"The SHOCKING Truth About Your Gut's SECRET Brain" How To Boost Your Mood From The Inside Out

Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. So what is the first thing I should be eating in the morning to set me up for success that day for my mental health, my hunger cravings, Everything. My hormones.

A savory breakfast built around protein.

Eggs.

Eggs, some yogurt, some leftover fish from last night, tofu, meat, a smoothie with protein powder, some nuts, something that, and I have loads of recipes in the book, but something that's built around protein. That way you're gonna keep your glucose nice and steady because protein does not.

Turn to glucose when you digest it. So we talked about juice, but what about smoothie?

You just mentioned smoothie. So smoothies would be a better solution. slightly better.

Yeah.

So if you, for example, if you smoothie a banana, okay, you're not going to get rid of the fiber, but the blades of the blender are going to pulverize it. So it's going to become less effective. And you're going to drink that banana smoothie so quickly versus eating the banana. So smoothies and juices are just less good if they're made of fruit. But if you have a smoothie in the morning with, like, protein powder, you know, some nuts, some milk, a little bit of fruit for taste, it's fine. As long as you're balancing it and putting some clothing on those fruits.

Protein in there.

Yeah.

So if you have peanut butter in.

There, is that a good thing? Cause it's protein. It's gonna be better for your glucose spike, yeah.

It's a better thing, okay.

You're trying to make me say things. Well, I'm just trying to understand better. Yeah. But the solution to this crazy food landscape that we live in, food environment, is not to cut out stuff. I don't believe in that. I think you try that for a week or you know, you're like, this year I'm never gonna eat sugar at all. That doesn't work. It never does. So what I recommend people try is try some of these techniques. For example, if you really want to eat some sugar, let's say a cookie or donut or whatever, the best time to eat that sugar so that you have maximum dopamine from it, maximum pleasure and less impact on your body is going to be after a meal as dessert. You want to always avoid eating sugar on an empty stomach and always avoid eating sugar in the morning. Okay?

Really?

Yes. So breakfast should be savory. Okay, in the morning nothing sweet is sweet.

Really? Yeah. Man, those pastries though, with chocolate inside.

And just, oh man, the donut in the morning. Keep them for dessert after lunch. Because if you have them in the morning, then what's happening in your body? As you digest that sugar and those carbs, they turn into glucose molecules and these arrive into your bloodstream really quickly and cause what's called a glucose spike. So blood sugar spike. And then about 90 minutes later, Louis, your glucose levels are going to drop. You're going to feel a crash. And now it's 10 a.m., 11 a.m., and all of a sudden you feel more cravings for sweet foods.

You're like, I need a cookie, I.

Need some chocolate, I need a snack. I need that spike again. And then you spike again, and then all day you're on a roller coaster where you feel addicted to sugar. Because your brain, when you're experiencing a glucose crash after a spike, the cravings center in your brain actually activates and says, Lewis, Find a cookie, find a cookie. And you wanna avoid that because then you cannot fight against the craving center in your brain.

So hard.

Yeah, that center is very powerful and it's linked to evolutionary responses that we have to low blood sugar. So you wanna avoid that from happening. The way you do it is have sugar after a meal as dessert, never on an empty stomach, never as a snack, never for breakfast.

Wow, my gosh, never as a snack.

If you can.

So you eat something first before you have the sugar. Exactly.

Or if you really need the snack, the sugar snack, what you do is another hack that I call put clothing on your carbs. So what does that mean? So first of all, carbs. Carbs are two types of foods, starches. So that's bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats, or sugars. Anything that tastes sweet from a banana to chocolate cake. Those are carbs, okay? when you eat them on their own, for example, a slice of cake on its own or a bowl of pasta on its own. Well, carbs break down to glucose molecules. So those naked carbs, very quickly, they end up as lots of glucose in your bloodstream, therefore, a glucose Spike. What you want to do instead is put some clothing on your carbs. And the clothing are proteins, fats or fiber before or, or with them. You can have them before or with them. So, for example, you can have a.

Bite of cake, but then have something else.

Yes.

Yeah.

You could like some Greek yogurt with the chocolate cake or with the bowl of pasta, add some chicken or some cheese or some spinach.

Right.

Put clothing on your carbs. Don't eat it naked. Exactly. Never eat your carbs naked so that they don't cause as big of a glucose Spike. Because when you put clothing on those carbs, digestion happens more slowly. So you're still eating the carb that you love with less impact on your glucose levels. And this is just one of many different hacks that I have that help us eat the stuff we love with.

Fewer consequences on our physical and mental health. That's powerful. So the more glucose spikes we have on a daily basis, and the more we have over time, it causes us to live less. It won't allow us to live longer, is what I'm hearing you say.

It causes us to age faster through a process called glycation.

Really?

Yeah.

What does glycation mean?

So glycation and glucose kind of sound like the same word. They're similar. Glucose glycation. And this is why. First of all, before we talk about glycation, I have to explain something to you. So, you know when you put a chicken in the oven and it goes from pink to cooked to brown, what actually happened is that in the oven it glycated. Glycation is the cooking process of the chicken. Now, did you know that as a human being, from the moment you're born, you slowly glycate, you slowly cook.

You start to cook.

Yes, like a chicken in the oven. And then when you're fully cooked, you die. I know it sounds crazy, but it is true. And on the inside, you're actually browning. So if you look at the cartilage of a baby, it's white. If you look at the cartilage of somebody who's a hundred years old, it's brown. It's been glycated. Glycation is cooking and it's aging. Now, why am I telling you this? Because every time you have a glucose spike, it accelerates glycation. Glucose causes this cooking, causes this glycation, causes this aging. So the more glucose spikes you have, the faster you age. And this shows on your skin as wrinkles, right? I'm actually 85 years old, but you can't tell because I don't have glucose spikes. And it also ages your organs within. And that's just one of the few things that happen when you have too many glucose spikes over time.

Wow.

How many glucose spikes is ideal to have on a daily basis? Like what's the optimal amount of spikes that we should have?

As little as possible, I would say.

How do you keep, I mean, besides not eating, I guess, how do you not have a glucose spike? when you're eating foods.

You avoid eating too many carbs on their own, too many carbs for breakfast, too many processed foods. But I don't want people to become too obsessed with keeping their glucose levels perfectly steady because you can actually do that in some unhealthy ways. What I want people to think about is do they have symptoms of glucose spikes? Do they feel cravings for sugar? Do they feel tired? throughout the day. Do they ever experience brain fog, mental slowness? Do they not sleep very well? Do they have inflammation on their skin like acne, psoriasis, eczema, etc. Those are all signs of glucose spikes. If you can never leave the house without a snack because you know you're gonna be hungry every couple of hours, that's glucose spikes causing that. And so as we implement these hacks, you can actually check in with yourself and see that these symptoms are improving. You don't have to wear a glucose monitor, you don't have to track your glucose levels to see the or the no spikes, you will feel better and pretty quickly too because your glucose levels respond in a matter of minutes to what you eat and what you do. So I recommend people learn to check in with themselves and see how they feel.

What is the optimal amount of eating in a day to manage glucose in a good way?

Are you into intermittent fasting? Yeah. Kind of.

Yeah, yeah.

It's been very trendy recently. But you don't actually need to fast for many hours a day to have healthy glucose levels. No, it's more about what you eat, right?

So you don't need to skip breakfast, you don't need to skip dinner. No, you don't need to have 500 calories a day and restrict calories.

No.

Now, are you still gonna look healthy and lose weight in this process or you're gonna gain weight if you're just eating whatever in the right order?

Well, so there's the order thing, but the hacks that I share, they allow you to stop focusing on the calories, stop focusing on the restriction and just kind of understand what molecules are in your food. And then naturally, as you focus on these glucose hacks, a lot of other things fall into place because you're less hungry. You have fewer cravings for all the processed junk.

Your hormones are healthier.

Exactly. Your hunger hormones are more balanced instead of you feeling famished every two hours. So naturally, when you focus on the hacks, a lot of things fall into place into your body. And then on the, on the fasting topic, I just want to remind people that intermittent fasting is not necessary to have a healthy body. You don't need to fast in order to be healthy. It's much more important to eat well in a way that keeps your glucose level steady than to restrict your eating window. For example, especially for females, we have to remember that fasting is actually a stressor on the body. So if you already have a life where stressful job, kids to take care of, you don't sleep a lot, you drink coffee, you do intense cardio exercise, maybe you do cold showers, you add fasting on top of that. that is a lot of stress for your body to handle. And that's why you see some women who are piling on all these things. Their hormones are breaking down. They feel exhausted all the time. Their body is just being like, no, that's too much stress. So I love fasting when I'm on vacation, for example, and it feels like an easy stress to add on. But when I'm working and I'm doing lots of stuff, I prefer to have breakfast, to have a Savory breakfast, as I explained, to keep my glucose level steady, and to just eat three times a day. Really?

Yeah. Something you mentioned here that I love is around freedom. And I think a lot of people don't feel free today with food, diets, restrictions, needing to biohack their life all the time. It feels like they always have to do something else or restrict something they love in order to be healthy, in order to optimize their life. and the more I'm hearing you speak about just understanding, it's almost like intuitive eating as opposed to restricting, counting calories, fasting, all these other things that are, that are trendy right now. So, because my fear is that a lot of women specifically, and now men more, more so with social media, feel like they need to look perfect all the time. They feel like they need to Eat a certain way and beyond the recent trends in order for their bodies to morph in a way that makes them feel like they're enough.

It's so tough, huh?

So how do we apply these hacks without feeling like it's some new trend, but more understanding it's more intuitive for me to just live a holistic, healthy life?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, if it's not calling you and you, like, don't do it, right? It's totally fine. Whatever works for you. But I found a lot of benefit from people switching from the fads and the restricting and the intense stuff and that relationship with your body that becomes a forceful relationship. It's like you're battling with your body every day, right? You're like holding on really strongly and trying to prevent this hunger and these cravings and just trying to be really- Willpower. Yeah.

It's so hard to have willpower.

So hard.

Forever.

So hard. And a lot of these fads, unfortunately, they're just not based on science, right? They are marketing machines. And that's also being used by the food industry to sell you more processed foods, et cetera. So I think what people will find in my work is I'm a biochemist and so I'm coming back to the principles of physiology. How does your body actually work and how does food impact your hormones, your cells, your energy levels, your mitochondria? I'm not trying to push some crazy new extreme diet. I'm just showing you some simple stuff that actually has been used for centuries. It's not very groundbreaking when you think about it. Let me tell you and give you an example. So the four hacks in my second book are savory breakfast instead of a sweet one, vinegar before you eat carbs, a vegetable starter, so starting your meals with veggies, and moving after eating. What's the science behind all those hacks? Okay, so savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. First of all, that's been done since forever. Sweet breakfasts? That's an invention of the food industry, okay? We didn't used to have dessert for breakfast. It doesn't make any sense. We used to have meat and potatoes. So savory breakfast instead of a sweet one because if you have a savory breakfast that's built around protein and not, let's say, orange juice and granola, which is pure glucose, then your glucose levels are going to stay nice and steady with the savory breakfast instead of having a big spike. And then that addiction roller coaster we talked about. So the spike and the cravings and the spike and the cravings and the spike and the cravings. You don't want to be on that roller coaster because then that prevents you from living the day you want to live. It prevents you from being able to use your energy and your passion and your talents to express in the world, you are being controlled by that cravings roller coaster if you start the day with a sweet breakfast. So that's the first one, savory breakfast, built around protein, nothing sweet except whole fruit if you want something that tastes.

A little bit sweet.

Exactly.

But after you eat the protein.

Exactly. So for example, you know, this morning I had some leftover salmon cakes. I had some green beans.

Sounds good.

Yeah, green beans and some rice and some Parmesan cheese. and to me, treating my breakfast like I would any other meal has completely changed my life. And it almost feels like, I often get people who tell me, I was having a sweet breakfast my whole life, and now I'm having a savory breakfast, and it feels like I've, I walked through a mirror. You know, in the movies, like the Alice in Wonderland, like walking through to this alternate universe, parallel universe, that's how it feels because all of a sudden you're, you're in control, you're energized, you feel good. Interesting. So that's breakfast.

Yeah.

Okay. Second hack that I love talking about is vinegar. Now, everybody has vinegar in their kitchen.

But no one uses it.

True.

No one likes the taste of it.

True.

But it's an ingredient that's been around for centuries in our culture. And actually in some countries, it's very well known that it's something that is good for you, it's healthy. In Iran, for example, they have apple cider vinegar every day. It's a health drink. But only recently, have we understood why it's good for us? So the reason vinegar is so good for us.

What's the science behind it?

Vinegar contains a molecule called acetic acid. Okay. And acetic acid, what it does when you have it before a meal, is that it slows down the breakdown of carbs into glucose molecules. So it acts on enzymes in your stomach and it slows down how quickly the food you just ate is going to be turned into individual glucose molecules and then into your bloodstream. Okay, so the second hack is one tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water before a meal that contains carbs.

I've done this a bunch in the past, not a bunch, but a handful of times. I just feel like I have to close my nose while I'm drinking this tall glass of water because it just burns, it tastes bad, it smells bad. It's just like, man, this is not enjoyable. So how do you make it enjoyable with vinegar?

Is there unflavored vinegar or like lemon vinegar? You can try white wine vinegar. You can try making a dressing and putting it on your meal instead of drinking it. And I know it's not great, And so I have some ideas about how you could use other things to have the same effect. But nonetheless, the scientific studies are there showing us it does have an impact and it's very simple and it's cheap.

Yeah.

But if you don't like it, don't force yourself. But do you have it before every meal? No, I would say once a day before a meal that's high in carbs, right?

That's it. Yeah. And what is the, when you track this with a glucose monitor or how you're tracking it, what do you see.

The spike doing instead?

You see 30% reduction in the glucose spike. if you just have a tablespoon.

Tablespoon in a big glass of water diluted before eating carbs.

Like 10 minutes before.

Doesn't matter.

Five to 10 minutes.

Wow. 30% less of a spike. Yep.

So you still eat the carbs you love with less impact on your glucose levels. Interesting. Yeah. But if you hate this hack, it's fine. The other hacks are just as powerful, right? So the savory breakfast one will transform your entire day, the experience of your whole life, essentially. And then the third hack is called the veggie starter hack. so that means that hack means having a plate of vegetables at the beginning of a meal. And you might think, okay, actually this has been done for a long time. In France, we have this concept called crudité, which is raw veggies at the beginning of a meal. In Italy, antipasti, all the roasted, nice vegetables. In the Middle East, they eat herbs by the bunch at the beginning of a meal. You know that salad with vinaigrette is quite a common way to start a meal. And now we understand why. It's because veggies contain an amazing substance called fiber. Fiber, she's amazing.

I love it.

She's on fire.

She's amazing. And fiber, when you have fiber in vegetables, at the beginning of a meal, the fiber has time to go and coat your upper intestine and to create a sort of protective shield, like a superhero deploying herself on the walls of your upper intestine.

Really?

Yeah.

And it's this sort of gooey viscous mesh that is improving your gut gut lining, and then any glucose coming down afterwards will not be able to get through to your bloodstream as quickly. Wow. So the veggie starter is an incredibly powerful hack. And you can even combine it to the vinegar hack by making a little vinegar dressing and putting it on your veggies.

Does that, what does that do? Does it decrease even more?

It decreases even more the glucose spike of the meal.

Yeah.

So you still have the pasta and the whatever you like, but if you add this hack, yeah. So you see, what happens when you do these hacks is that you can still eat the carbs you love, but then you're creating less of a spike. Therefore, the carbs are, first of all, not having as big of a negative impact on your health. Less inflammation, less glycation, less insulin release, and you're avoiding the creation of that cravings roller coaster, which is the main issue because most of us, when we have something sweet, then two hours later we want more sweets. And then it's 11 p.m. and you've eaten 56 cookies.

Right? Yes.

That's what we want to avoid. We want to have the stuff we love without creating this cycle of becoming a victim to more sugar cravings. The last hack I'll mention, and you'll love this one, it has to do with muscles. You got some good muscles, no?

Yeah. Yeah.

So you know how to use these.

I want them bigger though. You want bigger muscles?

Stronger. Really?

Let's go.

Nice.

Not too big, but you know, just-.

Yeah, you want more. You know why it's for your glucose levels.

It is. It helps you process sugar better when you have more muscle. Exactly. And the reason is, so glucose is your body's favorite source of energy. Every single cell in your body burns glucose for energy. So right now your brain cells are burning glucose to understand what I'm saying. You're holding a pen. That means your hand cells are burning glucose to contract and hold that pen up. If you're listening to us, you know, every single part of your body is currently burning glucose to perform its function. And your muscles, as I mentioned, also burn glucose to contract, okay? And we can use this to our advantage. The fourth hack in my method is, once a day, after one meal, use your muscles for 10 minutes.

Move, walk, stretch, jump.

Exactly.

You can even- 10 minutes. Clean your apartment. Do the dishes, fold your laundry, go grocery shopping. If you're at work and you can't do any movement, you can do some calf raises underneath your desk for 10 minutes. Lots of easy little ways to get that movement in so that your muscles will absorb some of the glucose from the meal.

What happens if it's 10 o'clock at night, you know, Ben and Jerry's is calling my name.

Yeah, baby.

In the freezer or whatever ice cream you like, it's calling my name. I'm just sitting there watching a movie, eating a whole thing of ice cream. And then I sit there and then I go to bed a couple hours later. What happens to the brain, body, gut, if you do that by itself without applying these hacks. Well, you're going to experience a very.

Big glucose spike as you're watching the movie and eating the Ben and Jerry's. That's going to have impact on your brain. It's going to increase inflammation. It's going to mess up your sleep hormones. You're not going to sleep as well. Your sleep is not going to be as deep or as restful. You might even wake up the next day feeling hungover. You know, you never get hungover because you don't drink, but sometimes you can feel hungover from sugar.

Wow.

If you've had it late at night, you're going to feel a bit groggy. You might feel like your hands have swollen a little bit during the night.

Your face swollen?

Yeah, exactly. Interesting. And then with that glucose spike, you're also increasing glycation aging, you're also increasing insulin release, which over time builds up to a diagnosis of pre-diabetes, for example. And whatever sort of health background your body has, if you've ever experienced symptoms from brain fog to psoriasis to fertility problems, that spike is going to make those worse. so let's say you're watching that movie, eating the Ben and Jerry's. You have a few options. You can have a handful of almonds as you're having the ice cream to put some clothing on the ice cream. Interesting. Yeah. You could do a vinegar drink. You could also grab a book or a bottle of water. And after you eat the ice cream, maybe do some bicep curls as you're watching the movie to help your muscles.

Soak up some of that glucose. There's always Solutions. So if I've eaten the cake, the ice cream, the cookies, and I've forgotten to do all these things beforehand. But I can still do it afterwards a little bit. Even if the sugar is just in my gut already and just soaking down there, I can still have a couple almonds or have vinegar and it'll still help.

The best thing to do afterwards is movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do them calf raises. You're sitting on the couch, calf raises for 10 minutes during the movie. That's gonna help actually. And you can do that up to 90 minutes after eating. The movement, the muscles.

Okay, cool. Do some push-ups, whatever it might be.

Totally.

The number one cause of death in these United States is the American diet.

Really?

Bumping tobacco smoking to number two. Cigarettes and I only kill about a half million Americans every year, whereas our diet kills many more.

Come on.

So, but that's good news, 'cause it means we have the power. right? It's never too late to start eating healthier, to stop smoking, to start moving. So, I mean, it's really a positive message that I was excited to learn when I finished the book.

So, when we change our lifestyle, when we change our eating habits and our nutritional habits, we can actually reverse our aging or age better is what I'm hearing you say.

We can age slower. Age slower.

Okay.

And because aging is a significant risk factor for most of our leading killers. You know, so my first book in the series How Not to Die was, you know, first half of the book is just 15 chapters, each of the 15 leading causes of death. Talking about the role of diet may play in preventing, arresting, reversing each of our top 15 killers. Say, wait a second. I mean, if, I mean, death is from disease, why isn't How Not to Die kind of all the longevity book anybody needs? But it's because Aging is a risk factor for multiple different diseases. So, for example, if all cancer were cured tomorrow, it would only add about three years to the average life span. Wait a second. Why is that? It's like our second leading killer. It's because if you don't die of one age-related disease, you'll just die of another one. So, the only reason you didn't die of a heart attack, ah, because you died of cancer the month before. But you were gonna die anyway from something else. So, by slowing down the aging process, then we can reduce the risk of many different diseases at the same time, to stroke and the dementia, cancer, heart disease, which rise exponentially with age.

Really?

So something like, you know, having a high cholesterol can increase your odds of having a heart attack or number one killer of men and women by as much as 20-fold. But an 80-year-old has 500 times the risk of having a heart attack compared to a 20-year-old. So age, but I mean, of course, the reason we focus on things like cholesterol, is because it's a modifiable risk factor. But what if the rate of aging were modifiable too? Yeah, so diet number one. And so if you look at these blue zones, they all center their diets around whole plant foods. So they're minimizing the intake of meat, dairy, sugar, eggs, junk, maximizing the intake of fruits, vegetables, legumes, beans, split peas, chickpeas, lentils, Nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, basically real food that grows out of the ground. These are really our healthiest choices. That would be number one.

Number one diet.

So number one diet. So that accounts alone for about half of the difference in life span between blue zones and the rest of the world.

What is the average blue zone age at death versus the average age of death of non-blue zones?

Right. It's about 12 to 14 years.

12 to 14 years difference.

Difference. So women 14, men 12 years longer, and so have up to 10 times the rate of so-called centenarians, those that get triple digits, live to be 100 or older. And it's not just about, you know, adding years to your life, but life to your years. These people are active, so they're at 100 and they're enjoying their lives, they're participating in life. And so what's the point of living longer? if you can't do it with vibrancy, with vitality. And so in this country, I mean, even our lifespan is going down. So actually the peak of life expectancy 2014, the United States, started going down every year since even before COVID shaved a few years off our lifespan.

Now there's certain pockets that are blue zone pockets.

Right, but in general, and it's because primarily the obesity epidemic. So we are raising The first generation of Americans set to live shorter average lives than their parents. And this was before COVID It continues to drop down. We are 39th in life expectancy around the world. So like Slovenians live longer than Americans. So we've got a lot of work to do. But the good news is, again, we have power over how we live.

Wow.

And what we eat.

For someone like me, I'm 230 pounds. I'm 40 years old. I was a former athlete. I train really hard. I'm at the gym lifting four or five days a week. I'm doing cardio, I'm doing some running, I'm walking a lot. But I also have a busy lifestyle. I travel sometimes. What would be the optimal, if I could, for me to live longer, still be athletic and strong and healthy and feel great.

So that was, you know, I talked about this How Not to Die book, the first half of the book, but I didn't want it to just kind of be a reference book. I wanted this to be a practical day-to-day kind of grocery store guide to make these kind of practical decisions. And that's what became the second half of the book, which centers my recommendations around a daily dozen checklist of all the kind of healthiest of healthy foods and habits. I encourage people to fit into their daily routine. so it's available on a free app. All my work is free at Dr. Gregor's Daily Dozen, iPhone, Android. And it's just basically, you know, these kind of to inspire people to include so, you know, in terms of 12.

Things that we should be doing.

12 things every day. So, you know, 90 minutes of modern intensity exercise or 45 minutes of vigorous exercise every single day. You know, how much, you know, how much to drink. So I want people to eat dark green leafy vegetables every day, the healthiest kind of vegetables. I want people to eat berries every day, the healthiest kinds of fruits, a tablespoon of ground flaxseed, a quarter teaspoon of turmeric, kind of on down the list, again, just to kind of inspire people to kind of think and then kind of track their progress, kind of make a game out of it. I mean, look, on the road, I'm not even hitting, you know, I'm lucky if I hit half. But, I mean, it's, again, kind of an aspirational kind of, if you really did have control over your environment, this is really the kind of things we want to include in One's Daily Routine.

So what would be the top five foods that you shoot every day to age longer?

Yeah, in terms of anti-aging foods, this global burden of disease study, which I mentioned before, again, the largest systemic analysis funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that the food associated with the largest expected life expectancy gains are legumes. These beans, split peas, chickpeas, lentils. In fact, one thing we can do is boost your intake of beans or lentil soup or hummus. And we think it's because they're the most concentrated sources of green biotics. resistant starch and dietary fiber that feeds the good bacteria in our gut. And that has implications towards decreasing inflammation, improving our immunity, improving muscle strength, muscle quality, muscle mass in frail individuals, but all but just by changing our microbiome. In fact, you can do these so-called fecal transplant studies.

Where are you- you- take a sick, healthy poop and put it in a.

Sick person, it's crazy, right? And it actually changes their biology to be crazy. absolutely crazy. But that's how we can prove cause and effect because, like, well, yeah, you feed someone a healthy diet, how do we know their gut bugs had anything to do with it? Ah, well, we can, we can control for that. And you can do it, you know, and so they.

Right.

So you can make, you know, you know, mice more fit, less fit by giving them, you know, healthy poop. Healthy poop from, from exercising Mouse or, you know, from Marathon Mouse or a Mighty Mouse versus the, you know, frail Mouse. so you can actually change, they're eating the same, they're doing the exact same, but they just have a different stool composition. And how do you get those good gut bugs? You feed them the right food. And that's the prebiotics, what are good gut bacteria you eat. A lot of people are thinking probiotics, they're thinking the actual bacteria themselves, the acidophilus, the bifidobacteria. Those are the good gut bugs, but if you just take those pills, the reason you don't have those good gut bugs in the first place is because you're not feeding them very well. you can take, you can try to populate your gut with as many good bugs as you want, they're going to die off if you continue to starve them, continue to starve your microbial self. Whereas, if you just ate the right foods, the good gut bugs are fiber feeders. If you eat the right foods, then your good bugs will be fruitful and multiply all on their own and, you know, do all the work for you and that work is creating these so-called postbiotics, which are their byproducts of microbial metabolism of these good foods like butyrate and SA, they can absorb through the colon wall into our bloodstream, circulate throughout our bodies, even cross the blood-brain barrier, have effects on our mental health, over our immunity. So dramatically decrease inflammation.

You can prevent asthma attacks just by.

Feeding people some beans.

I mean, it's absolutely remarkable. So legumes have prebiotics. They have the prebiotics. So that's why we think the food. In fact, legumes are the primary protein source of every single blue zone ever documented. That's where they get most of their protein, from some sort of legume, whether it's brown peas or something, or black beans in Costa Rica, or with soy foods in Okinawa, but it was always centered around not just plant-based in general, but a plant-based source of protein, legumes. So beans. And so we should be thinking like bean burrito, chili, how can I, fit beans in my daily diet. And that's part of the daily does. Is like, I mean, beans today. Like, can I put beans in my salad or throw some beans on this pasta dish? Or. And it's like, simply get a can of, you know, unsalted, no salt added beans, you know, open in two seconds. You always keep a can of beans in the fridge. You can just throw a spoonful onto anything, basically. Yeah. In fact, I even said someone at a talk was like, I just take white beans mashed into my oatmeal. I'm like, never heard of that. but he's like, can't even taste it. I'm like, okay, yeah, great. I mean, look, you know, and what's nice about a healthy breakfast is that regardless of what you do the rest of the day, you know, God knows what kind of, you know, what bowl of candy is on your co-worker's desk or what donut shop you're walking by or God knows what stress is gonna, you know, take you down the wrong path. At least you have a good foundation. You're true to it and you, you.

Know, feeding your good with good bucks.

But anyway, so that's number one. Okay. Legumes. Okay. Now So these are they identified the top five foods that associated with the longest lifespan. Now legumes rule the roost on a per serving basis, but actually on an ounce per ounce basis, nuts are associated with the longest lifespan compared to any other type of food out there.

What are the three best nuts?

There's really only one. There's really only one that pulls ahead and that's walnuts. Now, see, normally when I say like, you know, eat, you know, cruciferous vegetables or something, they're like, which one's best? I'm like, whichever one you'll eat. You like broccoli, eat broccoli. You like bok choy, eat bok choy. You know, look, whatever one you'll get into your face, that's it. But with nuts, it really does, walnuts really do pull ahead, and that's because they have more omega-3s than other nuts, they have more antioxidants than other nuts, and they're the only nuts shown to acutely improve artery function. within a matter of hours. And so, in fact, in the PREMED study, which is this large randomized controlled trial over years of thousands of individuals, although mixed nuts certainly did lower cardiovascular disease rates, it was the walnuts that appeared to be the most critical part. And we do want to get unsalted nuts. I know that's not as delicious.

Unsalted, why unsalted?

Well, in terms of dietary risk factor for death, Excess sodium intake is the way.

So I've been talking about the all this. I know, I know. I know.

Look, so in terms of things we're missing out on, right? It's the legumes, but in terms of stuff we're getting too much of? Salt. There's lots of horrible things in our diet. There's sugar, there's trans fat, there's salt. Okay. But sodium, salt intake, is the number one dietary risk factor for death on planet Earth. Come on.

It is the single worst thing about humanity's diet. But there's good news.

What about like- There's good news. Himalayan salt or something. They're different, they're all salted the same, huh? I know. But this is pink. This is from the Himalayas. This is rainbow color. This has got a few minerals in it or something. No, no, no, no. No, it's all bad.

But a little bit?

Can you have a little bit? Well, so we want to stick under 1500 milligrams a day. That's the American Heart Association recommendation. And to do that, and most of it, and people are like, I don't add a lot of salt. Most of our sodium intake comes from processed foods. 70% of sodium intake is not the salt we add in the kitchen or the dining room. It's in these processed foods, these, you know, anything in a box, in a package, in anything, they add salt because it's cheap, it's a flavor enhancer, right? In fact, that's why they add it to a lot of beans. It's not a preservative, it's in a can, it's sterile. It's because they want to make things taste good. It's the cheap way to make things, you know, so you can't just eat one. But the problem is, is that sodium increases risk, not just of high blood pressure, but so many different lead-in killers like kidney disease and I see kind of on down the list. Okay, but so there's two ways we can go. So there's lots of salt-free seasonings out there and, you know, and I encourage people to explore all sorts of new, you know, and, you know, people often, you know, there's all sorts of spices that I've never even heard of, like saffron. And, I mean, there's also, so explore the whole world out there and find some delicious taste. And then the easy fix is switching to the salt substitute, potassium salt instead of sodium salt. sodium chloride, switched to potassium salt, potassium chloride. It's just a natural mineral mined out of the ground just like sodium chloride is. And there are interventional studies. I talk about one in the book where they took these five kitchens that are veteran retirement home and randomized their kitchens into either continuing to salt with regular salt in the kitchen or switching to a 50/50 blend of regular salt and potassium, so regular sodium chloride and potassium chloride. And there was a dramatic 40% drop in cardiovascular disease death rates within a matter of years and the reduced sodium group. In fact, their life expectancy at age 70 in the between two groups was 14 years.

Come on.

Meaning that just by switching to half potassium salt for which you wouldn't even be able to taste a difference, they effectively made themselves 10 years younger when it came to the risk of premature death. So something that, so there's no downside. There is no, okay. So now if you go with, I'm encouraging people to actually try to switch to full potassium salt rather than the 50-50 blend, but then you do actually taste the difference. There's this bitterness to potassium salt that you don't get otherwise. It's more apparent in some foods than others. Some foods you really can taste the difference, but any amount that we can cut down. And the only other caveat is you need to have kidneys good enough to get rid of the excess potassium. And so if you have kidney disease, or if you have diabetes just because diabetes is such an increased risk of kidney disease, it's so damaging to the kidneys, even if you don't know you have kidney disease, if you have diabetes, you should first get your kidneys tested before switching to potassium. And if you're over 70, our kidney function does tend to decline over time. So even if, as far as you know, your kidneys are fine, if you're over 70, I would go super simple test. You can just get your kidney function tested and just make sure your kidneys can handle the extra potassium. But then, if you give them the all clear, your kidneys are good, then you can get all the saltiness you want. You could add extra, right? You can make your popcorn as crazy as you want. Tears to your eyes, salty, and with no harm. Wow. No harm. So that's one of the really, one of the simplest tweaks in the book. And it's like the leading cause of dietary risk factor for death, like the worst thing we could possibly eat. And there's a simple fix to it. Like, I'm too bad there wasn't like a potassium donut or something. We just switch over and totally fine. But that was one of the rare.

Things that it's like, Super easy to do. So explain that one more time. So if we have more potassium salt first, then we can have salt?

No, we're going, so we're swapping out. So instead of shaking on sodium chloride, we're shaking on potassium chloride. There's a bunch of different brands. You can have as much as you want. And you can have as much, as long as your kidneys are okay. Okay, got it. You can have as much as you want. And so you can go any grocery store, in the salt aisle, there's all these salt substitutes and it says potassium chloride. And there's some 50-50 blends. If you wanna start there and move, it's certainly better than adding piercing. Interesting.

I'm gonna try that. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna try that.

And the studies show. Oh, right. And not just it's associated with, but these interventional trials, these randomized control trials, blind that they don't know who's in which group until they break the code at the end, they say, oh my God, significantly less death and disability in.

The group just cutting down on the sodium.

Eating the same things. Eating the same. Eating the exact same things. with one single tweak, just switching over what kind of salt they're using.

Amazing.

That's incredible. Now, why haven't we heard about this? Like, why isn't this on, like, Blaire? Because no one makes any money on it. It's like dirt cheap, right?

I mean, it's.

I think it's cheap. I think it's more expensive than regular salt, but like, five bucks.

So.

But, I mean, there's just. No one's making money. I mean, there's just not a lot of money made because it's just like a simple, like, you know, you probably dig it up your own somehow. And so there's just no, no, yeah, there's not a lot of profit to be made. And so unfortunately we don't hear a lot about it.

That is fascinating. Okay, so we've heard about legumes, number one. Yeah. Nuts, specifically walnuts. Walnuts being number two.

Palmful a day is my recommendation. Palmful a day. One ounce.

What if you want to have more?

Oh, look, you can have more. I just, but they're calorie dense too. But the longevity benefits plateau out at one. So you don't get more additional benefit. and they're kind of pricey and they're calorie dense. Right, they're calorie dense.

So if you're really active, it's not gonna matter.

So 10 to 15 a day, maybe 20. So 10 halves. 10 halves. 10 halves comes out to be 30.

Grams or 1 pound.

Okay, so that's, that's, but I mean, look, you're not counting calories. Just grab a handful and you're good.

Grab a handful, grab some more and.

And, and every day. Or, or at least three times a week. I mean, the benefits are that great. Are that great. And that's, and that's, that's, in the Adventist cohort, the Lomaland Invents Cord, they think it accounts for two years of extra lifespan.

Come on.

It is one of the only foods. There's only two foods that have ever been associated with increase in literally years, plural, a single food, and nuts is one of them.

How do they measure this that know that like nuts and beans are gonna make you live longer?

Okay, so what you do is you take hundreds of thousands of people, you follow them over, follow them, their diseases, and their diets over time. so you keep doing these dietary surveys, exactly what are you eating, you know, you can do these random call you up, okay, what do you eat over the last 24 hours? Go through, sometimes you make them take pictures, whatever. Sure, sure. And so you follow that and then you fall exactly, you know their doctors and so you know exactly what have they been diagnosed, what are they dying of, you know, what are their autopsies show. And so you can follow them over time. That's what's called observational research or epidemiological research. Now you cannot prove cause and effect.

With that kind of research.

Right.

Because there's confounding factors. Maybe the people who are eating nuts are health nuts. And maybe, you know, they're working out on the beach. Nut eaters are working out more. Maybe they have other eating other healthy stuff. Maybe instead of, instead, what's the other thing you're eating instead of nuts? Maybe you're snacking on some real, it's a potato chips, right? Right. And so maybe it's the benefit is not so much the nuts, but you're not eating potato chips, right? So there's all these confounding factors. Now there are statistical methods that you can use to try to control for that. So you're basically, comparing nut eaters who aren't smoking and exercise, blah, blah, blah, to nut eaters that the non-nut eaters that also don't smoke, don't it. And so there be, and that's why you need this big number. Right, right. And so like the NIH ARP study, the largest study in history, we're talking over a half million people. And so with that much data, you can crunch the numbers and really kind of tease out, wait a second, with all these other factors controlled for, the people who are eating this many nuts are living this much longer. That's pretty crazy. And then you can turn to the most powerful evidence we have, which are interventional trials, where you randomize people to two groups, and you give them a smoothie, one with nuts and one flavored with nuts, but no actual nuts in it. So you make people, you know, a walnut-flavored smoothie versus an actual walnut smoothie, and neither the researcher nor the experimental subjects actually knows which is which. and you test it beforehand, so you really can't tell, right? And then you can measure acute reactions. You can measure their artery function literally within hours of consumption, crazy. And you can see what's happening in their cholesterol, what's happening. And so then you can, so these are kind of, these are called surrogate endpoints. So what we'd like to know is let's randomize people to these smoothies for 10 years and see who actually dies, doesn't it? Right, right. Okay, you can see how logistically that's difficult to do. But, what we can do is we know that, you know, the amount of cholesterol in our blood is really good indicator of risk factor for, you know, heart disease. And so, anything that lowers cholesterol, ah, okay, so we have the observational evidence showing decreased risk of heart disease among nut-eaters. And then we have the short-term data showing, look, it improves our function, decreases cholesterol. No wonder we're seeing these endpoints in the ABS, you put all the evidence together and you're like, wow, nuts really.

Appear to be healthy foods, right?

That'S how you do this kind of research. So fast. This is fascinating.

Oh, yeah. Good stuff.

Good stuff.

Okay. We're still on the five things to eat. Yeah.

Legumes, nuts. No salt. No salt. Also unsalted. Right. Unsalted. We're keeping our salt intake as low as possible under 1500 milligrams. That's not no salt, but very minimal.

It's really, and mostly it's about if you just avoid processed foods, you're gonna.

Go a lot of the way. Way less salt. Yeah. So eating fresh foods.

Yeah.

Number four and five, what would And so then it's eating more whole grains. So you were having oatmeal for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs.

What about the whole grain brain theory and then like how grains are bad for your brain? What type of grains affect the brain in a healthy way versus a bad way?

Yeah, the kernel of truth, who's kind of a little of a pun for all grains, is refined grains. refined grains are terrible for us. So when you take something like whole wheat and you strip away all the fiber and you're left with, you know, with white flour, or you do the same with brown rice to white rice, or you kind of strip out the nutrition, and you're left with basically kind of sheer carbohydrates. So you can take something like a sugar beet where most be, most sugar comes from these days, actually not from cane, and you basically take all the nutrition away. You're left with table sugar.

Right.

I'm assuming it's just, like, pure calories. and look, you only have about- no value. 2,000 calories in the Calorie Bank every day, you cannot be wasting your calories on these empty calorie foods. And so, and where is, and most grain consumption in the country is sadly these refined grains. So going after grains, it makes total sense because that's what people are eating. But of course, again, whole grains got caught in the kind of friendly fire.

Right, right.

So what are the grains we should be eating?

So yeah, whole grains, ideally whole intact grains. So like oat groats or steel cut oats. the more closely to how they kind of grew out of the ground the better. Or, you know, whole grain rye, you know, you know, so you, we want whole as the first word in any kind of grain bread.

Steel cut oats or whole grain oats.

Fantastic. Or even oak groats, which are what steel cut oats are before they, yeah, oak groats is before you cut it, an oak groat cut two or three times turns into steel cutouts. But that's the original and And if you haven't tried it, they are the super chewy oat groats. You buy, that's what, oh my God. Someone turned me onto oat groats and I was like, I'm never going back. Really? They're so good. And they're so much more healthy and they're, they're, they're, I can't, I can't come back to mushy oats. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Do you cook them? So you cook them now. They take a long time to cook unless you have a pressure cooker. So if you have one of these like electric pressure cookers out of the market now, then it's super quick. 20 minutes, you press a button, they're done. And you can make a whole bunch of them. But it's like oatmeal, it's like a, so it's like, it's like, but it's, It's chewer, you're harder, more delicious. And no matter how well you chew, the reason that's so much better for you is because these bits of go all, you know, don't get absorbed in our small intestine, end up in our large intestine and act as this prebiotic bounty for good gut bugs. But the more you refine it, the more you process it, the more that gets absorbed high up in the small intestine. You're basically leaving your colon bugs to starve down there. And that's why the more whole, the better. That's where the dietary fiber is, that's where the resistant starch is, that's where we can feed our good gut bugs, and they feed us right back. Wow.

Okay, so that's number four. What would be the fifth thing?

Okay, the fifth thing are foods they want people to reduce. They want people to reduce meat and soda as the two most important things to cut down in one's diet. But interestingly, the top four were actually things people aren't getting enough of.

Uh-huh.

Right, if you add those things. Right.

And so it's possible that really the benefits of a plant-based diet is less about what you're cutting out and more about just including the healthiest of healthy foods out there. Right?

Yeah.

I like that philosophy for people, because if you can include these things in your, your system and your daily routine, you're gonna be less hungry for the other sugary processed things. So maybe you have a little bit of it every now and then, but it's 80-90% of your diet.

Exactly. It's about, that's the kind of behind the Daily Dozen thing. It's like, by the end of the day, if you actually check off all those boxes, you are kind of naturally crowding out these less healthy options. And it turns out over 50% of calories in the United States come from ultra-processed junk. Most of the food we eat is just junk. And so, right, we're just kind of crowding saving for the special occasion. doesn't matter what we eat on our holidays, birthdays, special occasions, but on a day-to-day basis, we really should try to eat healthy. And that is, you know, centering our diets around these natural foods from fields, not factories, these kind of unprocessed foods.

It turns out that 95% of serotonin is produced not in your brain, in your gut.

Come on. But everyone talks about serotonin in the brain. Yeah. But it's produced in the gut.

95% of it is produced in the gut. Okay. 5% of it is produced in the brain. Now, in the brain, it is very relevant and important for how we feel our mood, our energy levels, our focus. But in the gut, the microbes have the ability to actually shape the production of serotonin and serotonin precursors. And these serotonin precursors affect bowel motility and affect mood and can cross the blood-brain barrier. So if you think about this, people that have, for example, irritable bowel syndrome. All right, so what is irritable bowel syndrome? There's no, here we are, it's 2024, we don't have a blood test, we don't have a CAT scan or anything we can do to diagnose this condition. We've known about it for 50 years. Okay, what is going on here? Well, they have a change in bowel motility. They all have either diarrhea or constipation. They all have abdominal pain. And in an overwhelming fashion, they suffer from mood disorders. There is a massive disproportionate prevalence of depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders in people that have IBS. And it's quite fascinating because when you think about it, it connects back to the gut and the brain and the new way of thinking about this condition, which has changed many times during my career.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah. About thinking about and treating IBS.

Treating IBS, right?

Wow.

Now there's a more holistic view, which is a good thing.

Now just say here's a drug or here's this thing.

Yes. to say it's not just a digestive disorder. This is a disorder of the brain and gut axis. Interesting.

There's a lot of anxiety, stress, overwhelm, mental diseases, or just blurriness mentally, it feels like, in society today. How much does our gut health impact our mental health?

Yeah, well, we've seen these conditions that are escalating. depression, anxiety, different mental health disorders, different cognitive disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, things like this. And the question is, what the heck is going on here? And when you see things changing this quickly, it's not genetic. So you have to take a step back and say, what is it about our environment? What is it about the way that we live that ultimately is resulting in this effect?

Because we didn't have all these mental health issues 50 years ago.

Well, they existed. They existed, but they didn't exist to the level of intensity or the number of people that are being affected by these things as what we see today.

Right.

And these are complex issues. So, to sit here and pretend that this is just this one thing, hey, it's the gut microbes, that's all that matters, that would be oversimplifying it. But I think that the important point though that the listeners need to hear is that these gut microbes do play a role. so in order to introduce this conversation, I feel like let's take a quick moment, take a zoom out, and let's talk about the microbiome, which is the living microorganisms that are a part of our body. There are 38 trillion microorganisms that exist covering all external surfaces of our body. So they're on our skin, on the top of our head, our scalp, literally they're crossing my eyeball as I sit here and look at you and talk to you, but they're so small I can't see them. So thankfully they're not affecting my vision in any way. So these are like little bugs.

Little bugs.

How many? 30 trillion? 38 trillion. Bugs. 38 trillion.

We call them gut bugs, but really we're talking about bacteria? Bacteria. That is around.

That's on the outside of our body and our inside of our body. Well, so here's an interesting thing about that. It turns out that what's inside of our body we're talking about our intestine. Yes. Is actually outside of our body. Yeah, bizarre.

I know.

Our intestine is on the outside of our body. Okay, so here's the thing. Your tube is a, your intestines are a continuous tube. It starts at your mouth. Now, you're a tall guy, much like me, okay, but the average person in the United States, somewhere between 20 and 28 feet, okay, is this continuous tube of intestines. 28 feet, now.

Yeah.

The tube is never broken. There is no point where things that enter into the tube leave the tube and go into the body unless they're absorbed by the body. Interesting. So basically what that means is because it's a continuous tube, it starts at your mouth, which is outside of your body. Things are outside of your body. You swallow them down. You may think of them as being inside your body, but actually they're within this tube and they never actually enter into your body. So all the way through, this is actually an external facing surface. Interesting. You're interacting with the outside world, which is one of the key points to understand is that your you're interacting with the outside world within your intestines. So this is the reason why, by the way, Louis, that 60 to 70% of our immune system lives in the wall of your intestine. This is the home of your intestines. People may think of the bone marrow as being, hey, that's where immune cells live. No, no. They're born there. They may be born in the bone marrow, but then they move to other places, much like you were born in Ohio and I was born in New York and now you're here and I'm in Charleston. the immune cells move and most of them take up residence within the lining of the intestines. And the reason why they're there is because this is actually where we're interacting with the outside world. And so we need our defense systems in place in that location. All right, so anyway, so here we are. We got 38 trillion microbes. Now this is, by the way, more than we have human cells. So we are, yeah, we are less than 50% human.

Wait, wait, wait, how many human cells do we have?

About 30 trillion.

30 trillion human cells, 38 trillion, what, non-human cells?

Non-human cells. Really? Yeah, so they're clearly outnumbering us. There is no doubt you are definitely less than 50% human. And actually, if we took your 30 trillion cells, if we took your 30 trillion cells and we moved the red blood cells and the platelets, which by the way aren't like the classic cells, like when we think of cells, I think we all have a picture in our mind of like the cell with the organelles, the mitochondria, all these things, right? So if you took just those cells, you are actually about 90% microbial and only 10% human.

And so a microbe is not a human element?

No, it's not. And it's also not a part of our body. They take up residence after birth.

That's crazy.

Yeah, so the water breaks, the water breaks, mom goes into labor, and for the first time, the baby is exposed to the outside world. And with that come a flush of these microbes. And actually passing through the birth canal is a gift from nature, because as a child passes through the birth canal for the first time, it's being exposed to this world, this microbial world that dominates. And they've been around, Louis, so like humans, we've been around for about three, three and a half million years. Archea, which live inside of our microbiome. They're not bacteria, they're not fungi, they're these weird things, but they produce gas. So when you pass gas, think of Archea. There's an archeologic site in Greenland where they found four billion year old Archea, four billion years, and we think that that's the oldest life on this planet. So these microbes, have been around forever. They've survived everything that exists. No matter what happens in this world, no matter what happens, there will be microbes. They will continue to exist. And they're an important part of us as humans, which is really the key point.

So can you have a healthy brain if you have an unhealthy gut?

I think that the healthiest, to have the healthiest brain possible, it is essential to have a healthy gut.

Really?

Yeah. I think that we need to be quite intentional about the way that we go about these things, because we can kind of just stumble into our health. or we can wake up and see that here we are and we have 38 trillion microbes. They're constantly evolving and changing. The food that you eat today will change your microbiome by tomorrow. And with those choices, you are shaping the microbiome and that microbiome will affect health throughout your entire body, including your brain, including your ability to function, including your ability to maintain memories, including your ability to focus and get stuff done. and your long-term cognitive health, which includes things like Alzheimer's and things of this variety.

Wow. So if someone is feeling like they have symptoms of some type of mental health challenge, they're feeling maybe they have ADHD or they have depression or depressed thoughts, where they have anxiety or stress or overwhelm, what are three things they could do to start recognizing how to.

Fix Well, I'll give you three things and they all connect back to the microbiome. I would start with food. The food is our most powerful lever that we can pull in terms of shaping and changing the microbiome. And there are simple choices that anyone can make. And this doesn't have to fall under a dietary pattern or a label. It's just changing the way you eat.

What would be for that first one, what would be the top five foods that everyone should eat? daily to optimize their gut microbiome.

Okay, I can give you a top five, but can I start with this essential rule?

Yes.

Which is diversity of plants. All right, so eating as much variety of different plants in our diet, we have to be intentional about this if this is what we want, because the problem is the food system is not going to do that for us. You go to the supermarket, they've distilled it down to 75% of the calories in our supermarket. it is three foods. What are those three foods?

Wheat, corn and soy.

Wow. Yes, that is 75% of the calories in the supermarket. Now granted, most of those are ultra processed, right? So I'm here to advocate for real food. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts and legumes, that's at least five. We could add mushrooms, all right? Those are broad categories and we can get more specific if we want to, but to me it's about getting that variety and this is not just an idea or a concept, this is actually scientifically proven. So in a study called the American Gut Project, which by the way was international, but it was run out of UC San Diego, what they found is that at the end of the day when they did their analysis above everything else there was this one rule: the diversity of plants in your diet was the number one factor in predicting who had the healthiest gut. and the number is 30. 30 per week. 30 different plants per week. Now all fruits, vegetables, whole grain seeds, nuts, and legumes include those 30. They count. Okay. All of them.

Right. So you want to have 30 different ingredients every week of plants.

At least.

Wow.

At least. But you know what?

I'll name them all if I've tried 30 different plants in my life.

Lose it.

It's like you and I need to.

Spend more time together.

Exactly, right? It's like 30.

Wow, that's incredible. You start it, take a smoothie. It could be Monday morning. Ah, okay. Take a smoothie. Bananas, blueberries, greens of your choice, whatever ones you like. Chia seeds, hemp seeds. Chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds. We're already up to six. Okay. Right? You want to add in some raspberries or some other kinds of berries. we could easily get this up to. Gotcha. Gotcha. You're making pasta sauce. Why would you just do pasta sauce? Why not throw some plants in there? Oh, there you go, right? Onions, garlic, basil, oregano. Those count too.

Spices count. Why is the, you know, if someone's like, listen, I just like my five to 10 plants a week. I eat healthy plants. I eat mostly plants. I non-process. foods, is that good enough or is it really more about adding more and more of the diversity as possible as opposed to just broccoli and spinach by itself?

The average person in the United States, 10% of their calories comes from actual plants. The number one plant is the potato. We're not talking about optimal nutrition here. There's a reason why people in the United States are suffering through the health-related issues that they currently have. we need to make changes. If we simply added more fiber to our diet, we would radically transform the health of this country.

Really?

Yes.

And that person who's not necessarily eating a lot of variety but is eating a lot of plants, number one, I give them a standing ovation. Their diet's great starting point. They're way better off than the average American is right now. We all though should be looking to optimize. We all have opportunities to do better. So if you take that diet, and you add more variety to it, they will reap the rewards of that. And the reason why is because every single one of these plants has unique properties that are number one going to affect our microbiome. So these microbes, they're kind of like us in many ways, Louis. They have personalities. Some of them are not nice. They have cliques. They have certain ones that they tend to hang out with and they work together. They also have taste buds. They have different food preferences. Not every microbe, believe it or not, likes kale. Right. But you can train it to like.

Kale or you can get rid of the ones that don't like kale, I guess. You can train it to like kale.

But there's going to be a lot of microbes that are going to be hungry if the only thing that you ate was kale. Interesting. So, every single plant is feeding certain families of microbes.

Interesting. So, the more diverse and expansive that you have with your plant diversity, the less hungry you'll be as well, is what I'm hearing.

Oh, 100.

So if I just eat broccoli and spinach and kale a few times a week versus I might never feel like I'm full. I know. It's like I still want more. Yeah.

Right.

So I need some different carbs or some snacks or things to feel more full. But if I'm hearing you say it right, if you have more diversity of plants more frequently, you're going to feel more satiated. you're going to get the fiber that your body needs to be less hungry as well.

Yeah. So satiation, like feeling full, is an important concept these days. We have all seen the rollout of Ozempic and these other GLP-1 type agonists. What is this GLP-1 that we're talking about here? This is a hormone. It's a gut hormone already produced by your body and makes you feel full. Now, I'm not sitting here and going to try to pretend that what you eat is going to have the same effect on your body that a drug does. That's not what I'm trying to do here. But I want people to understand that here we exist where 95% of Americans, 95%, are deficient in fiber. This is our most prevalent nutritional deficiency. And fiber is what actually leads to the release of GLP-1.

GLP-1 is what exactly?

GLP-1 is glucagon-like peptide-1. which is a gut hormone, which is what Ozempic is. Ozempic is GLP-1, okay? And it has these different effects on our body, including helping us to control our blood sugar and making us feel full.

Interesting.

Which is the reason why Ozempic is used for diabetes and for weight loss.

When someone takes an external drug like Ozempic to create a chemical, I guess, formulation inside of the body, the brain, the gut, the nervous system, things like that, to either turn on or turn off certain things. How effective is that versus, you know, having 30 plants a week and just eating the foods that will make you feel, that will turn on these hormones that you're talking about that the drug would do and make you feel more satiated in a full by itself.

So, First of all, we have to fully acknowledge that these drugs are highly effective. There is no doubt that they work. They're getting results.

They're getting results. But what are the long-term effects of these?

We have no clue. We have no clue. We don't have the data yet to say what the long-term results of these are. What we do know with complete clarity is that if you stop using the drug, by the way, they're very expensive. They're very expensive. Thousands of dollars per month.

Wow, right?

And are we ready to commit to doing this for the rest of our lives? Because when you come off of the drug, you go right back to where you were before.

Really?

Yes, you rebound immediately. So flip side though, I think it's important at the same time as we're having this conversation about Ozempic and these types of weight loss drugs, again, I'm not here to vilify them, okay? But when we're doing that, instead of changing the way that we eat, the behaviors, the problem that exists with this is like, yes, we can measure weight loss. And when people lose weight, there are different things that can certainly improve and they become more healthy. But is the only thing that matters for human health, our weight? That is not the case. There is so much more to us as humans and our determinants of our health beyond just whether or not we're obese, skinny, or what our body habitus is. And so we need to look at that bigger picture. The bigger picture is that when we optimize our diet, we have opportunities to improve ourselves metabolically, which includes improving our weight, which includes improving our blood sugar control, but we also have opportunities to prevent other diseases far beyond what Ozempic is capable of preventing.

But it also sounds like, as I'm hearing you talk about this, it sounds like if someone's taking something like Ozempic to lose weight, if that's their main goal, I want to lose weight, I want to take this drug, it's going to help me be less hungry, but if someone's losing weight but they're just still eating processed foods and they're not having plants and they're just eating less junk but they're still eating junk, how will that affect the brain and the gut connection to feeling good beyond just losing the weight?

So the data are clear that when we consume an ultra processed diet, which in the United States today 60% of calories are ultra processed foods, so more than half, these are foods by the way that did not exist 100 years ago.

Crazy.

Right, so like what we're describing was not possible for our great-grandparents. There's no way they could have ate the diet that we currently eat because these foods did not exist. And our kids, 70% of calories in our kids come from ultra-processed foods. And there's no doubt that they cause a shift in the microbiome. It's a shift towards what we call dysbiosis, so it's the opposite of what we see when we eat a diverse diet. Diverse diet leads to a diverse microbiome, and that is a healthy microbiome. When we shift towards ultra-processed foods, we're actually contracting the microbiome. We're empowering the ones that love sugar.

We're empowering the ones that create inflammation. And they're signaling the direction they want to go in. They want you to go in. Hey, you want more of this sugary drink. You want more candy.

You want more chips.

They're telling your brain, you need this.

There are interesting studies to suggest that our taste buds and our cravings are driven by our microbiome.

Wow.

It's almost like we don't have control sometimes. Or maybe it's felt in the past like, I want this so bad. Yes, I can stop myself, but my desires and cravings are just like, I'm gonna go to the store and buy candy right now. and is that the microbiome kind of signaling and constantly telling us, get this, go buy this.

You need this. I think that they play a role in that whole. Yes, I think that they play a role in that whole impulse. And yes, that certainly exists. But also the beautiful and exciting thing is our taste buds can change, right? Those impulses can change, and you can get yourself to a place where what you crave is actually something that's good.

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