(upbeat music) - Hey, I'm here with my dad, Dr. Furman. - And I'm here with my daughter, Jenna. - And we are going to talk about how to eat to live today for a long, healthy life. - That's right, we're focusing today on the basic tenets of longevity and anti-aging so you get a chance to control the rate at which you age and how long you live. - So I would assume, talking to you, that the most important part to your anti-aging technique is nutrition. - Correct. - So let's start with what you eat. - Absolutely, I mean, you're right, there are other factors that control aging with sides nutrition and we'll get those out of the way 'cause we're gonna focus mostly on the nutritional aspects. Like exercise, sleep, emotional poise, lack of stress, all the, you know, happiness quotients, all those things affect longevity but nothing affects longevity as much as what you put in your mouth. - Absolutely. - That's the number one factor that controls it. - For sure, I feel like that makes the most sense. I don't know if it's 'cause I grew up with you but that absolutely makes the most sense to me. - By the way, if you eat healthier, you sleep better. If you eat healthier, you have exercise capacity and you feel like being physically active. If you eat healthier, you're gonna have less stress in your life and your mind's gonna work better. And it's not, you know, there's other things we need too but obviously the core basis of good nutrition makes everything else easier to have go right in your life. - And as it's kind of, they all are in a circle working synergistically with each other and if you kind of focus on one, then you have an interest and it bleeds into the other and it goes into the other. So I think starting with nutrition is always for the best too 'cause it has such a big impact in the other aspects but start one and it will be good. You should prioritize all of them. - For sure. - So the most important thing when you're talking about nutrition is to eat nutrient dense foods. - Correct. So we're talking about the foundational principle of a nutrient diet. The five words people have to always memorize that's the most proven methodology is slow aging and everybody should know these five words. - Can I do it? - Yeah. - Okay. And wait, okay. - Five words. - Wait, I just wanna make sure I get in the right order. Moderate caloric restriction in the environment of nutrition, yeah, nutrition adequacy or micronutrient excellence? - That's correct. You kind of messed it up a little bit but you guys kind of got it. - I'm not you. Okay, it wasn't perfect. I got it. - Moderate caloric restriction with micronutrient excellence. - I knew I had it and then I got nervous for the camera. Oh my gosh. Okay. - You had it for sure. - Thank you, you know what I meant. So we were talking about this a little bit. I understand what moderate caloric restriction is and you might want to define it for everyone else. What is moderate caloric restriction? - Well, we're talking about we know extreme caloric restriction could it be make you too thin and not healthy and well nourished. We want to have as much as we can with an art and a science of hit our caloric window in that correct range. And I use the term moderate caloric restriction to mean that we don't overshoot our caloric needs but we undershoot it or we hit it right on the money right in that range of undershoring a little bit or right on the money. You can't be but if you start to hit over it then you start to age faster. So let's talk about hitting it right on the money. We have a basal metabolic, BMR, you know. So our BMR, basal metabolic requirement and let's just say me at 150 pounds, my BMR is about 1500 calories a day. Now keep in mind Americans eat 3300 calories a day. My BMR and maybe my exercise and activity might add an extra couple, two or 300 on top of that. So now I have my BMR plus my exercise and activity put together in that 1700 to 1900 window, let's say. - About your caloric needs for the day. - My caloric needs for the day. - Yeah, to maintain this weight, which is your ideal weight. - Correct, to maintain my ideal weight. So let's say for example, instead of eating in the 17, 18, 1900 range with my BMR plus my activity level I eat 2200, 2400, 2600 a day. Then I'm gonna age more, I'm gonna age quicker because the extra calories that I didn't have to have, the body raises the body's metabolism to burn them. So the extra calories cause you to raise your metabolism, which means your body temperature goes up, your thyroid function increases and the calories burn through respiration, your respiratory quotient starts to increase as well and the effort to burn off the extra calories you didn't need. And all those signaling that the body has to do to burn off the extra calories means you're running your metabolic engine at a higher rev, you're running your car at a higher speed and it makes you age faster and it cuts short your lifespan. - Does this mean there's less time to rest and digest when you are constantly eating and that also increases? - Yes, that's metabolic rate and inflammation. - That's true too, is that to digest properly we need to have digestive enzymes that aid in the digestive process. And when we eat a meal, there's so much digestive enzymes present to digest that meal and they expunge themselves and empty their contents into the digestive tract and they take hours to replenish themselves again and you could be eating again before you had replenished them or you ate till you were full and you ate till you were lost the capacity to efficiently digest, then you get more bacterial overgrowth, more yeast formation, more toxic formation and an unhealthy microbiome from eating till fullness and the empty extra calories you didn't need. So you form more toxicity for excess calories and the excess calories, of course, raise growth hormones too that also interfere with lifespan. So we're trying to be the best scientist/artist so every person knows their caloric needs and people can regulate that easily by seeing how much they weigh, by knowing their body fat. So by combining exercise, good health and good sleep with eating right, we can keep our body fat low as we, and our ratio of muscle tissue to body fat low so we age in good health, which is the complete opposite of what Americans live, how they think and what they're doing to protect their health and they're doing the complete opposite. They think it's healthier to have a faster metabolic rate so they can eat more and not gain weight and we're saying, no, it's better to have a slower metabolic rate so you can eat less and knock it too thin. So we're trying to eat so healthy that a body runs so efficiently and so without effort so it doesn't even need as many calories now. If you eat really healthy, you don't have to eat as many calories to make it your nutritional needs met, you're comfortable with less. And now, instinctually, you desire less calories. - Yeah, I love when we talk about what we're taught about having a fast metabolism that is such a superior, it's a good thing to have, you'll never have to worry about weight or excess weight, hey, I have a fast metabolism, I'm all set. But it was always interesting to what you educated me on when you talked about the history of it if you think of it from an evolution standpoint. So can you explain your reference when we used to talk about coming over on ships back in 1700, 1600s, whenever it was? - Well, humans have been on the planet for maybe, let's say 100,000 years. - In my head, it's in this one. - In your head, yeah. - It's in the 1600s. - It's through human history that people survived on the planet and it was hard to find food to eat. Go out there in the jungle of the woods, it's not that easy to find food. - You'd just scavenge for it, yeah. - Yeah, and you'll find grasshoppers and slugs and an artichoke, wild, artichokes. Yeah, blueberries, you'll find, you'll find, you know, personally, and you'll find it. - You don't actually think people were eating slugs, do you? - I don't know. - Okay, we should look into that. - Whatever they could find, you know. But people died, you know, whether, or whatever it was, where people couldn't get enough food to eat and people died of starvation. - All the time. - Right, so people weren't dying of excess calories until the farming revolution, the industrial revolution, where people would get extra calories and maybe some wealthy royalty, you know, rulers had too much calories, but most of the masses were just barely surviving with not enough calories. - It was the very wealthy and very rare person that actually was overweight. It was seen as an opulence, as a luxury. - Right, it was very rare. - Yeah, right, so people, so genetics enhanced survival in people who could get by with less calories. So nowadays, we have people that are more who gain weight and get overweight more readily than another person might. And those are the people from years from genetically, from centuries ago, that would have survived with less calories, with thrust in an environment, with excess calories, they're the first to die now, because their really body's not adapted to all these excess calories. So I'm also saying that fat on the body is all, the fat body fat percent is a huge longevity controller. - Absolutely, and so if you think about it from a time where people were battling with starvation, the ones who had a fast metabolism died sooner and died of hunger, but the ones with the slow metabolism actually were able to make it and survive. - And pass on their genes. - And pass on their genes. So it's not a bad thing to have a slow metabolism, however, it is a bad thing to overeat. - Well, in today's environment food, we have a toxic food environment where people are being processed foods. And of course, even the animal products are processed to a degree because they're higher fat than natural animal products anyway. But in any case-- - How, wait, why is that? I've never heard you say that. - Well, because their animal's not running around wild in the woods, they're very lean, they're living in a, in a pen. - Oh, they have more fat on that. - They have more body fat on them, yeah. So the animal fat body has more fat on them, too. - Great, oh wow. - And fat has nine calories, nine calories a gram compared to carbohydrate four calories a gram, you know, or whatever, five calories a gram. But the point here is is that, yes, people never could have with such a huge caloric environment with a huge caloric rush. Now, the caloric rush, if you're not sure what we're talking about here, means how many calories you can get in the bloodstream at one time. You can get a huge amount of calories in the blood that you could never have gotten had you lived a thousand years ago or 20,000 years ago. - Right. - And our bodies haven't changed. We sort of cave the same body that cavemen have, the same genes, the same structure. We are cave people. We lived thousands of years ago. Our bodies haven't changed since then. But now we have sugar and oil and salt and butter. We have all these things that we can get are calories in the blood so high, and those calories in the bloods being so high, raises growth hormones and also has an effect to biologically turn on cancer-promoting genes and prevent the shutting off of cancer-promoting genes. So the caloric rush, this huge caloric load in the bloodstream, which turns on cancer-promoting genes also makes you age faster. - Right. - So you're aging faster as you're turning, as you're damaging your DNA. - I just have to ask you, 'cause you said about cavemen, that you're a caveman, which I know how badly you actually want to be one. Do you still have the dream of foraging for your own food in Costa Rica and seeing how long you could survive in Costa Rica without any shelter, food? And you said just a knife? - Well, I have to have shoes. - Okay, shoes, yeah. You have sensitive feet. You definitely have to. - I don't want to be nude. I don't want to be nude. - Okay, so she's not naked and afraid. - Not naked and afraid. - Do you still want to do that? - Well, I do, I kind of did, but until I found out about the poisonous frogs, because there was these, there's something like in this place, I was going to go with it, but then they had these waterfalls and I was going to bring a bunch of people. - Yeah. - And bring them like 20 friends of mine. - I know. - And you live in the woods for like a couple of weeks and just eat off the land. - Yeah, it's a forest, forest for your own food. - Orange for our own food. - Yeah. - Right, see if we can do that. - Yeah. - And you're over it already? - I'm thinking because there's these, I don't think it was the poisonous snakes as much as the poisonous frogs you get picked by these frogs and like your arm comes off. You know, they can kill you if you're lying in your tent and you're bit by a frog in there. - You're a doctor, can't you handle that? - I know what to do when a person gets bit by a rattlesnake, but I don't want to be bit by a rattlesnake, just 'cause I know what to do if I'm bit by a rattlesnake. - Okay, that's fair. - Stick with your vegetables in San Diego, maybe. What I wanted to touch onto is, the principles are very interesting to me, but let me talk about moderate caloric restriction. I sometimes have a problem with that word restriction 'cause it makes it sound like you have to be hungry, really hungry, and that's not the case at all. It's just eating, I always saw it because I do this every day, I feel it in my own body. And I've experimented with what happens when I overeat, I feel lethargic, and what happens when I, I love how you said right on the money, because when you hit it right on the money, you feel like you have energy, you feel a certain lightness about you, but you're not hungry, you don't feel restricted, I just feel satisfied and happy, and I hit it. I feel comfortable. - You did it right on money, right. That's the goal. - And it really is like that feeling of where you can't feel your stomach, but you don't feel hungry either, and what you're always thinking about food. I also think that up here feels so good 'cause it just makes your body feel good, and you're not stressed about reaching your ideal waiter being too heavy or too skinny, you're just comfortable, and I want everyone to experience that comfortability. - Yeah, it's a good point because you're right, we're not caloric restriction too, we're uncomfortably hungry. - No. - We're eating so we're not full, but eating so you're not full doesn't mean you're hungry. We're living our life, we're out there playing games, playing volleyball, doing things, going to the do whatever we want to do in our life, and having fun, and not being hungry. And then if we get hungry again, we go eat again. - Yeah, and it's funny, it is funny. I really enjoy food and thinking about eating my next meal, but it feels so much better when you work up an appetite for it. - Yeah, when you're hungry, when you go to eat it, you won't even eat it. - It's the best sauce. - So we're not recreational eating, even though we enjoy our food, we're not eating just for recreation when we're not hungry, we're not recreating and eating when we're already had enough calories to get the point of being full and stuffed. Just because people are overeating before the taste, and they're overeating for the taste, and even if there's stomach swells, they're having much more calories than they require, just because it's recreational eating to eat that much food. - And I think we're really good at recreational eating nowadays. It's very accessible, it's very easy. Even if you're not eating all the time, you can be drinking something for six hours straight, just keep one drink out there. - You're snacking, they have something, they're drinking us some kind of liquid, they're putting something in their mouth. - Chloric rush. - Yeah, right. - So we talked about the micro, the moderate caloric restriction. Now I want to move on to the micronutrient excellence, and what does that mean? Because you're telling people, don't ovary, try to hit it right on the money and enjoy your food, but it's a lot easier to not do a caloric rush when you pick the right foods. - That's right, when you pick the wrong foods and you have a caloric rush, which means calories that brush the bloodstream from oil, sugar, white flour, products, you know, animal fats. - They're really freaking foods, they're not even real. - Right, they're on healthy foods, but those create addictive drives to overeaten the brain. So we're requiring less calories, but the other factor which we were just bringing up is we're talking about eating a diet rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals from colorful plants, because our longevity, one of the strong determinants of longevity is the nutritional concentration of the cell, particularly how much antioxidants and phytonutrient diversity is in the cell. So we're enhancing, so by eating lots of vegetables and berries and onions and mushrooms, these, particularly the G-bombs, particularly different types of green vegetables too, with less calories, with not overeating. That's, our dietary portfolio has a lot of nutrients per calorie, and therefore our cells have a lot of nutrients in them. A lot of nutrient concentration, nutrient density in the cells. And as the, we eat ovary calories and put more body fat on the body, that dilutes the nutrient density in the cells, 'cause it spreads the nutrients out to a bigger mass of tissue, if you're excessively large and it's too much fat, and fat cells so question nutrients still, disproportionately, especially fat soluble nutrients. But in any case, so we're talking about nutrient density and the tissues, and we, and that's where, well, let's eat our salad, let's chew it really well. See, sprouts on the salad, let's have scallion on the salad. Let's eat arugula, which you hate, on the salad, right? - Don't tell people that, I'm just saying. - Exactly, so we're, so reading all these healthy foods with a purpose, because now I'm gonna get these all these protective nutrients in the cells, and then the other half is the lack of toxicity in the cell, which is the other main determinative longevity, is the lower level of talk retained metabolic waste, and the high degree of nutrient density enables the body to keep the toxicity low, because it's the nutrients that enables the cellular machinery to get rid of carcinogens, toxins, free radicals, and other waste products that you could not get rid of if you didn't have all those nutrients in the cell. The nutrients help us get, so we don't wanna expose itself to toxins that are needlessly, but we keep our toxins low by watching our exposure and by having a good nutrient density in our cells. - Because they could do the work for us and really repair our bodies, even if there is damage. - Yes, because if you lived 30,000 years ago, there's still poisons in natural foods, there's still poisons in the natural environment. The body's designed to deal with some degree of toxicity, and breast our body produces its own waste, its own toxins, you produce formaldehyde, your body produces ammonia, formaldehyde, and uric acid, and urea, and all types of things that are not healthy for you. - Do we produce methane, like the same as cows? - The digestive plant produces methane, probably produces some, not the maize, just really the cows do. But in any case, you're producing some toxicity in the tissues, but the body's able to remove the free radicals, and clean them out, but we can overwhelm the body with toxins, stressing out the body's ability to detoxify, but detoxification is a major factor in controlling longevity, and the word detoxification is enhanced by good nutrition, lack of exposure toxins, and getting living with sufficient time where you're not eating, because when you're not eating, the body goes, enhances detoxification, mechanisms to repair and remove toxins when you're not putting food in your mouth, you need those time without eating. - So we hear the terms antioxidant, phytochemicals, micronutrients, nutrients, whatever you wanna call it, that I like to call it micronutrients, which is antioxidants and phytochemicals under that umbrella, but you're really referring to all these micronutrients, all these little nutrients that we don't even know about, like we only know the tip of the iceberg on a lot of them, right? But you always say, the thing about broccoli, the secret ingredient in broccoli, or the secret nutrient in broccoli is broccoli. Can you explain that? - Yeah, because we know that the most powerful cancer and longevity-promoting nutrients are most likely the ITCs, the isothiocyanites and green cruciferous vegetables, probably at the top of longevity-promoting foods. But in with the ITCs in broccoli, there are more than probably more than 500 other chemical compounds that aid to the body's longevity. So we're saying the, so we don't, if we just took the ITC out of the broccoli and put it into a pill and took that without the whole broccoli, it wouldn't have the same benefits. - 'Cause we don't even know all of the- - We don't know all those benefits, and plus you concentrate it without the other supporting orchestra, the whole symphony orchestra sounds, it doesn't work as well. It's like people take vitamin E and they don't get longevity effects. 'Cause when we eat the vitamin E from nuts and seeds, there's eight different vitamin E fragments all into more working together, not just one fragment you're gonna pill. So that's right, the most active ingredient in broccoli is the broccoli itself, 'cause there's more than 500 nutrients in there that work together. - And that science can't really replicate. - We haven't identified all these nutrients, we haven't named them all. And right, in a strawberry, there's probably more than 500 nutrients in a strawberry. So nature is quite, the matrix of the food is quite complicated. And we can't just try to think that we can use a vitamin supplement that's gonna take the place for these complicated substances that are found in natural foods. - So- - Especially if you can create organic foods that are real, run on good soils. - So although you're an advocate for smart supplementation, supplementation will never take the place of a healthy diet. So no matter what marketing campaign is behind, take this and you'll be healthy, it will never replace a healthy diet. - That's right, you have to have the basis has to be your healthy diet. Then you look at that healthy diet and you say, is there any enhancements that could be made through supplementation? But if you don't have the foundation there, the guts of the architecture of the building, does supplements aren't gonna do anything? - Right. - So just filling in a couple of things that you might be a little low in, your low in B12, you should take that, but there's 10,000 nutrients that you needed to have, not just B12, but your weakness is the one nutrient you're missing. So what leads to the other basic principle is comprehensive nutritional adequacy, which means that you have to have not just a high concentration of nutrients in the tissues, but the diversity of nutrients have to include all the things the human body needs, right? And that's where we get into the next, the next determinant of your longevity has to do with the fatty acid profile of your tissues. So particularly adequacy in the omega-3 fatty acid family. So omega-3 adequacy means ALA, which is the short chain omega-3 that's found in flax seeds, walnuts, hemp seeds, chia seeds, and green vegetables have ALA. And even if you took the long chain omega-3 EPA and DHA from fish oil or algae oil and plant-based ones, even if you took a lot of that stuff, you're still not gonna get ideal omega-3 coverage unless you also take have the exposure to ALA through flax seeds and walnuts. We need the whole, it's not enough to have it 'cause there's no retro conversion in the long chain back to the short chain. You still gotta have the short chain, and that's where I published a study on this on, I think the study was published about two or three years ago. It was about how you need to eat nuts and seeds for heart disease, prevention, and reversal. And that if you take out the nuts and seeds and make you diet too low in fat, you increase the risk of sudden cardiac death and cardiac arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation. Because there are, there have been famous physicians advocating plant-based diets that are extremely low in fat with no nuts and seeds in avocado as a means of reversing heart disease, and the data is overwhelmingly collaborative showing that there's more than a hundred studies. And in this study, in this article I used 50, I had 50 signed of references showing how nuts and seeds in prevents cardiovascular death and how it does so. And one of the mechanisms is that ALA stabilizes the heart against irregular heartbeat. - Oh wow, I think this is just personally great news for everyone because they also are so delicious. Great sauces, great in desserts. They're really fun to eat and incorporate in your diet. So we have all the healthy colorful vegetables and fruits that provide a lot of micronutrients. Then we have the nuts and seeds providing a good amount of short chain omega-3 fatty acids in ALA. And that does, what was, what you were telling me about about the proteins? - Well, we're just gonna talk about the animal protein in the plant protein mixture, but finishing up this, the fatty acid thing is the ALA is the short chain, but now can the body take the exposure to an adequate enough of ALA, and can we make enough long chain without eating fish or fish products? I just want to cover that. And the answer is that some people can make enough because they're genetically have enough conversion enzyme and their omega-3 index can be adequate without supplementation. But most vegans do not make adequate, that person is like 20%, 10%. Most people on plant only diets or vegan diets, even if they have adequate ALA exposure, still don't make the ideal amounts of the adequate enough of the DHA and EPA for the brain, because it's your lifetime exposure to an adequate index that's linked in scientific studies to size of the brain and risk of dementia with aging. So we have more than 20 studies that corroborate each other showing that this omega-3 index, measuring the EPA and DHA, not the ALA, correlates with not just brain size, but also with lifespan. That is a determinant of lifespan, that lower omega-3 index is a risk factor for shorter lifespan from all causes of all cause mortality. So now we have an extra determinant of longevity. We talked about phytochemical concentration of the cells, phytochemical diversity, body fat percent, low body toxicity. Now we have the omega-3 index in ALA, exposure being a fifth determinant of longevity. - My question for that is, you mentioned it's important for someone not eating fish or vegan, plant-based, nutrient, what about someone that has me occasionally, or yeah, eats red meat, chicken, and is starting to eat healthier? - Well, you're asking the question, how much loss of lifespan would happen if a person occasionally at animal products, what's the question for a site? - What about supplementing with DHA EPA? What about fish oil? 'Cause it does not only come from fish, what about someone that eats meat or occasional meat? - Meat, you don't get enough, you don't get DHA EPA from commercial raised meat, you get a little bit in wild meat, but not enough to supply adequate levels with the aging brain. So meat is not a good source. - So even if you occasionally eat meat, it's important for you to make sure you're fulfilling your fatty acid needs as well. - Or to know your omega-3 index. It's a simple blood test, you can check your omega-3 index. Most people eat meat, don't eat seafood, still have a poor omega-3 index. Most people who don't supplement get most of their omega-3 from seafood. We're talking about fish and clams and oysters and shellfish, those are people think, and perhaps seafood is one of those flip flops. It's really critical here because maybe 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, adding some seafood to the diet in small amounts, added to longevity, old literature, seafood is a longevity promoting food because it supplies us with EPA and DHA, but without saturated fat that can cause heart disease. And also, it keeps us B12 and zinc in a good level. No, it has these nutrients that humans need in a good level. But in the recent last three or four decades, with the dumping of garbage plastics into the ocean, and with the runoff, the agricultural runoff, of increased nitrogen, we have so much toxicity in the ocean and so much toxicity in inland lakes as well, that seafood went from a life span enhancing food to a life span detriment, I'm hurting food, and now we have more infertility, more burst effects. I'm linked to these long-term toxins that live in the body for years after exposure to seafood. And now we have definitive science showing that exposure to lake fish because of the growth of algae and the cyanobacteria that live on the algae causing a toxin called BMAA. It's not just plastics and chemicals and pesticides and herbicides, it's also just bacteria growing in the lakes from all the agricultural runoff, all the extra nitrogen and organic matter getting dumped into waterways. So now, lake fish has become toxic and you have clusters of ALS, Parkinson's Dementia Syndrome, around people who eat lake fish, and then we have people living near the coast, like Chesapeake Bay, increased clustering of ALS and Parkinson's around people eating shellfish, coastal water fish, particularly five alves and shellfish were high in these toxins and plastics in BMAA. So now, fish has become a negative where in small amounts it could have been a positive if we didn't make the environment so toxic. - And I think this is why some people say nutrition is so confusing or constantly changes or you're here different advice because it does change. The environment has such a profound impact on what we eat. So it's important to stay up to date and make it interesting. - Right. - It is so interesting. - So nowadays, this idea of the determinants of longevity, I'm saying it's better to be predominantly or mostly vegan or all vegan. And then check your zinc or take a little extra zinc, B12 and DHA EPA to get those nutrients that our ancestors would have gotten because just think about this. Humans were not vegans for the last 100,000 years in the earth. They ate some grasshoppers and some seafood and maybe eating some of the- - Grasshoppers. - Snakes, frogs. - What about just like a cow? - People weren't going around chasing cows. - Right. - And buffering. - Hundreds of years. - I do picture, you know, Game of Thrones era though. They kill like one big animal and then they share it amongst, you know, a whole village, a whole huge family. - Like the tan of the cave, what's the- - The tan of the cave bear. Where they're killing the animal with the spears, the kid is big bear, this big elephant, then they're sharing it among- - Food for a year, you know? - So I do picture that in my head a little bit when I make it exciting. - That's probably not what happened most. That was probably very rare. - Really, yeah. - People ate small things they could easily catch. - Right. - You know, I was a little kid. I could catch frogs and salamanders in my backyard. Did you eat them? - I sold them, you know, but I didn't eat them, no. But I caught rabbits, I used to make a rabbit trap in my backyard with like a cardboard box with a stick and a rope with a carrot inside. I make my own, I used to catch rabbits just for fun. - But really, did you let them go after? - Yeah. - Oh good, good. Our listeners are really happy about that at the moment. Yes. - What are we talking about? - We were talking about- - We were talking about the amount that our ancestors ate, the amount of meat they ate. - Oh yeah, yeah. - Not as workly vegan. - Right, so when we're moving people onto a vegan diet to the toxicity of the planet and for better for climate change and everything else, and for health, we're keeping in mind that there might be some beneficial nutrients in animal products that our genetic ancestors had exposure to. - Yeah. - The basis is not a strict vegan diet. People ate some animal products. They had a little external DHA source. They had a little extra zinc. They had a little extra B12 source. So those few nutrients that you better receive through animal products, we have to make sure we were adequate in those. So we're being conservative and cautious and some in the vegan community are being more, you could say, cavalier or risky to take a chance with just eating vegan foods. And my medical career over the last 35 years have seen many serious people who get developed B12 deficiencies on vegan diets, developing lack of ability to walk and dying of cardiovascular death through the high homocysteine. I've seen people die even anyway. I've seen advanced heart because of B12 deficiency. And unfortunately, I've seen many people mess up their brains and develop neurology disease due to DHA and EPA deficiency due to a global omega-3 index. I've been a doctor with most experience in taking care of this vegan community and seeing the outcomes if you don't adequately pay attention to these determinants of longevity of all these determinants of longevity, not just the ones you like, you know what I mean? - Totally, I mean, and this feeds into, even though our ancestors historically might've eaten a little meat or seafood, it is better to be vegan. I remember you telling me like 10 years ago, you looked at me and you go, no, vegans probably do have the longest lifespan and health span. - Yes, I think, well, that's true in today's society because what I'm saying here is this, if you couldn't supplement with B12, if you lived, you know, what people didn't know that 50 years ago, then maybe the vegan did not have the longest lifespan. You're better off eating a little bit of animal products 'cause you need those extra nutrients, animal products get you, give you. But with today's opportunity to use supplements to fix the minor things that a vegan diet doesn't have, you can fill those gaps without eating animal products and that most likely is gonna give you a longer lifespan compared to giving a little bit of animal products to get the extras in it can be 12. - Right, and it's nice too that it's better for the environment and animals. So there's like other benefits to it as well, but the fact that you're able to eat the gold standard, you do have the ability now with science fusing with natural foods to create the perfect diet. Would you agree? - Yes. - Given the climate, given some toxins and stuff in the environment. - Sure, and the other thing that's new in human history and new in nutritional science is what you have started to bring up the protein issue. Because we can't ignore all these studies that have shown that more animal protein dials up a shorter life, so in a dose-dependent way, and we don't have one study now, we have numerous studies, scores of them, looking at the same question, that as you regulate animal protein in the diet, does that extend life or shorten life? And we know now through many corroborative studies showing the same thing, that it shortens lifespan in a dose-dependent manner. And what really flipped nutritional science's heads around was that they realized that more plant protein made for longer life, so as more animal protein, so we know that plant protein has the benefits that animal protein doesn't have. Particularly, I'm thinking, it's because when you eat animal protein, you overshoot your protein needs, and when you overshoot your protein, it leads to active-based cancer. It turns on cancer-causing genes. - Like IGF-1. - Like IGF-1, IGF-1 is a hormone that can turn on cancer promotion, but there's other things that go on in the cell that prevent silencing of abnormal genes, and the animal protein drives that. But the plant protein, increasing plant protein, helps maintain brain size, immune system strength, and muscle and bone integrity with aging without overshooting your protein needs. And so while most plant-based advocates over the last two decades said, don't worry about protein, just need anything to get enough protein, it's kind of not true, it's that we do, especially as we get older, we have to pay attention to protein adequacy, and to get eating foods that are high in plant protein, like hemp seeds and broccoli, and beans and soybeans, these things do add to longevity, 'cause we're conscious of eating enough for the higher protein plant foods, and not make the diet all fruit. We're not make the diet all rice, like macromatic, they're all potato, we're actually paying attention, and we have the data to show that these concepts that I've been preaching over the last three decades have an undisputable amount of corroborative evidence now to show it's their efficacy. - Which the carnivore trolls are really not gonna like you saying that, they do not like that, and they really believe that eating full on me, and heavy, heavy dairy and cheese and raw this raw that helps their ailments, which it's so crazy that you can have two diametrically opposed viewpoints. That both claim longevity promoting. - You know, you could claim anything, but there's no science to show that let's-- - For all the people out there who are vacillating and don't know what to believe, it really fascinates me that there is no science. - Right, no science to show that eating more meat makes you live longer. - No. - The more you dig into it, and there are. I have seen studies, and we talked about this too, that shows dairy helps you lose weight, or helps your heart, you know, you get down the saturated fat. And it's so funny when you realize, oh, that one was funded by the dairy industry. Oh, they were comparing that with whole milk to skim milk, and then said skim milk was healthier. - Whatever it is is that you could look at short-term studies that don't look at, but if you look at long-term studies that follow hundreds of thousands of people, and we have to look at all the studies. And there's too much evidence to ignore the people who are on those type of animal, you know, keto and carnivore diets, they have to ignore 90% of the studies to find some data to justify what they want to preach. - Right. - But we've talked about it before on these podcasts, that there are some advantages for some people to go into ketosis, like if they have, you know, seizure disorder, or people who are schizophrenia, have schizophrenia because being ketosis could help them. - Right. - And there are some people who are allergic to beans, and they just cut out, they have allergies to certain types of food elements, and by going off all the things that are sensitive, they feel a little better. But that's so rare, it's so unusual that it's much, that it's really, it's not a diet style that's for, that would be even discussed for the masses, 'cause it's gonna cause too much need of the strategy and premature death. - That makes sense. There was one thing that you were telling me about, and I was like, oh, I want to know more about this. - Oh. - This. - Right. It's SERT1 and AMP kinase. We're talking about longevity proteins that stabilize the telomeres from aging and shortening, and maintain the stem cells from aging and disappearing. So to live a long time, you need, you want to have, you can reflect your biological age by the health of your cells as reflected by the length of your telomeres. And there are proteins that keep the telomeres and called SERT1 and AMP kinase and stabilize stem cells. And what activates those proteins, exercise, moderate caloric restriction, high phytochemical diet. What turns on the proteins that accelerate aging like mTOR and turn on cancer-promoting genes are extra calories, high glycemic diets, overeating and extra protein. So we can turn on, so we have so much evidence today to turn on cancer-promoting genes or turn off cancer-promoting genes or turn on and launch every proteins that make you live longer proteins, make you live shorter. So we have all the information here that exercise keeping in your accurate caloric window to keep your body fat low and to keep yourself lean. And if you're going to err on the side of eating, eat a little less, not a little more than you're supposed to. - Right, and you're still going to be fine. You're not going to starve, it still will feel good. But when you say telomeres, I just want to make sure people know what that is. You're talking about the ends of chromosomes, right? So when we age, they start to unravel and get not as pretty, essentially, right? Yeah, the ends of the chromosomes, as cells replicate, the more as you age and the cells are used. - They build wear, essentially. - They wear out and they're wearing out of the cell you can see by the telomeres shortening. So it had a losing their ability to replicate and continue to grow, to be healthy. So that happens as we age. So people say you can age backwards and I'm saying that's not true. You can age backwards because we can do telomere length testing and epigenetic testing and methylation defect testing to see what your biological age is. And when people follow a nutrientarian diet for a period of months or years, we retest them and they're actually telomeres longer and the biological age is now improved. So we see, and we just did a study on this with 50 women on a nutrientarian diet for more than five years each and 50 women on a standard American diet. And we compared the telomere length and the stem cells and we found huge differences. So we're talking here about that we can slow aging and if we change your diet to what we're saying here such a healthy living, we can actually get younger biologically. - With longer lengthening our telomeres. - With lengthening of our telomeres. - You can relate, you can if you eat a high nutrient diet can repair damage. - You can be great. There's an Amazon called telomeres that actually is able to repair and build back damaged telomeres. - So the last thing that we kind of touched on but we need to talk about for anti-aging is alcohol because that obviously is something that damages an age as our body as well. And so when you're talking about eating a high nutrient diet, a nutrient diet, a healthy diet that does exclude alcohol. - Alcohols and carcinogen, you know, excess salt is also immune system suppressing in ages you rapidly. - Right. - And it's just like extra calories do but having a fireplace in your house where you constantly have a little bit of smoke coming in, just a little bit of smoke coming in also ages people more prematurely too. - Right. - So it's any kind of thing, anything you take that's toxic, you know, and you chronically expose this toxin over and over again. You know, people drink alcohol like every week, right? They don't think they go out and have weekends, they drink two or three times a week, they drink alcohol. And it's the chronic exposure to that toxicity that has a major effect on shortening of the lifespan. - Right. - But not as much as the diet, not as much as fast food. Put it in perspective, hot dogs, burgers, pizza and french fries and obesity is much more damaging than having a couple of drinks a week but they're all lifespan shortening. - Right. So the biggest takeaway really to extend your lifespan and not age or age backwards and create a long healthy life for yourself is to eat a high nutrient diet which like I said is great news to me 'cause I really enjoy healthy foods and I think they're delicious. - Right. It's a great hobby to have. And we want people to identify with seeing a new tritarian, being a new tritarian gives you the happiest, the longest but the happiest, most pleasurable life and you're not losing pleasure in life when you're not gonna recreate with food, not gonna create, so eat self-destructive foods and damage your health with unhealthy food thinking it's gonna make your life happier. It doesn't work that way. - Right. And I'd like to say I think we're here to encourage people to reap all the benefits that come with eating a healthy lifestyle, eating a healthy diet and having a healthy lifestyle that it's really a positive and a blessing. So if you think it's not, this is all good news. We have the ability to anti-age, to fight off cancer and do this all through eating healthy foods and I think that's fantastic. - And healthy delicious foods that we can make taste delicious too. - Totally. It's a great deal. All right, thanks for joining us. Until next time. - Good luck. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
