HEALTHY FOODS That Heal The Body, Starve Cancer & PREVENT DISEASE! | Dr. William Li & Lewis Howes

Things that used to be like instant foods. Gotta be really careful about that because if you take a look at the packaging and I'm telling you, there's one thing your viewers can get from me about things to watch out for.

I think you gotta have a dream. The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes. You share a lot of science behind how we can beat cancer and other diseases by changing our diet, but it doesn't seem possible for most of the population to be think about that. So how is this possible?

Yeah, well, you know, first of all, thanks for having me on. I love talking about the, the making the impossible possible. And usually, first of all, you just have to kind of think through what your goals are. And so I'll explain sort of what my goals were when I got into this whole thing. So I'm a medical doctor. I'm trained as an internal medicine doc. and that means that I take care of men and women, young and old, healthy and sick. And one of the things that I trained myself more or less to do is a little bit different than how most medical doctors think, which is, you know, we're trained to diagnose disease, chase it with drugs, and keep chasing with drugs. Right. So my view has always been we start healthy. every now and then we get sick. But the real question is how can we actually get back to health and how do we prevent getting sick in the first place? So, a little bit of a different orientation. And my goal has always been to keep health, protect health, or to get you back to health. I'm also a researcher.

As a medical doctor, you're not what I've been told is you're not taught about nutrition and actually teaching how to eat properly to reverse disease or to prevent disease, I should say. So, how come you seem to be one of the few that have tried who've gone outside of the box to say, hey, listen, we're not going to just pump everyone with drugs and put a band-aid on something, we're going to get to the root cause.

Yeah, well, so here's a little bit of the kind of the under the skirt truth about this. Medical schools teach medical students that usually get less than one month worth of nutrition education in an entire four years, and then it never gets revisited throughout your entire career. And in fact, nutrition, when I went to medical school, was kind of dismissed as something that dieticians actually did. And when I trained in the hospital, now, I trained at Massachusetts General Hospital. It's one of the Harvard teaching hospitals. Okay, so I can run a COVID unit, I could run an emergency room, not a problem. But what I realized after many years of taking care of patients is that when my patients would ask me, Hey, Doc, what should I do for myself? I realized I was never taught that answer. So I thought that was wrong. Now, my background as a researcher actually comes into play in terms of how I got into this whole field because I'm what you call a vascular biologist. So that really means that I study the science of blood vessels. Blood vessels are important because we've got 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels packed inside our body. So you can imagine how important this network actually is. It delivers every bit of oxygen we breathe and all the nutrition we eat that goes through the bloodstream. You need the circulation to bring it to every cell and every organ. So that's what I studied, my science. So when I actually started almost 30 years ago, in medicine, my goal was to figure out how could we actually first conquer diseases. So I went into the biotech area and we tried to figure out common denominators of disease. And it comes back to food because food is one of those common solutions. But common denominators of disease actually means when you take a look at how we do research on Alzheimer's and diabetes, and obesity and aging and heart disease and cancer. These are vertical silos. They're about an inch wide and a mile deep. And you get specialists that actually come in and they're really knowledgeable about what makes one disease different from another. And I thought, look, you know, we should actually look at what makes diseases the same. So if you drain the Pacific, you get to figure out how the islands are connected, right? And so that's what I was interested in because I figured if you could figure out the common denominators of a disease, then you had a shot at pulling the bow back and sending a single arrow through multiple diseases. Now, I looked at angiogenesis, which is how the body grows blood vessels, that's my area, as one of those common denominators. And we were right. So I run the angiogenesis foundation. We figured out that when the body loses its control over its circulation, either you don't have enough blood vessels and wounds don't heal, or you have too many blood vessels and you either go blind or cancers grow. And so through biotechnology over a couple of decades, I actually have been involved with developing 41 FDA approved new treatments for cancer, diabetes, and prevent blindness, prevention of blindness. Okay. So that's my street cred. So when somebody basically says, oh, how'd you get into nutrition? Are you one of those doctors that don't believe in modern medicine? And I basically said, no, I actually develop modern medicines. What I realized when I was actually working with my patients is that although we can actually come up with better, more sophisticated, more higher tech treatments for diseases these days, the fact of the matter is we should be preventing disease in the first place. And when you're talking about prevention, you can't talk about drugs, you got to talk about something like food, and when I thought about it, and this is how I got into nutrition, I realized I wasn't taught about it, but I did have the skill set of actually having developed drugs and having invented many of the systems that drugs are being, are tested in. You know what? Why don't we just throw some food into those systems and see what happens? And so for me, I'm one of those people that actually not just says food as medicine, but I actually study food as medicine. That's how I got here.

Okay, very cool. So, what are the, I mean, so it is possible through food to beat cancer and diseases? And, is that what I'm hearing you say?

Well, here's basically what I actually learned myself is that when it comes to food and health, food is actually a medicine that we all take three times a day, right? We try not to take prescription meds whenever we can avoid. And even if you write prescription meds, you don't want to be taking them forever. But food is something that you take three times a day from the time we're born to our very last breath. And when it comes to food and health, there is, it's not just about the food. It's actually about how our body responds to what we put inside it. So that's the real kind of underlying secret. If you feed your body something that's not good for it, it's going to it's going to react poorly, not going to be good for you. If you feed your body something that is good for it, it's going to activate its health defenses. And that's what I write about in my book, Eat to Beat Diseases. How does a body actually maintain its health? And then what can we eat to help the body do it better?

Interesting. So, I mean, what are the key things we should be knowing about the body? Are all bodies the same when it comes to how foods I guess, are consumed and assimilated through the body and the bloodstream and all these different things? Or is everybody different where some nutritional foods might impact positively but negatively in other bodies? What should we be knowing about the body?

Yeah, it's a great question. And first of all, I'm a scientist, so I will tell you how you can tell that I'm a scientist is that real scientists tell you we don't know everything, okay? And it's the kind of humility that we have to start with because so often you think about, you know, scientists being very smart in things. Real scientists spend their time talking about what we don't know, not what we do know. But you're asking me what we do know. Alright, so I'll give you that answer. Look, our bodies are hardwired to be healthy. So when we're growing in our mom's womb, our body as we're forming our bones and our heart and our organs and our limbs, inside the form of the human that's being created are these health defenses. So you think about the body like a fortress. You know, you've seen a bit. We all seen in a medieval Fortress, a castle, right? And basically, like, it's a happy Community that lives inside there. You got a king, you got a queen, you got a princess, you got everything else going inside there. But that Fortress has got to protect itself, so it's designed to repel enemies. It's got a moat. It's got a drawbridge. It's got the little slits you throw, you fire arrows out of. It's got sloping walls, so enemies can't crawl up. It's got traps. And by the way, you know, like a medieval fort, the thing that I never realized having been to quite a few castles is that when you go into the entrance, there is a hole right above you, and it's called a murder hole. And it's basically if the, if people breach the, the drawbridge, They would just drop rocks, boulders down through that hole. All right. So the body is designed better than a medieval castle. We've got our own defense systems and there's five of them that I know about and I helped to kind of put together this picture partly because I studied the biotechnology. How do you actually treat diseases using these systems? And when you forget about the disease part and you think about the health part, these are the systems, these five systems that maintain our health. So I'll tell you what they are.

Okay.

First health defense system is called angiogenesis. That's what I study. Blood vessels, a 60,000 mile channel that delivers oxygen and nutrients everywhere. Got to have enough of them or our body is in trouble. Second.

Angiogenesis. This is the channel of blood vessels.

This is how the body grows blood vessels. It is a whole system of growth. When we have just the right amount of blood vessels, our body is healthy. Now, are you going to go to work out? All right? You're gonna pump some iron, your muscles gotta grow. Now you need a few more blood vessels. All right? If you skin your knee and fall off a bike, you gotta heal that wound. Underneath that scab, you got new blood vessels growing to heal. Now, the body never lets too many blood vessels to grow or causes problems. For example, Cancers are forming in all of our bodies because we're filled with these dividing cells and some of them make mistakes. But a microscopic cancer is completely harmless because it doesn't have a blood supply. And so our body prevents cancers from growing naturally by controlling the angiogenesis. So we just got enough for our good cells, not enough for the bad cells. So that's one of our health defenses. and there are treatments, including ones that I helped to develop, that can cut off the blood supply to cancer by cutting off it, by starving it. So that's called anti-angiogenic therapy. And the same treat, same approach has been used to prevent blindness. All right, so you don't have blood vessels leaking in the eye. However, turns out that sometimes your body needs a little help. So now you can actually use Foods to actually amp up your body's Angiogenesis defenses. So that's just one of the defenses.

Okay, that's the first one. What's the second one?

All right. Second one is our stem cells, right? So when we were kids, Louis, you know, like our grade school teachers told us, Salmon Redders can regenerate, starfish can regenerate, but people can't regenerate, right?

You lose your hand, it's not going to grow back.

Well, it turns out that people do regenerate. We can't regenerate that quickly. and we regenerate from the inside out, like a lizard can regenerate like a limb or tail, but we regenerate our organs continuously. Our lung regenerates, our liver regenerates. Okay? The lining of our mouth regenerates. If you've ever eaten a chip, all right, and scratched the inside of your mouth and it hurts, next day all fixed, right? Because of regeneration. All right, now here's the thing. It turns out that the way we naturally regenerate is through stem cells. Not the kind you go to a strip mall to have injected into your knee, but this is the kind that we're born with. Because you know, like when you and I were like sperm and egg meeting in our mom's womb and dividing, that's what we were. These are stem cells. We were all formed from these primitive cells that could be anything. It could be an eye, it could be a nose, it could be a heart. And they formed our whole body and there's always some overage. Okay? And so you have more than you need to form into a person. And when we're born, about 750 million stem cells are left over and they are packed up in a suitcase and stuffed into our bone marrow. All right? And so when we're born, even a little baby inside their bone marrow in this hollow of their bones, are 750 million stem cells and they are stored there like bullets in a bandolier waiting for when they're needed so that when we grow up and we need to be regenerated, you have too much to drink. Now your liver needs to be regenerated. You cut yourself, now you need to actually heal that wound. These stem cells come flying out of our bone marrow like bees out of a hive.

Wow.

To regenerate us, renew us from the inside out. and there are biotech efforts that I've been a part of to try to grow new heart, grow new brain, regenerate nerves. Not ready for prime time yet, but it turns out that foods can coax these stem cells out of our bone marrow so we regenerate faster.

Huh, which foods? This is the second one, but I'm curious, which foods can help us?

There are a number of them. I'll give you one right from the get-go, is Dark chocolate.

Oh, you're speaking my language now. Okay. Dark chocolate. Can you eat too much dark chocolate? That's the question.

You know, I have never seen anything about an overdose of cacao, but I will tell you that cacao has been shown to actually double the number of stem cells flowing in your bloodstream just by having two cups of hot chocolate made with 80% high flavanol chocolate.

Dark chocolate.

Come on. Yeah, that's been done in people, 60 year olds with heart disease.

So, wait, what happens when you drink or you eat this dark chocolate?

Okay.

What happens?

Yeah, the polyphenols in this dark chocolate that we know what they are, they're called proanthocyanidins. So, I'm a scientist. So, my job is to actually know what the inside chemicals actually are. These are natural chemicals, all right? Most people don't need to know that, but you drink it and it tastes good. That's all you need to know. But I'll tell you, these natural chemicals found in cacao actually trigger a reaction in your body so that they call out the stem cells. So it is literally like bees flying out of a hive, can double the number of stem cells. And what's the practical impact? Well, there was a study done at UCSF in San Francisco that looked at 60-year-old men with heart disease. So these are people whose blood vessels were already not doing so well, and their blood flow wasn't going so well either, and their blood vessels were kind of sick. That's kind of the definition of heart disease. By having the stem cells coming out, they were able to actually double the resiliency, the function of their blood vessels. So they got better rebound, better agility. Their blood vessels are in better shape because their stem cells are regenerating their circulation. Wow. So this is human studies, right? Like most of the time you hear about scientists talking about rats or mice or cells, I'm talking about human studies. And that's kind of where we are with food is medicine. It's not the kind of like the guesswork. Like we can do serious research to get down to exactly what's actually happening at the human level. So that's the second health defense systems.

Okay, third one.

Third one is our gut microbiome. Now, people have been talking about gut health and microbiome. It's almost like a buzzword these days. And people are saying, well, we can actually scoop your poop and we can actually measure your microbiome and we can tell you what you need to eat and what you don't need to eat. Again, I'm a scientist, so I will tell you that There are 39 trillion bacteria in the typical body. That's more stars than in a night sky. All right. So we barely understand the gut bacteria. But what we do know is that this gut bacteria actually controls our metabolism, communicates with our brain, actually can help us heal from the inside out. And very importantly, our gut bacteria basically lives. If you think of your gut like a garden hose, it's a tube, and you were to cut a garden hose in half, and you look inside it, there's a lining, okay? The bacteria is inside the hose, but inside the wall of the garden hose, that's where your immune system, 70% of our immune system lives inside our gut. So our gut bacteria.

70%?

Yeah.

So if you're feeding your gut a lot of bad foods, it's probably- you-'re.

Poisoning your immune system. You're preventing your gut bacteria. Now, I'll tell you what's interesting about the gut bacteria. Your gut bacteria talks to the immune system right through the walls of your gut. Immune system's in there, 70%, right? Like a jelly roll, like the jelly in a jelly roll, the gut bacteria is inside. So think about like a college student in a freshman dorm, they are talking to their a roommate by pounding on the wall, right? What do you want? What kind of pizza do you want? All right? And they can answer you. And that's basically what our gut bacteria says to our immune system. So we've got to keep that gut healthy. By the way, interestingly, and I've done research on this, certain gut bacteria can actually signal to your brain, it's a gut-brain axis, and cause your brain to release social hormones. Wow. Okay. And can affect your mood. So, you know, when you've got a crappy gut and you feel crummy in your gut, I guarantee you, like, it's not just because you're irritated, it's affecting your brain as well.

So, yeah, we had, we had Dr. Emeran Mayer on. He always got the gut, I think it's the gut brain connection or the gut immune connection or something like that. So he's, he's got a lot of great research on that.

Yeah, so well the key thing though is that foods can actually help right size your gut health. Think of it like an ecosystem, the Great Barrier Reef. So certain foods can support the ecology, the ecosystem, the Great Barrier Reef, and certain ones actually kill the coral, all right? And so continuously want to keep it in good shape all the way through our lives. And by the way, even conditions like autism, Alzheimer's and schizophrenia are all now seemingly connected to our gut bacteria.

Really?

Yeah.

Now, is there a way if someone has those, are they pretty easy to reverse though or is that hard?

Well, listen, we're just figuring this out because right now medically we prescribe medications to try to treat those things and a lot of times those medications just blunt the symptoms. Okay, they cover up the symptoms, they don't get at the underlying cause. Now, we don't know exactly how the gut bacteria communicates with the brain completely yet, but there's one giant nerve called the vagus nerve. It's like a giant shoe, it's about the thickness of a shoelace and it hangs from our brain all the way down into our gut. Okay, goes right near, wraps around our esophagus on the way down. And we think the gut bacteria basically sends text messages up to the brain. through this big nerve. Okay. So the key though is that foods can actually influence our gut bacteria, either good bacteria or bad bacteria. So that's important. So that's a third health defense system.

Okay. Okay.

So with the first, no angiogenesis number one. Yeah. Stem cells number two. Gut microbiome number three.

Okay. The fourth one.

Number four, our DNA. Now, if you watch CSI, DNA is just sort of like a genetic fingerprint, a code that you can find on a crime scene. Or if you're actually trying to do ancestry, look for your ancestors, you figure out how much of you is Neanderthal, right?

I think I was 1% Neanderthal when I did it, yes.

So the key though is DNA is a lot more than our genetic code. it actually protects us from the environment. Now, what am I, what do I mean by that? Well, you know how if we are exposed to, we get sunburn, ultraviolet light, you damage your DNA and what happens? Cancer, skin cancer, right? If you inhale lots of fumes from a chemical plant, it's going to actually damage your DNA in your lungs, you get lung cancer, right? But think about it, if you are in Los Angeles and you're driving on the I-10 or if you're actually just walking on a beach, you are actually getting ultraviolet radiation. So how come we don't get skin cancer all the time? Because our DNA is hardwired to fix itself from damage. And so the DNA is a protective mechanism from the environment. I always tell people when you're pumping gas, if you still drive a gas vehicle, as opposed to an EV. I always ask people, do you stand upwind or downwind? What do you do? Are you up or down? Do you know?

Well, upwind, right? So you're not getting the fumes in. Is that what you mean?

Right, right, right. Well, if you're standing downwind, you can smell the fumes. Yes. Right. And if you're smelling the fumes, you are poisoning the DNA in your lung. So how come we don't develop lung cancer after pumping gas? because our DNA is hardwired to fix itself. And so our DNA is sort of like a self-defense mechanism against the environment radon from your basement, okay? Off gassing from the, from the new car you just got or the Uber that you're riding in, you know, or the furniture that you got, right? So, like, this is, this is this incredible defense mechanism against our environment. And then, and foods can actually speed up the repair, help fix holes that are in our DNA. And then the other kind of piece the resistance for our DNA's defense is that there's something called a telomere. I don't know if you've ever had anybody in your show talk about telomeres.

Telomeres?

Yeah. Yes. These are- see if you're at the.

Longer the telomere, the longer you can live or something.

Right. Well, I'll tell you basically what the, you know, like to give a- to remind you- to remind your listeners and viewers, basically, if your DNA is like a shoelace, the telomere is like the little plastic cap at the end of the shoelace. And over time, that little cap kind of wears down just like on a shoelace. And you know, when they, when that cap is gone, man, that your shoelace just falls apart. Yeah. And that's what happens to our DNA. So we need that cap. That's called a telomere. And it burns down like a life fuse. So, you know, like Mission Impossible, like the fuse, right? So this thing is burning down and when it burns down, that's it, your cell's done. So what you want to do is to slow down your cellular aging and harsh things that you do to your body, smoking cigarettes, being in a couch potato, being exposed to damaging oxidative stress, actually just being stressed out like we are now with this friggin pandemic. Those things all shorten our telomeres. They burn the fuse faster.

Stress.

But, yeah, but foods can slow it down and some foods can reverse it and lengthen the telomere, which is really cool for, from an aging perspective. Right.

What are those, what are those top three foods that help lengthen the telomeres?

Green tea is one of them. Coffee. I gotta, I gotta. Yeah, it's amazing. I got, I got a little, I used to live in Italy, and I just got into this habit of drinking espresso. so I got a little cup here. Amazingly, coffee actually lengthens your telomeres. Come on. I kid you not. It's quite amazing. And leafy greens, some of the polyphenols and leafy greens can also slow down. And some of them actually look like they can lengthen atelomeres as well. So the key thing is that we are not just hapless pawns of aging. We can actually do something about it. And we can also fight against our environment because, look, the tax that we pay for being on planet Earth is we're exposed to stuff all the time. And we need to, we count on our body's health defenses to fix it. So that's a fourth defense. And our fifth defense is our immune system, which, you know, after two years, over the last two years, we all know how important our immune system is. But what if I told you that your immune system is so powerful that when it's in its best shape, even when you're 80 years old, it is strong enough to fight cancer. In fact, it can even wipe out metastatic cancer that's spread all over your body. That's how strong your immune system is if you give it the chance. And so here's what the immune system does. It's like an army of super soldiers. So, Rangers, SEALs, Marines, Special Forces, they've all got-- these are all parts of the immune system, all cells of the immune system. And like the Special Forces, they've got their own weapons, their own training, their own tactics, but they all work together for the collective good. And what happens is that when you've got good, strong defenses, you can fight off invaders from the outside. bacteria and viruses, for example. And, but it's not just outside invaders. You got inside invaders as well. And those little microscopic cancers are inside invaders. And so our immune system patrols our body, okay? Cops on a beat. And they're looking for things that don't look right. And you see that microscopic cancer that is it can't grow because it doesn't have a blood vessel, blood vessels feeding it, angiogenesis, basically you The immune system goes there and takes them right out. Okay. Wow. And takes a sniper shot and it's gone. And so that's why we got to protect our immune system. And there are lots of foods that can actually boost our immunity as well.

What would you be those, what would be those top three that boost the immune system?

Blueberries are a food that definitely boosts immune system. It's in young people as well as older people. They boost the natural killer cells, which is really cool. broccoli sprouts can boost our immune system. Now, these are the three day old sprouts. These are like the three day old sprouts, right? Okay. Okay. I mean, okay, here's something, here's something most people don't know. The big broccoli that when we eat broccoli, we really, you know, our moms told us to eat the treetops, right? Those, they're all the same. You go to the freezer section of a grocery store and you buy some frozen broccoli and they all look the same. they're all the same size. That's not really what broccoli looks like. If you go to the farmer's market and you see a real broccoli is this gigantic stem with a little bit of tree top. Okay, so what's in a broccoli? It's called sulforaphane. So that's what gives broccoli that unique taste of broccoli. It's a little sulfurous. Okay, so you got to put a little olive oil, a little bit of garlic, you know, I can. saute it up. Okay, so the sulforaphanes. We've done research now looking at what's in the treetops. It turns out that these sulforaphanes can starve cancer, anti-androgenic, help your body cut off the blood supply to cancer, broccoli treetops have it. But guess what? The stalk of the broccoli has twice as much of the good stuff than the treetops.

Eat the stalks.

Eat the stock. So man, like if you don't want to eat, if you don't want to saute the stocks, like a lot of cultures will just cut the stocks and saute them, stick it in a blender, you can make it into a smoothie or make a soup out of it, you know? And so there's a lot of good things you can do. Put a little broccoli stem, little oregano powder, you know, you can light it right up a little turmeric, it'll be really good smoothie or a soup. However, here's the thing. So this imagine this adult broccoli, having these sulforaphanes? Well, it turns out that these big broccoli plants used to be sprouts and the sprouts pretty much were born or sprouted from the seed with all the sulforaphanes it's ever going to have. All right, so when it gets bigger, it just gets distributed with the stalk closer to the ground having more of it, of course, but the broccoli sprouts have 100 times more. Wow. of the sulforaphane, it's a good stuff as a grown up broccoli. So sprouts, broccoli sprouts. Now, studies have been done to show that if you give people a flu shot, people in the winter should get a flu shot so you don't get the flu. All right, just go to your drugstore to get one. Turns out that if you, people are, they did a study looking at people getting the flu shot and they gave half the people a little shake made with broccoli sprouts. and the other group just got a placebo. And the people who got the broccoli sprout shake and a flu shot, their beneficial response of their immune system is 22 times higher.

Huh.

Like it totally rocked if they actually had a broccoli sprout shake. So that's not food versus medicine. That is food and medicine, which is really cool, right?

Interesting.

So we never want to throw out. We don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. We want to figure out how to.

Make everything go work even better. Absolutely.

Wow.

This is fascinating. Okay, so I'm curious, because you, you talked about this process where, where all these diseases or cancers seem to have this thing in common. Right? This, these heightened blood cells. Is that what it is? Or too many bloods. Too many blood.

Too many blood vessels. Many blood vessels that are feeding the cancer.

They're feeding the cancer. So I'm curious, do you know, is there a specific cancer or disease that's easier to reverse?

Okay, so let's take a look at what we know from the cancer treatment perspective. So I work in this area and, you know, I've been involved with helping treat cancer patients. So we do know that there is a new type of medicine that's not chemo that are called anti-angiogenesis. So they cut off the blood supply feeding the big cancers. By the time, so here's a research experiment that was done a couple of decades ago in the lab that I worked in. If you grew tiny little cancer cells and up to the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen, that's about three millimeters in diameter, and you kind of floated them in a broth, and didn't allow them to touch blood vessels, they would just stay there at that size almost indefinitely. Okay? And in our body, that's the size that the immune system would wing by and take out. The moment you allow blood vessels to grow into that microscopic mass, that tumor will grow 16,000 times in two weeks. It'll explode. This is like a trigger, get pulled in order to have cancers grow up. And for that reason, biotech companies started to develop anti-angiogenic drugs to treat cancer by cutting off the blood supply. So there are about a dozen anti-angiogenic drugs that have changed the game for treating kidney cancer and liver cancer and lung cancer and even brain cancer. All right? So we know that we can actually do this with drugs. The question is, can we do it with food? Not so much when cancer is out of the barn, horse is out of the barn, but what about prevention? What are foods that can prevent cancer? Well, it turns out that two apples a day actually can lower the rate of lung cancer and colon cancer. Why? Because there are natural substances in apples like quercetin. That's one of the natural chemicals. that actually are naturally anti-angiogenic. Green tea actually has been lowered risk of colorectal cancer, okay? Particularly in women. And what's in a cup of green tea are these polyphenols, EGCG, and when you drink it, it gets in your bloodstream. Why? Because the blood vessels are carrying it, and now your blood vessels loaded with this cancer starving stuff, these little tumors don't have a chance. Wow. Yeah. Okay.

Is it the same as eating two apples a day and, and, you know, eating these specific foods as it would be just putting all those ingredients in a supplement and taking the supplement. Would that work just as well to have, like, a super supplement that is just the, the killer of all cancer and diseases, you know, of all these different nutrients?

Well, look, I, I'm a researcher, and so, and I've been involved with drug development, and so if it were that easy, it would have been done a while. a while ago. But I can tell you that the whole, what I tell people is that the whole food is always going to be a little bit better for the following reason. Number one, for a supplement, you reduce it to a couple of different elements, you know, that, that you try to pack into a capsule. The whole food, man, it's got the hundreds, if not thousands, of natural goodies and chemicals, including, like, an apple's got the skin, it's got ursolic acid. It's got fiber, which feature gut microbiome. It's got quercetin, which cuts out the blood supply. So you're getting all that in there compared to just one thing you try to pack into a little capsule. That said, supplements are useful and I'm involved with designing and developing supplements as well. What we want to do, supplements, the term means topping off, right? So you're supplementing, you're not replacing. And this is what you know, like what you were just asking, Lewis is so important. Like, Can we just not bother eating and just have a supplement? No, man. You should be eating because you enjoy food. It's good for us. It brings people together. It tells us something about our traditions, our culture, our family, our community. Everybody's from someplace. Everybody's got something that they love to eat. And of that list, there's some good stuff in it. And so we should really lean forward. So that's the other thing that's a little bit different for me. compared to a lot of other doctors that tell people what not to eat. I try to tell people what you should add to your life, not that what you should take away. Plenty of people can tell you what to take away. I'm telling you what to add. And, and we should add foods that activate your health defenses. And supplements can be useful to top things off.

Got it. I've been told many times that inflammation is the, is also a big I guess, warning sign for diseases and cancers. And the more inflammation, the more your body is less capable of defending itself. And its immune system is weaker, is what I've been told. What would you say are the best ways to reduce inflammation in the body quickly? Is it through food? Is it through medicine? Is it through fasting? Is it through, you know, less, you know, more sleep? Is it through a better environment? What would you say is the so.

You know, a lot of people, I think when they hear about inflammation, they think about it as a bad guy. And what I want to tell you is that inflammation is normal and it's just part of our immune system. So when you actually have a bacteria or virus invading your body, let's say you get a cold, your immune system sets up a little bit of inflammation in your nose. okay, which is why we have a stuffy nose, a runny nose, and then it tackles the invader right then and there. And then hopefully that's all that's all that matters. And by the way, another sure sign of inflammation is if you cut yourself in the kitchen and you see that little cut will pretty quickly swell up, turn red and swell up inflammation. That's your immune system trying to tackle all the bacteria that might be trying to get into your skin. inflammation is good, but it goes up to protect you, and then it comes right down. I think about, I call it like a, like the volume switch in a car radio. Like you get in a car, you want to hear some tunes, got to turn it on. But what the problem with inflammation is when it doesn't go back down, it keeps on going more, more, more. It's chronic and it keeps on going up. And that's like getting in your car and having somebody, a passenger, turn up that volume and keep cranking that volume. and you're like, hey, man, turn that thing down. Right. Doesn't go down and you just can't go on. Right. And that's what happens inside your body. So what's, what are some of the different ways to actually deal with that? Well, the first thing to do is think about lifestyle, because we can actually give anti-inflammatories I could tell you to go out to take some Motrin, Tylenol, whatever. That'll take down your inflammation. But actually, there are ways of actually doing, if you actually just. if you stopped and just calmed yourself and took some breath, did some breaths and start to meditate, your body's inflammation will start to calm down. Okay? If you actually got a good night's sleep, your body will start to, the inflammation will start to calm down. It's kind of like, you know, everything is going crazy. Just let everything, let the thing settle. a little bit. So that's your inflammation settling down. Now, there are foods that have a lot of anti-inflammatory properties that can be very helpful. So, for example, cranberries have a lot of anti-inflammatory polyphenols. Chocolate even also has anti-inflammatory properties. Vitamin C is pretty anti-inflammatory strawberries, guava, red bell peppers, all really good, really good. and, and I, you know, I think that the other thing to think about is lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of fruits in particular, have anti-inflammatory properties. So the key about inflammation is that you don't want to get rid of it altogether.

Okay.

Okay. Like, if you, if you got pumped up on steroids, it would shut down your inflammation. You might get infected. because you don't have any inflammation. You want your body to get its set point. You want to get back to balance. So I think that, you know, there's lifestyle, there's diet, foods you can choose, there's sleep. All these things can actually help to calm inflammation. It's not a single on and off switch.

I'm curious. What would you say are the, the most harmful foods then? If you said, here are three foods that we should be eliminating, what would be those most harmful foods that cause the spike in inflammation consistently and causes a lot of these other diseases and cancerous cells to occur.

Right. Well, I'll tell you three foods that actually harm the body's health defenses and including the immune system by ratcheting it up inflammation and then lowering the defensive properties, but also harm to your DNA, also harm your microbiome, also blunt and stun your stem cells. and also wreck your body's ability to control its blood supply. So it's a lot worse than simply causing triggering inflammation. And by the way, that's the whole point, right? Like we try to take the silver bullet approach to everything. Let's match this with match. What I'm telling you is that the body is this system. Yes. So either you introduce something good to it, and you'll probably light up a lot of good systems, and if you put something bad to it, you'll probably trash a lot of it. Right. Okay. So, what are some three foods that actually we know that can trash your body's health defenses? One is soda. So, sugar-sweetened beverages like soda. All right? So, you know the favorite ones? It's tough, right?

Because I wish I could go back to my younger self and say, put down the Dr. Pepper, eight cans of Dr. Pepper a day, you know, when you're like eight years old, man.

Well, and I'm telling you, like this is one thing that, I always try to coach people on if you really, really love sodas, okay? Try to come off it, you know, just by going down one can a day, because most people drink multiple cans, go down one can a day and get to as low as you can because the added sugar actually overloads your body, your body's ability to be able to handle the sugar and then it makes you inflamed just by the nature of the sugar.

I cut out, I cut out soda years ago. I mean, maybe I have it once in a couple months or something. for like a treat, but it used to be almost an addiction probably for how much I drank it growing up as a kid in the summers. You're just drinking it nonstop, like water. But then when I learned about nutrition more, when I was playing sports and realizing this is making me tired, it's not quenching my thirst, that's when I said, okay, I need more of a.

Competitive edge and kind of cut it out of my life. Not only does soda actually, the sugar and soda cause inflammation, It really wrecks your microbiome, your gut bacteria as well. Your gut bacteria just can't tolerate that much sugar. And then guess what? And then you say, well, wait a minute. That's why we have diet soda, right? Turns out that those artificial sweeteners and soda screw your microbiome, your gut bacteria even more.

More than regular can of soda.

More than a regular can of soda.

Come on. So if it says zero sugar and it's a soda or a pop, you're saying that could be more harmful than.

Just for your gut microbiome.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Right.

Because the zero sugar is actually to prevent, you know, glucose spikes in your body. But in point of fact, it actually wrecks your gut microbiome. And remember what I told you? The gut microbiome communicates your brain, communicates your immune system, communicates your healing systems. That is not a system you want to screw with. And so that's why, you know, I try to tell people you really got to watch out for those artificial sweeteners. They are, they do some bad things. So that's one thing.

So, what are the best, before you go to the next thing, what are the best sweeteners we should be looking for when we're adding something into food or we see it on the packaging?

Sure. Well, natural sugars in fruits and vegetables, people go, well, I don't want any sugar in them, but what about in a peach? There's nothing better than a summer peach to me. And that natural sugar is okay because when you eat the peach, you're not just getting the sugar, you're also getting all these other bioactives in the fiber and everything else. Hundreds of thousands of natural chemicals that are good for you from Mother Nature's kind of pharmacy with an S. Okay? So that's different than just, you know, having sugar in a glass or corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup, not good for you. Maple syrup, a good way to sweeten. Honey is also a good way to sweeten as well. Monk fruit is actually a really, really sweet tasting gourd. That's a shell that is also a decent sweetener. Stevia, actually pretty powerful sweetener. I've been doing some research on it. I haven't been able to find anything wrong with it. But for people that are looking at Stevia, be very careful. Pick up that package and look at the side of the box and read what's on there because a lot of things that are called Stevia actually have a lot of other things added to it.

Okay.

So you want to get the pure stuff. I always tell, if it's in a box, look at what's inside it before you buy it.

There you go. Okay. So, Soda and Pop is the number one thing that is one of the worst things you could be eating to, or the things that could cause more disease and cancers in your body. Okay, that's number one. Number two.

Processed meats. Now, all of us that were kids grew up, you know, at the, you know, eating deli meats, turkey and a ham, right? I mean, like, that's basically you, you, what is your mom, what is your mom pack in your lunch bag, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, that's a relic of the 1950s, you know, of the sort of ultra processed foods that are everywhere laden with chemicals. That's not what we want to be doing. Now, I have to say it doesn't mean categorically that hams or sausages are bad for you, because if you go to Italy or if you go to places in Asia or Latin America, where they create dried meats kind of the old way. They're not putting chemicals in there and they're not manipulating it. But here, you know, where you go to the deli counter and, you know, like, yeah, take a look at that deli meat. Like, that's not meat doesn't come like that. Okay, so here's the thing. Processed meats are actually classified by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen. and, you know, linked to the causation of cancer. You got to eat a lot of it, but a lot of people actually eat. I mean, how many hoagies or subs? Yeah. Right. And I gotta say, you know, like, when I was growing up as a kid, I. I love those kind of, like, fancy kind of, like, the deli meats and stuff like that.

Absolutely.

Totally not good for you. So that's not good for you. It also damages the gut microbiome. oh, and it can actually damage your DNA. So you want to kind of be cut down or cut out sodas and processed meats. And then the other thing is really a category. And I call these ultra processed foods. So things are in a box or in a can that, you know, like our instant this or, you know, scoop it out and eat it quick. You know, I don't want to name any particular products. I don't want to call any products out, but I think we all know the stuff, a lot of stuff we grew up with and were advertised on television to kids. The frosted this, the Pop that, the things that you, you know, like the TV dinners, like things that used to be like instant foods. Got to be really careful about that because if you take a look at the packaging, and I'm telling you, there's one thing your viewers can get from me. about things to watch out for. Whatever you buy, pick it up. If it's in a box or in a can, and look on the side. Don't look just at the, that the label. Look at the, I mean, at the name of it. Look at the side and see if you recognize the ingredients. If you start, you know, if you lose, start losing track and you can't pronounce and you don't know what most of that stuff is, it's an ultra processed food that harms your DNA. that lowers your immunity, that screws up your gut microbiome, it impairs angiogenesis. It actually causes our cells to age faster. Those telomeres burn down faster. Oh, man.

By those processed foods.

Yeah, ultra processed foods, ultra, right?

What's the difference between ultra and processed?

So look, processing is technically any type of food you manipulate. Like, if you pick a tomato and you cut it up and you make spaghetti sauce at home, that's processing, you're processing it. Okay? If you're taking flour and an egg and you're making homemade pasta, you're processing it. I'm talking about ultra process. You know, there's a term called extrusion. Have you heard of this? Yes. Okay, so basically you've got these die cut machines that, like, this goop gets thrown into and, like, the big oil, like, crazy oils get thrown in there, and then it just, like, pushes out, like, Play-Doh. chunks of food that get cut and dried. That's what I'm talking about. Like that's the ultra processing. It takes, I guess maybe the definition is it takes food and transforms it into a form you don't recognize.

Got it. Okay.

You don't recognize that food. Yeah.

We don't want that. I'm curious, Dr. Lee, what do you think has been the biggest aha for you in your decades of from medical school to your research to your practice to all these things. What was the biggest aha when you learned this thing? It changed everything for you.

You know, there have been so many instances of that, like scientists, I'm seeing new things literally on a weekly basis. Things are like, my jaw drops virtually. You know, like last week, Louis, I read about a new discovery. that we just discovered a new type of human cell in our heart last week. Like, you know, like that. That's like, I hit my head, like, oh, my God, really? We. A couple years ago, we discover a new brain cell called the rose hip neuron. Okay. And it seems to be linked to depression. So I. I'm always amazed. I mean, as a scientist, I'm amazed by the. by the marvelousness of the body and how much we don't know about it. And still, so we have to respect it. Did you know, by the way, that we had it also, this is just this past year, 2021, there was a landmark discovery that changed everything we knew about our metabolism. What is that? Well, so everybody says that, you know, like, when you're a teenager, you're growing.

Tall, you got a high metabolism, you just burn calories, right?

Okay, totally wrong. Metabolism is going down when you're a teen. Okay, and then people say when you're in your 20s or 30s, you know, and you're starting to gain weight and getting out of shape, and they're like, man, my metabolism is slowing down. And then some people basically say that, you know, I was unlucky, because I was born with a bad metabolism. Look at my sister or look at my cousin. She's rail thin. She's so lucky she's got a fast metabolism. Right. All that has been turned up ended completely. It turns out that all humans go through only four phases of metabolism in their whole life.

Tell me.

Okay, actually, I'm going to show you this because it's actually right here in my desk.

You got a chart. You got a. you got a graph, you got a chart?

No, no, I got a paper. This baby right here, it's in a journal of science, okay? This is how researchers do it. Like, all around my office, man, like, I am reading this stuff. And this paper, I tell you, I gotta look at this. It studied 8,000 people from like 30 countries. And it studied people from eight days old to 90 years old. across 20 different countries. All right? This is the largest study of human metabolism ever undertaken. And here's what they found, that if you subtracted out body fat, which is different for everybody, okay? And you were to just go right down to the core of real metabolism, energy usage, energy generation are, here are the four phases. When we're born, we got the same metabolism as our mother. Makes sense, synchronized. From zero or from the day you're born to one year old, your metabolism skyrockets. In fact, it's twice high when you're one year old as when you're 20 years old.

Wow.

So from one year old down to throughout your teenage years in puberty, at time you think that you're eating a lot and your metabolism is going sky high, it's actually coming down from its peak.

Interesting. Why does it seem like you're burning so many calories?

Well, you just, you, you, well, you're more active and you're growing. Yeah. So you may be burning more calories per your metabolism as a changing. This is the key thing. We are hardwired to go through these phases. Now it's going down to 20 years old from 20 years old to 60 years old. okay. From college to retirement, it doesn't change. It is rock stable. All right, so it's our. And then after 60, it starts to diminish, but not as fast as you think. It's a slow deep. It's a slow grade down. Okay. Four phases of human metabolism. We never knew this before this year. All right. This is how it knew it is. So here's the key thing. What makes all the difference between people? Like how. Why is your metabolism different than mine? And why is. why is a sumo wrestler's metabolism different than, you know, somebody who's on a runway? Okay? And it has to do with the fact that our metabolisms are all the same, but the lifestyle choices that we make can actually push our metabolism one way or the other. So it, our metabolism doesn't cause us to be fat. Our fat slows down our metabolism. It's the other way around.

Interesting.

Completely.

So what, so how do we burn more fat then to eat up my metabolism?

That's what I'm working on right now. And that's, that's, that is the topic of my next book, by the way, which I'm writing right now.

Yeah.

So, so stay tuned for that answer because I, I'm on to something really hot on that. And I, I will give you a little bit of a, of a, I guess what's that? Early. Yes. well, you can eat certain foods to burn your fat down. So. So what? While. While caloric restriction and fasting can actually also do it, it turns out there are certain foods that you can actually eat that will trigger it. I don't want to give you a too much. I don't want to give your viewers a spoiler, because. I'll have you come, I'll have you invite me back in the show.

We'll have you back on for sure. We'll have you back on for sure. You can give us the whole debrief, but what would you see are a couple of these foods at least that you think that are, are now researched and proven to be powerful fat burning.

Well, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you one that's actually just a surprise is seafood.

Actually, seafood.

Yeah. Helps burn fat. Yeah.

Is it help burn fat or it starts to trigger and activate The fat learning process.

It triggers. So there are certain elements in food that are newly discovered in research. Like I just told you, I just told you some new stuff that's coming out of the hot off the presses. But I can tell you like, this is where, this is what I do. The research that if I told you about research about biotech developments, it may not actually mean anything to you for 10 years, maybe ever. you never. Okay, but when there's, when there's research about food or about your health, a lot of times there's stuff that you, that has immediacy. You can put it to use right away. So cancer starving foods, regenerative foods, gut health foods that can also help your brain, foods that slow down cellular aging, foods that lower inflammation and boost your immune system at the same time. You know, that's what I'm talking about, because The power of healing rests inside our body. And healthcare is not something that we need to rely on when we go to the doctor's office, right? Every year you go once. Healthcare is everything in between that we do for ourselves. And food is a medicine that we take.

Absolutely. I've talked about this many times on my show before that I grew up in a specific religion called Christian Science, where it was more the practice of spiritual awareness and that were spiritual ideas and less on using medicine to heal, but more using the mind and awareness to heal, you know, thought, which would then heal the physical body. So medicine was never a really thing I studied or really took growing up. It was just kind of like when we got sick or when something happened, we used thought, prayer, spiritual prayer. to kind of remind ourselves of who we are. But, I'm curious, do you think that people could live without modern medicine if they eat properly? Like all the things that you talk about in your book, Eat to Beat Disease? Do you think we could live longer lives, healthier lives without the need of certain medicines? Or, are you saying we should be using... Well, here and eating food? when we need them?

Well, we should be eating to enrich our lives from the time we're young all the way until our last breath. And that should actually be able to tackle about two-thirds of all the chronic diseases. And by the way, about a third of all cancers are thought to be due to diet and lifestyle. One-third of cancers, all right, we ought to be able to dodge. But you got to start early, right? I mean, this is not one of these things where I've been smoking my whole life and now I'm gonna actually turn over a new leaf. It's never too late to quit, by the way. However, the fact of the matter is that, you know, like, so you grew up, you know, in Christian, in the.

Christian Science framework, which you're in, you're.

In the Boston area.

So you, yeah, that's where the hub is.

The mother church is in, is in Boston. Yes. It's, it's amazing. It's an amazing place, a really a a spectacular place to visit and a very special place actually. But I will tell you that the idea of having formative years groomed in a healthy mindset, which is I think what you're talking about, is so important so that if you've got kids and if you're involved in teaching, and if you're involved in the business where you can actually impact on kids, think about the impact that you have now could actually influence their health 30, 40, 50, 60 years from now. And that to me is big responsibility. It's a giant opportunity to make a better society.

That's beautiful. I'm curious, we've got a few more minutes left. What do you think? You're telling me that every week you're essentially finding these aha moments based on the research papers you're finding and things that you're discovering yourself. What do you think in your mind if you could predict the future 10 years out, 5-10 years out? What are going to be the groundbreaking things that we as humans discover in the next 5 to 10 years that is going to transform our health?

Wow.

Based on what you've seen in the last 5 to 10 years and we're like, these are unbelievable. Every single finding, what do you think is on the horizon for us?

Well, one thing that I think is most, one of the big aha jaw droppers for me in the kind of the journey that I've actually had in my career is the fact that we can regenerate ourselves. Okay. And I never thought that was even possible. I had been working in stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine, and, you know, it's a real struggle. It's an uphill climb to really try to. show that we can actually regenerate the heart or the brain or nerves. And yet the body does it every single day. And when I discovered that, you know, you could regenerate tissue by barley, you know, eating barley, which is beta-D-glucan, or with chocolate, as I mentioned to cacao polyphenols, or even olive oil. There's something called hydroxytyrosol. It's a natural chemical and extra virgin olive oil. It helps to kind of make that distinctive olive oily taste that can actually help to protect your stem cell. Or if you are not a vegan, but you eat seafood and you're really adventurous, you know that black pasta squid ink that they have sometimes on menus. I happen to I, you know, I like to explore different kinds of food. Squid ink actually protects your stem cells. It's like a shield. Okay. And so the fact that you, we can actually eat to regenerate. So I'm very excited by this idea that we can eat foods and we're still discovering what foods can help our propel our body's regenerative capacity. I think that's going to actually be quite groundbreaking. And then something that I'm actually working on that is really, you know, future forward, right? So you're asking, like, what's going to be mind-blowing in the future?

Yes.

All right. Well, look, I'm kind of like a pretty down-to-earth guy. Like, I believe that we should be protecting our planet, doing everything we can to take care of, nurture this ball that we live on. and we should be doing better for our community. But I also, I think from the time I was a kid, I appreciated and I was excited by this idea of space travel, which is now happening more often.

Right.

All right, so here's something I think is going to happen over the next decade. As humans become extraterrestrial, we're going to be the first extraterrestrials we're ever going to meet is ourselves. and we get beyond near Earth orbit, we're gonna be, our bodies are gonna be bombarded by galactic radiation and have the effects of negative gravity changing our body. We gotta find out what kinds of foods or supplements that we gotta eat to protect ourselves.

That's crazy.

So I'm working on that.

That's cool.

So I've been meeting with astronauts, I've been talking to people in the space program, flight surgeons, and what I'm figuring is that if we can figure out what we're going to need in the future. So that, we could probably bring that right down to earth right now to actually do something good for us. So, I'm excited by that.

That's cool. That's really cool. I've got a couple of final questions for you, but you've got a lot of this information and more in your book, Eat to Beat Disease, the new science of how your body can heal itself. And, you've also got a masterclass that people can check out if they want to learn more about this and get these trainings from you over at drwilliamlee.com, you've got some great stuff over on your Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, drwilliamlee as well over there. We'll have it all linked up. And then, in the future, we'll have you back on about the next book about burning fat and the metabolism. That sounds like a really cool topic, which I'm sure people will love. This is a question I asked everyone at the end of our conversations. It's called the Three Truths. question. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario that it's your last day on earth, Dr. Lee. And it's many, many years away. You get to live as long as you want to. Your telomeres, they continue to extend. So you live as long as you want to live, right? But for whatever reason, it's your last day. And you've accomplished every dream and goal that you can think of. But for whatever reason, you've also got to take all of your work with you to another place. All your books and your content and master classes and videos and TED Talks and this interview, it all goes away. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons that you've learned from your life that you would share with the world. And this is all we have to remember from your content and your information. What would you say would be those three truths for you?

Well, that is a big, heavy question. I would say one of the truths is that we got to be good to the people around us. And at the end of the day, one of the things that I try to do is to make sure that I practice acts of kindness to the people around me. And I think that that's just an important thing that makes the world a better place.

Yes.

And makes me a better person. And because I remind myself of it, it keeps me on my toes, you know, when there's all these stressors around. So that's one thing is just sort of be kind to people around you. The second thing I think is that I would leave with people is Believe in the impossible. You know, you know, the impossible actually contains the word possible in its side. And so for me, part of what I've realized in my, my own life journey professionally is that, and I've, and I see this, I've seen this as a doctor, you can take people who like nobody else thinks there's any hope for. And they're at the end of the line and every doctor's given up. There's nothing else we can do for you. And if you believe something is possible and you're informed and you're. And you got the audacity to think that maybe. Maybe we can do it. I'm just telling you, I've. I've personally snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Wow.

And people who had no hope. By the way, including my own mother who had metastatic cancer and we got her on this immune therapy and three treatments nine weeks later, all of the cancer melted away because we allowed her immune system to rear up and clean up the act and she's alive today, seven years later, zero cancer. Okay? You gotta believe. I mean, this is not just hope, it's informed hope. and you have to commit yourself to actually doing it. So I've, and by the way, I've done that a number of times. So that's something that I think that I would leave people, you believe, just remember that you can convert the impossible into the possible. And then the third thing I think is that I believe as a truth is that science leads the way. And it's going to take us to the future. and if you're somebody who's hopeful and you're somebody who believes in a better place and a better existence in the future, follow the signs of science. And one of my mentors, a guy named Judith Folkman, used to end some of his lectures with this great quote from an American novelist named E.L. Doctorow. And he was describing his process of writing, right? So I'm an author and I went through this whole process and what he, what he, what Dr. said was that the act of writing is like driving at night. You can't see beyond your headlights, but you can make the whole journey that way. And that's what science is like, research is like, you know, you got to follow the headlights of science just to kind of see where it's going to go. And you're always going to get to a different destination than where you started. So those would be my three truths.

Those are beautiful. And your second one sounded like Christian science was rubbing off on you. The mindset, the belief, belief when there's no hope. Dr. Lee, I want to acknowledge you for a moment before I ask the final question for your continued trust and faith in directing your headlights in a certain way without seeing too far ahead of them and being consistent with that for many decades. and finding these solutions to help us heal the body, help us heal the different causes of inflammation and disease and cancerous things with your research. So I really acknowledge you for your consistency on this. And I'm just grateful that you continue to put it out there in ways that we can consume it. A lot of this science and research seems overwhelming. You're holding up the research paper on like, I don't know how to read this stuff, but your ability to translate that into tangible, bite-sized information for us to start taking those actions is really powerful. So I acknowledge you for all that you do to communicate this wisdom. And my final question is, what is your definition of greatness?

Wow. You're like the college professor that gives all these extra credit questions. Right.

Hopefully the good one that hopefully the one that you liked, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, I guess, you know, the definition of greatness, I think, is anything that's better than you thought, you know, because I think that, that there's so many different definitions, but we all come to the table with certain assumptions about almost everything and almost everyone. And to me, great. is anything better than what you expect? And I think that that allows us to be grateful, by the way, for what we got around us. And again, I think that we, no matter how accomplished, you know, somebody might be, we always have to take a couple of steps back just to be humble to recognize that it's a privilege to do what we do, no matter what you do. and we have to just remember that it's part of our duty to keep doing good for the world. When you actually look at the science of what happens during fasting, it's actually one of the best things you can do for yourself from both a mental standpoint and a physiologic standpoint. Assuming, of course, you're not malnourished, right? I mean, I'm assuming if you're the average American who's, you know, 10, 20, 30 pounds overweight, then this is something that actually has a lot of benefits.