Dr. William Li | Eat to Beat Disease: How Your Body Can Heal Itself

You know, maybe the ultimate wellness has to rely on self knowledge. If we actually spend time thinking about what's important to us, who we are, what is our role in our community and how do we interact with others, I think that's an every bit as important as the physical being.

What are you in your body embodied? What are you embodied and grateful for? What are you absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, most grateful for today?

Well, I think I am grateful for my good health. I am grateful for. I think I live in an area that is really peaceful. So I'm really grateful for nature. And you know, honestly, I think I'm grateful to other people because I think that's how we're going to get through this is really by people being kind to each other other and supporting each other. That's what I think humanity needs the most.

What a beautiful way to start a conversation. I'm here with Dr. Will Lee and we're talking about beating disease by eating the best foods possible. These superfoods, so many of us have heard the term superfood, eat the right foods, but what does that actually mean? How do we make sense of this? What are our defense systems in our body that'll actually move the needle for us? Not just smoke and mirrors. We're talking about angiogenesis today, which is fascinating. We've never explored it on Wellness Force. Will Lee, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure. Josh. When most people think about the concept of food as medicine, they're thinking about a big picture that may not be clear because frankly, what's in a refrigerator is not medicine. And it's not really a new concept either, even though it's kind of trendy, a really old concept. And if you go to any ancient culture, you know, the Greeks in the Mediterranean, if you go to people in South America, if you go to Asia, you know, for centuries, people have actually, you know, the average person, you know, whether you're a farmer or you're a worker or whether you're, you know, in the courts, you know, they, they all kind of realize that we all make decisions with what we put in our mouth that actually can help us heal and feel better. And so I think we lost kind of, we kind of lost touch of that in our modern industrialized world where pretty much it's a land of plenty, everything comes in a box. You can actually defrost it and thaw it and nuke it and all that kind of stuff. But food is, medicine is actually in my, in my mind A concept of helping to support our own health. And it's not something that we do to us. It's something that we help our own bodies actually do. And so I'm a medical doctor. I'm an internal medicine doc. I'm a scientist. I'm a. What we call a vascular biologist. So I study blood vessels. And I also wrote a book, Eat to Beat Disease, which really tries to put together everything that I know about food and health into ways that everybody can use. But I want to give you a little background about how I came to what I'm doing, and that really is that as a medical doctor, I realized that almost all of my patients had terrible diseases as I got older, and I was at the Veterans Administration. So these were, like, some of my favorite patients, these guys that served the country. They were from armed forces and in their 60s and 70s and older. They were really out of shape, and they had bad diabetes and heart disease and cancer and lung diseases. And I would give them their diagnoses and write a prescription and tell them where they should go in terms of seeing the next specialist. And then they'd all pop back in after putting on their coat and walking out the door, and they'd say, hey, Doc, one more thing. Can I ask you what I should do for myself? What should I eat? And I realized that I was never taught that in med school. And that's actually something that you see a lot in doctors, like the really absence of education on nutrition. And yet that is the one thing that we should be telling every person that we're seeing, whether they're healthy or they're sick.

How long was that training in school? Was it a week or a month or what was it? Do you remember?

You know, I probably had about a week's worth, maybe a little bit more of training in total. Okay. And then you got to realize that when doctors go to school, they're surrounded by junk food, junky stuff, you know, not, you know, there's a lot of.

You know, Friday night McDonald's in the hospital.

That's right. And so, you know, you have to walk. You have to be able to walk the walk in order to be able to talk the talk.

Right.

So, not surprisingly, most of the people that we trust for every other aspect of our health care, right, the doctors and they. Medical doctors, are really poorly trained to be able to provide that kind of healthcare that relies on food. And so I realized that I felt that was wrong. And so that set me on the journey that actually brought me to where I am Today. The other thing is that I'm a research scientist. And as a research scientist, I'm trained to dive deeply into a particular problem to try to figure out what is at the root, what is the heart, what is the truth of this, of this issue. And you know, whether you're talking about diabetes or obesity or heart disease or cancer. You know, the nice thing about science is that truth doesn't lie. We can discover new truths as we dive a little bit deeper, but we really find out what's going on. And that's the difference between ignorance, which is like, well, we don't know and maybe we don't care to. We now know and so we can care, we can do something about it. And so for me, I spent 25 years helping to develop biotechnology treatments, cutting edge treatments for cancer, vision liabilities. And in fact, I've been involved with 34 FDA approved drugs and devices. So I know what I'm talking about. When it's sort of like trying to figure out how to do research to help give people tools.

Yeah.

And I realized that when I was thinking about food and health, the thing that I wasn't taught in med school, but I really needed to know and I think other people need to know, doctors need to know. I realized I could take the tools of biotechnology, what I use for drug development, and apply that to studying food. So all of a sudden there's this new bridge between food and medicine, for food as medicine by really using the tools that we used to develop medicines to study food. And all of a sudden there's a new solid, truth bearing scientific approach to thinking about what we can do for ourselves that is every bit as valid when it comes to food, as it comes to medicines. And that's really what I wrote my book Eat to Beat Disease about. Because I wanted to tell people when it comes to drugs, it could take a decade before you can actually get something that you could prescribe and get it at a drug store. But when it comes to food, it's immediate. Pretty much you open your fridge, you're making the decision what you're going to do. You go to the market even today, and you get to choose instantly what it is that you want to pick up and what you want to do with that food. And so that kind of immediacy, I felt really deserved the ability to come out and get it to the people. And that's partly what I'm doing on your show.

Yeah, that's fascinating to me. It kind of puts a big question mark in my consciousness, a really big question mark as to why are people like yourself so popular in a world where, where you're really just telling people the ancient ways of being that you've learned. It's almost like we have to convince science that some of these ancient ways of eating the foods that have been eaten for thousands of years that are so healthy and so immune boosting. What is it about the public consciousness? In other words, where did we go wrong in our understanding of nutrition and of eating to beat disease? Where's the disconnect between food and medicine? When did that start?

You know, I think all of us when we are born are preloaded. Like, you know, we're already pre hardwired with health defense systems. And inside our bodies we know what we want, we know what we need to be able to help boost our body's own defenses. Because when it comes to food and health, it's not just about the food. It's about how our body responds to what we put into it. And so, you know, we've all had the craving for, you know, piece of fruit or craving for some kind of food. And that's usually our body telling our brain that we need to go after something that is needed inside us.

I crave mustard a lot. Turmeric or something there that I want.

Well, there may be turmeric, there may be some vinegar, there may be some other core things, peppers and some bioactives that you're wanting. And what's really interesting is that most of the healthy things in plants are natural chemicals. We call them bioactives. And they help the plant protect themselves. They're part of the defense system of the plant. They either are a natural insecticide to prevent bugs from eating the plants and their leaves and eating their fruits, or they may actually be protecting the plant from a reproductive perspective. So they can attract bees and butterflies and they can help to pollinate so they can keep their generations going. So these are all protective mechanisms. And when humans sort of got up from dragging our knuckles and we started to pick up the plants and eat them, all of a sudden those same plant defense natural chemicals had another job description because they encountered our bodies health defense systems and activated our body as well. So I'm trying to tell you that I think that we've always known intuitively that eating whole plant based foods is good for our body. And where we went, where we kind of lost touch with that, I think, is when we went from our cultural roots. Because, you know, like in America, everybody's from someplace. Sure. And we all are connected to some things. And the great thing is that we can enjoy lots of different cultures now. But if you look at the ancient cultures, there were no extreme diets. Like for all these ancient cultures, their foods tended to be pretty good for them. I think what happened, that we lost touch with things is when food became industrialized. So let's look at post World War II. We're building up the economy, we've got all these new tools and technologies now. We've got people to do things. And we. A lot of things, part of the things we can invent are, you know, doing mass production of food. And from a time where we didn't have maybe enough food because people were hungry during wartime, to having abundance in peacetime and prosperity, we could start to package and box and freeze. You know, I don't know if any of your viewers or listeners remember this, but, you know, there used to be television. TV dinners.

You'd put them in the microwave. I remember I was an 80s child.

Yeah, you stuck them in and you popped them out. And what did you do? You became the couch potato in front of the tv. Worst, the boob tube. And you ate, you know, whatever stuff was in a foil tray, right. And then you just crumpled it up and tossed it. And so I think that, you know, the industrial era was the time when we became so flush with choices that were prepackaged, pre chosen, pre processed for us. That made things wonderfully convenient in a certain way, but really for our bodies and our health, wonderfully inconvenient because we lost touch with who we actually are. And so what's going on now is a rediscovery using the modern science. So this is what's different now. Before, between 1,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago, we couldn't explain immunity. We couldn't explain our circulation and our blood vessel health. We couldn't explain our microbiome. Those are concepts we may have kind of intuitively known about. Now we can get down to the nitty gritty. We actually know enough about it so we can actually explain the choices, the good choices we're making. And to the extent we're having kind of a backlash against industrialization and going back to basics, I think that brings us back to who we are as humans.

Wow, there is such an incredible amount to unpack there. You strike me as a spiritual man, but also a scientist. With so much academia behind you, like, this is a breath of fresh air, you know, like this is what the world needs. We don't need people that are all neck up. We need People like you that are head to heart, connected, what is the emotional component? What's the moral compass on why you're doing this, why you wrote eat to beat disease? Like, what's the morality behind this for you?

Well, you know, I think I came from, I went into medicine because I really wanted to help people. And there's nothing better for me than to be able to, you know, see a patient, connect to them, listen to what it is that they care about, and then to see if there is some answer that I can help provide them, that can enable them to help themselves, number one. But then beyond that, if there's something that I can help them with using my knowledge and my access to medical technology, that's very satisfying. When I realized that helping one person at a time was satisfying, but still frustrating because there's so many people to help. That's when I started to get involved with research because the fruits of research can help millions of people. Right? And then logically, in my early days I went to drug development because, you know, when you're a medical student or even in college, I was a biotech, I was a bio biochemistry major. You know, we're sort of raised on a diet of the idea that, you know, if we only had more research and we could only develop the cure for this or that, the other thing, right, that's the, that's the big carrot that's dangled.

And so I predetermined path, actually, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it seems like it's just like the packaged TV dinners too, where it's like, this is what medical students do. You don't question what medical students do. Did you feel that way back then?

You know, you get on the treadmill and you just walk. It's like a people mover in an airport, you know, and you just kind of keep going until you get to your terminal and then you get to decide what gate you're going to go to. Well, I can tell you, for me, I started realizing that even as I became very successful in developing treatments. I mean, you know, there are treatments that I helped to develop that can cut off the blood supply feeding cancer. I gave a TED talk on this and it, you know, became really popular. And there are dozens of drugs that are treatments that are like this now. They're all game changers. But you know, honestly, they're very expensive. And I started to realize, why don't we prevent cancer in the first place? And so one of the things that I think, you know, one of my important compass Points was really this idea that, yes, we should treat disease. That's important, but even more important is to prevent disease in the first place. And when you're talking about prevention, you really can't be talking about medicines or drugs. You got to talk about other tools that we have at hand. And that's really what brought me back to food. And food as medicine is really the perfect way to actually set up the idea for everybody that we can actually prevent disease.

One of the things I loved in your TED Talk, by the way, I think the last time I checked, had 12 million views. What is that like for you? How have you managed your emotional state? You seem very grounded. We're going to talk about the science in your video and everything else in your book, but just on an emotional intelligence level, as you've received more attention, how have you dealt with all this novelty and adoration coming in? How do you stay grounded with all of this?

Well, you know what? I'm somebody that really, I love the pursuit of knowledge. So the thing that I'm really focused on is learning new things, and I'm really always interested in. I'm never happy just to know what I do know. I want to move. I want to kind of keep moving forward. So I think for me, I've always felt that, you know, rather than get bored of what I'm doing, I just keep swimming, you know, I just keep moving. And so that's my goal. And so I appreciate the fact that, you know, people have come to view my work and it's been really useful. And, you know, it's so gratifying to hear lives that have been changed by what I've written about or what I've spoken about. I really do think that that's. That makes it all wor while. But to be honest with you, even like, what we're dealing with now with COVID 19, you know, once I made sure I understood how to be safe, the first thing I did is I assembled my own research team and I went after this thing to be able to try to understand it, because until we understand it, there's not much we can do about it. And now that I'm, you know, almost a month into doing the research, I started to realize, oh, okay, so here's. We don't need to flail completely in the hospital. We can start making movements towards this. And one of the things we clearly need to do is to boost our immunity. And so I started to get into, well, what is it that we can actually do, you know, besides, we don't have the time to actually invent things. Right. I mean, there are people that are doing vaccines, but what are the people who are at home, you know, gonna do for themselves? Like, that's the immediacy that we can actually deliver. And so I started to look at immune boost foods as an example and mapping out all the things that the research is telling us of where we can actually do something for ourselves. And, you know, perhaps not surprisingly, the media is sort of like focusing on the drugs that are yet to be developed or in development. I think what we need to do is focus on the decisions that we can make right away every day, today and tomorrow. And we don't have to wait for the calvary to arrive in form of a syringe.

The cavalry is inside of ourselves. And this is what we talk about in your book, by the way. These five pieces that we're going to explore. Obviously we're not going to be able to do the deep dive. I have the book right here next to me. We're going to give away two copies of Eat to beat disease. So if you're hearing this, go to Instagram right on the post with Will Lee. We'll choose two people and you get the book delivered to your house. It's pretty cool. So thank you for writing this book, by the way. One of the pieces I loved about the book was these five systems. Angiogenesis, this really beautiful branch of science where blood can actually infuse health and growth cells to protect us. Regeneration, the microbiome, DNA protection and immunity, which you've already spoken about. But one of the best things that I want everyone to know is that each of these systems are equally dependent and equally viable with one another. Can you talk about how you found these five systems? Because you could have gone down the rabbit hole, Will. You could have said it's 10 systems, it's 20 systems. What was it about these specific five that are so valuable and interconnected?

Well, you know, I'm somebody who's really interested in the common denominators of things. And I remember thinking about much younger, watching cancer researchers go at it. You know, it was really quite remarkable, the amount of the intensity that cancer research done. But I realized that, you know, after all these years, we really haven't licked cancer, despite all the money and all the brain power that was thrown at it. And I realized that maybe it was an approach. Maybe what we needed to do is, I mean, there's breast cancer and brain cancer and kidney cancer and prostate cancer. Maybe we shouldn't Be looking at what makes diseases different from one another, but maybe we should take a look at what makes diseases common. And then I brought it beyond cancer. And I'm like, well, what is the common denominator between cancer, heart disease, stroke, blindness, arthritis, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's? You come up with a gigantic list of what ails us as a society. And what's amazing is by looking at the common denominator, my view is that you could pull the bow back of an arrow and send a single arrow through all of these diseases. And so that wound up actually being these five health defense systems, Starting with what I discovered was angiogenesis, which is how the blood vessel, how the body grows blood vessels, and so each to figure that out. Well, I've been, I trained. I was really amazingly fortunate. I studied under a researcher named Judah folkman in the mid-1980s in Boston, and he was the pioneer of the field of androgenesis. And he was more like da Vinci, you know, teaching students how to paint. You know, it was really amazing to be in his, you know, in his studio, his laboratory. And so we worked at it for, you know, well over 10 years and started to get deeper and deeper into this. But I took it a little bit further and said, you know, this common denominator approach for diseases could be borrowed. We could tear a page from that playbook and not just look at common denominators for disease, but we can look at common denominators of health. Now we have something we can do beyond saying health is the absence of disease, because that's what most people do, right? So if somebody asks you, hey, you know, what's health? And you say, how do you know you're healthy? Well, I'm not sick.

I have a six pack, some illusionary model.

Well, so now I'm telling you that, well, that's kind of on the outside, right? So we're now figuring out what health is on the inside. And we earn our health because our health defenses actually are firing in all cylinders. We're born with them, and they're firing in all cylinders. From the time we're born until our very last breath, they're doing all they can. So some people say, well, why did so and so get cancer? I think a more interesting question is, why don't we all not get cancer so more frequently? And that's due to our body's defenses. And the amazing thing is that the five defenses that I wrote about are the angiogenesis, stem cell regeneration, microbiome, DNA repair, and our immunity. These five Defenses are all being focused on by the pharmaceutical industry to develop drugs to go after the dise. So if you move that aside, but to say there's a lot of science behind that, you look at the other side, you can use those same five defenses to boost them up with food. So it really is just the other side. Look, you go into a grocery store. What do you see now, right? You got the food on one side, you got the drugstore on the other side. This is the same thing like in the five health defense systems. There's like the pharma side, the drugstore side. Let's go into the produce and the food side of things. We can actually really figure out it's the same defenses that get boosted. So, you know, they're quite amazing because they're interrelated. And what I tell people to think about is our health defenses are like a coral reef. Like, think about the Great Barrier reef, right? It's not just one kind of coral. It's coral. It's fish, you know, and you've got the big fish. It's an ecosystem, and everything works together. And that's really what our body is. It's a gigantic ecosystem of health.

Wow. I love this because I think about the way that nature always wins. You know, one day we'll leave the planet. Until then, what are we doing here that actually complements and interrelates and gives back to nature? I can't think of a better way to do that by food. Food is the way that we can honor nature. There's. We've had a guest on the show named Paul Check, and he talked about eating seasonally, eating the foods that actually grow in the right seasons. How does someone even know if their food that they're eating is causing them a lowering of these five defenses? Is there a starting point with the food that people can eat that you talk about in your book? What is that first step when even looking at the myriad of nutritional choices, right?

So to make it really, really simple, you know, all you got to do is go to a farmer's market because they're seasonal. They bring, always bring out. They cart out, and they load up into baskets the stuff that it happens to be fresh at that time. And farmers markets are everywhere. You know, I mean, I think that they've come back a great way. And even if you live in a city, you don't have to go too far to find out where the farmers have come in to actually bring their stuff. That's one way, great way to figure out what nature is Providing at that moment or that week for our bodies. So if you think about us as all interconnected, that's really one way to figure out what is the bounty that has come in. I'm thinking another way. If you live by the shore, you know, by the fishing docks, you know what used to happen is that people used to gather up by the dock to see what the boats were bringing in, to see what the fisherman caught. Same thing for the farmer's market. I generally think whole plant based foods that you grow from good soil using ways that protect the earth and you bring it to market and you buy it. Like that's going to be a really great way to start. Now. It's true. Not everybody can get fresh food all the time. And that's really one of the biggest inequalities I think that we need to address as a society. Yeah, we need to get better food. I mean, honestly, I don't really care if a drone flies it to your doorstep, but if you're in the middle of, you know, if you're in a place that doesn't actually have fresh food, we need as a society to figure out how to get that to you.

That's such a great point. Because it's all out there. It's not like the food's missing. Like how do you feed the world? You just transport the food to them, to the people that need it. There's farm box, there's butcher box, there's all these companies out there that there are ways to deliver this fresh food to people wherever they live.

And the irony is that there's a lot of fresh food that sits in the field rotting, not getting to the people that it needs to go to. So I think that that's one of the things that we need to be able to, we need to be able to find a way to improve our communities. Right. Also think about in the old days, right? Like in a simpler time, if you had a lot of abundance of food, what did you do? You gave it to your neighbor, right? So you shared your food. That's something that I think we're going to come back to thinking about is how do we share our bounty. But you asked about the basic rules of thumb. Whole foods, mostly plant based. Fruits and vegetables as fresh as possible, nuts and legumes, herbs and spices. This is really the bounty of health. And mother nature gives it to us. Every season, every month is a little bit different. And frankly, when you ask even what about the wintertime, you got root vegetables, you get the plant based foods that can actually store pretty well. Carrots, potatoes, apples, they all carry over. And because we are in general fortunate to be able to get foods from different places, you can always find something fresh in a supermarket. And that's one of the things that I tell people they should be doing, especially now, because we have to be more careful when we go to the supermarket plan. When you're there, don't loiter, make a beeline for where the good stuff is. And it's going to be in the produce section.

It's on the edges of the store. Not in the chip aisle. It's not there.

Or the soda aisle. Yeah, right. So now I will say, I will give you an exception to the middle aisle, though. You know, you got healthy fats there. You've got bean, dried beans. You know, there are, there are different things that are good in the middle aisle. I think it's what I like to do is to say, you know, let's. That's shopping. Where things are fresh is always going to be good. But don't overlook some of the good things that are in the middle of the store as well. But you want to think, you want to plan about it ahead of time.

There's dark chocolate there, too, and sparkling water, which is. I love both those things. One thing you mentioned earlier was angiogenesis. It's in your TED Talk, which we've obviously linked in our show notes here. So another million people can watch it at some point this year, I'm sure. But can you expand that a little bit more and talk about the angiogenic foods? Because those are the things that are actually going to yield more health. Right?

Right. So angiogenesis is a fancy term that basically describes how our body grows blood vessels. And we all know we've got blood vessels because if you cut yourself, you'll bleed. That's coming out of your blood vessels. What most people don't know is that underneath skin we've got 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels that are packed inside us. Right. So that's an enormous amount of blood vessels. And in fact, if you were to pull them all out and line them up end to end, you'd actually form a string that would wrap around the earth twice from a single person. So as you can imagine, this delivery system of blood and oxygen and nutrients to every cell in our body is going to be really, really important. You don't have enough of it. You wind up having things like heart attacks and strokes and wounds that don't heal. If you have too many of them, you can Bleed. If you bleed in your eye, you'll go blind. Or sometimes diseases will hijack our blood vessels. I mean, they're like, think about cancer cells like a terrorist. They will literally take over the blood vessels in the organ in which they're growing. And they will feed themselves so they can selfishly become nourished. And then blood vessels hitting, cancers will grow. The cancer will grow like 16,000 times in two weeks. So it's an explosive way for diseases to grow. So why is that actually such an important defense system is because it's always making sure your body, every cell, has nutrition. And the body also knows that it should be pruning away, removing any blood vessels that might be cause, might be helping to provoke a disease. Like a lawn mower, you know, so the blood, the lawn's always growing. Some weeds will pop up, and then the body's defenses will mow down that extra weed. So you get just the right amount, not too much, not too little. Goldilocks knew all angiogenesis, right? Okay. So one of the interesting things that I discovered early on was that there are certain foods eaten by people who have low cancer rates, like in the, like in the Japanese island of Okinawa that actually eat mostly plants. And these are farmers that often just eat soybeans or soy foods. And in their urine, you can discover there's a plant based substance that you can only get from the plant. Humans don't make it. And this substance actually cuts off the blood supply, feeding cancers. Now we suddenly begin to put a picture together of a plant based food that you can eat that actually you can find throughout your body that prevents cancers from growing by cutting off their blood supply, helping to mow that lawn. So you only have good, healthy blood vessels. That was the beginning in my career of discovering antiangiogenic foods or foods that prevent too many blood vessels. Helps keep the right number around. And what's amazing is there's so many foods that are out there. In fact, there's well over 100 antiangiogenic foods.

And these are listed in the book. So don't worry, you don't have to take notes and search on Google.

Yeah, it's amazing, right? So you got soy, you've got tea, green tea, you've got fruits and vegetables, and kale and carrots. We actually even looked at. Carrots, for example, contain a powerful natural substance, carotenoids that actually inhibit angiogenesis. They stop bad blood vessels from growing. We said, let's think a little bit about what we're doing in nature. What do we do? When you go to the farmer's market, can you get a carrot? I mean, a carrot is just a little bit of a root taproot. Most of it's this gigantic green mop. What do you do when you come home? You cut off the mop and you throw away the tops and you cook with the carrots. Right. So we said, what happens if we test the carrot tops for antiangiogenic or blood vessel boosting activity? And we found that the carrot tops. The carrots were good. They actually had really good stuff in it and antiangiogenic substances. But the carrot tops had twice the amount. Wow. Double the amount.

The part that's getting thrown away.

Way exactly, exactly. So it's quite amazing.

What is your sense on other things that people might be shocked by that would also help with angiogenesis. Are there a handful of other foods that are in your kitchen right now?

Well, let's see. I'll tell you a couple of surprises that are anti angiogenic. Most people don't think that chicken has anti androgenic activity and the chicken has vitamin K. Vitamin K is actually a substance that not the blood. Actually it's only found in chicken thighs, by the way. It's not found in the breast.

The thighs have the more blood flow amount. Is that what.

Why that's partly where you get it from? Yeah, exactly. It's like the natural part. Sure. By the way. So this is another reason why free range chicken is probably better as well. It's getting us running around. Exactly.

Happy lives.

Yeah. And they're picking on the natural bugs that they're actually eating. And so chicken thighs is a big surprise. A couple of other surprises are pomegranates. For example, we know that there's an extract in pomegranates that there's a thing that gives pomegranate. Pomegranate their natural dark color, deep ruby color is powerfully antiangiogenic, cuts off the blood supply. It's been studied in prostate cancer, actually. And actually it's really powerful because pomegranates also help the microbiome. There's so many foods that are amazing. Most of them are plant based, but not all of them. And some of the surprises come from the ones that are not plant based. That's nuts. Are also a powerful antiangiogenic. We've even studied red wine. We took a look at the different potencies of angiogenesis inhibition. By the way, it's not in the alcohol. It's really in the stuff from the Red grape.

Is that fermentation process why it has so much health benefit?

Yeah, because it's actually. The alcohol is actually fermenting, and it's extracting from the grape skin the natural chemicals. Oh, here's a surprise for you. We were looking. I told you about the carrots. We were looking at broccoli. If you go buy a bag of frozen broccoli from someplace and you cut the bag open, there are all these perfect little broccoli florets, the little treetops. But if you go to the farmer's market, you realize that the tree tops are only part of the broccoli. It's mostly this gigantic long stem. What do people do? Most people cut the stem off and throw it away. So we said, is there activity that can be angiogenesis beneficial in the stem of the broccoli? So we tested the head, the treetops, we tested the stem, and we found the head was good. But the broccoli stem had twice as much angiogenesis. Oh, my gosh.

We need to stop cutting the stems and tops off of everything almost. What about strawberries? I eat the tops of strawberries. I like them. Do those have those properties?

Well, I'll tell you what's interesting about strawberries. We haven't touched the tops of strawberries, but what we did look at is our wings. Which variety of strawberries are better? And it turns out that there's one kind of strawberry from New Zealand called Ruby Gem that has, like, three times as much of ellagic acid. Now, ellagic acid is actually what makes its angiogenesis inhibitor. It actually is what makes a strawberry tart. So you want, like, the perfect strawberry is sweet and tart, that perfect mix. Right. Like, I mean, that juicy. The big thing that I get bummed out about is that, you know, like, every strawberry could be perfect. So I'm always looking for that perfect strawberry. What we did find, by the way, also that was interesting, is that the ellagic acid found in strawberries is actually part of its defense system as well. And if you take a strawberry that's grown organically, meaning no pesticides, bugs will start to eat at the plant. Right. That's kind of why pesticides are used to keep away pests. If the bugs eat at the plant, the leaves, the stems, maybe even the fruit, the strawberry plant treats the insect bite like a wound. So to heal itself, the strawberry makes more ellagic acid, more of the good stuff. That's a cancer fighter. And so this is. We're beginning to realize now that, you know, maybe some of this stuff about organics was not just about lack of pesticides. Maybe it's less bad stuff, but now maybe it's more good stuff as well. So this is again, you know, like peeling layers of the onion back. You keep on going, keep on driving at this, and things that kind of made sense before might even make more sense now.

It makes perfect sense to us because we understand. We've had many guests that have come on the show, you know, Josh Takel and Kiss the ground, Regenerative farming. We're doing a Featured series with Dr. Zach Bush in the future now. So we understand that there is a cycle of nature. And your book so respects that cycle of nature. But I guess what's really fun from a scientific perspective, too, is that you have dedicated such a large part of your life to exploring the actual molecular biology of what goes on with our system and how it affects us. And there's no greater place, in my opinion. I'm curious how you feel about this than the microbiome, you know, neurologic and mood disorders being cross relation to the microbiome you talk about in your book, actually in this chapter, feed your inner ecosystem, chapter eight. This was really cool. A microbiome called Akkermansia municiphilia. I hope I said that right. This is the powerhouse. This has a direct correlation to our mood. How do we feed the good bacteria? And how did you come across this one, this Akkermansia?

Yeah, well, so, you know, when I went to medical school, we were taught that bacteria are bad. Bad, except maybe there are some good bacteria. So the interesting thing about the microbiome is that when I was in medical school, we were taught that bacteria are bad and antibiotics are actually good. And now we realize that antibiotics also take out the good bacteria that are in our body. And we've got so many good bacteria, it's unbelievable. We've got like 39 trillion good bacteria in our body, almost more good bacteria than we have human cells. And so the interesting thing about them is we're beginning to find out which bacteria are exceptional. Among the exceptional bacteria, there's one called Akkermansia. Akkermansia mucinophila. Now, I'm telling you about the mucinophilia part because that's really important. Akkermansia likes to grow in mucus. Mucinophil. And our guts naturally secrete healthy mucus. Right. So, you know, you know, we want to kind of keep our gut hydrated. And when we're. When it's hydrated, it creates mucus Healthy bacteria grow in there. And Akkermansia actually talks to your immune system, which is found right next door in the gut to the gut microbiome. And it actually helps immune system kind of knocks on the door. Immune system says, hey, fellas, let's go out there and, you know, let's, dad, let's go get them. And so the immune system goes out like a group of super soldiers to go hunt down bad guys that might be trying to invade the body. Some of those bad guys, by the way, are viruses and bacteria. Some of them are also cancer cells. And we found out, and I kind of came onto this whole Akkermansia, the power of Akkermansia. Because there's a big breakthrough in biotechnology for cancer treatment by giving immunotherapy. These are treatments that don't kill the cancer cells, but they help your body. His immune system naturally killed the cancer, so it's just helping your body's own defenses kill cancer. And we found that it works even in older people, like Jimmy Carter, the president of the. Former president of the United States. Ninety years old, he had cancer that spread to his brain. He got an immunotherapy, and it just. And his own immune system wiped this baby out. Okay. And he's, like, alive doing all today. So even when you're older, your immune system is still so powerful. What we found is that not everybody responds to immune therapy. In fact, about 20% of people respond the way that we want them to respond. So that's pretty disappointing if you can imagine a doctor treating somebody with an amazing treatment that can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. And it only works in 20% of people.

Why is that the case? Why Is it only 20% of people?

Yeah. So with a colleague of mine, Dr. Laurent Zipvogel, in Paris, it was discovered that the difference between people with cancer who are treated with immune therapy, the difference between those who actually responded to the immune therapy and lived versus people who didn't respond and died, was just one bacteria. That bacteria is Akkermansia. If you had it, you would respond, and you'd live. If you didn't have Akkermansia, you wouldn't respond, and you wouldn't do as well. That's how powerful Akkermansia is. Grows in your mucus. You can't eat it as a probiotic. There's no Akkermansia probiotic.

How do we get more of it, doctor? How do we do it?

You got to grow that mucus. Love seeing. So the way to grow the mucus is by having cranberry juice, pomegranate juice, Those the things that are the natural substances in those juices help the gut naturally produce the mucus. So it's like helping your body create the fertilizer that the seeds of akkermansia like to grow in. I had a patient who was a cancer patient who had multiple myeloma. We were going to actually treat her with an immune therapy. Her doctor basically said, let's just get her started on it. And I said, wait a minute, let's go check her Akkermansia. So we did a stool test and she had 0akkermansia. Why? Because she had been on an antibiotic for bronchitis. So not surprising. So we got her on pomegranate juice and we gave it to her. Just, you know, all you need is about eight ounces a cup a day for about three weeks. Right.

Does it matter if you do it on an empty stomach or not?

Does not matter. Okay, Full stomach, empty stomach, it all goes through. This is the liquid. It just runs, goes all the way down there. And she went from starting at the starting point of 0 Akkermansia. In three weeks later, she had six times above the general population's level worth of Akkermansis. She had super akkermanns. We got her on the immune treatment and man, her body responded like gangbusters. And just like it was so fast in terms of how it cleared the cancer. So again, that's applying the discovery that we had made in a practical way. Right? So, I mean, how many people would realize that something that could make it work much, much better is just found in a cup of pomegranate juice?

Well, it's so fascinating and honestly, it's so relieving that we don't have to have. Have the end of the road, in my opinion, which is pharmaceutical drugs. We can find all these things in nature. Like, you know, most of the things I've even read reports on this, they're from the pharmaceutical industry. They're created from plants that they find in the Amazon. A lot of the things that the pharmaceutical industry creates, they've actually already been grown in nature, and they're synthesized from the same atom structure that is found in nature. Have you seen that to be true as well in your research?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, many of the most famous medicines, including cancer medicines, came from plants. I mean, Taxol is a very famous old cancer treatment. It's now chemically synthesized, but it came from the bark of a yew tree, specifically a Pacific yew tree that was grown in the American Northwest. Aspirin comes from the bark of a tree tree. So if you look back at history, the legacy of nature has been with us forever, more or less. And, oh, what about a heart medicine like digoxin or digitalis that comes from foxglove, that came from actually drawing a flower, making it into a tea, and helping people who have heart problems?

Oh, man. I think about the way that our immune system, like you said, is the next door neighbor to the microbiome. And I was thinking about that later layer, and then you said that we put the pomegranate juice in there and the cranberry juice, which helps the mucus actually talk to our immune system. Everything is so interrelated. By the way, we need to support our farmers on this. I mean, if we're trying to get in really processed, homogenized juices and not these organic ones, don't you think that's going to have less efficacy to creating the mucus and the Akkermansia?

Well, that's actually something that we're working on right now just to understand how the growing environment can actually make a big difference among different types of plants. We know growing conditions are very important. If you actually make it really difficult for a plant to grow, it's not going to extract everything it needs from the soil or from the air or from the water. I mean, you know, nature comes from someplace and it usually comes from the stuff around it. So, not surprisingly, how we treat our plants, it really winds up reflecting. Reflecting how we treat our bodies when we actually eat them.

Wow. How we treat our soil, you know, the humus that we've had. I remember Josh Tukil talking about regenerative agriculture. He said the humus is actually how the earth breathes. So the quality of our soil dictates the quality of our nutrients that are found in organic produce. And then that goes into our microbiota and then it's the level in the mirror of our health. So it's so powerful that you talk about in this book, too, the mood to the microbiotic equation. Well, depression. You know, even people with. Have severe anxiety. What is the clear connection that you've seen in the research, both, you know, anecdotally and also in cases. What does that really mean for us? And how do we. How do we have a better mood by having a healthier gut?

Well, we know the gut's connected to the immune system because they're next door neighbors. So it's kind of like two college roommates you knock on the wall next door and your roommate can hear it. And that's basically your immune system and your microbio. Now, we also know, and this is a little bit more surprising, that the gut's connected to your brain. There's a gut brain axis, and it's still largely a mystery, but we're beginning to get at it. We know that the gut secretes some substances that circulate up to the brain. We also know that there are nerves that actually are helping the gut to actually function that start in the brain. And it seems like the bacteria can send signals up there. It's kind of like a text message up through the nervous system from your gut all the way to your brain. A great example of that is a bacteria called Lactobacillus. Lactobacillus is a natural gut bacteria. After the 1930s and 40s, when antibiotics came out, it became much less common in humans. So we kind of screwed up our own guts with antibiotics. But it's a really important one. You can still get it in yogurt. Turns out that it's the original bacteria used in sourdough bread that makes sourdough bread sour.

You just made everybody happy so they can eat sourdough and increase the good bacteria.

Lactobacillus, the lactic acid, is what makes sourdough bread sour.

But not in the traditional breads, not in one bread. Not even close.

Not even close. Like, not in the kind of the traditional. The real way of actually doing it is with sour with Lactobacillus pumpernickel, also made with the same starter, you know, so what was really interesting is Lactobacillus. And when you've done, researchers have shown if you feed Lactobacillus to the gut, one particular kind, Lactobacillus reuteri, it will actually send a signal to the brain, and the brain will release a hormone, natural hormone, called oxytocin. Now, oxytocin is what we call the social hormone. It's a hormone that makes you feel good when you see a friend, you know, you hug somebody you love. A social hormone. It's also the hormone that your brain produces from cancer, kissing, from orgasm, all kinds of, like, feel good stuff. It's an anti anxiety hormone as well. And this bacteria is one that we know actually helps your brain release that anti anxiety social hormones. Amazing.

Wow. So I get to eat these foods before I go into large social groups or maybe have an intimate moment with my partner. I can actually eat those foods beforehand. And that would essentially create More of a bond, more of a human connection, which is what is so, so important. I mean, gosh, food has been bringing us together since the dawn of time, since we were human beings. This book is really a return back home, man. I mean, this book is bringing us back home to who we actually are. Like you said in the beginning of the podcast, actually.

Well, one of the things that I, I'm really committed to doing is making sure people feel like healthy eating is number one, based on real science now, not just kind of hand wavy and wishful thinking, but there's real science behind it, number one. Number two, you don't have to spend all your time thinking about what to cut out of your diet. Let's go ahead and, and let's flip that equation and start to think about what to add to your diet. And I put more than 200 foods in my book. That is a list that's so long, everybody can find something that they love in it. My message is really to live healthy and eat healthy. Start with healthy food that you already love. If you start with the thing that you already love, you're already way ahead of the game. And that's where I think everybody should begin. It's not about cutting out. It's not only about cutting out. It's about what you add. And by the way, the other thing that's really important is that really, food itself is not a magic bullet. There are no magic bullets. It's really part of the equation. You got to do all the other things that are important. You got to stay physically active. It doesn't mean that you have to work out and be a superman, but you do need to stay physically active. You need good sleep, you need to manage your stress. All these things work together again back in that ecosystem to make a happy ecosystem. But food is one thing that we only see sleep. Most of us only sleep once a day, but we're eating multiple times a day. And so this is why, you know, it's so important to be aware that the decisions we make today can have huge implications for who we are tomorrow.

This book does have a spiritual component to it. I can, I can feel it, and I can definitely sense it in you. Do you have a connection to a higher power? As a scientist, as a medical doctor, what does that look like, like for you?

You know, I think that we all are connected with one another and to higher powers that actually make all life possible. And so I would say, you know, really good scientists are spiritual people because once, once you, once you, once you actually Appreciate just how complex it is. You realize that it's impossible that this is all by chance.

Who's been a mentor of yours that's just inspired you or who are a few people that, that still to the day light you up in your field?

Well, my mentor, Judah Folkman, who passed away a few years ago, was really a powerful influence. He, you know, as I gave this analogy, he was sort of like da Vinci. And training under his wing was like learning how to paint in da Vinci's studio. It wasn't about the technical aspects of painting that was important. It was about learning how to think about painting. I learned how to think about research, you know, rather than asking, asking rather than following the trail of everybody else. I learned to look at the areas that nobody else was looking at. I think that that's really remarkable. He was by far my most influential mentor. But I think that there have been so many people that in my life have been involved with my training, helping me ground my humanity with medicine. Because medicine can be very technical. You know, it's got a rocket science component to it, you know, like very.

Egoic at times as well. Someone's ideas challenged me and they get vehemently angry.

You know what we the most important because we don't know, we don't know. No single person knows everything there is to know about, about life. And nobody knows more about an individual than themselves. And so I, I think one of the things that we have to do as healers is really to be able to listen, to be a better listener than a speaker and also to share. And sharing is a two way street. So those are some of the things that I think have been really influential for me.

If you could look back at the timeline of your life and see how the dots have connected. It's always easier looking back. Was there a moment or a lesson that you could share with us that really touched your heart and made you know, I'm on the right path?

Well, there's been a number of those moments I've had that I think really did it for me. You know, I will share a story that I was in a gap year after college and I was really interested in studying the Mediterranean diet. And this is before it became popularized. And so I traveled and I actually went to visit communities in Greece where and they were monastic communities. So there were monks that were living there, that lived really a medieval lifestyle. And there were so many healthy, really aged, older monks. They were elders and they were all healthy, sharp minded, contributing to the community. And they ate everything they could grew or everything. They grew, they ate, they were active members of their community. They shared actively. And I think that was influential to me because it was before I went to medical school. And so without any technology, I realized it was possible to achieve good health and to live a good overall life and, you know, sort of from a humanistic perspective. But I think that, you know, that that experience taught me something, which is that I wasn't going to allow myself to be fooled or sed just by the headiness of all the tech and the drugs and biotech and all that kind of stuff. At the end of the day, we're all human and what we're able to do resides within ourselves.

Just solid wisdom and just so appreciative of this book. Eat to beat disease. The new science of how your body can and will heal itself. You can get this everywhere. Books are sold, but we're also, as I said, giving away two copies. So please go to the Instagram post that we have for today and just type in. I love this interview. I love this book. Type in something that you felt about the show. Dr. Lee, when we look at wellness, which is essentially this core principle of the nexus of physical, emotional and spiritual intelligence, we all know intelligence is not just how smart you are. What does this mean to you? To be well, to live a life well lived? If you were to define wellness, which is a big question, how would you define a life well lived? What is your definition of, well, wellness?

Wow, that's a, that's a big question. I think that, you know, our physical wellness is the obvious and that's really kind of what we started talking about. But I actually think that, you know, you have to be emotionally well, you have to fit well within your social system as well. You know, it's, it's a, it's the ecosystem. How well do you play with your neighbors? How well do you, you play by yourself? You know, how well does your, does your fish live, you know, in this massive system? And how peaceful do you feel? How safe do you feel? How adapted and adjusted are you as you kind of migrate through your. And migrate through life? And I think that if you, if, if we all look at life as a journey, you know, and we change over the journey, which is really an important part, right? Because when we're younger, we have, our outlook is one way. When we get older, it changes, matures, keep on adding years and decades. We're still the same person, but we actually think differently. I think another type of wellness is really to adapt our sense of Self. Maybe the ultimate wellness has to rely on self knowledge. If we actually spend time thinking of about what's important to us, who we are, what is our role in our community and how do we interact with others, I think that's every bit as important as the physical being.

Wow. Just a few times in our conversation, including right now, I've gotten that sensation of joy, that sensation of happiness, of real trust with you. So it's been a total pleasure to have you on the show. Where can people connect with you? Obviously they can just search for you on Google or DuckDuckGo or Brave, but where can people go to connect with you to actually begin this journey? The book is the first step, but what's after that?

Right. So, you know, I invite anybody to come join me on the journey that I'm on that I would love to be able to take people on with me to share what I know through my website, which is Dr. Dr. William Lee l I.com Dr. Williamlee.com and also I'm on social. You can find me Dr. DrDrWilliamLee Li on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and look, there's so much information out there. I find it hard to kind of sort through everything myself. One of the things that I try to do for, you know, my community and people that I want to share, you know, who are, I'm inviting everybody to share with me is I try to pick out the things that I think are important and try to curate them, to give them those bite sizes nuggets that I find so useful for myself.

Fantastic. Thank you again for coming on the show. And there is a lot of information out there. So I do my diligence to make sure that we can trust the experts that come on. And when I look at this field of really angiogenic foods and eating and how that relates to disease and our mood, you're at the very top. So it's been a true honor and pleasure to have you on the show. Dr. Will Lee, thank you again for your presence.

A real pleasure. Thank you.