The DAILY HACKS To Live Longer & Beat Disease! | Lewis Howes

Mtour is an energy sensor and it's in all of our cells. The idea is you want to reduce mTOR as much as you can. The more you suppress it, the longer you live. And here's the reason.

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

Right.

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

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

Do you drink it?

Yeah, I do.

Wow.

I take a shot of it.

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

But what I would urge people to do is, so you can cook on olive oil. This myth that olive oil oxidizes when you cook it is one of the worst internet myths there is. It turns out that olive oil is the least oxidizable oil. It's even better than avocado oil or coconut oil. It does not oxidize.

Oxidize, meaning like evaporate.

No, oxidize means gets damaged. Damaged, okay? It turns out everybody sees olive oil smoking and they figure that's damaged.

It's not. So you can burn it as much as you want.

You know, cultures have been using olive oil to cook with for 5,000 years and you know, there's not a lot of dead Italians from cooking an olive oil. Okay, so you gotta get out of that. So that's number one. Number one.

Number two. You gotta take vitamin D3.

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

And we can.

Vitamin D is also through the sun, is that correct?

But it's nearly impossible to get enough vitamin D through the sun. Really?

Nearly impossible.

80 of Southern Californians are vitamin D deficient because we're slathering sunscreen on us and we're wearing long sleeve shirts. We're inside a lot. You know, I live in Palm Springs. It's pretty hot in the summer. Really hot. We tend not to go out a lot in the summer, so we don't have enough vitamin D. and so you have to swallow vitamin D. The University of California San Diego published a study that the average human being to have an adequate level of vitamin D3 should be taking 9,600 international units a day. So basically 10,000 international units.

Wow.

They found no one who had vitamin D toxicity at 40,000 international units a day.

You can't overdose on vitamin D. I.

Have yet to see vitamin D toxicity and I've been measuring vitamin D levels for 20 years. every three months. I personally run my vitamin D level greater than 120 nanograms per milliliter for the last 12 years to prove I'm not dead. And so far so good.

Right.

And here's, you know, just, you know, tell you how crazy this is. If I feel I'm getting something, if I'm coming down with a scratchy throat or something, I'll take 150, 000 international units of vitamin D3.

How many capsules?

Three days. Well, so you can get 5, 000. so that's 10 capsules three times a day for three days. So I'm basically taking a 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 scratch.

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

So vitamin C really doesn't help that.

Much or really doesn't help that much. We can get into vitamin C and I think everybody should take a time release vitamin C twice a day and it's actually for a different What's the 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 to manufacture vitamin C. So the theory is, and I like the theory is, we grew up in Africa with lots of vitamin C containing plants in our diet. And so it was unnecessary for us to manufacture vitamin C. And the theory goes we'd have some extra glucose left over that we could store as fat to make it through the winter when times were rough. And we're the only fat storing ape. So The problem is vitamin C is essential to repair collagen and everybody collagen, okay? The reason smokers get wrinkles is collagen is broken because you actually repair cracks in collagen with vitamin C and smokers use up all their vitamin C with what's called oxidative stress so they don't have any vitamin C. In fact, here's another controversial statement. If I've got a smoker with heart disease, I'm willing to trade him his smoking with him taking large amounts of vitamin C while I get the rest of his diet squared away rather than tell him to stop smoking. Now, the reason I say that is, and I talk about this in the book, there's 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. And 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'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.

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 DHT gene.

A polyphenol and olive oil.

Okay.

You will actually make vitamin C. Okay, there you go. So there you go. Another good reason. So have olive oil, vitamin D, have.

Lots of vitamin 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 attack 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. 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, it's so good.

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

Oh, sugarfish is amazing, though.

Yeah.

And it's got the grains, too.

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

So no sushi.

Yeah.

So once in a while.

Yeah, once in a while.

Okay.

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

Yeah.

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

Wow.

Four.

A day.

Yeah, 1000 a day. Okay.

We got olive oil. We 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 polywanna phenol.

Okay.

Phenols are plant compounds. Polyphenols are plant compounds that plants use primarily to protect themselves against stress and sunlight. Just interesting fact. We know that red wine is beneficial for you because of actually two polyphenols. The most famous is resveratrol. The other one is quercetin or quercetin. The higher the grapes are grown, the higher in altitude the grapes are grown, the more polyphenols they make 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. For instance, black raspberry leaves have far more polyphenols than black raspberries. And I take black raspberry capsules, by the way, and it's in the book.

There you go.

So olives, for instance, are loaded with polyphenols. And olives that are stressed produce better. They're even better. Olive leaves have more polyphenols than olives. So olive leaf extract is an easy way of getting the huge amount of benefits 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 to protect themselves against insect predation. And so that's actually the reason you want to eat organic. So when you're going to the farmer's market and the poor little organic vegetables have got potholes of insects 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 my signature product, Vital Reds, it's pure polyphenols primarily and they're bitter. So we did lots of taste testing to figure out how the heck we're going to mask these really bitter compounds. So more bitter, more better. In fact, as I talk about in the book, had the pleasure of knowing Jack Lalanne, who you would know is really the godfather of fitness and nutrition in the United States. And I knew him in his later years. And Jack used to have a saying is that if it tastes good, spit it out.

Interesting.

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

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

Yeah, you can. And in fact, that's one of the reasons I'm a nut about taking a bunch of supplements, because we, if you look at even 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, 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 think about it, all those plants are grown organically, they're in six feet of loam soil, they've got their cool microbiome, so they're just replete with all these nutrients and polyphenols. And so, you know, if people think that they can actually do a great job eating healthy without supplementation, I got oceanfront property in Palm Springs, I'm happy to sell them.

Right, exactly. Okay, so I want to get one more thing. I've heard that In order to extend your life, you need to, I can't remember the name, extend something at the end of your telomeres. Telomeres. What is that?

Telomeres.

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

So that is one theory of longevity and it is a 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 is if anybody takes away it's vitamin D. So you've given.

Four things so far. Let's give me one final thing that can extend our life and the quality of our life as well.

Great.

So last thing we want to do is we want 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. 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, includes cheeses and besides 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, the fasting mimicking diet?

I've taken that a couple of times.

He got a patent for Prolong.

Yeah, Prolong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

Yeah, it's tough the first time.

It is.

For me, it was.

Now, in the book, I wrote about 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, you're out of here, you die. And so it gets the fittest of the fittest to survive.

Makes you stronger.

And you have to have these periods of time. You have to call the herd, as we say. So unless you do that, you have all of these cells that just kind of build up the debris, they're called senescent cells, some people call them zombie cells, and it's the amount of these zombie cells that is actually going to make you deteriorate long before you should.

It gets sick and it gets worse.

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.

Yeah.

It's as if you did calorie restriction every day and what this does is not only called a 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 back in. They're already there.

How much does alcohol, smoking, or marijuana, or psychedelics actually affect lifespan? Do we have enough research on this yet?

Well, we do on tobacco smoking. Obviously, it's very clear that's a decade off your life. And what's interesting is that what we're learning about these various things that you can do to hurt yourself or protect yourself is that what's happening is that your body is aging at a different rate. So smokers, you can measure it, are older biologically than people who've never smoked. That's why they look older too.

Wow.

We can measure that now in my lab. If I took your blood, I could tell you how old you are biologically, not just your chronology.

I want to do that. I saw you post this on Instagram that you're like 46. Is that right?

Or you're 42? Or what is it? I went down to, what was it, 40? 44, I think, or 42. It bounces around, but it's usually a decade younger than I put it on. That's cool.

So what do you do?

You take a blood sample, and then you what? Measure the blood?

There's two ways of doing it. There's one company that I advise called Inside Tracker, and that's what I use. I've had that too, yeah. You've done that, yeah? Yeah, yeah. So they come to your home or you donate, and then you get this readout of, I think it's 40 different parameters, and they use an algorithm and tell you how old you are. 42 or something like that. I'm in the top 2% of people my age for youthfulness. So I'm happy with that. Just dust it off, a little brag over there.

I like it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you better be if you're researching this and the top scientists in the world on this. Oh, yeah.

I don't like to brag. That's not what Australians and scientists do. But what I do want to say is I use my body as an experiment.

Yeah.

And trying to be a role model. And I've been optimizing my lifestyle for 20 years now based on this feedback from InsideTracker for the last 12-13 years. And you can see the graphs of things going out of the optimal zone and then I make a change based on science and it comes back or even better.

So we know from smokers that their biological age is older when they smoke is what you're saying, right?

Yeah, well that's one test. The InsideTracker test is what I do routinely every few months. But there's a new type of test that my colleagues and in my lab we've developed. It's called the DNA methylation test. It's also known as the Horvath test, named after my friend Stephen Horvath at UCLA. The way to think of this is, if you've ever heard of the epigenome.

I've heard of that.

These are the control systems that control our DNA. It turns out that that system you can measure, it's chemicals on your DNA that change over time predictably, and we've just developed a way to measure that 100 times cheaper than it was before. And I'm gonna bring this test to the public. So people can test their biological home or something. It should be a cheek swab.

That's what we're developing.

So you don't have to prick or.

Take blood or anything. You do a cheek swab. Exactly.

And then you ship it in or something. Yeah, you'll post it in. And then you get hopefully just a week later or less. Here's your credit score for your body. That's cool. And then even better, here's how you how do you slow it down or reverse it based on everything we know about you?

Wow, that's cool.

And it will take you on that journey. So do this, eat this, swallow this.

That is cool. I gotta take that test.

Yeah, well, you can get on the wait list if you want. Okay, there's a website because we are taking names right now. We may do some studies with early adopters too.

That's cool. Where's the wait list?

It's called Tally. T-A-L-L-Y tallyhealth.com and the reason I'm excited about it is it's very hard to focus on what works because we have no idea. You exercise, you hope that it's good. Is it too much, too little? If I eat this, does it help me? We need a dashboard for our bodies and that's what these give you.

That is really cool. Okay, so we know that smoking makes you age biologically. That's why it makes you look older smoking. What about drinking alcohol? We've talked about wine and the substance in wine that could be supportive. but alcohol in general, does that affect biological age and aging?

Well, it all depends on quantity. One glass a day, most doctors would say, especially if it's red wine, it's fine. And the alcohol actually can help with the cardiovascular system, reduces bad cholesterol and more importantly raises the good cholesterol HDL.

This is for red wine.

And the alcohol in white wine does a little bit of good too. But beer, So beer will raise the levels of uric acid, which is a breakdown product of a protein breakdown product that you can pee out. But if you have too much beer and other types of food that contain a lot of this type of protein, you will raise your uric acid level. So why does that matter? It's becoming very clear that if you have high uric acid levels, your body will age faster.

We just had Dr. David Perlmutter on who has a book about uric acid talking about like this is one of the root causes of poor health and aging faster and things like that. So, you talked to him a lot?

Yeah, yeah. I actually was one of the first people to read his book before it came out.

Yeah, it's really good.

It blew my mind. I now measure my uric acid levels. You can get little test strips. You just buy them.

You just pee on it. No, you swab it.

You spit on it and 10 seconds later you see.

You see your levels.

Acid levels.

Yeah.

And so the lower the level, the better.

Right.

The higher the level means there's risk for what?

Everything, according to David, it's really bad for cancers and heart disease mainly. But I think he's right that it's a sign of accelerated aging.

The higher the uric level, the faster you're going to be aging. And a larger amount of consumption of alcohol, specifically beer, I'm hearing, raises that level.

Beer in particular has a lot of the chemicals in it that will raise uric acid, unfortunately. And that's from David Perlmutter. He gave me a list of foods.

So, beer.

And they're like, oh, that's us.

Now, is there any benefit to beer in biology in science? Does it help you improve the quality of your health? Does your brain get better? Does your body, your system get better? Does it make you younger at all? Or are there no benefits to beer biologically and in your brain?

There are benefits because there's alcohol in there and a little bit of alcohol is good for your cardiovascular system.

But there's other things that's good for your cardiovascular system, right? That you don't need.

So beer on the list of alcohols is at the bottom for health, mostly. Unless it's full of sugar, like there's very sweet wines I think would be a problem. But beer does have a lot of vitamin B, B group vitamins, B3, tons of it.

But you can get that in other ways too. You can.

So what can you do? I mean, you've got to live as well.

Right, right.

I don't prescribe a life that's prolonging and feels longer. You've got to live a little.

Right, right. Enjoyment, the enjoyment of the richness of life.

Right, though I am trying not to drink alcohol these days.

I've never been drunk in my life.

Yeah, amazing.

Never been drunk. I don't find it amazing because I just never found the desire to do it. I never tasted some when I was 16 and I was like, I don't understand why I would ever drink this. Plus it was also for me, maybe that's one of the reasons in your mind I look younger, I look like I haven't aged more, is because I found it as an advantage in sports when everyone else was drinking, I was like, oh, it's weakening their immune system. It's making them slower mentally. This will give me an edge in athletics. They were hung over after games in practice and I was like, I'm gonna be sharp. And so I just kept on with it. I was like, this is just gonna make me sharper. Now, I have my other vice. I use sugar in other ways. This is my vice. I'm not perfect, but does alcohol make you look older too?

In excess.

In excess, gotcha.

Yeah, yeah, so a little bit every day is okay, a little bit, but most doctors, like physicians, would say if you overdo it, you will age. And actually what you do as a researcher is you look at people who live a long time and compare them to either their twin, which has been done, or family members. Yeah, and actually how you live your life has a massive impact on how long you live. There's a twin study. They took identical twins genetically identical in Denmark and they said, okay, let's look at them through their life and there were massive differences in how they looked and how long they lived. And when they went back to see what the causes were, they could figure out, first of all, that 80% of their lifespan was determined by how they lived. not their genetics.

You mean the way they felt about.

Themselves, the people they hung out with, their environment, the activities they took on, or what do you mean? Well, mostly their lifestyle.

What they ate, did they smoke, did they drink, did they exercise? Those things. Did they sleep well, all that stuff?

Right.

And those that did all the good things, the same genetics, twins born the same day, one could live 10 years.

Longer than the other.

Now, this is what I'm curious about. Were these twins hanging out all the time? Or were they, because usually when you're hanging out with someone all the time, you pick up the similar habits, right? You pick up a similar lifestyle habit as your parents, as your partner, and you kind of eat the same things. It's really hard to be like, I'm gonna drink every day and I'm not gonna drink every day if you're living.

Together and in the same room, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know. So I wonder how that is. Maybe they got separated at birth or something. Interesting. But it does tell you a lot. The fact that 80% of our future health is in our own hands is liberating. That's really good. Because often we think, Ah, it's not going to make a big difference. It really makes a big difference how you live your life every day. Focus on that. And one thing that I do is I look at my future self and I ask myself, what's that guy saying to me today if he could speak to me?

What's he saying? Please don't eat that.

Exactly.

Please don't drink that anymore.

You had enough, like you're going to.

Hurt me in 10 years. That's how you need to think about it. It's coaching yourself 10, 20, 30 years out.

Out. Right.

It's interesting. I asked David Perlmutter, I said, what are some things you wish you would have done younger to improve the quality of your health?

And he was like, flossing.

He was like, he's like, I. And I didn't go deeper into that, but I remember him saying that. I was like, there's wisdom in whatever it is. Maybe he had some gum issues or something he had to deal with at one point that was really affecting him for a year or two. I don't know. I'm just making this up. But if he can go back, he'd be like, I wish you would have done this better. so I didn't have to suffer later.

Right? Yeah.

What are the things you've done or you're doing now that your 10 year old self will be so happy for? But if he was in front of you right now, he'd just be hugging you and high-fiving you non-stop the things you're doing that he will appreciate in 10 years. And then what are a few things that he's gonna say, man, I really wish you wouldn't do that right now.

Oh, yeah. Okay. All right, so let's see. So I measure myself so I can speak scientifically, not just that it makes me feel good. It's the one meal, one main meal a day.

He would be grateful for.

I'm sure of it. And as a result, I'm leaner and, you know, more ripped.

You look lean.

I'm lean.

You look really lean.

I've gone shredded over the last two years from 150 pounds to 130.

Yeah, you look leaner even from the first time I had you on. Your face is leaner and chiseled. Yeah, I don't think I can lose.

Any, I want to lose any more. Yeah, I need to go back to the gym and do a little bit more.

So the one meal a day, but you weren't doing one meal a day, what, five, ten years ago?

No, I only started during the pandemic.

Yeah, this is new for me too.

It's hard actually when you begin. Very hard. You feel hungry because you've got those crashes that make you really hungry and you this hormone called ghrelin that makes you hungry. But once you get through that, it takes about three weeks. So anyone who tries it, make sure that you don't give up early. Just power through and then your liver will wake up.

One mean meal a day.

So that's one. The other thing I think that he will be happy is don't eat sugary foods.

Oh man.

Yeah.

Don't eat that cake. So at a restaurant when they say, do you want dessert? I always say no, but then I'm hoping that someone at the table does what I want. But that's all you, all I need. I need to taste it. I don't need to fill myself with a cake.

Gotcha. 'Cause you still wanna enjoy your life and live a full life, but you don't want to in 10 years be like, why do they eat cake every day?

It's not worth it.

Yeah.

Really.

Your future self will thank you for it. Lifting weights, I know you do that, so I need to do more of that. I got a standing desk, so most of the day I'm standing, which is great. Again, you have to get used to it. You'll feel tired for the first few weeks.

Yes.

Your legs will. I'm now mostly focused on eating plants.

When did you start that?

That's recently.

You eat mostly plants?

Yeah, I've switched. I love meat. I wish that I could eat more. But you just got to look at the science. There's some really good studies of thousands of people who just look how long people live and what they eat. And I mean, it's not even an argument.

But there's so many people that bring in the argument, well, all these people have cured these diseases or whatever, you know, gotten rid of these things from meat only. And, but people make the argument, right? Like you see that online, people making the argument for meat, meat, meat. So how, where are they finding these research studies of people living longer on an only meat diet?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But you're not seeing them. You're not seeing studies of anyone that lives over a hundred that all they.

Do is eat meat. Well, there might be one person or two, but when you look at 10,000 people, it's the vegan and the pescetarian that win out.

In the blue zones, right.

Yeah, and the numbers are something like that. You drop it down to you've got 88% less chance, or actually it's 12% chance for most diseases. So most diseases are protected by these diets.

Really?

Wait a minute, 80% less chance of what?

Of dying at any one point in the age range of the study, which is.

Oh, wow.

Which is by being a pescetarian.

Yeah. Yeah.

So it's vegan pescetarian. Those are the best. Then above that would be actually pescetarian was better than vegetarian. A little bit of meat seemed to help, but it has to be fish.

What's the omega-3s in there, right?

Yeah.

And.

And particularly a laic acid is good. which is found in avocados and olive oil. That activates one of the protective enzymes that we study in the lab. Which acid? Oleic, O-L-E-I-C. What is some of that.

But not a lot of that.

It's a monounsaturated fatty acid or a MUFA. If you have a bit of olive oil, there's a supplement online that I get that has high levels of oleic acid in it that I take every day. Okay, cool.

With the DHA and EPA.

All that stuff, yeah. All that good stuff. Yes.

Okay. So that's my fish intake.

Is a pill.

You don't eat fish, you eat very little.

Well, you know, I'm evolving my diet. So I've gone from a Mediterranean diet over the last 10 years to the last two, three months to all plant-based, no dairy, and yeah, no meat. And I'm just seeing what happens to my body. I'm measuring things. It's an experiment. Yes. It's not a philosophy. And if things don't work out biologically, I'll go back. I mean, I'd love to go back to a steak. I'm Australian after all. But you know, I'm driven by science and that's all that is.

Yeah.

Okay, so you got these four. Is there another thing that your future self would thank you for? One meal a day, don't eat sugary foods, that's gonna be one of the most challenging for me. Lifting weights, eating mostly plants, was there anything else?

Get control over psychological stress.

Oh yeah.

Why is this so important?

Well, the main problem is you have high levels of cortisol when you're stressed out psychologically. And it's clear that people who have high levels of really high levels of stress are chronically ill and even it accelerates gray hair. That's actually a fact. It's not just a myth. You really are getting older if you have stress.

Really? This is scientifically proven that if you're stressed out all the time or more frequently, you're gonna get older biologically.

Correct. Wow.

Yeah.

Can you reverse gray hair without dyes?

Yes.

Really?

Well, not routinely, but there are examples of that. There are some drugs that have shown in the clinic that make hair go gray from gray to brown. The best example I can tell you is that when people are stressed out, let's say they're in they're in the banking world and they're losing their minds. You can find hairs that start to turn gray.

Okay?

So you look at them and they're a little bit gray at the bottom. Oh, good. I'm turning gray. Okay. Then they get given a vacation and they go away for a couple of weeks. And guess what happens to the hair shaft?

It gets brown.

It's brown again.

Come on.

You can find these gray brown segments of hair.

Interesting. Yeah.

And what they tracked it down to was that the cells that make the hair pigment start to shut down, but they can be reinvigorated. But I suspect once you've been gray for a number of years, it's really.

Hard to reverse that.

Yeah.

But, you know, I'm the first person to say aging is not unidirectional. In my lab, we're driving it forwards and backwards at will. It's not really difficult anymore once you figure it out.

I had a protein shake because I went to this friend of mine's company called Essential Foods, living foods and he had this, it was like a hemp, coconut, chia, moringa, coconut cream, protein powder with lots of, yeah. And I had a couple of that with a spoon of coconut butter for fat and almond butter for fat and blended that up. That was my breakfast. And then lunch was a big salad with lots of avocado, olive oil and some wild salmon, which has fat. So that was, and dinner I haven't had yet. So, cool. Awesome. And dinner I'll usually have, you know, small piece of protein and like I'll put 75% of my vegetable plate is vegetables.

Really?

So if I go out to eat, I'll order like three sides of vegetables, right? And if you look at your plate, you know, by volume, 70 or 80% of your diet should be plant foods.

And non-starchy veggies, right?

Non-starchy veggies.

Right.

And right, and by calories, it should be like 50 to 60% fat. But fat doesn't take up a lot of space, so you can get a lot of calories in a little space and still eat like people a lot of olive oil in your thing or even coconut butter. So you don't have to worry about it. You just have to eat. And, you know, the trick is I don't worry about how much I eat. I just worry about what I eat. And I make sure I have stuff. Like, I know that I'm going to be like here and I know how long it's gonna be. So I always bring stuff in my pocket. Almond butter. So I just have a pocket. I know I'm never gonna be in a food emergency, so I'm not gonna have to eat something crappy. And I think, I eat very little grains, very little beans. I do eat them. I eat mostly vegetables and some low glycemic fruit and I eat lots of nuts and seeds and I eat good quality fish and animal protein. What's low glycemic fruit? What does that include? So I'm not eating like tons of pineapple and grapes and those are sugary things. And I eat like berries and And I eat mostly berries and then apples or pears sometimes, or kiwis or grapefruit or mangoes or papaya. Nice.

Okay. So let's go back to functional medicine. What does that actually mean?

Functional medicine is compared to regular medicine. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know if people listening really have a great understanding of what's happening right now in science, but it's profound that the shift that's happening in our understanding of the body is It's like Columbus going, hey, the Earth isn't flat.

Right now, the last few years.

It's just like the last decade or two with our understanding of the human genome, of systems biology, of the body as a biological network, as a system, it's like an ecosystem where everything's connected, working together. And so the way we organize medicine is according to these organs. You've got your cardiovascular system, your neurologic system, your GI system, and so you go to all these specialists.

Right.

And everybody cheats their part of your body. If you have a migraine, we're actually learning that it might be related to gut flora. Or if you have heart attack, I mean now we know that you might be getting cancer because of your gut bacteria. Well, no oncologist is asking you what's going on in your gut microbiome. And so now we know, for example, like the microbiome is a great example of this disruption that's happening in healthcare. You know, the microbiome, which is your gut flora, it's really it's like 10 times as many cells as your own cells. It's a hundred times as much DNA as your own DNA. So we're kind of lazy. We have about as much DNA as an earthworm. Okay. But we borrow the DNA of the microbes in our gut to do things for us. And we borrow things from plants to do things from us, like for example, glucosinolates. So the microbiome is this huge thing that's got two to three million genes. We only have 20,000 genes. and it regulates your weight. You can swap out poop from a thin person into someone with diabetes and reverse it.

Right?

Amazing.

We've seen people, I've heard stories of fecal transplants, not only curing things like that, but like, you know, autoimmune diseases and really Parkinson's and people with MS and like crazy stories that I'm sorry to hear. And there's research now going on aggressively in looking at fecal transplants for all sorts of diseases.

It's transferring poop from one person to another. Yes.

What is that, how do you do that? Well, how does that process? Well, they collect the There's actually a- I've never heard of this. Yeah, you've never heard of this? Never heard of this. Oh my God, this is huge. What is it called? Fecal transplant. FMT, fecal microbial transplant. The way it came about was some doctor had a bright idea that there was this condition called C. diff, which is an infection of the intestines that happens after antibiotics, is life-threatening. And there's a huge amount of people are now resistant to antibiotics because of all the antibiotics in our feed and in the animal production. the drugs don't work. People die.

Wow.

And, and somebody thought, well, gee, if I put the poop from a healthy person into a sick person, let's see what happens. And the doctor did it, and the person was cured like that. 98 effective. 98 effective.

How do you do this? So understand this process.

You want to get into it?

Give me the 10.

We can do the visual. So basically they take, like, they take a fecal trans transplant specimen, like a donor specimen from a healthy person. saline, and they screen them for all sorts of diseases, and then they spin it up with some saline, and then they inject it in with a catheter or a colonoscope.

And then they actually also shit. It just heals inside or what's it.

Do when it's well, it goes in.

It's like massive probiotics, right? Oh, interesting.

Yeah. And so it's like an infusion of probiotics. And also, they're actually pills now. They actually are making special encapsulated poop pills. Poop pills. And it's not, I mean, this is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I'm not talking about like stuff that's wacky. I'm talking about serious medicine that people but it's not just for that. Now they're looking at it for all sorts of things.

People are cured right after one infusion.

Yeah, it's amazing. So functional medicine is really understanding the body as a system and network and understanding that the focus should not be on treating disease, but on creating health. So it's the science of creating health. It's the ultimate biohacking tool. And it's interpreting all the data and the stories from your body that it tells through testing we do, for example, you don't have to do testing, but you can look into the body and look at your immune function and allergies and your gut flora and toxins and nutritional status. It's like doing a soil sample. So I'm like a soil farmer, organic soil farmer rather than an industrial agriculturist. I don't put all these chemicals on my plants to make them better like herbicides and pesticides. I create a healthy soil and then disease doesn't occur, right? Disease can't land in a healthy soil. So that's exactly what functional medicine is. We help people get in balance. We take away the things that cause imbalance. We put in the things that help create balance. So for example, I had a woman come, she had a whole whole list of problems. That's why I call myself a holistic doctor, because I take care of people with a whole list of problems. So she had, like, psoriatic arthritis was on a drug that cost 30 grand. Oh, my God. Called Stelea. And still was miserable. She also was overweight, had pre-diabetes migraines, sinus problems, ear, throat, reflux, depression, insomnia. She had, like, this whole list of things. Of course, she saw all these specialists. The scientist doctor, the migraine doctor, the autoimmune doctor, the skin doctor, the depression doctor, the gut doctor, like. And everybody's treating her with their best practices.

Their best drug probably.

But she's being seen at the top medical center. They're not doing bad medicine. They're doing standard of care. In fact, they're doing excellent standard of care. But the standard of care is not the way we're going to fix these problems. It's outdated or it's not. It's totally outdated. So rather than thinking about how all these were separate, I said how are these all connected? Interesting. How are these all connected? and so there were connections. It was all inflammatory. And I said, well, why don't we put you on an anti-inflammatory low glycemic diet, the Pegan diet, basically, right? Took away anti-allergens and I, and I cleaned out her gut because her gut was causing huge bloating and she had yeast reactions. Oh, she had, like, vaginal yeast and anal yeast and itching and itchy ears and yeast everywhere from the yeast on her mouth and thrush. And so I gave her an antifungal. I gave her stuff to clear out the bad bugs in her gut. I put in good bugs, I put.

In enzymes, I put in things to.

Heal and the gut lining. I gave her fish oil, vitamin D, just some basic stuff, probiotics.

Yeah, but it's really eliminating the bad.

Foods, eliminating the bad bugs in her gut, and putting in new bugs and putting in nutrients to help her body heal. Two months later, she comes back completely symptom free.

No way.

No more arthritis, no more to $230,000 drug, no more skin psoriasis, no migraines, no sinus problems, no oral bowel, no reflux, no depression, no insomnia. And she lost 20 pounds.

All from food.

Totally. And what was food and her gut flora?

Right.

I focused on her gut floor. Why? Because 60 or 50 of the immune system is in the gut.

Interesting.

Yeah. Why? Why is it in the gum? Why is it there? Because that you're sticking pounds of food.

A foreign material, every day in your body.

You gotta fight it off in your gut.

Yeah.

And you've got, you know, you've got all the bugs in there and poop. It's like, it's like the danger zone, right? It's like you're, you're like, and it's one cell away. Because you're one cell away from a sewer every Really? Yeah, it's one cell between you and that mass of food and poop, right? So, your immune system is like if anything happens right there. So, when people have autoimmune disease, it's often a gut issue. It's often a gut issue. People didn't know this before, did they?

No. No.

So, now all this is really coming to light and functional medicine is the operating system to interpret the data. It's a new set of lenses to think about how to solve it and it's a system of treatment. that helps people get back in balance. That's what's powerful. And then at Cleveland Clinic, you know, the CEO of Cleveland Clinic, Toby Cosgrove, I come to Wayne Gretzky of healthcare. He goes where the puck's gonna be, not where it is. Smart, right? And he basically came after me to.

Go set up a center there.

Functional Medicine Center. Yeah, I'm like, I'm not going to Cleveland Clinic. It's like a, you know, it's like, I'm not gonna go to a place where I'm gonna have to bang my.

Head against the wall where it's traditional.

Medicine, where they don't get this, where they're in the dark ages.

It's also known as one of the top hospitals in the world.

Of course, but it's the top hospital in the old model. Yes. So I'm like, but he knows what's happening. He knows what's happening. He's like, we need this here. And so he's investing tons of money, millions and millions of dollars building this. We're building an 18,000 square foot facility. We started with a little space and we just outgrew it. We're hiring doctors. I have an interview with the doctor right after this. And we're basically growing, we're doing research all sorts of conditions. We're changing medical school education. We're changing policy. We're doing community work. So we're really, he's really putting us on the map in the traditional world. And because he's gonna go out of.

Business if he doesn't start doing this.

But what's amazing to me, you know, Louis, I thought when I got there, people would be, you know, skeptical, negative, make it difficult for me and my team there. But it's the opposite. And at last, they want to learn. Last week when I was there, I had two deans of medical schools, two chairs of institutes, which are big deals, and another doctor as patients.

No way.

Yeah, they're coming as patients.

Because they're not being cured with the medicine.

The executive team, the C-Suite team, is sending all their family members to come see us.

Do you know Dr. Lissa Rankin, by any chance?

Yeah.

She's been on as well, and she talked about how she had all this medication she was treating herself. and started saying, well, let me just change the way I eat and my relationships and my emotional health. Exactly.

It's all about the power.

And she's like, no, I got off all the medicine. That's right. And then I stopped giving medicine to my patients.

I started asking so many questions. It's so powerful. So we're at this fulcrum. It's not just I'm like one lone doctor with a crazy idea. There's a whole movement going on here. We had dinner with James Maskell. He's helping move that movement forward. I'm the chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine, where we train doctors all over the world in this model and operating system of how to actually do this in practice. So, we are literally building an army of doctors that change healthcare and it's pretty exciting and it's actually starting to really hit that hockey stick point where it's changing.

Amazing.

People want it. I mean, people are desperate for this model.

So, if someone is listening and they're on some type of medication or they're just feeling like constantly sick, you know, something that's constantly happening what do you think is because there's so much information online that it's scary.

It's scary, right?

WebMD stuff, just like looking up anything and Googling it and seeing all the nasty photos and just like, oh, yeah. What is an approach that someone should take if they have some challenge that's constantly happening in their health? Should they first analyze the food they're intaking and do, like, an analysis?

Do you have, like, a process? Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a great question, Louis. So, you know, what I am is a doctor, and what I do is see patients in my office. That's my main job. Yes, I've written a dozen books.

Yes.

I do a lot of stuff, but that's my main job. And so I've learned over 30 years of doing this how to create sustainable, practical programs to help people get from sick to well very quickly. And what I've done, because not everybody can come see me and there aren't that many of us out there yet.

We have so many hours in a day.

And there's not that many functional medicine. I've written books and programs to help people operationalize this in their own life. So each that get thin, and look, I could say, do my program, but I don't really care what program you do, as long as it's based on the basic principles. And there are a lot of my colleagues who are writing great books about this. It's all the same information because it's all the same science and if you're telling the truth, there's only one story here, the truth, right? And so, this Effectiveness in is a great program that I put together to make people have so no friction. It's easy.

It's very straightforward.

21 days. 21 days practical goof proof. And it tells you what to eat. And when you get to the end of that, you'll see how you feel. Because most people in 21 days will change their habits, but they'll also allow their body to reset. It's like putting your body back to its original factory settings.

Right?

And then if something's left over, then, you know, gee, maybe I need to go deeper. Like, if you still don't feel great, maybe you have Lyme disease.

Maybe I have heavy metal poisoning.

Maybe your thyroid's not maybe have a parasite, maybe you could be eating the perfect diet but still feel bad.

So, do that 21 days first.

Yeah, but 80% of the time, you're.

Going to cure yourself.

Yeah, 80%. I mean, 80% of the time, this works for people and then the 20% who had to get extra help, they.

Need to come see somebody. And the body's pretty incredible in how.

It can heal itself very quickly once you change habits. Unbelievable. We did the survey of a thousand people who did this. I mean, they lost weight, yes, and they lost inches, yes, and that's all impressive. And their blood sugar dropped 20 points and their blood pressure 10 points. But the thing that really matters to me is I have everybody fill out what I call the FLC quiz. You know what that is? That's when you feel like crap. Okay? So it's a quiz. How do you have, like, you know, do you have bloating? Do you have asthma? Do you have headaches? Can you sleep? Like, joint pain, muscle pain, what's your mood? Are you depressed? Like, so you fill out this whole score and zero to four for every symptom, and you get a score. They do want it before and after. And the before and after score, there was a 69 reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. Whoa, because you don't have to treat everything individually. If you put in the right information, like I said at the beginning of the show, the body knows what to do. So the information in food is so powerful that if you figure out what to eat, you don't have to worry about how much, you don't have to count fat, grams, carbs, calories, nothing. I don't do that.

I don't have time for that.

I don't want to be on an app all day figuring it out. I just want to know how to get my body to naturally do what it's supposed to do. If you're off by 100 calories a day, you're going to gain like 50 pounds in 30 years. You can't do it by willpower. You have to use science. And the science of using fat and low glycemic food, like low sugar food, is really powerful. It's magical. I mean, I noticed my own body. I'm like 56 and I noticed- You're young, man.

You're like fit, healthy, energetic.

I know. Well, I can tell you, I was always been focused on health. But I was the doctor who was trained to eat low fat and to tell my patients eat low fat. And I did that. And I also ate a lot of things that I thought were healthy, like pasta was a health food. Pasta was a health food.

I used to eat so much pasta.

Yeah, health food, right? Low fat.

Pasta all the time.

Yeah, exactly. And so I basically changed that and I started eating a lot less starch, a lot less sugar, a lot more fat. And I noticed my body, without any exercise, I'm so lean, so fit.

It. Yeah.

I'm like, wow, I got a six-pack and I didn't even work out. It's like. And it's just stunning what happens when you're. When you do. And my brain is clear. I have more energy. My moods better. I mean, you're.

I know. So you're drinking a, like, a bulletproof coffee. You know that it works. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, I started doing testing some different things at the beginning of this year in January, and the first week, I did no sugar. The second week, no sugar, no gluten. Yeah. Third week, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy. Fourth week, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, no meat.

That was last week.

And I was just to see what happened with that.

Pulling a Band-Aid off slowly.

Yeah. I should have just done it all.

It's better to do it the other way. The way I do with my patients, you do a detox. Basically, you get off everything at once. You feel bad for a couple of days and then you see how you feel. I feel amazing.

Because one of the rules of-- I.

Should have talked to you before this. And then you can add things back one at a time and see what bothers you.

Interesting.

So, because the rule in functional medicine is if you're standing on a tack, it takes a lot of ask for make it feel better. So, if something's bothering you, you have to get rid of the cause. But, if you're standing on two tacks, taking one out doesn't make you 50% better.

Interesting.

So, if you're allergic to dairy and.

Gluten, but you just take out gluten, you're not going to feel better. Right, right, right. So, I did the whole wrong way. Oh, well. It was an experiment. But, the thing what I was going to mention was I started doing Bulletproof in the morning and fasting until 1:30 and not eating after 9:30 or whatever it is at night. And I realized that I wasn't hungry in the mornings when I do the coffee. And I would only have like half a cup only. And I would be fine until 1:30. MCT oil puts you in ketosis, which.

Is medium chain triglycerides. It's a super fuel, comes from coconut, which is in the coffee. It's what I recommend as part of my Eat Fat, Get Thin program. Speeds up your metabolism.

Even-- you-'re burning fat.

It actually makes you metabolism work faster and burn more calories.

If someone is above 60 or 70 right now and they're listening to this and they've been-- maybe they haven't been well with their diet or they're working out at all. They're just kind of like living in a little obese and have some minor health challenges. What can they be doing right now if they're over 60 to try to live a better, healthier, longer life?

Well, let's pretend they're not over 60, but we'll go there. Let's pretend they're 35 or 40 and they are slightly or obese and they have a couple number of health problems and you know, they're all in the, you know, because we're all in this together. What are we gonna tell this person? Here's what I'm gonna tell them. I'm gonna say, okay, the first thing that we need to focus on is metabolic correction. And we're gonna do that by optimizing your protein. So you are a, you know, what are they? They're probably not eating a ton and, or maybe they're eating a lot of carbohydrates. I'm going to say, well, the first thing we're going to do is I'm going to say we are going to ideally, and again, they might not do this, one gram per pound ideal body weight, which if this person is 150 pounds, it would be 150 grams of protein. That is high, right? That is on the higher end. So this guy might be like, I don't want to do that. I'm going to say, you know what? That's fine. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to focus on metabolic correction. So I'm going to start you at three meals a day. I don't care when your first meal is, but that first meal after you are coming out of a fast is the most important. And you are going to optimize that for dietary protein. And the reason it's the most important is because they are catabolic, they are fasting. At that moment, if we get that threshold, that nutrition, that protein threshold right, you will stimulate their muscle.

Mmm.

So what should be eating the first meal of the day?

So that could be, I would want them to hit 40 to 50 grams of protein.

Really?

And that could be a whey protein shake, which you could probably get a little bit less. It could be a beef patty. It could be chicken and eggs. It could be chicken and eggs. It could be whatever.

Okay, 40-50 grams of protein your first meal.

Just get that right. Just if any of the, if the listener would do that for me.

No matter how big your, no matter.

How big that's right.

40 to 50 grams. If you're 150 pounds or 250 pounds, just try to get in that range.

Yeah, I mean listen, could it be between 30 and 50?

Yes.

Okay, gotcha.

30 and 50 would be great. If you are older, if you are that 60 plus, the muscle goes through a normal physiological change called anabolic resistance. You want to push their protein a little bit higher. If you are younger like you, you could probably get away with 30 to 40 grams of protein.

Do you want to, does it matter if you work out first in the morning or fast for five hours in the morning? Doesn't matter. Just your first meal when you eat after you wake up, whether it's right away or 10 hours later.

Right, that first meal should be optimized for protein. And I would argue that if that meal is not around training, our target carbohydrate load and if they're not training would be 40 grams or less, that first meal. carbohydrates lower that first meal. The reason is, is it ends up being about a one-to-one ratio of, you.

Know, if you're eating carbs the same or less.

It would be less, right? Because anything really above the 50 grams of carbohydrates creates a more robust insulin response. And you don't want that for your first meal. You want that first meal to be very smooth and stable. And not only that, and Heather Leidy, who I had mentioned earlier, has done some very interesting FMRI research that one of the things that protein does is it's very satiating. And I always tell patients not to worry about their strengths, but to plan for their weaknesses. And when you augment willpower by leveraging dietary protein, you plan for it. You're much less likely to overeat.

Right.

So you nail that 40 grams of protein first. maybe a little bit lower carbs and some fat, then that next meal is maybe four or five hours later, right? So you stimulate muscle. You now have robustly stimulated muscle. That next meal will be another, again, depending on what you need, I like to target around 30 grams at a minimum.

Protein.

Yeah.

Okay.

The data, you know, it's interesting. So a lot of the literature doesn't actually support much discussion on that lunch meal. It's really that first meal. But again, if we're talking about maintaining healthy skeletal muscle, we're also talking about maintaining blood sugar. Compliance is really important. Protein, it's very hard to store protein as fat. There's a high thermic effect of food, meaning it takes more energy to utilize it. And part of the reason I believe is because it stimulates muscle. It takes anywhere from 20% of the food that you eat to actually, it takes 20% of that energy. So if you're eating 100 calories of protein, there is some contribution to that. Then that last meal of the day, I would say I would make that more robust, again, that 40 to 50 grams. And any listener could do this. The younger you are, you can You know, muscle is typically healthier. You can get away with a little bit less. The older you are, the more protein you need at once to overcome anabolic resistance. You know, skeletal muscle is fascinating, in case you were wondering, what I really thought about it. It's actually a nutrient sensor. It senses our nutrients. And it senses leucine. And that leucine, which is that branch, which is that amino acid, and that's really how we need to think about protein is we really need to understand that protein requirement as we age is really about a meal threshold. 24-hour protein is very important. Secondarily, having protein in discrete meals is incredibly valuable because if you don't, you won't stimulate your tissue.

Sure.

And as you age, that tissue becomes more marbled. with fat, it becomes more challenging. The other thing is resistance exercise is another way to stimulate tissue. And this is where you get with a great trainer. I know I typically recommend between three and four sessions of resistance exercise a week, but again, having someone evaluate you as it relates to training. And then another thing that's overlooked is mitochondrial and that's really the cardiovascular aspect. And the current recommendation is 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity now. And I think as, you know, again, we're very split. People are really into resistance training or they're really into cardio. But when we think about longevity, we must address both.

Is cardio... When I think of cardio, I think more about people trying to lose weight.

That's not a great strategy.

Is it helping you build muscle when you are just running and riding a bike?

I mean, not really. Muscle to grow requires metabolic stress, requires mechanical tension, exactly. Metabolic stress, ribosomal biogenesis, protein and calories.

Then why do people focus so much on cardio? Is it for heart health? Is it for other benefits?

Yes, I believe that number one, it's very easy to do. You don't have to have advanced knowledge of training protocols. And that's hard. That's hard for people. There is that barrier to entry. cardiovascular, a lot of the literature, a lot of the data has always been done on cardio. Again, because it's easy, you know, you first use rodent models, then you transition to humans. But cardiovascular activity is very valuable as it relates to mitochondrial function, as it relates to energy, and there's a natural decline as we age. Again, aging doesn't get easier, but being able to be strong and capable and optimizing for dietary protein will be the ultimate in longevity. And there's so much confusion about the narrative that my fear is, you know, when you address it in your later life, you're missing this huge opportunity midlife. Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, they don't develop later in life. They start in your 30s. When I was looking at that participant's brain, when I was looking, we'll just call her Sarah, when I was looking at Sarah's brain, it didn't start then. It started in her 30s.

From nutrition or from excess?

From excess. From being overweight. You know, had she built muscle, it would have been a metabolic buffer. You know, when you look at diseases of aging, it's not the aging, these diseases like Alzheimer's, cardiovascular, these start in your 30s. Sarcopenia, which is the big one where, you know, sarcopenia is loss of muscle mass and function, you know, which is we see people get much smaller. That doesn't start then.

Right.

It starts much earlier. So if you eat the way that you did in your 20s, you have no chance of protecting your muscle. The changes will be subtle. until one day they're not.

You just start shrinking and getting weaker.

You have increase in adipose tissue. You now fall into the general category of one of the millions that are overweight, have high blood sugar, insulin resistance, you name it. And it's something that happens over time. And if we continue the conversation that is very distracted about, well, we'll take this and we'll take this and we'll do that, as opposed to do the foundational things that we have direct control over, which is train hard, optimize and prioritize for a protein forward plan. You do those fundamental things, everything else is gravy.

So if you focus on protein and you train consistently, you should be able.

To protect your muscle.

And it sounds like eliminate a lot of the health problems or risks that could come your way.

This is the ultimate in a muscle centric approach.

My father had lung cancer back in 2005. He survived, but he shrunk in size by one third.

His body.

Yeah, yeah. quality of life never recovered to this extent. So this is where my passion for longevity starts.

You are living longer and more quality.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Okay, so that's number one.

Two, I call it don't die stupid or don't do stupid things or scientifically I call it passive longevity, right? So if you're smoking, statistically you're gonna live 10 years, well, less.

Right.

And if you look at the average for your gender and population group, okay? So smoking minus 10 years from your life. Not using seat belts?

Minus two years.

Seat belts in the car? Seat belts.

Yeah.

Minus two years from your life. Well, excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol, I don't even have the figures, but that's dangerous as well. so this, these are the simple things or don't doing, you know, doing super extreme sports. Like, for, for example, I, I've been blessed and I had an opportunity to travel to, like, South Pole and North Pole because it's, it's still pretty safe trips. But then I thought, okay, what if I, I want to go to Everest, like, the, the highest mountain on so probability of death if you try to do it is a little bit around, well a little bit above 6%. So I thought like as a man who wants to change one billion lives and father of four kids, I don't want to do it. So these are the simple choices and again they are all rational in regards to smoking or your safety procedures, etc. So that's very important too. And people really underestimate that.

Don't die stupid, don't do things so extreme that It gives you more chance of dying younger. Okay, number three.

Third is diet. So one of our limiting beliefs, and this is what has changed for us, is we underestimate the power of food and the food and the fact that food can be our medicine, right? So in this regard, there's so many disagreement in scientific circles around what actually extends our life today. but there is almost one agreement, even this most skeptical one, say that if you decrease the number of calories, your caloric intake, it's almost, it's almost your guarantee that you're gonna live like two, three, four years longer and the quality actually gonna be better.

Crazy.

Yeah, it is.

You'll look younger, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But then the question is how you do it, right? Because you know what? It's, for me, it's a nightmare. Just to three days a week, sorry, three times a day, seven days a week, just to control the number of calories that you do. So what I do, I'm doing a lot of plant-based food because the caloric intensity of vegetables is so small. Even if we have the whole table full of vegetables, you're still gonna be fine. So that's one. Two, because of the current production practices for meat and fish. The industrial version of this is full of growth hormones, antibiotics, equally bacteria itself. So I'm just trying to avoid this. So that's important as well. And this is why you switch to vegetables as well. I also do fasting, but it's not for everyone. You know, I do like 36 hours of fasting every week, Monday evening to Wednesday morning.

I've been starting to do that from Sunday evening, Tuesday morning.

Yeah.

And I feel great.

It's amazing.

I just did this a couple days ago.

Yeah.

I've done it a few times this year. And I'm kind of like, okay, once a month right now. Try for 24 to 36 hours.

Yeah.

And it's like maybe every two weeks or maybe every week eventually. I feel like I'm getting leaner. I feel like healthier, younger, all those things.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's. I also like your choice of weekday. because I'm kind of trying, I'm killing the blue monster in the beginning, right? So I'm like the most difficult part is like do it on Monday and Tuesday and then for the rest of the week.

Yeah, enjoy.

You enjoy yourself. I also like wine, but specifically Californian wine, but it's really unhealthy, specifically from the age of like 45 when your aging processes are starting to progress. So I'm sticking like like, probably one or two glasses of wine every week, like on my scene days, like Friday evening or Saturday.

Max.

And that's it.

Yeah.

I just did a brain scan with Dr. Daniel Amen. Do you know?

Yeah.

I interviewed him for the book, Amazing Guy. I just got my results back literally last week and did three brain scans. Supposed to go back in four months. He wants me to give me, he's giving me some supplements and some hyperbolic, hyperbolic chamber.

Yeah.

Did my first one yesterday. I'm doing another one tomorrow. Supposed to do 40 sessions. Yeah, it's at Next Health here.

Yeah, yeah.

And in the chamber. And he said, I asked him, I go, we just had an interview come out with him, but I asked him, of smoking marijuana, cigarettes or alcohol, which one is worse for the brain? And he said marijuana, based on 80,000, I think, scan results, those that had marijuana had far worse brains. looking brands than those who didn't. He said, obviously smoking and alcohol also affected, but marijuana is the worst. And so if we know these things that smoking alcohol, marijuana is bad for the brain, bad for longevity, why do we keep doing them? Why do we keep doing it?

Look, it's a trillion dollar question. I can guess that I do think through evolution we didn't really have access to all these things. so our body and our mind has never been prepared to tackle the challenge of this kind of over availability of this world.

Yeah.

Of the world, right? So much stimulation, so much opportunities, challenges, adversity, pain, suffering, media. Like it was a much simpler life 100 years ago.

Exactly. Exactly.

There was still adversity, but it was like, okay, we're just hanging out with a few friends in the farm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. And we've never been, well, that's why I talk about discipline and the unit and longevity because otherwise your body through centuries, actually through million years of evolution has not really been prepared to handle all this stress and all these choices. That's probably the surest way to answer that.

Okay, so that's how you die.

And also the final, you know, that was three, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, final the whole piece on the diet is the importance of, like, take out the sugar drinks. So, like, we're drinking water today, so that's super important.

This.

We have way too much sugar that we should and we can't process in terms of how our body works. The fourth is physical activity. And we have a funny view on, on physical activity. So, I mean, as humans, everything is, like, black and white. Everything is binary extremes. So it's a group of people just sitting and watching football on TV. The other group of people are, okay, I need to run a marathon. But there's so many things in between. The easiest thing you can do is just wear your Whoop or Fitbit or Apple Watch and count the steps. 10,000 steps a day is enough, actually, to transform your metabolic state, to support your longevity. like a healthy state of your body. If you look at science, starting from 6.5,000 steps or 7,000 steps is actually enough then it's a plateau. But usually say like 10,000 steps a day because we tend to under-deliver in terms of our target. And it's very easy, it's gamified, you can have immediate feedback like a badges, congratulations, prizes. That's the whole thing. I had an interview with Adrian Gore, the founder of insurance companies. I don't know who's their partner in the US, in the UK, it's Vitality UK. They started from South Africa and the only option and tools and resources they had to make people healthy is lifestyle changes. Because of the way the country was run and how poor they were, like it was like the only thing that they did. And they work a lot with guys like Apple, with Fitbit, just to make a change in your health through giving you different stimulus to do physical activity every day in form of steps. So like if you do every week, if you complete your seven goals, you get like a cup of coffee from Starbucks every two weeks. is, I think, tickets to the cinema. And then, but then the funny thing, you'd be amazed how many things that we can do for free cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Like, oh, I'm gonna go do this for an hour.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So that's, that's the thing. So gamified. And then obviously, on top of that, if you can, you should add stretching, you should add, like, a cardio exercise, because this is the best training for your heart and vessels. And remember, it's one of the low risk for that. So then, yeah, it's heart disease and cancer. So that's, that's super important as well. And also heavy lifting. What I've, what I've heard, I've seen the study, actually, that people who are professional, like heavy lifters, they have zero problem in any stage of their life, even during the old stage, zero problem with joints and bones as well. I don't know how it works, but it's It's really amazing. So that's worth, that's your health. Yeah, everything.

I mean, there are some heavy lifter bodybuilders who have destroyed their bodies. So if you're an extremist with it, obviously it's gonna shut your body down. But I think the science behind this is like the resistance training, the heavy lifting is increasing bone density. It's like, it's doing all these things for your body.

Yeah.

And muscle burns fat, so it's like helping you keep the fat off, which is helping you you stay younger and all those things. So that's physical activity, number five.

Yeah, number five, I call it peace of mind. And as we discussed, every time we think about health, we kind of defer to and we focus on physical health. And I do think we underestimate the importance of the mental aspect of that, because if we want to live longer, we want to live in healthy and happy states. so that's important and that's a lot of simple things like sleeping. My rule is eight hours in the bed, seven hours of sleep.

So that's what I resting for an hour sleeping.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I do. You know, I might fall asleep earlier but then just I don't want to mix that, you know, time in the bed is not always your kind of quality sleep time. Then meditation is very important. The problem you just just mention how difficult and destructing this world is. So by this means we all probably have very high level of cortisol, the stress hormone. And the way Mother Nature constructed our body, it's actually meant to be like a spike. So you see a bear or something dangerous in the forest, you have a spike of cortisol, the stress hormone. you run and then in, if you're lucky, in, you know, 10 or 20 minutes, then you can actually relax and your cortisol level goes down. So, but we live in with extremely high cortisol level, hour by hour, day by day, week by week. And it's, it's, and it's very dangerous. So meditation is a, is a really simple way to decrease your cortisol. and it has enormous health effect. And also in terms of the happiness, I think a sense of purpose and sharing the social realization sense of purpose is super important. And again, as we discussed pre-show, if you think about religious leaders or people who have a big mission in life, they tend to shine more, have more energy, and live longer. So, I mean, a meaningful purpose. Yeah, exactly.

A meaningful purpose. So those are the five out of the ten buckets. Going back to the psychological age and social, I guess, pressures or social norms. Something my father did as a child growing up is he would never celebrate my birthday. And I remember All the other kids in my class would have birthday parties, cakes, balloons, presents, all this. It was like this big celebration. My birthday comes around, nothing. I got no gifts, no parties, no nothing. It was just another day. And I remember after like a few years of this, you know, once I realized at like five, I was like, oh, I'm not even, and there was like seven and eight, I was like, Dad, why don't you celebrate my birthday? What's like, do you not love me? You know, it was like, yeah, yeah. He goes, we celebrate you every day, but I don't want to put emphasis on your age and how old you're getting because I've seen so many people focus on their age and be held back mentally and emotionally, physically by how young they are or how old they are. And so we never celebrated it. And I was like, Dad, but we can still get like a cake or something, you know, and have like presents. But he was like, I just don't want you to be limited by your age, by focusing on time. as a factor that's of importance for you that could hold you back. And I thought it was, you know, after of like the sadness of it, I was like, this makes sense. And I grew up feeling just like, it doesn't matter how old I'm getting biologically, right? But psychologically, I'm staying young and healthy and fulfilled and fun and joyful. I'm expressing myself like a child and therefore I feel young. and so, and I never feel like limited because I'm like, oh, I'm now 38 biologically, so it's like, I can't do this. It's like, no.

You can't. I can still do whatever I want. Oh, yeah, that's a great story. I mean, it's obviously a little bit painful for the kid, if I can.

Imagine, but that's a great lesson. But it's kind of a great habit. It's breaking down the social norms of like how to put emphasis on our age. Yeah. And how, okay, now you're a big milestone 30, now it's 40, like, oh, you're getting over the hill. saying these things, words have meaning and start to psychologically affect us. Like now I'm middle-aged. Okay, so you only got half your life left.

What do you mean?

Yeah.

So St. Joseph's all downhill from here. It's like the words we use transform our mindset, which affects our physiology.

Exactly. Exactly. You also touched on very important topic of how society and our life will change if we're all gonna live much, much longer. Whether it's 150 years or 200 years as well. And then I think the biggest mindset shift that we need to do is that our life will consist of several beautiful mini lives. Okay, so there are mini lives. Mini lives.

Seasons.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's a great metaphor or way to call it. So then every 10 to 20 years we will have an opportunity and the pleasure of changing career, right? Or start to do things that you always were dreaming of doing. So that's that. I do think it's important to recognize and we always be on this trajectory of redefining ourselves. And I do think it's very soon that we'll have a it's going to be a social norm to make a lot of changes in your life in terms of, you know, education, career, even purpose, even a dream every 10 to 20 years. Well, that's, that's one of the things to, to grow young. But also, I think it's a necessity in a world where our lifespan will go beyond or well beyond 100 years.

Yeah, that's cool. I'm curious about environment and weather. How does that play into age and aging or ants are staying young. Do people that live in cold, extreme colds live longer? Do people live in extreme hots? Is it more mild temperature where they live longer? Do we have any research around this?

Yes.

So.

And this is very interesting actually. So every time we're talking about extremes, it's not really great. Either way, so if you're like right in the middle of Africa, Right. And always under the sun, it's not that great. Because it, what it does, it's actually speeds up, like the aging processes in your body.

And everything.

Well, the other, the other extreme, if you are like really up north, that.

Then you have to work so hard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stay warm.

So that's, that's one. Well, the other thing is, you are deprived of sun because it's like six months or, you know, what? Vitamin D. Yeah, yeah, yeah. of polar night and six months of polar day, you don't have like a vitamin D which processed naturally in your body. And also you usually have certain limitations in terms of your access to nutritional food. Food is in deficit there in terms of variety and like vegetables as well. So you're really far away from your organic farm or wherever you take your vegetables from. So, I do think that we all, like if you think about US or Europe in a sweet spot of where we can live to maximize our longevity, I also talk about this in the concept called longevity revolution. I do think, and I say there are seven signs of longevity revolution just for communication purposes. And first sign for me is that I want you and all of us to watch out how longevity friendly our environment is becoming. So like China and India added 10% of their timberlands in the last 10 years or driver's cars.

They added what?

Timberlands, like forest area, forest area increased, right?

So that's why is that for oxygen? Is that for nature?

Because I mean, I think making sure world is becoming better, right? And fighting global warming is on everyone's agenda. And, you know, like these countries, they kind of thought, okay, if we will increase the timber like a forest land, that's gonna help to solve a problem. The other sign is, like driverless cars. So if you are, I was about to say, if you're driving driverless cars. So if you are in a driverless car, your chances to get in severe accidents or die is actually 10 times smaller.

If you're not driving the car.

Yeah, yeah.

If it's drive, if it's driven by a computer.

Is that out there yet? I mean, there's the Tesla that I have has like self-driving.

Yeah, yeah, we get you in there. It's just a matter. in the next, because, you know, I want to prepare all of us, not only for changes that we just discussed for today, but like you need to stay on longevity bridge in the next 5 to 10, 15 years. You need to be healthy and happy to make sure you enjoy the benefit of all these technologies which are coming.

It's not too late.

I call it Horizon 2. So we will discuss that as well. But then drive these cars. So that's a natural choice. So you just decrease mortality rate by a factor of 10. Isn't it amazing? Or plant-based meat or lab-grown meat? Well, that's just another caloric restriction intervention, if you think so. I'm actually very hopeful and positive about the fact that right now we have a choice, whether you go for like a usual meat or plant-based meat as well. And I'm not religious about being vegan or vegetarian. I have plenty of friends we're gonna have this habit. But, you know, obviously all these changes in the environment contributes to.

Right.

You know, our ability to live longer and enjoy in our life. In fact, I'm actually, I'm doing a lot of pro bono programs called longevity at work with largest corporations on Earth. I, I just, I don't want to use their names. And again, everything I do in longevity is, is. me sharing the best of me. So I do it for free. But what we do, we create longevity bubbles, like a longevity enabling environment in their offices. So people use the stairs, there's healthy food in canteens and vending machines. They all have varibles. And then week by week, you just compare this department with this department, this state with this state as well. They have. And, and right now we have so many apps for, like, meditation for. smoking cessation and an annual checkup is a part of so many health plans. So you just need to have like a good focus on that. So this is what we do. It's just another way for you to improve your longevity chances. To make sure you have, you're surrounded with healthy choices rather than you not just you opening out your fridge and it's like alcohol and chocolate. I love all of this, but it's just not really healthy.

One thing to keep in mind would be what regulates the gut microbiome? One of the major things that regulates the gut microbiome is what I just said, eating a diverse array of fermentable fiber. Give me an example.

What's a diverse array?

So you have blueberries, you have nuts, mushrooms, you have some dark leafy greens. These have different types of, or you've got onions and garlic. Those have a different type of fermentable fiber. That should be differentiated from non-fermentable fiber, which would be cellulose, slgans. Well, just like broccoli has fermentable fibers, but yeah, most of the bulk of fiber in plants is non-fermentable. So, what that's doing is basically just helping move stuff through the intestines, right? Pushing it out.

The fiber.

That's important.

The fiber is pulling it down and cleaning it out.

Cleaning it out, right. And that's also important. But the fermentable fiber, the stuff that can be eaten by this bacteria in our gut, that is the good stuff. That's allowing the bacteria to make short-chain fatty acids.

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, you know, 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, you know, because these bacteria are playing different roles.

Poles.

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 or, 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 husband gets tired of it, but I'm like the same. It's so much easier to have the same thing. 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 I can be more creative and I have more time. But generally speaking, it's easier to kind of stick to the same thing.

But 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. Justin the same meal three times a day or different meals? Dr. Justin 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 or sorry, two micrograms of mercury per four ounces cooked. So, that's really low in.

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. So, yeah, I would say cooking me.

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 green.

Kale.

And yeah, I'd 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 like the probably 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 and the sun expose the sun and, you know, cataracts and things like that. So 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 correlating plasma levels looting and zeaxanthin with, you know, improved cognitive function. There's been randomized controlled trials supplementing with looting 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, you know, 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. But, 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 and 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 is 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, but it, it, it's just, it's one of those things where people like to talk about potential anti-nutrients 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, 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.

I hear those are amazing for you. Yes.

So broccoli sprouts have like a hundred 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, if I could add more, I would absolutely put the broccoli sprouts in there. Yes. But my point was that the animal 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 sulfur or fang, particularly if they're not getting iodine. Most people aren't iodine deficient. It's like in salt. Most people are eating foods that already have salt in them. Now, so 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. You might find one study with one case report with a female who had some crazy disease or something and she was juicing, you know, just ungodly amounts of kale every day where it's like, I mean, okay, maybe you can create a situation where, you know, it'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 palate of a seven-year-old and I don't like blueberries. I don't, I don't like avocado. I'm the pickiest eater. I'm probably a pickier eater than your, 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. And I do think, for example, 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, you know, not die, for example, you know, 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. You know, there's the fermentable fibers that are feeding the gut microbiome, which are.