access glucose and glycogen for the muscles to be able to continue to work. It never contemplated that we are obligate fat burners. We are born with this amazing ability to extract calories from stored body fat. And the reason that we don't as we go through life, as we present our, you know, you're two years old, you're eating cookies and crackers and mushed peas.

All that stuff.

And so your body learns to depend on glucose, on carbohydrates as a source of energy. It never really gets to the point where you force it to burn fat. So what we do is we shift the diet around. It's not painful. You get rid of the breads, the pastas, the cereals, the crackers, the cookies, the candies, the sweet and soft drinks. Well, it does sound kind of obvious, doesn't it? But what you're left with is meat, fish, fowl, eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables, a little bit of fruit, some starchy tubers like sweet potatoes, things like that. Those are great tasting foods if you eat them right. And they're real food. And they're real food. And you can use butter and lard and you can eat bacon on this program. And what it does is it reduces the amount of simple sugars and carbohydrates you take in and just sort of forces gently, forces your body to upregulate all the enzyme systems that access stored body fat and burn it. and allow you to have more energy throughout the day without having to eat so often. So the first thing that happens is your appetite self-regulates. So now you get into this space where you become a good fat burner. You start to melt away. You're not as hungry because you're not as hungry because you're always carrying around a meal. It's on your thighs, it's on your ass, it's on your belly, wherever it is. It's, you know, that's your body becomes so adept at accessing those stored calories It says, I don't need to eat. I'm really not that hungry. Wow.

Yeah. And that's so empowering for so many people. But when you, you know, I was a, still love sugar. But I used to be really bad at sugar. I feel like I have much more under control. But I feel like when you're eating a lot of candy, sweets and sugar, you're never satisfied. You just want to eat more and more and more.

But that's, until you're sick. No, exactly. Oh, I'm full because I'm sick now.

Yeah.

I mean, I've got the stories of.

Lamar Odom eating four pounds of candy.

Four games? Four games or whatever.

Crazy.

Yeah, but I mean, we are, look.

We'Re all hired up. Look where he's at now.

It's like, we're all, but by the way, sugar is a very addictive substance. It's so addictive. So, you know, we're all hardwired to seek out sweet things. That's part of that hunter-gatherer DNA that we all carry. Really. It hasn't changed in thousands of years. So how do we shift our minds? So you, the first way you do it is you go from the craving, which is what you're talking about, like you crave sugar, so you eat sugar, and then that just promotes more craving and it gets you into this sort of addictive cycle. You're actually producing sort of opiate-like substances that are occupying receptor sites that are giving you sort of a feel-good experience. So you got to kind of be willing to get rid of that. So you get rid of the candies, you get rid of the sweetened beverages, the soft drinks and teas, and you get rid of the carbohydrates that, not all carbs, but the breads that convert to glucose in the bloodstream so rapidly. So now you've lowered your blood, your glucose experience on a daily basis. So now the brain is starting to get, yeah, I don't need to really get that much glucose. You know, I can, the body is burning more fat. As a result of you being able to burn fat, you create these byproducts called ketones, which the brain loves to burn ketones and burns them preferentially. So you need less and less sugar to, you know, maintain clarity throughout the day. If you haven't become fat adapted and you're a sugar burner, which is what we, it's not a derogatory term, but we use a term to describe people who haven't become fat burners yet, they're sugar burners. If you don't eat, it's true, if you don't eat for a couple of hours, your blood sugar dips because you haven't learned how to burn fat yet, you don't know how to access it, you can't take it out of storage and burn it, so now the blood.

Sugar is low, the brain goes, I.

Gotta go get some more glucose, I gotta get energy somewhere. Sugar or something. Sugar or something, so you have the bagel at 10:30 in the morning. Oh gosh. Or you have, Tastes amazing.

Well, for an hour and then it's... No, exactly.

But then you're hungry again and that's this vicious cycle. So if we can take the steps, we say it takes 21 days. That's why I have a book called the 21-Day Total Body Transformation. 21 days of this cutting these sugars and starchy, not starchy but simple carbohydrates out of your diet and just focusing on healthy fats and lean proteins and and vegetables. Your body gets the message and says, I'm not going to be getting that much glucose. I'm going to learn how to burn fat and I'm going to do it well, damn it. And then it takes the fat out of your body fat stores. So over time, you lose a pound, two pounds a week, and you trend toward your ideal body composition. So all of this is a 10-minute long-winded answer to your question of what does it take to to burn fat, it doesn't take a lot of exercise. It mostly takes the dietary shift. Yeah, you got to do some exercise. You don't have to do anything, but you can choose to do some exercise. It'll help accelerate. It'll help accelerate it a little bit, but most of it happens as a.

Result of the shifts you make in your diet. Absolutely.

It's all in the kitchen.

Yep. So you can get abs in the kitchen and not do anything different working out. Absolutely. Okay, so what's the difference between, because it sounds like a little paleo-ish.

What's the difference between primal paleo and a bulletproof, which has kind of been picking up up as well. You know, they're all sort of versions of a similar theme, which is to cut the sugars way down, cut the processed carbohydrates way down, get rid of the industrial seed oils, so that would be the soybean oil, the corn oil, the canola, which are causing inflammatory responses in a lot of people, and just kind of go to real food. With the Primal Blueprint, we said at some point, you know, dairy, if you like it, why not? include it in your diet if you don't have an issue with it.

I love it.

But all these foods exist on a spectrum. So dairy, there's raw milk, which is good for you. There's A2 protein, which is a form of casein. We could have a whole discussion about the different types of cows and the different types of protein that they make. But on the far end of the spectrum, the good end, there's butter, there's cream, there's all these things. At the other end, at the bad end, there's 2% skim, homogenized, pasteurized, non-fat whatever, stay away from that stuff. So all these foods sort of exist on the spectrum, so cheeses for instance, part of the dairy family. I love cheese.

I love cheese.

So we include it in our eating strategy because we say there's no real reason not to. Paleo, yeah, exactly, artisanal cheeses and there's good and bad cheeses as well. But on the Paleo program or the Paleo strategy is pretty strict for a lot of people. So they would say no dairy at all. of any kind. So no milk, no butter, no cream, no cheese. So that's, you know, there are little variations in this here.

But mostly whole foods.

Mostly whole foods is what we're all looking at. I mean, even if you look at a vegan experience these days or a vegetarian experience, it's really these dietary programs work largely as a result of what you eliminate, not what you're eating. So if you eliminate the crap, and you're left, even if you're only eating vegetables as long as you're getting enough protein, you should be fine.

If I'm coming down with a scratchy throat or something, I'll take 150,000 international units of vitamin D3.

How many capsules is that?

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?

It 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, the 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 could store as fat to make it through the winter when times are 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 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 these 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. 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 to 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 it. 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.

It'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. A polyphenol in 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. You 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. So if you want to call me a fat head, you know, I will tag you.

Yeah, 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.

Wow.

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. 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 kind of want to stay away from it.

Ah, sugarfish is amazing though. And it's got the grains too.

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

What I try to get people to do, and again, I measure this every three months in all my patients, and we're talking thousands and thousands of patients over the last 20 years, you wanna 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.

Right, right, right.

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, a thousand 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 got to have polyphenols in your diet. So, what the heck is a polyphenol? How do you remember polyphenol? Think about polywannaphenol. Okay. Phenols are plant compounds, polyphenols are plant compounds that plants use primarily to protect themselves against stress and sunlight.

Uh-huh.

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.

Yeah, 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, by the way, and it's in the book. So olives, for instance, are loaded with polyphenols and olives that are stressed Produce better. They are even better.

Wow.

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 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 four 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 gonna 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 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 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.

Yeah, you know, and 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 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 Ocean Front Property in Palm Springs. I'm happy to sell them.

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?

Or telomeres.

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

So that is one theory of longevity. And it is 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 if you like that theory?

There you go.

So that's vitamin D is... Vitamin D. It's... 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 always. 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 know, 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? Yeah.

The fasting mimicking.

I've taken that a couple of times.

And I, you know, 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 at least.

Now, in the book, I wrote about 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. You, 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, 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're not out of here, you die. And so it gets the fittest of the fittest to survive.

It 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 Sezynessence 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 makes you sick.

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've got some great recipes. It's easy to do and you do it five days in a row. 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. 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 crazy things. 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 six to eight o'clock at night. So 22 hour, 24 hours, I'm fasting.

For how long?

For six months.

Six months you do that?

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Now why do that? Because way back when...

Were you just drinking olive oil and vitamin D all day?

No, during the night, during that evening. -You're talking about 2 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 so young.

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

What should we be doing on a daily basis?

We've got to focus on a couple of things. One is that you have to know the truth and not a truth that was paid for. Because those truths, those aren't truths. Not in chronic illness. The truths that have been paid for, so someone says, oh, here's the truth about this illness, or here's the truth about Lyme, or here's the truth truth about, no, any truth has been paid for for that. That's not the ones you go with. Here's the truth. Truth is we have pathogens, we have toxic heavy metals, and we have to learn about the foods that feed these pathogens. And we have to learn how to remove these pathogens, kill them off. We have to learn how to remove toxic heavy metals out of our system, and we have to learn how to use foods as medicine to do it. But when everybody's playing guessing games, because they're removing gluten but they don't know why they should, they'll end up eating gluten again because they don't know why they should even really remove it anyway.

So what does Spirit of Compassion tell you are the three to five things that you should never eat? Or eat very limited amounts, like once a year?

The number one thing? is eggs.

Don't eat eggs.

Don't eat eggs. What? Because the pathogens.

Oh, no. The virus.

I love eggs. Look, take shingles virus for one. Spirit of compassion has taught me about what that virus does, right? As far as what symptoms it creates. The shingles virus, and science research doesn't know this, it creates trigeminal neuralgia. That's what it creates. So the shingles, you don't even have to have a rash anywhere in your body. You can have gum pain. jAw pain, neck pain, ear pain, head pain on the side of the head. You can have body pain, you can have all the shingles can do all of this, right? It can make your gums feel like they're burning. It can make your face feel like it's on fire. It can cause all these different things. And the shingles virus feeds off of eggs. So when you're eating eggs every single day, you're eventually going to get the shingles virus if you have it. because everybody has the shingles virus in their system.

Most everybody has one.

It's gotta be heightened. It's gotta be heightened. It's gotta be elevated. Maybe you had an emotional experience that knocked you down really good. Maybe your immune system has been down because you're zinc deficient. That's a huge thing. That's why I'm always recommending zinc. And then you're eating eggs all day.

Not all day. Some people eat them all day.

But you eat eggs every day. Three, four times. That's the first food. Here's the thing. So eliminate it. Never eat eggs or have them once in a while. There's a big part of, there's a big part of big pharma that's really dark that people are unaware of, okay? That dark part of big pharma is 80-90 years ago, they raised these viruses in labs using eggs as the virus's food. That's how it's done.

Okay.

So, you got your fibromyalgia, you got your autoimmune diagnosis, you got your chronic fatigue syndrome, your multiple sclerosis, you got your Hashimoto's thyroiditis, your eczema psoriasis, your rheumatoid arthritis or whatever you got going on, your Lyme disease now, because that's an autoimmune now, you got all these things. From eggs. No, the bugs that create all these illnesses were raised in labs and somehow escaped those labs 80, 90, 60 years ago. And because, and these bugs were raised on eggs. Eggs was the food. So they You took a really great survival food, right? You like eggs.

Yeah, I love them.

You love them, right? Great survival food. They're easy, you make them in the morning. You know, you just prime them. The protein. Yeah, the protein, right? All of that, they took that food, they ruined it for us.

So, that's one example, stay away from eggs. All eggs, even if they're like your.

Own chickens, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Look, if they're your own chickens, it's great. If they're organic, great. free range, great. All that's great. It's better, but it's still gonna feed if you look, if you don't have a chronic symptom, you don't have a chronic illness, you feel great, nothing's going on at any level. Eat the eggs. Eat the eggs. And then if something comes up down.

The road, get rid of the eggs. Okay, so that's number one.

What's the next food we should never eat?

Dairy products. All dairy. Feeds viruses. It feeds the bugs. Feeds the bugs. Goat's milk, sheep's milk, Milk, whatever you want. It just, it feeds, yeah. Kefir, just, it feeds the bugs. Okay. Yeah, milk, cheese, butter, a whole bit. So butter? Yeah.

Come on, man.

So get the butter out of your coffee. That's the worst thing you could do if you're sick.

Even ghee?

Yeah. Ghee is bad.

Yeah, it's not gonna be good. The thing is-- Again, if you're not feeling any symptoms. None of this stuff is really bad if you don't have any of the symptoms. symptoms. If you're not dealing with all the pathogens everybody has, if you're not dealing with the streptococcus and the different groups of strep that everybody has in their system, and if you're not dealing with the different Epstein-Barrs and all of them, if you're not, I mean, if you're not dealing with anything, then you could probably get away with this stuff and you can eat it. Is it bad for you in other ways? Some of it could be, maybe, you know, whatever. And of course, you could always find a paid for study that says eggs are good or this milk or that's organic. Of course, you can always find a paid-for study. But that paid-for study and everything else around it all, nobody knows why women and men and children are suffering like they are with the heart arrhythmias that are mysterious and the heart palpitations and all the different body pain and the migraines and the tingles and numbness and the ticks and the spasms. Nobody knows how any of that and the fatigue, nobody knows what's going on or causing all of that. So then, hey, wait a minute, but there was a paid for study saying that eggs are really good for me. And my doctor recommended them because it's a great protein source. Let me just eat them and then try to do my keto diet with eggs. Let me try to do this diet, maybe stay away from gluten. But in the end, and I have total respect for everybody that's trying to experiment. And you'll see it on YouTube too. You'll see like a few years ago, people being like, okay, I'm doing this. and then all of a sudden they're getting sick. Like it's showcasing now because we have a documented record we never had before with people with symptoms. It's showcasing things now like on social media. We're seeing it now where someone's like, okay, I'm loving my eggs. I'm doing it for like, you know, a year or whatever. And then a year later, you know, they're getting eczema and psoriasis and they don't know why. It's like things are, we're seeing it now when we never even you couldn't see it before, because, you know, social media is showcasing this documentation of everything in people's lives.

Okay, so we got no eggs, no dairy.

What else? Okay, those are, those, these are the basics.

Those are the two big ones.

If you eliminate that, you should be.

Yeah.

And gluten's your third basic.

That's your third. Those three.

So anything that tastes good, eliminate. Whether you want to stay animal protein, whether you want to be vegan and stay vegan and plant-based, that's what you get rid of, whether you're, you know, gluten, dairy, eggs. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. But you're saying meat is okay or plant-based is okay, or what's the ideal. Well, meat. Here's the spirit.

I should tell you here that you should be. I'm a big supporter.

Plant-based huge supporter. Okay.

It's Spirit of Compassion. A big supporter. Absolutely. Okay. Plant-based one. I mean, total big supporter. Okay. But I'm not, I'm not anti the animal product crowd and what they're doing because I'm not against meat either. And I think it gets the plant pro, the plant based people mad at me that are, that love me. They're like, wait a minute, he's not against him. How come he's not against him? How come he's not fighting for staying away from, you know, animal products and stuff? Because the animal products, like, say, meat, right, doesn't feed a pathogen so it doesn't lead a pathogen. So, I can't take personal, I can't take it personally. You know, personally, I like plant-based, you know, better, like on a personal level, but I have nothing against animal protein. Here's how it works. Like years ago when I used to do all the readings, I worked on one-on-one individuals, 250,000 individuals for the last 35 years.

People would come into your office, you would do a reading with them.

Yeah, and it doesn't matter if I like an animal product or not. It's not about what I like, it's about what is going on inside the body. So, Spirit of Compassion will be like, this person has this, so they need to get rid of this food. So, this person has, for example, an HHV-6 cytomegalovirus or Epstein-Barr or they got a streptococcus and everybody's walking around with these Bugs by the way. And yeah, oh yeah, they are. It's just, it's really, it's unbelievable. And so Spirit will say, you have to remove this food. So it's not a personal thing where I have to all of a sudden pick a side.

Just black and white.

I get it.

Everybody's trying to get on somebody's team with the diet or a program that's working for them and then they stay with it and they try it and then they go against the other side, right? You see? see it. Everybody's trying to get on somebody's team. That's human nature. That's the way we are. But I can't do that. I can't get on just the plant-based team because I know through Spirit of Compassion that meat won't feed a virus.

There you go.

Dairy will. So then I'm like, no, both sides. Well, of course, vegans aren't going to do dairy, but both sides might do gluten.

Yeah.

But they may want to do dairy someday. you want. I mean, a lot of vegans break and they go on to cheese or they go on to something. It's like, but if they know, no, wait a minute, this feeds this. The same thing with people that are eating animal protein, stay away from dairy so you're not feeding your pathogens to keep your, your Hashimoto's going and to keep your, you know, fibromyalgia going and your chronic fatigue syndrome going.

So it's really important. I can't take a belief system.

Like, I can't side up with a belief system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So those are the three main things. Is there anything else that we should be And then it's about taking out the toxic heavy metals, taking out the mercury, aluminum, the copper. Yeah, look.

Is that fish or is that...

If you don't have a lot of metals, you probably eat fish. You could have sardines, you could have trout, you could have salmon, you could have fish. If you're not dealing with a lot of metals, but if you've got symptoms and you're dealing with issues and you're.

Struggling, yeah, keep More toxic metals in the fish.

Keep the extra metals out. Exactly. Keep them out. It's important. But getting the metals out of the body, bringing in this, if I can give tips to anybody out there watching this podcast, it's get on the celery juice.

Why does celery juice have more benefits than water? Why does it help you cleanse the toxins, I guess?

It's herbal medicine. It's an herb. it was missed by everybody. Everybody thought it was just good for crudité, right? Or maybe throw a celery stick in somebody's smoothie or juice or something if it's kicking around. And Spirit of Compassion has taught me going all the way since I was a child that it's a miracle medicine. Really? Yeah. Because it's an herbal medicine and has power that people don't know about, just like so many other foods have power. But this one particularly, it has a sodium cluster salts, so something called sodium cluster salts. That's a pathogen killer. That's different than salt. It's different than sea salt or anything else. But it's a pathogen destroyer. It starts to break down the membrane that's around the pathogen. The virus has a sheath around it, its cell sheath. And the sodium cluster salts and celery juice start to wear it down and break it down. And that's just one thing. I mean, celery juice binds onto it binds onto byproduct that people have in their body. So, toxins from pathogens, it binds onto it and pulls it out of their body. So, that's just a couple of things. I could go and I wrote a book all about it.

I mean, those are just a couple of things. Okay, so celery juice being one, what.

Else should we be adding? Get the heavy metal detox, the medical medium heavy metal detox smoothie in you so you can remove the metals. so if you're somebody with eczema or psoriasis or lichen sclerosis, you're somebody, any kind of like skin problem of any kind rosacea, vitiligo, acne, metals out. Yeah, sure, definitely. It even helps with that because streptococcus causes severe cystic acne and that's what's behind that. And it does feed on metals too a little bit. But what happens is that you want to get the metals out. Celery root helps to flush the metals out once you've loosened them up with the heavy metal detox smoothie. So you want the medical medium heavy metal detox smoothie to pull that stuff out. That's one example. And these are just a couple of things you can do. Get rid of your gluten, get rid.

Of your eggs, get rid of your dairy, whatever side of the aisle you're.

On, whatever belief system you're in.

Plant-based, you're in.

Just get rid of those things and add celery juice in the smoothie. And you should be healing yourself a lot. You're moving forward. And then of course, there's a bunch of other stuff you can do and there's tons of information that I talk about all the time adding to all of this but those are some starting points if someone's just going to listen to this and then just be like, well, what do we get started here?

Yeah, you want to learn about the key foods you need to eat to master your health. Make sure to watch this video right here.

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. Get some mushrooms.